Frank's Column

Networks
By Frank Vest

You're probably thinking this is about Fidonet, Internet or both. Nope. It's about my network. No, not a new Fido or Internet style network either. Just 'my' network. :)

A few weeks ago, I decided to try to put together a couple of my computers (I have three in the house counting the BBS machine) in a network. I must say, it's been fun. :)

Started out with two old network cards. One was an ISA plug & play and the other was a plain ISA. To make a long story short, I installed the cards and let Windows configure the stuff that it does for the network. Things went well and I got it going with NetBeui. I thought this was great... until I rebooted one of the machines and the network disappeared. :(

From then on, I fought with the thing. I tried TCP/IP and everything from resetting up the network, including the dial-up part, to re-installing the cards. I searched the Internet and finally found the drivers, manuals and setup programs for the cards. Why is it so hard to find this stuff on the Internet?... Anyway, that's another story. :)

I finally decided, after a visit from my RC and our attempt to get the network up, that the BIOS of my main box had a problem. I tried to upgrade the BIOS and Windows wouldn't load for nothing. I couldn't even do a re-install of Windows. I got the BIOS back to the old version and was flustered to no ends.

Now, why didn't I think of this. Ask Fidonet Sysops! I put a note out in the Region 19 mailing list and got suggestions. One of which was to check the NIC settings of the cards. I thought, "I did this and saved the setting and reset the setting and saved them and ...". Ok, why not.

Here I go... Check the plug & play. It's fine. Check the other one. Same settings as before. Random thought. "save the settings even thought nothing has changed". So, I did.

I'm not asking why and I'm not going to try to figure it out. I'll not complain. I'll just accept that when I re-booted the non-plug & play system, the network came up and was just like it had always been there.

Go figger. :-)

Anyway, just wanted to share this with you all and say: If you need help with something computer related, the best place to go is Fidonet. You'll get more help than you could imagine and better than any "help desk" IMHO.

Regards,

Frank