Hi their, guys and gals...

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter. I am now
on the four week free trial with Supernews. So far so good. Hoping it
will be worth the 6 bucks a month. Anybody else watching ISPs do this?
mahalo,
jo4hn

jo4hn wrote:
Hi their, guys and gals...

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter. I am now
on the four week free trial with Supernews. So far so good. Hoping it
will be worth the 6 bucks a month. Anybody else watching ISPs do this?

Yes, that's why I run my own news server (and mail, etc).

-jav

"jo4hn" wrote in message
Hi their, guys and gals...

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter. I am now
on the four week free trial with Supernews. So far so good. Hoping it
will be worth the 6 bucks a month. Anybody else watching ISPs do this?
mahalo,
jo4hn

Yep ... the technical expertise needed to run an nntp server, although
slight, seems beyond most ISP's these days. When we cut back on our
bandwidth a year or so back, and after some fits and starts with other third
party nntp servers, I settled on GigaNews and have been very satisfied.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 11/06/05

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 12:45:30 -0800, jo4hn wrote:
Hi their, guys and gals...

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter. I am now
on the four week free trial with Supernews. So far so good. Hoping it
will be worth the 6 bucks a month. Anybody else watching ISPs do this?

I pay news.individual.net 10 euro a year (13 bucks or so) for a stable,
fast, reliable newsfeed. No binaries, but they filter out the spam and
it always works.

Dave Hinz

"Swingman" writes:

Yep ... the technical expertise needed to run an nntp server, although
slight, seems beyond most ISP's these days. When we cut back on our
bandwidth a year or so back, and after some fits and starts with other third
party nntp servers, I settled on GigaNews and have been very satisfied.

The technical expertise required to run a news server with full binaries
is huge. The cost is also huge, especially considering the relatively low
usage at most ISPs.

The incoming bandwidth for a news server with binaries can exceed 100
megabit/second. There is also the issue of the terabyte or more of fast
disk space required.

Brian Elfert

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:34:48 -0000, Brian Elfert wrote:
"Swingman" writes:

Yep ... the technical expertise needed to run an nntp server, although
slight, seems beyond most ISP's these days. When we cut back on our
bandwidth a year or so back, and after some fits and starts with other third
party nntp servers, I settled on GigaNews and have been very satisfied.

The technical expertise required to run a news server with full binaries
is huge.

I wouldn't call it "huge". It's just another thing that a decent Unix
sysadmin should know.


The cost is also huge, especially considering the relatively low
usage at most ISPs.

Not if they do it right. If their usage is low enough, they can resell
supernews or whomever.

The incoming bandwidth for a news server with binaries can exceed 100
megabit/second. There is also the issue of the terabyte or more of fast
disk space required.

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

Im in the uk here try using news.btinternet.com free me thinks and does
not matter who your isp is i also use opera for the news reader excellent
mac or pc

connor

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 20:45:30 -0000, jo4hn wrote:

Hi their, guys and gals...

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter. I am now
on the four week free trial with Supernews. So far so good. Hoping it
will be worth the 6 bucks a month. Anybody else watching ISPs do this?
mahalo,
jo4hn



--
http://www.connoraston.com

Dave Hinz wrote:

The technical expertise required to run a news server with full binaries
is huge.


I wouldn't call it "huge". It's just another thing that a decent Unix
sysadmin should know.
*----
Most Unix system administrators will never run a high volume news
server, so why would you expect them to have the expertise?

The cost is also huge, especially considering the relatively low
usage at most ISPs.


Not if they do it right. If their usage is low enough, they can resell
supernews or whomever.

*----
Please tell us how to "do it right" at negligible cost. It's a very
very substantial cost to my ISP. We stopped even trying to carry
a complete newsfeed when daily traffic exceeded 300 GB. How much do
you pay for transit for 300 GB per day? How much does your RAID cost
to store a month's worth of posts?

Reselling supernews isn't the same as maintaining a news server and
newsfeed. Why not just resell connectivity and web hosting instead
of being an ISP if that's what you call "hosting a news server".

The incoming bandwidth for a news server with binaries can exceed 100
megabit/second. There is also the issue of the terabyte or more of fast
disk space required.


A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

Yes, it's a very very big disk. Try backing up a terabyte regularly.

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:15:53 -0600, Mike Berger wrote:

Dave Hinz wrote:

I wouldn't call it "huge". It's just another thing that a decent Unix
sysadmin should know.

