We are at 2006, it is a bit late to care about floppy performance… hehehe

That's why we have Viagra, Cialis, etc. . . .

Thanks, Pictus. Now I understand why your pics look so good

Hehehehehehe
Thanks AB!

Lemniscate from NT to up the access to the devices are virtualised(same with linux)
but you can still do a full format to a floppy, just do not mark the option Quick Format
and if you want the BEST formatted floppy of the world, use this little old and good
utility FDformat ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdo … dfrm18.zip +- 100k

With the right parameters you format with sector sliding, it will improve
the disk performance a lot !
From the FDFORMAT.DOC, read the whole DOC to know more.

The X and Y options - Do sector sliding
---------------------------------------

These options can be used to enhance the performance of your disk up 
to 100%. This is a bit difficult to explain. Imagine a standard 360 kB 
disk. It has 9 sectors on each track numbered 1 to 9. Normally the 
sectors on all tracks ordered "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9". With sector sliding 
of 1 you order "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" on track 0, "9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" on 
track 1, "8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7" of track 2 and so on.

You can easily imagine, that it takes a little time, when your 
diskette drive head steps from one track to another. But your diskette 
continues rotating. Without sector sliding your diskette is positioned 
to sector 2 or 3 on the next track, when the stepping is done. It 
needs nearly a full revolution until sector 1 of the next track can be 
read. With sector sliding of 1 or 2 your diskette is positioned 
exactly on sector 1, when it starts reading again.

The DOS-Format program always formats with sector sliding 0. FDFORMAT 
provides two parameters to do sector sliding. /Xn slides n sectors, 
when you change the head, but not the track. /Ym slides m sectors, 
when you change the track. Normally only /Y is useful, but on some 
systems, especially XTs, you can reach additional speed by using /X.


Now, how to determine the correct value for sector sliding. In general 
you can say good values for /X are 0-2 and for /Y 0-4. The default is 
0 for /X and /Y. You to experiment with your configuration, which 
value is optimal for you. You may reconfigure your default sector 
sliding in the FDFORMAT.CFG file (described later). You have to find 
out this for each format seperately. Always good choices are the 
following:

Disk-Size          Good choice for sector sliding
------------------ ------------------------------
320-410 kB              /X:1 /Y:3
720-820 kB              /X:1 /Y:2
1.2 MB-1.72 MB          /X:2 /Y:3

This will improve your diskette perfomance 50%-100% on almost any 
system.

Example: FDFORMAT A: /4 /X:1 /Y:2 /R/K/V:SLIDE_DISK

We are at 2006, it is a bit late to care about floppy performance… hehehe

For a while I used win ME, coz I did not have much of a choice at the time. I was very　surprised when I discovered that I cannot format a bootable floppy, by all means I tried. Direct access was disabled at low system level. It was like my computer was rendered useless, crippled on purpose.

The best way to format a floppy disk is to use Windows 98/(SE). For some reason, any of MS's operating systems later than that do not permit full level formatting.

I think Linux is a GREAT tool for computer users. It can be very helpful for last resort file recovery as well (that is, right before using a hexadecimal editor...).

Has anyone tried Puppy Linux yet?

I presently have a dual boot PC (W98SE/W2K), a PC with XP Pro sans Internet Explorer (for graphics, runs so much faster), a test PC with W2K (used for slaving customers' hard drives and hardware/software testing), and a laptop with W98SE (for surfing the net while sitting in a LazyBoy recliner...). I use Linux Mepis for final stage file recovery. It's amazing what people throw away, and what a person can do with it if they know what they're doing. BTW, I do have a perfectly good laptop with Windows "ME" (cough...choke) on it that a customer was going to throw away. I'm going to give it to my sister . . . I still love her, though . . .

I found out that even though I don't approve of the lifeless digitization of the computer realm, I have a propensity for the repair of such.

AB, I think your intentions are admirable. I think everybody with a soul gets fed up with M$'s money-mongering attitude at some point.

Lemniscate

Novell has been polling the public for the last month to find out what Windows-only applications, if ported to Linux, would increase the likelihood that people would switch to Linux ...

The top 10 applications (after 31 days of voting) are as follows:

   1. Photoshop
   2. Autocad
   3. Dreamweaver
   4. iTunes
   5. Macromedia Studio
   6. Flash
   7. Quicken
   8. Visio
   9. Quickbooks
  10. Lotus Notes

Source: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2756049592.html

Linux is way cool
Dabbling a bit mysef

VMware x MS Virtual
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/vm.ars
http://usuarios.lycos.es/hernandp/articles/vpcvs.html
http://dallas.sark.com/SarkBlog/mholdor … /2467.aspx

Looks like VMware has an edge, try both and see who works best.
Microsoft virtual PC compatible list http://vpc.visualwin.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------

For Gimp x Photoshop look at this link
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT6362808891.html

I am a PhotoShop user not Gimp, for me what GIMP lacks most
is the plug-ins...
And Linux lacks color calibration devices
You can do by your eye but absolute it is not good as a
calibration device like http://www.colorvision.com/index_us.html

To understand color calibration look at
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

Linux is really powerful and a lot of fun to play with, but at least Mandrake at that time still had its fair share of pain-in-the-neck problems, which were enough to keep me from switching 100%.  I usually don't have the time to spend hours reading through help files to figure out that the reason I can't watch a certain video file is there's a period missing in one of the configuartion text files at line 126.

Dude, those are the exact and only reasons I'm not 100% linux at the moment.  Infact I still do most of my work under Windows.  Suse is mostly GUI now -- but wait till something goes wrong with your video settings and you'll be right back at a shell having to VIM your config files.  No fun and not an option if you're a developer or such.  No time for that crap.

Also Microsoft offers a keyboard editor which Linux doesnt seem to have.  So you can create your own keyboard maps.  As a developer I need a different keyboard layout for speed using symbols etc.  So Windows has the advantage there as well.

In a nutshell, I'd say if the Linux community would just spend some time writing Linux to be GUI from the ground up, it would get far -- and fast.  I'm not saying get rid of the shell, but it should *never* be necessary to shell unless one just prefers it.  There should be failsafe modes like windows has, to give you video even if it is crappy 640x480 at 16 colors.. lol

my 2 cents... crap, and they were my last 2... :-(

I was just reading up on a few of today's popular distros, in case I want to try Linux again anyway just for fun.  Ubuntu is well-liked, but is geared to using Gnome and I want something that's built with KDE users in mind, for the added functionality.   Free SuSE definitely seems worth a look.   I think an ideal solution for me will be if I can run as my main OS a good Linux that's engineered with desktop end users in mind, and then fire up a Windows virtual machine in VMware's free edition whenever I need to run certain Windows-specific apps.  That would be a practical way to make the transition from my standpoint.

The point is there are virtual machine software out there, so you can have a host O/S that is installed to your system (windows or linux), and then run a guest operating system inside a software program that presents a virtual hardware pc to the guest o/s. I've run XP and NT before that under linux and it works great for most average things. That way you can enjoy the best of both worlds. It does fall down if you're trying to play games or need ASIO audio drivers with lowlatency precise timing, or high speed networking. VMware provides a basic 10mbit network interface and generic sound which is why I've been running linux as the guest O/S lately. Microsoft has a virtual server also and made some announcement that they would give it away for free in order to compete against VMWare which is the dominant virtualization software on the PC. From the linux side of things there is another one called Xen which has now been merged into the mainline 2.6.x kernel tree. But I think it can not do virtualizing to a windows guest o/s so it's usefulness in a migration from windows to linux scenario would be questionable.

Also out on the horizon is virtualization in hardware for new PCs. AMD's Pacifica virtualization is supposed to be released sometime in the 1st half of 2006. This is a feature which was once only available in the very expensive high end enterprise class data center systems. Here is a link to some AMD marketing info that explains a bit more about virtualization.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not neccessarily an either/or choice between linux and windows. You can run them both at once, dual boot, run virtualization, live cd, etc. And utilize the strengths of both. Create a sandbox to explore, experiment, and get comfortable with linux without having to completely give up windows in one go.

