The Little Garden
August, 1993
Tom Jennings

On the service-provider front: *still* in negotiations. Down to the
end game I believe. Everyone's been in conferences or some damn thing.

			* * * * *

When I took on this job, I realized I was working a thin edge.
There's no real budget, and cash flow is exceedingly tight. It was
assumed I would provide my own hardware and whatever else was
necessary to do the job, and I've done this. But I am having a small
crisis.

To make a long story short, I *still* have not yet replaced my dead
DOS machine! I juggled my available components to upgrade my Unix
box to something reliable (now running a 386-40 with 16MB), and I
am now in dire need of the following components, in decreasing
order of PANIC:

	IDE hard disk *
	1.4mb floppy drive (3.5")
	mini-tower case & PS
	ethernet card

The drive can be any size, as long as it's IDE. My 1.4mb floppy is
out of alignment; the old case is a "jumbo" 286 with a flaky PS.
Leads? Deals? Donations? Send email!

* If someone has a near-new IDE drive that's 200MB or greater, then
I may want to buy it, swap out my older, smaller second unix drive
(wd1) for a larger one, and put my existing one in the DOS box.)


AND ON A RELATED SUBJECT: Please, when you get an invoice please
pay it within a month or so. I'm easy. But I am this month yet
unable to pay loans for NOS routers and the Portmaster in Palo
Alto, simply because people aren't paying invoices. Never mind my
not being able to pay myself yet! There would be sufficient cashflow
if the outstanding ones got paid...

			* * * * *

Tech note: The ZyXEL 1496-E modem "security dial-back" works. The
Zyxel-propriatary one is brain-dead, but no loss. Use AT*G5. Set
a password with AT*Hn. You dial the modem, it answers, and prompts
you for a password (up to three tries). Send the pasword then CR.
It then prompts for the call-back number, disconnects on you, and
ten seconds later dials you back. It does some limited number of
retries on busy, no carrier, etc.

I now have some nice, smart reasonably simple shell scripts to do
automatic SLIP link maintenance. I run it via cron. It uses PING
to see if the link is alive; if not it finds and kills SLATTACH,
uses KERMIT to dial and connect (separate script for the dial back),
and re-runs SLATTACH. It handles most boundary conditions: modem
not responding, multiple errors, taking longer than cron check
interval, missing files, etc. 

Interested, lemme know.


			* * * * *

The Portmaster in Palo Alto is DONE FULL UP. ALl 10 ports are in use.
The next will require purchasing a $600 ten-port expansion card. Which
means, I'll have to wait until I get two people who want in, so that
I'll have the cash up front to buy the card. Hmm... that's only $500. I
guess three.