OT: new PC catch-22

On the other hand ... bought this motherboard a few months ago. Found I needed a new case as PCB mounting holes are now different. Still wouldn't work. Discover I needed to buy a 'new style' PSU with the extra power connector thingy. Then a 2 day waste of my life finding out it wouldn't run windows98. Discover it was designed for the damnable windows XP. So, hardware had been designed for a particular micro (AMD) and a particular microshite OS. Nowhere were these details stated. The arrogant bastards assumption being that we're all non technical consumers, hence will buy and use whatever package they choose to offer us. Seems the only 'compatability' we are left with, is the ability to run ms progs. Aren't monopolies just the thing!. john

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Looks like this is the year for Linux. I won't buy any new computers unless they are guaranteed to run Linux with no problems. Also DOS:)

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:

SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators: Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:

What I generally find is that the released linux kernel seems to be a few months behind the "bleeding edge" of motherboard chipsets. Although it always boots up OK, a motherboard-integrated peripheral might not work. After a couple of months there is a new kernel available and it too starts working. If you pick a motherboard with a chipset that has been out a while, there is no problem. (And it is likely cheaper and more stable).

I use dosemu under linux (to run some old IAR dos compilers), works OK. In fact they seem much faster than under the "real" DOS, better filesystem performance perhaps.

Then there are various virtualization systems such as xen, vmware etc.

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John Devereux

Thanks for the good info, John. I'm already running Eagle on Suse with excellent results, and starting to think it might be time to convert everything else over to Linux.

How do you back up your system in case of hard disk failure? Is there an equivalent to XCOPY32?

What I'm looking for is to have a backup drive that I can install as Master and have it contain exactly what is on the original. The advantage of XCOPY32 is it doesn't waste time copying files that don't need updating, so the backup is very quick and you can afford to do it several times per day.

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:

SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators: Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:

Ahh, you make me laugh...

If you think that MS could legally get away with matching their OS to a BIOS manufacturer then you are an idiot. IF you actaully think the MS gives a shit about what PC there OS is installed on then you are even more of an idiot.

Beware of the inferior CD ROM. I have seen problems where the CDROM cant track out the the extreme edges of the CD, and depending on who cut the MS CD's there may be issues.

Ring MS, and they will get you a new CD. Try that, if that fails then either your MOBO or CDROM is f***ed, or something in between.

Failing that,if you can live with it, download a Linux distro and install that. Chances are if its a new PC then some of the drivers wont exist, but they are never far away.

ah now wait.. There is a Utility the OEM guys use to write data in the FLASH portion of the CMOS., it is checked by the boot disk which contains the restore OEM Os on it. Not all use this scheme. updating the bios can destroy this data in many cases. Not sure if that is what's going on. i think a standard off the self NON upgrade should do it in any case.

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The Real Andy wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Intel

CD.

no

the

make

computers.

installed,

could also be operator error.

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..and i have heard that complaint before; seems one must (somehow) get an old MB to run old OSes. Wait for "vista" where most users will be forced to toss their hardware and get new hardware because the old hardware does not have all of the "support" that "vista" *demands*.

The problem ther is that no reseller guarantees anything, and if the pile of metal they sell you does not work, then you pay for return. And they do not properly or fully test it and so it works for them because the setup and conditions are totally different. So you get back the same POS.

This is exactly what has happened with the setup i mentioned in the query; *three* identical setups they were supposed tocheck, and they only checked one and failed to follow instructions. Of course they work using a hard drive with XP loaded; that was not the problem! Idiots!

1) I think i mentioned that the drive used was a recent (6 months old) issue by Sony and it was a DVD read/write. 2) I had access to five sets of WinXP to work with, all straight from M$ no intervening reseller. Hard to believe that M$ sells so many screwed up CDs. 3) I believe i mentioned that the original BIOS gave problems, and that the *beta* update only solved one of them. That update was only a week old at worst. And the MB maker had a newer MB (about a week old) that was said to work properly, but the seller would not do an exchange; the MB maker only replaces MBs under a warantee basis and also will not exchange for the newer MB.

And Linux will *not* support programs written for XP, programs that are not available any other way and no equivalent(s).

Interesting.. *No* OEM OS.. I made a DOS boot floppy, added the downloaded FLASH utility and the downloaded BIOS beta update; booted from the floppy and followed the yellow brick road. Are you saying that the utility may have messed something up in the BIOS?

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Two different people, three different times, no communications as to procedure used, and the *SAME* problem occured. Methinks you are incorrect.

what i am saying is, people like DELL, Gateway etc.. at one time in the past and i don't know if they still do it? Use to load the Flash on the BIOS with additional info that their OEM restore CD would read on boot up or, if you try the install directly to see if the proper ID was in the Flash before it would let you install that OEM CD on the machine other wise, you couldn't use that CD in any other PC. Updating the Bios sometimes screwed this up.

What you should try to do is this, if stated that you were able to create a boot able disk to install the bios update? Did you try to run run a CD driver and run the set up program from the CD at that time?

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"I\'m never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
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Ahh.. Smell, E-Machines and HP were noted for that "proprietary" stuff; the hard drives were also "wired" and replacing one would give an unusable computer. These were "white box" units assembled from components bought from various sources (well, the box, video card, power supply, HD, DVD came from a different source than the "bundled" MB, CPU and RAM. I did think of trying a CD driver, but did not have the critical parts of the MSCDEX drivers (since it was DOS). I am pretty sure that would work. Now i am 500 miles away from the site where these problems exist.

The CD driver scheme is an excellent idea, and i think i better e-mail that support to the friend i tried to help; that would make things much easier.

I use the original 20 GB from a Etower 733 MHz computer with windows ME to test lots of motherboards, and has never refused to work. Each restore CDROM, on the other hand, looks for a certain emachines bios. I have collected a number of OEM restore disks for different brands and models.

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Robert Baer wrote in news:KvEjh.2783$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net:

I can't agree with that. I have run XP on machines from a 200 MHz Pentium up to 2.4 GHz P4s. Also dos and windows 3.1 on athlon 1.1 GHz and P4s. Also linux and lindows on same machines. (yes, too much free time) Though newer stuff does not ususally come with drivers for dos and older windows (95/98).

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Actually, you are quite wrong. Vista works just as well on current machines. The only thing is you cant run the new 'aero interface' unless you have a video card with a shitload of ram. No one really cares much because it is just marketing wank anyway.

However, if you try run it up on your old P500 with 128mb ram then dont bother. Stick with win95 or linux.

A number of rough equivalents.

The standard copy program ( "cp" ) has an option ( "--update" ) to do that.

Bye. Jasen

about 1993 sometime OS developers stopped relying on the bios for accessing the hardware features, as a result your OS needs drivers to access the hardware. If the harware was made after whoever is responsible for the driver stopped supporting your chosen OS, you're out of luck.

Bye. Jasen