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CHAOS MANOR MAIL

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Begin with the Alpha chip discussion, including a definitive answer by Peter Glaskowsky. Continue with a nice puff, then move to why I don't do Technet here.

Then some good advice from Professor Irwin on OUTLOOK.

Cure for an IDE problem:

IRQ mess

Of zip and shark

Time Machine Earth

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From: Aaron Sakovich <sakovich@hsv.sungardtrust.com>

Date: Mon, 03 Aug 1998 08:58:45 -0500

Subj: Press Release, Computer Users Seek Choice From Microsoft

____________________________________________________________

Press Release The AlphaNT Source

http://www.alphant.com/

 

Computer Users Seek Choice From Microsoft

Users ask Microsoft to level the playing field to help all consumers

Huntsville - 30 July, 1998 -- Computer users and professionals from all around the world have joined together to ask Microsoft to provide consumers a choice in the computer industry.

In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT on the Intel, MIPS, and Alpha platforms. Since then, CPU platforms have come and gone on the supported list, but two have remained consistent and true to the original precept that NT was an open and portable computing environment—the Intel x86 and Alpha families of microprocessors.

Microsoft has done an admirable job in ensuring that the components for NT Server, especially the BackOffice components, have been simultaneously released on the various computing platforms supported by Windows NT. But things have changed since NT was first introduced—the Alpha platform is now the only alternative for consumers running Windows NT. It is in the unique position of offering a competitive advantage for users with consistently higher performance, 64 bit processing capabilities today, and competitive pricing. It is finding that the original niche it occupied in a server role has expanded into the high-end workstation market, and now is moving into the commodity workstation segment.

"Commoditizing" Alpha

While Compaq, Samsung, and Alpha Processor, Inc. move Alpha into the mainstream, and many software companies have fully embraced the Alpha platform, Microsoft to date has concentrated almost exclusively on the high-end server market with their products. The members of the AlphaNT mail list, an Internet resource devoted to the technical issues regarding Windows NT running on the Alpha platform, joined together to create an Open Letter To Microsoft. In this letter, the signatories ask Microsoft to remember its long-term goal to make Windows NT a truly platform independent environment, thereby furthering consumer choice and fostering competition. The group identifies 6 particular areas where they feel that Microsoft can improve their products:

1. Develop and implement a plan to port all possible Microsoft applications (from Access to FrontPage and even Monster Truck Madness) to the Alpha platform.

2. Include Alpha binaries on the same media as x86 software distributions, just as Microsoft currently does for all BackOffice applications.

3. Release all new software and updates simultaneously on both platforms.

4. Include Alpha compatibility and system requirements on all product descriptions on the Microsoft website and other literature where hardware requirements are listed. If a product is not yet released for a specific platform, indicate an expected release date.

5. On all website downloads, provide and clearly indicate separate Alpha and x86 downloads.

6. Revise the "Made for Windows NT" logo requirements to accentuate NT’s cross-platform compatibility in order to ease the buyers’ burden when purchasing software: if an application is not available on all platforms, the vendor should be required to explicitly identify their diminished functionality. Vendors who support both platforms should be accordingly rewarded.

"This is not an adversarial role that we are taking with Microsoft," says Aaron Sakovich, founder and publisher of The AlphaNT Source (http://www.alphant.com/), an independent website devoted to the combination of Windows NT running on Alpha processors, and host site of the Open Letter To Microsoft. "We feel that we’ve found a way that Microsoft can improve their products while simultaneously offering consumers more choice than they’ve ever had before." He adds, "It also helps to foster competition in the microprocessor industry, which is good for all computer users, regardless of operating system or CPU platform." Along those lines, he points out that many users have questioned whether 350 and 400 MHz Intel chips would be available today if it wasn’t for the 667 and 767 MHz Alphas processors, even though the higher speed Alphas have traditionally been marketed into very narrow niches.

The Open Letter To Microsoft

The full contents of the letter can be found on The AlphaNT Source at http://www.alphant.com/, along with the list of signatures of those computer users and professionals who have already put their names on the letter. This letter will stay on the site, and the list of signatures collected will be made available to Microsoft.

