|
Grex > Health > #87: Sindi Keesan's Lymphoma Journal |  |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 480 responses total. |
keesan
|
|
response 417 of 480:
| 
Dec 16 14:03 UTC 2003 |
My immune system ought to start coming back tonight or tomorrow. I am
coughing and have runny eyes again. My hands are numb all over. But I
managed to sleep, on and off, a large part (3/4?) of the time between 11 pm
and 8 am. My hair is coming out faster. Jim says he is interested in
knitting but I already have enough wool caps.
Today we hope to make me the start of a linux/DOS computer. I discovered that
I cannot put in a sound card to play with in that computer unless I give up
the ISA modem or the Hercules Graphics Card because it has only two ISA slots.
A previous computer would not work at all with HGC in any of its three ISA
slots. What do people put into FIVE pci slots? Winmodem, windows-only sound,
network card, and what else?
|
gull
|
|
response 418 of 480:
|
Dec 16 14:43 UTC 2003 |
Hmm...the PCI slots in my desktop computer contain a video card (which
is also a TV tuner and video capture card), a sound card, a DVD hardware
decoder card, and a network card. If I threw in a modem I'd have five
slots full.
Of course if I bought a motherboard now it would probably come with
video, sound, and a network interface on-board, so I wouldn't need to
use slots for those unless I wanted something better than what was built in.
|
twenex
|
|
response 419 of 480:
|
Dec 16 15:20 UTC 2003 |
FireWire cards, IrDA cards, IRMAboard 3270 terminal emulation boards;
someone somewhere has probably come up with a board with PC Card
slots; the Amiga 1200 desktop computer had a PC Card slot built in;
someone developed an external SCSI + NIC card for it.
|
gull
|
|
response 420 of 480:
|
Dec 16 15:36 UTC 2003 |
Wow, there are PCI 3270 terminal emulators? The last one I saw was
8-bit ISA, and was in an IBM XT.
Boards with PC Card slots not only exist, many PCI wireless network
cards are actually PC Card-to-PCI bridge cards that you slide a PC Card
wireless adapter into. Some of these are more full-featured than
others. The one that's sold for Orinoco cards is actually a
full-fledged PC Card bridge that you can plug any PC Card device into.
|
twenex
|
|
response 421 of 480:
|
Dec 16 16:21 UTC 2003 |
I don't know that there are specifically PCI 3270 cards, no.
|
keesan
|
|
response 422 of 480:
|
Dec 16 23:30 UTC 2003 |
We don't have any TV or DVD cards, or any need for network cards, and as far
as I know all the pci modems and sound cards only work with Windows. I don't
really need sound for anything, I guess. The video card in there is AGP.
So I have five empty pci slots.
Jim went off to pick up some books on C++ despite feeling like his cold will
never end. He dressed in a goretex raincoat instead of a warm jacket so he
would not get overheated biking. He can get a flu shot even if he has a cold,
as long as he has no fever, if he gets to the County Health Dept. in Ypsi
before they run out, because as a pair we count as 'high risk'. I am not
supposed to catch flu from him and I can't get the shot myself. Maybe we will
take the car to Ypsi Thursday if he feels better since my immune system is
due to come back by then. There is also a holiday party at the Library for
the Blind and Physically Disabled, where he gets his books on tape, halfway
to Ypsi, which would be our big event of the week. I am getting a bit tired
of having to avoid people.
My friend in Macedonia writes that her boyfriend has been to Greece and Serbia
for medical reasons. He got his stomach cancer diagnosed in Bulgaria.
Macedonia does not have a lot of medical equipment. He has a doctor friend
in Toronto where I think he might get treated. He has to continue working
until spring first. I sure have it easy. So what if my ankles and wrists
are numb today and my tongue feels sandpapered again.
The reason for the narrow stripes in the darker areas of scanned photos is
scanner noise. Jim thinks he has a way to fix this by setting the black and
white somehow. The library book also explains how to use a black and white
scanner to scan color by scanning three times with colored filters and then
combining the outputs. The noise is amplified when the signal is weak (which
it is in the darker areas). At least we won't run out of toys.
Are the latest computers now coming with TV tuners and DVD players built in?
I thought PCI cards (PCMCIA?) were only for laptops.
|
tod
|
|
response 423 of 480:
|
Dec 16 23:33 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
|
keesan
|
|
response 424 of 480:
|
Dec 16 23:42 UTC 2003 |
I meant are PC-cards the same as PCMCIA. Typo.
Yesterday we hooked up some low technology to our high technology in the form
of a boombox with 'line in' plugged into the sound output of our Windows
computer and tried to listen to Realaudio. I think it sounded better a couple
of years ago with a slower modem. The sound keeps cutting out now. And there
are too many formats - streaming MP3, Windows Media Player (somewhere it said
this is also MP3), Ogg Vorbis (????), and Realaudio, and lots of required
plugins and things still don't work unless I download the latest WMP for 60
minutes - forget it. I am taping CDs instead. Radio Swiss had nice music.
Jim fixed a couple of computer speakers to sound slightly better by stuffing
them with old orlon socks. The Linux Realaudio software appears to be about
2 versions out of date. Can Linux do the other streaming formats? (In a
computer with more ISA slots, of course).
|
tod
|
|
response 425 of 480:
|
Dec 16 23:49 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
|
scott
|
|
response 426 of 480:
|
Dec 17 00:17 UTC 2003 |
Part of the standards for PCMCIA cards were upgraded after a couple years for
better drivers, more funtionality, etc. They also decided that "PCMCIA" was
too hard to remember or say, and created the term "PC card" as a replacement.
|
keesan
|
|
response 427 of 480:
|
Dec 17 02:51 UTC 2003 |
We have discovered that of our 11 pci video cards, only 2 of them will work
in our 300 MHz pentium. So will an AGP card. The AGP card is S3 and my
DOS ghostscript works only with Trident, Tseng, ATI or SVGA16. Does anyone
know if linux ghostscript has VESA or S3 support? One of the working PCI
cards is a Tseng but it has only 1M RAM in VESA mode and 256 colors in Tseng
mode. Why won't the other cards work here????
|
twenex
|
|
response 428 of 480:
|
Dec 17 09:36 UTC 2003 |
ghostscript should work with any card you can get the X window system working
for. I haven't heard of ghostscript being used with the text interface of
Linux, but again, it should work with any card that the text interface works
with, if you can. (The reason why DOS ghostscript only works with a few cards
is probably because many DOS cards do nasty hardware-dependent things with
the hardware, and they'll have only programmed it to do those things on those
three cards. In Linux, "ordinary" programs (like Mozilla, lynx, OpenOffice,
pine - an emailer - etc., *can't* do "nasty hardware-dependent things".
|
twenex
|
|
response 429 of 480:
|
Dec 17 10:25 UTC 2003 |
s/many DOS cards do/many DOS programs do/
|
gull
|
|
response 430 of 480:
|
Dec 17 14:24 UTC 2003 |
Re resp:425: "Cardbus" works into this somewhere, too. I know that the
Cardbus cards I've seen are keyed differently than older PCMCIA cards
(the ridge on the side is a different height) and won't fit in some
really old laptops. I think this is a 5V vs. 3.3V distinction.
We have two laptops at work that will only take the older cards, which I
can no longer get. Fortunately one of them just died in a way I can't
fix, so I may finally get a budget to replace it.
|
keesan
|
|
response 431 of 480:
|
Dec 17 15:06 UTC 2003 |
Regarding ghostscript, I installed the console version of it, not X. In DOS,
it works properly with Tseng but with Trident it displays and prints sideways.
I set -sDEVICE=tvga as instructed for Trident. With ega and vga the Trident
card also displays sideways. I will experiment with S3 and linux console
ghostcript. Jim disconnected that computer from the monitor that works with
S3 so he could experiment with scanners and Win98. I will put it back.
Got to learn to print with linux soon.
Last night, I hope, was my low point for immunity because I was up again
coughing my head off until after 3 am. Jim was also up late but he says this
is because he was testing a CD that turned out to be defective (the copy).
We also have an ISA 56K modem that works perfectly with basiclinux but Win98
says it cannot communicate with it. I will stick that in the linux-only
computer. Standard non-winmodem.
