Phase 0: Mission Complete

As the title says, Phase 0 of Operation Lazarus has been completed successfully. What, you may ask, is Phase 0? It's making sure that Lazarus is up and running with all major hardware changes required for short-term desired functions.

Equipment required:

1 Phillips-head screwdriver

1 PCI Ethernet card (I'm using a D-Link DFE-530TX+)

Unfortunately, I got a little ahead of myself and started unplugging everything right away. A quick read of the manual revealed that I actually needed to install the drivers before installing the hardware, so I had to re-plug everything back in. Even I have to take regular doses of RTFM.

When I first started setting everything up, I saw something that indicated to me that I would be the first person outside the eMachines factory to go inside the tower. How did I deduce this? Well, I saw this on the tower:

Yup, that's a manufacturer's QA seal. Of course, eMachines doesn't exactly target the compulsive-modifier customer. Fortunately for me, any possible warranty on Lazarus is long expired, so I pulled the sticker and was greeted by:

So naughty Danielle has voided the warranty (shown at right). I wonder if eMachines maintains this policy with their current products. It seems like there is much debate among manufacturers as to whether to have this policy. Anyway, warranty voided and Phillips-head screwdriver in hand, I removed the case.

Here is a shot of Lazarus's innards:

Why, yes, those are 2 ISA slots, for those who might be wondering. After a few exclamations about eMachines' perceived facetiousness, I removed the modem and replaced it with the Ethernet card. Since I eventually plan to add some USB ports, it made sense to remove the modem and not worry about punching out the other PCI slot right now.

The actual switch of cards was very easy. Once I plugged everything back in, Lazarus recognized the Ethernet card with no difficulty whatsoever. Plugging in an actual cable into our broadband modem hooked us right up to the Internet. Of course, it was somewhat slow, but I expected that. For good measure, I even changed the monitor resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768.

This means that all prep work is complete. I have established that Lazarus is capable of booting up and connecting to the Internet without major modifications. Obviously, the next step is to attempt to install some version of Linux.