More computers on that desk!

It would appear as though the theme for this week is "How many computers can we have set up and running, then swap out for more computers on that desk" or something like that. Previously I had the GX1, then the Sun Ultra5, then the SGI Indigo2, and now my Centris 650. Later I predict the Quadra 700 and maybe a sparcstation or two.



Would be the Centris 650 hanging out, with my Multiscan 15 attached. This thing is considerably better set up than I had thought; nice big 2GB seagate hard drive, decked out with 7.6.1 and a ton of apps, 112MB RAM, and a balzing 25MHz full 040. I also have a NuBus 10BaseT & AUI card in it, made by Asante if I remember correctly.

Unfortunately though, my Multiscan 15 seems to be dying again, it's doing the thing where it applies a strong pink tint over everything. This happened a while back, but went away, hopefully that happens again. Interestingly enough, this is the very same monitor we got with our Power Mac 6115CD back in 1994. I still have the manuals, install floppy, and box; though the box is filled with Christmas lights!

xbox finally on the net

A while back I got a modded xbox from a friend of mine, which is awesome. One of the apps from the mod, xbox media center, has loads of nice little abilities like playing music or videos off samba servers, or copying games over via FTP and so on. However, my xbox is nowhere near an ethernet cable when it's downstairs, and I have no TV or RCA input devices up in my room (yet!) So, what we've had to do is take either mine or dad's laptop into the living room, run a long enet cable, and do net sharing, which sort of sucks and is a pain to get working properly, esp. if you want other devices on the LAN to see it, or for it to see the internet.

But today, that all changed...

While cleaning, I came across my Linksys WGA11B. This thing is more or less an over glorified wifi-b to 10baseT ethernet bridge. I got it many years ago (read: wifi-b era) from a friend of mine who thought it was broken, but in reality had just lost the power supply. In attempt to "fix" it, he removed the case, which left me with a board and antenna, which was just enough. However, I never had a powersupply for it. Today however when cleaning when I found it, I had the thought to try it because I actually had a machine for it, the xbox. After a bit of digging I found a generic 12v AC adapter, and hooked it up. The lights lit right up and I had no idea what to do.

A short trip to the linksys support website later, I was downloading the setup application and reading manual PDFs. Basically, you plug this thing directly to you computer via ethernet, you run the application, you enter in your settings, and hit save. As long as you don't press the reset button, you're fine. The main disadvantage to this is that I had to move the wifi-net to WEP from WPA2, so that's been a little bumpy. Other than that it works great and I can now access the xbox whenever, without having to do weird computer crap.

SGI

So I dug out my good old Indigo2 just now, as well as the massive monitor. I think I got this from landon a few months ago, It's an R4400 250MHz, IMPACT MG10 graphics, 192MB RAM, 4ish GB HDD, and a CD drive. Has Irix 6.5 now, which I may reinstall.



Pretty simple setup, works nicely though.

Oh mah god, it lives!

So apparently before declaring it dead and being all bummed out, I should have checked the right speaker's connection to the actually machine. I moved the cable to the front headphone jack and I get good stereo now, but I do wonder if that bad jack is bad or something. I'll have to do more poking around.

R. I. P. Left Speaker

I just now noticed that when playing music on my speakers, the audio seemed to be primarily coming from the right speaker, which is the control, meaning it has the amp and inputs and that stuff, as well as the jack for the left speaker to connect to. Now, this has happened a few times before, but usually the cable just fell out of the jack or something. This was not the case, it was well seated in there. I tried wiggling the cable, I tried checking the audio driver software, I tried playing tons of different songs as well as tones that warble from speaker to speaker.

Guess this means I'll be shopping for a new set of speakers now.

Hrmmm.

Redoing XP on the Athlon

So basically after I got xubuntu all installed on the athlon, I decided to boot back to XP and do something, but unfortunately the install of XP got canned. I don't feel like going into the details because it's so depressing but basically I had to end up doing a COMPLETE reinstall, loosing datas. Most of them were mirrored on the thinkpad so it was ok.

Rain!

Suiting. The second I publish that post, the GX1's updates finish. Tsk tsk tsk.

In other news, it has started to RAIN! Which means the fan in my front window is pulling in deliciously cool air. Mmmmm it's nice. Also, starting to install on the athlon.