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paf-digest V1998 #28
paf-digest Thursday, July 16 1998 Volume 1998 : Number 028
In this issue:
Re: [PAF] Finding "Font" in PAF Companion
[PAF] Archival Storage & ZIP drives
[PAF] Re: Archival Storage & ZIP drives
[PAF] Re: archival storage
Re: [PAF] Re: archival storage
Re: [PAF] Re: archival storage
Re: [PAF] Archival Storage & ZIP drives
[PAF] Windows 98 and PAF
Re: [PAF] Windows 98 and PAF
Re: [PAF] Windows 98 and PAF
See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the PAF
or PAF-Digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:42:27 -0700
From: rhaldy@Juno.Com (Richard L Halliday)
Subject: Re: [PAF] Finding "Font" in PAF Companion
On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 10:42:53 -0700 Art Courtright <artc@discover.net>
writes:
>
>Hi Richard,
>
>Re: Your gracious offer to help with your list Companion Pathfinder
>and PAF
>3.0 Pathfinder. Please by all means educate us as I for one will
>appreciate the help. Thanks in advance..
>
>Art Courtright
>
>artc@discover.net
>
Art;
I am just now (Tuesday 9:41 Pacific Summer Time) getting ready to send
a batch of seven messages. The three Pathfinder lists are included on
both Elijah_L and the PAF list. I hope you find this useful.
Richard L. Halliday rhaldy@juno.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>At 06:42 PM 7/2/98 -0400, you wrote:
>>Yes, pleasee Richard, post them!
>>
>>Cheryl
>>
>>On Sun, 8 Mar 1998, Noel E Crapo wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------
>>> From: Richard L Halliday[SMTP:rhaldy@Juno.Com]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 1998 8:23 PM
>>> To: paf@innernet.org
>>> Subject: [PAF] Finding "Font" in PAF Companion
>>> I for one would greatly appreciate your list as designated below.
>Noel
>E. Crapo
>>> Agreed! also spent "hours" trying to refind the screen where I
>could
>>> select a typeface in PAF Companion. Try the following:
>>>
>>> Home Base
>>> Preferences
>>> Options
>>> General
>>> Fonts
>>>
>>> I have created an alphabetical list of capabilities and features
>of
>>> PAF Companion. Each entry gives the path to reach it. If anyone
>would
>>> like, I could post it. I call it Companion Pathfinder. I also
>have a
>>> similar list for PAF 3.0.
>>>
>>> Richard L. Halliday rhaldy@juno.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>_____________________________________________________________________
>>> You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
>>> Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
>>> Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
>>>
>============================================================================
>>> For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
>>> ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
>>>
>============================================================================
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Attachment Converted: "C:\DISCOVER\EUDORA\Attach\RE [PAF] Finding
>Font in
>PAF1"
>>
>============================================================================
>For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
>ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
>============================================================================
>
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
============================================================================
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============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 11:09:30 -0700
From: rhaldy@Juno.Com (Richard L Halliday)
Subject: [PAF] Archival Storage & ZIP drives
Cheryl Singhal of the PAF list wrote that she had been using her ZIP
drive to backup large numbers of files. I have been doing the same
thing. Upon checking with a friend, he told me that there are many
reports of failures of ZIP drives. His advice was to convert to a JAZ
drive which has more capacity and is a removeable hard drive ( with much
more expensive disks). Threse reports make me very nervous when I see
new computers for sale which contain only a ZIP drive and a CD-ROM drive.
Personally, I am going to buy the best quality floppies I can find and
use the capeability built into PAF to make MULTIPLE (and dated) backups
onto 1.44 meg floppies.
This month the in the bulletin of the Silicon Valley PAF Users Group
an article was published on the subject of archival storage. I found it
unsettling, but am glad of the warning. I have attached it below. I
have also obtained approval from the editor for it to be republished if
no changes are made and credits to the author and the Silicon Valley PAF
Users Group PAFinder are included.
Read the following article and then ponder. The 1960 U.S. Census is
recorded on IBM cards. There may be three of the machines needed to read
those cards left. Have we already lost that census just as surely as we
lost the 1890 census to fire!?
Richard L. Halliday rhaldy@juno.com
Digital Archiving: An Oxymoron
by Hugh Harline
On more than one occasion I have heard people say, "I'm going to use my
scanner to archive photographs." Archiving is really just storing records
for use later on. But when I think of "archiving," I always think of
long-term storage. My family has been involved in genealogy for many
years and long-term storage for people involved in searching out old
public records is measured in centuries.
Unfortunately the computer industry has a different view of storage. I
have heard computer people brag that their tapes and disks can be read
five years after they were written. I'm sorry, but five years cannot be
considered "archival."
I recently learned a bit more about the reliability of computer storage.
The National Media Lab did some testing of computer storage media to
determine how long our current tapes and disks will be reliable. The
results were in an article in the February 16, 1998, issue of US News and
World Report. Most of the brands of magnetic tape and floppy disks will
last about three to five years-the high-quality brands should last about
10 to 12 years.
The biggest surprise for me was how long the CD-R (recordable compact
disk) was stable-only three years. The higher-quality brands could last
around 30 years, but not the 50 to 100 years that I was hearing about a
few years ago.
One of the materials best suited to archiving is a high-quality,
low-acid, buffered paper. That's right, paper. Documents on paper and
photos on paper or film will outlive your computer files.
Another problem mentioned in the article and also talked about in
genealogy circles is usefulness of hardware and software and how they are
an integral part in the whole puzzle.
It works like this: Three things are needed if computer files are to be
accessible: hardware, software, and a medium to store the files.
Hardware and software are ever-changing-newer, faster, better every year.
But new equipment does not support the old. In 1981 Bill Gates said,
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." You try running your current
computer on 640K of memory.
The hardware and the software are very different now. We can only expect
the changes in technology to continue. Trying to run old software on new
computers is also next to impossible (unless you can write some emulation
software to get the new computer to think it is old).
Some older programming languages and software applications are no longer
supported by the original company (which may have been bought out two or
three times) or by the rest of the industry. If the hardware or software
no longer exists, then the programs are not going to be able to run, and
the files created by them will be only indecipherable series of ones and
zeros of binary code sitting on disks. If you were able to view a file
you would most likely see some weird symbols on your screen, not what you
had originally saved.
The computer storage medium that you save your files onto has to be
stable also. Magnetic tapes, floppy disks, removable hard drives,
magnetic-optical-compact disks, recordable compact disks-all have a
limited life span. Until a material that has long term storage properties
is developed this will always be a big part of the problem.
The current answer to the problem is to store files in an analog manner,
for instance, on paper. An alternative is to keep your computer files
current with technology by copying your files to new media before the old
ones die and to convert files to newer software file formats before the
old format disappears and the file becomes unreadable. Use the better,
more expensive brands of media for long-term storage of files: They will
be reliable much longer then the cheaper ones. There is no way to tell
when the death of a disk is imminent. You only know that it will happen.
The best file format in which to save important text and data documents
is ASCII text. It can be opened or imported by word processors and text
editors. Graphics pose a different problem: Save them in as generic a
file format as possible so they can be read by other applications. You
can also keep those old computers and software around to help you in
reading and transferring your files. That is, you can keep it until it
breaks down and needs a part that you can't get anymore-time to raid the
computer junk yard.
Digital electronics can do wonderful things, but if you are not aware of
the limitations in life and reliability you may have a stack of
unreadable disks in years to come. (They make good coasters!)
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
============================================================================
For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 11:49:45 -0700
From: Jonathan Hess <jahess@vivistar.com>
Subject: [PAF] Re: Archival Storage & ZIP drives
At 11:09 AM -0700 7/14/98, Richard L Halliday wrote:
> Cheryl Singhal of the PAF list wrote that she had been using her ZIP
>drive to backup large numbers of files. I have been doing the same
>thing. Upon checking with a friend, he told me that there are many
>reports of failures of ZIP drives. His advice was to convert to a JAZ
>drive which has more capacity and is a removeable hard drive ( with much
>more expensive disks). Threse reports make me very nervous when I see
>new computers for sale which contain only a ZIP drive and a CD-ROM drive.
>
> Personally, I am going to buy the best quality floppies I can find and
>use the capeability built into PAF to make MULTIPLE (and dated) backups
>onto 1.44 meg floppies.
My experience tells me Zip disks are more reliable than floppies -- by far.
I've also head that JAZ aren't all that reliable.
I think the reports of bad Zip drives are just that -- bad zip drives that
have catastrophic failures -- IE they're unusable for normal use. This is
good because you know the thing doesn't work and you know you need to get
it fixed.
If your data fits on a single floppy and you only have a floppy, use floppy
backups!
But above all, use a rotating back up scheme -- IE multiple disks that you
back up to. One week you back up to one. The next week another. Etc.
Then, if you need to restore and your most recent backup doesn't work,
you'll have another to fallback to.
I also don't like keeping the backup disks all together or at the same
location as my work computer.
