Week of 22 May 2000

Daynotes Journal

Week of 22 May 2000

Friday, 05 July 2002 08:28

A (mostly) daily journal of the trials, tribulations, and random observations of Robert Bruce Thompson, a writer of computer books.

wpoison

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Monday, 22 May 2000

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I'm seriously upset with Hewlett-Packard. So much so that I'm considering pulling all of their products from my recommended lists. It has nothing to do with the products themselves, which are typically best-of-breed or nearly so. What I'm upset about is their business policies. A few months ago, I stopped by the HP web site to download current drivers for one of their products. Rather than take me directly to the download page, the site insisted that I first register.

This increasingly common practice is completely unacceptable to me and, I think, to almost anyone who thinks it through. What possible reason does HP have to require registration to download drivers that are useful only to someone who owns the product in question? That being the case, why should a person who wants to download the current drivers for a product that he bought and paid for have to provide any information whatsoever before doing so?

Well, I needed the driver update because this scanner has stopped working reliably with the USB interface. HP showed a USB update, the description for which listed the exact problems I was having. So I had no choice but to comply with their obnoxious requirements. I had already registered and created an account, you understand. But that wasn't enough. No, they insisted on more. Purchase date, for example. Three fields, month, day, and year, all required. Does that mean that they're going to stop providing free driver updates after a certain time? Okay, I made something up there. The next required field was "For what purpose will your new HP product primarily be used?" Give me a break. Required? What justification is there for that? The next required field was serial number. What on earth do they need the serial number for? To prove that I have one of their damned scanners? Why would I would be downloading a driver for a 6200C if I didn't have one?

Presumably, they do some kind of field validation on the serial number, so I had no choice but to find it on the scanner itself. That was an adventure in itself, trying to lift the scanner carefully so as not to rip out other wires running near the back of it, lean over my work surface so that I could read the serial number (on the back, under an overhang, and upside down, no less), quickly memorize it and enter it into their damned form. I almost dropped the scanner while doing that. Would HP have repaired or replaced the scanner if I'd dropped it, since it would have been their fault? I don't think so.

Having gotten the serial number, entered it in the form and clicked submit, they next display an obnoxious page that confirms that I've updated my profile (which I didn't want to create in the first place), gratuitously thanks me for "sharing" my profile (as though I had any choice), and tells me that they will now use that information to send me, among other things, "special offers". In other words, spam. And they don't offer any way to opt out that I can see.

This is completely unacceptable, on several levels. HP is no longer on my recommended list.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 11:38 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Upgrades & CABS

I'm not into self-flagellation; my own experiences have confirmed that upgrading an MS OS is by far the more painful route. WinMag also gives the editorial advice to ALWAYS do a clean install of MS OS'es, not an upgrade. Over the last year, everyone who came to me with Win98 problems turned out to be an upgrade installed over Win95. I advised to wipe clean and install Win98--result was all problems solved, in every case.

Before discovering this for myself, I, too, suffered from multiple problems on one machine which was upgraded from Win95 to 98--every one of which disappeared when I stripped down to bare magnets and installed 98 clean.

Re: Mr. Donders' question of where to put the CAB files. For me, the whole purpose of putting the CAB files on hard drive is to install Windows directly from that drive. This yields two benefits: 1) it's at least twice as fast as doing the same from CD; and 2) Windows remembers to go there to get stuff when you Add/Remove software features--otherwise it will nag for the CD.

During normal installation, Windows creates a directory called \Windows\OPTIONS\CABS. Pournelle has indicated on his pages this is where to copy the CAB files (actually, I copy the whole Win98 disk there, as you then have the setup executable and all other files needed for installation). But by all means, create that sub-directory and copy the files there first with a DOS boot disk (with CD device configured). Then installation is so much easier.

I don't have any experience with Win98SE. Microsoft says it's the same as Win98 with Service Pack 1 applied using their update site, so it seems wise to save that money for something else.

I'd have to agree with all that. I've never had any luck with "upgrade" installations, and gave up attempting them years ago. Ultimately, it's faster just to strip the drive down to bare metal, install the OS fresh, and re-install all applications. And things always work better when done that way. I do wish that Microsoft made available some mechanism to allow configuration data for applications to be saved and moved to the new system, thereby configuring the app in one step. They used to have such a mechanism. They called it .ini files. In many respects, the registry is no improvement on .ini files. Nor is the idea of using shared DLLs. With hard disk space at about $10/GB and memory at $1/MB, I'd just as soon go back to the old style of storing an application with all its necessary files in one directory, which would allow us to relocate/re-install an app simply by cutting and pasting the directory. Microsoft hasn't done us any favors with their "improved" methods. If they won't go back to using .ini files, they should at least provide a mechanism to locate and store all pertinent registry entries for an app in a stand-alone file that could subsequently be merged with the clean registry on the new system. How hard would that be?

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Sherburne Jr [mailto:ryszards@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 1:51 PM
To: 'thompson@ttgnet.com'
Subject: RE: Dual celeron II use

It appears Intel may have plans for MP use of CII celerons after all. Intel just released a new celeron spec update, found here.

It contains a number of newly added errata that pertain specifically and only to MP use of the FC-PGA Celeron processors. Particularly errate C53, C56, C57, & C59 refer to errate that occur in MP systems. What say you, perhaps I was wrong? Or do these errata indicate the impossibility of use?

Coincidentally, I was reading that Spec Update when your mail arrived. I was working on S-spec tables for PC/DG, and hadn't noticed the detailed errata descriptions you refer to. I'm not a microprocessor designer, but from reading them it seems to me that Intel concedes the usability of the Celeron in MP environments. At first, I thought that those specific errata referred to the Pentium III and had been left in the Celeron Spec Update in error. But Intel labels errata with an initial letter to designate the processor(s) they pertain to, and "C" means Celeron.

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-----Original Message-----
From: McDonell @ The Park [mailto:mcdonell35@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 2:19 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Win 98 Upgrade wipes out printing, e-mail, etc.

I agree that MS probably could have nipped this in the bud. This morning, I read a report that suggests the same problem might exist with PCs that already had Win98 installed. And, MS had to issue "Second Edition". I did not dwell on the MS role but you are a communicator and I thought you would like to see that others are not. I have advised HP of my adventure and my personal feelings - a bit like a minnow asking a whale to move over. to their credit, HP has offered a CD cure but one would not know it without the internet. Maybe HP gambled that posting was adequate; based perhaps on the possibility that sales have not met expecations (i.e. lousy). Examining the HP site gave me a vague impression that the same problem might be affecting other HP printers. As Mark Twain might say, let us draw the veil of charity over the rest of the scene.

I agree that HP should have sent email to registered users of that printer, and that information can be difficult to locate on their web site. However, I don't really think HP (or the printer) is at fault here. After all, the printer was working just fine until you switched operating systems. When one has a functioning system, changes one element, and something else breaks, it's reasonable to blame the item changed rather than the item that broke. And it may be reasonable to blame the person who did the changing. I operate on the ain't broke/don't fix principle, on the assumption that fixing something unbroken often results in breaking something else. But then, I learned that back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was writing COBOL code.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Montgomery [mailto:monty@sprintmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 12:47 AM
To: Jerry Pournelle
Cc: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Re: Which "Tyan Trinity" Board?

Subj: Which "Tyan Trinity" Board? (continued) From: monty@sprintmail.com

Thanks for responding!

Alas, the response does not unambiguously identify the board you and Mr. Aldridge are using successfully.

There are evidently five Tyan Trinity boards that have both Super 7 and Slot 1:

Trinity 371 S1857 -- VIA chipset
Trinity 371 S1857-B -- 440BX chipset, no sound
Trinity 371 S1857SLA-B -- 440BX chipset, has sound
Trinity 400 S1854 -- VIA chipset, no sound
Trinity 400 S1854A -- VIA chipset, has sound

The VIA chipset models all support 66 MHz Ultra IDE, and a 133 MHz front-side bus, while the 440BX only supports 33 MHz Ultra IDE and a 100 MHz FSB.

The Trinity 371 models support only 2x AGP, while the Trinity 400 models support 4x.

Your coauthor Robert Thompson says, [here], that "I've never much liked VIA chipsets. In my experience, they're slow, buggy, and have aggravating incompatibilities." Mr. Thompson made that comment in the context of a discussion of motherboards for AMD Athlon CPUs, but the comment seems to indicate a general, rather than an AMD-specific, reservation about VIA chipsets.

If your experience, and Mr. Aldridge's, with VIA chipsets, differs from Mr. Thompson's, then perhaps I should reconsider my own reluctance, based on his comment, to give a VIA-chipset-based board a try. I do, after all, lust in my heart after the 66 MHz Ultra IDE. 8-)

Thanks for continuing to do all these things, so the rest of us don't have to!

Actually, the boards you mention support SC242 (Slot 1) and Socket 370, rather than Socket 7. The Intel 440BX chipset indeed supports 100 MHz FSB, UDMA/33, and AGP 2X. There are two similar VIA chipsets at issue. The Apollo Pro133 supports 133 MHz FSB, UDMA/66, and AGP 2X. The Pro133A is the same, but adds support for AGP4X. All of this goes to show the danger of buying on numbers, however.

Nearly all benchmarks show that Apollo Pro133/133A motherboards using a 133 MHz FSB are actually slower than a 440BX-based board using 100 MHz FSB. When running a 100 MHz FSB processor (or a 66 MHz FSB Celeron), the VIA boards are much slower than the 440BX boards.
UDMA/66 shows little or no throughput advantage relative to UDMA/33 with even the fastest of the current-generation ATA drives. The maximum throughput of a drive depends on whether data is being transferred from the inner or outer tracks. Drives like the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 barely exceed 30 MB/s at their fastest, and typically only provide 16 MB/s at their slowest, with perhaps a 22 MB/s average. That's well below even UDMA/33. My best guess is that we're unlikely to see drives that can actually benefit from UDMA/66 for at least a year or two. Even when we do, the impact of UDMA/66 versus UDMA/33 will be a relatively minor factor in overall system performance.
AGP 2X versus 4X is another non-issue. Current systems and video cards typically can't come close to saturating even AGP 2X. AGP 4X shows no discernable real-world advantage in any situation I know of. And in fact, the only time that AGP has any advantage whatsoever over even PCI is when the video card uses system memory as virtual video memory. You'll notice that most high-end video cards (the only kind that could even theoretically benefit from AGP) usually come with 32 MB, 64 MB, or more of physical memory installed on the card. That's because local video memory is even faster than shared system memory accessed via AGP. So the truth is that any flavor of AGP has no real-world benefit whatsoever, and downgrading a motherboard because it supports only AGP 2X instead of AGP 4X is ridiculous.

And, yes, my opinion of VIA chipsets holds true across the board. Given the recent news articles about Intel's chipset problems, it's easy to forget that historically Intel chipsets have been rock-solid, fast, and bug-free compared to competing chipsets from VIA, which have always been a step behind Intel, particularly in compatibility and stability. And VIA's problems extend beyond Intel processors. For example, it was recently disclosed that problems with the VIA KX133-based Athlon boards may have been responsible for AMD's decision not to release their new Thunderbird-core Athlons in Slot A, except for limited OEM distribution. Why? Because the KX133 has timing problems with Slot A and the Thunderbird core. Even the elderly AMD-750 chipset can support Thunderbirds in either Slot A or Socket A, so how did VIA, which apparently based the KX133 on the AMD-750, end up producing a chipset that can't run the Thunderbird in Slot A?

All of that said, I don't think that VIA chipsets are junk, but I'd always choose a board based on an Intel chipset if I had that choice. In my opinion, you'd be better off going with a 440BX based model. It'll be faster and more stable, and you won't miss those marketing-speak features that appear to give VIA the advantage. Although it is elderly and being ramped down, the 440BX is still the best chipset that Intel has ever made, and that's very good indeed.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: john biel [mailto:johnny51@home.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 10:11 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Plextor pricing

You wrote: "..... including one Canadian merchant who charges $369 (Canadian). If you exclude that one Canadian merchant, the highest price quoted by the 39 US merchants is $259. Give me a break. Apparently Plextor didn't buy enough ads on CNET."

Or much more likely, the person who wrote this up didn't have the slightest clue that $369CAD = $246USD. So including that one Canadian merchant the highest price quoted is still $259USD. I wonder if they would even respond, if you pointed out that even their own pricing data doesn't support their opinions on price.

Thanks. I knew that a Canadian dollar was roughly 2/3 the value of a US dollar, but I didn't know the exact exchange rate and was too lazy to go look it up.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Huth [mailto:mhuth@internetcds.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 2:50 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Follow up and bizarre drive problems.

