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.

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



 RJT> One of the interesting bits I scrounged was out of a machine that 
 RJT> I *think* was labeled Wester Digigal,  an XT-class box I think.  
 RJT> It had a little LCD display in there,  though I don't know what 
 RJT> they did with it.  It's smaller than the other ones I have on 
 RJT> hand,  and just might fit into a drive bay.  I have to rig a 
 RJT> small board,  adapting its connector to the sort of ribbon cable 
 RJT> connector that would go to a parallel port inside the machine.  
 RJT> This has some support under linux,  where I could display system 
 RJT> load,  or whatever.  The only thing I haven't figured out yet is 
 RJT> the extra 2-wire connector (both the same color),  I'm thinking 
 RJT> it's for a backlight but have no idea what to feed it. 

 LE> Well, some cases had jumpers you could set to display the CPU
 LE> speed, and had them wired in with the turbo switch.

Oh,  those LED display units.  I have some of those,  too.  My linux box is
currently saying "133" on the front of it,  and I have one in
another box here that's not active,  and I also have a few units in a box. 
There are a few different units of that sort out there,  and I need to get
the jumper info on them for them to be useful.

 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. :-)

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



 LE> I wound up with three of the 20 meg units & cards. These used what
 LE> looked like a standard cassette tape with a notch in the middle of
 LE> the back.

 RJT> I actually have 2-3 tapes like that,  figured they were for data but
 RJT> in what I had no idea.  The ones I'm referring to above are way
 RJT> bigger,  though. 

 LE> When new, those "data" cassettes ran $20 each. And we found one
 LE> brand that failed after about 10 uses. Ick.

Yeah.

 LE> I've got a big box of the tapes too. The were nice because unlike 
 LE> the drives that used the floppy controller *these* would do 5 meg 
 LE> a *minute* on a 286 box!!

 RJT> Wow.  And they held 20M?  Sounds handy.

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

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

 LE> A friend just didn't understand why I thought they were so much 
 LE> better than his Colorado drive until I finally got it thru to him
 LE> that I I could back up a 40 meg drive, using two tapes, and 
 LE> *verify* the backups in under an hour.

That speed part is pretty nice,  too.

 RJT> I bought a Colorado 350 new,  and wasn't aware before I did of the
 RJT> annoying noise those make.  The ones for the bigger tapes aren't as
 RJT> bad,  I guess.  Nor was I aware of them taking as long as they did.  I
 RJT> got a total of 10 tapes at that time,  figuring that'd be good for 2
 RJT> backup sets,  and eventually it took more than 5 to do a full backup. 
 RJT> Eventually I stopped using it,  I don't remember exactly why.  It's
 RJT> currently installed in the linux box but I don't recall if it's even
 RJT> connected or not,  and I'm in no particular rush to do anything with
 RJT> it even though I've since acquired more tapes in that size. 

 LE> We used one of the 20 meg units that was "surplus" from work as a
 LE> backup for a friend's BBS for years. Gave it up when it got to the
 LE> point of needing three tapes.

Yeah,  it's a real pain.  About the best solution I can come up with is to
build a backup server,  and put all these tape drives in it.  You pick the
media you want to use,  it builds a backup image on HD,  and then prompts
you when to change tapes.  When you get around to it...  It'd be slow,  but
only for that first whole backup.  After that incrementals oughta be a
whole lot easier.

 LE> One nice thing about these was that even if you did an "image" 
 LE> backup you could restore individual files from the backup (but if
 LE> the disk had been fragmented, it'd take forever zipping back and
 LE> forth thru the tape.

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

 LE> If her BBS stays up, nack will probably be a Jaz drive I'll loan 
 LE> her. simply because that way there's no need for changing 
 LE> cartridges in the middle of the night.

 LE> I've gort a similar unit that's external and was supposed to do 150
 LE> meg with the larger (almost the size of a paperback) tapes
 LE> cartridges. Never could get it to produce a backup that'd verify
 LE> ok.

