OT: new PC catch-22

[jasen]

Thanks for the good info, John. I'm already running Eagle on Suse
with excellent results, and starting to think it might be time to
convert everything else over to Linux.

How do you back up your system in case of hard disk failure? Is
there an equivalent to XCOPY32?

A number of rough equivalents.

What I'm looking for is to have a backup drive that I can install as
Master and have it contain exactly what is on the original. The
advantage of XCOPY32 is it doesn't waste time copying files that
don't need updating, so the backup is very quick and you can afford
to do it several times per day.

The standard copy program ( "cp" ) has an option ( "--update" ) to do that.

Bye.
Jasen

 

[jasen]

On the other hand ... bought this motherboard a few months ago. Found I
needed a new case as PCB mounting holes are now different.
Still wouldn't work. Discover I needed to buy a 'new style' PSU with the
extra power connector thingy. Then a 2 day waste of my life finding out it
wouldn't run windows98. Discover it was designed for the damnable windows
XP.
So, hardware had been designed for a particular micro (AMD) and a particular
microshite OS. Nowhere were these details stated. The arrogant bastards
assumption being that we're all non technical consumers, hence will buy and
use whatever package they choose to offer us.
Seems the only 'compatability' we are left with, is the ability to run ms
progs. Aren't monopolies just the thing!.

about 1993 sometime OS developers stopped relying on the bios for accessing
the hardware features, as a result your OS needs drivers to access the
hardware. If the harware was made after whoever is responsible for the
driver stopped supporting your chosen OS, you're out of luck.

Bye.
Jasen

 

[Mike Monett]

The standard copy program ("cp") has an option ("- update") to do
that.

Jasen

Thanks, Jasen. I was under the impression Linux may not always save
the data files currently in memory to the disk. Is there a flush
command to force it to save everything and ensure these files are
always copied to the backup?

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/index.htm
SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/spice/xtal/clapp.htm
Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/sampler/intro.htm

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Thanks, Jasen. I was under the impression Linux may not always save
the data files currently in memory to the disk. Is there a flush
command to force it to save everything and ensure these files are
always copied to the backup?

sync

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

On the other hand ... bought this motherboard a few months ago. Found I
needed a new case as PCB mounting holes are now different.
Still wouldn't work. Discover I needed to buy a 'new style' PSU with the
extra power connector thingy. Then a 2 day waste of my life finding out it
wouldn't run windows98. Discover it was designed for the damnable windows
XP.
So, hardware had been designed for a particular micro (AMD) and a particular
microshite OS. Nowhere were these details stated. The arrogant bastards
assumption being that we're all non technical consumers, hence will buy and
use whatever package they choose to offer us.
Seems the only 'compatability' we are left with, is the ability to run ms
progs. Aren't monopolies just the thing!.
john

Do a little research next time. The socket type will tell you what
processors you can use. That also gives you an idea of what OS it will
support. Go to the MB OEM web page and look at the available drivers
and you will know what OS it will support.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[John Devereux]

Thanks for the good info, John. I'm already running Eagle on Suse
with excellent results, and starting to think it might be time to
convert everything else over to Linux.

How do you back up your system in case of hard disk failure? Is
there an equivalent to XCOPY32?

Yes, several. The general command is "copy", but I like the "rsync"
command, this can be used between different computers too.

e.g.

rsync -a /source /destination

does a local copy and

rsync -a /source 192.168.0.2:/destination

copies to a remote machine.

There are lots of flags and options to say what is copied and how. In
general only changed files get physically transferred so it is very
efficient.

 

[Mike Monett]

Yes, several. The general command is "copy", but I like the
"rsync" command, this can be used between different computers too.

rsync -a /source /destination

does a local copy and

rsync -a /source 192.168.0.2:/destination

copies to a remote machine.

There are lots of flags and options to say what is copied and how.
In general only changed files get physically transferred so it is
very efficient.

John Devereux

That's great. Thanks, John. Merry Xmas!

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/index.htm
SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/spice/xtal/clapp.htm
Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/sampler/intro.htm

 

[Jamie]

Yes, several. The general command is "copy", but I like the "rsync"
command, this can be used between different computers too.

e.g.

rsync -a /source /destination

does a local copy and

rsync -a /source 192.168.0.2:/destination

copies to a remote machine.

There are lots of flags and options to say what is copied and how. In
general only changed files get physically transferred so it is very
efficient.

I have something to say about Linux., The little i have played with it
really impressed me when i transferred a large jpeg 1.2 Meg in size to
the Floppy. It wrote so fast to the floppy that i was very skeptical as
to it's fitness when completed. I popped out the floppy and then
reloaded that same file in a MS-Windows machine. It took 10 times longer
to read it and that isn't no exaggeration, with 0 defects on the read.
That in it self, really gave me a thumbs up. It seems that i always
had to pop in DOS mode to use the verify command to make sure the
floppy's data was valid in a Windows machine. Many times, Windows would
completely either miss a sector or simply write all FF's or 00's to a
sector. In DOS mode, it never seem to do this. And this is in various
Window machines i have found this to be true. when i say DOS mode i mean
either in Real DOS or a windows DOS box.
Thanks Microshaft!, you caused me lots of grief in the past!

 

[Joel Kolstad]

I have something to say about Linux., The little i have played with it
really impressed me when i transferred a large jpeg 1.2 Meg in size to the
Floppy. It wrote so fast to the floppy that i was very skeptical as
to it's fitness when completed.

I suspect that the drivers (software) for floppy disks in Windows probably
hasn't been touched in a decade. :-( It also seems as though the hardware
quality of floppy drives is pretty low these days, but given that the things
sell for $10 I can't really complain that much.

I have seen Linux behave somewhat worse with respect to PC BIOSes than
Windows does... there's the well-known problem where it corrupted the BIOS's
real-time clock data, causing some Dell laptops to refuse to boot at well
until you removed the CMOS backup battery, and I have a PC that fails to
"see" its USB-connected internal card readers after rebooting after having
used Linux.

 

[Robert Baer]

I use the original 20 GB from a Etower 733 MHz computer with windows
ME to test lots of motherboards, and has never refused to work. Each
restore CDROM, on the other hand, looks for a certain emachines bios. I
have collected a number of OEM restore disks for different brands and
models.

** That is not exactly what i meant; if the HD in the Emachine was
replaced with a new one, you may not be able to get the computer to work
due to proprietary items the BIOS wants to see.

 

[Robert Baer]

I can't agree with that. I have run XP on machines from a 200 MHz
Pentium up to 2.4 GHz P4s. Also dos and windows 3.1 on athlon 1.1 GHz and
P4s. Also linux and lindows on same machines. (yes, too much free time)
Though newer stuff does not ususally come with drivers for dos and older
windows (95/98).

Tha is *not* what was stated; the problem mentioned was running an
*old* OS on a *new* motherboard.

 

[Robert Baer]

Thanks, Jasen. I was under the impression Linux may not always save
the data files currently in memory to the disk. Is there a flush
command to force it to save everything and ensure these files are
always copied to the backup?

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/index.htm
SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/spice/xtal/clapp.htm
Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/sampler/intro.htm

I think "flush" is a program feature available in C, C+, etc and has
to be put into a program at appropiate places before compiling.
I do not think anyne has bothered to make a stand-alone program that
would "snoop" for open files and then close them; i am not sure if that
would be possible..

 

[Robert Baer]

Do a little research next time. The socket type will tell you what
processors you can use. That also gives you an idea of what OS it will
support. Go to the MB OEM web page and look at the available drivers
and you will know what OS it will support.

The motherboard, CPU and RAM were bought as a "bundle" (do i hear an
echo here?).
That is tanatamount to a guarantee by the seller that they work together.
And indeed, the motherboard was made for the Intel D 2X2 CPU and the
BIOS at that time "worked" with that CPU.
The minor problems (echo again) were that the BIOS initial screen
would not show any installed IDE drives, the boot process showed an
"Intel CPU uCODE error" and it would not boot from a/any WinXP CD.
A BIOS upgrade (to a newer, beta version) solved the uCODE problem
*only*.

 

[John Devereux]

Sorry, re-reading this, in linux of course it is "cp" not "copy".

As Neil Stephenson once said:

"Note the obsessive use of abbreviations and avoidance of capital
letters; this is a system invented by people to whom repetitive stress
disorder is what black lung is to miners."

<SNIP>

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

** That is not exactly what i meant; if the HD in the Emachine was
replaced with a new one, you may not be able to get the computer to work
due to proprietary items the BIOS wants to see.

Robert, I have installed many hard drives in used emachines where the
previous owner removed the drive to destroy it. I booted from a floppy,
formatted the drive and ran the restore disk with no problems. I make
the boot disks with files from http://www.bootdisk.com for whatever OS I
will be using.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

The motherboard, CPU and RAM were bought as a "bundle" (do i hear an
echo here?).
That is tanatamount to a guarantee by the seller that they work together.
And indeed, the motherboard was made for the Intel D 2X2 CPU and the
BIOS at that time "worked" with that CPU.
The minor problems (echo again) were that the BIOS initial screen
would not show any installed IDE drives, the boot process showed an
"Intel CPU uCODE error" and it would not boot from a/any WinXP CD.
A BIOS upgrade (to a newer, beta version) solved the uCODE problem
*only*.

Robert, my reply was to John's problems, not yours.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[John Larkin]

Start with new (6-month old), bleeding edge stuff: motherboard, Intel
D CPU, 80Gbyte hard drive, Sony DVD R/W, 500W supply, WinXP Pro.
Major problems:
1) "Intel uCode error...press F1 to continue" no boot from the WinXP CD.
2) Update BIOS to latest available (beta): the uCode error goes away; no
boot.
3) Go into the BIOS setup, first screen: *nothing* recognized; Primary
Master, Primary Slave,Seconsdary Master and Secondary Slave all have the
same message, to the effect "nothing available".

But, in booting up, there is a bit of screen fiddling, and the
installed hard drive and DVD drive are listed as present.
The DVD light has a very short blink after that, but the CD is not
accessed.

Now, the interesting part: plop in a PartitionMagic (bootable) CD,
and that works!
Understand, the PartitionMagic CD is old, way before Micro$uck
thought of XP (2002).

Seems to me that M$ has teamed with the BIOS and board makers to make
sure that one cannot *install* WinXp from scratch on these new computers.

But..if you happen to have a computer like that with WinXP installed,
the WinXP is readable and can be used for updates, etc.

So....
How in the h*ll does one start from scratch?

Why not just buy a pc with the os installed, all working?

John

 

[Robert Baer]

Robert, I have installed many hard drives in used emachines where the
previous owner removed the drive to destroy it. I booted from a floppy,
formatted the drive and ran the restore disk with no problems. I make
the boot disks with files from http://www.bootdisk.com for whatever OS I
will be using.

Thanks for the clarification; i had heard that they wrote something
special on their hard drives.
I believed that because i had run into such foolishments on a PC a
number of years ago.

 

[Sergey Kubushin]

I suspect that the drivers (software) for floppy disks in Windows probably
hasn't been touched in a decade. :-( It also seems as though the hardware
quality of floppy drives is pretty low these days, but given that the things
sell for $10 I can't really complain that much.

I have seen Linux behave somewhat worse with respect to PC BIOSes than
Windows does... there's the well-known problem where it corrupted the BIOS's
real-time clock data, causing some Dell laptops to refuse to boot at well
until you removed the CMOS backup battery, and I have a PC that fails to
"see" its USB-connected internal card readers after rebooting after having
used Linux.

Linux does NOT use pee-see BIOS. Only the very first part of initial kernel
loader does to build a memory map that is a nightmare in ix86 BTW. Then it
switches to protected mode where there is no BIOS access at all.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Thanks for the clarification; i had heard that they wrote something
special on their hard drives.
I believed that because i had run into such foolishments on a PC a
number of years ago.

Radio Shack/Tandy computers and drives were like that. The computer
bios would complain that the drive wasn't from Radio Shack, and if you
put the drive in another computer it would tell you that it couldn't be
used in a non-Radio Shack Computer. It was a real pain to salvage files
for people. You had to find a computer and drive that worked together,
then use the parallel or serial port to transfer data files to another
computer with the old "Interlink" DOS program from MS. (Its called
"Direct Cable Connect" in Windows. these days.)


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida