DCR3567@RITVAX.BITNET (DCR3567) (01/14/90)
Maybe as Amiga Owners, we feel left out of some things.. advantages of
owning a 'real' or 'big' computer, but we've always had bragging rights.
We saw that this machine was the best.. not task for task, or speed for
speed, but it has character, and style.
Anyway, there are more advantages to being 'small' than we think. It
really showed that even though we are small in number, all that means is
that we are more in touch with each other, and are more willing to help
out the 'other guy' when a question is asked (the evidence being that
I-Amiga and Comp.sys.Amiga are two of the most trafficed lists on the net!)
Well, here's just one more account of that comaradare that this
machine propagates...
I have an Amiga 2000, 3 megs ram, 40 meg HD, etc.. A power system when it was
bought (BEFORE I ventured into the poor-man wasteland of college life).
Seeing that I had a hard drive, I figured I'd do the right thing and back it
up every month.. you say that when it's new, but when was the last time you
waxed that '84 Chevy? Well, my hard drive crashed a few times in those
couple of years, and I always re-installed in.. a PAIN!!
So i picked up a copy of Matt Dillon's Backup/Restore program.. It was great
Cheap (I'm poor), simple (1 command-line statement), and effective.
I backed up the old hard drive to another partition on the drive, 20 megs
goes down to 11 megs with this program... I backed it up on 1/7/90, and
guess what?? It crashed on the 10th!! Hooray I said! Restore ff1: backup
01.07.. 1/2 way through.. BAM! Program ditches... Bummer..Unknown error.
Here's the great part. I get in touch with the author, my idol and hero,
Matt Dillon, and he trys to help.. Not only did he diagnose the problem,
but he offered to re-construct the file if I sent it to him.. Um, hard,
11 megs does not a floppy fit!
Well, I contact him by phone, last night.. he offers to modify his program
to get around the error, and continue the restore. Not only that, he
offered to do it in 30 minutes or my pizza was free! He put it on an
FTP site, and BINGO! TODAY I HAVE A COMPLETELY BACKED UP HARD DRIVE!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, on any other computer, this
probably NOT happen.. the openness of advice, and the help this person
gave was above the call of authorship (;-}), and I'd like to extend my
applause to Matt and all those other underpaid/rated/overworked/hobbyists/
authors that program and work on this Machine.
If the people make the Machine, then this machine is going to have a long
lifetime...
-Daniel C. Richardson
Mechanical Engineering
Rochester Institute of Technology
::The preceeding message was a paid political broadcast to re-elect ::
:: Matt Dillon ::