OT (Complexity makes for a) Desperate situation

[Mike McCarty]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 21:28, Mike McCarty wrote:
> 
> 
>>Please give an example of an NP-complete problem which must be
>>solved by firmware in the electronics of an ATA disc drive.
>>Not many traveling salesmen in my discs...
> 
> 
> If you are still talking about cable-select here, the problem

In this particular part of the Thread Which Would Not Die,
the topic seems to have drifted into another topic.

> being solved is the one of mass-assembly and removing the
> slow step of adjusting drive jumpers.  Virtually all new

Yes, that's another of the arguments used by the people who
supported twisted cables for floppies. "Let's screw the customer,
so we have an easier job building the machines."

> boxes are delivered with CS settings that work.  If you
> change it, you can still use jumpers if you want.  What's
> the issue?

I usually build up machines, anyway. So I install what I
want the way I want. I've never installed CS, and when
I find a drive jumpered that way, I immediately jumper
it otherwise. So, as you point out, *I* don't have problems
anymore.

But, a friend called me up about two years ago, having
problems with her machine (she'd just added a disc, which came
with a CS cable). We struggled with it for about 2 hours, before
I finally told her "Let's get rid of that damn' cable select,
and jumper for M/S". We did that, and the machine has run like
a champ ever since. She had rejumpered her primary disc as
CS, per the instructions with the new disc and new cable.

That was a problem for me, because it wasn't my machine, but
I was still working on it.

Convinced her, too, BTW.

Mike
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