If you use Word and Excel, as I do, perhaps you are annoyed by the fact that you cannot resize the Open dialogue box. Consequently, you are constantly scrolling to find the file/directory you. This is especially true if you have a rather large number of subdirectories/files. Well, after 4 years of scrolling, I discovered that which is terribly obvious. You simply need to click the icon that displays the directories/files as multiple columns, with a little less information, but the dialogue box displays many more directories/files. Once displayed with multiple columns, the Open dialogue box remembers its setting.
And now the fiasco.
I like the idea of using SCSI drives because they're portable among all my systems. I'm running 4 PC's (with a 5th waiting for me to fix an IRQ problem with the new motherboard I installed) and 3 Macs ( with two more just sitting there as storehouses for parts). I had an awful time getting the DVD-RAM to work on the same SCSI chain with any of my Iomega drives (a 100m Zip, a 1G Jaz and a 2GJaz). It was bizarre. If I just plugged Iomega stuff in, it worked. If I plugged in the DVD-RAM, it worked. But if I plugged in the DVD with any of the Iomega stuff, Windows '95 barfed all over me. There were icons on the screen, but when I clicked them the system said the devices weren't ready. They appeared in the system display of connected devices, but the device control panel display said they didn't work. I had no problems with hanging everything together on the Macs, it was only on Windows '95 that I had problems.
The DVD-RAM is a Matshita, marketed by LaCie. After trying all combinations of cables and SCSI terminations, it was clearly a problem of a collision in the driver software from LaCie and Iomega. The LaCie tech support line was totally unhelpful; they didn't have a clue. There was something on the Iomega site about what to do if you had problems with a SCSI chain that had both Iomega and non-Iomega stuff on it, but their fix applied only if you had an Adaptec SCSI card, which mine isn't.
Well, it took me a while to get to the point, but here I am... After much trial and tribulation, I found out the problem and fixed it myself (ain't that always the way?). Basically, it has to do with Windows '95 Plug and Play and how it works (or doesn't). As you know, Windows references disks by assigning a drive letter. Plug and Play assigns the drive letters by scanning all the busses at boot time. That means that if you've got removable things (like nearly everything on my SCSI bus), the assignment of drive letters changes depending on what you happen to have plugged in when you boot the machine.
In Win95, Microsoft does attempt to provide a way for you to give specific things specific drive letters. You open up the control panel and set the min and max drive letters allowed for a particular device to whatever you want. T he only real reason to care about the drive letters is that I use a lot of aliases (or, as Microsoft likes to call them, 'shortcuts'), and the aliases don't link to the actual device, they link to the drive letter. So if my configuration changes, the icon that looks like a CD-ROM and used to get me to my CD-ROM drive, can suddenly get me to my hard drive even though it looks the same as it always did. Very disconcerting. Well, although you can fix the drive letter, it only really works for stuff that is permanently attached. For removable stuff, Windows still assigns drive letters by giving the next available letter to the next device it finds. But if you've previously fixed the drive letter for a removable device, Windows remembers what driver is associated with that. So lets say that you've been using an Iomega JAZ for a while and you've fixed its drive letter at, say D. Everything works as long as that drive stays plugged in. But now, you put something else on the chain (like a DVD-RAM). If you SCSI addresses are just right (or wrong), when Windows goes to assign its drive letter, it will assign the first available drive letter (like D) to the first thing it finds on the SCSI chain. So if it finds the DVD-RAM before it finds the JAZ, it will assign D to the DVD-RAM. That wouldn't be bad if it was just the drive letter, but it also remembers the driver. The net result is that if the configuration of the SCSI chain changes, the drive letters change and the wrong drivers get assigned to the wrong devices. Nothing works anymore. I don't know why this problem doesn't show up in the FAQs of the various vendors, but it doesn't. I suspect its because so few Windows users know how to try to assign fixed driver letters. Unfortunately, you can't change the drive letter assignment letter directly; you have to bring the device up first (if the device doesn't work, Windows doesn't let you access its parameters). The only way I could do this was to remove all the SCSI stuff, deinstall all of the software (interface card and device drivers) and then reinstall the software. Then I made sure that I didn't try to define permanent drive letters and it all now works. I just need to let Windows assign the drive letters to whatever it finds and then it will also be smart enough to use the right drivers. I'm told that WIndows '98 has a better way of assigning drive letters, but because of the Internet stuff I don't want, I'm not about to go to it.
So anyway, here's the tip. If anyone is trying to install new drives and/or change the configuration of their SCSI chain by plugging and unplugging portable devices, then that user should REMOVE all the flags etc., that are concerned with trying to assign specific drive letters to specific devices on the SCSI chain. If you just let Windows find whatever happens to be plugged in at the time, it will work. It took me every night (and weekends) for two weeks to finally get past this and on the air, but now I know. And so do you...
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