Re: formatting and checking floppy disks for bad sectors

2020-01-15 Thread Fred Cisin via cctalk

WHAT DISK FORMAT?

Try bulk erasing your disks before you format them, because if you are 
reformatting a used disk, the content in the boot sector could confuse 
the operating system.


For PC-DOS, if track 0 is actually bad, then the disk can not be 
properly used for DOS.  It should be destroyed, or used on an operating 
system that does not need track 0. (many CP/M systems use track 0 as a 
system track, but don't need it for a data disk)


In some versions of DOS, there can be erroneous error messages about 
track 0 being bad, due to DOS not properly handling attempt to DMA 
straddling a 64K boundary.  If you get the message on all disks, then look 
at you CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, and add or remove a TSR or 
device driver, so that the TPA (Transient Program Area) will be in a 
different place.



You have not told us which operating system,
size and type of diskette,
name of the "utility" that you are looking for, 
What is a "kiooyt"?



On Wed, 15 Jan 2020, wdegroot via cctalk wrote:


i read / viewes a video on ormattinf a floppy with trk 0 bad

i attempted to download the suggested utility
bt it returned " filenot foiud:

if there is sich a util, can you sedn me the file?

it is annoying to have a kiooyt go bad te next tie it is used. 
sometimes in minutes.


i am generaly working wit oder stuss on ss retirement.


Softhome.net

2020-01-15 Thread Keven Miller(3k) via cctalk

I've been a happy user of a couple email addresses at softhome.net.
Recently, one has now failed to let us connect.
Sending mail to it from the other gives a mailbox full delivery error.

We've tried email to i...@softhome.net and supp...@softhome.net.
No response yet on the info one.
But I just got a delivery failure on the support one.

Does any one have contact info for softhome or can pass the word along?
We would really like to empty the one email that won't let us in.

Thanks,
Keven Miller




Re: formatting and checking floppy disks for bad sectors

2020-01-15 Thread wdegroot via cctalk

i read / viewes a video on ormattinf a floppy with trk 0 bad

i attempted to download the suggested utility
bt it returned " filenot foiud:

if there is sich a util, can you sedn me the file?

it is annoying to have a kiooyt go bad te next tie it is used. sometimes in 
minutes.


i am generaly working wit oder stuss on ss retirement.



Re: anyone heard from Cindy Croxton?

2020-01-15 Thread Mark Linimon via cctalk
On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 08:28:36AM -0600, sales--- via cctalk wrote:
> This has been a bad 3 months (health-wise) for my family.

Best wishes.  Let me know if someone from Austin can come be of help.

mcl


VTech Laser 3000 / Dick Smith CAT composite video pinout

2020-01-15 Thread Chris Pye via cctalk
Hi all. I know I could scope this out, but just wondering if anyone has the 
pinout for the
VTech Laser 3000 / Dick Smith CAT (in Australia) composite video pinout.

It’s not in the technical manual that I have, and can’t find it online.


Thanks,
Chris

Re: anyone heard from Cindy Croxton?

2020-01-15 Thread Richard Pope via cctalk

Cindy,
I am sorry to hear about your difficulties. I will hold you and 
yours in my prayers.

GOD Bless,
rich!

On 1/15/2020 8:28 AM, sales--- via cctalk wrote:

On 2020-01-14 11:24, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

I tried sending an email about a week ago after noticing
https://elecshopper.com/
was "down for maintenance"


This has been a bad 3 months (health-wise) for my family. I should be 
back in the office next week.


Cindy





Re: anyone heard from Cindy Croxton?

2020-01-15 Thread Kevin Lee via cctalk
Dear Cindy

Hope you and your family get better and stronger in the coming months.. 
Best Wishes

On 15/1/2020, 10:28 PM, "cctalk on behalf of sales--- via cctalk" 
 wrote:

On 2020-01-14 11:24, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> I tried sending an email about a week ago after noticing
> https://elecshopper.com/
> was "down for maintenance"

This has been a bad 3 months (health-wise) for my family. I should be 
back in the office next week.

Cindy




Re: anyone heard from Cindy Croxton?

2020-01-15 Thread sales--- via cctalk

On 2020-01-14 11:24, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

I tried sending an email about a week ago after noticing
https://elecshopper.com/
was "down for maintenance"


This has been a bad 3 months (health-wise) for my family. I should be 
back in the office next week.


Cindy


Re: Anyone interested in ARCNET, Token Ring, FDDI, HIPPI, Strip network code?

2020-01-15 Thread David Brownlee via cctalk
On Tue, 14 Jan 2020 at 19:34, Al Kossow via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On 1/14/20 9:47 AM, David Brownlee via cctalk wrote:
>
> > The code is quite old and the drivers are not MP safe, so its being
> > proposed that the code be dropped
>
> Goose step to the monocuture
>
> netBSD, we USED to run on everything..

A monoculture in this context would be for everyone to switch to Linux :)

Older versions of NetBSD are not going away, but in the interest of
there being something other than *just* older versions, people
continue to develop. To effectively run on current hardware it needs
to be able to use multiple processors, including NUMA and big/little
topologies. So it comes down to remaining portable only for a wide set
of older hardware, including some combinations for which literally no
users exist, or balancing older hardware with new.

A good example of the latter is a current thread on how to get
jemalloc to work correctly across the various m68k platforms which
have different page sizes, without switching to a dynamic page size
and the concurrent overhead, plus recent changes to the audio mixer
subsystem to ensure it is fast enough to play on those same m68k
systems.

I like being able to run NetBSD on my work laptop, run xen (likely to
switch to nvmm soon) to virtualise a bunch of Linux test boxes for
work, and use ZFS on my home server, with syncthing for data
redundancy to multiple remote locations. Losing that ability to rely
on it day to day in order to keep support for older hardware for which
no-one has stood up and offered to write code or even test changes...
seems a bad trade.

On that final point - on the NetBSD list it appears that several
people have spoken up regarding an interest to keep using ARCNET on
NetBSD, in some cases they just have hardware and a willingness to
test, which is the difference between "we need to update the code, but
have no users", and "someone finds this useful"

NetBSD is pretty reluctant to drop actual hardware platforms - to my
recollection it has effectively dropped three
- da30, a custom wire wrap board of which possibly only one ever existed,
- pc532, a home-brew NS32532 board which was dropped when gcc dropped
processor support
- acorn26, the original 26bit address space ARM2 based machines

We live in an imperfect world, but NetBSD is pretty much the only *nix
still actively trying to keep a modern OS running on older hardware,
and they're doing it by focussing on machine independent subsystems
and drivers rather than "fork another copy and hack for each case".

Thanks

David