NP> In the Win31 days, all you had to do was open it in a RAM
NP> drive, but under "modern" windows you can never find where the
NP> bloody file ends up! There's a 40GB drive with 5Gb of Windows
NP> rubbish all over the place... where'd it go?

NP> If you create a RAM drive with win98 it makes the computer
NP> hesitate on a lot of tasks. If you set TEMP and/or TMP to the
NP> ramdrive it will seize the OS. 

 Does it really lock up? I've got a ramdrive with Win98 and it's as
as slow as a wet weekend.

 It seems to me that the same philosophy Gates used in his BASIC has
spread right through everything Microsoft does. He adopted the Big
Brother approach to BASIC, where you were only allowed to do certain
things, and if you are stupid enough (or desperate enough) to
write in BASIC, you spend half your time trying to work out how to get
around things!

 I've finally worked out how to LOCK my small partition so I can wipe
it with a direct write and strangely, it's really fast! What I have to
do, is write the lock program in DOS using BP7 Pascal and assembler,
and run it in Win98 in a DOS window. I can't use the CRT unit, because
that barfs in 32-bit. I can't write it in Win31 because the Win31 API 
doesn't recognise the LOCK assembler (it seems to be specific to
32-bit), and I can't write it in Win98 because Win98 won't let me make
the int26h calls. I can't use a DOS7 batch file becasue LOCK is owned
by the window that calls it.

 It's fucking crazy! But it works really well (so long as I don't
expect to see anything on the screen). It beats the hell out of me. To
wipe the 32Mb drive takes 4 seconds in DOS6 native, but it seems to do
it in 2 secodns in Win98... except that it takes 6 seconds to LOCK and
UNLOCK the drive.

 Thank you, Bill Gates. May the bluebird of ugly fly up your fat
arse.

NP> I'm not on the Internet, but if I ever do it will be with a
NP> separate computer totally isolated with nothing of value
NP> anywhere on the drive.

NP> Sitting your windows machines behind a Linux server seems to
NP> block intruders.

 Yair... but how do you do that? You can run Linux out of Windows,
but how do you run Windows out of Linux?

Regards,
Bob
   

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5