Mother will not be pleased

Obey the grassface potatoes

One man's junk is another man's… who am I kidding?

Although I had originally hoped to avoid spending money on the old Windows 98 PCs, I couldn't pass the opportunity to purchase nine used 10BASE2 network cards with coaxial ports for $1.00 on eBay! A reliable network using this method was the stuff of legends back in the day; so this might involve some serious troubleshooting. Well, there will definitely be some kind of shooting involved.

Old age, nostalgia, and its effects on garage space

For those who have been checking my blog regularly, you may have noticed a slight decline in regular postings during the 2010 period. My interests change faster than the pants of a deer in a lion cage, so unfortunately my blog had lost my attention for quite some time; but this is about to change, because I have loads of stuff and junk (literally) to talk about!

I'll kick it off with some news about my latest hobby. In an attempt to relive some of my most memorable years, I have become the proud father of seven Windows 98 era PCs that would have otherwise been thrown out by my employer. With these old machines, a choice selection of high school chums and I will be able to replay some of the old multiplayer games that kept us busy most weekends (and many weeknights) during the 1999–2001 period. I'm talking about classic LAN games such as Delta Force, Half-Life: Counter-Strike, Motocross Madness 2, Quake, Soldier of Fortune, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, Viper Racing, Worms 2, and butt-loads more. Sure, some of these games are playable on new systems, but nothing beats the feel of a chunky beige keyboard, a flickering CRT monitor, and a noisy rig with the stability of a dead wombat on a tightrope. There's no ugly image resampling for the low-resolution games, and there's a sense of satisfaction I get knowing that the computer is working hard to display the primitive graphics.

Before we go to the trouble of removing 10 years worth of boot marks and coffee stains, I want to at least make sure the old PCs will talk to each other in a network. This was problematic back in the day, as we all had different machines with different operating systems. This time around I have a bunch of Dells, all running Windows 98 Second Edition. The only problem is, the network card drivers want to extract to floppy disks before they can be installed. Where am I supposed to find working floppy disks?! I could try eBay, but I'm hoping to avoid spending any money on this project. Besides this setback, I have functioning sound and video card drivers, and Viper Racing is as fun as it was in 1999!

I better stock up on Cheetos and Mountain Dew, 'cause there will not be any girls there.

Finally, something that the kids can't break

I attached the surround speakers in the home theatre this morning. Amazingly, I found all four speaker cables in the first attempt! It's really scary sawing nasty big holes in my nice new walls. Now all I need is a Blu-ray that will make use of the 7.1 channels.

The hybrid

My dad's class at school has been creating and racing HPVs and Hybrids for the past eight years or so. Pictured is their latest monster! It's powered by a 72cc petrol engine and an electric motor, and sports a fully adjustable suspension system. It will be competing in the 24 hour race at Maryborough this weekend.

Networked? Yes. Yes it did.

It's been ages between posts, but it's so hard to find the time! There's so much to share; but there's nothing as interesting and rare as a computer networking success story!

As mentioned previously, we are currently unable to access ADSL at our new home, so the only affordable option for Internet access is wireless broadband. The modem (Huawei E5832) we chose has a built-in wireless router, but there are no Ethernet ports.

My network consists of a desktop PC, laptop and a plethora of video game consoles (two that require a hard connection, and three that are wireless). The desktop PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 are connected by cable to a Asus wireless router, as a physical connection is required to reliably stream content from the PC to the consoles.

The devices connected to the Asus router could not gain Internet access because there is no way of physically connecting the modem to the Asus router.

The chumps (and chumpettes) at whirlpool.net.au directed me to a free third-party firmware upgrade for the Asus router, called DD-WRT. This has unlocked a tonne of features supported by the Broadcom chipset, but blocked by the Asus' default firmware. Now the Asus wireless router runs in Client Bridge mode, with a wireless connection to the Huawei modem.

The consoles can access the Internet! But before you get too excited, I haven't tested the physical connection between the PC and the consoles. I can't imagine any problems there though (unless I give it any amount of thought).