by DrWily » Feb 23, 2004 @ 5:12am
Our company provides connection and support for 100% free high speed internet access in all the properties we manage. This includes wireless all over the hotels and 10Mbit connections in each room. Not to mention connectivity for computers that the associates use. Thankfully, these systems are not flawless…
Right now I’m working with a Compaq Presario x1050. It’s cute and useful, but it’s also big and two hour powered. Not to mention it doesn’t have a serial port that I need to use almost every week. Then it’s rather large and fun to carry around on planes or through each room in a hotel for testing. Even in a cramped phone room when trying to access the equipment that the networks are based on. But enough about me, let’s waltz with a PDA.
Toss me a toolkit with an Asus A716, a nice compact Bluetooth keyboard, a serial cable, a SD card with a few choice FAQ’s on it, a compact flash networking card with a PCMCIA adaptor, and a bottle of Bawls. Sure it’s a long list, but it’s sure smaller than my laptop, power adaptor, and a USB to serial cable. Not only would that be less to carry, it would probably be cheaper too.
The most common problem we have is with guests connecting in a room. Let’s take the toolkit and see what’s up. First I would take out the compact flash NIC to check for a connection, just for the great number of people that still like to try phone cords for LAN access. If it works for me and I can’t get the guest’s device to work, I can always take this NIC and try it in there machine. I just can’t do that with this laptop’s built in NIC. A little backwards way of troubleshooting, but it’s best to see if their machine is the problem like this. It’s best to try not playing with their configuration since it’s not ours to play with.
Problems like this are rarely this simple. So it’s time to check the connection between the DSL modem in the room and the Subscriber Management System. I’ll have to open up one of those FAQ’s to figure out how to telnet into the SMS over the wireless system. From there I can tell it to send out test traffic to check the response of the modem in the room.
But maybe that doesn’t work, time to dig a little deeper for the problem.
In the room with all the equipment it gets a little cramped. Let’s connect directly to the SMS with the serial cable. Using the Bluetooth keyboard we can update the configuration quickly to get the guests back online. More FAQing and a phone call reveal the problem to be more elaborate. It seems that someone was in the room playing with cables.
Let’s take some pictures with my camera and take the compact flash card from there to the A716. Transferring those pictures to the SD card I have in there I can put the networking card back in. Then we can take the serial connection directly to the router to allow my PDA to get a public IP address and email the pictures to my boss. What, no CF slot on my laptop!? I’m going to cry… I’d better play some Pachelbel with the A716 to clam my nerves while I use the IR port to print out my report to the hotel’s GM.
Whew, when the work is all done it’s time to travel home. At least there’s room in my laptop case for my GBA SP. Well, if I had that A716 I could just load up an emulator and pretend I’m working on the plane. Then again, I could open up a map of Metroid Zero Mission in the background to see what I’m missing in my game. It even has a place for headphones that my SP just doesn’t have. If the flight is too long I may need another SD card to keep some sessions of Cowboy Bebop on. Oh, if it only dispensed caffeinated beverages, I’d be in heaven.
(Insert quote to destroy Megaman and rule the world with it here)
Sorry, I tried to kept it as short as I thought possible.
Anyways, What would I use it for?
