Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 March 26

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March 26

Floppy

I'm trying to get some files onto a computer that only has a floppy drive. No CD drive, no USB drive, only a floppy drive. Unfortunately, my main computer doesn't have a floppy drive and the target computer doesn't have an Internet connection. So what can I do? JCI (talk) 02:17, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

You can try taking the hard disk out of one of them and putting it in the other. By the sounds of the floppy only computer, it'll have an IDE drive, which isn't compatible with modern PCs. In which case you can get an IDE enclosure. Take the hard disk out of the floppy-only machine and using the enclosure, connect it to the new computer. Then copy away and replace the hard disk. - Akamad (talk) 02:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The vast majority of modern computers still have IDE ports because amongst other reasons, SATA optical drivers have only started to really take hold over the past 2 years or so. Even though some recent chipsets (the Intel ICHR10 for example) don't have native support for IDE, most manufacturers add it via PCI or PCIe chips Nil Einne (talk) 10:31, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

We should probably back up and ask what type of data you are trying to transfer. If the files are too large for a floppy or the total would take dozens of floppies to transfer, then the solution above might be best. If you only have a few small files, and expect to occasionally need to transfer a few more, then another way to go would be to get an external floppy drive for the new computer. It can plug into a USB port. It won't be very expensive, and this won't require any tinkering with the insides of computers. Floppy drives are going out of style, but you can still find them around now. In another few years, probably not. StuRat (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Or find another computer with a floppy drive and a USB port and put the data on a floppy disk via that 3rd computer. --Tango (talk) 05:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Do both computers have ethernet ports? You could network them and transfer the files that way. --Tango (talk) 05:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

A computer too old to have a CD drive is unlikely to have an Ethernet port, meseems. —Tamfang (talk) 16:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Just thinking out loud here .. but if the files aren't too big, and the old computer can connect to the Internet, I might try to just email them to myself. Just a thought, path of least resistance and all. (in other words, I'm lazy) — Ched ~ ^(yes?)/_© 06:28, 26 March 2009 (UTC) (and connect the target computer once you've done the email with the source PC) — Ched ~ ^(yes?)/_© 08:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

"the target computer doesn't have an Internet connection" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 09:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

It used to be possible to make ZIP files that spanned multiple floppies. Presumably this can still be done with WinZip etc. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:23, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Before the days of USB - a COM port

In the old days (1990s) we also sometimes would use a null modem cable. That would work if both computers have COM ports (look a bit like VGA screen port but with fewer pins). (However, I suppose both an USB floppy drive and a new network card for the old computer would be cheaper. In addition, you'd have to dig up some legacy software to actually make use of the null modem cable). Jørgen (talk) 13:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

You don't need legacy software really. Windows up to XP supported null modems. Unfortunately Vista drops it Direct Cable Connection. See below for more details. Nil Einne (talk) 10:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

There are a bunch of ways you could do this.

*An add-on USB board, might be impractical depending on how old the computer is.

*A Null modem cable.

*An actual modem and a pair of phone lines.

*An old-style parallell-port Zip Drive. (Be careful not to get the SCSI kind.)

*Yank the hard-drive from the old PC put it into a USB enclosure and connect to the new computer.

*Find an old NIC that will work in the old computer, and connect the old computer to your router.

* and of course, getting a USB floppy drive for the new PC.

Null modem cables are pretty cheap. Unless you have some of that other stuff laying around, the cable might be your cheapest way of doing this. (However, if the new computer doesn't have a serial-port, you may need a USB-to-serial adapter.) But the USB enclosure for the old harddrive might be an easy way to copy the entire drive at once onto your new PC. APL (talk) 14:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

One more way: Sony and SmartDisk made adaptors to use a memory card in a floppy drive. Amazon have information about them: Sony and SmartDisk. It looks as if they might be rather scarce now, but there seems to be one stockist: [1]. (Or you could try your local eBay or equivalent.) So you'd need a USB memory card reader to get the files from the main computer to the memory card, and the adaptor to get the files from the memory card to the target computer - and the memory card itself, of course. AJHW (talk) 15:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

One problem with nearly all of the above suggestions is that without an internet connection or CD drive, any new software for the machine has to be gotten on floppy somehow. For example, adding a USB card almost certainly won't work because it'll need drivers - and those will come on CD-ROM. Using a null-modem cable to the serial port...same problem...you need software.

I wonder whether you can remove the Floppy drive from the old computer and plug it into the new one. All of the modern motherboards that I own still have floppy drive ports...but yours may not. You can certainly chop up ZIP archives into floppy-sized chunks.

