• Re: What to do with a gia

    From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Tue Jun 25 21:55:00 2019
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    KM> I've inherited a PowerEdge R510 server! great whopping rackmount
    KM> type monster, dual Xeon, 64GB RAM, 12 drive bays, all full (8 3TB
    KM> SAS, 4 480GB SATA SSDs which will be used to upgrade other
    KM> stuff). No OS, cuz it was using some cloud OS from which it's now
    KM> disconnected.


    I suppose start here:

    https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln129177/how-to-install-t he-operating-system-on-a-dell-poweredge-server-os-deployment?lang=en

    Yep, found those... and thinking it should have shipped with Windows ServerSomeyear, but unable to find the Windows Sticker, I contacted Dell support to ask where they hid it... nope, that one shipped naked, no OS,
    but I HAVE ENTERPRISE SUPPORT!

    (That means instead of trying to fob you off with canned information, or telling you to get lost because you're out of warranty, they chase you
    around to make sure you leave happy. :)

    Anyway, once I figured out that if you boot from USB, it thinks your USB
    stick is C: and not USB-anything... should be able to install a fresh OS easily enough. Then the question is... what work shall it do? What would
    YOU do with 53 pounds of server? :)
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Wed Jun 26 07:10:00 2019

    Hi Ky!

    KM> I've inherited a PowerEdge R510 server! great whopping rackmount
    KM> type monster, dual Xeon, 64GB RAM, 12 drive bays, all full (8 3TB
    KM> SAS, 4 480GB SATA SSDs which will be used to upgrade other
    KM> stuff). No OS, cuz it was using some cloud OS from which it's now
    KM> disconnected.
    I suppose start here: https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln129177/how-to-install-t he-operating-system-on-a-dell-poweredge-server-os-deployment?lang=en
    Yep, found those... and thinking it should have shipped with
    Windows ServerSomeyear, but unable to find the Windows Sticker, I contacted Dell support to ask where they hid it... nope, that one
    shipped naked, no OS, but I HAVE ENTERPRISE SUPPORT!
    (That means instead of trying to fob you off with canned
    information, or telling you to get lost because you're out of
    warranty, they chase you around to make sure you leave happy. :)

    So you get personalized supoort paid for by whomever originally bought
    the unit?! Neat!!!

    And yes, I sort of figured you had found the information I did, just
    sometimes I'll put the search terms in a different sequence or add or
    leave out a phrase and find something unique.


    Anyway, once I figured out that if you boot from USB, it thinks
    your USB stick is C: and not USB-anything... should be able to
    install a fresh OS easily enough. Then the question is... what
    work shall it do? What would YOU do with 53 pounds of server? :)

    Interesting on the USB Boot. That is one way to do an installation with 'regular' computers, though I'm still using DVDs.

    Now for the "what would I do with 53 pounds of server?". And what was
    it, 3x 8 TB plus several 420 GB's (you were going to use the latter for upgrading other computers). So that leaves either three 8 TB units in a
    RAID or or 24 TB. I have a couple-pound server in the basement with
    only 5 TB and it is only half full. ...I don't know. If someone
    offered, yes, I'd take it too -- same as you, grab now, figure out what
    to do with it later. ...Obvious is 'storage', but one person has only
    so much data to store. Renting/leasing storage to others is a
    consideration, though then that kicks up all sort of business and legal requirements for you which can be a pain. ....I don't know!

    ¯ ®
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    ¯ ®


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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sun Aug 25 20:15:00 2019
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!
    KM> Yep, found those... and thinking it should have shipped with
    KM> Windows ServerSomeyear, but unable to find the Windows Sticker, I
    KM> contacted Dell support to ask where they hid it... nope, that one
    KM> shipped naked, no OS, but I HAVE ENTERPRISE SUPPORT!
    So you get personalized supoort paid for by whomever originally bought
    the unit?! Neat!!!

    Yep, about another 200 days worth, so I'd better get it in gear. :D

    And yes, I sort of figured you had found the information I did, just sometimes I'll put the search terms in a different sequence or add or
    leave out a phrase and find something unique.

    You never know, especially what with all the stupid custom results. No, Goo-duck, I want the exact thing I searched for, not what you think I wanted!!@*&^@@@##!!

    KM> Anyway, once I figured out that if you boot from USB, it thinks
    KM> your USB stick is C: and not USB-anything... should be able to
    KM> install a fresh OS easily enough. Then the question is... what
    KM> work shall it do? What would YOU do with 53 pounds of server? :)

    Interesting on the USB Boot. That is one way to do an installation with 'regular' computers, though I'm still using DVDs.

    You're supposed to use the embedded management engine, which I haven't entirely figured out yet. I read the fine manual and was not
    enlightened. I watched a video and began to have a glimmer. Perhaps I'll experiment and hope nothing explodes. One of the SSDs will be used as
    the OS drive (it has two 2.5" internal drive bays for this very purpose).

    Now for the "what would I do with 53 pounds of server?". And what was

    Boat anchor? :)

    it, 3x 8 TB plus several 420 GB's (you were going to use the latter for upgrading other computers). So that leaves either three 8 TB units in a
    RAID or or 24 TB. I have a couple-pound server in the basement with

    24TB straight up. Plus I'll probably hunt down some used SAS (cheaper
    than used SATA) HDs to fill the vacated bays.

    RAID is against my religion. Let me tell you the sordid tale (for the
    second time today, wtf) of how I lost faith:

    I was cured of RAID by a friend's experience with a failed array... when
    RAID loses its marbles, it garbles files in the most creative ways, such
    as each file contains striped sectors from each HD. And there's no good
    way to recover data from mangled linux filesystems, other than copy sector-by-sector then extract files from the resulting Single Giant
    File, based on known filetype headers, and hope the file was not
    fragmented. And the last intact backup was from =after= RAID went
    berserk, so was no help.

    What a mess. I spent six months rebuilding 14,000 irreplaceble JPGs from
    a vast heap of random data. Got to where I could hand-build JPG headers
    in my sleep, and ID which image a file fragment belonged to at a glance.
    (Some were in 3 or 4 pieces, and not in adjacent data chunks.) Good
    thing I think peering at files with a hex editor is normal. Were only
    about 60 that I couldn't recover at least part of, thanks to Frhed and JPEGsnoop.

    only 5 TB and it is only half full. ...I don't know. If someone
    offered, yes, I'd take it too -- same as you, grab now, figure out what
    to do with it later. ...Obvious is 'storage', but one person has only
    so much data to store.

    On the scattered PCs I have about <does ballpark count> 8-10 TB, not
    counting semi-random duplications, er, I mean backups of disks-in-use.

    Renting/leasing storage to others is a
    consideration, though then that kicks up all sort of business and legal requirements for you which can be a pain. ....I don't know!

    Yeah, you get into legal liabilities there. Distributed computing would probably not be worth the power bill (apparently it doesn't use much
    idle, but can really cook when running full tilt). So I'm thinkin'
    backup server and maybe occasional media server...

    ...if I ripped all the DVDs, which I should for backup purposes anyway,
    it'd be... well, there go the rest of those TBs... http://www.the-sandpit.com/misc/dvdlist.htm
    Who buys all this crap? Worse, who watches all this crap? :)

    Junk fills the brain cells allotted. :D
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Mon Aug 26 10:05:00 2019

    Hi Ky!

    KM> Yep, found those... and thinking it should have shipped with
    KM> Windows ServerSomeyear, but unable to find the Windows Sticker, I
    KM> contacted Dell support to ask where they hid it... nope, that one
    KM> shipped naked, no OS, but I HAVE ENTERPRISE SUPPORT!
    So you get personalized supoort paid for by whomever originally bought
    the unit?! Neat!!!
    Yep, about another 200 days worth, so I'd better get it in gear. :D

    I really hate it when they rush you like that!


    And yes, I sort of figured you had found the information I did, just sometimes I'll put the search terms in a different sequence or add or
    leave out a phrase and find something unique.
    You never know, especially what with all the stupid custom
    results. No, Goo-duck, I want the exact thing I searched for, not
    what you think I wanted!!@*&^@@@##!!

    There are times when I do misspell/mistype something and Google will
    offer the right one. There are also times when I try to type what I
    want, with the plus and minus options, and still get what I didn't want.
    And sometimes just fun to help someone, like with the Adrian can't be
    shut off in the previous message (or at least my reading sequence!). ^C
    is the answer, or at least supposed to be the answer -- now you get to
    find out why it didn't work. And maybe you knew about www.TheAdrianProject.com, maybe not.


    KM> Anyway, once I figured out that if you boot from USB, it thinks
    KM> your USB stick is C: and not USB-anything... should be able to
    KM> install a fresh OS easily enough. Then the question is... what
    KM> work shall it do? What would YOU do with 53 pounds of server? :) Interesting on the USB Boot. That is one way to do an installation with 'regular' computers, though I'm still using DVDs.
    You're supposed to use the embedded management engine, which I
    haven't entirely figured out yet. I read the fine manual and was
    not enlightened. I watched a video and began to have a glimmer.
    Perhaps I'll experiment and hope nothing explodes. One of the
    SSDs will be used as the OS drive (it has two 2.5" internal drive
    bays for this very purpose).

    I'll admit to (maybe too freqently!) want it NOW. The DVD installation
    just about always seems to work -- there are two computers where the DVD
    seems to have been software-disconnected and so they have been sitting gathering dust - literally. Used to work, for some reason don't work
    now, or the last time I tried.

    Thumbdrive installation probably is no big deal and probably is a little faster, though doesn't give me the flashing LED indicator like a DVD
    does to say something is happening even though the screen is just
    sitting there.

    Never tried a network install.


    Now for the "what would I do with 53 pounds of server?". And what was
    Boat anchor? :)

    I wonder if that's enough for the current on the Mississippi River?
    (It's only about a dozen blocks from the house.)


    it, 3x 8 TB plus several 420 GB's (you were going to use the latter for upgrading other computers). So that leaves either three 8 TB units in a RAID or or 24 TB. I have a couple-pound server in the basement with
    24TB straight up. Plus I'll probably hunt down some used SAS
    (cheaper than used SATA) HDs to fill the vacated bays.

    Wasn't familar with the term and probably others aren't either so here:

    SAS SSD vs. SATA SSD
    A SSD delivers faster data transfer rates than a serial ATA (SATA) SSD.
    ... SAS drives use a higher signal voltage than SATA drives and can
    reliably transmit data -- with better overall data integrity end to
    end -- at twice the speed of SATA drives.

    https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/SAS-SSD-Serial-Attached- SCSI-solid-state-drive

    OK, may as well go with the super-speed while you're at it!


    RAID is against my religion. Let me tell you the sordid tale (for
    the second time today, wtf) of how I lost faith:

    I was cured of RAID by a friend's experience with a failed
    array... when RAID loses its marbles, it garbles files in the
    most creative ways, such as each file contains striped sectors
    from each HD. And there's no good way to recover data from
    mangled linux filesystems, other than copy sector-by-sector then
    extract files from the resulting Single Giant File, based on
    known filetype headers, and hope the file was not fragmented. And
    the last intact backup was from =after= RAID went berserk, so was
    no help.

    What a mess. I spent six months rebuilding 14,000 irreplaceble
    JPGs from a vast heap of random data. Got to where I could
    hand-build JPG headers in my sleep, and ID which image a file
    fragment belonged to at a glance. (Some were in 3 or 4 pieces,
    and not in adjacent data chunks.) Good thing I think peering at
    files with a hex editor is normal. Were only about 60 that I
    couldn't recover at least part of, thanks to Frhed and JPEGsnoop.

    "Ytch!" I've got a bunch of JPGs from my first visit to Vienna which
    somehow became corrupted on the camera (cell phone) memory card -- have
    been able to recover some and others are still need to be worked on -
    just hadn't looked around for better/other repair utilities plus wanted
    a faster computer (like this one which I built in the interim) to
    hopefully get things done quicker.

    RAID and JBOD do seem a little 'dangerous'. I will admit to using JBOD
    with my backup NAS in the basement. So far so good. Know with JBOD if
    one drive fails essentially all fail, as far as the data component is concerned.


    only 5 TB and it is only half full. ...I don't know. If someone
    offered, yes, I'd take it too -- same as you, grab now, figure out what
    to do with it later. ...Obvious is 'storage', but one person has only
    so much data to store.
    On the scattered PCs I have about <does ballpark count> 8-10 TB,
    not counting semi-random duplications, er, I mean backups of
    disks-in-use.

    I'll have to allow ballpark as I know I have duplicated duplicates here. Working on combining the various 'storages' here. A lot of duplicate filenames but enough where the filename is the same but the data is
    different I don't want to just click the automatic overwrite or skip
    options. Also had an issue like you with all the files got dumped into
    a common directory, so loss of the subdirectories. I don't want the
    computer stuff mixed with the car stuff mixed with the house stuff, so
    that is being separated.


    Renting/leasing storage to others is a
    consideration, though then that kicks up all sort of business and legal requirements for you which can be a pain. ....I don't know!
    Yeah, you get into legal liabilities there. Distributed computing
    would probably not be worth the power bill (apparently it doesn't
    use much idle, but can really cook when running full tilt). So
    I'm thinkin' backup server and maybe occasional media server...

    It'll look impressive stating you have 18 TB (or whatever) of storage!
    Just don't display the "free space = 16.2 TB" part!!


    ...if I ripped all the DVDs, which I should for backup purposes
    anyway, it'd be... well, there go the rest of those TBs... http://www.the-sandpit.com/misc/dvdlist.htm
    Who buys all this crap? Worse, who watches all this crap? :)
    Junk fills the brain cells allotted. :D

    Well there are some I'd find interesting. If the "Becker DVD" is the
    one from the TV show I used to watch. Not into Star Wars, though would
    watch Planet of the Apes. ...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles??!!


    ¯ ®
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    ¯ @Q.COM ®
    ¯ ®


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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Wed Aug 28 22:04:00 2019
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    > And yes, I sort of figured you had found the information I did, just
    > sometimes I'll put the search terms in a different sequence or add or
    > leave out a phrase and find something unique.
    KM> You never know, especially what with all the stupid custom
    KM> results. No, Goo-duck, I want the exact thing I searched for, not
    KM> what you think I wanted!!@*&^@@@##!!

    There are times when I do misspell/mistype something and Google will
    offer the right one. There are also times when I try to type what I
    want, with the plus and minus options, and still get what I didn't want.

    Duck is pretty good about that, but often as not I want MY spelling!

    And sometimes just fun to help someone, like with the Adrian can't be
    shut off in the previous message (or at least my reading sequence!). ^C
    is the answer, or at least supposed to be the answer -- now you get to
    find out why it didn't work. And maybe you knew about www.TheAdrianProject.com, maybe not.

    Hadn't heard of it, tho I suppose it had to come from somewhere! But
    when I was quick-testing distros, the whole didn't impress me so much
    that I cared enough to chase after it.

    > Interesting on the USB Boot. That is one way to do an installation with
    > 'regular' computers, though I'm still using DVDs.
    KM> You're supposed to use the embedded management engine, which I
    KM> haven't entirely figured out yet. I read the fine manual and was
    KM> not enlightened. I watched a video and began to have a glimmer.
    KM> Perhaps I'll experiment and hope nothing explodes. One of the
    KM> SSDs will be used as the OS drive (it has two 2.5" internal drive
    KM> bays for this very purpose).

    I'll admit to (maybe too freqently!) want it NOW. The DVD installation

    Last week would be nice. :D And I would like this knowledge to just
    magically appear in my head; I have little patience with pursuing it.
    Maybe next year I won't be so busy, and will also be officially an Old
    Fogey eligible for free tuition, so maybe I'll go take a networking
    course at the college...

    just about always seems to work -- there are two computers where the DVD seems to have been software-disconnected and so they have been sitting gathering dust - literally. Used to work, for some reason don't work
    now, or the last time I tried.

    It doesn't have a DVD drive. I'd have to use the USB DVD (which I happen
    to have) or hook a loose drive to the internal SATA port.

    Thumbdrive installation probably is no big deal and probably is a little faster, though doesn't give me the flashing LED indicator like a DVD
    does to say something is happening even though the screen is just
    sitting there.

    Flash drive install is a LOT faster, probably 10x faster for the average install, and better yet if it's USB3. Optical drive is severely limited
    by low rotational speed (have you seen the demos of CDs flying apart in
    shards at speeds above 52x?).

    And most flash drives have a busy-LED, tho commonly it points at the
    floor if plugged into the mainboard port. This is solved by using a
    cable (be sure it supports USB3) so it can flap around in sight. :)

    Never tried a network install.

    Me neither.

    > Now for the "what would I do with 53 pounds of server?". And what was
    KM> Boat anchor? :)

    I wonder if that's enough for the current on the Mississippi River?
    (It's only about a dozen blocks from the house.)

    Probably not :) Have friends across the river in Davenport, only a block
    from the river (EEEK!) tho they tell me behind good levees. (whew!)

    KM> 24TB straight up. Plus I'll probably hunt down some used SAS
    KM> (cheaper than used SATA) HDs to fill the vacated bays.

    Wasn't familar with the term and probably others aren't either so here:

    Yeah, you pretty much never see SAS drives unless you have a server!
    Never thought I'd own one, let alone eight. Or twelve once I get it
    refilled (need to check how large it supports).

    SAS SSD vs. SATA SSD
    A SSD delivers faster data transfer rates than a serial ATA (SATA) SSD.
    ... SAS drives use a higher signal voltage than SATA drives and can
    reliably transmit data -- with better overall data integrity end to
    end -- at twice the speed of SATA drives.

    https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/SAS-SSD-Serial-Attached- SCSI-solid-state-drive

    OK, may as well go with the super-speed while you're at it!

    Yep. And they're HGST 7200rpm so I expect the speed is impressive, and
    this particular drive, per Backblaze stats, almost never fails.

    "Ytch!" I've got a bunch of JPGs from my first visit to Vienna which
    somehow became corrupted on the camera (cell phone) memory card -- have
    been able to recover some and others are still need to be worked on -
    just hadn't looked around for better/other repair utilities plus wanted
    a faster computer (like this one which I built in the interim) to
    hopefully get things done quicker.

    There is no repair utility as such, other than extracting 'em from
    whatever sectors were recoverable, then hand-editing the resulting file.
    You have to learn what is and isn't data by sight, and hand-delete
    what's not. Foreign junk will always be some multiple of a sector, or
    the slack space at the end of a cluster. (Yet another reason to defrag
    early and often!!)

    When you see a JPG with the bottom part tutti-fruiti, but otherwise the displayed size looks right, you've got some garbage in the middle of the
    file (it can only decode and display down to the garbage). Delete that
    garbage with your handy hex editor (Frhed in my case), making sure there
    are no leftover bytes, and assuming the rest of the data is intact, the
    file should look normal again.

    IIRC Frhed lets you jump down N-many bytes, so I'd find the bad spot,
    then jump down by sector (selecting as I went) and after one or more
    jumps landing right on the next good byte. Delete, done. Got so my
    average processing time for ordinary corruption was about 30 seconds.

    RAID and JBOD do seem a little 'dangerous'. I will admit to using JBOD
    with my backup NAS in the basement. So far so good. Know with JBOD if
    one drive fails essentially all fail, as far as the data component is concerned.

    Oy.
    https://blog.storagecraft.com/jbod-care/

    I don't know why I'd want the One Big Disk effect. I'm perfectly good
    with drives named \\Bullet\Easystore and \\Bullet\H and... okay, it does
    get a little windy...

    Shared resources at \\bullet

    Share name Type Used as Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bullet_C_W98 Disk
    Bullet_D Disk
    Bullet_E Disk (UNC)
    Bullet_F_XP Disk (UNC)
    Bullet_WD500 Disk (UNC)
    CitizenG Print Citizen GSX-230
    E2B (J) Disk (UNC)
    EasyStore Disk (UNC)
    Epson3250 Print Epson AP-3250 ESC/P 2
    G_MAIL (G) Disk
    H Disk (UNC)
    HP2100TN Print HP LaserJet 2100 PCL6
    HPLaserJet2100 Print HP LaserJet 2100
    L-XD-Fuji Disk
    Lexar (J) Bullet Disk
    M-SD-card Disk
    My Book (O) Disk (UNC)
    My Documents Disk
    My Pictures Disk
    Printer Print HP LaserJet IIIP
    Printer3 Print HP LaserJet 4P/4MP PS
    SharedDocs Disk

    Shared resources at \\silver
    SILVER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Scratch Disk
    G-Hitachi320 Disk
    HPLaserJ Print HP LaserJet 1020
    Mail (M) Disk
    SD120 (F) Disk
    SILVER-RAMdisk (Z) Disk
    SILVER-WD1000 Disk
    SILVER-WD250 Disk

    Shared resources at \\dell-pc
    Share name Type Used as Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- !SHARED Disk (UNC)
    C Disk (UNC)
    Users Disk

    The Dell's C and Users shares exist but do not work. Apparently one must
    do ugly hoop-jumping to share the root on Win7 and above, so I just dump everything I want to share in !SHARED. XP lets me share the root at my convenience. And tho the linux box can see everyone else, hell if I can
    figure out how to GET it to share (SAMBA did not help).


    KM> On the scattered PCs I have about <does ballpark count> 8-10 TB,
    KM> not counting semi-random duplications, er, I mean backups of
    KM> disks-in-use.

    I'll have to allow ballpark as I know I have duplicated duplicates here. Working on combining the various 'storages' here. A lot of duplicate

    Yeah, someday I need to make one consolidated backup. Real Soon Now!

    filenames but enough where the filename is the same but the data is
    different I don't want to just click the automatic overwrite or skip

    Not me, I've got way too many same names different file.

    options. Also had an issue like you with all the files got dumped into
    a common directory, so loss of the subdirectories. I don't want the
    computer stuff mixed with the car stuff mixed with the house stuff, so
    that is being separated.

    Erk, that would be all sorts of fun...

    KM> I'm thinkin' backup server and maybe occasional media server...

    It'll look impressive stating you have 18 TB (or whatever) of storage!
    Just don't display the "free space = 16.2 TB" part!!

    Haha.. likely I'll assign each disk a particular backup job, and maybe
    make a redundant copy on another disk.

    KM> ...if I ripped all the DVDs, which I should for backup purposes
    KM> anyway, it'd be... well, there go the rest of those TBs...
    KM> http://www.the-sandpit.com/misc/dvdlist.htm
    KM> Who buys all this crap? Worse, who watches all this crap? :)
    KM> Junk fills the brain cells allotted. :D

    Well there are some I'd find interesting. If the "Becker DVD" is the

    Becket. Excellent film.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becket_(1964_film)

    one from the TV show I used to watch. Not into Star Wars, though would
    watch Planet of the Apes.

    I love the original films, and like the brief TV series because Roddy
    McDowall makes anything good. Haven't yet watched the new ones.

    ...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles??!!

    One of many from Walmart's $3 bin. But I liked the animated series, so
    what the heck. Haven't watched 'em yet.

    Alice to Nowhere is exceedingly rare (and not on DVD other than crappy bootlegs)... tripped over it for cheap on eBay, guy did not know what he had...

    Had quite a bit of that luck in the past year. One was a reference book
    I thought I'd never even SEE, let alone own... there are only 8, maybe 9 copies known to exist. And someone had it up for $25. GIMME!!!
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Thu Aug 29 19:32:00 2019

    Hi Ky!

    > And yes, I sort of figured you had found the information I did, just
    > sometimes I'll put the search terms in a different sequence or add or
    > leave out a phrase and find something unique.
    KM> You never know, especially what with all the stupid custom
    KM> results. No, Goo-duck, I want the exact thing I searched for, not
    KM> what you think I wanted!!@*&^@@@##!!
    There are times when I do misspell/mistype something and Google will
    offer the right one. There are also times when I try to type what I
    want, with the plus and minus options, and still get what I didn't want.
    Duck is pretty good about that, but often as not I want MY
    spelling!

    Frequently, yes.


    And sometimes just fun to help someone, like with the Adrian can't be
    shut off in the previous message (or at least my reading sequence!). ^C
    is the answer, or at least supposed to be the answer -- now you get to
    find out why it didn't work. And maybe you knew about www.TheAdrianProject.com, maybe not.
    Hadn't heard of it, tho I suppose it had to come from somewhere!
    But when I was quick-testing distros, the whole didn't impress me
    so much that I cared enough to chase after it.

    That makes sense. I've done testing and didn't like the way a utility
    worked, or didn't work, ow was the same utility as what I had tested and
    dumped before just renamed.


    > Interesting on the USB Boot. That is one way to do an installation with
    > 'regular' computers, though I'm still using DVDs.
    KM> You're supposed to use the embedded management engine, which I
    KM> haven't entirely figured out yet. I read the fine manual and was
    KM> not enlightened. I watched a video and began to have a glimmer.
    KM> Perhaps I'll experiment and hope nothing explodes. One of the
    KM> SSDs will be used as the OS drive (it has two 2.5" internal drive
    KM> bays for this very purpose).
    I'll admit to (maybe too freqently!) want it NOW. The DVD installation
    Last week would be nice. :D And I would like this knowledge to
    just magically appear in my head; I have little patience with
    pursuing it. Maybe next year I won't be so busy, and will also be officially an Old Fogey eligible for free tuition, so maybe I'll
    go take a networking course at the college...

    Or teach it! ...I have spent a lot of time 'learning on the fly' stuff
    that's probably halfway common knowledge to the Computer Science
    graduates but for me, never heard of it!


    just about always seems to work -- there are two computers where the DVD seems to have been software-disconnected and so they have been sitting gathering dust - literally. Used to work, for some reason don't work
    now, or the last time I tried.
    It doesn't have a DVD drive. I'd have to use the USB DVD (which I
    happen to have) or hook a loose drive to the internal SATA port.

    I can't recall if I tried an external USB DVD or not. Recall spent a
    lot of time with seems like five different drivers. Maybe didn't have
    the external DVD then (those two computers have been hanging around that long??!!!).


    Thumbdrive installation probably is no big deal and probably is a little faster, though doesn't give me the flashing LED indicator like a DVD
    does to say something is happening even though the screen is just
    sitting there.
    Flash drive install is a LOT faster, probably 10x faster for the
    average install, and better yet if it's USB3. Optical drive is
    severely limited by low rotational speed (have you seen the demos
    of CDs flying apart in shards at speeds above 52x?).

    Haven't seen but have heard of some nasty occurrences.


    And most flash drives have a busy-LED, tho commonly it points at
    the floor if plugged into the mainboard port. This is solved by
    using a cable (be sure it supports USB3) so it can flap around in
    sight. :)

    ?? What have I been buying? I haven't seen a LED on a thumbdrive/flash drive/USB stick in years. Might see some soon: I bought a bunch of small (capcacity) ones (8 GB IIRC) for a picture project for my Mother and
    Aunt specifically because they said they had a LED indicator.

    As for the LED indicator being pointed wrong, yes, the old-old ones I
    have here with an LED always seemed to be pointing the wrong direction
    and here were times I used an extension cable to flip 'em over.


    Never tried a network install.
    Me neither.

    Seemed the ones done at the store took d-a-y-s. And seems like someone
    always fiddled with the system while it was upgrading/being
    rebuilt/whatever and so the process had to be restarted.


    > Now for the "what would I do with 53 pounds of server?". And what was
    KM> Boat anchor? :)
    I wonder if that's enough for the current on the Mississippi River?
    (It's only about a dozen blocks from the house.)
    Probably not :) Have friends across the river in Davenport, only
    a block from the river (EEEK!) tho they tell me behind good
    levees. (whew!)

    Ah! They're on the good side too! (I'm in Bettendorf.)


    KM> 24TB straight up. Plus I'll probably hunt down some used SAS
    KM> (cheaper than used SATA) HDs to fill the vacated bays.
    Wasn't familar with the term and probably others aren't either so here:
    Yeah, you pretty much never see SAS drives unless you have a
    server! Never thought I'd own one, let alone eight. Or twelve
    once I get it refilled (need to check how large it supports).

    Right: almost seems as logical to fill it to the max even though have no
    idea what with. That'll come along! And always better too much than
    not enough.


    SAS SSD vs. SATA SSD
    A SSD delivers faster data transfer rates than a serial ATA (SATA) SSD.
    ... SAS drives use a higher signal voltage than SATA drives and can
    reliably transmit data -- with better overall data integrity end to
    end -- at twice the speed of SATA drives.

    https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/SAS-SSD-Serial-Attached- SCSI-solid-state-drive

    OK, may as well go with the super-speed while you're at it!
    Yep. And they're HGST 7200rpm so I expect the speed is
    impressive, and this particular drive, per Backblaze stats,
    almost never fails.

    Even better: lasts forever, or at least until you're done with them.


    "Ytch!" I've got a bunch of JPGs from my first visit to Vienna which somehow became corrupted on the camera (cell phone) memory card -- have
    been able to recover some and others are still need to be worked on -
    just hadn't looked around for better/other repair utilities plus wanted
    a faster computer (like this one which I built in the interim) to
    hopefully get things done quicker.
    There is no repair utility as such, other than extracting 'em
    from whatever sectors were recoverable, then hand-editing the
    resulting file. You have to learn what is and isn't data by
    sight, and hand-delete what's not. Foreign junk will always be
    some multiple of a sector, or the slack space at the end of a
    cluster. (Yet another reason to defrag early and often!!)

    OK, so possibly I've done all that can be done. I was able to recover
    some of the pictures from the corrupted files; some had two pictures (or
    most of the picture) and I think one even had three partial pictures.


    When you see a JPG with the bottom part tutti-fruiti, but
    otherwise the displayed size looks right, you've got some garbage
    in the middle of the file (it can only decode and display down to
    the garbage). Delete that garbage with your handy hex editor
    (Frhed in my case), making sure there are no leftover bytes, and
    assuming the rest of the data is intact, the file should look
    normal again.

    OK. (Need to keep this for reference!). I had used a utility which
    extracted automatically and then went back and manually looked for the
    header and tail information and extracted some more that way.


    IIRC Frhed lets you jump down N-many bytes, so I'd find the bad
    spot, then jump down by sector (selecting as I went) and after
    one or more jumps landing right on the next good byte. Delete,
    done. Got so my average processing time for ordinary corruption
    was about 30 seconds.

    I think that was sometimes the time it took just to load here with the
    old system!


    RAID and JBOD do seem a little 'dangerous'. I will admit to using JBOD
    with my backup NAS in the basement. So far so good. Know with JBOD if
    one drive fails essentially all fail, as far as the data component is concerned.
    Oy.
    https://blog.storagecraft.com/jbod-care/

    Scanned through that -- seems like with anything there are good points
    and bad.


    I don't know why I'd want the One Big Disk effect. I'm perfectly
    good with drives named \\Bullet\Easystore and \\Bullet\H and...
    okay, it does get a little windy...

    Shared resources at \\bullet

    Share name Type Used as Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
    Bullet_C_W98 Disk
    Bullet_D Disk
    Bullet_E Disk (UNC)
    Bullet_F_XP Disk (UNC)
    Bullet_WD500 Disk (UNC)
    CitizenG Print Citizen GSX-230
    E2B (J) Disk (UNC)
    EasyStore Disk (UNC)
    Epson3250 Print Epson AP-3250 ESC/P 2
    G_MAIL (G) Disk
    H Disk (UNC)
    HP2100TN Print HP LaserJet 2100 PCL6
    HPLaserJet2100 Print HP LaserJet 2100
    L-XD-Fuji Disk
    Lexar (J) Bullet Disk
    M-SD-card Disk
    My Book (O) Disk (UNC)
    My Documents Disk
    My Pictures Disk
    Printer Print HP LaserJet IIIP
    Printer3 Print HP LaserJet 4P/4MP PS
    SharedDocs Disk

    Shared resources at \\silver
    SILVER
    ------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
    E-Scratch Disk
    G-Hitachi320 Disk
    HPLaserJ Print HP LaserJet 1020
    Mail (M) Disk
    SD120 (F) Disk
    SILVER-RAMdisk (Z) Disk
    SILVER-WD1000 Disk
    SILVER-WD250 Disk

    Shared resources at \\dell-pc
    Share name Type Used as Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
    !SHARED Disk (UNC)
    C Disk (UNC)
    Users Disk

    The Dell's C and Users shares exist but do not work. Apparently
    one must do ugly hoop-jumping to share the root on Win7 and
    above, so I just dump everything I want to share in !SHARED. XP
    lets me share the root at my convenience. And tho the linux box
    can see everyone else, hell if I can figure out how to GET it to
    share (SAMBA did not help).

    If - well, more like when -- one of the drives in the NSA unit
    downstairs fails I'll probably go with two separate drives rather than
    the one combined drive now (with JBOD). At the time I added the
    second hard drive it must have made sense to combine the original 2 TB
    with the new 3 TB (to get 5 TB), though in hindsight it makes just as
    much sense to have some files one drive and another set of files on the
    other.



    KM> On the scattered PCs I have about <does ballpark count> 8-10 TB,
    KM> not counting semi-random duplications, er, I mean backups of
    KM> disks-in-use.
    I'll have to allow ballpark as I know I have duplicated duplicates here. Working on combining the various 'storages' here. A lot of duplicate
    Yeah, someday I need to make one consolidated backup. Real Soon
    Now!

    Think 25 TB will be sufficient?!


    filenames but enough where the filename is the same but the data is different I don't want to just click the automatic overwrite or skip
    Not me, I've got way too many same names different file.

    Uh, that's what I said! Or meant to say. A lot of the 'common filename problem' was due to the MS-DOS 8.3 limitation; I used subdirectories to
    make some bulk differentiation: could have CABLE.001, CABLE.002, etc.,
    in PRINTER, MONITOR, TV, TELEPHON (ran out of characters!) -- all the
    CABLE files dealing with cabling, just specific to that device. (And
    probably a horrible example, though I did make some of my cables and
    had to learn about RTS/CTS vs. Xon/Xoff protocols.)


    options. Also had an issue like you with all the files got dumped into
    a common directory, so loss of the subdirectories. I don't want the computer stuff mixed with the car stuff mixed with the house stuff, so
    that is being separated.
    Erk, that would be all sorts of fun...

    So if I flip this 3-way switch the car wipers start!


    I'm thinkin' backup server and maybe occasional media server...
    It'll look impressive stating you have 18 TB (or whatever) of storage!
    Just don't display the "free space = 16.2 TB" part!!
    Haha.. likely I'll assign each disk a particular backup job, and
    maybe make a redundant copy on another disk.

    That makes sense. ...And isn't 'redundant copy' one of the RAIDs?!


    KM> ...if I ripped all the DVDs, which I should for backup purposes
    KM> anyway, it'd be... well, there go the rest of those TBs...
    KM> http://www.the-sandpit.com/misc/dvdlist.htm
    KM> Who buys all this crap? Worse, who watches all this crap? :)
    KM> Junk fills the brain cells allotted. :D
    Well there are some I'd find interesting. If the "Becker DVD" is the
    Becket. Excellent film.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becket_(1964_film)

    Uh, yeah! Becket would be interesting too. Some very good actors which
    helps.


    ...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles??!!
    One of many from Walmart's $3 bin. But I liked the animated
    series, so what the heck. Haven't watched 'em yet.

    I knew there was a whimsical side to you! :)


    Alice to Nowhere is exceedingly rare (and not on DVD other than
    crappy bootlegs)... tripped over it for cheap on eBay, guy did
    not know what he had...

    One man's junk is another's treasure!


    Had quite a bit of that luck in the past year. One was a
    reference book I thought I'd never even SEE, let alone own...
    there are only 8, maybe 9 copies known to exist. And someone had
    it up for $25. GIMME!!!

    Probably another instance of "hmpf! Probably won't get a nibble for this
    old text but may as well:.



    ¯ ®
    ¯ Barry_Martin_3@ ®
    ¯ @Q.COM ®
    ¯ ®


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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sat Sep 12 21:12:00 2020
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    KM> I've inherited a PowerEdge R510 server! great whopping rackmount
    KM> type monster, dual Xeon, 64GB RAM, 12 drive bays, all full (8 3TB
    KM> SAS, 4 480GB SATA SSDs which will be used to upgrade other
    KM> stuff). No OS, cuz it was using some cloud OS from which it's now
    KM> disconnected.

    And what I ended up doing was cannibalizing it... had a loose newer Xeon
    CPU, had a Lenovo S30 workstation motherboard that uses this very CPU
    fall on my head; it supports both SAS hard drives and 64GB ECC RAM...
    and uses about a third the electricity for the same net horsepower. And
    since it's a Xeon and I've already used Xorro as a name, it became
    Fireball, as in XL-5 (it's fast, it has an X, isn't logic wonderful? :)

    And then we had a HUGE argument getting any Windows before Win10 to install.

    The Lenovo board has an embedded Win10 license. (It shipped with Win7;
    how it acquired this is a mystery. Maybe that "free" upgrade.) It LOVES
    Win10. I do not. Win10 is what sent me screaming off to linux. Win10 ate
    my old external HD. Win10 is on my $#!+ List.

    Win8.1 Enterprise would not install. Win8 Embedded installs, but runs
    very poorly, and is very annoying. (Enterprise, which came to me on a
    freebie laptop, evidently has had considerable behavior modification, as
    it is much more polite than the consumer edition.)

    Win7 would not install, tho a portable Win7 install runs fine. (Not sure
    why this Win7Ultimate of uncertain provenance is portable, but it is.
    Just stick it in anything, and it runs.) Better than on Silver,
    actually, where it's decided NVMes are not in its future.

    I really wanted Fireball to run XP64, because its intended job is Poor
    Man's NAS, for which it needs to network gracefully and without
    argument. XP64 does that, and is 100% stable. But oh lordy, the ways the install found to fail.. got some help from Lenovo support but turns out
    if you slipstream the I/O driver, XP64 then rejects its own embedded
    serial number. After numerous fails I finally gave up and switched SATA
    to from UEFI to Legacy... and then we had a different set of fails,
    until one attempt became confused and used the previous failed install
    as its starting point -- and THEN it installed. And runs fine. I am now terrified of having to repeat this arcane procedure which no one
    understands, and have made three copies of the relevant hard drive. <g>

    BUT... still looking for the relevant SAS driver.. the XP driver on
    Lenovo's site is the wrong one (tho their Win7 driver works). Meanwhile,
    could not get Win7 on Silver to play nice with the NVMe (the driver made
    Win7 throw up all over itself) but the NVMe works fine with XP64. WTF.

    Well, I guess I just swap their OSs. And get to use my preferred XP for everyday. <g>

    Unless someone can show me how to get linux to gracefully allow network
    access to its precious hard drives... PCLOS runs lovely on both of 'em,
    but it's very annoying to be stuck with only ONE network drive that it
    will access (I don't know how I did that, either) and refusing to let
    anyone else see its own naughty bits.

    Oh... and never ever not EVER change the "use optimized defaults"
    setting on a Lenovo. If it ain't broke, don't touch it. You Have Been
    Warned. If you change it (hoping to fool the desired OS into installing, because Lenovo Support suggested looking at this setting) and if your
    vidcard is not BRAND FREAKIN' NEW, you will experience an
    apparently-bricked system, until you try a BRAND FREAKIN' NEW vidcard
    out of sheer desperation. (Well, new enough to know newfangled BIOS
    stuff, anyway.) Per Lenovo Support, the function comes factory-preset to
    Do Certain Settings, and if it disagrees with any bit of hardware, the
    result Does Not Work.

    And how was YOUR day? :D
    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Sun Sep 13 09:54:00 2020

    Hi Ky!

    KM> I've inherited a PowerEdge R510 server! great whopping rackmount
    KM> type monster, dual Xeon, 64GB RAM, 12 drive bays, all full (8 3TB
    KM> SAS, 4 480GB SATA SSDs which will be used to upgrade other
    KM> stuff). No OS, cuz it was using some cloud OS from which it's now
    KM> disconnected.
    And what I ended up doing was cannibalizing it... had a loose
    newer Xeon CPU, had a Lenovo S30 workstation motherboard that
    uses this very CPU fall on my head; it supports both SAS hard
    drives and 64GB ECC RAM... and uses about a third the electricity
    for the same net horsepower. And since it's a Xeon and I've
    already used Xorro as a name, it became Fireball, as in XL-5
    (it's fast, it has an X, isn't logic wonderful? :)

    But Zorro on TV spelt his name with a 'Z'! Much fancier to go slash- slash-slash than swoosh-swoosh!!



    And then we had a HUGE argument getting any Windows before Win10
    to install.

    It hasn't learned 'new and improved' isn't always so.


    The Lenovo board has an embedded Win10 license. (It shipped with
    Win7; how it acquired this is a mystery. Maybe that "free"
    upgrade.) It LOVES Win10. I do not. Win10 is what sent me
    screaming off to linux. Win10 ate my old external HD. Win10 is on
    my $#!+ List.

    Yes, that does seem a bit odd: has a license for Windows 10 though using
    and running Windows 7. I'd probably wipe Windows all together and
    install Linux (here Ubuntu), though probably try for dual booting as
    some things do need Windows. (Wonder how one can keep Win 7 from
    upgrading?)


    Win8.1 Enterprise would not install. Win8 Embedded installs, but
    runs very poorly, and is very annoying. (Enterprise, which came
    to me on a freebie laptop, evidently has had considerable
    behavior modification, as it is much more polite than the
    consumer edition.)

    8.1 may have been tweaked for business before being released -- "we can
    piddle off the consumer but better not the business customer!".



    Win7 would not install, tho a portable Win7 install runs fine.
    (Not sure why this Win7Ultimate of uncertain provenance is
    portable, but it is. Just stick it in anything, and it runs.)

    So a permanent Windows 7 won't work but a temporary one will! Wonder of
    the 'permanent' version is designed for a specific brand such as HP and
    so is missing anything Acer needs whereas the portable version has or
    can get all manufacturers.


    Better than on Silver, actually, where it's decided NVMes are not
    in its future.

    I haven't played with them yet. SSDs, yes.


    I really wanted Fireball to run XP64, because its intended job is
    Poor Man's NAS, for which it needs to network gracefully and
    without argument. XP64 does that, and is 100% stable. But oh
    lordy, the ways the install found to fail.. got some help from
    Lenovo support but turns out if you slipstream the I/O driver,
    XP64 then rejects its own embedded serial number. After numerous
    fails I finally gave up and switched SATA to from UEFI to
    Legacy... and then we had a different set of fails, until one
    attempt became confused and used the previous failed install as
    its starting point -- and THEN it installed. And runs fine. I am
    now terrified of having to repeat this arcane procedure which no
    one understands, and have made three copies of the relevant hard
    drive. <g>

    Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on
    this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was
    my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special' partition.

    And speaking of NAS, probably going to build one here as the pre-built
    device I'm using is no longer supported, plus was running short on
    storage -- deleted some old-old stuff and took care of that problem!
    FreeNAS, Amahi, etc. are considerations for the new NAS.


    BUT... still looking for the relevant SAS driver.. the XP driver
    on Lenovo's site is the wrong one (tho their Win7 driver works). Meanwhile, could not get Win7 on Silver to play nice with the
    NVMe (the driver made Win7 throw up all over itself) but the NVMe
    works fine with XP64. WTF.

    It's just toying with your mind! Unfortunately I haven't played with
    the NVMe's yet so I can't help there.


    Well, I guess I just swap their OSs. And get to use my preferred
    XP for everyday. <g>

    When life gives you lemons....


    Unless someone can show me how to get linux to gracefully allow
    network access to its precious hard drives... PCLOS runs lovely
    on both of 'em, but it's very annoying to be stuck with only ONE
    network drive that it will access (I don't know how I did that,
    either) and refusing to let anyone else see its own naughty bits.

    I'm using VNC here but limited experience. Have been going from this
    system to a couple of the Raspberry Pi's. Have been able to do
    read/write of their SDcards, which I suppose is similar to a hard drive
    over a network.

    ...Right_click, Properties, Local Network Share tab. More for a
    specific directory than the hard drive in total.


    Oh... and never ever not EVER change the "use optimized defaults"
    setting on a Lenovo. If it ain't broke, don't touch it. You Have
    Been Warned. If you change it (hoping to fool the desired OS into installing, because Lenovo Support suggested looking at this
    setting) and if your vidcard is not BRAND FREAKIN' NEW, you will experience an apparently-bricked system, until you try a BRAND
    FREAKIN' NEW vidcard out of sheer desperation. (Well, new enough
    to know newfangled BIOS stuff, anyway.) Per Lenovo Support, the
    function comes factory-preset to Do Certain Settings, and if it
    disagrees with any bit of hardware, the result Does Not Work.

    "Optimized" seems to mean "best results with the original way we shipped
    it".


    And how was YOUR day? :D

    Apparently better than yours!


    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Mon Sep 14 16:49:00 2020
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    KM> for the same net horsepower. And since it's a Xeon and I've
    KM> already used Xorro as a name, it became Fireball, as in XL-5
    KM> (it's fast, it has an X, isn't logic wonderful? :)

    But Zorro on TV spelt his name with a 'Z'! Much fancier to go slash- slash-slash than swoosh-swoosh!!

    <g> Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if they'd
    named the CPU Zeon instead.....

    KM> And then we had a HUGE argument getting any Windows before Win10
    KM> to install.

    It hasn't learned 'new and improved' isn't always so.

    Evidently not!!

    KM> The Lenovo board has an embedded Win10 license. (It shipped with
    KM> Win7; how it acquired this is a mystery. Maybe that "free"
    KM> upgrade.) It LOVES Win10. I do not. Win10 is what sent me
    KM> screaming off to linux. Win10 ate my old external HD. Win10 is on
    KM> my $#!+ List.

    Yes, that does seem a bit odd: has a license for Windows 10 though using
    and running Windows 7. I'd probably wipe Windows all together and
    install Linux (here Ubuntu), though probably try for dual booting as

    I am long cured of dual booting, especially outside one's species. Win7
    maybe, and Win10 definitely rewrites the boot sector every time you
    switch OSs, and whether it'll respect GRUB and leave it alone... I have doubts, considering it won't even respect a cousin Windows. Only reason
    I have a couple multiboot Windows setups is cuz they were supposed to be experimental, and there's nothing so permanent as a temporary camp. But
    even then it's a nuisance, and a risk every time you switch OSs. (Also
    Windows no longer respects being told to stick to a given drive letter,
    but instead wishes to always be C:, which changes everyone else's drive letters every time one switches OSs.)

    Well, I might multiboot linux only, provided none of 'em was of the
    Ubuntu family... having learned that unstable GRUB is a feature there.
    (Or why there exists an Ubuntu-specific GRUB fixit disk. Which also
    works on Mint.) Not sure if the fault goes back further to Debian. It
    may be fixed, by what I've read, but it was a known problem a couple
    years ago. Which having run into it twice in short order, is why I no
    longer have a Mint setup. (And I could trigger it reproducibly: just
    LOOK in the video resolution settings. Look, don't touch. Next boot,
    GRUB reliably commits seppuku.)

    some things do need Windows. (Wonder how one can keep Win 7 from
    upgrading?)

    I dunno... none of mine has attempted it. Then again, I tend to make
    updating manual or turn it off entirely.

    BTW first thing XP64 on Silver did is download 1.2GB of updates!! and I
    was like, WTF. Didn't we get told that ended years ago? Win7 still gets updates too, mostly for Windows Defender but occasionally other stuff.

    KM> Win8.1 Enterprise would not install. Win8 Embedded installs, but
    KM> runs very poorly, and is very annoying. (Enterprise, which came
    KM> to me on a freebie laptop, evidently has had considerable
    KM> behavior modification, as it is much more polite than the
    KM> consumer edition.)

    8.1 may have been tweaked for business before being released -- "we can piddle off the consumer but better not the business customer!".

    Evidently so. It's actually quite pleasant and well-mannered. (Except
    that it will completely hog any internet connection it sees. Unlike XP
    and Win7, which gracefully share with everyone else.) At least, once you install Classic Shell and a less eye-searing theme. I used it all summer
    while I was painting the rental house, as that laptop has very good
    wireless that could reach that far, and it was very stable. Wasn't going
    to keep it given how much I disliked Win8, but... it sat up and begged. <g>

    Tho I still hate what they did with Explorer, starting in Vista and
    completely trashed by the time it reached Win10. Unfortunately NO
    alternative I've tried has quite done it for me, and I live in the file manager...

    KM> Win7 would not install, tho a portable Win7 install runs fine.
    KM> (Not sure why this Win7Ultimate of uncertain provenance is
    KM> portable, but it is. Just stick it in anything, and it runs.)

    So a permanent Windows 7 won't work but a temporary one will! Wonder of
    the 'permanent' version is designed for a specific brand such as HP and
    so is missing anything Acer needs whereas the portable version has or
    can get all manufacturers.

    Oh, I tried those too. No improvement. Could not find a Lenovo-specific
    ISO, it's no longer available for download from them, and so far no one
    has uploaded it to any of the Usual Suspects. Also tried "Black" (fan-generated Win7) and no joy. The problem is that the I/O controller
    is too newfangled (both its UEFI and having that additional SAS
    controller), and requires specific drivers slipstreamed into the install media, PLUS two different drivers tacked on during the install. Except
    only one works; the other download (from Lenovo) is corrupted.

    To be fair, the pile of i5/i7 laptops someone gift me are equally cranky
    about older Windows... Black will install but won't stay activated.
    Win10 thinks it's activated (no one did so) on some of 'em and not on
    others, which I take to be a flaw in its hardware hash mechanism. (They
    all came with it. Will only stay on the more agreeable specimens... two already have PCLOS instead. They need more RAM to be really useful, most having only 4GB. And right now RAM prices are pretty durn high.)

    KM> Better than on Silver, actually, where it's decided NVMes are not
    KM> in its future.

    I haven't played with them yet. SSDs, yes.

    This one is my first. It needs the Storport patch from Microsoft, and an OS-specific driver. Which worked fine on XP64, and not at all on Win7.
    Holy crap, I've never seen Windows do an autorevert like THAT before...
    cycled through a bunch of angry screens and finally did a full system restore... it was VERY unhappy... Well, we won't try THAT again!!

    http://doomgold.com/pcstuff/NVMe.rar
    Storport patch and the OpenFabrics drivers.
    (The one with no OS specified in the name is for XP.)

    ...tho Win7 also has trouble hanging onto the vidcard driver on that box
    (XP has no such problem, and neither does Win10). About half the time
    when Win7 wakes up from Sleep (or hibernation, haven't checked which
    it's doing), it has the resolution set down a notch, and you have to
    tell it "Detect Screen" to make it reset. I have a suspicion the
    mainboard, or at least the chipset, is just a fraction too new for Win7,
    tho that doesn't explain why XP64 likes it just fine. And why Win7 runs perfectly on the other i7 of about the same age. (Different chipset, not
    as fancy. But same era.)

    Speaking of hibernation -- on XP it does not work if you have more than
    4GB RAM and it's using PAE. You can still Sleep, but not Hibernate.

    Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on
    this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was
    my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special' partition.

    Ouch. Yeah, one of those things we learn by deleting it. <g>

    And speaking of NAS, probably going to build one here as the pre-built
    device I'm using is no longer supported, plus was running short on

    The only prebuilt NAS I have is so old it maxes out at a pair of 120GB
    HDs. And tho the hardware appears to work, I could not get the software
    to work (browser-based). Oh well...

    storage -- deleted some old-old stuff and took care of that problem!
    FreeNAS, Amahi, etc. are considerations for the new NAS.

    ExplainingComputers lately demo'd building a NAS from a Pi, which was
    quite interesting. I forget which of the several options he used as the
    OS, but it wasn't real difficult. Or at least he explains well!! <g>

    It's just toying with your mind! Unfortunately I haven't played with
    the NVMe's yet so I can't help there.

    Very freakin' fast, that's for sure. But anything that requires an OS
    level driver just to be seen at all, I can't really trust -- how do you
    access the files if the OS is nowhere to hand? So its function will be basically very fast scratch space for crap that needs speed, like VM
    images and Mail files (and browser cache, far as it can be set -- when I
    can't set the location, I turn it off entirely because otherwise it
    fragments the disk way too much). And I should try moving the swapfile
    there (not that it should ever touch it with 32GB RAM, but some very
    dumb software, like anything Adobe, requires swapfile is present, or it
    won't run).

    KM> Well, I guess I just swap their OSs. And get to use my preferred
    KM> XP for everyday. <g>

    When life gives you lemons....

    ....find a lemon catapult and throw them back!!

    KM> Unless someone can show me how to get linux to gracefully allow
    KM> network access to its precious hard drives... PCLOS runs lovely
    KM> on both of 'em, but it's very annoying to be stuck with only ONE
    KM> network drive that it will access (I don't know how I did that,
    KM> either) and refusing to let anyone else see its own naughty bits.

    I'm using VNC here but limited experience. Have been going from this
    system to a couple of the Raspberry Pi's. Have been able to do
    read/write of their SDcards, which I suppose is similar to a hard drive
    over a network.

    I've been told it's easier to set up by using the device's IP address (192.168.x.x) BUT you still have to do each one manually. I must have 40 shares in Windows (counting stuff that's not usually running but has an
    ID on the network), so that's not really a satisfactory solution. I want
    to just be presented with a list of available shares and click to go,
    same as I do in Windows! <g>

    ..Right_click, Properties, Local Network Share tab. More for a
    specific directory than the hard drive in total.

    Whereas I usually want to share the whole disk. Cuz they're my files,
    dammit, I will show them to anyone I like! <g>

    KM> Oh... and never ever not EVER change the "use optimized defaults"
    KM> setting on a Lenovo. If it ain't broke, don't touch it. You Have
    KM> Been Warned. If you change it (hoping to fool the desired OS into
    KM> installing, because Lenovo Support suggested looking at this
    KM> setting) and if your vidcard is not BRAND FREAKIN' NEW, you will
    KM> experience an apparently-bricked system, until you try a BRAND
    KM> FREAKIN' NEW vidcard out of sheer desperation. (Well, new enough
    KM> to know newfangled BIOS stuff, anyway.) Per Lenovo Support, the
    KM> function comes factory-preset to Do Certain Settings, and if it
    KM> disagrees with any bit of hardware, the result Does Not Work.

    "Optimized" seems to mean "best results with the original way we shipped
    it".

    Exactly!! and all that's left of the original is the motherboard...

    KM> And how was YOUR day? :D

    Apparently better than yours!

    You shoulda seen my day when I thought the damn thing had bricked
    itself... was just about to No More Lenovos Ever.

    .. To be, or not to be. *BOOM!* Not to be.

    That's my day!
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Tue Sep 15 08:23:00 2020

    Hi Ky!

    KM> for the same net horsepower. And since it's a Xeon and I've
    KM> already used Xorro as a name, it became Fireball, as in XL-5
    KM> (it's fast, it has an X, isn't logic wonderful? :)
    But Zorro on TV spelt his name with a 'Z'! Much fancier to go slash- slash-slash than swoosh-swoosh!!
    <g> Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if they'd
    named the CPU Zeon instead.....

    People would still mispronounce it!



    KM> The Lenovo board has an embedded Win10 license. (It shipped with
    KM> Win7; how it acquired this is a mystery. Maybe that "free"
    KM> upgrade.) It LOVES Win10. I do not. Win10 is what sent me
    KM> screaming off to linux. Win10 ate my old external HD. Win10 is on
    KM> my $#!+ List.
    Yes, that does seem a bit odd: has a license for Windows 10 though using
    and running Windows 7. I'd probably wipe Windows all together and
    install Linux (here Ubuntu), though probably try for dual booting as
    I am long cured of dual booting, especially outside one's
    species.

    I have one laptop here which dual boots and that's mainly because it
    came with Windows-something and so I thought I'd try to keep it when installing Linux just to have another system which has Windows --
    occasionally I do need. I don't know if it rewrites the boot sector or
    not.

    Win7 maybe, and Win10 definitely rewrites the boot
    sector every time you switch OSs, and whether it'll respect GRUB
    and leave it alone... I have doubts, considering it won't even
    respect a cousin Windows. Only reason I have a couple multiboot
    Windows setups is cuz they were supposed to be experimental, and
    there's nothing so permanent as a temporary camp.

    Yuuup: temporary stays, permanent goes!

    But even then
    it's a nuisance, and a risk every time you switch OSs. (Also
    Windows no longer respects being told to stick to a given drive
    letter, but instead wishes to always be C:, which changes
    everyone else's drive letters every time one switches OSs.)

    That can get very confusing to the human user, even more so for any
    batch files.


    Well, I might multiboot linux only, provided none of 'em was of
    the Ubuntu family... having learned that unstable GRUB is a
    feature there. (Or why there exists an Ubuntu-specific GRUB fixit
    disk. Which also works on Mint.) Not sure if the fault goes back
    further to Debian. It may be fixed, by what I've read, but it was
    a known problem a couple years ago. Which having run into it
    twice in short order, is why I no longer have a Mint setup. (And
    I could trigger it reproducibly: just LOOK in the video
    resolution settings. Look, don't touch. Next boot, GRUB reliably
    commits seppuku.)

    Glad I don't have that problem here! Wonder if you hae a quirky video
    card? No idea what the connection would be, but if just looking at the
    video configuration screen does it -- 'looking at the screen' triggers a
    "what card and monitor am I?" No idea on the connection to GRUB.


    some things do need Windows. (Wonder how one can keep Win 7 from upgrading?)
    I dunno... none of mine has attempted it. Then again, I tend to
    make updating manual or turn it off entirely.

    Turning off is probably the trick. Until Microsoft decides to bypass.


    BTW first thing XP64 on Silver did is download 1.2GB of updates!!
    and I was like, WTF. Didn't we get told that ended years ago?
    Win7 still gets updates too, mostly for Windows Defender but
    occasionally other stuff.

    Maybe they thought Silver was a corporate/business installation -- that
    might still be viable,



    KM> Win7 would not install, tho a portable Win7 install runs fine.
    KM> (Not sure why this Win7Ultimate of uncertain provenance is
    KM> portable, but it is. Just stick it in anything, and it runs.)
    So a permanent Windows 7 won't work but a temporary one will! Wonder of
    the 'permanent' version is designed for a specific brand such as HP and
    so is missing anything Acer needs whereas the portable version has or
    can get all manufacturers.
    Oh, I tried those too. No improvement. Could not find a
    Lenovo-specific ISO, it's no longer available for download from
    them, and so far no one has uploaded it to any of the Usual
    Suspects. Also tried "Black" (fan-generated Win7) and no joy. The
    problem is that the I/O controller is too newfangled (both its
    UEFI and having that additional SAS controller), and requires
    specific drivers slipstreamed into the install media, PLUS two
    different drivers tacked on during the install. Except only one
    works; the other download (from Lenovo) is corrupted.

    Wonderful. :( Did a bit of Google-fu with: 'windows 7 lenovo download
    iso'. Nothing all that new so probably the same as what you discovered
    (but just in case!) This one has a list that looks interesting:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_ install/i-do-not-have-windows-7-media-but-i-do-have-my/5ce13741- ac25-4969-ae82-2494726aac1c



    To be fair, the pile of i5/i7 laptops someone gift me are equally
    cranky about older Windows... Black will install but won't stay
    activated. Win10 thinks it's activated (no one did so) on some of
    'em and not on others, which I take to be a flaw in its hardware
    hash mechanism. (They all came with it. Will only stay on the
    more agreeable specimens... two already have PCLOS instead. They
    need more RAM to be really useful, most having only 4GB. And
    right now RAM prices are pretty durn high.)

    Winter project: I'll have to go through to see what I have - not just
    RAM but some old daughterboards. ...Probably not that much of interest
    in the RAM Dep't: recalling a bunch of small capacity units.


    KM> Better than on Silver, actually, where it's decided NVMes are not
    KM> in its future.
    I haven't played with them yet. SSDs, yes.
    This one is my first. It needs the Storport patch from Microsoft,
    and an OS-specific driver. Which worked fine on XP64, and not at
    all on Win7. Holy crap, I've never seen Windows do an autorevert
    like THAT before... cycled through a bunch of angry screens and
    finally did a full system restore... it was VERY unhappy... Well,
    we won't try THAT again!!

    So it's true: computers _do_ get mad!



    ...tho Win7 also has trouble hanging onto the vidcard driver on
    that box (XP has no such problem, and neither does Win10). About
    half the time when Win7 wakes up from Sleep (or hibernation,
    haven't checked which it's doing), it has the resolution set down
    a notch, and you have to tell it "Detect Screen" to make it
    reset. I have a suspicion the mainboard, or at least the chipset,
    is just a fraction too new for Win7, tho that doesn't explain why
    XP64 likes it just fine. And why Win7 runs perfectly on the other
    i7 of about the same age. (Different chipset, not as fancy. But
    same era.)

    Out of curiosity have you tried manually setting the resolution for
    something slightly smaller than the real resolution? Thinking should be 1920x1080, try setting at 1900x1060. Was able to do that with a nVidia
    driver add-on some time back.


    Speaking of hibernation -- on XP it does not work if you have
    more than 4GB RAM and it's using PAE. You can still Sleep, but
    not Hibernate.

    Have read where there are problems with Hibernation.


    Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on
    this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was
    my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special' partition.
    Ouch. Yeah, one of those things we learn by deleting it. <g>

    "This looks empty and I need the space." <delete> Oops!


    And speaking of NAS, probably going to build one here as the pre-built device I'm using is no longer supported, plus was running short on
    The only prebuilt NAS I have is so old it maxes out at a pair of
    120GB HDs. And tho the hardware appears to work, I could not get
    the software to work (browser-based). Oh well...

    There are thumbdrives bigger than that! My NAS is also browser-based
    with two options to access: one is User (for users) and the other Administrator. If type in user_name-password-enter goes to the User
    login, To get to the Admistrator login have to user_name-password- mouse-and-click on the 'Administrator' button. Probably obvious but if
    the screen is hard to read.....


    storage -- deleted some old-old stuff and took care of that problem! FreeNAS, Amahi, etc. are considerations for the new NAS.
    ExplainingComputers lately demo'd building a NAS from a Pi, which
    was quite interesting. I forget which of the several options he
    used as the OS, but it wasn't real difficult. Or at least he
    explains well!! <g>

    I'll have to sit down and see what's out there. Basics isn't that
    difficult; those little "we do this!" special stuff is sometimes of
    interest. Using a Pi has some interest: it's physically small and
    doesn't use much power; power and enclosure for the hard drives could be
    a small problem. Repurposing an old computer mostly solves that
    (depends on the number and type of hard drive); could die of old age and
    have nothing.

    ...Hmm: the RPi option is sounding interesting: I have 5v/12v power
    supplies and a hard drive rack.......


    It's just toying with your mind! Unfortunately I haven't played with
    the NVMe's yet so I can't help there.
    Very freakin' fast, that's for sure. But anything that requires
    an OS level driver just to be seen at all, I can't really trust
    -- how do you access the files if the OS is nowhere to hand? So
    its function will be basically very fast scratch space for crap
    that needs speed, like VM images and Mail files (and browser
    cache, far as it can be set -- when I can't set the location, I
    turn it off entirely because otherwise it fragments the disk way
    too much). And I should try moving the swapfile there (not that
    it should ever touch it with 32GB RAM, but some very dumb
    software, like anything Adobe, requires swapfile is present, or
    it won't run).

    Yes on the Swapfile. I have 32 GB in this system; right now 6.2 GiB is
    being used (20%) but 10.5 MiB is in Swap. As far as I have seen I've
    never used anywhere close to half the RAM, just something demands to be
    in the Swap area every once in a while -- sometimes it's empty. Have
    read where a swapfile is no longer necesary -- sure seems like it is!


    KM> Well, I guess I just swap their OSs. And get to use my preferred
    KM> XP for everyday. <g>
    When life gives you lemons....
    ....find a lemon catapult and throw them back!!

    eBay or Etsy?!



    KM> Unless someone can show me how to get linux to gracefully allow
    KM> network access to its precious hard drives... PCLOS runs lovely
    KM> on both of 'em, but it's very annoying to be stuck with only ONE
    KM> network drive that it will access (I don't know how I did that,
    KM> either) and refusing to let anyone else see its own naughty bits.
    I'm using VNC here but limited experience. Have been going from this
    system to a couple of the Raspberry Pi's. Have been able to do
    read/write of their SDcards, which I suppose is similar to a hard drive
    over a network.
    I've been told it's easier to set up by using the device's IP
    address (192.168.x.x) BUT you still have to do each one manually.
    I must have 40 shares in Windows (counting stuff that's not
    usually running but has an ID on the network), so that's not
    really a satisfactory solution. I want to just be presented with
    a list of available shares and click to go, same as I do in
    Windows! <g>

    Yes and no. I haven't set up all of my computers with VNC because I
    don't need to. Right now four are configured and as I recall the
    initial configuration was rather easy -- couple of minutes at most.
    (OK, so with forty computers that's a few hours.) After it's set up it
    is a simple click.


    ..Right_click, Properties, Local Network Share tab. More for a
    specific directory than the hard drive in total.
    Whereas I usually want to share the whole disk. Cuz they're my
    files, dammit, I will show them to anyone I like! <g>

    Yes, sort of figured you wanted the whole thing, Files > Other
    Locations (at bottom of left pane) > Connect to Server. Also thinking
    to permanently mount a remote connection.


    KM> Oh... and never ever not EVER change the "use optimized defaults"
    KM> setting on a Lenovo. If it ain't broke, don't touch it. You Have
    KM> Been Warned. If you change it (hoping to fool the desired OS into
    KM> installing, because Lenovo Support suggested looking at this
    KM> setting) and if your vidcard is not BRAND FREAKIN' NEW, you will
    KM> experience an apparently-bricked system, until you try a BRAND
    KM> FREAKIN' NEW vidcard out of sheer desperation. (Well, new enough
    KM> to know newfangled BIOS stuff, anyway.) Per Lenovo Support, the
    KM> function comes factory-preset to Do Certain Settings, and if it
    KM> disagrees with any bit of hardware, the result Does Not Work.

    "Optimized" seems to mean "best results with the original way we shipped it".
    Exactly!! and all that's left of the original is the
    motherboard...

    And that comes without CPU, RAM, sometimes other parts!


    KM> And how was YOUR day? :D
    Apparently better than yours!
    You shoulda seen my day when I thought the damn thing had bricked itself... was just about to No More Lenovos Ever.

    Yet I've had pretty good luck with them. OTOH, I don't dig at 'em like
    you do!


    .. To be, or not to be. *BOOM!* Not to be.
    That's my day!

    Thought the tagline was appropriate!


    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

    ... Aborted effort.
    Close all that you have worked on.
    You ask too much.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Thu Sep 17 21:45:00 2020
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    KM> <g> Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if they'd
    KM> named the CPU Zeon instead.....

    People would still mispronounce it!

    <choking noise>-on...

    KM> I am long cured of dual booting, especially outside one's
    KM> species.

    I have one laptop here which dual boots and that's mainly because it
    came with Windows-something and so I thought I'd try to keep it when installing Linux just to have another system which has Windows -- occasionally I do need. I don't know if it rewrites the boot sector or
    not.

    Might be GRUB put itself somewhere else, too, having learned the perils
    of sharing with Windows. <g>

    KM> there's nothing so permanent as a temporary camp.

    Yuuup: temporary stays, permanent goes!

    Ain't that the truth!!

    KM> But even then
    KM> it's a nuisance, and a risk every time you switch OSs. (Also
    KM> Windows no longer respects being told to stick to a given drive
    KM> letter, but instead wishes to always be C:, which changes
    KM> everyone else's drive letters every time one switches OSs.)

    That can get very confusing to the human user, even more so for any
    batch files.

    Yeah, especially when three partitions and three boot menu items have
    have named themselves "WINDOWS". Took several boots to untangle which
    was which. I knew the middle one was Server, but you couldn't tell by
    looking!

    [Mint-GRUB-seppuku]
    Glad I don't have that problem here! Wonder if you hae a quirky video

    Shouldna been...

    card? No idea what the connection would be, but if just looking at the
    video configuration screen does it -- 'looking at the screen' triggers a "what card and monitor am I?" No idea on the connection to GRUB.

    Exactly. I could see it blowing off the video driver. But it had zero
    business going anywhere near GRUB. Mighta been something in the
    configuration manager that expected an OK at that point instead of a
    CANCEL, and left something open/unwritten... still had no business...

    KM> I dunno... none of mine has attempted it. Then again, I tend to
    KM> make updating manual or turn it off entirely.

    Turning off is probably the trick. Until Microsoft decides to bypass.

    Imagine the fun once the next version comes out... they've said Win10
    will be the last version of Windows. Implying that 20 years after they
    first broached the idea (it's been around since the Win2K launch, and I
    saw this with my own eyes), they'll FINALLY get Windows to be a cloud
    service, not a local OS. Meaning everyone is locked into subscription
    mode, not only for the OS but perhaps also for data storage. Same thing
    Adobe and Autodesk have already done.

    Anyway, once that's a done deal, there'll be ZERO control over updates.
    You'll get the OS the cloud sends you, and like it.


    KM> BTW first thing XP64 on Silver did is download 1.2GB of updates!!
    KM> and I was like, WTF. Didn't we get told that ended years ago?
    KM> Win7 still gets updates too, mostly for Windows Defender but
    KM> occasionally other stuff.

    Maybe they thought Silver was a corporate/business installation -- that
    might still be viable,

    XP64 was never really a consumer OS, yeah... it's the workstation
    version of Server2003.

    Wonderful. :( Did a bit of Google-fu with: 'windows 7 lenovo download
    iso'. Nothing all that new so probably the same as what you discovered
    (but just in case!) This one has a list that looks interesting:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_ install/i-do-not-have-windows-7-media-but-i-do-have-my/5ce13741- ac25-4969-ae82-2494726aac1c

    That's just links to the DigitalRiver downloads, which are no more.
    There's a tool for downloading ISOs straight from Microsoft, but you
    need a NON-OEM serial number for it to work (IOW you need a retail box
    version of Windows). So the tag on a Lenovo or Dell or HP (which I have
    in abundance) is no good for that. There are a couple unofficial MSDN
    archives which can provide the official ISOs with less trouble. But none
    of those is the desired OEM-specific ISO, tho I've found a couple other
    OEM images floating around.


    KM> To be fair, the pile of i5/i7 laptops someone gift me are equally
    KM> cranky about older Windows... Black will install but won't stay
    KM> activated. Win10 thinks it's activated (no one did so) on some of
    KM> 'em and not on others, which I take to be a flaw in its hardware
    KM> hash mechanism. (They all came with it. Will only stay on the
    KM> more agreeable specimens... two already have PCLOS instead. They
    KM> need more RAM to be really useful, most having only 4GB. And
    KM> right now RAM prices are pretty durn high.)

    Winter project: I'll have to go through to see what I have - not just
    RAM but some old daughterboards. ...Probably not that much of interest
    in the RAM Dep't: recalling a bunch of small capacity units.

    I dunno, I can't see as far as your parts box. <g>

    KM> This one is my first. It needs the Storport patch from Microsoft,
    KM> and an OS-specific driver. Which worked fine on XP64, and not at
    KM> all on Win7. Holy crap, I've never seen Windows do an autorevert
    KM> like THAT before... cycled through a bunch of angry screens and
    KM> finally did a full system restore... it was VERY unhappy... Well,
    KM> we won't try THAT again!!

    So it's true: computers _do_ get mad!

    Or at least Windows does!! Never have I seen so many error screens
    without anything locking up. One could regard its full recovery as
    miraculous. <g>

    KM> ...tho Win7 also has trouble hanging onto the vidcard driver on
    KM> that box (XP has no such problem, and neither does Win10). About
    KM> half the time when Win7 wakes up from Sleep (or hibernation,
    KM> haven't checked which it's doing), it has the resolution set down
    KM> a notch, and you have to tell it "Detect Screen" to make it
    KM> reset. I have a suspicion the mainboard, or at least the chipset,
    KM> is just a fraction too new for Win7, tho that doesn't explain why
    KM> XP64 likes it just fine. And why Win7 runs perfectly on the other
    KM> i7 of about the same age. (Different chipset, not as fancy. But
    KM> same era.)

    Out of curiosity have you tried manually setting the resolution for
    something slightly smaller than the real resolution? Thinking should be 1920x1080, try setting at 1900x1060. Was able to do that with a nVidia driver add-on some time back.

    I don't think I can set it manually, but being even a few pixels off
    correct aspect ratio would drive my eyes to drink. Weirdly, the setting
    it picks is in correct ratio. (16xx by 9xx. But not an even number.)


    KM> Speaking of hibernation -- on XP it does not work if you have
    KM> more than 4GB RAM and it's using PAE. You can still Sleep, but
    KM> not Hibernate.

    Have read where there are problems with Hibernation.

    None of mine have any trouble with it. But it's been an issue with older laptops in particular. Does need proper hardware support. Shouldn't be a problem with anything from about a quad-core or later, tho.

    > Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on
    > this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was
    > my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special'
    > partition.
    KM> Ouch. Yeah, one of those things we learn by deleting it. <g>

    "This looks empty and I need the space." <delete> Oops!

    The empty space, it not workee!


    KM> ExplainingComputers lately demo'd building a NAS from a Pi, which
    KM> was quite interesting. I forget which of the several options he
    KM> used as the OS, but it wasn't real difficult. Or at least he
    KM> explains well!! <g>

    I'll have to sit down and see what's out there. Basics isn't that
    difficult; those little "we do this!" special stuff is sometimes of
    interest. Using a Pi has some interest: it's physically small and
    doesn't use much power; power and enclosure for the hard drives could be
    a small problem. Repurposing an old computer mostly solves that
    (depends on the number and type of hard drive); could die of old age and
    have nothing.

    I have the HDs to do it, and now system with SAS support, and a 4-holer hotswap bay... so all the body parts are present, if scattered around
    the room. <g> Whether I'll ever do anything more complicated than "let Windows do it" remains to be seen.

    ..Hmm: the RPi option is sounding interesting: I have 5v/12v power
    supplies and a hard drive rack.......

    Well, there ya go!


    > KM> Well, I guess I just swap their OSs. And get to use my preferred
    > KM> XP for everyday. <g>
    > When life gives you lemons....
    KM> ....find a lemon catapult and throw them back!!

    eBay or Etsy?!

    Fruit section. <g>

    Yes and no. I haven't set up all of my computers with VNC because I
    don't need to. Right now four are configured and as I recall the
    initial configuration was rather easy -- couple of minutes at most.
    (OK, so with forty computers that's a few hours.) After it's set up it
    is a simple click.

    I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g>


    > KM> Oh... and never ever not EVER change the "use optimized defaults"
    > "Optimized" seems to mean "best results with the original way we shipped
    > it".
    KM> Exactly!! and all that's left of the original is the
    KM> motherboard...
    And that comes without CPU, RAM, sometimes other parts!

    Not when it shipped! <g>


    > KM> And how was YOUR day? :D
    > Apparently better than yours!
    KM> You shoulda seen my day when I thought the damn thing had bricked
    KM> itself... was just about to No More Lenovos Ever.

    Yet I've had pretty good luck with them. OTOH, I don't dig at 'em like
    you do!

    Dig up from the grave as the case was with this one... was supposedly
    dead. Not dead, just slow boot like a server. Happy birthday to me. <g>


    > .. To be, or not to be. *BOOM!* Not to be.
    KM> That's my day!

    Thought the tagline was appropriate!


    So did I!

    .. Aborted effort.
    Close all that you have worked on.
    You ask too much.

    I ask so little, considering how the work is spread among many PCs...
    durn things get lazy...
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Fri Sep 18 14:06:00 2020

    Hi Ky!

    KM> <g> Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if they'd
    KM> named the CPU Zeon instead.....
    People would still mispronounce it!
    <choking noise>-on...

    <chuckle> Thinking the German 'achtung'!


    KM> I am long cured of dual booting, especially outside one's
    KM> species.
    I have one laptop here which dual boots and that's mainly because it
    came with Windows-something and so I thought I'd try to keep it when installing Linux just to have another system which has Windows -- occasionally I do need. I don't know if it rewrites the boot sector or
    not.
    Might be GRUB put itself somewhere else, too, having learned the
    perils of sharing with Windows. <g>

    Could be. Half-recalling something about who was there first: if
    Windows was there originally one thing happened but if Linux was there
    first something else happened.

    The Windows first rule didn't always work, though I am talking of
    limited experiences over several years (so various version of Windows
    and Ubuntu). Some refurbished computers here came with a Windows and it
    got wiped out even though I tried to have it dual boot.



    KM> But even then
    KM> it's a nuisance, and a risk every time you switch OSs. (Also
    KM> Windows no longer respects being told to stick to a given drive
    KM> letter, but instead wishes to always be C:, which changes
    KM> everyone else's drive letters every time one switches OSs.)
    That can get very confusing to the human user, even more so for any
    batch files.
    Yeah, especially when three partitions and three boot menu items
    have have named themselves "WINDOWS". Took several boots to
    untangle which was which. I knew the middle one was Server, but
    you couldn't tell by looking!

    _Which_ Windows?! Sort of reminds me of when I installed the snap
    version of VLC Media player (default one didn't play some file but the
    snap version did). Both default and snap had the little orange cone
    icon, same label -- which one was which?



    [Mint-GRUB-seppuku]
    Glad I don't have that problem here! Wonder if you hae a quirky video
    Shouldna been...

    Wishes, spit... <g>


    card? No idea what the connection would be, but if just looking at the video configuration screen does it -- 'looking at the screen' triggers a "what card and monitor am I?" No idea on the connection to GRUB.
    Exactly. I could see it blowing off the video driver. But it had
    zero business going anywhere near GRUB. Mighta been something in
    the configuration manager that expected an OK at that point
    instead of a CANCEL, and left something open/unwritten... still
    had no business...

    Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.


    KM> I dunno... none of mine has attempted it. Then again, I tend to
    KM> make updating manual or turn it off entirely.
    Turning off is probably the trick. Until Microsoft decides to bypass.
    Imagine the fun once the next version comes out... they've said
    Win10 will be the last version of Windows. Implying that 20 years
    after they first broached the idea (it's been around since the
    Win2K launch, and I saw this with my own eyes), they'll FINALLY
    get Windows to be a cloud service, not a local OS. Meaning
    everyone is locked into subscription mode, not only for the OS
    but perhaps also for data storage. Same thing Adobe and Autodesk
    have already done.

    Half-thought: OK, so my computer works fine when I am able to connect to
    the web, like normal. So what happens when I'm not able to connect.
    like during a power failure, or the WiFi is encoded or the WiFi is
    broken? (I have a HP notebook and its internal option is intermittant
    at best.)


    Anyway, once that's a done deal, there'll be ZERO control over
    updates. You'll get the OS the cloud sends you, and like it.

    I tend to start bristling at that! Might be just my "New Hampshire 'Live
    Free or Die' attitude", but some things you just don't tell me to do
    without a darn good explanation I agree to. (I was raised in NH and
    move to IA.)



    Wonderful. :( Did a bit of Google-fu with: 'windows 7 lenovo download iso'. Nothing all that new so probably the same as what you discovered
    (but just in case!) This one has a list that looks interesting: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_ install/i-do-not-have-windows-7-media-but-i-do-have-my/5ce13741- ac25-4969-ae82-2494726aac1c
    That's just links to the DigitalRiver downloads, which are no
    more. There's a tool for downloading ISOs straight from
    Microsoft, but you need a NON-OEM serial number for it to work
    (IOW you need a retail box version of Windows). So the tag on a
    Lenovo or Dell or HP (which I have in abundance) is no good for
    that. There are a couple unofficial MSDN archives which can
    provide the official ISOs with less trouble. But none of those is
    the desired OEM-specific ISO, tho I've found a couple other OEM
    images floating around.

    OK -- I probably should have checked further -- it's the thought that
    counts?!



    KM> To be fair, the pile of i5/i7 laptops someone gift me are equally
    KM> cranky about older Windows... Black will install but won't stay
    KM> activated. Win10 thinks it's activated (no one did so) on some of
    KM> 'em and not on others, which I take to be a flaw in its hardware
    KM> hash mechanism. (They all came with it. Will only stay on the
    KM> more agreeable specimens... two already have PCLOS instead. They
    KM> need more RAM to be really useful, most having only 4GB. And
    KM> right now RAM prices are pretty durn high.)
    Winter project: I'll have to go through to see what I have - not just
    RAM but some old daughterboards. ...Probably not that much of interest
    in the RAM Dep't: recalling a bunch of small capacity units.
    I dunno, I can't see as far as your parts box. <g>

    It's blocking the view of your camera?! ...For some reason reminds me
    of one of the LP guys at the store (how we got into this discussion I
    have no idea!): he was talking to his girlfriend (video chat) late one
    night, apparently forgot to hang up when he put his phone down to go to
    bed. Discovered it was still on in the morning -- after he had changed
    'in full view'. She wasn't on/awake at the time but he was a little embarrassed at the possibility. LIS, how that discussions started....


    KM> This one is my first. It needs the Storport patch from Microsoft,
    KM> and an OS-specific driver. Which worked fine on XP64, and not at
    KM> all on Win7. Holy crap, I've never seen Windows do an autorevert
    KM> like THAT before... cycled through a bunch of angry screens and
    KM> finally did a full system restore... it was VERY unhappy... Well,
    KM> we won't try THAT again!!
    So it's true: computers _do_ get mad!
    Or at least Windows does!! Never have I seen so many error
    screens without anything locking up. One could regard its full
    recovery as miraculous. <g>

    I guess!! You must live right!


    KM> ...tho Win7 also has trouble hanging onto the vidcard driver on
    KM> that box (XP has no such problem, and neither does Win10). About
    KM> half the time when Win7 wakes up from Sleep (or hibernation,
    KM> haven't checked which it's doing), it has the resolution set down
    KM> a notch, and you have to tell it "Detect Screen" to make it
    KM> reset. I have a suspicion the mainboard, or at least the chipset,
    KM> is just a fraction too new for Win7, tho that doesn't explain why
    KM> XP64 likes it just fine. And why Win7 runs perfectly on the other
    KM> i7 of about the same age. (Different chipset, not as fancy. But
    KM> same era.)
    Out of curiosity have you tried manually setting the resolution for something slightly smaller than the real resolution? Thinking should be 1920x1080, try setting at 1900x1060. Was able to do that with a nVidia driver add-on some time back.
    I don't think I can set it manually, but being even a few pixels
    off correct aspect ratio would drive my eyes to drink. Weirdly,
    the setting it picks is in correct ratio. (16xx by 9xx. But not
    an even number.)

    I was initially thinking "16:9" so the "16xx:9xx" wasn't making sense.
    Your pixel numbers are 16-hundred-something by nine hundred something. <Checking> 1600x900 is a 16:9 ratio ("High Definition Plus / HD+") --
    might be a little more (or less) to accomodate for over- or
    underscanning.



    KM> Speaking of hibernation -- on XP it does not work if you have
    KM> more than 4GB RAM and it's using PAE. You can still Sleep, but
    KM> not Hibernate.
    Have read where there are problems with Hibernation.
    None of mine have any trouble with it. But it's been an issue
    with older laptops in particular. Does need proper hardware
    support. Shouldn't be a problem with anything from about a
    quad-core or later, tho.

    My Lenovo laptop is 'only' dual core.


    > Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on
    > this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was
    > my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special'
    > partition.
    KM> Ouch. Yeah, one of those things we learn by deleting it. <g>
    "This looks empty and I need the space." <delete> Oops!
    The empty space, it not workee!

    But look at all that space I'll have when it does work again!!



    KM> ExplainingComputers lately demo'd building a NAS from a Pi, which
    KM> was quite interesting. I forget which of the several options he
    KM> used as the OS, but it wasn't real difficult. Or at least he
    KM> explains well!! <g>
    I'll have to sit down and see what's out there. Basics isn't that difficult; those little "we do this!" special stuff is sometimes of interest. Using a Pi has some interest: it's physically small and
    doesn't use much power; power and enclosure for the hard drives could be
    a small problem. Repurposing an old computer mostly solves that
    (depends on the number and type of hard drive); could die of old age and have nothing.
    I have the HDs to do it, and now system with SAS support, and a
    4-holer hotswap bay... so all the body parts are present, if
    scattered around the room. <g> Whether I'll ever do anything
    more complicated than "let Windows do it" remains to be seen.

    Yes, I've semi-sorta collected the hardware as sales and interest
    strikes me. Also considering using some old/small hard drives -- one considering is JBOD-ing them together, another is keeping individual but
    sort of like partitions on a big capacity drive ==> small backup would
    go to a small hard drive.


    ..Hmm: the RPi option is sounding interesting: I have 5v/12v power
    supplies and a hard drive rack.......
    Well, there ya go!

    Wonder if I'll need that sequential start-up switch with all the hard
    drives?!




    Yes and no. I haven't set up all of my computers with VNC because I
    don't need to. Right now four are configured and as I recall the
    initial configuration was rather easy -- couple of minutes at most.
    (OK, so with forty computers that's a few hours.) After it's set up it
    is a simple click.
    I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g>

    Wikipedia?!




    > KM> And how was YOUR day? :D
    > Apparently better than yours!
    KM> You shoulda seen my day when I thought the damn thing had bricked
    KM> itself... was just about to No More Lenovos Ever.
    Yet I've had pretty good luck with them. OTOH, I don't dig at 'em like
    you do!
    Dig up from the grave as the case was with this one... was
    supposedly dead. Not dead, just slow boot like a server. Happy
    birthday to me. <g>

    It is rather fun when something that doesn't work can be fixed easily!



    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

    ... If it looks stupid but it works, it ain't stupid.
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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Barry Martin on Sun Sep 20 14:03:00 2020
    Barry,

    It's blocking the view of your camera?! ...For some reason reminds me
    of one of the LP guys at the store (how we got into this discussion I
    have no idea!): he was talking to his girlfriend (video chat) late one night, apparently forgot to hang up when he put his phone down to go to bed. Discovered it was still on in the morning -- after he had changed 'in full view'. She wasn't on/awake at the time but he was a little embarrassed at the possibility. LIS, how that discussions started....

    My webcam has a blue light that illuminates when it is "activated". So, that's something I watch. Or before bedtime, or if I am "au natural", I
    will turn the webcam toward the ceiling. Yet, I've heard of couples having mirrors above the bed on the ceiling. :P

    Daryl

    ... Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Mon Sep 21 21:26:00 2020
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    > KM> <g> Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if they'd
    > KM> named the CPU Zeon instead.....
    > People would still mispronounce it!
    KM> <choking noise>-on...

    <chuckle> Thinking the German 'achtung'!

    Nah, obviously not paying attention. <g>

    Could be. Half-recalling something about who was there first: if
    Windows was there originally one thing happened but if Linux was there
    first something else happened.

    Yeah, in the olden days Windows always had to be installed first, and
    oldest to newest. Now I'm not sure it makes any difference.

    The Windows first rule didn't always work, though I am talking of
    limited experiences over several years (so various version of Windows
    and Ubuntu). Some refurbished computers here came with a Windows and it
    got wiped out even though I tried to have it dual boot.

    I used to frequent a forum where people often griped about Windows
    suddenly failing to boot. In every case, they'd been dual-booting with
    linux. I call this "learning from others' misfortunes" and have not had
    a mixed-species boot since Argo's Red Hat/Win95 setup, installed in 1995 (eventually RH lost its password, which was "password" and wouldn't boot
    at all, and was made to go away. However Win95 remained solid for all
    the years until Argo was finally retired, end of 2011.)

    KM> Yeah, especially when three partitions and three boot menu items
    KM> have have named themselves "WINDOWS". Took several boots to
    KM> untangle which was which. I knew the middle one was Server, but
    KM> you couldn't tell by looking!

    _Which_ Windows?! Sort of reminds me of when I installed the snap
    version of VLC Media player (default one didn't play some file but the
    snap version did). Both default and snap had the little orange cone
    icon, same label -- which one was which?

    Oh yeah, have had that sort of thing too.. which of several icons? Which
    drive was it on again??

    KM> Exactly. I could see it blowing off the video driver. But it had
    KM> zero business going anywhere near GRUB. Mighta been something in
    KM> the configuration manager that expected an OK at that point
    KM> instead of a CANCEL, and left something open/unwritten... still
    KM> had no business...

    Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.

    Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which was like
    as not the root of the problem.

    KM> Imagine the fun once the next version comes out... they've said
    KM> Win10 will be the last version of Windows. Implying that 20 years
    KM> after they first broached the idea (it's been around since the
    KM> Win2K launch, and I saw this with my own eyes), they'll FINALLY
    KM> get Windows to be a cloud service, not a local OS. Meaning
    KM> everyone is locked into subscription mode, not only for the OS
    KM> but perhaps also for data storage. Same thing Adobe and Autodesk
    KM> have already done.

    Half-thought: OK, so my computer works fine when I am able to connect to
    the web, like normal. So what happens when I'm not able to connect.
    like during a power failure, or the WiFi is encoded or the WiFi is
    broken? (I have a HP notebook and its internal option is intermittant
    at best.)

    EXACTLY!!!

    And I'm like... no way in hell.

    At the aforementioned launch were some 1000 IT pros. During the
    presentation, they all developed identical angry frowns. (I was off to
    one side near the front and had a fine view of the audience.)

    KM> Anyway, once that's a done deal, there'll be ZERO control over
    KM> updates. You'll get the OS the cloud sends you, and like it.

    I tend to start bristling at that! Might be just my "New Hampshire 'Live Free or Die' attitude", but some things you just don't tell me to do
    without a darn good explanation I agree to. (I was raised in NH and
    move to IA.)

    Yep. Being of the Westerner stripe, my reaction is, "Oh yeah? Try and
    make me."

    KM> provide the official ISOs with less trouble. But none of those is
    KM> the desired OEM-specific ISO, tho I've found a couple other OEM
    KM> images floating around.

    OK -- I probably should have checked further -- it's the thought that counts?!

    <grin> If only thinking could instantly install the OS of our choice,
    with all the desired features... I know! I'll call it Telepathy. <g>

    > Winter project: I'll have to go through to see what I have - not just
    > RAM but some old daughterboards. ...Probably not that much of interest
    > in the RAM Dep't: recalling a bunch of small capacity units.
    KM> I dunno, I can't see as far as your parts box. <g>
    It's blocking the view of your camera?! ...For some reason reminds me

    It's that tall??!

    of one of the LP guys at the store (how we got into this discussion I
    have no idea!): he was talking to his girlfriend (video chat) late one
    night, apparently forgot to hang up when he put his phone down to go to
    bed. Discovered it was still on in the morning -- after he had changed
    'in full view'. She wasn't on/awake at the time but he was a little embarrassed at the possibility. LIS, how that discussions started....

    WHOOPS!



    > KM> This one is my first. It needs the Storport patch from Microsoft,
    > KM> and an OS-specific driver. Which worked fine on XP64, and not at
    > KM> all on Win7. Holy crap, I've never seen Windows do an autorevert
    > KM> like THAT before... cycled through a bunch of angry screens and
    > KM> finally did a full system restore... it was VERY unhappy... Well,
    > KM> we won't try THAT again!!
    > So it's true: computers _do_ get mad!
    KM> Or at least Windows does!! Never have I seen so many error
    KM> screens without anything locking up. One could regard its full
    KM> recovery as miraculous. <g>
    I guess!! You must live right!

    Or it fears my mighty hammer. Er, axe.

    KM> I don't think I can set it manually, but being even a few pixels
    KM> off correct aspect ratio would drive my eyes to drink. Weirdly,
    KM> the setting it picks is in correct ratio. (16xx by 9xx. But not
    KM> an even number.)

    I was initially thinking "16:9" so the "16xx:9xx" wasn't making sense.
    Your pixel numbers are 16-hundred-something by nine hundred something. <Checking> 1600x900 is a 16:9 ratio ("High Definition Plus / HD+") --
    might be a little more (or less) to accomodate for over- or
    underscanning.

    Methinks I'd rather not have it blowing off the driver, because who
    knows what that might do under the hood.

    > Have read where there are problems with Hibernation.
    KM> None of mine have any trouble with it. But it's been an issue
    KM> with older laptops in particular. Does need proper hardware
    KM> support. Shouldn't be a problem with anything from about a
    KM> quad-core or later, tho.

    My Lenovo laptop is 'only' dual core.

    Which is basically the same chip, just didn't test as good and got set
    to two cores. Anything with more than one real core, I should have said. Hyperthreading is not real cores. Anyway it's the chipset that counts
    (same one supports duo or quad), and it shouldn't have a problem.


    > > Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on
    > > this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was
    > > my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special'
    > > partition.
    > KM> Ouch. Yeah, one of those things we learn by deleting it. <g>
    > "This looks empty and I need the space." <delete> Oops!
    KM> The empty space, it not workee!
    But look at all that space I'll have when it does work again!!

    Just see if it lets you use it! <g>

    One of the Dells has an oversized recovery partition, and I wound up
    putting all sorts of junk in there as storage...

    KM> I have the HDs to do it, and now system with SAS support, and a
    KM> 4-holer hotswap bay... so all the body parts are present, if
    KM> scattered around the room. <g> Whether I'll ever do anything
    KM> more complicated than "let Windows do it" remains to be seen.

    Yes, I've semi-sorta collected the hardware as sales and interest
    strikes me. Also considering using some old/small hard drives -- one considering is JBOD-ing them together, another is keeping individual but
    sort of like partitions on a big capacity drive ==> small backup would
    go to a small hard drive.

    I make images of small drives and store them on a big drive. <g>

    > ..Hmm: the RPi option is sounding interesting: I have 5v/12v power
    > supplies and a hard drive rack.......
    KM> Well, there ya go!

    Wonder if I'll need that sequential start-up switch with all the hard drives?!

    At least with iStarUSA (my preferred brand) the multi-bay external units
    do it automagically. That's the only reason they have circuitry at all.
    The single-bay units are just pass-through.

    KM> I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g>

    Wikipedia?!


    Some bloke on a BBS. <g>

    KM> Dig up from the grave as the case was with this one... was
    KM> supposedly dead. Not dead, just slow boot like a server. Happy
    KM> birthday to me. <g>

    It is rather fun when something that doesn't work can be fixed easily!

    Such as by turning it on! <g>
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Daryl Stout on Mon Sep 21 07:25:00 2020

    Hi Daryl!

    It's blocking the view of your camera?! ...For some reason reminds me
    of one of the LP guys at the store (how we got into this discussion I
    have no idea!): he was talking to his girlfriend (video chat) late one night, apparently forgot to hang up when he put his phone down to go to bed. Discovered it was still on in the morning -- after he had changed 'in full view'. She wasn't on/awake at the time but he was a little embarrassed at the possibility. LIS, how that discussions started....
    My webcam has a blue light that illuminates when it is
    "activated". So, that's something I watch. Or before bedtime, or
    if I am "au natural", I will turn the webcam toward the ceiling.
    Yet, I've heard of couples having mirrors above the bed on the
    ceiling. :P

    Several of the cameras here have no LED; when Autumn (our grandchild) was
    an infant I created "Autumncam" so we could monitor while she was
    sleeping. Camera in the room had a LED. Used a notebook to monitor,
    which happened to have a built-in camera but AFAIK no 'on' indicator.
    It has a piece of paper of paper taped over the camera just in case. ...Actually still does: never took it off!


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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Tue Sep 22 08:34:00 2020

    Hi Ky!

    > KM> <g> Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if
    hey
    d
    > KM> named the CPU Zeon instead.....
    > People would still mispronounce it!
    KM> <choking noise>-on...
    <chuckle> Thinking the German 'achtung'!
    Nah, obviously not paying attention. <g>

    <smack!> And that wasn't from the clicking of heels together! <g>



    Could be. Half-recalling something about who was there first: if
    Windows was there originally one thing happened but if Linux was there
    first something else happened.
    Yeah, in the olden days Windows always had to be installed first,
    and oldest to newest. Now I'm not sure it makes any difference.

