For some reason, the Western Digital 500GB drive was having problems and I was ready to send the drive back to the manufacture for a replacement.  But I decided to replace the cable to see if that was the problem.  Sure enough, that was the problem.

Initially I recovered the data from the server and installed it on Ubuntu 7.10 desktop running as a virtual machine on top of my XP desktop.

But I’ve been a lucky recipient of a quite a few Dell GX280s which are more than powerful enough to run LAMP as a test bed; SAMBA and a few other applications to keep the infrastructure up and running. These puppies have a small footprint so I have two backup systems sitting around just in case.

Installing Ubuntu 8.04 Server was a breeze except that I thought it would at least install a basic desktop for management. But that wasn’t too difficult to install.  (Just apt-get install ubuntu-desktop.)  Everything else should be easy to install and configure.

Now, trying to debug a simple error condition with an analyzer, is becoming a chore trying doing this remotely from home. 02h — You’re Killing me!

You would think that 1.7G is plenty of space to upgrade, but no….

The server was an old Dell 6300 with 4 Pentium II running at a lighting speed of 450 MHz. When it was purchased about five or six years ago, it was an extremely powerful server. And it still is powerful for driving I/O to the Firmware I’m testing.

Since it’s used for testing, it was no big loss. Just the time to reinstall 2003. I plopped in the Enterprise edition and it wouldn’t boot off the CD. I checked the BIOS and alas no “Boot From CD First” configuration. It can boot off a 3 1/2″ floppy.

So I go about trying to create a bootable floppy with 2003 on it. Usually, the Windows OS CD has a utility to create 2003 boot disks so you can install it initially from a floppy. But not on 2003.

There is a way to create a 2003 boot floppy, install a loader and SCSI driver so that you can read the CD after you boot from floppy. So I went through all the trouble to create the disk, plopped in the CD again and reboot.

This time the Dell sees the CD and starts booting off it. The only different I did this time was put the latches down over the CD ROM. Duh. The CD ROM is mounted vertical in the server instead of horizontal as in the majority of all computers. Doh! What a time killer.

Any way I got the OS reinstalled and I’m back in business.

I’m also holding unnatural mice at the same angle as the Natural Mouse. I just need to get a new mouse for every computer I’m using…

– Howard

With the old style ball mouse, I would have to take out the ball and clean it every 3 months and then toss it out only to buy a new one after a year.

I splurged and bought a Microsoft Natural Wireless Mouse 6000.  The “Natural” is an ergonomic mouse designed to keep the pressure off your wrist.  It’s taking a little time to get use to the position but if it reduces the pressure on my wrist, it’s worth the price.