Tuesday, June 06, 2000
The State of Computers
All I wanted to do was download the images off my camera so I could take some more pictures. Being on the road, I had to use one of Tara's computers (or my PowerMac). Here is what I've done in the last four hours:
- My camera has a serial port. My computer has a USB (same as Tara's PowerMac).
- Tara has a USB to serial port converter. It doesn't work.
- Tara called technical support for the serial port converter, reinstalled all the latest drivers, rebooted the machine a few dozen times. Still doesn't work.
- Tara's Linux machine has a serial port. The software available for Linux doesn't support my camera.
- Tara's old Mac has a broken serial port.
- So we rebooted the Linux machine into NT...
- Installed the Windoze software that came with my camera.
- We managed finally to get the images downloaded from the camera!
- No ftp program that handles directories. So I search for one online.
- Find ws_ftp which is what I've used in the past. Downloaded it. The installer doesn't run.
- Searched some more. Found a program called LapLink FTP which is highly rated. MSIE won't download it.
- Tired of MSIE problems, I go to the Netscape site to get Netscape. Click on Download, and get "Server Error".
- Tried various things, but Microsoft Internet Explorer refuses to Download the Netscape installer. (Hmm...)
- Went to mozilla.com, downloaded Mozilla instead, and installed it.
- Downloaded LapLink, installed it. It crashes when I get to the actual transfer. Repeatedly.
- Searched more, turned up freeFtp, also highly rated.
- Downloaded freeFtp. The installer won't run because the "system files are out of date".
- Let it update the system files and reboot the machine.
- The machine hangs. Hard reboot.
- Boots this time (why this time and not last!?) but it's really slow now.
- Tried to run the installer again, but it craps out with some other error that's too large to fit in the error box so it gets clipped.
- Gave in, opened a DOS window and used text-based ftp to xfr the files manually.
Anyway, here are a couple of the pics -- Martin and Tara at Mango Cafe the night I arrived:
