response 78 of 198:

Oct 25 21:37 UTC 2000

Actually, minix had plenty of appeal to hobbyists.  It also had a bunch
of obvious short-comings.  Linux was more or less a foregone conclusion
the moment the minix book hit the presses.

response 80 of 198:

Oct 26 16:49 UTC 2000

I'm sure he didn't mean "overnight."

Also, Linux can be run as single-user.  Since many OS's assume console
access means root access, you can assume root access under Linux too,
all it takes is personal use of the system.  In my unwashed days, I used
to do all my Linux time on the root account.  I certainly could do
as much harm with that as any user on a W9x system.

response 82 of 198:

Nov 16 19:13 UTC 2000

Tuesday we set up our Russian immigrant friends with a copy of Arachne (a DOS
based browser that claims to work on almost any computer with 1M RAM, XT or
later) so that they could read Russian news.  First we transferred my working
copy to Jim's 386SX laptop, which has a 21M hard drive and 3M RAM.  I deleted
the cache and headers, the gifs, and the ikons, which reduced it from 7M to
3M (also deleted all the documentation and sound players).  It ran okay, in
256 color greyscale (LCD monitor), but was sort of slow displaying a file once
it was downloaded.  They expressed an interest, so we transferred it to their
386SX (16 or 20?) with 2M RAM.  After about a half hour wait to download
(without graphics) the first page of text, from what must be an extremely
popular Russian news site (Russian or English versions), which had lots of
articles on the US election, it took about 15 minutes to actually load the
page, the hard drive light blinking furiously all the time.  Arachne does
indeed work with 2M RAM, but not in real time.  I would suggest 4.
His other use for the computer was to play chess.  One game let you set the
levels for beginner to advanced, and he complained that after a few moves the
computer would take 20 minutes for the next move when set to more than
beginner.  THe other program had you specify how long the computer should
think between moves.  Beginner was about 30 sec and we had to go to 100 sec
to see much difference.  These programs would obviously run much better on
a 486, which we set them up with next (but not one that will read the news
aloud to you).  I had the challenge of explaining in Russian that no, there
was not someone playing against him on another computer also connected to the
phone line (the phone line was not plugged into his computer at the moment)
but only a program on a disk that he could not see but which flashed lights
when the program was thinking.  

The new computer has to have a reset button, as that is how he knows to start
a new game or exit Pine.  (We deleted a few messages for him).  

response 84 of 198:

Nov 17 15:12 UTC 2000

On a DOS machine, hitting RESET won't hurt a thing as long as you don't have
write caching running and you aren't writing a file at the moment.

response 86 of 198:

Nov 17 21:50 UTC 2000

I tried numerous times to teach him to exit properly, to no avail.  He also
holds the mouse with the tail pointing towards him and the pad upside down
(Jim cleaned the mouse so this would not be necessary).  It was a major
accomplishment teaching this much to someone who had never even used a
typewriter, and was hoping the computer would be like a radio.  

Reset is a universal way to exit both Pine and the chess games, and has not
yet bothered any of them.  

I tried hard to explain that there was something inside the computer, behind
the flashing lights, that had the program stored on it when the floppy disk
drive was empty.  I may be able to explain that you should not hit the reset
button when this object is flashing its lights.  We may open up a computer
and show him what is in it (no little men playing chess).

I have come up with a way to let them go to some interesting sites - set him
up a home page on grex, with some Russian jokes, and with links to sites that
I think will be interesting, and set Arachne to use this as the home page that
comes up when he types a for arachne (Jim will make a batch file that also
dials).  So he can type p for pine, c for chess, and a for arachne.  Otherwise
I would have to teach him to use the hotlist in Arachne (after teaching
myself).  

We now have five beginners using grex for email, none of whom had ever used
a computer before, and three still type with one finger.  Magic.

response 88 of 198:

Nov 19 16:08 UTC 2000

        I found a bargain for two-button mice at Big Lots. Only $6 each.
You just have to put up with or enjoy that you are using Darth Vadar's
facemask as a mouse.  Also available in Stromtropper.

response 90 of 198:

Nov 20 10:09 UTC 2000

charcat waves a howdy at sindy and jim!  and thanks them for helping me get
started.  be patient with the new ones and tell them it gets easier  >^.^<

response 92 of 198:

Nov 20 22:42 UTC 2000

        And have you ever seen a Stormtropper aim well?

response 94 of 198:

Nov 22 02:34 UTC 2000

Hi back to charcat!   I have not been able to get Arachne 1.67 to switch
between the two Cyrillic fonts.  Whichever one you install second is what you
are stuck with forever, even though I type in both of them on the accept
char-set line.  I think it worked in version 1.60 but I cannot get that
version to work any more.  Is there some other place I should be putting
information about fonts, so that the program will know to convert from Windows
CP-1251 to KOI-8 (used more in Russia)?
        Jim picked out our oldest 486 computer, which has no Reset button, or
a power switch that resembles one.  The ON-OFF is a large lever at the back.
This should give him a few seconds to think about what he is doing.  Arachne
gets upset if you turn it off without exiting, and makes you do more
complicated things to compensate later.  He got a 'bad' 120M hard drive to
work by removing UNIX from it and now it works with DOS.  The computer has
a whopping 8M RAM and I figured out that to get the ISP to work with Arachne
you change the DNS numbers to the ones used by Bignet.  Is there anyone good
at this who could help with the Cyrillic fonts?  The author insists it works.

response 96 of 198:

Nov 25 20:25 UTC 2000

  You say it's not the battery, but it sure sounds like it's losing 
  the battery-backed BIOS preferences..

response 98 of 198:

Nov 26 03:17 UTC 2000

Were either of those "scales" a real voltmeter?

Your AT&T may have a bad clock chip, or a defective bios.  Is the bios
upgradable? Is the clock chip socketed?  A bad clock chip might have a
weak bit that works fine under full power, but when only powered by the
battery (typically 3.3V instead of 5V) isn't bistable anymore, and
flips.  That *ought* to produce a cmos checksum error, which the bios
ought to tell you.  From the sounds of it, the AT&T may predate the
common deployment of 3.5" drives, and it may have a stupid bug that
prevents them from working right in all circumstances.  A bad bit in the
bios could also generate this error.  Has it always had this problem?

The 40M drive problems sounds like a cabling or jumper issue.  I assume
this is ST-412 compatible, not IDE, ESDI or anything else.  Does a
different cable behave differently?  Is the drive select set via a twist
in the cable or by jumpers on the drive?  Do both positions on the cable
work?  Is there any obvious damage to the cable?  Also, silly question:
is the bios configured to look for two hard drives?