The Lance J. Technoweb

Wow, it was a big WWDC keynote. Supported Hardware: Good and Bad First, the best news: Basically all devices that can run iOS, iPadOS, and TVOS version 13 will also be able to run version 14.  That's great news, as our good hardware will be able to continue with their useful lives. But in some disappointing news, WatchOS 7 will kill off the Series 1 and Series 2 watches.  Trust me, I appreciate that old hardware is hard to keep running forever.  Hardware doesn't improve with age, especially in a highly integrated device like a watch.  Still, it will be a shame to see all those old watches heading towards the recycle bin in the next five years.  Seiko's business model looks worse than ever. Similarly, MacOS v11 kills off all the 2012 Macs.  There are a lot of them, but I guess the writing was on the wall.  So they'll get a couple more years of updates, and then people will have to do something else with them.  Happily, these old beasts can easily r...

I've decided to power ahead in some areas, but to limit my spending. My main goal now is wiring, and not buying equipment that I won't need within the next six months... or that I might never need. Here are the details: Television At first I was going to buy an HDTV Streaming box with a large OTA TV antenna mounted in the attic.   I was getting excited and putting all sorts of stuff into my Amazon and eBay carts.  But I'm not nearly ready to start watching more TV in my house, and so I've decided to delay any TV-related purchasing decisions for now. Instead of buying new equipment, I'm just going to plan for possibilities.  That means prepping the building with appropriate cabling.   I learned that all of my major local TV stations are nearby (within 8 miles), and all the "weak and missing" TV stations are pointless IRN stations ("infomercial/religious/nut-job").  Furthermore, all the "weak" stations will be in the fringe even if ...

A few new ideas and discoveries In the Attic I was in the attic today just to further understand the current state of things. First, I found and removed a cable TV splitter that was up in the attic, so now my attic cable TV cabling issues are likely solved.  I still need to prove that the cables are OK with my tester, but my guess is that everything is good. It seems like I can easily run cables up from the basement via the plumbing chase.  In either case, I need to clean out the attic area and dress up the current cables emanating from the plumbing chase. I'm imagining sticking a 1 inch flex conduit down here, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea.  I need to better inspect the chase, and it's in a challenging spot both int he basement and in the attic. I plan to install a 6-position keystone plate on a low voltage frame in the attic.  This will operate as a "mini patch panel" in the attic.   I'll stick with the current "one ethernet, one coax...

After several days of work, I have Ethernet lines in many areas of the house and I understand all of my Cable TV wiring.  All of it is "dark" (not hooked up to anything at either end): Here is the Master List of Dark Cables: Bedroom 1: Ethernet to the attic, and Cable TV (shorted) to the basement Bedroom 2: Cable TV, strung outside the building to the basement telecom panel Bedroom 3: Ethernet to the attic, and Cable TV, strung outside the building to the basement telecom panel Den: Three Ethernet and Cable TV runs to the basement telecom panel. Kitchen: One Ethernet (broken) and Cable TV to the basement telecom panel Living Room: Cable TV to the basement telecom panel Basement (finished part): Ethernet and Cable TV to the basement telecom panel Other: One Ethernet from attic to basement telecom panel That's a lot of cable. But wait!  There is lots more cable near the basement telecom panel: There is a bunch of very old and/or hacked telephone wiring that once ran t...

Before I hop into the next part of the project, I want to cover my thoughts and feelings of what I want in my home data center. A lot of people have been asking me what I want in a rack system.  The basics seem easy: a standard 19 inch rack that's able to mount at least 14 U's.  Anything less seems just not big enough - routers, switches, a patch panel, power, and maybe a couple servers... it can add up.  Boy, that would look so incredible! But let me take a step back before I go down a path like that. My old Telecom Backboard was a Wreck My home telecom backboard in the basement was old-school, and it was nothing like a data center.  Instead, it was the world's worst telecom backboard, with 70+ years of sloppy modification. There were at least 22 cables hanging around the area, with about 65% somewhat attached to something else, and the other 35% left dangling.  There were a lot of bare wires twisted together, along with a few wire nuts.   The "...

My Soda Stream Jet's fill button broke, which means I can not longer carbonate water by pressing the pushbutton. This caused all sorts of grief in my household. Here is how I managed to repair my Jet to give it another 10 years of life (hopefully). First, a look at the button The fill button on the top of the SodaStream is actually a simple lever. Pressing down on the button moves a pin that does the actual work of pressing open the Carbonator's valve. Unfortunately, the axis point is fairly thin and can see a lot of stress. That's where my Soda Stream button cracked. [ I think the usage tip here is "don't over-press the button like a gorilla, it doesn't do anything but put high stress on the button."] Cracked levering point of the button The Pesky Lever Retaining Pin The Fix It was pretty easy for me to replace the button: Take off the back of the Soda Stream and remove the carbonator. Push out the the button lever's steel retaining pin. This takes qu...

