SLO BYTES NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER, 1988 ***** Whats New ***** What reads a 40 Megabyte while directory in 5 seconds? How about listing ALL your hard disk files in one continuous column even crossing subdirectories? Have you ever wanted to mark specific files, let's say by extension, for deletion, copying or renaming. If your answer was "yes" to any of the above, then you should have been at our last meeting. Kevin Azzouz, Product Development Manager for Executive Systems, presented XTreePro. Yes, this multifaceted utility does everything mentioned above and more. It's a powerful and FAST hard disk file manipulator. Written in machine language, it doesn't waste any time accomplishing a specific task. Here is a brief list of XTreePro utilities: * Log up to 26 drives * Protect files from deletion or movement between subdirectories * Copy a group of files to another disk maintaining directory structure * View the contents of a file in three different modes * Enter DOS commands through XTreePro's Dos shell and remember the last 15 * commands for future execution. * Change the name of a directory This is just a small list of XTreePro's many attributes. We would run out of column space if I mentioned them all. In all fairness I must mention other "global utilities" on the commercial market; the two most popular being Norton Utilities and PCTools. Both these programs take a little different approach to file manipulation and ultimately accomplish most of the same goals. We have several shareware packages to be found either in our software library or on our bulletin board which may be remotely similar to all the commercial programs mentioned above. Check out Disk Commando on #272 or Directory Scanner on #281. I have also assembled a new group of directory and file manipulators under disk #286 this month. They include Overview 2.0, MasterDos, DNAV (Disk Navigator) and Popcicle. To one degree or another the above programs have similarities to XTREE, Norton Utilities and PCTools. My preference in these programs is in the order listed. With the exception of Overview, none of them are as easy to use as XTreePro, nor do they graphically depict the operations as nicely. But then you're not paying as much for them either. Congratulation to the 3 club members who won a copy of XTreePro so graciously donated by Executive Systems. The club officers will be happy to take them off your hands if you don't know what to do with them. Hey, give me credit for trying! Again, our many thanks to Mr. Azzouz for his thorough presentation. He has promised us a return visit in the near future to demonstrate "HOT", Executive Systems new hard disk menuing software. After reading the manual cover I think this product is appropriately named. We look forward to his return visit. Next month at our early meeting George Campbell will finish up his 2 part presentation on the cost of hardware and software upgrades Ä are they worth it? Then Mel Johnson, member of SLO BYTES will demonstrate the well received memory resident spreadsheet, LUCID. This is a multidimensional Spreadsheet with a capacity of 58K. The program also has the capabilities of "crosslinking" to other LUCID spreadsheets for combining related data. ----------------------------- ***** CALENDAR ***** December 4th Demonstrate your favorite public domain software. Semi-annual swap meet. Refreshments. Our permanent meeting place through June, 1989 is Fisher Hall 286. The library will remain in Fisher 292. Check the bill-board in the patio for directions. Our meetings are held on the first Sunday of each month. New user's SIG will start at 1:30pm with the general meeting starting at 2:30pm. The library will be available for copying at approximately 12:30 until closing. -------------------------- ***** BITS 'N BYTES ***** *** Remember in December we ask that you share your favorite public domain shareware program with us. You can demonstrate it if you wish or just tell us about it, how you use it and why. Please contact one of the officers some time before the December meeting so we can schedule the presentation. *** For those of you copying disks from the library, thank you for returning the disks to their proper location in the file holders. It saves us time when we check the files for missing disks at the end of the meeting. *** My apologies to those few who may have wanted to stay later than 5pm at the last meeting. Our policy has been "stay as late as you wish." This remains our policy. I had to wrap it up as close to 5 pm as possible this month only, since it was my wife's birthday. She thought we were going out to dinner after the meeting. Instead when we stopped home to feed the animals she was greeted by 35 friends and a big surprise birthday party. *** Remember the meeting in January will be the 2nd Sunday of the month (January 8th) for that month only. The first Sunday falls on New Year's Day! *** We didn't have time to discuss the formation of SIGS (Special Interest Groups) at the last meeting. The interest is there we just need leaders. Any volunteers? *** Election of officers takes place at our December meeting. Now's your change to fully participate