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UK diy (uk.d-i-y) For the discussion of all topics related to diy (do-it-yourself) in the UK. All levels of experience and proficency are welcome to join in to ask questions or offer solutions. |
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#1
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A very senior moment...
The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the
same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... -- *Can fat people go skinny-dipping? Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#2
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A very senior moment...
On 25 Jul,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote: The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... BTDTGTTS Actually was on a DTT training course just before I retired. I copied the (generic) firmware from the /replacement/ unit into the good unit. Glad it wasn't on a live system, which would have taken hours to correct, and /much/ longer to explain away later. At least you should have been able to restore (it wasn't much used) from installation discs and the latest backups (you do *do* backups?) -- B Thumbs Change lycos to yahoo to reply |
#3
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
In article ,
wrote: On 25 Jul, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote: The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... BTDTGTTS Actually was on a DTT training course just before I retired. I copied the (generic) firmware from the /replacement/ unit into the good unit. Glad it wasn't on a live system, which would have taken hours to correct, and /much/ longer to explain away later. At least you should have been able to restore (it wasn't much used) from installation discs and the latest backups (you do *do* backups?) Yes, there was nothing important on it that wasn't backed up elsewhere. I did wonder if I could simply copy the HD on the other PC which runs the same XP. Like I could do on the Acorns. ;-) -- *'Progress' and 'Change' are not synonyms. Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#4
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A very senior moment...
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:55:32 +0100, wrote:
On 25 Jul, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote: The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... BTDTGTTS Actually was on a DTT training course just before I retired. I copied the (generic) firmware from the /replacement/ unit into the good unit. Glad it wasn't on a live system, which would have taken hours to correct, and /much/ longer to explain away later. At least you should have been able to restore (it wasn't much used) from installation discs and the latest backups (you do *do* backups?) Brought home new base unit, removed from packaging, packed up old unit, took to skip for recycling and arrived just in time to fling the lot in as the skip was being dragged out. Came home and stood staring, wallet broken, at the original base unit sitting in it's cubby hole, all smug and jaunty looking.... |
#5
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I did wonder if I could simply copy the HD on the other PC which runs the same XP. Like I could do on the Acorns. ;-) Pretty much, though XP itself won't help you, to do it under Windows you need something like Acronis or DriveImage or Ghost. Booting from a live Linux CD or USB stick OTOH would make it a piece of **** ... fdisk and dd if you like the greybeard method, gparted if you want the easy GUI method. |
#6
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A very senior moment...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... At work in the 80's we first had Sirius computers on which the Hard drive was Drive A: and the floppy was drive B:. Then we got Compaqs which had the hard dive as C: and the floppy as A:. So yours truly has to delete a floppy on the Sirius. Put it in , typed (Dos of course) "DEL A:*.*" and pressed Enter. Took a long time to live that one down. Incidentally, I know Senior Moments as CRAFT moments - Can't Remember A F###ing Thing. -- Tinkerer |
#7
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A very senior moment...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. OK I'll bite - what the heck is a Toppy when it's at home and do they need a big cage and lots of exercise? AWEM |
#8
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A very senior moment...
On 26 Jul 2010 14:33:50 GMT, Huge wrote:
On 2010-07-26, Andrew Mawson wrote: "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. OK I'll bite - what the heck is a Toppy when it's at home and do they need a big cage and lots of exercise? I imagine it's a Topfield PVR. Or simply a laptop. -- Frank Erskine |
#9
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A very senior moment...
On 26/07/10 15:03, Andrew Mawson wrote:
"Dave Plowman wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the OK I'll bite - what the heck is a Toppy when it's at home and do they need a big cage and lots of exercise? Topfield. It performs the same sort of function as a VCR, except it uses a computer hard disk (HD) to store the video rather than a magnetic tape. They are very useful devices which completely change your attitude to watching TV - rather than sitting down to see what is on, you see if anything worthwhile has been recorded. And you can skip adverts or pause to make a cuppa if you want. They have the TV listings built into them so you can do clever things such as recording all of a particular series. There are other similar devices which you may have heard of under names like Sky+, Freeview+, V+, Humax, Tivo, Windows Media Center or MythTV. |
#10
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A very senior moment...