Jim says if you make three primary partitions (for Windows, DOS and Linux)
Windows will not recognize the other partitions - is this correct? Linux will
recognize all of them, and DOS two of them. We have one 20G drive. I would
consider putting in a Windows-only sound card and using Windows only as an
internet radio since the Linux Realaudio is out of date.
|
gull
|
|
response 432 of 480:
|
Dec 17 16:35 UTC 2003 |
Windows will recognize a DOS partition, but not a Linux partition.
|
keesan
|
|
response 433 of 480:
|
Dec 17 20:20 UTC 2003 |
DOS won't recognize a linux partition either, but will Windows recognize a
SECOND primary partition? I really don't care, won't be using Windows for
much of anything except to play with realaudio.
Today we went through our CD-ROM drive collection. One requires a SONY
controller, another might also require something odd as it worked in the 486
it came out of but won't work with a regular IDE controller. Recycled them
both. We chose a drive that has little tabs that slide over the CD to hold
it in place when the drive is vertical instead of horizontal because I want
to put the tower computer under the monitor to save desk space. If i put it
under the desk I cannot get at the back of it.
Jim is thinking of putting in a second CD-ROM drive in teh computer with the
CD writer but someone said it makes more accurate copies to copy to hard drive
first and then CD, rather than between CD-ROM reader and writer. ? The
second drive will be a challege since he used the space where the floppy drive
was supposed to go to attach a hard drive after the previous owner put this
out at the curb with the cage removed, and then put in a 5 1/2" version of
a 3 1/2" floppy drive in the large bay where the CD-ROM drive is supposed to
go. He will improvise a floppy drive cage somehow if it is really better to
copy between drives. It might at least be less confusing.
I read up on ghostscript and it looks like you might need to run it under X,
which is a nuisance.
Since this is my 'journal' I guess I can post anything I like in it, meaning
whatever I happen to be doing while surviving chemotherapy, but this is
certainly drift. Today I swept snow off the neighbor's walk and discovered
that I get out of breath really fast. I have a long way to go before I feel
physically normal again. Supposedly it takes 6-12 months after therapy ends.
The neighbor is out now getting even with us.
|
twenex
|
|
response 434 of 480:
|
Dec 17 20:45 UTC 2003 |
By al means keep up the drift if you want to. I'm finding it
interesting to keep up with your everyday trials and tribbleations,
myself.
My understanding re: primary drives is this:
Linux or Windows, or just about any OS can be installed on a primary
partition. non-MS OSes can also be installed on logical partitions.
Most non-MS OSes can be coerced into reading Windows/DOS partitions,
although not all can read and write NTFS paritions (the type used by
NT, W2K, and XP.)
Further, an MS OS will recognize other primary or logical partitions
on the same drive, if they are formatted by an MS OS (caveat: DOS
cannot understand filesystems formatted for NT and versions of Windows
later than 3.1, at least not without added drivers). If >1 MS OS or
=>1 MS OS and OS/2 are installed on primary partitions, each OS will
see its own drive as C: and number the rest accordingly.
MS-OSes (anmd OS/2) number all primary partitions before all logical
partitions, thus with two hard drives in the same computer, each of
which has 2 primary and two logical partitions, the numbering for MS
OSes and Linux will be as follows:
Drive 1: MS Linux
Primary 1: C: /dev/hda1
"" 2: D: /dev/hda2
Logical 1: G: /dev/hda5*
Logical 2: H: /dev/hda6
Drive 2:
Primary 1: E: /dev/hdb1**
"" 2: F: /dev/hdb2
Logical 1: I: /dev/hdb5
"" 2: J: /dev/hdb6
* Linux reserves partition numbers 1-4 to primary partitions, whehter
or not there are four primary partitions, and always numbers logical
partitions from 5.
** This assumes that Drives 1 and 2 are on the same IDE channel. on
systems with 2 IDE channel, Drive 2 may be hdb, hdc, or, rarely, hdd.
|
keesan
|
|
response 435 of 480:
|
Dec 18 03:17 UTC 2003 |
If you use DR-DOS the partitioning gets further complicated (things are
numbered in an unexpected order in linux). DR-DOS also won't recognize a
FAT32 partition so if Windows shares a computer with DOS it needs to be
Windows (MS) DOS. It should be interesting to have three partitions each
formatted differently, on the same computer.
I got 2 out of 3 ESS pci soundcards working with Win98. The third was dead
but it took a while to figure this out since you cannot hear anything at all
with headphones plugged into the speaker hole like you can with Creative sound
cards since they have no amplifier (except the dead one did, and it probably
burnt out). Also finally found the right video driver but did not think it
was working until restarting Windows. It improved from 16 color VGA to 256
color 1024 and after restarting to 1600 res and 64K colors.
Jim somehow managed to get a second CD ROM drive in his computer with the
hard drive/floppy drive cage missing. I saw him doing something with a hot
glue gun to cover up the surgery. He now has four CD burner programs to play
with and will compare them and try to make two CDs into one 90 minute CD -
is it possible to make a 90 minute CD? I made a 90 minute tape of them
already.
We are hoping tomorrow to be able to get Jim his flu shot. My cough continues
to be pretty annoying - this morning I nearly threw up coughing again - and
the platelet count is still down so I am still using old sheets to blow my
nose into. I think I gained back the weight I lost during the first 10 days
of the cough. It helps to drink orange juice with everything since everything
tastes sour and orange juice is expected to taste sour. We mixed it with
pineapple juice.
Somehow the basement is not getting insulated. It has only been 21 years
since the materials were purchased. Maybe when Jim feels better?
The bill for the latest chemotherapy arrived. The cost of my miracle drug
went up this time from $5000 to $5900, wonder why. This means I will be
paying the full deductible next year for four CT scans and one chemotherapy
since they add to at least $15,000. Two tylenol pills are $4.29. I was
thinking of bringing my own to save the insurance company some money but it
seems to upset the nurses when you even take your own vitamin pills.
|
twenex
|
|
response 436 of 480:
|
Dec 18 10:40 UTC 2003 |
Bummer about the bills, the pills and the cough. Bummer about hte
insulation, yay for the weight gain. I believe the limit on CD-R(W)s
is 80 mins, if you get ones that are specifically meant to last 80
mins, and you're lucky.
I never tried DR-DOS (my first IBM-compatible was a Win95 machine. It
is now rebranded as OpenDOS, I think, might try it out.
I regularly have (more than) three partitions on my computer. Assuming
I have Windows on at all, I usually have 1 partition for some flavour
of Windows, 1 foran "expirimental" OS/Linux distro (slack, at the
moment), and a couple for my main Linux distro - at the moment I have
/, swap, and /home partitions though I plan to reformat and probably
have /, swap, /home, /usr, /usr/local, /opt and /var.
This is turning into Sindi's Lymphoma and Sindi and Jeff's OS Journal.
Oh well.
|
keesan
|
|
response 437 of 480:
|
Dec 18 12:00 UTC 2003 |
We put all of our linux partitions into one ext2 partition which we formatted
all at once. Why do you have separate ones?
The weight gain was probably just clothing. Right now I just weighed in at
104 pounds, which after eating breakfast might be back up to 105. I think
my neutrophil count might finally be going up slightly today. Got to sleep
at a reasonable hour, woke coughing at 2:30 and again at 5:30 and then sneezed
three times, which is a sign of some progress except I sneezed blood (low
platelet count). I probably should not go sneeze at people at the library
for the blind party. We will reevaluate the situation around noon and maybe
vaccinate Jim tomorrow instead. I have been a 'virtual person' for 2.5 weeks
now and would like to stop avoiding the rest of the world soon. I think Scott
and Slynne said this cold lasts just under 3 weeks but without an immune
system I bet it lasts a bit longer. I just washed four more handkerchiefs
and filled a fifth. Cough cough, cough cough.
I think my legs and knees and elbows are a bit less wobbly today, right on
schedule, and my hands not quite as numb. I am a bit sore in the spleen area
again (I was sore all last cycle but it improved for ten days now) probably
from the coughing. My tongue even feels a bit less sandpapered and my throat
is not raw. I get to feel better again for ten days now and after that it
is only two more treatments and I will feel just as good as today in six
weeks. Assuming I avoid the flu successfully.
Some of the side effects have disappeared or are less severe. This cycle only
one very small area of shredded skin around one fingernail. No jaw or upper
arm pain (which occurred this time of previous cycles). Occasional aches in
the IV hand but previous cycles it hurt for 1-7 days straight. No peeling
skin on my feet. No thrush or mouth sores.
Things still don't taste very good but no nausea. No headache (yet) this
cycle, maybe in a few days. Hot flashes continue and it still hurts to sit.
I should go lie down again for a while as the coughing has stopped.
|
twenex
|
|
response 438 of 480:
|
Dec 18 16:38 UTC 2003 |
Reasons to have separate linux partitions:
1. If you have an old BIOS, and more htan 1 OS on the same disk, you
might need to make sure that all bootable partitions are under the old
8MB limit, in case the BIOS cannot boot partitions above 8MB. So you
would need a x00MB /boot partition for Linux.
2. If you need to reinstall, or switch to a different distro, and want
to keep your data and any programs you may have installed that aren't
part of the standard distro, you can make separate /usr/local (that's
a separate partition "local" under "/usr") and /home partitions that
you tell the installation program not to format, thus preserving those
progs and data. You can also have a couple of distros/UNIX-like OSes
and keep all your data on one partition - though you'll probably have
to have different user accounts on each, as each seems to store
slightly different config files which could mess up your settings if
you try to keep them together. For example, you could have accounts
"debu", "slacku" and "rhu", for Debian, Slack, and RedHat, and on each
distro create a group "user", writeable by al members, and create aa
folder /home/data, onwed by group "user", with links to it in
/home/rhu/data, /home/slacku/data, and /home/debu/data; or you could
just use two of the distros for "bumming around in", and do any real
work in one distro anmd not bother with the whole /home/data thing.
3. By separating / (or / and /usr) separate partitions, you lessen the
chances that these partitions are going to be messed up if you mess
up, say, the partition with /home in it; also, if you make /usr a
separate partition, you can make this partition read-only, increasing
security still further.
4. The other reasons all relate to servers. If you have, say, separate
/, /boot, /tmp, /usr, /usr/local, /opt, and /var filesystems, users
cannot accidentally or deliberately fill up the whole system by, say,
keeping huge mail files in /var. (Although this is most useful in
servers, nothing prevents you from doing it on desktops or
single-function boxes like a computer set up to act purely as a
firewall.) (Note that you can have a separate partion, for any or all
of /usr and /usr/local).
5. One other reason that may not relate to servers. If you have two or
more disks, and want to use more than one disk for linux, before Linux
version 2.4 it was not possible to make a partition that covered all
or part of more than one disk; thus you had to (and stil can) split
partitions off so that, for example, / is on /dev/hda1 and /usr, /var,
etc, are all on another (presumably much larger) hard disk.
(Unix puristsmay replace the word "partition" with "filesystem" in
mine and Sindi's last responses, passim.)
|
gull
|
|
response 439 of 480:
|
Dec 18 17:22 UTC 2003 |
I think you mean the 8 *giga*byte limit, not 8 megabytes. Technically
the BIOS limit on older machines is at 1024 cylinders, if I remember right.
For home systems I often just create /boot and put everything else in /.
For servers I like to seperate out /var, /usr, and /tmp, and sometimes
other filesystems depending on the function.
There are other good reasons for creating multiple partitions. Some
boot loaders have trouble booting systems where root isn't one of a few
specific filesystem types -- for example, some Linux distributions can't
boot with a ReiserFS partition as root. But you might have reasons for
wanting to use that filesystem for other parts of the system. Also, if
a filesystem gets corrupted the damage is limited to one partition, so
for example having / seperate from /home means if you blow up /home, you
can still boot.
|
twenex
|
|
response 440 of 480:
|
Dec 18 17:31 UTC 2003 |
I do indeed mean the 8 GIGAbyte or 1024-cylinder limit, and thanks for
clearing up the bit about blowing up /home.
|
keesan
|
|
response 441 of 480:
|
Dec 18 18:06 UTC 2003 |
I thought it was a 1G limit - is 1024 cylinders 8G? We boot from the DOS
partition with loadlin and make DOS the first partition (or Windows 98).
I am still operating as root except when using dosemu (which requires that
it be used by 'user') but someone said to be 'user' when going online with
a browser. I think you can dial as root and then switch to another terminal
and be user before loading the browser or telnet program. I have not managed
to get the dialer working except as root.
What is the purpose of using three different linux distributions? Fun?
We were going to go on our big adventure but I started coughing again. I
cough so hard that my stomach contents starts rising - I can taste it. This
never happened before - is it specific to this particular cold?
How difficult is it to get a CD writer working with linux?
|