Jim Leonard wrote: Yes, but it's no *fun* ;-) cheers Jules -- A. Because it destroys the natural flow of conversation. Q. What's wrong with top posting ?

On 8/3/2006 at 2:10 AM Jim Leonard wrote: No, it's just the level of complexity that software's evolved. Display cards have come a long way from simple bit-mapped graphics and the level of driver support needed for relatively simple devices is more than you'd think. In particular, a "legacy" floppy driver under XP must deal with things such as ACPI and power management that were never an issue for earlier OS software. Most software, Linux included, has been getting more bloated. Not only does the complexity make for less reliability, but it makes ever-greater demands on system resources. I'm sometimes puzzled about this when I consider that most PC owners simply want to interact with a web browser and send email--and perhaps do the occasional word processing document and spreadsheet. With the current crop of operating systems, a staggering amount of hardware is being thrown at relatively few applications for the most part. Cheers, Chuck

On 8/3/2006 at 12:11 PM Roy J. Tellason wrote: 'Cause the OS says you have to. There was a huge grumble of displeasure in the NT community after MS assured developers that NT 4.0 kernel-mode drivers would work just fine with 2K. And they did--until RC1, when, just a month or two before official launch, you discovered that you had to implement the complete litany of power management services or you'd get a BSOD. I haven't even looked at Vista requirements yet--and probably won't until Vista's released because MS is making the same claim "You can use XP drivers on Vista". Sometimes, it seems to me that OS software at Microsoft is created as a sort of involuntary spasm. But as to why software is buggy and complex, consider ACPI. One of the densest, most incomprehensible, violated-in-practice "standards" that exists on the face of the planet. Or, consider the way the already-complex USB standard has "bloomed" since 1.0. Cheers, Chuck

Chuck Guzis wrote: The ACPI "implementation" on my machine is either physically damaged, or so fucking broken that there is not a single OS in existence that can use it. Good job HP, for making my system break with just about every bootable CD unless I bend over ass-backards with a 5-mile long bootloader command which breaks what little that does run. By the way, if anyone's intrested, the system is a Pavilion a414x. -- The real problem with C++ for kernel modules is: the language just sucks. -- Linus Torvalds

On Thu, 2006-08-03 at 12:11 -0400, Roy J. Tellason wrote: (possibly reviving a dead thread) Can't speak for KDE here, but recent releases of Gnome have been getting very snappy. There have been significant and much-needed(!!) optimizations in the libraries and core applications. gnome-terminal in 2.14 has become significantly faster than xterm(!). Application and desktop startup times are way faster. -toresbe :)

People, including me, want some sort of polish and shine to applications. This is something that most hardcore computer people do not understand. The polish and shine are the things that take up the computing resources, and generally make using the machines a bit more pleasant. I suspect one reason for this (and a big one as well) is that a USB printer is probably cheaper to make. Most of the cost is in the cable and sockets, and clearly the USB stuff wins there. -- Will

Jules Richardson wrote: Exactly. But, moreso, it also decreases reliability. How often do we see the same "buffer overrun" bugs creeping into code? Wasn't OO design, C++, "design by contract" supposed to BURY all of those little problem issues in a way that would make them go away FOREVER?? I.e. shouldn't classes take care of the details of pushing/appending bytes to a buffer so the developer doesn't have to *count* them?? Also, I think people fail to realize how much faster their machines *are* because they keep piling on fatter and fatter bloatware. Does KDE *really* need to be that big?? My favorite text editor (including emacs) is Brief (for DOS). I take out version 1.1 and run it on a 400MHz machine and it *flies*. I can't even imagine what it would do on a 2GHz box! Yet, it does everything I want, runs as a text console (though uses "line graphics" for the frames of it's "windows"), etc. Shame Borland never rereleased it after they bought it (or, better yet, open sourced it!) Yup. Like constantly telling me I misspelled something instead of letting me ASK you if I've misspelled anything (or, compromise, *remind* me to ask you...) Exactly. The "polish and shine" *quickly* fade. In the 80's, a friend was doing video [arcade] game design. I recall reviewing a pre-alpha copy of his game and being wow'ed by one of the effects. A few minutes later, when the effect should next have appeared, I was disappointed that this second instance wasn't anywhere near as spectacular as the first. I pointed that out to him. He replied that it was deliberate. The effect had random elements in it to ensure that it didn't appear the same each time. This was puzzling: "Why not put out your best effect EACH time?" He commented that folks get used to it and then it loses any impact. OTOH, if really great effects appear only occasionally, then, when they DO appear, they get noticed. Sort of like wondering why the fireworks show doesn't have the same intensity as the finale ALL THE TIME! :> How many people TODAY look at images of crumpled paper flying into a wastebasket and go "Ooooo.... Ahhhhh...."? USB will see more attention in the future (than the parallel port) -- so, "hitch your horse to USB" seems to make sense to manufacturers. I started designing a product and "settled" on USB simply because it would let me get by with a *single* connector -- and, I could use that same connector to charge the batteries in my product! A *big* advantage when you are designing something that must be small, portable, lightweight *and* still have some flexibility with the I/O's. I've since decided that even USB is too limiting and am moving the implementation to a BT stack. The cost of the radio offsets the costs of the connectors, cables, etc. and is slickernsnot.

It might be, if it weren't wrong so often. But I've seen it put up its silly little misspelling warning for things that are in fact spelled correctly. (Most commonly IME because they're nonstandard, less often because it was too stupidly done to know about them.) Second to this is failing to put up the warning for misspellings that, for all that they are misspellings, happen to end up at the correct spelling for some other word. (I conjecture that the latter tendency is in large part responsible for today's pernicious misspelling of "lose" as "loose", and quite possibly for the confusion of "its" and "it's".) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Zane H. Healy wrote: Why not have this happen when you click on a "check spelling" button instead of constantly running and interrupting your work process? (granted, most desktop CPU's have tons of idle cycles and could easily *do* this in the time between waiting for keystrokes) I guess I think about misspellings as a separate pass. I try to get the spelling right as I am typing (though keyboard failures are a nuisance, I can usually spot when a key is failing, etc.). I don't want to have to step back and fix a misspelling when I am concentrating on the next word to type, etc. Or, taking the focus away from me so that I *have* to deal with whatever you want to tell me ("Gee, is my computer on FIRE? No? Then why are you bothering me?? Fine, the printer has run out of paper. I'll figure that out sooner or later now go away...") Yet, other *useful* features are often missing (like being able to force a window to "stay on top" -- not a problem under most X window managers but in the peecee world, a real nuisance).

Bryan Pope wrote: I also use it's "mouse cursor focus" feature. Peace... Sridhar

It was written.... I think this thread should be now moved to "alt.comp.os.evangelism". Jay

I can understand complaints that it's distracting (it should be an option, and I think it is). Or that it's not that accurate, but lets be serious, what spell checker is. I was always forgeting to run what I'd typed up through a spell checker, now when I'm using systems/apps that support this feature I can easily correct spellings when I read over it to ensure that it makes sense. I hate this as well, and would like to add "Auto-correct" (I'd probably like this if it was easier to find, configure and turn on and off). It does work great for "hte" -> "the" :^) Zane

Kevin Handy wrote: My dig was intended at the MS folks. :> They like to write books about how well they handle quality issues like this... I guess they just don't READ them! Yup. I think later versions were rewritten, though. There was a noticeable slowdown moving up towards v3.1 Perhaps. No idea since the sources aren't available. I think it was just YABB* *Yet Another Borland Blunder Must make words like the personal pronoun 'I' particularly interesting! :>

"William Donzelli" wrote: hmmm... I was going to argue, but: (if window-system (if do-hazeltine (progn (set-background-color "black") (set-foreground-color "green") (set-cursor-color "white") (set-default-font "9x15") ) ) ) but later in the same .emacs it does say: (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-comment-face "Orange") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-string-face "LightBlue") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-keyword-face "Green") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-function-name-face "Green") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-variable-name-face "Cyan") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-type-face "Yellow") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-reference-face "Aquamarine") :-) -brad

