On 7/16/2012 3:18 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:11:34 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 1:03 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:30:53 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:32:01 -0400, "dadiOH"
wrote:

If a component needs software it comes with what you need.

If the system is Win 7 compatible the install will find all the
drivers on the install disk. They can later be updated at the
manufacture's web site when they become available for the device.

I haven't had a driver problem for years.

The problem you have with drivers is when you are not sure what
hardware you actually have. I have a whole cabinet full of boards
cards and drives. When I am putting a machine together from my parts
cache I often find a card that drivers are a mystery item. The old
"free" driver sites have become malware factories, always trying to
get you to load crap you don't want. Manufacturers are dropping
support on products very early in the life cycle.

The chinks (Lenova) have really screwed up the IBM PC site.

I just "upgraded to a more familiar version" (W7 to XP Pro) on my,
new to me, X61 tablet and getting all the drivers was a nightmare. I
still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.


I often read the chip numbers on the board then search for the
manufacturer and have found drivers that way. I would recommend
software like Speccy witch will give you info down to a chip's
part number and serial number. ^_^

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

TDD
The problem is figuring out what the "unrecognized device" really is.
After that has been figured out, getting the driver is only "slightly"
painful.


But it's fun to me, I like a challenge unless a customer is breathing
down my neck. ^_^

TDD

On 7/16/2012 12:22 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 01:51:23 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 11:15 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:28:01 +0000 (UTC), gregz
wrote:

My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)

Several years later I did the $300 WDWX1 controller/ST238 upgrade to a
hard drive but that also required a new system board.
My old one suddenly just "went bad" and I had to replace it on the M/A
... funny how that works huh?
I had a problem earlier with one of those diskette drives and needed a
new one too. They only had the 360K. ;-)

I'm thinking a large disk in mid 70's was about 20 kb or perhaps mb. ?
In 1969 loading a program by paper tape into a $10k pdp 8/I first required
you to manually machine code the program on switches so computer would know
how to read the paper tape. Back when an oscilloscope was what you used to
fix computers.


In the mid 70s a big disk drive was a 3330 M11 and you got 200MB per
spindle on a removable pack. (ten 14" platters)

Two drives were about the size of a side by side refrigerator and the
standard array of 8 had a 60 amp 3 phase 208 power plug.

I worked on computers since they leaked oil on the floor and filled a
big room.


Do you remember the UNIVAC drum memory units? I think they were the size
of a 50gal drum. I do remember the university having a UNIVAC
classic science fiction computer with all the glass doors and blinking
lights. This was back in 1965-66 when I started playing with digital
computers and the UNIVAC was being replaced by a shiny new IBM 360/50
RAX system with terminals around campus. The terminals were big L shaped
desks with an IBM Selectric for I/O and part of the desk held all the
interface electronics. The I/O was the wide green and white fan-fold
paper and I don't remember an 80 column card reader as part of the
terminal. Of course, there was a ton of keypunch machines at the
computer center. Kids today have no idea what we called computers but
those huge machines got us to The Moon and back. ^_^

TDD

I never spent much time around Univacs, I did have a couple mod 50s in
my territory tho, along with a m40 and a bunch of 25s and 30s over the
years. The 158 may have been the pinnacle of that type of machine. The
best water cool was the 3090. I had one for 5 years and never had a
call on it,

All of that big iron was replaced by rack mounted blade servers and a
****load of 3.5" SCSI drives in a rack. The bad part had a red
blinking light on it and you hot swapped it without taking the system
down. No fun in that. I went off to do other things.
The guys who fixed the old iron were eventually given early
retirement. 49 for me and that wasn't a horrible thing ;-)


I remember the IBM customer engineers, buy a computer and IBM threw in a
human in the deal. ^_^

TDD

On 7/16/2012 5:50 AM, RBM wrote:
On 7/15/2012 8:30 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 7/15/2012 9:32 AM, RBM wrote:
On 7/14/2012 5:53 PM, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

CPU

Motherboard

Hard Drive (SATA)

DVD (SATA)

Monitor

A friend ask me to build him a new system. (no problem)

Windows 7 – clean install...