 RJT> The bigger tapes I have sound like they'd fit that description.

And the biggest tapes I have in the box of them seem to hold about 256M or so.



 LE> I got the 4 gig (8 gig compressed) Travan 8GB drive and a coupe of 
 LE> tapes. Then somebody local offered a bunch of the tapes at $10 
 LE> each. So I now have about a dozen. the 24 gig drive takes standard
 LE> DAT cartridges, and I got 6 with it.
 LE>  
 LE> They are large enough to be *useful*.

 RJT> Yeah.  Particularly since I have linux software that will allow for
 RJT> backing up on one machine stuff that comes from all over a LAN.  That
 RJT> would only be worth my while to mess with if I got either something
 RJT> that was capable of storing a *lot* on one tape or some sort of a
 RJT> changer,  and I've never even seen one of those. 

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

For what?

 LE> Probably. I also liked being able to have 7 (or 15 with newer 
 LE> drives ) drives off of *one* cable.

 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. :-)

Know where I can get some brackets to do that?

 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. :-)

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

 RJT> These are in their own cases already,  quite substantial ones at that.
 RJT> Almost as big as a compact desktop case.  I can see them sitting on
 RJT> the shelf across the room,  in a stack that's got a PS/1 at the bottom
 RJT> of it,  and that only sticks out about an inch on either side,  maybe
 RJT> a bit more.  Not that much difference front-to-back,  either. 

 LE> Ah. The "aircraft carrier" type cases. They were made that big 
 LE> primarily so you could set a compact Mac on top of them. When Apple
 LE> changed to a more conventional design for the computer, you started
 LE> getting ones that were a *lot* smaller.

 RJT> These might have been made for use with a mac?  Hmm.  Got up and
 RJT> looked,  they're Toshiba XM-5100A,  and each has a button (for eject?)
 RJT> and power, disc, and busy lights,  plus a headphone jack with a volume
 RJT> control.  As I recall they also had a pair of RCA jacks on the rear, 
 RJT> as well. 

 LE> Yep. Mac drives. I've got one of that type, though it has an Apple
 LE> logo on it.

Oh my.  Why the heck wouldn't they have put two connectors on the back of
them,  then?

 LE> BTW, one of my old *modems* is almost that big!

 RJT> That's big,  for a modem.  Biggest ones I have are about the size of a
 RJT> C=1541 drive,  although in a much nicer case.  These are 9600 for
 RJT> 4-wire links,  and aren't "smart" in the usual sense,  though they
 RJT> have a separate serial port that goes to a board with a z80 on it to
 RJT> monitor the operatiosn of the rest of it.  Dunno what I'll ever do
 RJT> with those,  except maybe use the cases for something. 

 LE> This was a Telebit T2500. Nice modem for the time. It did 9600
 LE> (v.32) and Telebit's PEP protocool which would do around 18000.

I remember hearing nice things about those way back when.  Too bad they
didn't go further.

 LE> One slot for Compact Flash Cards & Microdrives.
 LE> One slot Smart Media
 LE> One slot for Memory Sticks, Secure Digital Cards & Multimedia cards
 LE>  
 LE> Mempory sticks are the slow ones at 621 kb/sec. The rest run over
 LE> 900.

 RJT> That's a lot of pretty specialized stuff,  that I'm not sure if I'll
 RJT> ever encounter or not...   Although it strikes me that it _would_ be
 RJT> handy to be able to deal with it if I ever encountered any of that
 RJT> stuff. 

 LE> Well, I don't know if I'll ever encounter anything other than the
 LE> CF stuff. On the other hand, it's a handy "just in case" gizmo.

Yeah.

 LE> Heck, if I can find the right sort of "baby AT" motherboard, a 
 LE> broken laptop that's broken the right way, or one of those 
 LE> "industrial controller" type boards I may be able build a nice
 LE> little "black box that will run a node just fine and have no moving
 LE> pasrts and not a lot of heat.

