Any fellow binary addicts|? :-)

  • Thread starter Thread starter george
  • Start date Start date
G

george

I just love to zip out to the binary newsgroups, set 3-4 big ones to
download, and harvest some 20,000+ files in a few hours on my DSL line.
The problem is, my dual Mac G4 Net computer invariably crashes
afterwards, needing disk repair. Directories are garbled, often entire
HDs disappear. Possibly because I sort out the incoming files under
OS9.2 since OSX 10.3.5 is just dog slow for this (like, 5 - 8 times
slower, making it impractical for this task).

I would like to get a computer/OS that can do the above 20,000+ file
download/file shuffling without breaking a sweat. Can a newer Mac G5 do
it? Or do I need a Pentium4? What works for you people?

TIA for all the help
George
 
I just love to zip out to the binary newsgroups, set 3-4 big ones to
download, and harvest some 20,000+ files in a few hours on my DSL line.
Click to expand...

Why on earth do you do that? If you eventually slog through them to find what
you want, why not do it in the newsreader predownload? Or do you keep
everything?
 
I just love to zip out to the binary newsgroups, set 3-4 big ones to
download, and harvest some 20,000+ files in a few hours on my DSL line.
The problem is, my dual Mac G4 Net computer invariably crashes
afterwards, needing disk repair. Directories are garbled, often entire
HDs disappear. Possibly because I sort out the incoming files under
OS9.2 since OSX 10.3.5 is just dog slow for this (like, 5 - 8 times
slower, making it impractical for this task).
Click to expand...

That's odd. My experience is the opposite. Doing the same job via
applescript and the finder is faster for me on OS X.
I would like to get a computer/OS that can do the above 20,000+ file
download/file shuffling without breaking a sweat. Can a newer Mac G5 do
it? Or do I need a Pentium4? What works for you people?
Click to expand...

I can't tell you about the iMac G5, my current work computer is 2.5 Ghz
Powermac and one of my scripts (AppleScript controlling the finder)
routinely moves around 5000 - 6000 files from the dump folder to the
required folders in about 45 to 60 seconds. To me that's acceptable; so
I never looked for a better solution and don't know if a better one
exists.

I'm guessing an iMac G5 could do the same job at twice the time so a
couple of minutes to sort 6000 files.
 
I just love to zip out to the binary newsgroups, set 3-4 big ones to
download, and harvest some 20,000+ files in a few hours on my DSL line.
The problem is, my dual Mac G4 Net computer invariably crashes
afterwards, needing disk repair. Directories are garbled, often entire
HDs disappear. Possibly because I sort out the incoming files under
OS9.2 since OSX 10.3.5 is just dog slow for this (like, 5 - 8 times
slower, making it impractical for this task).
Click to expand...

Have you tired using a UNIX script via the Terminal. You might put the
files in a tar archive.
 
I keep most of the files, and I sort them out manually into folders I
create. It's hard to believe, but I actually go through all the files,
before trashing the ones outside of my interest. I also read my 3000
(paper)book library and listen to my 1500 music CD collection. Aren't
we in the information age, after all?

What I have less and less time (or willingness) for is mucking around
to resusscitate a crashed computer. On this G4, OSX less stable than
OS9 by an order of magnitude. Maybe it's the big HDs (80Gig, 120Gig and
200Gig), maybe something else, but, just to tell you one example. I can
move a selection of files 5 to 8 times faster into the Trash under OS9
than OSX. Multiply that by 600 times per daily session (+ add the
crashes) and there is a real incentive to seek a better machine/OS.
 
I just love to zip out to the binary newsgroups, set 3-4 big ones to
download, and harvest some 20,000+ files in a few hours on my DSL line.
The problem is, my dual Mac G4 Net computer invariably crashes
afterwards, needing disk repair. Directories are garbled, often entire
HDs disappear. Possibly because I sort out the incoming files under
OS9.2 since OSX 10.3.5 is just dog slow for this (like, 5 - 8 times
slower, making it impractical for this task).

I would like to get a computer/OS that can do the above 20,000+ file
download/file shuffling without breaking a sweat. Can a newer Mac G5 do
it? Or do I need a Pentium4? What works for you people?

TIA for all the help
George
Click to expand...


Perhaps you should consider not being so incredibly selfish
in hogging the bandwidth of the news server.