If you've built a system in the last year or two or had one built for
you I would appreciate your comments.

Just the above parts are what I'm interested in. Been awhile since I
built mine :-\

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

+When I started building my own computers, I would typically go to
Newegg and check ratings and reviews for each of the components, then go
with that advice.
All of my original builds, I used the best Asus motherboards available
at the time. P4PE, P4C800E-D, P5AD2E. These are Intel socket boards, and
I used the best bank for the buck processor. I used Seagate hard drives.
Those machines worked flawlessly, but ultimately all of the boards
crapped out except the original P4PE. At the end of the day I'm not that
happy with Asus
After some time of not building anything, I needed to build another
batch, these are within the last two years. This time I went with
Gigabyte motherboards and I5 intel processors. I also switched to WD
hard drives, just for a change, the Seagates were always good to me. All
my machines are running continuously, some are gaming setups, and there
hasn't been the slightest hiccup from any of them.

Do you keep the dust bunnies, elephants and rhinoceroses out of your
machines? ^_^

TDD

Yes, but the teenagers don't


I used to carry a 20lb Co2 cylinder with a blow gun attached to blow the
dirt out of customer's computers but I'd take them outside first. ^_^

TDD

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:14:55 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/16/2012 3:00 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 18:58:03 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 6:48 PM, Duesenberg wrote:
On 7/14/2012 7:15 PM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 07/14/12 05:53 pm, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

For years I've bought nothing but Asus motherboards, AMD CPUs and
Seagate hard drives (except that I bought Hitachi drives for notebooks)
-- almost all my dead drives are Western Digital. Most recently I've
been buying G.Skill RAM but previously bought mostly Kingston. The DVD
drives I've bought recently have been whatever was on sale at the time.

My most recent purchases have been from NewEgg.com, but TigerDirect.com
has occasionally had better prices.

Perce

Western Digital has a perceived lower failure rate than Seagate the last
few years from the websites I buy from.


The only time I've ever had a modern hard drive fail was due to
overheating caused by extreme numbers of dust bunnies plugging up the
air vents in a case. O_o

TDD
You don't work on many computers then. Average lifespan appears to be
just around the 3 1/2 years for "consumer" drives. Yes, some last 5 or
six, but enough fail at less than one to even out the average.
Laptop drives in particular. I've got one here on a Toshiba, 1 1/2
months out of warranty - junk.


I work on lots of computers and the drives that I had the most problems
with were some horror story clones of Seagate that came out of India.
Perhaps you didn't grok what I meant, my fault. I should have written
"My personal hard drives." It's been quite a while since I had one of my
own hard drives fail. We've had some out of box failures of voice mail
system hard drives lately and I replace drives in servers and point of
sale systems all the time but I find those computers plugged up with
dirt which I believe leads to the failure of most computer systems. ^_^

PS, Some of my hard drives are still working after 10 years but they're
not hammered 24/7. ^_^

TDD
I've had plenty fail in boxes you could eat out of - but heat
definitely makes it worse - and dirt makes heat worse.

On laptops, people actually using them "on their lap" does cause them
to run hot, in many cases. So does sitting on a desk with a loose
sheet of paper sucked up onto the air intake - - - - - -

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:21:27 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/16/2012 3:18 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:11:34 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 1:03 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:30:53 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:32:01 -0400, "dadiOH"
wrote:

If a component needs software it comes with what you need.

If the system is Win 7 compatible the install will find all the
drivers on the install disk. They can later be updated at the
manufacture's web site when they become available for the device.

I haven't had a driver problem for years.

The problem you have with drivers is when you are not sure what
hardware you actually have. I have a whole cabinet full of boards
cards and drives. When I am putting a machine together from my parts
cache I often find a card that drivers are a mystery item. The old
"free" driver sites have become malware factories, always trying to
get you to load crap you don't want. Manufacturers are dropping
support on products very early in the life cycle.

The chinks (Lenova) have really screwed up the IBM PC site.

I just "upgraded to a more familiar version" (W7 to XP Pro) on my,
new to me, X61 tablet and getting all the drivers was a nightmare. I
still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.


I often read the chip numbers on the board then search for the
manufacturer and have found drivers that way. I would recommend
software like Speccy witch will give you info down to a chip's
part number and serial number. ^_^

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

TDD
The problem is figuring out what the "unrecognized device" really is.
After that has been figured out, getting the driver is only "slightly"
painful.


But it's fun to me, I like a challenge unless a customer is breathing
down my neck. ^_^

TDD
Likewise - Don't know if I have the "patience of Job" or if I'm "just
too dumb to know when I'm licked"

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:47:02 -0400, wrote:

But it's fun to me, I like a challenge unless a customer is breathing
down my neck. ^_^

TDD
Likewise - Don't know if I have the "patience of Job" or if I'm "just
too dumb to know when I'm licked"

Once you're licked you got it made :-\

On 07/16/2012 08:24 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:


I remember the IBM customer engineers, buy a computer and IBM threw in a
human in the deal. ^_^

TDD


And she didn't know a damn thing about computers either.

On 7/16/2012 7:47 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:21:27 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/16/2012 3:18 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:11:34 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 1:03 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:30:53 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:32:01 -0400, "dadiOH"
wrote:

If a component needs software it comes with what you need.

If the system is Win 7 compatible the install will find all the
drivers on the install disk. They can later be updated at the
manufacture's web site when they become available for the device.

I haven't had a driver problem for years.

The problem you have with drivers is when you are not sure what
hardware you actually have. I have a whole cabinet full of boards
cards and drives. When I am putting a machine together from my parts
cache I often find a card that drivers are a mystery item. The old
"free" driver sites have become malware factories, always trying to
get you to load crap you don't want. Manufacturers are dropping
support on products very early in the life cycle.

The chinks (Lenova) have really screwed up the IBM PC site.

I just "upgraded to a more familiar version" (W7 to XP Pro) on my,
new to me, X61 tablet and getting all the drivers was a nightmare. I
still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.


I often read the chip numbers on the board then search for the
manufacturer and have found drivers that way. I would recommend
software like Speccy witch will give you info down to a chip's
part number and serial number. ^_^

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

TDD
The problem is figuring out what the "unrecognized device" really is.
After that has been figured out, getting the driver is only "slightly"
painful.


But it's fun to me, I like a challenge unless a customer is breathing
down my neck. ^_^

TDD
Likewise - Don't know if I have the "patience of Job" or if I'm "just
too dumb to know when I'm licked"


If it's my own on my own time, I tend to view it as entertainment but
when the clock is ticking for someone else, I must decide if it's
economical to repair. I've had to point out to a number of folks over
the years that the most expensive and valuable item in/on their computer
is "The Data/Information". I used to preach "Backup your data and put
the tape in the fire resistant safe." but with the advent of cheap web
based backup that can be automated there is no excuse for any business
to ever lose data. I run service as an independent contractor for a few
nationwide service organizations where they will ship overnight loaded
hard drives to replace those in retail store computer systems and of
course I've repeatedly asked them about preventative maintenance to
clean the dust wildlife out of the computers on a regular basis but for
some odd reason they don't want to do anything until it breaks. O_o

TDD

On 7/16/2012 8:10 PM, Watson wrote:
On 07/16/2012 08:24 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:


I remember the IBM customer engineers, buy a computer and IBM threw in a
human in the deal. ^_^

TDD


And she didn't know a damn thing about computers either.

All the customer engineers I ever met had crew-cuts and flat chests,
perhaps a little beer belly. ^_^

TDD

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:21:03 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:35:52 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 17:39:12 -0400, "
wrote:

On 15 Jul 2012 18:55:52 GMT, Han wrote:

wrote in news
I still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.

Have you tried Raxco's PerfectUpdater? I believe they have a trial
version. I suckered into subscribing to it ... It's been almost a year
and all updates were done without problems other than rebooting.
ASUS X53E laptop w/ Win7Pro

Interesting. Lenovo's ThinkVantage updater is OK but it doesn't want to deal
with my WiFi drivers. There are newer drivers available but the installation
process looks to be a mess. I'd really like to be able to log into a WPA-2
network (like my phone - I'd rather not go naked).

