• Re: Home Lab

    From Ogg@Ogg to All on Sun May 3 22:38:00 2020
    Hello Nightfox!

    ** On Saturday 29.02.20 - 22:22, nightfox wrote to HusTler:

    I had a laptop with that stupid button. I hated it. I don't think it
    was a Leveno though. Some engineer thought it was a great idea. I
    guess not. I

    Ni> I assume you mean Lenovo?

    Ni> trackpads with the buttons as part of the trackpad rather than
    Ni> separate physical buttons, like this: https://www.librador.com/
    Ni> images/blog/thinkpad-trackpad.jpg


    I have exactly that on a reccently acquired T540p.

    I am finding it very difficult to get used that new design.

    I am still using my T60 and it has a small trackapd with actual L+R
    buttons below the pad *and* an extra set of buttons above it. The keyboard operates smooth as butter.

    The T540p has chicklet keys. I do not like those very much at all.

    It is a shame that engineers mess around with something that works so well for the sake of appearances.
  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to Ogg on Mon May 4 08:03:00 2020
    Ogg wrote to All <=-

    I had a laptop with that stupid button. I hated it. I don't think it
    was a Leveno though. Some engineer thought it was a great idea. I
    guess not. I

    Ni> I assume you mean Lenovo?

    Ni> trackpads with the buttons as part of the trackpad rather than
    Ni> separate physical buttons, like this: https://www.librador.com/
    Ni> images/blog/thinkpad-trackpad.jpg


    I have exactly that on a reccently acquired T540p.
    I am finding it very difficult to get used that new design.

    Yeah, I would not like that at all. Really prefer having actual
    buttons.

    I am still using my T60 and it has a small trackapd with actual
    L+R buttons below the pad *and* an extra set of buttons above it.
    The keyboard operates smooth as butter.

    I'm typing this on my Lenovo T510, which is 6-7 years old but
    still is working perfectly. I will never buy another laptop that
    is NOT a Lenovo, mostly because of the keyboard. It's that good.

    I will say that I have the trackpad disabled in the BIOS, although
    the little red rubber swivel-button-thingy still works to move the
    cursor. I use an external wireless mouse and don't like it when
    my hands/thumbs might brush the keypad and cause unwanted
    motion/action. That's why I disabled it.

    The T540p has chicklet keys. I do not like those very much at
    all.

    I don't mind them too much on a full size keyboard, but not on a
    laptop.

    It is a shame that engineers mess around with something that
    works so well for the sake of appearances.

    Agreed. It's like some people think that change must be made,
    just for the sake of change. Leave a good design alone.



    ... Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Ogg on Mon May 4 11:18:53 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Ogg to All on Sun May 03 2020 10:38 pm

    I have exactly that on a reccently acquired T540p.
    I am finding it very difficult to get used that new design.
    I am still using my T60 and it has a small trackapd with actual L+R buttons below the pad *and* an extra set of buttons above it. The keyboard operates smooth as butter.
    The T540p has chicklet keys. I do not like those very much at all.
    It is a shame that engineers mess around with something that works so well for the sake of appearances.

    My ThinkPad collection is still my favorite go-to laptops. They are just tanks, I can beat them down and they keep on serving me - and they do it WELL... as far as Linux goes, I'm often surprised at how much decent, current 2020 worthy tasks they can chew up and spit out...

    You know, and sure its a task, but you can replace some newer models keyboards with the older style. I have a T430s with the older T420 keyboard installed. I've also upgraded a few of the LCD panels; there are two easy 1080p+ options.

    The ThinkPads are tanks - just smash and mash them into what you need for today.. I've a pretty 27" Apple box for when it needs to be pretty - for getting work done, you can find ME [right now] on a Think-linux-box...

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ |15American Pi BBS |08@ |07AmericanPiBBS.com
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Paulie420 on Tue May 5 21:21:00 2020
    Paulie420 wrote to Ogg <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Ogg to All on Sun May 03 2020 10:38 pm

    I have exactly that on a reccently acquired T540p.
    I am finding it very difficult to get used that new design.
    I am still using my T60 and it has a small trackapd with actual L+R buttons below the pad *and* an extra set of buttons above it. The keyboard operates smooth as butter.
    The T540p has chicklet keys. I do not like those very much at all.
    It is a shame that engineers mess around with something that works so well for the sake of appearances.

    My ThinkPad collection is still my favorite go-to laptops. They are
    just tanks, I can beat them down and they keep on serving me - and they
    do it WELL... as far as Linux goes, I'm often surprised at how much decent, current 2020 worthy tasks they can chew up and spit out...

    You know, and sure its a task, but you can replace some newer models keyboards with the older style. I have a T430s with the older T420 keyboard installed. I've also upgraded a few of the LCD panels; there
    are two easy 1080p+ options.

    The ThinkPads are tanks - just smash and mash them into what you need
    for today.. I've a pretty 27" Apple box for when it needs to be pretty
    - for getting work done, you can find ME [right now] on a Think-linux-box...

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com

    ---
    = Synchronet = |15American Pi BBS |08@ |07AmericanPiBBS.com

    I have ONLY had thinkpad laptops. My current one is a T43. I can't say they have been utterly unreliable, but the one I have now I purchased second hand in 2014 and still runs great today, albeit a bit slow. I chose the thinkpad primarily due to it appearing a good choice for Linux users. ThinkWiki is an invaluable site.


    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Dennisk on Tue May 5 14:21:00 2020
    Dennisk wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    I have ONLY had thinkpad laptops. My current one is a T43. I can't
    say they have been utterly unreliable, but the one I have now I
    purchased second hand in 2014 and still runs great today, albeit a bit slow.

    The T4X series has the best keyboard ever. I picked up a 64GB PATA SSD for mine, and it gave it a power boost that gave it many years of use.

    Simple to work on, too.



    ... Which parts can be grouped?
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Dennisk on Tue May 5 19:06:23 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Paulie420 on Tue May 05 2020 09:21 pm

    I have ONLY had thinkpad laptops. My current one is a T43. I can't say they have been utterly unreliable, but the one I have now I purchased second hand in 2014 and still runs great today, albeit a bit slow. I chose the thinkpad primarily due to it appearing a good choice for Linux users. ThinkWiki is an invaluable site.

    I'm on a ThinkPad T430s, and run my BBS on an older X61... I wish mine was the T430, so I could upgrade the CPU... but I have the 3550 i7 so its OK; the rest is specced out, 16gb ram SSD, and a LCD upgrade to 1080p... had to order that crazy chinese connector - but it works great.

    Fast for linux, and cheap...

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Paulie420 on Wed May 6 21:47:00 2020
    Paulie420 wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Paulie420 on Tue May 05 2020 09:21 pm

    I have ONLY had thinkpad laptops. My current one is a T43. I can't say they have been utterly unreliable, but the one I have now I purchased second hand in 2014 and still runs great today, albeit a bit slow. I chose the thinkpad primarily due to it appearing a good choice for Linux users. ThinkWiki is an invaluable site.

    I'm on a ThinkPad T430s, and run my BBS on an older X61... I wish mine
    was the T430, so I could upgrade the CPU... but I have the 3550 i7 so
    its OK; the rest is specced out, 16gb ram SSD, and a LCD upgrade to 1080p... had to order that crazy chinese connector - but it works
    great.

    Fast for linux, and cheap...

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com

    ---
    = Synchronet = >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>

    That is quite a bit more powerful than the one I have (which I am using right now). I upgraded the ram form 1G to 2G because running a single browser and nothing else is touch and go. Also put in a 250G WD Blue IDE drive, the largest I could find. The hard drive has this odd problem where it fails to read certain sections, but only when it is cold. This usually results in a hung boot, so I let the machine warm up for a few minutes usually before I boot in cold weather.

    I can't justify buying a faster laptop, when I really do get by on this. I'd rather find more efficient ways to work with the machine, than spend money.


    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Dennisk on Wed May 6 07:51:00 2020
    Dennisk wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    this. I'd rather find more efficient ways to work with the machine,
    than spend money.

    Anyone can solve a probem by throwing money at it. :)

    When I discovered Lubuntu and got rid of XP on my single-core T43, I was pleasantly surprised and got a couple of years more life. A cheap PATA SSD gave it a few more years, and I ended up using the same laptop for over 10 years (after it was already obsolete)


    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu May 7 09:06:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Dennisk wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    this. I'd rather find more efficient ways to work with the machine,
    than spend money.

