Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On Fri, 2 Aug 2019, James Knott via talk wrote: Remember. You only get what you pay for That's something a lot of people have never learned. Because much of the time it isn't true. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 23:09:32 -0400 (EDT) "D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" wrote: > > - petroglyphs: long long time > > - clay tablets: millennia > > - paper (pre-wood-pulp): five hundred years > > - paper made from wood pulp: 75 years > > - punch cards and paper tape: 100 years > > - 9-track mag tape: 10 years > > - digital cassette tape 4 years (formats changed too quickly) > > - floppy disks: 5 years? Depends on the format (consider 3.0" > floppies) > > - USB flash drives: I've had them die after a year, but that's not > expected. > > - hard drives: death by standards evolution. Try finding an ST506 > controller. Or MFM, ESDI, SCSI, FireWire. Support for even PATA > is fading. > > - Laser Disc, Magneto-optical disks, CD-ROM, DVD (multiple standards), > BluRay: each has standards that get obsolete. The actual data may > deteriorate too. I do have some DVD that claim to have a lifetime > of over 100 years. Hugh, I copy my HDD backup to Blu-Rays periodically. Occasionally, I have had to recover stuff from them, and it has always worked. Typically, this was months after the fact. I archive my digital photos to DVD. I store these in a dark, cool place, and again, they are doing fine. My good camera has two SD cards, one of which I have designed as a backup. I have my DVD archive, my Blu-Ray backups, and I archive the SDs when they are full. I think my odds are pretty good. It is getting harder to find DVD and Blu-Ray discs in stores. The next time I order DVDs, it will be online, and I will order archival quality. -- Howard Gibson hgib...@eol.ca jhowardgib...@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] EOMA68
I assume this is what we're talking about: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop It looks like a good idea and it's relatively inexpensive - essentially a computer on a card with the form factor of a PCMCIA card (for people who remember those). They're currently claiming a ship date of, well, yesterday (literally). So we'll know in a few days if they shipped or not. I guess the problem is that it's been a very long time since they took people's money? The version of Fedora they're claiming to ship on some of the cards is Fedora 24, which Wikipedia said was released 2016-06-21, and end-of-lifed 2017-08-08. So anyone who ordered has been waiting perhaps 2.5 years? But if this starts ending up in people's hands, I'll consider ordering one ... Although that would be a bit silly: for my purposes a Raspberry Pi is still more practical. One place where this would be incredibly useful to me: I think it's a bad idea to cross any international border with important data on your computer. (Let's face it: the only law at the border is what the border guard says it is, and seizing data is becoming more and more common.) So being able to pop out the computer card from your laptop shell and slap in a clean one (for a mere $55) sounds like great answer to that problem. Just keep your border-crossing card up-to-date for software, and don't install anything personal or corporate on it. On Fri, 2 Aug 2019 at 11:24, Stewart Russell via talk wrote: > It certainly sounds like it has an image problem: > > https://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA68 > > They never did ship, did they? > > Stewart > >> >> >> --- > Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ giles...@gmail.com --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] EOMA68
It certainly sounds like it has an image problem: https://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA68 They never did ship, did they? Stewart > > > --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] EOMA68
On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 09:33:21AM -0400, Warren McPherson via talk wrote: > Is anybody here familiar with the EOMA68 project. A little. It's been so long ago that I ordered it that I only think of it once in a great while now. -- D. Joe --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
[GTALUG] EOMA68
Is anybody here familiar with the EOMA68 project. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
