Rob Scott's Ramblings

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - October 2007 - Now Yer Gettin' Silly.

Ya, I'm losing it, going all Windows again. Yep, due to a recent hardware failure, I'm switching to all Windows. Face it, they just don't write the good stuff for Linux. Mind you, if it weren't for a few pieces of other programs I use on a regular basis, I wouldn't use windoze at all. The family tree program, Windows only, the burning software that makes familytree disks flawlessly, windows. Hmm, if I could write or re-write those programs, I would, but I'm too freakin' old and impatient to learn anything beyond a few BASIC routines.

But, we do have a treat for all the old Atari, etc. fans before we close out this month. Shane was crusin' the 'net recently and came across the following bit of antiquity. It's an old issue of our computer club newsletter. This is about fifteen years old! Enjoy!

This month I'd like to go into just who we are. The Spirit is mostly produced by myself with the assistance of a few other sysops in the Ontario Atari BBS Association, a non-profit organization created solely for the purpose of expanding the horizons of the telecommunicating general public. We aim to bring new life into an unsupported computer by keeping you up-to-date on important issues affecting the 8-bit Atari community. We will try to keep you informed as to the best sources of software, hardware and computer supplies for Atari 8-bit home computers. We make no money for this service.

Recently one of our correspondents was informed that due to copyright laws they couldn’t put our newsletter out on their BBS's! What a crock! I don't know what laws they have been reading but it's certainly not a Canadian law, and I in no way EVER said sysop's could not put the Spirit up on their boards. That's ridiculous! Some pointed to the disclaimers etc. that we put in every issue, well if that's the case then we just won't put it in there anymore, but you might want to check with the author of a piece before you rip it off and use it elsewhere. As far as I know everything in the Spirit is in the public domain with the exception of the name Spirit. You can mention that if you like, I just don't want some whacko using our newsletter name in vain. To all them sysops who have refused our newsletter because you were afraid of putting it up, get a life.

Now, on to bigger and better things. I've recently received the latest BELLCOM public domain shareware 1992 catalog; the address to get yours is below. One of our correspondents has been in contact a time or two with Don Bell and he assures me that BELLCOM is still in business. The new catalog is jam-packed with new and exciting Atari software and from what I've read, Don is offering free trade-ins on defective items that customers may have purchased in the past, That's service! BELLCOM has been in the PD/Shareware business for many years and we hope that it will continue for many years to come. If you would like to obtain the new catalog write to BELLCOM at the following address:

BELLCOM P.O. Box 1043 Peterborough, Ontario Canada K9J 7A5

Note that now with each order Don has a new item that he includes free. It's a disk filled with information for Atari users. Just exactly what is in these infodisks I'm not sure as of yet but hopefully Don will start to include a copy of the Spirit! (Just a plug there Don). We should now rally behind all the few remaining sources of Atari 8-bit supplies and give them the pat on the back they deserve and BUY THEIR PRODUCTS, as without them we would soon have nothing new for our computers and then we would be forced to use them as "GAME MACHINES", a term I personally hate with a passion. A previous issue of AS carried a fairly decent list of companies still supporting the 8-bit line.

Anyhow, after all this I may not have much room left for everyone else's stuff so I will cut outta here and let someone else get a word in edgewise. Till next time, see you in a 8-bit!

Rob Scott, Editor/publisher The SPIRIT.

Well two months since the Spirit hit the press, and still nothing much to say. Was pleased to talk to Don Bell the other day and find him still supporting the 8-bit in the same excellent fashion he always has. Oasis games have gone through some major changes of late with Gladiators being taking beyond what I thought was possible for an 8-bit BBS game.

Pro has finally installed ANSI support. Good for Pro! The IBM callers get real confused when they call and get ANSI color and Graphics as they do in Oasis 5.0 and Pro..heh.. Always brings a chuckle when we deceive our Big brothers. Seems the layoff got a few more columns going this issue! GREAT! Always happy to see that happen! Ye Ole Junction is now functional as Oasis node 035 (v4.7). And welcome back to Shane Gaudaur AKA Iceman who has reopened Classic 8 BBS here in London.. Gee for a guy that didn't have much to say..

Also, I want to share a BBS role playing game with you all. On Desert Illusion we have just started to try a game of Diplomacy and are presently going through the election campaign, which in turn is becoming a smear campaign. Hopefully we will be able to add other Boards to the game and get a world empire running. Next issue if the game works I will submit a guideline for our version.. heh.. And perhaps we can get Foreign aid from you?

Well enough babbling on to the serious stuff... Welcome aboard to the new Board in New Jersey who now carries Spirit Mag (Sorry Stan, I forgot your BBS name! Duh....).. Well welcome aboard Stan and the gang hope you all enjoy the Spirit as much as I have these last 5? years we have been doing it.. Well Rob anyways..heh..

Dave Scott
Desert Illusion BBS
Oasis 5.0 beta Test bed & Oasis Support
London Ont. Canada
1-(519)-***-****

G'day from Australia. Would love some mail contact! Am interested in anything Atari 8. Write to:

Dave Blears
22 Georgia Street
Godwin Beach 4510
Queensland, Australia
Write Now!!!!
Am interested in Action!, Mac65, everything.

Welcome to this month's SPIRIT! I figured it was about time I got off my duff and started writing something here in this great publication.

For starters, I am now running the Classic Eight BBS. It is actually my third board. I run BBS Express, and soon to be putting up PRO! Node X233.

My first board was run using Express BBS. It was called The Baby Oil BBS. Needless to say, I had a few users complain about the name, thinking it was some kind of sleazy board, so I took it down and awaited for my PRO! Node to arrive.

After the node arrived I had some fantastic help from a friend of mine, Ron Godmaire, who runs POPS BBS (519) 432-0251, here in London. Ron was a great help to me, and helped me get started with the Desert Storm BBS. Due to some computer malfunctions, I was again forced to take the board down, finally about 9 months later, Dave Scott loaned me his 256K and I am now back up and running the Classic Eight BBS.

I will be putting up the PRO! Node near the end of April as my storage space will be expanding. The expansion will include some GREAT on-line games such as ARENA. And as always, the message bases will be running smooth because I have such great users!!!

Well, that's about all for this issue, but I'll be back!!!

