[gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

Howdy,

I got a friend that wants me to put Linux on his rig.  It has a floppy
drive and he does use it for files he has on floppies.  I haven't used a
floppy in a long time.  How good is support nowadays?  I will be putting
KDE on it.  Does it sort of automount or anything?  Does it function
anything like a CD/DVD?

If I had a rig with a working floppy, I would just test this myself but
the only system I have with one, the floppy drive died a long time ago.
 The little green light stayed on all the time so I unplugged it.  I'm
hoping someone here may still have one of these and can shed some light
on this.

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-)


-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

[gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Hartmut Figge]

Dale:

>I got a friend that wants me to put Linux on his rig.  It has a floppy
>drive and he does use it for files he has on floppies.  I haven't used a
>floppy in a long time.  How good is support nowadays?

hafi@i5_64 ~ $ mount /mnt/floppy/
mount: block device /dev/fd0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

Works good as always. Sometimes i look on old treasures. For 5.25" i
must use my old machine, because my new one vhas only a 3.5" drive.

>I will be putting KDE on it.  Does it sort of automount or anything?

I do not use automount. Or KDE. Or Gnome. Or XFCE... ;)

>Does it function anything like a CD/DVD?

I am mounting a CD/DVD manually too. :-D

Hartmut
-- 
Usenet-ABC-Wiki http://www.usenet-abc.de/wiki/
Von Usern fuer User  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Philip Webb]

120129 Dale wrote:
> I got a friend that wants me to put Linux on his rig.
> It has a floppy drive and he does use it for files he has on floppies.
> How good is support nowadays?

I haven't used diskettes for a couple of years,
but when I did, 'mtools' was the pkg I used to use to manage them.
Like your other advisor, I never automount devices (with Fluxbox),
but goto my Root desktop & manually mount them from there.
Mtools takes care of all that, however, for diskettes.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:
> 120129 Dale wrote:
>> I got a friend that wants me to put Linux on his rig.
>> It has a floppy drive and he does use it for files he has on floppies.
>> How good is support nowadays?
>
> I haven't used diskettes for a couple of years,
> but when I did, 'mtools' was the pkg I used to use to manage them.
> Like your other advisor, I never automount devices (with Fluxbox),
> but goto my Root desktop & manually mount them from there.
> Mtools takes care of all that, however, for diskettes.

mtools is what I recall poking floppies with, too. Well, that and
'superformat'. You can comfortably fit up to 2MB of data onto a
"1.44MB IBM Formatted" disk. (The common formatting loses a lot to
sector spacing overhead and the like.)

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[J. Roeleveld]

On Sun, January 29, 2012 2:16 pm, Dale wrote:
<snipped>
>  The little green light stayed on all the time so I unplugged it.  I'm
> hoping someone here may still have one of these and can shed some light
> on this.

The light staying on could also be because the floppy-flatcable is plugged
in incorrectly. Turning it around might be sufficient to make it work
again.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> 
> On Sun, January 29, 2012 2:16 pm, Dale wrote:
> <snipped>
>>  The little green light stayed on all the time so I unplugged it.  I'm
>> hoping someone here may still have one of these and can shed some light
>> on this.
> 
> The light staying on could also be because the floppy-flatcable is plugged
> in incorrectly. Turning it around might be sufficient to make it work
> again.
> 
> --
> Joost
> 
> 
> 


It started doing that all on its own without being touched.  I'm pretty
sure it was trying to spin too.  I think something went out and was
trying to make it spin all the time.  I may have another one out in the
shed but I'm not sure.  I may have a old junk rig but I don't know
whether they work or not.  I'm also not sure I have any floppies either.

I'm just full of issues on this one.  lol

Thanks to all for the replies.  I'll give those tools a try.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, January 29, 2012 2:16 pm, Dale wrote:
>> <snipped>
>>>  The little green light stayed on all the time so I unplugged it.  I'm
>>> hoping someone here may still have one of these and can shed some light
>>> on this.
>>
>> The light staying on could also be because the floppy-flatcable is plugged
>> in incorrectly. Turning it around might be sufficient to make it work
>> again.
>>
>> --
>> Joost
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> It started doing that all on its own without being touched.  I'm pretty
> sure it was trying to spin too.  I think something went out and was
> trying to make it spin all the time.  I may have another one out in the
> shed but I'm not sure.  I may have a old junk rig but I don't know
> whether they work or not.  I'm also not sure I have any floppies either.
>
> I'm just full of issues on this one.  lol
>
> Thanks to all for the replies.  I'll give those tools a try.

