I've just been through a rather time wasting exercise trying to run a
floppy diskette diagnostics program made by the manufacturer of a well known
brand, "Western Digital".

A while back my server Western Digital 60gig drive model number WD600 failed,
and although data was retrievable it was incredibly slow, so I replaced it
and have just got around to warranty replacement.

Prior to submitting the warranty claim I went to the Western Digital
site to find the typical diagnostics floppy image that most
manufacturers have available for this purpose.

There isn't the merest mention of GNU/Linux on the Western Digital HDD
download page just Windows and DOS apps.

I downloaded dlgdiag11.zip which doesn't give any info what OS it's for
just "The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results
for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option
and write zeros to the drive."

http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgdiag11.zip

When running the zip under DOSEMU I was with this:-
D:\WD>dlgdiag
This program must be run under Win32

Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.

So I had to get a friend who dual boots to grab the 1.5MB zip file, run
it under Windows produce the floppy and then create an image for me and
email it!

What a load of nonsense for an ancient looking DOS application that
runs Caldera DR-DOS anyway!

So much for Western Digital, no GNU/Linux support and Windows is needed
to make a DOS floppy!

Plus their drive failed at the 2.5 year mark. At least it's still under
warranty, the one redeeming Western Digital feature here. Actually the
drive was very quiet, now it's totally silent.

.................

After that fiasco, I thought I'd better get a Seagate Barracuda diag
floppy as I own two 60 gig drives of the same age as the Western
Digital unit. Unlike the Western Digital unit, these have built in
temperature sensors which my GNU/Linux systems display via lm-sensors
and Gk-Rellm.

What a supprise, the Seagate web site asks me if I'd like a GNU/Linux
CLI or GUI app for their "SeaTools Enterprise" utility. Registration
required but drat ... it's only for the SCSI products!

	"Ideal for SCSI or Fibre Channel drives in servers and
	workstations. Tests multiple drives simultaneously and
	sequentially. This version does not test ATA or SATA."

Next is the "SeaTools Desktop".
	Desktop edition works with most ATA, SATA, or SCSI drives
	in desktop systems and has a 98% accuracy rate.
	Our most popular version."

System Requirements for Running SeaTools Disc Diagnostic

You can run SeaTools Disc Diagnostic to test your disc drive if your PC has:

    * at least one (1) Seagate Technology disc drive.
    * an IBM / Intel compatible PC with a 386 or greater processor.
    * SVGA 800 x 600 or greater graphics capability.
    * at least 8 megabytes of RAM.
    * 1.44 megabyte floppy disk drive for the bootable SeaTools
	diskette (Two (2) diskettes required with version 2.x).

Sounds good, and they say this re dependencies:-
	" Intel-compatible system with at least 8MB of RAM, a floppy
	or CD-ROM drive and VGA graphics or better.
	OS independent."

Ok, lets download the 3.3 MB file and check it out:_


D:\SEAGATE>ls
seato~8v.exe
D:\SEAGATE>seato~8v
This program must be run under Win32

Aha, here we go again! Is this what they mean by "OS independent" ?

                           ....

Ok so Seagate is off my shopping list as well.

Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
competing with you.





-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

On 2004-01-02, Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
> I've just been through a rather time wasting exercise trying to run a
> floppy diskette diagnostics program made by the manufacturer of a well known
> brand, "Western Digital".
>

[snip very usfull info]

Terry, I tell you something, I would not touch a WD drive for love
nor money, and that goes for Maxtor too.  They are both in league
with Microsoft.  Seagate are and always been the best HD manufacturer.

And what you say about WD only having Dos/Windows tools, makes me
mad.  Its the assumption of the vendor that people only use
Microsoft products that I find completly ignorant.  How dare
they assume that.  If I buy a hardware product, surely its my right
to use it with *any* os if I choose, wether it be Linux, BSD, Solaris,
BeOS or even Windows if I want.

And on similar subject, was it not WD along were a couple of other
HD manufacturers comtemplating a couple of years ago about
incorporating code on the drive to prevent the playing of
mpeg and mp3 files, unless it was streamed directly over the
web from "authorised" sources.

OK, my rant is over now.


--
Mark Gary

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, Terry mumbled this incantation:

> http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgdiag11.zip
> 
> When running the zip under DOSEMU I was with this:-
> D:\WD>dlgdiag
> This program must be run under Win32
> 
> D:\SEAGATE>ls
> seato~8v.exe
> D:\SEAGATE>seato~8v
> This program must be run under Win32
> 
>                            ....
> 
> Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
> enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
> diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
> Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
> competing with you.

It is stuff like this that will turn even the most honest
GNU/Linux/FreeBSD user into a software pirate, just so they can make
a drive-repair floppy.

-- 
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:

> Ok so Seagate is off my shopping list as well.
> 
> Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
> enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
> diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
> Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
> competing with you.

If you think about it, it isn't really the diag utility itself that needs
Windows, but the imaging software that uncompresses and writes the image to
floppy.  As you said, the diag utlity runs runs autonomously on it's on
platform so it doesn't care what's installed since it never uses it.

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to just get the disk image and write it
using dd or something?  A simple shell script and an image should do the
same thing nicely.

As far as drives, I've used WD, IBM, Seagate and Maxtor drives and IME I've
had the best overall luck with WD.  I find them to be fast, quiet and
reliable as far as IDE drives go.


----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000 Newsgroups
---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.

Because this particular program performs low-level operations that 
requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.

-- 
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386
10:05AM  up 42 days, 12:16, 2 users, load averages: 0.02, 0.03, 0.00

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:

>I've just been through a rather time wasting exercise trying to run a
>floppy diskette diagnostics program made by the manufacturer of a well known
>brand, "Western Digital".
>
>A while back my server Western Digital 60gig drive model number WD600 failed,
>and although data was retrievable it was incredibly slow, so I replaced it
>and have just got around to warranty replacement.

A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in a plastic
bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.
Have your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables and boot
up. Then try copying data until it starts to fail. Freeze the drive again and
continue where you left off and so forth.
This is a last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails.
However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past.


>Prior to submitting the warranty claim I went to the Western Digital
>site to find the typical diagnostics floppy image that most
>manufacturers have available for this purpose.

I know what's coming :)

>There isn't the merest mention of GNU/Linux on the Western Digital HDD
>download page just Windows and DOS apps.

That's because they cater to what MOST people are using.
Personally, if I were running the show I would have a Linux image as well.


>I downloaded dlgdiag11.zip which doesn't give any info what OS it's for
>just "The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results
>for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option
>and write zeros to the drive."
>
>http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgdiag11.zip
>
>When running the zip under DOSEMU I was with this:-
>D:\WD>dlgdiag
>This program must be run under Win32

Running diagnostic software under emulators, or even under multi tasking OS's is
not really a very good idea which is why most of these utilities are self
contained bootable diskettes.
Asus recently had a very bad experience where they released a program to update
their BIOS that ran under Windows instead of booting directly to native DOS.
You can only imagine what happened to some peoples BIOS's!
Last I looked, they pulled the program.

>Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.

See above.

