Down for the Count

[RandallR 444]

Well, while at work yesterday I received a call from my wife that my computer has gone to the happy hunting ground. I returned home to find that I have a drive failure or controller failure - looks like I get to spend my Christmas vacation trying to resurrect or repair her, so I'm offline from home right now and won't be posting until this is resolved.I had a lot of Fly! stuff on the failed drive, including beta versions, scenery production, DB projects, etc. so I'm a little concerned to say the least! As I am about to go incommunicado, I would pass on Season Greetings to all of you. God's richest blessings to you in the coming year - see you on the other side.C.A.V.U.

[Guest]

Hi Randall maybe the big guy will look kindly on your hard drivegoing south on you! Anyway Randall please have a great Xmas! Dan

[Guest DSandberg]

Argh, I'm sorry to hear that Randy. Sounds like a painful way to embark upon your holiday break. I hope you had backups, or if not, that you won't need them.- David Sandberg (Fly II beta team member, and creator of InfoMETAR)

[KenWood 5]

Sorry to hear that, Randall! Hear's hoping that the outage is short and the files are salvageable

[RandallR 444]

Hey, thanks everyone! Well, I've got good news and bad news (for myself :-) )It turns out my second drive (my prize IBM Deskstar) is the one that went south - this is the one with everything related to Fly!II. (I still have a complete copy of Fly!2K running on the boot drive). Also on that second drive were 2 1/2 years of Fly! file downloads, all my data files for my new Carolinas Terrascene projects and all my DB edits, etc.Well David, as far as backups go, I'm kind of between backups. Also, when I've got 25 GBs of stuff to backup, it's almost too much so I have to pick and choose. I've got all my scenery files backed up on CD, and many of my downloads are also backed up on CD. The problem is, with all the beta work we were doing, I haven't backed up for a while so I've lost a lot of our "tweener" stuff and I've lost the database tutorial project I've been working on for about 6 months (that I should have backed up!) Arrggghhh!!!Well, half a computer and Fly!2K are still better than nothing! I'm going to see if a local establishment can spin the bad drive and recover most of my data before I begin reconstructing everything.Dan, your graphics are extraordinary! I was expecting some new buildings, etc., but that orca is astounding! If you can model a living creature like that, I can imagine what you might be able to do in Fly! Also, that cartoon animation scene is excellent. Remember, my offer still stands if you need help rendering the animations to movie (video).

[Guest ben_]

RandallI hope you can recover everything you need and manage to have an enjoyable holiday after all your hard work this year :-)Ben

[Guest]

Hey Randall, Luckily for you its Christmas day,just maybe. Let me explain. This past week as a matter of fact I thought I had lost a drive. I dont know if you have pulled the drive or not. If so then try hooking it back up and see what happens. I know that sounds crazy. But a ever so slight loose connection almost caused me to toss a good drive. The drive was a little over 3 years old and saw some very heavy usage. So I thought it may very well had bit the dust. The only clue that the drive wasnt the problem was upon bootup. Was a CD-Rom that is connected on the same slot on the MB was showing up as not being seen also. So I thought something else had to be causing the problem. It turned out that the cable connecting the two with the MB was just slightly loose. No idea as to what caused it to work loose but it was. Just a suggestion. It wont hurt trying. :)If I sound like Im stepping on toes I dont mean to. Just hate to see you loose all that work if it can be avoided. :)TonyWhy Oh .... Why cant I ????FlyII! ver. 2.40Directx 8.1nVidia drivers 41.09ECS K7S5A SOCKETA /DDR/ATX MB, DDR SRAM 128MB PC-2100 266MHZ MEMORY ,AMD ATHLON T-BIRD 1.2GHZ 256K FSB266 PGA , NVIDIA GEFORCE2 MX-400 64MB AGP

[Guest]

Hi Randall I've got lot's of goodies on my system Re the beta and such please email me if you need any help! and I still have lot's ofstuff I've done re the databases for both versions of Fly!. 2nd thank you for your comments on my work in Maya! yup it would be nice to do something for Fly with Maya with all it's great tools!. Perhapswhen I get a little better with .mel scripts I could try to write aexporter script and people (if they had acess to Maya) to "do" some stuff for Fly! as Maya's tools are outstanding when compared to 3DS Max for example (and I still use both BTW). Anyway I trust that therest of your Xmas has been filled with better things than the above! Dan

[RandallR 444]

Tony,Thanks for the suggestion - it was the first thing I checked. The drive shares the same cable as the boot drive and is the slave. Obviously, the MB side is connected properly as the C: drive is running fine - the connection into the D: drive was very tight. I got this computer running again by disconnecting the bad drive - if I reconnect it the computer can't boot and the D: drive cycles endlessly. I'd say it's fried.