Obsolete Computer Museum HelplineObsolete Computer Museum Helpline RSS 2.0 FeedClick here to Post a new message! | Click here to Search past postings!Looking to trade stuff? Click here to use the SwapShop instead!Check out the new Obsolete Computer Museum Forums. Threaded discussion forums with the speed and simplicity of the Helpline. Old-browser friendly, too. Come help me beta test it!Posted by Tom the CuratorPosted on May 9, 2008 at 13:42:25 ESTAlright, that's enough. Sorry all, but I'm not going to baby-sit this site. It's over.Posted by wdegrootPosted on May 9, 2008 at 13:28:06 ESTI have avoided any direct replies.but i am now being called stupidMy iq is well above average . and many of you that post are probably equipped with a similar high iq.I am tired of constant snipes and attacks.I do not attack others . why should others attack me?I had to go thru my "recieved cvalls " log. I was trying to find an old number I had called.I found SXO MANY 716 calls to buffalo, it seems I talked there more than any other two callers,. I tried to be patient and polite and give useful information and to be kind.My enetire life was taken over by several calls each day.it alost controlled my life. I stopped!especially bad were the constant calls 5 min before 11pm when I was watching CSI or Law & Order or ER, or another prime-time television program. No Matter how many hints I gac=ve about "please set youtr clock" I oftem missed the end or the `11 o'clock. weather report. What ever you do DO NOT encourage this troublesome person have your phone number.he will call and call and call and talk abot inane subjects.he will tell you how he cursed a store clerk or someone passing by on the street. You will hear all about Hillary and Old down south politics without when whern he said " I hope you go blind after your eye procedure"THAT WAS IT. NO MORE GOODBY FOREVERI had the eye scraping monday and hope things will improve in several days, It was a great fear, that my eyes would get worse.so this person can be mean, spitefull , and errastidc.I have had it with all the sniping all the snide comments.stop NOW. I am a peaceful person ., but enough is enough.for all the resonable and rational persons here, I am sorry you have to hear this, but it was posted openly and I am responding openly. ERIK GO AWAY. Posted by wdegrootPosted on May 8, 2008 at 22:31:02 ESTwe went thru this kind of "talking to a child" support stypewhen we were configuring a modem back in the 1980's and a wacom tablet in the late 1990'sseems there is a tendency to "script" everything.when my grandson put a quarter in the floppy drive compaq tech support was clueless ( all the smart pakistani';s are writing high level code, not answering phones.)I finally called the bethlehem radioshack support center, he told me in 10 seconds. I don't think the other guys have ever even seen a computer.I think after 15 minutes they sould have "sort of" realized it was a hardware problem and not what they were helplessly trying to do.at panasonic, supporting doit-matrix color printers we did better than that.( now that IS OBSOLETE)did you hear Eddie Arnold died today?Posted by erik (erikk71@aim.com)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 21:40:19 ESTPhysical Location: nyroger givens are you gonna just on raymond I realize you dont attack walter when he talks about countrymusic.My post is about hard ware. Walter shows how stupid an retarded he is by posting on other topics that are totally none computerPosted by Paul Swearingen (plsBCBDXER"at"aol.com)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 21:12:24 ESTPhysical Location: Topeka, KS<<I wonder if i can get them to pay for all the wated cell phone minutes, actinmg like they were talking to second-graders.>>Sign of the times, Walter. I got sucked into making a hotel reservation last week through the Yellow Pages system; I'd tracked down the hotel online and thought I was calling them directly ... but NO-O-OOO! I swear the nice young lady I talked to was in Pakistan, from her thick accent. Cost me an extra buck fifty, too.Posted by wdegrootPosted on May 8, 2008 at 20:10:38 ESTot but may be interestingour phone is thru Vonage which has worked well ( mostly)a year or so ago the box died and they sent another, we plugged it in ans it all was up and running in minutesthis is a router and phone jack that plugs into the cable modem.this time just the phone part died and the internet kept working,in 2 days a new box arrived, same model, it worked on the internet but still no phonethe techs took us thru the rigamarole as if we were in kindergarten, trying to determine if the INTERNET worked( it did, always did) but failed to adress the phone problem.after burning up a lott of cell phone minutes, they weill send another box, I am didallusioned with the company, but am unwilling to change my phonme number AGAIN.I wonder if i can get them to pay for all the wated cell phone minutes, actinmg like they were talking to second-graders.Posted by Paul Swearingen (plsBCBDXER"at"aol.com)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 17:34:03 ESTPhysical Location: Topeka, KansasEd Grant wrote: <<I have a Kangaroo Outbound 2000 laptop. It is a Macintosh clone. On powering up the computer shows the Kangaroo logo, makes a signal sound and then shows the image of a 31/2" disc with a question mark. I quess I need a boot disc or download disc set?? Any ideas how to get that information. Thanks.>>That's a rather rare clone; I believe it used the guts of a 68000 Mac, but I don't remember specifically which one not - maybe the SE. However, yes, the blinking floppy indicates that it needs a boot source and probably that the hard drive is kaput. You can boot from a floppy, but you won't be able to do much else; you really need a working SCSI hard drive. If you feel up to it, try cracking it open and "twirling" the hard drive a few times to loosen up the platter; it might just boot when re-installed so that you can extract the system and other software. Depending upon the amount of RAM installed, you should be able to use System 6.0.3 through System 7.53 on it, which should be available free online somewhere. Good luck!Posted by Brady (ballison(at}consolidated.net)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 16:50:59 ESTPhysical Location: ILI have a few things stuck to my fridge with magnets from hard drives. If the boards are ok always good to keep if you might need to salvage data from a like drive with a bad board.Posted by Raymond Ramirez (rramirez-at-claropr.com)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 15:18:43 ESTErik,I take apart my bad disk drives, too. I keep the servo motors, magnets (very strong!), and motor coils. Sometimes I keep the platters and a few heads. If the logic board is good, I will keep that, too. The empty frames are made of cast aluminum, and I have a few stored, but the local price per pound isn't good enough for me to visit a recycler. I can either trash them or wait until the price goes up. I find interesting how different manufacturers build their drives. I am keeping only a few of the bad drives as part of my historical collection on the hard drive (from 14" and 8" platters to full 5 1/4", 3 1/2", 2 1/2", 1.8", and even the first IBM Microdrive).Have fun!RaymondP.S. I am offering three special Sun computers on the Swap Shop!Posted by wdegrootPosted on May 8, 2008 at 14:31:09 ESTI just did a search on mac cloneand it seems it is a nitche industry.companies see it is a way to make money. and will keep trying until one either suceeds in winning a legal decicion over apple corporation.or there is an enforcable decision that shuts them all down.that is, until the next time .I don't think the story is over. and will not be over untilsomething real happens.Posted by erik (erikk71@aim.com)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 14:28:04 ESTPhysical Location: nyOKPosted by wdegrootPosted on May 8, 2008 at 13:52:31 ESTthere was a mac clone sold, i believe from a florida company. that was just sued? and shut down by apple corp.it sold for about 1/4 the price of a similar mac.I think the issue was it ran the apple operating systemand the apple OS is licenses only to run on Genuine Apple Mac'sapparently that was enough for the judge to decide.Posted by Aaron7 ComputersPosted on May 8, 2008 at 12:45:48 ESTCool! I didn't know there were Apple clones after the Franklin!Posted by Ed Grant (Jakesam_2000@yahoo.com)Posted on May 8, 2008 at 12:37:33 ESTPhysical Location: Quicy, MAI have a Kangaroo Outbound 2000 laptop. It is a Macintosh clone. On powering up the computer shows the Kangaroo logo, makes a signal sound and then shows the image of a 31/2" disc with a question mark. I quess I need a boot disc or download disc set?? Any ideas how to get that information. Thanks. Posted by roger givensPosted on May 8, 2008 at 11:29:21 ESTPhysical Location: azerik, why are you taking hard drives apart?when i was a kid, i took clocks apart to see how they were made.is this the same thing?why? and why do you have to tell us?did you do your laundry, did you cook supper? did you empty the trash?what does this have to do with old computers?get a life, do something interesting for a change.Posted by erik (erikk71@aim.com)Posted on May 7, 2008 at 20:54:36 ESTPhysical Location: nyToday I took apart 4 more ide drives one was 2 gig scsi an rest were idePosted by Paul Swearingen (plsBCBDXER"at"aol.com)Posted on May 7, 2008 at 20:02:34 ESTPhysical Location: Topeka, KSAllow me to confirm Raymond's evaluation of the Insignia/Zenith digital TV converters, which are identical ("Insignia" is Best Buy's house brand). I bought one of these, and it actually does a better job in picking up signals than my 32" Philips HD TV, although the quality of the antennas used makes a big difference, too. I'm going to save the second "coupon" until the last minute to see if anything better comes along.Let's see ... old computers ... one of my colleagues reported that two of her USB mouses have gone dead after being plugged into an iMac. Anyone ever heard of too much voltage going into USB ports? I told her to bring in the mouse to see if it worked on a computer at school (she said she'd taken the other mouse apart and couldn't get it back together, oh, boy). Or maybe there's another problem that I'm not aware of? (The keyboard on the iMac is a replacement, as she said her daughter spilled a drink on it ... maybe there's more to the story than I am aware of ...).BTW the old Gateway PIII that was under discussion here because of the inadequate video card just keeps rolling along in the classroom. It's a bit slow on the Internet, so it doesn't get used as much as the newer Lenovos that the school provides - but it does just fine for wordprocessing.Posted by TeeFredPosted on May 7, 2008 at 18:34:27 ESTCharles -Not yet. I think if you get to that point, that's when they roll you up in an old carpet and drop you off the bridge or something. Maybe just bury you. It's just another valuable learning experience. Posted by Charles WilsonPosted on May 7, 2008 at 16:48:34 ESTPhysical Location: Central Texas Thanks all--- An fdisk and format did the trick. All I can ask is , Do you EVER get to where you are not blind-sided by something new?Thanks again C. WilsonPosted by Raymond Ramirez (rramirez-at-claropr.com)Posted on May 7, 2008 at 11:22:18 ESTPhysical Location: San Juan, Puerto RicoBrady,Is your DVD recorder a Philips DVDR3575H? I am trying to get one at eBay since I read about it. I have a Philips HDRW720 with 80 GB and an analog tuner that is been operational for over a year. Although it isn't so consumer friendly, I love it, and I wish to get the "upgraded version, which does video up-conversion to 1080p for my Vizio LCDTV, and has a digital tuner. I prefer to buy another recorder than add a converter to my recorder, because the recorder can transmit IR codes to other boxes but not to the converter to change channels.Let me know if that is the model you have, or what brand and model is it.RaymondPosted by wdegrootPosted on May 7, 2008 at 09:57:43 ESTCharlie the conjecture and suggestions about something "stuck" on the drive such as a small program in the FAT or in a partition is possible and even likely.there is another possibility that the memory is seen by the hardware but not the software.don't ask me to be specific, all I can say is that very strange things can happen.if it were a pre=233mmx mb, it could have the intel 430 or one of a few othere chipsets that only can see up to 128m of ram.( yes I know you are only putting 64m on the mb)I think some boards that were made so a "split voltage" pentium would work.( any of the mmx chips or an amd 233, did use that chipset)I have several older mb and they are picky about which dimms they recognize or the size the mb will see. These dimms report and "clockl up"differently in newer mb.are the 2-32m "sticks" dimms (168p) or 73 pin simms?the 168 pin dimms seem to act strangely on some older mb.the only problem I have heard about with 72 pin simms, is that some NEC mb will not correctly see 8m double sided simme, they will be seen as 4meg, but a 16m dimm will be seen as it's true capacity. But, of course that is not your problem.Just as soon as you think you have it all figured out, something screwy happens.Posted by TeeFredPosted on May 7, 2008 at 09:48:15 ESTBrady -Yeah, that's a good point. That vintage machine only rarely had video controller on the motherboard, so an add in card is likely. Maybe the original was replaced? It's a possibility that wouldn't have occurred to me - and not too hard to check.Posted by Brady (ballison(at}consolidated.net)Posted on May 7, 2008 at 09:21:21 ESTPhysical Location: ILMy first thought was it had a bunch shared for the video, if it has an onboard video this is possible though on that old of machine I doubt it.Posted by TeeFredPosted on May 7, 2008 at 07:24:47 ESTDavid -Yeah, I had the same thoughts as you, but I think it could still be possible for some software to remain if the drive were only re-formatted. Formatting would not alter the boot sector, nor would it alter other partitions on the drive. There could be software (and possibly malware) in the boot sector that linked to software on another partition which would install a ramdisk or smartdrive, or whatever the malware wanted to do, before windows booted. Not very likely, but certainly possible, no? We don't know if there are other partitions on the drive, and we don't know if the boot sector was cleared (fdisk/mbr). Posted by DavidPosted on May 7, 2008 at 06:57:56 ESTGood point TJ, but I was working on the assumption that the reformatting that was mentioned would have cured any software setting related issues.Posted by TJ EdmisterPosted on May 6, 2008 at 23:25:27 ESTI think another possibility is that something is loading in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT which is allocating a bunch of XMS that Windows can then not use. (smartdrv or ramdrive.sys for instance)Posted by DavidPosted on May 6, 2008 at 22:20:02 ESTCharles:Check in the BIOS for setting related to memory holes. Some devices liked to live in the top 1MB of the 16MB of address space on AT's and couldn't be moved. Particularly some high end ISA video cards, and certain ISA SCSI cards. Mixing those devices with actual memory in the same location can cause some, interesting, results! Most PCI BIOS' can map out that location range, but some don't always give back anything above that location, and some are broken my design to restrict you to only the ammount before the restricted range. I'd imagine that the memory hole is enabled on your machine given that you've ruled out a setting with Windows. Failing that, pull out any expansion cards bar the absolute minimum and see if anything there is restricting you. Posted by Charles WilsonPosted on May 6, 2008 at 21:38:42 ESTPhysical Location: Central Texas How about an obsolete computer question?---I have been fooling with an old p 233mmx that correctly counts the memory upon booting,(2 32 megs) but when windoze loads , it states that there is only 15 meg. I've tried several combos of ram ,(each reads right upon booting) but still get only 15 meg by windoze. I formated the drive,(had ME on it originaly) and instaled 98se. Same old thing still no change. WHAT GIVES?Posted by Brady (ballison(at}consolidated.net)Posted on May 6, 2008 at 20:11:44 ESTPhysical Location: ILok, on the subject of files bumping into each other, I'm sure the guy was talking about fragmentation, but how many ppl would understand that, you all know we have to dumb down things for the typical user.As for the dtv converter, I spent very good money on one, but it isn't just a converter, I bought a recorder with a dvd+-r/rw and a 160 gig hdd. I have it hooked to an old zenith via an rf converter ($10) and audio fed into my 100w prologic stereo (tv has no sound anyway.)I have a decent rooftop antenna on about 20 ft mast and could get one station clear and the others so so, but they all come in nice and clear with the digital.Posted by wdegrootPosted on May 6, 2008 at 18:16:42 ESTit doesn't take much to start us all howling at the moon.Posted by philoPosted on May 6, 2008 at 17:44:23 ESTyikesthat was one of the worst typos I madesorry.Oh...maybe the files were just bumping around a lotnever mind. It was not my mistake <G>Posted by TeeFredPosted on May 6, 2008 at 17:43:01 ESTBarythrin -Those files aren't just bumping into each other, they are grinding too. Expect little baby files in a few months. Posted by barythrinPosted on May 6, 2008 at 15:57:17 EST::sigh:: a customer of ours just gave us a drive which I copied to our windows 2003 server and now of course I have a user saying they can't open that directory (it hangs) and dos never finishes. Well, cmd did finish although yes it took around 10 minutes for dir to finish. 1,500,000 files in one folder and yes this seems to cause some issues with programs. wtf..now we have the same issue with a 13GB file from this customer which I'm sure is a raw directory of another similar amount of files.Anyway, maybe this many files are bumping into eachother too? I think it may be causing one buffer to bump into another lolPosted by wdegrootPosted on May 6, 2008 at 15:00:52 ESTno the guy on the radio was right.I just picked up my pc and shook it REAL HARDand there was a lot of bumping and a few crashing soiunds,.should I use screws next time?Posted by philoPosted on May 6, 2008 at 14:14:32 ESTRaymond:LOL...if that guy on the radio was an expert...then averyone here is gertainlyno less thana computer genius...Of course who knows, I never looked...may those big files do bump into each other <G>Click here to Post a new message! | Click here to Search past postings! |
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