posted
Buying External Hard Drives for use with my Mac and Linux systems has been a bit of an inconvenience because you so often end up with a drive that is pre-formatted for NTFS ... so to make them compatible with my older Macs & current Linux systems I have to reformat them to FAT32.
Up until now I've been doing this on a Windows system in DOS, using a Command Line Prompt (format X: /FS:FAT32). It works, but it takes awhile and you have to partition the disk into smaller chunks, etc.
After going through these cave-man methods to format my drives to be Mac and Linux friendly, I (finally) stumbled upon a little utility called Swiss Knife. It's freeware and works like a charm. A bonus to having external drives formatted to FAT32 (versus NTFS) is that they can also then be readily used for PS3, Tivos, etc. How did I go so long without knowing about this? If any of you find yourself wishing to convert an NTFS formatted drive to use with your Linux, older Mac (or even PS3, etc.), check this out.
I've been using Windows, Mac and Linux for years. On the Windows side, I loved XP and completely love Vista. I don't care what mainstream media says, it's a beautiful OS and runs things beautifully for me.
On the Mac side, the high-water mark (for me) was somewhere around or between OS 7.5 and OS 9, and right around the release time of my beloved, beautiful, cobalt blue & white G3 Yosemite ... long before Mac became a PC, with Intel processors and based on the Unix kernel, etc. It's one of my favorite computers and most satisfying computer purchases. Although I do love my current Mac, something about the G3 / G4 generation of the "last real Macs" keep the Yosemite dear to my heart.
As to Linux, I've gone through just about every Distribution and distro spinoff I could get my hands on. Current favorite is Open Suse 11 and Madriva 2009. Although doing an Linux install can sometimes take a day & a half (or three days), that has never bothered me. I love the fun of the project itself and the OS.
I can't wait for the day when everything is cross-platform friendly on all systems; like firewire and USB. Until then, there will always be people out there writing clever software solutions such as Swiss Knife.
[ January 12, 2009, 05:28 PM: Message edited by: Ben Del Amitri ]
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Ben, my eyes glazed over reading all the technical stuff in this post! I'm completely lost on this!
However, I just bought and external HD a couple of weeks ago for backing up my system due to my annual HD crash and burns I seem to experience with my computers. Thankfully I didn't have to do anything other than plug her in and it auto loaded the software onto my system to get it up and running. Anything more than that and I would've had to give you a call for I.T. support I'm sure.
quote:Originally posted by LeDaemon: Ben, my eyes glazed over reading all the technical stuff in this post! I'm completely lost on this!
However, I just bought and external HD a couple of weeks ago for backing up my system due to my annual HD crash and burns I seem to experience with my computers. Thankfully I didn't have to do anything other than plug her in and it auto loaded the software onto my system to get it up and running. Anything more than that and I would've had to give you a call for I.T. support I'm sure.
I LOVE the fact that External Hard Drives have become so affordable. Fortunately, most are completely plug-and-play and compatible with all PCs and newer Macs (OS 10 plus, etc.), and this is for "normal" people's use. I still cling to old systems right alongside with newer ones (never throw a good computer away), so this would only apply to older Macs and Linux systems.
Just the other day I picked up a 1TB storage drive for just $169, and 500GB drive for just $99! I also use those USB-powered mini externals for photo and video shoots, vacations, etc. and the prices on those have toppled to somewhere around $99 for a great Maxtor, Western Digital or Simple Drive of 320GB. Heaven.
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Yeah, it`s amazing how the prices have dropped. I have five external HDs (to store all my video data)...the latest one being over 1TB. My first hardisk was only 128GB and it was way more expensive than the 1TB disk. Never had any trouble with them either...just plug and play.
I´m going to get myself a 32GB or 64GB USB stick as soon as the prices drop a little more. Those are pretty useful as well. You could basically store your entire foot fetish material collection on one little stick and hide it away somewhere
Also pretty incredible are the new Micro-SD cards. I have a new mobile phone with one of those...it uses an 8GB micro card that is as small as one of my fingernails.
posted
The HD I got was a Maxtor with 750GB of storage space for $95 right after Christmas. I had to back up a lot of stuff on the old 'puter before I reformated it and started with a clean slate. Seems that there were so many corrupted files from programs that I had uninstalled that managed to stay on the HD in the registry and other nooks and crannies causing me problems.
Storage is so incredible now. I remember buying my first Pentium 1 computer and my friends were marveling at my huge 850MB HD and that lightening fast 75mHZ processor. What a phallic substitute it was in the day! I retired the old Apple 2e with pride then.
quote:Originally posted by Hal: Yeah, it`s amazing how the prices have dropped. I have five external HDs (to store all my video data)...the latest one being over 1TB. My first hardisk was only 128GB and it was way more expensive than the 1TB disk. Never had any trouble with them either...just plug and play.
I´m going to get myself a 32GB or 64GB USB stick as soon as the prices drop a little more. Those are pretty useful as well. You could basically store your entire foot fetish material collection on one little stick and hide it away somewhere
Also pretty incredible are the new Micro-SD cards. I have a new mobile phone with one of those...it uses an 8GB micro card that is as small as one of my fingernails.
-Hal-
Last week I picked up an 8GB USB Stick for $17.99 and a 16GB Stick for $29. I was astounded to see these on a shelf at Fred Meyers.
The 8GB Stick is a great one, a Sony "Micro Vault" Click Drive - beautifully-designed, recessed usb head and with their patented compression software built into the drive. It works! you can compress data on the fly, and automatically de-compress when you are transferring the files to a conventional storage medium - making it possible to store and transfer almost 24GB of data!
It's fantastic, the state of storage; what's become of it, and where it is headed. I love the idea of being able to pick up a quick 4GB SD Card for $12 or $14 at the Safeway or drug store when a quick and unexpected photo opportunity presents itself. Fantastic!
I'm always walking around with pockets full of memory.
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by LeDaemon: The HD I got was a Maxtor with 750GB of storage space for $95 right after Christmas. I had to back up a lot of stuff on the old 'puter before I reformated it and started with a clean slate. Seems that there were so many corrupted files from programs that I had uninstalled that managed to stay on the HD in the registry and other nooks and crannies causing me problems.
Storage is so incredible now. I remember buying my first Pentium 1 computer and my friends were marveling at my huge 850MB HD and that lightening fast 75mHZ processor. What a phallic substitute it was in the day! I retired the old Apple 2e with pride then.
My first Windows-based PC had 1GB hard drive and a CYRIX processor. They were exciting times - I remember unpacking it and saying to myself "What will I ever DO with all that storage?" I immediately took it apart. Replaced the 14.4 modem with a 28.8 ... took out the 8MB of RAM and installed 16MB of EDO RAM, put in a newer heavy-duty fan and thought I had a smoking system. Funny stuff.
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: It's fantastic, the state of storage; what's become of it, and where it is headed.
I totally agree...I remember the times of 5,25" floppy disks in the 80s that would only store 160KB (!) of data. A 10er pack of those costed about as much as a 8GB USB stick nowadays
quote: Storage is so incredible now. I remember buying my first Pentium 1 computer and my friends were marveling at my huge 850MB HD and that lightening fast 75mHZ processor. What a phallic substitute it was in the day!
Same here...I felt like the king of the world with my 133mHZ Pentium 1 computer back in the days I think my harddisk only had 500MB but it seemed so gigantic compared to my Amiga500 with 10MB (!) harddisk
posted
I had am Amiga 500 as well (still do), and an Amiga 2500 with Video Toaster. It has a Motorola 68030 accelerator card and was as good (and fun) as any computer I've ever owned. I really loved Amiga.
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Ben Del Amitri: I had am Amiga 500 as well (still do), and an Amiga 2500 with Video Toaster. It has a Motorola 68030 accelerator card and was as good (and fun) as any computer I've ever owned. I really loved Amiga.
posted
I've never been much into games, really. What little gaming I did ... "Menace", which I loved and Battle Chess, which I also loved and found hilarious ... the sound effects and individual battles within each space were fantastic. That was about it.