>So I had to get a friend who dual boots to grab the 1.5MB zip file, run
>it under Windows produce the floppy and then create an image for me and
>email it!
>
>What a load of nonsense for an ancient looking DOS application that
>runs Caldera DR-DOS anyway!

Ain't that a pip!!
All of these things have a similar look and in fact appear to have been written
with Borland's Turbo C or similar.
They look like that old Borland IDE complete with box mouse cursor.

>So much for Western Digital, no GNU/Linux support and Windows is needed
>to make a DOS floppy!

You are going to have a tough time finding Linux support.

>Plus their drive failed at the 2.5 year mark. At least it's still under
>warranty, the one redeeming Western Digital feature here. Actually the
>drive was very quiet, now it's totally silent.

They make very good drives and their warranty is good.
Unlike Maxtor which I had a very unpleasant experience with.
The label on the drive said under Warranty until 2/03.
It failed 1/03 and I called Maxtor up and when they ran the numbers through the
system they said it expired on 12/02. I argued with them but they would not
offer anything.
Goodbye Maxtor, hello WD.

>................
>
>After that fiasco, I thought I'd better get a Seagate Barracuda diag
>floppy as I own two 60 gig drives of the same age as the Western
>Digital unit. Unlike the Western Digital unit, these have built in
>temperature sensors which my GNU/Linux systems display via lm-sensors
>and Gk-Rellm.
>
>What a supprise, the Seagate web site asks me if I'd like a GNU/Linux
>CLI or GUI app for their "SeaTools Enterprise" utility. Registration
>required but drat ... it's only for the SCSI products!
>
>	"Ideal for SCSI or Fibre Channel drives in servers and
>	workstations. Tests multiple drives simultaneously and
>	sequentially. This version does not test ATA or SATA."
>
>Next is the "SeaTools Desktop".
>	Desktop edition works with most ATA, SATA, or SCSI drives
>	in desktop systems and has a 98% accuracy rate.
>	Our most popular version."
>
>System Requirements for Running SeaTools Disc Diagnostic
>
>You can run SeaTools Disc Diagnostic to test your disc drive if your PC has:
>
>    * at least one (1) Seagate Technology disc drive.
>    * an IBM / Intel compatible PC with a 386 or greater processor.
>    * SVGA 800 x 600 or greater graphics capability.
>    * at least 8 megabytes of RAM.
>    * 1.44 megabyte floppy disk drive for the bootable SeaTools
>	diskette (Two (2) diskettes required with version 2.x).
>
>Sounds good, and they say this re dependencies:-
>	" Intel-compatible system with at least 8MB of RAM, a floppy
>	or CD-ROM drive and VGA graphics or better.
>	OS independent."
>
>Ok, lets download the 3.3 MB file and check it out:_
>
>
>D:\SEAGATE>ls
>seato~8v.exe
>D:\SEAGATE>seato~8v
>This program must be run under Win32
>
>Aha, here we go again! Is this what they mean by "OS independent" ?
>
>                           ....
>
>Ok so Seagate is off my shopping list as well.
>
>Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
>enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
>diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
>Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
>competing with you.

I feel your frustration Terry, but the fact is that we live in a Windows world.
I've had to invent similar workarounds for my daughter's iMac when she needed
submissions for school and so forth.

Even IBM which is supposed to be a large Linux supporter is speaking with forked
tongue.
All of that one button recovery stuff only works under Windows last time I
checked.
That might have changed by now.

This even propagates to IBM's largest systems where if you are running Linux
instead of AIX you lose some of the concurrent diagnostic and replacement
abilities of the box.

IBM'S P-Series is one example of this.
The AS/400 is another.

In time, as Linux becomes more mainstream these things will change but for now
we are stuck unfortunately.

flatfish+++

I would write to both companies and politely express your opinions to them and
see what happens.

General Protection Fault wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
> 
> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
> 

No, it does not. It produces the DOS disk which then in turn does the
low-level stuff.
-- 
"I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
    -- Groucho Marx

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On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100,
 Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:

<snip informative ranting>

Hie thee to <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983> for a
very informative article on smart tools for monitoring IDE drives. 

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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgement.

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On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
 General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>
> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that 
> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>


The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you boot
from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the low level
checks. RTF Post...


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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Unix has security which has been tested by conniving, unscrupulous
    college students over generations.

flatfish+++ wrote:

> A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in a
> plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.
> Have your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables
> and boot up. Then try copying data until it starts to fail. Freeze the
> drive again and continue where you left off and so forth.
> This is a last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails.
> However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past.

This is very risky as the melting ice left on the drive could cause a short 
and blow more than the drive - if the cause of fault is elecrical failure 
it's safer and easier to get a can of electronics freezer spray designed 
for pinpointing electronic component failure and keep spraying this over 
the drive's PCB every few minutes until copying is finished. I and work 
colleagues have rescued data from the widely reported bad fujitsu drives 
this way. Only attempt freezing the whole drive as a last resort (and only 
if data recovery is critical - better to keep regular backups).

-- 
Nigel Feltham - spanking trolls since 1999

rapskat wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
> 
>> Ok so Seagate is off my shopping list as well.
>> 
>> Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
>> enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
>> diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
>> Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
>> competing with you.
> 
> If you think about it, it isn't really the diag utility itself that needs
> Windows, but the imaging software that uncompresses and writes the image
> to
> floppy.  As you said, the diag utlity runs runs autonomously on it's on
> platform so it doesn't care what's installed since it never uses it.
> 
> I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to just get the disk image and write
> it
> using dd or something?  A simple shell script and an image should do the
> same thing nicely.

Maybe either open the .exe with 'ark' and hope the self-extracting archive 
part of the executible is in a standard format or run it under wine and 
look in wine's temp directory before the extractor crashes and hope it's 
made a copy of image there (it may extract image and floppy disk writing 
app and call it, many single-exe windows installers just extract files to 
temp directory and call the real installer).

-- 
Nigel Feltham - spanking trolls since 1999

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>
> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>
>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that 
>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>
>
>
> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you boot
> from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the low level
> checks. RTF Post...

The program used low level operations to create the disk image.  This is 
typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use them myself.

-- 
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386
 1:35PM  up 42 days, 15:46, 2 users, load averages: 0.06, 0.01, 0.00

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:20:28 +0000, Nigel Feltham <nigel.feltham@btinternet.com>
wrote:

>flatfish+++ wrote:
>
>> A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in a
>> plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.
>> Have your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables
>> and boot up. Then try copying data until it starts to fail. Freeze the
>> drive again and continue where you left off and so forth.
>> This is a last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails.
>> However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past.
>
>This is very risky as the melting ice left on the drive could cause a short 
>and blow more than the drive - if the cause of fault is elecrical failure 
>it's safer and easier to get a can of electronics freezer spray designed 
>for pinpointing electronic component failure and keep spraying this over 
>the drive's PCB every few minutes until copying is finished. 

That's why you place the drive in a plastic bag :)
Very little condensation appears on the drive if done that way.

The freon approach works well if you can pinpoint the bad chip. 
I still have a couple of cans of ElectroKleen freezer stuff around that still
use CFC's unlike the newer stuff.
Not good for the environment, but it works better than the newer stuff.

