Actually, I use Windows 30+ hours per day (# of machines * # of hours) or, if
you like, nearly every waking minute, and have more trouble with disk subsystem
failures on the Apples in the typical half-hour session than I have with the
Windows boxesin any given month. Now, I'm only using three Apples at the
moment, but on any given day, I have more data losses than I can remember having
over the entire 20+ years I have been using CP/M. These Apple machines (][+,
IIe, //c) happily intechange media, so whatever, if anything, is wrong with them
is common to them all. They behave pretty much as I remember all Apples doing,
even back in the '80's when folks willingly tolerated such behavior, which
clearly reminds me of why I never liked them.
As I said in a previous email, I'm planning to chuck the things in order to get
them off the market, and my drive a truck over them just to protect the public,
as soon as I'm done recovering the source files and doc I've so far been unable
to recover. (Today was one of the days on which I renewed this frustrating
experience, BTW.)
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "M H Stein" <mhstein(a)usa.net>
To: "'ClassicComputers'" <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 1:56 PM
Subject: hard-sector 5 1/4 disk
Hmmm... you don't use Windows much, do you...
------------------Original Message----------------
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 15:29:50 -0700
From: "Richard Erlacher" <edick(a)idcomm.com>
Subject: Re: hard-sector 5 1/4 disk
The way I seem to remember it is that, back then, we were amazed when things
worked, rather than being irked when they didn't. Apple's attitude was
clearl,
though, and that was that if your data really
mattered, you'd certainly use a
computer and not an Apple. The Apple wasn't designed from the ground up as a
computing machine, but rather as a video toy (not in the disparaging sense) on
the order of the several other video games of the time, which, coincidentally
could also do some computing. Apple's approach was that if people were
willing
to buy an Apple and then use it for useful work,
they'd try to charge as much
as
they possibly could, since the overall cost ostensibly
would be low initially,
and then they'd make their money on the disk drives, (where they had some real
margin) and other add-ons that it took to convert the Apple into a computer
capable of doing useful work.
What makes all this crystal clear is that if I fire up an Apple today, it
still
does all the stupid disk-subsystem-related crap it did
back then, only, by
now,
nobody would even think of putting up with that. Back
then, it was about par
for the course, but it wouldn't last a week in today's environment.