My specific use and purpose was for (amateur) film making. Hence, the Video Toaster / gold digitizer, etc. configuration. At the time, it was pretty state-of-the-art in terms of simple frame grabbing and what they called Character Generating then (titling), etc. Believe it or not, I was (even then) concerned about making foot movies. I had been inspired by low-budget movies of Herschel Gordon Lewis, John Waters, Delores Wishman and others of their ilk.
Having invested in the Amiga 2500 (upgrading from the 500) with complete Toaster load, I went out and made home-made "movies". Little dramas of an hour or so, in which I incorporated Female Feet as a consequential element; not always in a subtle way.
In terms of graphics and video capabilities, it blew my MacIntosh II AWAY. My love for Amiga systems goes back to it's root and father, Commodore systems. In fact, I actually have a working Commodore C64 (Gold Edition) which I still fire up every once in awhile.
[ January 14, 2009, 08:06 PM: Message edited by: Ben Del Amitri ]
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Same here...I was/am a huge C-64 fan. I still have mine...an old C-128D (a "portable" Commodore 128 with integrated disk drive...it can emulate a Commodore 64 as well. It weighs a ton!).
I was always a lot into games (mainly text adventures, not sure if you remember that genre...it seems to have died out) but I did start programming on the C-64....Basic and Assembler, and working with "Koala Paint", a very crude pre-historic version of Photoshop. It was fun and I even made some money with my programmes as a teenager. I was also doing a lot of game "cracking" and was part of the European demo/cracker-scene (I think this was never very big/popular in the USA?).
I remember that the Amiga was state-of-the-art when it came down to video editing. A friend was into this and always wanted to buy my old Commodore monitor...apparently this monitor was perfect for video cut (it had something to do with the input plugs at the back of the monitor). I didn´t sell it, though, and still use it nowadays when I play some old games on the C-128. Unfortunately I sold my Amiga 500 in the 90s...I kind of regret it now.
-Hal-
PS. Ben, how about posting some of your old movies Sounds very interesting.
posted
Those old movies were actually made on film first, transferred to video then "digitized" through the Video Toaster / Amiga system setup. Unlike video "clips" of today, they were indeed, actual movies. That is to say, they had story lines, plots, and were anywhere between an hour and ninety minutes in length.
Financially, it was a catastrophic loss. We entered a few of them in film festivals and sold a few to local video rental & retailers. At some point I decided that to try and promote them would be throwing good money after bad - so I cut my losses by dumping off a couple boxes of tapes to some place in Germantown PA.
The one thing I was quite proud of, was the fact that almost all the "actors" were girls, and that they were all very dear and beautiful ... and of course, with Feet.
Interestingly, the lack of success there, never killed my desire to make low-budget "movies". Over the past five or six years, I've taken advantage of technology and continued to make home "movies" with story lines and plots ... using Leah, Malory, Kristin, Jackie, Britney, Alecia and the others as "actresses". In fact, Little Christy, Jewel and a couple of the new girls are also involved.
We recently entered the movies "Death of A Few Salesmen" and "Home Repair" in the Tacoma Film Festival ... "Blood Sucking Monkeys of East Mifflin Pennsylvania" (which was supposed to have been a parody of the H.G. Lewis Gore flicks) and a martial arts movie called "Tae-Kwon-Doll" (staring Joy, Amber and Christy) at the Seattle Film Festival. All of these movies did terribly at the festivals and left audiences scratching their heads (and by "audience", I mean about 20 or 30 people).
Perhaps I'll clip out a few scenes from some of those old movies (and a few new ones) and post them to youtube sometime. Incidentally, I've been asked not to participate in next year's film fest in Tacoma. Maybe we'll try Portland.
[ January 16, 2009, 12:32 AM: Message edited by: Ben Del Amitri ]
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Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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