Bob, after our exchange of letters earlier this month about building a machine, I thought I'd update you on what I ended up doing. I'd also like to beg your indulgence again. Can you explain what might be going on with the hard drive problem I've described below?

Just built a dual 650mhz board around the P3DM3 motherboards. Running Supermicro recommended memory (two banks of 256) and a 27 gig Maxtor IDE drive with a Matrox G400 board.

I'd many problems with setup on this system. I was getting "inaccessible boot device" errors on every other boot (really!) from Windows 2000. Actually error is a stop 0x000007b, (0x8144ca30,0xc00014f ....). In addition to this, I'm having system crashes with reboots every once in a while. I've swapped memory chips, video cards, disabled the scsi port, flashed the rom to the latest version, etc.

As a side note, Supermicro technical support was not the least bit helpful, indeed they were amazingly rude and nasty. Their sole suggestion was to replace memory.

I ended up taking my home system to our IS guru at work and begging him to help.

Turns out that the original drive is the problem. I swapped in a 40 gig Maxtor and the problems went away.

Now for the really odd parts. The original Maxtor 27 gig drive formats and checks out correctly under dos and when using the Maxblast utility. Yet when placed in any system except windows 98 it fails. Doesn't matter which motherboard, which bios, NT 4.0, windows 2000, linux, or beos. In any os except 98 the drive is always set to 7 gigs. If I low level format it, repartition it, and reformat it...it returns to be a 7 gig drive, except under windows 98.

I'm going to approach Maxtor next week and ask them to replace the drive as it is only 5 months old. However, I'd love to hear if you or anyone has an explaination.

That is truly weird. As I started reading your message, my first thought was that you must be using an inadequate power supply. That can result in exactly the kind of hard disk problems you mentioned--boot failures, read errors, write errors, and so on. When I got to the part about it being recognized only as a 7 GB drive under anything except Win98, though, I was stymied. It obviously can't be a BIOS or interface issue, since it manifests with different motherboards, so it seems it must be something odd about the drive itself. If you haven't tried a low-level format yet, I'd try that before returning the drive. I've encountered weird stuff like you describe that was persistent until I low-level formatted the drive. You'll have to download a low-level format utility from Maxtor to do that, but it's worth a shot. If that doesn't do it, I have a few vague thoughts (like perhaps the drive is responding incorrectly to the ATA Identify command), but they're all grasping at straws.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: fabfour@swbell.net [mailto:fabfour@swbell.net]
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 9:54 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Help!

Robert, Can you help me? I saw that you have a 386 with a maxtor 120 mb hard drive. Could you please e-mail me the cmos setting for that hard drive? I have one in a 386 for my neices, and the battery died. When I replaced it, the setting were gone and none of the settings are on the drive!

Thank you in advace if you can help me. Two little girls will be grateful!

Don

Alas, I no longer have a monitor attached to that system, nor one that will work with it. It has a monochrome graphics card in it, and I've just been using it sans monitor to run my voicemail. It runs for literally months on end. It's not connected to a UPS, so when we have a power failure, it simply reboots and runs some more.

As far as your disk, the best bet is to visit the Maxtor web site and look up the model number of the drive. That'll give you the physical drive parameters. On a system and drive of that vintage, entering the physical drive parameters should allow the system to boot. If after you do that the system recognizes the physical drive as present but will not boot from it, it's possible that the system was configured originally to translate drive geometry. If that's the case, you have two choices: (a) continue using the physical drive parameters that you just entered, repartition and reformat the drive, and re-install all your software (and the data which I hope you have backed up), or (b) use trial and error to attempt to find the correct combination of drive parameters for User Defined drive type that will allow the system to recognize the data on the drive.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Furlong [mailto:sfurlong@acmenet.net]
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 10:59 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Intellect of lawyers

You wrote in your Wednesday, 17 May, commentary, of the old saw about law students being those not smart enough to get into med school.

I must take humorous exception to that. I have an MS in Software Eng, work as a programmer, and start law school in September. However, as a rule I think you're right. Some lawyers who write about the law profession mention that many lawyers have a big problem in tech cases because they weren't able to handle math and science (which was why they went into law in the first place). In my own experience, even bright lawyers are very impressed with what I do because it's much harder than what they do (in their opinion, which is what matters in this context).

Ta, SRF

--
Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel
518-374-4720 sfurlong@acmenet.net

Actually, in all seriousness, I know some very bright people who, for reasons unclear to me, chose to become attorneys. And when I was in college I did at one point seriously consider pursuing degrees in both law and medicine, not because I wanted to practice either law or medicine, but simply on the Jubal Harshaw theory of self-defense.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Swijsen [mailto:qjsw@oce.nl]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 8:18 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Subject: MS patch

>I don't trust advertising-supported sources for PC information.

You can safely drop the 'PC' from that sentence.

Batch viruses could be made. The biggest problem would be automatic starting. But you can trust enough users to do that for you. Most people don't check what they get but simply open the attachments. Especially at work because they trust the corporate safeties (virus scanners, firewalls, etc) to trap everything before it arrives at their desk. The feeling is that "if it passes the sentry at the front door it cannot be bad". This makes companies vulnerable.

A lot of custom software uses the scripting capabilities of MS Office for added functionality. For example we use MS Word to produce order-confirmations for mailing or faxing. Because of this many companies will not be able to install the MS patch and they will not be able to simply turn off all scripting. That is until they have tested and (where necessary) adapted their programs. (That is going to cost serious money. And what goodwill still remained for MS will evaporate fast.). Off course user will expect the 'computer department' to have all safeties active and simply open everything they get (see previous). This makes companies vulnerable for the time being.

That is double vulnerability.

What do we need the DOJ for? MS is on a nose dive and it looks like they just hit the afterburner. -- Svenson.

Mail at work : qjsw@oce.nl,
or call : (Oce HQ)-4727
Mail at home : sjon@svenson.com

Well, I suppose people who insist on using dangerous tools have to expect to lose a few body parts from time to time. As for me, I simply uninstalled Windows Scripting Host from my Win9X boxes and deleted the two scripting exe files from \Winnt\System32 on my NT boxes. I can easily live without scripting. I have sympathy for those who can't, but I'm sure glad that I'm not in their positions.

14:30: Well, I downloaded and installed the USB update for the HP scanner, and it still doesn't work properly. Each time I restart the system, the scanner is recognized and works properly for one scan. After that, attempting to do anything simply fails because the system no longer recognizes that the scanner is present. Every time I reboot, Windows 98 gives me the "new hardware found" message and re-installs the scanner drivers. I can't find any device conflicts, and there doesn't appear to be any problem with availability of IRQs. I did install a USB update from Intel on the motherboard, and I wonder if that's conflicting with something. I've about had it with trying to make this work under Win98 and USB. The scanner also has a SCSI interface, so I think I'll just connect it to either my or Barbara's NT box and have done with it. This used to work under Windows 98 on the Dell box. I don't know why it doesn't work on my new Windows 98 box, and I'm about past caring.

I did my Wall Street Journal interview this morning. Mr. Eig says the article should run sometime next week. It'll be a page one article, no less. This guy has really put some work into learning everything anyone might want to know about dishwashers, so I suspect it'll be an interesting article. Near the end of the interview, Mr. Eig asked if Barbara would be willing to speak with him. I told him that he shouldn't talk to her, because she'd just contradict me and tell malicious stories. He said that journalistic integrity required that he get the other side of the story, so I reluctantly told him that Barbara was out running errands today, but would be here all day tomorrow. Barbara is excited about doing the interview. If nothing else, having her new business mentioned on the front page of the Wall Street Journal can't hurt.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Hough [mailto:phil4@compsoc.man.ac.uk]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 12:04 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Regsitry vs ini

"Microsoft hasn't done us any favors with their "improved" methods. If they won't go back to using .ini files, they should at least provide a mechanism to locate and store all pertinent registry entries for an app in a stand-alone file that could subsequently be merged with the clean registry on the new system. How hard would that be?"

Interestingly I noticed that it is now the apps that are changing.

For example, The latest incarnations of Adobe's Photoshop are stand-alone, on resinstallation of your OS, copy the folder back where you want it, and run the app, and all works fine. No need to reinstall.

Obviously the App authors have seen the light... lets hope MS get the hint sometimes soon.

BTW: with regard to your HP experience.. afaik it is law in the uk, that when you specify you personal details you can opt out of any advertising. I guess it's not the same in the US?

ATB.

Phil
Phil Hough - 4th Year Computer Scientist Out of memory.
E-mail: phil4@compsoc.man.ac.uk We wish to hold the whole sky,
Phone: 07720 291723 But we never will.
WWW: http://www2.cs.man.ac.uk/~houghp6

Good point. Many small programs and utilities operate that way, but it's good to know that a heavy-duty application like Photoshop does as well. Now if only all app makers would abandon the registry and put everything they needed in one directory.

wpoison

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Tuesday, 23 May 2000

[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week]

Today I'm going to tear down thor (my Win98SE box) to bare metal and re-install. This time, I think I'll configure it to multi-boot Win98SE, Windows 2000 Professional, and perhaps NT 4 Workstation. While I'm at it, I think I'll install the OnStream DI30 15/30GB tape drive in this machine.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: pttdsz [address removed by request]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 3:26 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: The registry and software using it.

>If they won't go back to using .ini files, they should at least provide a mechanism to locate and store all pertinent registry entries for an app in a stand-alone file that could subsequently be merged with the clean registry on the new system. How hard would that be?

Well, I don't know if there is a mechanism that provides all you desire, but AFAIK, there's nothing stopping any software developer from putting whatever changes to the registry they make in a file stored in the program directory, or anywhere else. It'd be harder to keep track of changes made after the installation, but I think there are applications which can take care of it. Never really used any of them, so I can't attest to their quality, but I believe Quarterdeck, Ontrack, and Norton all have something to offer. A program could even restore the necessary registry entries itself, assuming the developer was willing to do whatever work was required. Can't say that that would be trivial, but it would hardly be incredibly difficult. No more so than following any of the other practices of good software development.

Spam-shielding my address would be much appreciated.

Thanks. Yes, I'm familiar with the products you mention. I tried Quarterdeck Cleansweep a couple years ago, but I never had much luck with using it to move an application from one volume to another. Perhaps I should try a more recent version.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Sturm [mailto:jpsturm@dingoblue.net.au]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 4:21 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Bizarre drive problem

Robert

I have experienced similar problems to Mark Huth's in the past when the master boot record of a hdd became flaky. I have a little (1kB) proggy called zeroboot that zaps the MBR instantly. Happy to supply on request, noting that it is a dangerous utility. No warnings; it just zaps the MBR of the primary hdd.

Thanks. As it turns out, it appears that Dr. Huth's problem was in fact a defective hard disk. I'm curious about your program, though. Does it do something more than running fdisk /mbr?

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-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Gorsky [mailto:thetardis@geocities.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 12:25 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Win 98 and HP scanner

Hi, I started reading your page while Jerry was on vacation, and really enjoy you page and his.

Anyway, about the scanner. Are you using Windows 98 or Windows 98SE. It has been my experience that Win 98, even with the service pack still has plug and play problems. All my PCs run Win 98SE (except two - one is a NT 4 Server the other dual boots with Win 2000) with no problems. A friend had a PC that they wiped clean and reinstalled 98, but was having problems configuring the NIC. As soon as I reinstalled the SE update (not service pack 1) the NIC configured and worked perfectly. Just an idea.

Thanks for the kind words. You make a good point. I should have mentioned that I'm using Windows 98SE. Interestingly, back when the scanner was connected to my old Dell Dimension Pentium/200 box, it ran fine, originally under Windows 98 and later under Windows 98SE. The problem occurs on the new box, which uses an Intel CA810E motherboard. I'm about convinced that the problem may have been caused by an Intel USB patch that I applied. At any rate, today that new box gets stripped down. I'm going to reconfigure it to multi-boot Win98SE, Windows 2000 Pro, and perhaps NT 4 Workstation. We'll see what happens.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Huth [mailto:mhuth@internetcds.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 12:19 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Follow up and bizarre drive problems.

Robert,

Story gets odder and odder. Power supply is a Sparkle 300w and should give enough power.

I'd already done a low level format using Maxtor's low level formatting program. Didn't seem to make any difference. Spoke with Maxtor and they told me that the drive "couldn't" be the problem if it ran with their Maxblast program (it tested fine with their program, just not in the real world). Our IS guy commented "something screwy in the drive firmware" and recommended returning the drive.

Took the drive back to the local retailer from whom I bought it in Feb. He was happy to exchange it for another drive. As he was checking it he noted that it was labeled HP in addition to Maxtor. Odd for a retail drive. He wondered if this was a returned drive resold as new. In any event, new 30 gig drives pops into the machine and formats and runs without flaw. Guess the drive "could" be the problem after all.

