those serial port blues

March 16, 2002

Today's Reading
Birds of Heaven : Travels with Cranes by Peter Mathiessen, Daughter of the Mountains by Louise Rankin

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

The USB PCI card for my antique Mac arrived over a week ago but what with work and cats and general malaise, I didn't get around to installing it until today. Long term readers will recall that this antique is a PowerMac 7600 desktop box, not one of those easy-open G3 or G4 towers. One doesn't exactly open the case, one takes the whole darn thing off. This is easier said than done without breaking any of the little plastic parts that clip on or sit on or touch or otherwise connect to the metal chassis. So it took ages to get it off.

You would be amazed, dear readers, at how much cat hair the inside of a PowerMac can contain and still run. I'm talking major cat hair. Enough to form a medium sized cat with some left over to clog a drain or frighten small children in the dark. So I decided to vacuum the area around the PCI slots before I installed anything. In order to get all the cables unplugged and the case off the Mac, I had moved the computer desk and rearranged everything in my office into not very neat - ok downright messy - disarray. The bookcase is still pulled away from the wall so the Verizon men could get at the phone jack . Things are piled in front of the only somewhat accessible outlet. I reach over to plug in the vacuum cleaner, stub my toe on the printer, fall against the bookcase, and knock the photos and memorabilia off the top of it. I do manage to plug in the vacuum cleaner though. And vacuum the PCI slots.

I install the USB card into a PCI slot. It goes in just fine. Then I notice the ports don't totally line up with the opening in the back of the case. Grrr. I move what can be moved, and get it so if I'm really precise when I plug in the new printer and then never unplug it again, it'll work. But I do not have a USB cable for the new printer. The new minimalist out of box experience assumes that you have all required cables just sitting there in your study or living room or wherever normal Americans keep their PCs (normal Americans do not have Macs - only us arty types). Now I have known this for well over a week. Since I took the printer out of the box. Have I gone bothered to go buy one? No. Do they sell them at CVS or at Perfecto's coffee shop? No. When do I ever enter a store that might have anything besides prescription medicines or coffee?

Anyway, first I have to download the driver for the USB card. The new minimalist packaging also does not include drivers. In fact all that comes in the box with the card is a tiny piece of paper that says open the case and stick the PCI card in the slot, then go to www.xxxx.com/usbdrivers. And this is supposed to be an improvement? So I dial in and get the driver. Oh, I think I mentioned before that I did manage to get a used modem that connects to the Mac serial port otherwise I would be up the creek without a paddle trying to use a USB modem to get the USB driver. Chickens, eggs, USB drivers... which does come first? Am I ready to announce my religious conversion and bow down to Redmond, Washington? Uh, nope. I can only shudder to think what a fiasco this would have been if the same crisis happened to an antique Window Box. I'd be planting flowers in the Window Box.

So while I had the office all torn up and cables flying every which way, I decided to hook up a SCSI CD-RW I'd bought awhile back before all this crap happened and never got around to using. Unlike the postmodernists in computer land, LaCie does include a CD with the driver on it. And Silverlining too. One of the single most useful pieces of software ever devised. Of course, I have clearly hooked something up incorrectly because Silverlining fails to find the new CD-RW. So I have all these devices that are just sort of here and not useable at all. The CD-RW sits there expectantly like at any moment it will get noticed and asked to dance. The printer sits there with the tape still on it, the cartridges in little plastic bags, and the power cord neatly coiled waiting for some Dickensian moment involving dusty wedding cake and boys named Pip or something.

I keep reminding myself I saved a couple of thousand bucks by not buying a new computer.