I got up.

I ignored the decoder.

I checked my email.

I started looking at the decoder. What am I going to do?

While fiddling around I broke the replacement card slot. I'm getting good at this.

I started complaining on irc, someone suggested that I try not having the cap there, or that any would do.

I thought about getting a whole bunch of different values and trying them, I found a greencap hanging around, I soldered it on.

I removed the interface (I put it on and off a few times last night, trying to use the serial interface instead of the card slot etc, after I broke it). I plugged it all in.

I had to hold the card slot together, and it worked!! hooray.

It will only work with a card in there, my interface doesn't work, but I'm not too worried, the box isn't stuffed.

I bummed around again trying to get the interface to work, still no good.

Mum had got that bogan gardener in again, all he did for the 2 1/2 hours he was here was abuse his son loudly.

I had another hot shower.

I intended to go to the electronics shop again, get a replacement card slot, and bits to make more interfaces (make another one, maybe it will work, or maybe it's just this box). But I spent too long working out what I needed, and I wouldn't have had time to get back for the appointment in Gosford.

I decided to try one more thing.. this software is trying to boot up the box as if it has a locked card, but it's not. This is so simple it will have to work. I reset the card locking details, tried it again. Still no good.

I took off about 11.45, went into Gosford, saw my mate I go to dinner with, the guy who's interested in buying the business turned up. I showed him the equipment we have there, my mate told the network provider (who are upstairs) that we were there. They offered to help us with the issues we're having with spam.

I showed the guy our equipment in the rack, then the guys from the network provider turned up.

We went up to their office, and their linux guy had a look through the server, there's nothing we can really do, it's running Red Hat 2 from 1996.

I left from there, went to the electronics shop, got the bits I needed to make more interfaces.

$52 worth? Yeah, spose, $26 worth of rj45s, $9 for the replacement card slot, and $8 for solder. And then the few dollars for the components.

I went to McDonalds, got some lunch, and read the paper.

I came home, filled up the tank on the way.

I made up another interface, put it in instead of the other one. I also put a switch on the card slot (the original had a normally closed switch, the replacement has a normally open). Still no good. What is going on here?

I emailed the guy that had the proper interfaces made up, to see if he had any idea about this, he suggested I try a newer version of the card sharing software.

I searched around a bit, and found it. I thought this just might work, but, nope.

I put the proper card back in the decoder, recorded the episode for dvd archiving.

I give up.

There must be something dumb going on here. I think this box is just stuffed.

I'm going to make up another dodgy card interface using the old gold card, and try a few different boxes to see if I can get others working.