Leonard Erickson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RJT> It's that last bit I wasn't familiar with.  Heck,  I know about
 RJT> Digital Research,  from CP/M! 

 LE> They sold *that* to Caldera too. You could download it for a while.

 RJT> And now you can't?  Weird...

 LE> No idea if you can or not. I said you *could*. I don't know if you
 LE> still can. Thus my phrasing.

Oh,  ok.

 LE> Got a couple things I figured were worth it, and one of the 
 LE> interesting things was a temperature sensor that was designed to 
 LE> replace the faceplate ona 5.25" drive bay. It's got the sensor on 
 LE> a long wire pair, and has a connector for power (3.5" floppy type 
 LE> connector).

 RJT> Cool.

 LE> It'll wind up in one of my system next time I'm tearing things
 LE> aprt.

 RJT> I could see where that'd be a nifty thing to have.

 LE> Well, they sell similar gizmos at Frys, but it's a pain getting
 LE> there.  I figure the "clunk" was the read/write head moving up and 
 LE> down.

 RJT> Probably.  Or the brakes kicking in?

 LE> No, because the few times we had to restore individual files from
 LE> an image backup, you could hear the tape slow down while nowhere
 LE> near the end, then there was a clunk, then it started speeding
 LE> alonmg again. You could *hear* the tape moving.

Ok.  That's a little different than the ones I have here.

 RJT> Yeah,  I can see where that would be the case.  But then you have the
 RJT> possibility that you replace a dead drive with something different, 
 RJT> with maybe different geometry.  I'm glad I never got much invested in
 RJT> any of that copy-protected stuff. 

 LE> Well, the only one I used much was an old version of Printmaster.
 LE> And I made a copy of the "bad" restore (from a file-by-file backup)
 LE> and compared it with the good copy I made by doing a new install.
 LE> It had provision for installing several times to allow you to
 LE> recover from "oops" situations.

 LE> I found one file that was different, and it was different for a few
 LE> bytes. It only took a bit to determine that those bytes were the
 LE> number of the cluster the EXE file started in.

Aha.  Sounds like a bit of norton utilities were used there,  or something
of that sort.

 LE> After that, I just uninstalled it, (adding one back to the install
 LE> count) copied the the old copy into the directory and edited those
 LE> bytes top match things. and after that, when I still used it, I'd
 LE> just do a quick edit if I had to move things.

Sounds good to me!  Those schemes are just silly...

 LE> Nope. Another possibility is some cases have 2 or three drive
 LE> "brackets" thaty slide in or out of the case (offten in odd spots,
 LE> like under the power supply.

 RJT> I have one of those brackets sitting here,  someplace,  but I don't
 RJT> think that it fits any of the cases I have.  In at least several
 RJT> instances the 3.5" bays come clear out of the case,  with one screw
 RJT> more often than not,  sliding right out.  Sometiems some of the other
 RJT> bays do too.  Makes it real convenient to do stuff without having to
 RJT> completely disassemble things. 

 LE> The big ATX case I'm going to build the Win2k system in has several
 LE> of the internal bays set up so you can throw a lever to unlock
 LE> them, and they will then pivot out and can be removed by lifting
 LE> them off the pivots.

No screws,  even.  Hm.

 LE> A cute extra is that the levers are placed so that when you close
 LE> the side of the case (it swings out) it'll push the levers into the
 LE> Lock position if they weren't already there.

Sounds good.  I see some seriously nifty-looking cases out there these
days,  but I'm not in any way short at this point in time,  and haven't yet
moved on to ATX hardware,  so I guess I'm in for some surprises compared to
what I'm used to dealing with.

 LE> Also *all* the sheet metal in the case has rolled edges. This is
 LE> *worth* the extra money if you;ve cut yourself on the inside of
 LE> cases as often as I have!

Oh yeah.

 RJT> I might even have docs here someplace,  but am not well enough
 RJT> organized to say for sure.  No web access,  either.  (Yet.) 

 LE> Well, if you can give me the brand and model, I can look it up and
 LE> if I find it, I can put it on hold for you. They are usually PDF
 LE> files, I hope you can read those...

Yep,  I'm sure I have something on hand to deal with those.  Let me do a
little digging here first,  see if I can't come up with something...

 RJT> Sounds nifty.  But if I was gonna go with something nonstandard,  I
 RJT> think I'd prefer that little gizmo that looks like a pencil eraser
 RJT> sticking up out of a keyboard.

 LE> Ah, the Centrally Located Inteface Toggle. (work out the acronym
 LE> :-)

 RJT> Heh.  That's not what I've otherwise seen it called,  but okay...

 LE> I know. They've got some other official name, but someone sprang
 LE> that on me once. It's a tiny little thing and you rub it to make
 LE> things happen. :-)



 LE> Well, of the "built-in" laptop solutions, I like the
"touchpad"
 LE> best.