The drive that I got running didn't respond to the canned stuff so I went for
the fridge because I had nothing to lose at that point.

>I and workcolleagues have rescued data from the widely reported bad fujitsu drives 
>this way. Only attempt freezing the whole drive as a last resort (and only 
>if data recovery is critical - better to keep regular backups).

Yep.. but we all know how studious we are with back ups :)

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On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:36:53 GMT,
 General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>>
>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that 
>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>>
>>
>>
>> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you boot
>> from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the low level
>> checks. RTF Post...
>
> The program used low level operations to create the disk image.  This is 
> typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use them myself.
>


low level operations like dd or rawrite? you know, programs that work
great from Linux natively, or dosemu respectively. 

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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
 I trust Microsoft. 
 I trust them to be spectacularly unable to get anything right.

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 12:46:41 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>
> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:36:53 GMT,
>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>>>
>>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that 
>>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you boot
>>> from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the low level
>>> checks. RTF Post...
>>
>> The program used low level operations to create the disk image.  This is 
>> typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use them myself.
>>
>
>
> low level operations like dd or rawrite? you know, programs that work
> great from Linux natively, or dosemu respectively. 

Obviously it's using a native Win32 system call instead of a DOS call.
Why are you having so many difficulties with this?  Why would the manufacturer
*not* develop for the most common system?

-- 
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386
 3:00PM  up 42 days, 17:11, 2 users, load averages: 0.04, 0.02, 0.00

: flatfish+++ <flatfish@linuxmail.org>
: A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in
: a plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.  Have
: your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables and
: boot up.  Then try copying data until it starts to fail.  Freeze the
: drive again and continue where you left off and so forth.  This is a
: last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails. 
: However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past. 

Heat-marginal components can also be kept limping along for a while
for purposes such as the above using a can of dust-off (ie, pressurized
non-freon-but-freon-like-substance in a can).  Especially if you use
the can upside-down so as to spray the volatiles onto the component;
sucks the heat right out of 'em.  Beware various dangers, but sometimes
you just have to give a machine a sharp slap... or a bit of a freeze.

Egad the grotesque things one learns over time, sigh...


Wayne Throop   throopw@sheol.org   http://sheol.org/throopw

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On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 21:05:17 GMT,
 General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 12:46:41 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:36:53 GMT,
>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
>>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>>>>
>>>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
>>>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you
>>>> boot from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the
>>>> low level checks. RTF Post...
>>>
>>> The program used low level operations to create the disk image.
>>> This is typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use
>>> them myself.
>>>
>>
>>
>> low level operations like dd or rawrite? you know, programs that work
>> great from Linux natively, or dosemu respectively. 
>
> Obviously it's using a native Win32 system call instead of a DOS call.
> Why are you having so many difficulties with this?  Why would the
> manufacturer *not* develop for the most common system?
>

you claimed it used "low level operations" I was asking what low level
operation you were referring to? 

as for most common, frankly, I don't care. I don't eat at McD's much at
all, no matter how *common* it is, I don't vote for the *common* choice,
and I don't buy my hardware and software based on what the most *common*
choice is. I buy based on what fulfills my needs. 

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Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
	-- Lazarus Long

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:20:28 +0000, Nigel Feltham wrote:

> flatfish+++ wrote:
> 
>> A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in a
>> plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.
>> Have your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables
>> and boot up. Then try copying data until it starts to fail. Freeze the
>> drive again and continue where you left off and so forth.
>> This is a last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails.
>> However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past.
> 
> This is very risky as the melting ice left on the drive could cause a short 
> and blow more than the drive - if the cause of fault is elecrical failure 
> it's safer and easier to get a can of electronics freezer spray designed 
> for pinpointing electronic component failure and keep spraying this over 
> the drive's PCB every few minutes until copying is finished. I and work 
> colleagues have rescued data from the widely reported bad fujitsu drives 
> this way. Only attempt freezing the whole drive as a last resort (and only 
> if data recovery is critical - better to keep regular backups).

Some manufacturers put the component side of the PCB toward the case, so
all you have access to is the bottom of the board. If that's the case,
it'll be hard to deliver coolant where it's needed.  

I'd also be nervous about putting the drive in the freezer, even if it was
in a plastic bag. Even though there's less moisture to condense, there's
still some, and the moisture in the air inside the HDA is generally
unaffected by the plastic bag. Still, if you're only cooling it down to
50-60F, condensation might not be a problem. 

A couple other things might be worth a try first. 

1. If it's a problem related to the IDE interface (not too likely), try
putting it in another computer. 

2. If the problem is related to heat, before you try the freezer trick, try
opening the computer case (not the HDA) and blowing air across the drive
with a fan. If the problem is heat related, then you'd generally expect the
drive to work okay when the computer is first started up, then gradually
get worse as the air inside the computer case heats up. If it does, then
cooling will probably help. 

3. Terry has some basic test equipment around, so another thing to check is
the power supply - make sure the supplies aren't the problem. I _think_
3.5" drives still use the 12V supply output for the servo and motor, as
well as a 5V supply. 

4. Try rotating the drive, so it's on it's side or even upside down. I
doubt that will have much effect these days, since the mass of the heads is
so small. Still, you're talking about trying to reduce error probabilities
to the point that you can read data from the drive; it might not take much
of a difference to improve things enough to read the data.  

Cooling could also help because the density of air in the HDA will increase
as the air is cooled, which will in turn increase the flying height of the
heads somewhat. 

In any event, Terry said that he was able to recover his data, it just took
a long time to do it. I'm sure there is some obscure chip-related problem
that might cause a failure like that, but I think a problem with the
spindle bearing or one of the heads - possibly a microscopic piece of dust
stuck to the head -  might be a more likely bet. 

One last thought is that drives today are remarkably complex. A few years
ago, when I was designing disk drive chips, we were already putting in
diagnostic information about the data being read back, and the drives were
smart enough to detect when they were performing excessive retries on a
sector, or even when the error-correction circuits were starting to
approach their limits on a given sector on a regular basis. When that
happened, they automatically moved the data to another sector and flagged
the underperforming sector. I'm not sure what the diagnostic programs do,
but their ability to "repair" a modern drive might be pretty limited, since
the drive is already flagging bad sectors as it runs (that's the theory
anyway; I don't know how well it worked in practice). 

-- Mike --

Jim Richardson threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100,
>  Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
>
><snip informative ranting>
>
> Hie thee to <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983> for a
> very informative article on smart tools for monitoring IDE drives.

What an excellent article, emerging  smartmontools right now :)

Jim you're a fountain of useful information, thanks!



-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

Peter K�hlmann threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> General Protection Fault wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>> 
>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>> 
>
> No, it does not. It produces the DOS disk which then in turn does the
> low-level stuff.

Exactly. All that WIn32 seems to do is provide some eye candy.

-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

flatfish+++ threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
>
>>I've just been through a rather time wasting exercise trying to run a
>>floppy diskette diagnostics program made by the manufacturer of a well known
>>brand, "Western Digital".
>>
>>A while back my server Western Digital 60gig drive model number WD600 failed,
>>and although data was retrievable it was incredibly slow, so I replaced it
>>and have just got around to warranty replacement.
>
> A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in a plastic
> bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.
> Have your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables and boot
> up. Then try copying data until it starts to fail. Freeze the drive again and
> continue where you left off and so forth.
> This is a last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails.
> However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past.

