Whilst doing some testing on some 10/100Mbit/s switches at home the other day, I was just checking on whether a neat Zyxel ES-3148 model had some extra ports at the back to ‘daisychain’ more switches to, when I tripped over both the power lead and the Cat5 cable connecting my laptop to my wireless router.

Ironic really when I've spent ages barking at the kids to be careful when roller skating near the laptop. Only a partial reboot was possible and the operating system kept hanging. Using PowerQuest's V2i Protector software which I'd used to store an image of the Windows 2000 Professional OS on a separate USB drive, I managed to restore the system to a state where all the most critical applications were present and runnable – Lotus Notes, WordPerfect, CorelDraw, Excel.

However, trying to connect to our email server wasn't possible and eventually I found that both the onboard LAN connection AND the mini-PCI wireless card were 'blown'. Searching through my 'box of bits' I unearthed a Cisco CB20-A wireless PC Card and also an ancient Compaq WL110 wireless PC Card. The CB20-A as the prefix suggests is an 802.11a spec only card which doesn't work with my wireless router, but the WL110 is a 802.11b only which would work. And did - after inserting the card and digging out some drivers, it connected me up at around 3.5Mbit/s. So, Trevor 'Shoestring' Eve is not the only guy able to wake the dead, but the lesson is don't throw old hardware out, you never know when you might need it – just keep those cupboards full of junk – you know it makes sense.

25 Oct 2006