in directing club activities. *** Gus Thomasson, our program director, needs your input for guest speakers. Leave him a message on the BBS or call him at 544-2319. We tried to get the Presidential Party hopefuls to speak on how they use computers in their jobs, but then we began to think, "who would show up to the meeting?" A few weeks ago I attended a software conference where WordPerfect was demonstrating WordPerfect 5.0. They were advertising under the theme "Campaign '88." The speaker suggested everyone use them as a write-in candidate. What if......? *** In my dual role as editor and software librarian I too need some input. What type of software would you like to see in the library? If it's out there we will find it. Do you find most of the newsletter articles interesting? Should we have a different emphasis or direction? Let us know. We accept all constructive criticism gracefully! *** I heard many positive comments about moving our meeting to Sundays. The officers sure appreciate getting home before midnight! *** Comdex, the biggest computer show in the world, is November 14th through November 18th. I will be attending two evening conferences; one for newsletter editors, the other for officers hosted by the Association of Computer User Groups. The ultimate goal at both meetings is how to better serve the computer users through their respective user groups. If you want a daily update to what is happening at Comdex, sign on to the BBS. We will be taking a portable computer and modem and calling the BBS daily. *** If you want to purchase blank disks only at the meeting, they may be purchased in the software library room, Fisher Hall 292. We will probably be moving membership sign-ups, etc. into the library room while the general meeting is being conducted. This should alleviate the "crunch" before and after the meeting for disks, memberships and other things. *** Ashton-Tate, makers of such programs as dBASEIII+ and Framework, are sending us a limited number of their quarterly newsletters ÄÄ User Group UPDATE TM. These will be available for users of their products on a first-come basis. *** Start reading your newsletter carefully! Your answer at the next meeting might be worth 10 free floppy disks. Our permanent meeting place through June, 1989 is Fisher Hall 286. The library will remain in Fisher 292. Check the bill-board in the patio for directions. Effective October 2nd, our meetings will be held on the first Sunday of each month. New user's SIG will start at 1:30pm with the general meeting starting at 2:30pm. The library will be available for copying at approximately 12:30. ---------------------- dataTAG - A Ventura Publishing Utility By Teri Sorgatz Oh horrors! Your department head has requested a published listing of all 3,000+ pieces of laboratory equipment in your science building . . . by tomorrow morning. Or, your pastor has gently suggested how much the congregation would appreciate a published directory of the members . . . of all the sister churches. At first you thought you had the task licked. You were confident in your desktop publishing skills with Ventura Publisher. (Haven't you been typesetting all of your friends resumes?) But just think of all those wee-hours-in-the-morning to be spent inserting Tags , stripping delimiters, and removing empty fields in your database to get the dang thing formatted. No need to sluff the project off onto your poor high school kid who probably already has plans for the evening. Have I got a solution for you! , by Publishing Solutions. Tagging a database or spreadsheet for import into an existing Ventura Publisher Style Sheet is this easy: Export your database or spreadsheet as a Comma Delimited .TXT file per your program's instructions. Include only those fields that you want to appear in the final format, in the order they are to appear. Execute the program and follow the simple on screen instructions. Among other things, you will be asked to supply a tag name for each of the fields. Execute Ventura Publisher, load the desired style sheet, then load your new tagged file as an ASCII file. Bingo! The work's all done! dataTAG will automatically tag any Comma Delimited ASCII text file with a .TXT extension. The program is menu and command line selectable for use with Ventura Publisher, PagePerfect, PageMaker 3.0, Interleaf TPS, or Gem Desktop Publisher. It will create a new ASCII file with the file extension .DTV or .DTP depending on the desktop publishing package chosen from the menu. I tested dataTAG on a simple name/phone number database that I had in Ashton- Tate's RapidFile. After arranging the file as desired, I exported it as Comma Delimited, exited RapidFile, and called up dataTAG. After processing the Comma Delimited .TXT file (making simple menu choices with absolutely no confusion) I then entered Ventura Publisher, loaded a sample style sheet called &PHON- P2.STY, and loaded the new dataTAG-processed .DTV file with the ASCII option. The file loaded perfectly and the work was complete in minutes! My phone list was now typeset in two column "phone book" format, including a "live" header containing first and last occurrence of names on each page. I was not able, however, to test the product with other Desk Top Publishing packages. I have no doubt, though, that dataTAG would perform just as admirably with all supported DTP formats. According to the literature supplied with the program dataTAG is able to tag 10,000 fields in approx. 