Overnight my wireless DSL router died, forcing me to spend hours reading about the current generation of wireless DSL routers. I’m not sure how old it is, or if it is under warrenty or not.

I know it is less then two years, hang on, what am I doing. Why don’t I search CR. FFS, I’m dumb at times. The answer is 23rd August 2004 [www.creationrobot.com/?p=560]. 1 year 4 months, I’ll have to call Belkin and find out if it is still covered. Man, that’s such a short time, electronics are just not designed to last anymore.

Of course I’m betting that one of my cats shortened its life by quite a lot. Anything in my house that’s warm and silent, you’ll find a cat asleep on it. One of them had taken to sleeping on top of the router, the poor router must have baked to death. Sometimes I know how it feels, I’ve woken up before now with three cats on me, it beats out a sauna.

Meanwhile I’ve chosen a [netgear.co.uk/wireless_modem_router_dg834pn.php] and ordered it, if I get a replacement from Belkin I’ll sell it on eBay.

So using my old DSL modem that I’d kept, I manage to get my Windows PC online, I managed to find the old drivers on a backup DVD, the original CD eluded me. During my search FireFox crashed three times, each time I had to go back and reload sites I had open. Then Windows system crashed on me, telling me it was rebooting in thirty seconds, like it or not.

At this point I was looking longingly at my PowerBook, but I didn’t have the old modem drivers for it, the only ones I could find online were ‘upgrades’, you needed the original CD. Which was still eluding me. Cuttle fish have nothing on that CD.

Last week I installed Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog on a partition, it was time to prove the worth of Linux; I’d had enough of Windows crashes for one day. Reboot, on the grub menu select Ubuntu, kernel crash. OK… I tried again. Same result. Well at least windows booted up before crashing, damn you Linux.

So it was time to bait out the original driver disk and get my PowerBook to sing in harmony with the old USB DSL modem. I used my external firewire DVD drive as bait, dragging it slowly across the room and waiting for the twiches to reveal the disks in hiding.

Sure enough an CD Booklet case that I hadn’t used in ages twitched, the disks excited at the prospect of leaping into the drive. While the were distracted I pulled out the original driver disk and slipped it into the PowerBook.

One install, one update and bing, I’m online, and the PowerBook doesn’t crash. I bought the new DSL router and I’m now awaiting its arrival. Which will probably be Monday.

Wired Internet is just barbaric.

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