19 Jun
2010
19 Jun
'10
2:56 p.m.
On Saturday 19 June 2010, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
It has been my experience that such dongles have a lifetime of about a year.
Or less.
Story time: Years ago, we setup a graphics system that involved using the
A&B Roll Editing (or something like that name) amiga software to control 2
editing S-VHS vcr's, Panasonic 7750's. That came with a parport dongle,
without which it would not work. And it was a $25,000 package.
They, after lots of argument, and receiving the old dongle, would replace it
when it failed. eventually that program was sold to RVS, Ring Video
Systems, some fly by night down in FL.
The dongle failed again (there was no printer attached to its output port
ever) and they screwed around for 6 months, finally going to the original
authors house to get the last dongle in existence after we threatened to
sue. It lasted about 3 months. By then the hacking business was running
full tilt in the amiga world, so when they said no more dongle, we said
we're gonna hack it, sue us if you dare. We sent it off to one of the
hackers, and had a working system back on-line in 3 days. RVS in turn had
one of their programmers try to take it out, and 3 copies later over about 2
weeks, they failed. And we laughed at them on the phone when the last one
they sent didn't work.
To this day, I believe we only have one dongle protected system at the
station & that was because they said there wasn't one, but there was. We
simply do not consider for purchase, any system that uses a dongle for copy
protection. And we are not exactly silent when we tell some vendor, sorry,
you use a trouble prone technology so we will not even consider your
product/equipment. When we are writing checks for $100k and up for the new
digital stuff, we are justifiably being picky. If the vendor doesn't like
it, the exit door is that way, come back when you can offer us something
that Just Works(TM). Its been remarkably effective at separating out the
rectums in the business.
Hi Gene :)
[huge snip]
Being an
ardent purist can bite you. As another friend of mine would
say, use what works.
No Windows! If needed I'll write to your friend and get that Atari-VGA
interface, get a SMPTE interface again and an anlog audio recorder
again. I also would change the SCSI hard disk in the Lacom interface,
it's a 42 MB Seagate, without any free space and it sometimes fails on
startup. The main problem is, that I don't have the money jet and it's
not that easy to get the money. Another issue is, that I guess it's time
to use modern software, because it also comes with some advantages
compared to 80ies software made for the Atari and to the very old
hardware. E.g. what would happen if one day a chip in the Steinberg
dongle should break? Cheers!
Ralf
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
errors, which by definition are limited
-- SNAFU Equations (JB's Scholastic Laws) n�3