Forgot to mention a couple things earlier:

1) Floppies can go bad from dust accumulation. Sometimes they can be
cleaned by jerking the head via software. That was a normal part of
the driver in DOS and Windows, IIRC.
2) On PC clones, floppies never had auto-insert detection. (Though
maybe you'd get something like that if you used a superfloppy or
LS-120 drive to read them)


-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

Michael Mol wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, January 29, 2012 2:16 pm, Dale wrote:
>>> <snipped>
>>>>  The little green light stayed on all the time so I unplugged it.  I'm
>>>> hoping someone here may still have one of these and can shed some light
>>>> on this.
>>>
>>> The light staying on could also be because the floppy-flatcable is plugged
>>> in incorrectly. Turning it around might be sufficient to make it work
>>> again.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Joost
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> It started doing that all on its own without being touched.  I'm pretty
>> sure it was trying to spin too.  I think something went out and was
>> trying to make it spin all the time.  I may have another one out in the
>> shed but I'm not sure.  I may have a old junk rig but I don't know
>> whether they work or not.  I'm also not sure I have any floppies either.
>>
>> I'm just full of issues on this one.  lol
>>
>> Thanks to all for the replies.  I'll give those tools a try.
> 
> Forgot to mention a couple things earlier:
> 
> 1) Floppies can go bad from dust accumulation. Sometimes they can be
> cleaned by jerking the head via software. That was a normal part of
> the driver in DOS and Windows, IIRC.
> 2) On PC clones, floppies never had auto-insert detection. (Though
> maybe you'd get something like that if you used a superfloppy or
> LS-120 drive to read them)
> 
> 


I'm going to try to talk him into letting my transfer them to CD.  Tell
him it is time to catch up with new and better things.  CD drives has
autodetect and just plain work better anyway.

At least I know there is a chance.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
>
> I'm going to try to talk him into letting my transfer them to CD.  Tell
> him it is time to catch up with new and better things.  CD drives has
> autodetect and just plain work better anyway.
>
> At least I know there is a chance.  ;-)
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)

A single USB thumb drive for $20 would likely hold every floppy he
ever made, and maybe 10-20 times more. Why waste time making & sorting
through CDs, etc?

- Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 1131 bytes --]

On Sunday 29 Jan 2012 19:09:59 Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> 
> > I'm going to try to talk him into letting my transfer them to CD.  Tell
> > him it is time to catch up with new and better things.  CD drives has
> > autodetect and just plain work better anyway.
> > 
> > At least I know there is a chance.  ;-)
> > 
> > Dale
> > 
> > :-)  :-)
> 
> A single USB thumb drive for $20 would likely hold every floppy he
> ever made, and maybe 10-20 times more. Why waste time making & sorting
> through CDs, etc?

I'm coming to this late, but floppies should just work™ and show up under 
/dev/fd0 or /dev/floppy.  I've got an old laptop which has a bay for CDROM or 
floppy and was able to access a floppy only a couple of months ago.  With fluxbox 
and no automounting I had to run pmount or mount (can't recall now).

The only historical problem I recall is when running grub prompt at grub 
installation time which could spend an inordinate amount of time probing the 
floppy (using --no-floppy sorts this out).
-- 
Regards,
Mick

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
>>
>>
>> I'm going to try to talk him into letting my transfer them to CD.  Tell
>> him it is time to catch up with new and better things.  CD drives has
>> autodetect and just plain work better anyway.
>>
>> At least I know there is a chance.  ;-)
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
> 
> A single USB thumb drive for $20 would likely hold every floppy he
> ever made, and maybe 10-20 times more. Why waste time making & sorting
> through CDs, etc?
> 
> - Mark
> 
> 


Hmmmm, super point.  May suggest that.  I got to boot something to see
what this rig has in it.  It may be a older system.  I'm pretty sure I
saw USB tho.

I bet USB has a better life span than floppies too.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

[gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[walt]

On 01/29/2012 12:04 PM, Dale wrote:
> Mark Knecht wrote:

>> A single USB thumb drive for $20 would likely hold every floppy he
>> ever made, and maybe 10-20 times more. Why waste time making & sorting
>> through CDs, etc?
 
> Hmmmm, super point.  May suggest that.  I got to boot something to see
> what this rig has in it.  It may be a older system.  I'm pretty sure I
> saw USB tho.
> 
> I bet USB has a better life span than floppies too.

Boy that's the truth.  All of my three (working) old machines still have
floppy drives, but my next one won't.  And good riddance, too.  Last
time I made a floppy boot disk (years ago) I had to format about a dozen
floppies before I found a good one :p
  
BTW, the floppy drives I have don't send any interrupt when I insert a
disk, so automounting is a non starter.  Maybe the newer USB external
floppy drives do, dunno, but I'm not tempted to try one.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 5:08 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/29/2012 12:04 PM, Dale wrote:
>> Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>>> A single USB thumb drive for $20 would likely hold every floppy he
>>> ever made, and maybe 10-20 times more. Why waste time making & sorting
>>> through CDs, etc?
>
>> Hmmmm, super point.  May suggest that.  I got to boot something to see
>> what this rig has in it.  It may be a older system.  I'm pretty sure I
>> saw USB tho.
>>
>> I bet USB has a better life span than floppies too.
>
> Boy that's the truth.  All of my three (working) old machines still have
> floppy drives, but my next one won't.

Yeah, I haven't had a box with a floppy drive in quite some time.

