Subject: Re: Off topic: flash drives and DOS diehards

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

You may recall that I couldn't get Windows (My Computer) to display the
thumb drive on my home machine, though it was in Control Panel and DOS
saw it nicely. Having installed another on a friend's PC with no
problems, I am forced to conclude that there is an incompatiblity with
the Iomega utility (rhyme--à la a Gilbert and Sullivan
patter-song--unintentional) that reassigns drive letters if you don't
like what the BIOS and Windows give you. It would be nice if Kanguru and
Iomega got together on this, but as Iomega also makes flash drives, I'm
not holding my breath. So herewith a couple of warnings about these very
useful items:
1. If you've got an Iomega drive on your system and used the drive letter
utility, you'd better get an Iomega flash drive (which costs a lot more
than other brands) or be prepared to live with its not showing up in My
Comupter. (Which is no big deal so long as DOS sees it; just create a
second shortcut to an existing drive, than tweak the pif so it refers to
the flash drive.)
2. If you use them with older systems (the Kanguru works with 98 initial
release, not just SE), be chary of hot swapping. Some initial ATX power
supplies seem not to fully support all the power capabilities of later
ones and can reboot if you do it.

Patricia M. Godfrey
PMGodfrey@xxxxxxxx