| Sunday,
July 2, 2000 I suspect I was getting a bit hysterical about
the line dropping nonsense. When I went to bed, I wouldn't be connected
for more than a minute or two before the line connection was broken, and
the Netwinder would wait a minute or so and dial. Again and again.
This morning the problem seems to have fixed itself. Since I did
nothing and nothing here changed, it's pretty clear it's on the Earthlink
POP side. It happened with three different local access numbers, so this
whole area must be overloaded, and possibly Earthlink has set things to
drop connections when that happens? I don't know. As of 0745 there
is no trace of the problem. It fixed itself while I was asleep...
Incidentally, I can't answer individual questions about what's wrong
with your system. Obviously I try harder for subscribers.
I have a ton of pictures of the show, and many adventures to report.
More later. And I will, I will, get a mailing off to subscribers sometime
this weekend.
First I have to unpack and sort all the stuff I brought back, including
Plextor software that swears it will work with CD-R/W and Windows 2000.
Let's hope so. And there's the column to get done.
No rest for the wicked...
Does anything useful ever come from psi.com? So far it is ALL
spam. All.
On the registration fiasco: we don't have true registration and info
for BYTE.com readers but the editor hopes that will change Real Soon Now.
I'll let you know. We do have a newsletter signup that mostly reminds you
that there is a new BYTE.COM issue when that happens. That is usually on a
Monday although this holiday week may be different. It won't hurt you to
sign up for it: they assure me there's no way it gets out to the spammers.
And it will mildly help us by showing our owners that we have readers who
care. Real registration would help more, and that we will be able to have
-- Real Soon Now, I guess. Sorry for the confusion. It has been a
LONG week.
Does anyone know what DLL's FreCell calls? When I invoke FreCell on my
portable it comes up with an error box and I have to close it. It is not
frecell.exe as I have replaced that with no change in the result. Some
init file or dll I presume, but I do not know which. I would like to
replace something so I can get frecell working on that machine again.
Well, that worked. See mail.
The Netwinder has gone insane and I don't know enough about UNIX /
Linux to fix it. First I get a long series of being dropped from
connection. I know that the same line connected with that modem through
the machine directly does NOT get dropped.
Before I can do any diagnosis I need the symptoms, so anything other
than symptomology in the following is pure speculation.
First, my line connection seldom lasts more than three or four minutes
before it is dropped. Exception: it seems to stay connected when in actual
heavy use. There is a box in Outlook that tells it to hang up when done.
That box had mysteriously become checked. I unchecked it and exited
Outlook; no change. I reset the machine. No change. It is possible but
unlikely that Outlook is responsible for all this although how I do not
know.
The problem remains despite changing dialup numbers and resetting the
Netwinder.
Sometimes the problem simply goes away, and all is normal again, for
several hours. Then it is back. When I am having the problem I seem to
have difficulties getting Outlook to reach the Earthlink mail server.
Eventually it does, and all the mail comes in, but that may take several
tries, and the system may have connected to pair.com and other places
after timing out trying to reach the Earthlink server.
When things are working they work well, without problems. But then the
line dropping starts again, and we dial, and dial, and dial.
After a while (hours of this) the Netwinder begins endlessly to display this message:
s10: transmit timed out, bad line quality?
It gives that message even if the modem is turned off and left off as
well as when it is power cycled. Once that message begins to be displayed,
the Netwinder never again
tries to dial, good line quality or bad (and it doesn't sound bad to
me). Since it won't try to dial, it hardly matters. Modem off or
modem on, telephone line plugged in or not plugged in, it will never try
to dial, but pops up that message about every 20 seconds. Log in to the
Netwinder. Don't matter. That message continues to be displayed. Do
sync;sync
and I get
s10: transmit timed out, bad line quality?
at intervals. And that's it. So eventually I do
init 6
and the Netwinder resets, and begins to dial again.
This sucks rocks.
Now I suppose that if I knew enough about Linux I could force the system
to flush s10 or whatever it is (it must have some internal image since
turning off the modem certainly flushes the S10 register in the modem
itself). There ought to be a way to force the system to dial. But I do not
know what it is.
So I reboot and it works again. For a while anyway. Of course it
more or less endlessly redials. I change access numbers and it
happens anyway. Then for a while all is well, and it has fixed itself.
Then we are back to this again.
Whenever this happens, incidentally, I can reach the mail server
at pair.com but generally not the Earthlink mail server. By "this" I
mean the endless s10: messages, followed by my rebooting the system and
power cycling the modem, followed by intermittent connections with phone
line dropping,
but at least it is dialing; that will go on for a few hours, then whammo!
Either all works well and the line never drops or I am back to the S10: message and it will not even
try to dial. But while it is
working after a reboot I can sometimes send mail, but it can't connect to
the Earthlink server to receive mail. I can, however, ftp direct to the
site which is how I am posting this. Later I can reach the Earthlink mail
site. So this is somehow associated with connecting to Earthlink. And I am weary of it.
So we have three problems: (1)The line being dropped forcing endless
redials. (2)The connection to Earthlink server when we are connected. (3)
The
Netwinder getting in a coil with that s10: message and my not knowing what
I should do to force the dialup process to restart. There must be a
command to force redial without resetting but I don't know it.
Meanwhile it will connect, sometimes, and for a while, and I can ftp
when that happens.
I sure hate this. Perhaps I may have to scrap the
Netwinder and connect through a Windows machine. That will at least let me
discover what kind of problem I have. The trouble with network appliances
is that when they don't work you can't figure out what has happened. Or I
can't. When it works that Netwinder is wonderful, but what has happened in
the past week? The phone lines got worse? Unlikely but possible I suppose.
The Netwinder wore out? That's the trouble. I can't figure it out. One
test will be to use the USR modem directly with this machine to see if it
stays connected; if so, I will have isolated some of the problem.
Earthlink technicians I have some confidence in say that they have done
nothing, and it must be my phone line. Thompson thinks so also. Why that is intermittent
or even how it can be intermittent isn't
clear. In any event it is clearly time to do some serious analysis. Why
did everything work and about a week ago stop working? Nothing I
know of was done here to change things.
Continue in next VIEW. This has become serious enough to warrant some
work on it.
TOP
Current
View
Current Mail
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