I'll bear that in mind in future. As an electronics tech, I've used
cold spray to make some circuits work, and some fail, guess it depemds
on the failure mode.

>
>
>>Prior to submitting the warranty claim I went to the Western Digital
>>site to find the typical diagnostics floppy image that most
>>manufacturers have available for this purpose.
>
> I know what's coming :)

I bet you do :)

>
>>There isn't the merest mention of GNU/Linux on the Western Digital HDD
>>download page just Windows and DOS apps.
>
> That's because they cater to what MOST people are using.

Understand.

> Personally, if I were running the show I would have a Linux image as well.

Yeah it wouldnt be that hard to provide would it ?
Just the actual floppy as a image file would be fine.

>
>
>>I downloaded dlgdiag11.zip which doesn't give any info what OS it's for
>>just "The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results
>>for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option
>>and write zeros to the drive."
>>
>>http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgdiag11.zip
>>
>>When running the zip under DOSEMU I was with this:-
>>D:\WD>dlgdiag
>>This program must be run under Win32
>
> Running diagnostic software under emulators, or even under multi tasking OS's is
> not really a very good idea which is why most of these utilities are self
> contained bootable diskettes.
> Asus recently had a very bad experience where they released a program to update
> their BIOS that ran under Windows instead of booting directly to native DOS.
> You can only imagine what happened to some peoples BIOS's!
> Last I looked, they pulled the program.

Eww, bet they won't do that again in a hurry!

[...] 
>>What a load of nonsense for an ancient looking DOS application that
>>runs Caldera DR-DOS anyway!
>
> Ain't that a pip!!
> All of these things have a similar look and in fact appear to have been written
> with Borland's Turbo C or similar.
> They look like that old Borland IDE complete with box mouse cursor.

Yeah they do.

>
>>So much for Western Digital, no GNU/Linux support and Windows is needed
>>to make a DOS floppy!
>
> You are going to have a tough time finding Linux support.
>
>>Plus their drive failed at the 2.5 year mark. At least it's still under
>>warranty, the one redeeming Western Digital feature here. Actually the
>>drive was very quiet, now it's totally silent.
>
> They make very good drives and their warranty is good.

I love the warranty!

> Unlike Maxtor which I had a very unpleasant experience with.
> The label on the drive said under Warranty until 2/03.
> It failed 1/03 and I called Maxtor up and when they ran the numbers through the
> system they said it expired on 12/02. I argued with them but they would not
> offer anything.
> Goodbye Maxtor, hello WD.

I'd never but a Maxtor as I had 2 in two weeks, a head fell of the
second one! I refused another Maxtor drive and got something else from
the shop instead, but this was a long time ago, perhaps they have
improved.

Actually all hard drive brands I've had experience with have failed
sooner or later. I *think* I've had the best experience with Seagate
and Fujitsu.

[...] 
>>Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
>>enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
>>diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
>>Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
>>competing with you.
>
> I feel your frustration Terry, but the fact is that we live in a Windows world.

True atm.

> I've had to invent similar workarounds for my daughter's iMac when she needed
> submissions for school and so forth.

Of course! Mac users would be in the same boat as GNU/Linux users.

>
> Even IBM which is supposed to be a large Linux supporter is speaking with forked
> tongue.

Yeah, I've said I don't trust IBM either.

> All of that one button recovery stuff only works under Windows last time I
> checked.
> That might have changed by now.
>
> This even propagates to IBM's largest systems where if you are running Linux
> instead of AIX you lose some of the concurrent diagnostic and replacement
> abilities of the box.
>
> IBM'S P-Series is one example of this.
> The AS/400 is another.
>
> In time, as Linux becomes more mainstream these things will change but for now
> we are stuck unfortunately.

Sure, but I like to vote with my wallet.

>
> flatfish+++
>
> I would write to both companies and politely express your opinions to them and
> see what happens.

Good idea, I'll just suggest that they provide a floppy.img on their
sites for GNU/Linux users.



-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

Mike threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:20:28 +0000, Nigel Feltham wrote:
[...] 

> 3. Terry has some basic test equipment around,

Hah, I don't call a 100mhz HP DSO and a HP 25mhz 24ch LA basic :P

> so another thing to check is
> the power supply - make sure the supplies aren't the problem. I _think_
> 3.5" drives still use the 12V supply output for the servo and motor, as
> well as a 5V supply.

Good ideas, I tried the drive in three different pcs as well.

>
> 4. Try rotating the drive, so it's on it's side or even upside down. I
> doubt that will have much effect these days, since the mass of the heads is
> so small. Still, you're talking about trying to reduce error probabilities
> to the point that you can read data from the drive; it might not take much
> of a difference to improve things enough to read the data.  
>
> Cooling could also help because the density of air in the HDA will increase
> as the air is cooled, which will in turn increase the flying height of the
> heads somewhat. 
>
> In any event, Terry said that he was able to recover his data, it just took
> a long time to do it. I'm sure there is some obscure chip-related problem
> that might cause a failure like that,

The diags said that there was a problem with the SMART system, drive
defective.

> but I think a problem with the
> spindle bearing or one of the heads - possibly a microscopic piece of dust
> stuck to the head -  might be a more likely bet. 
>
> One last thought is that drives today are remarkably complex. A few years
> ago, when I was designing disk drive chips, we were already putting in
> diagnostic information about the data being read back, and the drives were
> smart enough to detect when they were performing excessive retries on a
> sector, or even when the error-correction circuits were starting to
> approach their limits on a given sector on a regular basis. When that
> happened, they automatically moved the data to another sector and flagged
> the underperforming sector. I'm not sure what the diagnostic programs do,
> but their ability to "repair" a modern drive might be pretty limited, since
> the drive is already flagging bad sectors as it runs (that's the theory
> anyway; I don't know how well it worked in practice). 

The above are all good ideas, in practice and after the failure it's
hard to do much imho.

Nice informative post Mike, thanks :)

-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

Jim Richardson threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100,
>  Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
>
><snip informative ranting>
>
> Hie thee to <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983> for a
> very informative article on smart tools for monitoring IDE drives. 

WOW, very impressed!

I've emerged smartmontools onto my Desktop. the server is next!

