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#61
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Dell computer with no input
On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 17:07:17 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote: On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 15:45:26 -0500, Nil wrote: On 29 Nov 2017, Char Jackson wrote in alt.windows7.general: I haven't needed an optical drive in at least 4-5 years, whether it's CD, DVD, or BR. I use CDs and DVDs every single day. I'm sure you're not the only one, but I think you're in a declining category of users. I don't use them as often as Nil, but as I said, I use them too. You're right, though; we're in a declining category. |
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#62
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Dell computer with no input
Mark Lloyd wrote:
My newest desktop computer has no floppy connector, but it does have RS232 (serial) and parallel port connectors on the motherboard. And you realize when they do that, that it's all an affectation. The chip that does all the low speed I/O is called the "SuperI/O". It has serial, parallel, floppy interface, IRDA, PS/2 and so on. Intel proclaimed "we will do away with that thing". But Intel isn't the whole story in life. And motherboard makers still include it, or the various variants of it. It's 128 pins, and a rectangular chip, if fully fleshed out. In some cases, the motherboard maker wanted it for the hardware monitor, which can be read out in Speedfan. But without too much trouble, they can also leave headers on the motherboard for the other interfaces. I didn't think I had RS232 on the new machine, but one day I was idly looking at USB headers, and spotted a header in one corner of the board (2x5) with a different "missing pin pattern". And that turned out to be an RS232 port. Which I tested, made up an adapter cable, and it all worked. SuperI/O chips (ones with PS/2 interfaces for that PS/2 connector) plus PCI bridge chips (so you can have a PCI slot for that old sound card), are still features on retail motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS and so on. There are just two classes of customers. One set of customers absolutely hates legacy interfaces, and they won't buy a legacy motherboard with the interfaces on it. All they want is PCI Express and USB3. The other set of customers are quite comfortable having legacy interfaces, just so they can continue to use junk from their junk room :-) Paul |
#63
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Dell computer with no input
On 11/29/2017 7:42 PM, Paul wrote:
Mark Lloyd wrote: My newest desktop computer has no floppy connector, but it does have RS232 (serial) and parallel port connectors on the motherboard. And you realize when they do that, that it's all an affectation. The chip that does all the low speed I/O is called the "SuperI/O". It has serial, parallel, floppy interface, IRDA, PS/2 and so on. Intel proclaimed "we will do away with that thing". But Intel isn't the whole story in life. And motherboard makers still include it, or the various variants of it. It's 128 pins, and a rectangular chip, if fully fleshed out. In some cases, the motherboard maker wanted it for the hardware monitor, which can be read out in Speedfan. But without too much trouble, they can also leave headers on the motherboard for the other interfaces. I didn't think I had RS232 on the new machine, but one day I was idly looking at USB headers, and spotted a header in one corner of the board (2x5) with a different "missing pin pattern". And that turned out to be an RS232 port. Which I tested, made up an adapter cable, and it all worked. SuperI/O chips (ones with PS/2 interfaces for that PS/2 connector) plus PCI bridge chips (so you can have a PCI slot for that old sound card), are still features on retail motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS and so on. There are just two classes of customers. One set of customers absolutely hates legacy interfaces, and they won't buy a legacy motherboard with the interfaces on it. All they want is PCI Express and USB3. The other set of customers are quite comfortable having legacy interfaces, just so they can continue to use junk from their junk room :-) Paul I have a few ISA GPIB interface cards. So, I saved an old computer that had sockets for it. When I tried to put a modern OS on it, no dice. Had to build my own RS-232 to GPIB adapter. Then they quit including RS-232 interfaces. Still works with USB to RS-232 to GPIB, but I haven't tried it on win10. You just can't win. |
#64
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Dell computer with no input
"Char Jackson" wrote in message
... I use CDs and DVDs every single day. I'm sure you're not the only one, but I think you're in a declining category of users. Very long ago, I switched to other forms of storage for all of the things that previously called for optical discs. I used to back up to CD-RW, when all my emails, documents etc would fit onto one 650 MB disc (those were the days!). But it was painfully slow. Once portable self-powered hard discs became available, I changed over to backing up to them. I still use CD/DVD for: a) installing software that is supplied on CD rather than online b) playing video DVDs c) burning video DVDs of home movies etc for other people On any new PC I'd still want a CD/DVD reader/writer, but I probably wouldn't use it anywhere near as often as I used to. An external USB drive might suffice for those times that I use it. |
#65
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Dell computer with no input
"NY" wrote