    Don't recall that but probably did it accidentally: any machine I had a Windows on was going to be one that was refurbished, so probably an
    older version, maybe updated. Ubuntu would be the latetst LTS
    version,so automatically older to newer.


    The Windows first rule didn't always work, though I am talking of
    limited experiences over several years (so various version of Windows
    and Ubuntu). Some refurbished computers here came with a Windows and it
    got wiped out even though I tried to have it dual boot.
    I used to frequent a forum where people often griped about
    Windows suddenly failing to boot. In every case, they'd been
    dual-booting with linux. I call this "learning from others'
    misfortunes" and have not had a mixed-species boot since Argo's
    Red Hat/Win95 setup, installed in 1995 (eventually RH lost its
    password, which was "password" and wouldn't boot at all, and was
    made to go away. However Win95 remained solid for all the years
    until Argo was finally retired, end of 2011.)

    Yes, I've done a lot of 'learn from others'. ...Someone's probably
    going to gripe about your password being 'password' but doesn't matter
    as have to be in range. Someone made the joke here that if I started
    seeing a bunch of cars parked outside the house I'd better change the
    WiFi password!



    KM> Yeah, especially when three partitions and three boot menu items
    KM> have have named themselves "WINDOWS". Took several boots to
    KM> untangle which was which. I knew the middle one was Server, but
    KM> you couldn't tell by looking!
    _Which_ Windows?! Sort of reminds me of when I installed the snap
    version of VLC Media player (default one didn't play some file but the
    snap version did). Both default and snap had the little orange cone
    icon, same label -- which one was which?
    Oh yeah, have had that sort of thing too.. which of several
    icons? Which drive was it on again??

    BTDT!! I've put a file called "WhatIsThis" is some subdirs so I could
    find what it did or why it was created. Usually used the extension
    '.BJM' for a further indicator I created that file. Windows (at least
    the old ones when I used it) needed to be told .BJM was a text file;
    Linux just knows.


    KM> Exactly. I could see it blowing off the video driver. But it had
    KM> zero business going anywhere near GRUB. Mighta been something in
    KM> the configuration manager that expected an OK at that point
    KM> instead of a CANCEL, and left something open/unwritten... still
    KM> had no business...
    Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.
    Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which
    was like as not the root of the problem.

    I C:/ <bseg>

    Yes, have run into a few of those. And have sometimes seen where
    there's an exchange between a user and the author where the author
    states he's just not interested enough in that feature/option to do it,
    or admits it's beyond his capabilities.


    KM> Imagine the fun once the next version comes out... they've said
    KM> Win10 will be the last version of Windows. Implying that 20 years
    KM> after they first broached the idea (it's been around since the
    KM> Win2K launch, and I saw this with my own eyes), they'll FINALLY
    KM> get Windows to be a cloud service, not a local OS. Meaning
    KM> everyone is locked into subscription mode, not only for the OS
    KM> but perhaps also for data storage. Same thing Adobe and Autodesk
    KM> have already done.
    Half-thought: OK, so my computer works fine when I am able to connect to
    the web, like normal. So what happens when I'm not able to connect.
    like during a power failure, or the WiFi is encoded or the WiFi is
    broken? (I have a HP notebook and its internal option is intermittant
    at best.)
    EXACTLY!!!

    I've got a notebook computer which seems to have that issue. It is set
    to dual boot between Windows-something (10? - it did that sneaky upgrade
    people were in an uproar over maybe three years back) and Ubuntu 18.04.
    Haven't tested with Windows but with Ubuntu it needs to be connected to
    The Internet to complete booting, otherwise the screne gets to a certain
    point and the sceen semi-randomly blinks and the HDD LED indicates
    constant access. Plug in an Ethernet cable - boots fine.

    The internal WiFi on this unit is intermittent so has a dongle added. Apparently the boot issues occurs before the driver is loaded.


    <continue with Windows via Cloud>
    And I'm like... no way in hell.
    At the aforementioned launch were some 1000 IT pros. During the presentation, they all developed identical angry frowns. (I was
    off to one side near the front and had a fine view of the
    audience.)

    It's kind of funny when everyone comes up with the same conclusion!


    KM> Anyway, once that's a done deal, there'll be ZERO control over
    KM> updates. You'll get the OS the cloud sends you, and like it.
    I tend to start bristling at that! Might be just my "New Hampshire 'Live Free or Die' attitude", but some things you just don't tell me to do
    without a darn good explanation I agree to. (I was raised in NH and
    move to IA.)
    Yep. Being of the Westerner stripe, my reaction is, "Oh yeah? Try
    and make me."

    There are good and bad things about The Cloud. Might make things a lot
    easier with 'everyone on the same page': utilities up-to-date and so compatible (assuming the machine can use -- 64-bit utility on a 32-bit machine...). Well, that might be processed 'in the Sky' and just the
    end result sent out (seeing some problems with that too!).



    KM> provide the official ISOs with less trouble. But none of those is
    KM> the desired OEM-specific ISO, tho I've found a couple other OEM
    KM> images floating around.
    OK -- I probably should have checked further -- it's the thought that counts?!
    <grin> If only thinking could instantly install the OS of our
    choice, with all the desired features... I know! I'll call it
    Telepathy. <g>

    Let's float that idea to the flagpole and see who salutes!


    > Winter project: I'll have to go through to see what I have - not just
    > RAM but some old daughterboards. ...Probably not that much of interest
    > in the RAM Dep't: recalling a bunch of small capacity units.
    KM> I dunno, I can't see as far as your parts box. <g>
    It's blocking the view of your camera?! ...For some reason reminds me
    It's that tall??!

    I have a bad habit of sometimes playing 'Stack'.....



    KM> I don't think I can set it manually, but being even a few pixels
    KM> off correct aspect ratio would drive my eyes to drink. Weirdly,
    KM> the setting it picks is in correct ratio. (16xx by 9xx. But not
    KM> an even number.)
    I was initially thinking "16:9" so the "16xx:9xx" wasn't making sense.
    Your pixel numbers are 16-hundred-something by nine hundred something. <Checking> 1600x900 is a 16:9 ratio ("High Definition Plus / HD+") --
    might be a little more (or less) to accomodate for over- or
    underscanning.
    Methinks I'd rather not have it blowing off the driver, because
    who knows what that might do under the hood.

    Yes, I've created some problems trying to repair a problem. Some repair projects get a delayed start until I have a backup in place just in case
    'poop occurs'.


    > Have read where there are problems with Hibernation.
    KM> None of mine have any trouble with it. But it's been an issue
    KM> with older laptops in particular. Does need proper hardware
    KM> support. Shouldn't be a problem with anything from about a
    KM> quad-core or later, tho.
    My Lenovo laptop is 'only' dual core.
    Which is basically the same chip, just didn't test as good and
    got set to two cores. Anything with more than one real core, I
    should have said. Hyperthreading is not real cores. Anyway it's
    the chipset that counts (same one supports duo or quad), and it
    shouldn't have a problem.

    Possibly why the BIOS for this motherboard has switches to control the
    various cores. Initially I'm thinking why would someone want to shut
    off a core (it's an 8-core CPU)? Probably more the other way: allow an overclocker to turn on a core and maybe use a quad-core as a quint-core.




    One of the Dells has an oversized recovery partition, and I wound
    up putting all sorts of junk in there as storage...

    Sneaky hiding place for private data too!

    I was semi-playing around with 'split' systems. In the past have used
    two hard drives: one for the boot and the OS, the other for data. This
    time figure to try the boot/OS drive as one of those solid state
    critters, potentially some problems so left the data on the 'rust drive'
    as you call it. Was also thinking along your lines: not necessarily
    hide stuff but use the 'excess' space for don't-need-too-often storage.
    Never did (or at least not so far) use the extra space on the SSD but
    did find I was running a little low on the space I allocated for the OS. Multiple backups to what I already have - just in case! -- and delete
    one of the 'sneaky' partitions on the SSD and expand the OS partation in
    to it. Worked without problem (whew!!).


    KM> I have the HDs to do it, and now system with SAS support, and a
    KM> 4-holer hotswap bay... so all the body parts are present, if
    KM> scattered around the room. <g> Whether I'll ever do anything
    KM> more complicated than "let Windows do it" remains to be seen.
    Yes, I've semi-sorta collected the hardware as sales and interest
    strikes me. Also considering using some old/small hard drives -- one considering is JBOD-ing them together, another is keeping individual but sort of like partitions on a big capacity drive ==> small backup would
    go to a small hard drive.
    I make images of small drives and store them on a big drive. <g>

    And then an image of the big drive on an even bigger drive! I don't
    play around with operating systems like you do so no real need to do the imaging. For you it makes sense.


    > ..Hmm: the RPi option is sounding interesting: I have 5v/12v power
    > supplies and a hard drive rack.......
    KM> Well, there ya go!
    Wonder if I'll need that sequential start-up switch with all the hard drives?!
    At least with iStarUSA (my preferred brand) the multi-bay
    external units do it automagically. That's the only reason they
    have circuitry at all. The single-bay units are just
    pass-through.

    I'll keep that bit of information. (Finding it may be another thing!
    <g>) The half-baked build-your-own NSA project here is considering use
    of several old/small hard drives for storage. Some might be clobbered
    together under JBOD, though if one fails they all effectively fail.
    Might be better to use as individual drives and/or store non-critical
    data. As far as the power draw, was a semi-consideration -- inital
    project was sort of thinking the unit in a computer case, so use a ATX
    PSU. The use of an RPi put a bit of a twist on the PSU aspect -- woiuld definitely need an external supply, which could be that 5v/12v one I
    have -- if able to supply the necessary start-up current.


    KM> I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g>
    Wikipedia?!
    Some bloke on a BBS. <g>

    :) ...So did I provide a usuable introductory explanation in an earlier
    message?


    KM> Dig up from the grave as the case was with this one... was
    KM> supposedly dead. Not dead, just slow boot like a server. Happy
    KM> birthday to me. <g>
    It is rather fun when something that doesn't work can be fixed easily!
    Such as by turning it on! <g>

    Some times they just need the rest!


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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Ky Moffet on Wed Sep 23 07:46:00 2020
    Ky,

    <chuckle> Thinking the German 'achtung'!

    Nah, obviously not paying attention. <g>

    All I could think of was "A German Sneeze", or "Hogan's Heroes". <G>
    Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink) lamented that his character would be
    what he was remembered for. Yet, he and his father were excellent
    orchestral conductors. I remember a radio commercial several years
    ago for National Semiconductor, where this woman noted "My favorite
    National Semiconductor is Leonard Bernstein". <G>

    Yeah, in the olden days Windows always had to be installed first, and oldest to newest. Now I'm not sure it makes any difference.

    It was also so much easier years ago, and didn't take as long. The
    2004 Update to Windows 10 took nearly 8 hours to download, install,
    and do all the necessary reboots.

    I used to frequent a forum where people often griped about Windows suddenly failing to boot. In every case, they'd been dual-booting with linux. I call this "learning from others' misfortunes" and have not had
    a mixed-species boot since Argo's Red Hat/Win95 setup, installed in
    1995 (eventually RH lost its password, which was "password" and
    wouldn't boot at all, and was made to go away. However Win95 remained solid for all the years until Argo was finally retired, end of 2011.)

    I think of the meme where the guy says he's going to change is password to "incorrect", as he keeps getting a message saying "Your Password is incorrect". :P

    Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which was like
    as not the root of the problem.

    I've seen some doorgame IGM's (with L.O.R.D.) like that.

    <grin> If only thinking could instantly install the OS of our choice,
    with all the desired features... I know! I'll call it Telepathy. <g>

    Really.

    of one of the LP guys at the store (how we got into this discussion I
    have no idea!): he was talking to his girlfriend (video chat) late one night, apparently forgot to hang up when he put his phone down to go to
    bed. Discovered it was still on in the morning -- after he had changed
    'in full view'. She wasn't on/awake at the time but he was a little embarrassed at the possibility. LIS, how that discussions started....

    WHOOPS!

    It happens to all of us. Three things fail as we get older. The first is memory ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... darn!! I forgot the other
    two!! <G>

    Wikipedia?!


    Some bloke on a BBS. <g>

    Plenty of those around. <G>

    It is rather fun when something that doesn't work can be fixed easily!

    Such as by turning it on! <g>

    Or you plug the power strip into itself, and wonder why it doesn't work. :P

    Daryl

    ... I'm making chocolate chip cookies, and I have more M&M's to peel.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Daryl Stout on Thu Oct 15 21:14:00 2020
    DARYL STOUT wrote:
    Ky,

    > <chuckle> Thinking the German 'achtung'!

    KM> Nah, obviously not paying attention. <g>

    All I could think of was "A German Sneeze", or "Hogan's Heroes". <G> Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink) lamented that his character would be
    what he was remembered for. Yet, he and his father were excellent
    orchestral conductors. I remember a radio commercial several years

    Huh, I didn't know that. I knew he did stuff outside of TV, tho what had
    never penetrated (or didn't stick). Wonder if there are any recordings?

    ago for National Semiconductor, where this woman noted "My favorite
    National Semiconductor is Leonard Bernstein". <G>

    LOL! Good one.


    KM> Yeah, in the olden days Windows always had to be installed first, and
    KM> oldest to newest. Now I'm not sure it makes any difference.

    It was also so much easier years ago, and didn't take as long. The
    2004 Update to Windows 10 took nearly 8 hours to download, install,
    and do all the necessary reboots.

    Yeah, basically it downloads and installs a whole new monkey.....

    http://www.wholenewmonkey.com

    [Yes, I registered the domain just to house this silly joke.]

    Someday you'll wake up to discover it's downloaded a cloud OS, is
    demanding a subscription fee, and until you pay up, nothing works.

    KM> 1995 (eventually RH lost its password, which was "password" and

    BTW this was apparently a known issue with RH6, as someone told me
    decades later.

    KM> wouldn't boot at all, and was made to go away. However Win95 remained
    KM> solid for all the years until Argo was finally retired, end of 2011.)

    I think of the meme where the guy says he's going to change is password to "incorrect", as he keeps getting a message saying "Your Password is incorrect".:P

    LOL, I may have to use that one!

    I make things even easier nowadays. What is your root password? "root"

    I hate typing passwords. One of these days I'll get around to turning it
    off entirely. Ain't no one else here to muck things up.

    It happens to all of us. Three things fail as we get older. The first is memory ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... darn!! I forgot the other two!! <G>

    There were two??!

    KM> Some bloke on a BBS. <g>

    Plenty of those around. <G>

    <looks around> Oh my. Where did YOU come from??

    > It is rather fun when something that doesn't work can be fixed easily!

    KM> Such as by turning it on! <g>

    Or you plug the power strip into itself, and wonder why it doesn't work. :P

    Electrical circle jerk. <g>

    I've never managed that one, but with a new PC build, when I first fire
    it up to test, I have invariably forgotten to plug in something vital.
    Often the power. <g>
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Thu Oct 15 22:11:00 2020
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    Don't recall that but probably did it accidentally: any
    machine I had a Windows on was going to be one that was refurbished,
    so probably an older version, maybe updated. Ubuntu would be the
    latetst LTS version,so automatically older to newer.

    So no worries! <g>

    Yes, I've done a lot of 'learn from others'. ...Someone's probably
    going to gripe about your password being 'password' but doesn't
    matter

    Doesn't matter since no one else is going to stick their grimy fingers
    on my keyboard, and if some network attack is as far as needing
    password input, it's already too late. With recent installs I disable it entirely, if I can. (Some distros won't let you.)

    as have to be in range. Someone made the joke here that if I
    started seeing a bunch of cars parked outside the house I'd better
    change the WiFi password!

    When your street looks like a parking lot, you're really in trouble...
    now that every new car has wifi, it's amusing to turn on the unloved cellphone's wifi and watch the endless parade of unsecured wireless
    going by on the highway. (Also amazing that it has enough range to see
    them at all.)

    Oh yeah, have had that sort of thing too.. which of several
    KM> icons? Which drive was it on again??

    And sometimes I don't realize I'm using the one on the wrong drive until
    one day I need to twiddle something on disk and... what do you mean, I'm running the copy in D:\storage instead of the one in C:\Utility ?? Or
    worse... what do you mean, you're running the copy from over on \\Bullet\F:\Utility??

    Especially with Win7 and Aero active -- it lets you move stuff around on
    disk and Aero keeps track. (If you disable Aero, this does not work.)
    Pretty soon you don't know where any of your shortcuts point, even tho
    they still point at the right program!! It's the one feature that
    endeared Aero to me (otherwise I can't stand it, because I can't get eye-restful colors) because it tolerated my dragging stuff around
    without troubling to reinstall, AND without editing the wandering
    program's shortcut.

    BTDT!! I've put a file called "WhatIsThis" is some subdirs so I
    could find what it did or why it was created. Usually used the
    extension '.BJM' for a further indicator I created that file.
    Windows (at least the old ones when I used it) needed to be told .BJM
    was a text file;

    Oh yeah, now I have textfiles in the root of every drive, so I can see
    where I am even if it's non-obvious (or I'm oblivious). No content, just
    need the filename to tell me where I am. Eg. Silver_C_WD500.txt

    Linux just knows.

    I'd like to know how it just knows!

    Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.
    Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which
    was like as not the root of the problem.

    I C:/ <bseg>

    Time to upgrade your compiler. <g>

    Yes, have run into a few of those. And have sometimes seen where
    there's an exchange between a user and the author where the author
    states he's just not interested enough in that feature/option to do
    it, or admits it's beyond his capabilities.

    Too bad more of these don't get picked up by better/more interested programmers.

    That's actually why all the sudden improvements in ReactOS -- lately got
    the attention of a bunch of programmers with time on their hands, and
    they fixed/improved more stuff in the past year than the one-man-band-and-occasional-help managed in the previous two decades.
    Those of us who've been keeping an eye on it are suitably grateful. <g>

    I've got a notebook computer which seems to have that issue. It is
    set to dual boot between Windows-something (10? - it did that sneaky
    upgrade people were in an uproar over maybe three years back) and
    Ubuntu 18.04. Haven't tested with Windows but with Ubuntu it needs to
    be connected to The Internet to complete booting, otherwise the
    screne gets to a certain point and the sceen semi-randomly blinks and
    the HDD LED indicates constant access. Plug in an Ethernet cable -
    boots fine.

    That's nasty; I'll consider myself warned!!

    The internal WiFi on this unit is intermittent so has a dongle
    added. Apparently the boot issues occurs before the driver is
    loaded.

    So far I haven't run into goofy onboard wifi, but have had a couple
    NICs croak... you might check if the wifi card is loose, or its antenna
    is loose. Usually you can get to 'em easily as it's typically a card in
    a slot (meaning it's also easily replaced, relatively speaking) with its
    own door, since the slot can also accommodate those micro SSD drives.

    <continue with Windows via Cloud>

    And I'm like... no way in hell.
    At the aforementioned launch were some 1000 IT pros. During the presentation, they all developed identical angry frowns. (I was
    off to one side near the front and had a fine view of the
    audience.)

    It's kind of funny when everyone comes up with the same conclusion!

    Oh yeah. But seems so obvious if you have the first clue about business
    vs its necessary reliability. Someone in the same era figured out that
    downtime for big business could cost as much as $8 million per MINUTE...
    so building in even brief cloud-caused downtimes was out of the
    question. And considering how much sheer waiting around one did on that
    era's broadbland (typo, I swear!) it would have been a very costly
    switch even with zero downtime.

    Which was flamingly obvious to everyone in the room, except for the
    hapless Microsoft presenter. (Who was a nice guy, but a true believer in
    The Future Is Cloud. Sadly, he may have been right, if premature.)

    There are good and bad things about The Cloud. Might make things a
    lot easier with 'everyone on the same page': utilities up-to-date and
    so compatible (assuming the machine can use -- 64-bit utility on a
    32-bit machine...). Well, that might be processed 'in the Sky' and
    just the end result sent out (seeing some problems with that too!).

    Yep. And it's becoming forced, first by Adobe and Autodesk with their subscription-only models, and soon enough by Windows. My sister's
    architectural firm is already all cloud-based, because by way of their necessary software, going cloud is now state of the art, and if you're
    not up to date on everything, you can and will be sued into a culvert
    the first time anything goes majorly wrong and some shyster can claim
    you weren't using "supported, industry standard" everything. (They don't
    even keep older company cars, same reason.)

    Which is how I came to have a stack of 5 year old PCs, and the titular
    giant server. Out of support means too much liability (especially when
    your projects are budgeted in multiple millions of dollars), so out the
    door they go.

    But.. "I'm not a production environment; I'm a basement." :D

    <grin> If only thinking could instantly install the OS of our
    choice, with all the desired features... I know! I'll call it
    Telepathy. <g>

    Let's float that idea to the flagpole and see who salutes!

    Wait, why is DOS up on the flagpole??

    I have a bad habit of sometimes playing 'Stack'.....

    Mine are more like "randomly piled". <g>

    Methinks I'd rather not have it blowing off the driver, because
    who knows what that might do under the hood.

    Yes, I've created
    some problems trying to repair a problem. Some repair projects get a
    delayed start until I have a backup in place just in case 'poop
    occurs'.

    Not even that, but that should it change its mind about resolution while
    I'm doing something, I could wind up with unfortunate clicks. This is
    why I turn off ALL the sliding and fading everything on linux, because
    it can and DOES capture the wrong click (Windows tends to have a more
    definite time boundary for click vs menu, but I've still seen the
    problem there).

    Possibly why the BIOS for this motherboard has switches to control
    the various cores. Initially I'm thinking why would someone want to
    shut off a core (it's an 8-core CPU)? Probably more the other way:
    allow an overclocker to turn on a core and maybe use a quad-core as a quint-core.

    If it's actually a 6-core (never heard of 5-core!) then you might be
    able to enable 'em (I gather there are BIOS hacks to do this for some
    CPUs). I don't know why you'd want to disable one, tho.

    But hyperthreading is still not cores. Paladin's old single-core P4 gets displayed by Windows as 2 cores, but it's not -- it's just got
    hyperthreading.

    One of the Dells has an oversized recovery partition, and I
    wound KM> up putting all sorts of junk in there as storage...

    Sneaky hiding place for private data too!

    Especially if the partition is hidden <g>

    I was semi-playing around with 'split' systems. In the past have
    used two hard drives: one for the boot and the OS, the other for
    data. This time figure to try the boot/OS drive as one of those
    solid state critters, potentially some problems so left the data on
    the 'rust drive' as you call it. Was also thinking along your lines:
    not necessarily hide stuff but use the 'excess' space for don't-need-too-often storage. Never did (or at least not so far) use
    the extra space on the SSD but did find I was running a little low on
    the space I allocated for the OS. Multiple backups to what I already
    have - just in case! -- and delete one of the 'sneaky' partitions on
    the SSD and expand the OS partation in to it. Worked without problem (whew!!).

    Oh yeah... for some reason I've forgotten (except that at the time I was
    still doing a DOS boot partition), Bullet has 3 small FAT32 partitions
    before it gets to the larger XP64/NTFS partition. Good thing I haven't
    run out of space on the NTFS partition... tho I sure have found a lot of
    junk to put on D: and E: !!

    Also, I like to have the swapfile on its own partition, along with any
    browser cache or other wastes of space, to confine fragmentation.

    I make images of small drives and store them on a big drive. <g>

    And then an image of the big drive on an even bigger drive! I don't

    YES!

    play around with operating systems like you do so no real need to do
    the imaging. For you it makes sense.

    Oh, this is not so much for the OS as for the complex tangle of software
    that eventually inhabits the OS. Egads!!

    <g>) The half-baked build-your-own NSA project here is considering
    use of several old/small hard drives for storage. Some might be
    clobbered together under JBOD, though if one fails they all
    effectively fail.

    EEEP!!!

    Might be better to use as individual drives and/or store
    non-critical

    I spent six months rebuilding 14,000 image files for a friend who'd had
    his data on a RAID system (some species of linux), since the best that professional data recovery could do was still a mess. Me, I ain't NEVER
    doing any kind of striped, cobbled-together, or other fragmented-among-the-hardware file storage. I am not a busy commercial
    server that needs the performance boost, and for me it is not worth the
    risk.

    When you get to where you and your hex editor can edit the garbage out
    of a JPG in 30 seconds flat, you've done way too many of 'em. <g>

    data. As far as the power draw, was a semi-consideration -- inital
    project was sort of thinking the unit in a computer case, so use a
    ATX PSU. The use of an RPi put a bit of a twist on the PSU aspect --
    woiuld definitely need an external supply, which could be that 5v/12v
    one I have -- if able to supply the necessary start-up current.

    My brain hurts. What would such a creature do for a living?

    I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g> Wikipedia?!
    Some bloke on a BBS. <g>
    :) ...So did I provide a usuable introductory explanation in an
    earlier message?

    Uh, somewhere... kinda cross between remote desktop and Mouse Without Borders... or so I gather...

    Dig up from the grave as the case was with this one... was KM>
    supposedly dead. Not dead, just slow boot like a server. Happy KM>
    birthday to me. <g> It is rather fun when something that doesn't
    work can be fixed easily!
    Such as by turning it on! <g>

    Some times they just need the rest!

    That was the old method for fixing CDROM drives -- power 'em down
    overnight and sometimes they'd get unconfused and work again.

    .. Anyone with "cloisterphobia" should not consider becoming a monk.

    HA!
    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Ky Moffet on Fri Oct 16 16:51:00 2020
    Ky,

    Huh, I didn't know that. I knew he did stuff outside of TV, tho what
    had never penetrated (or didn't stick). Wonder if there are any recordings?

    You would have to check with the local classical music station, or
    with "Performance Today". I think their website is yourclassical.org

    ago for National Semiconductor, where this woman noted "My favorite
    National Semiconductor is Leonard Bernstein". <G>

    LOL! Good one.

    Wonder if they got a shock from the baton?? :P

    It was also so much easier years ago, and didn't take as long. The
    2004 Update to Windows 10 took nearly 8 hours to download, install,
    and do all the necessary reboots.

    Yeah, basically it downloads and installs a whole new monkey.....

    http://www.wholenewmonkey.com

    [Yes, I registered the domain just to house this silly joke.]

    You have too much time on your hands. :P

    Someday you'll wake up to discover it's downloaded a cloud OS, is demanding a subscription fee, and until you pay up, nothing works.

    That'd be my luck. Reminds of the deal at a local Wal-Mart the other
    day. Apparently, this individual had stolen a phone or gift card...but
    without activating it at the register, it basically was a brick.

    I think of the meme where the guy says he's going to change is password
    o
    "incorrect", as he keeps getting a message saying "Your Password is incorrect".:P

    LOL, I may have to use that one!

    Duct tape can't fix stupid, but it helps mask the noise. However, it may
    not work for blondes. :P

    I make things even easier nowadays. What is your root password? "root"

    You might as well as get a beer to go with it. <G>

    I hate typing passwords. One of these days I'll get around to turning
    it off entirely. Ain't no one else here to muck things up.

    I have a password manager for all my internet stuff. But, that reminds me
    of a deal back when my BBS was "dial-up" only. The BBS was still at what was
    my parents home (I moved out 3 months before I got married)...and this was long before I had proposed to my girlfriend...who was first a user, then my Co-Sysop, then my wife,

    Well, I was running GT Power under dial-up, and had setup a logon macro, where I could logon from the host console with just a function key input;
    since most of my logons were from the host (local) console anyway.

    Anyway, I was at my girlfriend's apartment, and wanting to logon. I dialed the number, connected, and it got to the logon prompt. I hit the function key on the keyboard...and nothing happened.

    I hit it again...nothing.

    Then it hit me like a ton of bricks...

    "You're not at the host console. You don't know your logon credentials.
    You can't logon to your OWN BBS"!!. So, the initials DS stood for "Dumb
    $*!+" :P

    It happens to all of us. Three things fail as we get older. The first is memory ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... darn!! I forgot the other two!! <G>

    There were two??!

    Memory was first...but I don't remember the others. What was this thread about, anyway?? :P

    Some bloke on a BBS. <g>

    Plenty of those around. <G>

    <looks around> Oh my. Where did YOU come from??

    WARNING!! Alarm indicates that Sysop is in the area!! Look Innocent!! <G>

    Or you plug the power strip into itself, and wonder why it doesn't work.
    :P

    Or like these kids putting a penny with this plug...basically trying for
    a Darwin Award.

    Electrical circle jerk. <g>

    On a digital ham radio net years ago, on the mode of packet, one fellow ham radio operator thought that "E.D." (common in older men) stood for "electronic doofus". <G> Now, I can relate to that, as electronics was never my forte'.

    The Net Control of this net was the wife of her husband, the Sysop. When it got to him, all he typed was "I'm curious to see how Ed is going to explain E.D. to Roger" (I'm chuckling like mad at this point!!). It gets back to Ed, and he asks Billie, the Net Control (her husband's name was K.O.) "Do you
    know Morse Code??". She typed "Yes, and I know a lot of other things as well!!".

    I was about to die laughing!! <BG>

    I've never managed that one, but with a new PC build, when I first fire
    it up to test, I have invariably forgotten to plug in something vital. Often the power. <g>

    One ham radio operator said that one this other ham radio operator wanted help getting his radio (which was plugged in and turned on) to work. He said "it took all he had to NOT type 'Key the Push To Talk on the Microphone'" <G>.

    Daryl

    ... "We want the red dildo on the wall". "Nope, that's our fire extinguisher". === MultiMail/Win v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
    * Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - tbolt.synchro.net (454:1/33)
  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Fri Oct 16 12:34:00 2020

    Hi Ky!

    Don't recall that but probably did it accidentally: any
    machine I had a Windows on was going to be one that was refurbished,
    so probably an older version, maybe updated. Ubuntu would be the
    latest LTS version, so automatically older to newer.
    So no worries! <g>

    Seems so!

    Yes, I've done a lot of 'learn from others'. ...Someone's probably
    going to gripe about your password being 'password' but doesn't
    matter
    Doesn't matter since no one else is going to stick their grimy
    fingers on my keyboard, and if some network attack is as far as
    needing password input, it's already too late. With recent
    installs I disable it entirely, if I can. (Some distros won't let
    you.)

    Here I also don't get too concerned about LAN machine passwords either.
    Out into the real world am more cautious, but a lot of times what I
    consider a simple/easy password the password integrity bots indicate are
    rather secure.


    as have to be in range. Someone made the joke here that if I
    started seeing a bunch of cars parked outside the house I'd better
    change the WiFi password!
    When your street looks like a parking lot, you're really in
    trouble... now that every new car has wifi, it's amusing to turn
    on the unloved cellphone's wifi and watch the endless parade of
    unsecured wireless going by on the highway. (Also amazing that it
    has enough range to see them at all.)

    Well that's one way of being entertained! Haven't thought of that, plus generally drive so don't want to be looking at that cell phone app when
    should be paying attention to the road. ...There is someone around here
    (the neighbourhood) with an odd SSID: "I can haz internet toos". Yup,
    spaces and all! ...Not on currently so can't find their signal
    strength.


    Oh yeah, have had that sort of thing too.. which of several
    KM> icons? Which drive was it on again??
    And sometimes I don't realize I'm using the one on the wrong
    drive until one day I need to twiddle something on disk and...
    what do you mean, I'm running the copy in D:\storage instead of
    the one in C:\Utility ?? Or worse... what do you mean, you're
    running the copy from over on \\Bullet\F:\Utility??

    Yup: BTDT. Have made a work directory and for trying to make it easy
    have simply copied so the work directories and file names are the same
    as the original. ...Oops! How'd I get to working in the original area
    when I should be in the work area?! Backups are a good thing to have!!


    Especially with Win7 and Aero active -- it lets you move stuff
    around on disk and Aero keeps track. (If you disable Aero, this
    does not work.) Pretty soon you don't know where any of your
    shortcuts point, even tho they still point at the right program!!

    I got to where I wanted to go! I have no idea how I got there, but I'm
    there!


    It's the one feature that endeared Aero to me (otherwise I can't
    stand it, because I can't get eye-restful colors) because it
    tolerated my dragging stuff around without troubling to
    reinstall, AND without editing the wandering program's shortcut.

