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Sunday, 18 March 2001
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So I have half a gig of new RAM sitting on my work table, and an assortment of other parts — I just need to buy a 300-watt ATX case and a Socket7 CPU cooler, and I can start playing mix-n-match again. Yesterday I got the privilege of buying my daughter some new catcher's shinguards, batting gloves, and a carryall bag. Sports are expensive. But I guess that snow-covered yards notwithstanding, spring must be in the air. Or at least spring training.
Funny how I always hear from my daughter when she needs new equipment. But seriously, as other divorced dads can attest, any excuse to spend time with your kids is a good excuse. If it's expensive, well... at least I can honestly say that I enjoy every minute with her. It's hard not seeing your kids grow up; hard not to be there when they fall off their bikes; hard to hear about the latest visit to emergency over the phone. Yeah, it's no fun being the single parent, either, and being the one who has to get up in the middle of the night and clean up the messes. It's just no fun all the way around, and so it behooves one to make the most of every opportunity to enjoy one's family. So when you're wiping that little runny nose for the third cold this winter, remind yourself that it could be a lot worse. You could instead not be wiping that little nose. Ah, well, I wax maudlin. Sorry.
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Monday, 19 March 2001
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Today I get to keep whacking away at that dad-blasted Gateway notebook. I finally got NT on it by scraping the hard disk down to bare metal, but it Shouldn't Oughta Hafta Be That Way. Now I have to get the PC Card enabling software for NT (Card Executive) working, then install the network card. Then I get to try to shoehorn Win98 onto it without munging up the NT install. I gotta say, Notebooks Is Hard. I've done this stuf umpteen times on desktops, both brand-name and deservedly nameless, and it's just plain waaayyyyy easier. Poop. But I ain't givin' up just yet. Meanwhile, of course, the hapless end user bites his nails down to the elbow, wondering how he's ever going to get up to speed again. I'm afraid I lack the true BOFH mindset, that would allow me to sail serenely above his worries... Ah well, stiff upper lip and all that.
Bo Leuf chips in (with the wonderful subject line of "bootiboot"):
Ah, the fun of getting multiple MS systems to coexist on a notebook :(
Plus I have one notebook with a mobo that apparently doesn't like 98 or ME in any shape, size or form. Sensible of it, I suppose...
Actually, notebook and NT4 is not necessarily a problem -- I've found this combo to be both stable and reliable, more so than Win2000. But I note that since you were diddling with Win98 and NT4, the caution in order is that Win98 PnP can redo resource settings so that simple reboot into NT4 retains the PnP allocation's possibly non-default settings for some devices. If that happens to be something critical, then NT4 is dead as far as warm reboots go. A cold power-off restart generally resets all devices to default settings, which is how NT4 saw them when installed. UNLESS of course NT install and hardware detect is done after a warm reboot from say 98, after which chances are NT will fall over on subsequent cold starts. And so on...
My personal gripe is that NT4 (still) can't be retro-re-installed once Win2000 has been on the drive. I'm (still) probing the why of this should be so, albeit I know I can restore an image, and using the Win2000 NTLDR et al get the NT4 running again. But that's cheating, sort of.
/ Bo
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Tuesday, 20 March 2001
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Well, this morning I finally handed that annoying Gateway notebook back to the end user. Everything works pretty well, other than a few little minor annoyances. I'd like to have had the rest of the morning to really configure both the NT and 98 installs exactly the way I wanted them; dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s, don't you know. But this is real life, and it just doesn't usually work that way.
The way it ended up was: NT would only install onto a completely blank drive. So I gave it a 2-gig primary FAT partition and set it up. Then I used Partition Magic 6 to hide that partition, and created a new 2-gig primary FAT partition for installing 98. When the OS installs were done, and completely unaware of each other (I generally prefer it that way), I created a 2-gig extended FAT partition at the end of the free space for data that both operating systems would see, and made the rest of the free space in the middle a single primary NTFS partition, onto which the user will install his many large NT-only proprietary apps.
So when NT fires up, it sees its own primary FAT partition as drive C:, the extended FAT partition as D:, and the big primary NTFS partition (since NT can see multiple primary partitions) as drive E:, and nothing else. And when 98 fires up, it sees its own primary FAT partition as drive C: and the extended FAT partition as D:, and nothing else. So both systems can use the extended FAT data partition for documents and such, that might need to be accessed from either OS; but neither OS can see the other's proprietary system partitions. Ignorance is bliss. Of course, that meant duplicate installations of Office 2000, but what the hey. If I were going to be really anal-retentive about it, I would've created a separate 2-gig FAT partition just for common apps: I still would've had to install them twice, to update the respective registries, but the files would've been in the same place, with the second install merely overwriting the first. I've done that before, but I figured this thing was getting complicated enough.
And how does he choose which OS runs at boot time? The NT boot loader doesn't really cope with hidden partitions, since it was basically made to look at "normal" disk configurations. Boot Magic (comes with PM, not sold separately), installed into the 98 partition. It can't install under NT, but once installed under 98, it reads and writes NTFS just fine, if not speedily. See, ya just need the right tools for the job. And now that's out of my thinning hair.
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Wednesday, 21 March 2001
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Today my boss moves into my little lab with me. He's a hyper-kinetic ADD type, but likeable and a good motivator. His wife's a schoolteacher, and lemme tell ya, she prob'ly doesn't need any more kids than hubby and the bunch at school. So we're cleaning up old dreck, sorting flotsam from jetsam, and getting ready to sell it all off to the highest bidder. He's keeping me busy. Now I get to learn how to sell stuf on eBay, instead of just buying. See, work is a good thing. Every so often you learn something there that can be usefully applied to your own real life.
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Thursday, 22 March 2001
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I'm bored. Bored, bored, bored... I know, thanks for sharing.
I've been trying to find a cheap ATX case. But my choices are either1) buy whatever's available locally (not so cheap), or 2) buy remotely, and pay $10-20 to ship it. Ack. That means that to be a good deal, a long-distance order must be at least $20-30 cheaper than what's available here. Which is typically $60-100, for a 250-300W mini- or mid-tower Antec case. Maybe it's time to go to one of those ubiquitous computer shows that come around every month or so. I saw one on a billboard for April 1st. I hate those shows. Tons of Taiwanese dreck (there must be an appropriate Chinese equivalent for that), crowds of shuffling bargain hunters... And no assurance that your selection will function when you get it home; and if it doesn't, "Who ya gonna call?"
See, thinking out loud like this is beneficial — when I see it in print, I quickly conclude that while the idea of a bargain is sweet, I really should just shut up and pony up the shekels for something local. Of course, any suggestions would be welcome. I'd really like to get that PC built for my daughter. What we need around here is a Fry's. What we got around here is a CompUSA. Feh.
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Friday, 23 March 2001
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No entry.
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Saturday, 24 March 2001
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No entry.