Well, I finally got rid of my Amiga 2000 computers. They were taking up quite a bit of space. The guy that bought them from me on eBay finally came by and picked them up. I guess he was legit afterall.

Not much to report about in terms of the computer circus. Oh, I did get a 56K PCI modem the other day. I had a hell of a time getting the driver installed so that the software would actually recognize the modem. Not sure how I finally got it to work. I basically de-installed everything and started over.

I bought the modem on eBay, and it came with two CDs. One CD has the same markings as the box the modem came in, and the other CD was just a CD-R that someone burned with another set of drivers on it. Not sure what the deal is. Of course, for some reason, I installed the driver from the CD-R, first. That may have been the mistake that gave me such trouble.

One thing about the HORRIBLE installation software that was on the CD-R disk is that it was totally HORRIBLE. It had this splash screen - which was actually the main menu - with no frame or window controls on it, and it would not allow me to click on anything. It was doing something - installing something! - in the background before giving me a chance to select anything.

I guess it was psychic.

Don't you hate software that presumes to know what you want to do next? I just wanted to see what was on the disk. Well, the thing is, after I de-installed what I thought was the software/driver that was automatically installed, I put in the other CD-ROM and installed the drivers from that. That's when I tried installing other software to talk to the modem only to discover the modem wasn't talking.

So I de-installed everything modem-related and started over...again with the CD-R disk. This time, the main menu screen that wouldn't let me click on anything, refused to go away. I was able to peek around the edge of this window (since it wasn't full screen) and double-click on My Computer and dig up an old program I wrote called Window Hunter. This allowed me to discover the problem with the window not going away. Apparently, behind the main menu window, it was attempting to do the install that it snuck in on the first go-round, but this time it encountered a file that already existed. So, it was waiting at a dialog box for me to click on Skip or Replace.

The infinite wisdom of those who developed this horrible software apparently lacked the foresight to consider something going WRONG during the installation process, for they provided absolutely no way to hide the main menu window in order to see any operating system dialog boxes that may pop up! Alas, Window Hunter came to the rescue. I took aim at the main menu and shot it down. And there, in all it's glory, was the dialog box asking me to Skip or Replace.

Or something to that effect.

The short story is, I got the modem working. My next step is to plug it into a phone line (assuming there is some way I can run one out to my shop) and configure the automated voice mail software that came with the modem (or write my own). That was the whole point of getting the modem. Well, that and having fax capability. We have a computer with a scanner and a printer and a modem - seems like we ought to be able to get rid of the answering machine and the fax machine, eh?

That's the idea.

Progress may be slow, but I'm making some.

I think.