    Probably creates some sort of a virtual drive and when you want to use a programme the programme is working on its original home, you just think
    you're working elsewehere. Being relly virtual!


    BTDT!! I've put a file called "WhatIsThis" is some subdirs so I
    could find what it did or why it was created. Usually used the
    extension '.BJM' for a further indicator I created that file.
    Windows (at least the old ones when I used it) needed to be told .BJM
    was a text file;
    Oh yeah, now I have textfiles in the root of every drive, so I
    can see where I am even if it's non-obvious (or I'm oblivious).
    No content, just need the filename to tell me where I am. Eg. Silver_C_WD500.txt

    Yup. 0 bytes is fine as long as it tells me where I am.

    For a while I was running three MythTV Backends. All three (or maybe
    just the first two) Desktops were the same (because running the same
    Ubuntu version), so that didn't help. Could have changed the picture
    but a lot of times whatever I was doing was covering most of the Desktop
    so that wouldn't have helped. Finally created a Desktop icon; didn't go anywhere but did show whare I was.

    To semi-further complicate things I use one monitor off an HDMI switch.
    Had different keyboards amd mice and those were identified -- how come
    my mouse isn't working? Oh - wrong video input!


    Linux just knows.
    I'd like to know how it just knows!

    The Shadow Knows!!


    Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.
    Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which
    was like as not the root of the problem.
    I C:/ <bseg>
    Time to upgrade your compiler. <g>

    Time to upgrade my brain so I understand the complier!


    Yes, have run into a few of those. And have sometimes seen where
    there's an exchange between a user and the author where the author
    states he's just not interested enough in that feature/option to do
    it, or admits it's beyond his capabilities.
    Too bad more of these don't get picked up by better/more
    interested programmers.

    They're creating their own!


    That's actually why all the sudden improvements in ReactOS --
    lately got the attention of a bunch of programmers with time on
    their hands, and they fixed/improved more stuff in the past year
    than the one-man-band-and-occasional-help managed in the previous
    two decades. Those of us who've been keeping an eye on it are
    suitably grateful. <g>
    I've got a notebook computer which seems to have that issue. It is
    set to dual boot between Windows-something (10? - it did that sneaky
    upgrade people were in an uproar over maybe three years back) and
    Ubuntu 18.04. Haven't tested with Windows but with Ubuntu it needs to
    be connected to The Internet to complete booting, otherwise the
    screen gets to a certain point and the sceen semi-randomly blinks and
    the HDD LED indicates constant access. Plug in an Ethernet cable -
    boots fine.
    That's nasty; I'll consider myself warned!!

    My old laptop doesn't have that issue (fortunately!!). Back to the
    notebook, not sure if the problem is something with the built-in WiFi as
    even after booting it will randomly disconnect (which is why I got the
    dongle in the first place).


    The internal WiFi on this unit is intermittent so has a dongle
    added. Apparently the boot issues occurs before the driver is
    loaded.
    (Guess I mentioned that already!)

    So far I haven't run into goofy onboard wifi, but have had a
    couple NICs croak... you might check if the wifi card is loose,
    or its antenna is loose. Usually you can get to 'em easily as
    it's typically a card in a slot (meaning it's also easily
    replaced, relatively speaking) with its own door, since the slot
    can also accommodate those micro SSD drives.

    I'll have to eventually check that. Initially I was thinking of
    replacing the WiFi module with one that will do both bands but then was reminded the antenna would probably be wrong as designed for the 2.4 GHz
    band only. Seems like there was another problem. Anyway, plugging in
    the dual-band dongle was the safer option, though I did forget about the
    driver having to be loaded for it to work. (Driver loads and works
    fine, just need to load the kernel first and the kernel needs to
    connect....)


    <continue with Windows via Cloud>

    And I'm like... no way in hell.
    At the aforementioned launch were some 1000 IT pros. During the presentation, they all developed identical angry frowns. (I was
    off to one side near the front and had a fine view of the
    audience.)
    It's kind of funny when everyone comes up with the same conclusion!
    Oh yeah. But seems so obvious if you have the first clue about
    business vs its necessary reliability. Someone in the same era
    figured out that downtime for big business could cost as much as
    $8 million per MINUTE... so building in even brief cloud-caused
    downtimes was out of the question. And considering how much sheer
    waiting around one did on that era's broadbland (typo, I swear!)
    it would have been a very costly switch even with zero downtime.

    Some things are very easy doodled on paper and get very difficult with attempting the actual implementation. I've seen posts in StackOverflow
    where the desired result seems fairly simple: should be able to add a
    grep here and a &2> there to get the desired output. Thirty lines of
    code later....


    Which was flamingly obvious to everyone in the room, except for
    the hapless Microsoft presenter. (Who was a nice guy, but a true
    believer in The Future Is Cloud. Sadly, he may have been right,
    if premature.)
    There are good and bad things about The Cloud. Might make things a
    lot easier with 'everyone on the same page': utilities up-to-date and
    so compatible (assuming the machine can use -- 64-bit utility on a
    32-bit machine...). Well, that might be processed 'in the Sky' and
    just the end result sent out (seeing some problems with that too!).
    Yep. And it's becoming forced, first by Adobe and Autodesk with
    their subscription-only models, and soon enough by Windows. My
    sister's architectural firm is already all cloud-based, because
    by way of their necessary software, going cloud is now state of
    the art, and if you're not up to date on everything, you can and
    will be sued into a culvert the first time anything goes majorly
    wrong and some shyster can claim you weren't using "supported,
    industry standard" everything. (They don't even keep older
    company cars, same reason.)

    Yup: sometimes one is forced to 'go with the flow' even though it's
    wrong. You and I might be able to get by using old/antiquated software
    but companies can't, partially/mostly because of support. Probably a
    good example is when they don't "keep up": pretty soon they're left
    behind, forced to use a 286 because their software won't run on anything
    newer.


    Which is how I came to have a stack of 5 year old PCs, and the
    titular giant server. Out of support means too much liability
    (especially when your projects are budgeted in multiple millions
    of dollars), so out the door they go.

    Yup. So sometimes good news for us individuals: cheap refurbished
    computers! Bad news is it costs to get the new ones and those costs are
    passed on to us as consumers.



    <grin> If only thinking could instantly install the OS of our
    choice, with all the desired features... I know! I'll call it
    Telepathy. <g>
    Let's float that idea to the flagpole and see who salutes!

    Insert 'saaaaalute!' from the old Hee-Haw show. :)


    Wait, why is DOS up on the flagpole??

    It rose above the others?



    I have a bad habit of sometimes playing 'Stack'.....
    Mine are more like "randomly piled". <g>

    What I usually wanted was on the bottom and I was getting tired
    (pronounced 'annoyed') with taking off the ones on top to get to the one
    I wanted.



    Not even that, but that should it change its mind about
    resolution while I'm doing something, I could wind up with
    unfortunate clicks. This is why I turn off ALL the sliding and
    fading everything on linux, because it can and DOES capture the
    wrong click (Windows tends to have a more definite time boundary
    for click vs menu, but I've still seen the problem there).

    I tend to not like the 'fancy stuff' so the pretty graphic effects are
    turned off fairly quickly. OK, I will admit they are interesting for a
    little while, just because it's new. After that, let's get to work!



    Possibly why the BIOS for this motherboard has switches to control
    the various cores. Initially I'm thinking why would someone want to
    shut off a core (it's an 8-core CPU)? Probably more the other way:
    allow an overclocker to turn on a core and maybe use a quad-core as a quint-core.
    If it's actually a 6-core (never heard of 5-core!) then you might
    be able to enable 'em (I gather there are BIOS hacks to do this
    for some CPUs). I don't know why you'd want to disable one, tho.

    No longer working properly? IOW failed. Sort of like using a battery
    adapter to make an AAA fit because out of AA's. https://www.amazon.com/LAMPVPATH-Battery-Adapter-Converter-adapter/dp/B0 7D6RDQ3S/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2XR1QOBHNAC8M&dchild=1&keywords=battery+adapter
    &qid=1602866461&sprefix=Battery+adapter%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-3

    Basically a tube the size of the larger battery the smaller battery fits
    in to.



    But hyperthreading is still not cores. Paladin's old single-core
    P4 gets displayed by Windows as 2 cores, but it's not -- it's
    just got hyperthreading.

    Right: essentially make one do the work of two.


    One of the Dells has an oversized recovery partition, and I
    wound KM> up putting all sorts of junk in there as storage...
    Sneaky hiding place for private data too!
    Especially if the partition is hidden <g>

    Even better!



    I was semi-playing around with 'split' systems. In the past have
    used two hard drives: one for the boot and the OS, the other for
    data. This time figure to try the boot/OS drive as one of those
    solid state critters, potentially some problems so left the data on
    the 'rust drive' as you call it. Was also thinking along your lines:
    not necessarily hide stuff but use the 'excess' space for don't-need-too-often storage. Never did (or at least not so far) use
    the extra space on the SSD but did find I was running a little low on
    the space I allocated for the OS. Multiple backups to what I already
    have - just in case! -- and delete one of the 'sneaky' partitions on
    the SSD and expand the OS partation in to it. Worked without problem (whew!!).
    Oh yeah... for some reason I've forgotten (except that at the
    time I was still doing a DOS boot partition), Bullet has 3 small
    FAT32 partitions before it gets to the larger XP64/NTFS
    partition. Good thing I haven't run out of space on the NTFS
    partition... tho I sure have found a lot of junk to put on D: and
    E: !!

    Lots of storage space is good!



    Also, I like to have the swapfile on its own partition, along
    with any browser cache or other wastes of space, to confine
    fragmentation.

    I was trying to find where my swap file is. System Monitor says it's 32
    GiB but I didn't see anything around that size. ...Ah! I put it on the
    hard drive (I was looking at the the SSD): the old rule was not to have something that constantly changed on a solid state drive so I put it on
    the rusted one.



    I make images of small drives and store them on a big drive. <g>
    And then an image of the big drive on an even bigger drive! I don't
    YES!

    And then -- even bigger?!


    play around with operating systems like you do so no real need to do
    the imaging. For you it makes sense.
    Oh, this is not so much for the OS as for the complex tangle of
    software that eventually inhabits the OS. Egads!!

    I get confused enough with this one OS!


    <g>) The half-baked build-your-own NSA project here is considering
    use of several old/small hard drives for storage. Some might be
    clobbered together under JBOD, though if one fails they all
    effectively fail.
    EEEP!!!

    Yeah, it sounded good at first.


    Might be better to use as individual drives and/or store
    non-critical
    I spent six months rebuilding 14,000 image files for a friend
    who'd had his data on a RAID system (some species of linux),
    since the best that professional data recovery could do was still
    a mess. Me, I ain't NEVER doing any kind of striped,
    cobbled-together, or other fragmented-among-the-hardware file
    storage. I am not a busy commercial server that needs the
    performance boost, and for me it is not worth the risk.

    I have made DVD and external hard drive backups of portions of the NAS.



    data. As far as the power draw, was a semi-consideration -- inital
    project was sort of thinking the unit in a computer case, so use a
    ATX PSU. The use of an RPi put a bit of a twist on the PSU aspect --
    would definitely need an external supply, which could be that 5v/12v
    one I have -- if able to supply the necessary start-up current.
    My brain hurts. What would such a creature do for a living?

    Blow fuses? <g> Actually part of the considertion is just to use what I
    have on hand to create the backup storage unit.



    I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g> Wikipedia?!
    Some bloke on a BBS. <g>
    :) ...So did I provide a usuable introductory explanation in an
    earlier message?
    Uh, somewhere... kinda cross between remote desktop and Mouse
    Without Borders... or so I gather...

    BTW, VNC will not support audio, or at least the 'VNC Server' I'm using
    here has that 'error' message. Not really an error message as the icon
    of the speaker has a line through it and when hover that message comes
    up. Maybe there is a higher level version that includes audio.


    Dig up from the grave as the case was with this one... was KM>
    supposedly dead. Not dead, just slow boot like a server. Happy KM>
    birthday to me. <g> It is rather fun when something that doesn't
    work can be fixed easily!
    Such as by turning it on! <g>
    Some times they just need the rest!
    That was the old method for fixing CDROM drives -- power 'em down overnight and sometimes they'd get unconfused and work again.

    Wonder if the 'unconfusion' was simply a discharge of capacitors?




    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

    ... Older people are just younger people later in their lives.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sat Oct 17 19:56:00 2020
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    Here I also don't get too concerned about LAN machine passwords either.
    Out into the real world am more cautious, but a lot of times what I
    consider a simple/easy password the password integrity bots indicate are rather secure.

    Conventional wisdom is that to be secure, you need passwords with upper
    and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Well, turns out when this
    was actually challenged... such passwords are no more difficult to crack
    than if they're, say, all lowercase letters. The most difficult were
    nonsense phrases like "Barryisameanie" or "mybanksucksdeadfish".

    KM> When your street looks like a parking lot, you're really in
    KM> trouble... now that every new car has wifi, it's amusing to turn
    KM> on the unloved cellphone's wifi and watch the endless parade of
    KM> unsecured wireless going by on the highway. (Also amazing that it
    KM> has enough range to see them at all.)

    Well that's one way of being entertained! Haven't thought of that, plus generally drive so don't want to be looking at that cell phone app when

    I'm about 150 feet from the road... wouldn't want to be driving!

    should be paying attention to the road. ...There is someone around here
    (the neighbourhood) with an odd SSID: "I can haz internet toos". Yup,
    spaces and all! ...Not on currently so can't find their signal
    strength.

    LOL! Must be all cat videos. <g> I see sillies like that once in a
    while. One that went by was something like "John's Ugly Printer" (for a
    car?? musta been a laptop or some such)


    KM> what do you mean, I'm running the copy in D:\storage instead of
    KM> the one in C:\Utility ?? Or worse... what do you mean, you're
    KM> running the copy from over on \\Bullet\F:\Utility??

    Yup: BTDT. Have made a work directory and for trying to make it easy
    have simply copied so the work directories and file names are the same
    as the original. ...Oops! How'd I get to working in the original area
    when I should be in the work area?! Backups are a good thing to have!!

    And then forget that you've been moving all the work to D: and discover somewhat late you're still working on the file in C: ....


    KM> Especially with Win7 and Aero active -- it lets you move stuff
    KM> around on disk and Aero keeps track. (If you disable Aero, this
    KM> does not work.) Pretty soon you don't know where any of your
    KM> shortcuts point, even tho they still point at the right program!!

    I got to where I wanted to go! I have no idea how I got there, but I'm
    there!

    Well, I'm somewhere, anyway...


    KM> It's the one feature that endeared Aero to me (otherwise I can't
    KM> stand it, because I can't get eye-restful colors) because it
    KM> tolerated my dragging stuff around without troubling to
    KM> reinstall, AND without editing the wandering program's shortcut.

    Probably creates some sort of a virtual drive and when you want to use a programme the programme is working on its original home, you just think you're working elsewehere. Being relly virtual!

    Nope, the shortcut actually gets changed to point to wherever it went.

    KM> Oh yeah, now I have textfiles in the root of every drive, so I
    KM> can see where I am even if it's non-obvious (or I'm oblivious).
    KM> No content, just need the filename to tell me where I am. Eg.
    KM> Silver_C_WD500.txt

    Yup. 0 bytes is fine as long as it tells me where I am.

    And with NTFS, files under about 1k are stored in the file allocation
    table, so they don't waste clusters. I'm not sure how this works if the
    table gets munged, but it does auto-backups, so...


    For a while I was running three MythTV Backends. All three (or maybe
    just the first two) Desktops were the same (because running the same
    Ubuntu version), so that didn't help. Could have changed the picture
    but a lot of times whatever I was doing was covering most of the Desktop
    so that wouldn't have helped. Finally created a Desktop icon; didn't go anywhere but did show whare I was.

    That's a good idea. My desktops used to look different enough that I'd
    always know at least which PC I was on (when they share a monitor) but
    then I started using my custom PCLOS install and of course it already
    looks as desired... so now I have to check where I am again. <g>
    Fortunately the confusion is among laptops, not everyday systems. Well,
    unless Silver II or Fireball has PCLOS up...


    To semi-further complicate things I use one monitor off an HDMI switch.
    Had different keyboards amd mice and those were identified -- how come
    my mouse isn't working? Oh - wrong video input!

    Oh yeah, I do that with Bullet all the time... forget that it has its
    own keyboard and then wonder why input doesn't work. It should be
    obvious because one keyboard is wireless and the other is both wired and
    quite heavy, but apparently I do not always notice the difference. <g>


    > Linux just knows.
    KM> I'd like to know how it just knows!
    The Shadow Knows!!

    But I don't have a PC named Shadow...


    >> Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.
    > KM> Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which
    > KM> was like as not the root of the problem.
    > I C:/ <bseg>
    KM> Time to upgrade your compiler. <g>

    Time to upgrade my brain so I understand the complier!

    Wait, I could get a brain upgrade??


    > Yes, have run into a few of those. And have sometimes seen where
    > there's an exchange between a user and the author where the author
    > states he's just not interested enough in that feature/option to do
    > it, or admits it's beyond his capabilities.
    KM> Too bad more of these don't get picked up by better/more
    KM> interested programmers.

    They're creating their own!

    Their own bugs, more like!!

    My old laptop doesn't have that issue (fortunately!!). Back to the
    notebook, not sure if the problem is something with the built-in WiFi as
    even after booting it will randomly disconnect (which is why I got the
    dongle in the first place).

    Um... is it using the linux Broadcom driver? last I paid attention, it
    was notoriously unstable. Or why linux and laptop wifi used to be such
    an adventure.

    I'll have to eventually check that. Initially I was thinking of
    replacing the WiFi module with one that will do both bands but then was reminded the antenna would probably be wrong as designed for the 2.4 GHz
    band only. Seems like there was another problem. Anyway, plugging in
    the dual-band dongle was the safer option, though I did forget about the driver having to be loaded for it to work. (Driver loads and works
    fine, just need to load the kernel first and the kernel needs to
    connect....)

    Ah, the goofiness is almost certainly an issue with the driver for the internal wifi chip. So... dongle. (I have several; they work fine, even
    the $3 ones. Actually, I wish I had some more of the $3 ones.)

    Some things are very easy doodled on paper and get very difficult with attempting the actual implementation. I've seen posts in StackOverflow
    where the desired result seems fairly simple: should be able to add a
    grep here and a &2> there to get the desired output. Thirty lines of
    code later....

    Oh yeah... I think the actual solution is "head explodes".

    Yup: sometimes one is forced to 'go with the flow' even though it's
    wrong. You and I might be able to get by using old/antiquated software
    but companies can't, partially/mostly because of support. Probably a
    good example is when they don't "keep up": pretty soon they're left
    behind, forced to use a 286 because their software won't run on anything newer.

    NASA used to run around collecting 486s because they were so totally a
    known system -- since you can't send the repair guy out to Jupiter. <g>
    And I knew someone who in the late 1990s was still scrounging XT boards
    for a cloth-cutting machine that needed it to interface... 10 cents
    worth of computer and ten grand worth of cutter.

    > KM> <grin> If only thinking could instantly install the OS of our
    KM> choice, with all the desired features... I know! I'll call it
    KM> Telepathy. <g>
    > Let's float that idea to the flagpole and see who salutes!

    Insert 'saaaaalute!' from the old Hee-Haw show. :)

    Hee-hee-heee-heee-he-haw-haw-haw!


    KM> Wait, why is DOS up on the flagpole??

    It rose above the others?

    It boots faster!!

    > I have a bad habit of sometimes playing 'Stack'.....
    KM> Mine are more like "randomly piled". <g>

    What I usually wanted was on the bottom and I was getting tired
    (pronounced 'annoyed') with taking off the ones on top to get to the one
    I wanted.

    Well, of course! how else would you stack it? <g>

    KM> Not even that, but that should it change its mind about
    KM> resolution while I'm doing something, I could wind up with
    KM> unfortunate clicks. This is why I turn off ALL the sliding and
    KM> fading everything on linux, because it can and DOES capture the
    KM> wrong click (Windows tends to have a more definite time boundary
    KM> for click vs menu, but I've still seen the problem there).

    I tend to not like the 'fancy stuff' so the pretty graphic effects are
    turned off fairly quickly. OK, I will admit they are interesting for a little while, just because it's new. After that, let's get to work!

    The goofy effects annoyed me even before I discovered this, uh, tripping hazard. So normally I turn them off, but once in a while I miss one, or haven't got to it yet.


    KM> If it's actually a 6-core (never heard of 5-core!) then you might
    KM> be able to enable 'em (I gather there are BIOS hacks to do this
    KM> for some CPUs). I don't know why you'd want to disable one, tho.

    No longer working properly? IOW failed. Sort of like using a battery

    That's such a corner case it's triangular!

    adapter to make an AAA fit because out of AA's.
    Basically a tube the size of the larger battery the smaller battery fits
    in to.

    Good idea, if the voltage is the same. I have a clock that's supposed to
    take a C battery, but those are both pricey and would have required a
    trek to Walmart, whereas I buy AA bulk from Costco so always have 'em on
    hand. Upon noting that AA are the same voltage and length as the dead C,
    I stuffed an AA in the spot, and it works fine! probably won't last as
    long, but it's been in there for several months now, so...

    ...actually, probably a good use for batteries that the camera or mouse
    have rejected (don't like 'em weak), but aren't actually dead yet.

    KM> But hyperthreading is still not cores. Paladin's old single-core
    KM> P4 gets displayed by Windows as 2 cores, but it's not -- it's
    KM> just got hyperthreading.

    Right: essentially make one do the work of two.

    Well, sort of... the software has to know to use it too. Same with
    multiple cores. Most software outside of databases and some newer games
    has no clue.

    Lots of storage space is good!

    Junk fills the space allotted!

    KM> Also, I like to have the swapfile on its own partition, along
    KM> with any browser cache or other wastes of space, to confine
    KM> fragmentation.

    I was trying to find where my swap file is. System Monitor says it's 32
    GiB but I didn't see anything around that size. ...Ah! I put it on the
    hard drive (I was looking at the the SSD): the old rule was not to have something that constantly changed on a solid state drive so I put it on
    the rusted one.

    Egads, no, don't let it be that big, it's a total waste and does nothing
    but slow down Windows startup (when it decides it needs to rewrite the
    whole 32GB). Since that system has 32GB RAM, it only needs a token
    swapfile, and only for stupid programs that insist. So... set it to
    permanent and a max of 2GB.

    > KM> I make images of small drives and store them on a big drive. <g>
    > And then an image of the big drive on an even bigger drive! I don't
    KM> YES!

    And then -- even bigger?!

    Well, of course!! It's like fleas, except the other direction.

    "So, naturalists observe, a flea has smaller fleas that on him prey; and
    these have smaller still to bite ’em; and so proceed ad infinitum."
    - Jonathan Swift


    > play around with operating systems like you do so no real need to do
    > the imaging. For you it makes sense.
    KM> Oh, this is not so much for the OS as for the complex tangle of
    KM> software that eventually inhabits the OS. Egads!!

    I get confused enough with this one OS!

    I look at my rather long list of network locations, and wonder how I
    keep track.

    KM> I spent six months rebuilding 14,000 image files for a friend
    KM> who'd had his data on a RAID system (some species of linux),
    KM> since the best that professional data recovery could do was still
    KM> a mess. Me, I ain't NEVER doing any kind of striped,
    KM> cobbled-together, or other fragmented-among-the-hardware file
    KM> storage. I am not a busy commercial server that needs the
    KM> performance boost, and for me it is not worth the risk.

    I have made DVD and external hard drive backups of portions of the NAS.

    They thought they had backups too. Ooops.

    I decided right then and there... my data will never live on RAID, or
    any species of conglombed or striped disks.

    >> KM> I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g> Wikipedia?!
    > KM> Some bloke on a BBS. <g>
    > :) ...So did I provide a usuable introductory explanation in an
    > earlier message?
    KM> Uh, somewhere... kinda cross between remote desktop and Mouse
    KM> Without Borders... or so I gather...

    BTW, VNC will not support audio, or at least the 'VNC Server' I'm using
    here has that 'error' message. Not really an error message as the icon
    of the speaker has a line through it and when hover that message comes
    up. Maybe there is a higher level version that includes audio.

    Oh. Normally I don't want audio to migrate with the desktop in use, tho, because half the idea is one system can be busy making noise while
    another is busy doing actual work.

    > Some times they just need the rest!
    KM> That was the old method for fixing CDROM drives -- power 'em down
    KM> overnight and sometimes they'd get unconfused and work again.

    Wonder if the 'unconfusion' was simply a discharge of capacitors?

    Probably so. Resets the single brain cell to zero.

    .. Older people are just younger people later in their lives.

    Explains the second childhood!

    ...or maybe I discharged all my capacitors...
    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Daryl Stout on Sat Oct 17 20:05:00 2020
    DARYL STOUT wrote:
    Ky,

    KM> Huh, I didn't know that. I knew he did stuff outside of TV, tho what
    KM> had never penetrated (or didn't stick). Wonder if there are any
    KM> recordings?

    You would have to check with the local classical music station, or
    with "Performance Today". I think their website is yourclassical.org

    Huh, that's an interesting site, thanks!

    > ago for National Semiconductor, where this woman noted "My favorite
    > National Semiconductor is Leonard Bernstein". <G>

    KM> LOL! Good one.

    Wonder if they got a shock from the baton?? :P

    ZAP! You in the second strings, pay attention!

    KM> http://www.wholenewmonkey.com
    KM> [Yes, I registered the domain just to house this silly joke.]
    You have too much time on your hands. :P

    And too many weird ideas. <g>

    KM> Someday you'll wake up to discover it's downloaded a cloud OS, is
    KM> demanding a subscription fee, and until you pay up, nothing works.

    That'd be my luck. Reminds of the deal at a local Wal-Mart the other
    day. Apparently, this individual had stolen a phone or gift card...but without activating it at the register, it basically was a brick.

    Ooops!!

    I have discovered a nifty trick with Win10, which at least sometimes
    works... You know how Win10 insists that you pay up (seriously??) and
    activate before it'll let you customize it, or even switch to the dark
    theme? Disconnect internet before installing. Do your customizing. NOW
    connect to net. It will behave as if it's activated, even tho it's not.

    Duct tape can't fix stupid, but it helps mask the noise. However, it may not work for blondes. :P

    Enough duct tape silences anyone. <g>

    KM> I make things even easier nowadays. What is your root password? "root"

    You might as well as get a beer to go with it. <G>

    LOL... rootbeer, yeah. <g>

    KM> I hate typing passwords. One of these days I'll get around to turning
    KM> it off entirely. Ain't no one else here to muck things up.

    I have a password manager for all my internet stuff. But, that reminds me

    I let the browser remember, except for a couple of super-secure ones.

    Anyway, I was at my girlfriend's apartment, and wanting to logon. I dialed the number, connected, and it got to the logon prompt. I hit the function key on the keyboard...and nothing happened.

    I hit it again...nothing.

    Then it hit me like a ton of bricks...

    "You're not at the host console. You don't know your logon credentials. You can't logon to your OWN BBS"!!. So, the initials DS stood for "Dumb
    $*!+" :P

    LOL!! Oh dear.. the solution was so clever that it created its own
    problem! :D :D :D

    > It happens to all of us. Three things fail as we get older. The first is
    > memory ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... darn!! I forgot the other
    > two!! <G>

    KM> There were two??!

    Memory was first...but I don't remember the others. What was this thread about, anyway?? :P

    You're asking me??

    > KM> Some bloke on a BBS. <g>
    > Plenty of those around. <G>
    KM> <looks around> Oh my. Where did YOU come from??
    WARNING!! Alarm indicates that Sysop is in the area!! Look Innocent!! <G>

    <looks innocent>

    Wait, what does innocent look like??

    and he asks Billie, the Net Control (her husband's name was K.O.) "Do you know Morse Code??". She typed "Yes, and I know a lot of other things as well!!".

    I was about to die laughing!! <BG>

    <snork>

    One ham radio operator said that one this other ham radio operator wanted help getting his radio (which was plugged in and turned on) to work. He said "it took all he had to NOT type 'Key the Push To Talk on the Microphone'" <G>.

    Paging Captain Obvious!!!
    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Ky Moffet on Sun Oct 18 21:24:00 2020
    Ky,


    You would have to check with the local classical music station, or
    with "Performance Today". I think their website is yourclassical.org

    Huh, that's an interesting site, thanks!

    I like the "Piano Puzzler" with Bruce Adolph, and Fred Child. They take contemporary tune, and reformat it into the style of a classical music composer. It will work your brain. :)


    Wonder if they got a shock from the baton?? :P

    ZAP! You in the second strings, pay attention!

    LOL!!

    You have too much time on your hands. :P

    And too many weird ideas. <g>

    Or we've been BBSing too long. :P


    That'd be my luck. Reminds of the deal at a local Wal-Mart the other
    day. Apparently, this individual had stolen a phone or gift card...but without activating it at the register, it basically was a brick.

    Ooops!!

    He probably tried to pawn it off.

    I have discovered a nifty trick with Win10, which at least sometimes works... You know how Win10 insists that you pay up (seriously??) and activate before it'll let you customize it, or even switch to the dark theme? Disconnect internet before installing. Do your customizing. NOW connect to net. It will behave as if it's activated, even tho it's not.

    Interesting. Well, my copies of W10 (the BBS computer is on 32-bit, and
    the laptop where I do my ham radio and website is 64-bit).

    As for a dark theme with Windows 10, I wasn't aware one existed. I use
    that with Facebook, as it's easier on the eyes.

    Enough duct tape silences anyone. <g>

    I think of the Cheech And Chong routine with "The Big Brave Motorcycle
    Rider" was in a wreck, and got taped up big time. The problem was, he had
    as much hair on his body as a gorilla. And, you thought waxing was bad??!!

    You might as well as get a beer to go with it. <G>

    LOL... rootbeer, yeah. <g>

    I've known of Dad's, Hires, A&W, and Mug...not sure if there are other brands or not.

    I have a password manager for all my internet stuff. But, that reminds me

    I let the browser remember, except for a couple of super-secure ones.

    If the browser dumps, I'm screwed.


    "You're not at the host console. You don't know your logon credentials. You can't logon to your OWN BBS"!!. So, the initials DS stood for "Dumb $*!+" :P

    LOL!! Oh dear.. the solution was so clever that it created its own problem! :D :D :D

    She was laughing like mad, and I felt so dumb!!

    Memory was first...but I don't remember the others. What was this thread about, anyway?? :P

    You're asking me??

    I guess that was my first mistake. <G>

    Wait, what does innocent look like??

    Different from looking guilty?? <G>

    and he asks Billie, the Net Control (her husband's name was K.O.) "Do you know Morse Code??". She typed "Yes, and I know a lot of other things as well!!".

    I was about to die laughing!! <BG>

    <snork>

    And, it was one of those days where "I needed a good laugh". <G>

    One ham radio operator said that one this other ham radio operator wanted help getting his radio (which was plugged in and turned on) to work. He said "it took all he had to NOT type 'Key the Push To Talk on the Microphone'"
    <G>.

    Paging Captain Obvious!!!

    Never mind Roger Roger...or the tagline below. <G>

    Daryl

    ... Looks like I picked the wrong week to answer QWK Mail.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
    * Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - tbolt.synchro.net (454:1/33)
  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Sun Oct 18 11:31:00 2020

    Hi Ky!

    Here I also don't get too concerned about LAN machine passwords either.
    Out into the real world am more cautious, but a lot of times what I
    consider a simple/easy password the password integrity bots indicate are rather secure.
    Conventional wisdom is that to be secure, you need passwords with
    upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Well, turns
    out when this was actually challenged... such passwords are no
    more difficult to crack than if they're, say, all lowercase
    letters. The most difficult were nonsense phrases like
    "Barryisameanie" or "mybanksucksdeadfish".

    What tends to go against conventional wisdom as those are 'dictionary attacks'. Would seem adding a number or punctuation would make it much
    more difficult ==> "Barryisameanie12x" -- seems the randomness of the
    '12x' would complicate things.

