-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 WC>  I've tossed a bit of that, I draw the line at 8 Meg. sticks.

 WC> Well latest release in this case is four years old as Netscape is
 WC> no longer supporting this 16 bit platform.

 RJT> I hate that,  I really do.  The older platforms aren't just going to go
 RJT> away completely,  not for a while yet...

Not for me anyway. Win 3.1 is small and efficient and does
95 percent of what I want to do plus it's setup quite to my tastes just
now and I'm taking care not to load up on garbage.
Right now Windows stands just under 31 Meg, with MSword
as a subdirectory and a number of other utilities such as
Adobie Acrobat reader, WS-FTP and Telnet.
Full featured Netscape Communicator stands at about 32 Meg.,
after clearing cache memory. So everything I've got loaded 
comes in well under 100 Meg. with the remaining 80 Meg or so
devoted to original setup software in self extractors, JPG's,
GIF's. .WAV's, ect. Half my 325 Meg drive is open space.
 
 RJT> I have assorted utilities here to read cmos and save it to a file,
 RJT> stuff like that...

 WC> Yeah, I've cmos.com and others are readily available from the
 WC> SimTel mirrors.

 RJT> That may even be where I got some of them from when I had the chance.

SimTel is an excellent place to snare freeware or shareware
and it's mirrored all over the world with a *nix based
file directory everything is easy to find.

 WC> I got the card specs right off the CD in a file but applying them
 WC> did not work. Mind you this was an on motherboard video card clone.

 RJT> Often knowing what chipset is in use helps a lot.

 Had the manual and software from the IBM  card they mimicked
 but even so no joy. The guy that hacked the driver file said
 it was a bitch and I recall trying all sorts of video settings.

 WC> I've found freeware diagnostic software at SimTel that'll tell you
 WC> what your monitor can handle though usually there's a disclaimer
 WC> about risk of the higher resolutions and refresh rates and you
 WC> should only run them briefly and at your own risk.

 RJT> What software is that?

I _may_ have it on this drive as I recall a monitor.zip file, 
we'll see, otherwise I'll have to do a net search for SimTel, 
Diagnostic, Video, Monitor.
 
 WC> Currently I've a minor problem with this monitor as it loses vert.
 WC> sync when recovering from power saver mode however as it was
 WC> salvage I suspect the kiddies were playing at the 2 available
 WC> recessed trimpots in the back.

 RJT> Are they labeled at all?

 Sub H phase 2 and sub H phase three.
 Problem in this case was easily fixed.

 RJT> It's not a driver issue with me as much as a config file issue.  You
 RJT> start looking at setting up X without the automated utilities to do it
 RJT> for you and you'll see what I mean.  :-)

 We didn't have much in the way of stinking automated setup 
 utilities in Linux Slackware 1.1.59 except for the very most
 common and basic stuff so I already know what you mean ;-)
 
 WC> stiff and too thick distorting the metal shield on the back of the
 WC> CRT board shorting out the driver transistors.

 RJT> I remember you mentioning this before.

 It bears repeating as it's _really_ annoying to have a
 5 cent piece of foam pad fry a monitor :-(

 WC> In the first case the heat had toasted the pins so bad some came
 WC> out of the CRT with the socket :-(

 RJT> Ouch.

Yeah and they were all sorts of shades of blue and black as well :-(

 RJT> It's been a long time since I've been inside of a monitor.  Mostly
 RJT> because I don't have any place in here where I can work.  
 
Same here. I've two SVGA's in the other room one pretty far gone
but the other is only a width problem related to a loose wire
or poor solder joint, how do I know... well just whack it once and
everything comes back for a very short time. 
Worst comes to worst and both working SVGA's go down
I've a working VGA as well.

 WC> The heck with the support you don't actually learn anything that
 WC> way.

 RJT> You sound like a candidate for Slackware here...   :-)

 WC> If I need support I'll go with users info. available by using a
 WC> search engine, Fido or newsgroups which I've lately turned to to
 WC> find the good and bad of the new motherboards.

 RJT> Heck,  with any decent distro that's not too old you get tons of info
 RJT> _with_ it.  The trick is in figuring out where the stuff is that you
 RJT> need.    
 
I'm already aware of that from my brief encounters with Linux.

 RJT> I noticed that a nontrivial amount of these were in HTML
 RJT> format,  so I ended up putting together a big root page and tying all
 RJT> this other stuff into it,  plus things like the HOWTO files and
 RJT> whatnot.  I can even pull man pages into that, there's a form you fill
 RJT> out and submit and it pulls the man page into HTML format.  Kinda cool,
 RJT>  running my own web server software here...  :-)

 Yes that sounds like a really nice feature.
 
 RJT> I could organize it better,  probably.  Or just keep adding links to
 RJT> it.

 I recently got _very_ organized when that worm hit
 and I started from scratch.
 BTW it seems recent worms can invade HTML and self execute
 just on reading that file so it looks like my new mail default
 will be plain text until I manage to afford software with updates 
 to protect me from that crap. Do you suppose the anti-virus companies
 subcontract the idiots that write malicious code to sell their
 wares ;-)

 WC> Heh. I've heard one release of Linux was commercial wide body jet
 WC> approved and certified and a version was slated to run on the
 WC> shuttle. Would _you_ fly a 767 with a Windows O.S.

 RJT> No,  given the choice.

 WC> ;-) Adds a whole new meaning to BSOD!

 RJT> Indeed.  I've heard of "computerized billboards" and
similar places
 RJT> showing up with a BSOD,  which I thought was *really* weird.  Why you'd
 RJT> use software like that in that kind of an application makes no sense to
 RJT> me at all...

Just a quick and dirty solution to video drivers.
OTOH I once had a really cool detailed graphics demo with sound 
that ran for around 10 minutes before repeating written on a Mac 
that fit on a 1.44 diskette! Kind of a Rube Goldberg Monty Pythonish
sort of thing with lots of color and progressive intricate
animated objects added. Towards the end there were some
amusing comments to fellow graphics hackers and an invite to 
a convention in some place like Norway.
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