Stuff that works ...

One of my favourite changes over the last decade or two has been that these days, by and large, gadgets work.

Last evening I plugged in two powerline network adapters, connected the devices and - job done - my telly was on the internet.

Any one care to offer an anecdote on how long it took them to get networking working on Windows the first time they tried ? 

If by "get networking working", you mean getting it to work right, with NFS, printing to non-windows print services, etc, all as stable and reliable as any other OS, my answer would be "15 years and counting".  Still has not happened.

One of the first merit badges I earned dealing with windows networking was getting windows 95 (I think) connected to my school's dial-up.  I had to roll a custom 'scp' script to do it.  Here it is in all it's glory (yes, I still had it sitting around in a folder):

;
; This is a script file that demonstrates how
; to establish a PPP connection with a host
; that uses a menu system.
;
; A script file must have a 'main' procedure.
; All script execution starts with this 'main'
; procedure.
;
; NMSU settings:
;  primary name server: 128.123.3.5
;  secondary name server: 128.123.19.135
;


; Main entry point to script
;
proc main

   ; Change these variables to customize for your
   ; specific Internet service provider

   integer nTries = 3

   ; This is the login prompt and timeout values

   string szLogin = "Username:"
   integer nLoginTimeout = 5

   ; This is the password prompt and timeout values

   string szPW = "Password:"
   integer nPWTimeout = 5

   ; This is the prompt once your password is verified

   string szPrompt = "NMSU-NET>"

   ; This is the command to send to establish the
   ; connection.  This script assumes you only need
   ; to issue one command to continue.  Feel free
   ; to add more commands if your provider requires
   ; it.

   ;
   ; This provider has a menu list like this:
   ;
   ;   1              : Our special GUI
   ;   2              : Establish slip connection
   ;   3              : Establish PPP connection
   ;   4              : Establish shell access
   ;   5              : Download our software
   ;   6              : Exit
   ;
   ;   annex:
   ;

   string szConnect = "ppp^M"

   ; Set this to FALSE if you don't want to get an IP
   ; address

   boolean bUseSlip = TRUE

  
   ; -----------------------------------------------------


   ; Delay for 2 seconds first to make sure the
   ; host doesn't get confused when we send the
   ; two carriage-returns.

   delay 2
   ; transmit "^M^M"

   ; Attempt to login at most 'nTries' times

   while 0 < nTries do

      ; Wait for the login prompt before entering
      ; the user ID, timeout after x seconds

      waitfor szLogin then DoLogin
        until nLoginTimeout

TryAgain:
      transmit "^M"        ; ping
      nTries = nTries - 1

   endwhile

   goto BailOut

DoLogin:
   ; Enter user ID

   transmit $USERID, raw
   transmit "^M"

   ; Wait for the password prompt

   waitfor szPW until nPWTimeout
   if FALSE == $SUCCESS then
      goto TryAgain
   endif

   ; Send the password

   transmit $PASSWORD, raw
   transmit "^M"

   ; Wait for the prompt

   waitfor szPrompt

   transmit szConnect

   if bUseSlip then
      ; An alternative to the following line is
      ;
      ;     waitfor "Your address is "
      ;     set ipaddr getip
      ;
      ; if we don't know the order of the IP addresses.

      waitfor "Your IP address is "
      set ipaddr getip
   endif
   goto Done

BailOut:
   ; Something isn't responding.  Halt the script
   ; and let the user handle it manually.

   set screen keyboard on
   halt

Done:

endproc

 I used to play a lot of dos games and it seemed like every game needed a bit more free memory than the last so I always had to try to find a way to have 592k of free memory, or whatever the game needed.  This meant loading everything possible into high mem and disabling every device i didn't need.  Kids today are so spoiled, the games just work.  How many gamers even know what a batch file is anymore?

The last time I set up a web server it literally took me about 30 minutes start to finish to install gnu/linux, apache2, and all the plugins.  For some reason it takes like 2 hours to install windows xp with all the drivers and security updates though.

Hoss are you a script hoarder?

I just set-up a Moodle site (an online classroom, similar to Blackboard or WebCT). It includes an apache lite program. Total time, including the download from the web site, 20 minutes and it just works. From early attempts with similar products, around 3 years   ago, the total time was 3 hours because I had to de-bug several of the bat/script files. I grew up learning how to use hi/low mem work arounds on an Apple IIe and IIc. Things are a LOT simpler now.