 RJT> I don't think I care for those too much.  I'd have to use one for a
 RJT> while,  I guess. 

 LE> Well, my main complaint with them is that it's too easy to trigger
 LE> a "hidden" feature. You see, you can use the left button
to "click"
 LE> or you can just "tap" the pad. I'd accidentally tap them...

I wonder if that's in the hardware or if it's a driver feature?

 LE> ASUS does it own way (and possibly other do it their way as well,
 LE> but we preferred ASUS motherboards). So, I checked them all out in
 LE> the ASUS system, and placed them in large bags labeled "ASUS" for
 LE> the ones theat checked out ok.

 RJT> You're using ziplock bags for storing cables too?  :-)

 LE> Hey, it helped keep them organized. and we had *tons* of them from
 LE> stuff that came in them.

That's what I figured when I went digging through a whole big box of ribbon
cables one time,  and thought that a little organization might be a good
thing.  After a point where I'd acquired a whole mess of stuff...

 LE> Next time we got in a system that didn't use the ASUS pinout, I 
 LE> checked all of ones that hadn't worked in the ASUS in it. Got two
 LE> that didn't work in that either. Close inspect showed something
 LE> messed up, so they got tossed.

 RJT> Two ways,  eh?

 LE> Haven't found a system that used a third way without using a
 LE> completely different connector.

Some of them might do that,  I wouldn't put it past these mfr's.

 LE> I think the trick is that there are two varieties of the "press on"
 LE> connectors that go onto the headers.

Or you can orient the ribbon cable two different ways,  at each end. 
Probably switching both ends would tend to cancel things out,  but maybe
not.  There might be some differences in the connectors,  it's been a
really long time since I messed with those.

 RJT> That's current stuff.  I have some that have 25-pin wiring,  too.  A
 RJT> couple of them in that nifty rainbow cable.  I could probably use some
 RJT> more of those,  maybe,  depending on how much further I can go with
 RJT> certain projects. 

 LE> I was testing both 9 & 25 pin serial assemblies. They all went to
 LE> the 2x5 headers on the motherboard.

But some of the older hardware I used went with much wider ribbon and more
pins on the adapter card (before all this stuff was on the MB) than that.

 LE> But unless a customer asked for it to be done differently, we'd 
 LE> always have 1 25-pin port and one 9-pin port when we put a system 
 LE> together. That helped folks keep straight which was COM1 and which 
 LE> was COM2.

Which was which the way you did it?  I used 9 for com1 because maybe I was
gonna use a serial mouse,  and 25 for com2,  which is where the modem plugs
in.  I can't remember why it was I decided it had to go that way,  but I've
been running it that way for ages.  Probably some early software issue or
something.

 RJT> And then I have a bunch for game ports.  At one time I had like 3 game
 RJT> ports in this box,  and wasn't using any of them.  I don't think any
 RJT> of them were ever enabled.  Gotta get a joystick one of these days and
 RJT> see what I can do with that... 

 LE> I think I have one of those dual port cards around somewhere. I've 
 LE> mostly used the ports on sound cards.

Sound has been a fairly recent addition to stuff here,  but yeah,  that's
some of them.  The others were on multi-i/o cards.

 LE> And after helping a friend get her MIDI capable keyboard hooked to 
 LE> her computer thru a "special" cable to the sound card, I picked up 
 LE> one of the cables myself, and later picked up a used keyboard, 
 LE> cheap. It turns out to not be all that hard to get working, just 
 LE> non-intuitive. I *stumbled* across the instructions in Windows 
 LE> help while looking for something else, you see. :-)

Instructions?  Where did they hide them?  I have a vague recollection of
somebody posting the cable info in here some time back,  but I never did
anything much with it.  Did that give you midi in and out both?

 LE> So now I can test the MIDI capabilities of a system on the bench.  

 LE> Oh yeah, I got a couple of Imac USB keyboards for free a while 
 LE> back. On a whim, I tried plugging them into a Windows box. Windows
 LE> says it's detected a new "Human Interface Device" and asks to
 LE> install the drivers. I told it to go ahead. It didn't ask for the
 LE> windows CD (so the drivers are part of the "base" install set).

Hm.  More space wasting on stuff that I don't use,  but that's typical.

 LE> And shortly after that I could typ away on the mac keyboard. The 
 LE> "cloverleaf" key works as an Alt key. And the
"apple" key works as
 LE> something else, Menu, I think.

 LE> Anyway, they make a great way to test USB ports. Of course, *now*
 LE> USB keyboard for the PC are getting common. But these are smaller
 LE> and easier to haul on house calls. :-)

I don't know that I'd want to go USB for keyboard and mouse,  particularly
when I already have ports for them otherwise,  and when I may be dealing at
times with software that won't support them,  or at least without going to
a lot of trouble.

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