Try running Mac OS X or Vista on such a display (or WinXP, X-Windows with a fancy window manager). You'll quickly find that modern OS's require 3D accelerated graphics cards, and that it isn't exactly easy to turn off all of those functions. This is a personal source of irritation with me, I don't want to waste system resources with all of those "gee wiz" features! In fact the inability to turn stuff I don't want off that has been added in the last two versions, and them removing stuff I do want is really starting to turn me off on the Mac. OTOH, I do want a high-end graphics card and a high-end monitor for running my Adobe DTP apps. It's also nice to have such a setup for surfing. In all honesty for the most part, the rest of what I run could be done on a VT420 and I'd be just fine. On anything other than my Mac, I view a graphics display as a way to get a lot of terminal windows (and this is part of what I use it on the Mac for). But then I am not the typical user, and that probably includes on CLASSICCMP. Zane

In my case I want to turn "expose" and "widgets" off on Mac OS X, as well as the special effects. That's the bulk of the control I'm looking for. While you can disable expose (no hot keys), it is probably still wasting resources. The "widgets" problem is much larger, as far as I know there is no way to turn it off, it is a major waste of resources. It was one of the reasons I dumped 10.4 and went back to 10.3.9. At least the special effects can be turned off. One of my favorite Unix applications. Unfortunately there really isn't an equivalent on OpenVMS. Zane

fine, The problem is the legacy - in order of building smaller PCs, people should get rid of the (big and clunky) parallel port. Imagine a pc where everything - printer, keyboard, mouse, pen-drive - is USB. You'll have to have a power supply, a video and a USB connector, all peripherals can be connected thru USB, and many of them (as a keyboard - dunno why it doesn't happens today) becoming a USB hub. whether not, the You **can** choose, but why? In the early 90's I paid $650 for a CD-ROM (Nec intersect). Now you pay what? $20? For a CD Recorder? :o?

Alexandre Souza wrote: Some first-generation iMac keyboards (the ones that had their own cord builtin, more specifically than the ones that needed an extra cord) dis this exact thing. I remember setting up some iMacs at school one day, and remember having to plugin a USB floppy drive into the USB port 1 of the keyboard, and the mouse in USB port 2 (some didn't have a floppy drive cause the keyboard was the ones that needed a extra USB cable for the keyboard itself, consuming a USB port just to function). Why? They were using the second USB port on the system for either a printer or other USB device, for example, this touchpad that was bigger than the computer+keyboard+mouse (a good 30 inches, in fact). A few had USB ethernet dongles to replace the fried onboard ethernet (it's a public school, any mention of a "surge protector" or any other device it would be logical to use gets KIGO'd. Eh, I guess that's what our tax dollars are going for -- and horrible cafeteria food.) -- The real problem with C++ for kernel modules is: the language just sucks. -- Linus Torvalds

On 8/3/2006 at 9:00 PM Alexandre Souza wrote: the Maybe, but Linux doesn't have anything like the old QNX demo--an OS and browser that boots from a single 1.44MB floppy: http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html Even back then, it impressed the heck out of me. Cheers, Chuck

Alexey Toptygin wrote: It was a *demo*. It wasn't meant to be anything but that. QNX is essentially an embedded OS, so I doubt that it was any more special than some production builds. Even if it was, and even stipulating that it was all hand-picked code, it was, and still is, a damned impressive DEMOnstration. The statement that you can't do anything useful from a single floppy is also simply not true. http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw Doc

On 8/4/2006 at 2:15 AM Alexey Toptygin wrote: Nifty trick, yes, but still nifty. There's a guy in Lithuania who's written a bit more on the QNX demo: http://qnx.projektas.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm Along the same lines is UBCD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/insert/start.html I like software stunts. One thing I've been wondering about lately is what's the cheapest (list price) device that will run any sort of an operating system with file I/O and some application? Cheers, Chuck

On 8/3/2006 at 9:36 PM Don Y wrote: Cheaper.