Most Unix system administrators will never run a high volume news
server, so why would you expect them to have the expertise?

OK, let me modify my statement to say that the skills of any decent
sysadmin are compatible with running a large NNTP server, and there is
little to any unique skill needed. It's just another service running on
another port, with bandwidth and storage capacity issues like any other
IO intensive app.

Not if they do it right. If their usage is low enough, they can resell
supernews or whomever.

Please tell us how to "do it right" at negligible cost.

Get a reseller account with a bigger newsfeed. Point your clients
directly to 'em. And I might be inspired to spend more time on your
problem if your tone wasn't so adversarial.

It's a very
very substantial cost to my ISP. We stopped even trying to carry
a complete newsfeed when daily traffic exceeded 300 GB. How much do
you pay for transit for 300 GB per day? How much does your RAID cost
to store a month's worth of posts?

If you're storing a month worth of posts, and that's a problem, I'd say
you're not doing it right.

Reselling supernews isn't the same as maintaining a news server and
newsfeed.

Server, no. Feed, yes, at least as the customer sees it. You can even
tweak your dns so that news.yourisp.com is the right server.

Why not just resell connectivity and web hosting instead
of being an ISP if that's what you call "hosting a news server".

"providing NNTP service to your customers". If the appropriate method
is to host it, great. If the appropriate method is to offload it, then
that's fantastic too.

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

Yes, it's a very very big disk. Try backing up a terabyte regularly.

Just a terabyte? Yeah, um, that's not actually a problem. Depends on
the resources available to you, doesn't it.

In article , Mike Berger
wrote:

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

Yes, it's a very very big disk. Try backing up a terabyte regularly.

To floppies????

MMMMWWHHOAAAAAAHAHA.

"Brian Elfert" wrote in message
"Swingman" writes:

Yep ... the technical expertise needed to run an nntp server, although
slight, seems beyond most ISP's these days. When we cut back on our
bandwidth a year or so back, and after some fits and starts with other
third
party nntp servers, I settled on GigaNews and have been very satisfied.

The technical expertise required to run a news server with full binaries
is huge.

Apparently only if you couldn't spell "sysadmin" in say, 1998.

The technical expertise should not be "huge" to any decently trained
technical staff. That is not to deny that the equipment/bandwidth
requirements may indeed be scalable to encompass "huge", however that is
quantified.

The cost is also huge, especially considering the relatively low
usage at most ISPs.

The incoming bandwidth for a news server with binaries can exceed 100
megabit/second. There is also the issue of the terabyte or more of fast
disk space required.

What's "huge" to an SBC, or MCI, et al? These are the corporate deep
pockets, who bought out all the smaller ISP's, who actually ran nntp servers
(with full binaries) on smaller pipes, with fewer hardware resources, with
fewer problems by far, and who could do it without having to read "help
desk" style prompt sheets when called upon to answer a basic question ...
god forbid the latter in this day and age.

Nope ... I'll stick by my original contention: the technical expertise seems
beyond most ISP's these days.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 11/06/05

"Robatoy" wrote in message
...
In article , Mike Berger

wrote:

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

Yes, it's a very very big disk. Try backing up a terabyte regularly.

To floppies????

MMMMWWHHOAAAAAAHAHA.


Rob - you're a very sick person.



I like you!

V

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 12:45:30 -0800, jo4hn wrote:

Hi their, guys and gals...

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter. I am now
on the four week free trial with Supernews. So far so good. Hoping it
will be worth the 6 bucks a month. Anybody else watching ISPs do this?
mahalo,
jo4hn

Yep, Direcway just plain dropped newsgroups a couple of years ago because
"nobody used them" according to an on-line survey they did. [Funny, I never
received any information about any such survey :-( ]

Tried Teranews for a while -- it was a disaster, they were down more than
up, I couldn't see most of the binaries in abpw for some reason, some
articles never posted, and some responses were never seen: and that was
for the paid server.

Moved to Supernews a little over a year ago -- thus far, it has been
almost completely trouble-free. They are a little overzealous in some of
their policies, for example, if one posts a URL that contains certain words
indicating it might be a for sale site, Supernews will reject the posting
indicating that rec.ww is not a commercial newsgroup. At a high level,
that kind of policy is OK, but there are times when sharing information
about various things that are available makes such a URL information, not
commercial sales. Other than that, Supernews is really good, you'll like
it.