Hi Alvin, On Fri, 2 Aug 2019 09:35:47 -0400 Alvin Starr via talk wrote: > On 8/1/19 7:14 PM, William Park via talk wrote: > > On Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 11:15:43AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via > > talk wrote: > >> We bought two Asus ux305ca notebooks about three years ago. The > >> Microsoft Store had a remarkably good deal on them. I'm not the > >> only GTALUGger to buy this notebook. > > Lesson here: Don't buy Asus laptop, if you want reliability. > The lesson should be don't buy the least expensive product if you > want reliability. > I am typing this on a 6+ year old Asus laptop with a couple of 256G > SDDs and I have not had a problem with it. > Most manufacturers will produce products that are scaled back with > the least expensive components. > I have a few "cheap" HP,ACER and Dell laptops that have been trashed > in a couple of years in that category. > I would be willing to bet that Microsoft had Asus make a special > production run with parts of "less expensive" quality so that they > could meet that "good deal" price point. > You will not lose your money, but as the odds will be fairly even, you will not win anything :) > Remember. You only get what you pay for(on a good day). > Well said! --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On 2019-08-02 09:35 AM, Alvin Starr via talk wrote: > The lesson should be don't buy the least expensive product if you want > reliability. Yep. That's why I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad, rather than a plain Lenovo notebook. > Remember. You only get what you pay for That's something a lot of people have never learned. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On 8/1/19 7:14 PM, William Park via talk wrote: On Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 11:15:43AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: We bought two Asus ux305ca notebooks about three years ago. The Microsoft Store had a remarkably good deal on them. I'm not the only GTALUGger to buy this notebook. Lesson here: Don't buy Asus laptop, if you want reliability. The lesson should be don't buy the least expensive product if you want reliability. I am typing this on a 6+ year old Asus laptop with a couple of 256G SDDs and I have not had a problem with it. Most manufacturers will produce products that are scaled back with the least expensive components. I have a few "cheap" HP,ACER and Dell laptops that have been trashed in a couple of years in that category. I would be willing to bet that Microsoft had Asus make a special production run with parts of "less expensive" quality so that they could meet that "good deal" price point. Remember. You only get what you pay for(on a good day). -- Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 al...@netvel.net || --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On 2019-08-02 08:03 AM, Russell Reiter via talk wrote: > > > - 9-track mag tape: 10 years > > > Would this form factor be sized like commercial 8 track audio tape > with an extra track squeezed in for sync? No, it was 1/2" tape on an open reel. And it was 9 or 7 actual tracks, with one track used for the parity bit. They used odd parity, to guaranty at least one "1" bit, to provide clocking for the NRZI encoding used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-return-to-zero --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On 2019-08-02 07:23 AM, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote: > On 2019-08-01 11:09 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: >> - punch cards and paper tape: 100 years >> >> - 9-track mag tape: 10 years > Good luck getting a reader for any of these now. At least the paper > media is scannable. I used to work with all of those, back when I was a computer tech working on mini computers. There were even a couple of 7 track tape drives. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On Fri, Aug 2, 2019, 7:23 AM Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote: > On 2019-08-01 11:09 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: > > > > - punch cards and paper tape: 100 years > > > > - 9-track mag tape: 10 years > Would this form factor be sized like commercial 8 track audio tape with an extra track squeezed in for sync? I recall my musical friends in the 80's were buying four track cassette recorders with simultaneous synchronization. They used standard stereo cassettes which played back two channels in stereo and you flipped it over to play the other two. One popular brand recorder was Fostex, it used both sides of the cassette at once. You could record three channels, then mix down to one, play back and simultaniously record another two over top and mix again, then run the audio through the unit mixer and balance the output to stereo, then line out to for either dub recording or live playback. > > Good luck getting a reader for any of these now. At least the paper > media is scannable. > Chances are if you have the data on tape, you already have the reader. These folks will repair or replace your equipment. > > https://www.repairmytapedrive.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvo_qBRDQARIsAE-bsH-VNiWSUGLvKmlIQ0lWVT8pBZ5qIC4eNFmH5d63HKJlS02HWZsBRzIaAlHnEALw_wcB It may seem out of date, but there is still a strong business case for maintaining the original archive records on original format, as well as a copy transferred to newer media, depending on the importance of the dataset itself. > > Stewart > > --- > Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures
On 2019-08-01 11:09 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: > > - punch cards and paper tape: 100 years > > - 9-track mag tape: 10 years Good luck getting a reader for any of these now. At least the paper media is scannable. Stewart --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