Depending on what software this old machine runs - I'd scour eBay for an an old ethernet card...they can't cost more than $5 at that vintage...and you stand a chance of the computer already having software onboard. If the ancient machine has a modem - then perhaps it can still dial-out to the internet. SteveBaker (talk) 05:10, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The target computer OS wasn't stated however. But for example, Windows 95 and onwards should be able to support a null modem connection without extra software (can't remember about Windows 3.1). If the OS is something like DOS, there's a slight chance the comp may come with Laplink or something although I'm not certain if Windows will be able to connect to that (i.e. you may need some other software on your modern computer to connect to laplink on the old computer). The other problem is that Vista drops support for Direct Cable Connection so if the modern computer's OS is Vista your going to need to look for something. It looks like Linux should do the job [2] [3], so you may be able to do this from a live CD. Of course if the modern computer's OS is Linux all the better. From the sound of it, most BSDs and Solaris should be possible too although I don't know about Mac OS X. Also if you have the software to use a modem, you likely (but not definitely) have the software to use a null modem. IMHO we really need more info to answer the question. As I've already mentioned, knowing what the OS of the target comp as well as the modern comps you have access to would help a lot. Also is the floppy drive a 3 1/2"? Is it 1.44MB/HD? Does the target computer have a spare IDE port (presuming it even uses IDE)? Nil Einne (talk) 10:31, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

This Can't be Good can it?

I was reading about what a good (safe) temperature for a GPU (graphics card is) and I read that a good temperature (under load) is around or below 70C. Well, I downloaded "SpeedFan" to monitor the temperature. And while my GPU was "under load" (I guess you could say) the temperature got up to around 78C. One of the things that was suggested was to turn my GPU's fan up to 100%. Well...it IS at 100%. Even so, it was still getting up to 78 degrees with a 3D game running, and now that I've closed that, it's still running at 70 degrees. So...that can't be good, can it? What can I do about it, and what could happen if I do nothing about it? (i.e. will my PC blow up.)

Graphics card is an Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS

Digger3000 (talk) 07:14, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried to clear the inside of your computer of dust? Be very careful doing it but I found that my fan on my desktop computer was quite heavily clogged with dust - I suspect that would've impacted running temperature. Also perhaps look for unrequired processes running on your computer - on my Macbook a print-driver/printer process was constantly running and had forced my fan on to 6000rpm and made my laptop sound like a mini turbine engine. Once I got rid of that process it quickly slowed as the temperature dropped - so maybe check your task-manager processes tab. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Stick a really large fan like coolermaster into your case. If you can't afford that, put two cheap ~60mm fans in, one sucking the air in from the back and the other expelling air from the front (so you get unidirectional airflow). If that's too difficult for you, open your case and just put an ordinary $20 room fan next to your computer, blowing cool air in. That did wonders for my son's computer. 80 degrees is WAY too high... my 9600GT GPU runs at 50 and my cpu at 40, and that's with a coolermaster. At that temperature your computer won't blow up (lol) but components will get damaged over time. One last thing to check - your sensor could be wrong - so with your hand properly "anti-static-ed" just feel your graphics card quickly and you can tell if it's really hot - if it's too hot to touch for over a second then your sensor is correct. Sandman30s (talk) 12:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Get a can of compressed air (sometimes called an air duster). You can often get them in office supplies shops (WHSmith for one, if you're in the UK). Give it a good blast into your PSU, processor fan/heatsink, graphics card cooler, case fans and anywhere else you see dust. I'm not sure (sanity check on this, please!), but I think fan motors don't take too well to being turned by anyone but themselves, so you may want to stop fan blades turning somehow. Don't use a vacuum cleaner - they throw off static which screws around with the electronics (you can use it to clean any dust up once you've sealed up your PC again). CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 12:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Simply opening the case may do wonders, without the need for an external fan. A computer that was properly designed to convey air flow would actually do better with the case on, but, in my experience, they rarely are. StuRat (talk) 15:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Opening the case does seem to cool it down. It's a tiny little case that I doubt was designed to hold an 8800GTS (which barely fit in it.) Digger3000 (talk) 20:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

"Tiny little case" is your problem. There's just not enough air-flow in that for something that generates as much heat as an 8800GTS. I would still use an external fan. Sandman30s (talk) 08:16, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

How much does just opening the case help ? StuRat (talk) 17:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

ls -tr | sh foo

for FILE in $PATTERN
 do
  dostuffwith $FILE
 done

Pretty simple, right? But I want it to take the files oldest-first (as listed by ls -tr) rather than in alphabetic order. Is there a simple way? —Tamfang (talk) 16:51, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this what you want:

for FILE in `ls -tr`
do
  dostuffwith $FILE
done

87.114.147.43 (talk) 17:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks! —Tamfang (talk) 19:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Or ls -tr | xargs -L1 dostuffwith 87.114.147.43 (talk) 17:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the for version better because the loop also has a sleep that I didn't mention. —Tamfang (talk) 19:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I like:

find -name $PATTERN -exec dostuffwith {} \;