Perhaps they're cutting you off after a certain point, many
services do have a download limit.

Otherwise, if simply working with tons of files is
corrupting your directories I would seriously consider
extensively testing that system for CPU overheat, memory
errors, and anything else you might suspect, as that is a
very serious flaw, enough so that I would trash the system
before relying on it to store data.

You should not "need" anything in particular, merely a
system whose bios (or an add-on controller card w/bios) that
supports a large enough hard drive... then whatever system
you use would of course have to work properly. If you find
your files often corrupted and considering the sources, you
might simply have been infested with viri.
 
I think George is just trolling. "Or do I need a pentium?" is the
giveaway.

What works for us people is not bothering to collect stuff we don't
even have time to read.
 
What I have less and less time (or willingness) for is mucking around
to resusscitate a crashed computer. On this G4, OSX less stable than
OS9 by an order of magnitude. Maybe it's the big HDs (80Gig, 120Gig and
200Gig), maybe something else, but, just to tell you one example. I can
move a selection of files 5 to 8 times faster into the Trash under OS9
than OSX. Multiply that by 600 times per daily session (+ add the
crashes) and there is a real incentive to seek a better machine/OS.
Click to expand...

I have noticed under Mac OS 9 that directories with a lot of files slows
down increadible. You might try to use an UFS (UNIX files systems) disk,
because then it should not happen. Also, working with files from the
Terminal window should bypass any Mac OS X slowdowns.
 
What I have less and less time (or willingness) for is mucking around
to resusscitate a crashed computer. On this G4, OSX less stable than
OS9 by an order of magnitude. Maybe it's the big HDs (80Gig, 120Gig and
200Gig), maybe something else, but, just to tell you one example. I can
move a selection of files 5 to 8 times faster into the Trash under OS9
than OSX. Multiply that by 600 times per daily session (+ add the
crashes) and there is a real incentive to seek a better machine/OS.
Click to expand...

If you use HFS, and that is what slows it down, try to download into a set
of subdirectories, none having more than at most a few hundred files.
 
I think George is just trolling. "Or do I need a pentium?" is the
giveaway.

What works for us people is not bothering to collect stuff we don't
even have time to read.
Click to expand...

Ive always said theres a OCD element with many people into it. You see
certain types of OCD (obsessive compulsive) types who have tons of
garbage in their house. Ive seen bits on professors , grad students
and working class types who just get into collecting stuff , they are
caught up with the process and not as interested in the results. Ive
seen others comment on it too. Theyll admit 99% of the stuff they get
they never use or dont even bother finding out what it is.

I was watching Cinemania , on Bravo same type of thing. It focuses on
a group of people in this documentary who defintely fit in the
"disorder" classification. They see so many movies it borders on the
bizarre and it fills a huge vacuum in their lives. This one guy is
leafing through a notebook where he wrote all the movies hes seen and
claims at one time he saw 1000 movies in one month . That seems
physically impossible but I guess some were short films I suppose. But
you get this idea that there are a lot of people with these OCD traits
that spill over into various activities.
 
I just love to zip out to the binary newsgroups, set 3-4 big ones to
download, and harvest some 20,000+ files in a few hours on my DSL line.
The problem is, my dual Mac G4 Net computer invariably crashes
afterwards, needing disk repair. Directories are garbled, often entire
HDs disappear. Possibly because I sort out the incoming files under
OS9.2 since OSX 10.3.5 is just dog slow for this (like, 5 - 8 times
slower, making it impractical for this task).

I would like to get a computer/OS that can do the above 20,000+ file
download/file shuffling without breaking a sweat. Can a newer Mac G5 do
it? Or do I need a Pentium4? What works for you people?

TIA for all the help
George
Click to expand...

You probably have a bad disk or bad cable, it's not OS-X or the G4's that
are responsible for your crashing.
 
Great line Pelysma, and so full of innuendo! I can't even guess just
what you're really saying to Geo.

Close cousin to this famous line: There are 10 kinds of people in the
world, those that understand binary math, and those that don't.

But yours says so much more!
 
Taryn said:
Great line Pelysma, and so full of innuendo! I can't even guess just
what you're really saying to Geo.

Close cousin to this famous line: There are 10 kinds of people in the
world, those that understand binary math, and those that don't.

