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USB I H8 U
Oct. 12th, 2003 05:43 pm[Geek Version]
My Mom bought my Dad an MP3 player he can wear while running (he runs marathons, used to smoke a pack a day, take that!), and when they plugged it into the PC it didn't seem to work. They're pretty techneophyte, so they just assumed they were doing it wrong. I was coming to Ottawa this weekend, so they just left it for me. It almost ruined my weekend! Not really, but what a pain in the ass it was to get working!
It's on a new system, all patched and updated, and should have just worked. But there's an obscure issue with the motherboard I bought them (I built the system myself) that refuses to allow USB 2.0 devices to function if there's a card in the PCI1 slot. But is this mentioned everywhere so that customers never have any problems?? No! I had to Google for an hour to find it, and it was actually for a different issue entirely. I was out of ideas though, so I tried it, and bang, it worked!
To assist me in my trials and errors, I bought a USB Flash Drive (Excalibur, comes from Pine, the same company that makes (maybe just sells?) a lot of those no-label-at-all CDRs. Because I was able to solve the problem, my reward is I get to keep the toy! Suggestions for what to put on it? (64 MB)
[/End Geek Version]
[Everybody Else Version]
Phew! My parents were hoping I would get this new MP3 player working for them, and I finally did! Yay me! It was a pain though... I hate computers.
There's something to be said for jobs like carpenter and painter -- you do something, and it gets done, and there's visual proof you're not a nutjob, and there's a huge sense of accomplishment. With computers, I spent easily 4 hours solid rebooting, reinstalling, and all that crap, just to get something that should have worked instantly. Bleah.
But at least now I can relax for the rest of the weekend. :-)
[/End Everybody Else Version]
My Mom bought my Dad an MP3 player he can wear while running (he runs marathons, used to smoke a pack a day, take that!), and when they plugged it into the PC it didn't seem to work. They're pretty techneophyte, so they just assumed they were doing it wrong. I was coming to Ottawa this weekend, so they just left it for me. It almost ruined my weekend! Not really, but what a pain in the ass it was to get working!
It's on a new system, all patched and updated, and should have just worked. But there's an obscure issue with the motherboard I bought them (I built the system myself) that refuses to allow USB 2.0 devices to function if there's a card in the PCI1 slot. But is this mentioned everywhere so that customers never have any problems?? No! I had to Google for an hour to find it, and it was actually for a different issue entirely. I was out of ideas though, so I tried it, and bang, it worked!
To assist me in my trials and errors, I bought a USB Flash Drive (Excalibur, comes from Pine, the same company that makes (maybe just sells?) a lot of those no-label-at-all CDRs. Because I was able to solve the problem, my reward is I get to keep the toy! Suggestions for what to put on it? (64 MB)
[/End Geek Version]
[Everybody Else Version]
Phew! My parents were hoping I would get this new MP3 player working for them, and I finally did! Yay me! It was a pain though... I hate computers.
There's something to be said for jobs like carpenter and painter -- you do something, and it gets done, and there's visual proof you're not a nutjob, and there's a huge sense of accomplishment. With computers, I spent easily 4 hours solid rebooting, reinstalling, and all that crap, just to get something that should have worked instantly. Bleah.
But at least now I can relax for the rest of the weekend. :-)
[/End Everybody Else Version]
