Sorry for asking, but how does this thread relate to Window-Eyes?
Ralf Kefferpuetz
Germany
MSN/Live: [email protected]
Aim: RalfKatEMC
Skype/Yahoo: rkefferpuetz7747
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Belle [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 8:16 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Dell systems and such
Unless you'd rather I didn't, I'll go public with this so others might
benefit since I think it's very relevant for people like ;us who aren't
happy with just a top level access and who use older stuff as well as
newer
stuff to give us greater independance.
I really appreciate your encouragement and the conversations we've had
through the years keeping some of this stuff going and comparing notes.
We've been able to avoid lots of problems using imaging problems, it's
saved
your bacon numbers of times, just like it has mine.
I have a good teching buddy up in Ok who believes strongly in it, and
uses
dos still to tech with, and he builds machines and everytime, hands
down,
even though it's got it's limitations, I think it gains up a lot of
control
that blind people in windows only don't get.
They'd rather spend hours playing with registry cleaners, and spyware
tools
that don't really work, when it's so wonderful to hit the bitton, walk
away
and go get a coke, and come back to a system fresh as the day you bought
it
with all your favorite stuff installed the way you like.
Ok enough evangilizing, I just want people to know that old technology
can
be great and is worth preserving and using when you can, I like what
that
other cat said about something not being obsolete because the computing
world says it is but only when it quits serving your purpose.
Drive snapshot is a german made software which makes images to another
drive, much like image for windows dos and linux does.
YOu don't have the gui in dos, but you can use batch files, and it does
text
writes so you can see progress and all.
In windows, you get a nice gui.
One executable works in dos and windows, and also opens up image files
for
you to look inside.
It doesn't have the extra drivers like image for dos for cd and usb
access
and such, but you can install those yourself.
It's a great tool, and I've starting using it because it allows me to
get to
my ntfs drives without that memory limit that ntfspro has with
image.exe.
1600 fsb is 1600 front side bus.
That's the fastest processors supported at that time.
Driver genius is a program that can save out drivers for all your
devices,
and also find them on the net for you.
It doesn't do as well on the later part, but if you want to restore a
system
and don't have driver disks handy, and you need to grab your drivers out
of
an existing install, driver genius is great, and it works with we.
I had an older version around here, so that might have been the problem
with
not finding the netcard drivers, but still, I made it work.
Yeh, well, the only way you could get around having integrated
paripherals
is to install xp on that machine, run driver genius and then re-install
2k.
And then use the drivers you got out of xp.
For an older machine 2k is still a better option since it doesn't hog as
much as xp, so great for anything like a p2 anything less than a 700 or
256
megs of memory, I say put 2k on it or w98.
Well, if you do it all yourself, and really go budget and get your own
parts, you could do a 3gig 2 core machine for probably 5 bills.
But this machine here was built by sonica labs, and it's decked out with
all
the finest stuff from that time, passive cooled video, big quiet power
supply, it was when the first run of 45 nm stuff first came out, and I
got
it loaded with 3 big sata drives and 2 good burners and 2 gigs of ddr2
memory.
Sonica labs replaced a machine no questions asked when dhl mangles the
first
one, which had an asus mobo, and they gave me a better machine to
replace
it, better mobo I think gigabyte mobos are better than asus.
This board
has 2 pci slots, 2 pci express 16 slots, and I forget how many pci
express
one slots, but it's got all the other stuff I mentioned in the other
email.
What's good about this motherboard is that it does ide immulation very
well,
even to the point of being able to load a dos cdrom driver to access the
burners.
Some of the lesser motherboards won't do that, ide immulation from the
bios
isn't all created equal.
Also for a music machine, sonica labs disabble ahci mode, which makes it
better for us doing installs and such, and also apparently timing issues
and
such in windows is better when the hardware controls things.
This makes sense, as we used to disabble pci steering and do dedicated
physical irqs to a slot for our audio interfaces back before things got
robust enough in windows to handle it.
Now we don't do that so much.
But apparently, even though ahci mode offers hot swapping and other cool
stuff, the experts say let the bios handle it.
Which while we're running these hybrid systems, is the best thing right
now
for people using their computers for the stuff I do.
Because if you enable ahci mode, you'd have to have text mode drivers,
and
unless your using nlite which isn't perfect, you'd have a bitch of a
time
with unattended installs, those text mode drivers can be tricky, and you
couldn't get past the part when xp asks for a disk.
there are some voodoo you can use with the unatend.txt file, but safe to
say
text mode drivers are harder to deal with.
Ok, I don't know everything, and I'll probably get some rocks thrown at
me
by people who haven't got anything better to do than to be jerks but
here's
my understanding of why we don't have safe mode or talking installs.
The same bios which helps us out and makes windows and the whole pc work
better in one situation also has boxed us in.
That's why you need a bios upgrade everything they add a new bus or
change
drive geometries, this is old 80s technology, very limited memory, and
legacy dos level stuff, and there's no memory to load drivers and
software
to make things talk.
Intel around 98 I believe it was if I remember the white paper I read
released efi I believe it stands for extended firmware implementation or
interface, some such, and this basically does away with the bios and
allows
the computer operating system to talk to the hardware directly from the
get
go, this is what apple uses, and the reason it can run windows natively
is
that it immulates the old pc bios, but because other operating systems
have
left the bios behind, there's much more memory and resources to do stuff
like what we want.
They don't have the real mode limitations, so if we want voiceover to
talk
me through an install, no problem.
But with the old bios stuff, when you barely got enough memory to do
these
big drive geometries, and even start to talk to all the stuff we've
crammed
in to a modern pc, you can just forget about loading software for a
talking
install.
I'm sire I don't have it 100 percent right in all the particulars, but
that's my layman's understanding of things.
When we get efi based systems, then a lot more stuff will be possible,
and
hardware upgrades will be much simpler, I believe the one good thing
about
vista I saw was that efi implementation has started.
I don't know much beyond that, only that with all the hasles we have
with
the bios, and the translation that has to happen, and the handing off to
windows and such, that efi will speed things up a lot and make
compatibility
easier.
This will happen in time, but microsoft is dragging it's heels behind
everybody else as usual.
Well, atleast we have imaging down, which get's us out of having to use
safe
mode to fix a hosed system, botched driver install, etc.
It's not the best solution, but it works every time, pc acts up, if you
can't fix it reasonably quick, just image your system drive, and your
back
in business.
Keep email and other junk off on other partitions, and nothing get's
hosed.
YOu know, that 137 gig limit might be the key thing here, I should try
and
re-size that partition and see if it fixes my issue.
I used to think it was the 4k line thing, I had the same problem with
fat32 when I first got these drives, and then I re-formated fat32 4k
line,
and it seemed to fix some things, but the problem is back.
So maybe 4k line fat32 is some of it but not all the problem.
At 10:26 AM 8/2/2009, you wrote:
>I've never tried drive snapshot. Does it make an image or just keep a
>mirror image on another drive? I use fat 32 on all my stuff. makes
>life simpler. I had the same problem with sata drives on dos, I think
>there is some doundary around 137 gig that dos won't see. I generally
>partition all my stuff on larger drives. I guess sata is faster, but
>I've had less problems with ide drives. I also use western digital my
>book and image for dos sees those fine and ai can restore from those.
>
>What is 1600 fsb?
>
>Never heard of driver genius. What does this do? UI couldn't use
>your
>trick on that dell as it was an on board card, sound and all on
>the mother board. When you say cheap, any guess on how cheap for
>a 3 gig dual core machine?
>
>It really ticks me off we don't have speech in safe mode or talking
>installs. We should have had this stuff years ago!!!
>
>Later.
>Butch
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