 RJT> Trouble with most laptops seems to be in the area of the parts that
 RJT> supply power to the rest of it,  from what I hear.  Regarding more
 RJT> "standardized" hardware and few moving parts,  you might do a web
 RJT> search on something called "Route66".  This was a box designed for
 RJT> automotive installation,  with one HD, a rather different power
 RJT> supply,  and interface through a keypad/LCD combo as I recall.  I
 RJT> think I have a magazine article around here someplace that talks about
 RJT> it,  if you can't find it. 

 LE> Automotive stuff tends to not be designed to be all that low power.
 LE> I've got a couple of 486 computers that used to be in State Police
 LE> vehicles. They actually have built-in CRTs!!

This wasn't automotive-type stuff,  just where it ended up.  They needed to
use a special power supply to make that happen.  I forget what else was
different about it.  No keyboard,  no video -- just a touchpad and LCD
screen.

 LE> Then again, check the docs for the motherboards in your systems. A 
 LE> *lot* of "older" motherboards actually *have* USB support. The 
 LE> BIOS can enable it, and there's a header to plug a cable and 
 LE> connector into. The trouble is *finding* the right gizmo to plug 
 LE> into it.

 RJT> Exactly.  The gizmo seems to be in scarce supply,  if it's even out
 RJT> there.  I just looked,  and can't spot the connector in the linux box,
 RJT> though I thought that there was one in there.  Too many ribbon cables
 RJT> and such in the way.  I did spot a couple of other ones that I hadn't
 RJT> noticed before,  though,  labeled IR1 and IR2 (as well as being marked
 RJT> CON9 and CON10),  these are 4 pins,  single row.  I wonder what those
 RJT> are all about? 

 LE> The IR ones are likely for IR transcievers. Most laptops, a lot of
 LE> handhelds and even some things like printers can use those to talk
 LE> to the computer. Though usually at the cost of one of the serial
 LE> ports.

I've seen those connectors,  usually labeled "IRDA" or something
pretty close to that,  along the front edge,  with the rest of the stuff
that connects to the case.  I don't know how I missed noticing these
before,  and their location is weird - between slot connectors.

 LE> Most just have one that plugs into the pins for the mouse port.

 RJT> Oh?  I had to get the gizmo for that,  when I switched from a serial
 RJT> to a PS2 style mouse.  The pin header was there,  on the MB,  but no
 RJT> other connector. 

 LE> Some have the USB pins (as well as the IR stuff) all on that same
 LE> "header" block.

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

 LE> Given that the connector at the motherboasrd end is pretty 
 LE> standard, you could possibly find a connector for a different brand
 LE> of MB and move the pins around.

Maybe.

 LE> And I've seen systems that didn't even have *that*. I surprised the
 LE> heck out of a few folks when I managed to dig up the connector for
 LE> their "ancient" computer so they could have a PS/2 mouse or add 
 LE> USB. (and the ones who "upgraded" to USB were the source of the 
 LE> mouse port hardware for the folks that had been living with a 
 LE> serial mouse).

 RJT> Interesting.  I was thinking about a trackball a while back,  but the
 RJT> only one the store I was in had in stock was USB.  It was also too
 RJT> small,  compared to some that I've seen. 

 LE> Well, for what it's worth, there's one brand where the only 
 LE> difference between the serial port, PS/2 port and ADB (Mac) ones is
 LE> the cable. If I didn't have a trackball I like, I'd try modifying
 LE> one of those.

The guy in the store seemed to think that I should be able to make it work
with an adapter,  so he got one and plugged it into a machine,  running
some version of windoze.  I don't know what he expected,  but it didn't
work.

 LE> Also, a lot of those USB mice & trackballs *do* have PS/2->USB
 LE> adapters included if you read the fine print on the package.

I don't think this one had it included,  but they have a lot of that sort
of stuff at the store.

