Sam Trenholme's webpage
This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in 1995; any technical information is probably outdated.

Re: OBHack...


Article: 7672 of alt.hackers
From: halo@news-server.engin.umich.edu (Johnny Yuma)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: OBHack...
Date: 16 Apr 1995 05:27:27 GMT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Lines: 79
Approved: WOah, almost forgot this!!
Message-ID: 3mq9rv$juk@srvr1.engin.umich.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: chlorine.engin.umich.edu
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Status: RO

Mark Gryn (gryn@uwindsor.ca) wrote:
:	Eggasctly.  I doubted it.  Didn't think that last post would make
: it in.  So, I didn't bother including an OBHack.  Now I find it actually
: made it in and so now I must repent my sin(s) and display an OBHack...

Ahh! If you'd violated the scared trust of alt.hackers a second time, I'd
not have shared my information with you! =)

:	While I'm posting though...I'll ask a question that of course
: does not have anything to do with hacking, but I've been wondering about
: for awhile.  What's the difference between parity and non-parity simms?
: (Besides price and a chip on the simm...)

Well... From what I understand. (i.e. take this with a grain or two of
salt... Not so long ago I was wondering the same thing as I was buying a new
pci motherboard & memory to go along..) Parity simms seem to have 4
extra bits, which are a type of 'error' correction for memory.	It is my
understand of parity that each bit is either set off or on (0/1), and the
parity bit is used to check if one of the bit's has become corupted and is
incorrect.  Someone please correct me if I am mistaken.  As far as personal
expirence, Parity ram is used more often in PC's and non-parity ram is used
in synthizers and such like that.

: OB_Better_hack:
:	Little novell hack I guess.  At school our network of 400+ pc's
: is setup using Novell of course.  Naturally the site admin doesn't
: appreciate people bringing in their own floppy disks (backup, we don't
: need no stinkin' backups) and certainly frowns upon us using the system
: to play doom and/or descent.
:	Any case, as the system normally boots into a standard menu
: system, enter your userID, etc, then gives you a menu that allows you to
: run Windoze, turing, whatever.  Naturally the whole thing is made up of
: batch files and a nicely timed CTRL-BREAK brings you to a dos prompt.
:	Having accidentally done this one day I found myself in my
: personal directory, with an assortment of .INI files in my dir.  Now,
: that whizz of an admin had gone into the PROGMAN.INI and disabled the
: 'FILE' menu in program manager, thus we couldn't get a dos prmpt, or run
: our own programs.  Simple enough, I pop open PROGMAN.INI and delete the
: line, the mark the file read only.  Now, the batch file he has setup
: can't delete my PROGMAN.INI, so I've got a dos prompt any time I want,
: allowing me to run other programs or transfer 'stuff' to floppy any time
: I need it...

It amazes me the silly things the "admin's" at the lab at High
School do. =)

Hmm.. Damn. I posted! That means I owe an....

ObFailedHack:
A good friend of mine's father purchased an AT&T computer... So being the
good friend that I am, I went over to help out with windows and drivers and
installing software... When it came time to install the terminal software, I
chose the terminal software of the U.S. Olympic lawn mowing team, Telemate.
On to the hack... Well, for some reason AT&T thought it would be an
execlent
idea to put the modem on com3 as default.  Well, ok, not my first selection,
but I'll live with it.	Odd, the modem worked fine in Windows 'Terminal',
but refused to give us any responce in DOS. <Ponder and debate and check
settings a good 4-5 times...> Hm, no, nothing is set incorrectly, yet the
modem is still not working.  When all else fails, RTFM, so off we go to find
the manual, which says... 'In order to give you the easiest use of a modem
possible, We have included a 'Windows(r)' modem.  The Windows(r) modem is of
course very easy to use and GUI like, compared to the difficult to use DOS
modem.	From what I could see if it, it looked like a semi-nice modem. (with
v.32ter and stuff), but a Windows modem?!?! Ohman... It refused to work in
dos. :(

ObFutureHack:
Making a small TSR to watch all the traffic to the com port and see exactly
how this 'Windows' modem works.  I'd love to be able to tell it that it is
in 'windows' when it's not. :)

Johnny

Just when you thought things were headed in the right direction...

--
Everyone should know of all information that others have deemed unfit for for
public knowledge. -Author Unknown | GAT/CS -d+ H s++:++ g+ p2+ au- a-- w+++ v-
C++++ UL+++(++++) P+>++ L++(+++) 3- E N+++@ K---- W--- M-- V-- -po+ Y+
t 5- j
R- G tv-- b+++ D+ B- e u--- h! f+ !r !n y? <halo@azure.engin.umich.edu>



Parent

Child Child

Back to index