    I'll admit to being to some degree lax in the complicated password
    department, though based on what you say here (and I've read elsewhere)
    my not overly complicated to a human passwords seem to be confusing to computers.


    KM> When your street looks like a parking lot, you're really in
    KM> trouble... now that every new car has wifi, it's amusing to turn
    KM> on the unloved cellphone's wifi and watch the endless parade of
    KM> unsecured wireless going by on the highway. (Also amazing that it
    KM> has enough range to see them at all.)
    Well that's one way of being entertained! Haven't thought of that, plus generally drive so don't want to be looking at that cell phone app when
    I'm about 150 feet from the road... wouldn't want to be driving!

    That was the depth of the lot my parents' house was on when I was
    growing up!


    should be paying attention to the road. ...There is someone around here (the neighbourhood) with an odd SSID: "I can haz internet toos". Yup, spaces and all! ...Not on currently so can't find their signal
    strength.
    LOL! Must be all cat videos. <g> I see sillies like that once in
    a while. One that went by was something like "John's Ugly
    Printer" (for a car?? musta been a laptop or some such)

    I saw another "weird" SSID yesterday when I was trying to figure out if
    I had a WiFi problem (referencing the reply I gave in the *NIX
    conference just now) but didn't take time to jot it down as trying to
    get my little problem figured out).


    KM> what do you mean, I'm running the copy in D:\storage instead of
    KM> the one in C:\Utility ?? Or worse... what do you mean, you're
    KM> running the copy from over on \\Bullet\F:\Utility??
    Yup: BTDT. Have made a work directory and for trying to make it easy
    have simply copied so the work directories and file names are the same
    as the original. ...Oops! How'd I get to working in the original area
    when I should be in the work area?! Backups are a good thing to have!!
    And then forget that you've been moving all the work to D: and
    discover somewhat late you're still working on the file in C:
    ....

    You got it!! Sometimes just safer to work on a separate computer, but
    it's not as comfortable 'cause.... <whine, whimper!>



    KM> Especially with Win7 and Aero active -- it lets you move stuff
    KM> around on disk and Aero keeps track. (If you disable Aero, this
    KM> does not work.) Pretty soon you don't know where any of your
    KM> shortcuts point, even tho they still point at the right program!!
    I got to where I wanted to go! I have no idea how I got there, but I'm there!
    Well, I'm somewhere, anyway...

    According to GPS.....



    KM> It's the one feature that endeared Aero to me (otherwise I can't
    KM> stand it, because I can't get eye-restful colors) because it
    KM> tolerated my dragging stuff around without troubling to
    KM> reinstall, AND without editing the wandering program's shortcut. Probably creates some sort of a virtual drive and when you want to use a programme the programme is working on its original home, you just think you're working elsewehere. Being really virtual!
    Nope, the shortcut actually gets changed to point to wherever it
    went.

    I suppose that's good sometimes. Thinking there are times when I don't
    want things permanently changed and other times I do. Or want to be
    able to go back to how it was as a backup.


    KM> Oh yeah, now I have textfiles in the root of every drive, so I
    KM> can see where I am even if it's non-obvious (or I'm oblivious).
    KM> No content, just need the filename to tell me where I am. Eg.
    KM> Silver_C_WD500.txt
    Yup. 0 bytes is fine as long as it tells me where I am.
    And with NTFS, files under about 1k are stored in the file
    allocation table, so they don't waste clusters. I'm not sure how
    this works if the table gets munged, but it does auto-backups,
    so...

    Love those mysterious Black Boxes! I kind of figure as long as I have
    plenty of room on the drive I'm not going to be concerned if a file
    takes one or a hundred or 2047 bytes. (Can you tell I'm thinking old
    stuff?!)


    For a while I was running three MythTV Backends. All three (or maybe
    just the first two) Desktops were the same (because running the same
    Ubuntu version), so that didn't help. Could have changed the picture
    but a lot of times whatever I was doing was covering most of the Desktop
    so that wouldn't have helped. Finally created a Desktop icon; didn't go anywhere but did show whare I was.
    That's a good idea. My desktops used to look different enough
    that I'd always know at least which PC I was on (when they share
    a monitor) but then I started using my custom PCLOS install and
    of course it already looks as desired... so now I have to check
    where I am again. <g> Fortunately the confusion is among laptops,
    not everyday systems. Well, unless Silver II or Fireball has
    PCLOS up...

    Part of my thinking was also visually matching other systems around
    here: the Bionic Beaver desktop means the system is running Ubuntu
    18.04. OTOH when running MythTV I don't see that background and should
    for some reason the system decide to drop to it's default image I could
    be thinking I'm on a different system from what I actually am.

    At one time when I was working with BE1 and BE2 on the same monitor I
    did have a piece of paper with "BE1" on one side and "BE2" on the other
    -- was folded to fit over the top of the monitor and even used different
    colour marker to further emphasize.



    To semi-further complicate things I use one monitor off an HDMI switch.
    Had different keyboards amd mice and those were identified -- how come
    my mouse isn't working? Oh - wrong video input!
    Oh yeah, I do that with Bullet all the time... forget that it has
    its own keyboard and then wonder why input doesn't work. It
    should be obvious because one keyboard is wireless and the other
    is both wired and quite heavy, but apparently I do not always
    notice the difference. <g>

    They're all black!


    > Linux just knows.
    KM> I'd like to know how it just knows!
    The Shadow Knows!!
    But I don't have a PC named Shadow...

    Could be the name of one in a black case!



    >> Possible incomplete/incorrect programming.
    > KM> Bingo. This is the hazard of having unfinished features, which
    > KM> was like as not the root of the problem.
    > I C:/ <bseg>
    KM> Time to upgrade your compiler. <g>
    Time to upgrade my brain so I understand the complier!
    Wait, I could get a brain upgrade??

    Sure! Limited time offer, expires October 31!


    > Yes, have run into a few of those. And have sometimes seen where
    > there's an exchange between a user and the author where the author
    > states he's just not interested enough in that feature/option to do
    > it, or admits it's beyond his capabilities.
    KM> Too bad more of these don't get picked up by better/more
    KM> interested programmers.
    They're creating their own!
    Their own bugs, more like!!

    It worked at their place, how come not here?!


    My old laptop doesn't have that issue (fortunately!!). Back to the notebook, not sure if the problem is something with the built-in WiFi as even after booting it will randomly disconnect (which is why I got the dongle in the first place).
    Um... is it using the linux Broadcom driver? last I paid
    attention, it was notoriously unstable. Or why linux and laptop
    wifi used to be such an adventure.

    OTTOMH that laptop doesn't use Broadcom. ...Added (another) note in it
    -- keep this up and I won't be able to close the cover!



    I'll have to eventually check that. Initially I was thinking of
    replacing the WiFi module with one that will do both bands but then was reminded the antenna would probably be wrong as designed for the 2.4 GHz band only. Seems like there was another problem. Anyway, plugging in
    the dual-band dongle was the safer option, though I did forget about the driver having to be loaded for it to work. (Driver loads and works
    fine, just need to load the kernel first and the kernel needs to connect....)
    Ah, the goofiness is almost certainly an issue with the driver
    for the internal wifi chip. So... dongle. (I have several; they
    work fine, even the $3 ones. Actually, I wish I had some more of
    the $3 ones.)

    So maybe eventually and update/correction. At this point it is a back-
    burner project (sure is getting crowded back there!): it would be handy
    to have that notebook working as far as portability is concerned -- much lighter in weight than my Lenovo laptop, though that wasn't the reason I purchased it.


    Some things are very easy doodled on paper and get very difficult with attempting the actual implementation. I've seen posts in StackOverflow where the desired result seems fairly simple: should be able to add a
    grep here and a &2> there to get the desired output. Thirty lines of
    code later....
    Oh yeah... I think the actual solution is "head explodes".

    Definitely needing a new brain then!


    Yup: sometimes one is forced to 'go with the flow' even though it's
    wrong. You and I might be able to get by using old/antiquated software
    but companies can't, partially/mostly because of support. Probably a
    good example is when they don't "keep up": pretty soon they're left
    behind, forced to use a 286 because their software won't run on anything newer.
    NASA used to run around collecting 486s because they were so
    totally a known system -- since you can't send the repair guy out
    to Jupiter. <g> And I knew someone who in the late 1990s was
    still scrounging XT boards for a cloth-cutting machine that
    needed it to interface... 10 cents worth of computer and ten
    grand worth of cutter.

    Yup: I remember reading that some time back. Made sense: need something
    known to be stable when out in space -- even relatively close by like
    the ISS.



    KM> Wait, why is DOS up on the flagpole??
    It rose above the others?
    It boots faster!!

    Hmm: wonder how fast MS-DOS 2.11 would boot on a SSD?? Pointing to that
    one as that was the first OS I used on my personal computer (DEC Rainbow
    100). ...Ah, the grinding sounds the floppy drives would make!


    > I have a bad habit of sometimes playing 'Stack'.....
    KM> Mine are more like "randomly piled". <g>
    What I usually wanted was on the bottom and I was getting tired
    (pronounced 'annoyed') with taking off the ones on top to get to the one
    I wanted.
    Well, of course! how else would you stack it? <g>

    I was sort of hoping so what I wanted would be handy -- a robot fetching
    for me would be a nice touch!


    KM> Not even that, but that should it change its mind about
    KM> resolution while I'm doing something, I could wind up with
    KM> unfortunate clicks. This is why I turn off ALL the sliding and
    KM> fading everything on linux, because it can and DOES capture the
    KM> wrong click (Windows tends to have a more definite time boundary
    KM> for click vs menu, but I've still seen the problem there).
    I tend to not like the 'fancy stuff' so the pretty graphic effects are turned off fairly quickly. OK, I will admit they are interesting for a little while, just because it's new. After that, let's get to work!
    The goofy effects annoyed me even before I discovered this, uh,
    tripping hazard. So normally I turn them off, but once in a while
    I miss one, or haven't got to it yet.

    "Hah-ha! I'm hiding over here!"


    KM> If it's actually a 6-core (never heard of 5-core!) then you might
    KM> be able to enable 'em (I gather there are BIOS hacks to do this
    KM> for some CPUs). I don't know why you'd want to disable one, tho.
    No longer working properly? IOW failed. Sort of like using a battery
    That's such a corner case it's triangular!

    A right angle? BTW, do you know why corners are warm? They're 90ø!


    adapter to make an AAA fit because out of AA's.
    Basically a tube the size of the larger battery the smaller battery fits
    in to.
    Good idea, if the voltage is the same.

    Voltage is the same between AAA, AA, C and D, just the current
    capabilities are different (which I think is part of the reasoning for
    the variance in size). All four at 1.5v (originally, when fresh); do
    have to watch as the NiCad versions are usually 1.25 volts.

    I have a clock that's
    supposed to take a C battery, but those are both pricey and would
    have required a trek to Walmart, whereas I buy AA bulk from
    Costco so always have 'em on hand. Upon noting that AA are the
    same voltage and length as the dead C, I stuffed an AA in the
    spot, and it works fine! probably won't last as long, but it's
    been in there for several months now, so...

    Ta-daaa! As I was rading that was thinking C's and AA's a close to the
    same length so should work -- big problem would be the AA isn't held
    securely in the battery compartment so could loosen and fallout.
    Generally not too much movement for a clock so no problem -- something
    like a remote control though.... (Haven't seen a remote use a C
    battery!)


    ...actually, probably a good use for batteries that the camera or
    mouse have rejected (don't like 'em weak), but aren't actually
    dead yet.

    I haven't but some people have moved batteries from one device to
    another as 'die'. The mechanism for an analog clock would probably draw
    more current and so become too weak but moving that battery to a remote control could work ==> no constant draw like in a clock, plus some
    batteries regenerate a little when given a rest, so a 'dead' battery
    from a clock could work in a remote.



    KM> But hyperthreading is still not cores. Paladin's old single-core
    KM> P4 gets displayed by Windows as 2 cores, but it's not -- it's
    KM> just got hyperthreading.
    Right: essentially make one do the work of two.
    Well, sort of... the software has to know to use it too. Same
    with multiple cores. Most software outside of databases and some
    newer games has no clue.

    Makes sense. I've sort of watched the lines of System Monitor and
    sometimes only one core is doing any work at a time. Then seems like
    the foirst core gets 'tired' and hands off the job to another core. And
    not literally one core working and the others goofing off, but seems
    like two or four cores could share the load more evenly than what is displayed.



    Lots of storage space is good!
    Junk fills the space allotted!

    Junk food is good, therefore junk data is also good!


    KM> Also, I like to have the swapfile on its own partition, along
    KM> with any browser cache or other wastes of space, to confine
    KM> fragmentation.
    I was trying to find where my swap file is. System Monitor says it's 32
    GiB but I didn't see anything around that size. ...Ah! I put it on the
    hard drive (I was looking at the the SSD): the old rule was not to have something that constantly changed on a solid state drive so I put it on
    the rusted one.
    Egads, no, don't let it be that big, it's a total waste and does
    nothing but slow down Windows startup (when it decides it needs
    to rewrite the whole 32GB). Since that system has 32GB RAM, it
    only needs a token swapfile, and only for stupid programs that
    insist. So... set it to permanent and a max of 2GB.

    I didn't set the swapfile size: the system did it to itself when it
    created itself. (So blame the programmers!) Not too worried about what Windows would do to it as the only Windows on this system is the virtual
    one (from Oracle's VM).



    > KM> I make images of small drives and store them on a big drive. <g>
    > And then an image of the big drive on an even bigger drive! I don't
    KM> YES!
    And then -- even bigger?!
    Well, of course!! It's like fleas, except the other direction.

    I feel weird
    I have bugs in my beard!




    "So, naturalists observe, a flea has smaller fleas that on him
    prey; and these have smaller still to bite ’em; and so proceed
    ad infinitum." - Jonathan Swift

    Humans have bacteria on their skin and in their gut....


    > play around with operating systems like you do so no real need to do
    > the imaging. For you it makes sense.
    KM> Oh, this is not so much for the OS as for the complex tangle of
    KM> software that eventually inhabits the OS. Egads!!
    I get confused enough with this one OS!
    I look at my rather long list of network locations, and wonder
    how I keep track.

    "Hmmm.. it's either this one or this one..... <selection click> It was
    the other one!"


    KM> I spent six months rebuilding 14,000 image files for a friend
    KM> who'd had his data on a RAID system (some species of linux),
    KM> since the best that professional data recovery could do was still
    KM> a mess. Me, I ain't NEVER doing any kind of striped,
    KM> cobbled-together, or other fragmented-among-the-hardware file
    KM> storage. I am not a busy commercial server that needs the
    KM> performance boost, and for me it is not worth the risk.
    I have made DVD and external hard drive backups of portions of the NAS.
    They thought they had backups too. Ooops.

    But it said "backup completed"!


    I decided right then and there... my data will never live on
    RAID, or any species of conglombed or striped disks.

    Yes: my NAS originally had one 2 TB hard drive, then I decided to add
    the second and got a 3 TB drive (maximum capacity per slot). So a total
    of 5 TB sounded good, especially as multiple backups of a 2 TB system or whatever I had back then. So far no issues but if one of the backup
    drives goes it takes the other one with it. Not sure what it's called
    but there is a RAID option that duplicates itself, so if one drive fails
    the data is on the other.


    >> KM> I dunno VNC... but now I know who to ask. <g> Wikipedia?!
    > KM> Some bloke on a BBS. <g>
    > :) ...So did I provide a usuable introductory explanation in an
    > earlier message?
    KM> Uh, somewhere... kinda cross between remote desktop and Mouse
    KM> Without Borders... or so I gather...
    BTW, VNC will not support audio, or at least the 'VNC Server' I'm using
    here has that 'error' message. Not really an error message as the icon
    of the speaker has a line through it and when hover that message comes
    up. Maybe there is a higher level version that includes audio.
    Oh. Normally I don't want audio to migrate with the desktop in
    use, tho, because half the idea is one system can be busy making
    noise while another is busy doing actual work.

    So one system humming to itself without the one one trying to join in!

    I was sort of thinking along the lines of someone trying to use VNC as a
    video conferencing utility. Not sure if could -- never tried. Suppose
    if the remote system was displaying a camera and that part had audio....


    > Some times they just need the rest!
    KM> That was the old method for fixing CDROM drives -- power 'em down
    KM> overnight and sometimes they'd get unconfused and work again.
    Wonder if the 'unconfusion' was simply a discharge of capacitors?
    Probably so. Resets the single brain cell to zero.

    There are times it would be helpful!


    .. Older people are just younger people later in their lives.
    Explains the second childhood!

    Finally realize the 'adult stuffiness' isn't quite worth it.


    ...or maybe I discharged all my capacitors...

    TMI! TMI!! Sounds like a porn site for electronic geeks!!




    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Daryl Stout on Tue Feb 8 14:30:00 2022
    DARYL STOUT wrote:

    As for a dark theme with Windows 10, I wasn't aware one existed. I use that with Facebook, as it's easier on the eyes.

    Ah, there's a better fix for that: an extension called "Dark Reader"
    (the icon looks like a comic-book Darth Vader). Can use it to invert
    colors on any website, and most of the time it's fairly sensible about
    how it does it. Basically it just rewrites the stylesheet on the fly.
    You can enable or disable it either temporarily or permanently for any
    site, and adjust the settings quite a lot. Mostly I just let it do its
    thing. Available for any browser in the Chrome or Firefox ecospace.

    Some sites it doesn't work well with, like Google Maps. But it does
    wonders for glary white sites like Facebook.

    Or you can use Stylish, but that requires a lot more manual fiddling for
    each site, while Dark Reader automates the whole thing.

    KM> Enough duct tape silences anyone. <g>

    I think of the Cheech And Chong routine with "The Big Brave Motorcycle Rider" was in a wreck, and got taped up big time. The problem was, he had
    as much hair on his body as a gorilla. And, you thought waxing was bad??!!

    LOLOL!


    > I have a password manager for all my internet stuff. But, that reminds me
    KM> I let the browser remember, except for a couple of super-secure ones.

    If the browser dumps, I'm screwed.

    There exist password exporting utilities. Chrome finally has one of its
    own, sort of. For Firefox there's something called Password Exporter.
    Every so often I do something with that. Password manager is not
    necessarily any better about saving passwords than the browser is.

    But I would definitely consider exporting them to text and printing them
    out, if you can.
    KM> Wait, what does innocent look like??
    Different from looking guilty?? <G>

    Probably not. <g>
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Wed Feb 9 11:13:00 2022

    KY MOFFET wrote to DARYL STOUT <=-

    > I have a password manager for all my internet stuff. But, that
    eminds
    me
    KM> I let the browser remember, except for a couple of super-secure ones.

    If the browser dumps, I'm screwed.

    There exist password exporting utilities. Chrome finally has one
    of its own, sort of. For Firefox there's something called
    Password Exporter. Every so often I do something with that.
    Password manager is not necessarily any better about saving
    passwords than the browser is.

    But I would definitely consider exporting them to text and
    printing them out, if you can.

    Yes, I'd have a backup copy (or two) of my passwords! Over the decades
    I've had computers die: remember once came home from work to find my 256
    GB HDD now thinking it was a something like 48 GB drive. Have
    electronic backups to the NAS in the basement.

    Here I have a password file on the computer -- not terribly secure but
    I'm the only one on this computer. Some people recommend keeping on a thumbdrive. I also have a Password Book: 2" ring binder with individual
    pages for each site. I also will keep other notes such as Secure
    Questions: some of my answers would normally be two words but the site
    doesn't allow, or would have an aprostrophe but again the site doesn't allow..... Sometimes other information like customer service telephone numbers.






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    Now my escape key doesn't work.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Thu Feb 10 22:25:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    KM> But I would definitely consider exporting them to text and
    KM> printing them out, if you can.

    Yes, I'd have a backup copy (or two) of my passwords! Over the decades
    I've had computers die: remember once came home from work to find my 256
    GB HDD now thinking it was a something like 48 GB drive. Have

    I remember that!

    electronic backups to the NAS in the basement.

    What sort of NAS do you have?

    I have a bunch of 2TB SAS drives that I'd like to set up as a NAS or
    something similar. I was going to use Fireball, but its SAS chip is real twitchy-picky and only works with random OSs when it feels like it. Have
    a couple of SAS adapters that might work better, haven't tested yet.

    Here I have a password file on the computer -- not terribly secure but
    I'm the only one on this computer. Some people recommend keeping on a thumbdrive.

    Problem is, thumbdrives are easy to lose, easy to corrupt, and not
    terribly reliable. If one dies, it just dies, no warning.

    I also have a Password Book: 2" ring binder with individual
    pages for each site. I also will keep other notes such as Secure
    Questions: some of my answers would normally be two words but the site doesn't allow, or would have an aprostrophe but again the site doesn't allow..... Sometimes other information like customer service telephone numbers.

    Good idea!

    I have a Standard List of Weird Crap I Can Remember from not-at-all-secure-and-probably-compromised-but-who-cares, up to Burn-Before-Reading-Never-Written-Down. If I can't remember, it's up the
    list until I hit one. <g>
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Fri Feb 11 14:15:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    KM> But I would definitely consider exporting them to text and
    KM> printing them out, if you can.
    Yes, I'd have a backup copy (or two) of my passwords! Over the decades
    I've had computers die: remember once came home from work to find my 256
    GB HDD now thinking it was a something like 48 GB drive. Have
    I remember that!

    Good memory! No idea what happened - thinking maybe one of the r/w arms
    broke as thought I heard a rattling. Computer was on a UPS so shouldn't
    have been a shock from a voltage surge. <shrug>


    electronic backups to the NAS in the basement.
    What sort of NAS do you have?

    ZyXEL NSA320 with a total of 5 TB storage (3 + 2). Antique by today's standards but works fine. The only thing I have to do when mounting is
    add in a command switch to add in to use the old/original protocol.
    Have this system's back ups, the storage for the camera's, and database backups for the MythTV system. The recordings themselves go to an
    external HDD (USB3).


    I have a bunch of 2TB SAS drives that I'd like to set up as a NAS
    or something similar. I was going to use Fireball, but its SAS
    chip is real twitchy-picky and only works with random OSs when it
    feels like it. Have a couple of SAS adapters that might work
    better, haven't tested yet.

    I'm been planning to build my own NAS: use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    other project bullies its way in front of the line....


    Here I have a password file on the computer -- not terribly secure but
    I'm the only one on this computer. Some people recommend keeping on a thumbdrive.
    Problem is, thumbdrives are easy to lose, easy to corrupt, and
    not terribly reliable. If one dies, it just dies, no warning.

    BTDT!! When I was visiting Europe a few years ago took a bunch of
    pictures, so had the originals on the cell phone's card, copied to the
    laptop, copied to a couple of thumbdrives which travelled more or less separately.

    No problems.

    OTOH I have had thumbdrives here just die. Some were those 'yellow' thumbdrives (the blue ones were fine). Others were some cheap ones (4
    GB) I bought more or less for sneakernet stuff. No problems that I can
    recall with name brand ones.



    I also have a Password Book: 2" ring binder with individual
    pages for each site. I also will keep other notes such as Secure
    Questions: some of my answers would normally be two words but the site doesn't allow, or would have an aprostrophe but again the site doesn't allow..... Sometimes other information like customer service telephone numbers.
    Good idea!

    I thought so! <g>


    I have a Standard List of Weird Crap I Can Remember from not-at-all-secure-and-probably-compromised-but-who-cares, up to Burn-Before-Reading-Never-Written-Down. If I can't remember, it's
    up the list until I hit one. <g>

    A List would probably work just as well -- after all the individual
    pages in my notebook are just a series of a list. Advnatage of the
    individual pages is easier to keep physically alphabetical (sequencing
    the sheets). The electronic list can be sequenced either by a sort
    function or manually inserting in the proper place. As long as it works
    for the user! :)



    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sun Feb 13 18:35:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    > I've had computers die: remember once came home from work to find my 256
    > GB HDD now thinking it was a something like 48 GB drive. Have
    KM> I remember that!

    Good memory! No idea what happened - thinking maybe one of the r/w arms broke as thought I heard a rattling. Computer was on a UPS so shouldn't
    have been a shock from a voltage surge. <shrug>

    I've seen a HD with a busted r/w arm (head come loose and just dangling)
    and another with the arm disconnected entirely. So it does happen!


    > electronic backups to the NAS in the basement.
    KM> What sort of NAS do you have?

    ZyXEL NSA320 with a total of 5 TB storage (3 + 2). Antique by today's standards but works fine. The only thing I have to do when mounting is

    So long as it schlepps files back and forth and stores 'em reliably,
    it's good enough, what else is a NAS supposed to do anyway??


    KM> I have a bunch of 2TB SAS drives that I'd like to set up as a NAS
    KM> or something similar. I was going to use Fireball, but its SAS
    KM> chip is real twitchy-picky and only works with random OSs when it
    KM> feels like it. Have a couple of SAS adapters that might work
    KM> better, haven't tested yet.

    I'm been planning to build my own NAS:

    There exist NAS-OS images, tho I haven't looked into 'em.

    use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    other project bullies its way in front of the line....

    I guess until you run out of connectors...

    OTOH I have had thumbdrives here just die. Some were those 'yellow' thumbdrives (the blue ones were fine). Others were some cheap ones (4
    GB) I bought more or less for sneakernet stuff. No problems that I can recall with name brand ones.

    I recall an Adventure with several bogus AData thumb drives.... in my observation, all the off-brand drives are crap. If it's not a Big Name, AVOID!!
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Mon Feb 14 07:38:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    > I've had computers die: remember once came home from work to find my 256
    > GB HDD now thinking it was a something like 48 GB drive. Have
    KM> I remember that!
    Good memory! No idea what happened - thinking maybe one of the r/w arms broke as thought I heard a rattling. Computer was on a UPS so shouldn't have been a shock from a voltage surge. <shrug>
    I've seen a HD with a busted r/w arm (head come loose and just
    dangling) and another with the arm disconnected entirely. So it
    does happen!

    In hind sight I should have opened the drive to see what happened. I
    know I tried a few recovery options.



    > electronic backups to the NAS in the basement.
    KM> What sort of NAS do you have?
    ZyXEL NSA320 with a total of 5 TB storage (3 + 2). Antique by today's standards but works fine. The only thing I have to do when mounting is
    So long as it schlepps files back and forth and stores 'em
    reliably, it's good enough, what else is a NAS supposed to do
    anyway??

    Provide another source for blinkenlichten! Actually pretty much my
    thoughts: just need it to store/backup data. The only two issues with it
    are current OSs whine about the low security version it has (can't be
    updated as no longer supported) -- I have a work-around and don't need
    the security. The other is it is getting a little long in the tooth and
    so might have some pending hardware issues.


    KM> I have a bunch of 2TB SAS drives that I'd like to set up as a NAS
    KM> or something similar. I was going to use Fireball, but its SAS
    KM> chip is real twitchy-picky and only works with random OSs when it
    KM> feels like it. Have a couple of SAS adapters that might work
    KM> better, haven't tested yet.
    I'm been planning to build my own NAS:
    There exist NAS-OS images, tho I haven't looked into 'em.

    Have found some of them and glanced through. Some look pretty
    impressive!


    use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    other project bullies its way in front of the line....
    I guess until you run out of connectors...

    Strip and solder a few of the wires together to make Y-adapeters. <bseg>


    OTOH I have had thumbdrives here just die. Some were those 'yellow' thumbdrives (the blue ones were fine). Others were some cheap ones (4
    GB) I bought more or less for sneakernet stuff. No problems that I can recall with name brand ones.
    I recall an Adventure with several bogus AData thumb drives....
    in my observation, all the off-brand drives are crap. If it's not
    a Big Name, AVOID!!

    Yes, these were Adata thumbdrives. Not sure if it's an off-brand but I
    wasn't impressed by their customer service and so they are now on my Do
    Not Buy List.




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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Tue Feb 15 10:58:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!
    > Good memory! No idea what happened - thinking maybe one of the r/w arms
    > broke as thought I heard a rattling. Computer was on a UPS so shouldn't
    > have been a shock from a voltage surge. <shrug>
    KM> I've seen a HD with a busted r/w arm (head come loose and just
    KM> dangling) and another with the arm disconnected entirely. So it
    KM> does happen!

    In hind sight I should have opened the drive to see what happened. I
    know I tried a few recovery options.

    If they're making noise it's one of two problems: either busted as
    above, or (more often) the logic board died and it's making the motor go
    clank clank clank. Logic boards can be replaced... sometimes. Around the
    40GB era that starts to be very specific and needs an exact-match chip,
    or it won't work. Matching same production batch, not just same model,
    and with the more modern HDs every drive is different because the chip
    is programmed to match the individual drive. There's an outfit that
    sells the logic boards, and also does the repairs for under $100 or so,
    but it's no longer something you and I can really do.

    KM> So long as it schlepps files back and forth and stores 'em
    KM> reliably, it's good enough, what else is a NAS supposed to do
    KM> anyway??
    Provide another source for blinkenlichten! Actually pretty much my

    LOL!

    thoughts: just need it to store/backup data. The only two issues with it
    are current OSs whine about the low security version it has (can't be
    updated as no longer supported) -- I have a work-around and don't need
    the security. The other is it is getting a little long in the tooth and
    so might have some pending hardware issues.

    Yeah, same reason I don't care that Bullet, who until I started
    rearranging hardware was doing duty as file server, is 14 years old.
    Reliable, so who cares? And unless some nullwit breaks into my house and
    peers into my files, there really isn't any security issue.


    > I'm been planning to build my own NAS:
    KM> There exist NAS-OS images, tho I haven't looked into 'em.
    Have found some of them and glanced through. Some look pretty
    impressive!

    Yeah, quite competent.

    The Asustor, if I were rich and buying a NAS, looks like a really nice
    unit. Since I'm not rich, some low-power PC will do. :P

    > use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    > for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    > other project bullies its way in front of the line....
    KM> I guess until you run out of connectors...
    Strip and solder a few of the wires together to make Y-adapeters. <bseg>

    Cheat :P

    KM> I recall an Adventure with several bogus AData thumb drives....
    KM> in my observation, all the off-brand drives are crap. If it's not
    KM> a Big Name, AVOID!!

    Yes, these were Adata thumbdrives. Not sure if it's an off-brand but I wasn't impressed by their customer service and so they are now on my Do
    Not Buy List.

    Looks to me like the off-brands are buying seconds (borderline-defective memory chips) and building the units with the cheapest logic board
    available. So they're bound to fail early and often... and are priced accordingly.

    At this point, in a flash drive or memory card, I'll only buy Sandisk.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Wed Feb 16 08:50:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    > Good memory! No idea what happened - thinking maybe one of the r/w arms
    > broke as thought I heard a rattling. Computer was on a UPS so shouldn't
    > have been a shock from a voltage surge. <shrug>
    KM> I've seen a HD with a busted r/w arm (head come loose and just
    KM> dangling) and another with the arm disconnected entirely. So it
    KM> does happen!
    In hind sight I should have opened the drive to see what happened. I
    know I tried a few recovery options.
    If they're making noise it's one of two problems: either busted
    as above, or (more often) the logic board died and it's making
    the motor go clank clank clank. Logic boards can be replaced...
    sometimes. Around the 40GB era that starts to be very specific
    and needs an exact-match chip, or it won't work. Matching same
    production batch, not just same model, and with the more modern
    HDs every drive is different because the chip is programmed to
    match the individual drive. There's an outfit that sells the
    logic boards, and also does the repairs for under $100 or so, but
    it's no longer something you and I can really do.

    Right: opening would have been more to physically see the innerds as
    opposed to just seeing a picture. If even attempted to repair I doubt I
    woudl have trusted the HDD any longer. Not doubting my repair ability,
    more the HDD failed and it shouldn't have.