    Anyone can solve a probem by throwing money at it. :)

    Anyone with money to throw away that is. But it isn't the money which bothers me. It is otherwise good equipment thrown into landfill, wasting resources, leeching toxins into the soil. It is the churn of natural resources to rebuild technology over and over and over again to do the same tasks. It is the waste of human labour and effort reinventing the wheel, restarting, resetting, reprogramming. I can't abide by waste and hate squandering what we have. People are criminally wasteful. There is always justification for doing this, but most of it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

    When I discovered Lubuntu and got rid of XP on my single-core T43, I
    was pleasantly surprised and got a couple of years more life. A cheap
    PATA SSD gave it a few more years, and I ended up using the same laptop for over 10 years (after it was already obsolete)

    Wait until you discover Puppy Linux or LTSP, then you'll get years more. When I was younger and living with my family, I had my machine set up as a Linux Terminal Server, which allowed my sister on the Pentium 100, using a boot floppy, to log directly into my computer using an account, and browse the internet.

    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    = Synchronet = realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Thu May 7 13:33:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu May 07 2020 09:06 am

    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Dennisk wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    this. I'd rather find more efficient ways to work with the machine, than spend money.

    Anyone can solve a probem by throwing money at it. :)

    Anyone with money to throw away that is. But it isn't the money which bothe me. It is otherwise good equipment thrown into landfill, wasting resources, leeching toxins into the soil. It is the churn of natural resources to rebu technology over and over and over again to do the same tasks. It is the was of human labour and effort reinventing the wheel, restarting, resetting, reprogramming. I can't abide by waste and hate squandering what we have. People are criminally wasteful. There is always justification for doing thi but most of it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

    When I discovered Lubuntu and got rid of XP on my single-core T43, I was pleasantly surprised and got a couple of years more life. A cheap PATA SSD gave it a few more years, and I ended up using the same laptop for over 10 years (after it was already obsolete)

    Wait until you discover Puppy Linux or LTSP, then you'll get years more. Wh I was younger and living with my family, I had my machine set up as a Linux Terminal Server, which allowed my sister on the Pentium 100, using a boot floppy, to log directly into my computer using an account, and browse the internet.

    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    = Synchronet = realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    Puppy linux has helped me re-purpose several pc's. I have a pc running FreeDOS, and there's times I need to transfer files from a thumb drive or network to it, so I'll pop in a Puppy boot CD to access those devices.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Moondog on Fri May 8 08:54:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu May 07 2020 09:06 am

    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Dennisk wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    this. I'd rather find more efficient ways to work with the machine, than spend money.

    Anyone can solve a probem by throwing money at it. :)

    Anyone with money to throw away that is. But it isn't the money which bothe me. It is otherwise good equipment thrown into landfill, wasting resources, leeching toxins into the soil. It is the churn of natural resources to rebu technology over and over and over again to do the same tasks. It is the was of human labour and effort reinventing the wheel, restarting, resetting, reprogramming. I can't abide by waste and hate squandering what we have. People are criminally wasteful. There is always justification for doing thi but most of it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

    When I discovered Lubuntu and got rid of XP on my single-core T43, I was pleasantly surprised and got a couple of years more life. A cheap PATA SSD gave it a few more years, and I ended up using the same laptop for over 10 years (after it was already obsolete)

    Wait until you discover Puppy Linux or LTSP, then you'll get years more. Wh I was younger and living with my family, I had my machine set up as a Linux Terminal Server, which allowed my sister on the Pentium 100, using a boot floppy, to log directly into my computer using an account, and browse the internet.

    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    = Synchronet = realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    Puppy linux has helped me re-purpose several pc's. I have a pc running FreeDOS, and there's times I need to transfer files from a thumb drive
    or network to it, so I'll pop in a Puppy boot CD to access those
    devices.

    ---
    = Synchronet = The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net

    There are USB drivers for DOS, right? I'm sure I've seen some. Add to that a DOS TCP stack and tools, like mTCP, you should be good to go. That being said, nothing wrong with using Puppy instead.

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Dennisk on Thu May 7 21:04:21 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Fri May 08 2020 08:54 am

    There are USB drivers for DOS, right? I'm sure I've seen some. Add to that a DOS TCP stack and tools, like mTCP, you should be good to go. That being said, nothing wrong with using Puppy instead.

    I don't recall seeing USB drivers for DOS. I don't remember ever using a USB device in DOS anyway.. A long time ago, I stuck with PS/2 for keyboards & mice for a long time for backwards-compatibility in case I needed to use a DOS boot disk for anything. If I had a USB mouse, I'd always check to see if it was compatible with a USB-PS/2 adapter so I could plug it into the PS/2 port.

    But I do remember seeing an ISP dialup program for DOS that provided TCP/IP capability and internet access for DOS.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Nightfox on Fri May 8 09:15:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Nightfox to Dennisk on Thu May 07 2020 09:04 pm

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Fri May 08 2020 08:54 am

    There are USB drivers for DOS, right? I'm sure I've seen some. Add to t a DOS TCP stack and tools, like mTCP, you should be good to go. That be said, nothing wrong with using Puppy instead.

    I don't recall seeing USB drivers for DOS. I don't remember ever using a US . If I had a USB mouse, I'd always check to see if it was compatible with a

    But I do remember seeing an ISP dialup program for DOS that provided TCP/IP

    Nightfox

    Freedos will support a usb hard drive, but no other usb devices.

    I have tried getting Arachne running in dos with wattcp. I may have to reinstall Arachne, though. It came as part of an extras or full freedos package, and I might've botched the original install. The wattcp and crynwar net card drivers work. The pc pulls an IP address from my outer and I can
    ping it.

    It's a matter of me being lazy and expecting immdiate results from tech I
    know will work. I would like to get Arachne going, just to see how it
    handles modern sites.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Nightfox on Sun May 3 12:03:00 2020
    Nightfox wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Fri May 08 2020 08:54 am

    There are USB drivers for DOS, right? I'm sure I've seen some. Add to that a DOS TCP stack and tools, like mTCP, you should be good to go. That being said, nothing wrong with using Puppy instead.

    I don't recall seeing USB drivers for DOS. I don't remember ever using
    a USB device in DOS anyway.. A long time ago, I stuck with PS/2 for keyboards & mice for a long time for backwards-compatibility in case I needed to use a DOS boot disk for anything. If I had a USB mouse, I'd always check to see if it was compatible with a USB-PS/2 adapter so I could plug it into the PS/2 port.

    But I do remember seeing an ISP dialup program for DOS that provided TCP/IP capability and internet access for DOS.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

    I'm using DOS 6.22 on a 486 DX4/100 right now, using mTelnet. There are USB drivers, two I can see are DOSUSB, which supports USB1, 2 and 3, and USBASPI v2.20. I have no need for them, but they do exist, so perhaps they are an option for you.

    I've luckily kept old hardware, but lost a ps2 to serial adapter for a mouse. Can't seem to find those adapters anymore, which means I'm down to one serial mouse. Keep all the old hardware, because it is getting expensive. I was looking at serial mice
    and struggled to find one below $50! I still use a 20 year old PS2 keyboard on my main desktop, compatibility with other machines is always a priority.



    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.29
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Fri May 8 07:24:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Nightfox <=-

    It's a matter of me being lazy and expecting immdiate results from tech
    I know will work. I would like to get Arachne going, just to see how
    it handles modern sites.

    The quickest way would be to get DOSBOX working with NE2000 emulation; I'm running it now. It's a huge waste of screen real estate and it ugly as hell but it mostly works.

    MINUET was a dos internet package that looked like a DOS IDE wrapped around
    a suite of apps, but I think the browser was text-only.



    ... The exception also declares the rule
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Dennisk on Fri May 8 08:01:59 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Nightfox on Sun May 03 2020 12:03 pm

    I'm using DOS 6.22 on a 486 DX4/100 right now, using mTelnet. There are USB drivers, two I can see are DOSUSB, which supports USB1, 2 and 3, and USBASPI v2.20. I have no need for them, but they do exist, so perhaps they are an option for you.

