Wayne Chirnside wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

WC> They're working on new microlithography techniques using far
WC> ultraviolet LASER's to make chips now so terrahertz processors and
WC> RAM memory in the tens of gigabytes will be available in about two
WC> years!

RJT> UV lasers?  Wow.  I guess xray lasers will eventually show up,
RJT> probably starting out in some weapons program...

WC> I originally wrote the same about X-ray LASER's in the post but
WC> editted it out.

Ever read any Larry Niven?  :-)

WC> I just got another thing added to my things to do list, buy 
WC> antivirus software :-(

RJT> Me,  I don't plan to hook a modem to the w98 box at all,  when it sees
RJT> the 'net it's gonna be through a router/firewall box.

WC> Guess I'll check out a router as well.

Easy enough to set one up with linux,  either use a standard distro with a
minimal install or get one of the mini-distros that are optimized for the
purpose.

WC> This time it turned out to be a false alarm and it appears someone 
WC> with my e-mail in their address book got infected with one of those 
WC> worms that has it's own SMTP built in. Yesterday about 27 e-mails 
WC> on the server with 2/3rds of them carrying a worm, today nada, 7 
WC> messages no malicious payloads.

WC> Haven't figured out how to completely block trojans and viruses on 
WC> the 98 box while I've managed it quite nicely on the Windows 3.1 
WC> box without antivirus software.

RJT> I never could see the sense of taking _data_ and _running_ it!  That
RJT> seems to be at the root of a lot of those kinds of problems.  Things
RJT> like email attachements that you execute,  etc.

WC> Yeah but the newer stuff is self executing inserting a key into the
WC> registry and it has built in SMTP and scans and incorporates your
WC> address book into it's SMTP.

Windoze design...

WC> RE: sound card.

RJT> Got one PCI one in the machine but it doesn't seem to have an interrupt
RJT> configured and I'm stalled at the moment in terms of figuring out how
RJT> to make that happen.  Also a couple of ISA ones in a box here,  I'm
RJT> going to try and see what I can make work shortly.

WC> I've a half length ISA that appear identical to the SB sound card 
WC> minus proprietary SoundBlaster CD drive I could checkout for you.
WC> Just sub it into the NEC in place of the SB card and see if it 
WC> works. I'm pretty sure it will as it's using the same IRQ, and 
WC> addresses. Only problem there is I need to retain the software CD 
WC> for the NEC setup. Of course if it's for Linux I expect it'd be 
WC> detected.

Maybe,  maybe not,  but I'm not all that worried about the cd connector
anyhow.  I'm currently messing with the test fixture,  and have an
"AMD Interwave" sound card in there that has such a connector, 
but I'm not sure how I'm going to configure it.  The current setup on that
machine is an older version of Debian that I'd stuck on there ages ago, 
and I'm not sure how to configure it.  It *may* be that the connector there
is configured to be secondary IDE interface,  which would explain why the
machine doesn't seem to be able to see the cdrom drive at the moment.  I
guess I gotta pop it out of there and see if it works then...

If I can't get that PCI card to work in the one box,  I'll get another one
working in this other box,  and do my interfacing in there!

WC> I was contemplating the experimental swap anyway to get that big 
WC> honking card out of the way but still retain the sound in the ISA 
WC> slot to free up a PCI slot occuied by a PCI sound card. Give me a 
WC> yell if you if nothing you've on hand works and I'll see if I can 
WC> manage to send it to you.

I'll take anything I can get,  and in the meantime I'm limited to weekends
to do any serious fiddling with this stuff.  We'll see how it goes,  if I
can get somewhere with it.

WC> I'll even zip up my SoundBlaster directory and delete and see if 
WC> the SoundBlaster software recognises and sets up on the card.

WC> So far my loses from failure over the years are 2 floppy drives,

RJT> These days when I go to snag one,  even at the used place,  I try 
RJT> for Sony.  They haven't disappointed me yet.  And they invented 
RJT> the damn things.

WC> Good to know and thanks for the tip as I'm planning to buy one for
WC> backup for when one here inevitably fails.

So far so good,  anyhow.  I guess I was kinda rough on floppy drives for a
while,  even used them for backup before I got tape.  That would explain
how they wouldn't tend to last as long as they should.



RJT>  Monitors,  yeah.  I have three of them sitting here in the room,  

WC> I've two dead in the other room with one possibly worth the tme to 
WC> fix as it doesn't look too bad and I think it's an intermittant 
WC> on on of the potentiometer leads to board.

That sounds like the problem I have with this little tv here -- you can't
wiggle the knob without making it cut out,  can't turn it down to
reasonable levels,  either,  but a spare set of computer speakers with
their own volume controls made a temporary fix.  



RJT> Or boot linux from a floppy (got tomsrtbt handy?) and use dd,  instead.

WC> Close as an internet logon. What's dd?

RJT> From the man page: "dd - convert and copy a file". 
Copies from stdin
RJT> to stdout,   using specified block sizes (default is 512 bytes),  and
RJT> optionally performing conversions.

WC> Hmm, I'd been using Linux to cp to and from a FAT 16 partition with 
WC> no noticable problems without using dd, guess things were just 
WC> serendipidously lined up right here.

Was that partition mounted as a fat16 partition?  The dd program doesn't
worry about filesystem stuff,  works with tape and boot sectors and
whatever...

WC> Definately something I'll want to look into.

It's handy.

WC> Thanks for the answer as currently there's no chair in the room at
WC> the computer desk because of my back and the cart I've got is 
WC> currently occupied by the H.P. THAT's why I want to split the 
WC> partition on the H.P. so badly to install Linux here. Think I 
WC> figured out what I did wrong with FIPS but splitting a FAT 32 with 
WC> data on it is new to me, FAT 16 and the version of FIPS for that is 
WC> old hat.

Never used FIPS here.  The only box I'm considering linux _and_ something
else is the 98 box,  which has the original 500M drive in it and a 1.2G
drive that's got the current install.  After I finished ripping all the
stuff off the original drive I wiped it,  made a small partition,  put the
w98 swap file there,  and am thinking about installing linux on the space
that's left. Trouble is,  the basic packages in a late install won't fit, 
requiring more room than I've got.  Dunno if I'm gonna work that out with
NFS or what,  but I'll figure something out... 



RJT> Gels are rated in AH,  but that's at a _20-hour_ rate -- so a 10AH gel
RJT> is spec'd for a 500mA drain for 20 hours.  You can pull a lot more out
RJT> of them, for short periods of time,  though they don't seem to last
RJT> real long in that type of use,  and of course at lower rates they last
RJT> longer.

WC> Some experience with those in heavy duty sizes as a company  I 
WC> worked for used a great many as backup and their service conract 
WC> swapped them out well before they were dead and I snagged a few.

That's how I got some of the ones I have,  they were swapped out.  How big
are the ones you have?  And,  are you keeping them charged?

RJT> People who used to buy batteries were often surprised at how this
RJT> worked, thinking that you could draw a heck of a lot more out of them
RJT> than you actually can.  Or that they'd last longer while you did it.

WC> I find if you charge them up quickly after discharge it helps. I'll 
WC> rely largely on the guys from Electro-Battery as they deal with the 
WC> stuff all the time. Downloaded a 39.4 Meg. PDF of Digikey's 
WC> catalog last night to find some hefty stud type rectifiers to 
WC> isolate the UPS charger from external battery. Unbelieveable amount 
WC> of stuff in their new catalog and I was wishing I was a kid again 
WC> with good eyesight to play around with all the surface mount 
WC> prototype boards and such. Also snagged Jameco's PDF. That's 53 
WC> MEG of download in under three hours time :-)

Whoa!    I am way behind on their catalogs,  haven't gotten any in
several years,  since I stopped regularly buying stuff from them.  Looks
like I'm gonna have to get a hold of some.  But I don't think I'll be
downloading them any time soon.  Maybe they'll put 'em out on cdrom
sometime soon?  I know a lot of companies are going that route.



WC> You know I'm getting a little spooked by these plugins that install 
WC> on the fly and shockwave activating and streaming MP3 suddenly 
WC> coming out of my speakers never even having left the web site, 
WC> Charles Angelich's, that I was on.

RJT> That *is* weird.  I've little experience with that sort of thing, 
and RJT> am not sure I'd care for it too much.

WC> Me neither, I'd rather manually go to the web site of of someone 
WC> offering such plugins, download and install it myself as well as 
WC> having the backup archive instead of it doing it's thing in the 
WC> background, Winunzipping and instaling on the fly. Like I say it's 
WC> spooky.

Yeah.

RJT> And if I did have that sort of thing happening,  I'd want to be 
RJT> *real* sure of what was running on any system I had here.  It 
RJT> amazes me how much people will trust in stuff like that...

WC> I exercise some care which is not to say I won't yet get burned. 
WC> Almost got fried last night on a zipped download of what was 
WC> supposed to be an MP3 but I did a "save taget as" instead of 
WC> letting it do it's thing in Winzip. AS I've pkzip 2.50 on the 
WC> machine I used the -t switch to look at the _MP3_ first, there were 
WC> a couple of dozen files in there and it would have taken over my 
WC> desktop, replaced my wallpaper and dog know what else. Promptly 
WC> deleted.

Heh.  But people out there do just trust that sort of thing,  without even
thinking about it much...

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