Thinkvantage cleared 3 of the 4 mystery yellow boxes I had. One just
will not go away. None of those drivers TV fixed were on the X61
driver page.
Lenova has really screwed the pooch on this one. I was able to get all
the drivers in one click on the old IBM.COM site for all of the
Netvistas and Aptivas I had, simply by putting in the type and model.
I still can, as long as I stay with the OS supplied with the
machine. Upgrades, or downgrades from Vista to XP, can be a
BITCH.(particularly if the model in question was never shipped with
XP)

Mine won't update the WiFi stuff and I agree with gfretwell, Lenovo has gone
way downhill. I don't know what's better, though. I haven't been impressed
with any I've seen lately.

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:24:04 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/16/2012 12:22 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 01:51:23 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 11:15 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:28:01 +0000 (UTC), gregz
wrote:

My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)

Several years later I did the $300 WDWX1 controller/ST238 upgrade to a
hard drive but that also required a new system board.
My old one suddenly just "went bad" and I had to replace it on the M/A
... funny how that works huh?
I had a problem earlier with one of those diskette drives and needed a
new one too. They only had the 360K. ;-)

I'm thinking a large disk in mid 70's was about 20 kb or perhaps mb. ?
In 1969 loading a program by paper tape into a $10k pdp 8/I first required
you to manually machine code the program on switches so computer would know
how to read the paper tape. Back when an oscilloscope was what you used to
fix computers.


In the mid 70s a big disk drive was a 3330 M11 and you got 200MB per
spindle on a removable pack. (ten 14" platters)

Two drives were about the size of a side by side refrigerator and the
standard array of 8 had a 60 amp 3 phase 208 power plug.

I worked on computers since they leaked oil on the floor and filled a
big room.


Do you remember the UNIVAC drum memory units? I think they were the size
of a 50gal drum. I do remember the university having a UNIVAC
classic science fiction computer with all the glass doors and blinking
lights. This was back in 1965-66 when I started playing with digital
computers and the UNIVAC was being replaced by a shiny new IBM 360/50
RAX system with terminals around campus. The terminals were big L shaped
desks with an IBM Selectric for I/O and part of the desk held all the
interface electronics. The I/O was the wide green and white fan-fold
paper and I don't remember an 80 column card reader as part of the
terminal. Of course, there was a ton of keypunch machines at the
computer center. Kids today have no idea what we called computers but
those huge machines got us to The Moon and back. ^_^

TDD

I never spent much time around Univacs, I did have a couple mod 50s in
my territory tho, along with a m40 and a bunch of 25s and 30s over the
years. The 158 may have been the pinnacle of that type of machine. The
best water cool was the 3090. I had one for 5 years and never had a
call on it,

All of that big iron was replaced by rack mounted blade servers and a
****load of 3.5" SCSI drives in a rack. The bad part had a red
blinking light on it and you hot swapped it without taking the system
down. No fun in that. I went off to do other things.
The guys who fixed the old iron were eventually given early
retirement. 49 for me and that wasn't a horrible thing ;-)


I remember the IBM customer engineers, buy a computer and IBM threw in a
human in the deal. ^_^

....not that you didn't pay for it.

My brother had a saying "if you want to know where your profits go, buy an IBM
computer". ...then I joined IBM. ;-)

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:37:34 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/16/2012 8:10 PM, Watson wrote:
On 07/16/2012 08:24 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:


I remember the IBM customer engineers, buy a computer and IBM threw in a
human in the deal. ^_^

TDD


And she didn't know a damn thing about computers either.

All the customer engineers I ever met had crew-cuts and flat chests,
perhaps a little beer belly. ^_^


There was a time in the programmer contracting business when a
good-looking chick would always land at a client site after the
interview. Didn't matter if she knew anything past the rudimentary.
It was a cruel, sexist world. There was more than one reason to call
contracting companies "body shops."
I pondered starting my own contracting company. Recruit from modeling
schools, teach the girls the rudiments, and send them to client
interviews in the proper attire - business-with-leg.
Never did it though. No guts I guess.

