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Default 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.
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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?)

--
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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.
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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....
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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.



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"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


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"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

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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
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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.
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"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




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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.


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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.
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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
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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.


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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 ......


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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.



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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.
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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.
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"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


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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


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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.


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"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


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"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.


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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   Report Post  
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Posts: 1,736
Default 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   Report Post  
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jkn jkn is offline
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Posts: 686
Default 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   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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Posts: 116
Default 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   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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Posts: 246
Default 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   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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Posts: 1,736
Default 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   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 557
Default 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   Report Post  
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Posts: 557
Default 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   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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Posts: 126
Default 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   Report Post  
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Posts: 1,031
Default 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
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Posts: 246
Default 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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