etee's Blog

Other than that activity that results in a paycheck, this week has been consumed with dealing with a fried DSL modem. It seem that, after a few years of service, DSL modems like other electronic items are subject to a horrible and untimely death in the presence of lightning bolts. Mine suffered from this very thing on Monday night, and while I have a replacement on order from my ISP, I decided to try and "roll my own" as well.

First, I bought what is probably the one model of DSL modem that won't work with my ISP. Or, at least, it won't work in the way I want. All I could get was one PC to connect. So, I bought another modem - this time a Zoom X5, and after several evenings (and one morning) of fiddling with settings between it and my Airport Extreme, I finally got multiple PCs online! Yippee!

When the "official" replacement comes in, I will probably replace the Zoom with it - however, I will keep the Zoom as a backup, given that I really, really don't like being without Internet access.

After all, one never knows when (or where) the next lightning bolt will strike.