--
Vic

On Sunday, July 15, 2012 11:12:27 PM UTC-5, Doug wrote:


Go to Dell's newsgroup and ping "Ben Myers". He drops by every now
and then and seems to be very knowledgeable about hardware regardless
of brand. If you get into software questions, it isn't his strong
point but he knows a decent amount tho others may be better equipped
to answer like a guy called RnR, etc... .

I totally respect Ben's opinion...RnR...nothing special.

On Tue, 17 Jul 2012 04:09:42 -0700 (PDT), Bob_Villa
wrote:

On Sunday, July 15, 2012 11:12:27 PM UTC-5, Doug wrote:


Go to Dell's newsgroup and ping "Ben Myers". He drops by every now
and then and seems to be very knowledgeable about hardware regardless
of brand. If you get into software questions, it isn't his strong
point but he knows a decent amount tho others may be better equipped
to answer like a guy called RnR, etc... .

I totally respect Ben's opinion...RnR...nothing special.


Also respect BillW50 for both hardware and software. There are a few
others just don't recall their names. I think if you get Ben's, RnR's
and BillW50's opinion, you pretty much got yourself covered g.

On 2012-07-17, Vic Smith wrote:

good-looking chick would always land at a client site after the
interview. Didn't matter if she knew anything past the rudimentary.
It was a cruel, sexist world. There was more than one reason to call
contracting companies "body shops."
I pondered starting my own contracting company. Recruit from modeling
schools, teach the girls the rudiments, and send them to client
interviews in the proper attire - business-with-leg.

That certainly occurred with the production line tool supply
companies. At one time, it was serious go-to guys with knowledge and
a sense of professionalism. Later, it degenerated into bobble-boobed
babes with nary a clue. I used to buy all the hand tools for a major
hi-tech division of a major Silicon Valley player. What was once the
domain of fast talking glib fellows who actually knew the technical
details of their lines soon gave way to cute babes with a flirty wink
and toothsome smile. Oh, they laid it on thick while the order was
pending, but after placed, it was like the client never existed. So
unlike the conscientious guys who would check back every week to
follow up and make sure everything was jake.

nb

On 7/17/2012 7:36 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-17, Vic Smith wrote:

good-looking chick would always land at a client site after the
interview. Didn't matter if she knew anything past the rudimentary.
It was a cruel, sexist world. There was more than one reason to call
contracting companies "body shops."
I pondered starting my own contracting company. Recruit from modeling
schools, teach the girls the rudiments, and send them to client
interviews in the proper attire - business-with-leg.

That certainly occurred with the production line tool supply
companies. At one time, it was serious go-to guys with knowledge and
a sense of professionalism. Later, it degenerated into bobble-boobed
babes with nary a clue. I used to buy all the hand tools for a major
hi-tech division of a major Silicon Valley player. What was once the
domain of fast talking glib fellows who actually knew the technical
details of their lines soon gave way to cute babes with a flirty wink
and toothsome smile. Oh, they laid it on thick while the order was
pending, but after placed, it was like the client never existed. So
unlike the conscientious guys who would check back every week to
follow up and make sure everything was jake.

nb


35 years ago, me and some friends who knew our electronics and had
repair depot experience took a crash course for our First Class FCC
License. There was one cute gal in the class who didn't know one end
of a soldering iron from the other. Everyone who attended the course
passed the test at The FCC office and only one person from the class
was offered a job at a radio station. Yep, Affirmative Action doesn't
only apply to skin color. Funny thing happened, I did windup
straightening out a few radio stations as an independent contractor,
they were woman and minority owned stations. That's irony for you. ^_^

TDD

On 7/15/2012 10:14 PM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 22:53:13 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:57:33 -0400, "
wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:22:01 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 18:41:31 -0400, "
wrote:

Plus,you can configure a desktop or tower PC to be a DVR and record several
TV channels at the same time.