One last bit of interest. Drive from local retailer was $30 bucks cheaper than from several "discount" web retailers.

Again, thanks for your help.

Yep. Sparkle makes decent power supplies, and a 300W unit should be large enough. I suspect that your IS guy is right about the firmware. I don't know of anything else that could explain the symptoms you described. Glad you got it working. And you raise an excellent point about prices. Web sources are usually cheaper than local ones, but not always. When I bought this HP ScanJet 6200C last fall, I did a web search for prices. I ended up buying it locally, at Computer & Software Outlet. I paid perhaps $25 more than the absolute cheapest price I found on the web, but the local price was the same as the web price from places I would actually consider giving my credit card number to.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Swijsen [mailto:qjsw@oce.nl]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 4:35 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Subject: registry

>How hard would that be? Death (or is it dead) simple.

We use that regularly when distributing our own apps. Ex "cu_wordlink.reg" REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0\ProShield]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0\ProShield\sports.db]
"Connect"="-db db/sports -1"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0\ProShield\stddb.db]
"Connect"="-db db/stddb -1"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0\ProShield\wldb.db]
"Connect"="-db db/wldb -1"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0\ProShield\Startup]
"Databases"="sports,stddb,wldb"
"Shell"="Taskbar"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \PSS\WordLink\2.0\ProShield\Windows]
"mnu030"="1,1,640,24,3"

adds the required keys and values for an update of the Wordlink product which we use to print order confirmations via Word. Just lookup the .reg files on your system to see some more. So if MS wants they could do it. But they will call their own reg files a trade secret.

BTW what do you mean by a 'clean registry' ? Is that something like a 'nice bug', or a 'helpfull government' ?

--
Svenson.
Mail at work : qjsw@oce.nl,
or call : (Oce HQ)-4727
Mail at home : sjon@svenson.com

Thanks. I've put an extra space before the second slash in " \Software\" to allow the lines to break for those with lower resolution monitors so the page won't scroll horizontally. I'm sure you're right. I've migrated applications from one machine to another by manually altering things--copying DLLs to the appropriate directories, doing a save-and-restore on Registry keys, and so on. I've actually made it work, although it's more difficult and time-consuming than simply re-installing the program. But if I can do it manually, there's no reason why the app vendor couldn't include a utility to do it automatically. I don't even mind having to re-install the application. It's losing the custom settings I object to. All they need do is add two options to the File menu--"Save Configuration" and "Restore Configuration."

wpoison

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Wednesday, 24 May 2000

[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week]

The more I use this Antec KS-288 case, the more I like it. Since I was stripping the hard disk down to bare metal anyway, I decided to go ahead and install the OnStream DI30 15/30 GB tape drive. The machine sits on my desk, as shown below, with not much working room around it.

With most cases, I would have had to slide the system out, disconnect all the cables, move the system to a working area where I could get at it, remove the screws, take off the covers, install the drive, and then reverse the whole process. With the Antec KS-288, life was a lot simpler. I reached behind the case, which has a single knurled screw at the top rear to secure the cover. After removing that screw, I slid the top of the case backwards an inch or so and lifted it off. I then lifted the left side panel straight off, and had full access to the interior of the case. I installed the tape drive, connected the cables, and replaced the covers. All of that took only about three minutes. In fact, I was working so quickly that I forgot to install screws to secure the tape drive to the frame. I didn't realize that until I was half-way through installing Windows 98 SE and noticed that the tape drive was sitting about an eighth of an inch too deep in the case. Removing the covers, installing the drive screws, and replacing the covers took literally two minutes.

This is an extremely nice case. Everything lines up perfectly, there are no sharp edges, and it is very solidly built. All the more amazing, since this is one of Antec's Value-Line cases, and sells on the street for only $65 to $70, including a decent 250W power supply. If you're looking for a high-quality case to build a new system around, look no further than Antec. Highly recommended.

After getting all the hardware installed, I started on installing the OSs. Windows 98 SE installed normally, but without bothering to ask about how to configure TCP/IP. I went into Network Properties and changed it from using a (non-existent) DHCP server to specifying IP configuration settings manually. I then installed Windows NT 4 Workstation, which installed normally.

Silly me. After installing Windows 98 SE and Windows NT 4 Workstation without incident, I started on the install of Windows 2000 Professional. After I sat through the 15 minutes or so it took to run the four boot floppies, Setup informed me that I would be unable to start Windows NT 4 unless I installed at least SP4 before installing Windows 2000 Professional. Just a thought, but it'd be nice if Setup checked that immediately rather than forcing you to waste 15 minutes before finding out that you had to kill Windows 2000 Professional Setup, start NT4, apply the Service Pack, and then restart Windows 2000 Professional Setup, waiting another 15 minutes for the boot floppies to be processed.

So now I have a triple-boot system, with Windows 98 SE, Windows NT 4 Workstation, and Windows 2000 Professional, all apparently co-existing happily. At this point, they're all just basic OS installs. Now I need to install a bunch of software for all three OSs--current video and sound drivers, Office 2000, CD burning software, tape backup software, all my standard utilities, and so on.

Speaking of cases, here's the start of my new test-bed system, which will probably be one of the few computers in the world that has a plywood chassis. It ain't pretty, but it will make it easy to swap components. So far, it's just a two foot square of plywood with a Sparkle 250W power supply permanently affixed. I'll salvage a removable drive cage from an old case, and use that to permanently mount a boot hard drive, floppy drive, and CD-ROM drive. Then I can easily swap motherboards and expansion cards in and out. I also have the guts of a second plywood test-bed, and I'll probably mount some 6" posts on the bases to make the systems stackable.

Malcolm, our crafty eight-month-old Border Collie pup, has struck again. As I was answering mail this morning, I heard Barbara's anguished cry, "Malcolm!!!!" I rushed out to the den to see what he'd done. Here's what.

At first, we thought it was this morning's paper, but then Barbara noticed it was one from the middle of April. She couldn't figure out where he'd found such an old newspaper. Finally, it hit her, and she asked if I was missing a dog-beater. Sure enough, I noticed that the dog-beater I keep in my office was missing. Malcolm had apparently sneaked into my office while I was answering mail, stolen the dog-beater, and shredded it. (For those of you with delicate sensibilities, I don't actually beat him with it. Usually, just brandishing it is enough. If not, I escalate to a light tap on the snout.)

Barbara is off to run errands and go to the grocery store. When she returns, I'll need to help with the groceries and then climb up on the roof to blow out the gutters. So I'd better get to work.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: David [mailto:dkreck@lightspeed.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 10:59 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: HP troubles

Well HP has good products but support just gets worse!

Your troubles just amplify what I went through last week. Bought a new HP Pavillion for one of my clients. I've honestly had very good luck with all HP models and have found the low end Pavillions more than adequate for most basic office users. Picked up the user's old system on Friday, created direct cable connections between the old and new systems and transferred all the needed files, about 2 hours work.

Monday morning. Set system up at desk (under), installed the HP printer software and went to do the last few items. Connect to Compuserve. Nothing. Startup a terminal emulator and try talking to the modem directly, modem responds. Try dialing out manually, no dial tone heard. Try just picking up the line with ATH1, hey dial tone. Okay 22 years in the computer game I think I got modem command down pretty well by now. Goto device manager remove the modem, shut down, pull modem, restart, shutdown, install modem, restart, plug and play does it thing and nothing changes. Bad hardware.

Now the fun. Call HP support and go through the damn automated menus, and this call is not toll free, it's costing the client. Got through in about 3 minutes, okay not too bad. Your serial number please. Remember I said it was under the desk. Crawl down, it's dark and could they have printed it any smaller! Hell at 49 my eyes just ain't that great. Have to unhook some cables to get the box into the light and read the number to Mr. Tech Guy. Okay tell him the story. Now here we go by the book, do step 1 now step 2. Oh please are you listening, I've done this! No, we do them all again and then some. Okay you need to get the recovery CD and restore the system. What! Fortunately, or not you can do an OS only restore which I proceeded to do at Tech's request. Thirty minutes later I'm done and all is just the same, except I now have to repeat some of my earlier steps like the printer install.

Call back HP Tech, a few more minutes with a different support guy and finally a admission the hardware had a problem. Great are you going to send me a new card? Let's see. Hmm, no, that unit is only available for bench repair. We'll ship you a box, you repack the entire unit and send it back and in about 5 days well return it. F@#?!!! This is just not believable. I tell them to just give me a case number and I'll think about it.

Ran out to Computer Superstore and buy a Viking 56K PCI modem for $30.00. Go back slap it in the box, restart go through the plug & play, switch dialup networking to use the new modem and all is right with the world. Three hours wasted, frustration, telephone charges and my temper blown (which after 22 years of this is damn hard to do - thank you). As I said, HP has good product by tech support has gotten rotten. I think I knew most of this before I even made the first call, I must be a masochist.

MORAL OF THE STORY.

Cheap or even moderate hardware beats wasting valuable time on stupid tech support and warranty policies.

Thanks for the rant.
Dave Krecklow
david@compudave.com

Yep. More's the pity, because HP used to have good tech support.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Anshuman Bhargava [mailto:shrishti@bol.net.in]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 3:03 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Re: (no subject)

Hello Mr.Thompson,

How are you ? Namaste.

If you recall I had asked you about buying a CDR. Your reply had been prompt and very helpful. I would be very grateful if you could help me with another query. I had gone to buy the HP CDR 9310i as HP drives are the only ones available here in New Delhi. However it said on the box that the cd writer required a minimimum system configuration of Pentium 200 MHz., Windows 95 B and at least 32 MB ram. . My system config is Pentium 100 MHz, Windows 95 B. and 64 MB ram. My CD ROM is not working at present Will the HP CDR Plus 9310i or any other HP cd writer requiring pentium 200 MHz work on my pentium 100 MHz computer ? Will there be any problems ?

Please help me with the above. If you could suggest which cd writer to go for if the above doesn't work out ?

Thanking You, and sorry for troubling you a bit further,

Gratefully yours,

Anshuman Bhargava.

I don't know the answer to your question. Perhaps one of my readers will be able to offer some advice. I did some quick checking on other CD-R manufacturers' webs sites, including Plextor, Iomega, and Smart & Friendly, and couldn't find any references to minimum hardware requirements at all. In general, obviously, it's a good idea to pay attention to whatever minimum hardware requirements the manufacturer specifies. However, my guess is that the minimum hardware requirements that HP specifies for this drive have more to do with the bundled software than with the drive itself. It's quite possible that the drive would run successfully in your system, but the only way to know for sure is to try it. Even if your system is in fact not fast enough to run the bundled software, it's quite possible that you could use some other software to burn CDs. Another alternative may be to add an inexpensive upgrade processor like the AMD K6-2, assuming that your motherboard can accept it.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: J.H. Ricketson [mailto:culam@micron.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 11:58 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Multi-Boot Boxes

Dear Bob,

FWIW, I have had some experience with multi-boot boxes.<BG> I offer the following as a checklist that has worked for me.

1. Each OS in its own partition (except W3.1/WfWG, which will happily share with another OS.)

2. "SuperClean" (TM reg. JHR) install: Install the first OS, back up that partition, wipe the OS, and then install the next OS. Repeat until all OSs installed.

3. Install W98 first, as it wipes out boot.ini when installed after NT or W2K.

4. Install W98 on C:. It is possible to install on another partition, but gives peculiar and unanticipated (bad!) results.

5. Finally, consider a minimal installation of W3.1 or WfWG, either on the HD or removable media. This is invaluable, as it can be booted from a DOS boot disk and used to begin the copy-back bootstrap operation of restoration after things have gone bad. (They do, on occasion. You may have noticed.)

My very best wishes for your complete success.

Regards,

JHR
--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
culam@micron.net

Thanks. I think I agree with all of that, with a couple of exceptions. First, I've never felt the need to install 16-bit Windows on a multi-boot system. I can get to whatever I need to with a Win98 emergency boot disk. This system happens to have all three volumes formatted FAT, which is a departure for me. Ordinarily, I use only NTFS with NT/W2K. For that reason, I often install multi-boot even on dedicated servers. That is, for example, if I'm building a serious NT Server box, I usually create a second partition and do a minimum install of NT on it. That way, if something serious happens to the main NT partition, I can always boot to the copy of NT that resides on the "emergency" partition and use it to access files on the main NTFS volume(s). Also, with regard to installing Win98 after NT4, what you say used to be true. One had to install Win9X first, and then install NT4. Purely by accident, I found out a few months ago that Win98 (SE, I believe) was smart enough to recognize that NT was already installed and create an appropriate boot.ini file. I can't remember all the details, but I believe I had a functioning dual-boot system with Win9X on C: and NT4 on D:. For some reason, I blew away C:, expecting that I'd have to re-install both Win9X and NT4. When I installed Win98, it recognized that NT was already installed and made a boot.ini. Or at least that's how I remember it.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Mugford [mailto:mugford@aztec-net.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 2:10 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Even simple movements not so simple

Robert,

I have nothing but sympathy for your unhappiness with HP AND the various stories about the Microsoft-begotten hassles of moving applications.

