Hardware overload

In the last three weeks I've done major work on my system, a friend's system, my two kids systems, and today, my step-grandfather's two systems. This is all not to mention major work on at least one production and three test systems at work. Ahhh!

I've brought most of this on myself, and I really don't mind so much, I'm just starting to confuse issues between systems. A sure sign of overload.

Oddly, while I was working on the system today, a friend from work called me on my cell phone because HE was working on one of his friend's systems and was having an issue that he couldn't figure out and wanted to asked if I had any input. Ahhh!


Today, we had a family lunch, and afterward I told my step-grandfather I'd go over to his place to get some of his new hardware going that he got for Christmas, since he had been asking me every time we got together in the last several weeks.

He has a new-ish system from maybe October, and an older system that has been offline since he got the new one. He has been wanting to use them both because while the newer system is XP, the older one is 98, and he says there's some software that he has never gotten working in XP that he would still like to use.

For Christmas, he got a broadband router with built-in switch, some network cable, and a KVM. So that made my job for the day hooking up his new KVM, networking the two computers, and mapping drives between the two of them so he could easily copy stuff back and forth.

Well, most of that went as expected, though I'm having a little trouble mapping a drive in his 98 back to his XP Home. I'm not sure if it's an XP Home issue or something I'm missing. I have XP Pro at home, and my kids' 98 computers can map drives back to it with no problem. So that's why I'm suspicious. Also his XP Home can map back to the 98 system no problem and can read-write files all the same.

But I called it a draw and left because he also got an external DVD-burner for his system, however all of his USB ports -- even the SIX on his "NEW" computer -- are USB 1.1. I completely advised against trying to write 4.7GB DVDs via 12mb USB 1.1 ports. So he will be picking up a USB 2.0 PCI card that I will get to install next weekend and then finish working his other issue.

The irony? He specifically asked for an external DVD-burner so he wouldn't have to mess with opening up his system... only now we'll have to open it up to put the PCI card in... good thing he didn't get the internal drive.