> And good riddance, too.  Last
> time I made a floppy boot disk (years ago) I had to format about a dozen
> floppies before I found a good one :p

FWIW, you could probably have fixed them by using superformat to do a
low-level format. And you coulda made yourself some disks capable of
holding a whopping *two megabytes!*

>
> BTW, the floppy drives I have don't send any interrupt when I insert a
> disk, so automounting is a non starter.  Maybe the newer USB external
> floppy drives do, dunno, but I'm not tempted to try one.

Possibly. Thing is, the spec for floppies which plugged into PC clones
didn't really allow for any kind of notification. It just plugged into
an MFM controller, which swept the read/write head around to the
commands of the host machine. I do know that the USB drives make
assumptions about floppy sector/track layouts, which I found to be a
bit of a bummer.

-- 
:wq

[gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[walt]

On 01/29/2012 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:

> an MFM controller

Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 6:41 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/29/2012 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
>
>> an MFM controller
>
> Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p

28. Just got started earlier than most. Also "studied" history. :)

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:46:58 -0500
Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 6:41 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 01/29/2012 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
> >
> >> an MFM controller
> >
> > Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p
> 
> 28. Just got started earlier than most. Also "studied" history. :)
> 

So if you saw them when they were still new and shiny that means at the
time you must have been

2 years old!

Child prodigy?

:-)



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:46:58 -0500
> Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 6:41 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On 01/29/2012 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
>> >
>> >> an MFM controller
>> >
>> > Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p
>>
>> 28. Just got started earlier than most. Also "studied" history. :)
>>
>
> So if you saw them when they were still new and shiny that means at the
> time you must have been
>
> 2 years old!
>
> Child prodigy?

I didn't see anything new and shiny until I had the money to buy it
myself...Though we did get a Tandy RLX1000 when I was five or six.
When I was (I think) 12, I spent my $200 in savings to buy most of a
second-hand K6-200 when the original owner was upgrading to (I think)
a Celeron 300.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Pandu Poluan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1363 bytes --]

On Jan 30, 2012 7:19 AM, "Michael Mol" <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
wrote:
> > On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:46:58 -0500
> > Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 6:41 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > On 01/29/2012 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> an MFM controller
> >> >
> >> > Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p
> >>
> >> 28. Just got started earlier than most. Also "studied" history. :)
> >>
> >
> > So if you saw them when they were still new and shiny that means at the
> > time you must have been
> >
> > 2 years old!
> >
> > Child prodigy?
>
> I didn't see anything new and shiny until I had the money to buy it
> myself...Though we did get a Tandy RLX1000 when I was five or six.
> When I was (I think) 12, I spent my $200 in savings to buy most of a
> second-hand K6-200 when the original owner was upgrading to (I think)
> a Celeron 300.
>

My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop horizontal
all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a front-panel (7-segment
LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"

And of floppies that really *are* floppy (5.25")...

And of copy-protected diskettes and CopyIIpc and CopyWrite...

As you can see, I have a severely traumatic childhood...

Rgds,

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2009 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>
> On Jan 30, 2012 7:19 AM, "Michael Mol" <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:46:58 -0500
>> > Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 6:41 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > On 01/29/2012 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> an MFM controller
>> >> >
>> >> > Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p
>> >>
>> >> 28. Just got started earlier than most. Also "studied" history. :)
>> >>
>> >
>> > So if you saw them when they were still new and shiny that means at the
>> > time you must have been
>> >
>> > 2 years old!
>> >
>> > Child prodigy?
>>
>> I didn't see anything new and shiny until I had the money to buy it
>> myself...Though we did get a Tandy RLX1000 when I was five or six.
>> When I was (I think) 12, I spent my $200 in savings to buy most of a
>> second-hand K6-200 when the original owner was upgrading to (I think)
>> a Celeron 300.
>>
>
> My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop horizontal
> all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a front-panel (7-segment
> LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"
>
> And of floppies that really *are* floppy (5.25")...
>
> And of copy-protected diskettes and CopyIIpc and CopyWrite...
>
> As you can see, I have a severely traumatic childhood...

PC, XT or AT?

Fastest system I ever used what dropped down to 4.77MHz was a 33MHz 386..

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[David Relson]

> My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop
> horizontal all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a
> front-panel (7-segment LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"
> 
> And of floppies that really *are* floppy (5.25")...
> 
> And of copy-protected diskettes and CopyIIpc and CopyWrite...
> 
> As you can see, I have a severely traumatic childhood...
> 
> Rgds,

You mean those small floppies?  Remember the big 8 inchers?

In the early days, putting a computer together took more than a screw
driver.  Remember soldering irons and PC board kits with discrete
components?  I do believe I still have an S-100 bus machine in my attic.

Regards,

David

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Peter Humphrey]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 195 bytes --]

On Monday 30 January 2012 04:23:27 David Relson wrote:

> You mean those small floppies?  Remember the big 8 inchers?

And those Winchester disks?

