Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
dangerous!
I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
curses-
James
[email protected]
"brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
> dangerous!
> Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
> Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
The middlemen that I buy from seem to be stable businesses, but the employee
parking lot is not full of luxury cars. The prices don't seem outrageous for
what you get and the cost of processing.
I've also used wood for heating for many years. Right now, cordwood is $120
to $170 a cord. When I look at the labor involved in felling trees,
dragging them out, cutting splitting, hauling, that is not a bad price. The
wood we buy for projects is most likely handled with more automation, but
there is still a lot of cost in the equipment, fuel, transportation, dollars
of inventory tied up during the drying process, etc.
There is still a lot of free wood available if you are willing to do the
work to reclaim it. Old furniture, crates, pallets, can have some rather
nice material. I've built outdoor tables from dunnage is containers from
Korea. My wife's sewing table is a scrap of melamine coated plywood from a
display house.
brocpuffs writes:
>Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
>dangerous!
>
>I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
>Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
>use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
>
>It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
>growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
>
>Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
>Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
>I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
To make you feel even better about it, consider that woods like greenheart and
purpleheart among others are used in some general construction in their native
areas.
Wood processing, though, is complex, transport costs are high even within the
U.S., and ecological consideration here and overseas add to the cost. I doubt
anyone is getting rich on selling wood to the consumer, when you consider
buying it either by traveling to an area, or taking a chance on sight unseen,
either drying it at its native site or drying it in the U.S., or whatever part
of the U.S. native American woods are transported to, handling it again to
stack it in storage, handling smaller amounts to place in retail displays, skip
planing to show grain (or S2S for those who want it), downgrading probably half
of each log's output because of faults that take it out of FAS, advertising it,
handling it again when it is bought.
And part of the problem is that wood is not all that easily handled each time.
Weight may be excessive, lengths are often unwieldy, thicknesses or variable,
as are widths, and most of it will give you a severe case of the splinters if
you're not careful.
And the tools used to prep it for sale aren't cheap. For kicks, see if you can
find an estimate of a modest size kiln for drying wood along with automated
gear to make sure the temps stay correct and the wood doesn't dry too quickly
or too slowly.
I think wood is about where it should be, given the general increases in prices
for everything else in the past couple decades, with some emphasis on the cost
of fuels.
Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken
Ron Short wrote:
> Was searching the net and found this site:
> http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
>
> If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
> $0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
Now that's interesting. I haven't been by the wood store in a year now for
assorted reasons, but the last time I bought walnut there, it was $4.70/bf,
and it had O'Shea Lumber Company on a piece of paper stapled to one of the
boards.
Crikey.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
Prometheus wrote:
> The bad part is they are usually already soaked with grease and banged
> up a lot, so I just let them go on their merry way, often with a
> little regret...
Not much point in regret. Pallet wood is sort of like a bowl full of
plastic candy. It looks good until you taste it. Spiral nails, embedded
grits, knots, splits, and it's usually too thin to mill down into anything
useful besides. I don't even look through the pallet pile anymore. It's
too frustrating. So much work, so little useful wood.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
Silvan responds:
>Not much point in regret. Pallet wood is sort of like a bowl full of
>plastic candy. It looks good until you taste it. Spiral nails, embedded
>grits, knots, splits, and it's usually too thin to mill down into anything
>useful besides. I don't even look through the pallet pile anymore. It's
>too frustrating. So much work, so little useful wood.
I've got to agree. I picked up a tool yesterday for a test, and looked at some
of the discarded pallets at the trucking company. Yuk. The ones that weren't
filthy were made of some 3/8" scrub oak, with what grain was showing through
the rough really ugly.
You'd spend hours getting enough wood for a small box, and then, more often
than not, the box would end up ugly.
I used to use pallets for kindling with wood heat, but quit when my ash
cleaning chores brought up so many old nails. Too much hassle to get them out
of the grates.
Charlie Self
"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."
Edgar Bergen, (Charlie McCarthy)
Someone must be rich if they can afford to buy the lumber and the tools to
work it, much less have the free time to do so.
Go to some other countries and see if your opinion remains unchanged.
"brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> > Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>
> curses-
>
> James
> [email protected]
>
I have a friend who builds picture frames in there shop, they import most of
there wood because the cost of domestic is so high
George wrote:
> Someone must be rich if they can afford to buy the lumber and the tools to
> work it, much less have the free time to do so.
>
> Go to some other countries and see if your opinion remains unchanged.
>
> "brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> > Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
>> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>>
>> curses-
>>
>> James
>> [email protected]
>>
Richard Clements writes:
>
>I have a friend who builds picture frames in there shop, they import most of
>there wood because the cost of domestic is so high
I'd love to see that wood your friend supposedly pays less for than he would,
for example, for cherry or walnut or one of the oaks. Mahogany? Padauk?
Satinwood?
Just WHAT wood does he pay less for than he can find a similar wood for here in
the U.S.?
Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken
Charlie Self plantation Richard Clements writes:
>
>>
>>I have a friend who builds picture frames in there shop, they import most
>>of there wood because the cost of domestic is so high
>
> I'd love to see that wood your friend supposedly pays less for than he
> would, for example, for cherry or walnut or one of the oaks. Mahogany?
> Padauk? Satinwood?
>
> Just WHAT wood does he pay less for than he can find a similar wood for
> here in the U.S.?
>
> Charlie Self
> "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
> Christianity has made them good." H. L. Mencken
First this is Idaho, we don't have any comershal hard wood here, so we have
to import it from other parts of the country. Most of it's plantation
stuff rubbertree, Philopine Mahogany, and the like, but they have a spray
finishing process, that he keeps promising to show me, still hasn't, that
can make it look like just about anything they want, with in reason
Can vouch for the birdseye raiders. Yanked them out up here, even if it took
a helicopter.
We're a bit third world in some respects now. Wes ship logs rather than
product, sometimes purchasing the result in return. Trouble is, veneer
mills are as welcome as paper-making most places.
What money is made isn't made by loggers, that's for sure. Or sawyers.
"mark" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I remember reading an article that said a pretty fair amount of our best
> wood is shipped overseas to places like Japan. We get the leftovers on
> Native hardwoods.
>
>
Where are you from?
I live in South Central Kansas. While prices have increased some during the
past few years, they are really pretty stable. I buy a fair amount of Oak,
Maple, Walnut and Ash from a couple of sources one is a hardwood dealer
(http://www.woodsworksqh.com/index.html)about 30 miles from home. If you
look at the site you will notice good discounts at various quantity levels.
The biggest increase we have seen from them is in Walnut and Cherry and they
are as likely to go down from time-to-time as up. I can beat most of his
prices by $1.00 or more/bf by going 150 miles east to Southern Missouri or
Northern Arkansas, and I do if quantity warrants. A local woodworker also
handles hardwoods at a price competitive enough to keep us from driving
south for smaller quantity.
Exotics are another story. The local shop handles some Purpleheart, Paduk,
Birdseye Maple, and limited quantities of Burbinga and others to those
willing to pay $10 to $25/bd ft.
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:32:36 -0500, brocpuffs <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
>Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
>dangerous!
Er, I think I was feeling a bit depressed when I sent that to the NG.
Late on a cold, dull gray afternoon is bad for me.
Also, I do have a fixed income, and my ideas often far outstrip my
resources.Lastly but not leastly, I am feeling myself beginning to
slow down from being 62. Memory and shoulders both. I could throw un a
few more but who needs to read all that negative stuff- maybe more
inventiveness will come of this?
So I emitted a carp and got my response.
James
[email protected]
Ron Short wrote:
> Was searching the net and found this site:
> http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
>
> If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
> $0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
>
> All substantially less than I pay my supplier. Of course I only buy a few
> board feet per month not the thousands advertised on that site. Still gets
> you thinking about how the price could jump so much. Or makes you think
> you should be selling the wood instead of working it.
Ron, I think you have a misconception about that table. The number in the
first column is the quantity they have on hand, the one in the third is the
price per thousand board feet. The price in the third column is _not_ for
the entire quantity in the first column.
Further, on another page of the site, they say that their minimum buy is 500
board feet, not "thousands".
> "brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
>> dangerous!
>>
>> I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
>> Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
>> use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
>>
>> It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
>> growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
>>
>> Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
>> Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
>> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>>
>> curses-
>>
>> James
>> [email protected]
>>
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:11:18 -0500, Silvan
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Prometheus wrote:
>
>> The bad part is they are usually already soaked with grease and banged
>> up a lot, so I just let them go on their merry way, often with a
>> little regret...
>
>Not much point in regret. Pallet wood is sort of like a bowl full of
>plastic candy. It looks good until you taste it. Spiral nails, embedded
>grits, knots, splits, and it's usually too thin to mill down into anything
>useful besides. I don't even look through the pallet pile anymore. It's
>too frustrating. So much work, so little useful wood.
That's why it's a little regret! I look at them, sigh, and think
about what it would do to my bits and blades if I ran into a nail or
embedded rock, then let them go.
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam
In article <[email protected]>,
Ron Short <[email protected]> wrote:
>Was searching the net and found this site:
>http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
>
>If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
>$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
BZZZZZT! The prices quoted are 'per 1000 bd ft', *not* for the entire
inventory as a single lot.
The 8/4 poplar is $1.26/bd ft. ($1260/1000 bd ft.) 18M bd ft in stock
The 4/4 ash is $1.29/bd ft. ($1290/1000 bd ft.) 15M bd ft in stock
(For the 4/4 walnut they did not specify the quantity for the $2750 price, but,
given that _everything_else_ is priced 'per thousand bd ft', it _is_ fair
to assume that that is the way the walnut is priced, as well. Thus: )
The 4/4 walnut is $2.75/bd ft. ($2750/1000 bd ft.) 10M bd ft in stock.
You don't have to buy the entire inventory of any of those items, to
get the indicated pricing. minimum order is only 500 bd ft.
>
>All substantially less than I pay my supplier. Of course I only buy a few
>board feet per month not the thousands advertised on that site. Still gets
>you thinking about how the price could jump so much. Or makes you think you
>should be selling the wood instead of working it.
*OR* that one should learn how to read a price list. <grin>
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:45:49 GMT, "Edwin Pawlowski" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
>"brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>>
>> Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
>> dangerous!
>
>> Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
>> Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
>> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>
>The middlemen that I buy from seem to be stable businesses, but the employee
>parking lot is not full of luxury cars. The prices don't seem outrageous for
>what you get and the cost of processing.
>
>I've also used wood for heating for many years. Right now, cordwood is $120
>to $170 a cord. When I look at the labor involved in felling trees,
>dragging them out, cutting splitting, hauling, that is not a bad price. The
>wood we buy for projects is most likely handled with more automation, but
>there is still a lot of cost in the equipment, fuel, transportation, dollars
>of inventory tied up during the drying process, etc.
>
>There is still a lot of free wood available if you are willing to do the
>work to reclaim it. Old furniture, crates, pallets, can have some rather
>nice material. I've built outdoor tables from dunnage is containers from
>Korea. My wife's sewing table is a scrap of melamine coated plywood from a
>display house.
You actually can get some nice stuff out of pallets- I see wood that
makes my eyes bug out a little every once in a while at work. Most of
them are junk, but every so often an odd bit of black walnut or an
exotic hardwood I couldn't name if I tried to shows up in the stack.
The bad part is they are usually already soaked with grease and banged
up a lot, so I just let them go on their merry way, often with a
little regret...
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam
> I think wood is about where it should be, given the general increases in
> prices
> for everything else in the past couple decades, with some emphasis on the
> cost
> of fuels.
>
> Charlie Self
> "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
> Christianity
> has made them good." H. L. Mencken
I remember reading an article that said a pretty fair amount of our best
wood is shipped overseas to places like Japan. We get the leftovers on
Native hardwoods.
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 13:41:28 -0600, "RonB" <[email protected]> wrote:
>Where are you from?
>
>I live in South Central Kansas. While prices have increased some during the
>past few years, they are really pretty stable. I buy a fair amount of Oak,
>Maple, Walnut and Ash from a couple of sources one is a hardwood dealer
>(http://www.woodsworksqh.com/index.html)about 30 miles from home. If you
>look at the site you will notice good discounts at various quantity levels.
