Subject: Aaaarrrggghhh! It's not my day

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 23:25:12 +0100 (BST)

Hi all!

It appears that today wasn't my day!  I've had many problems, one of them
quite serious.

Last night sometime my (new, less than 1 week old) hub here died.  My hub
connects the A5k, EBSA and RiscPC together.  The hub is essential for
connecting these together since the EBSA is 10BaseT only, RiscPC is
10BaseT/10Base2, and the A5k is 10Base2 only.

My system has evolved over the years into a very pecular arrangement -
the A5k is the fileserver for the RPC and EBSA, whereas the EBSA has my
modem on to provide a nice fast reliable link outside.  So:

                                          (10bT) RPC
                                         /
   <-> modem <-RS232-> ebsa <-10bT-> hub
                                         \
                                          (10b2) A5k

The problem basically is that the hub's 10Base2 port does not want to
receive anything anymore!  It used to, and it does still transmit
packets.  This effectively disconnected the RPC and EBSA from the A5k!

The only reason that I am able to get onto the internet again is that
I have put another ethernet card into the RiscPC, and yes, yet another
twist in the works, the RPC is now a router!  I now have:

  <-> modem <-RS232-> ebsa <-10bT-> hub <-10bT-> RPC <-10b2-> A5k

since this is currently the only way that I can physicall connect the
machines together now.  Obviously this is far less efficient and far
less reliable than before, and I don't intend to continue with this
setup for long (since I'm going to do my best to get this hub replaced
ASAP, and I mean new-one-before-return arrangement).

The reason is that I'm in danger of missing a target that Acorn would
really like me to meet for this Monday (i.e. I've got to do another
kernel release this weekend).

Why do I always get unreliable goods from wherever I buy from?  Is
it just me, or is quality absolutely lacking in the computer world?
I've only had over half of purchased products have had to be sent
back within their warranty period, and the ratio is still rising!

All that I'd like to do is to buy a piece of hardware and have it
work fine for a reasonable time with absolutely no problems.  Ok,
so lets set a challenge.  If any supplier out there can successfully
prove to me some hardware that will not go wrong within it's warranty
period, then I'll start to consider buying it.  If they're not willing
to prove this (and the method that they decide to do this is totally
up to them), then I simply won't buy from them.

   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |       Russell King      [email-masked]         --- ---
  | | | | http://whirligig.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~rmk92/home.html  /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |      *  who wishes that he was in Hong Kong  *      ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |

---

From: Richard Townsend <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 23:40:13 +0100 (BST)

> It appears that today wasn't my day!  I've had many problems, one of them

<snip>

Bad luck Russ! I think that everything seems to go wrong with you coz 
you're the most important person to do with ArmLinux. This seems to be 
bad juju, so perhaps all should join in a juju-improving ritual. Or 
perhaps this is a Feng-Shui problem (sp?) - wanna move house?

"Oh spirits of Linus and Herman, we invoke thee, make Russ' equipment 
work, and grant him anomalous transfer rates of 100Mb/sec on 10Base-T/2 
equipment, we beseech thee. Droppest thou no packets, and apply 
supernatural laxatives to net blockages. Dispel bugs and compile!"

Hmmm, that should work....

Rich

+-------------------------------------+--------------------+
| Richard Townsend                    |                    |
| Department of Physics & Astronomy   | "Old pond,         |
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