Re: SEUL: hardware detection

[Rick Jones <rickya@siservices.net>]

Mike Scott wrote:
> 
> I personally have installed a lot of systems with FAT32, and have not
> had any problems specific to FAT32 only.  (Of course, the whole thing
> stinks, and having almost daily to explain to CI customers that just
> because 95 is broken doesn't mean the machine I sold them is defective...
> means 95 has single-handedly taken the enjoyment out of my career as a
> self-employed computer consultant)... but the FAT32 systems don't seem
> to be that much worse than the rest.

I know exactly what you mean.  I closed my business because I have no
patience for that crap anymore.  I had one customer in particular that
wanted top of the line everything 166MHZ was it at that time.  I built
him a nice system.  Top of the line motherboard, video, CDROM, he
chinced on the monitor.

I got him a great deal on a 17" flatscreen edge to edge monitor w/
electronic controles and seperate RGB inputs for under $600.  At the
time they went for $1000 or more depending on the manufacturer.  The
system cost him about $3000 total.  He bitched and bitched about the
cost.  I told him $2300 originally.  Before the monitor and other
goodies he added.

I swore up and down he had the best money could buy.  Showed him it
would cost him at least $1000 more for a comparable system through
another company and he'd get lesser quality.  Which is why he had me
build it that way to begin with.

Anyway.  Every other day he's calling me because it's screwed up. 
Contaminated file system, stuck in DOS mode, his stock quoting machine
stops working, on and on for months.  When I first installed it I told
him to get a UPS with a line conditioner to protect it.  Our power is
fine.  Even though I met them to begin with due to contamination on
their old 386 with Win3x on it.  Which is harder to do than in Windoze
95.

He blew out the motherboard and the video card within 3 months, on top
of Win 95 needing to be reinstalled several times because it was trashed
to the point of not booting.  Calls me one day while waiting for his
video card to come in, meanwhile I let him use my video card to keep him
quiet, tells me he'd never have bought it from me if he knew it would be
such a hunk of junk.  He wants his money back.  He can get a better
system for the same money.  I told him to find someone else cuz I'd had
it with his crap and hung up on him.  He calls me back an appologizes. 
A couple of weeks later his video card comes in, I call and leave
messages that we need to make an appointment for me to install it.  He
never returned my call.  Kept my video card.  Ofcourse his was better
than mine so =)

Anyway.  That was when I said enough is enough.  That's why I have
strong reservations about dipping into the registry for configuration
info.  People will blame it on Linux, in a heartbeat, if something
happens to Windoze 95 after they install it.  For that matter, if
something happens to any program on the Windows side, they'll blame
Linux.