(no subject)

[theweaselking]

An interesting dillemma of design:

The "boot disk" for Windows XP SP2 is 8MB in size.

EDIT: For extra further consideration, a 98SE boot disk fits on a single floppy and allows you to run the NT installer, even if it can't run the XP setup.exe wtih all the pretty pictures. Ah, if only the documentation actually told me this instead of suggesting the six-disk monstrosity.

Comments

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, in the next version of Windows, there won't be ANY "boot from floppy" capability. Charming, isn't it?

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Largely that's because floppies have gone the way of the dodo in much the same way as 3.5 disks and zip drives.

I see no reason for microsoft to create such a piece of tech for new windows. OTOH, it'd be nice to have the ability to create one if you needed it. But I don't see a reason not to use a flashdrive for that.

[jerril]

Considering the number of PCs I'm seeing that don't even have a floppy drive? Not surprised. However, I bet we'll see "Boot from USB Key" soon. We can already boot from CD, and I have to say, that's pretty crash hot.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Boot from USB key (any USB Mass Storage Device, to be accurate) has been a standard feature of most motherboards for, what, about 2 years now? Hell, my current PC, which is over a year old now, can boot from CD, USBkey, USB-CD, SCSI (aka the SATA raid controller), and a few other things along with HDD and FDD. It's not necessarily always turned on, even when the PC supports it, though.

http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/SoulPad/soulpad.html

Floppy drives are dead, D-E-D, and should remain so. Unreliable pieces of shit. A 32 meg USB key costs less now than a box of floppies and has twice the capacity.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I agree, they're unreliable and suck.

They are, however, useful for booting a computer that dates from 2000 or 2001.

And I'm not willing to trash a computer that's only 5 years old when it still *works* for almost everything.

[jerril]

Well cat my dog. I apparently have to get out more. I replaced my mobo ~year.5 ago, but it was hardly cutting edge. It was more a case of "OMG my processor iz zorched oh my baby oh noes now I need a computer or I'll never play WoW again!!1" and I grabbed the cheapest set of good parts I could get on short notice.

Which still made my old processor which imploded look like an abacus.

But, long story short, nothing in the BIOS about booting from USB devices of any kind. SCSI, yes, and one or two absolutely wierd things I don't recognize or have, but no USB. Teardrop.

I obviously need a new computer :D

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

You were probably right on the edge of not having it, then.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

This does not help me when my computer BIOS says it can boot from CD, but then does not do so. This is an OLD computer.

And, of course, having done all that, XP won't read my perfectly good HDDs, and the makers of the drive controller, who HAVE a fix, have taken it off their website completely and require you to email them for it.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

If your computer is that old, you *really* don't want to install the successor to XP on it. Unless it has ungodly amounts of memory and a modern (and by that I mean currently-costing-over-$200) graphics card shoehorned into it, it'll be slower than treacle. Even with those it'd suck.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ungodly amounts of memory: 1 GB.
Modern graphics card: a nice 128 MB jobby.
Processer: genuine-P3 500MHz.

It's not a bad computer. I'm just frustrated by XP's inability to read an Ultra ATA/66 HDD. I may go back to 98SE, swear a bit, and return the copy of XP.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Or, alternately, pick up a second-line laptop and use that instead.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Frankly, any computer that doesn't run XP comfortably (and my personal cutoff for that would be about a gigahertz & 512 megs -- your PC can handle a P3-850 without problems, although that doesn't fix the motherboard issue) would not be something I'd call a good computer. I have unofficially mostly discontinued supporting family members with 9x almost a year ago.

$50-100 for a new motherboard (of the right kind) ought to get your PC a lot more up to date, incidentally. Especially in package-deal (rather than custom-put-together) PCs, the motherboard tends to be the thing that is most overlooked, while it's the most important thing for all sorts of strange and not-so-strange compatibility issues. Not saying that's what you should do, though, necessarily. $100-150 for a new motherboard and processor, while keeping the rest, would buy you at least a year, quite possibly two (especially if you're not that worried about using a vastly out of date machine). Some of that depends a bit on what *exactly* is inside your current one, but assuming VGA graphics card, the rest in PCI (you don't have an ISA modem or something do you?), that'll be fairly easy to match. The memory might be trickier, depending on whether it's PC100 or PC133 rated, and whether it's in 4x256M or 2x512. Many (cheaper, especially) motherboards only have 2 or 3 memory slots rather than 4. Also, after actually checking out what's on offer, motherboards taking SDR are resembling hen's teeth by now.

Doing the research: An Asus AGP motherboard with a Sempron 2600+ and 1 GB DDR would be about $250 at newegg, and I would say that they'd last another 3 years as fast enough (possibly with an extra gig of memory sometime) -- although the other bits like the DVD burner you don't have, the CD burner you may have, and the harddrives might get too slow and/or small for you (and your power supply may need an upgrade along with the new processor, if it's on the edge now).

Keeping the memory, you'd need to look a bit harder for motherboards that take SDR ram, which would constrain your choice of processor, pretty much to Socket-A. One of the Socket-A Semprons with a -- preferably an Asus, preferably one of their Deluxe versions -- old SDR/AGP motherboard will do you fine for a while, though.

Anyway, what you end up doing will have to depend on how comfortable you are digging around in the guts of your PC and the kind of spending pattern you prefer.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

This isn't my primary game-toy PC. This is my old PC, given to torrain, and the most complicated stuff it runs is photoshop and the like. Image editing is relatively memory-intensive, but should *not* be taxing even a machine this old.

> The memory might be trickier, depending on whether it's PC100 or PC133
> rated, and whether it's in 4x256M or 2x512.

PC/100, 2x512.

> although the other bits like the DVD burner you don't have,

There was a DVD burner in this machine, but I cannibalised that for my new toy.

> the CD burner you may have,

A perfectly good HP one. Again, it works just fine.

> and the harddrives might get too slow and/or small for you

Unlikely. It's got 120 GB of HDD space, and the speed of the drives is not a killer.

No ISA modem - there's a PCI USR modem in there that hasn't been used in years, and a PCI 10/100 network card.

> depend on how comfortable you are digging around in the guts of your PC

I *hate* motherboard replacements. Really, totally, completely hate MB and chip replacements. Anything else, I do happily - which is why this old computer has really good everything-but-MB-and-chip.

I'm thinking of cannibalising it again - lay out the $250-300 (Canadian) for a new MB, chip, RAM, power, and case, then toss over the video card, the 80GB HDD, and all the spiffy peripherals. The old machine would still have onboard video (and I've actually got the last pre-ugrade 64 MB graphics card still) and a 40 GB drive, and could be turned into a server easily enough.

> and the kind of spending pattern you prefer.

Ideally? Lay out money for this once, upgrade again in five years or so.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Ideally? Lay out money for this once, upgrade again in five years or so.

Yeah, so totally opposite to mine, which is relatively small amounts every year or so at most.

I'm thinking of cannibalising it again - lay out the $250-300 (Canadian) for a new MB, chip, RAM, power, and case, then toss over the video card, the 80GB HDD, and all the spiffy peripherals.

250-300 CAD sounds slightly optimistic for decent cpu/mb/ram/case+power, although you can certainly do it if you compromise a bit on the 'decent'. If you go for an Asrock (Asus' budget arm) combo rather than asus, frex, you save 40-50. Still, a gig of DDR memory will eat up well over 100 CAD all by itself, you're not going to get *any* case+power under 50 CAD, and that'll be a pretty crappy one, leaving at most 100-150 for motherboard and CPU. That's just about doable, but I'd spend a teensy bit more and go a bit further up the price/performance curve knee for the processor and get a good Asus Deluxe motherboard (which'll be over 100 by itself). My policy of only buying Asus motherboards (or sometimes Abit, Gigabyte, or MSI), and for my own PC only getting fancy ones, has paid major dividends over the years. They just work a lot better and can do more.

It was my experiences with two Pentium 1/K6-2 PC-Chips motherboards that caused me to swear a holy vow to never ever have anything produced by those people in my house ever again, though (I believe these are the people that, among others, do ECS/Elitegroup), and so far I've kept that vow.

The old machine would still have onboard video (and I've actually got the last pre-ugrade 64 MB graphics card still) and a 40 GB drive, and could be turned into a server easily enough.

But do you want a server? Most people don't really need one, and if they do, they mostly need one as a storage server, which a 40 gig drive effectively can't do.

This isn't my primary game-toy PC. This is my old PC, given to torrain, and the most complicated stuff it runs is photoshop and the like. Image editing is relatively memory-intensive, but should *not* be taxing even a machine this old.

Photoshop is among the heavier applications, especially if you want to respond snappily. It takes a lot of memory, yes (and my D-SLR wielding friend has 2 gigs for that), but it also takes a fair amount of CPU. Many filters (on highres digital photos) take dozens of seconds or even minutes on a brand new 3 GHz+ machine. Of course, some of them are also fairly easy to handle even for a 500 MHz machine, but I wouldn't in any way want to have a machine that slow for image editing duties.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> 250-300 CAD sounds slightly optimistic for decent cpu/mb/ram/case+power,

Local store where I know the workers and tend to pick up a discount has most of what I want for about $350. I was guessing low on my ideal price range.

I'm still considering it, regardless. I don't *do* hardware often enough to stay abreast of what's good.

> But do you want a server? Most people don't really need one

I don't need one either. "Need" is not important, here, not nearly as much as "I've never done it and it interests me".

> I wouldn't in any way want to have a machine that slow for image editing
> duties.

Consider that she's been running a P166 with 128 MB of RAM to do everything she wants to do, for years, I doubt it's going to be that big a deal.

This is, of course, The Catch(tm): We're not discussing using this machine for anything approaching modern high-end computing. That's what my machine is for, and, frankly, mine falls short for the heavy workhorse applications. It's a great *game* machine and can do anything adequately.