Working on the boxes




Photo-diary: Boxes, boxes everywhere! Saturday after Good Friday. Sunny and very hot, but things are progressing quickly. Today we begin to put together the computer hardware.

First of all we put together a box that will be the network support server. What we wanted was not too good a machine, but it would have to be very reliable as it would be running all the time. We try a couple of the tower systems, but reject them for various reasons. E.g., there was a really good system that had been donated from a cyber-cafe. But it didn't have a standard sized power supply. We need to have a machine that can have its parts replaced by raiding other machines, and so that wasn't suitable..

Photo-diary: Sorting the equipment Eventually we found an old Pentium II machine. We install a larger hard disk and a network card, and it works OK. Then we use this machine to test all the monitors so that we can put together 10 good monitors from the 15 or so that we have to choose from.

Next we put some systems together. That meant grouping parts together – boxes, monitors, keyboards, mice and cables – to make a complete computer system. This took a while as we had to juggle pieces around to match the mix of AT and ATX boxes, as well as monitors that had either cables, or no cable and 9-pin D connectors.

Photo-diary: Cleaning the dirst of the serviceable stuff Most of the day was spent working through the desktop machines that will be used as the clients on the network. Most of these are 100MHz Pentium I's. Each one required a memory upgrade from 16MB to either 24MB or 32MB, depending on what memory we had available. We also had problems with some of the processor fans. After swapping bits and pieces between machines, we eventually managed to get eight good systems out of the 10 Pentium I desktops we had available.

When it got dark, I took a break and tried to cool down. But work continued to make the metal brackets that will fix the computers under the central table. About 8pm everyone stopped and we had a beer and some loud music from the sound system that Mervin had installed in The Container during the day. About 9pm we locked up and went home.

Photo-diary: Mervin manages Photo-diary: Welding by night
Mervin arranges the boxes for bracketing while Slaughter welds into the night

Photo-diary:




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