SLO BYTES NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY, 1989 What's New By Bob Ward The last meeting started with myself giving a short demonstration of the advantages and disadvantages of using EDLIN. Several of EDLIN's functions were shown. The main point of discussion was "why use such a cumbersome editor." We all know there are several small editors in public domain and shareware libraries that run rings around EDLIN. But, you can ALWAYS depend on EDLIN being available should you need a line editor while using someone elses computer. This is assuming that the computer has a full set of DOS files on or near the computer. That's the main reason I use it, pure and simple, it's always there should I not have my other favorite editor handy. No, it's not a desktop publishing package, nor would I write a letter with it, but it's great when editing small text and BATCH files. See the accompanying article briefly describing many functions of EDLIN. After a short intermission, allowing the troops to regroup for the general meeting, we jumped headlong into the topic of graphics with our President, George Campbell, demonstrating Dr. Halo III. Unfortunately many of Dr. Halo's great graphic functions could not be adequately displayed on our overhead projection system. CGA and what's projected on the overhead screen just don't make it with some programs and this was one of them. George was able to show enough of Halo's graphic capabilities to get many people interested, though. Perhaps someday the club will be outfitted with a 386 laptop and an EGA color overhead projection system. Anyone for raising the dues? Donations?? This coming month George and I are switching places, and I will be demonstrating a software package from TouchStone Software Corporation called CheckIt. This is a diagnostic software package that thoroughly tests all your computer hardware components and reports any problems. It will even pinpoint a single RAM chip that is bad. I will have several brochures for those interested. Remember the new SIG. If you are interested in BASIC programming visit Fisher Hall 465 at 1:30. George Tway will be leading the BASIC special interest group. News From Our Library Bits n' Bytes * Two months ago an individual inadvertently took home SEVERAL library disks. After finding his mistake, he later called George and said he would bring them by in a couple days. We don't remember his name but know he's from Los Osos. If you are reading this please return the disks to George immediately so we can place them back in the Library. * Those interested in the BASIC language SIG (special interest group), remember to meet in Fisher Hall 465 at 1:30. You may take the elevator in the center of the building. The room is on the same end of the building as the general meeting downstairs. The SIG leader who is well versed in BASIC is George Tway. * We are kicking around the idea of starting a BATCH FILE SIG if we can find a leader knowledgeable in the subject. Any volunteers? We need someone who can write complex files using high level BATCH file language. * We would be interested in knowing how many members DO NOT have 5.25" floppy disk drives on their computer. Although may hands went up at the last meeting when we asked how many individuals had 3.5" drives, I suspect the majority also have a 5.25" drive. If you have only 3.5" drives drop me (Bob Ward) a note or call me. If the demand calls for it we will supply a 3.5" external drive on one of the PC's for copying library disks. * Pat Farley is still looking for the person who picked up his PC-SIG catalog at the January meeting. It's hard to miss, so please look through your computer materials. * We have several discount coupons for PC Magazine. Ask for one at the meeting. PC World has decided to do the same and will be sending us a large number of coupons soon, hopefully before the next meeting. * WordPerfect is offering user groups a special discount on their monthly WordPerfect Magazine. A one year subscription is $12, a $3 savings to each subscriber. We need a minimum of 25 people interested in purchasing a subscription. All money will be handled through the club. * Fisher Hall tends to be cold at times during our meetings. The heat is turned off on the weekends as an energy conservation measure. To get it turned on just for our meetings requires red tape you wouldn't believe. If it looks cold on a meeting day, dress accordingly. March 5th Bob Ward will demonstrate CheckIT, a computer diagnostic software package from TouchStone Software Corporation. DOS 4.0 - An Excedrin Headache ! By Gus Thomasson, SLO BYTES PC User's Group As some of the more sensitive and attuned of you might have intoned from my subtle remarks regarding the obtuse operating systems with which we PC users must deal, Microsoft is not held in particularly high regard. But now they've really gone and done it. First, they gave us the 640k barrier, then the 32 megabyte limit, next came the 8 letter limit on file names, but NOOOOOO! that wasn't enough. The coup de gras has to be DOS 4.0 or 4.01 or what ever version it's up to is this week. But I'm