Hello:


This e-mail is being sent to all known users of Pro-Entropy
as well as anyone who corresponded with me or a user at that
address in recent memory. I am sad to report that
Pro-Entropy died on 9-2-01 at just after 3pm of a massive
hard drive failure. The failure was mechanical in nature.
Some of the components in the system are as old as 1983,
which is a very long time in computer years. The hard drive
which failed had been running since March 1993, or over
466,032 continuous hours, which is well beyond life
expectancy of a hard drive (100,000 hours of use).
Normally, one reverts to a back-up disk and a new drive at
this point. Here the sad tale begins.

After several hours of trying to hook-up various spare
components to the systems I have -- Pro-Entropy always had
a back-up CPU -- IÕve learned a few things. First, these
modern high-capacity drives are not compatible with this
old hardware. Secondly, there are no 127MB or less external
SCSI hard drives for sale on e-bay. Finally, in desperation
I hooked up my Zip drive. At this point I remembered that
while a Zip drive works with Pro-Entropy -- it behaves like
a big floppy disk -- you canÕt boot from one. ThatÕs when I
discovered that the last few back-up disks from 1999 and
2000 are unhealthy. The last surviving backup disk is from
Summer 1998. 

The Y2K update software I have saved on a floppy but the
source code was eaten for lunch when the drive died. All of
this compounded together means I will have no choice but to
discontinue all support for the ProLine system. Details on
this will be available at http://www.darsys.com/proline
shortly.

Although Pro-Entropy ceased having any productive life
about three years ago, it was always a fun hobby. At this
point, however, there is no cost effective or time
efficient way to restore Pro-Entropy. The few remaining
users all have other access. 

I will miss Pro-Entropy greatly. Pro-Entropy began in the
aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. There was a system called
Pro-Miami that died 23 August 1992 as Andrew removed
Pro-Miami from the face of the earth. Happily the sysop,
Nelson and his family were unharmed though everything the
owned was destroyed. Early in 1993, Nelson found the hard
drive containing Pro-Miami and gave me the user lists and
some other information from the system. Pro-Entropy was
born 13 February 1993 and has been running continuously
until 1 September 2001. There were glitches along the way,
including a mammoth re-coding and re-compiling job when it
was discovered that ProLine software was not Y2K compliant.
The author had no interest in taking over this project at
that time since the list of ProLines had dropped from
almost 200 to around eight. He gave me the source code and
in a very busy three months, I re-wrote it. I had planned
on keeping Pro-Entropy alive until its tenth anniversary. 

I've met a few really cool people over the years on it,
some of whom I am still friends with. IÕve had a few
celebrities pass through -- Dave Barry, Terry Pratchett,
Douglas Adams, and a number of minor league hockey players
that I know of. Part of life is death. As such, all things
must pass, and so too must Pro-Entropy. 

Any mail you have sent to any address at
pro-entropy.cts.com or pro entropy.cbbs.cts.com will not be
delivered or read. Mail to the pro-entropy list server at
pro-entropy.westnet.com is unaffected. My personal e-mail
has been moved to aol.com or darsys.com (your choice). All
the mailing lists administrative are being handled at
westnet.com and darsys.com -- you will receive separate
instructions as a list post.

Pro-Entropy will go the way of all surplus computer parts.
It will be sold piecemeal on e-bay. IÕve come to find out
some of the parts will fetch me some Ben Franklins, which
is more than some of them originally cost. A few people
have asked me what Pro-Entropy was comprised of: the quick
answer is an Apple IIgs with 8MB of RAM, a Transwarp GS
accelerator card, a RAMFast SCSI card, a TMS Shadow 127MB
Hard Drive, an 800K Floppy, a Hayes Accura 56K modem, and
an ImageWriter II printer. Additional hardware available
but not installed included an Apple DMA SCSI card, Apple
3.5 HD disk controller, a Zip 100, and some other petty
hardware including duplicates of many items so the system
never hard to come down.

Any questions may be directed to me via e-mail at darsys at
aol dot com. 


Sincerely,
Eric A. Seiden, System Operator
Pro-Entropy BBS