+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Robatoy wrote:

In article , Mike Berger
wrote:


A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.


Yes, it's a very very big disk. Try backing up a terabyte regularly.


To floppies????

MMMMWWHHOAAAAAAHAHA.
Omygawd. I think I missed you most of all.

Sorry for writing this in crayon........

j4 the looneyburger

Lew Hodgett wrote:

jo4hn wrote:

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing
out newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter.


snip

When it comes to puters, I'm on the stupid end of the scale; however,
I'm also in SoCal, use Earthlink, and have no problems getting NewsGroup
postings.

What am I missing?

Lew
Maybe I can 'splain a bit further. I signed up with Earthlink dial-up
in 1997 when there was no inexpensive high speed link. I never bothered
to change to something else until I moved to the mountains in 2003.
There was a local cable company (bought out by Charter) that offered
some high speed connectivity. So they became my physical carrier with
EL atop. EL later decided that I should be using their high speed
offerings rather than Charter so they blew off my news group support.
The catch22 was that they didn't offer any high speed connectivity out
here in the sticks. Thus I dropped EL and went to charter for a bit
until they decided they didn't want to support news groups either. In
each case, I'm sure it was an actuarial decision. It still sucks.
grumble,
jo4hn

Have you tried using google groups to join rec.woodworking?

Swingman said:

What's "huge" to an SBC, or MCI, et al? These are the corporate deep
pockets, who bought out all the smaller ISP's, who actually ran nntp servers
(with full binaries) on smaller pipes, with fewer hardware resources, with
fewer problems by far, and who could do it without having to read "help
desk" style prompt sheets when called upon to answer a basic question ...
god forbid the latter in this day and age.

Nope ... I'll stick by my original contention: the technical expertise seems
beyond most ISP's these days.

And I have to agree, Wholeheartedly - Having just spent 2 hours
on the phone with "technical support" at Charter for the third time
this month.

Mindspring, who was my first ISP, (unless you include some really old
BBS UUNET to PC bridge software), was fantastic. When they were
bought out by EarthStink, almost overnight, news services went
straight down the toilet - everything else followed suit. I started
getting tons of spam I never got before, and calling for technical
support became an exercise in head-banging.

The Big Guys are after one thing - your money.
And that's it - deep pockets who want to grow deeper..

So I switched to Charter. They were great at first, but like all
others, they deteriorated over time. When I called Tech Support 2
years ago, I got a guy that taught ME a few things. Now, well, let's
just say it's pathetic - a crew of moronic 21 year olds who parrot the
same "Have you unplugged your modem?".

As it was with this last problem with Usenet News.

I slowly bitched my way up the company ladder, and even then,
I mention port 119, or nntp and they glaze over and fall-back to same
old tired response - "Have you unplugged your modem?"
Cripes, give me a break!

After explaining what Usenet is, what ports are, why port 119 is
special, about configuring software time-outs - four separate and
distinct times - they have yet to resolve the problem. They also had
no knowledge of the fact that they sub nntp service to an outside
service. They are apparently totally clueless and undeserving of any
respect.

Exasperated, I took the path of least resistance, and went directly to
the company they sub their nntp services to: Highwinds Media.

This ONE simple email sent to Highwinds Media garnered almost instant
correction of the problem., and a nice letter thanking me for the best
laugh they've had all week:

-----------------
We are customers of Charter Communications High Speed Cable service.
Repeated 2 hour calls to Charter have resulted in non-performance in
the resolution of our problem. They don't have a clue what I'm
talking about, and I'm hoping you have a direct line to someone at
Charter who knows what they are doing. Mention port 119 and they
simply glaze over...

Anyway, when we connect to Usenet, we get the following error:

Error connecting to nntp.charter.net
Error reported by Server: 400-Too many connections.
(Charter allows 2 per host/0 per feed)
(Tornado v1.06.380)

Either the software on your end or their end is not configured
properly, and is not timing-out on dropped, disconnected, or abandoned
connections, and it takes hours for the disconnected ports to release,
thereby allowing another connection to be made.

There is only one computer that connects to Usenet, so it's not like
we have a band of Warez Hounds downloading stuff 24/7.

Also, even when it works properly on text message downloads, uploads
frequently fail. This has only recently begun to occur.

Please, can you get someone at Charter who has a clue to fix this?

Thanks, Greg
----------------------

FWIW,


Greg G.

rickluce said:

Have you tried using google groups to join rec.woodworking?

