loafman@convexe.UUCP (03/05/88)
I just got Fastback+ version 1.1 (1.01??) and the READ.ME file said that this version fixed a un/compress bug which had only been reported by about 20 people. Contact Fifth Generation and I'm sure they will replace your package with one that works. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kenneth W. Loafman @ CONVEX Computer Corp, Dallas, Texas | All opinions Voice: work: (214) 952-0829 home: (214) 964-1250 | are my own, USPSnail: 1705 Coit Rd #2101, Plano, Tx 75075 | of course. UUCP: ihnp4!convex!loafman | CompuServe: 72345,233 | ...KWL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
aja@i.cc.purdue.edu (Miek Rowan) (03/08/88)
Fifth Generation said they are automatically shipping 1.01 (of Fastback+) to REGISTERED users by zip code. God knows what zip they started at (the guy on the phone said he didnt know :-) but you should get it soon (1-2 weeks) if you sent in your registration card. miek PS the number to call is (504) 291-7283 for info
vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) (09/06/88)
In article <26014@neabbs.UUCP> richard@neabbs.UUCP (RICHARD RONTELTAP) writes: >I would also recommend Fastback PLUS. It has loads of features, good >error correction and writes disks in DOS compatible format. Do you know a way to get FB+ to read from @cmd files with an arbitrary number of lines like it did before? I have a great deal more than twenty file specifications for backup inclusion. That limit is killing me, and I have to continue w/FastBack null. -- O----------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large | Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .
fleming@nvuxk.UUCP (George W. Fleming) (03/17/89)
When I purchased a copy of FASTBACK PLUS (Version 2.0 I believe) few months ago and tried to use it, I came across an interesting phenomenon... Doing a backup on my IBM PS/2 Model 70-121 with 3 1/2 inch floppies, I noticed that the first floppy always gets done real fast. After that, every floppy always gets reformated for some reason (even though the floppy was already formated). This happens no matter how I rearrange the disks (the first is always fast, the succeeding ones are always slow because they have to be formatted). I called Fifth Generation Systems about this problem and the technical support person did not even think this was a problem. She kept repeating that I obviously had unformated disks. I finally convinced her to write it down as a software report, and wanted her to get back to me...that was two to three months ago.... Has anyone had similar type of experience? I also had some other strange problems with this program (it rewrote the a disk before I had a chance to put a new one in, some binary error I don't remember the details of, etc.). I am just rather surprised with all the problems I had since all the magazines seem to give it such rave reviews. With what I have seen and the type of technical support I got, I don't know if I want to buy their product again... A while back I seem to have noticed someone posting an article about problems using it on a PS/2 Model 50Z. Is this a related problem? Any insight would be welcomed.
wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (Rich Wales) (03/18/89)
I would have preferred to e-mail this comment, but I couldn't find a
reasonable return address for the sender ("nvuxk" doesn't appear to be
in the maps, and he didn't include a signature with any path hints).
So, here goes with a followup posting.
In article <441@nvuxk.UUCP> fleming@nvuxk.UUCP
(George W. Fleming) writes:
When I purchased a copy of FASTBACK PLUS (Version 2.0 I believe)
few months ago and tried to use it, I came across an interesting
phenomenon...
Doing a backup on my IBM PS/2 Model 70-121 with 3 1/2 inch
floppies, I noticed that the first floppy always gets done real
fast. After that, every floppy always gets reformated for some
reason (even though the floppy was already formated). This
happens no matter how I rearrange the disks (the first is
always fast, the succeeding ones are always slow because they
have to be formatted).
I have used FASTBACK PLUS v2.01 for some time and have never seen this
problem. I have a Taiwanese "turbo" XT clone (100% IBM-compatible) with
a 32-meg hard disk, and I dump to a 3.5"/1.44-meg diskette drive.
FASTBACK PLUS passes the "high DMA" test on my system, using this high-
density drive, with the CPU clock running at "turbo" speed (8 MHz).
I use the highest command level ("advanced"), with maximum compression
("save disks"). I can check my other configuration options and compare
them with the ones George uses, if he will get in touch with me via
e-mail.
When I use preformatted disks with FASTBACK PLUS, the program always
accepts them and doesn't try to reformat them.
I also had some other strange problems with this program (it
rewrote the a disk before I had a chance to put a new one in,
some binary error I don't remember the details of, etc.).
I've never seen this problem on my system. FASTBACK PLUS always waits
for me to put in the next disk.
A while back I seem to have noticed someone posting an article
about problems using it on a PS/2 Model 50Z. Is this a related
problem? Any insight would be welcomed.
Well, of course, if George's problem stems from some strangeness with
the PS/2, my experience with an XT-clone would not be relevant. Again,
though, I'll be glad to discuss this issue at more length via e-mail,
if George will contact me with a reasonable return path.
