Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Anthony Albert wrote:

> On 14 Jan 2005 at 15:43, sindi keesan wrote:
> > Is someone really crazy enough to modem 100MB?  That was an odd example to
> > pick.  It would be quicker to use floppy disks.  Or an old laptop computer
> > with file transfer cable.
>
> I have... or at least files of similar sizes, ~80MB   With a 33.6Kb
> modem speed, you can get about 10MB per hour, and if you're willing to
> do pieces of the transfer now, and more pieces later, until you get all
> of the pieces, it's quite do-able.
>
> Floppy disks is not necessarily faster, and is a lot less reliable, in
> my experience. By the time you format the floppies or make sure the
> files on them have been deleted, then do the copies, then make more
> copies after you get to the destination and find that two out of the
> set of floppies don't work, then have to return to start and make more
> floppies - you've used up more effort than using the modem. If you've
> got a server you can dial in to, then start downloading a list of
> pieces... you can set up the first dozen pieces to download, then walk
> away and just let the download continue.
100MB of 1.4MB floppy disks is about 60 or 70 disks (I don't own that many 
good 1.44's) so I agree this is not really feasable, but you are assuming 
100% perfect modem transmission, and that you are not knocked offline for 
'inactivity' after 10 minutes of not pressing any keys, that the site is 
not too busy, and that nobody has to use the phone for 8 hours.

> Using an old laptop computer is a possibility, and I've done similar,
> too, using an external hard drive that could be interfaced to the
> parallel port.

We were given two boxes that install into a large drive bay, with smaller 
boxees that go into them and hold an iDE drive which plugs into the 
controller, and could be used to transfer between computers.    Only works 
if both computers are set up this way.

> Setting up the file transfer after dialing in can be pretty simple, and
> as noted, using split, you can simply reassemble the pieces once you've
> got them and checked their lengths.  Split makes it easy, since they
> should all be the same length but the last piece, and any that aren't
> the right length, you know you need to download again.
>
> Nowadays, however, burning a CD-ROM is much more reliable and quicker
> as well, so I haven't done modem transfers larger than about 15MB in
> several years.

Not all computers have burners but all of ours have working parallel 
ports, even the laptops.  (A friend's 'new' 933MHz won't print to a known 
good printer though, even in DOS.)

> Anthony Albert
> ===========================================================
> Anthony J. Albert                     albert AT umpi.maine.edu
> Systems and Software Support Specialist          Postmaster
> Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle
>         "This is only temporary, unless it works."
>                         --- Red Green
>
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org