Piffle!

[Warrl]

The three main reasons I haven't already switched to Linux, in no particular order:

1) In my attempts to switch, I have yet to succeed in getting my computer to be a wifi hotspot that my tablet can see. Note though: I'm trying to get it to be a DEDICATED hotspot, not emulate two devices one of which is a client on some other network - and Windows won't do this either; it may be something the hardware/UEFI simply won't allow.

Why are you trying to get your computer to be a dedicated WiFi? Why not just use your router?

Well, if I'm using expensive cell data, that works fine - my router is my phone.

However, lots of RV parks have free wifi. I like that better for obvious reasons. And if my phone is connecting to that, it cannot simultaneously be my router.

My computer can be my router. But there are problems with switching back and forth between the two, one being that there is no single fixed IP address for my printer that works with both routers. Also, so far as I've been able to find and get working, my computer can ONLY be my router when it also has a wifi connection to some other router, and both sides then run at half speed. Some RV park wifi is pretty slow and weak at full speed. (So is the cell network in some places.)

I also want the connection between the phone and the computer to always look the same, because that makes backups and file-syncing more reliable.

What seems like the easy solution would be for my computer to be my router all the time. It can talk to the phone over USB to get to the internet. How the phone gets to the internet would not be the computer's problem.

Now if there's a cheap dedicated wifi router than can handle its uplink being a USB connection...

[AnotherFairportfan]

* sigh *

I came out here to my desk to take my pills, which live here.

For no particular reason, i reached down and pressed the power button on the computer - something i have done several times since it went Tango Uniform some days ago.

And it came on.

I have an intermittent somewhere; i'm still fairly sure it's the motherboard.

[TazManiac]

What if I just happen to like Windows?

Then we will all pray for you and hope that the nice pleasant men with the white coats will be able to help you help yourself.

Or- You Dual Boot.

The three main reasons I haven't already switched to Linux, in no particular order:

1) In my attempts to switch, I have yet to succeed in getting my computer to be a wifi hotspot that my tablet can see. Note though: I'm trying to get it to be a DEDICATED hotspot, not emulate two devices one of which is a client on some other network - and Windows won't do this either; it may be something the hardware/UEFI simply won't allow.

Why are you trying to get your computer to be a dedicated WiFi? Why not just use your router?

I second this; being able to enable Connection Sharing on a PC is a means to an end, but isn't the preferred default to allowing a 2nd device access to your network.

We can get into DD-WRT and just basic single-IP-address-from-your-ISP shared amongst all-your-differing-devices (this forum is read by folks with differing degrees of experience, so I'm taking for granted very little in terms of the reading audience.), but are you just trying to get the Tablet Online?.

2) I'm an experienced VB programmer and have a substantial stack of VBA macros divided among several add-ins and templates in both Word and Excel. At this point I am not convinced that OpenOffice or any of its derivatives are similarly programmable.

Latest version of LibreOffice Calc is similarly programmable. In fact, you can even import your VBA directly without a problem.

This is worth trying; I can't relate practical experience because I didn't take VB (Visual Basic?) past the first six months of it's debut.

3) I'm lazy.

Behold, the power of the default option.

In all seriousness, run what you like. I happen to prefer Linux for a lot of different reasons, but it's not for everyone. Unlike MS, I'm not going to try and tell you how to set up your OS.

I've often related that folks develop knowledge most often in the pursuit of a goal, book-learn'n is a good preparation, but school of hard knocks toughens you up and strengthens you intuitively.

In other words, why bother with better if you don't think the challenge of 'new' will be worth it?

[Dave]

1) In my attempts to switch, I have yet to succeed in getting my computer to be a wifi hotspot that my tablet can see. Note though: I'm trying to get it to be a DEDICATED hotspot, not emulate two devices one of which is a client on some other network - and Windows won't do this either; it may be something the hardware/UEFI simply won't allow.

This can be done with Linux, but it's not at all trivial. You need several things:

• The "hostapd" daemon, which implements the "access point" management functionality
• One of the somewhat limited set of WiFi network cards which can operate in "access point" mode.
• Some additional network setup (typically using "iptables") which enables routing and "network address translating" (a.k.a. "masquerading") so that whatever client systems connect to your "hot spot" can share your laptop's IP address and route traffic out through its other network interface.

