That headline is a little misleading -- it's not "trying to extend life span of PCs" that got him into trouble it's trademark infringement and annoying Microsoft. Possibly, he also didn't read the various Windows licensing terms properly either as regards transferring licenses between machines and/or people.
This is why people should avoid Windows at all costs.

But he was NOT transferring the licence at all. All he was doing was providing/installing the source software for the licence that was already there with the machine. The COA stickers were there and the licence belongs with the machine, whoever has the machine.
MS can be very pernickety about installing their software. I once built a whole lot of identical machines and bought the install CDs and licences to go with them.
I wanted to sell the machines with all drivers and software installed, with just the name and addresses left to fill in. I set one up and cloned the disk to the other machines. MS objected and forced me to re-install Windows on each machine, though you can get a special OEM install version that can be cloned - leaving ALL the personalisation undone (as I found out later).

More proof that you do not own Windows or the PC it is on, you are leasing it from Microsoft. Licensing is their business. It's kind of like Universities and banks, they are just selling you a market product called debt, the rest is smoke and mirrors.

I don't know what the license says, so I was speculating that the license may not state that the software license changes ownership when the machine does. If you know otherwise, fair enough. I also don't know precisely which licence is required to use any specific "restore CD" or to transfer ownership of that and whether that is transferred with ownership of the machine or not, especially when the machine didn't come with a restore CD and the one you're using is from a Dell machine (I am assuming he made copies of the Dell restore CD or he's a complete moron for putting their name on them, rather than just an idiot for doing so).

MS Specifically point out that you do not OWN the licence on the licence.
They state that it grants you the right to USE their software on THAT machine. The licence stays with the machine NOT the person, and even then the machine has to remain effectively the same.

That is correct, with Microsoft, you never own any of their softwares, you are only buying a licence to use it, it always remains Microsoft's property.

One of the major reasons for using FOSS software, for me. ;)

I very rarely use MS products, only while at a public computer briefly on the rare occasion to check something really quick.
There is so much still to learn about Linux for me, that I have no time for MS.

I spent a little time in the 'junk' room this morning installing 'Slink' on an old Toughbook I drug out of the pile. I thought it might help me with a problem I've been having with some more old hardware here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...9/#post5823233

No help because I got the same timeout message - but it was fun. ;)

Seeing your post reminded me that there is at least one website that has old versions of distros, maybe this will be useful to some of you trying to keep the old hardware working. :)

https://old-linux.com/

This might just get an old one up & running.

https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/

Thanks for these sites, really appreciated a lot.

I have much more to share, perhaps will do so in future.

Listen to all Radio on SDR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7RLJt4vZ_g

This is a good use for old computer with the SDR.

8W PC that fits in hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDyM6SKLt24

10 Things to use from old tablet parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uH6a2Pn06s

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode...move-1.4546964

This is a very interesting analogy that is already being used for supercomputers. When considering old computers in bulk, considering their power consumption and storage cost, utility longterm, recycling them ASAP makes sense.

Are there any links that give tips on the use of old small/tiny motors found in printers ? If you come across any, please share, much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Note: I searched but didn't find any such link.

Edited to add, found this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVcK9T9IfSQ

Lists these uses:
1. Theft alert alarm, using DC Motor, clip, 9v batter and Steel cup
2. Generator using DC Motor, it can be used to glow the led light and also charge the phone
3. 4 Wheel driven car which can do vertical climbing
4. Coin sorting Machine to sort the coins in minutes.
5. Electric screw driver for easy and quick operations.
6. How to make a boat using DC Motor
7. Bubble Machine using DC Motor,
8. Crazy alarm to wake us up on time
9. Dead battery car that runs like crazy and
10. DC Motor free energy charger

City inspectors came as a team to inspect my bldg., very likely due to tenant complaints regarding severe pest issues and poor maintenance. They saw my apt. and smiled but later one inspector came and told me that I need to reduce stuffs, have too much for small apt. Hope I am not forced to part with my old computers, will see how it goes. Inspector will return again in future to see my progress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogomania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_syndrome

Following are clutter related links. There is a well known clutter issue inregards to books called Bibliomania. Similarly
in the future we might see tech related clutter as techmania.
Going towards collecting software will greatly reduce this issue of techmania.

Repair Electronics for Dummies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2ba-t_N1gE

https://www.maketecheasier.com/recov...a-linux-tools/

Need to work with the above tools in advance and practice using them. This is specially vital with old IT stuffs, however for now I will not do it. Perhaps in the future.

You never own GPL'd software either. It is usually still protected by copyright. It's free for you to use, modify, distribute, etc - but only in accordance with the terms of the licence.

Technically/legally correct. :)

Although most is under a copyleft. ;)

The FreeDOS 1.2 ISO image does have the emulators on the disk. The easiest way to install the emulators, and everything else on the 438 MB disk, is to switch to the custom advanced mode installer. You will need to press "CTRL-C" early on BEFORE the software installation begins, to get the advanced mode installer. You will need to answer NO to switch to the advanced mode installer, at the prompt you will get.