getting ahead of my story. You see it's sort of my job to be on the cutting edge of technology. Yup, I was the guy what bought the first Edsel. The first on my block to have a 386 and now the first to have actually survived the complete and totally automated actual installation of the new and improved DOS 4.01 Well, I had heard the thing could look at an 80 megabyte hard disk as a single disk without partitioning into several lesser disks, and that it had a rather nice graphics interface. I should have realized the omen when the package contained not two, or three, or four but five disks. An install disk, a select disk, a shell disk and 3 other bizarre and strange operation disk containing things I don't even want to discuss with nice people. Now lets see insert the install disk into A: and type install? No! No! No! Too straight forward. Try inserting the install disk and typing SELECT. Ah yes, the program prompts for the select disk, Why didn't they ask for it in the first place. Just wanted to see if I had the other I guess. Perhaps there are too many disks in the world so we have to do some thing with them. Have you ever noticed that disks are somewhat like socks, basically solitary things which have a distinct distaste for jackets; something to do with entropy I suspect. In any event the select disk which was supposed to boot the system under the new system did just that.... boot after boot after boot. Basically the only way I could get the system up and running was to boot under 3.3 then do a SYS command. This unfortunately only allowed me to format under 3.3 hence no 80meg drive. Or for that matter any other 4.0 specific function. The interface was nice, totally mouse operated and fairly intuitive. The thing introduced enough overhead to prevent many RAM intensive programs from running but you could exit the shell to run them. I'm becoming too emotional to go on! I,m turning in my DOS master's certificate and go live in a cave somewhere. I wonder if I could get stable power in there with phone service? EDLIN - A List of Commands [line] - edit line designated. Places an * before line to be edited. C - [line],[line],line[,count]C - copies lines in specific range to the line number specified. D - [line][,line]D - deletes lines within range specified E - ends EDLIN editing session while saving changes Q - quits editing session without saving changes I - [line]I - insert lines just before current line designated L - [line][,line]L - list lines between given range M - [line][,line],lineM - moves range of lines just ahead of 3rd line given R - [line][,line][?] R [string][string] - replaces all occurances of string one with string 2 S - [line][,line][?] S [string] - searches a specified range to locate specific string. Another undocumented "trick": when editing an existing line after calling it up with the line number, use your right arrow key to duplicate the line from left to right to a point where you want to make the changes. WHERE'S THE DIRECTORY? by Lynn L Kauer Saginaw Valley Computer Association A couple of times in the past months I have received a call from someone with the question, "I just erased all the files from my hard disk. (Panic) How can I get them back?" It can be done with utility software like Mace Utilities or PC Tools. However, if the user would develop one habit it would relieve him (her) of much grief. THE MISTAKE: Assume that you are in the process of clearing some floppy disks that you want to copy some other files onto. The easiest way to clear them is to use the ERASE command. But just to be safe you want to look at what is on the floppy disk before you erase it. This is where the problems start. The following is how to effectively screw up and erase data from your hard disk quicker than you can pucker while suckin' on a lemon. Mistake Step #1: When logged into a directory of drive C the lazy, and most dangerous, way to look at the files in drive A is to type the command DIR A: This command shows the user what files are on the floppy in drive A. Unfortunately the user is still in drive C ! What the command really says is "Without leaving the directory I am in on drive C I want to look at what is in drive A. (The same problems can occur on dual floppy drive systems if you are in drive A and issue the command DIR B: ). Mistake Step #2: After looking at the files displayed you verify that they are indeed not wanted and issue the command ERASE *.* or DEL *.