jaclaz

Of course it is entirely up to you and to the various Owners/Admins of the Board, but as I see it, a large number of people are interested still in Win9x issues, and closing the Forum would reduce the appreciation of a number of members. By "Archiving" do you mean keeping the threads in Read Only mode or backing up them and removing from public view? If the first, I guess that there will be no problems, except making unhappy a number of members, myself included. If the second, before doing that, I would advise to find an alternative solution, like if needed hosting them on another site, to let the "frozen" contents still available to the public. jaclaz

It is possible that some floppy drive is "defective" with 720 Kb. Most probably it is not a 720 Kb media specific problem. As you might remember, there were actually hole punchers (or instructions on how to drill and additional hole in 720 kb ones to make them 1440 Kb: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23027 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...=23027&st=7 there were both for the "old" 5.25" and for the "new" 3.5", the one depicted here is for the 5.25": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk an image of a 3.5" one seems like rare.... ...essentially the actual magnetic support of both 720 Kb and 1.44 Mb diskettes was the same, at least when the 1.44 format became popular (it costed far less to manufacturers to produce the same thing with two different "cases" than to have two separate production lines). some more "vintage" info is here: http://www.angelfire.com/nh/secret/27disks.htm The formatting is VERY important on floppies, it is possible that you are using a "bad" formatting program. I always used VENUS to copy/format/re-format, at least for 1.44 ones, cannot remember if it's comaptible with 720 Kb.... Recently I found DCOPY to be very, very dependable. Of course both under "pure" DOS. In the good ol' times there were quite a number of DOS programs to "revive" defective diskettes, that generally speaking worked remarkably well. Right now I can't remember even a single one, but if you want to have a try at them I can do some research and see if I can come up with some. jaclaz

Maybe you didn't find the "right one", run on the strick Chipgenius and report manufacturer/controller used. If we find the correct manufacturer tool it is possible that the stick can be re-initialized. Besides being notoriously cheap , I do not condone giving up, you mean you are allright having been beaten 1 to 0 by an obscure piece of silicon? Chipgenius: http://www.mydigit.cn/chipgenius.htm http://dl.mydigit.net/2009/0406/chipgenius.html http://dl.mydigit.net/download.php?a_k=WAk...kwJUVUcUQFEXARR Don't worry about the Chinese , the app is mostly harmless: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=4661 jaclaz

Everything seems fine. jaclaz

Read here : http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=3117 Unrelated, but not much :whistling:, and just FYI: http://www.denispetrov.com/?page_id=3 http://www.serverelements.com/forums/viewt...hp?f=1&t=64 http://alter.org.ua/en/soft/win/floppy/ jaclaz

Just for the record, and for future memory, the VISTA (and possibly Windows 7) "formatting strategy" has been profoundly changed: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=135781 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941961/en-us As often happens the info is still a bit misleading: should be read as: jaclaz

I would say that now it is perfectly safe. (as said above upgrading on a fully loaded with apps system, possibly "tweaked" may still cause some headaches) It wasn't initially: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=118290 jaclaz

I guess I could spend a couple of words on this. The number of WRITE cycles (READ cycles are NOT reportedly affecting the life of a stick) is LARGELY UNKNOWN. Most of the numbers you see around like 100,000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear are largely speculative and/or came out with previous releases/versions of both memory and controllers. Current devices have "better" (more lasting) memory chips and controllers which feature wear leveling techniques, which can introduce a large multiplying factor for "life expectancy", bigger than 2 or 3 in average use. Now think a bit about an image file (Ghost/imagex) sized at, say, 1 Gbyte. With a typical AVERAGE USB flash sequential write speed around 10/12 Mbyte per second: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/di...p_11.html#sect2 you have 1024/12=÷85 seconds time to write the image to the stick. 85 seconds x 100,000= 8,500,000 seconds 8,500,000/60=141,667 minutes 141,667/60=2,361 hours 2,361/24=98 days Now, if you have passed the last three months 24/7 copying images to the same USB sticks , you appear to have a bigger problem than a non-working pendrive! Most pendrives may "die", much earlier than when the memory wears out for three reasons: "mechanical" problem i.e. a soldering that got stressed during insertion/removal the controller simply dieing, possibly because of overheating (sticks kept connected all the time, some tend to get VERY hot) defective controller In other words, if you insert your stick and it is NOT recognised anymore, it is probable that the controller rather than memory died. About memory wearing, it is GREATLY increased by: using NTFS (or any semi-journaled/journaled filesystem on it) for NTFS you may want to disable a key in the Registry: http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/50/ but unfortunately it's a "global" setting using it as "temporary" or "cache" or "swap" jaclaz

GOOD news. Unrelated, but not much, fuwi has recently released a small GUI for it: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23189 I'll notify him and see if he will update it with the Windows 7 feature. jaclaz

See if this clears the matter: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...807&st=1194 jaclaz

An easy way to remember... 0 = off, 1 = on. RAID 0 = mirroring off, RAID 1 = mirroring on. Which of course I will soon forget and remember as: 0 = off, 1 = on. RAID 0 = striping off, RAID 1 = striping on. Thanks, but it's no use, I simply confuse them easily. (and one of the main reasons why I love RAID 10 ) jaclaz

Do you have a WIRELESS RS-232 to TTL (or USB to TTL) converter? jaclaz

Not really. The correct link is now: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=120444 The link: links to the "Install XP from USB forum" The "correct" link is: Just in case it is relatively easy to translate from this (so called "friendly names") - NOT working right now: to this always working: The number of the thread with friendly names is after the "t" and before the .html, you just get it and add it after: hxxp://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic= I quickly fixed the links in the FAQ's: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=116766 as they are (hopefully) the most used ones. jaclaz

That is incorrect. RAID 0 is stripping. RAID 1 is mirroring. They are two totally different things. My bad I meant RAID 1, I often get the one for the other, that why I alwys add (mirroring). jaclaz

Well, you can get away with far less money, but usually you get what you pay for. You mean this one? http://shopper.cnet.com/soho-servers/hp-me...9-33528247.html That is at least 650 bucks with 2 750 Mb hard disk: But for a basic RAID 0 (mirroring) you need two 1.5 Tb drives. Besides there are a lot of models of HP Smart Home servers, which one you have in mind? On which shop have you seen it? (if not a local one). For about that money you can have a LaCie fully populated (five disks) 2.5 Tb one: http://shopper.cnet.com/external-hard-driv...9-33351110.html or a "bare" Synology: http://shopper.cnet.com/external-hard-driv...9-32550673.html +3 1 Tb drives jaclaz

There are a lot of misunderstandings going on on this topic, your question may be the occasion to attempt clearing some of them. This thread and the nice page by CarterinCanada: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...807&st=1232 http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html and various similar hints/guides linked to or various information posted on the present thread, are aimed to recover or "debrick" a specific Seagate series drive suffering from the problem initially explained in this same thread (links given in this post): http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...807&st=1589 THIS problem may appear with two different symptoms: 0 LBA or BSY state. There may be tens or maybe hundreds of different problems leading to the same symptoms. Moreover several people with a failed or failing drive come here thinking this represents a miracle cure for any desease. (even if Symptoms are different) It is NOT. There are NO reports of drives suffering from THIS problem, to which THESE remedies were PROPERLY applied, using PROPER interfaces/cabling/power supplies, PROPERLY connected, which were not fully and integrally recovered. There is NO rational reason to presume that once THIS problem has been resolved and the PROPER firmware upgrade has been applied, the drive is not anymore dependable: it is EXACTLY as DEPENDABLE as any other Seagate Hard disk of the same series that was NOT affected by the problem. Whether this particular series of drive is more or less dependable than series X of manufacturer Y is higly debatable, there are NO publicly available extensive studies in this direction, and anyway by the time (exception made for early failures) the data would be available, a new (or more than one) series will be available and common, both from Seagate and from manufacturer Y. Borrowing the words Peter Gutmann used to describe the misunderstandings about his reknown paper: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html this thread and the info within it has been sometimes interpreted/used more as: If the problem is THIS one, the "cure" does work, if the problem is not exactly THIS one, who knows? jaclaz

This emote, using "ph34r" bbcode, I believe used to be :ninja And, just for the record, there is a "vanishing" version of it: jaclaz

It is very possible you simply have NOT enough voltage. These thingy usually need something MORE than 3 V and up to 5 V. See here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...807&st=1592 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...807&st=1594 jaclaz

Hey guys, though I do understand that you are doing this in GOOD faith : It is against Board Rules: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408 @domlebo70 It is not advisable to post on a public forum your e-mail address, at least you should "mask" it as I did in the QUOTE (or in a similar way) at least to avoid the risk of being added to some SPAM database by harvesting bots. A suitable interface is available in Australia allright (besides possibly a number of places) on e-bay: http://shop.ebay.com.au/?_from=R40&_tr...-All-Categories jaclaz

Yep, but don't worry, I was just joking. I'll give you another tip, see if the misterious connector has a "proper" name: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...ic=8706&hl= it does look like a LFH60, but cannot say. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Force_Helix Matrox cables appear to be differently mapped: http://pinouts.ru/VideoCables/matrox_lfh60_pinout.shtml but maybe you can find and adapt some "surplus" cable... jaclaz

See here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=43605 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=99220 jaclaz

Replied in fernan's DOUBLE post here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...807&st=1758 in as plain as possible English (but there the post made sense) . NO. NOT "exactly" this solution. The internal "language" of older disks is different. The connecting speed is different. The general idea may work, but you need specific information for the specific drive model. jaclaz

NO. NOT "exactly" this solution. The internal "language" of older disks is different. The connecting speed is different. The general idea may work, but you need specific information for the specific drive model. jaclaz

It seems to me like the nice source you found: http://verizonwireless.howardforums.com/sh...ad.php?t=832865 clears the matter remarkably well: First two DKU-2 and CA-53 are NO good. (NO chips inside them) The DKU-5 is reported to be somewhat defective. The original CA-42 is reported as NOT having a "Virtual COM driver". As I see it, judging from the cards you have in your hands you have two options: lose lose . I am confused if the original Nokia cable (NOT the CA-53 which is NO good) is a CA-42 or a DKU-5, I am assuming it is the OLD DKU-5. I would try the DKU-5 cable on a laptop (i.e. one without a hardware Serial Port) or try disabling the internal CPM port from BIOS on your desktop. From what is reported on the given site the OLD Nokia PC-Suite includes a driver that mounts the OLD DKU-5 to a Virtual COM port. Did you already try installing it and see if it actually creates this additional COM port? Alternatively, post the Vid & Pid of the "fake" Chinese CA-42. More generally USB solutions should be reserved to people that have NOT a desktop with a "proper" RS-232. A "normal" RS-232 to TTL converter, such as the one used in the re-known guide: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=133387&hl= http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html can be found for a handful of bucks, you don't have a problem with finding GROUND, TX and RX, and they do work. Let us reason on the workflow: PC (without Serial RS232 port): Hyperterminal->"Virtual Com Port Driver"->"USB driver"->"Real USB"->"USB to RS-232 Converter"->"RS-232 to TTL converter->drive (and back) PC (without Serial RS232 port): Hyperterminal->"Virtual Com Port Driver"->"USB driver"->"Real USB"->"USB to TTL converter->drive (and back) PC (with Serial RS232 port): Hyperterminal->"Com Port"->"RS-232 to TTL converter->drive (and back) Common sense (and Murphy's Law ) tells us that the shorter path is more advisable: 3. is "better" than 2. and 2. is "better" than 1. (in the sense that there are less things that may go bad). jaclaz

AFAICR WinsetupfromUSB: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=157 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=120444 Does work for x64 builds, but with SINGLE partition USB sticks ONLY. jaclaz