Unauthorized Hardware Modifications (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 04:12:01 -0400
From: "Eric M. Kidd" <revp.xvqq@cbobk.pbz>
To: "Jason Y. Sproul" <wfcebhy@cvpnffb.pfyno.jrfyrlna.rqh>,
    "Michael J. Fromberger" <Zvpunry.W.Sebzoretre@znp.qnegzbhgu.rqh>,
    atz@qnegzbhgu.rqh
Subject: Unauthorized Hardware Modifications

 'And the meanest, nastiest, ugliest one of the bunch, he had probably
  offended more people through his postings than the world's top ten
  sickest, most twisted fucks combined, he was coming over to me and he
  was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' nasty 'n' ugly 'n' horrible
  and all kinds of things and he sat down next to me and said "Kid, what'd
  ya get?"

  I said "I didn't get nothing, they put a line on my transcript and made
  me remove the hard drive". He said "What were you busted for?", and I
  said "unauthorized hardware modifications". And they all moved away from
  me on the bench there, and a hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty
  things, 'till I said "to set up an NNTP server which could bring
  potentially-offensive newsgroups censored at my local site and grant
  full news access to my friends". They all came back, shook my hand,
  talkin' 'bout crime, underground FTP sites, promiscuous NNTP servers,
  what to do about Barney the Dinosaur, all kinds of groovy things that we
  was talking about on the bench.'
                                    -Paul Pomes, "Alice's NNTP Server"

Humor me for a momemnt. There's a point to all this.

So I decided it was time to bite the bullet and run Linux, and besides,
MicroCenter was running a special on used IDE drives. I bought a half-acre
of disk space (2.5 GB) for under $170, strapped it to my bike, and risked
my life on Mass Avenue.

When I got home, I took my BeBox apart, and tried to mount the drive. The
BeBox uses 40-pin IDE connectors, while the drive came with a keyed 39-pin
cable. Since all IDE drives are apparently vaguely compatible, and the
installation instructions assumed the cable wasn't keyed, I grabbed a hand
drill and a tiny bit. A minute later, everything fit.

With the preceding lovely filk running through my head, I reassembled my
BeBox. Unfortunately, it no longer worked. Even with all the hardware
unhooked, it still froze before initializing the video display. Fargh! It
must have finally died. I composed a message to qrifhccbeg@or.pbz, and
spent some time shooting the breeze with Rain about idiot bosses.

Returning to my room, I remembered that I "fixed" this problem once before,
several months ago--by accidentally jamming my ISA Ethernet card into a
running BeBox and rebooting. Figuring that my motherboard was probably
toast (and the card only cost $30 new), I resorted to voodoo debugging.

I jammed the card into the motherboard of my powered-on BeBox, and rebooted.

Sure enough, it worked.

I'm going to hook up all the drives again, and format the new arrival. I'll
tell you if the drive works. In the meantime, I'm offering a dinner at
Bartley's or Romunto's--with choice of beverage--to the first person who
can explain why my machine now works.

Cheers,
Eric