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Recent Firefox update to 51.0.1 will cause severe instability and crashes if you run Win XP Sp3 (some of us still do), Firefox and Norton security. If you look at task manager you will see increasing numbers of conathst.exe files building while Firefox is running. Then you will crash. The solution is to close the Norton Security Toolbar in Firefox or revert back to a previous version of Firefox (50.1.0) until the problem is fixed by Mozilla.

rotor wrote:Recent Firefox update to 51.0.1 will cause severe instability and crashes if you run Win XP Sp3 (some of us still do), Firefox and Norton security. If you look at task manager you will see increasing numbers of conathst.exe files building while Firefox is running. Then you will crash. The solution is to close the Norton Security Toolbar in Firefox or revert back to a previous version of Firefox (50.1.0) until the problem is fixed by Mozilla.

Found your problem right there Its time to move on there

Pariah3j wrote:

rotor wrote:Recent Firefox update to 51.0.1 will cause severe instability and crashes if you run Win XP Sp3 (some of us still do), Firefox and Norton security. If you look at task manager you will see increasing numbers of conathst.exe files building while Firefox is running. Then you will crash. The solution is to close the Norton Security Toolbar in Firefox or revert back to a previous version of Firefox (50.1.0) until the problem is fixed by Mozilla.

Found your problem right there Its time to move on there

Yup, I know you are right but some of us have scanners and printers that we really don't want to dump. This was to alert people to a problem, not to make anti-firearm Bill Gates a little richer. I also have old motor vehicles that I don't dump just because they are old. Darn, I am old.

rotor wrote:

Pariah3j wrote:

rotor wrote:Recent Firefox update to 51.0.1 will cause severe instability and crashes if you run Win XP Sp3 (some of us still do), Firefox and Norton security. If you look at task manager you will see increasing numbers of conathst.exe files building while Firefox is running. Then you will crash. The solution is to close the Norton Security Toolbar in Firefox or revert back to a previous version of Firefox (50.1.0) until the problem is fixed by Mozilla.

Found your problem right there Its time to move on there

Yup, I know you are right but some of us have scanners and printers that we really don't want to dump. This was to alert people to a problem, not to make anti-firearm Bill Gates a little richer. I also have old motor vehicles that I don't dump just because they are old. Darn, I am old.

Linux is your friend.

Tried Linux. Like it but I have dedicated equipment and software specific for that equipment that wont update to Linux. This post was a FYI for those in similar circumstances and I appreciate the suggestions. All of this is still better than my RadioShack TRS80 computer loading programs from a tape drive. Ever try loading Microsoft assembly language from a tape drive?

You must have really specific peripherals. We had to run Windows 98 forever because of embroidery machines so I understand...

I get your issue with upgrading OS. I went with Win 10 and my old reliable LaserJet 6 is no longer compatible. Of the 4 printers in the house, it is the best and most reliable printer for B&W print jobs.

rotor wrote:All of this is still better than my RadioShack TRS80 computer loading programs from a tape drive. Ever try loading Microsoft assembly language from a tape drive?

Wow. Throwback Thursday on Friday. Nostalgia...sigh. Acoustic couplers to reach out and s - l - o - w - l - y touch the rest of the pre-internet world, and taking a plain ol' "portable" (meaning it was smaller than a bread box) cassette deck and plugging it into your whiz-bang TRS80 to load assembler or "C" into the computer's massive RAM.

Just a note that I'm currently limping along on an old Windows Vista laptop while my barely-one-year-old Windows 10 Pro workstation is back at Dell being looked at under warranty. Firefox 51.0.1 (32-bit) does seem to function normally, but Google Chrome--as it would on your system--provides, every time it starts, the friendly notice: "This computer will no longer receive Google Chrome updates because Windows XP and Windows Vista are no longer supported." Yes-thank-you-very-much-for-the-constant-reminder-I-know-that.

Skiprr wrote:

rotor wrote:All of this is still better than my RadioShack TRS80 computer loading programs from a tape drive. Ever try loading Microsoft assembly language from a tape drive?

Wow. Throwback Thursday on Friday. Nostalgia...sigh. Acoustic couplers to reach out and s - l - o - w - l - y touch the rest of the pre-internet world, and taking a plain ol' "portable" (meaning it was smaller than a bread box) cassette deck and plugging it into your whiz-bang TRS80 to load assembler or "C" into the computer's massive RAM.