This past weekend, we spent four days setting up a new shipping computer to replace one that is failing of old age and hardening of the disk drive. The key app was a bar-coding application that prints to a Zebra printer. Unfortunately, years ago, the original computer was divied up into four logical volumes to control cluster size and space-wastage. The original bar-coding app was installed on drive E:.

In the interim, hard drives plunged in price AND the company adopted a policy of a single drive C: running FAT32 (the idiot behind the policy was me, of course). So we installed all the stuff on the new machine we had to, copied over the data files (luckily C:\DATA\BARCODES on both setups) and then the various folders from the desktop of the original. Each folder contained a link to the running program and then a link to the program with a particular data file and parameters. A desktop folder for each of the three label sizes.

Brought up each folder and updated the properties of each shortcut, changing the starting directory to the NEW program directory and updating the directory info in the command line. The kicker was that despite doing that, I STILL had to change the icon, get the message that the old program directory did not exist (duhhhh!) and browse to where the new directory was, to filch the icon out of the program.

EACH of the data files had to be brought into the editor, where it complained about a missing printer. On the original machine, we ended up using the Zebra 140 (Copy 2) printer. We had had a fair bit of difficulty getting things up and going. On the new machine, I guessed right and made it just Zebra 140. The program didn't cope and I had to go in and change the printer from the newly assigned DEFAULT (which was wrong) to a specific printer, the Zebra 140. Doing so seemed the only change needed to make things work.

Well, MOST everything worked. But some of the files were fouling up, printing five labels where eight were expected. I was *THIS* close to unplugging and going back to the old wreck when an epiphany occured. The printer was connected by serial port! A quick check revealed a discrepancy in port modes; 9600,7,E,2 rather than 9600,8,N,1 that is the default for Win95B installs. Changing that fixed all.

I was astonished at the awkwardness of it all. Maybe I shouldn't have. But the thing that irked me the most was that I COULD NOT just copy over the program and have things work. Or was it having to change the icons? Either way, I'm having an assistant do the next upgrade [G].

Gary Mugford

Gary Mugford
Idea Mechanic
Bramalea ON Canada

A lot of us have gone through similar problems, and it just goes to emphasize how badly Microsoft has implemented the whole idea of the registry, software installation, shared DLLs, and so on. When I first encountered this type of software install, my first thought was that it was a Communist Plot intended to prevent people from pirating software, and I haven't seen any reason to change my mind.

wpoison

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Thursday, 25 May 2000

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Now here's a criminal who's not going to get any sympathy when he's caught. The newspaper this morning reports that an armed robber held up a Charlotte store. One of the women working there had her four year old daughter with her. The little girl started crying during the robbery. The goblin told the mother that he'd kill the little girl if she didn't stop crying. The mother couldn't get the little girl to stop crying, so the goblin shot the little girl in the chest. Amazingly, the hospital reports that the little girl is in fair condition. What kind of miserable excuse for a primate intentionally shoots a four year old girl? I sincerely hope that when the cops catch up with this SOB he resists arrest.

I'd better get this posted. There's a very loud thunderstorm moving in, and our lights just started flickering. And Barbara's father picked her up half and hour ago to go play golf. Not good.

* * * * *

The following message was in response to my suggestion to Chuck that he start a web site and start keeping a daily journal.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 10:21 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Upgrades & CABS

Thanks for the invitation, but where to get the time?! I barely get to read the rest of you, and sometimes I just can't get through all of Pournelle's ramblings--though it's not for lack of interest, or good material on his part.

Recently I've become involved in the startup of a new video production company (principally corporate--or "industrials" as we used to call them), and the days are not long enough. There's enough material from that project to fill a daily web page, but no time to put it in writing.

One item is a new technology TV projector from NEC. It's about the size of a less expensive home VCR--though perhaps twice higher--and this baby throws a 6 foot tall picture on a wall (not a screen) across a 30 foot room that is significantly sharper than any 31" TV on the market. What's more, the test room was not dark--it had incredible ambient light, including daylight from a wall of windows--but the picture was bright and beautiful from any angle!

I admit we were feeding it with a higher quality signal than ends up going into your home TV picture tube, but it really looks no worse than home TV when we feed it from a regular VHS VCR, and eventually, high-definition will easily exceed what we are calling our high-quality feed (Sony Beta SP and Panasonic DVC Pro).

My wife has been waiting for years to have a "picture wall" instead of a TV--but I can't tell her about this just yet. The price is $8,500 (however, that's down from $15,000 last October); the new business isn't doing THAT well yet.

Since we are in the same generation, you and Barbara might also enjoy a movie we saw last week called "High Fidelity". It's a great piece of ensemble acting based on a book by one Brit (Nick Hornby) and directed by yet another (Stephen Frears)--although the casting has a lot of Chicagoans.

The setting is a fictitious record store in Chicago that sells nothing but old vinyl "collectors" records. It's about the post-college time of life. The characters drawn by the actors who work in the store are so real, it's freaky. The more I reflect on the movie, the more I like it. It's definitely a guy's movie, but there were plenty of women in the packed house where we saw it, enjoying too. My wife liked it, but she has never been REALLY into rock music, and it's that--taken to extreme--which is central to making the movie funny. One of the best pictures I've seen in years. Satisfying end, too; makes you feel good about spending the time on it.

John Cusack stars; his sister Joan plays his girlfriend's best friend Liz; and their father, Dick, has a short bit as a minister at a funeral. The Cusacks lived down the street from us in Evanston when I worked in Chicago.

Thanks. I'll tell Barbara. That sounds like a movie she might like. As far as the NEC projector, I wonder how long it'll be before they're selling them at Circuit City for $500.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Hough [mailto:phil4@compsoc.man.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 12:03 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: CDR Minimum Spec

I've seen a CD Writer working fine on a P90 16Mb RAM, running Linux.

I agree with your suggestion that the minimum spec is more likely to be the software bundle than the drive. The only problem I can see is that the app+OS take so much memory, that swapping to disk is required, while writing. This may of course cause the writing process to fail.

Thanks. I figured that was the case, because the CD writer hardware really shouldn't put much of a load on a system. As I recall, the gentleman had 64 MB of RAM, which should be enough to keep swapping to a minimum, particularly if he just starts the CD burning and doesn't try to do anything else until the process completes.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: J.H. Ricketson [mailto:culam@micron.net]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 5:49 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Multi-Boot - More

Bob -

Something I glossed over in describing my multi-boot system is twin HDs, the second containing an exact (or close enough) copy of the first (boot)HD. This expands capabilities and options immensely. And, as has been said - HD storage is ridiculously cheap and getting cheaper.

There is not necessarily a need to actually install a 16-bit Windows - but it is handy to have it to run, in the event of a worst-case scenario where DRIVE0 is totaled and I have to rebuild a new DRIVE0, either from scratch or by copying back DRIVE1 to DRIVE0. I can activate the 16-bit Windows and use it, albeit slowly, to copy back C:\Root with all its goodies, including boot.ini, and NT4 or W2K, reboot into NT4 or W2K and use that to quickly copy back the remainder of DRIVE0 from DRIVE1, and I'm back in busines as usual.

As a minimum, I would strongly recommend a boot floppy that can activate the tape system or whatever is used for backup, so that it can be used for the restoration.

I, personally, don't rely on ER disks. I have wasted too much time with them, ERing and finally, after multiple reboots, had to reinstall anyway. Your mileage obviously differs. Perhaps if I had enough breakdowns to seriously study the care & feeding of ER disks, my mileage might improve. The backup & copy-back system I use "Works for Me." It still gives me a warm feeling of security to know I have a boot floppy with all the goodies - XCOPY, FDISK, FORMAT, etc., and a config.sys & autoexec.bat that will activate my MO drive and CD drive. From that start - I'm well on my way, with something besides a blank screen to stare at.

As to FAT16 vs. NTFS, etc.: If a box has only NT4.0 & W2k - NTFS would be the only way to fly. However, when another non-NTFS- speaking OS is added to the mix, I find it necessary to compromise on FAT16 as a Lingua Franca that all understand. That also allows me to use one instance of Office 97, accessible by all, with a common file directory. Also a common bookmark file & browser (which shall remain nameless out of respect for readers' sensitivities)<BG> FAT 16 does require a tradeoff of speed and agility, and I am limited to 8.45 Gb HDs, regardless of the actual capacity of the HD.

I wish my W98 were as smart as yours, or I had your luck! Mine is an "upgrade" (non-SE) version that requires even more care to install/reinstall on my multi-boot box than a full version would. It is certainly not bright enough to recognize that other Windows versions exist, and may indeed be on the very HD on which it is being installed. I suppose that possibility never occurred to the geniuses at Redmond, either.

On creating a second NT partition on the same physical disk, it is an excellent idea if there is room, and very handy to have. Only drawback would be if DRIVE0 totaled. Then NT would be aiNT, and a new beginning unless you could restore from backup. I like my twin HDs. Even if they both go south simultaneously (in which case I have serious problems 'way beyond HDs), I can still restore from the copies on MO Discs.

My philosophy and strategy "Works for Me," and will work for anyone who follows it. That is not to say it is the only way. There are many paths to enlightenment.<G> Bits & pieces may be abstracted and used successfully, depending on the multi-booter's desires and the target system. It's a wide-open field. My aim is primarily rock-steady reliability, 24/7/366 - which involves some tradeoffs. Others may have differing priorities, and prefer different trade-offs.

Regards,

JHR

--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
culam@micron.net

It occurs to me that you might find Drive Image useful. I haven't looked at it since V2.0, but V3.0 is out, and I should probably take a look at it. Drive Image makes a snapshot of a drive volume, storing it in compressed form on your choice of media--another hard drive, a network volume, a removable drive, and so on. It also creates a set of restore floppies. If you trash up your hard disk, you can simply restore it from the most recent image file. If the hard disk dies, you can replace the drive, boot with the restore floppies, and restore the most recent image file to the new hard disk. It also allows selective restore of specified files within the image. I don't know that I'd use it as my primary backup method, but it's great for disaster recovery.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Montgomery [mailto:monty@sprintmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 12:48 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com; Jerry Pournelle
Subject: Re: Which "Tyan Trinity" Board?

From: monty@sprintmail.com
Subj: Hardware book -- suggestion

Thanks to both Mr. Thompson and Dr. Pournelle for recently answering questions about the Tyan Trinity 371 motherboard based on the Intel 440BX chipset!

One thing I almost stumbled over, in putting together a shopping list: although it is true that the board has both Socket 370 and Slot 1, and it is also true that Pentium III comes in both Slot 1 and Socket 370 forms, careful examination of the CPU support table on the Tyan web site indicates that the board only supports the Slot 1 form of the Pentium III. The Socket 370 support is only for Celerons.

Perhaps the forthcoming hardware book should address subtleties of this kind? Not so much by mentioning this particular situation, but by mentioning that this _generic_kind_ of situation exists?

Thanks. Although I don't follow Tyan boards closely, I believe that the later variants of that board in fact support FC-PGA Pentium III and FC-PGA Celeron II processors in the Socket 370. There's no reason for them not to. The FC-PGA version of Socket 370 has slightly different pinouts, but is backward-compatible with PPGA processors (i.e. Celeron I). So it would make sense for Tyan to use the later version of Socket 370, and simply use a BIOS and VRM that supported all Socket 370 processors.

