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Old December 19th 17, 03:35 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
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Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

On Tue, 19 Dec 2017 07:56:17 -0500, Paul wrote:

Ammammata wrote:
Il giorno Sat 16 Dec 2017 08:26:40p, ** ha inviato su
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general il messaggio
. Vediamo cosa ha scritto:

This is an old IBM brand computer from about 2001


an almost seventeen-years-old computer is like a Ford Model T
you can't ask the hardware to be fully functional after so much time
it's your mistake to pretend to work safely with it

imho


I have a few 18 year old machines, still in mint condition.

No complaints. The installed OS still runs, just like it used to.

These machines use a lot of electricity though. One machine
I measured some time ago, it used 150W just sitting there
doing nothing. Like it was a V8 car with big fins on the back :-)
The machines back then, had hardly any power-saving features.
That's one reason they make poor choices if your
electricity is expensive.

*******

They won't boot off a DVD though, because when the machines
were invented, DVDs didn't exist, and nobody prepared
for the arrival of DVDs.

I even put a DVD drive in the machines to test this.
I was disappointed, but not surprised.

On earlier computers, some of the booting process
is done by "hard drive emulation". The BIOS converts
other device types to "look like" a hard drive. And
part of that methodology involves "fixed size disks".
So when the DVD came along, it was much larger than
anything the designers had anticipated. Amongst
other problems. I don't think the BIOS knows what
the DVD command set looks like either. It wasn't
an El Torito problem I was seeing, it was a physical
layer problem - the BIOS just didn't want to touch
the drive.

One other quirk someone else in the newsgroups tested
at the time, is they inserted a SATA PCI card into
the machine. And the BIOS just ignored it, and the
OS couldn't use it. So again, if you use hardware
cards the BIOS has never heard of, there will be
problems.

But these really aren't surprises. It's to be
expected things like this will happen.

I was booting something just yesterday, and in the
boot log on the screen it said "18493843248 GB disk".
Then the next line said "this is a really big disk".
No ****. So again, modern software is never prepared
for surprises, even if the software was written
in 2017. I don't know how the booting OS in that
case, had managed to query the disk drive, but
it got an absurdly large (wrong) size from it. No software
is really "prepared for infinity and beyond" :-)

The main problem with old computers, is there's no
decent web browser to use on them. That's why the
machines sit in the Junk Room.

Paul


Interesting. I never knew these old computers could not handle DVDs.
I've never used much optical media of any sort, so I never even thought
about it.

I do somewhat question where the dividing line is as far as power
hungry computers, VS those which are less hungry. This old machine never
seems to throw out much heat. It's a basic Pentium with coppermine
processor. The original power supply was 100W, which was too small as
soon as I added extra HDDs and other stuff. That PS failed, so I
replaced it with a 350W supply which I have used since.

However some of the old dual core machines were power hogs. I knew
someone with a Dell dual core machine that had 3 fans. You did not dare
run that thing in hot weather if the house had no AC. One of the fans
died in that machine and it was hot enough to fry an egg on it. I
replaced the fan for that person. What amazed me was that machine
running XP home ed. was 5 times slower than my 2001 machine I am using
right now. I actually thought the CPU had gotten so hot that it was
fried, but I was told that machine had always been that slow. A few
years later I acquired 2 similar machines. One was identical, the other
similar. Both of them were also very slow, and ran very hot.

I have since learned that those early dual core Dell machines were
always slow and were lousy computers. (Because of that, I'd never buy a
Dell). Although I never measured the power draw on those machines, I
know that heat is power consumption and those beasts were almost like
electric heaters. I am sure they sucked lots of power.

But the newer stuff runs cooler even with quad cores and a lot more
power needs. So, I kind of wonder if my 2001 machine is really not all
that bad on power use???

You got that right as far as no browser support anymore.... I keep
hoping someone will create a browser for them, but I wont hold my
breath.
I do have to keep asking why the internet is so bloated these days. It
actually worked better in the old days and was 10X more useful back
then. nd no, it's NOT videos thats causing the problems. I can run darn
near any video on this old computer with no problems, unless I am
defragging or running a HDD scanner at the same time. (Using Win98).

Of course the video software matters too. I use Media Player Classic.
Simple to use with no crap and no bloat.