Re: can I use Apple II with a vga/dvi monitor? how to get software?

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <RL7mi.114117$NV3.3285@pd7urf2no>,
The Wizard of Oz  <wizard@emeraldcity.gov> wrote:

> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> In article <l%Mli.111516$NV3.19072@pd7urf2no>,
.............
>>>         This was back in 2000. No administrator accounts.
>> 
>> Windows NT had admin and user accounts before 2000 ....
> 
>         Never said I was running an NT class of Windows.

Most people didn't back then - but you could have, if stability and
robustness had been important enough for you.  On my work I ran NT
from 1995 and on.... I never had a disk crash.

>>>> 2. You didn't back up your stuff properly - so you lost a months (sic!)
>>>> worth of work instead of merely a few hours worth of work.
>>>         It WAS backed up. To the second hard drive in the same system.
>> 
>> :-)
>> 
>> A really proper backup shouldn't just be stored outside your computer,
>> but even in a different building!  The building where you're working
>> can catch fire.....
> 
>         Correct. However you have to work with the constraints of what you 
> have. If all you can afford is a second hard drive in the same machine 
> then that's all you can do. It's a different story now though. 
> Especially since people are scrapping fully functional machines just to 
> run Vista.

A backup doesn't have to reside in another computer to be "elsewhere"!
You could have written your backups to CD-R or DVD-R disks, or backup
tapes, and then stored the backup media somewhere else.  Today you can
also put your backups on some suitable storage space on the Internet.
 
>> There are btw hard drive recovery services one can buy, which can do
>> really amazing things at recovering seemingly lost data.  These people
>> pick the hard drive apart, remove the magnetic disks, insert them in
>> their own recovery apparatus and read the disks, one by one, as much
>> as they can on every disk.  They they put it all together to one big
>> disk image, as complete as they can.  These services aren't cheap of
>> course, but can still be worthwhile in situations like the one you
>> encountered, where one full month's of work was at stake.
> 
>         $20,000 to start and they'll get the new drive back to the customer 
> within a month. This is good if there is physical damage to the hard 
> drive. In my case the physical mechanisms were fine (still work in 
> fact). It was the content of the hard drives which got scrambled. The 
> modern way to recover data (I've done this for countless friends running 
> Windows) is to try to back up the files under another operating system. 
> Then reformat the hard drive and put the files back. The other way to do 
> this (assuming the modern method doesn't work) is to send the drive to a 
> company associated with the CIA. They are able to recover data up to 13 
> previous reformats ago. Starting cost is $200,000.

That stuff is overkill for normal disk crashes!  You do the stuff you
describe here only if you want to recover data others have
deliberately erased from their disks.

A third option is this: get a new, blank, harddrive, format it and
reinstall Windows on that drive and make it the primary HD on your
system.  Install your original harddrive as the secondary HD.  Boot up
your machine from the new drive, and then read your documents from
your old drive.  If needed, let some disk recovery utility work on the
original drive.

I did this on a friend's computer the other week: their computer just
refused to boot.  When trying to boot the system CD and telling it to
either reinstall Windows or reformat the drive, the system CD got so
confused by the damaged registry that it crashed!  So I bought a new
harddrive for them, reinstalled Windows on it, installed their
original harddrive as a secondary drive and then I could just read all
their data from the original drive without problems.  A virus scanning
program later found some viruses on that harddrive -- now they've
learnt to _not_ log in to an administrator's account all the time....

 
>         My solution of scrapping Microsoft for everything but games works very 
> well for me. YMMV. Of course there are those who believe the propaganda 
> and will never consider the option.

One should of course not believe in any propaganda - neither the
propaganda that says you shouldn't run anything but Micro$oft'$ stuff,
nor the propaganda that says you should avoid Microsoft like the
plague.  As usual, the truth is somewhere in between.

The major advantage of Windows is the very large amount of software
available for it, which means you're most likely to find the
application you need for that OS.  That's why Linux has Wine, and
that's why modern Macs also can run Windows.  And that's why you run
your games on Windows rather than on Linux..... :-)

>                                 Later
>                                 Mike
-- 
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