Nightfox wrote to Digital Man <=-

The prices of LightScribe discs has skyrocketed to the point where I'm no longer buying/burning them. It's a bummer too, cause that was a decent technology and I have a number of drives that supported it.

That is a bummer. I hadn't checked the prices in a while, so I didn't realize the prices had gone up that much.

Given the choice between having optical drives and not having them, I still prefer to have one. I suppose the Internet is making them obsolete, but I
find an occasional use for them. I also still occasionally use my USB floppy drive from time to time, as well. I suppose most people are not into retro computing, so.. I just watched a video of a guy that was able to use his
USB floppy drive on his iPad. Things like that interest me.

As for LightScribe, I haven't used that in ages. It was a great technology, as it basically turned your optical drive into a label etcher. I guess now, they just make all the media printable. I guess that would work as well,
but I use a laser printer. I've never actually had a printer that could
print on optical media.

Ch.
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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Chai to Nightfox on Sat Nov 10 2018 06:45 pm

floppy drive from time to time, as well. I suppose most people are not into retro computing, so.. I just watched a video of a guy that was able to use his

i'm just more practical in my old age. i dont want shit around if i'm not using it. and cds and dvds sucked. pain in the ass to load them up or burn to them when you can use a flash drive or a harddrive.

As for LightScribe, I haven't used that in ages. It was a great technology, as it basically turned your optical drive into a label etcher. I guess now, they just make all the media printable. I guess that would work as well, but I use a laser printer. I've never actually had a printer that could print on optical media.

always used a sharpie.
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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: MRO to Chai on Sat Nov 10 2018 08:09 pm

i'm just more practical in my old age. i dont want shit around if i'm not using it. and cds and dvds sucked. pain in the ass to load them up or burn to them when you can use a flash drive or a harddrive.

I don't think it was such a pain to burn to optical drives. I always used optical burning software (such as Nero) but Windows started including functionality to burn to optical discs since Windows XP, I believe, so you could do drag & drop CD/DVD burning (I never used that feature much, so I don't remember how exactly it worked).

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Nightfox to MRO on Mon Nov 12 2018 09:23 am

Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: MRO to Chai on Sat Nov 10 2018 08:09 pm

i'm just more practical in my old age. i dont want shit around if i'm not using it. and cds and dvds sucked. pain in the ass to load them up or burn to them when you can use a flash drive or a harddrive.

I don't think it was such a pain to burn to optical drives. I always used optical burning software (such as Nero) but Windows started including functionality to burn to optical discs since Windows XP, I believe, so you could do drag & drop CD/DVD burning (I never used that feature much, so I don't remember how exactly it worked).

it's a big hassle for me. especially when doing dvds. flash drives are better. ---
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Buying name brand CDR/DVDR's seems to make a big difference.

Memorex is a common brand of optical discs, but I've had problems with them i

>the past. I've used Verbatim quite a bit and haven't really had problems wit
>their discs. TDK and Sony discs seem fairly good too, although theirs seem a
>bit harder to find.

I currently do have some Memorex although I agree they may not be the best
of the 'name brand' disks. I always liked TDK when I could find them.
The other brands I have at the moment are FujiFilm and Maxell. Given
marketing these days though it can be hard to know how many different
'makes' all come off the same assembly line in China.

I do recall back when standard optical disks were more expensive a friend
used to buy spindles of 100 no-name ones to get a good price - so no-name
they had no labels, which I believe also help protect the disks from light deterioration. But he also noted right from the start that about one in
five disks would produce a coaster so you do often get what you pay for.

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: ROB MCCART to NIGHTFOX on Sun Nov 11 2018 04:54 pm

I currently do have some Memorex although I agree they may not be the best of the 'name brand' disks. I always liked TDK when I could find them.
The other brands I have at the moment are FujiFilm and Maxell. Given marketing these days though it can be hard to know how many different 'makes' all come off the same assembly line in China.

I do recall back when standard optical disks were more expensive a friend used to buy spindles of 100 no-name ones to get a good price - so no-name they had no labels, which I believe also help protect the disks from light deterioration. But he also noted right from the start that about one in five disks would produce a coaster so you do often get what you pay for.

Yeah, I tended to avoid the cheaper no-name ones, even if they were in the big spindles. I remember there also being more off-brand names - I think I still have something backed up on a "Mr. Data" CD-R somewhere.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Chai to Nightfox on Sat Nov 10 2018 18:45:00

Given the choice between having optical drives and not having them, I still prefer to have one. I suppose the Internet is making them obsolete, but I find an occasional use for them. I also still occasionally use my USB floppy drive from time to time, as well.

Me too. I actually find myself using it quite a bit. Part of my job is maintaining my company's elderly computers (the general ledger is still run on the CP/M version of dBase...!) so being able to access floppies is still super important (though my MacBook Pro no longer supports USB floppies).

