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Why do you still use Windows XP?



 
 
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  #286  
Old March 17th 12, 08:33 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Lostgallifreyan
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Posts: 194
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

"BillW50" wrote in :

I didn't recall the 904HD model of having a Celeron processor. I would
have guessed an Atom processor. And I think they listed 1GB max was
wrong. As I would think it can handle 2GB of RAM (should only have one
RAM slot though).


I think 2GB too, though 1GB will be enough for me. I used to think I could
never have too much RAM, but choosing to run W98 and seeing that I never use
all of 1GB sets a clear margin so I'm ok with 1GB. I read of the Atom
processor just now, but I think this, and a slightly larger Eee machine, have
the Celeron in them. This is fine, as I'm after a low power efficient
machine, and this one qualifies.

The price sounds good to me. No problem there. Worse comes to worse you
can always get your money back out of it. So I don't think you will
regret it at all. ;-)



I'm already getting buyer's remorse and I haven't even sseen it yet. But
that's mainly because I like the ITX boards I have, and the 17" ELO monitors,
and I'm very hard to please. I don't think I'll regret trying this though, in
the long run.

The price is good, but I'm a bit nervous about the screen. I really hate
vulnerable screens, and this might be one. High res in a smaller size than in
later machines with same res. One reviewer said it looked grainy. I might
find it great. Entirely possible. Or it might hurt my eyes and just make me
want to hit it. There is VERY little more invoking of true despair than
trying to fight against a combination of machine limit and human frailty
combined. In the long runs I only accept a machine that does nto put me
through that. Such machines are RARE.
Ads
  #287  
Old March 18th 12, 11:35 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
BillW50
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Posts: 5,556
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in :

I have heard lots of stories about SD and flash drives failing. I
never had one fail yet and some are really old (12+ years I would
think). One guy I know has failures as short as two weeks. Although
he constantly writes to them and uses the dirt cheap ones. All of
mine I don't think I have more than a thousand writes on any of them.


It's possibly my Kingstons were fakes. Not all that likely, but
bought from a small local shop. If they had been, the shop wouldn't
have known either. I've seen a couple of real fakes since though,
they're usually more obvious, rough-looking in some details, or with
half claimed capacity, slow access, or worse.

I find that cheap SD cards are a bad bet, but cheap CF cards often
score high. Best for top nothc in both is Transcend, at least, last
time I bought. Sandisk on eBay is impossible, fakes that make a
minefield more mine than field. Hopefully Transcend won't suffer the
same fate. Maybe not though, I think they were more open about their
detailed documentation, so fakers can't so easily rely on buyer's
ignorance of details. (I wish ALL parts were so openly spec'd as
those things were!) Anyway, Transcend were the only CF cards I ever
found that reliably gave me performance like UDMA mode 5. And at a
modest price that made Sandisk look very disappointing, even greedy.


All wonderful information! Many thanks! I bought a fake off of eBay
once. An 8GB SD card which turned out to be really a 2GB SD card. I
tried looking for ways to fix it so everything would see it as a real
2GB once again.

I never found a good way to do this. So I cheated and used a
partitioning utility and created a partition of 2GB. Now an OS won't
touch the unreal 6GB part.

This fake 8GB is really slow at writing. Of course I don't trust it with
original files or anything. But it has been doing very well otherwise.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3


  #288  
Old March 18th 12, 11:51 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Lostgallifreyan
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Posts: 194
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

"BillW50" wrote in :

All wonderful information! Many thanks! I bought a fake off of eBay
once. An 8GB SD card which turned out to be really a 2GB SD card. I
tried looking for ways to fix it so everything would see it as a real
2GB once again.


You're welcome. I never like feelign useless, so that helps (especially on
days when coding isn't working so well).

About the SD card fakes, I have a '16 GB' that's really an 8, bit I'm not
sure its slow access warrants any use of it, except for testing when I really
don't care if the card lives or dies. I decided that SD cards in adapters on
ATA were a terrible idea anyway, but CF cards and adapters work well.
  #289  
Old March 19th 12, 02:17 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Zaphod Beeblebrox
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Posts: 868
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

In article , says...

In ,
Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
In article ,
says...

In ,
Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
In article ,
says...

In ,
Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
In article ,
says...


One idea I really like is Windows Embedded. There are other
software that does something similar. But what basically happens
is that all writes are redirected to somewhere else (like to RAM
or to another drive). So nothing on your boot/system drive is
changed at all. Windows thinks it is writing there and things are
written and re-read with the updated information, although...

When you power off (you don't even have to do a proper shutdown
either).

