Sirbendy

Office 97 ditto. And always, sods law...disk 45 would generate a CRC fail, and that was the entire evening wasted. I do believe I have 097s disks somewhere. My "All Windows" DVDs are my favourite posession ever..very dubious, but it's every version of DOS, every version of Windows from 1 through to 2003 datacenter (latest at the time), every bolt-on (MS BOB, plus packs, etc etc), all in ISO or IMG format, all creatable from the GUI on the 2 DVD set. I occasionally fire up NT4 for the crack of it. Even installed ME just to remind me why I skipped it.

hmm. No idea on the actual code side, but... If each site has a different IP setup, a script that conditionally checks the IP and then uploads different files to a webserver using FTP, depending on the condition?

oh yes. Double/drivespace, laplink cables and interlnk, even TIE fighter..actually, I'm 80% sure I saw the CD for that in the loft...! I was saying yesterday about the 5.25 "beermat" drives..heh. or the Amstrad 3 inch! The council I worked for had an 8 inch (IIRC) drive...looked a bit like a twin-tub, all flashy neons and big yellowed buttons. Very funny to use, used to try and roll across the floor! Banks used that.. The old reel-to-reel tapes were a bank thing too..all feeding data into BACS. What a total lashup it was. Massive line at a time impact printers in acoustic housings. I was an unfortunate owner of a 386/DX25 with a 32 bit problem..if I put Win3.x into 32 bit disk mode, all I got was beeping and fits from it. What about the Cyrix M1/M2/6x86? They were fun..and the Nexgen 5x86, which was a 486/DX4 100 with pentium class overtones, or the original AMD K5..ahhh. those were chips that stick in the memory (or in the case of Cyrix, the bin). AARGH, COAST..oh dear yes. Doing some work for the British Red Cross (mums the accountant for 3 branches), I've run across in the last 3 years, 1 IBM 5150, 8088 CPU, 640k RAM, MDA graphics and greenscreen, and 2x 5.25 full height floppy drives..in active use! I love old technology..

mine is the gen1, or thereabouts..no 3g, got the P1800SSD though. Just moved my XP VM to the 2gb SD card in the expansion bay...it's fair shifting! £150, open box return from Amazon. I figured it's going between sites, and I've got to do a stripdown to fit the 1gb upgrade anyway, so..pristine wasn't needed. It has 1 tiny scratch, the BIOS was outdated, and it wouldn't initially start up due to having the flat battery left in it. I nicked jems battery, booted it, shut it down, swapped them back and it's been fine ever since. Got mine sat at BIOS V3304 IIRC..3309 had a fit. I opted for the SSD model as hard disks in cars put me on edge..!

I've got my 8gb SSD/512mb Aspire One now...Linpus Linux went, Puppy Linux on as it's tiny and fast. Now got a Virtualbox XP VM on there as well for work use, and RAdmin running nicely under WINE.. I quite like the Atom CPU...heh...got a 1gb RAM upgrade on order for it too. The SSD isn't exactly blazingly quick, but I can use a class 6 SDHC card to run the VMs from I'd imagine. I'm frankly impressed..

oh yes. Me too!

Me and the missus were debating this as we fell asleep. We've got a new tech, who's 17. Good lad, but he couldn't ID a "discrete" audio card versus an onboard... It occured to me that he's probably grown up on integrated kit - not ones with the seperate expansion boards etc. We (me and NM) were also reminiscing about BBCs, CP/M, mainframes, reel-to-reel tapes, 386s and the coming of the almighty DX, early pentiums, amiga workbench, monkey island etc yesterday..he looked lost. His idea of "retro windows" is Win2k.. I've a good mind to VM 2.03, 3.0, 3.1, NT4, and OS/2 if I can find that, and say "right. THIS is retro. Now configure me a CDROM driver in DOS." Might also see if I can find a 286/386 and say "build it up, get it running, install DOS and windows 3.x, lets see if you can..". I like the lad, I do, but...for all of his "Xenos academy" training, he seems remarkably lacking in some of the basics. heh. It's true though - the courses are dumbed down. We had 3 girls in the office asking US for advice on the configuration module, and it was news to them that PCs don't "see" the GUI, but talk in 1's and 0's, and are just at heart a mass collection of switches that are going on and off millions of times a second. It took a lot of explaining. Ditto refresh rates for monitors. I said "Do your TVs flicker?" "no.". "Hmm. OK. These lights...they're turning on and off roughly 60 times a second or so..that's similar to what an old style monitor/TV does." They didn't believe me, so I got out a digicam and said "look through that". They can put things in, but have no understanding of the underlying principes and systems. How many still confuse "hard drive", or "cpu" with "base unit"? Too many. It's a crying shame...they seem to find the underlying reasons and tech quite fascinating! Same with "web page design"..Frontpage or Studio. Then they look at me like I'm mad for doing it in notepad! CLI? They're lost. Even changing the GUI loses them..they're NOT learning, they're just copying someone else.

there's only so much you can do - we have Bloxx, PolicyCentral Enterprise and Netsupport, safesearch forced etc. Still got a kid in last year who found an image of Shrek getting head in google safesearch (looking for cartoon characters). Not really that much we could do short of informing Google about it.