*. Additionally you answer (Y)es to the prompt "Are you sure ?" Tragedy has struck. You just erased all the files from your hard disk in the directory that you were logged into! The ERASE or DEL command was really directed to the drive and directory you were logged into. In this case, a sub- directory of drive C. THE RIGHT WAY: Forget the shortcut DIR A: command. It's a bad habit to get into. Take the time to log into the floppy drive BEFORE issuing the DIR command. Use the following commands: CD \A: (This tells the computer to change the directory from its current location to the root directory of drive A ). (For floppy drives issue the command B: to change to the root directory of drive B) Now that you are logged into the floppy drive you can safely issue the DIR command and erase at your pleasure. The trick is to log in to the drive you want to do maintenance on. LaserMenu by Mark Heyman, SLO BYTES PC User's Group Laser Menu by MicroLogic is of little use to computer users who have a word processor that has multi-font/document capability and supports the Laserjet format. It does allow one to manipulate fonts, download fonts, send control codes, and emulate various printers. Usually, the word processor provides better control. I tried to send a "1B45" which is the reset command for the HP class of laser printers and it selected the auxiliary paper tray and it ejected an envelope! It should have deselected the auxiliary paper tray and reset the printer. I personally would not recommend this product. It occupies 70K of memory once installed, intercepts output destined for the printer port, and offers little in the way of easy control. This package might be valuable to one who has older word processing software that does a poorly supports laser printers. COMPUTERUS CONFUSICUS Patrick J. Smith Utah Blue Chips Newsletter, November, 1988 You're probably aware that the microcomputer industry has developed its own technical terminology as a way of distinguishing the experts from the typical ignoramuses. Doctors and lawyers do the same thing. They attempt to shift a common mundane conversation to a level so complicated that you can't get along without their expertise. Your latissimus dorsi has an inflamed prima facia habeas corpus. Likewise, in the PC industry, if you want to talk intelligently about PC's, you have to have a firm grasp on the terminology. As opposed to Latin, the PC industry loves numbers and acronyms. "My IBM 286 has 1.2K RAM, 40 meg hard disk, 360k floppies, 20 Mhz CPU, 2400B modem, and an EGA. Another sign of an expert is that he doesn't call his PC a PC. He calls it his machine, somehow endowing it with more power and features than everybody else's, which are just toys. A long, long time ago (about three or four years), if someone talked to us in microcomputer lingo, or computerese, we were either bored or impressed (or both), but we almost never had the slightest idea what they were talking about and we weren't ashamed or embarrassed to say so. We might have walked by a group of technical types when one of them was telling the punch-line of a joke: "... and then he said, 'that wasn't a duck, that was an IBM 286!'" --and everybody except us roared with laughter. But, the good thing about several years ago was that most people unfamiliar with computers never led anyone to believe otherwise. A typical dialogue went like this: I just bought a new personal computer. Oh, really? An IBM? Of course, what else? Is it pretty powerful? Oh yeah; it's got an 8088 chip running at 4.77 megahertz with 256k on the motherboard and CGA color graphics. Uh, I don't know much about computers, but one of these days, I've got to learn how to use one of those things. But nowadays, PC's are more universally accepted not only as the domain of the technical and nerd types, but also as an important tool for the manager and the executive. Nobody would disagree with this assessment. However, many of us still don't know anything about PC's. The difference now is that instead of admitting that we're PC illiterate, and risking embarrassment by being ignorant about a now-common business tool, we try to fake it. That's right. We listen, and nod, and go along with conversations about PC's without having the slightest idea of what they're talking about. The dialogue now goes like this: I just bought a new PC. Oh, really? What kind? A LugWeight ProDesk Turbo XLGT WYSIWYG. I've heard those are pretty powerful machines. Hey, it's a screamer. It's a '386 with VGA, running at 30 Megahertz and I've got a 160 Meg. drive and 1.44 Meg. floppies. I've been thinking of getting one of those myself. In both cases, we had no idea what the other guy was talking about. But nowadays we'll lose face if we let on that we don't know a 40 Meg. drive from a 300-yard drive on the par 5. Some people will go one step further. They'll initiate the conversation, trying to use all of the PC lingo on others even though they don't even know what they're talking about. They just hope the other guy doesn't know either. I'm thinking of buying a PC. What kind? Hey, it's got the 8088286386 chip running at at least 100 Megabucks with the EGA, VGA, PGA, and NBA, 40 MAG SeaWorld, and a 20 MAG floppy drive. To take this conversation one step further into the lunacy zone, you just need to get two people talking, neither of whom knows what he's talking about, but both go along as though what they're saying is mutually familiar. This soon becomes a spectator sport at its best. Board Name Sysop's Name Phone # Baud Rate(s) System ---------------------- ----------------- -------- ------------- ------------ SLO Bytes BBS George Campbell 528-3753 300/1200/2400 WildCat! Cygnus X-1 BBS Daniel Durbin 541-8505 300/1200/2400 Perspective The Message Center Jim Tinlin 489-1966 300/1200 MC*BBS C64 The Hot LZ 543-8457 300/1200/2400 WWIV-IBM Dark Side of the Moon Kevin Criqui 544-5419 300/1200 Genisis Sword Of Shanara Marcos Della 544-0666 300/1200/2400 DMG*BBS Computer Logic BBS Matt Kaney 544-5863 300/1200/2400 QuickBBS CLUB BBS (C. Logic #2) Brian Archambeault 489-8262 300/1200/2400 QuickBBS The Conservative BBS Scott Peterson 543-3240 300/1200/2400 WildCat! Amiga/PC Connection Daniel Durbin 489-6714 ---/1200/2400 WildCat! SLO Apple Users Group Earnst Baros 528-4958 300/1200/2400 Red Ryder Pentode BBS Dale Williams 549-9104 300/1200/2400 (WWIV-Mac) Central Coast Amiga Tony Selyem 543-9386 300/1200 Opus SLO Pokes Larry Shepard 481-9603 300/1200 Express Tower of High Sorcery Raistlin Majere 937-4492 300/1200 MC*BBS Treasure Chest BBS 937-0245 CCCUG BBS 834-2216 New Members A big WELCOME to our new members. For those of you new to computing you will find your new users manual valuable. Read it thoroughly and use it with your computer, and of course, bring your questions to the next meeting. Ralph Allison 528-7114 Jim Buenrostro 544-4643 Harvey Haefer 773-5114 Jason Haines 528-0827 Mark Heyman 528-1146 Roger Lachance 481-9569 Walter MacPhee 466-5363 Norman Maxwell 239-3044 Effie & G.D. McDermott 773-4854 Joye Naley 239-4104 Samuel Nunes 489-2011 Phil Persons 772-5503 Salley Ross 544-1745 Allyn Schultz 595-7615 Doris Searey 489-3123 Nils Sedwick 544-5317 The following individuals have expired memberships. Please send a check to Bob Ward or Teri Sorgatz before March 1st if you wish your membership to remain in force. Paul Chinowsky Zorus Colglazier Myer L.Crumb Dorthy Gardner Patrick Gerety Scott Greenaway Alison Henry Herbert Kaler David J. Martines David Mulvey Tom O'Malley Rick Racouillat Suzanna-Marie Sarasvati Irene Saurwein George Trigueiro Phil Wagner Erin Wirtz PC TOOLS Deluxe version 5 or Mice, Mice, here come the Mice By French Morgan, SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP Two impressions first come to mind. First, PC Tools Deluxe has grown since its introduction years ago as PC Tools. It is now issued on 4 5 1/4" DSDD diskettes (2 3 1/2" DSDD diskettes are included as a bonus). Secondly, as the Macintosh and IBM worlds merge, both are sharing strengths, especially user interfaces utilizing a mouse. While all features are still under keyboard control, the addition of a mouse makes PC Tools Deluxe almost seamless and a joy to use. To encourage the use of a mouse, Central Point Software is offering a serial or bus mouse at $39 or $49 respectively, plus $5 shipping. Features Abound As Central Point Software has listened to their customers over the years, PC Tools Deluxe has added powerful features to their latest version. Briefly, the list includes: 1) PC SHELL, a DOS shell which may be memory resident and integrates the best of the DOS 4.0 SHELL, NORTON Utilities' Advanced, and XTREE PRO and uses as little as 10K of RAM. 2) DESKTOP has 9 separate applications, which may include up to 15 resident notepads, 3 calculators (financial, algebraic, programmers), spelling checker, dBASE compatible database management with autodial for the telecommunication section (with background communication), appointment scheduler, ASCII table, macro processor (like SUPERKEY, PROKEY, or SMARTKEY), mailmerge, outlining, and a clipboard. All of this with as little as 40K of RAM and memory resident. 3) PC SECURE, an encryption/decryption program with compression on facility (like ARC or PKARC) to secure confidential data and/or just save files in a "dehydrated" form to save disk space. 4) MIRROR, which safely copies your valuable system tables and directories in a safe place. In case your harddisk or floppy disk 'crashes', then REBUILD can re-vitalize the disk and return all files and directories (even fragmented files) to their lasted "MIRRORED" condition. Deleted files can be restored as well, automatically. 5) PC FORMAT can now safely format all DOS disk drives. It allows for easy recovery of accidentally formatted disks or diskettes. 6) COMPRESS will backup to any DOS device like the Bernoulli Boxes and optionally do so in ASCII / file-image format of the fast DMA format. COMPRESS will also analyze any disk, move data and/or lock-out clusters/sectors of defective media. 7) PC CACHE, which is a faster, more flexible cacheing program than earlier versions. It allows apparent faster and safe access to harddisks. Memory is written to disk when the user pauses during computer interaction. PC Tools Deluxe supports and uses extended and expanded memory to enhance its use and performance. This new version has been rewritten from the ground up. It is more than a simple upgrade. The manual has grown from roughly 50 pages to 527 indexed pages! While the program does resemble PC Tools Deluxe of old in many areas, there have been major improvements. Integration has been a key as well as the addition of the mouse interface with drop down menus. Because of its power, PC Tools Deluxe should be run on a harddisk, but can run on a floppy disk. It runs on IBM PC, XT, AT and compatibles, PS/2 models, and the PCjr. A minimum of 512K RAM is recommended, along with any monitor. Color is adjustable throughout the various menus. This is a program that excels in nearly all areas and has little competition. For the price, it's a basic tool that every computer needs - the ole 'Swiss Army Knife' of computer users. Prices can be found from $39 to $79. Look for specials and don't be without it! Also look for the Macintosh version. STARLINK - a PC Pursuit Alternative The following message was downloaded from USENET BBS service. The list of cities was deleted. STARLINK is an alternative to PC Pursuit. You can call 91 cities in 28 states during off-peak hours (7pm-6am and all weekend) for $1.50 per hour. All connections through the Tymnet network are 2400 bps (1200 bps works too) with no surcharge and there are no maximum hours or other limitations. There is a one time charge of $50 to signup and a $10 per month account maintenance fee. High volume users may elect to pay a $25 per month maintenance fee and $1.00 per hour charge. The service is operated by Galaxy Telecomm in Virginia Beach, VA and users may sign up for the service by modem at 804-495-INFO. You will get 30 minutes free access time after signing up. This is a service of Galaxy and not TYMNET. Galaxy buys large blocks of hours from TYMNET. To find out what your local access number is you can call TYMNET at (800) 336-0149 24 hours per day. Don't ask them questions about rates, etc., as they don't know. Call Galaxy instead. Galaxy says they will soon have their own 800 number for signups and information. STARLINK is a service of Galaxy Telecomm Division, GTC, Inc., the publishers of BBS Telecomputing News, Galaxy Magazine and other electronic publications. News From Our Library The following programs have been added to our library during the month of February: #304 - C Compiler. Yes folks a real shareware compiler for the C language. Written by the brother of a member of our club. #305 - Managex, a small business manager. Receipts, disbursements, accounting, and much more. Disk 1 of 2 #306 - Managex, Disk 2 of 2 #307 - Dataplot, a 2 dimensional graphic program for scientific and engineering applications. Graphics required. #308 - PKZIP/PKUNZIP Ver 0.9, Phil Katz new archive utility. His replacement for PKARC/PKXARC. Our library will continue to use the old PKARC/PKXARC utility for squeezing its files. #309 - Utilities; HDDIAG, hard disk maintenance & low level formatter; BCOPY, copy files in the background of another program; CONFRMT, formats disks in background; DERASE will unerase deleted files, and many other utilities. #310 - TTT is a great typing tutor program. BENCHTOP, a graphically oriented menuing system for running any program. UPDATES: #280 - TUTOR.ARC updated to Ver 4.4 #292 - ACS IN-CONTROL disk 1 #293 - ACS IN-CONTROL disk 2 SLO BYTES SUPPORTS 3.5" FLOPPY DISKS Because of the large number of members who now have 3.5" floppy drives, the club is in the process of purchasing a computer with a 5.25" "A" drive and a 3.5" 720K "B" drive. The computer will be set up like the others with DISKCOPY A: B: only. Using this command will make a 360K single sided, 3.5" duplicate on drive B: from the 5.25" floppy in drive A. We will NOT provide library disks on 3.5" format. The library will remain on 5.25"/360K disks only. At this time we will not provide the 3.5" unformatted disks for sale at the meetings. You must bring your own 3.5"/720K disks if this is the format you wish to use. This computer is provided mostly for those members who have PS/2's with ONLY a 3.5" disk drive. If you have a standard 5.25" floppy drive, use one of the other machines. This computer, being an XT, will NOT take the high density 1.44 MEG 3.5" disks. You must use 720K disks only! This computer will have 640K memory, and providing no one needs to use it for copying on to the 3.5" format, will be available for diskcopy to 5.25 floppies. We will have a DISKCOPY A: A: command on the menu for this purpose. Those with 3.5" disks will get priority on using this computer. Unfortunately, this purchase will not add another computer to the library. The Biology department is dedicating one of the PC's we used at the meetings to a campus mainframe. Therefore we will still have only 4 PC/XT's for copying, and the COMPAQ portable for locating files in our library. ON COMPLEXITY, NUMBER 14 By Jim Hoisington, North Texas PCUG Republished by The Bug Report, July, 1988 A lot of people are confused about the difference between Expanded and Extended memory. I'll try to explain the difference and give some advice on which you need. Extended memory can only exist on machines with the 80286 or 80386 processors. The original IBM PC will never have Extended memory because the 8088 processor can't use it. Extended memory is just more memory above the 1 megabyte limit. Since the 80286 can address up to 16 magabytes of memory in protected mode (the 80386 can address even more), programs which run in protected mode will want to use some of that space. Until recently, most software ran the 80286 and 80386 processors in "real" mode. However, OS/2 users will need between 4 and 8 megabytes of memory for their software by the end of 1989. And