I'd be very careful doing that - there are many documented
instances of the file system getting corrupted that way under XP
Embedded with EWF running. Rare, I grant you, but not worth the
risk in my opinion.

How? The system drive is in read only mode and all changes are in
RAM (which you don't want anyway). I can see if you are using
another partition to hold all of the writes that would be a
problem. But not if it is stored in RAM.

I don't know the technical details, but EWF doesn't place the drive
in read-only mode, EWF is just a system-level driver that redirects
writes to RAM instead of disk, and it has been known to fail on
power loss in such a way that the drive gets corrupted. Look in the
history of microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded for a number of
related posts, and I suspect MS web forums have some also.

Hi Zaphod! Are you sure this is the right newsgroup?

microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded

As there are only 15 posts in the last 9 months and most of those are
spam. Also with EWF enabled, it should work very much like a Live OS.


Yes, that's the right group, but when MS dropped them it died pretty
quickly. You'll have to look well back in the past to see the posts
I'm talking about. Or look in the web forums, I suspect you'll find
similar posts there, but I've not used them so I can't say for sure.


Okay, I thought there were recent discussions about it.


There might be, just not in the newsgroup (which never had a lot of
traffic even when XP Embedded was the current version).


But rest assured, as much as you'd like to think it works like a live
CD, the difference is there - live CDs run on actual Read-Only media
where it is not possible to write to the media, but EWF does not - it
is a system-level driver that redirects writes to memory, and it can
and does fail under the correct circumstances.


Well I never tried it, but I see nothing stopping Embedded from running
from a DVD read only, a ROM, or almost anything else as read only.


True, though most embedded products tend to steer away from spinning
disks toward solid state media - both for reliability and space
concerns.


30 seconds searching in Google Groups turned up this post and others:

http://groups.google.com/group/micro....embedded/brow
se_thread/thread/304b4d42890bd5aa/1c600bfbdd395133?
hl=en&lnk=gst&q=ewf+corrupt#1c600bfbdd395133


See this is what I am talking about. They have other partitions/drives
that are not under the write protection with the EWF enabled (generally
it is only the system partition). And in these cases, all bets are off
as those other drives are still being written too.


The post that the link points to says nothing about multiple
partitions, though I'll admit the OP does. It wasn't my intent to do
your homework for you, but rather to show that there are recorded
instances out there in the group. There are enough posts in the
archive discussing failures on single partition media that it is
accepted in embedded product engineering circles as real problem. It is
one of the reasons MS just isn't taken seriously in the embedded world.
It was kind of weird - MS had a big presence at ESC Boston 2010 and was
practically laughed out of the conference, and didn't even bother
showing up at ESC Boston 2011. It's pretty clear they "just don't get
it" as far as embedded systems go.

--
Zaphod

"The best Bang since the Big One" - Eccentrica Gallumbits
  #290  
Old March 19th 12, 05:19 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
BillW50
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,556
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

In ,
Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
In article , says...

Okay, I thought there were recent discussions about it.


There might be, just not in the newsgroup (which never had a lot of
traffic even when XP Embedded was the current version).


I wish I had known that newsgroup existed back then. As I would have
been asking a lot of questions way back then. ;-)

[...]
30 seconds searching in Google Groups turned up this post and
others:

http://groups.google.com/group/micro....embedded/brow
se_thread/thread/304b4d42890bd5aa/1c600bfbdd395133?
hl=en&lnk=gst&q=ewf+corrupt#1c600bfbdd395133


See this is what I am talking about. They have other
partitions/drives that are not under the write protection with the
EWF enabled (generally it is only the system partition). And in
these cases, all bets are off as those other drives are still being
written too.


The post that the link points to says nothing about multiple
partitions, though I'll admit the OP does. It wasn't my intent to do
your homework for you, but rather to show that there are recorded
instances out there in the group. There are enough posts in the
archive discussing failures on single partition media that it is
accepted in embedded product engineering circles as real problem.


Thanks Zaphod! I plan on spending the next few weeks reading through the
archives to see what I can find. And you might have missed this post by
Lostgallifreyan, who explained to me how corruption could happen. See
below.

In ,
BillW50 wrote on Sat, 17 Mar 2012 07:47:27 -0500:
In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:

Failing on power loss can affect a CF card. Suppose a write is
driver- redirected to RAM disk. Suppose the power fails, and in that
last dying instant the driver fails, the calling function is still
trying to write, or for whatever other reason the write tries to
complete, unredirected. In the last instant of that instant, a CF
card might be written to at the last gasp of power. This is often
fatal for that card, never mind how many partitions are on it. If
this is what is happening, you might be SOL, not a lot you can do to
prevent the risk, except EXPLICITLY make every write operation go to
RAM disk, or wherever you want it to go. Relying on some driver to
redirect stuff is essentially a dangerous conflict of interest, a
bit like trusting other people's web spiders to respect your
robots.txt file if you run a website. If NOTHING at any level is
trying to write to a CF card or other Flash space, it should be
safer. I wouldn't use a system that depended on over-riding
dangerous existing behaviour, I'd want to change that behaviour at
source.


