Enola's ordeal of Cable Modem Setup

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Today I finally got the cable modem to work.

Let’s see what I went through to date:

Tuesday:
Went to Radio Shack and bought the kit. Just plug in the hardware and load the drivers, no problem.

Well, looks like the hole in the floor isn’t large enough to feed the cable through, so I go into the basement with a drill to enlarge the hole.

(Pissshhhhhhhh) AAAARGHHH! I just drilled through the radiator!

I quickly turn off the water line and put a bucket under the leak.
Drain the system, disassemble the radiator, propanr torch out the copper pipe with hole in it and solder in new fresh plumbing. Reassemble radiator and 2 hours later, good as new.

(more or less)

Fish cable through hole, and plug in.

Follow directions for installation, but system has no NIC.

What the fuck is an NIC?!?!?

Back to Radio Shack and get Network Interface Card. Open up computer, install card and reassemble computer.

System says I meet minimum requirements for hardware, but no signal detected.

Have to call up Cable company to activate internet account.

After an hour, end up with some old guy on the phone who says,
“Uhhh…oky-doky. Should get goin’ in about an hour.”

My Nerves are absolutely shot, so I call it a night.

Wednesday:
Try the modem again, still no go.

Call up cable company again, they say, “oh, HIM, yeah he don’t know what you meant.” So for another two hours I’m on the Phone being talked through trying this and that.

DON’T TALK ME THROUGH…GET SOMEBODY’S ASS HERE !

Eventually, I got a username, password, and a bunch of test signals on the modem’s display.

But no IP adress. What the fuck is an IP adress?!?!?

They say they’ll send over a technician Friday.

Thursday:
Computer Literate friend of Mom’s attempts to talk me through more installation. He’s frustrated with me…he can’t explain things to those who don’t know their computers inside-and-out.

I feel like a little old lady bringing in a car to the local greasy mechanic.

Friday:
Technician comes and discovers I HAVE NO ETHERNET LINE.
“Didn’t it come with the kit?” “Hey, man, what you see is what I got.” Goes out to van, plugs in line, enters a few commands, browses through the Internet to make sure everything is smooth, and…

BANG!!!

It works.

AHHHHH!

2

I’m planning on getting a cable modem in the near future. Having worked in my brother’s computer business assembling systems, I hope to have an easier time than you did.

3

Hmmmmm… I got my cable modem up and running in a few hours with little or no misadventure. At least now all that delicious bandwidth is yours-- too bad this site won’t load any faster for you. :smiley:

[FYI]
IP: Internet protocol
Internet protocol defines how information gets passed between systems across the Internet.

IP address: Internet protocol address
This address is a unique string of numbers that identifies a computer on the Internet. All resources on the Internet must have an IP address–or else they’re not on the Internet at all.
[/FYI]

4

Umm excuse me, but how did you have the cable modem connected to your computer without an ETHERNET line?

5

With a USB line.

That’s why it didn’t work!

6

You might want to check out this site sometime during the next month. You might recognize one of the stories.

To be fair, I would probably have done the same, since I have never had anything but dial up access.

7

Well in his(?) defense, some cable modems do come with the option of connecting by USB.

Unfortunately, this hardly ever (read: never) works.