jaclaz

Which motherboard make/model? The setting could be labeled "DRAM Bus selection" on AMI Bios, as an example check the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA manual (a rather "old" board) : http://www.asrock.com/mb/VIA/775Dual-VSTA/ http://www.asrock.com/mb/VIA/775Dual-VSTA/?cat=Manual jaclaz

You do understand that you are describing NT 4 or Windows 2000 before it "evolved" into XP, don't you? jaclaz

Had what? Any doc/detail about this? jaclaz

Still OT, but not much, it seems that after all also good ol' XP is becoming SAAS (at least for the time being and for a few people) : http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/25/navy_pays_microsoft_9_1_million_to_continue_supporting_windows_xp.html Besides the "Navy" news, I find this interesting: since in about a month time (or a little bit more) we will have no more 8/8.1 meaningful/relevant data (I forecast something like maybe the current around 2% Vista has right now ) and most probably a sensible reduction of 7 installs (all the pople that will have been tricked into the Windows 10 free upgrade transformation ). I expect that by the end of August (or as soon as the data for it will be available on netmarketshare and similar) a lot of people will tag Windows 10 as "the OS that overtook XP" (instead of "the OS that definitely killed 8/8.1"). jaclaz

Well, it seems like the Weather App is not among the worst things around, check here: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/you-re-welcome- scroll down to the Samsung related snippet. ph34r: jaclaz

Some news: http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/06/23/docker-and-microsoft-announce-more-innovation-to-cross-platforms-and-win-hearts jaclaz

Interesting way to depict the situation , though I have to object on the use of "needed", it should be more like "limit" in the sense of "maximum possible at the level of our knowledge" we could use "tested" in your case where you threw at the thingies the more you could, which is very good but that possibly is not "enough" in the sense that you have still some little things that you would like to better but that have no means to implement to get closer to your perfection ideal. Then by extension, let's see what happens if NO tweaks are applied (i.e. the experience of the common, average, user/customer): XP - Tweak effort needed tested: 0, resultant value: 5.9 Vista - Tweak effort needed tested: 0, resultant value 4 <- This is Vista "as released" and on the (crappy) hardware it was released initially. Win 7 - Tweak effort needed tested:0, resultant value 6.5 <- This also apply to Vista SP2, which BTW for some aspects is even better than 7 Win 8.1 - Tweak effort needed tested: 0, resultant value 5 Win 10 - Tweak effort needed tested: 0, resultant value 4 <- this applies to the beta's it is entirely possible that the final release will get a much better rating, like 4.1 jaclaz

OT , but not much , someone has discovered that visually differentiating (optionally) the program window in focus from the other windows opened in the background helps in "getting rid of distractions and focus on current task": https://hazeover.com/ jaclaz

Yep , though maybe now a tadbit "dated". JFYI there were some news on the topic: http://reboot.pro/topic/19929-make-ramdisks-even-faster/ And, though IMDISK is not among the faster ones, through the IMDISK Toolkit: http://reboot.pro/topic/18324-imdisk-toolkit/ the issue of automatically backing up contents at shutdown have been recently solved (among other features, more image formats. etc.) jaclaz

And, just for the record: http://reboot.pro/topic/5497-ms-dos-71/ jaclaz

Heck , more, much more than that! I am an old, grumpy and cheap bastard, but not that cheap. I still have (some remnants of) a dignity Sorry, but IMHO you are mis-perceiving the reality: they did not. The fact that they implemented anything that you suggested is a mere coincidence, whenever something appeared to have gone through it was just because it overlapped with the contents of their (immutable) agenda. jaclaz

Happy you found those useful, and now, for no apparent reason: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/ jaclaz

Let's clear this aspect , you get payed ONLY AFTER I have been paid , provided that MS has any money left . jaclaz

7.1 is 7.10 as much as 7.0 is 7.00, both do not "exist" the 7.00 (or 7.0 is the same) is the DOS underlying the first release of Windows 95 or Windows 95 A, the 7.1 (or 7.10 is the same) is the DOS underlying the later windows 95 and 98 releases. Wiindows ME has underlying a DOS 8.0 (or 8.00 is the same). No version of DOS past 6.22 were ever releases by MS as a "self standing" OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=MS-DOS try running VER at the command prompt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver_(command) http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ver.php You could not at the time buy a box like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-MS-DOS-6-22-Upgrade-PC-1994-Factory-Sealed-/400936061362?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d59a6c9b2 but with DOS 7.0 or 7.1 in/on it. jaclaz

I really cannot see how and where I have insulted you. Should I have done so or should you perceive anything I wrote on this thread as an insult to you , I wish to assure you that it was unintentional and I apologize for it. My intention was to jokingly remark about the "tradition" where on *any* question BATCH related on MSFN usually Gunsmokingman provides a (usually very good) Visual Basic Script alternative, and how in this case where it was not possible because the DOS (7.1 or otherwise) does not have VBS, you (nicely) provided a Quick Basic (valid) alternative, effectively taking the role that Gunsmokingman has in the "tradition". jaclaz

Sure , and most probably, at a confidence level of (IMHO) 95% (i.e. very high) this represents the actual truth , the point I was raising was on the methodology, not on the results. You have a 21 to 23 ratio (which in statistics means 50%, not "most" or "some") situation in which at least one relevant part of the sample is inherently prone to be biased and this part (IF it is actually biased) is so relevant to undermine the whole procedure and results, 9 out of 23 is almost 40%. If you apply a wrong methodology and by pure chance you get a correct result, the result remains correct and the method remains incorrect. AND, JFYI, coffee does help in NOT lying : http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/news/2014/04/Sleep-study-release jaclaz

You need to understand the concept of "voltage". Voltage is a "level", or more exactly a electric potential difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Voltage Take two common batteries and a multimeter as an example: -[battery]+-[battery]+ 0 1 2 if you measure voltage between 0 and 2 you will read 3 V, and if you measure voltage between 0 and 1 you will read 1.5 V, but if you measure between 1 and 2 you will read 1.5 V as well: between 2 and 0 there are 3V as (1.5+1.5)-0=3 Vbetween 1 and 0 there are +1.5-0=1.5 Vbetween 2 and 1 there are 3-1.5=1.5 VIf you prefer point 2 is at +3 V over ground level (i.e. relative to point 0) and at level +1.5 V relative to point 1. The TTL levels used in this hard disk and converter use very "narrow" intervals, and signals are transmitted at a relatively high speed, so an even minimal difference in the "base level" can lead to mis-communication. The idea is that if ALL the ground or 0 level points of ALL devices involved are connected together, they are ALL at the same level, a so-called equipotential connection or isopotential locus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipotential this allows the "peaks" (which are the actual 0's and 1's transmitted) to be at the correct level, because they "share a common base". More in detail, according to specs a "peak" measured between the Tx and Ground between 0.35 V and 0.8 V is a "0", and a "peak" measured between the Tx and Ground between 2.0 V and 3.3 V is a "1". If the TTL converter sends a "0" by sending an impulse at 0.6 V, but the ground (for whatever reason) is locally at 0.21 volts, a connected device with ground at the proper level of 0 V may "receive" it at 0.6+0.21=0.81 V and fail to "understand" it as being a "0", since these peaks are transmitted at a 38400 baud/rate there is the added complication of transition times (from 0 to the peak and back). When doing a loopback test this is not an issue, as there is no other device connected and of course the Tx and Rx of the converter share a "common base". If the loopback tests do not succeed, you have in your hands a *somehow* defective hardware, if you do the loopback test a the TTL level you have no way to know if the defective part is the USB to RS-232 or the RS-232 to TTL converter, so you should additionally do a loopback test on the RS-232 terminals, pinout and howto can be found here: http://www.ni.com/tutorial/3450/en/ Be careful, the RS-232 has a relatively high voltage level, and if you misplace some connection you can "fry" something. All in all, if you feel not familiar enough with the involved matters, are you sure you don't have a (local of course) friend with some more experience in the field? There is nothing actually complex *anyone* with a very minimal electric/electronic experience or education can do properly the testing (and the grounding). jaclaz

