The Resource Room Computer

The current computer was bought as a gift for the American teachers on Christmas 2000. It runs at 800MHz with 128MB of RAM, with a 20GB hard drive, 50x CD-ROM, a floppy drive, internal 56K modem, generic sound and video cards, 2 USB ports. The default OS is Windows 98.

Several things that need to be mentioned if somebody is going to be administering this computer:

Using The Internet

Connect to the internet by double clicking the My Connection icon on the desktop and clicking Connect. I've set it up so that the login is completely automatic, requiring no interaction on your part. In fact, you probably wouldn't even know about it if I didn't tell you. However, I anticipate that when the school moves you will probably have to set up a new internet connection. Perhaps this information will come in handy.

Internet Connection

The ISP we use is a local isp that we dial up on a 56k modem. The telephone number we use is 023618888. Download speeds max out at about 2.6K/sec, a megabyte typically takes about 5 minutes to download. When we arrived, we used a seemingly antiquated login system that required us to type in the username and password into a terminal screen. It was enough of a hassle that I looked online and found that Microsoft provides a scripting language to automate the process. The script is located here:

C:\Program Files\Accessories\script_test.scp

The script automates the following login process:

username: glewis
password: ****
type 1 for PPP/web access
use the mouse to hit the Continue button

In case you want to remove the script and log in manually, do the following: click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to Communications, and then click Dial-Up Networking; right-click the My Connection icon and click Properties; click the Scripting tab and clear the text box. This will not erase the script; if you want to use it again, it will still be in the location given above.

Last year's team gaves us these instructions, they are now obsolete:

Every time you try to connect to the internet, you'll get a post dial-up box. The username is "glewis" and the password is "****". When the menu pops up, choose "1" and press F7 to continue.

Paying for the Internet

The rate for internet service this year was 4 yuan/hour on weekdays, 2 yuan/hour weekday nights and weekends.

This year we had the situation where two of the teachers used the computer only a little, and two of the teachers used it heavily. In the interest of fairness, I downloaded and set up two programs to help us keep track of each person's total time on the Internet. Netlaunch runs in the background and monitors the internet connection. When somebody signs on, it launches Internet Timer. When Internet Timer starts up, it requests a user password and logs the time. It also logs the time at logoff. At the end of each month we checked everybody's time and calculated how much each person payed. Light e-mail checkers payed 20-30 yuan each month; heavy use can rack up bills of up to 150 yuan. In a situation where everybody uses the computer about the same amount, this system would not be necessary. To remove this functionality, simply open the Start menu, go to Programs > Administration > NetLaunch. Select the third Program tab and uncheck the box that says Automatically run NetLaunch at startup.

Credit cards not being widespread and the banking system still developing, you will have to go through the inconvenience of taking a trip to Tonglou to pay the internet bill every month or two. The ISP's office is on the 29th floor of the Tianjin Finance Building (the 天津金融大厦), at 123 Weidi Road. Simply take a taxi to Tonglou, or catch the 951 bus if you are feeling thrifty. From the foreign language bookstore start walking approximately east (McDonalds will be over your left shoulder across the road) and look for the tall grey office buildings on your right. It's the second one, and it has a bunch of bank tellers on the bottom floor. The elevators are around in the back on the first floor. Make a left as you exit on the 29th floor. Generally, you can pay the internet bill every couple of months.

Chinese Support

I downloaded Chinese support for text-input. This is useful for writing Microsoft Word documents in Chinese, or sending e-mail from Outlook Express also in Chinese. Simply open a Word document or a new message in Outlook, left-click the "En" icon in the system tray (bottom right) and select "Chinese (Simplified) ISE". As of the creation of this document, the printer driver does not support Chinese characters. The best way to print Chinese is to save to a disk and ask Lawrence to print it out.

D Drive

The D drive has about 8GB of capacity. I've used it as an MP3 storage partition. The ripping/encoding software I use is called Zlurp, and it only lets you rip the odd tracks on a CD when you are not signed onto the Internet. The MP3 program we use to play music is called STP, or SysTrayPlay. I picked it because it's very small and doesn't slow down the computer too much while playing.

One quirk of the computer is the sound card. When the computer plays a CD, it doesn't route the music through the soundcard, so plugging the speakers into the back yields silence. It is necessary to plug the speakers into the headphone jack on the front plate of the CD drive. However when playing MP3's, the speakers should be plugged into the back of the computer.

If you can figure that one out and fix it, you're a better man/woman that I.

Software Inventory

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Micah Sittig
Created on April 28, 2002
Last updated: 2002.06.29