As far as the SC242 connector supporting only Pentium III in that board, I have to assume that that's simply laziness (or perhaps a lack of market demand to support the earlier Slot 1 processors). Electrically, the Slot 1 versions of the Pentium II, Celeron, and Pentium III differ slightly, although they all use the GTL+ signaling standard. It's possible that Tyan has designed this board with VRMs that can supply only the 1.60/1.65V used by Coppermine Pentium III processors, which would rule out using the 2.8V Klamath-core Pentium II and Celeron processors as well as the 2.0/2.05V Deschutes-based Pentium II/Celeron and Katmai-core Pentium III processors. But I think it's more likely that they simply didn't bother to use a BIOS that supports the different L2 caching methods used by the Pentium II, Celeron, and Pentium III.

wpoison

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Friday, 26 May 2000

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That very loud thunderstorm I mentioned yesterday morning ended up being a pretty bad one. Straight-line winds of 80 MPH (129 KPH) or more, huge trees down, houses crushed or with their roofs ripped off, and at the airport several planes (which had been tied down) turned over and crunched together. Several tornadoes reported, but none yet confirmed. There are about 140,000 homes without power, but only about 2,000 of those are in Winston-Salem, nearly all on the eastern edge. Apparently, the storm just started to come together over Winston-Salem, but really started doing damage at Kernersville, which is 15 miles (24 KM) east of here, and Greensboro, which is about 30 miles east of here. Barbara and her father were on the third hole of the golf course when it struck. They immediately made tracks for the clubhouse. There were surprisingly few injuries. The only I've heard about were two people who were unfortunately just attempting to land in a light plane when the wind gusts forced them hard onto the runway. The plane was destroyed, and they're in the hospital. All that happened here was that the lights flickered occasionally.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Montgomery [mailto:monty@sprintmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 10:31 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Cc: 'Jerry Pournelle'
Subject: Re: Which "Tyan Trinity" Board?

Oops!

I did not mean to say that the Slot 1 on the Tyan Trinity 371 based on the Intel 440BX chipset _only_ supported Pentium III. The Tyan web site indicates that the board supports the Slot-1 forms of Pentium II and Celeron too.

All I was trying to say is that the board does not support the Socket-370 form of Pentium III.

And yes, the Tyan web site does indicate that the later, VIA-chipset-based Trinity -- the Trinity 400 -- supports the the Socket-370 form of Pentium-III-Coppermine.

Sorry. I misinterpreted your statement, "... the board only supports the Slot 1 form of the Pentium III." Obviously, what you meant was that the board supports Pentium IIIs only in Slot 1 packaging, whereas what I read your statement to mean was that it supports only Pentium IIIs in Slot 1 packaging.

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-----Original Message-----
From: J.H. Ricketson [mailto:culam@micron.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 10:42 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Multi-Boot - More

Drive Image sounds really interesting. First, I'm a bit hazy on the definition of the term "Volume." Does that = DRIVE0, DRIVE1,etc, or does that = C:, D:, E:, etc.? If the latter, I'm very interested. I can fantasize writing a batch file, script, whatever, and punching that script up when I head for bed. No babysitting required. The answer to a maiden's prayer! I'll look into it. My only reservation is that it might be too complex to allow fast & easy recovery - or it might involve the classic "Catch-22" of needing a functional PC in order to restore functionality - And if I had a functioning PC, I wouldn't be restoring functionality! Workable - perhaps - for a network, but not for a lone PC. Even over a network, I am puzzled as to how one might restore function to a non-functional PC that couldn't connect to the net. It would still be a lone PC, until functionality and networking capability was restored. Bottom line: You still have to get down & dirty, and begin by bootstrapping your way back up. Crash restoration is one area where I am, regretfully, quite experienced. I would happily forego that experience in the future.

Oh - I forgot to mention W2k's nosiness at install. Sorry. I have encountered that before, and it trashed my NT4 install. A good workaround might be to install NT4 after the W2K install next time around. My SOP on this is, of course, SuperClean - there are no other OSs there for W2K to snoop. Once W2K is safely bedded down in its own stall, AFAIK W2K completely ignores other OSs - if it is even aware of them. That's one of the many reasons I'm willing to endure the tedium of SuperClean - it saves me time and complications in the long run. And NT4 will run 'til hell freezes over with SP0, or until you get around to installing SP5.

And I heartily agree with your take on HP, Microsoft, and then some. I don't want to get started on that rant - could take days. And I've got a TR to finish! <BG>

As I said, it's been a while since I looked at Drive Image, but my recollection is that it does in fact support volumes in the sense of drive letters. It does require a functional PC to restore functionality, in the sense that everything has to light up and spin, but not in the sense I think you mean. That is, it doesn't have to be a bootable PC. You just stick in the boot floppy, start the system, and restore from the image file. Then you restart the system and it boots back to the state it was in when you made the image. I don't recall the details of restoring e.g. from an image stored on a network volume, but as I recall it builds a boot floppy with network drivers in that circumstance.

PowerQuest does have a 60-day money back guarantee, so you can try it without risk. They also have a 30-day eval copy of Drive Image Pro available for download. Drive Image comes in at least three versions. The standard version is for one PC. The Pro version is licensable for multiple PCs, e.g. workstations on a network. The Technician version is for people who clone workstations, and is also licensed on a per-PC basis.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Hough [mailto:phil4@compsoc.man.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 11:04 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Subject: RE: CDR Minimum Spec

Thinking about it a little further, I think the only thing he has to watch is Thermal Recalibration on older harddisks.

The advice I give to punters on CW-J's message board about writing CD's, is unless they've got SCSI, don't touch the machine while its running (including screensavers, powerdowns).

ATB.

Phil

Phil Hough - 4th Year Computer Scientist Out of memory.
E-mail: phil4@compsoc.man.ac.uk We wish to hold the whole sky,
Phone: 07720 291723 But we never will.
WWW: http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~phil4

Excellent advice for CD burning in general, and burning with an IDE drive in particular. On faster machines and with drives with large buffers, however, one has a bit more room for error. I don't know how large the buffer is in that HP drive, but this Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32A has a 4 MB buffer. Even when burning at 8X (1,200 KB/s), that's more than 3 seconds of data buffered, which goes a long way toward reducing coasters.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Butler [mailto:cbutler@cbjd.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 12:33 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: CABs

Putting the CABS in \windows\options\cabs is not a good idea. If you need to re-install Windows with a clean install, the easiest method is to deltree c:\windows . However, if your CABS are under the \windows directory, you lose them as well. I create a directory c:\win98se and copy the CD there (I also create a msbatch.inf file with the CD Key in it in the same directory):
____________________________________________________
; MSBATCH.INF
;

[BatchSetup]
Version=3.0 (32-bit)
SaveDate=05/06/98

[Version]
Signature = "$CHICAGO$"

[Setup]
ProductKey="xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx"
______________________________________________

What a truly excellent idea. I've never put distribution files in the cabs directory. I have a distribution server where I store CD images for operating systems, applications, utilities, and so on. But I'd always put the init key in a simple text file named !initkey.txt in the root of the software directory.

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This is a long message that covers multiple topics, so I'll embed my comments in the body of the message.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Micko [mailto:rmicko@clipperinc.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 7:56 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Many Things... mostly DHCP

Mr. Thompson:

I am continuing to enjoy your website. Along with Jerry Pournelle's site, I seem to check yours out every day or so.

Thank you for your help with the NT Small Business Server DHCP Server problem I was experiencing. Through some further research I was able to figure out a solution, which I'm passing along. While everyone's suggestions were helpful, they all were "end-run" solutions. involving using lpr or some other external way to do DHCP. The optimal solution for the customer was to not add anything else, but make the SBS and the Lucent Router co-exist happily. As a recap of the problem for readers who do not want to search for my original message... SBS has an annoying "feature by design" (microsoft's words, not mine) where SBS can be the only DHCP server on the network. The customer site was in a situation to tap into a T1 line for internet access. However, the T1 connection is served by a Lucent router that uses DHCP to dole out IP addresses. I was not at liberty to change anything on the Lucent router, and I really didn't want to assign static IP addresses to the PCs in the customers network. At first I tried blocking the DHCP UDP ports in advanced security of the TCP/IP properties for the external NIC card, however, that caused not only DHCP to be blocked from the internal network, but all traffic entirely. I still think that original method should have worked... probably another "feature" of SBS.

The solution I found that did work was to turn off the DHCP Server bindings to the external NIC in network properties. Viola, SBS' DHCP Server functions fine as the "only" DHCP server on the network, and the customer has a speedy T1 connection to the internet. To Microsoft's credit I did happen upon the answer in their knowledge base, but the article was for a modem issue. Microsoft's knowledge base is very useful, but there is a learning curve to figuring out which keywords will give useful results, and even then there is a lot of reading to sort through. I have become fairly adept at searching the kb, but it still takes a while to get at useful info. support.microsoft.com (related KB articles: Q216238, Q164882, Q196971, Q237773, Q218636, Q219364)

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Regarding the upcoming dishwasher article in the WSJ. You mentioned that you thought it odd that the WSJ would publish an article on dishwashers. I usually read the WallStreet daily; the Friday May 19 issue had an article about dishwashers in Japan. At first I thought this was the article you were referring to.

I don't read the WSJ regularly, so I didn't notice that one. This article is supposed to appear sometime next week. As it turned out, the author never contacted Barbara to interview her, so she may not be appearing. Neither may I, for that matter. One never knows about interviews until one sees the actual piece.

-----

A few thoughts on general discussion of motherboards, cpus, chipsets, etc here on ttgnet and elsewhere. I have been playing with computers for 20 years since I was a wee lad. My first love has always been hardware. When I started my consulting business, the majority of my work was building clones for people who wanted the added services of an "expert" to help them with their computing. Since the beginning I have always believed and operated on the maxim that I could build a system that was measurably better in some way than a pre-built system. Either it was less expensive, or more reliable, or perhaps was a customized hotrod. At the very least I was able to say that I hand picked every component because I felt it was the best choice for the requirements of the system at hand. Many times I was in a situation where economies of scale worked to my advantage. For example, the price between two graphic cards may be a difference of $5.00, but the quality of the one was much greater than the price difference. For a dell, gateway, or any large outfit, that $5.00 multiplied to a large amount. For myself and my customers it was chump change, so I delivered a much better product. I always chose the better component. Within the last year or two, I've come to believe that this is no longer true. For my own consulting practice I have standardized on Dell computers. The specific vendor isn't that important. I could have chosen Gateway, Compaq, Micron, etc with similar results.

The important difference is that in the last 2 years there has been a measurable decline in price and quality. First price: I can no longer build a system effectively as a business proposition. Currently the component cost alone is comparable to purchasing a complete system. If software applications are required, I usually cannot compete with the "bundle" cost from the larger integrators. Even with all of this, I used to be able to choose to build my own because there was a small benefit in building a system more easily upgraded and maintained since it was based on standard parts, nothing proprietary. Plunging costs have made upgrading less and less an issue. However, what made it a complete non-issue was the rapid change in technology. Today, if I purchase a reasonably equipped system, by the time I want to upgrade, I won't want to... the new cpu won't be compatible with my motherboard... the compatible motherboard will use a new standard of ram... my graphic card won't be able to use the latest PCI-2 or NG I/O bus... the harddisk won't be able to use the UltraDMA 1GHZ and besides, it is only 25GB... (Sorry...) In the end, I am better off purchasing a new system and using the old system for something else.

Secondly, Quality: What I am calling the new "aggravation" factor. I think some of this is due to the bloat and decline in OS by Microsoft. In Microsoft's defense, Win9x & NT are much more complicated than DOS ever was. In the few weeks I've read your stuff, you are intimate with "af" (aggravation factor). Building a system used to be a 4 hour job max. Now it's a multiple day adventure. Breadboard the system. Install the OS. Research the driver bugs. Re-Install the OS. Research the bugs due to the peculiar combination of two manufacturers components. Re-Install the OS. Find out about the MotherBoard BIOS problem. Flash the BIOS, re-install the OS. Finish the system. Add the OfficeJet the customer already had. Find out that HP wants $25.00 for the NT drivers since you originally bought the scanner when the NT drivers weren't available. (true story)... (again, sorry for rambling) etc. Deliver the system. Support the system more than you seem to remember supporting systems in recent years. Realize that AMD K6 & VIA combo's can be flaky. Find out that Intel's stuff can be flaky. AARGH.

In general I now advise customers that if they would like to have an enjoyable hobby and like to tinker... building PCs can be just that. Yesterday kids became hams, now they build PCs. But otherwise, just call up Dell, Gateway, HP, etc, and decide how long you want to go before you have to call them again. The longer time you want in between then pay more now.

I look forward to your comments, if you would care to. Somehow I think this bears on your upcoming hardware book with Jerry Pournelle. I'm going to get it, but I think the general PC enthusiast audience is shrinking or non-existent.

( I am also sending this comment to Pournelle's site in regards to his advice to a reader to build 2 systems for the readers' sons to take to college.)

