I got up at 6.20 am, I put the proper card in the box, and recorded the show for dvd archiving.

I checked the forum, there were a couple of comments in the thread I'd posted to with my theory, didn't deal with it specifically, but the guy reckoned his interface with a max232 chip on it, (and powered) was working fine.

I dug around, at some point I'd downloaded schematics for an interface with a max232 driver and a hex buffer on it.

I worked out the parts I needed, no issue, I think I'll try building it and see.

I started looking at it, decided it was too early, and when the show finished at 7am, I went back to bed.

I got up again at 10am.

Started making up the veroboard layout for the circuit, decided I could work that out later, I still needed the parts, I wrote up the parts list.

I ended up leaving home at almost midday, I rode up to the Cafe, I grabbed a modem, went and checked, it would fit in a standard express post bag, went back to the Cafe, made up the invoice, printed it, went over and posted the modem to the guy who's pc I fixed yesterday.

I helped my mate make up the invoice for one of our clients.

I had some lunch, bummed around a bit, and then took off.

I went over to the electronics place to buy more parts, it started raining on the way, as I came out of a roundabout, the whole arse end of my bike started slipping as the wheel spun in the wet, I grabbed the clutch in, the wheel slowed a bit, and it locked back in to gripping to the greasy road, and the whole thing pulled back to where it was supposed to be, I nearly shat myself when it first started to go.

Anyway, I got pretty wet, but I didn't really care.

I got the bits I needed, all of $10 worth, I noticed that the gold cards they sell are on special, what a surprise, now that they are useless. I commented to the guy about it, and he mumbled something about "yeah, now that the encryption's changed", I said that was what my bits were for, "can I ask?" he says, so I told him how card sharing works, and the fact that they sell all the bits required to do it, but I think he got a bit lost.

I'm not sure of their schedule, there were different guys in there today, to when I was in there on Thursday and Friday last week. Once I get all this done, I might pop back and show him, he seemed pretty interested.

I came home after that, I took the key out of my bike, and chucked it on the seat, a huge huntsman spider came running out from under the pillions seat. I wondered where they bugger who keeps putting webs all my bike lives.

I had a bit of fun maiking him run around, then I got bored, unloaded the bike, and left him.

I thought I might call him Boris, I commented that on irc, and someone asked why spiders were always called Boris, so I think I'll have to find some other name for him, I can't think of one.

I drew up another design for the interface.

I made the interface up, I found a 5v power supply (the 9v I was going to use to run the card reader, that I used on my pic programmer yesterday, has died, bugger), I wired up the rj45/serial adapter for power over ethernet (well, except it's not ethernet :-) to power my new interface.

I soldered it into the decoder, plugged it all in.. it doesn't work.

hmm, must just be something silly. I started looking, oh.. here's one of the electrolytic capacitors that powers the MAX232 in backwards. I turned it around, still no go.

I started looking more carefully, comparing my design to the board, hangon.. it looks like the wire links from the rj45 socket are a bit screwy, the carrier detect is wired where RxD should be, RxD is where TxD should be, and TxD is out in the middle of nowhere connected to nothing.

I fixed all that up.. hooray, it seems to work, i can use it for logging, and I can use it with the old dos based card emulator.. but.. the client still does not work! argh!

So now I'm, back to my original theory, we need a dumb gold card to bootstrap the box, and then pass control over to the client, since the new interface with max232 and hex buffer makes to difference whatsoever.

At least it has a couple of flashy LEDs I can watch while I try to boot it with the client running :-)

I managed to get on the forum again, and post my findings, someone suggested I try a different OS.. yeah, so I went back to trying 98 instead of 2000. No difference.

I ate my chips and dip for dinner, and started drinking.

I had a quick fiddle to see if I could find the AP down the street again, nope, must be gone.

And I haven't even got that wireless card yet. (Where is that bloody thing??).