Web Developers:

View the source of this blog entry and feel free to add the following code to the end of your pages. Let's deter people from using Internet Explorer until Microsoft simply gives up on it like they should have done so many years ago! And please encourage other web developers to follow suit.

P.S. If you are not using Internet Explorer, you won't see anything below this line.

This blog is pretty stale. But considering the nature of this blog, I'd say that is a good thing. It has been difficult to keep up with things while building a house, moving, and working full time.

Not a whole lot has happened on the Computer Circus front. However, I have since found a new home for my web sites - I finally found one that allows hot linking so I can post my photos and link to them from my blog.

The computer I used to run my web server on I think has finally given up the ghost. I turned it one one day to copy all the files off of it (to put them on my new web host) and it failed to boot up! I tried a couple of times, and finally managed (by sheer luck) to get it to boot. Once it was up, I logged into root and copied all the files off of it.

I haven't turned it back on since.

I also managed - somehow - to lose a whole bunch of pictures that I took with my camera. I don't really know how it happened, and I don't even really remember the chain of events that led to the loss. All I can recall is that it involved a laptop that I was using from work, and I transferred images from that laptop to one of my desktop computers. But the images are nowhere to be found - and I have scanned ALL of my drives with Picasa as well as with some data recovery tools, to no avail.

It also didn't help that I copied 3GB of data to my laptop JUST before making this discovery. It was a comedy of errors, though no one was laughing.

I also have been struggling with this crappy network situation at my new home. There is no such thing as DSL out where I live, and I can't even get cable. It's the price I pay for living in a rural area. So, I have to suffer with this Verizon wireless card and an old wireless networking router that allows us to share the network connection on our LAN, yet none of our DELL laptops can connect to, wirelessly.

Without getting into it, suffice to say it is a royal pain in the ass. Especially when it goes kaput while I am working from home! My office is over 3 hours away, so it's not like I can just hop in the car and head to the office.

Anyway, I have plans to put together a file server - someplace where we can put all of our files - and a system to back them up regularly - so we can maybe create a little simplicity around here. I have too many computers, and too many vulnerable files spread around too many drives.

I bought a 1TB (terabyte) drive, and I want to buy another one to use as a mirror. Now I just need a computer case to put them in (all the ones I have seem inadequate, and I only have one or two computers that support SATA drives). Time is my biggest enemy. I think I need to just hire someone to come in and plan it out and maybe even set it up for me.

I'm sure that is a recipe for another entry in the Computer Circus Blog.

Until then, I just wanted to ping this blog to let you know I'm still around.

Anybody still out there?

Now that I am getting settled into my new home, it seems some old projects are coming back to life. I was arranging things in the basement today when I came across an old computer power supply casing that I had modified (by ripping out its dead guts) to house a separate, much smaller power supply inside, plus a '386 embedded PC computer board and a tiny hard drive from an old laptop. It was a project that I never completed, because the replacement power supply was supposedly bad.

But I had coincidentally also discovered the questionable power supply in a box just minutes earlier. So, one thing led to another, and I decided to try putting the thing together to see if the power supply was actually dead or not. Some power supplies don't work (properly, anyway) unless they have a load connected to them, and I think, originally, I was too afraid of blowing up my tiny computer and subsequently never connected it to the power supply and tried firing it up, and abandoned the project for dead.

But today was different. This is a new year (that, IMO, is going to be great), so I mounted the power supply inside the housing and applied power. The cooling fan from the original power supply was still mounted inside the housing, so I connected it to what I thought was where a cooling fan was supposed to connect on the tiny power supply, but nothing happened when I turned on the power. After some troubleshooting, I determined that the connection was meant for a power fail signal (wrong voltage and power to drive a fan), so after modifying a connector to the main power output pins, I had the fan wired to the proper 12V output.

But still no luck. The fan would not turn.

So then I decided to get out the embedded PC board and hook everything up and turn it on to see what would happen. I just had a feeling that it was all going to work once everything was in place. I wasn't all that concerned about blowing up my tiny computer, since I figured I might never find the time again to mess with it, anyway, so I felt there was nothing to lose (except a box on the shelf so I'd have more room for storage). I got everything wired up, plugged it in, and flipped the switch.

Nothing.

I was disappointed. But then, after a few seconds, suddenly a red LED came on! And the fan started running! A couple more seconds passed and the tiny computer beeped at me - twice! IT WAS ALIVE!!!

I knew it needed something (because of the double beep), but because I did not have a monitor or keyboard attached, I didn't know what it thought was wrong (other than no keyboard or monitor being attached). But that didn't matter to me so much as the fact that it was actually, and finally, running!

I have a blog entry way back in June 2004 where I wrote about some of the troubles that I had with this particular project. But it didn't start there! It actually began on the day that I created the Computer Circus blog!

That first entry details an event whereby the power went out in my apartment due to a power supply giving up the ghost inside one of my computers. It was that power supply that I gutted to use as the housing for this project, which was to build a complete, fully-contained computer (DOS-based, 50MHz '386 embedded computer) inside the shell of an old, dead computer power supply.



Although that was the original initiation point that led to this project, this particular project officially began about a week later. I blogged about it after I made the initial determination that the attempt failed.



So, after nearly five years, an event that contributed to the inspiration that led to the creation of this blog has found closure by beginning a new life. Here is the completed project in the clutches of my hand.



Once I knew it was working, I mounted the keyboard connector to the housing (in the hole where the output power wires from the original power supply used to be). And I installed the video connector, a COM port connector, and plugged in the hard drive. I dug out an old keyboard, hooked up a monitor, plugged in the computer and turned it on. I got a prompt to enter the BIOS, and thus I was on my way to configuring a new toy to play with.



Here's to one accomplishment, already, in 2009! Woo hoo! And it wasn't even on my list.