Well, we'll have to disagree about this. In my experience, one can build a PC equivalent to a $1,000 to $1,500 Dell, Gateway, or other name-brand unit for $200 to $400 less. Alternatively, one can build to the same price point and end up with much better grade components. All of these manufacturers try to pinch pennies to remain competitive on price. When you buy one of their systems, you end up with low-end to mid-range components. Anywhere there's an option to spend 5% or 10% more to get 50% better performance, you can be sure that they chose not to spend the extra money. Power supplies are marginal. If two models of a disk drive are available, one with twice or four times the cache but that costs $3 more, you can be sure that they chose the one that was $3 cheaper. You'll also find they use white-box components that are inferior to the retail products. For example, they may trumpet that their system contains the hot video card of the month, but you'll likely find that rather than the 360 MHz RAMDAC in the retail product, you get a 300 MHz (or even 270 MHz) RAMDAC and much slower memory. That way, they can claim that they're providing the hot video card without actually paying the price. Same thing on stuff like monitors. They may bundle a 17" monitor with what looks like good specs and uses a Trinitron. You'll find, however, that that monitor is nowhere near as good as a 17" Hitachi, Mitsubishi, NEC, or Sony unit. The display quality isn't as good, and the OEM monitor will likely last half as long. And so on.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think these folks are selling junk, and I frequently recommend Dell to people who just want a computer without the hassle of building one themselves. But you can do much better building one yourself.

-----

You are not alone. HP has become a source of evil in general. Things work in cycles. For many things, I like to standardize. Many years ago, I only chose Epson for printers. Then their quality went out the window. I standardized on HP for printers and much else. I would say there 3 year window of high quality is starting to crack for me. In the last two months I have had 3 or 4 instances of having to deal with them and wishing I could ring the neck of the unthinking inconsiderate louts on the other end. Particularly annoying is their jumping on the model bandwagon. If we don't have a true jump in technology, just keep rebranding the same system with a few tweaks. The latest sign of their new evil ways I have experienced is with their 800 series of printers. There are two models that are essentially the same except for price and the dirty little fact that the cheaper unit can only use the "economy" cartridges which are cheaper but have much less ink. The other model, essentially the same is more expensive, but can accept the more economical cartridges with a greater supply of ink. AARGH!

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Lastly, a few weeks you had a few comments regarding freenet and it's possible effect on creators and copyrighted material. Then a week later you were discussing OpenMail. In response to a message regarding the licensing, you "winked" at it. Why should the OpenMail creators work...? I don't think that was the intention of what you wrote, but it was the impression I received. Granted, I have the ability to remember useless things and connect them in unintended ways.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. I think you'll find that in these pages I've never advocated pirating software or violating license agreements. In reference to OpenMail, I seem to remember that a reader commented on the non-commercial provisions of the license. I don't even recall what those are, if in fact there are any. I commented something like that I considered my own operations to be within whatever limitations that license had. I say that on two bases. First, although I have a personal corporation, that's solely for convenience and liability reasons. The corporation has zero employees, and Barbara and I take both income and expenses to our personal 1040 and Schedule C.

Second, and more important, I write computer books. Nearly any software maker, including HP, is happy to send me whatever I ask for, including full unlimited licenses, in the hope that I'll write about their products. Journalists and authors are a special case as far as most software companies are concerned. For example, if I contact Microsoft's PR agency about getting Windows 2000 Professional, I'll say something like, "I'll need to run this on a bunch of machines. Can you send me five licenses?" Their response is typically something like, "Run it on however many machines you want. Don't worry about the license."

I apologize for the length of this letter. Feel free to edit. Again... I'm really enjoying your site.

Thank you for your courtesy,

Richard Micko
Clipper Computer Consulting, Inc.
rmicko@ClipperInc.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: yarvin-norman@cs.yale.edu [mailto:yarvin-norman@cs.yale.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 12:59 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Tennis musings: some comments

Even though I currently don't play or watch tennis, and never did so seriously, I found your article "The U. S. Open and Big Servers" very interesting. I have some comments from a theoretical perspective.

First, the beam from a radar gun is not at all sharp and well-defined. A radar gun is usually only five or ten wavelengths in height and width, and no antenna of that size can produce a sharp beam. The manufacturers try, but the laws of physics bound what they can achieve. Not only is the beam fairly wide, but it also usually has sidelobes. (Those are not required by the laws of physics, but they are hard to eliminate.) The beam can and will bounce off the ground on its way to the ball, as well as taking the direct route. If the net is supported by a metal wire, that wire will generate its own set of reflections. The "beam width" for incoming signals (that is, the range of angles over which the unit "listens" for incoming signals) is identical to the beam width for the outgoing signals -- presuming the same antenna is used for both, as is usual. (The formula is: theta = 1.22 lambda/d, where lambda is the wavelength, d is the antenna width, and theta is the beam width in radians. Thus a five-wavelength antenna produces a 14 degree beam, at best.)

The thing that makes radar speed measurement at all possible is that the additional reflections all have a lower doppler shift than the main signal. So the radar unit fires off a wide beam, gets back all sorts of garbage over a wide angle, and looks for the highest doppler shift. If this happens to be off a nearby fan, that is what the reading ends up as. But the operators of the unit would have to be braindead not to notice this (since they would be getting those high speeds continuously, rather than just when a serve takes place); it could happen once in a while, but not on a continuing basis.

On the other hand, your hypothesis that the speed gun is pointed at a fixed (and low) height doesn't work. Unless they have a huge antenna, the beam is so wide that it catches everything including the kitchen sink (if there is one in the area). If it were pointed too low to catch a large man's serve, it would bounce off the ground, and come back up. That would reduce the measured speed, since the reflection would be indirect; but again, the operators would have to be beyond stupid to point the antenna that low (something like ten degrees low), every single time.

Doppler radar can be a very accurate thing. It is essentially a measurement of time, and time can be measured more accurately than any other physical quantity. At NASA, good doppler radars are the standard used for calibrating other speed measuring devices. But there is a serious weak point: the subtraction of the received frequency from the emitted frequency. If that is done badly, then additional harmonics can be generated, and doing it perfectly means constructing something like a perfect multiplier for two microwave-frequency analog signals -- something that is hard to do even with a large budget. In serving, the tennis ball moves about twice as fast as the racket (due to the basic physics of collisions). If the racket is metal or graphite (both of which conduct electricity well), it will send back a far stronger signal than the rubber-and-cloth ball will. Thus harmonics from the motion of the racket can overpower the signal from the ball. Instead of measuring the speed of the ball, what would be measured would be 2x or 3x or 4x or some other multiple of the speed of the racket. The electronics that look for the highest frequency shift would probably reject the 4x harmonic as giving too high a speed; the even higher harmonics would suffer the same fate. But the 2x harmonic would give about the speed of the ball. If the designers of the radar were not careful, they could easily decide that they were measuring the speed of the ball, when they actually were measuring twice the speed of the racket. But if they set this up for men, and measured the second harmonic, and threw the third harmonic out as being too high, then when used for women, the same device would measure the third harmonic, assuming that (as you claim) the serve speeds of men are about 3/2 those of women.

I think this is a much more plausible hypothesis than the one you offer; in addition to my above comments about beam width, I don't see any way that a beam aiming error could give a ridiculously high speed for a woman's serve: I can see how it could give too low a speed for a man, but not too high a speed for a woman, assuming that the correct speed is the one measured just after the ball leaves the racket.

There is a simple way to confirm your doubts about the speed guns: counting frames on a videotape of a tennis match in which the radar results are announced. The number of frames between the ball leaving the racket and it crossing the net can easily be counted on a decent VCR, and (at exactly 60 frames per second) gives a good indication of the average speed.

I defer to your superior knowledge of radar. But I can tell you empirically that there is absolutely no comparison between the power of a strong male server and that of a strong female server. I've taken serve from some very powerful women servers, and they simply do not have either the height (angle) or the power to force a good receiver. I always had time to respond, and more than enough time to do something with the return. On the other hand, I once received serve from a guy named Roscoe Tanner. From the time he struck the ball until the time it impacted the fence behind me, I simply was not able to react quickly enough to get my racket on the ball. When I did make contact, it was simply a matter of blocking the ball back because my racket happened to meet the ball. No question of doing anything with it. There simply wasn't time.

Back in high-school, we got our hands on a high-speed camera and some film. That thing had variable speed settings, ranging I believe from 100 frames/second up to something in the thousands. The camera used a rapidly rotating mirror to sample, so the interval was known and tightly controlled. We got set up, and then I and another guy who was a huge server hit a couple practice serves and then served for score. We enlarged a few of the appropriate frames and then measured distance versus time, using the known diameter of the tennis ball as a reference (it stayed squashed for a surprising distance from the racket). As best we could measure, the other guy managed 146 MPH off his racket, and I managed 137 MPH.

Now, I seem to remember that Venus Williams has been credited with a serve at or near 137 MPH. There's just no way. First, a 6'0" or 6"1, she's just not tall enough to be hitting down, and if she can't hit down a flat serve at that speed will go long every time (and no one who has ever lived can hit a 137 MPH topspin serve). When I was playing, one had to be between 6'3" and 6'4" to hit down. It may be a bit less now, because they've changed the rules on foot faults. Thirty years ago, if you crossed the plane of the base-line (even airborne), it was a foot fault. Nowadays, you can cross the plane as long as your foot doesn't touch the court. That gains you perhaps another foot or so toward the net, say from 39 feet down to 38 feet.

Against a really big server, stuff happens. Big male servers periodically knock the net off its supports, hit balls through the net, and so on. If there's a standard hurricane fence behind you when you're taking serve from a strong male server, you can count on the fact that you're going to have to walk behind the fence to retrieve nearly every ball you let hit the fence. That just doesn't happen with women servers, no matter how strong they are. I know this from personal experience, so when a radar gun tells me that a woman server, any woman, is hitting the ball as hard as or harder than Boris Becker, I know that the radar gun is wrong.

wpoison

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Saturday, 27 May 2000

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I tried to install the HP 6200C scanner software under Windows 2000 Professional on my new secondary system. I figured it would be pretty easy, given that Device Manager recognized the 6200C by name as being connected to the USB host controller. No such luck. A quick search of the HP site tells me that no 6200C drivers are yet available for Windows 2000 when using USB. SCSI is no problem, except that I didn't install a SCSI host adapter in this machine. So, at this point, I can't use my scanner via USB with Windows 98 SE because it simply doesn't work. I can't use it with Windows NT 4 Workstation, because NT4 doesn't support USB. And I can't use it with Windows 2000 Professional, because HP hasn't released USB drivers for it yet.

I guess HP really wants you to use this scanner with the SCSI interface. In fact, they kindly provide a special offer for people who want to use it under SCSI and have found that the SCSI card that HP supplied with their scanner isn't supported under Windows 2000. Wouldn't it have made more sense to provide a Windows 2000 driver for the bundled SCSI card than force people to buy a new SCSI card?

So I gave up on the scanner for the moment and decided to install the Windows 2000 Fax Service. That was a non-starter. I already had an old Practical Peripherals MTII 14.4 data/fax modem sitting on top of one of the PCs and connected to the fax line, so I tried it first. Everything apparently went normally. I tried dialing the fax modem on a voice line, and it answered. I then called Barbara, who was over at the library, and asked her to fax me something. Again, everything appeared to go normally. The fax modem answered properly, but it simply refused to receive a fax. I've had this happen before, so I decided to give up on the PP modem and try something else.

I had an old U. S. Robotics Sportster 28.8 Faxmodem sitting on the shelf, so I connected it up and gave it a try. Windows 2000 did not even detect that the modem was present, which it at least did for the PP. I tried installing it manually, but W2K simply refused to acknowledge that a faxmodem was connected to either COM1: or COM2:. I know everything is connected properly, because I watched the lights on the modem flicker when W2K pulsed it. It's there, but W2K simply refuses to see it.

I've about had it with faxmodems anyway. I think I just need to do some research to decide which fax machine to buy. Until recently, I would have probably concentrated on HP models. No more, though. I may not even look at them. I suspect that Panasonic or one of the other Japanese manufacturers has exactly what I want.

And all of this reinforces my opinion that Windows 2000 is not ready for prime time. There simply aren't enough drivers available for it, and there are too many mainstream applications that simply won't run under it.

Another good candidate for the Darwin Awards. This guy gets on an airliner in the Philippines, robs the passengers, and jumps out from an altitude of 6,000 feet, carrying the loot and wearing a home-made parachute. The newspaper this morning said they'd found his body buried in the mud, with only his hands and knees visible. They found the parachute half a mile away. No mention of the loot.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 11:47 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson (E-mail)
Subject: Tennis: Counting VCR frames

If you are counting TV frames on a home VCR, because of interlace scanning in the American NTSC standard, there are only 30 frames to a second. Actually, because of how color is integrated into NTSC, the frame rate is just slightly less than 60hz, so over a long period of time, counting frames would not correspond with real time, although the correction for that is a known factor.

Also, some home VCR's are not capable of advancing just one frame at a time, so that's something else to consider.

If you want to test whether or not your VCR is capable of exact frame advance, and you don't have a tape displaying "burned in" time code (what we use in video editing to make frame accurate editing choices), then play back a tape of a movie. Pause and begin advancing one frame at a time. If you can repeatedly count four frames of action, followed by a fifth frame which is a freeze frame of the fourth frame, then your machine is capable of accurate frame-at-a-time advances.

The interspersed frozen frames are necessary to convert the film rate of 24 frames-per-second to the TV rate of 30fps. Pick a film made for theatrical release, because many filmed commercials and made-for-TV movies shoot their film at 30fps to match to TV rate and avoid that frozen frame.

Hmm. Never thought about that, but it makes sense. Thanks. I do remember wondering why the frame rate was something odd, like 59.875 frames/second (or whatever) when I was reading the manual for a TV capture card.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Sherburne Jr [mailto:ryszards@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 4:43 PM
To: 'webmaster@ttgnet.com'
Subject: Mr. Ricketson's disaster recovery thoughts

Why not try Ghost? If the idea is perfectly sure recovery, data on a drive in a partition, OS on same drive in another partition. Then use Ghost, widely available since Norton Symantec bought them to "Ghost" that 2 partition drive to the second drive. Then, if things on the operating drive go awry, just ghost back from the duplicate. Seems to work much better than any drive copy software I have seen elsewhere, although I think you must get a newer version to have NTFS compatability. Just a though, learned from managing my two preschoolers computer. Preschoolers have amazing curiosity about the things a computer can do, sometimes that is a Really Bad Thing. Ghosting the drive to a 2nd drive and unplugging drive 2 keeps me from going nuts when they eventually once a month or so do their Bad Thing, always resulting in "Daddy, the computer is broken" calls.

Thanks. I've never used Ghost, although I'm vaguely familiar with its features. PowerQuest Drive Image is a very similar product. In addition to disaster recovery, a lot of companies use it for cloning workstations. I suspect that either product would do what Mr. Ricketson wants to do. And you're right about kids and PCs. Years ago, back in the days of ST506/412 hard disks, I knew a guy who made the mistake of leaving a floppy disk with a low-level format utility in the vicinity of his home PC. He arrived home from work one day to find that his 9 year old had been playing with the computer and had done a low-level format of his hard disk. It could have been worse, though. Fortunately, he had a Compaq 20 MB tape drive installed on that machine, and had a recent backup he'd done with it.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: yarvin-norman@cs.yale.edu [mailto:yarvin-norman@cs.yale.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 5:09 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Tennis musings: some comments

Sorry, I should have made it clearer that I wasn't trying to contest your observations or opinions in any way (nor am I now); indeed, I was assuming they were correct, and proposing an explanation for why the radar gun would yield a bad result, in particular about 3/2 of the correct speed, which is about what you've seen it yield in televised matches, if I read your article correctly.

Since the time one has to react to a ball going an average of 100 MPH is about half a second, and since part of that is eaten up by human reaction time, of maybe a quarter of a second (perhaps a tenth of a second at very best), it is thoroughly believable that there is no time even to get the racket on the ball. (A ball that starts off at upwards of 100 MPH, reaches the net at about 100 MPH, and continues dropping in speed from there will have an average speed of something like 100 MPH. Actually the average is not precisely the right measure to use, but it is close enough. 100 MPH = 146 feet/second; over a distance of 78 feet, that is about half a second.)

As well as the height issue, there is also the issue of brute strength. Women have much less upper body strength than men (roughly half), and this has to make a difference. A ball with about half the energy will have about 70% of the speed, which again is in the same ballpark as your figures.

I also have some comments on the distinction between "serving up" and "serving down". Perhaps I should just ask what the distinction is, but it seems better to first examine whether the phrases can be taken literally. If they were taken literally, the dividing line between these two things would be the ball being hit purely horizontally. If the ball is hit horizontally, then it hits the ground after about

t=sqrt(2*h/g) seconds,

where h is the starting height, and g is the force of gravity; taking a starting height of 3 meters, this works out to .77 seconds. (Actually it is longer than this, since there is some air drag, made larger by the forward motion of the ball, but take this as a lower bound.) To reach the service line in that time, it would be traveling at an average of 39+21 feet / .77 seconds = 80 feet/second = 54 MPH (or even lower than this, if air drag is taken into account). But that speed is much lower than competitive serve speeds, even for women; clearly a literal interpretation doesn't work.

Your statements:

"I'm a little over 6'3", and that just happens to be about the minimum height needed to be able to hit down on a serve. Anyone much shorter than that has to hit up on a serve in order to clear the net. I know it doesn't look that way, but it is true nonetheless. You can prove it by measuring the height to the middle of the fully extended racket, and then using the known distances (39 feet from baseline to net and 21 feet from net to service line)."

make it sound like what is needed to "hit down" on a serve is a straight-line path from the middle of the racket to the service line. The required height of the center of the racket for that would be 8'7", which is about right: the extended arm is maybe another foot above head height, and the racket adds the rest. This seems like a useful criterion, since if there is a straight-line path, then you can fire off serves at an arbitrarily high speed. At realistic speeds, there is some ball drop due to gravity, which gives you a margin of error:

speed   drop at net drop at service   difference
(MPH)     (feet)       line (feet)

70       2.3           5.4             3.1

80       1.8           4.2             2.4

90       1.4           3.3             1.9

100       1.1           2.7             1.6

110       0.93          2.2             1.3

120       0.78          1.85            1.07

130       0.66          1.58            0.92

140       0.57          1.36            0.79

These numbers are not to be taken too seriously, since they were computed assuming constant speed, but the "difference" is about how much margin of error exists, if there is just barely a straight-line path from the center of the racket to the service line.

Despite the imprecision, I've beaten this one to death to my own satisfaction, and probably to your great boredom, so I'll quit now.

--
Norman Yarvin
yarvin@cs.yale.edu

I love it. That's exactly the kind of playing with numbers I like to do. As you say, though, the numbers can't be taken seriously for several reasons. First, of course, is the fact that velocity is not constant. A ball that leaves the racket at 150 MPH is down to perhaps 100 MPH by the time it reaches the net. Second is spin. Most servers hit even a "flat" serve with some topspin, although there are exceptions. The great Ellsworth Vines, who played in the 1930's, was one such. He hit *everything* flat, including volleys. They used to say that if you stood at mid court you could see the lettering on the ball as it went past. I remember watching footage of Vines playing. At one point, he hit an overhead that bounced once and then nailed a linesman in the forehead. It knocked the guy unconscious, and they brought in a stretcher to haul him away. If you could magically drop Vines at Wimbledon today, he'd still probably be the hardest hitter on the tour, even using his old wooden racket.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Sturm [mailto:jpsturm@dingoblue.net.au]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 7:15 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Build your own vs brand name

For the last few years I have been buying my machines from a white box builder, EYO here in Australia. I specify every part in the box and EYO assembles it for $A30. My rates are $A75/hr so it's not worth having the parts shipped for me to assemble. I can specify OEM or retail parts for most things so I have all the control over a machine I want and I save over the cost of HP, Dell, Compaq etc.

The real cost saving to me, though, is the ease of servicing. Having struggled for a day and a half with my sister's proprietary machine (a Packard Bell) recently, I would suggest only buying proprietary if you know you are going to get decent service from the supplier. My white boxes from EYO contain standard parts that are available overnight in most cases in the event of hardware failure.

The only proprietary box I ever bought, a Zenith 286, failed under warranty (12 mths) three times and took 2 weeks to be repaired each time. I could have purchased 2 white boxes for what I paid for that machine and continued working instead of losing 6 weeks out of my working year. Of course that is what I subsequently did, though the number of machines is now 4, not including a combined router/hub/modem/DHCP server from Intel.

On a different note, I too am becoming disenchanted with HP. They want $A1,195 for a PostScript SIMM for my LJ5P! A new 2100M is less than $A400 extra. I am seriously thinking of trying Lexmark.

Jonathan Sturm

PS Really like your site :-) Looking forward to reading some of your books.

Thanks for the kind words. I agree that proprietary PCs are to be avoided.

wpoison

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Sunday, 28 May 2000

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We slept downstairs in my mother's area last night. We'd been under severe thunderstorm and tornado watches all day, and the last of them wasn't to expire until 2:00 a.m. So we pulled out the sofa bed and camped out downstairs with my mother and all three dogs. Barbara says she slept well. Malcolm did, too, although he had to spend the whole night in his large crate. As it turned out, nothing happened. We didn't even get any rain.

We've been cautious about storms ever since 1989. During the May 5th storm that year, we were at a friend's house. She was fairly recently arrived from Britain and had no experience of Spring weather in the U.S. As we were sitting talking and listening to the wind coming up, Barbara and I suggested that it'd be a good idea to go hide in her basement. She thought we were being ridiculous, but as it turned out we were wise to have done so. As we sat there in the basement, we couldn't figure out what the loud thumping noises were. As it turned out, they were caused by falling trees. The entire area was wrecked by that storm. Alison's back yard was a disaster area, with trees down all over the place. Barbara's parents, who live a couple miles from Alison's house, had several of their huge oaks--200 or 300 years old and four feet thick at the base--ripped out. The powers that be later said that this storm wasn't a tornado, but anyone who saw the aerial views, which showed a clear linear track, thought otherwise.

Then, little more than a month later, on June 8th, we had another non-tornado. This one trashed our area. We were sitting in the den watching television when a crawler came across the bottom of the screen saying that a tornado had touched down on Witherow Road. That's where we live, and the entire road is only three blocks long, so we were a bit concerned. We immediately headed for the basement. As we reached the door, we heard a loud crash from the living room, where one of the columns from our front porch had come through a window. When the storm passed, we went outside and found that part of our roof had been ripped off. They later said that that storm hadn't been a tornado, either. Instead, they said we'd had "micro-bursts" which are apparently localized high-speed (100 to 200 MPH) downdrafts. Whatever. We sure felt as though we'd been through a tornado.

When we subsequently made over the downstairs area to make it an apartment for my mother, one of the things we did was build a reinforced wall around the kitchen. It's framed with staggered 2X8's and steel columns every four feet, and is covered with heavy plywood sheathing with solid tongue-and-groove 1" yellow pine paneling over it. I'd actually considered building a storm wall out of filled concrete block, but decided the reinforced wall we ended up using was adequate.

So now anytime severe weather threatens, Barbara and I just head for the basement. The dogs seem happier down there as well.

* * * * *

There have been a couple of regrettable incidents over the last few months when I in good faith published an email message from someone who subsequently mailed me to say he was upset because his message (or email address) was not intended for publication. I try very hard to honor requests for special handling, and in fact I often mail someone to ask if it's okay to publish his message if there's any question in my mind that part or all of it might have been intended as a private message.

Also, busy as I am, it sometimes takes me longer than I'd like to respond to email messages, particularly those that are not a high priority for me. People sometimes become irate when I don't respond instantly or if, when I respond, they consider my response too short or otherwise inadequate. In one notable case, someone mailed me to ask for detailed consulting advice. Basically, he wanted me to tell him, in detail and step-by-step, how to set up an internetwork with components that he'd already chosen and with which I was not familiar. By the time I read his first message, he'd also sent several more increasingly irate messages asking me why the hell I hadn't responded yet. By the last one, he seemed to be frothing at the mouth. Needless to say, I never did respond to his message, and I put the sender's address in my kill file. For all I know, he's stroked out by now.

I don't understand people like that. It's bad enough that they expect free consulting advice, but they expect it Right Now. Do they think I'm their slave or something? I used to respond to such messages quoting my $250/hour billing rate and the fact that I required a substantial retainer be paid up front, but I stopped doing that when I realized that one of them might actually hire me. I have no desire to work for anyone who would send such messages, regardless of how much they're willing to pay.

At any rate, the following material will appear at the top of my journal page beginning with next week's edition:

About Mail
IF YOU SEND MAIL to thompson@ttgnet.com or webmaster@ttgnet.com, I may publish it, including your email address. If you do not want your message published; or do not want your email address published; or want your email address published but in disguised form (e.g. thompson at ttgnet dot com); or want a different email address published than what appears in your "From:" field; or want your message published anonymously, send your message to anonymos@bellsouth.net and note whatever special handling you want at the top of the message. I don't publish many completely anonymous messages, but I do my best to honor requests to remove or conceal senders' email addresses. Note that if I reply to one of your messages, my message will be From: thompson@ttgnet.com, so if you reply to one of my replies and want any special handling, make sure to change the To: field to anonymos@bellsouth.net before you send your reply.

