I have three Iomega drives, a Zip, 1G Jaz and a 2G Jaz, daisy-chained to a PCMCIA SCSI card in a P-II laptop held captive to it's desk by an expired battery. They still work, from back in the 486 era, so maybe there's something to be said about build quality in the early days. I also have internal 2G Jaz and an internal Zip (both SCSI) in my tower, as well as a seperate parallel-port unit that first worked for a 33MHz 486 laptop, way back when they were reasonably current.
There was one internal IDE Zip that failed in an old P166 I was refurbishing, but I spotted the warning signs before it could damage any disks (I oughta open it up to look for fubar'ed heads).
I've only lost one disk to bad sectors, and in that case I believe I did something I shouldn't and forced the drive to zig when it should've zagged. For that matter, I can actually credit the Jaz with saving my data, as it contained most of my applications and data when my primary system (at the time, a second 486 laptop) suffered a noisy hard drive failure after 5 years of service. I plugged the cartridge into the internal Jaz in my tower and kept going from there until I could replace the failed machine.
Why am I still using them? I've had worse luck with CDR/RW, believe it or not. A first generation internal CDRW that seldom completed a write without trashing the disk, an external USB (Archos) unit that wrote three disks before complaining that it couldn't calibrate it's laser, and my present unit, an external SCSI (yeah, four devices on one laptop) from Panasonic, which writes CD-R's reliably, but has proven finicky about CD_RW's, preferring to write to older ones and complaining about newer ones, even those rated 1-4x.
The aforementioned ancient laptop, being my primary system, has only USB 1.1, limiting my writes to 4x, assuming write-once media. I did try to move to -RW's for archivial storage, but the unit seems not to like the last batch of Memorex low-speed rewriteables I bought. I suppose I should try reducing write speeds, but in the interim, my Zip and Jaz units carry the load, having beaten the odds by continuing to function as they should for so long.
As it stands, the only thing that will break my dependence on these drives is replacing this machine with a newer laptop that has USB 2.0 (space constraints rule out replacing it with a desktop or tower) or a built in CDRW.
But yeah, I know I'm cheating the reaper on this one
---PCJ
(clarification): since the P-II era I've always had a faster desktop to fall back on, but most of my work was done on a succession of less-than-bleeding-edge laptops)
You know how in Windows Explorer, if you click on an HTML document, you'll get a preview of the page in the right-hand panel? IE generates that. Thus, you can get infected JUST BY HIGHLIGHTING the file. You really can't escape...
(W98SE w/all patches, IE6, Eudora Pro 3, OE left in an unconfigured state)
Using the above, whenever I recieve an unsolicited HTML attatchment, I turn off "[V]iew as Web Page" to disable the preview before highlighting the file to remove it.
I also have my download folder set to display it's contents by date so any recent attatchments are all clustered together at the top for deletion. (And a loud toilet-flush WAV assigned to the act of emptying the Recycle bin just for effect:) )
Of course I'm probably lucky with regard to the topic. Both my parents, though not exactly computer literate,(neither uses email and only one does any web browsing (rarely at that)) at least seem to understand the hazards of email attatchments enough to find funny the 'clueless user' horror stories I relate to them from topics just like this.
"Printer sharing isn't hard with XP and 2k/9x *if* you know everything that needs to be set up. If your printer is on XP, the solution is that you have to create a user on the XP machine with a password, and in the 9x/2k machine make sure you log on to microsoft client for networks with the same user/pass as whats on the XP machine, then in XP make sure the printer share permissions includes the 9x/2k user. XP forces you to log on with a user/pass because shared devices/folders don't work without it. 98 was before everyone and their mother were using shared resources and it didn't force you to use user/pass.
After making matching accounts, printer and file sharing will work like a charm. If you cancel the logon window in 9x/2k, it won't work without prompting you for a user/pass.