GUI? Pah. PEEK and POKE, Daisywheels, arcane command lines and BASIC FTW. 6502 CPUs rock my world. Not so much the Z80, the 8080 or the 8088 though. And lets just bury the 80186 episodes...RM Nimbus..argh.

While the cars haven't because they've been waiting for the RAC..

good advice indeed. Listen for engine noise - noisy tappets etc. Make sure it fires immediatly when you turn the key. After it's idled for a while, boot the throttle, look for blue smoke. If it's a diesel, some is OK. Not a lot. Check the header tank for sludge and water colour..blue/green/red/pink is OK, rusty is NOT. Check the oil filler cap and inside the cover for yellow emulsion - some will be present probably due to the cold weather - any excess is a bit sus. If the water/oil look OK, this may not be such a worry. If it's got PAS, spin the wheel lock to lock and listen for any nasty noises, as well as make sure it turns smoothly. Road test is important. The seller wanted me to be a passenger while HE drove the Astra..I said no. See if you can talk them round to chucking in a service.. I did.

had a dell this morning, continual beep, no video. Opened it up, rebooted.."no NIC". Rebooted, no video. Rebooted, no BIOS..hmmm On closer inspection, the Northbridge chip has heat marks on it, and a hole right through it! God knows what happened there...I can only guess a spike or similar set it on the slippery slope towards self-destruct. Needless to say, that's one Optiplex GX60 that's gone in the skip (after removing everything useful from it)

Which mobile? My Ipaq 514 was doing that, before I applied the 2 softpaqs for it. Now I have a week+ on a charge using wifi and BT. It's a voice messenger, running WM6 standard. Me likey a lot.

We're closed in Telford Today. Was open yesterday. Got a text at 7am saying "closed", so went back to bed. HATE driving in it. The roads out here are untreated. Total ballache. It's still snowing sort of...almost like drizzle. Meh. Looks like it's melting a bit though. Very pretty, very "proper UK winters like when I were a lad", shame of it is now I'm all grown up I have to drive in it. poo. That said, I looked at chains 2 years ago when I almost didn't get home...never seen the socks before though...I don't quite see how they'd work..the chains cut into the compacted snow to grip..the socks do it via friction...hmm..I'd love to see a snowy hill side by side demo... Mind you..£50? For a useable lifetime of...quite a lot? Bit of a bargain there..might be worth a punt. The whole "running out of grit" thing sums up my opinion of councils. Shoot the damn lot of them and appoint sensible people to the posts who are in touch with reality. Not enough grit? Psh. Where are the ploughs and road clearers I recall from my youth? Sold off for cash I'd bet. Just because we had a 15 or so year break from "normal" winters. If the BBC are right (reckon this is "cyclic" and will be like this for a few years or so), get them back. We pay road tax, we pay rates, we pay for bloody everything in this country and where is it going? not on the bloody road infrastructure, I can say that much. Total TWB. Don't get me wrong, a day off is nice. The missus walked into her work, but doesn't work fridays. If we're closed tomorrow as well, fine. Today, I would have quite liked to get a machine, desk and whatnot setup for my new assistant tech, starting monday. Poor lad's going to be lumbered with a 256mb Ergo Ensis at this rate. Yuk. Luckily, 95% the work in the helpdesk system outstanding can be done remotely over VPN, which is what I shall do.

Teachers - no matter how meticulously you test something, how idiot proof you make it, the dribbling imbeciles will find a way to screw it up.

Stanley APC-OL6-UK 6Ltr Compressor - Screwfix.com, Where the Trade Buys That's the one we've just bought...bloody lovely.

kitchen trays? Psh. Wheelie bin lids, come on...

bloody hell...you had snow @ 10.5c? Heh.. Have you got a Vauxhall? Mine's optimistic by 2 degrees.

We're still open in Telford. Roads are clearish - main roads are OK if you're careful - a few bits aren't great, side roads are a gauntlet. I'm glad I have an auto..stick it in snow mode, leave it in drive, foot off the throttle and let it crawl over the bad bits at 2-3mph. If I skid, it's too slow to damage much.

yes, Ghost itself does it...you'll need the drivers for the drive I think, but if you look at the help in Ghost, it should tell you how. This holds thrue for (I'm sure) 6.x to 11.0.1 (which I'm using). If not from ghost, you can tell ghost to split the image into chunks..say 640mb (CD), and then burn them with a normal CD app.

we're still running - not sure for how long. It'll be "everyone out" at 4, if we last that long. mini-blizzard again. tits. If it keeps up, I'm not doing tomorrow. I'll devote it to "pre-move" packing that I've been procrastinating over.

the head had a Hyundai coupe...what did you think of them? He christened his "The Widowmaker"....apparently "twitchy" didn't do it justice?

it wouldn't be bad if we KNEW the roads would be passable..but the council are useless, and that's being nice..gritters? what bloody gritters?

The missus had a mail from her boss- "I'll keep an eye on the snow - if it continues, abandon office". If that happens (and they're a 20 minute walk from home), I'm going to fetch her and do the same. I have a few jobs on the helpdesk outstanding, all can be done via VPN. If the head doesn't like it, I'll saty - IF he drives me home. If not, I will use my own judgement as to what I consider "safe". I'm just glad I did 2 skidpan courses and have an automatic with a snow mode.

bugger. Mini-blizzard outside the last 20 minutes. Not happy at all.... If this keeps up, I'm offski and sod the lot of 'em..