I almost turned into a consumerist today

When the 8 port, 100Mbps, Allied Telesyn switch broke, we faced a business critical issue: the $300 monthly profit was at stake. We had to get a new AC adapter immediately.

This was the kind of stuff that kept me busy 10 years ago when I was running me and my brother's business: Escape Computer Games & Internet Club - you know - the kind of place where people used to spend time on IRC, Counter-Strike and Broodwar in 2000. This was the place we celebrated the opening of, in the fall of '98, playing Duke Nukem, Starcraft and Quake until 8 in the morning when I went to school and slept a bit. Luckily for me, my parents came back from the vacation after a week and I started sleeping again.

The switch was 12V but wouldn't settle for less than 1.5A. No regular AC adapters we could get in the local market could output that power.

That's when Dudu stepped in. He was the passioned, self trained engineer that used to fix the TV or your cell phone and usually worked surrounded by tons of wreck (a really lucrative business 15 years ago in Romania), never made it to college kind of dude. He built us a hideous, cubical, 1kg, 12V (probably 3A) AC adapter from a broken VHS player.

Total cost: $10.
Counter/Terrorists kids satisfaction : priceless.

The "device" had all the bells and whistles required to operate the high end switch for more than 3 years until we shut down the business as I went to college.

So yesterday, when my 4 port, 54Mbps Linksys wireless router stopped blinking, I just decided to get a new Linksys WRT54GL as it had good reviews on Amazon.
It was procrastination mixed with laziness that led me this evening to the situation of being in the same situation as yesterday: no interwebs, staring at the broken wireless router that wouldn't start no matter how many times I replugged it.

Like any computer science major that never had an electronics class in his life, I did the logical thing: I opened up the wireless box, glazed for about 30 seconds at the circuit board, decided everything looked good, took out my multimeter, recursively killed the multimeter (I measured the power in the cable that was powering it), then I tongue-tested the still blinking Bandridge AC adaptor that used to power my Linksys wireless router.

I didn't "feel" any 12V at 1A pain! It wasn't the router, it was just a broken, 12V, 1A AC adapter! Can you sense the history repeating? There no profit at stake, I almost got a new wireless router, it was just laziness that forced me try the impossible.

I won't make the story too long and explain how after 10 years, 600KM away from Escape, perfectly fitting a Linksys router, the old, ugly, cubical VHS born AC adapter promptly brought the green lights on my router back to life. For free!



Fixed wireless router:
$80 more for me,
$50 less for Cisco,
$30 less for eMag and Co

My early entrepreneurship memories: priceless.