    Ah.. I didn't know there was any development for that kind of thing going on for DOS.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to NIGHTFOX on Fri May 8 11:14:00 2020
    But I do remember seeing an ISP dialup program for DOS that provided TCP/IP cap
    bility and internet access for DOS.

    Arachne did that with a serial mouse.

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ A restless eye across a weary room...
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 8 20:06:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Fri May 08 2020 07:24 am

    Moondog wrote to Nightfox <=-

    It's a matter of me being lazy and expecting immdiate results from tech I know will work. I would like to get Arachne going, just to see how it handles modern sites.

    The quickest way would be to get DOSBOX working with NE2000 emulation; I'm running it now. It's a huge waste of screen real estate and it ugly as hell but it mostly works.

    MINUET was a dos internet package that looked like a DOS IDE wrapped around a suite of apps, but I think the browser was text-only.



    ... The exception also declares the rule
    Until I get my actual NE2000 card and mTCP going on my Portable II, my other physical Dos system is used for serial file transfers via Fastlynx.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Nightfox on Sat May 9 13:49:00 2020
    Nightfox wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Nightfox on Sun May 03 2020 12:03 pm

    I'm using DOS 6.22 on a 486 DX4/100 right now, using mTelnet. There are USB drivers, two I can see are DOSUSB, which supports USB1, 2 and 3, and USBASPI v2.20. I have no need for them, but they do exist, so perhaps they are an option for you.

    Ah.. I didn't know there was any development for that kind of thing
    going on for DOS.

    Nightfox

    ---
    = Synchronet = Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

    There probably isn't much now, but remember that USB has been around more than 20 years, and USB3 for what, a decade? So even if development stopped a decade ago for DOS, we would still have USB3 drivers.


    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Dennisk on Sat May 9 16:13:37 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Nightfox on Sat May 09 2020 01:49 pm

    I'm using DOS 6.22 on a 486 DX4/100 right now, using mTelnet. There
    are USB drivers, two I can see are DOSUSB, which supports USB1, 2
    and 3, and USBASPI v2.20. I have no need for them, but they do
    exist, so perhaps they are an option for you.

    Ah.. I didn't know there was any development for that kind of thing
    going on for DOS.

    There probably isn't much now, but remember that USB has been around more than 20 years, and USB3 for what, a decade? So even if development stopped a decade ago for DOS, we would still have USB3 drivers.

    I thought the development of DOS software started to slow down significantly around 1995 when Windows 95 came out. If I recall, Windows 95 didn't seem to properly add USB support until OSR2.1 came out (around 1996-ish, I think?), and even then, I heard its USB support still was lacking a little bit. It seems DOS use did still continue for a little bit, so I guess it's possible that there would be USB or even USB3 drivers for DOS..

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Nightfox on Sun May 10 22:08:57 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Nightfox to Dennisk on Sat May 09 2020 04:13 pm

    I thought the development of DOS software started to slow down significantly around 1995 when Windows 95 came out. If I recall, Windows 95 didn't seem to properly add USB support until OSR2.1 came out (around 1996-ish, I think?), and even then, I heard its USB support still was lacking a little bit. It seems DOS use did still continue for a little bit, so I guess it's possible that there would be USB or even USB3 drivers for DOS..

    Nightfox


    Yeah, the development did slow down, but not stop. Nevertheless, the USB driver exists.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to DENNISK on Sun May 10 18:53:00 2020
    Yeah, the development did slow down, but not stop. Nevertheless, the USB driver exists.

    Did it come out of the FreeDOS project?

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ ...a host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance...
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dumas Walker on Mon May 11 15:04:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to DENNISK on Sun May 10 2020 06:53 pm

    Yeah, the development did slow down, but not stop. Nevertheless, the USB driver exists.

    Did it come out of the FreeDOS project?

    That's where I first notice it. My understanding it works with USB hard drives.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Dumas Walker on Mon May 11 08:40:36 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to DENNISK on Sun May 10 2020 06:53 pm

    Yeah, the development did slow down, but not stop. Nevertheless, the
    USB driver exists.

    Did it come out of the FreeDOS project?

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ ...a host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance...

    For BBS stuff, I came a little later - so DOS (and the FreeDOS) project now - is where my heart lies... I want to setup two boxes, and 8088 AT IBM machine and a powerhouse 486 system.... thats my hayday.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Paulie420 on Tue May 12 09:04:00 2020
    Paulie420 wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to DENNISK on Sun May 10 2020 06:53 pm

    Yeah, the development did slow down, but not stop. Nevertheless, the
    USB driver exists.

    Did it come out of the FreeDOS project?

    ---
    = SLMR 2.1a = ...a host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance...

    For BBS stuff, I came a little later - so DOS (and the FreeDOS) project now - is where my heart lies... I want to setup two boxes, and 8088 AT
    IBM machine and a powerhouse 486 system.... thats my hayday.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    = Synchronet = >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>

    Is there a compelling reason to use FreeDOS instead of MS-DOS 6.22 on older machines, aside from not actually having MS-DOS 6.22? I have a FreeDOS install on my Desktop, but mostly because Linux doesn't handle the floppy drive correctly anymore.

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Dennisk on Tue May 12 07:31:48 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Paulie420 on Tue May 12 2020 09:04 am

    Is there a compelling reason to use FreeDOS instead of MS-DOS 6.22 on older machines, aside from not actually having MS-DOS 6.22? I have a FreeDOS install on my Desktop, but mostly because Linux doesn't handle the floppy drive correctly anymore.

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    LOL, thats why I use it on an old 386 machine I have that still kicking... I lost those big DOS IBM folders that were so cool.

    For my linux box, I just use DOSBOX and go... its too easy to have an 'app' that does it all.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to PAULIE420 on Tue May 12 12:39:00 2020
    For BBS stuff, I came a little later - so DOS (and the FreeDOS) project now -
    where my heart lies... I want to setup two boxes, and 8088 AT IBM machine and
    powerhouse 486 system.... thats my hayday.

    Yeah, my nostalga systems would be the 8088 and a 386 DX-40. Those were my first two clone machines.

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ "Stamp Collection?? Ha-Ha!" - Nelson
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Dumas Walker on Tue May 12 16:08:56 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to PAULIE420 on Tue May 12 2020 12:39 pm

    For BBS stuff, I came a little later - so DOS (and the FreeDOS)
    project now - where my heart lies... I want to setup two boxes, and
    8088 AT IBM machine and powerhouse 486 system.... thats my hayday.

    Yeah, my nostalga systems would be the 8088 and a 386 DX-40. Those were my first two clone machines.

    Yep... my Uncle was an engineer @ IBM world headquarters in New York. So we had a really cool IBM AT, one of those God awfully heavy machines made out of solid metal... and that iconic IBM monitor. Those really were awesome systems; I remember doing a CGA upgrade on that PC...

    Later came a Tandy that sucked, but my parents paid big bucks for... ugh. Had to use it for waaaaay too long.. ran a couple BBSes on that rig anyhow; and it served me well for running that same BBS when I did upgrade to a 386 and then 486 machine. By that point, I knew everything and was a super computer hacker and was always into the next best thing...

    Man I miss those times.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Paulie420 on Wed May 13 17:31:00 2020
    Paulie420 wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Paulie420 on Tue May 12 2020 09:04 am

    Is there a compelling reason to use FreeDOS instead of MS-DOS 6.22 on older machines, aside from not actually having MS-DOS 6.22? I have a FreeDOS install on my Desktop, but mostly because Linux doesn't handle the floppy drive correctly anymore.

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    LOL, thats why I use it on an old 386 machine I have that still
    kicking... I lost those big DOS IBM folders that were so cool.

    For my linux box, I just use DOSBOX and go... its too easy to have an 'app' that does it all.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    = Synchronet = >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>

    I kind of want a 386, only because I used to have one. Still take an XT system instead. I've still got DOS 6.22, 3.3 and 2 (I think) lying around. Not sure if you are supposed to install it on multiple systems, but I doubt anyone would care now.

    I have a partition on my main desktop which is FreeDOS. Its OK, but I found copying to/from floppies really slow.

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Dumas Walker on Wed May 13 17:35:00 2020
    Dumas Walker wrote to PAULIE420 <=-

    For BBS stuff, I came a little later - so DOS (and the FreeDOS) project now
    -
    where my heart lies... I want to setup two boxes, and 8088 AT IBM machine
    and

    powerhouse 486 system.... thats my hayday.