Don Y wrote: And now begins the "What constitutes an OS?" thread.... Doc

I'm trying to remember--the smallest DOS/360 memory footprint was what, 8K? 16K? Whatever, it wasn't much to support 1 background and 2 foreground partitions. Lots and lots of supervisior transient "phases" of course, read in from disk, but still it was impressive what could be done in a small amount of memory. Almost makes CP/M seem bloated by comparison. I recall that when Neil Lincoln was working on a proposal for a supercomputer for NASA Ames (IIRC he called it his Super-X-by-God) back in the 1970's, , he solemnly informed me that the OS would be segregated in its own dedicated memory--all 16K of it. Now, that was 16K 64-bit words and I assume that most of the job control and slower I/O tasks would be handled by other machines, but to me it represented a line drawn in the sand. I've always thought it a pity that other manufacturers didn't follow his lead and legislate in hardware the size of the OS kernel. Cheers, Chuck

Alexey Toptygin wrote: Yes and no. Of course it is a special build. Just like bootable *BSD floppies "crunch" the core utilities into a single executable image (with multiple entry points) instead of separate binaries. But, one key difference between the QNX approach and that of most other current OS's is the microkernel architecture. Instead of a BIG monolithic kernel with ALL the drivers installed (or, extra glue for LKM support, etc.), a microkernel based design treats all of these as components which can be plugged together. And *talk* to each other (instead of being invoked "from above"). I suspect that they could REPLACE the support for NE1000 cards with some OTHER card and not change the overall footprint by much. And, *possibly* not even have to relink (!?). Even Mach -- probably the most bloated microkernel -- would fit into a 1MB footprint. OTOH, how big is the latest Linux Kernel? The NetBSD kernel that I run is almost 3M... and I've trimmed out much of the support for devices that aren't present in my machine! QNX doesn't try to be a desktop OS. Just like Linux doesn't claim to be MacOS. I dont see it as a nifty trick. You want "tricks"? Look at PIC-based web servers :> Gives new meaning to the term "truth in advertising" :-( But that's a consequence of the way that *they* decided to support the hardware that *they* chose to support! Do they support Mitsumi CD-ROM's? Adaptec 1542's? ATM / SONET? Gee, there's another OS that tres to do all of those things. I think it's made by MS... :> A single floppy is a *lot* of code. You can *do* a lot with that much code (since it only needs to reflect the size of the TEXT segent, more or less, and could conceivably be a compressed executable). Look at what most cell phones do nowadays... If you want to burden the implementation with "this has to run on ANY conceivable x86 machine built since 1980", then you're imposing a lot on the design. How many Linux kernels will boot on a 4MB machine? What about a *1* MB machine?? No, I'm not a fan of QNX (their licensing doesn't justify the value they add). But, I think this is a reasonable marketing ploy -- especially to a market (embedded systems) where an 8MB machine is considered "resource RICH"!

At 10:27 AM -0400 8/4/06, Patrick Finnegan wrote: I used to have a 386sx/16 Twinhead laptop with 4MB RAM, Math Coprocesser, and a 320MB HD running Linux *AND* X-Windows (the system had been upgraded from 1MB RAM to 4MB, the Coprocessor added, and course about the only thing I ran under X-Windows was xdvi and a couple of xterms. The main use for the system was running TeX, sed, and awk. The interesting thing was, I had thought that MGR would be the more efficient windowing system, but I discovered that X-Windows did better. I forget what I used for a window manager, I think it was something pretty light weight, it wasn't twm, it was probably either olvwm, or fvwm. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

Don Y wrote: I run linux on the ceiva picture frames (the old ones). It only has 4mb of ram. That's enough for the kernel, several apps and a ramdisk file system. If I had more free time I'd run uclinux - I suspect everything would a lot smaller (but I'm not completely sure) -brad

