April 03, 2003
Antiques
It's not all the latest gigabit ethernet that I get to play with. Trouble comes first, and the trouble report on my desk this morning was for a PACE terminal. ("PACE" is an acronym for something to do with plug-in equipment inventory.) Tube has no display. Call customer, the display is an AT&T 705 dumb terminal -- two rs-232 comm ports, 80 columnx25 line amber display. So I go back into the storeroom and dust off the single boxed 705 we have -- it's been untouched for a couple or three years. Roll down to Wilmington, leave it in the van while I go upstairs (of course) to check the situation.
Yep, it's a 705, power is good, keyboard lights function, twiddle the brightness and contrast knobs without as much as a glimmer from the screen. Unplug, set aside, go down to the van and haul the replacement up. Plug in, power up, looks good:
That was the easy part. As you can see from the above photo, the terminal is connected to a barcode scanner and both a 9600 four-wire ADN point-to-point modem and a backup 14,400 dial-up modem.
Call PACE HotLine, get some options, plug them in, not getting linked. Switch the modem cable to the other comm port. When I hit keys I am getting a Send Data light; but no Receive Data back and no keyboard echo. Call the number that reported the trouble, who connects me to another, who bridges on another, who finally figure they don't handle that old stuff and referred me back to the Helpline that didn't help in the first place.
Hey, I know when I'm up against the wall -- but I have friends. Pull up WebPhone, look up Louis Morrow -- hell, I haven't talked to the guy for a couple of years anyhow. Chat for a while, catching up on family, "Louis, I have a small problem I need a little help on." Check the options, fine. Louis has me loop up the ADN modem, I can see myself typing. Release it and it kicks the modem on the far end back to life and I get a log-on prompt. People may think I know it all but it's a bluff -- I merely know those who do know it all (or at least that part of all that I do not know.)