test please delete

[BrilloPad]

Not fruit for lunch for once.

Fruit for breakfast.

Went to a dev lunch. Boxpark at Shoreditch High Street. I had chicken noodle salad. Very nice it was too.

[covbob]

Hiya Brilllo

[covbob]

42 minutes in and the pattern hasn't broken.

Long, rambling and generally irrelevant questions answered by "we've already answered that" or "that's answered in the docs" or "that's not really relevant"

[covbob]

Oh joy, a one hour call has just become 90 minutes.

[BrilloPad]

Oh joy, a one hour call has just become 90 minutes.

thats not really relevant.....

[WTFH]

42 minutes in and the pattern hasn't broken.

Long, rambling and generally irrelevant questions answered by "we've already answered that" or "that's answered in the docs" or "that's not really relevant"

You know I'm looking at the ClientCo diary to see who is on calls right now as I have strong suspicions you are working with the same shower that I'm with.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Due to the unseasonable heat & discomfort I've spent the entire afternoon firkling about with an ancient XT with a proper monochrome green screen (an IBM one at that).

Turned it on (it used to work) and nothing.

No volts coming out of the psu.

Aha! Either it's a dead psu or there's a short on something (dead tants being the usual thing, they were crap when new and after 35 years they haven't got any better).

Pull all the cards (a tant shorted on the HD controller card the last time I turned it on).

Still nothing.

Ok.

Disconnect the drives.

Still nothing.

Unplug motherboard power connector: volts come back.

Shorted tant on motherboard, take out MB (easier said than done, thanks IBM), find shorted tant is the 3rd one I try, replace tant, reinstall MB which is even more of a pain in the arse until I use the blutak trick with one of the screws.

Power up: got volts ok, then reinsert the cards one by one.

All good, does the memory scan and once I'd found a 5.25" boot diskette it booted ok.

Amazing that a 30+ year old randomly stored Amstrad 1512 boot diskette still works.

Firkle about with the HD controller, replace a couple of tants.

Replace controller card in XT, power it up, HD spins up, making a noise like a helicopter taking off.

Won't boot off HD, boot off floppy and it does see the HD.

Briefly.

HD makes a terminal sounding noise & I turned it off.

It still spins up but is royally fecked.

Which was quite a fun way of avoiding going out in the unbearable heat while watching some poor sod mowing next door's lawn in the blazing sun.

Anyone want a half working XT?

One careful owner & me.

Full 640k of ram, should be enough for anyone.

And before I did any of that I had to find a switchable keyboard which knew about AT & XT pcs.

[Diver]

Which was quite a fun way of avoiding going out in the unbearable heat while watching some poor sod mowing next door's lawn in the blazing sun.

Anyone want a half working XT?

One careful owner & me.

Full 640k of ram, should be enough for anyone.

And before I did any of that I had to find a switchable keyboard which knew about AT & XT pcs.

I could do with an upgrade! will it run DOS 6.20

[WTFH]

test please delete

ClientCo have new user very little training and full system access.

One user has managed to stop 3 warehouses.

... and I’m boarding a flight home

[DoctorStrangelove]

I could do with an upgrade! will it run DOS 6.20

Yes.

Very very slowly.

It will run Windoze 1.0.

Even more slowly.

This evening's first feature is "The Great Train Robbery A Robber's Tale".

"The Great Train Robbery" A Robber's Tale (TV Episode 2013) - IMDb

They seem even more disorganized that the Hatton Garden lot, & nastier with it.

Rather sad that two chaps were killed on the railway line near Margam today.

They had ear defenders on & didn't hear the train.

I thought there had to be a lookout.