Not if you have digital cable. Besides, that's what the DVR is for.

You can buy a digital TV card for a PCI machine.

Does it do the DRM stuff?

They have "cable cards" in them that you get authorized like a cable
box. I haven't done anything with that but the guys at AVS forum can
tell you more than you want to know about it. I still use my ReplayTV
and I have a DVR from Dish.

Which AVS forum?


Didn't know that, but I guess it makes sense to have them available.

I use the PC I have connected for music and streaming content directly
from the net.
(Hulu, HBO-Go etc)

That's what I intended to do with the system that I bought the pieces for but
never put together.

Are links that have good information on computer DVR, media setup,
software? Obviously I could google, but often people have found favorite
links.

"Oren" wrote in message ...
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 08:49:08 -0700, "Guv Bob"
wrote:

Check out their specials -- they run full page ads in the paper which is better for me than searching a website. You can view them online also at www.frys.com -- click at the top on "See our ads".


Thanks. I have a paper ad good for 7 days. We will be going to Fry's
this morning, so my friend can get an idea of exactly what it would
cost to build vs. a box OEM unit. He did mention a laptop so we will
check them out. He has very simple needs for his computing.

Sounds good. In that case, maybe the recycler.com or ebay might be a possibility? I still have the first laptop I bought with Win95 on it and it still works fine for the applications I installed on it. Also have W98SE, 2000, ME and XT on machines, all running fast and fine for what they were intended.

I'm a firm believer of picking the application first and then seeing if I need to upgrade OS or hardware. I still have one of the original system-builder DVDs of Windows 7 that I got as a Frys loss leader. Never have installed because I still have not needed to upgrade yet.

wrote in
:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:23:46 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2
keyboards and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was
low because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD
I remember when a 20mb drive was cheap at $500.
My then Brother-In Law bought a PC, and by the time he had upgraded
to DSDD floppies, then an add-on hard drive, and an EGA monochrome
video card and monitor, it had cost him more than his new Ford
Ranchwagon, loaded with 460, posi, and AC


My turn! I remember...

Those Radio shack things
PC Jr sidecars
55sx machine advertized in PC mag for $5400

but...

anybody know where I put down that soda I just poured? :-(

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:02:35 +0000 (UTC), Red Green
wrote:

wrote in
:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:23:46 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2
keyboards and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was
low because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD
I remember when a 20mb drive was cheap at $500.
My then Brother-In Law bought a PC, and by the time he had upgraded
to DSDD floppies, then an add-on hard drive, and an EGA monochrome
video card and monitor, it had cost him more than his new Ford
Ranchwagon, loaded with 460, posi, and AC


My turn! I remember...

Those Radio shack things
PC Jr sidecars
55sx machine advertized in PC mag for $5400

but...

anybody know where I put down that soda I just poured? :-(
Still have my RS CoCo2 withJ-Dos and dual floppies, as well as my
MN-10. Anyone remember that little gem???

On 7/17/2012 7:02 PM, Red Green wrote:
wrote in
:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:23:46 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2
keyboards and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was
low because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD
I remember when a 20mb drive was cheap at $500.
My then Brother-In Law bought a PC, and by the time he had upgraded
to DSDD floppies, then an add-on hard drive, and an EGA monochrome
video card and monitor, it had cost him more than his new Ford
Ranchwagon, loaded with 460, posi, and AC


My turn! I remember...

Those Radio shack things
PC Jr sidecars
55sx machine advertized in PC mag for $5400

but...

anybody know where I put down that soda I just poured? :-(


I was actually working for Tandy Repair, the repair division of Radio
Shack when the TRS-80 came out and quite a few came through the repair
depot. If you walked across a carpet and touched one of those evil early
computers, it could and often would GRONK! ^_^

TDD

The Daring Dufas wrote in
:

On 7/17/2012 7:02 PM, Red Green wrote:
wrote in
:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:23:46 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't
give 'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I
haven't paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the
hottest gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need
for nada. Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD
monitor, no CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may
join the 21st century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2
keyboards and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price
was low because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard
drive was cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD
I remember when a 20mb drive was cheap at $500.
My then Brother-In Law bought a PC, and by the time he had
upgraded
to DSDD floppies, then an add-on hard drive, and an EGA monochrome
video card and monitor, it had cost him more than his new Ford
Ranchwagon, loaded with 460, posi, and AC


My turn! I remember...

