CBBS(R) 4.0.3b 06/24/91 23:46:31 Y/N: want CBBS "1st time user" info?^U ?^U ?^U ?n;ward;christensen;odraw;;fullc;piss Logging name to disk... You are caller 222238; next msg =44898; 395 active msgs. Prev. call 06/23/91 @ 20:03, next msg was 44887 Recording logon for next time... Use FULL? to check assignments ?^U ?xxxxx "Mine" command checking for msgs TO you, ^K >Function:?dir c:log;dir c:killed;dir summary;type-20 log,ward c;or;*;short LOG. 8 KILLED. 19 SUMMARY. 26 /23/91,20:03:15,222214,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, E#44887, E#44888, E#44889, E#44890, E#44891, 06/23/91,20:38:47,222215,1,STEVE GENOVESE,,2 06/23/91,20:51:54,222216,9,OSCAR BERKE,chicago/il,2 06/23/91,22:53:55,222217,2,CLIFF SHARP,, E#44892,6 06/23/91,23:12:07,222218,2,ED FOSTER,,3 06/24/91,05:04:10,222219,2,PETE JONES,,2 06/24/91,06:02:45,222220,2,MICHAEL MCDANIEL,,2 06/24/91,06:06:40,222221,2,MICHAEL MCDANIEL,,4 06/24/91,08:26:13,222222,2,DENNIS STAHL,,5 06/24/91,09:59:18,222223,2,JAMES SCHMIDT,,1 06/24/91,10:40:26,222224,9,BEN TEIFELD,,3 06/24/91,11:02:47,222225,2,STEVE AIDIKONIS,,3 06/24/91,11:56:42,222226,1,LINDY SLOAN,,4 06/24/91,13:48:23,222227,2,DON PIVEN,,2 06/24/91,14:26:54,222228,2,JACK HOMA,,1 06/24/91,14:42:25,222229,2,BILL WOLFF,, E#44893, E#44894,22 06/24/91,15:13:30,222230,2,BOB JOHNSTON,,0 06/24/91,15:25:36,222231,1,PAUL BRAMEL,,14 06/24/91,17:59:56,222232,1,RICHARD GOZDAL,,4 06/24/91,19:06:42,222233,9,JAMES KARAGANIS,, E#44895,3 ]JAMES KARAGANIS, 06/24/91,19:35:30,222234,1,BERNARD GOLDLUST,,2 06/24/91,19:43:20,222235,1,KEVIN CLARK,,8 ]PEACE KEVIN CLARK, 06/24/91,21:04:37,222236,2,BILL WOLFF,, E#44896, E#44897,10 06/24/91,22:44:32,222237,2,RICHARD WITTAKER,ITASCA,4 06/24/91,23:46:35,222238,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, 44887 06/23/91 WARD CHRISTENSEN => ANDY SHIPIRO: "POWER CONSUMPTION" 44888 06/23/91 WARD CHRISTENSEN => TONY ANTONUCCI: "R/LANTASTIC 4.0" 44889 06/23/91 WARD CHRISTENSEN => BILL WOLFF: "R/FAT TABLES /REBUILDING" 44890 06/23/91 WARD CHRISTENSEN => BILL WOLFF: "R/ALWAYS ON VS POWER UP/DOWN" 44891 06/23/91 WARD CHRISTENSEN => ALL: "HOW A PC BOOTS" 44892 06/23/91 CLIFF SHARP => WARD CHRISTENSEN: "R/HOW A PC BOOTS" 44893 06/24/91 BILL WOLFF => WARD CHRISTENSEN: "R/ALWAYS ON VS POWER UP/DOWN" 44894 06/24/91 BILL WOLFF => WARD CHRISTENSEN: "R/FAT TABLES /REBUILDING" 44895 06/24/91 JAMES KARAGANIS => ALL: "C PROGRAMMING" 44896 06/24/91 BILL WOLFF => JERRY OLSEN: "DEC DISKS" 44897 06/24/91 BILL WOLFF => ALL: "GOTCHA!" ---- End of summary ---- Retrieving flagged msgs: C skips, K aborts. Msg 44887 is 09 line(s) on 06/23/91 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to ANDY SHIPIRO re: POWER CONSUMPTION I don't think all those "set back" thermostats are a sham - thus I think it IS appropriate to set back air conditioning when a location is not occupied. Lets take the worst case of a house unoccupied for a month's vacation. Surely the AC shouldn't be left on 78 degrees all that time. It won't cost THAT much - perhaps 4 hours operation - to bring the house to 76 degrees after the people come back. At the other extreme is the idea of leaving the AC on full time. That would be most expensive. I'm sure there is some formula for determining the optimum - for example "don't go more than 8 degrees high" or something. Msg 44888 is 04 line(s) on 06/23/91 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to TONY ANTONUCCI re: R/LANTASTIC 4.0 Great! I just bought another AE2 yesterday @ CompUSA - the Novell School I'm in has me thinking of putting up a Novell server, and I would use the same board so I could be compatible across the board - in case I decide to make it a Lantastic Server instead. Msg 44889 is 21 line(s) on 06/23/91 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to BILL WOLFF re: R/FAT TABLES /REBUILDING Here's what a 720K disk looks like: DiskParm 9/10/88 by Ward Christensen Defaults to A: drive, or specify a drive: DiskParm c: 00 02 02 01 00 02 70 00 A0 05 F9 03 00 09 00 02 00 00 00 ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ 512 bytes per sector 2 sectors per cluster 1 reserved sector 2 copies of fat 112 root entries 1440 sectors per disk F9 media descriptor 3 sectors per fat 9 sectors per track 2 heads 0 hidden sectors ---- So, no a 720K isn't 512 byte clusters - it is 1K. 720K floppies could even be patched to use 512 byte clusters, but you'd have to increase each fat's size, move the root dir down, etc. Major process, but I've done it as an exercise. Msg 44890 is 04 line(s) on 06/23/91 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to BILL WOLFF re: R/ALWAYS ON VS POWER UP/DOWN A light bulb doesn't fail due to the start-up spike. It fails during start-up due to thermal shock - going from room temp to thousands of degrees. Nevertheless this same cold-to-hot transition, to a lesser degree, obviously applies to electronics. Msg 44891 is 10 line(s) on 06/23/91 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to ALL re: HOW A PC BOOTS I'd been asking (not here) how a PC boots, and found the following, by pointers to the MS-DOS encyclopedia. What happens is that the rom goes to the master boot sector (MBS) of the drive, and looks for the following: - can read it (obviously - if it can't read it it hasn't been LLF'd) - finds a long or short JMP in byte 0 - finds a 55 AA at the end of the sector ...THEN it loads that code into 0:600 (I think) and executes it. It moves itself up, sets up pointers to the partition, and then loads the boot sector from DOS or what ever is set up to boot. It loads up at 0:600 also. Msg 44892 is 06 line(s) on 06/23/91 from CLIFF SHARP to WARD CHRISTENSEN re: R/HOW A PC BOOTS Good description, except that the code I've looked at executes at 0:700. The partition sector (C0H0S1) on a hard drive is an executable code fragment which finds the active partition's first sector, loads IT and executes it to complete the beginning of the boot sequence. It can be very instructional to disassemble C0H0S1 on a standard, FDISKed hard drive to see that part in gory detail. Msg 44893 is 16 line(s) on 06/24/91 from BILL WOLFF to WARD CHRISTENSEN re: R/ALWAYS ON VS POWER UP/DOWN Ahh... your right about thermal shock to a light bulb, but it also does gets spiked as well. Light bulbs when cold hardly offer little resistance to electrons. On the other hand, when they are heated to high temperatures with the combo of mass current flow, starts to oppose current flow and builds up lot more resistance. On a different note, filaments in tubes, which act very much like light bulbs, would usually blow (if connected in series) either the one in the path of an incoming electrons or the one rated at the highest voltage drop. Knowing this little trick while repairing tube TV sets with series connected filaments which had one or more filaments gone proved very helpful. In short, yes you are correct in what you are saying, but there are also mass surge that builds up through a filament when you first turn it on or shall I say whenever you turn it on. Msg 44894 is 02 line(s) on 06/24/91 from BILL WOLFF to WARD CHRISTENSEN re: R/FAT TABLES /REBUILDING Thank you, thank you, thank you! Very interesting indeed information. I am sure I will put it to good use. Msg 44895 is 02 line(s) on 06/24/91 from JAMES KARAGANIS to ALL re: C PROGRAMMING Can anyone recommend some good reference books on C programming? Thanks. Msg 44896 is 02 line(s) on 06/24/91 from BILL WOLFF to JERRY OLSEN re: DEC DISKS Your more than welcome for those disks. I am glad somebody got some use out of them. Otherwise they would just sit and rot around here. Msg 44897 is 10 line(s) on 06/24/91 from BILL WOLFF to ALL re: GOTCHA! Ah... that old MS-DOS bug got me again. I had a open file on drive B: and swapped the data disk with a freshly formatted disk. I forgot that there was an opened file on the other disk and placed the old data disk back into the drive and then read the directory and wham! The old directory is now replace with the formatted disk with no files. OH NO!!! I recovered some files with RECOVER and CHKDSK MS-DOS commands, but those that were much older than a few days were all gone. Why oh why does this bug still exist while many never warn you of this. Ouch! No dup. chars. >Function:?CBBS(R) 4.0.3b 06/25/91 22:21:23 Y/N: want CBBS "1st time user" info?^U ?^U ?^U ?n;ward;christensen;odraw;;fullc;piss Logging name to disk... You are caller 222260; next msg =44901; 371 active msgs. Prev. call 06/24/91 @ 23:46, next msg was 44898 Recording logon for next time... Use FULL? to check assignments ?^U ?xxxxx "Mine" command checking for msgs TO you, ^ >Function:?dir c:log;dir c:killed;dir summary;type-20 log,ward c;or;*;short LOG. 9 KILLED. 34 SUMMARY. 24 /23/91,20:03:15,222214,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, E#44887, E#44888, E#44889, E#44890, E#44891, 06/23/91,20:38:47,222215,1,STEVE GENOVESE,,2 06/23/91,20:51:54,222216,9,OSCAR BERKE,chicago/il,2 06/23/91,22:53:55,222217,2,CLIFF SHARP,, E#44892,6 06/23/91,23:12:07,222218,2,ED FOSTER,,3 06/24/91,05:04:10,222219,2,PETE JONES,,2 06/24/91,06:02:45,222220,2,MICHAEL MCDANIEL,,2 06/24/91,06:06:40,222221,2,MICHAEL MCDANIEL,,4 06/24/91,08:26:13,222222,2,DENNIS STAHL,,5 06/24/91,09:59:18,222223,2,JAMES SCHMIDT,,1 06/24/91,10:40:26,222224,9,BEN TEIFELD,,3 06/24/91,11:02:47,222225,2,STEVE AIDIKONIS,,3 06/24/91,11:56:42,222226,1,LINDY SLOAN,,4 06/24/91,13:48:23,222227,2,DON PIVEN,,2 06/24/91,14:26:54,222228,2,JACK HOMA,,1 06/24/91,14:42:25,222229,2,BILL WOLFF,, E#44893, E#44894,22 06/24/91,15:13:30,222230,2,BOB JOHNSTON,,0 06/24/91,15:25:36,222231,1,PAUL BRAMEL,,14 06/24/91,17:59:56,222232,1,RICHARD GOZDAL,,4 06/24/91,19:06:42,222233,9,JAMES KARAGANIS,, E#44895,3 ]JAMES KARAGANIS, 06/24/91,19:35:30,222234,1,BERNARD GOLDLUST,,2 06/24/91,19:43:20,222235,1,KEVIN CLARK,,8 ]PEACE KEVIN CLARK, 06/24/91,21:04:37,222236,2,BILL WOLFF,, E#44896, E#44897,10 06/24/91,22:44:32,222237,2,RICHARD WITTAKER,ITASCA,4 06/24/91,23:46:35,222238,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, E#44898,9 ]Give Dennis Stahl a prize for #222222? ;-) WARD CHRISTENSEN, 06/25/91,00:41:33,222239,2,DONALD SNELL,chicago/ il.,2 06/25/91,02:47:15,222240,2,HARRY GREEN,palos hills/ il, 06/25/91,02:54:57,222241,2,HARRY GREEN,,14 06/25/91,03:10:00,222242,2,HARRY GREEN,,30 06/25/91,07:04:23,222243,2,SHERMAN KAPLAN,,7 06/25/91,07:55:56,222244,2,CLIFF SHARP,, E#44899,9 06/25/91,08:58:05,222245,2,BILL WOLFF,,1 06/25/91,09:15:11,222246,2,MICHAEL SHARTIAG,,6 06/25/91,09:30:02,222247,1,GEORGE HOPKINS,greensboro/ nc,8 06/25/91,09:42:20,222248,2,RICHARD HINTON,,1 06/25/91,09:53:22,222249,2,BILL WOLFF,, E#44900,3 06/25/91,09:58:37,222250,2,DENNIS STAHL,,4 06/25/91,11:10:03,222251,2,GARY ELFRING,,3 06/25/91,15:26:18,222252,1,LANE LARRISON,,5 06/25/91,16:56:43,222253,1,JEFF EDWARDS,Kansas City/ MO,1 06/25/91,17:31:00,222254,1,WARD CHRISTENSEN,,2 06/25/91,18:30:38,222255,2,CHARLIE KESTNER,,7 06/25/91,19:48:22,222256,2,DON PIVEN,,2 06/25/91,19:54:28,222257,1,KEVIN CLARK,,7 06/25/91,20:15:53,222258,2,LARRY GLASSMAN,,2 06/25/91,21:19:07,222259,1,STAN YOUNG,chi ill,7 06/25/91,22:21:27,222260,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, 44898 06/24/91 WARD CHRISTENSEN => BILL WOLFF: "R/GOTCHA!" 44899 06/25/91 CLIFF SHARP => ALL: "POWER-OFF CONTROVERSY" 44900 06/25/91 BILL WOLFF => CLIFF SHARP: "R/POWER-OFF CONTROVERSY" ---- End of summary ---- Retrieving flagged msgs: C skips, K aborts. Msg 44898 is 06 line(s) on 06/24/91 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to BILL WOLFF re: R/GOTCHA! I ran into the old "change the disk with open files" 3-5 times at work- I used to say I would rebuild the disks for 'em - but after about 5 hrs hacking, I decided it wasn't worth it - better to teach 'em "don't do it!". When DOS 4 came out, and showed this funky serial #, I said "Yay! At last DOS has a way that is unique for each diskette - S-U-R-E-L-Y they must use it to detect disk change! NOPE! Rats! Msg 44899 is 19 line(s) on 06/25/91 from CLIFF SHARP to ALL re: POWER-OFF CONTROVERSY Everyone seems to be talking about whether to leave power on the computer or turn the whole thing off when leaving it. To cover the monitor, let me say that the monitor should be shut off any time you're not going to be using it for the next fifteen minutes. I spent the better part of the period 1967 to 1978 repairing TV sets, and found that sets left on all the time developed a peculiar weakness of the CRT; it would be fine once on for a while, but when turned off and hten on, it would take nearly forever to "warm up" to the point that it had even a viewable picture (much less a good one). How does this experience carry over? Take a TV, gut it (remove the tuner, the IF stages, the video detector, the chroma stages, etc. etc.) and you basically have a monitor. The Princeton HX-12 I'm using today was a throwaway from a company that was told the CRT was bad; I soldered an intermittent joint on a CRT driver transistor and it hasn't performed in any less-than-perfect manner since. The debate is open on leaving the computer on (I leave mine on 24 hrs.) but the monitor should be turned OFF whenever you plan not to use the 'puter in the next fifteen minutes (about the amount of life the CRT loses when you turn it on). Msg 44900 is 30 line(s) on 06/25/91 from BILL WOLFF to CLIFF SHARP re: R/POWER-OFF CONTROVERSY Hi Cliff! Well I understand what your saying but many improvements have been made since the 60's and 70's. There used to be a claim that leaving CRT's on all the time with the same screen causes the image to be burned into the screen. Since then, the screens can take lots more heat then the older types. So this would hardly be a problem today. I have yet heard of a case that this has happened with any CRT later than say 1980. Of course, you can if you turn the bias higher than average viewing. Another thing you have to worry about is the heater (filament) in the CRT. If that goes (you have three filaments on a color CRT) you'll be out of business (if color, you're out a color). Turning it on and off will weaken the filament(s). Also leaving it on, will also weaken it. There is no winning here, just balance. I do still have a CRT rejuvenator that works wonders in some cases. It won't fix broken filaments, but it will help getting a brighter picture. Though this trick does weaken the filaments and can blow them during the event. Darn if you do and darn if you don't. Another thing helpful (or harmful depending how you look at it) is that most CRT's now have a small voltage applied to the heater all the time. This speeds up warming up a CRT and lessens the quick temperature changes that a CRT has to go through. On the other hand, it's on all the time even though on a lower setting sometimes. By the way, I too, turn off my monitors if I won't be using them in about 15 minutes or so. I also turn off my computers most of the time too. Though I don't have hard drives. If I did, I would likely leave mine on more. I don't really dislike hard drives, it's just the computers I use would be very expansive to add one. No dup. chars. >Function:?