"Jim" wrote in message ... On 26/07/10 15:03, Andrew Mawson wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the OK I'll bite - what the heck is a Toppy when it's at home and do they need a big cage and lots of exercise? Topfield. It performs the same sort of function as a VCR, except it uses a computer hard disk (HD) to store the video rather than a magnetic tape. They are very useful devices which completely change your attitude to watching TV - rather than sitting down to see what is on, you see if anything worthwhile has been recorded. And you can skip adverts or pause to make a cuppa if you want. They have the TV listings built into them so you can do clever things such as recording all of a particular series. There are other similar devices which you may have heard of under names like Sky+, Freeview+, V+, Humax, Tivo, Windows Media Center or MythTV. And there's me happily thinking he meant one of those kid's devices where you pump up and down like crazy and it revolves at speed making humming noises. ;o) -- Tinkerer |
#11
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A very senior moment...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:17:29 +0100, Jim wrote:
On 26/07/10 15:03, Andrew Mawson wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the OK I'll bite - what the heck is a Toppy when it's at home and do they need a big cage and lots of exercise? Topfield. It performs the same sort of function as a VCR, except it uses a computer hard disk (HD) to store the video rather than a magnetic tape. I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. |
#12
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A very senior moment...
In article ,
Jules Richardson wrote: Topfield. It performs the same sort of function as a VCR, except it uses a computer hard disk (HD) to store the video rather than a magnetic tape. I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. And it's meant to be able to work with bigger drives. However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. -- *If God dropped acid, would he see people? Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#13
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A very senior moment...
On 26/07/2010 16:17, Jim wrote:
There are other similar devices which you may have heard of under names like Sky+, Freeview+, V+, Humax, Tivo, Windows Media Center or MythTV. I was gassing to someone today about the poor state of technological awareness amongst the general populace. Folks may blindly scan read a tabloid or broadsheet newspaper and flit across terms such as 'Sky+' or 'Freeview' or 'iPhone' or 'Internet', and read some scandal happening about matters to do with the product and the people involved, _but_ they will have absolutely no clue what these innovations actually do. Journalism and PR has trivallised things to give inanimate objects celebrity and fashion status - and only _that_ seems newsworthy - and advertising is unfortuately mostly aimed at those who have seen one product and could possibly desire spending money on another. The hacks could really do much better spreading out the goodness of technology in everyday life messages out further, but stories like "make sure your set-top box stays unplugged during the night or the planet is doomed" is actually dissuasion for people to actually plug in and successfully use these products. If the daily maul or the soaraway Sun could, say, run over five days a pullout guide to technology and joe public, focus on what technology does, how we are all going to have to get on with it, leave complicated words out of it, supply humanly accessible links to organisations and other bodies interested in closing the digital divison, and also give guidence for who to call (and how to validate their credentials) when it all goes wrong - we may get that jump on South Korea. Or, shall we forever moan about closing post office counters .... ;-( -- Adrian C |
#14
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A very senior moment...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. ta J. |
#15
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A very senior moment...
On 25 July, 23:27, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. *Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... -- *Can fat people go skinny-dipping? * * Dave Plowman * * * * * * * * London SW * * * * * * * * * To e-mail, change noise into sound. not quite in the same league, but a cringeworthy story all the same ... many years ago, at poly, we used a VAX 750 to do our 8080/Z80 assembler programming. Working in pairs, we had a 3 week assignment to do. Some friends had just finished theirs, and got it working. Jokingly I typed DELETE filename on their terminal, and hovered my finger over "Enter". A few friendly threats, and I thought I'd cancel the command by pressing ESC. Only in VMS (for reasons no one ever explained to me) ESC=Enter. Whoops. And then it turned out that the only work backed up was final year projects. Luckily (?) they had just printed out the code, for inclusion in their write-up. You can guess what I spent the next 3 hours doing ...... |
#16
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A very senior moment...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:05:47 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson wrote:
Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! My 500GB HD Panasonic PVR hold a mere 75hrs by default which I think records the data stream as transmitted. If you aren't all that fussed about quality it'll stored a silly amount, 2,000+ hours springs to mind but that would probably be worse than VHS... Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. That's why you buy a PVR with built in Blu-ray burner then you can archive off to Blu-ray or DVD should you want to. B-) -- Cheers Dave. |
#17
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A very senior moment...
