March 28, 2004
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Continued Recovery Progress
Computers are strange. Their behavior is often unpredictable.
My current backup computer was, in the beginning, successfully connected to the Internet from Windows 98SE. When Cathy had problems with connections on the upstairs computer, also using Windows 98SE, I attempted to duplicate the problem on my computer. I managed to create the problem but not to cure it.
The upstairs computer, our gateway machine, died and had to be replaced with a ShuttleX based machine I had built. The operating system and all of Cathy's software and data were simply copied from the old machine. The new machine was able to connect to the Internet.
I decided to add file and printer sharing to the three machines on the network. It really is a network, all of the machines being connected to a router which is, in turn, connected to the cable modem. The router is the real gateway but, being invisible to Windows machines, one of the computers had to be designated as gateway, a fiction for Windows' benefit.
Each of the computers can see files on the other computers that have been designated for sharing. Even the backup computer, which cannot see the Internet, can share files and run programs on the other computers. That means it can access the Internet by running a browser on one of the other machines, even though it can't connect to the Internet directly.
The setup on the backup computer and the gateway computer appear to be identical. Windows doesn't let me look very deeply into the details, but superficially the setup is the same. One machine works correctly, the other doesn't.
Everything now runs a lot slower on all three machines.
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