30-40 seconds, with no limit to the number of records, fields, or characters. It automatically strips delimiters and empty fields while retaining the tagging sequence. This makes it indispensable for any application to be published in a tabular format or one with controlled line breaks. Tags for page breaks can also be inserted allowing you to limit the number of records per page if this function is supported by your DTP package. Speaking of the literature . . . the instruction manual is a concise four 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" pages long! dataTAG requires a hard disk, DOS 2.1 or higher, a database or spreadsheet that will export or format in Comma Delimited ASCII. It will run on XT and AT compatibles, 80386's, and all PS/2's. You can purchase dataTAG from Publishing Solutions, 205 E. 78 Street, Suite 17-T, New York, New York 10021, (212) 288-2470. As a special treat Publishing Solutions has offered a $20.00 discount to any person indicating that they have read this review. * A Comma Delimited ASCII file has the fields separated by commas and quote marks ( , ). A Wordstar database is an example of a Comma Delimited ASCII file. --------------------- *** LOCAL DISCOUNTS *** Discounts usually apply only to regularly priced merchandise. Ask a salesman to make sure. Paradise Computers 5% All computers. peripherals and software. 10% Ribbons, paper, disks & other expendable items. Star Computers 5% Any software in stock. 10% Paper, ribbons, cables, and other supplies. Computer Logic 10% Off list - all computers, software, computer peripherals, and products. Contact Bruce, Paul or Dave for discount. WITCO Computers 10% Off complete systems, peripherals, supplies but not including software. 5% Off computers alone. FISBOSA Systems 10% Off packaged systems, software, and/or peripherals when purchased with system. Contact Lynne Boisen. --------------------- *** NEW MEMBERS - OCTOBER, 1988 *** Dennie Chandler 773-4566 George Janeway Jr. 528-5993 Phillis & Brad Rinehart 543-7265 Martin Schooley 528-4279 Richard Toomire Rosalie Valvo 772-7961 Ernest Werbel 543-1308 Sherry Weipert 543-5625 ----------------------- EXPIRED MEMBERSHIP - SEPTEMBER, 1988 Dorthy Bartels Thomas Beal Jim Borland Robert Cross Coy Fowler Evelyn Hilden Rusty Laughlin Tom & Rennie Law Rosemarie McKeen Robert L. Middleton Billy Mounts Ron & Kathy Roberts --------------------------- *** HOT *** by Gus Thomasson Common complaints about DOS are rampant. The most welcome influx of non-nerd types to the computer world has obviated the need for a more intuitive user interface. The innocuous and odious DOS prompt was fine for programmers and power users but the average user finds them unfriendly to be generous, and down right hostile to be frank! For some reason or another I dislike almost every thing Microsoft has done. It's rumored they don't even use their own word processor. Many interfaces, both graphic (GEM) and character based (Menu) have been introduced to ameliorate the situation. Some of the best have been tangled up in law suits by one Fruit Computer Company or another. Others suffer from a rigid structure which negates the functionality of the interface. The problem with most menu systems is that the &@#!&*% (censored) things never seem to offer the choice of what ever it is I want to do at the time. Besides they take too long to set up, if I could do that I probably wouldn't need the thing in the first place. One of the most interesting menu systems I've run across is "HOT" by Executive Systems; the same wizards that brought us XTree and XTreePro. This astounding package first allows the selection of a graphic menu style. Create your own or choose a menu such as a file cabinet, note cards, multiple choice, or standard. Next, the thing actually searches the hard disk and catalogs the many programs on it, categorizes them as to type: word processors, data base managers, spread sheets etc. and then amazingly enough actually writes the code to run them from the menu. WOW! The "HOT" system is scheduled to be shipped from Executive systems this month. It might be obtained from them directly or through your favorite computer store. I do not know the price as of this writing but Executive Systems is known for giving "big bang" for the buck. Editors note: I vote for Gus as our very own Dvorak sound-a-like. Do I hear a second? ---------------------------------- *** NEWS FROM OUR LIBRARY *** Here is a list of new programs placed in our library for the month of October: #285 Disk Wiz - disk and print manager. LIST62A & LISTMOD have also been moved from disk #238 to this disk with LIST62A updated to LIST63A.ARC. #286 Hard Disk File Manipulators - Overview 2.0, MasterDos, DNAV (Disk Navigator) and Popcicle. To one degree or another the above programs have similarities to XTREE, Norton Utilities and PCTools. My preference in these programs is in the order listed. #287 Management Menus - Unique People Manager program. Grade yourself. Should you be a manager? #288 Financial Calculator & PC-AR, an accounts receivable and sales analysis program. UPDATES: #206 PC-ART updated from ver 2.1 to 3.1 #218 ProComm Test Drive. Minor "bug" fixes #266 TheDraw version 3.1 71A Crosstalk Crosstalk MK.4 Communications 71B Crosstalk Crosstalk XVI Communications 72 Persoft IZE 73 Borland Sprint Word Processor 74 Borland Quattro 75 Word Perfect Corporation PlanPerfect 60 Word Perfect Corporation WordPerfect 76 Word Perfect Corporation WordPerfect Office 77 Word Perfect Corporation DataPerfect 78 ? Market Manager Plus 79 Lotus Lotus Express Demo 35A Borland SideKick Plus *80* Digital Research Gem Draw Plus (1.2 mb disk) *81* Digital Research Gem 1st. Word Plus (1.2 mb disk) *82* Digital Research Gem Desktop (1.2 mb disk) *83* Publisher (1.2 mb disk) 84AB PFS First Choice with graphics 86AB Palisade Corp. @RISK (risk analysis & modeling) *nn* These demos can be run only on a computer with a high density (1.2 meg) floppy drive. -------------------------------- *** MICROSOFT/IBM OS/2 *** by Dave Gillett Newsletter of the Personal Computer Club of Toronto, July/August, 1987 There are four major components of OS/2 which make it more akin to minicomputer and mainframe operating systems than to CP/M and DOS: multi-tasking, windows, data base, and communications. In each case, the enhancement has a cost and users must make a commitment to Microsoft and IBM which may be difficult to change later. Multi-Tasking Multi-tasking systems allow the computer to have several programs active at once. This is not to be confused with DOS, where several programs can be resident at once; when you pop up SideKick during a spreadsheet recalculation in Lotus 1-2-3, all activity in the spreadsheet is placed on hold until you finish with SideKick. A multi-tasking system would simultaneously recalculate while SideKick is in operation. Multi-tasking doesn't work with DOS for two reasons. One reason is it was designed around the assumption of a single program, so if a memory resident program tries to use a DOS function while some other program is using DOS then the machine is confused; it has not way to distinguish which DOS function request came from which program. The other problem is that most of the best commercial software is better because it is able to do things directly with the hardware instead of asking another level of software to interpret what it wants. The most frequent offender is writing to the screen (routines built into the machine are incomplete and intolerably slow); you can imagine what would result if Lotus finished its recalculation and tried to draw a graph all over your SideKick appointment file... A simple multi-tasking system must ensure that no two programs have control of the same device simultaneously. A fancier one allocates portions of devices. For example, different programs may both have files on the hard disk open, but they may not both write to the same file concurrently. The only way this could work is if all programs use the facilities of the operating system to access every device. In designing the 80286 processor, Intel added facilities in the processor (below the level of the operating system) to control memory allocation and to prevent certain types of problems. For instance, if program A was the current owner of the memory on the video adapter, an attempt by program B to write to the screen memory would be trapped by the processor and the operating system could then take whatever action was desired. This might be to save program A's screen, restore a saved program B screen, and let program B try again, this time as owner of the video memory. These features are known collectively as protected mode. Unfortunately, an 80286 in this mode no longer works quite the way an 8088 or 8086 does, and it turns out that DOS has a great deal of trouble using this mode. OS/2 runs entirely in protected mode, and only programs that work with this mode will run under OS/2. Microsoft has defined a set of rules for programmers to follow when writing programs that run under both DOS and OS/2, but OS/2 can only handle one such program at a time and such programs will probably run slower under DOS than others which are not able to run under OS/2. The 80386 includes a feature called virtual 8086 mode, which is fancier than the protected mode of the 80286. DOS programs on the 80386 can each have what appears to the program, as a complete 8086/88 processor with 640K of RAM and its own peripherals. Products like PC-MOS allow multiple copies of DOS, each running its own selection of programs without any interference from any other activity. OS/2 will run on the 80386, but sacrifices some of this power in order to run on the 80286. OS/2 comes closer to using the potential of the 80386 than DOS does to the 80286, but the gap is there and it will cost money. The restriction of OS/2 to allow it to run on the 80286 may be misplaced effort with the production of Intel's processor that has all the features of the 80386 (except for the 32-bit memory bus) and plugs into the same socket as the 80286. Everyone who bought an AT or 80286 accelerator card will be able to plug in a 386-equivalent and run software that takes advantage of it, retaining more DOS compatibility than OS/2 can provide. Windows Some PC programs provide their own window appearance, and others do not. A few products (TopView, DesqView, MS Windows) have tried to provide a general window environment for use with other programs, with limited commercial success. A modified version of MS Windows will be the standard interface for OS/2. Indeed, IBM (who call it the Presentation Manager) are adopting it as the standard interface for their future products all the way up to their mainframe lines. Window programs represent a specific case of the resource access problem cited above: they only really work if ALL of your software uses them. Chances are there's at least one program you're fond of that won't work well with Windows. Window interfaces are possible on PC's because you've got a dedicated processor with nothing better to do than talk to the user. I don't believe that windowing 400 users on a 3090 mainframe will work unless they've all got PC's doing the work. I have to conclude that IBM wants all of its big customers to replace their 3270 terminals with PC/2's. Data Base IBM has a mainframe data base system called DB2, with an associated query language called SQL. The combination provides a high-level data base access facility to application programs; programs written in a variety of languages are all available to use the same data in the same way. A version of this system will be bundled into OS/2, which is likely to make data base systems like dBASEIII+ unnecessary (someone will undoubtedly develop an interpreter which reads dBASEIII+ command files and translates them to call on the appropriate SQL facilities). Communication Connectivity seems to be this year's buzz word. IBM knows that people are frustrated with trying to find ways to connect PC's to their mainframes (people have been complaining for years about difficulties connecting their mainframes to anything!) and so they've decided to solve the problem once and for all. The solution: OS/2 will include, bundled into the operating system, virtually every IBM (and a few industry standard) communications protocol of the last 20 years. The number of choices resulting boggles the mind. If it had been announced with the AT, and the 80386 were not available, then I'd expect all serious software development would be done in that environment by now. But that's not the world of 1987, and I suspect that 386 users will find either PC-MOS and its ilk (multiple DOS) or UNIX more to their liking, and that 286 users who out grow DOS will be able to migrate to the 386 with ease. ONE YEAR LATER ..... as Reported by John McGinley in the July, 1988 issue of CPC, the Monthly Publication of the Connecticut IBM Personal Computer User's Group. More on OS/2: originally it was written to overcome 3 handicaps of DOS, i.e. the 640K limitation, managing hard disks over 32meg, and multitasking. I've just received a test report which makes OS/2 look sick in the latter compared to Unix on the same machines. One article in the Twin Cities User Groups's newsletter suggests OS/2 is DEAD because of Intel's new P9 chip. It is like the 80386 but only uses a 16-bit data path, not unlike the difference between the 8088 and the 8086. Cheaper, it lets 386 software run in 286 machines and may be the chip of choice in the future. You yank out your 286 chip, insert an adapter board and then insert the P9 chip. Remember OS/2 is now only written for 286 chips; the 386 version has not seen the light of day. We could have an OS/3 or OS/386 instead of OS/2 (2 for 286). Also why wait for multitasking OS/2 when Desqview does it right NOW? All of this should give a new lease on life to current AT-type machines. The SLO BYTES Newsletter is a monthly publication of SLO BYTES PC User's Group located in San Luis Obispo, California. Information in this Newsletter is derived from both our own membership and other PC User Group Newsletters. The purpose of this publication is to inform our members of meetings and provide information related to the use of IBM PC's and compatible computers. ---------------------------------- ***** WHAT'S IN MY FILE? ***** BY FRANK AMMLUNG PC Report, Boston Computer Society Newsletter, August 1988 Try this experiment if you are comfortable using BASIC -- enter the following (except for the remarks): 10 Open "O",#1,"TEST.DAT" ' open Test DAT for output 20 A$ = "1234567890" ' A$ is 10 characters 30 FOR K% = 1 TO 10 40 PRINT #1,A$ ' Write 10 records 50 NEXT K% 60 END run OK What do you expect as the result of this experiment? You are creating ten records of ten characters each. That's 100 characters in the file TEST.DAT, right? Wrong! Use the DOS comand DIR, and you will see the following: C>dir test.dat TEST DAT 121 One hundred and twenty-one characters! Where did the additional 21 characters come from? Did we somehow write out two and 1/10 additional records? We can use BASIC again to read back TEST.DAT and tell us what's there (do you think we can trust it?). 