    Yeah, my nostalga systems would be the 8088 and a 386 DX-40. Those
    were my first two clone machines.

    My two 486's are good enough to provide that 386/486 experience. I did have an Amstrad PC2386 which was a unique machine, and I think my parents threw away the case of my XT system, leaving me with the keyboard, monitor, mobo, graphics and IO cards. The XT is the system I want, you can't duplicate that experience with DosBox.

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Paulie420 on Wed May 13 06:44:00 2020
    Paulie420 wrote to Dennisk <=-

    For my linux box, I just use DOSBOX and go... its too easy to have an 'app' that does it all.

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full screen does enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being able to emulate all of
    the hardware of the time, including an NE2000 card - then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP port to use old COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.


    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Dumas Walker on Wed May 13 06:49:00 2020
    Dumas Walker wrote to PAULIE420 <=-

    Yeah, my nostalga systems would be the 8088 and a 386 DX-40. Those
    were my first two clone machines.

    A Compaq Portable II with one of those ISA add-in hard drives would be mine.


    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 13 10:11:09 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Paulie420 on Wed May 13 2020 06:44 am

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full screen does enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being able to emulate all of the hardware of the time, including an NE2000 card - then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP port to use old COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.

    I don't know how to do that, as I would love to use my copy of Terminate 5... or heck, even BBS software from back in the day. Can you elaborate on that process??

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 13 13:10:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    For my linux box, I just use DOSBOX and go... its too easy to have an 'app' that does it all.

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full
    screen does enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being
    able to emulate all of the hardware of the time, including an
    NE2000 card - then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP
    port to use old COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.

    Not that I'm actually arguing the point here..., but wouldn't it
    be even cooler to have the actual hardware doing that? :-)

    Haven't looked lately, but that stuff is pretty pricey these days
    on eBay, etc... (proud owner of a working 486 w/ 2 serial ports
    here). ;-)



    ... Potted meat: all the other stuff too vile for hot dogs.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Paulie420 on Thu May 14 01:17:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Paulie420 to Dumas Walker on Tue May 12 2020 04:08 pm

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to PAULIE420 on Tue May 12 2020 12:39 pm

    For BBS stuff, I came a little later - so DOS (and the FreeDOS)
    project now - where my heart lies... I want to setup two boxes, and
    8088 AT IBM machine and powerhouse 486 system.... thats my hayday.

    Yeah, my nostalga systems would be the 8088 and a 386 DX-40. Those were first two clone machines.

    Yep... my Uncle was an engineer @ IBM world headquarters in New York. So we A upgrade on that PC...

    Later came a Tandy that sucked, but my parents paid big bucks for... ugh. Ha t point, I knew everything and was a super computer hacker and was always in

    Man I miss those times.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07


    I find it interesting there is no stopping point in learning as technology advances. As you stated, DOS and pre-plug and play systems required savvy
    with regards to making devices play together, plus having to adjust autoexec.bat and config.sys settings so everything ran at it's best. With
    Win 3.x, it was the .ini files. With Win9x and above, knowledge of the registry became important. When I began experimenting with linux 15 years
    ago, it reminded me alot like DOS and Win 3.x because of the system config files. It was fun to take a so-called "pc expert" and sit him down in front
    of something other than Win XP or newer, especially linux.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu May 14 01:34:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Dumas Walker on Wed May 13 2020 06:49 am

    Dumas Walker wrote to PAULIE420 <=-

    Yeah, my nostalga systems would be the 8088 and a 386 DX-40. Those were my first two clone machines.

    A Compaq Portable II with one of those ISA add-in hard drives would be mine.


    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

    My retro box happens to be a Portable II, except the 10mb Plus hard card is inoperable. I had to make a Y power cable to allow for the use of the two 360mb 5.25" floppies with an IDE hard drive. If I could find an original or
    3d printed version fo the 3.5" floppy cover plate, I'd swap out a 5.25" for
    it.

    The smallest hard drive I had was a 426mb drive, and due to the drive type lim itations I used a drive overlay to trick the machine into liking it. I salvaged an NE2000 card with bnc and RJ45 connectors from another pc and installed it back around December. I installed DR-DOS 7.2 with the Novell drivers pack, but haven't got it working on the network yet. The default Novell stuff is IPX. I have downloaded mTCP, but haven't loaded it on the Portable yet.

    IIRC it's either 640k or 1mb, so Win 3.1 is a no go. I have run Open Gem in
    a DOSBOX, and it's supposed to run on a machine with less than 512k.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Gamgee on Thu May 14 01:39:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Gamgee to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 13 2020 01:10 pm

    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Paulie420 <=-

    For my linux box, I just use DOSBOX and go... its too easy to have an 'app' that does it all.

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full
    screen does enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being
    able to emulate all of the hardware of the time, including an
    NE2000 card - then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP
    port to use old COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.

    Not that I'm actually arguing the point here..., but wouldn't it
    be even cooler to have the actual hardware doing that? :-)

    Haven't looked lately, but that stuff is pretty pricey these days
    on eBay, etc... (proud owner of a working 486 w/ 2 serial ports
    here). ;-)



    ... Potted meat: all the other stuff too vile for hot dogs.

    I'm wondering how the early Pentium hardware market will bear in a couple of years. the pc recycling guys get more money recycling first and second gen Pentium board and cpu's due to the high gold content.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Paulie420 on Thu May 14 07:49:00 2020
    Paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full screen does enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being able to emulate all of the hardware of the time, including an NE2000 card - then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP port to use old COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.

    I don't know how to do that, as I would love to use my copy of
    Terminate 5... or heck, even BBS software from back in the day. Can you elaborate on that process??

    There are lots of different builds of DOSBOX - look in the dosbox configuration file under serial ports and see if there's a "modem" option
    for the comm ports.

    I define my COMM1 port as "modem listenport:23", and when I send hayes commands with the hostname instead of a phone number, it connects to that
    host via port 23 (telnet)

    For BBS software, I think you need to run NETFOSSIL or something like that
    to do full port redirection.


    ... Don't break the silence
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Gamgee on Thu May 14 07:52:00 2020
    Gamgee wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Not that I'm actually arguing the point here..., but wouldn't it
    be even cooler to have the actual hardware doing that? :-)

    Oh, agreed - money and space are the issues.

    I'd love to have an AT clone with a ton of EMS, or a 386/40. EGA or VGA graphics. old-school clicky keyboard. Compaq Portable II/III... AT&T 6300.
    Or a PS/2 like I had at my first job - Model 80 with 8 MB of RAM.


    ... Do the words need changing?
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Thu May 14 07:54:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    IIRC it's either 640k or 1mb, so Win 3.1 is a no go. I have run Open
    Gem in a DOSBOX, and it's supposed to run on a machine with less than 512k.

    Back when I had that machine, I had a couple of AST 8-bit memory cards - bumped memory up to 8MB RAM, but they were slow as hell. I remember getting them to work in a desktop, can't remember if I had room in the Portable for it.

    Greenscale CGA graphics for the win!


    ... Do the words need changing?
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Thu May 14 08:25:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I'm wondering how the early Pentium hardware market will bear in a
    couple of years. the pc recycling guys get more money recycling first
    and second gen Pentium board and cpu's due to the high gold content.

    Those were good years; I went from a P166 to a P233/mmx, to a Pentium Pro
    and those systems lasted way longer than I would have expected. Didn't know about the gold content.

    Anyone can do a clean looking PC install with SATA cabling -- making one of those old ATA/floppy systems cabling look good took some skill. :)


    ... Change nothing and continue consistently
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Moondog on Thu May 14 16:48:35 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Moondog to Paulie420 on Thu May 14 2020 01:17 am

    I find it interesting there is no stopping point in learning as technology advances. As you stated, DOS and pre-plug and play systems required savvy with regards to making devices play together, plus having to adjust autoexec.bat and config.sys settings so everything ran at it's best. With Win 3.x, it was the .ini files. With Win9x and above, knowledge of the registry became important. When I began experimenting with linux 15 years ago, it reminded me alot like DOS and Win 3.x because of the system config files. It was fun to take a so-called "pc expert" and sit him down in front of something other than Win XP or newer, especially linux.

