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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] some misc Linux tips
  • Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 16:24:19 +0000 (UTC)

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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