I got one of those old boxes also, a Hewlett Packard DC5000.It's a compact thing, lying flat instead of standing up, built of bullet proof gauge metal, and weighs a ton compared to current PC's. It has the drives on a tray that swings up to 90 degrees out of the case with a lever, so you can easily reach all the cables to the motherboard, plus has the little latch system, so you just slide drives in, no screws. It's a Pentium 4 at 2.2 ghz, I put 2 gigs of DDR1 3200 ranm in it, and it has 2 more empty ram slots, has a couple of serial ports, and plenty of USB ports. Its only drawback is half height cards, but I don't think I really need any cards other than the ethernet card that's in it already. I like its CPU cooler, which is not a propeller fan, but a turbine fan, the kind that has a bunch of fin like blades around the shaft, and vents the CPU hot air directly to a separate opening on the case side, instead of blowing it around inside the case and heating up all the other components.
The old machine seems indestructable.Shutting it down with the power button doesn't even generate a crash message, it tolerates anything. I've got to get round to ordering a router, so I can get it online, with Windows XP and good old Outlook Express for email.
Indigo L On 11/23/2011 12:43 AM, D!J!X! wrote:
Hey Chris, you mentioned old machines, you reminded me, I have a p3 733 mhz system, use to be a server; has 6 PCI lsots and an AGP slot. Has windows98 if I'm not mistaking, but can take 2000 as well. Has joystick port, 2 serial ports, parallel etc. I'm trying to get it out of here, no room in the shop, asking 40 bucks for it, if you or anybody you know might be interested; I call these dos boxes; a few people bought quite a few this summer to mess with radios and such, for some other experiments and such, still got this one left though... D!J!X! -----Original Message----- From: realmusicians-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:realmusicians-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Belle Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 11:05 PM To: realmusicians@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [realmusicians] Re: Running Winize 7.5.2, god Help Me? Computer programmers don't make money from stable, well operating software, only from keeping us running on the treadmill of re-inventing the wheel, and selling us ever clunkier buggier and bloatier versions of things, ostensibly to make us more productive, and paying for the privelege 'grin'. Xp has been the longest lasting, most popular, and most stable version of windows ms ever invented, except for maybe 2000, which is really the same thing just stripped down, I still have it on old pentium 2 machines, and it can run quiet a bit of new stuff even so, just is no more support for it at all from ms. 6.1 huh? Well, I think 7.2 just about got to the snappy stage 6.2 was at with the advantage of scripting, and so far, the scripts I'm using haven't bitched, but I'm hoping enough people will step forward and say something directly to gwmicro, so many people tell me or their friends things, but don't tell the people who could make a difference. We can't be the only people on the planet experiencing these weird things. By the way, I just found out something cool. Nvda can talk in safe mode. No shit. That's huge. At 07:44 PM 11/22/2011, you wrote:No crackling on the I7 machine running any of those Reason demo songs, plus playing along with them from midi keyboard. System restore is still on on that machine, but I turned it off years ago on the slow old music machine I'm not worrying about excess latency or anything else on the new 64 bit I7, because in a little longer I'll put Windows XP Pro on a Samsung F3 and I'll be back in happy hog heaven; back on stable XP and good old predictable WindowEyes 6.1, but on a more powerful machine. I had no problem whatsoever getting 5 ms latency, even 3ms, on both the Emu PCI sound card and the PCIE Emu 1616m, on that slow old machine, which played 1 or 2 of Reason 6's devices just fine, it just couldn't cope with those demo songs, where 5 or 6 devices are running simultaneously. I had fewer glitches in 32 bits Reason 6 than I do on a new computer with many times more power. I'm not impressed with the stability of Win7 64. it reminds me of my friend's 700 horsepower supercharged Corvette. It might go 200 miles an hour, but his car went through a set of crankshaft bearings in a week. How impractical is that? Sorry, maybe I'll become a Mennonite, the horse and buggy approach is more peaceful. smile. Indigo L On 11/22/2011 8:18 PM, Chris Belle wrote:Indie, if your worried about crackling and latency in your audio though you might want it off on your music machines, it's something toconsider.Why bog a race horse down with a sumo wrestler if you don't have to'grin'.But if you like it, then it's golden. At 07:00 PM 11/22/2011, you wrote:I'm not going to worry about System Restore being a resource hog, it saved me more than once now, and these four and 8 core machines are still plenty fast enough with System Restore running. On 11/22/2011 2:27 PM, Jack Conti wrote:Tell you what it has bailed me out about three times over the last year. windows just simply screws up sometimes and just bringing mhy system back a day helped. it even fixed a window eyes issue for me since i di a couple bad things<smile> At 02:19 PM 11/22/2011, you wrote:I don't have system restore running all the time as it's a resource hog. It's not really the same thing as an image, only backs up certain files, it's a half assed microsoft thing no serious it person uses it. Well, let's say would depend on it for a real backup. At 12:14 PM 11/22/2011, you wrote:Can't you do a system restore, back a couple of days, before all this mess hit the fan? On 11/22/2011 1:05 PM, Chris Belle wrote:You too huh? Well, I lost my we 7.2 disk temporarily while the studio was being built, so even though I owned window-eyes through 2 sma's a good friend of mine lent me an iso so I could enjoy the dubious pleasures of being a paying beta tester 'grin'. I guess that's what we are with all this software. I've come to the conclusion that we 7.2 was pretty good especially after the refresh, then after all the furniture was moved around it took a nose dive again. I didn't have the luxury of having the option to go back to 751 and use my own copy of we. After I found my copy burried in a box someplace, I guess I didn't imediately rectify putting my own on all the machines, and so, I'm out of luck. This all happened at the time when I felt I was really treated badly by gwmicro, booted unsarimoniously off the beta team because I stood up to Doug because all he wanted to hear about at the time were scripting issues, and I felt there were important issues with the core functionallity of we not being delt with. So i didn't feel like asking for another disk and handing over 20 bucks, petty I know, but it really hurt at the time. I don't care anymore, I think these access companies are all the same, some a little better than others, but when you run a business, the bottom line is making a living. Doug's going to make a whole lot more money selling new copies of window-eyes for as long as he can, and these little devices which he can resell and not have to baby-sit too much, and the writing's on the wall, with w8 coming out with a pretty good narrator, the mac coming on strong, and these little screen-readers like nvda being nearly as good as the big guys for more work a day tasks, I think the screen-reader landscape is gonna change and the survivors will have to do something different. It won't be tomorrow, but you know even fs has lowered their price for an sma, and they never do that. Guess they're feeling the pinch too, so many blind folks buying macs now, and or using the free stuff? The cavvy course through sisco that Stephie is taking recommended nvda over jaws or window-eyes and you would be very supprised at how good that little reader is. the only thing it lacks is direct pixel control of where to place the mouse, you can't move by delta values yet, but it will read much stuff that is silent to window-eyes, especially in windows 7. How is it that a little free or donation supported screen reader can be so stable and work so well, when the big guys are so troublesome? Is it the bloat factor? I think therecomes a time with any software when it reaches a critical mass and then as features are piled on, and old code isn't updated or taken out, it becomes less stable, responsive, and buggy. And I'm no programmer, but I know enough to know how difficult and elusive these things can be, especially with low level stuff, and the ever changing target of how to even hook in to operating systems, dcm, mirror drivers, ui and the whole nasty mess. so I don't think it's malice, I think gwmicro is trying to survive, like a friend of mine pointed out, neglect and disrespect can be mistaken for quiet desperation. Doug's got a payroll to make. also, there's been a lot of personallity turn over over there it seems to me and one of the main programmers died too right? so, it would probably take a new programmer a lot of time to come up to speed with what is going on rather than someone who's worked intimately with window-eyes through it's birth and maturity and now it's cancerous degeneration 'grin', sorry, just having a little fun, don't get too mad at me Tom. let's hope a little chemo therapy and prayer will bring it back and some super smarts like you have. Boy, I'm writing this message with jaws, and notice I'm getting no missed typing characters which has always plagued me with window-eyes. I know I get in a hurry and make mistakes, but I'm a pretty good typer, if a lousy speller, but I get far more mistakes trying to type with window-eyes. No matter what I do, this never went away with any of my hardware. A friend of mine kids me that I'm using too good hardware and I need to use amd chips as he's a fan of amd stuff, it's a friendly little thing we do, well, it's a wonder with all the crap that the pc world has to deal with that any of this stuff works at all, and works as well as it does. Hope my personal observations and candid monologue on my personal experiences doesn't offend anyone, it sure wasn't meant to. My wife is using jaws almost exclusively now as she's more in to the office stuff and it's a know fact that fs has been ahead in that regard for years, much as we wouldn't want to admit it and as much work as gwmicro has done with special tweaks for office. Where window-eyes still shines is exploring new apps, seeing tool tips, and general exploration especially with the older operating systems. When I was creating session drummer 3 hotspot clicker sets for jaws I kept bouncing back to window-eyes to see what was under themouse.Jaws will do this too, but it's a bit more clunky, window-eyes mouse navigation is more natural and immediate. Well, if I have to make a choice, there will always be demo copies of we around, and maybe we 8 will be the magic bean third time's the charm right? here's hoping. My heart always goes out to the under dog, the little company, and there is still a little bit of that left at gwmicro, not much, but they are marginally better to deal with than FS, I hope all of that doesn't go away. But it's a terrible strain to maintain kindness and patience when you've got a zillion blind folks yammering at you, and more and more pressure put on just a few people, and I understand this, but we dish out our money so we can do our work, and we should have the right to expect results. Well, mnot only have I not gotten results, but what I had to begin with has been lessened, and made more troublesome to use. So what can I say? Probably nothing more of value at this point. blessing everyone. At 10:5 9 AM 11/22/2011, you wrote:It's okay Tom, problems solved. I got a system restore back 2 days, before this disaster; so now I have Wineyes 7.5.1 again. I wasted time trying to install 7.5.1 on top of 7.5.2 and got a message that some hook or the other could not be set, so lost speech at that point, but my wife did the restore. Thanks for your help, Indigo L On 11/22/2011 9:19 AM, Tom Kingston wrote:Make sure Show advanced options is on under the help menu. Open the keyboard node and cursor down once to the voice node. Then tab once for the speak options. I've never had any problem with the backspace key. I just tried Ctrl-Shift-R and got the same result as you. I never noticed because I've never used it in a composition windowbefore.Hth, Tom On 11/22/2011 8:30 AM, Indigo wrote:I just looked in the control panel, and that old setting of speak characters, or whole words as you type seems not to be there any more. Next I'm going to get off the thunderbird.000 set file, because it might be a new one they developed for 7.5.2; and not the one I had developed myself in 7.5.1. I do notice small improvements in thunderbird, the backspace is more reliable, but the old read to end shortcut control+shift+R now only reads the single sentence I'm on, and not to the end, as before.. I wish I could type that blithring idiot noise the Three Stooges used, you know, where you make a noise with your mouth as youflip across your lips with a finger. that's how I feel typing in this madness! smile. Indigo L On 11/21/2011 1:59 PM, Roy Shtupler wrote:maybe it's something to do with keyboard settings; will further look. cheers Roy. http://elephant-dolphin.bandcamp.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Indigo" <33indigo@xxxxxxxxxxx> To:<realmusicians@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 7:44 PM Subject: [realmusicians] Re: Running Winize 7.5.2, god Help Me?Nope, Roy. Same double repeating with and without apps running. It's not just speaking the character I just typed, or the word, but the sentence I'm typing, cumulatively, from the first word to the cursor position, instantly the very nanosecond I pause typing. Where is the setting to turn off speaking of typed words in the W E control panel, do you know? I used to know, but can't find it in this wonderful tree view control panel. Thanks, Indigo L. On 11/21/2011 12:03 PM, Roy Shtupler wrote:does it have a script for ThunderBird? if so , when setting the scripting status to Manual , does this go away? cheers Roy. http://elephant-dolphin.bandcamp.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Indigo" <33indigo@xxxxxxxxxxx> To:<realmusicians@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 6:48 PM Subject: [realmusicians] Running Winize 7.5.2, god Help Me?Okay, here I am in the first moments with the new Winize 7.5.2 upgrade, and it's utter chaos in my Thunderbird. It is reading every line twice immediately after I type even a single character, never did that before. I feel like I'm in some huge cave, with an echo repeating every thing I say! When I pressed the enter key to begin the upgrade, I felt just like I do at the doctors, beginning some procedure that could either take the disease away or take my life, and all I can do is submit. smile. Now I gotta go into the tree structure of the once easy Winize control panel and try to find a setting that will shut down this maddening double echo One thing about hearing everything twice, I sure have no doubt about what I've written. smile. I don't know whether to laugh or cry! Indigo LFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web designFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web designFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web designFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web design