Those Radio shack things
PC Jr sidecars
55sx machine advertized in PC mag for $5400

but...

anybody know where I put down that soda I just poured? :-(


I was actually working for Tandy Repair, the repair division of Radio
Shack when the TRS-80 came out and quite a few came through the repair
depot. If you walked across a carpet and touched one of those evil
early computers, it could and often would GRONK! ^_^

TDD



I remember walking 12 miles to school in kindergarden in northeast
blizzards when it was 40 below,... no 50 below,... it was 60 below. Had
no shoes or gloves...AND WE LIKED IT. Oh yea, it was pitch black too.

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:29:02 +0000 (UTC), Red Green
wrote:



I remember walking 12 miles to school in kindergarden in northeast
blizzards when it was 40 below,... no 50 below,... it was 60 below. Had
no shoes or gloves...AND WE LIKED IT. Oh yea, it was pitch black too.

You had school? We had to find a smart person and follow them around
al day.

Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:29:02 +0000 (UTC), Red Green
wrote:



I remember walking 12 miles to school in kindergarden in northeast
blizzards when it was 40 below,... no 50 below,... it was 60 below. Had
no shoes or gloves...AND WE LIKED IT. Oh yea, it was pitch black too.

You had school? We had to find a smart person and follow them around
al day.


You knew smart people? We had to get one of our parents to whip us with
a belt until it smarted!

On 7/20/2012 10:32 PM, Bill wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:29:02 +0000 (UTC), Red Green
wrote:



I remember walking 12 miles to school in kindergarden in northeast
blizzards when it was 40 below,... no 50 below,... it was 60 below. Had
no shoes or gloves...AND WE LIKED IT. Oh yea, it was pitch black too.

You had school? We had to find a smart person and follow them around
al day.


You knew smart people? We had to get one of our parents to whip us with
a belt until it smarted!

We didn't need parents to terrorize us when we were children, we had
nuns. O_o

TDD

The Daring Dufas wrote in
:

On 7/20/2012 10:32 PM, Bill wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:29:02 +0000 (UTC), Red Green
wrote:



I remember walking 12 miles to school in kindergarden in northeast
blizzards when it was 40 below,... no 50 below,... it was 60 below.
Had no shoes or gloves...AND WE LIKED IT. Oh yea, it was pitch
black too.

You had school? We had to find a smart person and follow them
around al day.


You knew smart people? We had to get one of our parents to whip us
with a belt until it smarted!

We didn't need parents to terrorize us when we were children, we had
nuns. O_o

TDD


....and there was Mother Superior known as the Biker Nun. Had a tatoo of
John the Baptist on her bicep. Would flex it and the head would roll off
and on.

On Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:34:44 -0500, "Doug"
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jul 2012 04:09:42 -0700 (PDT), Bob_Villa
wrote:

On Sunday, July 15, 2012 11:12:27 PM UTC-5, Doug wrote:


Go to Dell's newsgroup and ping "Ben Myers". He drops by every now
and then and seems to be very knowledgeable about hardware regardless
of brand. If you get into software questions, it isn't his strong
point but he knows a decent amount tho others may be better equipped
to answer like a guy called RnR, etc... .

I totally respect Ben's opinion...RnR...nothing special.


Also respect BillW50 for both hardware and software. There are a few
others just don't recall their names. I think if you get Ben's, RnR's
and BillW50's opinion, you pretty much got yourself covered g.

I wonder if that's the same BillW50 who posts in the XP and 7 groups.
He's easily one of the biggest blowhards there is, always talking
about his dozens of laptops and never making any sense. Everyone tries
to correct him, but he's a stubborn one! If that's the same guy,
listen to him, then do the opposite.

/back to lurk mode