Desktop info:-

root@gronk:/home/iso# smartctl -i /dev/hda
smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     ST360021A
Serial Number:    3HV1VHC7
Firmware Version: 7.73
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   5
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Sat Jan  3 11:19:55 2004 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

root@gronk:/home/iso# root@gronk:/etc/init.d# smartctl -Hc /dev/hda
smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity was
                                        completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever 
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:                 ( 422) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x1b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off
										support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        No General Purpose Logging support.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:        (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (  57) minutes.



root@gronk:/etc/init.d# smartctl -A /dev/hda
smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED
WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   074   070   034    Pre-fail  Always
  -       184007212
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   083   083   000    Pre-fail  Always
  -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always
  -       240
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always
  -       6
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   078   060   030    Pre-fail  Always
  -       68102983
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   095   095   000    Old_age   Always
  -       5216
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always
 -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always
 -       335
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   043   055   000    Old_age   Always
-       43
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   074   070   000    Old_age   Always
-       184007212
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
-       1
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline
-       1
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
-       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline
-       0
202 TA_Increase_Count       0x0032   211   108   000    Old_age   Always
-       145

-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 10:57:48 +1100,
 Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
> Jim Richardson threw some tea leaves on the floor
>  and this is what they wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100,
>>  Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
>>
>><snip informative ranting>
>>
>> Hie thee to <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983> for a
>> very informative article on smart tools for monitoring IDE drives.
>
> What an excellent article, emerging  smartmontools right now :)
>
> Jim you're a fountain of useful information, thanks!
>
>
>

:) I read a lot, 

I mean a *lot*

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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

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TKxETBObqVI8aaZzn15CoAo=
=Z8Yj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please. 
Anthony DeBoer 

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 11:10:43 +1100, Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:


>I'll bear that in mind in future. As an electronics tech, I've used
>cold spray to make some circuits work, and some fail, guess it depemds
>on the failure mode.

That's your first step of course :)
I keep forgetting people around here are engineers and such.
Most common folk don't have cans of freeze laying around!

>>
>>
>>>Prior to submitting the warranty claim I went to the Western Digital
>>>site to find the typical diagnostics floppy image that most
>>>manufacturers have available for this purpose.
>>
>> I know what's coming :)
>
>I bet you do :)
>
>>
>>>There isn't the merest mention of GNU/Linux on the Western Digital HDD
>>>download page just Windows and DOS apps.
>>
>> That's because they cater to what MOST people are using.
>
>Understand.

But still they are wrong.
I wonder what the Mac people do?
Are there utilities for them on the manufacturers websites?
If not, there should be.

>> Personally, if I were running the show I would have a Linux image as well.
>
>Yeah it wouldnt be that hard to provide would it ?
>Just the actual floppy as a image file would be fine.

I know.
I have written Western Digital and suggested that.

>>
>>
>>>I downloaded dlgdiag11.zip which doesn't give any info what OS it's for
>>>just "The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results
>>>for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option
>>>and write zeros to the drive."
>>>
>>>http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgdiag11.zip
>>>
>>>When running the zip under DOSEMU I was with this:-
>>>D:\WD>dlgdiag
>>>This program must be run under Win32
>>
>> Running diagnostic software under emulators, or even under multi tasking OS's is
>> not really a very good idea which is why most of these utilities are self
>> contained bootable diskettes.
>> Asus recently had a very bad experience where they released a program to update
>> their BIOS that ran under Windows instead of booting directly to native DOS.
>> You can only imagine what happened to some peoples BIOS's!
>> Last I looked, they pulled the program.
>
>Eww, bet they won't do that again in a hurry!

From what the Asus group said they lost a fortune!!
Could you imagine Windows finding a new device, or going out for an automatic
update right in the middle of some poor soul updating his motherboard BIOS?
Yikes!!!!!

>[...] 
>>>What a load of nonsense for an ancient looking DOS application that
>>>runs Caldera DR-DOS anyway!
>>
>> Ain't that a pip!!
>> All of these things have a similar look and in fact appear to have been written
>> with Borland's Turbo C or similar.
>> They look like that old Borland IDE complete with box mouse cursor.
>
>Yeah they do.
>
>>
>>>So much for Western Digital, no GNU/Linux support and Windows is needed
>>>to make a DOS floppy!
>>
>> You are going to have a tough time finding Linux support.
>>
>>>Plus their drive failed at the 2.5 year mark. At least it's still under
>>>warranty, the one redeeming Western Digital feature here. Actually the
>>>drive was very quiet, now it's totally silent.
>>
>> They make very good drives and their warranty is good.
>
>I love the warranty!
>
>> Unlike Maxtor which I had a very unpleasant experience with.
>> The label on the drive said under Warranty until 2/03.
>> It failed 1/03 and I called Maxtor up and when they ran the numbers through the
>> system they said it expired on 12/02. I argued with them but they would not
>> offer anything.
>> Goodbye Maxtor, hello WD.
>
>I'd never but a Maxtor as I had 2 in two weeks, a head fell of the
>second one! I refused another Maxtor drive and got something else from
>the shop instead, but this was a long time ago, perhaps they have
>improved.

Yikes!!!

Gives a whole new meaning to the term headless PC :)

>Actually all hard drive brands I've had experience with have failed
>sooner or later. I *think* I've had the best experience with Seagate
>and Fujitsu.

Yes. They are all time bombs in one way or another.

>[...] 
>>>Seagate and Western Digital if you're listening, this isn't good
>>>enough, either pull your finger out and develop some decent GNU/Linux
>>>diags and put the images on your web sites or hope that a decent
>>>Chinese manufacturer of HDD's that support GNU/Linux doesn't start
>>>competing with you.
>>
>> I feel your frustration Terry, but the fact is that we live in a Windows world.
>
>True atm.

Unfortunately.


>> I've had to invent similar workarounds for my daughter's iMac when she needed
>> submissions for school and so forth.
>
>Of course! Mac users would be in the same boat as GNU/Linux users.

Yes they are and they are mostly just as inventive as the Linux folks.

>>
>> Even IBM which is supposed to be a large Linux supporter is speaking with forked
>> tongue.
>
>Yeah, I've said I don't trust IBM either.
>
>> All of that one button recovery stuff only works under Windows last time I
>> checked.
>> That might have changed by now.
>>
>> This even propagates to IBM's largest systems where if you are running Linux
>> instead of AIX you lose some of the concurrent diagnostic and replacement
>> abilities of the box.
>>
>> IBM'S P-Series is one example of this.
>> The AS/400 is another.
>>
>> In time, as Linux becomes more mainstream these things will change but for now
>> we are stuck unfortunately.
>
>Sure, but I like to vote with my wallet.

I do the same.
I was just clued in that Lexmark is a nasty company to do biz with and I won't
buy another product from them.
I will support companies that at least make an effort toward supporting multiple
platforms like Windows, Linux and Mac.

>>
>> flatfish+++
>>
>> I would write to both companies and politely express your opinions to them and
>> see what happens.
>
>Good idea, I'll just suggest that they provide a floppy.img on their
>sites for GNU/Linux users.

I sent my letter off today!

flatfish+++

Terry wrote:
>
> There isn't the merest mention of GNU/Linux on the Western Digital HDD
> download page just Windows and DOS apps.

Another vendor that doesn't support Linux. The user is left hanging if they
choose Linux. Where is the open source app you guys are always claiming exists
that will allow you to do anything with your Linux box that a Windows users can
do?
>
> I downloaded dlgdiag11.zip which doesn't give any info what OS it's for
> just "The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results
> for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option
> and write zeros to the drive."

> When running the zip under DOSEMU I was with this:-
> D:\WD>dlgdiag
> This program must be run under Win32
>
> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>
> So I had to get a friend who dual boots to grab the 1.5MB zip file, run
> it under Windows produce the floppy and then create an image for me and
> email it!