My prior blog entries were all about converting my house's telephone lines for Ethernet use. Today I started to address my old home's coaxial cable tv cables. Cable TV was a huge thing from the 1980s until the 2000s, but it is a dying concept. Still, the one thing I've learned is that you need to understand something before taking out an axe.   Almost every room in my house has a cable TV outlet (some rooms have more than one). In my basement, a cluster of 9 cables appear in the telecom panel, with some connected to a giant splitter and some just hanging loose. Half the cable seems to have been run properly: inside the walls of the house. The other half was sloppily strung up on the outside of the house. It looks like most of this cable was installed 20 years ago. So without further ado, I'm going to assess what I have. Identifying and Testing each cable My first order of business was to figure out where each cable was going to, as only one cable was labelled ("att...

Welcome back. Last time I finished sorting out all my old Cat5 cable.  Now I know where all the cables go, and I know that all the Cat5 cables are usable for Ethernet.  I crimped an RJ45 connector to the ends of each cable.  But right now it is all just "dark wire" sitting in the walls.  I need to start finishing something. I removed the old wallplates when I added on the RJ45 connector to each Cat5 cable, but I won't be able to reuse them because my goal is Ethernet.  My old wallplates have the telephone style "RJ11" jacks, and most of those wall plates also have a Coax TV cable. They're going to be RJ11-style plates forever, so I put them in my box of "old outlets". And remember I also need a Coax outlet in each of my wallplates for the TV wires.  Keystone Wallplates I'm going to use Keystone wall plates, which are often used in commercial buildings and advanced home set-ups.  Keystone wallplates have from one to six small square openings so ...

In the last two posts I described my attempt to transition all of the old Cat5 cabling in my house from analog telephone use to Ethernet use.  After cutting out the RJ11 telephone jacks from each cable end and replacing them with RJ45 plugs, I was able to identify and test each cable run.  Unfortunately, about half the cables were not working. The Cat5 cable in the kitchen is connected, but one of the conductors (specifically, wire #8) is broken.  Since I don't really care much about the port in the kitchen, I'll put off repair of this cable. Sadly, all the Cat5 cables to the upstairs bedrooms are weird.  My low-end network cable tester only shows conductor #5 being healthy.  Basically none of the cables upstairs seem to work at all. My Upstairs Plan Before addressing the upstairs cabling, I want to think about why I want Ethernet in the upstairs at all.  There are a few reasons: First, the bedrooms are likely going to partially serve as home offices. ...

It's another day, and now it's time to analyze the CAT5 wiring. Last time I disconnected all the house wiring from the telephone company.  I removed all the old telephone-style RJ11 jacks.  And then I crimped new RJ45 connectors onto the cables using the 568B standard. The Plan Now I plan to identify and test each cable.  Which cable in the basement is connected to which specific wall jack?  Does that cable look healthy, with all 8 conductors properly working?  All of this requires a simple tester and running around the building. Getting the right Ethernet cable tester. A tester is important because it makes it really easy to check the basic health of a cable.  I have a very cheap tester , so it only does the most basic continuity test of a traditional cable with traditional "RJ" connectors.  My tester can't identify what exactly is wrong... it's basically "looks OK" or "something's not right", and it leaves it to me to figure out exact...

My home has a nest of cable TV and CAT5 wires.  My goal is to figure out if I can use any of my old home wiring for modern networking. As I mentioned last time, I'm planning to keep any viable CAT5 cabling and any decent cable tv coax cables.  But it's all in a nest of unlabelled wires, and I have no idea if they work.  It's a mess, but I aim to figure it all out. CAT5: from Analog Telephone to Ethernet I am very confident that I will never have a need for analog phone lines in my house.  I would much prefer to have Ethernet.  So my goal is to convert any RJ11 jack to an RJ45-style Ethernet jack.  But first I need to see if the cables inside the jacks are viable.  Since Ethernet is one of my primary goals, I'm starting with the CAT5. The CAT5 wiring was put into my house about 20 years ago, but it is exclusively configured for analog telephone lines.  There are a bunch of RJ11-style telephone jacks around the house.  In the basement, six C...

I have an old house, well over 100 years old.  It's been hacked up over the decades, and now I'm trying to change it so it's appropriate for our modern Internet age. In-the-home Telecommunications have changed a lot over the years.  100 year old telephone wiring is not uncommon, along with 40 year old Cable TV wires.   But these days, in the home telecom has shifted to Internet standards and all the handy services they provide: WiFi is in. Security Cameras are in. Video doorbells are in. Ethernet cabling is in. Power over Ethernet is in. But... Old-school alarm systems and doorbells are out. Analog Telephone is definitely out. Cable TV wiring is fading fast. This series will cover my adventure of transitioning my 100+ year old house full of old-school telecom wiring into a full modern data-capable home for today and the foreseeable future. My General Plan Generally I want to have all the modern conveniences in my old house, but I don't want to spend a lot of money doing...