On Thursday 03 August 2006 08:38 pm, Chuck Guzis wrote: Back then it was pretty impressive stuff. As were a few other things. I did a little bit of poking around there and ended up on the page for Desqview/X, something I've always wanted to try and play with a bit. They say: "With a DOS TCP/IP network present DESQview/X can run applications remotely." Does that mean that there isn't any networking support in DV/X itself? (Still having idle thoughts about dos-type stuff with TCP/IP networking somehow. Anybody know what dr-dos uses for a protocol offhand? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Chuck Guzis said: Ever heard of 1diskx? It's a web browser and X11 (with slightly better NIC support than he QNX disk) that boots on anything as little as my 386sx/20 with 6MB of RAM (this includes X loading as well) If you dont belive me, send me a pack of AAA batteries and a known-good floppy so I can use my (rather crappy) digital camera... The floppy is for 1diskx. You think I'm talking out my ass? I'm serious! -- The real problem with C++ for kernel modules is: the language just sucks. -- Linus Torvalds

Quoth Chuck Guzis, in part: For me, at least, the push to upgrade usually comes from either wanting a new media-handling capability (DVD burning, f'rinstance) or from finding a new game that has some requirement my old system won't meet. If it weren't for those two incentives to upgrade, I'd probably continue to use an old 386 machine - like Strong Bad. * I suspect a lot of people upgrade for the same reasons, and there may be a vicious circle of development working: chip designers create faster chips, programmers make neater toys using the new capabilities, people get excited over the toys and buy them, it becomes the standard, the OS bloats a little more, there becomes a push to create faster chips to run the resulting bloatware faster, return to start. There's probably a lot of people, too, who upgrade to the Biggest And Fastest simply because it _is_ the Biggest And Fastest and they have to have it. I was guilty of that attitude myself at an earlier point in my life, and almost bought a NeXT when it was brand-spanking-new just because I was so impressed at the time with the hardware. (Yes, I am embarassed to admit this <g>, though I am still fond of the 68040.) Luckily I was able to give myself a fairly hefty reality check of what the hell I was going to _use_ it for, and talked myself out of it. ** But most people in that get-the-very-fastest-whether-they-need-it-or-not category probably _don't_ talk themselves out of it, which explains things like how the "Cross Fire Gaming Computer" can possibly even exist. *** (Though maybe this is a poor example. "Gold Channel Gamer RAM"?!) -O.- * - http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail94.html ** - http://flyingmoose.org/me/hamlet.htm *** - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260015469715

I'd forgotten that. Yes, an ISA board can be built from junk-box parts in an hour or so. Another thing, it's a lot easier to interface to the parallel, serial or joystick ports than to Useless Serial Botch. I guess a 386 machine is very likely to have at least the first 2 of those, modern machines might well be USB only. I thought even the 8086 did some pre-fetching of instructions. Which means even that chip is less predicatable than, say, a Z80. Sure. That's why I'm curious about why he's interested in such machines. -tony

Segin wrote: Sure. But the PASSENGERS will have substantially MORE damage than those in that 2005 vehicle... Don't confuse consumer "peecees" with other modern machines. (what's the MTBF on that 15 year old disk drive from your 386sx??)

Segin wrote: And how many *computers* do we have? Losing one or two doesn't really make a difference... :> And a modern drive has an MTBF of, what, 500,000 to 1,000,000 hours?! :> Actually, it's *Between* failures. *I'm* not trying to "belittle" you. I'm just pointing out the holes in your argument. If you chose to dismiss them with flippant "one or two doesn't make a difference" comments, then I guess you don't particularly care about your own claims? Seems like you're the one doing the trolling... :>

On Saturday 05 August 2006 02:34 am, Segin wrote: I've been a tech for coming up on four decades now, most of that time having my hands inside of the hardware of one sort or another, and the earlier stuff had vacuum tubes in it, on up to current technology. And I've *never* seen anything like what you describe here, or heard of such a thing either. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Do you mean the CPU chip, the PCB substrate, or what? [...] Oh not _again_. There is a real difference between DD and HD disks. The coercivity of the media _is_ different. Sure, for 3.5" disks it's close, and may work in most cases, but none-the-less I am not going to risk my data that way... The cost of a the media is a lot less than my time in recreating said data (or even restoring it from a backup). -tony