Blu-Rays and DVDs are also great for backing up. And while I have an AUX port in my car, sometimes I just prefer to have a few CDs I can throw on and not have to worry about plugging my phone into something.

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Derision to Chai on Mon Nov 12 2018 07:48 pm

Me too. I actually find myself using it quite a bit. Part of my job is maintaining my company's elderly computers (the general ledger is still run on the CP/M version of dBase...!) so being able to access floppies is still super important (though my MacBook Pro no longer supports USB floppies).

I have a USB floppy somewhere, and my Thinkpad Docks have a Floppy connector. I should try reading some of mine, my last two floppies I'd kept for posterity's sake (Qedit install disk) I could read without problem a few years back.

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Derision to Chai on Mon Nov 12 2018 07:48 pm

still super important (though my MacBook Pro no longer supports USB floppies).

How does it no longer support USB floppies? Was the USB floppy device driver removed from OS X?

Blu-Rays and DVDs are also great for backing up. And while I have an AUX port in my car, sometimes I just prefer to have a few CDs I can throw on and not have to worry about plugging my phone into something.

Yeah, I still like backing things up on optical discs sometimes. For my car, I bought a 32GB USB flash drive just for my car and put a bunch of MP3s on it, and I leave that plugged in in my car all the time. Makes it easy to listen to it when I want to.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Nightfox to Derision on Tue Nov 13 2018 09:53 am

Yeah, I still like backing things up on optical discs sometimes. For my car, I bought a 32GB USB flash drive just for my car and put a bunch of MP3s on it, and I leave that plugged in in my car all the time. Makes it easy to listen to it when I want to.

Yep, devices are my own cloud backup. I have a 200 GB SD card in my phone and have my movies and most of my music in it. My car has a 64GB USB stick with the rest. If my PC throws a hard disk, the media is covered.

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Tue Nov 13 2018 06:10 pm

Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Nightfox to Derision on Tue Nov 13 2018 09:53 am

Yeah, I still like backing things up on optical discs sometimes. For my car, I bought a 32GB USB flash drive just for my car and put a bunch of MP3s on it, and I leave that plugged in in my car all the time. Makes it easy to listen to it when I want to.

Yep, devices are my own cloud backup. I have a 200 GB SD card in my phone and have my movies and most of my music in it. My car has a 64GB USB stick with the rest. If my PC throws a hard disk, the media is covered.

wow you have a real small media library. dont you get sick of hearing the same stuff all the time?
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I do recall back when standard optical disks were more expensive a friend used to buy spindles of 100 no-name ones to get a good price - so no-name they had no labels, which I believe also help protect the disks from light deterioration. But he also noted right from the start that about one in
five disks would produce a coaster so you do often get what you pay for.

The one thing I found those good for was for burning music onto. Rarely
ever had trouble with them if I used them as music CDs. I would also use
them for one-time burns for OS installer discs.

Mike

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: MRO to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Nov 13 2018 09:23 pm

wow you have a real small media library. dont you get sick of hearing the same stuff all the time?

No.

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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Dumas Walker to ROB MCCART on Tue Nov 13 2018 06:39 pm

The one thing I found those good for was for burning music onto. Rarely ever had trouble with them if I used them as music CDs. I would also use them for one-time burns for OS installer discs.

I'd much rather burn an install ISO onto a DVD/CD then make a stick. Most of my old computers still have DVD drives, though. :)

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Derision wrote to Chai <=-

Me too. I actually find myself using it quite a bit. Part of my job is maintaining my company's elderly computers (the general ledger is still run on the CP/M version of dBase...!) so being able to access floppies
is still super important (though my MacBook Pro no longer supports USB floppies)

I just popped in a floppy disk into Windows 10 (latest update).
Formatting, copying, chkdsk, all still works with floppies.
I imagine Windows will one day omit the ability to work with floppies,
but it's kinda cool that it's still there. I'm honestly surprised that
they still support it, and I'm not surprised that Apple does not.

It's interesting to me that CP/M is still being used in production environments.

Blu-Rays and DVDs are also great for backing up. And while I have an
AUX port in my car, sometimes I just prefer to have a few CDs I can
throw on and not have to worry about plugging my phone into something.

My vehicle has CD, MP3 CD, and AUX. It does not have a USB port, even
though USB ports were in most aftermarket systems at the time.
I keep telling myself I need to update my audio system in my car.

In time.

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MRO wrote to Chai <=-

i'm just more practical in my old age. i dont want shit around if i'm
not using it. and cds and dvds sucked. pain in the ass to load them up
or burn to them when you can use a flash drive or a harddrive.

