main April 2005

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54 participants
56 discussions

Re: [ALUG] New member
by Joe Button 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

On Friday 08 April 2005 12:04, Chris Walker wrote: > Windows rewrote the MBR and so I lost Lilo. Can I get it back? Not a > chance! Definitely worth having some kind of rescue CD for such occasions. Personally I tend to use SystemRescueCd, or occasionally Knoppix (the PXE boot server thingy is a life saver). Plus I'd recommend getting to know grub instead of Lilo. It's tempting to stick with what you know but grub really does make things much easier. Tip of the day: Always make sure you have a separate /boot partition, that way it's much easier to manage / not trash your grub config etc.

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Printer not working
by Peter Hunter 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

Hi all, I have just connected my Epson Stylus CX 3600 all in one printer to the spare USB port. SUSE 9.2 recognised it straight away, told me what the printer was and configured it. However, When I did a test print, and tried to print an email, everything 'seemed' to work ok, except nothing printed! There are no print jobs waiting in the queue. When I click on print the window opens and shows the Epson Stylus CX 3600 as the selected printer. Under the following headings is shows, Status: Idle (Accepting print jobs). Location: USB printer on //EPSON/Stylus%20CX3600. Comment: Local RAW Printer. And at the bottom it says, Print System Currently Used: CUPS. So, why is it that when I click on print, nothing happens? I know the printer works okay as it is also connected to my Windows PC and Apple Mac, via a printer hub. Yes, the printer is switched on, and the correct port is selected on the hub (I've tried them all just in case). The cable and connections must be okay as the printer was detected as soon as I connected it. Any help would be very much appreciated. I don't know enough about Linux or UNIX yet to trouble shoot via the command line, but I'm willing to follow instructions / directions. Many thanks for reading this, Peter

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autocheck email?
by Peter Hunter 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

Hi all, I know I have asked this before, but I had to re-install Linux (SuSE 9.2) onto a new (old) computer. I'm now using a P3 500MHz machine with a 10GB hard drive, DVD-RW and just 160 MB RAM (for now, anyone got any PC 100 they want to get rid of cheap?). Anyway, I have got all the email connection sorted ok, I just want to get KMail to check for new messages every couple of mins or so. How do I do it? Like I said, I asked before but can't remember what was said. This time I'll print out the reply and keep it in my folder. Thanks in advance. Peter

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Re: apple kit
by phil 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

> Adam > IBM thinkpads are good, and I given that around 50% of Mac laptop > owners > I know have had to send the thing off for repair within the first year > (and quite a few of them more than once) I think Mac laptops suck, > although they do appear to be getting better again so ask me again in > another year. Well - guess they were unlucky - the iBook has had a fair run of dodgy motherboards, but I gather an extra generous replacement program fixed many of those. I'm certainly getting one to replace my G3 Pismo this year which has zero spent on it since I bought it. And it still has a fairly good resale value. > >> When the Dual G5 was first made available it was very hard to build a >> X86 >> based machine with the same real world performance for much less >> money and >> that's completely ignoring the fact that they are one of the best >> designed >> and built Workstations I have ever had the pleasure of pulling to >> bits. > > Also look at how > expensive a Mac that will play Doom III nicely costs compared to an x86 > gaming rig. You're starting to sound like a Winders troll there! > >> You can beat the Mini Mac on a straight price/performance >> comparasion, but >> factor in subjective things like near silent running and the tiny >> form factor >> and you'll struggle to find anything to compare. Just off the top of >> my head >> a MiniITX board, case, memory, Hard drive, Slimline CDRW and PSU >> comes to >> about £250 retail (and that's for less performance and does not >> include an >> operating system or any manufacturer support) > > There have been many other small form factor PCs in the past, tbh I'm > not too worried about how big my computer is as it sits under my desk. > Also you have to factor in the one of the design flaws of the Mac mini > with its dodgy dvi/vga adaptor which isn't compatible for the vesa spec > which to me suggests a big Apple design flaw (so it isn't *always* > sensible design). From what I gather it's a low voltage thing that only shows up on certain monitors? As this is a version one product, guess it'll get resolved in the next revision. Tough on the early adopters I know, but it's not that it won't work with ANY monitors, just SOME. > > The machine I am typing on was originally a 1.4Ghz Athlon with a > Ge-Force 2 card which cost 600 quid, the motherboard died and it cost > 50 quid to replace with a newer better motherboard and around the same > time I upgraded the gfx card to a geforce 4 for 100 quid. At christmas > I upgraded the cpu and gfx card which cost me 200 quid for a 2.mumble > Ghz Athlon and a GeForce 6600GT card and the upgrade required me to buy > some new ram (total 1GB). Every time I have upgraded the machine I have > sold many of the bits on ebay. > > When I add up what it has cost me over 4 years (1050 quid) and what I > got back by selling bits (150 quid, and if I had sold the geforce 2 > card > I would have got another 50 quid) It has cost me 850 quid to have a > machine that is more than fast enough (and at the beginning was fairly > high end) for nearly 4 years with no upgrade projected for another 2 > years I would say that works out as a bit of a bargain compared to an > equivalent Mac (in fact, looking at the Apple store online, an > equivalent (but admittedly slightly faster) G5 Mac would cost me about > 1361 quid. God knows what the price would have been if I had stayed > with > Mac kit from the beginning. Probably 1361 quid... As was stated at the beginning, it's the appliance thing. Many Mac users buy their kit like other people buy stereos or TV's. They use it till they fancy another. I'll use this G4 iMac for about 2 more years and get the latest and greatest to replace it. Obviously they break for some people, - I've a 93 or 4 vintage LC that won't boot, but I've never had a hardware failure in anything else yet. That's about 40 or 50 machines. This that one I've a 1989 Classic upstairs, still runs just fine, never been opened. Logic battery died years ago, but it ticks along. It's a mindset thing. I buy my Mac to do a job. If it earns me enough I buy another.Phil

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Thunderbird help?
by Anthony Anson 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

A fiend of mine is having prombles with Thunderbird (1.0 ISTR) I offered to ask for a howto? from the Shed, but I gooved I'd ask in zetnet.support while I was about it. Not having got a lot to pass on, I bethought me of the ALUG list... <Q> Yes please would you ask how to make the Junk empty to Trash automatically. I have ticked the box but it doesn't work :( Anna </Q> -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ The only way to tell when a Finn is in love with you is that they look at your feet instead of their own.

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External SATA drives
by Wayne Stallwood 04 Apr '05

04 Apr '05

At the kit meet I was talking to someone about the availability of external SATA enclosures and how we were frustrated that external SATA sockets are available but seemingly there is nothing to plug into them. I think it could have been Noodles but I am not sure Anyway such a device does exist and they are available from Scan (right device, wrong picture on their site) It's the Highpoint Rocketmate 1000, strangely it only supports traditional IDE ATA drives internally and price is not available on the Scan site but I have the product PDF's if whoever it was is interested.

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