As given, it's recursive down into subdirectories. SteveBaker (talk) 05:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Transferring email adresses from cableone.net to aim mail .com or yahoo.com

I have stared traveling and take a laptop with me. On this ,I can use win explorer to pull up some of my cableone email, but I cannot access my address book. I use "firefox" and "Google"for sending some emails and would like to have my addresses when traveling67.61.12.158 (talk) 18:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Convenient Contribs Lookup

Resolved

Does anyone know of a script that I can import into my default monotype.js theme that will give me a link to a user's contribs on the top tab bar? I'm currently using Twinkle and like all the extra tabs it adds for my convenience. I think a contribs tab would be super handy to see what people are up to when I am already on their user page. Thanks aszymanik speak! 19:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't you like the link of the left side for user contribs?

AHH!! I was once blind and now I can see! Hahah thanks! aszymanik speak! 01:59, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Audio on DVDs in Windows Media Player

I'm trying to watch a DVD on Windows Media Player on Windows XP (I've never done this on my PC before) but there's no audio, and I've been clicking around and reading the help pages for half an hour and can't for the life of me work out what's wrong. I've tried a few other DVDs and it's the same problem. Can anyone help? --AdamSommerton (talk) 20:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Does the audio of anything else work? Try listening to some music or go on youtube to see whether this is a problem with the DVDs or the computer overall. --BiT (talk) 20:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Everything else is fine. I'm listening to music right now on WMP. DVD quality is perfect but there's just no sound. --AdamSommerton (talk) 20:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Does your sound card have a separate volume for CDs and DVDs? The input volume for other devices is often muted or set to zero. Have a look at the volume settings in the control panel (or try right-click on the volume icon in the system tray first - there could be a separate "settings..." or "advanced..." option). Astronaut (talk) 02:45, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

If the audio for other stuff does work, try installing VideoLAN. DVD playback on XP depends on which DVD media decoder is installed (these can come from a variety of sources, and some can be of wonky quality); DVD playback in VideoLAN skips this, and has its own decoder; I've found it to be very reliable. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 20:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Sending e-mails and surfing the net anonymously

I use Linux, since it may matter in the latter question. I was wondering whether or how this is possible. First the e-mail part, is it possible to send e-mails without you using a specific address or even using a fake e-mail address that is randomly generated? (on a side-note, is it possible to send an e-mail via the terminal?) Also, what ways are there to surfing the net anonymously, I know about proxies but I'm not sure how to utilize them (I've tried Tor, but that's just for the web browser right?). How do you use proxies and is there any other way? Thank you. --BiT (talk) 20:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

For anonymous emails see anonymous remailer. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 20:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

You can set up numerous disposable email accounts with yahoo, gmail etc through tor, which as long as you send then while using tor the referrer ip address will be that of tor and not your own —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.188.83 (talk) 20:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you can send email from the linux command-line. You wanna guess what the command is? 'mail'. So:

steve@gnosis % mail

No mail for steve

steve@gnosis % mail obama@whitehouse.gov

Subject: Wow! This actually worked!

Hello! Lol! R U really teh prez?

^D

steve@gnosis %

Easy! :-) SteveBaker (talk) 04:36, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok cool (that was only a side-question) but what about anonymous e-mailing and surfing? I tried mixmaster (is it possible that it takes a long time to deliver the e-mail with mixmaster, because I sent several letters to my own address and I haven't gotten them) to send an anonymous e-mail after checking out the 'anonymous remailer' article but what about anonymous web surfing? Is there any other way of doing it besides being behind proxy and what's the best way to to it (use a proxy/something else) in Linux? --BiT (talk) 08:30, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Mixmaster is slow by design. Each intermediate node introduces a random delay to make it harder to statistically correlate incoming and outgoing messages, so messages can take hours or days to arrive. Tor is basically mixmaster without the delays (and with a two-way TCP connection instead of one-way message passing). It's plenty secure unless you have powerful enemies. If you want fast delivery or you want people to be able to reply to you (without revealing your identity) then webmail via Tor is the way to go. -- BenRG (talk) 23:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Tor isn't only for web browsing - it can anonymize almost everything that works over the internet. (It's a little slow though, and I'm not sure if it's enough anonymous for sending mail.) As for anonymous mail, I've heard Cypherpunk remailers work good - but you need to know some basics of using GnuPG (gpg). --grawity 18:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Using Tor for emails would not be a complete solution. You still need a server to connect to that will relay your emails. It would be no good to use Tor to completely anonomise yourself, and then have Outlook or Thunderbird log into your normal email server with your normal username and password.

