Alright, let me tell you about this whole “bostonconnr” thing I got myself into. It wasn’t some grand plan, you know? Just one of those weekends where you think, “Hey, I’ve got this old piece of kit lying around, let’s see if I can make it do something useful.” Famous last words, right?
Getting Started with the Beast
So, this “bostonconnr” – I think it was some kind of ancient network switch or maybe a super-niche router, honestly, the label was half peeled off. Found it in a box of stuff from my college days. My first thought was, “Cool, maybe I can set up a separate little network for all those smart home gadgets that keep phoning home to who-knows-where.” Seemed like a simple enough idea.
I plugged it in. Lights blinked. Okay, promising. I connected my laptop to it with an ethernet cable. Nothing. No IP address, no connection, just that little yellow warning triangle taunting me. Classic.
Next, I tried to find its default IP address. You know the usual suspects – 192.168.1.1, 192.168.0.1, 10.0.0.1. Scanned the whole damn range. Zilch. This thing was playing hard to get.
The Deep Dive (or Desperation)
This is where things usually go one of two ways: you give up, or you get stubborn. I got stubborn. I mean, how hard could it be? It’s just a box with ports.
I started searching online for “bostonconnr” and any model numbers I could barely make out. Most of the results were for actual Boston connections or something completely unrelated. It was like this thing never existed, or everyone who ever owned one threw it out years ago. Smart folks.
Then, deep in some forgotten forum from the early 2000s, I found a single thread. Someone mentioned needing a specific serial cable and a terminal program to even talk to this model. A serial cable! In this day and age! Luckily, being a bit of a tech hoarder, I actually had one tucked away.
So, I dug out the serial-to-USB adapter, fired up PuTTY, and tried to connect. More gibberish on the screen than actual text. Baud rates, parity, stop bits – I fiddled with every setting imaginable. It felt like trying to tune an old radio, hoping to catch a faint signal.
You know, it’s funny. My kid walked in while I was hunched over, muttering at the screen. He asked what I was doing. I said, “Trying to make this old thing work.” He just looked at me, then at his tablet that connects to the internet like magic, and walked away. Probably thought I was nuts. Maybe he’s right.
A Glimmer of Hope?
After what felt like an eternity, I stumbled upon the right combination of serial settings. Actual, readable text started scrolling! It was like deciphering ancient hieroglyphs. The command line interface was archaic, super basic, but it was there. I was in!
From there, I managed to reset it to factory defaults (which still didn’t make the ethernet ports spring to life easily). I poked around the menus, trying to figure out how to configure VLANs or just get a simple DHCP server running on it.
- Checked for firmware updates – yeah, right. The company probably folded a decade ago.
- Tried setting static IPs on my laptop, then on the device.
- Rebooted it. Many, many times.
Eventually, after hours of this, I got it to a point where one port would give out an IP address. Just one. And it was flaky. The slightest breeze, and it would drop the connection.
The “Success” and the Realization
So, did I achieve my goal of a super-secure isolated network for my smart toaster? Not really. I mean, technically, I made the “bostonconnr” do something. It passed a few packets. But it was so unreliable and clunky, it just wasn’t worth the effort for the original purpose.
Ultimately, I unplugged it and put it back in the box. But you know what? It wasn’t a total waste. It was a reminder of how far things have come, and sometimes, just the challenge of wrestling with old tech is its own weird reward. Even if you end up right back where you started, just a bit more frustrated and with a story to tell. So yeah, that was my “bostonconnr” weekend. Don’t recommend it unless you really, really like puzzles with missing pieces.