mrwobbly

What is a realistic number of laptops to connect to an 802.11a wireless access point? Each class has a POE D-Link DWA-3500 AP on spaced out g channels. These were put in to sort out the connection problems the school had with the trolley of fifteen laptops which has since worked well. Now without consulting me they have gone out and bought 30 new laptops and sapped the entire budget. The laptop wireless cards are a, b and g. I seem to remember reading that 802.11a would support many more connected clients but can’t find anything now to confirm that. I don’t think they are going to get more than 15 connected and a managed system is now out of the question.

Would anyone have the install media for old versions of Supertools and Toolbox by Blackcat which were a subsidiary of Granada Learning One of my Primary schools has a new suite of computers being fitted. They have a site licence for both but I suspect the CD’s were borrowed many years ago by a teacher and not returned. Most programs I can transfer by copying the folder from one of the old computers and registering the DLL files. Some are proving a little more difficult so I need the CD. The Numbers, Words and Pictures CD is still in school and the Logo for Windows looks to be Windows circa 95. Tag Learning sells a much upgraded version of SuperTools but I’m sure they would need the school to purchase a new site licence at £599 for the upgrade which is way beyond budget at present. Any help would be gratefully received. Nick

The staples I see are 2Simple titles like Maths City, Alphabet Soup, Simple City and 2Paint a Picture. Sherston software especially the Tizzy titles and then a mix of old dorling Kindersley titles which are a pain as they need the CD to run. You can run them from a disk image with Daemon tools and script. I’m not sure on Sherston but 2Simple will send out the titles on 30 day approval. Both company’s are great for help or tech support and have often sent out disks the same day to replace scratched or lost CD’s. If you speak to them they will tell you which titles they recommend on what you want the software to do. Things like teaching mouse control etc.

I have a Snapserver in one of my primary schools where the raid has failed. Any suggestions for getting the data off it? I can log on to the web interface. Its raid5 (checksummed). 4 disks and the console shows the status for each drive as ok but the raid status says failed. The event log shows multiple lines of Raid5: failed to run raid set md0 Any help would be gratefully received.

I had loads of problems getting the drivers to work on the Digiblue 3 which is what you have. Eventually a later CD was released. Version 3.1 and it cured all. If these came from TAG Learning give them a call and the will give you access to the ISO download. PM me if you get stuck and I'll try and get you the ISO.

Would anybody know, or could check the voltage and amp rating for a Promethean board power supply. I’m at a school Monday which has one gone but I won’t be able to get a Promethean replacement for them until my next visit. I have loads of power supplies at home and wondered if I could use one of them on a temporary basis.

Search the Promethean Knowledgebase for spiking. This will bring up a page with instructions and a link to download the firmware.

Go to device manager and open up the IDE controllers. Open up the secondary IDE controller and go to the advanced settings. I bet you will find they are running in PIO mode. Change to DMA mode. End of stutter. I’ve seen this so many times. If the DMA mode is not available the chipset drivers will need re-installing or were never installed in the first place.

If your friend is on a budget Tesco Direct often have some decent machines. The drawback is that they fall under the Windows 7 upgrade offer instead of coming pre-installed. They run pretty swiftly after you take all the bundled rubbish off. They were doing delivery to your local store which I found very convenient compared to the 130 mile round trip I had to do last weekend to my local UKMail depot to pick up a Dell laptop as I was out when they tried to deliver. I like the Dell computers but have had such bad experiences with them lately. Orders cancelled without informing me. Very long delivery times and account managers who don’t seem to care.

PM me your email address and I'll send you the CC3 manual in pdf format. The school would have had a hard copy.

Logon as systemadmin at a computer or the server. The RM Management Console has a shortcut on the desktop. Start this up and you do all your network administration from this unless you are very familiar with CC3. Changes made to AD can cause serious problems unless you know what impact they will have on the RM custom group policy settings

If you take a CC3 machine off the domain you will break it and have to rebuild it. You need to undo everything you have done so far. For offline use open the management console. Right click on the laptop and go to properties. On the general tab make sure the type of workstation is set to shared laptop or personal if you want to give the user more control at home to connect to a network or add a printer. Underneath add the user as a privileged user. If they need access to there documents you will need to allocate out RM Synchronise or setup offline files. As stated before the user will have to logon when connected to the network before they can use it offline. Also remember to reboot before they do this. Note: If a privileged user logs on while on the network, once it is off the network nobody except that person can log on to the laptop offline.

Thanks Ric, I read through that thread at the weekend. Some interesting and varied input

Multiseat computing I new I'd heard of it. I couldn't think of the term to describe it. Many thanks for your help.

One of my primary schools has asked me about a system they have heard about. It is a base unit computer that connects up to up to eight monitors, keyboards and mice. It sounds like a self contained thin client like solution for up to eight users. Has anyone got any idea who produces it and where I can find out some more information? I’ve heard of it but can’t think where.

I contacted Simon this week by email for a quote for 18 laptops. That was my first contact with CPL. I was very impressed with the response, the follow up and the quote. I phoned him yesterday and it was obvious he was rushed off his feet and had to answer other people’s phones. It didn’t stop him following up on what I requested. The deal was sorted and at a great price. Just have to say a big thank you to Simon. You’re a star.

You could remove the ring wires from all sockets as these cause problems and are not required on modern telephones. An easier way if you have a NTE5 BT master socket is to fit an iplate which you can pick up on Ebay or from Dabs. This disconnects the ring wires at the master socket. I fitted one last month for someone and the line speed doubled.

My apologies as I was wrong on the card you linked to on ebuyer. It supports both the 3.3 and 5 volt standards and would fit in any PCI slot as it has both cut outs. Thank you, PeterW and synaesthesia for the reply and causing me to look into it further. The reason I said it would work is I bought a SCSI PCI-X card off eBay and it would not fit into the PCI slot which I now know is due to the card being 5v and my server PCI slots being 3.3v. It seems it’s not so clear cut an answer as I thought. PCI-X comes in universal with both voltage slots, or only the 5v or the 3.3v slot. I’ve looked at the EBay photo and it shows a PCI-X card in the photo but says “for illustration purposes only”. As the card is longer than the PCI slot it must be PCI-X. The 2410SA was a PCI card as per the item description so I don’t think that is the card you have. I think you may have the PCI-X equivalent which was the 2420SA which is 3.3v only. You have valid reason to return it should it not fit. I’ve looked at my desktops and two old servers and they all have 5v PCI M/B slots. My new server has 3.3v slots. It would seem you need to make sure you are buying a universal card or one that will match your motherboard. Regards Nick

PCI-X is a 64 bit card for old servers. It was a 64 bit extension to the 32 bit PCI bus and is different to PCI. PCI-X came out in 1998 six years before PCI Express. Sorry the card is not going to work.

I’ve had two of my schools complain about several pens not functioning in the last week. I found it was because the nibs had disappeared. Try a Google UK for “Promethean nibs”. One came up as 27p per nib buying in bulk Worth looking into I think Nick

For the VGA you can get a VGA to HDMI converter on eBay for about £29 coming from Hong Kong. I fitted one of these to a plasma in a classroom and the picture quality was excellent.

Thank You. That fills the bill nicely.

Could anyone point me to a website or resource on creating a Regfrag for dummy’s. I want to hide a drive but don’t want to edit the registry on each machine manually. I have the changes I need to apply. Thanks in advance

I've also found you can't use the F6 to install SATA drivers if your installing from a slipstreamed setup disk. You need to have the drivers already slip streamed onto the disk. Hope that helps

"Invalid product key" That is a known issue with slipstreaming SP3, Just stick to SP2 and the SATA drivers and all should be ok.