Shane Scott Gaudaur
Sysop: Classic Eight BBS
(519) ***-****› London, ON

Often wondered why you get errors and yet you run the head cleaner through the Drive at least once a week? Could be you haven't REALLY cleaned the drive lately? I mean tear it down and give it a good honest cleaning. WHAT!!! You never have? Surprised it works! Depending on usage or even lack of usage and the environment your Computer is setup in there is no set schedule as to when you should do preventive cleaning. I do my Happy enhanced 1050 every month. But I'm a slob and smoke near my machine. (OH YUK HE SMOKES!!) Opps there goes my fan club. Regardless, it's simple.

Step One: Remove the top portion of your case by removing the four screws in the embedded recesses on the bottom of the drive. CAREFULLY lift the top and set it aside. You are now looking down on the drive mech.

Step Two: Remove all dust balls etc. from the drive itself. The running arms on the head are lubricated and require some good alcohol cleaning to remove what I like to call drive goop that will cause the drive to falter and thus err. Having done this and using a QUALITY cotton swab CAREFULLY clean the two ceramic positions on the read/write head. A poor quality Swab will break down and cause more problems than you can imagine! Having cleaned the Drive mech and seeing, as the case is open, do a visual inspection of all wires. Ensuring that all are firmly seated in their respective places. Now, using a fine grade sewing machine oil. (No 10w30 please!) put a small dab on each head runner, (the two metal bars the head rides on) as you removed all the lubrication with the alcohol cleaning. Now carefully place the cover back on and screw the 3 screws you still have left back into their holes. (The forth screw? Atari has a screw on every drive with a built in Transporter that sends it back to the factory when removed. At least that’s my story and I'm sticking to it!). Simple enough! Be careful Don’t knock the heads off of alignment and make sure it's unplugged!

Till Next issue...››Atari Fred... My 8-bit ain't dead!---------------

Well I was ask by the boys at Spirit International this time around to write a little something to include in this month Spirit World. So if it is kind of brief then its because I never had much of a chance to get ready for it, but here goes.

Since I run Express Pro! Then maybe I will start with talking a bit about that. BBS Express Pro! to me is one of the most powerful BBS Programs available for the Atari 8-bit. We at Pro! are ALWAYS coming up with new Ideas. I believe as I am writing this right now they are working on the Z-Modem protocol for us 8-bit Atarians.

Another thing that has been slow in coming but is finally here is the FULL Ansi compatibility. This enable IBM user to take full advantage of the ANSI Graphics online while logged on to an Express Pro! This is version 3.2c and up. It is still not available at POPS but we will get it soon enough. Another option not available very often with 8 bit Computers is BATCH UPLOADING, which is now available with BBS Express PRO! which is one of the next things in the books for POPS along with the newer version of the main program to allow Ansi and also the Multiplexer should be hopefully in by the summer.

Just to let you all know a bit about POPS BBS itself. It runs on an Atari 130XE upgraded to 576K, therefore giving it 512K of RAM. And on this Atari I have a 256K MIO, which enables me to run a few other things. I am currently running 2 Hard Drives on it. One being a P.T.I 50 meg Hard Drive which formats to 44 meg. The other is a Rodime 60 meg Hard Drive which formats to about 58 meg. All toll this gives POPS about 103 meg online. Not to bad for the old 8-bit which they said would never go anywhere.. Also with these 2 Hard Drive I have a 1050 Disk Drive with an Archiver in it and also an Old Epson M/X 80F/T Printer. All this comes together with a Supra 2400 baud modem and view on a 12 inch Monochrome Monitor.

Well I had not written in this for a while but maybe I will find something else to write about next time around. So for now and in case I don't. Have a nice Summer....

POPS BBS
1-519-***-****
24 hours a day7 days a week
100+ Meg online
(London Ont.)

Well it’s been a little while since we last spoke and no doubt much has happened with all of you...hopefully most of it good!

Last time I was here I was awaiting the arrival of my black box and hard drive and envisioning lots of fun with the BBS. It’s been a Month to the day that Ye Ole Junction went up and I tell ya I feel a lot older than I did a month ago..and as much wiser...I guess the best ability I could think that a sysop needs to have is the ability to take criticism and turn it to your advantage, cuz I have to believe that any newcomer is sure to be prone to errors...I know I have. But there are things you really have to experience to get the full benefit out of them...it's the best teacher there is around...for its easy to feel foolish when a fellow sysop explains something that sounds and most likely is easy, but then we all have to learn to crawl before we walk and walk before we run...so no matter how stupid you think your question is...don't hesitate to ask someone for the answer...as I am sure that somewhere in our midst is someone who can solve your problem or send you in the right direction.

Talking about problems. Well, I have heard rumors of the Spirits' demise. The online magazine that is...those rumors are only that as long as we all send in something to make its existence a continuance. I hope we can all find something that is print worthy, and continue this avenue of communication amongst ourselves here in the Atari 8 bit community. So for now I should close with the comments that yes, being a sysop is a lot of fun, it's also a lot of work but it's well worth it when there are users like yourselves. I bid you all take care until the next issue I bid you well....
Jogger

Atari Spirit is prepared with the following hardware and software:

Atari 130xe (512k), Tandy TRS80 laptop (for when I get inspired!) and is edited with TextPro v4.5.

All articles provided to the Spirit are in the public domain provided they remain together. Contact the individual authors and the Spirit editor re: reprints of certain articles in other newsletters. Most authors and the editor/publisher may be contacted via any OABA BBS. The Spirit is in no way affiliated with Atari Canada or Atari Corp. The Spirit has no commercial sponsor. The Spirit is in no way responsible for any damage to any equipment or programs as a result of trying out suggestions from the individual authors.

Submit all articles to:››A)Any OABA BBS.›B)The Spirit BBS (613)***-**** 2400b 24 hours daily.›---

Till next time! Rob. (And special thanks this month to Shane for finding the neatest thing we all were ever involved in!

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - September 2007

This month I'd like to cover the cost of the internet. If they continue to bombard me with ads, collect information from me, (using obvious methods or being as snaky as they can). How come it's not free or at least subsidized? After all, if they're pushing a product at me that I want, I'll buy it thereby making me more of a consumer and them richer. (By the way, I never have and likely never will conduct commerce over the internet, it's still insecure and run by the Monty Burns of the World). In other words, they are not selling me anything.

Although I do use the net for looking at apartments, and I did see my latest car advertized over the net. I never would buy either over the net. So, in conclusion, show me your stuff, but I'll come over and lay my hands on it. It's the way I sell computers, I bring them over to your house or you come to my shop and actually see it being built and heck, I'll add a clapper if you want. Someday I'll find that elusive affordable apartment, give my nephew back his room, and get my stuff out of storage.

Well, how about that, before I even finished writing this article, I found a new place to live and I'm moving in next week. I found it through a friend and not even on the market at all yet. What luck! Now maybe, we can all get on with our lives. Back soon, gotta pick out drapes.

CYA next month!

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Yes, it's been a year since my last column, and for that I apologise. I've been very ill, not able to do much of anything at all for that whole time. Now things have improved and I'm back to my old opinionated form.

Just to finish up, I settled on Ubuntu Linux, no need to go any further - period.

Not to cut this too short, but I must. Look for some more neat stuff next month as it is time for me to start working on that column NOW, before July.

See you very soon!

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Yes, it's been some time, but as you will find out as you read on, I've been a very busy guy. As many of you already know, I've been tinkering with Linux for several years, not really getting serious about it at all. Over the past few months I've rarely put a rebuilt out the door. This has left me with a few very nice machines to fool around with and running the same OS on all of them is kinda boring. So, what to do with all these machines besides storing them away on a shelf? Install Linux on them! But, not just the same version on all of them. I installed different flavours of Linux on each of them and took each for a test drive. The three versions I used were Ubuntu Linux, Xandros Linux and Libranet Linux. The versions aren't important, as most are changed quite often and may confuse some readers. Basically, with the exceptions of some of the kernels, they are all based on the same one. Only the programs themselves are different. I'm going to break this down one by one and try to keep this as short as possible. I thought of writing three monthly columns on each but thought better to get in as much as possible now while the AC/DC concert plays in the background on Much More Music.

First off, I went to each of the companies websides and downloaded the apporopriate CD images. Ubuntu and Xandros were one CD versions and Libranet was two.

I started with Xandros on a PII 233 with 128Mb RAM, CD ROM, 5 Gb drive. It went rather well but had one issue with my soundcard so I changed the card and presto! Music. It was rather painless to install and only took about an hour or two to install and set up to my liking. I used it for about a week running the update manager only once manually to install updates for the system. A lot better than that "other OS" that blows. Xandros ended up number two on my list of OS.

Next I ran a live version of Ubuntu and had absolutely no problems later installing it on another PC with the full free downloaded version. It was actually the fastest and easiest to install coming in at less than one hour. The machine was a PIII 400 with 256 Mb RAM and a four Gb drive. Updates were actually better as the system notified me of updates immediately and was two clicks to install them. The system updates took about 30 minutes to install and a reboot was required to install a newer kernel. Ubuntu was number one on my list as I think anyone can install it no matter how much experience they have. Ubuntu was number one on my list.

Last but really not least was Libranet. This two CD version was hours installing and updating. But, in all fairness, I installed it with EVERYTHING! It was installed on a PIII 400 with a 5 Gb drive and 160Mb RAM. I'm glad it wa a faster machine. With all the software and options made available in this version, you have your choice. A few problems it had were one flaky stick of RAM and a bad power supply. Took me a few hours to figure out the RAM issue but the fan was grinding so hard I got it down and out pretty quick. Multiple choices of X Windows systems gave me much choice and it can be made easily into a rather nice looking desktop system - or file server. Rated number three just because it took almost as long to install as Windows XP and 2K on my AMD system and the network server a few years ago. It's definitely not for the uninitiated and can be messed up rather quickly. Updates took hours to download and install but this is again because of the large amount of progams and X windows systems included with it. I recently downloaded the DVD version (four CDs worth of files for that install and it will be reviewed - eventually).

All the systems slid perfectly into my home network and the net was at my mercy. The Libranet DVD version as well as SUSE Linux will be reviewed in upcoming columns as I get some other machines rebuilt. Don't throw it out! there's still life in them thar PC's!

As always, your comments and feedback are welcome to: [email protected] .

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - December 2005

Hey all! Merry Christmas and all the best of the Holiday Season! Welcome to another edition of "Rob Scott's Ramblings". A place where you can keep up on the latest happenings at my place.

As a few of you might have gathered, I've been sick lately due to the complications of my Diabetes. I lost a toe to infection but I'm doing fine and expect to return to "the other job" soon. My hopes are high. While I've been off, I was straightening up my spare parts and now I have a good stock of PC's for sale at reasonable rates. They were all burned in for over a week and come with the exciting Xandros or Ubuntu Linux operating systems. I'm sorry there are no photos of the massive build that went into the construction of these babies, but I'm sure you didn't want to see me working in my Pajamas with a huge cast on my foot. Two were Intel systems (a PII and a PIII system) and one AMD 1200. The Intels are twins containing all the usual good stuff and the AMD was a bit of a custom job with a windowed case, lights, extra fans and several good geek upgrades installed. There will be photos put up on the website of the finished products. I'm rather proud of these machines that some days due to the illness and hospital visits I thought would never be completed.

You'll possibly notice that all the November, December and January columns are being posted at the same time this month. Again it was due to the illness that the November & December weren't posted on time, I just found them on my laptop.

It's time for bed now and I hope your Christmas will be as good as mine now that I will soon be getting back to a regular paycheck. Happy holidays everyone!

Rob & Family

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - November 2005

As I continue to recover I still plug on. What a good little soldier I am. Anybody miss me? Ya, right.

Hey, got my laptop working again, that's the only reason I'm writing. It's a lot easier with the laptop and lay in the bed with the snoring kittens all day. They certainly help you to doze off.

Speaking of dozing off, I notice that more and more people have to rely on the internet for their day to day activities. For instance, I'm off work because I'm ill, my Unemployment insurance hasn't kicked in yet, (TWO MONTHS!!!) and I have no income so no internet. Well the fine folks over at UI suggest I do all my claiming online, or over the phone. Which during this period neither of which I have. Now, I don't want to appear like an idiot every month, but I'm not supposed to be running all over London trying to settle these matters. In fact, I'm not supposed to be doing anything but laying in bed - recovering.

It's incredibly amazing how much we've come to rely on the internet and the telephone but they are still not free for all citizens considering we all paid for its' inception and organization. Now it's gone corporate and it's still not in everyones home. What's up with that?

End of rant.

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Well, here we are again. Did ya try out some of the programs I suggested last issue? I hope you enjoyed playing around with them as much as I did. Now I'm testing out a few Blog programs, and I've found most to be fairly useless. Almost all of them want you to host with them, give them all the rights to your content, or are just plain confusing to work with. Whatever happened to the "free internet"? I think it's become way too commerc- ialized and money-grubbing corporations are taking a lot of liberties with the way things should be. According to the way that the internet was originally set up, we should all be online and surfing for almost no cost at all. It just keeps getting more and more costly as time goes on.

This month my review is on FTP programs. I don't want to use the built-in capabilities of Internet Explorer, all I get there is plenty of pop-ups which waste my time closing them. I tried WS-FTP Pro, but the program shut down after 30 days and face it, I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'm the cheapest SOB in the world. Right now I'm testing and am quite happy with Coffeecup Free FTP software (www.coffeepot.com)

There will be more on the blog stuff next month, I've just not found any of them to be useful at this time. I even tried the one suggested on the famous Call For Help TV show. an excellent resource most of the time.

That's about it for this month, I'm outta words and ideas. CYA!

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A lot to cover this month so I'll get right to it.

Konfabulator - Plain and simple, easy to use, Just plain fun! Get it now, free 30-day trial. www.konfabulator.com.

After juicing up my desktop I decided that the PC needed a bit of sprucing up and I did it. I got a new case for it from Oxford Computers that had a nice 350 watt power supply and a couple of light strips on the front. A window in the side was a good sell too. At twenty bucks it was a steal. Then I added a Motherboard, tube light, an illuminated fan and a 15 gig hard drive from Lotus Computers (www.lotuspc.com). After all this I decided the wires being all lit up and messy looking through the glass was a bit much so I added some wire cover tubing I picked up at Forest City Surplus. Neat now. But there was the problems of beige bezels on my CD-ROM and floppy drives. I wandered into Mega Computers on Richmond Street and found a new CD/DVD burner with software for seventy-five dollars with software! Photos available now on the photo web page available from the main menu! (I know I've said that before, but this time I really want to show off! Pardon my poor photo talents).

Why did I get all this stuff? I got frustrated trying to get my car through DRIVE CLEAN! It should be called wallet clean! What a SCAM! When the going gets tough, geeks upgrade!

Another fun program I recently installed is Say The Time from Provenio Software, www.provenio.ws. 30 day trial version but fully-functional and customizable.

That about covers it for this month! See you in the future.

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Hey all, I'm still here. Been working on some newer ways of communicating. I've started a personal webspace at MSN, if you want to take a peek it's here: Personal Space. Feel free to drop by and see what bugs me. I think that is where I'm gonna stick my rants and raves for now. I'll try to save this space for more of the tech stuff. (I know you'll miss my rants here, but if it has to do with tech, it'll be ranted about in here).

I finally gave up on that SOYO Dragon board I had for my AMD system. I went and got an ASUS board and dumped the IDE RAID portion of that SOYO board. I could not for the life of me get it to install more than Windows 98. Even Linux ended with a kernel panic while installing. I'm back on with the "fancy" machine and I even treated it to a new case I picked up at Oxford Computers. One of those windowed jobbies with lights and all in it. Not too shabby looking, and I really do have to get a new hard drive for it. I've only got a 1.2 Gig and a 2 Gig drive in it. Not a whole heck of a lot of space, but the server has plenty of space since I did replace one of the drives in there for file storage. Ya, I know I've been promising Photos of my work but I consider every PC here a "work in progress" and don't consider them finished. I know some would like to see my works in progress, but some days I skitter from machine to machine as the mood or a new idea hits me and I forget to pick up the camera and snap a few photos.

I'm undecided on Project 2005. Should I use the AMD system with all the fancy lights and windows in it, OR should I customize the PIII machine and add that stuff to it? Let me know what you want to see me do. Please.

Hey, I'm starting to ramble here so we'll cut it off here and hope to see you all again in the near future. Later gang!

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Greetings! Welcome back to another of my increasingly annoying rambles. What's up with all of you folks? I'm trying to come up with a topic for this month's banter, but I'm just filling the column with fluff. If there is something you'd like me to explore, please feel free to send me suggestions for the column - I'm bone dry.

I've been running XP Home for about a month now on one of my spare pc's, seems ok, but a bit slow reacting sometimes. Quite possibly to the memory management in it, changing programs in memory so they run faster. A lot like multi-tasking in DOS (you do remember that don't you?). So far I'm grading it a B-. I still think Windows 2000 was the best OS Microsoft ever came out with and remember that I'm still partial to Linux, so that's giving in a lot.

At a loss for content now. Time to sign off or I might get off on a tangent we don't want to bother with. See you next time!

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Happy New Years and a happy birthday to my loving wife Elsa and some outlaws named Brandi and Dylan.

Well, everyone made it through the holidays I see, of course if you didn't you wouldn't be reading this so.... Not that I think anyone is really reading my rants. And speaking of rants here's one: Ontario's Drive Clean Program is a @#$%ing rip-off! Can't even tell you what the problem is, just take it to a mechanic for a hefty diagnostic bill and get it fixed. If possible. No wonder the wreckers' lots are full.

At least computer repair is not so wasteful. Here I take older PC's and recycle the still very useful and functioning parts. Please, if you're going to toss an old computer, give me a call, I may find something useful in your old door-stop.

I just passed the 2000 mark in SETI packets over the holidays. You other guys in the group should stop slacking off. ET may be calling. For those who are not in the know, SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestial Intelligence program that searches a small band of the night sky for radio signals from other occupied worlds. (I've done two *interesting* packets in two thousand). ET, we're still waiting for you to drop the dime. The SETI@home project is aprogram that runs in the background on computers while they are not being used. A useful and interesting project to be sure.

Just about it for this month so I'll hopefully be back next month to feed you more useless/useful information.
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Happy Birthday goes out to Rob Szkarlat and JR Oake! Merry Christmas! If you're not on the birthday list I get that from the Family Tree and I don't have your birth date. Please contact me so I can include you in future issues.

Everyone ready for Christmas? Not icky-Bob here, never ready. But I am working on the family history, working hard too. I'm finding much information and adding more daily to the family tree. If you want/need to see what's done so far, fell free to drop me a line, I can send you out a copy of the database if you use Legacy Family Tree Maker or just want to view an HTML version of what I've got so far I can arrange that too. e-mail me at : [email protected] (Remove NOSPAM so I don't end up on a spam mail list.

Project 2005 is still on the go, I'm still selecting a case and a new MB for it are on the list and most of the other parts are already set up and running but the MB I have is flaky and the case is just plain yucky. More on that in my next column or look in the Project Page.

Just a little rant this month on utility deposits. As you may know I recently moved. I had to pay deposits on my Hydro and Gas accounts. Now, I had a deposit on my hydro, and gas I did not have before. Imagine my shock when I found out the deposits were almost higher than my rent! $250 for gas plus a service charge of around $50, for the first bill! No gas on it, just those charges! Plus, the hydro company London Hydro, would not just transfer my deposit of $200 to my new account, I had to pay another $200, plus my first month service plus a service charge, then they would take off the $50 I owed them from the old account deposit and then after I paid all those fees I would get my $150 CREDITED to my account. I don't know about any of you, but it just didn't make any sense to me. Frankly, I'm outraged. I want my money back, not a credit. (Isert a few choice words here). Who makes up the rules for these jerks? Who regulates them as well? (I feel better now).

Till next month, Happy Christmas again! I'm not having the greatest yet.
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Greetings, or should I say Gidday eh! Seeing as I've recently returned from Arnprior after a short visit with family and friends back home. The trip went well and the weather was frosty but nice and sunny. The move the week before went great as well and I am now in the new digs running network cables and setting up rooms, hanging curtains, sorting through old boxes of stuff and trashing old PC parts I have never had any call to use. Feel free to look in the bin, someone did and a whole mess of stuff was picked up the first night it was all out. At least Elsa was happy it wasn't me.

Project 2004 has now been trashed, we're now looking at 2005 so expect a minor change there. There were just too many parts to retrieve/manufacture there and it would've taken much too long to do all that. It's still going to be awesome but it will now be under wraps for a few days/weeks so look in on the main page to find the changes.

That's it for today, I'm trying to go too many directions at once and have too many projects on the go at the moment so I will cut it short for now and see you all in the very near future as time and demands dictate. see you all in the funny pages!
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Well, lots of new stuff to cover so I'll get right to it. I recently got promoted at my "real" job to Corporal and am now I guess the "official" weekend supervisor. Good thing number one is I recently celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary to my wife Elsa. It's never been a lot of work as she loves me no matter what I do or how many computers are in pieces in her living room. (Not to say that she likes it, she just does not say much about it ;).

I just finished upgrading this PC again, I added a new mother- board and CPU and retired the old machine as my primary intranet server. You see, I have 3 computers in the living room, (the server - PII 400, A seti machine - Pentium 120, and this one, an AMD Duron). John has an AMD as well in his room running on the same internet connection. I also got my laptop semi-running as well and retrieved the old ramblings articles off of it as well and will be making them available soon. I still haven't found my SCSI cable for the Mac and those articles will come as soon as I do, (I'm too freaking cheap to buy a new one for such an old machine).

I also added a new printer to my collection a Lexmark ink-jet and you will see many photos I have taken added here and there. I've become better at taking photos and saving them without losing too much of the resolution.

The My Pets page will be updated with the addition of Scooter, an epitaph for Crash, and a lot more photos. I will probably have that all updated in the next week. As well look for an area where photos and stories of upgrades are available. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes ;).

That's about all I have for now so stay tuned and check the updated sections from the main index.htm page. See you all again soon!
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Happy New Years to all my readers. Welcome back to another years' worth of miscelaneous ramblings about my experiences in the PC trade. I build new computers as well I repair older computers so I know how important your computer is to you, wether it be the latest and greatest or just an old Tandy Model 100 portable. I own and still maintain several older computers and I run a souped up PC for my daily needs.

Get any new toys for your PC this year? I didn't, I'm saving up for a car and moving out of this crappy apartment, trying to help John get a job and all, so the toys will have to wait. But there is a laptop in my future, the old ones' power supply died and the batttery is gone. I'm too cheap to buy a power supply for a 386 laptop that is worth less than a replacement power supply so it's retired to the museum.This will help me in doing service to the community as I find I'm lugging tons of CD's around with drivers and all and I'd like to catalog all the files on the laptop to assist me in finding the files I need when I need them.

If I can come up with the capital this year I'm going to open a carry-in service store for PC's. This will keep me out of the volatile newPC market, it's just too cutthroat right now and good service is just a short drive away this way. No need to phone ahead to make sure someone is here. And, all our previous sales will be eligible for a free check-up when we open. Please stay tuned for more info on this.

Is everyone happy with the new web page formt? I didn't get ANY feedback on this so I'm just wondering, I see I got hits but that's all.

Anyhow, time to ramble off and hope all is well for all of you in the New Year!
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Rob Scott's Ramblings - November 2003

Hello and wecome back, it's been a month or two but I persevere. Ya, I went back to Winders and gave up on Linux again for a while. Why? Compatibility. I was having problems with one of the most used features on the internet. Instant messaging. Face it, for Linux it's just not there. I recently installed GIM (Global Instant Messenger) and found it to be all it was cracked up to be, truly global, it imported all my user data and it worked! Yes, I gave up a feature or two in Microsoft Messenger, but they were seldom used and frivolus, who wants to look at MY ugly mug anyhow? Or hear my screaky voice (screaky? Hm, did I create a new word?).

As a few of you know, i'm temporarily offline again, internet access being expensive once again due to the fact that all of you are sheep. You put up with the high cost of internet access prices that are higher than they should be. Rogers for intance - the service does not get any better with the higher prices and if they truly wanted to rulke they'd lower their rates. It's YOU who make the prices they charge, and if you're willing to pay, they will charge it. It really is crazy, I remember when cable first came on the scene a few years ago, five bucks a month, you got access to a lot of networks that had SHOWS on, not infomercials. I really hate them and they are sucker plays for the poor or the recently income enhanced, face it, rich people do not watch TV, they are out driving around in their brand new SUV. They have more money than brains and are surfing at "higher speeds" than you or me. Of course those "higher speeds" are not as cheap as they were and get slower with everyone who signs up. Now for just barely faster then the service they had when they started with, it's forty to fifty dollars a month, it WAS fifteen dollars when they started. 'nuff said for now, send me you opinions on this to [email protected].
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Rob Scott's Ramblings – August 2003

Welcome back, I've been busy again so this is late, again. How is everyone? Still Linux watching? With all the hubub about copyright in the Linux world I've installed zero copies of Linux in any new machines lately. Did SCO make a deal with Microsoft? Is it a conspiracy? I've not heard any allegations supporting this but it's something to think about.

I recently started a thread in the message boards on Tech TV regarding the contest on Call For Help show (http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp). There was a question of whether anyone from Canada had ever made it on the show to play. From all our research, nobody ever has. And now the thread has been deleted from the message boards. Hmmm. I don't any longer feel the need to have that channel, as it's plugged with infomercials and the Canadian segments are embarrasing at best. For instance, the new segments from MSNBC Canada where the guy interviews people on the street about who is the greater threat – Osama or Saddam. Well, who in the tech field gives a bloody hoot? I'd be more interested in how many watts my power supply puts out. That is not why I subcribed to Tech TV. By the way, I don't know how many watts my power supply puts out, it turns on, that's all I or you should care about.

I've recently done an upgrade to my system, photos are available in the photo gallery for you to peruse, remember this is a work in progress and the wiring is a bit messy right now. I'll add pictures to the page as is needed. Or I am thinking of making seperate pages for different subjects.

Now, I've really got to work on getting my next column going, so I'll leave you for now.
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Rob Scott's Ramblings - July 2003

Well, here's another month gone by and I'm fully immersed in using my new OS - Linux. I've had it with the vagaries of Windoze. Always crashing, poor memory management, non-compatible hardware. Now, I'm not saying that Linux is much better, but I don't have to reboot constantly when something barfs. I can just open a new console and kill the bad session and carry on from there. There is however a very steep learning curve involved and I don't recommend it for the faint of heart.

Plus, you'll miss a lot of your old favorite programs. Chat windows, but then again, I'm a bit more productive. As you can see, two columns in two months - AND one is ahead of time!!!!

I'm just now for the first time using IceWM as my window manager, the documentation is very sparse so it's a learning experience. Just trying to figure out how to add stuff to the menu and change defaults is a chore I haven't got to yet, so some things don't do anything (anymore) when I click on them. My Mozilla won't start from any menu entry, but I do get it though another program running on the desktop called gkrellm, which is sort of a desktop system monitor. I can monitor all aspects of my PC and the internet, check mail, get the temperature from the airport, time, all kinds of stuff. I'll go into more detail on that when I get around to adding some plugins to it.

Okay, now how do I change some of the defaults in IceWM? It's not documented anywhere on my system, and the authors site is barren. Hmmm, change window managers? We'll try that now.

And, the verdict is in. It's the KDE desktop environment for now. And I have a few others to work with later. But that's for next month's column. I've got to get this one up and ready now as it's the first of July. Happy Canada Day!

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - June 2003

Everybody happy? I am, I've just switched myself over to Linux and all is well in the world with me. I'm using the Libranet version of Linux that I downloaded and burned a Cd from. The process was simple and worked just fine. The computer has only locked up once since I installed it. A far cry from the two to three a day I got while using Windows 2000. This mainly was a memory problem, but Linux seems to handle it better. I really should match the speed of all my memory.

Another thing that suprised me was that my Internet Connection Sharing I run on John's PC (Win 2K) still works, with one outage finally tracked down to Norton Firewall blocking my access. Simple fix, remove Norton. He has three other firewall programs there to use anyways. (I really could not believe he has 3 of them installed, as well as several anti-virus utilities. And he gets spam constantly. Hmmmm.

Anyhow, I'm going to cut it short at this point as Libranet came with dozens and dozens of neat little programs that I have to try out and see what I'm going to keep and what is just trashy. I have plenty of work to do so if you want me look in ICQ and you'll find me (only stable chat engine out there).
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Rob Scott's Ramblings - March 2003

Oh. Bet you thought I fell off the earth didn't ya? Nope, I'm still here "blogging" (to use today's popular term) this column now and then for your your enjoyment.

Lemme see, what's new? Gosh, it's been so long since I've written one of these that I can't really tell you what's old anymore? I've been keeping busy working at the "paying" job and doing a few minor PC upgrades now and then (as well as aquiring a new PII machine for my own use) and doing a few minor upgrades and repairs for family/friends when their machines go horribly astray. But, for the most part I just try to relax and enjoy life therse since my heart attack over a year ago and the subsequent four months on unenjoyment. I try to not get too much on the plate just out of pure enjoyment of the laziness.

I spend a little time doing digital photography in place of the old expensive methods, upgrading my own PC now and the, but that is just about it. Most of my time is taken up by the paying job.

It's been terribly cold of late and it's the dead of winter so I've been cooped up in my spare time working on a new website for you to all visit and enjoy. It'll be here on Fortune City and will be available soon. Sorry about the long URL there, but it'll be worth it. It'll change as I get things done. So visit, and enjoy, don't leave me e-mail there as it is certain to change soon as the earthling.net account is the target of spammers and I rarely check that account anymore. I'm trying out a new piece of software that will encode the e-mail address so it can't be lifted but will work fine for a reader to click and send mail to me.

Another current project includes the ultimate CD-ROM for the Model 100 for those who may want one and who want everything in one place. The beauty of the M100 shows through again with virtually every piece of software available fitting on one CD. Stay tuned for more developments on this project. Another thing I was wondering about if anyone has ever heard about anyone hooking up an external ZIP drive to a M100? It's parallel, why not?

The home network is being worked on and I'm currently setting up internet connection sharing as I'm tired of swapping the modem in and out rebooting etc. Zone Alarm is going to get lots of work as I'm sure John's machine is full of holes.

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - March 2002 - Rob Scott

Greetings to all and welcome back to another rant by Rob. I've got my Tech tv and I'm a little undewhelmed these days. This is stuff that basic users need to know. BUT, there is a very bad tendancy for all of the people on these programs to push Windows XP. Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with XP. just the fact that not all of us are running the latest and greatest PC's. Some still use Pentium ones and even the odd 486! Hell, I use a Tandy Model 100 laptop as one of my PC's. And, my Mac is a Mac Plus.

Please pull your jaw off the floor now.
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Rob Scott's Ramblings - April 2002 - Rob Scott

Well, hello to all our fearless readers! Why are we fearless? Because we save money keeping older pc's far past their prime running efficiently and cheaply. Being the cheap bastard that I am, I will continue to do this for some time to come. For instance, I'm still using the Mac Plus and the Tandly model 100 laptop that both date back to the 1980's. Sort of like my taste in music.

Speaking of music, did you hear about the copy protection on Celine Dion's new CD? Want to know how to make MP3's from that album? It's simple really - buy the cassette and burn THAT! No different than hooking up the old stereo to the PC. ( also works on Macs ) You might want to get a noise filtering software package to remove the tape hiss but it's so simple it's silly to pay the extra for the CD which you can't play in your PC - even if it is your home entertainment centre.
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Rob Scott's Rmblings - June 2002 - Rob Scott

Well, I missed a month. A lot has been going on, and I just got real busy at the bread and butter job. This month's issue should be hitting the web site about mid-june, I'll start July's issue at that time to try and get it out on time for a change.

I've found a few interesting items to cover this month and I'll just get right to them. One site I recently found that is of interest to many of my users is www.tinyapps.com. This site features many programs that run from a floppy disk. Including web servers, browsers, text editors and office suites. The web browser I mention is the offbyone browser. This is by far the cleanest browser available bar none. It's code is so clean it will run from a floppy disk. Fully-supporting HTML3.2 standards it may be all you ever need for surfing the web. It has no scripting or e-mail support but on tinyapps you'll find a mail service that will suit your needs. The best thing about all the software on this site is it's almost all FREE! It's great for that older machine collecting dust around the house. About the only piece of freeware I couldn't find on the site was the text editor I use for all my daily purposes - Editpad - www.editpadlite.com.

A floppy-based version of f-prot anti-virus is here as well, and it's also free for personal use. Just what you might need in a pinch.

About the only flaw I found from all these great little pieces of software was that one of them was infected with a virus which inadvertantly got loose on my test machine. A quick re-install of windows and a few cups of coffee was in order. It's a good thing I test everything on a separate machine. Some peoples kids - honestly!

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - August 2001 - Rob Scott

Well, it's that time again. time for my monthly rant. This month we're going to write the column on our trusty TRS-80 Model 100 portable. For those of you unfamiliar with this type of computer, don't bother running down to your local Radio Shack to look at this one. They're older than most of the employees of that particular chain of stores. Youcan still pick one up on e-bay, but they are costly and mostly sought out by collectors and die- hard fanatics.

Other PC's we use here at the world domination headquarters are an NEC 386 laptop, Apple Mac Plus, and three Spirit Systems Pentium PC's. The Mac is used mainly to keep these columns organized and the PC's are used for our extensive home/office network. We really do have a wired home. but, we've held off on the net surfing refrigerator and Tv set for now. For more information on how we connect all these computers together and share files between them, visit our website.

Till the next issue, compute free or die!
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Rob Scott's Ramblings - December 2001 - Rob Scott

Hello all! We're back with another fact-filled Christmas column. Now we don't condone going out and buying anyone a computer for Christmas, but - with prices this low who can resist? You can now go out and for a lot less than a thousand dollars, you can pick up a pretty good starter PC for yourself or your family. I assume you already own a PC or you wouldn't be reading this article, but who knows, you may have had this given to you on hard copy by a thoughtful friend or associate.

What is a good thing for you to know, is that old PC is more than a door stop. It's still a functional computer that you can use on a cheap home network. Using all the various methods of connecting them together - such as: ARCnet, USB, Null-modems, modem to modem, Ethernet, etc. you can easily create your own easy to assemble network and interconnect them all for basically peanuts. For more information on how to hook this all together, please look to our website to see how we've used some of these methods to connect our PC's together.here.

I'm just about out of room for this month's rant, so I'll bid you all good-bye for now and hope to see you all in our next issue.
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Rob Scott's Ramblings. February 2000

Well, here we go again. I've finally got this thing up and running as I wanted it. Now I have a very special wordprocessor called EditPad. It has the ability to create/edit multiple files at once. As well I can load all of my webpages and manually edit them as I please. Now to find a decent web browser that will work on my laptop. Opera was an option, but it's only shareware and only runs for so long. Internet explorer and Netscape are way too bulky for this old 386 laptop and I have only the ability to run in 16 colours.

On to bigger and better things now, IBM has a new logo they've applied for the patent on. Want a sneak peek? Go to the patent site and search for IBM and peel. Kinda nice looking. Then again, the OS/2 Warp logo was kinda cool too.

LOGO CONTEST! Spirit Systems Canada needs a logo. The prize? Nothing but our eternal gratitude and credit for your work. (Who knows, maybe some graphics outfit will spot it and etc, etc....).
E-mail me your entries - [email protected] is the place to send them.

Parting Shots

1. Big companies don't do business via chain letter. Bill Gates is not giving you $1000, and Disney is not giving you a free vacation. There is no baby food company issuing class-action checks. You can relax; there is no need to pass it on "just in case it's true". Furthermore, just because someone said in the message, four generations back, that "we checked it out and it's legit", does not actually make it true.

2. There is no kidney theft ring in New Orleans. No one is waking up in a bathtub full of ice, even if a friend of a friend swears it happened to their cousin. If you are hellbent on believing the kidney-theft ring stories, please see: http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa062997.htm and http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa062997.htm. And I quote: "The National Kidney Foundation has repeatedly issued requests for actual victims of organ thieves to come forward and tell their stories. None have." That's "none" as in "zero". Not even your friend's cousin.

3. Neiman Marcus doesn't really sell a $200 cookie recipe. And even if they do, we all have it. And even if you don't, you can get a copy at: http://www.bl.net/forwards/cookie.html. Then, if you make the recipe, decide the cookies are that awesome, feel free to pass the recipe on.

4. We all know all 500 ways to drive your roommates crazy, irritate co-workers, gross out bathroom stall neighbors and creep out people on an elevator. We also know exactly how many engineers, college students, Usenet posters and people from each and every world ethnicity it takes to change a lightbulb.

5. Even if the latest NASA rocket disaster(s) DID contain plutonium that went to particulate over the eastern seaboard, do you REALLY think this information would reach the public via an AOL chain-letter?

6. There is no "Good Times" virus. In fact, you should never, ever, ever forward any email containing any virus warning unless you first confirm it at an actual site of an actual company that actually deals with virii. Try: http://www.symantec.com/. And even then, don't forward it. We don't care.

7. If your CC: list is regularly longer than the actual content of your message, you're probably going to Hell.

8. If you're using Outlook, IE, or Netscape to write email, turn off the "HTML encoding." Those of us with standard email don't care enough to save your attachment and then view it with a web browser, since you're probably forwarding us a copy of the Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe anyway.

9. If you still absolutely MUST forward that 10th-generation message from a friend, at least have the decency to trim the eight miles of headers showing everyone else who's received it over the last 6 months. It sure wouldn't hurt to get rid of all the ">" that begin each line. Besides, if it has gone around that many times - we've probably already seen it.

10.Craig Shergold in England is not dying of cancer or anything else at this time and would like everyone to stop sending him their business cards. He apparently is also no longer a "little boy" either.
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9:12 AM 2/3/00 Rob Scott's Ramblings

Just finished getting Windows '95 installed on my laptop here. It's an old version of Windows and an equally older system. The Laptop is a NEC UltraLite SL/25C. Finding drivers and any instructions for it were a bitch but I got it done.

Now all I have to master is my radio show. I just have to figure out how to get John off the PC....

The Radio Show? Well it seems there are sites out there now that allow you to create and broadcast Real Audio shows on the Internet. I am in the process of making up my first show (a gripe about gas prices) and it will be available by the time you read this.

Parting Shots

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. 1. Buying a stronger whip.
   2. Changing riders.
   3. Threatening the horse with termination.
   4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
   5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
   6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
   7. Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
   8. Creating a training session to increase the rider's load share.
   9. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
   10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
   11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
   12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
   13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.
   14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
   15. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
   16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
   17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
   18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
   19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
   20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
   

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Rob Scott's Ramblings - September 2000 - Rob Scott

Rob Scott's Ramblings is a monthly publication of www.geeksinc.org, a division of BDR/Spirit Systems Canada. BDR/Spirit Systems Canada is a computer reseller with offices in London and Guelph, Ontario Canada.

Welcome back! This month we've got some more exciting news for users of older technology in the PC world. Not all of our news concerns older PC's only. Some of it concerns owners of the latest and greatest.

Not much new on the Mac and Tandy sides this month so we'll just ask that you send in your neat stuff you've found that may help out other users in future issues.

Again in case you've missed it in a past issue we try to cover the issues of users of older PC's still being used out there. For instance, I own and use on a daily basis the following types of PC's in my home/office environment. A Pentium II 266, an IBM PS/2 486, an NEC Ultralite SL25C laptop, a Tandy Model 100 laptop and a Macintosh Plus system. I actually use a lot of null modem cables, ARCnet cabling and a very hard pressed Iomega ZIP 100 drive to keep all these tied together. Finding all the drivers and programs was a long and tedious process which finally paid off just last year.

As I wrote about in an earlier issue, I run my laptop with DOS and Windows 3.1. To make my life easier in this, I use a program manager called Calmira (www.calmira.org) which is a Windows 95 look-alike shell. This makes my desktops more uniform across my many PC's.

The Mac and Tandy are pretty well unupgradeable much further than they originally were. With a Y2K patch on the Tandy the only thing that is new, they serve their purpose. They both "talk" to each other via null-modem cables.

Windows 95 and 98 are the operating systems used on the 486 and pentium. Using the software included with Windows 98 I have them communicating via ArcNet network cards and using my external Iomega Zip drive. This also works with my Windows 3.1 system on the laptop.
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Rob Scott's Ramblings - December 1999 - Rob Scott

Well, here we are at the end of the millenium - BIG DEAL! I'm no richer, Micro Tek Systems of London, Ontario is still in business and they still owe me about fifteen hundred bucks for overtime and severance, the agencies that be are useless. Rogers Cable still sucks for internet access and what they rob us for it's use, (9600? what the hell kind of throughput is that?).

Ok, rant out of the way - it's time for the good stuff. FREE DIAL-UP Internet access! Got your attention now don't I? Yes, it's available and it's FREE - (well, you do have to click on an ad now and then but....) Want free dial-up in Canada? Just surf on over to www.altavista.com and look for the FREE ACCESS button and fill out the not too obtrusive survey and you're in. As well, I've re-directed all my e-mail accounts that I could to it and it works just fine.

Now all the unanswered e-mail will be going to the one e-mail account. It will finally be read and actioned! I do however find that a reminder to click a button when I am already connected to their site a bit annoying and the lack of true Canadian content (the links) a bit frustrating. I'm sure that as more Canadian subscribers sign on to the service it will improve in those areas.

As well, it will read that you are connected to their site and will not tell me that my "health meter" is low (a feature that was NOT supposed to be annoying according to the subscriber agrement!) and that I'm about to be disconnected.

Other freebies? You want more? Greedy buggers.... Ok, there is plenty of places out there giving away space for your website. www.hypermart.com, www.geocities.com, www.xoom.com, www.fortunecity.com, and www.tripod.com. Free online e-mail, well, there's just soooo many of them! www.altavista.com, www.iname.com, www.yahoo.com, as well as ALL the hosting services listed above give pretty good e-mail forwarding and online e-mail service. But, make sure you WRITE everything down or print it out and store it in a safe place (your computer is NOT a safe place, unless you're using Linux as an OS ;^) - )

And speaking of Linux! If you're thinking of taking a look at it and find that you've been having trouble installing the stuff you get from the web try out Caldera Systems Open Linux 2.2 currently available to Costco members for 19.95. Installation is painless and you can keep Windoze on your system if you need to fall back. The partitioning software (included) is easy to use and all went well in my machine with one exception, I can't get a peep out of my Soundblaster AWE 64 sound card. The system sees it, but it does not make a peep. I'm sure it's just me tho' and I have not had time to peruse all the FAQ files (included) that probably have the answers that I need.

Whew! That my friends brings me to the end of this months' rants and raves! Just the ramblings of an old geek brought up on computers in a simpler time. (BW - Before Windows) See you at the prompt!

Parting Shots
> If You Can Read This, I've Lost My Trailer.
> The Earth Is Full -- Go Home
> I Have The Body Of A God (Buddha)
> This Would Be Really Funny If It Weren't Happening to Me
> Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult
> The Face Is Familiar But I Can't Quite Remember My Name
> Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway
> Illiterate? Write For Help
> Honk If Anything Falls Off
> He Who Hesitates Is Not Only Lost But Miles From the Next Exit
> Where Are We Going and Why Am I In This Handbasket?
> It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now
> I Haven't Lost My Mind, It's Backed Up On Disk Somewhere
> Remember Folks: Stop Lights Timed For 35mph Are Also Timed for 70mph.
> Boldly Going Nowhere
> Heart Attacks... God's Revenge for Eating His Animal Friends
> How Many Roads Must a Man Travel Down Before He Admits He
> Is Lost?

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Last Updated: 14/May/2005