Re: Lucky hack

Article: 7417 of alt.hackers
From: hacker@ns.secis.com (Tommy Usher)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: Lucky hack
Date: 18 Feb 1995 17:12:20 GMT
Organization: SouthEast Information Sys
Lines: 54
Approved: I suppose this time....
Message-ID: 3i59pk$mf1@news.cais.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: ns.secis.com
Keywords: nope, nope, nope, and nope
Status: RO

In article <3i2q74$aeg@access3.digex.net>,
Michael Lea <mikelea@access.digex.net> wrote:
>ObLuckyHack:  The folks in the library at the school I work for wanted
>their floppy drives switched so the 3.5" drive was a: and the
5.25" drive
>was b:.  No problem, says I.  I open up the box and it turns out that the
>5.25" drive has a card edge connector and the 3.5" has a male
pin set
>connector (what are the real names for these things?).  And, predictably,
>the cable that was in there did not have the right connections on it so I
>could swap the drives.  So I search around for awhile and can't find the
>right cable...so I decide to just swap the 3.5 drive out and put in one
>with a card edge connection.  Except the only 3.5 drive I can find is one
>that a disk came apart in.  Hmm...so I pour all of the disk parts out,
>and open up another machine in the computer lab to test it on.  VIOLA!
>Inside that machine was a cable with exactly the connections I need on
>it.  You can figure out the rest...  (i'm so happy, it made my day.)

Uh, this may seem a dumb question, but.......why didn't you just change the
settings in the CMOS?  I mean, on most systems, you can specify which drive
will be the a: drive and which will be the b: drive.  In fact, I always make
the 3.5" the a: drive, since DOS almost always comes on 3.5" disks.
Now, I
suppose, if this was a fairly old system, you might not have that option, but
I kind of doubt it.....

ObSimilarHack

I finally found an external CD-ROM I could afford, and bought it.  (I had been
putting off getting one since I didn't have an extra bay, and didn't really
want to give up my 5.25" drive.  I really need a new system, but
can't afford
it at the moment.)  I got it home, and installed it, put in the software, and
found that while the system recognized its presence (it gave a directory
listing) it would choke on all but the smallest files.  I called tech support
and got several explanations, none of which were satisfactory.  After several
trips back to the store, and much effort, I gave up and decided that if I were
going to have a CD-ROM (by now, I have decided I DO want one, having also
bought several CDs to use in it, which I can't return...) I am going to have
to have an internal drive, and give up my 5.25" drive....or am I?
I installed
the new CD-ROM, and after testing to make sure this one works (it does) I hook
up my old 5.25", (The CD-ROM is still in there, the 5.25 is sitting
on top.)
and sure enough, I can access it.  So, from now on, on the rare occasion I
need the 5.25 (mostly for older program disks, the occasional disk from a
book, or transferring stuff to my antique CP/M system that my daughter plays
with) I can still use it.  Oh, as to the external system?  Apparently, the IDE
card conflicted with the built in IDE in my system.  They were just
incompatible.  Ironically, I really hated having to give it up, since the
company did put out some effort to help.  In fact, the owner called back that
night to see what the problem was.  I guess threatening to trash them on
the Internet sort of helped.....  Which of course, I won't do now.


--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Tommy Usher  No Frills Software | Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: |
| hacker@ns.secis.com             | There's always one more bug.             |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Child

Back to index