Just a note that I'm currently limping along on an old Windows Vista laptop while my barely-one-year-old Windows 10 Pro workstation is back at Dell being looked at under warranty. Firefox 51.0.1 (32-bit) does seem to function normally, but Google Chrome--as it would on your system--provides, every time it starts, the friendly notice: "This computer will no longer receive Google Chrome updates because Windows XP and Windows Vista are no longer supported." Yes-thank-you-very-much-for-the-constant-reminder-I-know-that.

I am a throwback. I was going to build a M.I.T.S. computer via Popular Electronics as well. I also had owned the first IBM PC and remember paying $1,000 for a 10 meg hard drive and was amazed at the speed. I still have all of the manuals and floppies for DOS. As far as Radio Shack, when they came out with more advanced units they failed to use gold contacts on connectors and there were constant errors unless you cleaned the contacts. Ever use Electric Pencil as your word processor? My iPhone has more capability than any of those old systems. The good old days. I will eventually end up with Win 10 I guess but I hate the thought (and expense) of changing tried and true hardware.

Heathkit H89. Can anyone else speak CP/M?

I started out with a TI 99/4A. Next was a Coleco Adam. That kept breading, so we got an Apple IIe. Took it to Germany and wound up dropping a Z80 card in it (yes, I spoke CP/M, oljames3).

Then I moved to IBM PC clones running MS-DOS. I resisted going to a "gooey", saying, "I don't do rodents." Finally, I saw the handwriting on the wall and started using WIN 3.11.

Since rotor already conveyed the information, I don't know if we, er, more mature techies can really stray off topic (and if we do maybe I'll just move it over to the "Off Topic" category).

I helped start up a (cutting-edge at the time) small business in early 1981 and, following a few months of detailed and adequate research, we decided on the purchase of an IBM 5120. This space-age marvel set us back about $15,000. Man; this wonder had everything but the kitchen sink built in...and it barely weighed 100 pounds! A nifty 9" built-in monochrome monitor (64 characters x 16 lines of text), 2 built-in 8" 1.2 MB floppy disk drives, a massive 64K of RAM and 64K of ROM, with both APL and BASIC resident in ROM; you flipped a switch on the front before powering the system on to select which you wanted to load. And it even had both a parallel and serial interface! But no such thing as a hard drive; sorry. I still have some boxes of those 8" floppies somewhere in the attic.

And to think that technology only cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today's dollars! (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

Skiprr wrote:Since rotor already conveyed the information, I don't know if we, er, more mature techies can really stray off topic (and if we do maybe I'll just move it over to the "Off Topic" category).

I helped start up a (cutting-edge at the time) small business in early 1981 and, following a few months of detailed and adequate research, we decided on the purchase of an IBM 5120. This space-age marvel set us back about $15,000. Man; this wonder had everything but the kitchen sink built in...and it barely weighed 100 pounds! A nifty 9" built-in monochrome monitor (64 characters x 16 lines of text), 2 built-in 8" 1.2 MB floppy disk drives, a massive 64K of RAM and 64K of ROM, with both APL and BASIC resident in ROM; you flipped a switch on the front before powering the system on to select which you wanted to load. And it even had both a parallel and serial interface! But no such thing as a hard drive; sorry. I still have some boxes of those 8" floppies somewhere in the attic.

And to think that technology only cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today's dollars! (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

As we all boast about equipment, when I first computerized my office we had a huge NCR computer, 8"floppies for backup (or were they 12"-can't remember) (eventually went to dedicated tape drive for backup ($15K in early 80's). The hard drive was a huge platter driven by a belt which tended to slip off and I had to get under the thing and put the belt back on so the office could run. Had an entire room dedicated to a computer with it's own electrical system, huge dot matrix printer, oh the days. Definitely off topic. Anyone ever put the belt back on their hard drive?

The belt drives were so much quieter than the chain drives!

twomillenium wrote:The belt drives were so much quieter than the chain drives!

Wait. What? Drives? You had something steam-driven or electrical spinning your hard drives?

My first hard drive was an external Winchester 5 MB the size of a manhole cover and came with a treadle to run it...