Rumor has it that Bruce Lane may have mentioned these words: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/img/index.htm Google is your friend... ;-) Took a bit to find, but he has a separate 'museum' type site, and it's listed here. Hope this helps! Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers

Rumor has it that Allison may have mentioned these words: That's what I do - I've found USPS to be the cheapest available to send to Canada, and haven't had a problem yet. If the package weight is under 4 pounds (IIRC) you can use the "small customs form" which is pretty much: Name, Address, Contents, Value, Weight. Pretty simple to fill out. HTH, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Bugs of a feather flock together." sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Russell Nelson zmerch at 30below.com |

I've had very good luck with postal service (on both sides of the border) having run a mail-order business for many years, I still find it the best option in many cases. NEVER ship to Canada via UPS ... ***NEVER*** UPS charges a large "brokerage" fee to the recipient which they clain is for processing the customs paperwork. Postal service costs nothing in clearing. EG: I had a PET shipped up, shipping cost to the sender was $60, "brokerage fee" I had to pay to receive the machine at my door was $45. -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

It's been quite a while since I did this, but you used to need to use a freight forwarder in Canada or it would sit in customs for weeks. Ask your recipient who they recommend or try Googling. Gil

Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: Shipping to Canada: always use USPS. If the declared value is small (don't know what the limit is today, $15 or $20?) then it goes through with no import duties (but possibly GST/PST). If you dare ship it UPS, the receiver will be stuck with a $30-$40 "brokerage charge" even if there are zero import duties. UPS and the brokerage charge are not necessarily all that bad if it is truly a commercial shipment and the value is large enough that the $40 brokerage charge is in the noise. It's a crying shame when a supplier sends a free catalog to Canada via UPS and the recipient ends up paying $40 in brokerage fees! Tim.

From: "Allison": I prefer FedEx over OOPS, myself :-). For smaller packages FedEx will likely cost more, though. Vince

From: "Dan Cohoe" <dancohoe at oxford.net> The way it was explained to me (bear in mind that this is at least third-hand information that I have no easy way to confirm), is that Canada's system for re-delivering mail that fails on the first attempt (which is a lot of mail here in the USA, too), is different. That somehow the path there is relatively short between "this came back to the post office" and "let's sell this on our eBay site". My wife buys and sells dolls from and to Canada, and apparently her colleagues go to check Canada Post's ebay auctions when their dolls don't get delivered. And have actually found them there. (They are reportedly really good about pulling the auction if the rightful claimant comes forward.) There's also a tactic where the shipper includes hir name, address, and phone number in the package, so that when they open it, they have another chance of being contacted to fix the problem. FWIW, Vince

Allison wrote: I think USPS ground charges a fee to get into Canada, Air does not.

Chuck Guzis wrote: I thought the way around that limitation was to use "Global Express Mail"? Peace... Sridhar

Allison wrote: I send stuff to Canada all the time, but I don't have much information for you because I usually drive across the border and send Canada Post. Sorry. Peace... Sridhar

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 10:59:07, Joe R. <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> wrote: Yes... mostly bad. I had a package get stuck at the border because the sender didn't know to fill out any paperwork in advance - they wanted $85 USD. I told them I wasn't paying and what to do with the package (send it back ;-) I have sent things _to_ Canada via my commercial UPS account, but I always fill out the customs docs. No hassles on the other end (the recipient probably pays taxes, but that's a Candian law thing, not a UPS thing). I have never had any hassles sending things via Post around the world - except glacially slow delivery in Canada. At least there are no unwelcome charges. -ethan

Well, I shall try it, of course. I'm trying to compose one boot disk for my (actually orpahn of software) Xerox 820 in 5,25 inch.format. I have the files and even (I think) the CPM.SYS file what must be copied in the first tracks of the CP/M disk in single density format. But I have the impression that all the tools available actually musn't do the job I want to do. I only know one tool in CP/M to grab the boot tracks, and I suppose that if I use one computer to do the job (one Osborne Vixen) and compose with it one boot disk for the Xerox 820 it will not work in the Xerox cause of the different treatment of the disks from the Vixen to the Xerox. Isn't so ? Regards Sergio

Dave, I think you should post the complete link whenever you make new release announcements. I've found it inconvenient as well. John A.