-- 
Rgds
Peter		Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1988 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

David Relson wrote:
> 
>> My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop
>> horizontal all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a
>> front-panel (7-segment LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"
>>
>> And of floppies that really *are* floppy (5.25")...
>>
>> And of copy-protected diskettes and CopyIIpc and CopyWrite...
>>
>> As you can see, I have a severely traumatic childhood...
>>
>> Rgds,
> 
> You mean those small floppies?  Remember the big 8 inchers?
> 
> In the early days, putting a computer together took more than a screw
> driver.  Remember soldering irons and PC board kits with discrete
> components?  I do believe I still have an S-100 bus machine in my attic.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> David
> 
> 


I still have my breedboard.  You know, the thing you run the traces with
wires with.  Heck, I got a couple small ones that still have circuits on
them.  One is a temp circuit that turns a fan on when it gets above a
certain temp.

I think my pump controller is still out there too.  We used to have well
water out here.  It was nasty so we had a HUGE filter.  I'm talking
truck size filter.  It held about 2,000 gallons of water if you take out
for the filter media.

Dang, that has been a while back there.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 08:29:47AM +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:

> > >> > Michael, I think you must be older than you look :p
> > >>
> > >> 28. […]

Same here.

> My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop horizontal
> all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a front-panel (7-segment
> LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"
> 
> And of floppies that really *are* floppy (5.25")...

I still punched holes in 5.25" disks to make them two-sided in a 1541.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

Today’s stress is the good old times of the day after tomorrow.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 284 bytes --]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:07:41 +0100, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:

> I still punched holes in 5.25" disks to make them two-sided in a 1541.

As if the 1541 wasn't slow and unreliable enough as standard.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

FINE: Tax for doing wrong. Tax: fine for doing fine.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 454 bytes --]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:29:47 +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:

> My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop
> horizontal all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a
> front-panel (7-segment LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"

Did the switch do anything else, apart from change the numbers on the
front?


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Politicians are like nappies
Both should be changed regularly, and for the same reason

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Pandu Poluan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 573 bytes --]

On Jan 30, 2012 4:39 PM, "Neil Bothwick" <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:29:47 +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:
>
> > My earliest "new and shiny" then would be a honkin' big desktop
> > horizontal all-steel box, with a "Turbo" switch that toggles a
> > front-panel (7-segment LED)  display between "4.77" and "8.00"
>
> Did the switch do anything else, apart from change the numbers on the
> front?
>

Well, it *did* change the speed from slow to not-that-slow :-P

Do it several times back-to-back, and you'll lock the system to hardware
reset ;-)

Rgds,

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 810 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Mike Edenfield]

On 1/29/2012 1:14 PM, Michael Mol wrote:

> 2) On PC clones, floppies never had auto-insert detection. (Though
> maybe you'd get something like that if you used a superfloppy or
> LS-120 drive to read them)

Technically, they did, it was just impossible for an OS to 
make it actually work:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/02/9528175.aspx

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Hampicke]

> Technically, they did, it was just impossible for an OS to make it
> actually work:
> 
> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/02/9528175.aspx


Quote
> And you certainly don't want to make the user go through this
> training session when they unpack their computer on Christmas
> morning. "Thank you for using Window 95. Before we begin, please
> insert a floppy disk in drive A:."

I wish they would have tought of that when they forced users to activate
and/or register Windows.

"Thank you for using Window XP. Before we begin, please enter your 100
digit serial number"

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[James Broadhead]

On 30 January 2012 13:09, Michael Hampicke <gentoo-user@hadt.biz> wrote:
>> Technically, they did, it was just impossible for an OS to make it
>> actually work:
>>
>> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/02/9528175.aspx

From the comments:
Barry Kelly: "Win95 Setup *does* make the floppy drive grind, though,
as have all versions of Windows Setup from 95 through to XP. (Speaking
as an ex hardware technician who installed Windows hundreds of times.)

Specifically, it makes the grinding noise when it's setting up the
Start Menu items for the first time (it says). I personally suspect
it's because it's creating the "Send To" shortcut, but that's only my
suspicion."


Honestly, given that it's a single bit check per hardware change, it
doesn't seem like all that challenging of a feature. We could have had
autorun.inf viruses almost 5 years earlier!

RE: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Mike Edenfield]

> From: James Broadhead [mailto:jamesbroadhead@gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 8:15 AM
 
> On 30 January 2012 13:09, Michael Hampicke <gentoo-user@hadt.biz> wrote:
> >> Technically, they did, it was just impossible for an OS to make it
> >> actually work:
> >>
> >> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/02/9528175.aspx
 
> Honestly, given that it's a single bit check per hardware change, it
> doesn't seem like all that challenging of a feature. We could have had
> autorun.inf viruses almost 5 years earlier!

The problem, IIRC, is that the floppy bus has no way of identifying a "hardware change" even happened, so there would be nothing to trigger the hardware re-check.

Of course you could "make it work" with all kinds of heuristics but most of them involve getting the auto-insert check wrong at least once. That means either spinning up the drive when it's empty ("Dear /.: Windows is stupid! It keeps trying to read from my floppy drive when there's no disk."), or failing to spin up when a disk is inserted and requiring user intervention ("Dear /.: Windows is stupid! It used to know when I put a disk in my floppy and now it stopped!"). 

By the time Windows 95 came along floppies were on the way out and really not worth the hassle. Windows auto-mounts all drives on demand, so it didn't really need to know when you put a disk in, and none of the software that came on floppies had autorun setup. I'm kinda surprised they even spent as much time as they did looking at it :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> Technically, they did, it was just impossible for an OS to make it
>> actually work:
>>
>> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/02/9528175.aspx
> 
> 
> Quote
>> And you certainly don't want to make the user go through this
>> training session when they unpack their computer on Christmas
>> morning. "Thank you for using Window 95. Before we begin, please
>> insert a floppy disk in drive A:."
> 
> I wish they would have tought of that when they forced users to activate
> and/or register Windows.
> 
> "Thank you for using Window XP. Before we begin, please enter your 100
> digit serial number"
> 
> 


I had to replace a mobo and hard drive for a friend once.  For some
reason the drive and controller went out.  Anyway, when we reinstalled
winders, it said we had to call M$ to get some long freaking number.
While on the phone with them, I told them I had never heard of such
nonsense before.  She progressed to telling me all the canned responses
but she didn't expect my response.  I told her I used Linux and when you
get a CD and install it on more than one system, the Linux folks have a
party instead of requiring a confirmation number.  I then went on to
explain how I was doing this for a friend and that I wouldn't install M$
crap on my rig if it was free.  I could tell she was not happy about my
thoughts on her product since she got quiet.  Me being a chatter box at
times, I just kept explaining the advantages of Linux over M$.

I got my number tho.  My friend is happy.  I have converted a few people
over to Linux since then too.  She just thought she hated me back then.
 lol

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Peter Humphrey]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1004 bytes --]

On Monday 30 January 2012 21:20:59 Dale wrote:

> I had to replace a mobo and hard drive for a friend once.  For some
> reason the drive and controller went out.  Anyway, when we reinstalled
> winders, it said we had to call M$ to get some long freaking number.
> While on the phone with them, I told them I had never heard of such
> nonsense before.  She progressed to telling me all the canned responses
> but she didn't expect my response.  I told her I used Linux and when you
> get a CD and install it on more than one system, the Linux folks have a
> party instead of requiring a confirmation number.  I then went on to
> explain how I was doing this for a friend and that I wouldn't install M$
> crap on my rig if it was free.  I could tell she was not happy about my
> thoughts on her product since she got quiet.  Me being a chatter box at
> times, I just kept explaining the advantages of Linux over M$.

How to win friends and influence people!

-- 
Rgds
Peter		Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4381 bytes --]

RE: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Mike Edenfield]

> From: Michael Hampicke [mailto:gentoo-user@hadt.biz]
> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 8:10 AM
> 
> > Technically, they did, it was just impossible for an OS to make it
> > actually work:
> >
> > http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/04/02/9528175.aspx
> 
> 
> Quote
> > And you certainly don't want to make the user go through this
> > training session when they unpack their computer on Christmas
> > morning. "Thank you for using Window 95. Before we begin, please
> > insert a floppy disk in drive A:."
> 
> I wish they would have tought of that when they forced users to activate
> and/or register Windows.
> 
> "Thank you for using Window XP. Before we begin, please enter your 100
> digit serial number"

Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won $5.

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Hampicke]

> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won $5.

I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
I was using Win95 - and was happy with it

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Hampicke]

> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won $5.

I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
I was using Win7 - and was happy with it

And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
1.something (but up until now just on the servers).

I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.

So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Walter Dnes]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
> > Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won $5.
> 
> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
> 
> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
> 
> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
> 
> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.

  I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[wdk@moriah]

Hey, WinME was a killer app!

MS were really smart with it and if they used the same philosophy with vista, how different things could have been!

WinME killed so many systems, user experiences and expectations that when 2k came along every one was so pleased to upgrade (nt4 was never really pushed to users) :)

W.Kenworthy


On 01/02/2012, at 1:30, "Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
>>> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won $5.
>> 
>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
>> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
>> 
>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
>> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>> 
>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
>> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
>> 
>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
> 
>  I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
> more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
> down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
> would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.
> 
> -- 
> Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
> 

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tue, January 31, 2012 6:30 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
>> > Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a
>> pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won
>> $5.
>>
>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
>> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
>> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
>>
>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
>> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>>
>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
>> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
>>
>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
>
>   I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
> more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
> down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
> would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.

I enjoyed MS Dos, then played a bit with MS Win3.11, MS Win95 and MS Win98SE.
However, for important stuff, like day-to-day desktop, I switched to Linux
in 1997. That was the last time I lost files due to a crash of MS
Windows...

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> 
> On Tue, January 31, 2012 6:30 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
>>>> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a
>>> pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won
>>> $5.
>>>
>>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
>>> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
>>> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
>>> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
>>> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
>>> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
>>>
>>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
>>> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>>>
>>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
>>> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
>>>
>>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
>>
>>   I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
>> more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
>> down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
>> would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.
> 
> I enjoyed MS Dos, then played a bit with MS Win3.11, MS Win95 and MS Win98SE.
> However, for important stuff, like day-to-day desktop, I switched to Linux
> in 1997. That was the last time I lost files due to a crash of MS
> Windows...
> 
> --
> Joost
> 
> 
> 


When 3.1 came out, I changed jobs.  Swapping 15 floppies is no fun to
me.  Funny, reinstalling fixed the problems back then and it still is
the best way to fix windoze.

