3

floppy drive.So there goes another
$79 for a little floppy drive that
looks like a designer tool for which
you pay more for the branding
color of the mildly transparent
plastic housing than for the
technology that is in it. However,
you are luckyto have one of these.

Now, if you are adamant to
become a true citizen of the 21s t
century, you willgive up the
floppy habit and graduate to the
diskless environment and entrust
others with yourvaluable data. We
suggest that you see Susan Bibeau
first to discuss this ratherserious
matter and develop a painless Rx
forthe removal of thefloppies. We
suggest two ways. 1. Come to the
Humanities Computing lab with
all your floppies, oryour old
computer(just the box, please!)
and haveus transfer thedata to a
safeplace from where wecan
eitherburna few CDs or establish
a fileserveraccount which you can

reach from your office,from your
home, and even from another
continent, as long as you have an
internet connection. 2. Have us
movethe data to yournew
machine.

If you’renot yet ready to give up
your highdensity (HD) diskettes,
there is anothersolution. Imation
makes an external disk drive that
can read both HDdiskettes and
SuperDisks, which have a capacity
of 120MB. Great forbacking up.

Dartmouth’s new network and the
network connection onyour new
machinery are significantly faster
than what you areused to. Inthe
Language ResourceCenterwe
movefiles of 600 MB, sometimes
even 900 MB routinely up and

down fromthe serverin minutes.
A completeformatted book has
hardly morethan 2 to 4 megabytes
and uploads and downloads in
seconds.

If your new computercomes with
a Zip drive, using zip disks as a
safe backup storage (i.e., storing a
second copy of a file that is already
on thecomputer) makes good
sense.

Floppies, zip disks, tapes, and hard
disks willeventually fail. CDs, if
handled and stored carefully, will
last thirty years orlonger.
Extremely valuabledata should be
kept on different types of media in
different locations to prepare for
the worst casescenario. It is also a
good idea to keep hard copy.~

example, take a look at the
“Starwars Trailer” by opening
QuickTime 4 MoviePlayerand
going to the URL rtsp://schiller.
dartmouth.edu/menace_480.hnt.
Prepare yourself for an experience
in highquality video and sound!

None of these services can be
called interactive. We arejust
providing a library of resources. In
the long run this library will
probably be accessed from
interactive programs that canuse
audio and video clips in
challenging language exercises.~

point inthe whole world, but, for
copyright reasons, we need to
restrict access (“domain-protect”)
to the Dartmouth campus only.

Most of ourvideo holdings arestill
served via the AppleShare Server
Digital Lab or NT Server Dante.
Occasionally we have full-length
feature movies on theserverin
streaming format. Give us a call
and ask foravailability if you are
interested in this type of
technology. Video holdings can
also be accessed directly from
QuickTime Player. You can, for

Now that this new bondi-blue or
graphitepiece of equipment has
been unpacked and is occupying
enormous amounts of thereal
estate on yourdesk, yourfloppies
arewaiting to be unloaded into the
new machine. But — there is no

From floppy to zip,
to network, to???

—Otmar Foelsche

How do you get data in and
out of your new iMac, G3,
and G4?