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.

Adding New Parts

So I've been to my friendly neighborhood Geek-Toys-R-Us and acquired an Ethernet card and a KVM switch. I did research to make sure that these items would be compatible with all the OS's I'm going to be using. I'm leaving Windows 98 on Lazarus until all hardware is in place and ready to go.

The KVM switch is an IOGEAR MiniView Micro USB Plus (Model #GCS632U). Although Conrad is a Mac, my monitor precedes that purchase and is a VGA. The switch comes with all the appropriate cables, which is nice. It does not require batteries or any external power cords. As the name implies, the switch is USB-based and will go into Lazarus's lone USB almost-certainly-not-2.0 port. Eventually I'll probably get a USB 2.0 PCI card for Lazarus, but it's not a high priority right now, as I don't really plan on sticking in a crapload of USB devices.

As per the instructions, I made sure both machines were completely turned off before hooking up anything. After plugging the appropriate cables into the appropriate outlets, I powered up Conrad first. Everything worked perfectly except for the speakers. Then I powered up Lazarus to: 1) test the switch, and 2) see if Lazarus would recognize the peripherals in this new setup.

As mentioned previously, the switch has no buttons, so toggling between computers has to be done via "hotkeys" on the keyboard. I noticed in my research that one user had reviewed this model negatively because the manual says to toggle by tapping the Scroll Lock key twice, which does not exist on a Mac keyboard. If this user had bothered to read further, they would see that the manual gives options for Mac users. I'll concede that the method for invoking Hotkey Mode on Macs is kind of fussy and takes some getting used to. However, it is doable. I did have to go through a few different settings before finding one that I liked. Moral of the story: a spoonful of RTFM (Google it if you don't know what it means) makes the installation go down a whole lot easier.

On Lazarus, it did take some time to recognize the USB peripherals. In fact, I had to plug in a PS/2 mouse that came with him to click on the appropriate buttons, as he didn't recognize the keyboard or the mouse at first. There were no video issues with Lazarus, although sometimes toggling will mess with the settings on Conrad. However, the resolution always resets itself upon logging in, so I'm not worrying about it right now.

The speakers started working once I disconnected them from the switch, shut them off, reconnected them, and turned them back on. It never ceases to amaze me how many "technical tricks" are variations of turning something off and then turning it back on.

Next time: putting in the Ethernet card.