This e-book may help those who want to leave Windows and try Linux.
Linux Transfer for Power Users: A Roadmap for Migrating to Linux for Experienced Windows Users
http://rapidshare.de/files/8392022/05g_ … o.rar.html
password=  www.Chipollo.Info

For those like me who have to stay with Windows realms:
Fixing Windows XP Annoyances : How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About
the Windows OS
http://rapidshare.de/files/15860926/0596100531.zip.html

Microsoft Windows XP Power Optimization
http://rapidshare.de/files/16541308/Mic … zation.rar

I've been completely Windows-free and it is do-able if you're commited to it. But the truth is each system has flaws and annoyances, and also strengths. They're just tools, it's better to try to evaluate your needs and use the tools that are best suited to what you are attempting to do. I try to do my sensitive stuff on linux where I feel more secure, and gpg is built into KDE so it's easy to encrypt and decrypt things, and I'm not so worried about key-loggers and trojans. Windows has a lot of fun stuff like Stardock WindowBlinds for example which make it look really good. If you want to write music, the PC with VST plugins is a much better choice than Linux. If you want to run a reliable network service, then linux or BSD is definitely the way to go.

I tried to go all Windows again based on some of its merits, but I just couldn't do it. I like linux ideals. It's cool that you can get down to the source code level and custom compile everything with all the options you want and none of the extras (I've done this). It's cool that they work for open documented inter-operable standards so different systems can still exchange data, and if someone gets angry they can't take their toys and ruin the party for all the other kids. The other problem is the "IP intellectual property" legal thing and software patents which are allowed in the US. So a company can get a patent on something retardedly obvious and simple like a one-click checkout shopping cart for a website, and sue anyone else who does it. So there's things like that which linux has to dance around trying not to step on the tows of people who try to lock up ideas and be the gatekeepers demanding money etc. That's why Fedora doesn't ship with an XMMS player that can play mp3. Sure it's a quick fix to find a version compiled with mp3 support, but the legality of it is grey in some places.

You can do pretty much all the basic desktop stuff in linux no problem, browse the web/email, etc. The new installers for distros like SuSE, Kubuntu, and Fedora might even be easier than Windows now. So things are coming along. I'm hoping eventually it takes over because the basic platform gets advanced enough and is out there for free that everyone decides to build on it. And that seems to be happening. Embedded devices is one example.

Another cool thing is the concept of a linux "live cd". If you're curious about trying it out, you can download and burn a cdrom "live cd" of linux. What that means, is that once the disk is burned, you can reboot your computer, and boot from the cdrom drive with the live cd, and linux will startup, all the  way to the desktop and you can play around, all without affecting  your harddrive or (presumably) windows install. So to get rid of it, you just shutdown and restart the computer like you normally would and you're back in windows.

It's a great way to experiment with linux, without actually having to go through the trouble of re-partitioning drives, or reinstalling windows or anything. And with these little USB flash storage devices, you can actually get away with storing your data there. And take your O/S and data anywhere. So if you were traveling and wanted to use a friends computer, you could reboot on your live cd, and download and read your email to a flashdrive, without having to use their insecure/unknown state windows machine, worry about the security of it, besides physical keylogger devices, and keep all your data on an encrypted partition... well now I'm starting to sound paranoid. But the point is there are a lot of possibilities that you can custom taylor with a little work to your personal needs/taste just because you can.

http://www.knoppix.org/ they are one of the popular livecd distros if you want to check into it more.. or go see http://distrowatch.com ...which brings me to another thorny problem, there are so many distros. which one to try/use? all this flexibility has led to many ways of doing things and lots of fragmentation. Different package managers and philosophies... But lately [k]ubuntu has been a linux darling. http://www.ubuntu.com ... oh yeah on linux there are 2 major desktop environments, KDE (Kubuntu), and Gnome (Ubuntu). There is no war between them. Just different choices...

"Ubuntu is an age-old African term for humaneness - for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation. As an ideal, it promotes co-operation between individuals, cultures and nations."

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy, vs the big cold corporate monopoly fist... So I'm definitely a fan of linux, but it's not all roses, but it is getting better. Depending on what you do with your computer, it does some things much better than the competition... okay rant off. sorry I rambled on and the grammer errors ...