< sighs >

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:36 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, January 31, 2012 6:30 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
>>>>> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a
>>>> pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won
>>>> $5.
>>>>
>>>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
>>>>
>>>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
>>>> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>>>>
>>>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
>>>> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
>>>>
>>>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
>>>
>>>   I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
>>> more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
>>> down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
>>> would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.
>>
>> I enjoyed MS Dos, then played a bit with MS Win3.11, MS Win95 and MS Win98SE.
>> However, for important stuff, like day-to-day desktop, I switched to Linux
>> in 1997. That was the last time I lost files due to a crash of MS
>> Windows...
>>
>> --
>> Joost
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> When 3.1 came out, I changed jobs.  Swapping 15 floppies is no fun to
> me.  Funny, reinstalling fixed the problems back then and it still is
> the best way to fix windoze.
>
> < sighs >

Actually, the reason for that's pretty easy to explain. It's because
Windows, unlike every major Linux distribution since Apt, wasn't
designed around pulling software from centralized repositories.
Instead, ISVs were expected to provide installers, which users were
expected to obtain from outside channels and run. That seems archaic
to Linux users, but even Red Hat was like that before yum.

Since there was no centralized, curated software repository maintained
by people ensuring things worked properly together, you got everything
from DLL hell to developers violating Microsoft's recommendations
(and, considering that Microsoft *designed the platform*, you can
consider their recommendations as part of the platform spec) and good
development practice. So you have things like:

* People bypassing APIs and munging registry keys directly. This would
be like a Linux app going in and modifying Debian's package database
without going through an intermediate library kept in lockstep with
the package manager code. Eventually, one's going to behave in a way
the other isn't going to expect, and either the package database will
become corrupt ("f'ing $OSVENDOR! Their stuff keeps breaking!", the
user will curse), or the application will stop working ("F'ing
$OSVENDOR! They keep breaking my stuff!")

* People not bothering to understand DLL search paths, and getting
into the habit of dropping their DLL into the SYSTEM32 folder. That
would be like manually building and installing a package to /usr/
instead of /usr/local, or a library in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib with
an improper soname. Eventually, you risk changing the behavior of an
unrelated app, or having an unrelated app change your app's behavior,
all because a couple DLLs had the same name and no differentiating
metadata.

* People only ever testing their programs while they have
Administrator privileges, and so their programs only ever work
correctly while running as Administrator. This would be like an app
found in /usr/bin assuming it can write anywhere it pleases, call any
API call it needs, and doing some marginally unsafe things with system
calls. To get it to work properly, you'd have to make it suid root,
and it'd be a vulnerability vector.

The analogies aren't perfect, but the points still stand. Sad thing
is, if and when Microsoft takes steps toward a repository model (these
days, people like to call them app stores) they'll be lambasted as
being evil for applying a gateway to the platform, even though it's
going to be a necessary step to fixing a lot of what's wrong with the
development culture on that platform.

Linux isn't perfect in these regards, but the combination of being
open source, of distros having their own software repositories and of
distro maintainers feeding fixes upstream is an exceedingly effective
combination. Linux systems don't accrue systemic cruft nearly as
rapidly as Windows systems, in large part because of the forced
cooperation applied by the LSB and by distro maintainers.

Cruft buildup can still happen, though, and that's why "emerge -e
@world" exists. And, actually, that's a pretty analogous action to
reinstalling Windows. It's just much easier, and does a better job of
retaining user and application settings.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Dale]