Besides, Tor has technical features designed to PREVENT it from being used for emails. (Port 25 is blocked, for example.) I don't know how well that works. APL (talk) 21:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

iMovie HD

At my high school we're working on a video project. At school I've been using a version of iMovie HD-I assume it's version 6.X, but I'm not certain. I need to be able to edit the files at home at well, but my copy of iMovie (v. 7.1.1) is significantly inferior and refuses to recognize files from my iMovie HD project. I've tried downloading iMovie HD v.6.0.3 from http://support.apple.com/downloads/ to no avail, because it requires a copy of iMovie v 6.0.0. Does anyone know how/where I could get that? If I upgrade to the newest edition of iMovie, will it be compatible with files from iMovie HD 6? 63.229.210.11 (talk) 22:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Does anybody know if this site is reliable? http://en.kioskea.net/telecharger/telecharger-1238-imovie-hd 63.229.210.11 (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Vista, firefox

Resolved

Help! My screen has turned 90 degrees anticlockwise. The text now streams on its left side starting at the bottom. How do I undo this? Kittybrewster ☎ 23:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

That's usually a screen (display) setting. Right click on the screen background and go through the properties thing. Or buy a neckbrace. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 23:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Got it. Ctrl alt up-arrow. Kittybrewster ☎ 23:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Ports and Sockets, .logs and e-mail

I have two completely unrelated questions.

1. What is the difference between a socket and a port?

2. I wrote a .bat (in Windows Vista Home Premium x86-64 SP1) to clear all .bat .tmp and .log files from the system. The person who owns this computer (I was trying to help them out by opening up some disk space) uses Windows Mail. Now, this .bat will clear every accessible/permissible .log or .tmp from the system. Could this have deleted this persons e-mails? If so, how and why?

TIA, Ζρς ιβ' ^¡hábleme! 23:44, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

A socket is an open, ongoing communication channel (they're ephemeral - once the communication is over the socket is destroyed). A port is part of the address you connect to (often when establishing such a socket); the rest of the address is typically the IP address of the destination machine. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 23:49, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Strictly a socket is the local software object that describes such an ongoing communication, but people generally use the term socket for both, saying rather "I opened a socket to that http server" rather than "I created a socket object that corresponds with an ongoing TCP session to that http server". 87.114.147.43 (talk) 23:51, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Also a socket can correspond with communications over a variety of networks and protocols - you can get a TCP socket, a UDP socket, an IP (datagram) socket, or a Unix domain socket. Unix systems also allow you to create sockets that allow you to send and receive raw ethernet frames (SOCK_RAW). Ports are only found in TCP and UDP communications - there's no such concept in IP or ethernet. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 23:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Your .BAT question: it depends on the file (and directory, and access control list) permissions for the other guy's files; if those were set to allow you to delete these files, then your BAT file can have done so. Whether that's the case in your actual system depends on how it's set up. It's always wise to be very careful when writing recursive deletion scripts, as they'll find and delete files you didn't know about, but might well really miss when they're done. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The files is located at C:\[file]. It is set to execute every time the computer starts up (I added it to startup in the registry). The person is set as an administrator on his computer. Why would the script delete e-mails? Are they .log or .tmp files? Ζρς ιβ' ^¡hábleme! 00:31, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Probably not, but if you don't know for sure (and need to ask here) then such a script is a very bad idea indeed. For example, what happens if someone makes a folder called "my.weekly.log"? 87.114.147.43 (talk) 00:44, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

You have no idea how un-tech savvy this person is. They couldn't change a file extension if it were required of them. They wouldn't create a .log or .tmp file. Also, I knew deleting all .log and .tmps wouldn't be system critical so taking out all of the cruft was worth the risk of losing something valuable. Ζρς ιβ' ^¡hábleme! 01:40, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

FYI, Windows Mail saves emails as .eml files in "C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail" Indeterminate (talk) 07:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I've gotta say - recursively removing '.bat' files is madness. Firstly, you have no idea what bat files may be system-critical or important to some piece of newly installed software - or just generally some small useful thing that someone deliberately installed or created from scratch. On the other hand, bat files are typically VERY short text files - and it's rare to find them more than a few kbytes long...on disk drives edging into the terabyte range - you're not saving 1% of your disk space - you're not even saving one part per MILLION of disk space...it's more like one part per billion. It's a quite utterly negligable benefit for an extremely high risk. So considering the risk/benefit ratio here - it's nothing short of crazy! SteveBaker (talk) 04:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Um, Steve, I think you misinterpreted what I said. I wrote a .bat to remove .tmp and .log files. 67.54.238.193 (talk) 21:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC) (this is Zrs_12 by the way)

Actually, on the first part, you said it would remove all .bat and .log files, but as you gave more detail, you said .tmp and .log. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 22:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It's fixed now. 67.54.238.193 (talk) 03:14, 29 March 2009 (UTC)