181 lines
8.6 KiB
HTML
181 lines
8.6 KiB
HTML
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<title>The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers LG #75</title>
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<H4 ALIGN="center">
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<H1><font color="maroon">The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">Mike "Iron" Orr</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<H2>Drill</H2>
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By <A HREF="mailto:apepin@pepinsrv.pepinhome.org">Tony Pepin</A>
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<P> This happened a long time ago, when a 20-megabyte hard disk was a
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giant, both in capacity and size.
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My friend had a Corvus 20 meg drive that was shared among five PCs
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which were used to run the accounting department of a small manufacturing
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business. The owner of the company was extremely pleased with my
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friend and the efficiency of the computerized accounting group.
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<P> One day, in the middle of month-end processing, the electric motor on
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the Corvus burned out.
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Payroll and Accounts Receivable needed to be done by the end of
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the day, and there were no backups of the data files. Since the Corvus
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had never failed, my friend had not bothered making backups.
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<P> Not having anything to lose, he opened up the case and removed the
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burned out motor. He then took an old electric hand drill with a
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variable speed motor and chucked it directly to the hard disk.
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<P> I wrote a quick and dirty program that read one sector of data and
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displayed a message when the read was successful. He ran this
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program while squeezing the trigger on the drill until it reported
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successful reads.
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<P> Once he had the speed right, he used black tape and taped the trigger
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so that it would not move.
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<P> The accounting group finished their month-end processing using the
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drill as the hard disk motor. He continued to use the drive with
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the drill for several weeks, after carefully making backups of the
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data however.
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<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%%"> <!--*********************** -->
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<H2>Zap</H2>
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By <A HREF="mailto:ogre@sirinet.net">John J Tobin</A>
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<P> Here is a foolish story of what I did to a computer I was building.
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<P> Back before I had a lot of money to buy new hardware and such I had to
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make due with the few parts that I had lying around. One was an old XT
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case with a working power supply, I had enough money to get a motherboard
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and a DX4-100 chip, however cases and power supplies were expensive back
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then so I decided to use the XT case that I had. Since the XT
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motherboards were non-standard as far as mounting holes go and the new
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board wouldn't line up I had the great brainstorm to mount the board on
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the anti-static bag, I though "Sure it's anti-static it'll be safe." I
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ran it and it would boot up but the keyboard controller was failing. I
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took it back to the place that I bought and and I was explained to how
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the anti-static bag will actually conduct electricity and that I fried
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the board. Luckily he was willing to refund me half of my money, I then
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had to shell out for another board and a case this time. The lesson I
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learned was that if I am going to mount a board on anything but the pegs
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of the case I better use wood, something that is definitely and
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insulator.
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<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%%"> <!--*********************** -->
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<H2></H2>
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By <A HREF="mailto:kirk@innocent.com">Kirk</A>
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<P> Here follows the story of
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the geekiest use I've ever put my Palm III to.
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<P> I bought a Used Sparc Classic and it came with a hard drive, RAM,
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keyboard and mouse. It did <EM>not</EM> come with a monitor. Since I planned
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for it to be a server, the lack of a monitor wasn't a big deal except
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that I couldn't install Linux on it (or anything else for that matter)
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without being able to see what I was doing.
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<P> Palm III to the rescue! I had a serial cable that plugged into the
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bottom of the Palmpilot connected to a gender bender, connected to a
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DB25 <-> DB9 cable to plug into the serial port of the Sparc. The
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serial port on the Sparc actually has the wiring for both /dev/ttyS0
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<EM>and</EM> /dev/ttyS1, but the first serial port has the same wiring as a PC,
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so it worked fine. Last but not least, I unplugged the keyboard.
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<P> Now that the hardware side was figured out, I downloaded a freeware
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vt100 program for my Palmpilot and configured it for the proper baud
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rate, stop bits and such. When I turned on the Sparc, it tried to find
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a keyboard and failed. Then it found a vt100 terminal on the serial
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port and used the Pilot as a console. I installed RedHat 6.2 to my
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Sparc using that tiny little screen.
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<P> After the install was done, I rebooted and telnetted in from my PC.
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Everything worked perfectly.
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<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
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[If you have a story about something foolish or ingenious you
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did to your computer, send it to
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<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>-Iron.]
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</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
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<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
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<P>
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<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Mike Orr</H4>
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<EM> Mike ("Iron") is the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>. You can read what he
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has to say in the Back Page column in this issue. He has been a Linux
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enthusiast since 1991 and a Debian user since 1995. He is SSC's web technical
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coordinator, which means he gets to write a lot of Python scripts.
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Non-computer interests include Ska/Oi! music and the international language
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Esperanto. The nickname Iron was given to him in college--short for Iron Orr,
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hahaha. </EM>
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<!-- *** END bio *** -->
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<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
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<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
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<H5 ALIGN=center>
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Copyright © 2002, Mike "Iron" Orr.<BR>
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Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
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Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
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