that additional memory will be Extended memory. Expanded memory was originally invented to help the 8088 based PC's use more memory than they were capable of addressing. This same system also works on the 80286 and 80386 processors when they are running in "real" mode. Expanded memory creates one or more windows below the 640K limit on the PC. The software can then put some data into a window and tell the Expanded memory board to store it in a "page." When it wants the data back, it tells the Expanded memory board to fetch the page and put it back into the window where the 8088 processor can use it. The number of pages is determined by the amount of memory on the Expanded memory board. By shuffling data in and out of these windows, the program can keep more information in the computer than will fit into 640Kb. It is clumsy but the alternative is to keep the information in a disk(ette) file. The memory to memory transfers between the windows to and from the fastest disk drives. A problem with Expanded memory is that not everybody agreed on the size and the number of the windows. The original design was a joint effort by Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft Corporations. In computerese, this became the LIM specification by using the first letter of each designers corporate name. The expanded memory part got abbreviated to EMS which stands for Expanded Memory System. AST Corporation, which was not a part of the original design, improved upon it and came out with its own standard called EEMS - Enhanced Expanded Memory System. Last year all the major memory board makers got together and improved the design one last time. This final specification is usually designated LIM 4.0. Boards made to this standard are just coming on the market as of the middle of 1988. However, I am not aware of any software that makes use of its enhancements. Over the next three years we will probably see software that takes advantage of both Expanded and Extended memory. After all, there are all those PC's out there with 8088 processors that have no other way to get access to more memory. However, as OS/2 and other "protected" mode operating systems come into common use on the 80286 and 80386 machines, I have to believe that software developers will abandon the page swapping mode of Expanded memory for the "just more memory" mode of Extended memory. Do you need Expanded memory? Only if you are going to be running a product like Lotus 1-2-3 or Ventura Publisher 2.0 which can make use of all of it. Do you need Extended Memory? If you have a PC or PC clone, certainly not. If you have a computer with an 80286 or 80386 processor, you will eventually need more memory than 1 megabyte. Some of us will need it sooner than others. I am writing this column on my AT clone. It has 1 megabyte of memory on the motherboard. I have added an AST Rampage card with 2 megabytes. I have divided the memory on the card so that I have 512Kb of Extended memory and 1.5 megabytes of Expanded memory. Are you thoroughly confused? I know I am! THE INTERLEAVE FACTOR By Dave Bushong New York Amateur CC Reprinted from the Space Coast PCUG Newsletter Most hard disks in PC's have an "interleave value" from 1 to 7. This value represents the spacing between groups of data on your hard disk. These groups of data are called sectors. Your hard disk system reads or writes data on the disk itself as the disk spins. The disk spins at a constant rate. It is similar to the way a record player works. The head moves from the edge to the center and the disk spins at a constant rate. Your computer cannot always accept (or supply) the data fast enough for the disk drive. In such a case, the hard disk system causes your computer to wait until the place for that data comes around again. This takes a little under seventeen thousandths of a second. If your computer is not able to accept each sector as it comes by, you will notice that the performance of your system is slow. To improve its performance, computer manufacturers shuffle the sectors so that the first one that is requested is seldom located next to the second one, the second one is seldom next to the third one, and so on. You could visualize this by cutting a pizza into seven slices. Using a tag, number each one. Now change their positions so that none are next to a piece that it originally had as a neighbor. If you evenly shuffled them, you might have the arrangement of "1-5-2-6-3-7-4." In this case, the interleave factor is two, since the distance from piece number 1 to piece number 2 is two. Right after you cut the pizza, when they were numbered "1-2-3-4-5-6-7," the interleave was one. If you arrange the pieces "1-6-4-2-7-5-3," the interleave would be three. The hard disk interleave is performed just like this, but with seventeen slices instead of seven. As the distance between numbered sectors increase, your computer has more time to process the data in each sector. The manufacturer finds the point where there is enough time to process each sector, but not so much time that the computer is waiting too long for each sector to arrive at the read/write head.