I got up at about 8.30.

Had a shower, got dressed, ate. Checked my email. I don't know why I bother with email anymore. Nobody sends me anything, I only ever get spam.

I had a couple of minutes to fill in until I had to leave, I started doing something, lost track of time, and ended up leaving a few minutes late.

I went to the Senior's centre, they'd managed to copy the floppy of the linux router I setup for them. They almost got the printer setup, it wasn't shared, and they were putting the wrong slash in the run box (// instead of \\). I got all that sorted.

They'd changed the linux router to a different machine, with an unsupported network card. I moved the working one from the other machine they were using.

They had 2 machines that weren't in there last time. I set them up, neither of the network cards were automatically supported (ancient ISA things, with jumpers). It's not worth fiddling around with that stuff anymore, setting jumpers, or finding software, and configuring the cards, when you can get a second hand Intel PCI network card for like $3 that you just plug in and it works.

I swapped both of the unsupported ancient ISA cards out, with a couple of PCI cards they had.

I tried to adjust their projector for them, because they use it on an angle, the picture ends up skewiff, but the projector only has adjustments for when you use the projector aiming upwards, not downwards, so that couldn't be fixed.

I ended up leaving about 11.30. They asked if they owed me anything, but I didn't ask for anything, they paid me enough when I was there the other day, and this was just a bit of fiddling, so I wasn't worried.

I came home. I got my gear sack, and stuck it on my bike.

As I took off, I had a brain fart, I stopped, but I was on an angle, and my foot was too far out, the bike started to go down, I did what I could to hold it up, I almost balanced it, but it just very very slowly went down, until I put it down on the driveway, so slowly, it did no damage whatsoever, but then I was faced with trying to pick it back up again.

The fact I was on a steep slope didn't help, but I managed to pull it up. I jumped off and had a look, no damage at all, didn't expect any. I noticed that one of the bolts that holds the whole back of the bike on was missing again. It wasn't stuck in the exhaust this time, it's gone. I'll need to get 4 more to replace them. I'm not getting the shitty black ones that rust immediately this time however.

Anyway, I went to the supermarket. Bought some food, and some lunch, and came home again.

I started trying to get the server going again.

I managed to compile a kernel for the machine, I don't think it will work though, it doesn't have any references to the SATA controller I need support for.

I remembered I had to send my resume to the guy at the place I contracted to on Tuesday/Wednesday.

I started trying to fix it up, it's a shambles, and I can't be bothered rewriting the whole thing. I just did a quick tidy, updated it, and zipped it up.

I called my mate that works there, got his email address, and sent it through. Apparently the guy that wants to hire me wasn't there today, he's off sick, so he'll get it on Monday. Whatever, I'm not too worried.

I remembered that my other motorbike that my mate was going to pay for renewing the rego is nearly out. I rang to let him know, he said he would call me back later, or tomorrow. Yeah, sure, so either I end up paying the renewal, or I wait, and end up paying the renewal, along with a full inspection, because it's gone out of rego.

I got back to the servers. I made a custom rescue disk, then I had to find a floppy to put it on.

I tried one, it appeared to image without issue, however the server would not boot off it "boot failed" nonsense.

I went through over 20 floppy disks (and tried 3 different floppy drives) before I could find a floppy to put the rescue image on without getting CRC errors. I gave up in the end, and used one that errored, because it errored at the end.

I managed to get the machine to boot off it. No references to the controller or the SATA disks though. Not too happy.

It asked for the root disk. I went through the whole thing again to find another floppy disk that would work. When did floppy disks turn to complete shit? I found one, put the root image on it, no matter how many times I tried to boot it, the kernel would oops. I tried another floppy, same thing.

I then realised I had somehow managed to overclock the CPU to AMD 3200+ instead of 2500+. I changed the memory timing from 200MHz to 166MHz, and it returned to the correct speed (that probably explains the crashing using knoppix) (ooh, that was fun, while typing this, my machine just pseudo locked up for a minute).

I managed to boot into the setup tool, but as before, it claimed that it didn't see any hard disks. Shit.

My mate I go to dinner with called me, when was I coming up. Oops, it's 5.30, I was going to go up there at 3.30. I said I would leave soon.

I fiddled with the machine for a minute, gave up, and left.

I went up to my mate's place, I had a look at the PC he was trying to work on the other day, and accidently pulled the leads for the power switch off, and couldn't find where they went.

I tried all combinations of the pin headers where the IDE LED and other front panel connectors goes. Nothing. I tried shorting other pin headers I could find, nothing.

I though about shorting the mobo power supply connector signal line to ground (to force the ATX supply on) but I couldn't remember which was the signal line.

I got on the net, and managed to find the manual for the motherboard. It did not say where the power switch pin headers were. Useless.

I went and tried shorting everything again, no good. I decided to short the powersupply to force it on, but I couldn't remember the line to short.

I went and got back on the internet again (we had to hang up to order pizza, and you can't ring the pizza place from my mobile). I found the pinouts, you short the green wire to ground.

Ah, I thought that's what it was, I was trying that, but it was only making the floppy drive click.

I went back and did it again, same thing, only the floppy drive clicks.

I put the mobo power connector back on the board, shorted the green wire to ground, and everything powered up.

When I removed the paper clip I was using to short the green wire, it went off. That's weird, it really should stay on. Maybe it requires the power switch to pull a component shut and hold it, and because I'm bypassing that, it doesn't work.

I left the paper clip in there, booted it up. It wouldn't boot windows or whatever. I found a boot disk, booted it up, tried to look at the contents of the disk, and got "invalid media error reading drive C:". Looks like the disk is toast.

My mate got back from picking up his wife from the station, and the pizzas. I told him it looked like the disk was toast.

He then told me that he'd been trying to rebuild the machine.. ah, he's repartitioned the disk, but not formatted it yet, that's why I'm getting the error. I was expecting there to be an OS on the disk.
We ate dinner, and then he pulled in the case and mobo of the machine he wanted me to put together.

I mounted the motherboard, the case was a bit cheesy, but not too bad. Everything went in without any issues. Took about an hour and half to get the whole thing assembled, then we dragged it out, plugged it in, and I configured the BIOS.

I told him how to use partition magic to partition it, and then install Win2000.. oh. I'll need my CD, so I'll have to come back tomorrow with it.

I sat and chatted for a bit, and left about 9.30pm. He gave me a floppy drive, cool, I needed one for the servers.

I took off, and decided to pop in and see my mate (that was in the US recently) and see if we were doing anything tonight.

I got there about 10pm. Another mate was there, we hung around there for an hour or so, listening to music, while another mate turned up. Apparently the taxi he called had electrical problems, so they had to send another one.

It eventually got there, they all jumped in the taxi, and I rode behind (I didn't intend to stay out as late as them. I need to get these servers built).

We went out to Terrigal, went into the club there. It was about 11.30pm. I had a drink. This place didn't have the usual vibe, it felt very wrong.

We hung around in there for an hour, one of my mate's got fed up a lot earlier, and went across the road to the beer garden.

We found him, they all jumped in a taxi, and came back to Gosford. I followed behind again.

We went to the club (got there about 12.45am). We hung around playing the pokies and stuff.

I couldn't lose on the pokies (but couldn't win either). I played them for about 15 minutes, and came away with the same money I started with ($20).

While hanging around, I saw a guy I did my motorbike course with (well, he saw me first :-). I also saw a guy from school I haven't seen since school.

We went in for a dance for a bit. I saw a guy I hate. I was hoping he would come over, so I could tell him to bugger off, and then hopefully have a go at him in the carpark I've been waiting to do for about 7 years.

He didn't. While we danced, the guy from school came and danced for a bit near us, it was a laugh.

Some midget came over, and started giving my mate dance tips. I could hardly keep a straight face. The midget tried to match my mate and I up with a couple of chicks that were dancing near us, but they wouldn't have bar of it.

A few minutes later they both went up and behind the stage, they must have been paid to be dancing there.

We left the club before the last song finished, so my mates could beat the "rush" for the taxis. It was about 2am.

I came home.

I started googling, and I found that kernel 2.4.21 has support for the SATA RAID controller on these boards. I started downloading kernel source for 2.4.25, and gave up after waiting an hour.