    KM> So long as it schlepps files back and forth and stores 'em
    KM> reliably, it's good enough, what else is a NAS supposed to do
    KM> anyway??
    Provide another source for blinkenlichten! Actually pretty much my
    LOL!
    thoughts: just need it to store/backup data. The only two issues with it are current OSs whine about the low security version it has (can't be updated as no longer supported) -- I have a work-around and don't need
    the security. The other is it is getting a little long in the tooth and
    so might have some pending hardware issues.
    Yeah, same reason I don't care that Bullet, who until I started rearranging hardware was doing duty as file server, is 14 years
    old. Reliable, so who cares? And unless some nullwit breaks into
    my house and peers into my files, there really isn't any security
    issue.

    Pretty much the same here. Actually I'm more concerned with the
    neighbour's tree falling this direction and smashing stuff than a break
    in. (We did have a severe wind storm after the Derecho and I did move
    stuff from my desk as it's right next to the window: was a bit concerned
    the window might break.)


    > I'm been planning to build my own NAS:
    KM> There exist NAS-OS images, tho I haven't looked into 'em.
    Have found some of them and glanced through. Some look pretty
    impressive!
    Yeah, quite competent.

    But first!....


    The Asustor, if I were rich and buying a NAS, looks like a really
    nice unit. Since I'm not rich, some low-power PC will do. :P

    I'm thinking more towards building my own mainly because I have the
    parts laying around (or at least think I have!). As far as physical
    size, the purchasable (that a word?) versions seem to be more compact,
    which has an advantage -- the current NAS is in the basement on a
    storage cabinet under the service panel. A too-tall unit won't fit; a too-wide unit is possible but have to move the UPS down there (which is
    on the cabinet. ...Actually there's a second UPS: the one for the VoIP (telephone service on the fiber optic line).



    > use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    > for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    > other project bullies its way in front of the line....
    KM> I guess until you run out of connectors...
    Strip and solder a few of the wires together to make Y-adapters. <bseg>
    Cheat :P

    Would work for power, probably not data. :( <g>


    KM> I recall an Adventure with several bogus AData thumb drives....
    KM> in my observation, all the off-brand drives are crap. If it's not
    KM> a Big Name, AVOID!!
    Yes, these were Adata thumbdrives. Not sure if it's an off-brand but I wasn't impressed by their customer service and so they are now on my Do
    Not Buy List.
    Looks to me like the off-brands are buying seconds
    (borderline-defective memory chips) and building the units with
    the cheapest logic board available. So they're bound to fail
    early and often... and are priced accordingly.

    The trouble was both the yellow and blue ones were Adata, 16 GB, USB
    3.0, UV128 (whatever that means). Physically identical except for the
    colour. Blue ones "always" worked -- I did manage to kill a couple but
    seemed to be more me doing something as opposed to the yellow ones just
    failing 'mid-air'.

    A while back (year, maybe two) I did sort of check and the blue ones had differences from the yellow per diagnostic/recovery utilities. The
    experience definitely soured me on Adata, so no buying anything from
    them.


    At this point, in a flash drive or memory card, I'll only buy
    Sandisk.

    I've been sticking with SanDisk and Kingston.


    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

    ... Songs from the Hospital Hit Parade: "Red Cells in the Sunset"
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Thu Feb 17 10:01:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    KM> match the individual drive. There's an outfit that sells the
    KM> logic boards, and also does the repairs for under $100 or so, but
    KM> it's no longer something you and I can really do.

    Right: opening would have been more to physically see the innerds as
    opposed to just seeing a picture. If even attempted to repair I doubt I woudl have trusted the HDD any longer. Not doubting my repair ability,
    more the HDD failed and it shouldn't have.

    Repair is only for data recovery; no failed drive is EVER considered
    "working" after repair.

    KM> Yeah, same reason I don't care that Bullet, who until I started
    KM> rearranging hardware was doing duty as file server, is 14 years
    KM> old. Reliable, so who cares? And unless some nullwit breaks into
    KM> my house and peers into my files, there really isn't any security
    KM> issue.

    Pretty much the same here. Actually I'm more concerned with the
    neighbour's tree falling this direction and smashing stuff than a break
    in. (We did have a severe wind storm after the Derecho and I did move
    stuff from my desk as it's right next to the window: was a bit concerned
    the window might break.)

    Yeah. Physical security makes sense for corporate, but for us, we don't
    want to be bothered, when the worst hazard is falling trees. <g>

    KM> The Asustor, if I were rich and buying a NAS, looks like a really
    KM> nice unit. Since I'm not rich, some low-power PC will do. :P

    I'm thinking more towards building my own mainly because I have the
    parts laying around (or at least think I have!). As far as physical

    Yeah, and can put to use a lot more than the two drives handled by the
    average commercial NAS with a consumer-practical price. In a pinch my preferred case will handle ten HDDs. I don't want RAID (cured of that by
    a summer spent recovering a friend's RAID-mangled data) or anything but
    HAND OVER MY FILES AND NO ONE GOES TO THE SCRAPYARD. No flaming hoops,
    just storage.

    I do have a very old actual for-really NAS here somewhere, but haven't
    been able to get it to work. How old? <goes to look> IDE, not SATA.
    Cisco, probably cost a fortune new. Came in some box of free stuff. Interesting, but not useful.

    > > use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    > > for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    > > other project bullies its way in front of the line....
    > KM> I guess until you run out of connectors...
    > Strip and solder a few of the wires together to make Y-adapters. <bseg>
    KM> Cheat :P
    Would work for power, probably not data. :( <g>

    It can, in fact that's how some of the cheap adapters work, but you
    still have the same total bandwidth, so it gets real slow.

    The trouble was both the yellow and blue ones were Adata, 16 GB, USB
    3.0, UV128 (whatever that means). Physically identical except for the colour. Blue ones "always" worked -- I did manage to kill a couple but seemed to be more me doing something as opposed to the yellow ones just failing 'mid-air'.

    Different source for the seconds, probably. I recall that mattered
    exceedingly with vidcards in old OEM boxen... Matrox chips were seconds
    (I had a firsthand confirm on that) but still worked right. ATI chips
    were also seconds but a crapshoot. Box still said Gateway on the front.

    A while back (year, maybe two) I did sort of check and the blue ones had differences from the yellow per diagnostic/recovery utilities. The experience definitely soured me on Adata, so no buying anything from
    them.

    When I looked, the average of all reviews was "Nothing but trouble".


    KM> At this point, in a flash drive or memory card, I'll only buy
    KM> Sandisk.

    I've been sticking with SanDisk and Kingston.

    Only RAM I've ever had fail was Kingston. All sorts of other random RAM
    of every and no brand, no problem. So they're not on my top buy list.

    I've used Lexar flash drives, but larger than 128GB like to default to
    USB 1.0, and walking data over one bit at a time is faster.

    In SSDs or NVMes, Sandisk/WD or Samsung. Only reason I have an NVMe
    that's a PNY is cuz "cheapest one I could lay hands on til we see if
    they work with this ...vintage... hardware and OS."

    With the 3rd party driver, XP64 likes 'em fine. But Win7 threw up in new
    and creative ways, and Win10 corrupts them (permanently sets a dirty bit
    so they perpetually want "disk checking").
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Fri Feb 18 10:28:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    KM> match the individual drive. There's an outfit that sells the
    KM> logic boards, and also does the repairs for under $100 or so, but
    KM> it's no longer something you and I can really do.
    Right: opening would have been more to physically see the innerds as
    opposed to just seeing a picture. If even attempted to repair I doubt I woudl have trusted the HDD any longer. Not doubting my repair ability,
    more the HDD failed and it shouldn't have.
    Repair is only for data recovery; no failed drive is EVER
    considered "working" after repair.

    My definition is probably looser: the repaired drive (rust or otherwise)
    is now working but I eye it with suspicion. I'd use it for something
    like Sneakernet or temporary storage/use, definitely nothing critical
    like for a Backup.


    KM> Yeah, same reason I don't care that Bullet, who until I started
    KM> rearranging hardware was doing duty as file server, is 14 years
    KM> old. Reliable, so who cares? And unless some nullwit breaks into
    KM> my house and peers into my files, there really isn't any security
    KM> issue.
    Pretty much the same here. Actually I'm more concerned with the
    neighbour's tree falling this direction and smashing stuff than a break
    in. (We did have a severe wind storm after the Derecho and I did move
    stuff from my desk as it's right next to the window: was a bit concerned
    the window might break.)
    Yeah. Physical security makes sense for corporate, but for us, we
    don't want to be bothered, when the worst hazard is falling
    trees. <g>

    Plus hackers are more likely to target businesses where tons of data
    like passwords, SSNs, etc., could be collected in one big swoop. More
    than likely a hacker isn't going to bother you or I to grab my bank
    account number. (They won't the password on my computer -- well, maybe
    the History -- darn!) I probably have a greater chance of a hacker
    attempting to snag my WiFi. (Why has that car been sitting on the
    street for the last hour?)


    KM> The Asustor, if I were rich and buying a NAS, looks like a really
    KM> nice unit. Since I'm not rich, some low-power PC will do. :P
    I'm thinking more towards building my own mainly because I have the
    parts laying around (or at least think I have!). As far as physical
    Yeah, and can put to use a lot more than the two drives handled
    by the average commercial NAS with a consumer-practical price. In
    a pinch my preferred case will handle ten HDDs. I don't want RAID
    (cured of that by a summer spent recovering a friend's
    RAID-mangled data) or anything but HAND OVER MY FILES AND NO ONE
    GOES TO THE SCRAPYARD. No flaming hoops, just storage.

    Right. All I really need is backup storage for when something goes
    wrong. Even the old (antique!) NAS I have offers all sorts of options
    I've never used: Media Server, iTunes Server, Broadcatching (no idea
    what that is), Flickr/YouTube uploader.... Could probably get by with
    an external HDD!


    I do have a very old actual for-really NAS here somewhere, but
    haven't been able to get it to work. How old? <goes to look> IDE,
    not SATA. Cisco, probably cost a fortune new. Came in some box of
    free stuff. Interesting, but not useful.

    So when are you going to price SATA-to-IDE adapters?!

    Here I could break up the total storage device into portions: music BU
    to one HDD, data to another; the cameras monitoring what's going on
    putside could be to multiple small hard drives: they don't need to be to
    the same drive. I look at (essentially) /NAS/Unit 1/Camera 1, which
    could go just as easily to /NAS/HDD1 as /NAS/HDD8.




    > > use some of the old/smaller HDDs
    > > for end-directories (instead of a sub-dir on a huge/new HDD). Some
    > > other project bullies its way in front of the line....
    > KM> I guess until you run out of connectors...
    > Strip and solder a few of the wires together to make Y-adapters. <bseg>
    KM> Cheat :P
    Would work for power, probably not data. :( <g>
    It can, in fact that's how some of the cheap adapters work, but
    you still have the same total bandwidth, so it gets real slow.

    I don 't like to wait when I don't have to so not a good option for me. Actually was thinking more the output of the motherboard's port is set
    to go to the input of specific device only but suppose could just as
    easily do output to several device and whichever device is the correct
    one can then decode the data. (Yeah, really sloppy Black Box concept!)



    The trouble was both the yellow and blue ones were Adata, 16 GB, USB
    3.0, UV128 (whatever that means). Physically identical except for the colour. Blue ones "always" worked -- I did manage to kill a couple but seemed to be more me doing something as opposed to the yellow ones just failing 'mid-air'.
    Different source for the seconds, probably. I recall that
    mattered exceedingly with vidcards in old OEM boxen... Matrox
    chips were seconds (I had a firsthand confirm on that) but still
    worked right. ATI chips were also seconds but a crapshoot. Box
    still said Gateway on the front.

    Spotted cows! ...I sort of have the theory lower-classed Pentiums,
    etc., were ones that failed to meet the upper-level standards: it works,
    just not at the top level. Waste not, want not!




    KM> At this point, in a flash drive or memory card, I'll only buy
    KM> Sandisk.
    I've been sticking with SanDisk and Kingston.
    Only RAM I've ever had fail was Kingston. All sorts of other
    random RAM of every and no brand, no problem. So they're not on
    my top buy list.

    I think the only brand I had problems with is Patriot but they
    immediately replaced essentially without question (I had done the
    extended MemTest+ diagnostic to verify to myself where the problem was
    already so any question was already answered).

    The usage also makes a difference (great! more variables!). Semi-
    following best for the Raspberry Pi's microSD card -- top of my head not recalling but essentially Brand A is good but only Model 1 as Model 2 is sluggish. Brand 2 is next best but if use as <condition> is better than
    Brand 1. ...Essentially depends on Reads, Writes. Also seems if a lot
    of writes then better off with a larger capacity card even though means
    a lot of unused space: each (segment) has only so many writes
    available, so if writing a lot then if to a small capacity card one uses
    the same (segment) over and over again, so exhausts/dies effectively
    sooner. If using a large capacity card the same number of writes are
    spread over more (segments) so effectively lasts longer. (Again I'm
    having an issue with terminology as don't know the proper name and
    details.)



    I've used Lexar flash drives, but larger than 128GB like to
    default to USB 1.0, and walking data over one bit at a time is
    faster.

    "Oddly" Lexar drives were in one of the RPi studies and while great for
    other functions did abysmally poorly in the RPi. I odn't recall the
    size but seems the comparisons were using 16 and 32 GB cards.


    In SSDs or NVMes, Sandisk/WD or Samsung. Only reason I have an
    NVMe that's a PNY is cuz "cheapest one I could lay hands on til
    we see if they work with this ...vintage... hardware and OS."

    Yup: if something may or may not work doesn't make sense to go with
    expensive. And of course usage: for example on this computer I want to
    access the information (data) fast so a 7200 RPM drive might make sense
    but for storage a 5600 RPM drive is probably mopre than enough, so I can
    save some money between those two options. (Think I have the numbers
    right.)


    With the 3rd party driver, XP64 likes 'em fine. But Win7 threw up
    in new and creative ways, and Win10 corrupts them (permanently
    sets a dirty bit so they perpetually want "disk checking").

    I'm more and more liking my decision to move away from Windows!




    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

    ... Useless Fact: In Africa, a minute passes every 60 seconds.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sat Feb 19 18:27:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    > woudl have trusted the HDD any longer. Not doubting my repair ability,
    > more the HDD failed and it shouldn't have.
    KM> Repair is only for data recovery; no failed drive is EVER
    KM> considered "working" after repair.

    My definition is probably looser: the repaired drive (rust or otherwise)
    is now working but I eye it with suspicion. I'd use it for something
    like Sneakernet or temporary storage/use, definitely nothing critical
    like for a Backup.

    Yeah, unless you know it was a filesystem/partition problem, would not
    be at the head of my trusted list. But for that kind of use, sure.

    However, if the OS touches it, and it's bad, it will make trouble. Drive that's failing but nothing visible (no bad sectors) can cause system
    freezes.

    KM> Yeah. Physical security makes sense for corporate, but for us, we
    KM> don't want to be bothered, when the worst hazard is falling
    KM> trees. <g>

    Plus hackers are more likely to target businesses where tons of data
    like passwords, SSNs, etc., could be collected in one big swoop. More
    than likely a hacker isn't going to bother you or I to grab my bank
    account number. (They won't the password on my computer -- well, maybe

    That's not really the criterion. A million small bank accounts totals
    the same money, and garners no untoward attention from Interpol.

    the History -- darn!) I probably have a greater chance of a hacker attempting to snag my WiFi. (Why has that car been sitting on the
    street for the last hour?)

    Anyone trying to enjoy my wifi would be very disappointed in the speed...


    KM> Yeah, and can put to use a lot more than the two drives handled
    KM> by the average commercial NAS with a consumer-practical price. In Right. All I really need is backup storage for when something goes
    wrong. Even the old (antique!) NAS I have offers all sorts of options
    I've never used: Media Server, iTunes Server, Broadcatching (no idea
    what that is), Flickr/YouTube uploader.... Could probably get by with
    an external HDD!

    Yeah, the Asustor has its own little CPU and OS, and it can do enough
    stuff that you could almost use it as a desktop. Would I ever use those functions? I doubt it.

    KM> I do have a very old actual for-really NAS here somewhere, but
    KM> haven't been able to get it to work. How old? <goes to look> IDE,
    KM> not SATA. Cisco, probably cost a fortune new. Came in some box of
    KM> free stuff. Interesting, but not useful.

    So when are you going to price SATA-to-IDE adapters?!

    LOL... I've used those. The one that actually works and doesn't burn a
    hole in your PC is awkwardly sized and a naked board so you have to be
    careful what it touches; the one that's got a case around the board and
    isn't so big and gawky runs at FRY. Either way, not a good solution.

    Here I could break up the total storage device into portions: music BU
    to one HDD, data to another; the cameras monitoring what's going on
    putside could be to multiple small hard drives: they don't need to be to
    the same drive. I look at (essentially) /NAS/Unit 1/Camera 1, which
    could go just as easily to /NAS/HDD1 as /NAS/HDD8.

    Yeah, I like to sort things out that way when I can.

    KM> It can, in fact that's how some of the cheap adapters work, but
    KM> you still have the same total bandwidth, so it gets real slow.

    I don 't like to wait when I don't have to so not a good option for me. Actually was thinking more the output of the motherboard's port is set
    to go to the input of specific device only but suppose could just as
    easily do output to several device and whichever device is the correct
    one can then decode the data. (Yeah, really sloppy Black Box concept!)

    Each one needs its own channel, as I understand it. So the adapter has
    to know how to direct traffic. But you still only have X-bandwidth,
    until you get into the more expensive adapters that are designed to give
    each HD its full bandwidth.

    Spotted cows! ...I sort of have the theory lower-classed Pentiums,
    etc., were ones that failed to meet the upper-level standards: it works,
    just not at the top level. Waste not, want not!

    That's exactly right. Because chip production is so variable, some work
    better than others, and whatever the batch tests at is how they'll be
    labeled. Lesser chips may "overclock" because some will actually be up
    to it.

    And there will be occasional freak chips that can "overclock" to
    something ridiculous, like over 5GHz.

    And it makes gamers very happy when they can buy a cheaper CPU and
    "overclock" it to something silly like that.

    But there is really no such thing as overclocking; there is only running
    a chip up to its maximum ability.

    Back in the olden days, for a while the P75 was the market sweet spot.
    Intel was already producing P90 CPUs, but they were widely viewed as too expensive. But P90 was what was coming out of the production line, and
    they cost the same to make regardless, so they rebadged a bunch of those
    P90s and sold them as P75s. In fact I've only seen one P75 that was
    really only 75MHz and would not "overclock" to 90MHz, because of this.

    I think the only brand I had problems with is Patriot but they
    immediately replaced essentially without question (I had done the
    extended MemTest+ diagnostic to verify to myself where the problem was already so any question was already answered).

    Good on them, then.

    The usage also makes a difference (great! more variables!). Semi-
    following best for the Raspberry Pi's microSD card -- top of my head not recalling but essentially Brand A is good but only Model 1 as Model 2 is sluggish. Brand 2 is next best but if use as <condition> is better than

    And there are a bunch of different SD card specs. Explaining Computers
    channel had a good go-over of the various types a while back. I printed
    out his conclusions chart and put it in my wallet. :)

    Only buy Sandisk now regardless, but still there are different types,
    and not all work well for everything.

    Brand 1. ...Essentially depends on Reads, Writes. Also seems if a lot
    of writes then better off with a larger capacity card even though means
    a lot of unused space: each (segment) has only so many writes
    available, so if writing a lot then if to a small capacity card one uses
    the same (segment) over and over again, so exhausts/dies effectively

    Yeah, true of all flash devices, including SSDs.

    KM> I've used Lexar flash drives, but larger than 128GB like to
    KM> default to USB 1.0, and walking data over one bit at a time is
    KM> faster.

    "Oddly" Lexar drives were in one of the RPi studies and while great for
    other functions did abysmally poorly in the RPi. I odn't recall the
    size but seems the comparisons were using 16 and 32 GB cards.

    Yeah, see, Lexars sometimes have weird ideas. They're made by Micron,
    which normally means good quality memory, but not so sure about the rest
    of the unit.

    KM> In SSDs or NVMes, Sandisk/WD or Samsung. Only reason I have an
    KM> NVMe that's a PNY is cuz "cheapest one I could lay hands on til
    KM> we see if they work with this ...vintage... hardware and OS."

    Yup: if something may or may not work doesn't make sense to go with

    Yeah... could chuck it into one of the other boxen but... well, it was
    both cheap and works, what's not to like??

    expensive. And of course usage: for example on this computer I want to access the information (data) fast so a 7200 RPM drive might make sense
    but for storage a 5600 RPM drive is probably mopre than enough, so I can
    save some money between those two options. (Think I have the numbers
    right.)

    The main diff is the 7200RPM drives usually come with a 5 year warranty,
    and are designed for harder use. It does make a significant difference
    as a boot drive, not so much as a data drive, but if you're impatient,
    you WILL notice the difference.

    KM> With the 3rd party driver, XP64 likes 'em fine. But Win7 threw up
    KM> in new and creative ways, and Win10 corrupts them (permanently
    KM> sets a dirty bit so they perpetually want "disk checking").

    I'm more and more liking my decision to move away from Windows!

    Yeah, they're not really enticing me with the more-recent shenanigans.
    Win11 has some nice features, but for every nice feature there's an
    equal and negating WTF.

    Win10's guts seem to be very good, but the desktop leaves pretty much everything to be desired, and then there's these bad behaviors...

    I once suggested to a MSFT rep that it would be really nice to have
    modular desktops, so we could use whichever style of Windows we prefer
    while having the benefits of updated underpinnings. He said they were
    actually considering that, but obviously nothing came of it.
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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Barry Martin on Sun Feb 20 20:27:00 2022
    Barry,

    I'm more and more liking my decision to move away from Windows!

    Especially if a tornado is approaching. <G>

    Daryl

    ... Velcro - what a rip off!
    === MultiMail/Win v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
    * Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - Little Rock, Arkansas (454:1/33)
  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Sun Feb 20 08:07:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    > would have trusted the HDD any longer. Not doubting my repair ability,
    > more the HDD failed and it shouldn't have.
    KM> Repair is only for data recovery; no failed drive is EVER
    KM> considered "working" after repair.
    My definition is probably looser: the repaired drive (rust or otherwise)
    is now working but I eye it with suspicion. I'd use it for something
    like Sneakernet or temporary storage/use, definitely nothing critical
    like for a Backup.
    Yeah, unless you know it was a filesystem/partition problem,
    would not be at the head of my trusted list. But for that kind of
    use, sure.
    However, if the OS touches it, and it's bad, it will make
    trouble. Drive that's failing but nothing visible (no bad
    sectors) can cause system freezes.

    Hmm: thinking about that one Raspberry Pi I'm having problems with:
    randomly locks up/stops. Sometimes a reboot works, sometimes have to
    power boot to get going again. Plenty of room on the SD card, plenty of
    free memory.


    KM> Yeah. Physical security makes sense for corporate, but for us, we
    KM> don't want to be bothered, when the worst hazard is falling
    KM> trees. <g>
    Plus hackers are more likely to target businesses where tons of data
    like passwords, SSNs, etc., could be collected in one big swoop. More
    than likely a hacker isn't going to bother you or I to grab my bank
    account number. (They won't the password on my computer -- well, maybe
    That's not really the criterion. A million small bank accounts
    totals the same money, and garners no untoward attention from
    Interpol.

    That's true.


    the History -- darn!) I probably have a greater chance of a hacker attempting to snag my WiFi. (Why has that car been sitting on the
    street for the last hour?)
    Anyone trying to enjoy my wifi would be very disappointed in the
    speed...

    Still, could be better than nothing!


    KM> Yeah, and can put to use a lot more than the two drives handled
    KM> by the average commercial NAS with a consumer-practical price. In Right. All I really need is backup storage for when something goes
    wrong. Even the old (antique!) NAS I have offers all sorts of options
    I've never used: Media Server, iTunes Server, Broadcatching (no idea
    what that is), Flickr/YouTube uploader.... Could probably get by with
    an external HDD!
    Yeah, the Asustor has its own little CPU and OS, and it can do
    enough stuff that you could almost use it as a desktop. Would I
    ever use those functions? I doubt it.

    On one hand there are our types which could make a system from scratch
    -- well, select and grab a bunch of software anyway! There are others
    who could not. My guess is the units put in all that software for the
    latter group. Same unit is sold to mour group, we just don't have to
    use what's included.



    KM> I do have a very old actual for-really NAS here somewhere, but
    KM> haven't been able to get it to work. How old? <goes to look> IDE,
    KM> not SATA. Cisco, probably cost a fortune new. Came in some box of
    KM> free stuff. Interesting, but not useful.
    So when are you going to price SATA-to-IDE adapters?!
    LOL... I've used those. The one that actually works and doesn't
    burn a hole in your PC is awkwardly sized and a naked board so
    you have to be careful what it touches; the one that's got a case
    around the board and isn't so big and gawky runs at FRY. Either
    way, not a good solution.

    I've worked with bare/open circuit boards; mostly the electrical side of
    things like voltage regulators and chargers. The pre-made aspect is
    nice: keeps things compact and the price down -- I'd probably pay the
    same for a toroid as I did for the entire unit. Holding the board in
    place in the box can sometimes be a bit of a challenge!


    Here I could break up the total storage device into portions: music BU
    to one HDD, data to another; the cameras monitoring what's going on
    putside could be to multiple small hard drives: they don't need to be to
    the same drive. I look at (essentially) /NAS/Unit 1/Camera 1, which
    could go just as easily to /NAS/HDD1 as /NAS/HDD8.
    Yeah, I like to sort things out that way when I can.

    It makes troubleshooting easier!


    KM> It can, in fact that's how some of the cheap adapters work, but
    KM> you still have the same total bandwidth, so it gets real slow.
    I don 't like to wait when I don't have to so not a good option for me. Actually was thinking more the output of the motherboard's port is set
    to go to the input of specific device only but suppose could just as
    easily do output to several device and whichever device is the correct
    one can then decode the data. (Yeah, really sloppy Black Box concept!)
    Each one needs its own channel, as I understand it. So the
    adapter has to know how to direct traffic. But you still only
    have X-bandwidth, until you get into the more expensive adapters
    that are designed to give each HD its full bandwidth.

    I was thinking needing their own data channel also, which was the joke
    behind my comment, though was a bit hidden. (There's another one!)
    The power portion can be soldered together; the data not.



    Spotted cows! ...I sort of have the theory lower-classed Pentiums,
    etc., were ones that failed to meet the upper-level standards: it works, just not at the top level. Waste not, want not!
    That's exactly right. Because chip production is so variable,
    some work better than others, and whatever the batch tests at is
    how they'll be labeled. Lesser chips may "overclock" because some
    will actually be up to it.

    Yea! I was right! As for overclocking, I don't do mainly because of the overall concept of it's designed for only so much, very possible to do
    more for a short period of time but after that it fails.


    And there will be occasional freak chips that can "overclock" to
    something ridiculous, like over 5GHz.

    Remember when we were ecstatic at the 8088's 16 MHz?!


    And it makes gamers very happy when they can buy a cheaper CPU
    and "overclock" it to something silly like that.

    Well yeah: I like a bargain too!


    But there is really no such thing as overclocking; there is only
    running a chip up to its maximum ability.

    Agree. I'm thinking the manufacturers want to be able to sell a (say) 6
    GHz chip, and maybe actually have it, but the problem is becomes unstable/overheats/requires a lot of power/whatever. Cut it down to 4
    GHz, problems go away. ...Let the tinkers deal with those issues, we said
    it's only good to this level. And Clyde the Corporate Lawyer reminded
    to include the 'overclocking may void warranty' clause.



    Back in the olden days, for a while the P75 was the market sweet
    spot. Intel was already producing P90 CPUs, but they were widely
    viewed as too expensive. But P90 was what was coming out of the
    production line, and they cost the same to make regardless, so
    they rebadged a bunch of those P90s and sold them as P75s. In
    fact I've only seen one P75 that was really only 75MHz and would
    not "overclock" to 90MHz, because of this.

    Makes sense to me.



    The usage also makes a difference (great! more variables!). Semi-
    following best for the Raspberry Pi's microSD card -- top of my head not recalling but essentially Brand A is good but only Model 1 as Model 2 is sluggish. Brand 2 is next best but if use as <condition> is better than
    And there are a bunch of different SD card specs. Explaining
    Computers channel had a good go-over of the various types a while
    back. I printed out his conclusions chart and put it in my
    wallet. :)

    (Ky has a George Costanza wallet; very little money, but stuffed full of
    notes, coupons, phone number strips for guitar lessons....)

    Actually something I should do but electronically; store in the phone
    as I usually carry when I go out. Guess I'll have to learn how to use
    it for something beside talking, pictures, and a schedule calendar!


    Only buy Sandisk now regardless, but still there are different
    types, and not all work well for everything.

    Right, like some hard drives are recommended for lots of writes and few
    reads (surveillance ==> constant recording, occasional playback) some
    memory cards are designed for lots of writes and fewer reads, some the
    other way.



    Brand 1. ...Essentially depends on Reads, Writes. Also seems if a lot
    of writes then better off with a larger capacity card even though means
    a lot of unused space: each (segment) has only so many writes
    available, so if writing a lot then if to a small capacity card one uses
    the same (segment) over and over again, so exhausts/dies effectively
    Yeah, true of all flash devices, including SSDs.

    I'm thinking with my RPi problem somewhere above going from the the
    current 32 GB card, which shows as having lots of room, to a 64 GB card.
    Data should be rattling around loose!


    KM> I've used Lexar flash drives, but larger than 128GB like to
    KM> default to USB 1.0, and walking data over one bit at a time is
    KM> faster.
    "Oddly" Lexar drives were in one of the RPi studies and while great for other functions did abysmally poorly in the RPi. I odn't recall the
    size but seems the comparisons were using 16 and 32 GB cards.
    Yeah, see, Lexars sometimes have weird ideas. They're made by
    Micron, which normally means good quality memory, but not so sure
    about the rest of the unit.

    That's kind of the problem: every so often a great brand name puts out a
    dud.


    KM> In SSDs or NVMes, Sandisk/WD or Samsung. Only reason I have an
    KM> NVMe that's a PNY is cuz "cheapest one I could lay hands on til
    KM> we see if they work with this ...vintage... hardware and OS."
    Yup: if something may or may not work doesn't make sense to go with
    Yeah... could chuck it into one of the other boxen but... well,
    it was both cheap and works, what's not to like??

    It's lime green!



    KM> With the 3rd party driver, XP64 likes 'em fine. But Win7 threw up
    KM> in new and creative ways, and Win10 corrupts them (permanently
    KM> sets a dirty bit so they perpetually want "disk checking").
    I'm more and more liking my decision to move away from Windows!
    Yeah, they're not really enticing me with the more-recent
    shenanigans. Win11 has some nice features, but for every nice
    feature there's an equal and negating WTF.

    I'm thinking most people stick with Windows because they don't know of something different or are afraid to make the change. Admittedly
    switching from Windows-think to Linux-think is a slight challenge. And I
    guess Linux is more for 'fiddlers' -- maybe not as easy for those users
    used to clicking. I still like the command line - sometimes easier. ...Sometimes.


    Win10's guts seem to be very good, but the desktop leaves pretty
    much everything to be desired, and then there's these bad
    behaviors...
    I once suggested to a MSFT rep that it would be really nice to
    have modular desktops, so we could use whichever style of Windows
    we prefer while having the benefits of updated underpinnings. He
    said they were actually considering that, but obviously nothing
    came of it.

    Or at least yet. Or could have been said to placate you: yes, we're
    working on that, in the meantime you stil have to use the old junk but
    with the hopes of something good.



    ¯ BarryMartin3@ ®
    ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ®

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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Mon Feb 21 12:22:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    KM> Yeah, unless you know it was a filesystem/partition problem,
    KM> would not be at the head of my trusted list. But for that kind of
    KM> use, sure.

    I don't recall offhand if yours was mispartitioned (which happened
    sometimes with old tools) or what. But obviously got past it. <g>

    KM> However, if the OS touches it, and it's bad, it will make
    KM> trouble. Drive that's failing but nothing visible (no bad
    KM> sectors) can cause system freezes.

    Hmm: thinking about that one Raspberry Pi I'm having problems with:
    randomly locks up/stops. Sometimes a reboot works, sometimes have to
    power boot to get going again. Plenty of room on the SD card, plenty of
    free memory.

    Dunno if SD cards need the TRIM function like SSDs do to clean up after used/unused sectors and do wear-leveling... linux has not been good
    about that, generally, nor Windows before Win7, but newer SSDs TRIM themselves. SDs? no idea.

    <goes to look>

    Okay. If it's been in service a while as an OS host, chances are it's
    worn out:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/ex7dvo/quick_reminder_that_sd_cards_with_wearleveling/
    ===
    Vast majority of SD cards do not have wear-leveling, and might keep on
    writing to the same blocks over and over. In the end you wear out the
    card, and it becomes defective.

    When using SD cards in servers/computers this might become a major
    issue, especially if you have software running that performs large
    amount of write operations and/or generates a lot of written data.
    ===


    BUT! an inexpensive card is now available that does the job! new info
    from WD says:
    ===
    Our WD Purple MicroSD's do both static and dynamic wear-leveling.
    Meaning all blocks across whole address space are considered for wear
    leveling regardless of if and how the blocks are used. This keeps the
    number of program erase cycles consistent on all blocks.
    ===

    https://www.westerndigital.com/products/memory-cards/wd-purple-microsd#WDD032G1P0C

    Oh, be aware that as an old fogey, once a year you can claim a
    substantial Old Fogey discount on orders from WD. Last I looked it was 15%.


    > the History -- darn!) I probably have a greater chance of a hacker
    > attempting to snag my WiFi. (Why has that car been sitting on the
    > street for the last hour?)
    KM> Anyone trying to enjoy my wifi would be very disappointed in the
    KM> speed...

    Still, could be better than nothing!

    Tin cans and string level better than nothing!

    Okay, maybe it's time to upgrade from Fidonet.

    KM> Yeah, the Asustor has its own little CPU and OS, and it can do
    KM> enough stuff that you could almost use it as a desktop. Would I
    KM> ever use those functions? I doubt it.

    On one hand there are our types which could make a system from scratch
    -- well, select and grab a bunch of software anyway! There are others
    who could not. My guess is the units put in all that software for the
    latter group. Same unit is sold to mour group, we just don't have to
    use what's included.

    It's designed for small business backup and fileserver type work, where
    there are liability concerns. Commercial NAS lost data? you were
    following best practices, no liability in that. Homebrew NAS lost data?
    See you in court.

    My sister's work (she's a partner in a big international architecture
    firm) discards anything that's out of warranty, including vehicles,
    because the liability is too great. Building fell down? You were using
    fully supported everything and all to industry standard, so no liability
    for any defect that derives from said hardware or software. Using
    unsupported or outdated software OR hardware? See you in court. (We're
    talking billions of dollars, not small claims court.)

    THAT is why business doesn't use "free software" unless it's backed by
    someone they can sue for damages, eg. RedHat.


    > So when are you going to price SATA-to-IDE adapters?!
    KM> LOL... I've used those. The one that actually works and doesn't
    KM> burn a hole in your PC is awkwardly sized and a naked board so
    KM> you have to be careful what it touches; the one that's got a case
    KM> around the board and isn't so big and gawky runs at FRY. Either
    KM> way, not a good solution.

    I've worked with bare/open circuit boards; mostly the electrical side of things like voltage regulators and chargers. The pre-made aspect is
    nice: keeps things compact and the price down -- I'd probably pay the
    same for a toroid as I did for the entire unit. Holding the board in
    place in the box can sometimes be a bit of a challenge!

    Yeah, finding a way to dangle the one that worked where nothing would
    contact metal was more challenge than it was worth. Plus it doesn't fit
    inside any sort of drive bay. Easier to install an IDE or SATA adapter
    card (tho the latter need drivers, which can be an Issue. The IDE cards don't.)

    KM> Yeah, I like to sort things out that way when I can.
    It makes troubleshooting easier!

    What if we run out of ammo??!

    KM> Each one needs its own channel, as I understand it. So the
    KM> adapter has to know how to direct traffic. But you still only
    KM> have X-bandwidth, until you get into the more expensive adapters
    KM> that are designed to give each HD its full bandwidth.

    I was thinking needing their own data channel also, which was the joke
    behind my comment, though was a bit hidden. (There's another one!)
    The power portion can be soldered together; the data not.

    Oh yes, saw the joke, but it was actually reality <g>

    > Spotted cows! ...I sort of have the theory lower-classed Pentiums,
    > etc., were ones that failed to meet the upper-level standards: it works,
    > just not at the top level. Waste not, want not!
    KM> That's exactly right. Because chip production is so variable,
    KM> some work better than others, and whatever the batch tests at is
    KM> how they'll be labeled. Lesser chips may "overclock" because some
    KM> will actually be up to it.

    Yea! I was right! As for overclocking, I don't do mainly because of the overall concept of it's designed for only so much, very possible to do
    more for a short period of time but after that it fails.

    My way of thinking: If overclocking makes something uncomfortably or inconveniently hot, it should not be done. If it still runs within
    normal parameters, then not a problem.

    Lately learned that I should be able to "overclock" Fireball's RAM,
    because it actually runs at the higher speed, given a choice. CPU
    supports it, board supposedly does... if Lenovo didn't disable it.
    Haven't looked yet. Would be a significant performance boost (to where Fireball could claim "fastest PC in the house").

    KM> And there will be occasional freak chips that can "overclock" to
    KM> something ridiculous, like over 5GHz.

    Remember when we were ecstatic at the 8088's 16 MHz?!

    I think the first PC I ever used was like 4MHz... so slow you had to
    wait for it to wait for itself! However, it did the job... I still have
    the 5" floppies for it here somewhere, for DOS5 and WordPerfect 5.0.

    KM> And it makes gamers very happy when they can buy a cheaper CPU
    KM> and "overclock" it to something silly like that.

    Well yeah: I like a bargain too!

    Yeah, tho their case is rather a false economy... gambling, in fact.

    Anyway, I only look at rated speed, and don't consider overclocking when
    I shop. If it can gracefully do so, great! If not, I still got what I
    paid for and am not gambling on being able to make it happen.

    KM> But there is really no such thing as overclocking; there is only
    KM> running a chip up to its maximum ability.

    Agree. I'm thinking the manufacturers want to be able to sell a (say) 6
    GHz chip, and maybe actually have it, but the problem is becomes unstable/overheats/requires a lot of power/whatever. Cut it down to 4
    GHz, problems go away. ...Let the tinkers deal with those issues, we said

    Yep. Vaguely recall some CPU managed 7GHz, but keeping it running
    without melting a hole in the board... that's why they do oil immersion,
    to cool the whole thing.

    it's only good to this level. And Clyde the Corporate Lawyer reminded
    to include the 'overclocking may void warranty' clause.

    That too. No corporation with attorneys on staff would ever allow
    overclocked anything to come anywhere NEAR their work (see above).

    KM> Back in the olden days, for a while the P75 was the market sweet
    KM> spot. Intel was already producing P90 CPUs, but they were widely
    KM> viewed as too expensive. But P90 was what was coming out of the
    KM> production line, and they cost the same to make regardless, so
    KM> they rebadged a bunch of those P90s and sold them as P75s. In
    KM> fact I've only seen one P75 that was really only 75MHz and would
    KM> not "overclock" to 90MHz, because of this.

    Makes sense to me.

    What did not make sense was the two identical boards... both Micro-Star
    (MSI in their early days; they used to suck, but have improved greatly).
    Two early Pentium CPUs, one labeled 66MHz, the other labeled 60MHz.

    The 66MHz CPU would only run at 60MHz, and the 60MHz CPU would only run
    at 60MHz. And each one only liked one of the identical mainboards (which
    were more than identical, they were same batch with consecutive serial numbers).

    And I also encountered "75MHz" CPUs that would only run at 90MHz.

    THAT is how goofy it was back when CPUs started climbing out of the
    XT-to-486 midden pit.
    > KM> And there are a bunch of different SD card specs. Explaining
    KM> Computers channel had a good go-over of the various types a while
    KM> back. I printed out his conclusions chart and put it in my
    KM> wallet. :)

    (Ky has a George Costanza wallet; very little money, but stuffed full of notes, coupons, phone number strips for guitar lessons....)

    How did you know??!

    And I've had the same wallet since 1973...

    Actually something I should do but electronically; store in the phone
    as I usually carry when I go out. Guess I'll have to learn how to use
    it for something beside talking, pictures, and a schedule calendar!

    I don't normally carry the phone, or if I do, it's the Retard Phone. For
    some unknown reason the iPhone666s (as I renamed it) will only do Wifi
    and can't reliably see the cell tower. I don't much care, since it has
    such a crap battery (3 hours talk, about 6 hours idle, and that's how
    crap they are brand new!) that I just leave it plugged in at home. Well,
    it was free...

    Did I tell the tale of that piece of *#$#%?? There is no getting its
    bluetooth to speak to anything but another apple device, unless it's a
    dumb device like headphones or keyboard. It can see the linux box over
    wifi (for some reason PCLOS will let the iPhone, and ONLY the iPhone,
    see its precious files) and I can copy over my .vcf file, but it will
    not import that. So how the heck do I import contacts? Had to email it
    to myself, set it up to see GMail (it can only see GMail or Apple Mail)
    ...let it fetch mail (geezus, not all 120,000 messages in that account, stop!!!!) and THEN it will import contacts.

    And then Ting issued me a phone number from up in Ronan. Which is on the Flathead Indian reservation. Apparently from all the beating my head
    against the durn iPhone, I became an honorary tribal member... maybe I
    should try smoke signals....


    KM> Only buy Sandisk now regardless, but still there are different
    KM> types, and not all work well for everything.

    Right, like some hard drives are recommended for lots of writes and few
    reads (surveillance ==> constant recording, occasional playback) some
    memory cards are designed for lots of writes and fewer reads, some the
    other way.

    Yeah, and more important vibration tolerance, because there's a lot more
    of it if you have a bunch of drives in close proximity.

    > Brand 1. ...Essentially depends on Reads, Writes. Also seems if a lot
    > of writes then better off with a larger capacity card even though means
    > a lot of unused space: each (segment) has only so many writes
    > available, so if writing a lot then if to a small capacity card one uses
    > the same (segment) over and over again, so exhausts/dies effectively
    KM> Yeah, true of all flash devices, including SSDs.
    I'm thinking with my RPi problem somewhere above going from the the
    current 32 GB card, which shows as having lots of room, to a 64 GB card.
    Data should be rattling around loose!

    See above. It's not a space issue, it's a tired card issue.


    KM> Yeah... could chuck it into one of the other boxen but... well,
    KM> it was both cheap and works, what's not to like??
    It's lime green!

    <eyes bag of old flash drives, sees lime green, hot pink... brown??!>


    KM> Yeah, they're not really enticing me with the more-recent
    KM> shenanigans. Win11 has some nice features, but for every nice
    KM> feature there's an equal and negating WTF.
    I'm thinking most people stick with Windows because they don't know of something different or are afraid to make the change. Admittedly

    Or have liability concerns, which is the real reason business doesn't.

    switching from Windows-think to Linux-think is a slight challenge. And I guess Linux is more for 'fiddlers' -- maybe not as easy for those users

    Too true. Tho more make an effort to be normal-user friendly these days.

    used to clicking. I still like the command line - sometimes easier. ..Sometimes.

    Hahaha. Come see my Neon setup and say that a bit louder. <g>

    KM> I once suggested to a MSFT rep that it would be really nice to
    KM> have modular desktops, so we could use whichever style of Windows
    KM> we prefer while having the benefits of updated underpinnings. He
    KM> said they were actually considering that, but obviously nothing
    KM> came of it.

    Or at least yet. Or could have been said to placate you: yes, we're
    working on that, in the meantime you stil have to use the old junk but
    with the hopes of something good.

    We had a substantial discussion about it. They really were looking at
    it. But there'd have to be a support disconnect between "supported" and
    "your old crap" desktops, and that likely made it infeasible.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Daryl Stout on Mon Feb 21 11:21:00 2022

    Hi Daryl!

    I'm more and more liking my decision to move away from Windows!
    Especially if a tornado is approaching. <G>

    There have been very few times I've been concerned for my safety with
    storms. Not to be misinterpreted as foolhardiness -- I'd make a lousy
    storm chaser!



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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Barry Martin on Tue Feb 22 13:57:00 2022
    Barry,

    There have been very few times I've been concerned for my safety with storms. Not to be misinterpreted as foolhardiness -- I'd make a lousy storm chaser!

    I'm a storm spotter, but NOT a chaser. Too many crazies out there.

    The ones who are WANTING severe weather...I hope they get what they
    ask for...and THEY are the ones who suffer injury, damage, etc. I feel
    that if The Good Lord had wanted us to know everything about severe
    weather, He would've told us by now.

    Daryl

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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Tue Feb 22 09:25:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    I don't recall offhand if yours was mispartitioned (which
    happened sometimes with old tools) or what. But obviously got
    past it. <g>

    I'm not recalling the details either, and seems like at least two
    different errors. Main problem was it just didn't show up as a
    thumbdrive anymore, though was detected as being plugged in to the USB
    hub: right now this virtual Windows XP detects it as (USB dropdown)
    Unknown Device FFFF:1201. ...OK, same for lsusb: ffff:1201 without any identifier following.

    At the time did try various options to recover, Some worked
    temporarily: seen as the proper device, may have been able to work with
    the data then failed again shortly, others just never worked again.
    This post does have some details on someone else's results and recovery suggestions. There is mention of 'cheap junk'. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/546904/corrupted-usb-media

    Oh, the reason I have it plugged in? The cover is metal and makes a
    decent site to discharge any static electricity build-up.



    KM> However, if the OS touches it, and it's bad, it will make
    KM> trouble. Drive that's failing but nothing visible (no bad
    KM> sectors) can cause system freezes.
    Hmm: thinking about that one Raspberry Pi I'm having problems with:
    randomly locks up/stops. Sometimes a reboot works, sometimes have to
    power boot to get going again. Plenty of room on the SD card, plenty of free memory.
    Dunno if SD cards need the TRIM function like SSDs do to clean up
    after used/unused sectors and do wear-leveling... linux has not
    been good about that, generally, nor Windows before Win7, but
    newer SSDs TRIM themselves. SDs? no idea.

    Offhand don't know the details on the card in there other than 32 GB but
    it is probably around two years old so may not have the built-in TRIM.
    (BTW, yesterday it behaved itself, day before it have to be told who's
    boss twice.)

    <goes to look>
    Okay. If it's been in service a while as an OS host, chances are
    it's worn out: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/ex7dvo/quick_remind er_that_sd_ca
    ds_with_wearleveling/

    OK, that was helpful in verifying the currently installed SD card is
    probably the culprit. Poor guy just wore itself out!

    One thing I don't know and wil be finding out is if the card copying
    utility of the Raspberry Pi will 'work properly': copy just the data and
    not the "this section is bad" on to the new card.



    BUT! an inexpensive card is now available that does the job! new
    info from WD says:
    ===
    Our WD Purple MicroSD's do both static and dynamic wear-leveling.
    Meaning all blocks across whole address space are considered for
    wear leveling regardless of if and how the blocks are used. This
    keeps the number of program erase cycles consistent on all
    blocks. === https://www.westerndigital.com/products/memory-cards/wd-purple-mic rosd#WDD032G10C
    Oh, be aware that as an old fogey, once a year you can claim a
    substantial Old Fogey discount on orders from WD. Last I looked
    it was 15%.

    Well, I was going to write up there for the cost of the card (I tend to
    buy in multiples to get a slight discount) I would just throw into
    electronic recycling but a future of 15% discounts might make an initial
    higher cost worthwhile.


    > the History -- darn!) I probably have a greater chance of a hacker
    > attempting to snag my WiFi. (Why has that car been sitting on the
    > street for the last hour?)
    KM> Anyone trying to enjoy my wifi would be very disappointed in the
    KM> speed...
    Still, could be better than nothing!
    Tin cans and string level better than nothing!

    Here it's raining out: your string to the guy in the car is getting wet
    and so not conducting well!



    KM> Yeah, the Asustor has its own little CPU and OS, and it can do
    KM> enough stuff that you could almost use it as a desktop. Would I
    KM> ever use those functions? I doubt it.
    On one hand there are our types which could make a system from scratch
    -- well, select and grab a bunch of software anyway! There are others
    who could not. My guess is the units put in all that software for the latter group. Same unit is sold to mour group, we just don't have to
    use what's included.
    It's designed for small business backup and fileserver type work,
    where there are liability concerns. Commercial NAS lost data? you
    were following best practices, no liability in that. Homebrew NAS
    lost data? See you in court.

    Which is probably why one constantly sees in the licensing text the disclaimer.



    My sister's work (she's a partner in a big international
    architecture firm) discards anything that's out of warranty,
    including vehicles, because the liability is too great. Building
    fell down? You were using fully supported everything and all to
    industry standard, so no liability for any defect that derives
    from said hardware or software. Using unsupported or outdated
    software OR hardware? See you in court. (We're talking billions
    of dollars, not small claims court.)

    Yup. If someone using stuff outside of what the manufacturer claims it
    will work it's on them. Remember seeing in a toaster's paperwork (may
    have been a blender or some other small appliance) the warranty for
    consumer use was one year but for use in a business 90 days (maybe less,
    I've forgotten). Only reason I was looking at the warranty stuff was to
    help deciding between two: figure a longer warranty period means the manufacturer built better.

    Back to the business stuff, what's sort of funny is the bean-counters
    and make-a-profit guys will be saying to use the old stuff: it's paid
    for, works, or cheaper to repair than buy new. They probably change
    their mind when that court date gets set!



    > So when are you going to price SATA-to-IDE adapters?!
    KM> LOL... I've used those. The one that actually works and doesn't
    KM> burn a hole in your PC is awkwardly sized and a naked board so
    KM> you have to be careful what it touches; the one that's got a case
    KM> around the board and isn't so big and gawky runs at FRY. Either
    KM> way, not a good solution.
    I've worked with bare/open circuit boards; mostly the electrical side of things like voltage regulators and chargers. The pre-made aspect is
    nice: keeps things compact and the price down -- I'd probably pay the
    same for a toroid as I did for the entire unit. Holding the board in
    place in the box can sometimes be a bit of a challenge!
    Yeah, finding a way to dangle the one that worked where nothing
    would contact metal was more challenge than it was worth. Plus it
    doesn't fit inside any sort of drive bay. Easier to install an
    IDE or SATA adapter card (tho the latter need drivers, which can
    be an Issue. The IDE cards don't.)

    Yess, sometimes cheaper in the long run to let someone else figure out
    the mounting details so I can just slide it into the slot.

    Even with a plastic (so non-conductive) case things can get interesting.
    I had built a battery supply using the case of a failed UPS (no, not the
    one from earlier this year -- this puppy was probably from the 80's).
    RBC-17 type battery, charger circuit, a 12v regulator board and a 5 volt regulator board for the outputs. So looks like plenty of room for
    mounting the parts but with the support ribs, etc., it got a little challenging.


    KM> Yeah, I like to sort things out that way when I can.
    It makes troubleshooting easier!
    What if we run out of ammo??!

    Throw the guns! Then throw rocks! Then throw a fit!



    KM> Each one needs its own channel, as I understand it. So the
    KM> adapter has to know how to direct traffic. But you still only
    KM> have X-bandwidth, until you get into the more expensive adapters
    KM> that are designed to give each HD its full bandwidth.
    I was thinking needing their own data channel also, which was the joke behind my comment, though was a bit hidden. (There's another one!)
    The power portion can be soldered together; the data not.
    Oh yes, saw the joke, but it was actually reality <g>

    Which is why Mother Nature sais "Ha-ha! The joke's on you!"


    > Spotted cows! ...I sort of have the theory lower-classed Pentiums,
    > etc., were ones that failed to meet the upper-level standards: it works,
    > just not at the top level. Waste not, want not!
    KM> That's exactly right. Because chip production is so variable,
    KM> some work better than others, and whatever the batch tests at is
    KM> how they'll be labeled. Lesser chips may "overclock" because some
    KM> will actually be up to it.
    Yea! I was right! As for overclocking, I don't do mainly because of the overall concept of it's designed for only so much, very possible to do
    more for a short period of time but after that it fails.
    My way of thinking: If overclocking makes something uncomfortably
    or inconveniently hot, it should not be done. If it still runs
    within normal parameters, then not a problem.

    Makes sense too.


    Lately learned that I should be able to "overclock" Fireball's
    RAM, because it actually runs at the higher speed, given a
    choice. CPU supports it, board supposedly does... if Lenovo
    didn't disable it. Haven't looked yet. Would be a significant
    performance boost (to where Fireball could claim "fastest PC in
    the house").

    Broadcast that news over your tin-can-and-string network! <g>



    KM> And there will be occasional freak chips that can "overclock" to
    KM> something ridiculous, like over 5GHz.
    Remember when we were ecstatic at the 8088's 16 MHz?!
    I think the first PC I ever used was like 4MHz... so slow you had
    to wait for it to wait for itself! However, it did the job... I
    still have the 5" floppies for it here somewhere, for DOS5 and
    WordPerfect 5.0.

    IIRC my DEC Rainbow 100 trotted along at 4 MHz but had dual processors:
    Z80 and 8088, so by splitting up duties was faster. It ran MS-DOS 2.11.
    And yes, used 5¬" floppies but RX50 format (400 KB vs 360 KB) -- not
    directly compatible.



    KM> And it makes gamers very happy when they can buy a cheaper CPU
    KM> and "overclock" it to something silly like that.
    Well yeah: I like a bargain too!
    Yeah, tho their case is rather a false economy... gambling, in
    fact.

    "Whoa duuude! That flame design on the case looks soooo real! ...Oh
    sh--: those are REAL flames!!!"

    ...For the high-brow we could make a reference to Dali's _The Persistence
    of Memory_: "Oh my Priscilla, look how the computer is melting."



    Anyway, I only look at rated speed, and don't consider
    overclocking when I shop. If it can gracefully do so, great! If
    not, I still got what I paid for and am not gambling on being
    able to make it happen.

    Right: LIS somewhere I more or less figure the company manufacturing has
    tested and figured out the maximums, Not always, like your P90 and P75 comments. For that I might be tempted to try, first checking what to be looking for (cue Wicked Witch: "I'm mellltttinnng!". OTOH doesn't
    always work out: my original motherboard and CPU combination was based
    on recommendations from the motherboard manufacturer. They looked at
    charts - "should work". Didn't: too fast. I ended up getting a motherboard
    to match the processor, got a slower processor for the original motherboard (this CPU recommended and tested in threads started by others with the
    same problem I had). Both systems work.



    KM> But there is really no such thing as overclocking; there is only
    KM> running a chip up to its maximum ability.
    Agree. I'm thinking the manufacturers want to be able to sell a (say) 6
    GHz chip, and maybe actually have it, but the problem is becomes unstable/overheats/requires a lot of power/whatever. Cut it down to 4
    GHz, problems go away. ...Let the tinkers deal with those issues, we said
    Yep. Vaguely recall some CPU managed 7GHz, but keeping it running
    without melting a hole in the board... that's why they do oil
    immersion, to cool the whole thing.

    And possibly cool the oil via a car radiator!


    it's only good to this level. And Clyde the Corporate Lawyer reminded
    to include the 'overclocking may void warranty' clause.
    That too. No corporation with attorneys on staff would ever allow overclocked anything to come anywhere NEAR their work (see
    above).

    Yup: have seen tis kind of warning. Even Firefox has a warning pop up
    if start to go into a certain configuration area.


    KM> Back in the olden days, for a while the P75 was the market sweet
    KM> spot. Intel was already producing P90 CPUs, but they were widely
    KM> viewed as too expensive. But P90 was what was coming out of the
    KM> production line, and they cost the same to make regardless, so
    KM> they rebadged a bunch of those P90s and sold them as P75s. In
    KM> fact I've only seen one P75 that was really only 75MHz and would
    KM> not "overclock" to 90MHz, because of this.
    Makes sense to me.
    What did not make sense was the two identical boards... both
    Micro-Star (MSI in their early days; they used to suck, but have
    improved greatly). Two early Pentium CPUs, one labeled 66MHz, the
    other labeled 60MHz.

    "Identical" isn't. Differences somewhere. Thinking how a hard drive
    maks a sector bad -- the same sector on an 'identical' drive will be
    fine. Take two timing circuits with 'identical' components: microscopic differences and the two won't resonant exactly the same.



    > KM> And there are a bunch of different SD card specs. Explaining
    KM> Computers channel had a good go-over of the various types a while
    KM> back. I printed out his conclusions chart and put it in my
    KM> wallet. :)
    (Ky has a George Costanza wallet; very little money, but stuffed full of notes, coupons, phone number strips for guitar lessons....)
    How did you know??!

    Your listing. Oops, wrong word: you're listing!



    And I've had the same wallet since 1973...

    Mine's not nearly that old. Yours is either super-sturdy (nylon?),
    possibly duct-taped together, or you don't use it that often.



    Actually something I should do but electronically; store in the phone
    as I usually carry when I go out. Guess I'll have to learn how to use
    it for something beside talking, pictures, and a schedule calendar!
    I don't normally carry the phone, or if I do, it's the Retard
    Phone. For some unknown reason the iPhone666s (as I renamed it)
    will only do Wifi and can't reliably see the cell tower. I don't
    much care, since it has such a crap battery (3 hours talk, about
    6 hours idle, and that's how crap they are brand new!) that I
    just leave it plugged in at home. Well, it was free...

    Here have pretty decent signal; several years ago not quite as good: my
    phone worked best when on the East side of the house, not so good on the
    West. (Computer Room is on the East side, so that worked out!) Some friends'phones connected best on the West side of the house, with
    mediocre reception on the East. All depended on the carrier and their
    tower location.


    Did I tell the tale of that piece of *#$#%?? There is no getting
    its bluetooth to speak to anything but another apple device,
    unless it's a dumb device like headphones or keyboard. It can see
    the linux box over wifi (for some reason PCLOS will let the
    iPhone, and ONLY the iPhone, see its precious files) and I can
    copy over my .vcf file, but it will not import that. So how the
    heck do I import contacts? Had to email it to myself, set it up
    to see GMail (it can only see GMail or Apple Mail) ...let it
    fetch mail (geezus, not all 120,000 messages in that account,
    stop!!!!) and THEN it will import contacts.

    I think I had similar issues importing my contacts; half-recall I
    finally just typed in by hand.


    And then Ting issued me a phone number from up in Ronan. Which is
    on the Flathead Indian reservation. Apparently from all the
    beating my head against the durn iPhone, I became an honorary
    tribal member... maybe I should try smoke signals....

    Computers (or rather their programmers) aren't all that smart some
    times! Ages ago Dad bought a subscription to TV Guide; we lived in
    southern New Hampshire, 45 miles north of Boston. What did TV Guide do?
    Send us the version for Providence, RI!! The signal would have to go
    through Massachusetts!


    KM> Only buy Sandisk now regardless, but still there are different
    KM> types, and not all work well for everything.
    Right, like some hard drives are recommended for lots of writes and few reads (surveillance ==> constant recording, occasional playback) some
    memory cards are designed for lots of writes and fewer reads, some the
    other way.
    Yeah, and more important vibration tolerance, because there's a
    lot more of it if you have a bunch of drives in close proximity.

    Never really thought of vibration though have felt the drive directly to
    make sure was spinning. And when finding a home for a computer I do
    make sure is sturdy: combination of weight and not bounce, etc., so some vibration consideration.



    > Brand 1. ...Essentially depends on Reads, Writes. Also seems if a lot
    > of writes then better off with a larger capacity card even though means
    > a lot of unused space: each (segment) has only so many writes
    > available, so if writing a lot then if to a small capacity card one uses
    > the same (segment) over and over again, so exhausts/dies effectively
    KM> Yeah, true of all flash devices, including SSDs.
    I'm thinking with my RPi problem somewhere above going from the the
    current 32 GB card, which shows as having lots of room, to a 64 GB card. Data should be rattling around loose!
    See above. It's not a space issue, it's a tired card issue.

    OK, yup. Not all that difficult to create a new card, just more a few
    details didn't make sense. Those details are here, not the article nor
    what you've said.


    KM> Yeah... could chuck it into one of the other boxen but... well,
    KM> it was both cheap and works, what's not to like??
    It's lime green!
    <eyes bag of old flash drives, sees lime green, hot pink...
    brown??!>

    How'd that brown one get in there? " U+1F4A9 "!!


    KM> Yeah, they're not really enticing me with the more-recent
    KM> shenanigans. Win11 has some nice features, but for every nice
    KM> feature there's an equal and negating WTF.
    I'm thinking most people stick with Windows because they don't know of something different or are afraid to make the change. Admittedly
    Or have liability concerns, which is the real reason business
    doesn't.

    I was thinking more the individual end-user but business, yes too. OTOH
    some have been forced to stick with old versions because their hardware
    or some required software won't work with the new OS. Read about
    businesses with old payroll software; manufacturing equipment that runs
    on 8-bit, etc. (For the latter the particular piece of equipment isn't
    made any more but is integral to what the company sells.)



    switching from Windows-think to Linux-think is a slight challenge. And I guess Linux is more for 'fiddlers' -- maybe not as easy for those users
    Too true. Tho more make an effort to be normal-user friendly
    these days.

    Hit 'start' to stop!



    used to clicking. I still like the command line - sometimes easier. ..Sometimes.
    Hahaha. Come see my Neon setup and say that a bit louder. <g>

    It's hard of hearing?!


    KM> I once suggested to a MSFT rep that it would be really nice to
    KM> have modular desktops, so we could use whichever style of Windows
    KM> we prefer while having the benefits of updated underpinnings. He
    KM> said they were actually considering that, but obviously nothing
    KM> came of it.
    Or at least yet. Or could have been said to placate you: yes, we're
    working on that, in the meantime you still have to use the old junk but
    with the hopes of something good.
    We had a substantial discussion about it. They really were
    looking at it. But there'd have to be a support disconnect
    between "supported" and "your old crap" desktops, and that likely
    made it infeasible.

    Most people want the New! Improved! plus it has to look different to
    verify is is new and improved.



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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Daryl Stout on Wed Feb 23 08:00:00 2022

    Hi Daryl!

    There have been very few times I've been concerned for my safety with storms. Not to be misinterpreted as foolhardiness -- I'd make a lousy storm chaser!
    I'm a storm spotter, but NOT a chaser. Too many crazies out
    there.

    How does one put spots on a strorm??


    The ones who are WANTING severe weather...I hope they get what
    they ask for...and THEY are the ones who suffer injury, damage,
    etc. I feel that if The Good Lord had wanted us to know
    everything about severe weather, He would've told us by now.

    Either that or we're not paying attention. Personally I like the
    challenge of severe weather. OTOH I'm still wanting limitations: 50 MPH
    winds -- bring it on: I can handle that! 100 MPH winds -- <whimper!>


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  • From Daryl Stout@454:1/33 to Barry Martin on Fri Feb 25 12:10:00 2022
    Barry,

    How does one put spots on a strorm??

    I guess on the map for the chasers.

    Either that or we're not paying attention. Personally I like the challenge of severe weather. OTOH I'm still wanting limitations: 50
    MPH winds -- bring it on: I can handle that! 100 MPH winds --
    <whimper!>

    As long as it doesn't cause damage, it's just a nuisance.

    Daryl

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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sat Feb 26 19:42:00 2022
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    Either that or we're not paying attention. Personally I like the
    challenge of severe weather. OTOH I'm still wanting limitations: 50 MPH winds -- bring it on: I can handle that! 100 MPH winds -- <whimper!>

    In central Montana, we call 100mph winds Tuesday. <g>
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Sun Feb 27 09:08:00 2022

    Hi Ky!

    Either that or we're not paying attention. Personally I like the
    challenge of severe weather. OTOH I'm still wanting limitations: 50 MPH winds -- bring it on: I can handle that! 100 MPH winds -- <whimper!>
    In central Montana, we call 100mph winds Tuesday. <g>

    And that would be just a light breeze on top of Mt. Washington! (From
    the guy raised in New Hampshire.)



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