    I agree.. and I hope there never comes a stopping point. Well, we won't ever come to that.. but yea, I love the ever growing corn-maze of PCs and computers... theres so many avenues and systems to play with in 2020. We sure have it pretty good... I think linux is the future, but we'll see where things continue to go.

    :P
    Regardless, it sure is fun on the frontlines.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu May 14 16:52:39 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Paulie420 on Thu May 14 2020 07:49 am

    Paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full screen
    does enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being able to
    emulate all of the hardware of the time, including an NE2000 card -
    then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP port to use old
    COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.

    I don't know how to do that, as I would love to use my copy of
    Terminate 5... or heck, even BBS software from back in the day. Can
    you elaborate on that process??

    There are lots of different builds of DOSBOX - look in the dosbox configuration file under serial ports and see if there's a "modem" option for the comm ports.

    I define my COMM1 port as "modem listenport:23", and when I send hayes commands with the hostname instead of a phone number, it connects to that host via port 23 (telnet)

    For BBS software, I think you need to run NETFOSSIL or something like that to do full port redirection.

    Thanks, I understand the direction you're sending me... and I just simply didn't know DOSBOX that those features. I mean.. I never thought to look. I always used my new hardware and options that work under linux, or actual retro systems with the hardware at the ready.

    I know my old Renegade friends use some type of NETFOSSIL options to run Renegade BBSes on telnet, but I didn't know those options were available to me, on a linux box, with consumer softwares in DOS. Thank you... for showing me another freaking rabbit hole that I'll probably wish I hadn't looked into in a week. :P

    But really, thanks.. I get it.. and will 'get it' soon.

    I love SyncTerm, but if I could get my TER-500 Terminate working... I'd smile. Or even Telix or.... you know. :P I wanna login like I did back then man.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 09:21:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Moondog <=-

    Moondog wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I'm wondering how the early Pentium hardware market will bear in a
    couple of years. the pc recycling guys get more money recycling first
    and second gen Pentium board and cpu's due to the high gold content.

    Those were good years; I went from a P166 to a P233/mmx, to a Pentium
    Pro and those systems lasted way longer than I would have expected.
    Didn't know about the gold content.

    Anyone can do a clean looking PC install with SATA cabling -- making
    one of those old ATA/floppy systems cabling look good took some skill.
    :)

    Having fixed up a few old systems, I can state that I utterly hate ribbon cables, and now that those systems are set up, I never want to have to shift drives around again.

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to paulie420 on Fri May 15 06:41:00 2020
    paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I love SyncTerm, but if I could get my TER-500 Terminate working... I'd smile. Or even Telix or.... you know. :P I wanna login like I did back then man.

    I have Telix running in DOS box, and hearing that alert connect sound after
    so many years brought me back.


    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 12:20:09 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to paulie420 on Fri May 15 2020 06:41 am

    I have Telix running in DOS box, and hearing that alert connect sound after so many years brought me back.

    I've tried running Telix in DOSBox, but for me, it was not displaying ANSI properly.. ANSI was garbled with it. It seems Telemate behaves much better for me in DOSBox. I tended to use Telemate back in the 90s, but I don't remember having any major problems with Telix.. I liked using Telix occasionally in the 90s.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 11:47:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Thu May 14 2020 07:54 am

    Moondog wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    IIRC it's either 640k or 1mb, so Win 3.1 is a no go. I have run Open Gem in a DOSBOX, and it's supposed to run on a machine with less than 512k.

    Back when I had that machine, I had a couple of AST 8-bit memory cards - bumped memory up to 8MB RAM, but they were slow as hell. I remember getting them to work in a desktop, can't remember if I had room in the Portable for it.

    Greenscale CGA graphics for the win!


    ... Do the words need changing?

    Looks like the existing ram board has to be replaced. One of the open slots
    is not a full length ISA connector (8 bit?) I like the Portable design. I wish I was more of a fabricator, because I would like to build a machine inspired by it's design with new components. I could probably get by using a ITX board to save space.


    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 11:59:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Thu May 14 2020 08:25 am

    Moondog wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I'm wondering how the early Pentium hardware market will bear in a couple of years. the pc recycling guys get more money recycling first and second gen Pentium board and cpu's due to the high gold content.

    Those were good years; I went from a P166 to a P233/mmx, to a Pentium Pro and those systems lasted way longer than I would have expected. Didn't know about the gold content.

    Anyone can do a clean looking PC install with SATA cabling -- making one of those old ATA/floppy systems cabling look good took some skill. :)


    ... Change nothing and continue consistently

    Clean ATA/floppy cable runs involved having a bunch of spare oddball length an d drive spacing combinations. I recall one system I worked on had a spare
    hdd slot on the side or above the psu instead of the front bay. My gues is si nce it was a mini-tower, the hdd bay in the back would've allowed use of all t he open 5.25 bays for removable media. In the early Pentium days I recall seeing pc builds that retained the 5.25" floppy, plus would have a CD reader and a discrete CD burner.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Fri May 15 12:07:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 2020 09:21 am

    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Moondog <=-

    Moondog wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I'm wondering how the early Pentium hardware market will bear in a couple of years. the pc recycling guys get more money recycling first and second gen Pentium board and cpu's due to the high gold content.

    Those were good years; I went from a P166 to a P233/mmx, to a Pentium Pro and those systems lasted way longer than I would have expected. Didn't know about the gold content.

    Anyone can do a clean looking PC install with SATA cabling -- making one of those old ATA/floppy systems cabling look good took some skill. :)

    Having fixed up a few old systems, I can state that I utterly hate ribbon cables, and now that those systems are set up, I never want to have to shift drives around again.

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I find some humor in the board designers finallly placing ATA and floppy headers on the edge of boards instead of the random spots in the middle, only to see the devices that used them either e phased out or replaced with a
    newer, thinner standard. The only benefit I see for having the connectors somewhere other than the edges is if the board was designed for specific slimline case, and connector location was critical to the design.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Moondog on Fri May 15 16:34:10 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Moondog to Dennisk on Fri May 15 2020 12:07 pm

    Having fixed up a few old systems, I can state that I utterly hate
    ribbon cables, and now that those systems are set up, I never want to
    have to shift drives around again.

    I find some humor in the board designers finallly placing ATA and floppy headers on the edge of boards instead of the random spots in the middle, only to see the devices that used them either e phased out or replaced with a newer, thinner standard. The only benefit I see for having the connectors somewhere other than the edges is if the board was designed for specific slimline case, and connector location was critical to the design.

    I've seen a lot of motherboards these days with SATA ports on the edge, facing outward (rather than upward). I sometimes find those ports a bit awkward, since they don't point in the direction I need the cables to go. I still like to use an optical drive, and it would be handy to have at least one SATA port pointing upward from the motherboard to make it easier to route the cable to the optical drive. I suppose the angled ports on the edge of the board can be good for cases where you can route the cable to a hard drive in a way that the cable is more hidden though, but that depends on the case you buy.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 17:55:26 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to paulie420 on Fri May 15 2020 06:41 am

    paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I love SyncTerm, but if I could get my TER-500 Terminate working...
    I'd smile. Or even Telix or.... you know. :P I wanna login like I
    did back then man.

    I have Telix running in DOS box, and hearing that alert connect sound after so many years brought me back.

    Rad, I didn't know I could connect those apps - Terminate 5.0 here I come. I still have a registered copy with some of my old scripts installed and waiting. :P

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Paulie420 on Fri May 15 20:20:39 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Paulie420 to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 13 2020 10:11 am

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Paulie420 on Wed May 13 2020 06:44 am

    I've wanted a DOS box for some time now, but DOSBOX in a full screen do enough to make me not need physical hardware. Being able to emulate all the hardware of the time, including an NE2000 card - then being able to emulate a serial port with a TCP port to use old COMM apps with telnet BBSes is pretty neat.

    I don't know how to do that, as I would love to use my copy of Terminate 5.. or heck, even BBS software from back in the day. Can you elaborate on that process??


    google bbs termbox
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Moondog on Sat May 16 20:18:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 15 2020 09:21 am

    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Moondog <=-

    Moondog wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I'm wondering how the early Pentium hardware market will bear in a couple of years. the pc recycling guys get more money recycling first and second gen Pentium board and cpu's due to the high gold content.

    Those were good years; I went from a P166 to a P233/mmx, to a Pentium Pro and those systems lasted way longer than I would have expected. Didn't know about the gold content.