What were you saying about how Linux supports DOS apps better than XP?

>
> What a load of nonsense for an ancient looking DOS application that
> runs Caldera DR-DOS anyway!
>
> So much for Western Digital, no GNU/Linux support and Windows is needed
> to make a DOS floppy!

Yeah, I am sure they will miss your business. Not.

begin  In <slrnbvb5ue.22gi.generalpf@braids.ertw.com>, on 01/02/2004
   at 04:10 PM, General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com>
said:

>Because this particular program performs low-level operations that 
>requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.

Sit back, get a good night's sleep, drink a cup of coffee and then
carefully reread Terry's article. A graceful apology to him will help
keep you from digging yourself in deeper.

-- 
     Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

Unsolicited bulk E-mail will be subject to legal action.  I reserve
the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.

Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do
not reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 14:04:03 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>
> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 21:05:17 GMT,
>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 12:46:41 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:36:53 GMT,
>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
>>>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>>>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>>>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>>>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
>>>>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you
>>>>> boot from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the
>>>>> low level checks. RTF Post...
>>>>
>>>> The program used low level operations to create the disk image.
>>>> This is typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use
>>>> them myself.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> low level operations like dd or rawrite? you know, programs that work
>>> great from Linux natively, or dosemu respectively. 
>>
>> Obviously it's using a native Win32 system call instead of a DOS call.
>> Why are you having so many difficulties with this?  Why would the
>> manufacturer *not* develop for the most common system?
>>
>
> you claimed it used "low level operations" I was asking what low level
> operation you were referring to? 
>
> as for most common, frankly, I don't care. I don't eat at McD's much at
> all, no matter how *common* it is, I don't vote for the *common* choice,
> and I don't buy my hardware and software based on what the most *common*
> choice is. I buy based on what fulfills my needs. 

And when you're selling hardware to feed your children, you'll target the 
largest group, which is what they're doing.  To do any less would be
unbusinesslike.


-- 
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386
10:10PM  up 43 days, 21 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.04, 0.04, 0.00

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 10:58:46 +1100, Terry wrote:
> Peter K�hlmann threw some tea leaves on the floor
>  and this is what they wrote:
>
>> General Protection Fault wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>> 
>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>> 
>>
>> No, it does not. It produces the DOS disk which then in turn does the
>> low-level stuff.
>
> Exactly. All that WIn32 seems to do is provide some eye candy.

Are you retarded?  If you don't know what the hell you're talking about,
feel free to STFU.

Win32 consists of more than GDI.  It's everything, including memory allocation
and hardware control.

Grab a friggin' clue.

-- 
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386
10:10PM  up 43 days, 21 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.04, 0.04, 0.00

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:32:09 -0500,
 flatfish+++ <flatfish@linuxmail.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 11:10:43 +1100, Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I'll bear that in mind in future. As an electronics tech, I've used
>>cold spray to make some circuits work, and some fail, guess it depemds
>>on the failure mode.
>
> That's your first step of course :) I keep forgetting people around
> here are engineers and such.  Most common folk don't have cans of
> freeze laying around!
>

As an aside, you can get that stuff cheaper by buying the stuff you use
for the airhorns at ballgames, it's the same liquified gas, just hold it
upside down when you pull the trigger :) (without the airhorn of course)
the feed tube on the freeze spray goes down into the liquid, the feed
tube on the air ones, is above the fluid level. 


<snip>

>
>>Understand.
>
> But still they are wrong.
> I wonder what the Mac people do?
> Are there utilities for them on the manufacturers websites?
> If not, there should be.
>

most Macs used to be SCSI, has that changed? I haven't been paying
attention to that part. 

>>
>>Yeah it wouldnt be that hard to provide would it ?  Just the actual
>>floppy as a image file would be fine.
>
> I know.  I have written Western Digital and suggested that.
>

IIRC, Seagate used to do just that. 


<snip>

>
>>Eww, bet they won't do that again in a hurry!
>
> From what the Asus group said they lost a fortune!!  Could you imagine
> Windows finding a new device, or going out for an automatic update
> right in the middle of some poor soul updating his motherboard BIOS?
> Yikes!!!!!
>


You've succeeded in coming up with something that sounds even worse,
than a broken registry :) 


<snip>

>>Actually all hard drive brands I've had experience with have failed
>>sooner or later. I *think* I've had the best experience with Seagate
>>and Fujitsu.
>
> Yes. They are all time bombs in one way or another.
>


Backups, backups, backups, you *will* eventually either be glad you did,
or sad you didn't... just a matter of time. 

On that note, check out the smarttools page I pointed Terry to, it will
help you find out that your drive is going south, *before* you lose the
data. 


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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Never volunteer... they'll send you to earth

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 04:11:48 GMT,
 General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 14:04:03 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 21:05:17 GMT,
>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 12:46:41 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:36:53 GMT,
>>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
>>>>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
>>>>>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
>>>>>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
>>>>>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
>>>>>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you
>>>>>> boot from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the
>>>>>> low level checks. RTF Post...
>>>>>
>>>>> The program used low level operations to create the disk image.
>>>>> This is typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use
>>>>> them myself.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> low level operations like dd or rawrite? you know, programs that work
>>>> great from Linux natively, or dosemu respectively. 
>>>
>>> Obviously it's using a native Win32 system call instead of a DOS call.
>>> Why are you having so many difficulties with this?  Why would the
>>> manufacturer *not* develop for the most common system?
>>>
>>
>> you claimed it used "low level operations" I was asking what low level
>> operation you were referring to? 
>>
>> as for most common, frankly, I don't care. I don't eat at McD's much at
>> all, no matter how *common* it is, I don't vote for the *common* choice,
>> and I don't buy my hardware and software based on what the most *common*
>> choice is. I buy based on what fulfills my needs. 
>
> And when you're selling hardware to feed your children, you'll target the 
> largest group, which is what they're doing.  To do any less would be
> unbusinesslike.
>
>


Unbusiness like, is to turn away business, that costs you virtually
nothing. 

Making the floppy images available, for those who would use them, cost's
the time of one employee, about 15min. 

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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Any nitwit can understand computers. Many do. 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 03:34:50 GMT,
 Rich Bell <rg_bell@nvbell.net> wrote:
> Terry wrote:
>>
>
>> So I had to get a friend who dual boots to grab the 1.5MB zip file, run
>> it under Windows produce the floppy and then create an image for me and
>> email it!
>
> What were you saying about how Linux supports DOS apps better than XP?
>
>>

If it uses Win32 calls, it isn't a DOS app, now is it? 

(with the bell twins, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.)
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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Quantum mechanics: The dreams stuff are made of.

> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
> -       1
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline
> -       1

I would be slightly concerned about these, though I am not as
knowledgeable
about Seagate firmware, so my concern may be misplaced.

I think that the raw values of '1' indicate that there is one
unreadable sector on the hard disk.  You should run an extended self
test with '-t long'; if it fails you should try using the Seagate
utility to force reallocation of the bad sector.

