🚀 go-pugleaf

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

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   Alan I. Vymetalik, 2244 East Avenue #5, Rochester, New York, 14610-2518
                      USA, Phone: (716)-271-8528    
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