    Anyone can do a clean looking PC install with SATA cabling -- making one of those old ATA/floppy systems cabling look good took some skill. :)

    Having fixed up a few old systems, I can state that I utterly hate ribbon cables, and now that those systems are set up, I never want to have to shift drives around again.

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I find some humor in the board designers finallly placing ATA and
    floppy headers on the edge of boards instead of the random spots in the middle, only to see the devices that used them either e phased out or replaced with a newer, thinner standard. The only benefit I see for having the connectors somewhere other than the edges is if the board
    was designed for specific slimline case, and connector location was critical to the design.

    With the roomy cases of the old XT system, it wasn't a problem. You had room to put a small dog in the case. I lost a partition due to a faulty IDE ribbon cable. I must have pulled it in and out of a drive too many times, and something came loose, which I didn't realise until the FAT table got scrambled.
    SATA connectors are not designed to be pulled in and out much either, but they do plug and unplug easier.


    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Sat May 16 06:37:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I like the Portable design. I wish I was more of a fabricator, because
    I would like to build a machine inspired by it's design with new components. I could

    Shorten the case, put a small 16:9 LCD in the front, and decent video card
    in it, batteries, and a modern CPU. Full-travel keyboard. That would rock.


    ... Curious ideas wait for stranger times
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Nightfox on Sat May 16 08:59:00 2020
    Nightfox wrote to Moondog <=-

    I've seen a lot of motherboards these days with SATA ports on the edge, facing outward (rather than upward). I sometimes find those ports a
    bit awkward, since they don't point in the direction I need the cables
    to go.

    My Dell T3400 has 2 SATA slots at the bottom of the case, which is OK -- but the drives stick out so far that even with right-angle SATA cables there's a bit of pressure on them.

    It's been running like that since 2012, so I guess it'll hang in there a little longer. I love the system, but with me working from home, 8GB of RAM
    is turning out to be a pain.

    It could allegedly go up to 16GB, but DDR2 ECC RAM costs enough to make me want to just buy a T3500 that takes cheaper, Non-ECC DDR3 RAM.



    ... XT or AT, it makes a big difference.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 16 12:30:34 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Sat May 16 2020 08:59 am

    My Dell T3400 has 2 SATA slots at the bottom of the case, which is OK -- but the drives stick out so far that even with right-angle SATA cables there's a bit of pressure on them.

    It's been running like that since 2012, so I guess it'll hang in there a little longer. I love the system, but with me working from home, 8GB of RAM is turning out to be a pain.

    It could allegedly go up to 16GB, but DDR2 ECC RAM costs enough to make me want to just buy a T3500 that takes cheaper, Non-ECC DDR3 RAM.

    Do you work for a place where you can request a work laptop or something where you could specify what RAM & all you need?

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Nightfox on Sat May 16 14:58:30 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Nightfox to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 16 2020 12:30 pm

    Do you work for a place where you can request a work laptop or something where you could specify what RAM & all you need?

    I have a Thinkpad T480 with 16 GB of RAM, I'll usually remote into it for VPN work. It's the SATA drive, I think, that's the biggest bottleneck. I'm runnins 2 2TB drives in a mirror.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 16 15:01:16 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Sat May 16 2020 08:59 am

    Nightfox wrote to Moondog <=-

    It's been running like that since 2012, so I guess it'll hang in there a little longer. I love the system, but with me working from home, 8GB of RAM is turning out to be a pain.

    I think I have some DDR2 laying around. Either 8GB or at least 4...

    if interested I can USPS some direct, daddio.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Sat May 16 23:36:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Sat May 16 2020 08:18 pm



    I find some humor in the board designers finallly placing ATA and floppy headers on the edge of boards instead of the random spots in the middle, only to see the devices that used them either e phased out or replaced with a newer, thinner standard. The only benefit I see for having the connectors somewhere other than the edges is if the board was designed for specific slimline case, and connector location was critical to the design.

    With the roomy cases of the old XT system, it wasn't a problem. You had roo to put a small dog in the case. I lost a partition due to a faulty IDE ribb cable. I must have pulled it in and out of a drive too many times, and something came loose, which I didn't realise until the FAT table got scrambl
    SATA connectors are not designed to be pulled in and out much either, but t do plug and unplug easier.


    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I've senen my share of monster towers with more bays than you could ever use, but I've also run into quite a few OEM designs where they tried to tuck as
    many items in the smallest case possible. For a couple of years ZDS wanted to get into budget mass market systems and resorted to hiring a Taiwanese
    company to build them and market them in catalogs such as Crutchfield's.
    These were branded plain jane 486 and 386 clones with 100 Watt psu's and a
    case that was just big enough to house the main baord, a riser card, a 3.5" floppy, a 5.25" floppy, and a hard drive. Technically there were 2 5.25"
    bays, however literature that came with it ignored the second bay because of the low powered psu. IIRC the psu had a wierd form factor, so finding a
    larger psu that fit was a no go.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 16 23:55:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Sat May 16 2020 06:37 am

    Moondog wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I like the Portable design. I wish I was more of a fabricator, because I would like to build a machine inspired by it's design with new components. I could

    Shorten the case, put a small 16:9 LCD in the front, and decent video card in it, batteries, and a modern CPU. Full-travel keyboard. That would rock.


    ... Curious ideas wait for stranger times

    I think our definitions of a decent video card probably do not match. I'm not much of a gamer any more and even when I did game, the price point of second
    or high third tier cards was more than enough for me. I could possibly get
    away with using a regular sized psu, but I'd rather go with something smaller that so I can ensure everthing fits. I'd probably do the Mini-TX board route than mATX to keep it small. Finding a low profile cpu cooler that fits with everything packed around it might be a challenge.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun May 17 00:03:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Sat May 16 2020 08:59 am

    Nightfox wrote to Moondog <=-

    I've seen a lot of motherboards these days with SATA ports on the edge, facing outward (rather than upward). I sometimes find those ports a bit awkward, since they don't point in the direction I need the cables to go.

    My Dell T3400 has 2 SATA slots at the bottom of the case, which is OK -- but the drives stick out so far that even with right-angle SATA cables there's a bit of pressure on them.

    It's been running like that since 2012, so I guess it'll hang in there a little longer. I love the system, but with me working from home, 8GB of RAM is turning out to be a pain.

    It could allegedly go up to 16GB, but DDR2 ECC RAM costs enough to make me want to just buy a T3500 that takes cheaper, Non-ECC DDR3 RAM.



    ... XT or AT, it makes a big difference.

    The T3400 was quite the beast during it's time.


    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to paulie420 on Sun May 17 09:57:00 2020
    paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-


    I think I have some DDR2 laying around. Either 8GB or at least 4...

    if interested I can USPS some direct, daddio.

    Thanks for the offer, the complication is that it needs to be ECC RAM. Hard
    to find.


    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Sun May 17 10:03:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    The T3400 was quite the beast during it's time.

    For the most part, it's hanging in there. Shipped in August 2009, I got it
    in 2011, put 2 mirrored drives in it , swapped out the Nvidia graphics for a low-end ATI Radeon back in 2015 or so.

    A few years later swapped the Core 2 Duo for a Core 2 Quad chip. Upgraded to Windows 10 with only one issue - no native Windows 10 drivers for the
    onboard RAID, but I got an older driver to work.

    Great systems to work on - lots of room to add drives, clearly marked plugs, and it's all screwless.

    I'll be sad one day when I turn it on and hear... nothing.




    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to MOONDOG on Sun May 17 18:09:00 2020
    I've senen my share of monster towers with more bays than you could ever use, but I've also run into quite a few OEM designs where they tried to tuck as

    I had one set up for several years. I replaced it about a month ago with
    an SBC. :)

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ Safe sex used to mean to put the car in "Park"
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dumas Walker on Mon May 18 00:29:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to MOONDOG on Sun May 17 2020 06:09 pm

    I've senen my share of monster towers with more bays than you could ever u but I've also run into quite a few OEM designs where they tried to tuck as

    I had one set up for several years. I replaced it about a month ago with
    an SBC. :)


    I keep a couple of old desktops around for odd tasks. I have one that acts
    as a print server and scanning station. After I scan documents, they're
    saved in a network shared folder. I'm thinking I can get by with using an
    SBC to replace it. It's a 12-13 y/o desktop, and I run some other linux apps on it such as Guitarix, so I might move it upstairs and re-purpose it again
    for music recording and editing.