I try to respect confidences, but I sometimes get more than 100 email messages a day, not counting mailing list traffic and spam. Things are always very hectic around here, and stuff happens. Using anonymos@bellsouth.net helps me keep things sorted out. Using it is not a 100% guarantee that I won't mishandle your message, but it is about 99.999% certain, because messages sent to that account are sorted into a special Outlook mail folder.

If mail you send to one of my ttgnet.com addresses bounces, you can resend it to ttgnet@bellsouth.net. That's my alternate main mail address, and I check it frequently. I try to answer mail as soon as possible, but it's gotten to the point where I simply don't have time to reply to all of it. So if you send me mail and get a short reply or no reply at all, I apologize. I'm working as hard as I can.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Micko [mailto:rmicko@clipperinc.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2000 11:55 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Build-Your-Own vs. Dell

Mr. Thompson:

Please do not think I'm trying to beat a dead horse. I repeat from my earlier message: I used to be a firm believer in building PCs myself for myself and my customers. If I thought I could deliver something better, I would continue to build them myself for my customers. However I am convinced this in no longer true. I would like to know where your mileage differs. Again, as recently as 1 - 2 years ago, I completely agreed with you.

I would like to challenge your assertion of saving $200 - $400 on a system. This morning I surfed to the Dell site and pulled up what I hope is a fair system for comparison (I will re-type from Dell's printout):

Date: Saturday, May 27, 2000 9:07:40AM CDT
Catalog Number: 04 19
Dell Dimension XPS T600r, Pentium III 600MHz
128MB 100MHz SDRAM
QuietKey Keyboard
17" .28dp E770 Monitor
16MB ATI Rage 128 Pro
10GB Ultra ATA Harddrive (7200rpm)
1.44mb Floppy Drive
Win98SE
MS Intellimouse
3Com v.90/56K PCI Telephony Modem
12X DVD-ROM w/sw Decoding (**free upgrade offer)
Turtle Beach Montego II A3D320V
harmon kardon speakers
Office 2000 SBE w/Encarta2000
Norton Antivirus 2000
1 Year NBD On-Site Parts&Labor, Yrs 2&3 Parts
$1309.00

I then tried to price a similar system in parts. I realized that I didn't want to spend a gross amount of time to make sure I had a perfect apples to apples comparison, so I made a few quick choices on individual components, but I think everything is similar. I priced most of the parts from The Chip Merchant (store.yahoo.com/thechipmerchant), hoping they were a fair representative, unless where noted.

Case: ATX 7A095-06 $34.00
Tyan Tsunami 400 s1854 ATX mb $105.00
Intel P3 600e OEM $248.00
Fan: $12.00
128mb PC100 (CT16M64S4D83 from crucial) $107.99
Keyboard: NMBS 104key $13.00
Viewsonic Q71 17" .27dp $234.00
ATI Xpert 128 16mb $79.00
Western Digital 10.2GB 7200rpm $127.00
Mitsubishi 1.44mb FD $12.00
Windows 98SE OEM $92.00
MS USB Intellimouse $18.00
Diamond Supramax 56K PCI modem $31.00
Shuttle 10X IDE DVD-ROM $128.00
SoundBlaster Live Value OEM $52.00
Altec Lansing ACS22 Speakers $28.00
Office 2K SBE (D&H Distributing. you must be a MS System Builder. 3pack, $535.00) $178.33
Norton AntiVirus 2000 $34.95
$1534.27

In addition this comparison doesn't include a value for assembly, software load, or the warranty. I readily admit I normally get somewhat better pricing from different channels, but the prices at the chip merchant seem reasonable. If I worked at it I may find better costs to shave off an additional $100 - $150.00, but certainly not enough savings to save $425.27, which would save me the $200.00 you claim you can build an equal system for. Also, I included a Microsoft System Builder price for Office SBE. An ordinary consumer may not have access to that, in which case copy of Office 2000 standard would be ~ $395.00 (www.buy.com).

Also, you remarked that the large integrators will always choose the lesser quality/performance components and therefore you can build a better performing system by choosing your own components. I can only speak for dell, which is who I decided to partner with for hardware. In their case, I can testify that the components are the same quality components I have been choosing. Intel CPUs, Western Digital and Maxtor HDs, etc. I can testify to this since I can't help but open a system up to see how they're built. Find me a tinkerer who can resists the urge to "pop the hood" to see what kind of engine is in there. I cannot speak about the graphic cards... I don't pay that much attention. I can say that the Dells I've spec'ed out and worked with performed as well as anything I've built myself. Most of my desktop work is for offices, so graphic performance is not high on the list.

I agree that I also dislike proprietary systems. I have done quite a bit of work on Packard Bells, HPs, Gateways... they have always been a pain to deal with due to the odd riser card, etc. However Dell's next day service makes it less of a consideration. If it breaks, they fix it. Also, their systems seem fairly standard for most things.

What I feel that is happening with PCs is analogous to the auto industry. In the early days of the auto industry there were many smiths who made, repaired, and tinkered with cars. Then consolidation occurred and there our only a few manufacturers left. There are still a few small operations making custom automobiles, but in general you only buy from a few manufacturers. I see the PC Industry going the same way. There will always be some number of people building their own PCs, but more and more one will only buy from a few manufacturers. No one I know assembles their own car from parts for general transportation.

I would like to see where your mileage differs. Honestly, I would like to build my own systems again in general if I thought there was a benefit, but there isn't. (I still build my own systems for personal use. But that's for my own personal enjoyment or hobby.)

-----

I did not intend to accuse you of advocating software piracy. I felt that your comments on OpenMail, left me with that unintended impression. Those of us in the industry all have ways to legally get software for evaluation and training use. Perhaps not having to pay full board for software is where you are saving $200 - $400 when building your own system?

Have a restful and enjoyable Memorial Day.

Thank you for your courtesy,

Richard Micko
Clipper Computer Consulting, Inc.
rmicko@ClipperInc.com

Well, I don't have time at the moment to do an apples-to-apples comparison, but I cut the text below from the first draft manuscript of PC Hardware in a Nutshell. This is from the chapter on building PCs, which configures systems for various purposes. This figures are from some time back, so they're no longer realistic, but they are a valid comparison. As far as software cost, I think you're overestimating. You can get OEM copies of stuff when you order a motherboard, and sometimes even when you order just a hard disk. I've seen OEM deals for around $50 that include Win98, Works, Encarta, Money, and so on. You can get the full Office 97 SBE OEM version for about $100, or O2K for about $150.

Component	Model	Price
Case	PC Power & Cooling Personal Mid-Tower	$ 65
Power supply	PC Power & Cooling Silencer 275 ATX	99
Processor	Intel Celeron/433	75
Motherboard	Intel SR440BX	150
Memory	Crucial CT8M64S4D75, 64 MB PC133 SDRAM DIMM	99
Hard disk	Seagate Barracuda ATA 28.5 GB 7200 RPM DMA/66	200
CD-ROM drive	Smart & Friendly SAF798 SpeedWriter Plus 2X4X24 CD-R(W)	150
Tape drive	OnStream DI-30 15/30 GB ADR tape drive w/ six tapes	390
Floppy drive	Mitsumi 1.44 MB	15
Keyboard	Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro	50
Mouse	Microsoft IntelliMouse with IntelliEye	49
Monitor	Hitachi SuperScan Elite 640 17” SVGA	250
Speakers	Labtec LCS-2414	35
UPS	APC BP420S Back-UPS Pro 420 VA	195
	Shipping and miscellaneous	53
	Grand Total	$ 1,875

Table 13-2. Component list for a mainstream system

This home-built system compares favorably to $2,000 systems from Gateway, Dell, or Micron. As an experiment, we configured a $1,900 Gateway Essential PC (they charge about $100 to ship), trying to match components as closely as possible. Dell and Micron do not offer configurations even close to what we’ve chosen. Neither, for example, offers a hard drive larger than 13.6 GB on a Celeron/400 system. The Gateway Essential is available with either a Celeron/400 or a Pentium III/450, but comparing specifications and options makes it clear that they’re based on different motherboards. The Gateway Essential 400 appears to use the PPGA Celeron/400 on an Intel CA810 motherboard, which uses the same integrated sound as the SR440BX, but has the inferior Intel graphics rather than nVIDIA TNT. The PPGA motherboard also eliminates the possibility of upgrading later to a Pentium III, at least until the FC PGA Pentium IIIs become widely available, and assuming that that particular Socket 370 motherboard supports the FC PGA Pentium III, which many do not.

Comparing other components from the top down, the Gateway OEM case and power supply aren’t as good as PC Power & Cooling. Gateway offers two 17” monitor options, and the better monitor has roughly comparable specs to the Hitachi we chose. We prefer the Hitachi name. Gateway offers a 27.3 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive upgrade, but doesn’t say who makes it. Once again, we prefer the 28.5 G B Seagate Barracuda. Other components, including the CD-RW drive and UPS are comparable, although Gateway uses a Sony CD-RW drive which has had some reported problems with regard to compatibility with Adaptec DirectCD. The same holds true generally for the other components such as the keyboard and mouse. We’re using top-notch branded retail products, while Gateway is using generic white-box versions.

The Gateway Essential 400 does have some extras, including Windows 98 and Works, which we’d have to buy separately. It also includes a non-optional OEM Winmodem and a year of gateway.net Internet service, which might be valuable for some, but not for us. What the Gateway doesn’t include (even as an option) is the tape drive, which occupies $400 of our budget. Overall, we conclude that the home-built system offers better components (and choice of components) with full manufacturer warranties at $200 to $300 less than the cost of the Gateway.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Sturm [mailto:jpsturm@dingoblue.net.au]
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2000 7:50 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Win2k woes

While I have great sympathy for your problems with Win2k and agree that the lack of driver support from manufacturers is frustrating (and bewildering) I must disagree that Win2k is not ready for prime time. From *my* point of view, it has been ready for prime time for a year. That's how long I've been using it as my primary OS.

The only apps I can't run under Win2k (even with appcompat.exe) are Myst, Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor). Sadly, it runs Civilisation: Call to Power and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri at least as well as Win9.x. I say sadly because I lose a day's work if I fire up any of these games and having to boot another OS to do so is a disincentive.

My solitary USB device, an Orb removable hdd, was an example of Plug'n'Play as it should be. I plugged and it played.

As an experiment, I grabbed an old Netcom 2400 fax/modem and plugged it into a comm port. Win2k recognised it as a generic Hayes compatible and it appears to work fine on Fax. I decided not to test it for data transfer! Win2k also has no problem with the 3Com/US Robotics Voice FaxModem that so far has been tested only for sending and receiving faxes on a normal telephone line. This coming week I will have my telco provide the secondary telephone number for voice/fax on the voice line. If you don't hear otherwise, it works fine. The only reason this is not already in place is because the modem inside the Intel iStation router/hub/DHCP server/firewall provides unacceptable pings for my son's on-line gameplay. I am hoping that the beta software provided by Intel solves that problem.

The only driver issue I have had to face with Win2k so far was with a Matrox G400 video card in the new machine. The Certified driver could detect no Matrox card in the machine. Under Win98 in the same machine the machine crashed on initialisation of the desktop, so I returned the video card. Seems to me that Matrox are losing it with driver development under more than just Win2k.

Since my scanning needs have been minimal until recently, I have held off on buying a scanner. When I discovered that Canon have released an excellent transparency scanner (FS2710) at an affordable price, I ordered one. Still waiting for delivery 6 weeks later :-( Canon have a driver for Win2k and claim that NT4 driver will work under Win2k also. We will see.

Since I have pretty well decided on the HP ScanJet 5200 as suitable for my document scanning needs, I await the release by HP of a working Win2k driver before shelling out my hard earned cash.

I have no love for Win9.x as an OS for serious workstation use. I was an instant convert to NT with the final beta of NT4 WS. I only crashed NT4 3 times prior to switching to Win2k. Twice was directly attributable to my own stupidity, so my assumption is that the 3rd occasion was due to the same :-)

Hmm. Well, my scanner software won't run under W2K, nor will Adaptec EasyCD 3.5 (and, yes, I know about the workarounds that are supposed to let it work under W2K, but it won't), Adaptec DirectCD, Onstream Echo tape backup software, Veritas Backup Exec backup software, the CD utilities supplied with my Plextor CD-R(W) drives, my screen capture program, my web stats processing program, or my wife's Palm synch program. There are several other programs I use regularly that won't run, but I think you get the point. The driver support in W2K is also pathetic. There isn't any driver support at all for a lot of mainstream hardware products, and even those that are supported are often supported poorly. I mean, what use is a driver for a 3D accelerator if that driver provides only 2D functions? If that doesn't make W2K not ready for prime time, I don't know what does. Conversely, everything works under Windows NT4. I see no reason to fix something that ain't broke.

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