>The biggest increase we have seen from them is in Walnut and Cherry and they
>are as likely to go down from time-to-time as up. I can beat most of his
>prices by $1.00 or more/bf by going 150 miles east to Southern Missouri or
>Northern Arkansas, and I do if quantity warrants. A local woodworker also
>handles hardwoods at a price competitive enough to keep us from driving
>south for smaller quantity.
>
>Exotics are another story. The local shop handles some Purpleheart, Paduk,
>Birdseye Maple, and limited quantities of Burbinga and others to those
>willing to pay $10 to $25/bd ft.
Whew... $10 or more a bf for Birdseye Maple? I bought a bit of that
a few weeks ago at $4.25 a bf- it's a domestic hardwood, fer cripes
sake! It's a nice looking wood, but for that price it's like a punch
in the stomach...
Overall, I get a good price for wood, considering the quality of the
stock the local place carries and the enjoyment I get out of it. When
you start talking about pine 2 x 4s from the hardware store, then
yeah, it's outrageous- but I expect to pay a little more for quality
and beauty, so nice hardwood usually seems like a bargin to me. If
you consider what it costs to get one of those crappy particle-board
and contac-paper pieces of furniture compared to what you'd spend on
the wood required to make one out of a decent material, they're often
comparable if you've got a decent supplier.
Of course, all of that can mean very little to someone on a tight
budget- but I suspect that what you're seeing is just about where it's
at. Everything is getting more expensive these days!
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam
Prometheus responds:
>Whew... $10 or more a bf for Birdseye Maple? I bought a bit of that
>a few weeks ago at $4.25 a bf- it's a domestic hardwood, fer cripes
>sake! It's a nice looking wood, but for that price it's like a punch
>in the stomach...
Not too long ago, I read about a guy who makes his living searching out
patterned maple in log form for, IIRC, Martin. You can bet that kind of
emphasis is what drives the prices of any domestic up.
Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken
The price of red oak has been stable for years, cherry bounces a bit but is
stable too. If any wood you are buying comes in from overseas, consider the
USD has slid 45% against the Euro.
--
Rumpty
Radial Arm Saw Forum: http://forums.delphiforums.com/woodbutcher/start
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
> dangerous!
>
> I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
> Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
> use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
>
> It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
> growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
>
> Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
> Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>
> curses-
>
> James
> [email protected]
>
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 06:52:30 GMT, mac davis <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:32:36 -0500, brocpuffs <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
>>dangerous!
>>
>>I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
>>Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
>>use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
>>
>>It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
>>growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
>>
>>Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
>>Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
>>I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>>
>>curses-
>>
>>James
>>[email protected]
>
>interesting question...
>after my last couple of trips to the borg, I was going to ask a
>related question:
>Are the hurricanes in the south what's raising plywood prices so
>fast??
The big factor seems to be the increasing worldwide demand for
plywood. I stumbled on a site that tracked world lumber consumption by
country or area on a monthly basis and the current report indicated
supplies are tight and prices firm to rising in all areas.
(Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the site.)
>
>On my last 2 projects, both involving several shop drawers, I was
>going to use 3/8" or 1/2" plywood for the drawer sides and backs
>because it was the less expensive way to go..
>On both projects, plywood had gone up so much, it was cheaper to buy
>fairly nice quality Douglas Fir than it was to use pine plywood... wtf
>is wrong with that picture??
>
>I know that you're talking about REAL wood, but my budget and skill
>level doesn't allow that yet..
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:54:21 GMT, "mark" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I think wood is about where it should be, given the general increases in
>> prices
>> for everything else in the past couple decades, with some emphasis on the
>> cost
>> of fuels.
>>
>> Charlie Self
>> "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
>> Christianity
>> has made them good." H. L. Mencken
>
>I remember reading an article that said a pretty fair amount of our best
>wood is shipped overseas to places like Japan. We get the leftovers on
>Native hardwoods.
>
Actually premium softwood is more likely to go to Japan. They get most
of their hardwoods from the tropics.
The traditional Japanese house is built using post and beam
construction with a kingpost in the center to hold the whole thing up.
(This was true even of their castles. The kingpost for a castle took a
huge tree.) In house construction the kingpost is left exposed as a
critical design element and is very carefully chosen and even more
carefully trimmed.
These days almost all those kingposts come from northwest North
America. Personally I think the ones the Japanese favor look kinda
knotty and even a little crooked, but I'm just a dumb gaijin.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:32:36 -0500, brocpuffs <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
>Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
>dangerous!
>
>I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
>Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
>use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
>
>It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
>growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
>
>Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
>Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
>I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>
>curses-
>
>James
>[email protected]
interesting question...
after my last couple of trips to the borg, I was going to ask a
related question:
Are the hurricanes in the south what's raising plywood prices so
fast??
On my last 2 projects, both involving several shop drawers, I was
going to use 3/8" or 1/2" plywood for the drawer sides and backs
because it was the less expensive way to go..
On both projects, plywood had gone up so much, it was cheaper to buy
fairly nice quality Douglas Fir than it was to use pine plywood... wtf
is wrong with that picture??
I know that you're talking about REAL wood, but my budget and skill
level doesn't allow that yet..
Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
All substantially less than I pay my supplier. Of course I only buy a few
board feet per month not the thousands advertised on that site. Still gets
you thinking about how the price could jump so much. Or makes you think you
should be selling the wood instead of working it.
"brocpuffs" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
> dangerous!
>
> I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
> Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
> use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.
>
> It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
> growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-
>
> Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
> Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
> I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.
>
> curses-
>
> James
> [email protected]
>
OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M" stand
for?
"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Ron Short writes:
>
> >
> >Was searching the net and found this site:
> >http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
> >
> >If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
> >$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
>
> Checked his poplar prices for the listed 4/4 2000 BF, at $770 per 1000 BF,
> which works out to 72 cents a BF. Reasonable, but it ain't nowhere near
what
> your calculator gave you. And my check of the 8/4 gave $1.26 a BF.
>
> One of us needs a new calculator.
>
> Are you forgetting that when you're buying 18,000 BF at $1260 per M you
need to
> multiply that M by 18?
>
>
> Charlie Self
> "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
> has made them good." H. L. Mencken
"Silvan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> Upscale wrote:
> > thinking on this subject has preceded you. :)
>
> On old computers or old women? :)
One woman in particular. Can't say if she's old or not.
Larry Jaques wrote:
> That's the difference of "megs less overhead", sir.
> Net vs. gross, KWIM,V?
> Kinda like Searz horsepower vs. reality.
There's actually a real answer to this problem. I think they invented
kibibytes and mebibytes or some silly froof like that. I forget which is
which, but one of them is the proper powers of two version, and the other
is the lazy HD manufacturer's multiples of 1000 version.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
Richard Clements wrote:
> has to do with base 2 math, as far as your hard drive, there are a number
> of reasons why your not seeing the full 60GB, fist hard drives are brocken
Not the least of which is that hard drive manufacturers have been using the
standard that "megabyte = 1000 bytes; gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (of 1000
bytes)" ever since about the time when the first IDE hard disks came out.
It's a marketing gimmick. No mystery to it. Caveat emptor.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
Brett A. Thomas wrote:
> When hard drive manufacturers first started selling hard drives, they
> "rounded down," and advertised drive capacities as being on the 10^x
Yes, thank you. You're right. I'm right.
I seem to recall that the old MFM and RLL drives actually delivered the
advertised capacity. Am I dreaming that? It was a long time ago. The
largest one of those I ever laid hands on was 80 megabytes, and I think it
would have actually been 80 megabytes if all the heads had been
working. :)
Boy, they don't make'em like they used to. My first computer that was MY
computer was put together out of complete junk parts like that. The 80 meg
drive had bad bearings, and it screamed like a jet engine. One or two of
the heads didn't work, and it had gazillions of bad sectors. It still
worked, and I used it for awhile, until I saved up enough money to buy one
of those new IDE deals. A 120 MB drive that I still have around here
somewhere.
More recently, I had a 40 gig (Maxtor) drive that was about 11 months old.
One morning, I came in to get on the computer, and the drive was clicking.
Just like that. Poof. Gone. I'll bet that damn gimp 80 meg RLL drive
would still work to the same limited extent that it was working twelve
years ago. Ugh. Fourteen years ago.
Wow. I knew my wife back then too. She was right around the same time I
was putting that POS together. Funny how 14 years ago seems an eternity in
computer terms, but just getting started on a marriage. (Well, 11 years of
marriage, and three years of incredible sex. Not necessarily in that
order. :)
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
Upscale wrote:
>> marriage, and three years of incredible sex. Not necessarily in that
>> order. :)
>
> You know Silvan, I was reading this thread and I saw the above comment,
> and I knew right away before I saw your name, it was you making it. Your
> thinking on this subject has preceded you. :)
On old computers or old women? :)
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:21:56 GMT, Mike Marlow <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> Since we went from MFM to IDE...
>
> We went from MFM?
Er, yeah, in the 1980's, friend.
Upscale wrote:
> "Silvan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> Upscale wrote:
>> > thinking on this subject has preceded you. :)
>>
>> On old computers or old women? :)
>
> One woman in particular. Can't say if she's old or not.
Depends on if I'm mad at her or not how old she is.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 13:32:21 -0800, Brett A. Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I remember I had an acquaintance back then who excitedly told me, one
> day, "I'm beta testing for Stacker!" I said, "Yeah, you do that. Good
> luck with that..."
My standard comment in such situations has been, for rather a long
time now, "Yeah, 'cuz what could _possibly_ go wrong?".
Rick wrote:
> Until you slapped that puppy on an RLL controller and made it a 30 MB
> drive (give or take a few kB).
32 MB IIRC.
I saw one of those things the other day. What do you bet half the people,
maybe even 75% or even 90% of the people who have home computers today have
no clue what a "full sized card" is?
I ran into that with someone in some context or other. I don't remember the
surrounding details, but his definition of a "full sized card" was one
where the PCB came all the way to the end of the edge connector.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
Mike Marlow wrote:
> I've never seen the asterik, but I've never looked for it. There is
> overhead on a fresh drive though that does eat into the capacity. There is
> a low level format that is beneath the level of the operating system. Then
> there is the filesystem you're refefring to. I guess I'm not familiar with
> today's marketing practices, but it used to always be that the unformated
> drive capacity is what was advertised and that was before the low level
> format - what we used to call the hardware format. Then you put the
> filesystem on top of that and lost even more capacity. Today you put
> microsoft products on top of that and lose all of your capacity...
Since we went from MFM to IDE, nobody low-level formats anymore. Now
that the controller doesn't have to have intimate proprietary knowledge
of the drive, you don't need to low-level format. In fact, on most
machines, you can't, anymore. What you're saying was true a long time
ago, but it's not the reason for discrepancies, anymore. See this page
from Seagate, for example, on "Discrepancy Between Reported Capacity and
Actual Capacity,"
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tb/capacity_measure.html
which says, among other things, "Unfortunately there are two different
number systems which are used to express units of storage capacity;
binary, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, and decimal,
which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes. The storage industry
standard is to display capacity in decimal."
See also, for example, this stat page on a random Seagate 160 GB drive:
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,577,00.html
If you click the "capacity" link on that page, it sends you to:
http://www.seagate.com/products/discselect/glossary/index.html#cap
Which says, "Capacity is the amount of data that the drive can store,
after formatting. Most disc drive companies, including Seagate,
calculate disc capacity based on the assumption that 1 megabyte = 1000
kilobytes and 1 gigabyte=1000 megabytes." So, they're explicitly saying
that it is a post-format size, so that's definitely not the issue. The
issue is that they have a definition of "gigabyte" that is completely
different from the rest of the industry, including the sizes reported by
the computers that use the drives.
Which was my point, when someone lectured me that a "K" is always 1024 -
it always is except when it's not. :)
-BAT
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 14:13:03 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]>
spake the words:
>Charlie Self wrote:
>> Ron Short asks:
>>>OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M" stand
>>>for?