The AlphaNT Source

The AlphaNT Source is the global, independent resource for all things relating to the combination of the open and vendor independent, high performance, 64 bit Alpha microprocessor and Microsoft’s operating system, Windows NT. On that website, you’ll find links to news, articles, FAQ’s, mail lists, file archives, and other Web sites related to this topic. The intent of the content is to ensure that users of Alpha based system, or even prospective owners, get the full capabilities out of the world’s fastest computer and the most popular operating system. The AlphaNT Source is accessible at http://www.alphant.com/.

Contact information

Aaron Sakovich, sakovich@hsv.sungardtrust.com

Chefren Hagens, chefren@pi.net

The AlphaNT Source, http://www.alphant.com/

Information regarding the AlphaNT mail list can also be obtained on The AlphaNT Source.

Note: Direct links to the letter are discouraged as the site is changing locations and URL’s. The site link to www.alphant.com will be guaranteed to work now and into the future; a reference to the letter will remain prominent at the top of the main page on that site. Information on The AlphaNT Source is copylefted per the GNU General Public License unless otherwise specified.

I can certainly agree with that.

Or thought I could. I seem to have disagreements from readers and my own ranks, largely on the grounds that the return on investment isn't there: there just won't be enough alpha chips sold to justify the support. Of course that is certainly a self-fulfilling prophecy. This doesn't mean it's not true without the self-fulfillment, but without NT the Alpha is almost certainly dead.

Every now and then I can be made to listen:

Peter N. Glaskowsky [png@ideaphile.com]

From the Open Letter to Microsoft from the AlphaNT Source:

> While Compaq, Samsung, and Alpha Processor, Inc. move Alpha into the mainstream, and many software companies have fully embraced the Alpha  platform, Microsoft to date has concentrated almost exclusively on the  high-end server market with their products.

Server and workstation, actually. This is all Alpha is good for, unfortunately. Alpha has great floating-point performance, good integer performance, and extremely low manufacturing volumes. This is the classic recipe for a high-end server and workstation processor.

The efforts made by Digital, Samsung, and Mitsubishi to support a low-cost system market prove that these companies just don’t understand what counts in low-cost systems.

Cost is actually way down the list of requirements for mainstream PC buyers. We don’t see this under normal circumstances because the higher-order issues are roughly equivalent for most of the PCs on the market. I think the most critical thing is compatibility. Mere compatibility with _most_ x86 software isn’t enough; most buyers won’t tolerate anything less than perfection on this point. AMD, Cyrix, and IDT all lose sales due to end-user uncertainty, though they’ve basically achieved perfect compatibility right down to the socket level. Even Intel itself suffers when bugs crop up. Alpha NT supports the FX!32 binary translation technology that handles most x86 applications, but in my opinion, FX!32 is far short of what’s needed.

CPU-vendor and system-OEM branding are also more important than cost for most customers. Nobody thinks of Alpha as a desirable CPU brand for the mainstream. Even the people who know about Alpha processors for workstations aren’t entirely sure they want them; other workstations offer better software compatibility, application-level performance, or scalability. In the PC space, Digital hasn’t been able to convince Compaq or Dell or Packard-Bell to offer Alpha-based desktop PCs. I don’t think they ever will, even though Compaq _owns_ Digital now. We could argue about whether this demonstrates the stupidity or savvy of these vendors, but it’s a fact of life. What end user would buy a new CPU if it isn’t good enough for big-name system companies?

Performance is certainly important, but it’s #4 on the list, at best. Like cost, performance is used to help a user pick a particular system configuration once they’ve decided on the big stuff like the OEM, CPU, and basic features. The only way a user decides to get an Alpha is if they need the best possible performance on some particular application like LightWave and they simply don’t care very much about anything else. This is the key— such users are generally graphics professionals, and they almost always have the budget to pay a premium price for such a system.

In other words, the "low-cost Alpha" concept has almost no natural market. That’s my considered opinion, anyway, and I’ve got about four years of relevant experience to back it up. One of my dirty secrets is that I used to be part of the MIPS Windows NT effort back when I was with IDT. I helped MIPS NT system vendors specify, design, and debug systems based on the MIPS R4400 and R4600 processors offered by IDT. We could offer roughly 2X the integer performance and 3X the floating-point performance of comparably-priced Intel processors (at the time, we compared our 133-MHz R4600 against the 66-MHz Pentium), at least on CPU-intensive applications. Productivity applications like Word and Excel didn’t show the same advantages because they’re so dependent on the performance of main memory, hard disks, and graphics cards, and these things _have_ to be the same on x86-based and non-x86-based systems to keep the overall system cost comparable.

IDT put a fair amount of money into the MIPS NT effort, and companies like NeTpower and NEC put in a lot more. Even though I did my job to the best of my ability, I felt it was all a waste of time and money without the full support of SGI/MIPS and Microsoft, and occasionally I said so. What I mean by "full support" was at least a billion dollars over three years. I figured that’s what it would take to get every important software developer to support a second CPU architecture for Windows NT. That’s about what I think Intel will put into IA-64, and I’m quite sure Intel will be successful.

The companies pushing MIPS NT eventually pulled the plug on the whole program once they realized that there was no middle ground between spending nothing and spending a billion dollars. The Alpha backers still haven’t figured this out; they’re still looking for a middle ground around $100 million, but it just isn’t there. They’ll never achieve critical mass at that level. They clearly haven’t achieved any real success to date. Sales volumes are in the tens of thousands per year. This represents evaluation units in big MIS organizations, some sales to software vendors, and lots of free and discounted systems distributed by Digital and the others to Microsoft and other software developers in exchange for Alpha-native applications. It’s just nowhere near profitable.

I greatly appreciated Microsoft’s willingness to support alternate CPU architectures in Windows NT. Microsoft’s position was really the result of a personal campaign by Dave Cutler, the architect of NT, who knew the benefits of processor independence for end users as well as the NT development team itself. Eliminating x86-specific code has made NT easier to develop and maintain in the long run. Similar benefits obtain at application-software developers, but most of these benefits are obtained by virtue of working with the NT software interfaces; for an application developer, supporting Alpha NT is an extra expense without much payoff.

This is true for Microsoft’s own application-software units, too. We in the MIPS NT effort used to ask why Microsoft wouldn’t commit to providing certain critical desktop apps in MIPS NT form. Microsoft did Word and Excel on the client side, for example, plus SQL Server—yet Microsoft wouldn’t do Access for MIPS NT. Microsoft’s representatives explained that each of the company’s applications come from an independent business unit with its own profit-and-loss responsibilities, and they were quite frank about it—

Access and most other apps (particularly entertainment titles) just weren’t worth porting to MIPS. Too much effort for too few sales. I can’t argue with their logic, at least not until non-x86 systems _do_ start selling in high volume. I know it’s a Catch-22 situation, but the only way to fix that is for Bill Gates himself to make exceptions for these groups to let them lose money on Alpha for a while. I’d bet major bucks that Intel has already been promised exactly this for IA-64.

In short, it’s possible for a non-x86 architecture to be widely supported under Windows NT. Even though it hasn’t arrived, Intel’s IA-64 will prove this. No other CPU architecture is backed by sufficient resources to achieve comparable success, however. The Alpha NT effort is doomed, has been doomed since it began four years ago, and really ought to be ended before any more money is thrown down that particular rat-hole. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is, at least in my opinion.

. png

Peter N. Glaskowsky, Senior Analyst, MicroDesign Resources

Publishers of the Microprocessor Report

http://www.MDRonline.com/

You have convinced me. We were very fond of the alpha here, and I suppose I keep hoping for some meaningful competition to Intel. Not that I have any animus toward Intel, but I do like to see alternatives. Anyway, I've learned something, which is one reason for keeping this dialogue...

 

And now this:

Peter L. Briggs, Principal, Briggs' Associates [pbriggs@hdinet.com]

Jerry:

It’s kind of odd, but I discovered that I had become accustomed to a daily dose of your journey through and about cyberspace! - warts and all. I’ve found that I truly enjoy the daily form of your musings, with all their ‘false starts’ and unanticipated diversions, the crankiness, the insights. In fact, I enjoy this daily fare far more than the ‘more polished’ monthly versions I’ve been reading for more than 10 years, and I enjoyed that immensely!

I notice, now, when you go a day or two without adding to your musings, and I miss it! I like the immediacy of it, the transparency about your feelings as things delight and frustrate you, and the less-than-straight ahead progress you make.

This feels like real life, to me. My constant struggles with software and tools mirror yours, since I, too, only use the tools as the means to various ends rather than as ends in themselves. I write, I research (both traditionally and electronically), I use Microsoft Office 97, Paint Shop Pro, Visio, browsers, scripts, and countless Web tools (to publish results to clients.) ‘Listening’ to you journey through these minefields is helpful as to outcomes, and helpful in realizing that my stagger-walk through these subjects mirrors that of another competent person.

Please continue with your frequent musings, they help and enlighten my own journey!

Regards.......................Peter

I try, but it has been more than 100 here, and yesterday the Microsoft Office 2000 team was down; by the time they left I was exhausted. I am still throwing away tons of stuff, much dating back to early PC days: old copies of Windows for Work Groups, Corel Draw 4, ISA boards that do little---

And I'm trying to write fiction. But I do try to keep up. If I can keep a daybook it will be mostly here. And thanks.

 

On Technet:

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

As much ‘mucking about’ as you do with Windows based computers you might wish to get a subscription to TechNet. This will get you a two CD set from Microsoft mailed every month. The first CD is searchable texts of all the product Resource Kits and the Knowledge Base. The second CD contains drivers and software updates. (Microsoft Technical Support itself relies quite heavily on this material).

Information on the product can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/products/prodref/159_ov.htm It can be orderd directly from mail order houses such as PCConnection (my personal favorite).

Their URL is: http://www.pcconnection.com

Cordially,

T. Patrick Henebry

All true. We used to get them here, but there was no point since the BYTE staff got them back at HQ. Now I have to use you readers as my support base, not having a bunch of the best technological minds in the business on the company payroll. There's a time factor here: I just don't have the time to pore through the major arcana; better to admit what I don't know and rely on readers to help. That seems to be working, mostly. I could subscribe to the Tech Net but I am pretty sure I would never have the time to look at it all.

And now this:

 

Keith Irwin [kirwin@iglobal.net]

Jerry—

If you go to the Tools>Options>Mail Format tab in Outlook, and you’ve got WordMail selected, you’ll see under the "Stationary and Formats" tab the mail template. The default is "Email."

You can change it to several different types.

Under Start>Find Files, you can search of "email*" or "*.dot" and you" find a shortcut to the templates under something like:

c:\program files\microsoft office\wordmail\favorites

I edited the "normal" font in my email.dot to change from 10.Arial to 12.Times Roman. Much nicer! (I saved it to Kmail.dot, as well, so I could switch to it.)

Also, the Office Assistant lists a lot of this when you type "wordmail template" into the box.

I expect that these integration confusions are due to the fact that Outlook ‘98 came out a year after Office 97. (You gotta know that this’ll only get better. I really like the redline spelling when typing e-mail.) I’d suggest using Plain Text for everything, even copying text for Chaos Manor Mail. If you insert plain text (through copy/paste) and then use the "Preformatted" style (in Word), the quoting will be more direct and all that tab/blockquote nonsense will go away.

BTW, in WORD, if you deselect the "Mail as Attachment" in Tools>Options>General, then use the File>Sent to>Mail recipient, you can use regular word itself to send messages. The messages are converted to plain text when it brings up outlook’s compose menu.

At any rate, "Find files," is your pal.

The MAIN reason I wanted to write, though, was to ask when Office 2000 was supposed to come out. There’s no dates on MS’s site.... :) Are we going to know the features after August 10th?

-K(eith)

U of NT

That's sort of what I was looking for. Thanks. I'll go muck with those dot files. The release date on the 2000 stuff is apparently 10 August, and then everyone will know. I have had some real problems with IE 5 and for that matter with Office 2000 but it may be the peculiarities of Winnie. I am about to build a good Win 98 machine to test this on. Also to install it on an Intergraph NT workstation. Both those should provide decent tests. The Office 2000 team was carrying linked NT laptop Pentium 266's one a workstation the other a server, and it was running flawlessly, so I am sure my problems are with some residuals. That happens...

On Sound Card woes:

 

 

In today’s view you wrote about WINNIE’s sound troubles that;

"Most of the problems are clearly from sound difficulties: the game will lock with a repetitive sound on."

The machine I’m using right now has an ESS 1868 AudioDrive PCI sound card built in. This card exhibited the same problems with the "Mechwarrior 2" CD that is my son’s favorite game.

I converted the machine from Win 95b to Win NT, applied the latest drivers that I could find (2.00.21), and most of the sound problems went away. (Alas, Mechwarrior won’t run on NT. So my son has to use his system with a ISA SoundBlaster Pro, poor waif!)

It seems unlikely that the WinChip is the root of your problems, seeing as my system uses a genuine Intel Pentium 166.

I’ve got a new Diamond Sonic Impact PCI sound card for my son’s machine (Also an ESS based card.) that I’m holding off using until your adventure plays to it’s end.

Good luck!

Mark Gosdin

mgosdin@brightok.net

Converting Winnie to NT would solve some problems but one reason she exists is as an experiment. I'm much more likely to go to Win 98. Thanks. But in fact the PCI 64 from Creative took care of all Winnie's sound problems. Now we got different dragons...

ANd then:

 

 

Dr. Pournelle,

You wrote:

> Apparently NT isn’t as stable as Microsoft wants you to believe,  and if you do a LOT of stuff with it, as I do, then once in a  while it feels neglected and wants to be shut down and restarted.   ... I have [to] DO something about that. Or write fiction.

Why not set up just *one* machine with Linux Red Hat 5.0, Applixware, and Word Perfect? It’d take some time, but obviously NT is eating entire days of your time anyway; surely you’d rather see that time go to learning a new OS that’s stable?

Or, if that strikes you as dumb, why not get on with writing Mamelukes, which at least one of your readers (me) will buy in hardcover the moment it appears?

I can understand wanting to remain in synch with what Microsoft does; they’ve treated you decently and have been a useful counterweight to the boutique marketing of Apple and the inpenetrability of old-style UNIX. But, in all honesty, I just got RH5 working on a machine that had formerly been only running Win95, and I never expect to need Win95 again. The Red Hat people have put a lot of work into making Linux easy to run and fun to use, and it shows: autoinstalling device drivers, 30 days of tech support with each CD, a desktop in 5.1 that is essentially the NeXT interface. Or you can get Caldera’s Linux which bundles the KDE desktop, which is the sleekest GUI I’ve ever seen.

Nor is it even true that you have to install it yourself on an existing machine if you don’t want to; there *are* vendors that sell pre-installed Linux (despite all the complaints by Ralph Nader); it’s just that, at present, they’re niche companies selling to a niche market. Which doesn’t mean that they’re not good. The Linux Web page (www.linux.org) lists vendors selling new systems for as little as $1400 (that instance is a 233 MHz Pentium II, 64 Mb/4 Gb machine from VA Research). That’s enough for any reasonable need.

At least please give it a thought. I wouldn’t obtrude upon you with an e-mail like this, except for one thing: you *really* don’t seem to be enjoying NT much, or Win98 much for that matter. Why not give something radically new a try?

And if that’s a pointless suggestion, honestly: I enjoy your fiction (and your non-fiction essays about "The State of Science, Year 19XX") a great deal. Quite a few people do, even if they don’t agree with your politics. Why not make some honest money for yourself and spare yourself annoyance by just *writing* more fiction or essays?

Sincerely yours,

--Erich Schwarz

Sigh. Sheer stupidity? Mostly inertia. But we are putting together a machine to do LINUX, and we'll see what we can do with it. I need a time when Alex, Eric, and Darnell are all likely to be available, and maybe Joanne Dow as well. I have the same thoughts on Unix that the character Pavoratti played in that movie had about Puccini's last opera. If I'm going do that I want a wizard handy...

But yes we will do it. As to stopping to write, you, my wife, and Jim Baen are all in agreement: go get the damn book done. Stop playing with this stuff...

atom.gif (1053 bytes)

On Bookshelf:

ChiggyVonR@aol.com

I looked in the registry with Norton Utilities Regedit and found the following KeyName:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ReferenceTitles\BookshelfL

the value name is DefinePath

and the original value data was m:\aamsstp\app\bs96se.exe /H /D "%s"

m: being my cd drive

I changed the value data to

d:\office97\aamsstp\app\bs96se.exe /H /D "%s" d:\office97 being the harddrive\directory I copied the office97 cd to. Now I have an online dictionary. I didn’t even have to restart my computer.

I didn’t even know there was a dictionary on the cd.

Tom Bruley

I thought it would be about that simple. Interestingly, Office 95 had MORE on the the CDROM, like the Columbia Bookshelf. I betcha you could copy the Office 95 bookshelf files to a hard disk and come up with some registry wizardry to acces all those. One of these days I'll give that a try if one of you doesn't do it first. Thanks, Tom. I'll do that on my system shortly.

The cure for the IDE Problem:

(Place marker: I'll have it in a bit. There's something terribly wrong with WORD and I need to fix it.) (Fixed, see VIEW for today.)

MY THANKS TO:

 

Claud Addicott [caddicott@iname.com]

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

The following is from Microsoft, and may relate to your problem. Apparently some of the removable IDE drivers that came with Win95 OSR/2 are less than adequate, and they have released a patch (attached).

Good Luck,

Claud Addicott

"CAUSE

Removable IDE disk drives are not fully supported by the IDE drivers included with Windows 95.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Windows 95. An update to address this problem is now available, but is not fully regression tested and should be applied only to computers experiencing this specific problem. Unless you are severely impacted by this specific problem, Microsoft does not recommend implementing this update at this time.

This issue is resolved by the following updated files for Windows 95:

Esdi_506.pdr version 4.00.954 (dated 2/26/96) and later

Voltrack.vxd version 4.00.954 (dated 3/6/96) and later

To install this update, follow these steps:

1.Download the Remideup.exe file from the Microsoft Software Library to an empty folder.

2.In My Computer or Windows Explorer, double-click the Remideup.exe file you downloaded in step 1.

3.Follow the instructions on the screen.

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Software Library:

~ Remideup.exe (size: 147096 bytes) "

AND Thanks also TO:

Tokunaga, Jason M [jason.tokunaga@West.Boeing.com]

Jerry,

Read about your travails with the IDE Zip. I’ve installed several on machines both at home and at work and have run into a couple of issues:

1) You MUST run either OSR 2.x or SR-1 with the REMIDEUP.EXE patch available from the Micro$loth web site. Several issues pertaining to the IDE/ATAPI Zip are corrected with this patch. See the "Windows 95 System Updates" page at http://www.walbeehm.com/win95upd.html

2) Download the latest Iomega Zip drivers from the Iomega web site. Never noticed anything special, but it can’t hurt.

3) Install the Zip drive on the SECONDARY IDE channel. The latency of the Zip is much higher than a hard disk, so you may take a performance hit.

4) Install the Zip as the MASTER on the secondary channel. If you don’t, you will not have a problem using the drive, but your hard disk activity LED (on your system case) will remain on even if there is no disk activity. From a troubleshooting standpoint, this is a real pain in the neck.

5) Install the BUS-MASTERING DRIVERS for your chipset, if necessary. This may fix the yellow exclamation marks in the hardware manager. Also, you may have to install drivers for Windows 95 to recognize the actual chipset on the mainboard (http://via.com.tw).

NOTE: With the VIA VP2/VP3/MVP3 bus-mastering drivers, the Iomega ZipTools information for the disk and/or drive may not appear correctly. The disk space listed may read 420 MB instead of 100MB, and the interface listed may be SCSI instead of ATAPI or IDE (which actually makes sense, somewhat, when one realizes that ATAPI uses the SCSI protocols to communicate the devices - thus the reason that the ATAPI CD-ROM drive is listed under Adaptec’s SCSI Interrogator tool). Performance should not be effected, however, should you UNINSTALL the drivers, a process that is highly NOT recommended, the information will be even MORE screwed-up (for one, the drive information serial-number or revision number will be un readable!).

Actually, the best thing to do is to install all the hardware on the machine in question, format the drive, and install Windows from scratch. Have all the drivers ready on floppy, hard disk, and/or CD, and just insert them at the appropriate time. DON’T change the settings, however, if it doesn’t find your video card - just let it run in plain vanilla VGA to start with, as some video card installation routines do the kitchen sink thing and install the drivers, the control panels, the DirectX drivers, etc.

Also, do you have the patch for Win 95 to use the multi-disk changer? I’ve never owned one (a geek friend HIGHLY recommended that I save my money), but that patch is SUPPOSED to be the Holy Grail for using a changer with Win 95.

Hope this helps, Jerry.

Jason Tokunaga

That seems to take care of the problem, and thanks again! Eric compares that multiple changer to Sibyl and says she'll never love me back no matter how much attention I give her. He may be right. I'll put her in some server one of these days.

IRQ Problems:

Keith Irwin [kirwin@iglobal.net]

Jerry—

I have a linksys card which came with a disk on which was a program for changing the card’s IRQ setting. The instructions tell you too see what’s availabile in the system devices, then configure the card,then install it. Might you have similar software that came with your card?

Keith Irwin

U of NT

ALAS, while real net cards have such features, my el cheapo $29 special from Fry's depends on Plug and Play to configure it. If there's a way to tell it what IRQ to have, I don't know it.

 

David L. Ellis [dellis@halcyon.com]

Hello Dr. Pournelle,

It sounds like you did all the right things, but missed maybe one thing. After you forced IRQ5 to ISA and then installed the network card which grabbed IRQ11, you should try restarting, and then going to Device Manager, and open Properties on the network card. Then, under Resource, take the check mark out of "Use automatic settings." Leave the IRQ at 11, but with the check out, it won't try to mess with what you've got, and you will in effect "lock" that IRQ in place. Then proceed as noted.

Hope this helps.

David L. Ellis

Aargh. Of course that's what I should have done. Sigh. Thanks, and next time… But just now Winnie is working fine, and I have made a PQ Drive Image so I can get back there. And maybe one of these days I'll get the sound card on IRQ 5. Thanks. I sure forgot about that automatic thing…

For the record, you can make things take the right IRQ by reserving all the ones you do NOT want it to take, then when that works, go to device manager and clear the Use Automatic Settings check. Now that IRQ is nailed in place, and you can do it again with another. There once was a lady from Spain, who became ill whie riding a train, not once but again, and again and again and again... If you get tired of watching machines reboot you can always take up honest work.

And to wrap it up:

 

David Cefai [davcefai@keyworld.net]

Dear Jerry,

One more thing about sorting IRQs in a Plug and Play Hell. Before installing a non PnP card it could be a good idea to reserve the resources in Win 95. Control Panel, System, Device Manager, View Devices by Connection, Double click on Computer, Reserve Resources. This makes Windows leave the resource alone - I have toyed with the idea of reserving ALL the resources!

regards

David Cefai

Thanks. That should do it. And I should have done all that to begin with. The moral of the story is don't trust plug and play and start with the idea that you will work around it. Sigh. I was deceived when it worked, once...

Sunday, 9 August 1998

John H. Dow [jdow@ICSI.Net]

Just had a chance to check out your web site for an update.

I think you need to lay of the coffee for a while. Microsoft will drive you nuts (especially the registry) if you let them. And I certainly agree with your opinion of plug and pray. In theory it’s great but the actual real world implementation sucks.

I do have a suggestion on the Zip Drive. Get rid of them, all versions. I went to the new little portable drive called the Shark. I changed over last fall and can’t tell you how much of a joy it is to use. There’s not a month goes by without a frantic phone call from an associate, friend, or neighbor who has a zip data problem. In the past 10 months, I have not had a single problem on my shark or from anyone I’ve recommended.

I’m sure you’ve seen or heard of them but just in case you haven’t, here’s their web address:

http://www.goavatar.com/

 

One thing that might help you in your adventures of installing software and hardware is a program to track changes. There are several out there that work pretty well. And it takes a lot of the pain (not all of it - software developers are sneaky) out of experimentation. I’ve attached a shareware version from PC Magazine called Incontrol 3.

I hope you got your outlook problems solved. Let me know via your column if you discovered any new tricks.

John H. Dow

jdow@icsi.net

jdow@bix.com is Joanne Dow, an old friend from forever whom I met when I was speaking at a Soldier of Fortune convention. Greetings.

Not sure what coffee has to do with it all. One of the things I do is plod through odd installations to see what will happen. It's not news that plug and play is pretty awful, although in fact you CAN get around it, if you are systematic and have patience and can stand waiting for the machine to boot up a lot. One of these days I have to write an essay on strategies: systematic incremental, focus gambling, and the others. I use them all, but of course the safest is systematic with the smallest increments. That also uses a lot of time, so if you are pretty sure a bunch of things can work you change them all at once. That is called focus gambling and it is a gamble…

Journaling programs are pretty useful, thanks, but in fact I use the old fashioned kind, a hard bound log book (Boorum and Pease 09-9132 ruled, margin, and paged) when I am working with new systems.

This site has a very great deal on it over time; I tease out the best for the monthly columns. The first of those has gone overseas, and will be out in English shortly when I arrange with those who paid for it for terms; by the first of next month anyway. Most of what's in it has been in VIEW sometime in the past weeks.

VIEW is a daybook and has a lot of the stuff that ordinarily would be in my hardbound log books.

I have seen SHARK drives at Fry's on sale. I have to say, I have used ZIP drives in both SCSI and parallel versions for well over a year, as has Niven, and we have never had any problems with them other than the drive letter mess with the internal IDE drive, and that is not peculiar to ZIP. Just don't boot with a drive in the slot and Bob's your uncle. I prefer Magneto Optical because the media is more stable and the form factor makes it easier to carry one in your pocket, but they are not as ubiquitous as Zip, and parallel versions are even less common. ZIP is pretty good as a super floppy, or so I have found. Never tried Shark.

Thanks, and welcome aboard.

Eric says:

Eric Pobirs [nbrazil@ix.netcom.com]

Avatar Shark Drive

We talked to them last November at Comdex but they never sent any product. Can’t discuss product if it isn’t in evidence.

I’ve noticed a certain pattern of anecdotal evidence often arises whenever a popular item is troublesome. Somebody pops up and says "Try this, I’ve never had any trouble with it!" This to me means they haven’t found the problem yet. It’s there in everything just waiting for you to make one little mistake. If you’re using a device that is almost unknown in the mass market and compare that experience to something extremely common (built into a goodly percentage of all new systems), your obscure device will probably come off looking better. With so many more (and by consequence less technically oriented) people testing the popular device in all manner of configurations it isn’t surprising if the complaints are easier to find. To find a complaint about the Shark Drive you first have to find a Shark Drive user, which isn’t easy.

This isn’t to let Iomega off the hook. They made plenty of mistakes, the worst of which was not reacting fast enough to ZIP’s success. Perhaps someday someone will build an OS that really understands removable media beyond floppies. I haven’t seen one yet that does. They either get confused by suddenly missing or appearing media or require onerous mount/dismount commands. Iomega did much to smooth the way but still was not prepared for millions of novices to come calling in such a short time.

For my own anecdotal account, I can truthfully say I’ve had a smooth road in installing and using Win98 compared to numerous other OS experiences. That does nothing to change the fact that millions of others have not. Certainly many did not adequately prepare for the upgrade but the major PC vendors almost universally failed to prepare, too. How could a company of Compaq’s immense resource have failed to test the configuration they’d shipped in the last two or three years for compatibility issues and driver support? Did they think it was somebody else’s job. Did they think the upgrade package wasn’t going to fly off the shelves for no better reason than novelty and keeping up with the Joneses? The fact that, to my knowledge, none of the major vendors had a web page discussing how the upgrade would behave with the hardware they sold suggests that don’t care about repeat business or plain incompetence. Is there a high turnover rate in the departments responsible for such things? Did they knowingly drop the ball with the knowledge they wouldn’t be there to blame when it hit the ground?

Good points, and thanks. For some reason I'm a bit under the weather today, or I'd haver longer comments. I have certainly had a lot of mail warning me not to try Windows 98, and that includes from product managers of many hardware systems we use here. I'll try 98 and Linux when I get back to the office in a couple of weeks. Thanks again.

Re: Time Machine Earth mentioned in View:

Dr. Pournelle,

The following web site seems to be about the software you mentioned:

http://www.rockware.com/catalog/timemach.htm

Hope this helps.

--

Bryan R. Stahl

"This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,

For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;

But what comes after is measure for measure,

And not a God that afflicteth thee..." Kipling

brstahl@sprynet.com

BRYAN.R.STAHL@dos.us-state.gov

Incidentally I recommend the Kipling poem to those who aren't familiar with it. "I'm off to batter the family priest, because my God has afflicted me..."

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