Msg: 5438 *Conference*

09-23-94 21:22:32

From: KENNETH SMITH

To : RICHARD HANSON

Subj: HARDWARE INSTALLED

Hi Rick,
 
I'm back at school again, pursuing my Bachelor's in Computer Science at SUNY  
Fredonia. I finally installed all the hardware that I ordered from The Club
into my Model T's the week before school (late August). I got it in July. [I
have an  ExtRam, XR-4, and a RamPac.] Amazingly, enough, it all works fine (so
far). I'm  not very good with a soldering iron, but everything went well. I
wanted to put  in the XR-4 into my T102 first, but I decided I had better start
with the easier stuff. The RamPac is a breeze. Putting the ExtRam into my T200
was easier than I thought it would be (no soldering!). I really like that wire
wrap tool that you  included. The big challege was to put in the XR-4. Opening
the case on the T102  was enough to give me the willies. It's all too common
for me to take something  apart that works, only for me to put it back together
and have it never work  again. I studied the excellent directions a dozen
times, VERY carefully, then  followed them. I just hope my soldering job will
last forever, where I connected into the System Bus. Although I enjoyed the
experience, I don't want to have to  do it again. I'm just afraid that someone
will come out with a ROM chip, that I  absolutely MUST have, and I'll have to
remove the XR-4 or ExtRam. To avoid that, I'll PAY EXTRA to buy the ROM image
on disk! I suppose for legal reasons, you'd  have to send the chip along with
it, but I'd want it anyway, as a tribute to  Murphy's Law.
 
Maybe I should write some serious software for these Model T's. A program to  
copy an entire diskette to the RamPac would be nice. . . . Just One disk swap  
instead of the dozen that it seems to take for FLOPPY and BACKUP.BA. And if
it's written right, you could make multiple copies of the diskette, while only
reading it once. The MS-DOS BACKUP command isn't even that good! I saw an  
article in Portable 100 about it, and I am a Computer Science major. . . . And
maybe I could write another program that would capture TELCOM files directly do
the RamPac. If I only had the time.
 
Well, that's all for now. It's a pleasure doing business with you.
 
--Ken Smith