>> 1,000.
>
>Oh! You mean "k"! ;)
No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poverty is easy. * http://diversify.com
It's Charity and Chastity that are hard. * Data-based Website Design
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mille - Latin for a thousand. Also Frog, if memory serves.
"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Ron Short asks:
>
> >OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M"
stand
> >for?
>
> 1,000.
>
> Charlie Self
> "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
> has made them good." H. L. Mencken
first off it's kilobytes, as in kilograms, the diff is kilograms are 1000
grams, where as kilobytes are 1024 bytes, remembering back to collage it
has to do with base 2 math, as far as your hard drive, there are a number
of reasons why your not seeing the full 60GB, fist hard drives are brocken
down into sectors, and each sector holds X amount of data, and sector size
changes from drive to drive. Your going to be short the first sector of the
drive this is where the MBR(master boot record) is located and depending on
how big your sectors are this can eat a little bit, a 60GB drive with 1200
sectors is going to be short 50M, also depends on how it was formated, was
it a stock drive in the computer, HP Pavilions a while ago had a 40GB drive
but only formated 25GB for the user, and then used the rest as a Back-up
space, this is also common for lap tops and some of the newer toaster
systems, Compaq EVO's for example, also if it's not an OEM drive, and you
just put it in the system using there formating, it may not have been
formated to the right size, I've seen some maxtors like that. and last,
they may be rounding a little bit, there a few sectors short so they just
round up.
Silvan wrote:
> Larry Jaques wrote:
>
>> That's the difference of "megs less overhead", sir.
>> Net vs. gross, KWIM,V?
>> Kinda like Searz horsepower vs. reality.
>
> There's actually a real answer to this problem. I think they invented
> kibibytes and mebibytes or some silly froof like that. I forget which is
> which, but one of them is the proper powers of two version, and the other
> is the lazy HD manufacturer's multiples of 1000 version.
>
"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Rick" wrote in message
>
> > Of course, if you were a gambling person, you'd then doublespace the
drive
> > for 60 MB (or so) per ST-225.
> >
>
> Damn, how soon we forget. Your use of the word "Doublespace" suddenly
> brought back a flood of memories of words/terms like "Stacker".
> "DriveSpace", and "CVF" that I guess had slipped into my subconscious. Who
> was it sued MSFT for stealing (what else is new) their compression
> algorithm, Stac Electronics, or something like that? IIRC, that was a BIG
> deal when DOS 6.0 came out.
It was Stac.
todd
"Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>
>>
> Forever, in computer science, 1K (kilobyte) has been 2^10 bytes, or 1024
> bytes. 1M (megabyte) has been 2^20 bytes, or 1K * 1K, or 1,048,576
> bytes. 1G (gigabyte) has been 2^30 bytes, or 1M * 1K, or 1,073,741,824
> bytes. There are good reasons for these odd results, having to do with
> the binary system computers use internally.
Yup - my background also.
>
> When hard drive manufacturers first started selling hard drives, they
> "rounded down," and advertised drive capacities as being on the 10^x
> scale. So, an advertised "50 megabyte" drive that a computer scientist
> would expect to have 52,428,800 bytes of storage space really only had
> 50,000,000 bytes of storage space. Back in the 50 megabyte days, nobody
> much noticed.
>
> Now, hard drives are much larger, and the error is, too. A new, "250
> gigabyte" drive that a computer scientist would expect to have 250 *
> 1073741824 = 268,435,456,000 bytes. But the HD manufacturer sells you a
> drive that actually holds 250,000,000,000 bytes. That's where most of
> the quoted vs. actual difference goes, and why, if you put in a "250GB"
> fresh drive, your computer will tell you it's a 232GB hard drive, even
> before you put a filesystem on it. It's not "overhead" or OEM
> controlling, or any of that stuff. It's that, if you look on the fine
> print of the HD box, there's a little asterisk that says "we consider
> 1GB to 1 billion bytes." This is not true of other types of computer
> memory; for example, when you buy "1 GB" of RAM for your computer,
> you're getting storage for 1,073,741,824 bytes. If you bought a "1 GB"
> hard drive, though, it'd have storage for 1,000,000,000 bytes.
I've never seen the asterik, but I've never looked for it. There is
overhead on a fresh drive though that does eat into the capacity. There is
a low level format that is beneath the level of the operating system. Then
there is the filesystem you're refefring to. I guess I'm not familiar with
today's marketing practices, but it used to always be that the unformated
drive capacity is what was advertised and that was before the low level
format - what we used to call the hardware format. Then you put the
filesystem on top of that and lost even more capacity. Today you put
microsoft products on top of that and lose all of your capacity...
It's easy enough to figure the real capacity though. Number of bytes per
sector multiplied by the number of sectors, and the number of cylinders. I
suspect if you do this on any disk drive it will not come out to an even
MByte or GByte count.
>
> Finally, a topic in this newsgroup I actually know something about! :D
>
It is a rewarding feeling, isn't it?
--
-Mike-
[email protected]
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 12:59:01 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Forever, in computer science, 1K (kilobyte) has been 2^10 bytes, or 1024
>bytes. 1M (megabyte) has been 2^20 bytes, or 1K * 1K, or 1,048,576
>bytes. 1G (gigabyte) has been 2^30 bytes, or 1M * 1K, or 1,073,741,824
>bytes. There are good reasons for these odd results, having to do with
>the binary system computers use internally.
Back in 1999 someone wrote a question to a local newspaper inquiring
why the upcoming click-over to 2000 was called Y2K when every computer
literate 12 year old knew that a "K" was equal to 1028 and thus
everyone was apparently celebrating 2048. You would not have believed
the answer. (paraphrased; don't remember it exactly) "the 2048 is
'averaged' to 2000 so that Y2K makes sense."
Who'd have thought that the clueless pendulum would have swung so far
so quickly and to include so many, beyond that which one would expect.
I wrote an erudite reply regarding scientific/mathematic suffixes and
prefixes and their predating computers by some decades that was
probably digested solely by the immediate members of my family who
were fairly bulldozed into reading it.