| I used to back up to CD-RW, when all my emails, documents etc would fit onto | one 650 MB disc (those were the days!). But it was painfully slow. Once | portable self-powered hard discs became available, I changed over to backing | up to them. | I use DVDs. It takes maybe 5 minutes, which I don't need to supervise. I keep everything I need backed up regularly on a single data partition and copy that partition to DVD. I don't see why anyone would need more than 4 GB for *routine* backup. I do have big stuff backed up to old hard disks and USB sticks, but for routine it's easier and more stable to use DVDs. With an external hard disk you then depend on a single backup that could fail. A power surge could kill it while it's connected. A mechanical failure could happen. An external disk is for expansion or mobility, not for backup. And it's really not very good even for expansion. Millions of people have been suckered into buying overpriced external disks that they don't need. I have a friend who was talked into it by his "IT person". He had about 400 GB free on a 500 GB disk. Now he has 400 GB plus a 1 TB external disk. A complete waste of money. The disk is always plugged in. Thus it's just a poorly connected internal drive in practice. | I still use CD/DVD for: | | a) installing software that is supplied on CD rather than online | b) playing video DVDs | c) burning video DVDs of home movies etc for other people | I also use them for boot disks, to boot imaging software, repair disks, memtest, hirens boot CD, etc. (I still use CDs for most of those.) A USB stick is not as widely supported and costs $5-20 per boot stick. DVDs cost about 30 cents. Do you buy a new USB stick every time you want a boot disk? Or do you just not use boot disks? |
#66
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Dell computer with no input
On 11/29/2017 05:17 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
[snip] But I should also confess that since floppy drives are so cheap ($15 or so), I almost got one on my new computer too. I use floppies very seldom and it's not that hard to plug in the USB 3.5" drive. As to 5.25", one computer is enough for that. -- 25 days until the winter celebration (Monday December 25, 2017 12:00:00 AM for 1 day). Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ "If God exists, what objection can he have to saying so?" [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_] |
#67
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Dell computer with no input
On 11/30/2017 08:53 AM, Mayayana wrote:
[snip] With an external hard disk you then depend on a single backup that could fail. A power surge could kill it while it's connected. A mechanical failure could happen. An external disk is for expansion or mobility, not for backup. For backup, have TWO external drives and alternate the use of them. That way, you almost always have two different backups (in case something happens to one). Don't connect both drives to the computer at the same time. [snip] -- 25 days until the winter celebration (Monday December 25, 2017 12:00:00 AM for 1 day). Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ "If God exists, what objection can he have to saying so?" [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_] |
#68
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Dell computer with no input
"Mayayana" wrote in message
news "NY" wrote | I used to back up to CD-RW, when all my emails, documents etc would fit onto | one 650 MB disc (those were the days!). But it was painfully slow. Once | portable self-powered hard discs became available, I changed over to backing | up to them. | I use DVDs. It takes maybe 5 minutes, which I don't need to supervise. I keep everything I need backed up regularly on a single data partition and copy that partition to DVD. I don't see why anyone would need more than 4 GB for *routine* backup. I do have big stuff backed up to old hard disks and USB sticks, but for routine it's easier and more stable to use DVDs. I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have hard discs. CDs and DVDs are fine for full backups, but if you do incremental backups of just the files that you have changed since last backup, you gradually eat up disc space which is only recoverable if you wipe the disc clean and start again. I back up all my photos. I currently have 770 GB of them. At present they are backed up to a spare 1 TB drive that became free when I bought a 4 TB drive internal drive (for photos and TV recordings) and used it to replace the 1 TB drive. Likewise I have about 1.7 TB of TV recordings which are backed up to a 2 TB USB drive. I find that optical discs are fine for easy transport to give to someone else and can be played in a music CD player or a TV DVD player (though many of those will now accept hard discs as an alternative, subject to the big restriction that the drive must be formatted as FAT rather than NTFS). But they are a pain if you want to back up more than will fit on a disc, or for gradual incremental backups. In the past I used to use 100 MB and 250 MB Zip discs which had the advantage over optical that you could delete files and regain the space, but the disadvantage that they were lower capacity. I kept the Zip drive until I was sure that I didn't have anything on Zip disc that I didn't also have elsewhere. Likewise for floppies: I made sure that all my floppies were transferred to other storage before I got rid of the last PC with a floppy drive. |
#69
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Dell computer with no input
"NY" wrote
| I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have hard discs. | I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've *never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last week I was backing up email to a database, going back 10 years. All the disks were fine. |
#70
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Dell computer with no input
On 30 Nov 2017, "Mayayana" wrote in
alt.windows7.general: "NY" wrote | I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have | hard discs. I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've *never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last week I was backing up email to a database, going back 10 years. All the disks were fine. Me, too. I have hundreds of CDRs and DVDRs and I could probably count on one hand the number of them that have gone bad... and usually that's because of physical damaged caused by me. I'm sure I've had proportionally more hard disks go bad. |
#71
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Dell computer with no input
In article , rednoise9
