CHARLES ANGELICH wrote in a message to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE:

WC> Love to but currently on the 486 as the hard drive in the
WC> Pentium died. Win 3.1 - DOS 5.0 

CA> In my 20+ years I've only had one hard drive quit on me. Odd that
CA> so many here on FIDO are forced to replace hard drives. :-\

I've only lost one as well,  though the two ST251 drives I used to use got
*real* noisy before I retired them.  Bearing noise,  I guess,  from running
them 24/7.

There's a burst of HD activity here a couple of times a day,  around
midnight and at the 4AM maintenance events.  I'm carrying pretty many
echos,  which accounts for a lot of it,  but even still fido ain't what it
used to be.  Given that to a greater extent,  I can see where some people
might be working them harder than I do.  Particularly if you add in
environmental factors.

 CA> --8<--cut 

WC> I could use the Knoppix CD you sent to surf the web in
WC> Randrive mode saving settings to diskette but would lose
WC> fido offline capability. 

WC> In fact I'll _have_ to use Knoppix in ramdrive mode to even
WC> make sure the Siig and Seagate items I want are in stock at
WC> the local CompUSA because Netscape 4.08 no longer displays
WC> their web site AT ALL. 

CA> Business websites seem to want to have all the 'bells-n-whistles' 
CA> that only newer browsers will display properly. 

Or they make unwarranted assumptions about which platform you're running, 
and which browser you're using,  and target their development in that
direction.  That,  and the fact that nobody who does this stuff likely
tries loading a page from a typical slow dialup connection...

I tried to load a page from the state of PA earlier this afternoon.  Waited
a while,  went and read some emails and responded to them,  went back and
looked,  went and played a couple games of solitaire,  and went back and
looked again.  By that time,  _45 minutes later!_,  it had only gotten
about 60% of the way here.  I gave up at that point.

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