-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales
"Now, drop your weapons, or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Mike Loving) (03/18/89)
> bunch of problems with fastback mainly disk formatting
I have used Fastback going to 360/720/1200 K floppies and 720/1.44 3.5"
floppies. I have seen the error that ??? at nvuxk has seen. I finally
decided that it was due to a substandard floppy disk drive. It was a
360k 5.25" floppy drive and that was the only floppy drive on which the
error ocurred. I have not seen any of the other problems but it is possible
that they are related. I just quit using that drive for backups.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Loving loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu
. . . {hplabs,ucbvax,uunet}!cs.ucla.edu!loving
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) (03/19/89)
NB: Another question at end of article!!! In article <441@nvuxk.UUCP> fleming@nvuxk.UUCP (George W. Fleming) writes: >Doing a backup on my IBM PS/2 Model 70-121 with 3 1/2 inch floppies, I >noticed that the first floppy always gets done real fast. After that, >every floppy always gets reformated for some reason (even though the >floppy was already formated). This happens no matter how I rearrange >the disks (the first is always fast, the succeeding ones are always slow >because they have to be formatted). I had a similar, but less disturbing, experience. I'm using a PS/30 on Novell to 3.5" DS/DD disks. Let's say I'm doing a backup, the first time with unformatted disks. So it formats, takes four disks. I backup again, same databse, same disks, no changes. This time it does *not* format (of course), but it takes *less* time, reaches the fourth disk, and asks for a fifth, which it formats. On repeating this process, each time the size of the backup set increases by some small amount, converging on, say, 5 1/2 disks. OK, all these backups look great, good history files, just different sizes for each backed up file. So I call 5th Generation and get a similar ignorant, rude response, put on hold, etc. Eventually I am told that intelligent compression is going on whereby with unformatted disks (apparently since it's already taking its time with the formatting) does *more* compression, yielding *less* disks with *more* time. Thereafter compression gets less, yielding *more* disks with *less* time. How it know to do this, I don't know. But I was happy w/that until your posting. Now *my* question: moving from old Fastback to FB+ I lost my most important feature, being able to give an arbitrarily long list of arbitrary filespecs to back up. *THEY ONLY GIVE YOU TWENTY DAMNED FILESPECS TO INCLUDE*! The old @file syntax is gone?! Am I overlooking something obvious? When I asked 5th Generation they didn't seem to think so. . . -- O----------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large | Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .
ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (03/19/89)
While installing Fastback Plus for a friend, I discovered a bit of very sloppy programming in it. The installation program modifies the path statement. It does not check for previous modification. If you have to abort the installation, the next go round will again modify the path, adding the fastback directory. With a little luck you run out of environment space. One would think a professional programmer would know enough to examine the path (and environment size) before diddling it.
toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) (03/21/89)
In article <2000@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes: >[...]Eventually I am told >that intelligent compression is going on whereby with unformatted disks >(apparently since it's already taking its time with the formatting) does >*more* compression, yielding *less* disks with *more* time. Thereafter >compression gets less, yielding *more* disks with *less* time. How it >know to do this, I don't know. When using the "Advanced" menu, you can select between compression "off" , "save time", and "save disks". In "save time" it only compresses when there is time available. "save time" is also the default. On a slow machine (like a PC/XT) it essentually will not compress at all in this setting. "save disks" gives maximum compression. On a fast machine (such as an 80386), "save disks" can actually save time by requiring fewer disk changes! On ATs or greater, I always use "save disks". On my old "XT" compatible, I went back to the original Fastback -- it's faster! Tom Almy toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com Standard Disclaimers Apply
mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (03/21/89)
>One would think a professional programmer would know enough to >examine the path (and environment size) before diddling it. One would hope that any person selling a program would warn the user loudly and vigorously before mucking with their config.sys or autoexec.bat files. This starts up the occasional "setup program" wars. I feel ornery just now, having yesterday re-installed Microsoft Windows for the 99th time just to change video driver mode. Software writers, when you decide how to have the user install the software, please not the following: (Microsoft take note!!!!) 1. The user may not want to install the whole package - when I install Microsoft C or Fortran I only want the compiler, includes, and libraries (for the memory model I want!) NOT - repeat NOT - suck dreck as Quick C or their silly editor!!! I DON'T want all those stupid .pif files with Microsoft Windows!! Most of the programs I never heard of. 2. The user might want to use a directory of HIS choice, not yours - and might not be ABLE to install from a: (if your disks are 5 inch and his a: is 3 inch!) (Microsoft does OK here.) 3. The user might want to just change PART of an installation, not the whole thing. Windows is a big offender here. 4. Please -Please - Please- don't modify config.sys or autoexec.bat - instead write out something like config.sam or autoexec.sam (.sam is for sample). I suggest writing up a section of the manual that explains what goes where, AND WHY, and implementing it as a batch file, so the user can modify it. Doug Mc Donald
allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) (03/28/89)
As quoted from <45900214@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> by mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu: +--------------- | 2. The user might want to use a directory of HIS choice, not yours - | and might not be ABLE to install from a: (if your disks are 5 inch | and his a: is 3 inch!) (Microsoft does OK here.) +--------------- Only partially. When we installed Apex (which comes with Windows) on a Dell 220, the install went fine until it ran MEMSET -- which absolutely INSISTED that the Utilities disk be in A:. Since Apex comes on 5 1/4" disks, and the Dell 220 has a 3 1/2" A:, I had to abort MEMSET and build a special disk for it. --Following which, every time we started Windows we got an annoying "memory size changed, run SETUP" message until I finally got sick of it and re-installed Windows from scratch. Sigh.... +--------------- | 3. The user might want to just change PART of an installation, not the whole | thing. Windows is a big offender here. +--------------- Sigh. Isn't it, though? Couldn't they have taken an example from their own MS Word 4.0 install program? ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@ncoast.org uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@<backbone> NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser