Date   : Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:38:10 +0100
From   : robert@... (Rob)
Subject: Hardware Woes

Sigh.

Been setting up a spare(ish) P4 machine to run multiple copies of
BeebEm to act as hosts for the viewdata BBS for the show.  Worked
beautifully, so thought I'd have another go with getting the A5000
talking to the econet...

So went up to to the attic, and powered up a Master that I've been
running *stations on, and realised I'd left on a B+2P that was
runnning a L2 fileserver (to source the *stations!)  And that was
hung.  Powered off, on, and it won't boot.  Well, not with the 2P
connected...   It's running host-powered at the moment, as my meaty 5V
psu died last week .. sigh ..

Guess I need to go look for the 65C02 2P service manual now ...

So I think, well, we'll just reboot the  A5000 anyway, in the hope it
will miraculously start talking to the econet, but that won't come
back on either.  I see the cursor flashing in the top left for a
moment, then it goes away and nothing else happens.  drat....

I've left it all off to cool down, and hope things have improved when
I get a chance to get back up there later ...


Plan B is to check out and use one of the filestores, but I've not
touched them yet, and wanted to backup the drive before I tried to
fire them up in server mode, which relies on having somewhere big to
copy the data to, like another fileserver... Oops. But using one of
those won't let BeebEm talk to it .. unless ..

Phil?  Got a spare bridge/router/gateway/whatever it is?  I was going
to buy one anyway, eventually ...

Plan C is to use the RISC PC, but that's not got an econet interface
in it, so I have the opposite problem: none of the Beebs will work
with it, which rather defeats the whole point...  I'll probably have
to use it anyway, to copy the data off the A5000's drive, if I can't
get that back up and running...

Plan D, finally connect up the CF drive to a Master/CoPro and use that
as a L3 fileserver instead.. ditto issues re BeebEm... but it might
let me backup the filestore ..

Plan E, Can I put a hard disc and an ethernet card in an A3000 ?
What would I need?

Plan @ (if A was 1, that'll be like zero, right?) I'd already put
wanted ad on a local freecycle-type group for another A5000, but no
hits yet... maybe need to post on more groups.)

sigh

Rob