But yours says so much more!
Click to expand...

Well, I was actually just launching off on the plain old joke, hoping to
give some fellow geeks a disgusted chuckle of recognition. It had
practically nothing to do with Geo's original post, which OTOH is
interesting to me mostly because I don't personally know as much about
automating the mass-downloading process as I'd like to.

My "binary addiction" involves downloading a dozen or so wallpaper images at
a time from Usenet, while my son's is mostly anime via Bit Torrent and
variations. So, of the 10 of us, neither is all that sophisticated.

:-)
P.
 
Jon Danniken said:
"Junk is stuff that you keep for 20 years, then throw away a week before
you
need it."
Jon
Click to expand...

"How come my stuff's "s***", and your s***'s "stuff"?
--George Carlin
 
A quick report: I finally nailed why OSX was so sluggish and unstable!

It was a massive case of directory corruption on 3 out of 4 HD volumes. The
funny part is, I used Norton DD all this time (I'm a regular NDD user since
1993), and it didn't solve it. I even packed up my G4 and took it to an
authorized Apple Service Tech center a few months ago to find out why OSX
crashes so often, etc. while OS9 works just fine. The couldn't pinpoint the
problem, either. What nailed it? I just bought DiskWarrior.

Until now, I literally spent the past 3 years of my life in the firm
belief, that OSX is simply a piece of junk, something along the lines of MS
Windows V1.0. (Why, if your computer crashed every second time, couldn't
print more than the first page of a layout, etc, you would have felt so,
too.) Interestingly, the drive with the MOST damage was the one with OS9 -
which worked right. The only drive with NO damage was the one with OSX -
which didn't. Go figure.

All in all, my experience with DiskWarrior for the past 4 days is, if you
run it and replace the directories - hey, OSX actually works! It's totally
new to me. I could download 60,000 files on 5 simultaneous feeds, copy a
Sony mini-DVD to the hard disk and edit a scan in Photoshop at the same
time with nary a hitch. I never saw OSX work this good! (Heck, for 3 years
I never saw OSX work, period. I wonder how many other Mac users might be
still out there in the same situation.) I think Apple should have made
DiskWarrior an integral part of the OSX.

Due to the load I put on OSX, I admit, I have had to run DiskWarrior just
about every 24 hours since I brought it in. But still - OSX works! Az
amazing sight.
 
News Reader said:
A quick report: I finally nailed why OSX was so sluggish and unstable!

It was a massive case of directory corruption on 3 out of 4 HD volumes. The
funny part is, I used Norton DD all this time (I'm a regular NDD user since
1993), and it didn't solve it.
Click to expand...

Honestly, Norton probably *caused* it. Norton Utilities has no place
on an OS X system, and very often causes directory damage when none
existed before. Uninstalling it is the best thing you can do. Don't
run Disk Doctor, don't run Speed Disk -- don't run any of it.

DiskWarrior is an amazing piece of software; I'm glad it took care of
your problem. What you described is how OS X is *supposed* to work!
:-)
 
Once someone wiser than I said to me that when it came to disk utilities the
only people who get into situations where they are needed are the people who
are already using those utilities.

so they are like people who use sandpaper to polish their car because they
have learned that sandpaper is what will best get the deep scratches out of
their paint.

when it is the sandpaper that causes the scratches. if they had not used
that, they would be OK

Norton Utilities is like sandpaper.
 
Tim Murray said:
Why on earth do you do that? If you eventually slog through them to find what
you want, why not do it in the newsreader predownload? Or do you keep
everything?
Click to expand...

Yes, I keep everything that interests me. Slogging through a single
20,000+ post newsgroup to hand-select the 12,000 individual posts
whose attachments I want to download is a one-hour job.

I still do it when less than half of the files interests me. If I want
more than half of the files from a group, it's a time-saver to grab
everything. Once downloaded, the files will appear in alphabetic
order, which makes separating the wheat from the chaff quicker.

I know it's possible to list the newsposts by alphabetic order in the
news client already. But I want the client to list the posts by date,
so I can focus on posts made after my last visit.

One could say, why don't I simply mark every remaining post "read" at
the end of a downloading session and then I'd see only new posts the
next time. It's because every now and then have to go back and
download a file a second time (or a first time if I missed it).

See, I have a system... :-)
 
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