It looks like I will have to be making an unexpected purchase.  I turned on my home computer and noticed that it wouldn’t connect to the Internet.  That was odd so I tried my normal troubleshooting steps, but still nothing.

I did some looking and found that my router was behaving strangely.  I have a cable modem that feeds a Linksys Wireless Router and switch.  The computer here in my office is plugged directly into it, but the other computers in the house connect through secure wireless.

Anyways, the router was blinking in a way that I could tell wasn’t good.  I was able to bypass the router by plugging the PC network cable directly into the cable modem.  This works now but it means that

1. I don’t have wireless access
2. The firewall and security features, though probably rudimentary, that the router was providing are no longer available.

I did some research on what the blinking means and if there is a solution.  Apparently, the firmware got fried and since it won’t receive a connection through the network cable, the ’secondary’ solution is to reset the card by using a screwdriver to temporarily short out one of the circuits on one of the chips.   Though someone posted pictures on how to do it, I am not sure it’s worth it.  The router has been doing some odd things over the past few months, so even if I were to successfully pull off the short circuit (the odds of which I put at about 40% anyways) I fear that it would just flake out sooner rather than later.

The router itself is probably five years or even older, so I have no qualms about putting it to rest knowing that it served well.

I’ll have to break the news to Mrs. Beagle that she’s without wireless access on her laptop until I research the best replacement, and at the right price of course!

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