Planning ahead: REMOVING hardware?

[StefanJ]

I fished a nice HP Vectra out of a dumpster a few weeks back. On Sunday it premiered as a spiffy MythTV box, running Fedora Core 5. Whoo-hoo!

Now, the previous owner had installed a 100/10 Ethernet card in one of the two PCI slots. Given that my cable service only runs at 8 - 12 mbps, and that the only things of note that I'll be downloading are program schedules, I'm thinking of removing the 100/10 card and using the on-board 10 mbps Ethernet connector. This would free up a slot for a second tuner. (I have a HDTV 3000 card.)

Now, the 100/10 card is a recognized piece of hardware. It was in the machine when I installed Fedora. What would be the effect of simply yanking it?

To avoid trouble, should I do anything first?

Thanks,

Stefan Jones

[Wayne]

I had two completely different PCMCIA LAN cards (different maker, different chipset) for my old Thinkpad and inserting either one of them and turning on the machine would result in a connection.

Edit: I hate it when people get good hardware for nothing! :D

Wayne

[Dan]

Hmmm. Interesting twist. Pull & Play? I think so. But there's only one way to find out for sure.

Dan

[Wayne]

Hmmm. Interesting twist. Pull & Play? I think so. But there's only one way to find out for sure.

Dan

Pull and Play sounds a bit kinky but I'm not going there :D

I'm sure if the onboard ethernet is supported it'll be picked up on boot.

Cheers

Wayne

[StefanJ]

Just to clarify, I can use either Ethernet connector already. They're both recognized, and if the cable is inserted can pick up an address from my router.

I'm just being cautious. I'd hate to yank the card and then have the machine run into difficulties on boot, perhaps waiting ten minutes for non-existent hardware to time out.

[Wayne]

Just to clarify, I can use either Ethernet connector already. They're both recognized, and if the cable is inserted can pick up an address from my router.

I'm just being cautious. I'd hate to yank the card and then have the machine run into difficulties on boot, perhaps waiting ten minutes for non-existent hardware to time out.

Yank the card! Yank the card! I really don't think you have anything to worry about. If I were you I'd open the case anyway to clean it out, you don't know what might be lurking in there :eek:

がんばって！

Wayne

[StefanJ]

Hey, that's good enough for me! I'll yank the card before the next start-up and see how things go.

you don't know what might be lurking in there

Heh-heh! First thing I did when I got it back to the apartment was open it up, whisk out the dust bunnies, and wipe it down with orange cleanser wipes. I boggled when I turned it on. Pentium 4 1.8 MHz, 768 MB of RAM. Thrown away!

Amazingly, I found a set of Cambridge Soundworks powered speakers in the trash a few days later. Another clean-up, and my MythTV has a sound system! Although at this rate it will end up in the living room, integrated into my media center.

[Wayne]

Hey, that's good enough for me! I'll yank the card before the next start-up and see how things go.

Heh-heh! First thing I did when I got it back to the apartment was open it up, whisk out the dust bunnies, and wipe it down with orange cleanser wipes. I boggled when I turned it on. Pentium 4 1.8 MHz, 768 MB of RAM. Thrown away!

Amazingly, I found a set of Cambridge Soundworks powered speakers in the trash a few days later. Another clean-up, and my MythTV has a sound system! Although at this rate it will end up in the living room, integrated into my media center.

So, now it smells all nice and orangey fresh :D

It never fails to amaze me that some people have more money than sense to throw good hardware like that away. I can only guess that their windows install somehow borked and they were getting blue-screens and they thought the best way to cure it was to buy a new machine. Perhaps in a year or so you might be able to find its replacement in the same skip! :rolleyes:

Wayne

[nick.stumpos]

ahh some good old dumpster diving, i love it