And flash drives is what I use mostly when working on modern systems.
But I very much have a use case for all of this stuff. Not everyone does.
It makes sense to me that many people no longer use it.

My nephew used to visit my place so he could stream Twitch on my network.
He lives in a rural area, and only has 1Mbps DSL. He had some open source program, I don't know what, that he downloaded on my PC, so he wouldn't
have to download it on his slow connection. He tried to dump it on his
phone, but for some reason his phone would not co-operate. Rather than debugging the problem, or loaning him a $10 USB drive that I may or
may not see again, I just dumped it on a a 50 cent DL optical disc and
sent him on his way. Fortunately, he still uses optical drives in his
system as well.

As for LightScribe, I haven't used that in ages. It was a great technology,

always used a sharpie.

It's certainly faster to use a Sharpie. LightScribe is just nicer looking
for those instances where you're burning a disc for someone else (and
only when appearances matter).



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Re: Re: Running Linux In Vm O
By: Dumas Walker to ROB MCCART on Tue Nov 13 2018 06:39 pm

The one thing I found those good for was for burning music onto. Rarely ever had trouble with them if I used them as music CDs. I would also use them for one-time burns for OS installer discs.

that's because it just chirps or does something unnoticable.
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Re: Retro Computing
By: Chai to Derision on Wed Nov 14 2018 03:29 pm

My vehicle has CD, MP3 CD, and AUX. It does not have a USB port, even though USB ports were in most aftermarket systems at the time.
I keep telling myself I need to update my audio system in my car.

OEM car audio/multimedia systems are usually all pretty bad. I've seen some interesting Android head units that allow you to use readily updated Android apps and hook into steering wheel controls and back up cameras.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Chai on Wed Nov 14 2018 03:15 pm

OEM car audio/multimedia systems are usually all pretty bad. I've seen

I've wondered why that is. I have a car stereo that I bought for its built-in GPS and ability to play music from a USB flash drive, and it has some quirks that bug me a bit, which I think wouldn't have been difficult for them to improve.

Nightfox

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poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Chai <=-

OEM car audio/multimedia systems are usually all pretty bad. I've seen some interesting Android head units that allow you to use readily
updated Android apps and hook into steering wheel controls and back up cameras.

Fortunately, most of my purchased audio files have been through Amazon, so I'll be able to listen to all of that via voice control with the new
Amazon Echo Auto, which will be out before long. It connects to your phone
via Bluetooth, and can do things most echos can do.. Open your garage door, use skills, turn house lights on and off. It can also provide audible directions for navigation, make voice controlled phone calls (I can finally answer my phone in my car without breaking the law), play your music, etc.

As long as you have an AUX jack or Bluetooth connectivity in your stereo,
the $49 device will work with your system. It's a cheap upgrade to my otherwise crappy stereo. Although, I still would like an android based stereo. Unfortunately, I've found trying to use my phone directly with my stereo system too distracting.

Amazon Echo Auto:
https://goo.gl/7SNMt4

I'm still trying to figure out why pre-orders are by invitation only.


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Re: Retro Computing
By: Nightfox to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Nov 14 2018 05:01 pm

I've wondered why that is. I have a car stereo that I bought for its built-in GPS and ability to play music from a USB flash drive, and it has some quirks that bug me a bit, which I think wouldn't have been difficult for them to improve.

My 2014 Prius has a interface that looks like it came out of a kids Leapfrog toy, and updates have been sparse. They just announced that Pandora would no longer work, but they couldn't figure out some way to remove the button (or didn't want to pay for it)

The map uses a DVD that's now showing its age, and updates are $160. I could get a cheap Chinese Android head unit for that price.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Wed Nov 14 2018 06:56 pm

didn't want to pay for it)

The map uses a DVD that's now showing its age, and updates are $160. I could get a cheap Chinese Android head unit for that price.

you can probably just download the update
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Re: Retro Computing
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Wed Nov 14 2018 06:56 pm

My 2014 Prius has a interface that looks like it came out of a kids Leapfrog toy, and updates have been sparse. They just announced that Pandora would no longer work, but they couldn't figure out some way to remove the button (or didn't want to pay for it)

I've never been able to get Pandora to work with my car stereo. Supposedly after connecting my phone with Bluetooth, it looks like the Pandora on my car stereo is supposed to be able to communicate with Pandora on my phone, but it has never been able to.

The map uses a DVD that's now showing its age, and updates are $160. I could get a cheap Chinese Android head unit for that price.

I've tried using the Garmin software to get updated maps for my car stereo, but the software isn't even listing any new maps available.

Nightfox

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Re: Retro Computing
By: MRO to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Nov 14 2018 10:53 pm

you can probably just download the update

There are torrents out there, and some people on eBay selling pirated versions, yes.