    Another issue is I have not been receiving any hand me down or company throw out pc's as of late, so what I have in inventory for use is looking more like
    a museum collection than pc's that can be re-purposed. I have a Pi3 and a
    Pi4, and have set up a Pine Rock64 sbc for a non-profit to run a marquee display. Odroid has a new board that looks like an interesting alternative to
    a Pi4.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to MOONDOG on Mon May 18 10:55:00 2020
    I keep a couple of old desktops around for odd tasks. I have one that acts as a print server and scanning station. After I scan documents, they're saved in a network shared folder. I'm thinking I can get by with using an SBC to replace it. It's a 12-13 y/o desktop, and I run some other linux apps on it such as Guitarix, so I might move it upstairs and re-purpose it again for music recording and editing.

    I do keep a couple of desktops for odd tasks also. I have one that is
    running OS/2 for my DOS BBS (for now!). I also have one that I can use to access CD roms.

    Another issue is I have not been receiving any hand me down or company throw out pc's as of late, so what I have in inventory for use is looking more like a museum collection than pc's that can be re-purposed. I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, and have set up a Pine Rock64 sbc for a non-profit to run a marquee display. Odroid has a new board that looks like an interesting alternative to a Pi4.

    Same here. My two recent hand me downs were from a friend and from the
    side of the road. :O :D The latter one I got a lot more service out of
    even though it was not as powerful. I eventually replaced it with an UP
    Board. The former is a more modern dual-core that had Win 7 (??) on it. I
    had trouble getting it to do much so I installed linux on it. Debian at
    first then later Devuan.

    Seems like it does not like WWW browsers much. Opening one will sometimes
    lock that system cold. But it has a CD drive & can more easily access the
    nfs shares than OS/2 can so it gets powered up every now & then.

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ Capitol City Online * 502/875-8938 * KY, USA * v34
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Ogg@Ogg to All on Mon May 18 15:50:00 2020
    Hello poindexter!

    ** On Thursday 14.05.20 - 10:52, poindexter.fortran wrote to Gamgee:

    I'd love to have an AT clone with a ton of EMS, or a 386/40. EGA or VGA graphics. old-school clicky keyboard. Compaq Portable II/III... AT&T 6300.
    Or a PS/2 like I had at my first job - Model 80 with 8 MB of RAM.

    I have a brand new GA-586T2 mobo that I never used.

    Looks like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i98fzScEXo4

    Supports either Pentium/Intel, Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX & AMD-K5/K6 CPUs

    Mine has 2 196-pin DIMM sockets and 2 72-Pin SIMM sockets.

    Max 256MB using various combinations of both DIMM and SIMM.

    I never got around to getting a CPU for it.


    ../|ug
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dumas Walker on Mon May 18 21:37:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dumas Walker to MOONDOG on Mon May 18 2020 10:55 am

    I keep a couple of old desktops around for odd tasks. I have one that act as a print server and scanning station. After I scan documents, they're saved in a network shared folder. I'm thinking I can get by with using an SBC to replace it. It's a 12-13 y/o desktop, and I run some other linux a on it such as Guitarix, so I might move it upstairs and re-purpose it agai for music recording and editing.

    I do keep a couple of desktops for odd tasks also. I have one that is running OS/2 for my DOS BBS (for now!). I also have one that I can use to access CD roms.

    Another issue is I have not been receiving any hand me down or company thr out pc's as of late, so what I have in inventory for use is looking more l a museum collection than pc's that can be re-purposed. I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, and have set up a Pine Rock64 sbc for a non-profit to run a marquee display. Odroid has a new board that looks like an interesting alternative a Pi4.

    Same here. My two recent hand me downs were from a friend and from the
    side of the road. :O :D The latter one I got a lot more service out of even though it was not as powerful. I eventually replaced it with an UP Board. The former is a more modern dual-core that had Win 7 (??) on it. I had trouble getting it to do much so I installed linux on it. Debian at first then later Devuan.

    Seems like it does not like WWW browsers much. Opening one will sometimes lock that system cold. But it has a CD drive & can more easily access the nfs shares than OS/2 can so it gets powered up every now & then.


    Seems like more and more friends and relatives are getting either Macbooks or Ipads, or doing most of their surfing on their phones. The companies I would solicit for throwouts are either in lease and return programs, or they're donating pc's to non-profits that e-cycle older systems. The gamers are
    giving their old pc's to their kids or nieces and nephews to play Fortnight
    or Overwatch.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/DUNGEON to Moondog on Mon May 18 19:51:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Sat May 16 2020 08:18 pm



    I find some humor in the board designers finallly placing ATA and floppy headers on the edge of boards instead of the random spots in the middle, only to see the devices that used them either e phased out or replaced with a newer, thinner standard. The only benefit I see for having the connectors somewhere other than the edges is if the board was designed for specific slimline case, and connector location was critical to the design.

    With the roomy cases of the old XT system, it wasn't a problem. You had roo to put a small dog in the case. I lost a partition due to a faulty IDE ribb cable. I must have pulled it in and out of a drive too many times, and something came loose, which I didn't realise until the FAT table got scrambl
    SATA connectors are not designed to be pulled in and out much either, but t do plug and unplug easier.


    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I've senen my share of monster towers with more bays than you could
    ever use, but I've also run into quite a few OEM designs where they
    tried to tuck as many items in the smallest case possible. For a
    couple of years ZDS wanted to get into budget mass market systems and resorted to hiring a Taiwanese company to build them and market them in catalogs such as Crutchfield's. These were branded plain jane 486 and
    386 clones with 100 Watt psu's and a case that was just big enough to house the main baord, a riser card, a 3.5" floppy, a 5.25" floppy, and
    a hard drive. Technically there were 2 5.25" bays, however literature that came with it ignored the second bay because of the low powered
    psu. IIRC the psu had a wierd form factor, so finding a larger psu
    that fit was a no go.

    My 486 DX4/100 isn't much bigger. Just big enough for two floppy drives and two hard disks. In some ways, compactness makes things a little easier, ins ome ways, because you can have the IDE cable reach both the master and slave drives. One of my larger cases is more of a problem, because the cable cannot reach all the drives. Obviously, longer cables would help but I can only work with what I have.

    I wonder if you could build the case so that the power and data connectors were in the case itself, with sockets at the back of the drive bay. Just push the drives in.


    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ The Dungeon BBS - Risen from the Ashes! - Canberra, Australia. http://bbs.barnab
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Mon May 18 04:46:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

    re-purposed. I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, and have set up a Pine Rock64 sbc for a non-profit to run a marquee display. Odroid has a new board that looks like an interesting alternative to a Pi4.

    Those Odroids do look good.

    I have the BBS running under Windows on a dual core PC; I'm looking at using DD-WRT on my router to see what I can get it to do (Currently using it for DLNA, Lighthttpd, and looking at some kind of proxying) and looking at a Pi (probably a Pi Zero W) to set up as an experiment. That seems like a pretty good setup to play with while not costing an arm and a leg in power.


    ... The robots can go off-script?
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Tue May 19 12:40:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Mon May 18 2020 07:51 pm


    My 486 DX4/100 isn't much bigger. Just big enough for two floppy drives and two hard disks. In some ways, compactness makes things a little easier, ins ome ways, because you can have the IDE cable reach both the master and slave drives. One of my larger cases is more of a problem, because the cable cann reach all the drives. Obviously, longer cables would help but I can only wo with what I have.

    I wonder if you could build the case so that the power and data connectors w in the case itself, with sockets at the back of the drive bay. Just push th drives in.


    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I'm sure it's possible to create a backplane with power and data on it,
    however in order to make it compatible with most of the hardware out there it may require proprietary cradles, similar to the removable drive caddys
    present in the mid to late 1990's. I noticed it more with floppies where the power and date cables aren't consistently spaced. Same with PATA hard drives and optical drive to some extent. Modern servers are that way. Hot swappable
    drive bays are not a new thing.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Moondog on Wed May 20 09:10:53 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Moondog to Dennisk on Tue May 19 2020 12:40 pm

    My 486 DX4/100 isn't much bigger. Just big enough for two floppy drives and two hard disks. In some ways, compactness makes things a little easier, ins ome ways, because you can have the IDE cable reach both the master and slave drives. One of my larger cases is more of a problem, because the cable cann reach all the drives. Obviously, longer cables would help but I can only wo with what I have.