Okay now that makes sense and I can see that happening. And one could
avoid this problem electronically by disabling the write enable line.


I also mentioned to Lostgallifreyan that one could physically disable
the write enable to the drive. And regardless what else is happening,
that should prevent any shenanigans of any accidental writing to the
protected drive.

It is odd, I have routinely killed the power to my embedded devices and
I never had a problem. I suppose how the power fades throughout the
system determines how risky this practice would be on a given machine.

It is one of the reasons MS just isn't taken seriously in the embedded
world. It was kind of weird - MS had a big presence at ESC Boston 2010
and was practically laughed out of the conference, and didn't even
bother showing up at ESC Boston 2011. It's pretty clear they "just
don't get it" as far as embedded systems go.


I am not sure if there is enough demand for Windows Embedded anyway?
Since the appearance of netbooks, tablets, and such... it seems to make
more sense just running the stock Windows anyway, don't you think?

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3


  #291  
Old March 19th 12, 06:13 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Lostgallifreyan
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Posts: 194
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

"BillW50" wrote in :

It is odd, I have routinely killed the power to my embedded devices and
I never had a problem. I suppose how the power fades throughout the
system determines how risky this practice would be on a given machine.


That reminds me of something...
I made a small GPS logger based on a Logomatic v2 board. One of the things
that board has is an SD card socket, and a warning that we are supposed to
manually request the data to be flushed to the card before removing power, to
avoid this corruption problem. I needed a reliable system that I could turn
off power from entirely, using a magnet and reed switch, so I had to figure
out a way to stop the device safely. I did it with an LED, an aerogel
capacitor, and not a lot else. The idea is that the Li-ion cell keeps the cap
charged, and when power is removed the (carefully chosen) LED arranged for a
voltage drop that immediately put a logic line below thrshold, to logic 0,
forcing data flush. It had just enough time to do this before that cap
discharged. So it was always safe after that. I came up with a basic rul
that for any system needing that method, the capacitance should be rated at
one farad per amp drawn by the load. (And the cap rated for the voltage used
too). I documeted the doing on Sparkfun Electronics forum using the same name
I do here.

The point of that is, that some systems might use a similar method. Power
fading can be managed so a reservoir persists long enough to finish a cache
flush to disk or card before critical power loss occurs. The question is, is
this actually done? I like my method because it doesn't depend on an order
given. It physically makes sure there IS always enough power to do the deed.
This is true nio matter how the main source fails. Basically, like a UPS writ
very very small...

The main problem with this idea is that it may not be easy to apply in many
situations. You'd need a way to send a 'logic low' signal to force a card
driver to flush the cache and finnish writing, immediately on receipt of
signal, and I've no idea if that's a standard thing. Even if it were, it
might need a few parts changed or moved, using SMT soldering in most cases.
At least the Logomatic makers thought about this, but even there I had to do
some work of my own.
  #292  
Old March 19th 12, 06:44 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
BillW50
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,556
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote on Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:13:46 -0500:
"BillW50" wrote in :

It is odd, I have routinely killed the power to my embedded devices
and I never had a problem. I suppose how the power fades throughout
the system determines how risky this practice would be on a given
machine.


That reminds me of something... I made a small GPS logger based on a
Logomatic v2 board. One of the things that board has is an SD card
socket, and a warning that we are supposed to manually request the
data to be flushed to the card before removing power, to avoid this
corruption problem. I needed a reliable system that I could turn off
power from entirely, using a magnet and reed switch, so I had to
figure out a way to stop the device safely. I did it with an LED, an
aerogel capacitor, and not a lot else. The idea is that the Li-ion
cell keeps the cap charged, and when power is removed the (carefully
chosen) LED arranged for a voltage drop that immediately put a logic
line below thrshold, to logic 0, forcing data flush. It had just
enough time to do this before that cap discharged. So it was always
safe after that. I came up with a basic rul that for any system
needing that method, the capacitance should be rated at one farad per
amp drawn by the load. (And the cap rated for the voltage used too). I
documeted the doing on Sparkfun Electronics forum using the same name
I do here.

The point of that is, that some systems might use a similar method.
Power fading can be managed so a reservoir persists long enough to
finish a cache flush to disk or card before critical power loss
occurs. The question is, is this actually done? I like my method
because it doesn't depend on an order given. It physically makes sure
there IS always enough power to do the deed. This is true nio matter
how the main source fails. Basically, like a UPS writ very very
small...

The main problem with this idea is that it may not be easy to apply
in many situations. You'd need a way to send a 'logic low' signal to
force a card driver to flush the cache and finnish writing,
immediately on receipt of signal, and I've no idea if that's a
standard thing. Even if it were, it might need a few parts changed or
moved, using SMT soldering in most cases. At least the Logomatic
makers thought about this, but even there I had to do some work of my
own.


That is one amazing story Lostgallifreyan. I love it! That reminds me of
all of the mods I have done in the past. ;-)

My first experience with RAMDisk was an external RAM module for the
Commodore 8-bit machines. Well the first RAMDisk experience was really
on an Epson CP/M laptop. But that had battery power 24/7 and didn't
count for loss of power glitches, since it never had any.

Anyway being new to RAMDisks, I was done with coding and powered off the
computer without thinking to save my work to a floppy. Instantly I
thought oh crap! Powered back on in less than a second and checked the
RAMDisk and everything was still there fully intact. ;-)

So I started testing how long the power could be gone before corruption
would occur. And it would still hold data for up to 4 to 7 seconds
later. 5 to 7 seconds was a toss up and it could go either way. I wished
I investigated further to learn how long those RAM chips could retain
data without a refresh. As I would guess a second or so there could have
been enough power floating around to keep the refresh going for a bit.
But even that doesn't explain up to 7 seconds later and everything could
still be intact.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3


  #293  
Old March 19th 12, 07:30 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Lostgallifreyan
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Posts: 194
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

"BillW50" wrote in :

Anyway being new to RAMDisks, I was done with coding and powered off the
computer without thinking to save my work to a floppy. Instantly I
thought oh crap! Powered back on in less than a second and checked the
RAMDisk and everything was still there fully intact. ;-)

So I started testing how long the power could be gone before corruption
would occur. And it would still hold data for up to 4 to 7 seconds
later. 5 to 7 seconds was a toss up and it could go either way. I wished
I investigated further to learn how long those RAM chips could retain
data without a refresh. As I would guess a second or so there could have
been enough power floating around to keep the refresh going for a bit.
But even that doesn't explain up to 7 seconds later and everything could
still be intact.


That's useful. I don't know how it works but anything that persists even for
a moment is good. Our eyes work on persistence of vision for continuity, and
as far as I know, brains don't do caching the way computers do. Maybe there's
something to temporal persistence that can avoid the need. Just rambling
here, but something about this seems to imply some powerful discoveries in
any number of useful contexts. One obvious known one is the use of flywheels
in engines to overcome the need to cache extra fuel for bursts of
acceleration, but I bet there are a lot of non-obvious ones to come. I guess
the whole RAM refresh thing is based on this, otherwise it would be all
refresh and not a lot of other access!
  #294  
Old March 20th 12, 09:36 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
J. P. Gilliver (John)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,291
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
I am not sure if there is enough demand for Windows Embedded anyway?
Since the appearance of netbooks, tablets, and such... it seems to make
more sense just running the stock Windows anyway, don't you think?

Oh, I think systems that were (more or less) instant on, could not be
corrupted, and looked like normal Windows, would have a not-small
market.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I believe the cake has got to be sliced up to help those who are needy and
you've got to keep someone there who's going to make the cake. Here we always
destroy the people who make the cake. - Michael Caine (MM), RT, 7-13 Nov 2009.
  #296  
Old March 20th 12, 02:26 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,449
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:36:46 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
I am not sure if there is enough demand for Windows Embedded anyway?
Since the appearance of netbooks, tablets, and such... it seems to make
more sense just running the stock Windows anyway, don't you think?

Oh, I think systems that were (more or less) instant on, could not be
corrupted, and looked like normal Windows, would have a not-small
market.


On the other hand, they'd be quickly exploited.

  #298  
Old March 20th 12, 03:25 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,449
Default Why do you still use Windows XP?

On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:04:42 -0400, Zaphod Beeblebrox
wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:36:46 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
I am not sure if there is enough demand for Windows Embedded anyway?
Since the appearance of netbooks, tablets, and such... it seems to make
more sense just running the stock Windows anyway, don't you think?

Oh, I think systems that were (more or less) instant on, could not be
corrupted, and looked like normal Windows, would have a not-small
market.


On the other hand, they'd be quickly exploited.


What do you mean?


I mean in the usual sense.

 




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