 LE> I got a neat one for my laptop a while back. It's bult sort of like
 LE> a fat "trigger assembly" for a gun. Your index find goes in the
 LE> trigger guard which has a bump that extends down just far enough
 LE> for your index finger to stabilize it. the "left" button is inside
 LE> the trigger guard. The trackball is on top where your thumb can
 LE> move it easily. and there are a pair of buttons in front of it. The
 LE> right one is the right mouse button. the left if fort special
 LE> functions that my laptop doesn't recognize (it's prett ancient).

 LE> Oh yeah, this thing works in either hand. :-)

Sounds nifty.  But if I was gonna go with something nonstandard,  I think
I'd prefer that little gizmo that looks like a pencil eraser sticking up
out of a keyboard.  I've used that,  and found it pretty easy to use.  The
ball with two buttons,  particularly built-in,  was a real awkward thing to
get used to for me.  (It was at an information thingy in a retail store.) 
That thing you describe,  I'd have to try it for a bit before I could see
if it'd be workable or not.

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

 LE> I've made a point of buying the extra gizmos for my systems even 
 LE> if I didn't intend to use the ports at the time, simply because I
 LE> *might* want to later.

 RJT> Most of the stuff I got new came with all of that,  if the MB
 RJT> supported it. 

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

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

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

 LE> I had someone I was able to install USB on just be swapping his 
 LE> mouse "card back" for one that had mouse, 2 USB ports and an IRda
 LE> connector (I've only once found anything that'd plugg into the Irda
 LE> connector and work, drat). 

 LE> But that was because I had one of those handy.

Hm,  mouse,  2 USB,  and IRDA sounds pretty good to me.  

 LE> It was occasionally very informative to see hardware ID just fine
 LE> and the drivers install and the nachine work just fine. That pretty
 LE> much pinnede down problems to Windows being messed up. In which
 LE> case we'd copy all the files on the user's drive to a directory on
 LE> the backup system, reformat his HDS, reinstall Windows, and then
 LE> after it was installed ok, copy hois old files back to a
 LE> subdirectory on his system. He'd still have to re-install all the
 LE> software, but the config files and data files were there. 

 RJT> I guess that supports the "re-install" I've heard about being so
 RJT> necessary so much of the time.  Have you ever heard of any particular
 RJT> causes for that sort of behavior?

 LE> The main causes seem to be adding hardware, changing hardware and
 LE> change programs.

I guess I don't tend to do that much with that system for the most part.

 LE> A slightly less drastic step that sometiomes works is to boot into
 LE> safe mode open up the device manager and nuke all the entries for
 LE> hardware that's no longer in the system, as well as all the
 LE> *multiple* entries for hardware that *is* there.

Yeah,  I've seen those multiple entries,  too.

 LE> Then reboot and let it re-install all the hardware.

 LE> Windows does a *terrible* job of cleaning up when things are
 LE> removed, and often just leaves the checks for the hardware (and the
 LE> associated drivers) in the system confusing the heck out of things.

Yep.

 RJT> I know that what we have running here (one w98 box) seems to be 
 RJT> pretty stable,  for the most part,  but mostly it's a bunch of 
 RJT> games for the grandkids.  Very seldom will I fire up word to do a 
 RJT> single-page document or something of that sort. And some people 
 RJT> seem to have to re-install fairly often,  from what I hear.  I've 
 RJT> no clue as to exactly why that should be.

 LE> Well, my main Windows box was pretty stable for several years. but
 LE> *something* (software) that I installed or upgraded in the last few
 LE> months has me rebooting every few days, and rendered my CD burner
 LE> incapable of burning a CD (makes lots of "coasters").

Bummer.

 LE> So I'm just going to put together a Win2k box, and then move all my
 LE> data over. and then reformat the HD and reinstall Windows and let
 LE> it serve as something that won't get messed with much.

I have my burner installed into the linux box,  and plan to leave it there,
 where it won't bother windoze at all.  

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