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I do recall back when standard optical disks were more expensive a friend

>> used to buy spindles of 100 no-name ones to get a good price
>> But he also noted right from the start that about one in
>> five disks would produce a coaster so you do often get what you pay for.

The one thing I found those good for was for burning music onto. Rarely

>ever had trouble with them if I used them as music CDs. I would also use
>them for one-time burns for OS installer discs.

Yes, I think music software is better at covering for minor errors than
pure data uses.. although these days with drives reading and writing
so much faster virtually all drives are set up to 'best guess' small
gaps for what is missing rather than generate an error and stop, and
it works well 99% of the time.

System backups that I expect (hope?) to never use I don't do all that
often anymore unless I make major changes to the Operating System or
change hardware requiring changed drivers and such.
I keep a copy of the day to day stuff I need kept up to date backed up
on a flash drive until there's enough to burn to a disk but I don't do
the full O.S. very often.
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I keep a copy of the day to day stuff I need kept up to date backed up
on a flash drive until there's enough to burn to a disk but I don't do
the full O.S. very often.

I have an old machine that I use as a file server here at the house. The
bbs machine does a mirror backup to it once a day. Most of my other
machines do it at least once a week, and I backup up that whole server to a
usb hard drive once a week.

Makes it easy to go back and get a file over the network (or the usb hd)
when I accidentally fat-finger-delete it. :)

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Chai to Derision on Wed Nov 14 2018 15:29:00

I just popped in a floppy disk into Windows 10 (latest update).
Formatting, copying, chkdsk, all still works with floppies.
I imagine Windows will one day omit the ability to work with floppies,
but it's kinda cool that it's still there. I'm honestly surprised that
they still support it, and I'm not surprised that Apple does not.

I found it a bit annoying when macOS stopped bothering with it. I mean, they've bloated the rest of the OS to Vista levels of bloat, while still deleting useful features.

It's interesting to me that CP/M is still being used in production environments.

One of the things I was tasked with was figuring out what to do if the one computer that runs the ledger goes down, since none of the machines made today will run CP/M out of the box; and also to figure out what to do if the ancient Okidata dot matrix printer they used to print it out ever goes south. Priner was easy -- Okidata still makes them, though they're like $900. Finding a machine that'll run dBase on CP/M was a little more complicated, but amounted to running it in an emulator and getting a second-hand Commodore 128 off eBay.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Derision to Chai on Sun Nov 18 2018 12:36 pm

I just popped in a floppy disk into Windows 10 (latest update).
Formatting, copying, chkdsk, all still works with floppies.
I imagine Windows will one day omit the ability to work with floppies,
but it's kinda cool that it's still there. I'm honestly surprised
that they still support it, and I'm not surprised that Apple does not.

I found it a bit annoying when macOS stopped bothering with it. I mean, they've bloated the rest of the OS to Vista levels of bloat, while still deleting useful features.

Yeah, I thought it was somewhat odd (but not surprising) when Apple stopped including optical drives in their Macs. I also thought it was odd that Apple never included blu-ray drives in their Macs though - as far as I know, they only had DVD drives.

Nightfox

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Nightfox to Derision on Mon Nov 19 2018 10:13:47

Yeah, I thought it was somewhat odd (but not surprising) when Apple stopped including optical drives in their Macs. I also thought it was odd that Apple never included blu-ray drives in their Macs though - as far as I know, they only had DVD drives.

From what I understand of it, it was mostly the licensing nightmare of having a built-in method for playing Blu-Ray movies that turned them off. Jobs referred to it as a "world of hurt" or something, and focused instead on digital content, downloading or streaming movies rather than physical media.

macOS itself has the drivers to access and burn blu-ray. I had an external USB bluray that worked fine with it, and later replaced the original DVD-RW with a blu-ray burner which I use sparsely enough that I'm considering replacing it with a second hard drive. And there are some third-party apps that let you watch media on blu-ray discs, but all of those apps cost way more than something like VLC, which'll let you watch almost anything for free.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Derision to Nightfox on Mon Nov 19 2018 03:01 pm

third-party apps that let you watch media on blu-ray discs, but all of those apps cost way more than something like VLC, which'll let you watch almost anything for free.

I've tried using VLC (on Windows) to watch blu-ray discs, but I seem to recall VLC was unable to play blu-ray.

Nightfox

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Nightfox to Derision on Mon Nov 19 2018 15:57:39

I've tried using VLC (on Windows) to watch blu-ray discs, but I seem to recall VLC was unable to play blu-ray.

Right... in order to play Blu-ray you need libraries to decode AACS, and I also think you need to have a key database for region, copyright, whatever. Even then, it'll only play discs for which it has the library and AACS keys. A lot of those just aren't available without shelling out bucks for licenses.

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