In article ,
Jules Richardson wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. -- *Happiness is seeing your mother-in-law on a milk carton Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#18
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A very senior moment...
In article o.uk,
Dave Liquorice wrote: Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! My 500GB HD Panasonic PVR hold a mere 75hrs by default which I think records the data stream as transmitted. If you aren't all that fussed about quality it'll stored a silly amount, 2,000+ hours springs to mind but that would probably be worse than VHS... HD needs approx 4 times more space than FreeView SD, IIRC. -- *Procrastinate now Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#19
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A very senior moment...
"Jules Richardson" wrote in message ... On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:17:29 +0100, Jim wrote: On 26/07/10 15:03, Andrew Mawson wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the OK I'll bite - what the heck is a Toppy when it's at home and do they need a big cage and lots of exercise? Topfield. It performs the same sort of function as a VCR, except it uses a computer hard disk (HD) to store the video rather than a magnetic tape. I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. I know these things as PVRs (Personal Video Recorder) and have two made by Panasonic. In addition to the hard drive, there is a DVD burner. You can record directly to DVD-R or DVD-RW as well as to the HDD and, if you have a recording on the hard drive that you wish to keep; you can copy it across to DVD. You can copy the other way as well which is handy if you want to duplicate a DVD although it does involve copying twice (onto HDD the back to new DVD). -- Tinkerer |
#20
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A very senior moment...
On Jul 25, 11:27*pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote: The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. *Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... -- *Can fat people go skinny-dipping? * * Dave Plowman * * * * * * * * London SW * * * * * * * * * To e-mail, change noise into sound. I made the mistake of replying in a thread containing Steve Firth. MBQ |
#21
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A very senior moment...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... I worked as a cable jointer on BT for many years. If people don't know, telephone cables are sized by the amount of pairs of wires they contain - smallest these days I think is a 5pr, going all the way up to 4,800pr. IIRC, a 120m length of 200pr cable had gone faulty so another guy and myself were doing a 200pr changeover and I was at the controlling end. After putting the last pair through I got my hacksaw and cut the old cable out to give myself more room to close the new joint - and discovered, when I was about 90% through the cable, that I was cutting through the new one. |
#22
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A very senior moment...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... In article , Jules Richardson wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Also my daughter transfers recorded films from her Sky Plus box to VHS tape and I then transfer them to DVD for her, just connect the SCART out on the VHS to an AVI connection on the HDD/DVD recorder and away it goes. You can even use the pause control on the recorder to edit out adverts etc. -- Tinkerer |
#23
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A very senior moment...
"Man at B&Q" wrote in message ... On Jul 25, 11:27 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote: The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... -- *Can fat people go skinny-dipping? Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. I made the mistake of replying in a thread containing Steve Firth. Now you tell me. |
#24
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A very senior moment...
On 27/07/2010 22:08, Tinkerer wrote:
"Dave Plowman wrote in message ... In , Jules wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Which is a shame for us. We collected a hell of a lot of Disney tapes from our local video rental store, most of which have never been released into the public domain. Also my daughter transfers recorded films from her Sky Plus box to VHS tape and I then transfer them to DVD for her, just connect the SCART out on the VHS to an AVI connection on the HDD/DVD recorder and away it goes. You can even use the pause control on the recorder to edit out adverts etc. Earlier this year I transferred a large amount of VHS to DVD just this way. My only failure was Good night Mr Thom. The DVD has to be cleaned with IPA before it will play right through. But I have found the original tape, I just need a case to put it in now, so it will play in the video recorder. Dave |
#25
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A very senior moment...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:19:20 +0100, dave
wrote: On 27/07/2010 22:08, Tinkerer wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... In , Jules wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Which is a shame for us. We collected a hell of a lot of Disney tapes from our local video rental store, most of which have never been released into the public domain. Google "macrovision removal". -- (\__/) M. (='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and (")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by everyone you will need use a different method of posting. |
#26
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A very senior moment...
