Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

The AC in my server room seems to be working pretty well.

The early history of Windows file attributes, and why there is a gap between System and Directory: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180830-00/?p=99615

There's more CP/M legacy in Windows than you may realize.

LB: Rumor has it that, shortly after the worm Morris wrote unexpectedly raged across what was the Internet at the time as malware, not as the benevolent potentially bug-fixing worm he wanted, someone got root on Morris's system & changed his login name from rtm to rtfm.

Related: If you want to follow log files that are rotated, regularly or on reaching a certain size, use `tail -F` instead of `tail -f`. The difference is that -F tells `tail` to reopen the file if it's truncated or deleted/moved and recreated.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
tail -F \
/var/log/maillog \
/var/log/messages \
|
while read -r line
do printf \
"\033[38;5;%dm%s\033[0m\n" \
$(($RANDOM%214+17)) \
"$line"
done
#
# Follow log files, showing each
# line in a random color.
# Needs a 256-color terminal,
# works best on dark/black
# backgrounds.
#

But the weird thing is both original disks were fine in my 286's 1.2 MB drive the one time I put them in there, & by coincidence the one command I ran to exercise them both was diskcopy, giving me a full duplicate of both disks, & both copies work just fine in my XT.

It's a good thing neither IBM nor Microsoft put copy protection on their DOS boot/install disks.

It's hard to tell from the label. The icky label is the Startup (boot) disk, & the good label is the Operating disk. The mylar of the Operating disk is just as damaged. It does explain why it wouldn't boot in my XT.

You'd think that a boxed set of disks still in shrinkwrap would be best protected from damage. Nope. this is the underside of a DOS 3.3 boot disk that sat unused & protected in a tyvek sleeve, in a special pocket, in a 3-ring binder, in a box, under shrinkwrap for 31 years. Look at the mylar disc visible through the oval access hole.

The IBM DOS 3.3 User Guide has a yellow bird character in some of its illustrations.

"If you've ever wanted to see the Internet fold itself up into a burrito and consume itself hungrily over the course of four minutes, you've come to the right place." - NPR, introducing what's supposed to be a news article.

Frankly, that pretty well describes birdsite.

I'm quickly learning that for IBM-compatible retrocomputing, life becomes a lot easier if newer vintage PCs are restored & operational first.

I heard that my orange excuse for a head of state gave a speech at the UN General Assembly today, & when he boasted that he did more than any previous US administration, he got laughed at. Politely, of course, but openly laughed at. This makes me so happy.

I realized something this morning.

With 3.5" floppy disks, unformatted HD disks are 2 MB, & DD disks are 1 MB, so HD disks have twice the capacity of DD disks.

But with 5.25" floppy disks, unformatted DD disks (assuming double-sided) are 500 KB, & HD disks are 1,500 KB, so HD disks have 3x the capacity, not twice.

Later TIL there was a seldom-used "quad density" between DD & HD in 5.25" standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk

Today was a spinning-wheels day. No progress, nothing done, despite every effort.