Messages

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SMF Forum Mods / Re: Is there a better way to handle Gri's posts?

« on: July 28, 2011, 02:15 PM »

Somehow Mouser has been able to police this forum by inculcating in us the motivation to police ourselves.  A rare quality in leadership; indeed, and we are the better for it.  

Regardless of what anyone may think on their first impression, I would suggest that person(s) would do a great disservice to their self and others if one does not take another look.  DC is quite remarkable, besides gaining a better mastery on coding.

The jury is still out on the issues concerning Gri and ourselves.  It would be interesting to return here and see what verdict was rendered, provided we did not err and vindicated ourselves demonstrating we did have the wisdom to judge rightly.

<Edit - Hmmm.... nothing new?>

-CodeTRUCKER (December 07, 2007, 06:46 PM)

Well I have an update for you, although it appears that Gri has become a non-issue since the post I'm replying to has been posted. Gri's quest has been directed to my board and I've set up a section for him there. I've set up 2 SMF boards for him to be Admin on so that he has greater resources at his disposal.  Why? I figured out what he wanted (for the most part, anyway) and while he's become a non-issue for you guys all this time, I have a related question about YOUR board...the second SMF board I've seen that has a "threaded view" in place, and I'd like to know what setting you set or what file you modify to get this.

Gri's quest is basically a trackback of a discussion, but the ability to view the linktree where even individual postings are mapped out is a good alternative, and I for one have an interest in just such a capability. A picture of what I'm talking about was taken of that other board:

Ideally looking for a function that looks like this, which is an archive of a now-defunct DCScripts.com board

This is the thing I want to know how to do, and it's something that is applicable to what Gri has been looking for as well.

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General Software Discussion / Re: original win98 games

« on: March 13, 2011, 11:07 PM »

I recently setup a virtual 98 and am wanting to find the games.

-techidave (March 12, 2011, 02:50 PM)

Do you have a special purpose for that virtual? I can't see much use for it, besides the quick boot-time on modern hardware, but usually more modern virtual machines, like those running WinXP, revive from paused state quick enough and have a bigger feature-set and matureness over W98.

-Ath (March 13, 2011, 11:33 AM)

That's why I still have Win 3.11 squirrelled away.  I got MS OSs going back to 2.0 because they've got different sorts of maneuverabilities and when it comes to hard disk recovery, a lot of times using a different version of DOS can be helpful.  Some guy had a head crash on an XP and the Rescue disk would give me guff.  I recovered what data was undamaged by the crash by using a Win 98 bootup/recovery disk.

Oh yeah---and Win3.11 still recognizes the ANSI driver. Win95 did also, to a limited extent but things got too far away from the ANSI driver beginning with Win98 SE and later.  Yeah--I'm an ANSI artist and I notice stuff like that. And there was DOS Edit--really the bee's knees for embedding low-ASCII control codes. 

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General Software Discussion / Re: original win98 games

« on: March 13, 2011, 11:03 PM »

I hadn't seen a picture of Win 1 or 2 either.  I started out with windows 3.0 and DOS 5.  At work we actually had DOS 3.3 installed with no windows.

-techidave (March 13, 2011, 06:32 AM)

There wouldn't have been any Windows using DOS 3.3 because that was pre-Windows. That was the first version of DOS that got serial port networking capability (as opposed to the coax cable type proto-Ethernet / acoustic coupler networking that was state of the art at the time).

Yeah, I started out with DOS 1, aka CP/M.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What the hell is OpenCandy?

« on: February 26, 2011, 07:19 PM »

My policy: u want me to spread ur seeds, u pay me. Period. I spread seeds for no one.

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Living Room / Re: [Humor]: An update is available for your computer!

« on: February 26, 2011, 07:15 PM »

To raise the issue once more, I updated 2 days ago (Thursday) and had the 7 updates I mentioned. Today, I go to update again and have 14 new updates. Today's series required me log out and log back in. Once again, my point is not to bad mouth the *nix platforms, but merely point out that number of updates, or the requirement to reboot/log out and log back in does not make a platform bad. I think using this criteria to judge a platform is ill-advised if not used in the proper context.

-Josh (February 26, 2011, 01:15 PM)

100% with you on that one.  

I never understood why it was such a big deal either. It doesn't matter if there are security holes or program bugs. Because there will always be security holes and program bugs. What's most important is that they get patched on a timely basis. I'd be much more concerned if updates were few and far between.

Updates and reboots are a small inconvenience to put up with in return for a more secure and stable machine.

 

-40hz (February 26, 2011, 02:41 PM)

I replaced a hard drive on an XP machine and installed a the fresh XP from the CD, and it ran fast.  Then came the infernal updates--hundreds of them.  Got all those installed and then--you guessed it--the machine slowed down.  It slowed down to the point where the machine actually produced an error message from MS HQ complaining that the machine was running too slow, would I please close a few windows.  It had a Report button, I clicked on that and said a few choice words about how, if MS wanted XP to run faster, what it needed to do is quit clogging the system with all those updates.

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Living Room / Re: [Humor]: An update is available for your computer!

« on: February 25, 2011, 11:07 AM »

Annoying? I came back to my machine seeing that it had updated automatically. I didn't have to do anything but reboot which took less than a minute. On Windows, the reboot is optional. On Linux, if I don't logoff after certain updates, the WM will look quite screwy.

-Josh (February 25, 2011, 07:58 AM)

Yeah, that's nice at first, but after a while there are so many updates that the machine slows down, then MS comes out with a new OS and you buy a new machine with the new OS pre-install because it's cheaper than upgrading the one you got and what it all amounts to is that you change machines for the new faster OS like a person buying a new Cadillac because the ashtrays in the old one got full.

