Uncreative Labs

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Anyone know what's happened to OCHL??? Seems to have been down for several days now...

More pertinent question:

I'm building a machine (based on an old Gateway 2000 G6-200---200Mhz Pentium Pro) strictly for data transfer, using the following media(s):

Zip 100/250,
PCMCIA,
3.5/5.25 floppy,
QIC80 Tape,
Superdisk 120MB,
Bernoulli Drive,
anything that'll plug into USB 2.0 ports (which I've added a card for)

I'd like to boot between 2 OS's (DOS/Win2K) on the same drive so I can cover just about anything out there, and then be able to back it all up on CD-R/DVD-R (also connected to USB2.0). I know it's not an easy challenge (and backing up on such a slow machine would be very slow), but it'll be part of the services I plan to offer when I return to "full-time" PC repair/consulting. Anyone got any suggestions/hints/gripes/comments????

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

How many devices ya plan to plug in the USB ports, A usb device uses some of the CPU's power. Don't plug all that many devices in a 200mhz machine. As for a dos/ win2k dual boot, id first install win2k ,then install dos on a different partion. then find a boot loader program. The reason id have you install win2k first is so dos doesn't change you win files and viceversa.( Bad experience with a dos/ win95 dual boot. Dos was allready install and i install windows 95 on the second HDD, windows 95 rewite my dos's command.com, msdos.sys. and io.sys making it unable to boot to dos) Mad

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

There will actually be no more than 2 devices at a time plugged in (and at least one of them externally powered---the CD/DVD burner), so that shouldn't be an issue. I had better luck on dual booting with Win95(A) and DOS 6.22. On a AST 486 (upgraded to a POD83) I actually installed DOS first, then Win95; then using F5 to boot to DOS (i.e.--"Previous Operating System") as needed. It has two HDD's, one of which Win95 can see and DOS can't (a funky install, using the 2nd HDD as a master on the secondary IDE port). It works really well as a DOS gaming system, and Win95 is called up when needed (even though dosbox 0.7.0 works pretty well on my Semprom 1800, there's still some games that just won't cut it in dosbox...).

I'm thinking more in the line of running into trouble with interrupts, and may have go with SCSI HDD's (the Bernoulli drive is SCSI, so that may force the issue) and use the IDE's for other devices. I had a 386DX33 which booted to a 420MB IDE HDD, and had a 2x SCSI CD-Rom on it, and used that system for years as a secondary machine. This time, I need to be able to exchange data from FAT16 to FAT32 (yes, I know FAT32 can read FAT16); but will probably have to rely on some utilities to enable DOS to see the FAT32 (possibly NTFS) partition. Need to get this going quickly, since I'm still working full-time for the moment until my company pulls up stakes and heads to Mexico. (Trust me, you just can't build electronics in the U.S.A. anymore; and the crap that comes from China/Mexico seems to be overlooked on quality based on low-price...)

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

your right the stuff from China, Mexico, and Korea is all crap. The parts are real low quality and these things are pretty much thrown together, sad to see what this world is coming to. The only computers i see assembled in america are white box clone you buy at a store that have name tags like R-computer, Fry's, U-tron and Computer Brewers. I know a few utilities that work in dos that reads, write NTFS but i haven't seen any for FAT32 if you see any , let me know.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

OBSOLETE HELPLINE IS DOWN FOR OVER A WEEK
i was told that others have emailed tom.
he travels , they say, and may be away.

the forum is on a commercial site at his job.
he has suffested that he is not active and may be shut down.
i hope not

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:20 pm

OCHL has been down since at least May 7, as I wanted to post that day and could not (I had just gotten my 12mhz. V20 on the Internet with a cable modem and Intel network card for the first time).

The last post on OCHL was May 6 so that is probably the day it went down.

I'd be sorry to see OCHL disappear.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

looks like the other old computer forum is really gone the server is down
too bad. sometimes rambunctious but always interesting.

OCH rip