Michael Mol wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:36 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, January 31, 2012 6:30 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
>>>>>> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes a
>>>>> pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won
>>>>> $5.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
>>>>> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
>>>>> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
>>>>> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
>>>>> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
>>>>> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
>>>>>
>>>>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
>>>>> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>>>>>
>>>>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation (Gentoo)
>>>>> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
>>>>>
>>>>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
>>>>
>>>>   I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
>>>> more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
>>>> down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
>>>> would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.
>>>
>>> I enjoyed MS Dos, then played a bit with MS Win3.11, MS Win95 and MS Win98SE.
>>> However, for important stuff, like day-to-day desktop, I switched to Linux
>>> in 1997. That was the last time I lost files due to a crash of MS
>>> Windows...
>>>
>>> --
>>> Joost
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> When 3.1 came out, I changed jobs.  Swapping 15 floppies is no fun to
>> me.  Funny, reinstalling fixed the problems back then and it still is
>> the best way to fix windoze.
>>
>> < sighs >
> 
> Actually, the reason for that's pretty easy to explain. It's because
> Windows, unlike every major Linux distribution since Apt, wasn't
> designed around pulling software from centralized repositories.
> Instead, ISVs were expected to provide installers, which users were
> expected to obtain from outside channels and run. That seems archaic
> to Linux users, but even Red Hat was like that before yum.
> 
> Since there was no centralized, curated software repository maintained
> by people ensuring things worked properly together, you got everything
> from DLL hell to developers violating Microsoft's recommendations
> (and, considering that Microsoft *designed the platform*, you can
> consider their recommendations as part of the platform spec) and good
> development practice. So you have things like:
> 
> * People bypassing APIs and munging registry keys directly. This would
> be like a Linux app going in and modifying Debian's package database
> without going through an intermediate library kept in lockstep with
> the package manager code. Eventually, one's going to behave in a way
> the other isn't going to expect, and either the package database will
> become corrupt ("f'ing $OSVENDOR! Their stuff keeps breaking!", the
> user will curse), or the application will stop working ("F'ing
> $OSVENDOR! They keep breaking my stuff!")
> 
> * People not bothering to understand DLL search paths, and getting
> into the habit of dropping their DLL into the SYSTEM32 folder. That
> would be like manually building and installing a package to /usr/
> instead of /usr/local, or a library in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib with
> an improper soname. Eventually, you risk changing the behavior of an
> unrelated app, or having an unrelated app change your app's behavior,
> all because a couple DLLs had the same name and no differentiating
> metadata.
> 
> * People only ever testing their programs while they have
> Administrator privileges, and so their programs only ever work
> correctly while running as Administrator. This would be like an app
> found in /usr/bin assuming it can write anywhere it pleases, call any
> API call it needs, and doing some marginally unsafe things with system
> calls. To get it to work properly, you'd have to make it suid root,
> and it'd be a vulnerability vector.
> 
> The analogies aren't perfect, but the points still stand. Sad thing
> is, if and when Microsoft takes steps toward a repository model (these
> days, people like to call them app stores) they'll be lambasted as
> being evil for applying a gateway to the platform, even though it's
> going to be a necessary step to fixing a lot of what's wrong with the
> development culture on that platform.
> 
> Linux isn't perfect in these regards, but the combination of being
> open source, of distros having their own software repositories and of
> distro maintainers feeding fixes upstream is an exceedingly effective
> combination. Linux systems don't accrue systemic cruft nearly as
> rapidly as Windows systems, in large part because of the forced
> cooperation applied by the LSB and by distro maintainers.
> 
> Cruft buildup can still happen, though, and that's why "emerge -e
> @world" exists. And, actually, that's a pretty analogous action to
> reinstalling Windows. It's just much easier, and does a better job of
> retaining user and application settings.
> 


So basically, WINDOZE SUCKS !!!!  LOL

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Walter Dnes]

On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 07:41:29AM -0600, Dale wrote
> 
[...major snippage...]
> 
> So basically, WINDOZE SUCKS !!!!  LOL

  Actually, some Windows *DEVELOPERS* suck.  It's equivalant to some
linux developers assuming that /usr is mounted at the very beginning of
the boot process, so that their code can call all sorts of userspace
stuff... no wait<G>.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 8:01 PM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 07:41:29AM -0600, Dale wrote
>>
> [...major snippage...]
>>
>> So basically, WINDOZE SUCKS !!!!  LOL
>
>  Actually, some Windows *DEVELOPERS* suck.  It's equivalant to some
> linux developers assuming that /usr is mounted at the very beginning of
> the boot process, so that their code can call all sorts of userspace
> stuff... no wait<G>.

I was hoping someone else would make the point. But...yes. That was
most of the point of my email. :)

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 473 bytes --]

On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 08:01:09PM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 07:41:29AM -0600, Dale wrote
> > 
> [...major snippage...]
> > 
> > So basically, WINDOZE SUCKS !!!!  LOL
> 
>   Actually, some Windows *DEVELOPERS* suck.

Reminds me of the “Ballmer peak”: http://xkcd.com/323/
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

On Mondays I feel like Robinson -- I’m waiting for Friday.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

[gentoo-user] Re: Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 02/01/2012 07:36 AM, Dale wrote:
> When 3.1 came out, I changed jobs.  Swapping 15 floppies is no fun to
> me.  Funny, reinstalling fixed the problems back then and it still is
> the best way to fix windoze.

I installed a Windows 95 beta from floppies :-)  Microsoft shipped them 
DMF formatted (1.68MB instead of 1.44MB) but still, they were way too 
many; around 30 disks or more.  And before doing that, I had to make 
copies of every single one in case they go bad.

Good times :-P

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wed, February 1, 2012 6:36 am, Dale wrote:
> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, January 31, 2012 6:30 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote
>>>>> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before someone makes
>>>>> a
>>>> pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I just won
>>>> $5.
>>>>
>>>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win95 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using WinNT4 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it
>>>> I was using Win7 - and was happy with it
>>>>
>>>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user since
>>>> 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>>>>
>>>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my Workstation
>>>> (Gentoo)
>>>> and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few month ago.
>>>>
>>>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
>>>
>>>   I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've been even
>>> more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly tried to ram ActiveX
>>> down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX, and 99% of "drive-by-downloads"
>>> would've disappeared.  WinME was a sad joke, however.
>>
>> I enjoyed MS Dos, then played a bit with MS Win3.11, MS Win95 and MS
>> Win98SE.
>> However, for important stuff, like day-to-day desktop, I switched to
>> Linux
>> in 1997. That was the last time I lost files due to a crash of MS
>> Windows...
>>
>> --
>> Joost
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> When 3.1 came out, I changed jobs.  Swapping 15 floppies is no fun to
> me.  Funny, reinstalling fixed the problems back then and it still is
> the best way to fix windoze.

You should've tried installing MS Office back then...
45 (Or there-abouts) floppies and the installer asking for them in a
random order. With some of those being asked several times...

The guy asking for it paid a lot for it, so it wasn't too bad. ;)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Hinnerk van Bruinehsen]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 02.02.2012 08:54, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> 
> On Wed, February 1, 2012 6:36 am, Dale wrote:
>> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Tue, January 31, 2012 6:30 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 06:05:12PM +0100, Michael Hampicke
>>>> wrote
>>>>>> Sweet. I had 15 minutes in the office "how long before
>>>>>> someone makes a
>>>>> pointless, unrelated Windows insult out of my post" pool; I
>>>>> just won $5.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I was using Win3.1 - and was happy with it I was using
>>>>> Win95 - and was happy with it I was using WinNT4 - and was
>>>>> happy with it I was using Win2000 - and was happy with it I
>>>>> was using Win Server 2003 - and was happy with it I was
>>>>> using Win7 - and was happy with it
>>>>> 
>>>>> And I am also a Linux SuSe user since 6.0 and Gentoo user
>>>>> since 1.something (but up until now just on the servers).
>>>>> 
>>>>> I made the final switch from Windows to Linux on my
>>>>> Workstation (Gentoo) and Notebook (Lubuntu) only a few
>>>>> month ago.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So please, don't accuse me of making Windows insults.
>>>> 
>>>> I feel that Win98SE was the best Windows ever, and could've
>>>> been even more of a killer if Microsoft hadn't so stupidly
>>>> tried to ram ActiveX down people's throats.  Remove ActiveX,
>>>> and 99% of "drive-by-downloads" would've disappeared.  WinME
>>>> was a sad joke, however.
>>> 
>>> I enjoyed MS Dos, then played a bit with MS Win3.11, MS Win95
>>> and MS Win98SE. However, for important stuff, like day-to-day
>>> desktop, I switched to Linux in 1997. That was the last time I
>>> lost files due to a crash of MS Windows...
>>> 
>>> -- Joost
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> When 3.1 came out, I changed jobs.  Swapping 15 floppies is no
>> fun to me.  Funny, reinstalling fixed the problems back then and
>> it still is the best way to fix windoze.
> 
> You should've tried installing MS Office back then... 45 (Or
> there-abouts) floppies and the installer asking for them in a 
> random order. With some of those being asked several times...
> 
> The guy asking for it paid a lot for it, so it wasn't too bad. ;)
> 
> -- Joost
> 
> 

I remember OS/2 Warp 3.0 - 1 CDROM oder 95 floppies. I bought a
cdrom-drive after the install failed the third time because of a bad
disk (no. 70+, if i recall correctly) ;)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.18 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPKlS6AAoJEJwwOFaNFkYclKoH/AnQvPmsU4iAXALQ8OIYadGY
VNiO1XVPcQDYHvVNBmaAbDlUWiFJh/qYNE7ocUaG7L6jecjM8hOUCdbCxGydt+zt
lpMzA3piA9dWKf9GcAipud3tLSNNp3/6RnjMPa2rlpXR1u3DPwKm65ZYY/x7IJ03
LgEk922R0soUgR71AkYYTBYF3LT6Zz8eosopeZBtHmpX0j+P++Xia1Ao9jKEn3vL
fn3uiwzMWhUGvQgufh/SA7Cc5GvEUV80f0jFN3RU33ECLTznC4AC/jEeahHR4Wvc
tuqtuaFfna/TauCy09619GLFPyg7CmToPXWhmeaFlfFTq4ntUCzcqoJaVXJ8fcQ=
=Y6ke
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: [gentoo-user] Floppy support question for old farts. lol

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 1:54 AM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
> You should've tried installing MS Office back then...
> 45 (Or there-abouts) floppies and the installer asking for them in a
> random order. With some of those being asked several times...
>
> The guy asking for it paid a lot for it, so it wasn't too bad. ;)

I had to install Lotus Smart Suite on dozens of computers, it was
about 70 floppies IIRC. That became really fun when I suspected
someone had a virus, which infects every disk inserted... this was
before antivirus software was common. At home, on an OS/2 machine, I
dialed up the McAfee BBS and downloaded their AV program, made a
virus-free bootable floppy, set it read-only, and took it to work.
Nearly every computer, every disk, in offices covering half of the
USA, were infected with the Monkey.B virus. I proceeded to disinfect
hundreds of floppy disks at the offices where I worked for the rest of
the week. Fun. :)