Dag. The places you find solutions in, I tell you. My home LAN was comprised entirely of '98 machines (not using the MS login) till my brother added an XP laptop to the system. I got it to browse the web through the main system which was running ICS, and it could see other computers on the network, no problem. Then I tried to browse the shared folder on the XP machine from a '98 box (silly me), and IE literally threw a fit. After knocking some sense back into the errant machine, I told my brother if he had files to move to another machine, to do the transfer from XP to 98-not the other way around.
I see now that not using the MS login on the '98 machine was the culprit. Thanks for the tip.
"The two lamest looking ones were the train driving game (Woo, stay on that track)...."
Sounds like that's Densya De Go! (Let's Go by Train!). I happen to have home versions of this in my collection, in Saturn, Dreamcast and PC formats (along with the special motorman's controller for each, the Dreamcast one having been the toughest one to locate, possibly rarer than the VO:OT Twin Sticks)
Densya De Go! is a lot tougher than it's premise seems to indicate because it's a contest of precision, not speed or endurance. You start off with a set number of points, shown by the big "30" in the top center of the screenshot. You earn or lose points depending on what you do right (blowing horns for crossings, bridges and tunnels) or wrong (running late). The main object is to run from station to station, which seems ridiculously easy on the surface.
The hard part is stopping the train. You see, trains are very slow to react to control inputs (but you knew that already, right?). Where this affects you in the Densya De Go! series, is that you must time your arrival so that your train not only stops within one meter of a stop marker at the end of the platform, but you also must make this stop within a three second window to be considered on time. (and earn bonus points).
-Arrive late and you lose one point (two on harder levels) for every second your train is still moving after time is up (your arrival time is the white time in the upper left corner, current time is in yellow below it). -Overshoot the marker by more than one metere and lose a point for every metere beyond that point (the distance to the next stop marker is in the lower right corner--green if you're stopping, white if you're bypassing it as an express).
-Slow down too much once in the station, and incur a 10-point penalty for throttling up to avoid stopping short of the marker--you're supposed to use brakes only.
-Even if you are bypassing stations as an express, you must reach the stop markers by a specific time to avoid losing points,(OTOH, if you manage to pass the marker at the exact second posted, you get the second-biggest bonus in the game--the biggest bonus reserved for slamming on the brakes and stopping short of a truck stuck on a random crossing)
So even though you aren't steering the thing, it's still a massivley heavy contraption that must be brought up to a (relativley) high speed, then made to a stop at a very precise spot within a short time frame to gain bonus points and prolong game time.
So, what keeps you from simply flooring it and sliding into every station early? Posted speed restrictions for sharp curves for one thing (violating a posted speed restriction is a 10 point penalty, violating a signal gets you an emergency stop) and your real mistress, the train ahead of you. Run too fast and you start encountering yellow signals from the preceding train, which forces you to slow down. The part that gets you here is when departing a station, you don't get additional time to make it to the next station just because you arrived early. Which means that if you were tailgating the previous train when you arrived, you have to contend with yellow signals and their associated speed restrictions, while the schedule assumes a normal-speed run. It's possible to spot this coming on an express run, as you can see how far ahead or behind schedule you are at every local station and adjust your speed accordingly, but on a local, you're in trouble if you start passing yellow signals that don't turn green as you come out of the station, unless you've built up serious brownie points beforehand. It's the only really unrealistic part of the game, but it was thrown in to keep you honest.
I think I read somewhere that the commuter train operators in Japan are allowed about 6 minutes of accumulated late arrivals (due to operator error) in their entire careers. Exceed that an
This applies to their My Webpage" service as well as other parts of their "community". As far as I know, it's been in place during as well as since, the Yahoo-Geocities fiasco.
No, X2000 don't achieve 230-250 on regular tracks.
If I recall correctly, the record is around 270 km/h on a test tour. The ordinary top speed is about 200 km/h.
The X2000 trainset brought to the US for evaluation reached a top speed of 155 MPH* (the ICE did 165) on the Northeast Corridor in tests**.
---PCJ
*just about 250 Km/H
**Normally top speeds on this portion of the NEC are limited to 135MPH (217Km/H) for Acela Express trainsets--the catenary isn't counterweighted and thus isn't tight enough to prevent the pantagraphs (current collectors) from skipping and bouncing against the contact wire
I tried this a few times (to pre-delete spam), and found that just displaying the headers marked the message as read when I downloaded them later in Eudora, regardless of whether or not I actually opened the message.
Inconvenient enough for me that I quit using the feature after the first few times. Dunno if it's changed since then.
---PCJ
And, according to one of the documentaries on the subject, one of the other limitations of such extreme high speeds is braking distances.
TGVs could run a lot faster than they do in service now, but the distances required to brake to a complete stop become so ridiculously long (20 miles in the case of the record-breaking run) that maintaining a safe distance between trains prevents service from running at practical intervals.
This has more to do with set-top recorders than computer drives, in that you can add chapter marks whenever you want, split titles and hide selected chapters after the recording is done.
For example, with my Philips DVDR985, I recorded The Oblongs during "Adult Swim". Started the recording just before the opening sequence, paused during the commercials, then resumed recording to just past the end credits.
I return to the beginning of the recording and split the title right at the beginning of the opening sequence and delete the track containing the material preceding the opening sequence. I then fast-forward to the first commercial break, drop a chapter marker at the first commercial break, just as the program fades to the "black card", and another just before the program resumes. I go back to the chapter thus created and mark it as "hidden".
Upon playback, the deck now skips the chapter containing the black cards/commercials, and the program plays without interruption. By applying the "Make edits compatible" process in the edit menu, any DVD player that recognizes the disk will also observe the edits I made. With a -RW deck, the above could not be done due to limitations in the format as implemented by -RW set-top recorders.
Now, I suppose you could do the same with a hard disk-equipped deck, editing on the HD and spitting out the edited video on a -R disk (Panasonic's technique), but the decks thus equipped cost more.
This article was instrumental in getting me to pick a +RW deck over the others, since I would be doing a lot of editing of old VHS archives and unedited recordings as I converted them to disk.
As an aside, on the same site, learned later that the Sony dual-format decks omit some of the editing capabilities of +RW, supposedly to avoid confusing consumers unaware of the differences between the +RW and -RW formats.
As for compatibility, I know a friend's X-Box played my first +R disk, but without audio, my brother's PlayStation2 played the same disk without a hitch. I recently picked up a Panasonic DVD-LA95 portable DVD player after extensive research. It's manual declares that +RW disks "cannot be played", but my experience (and dvdplusrw.org's tests) show otherwise.
Much of this is probably unimportant to those intending to use their computer to burn DVDs, but I primarily use the set-top box. I did get a HP 300e burner for the PC this fall, but if past usage habits is any indicator, I might get around to actually using it this summer.
Slashdot Mirror
There was one internal IDE Zip that failed in an old P166 I was refurbishing, but I spotted the warning signs before it could damage any disks (I oughta open it up to look for fubar'ed heads). I've only lost one disk to bad sectors, and in that case I believe I did something I shouldn't and forced the drive to zig when it should've zagged. For that matter, I can actually credit the Jaz with saving my data, as it contained most of my applications and data when my primary system (at the time, a second 486 laptop) suffered a noisy hard drive failure after 5 years of service. I plugged the cartridge into the internal Jaz in my tower and kept going from there until I could replace the failed machine.
Why am I still using them? I've had worse luck with CDR/RW, believe it or not. A first generation internal CDRW that seldom completed a write without trashing the disk, an external USB (Archos) unit that wrote three disks before complaining that it couldn't calibrate it's laser, and my present unit, an external SCSI (yeah, four devices on one laptop) from Panasonic, which writes CD-R's reliably, but has proven finicky about CD_RW's, preferring to write to older ones and complaining about newer ones, even those rated 1-4x.
The aforementioned ancient laptop, being my primary system, has only USB 1.1, limiting my writes to 4x, assuming write-once media. I did try to move to -RW's for archivial storage, but the unit seems not to like the last batch of Memorex low-speed rewriteables I bought. I suppose I should try reducing write speeds, but in the interim, my Zip and Jaz units carry the load, having beaten the odds by continuing to function as they should for so long.
As it stands, the only thing that will break my dependence on these drives is replacing this machine with a newer laptop that has USB 2.0 (space constraints rule out replacing it with a desktop or tower) or a built in CDRW.
But yeah, I know I'm cheating the reaper on this one
---PCJ
(clarification): since the P-II era I've always had a faster desktop to fall back on, but most of my work was done on a succession of less-than-bleeding-edge laptops)
(W98SE w/all patches, IE6, Eudora Pro 3, OE left in an unconfigured state)
Using the above, whenever I recieve an unsolicited HTML attatchment, I turn off "[V]iew as Web Page" to disable the preview before highlighting the file to remove it. I also have my download folder set to display it's contents by date so any recent attatchments are all clustered together at the top for deletion. (And a loud toilet-flush WAV assigned to the act of emptying the Recycle bin just for effect :) )
Of course I'm probably lucky with regard to the topic. Both my parents, though not exactly computer literate,(neither uses email and only one does any web browsing (rarely at that)) at least seem to understand the hazards of email attatchments enough to find funny the 'clueless user' horror stories I relate to them from topics just like this.
---PCJ
After making matching accounts, printer and file sharing will work like a charm. If you cancel the logon window in 9x/2k, it won't work without prompting you for a user/pass.
Dag. The places you find solutions in, I tell you. My home LAN was comprised entirely of '98 machines (not using the MS login) till my brother added an XP laptop to the system. I got it to browse the web through the main system which was running ICS, and it could see other computers on the network, no problem. Then I tried to browse the shared folder on the XP machine from a '98 box (silly me), and IE literally threw a fit. After knocking some sense back into the errant machine, I told my brother if he had files to move to another machine, to do the transfer from XP to 98-not the other way around.
I see now that not using the MS login on the '98 machine was the culprit. Thanks for the tip.
---PCJ
Sounds like that's Densya De Go! (Let's Go by Train!). I happen to have home versions of this in my collection, in Saturn, Dreamcast and PC formats (along with the special motorman's controller for each, the Dreamcast one having been the toughest one to locate, possibly rarer than the VO:OT Twin Sticks)
Densya De Go! is a lot tougher than it's premise seems to indicate because it's a contest of precision, not speed or endurance. You start off with a set number of points, shown by the big "30" in the top center of the screenshot. You earn or lose points depending on what you do right (blowing horns for crossings, bridges and tunnels) or wrong (running late). The main object is to run from station to station, which seems ridiculously easy on the surface.
The hard part is stopping the train. You see, trains are very slow to react to control inputs (but you knew that already, right?). Where this affects you in the Densya De Go! series, is that you must time your arrival so that your train not only stops within one meter of a stop marker at the end of the platform, but you also must make this stop within a three second window to be considered on time. (and earn bonus points).
-Arrive late and you lose one point (two on harder levels) for every second your train is still moving after time is up (your arrival time is the white time in the upper left corner, current time is in yellow below it).
-Overshoot the marker by more than one metere and lose a point for every metere beyond that point (the distance to the next stop marker is in the lower right corner--green if you're stopping, white if you're bypassing it as an express).
-Slow down too much once in the station, and incur a 10-point penalty for throttling up to avoid stopping short of the marker--you're supposed to use brakes only.
-Even if you are bypassing stations as an express, you must reach the stop markers by a specific time to avoid losing points,(OTOH, if you manage to pass the marker at the exact second posted, you get the second-biggest bonus in the game--the biggest bonus reserved for slamming on the brakes and stopping short of a truck stuck on a random crossing)
So even though you aren't steering the thing, it's still a massivley heavy contraption that must be brought up to a (relativley) high speed, then made to a stop at a very precise spot within a short time frame to gain bonus points and prolong game time.
So, what keeps you from simply flooring it and sliding into every station early? Posted speed restrictions for sharp curves for one thing (violating a posted speed restriction is a 10 point penalty, violating a signal gets you an emergency stop) and your real mistress, the train ahead of you. Run too fast and you start encountering yellow signals from the preceding train, which forces you to slow down. The part that gets you here is when departing a station, you don't get additional time to make it to the next station just because you arrived early. Which means that if you were tailgating the previous train when you arrived, you have to contend with yellow signals and their associated speed restrictions, while the schedule assumes a normal-speed run. It's possible to spot this coming on an express run, as you can see how far ahead or behind schedule you are at every local station and adjust your speed accordingly, but on a local, you're in trouble if you start passing yellow signals that don't turn green as you come out of the station, unless you've built up serious brownie points beforehand. It's the only really unrealistic part of the game, but it was thrown in to keep you honest.
I think I read somewhere that the commuter train operators in Japan are allowed about 6 minutes of accumulated late arrivals (due to operator error) in their entire careers. Exceed that an
Similar to this?
This applies to their My Webpage" service as well as other parts of their "community". As far as I know, it's been in place during as well as since, the Yahoo-Geocities fiasco.
---PCJ
The X2000 trainset brought to the US for evaluation reached a top speed of 155 MPH* (the ICE did 165) on the Northeast Corridor in tests**.
---PCJ
*just about 250 Km/H
**Normally top speeds on this portion of the NEC are limited to 135MPH (217Km/H) for Acela Express trainsets--the catenary isn't counterweighted and thus isn't tight enough to prevent the pantagraphs (current collectors) from skipping and bouncing against the contact wire
Inconvenient enough for me that I quit using the feature after the first few times. Dunno if it's changed since then. ---PCJ
TGVs could run a lot faster than they do in service now, but the distances required to brake to a complete stop become so ridiculously long (20 miles in the case of the record-breaking run) that maintaining a safe distance between trains prevents service from running at practical intervals.
---PCJ
This has more to do with set-top recorders than computer drives, in that you can add chapter marks whenever you want, split titles and hide selected chapters after the recording is done.
For example, with my Philips DVDR985, I recorded The Oblongs during "Adult Swim". Started the recording just before the opening sequence, paused during the commercials, then resumed recording to just past the end credits.
I return to the beginning of the recording and split the title right at the beginning of the opening sequence and delete the track containing the material preceding the opening sequence. I then fast-forward to the first commercial break, drop a chapter marker at the first commercial break, just as the program fades to the "black card", and another just before the program resumes. I go back to the chapter thus created and mark it as "hidden".
Upon playback, the deck now skips the chapter containing the black cards/commercials, and the program plays without interruption. By applying the "Make edits compatible" process in the edit menu, any DVD player that recognizes the disk will also observe the edits I made. With a -RW deck, the above could not be done due to limitations in the format as implemented by -RW set-top recorders.
Now, I suppose you could do the same with a hard disk-equipped deck, editing on the HD and spitting out the edited video on a -R disk (Panasonic's technique), but the decks thus equipped cost more.
This article was instrumental in getting me to pick a +RW deck over the others, since I would be doing a lot of editing of old VHS archives and unedited recordings as I converted them to disk.
As an aside, on the same site, learned later that the Sony dual-format decks omit some of the editing capabilities of +RW, supposedly to avoid confusing consumers unaware of the differences between the +RW and -RW formats.
As for compatibility, I know a friend's X-Box played my first +R disk, but without audio, my brother's PlayStation2 played the same disk without a hitch. I recently picked up a Panasonic DVD-LA95 portable DVD player after extensive research. It's manual declares that +RW disks "cannot be played", but my experience (and dvdplusrw.org's tests) show otherwise.
Much of this is probably unimportant to those intending to use their computer to burn DVDs, but I primarily use the set-top box. I did get a HP 300e burner for the PC this fall, but if past usage habits is any indicator, I might get around to actually using it this summer.
---PCJ