stuart@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (S. D. Ericson) (10/20/89)
My dad's rainbow just crashed it's harddisk, and finally proved to him (I told him so! :-) that he needs to do regular backups. Does anyone have reccommendations for Rainbow-compatible programs? I know there is always DEC's BACKUP.EXE, but I was hoping for something more polished like FASTBACK for the clones. Will any of these work on the 'bow? Question two: Are there any substitutes for those RX50 diskettes that will work reliably? Now that we have MS-DOS, formatting is easy, but I don't know if AT disks will work Any Suggestions? I'm getting sick of paying RX50 prices, even through discount places like Richard Young. Thanks! Stuart "Offical Techincal support for Norm's Rainbow" -- Stuart Ericson AT&T Bell Laboratories | Note: area code 312 USEnet: att!ihlpa!stuart IH 1C215 | becomes 708 on ARPA: stuart@ihlpa.att.com 2000 N. Naperville Road | 11/11 Thanks to Voice: (312) 979-4491 Naperville, Il 60566-7033 | Illinois Bell :-(
iav1917%ritcv@cs.rit.edu (alan i. vymetalik) (10/21/89)
In article <4000@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> stuart@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (S. D. Ericson) writes: >My dad's rainbow just crashed it's harddisk, and finally >proved to him (I told him so! :-) that he needs to do >regular backups. Does anyone have reccommendations for >Rainbow-compatible programs? > >I know there is always DEC's BACKUP.EXE, but I was hoping >for something more polished like FASTBACK for the clones. >Will any of these work on the 'bow? > >Question two: Are there any substitutes for those RX50 >diskettes that will work reliably? Now that we have MS-DOS, >formatting is easy, but I don't know if AT disks will work >Any Suggestions? I'm getting sick of paying RX50 prices, >even through discount places like Richard Young. > >Thanks! >Stuart >"Offical Techincal support for Norm's Rainbow" > >Stuart Ericson Stuart, First thing... STOP buying RX50s! Too expensive. Waste of money. Someone GAVE me 30 RX50s recently, but I wouldn't have paid the $1, $2, or $3 (or more) per disk that some places are charging. Regular PC DS-DD (double-side, double-density) diskettes are just fine. I buy bulk packages of DS-DD (BASF is my current preference) at about $20.00/50 disk- ettes. That's $0.40 a disk! You can some mail-order places going as low as $0.25 or 0.28 a disk, but I am not sure about the quality. After about 150 DS-DD diskettes, I had one that didn't format. I tried two more times and it finally did, but I tossed it anyway. I've had at least a dozen RX50-specifically-labelled diskettes fail on me over the years. Caveat Emptor. About backups... I have heard that FastBack works. I am not sure about FastBack Plus. I don't have my Rainbow News newsletters to double check this. I know that Backup Master from Intersecting Concepts won't run properly under CodeBlue. I would prefer to get a tape backup unit given the fact my last hard disk backup took 55 diskettes! (ARG!) That covered 20 or so Mbytes of ARCHIVED and ZIPPED files off my 33Mbyte drive. (I archive everything before running MS-DOS's Backup. This is a similar process that many backup programs use.) If you get a hold of PKARC or PKZIP and use DOS's Backup, you can save yourself a little money, but it'll take a little longer to do a backup. To save time, you can invest in a specialized backup program, but some of them encode and compress data in a proprietary manner which may not allow you to get to the data on the diskette if for some reason the backup program won't restore the file(s). You're still going to be stuck doing a lot of floppy shuffling whichever way to go. Note to the Net! WHY CAN'T ANYONE BUILD A RAINBOW TAPE BACKUP UNIT FOR ABOUT $375.00?!! I've seen low-priced 40Mb tape units for the PC over the last year in the $290-$350 range, as I recall, and the software isn't all that difficult to write. It could be run off of the unused RX50 port on the floppy disk controller car (except for those people who have I-Drives). Enjoy, alan -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Alan I. Vymetalik, 2244 East Avenue #5, Rochester, New York, 14610-2518 USA, Phone: (716)-271-8528 ...!rochester!ritcv!iav1917 -or- ...!rochester!rit!ritcv!iav1917 ritcv!iav1917@rochester.UUCP -or- iav1917%ritcv@cs.rit.edu /If I can't be reached via any of the above e-paths, please write./ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=