Progress!  I did some snooping around and discovered that I hadn’t seated the wireless PCI card fully – dooh!  Installed the card and drivers correctly this time, and what do you know, it can communicate with the router.  I configured Internet Explorer to WildBlue specs, and was able to access the internet over my wirelessly networked darkroom workstation.  Works great!

Now the bad part – I can’t seem to get the two computers to recognize each other.  So it appears that I have the internet connection sharing configured properly, but have failed in my attempts to activate File & Printer Sharing, or to even see these resources in the Network Places folder.

Well, I’ll just have to keep working at it, and I hope to have it all operating together soon.

Yesterday was spent in the company of a North Arkansas Telephone Company tech installing and configuring WildBlue Satellite Broadband in our home.  The installation went smoothly, although it was a long process that took nearly the entire day.  So far, the service is as I had expected, with download speeds testing to be in the 1.5-1.6 Mbps range.  The latency of satellite transmissions is evident, but not intolerable.  Once packets begin to arrive however, downloads proceed rapidly.  I will post my observations and experiences with WildBlue as they occur.

 Now that I have broadband, I decided that it is time to network our home computers.  I have just finished installing Linksys WRT54G Wireless G Broadband router, and it appears to work fine with my main computer (Gateway 820GM Media Center) and the satellite modem.  My upstairs computer (Gateway Select K7-950), which I use as my digital imaging studio, is another story however.  I installed a Linksys PCI Wireless G card, installed and configured the driver software, and voila – NOTHING.  I’ll try to troubleshoot it in the next day or so.