- -
LRod
Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite
Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999
http://www.woodbutcher.net
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:28:53 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Larry Jaques wrote:
>> No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.
>
>Yeah, yeah, tell it to the company that manufactured my hard drive...
oh, but then we have to get into actual vs. formatted size...
maybe they should sell hard drives in "nominal" sizes?
"Rick" wrote in message
> Of course, if you were a gambling person, you'd then doublespace the drive
> for 60 MB (or so) per ST-225.
>
Damn, how soon we forget. Your use of the word "Doublespace" suddenly
brought back a flood of memories of words/terms like "Stacker".
"DriveSpace", and "CVF" that I guess had slipped into my subconscious. Who
was it sued MSFT for stealing (what else is new) their compression
algorithm, Stac Electronics, or something like that? IIRC, that was a BIG
deal when DOS 6.0 came out.
Time really flies ...
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 11/06/04
Robert Bonomi wrote:
> NO, you are _not_ dreaming it. A ST-225, commonly referred to as a "20 mb
> drive", had a _formatted_ capacity in excess of 21 million bytes. "Usable"
> space, after a filesystem was laid down, was a fair bit lower.
That was an MFM drive. Believe it or not, Seagate still has a tech
reference page up on it:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/mfm/st225.html
Assuming they haven't retroactively changed their literature to
correspond to their current (wrong) numbering scheme, here're their
quoted numbers on it:
25.6 MB UNFORMATTED CAPACITY
21.4 MB FORMATTED CAPACITY (17 SECTORS)
But, let's remember, *terminology* has changed since then. Back then,
"unformatted" meant "not-low-level-formatted." "Formatted" meant
"low-level-formatted but without a filesystem on it." Nowadays, your
IDE drive comes low-level formatted, so if you want an apples-to-apples
comparison, you want to look at today's "new-in-box unformatted" hard
drive capacity versus yesterday's "[low-level] formatted [without a
filesystem]."
In that page, they state it had 41,820 sectors per drive. Assuming it
followed the standard of 512 byter per sector, that'd be 21,411,840
bytes, or 20.42 (real) MB. So they're quoting "21.4 MB" as the
capacity, but we can clearly see that's actually only 20.42 *real* MB.
So, sorry, guys, you're engaging in that classic pastime of remembering
the past as better than it was. They started lying about hard drive
sizes a *long* time ago, it was just harder to tell with the unformatted
vs. formatted confusion. Also, when you put a filesystem on it, you
inevitably lose some space. Since they were quoting 21.4MB but you were
only getting 20.42 MB, but you didn't see that until FAT had eaten
another chunk, so it wasn't real obvious that you were losing that much.
Anyway, maybe the reason it was "commonly referred to as a '20 mb
drive'" is because it *was* a 20 MB drive. ;)
-BAT
In article <[email protected]>,
Brett A. Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:
>Robert Bonomi wrote:
>> NO, you are _not_ dreaming it. A ST-225, commonly referred to as a "20 mb
>> drive", had a _formatted_ capacity in excess of 21 million bytes. "Usable"
>> space, after a filesystem was laid down, was a fair bit lower.
>
>That was an MFM drive. Believe it or not, Seagate still has a tech
>reference page up on it:
>
> http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/mfm/st225.html
>
>Assuming they haven't retroactively changed their literature to
>correspond to their current (wrong) numbering scheme,
Your assumption *IS* in error. <grin>
The early datasheets -- like the paper one I have in my files -- listed
numbers 'to the byte', not the 'approximations' cited below.
> here're their
>quoted numbers on it:
>
> 25.6 MB UNFORMATTED CAPACITY
> 21.4 MB FORMATTED CAPACITY (17 SECTORS)
>
>But, let's remember, *terminology* has changed since then. Back then,
>"unformatted" meant "not-low-level-formatted." "Formatted" meant
>"low-level-formatted but without a filesystem on it." Nowadays, your
>IDE drive comes low-level formatted, so if you want an apples-to-apples
>comparison, you want to look at today's "new-in-box unformatted" hard
>drive capacity versus yesterday's "[low-level] formatted [without a
>filesystem]."
>
>In that page, they state it had 41,820 sectors per drive. Assuming it
>followed the standard of 512 byter per sector, that'd be 21,411,840
>bytes, or 20.42 (real) MB. So they're quoting "21.4 MB" as the
>capacity, but we can clearly see that's actually only 20.42 *real* MB.
Yup. your assumptions, and numeric derivations are accurate. That is
precisely why it *was* known as, and *sold* as, a "20 mb drive".
>So, sorry, guys, you're engaging in that classic pastime of remembering
>the past as better than it was. They started lying about hard drive
>sizes a *long* time ago, it was just harder to tell with the unformatted
>vs. formatted confusion. Also, when you put a filesystem on it, you
>inevitably lose some space. Since they were quoting 21.4MB but you were
>only getting 20.42 MB, but you didn't see that until FAT had eaten
>another chunk, so it wasn't real obvious that you were losing that much.
Bullsh*t. there were *MANY* 'readily available' utilities -- including the
formatter that was BUILT-IN in the HD BIOS chip -- that reported the 'raw'
formatted capacity in actual bytes. And short-hand forms using 1024*1024
multiples.1G
>Anyway, maybe the reason it was "commonly referred to as a '20 mb
>drive'" is because it *was* a 20 MB drive. ;)
No shit, Sherlock. It _was_ the standard 'way back then' to describe disk-
drive capacity in units of 1024*1024 bytes.
Then the marketing guys got into the act, and perceived an advantage to
rating disks in 'millions of bytes', when the competition was sizing in
'1024*1024' bytes. With disks in the 10e8, and above, capacity range, the
'paper difference' was enough to be a 'marketable difference'.
It did make apples-to-apples comparasions *difficult*. What was worse, the
same manufacturer would use different measurement styles on different lines
of drives.
This was particularly comical, when it was the _same_ HDA assembly, just with
a different controller card on the drive.
In article <[email protected]>,
Silvan <[email protected]> wrote:
>Brett A. Thomas wrote:
>
>> When hard drive manufacturers first started selling hard drives, they
>> "rounded down," and advertised drive capacities as being on the 10^x
>
>Yes, thank you. You're right. I'm right.