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Site/Forum Features / Re: Request for help: graphic designer/writer to make an old-timey 2-page wackyness

« on: February 24, 2011, 12:19 PM »

Kewl.  Stuff like this comes up when Googling images "wacky victorian":



Precious little else, though. Foo.

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Site/Forum Features / Re: Request for help: graphic designer/writer to make an old-timey 2-page wackyness

« on: February 24, 2011, 12:11 PM »

The style category is Victorian. Use that term in a google image search and you can find more. I've made badges for my own forum in this style, which is also a takeoff of Jack Daniels:

Is this compliant with the genre you have in mind?  I do suspect so.  As to wacky, there's stuff on my Portal that fits that description as well (Bolgiano's Seeds). You might do a Google on that as well, perhaps.

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Living Room / Re: Can anyone repair Li-ion battery circuit?

« on: February 23, 2011, 10:30 PM »

You can't save a leaky battery, alas. What you say is true about a lot of rechargeables, as it happens. What you're doing is putting a charge on the battery's electrodes and its internal chemistry re-forms the dielectric somewhat. An auto's lead-acid battery will recharge somewhat from a bundle of AA cells simply because there's a charge applied to its plates enacting a chemical process. It won't charge enough to be able to deliver the full rated current, but you might could get it to crank your engine a couple of times if you've got a small car with a small starter and an easily turned engine. Get the engine started and the system charges the battery with full current delivery.

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Living Room / Re: Can anyone repair Li-ion battery circuit?

« on: February 21, 2011, 03:20 PM »

Thanks for the link. The pic shows a battery pack that clearly has a cell leakage problem on the right side of the pack.  I've disassembled many similar packs to keep the individual cells that are still good and use them for different purposes. Temperature is an issue with these cells and the connections between them are micro spotwelded. Before you defeat the circuit board, you need to replace the leaky cells or the other good cells will go bad and/or you ruin the circuit board from faulty operation.

In NICads I've successfully soldered the spotwelds back to fresh cells using a low-watt soldering pencil (45 watts, tiny tip, with heat sink arrangements), but it's my understanding that the Li Ions are much fussier. In my considered opinion, I think your best option for salvage is to just separate the good cells from the bad and use them individually in other things. That pack, as a pack, is shot (except for maybe the circuit board).

I'd sure like to see the schematic of that board, but I'll betcha it's proprietary.

This cautionary comment on that article is wise to make note of:

It’s a bad idea to replace a single cell in a pack like this. If the cells don’t discharge evenly you can get in a situation where a strong cell reverses a weak cell. That will drastically shorten the life of the reversed cell or even destroy it (depending on which battery chemistry it is).

This is the same reason why instruction manuals for everything state to use only matched, new batteries when you replace them. You can get away with a lot in something like a remote control, but in a high-current application you have an opportunity to rupture a cell.

This is further debated in the comment thread, but having experienced overheating batteries and batteries that went boom, it'll take experience for those in-favor guys to change their minds.  I'm hoping it doesn't have to come to that for the wise who find it better to learn from the mistakes of others in preference to making their own.

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Living Room / Re: Can anyone repair Li-ion battery circuit?

« on: February 21, 2011, 11:50 AM »

I've got more projects than I can handle at the moment but I've never heard of a circuit on a battery (cell).  I can diddle with circuits but that sounds like a microcircuit totally defiant of the soldering iron.  But you have my curiosity up--I'm definitely gonna do more research on that.

Nicads and metal hydrides have an inherent characteristic like that, without any extra circuitry as it happens. Lead-acid batteries require deep cycling to avoid going bad, so each type of battery has its own inherent peculiarities even without circuitry.

I found this just now:

...Despite its overall advantages, lithium-ion has its drawbacks. It is fragile and requires a protection circuit to maintain safe operation. Built into each pack, the protection circuit limits the peak voltage of each cell during charge and prevents the cell voltage from dropping too low on discharge. In addition, the cell temperature is monitored to prevent temperature extremes. The maximum charge and discharge current on most packs are is limited to between 1C and 2C. With these precautions in place, the possibility of metallic lithium plating occurring due to overcharge is virtually eliminated.
 
Aging is a concern with most lithium-ion batteries and many manufacturers remain silent about this issue. Some capacity deterioration is noticeable after one year, whether the battery is in use or not. The battery frequently fails after two or three years. It should be noted that other chemistries also have age-related degenerative effects. This is especially true for nickel-metal-hydride if exposed to high ambient temperatures. At the same time, lithium-ion packs are known to have served for five years in some applications.
 
Manufacturers are constantly improving lithium-ion. New and enhanced chemical combinations are introduced every six months or so. With such rapid progress, it is difficult to assess how well the revised battery will age.
 
Storage in a cool place slows the aging process of lithium-ion (and other chemistries). Manufacturers recommend storage temperatures of 15°C (59°F). In addition, the battery should be partially charged during storage. The manufacturer recommends a 40% charge....

Apparently, there is an additional safety issue regarding what you suggest and so I would advise against it.

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Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« on: February 20, 2011, 07:46 PM »

LOLz!!!  I already know for a fact that it's too long for Twitter. It's cut me down to "Clara Listenspre" 

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Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« on: February 20, 2011, 01:51 PM »

Thank you!

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Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« on: February 20, 2011, 01:33 PM »

Hi guys--just registered as a result of a discussion about somebody who, from what I hear, is infamous on this site (as he is elsewhere in cyberspace including my own board): Gri. I'm certainly interested in browsing mods to SMF, since I run two boards using that code. I don't know more than entry-level coding and so code tweaking is the maximum of my talents; can't really author any of it as such.

Pleased to meet y'all!  Gri, I'm already familiar with