On Sun, 14 May 2006 12:21:38 -0400 Walt Sawyer wrote:

Friday night, my wife was using her computer (lenovo/IBM desktop), then the DSL connection went down (I wasn't here) and then her network card didn't work. That's about the time I got home and found that the on motherboard gig/100/10 Broadcom NetXtreme gigabit... stopped being recognized. OK, sometimes these motherboard NICs go bad. When booting in the redmond product, the ethernet connection was there. It was time to upgrade to Fedora Core 5 so I figured this was a good time. Perhaps the newer kernel would just fix the problem for me. Well, it didn't. It would detect that the correct card wasn't there. I checked dmesg and found no entrys for eth0. I tried adding a 3com (one of the most common drivers!) card and on bootup it didn't see it, but in the network configuration area I was able to add it as eth1 (the Broadcom was eth0). Upon rebooting, it looked for eth0 and eth1 and found neither responding.

Is there any reason a NIC would just stop responding? This machine was working just fine until this issue. Thanks in advance Walt

Most of the Broadcom 10/100/1000 integrated NICs I've used recently are Intel chipsets and use the E1000 driver. It might be worth a look there. Brian J. Conway bconway(at)alum.wpi.edu "LINUX is obsolete" - Andrew S. Tanenbaum, creator of Minix - Jan 29, 1992

NOTE: Cut and pasted from a web post of mine...i just didn't want to re-write it... Since my arc isn't built yet, and we have recieved 27 feet of rain here in New England in the past 7 days, my basement flooded again. The pump went out sometime overnight and i had 3-4 inches of water in my basement/computer room this morning. I am smart enough, however, to have everything up off the floor (except my sun workstation!), so nothing was damaged but the carpet. So i was thinking today, why not put an H2O sensor in and have one of the dozen or so computers page/email me when there is water present? But......I am not a programmer, nor do I have any idea how to interface software with a hardware sensor (that I can't actually find at present on the web). So the quetion is, where do I begin? A quick google search finds alarm sensors, but no interface to a computer serial port...they just start screaming if they get wet. Even if i did find one, where do I start with such a thing, to interface with an OS to trigger an action? Does someone know of a (cheap) product to do this? Not only does is seem like a practical project for the house, I'm sure it will be a good learning experiance as well. Thanks for any advise...I'll be out collecting animals

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Marc Hughes wrote:

I hate being the practical one, but take the time & money you'd spend on that project and install a backup sump pump. You'll be far happier with a dry basement than knowing you have a wet one.

-Marc

One could put a webcam and microphone on the sump pump. I've never seen a "sump pump cam" before - maybe you'll be the first?! ;-) Perhaps you should get a water alarm with the ear piercing alarm, and attach a microphone to the computer. Write some software that detects the loud noise and informs you accordingly. Later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEaSXCHl0iXDssISsRAtyQAJ9mas4vLct54RMXf6u3hD2EDjjXPQCdE5ao UQlJYc5HTFAMVNv1bXsoN9M= =qG4N -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

If you have a free serial port open, you could wire up an open/close switch to one of the handshaking lines to easily detect a water level over a certain point. The open close switch could be some kind of floater like the way sump pumps activate. Mike Leo wrote:

no doubt i have some sump pump work ahead of me as well.

it wasn't actually the pump that failed, but the hole, but that is another story.

NOT having water in the basement is MUCH MUCH better than having water but getting paged because of it...but even with 2 sump pumps, a mule and sand bags, I would rather know when they all failed and be notified, than not.

This seems like a $4 dollar solution...plus an excellent opportunity to learn something new...besides how to make a hole in concrete 6 inches wider!

--- Marc Hughes wrote:

...

I hate being the practical one, but take the time & money you'd spend on that project and install a backup sump pump. You'll be far happier with a dry basement than knowing you have a wet one.

-Marc

...

NOTE: Cut and pasted from a web post of mine...i just didn't want to re-write it...

Since my arc isn't built yet, and we have recieved 27 feet of rain here in New England in the

On 5/15/06, Mike Leo wrote: past

...

7 days, my basement flooded again.

The pump went out sometime overnight and i had 3-4 inches of water in my basement/computer room this morning.

I am smart enough, however, to have everything up off the floor (except my sun workstation!), so nothing was damaged but the carpet.

So i was thinking today, why not put an H2O sensor in and have one of the dozen or so computers page/email me when there is water present?

But......I am not a programmer, nor do I have any idea how to interface software with a hardware sensor (that I can't actually find at present on the web).

So the quetion is, where do I begin?

A quick google search finds alarm sensors, but no interface to a computer serial port...they just start screaming if they get wet.

Even if i did find one, where do I start with such a thing, to interface with an OS to trigger an action?

Does someone know of a (cheap) product to do this?

Not only does is seem like a practical project for the house, I'm sure it will be a good learning experiance as well.

Thanks for any advise...I'll be out collecting animals _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

_______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

_______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

-- --- Karl Hiramoto http://karl.hiramoto.org/ US VOIP: (1) 603.966.4448 Spain Casa (34) 951.273.347 Spain Mobil (34) 617.463.826 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto GTalk=karl.hiramoto@gmail.com ------ - The degree of technical confidence is inversely proportional to the level of management.

Well, i'm getting closer: http://www.ideativeinc.com/leakfrog.cfm http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004W4B4/102-3009714-8566516?v=glance&n=228013 I'm thinking I can use this, but then splice into the wires and something something something... I think finding the sensor might be easy....can anyone point me to the means to communicate with it via linux? I'm guessing something as simple as "if circuit is open, do nothing, else page mike", but I am at a complete loss on how to go about that piece of it. Andy's idea of listening for the alarm is good, but what happens when I crank my Battle for Middle Earth II game to max? thanks again and I am still looking through those other sites...thanks john. --- John Stoffel wrote:

Mike> So i was thinking today, why not put an H2O sensor in and have Mike> one of the dozen or so computers page/email me when there is Mike> water present?

Take a look at the Dallas Semiconductor one-wire sensors. I've got one sitting right next to me here at work. It's basically a DB9 serial port dongle (DS9097U-9) which connects over standard ethernet cables to various sensors. The sensors all have unique IDs and can be addressed by linux software.

Take a look for the Digitemp software. It has the drivers for watching various sensors like this. I built a bunch of temp sensors for a server room so I could watch temps on the cheap:

http://www.digitemp.com/products.shtml

He's not selling hardware anymore, but it's good links to sensors and such.

Here's another link page:

http://www.ibuttonlink.com/Sensors.htm

which looks really neat.

Good luck with the water!

John _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug