I have this old Athlon 1400 machine that has been sitting around unused for a couple years. I finally decided to put a hard drive in it and set it up for Dani. After installing the hard drive and Windows 2000, I took the network card out of my ancient Mac clone and put it in the Athlon. The card was recognized by Windows, but it had an error code of 10 (device cannot start). I tried changing the drivers and fiddled with a bunch of other settings.

Today I bought a new 10/100 network card (D-Link DFE-530TX+). I installed it in the 3rd PCI slot. The first slot is blocked by the USB card, and the second is very close to the USB card.

My computer wouldn't boot. It keep beeping constantly and I got no video output. I unplugged all non-essential items (everything except the fans) from the motherboard and turned it on. Still beeping. I went through 5-10 cycles of changing connections and powering it up.

I was sure I had screwed up the computer, and I went online with my other oomputer to read the online manual. I have an ASUS A7M-266 motherboard. I went to Asus's website and opened the online manual PDF. It said the beeps I was having was due to no RAM being found.

I switched my DIMM from slot 1 to slot 2 and turned on the computer. It beeped normally. Hurray! I reconnected all the devices.

I booted up, Windows found the new card. I cancelled the new hardware wizard and installed the drivers from the CD. Everything appeared to go well, but I could not get online.

The computer's port on the router was lit up. I tried pinging my router. Didn't work. I changed most of the IP settings, nothing worked.

Finally I booted into Knoppix, the trusy diagnostic bootable CD. Knoppix couldn't get a net connection either.

At this point I am hoping I didn't fizzle-fry the card.

I took the NIC card out of it's slot and put it in the slot above it. It is about 2 mm away from the USB card. I booted up, installed the card's drivers again. This time it worked.

So now I am installing all the Windows patches and whatnot, and the computer should be ready for Dani when she wakes up.

One of the presents I got for Christmas is a Microsoft Standard Wireless Mouse. Before receiving this mouse, the only experience I've had with a wireless mouse is my Wireless Intellimouse Explorer, which is a few years old. My Intellimouse didn't seem to be very accurate, and it would lag a bit if you stopped moving it for a few seconds. Because of these issues, I had been using my basic Logitech optical mouse.

The Standard Wireless Optical Mouse comes with a receiver which plugs into a USB port, and 2 AA batteries. It's supposed to get about 6 months of battery life. That would be nice. It also can operate on only 1 battery. It comes in black or white, mine is black.

When I got home on Christmas day, one of the first things I did was plug in my new mouse. I was suprised that it moved so much more smoothly than my Intellimouse. I guess a few years of technological advancement will do that. It also doesn't lag at all after it has gone into power saving mode. Overall I like my new mouse, it works well.