>
>I seem to recall that the old MFM and RLL drives actually delivered the
>advertised capacity. Am I dreaming that? It was a long time ago. The
>largest one of those I ever laid hands on was 80 megabytes, and I think it
>would have actually been 80 megabytes if all the heads had been
>working. :)
NO, you are _not_ dreaming it. A ST-225, commonly referred to as a "20 mb
drive", had a _formatted_ capacity in excess of 21 million bytes. "Usable"
space, after a filesystem was laid down, was a fair bit lower.
Swingman wrote:
> Damn, how soon we forget. Your use of the word "Doublespace" suddenly
> brought back a flood of memories of words/terms like "Stacker".
> "DriveSpace", and "CVF" that I guess had slipped into my subconscious. Who
> was it sued MSFT for stealing (what else is new) their compression
> algorithm, Stac Electronics, or something like that? IIRC, that was a BIG
> deal when DOS 6.0 came out.
I remember I had an acquaintance back then who excitedly told me, one
day, "I'm beta testing for Stacker!" I said, "Yeah, you do that. Good
luck with that..."
"Dave Hinz" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:21:56 GMT, Mike Marlow
<[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> >>
> >> Since we went from MFM to IDE...
> >
> > We went from MFM?
>
> Er, yeah, in the 1980's, friend.
>
... failed attempt at humor - or you were ducking as that one went by. You
had to be ducking because it wasn't clever enough to have made it over your
head on its own.
--
-Mike-
[email protected]
"Silvan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> Funny how 14 years ago seems an eternity in
> computer terms, but just getting started on a marriage. (Well, 11 years
of
> marriage, and three years of incredible sex. Not necessarily in that
> order. :)
You know Silvan, I was reading this thread and I saw the above comment, and
I knew right away before I saw your name, it was you making it. Your
thinking on this subject has preceded you. :)
Until you slapped that puppy on an RLL controller and made it a 30 MB drive
(give or take a few kB).
Of course, if you were a gambling person, you'd then doublespace the drive
for 60 MB (or so) per ST-225.
Like it so nice? Do it twice!
And ... if you were REALLY LUCKY (as I was ), you replaced the pair of
ST-225s on said RLL controller with doublespace installed (120 MB) JUST
before it died. Died is defined as you just ran the last QIC tape and when
you rebooted ... nothing happened. Load the new drive with DOS and the tape
utilities, restore, and away we go ... back in business.
Woodworking is mild in comparision.
Regards,
Rick
> Anyway, maybe the reason it was "commonly referred to as a '20 mb
> drive'" is because it *was* a 20 MB drive. ;)
>
> -BAT
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:28:53 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]>
spake the words:
>Larry Jaques wrote:
>> No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.
>
>Yeah, yeah, tell it to the company that manufactured my hard drive...
Your drives are so old they're measured in K, are they'? =:0
That's the difference of "megs less overhead", sir.
Net vs. gross, KWIM,V?
Kinda like Searz horsepower vs. reality.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poverty is easy. * http://diversify.com
It's Charity and Chastity that are hard. * Data-based Website Design
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>
> Since we went from MFM to IDE...
We went from MFM?
--
-Mike-
[email protected]
geeze, nothing stays the same anymore
Larry Jaques wrote:
> On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:28:53 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]>
> spake the words:
[snip of strange brews]
To clarify, let me present jo4hn's terminology for counting bytes: one
byte, two bytes, many zigabytes. J4's lemma to a well known axiom: No
matter how big a resource you give them, software mavens will not only
fill it up but will exceed it.
And finally the definition of a computer: an incredibly fast idiot with
a zillion toes to count on.
As the man said, hope this helps.
mahalo,
jo4hn
Snip ......
> I saw one of those things the other day. What do you bet half the people,
> maybe even 75% or even 90% of the people who have home computers today
have
> no clue what a "full sized card" is?
>
> I ran into that with someone in some context or other. I don't remember
the
> surrounding details, but his definition of a "full sized card" was one
> where the PCB came all the way to the end of the edge connector.
>
> --
> Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <[email protected]>
> Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
> http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
> http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
There ... I'll irritate the other 50% this time. Probably shouldn't get
started on the walk down "memory" lane (pun intended). I remember when ALL
cards were full-length. I read a piece about a computer museum on
aliceandbill.com and blathered on about all the ones they missed ... I don't
need to do that again this week.
Perhaps when this embedded controller programming job finishes up, I'll make
some sawdust. After I clear the electronics crap out of the shop!
Regards,
Rick
BTW, bought a USB "thumb drive" yesterday ... 128 MB ... 'bout as big as the
old drive _connector_ ... capacity is greater than what my first FOUR
computers combined had ... for $16.00.
"Dave Hinz" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:21:56 GMT, Mike Marlow
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>> Since we went from MFM to IDE...
>>
>> We went from MFM?
>
> Er, yeah, in the 1980's, friend.
Had the MFM! What did I miss on the IDE and should I bring a friend?
Mike Marlow wrote:
> "Silvan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>Not the least of which is that hard drive manufacturers have been using
>
> the
>
>>standard that "megabyte = 1000 bytes; gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (of 1000
>>bytes)" ever since about the time when the first IDE hard disks came out.
>>It's a marketing gimmick. No mystery to it. Caveat emptor.
>>
> Not really Sylvan. It's always been that a K was 1024 bytes and at the same
> time the entire industry has loosely used the term K. Everyone knew what it
> really was, but the rounding was just convenient, since the error was
> trivial. The marketing claim you suggest above would actually work in the
> consumer's favor. A kilo byte is 1024 bytes, but according to your
> statement above, it should mean 1000 bytes. You're actually getting 24
> bytes free from the manufacturer. No marketing scam there. Same thing as
> you scale up in size. BTW, I know you probably just screwed this up, but a
> megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes - rounded. As to the available space - well
> that's a formatting issue. The drive does indeed contain the space as
> advertised, but formatting takes up some of it leaving you something less.
Uh, no, he didn't screw it up. That was my original point with my crack
that, when someone tried to correct my original "k" joke, that they
should tell it to my hard drive manufacturer.