From a FreeDOS forum at sourceforge.net:

"There are two ways to enter ADVANCED mode:

1) If you booted into the installer, exit to the command prompt. Then run "setup adv"
2) At any point the installer is waiting for user input, like "Welcome, want to continue?" You can press CTRL+C. This will display a couple options. Mainly, switch into and out of ADVANCED mode.

ADVANCED mode will also let you change things like:

1) Turns off automatic partitioning.
2) Choose between Quick or Long format.
3) Change Target Drive and directory for FreeDOS
4) Select backup as a zip when a previous OS was present.
5) Force update to MBR or not.
6) Detailed package selection.
7) More install options..."

-----------------------

I normally partition the hard drive manually with "fdisk" and after it reboots I press "CTRL-C" when you need to select your language and it wants to format the hard drive. Please switch to the advanced mode installer before you get to the option to choose available software to install. You will get the full choice when you choose the bottom option, which will allow you to install everything on the ISO image, including all software and source code.

I can verify that it does indeed install everything, including all emulators, games, networking, utilities, sound, etc when you choose the advanced mode installer.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for this very helpful post, one thing to remember is that FreeDOS will not install on a Linux partition, it will need NTFS at the least I think.

http://www.pricecatcher.net/shopping...3?cid=11510901

This mp3 player is amazing, altho I didn't buy it, still my older ones are functional. Listening to audiobooks on mp3 player greatly reduced uptime of old PC, atleast for me.

Lat time I installed it I could swear it was on FAT-32 not NTFS, but I would check the FreeDos web site for the best information.

You are very welcome.

I probably should have mentioned in my post, but forgot to mention it. FreeDOS only has support for FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. It's not compatible with NTFS, or native Unix/Linux partitions, or native Apple Macintosh partitions.

--- FAT12 is for floppies, and tiny hard drives (At first maximum 16MB, later maximum 32MB).

--- FAT16 is limited to maximum 2.1 GB per partition with standard cluster size. Some older BIOS (before middle 1990's) will limit it to 528MB. Extremely old BIOS (early 1980's) will limit it to 32MB.

Older BIOS services have a compatibility limit of 528 MB per partition and a theoretical limit of 8.4 GB for the entire hard drive. With this combination, you could format the drive with around 15 or 16 FAT16 partitions, each up to 528 MB each.


Later versions of MS-DOS and early Windows operating systems (before Windows 95B) limit the drive capacity to 8.4 GB per physical drive and 2.1 GB per partition.

--- FAT32 has a higher limit, could be 8.4GB, or 32GB, or 128GB, or 137GB, or 2TB, depending on the vintage of the BIOS on the motherboard. FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95B.


Also be aware that with some old BIOS and FAT16 combinations, you were limited to using the first 8.4GB of the physical hard drive, even though it might have been a 40GB or larger drive for example. When that was the case (it was quite common with MS-DOS 6.22 and earlier), the hard drive could be divided as 4 different FAT16 partitions (each 2.1GB in size). Anything after the 8.4GB was wasted, because MS-DOS could not "see" it. That was a MS-DOS FAT16 limitation, along with certain BIOS limitations of the era. FAT32 does not suffer that particular limitation.

FAT32 could see more of the space, or the entire hard drive, but could still be limited to 32GB, or 128GB, or 2TB, depending on the vintage of the BIOS on the motherboard.


Anyway, any modern version of FreeDOS will be able to utilize the upper limits, still depending on the vintage of your BIOS. For install, I could install FreeDOS with a single FAT32 partition to completely fill my 1 TB (terabyte) hard drive, when that hard drive is installed inside my vintage 2010 Intel Xeon Quad Core workstation. And if I had a 2 TB hard drive, I could format and install FreeDOS (using FAT32) and use the entire hard drive for FreeDOS. It would be able to see and utilize the entire hard drive, up to 2 TB.

But on the other hand, if I were to take this particular 1 or 2 TB hard drive and put it inside my Pentium 4 computer, and format and install FreeDOS on the Pentium 4 as FAT32, it would be limited to 137 GB in size, because it has an older BIOS. The rest of the space would be invisible to DOS, it could not see it.

And if I choose to use only FAT16, each partition would be 2.1GB, and I could make a total of 24 partitions, using the drive letters C - Z. Cannot use the letters A or B for hard drives, because they are reserved for floppies under DOS. Basically speaking, my 1 Terabyte drive would function as a 44 gigabyte drive (2.1 x 24), if I format each partition as FAT16. The remainder of the space would be wasted, not used by DOS.

Hope I did not confuse anyone.

P.S.

If you are using VirtualBox or similar, most of the above does not apply. It's just a simple 2.1 Gigabytes per partition for FAT16, and 2 terabytes per partition for FAT32.

It's only more complicated when you are installing on an actual computer, especially with vintage computers like a 486 or something else old like that.

Compared to using virtualization technology like VirtualBox on a modern computer and Operating System (such as Windows 7, 8, 10, or Linux, or Macintosh), which avoids all the various BIOS limits of vintage computers.