On 26 July, 20:05, Jules Richardson
wrote: However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. Downloadibf from the topfield is certainly feasible, but a bit of a pain, as (at least with the Topfield PVR5800) the download link is USB, which is (a) slow-ish, and (b) ties up the 'toppy' whilst you're downloading. I' hoping the next generation will have (or have already?) an Ethernet connection. I'd happily pay for one of those. FWIW upgrading the hard drive on a Topfield is pretty straightforward for anyone with a bit of technical nous who is prepared to read up on the tpfield user group forums. Another approach which I haven't tried is to keep the 'swapout' disk and stick it in a Linux PC (with eg. a caddyless drive bay). You should be able to play the recordings on the PC straight from the drive. J^n |
#27
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
On 28/07/2010 09:29, Mark wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:19:20 +0100, wrote: On 27/07/2010 22:08, Tinkerer wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... In , Jules wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Which is a shame for us. We collected a hell of a lot of Disney tapes from our local video rental store, most of which have never been released into the public domain. Google "macrovision removal". Thanks for that, it is going to take me some time to go through it though. Got the g daughters to look after for the next 3 weeks. First week on my own while wife goes to Scout camp. Dave |
#28
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
dave wrote:
On 28/07/2010 09:29, Mark wrote: On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:19:20 +0100, wrote: On 27/07/2010 22:08, Tinkerer wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... In , Jules wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Which is a shame for us. We collected a hell of a lot of Disney tapes from our local video rental store, most of which have never been released into the public domain. Google "macrovision removal". Thanks for that, it is going to take me some time to go through it though. Got the g daughters to look after for the next 3 weeks. First week on my own while wife goes to Scout camp. Dave Most units sold for copying from tape to computer will happily copy videos or DVDs while ignoring the Macrovision or similar. I've got a Roxio USB one which works fine and before that I had a Pinnacle Dazzle (DV-170 IIRC), but that particular model won't work under Windows 7 - which is unfortunately what is on the PC in the living room and hence near the TV. SteveW --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
#29
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:17:26 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote: dave wrote: On 28/07/2010 09:29, Mark wrote: On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:19:20 +0100, wrote: On 27/07/2010 22:08, Tinkerer wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... In , Jules wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Which is a shame for us. We collected a hell of a lot of Disney tapes from our local video rental store, most of which have never been released into the public domain. Google "macrovision removal". Thanks for that, it is going to take me some time to go through it though. Got the g daughters to look after for the next 3 weeks. First week on my own while wife goes to Scout camp. Dave Most units sold for copying from tape to computer will happily copy videos or DVDs while ignoring the Macrovision or similar. I've got a Roxio USB one which works fine and before that I had a Pinnacle Dazzle (DV-170 IIRC), but that particular model won't work under Windows 7 - which is unfortunately what is on the PC in the living room and hence near the TV. I'd always recommend a standalone device rather than a USB one. Also Pinnacle do not have a great reputation. Anyway there are loads of people much more knowledgeable about this than me on rec.video.desktop. -- (\__/) M. (='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and (")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by everyone you will need use a different method of posting. |
#30
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... The HD in my Toppy died, so I decided to replace all the PSU caps at the same time - they weren't too bad but the 3.3v rail was a bit low. That went fine. Bought a new 500GB PATA HD off Ebay, and it didn't like the Toppy. Had been warned this could happen. The workshop desktop PC - that doesn't get much use - was assembled by me and has two IDE HDs of about the same age as the Toppy, and neither of them even remotely full, so I decided to try one in it. Copied everything on F onto C, and removed F. Bet you're ahead of me. I'd actually removed C, plonked it in the Toppy and formatted it... Not as bad as a remote support engineer who told a networks engineer to enter command on his Sun Network station: remove -r |
#31
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