I'm not the OP, but the problem with Google is that it's just not the
same. I download messages and respond as I have time - off-line, as
it were.

They also don't support binaries of any kind.
So alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking is out of the question.

Doesn't satisfy my Usenet needs, anyway...

FWIW,

Greg G.

In article ,
jo4hn wrote:

Robatoy wrote:

In article , Mike Berger
wrote:


A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.


Yes, it's a very very big disk. Try backing up a terabyte regularly.


To floppies????

MMMMWWHHOAAAAAAHAHA.
Omygawd. I think I missed you most of all.

Sorry for writing this in crayon........

....a brown one, no less....

=o}

In article t,
Lew Hodgett wrote:

jo4hn wrote:

Back again. Seems like every time I turn around, my ISP is trashing out
newsgroups. This has now happened with Earthlink and Charter.

snip

When it comes to puters, I'm on the stupid end of the scale; however,
I'm also in SoCal, use Earthlink, and have no problems getting NewsGroup
postings.

What am I missing?

Lew

Are you getting boobies, Lew? I mean...not YOU.....I mean pictures!!

MY server gets me boobies.

In article ,
jo4hn wrote:

until they decided they didn't want to support news groups either. In
each case, I'm sure it was an actuarial decision. It still sucks.
grumble,
jo4hn

I get 28,900 + newsgroups. I'm told there are 80,000 more... if you
include the likes of:
alt.binaries.pictures.dicks.slammed-in-cupboard-doors.romanian.
(I don't read the language anyway, so tatoos are meaningless.)

In fact, I just read the wreck. Sometimes home repair...

Robatoy wrote:

Are you getting boobies, Lew? I mean...not YOU.....I mean pictures!!

I use dial up so limit my down loads of pics to relatively small files
which has proved adequate to date.

Lew

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:49:24 -0500, Robatoy
scribbled:

In article ,
jo4hn wrote:

until they decided they didn't want to support news groups either. In
each case, I'm sure it was an actuarial decision. It still sucks.
grumble,
jo4hn

I get 28,900 + newsgroups. I'm told there are 80,000 more... if you
include the likes of:
alt.binaries.pictures.dicks.slammed-in-cupboard-doors.romanian.
(I don't read the language anyway, so tatoos are meaningless.)

I see you're on simpatico (can't get myself to misspell an Italian
word) too. How's you ABPW coverage? Mine is spotty with a lot of
pictures missing.

Luigi
Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/humour.html
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/antifaq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ct_Woodworking

In article , Swingman
wrote:

Nope ... I'll stick by my original contention: the technical expertise seems
beyond most ISP's these days.

I got the telephonic equivalent of a blank stare when I asked my local
ISP about their limit of 1 nntp connection. Really, 1 connection....
even with DSL, that makes usenet unusable until *every*thing has
loaded.

I switched to Teranews' free service, which worked great until they
changed whatever they changed a couple of months ago. Something about
their article numbering... I don't know. It doesn't work with Thoth,
nor with any of the NewsWatcher derivatives so far as I can tell. Ten
million new articles, mark 'em read, and get nine million more, but
only two articles current and readable.

Scratch Teranews.

So now, my telco bought my ISP, and their nntp seems decent. I haven't
bothered checking who provides it, but I doubt they do it themselves
(since they totally hosed the changeover, to the point that I had no
DSL for 10 days, and only had dialup for a day and a half until
everything got fixed).

A two-connection limit, but I can live with that.

Kevin

Brian Elfert wrote:
"Swingman" writes:

Yep ... the technical expertise needed to run an nntp server, although
slight, seems beyond most ISP's these days. When we cut back on our
bandwidth a year or so back, and after some fits and starts with other third
party nntp servers, I settled on GigaNews and have been very satisfied.

The technical expertise required to run a news server with full binaries
is huge. The cost is also huge, especially considering the relatively low
usage at most ISPs.

The incoming bandwidth for a news server with binaries can exceed 100
megabit/second. There is also the issue of the terabyte or more of fast
disk space required.


Many ISP's now consider Usenet to be a secondary service. Typically,
only a very small percentage of users even know what news is, much less
how to access it directly.

There's another whole bunch that access news via websites that claim to
host "forums", only to display newsgroups via a web page.

In article ,
Luigi Zanasi wrote:

How's you ABPW coverage? Mine is spotty with a lot of
pictures missing.

