-=> Quoting Roy J. Tellason to Leonard Erickson <=-

 RJT> Leonard Erickson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
 
 LE> More recently Caldera has sold it to some other outfit. I forget
 LE> the name.
 
 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...

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

 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.

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

 RJT> Probably.  Or the brakes kicking in?

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

 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. 

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

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

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

 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. 

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

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

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

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

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

 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...

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

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

 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?  :-)

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

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

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

 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. 

I was testing both 9 & 25 pin serial assemblies. They all went to the
2x5 headers on the motherboard. But unless a customer asked for it to
be done differently, we'd always have 1 25-pin port and one 9-pin port
when we put a system together. That helped folks keep straight which
was COM1 and which was COM2.
 
 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... 

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

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

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

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

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

--- FMailX 1.60