Initial Priorities

1. Communicating with site coordinator for negotiating priorities (by the end of the week)

2. Getting and refurbishing the computers (they will arrive by the end of the week)

3. Searching for freely available software & installation (software requests on Software Inventory Page)

4. Setting up and configuring network

5. Extras

Actual Implemetation

Our group initially selected 8 computers from those available in the basement of Prairienet. We inventoried the computers and and checked the reliability of the hardware. Unfortunately, we found that the computers were a bit uncooperative, but we persevered nonetheless.

One week later Martin contacted us with news of new donations made by the city of Champaign. Thus providing us with higher quality/more cooperative PCs. (HOORAY!) During Spring Break, Ameila and Erin diligently invetoried these computers preparing our group for optimized lab time for the duration of the semester.

Upon return from Spring Break, we regrouped and combined our talents and abilities. Essentially our plans were to divide and conquer. Thus, we worked 2 by 2 to refurbish and install WIN2000 operating systems on 7 of the computers. One computer was reserved as a server, on which Martin obligingly loaded Fedora Linux.

Meanwhile, Dinesh kindly put up with our many questions and aided in our search for Compaq drivers. The search for drivers proved to be fruitless. Thus, Dinesh recommeded that we install new network cards, which worked beautifully! As a result, we were able to update our operating systems and check their communication capabilities through use of ipconfig and ping commands.

Incidentally, throughout the semester we located various internet resources and free software that could be utilized by the source. The resources we found are included in our inventory page.