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.

And now you can't?  Weird...

I may have some of those files around here someplace.

 LE>  
 LE>  
 LE> A PS/2 system I have hear displays POST codes on the LCD, as well
 LE> as some other stuff. and there's a driver available for displaying
 LE> stuff of your own on there. :-)

 RJT> Like I say,  there *is* support for the LCD displays under linux. 
 RJT> While I *could* modifiy a case and mount any of the ones I have in the
 RJT> front of it,  most of the ones I have aren't backlit (that's why I
 RJT> have them,  they were pulled from Yamaha DX7 keyboards which were
 RJT> upgraded to backlit displays).  That one little one does appear to be
 RJT> backlit,  though,  if I can figure out how to use it,  and will also
 RJT> apparently fit into a drive bay,  meaning I can put it into any case I
 RJT> want.  A blank panel,  a small board,  and a couple of connectors will
 RJT> let me ribbon cable it right to the parallel port connector on the MB,
 RJT> and I can feed it what I want. 

 LE> I recently bought a couple boxes of "stuff" from someone.

Sounds like fun.  I remember stumbling across a "yard sale" one
time where the stuff they had out front was typical,  while the stuff they
had out back included such things as tubes full of chips,  etc.  I still
have most of that.

 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).

Cool.

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

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

 LE> A later model, which I didn't get any of, but we upgraded some
 LE> folks at work to stored 60 meg.

 RJT> Hm.  I had no idea you could stuff that much into a cassette.

 LE> Well, they ain't regular cassettes by a long shot. I expect that
 LE> the tape is very different.

Yeah,  chrome or metal,  probably.  My cassette deck here handles that
stuff but I never got that far into it.

 LE> They also had 4 "tracks". The tape would zip along and when it hit 
 LE> one end there's be a "clunk" and it'd zip back the other way.
 LE> Repeat two more time and then eject the tape.

I've wondered how many tracks there are on some of these other ones.  I
suspect that's probably a lot of the difference between the drives I have
here that hold those "big" tapes (DC600,  etc.) and the one
that's similar in an old Televideo box I have that only stored something
like 14M.  That box was a trip,  a 16-user z80-based system!  Too bad they
went with a weird interface instead of something like rs232.  It had a 40M
HD in it,  belt-driven and 8" in diameter.

 LE> I figure the "clunk" was the read/write head moving up and down.

Probably.  Or the brakes kicking in?

 RJT> I never liked the concept of "image" backups.  Too much wrong with
 RJT> that picture. 

 LE> They are handy for some things. Like some of the old style copy
 LE> protected software that had the location on the drive "coded" into
 LE> it during install.

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

 LE> There's software for both the big tape drives for that.

 RJT> For what?

 LE> For backing up other systems over the network.

Oh.

 RJT> Yeah,  if you have a case that supports that many drives.  I have some
 RJT> big cases here,  and have thought that it might be nice if somebody
 RJT> would make an adapter kit that would allow mounting *two* small drives
 RJT> in a 5.25" bay.   

 LE> Mount them sideways. :-)

 RJT> Know where I can get some brackets to do that?

 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.

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

 LE> We had a box full of them as most customers didn't *need* them and
 LE> the case came with one. 

 LE> Wouldn't be *too* hard to drill hoiles in some sheet metal to screw
 LE> them to and screw it to the inside of the case somewhere.

Probably.  Then you need to have enough ribbon cable to reach wherever you
mounted it,  and enough power leads (though I've been building my
collection of y-adapters over the years :-)...

 LE> and for that matter, one guy I used to know ran a "public access
 LE> Unix site" in the mid 80s. He had the full 7 drives (full height
 LE> 5.25" onces!) on that system. They were sitting out on the
 LE> tabletop. Made cooling simple. :-)

 RJT> Heh.  I don't think I'd care to try a setup like that here.  Though it
 RJT> might be just the ticket for this pair of Full-Ht. 5.25" SCSI drives I
 RJT> have here.  They're supposed to be about a gig each,  dunno if I'm
 RJT> gonna bother with them or not... 

 LE> You can always bolt a bunch of drives to a piece of pegboard and
 LE> fasten it to the wall next to the system :-)

Wall space in here is in rather short supply as well.

 RJT> I'll have to look further,  next time I have this thing apart for some
 RJT> reason.  Right now it's up,  been up for quite a while (36 days plus, 
 RJT> acccording to top),  and I haven't any immediate plans to shut it
 RJT> down.  That's why I didn't find the USB connector,  I didn't want to
 RJT> pop a ribbon cable or something while it was powered up. 

 LE> Well, check online. The docs for the motherboard may be online.

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

 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> :-)

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

 RJT> I've used that,  and found it pretty easy to use.

 LE> My laptop *has* one of those. I hate it. Too hard to control.

Better than some other stuff I've messed with.

 RJT> The ball with two buttons,  particularly built-in,  was a real 
 RJT> awkward thing to get used to for me.  (It was at an information 
 RJT> thingy in a retail store.)  That thing you describe,  I'd have to 
 RJT> try it for a bit before I could see if it'd be workable or not. 

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

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

 RJT> Worst part is,  I have a wheel mouse at work,  and now I want one here
 RJT> on the linux box.  :-) 

 LE> Oh yeah, that's why on my desktop I use a Logitech TrackMan Marble
 LE> Plus. the ball is right under my thumb, and uit has a scroll wheel.

Hmm.

 LE> You'd be surprised how many systems *don't*.

 RJT> Systems,  maybe.  Which means that the people assembling the systems
 RJT> are keeping that stuff when they put 'em together.  Because an awful
 RJT> lot of them come with all the cables and hardware and such that you
 RJT> need,  and then some. 

 LE> Nope, even the motherboard don't include them. I know. They'll have
 LE> the PS/2 mouse connector assembly, but the mouse/usb/irda assembly
 LE> has to be ordered seperately.

Ok.

 RJT> Seems to me I remember some discussion in here way back when about how
 RJT> it was important,  with serial ports,  to have the right ribbon
 RJT> cables.  There being a number of different ways to make those,  having
 RJT> the wrong ones just won't work.  I've found this out the hard way more
 RJT> than once.  :-)  

 LE> There are two ways of wiring them. One day, when it was slow, I put
 LE> a system up on the bench and proceeded to *test* all of the serial
 LE> cable assemblies we had in a box.

 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.

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

 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.

Two ways,  eh?

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

 LE> Parallel assemblies are standard. 

Yeah,  I'd think they would be.

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

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