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

 RJT> Leonard Erickson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
 
 LE> Hopefully, the new owners of DR-DOS will make the changes to the 
 LE> 7.03 code needed to make a 7.05 that isn't limited that way.
 
 RJT> New owners?  I think I missed something here,  again.  No surprise
 RJT> there.   
 
 LE> DR-DOS was from Digital Research originally. They sold it to Novell
 LE> which released it as Novell DOS. Calderas bought it from them as
 LE> "OpenDOS", and later changed it back to DR-DOS (possibly something
 LE> to due with their lawsuit against MS for having *deliberately* made
 LE> Win 3.1 incompatible with earlier versions of DR-DOS amnd
 LE> "bundling" Win 95 and 98 with DOS and claiming they *were* the
 LE> OS[1])
 
 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! 

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

 
 
 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. 

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

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

 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.

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

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

I figure the "clunk" was the read/write head moving up and down.
 
 RJT> I never liked the concept of "image" backups.  Too much wrong with
 RJT> that picture. 

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

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

 RJT> For what?

For backing up other systems over the network.

 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?

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

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

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

 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... 

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

 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. 

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

 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.

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

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

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

 RJT> The ball with two buttons,  particularly built-in,  was
 RJT> a real 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 try
 RJT> it for a bit before I could see if it'd be workable or not. 

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

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

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

 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. 

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

 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.  :-)  

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

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

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

Parallel assemblies are standard. 


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