Well, just for the record, dosbox's Ctrl+F11/Ctrl+F12, are very handy: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Performance#How_to_speed_up.2Fslow_down_DOSBox And for Qemu there is Qemu brake: http://www.miroslavnovak.com/qemu-brake_en.php jaclaz

Yes and no, the fact that a similar setup has it's own drawbacks doesn't mean that it is anyway unreliable, after all RAM is used much more than storage on any computer and it has proved to be a very solid piece of hardware, in my experience it is very rare that a stick of memory becomes bad, usually defective memory sticks are either DOA or suffer a very early death (though of course it is possible that they wear out over the years of use, I don't think there is an actual "wear" or degrading performances as there can be for SSD's) anyway, to remain OFF topic While, almost back on topic, the issues with the proposed setup are not that much, you would need a good UPS, and - just like we did in the good ol'times - in the morning you would switch on the PC, go get a cup of coffee and by the time you are back the OS would be fully loaded, then you could work all day on the very fast/responsive thingy and when leaving you would need to wait a few minutes because during the shutdown changes would need to be committed to permanent storage, with some tricks (thinking of something like a rsync demon running in the background) the amount of data to be committed may be very little and the shutdown could be quite fast. Just for the record, many, many years ago I used to have workstations that at shutdown robocopied changed data files to a network storage for redundancy/backup and it wasn't that bad. jaclaz

Sure they don't, but the way they are represented may , the fact that 9 machines in the list actually belong to the Author of the patch may influence the attribution of "most" and "some". DATA don't lie. jaclaz

Sure , until Windows 95 came out everything manufactured by mankind, including cars, bridges and buildings was designed by hand on paper, Adobe and Autodesk only exist because of Windows 95, a Lotus 123 was just an extremely small British car and your dad's accountant used an abacus to calculate the taxes. Not that this did not actually happen in recent enough times, but you are some 10-15 years off in the dates. To be fair a fairly good (but not exceptional) PC, something that would have been called an "Engineering Workstation" at the time, circa 1985 would have easily costed 8-12 monthly wages of the actual engineer, the PC and DOS was a (costly) device used at work, not something that was in every home. jaclaz

It's on the Wayback machine alright (as suggested in that thread) Here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://download.microsoft.com/download/winntwks40/Utility/4.71.1015.0/NT4/EN-US/WIN_DEPLOY.exe These ones are seemingly fine: https://web.archive.org/web/20060320022750/http://download.microsoft.com/download/winntwks40/Utility/4.71.1015.0/NT4/EN-US/WIN_DEPLOY.exe https://web.archive.org/web/20080222200834/http://download.microsoft.com/download/winntwks40/Utility/4.71.1015.0/NT4/EN-US/WIN_DEPLOY.exe What is the problem? jaclaz

I have one thing to say about speed, which is: As a side note, yet another way, WHOLE OS and programs on Ramdisks, of course a tadbit slow at power on, but once loaded very, very fast: http://reboot.pro/topic/20487-any-tut-on-expanding-c-partition-on-many-ramdisk/ jaclaz

Well, to be fair, people who have not used RAMDISK's (which I perceive is what this thread is about ) often don't understand the potential for the further increase of the level of responsiveness. Of course such a setup has it's own drawbacks, unlike the switch from conventional HDD's to SSD's which is perfectly "transparent" and surely it is much more costly on a per Gb base. Should you have some (several) spare C-notes, you can do with it something really nice (JFYI): http://www.bjorn3d.com/2013/01/ramdisks-maximizing-high-capacity-ram/ jaclaz

As said I was just kidding, without any intention to offend, nor to insult anyone or anything. I'm really really sorry, I apologise unreservedly. I take it back and offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future. Is this OK with you? However, to be picky and just for the record, MS-DOS 7.1 (though it includes Qbasic alright) is not a complete OS, it is part of some Windows operating systems, (namely Windows 95 OSR 2, Windows 95 OSR 2.5, Windows 98, and Windows 98 SE). jaclaz