@REMOVETHIScomcast.net says... On 30 Nov 2017, "Mayayana" wrote in alt.windows7.general: "NY" wrote | I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have | hard discs. I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've *never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last week I was backing up email to a database, going back 10 years. All the disks were fine. Me, too. I have hundreds of CDRs and DVDRs and I could probably count on one hand the number of them that have gone bad... and usually that's because of physical damaged caused by me. I'm sure I've had proportionally more hard disks go bad. I've got 1000's of cds and dvds going back more than a decade now. Everyone I've had need to "use" I've been able to read with only the occassional disk requiring being put in a second or third reader before it was properly seen. I ALWAYS verify burns. I trust them more than backup drives and/or flash media. Mind you they're also properly stored. |
#72
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Dell computer with no input
On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 23:42:05 -0400, pjp
wrote: In article , rednoise9 says... On 30 Nov 2017, "Mayayana" wrote in alt.windows7.general: "NY" wrote | I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have | hard discs. I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've *never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last week I was backing up email to a database, going back 10 years. All the disks were fine. Me, too. I have hundreds of CDRs and DVDRs and I could probably count on one hand the number of them that have gone bad... and usually that's because of physical damaged caused by me. I'm sure I've had proportionally more hard disks go bad. I've got 1000's of cds and dvds going back more than a decade now. Everyone I've had need to "use" I've been able to read with only the occassional disk requiring being put in a second or third reader before it was properly seen. I ALWAYS verify burns. I trust them more than backup drives and/or flash media. Mind you they're also properly stored. I'm surprised to see so many people coming to the rescue of optical media. I used optical media from somewhere around 1998 to 2004, give or take a year, and back then I didn't know of anyone who didn't have a stack of coasters that they didn't know what to do with. Some people made actual drink coasters, others used the back-side of the disc as a clock face, things like that. I have memories of buying 50-pack spindles and being happy to get more than 30 good burns. So my impression of optical media is very poor, but maybe it's just a case of me getting out before the industry had matured. Even if true, there's no way I'm going back. A flash drive the size of my thumb nail can contain the equivalent of 16 4GB DVDs or 100 650MB CDRs, and I can carry the flash drive anywhere and use them anywhere. I can't say the same about optical media, even if it has somehow emerged as a stable medium in recent years. As for the media types I trust most, it's hard drives, hands down. Flash drives are a close second and optical media don't even make the list. File this, I guess, under the heading of We're All Different. -- Char Jackson |
#73
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Dell computer with no input
I agree char but what happens if the memory stick you have all that data and
or programs on dies with out warning. And yes certain brands have a habit of doing just that. What is youre brand of choice for memory sticks? I use PNY or SanDisk no problems with either but each is included in my daily back up routine. -- AL'S COMPUTERS "Char Jackson" wrote in message ... On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 23:42:05 -0400, pjp wrote: In article , rednoise9 says... On 30 Nov 2017, "Mayayana" wrote in alt.windows7.general: "NY" wrote | I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have | hard discs. I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've *never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last week I was backing up email to a database, going back 10 years. All the disks were fine. Me, too. I have hundreds of CDRs and DVDRs and I could probably count on one hand the number of them that have gone bad... and usually that's because of physical damaged caused by me. I'm sure I've had proportionally more hard disks go bad. I've got 1000's of cds and dvds going back more than a decade now. Everyone I've had need to "use" I've been able to read with only the occassional disk requiring being put in a second or third reader before it was properly seen. I ALWAYS verify burns. I trust them more than backup drives and/or flash media. Mind you they're also properly stored. I'm surprised to see so many people coming to the rescue of optical media. I used optical media from somewhere around 1998 to 2004, give or take a year, and back then I didn't know of anyone who didn't have a stack of coasters that they didn't know what to do with. Some people made actual drink coasters, others used the back-side of the disc as a clock face, things like that. I have memories of buying 50-pack spindles and being happy to get more than 30 good burns. So my impression of optical media is very poor, but maybe it's just a case of me getting out before the industry had matured. Even if true, there's no way I'm going back. A flash drive the size of my thumb nail can contain the equivalent of 16 4GB DVDs or 100 650MB CDRs, and I can carry the flash drive anywhere and use them anywhere. I can't say the same about optical media, even if it has somehow emerged as a stable medium in recent years. As for the media types I trust most, it's hard drives, hands down. Flash drives are a close second and optical media don't even make the list. File this, I guess, under the heading of We're All Different. -- Char Jackson |
#74
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Dell computer with no input
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#75
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Dell computer with no input
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