[time-nuts] Google Patent Search is Broken

[Mike Monett]

  > On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:55:36 -0300, Mike Monett wrote:

  >> I'm hoping  a  lot of these problems will soon  go  away.  I have
  >> WinXP SP3 running in VirtualBox 3.0 on Ubuntu 9.04, and  it works
  >> great.

  >> But it  doesn't  like  running my old  DOS  programs.  The screen
  >> update is  so  painfully slow it makes  the  program  unusable. I
  >> tried VB 2.1, but it was only slightly faster.

  > Have you  tried  any  of the Linux DOS  emulators?  I  find DOSBox
  > particularly useful  for  the   odd   DOS  programs  I  still use.
  > http://www.dosbox.com/

  > John.

  Hi John,

  Thanks for the suggestion. I really need to get Win98 running, since
  I have about 3 decades of code written in Borland Pascal  that works
  with Win98 to find and load programs.

  For example,  one of the biggest problems with Windows and  Linux is
  you have to load the desired program, then find the file you want to
  work with. The search function is extremely poor, especially  if you
  have hundreds or thousands of files in a folder to look through.

  My software  generates an index of every file on the hard  disk, and
  assigns a comment field to each file. I put keywords in  the comment
  field, such as "pll", "phase noise", "dmtd", "xtal", etc. Then I use
  a modified  Boyer-Moore  search in assembly code to  find  all files
  that contain the keywords. It is very fast.

  For example,  searching  my   hard   disk  for  "timenuts"  give the
  following result (search result list omitted for clarity):

  Searched 202,362 files in 4,130 directories

  Found 7 hits in 67.331 ms

  When I  find the file I am looking for, I press a single key  and my
  program loads the appropriate program with the target file.  I don't
  have to  remeber  all the strange incantations needed  to  make each
  program perform the desired task - these are all hard-wired  into my
  code and so takes care of all the details.

  This program is indespensable. I just don't know how I would survive
  if I  had to work the way everyone else does. I would never  be able
  to find anything.

  Unfortunately, these programs will not run satisfactorily  in WinXP.
  They are  so slow they are unusable. And all the  other alternatives
  so far have one or more huge show stopper problems.

  For example,  I  tried  QEMU. I can partition  the  drive,  but QEMU
  doesn't want to save the partition information and it disappears the
  next time I boot. I'm sure there must be something I'm  doing wrong,
  but I can't find any solution.

  I tried  running Win98 in VirtualBox. This was a waste of  time. The
  VGA screen  only gives 640x480 resolution, which is  unusable. There
  are several  ways to improve this with external  video  drivers, but
  the main problem is there are no Guest Additions for Win98. So there
  are no  shared folders to transfer files. Copying  to  the clipboard
  doesn't work,  you have to constantly capture and release  the mouse
  to go back and forth to Ubuntu, etc.

  One solution  may be to run Virtual PC 2007 in Win XP. I  tried that
  last night  before  going to bed, but I suddenly realized  I  need a
  much larger  partition  than  the 2GB I was  using  to  make  Win XP
  compatible with the 2GB limit in DOS.

  So the  first thing to try is to install another version  of  Win XP
  but with  a  much  larger partition. I  understand  FAT32  will take
  127.5GB, but  Win XP can't format anything over 32GB. So  I  have to
  try running  FDISK  from  a Win98 boot disk and  see  if  the latest
  version of  Ubuntu will let me read the Win98 floppy  in  Virtual PC
  2007 running under Win XP SP3 running in VirtualBox 3.0.

  Whew!

  Thanks,

  Mike