1237a59f0bc7
tech



Hello Wayne - 

CA>> I've known a few who had 'mysterious' hard drive disasters
CA>> after repartitioning with FIPS and have, therefore, never
CA>> used it myself. 

WC> Heh, most user friendly software I've ever used and it's
WC> saved me on numerous occassions but you DO need to read the
WC> docs. 

Always. 

WC> Specifically mentioned is not to use on Compaq's with
WC> proprietary hard drive "setup" partition. You do need to
WC> defrag first, than remove any hidden files such as
WC> mirror.idx that may lurk at the end of the drive. I suspect
WC> your acquaintances didn't read the docs which are in fact
WC> rather brief and concise. Even without Linux I've used it
WC> as a recovery tool with great success. BTW I f'ed up and
WC> forgot I'd mirrored my old DOS -Win 3.1 partition to floppy
WC> and need not have done a complete reinstall when I suffered
WC> a crash and burn, oops. 

I can admit the people who had problems after using FIPS are
the type that would use it without reading the DOCs. That is a
good point. 

CA>> If I remember correctly W31 v5.x of Inernet Explorer even
CA>> writes entries into the REG.DAT of W31 (not often done by
CA>> other software) that will cause problems. I seem to recall
CA>> trying to edit them out and finally just replacing REG.DAT
CA>> with a backup copy. 

WC> I didn't install over Win 3.1 and thus have a 32 bit FAT
WC> and so most everything I do is on the new system though
WC> telnet is still confined to the Pentium 1. I need to save
WC> some money for things like NetTerm for Windows 98 to telnet. 

Hyperterminal PE (personal edition) seems to work well for many
and it's free. Alan Zisman swears by it. I use NetTerm because
there is no Hyperterminal for W31. 

--8<--cut 

WC>> BTW were you aware that "attrib," with the comma will
WC>> strip all attributes of a named file? 

CA>> No I did not. Sounds like a bug that has been elevated to
CA>> a 'feature'. ;-) 

WC> Thought I'd pass it along as you only recently discovered
WC> CD was the same as PWD in Linux, it's a useful bit of info. 

Grin ... well in retrospect that does seem a bit obvious but I
never had a _need_ for it until writing that batch file. ;-) 

--8<--cut 

WC>> Big deal, the big hurdle was the machine itself, memory is
WC>> cheap these days and I'm thinking about maxing this box
WC>> out to 256 Meg. RAM. 

CA>> I'm inclined to want 512meg if I'm going to bother
CA>> swapping memory in/out but after asking about memory
CA>> limits in the W95 echo and getting no replies I'm not
CA>> clear as to what OS will use 512meg and what OS will just
CA>> ignore more than 256meg. 

WC> Think per manual this machine only supports 256 Meg., I'm
WC> happy... for now ;-) 

256 seems enough for my brother's W98SE install. 

CA>> The most recent discussions about BL2 on the elist
CA>> revolved around MSWord support. MSW isn't even compatible
CA>> with other versions of MSW. 

WC>  This I know, marketing instead of competence :-( 

CA>> I think the consensus is that RTF is more likely to be
CA>> compatible but even that is not 100% and has limitations. 

WC> Not all that familiar with RTF. 

I've never liked RTF but I don't do word processing normally. I
usually wind up doing it to help out someone else not for
myself. 

WC>> What I'm going to be doing in the next few weeks is
WC>> checking out USB CD-ROM read-writers. 

CA>> You may want to verify that you have USB 2? 

WC> I'll check first of course, I always do which is why I've
WC> never had hardware problems when hooking up new stuff. 

I should've said the proper hardware/speed to support USB 2. 

WC>> There's a German fellows release that employs Dillo
WC>> graphical browser and the above refered to word processor
WC>> on a Redhad small footprint, 350 Meg, installation. 

CA>> You might want to ask Steven Darnolds on the survpc elist
CA>> about Dillo. He has recently been looking at various Linux
CA>> browsers and might have a more objective opinion as to
CA>> it's usefulness/speed/etc. 

WC> I looked at the screen shots, impressive to say the least.
WC> Source code just over 300K and binary about 200K!!! 

How well it supports CSS, frames, javascript, and even FLASH
can be important for accessing manufacturer's websites which I
suspect you do want to do more often than the average person.
That and stability in general. ;-) 

CA>> My 2 cents fwiw is that the 'best' Linux is the one that
most of the people you know use. 

WC> I find the more different types of software I use the more I
WC> learn about the basics which often transfers to new
WC> software... 

What I'm saying is that describing a problem in text can be
difficult where a live person looking at the monitor can detect
a great deal more than you can reproduce in a text here (or
anywhere) when requesting assistance. 

WC> well except for COBOL perhaps ;-) I hated english in school
WC> and hate it worse as a programming language! 

Both German and French programmers have explained to me that
they prefer English. The same textual information in German or
French can be more than twice as long especially for German
text files. ;-) 

WC>> I've now 2 decent machines so no problem. Likely though
WC>> I'll try relocating that fast UART to my working 486 board
WC>> way down the road when I've the time to play and try to
WC>> install a sufficiently versitile Linux on it and what will
WC>> become it's 325 meg drive when I replace the NEC's current
WC>> one. 

CA>> An internal modem would save you much grief in that regard
CA>> (my 2 cents). 

WC> Financial resources limited and I do want to try doing
WC> something relatively ambitious that used to be a snap. If I
WC> blow it no loss. 

OK. 

CA>>> Keep in mind recent Linux, Windows, and others are being
CA>>> written for 2ghz machines now with installed memory on 

CA>> video cards that can be 32 meg just for the video. 

WC>> Not worried, 8 Meg on my video card will do for now and if
WC>> not I'll disable the onboard in CMOS and use up a slot. 

CA>> My brother has 8 meg on his video card and it seems to be
CA>> sufficient for his uses. Streaming video is 'iffy' but I
CA>> suspect that is the combination of winmodem and a poorly
CA>> configured OS. 

WC> Opps, misspoke myself, THIS machine has an 8 Meg card, the
WC> H.P. has a 32 :-) 

I think for HP machines this is 'shared memory' meaning it
reduces available system memory? 

--8<--cut 

WC> The troubleshooting tool for XP is a .50 caliber Desert
WC> Eagle. 

:-) 

--8<--cut 

WC>> Hopefully it'll be supported, Rockwell HCL something or
WC>> other software modem. Need to see if this modem is
WC>> supported in Linux and if there's a readme in the .tgz 

CA>> This is confusing (to me). Rockwell had a combo hard/soft
CA>> modem years ago that would even work for DOS. It had
CA>> drivers for both DOS and Windows. I had the impression
CA>> Rockwell abanadoned that design in favor of the winmodem
CA>> (Windows only) and the little bit I've read about Linux
CA>> lead me to think Linux was only attempting to support the
CA>> latter (DOS compatible Rockwells) and not the winmodems? 

WC> Not a clue as yet but if I run into difficulty there's the
WC> Linux supported software modem sitting in this machine
WC> unused. I'd install 98 over 3.1 if the disk had the space
WC> for it here and avail myself of that modem both in Linux
WC> and Windows on this machine. Once I slap a real drive in
WC> this machine that'll be taken care of and I do believe I'll
WC> make it FAT 16 and keep 3.1 

I'm not certain that W98SE will use FAT16? I know Alan Zisman
has said he kept the first partition as FAT16 for W95 but used
FAT32 on all other partitions. It was to keep his old DOS
utilities alive and working which would probably limit that C:
partition to 2 gig? 

WC> Still telneting off the NEC and surfing off the H.P. Hey if
WC> I remove the base from this monitor I can fit both machines
WC> on that cart! 

Take note of the postioning of the casters. If they are too far
inboard the cart might tip? 

>
>        ,                                        ,
>      o/      Charles_Angelich  - DOS Ghost       \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >  www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/faf/  < \   __\__
 

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