Yup... I think that's universal for sympatico customers.
I often check an archival website for any pics I may have missed.
http://www.delorie.com/wood/abpw/
I'm not sure how that is updated, but it certainly has more coverage
that Sympatico.

A HandyMan with patches, eh? What ARE you doing to our reputation as a
nation? *G*

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:35:40 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm,
Robatoy quickly quoth:

In article t,
Lew Hodgett wrote:
What am I missing?

Lew

Are you getting boobies, Lew? I mean...not YOU.....I mean pictures!!

MY server gets me boobies.

I see you found alt.binaries.pictures.shepherd.fantasy alright, Rob.
Please DAMHIKT.


----------------------------------------------------
Thesaurus: Ancient reptile with excellent vocabulary
http://diversify.com Dynamic Website Applications
================================================== ==

On 5 Dec 2005 21:42:29 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:34:48 -0000, Brian Elfert wrote:
"Swingman" writes:

Yep ... the technical expertise needed to run an nntp server, although
slight, seems beyond most ISP's these days. When we cut back on our
bandwidth a year or so back, and after some fits and starts with other third
party nntp servers, I settled on GigaNews and have been very satisfied.

The technical expertise required to run a news server with full binaries
is huge.

I wouldn't call it "huge". It's just another thing that a decent Unix
sysadmin should know.


The cost is also huge, especially considering the relatively low
usage at most ISPs.

Not if they do it right. If their usage is low enough, they can resell
supernews or whomever.

The incoming bandwidth for a news server with binaries can exceed 100
megabit/second. There is also the issue of the terabyte or more of fast
disk space required.

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

OUCH.. my old 10 meg hard drive is turning in it's grave, Dave..


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 08:35:16 -0800, mac davis wrote:
On 5 Dec 2005 21:42:29 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

OUCH.. my old 10 meg hard drive is turning in it's grave, Dave..

Oh, I know. My first hard drive had 5 meg fixed, and 5 meg per
removable diskpack. Size of a small washing machine.

"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 08:35:16 -0800, mac davis wrote:
On 5 Dec 2005 21:42:29 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

OUCH.. my old 10 meg hard drive is turning in it's grave, Dave..

Oh, I know. My first hard drive had 5 meg fixed, and 5 meg per
removable diskpack. Size of a small washing machine.

I was proud of my first "hard" drive ... a spiffy GE Cassette Recorder. Put
that "huge" 640kb floppy to shame.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 11/06/05

On Tue, 6 Dec 2005 10:57:59 -0600, Swingman wrote:
"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 08:35:16 -0800, mac davis wrote:
On 5 Dec 2005 21:42:29 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

OUCH.. my old 10 meg hard drive is turning in it's grave, Dave..

Oh, I know. My first hard drive had 5 meg fixed, and 5 meg per
removable diskpack. Size of a small washing machine.

I was proud of my first "hard" drive ... a spiffy GE Cassette Recorder. Put
that "huge" 640kb floppy to shame.

I've still got some audio casettes with data on them. I wonder if
they're readable, 25 years later. I have a theory...

"Swingman" wrote in message
...
"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 08:35:16 -0800, mac davis wrote:
On 5 Dec 2005 21:42:29 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

A TB isn't much disk these days. I can't believe I'm writing that, but
it's true.

OUCH.. my old 10 meg hard drive is turning in it's grave, Dave..

Oh, I know. My first hard drive had 5 meg fixed, and 5 meg per
removable diskpack. Size of a small washing machine.

I was proud of my first "hard" drive ... a spiffy GE Cassette Recorder.
Put
that "huge" 640kb floppy to shame.


Beat me to it.

I remember having to buy a second floppy drive and getting it installed in
an early IBM personal computer. The second floppy was an upgrade from the
cassette recorder. This was done at the same time I "upgraded" my memory 128
K to a robust 256 K RAM.

I was the envy of many because I could have separate application and data
floppies.

And I paid some outrageous amount of money for this electronic horsepower
too.

I am certain that this qualifies me for some kinda fossil designation.

Greg G. wrote:
rickluce said:


Have you tried using google groups to join rec.woodworking?


I'm not the OP, but the problem with Google is that it's just not the
same. I download messages and respond as I have time - off-line, as
it were.

They also don't support binaries of any kind.
So alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking is out of the question.

Doesn't satisfy my Usenet needs, anyway...

FWIW,

Greg G.
Yeah, I tried Google groups too. Same response as Greg.
j4

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:57:07 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

Moved to Supernews a little over a year ago -- thus far, it has been
almost completely trouble-free. They are a little overzealous in some of
their policies, for example, if one posts a URL that contains certain
words indicating it might be a for sale site, Supernews will reject the
posting indicating that rec.ww is not a commercial newsgroup. At a high
level, that kind of policy is OK, but there are times when sharing
information about various things that are available makes such a URL
information, not commercial sales. Other than that, Supernews is really
good, you'll like it.

I'm with Intergate and they sublet the news to Supernews. Works pretty
well. There are a few lowcost news servers around, but most of the free
ones have gone away.

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:57:59 -0600, Swingman wrote:

Oh, I know. My first hard drive had 5 meg fixed, and 5 meg per
removable diskpack. Size of a small washing machine.

I was proud of my first "hard" drive ... a spiffy GE Cassette Recorder.
Put that "huge" 640kb floppy to shame.

The first "hard drive" I remember was on a GE425. It was a single 2'
(about) diameter platter mounted vertically with a single slow-moving
head. I wrote a DOS-style O/S for it around '65 or '66.

But even now, I don't need a terabyte. I've got 2 8GB drives. One has
both W95 and Linux on it, and the other is a backup for it. Of course, I
don't fill my disk with music and movies :-).

Larry Blanchard (in ) said:

| On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:09:40 +0000, Dave Hinz wrote:
|
|| I've still got some audio casettes with data on them. I wonder if
|| they're readable, 25 years later. I have a theory...
|
| I doubt it. I finally gave up and threw away my 8" floppies. A
| few years before that I trash canned my 800bpi mag tapes :-).

Makes me really glad I saved all the really important stuff on paper
tape...

;-D

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:09:40 +0000, Dave Hinz wrote:

I've still got some audio casettes with data on them. I wonder if they're
readable, 25 years later. I have a theory...

I doubt it. I finally gave up and threw away my 8" floppies. A few years
before that I trash canned my 800bpi mag tapes :-).

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:10:00 -0800, Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:09:40 +0000, Dave Hinz wrote:

I've still got some audio casettes with data on them. I wonder if they're
readable, 25 years later. I have a theory...

I doubt it. I finally gave up and threw away my 8" floppies.

Yeah, that's my theory too. But, it's very low density, maybe 150 baud
or so. Might be able to bring it back with an EQ. It'd be interesting
to see what I was writing 25 years ago. Probably cringe-worthy.

A few years
before that I trash canned my 800bpi mag tapes :-).

We tossed a bunch of tapes when I was at GE, in 1998. Two years later,
I got to do the "Guys, I hate to say this, but I really did tell you so"
thing when we needed those tapes for some Y2K crap. Ended up retiring
some ancient systems, though.

Our "Software Shaman" (his real title) got a refresher in what that
little yellow ring on the back of the 9-track tapes is for, and why you
should be really sure before mounting a unique tape that it's read-only
when you do it. We had to get a customer to send us back a copy of that
one. Not so good. I could probably still make him cringe, today, by
showing him the write-enable ring.

On Tue, 6 Dec 2005 12:09:01 -0600, Morris Dovey wrote:
Larry Blanchard (in ) said:

| On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:09:40 +0000, Dave Hinz wrote:
|
|| I've still got some audio casettes with data on them. I wonder if
|| they're readable, 25 years later. I have a theory...
|
| I doubt it. I finally gave up and threw away my 8" floppies. A
| few years before that I trash canned my 800bpi mag tapes :-).

Makes me really glad I saved all the really important stuff on paper
tape...

Got holes?

At least it's human readable that way, in a pinch.

Dave Hinz (in ) said:

| On Tue, 6 Dec 2005 12:09:01 -0600, Morris Dovey
| wrote:
|| Larry Blanchard (in )
|| said:
||
||| On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:09:40 +0000, Dave Hinz wrote:
|||
|||| I've still got some audio casettes with data on them. I wonder
|||| if they're readable, 25 years later. I have a theory...
|||
||| I doubt it. I finally gave up and threw away my 8" floppies. A
||| few years before that I trash canned my 800bpi mag tapes :-).
||
|| Makes me really glad I saved all the really important stuff on
|| paper tape...
|
| Got holes?
|
| At least it's human readable that way, in a pinch.

Ugh! I actually do have a jar of holes somewhere :-)

And I still have my splicer and a couple of boxes of Mylar splices
(just in case).

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html