On Saturday 05 August 2006 02:17 pm, Chuck Guzis wrote: I've heard some similar stories about that stuff, too, now that you mention it... Sometimes it's amazing what people will end up storing in their garages, especially in situations where all sorts of stuff has been collecting for ages. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

FWIW, nor have I (and I've been working on equipment of similar age too). I am told the modern lead-free solders can have reliability problems, certainly if misused, but AFAIK all older Macs were assembled with normal lead/tin solder. I;'ve got a couple of Mac+ machines. One has a low-emission CRT, the other hand the well-known problem on the yoke connector. Neither has had any problems with the digital side. -tony

Don Y wrote: Depends on the drive. I've had modern 80GB, and 160GB drives die on me after only about a year of use (funny how they go just past the warranty!). These were well taken care of drives. Meanwhile I have several 5MB 5.25" full height Seagate drives for my Lisa that are nearly 25 years old - and they still work, though they sound like jet engines when I turn them on. The real problem with ancient x86 hardware is cost per watt. I don't mean the CPU, I mean the entire machine. A modern machine runs a lot more efficiently than an old 386, even though Intel CPU's were until recently notorious for consuming lots of power. There are very few things I can't do with a modern machine that I could do with an old 486 or 386 - even if it has to be inside a VM or emulator. That said, until very recently, I used a Pentium I 100Mhz with 64M of RAM as a router. Ran beautifully, and it served better as a router than taking up space in a junk yard. I replaced this with another aging machine - a PIII running at 500Mhz, which only uses 100Watts more - but I can certainly get a lot more out of it. So that old machine certainly cost me more to run than the new one in terms of performance for electricity used. I certainly don't need a 2Ghz AMD64 with 4GB of RAM for use as a router. Today. In 5 years from now, my desktop will be very likely be my router. I tend to look at the early machines as a Cambrian explosion. We saw a ton of different kinds of machines, each unique in its own way. The market made them extinct, so now we have only several handfuls of kinds of machines. But, those old ancient beasties were wonderful in their own ways. A 286, or 386 being the ancestor of modern common PC's makes it uninteresting - but only because of how common they were. A few of the ancient x86 line have some historical value. The 1st IBM PC, the Jr, the 1st laptops, the 1st portable PC, and so on are collectibles because they are the 1st of something. But a generic white box 386, meh.

Segin wrote: \>> A few of the ancient x86 line have some historical value. The 1st IBM ... That's a cop-out. Send me your shipping address in private email. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Cape Coral, FL

Is there not a small S/390, sort of a deskside unit? I thik I have seen one. I think you could make a deskside 9370, if you cut enough stuff out. -- Will

I seem to remember something that was more than just a tower - it might have weighed a few hundred pounds. Not a PC?? -- Will

William Donzelli wrote: The IS/390 is quite a bit bigger than a tower. The next size up is the MP/3000, which is about half the size of a full-size S/390, but it still has a PC at its core somewhere. Peace... Sridhar

Chuck Guzis wrote: I never heard of them. What were they all about? Peace... Sridhar

On Sun, 6 Aug 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote: Did anyone here ever use one of those XT boardsets for 360 or 370?

Ray Arachelian wrote: But how many *hours* do they have on them? I prefer SPARC LX's... they draw maybe *40* watts? (though I don't move much network traffic through them so I can live with their reduced bandwidth) Perhaps I'll replace the disk with a solid state drive and cut that (and the noise) even more... Good analogy! <grin>

Ray Arachelian wrote: So, a few *thousand* hours? :> I put 64M in my Voyager but want to upgrade the 800M (?) drive. Unfortunately, small SCSI drives are hard to find. And, the display on the Voyager is painfully small.

Ray Arachelian wrote: Even luckier -- it *came* with it! ;-) I think I would *like* to keep things as close to "normal" (original?) as possible and not let the machine devolve into a patchwork hodge-podge. I don't use it for any *real* work since I have other more capable (and comfortable!) machines for that. Even the 800M (or is it 600?) drive is big enough to let it connect to other servers here (which can do the *real* work). I originally hoped to put it in the kitchen as a nice little email box (but I have been overruled on that idea :< ) Thanks, I'll save the pointers in case I decide to bite the bullet. Old Macs used SCSI. Did old apple laptops *also* use SCSI drives? (i.e. might that be a source I can check out?)