With interleave set to "As original", ImageDisk will wait for a sector index pulse, then begin reading sector ID fields and storing them until another sector index pulse occurs. It would appear that you disks are interleaved 3:!, and that the interleave is offset by 1/2 revolution on the odd tracks (not all that uncommon - it means that the disk has 1/2 revolution to step before it has to wait for the next revolution. This can make disks noticably faster to read when reading sequential tracks. If you like, you can set interleave to "Best Guess" which will regenerate the calculated interleave from the first sector on each track. You can also pick an interleave if you want to change it., however either of these choices would likely result in disks which are slower to access than your original. When it says "unable to determine interleave", it means that it could not read the sector id's reliably in the same order on multiple attempts. Imagedisk will read the disk for several revolutions, storing any new sector IDs that it finds. If it figures out that it is not seeing all of the sector IDs on each revolution, it generates this message. Most likelt the disk is marginal to read with the PC controller. Full analysis will cause it to perform quite slowly as it reanalyzes the disk "from scratch" on every track. Full analysis is very rarely required. It would appear that your PC controller is unable to read the last sector on the disk (17) - also not uncommon, many systems use gaps etc. in their formats which are outside the tolerances of the PC controller. The good news is that PC's vary widely, and you will likely find that another machine may read the whole disk, or it may be able read different sectors (in which case you can use IMDU to merge the two images to get a complete one). Out of a dozen or so machines that I tested ImageDisk with, only a couple of them were able to read all of the disks I've been able to make work. I've also found that slowing the drive a bit can help with some of these. See the notes in the document and in the online help. Yes, please do - I have also provided fairly extensive online help at the touch of the F1 button. Spend some time with it, as there is a lot of information there, and you will not get the most out of ImageDisk if you do not understand it. I designed ImageDisk to allow me to archive disks that I had trouble with by other means, and it has a lot of fairly technical options - it is not a "click OK" type program. -- A general note to everyone about ImageDisk "support" -- In one of my "day jobs", I produce and sell development tools for various small/embedded processors - 80+% of my technical support consists of cutting and pasting pages from the documentation and sending it back to people. In most cases, it's obvious that they have not even "cracked the cover" of the manual, since several of the most common questions are answered on the first page. Since ImageDisk is being made available as free software, I am not going to be overly inclined to do this on an ongong basis for it. I know nothing can overcome he urge to fire up a new toy "right away' (I do it!), however when doing so brings questions, please refer to the documentaion and help files (in detail) before coming to me. Also note that there are *MANY* disk formats which cannot be read by the PC floppy controller. If ImageDisk just can't seen to digest your favorite systems disks (or even your less favorite ones) - there's not much point coming to me about it, as chances are that it simply is not possible. For other issues, reasonable suggestions, legimate bugs etc. I am here and am happy to help. Regards, Dave Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

On 11/21/2005 at 7:20 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: A long time ago, I wrote a DOS driver for the HP-150 series 1 and 2. Here's what I have: HP-150 series 1: 16 256-byte sectors per side, 1 side, 66 cylinders, interleaved 4:1, first sector is 1 HP-150 series 2: 9 512-byte sectors per side, 2 sides, 77 cylinders, interleaved 2:1, first sector is 1 Does that help any? Note that these numbers reflect the diskette are used by DOS, not the absolute number of tracks on each disk. Like Allison said, some are intended as spares. Chuck

On 11/22/2005 at 9:12 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: Yes, but that's the way folks talked about them, so who am I to swim against the current? I have some samples in my files, but the drivers in question were used by many folks for several years with no complaints, so I figure I got it right. If the itch to know becomes a major rash, I can dig them out and double-check. Cheers, Chuck