Tech Tangents talks about how preservationists use tools like GreaseWeasle to back up disks.
It helped me a lot when learning how to back up and write my own disks.
Update: Using a Greaseweasle and a 5.25″ floppy drive turned out to be critical evidence/court records on a nearly 50-year-old floppy disk last written to in 1993 using a DEC PDP-11.
Have written previously about my experiments with the very excellent Greaseweazle; but that was reading things like my old Kings Quest 5.25″ floppy disks from my modern 12th Gen Intel PC running Windows 10.
Recently I acquired some old pc hardware and put together a retro 486-DX pc. To that end, I needed to create a DOS boot disk for this old system. That meant I needed to write a 1.2mb DOS boot disk.
Previously I used some boot disk images to create an old DOS virtual machine running Windows 1.0. For that, I used a bunch of archived boot disks images from WinWorld archive.
But how do I write these little beasts?
I floundered around with greaseweezle’s command line but this guide from Tech Tangents really helped out. There’s clearly a lot more I need to learn, but this got me a bootable 5.25″ 1.2mb floppy disk. I was able to test it on 2 different drives, and both worked. So, that’s pretty sweet!
How to write DOS 6.22 image to a 5.25″ 1.2m floppy drive attached to the ribbon cable right before the cable twist:
gw write --drive b --format ibm.1200 Dos6.22-5.25.img
To write a DOS 3.30 image to a 5.25″ 360k floppy drive attached to the ribbon cable right before the twist:
gw write --drive b --format ibm.360 DOS330-360k.img
When I was learning to drive tractors, I first learned on a John Deere 720, then on a John Deere 4020
The 4020’s had a synchro-shift transmission that I liked to think had 3 ‘zones’ that consisted of a high/low forward and a reverse. As you moved down the tree, those high/low/reverse combos got faster and faster.
Did you ever drive one? How did you work it out in your head?
Worf: They are Klingons – and it is a long story. We do not discuss it with outsiders.
How to reconnect your Steelseries headset after swapping it between systems.
Even though this headset is supposed to work without their Nova 7 Bluetooth dongle, I found you had to connect to the system with the dongle first. The buttons you press are also not intuitive so this was very helpful.
The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (text) passed by President Biden in Nov 2021 included a little clause that I think might surprise everyone.
ALL cars sold from 2026 onwards must include a drunk driving detection system in order to use the vehicle. It might mean a passive system of some sort that analyzes your driving – or could include something as invasive as a breathalyzer. There’s increasing evidence this may not be possible by 2026, but it’s something to keep in mind.
SEC. 24220
(1) Advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention
technology.--The term ``advanced drunk and impaired driving
prevention technology'' means a system that--
(A) can--
(i) passively monitor the performance of a
driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify
whether that driver may be impaired; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation
if an impairment is detected;
(B) can--
[[Page 135 STAT. 832]]
(i) passively and accurately detect whether
the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a
motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the
blood alcohol concentration described in section
163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation
if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal
limit is detected; or
(C) is a combination of systems described in
subparagraphs (A) and (B).
Someone always wins the lottery every day – but the reality is when you decide what kind of game you’re going to make you’ve already decided how much money you’re going to make.
I love how Chris Zukowski from ‘How to Market Your Game‘ gives very realistic and honest evaluations of the game industry using data.
Regardless of the effect of marketing, in this video he shows that the financial success of your game is dependent on a bunch of different factors that are determined LONG before you even write the first line of code.
Other articles:
“I don’t care what others do so long as they’re not hurting anyone else”
Obviously directly hurting others is bad and most would agree with that. But what about things that ‘only’ affect that person? People can hurt themselves psychologically (self-imposed isolation, addictions to porn/drugs/social media/etc), physically (drugs, dangerous driving, overly dangerous risk taking, overeating, bulimia, etc), and emotionally (codependent behaviors, addictions, etc).
The reality is that behavior you claim is only hurting yourself is never just bad for you. It is also bad for others. Others must deal with the consequences of you hurting yourself. Alcoholics and drug addicts very often say they don’t hurt others – but anyone who has a family member or loved one that is an addict would disagree.
Communities are often losing a valuable person with unique talents and things to offer. They aren’t able to live full lives or contribute their talents. Those are all losses to the person and to the world. In worse situations, it results in life-long health issues and more medical treatments that put stress on medical and emergency services. Destruction of property can lead to higher costs for things and higher insurance rates.
“I don’t care what others do as long as they’re not telling others what to do.”
It’s nice in thought, but the fact we live in a democracy with voting means we DO tell each other what to do in the public sphere by how and who they vote into office. That is why the truth about human worth and understanding what makes just laws and just governance matters more than feel-good measures.