10 Open "I",#1,"test.dat" ' open test.dat for input 20 if eof(1) then goto 100 ' check for end of file 30 input#1, stuff$ ' read a record into stuff$ 40 KOUNT% = KOUNT% + 1% ' increment KOUNT% 50 PRINT KOUNT%,STUFF$, LEN(STUFF$) 60 GOTO 20 ' keep reading TEST.DAT 100 END run 1 1234567890 10 2 1234567890 10 3 1234567890 10 4 1234567890 10 5 1234567890 10 6 1234567890 10 7 1234567890 10 8 1234567890 10 9 1234567890 10 10 1234567890 10 Well, does that restore your faith a bit? Ten records with ten characters each, and those are the same characters we wrote to TEST.DAT. Those extra 21 characters? They help a text editor, or BASIC, or your favorite language know when they should stop reading records or files. At the end of every record of TEST.DAT are two extra characters that indicate "end of record". Those two characters are a hexadecimal 0D followed by hexadecimal 0A. The 0D and 0A are also known as "carriage return" and "line feed", respectively. If each record has these extra two characters, then that explains 20 out of the 21 extra characters. The 21st character is an "end of file" marker that is positioned right after the 0D0A of the last record. This character is the hexadecimal 1A, also known as "Ctrl-Z". You won't be able to see these characters using your favorite programming language or text editor. If you want to "peak behind the curtain", you can use DEBUG to load and display the contents of TEST.DAT in hexadecimal. Each "1234567890" record of TEST.DAT will look like "313233323536373839300D0A" in hexadecimal. The ASCII "1" is the hexadecimal "31", ASCII"2" is hexadecimal "32", and so on. I first ran into this mystery about the number of characters several years ago when I wanted to check the number of records one program had created before reading them into another program. When you are writing a file with fixed length records, the number of characters shown with DIR is: (Characters Written + 2) X Number of records + 1 The "2" is for the "0D0A" at the end of each record and the "1" is for the "1A" at the end of the file. So, if you are writing 1000 records of 70 characters each, you will have: (70 +2) X 1000 +1 = 72,001 characters. ------------------------------- *** NEWSLETTER INFORMATION *** Membership: Dues are $18 per year. Newsletter only is $10 per year. Full membership entitles you to our monthly newsletter, full use of the public domain software library and discounts at local computer stores. Article Submission: Deadline for submission of articles is the 15th of each month. Articles should be provided in ASCII format without any type of formatting from your wordprocessor including tabs, indents, extra spaces, or highlighting. We prefer articles on disk but will accept hardcopies if necessary. Disclaimer: Neither SLO BYTES PC User's Group, its officers, editor, or contributors to this newsletter assume liability for damages arising out of this publication of any article, including but not limited to the listing of programming code, batch files and other helpful hints. Reprinting of this Newsletter: Articles from this newsletter may be reprinted by other user groups if credit is given to both the author and newsletter from which it was taken. Reproduction of articles with a specific (C) Copyright notice is prohibited without prior permission from the original author. The SLO BYTES Newsletter is a monthly publication of SLO BYTES PC User's Group located in San Luis Obispo, California. Information in this Newsletter is derived from both our own membership and other PC User Group Newsletters. The purpose of this publication is to inform our members of meetings and provide information related to the use of IBM PC's and compatible computers. Membership: Dues are $18 per year. Newsletter only is $10 per year. Full membership entitles you to our monthly newsletter, full use of the public domain software library and discounts at local computer stores. Article Submission: Deadline for submission of articles is the 15th of each month. Articles should be provided in ASCII format without any type of formatting from your wordprocessor including tabs, indents, extra spaces, or highlighting. We prefer articles on disk but will accept hardcopies if necessary. Disclaimer: Neither SLO BYTES PC User's Group, its officers, editor, or contributors to this newsletter assume liability for damages arising out of this publication of any article, including but not limited to the listing of programming code, batch files and other helpful hints. Reprinting of this Newsletter: Articles from this newsletter may be reprinted by other user groups if credit is given to both the author and newsletter from which it was taken. Reproduction of articles with a specific (C) Copyright notice is prohibited without prior permission from the original author. Advertising: Commercial advertisers, request ad packet from Bob Ward. Members may advertise personal computer equipment or software for free. Submit your ad to Bob Ward. Direct all correspondence to Bob Ward, 2100 Andre Ave., Los Osos, CA. 93402. Call (805)756-2164 M-F 7:30am - 5pm and (805)528-0121 all other times. Treasurer: John Rohde, 1214 Vista Del Lego, San Luis Obispo, CA. 93401 ----------------------------