(Was about to post, but see it has been answered above.)

Came across this thread that explains FreeDos install on real vintage PC, good reference if needed:
https://www.techrepublic.com/forums/...erent-machine/

I tried it on NTFS, no wonder it failed, tx for this very helpful post again.

You are very welcome. Glad I could be of some help.

Howard

My PC speakers on button is loose and turns itself off soon, it is a push button, am trying to figure a way to keep it pushed in, n> tried duct tape little but it pushes the tape out, will try to put take all around the speaker and see if that holds.
my parrots want to listen to net radio Echo Moscow. Any suggestions are welcome.

Edited to add:
Put duct tape over the switch that runs all around the sides, this seems to have worked, will leave it like this and update only if there are any issues. Thanks all.

It came off in 10 minutes, tried to stick it back and it came off again. Need to try more duct
tape, elastic band, crazy glue etc., next.

Maybe you can open it up & access the wires to the switch(?) - by pass the switch(?).

Tx for this suggestion. Only one of the speakers is working, verified that all wires are ok. Used more duct tape to hold it strategically, will observe and see.

My efforts to study coding have been greatly stalled again due to recent city inspection of bldg., and related factors.

The one thing now I understand is that, keeping several old computers in a tiny apt. is not healthy, it can affect air quality/circulation, be a fire hazard and enhance the breeding of pests. In this regard, being a minimalist is better but I am far from it.

Removed duct tape around PC speakers. There was a lot of dirt around the switch and this kept pushing it
out and turning off the speakers randomly. Cleaned all this dirty nicely, glad this has helped resolve the issue.
Will still monitor PC speakers for sometime and see.

Dropped the PC speakers from belly level on floor due to pull of the wires, when cleaning. This is better done
at ground level and also need to carefully roll the wires away safely to avoid tripping etc., This is vital to
remember for the future.

https://www.webmd.com/rheumatoid-art...trigger-finger

The above issue seems to starting for me as I age in my right hand, middle finger. So I plan
to reduce my old PC use and listen to classic audiobooks from librivox.org on an old
mp3 player.

The only time I get a rheumatoid problem in my hands is reading in bed at night when my fingers will cramp up.

Instead of duct tape and all the mess from the glue. I would have used a broke off piece of a Popsicle stick for pressing against the button with a flat surface. Then one of my tie wraps to fasten it by going completely around the speaker. It can be removed to turn it off. Then put back in place to turn it on. By just slipping on and off. Just mentioning cleaner red neck engineering is all.

Interesting reading here about how Easy OS works:
http://bkhome.org/easy/how-easy-works-part-2.html

That looks interesting, I like what Barry does, I shall have to download & have a play around with it. :)

Anyone here still burns/uses CDs/DVDs ? Please share related experience here. Tx in advance.

I have a USB DVD rewriter (I forget all the pluses and 'r's and stuff) which I bought when I built my new PC without optical drives. I bought it to rip CDs and DVDs but I've found a combination of DVD copy protection, optiocal drives just being unreliable and being able to stream video and buy what music I still want in FLAC stopped me using optical drives much at all.
Mind you, I've never liked optical drives since their inception -- they require too much precision to work so any slight issue and they just stop. At least with spinning rust, which I'm not the biggest fan of either, ther's some robustness in there and the drives are sealed.

I need to use a CD for external booting of Oldboy. This is a 32-bit Fujitsu-Siemens desktop computer, currently running AntiX, and it won't boot from usb. Because of the annoyance of having to burn a CD, I did the recent AntiX upgrade using apt rather than the recommended clean reinstall. I also use CDs for anything I want to keep long-term, such as SystemRescue.

Interesting, there are folks still using vinyl records, cassette tapes etc., but most are moving away from CDs/DVDs

Analogue media have their charm for some (I'm not oneof them) but optical drives were never any good. CDs are fithful reproductions as long as they're made using techniques not used since they were invented and they don't have any damage and the player is the same. Other media work fast enough and are largely error-free enough that sound can be reproduced faithfully and consistently withoiut having to worry about mechanical issues.

Why is Physical Media Dying?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqpdyytaJAk

Re newspapers - it is old news by the time it gets printed - much more up to date info is found online these days.

I, too, only use optical media to boot & install an OS onto an old machine, it's the same with floppy disks, the technology has been superseded, & I now use pendrives everywhere.

I am a bit worried about SD/SDHC cards being superseded by those microSD/SDHC/SX cards though, they seem not to last as long. ;)

I still use writeable DVD media for long term storage of certain critical data. I also like the (now rare) small format writeable CD disks for small dataset long term storage. For short term load images. short term and portable storage that is not magnetic sensitive, I am willing to use network attached and USB device storage, knowing that it is not nearly as reliable.

I just came across a couple free downloads for two old books that I think may interest you.

ftp://ftp.oreilly.com/pub/utp/UnixTextProcessing.pdf

https://ia902309.us.archive.org/25/i...g_Language.pdf

I have a physical copy of the AWK book, but the other one certainly looks worth a read too. :)