Greetings all!

It has been a long time since I have seen anything from the BBS scene.  For
ones who may not of known, I am the old operator of CHRIS-CO BBS; hence my real
name is Chris, but have always gone by "Computer Whiz" on the BBS scene.  The
only real reason I haven't stuck around much and kept my board up and running
is because of my World of Warcraft addiction...  when you play an MMORPG, it
gets quite addicting, and takes up any free time you might have.  So if I ever
get over playing WoW, I may come back to the scene again.

What brought me here to look this time was mainly because where I work, we have
some test equipment that requires old, slow PCs...  no faster than a 286.
Anything faster, and the PC is too fast to communicate with the ARINC 429 /
RS232 data communications on the equipment.  This equipment is designed to test
aircraft electronic components (such as Slat/Flap Control Computers, Flight
Control Units, and Electronic Control Boxes which control the Auxiliary Power
Unit).  Anyway, on one of these, an MFM interface Seagate ST225 20MB Hard Drive
is quickly giving up the ghost.  Each time a surface scan is run via SCANDISK
(from DOS 6.22), it seems to find more bad sectors.  So we had to search for a
replacement hard drive (a very old MFM hard drive) that would work with the PC.
 This PC only had a 5�" Floppy drive, and all of our PC's in the same shop had
only 3�" Floppy drives, but in another shop, there was a PC that had both a 5�"
and a 3�" floppy on one computer.  To back up this one PC, normally we would
have to copy information to a 5�" Floppy, then goto the other side of the
building, copy from the 5� to the 3�, then copy it to another one of our
PC's...  being 16 MB of data, that would have been a big hassle.

So... next idea was to use good ol' Laplink!  Problem 1: Find an old version of
Laplink Professional for DOS.  Searching the Web for Laplink wasn't going to do
it.  Sure, I would come up to the official Laplink site where I can spend $50
for an old version of something that isn't supported anymore...NOT!  especially
when I already had it before and lost it somewhere (in a move, bad disc, a
formatting, who knows what)...  so I did a search for LLPRO.EXE, and luckily
found it.  Problem 2: Next I needed a Laplink Cable.  I asked around (where I
work) if anyone had one, and no one knew what I was talking about.  The
computer/network coordinator told me what I was wanting to do didn't seem
possible, but he told me good luck!  (First thought, psht, luck?  I know what I
am doing)  So...  I look in the toolbox, kinda remembering a straight-thru
parallel cable (extension, about 25' in there, and sure enough, found it, the
cable that had been sitting there since I have worked there (going on 6 years).
 I looked at it, and didn't even think twice...  I took it, cut it right in the
middle, and rewired it to make it a laplink cable, soldered the needed wires,
insulated them, and wrapped it back up with trusty ol electrical tape.  Hooked
them up to the two computers, and successfully copied all the files over to the
second PC.

And with that, it came across my mind that I need to put up my BBS again and
make available all the old DOS programs that are really hard to find.
Eventually I will do it, but until I get over my WoW addiction, might not
happen.  Maybe it will, who knows.  Just be on a watch out for it, I might
start working on it during my lunch breaks at work, and sometimes when WoW is
giving me fits (i.e. lag monsters, long queues, server problems, etc.) at home.
 When I do, I gotta put on Usurper 0.20d 

ComputerWhiz


--
[AT2k] -- Your VBBS/VADV Support Center -- [www.at2k.org] -- [bbs.at2k.org]