Bruce

General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> writes:

> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 14:04:03 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 21:05:17 GMT,
> >  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 12:46:41 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:36:53 GMT,
> >>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 11:18:37 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:10:40 GMT,
> >>>>>  General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100, Terry wrote:
> >>>>>>> Have I gone nuts ? Why is Win32 needed to produce a bloody DOS floppy ?
> >>>>>>> No it didn't work under Wine either, just came up with a nice Western
> >>>>>>> Digital GUI background, ... fabulous.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Because this particular program performs low-level operations that
> >>>>>> requires certain ioctls that are not implemented by DOSEMU.  RTFM.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The program in question, is the one that writes the disk image you
> >>>>> boot from, to do the hardware checking. Not the one that does the
> >>>>> low level checks. RTF Post...
> >>>>
> >>>> The program used low level operations to create the disk image.
> >>>> This is typical of such utilities.  I know because I've tried to use
> >>>> them myself.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> low level operations like dd or rawrite? you know, programs that work
> >>> great from Linux natively, or dosemu respectively. 
> >>
> >> Obviously it's using a native Win32 system call instead of a DOS call.
> >> Why are you having so many difficulties with this?  Why would the
> >> manufacturer *not* develop for the most common system?
> >>
> >
> > you claimed it used "low level operations" I was asking what low level
> > operation you were referring to? 
> >
> > as for most common, frankly, I don't care. I don't eat at McD's much at
> > all, no matter how *common* it is, I don't vote for the *common* choice,
> > and I don't buy my hardware and software based on what the most *common*
> > choice is. I buy based on what fulfills my needs. 
> 
> And when you're selling hardware to feed your children, you'll target the 
> largest group, which is what they're doing.  To do any less would be
> unbusinesslike.

No they are not.

They would be targeting the largest group if they had just provided a
floppy image with the writing program separate. That way, they would
have caught *everyone*.

IBM does the same dumb thing for its BIOS update program
BTW. Silly buggers.

Mart

-- 
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
	-- George Carlin

Jim Richardson threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 03:34:50 GMT,
>  Rich Bell <rg_bell@nvbell.net> wrote:
>> Terry wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> So I had to get a friend who dual boots to grab the 1.5MB zip file, run
>>> it under Windows produce the floppy and then create an image for me and
>>> email it!
>>
>> What were you saying about how Linux supports DOS apps better than XP?
>>
>>>
>
> If it uses Win32 calls, it isn't a DOS app, now is it?

These Bell Wintrolls really need to learn about the subject of their
zealotry!

>
> (with the bell twins, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.)

And at the end, you get the no Bell prize!



-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

On 2004-01-03, Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
> Jim Richardson threw some tea leaves on the floor
>  and this is what they wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 23:50:33 +1100,
>>  Terry <tjporter@gronk.porter.net> wrote:
>>
>><snip informative ranting>
>>
>> Hie thee to <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983> for a
>> very informative article on smart tools for monitoring IDE drives. 
>
> WOW, very impressed!
>
> I've emerged smartmontools onto my Desktop. the server is next!
>
> Desktop info:-
>
> root@gronk:/home/iso# smartctl -i /dev/hda
> smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
> Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
>

This is what I love about cola, if you cut threw of spew
of the trollery, you learn something new and usefull every
day.  What a fantastic utility.

--
Mark Gary

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 11:27:26 +1100, Terry wrote:

> Mike threw some tea leaves on the floor
>  and this is what they wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:20:28 +0000, Nigel Feltham wrote:
> [...] 
> 
>> 3. Terry has some basic test equipment around,
> 
> Hah, I don't call a 100mhz HP DSO and a HP 25mhz 24ch LA basic :P
 
When I said 'basic' I was thinking of the voltmeter or low frequency scope
you'd need to check the supply. It seems basic to you and me, but most
folks don't even have that. 

....

>> In any event, Terry said that he was able to recover his data, it just took
>> a long time to do it. I'm sure there is some obscure chip-related problem
>> that might cause a failure like that,
> 
> The diags said that there was a problem with the SMART system, drive
> defective.

Ugh. That's informative, isn't it? 

SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) that monitors
various metrics related to drive performance and reliability. In your case,
it's saying there are problems (duh), but it's not telling you what the
problem is. 

Since SMART is a semi-standard, you could try using a different SMART
diagnostic tool. Hitachi has one called DFT. It creates a boot floppy to
run, but they offer a Linux boot floppy creation utility:

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

If your computer is moderately recent, the BIOS should support SMART, and
automatically run a check when the system boots - provided the check isn't
disabled. I don't know what the issues are with checking SMART after the
system boots, but there must be some issue, or all the SMART diagnostic
programs wouldn't be running from a bootable floppy. 

Without a SMART utility that can run after boot-up, uptime is inversely
proportional to the odds of finding a drive problem before your disk dies. 

-- Mike --

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 08:20:17 -0800, Mike wrote:

> If your computer is moderately recent, the BIOS should support SMART, and
> automatically run a check when the system boots - provided the check isn't
> disabled. I don't know what the issues are with checking SMART after the
> system boots, but there must be some issue, or all the SMART diagnostic
> programs wouldn't be running from a bootable floppy. 

I stand corrected: I just saw the pointer to Bruce Allen's smartmontools.

-- Mike --

Wayne Throop wrote:

> : flatfish+++ <flatfish@linuxmail.org>
> : A good trick you might try in the future is to place the sick drive in
> : a plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.  Have
> : your system ready to go so that you can quickly connect the cables and
> : boot up.  Then try copying data until it starts to fail.  Freeze the
> : drive again and continue where you left off and so forth.  This is a
> : last ditch effort and should only be done after all else fails.
> : However, I have seen this trick work several times in the past.
> 
> Heat-marginal components can also be kept limping along for a while
> for purposes such as the above using a can of dust-off (ie, pressurized
> non-freon-but-freon-like-substance in a can).  Especially if you use
> the can upside-down so as to spray the volatiles onto the component;
> sucks the heat right out of 'em.  Beware various dangers, but sometimes
> you just have to give a machine a sharp slap... or a bit of a freeze.
> 
> Egad the grotesque things one learns over time, sigh...

True - a few months ago at work we got out an old laptop (actually more of a 
luggable - remember the old plasma screen toshiba's) we had with logic 
analyser card installed (we were having a clearout and wanted to test it to 
see if worth keeping) and found it's old 20mb hard drive totally dead with 
bearings seized solid. 

Removing the drive and dropping it about 3ft onto a concrete floor, upside 
down to protect the PCB, got it going again - although after testing we 
decided the maching had no more use to us so was dumped anyway ;-)

-- 
Nigel Feltham - spanking trolls since 1999

In article <p16gc1-0fk.ln1@gronk.porter.net>, Terry wrote:
> Next is the "SeaTools Desktop".
> 	Desktop edition works with most ATA, SATA, or SCSI drives
> 	in desktop systems and has a 98% accuracy rate.
> 	Our most popular version."
> 
> System Requirements for Running SeaTools Disc Diagnostic
> 
> You can run SeaTools Disc Diagnostic to test your disc drive if your PC has:
> 
>     * at least one (1) Seagate Technology disc drive.
>     * an IBM / Intel compatible PC with a 386 or greater processor.
>     * SVGA 800 x 600 or greater graphics capability.
>     * at least 8 megabytes of RAM.
>     * 1.44 megabyte floppy disk drive for the bootable SeaTools
> 	diskette (Two (2) diskettes required with version 2.x).
> 
> Sounds good, and they say this re dependencies:-
> 	" Intel-compatible system with at least 8MB of RAM, a floppy
> 	or CD-ROM drive and VGA graphics or better.
> 	OS independent."
> 
> Ok, lets download the 3.3 MB file and check it out:_
> 
> 
> D:\SEAGATE>ls
> seato~8v.exe
> D:\SEAGATE>seato~8v
> This program must be run under Win32
> 
> Aha, here we go again! Is this what they mean by "OS independent" ?