I've seen some people that have hard drives use floppies as their working
medium. Mainly because they want to have a backup. Uck. Hard drives are
so much more reliable than floppies or any removable media and so much
faster. It is just you need the removable media backup in the event of a
catastrophic failure or corruption of the hard drive.
Floppies are probably the worse for LONG term storage. For long term
storage of static data optical technologies (Writeable CD's) are more
reliable. However, we're constantly updating our geneology data so we
don't really need the ideal long term storage solution. We're looking for
storage that lasts until we make our next backup.
Finally, backup utilities often don't work. This is bad because you don't
know they're not working until you need to do a restore. With the larger
disks, like zips, I just copy files straight over using the normal file
system.
(Actually I fib. I now backup to other computers on a network and even the
internet. I rarely mess with removable media now. But I'm sure I'm the
exception in this regard.)
Jonathan Hess
ViviStar Consulting
http://www.vivistar.com/
mailto:jahess@vivistar.com
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 15:30:27 EST
From: "Joan Raney" <raneyj@Rex.queens.edu>
Subject: [PAF] Re: archival storage
I read the posts about ZIP drives. I was wanting to purchase one for
backup and archival use. In March my hard drive crashed and I didn't
have good backup copies so I lost almost everything. I don't want
that to happen to me again, hence the interest in a ZIP drive.
Seeing the expensive price to pay for a floppy zip disk that turns
out to be a flop (no pun intended) I think the company that makes the
ZIP disks ought to offer a refund or exchange or something.
Should I still buy a ZIP drive?
Joan Raney
Charlotte, NC
raneyj@rex.queens.edu
oviattj@juno.com
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 15:24:09 -0700
From: "John J. Totten" <jjtotte@california.sandia.gov>
Subject: Re: [PAF] Re: archival storage
Joan Raney wrote:
>
> I read the posts about ZIP drives. I was wanting to purchase one for
> backup and archival use. In March my hard drive crashed and I didn't
> have good backup copies so I lost almost everything. I don't want
> that to happen to me again, hence the interest in a ZIP drive.
> Seeing the expensive price to pay for a floppy zip disk that turns
> out to be a flop (no pun intended) I think the company that makes the
> ZIP disks ought to offer a refund or exchange or something.
>
> Should I still buy a ZIP drive?
>
> Joan Raney
> Charlotte, NC
> raneyj@rex.queens.edu
> oviattj@juno.com
> ============================================================================
> For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
> ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
> ============================================================================
I have been using a Zip drive for a couple years with no problems. The
suggestion that the media is rotated on some regular basis is the
industry method of making sure that there is at least a partial copy of
the data that is no older than two back ups ago.
Lots of computer systems are backed up each day and the media is rotated
through the week and one disk or tape archived at the end of the week.
Typically that is not required by the home user, but it is a good idea.
Then if the tape drive or Zip in my case fails and destroys the media
only one back up is lost rather than all of it.
John Totten
============================================================================
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============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 15:24:09 -0700
From: "John J. Totten" <jjtotte@california.sandia.gov>
Subject: Re: [PAF] Re: archival storage
Joan Raney wrote:
>
> I read the posts about ZIP drives. I was wanting to purchase one for
> backup and archival use. In March my hard drive crashed and I didn't
> have good backup copies so I lost almost everything. I don't want
> that to happen to me again, hence the interest in a ZIP drive.
> Seeing the expensive price to pay for a floppy zip disk that turns
> out to be a flop (no pun intended) I think the company that makes the
> ZIP disks ought to offer a refund or exchange or something.
>
> Should I still buy a ZIP drive?
>
> Joan Raney
> Charlotte, NC
> raneyj@rex.queens.edu
> oviattj@juno.com
> ============================================================================
> For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
> ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
> ============================================================================
I have been using a Zip drive for a couple years with no problems. The
suggestion that the media is rotated on some regular basis is the
industry method of making sure that there is at least a partial copy of
the data that is no older than two back ups ago.
Lots of computer systems are backed up each day and the media is rotated
through the week and one disk or tape archived at the end of the week.
Typically that is not required by the home user, but it is a good idea.
Then if the tape drive or Zip in my case fails and destroys the media
only one back up is lost rather than all of it.
John Totten
============================================================================
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============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 21:17:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: Cheryl Singhal <csinghal@CapAccess.org>
Subject: Re: [PAF] Archival Storage & ZIP drives
On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Richard L Halliday wrote:
> Cheryl Singhal of the PAF list wrote that she had been using her ZIP
> drive to backup large numbers of files. I have been doing the same
It certainly doesn't matter to the thrust of the discussion, but just for
the record, my ZIP *drive* is alive and well and taking nourishment. One
of the discs is R.I.P. and I'm too chicken to check the other two.
> Personally, I am going to buy the best quality floppies I can find and
> use the capeability built into PAF to make MULTIPLE (and dated) backups
> onto 1.44 meg floppies.
I have been running <f1> and then doing pkzip c:\whatever\date.zip *.dat
EACH time I exit since my disaster with the bad pointer. (Oh, and did I
tell you guys? I was two pages from the END and a routine back-up when I
got that bad pointer, too.)
> The biggest surprise for me was how long the CD-R (recordable compact
> disk) was stable-only three years. The higher-quality brands could last
> around 30 years, but not the 50 to 100 years that I was hearing about a
> few years ago.
About the time music CDs hit the market, a friend of ours who worked in
the disc-producing end of the industry cautioned us about them: their
experience was that 5 years was the maximum reliable life. A few lasted
longer, a number didn't make it to 5.
But as MaryLou says -- doesn't matter how long the disc lasts if the
equipment to use it, and the software to read it is kaput-ski. Paper's
good. Some of that's been around a millenium or so.
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 03:05:16 -0500
From: Richard Nowlin <Nowlin@flash.net>
Subject: [PAF] Windows 98 and PAF
At the FHC where I volunteer, the director is planning to install
Windows 98 on the two windows computers they have. Recently there was
some soc.genealogy.computers newsgroup discussion of problems with
PAF3.0 on computers that had been upgraded to Windows 98. Several
problems were described, potential solutions proposed, but there has
been no final response to the topic.
Has anyone converted to Windows 98 and successfully run PAF 2.31 and/or
PAF3.0M?
Are their problems that you had, and solved?
Any response would be appreciated. One never knows in newsgroup
discussions whether the problems is user created, or real, unless the
user is a recognizable name.
Thanks, Dick Nowlin
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:32:08 -0700
From: "John J. Totten" <jjtotte@california.sandia.gov>
Subject: Re: [PAF] Windows 98 and PAF
Richard Nowlin wrote:
>
> At the FHC where I volunteer, the director is planning to install
> Windows 98 on the two windows computers they have. Recently there was
> some soc.genealogy.computers newsgroup discussion of problems with
> PAF3.0 on computers that had been upgraded to Windows 98. Several
> problems were described, potential solutions proposed, but there has
> been no final response to the topic.
>
> Has anyone converted to Windows 98 and successfully run PAF 2.31 and/or
> PAF3.0M?
>
> Are their problems that you had, and solved?
>
> Any response would be appreciated. One never knows in newsgroup
> discussions whether the problems is user created, or real, unless the
> user is a recognizable name.
>
> Thanks, Dick Nowlin
>
> ============================================================================
> For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
> ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
> ============================================================================
Upgrading to Windows 98 to run PAF is probably a waste of good money
since PAF is a DOS program and will run just as well under Windows 95 as
it will Windows 98. It appears that Windows 98 is an incremental update
which should have been free since they fixed over 3,000 bugs in Windows
95 with it. The service pack for Windows 95 is free on the Microsoft
site and fixes several. Unless there is a specific reason, such as
support for some new hardware the best advise is to save your money for
a while. Or at least until the price comes down. John Totten
============================================================================
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============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 16:59:28 -0400
From: kjhamlin <kjhamlin@oakland.edu>
Subject: Re: [PAF] Windows 98 and PAF
I am currently running PAF 3.0m under Windows 98. The only problem I have had is
that PAF will not work with the A: drive anymore. I have not had time to
investigate it further.
Bruce Hamlin
Richard Nowlin wrote:
> At the FHC where I volunteer, the director is planning to install
> Windows 98 on the two windows computers they have. Recently there was
> some soc.genealogy.computers newsgroup discussion of problems with
> PAF3.0 on computers that had been upgraded to Windows 98. Several
> problems were described, potential solutions proposed, but there has
> been no final response to the topic.
>
> Has anyone converted to Windows 98 and successfully run PAF 2.31 and/or
> PAF3.0M?
>
> Are their problems that you had, and solved?
>
> Any response would be appreciated. One never knows in newsgroup
> discussions whether the problems is user created, or real, unless the
> user is a recognizable name.
>
> Thanks, Dick Nowlin
>
> ============================================================================
> For assistance and help for the PAF Mailing List please contact
> ed.rogers@bigfoot.com or http://www.innernet.org/paf/
> ============================================================================
============================================================================
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------------------------------
End of paf-digest V1998 #28
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