Back on the air

[Andrew Bennett <andrew.bennett@ns.sympatico.ca>]

I have just upgraded to a new fast computer for data
analysis. It is wonderfully fast ...

when it runs ...

Along the way, I added a local network to the old
computer - this one that runs the e-mail etc. Win95
at this end, Win98 at the other. Ha!

Word of advice: don't try this aided only by the Windows
so-called "Help": this is deliberately wrong so as to send
business to all those "Network Consultants" who have
sprung up all over the place. I ended up losing my Internet
connection and eventually losing the integrity (such as it was)
of the Windows "system".

I have now reloaded the Win95 computer. 3 times. More words
of advice:

HP CDRW "Disaster Recovery" takes forever - I had
to stay up most of one night to change CDs - and DOES NOT
WORK. I had to go all the way back to the original CD.

DON'T back up on rewritable CDRW disks ... fortunately I splurged on
a second CDRW drive on the new computer and can transcribe
them to something this computer can read. My address book
and (I hope) financial records are still on CDs somewhere ...
Windows Explorer just sits there buzzing the disk drive. Yes - I
have loaded what is supposed to be the right driver. I've lost a
few posts too - they have slipped between backups.

To get rid of the last abortive Linux, I had to do an
unconditional reformat on the hard disk. A regular reformat left
me with the old Linux boot loader pointing to partitions that no
longer existed. Yes - it tried to load them and would not believe
that they were not there. Messy!

Meanwhile, in my spare time, I am converting Borland Pascal 7.0
programs to Free Pascal. Runs very fast so there is no need to go
over to C just to get speed. The conversion to a different brand
of Pascal is a good deal less onerous to me than trying to convert
to C which I find completely opaque.

Andrew Bennett