Ray Arachelian wrote: Amazing how a few computers meets with disdain... yet a closet full of *shoes* doesn't! :-/ (and shoes are so BORING! Hell, if it doesn't have blinkenlights, what good is it??) Yup. I have mine on a small UPS so that I could dial out, etc. even if there's a power outage. But, we have so few outages here (and never any of more than 30 minute duration) *and* I now have laptops to throw at that problem so it's kind of just taking up space... :-( I had hoped NetBSD would eventually bring their support up to a level that would let me replace Solaris on that box (since NBSD seems pretty respectable on older SPARCs) but that hasn't yet happened. Makes one wonder what sort of rituals took place on the equinox... I will have to check my surplus sources and see what turns up.

Ray Arachelian wrote: I've learned NOT to rely on that! :> But, a friend dropped off several hundred NiMH cells some time ago so I just rebuild the battery packs. Cosmetically not pretty but the machines will end up in the trash in short order anyways... I *should* look into that as they are probably even more energy efficient than the LX. But, often they have oddball I/O's that really are only addressed in the MS world. :-( Exactly. Last time I checked (a few YEARS ago), there wasnt support for the CCFL's (the ides of leaving the display on 24/7 isn't appealing) With bits flying EVERYWHERE!! :>

Don Y wrote: I use a 500 MHz PIII as a router, mailserver, and FM broadcaster--and there's still way too much unused capacity. So I also have iit enrolled in the BOINC project. Might as well do somone some good with those wasted watts. http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ Cheers, Chuck

Don Y wrote: You obviously let at least one machine talk to the outside world, after all, how else are you reading and responding to this mailing list? :-) Yes, your LX does count as a machine, even if it's only running at 40Mhz. :-D I find a well secured openbsd box to be a nice secure firewall, NAT/router. I route my web traffic through a squid, that way I can catch any possible rogue applications trying to talk to outside machines over http, ftp, or smpt. Local firewalls on all the boxes help too. Esp. on windows where you get pop ups letting you know what's trying to talk to the outside world. Yup, for every watt of CPU power, you need another watt (or is it more?) to cool it. RAM is cheap these days, ~$100=1GB. So don't fret over the memory. There are machines I rarely power on at home for the same reason. They're too expensive to run, so I only power them when I need to.

On 8/5/2006 at 3:14 PM Don Y wrote: I must be be uncommonly lucky, then. I've not done a thing to my server for several years, except change the mail relay address when I changed hosting services. (It was just a name change--a quick edit). If I hear the BBC on the radio when I wake up in the morning, I know that everything's working. We don't get many power failures here (the substation is just about 1/2 mi down the road), but when we do, they're doozies lasting a day or more. I've got a big old Elgar UPS that the server's hung off of, with 4 deep-cycle marine batteries. It'll run the server for a few hours until I bestir myself and fire up the generator, which I need to do anyway if I want to use water (well) and eat food (refrigerator). OTOH, I don't know what sort of backup the telco "temple" has that's located on the southwest corner of my property. They've got a power line drop there, but I don't know if they've got backup. Supposedly, the setup has something like a 10,000 POTS pair capacity (that's what a lineman told me), so one would hope for some sort of second power source for the DSL connections. Cheers, Chuck .

On 8/5/2006 at 4:45 PM Don Y wrote: No pingback from the server, although I don't know how to turn it off on the modem (I wish). All ports are closed. I can't telnet,ftp, etc. in Oh, I'm about 9 wire miles from the CO; the "temple" is a fiber terminal. Since it's only about 400 feet away, I get really good DSL. One odd thing hanging off the side of one of the big boxes is round and about the size of a hatbox. I imagine it must be for cooling, but I'm not sure. If I ever have any line problems during weekday work hours, I usually only have to hike down to the temple and ask the guy who always seems to be working there about it. I keep the poison oak and yellowjacket nests cleared away for the telco folks and they seem to appreciate it. It's actually pretty pleasant--out in the country and under a big oak tree. One can only wonder about the cost of a foot of copper trunk line with today's metals prices. --Chuck

On 8/5/2006 at 2:12 PM Ray Arachelian wrote: They're fine for copying floppies, data transfer, handling tapes, etc. My old standby for most data transfer stuff is an HP Vectra P1 166 tower. One with the expansion slots at a right angles to the mobo, so that I can get at cards easily. It's new enough that it runs Win98, Linux or NetBSD just fine, even though it spends most of its time in DOS--and it has the old ISA Catweasel in it. I still keep an old XT around for things like the MatchPoint and Deluxe Option Boards. It's not networked (yet) although I do have an Artisoft NE1000 clone card installed. Just no software yet. Same idea for old AT and 33MHz 386 boxes around here. Cheers, Chuck

On Saturday 05 August 2006 02:12 pm, Ray Arachelian wrote: I have *way* too much electronic junk as it is, and was hoping that someone else might be interested in those drives in particular... I SSH _to_ that box but that's about it. Squid was one thing that I know of that might prompt me to upgrade a bit sooner, as it'd cache stuff. I only have an adblock plugin in firefox but that seems to do the job just fine. I'm just starting to look into that stuff, but would that box need to actually process any of that stuff? I have a LOT of capacitors on hand, too. Database applications, maybe? That sure seems to want to soak up resources I mentioned the somewhat faster machines above. One's a Celeron 566, one's a K6-500, and then there's this Athlon something-or-other that's sitting here waiting for me to get around to firing it up. That'll probably be the replacement for this workstation, one of those other two will probably replace the P60 that's currently the w98 box (and become a dual-boot system in the process), and I can stick one of the P-II boards (probably a 450) in to the server position. If I ever get around to it. I have a whole bunch of stuff in that speed range, there are at least a couple or 3 120s, and some other stuff close to it. Socket 7, I think, some in AT, some in ATX format (which I don't have enough cases for). Got those, a whole box of several 486 machines I pulled apart a while back (which came in handy after I trashed a video card by hitting that option connector with a drive power plug which has since been positioned better), a couple of low-profile 386 boxes, a low-profile 486 box, at least a few 286 boards, and even some 8088 stuff. Got a bunch of ISA cards, too, including sound, multi-I/O, one of those Jameco (?) dual floppy interface cards w/ BIOS (lets you put pretty much anything into an XT-class machine), stuff to interface those real early CD drives that aren't AT, and I forget what else. Anybody finding that they need some bit or other of this is welcome to contact me offlist. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Roy J. Tellason wrote: Welcome to the PC world...where something becomes obsolete just because something newer starts shipping! Remember what P.T. Barnum said about suckers being born every minute? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Cape Coral, FL

Who the blazes cares about that. My experience is that people heel a lot quicker than the time it takes to repair a car. And having had to do major bodywork repairs for what should have been what you'd call a 'fender bender', I am half-convinced that all the safety features in modern cars are just a way to sell more and more expensive replacement parts. -tony

Tony Duell wrote: My bedroom is about 9' by 12'. I honestly have nowhere to put a PDP-11, which would probably fall through the floor anyways (I live in a trailer). And to note, my entire hardware collection is 32-bit x86, save a busted up Macintosh. My 386 is my oldest machine. And note: If I want to play a video game, I'll do it on my main system. I mean, Doomsday/jDoom is rather nice for DOOM. On a final note: My main desktop run Linux, my other box run Windows 2000 with Microsoft's Interix subsystem installed, and my Dell runs FreeBSD. Don't ask about the 486 or 386, I can't remember. Probably DOS. -- The real problem with C++ for kernel modules is: the language just sucks. -- Linus Torvalds

----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> trailer). If you use one of the smaller backplanes, you can get an 11/23+ ( /73, /83 etc)into a old desktop PC case (use RQDX3 and an RD drive, along with an OEM power supply). The worst you'll have to do is make up an RQDX3 to drive cable (no space for the interconnect board). You'll also need to build a watchdog module, but that's only a dozen or so parts. Jim.