    I wonder if you could build the case so that the power and data connectors w in the case itself, with sockets at the back of the drive bay. Just push th drives in.


    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I'm sure it's possible to create a backplane with power and data on it, however in order to make it compatible with most of the hardware out there it may require proprietary cradles, similar to the removable drive caddys present in the mid to late 1990's. I noticed it more with floppies where the power and date cables aren't consistently spaced. Same with PATA hard drives and optical drive to some extent. Modern servers are that way. Hot swappable
    drive bays are not a new thing.


    Perhaps. If it was a given that a particular bay would take a particular sized SATA hard drive, or a blueray drive, it could be done. It is less flexible, but would be neater. At the back where the hard drive sits there is a place with the power/data connectors, and the drives slide in. At the other end of the plate are sockets to connect it to the motherboard. Kind of similar to a networking patch panel.

    It probably isn't that workable, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it done sometime in the near future.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue May 19 17:26:39 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Mon May 18 2020 04:46 am

    Moondog wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

    re-purposed. I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, and have set up a Pine Rock64
    sbc for a non-profit to run a marquee display. Odroid has a new
    board that looks like an interesting alternative to a Pi4.

    Those Odroids do look good.

    I have the BBS running under Windows on a dual core PC; I'm looking at using DD-WRT on my router to see what I can get it to do (Currently using it for DLNA, Lighthttpd, and looking at some kind of proxying) and looking at a Pi (probably a Pi Zero W) to set up as an experiment. That seems like a pretty good setup to play with while not costing an arm and a leg in power.

    Are those ODROIDs a higher spec than the RPi 4???

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Moondog on Wed May 20 07:31:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dennisk <=-

    I'm sure it's possible to create a backplane with power and data on it, however in order to make it compatible with most of the hardware out
    there it may require proprietary cradles, similar to the removable
    drive caddys present in the mid to late 1990's.

    I have a Dell server that was set up long before I started my job. 3 of the drives are SAS SSDs that are sitting in a hot-swap bay, minus the sled.
    Drives me bonkers to see it, but I haven't had an occasion to power the
    server down and properly mount the drives.


    ... Change ambiguities to specifics
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Wed May 20 22:10:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Wed May 20 2020 09:10 am

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Moondog to Dennisk on Tue May 19 2020 12:40 pm

    My 486 DX4/100 isn't much bigger. Just big enough for two floppy driv and two hard disks. In some ways, compactness makes things a little easier, ins ome ways, because you can have the IDE cable reach both th master and slave drives. One of my larger cases is more of a problem, because the cable cann reach all the drives. Obviously, longer cables would help but I can only wo with what I have.

    I wonder if you could build the case so that the power and data connectors w in the case itself, with sockets at the back of the drive bay. Just push th drives in.


    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I'm sure it's possible to create a backplane with power and data on it, however in order to make it compatible with most of the hardware out ther it may require proprietary cradles, similar to the removable drive caddys present in the mid to late 1990's. I noticed it more with floppies where the power and date cables aren't consistently spaced. Same with PATA har drives and optical drive to some extent. Modern servers are that way. swappable
    drive bays are not a new thing.


    Perhaps. If it was a given that a particular bay would take a particular si SATA hard drive, or a blueray drive, it could be done. It is less flexible, but would be neater. At the back where the hard drive sits there is a place with the power/data connectors, and the drives slide in. At the other end o the plate are sockets to connect it to the motherboard. Kind of similar to networking patch panel.

    It probably isn't that workable, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it done sometime in the near future.

    Either a manufacturer would have to take a leap of faith and hope buyers
    adopt his standard, or a group of manufacturers will have to agree on a
    docking standard.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to paulie420 on Wed May 20 22:20:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: paulie420 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue May 19 2020 05:26 pm

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Mon May 18 2020 04:46 am

    Moondog wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

    re-purposed. I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, and have set up a Pine Rock64
    sbc for a non-profit to run a marquee display. Odroid has a new
    board that looks like an interesting alternative to a Pi4.

    Those Odroids do look good.

    I have the BBS running under Windows on a dual core PC; I'm looking at using DD-WRT on my router to see what I can get it to do (Currently usi it for DLNA, Lighthttpd, and looking at some kind of proxying) and look at a Pi (probably a Pi Zero W) to set up as an experiment. That seems l a pretty good setup to play with while not costing an arm and a leg in power.

    Are those ODROIDs a higher spec than the RPi 4???

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    Being newer, the C4 has a higher clock speed and consumes less power,
    however it lacks gig ethernet and has one hdmi. the C4 is cheaper and uses a barrel type plug instead of a usb c plug, and can accept a variety of input voltages from 5.5v to 17v (must have built in buck converter.) This feature
    is attractive for embedded systems since supllying a dedicated 5v is not necessary.

    Price of the C4 is $50USD compared to $55USD

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/DUNGEON to Moondog on Thu May 21 21:03:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Wed May 20 2020 09:10 am

    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Moondog to Dennisk on Tue May 19 2020 12:40 pm

    My 486 DX4/100 isn't much bigger. Just big enough for two floppy driv and two hard disks. In some ways, compactness makes things a little easier, ins ome ways, because you can have the IDE cable reach both th master and slave drives. One of my larger cases is more of a problem, because the cable cann reach all the drives. Obviously, longer cables would help but I can only wo with what I have.

    I wonder if you could build the case so that the power and data connectors w in the case itself, with sockets at the back of the drive bay. Just push th drives in.


    ... Dennis Katsonis

    I'm sure it's possible to create a backplane with power and data on it, however in order to make it compatible with most of the hardware out ther it may require proprietary cradles, similar to the removable drive caddys present in the mid to late 1990's. I noticed it more with floppies where the power and date cables aren't consistently spaced. Same with PATA har drives and optical drive to some extent. Modern servers are that way. swappable
    drive bays are not a new thing.


    Perhaps. If it was a given that a particular bay would take a particular si SATA hard drive, or a blueray drive, it could be done. It is less flexible, but would be neater. At the back where the hard drive sits there is a place with the power/data connectors, and the drives slide in. At the other end o the plate are sockets to connect it to the motherboard. Kind of similar to networking patch panel.

    It probably isn't that workable, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it done sometime in the near future.

    Either a manufacturer would have to take a leap of faith and hope
    buyers adopt his standard, or a group of manufacturers will have to
    agree on a docking standard.

    ---
    = Synchronet = The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net

    Yeah, probably won't happen then.

    ... Dennis Katsonis
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ The Dungeon BBS - Risen from the Ashes! - Canberra, Australia. http://bbs.barnab
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Fri May 22 12:27:00 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Dennisk to Moondog on Thu May 21 2020 09:03 pm



    Either a manufacturer would have to take a leap of faith and hope buyers adopt his standard, or a group of manufacturers will have to agree on a docking standard.

    ---
    = Synchronet = The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net

    Yeah, probably won't happen then.

    ... Dennis Katsonis

    As mentioned previously, servers and some NAS's with hot swap bays have taken the leap to cradles and caddys. That's probably as close as we'll get regarding modularity.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From The Doctor@VERT/DMINE to Moondog on Fri May 22 21:07:24 2020
    Re: Re: Home Lab
    By: Moondog to Dennisk on Fri May 22 2020 12:27 pm

    As mentioned previously, servers and
    some NAS's with hot swap bays have
    taken the leap to cradles and caddys
    That's probably as close as we'll ge
    regarding modularity.

    I think there's too much market churn
    and too many companies competing for
    prosumer and power user market share.
    It seems like everybody and their
    backup out there has a different way of
    doing things. The last time I rebuilt
    my research server I went looking for
    the same hhot-swap bays that I had at a
    previous job, and found out that they'd
    gone out of manufacture a year or two
    after the last time I saw them. Kind
    of frustrating, really - those were
    great bays. I wound up buying a set
    the last time I was on the east coast
    (hot swappable SATA-III[: A four-drive
    and a three-drive) and they've held up
    pretty well.



    The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510]
    https://drwho.virtadpt.net/
    I am everywhere.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Diamond Mine Online BBS - bbs.dmine.net:24 - Fredericksburg, VA USA