"Andy Burns" wrote in message o.uk... Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I did wonder if I could simply copy the HD on the other PC which runs the same XP. Like I could do on the Acorns. ;-) Pretty much, though XP itself won't help you, to do it under Windows you need something like Acronis or DriveImage or Ghost. I thought about keeping a backup of my windows install with a disk image for a very fast recovery .... are any of the above freeware ? |
#32
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
In message , Rick Hughes
writes "Andy Burns" wrote in message news:xuKdnZppe9PjotDRnZ2dnUVZ8iGdnZ2d@brightview. co.uk... Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I did wonder if I could simply copy the HD on the other PC which runs the same XP. Like I could do on the Acorns. ;-) Pretty much, though XP itself won't help you, to do it under Windows you need something like Acronis or DriveImage or Ghost. I thought about keeping a backup of my windows install with a disk image for a very fast recovery .... are any of the above freeware ? DriveimageXML is free, the others afaik aren't. You could also try gparted or clonezilla live cds. http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GParted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonezilla -- Nick (=----) |
#33
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
Nick wrote:
DriveimageXML is free, the others afaik aren't. You could also try gparted or clonezilla live cds. And if you already have a Windows XP installation CD try ubcd4win http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm - it enables you to create a bootable minimal XP CDROM which also includes lots or useful repair tools, including a password resetter and DriveimageXML. Windows won't let you restore an image over itself while it's running but when you're running from the CD you have full unrestricted access to your C drive. -- Mike Clarke |
#34
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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A very senior moment...
Mark wrote:
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:17:26 +0100, Steve Walker wrote: dave wrote: On 28/07/2010 09:29, Mark wrote: On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:19:20 +0100, wrote: On 27/07/2010 22:08, Tinkerer wrote: "Dave Plowman wrote in message ... In , Jules wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:34:38 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote: I had the impression that the hard disks are less-than-trivial to remove/ swap, and (obviously) they only have a limited amount of storage space - in other words, good for temporary "watch it a little bit later" storage, but not really analogous to what people used VCRs for. Would depend on how many VCR tapes you had. The basic 250GB HD holds IIRC something like 200 hours worth of programmes. That's not too bad ... certainly more than I'd expected! However, you can link it to your PC and transfer stuff there for storage if you prefer. Aha, now that is useful! I'd figured that the manufacturers were probably leaned on by movie and TV companies and didn't allow people to do stuff like that, so you got stuck with a self-contained box and had to start binning stuff when space ran out. You can, of course, transfer individual recordings to DVD or even VHS if you want. What it won't do is record *from* VHS, etc. Off air only. Although there are similar devices which can. My Panasonic with HDD and DVD burner happily records from "most" VHS tapes. It is not supposed to record from the purchased movie type because of the anti-piracy signal but in practice it only falls over with Disney ones. Which is a shame for us. We collected a hell of a lot of Disney tapes from our local video rental store, most of which have never been released into the public domain. Google "macrovision removal". Thanks for that, it is going to take me some time to go through it though. Got the g daughters to look after for the next 3 weeks. First week on my own while wife goes to Scout camp. Dave Most units sold for copying from tape to computer will happily copy videos or DVDs while ignoring the Macrovision or similar. I've got a Roxio USB one which works fine and before that I had a Pinnacle Dazzle (DV-170 IIRC), but that particular model won't work under Windows 7 - which is unfortunately what is on the PC in the living room and hence near the TV. I'd always recommend a standalone device rather than a USB one. Also Pinnacle do not have a great reputation. Anyway there are loads of people much more knowledgeable about this than me on rec.video.desktop. I have no idea of what is available. But at the low price of the Pinnacle and Roxio ones and both never having dropped a frame, I've been happy enough using them for transferring kids films and couple of training videos. For more intensive use or if it's something that you want to keep for years then Pinnacle do seem poor on supporting newer operating systems for devices that were only recently current items, but I've no experience of any others yet. SteveW --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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