Eta Carina Logo About Me The Thinker
The ever changing Eta Carina Ltd network system has changed yet again. So I have added this page for an update rather than edit the prior page.

Update Section 1

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One of the requirements of my job was to have with me at all times a laptop, which I used to connect to mainframes, routers and to download files off the Web while on site. I was given a Toshiba 486 Laptop which was a very reliable machine but very slow with its 28K modem. So I purchased a laptop of my own and added it to Eta Carina Ltd as well. The new member of the Eta Carina Ltd network is Aquila (The Eagle), a Toshiba 2500 CDS laptop running a Pentium 233Mhz Intel processor and a 2GB HDD, 64Mbs of RAM and a 56K Dynalink PCMCIA modem card. I connect to my network with a SureCom PCMCIA Ethernet Adapter EP-427 card. I must admit that I had used it very little for business purposes but instead used it quite frequently to access the Chat rooms while staying in motels when I was doing installation projects.

During the first part of 1999 I decided to make a change to my isolated life in the New Zealand Northland area and resigned my employment. I moved to the States on March 29th. I packed all my computers except Canis Major and Aquila, which I brought with me on the plane, and shipped them along with my household items to my parent's place in South Bend, Indiana. Because Canis Major was my main work machine I thought it best to bring that along with me on the plane. WRONG!!! United Airlines did a number on the machine as it made its way from Auckland Airport to Los Angles Airport. When I picked it up in Los Angles to catch the next flight to Seattle the box looked like it had been through a war. Arriving in Seattle I inspected the machine at my brother's place in Olympia and to my worst fears found that it was indeed damaged. Interestingly United Airlines doesn't accept responsibility for electronic items being transported by their aircraft. The damage to the computer was consistent to repeated abuse, being dropped or thrown. I repaired the machine but the CD-ROM and hard drives show intermittent faults. The floppy was history and all the interface cards were dislodged. My advices…never, never take anything of value with you on any airline if you can't carry it with you.

I got a job in South Bend with a computer sales and service company and having evaluated the condition of Canis Major as not being satisfactory I decided to purchase another computer. I added Taurus to the Eta Carina Ltd network. Taurus sports a Pentium III 450Mhz Intel processor, 128Mb RAM and a 19" ADI monitor. This baby will be my entertainment center. That's not all, I also purchased another machine to act as an Internet Web Server. Enter the new Carina (the old Carina was renamed Aries) running a Pentium II Intel processor and 128MB Ram. So Eta Carina Ltd will be overhauled in the next few months to a full fledged Intranet with Internet access through Carina. I purchased Microsoft's Small Business Server package to run on Carina and also bought Linux to run on Orion.

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This page was last updated on 1 August 1999