Some network cards can run multiple modes at once - i.e. acting as an access point for one SSID, and acting as a client on another. Not all can do this, and even for those which can, you may get better performance using two WiFi cards (or one internal card and an external USB dongle).

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/debian-ubu ... ess-point/ has some information about doing this, although they talk about operating in bridged mode rather than NAT/masquerade mode.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Docum ... n/hostapd/ seems to be the Place To Go for information about the hostap daemon and the cards/drivers you can use.

[GlytchMeister]

I knew Dave would turn up.

All knowledge is contained in fandom. I can come here with problems regarding anything from art and writing, to the FrankenStratus misbehaving, to techie computer issues, and someone will know not only what ails me, but how to fix it and how to prevent it in the future.

It's awesome.

[AmriloJim]

WinX is, for the most part, a fine OS. It's the uncertainty of what screen resolution it wil choose this time, and MTBF measured in hours (or even minutes) that bugs me.

[TazManiac]

* sigh *
I came out here to my desk to take my pills, which live here.
For no particular reason, i reached down and pressed the power button on the computer - something i have done several times since it went Tango Uniform some days ago.
And it came on.
I have an intermittent somewhere; I'm still fairly sure it's the motherboard.

Two things pop to mind;

- Intermittent/poor Grounding; often resolved by simply unscrewing the MB screws partially and re tightening and/or re seating the P/S Cable to M/B connection. little ps- This might be less M/B and moreso the switches in the power supply. (maybe)

- Power Switch meet Contact Cleaner, esp the non-residue type. (There are two common types, one is a lubrication kind the other is 'dry' in that it all evaporates. You want the later.)

PS- Warri. It seems to me you could set up THIS dd-wrt running on one of THESE Linksys WRT54G and have it be your 'Free-WiFi'<-->Router<-->'your-devices' solution. Of course USB wouldn't be part of the default connections in the primary scenario, but you'd have Ethernet (hard line) and wifi (wireless) networking at your fingertips...

Those older Linksys wifi routers are cheap to free these days...

last PS- I'm currently replying in an off-the-cuff manner with a laptop on my chest and the rest of me under the covers.
I can be much more detailed and solution orientated, if need be, by getting up and sitting at the desktop machine... lmk...

[TazManiac]

Oh, and Fairport? I might need to pull out the story of reconditioning the S100 bus 'server' running a shipping company on the industrial eastern edge of San Fran (read residual airborne grit...), but I'm holding that anecdotal medicine in reserve still...

[AnotherFairportfan]

Oh, and Fairport? I might need to pull out the story of reconditioning the S100 bus 'server' running a shipping company on the industrial eastern edge of San Fran (read residual airborne grit...), but I'm holding that anecdotal medicine in reserve still...

Heh. I could tell the story of the insides of the Sedigraph 5100 (particle size analyser) that came in for refurbishing after years of use at a kaolin pit.

[Warrl]

Let's see... there was about five years in I think the early 90s where I routinely built computers, including Netware servers, from bare case up to and including managing users and configuring backups. About the same time, at home, I took an old computer (80386sx/40 processor) and turned it into a firewall/proxy server/print server running Linux; once set up I never had to do a thing with it and it kept going until the hardware died. Shortly after setting that up I ran Linux on the desktop for several weeks, but the user software I wanted didn't seem up to snuff yet; when I mistyped a command and wiped out the first 1.44 megabytes of /dev/hda I decided to rejumper the hard drives so it would boot off the one that had the working Windows install. Haven't done hardly anything with Linux since. Unfortunately, that also means I got rid of my Linux administrator manuals when we moved into the motorhome.

Aside from those five years, I was a programmer - the first half of my career on mainframes, the second half on Windows boxes.

As for what I'm trying to do currently, getting both computers, both phones, all three tablets, and the blu-ray player able to talk to the internet via wifi would be nice; it would also be nice if they could talk to the printer (which does wifi and, at least for Windows, needs a fixed IP address) and each other, since I have my computer attempting to back up the tablets, phones, and the other computer.

The catch is that the actual internet connection comes three ways:
* via my phone and the cell-phone network - cell data is expensive
* via an RV park's wifi - generally unsecured and I can't touch the configuration at all
* nonexistent - everything that doesn't absolutely require internet connection needs to still work

(That last bit seems obvious, right? My first mobile hotspot didn't start initializing the wifi side until after it had a successful cell-data connection. No cell tower in range, can't print to the printer on the other side of the room.)

I'm quite comfortable configuring routers and DHCP servers - if they are configurable. The relevant software in my phone apparently is not, and same for Windows.

Dave, I think I remember working with hostapd in my most recent experiments with Linux (which is on one of these three USB flash drives - the blue one I think). I found some instructions online (sorry, forget where) on how to set things up, was puzzled at their failure to include setting an IP address or configuring a DHCP server, and when I got to the point where other devices supposedly should have been able to see the network - nothing. The wifi card in this machine DOES support hosting a network, I do it often in Windows, but I can't absolutely confirm that it supports being dedicated to that task full-time - as opposed to switching back and forth every few milliseconds between that and being a client.

Microsoft is worrying me with how they seem to think they own my computer and everything on it, and know how I should use it so thoroughly they don't care about how I want to use it. I managed to make Win8 usable and block the Microsoft spyware updates, but eventually I won't be able to stay with Win8...

---

My weirdest hardware story starts with an HP laser printer that simply refused to print at all in a narrow stripe up the middle of the page... this was in the five years I was doing hardware & systems, so I got the call to go figure out what was going on.

I noticed that one of the four screws holding the rack that the toner cartridge sat in was VERY loose... and another was gone. Went looking for it. Found it deep inside the toner cartridge. Removed it. Verified that the printing problem was solved.

I came back a few minutes later with a screwdriver, replaced that screw, tightened the obviously-loose one, and checked the other two - one of them was loose. Went to the next printer. Noticed that one of its four screws was shiny, while all the others were black. Two of them were loose.

So I checked every printer in the place (about 15, as I remember) and ALL of them had one to three loose screws (and a couple of them were completely missing one screw) on that rack except the two of the newest model - which, by design, didn't have screws there at all.

[AnotherFairportfan]

* sigh *
 
So, my computer is working, right?
 
Yep.
 
So i want to print something.
 
So the printer says the magenta cartridge is empty (it's not; this is a third-party cartridge that holds about twice as much ink as an Epson cartridge).
 
So i snap out the cartridge, check to make sure it's still about half-full (it is) and snap it back in.  (This process resets the counter chip on the cartridge.)
 
Printer announces cartridge is not properly installed.
 
Sometimes they just don't seat perfectly, so i take it out and snap it back in a couple times.
 
Nope.
 
Last times i went through this (with another Epson printer), there was gunk on the contacts on either the cartridge or the printhead carrier, so i get a Q-Tip and some alcohol to clean them, which worked before.
 
Clean the contacts on the cartridge - no sign of anything there.
 
Go to clean the contacts on the printer.
 
Uh Oh.
 
The little plastic strip the contacts are mounted on is loose in its slot and slipped upward about 1/8 inch.
 

 
Try to push it back down. {GENTLY!}  Nope.
 
E-mailed Epson Support.  The printer should be under warranty, though they may try to claim that anything having to do with the ink system is out of warranty due to my use of non-OEM cartridges.
 
I plan to point out that this is a physical defect in the printer itself, not something in the ink system.
 
There's an Epson warranty center about fifty miles away...

[GlytchMeister]

Your Murphy field is rather intense lately, FPF.

[TazManiac]

"The Field is Strong with this one..."

[AnotherFairportfan]

"The luck runs roughly around Korval..."

[DinkyInky]

"The luck runs roughly around Korval..."

Don't discuss the aftermarket ink, period.

Epson replaced my Claria HD printer a few years ago for that same issue.

There are no aftermarket ink cart refills for the Claria HD printers, so I can tell you it's most likely not the cart at fault.

I'm seriously surprised they've not fixed that defect yet.

You'd think they'd get sick of replacing printers after a while.