Why not use the ISO image they provide to make a CD version?

-- 
--Tim Smith

begin  In <slrnbvcg6i.24i3.generalpf@braids.ertw.com>, on 01/03/2004
   at 04:11 AM, General Protection Fault <generalpf@braids.ertw.com>
said:

>And when you're selling hardware to feed your children, you'll target
>the  largest group, which is what they're doing.

No. That's a simplistic analysis. If you know what you are doing you
will target the largest group *WITHOUT* turning away smaller groups
that you could have sold to with minimal effort. 

>To do any less would be unbusinesslike.

To send potential customers to other vendors, when you could
accommodate them easily and inexpensively, is unbusinesslike.

-- 
     Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

Unsolicited bulk E-mail will be subject to legal action.  I reserve
the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.

Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do
not reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

Bruce Allen threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

>> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
>> -       1
>> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline
>> -       1
>
> I would be slightly concerned about these, though I am not as
> knowledgeable
> about Seagate firmware, so my concern may be misplaced.
>
> I think that the raw values of '1' indicate that there is one
> unreadable sector on the hard disk.  You should run an extended self
> test with '-t long'; if it fails you should try using the Seagate
> utility to force reallocation of the bad sector.

Thanks, I'll try that and see what happens.

>
> Bruce

Are you *this* Bruce Allen ??

smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen 
-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

In article <a4dcvv42rlqle5fc8sh93gd3ho0he4p8vv@4ax.com>,
flatfish+++  <flatfish@linuxmail.org> wrote:
>
>I do the same.
>I was just clued in that Lexmark is a nasty company to do biz with and I won't
>buy another product from them.
>I will support companies that at least make an effort toward supporting multiple
>platforms like Windows, Linux and Mac.

I read a review of laser printers here. (Dutch HCC Computertotaal)
The only one to score 5 quality balls of 5 for text and photo printing :
        the Brother HL-1430
USB + Parallel port, and ... Linux drivers.
Think I'll get one and dump the second hand Lexmark I have here.
Not the cheapest in the test but wait. I find an advertisement for
E 179, which equals the price of the cheapest in the test.

(My first Brother, a daisy wheel, was E 500 in 1986).

What about positive reinforcement and send a complimentary letter.


>>> flatfish+++
-- 
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
        One man-hour to invent,
                One man-week to implement,
                        One lawyer-year to patent.

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:01:07 GMT, albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der
Horst) wrote:


>I read a review of laser printers here. (Dutch HCC Computertotaal)
>The only one to score 5 quality balls of 5 for text and photo printing :
>        the Brother HL-1430
>USB + Parallel port, and ... Linux drivers.
>Think I'll get one and dump the second hand Lexmark I have here.
>Not the cheapest in the test but wait. I find an advertisement for
>E 179, which equals the price of the cheapest in the test.
>
>(My first Brother, a daisy wheel, was E 500 in 1986).

Wow!
How times have changed.
Most of us old farts know Brother as the typwriter company and in past years the
"all in one printer/fax etc" company with little support for Linux.

IMHO Lexmark makes excellent printers and while the ink refills are expensive,
at least in my house (with several ink wasting kids) they last a LONG TIME.

However I don't like the propriatory attitude that they seem to have.
I don't like to be locked into anything and although I am reasonable (ie:I don't
expect a Porsche part to fit my Vette), I have limits as well.

>What about positive reinforcement and send a complimentary letter.

I just fired off a letter to them thanking them for Linux support and informed
them that I will certainly consider them for my next purchase.

http://solutions.brother.com/Library/sol/printer/linux_install.html

................Says it all for me...........

>
>>>> flatfish+++

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:01:07 GMT, Albert van der Horst wrote:
> In article <a4dcvv42rlqle5fc8sh93gd3ho0he4p8vv@4ax.com>,
> flatfish+++  <flatfish@linuxmail.org> wrote:
>>
>>I do the same.
>>I was just clued in that Lexmark is a nasty company to do biz with and I won't
>>buy another product from them.
>>I will support companies that at least make an effort toward supporting multiple
>>platforms like Windows, Linux and Mac.
>
> I read a review of laser printers here. (Dutch HCC Computertotaal)
> The only one to score 5 quality balls of 5 for text and photo printing :
>         the Brother HL-1430
> USB + Parallel port, and ... Linux drivers.
> Think I'll get one and dump the second hand Lexmark I have here.
> Not the cheapest in the test but wait. I find an advertisement for
> E 179, which equals the price of the cheapest in the test.
>
> (My first Brother, a daisy wheel, was E 500 in 1986).
>
> What about positive reinforcement and send a complimentary letter.

I second the recommendation for Brother printers.  I bought a Brother HL-1030
(Canada only) five years ago and have not had a single problem.  The toner
is reasonably priced and uses the same cartidges as their faxes, so they'll
stick around longer.

It did take a long time to be supported by ghostscript but oh what do you
expect for a printer sold only in Canada.

-- 
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE i386
10:30AM  up 58 days, 12:41, 2 users, load averages: 0.02, 0.01, 0.00

> > I would be slightly concerned about these, though I am not as
> > knowledgeable
> > about Seagate firmware, so my concern may be misplaced.
> >
> > I think that the raw values of '1' indicate that there is one
> > unreadable sector on the hard disk.  You should run an extended self
> > test with '-t long'; if it fails you should try using the Seagate
> > utility to force reallocation of the bad sector.
> 
> Thanks, I'll try that and see what happens.
> 
> > Bruce
> 
> Are you *this* Bruce Allen ??
> 
> smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen

Yes.

Bruce

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On 31 Jan 2004 02:15:22 -0800,
 Bruce Allen <ballen@uwm.edu> wrote:
>> > I would be slightly concerned about these, though I am not as
>> > knowledgeable
>> > about Seagate firmware, so my concern may be misplaced.
>> >
>> > I think that the raw values of '1' indicate that there is one
>> > unreadable sector on the hard disk.  You should run an extended self
>> > test with '-t long'; if it fails you should try using the Seagate
>> > utility to force reallocation of the bad sector.
>> 
>> Thanks, I'll try that and see what happens.
>> 
>> > Bruce
>> 
>> Are you *this* Bruce Allen ??
>> 
>> smartctl version 5.25 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
>
> Yes.
>
> Bruce

Sweet! thanks for the cool software, helps me sleep easier knowing that
some potential hardware failures are being watched for on my servers :)

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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Some people are born normal, some people achieve normality, and some
have normalcy thrust upon them by a nice nurse with a hypodermic.