Forever, in computer science, 1K (kilobyte) has been 2^10 bytes, or 1024
bytes. 1M (megabyte) has been 2^20 bytes, or 1K * 1K, or 1,048,576
bytes. 1G (gigabyte) has been 2^30 bytes, or 1M * 1K, or 1,073,741,824
bytes. There are good reasons for these odd results, having to do with
the binary system computers use internally.
When hard drive manufacturers first started selling hard drives, they
"rounded down," and advertised drive capacities as being on the 10^x
scale. So, an advertised "50 megabyte" drive that a computer scientist
would expect to have 52,428,800 bytes of storage space really only had
50,000,000 bytes of storage space. Back in the 50 megabyte days, nobody
much noticed.
Now, hard drives are much larger, and the error is, too. A new, "250
gigabyte" drive that a computer scientist would expect to have 250 *
1073741824 = 268,435,456,000 bytes. But the HD manufacturer sells you a
drive that actually holds 250,000,000,000 bytes. That's where most of
the quoted vs. actual difference goes, and why, if you put in a "250GB"
fresh drive, your computer will tell you it's a 232GB hard drive, even
before you put a filesystem on it. It's not "overhead" or OEM
controlling, or any of that stuff. It's that, if you look on the fine
print of the HD box, there's a little asterisk that says "we consider
1GB to 1 billion bytes." This is not true of other types of computer
memory; for example, when you buy "1 GB" of RAM for your computer,
you're getting storage for 1,073,741,824 bytes. If you bought a "1 GB"
hard drive, though, it'd have storage for 1,000,000,000 bytes.
Finally, a topic in this newsgroup I actually know something about! :D
-BAT
"Silvan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Richard Clements wrote:
>
> > has to do with base 2 math, as far as your hard drive, there are a
number
> > of reasons why your not seeing the full 60GB, fist hard drives are
brocken
>
> Not the least of which is that hard drive manufacturers have been using
the
> standard that "megabyte = 1000 bytes; gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (of 1000
> bytes)" ever since about the time when the first IDE hard disks came out.
> It's a marketing gimmick. No mystery to it. Caveat emptor.
>
Not really Sylvan. It's always been that a K was 1024 bytes and at the same
time the entire industry has loosely used the term K. Everyone knew what it
really was, but the rounding was just convenient, since the error was
trivial. The marketing claim you suggest above would actually work in the
consumer's favor. A kilo byte is 1024 bytes, but according to your
statement above, it should mean 1000 bytes. You're actually getting 24
bytes free from the manufacturer. No marketing scam there. Same thing as
you scale up in size. BTW, I know you probably just screwed this up, but a
megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes - rounded. As to the available space - well
that's a formatting issue. The drive does indeed contain the space as
advertised, but formatting takes up some of it leaving you something less.
--
-Mike-
[email protected]
On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:38:29 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
>So, sorry, guys, you're engaging in that classic pastime of remembering
>the past as better than it was. They started lying about hard drive
>sizes a *long* time ago, it was just harder to tell with the unformatted
>vs. formatted confusion.
We were dealing with variations in capacity data more than 20 years
ago. They are largely the artifact of "generic" drives, drives that
can be used with various systems, and thus potentially formatting
in unpredictable ways. In the good old days of proprietary systems,
you could buy drives that had accurate specifications.
On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 17:09:44 -0500, Silvan
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Rick wrote:
>
>> Until you slapped that puppy on an RLL controller and made it a 30 MB
>> drive (give or take a few kB).
>
>32 MB IIRC.
>
>I saw one of those things the other day. What do you bet half the people,
>maybe even 75% or even 90% of the people who have home computers today have
>no clue what a "full sized card" is?
>
>I ran into that with someone in some context or other. I don't remember the
>surrounding details, but his definition of a "full sized card" was one
>where the PCB came all the way to the end of the edge connector.
it's been a while since I've had a card that came to the "front" of
the case and had to be supported there. last one was a sound card,
IIRC...
"Brett A. Thomas" <[email protected]> writes:
>Mike Marlow wrote:
>> I've never seen the asterik, but I've never looked for it. There is
>> overhead on a fresh drive though that does eat into the capacity. There is
>> a low level format that is beneath the level of the operating system. Then
>> there is the filesystem you're refefring to. I guess I'm not familiar with
>> today's marketing practices, but it used to always be that the unformated
>> drive capacity is what was advertised and that was before the low level
>> format - what we used to call the hardware format. Then you put the
>> filesystem on top of that and lost even more capacity. Today you put
>> microsoft products on top of that and lose all of your capacity...
>
>Since we went from MFM to IDE, nobody low-level formats anymore. Now
This is incorrect. All drives must be low-level formatted, the IDE
drives are now formatted at the factory. SCSI drives can be low-level
formatted in the field, and often are to change the sector size
(for mainframe systems) or other media characteristics .
The low level formatting divides a track into multiple sectors. There is
some capacity loss in each track as a result of this (inter-sector gaps).
High-level formatting (e.g. DOS Format command) places a filesystem on
the media (to store directories, free space lists and file metadata)
further reducing the available capacity.
Disk space is allocated to files in fixed size quantities, from 512 to
8192 bytes per chunk depending on the OS and filesystem. A lot of
100 byte files will waste 412 bytes per file (so you could realize
perhaps only 20% of your stated drive capacity before "filling it up").
Stated drive capacities are best considered approximate.
scott
Ron Short writes:
>
>Was searching the net and found this site:
>http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
>
>If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
>$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
8 cents a bf for poplar and not much over 3 times that for walnut? How? It
costs more than that on the frigging stump!
Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken
Ron Short writes:
>
>Was searching the net and found this site:
>http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html
>
>If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
>$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.
Checked his poplar prices for the listed 4/4 2000 BF, at $770 per 1000 BF,
which works out to 72 cents a BF. Reasonable, but it ain't nowhere near what
your calculator gave you. And my check of the 8/4 gave $1.26 a BF.
One of us needs a new calculator.
Are you forgetting that when you're buying 18,000 BF at $1260 per M you need to
multiply that M by 18?
Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken