_ _ The SLO BYTES Newsletter is a monthly publication of SLO BYTES of the Central Coast of California, an IBM personal computer user's group. Information found in this Newsletter comes from magazine articles, other PC user group newsletters, and our own members. The purpose of this publication is to inform our members of meetings, their program content, and other information related to the use of PC's and PC compatable computers. Dues to SLO BYTES are $18 per year. As a member you will receive a membership card, an updated membership list, SLO BYTES monthly newsletter, and free use of our Public Domain Library. Contributors are asked to submit articles for the next issue by the 10th of each month either in writing or on disk. Address all correspondence to SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP, % Bob Ward, 2100 Andre' Ave., Los Osos, Ca. 93402. Have a computer related item to sell? Tell the editor and we will put it in our newsletter. For further inforation call Bob Ward @ (805)528-0121 eves. ***************************************************************** Meetings are held the 4th Thursday of every month at 6:15 pm. Location is Cal Poly University, Biology's Science North, Room 313. ***************************************************************** _ _ ** If you're a Dysan floppy disk fan, check out the special marked boxes of 10 diskettes which include the free Boardroom Graphics Software program. Boardroom Graphics turns your spreadsheet data into 3-D graphs, bar graphs, line charts, and scattergrams. The manufacturer of Verbatim Datalife disks are not to be outdone by Dysan as they are giving away a free pocket calculator on their special boxes of 10 diskettes. I checked all the breakfast cereal packages at the store and didn't find a give-a-way that even came close to either of the above. ** Ray Miklas is still working on his 2 Genealogy programs. Rumor has it that he combined the 2 programs with some fancy programming and now he has 34 children. Good luck on getting IRS to believe you Ray ** Thanks to Byron Smith, John Rhode almost has his 5000 mailing labels transferred to PC FILE III. A case of perseverance finally paying off ! ** I hear that Rick Racouillat was leaning over his computer the other day when his tie was sucked into one of the disk drives. He now has 56 K of correspondance on the back of his tie and his wife's receipes on the front. I wonder if Norton Utilities can "fix" this problem. Help Byron! Good thing it wasn't a bow tie. ** Did Dick Trueman ever received his AT&T computer from the Cal Poly bookstore? Hope he gets it in time for the holidays. It's been over 6 weeks now or is that 2 months? But then yours truly ordered an IBM from same & has been waiting 2 1/2 weeks for an IBM monitor. It reminds me of buying a new car without tires. I wonder what this newsletter would look like if I used a computer without a monitor? ** The PC mouse out in Los Osos just told me that one of our new members, Wanda Hoagland, just purchased new computer furniture for her soon to be purchsed Compaq. Your making some of us "primatives" jealous Wanda. I know of one member who uses an old board between 2 bricks as a computer stand. ** Did you know that Chris Thyrring finally got his PC working again. First it was the disk drive controller board -- repaired under warranty (Whew!) then the Muthor Board -- not under warranty (Ouch!!). He said he wouldn't turn the computer off for 90 days, the extent of the new board warranty. Anyone taking bets on day 91? At least we could give him the large digital clock program so his PC would still be doing something during the off hours. Good luck Chris !! ** Hopefully by the next meeting, Morgan Enterprises (French - Surge Supressor - Morgan) will have a great product to demonstrate. If you have never seen a "MOVIT", pronounced MOVE- IT, you have a new experience in store. We saw these little "creatures" at the Comdex show in L.A. last winter. Some are sold as "kits" and some are ready to go right out of the box. Many are programmable with your computer using the RS 232 port. A cross between R2D2 and 3CPO (for you Starwars fans), they follow lines drawn on the floor, avoid objects, draw on paper, and respond to sound. In fact the top of the line has a voice recognition synthizer and can remember a command vocabulary of over 100 words as well as grasp objects carrying them from one point to another. Prices range from $25 to $100 with the Cadillac of the group going for $300. ** No fool'n guys & gals, weve found a real live bulletin board located in SLO. Other than the telephone number, I have no information about it. Rev up your modem, access the bulletin board, & let us know what it's all about at the next meeting. *** The number is 541-3358 *** ** I just heard of IBM's answer to a portable computer. A new company called TAG-A-LONG, founded by Willy Heel, has a PC converter kit to make any PC a portable. The hardware consists of: 1 6' rope 1 eye bolt 4 casters 1 tube epoxy cement 1 baggage handle The easy to follow directions show how to install the handle on top of the monitor while gluing its bottom to the top of the computer. The eye bolt, rope, & casters can be added later. This is especially helpful while transporting your "portable" in airline terminals. For an extra $6.75 you can purchse a "klack- klack" and a label that says "FIDO" to put on the back of the monitor. ***************************************************************** _ _ During our last meeting, Matt Whittlesey displayed a few of Framework's many attributes. This is a powerful integrated software package that uses "frames" to store and display data and text. By the size and complexity of this program, we could spend may hours learning its finer characteristics. Our many thanks to Matt for giving us a "taste" of Framework at the last meeting. At this coming meeting Byron Smith and yours truly will be demonstrating our favorite little word processor, PC-WRITE, Version 2.5. You ask, "What can I really get for $10 or free through public domain, in a word processor ?" Well, for one thing you get an on-disk manual of over 135 pages, a variety of help screens and many functions found on larger, more expensive word processors. Byron will start by describing and displaying some of the more fundamental parts of PC-WRITE, including ruler set-ups, help menus, right margin justification, marking and moving blocks of text, and importing text from another file. I will finish the presentation by demonstrating PC-WRITE'S latest addition with version 2.5, Mail Merge. This program works very nicely with PC- FILE III for extracting data and merging it with text. Future versions around the first of the year, will include a spelling checker and dictionary. PC-WRITE can be found in our P.D. library as disk # 96. ***************************************************************** _ _ Please note your mailing label found on this newsletter. In the upper right corner you will find a month and year. This is your renewal date for membership. Some of the luckier members will find a 2 letter abbreviation followed by an *. These individuals were kind enough to come to our meeting and give us a presentation of a computer product they manufacture or software they developed. They will receive the newsletter and all other benefits of membership to the month listed on their mailing label. Remember an updated membership list is on disk and in the front of the P.D. software disk holders. Type "go" to run it. New members this month include: ** Wanda Hoagland ** 528-6131 ** Steve LaMarine ** 489-5583 We are happy to have you as members and fellow computer enthusiasts. Keep your cursor blinking and your disk drives humming. ***************************************************************** _ _ New public domain disks for November and December. SLO # 107, 108, 109, 110 from Potomac Pacific Engineering. DATABASE OF STEEL A four disk package written in BASIC which contains the following: DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM -- Accounting -- Payroll -- Inventory PROGRAMMABLE RELATIONAL -- Report generator -- Tax Tables -- subfile generator -- Form Generator -- Customizable Screens SPREADSHEET -- 21 ways to calculate numbers -- Graphics, Bar charts -- Automatic recalculation EXPERT SYSTEM INFERENCE ENGINE -- Detects Contradictory Evidence -- Accepts Unknown Input -- Diagnosis of Multiple Problems (This is probably not a program for the beginner) ***************************************************************** Our secret message, now worth 15 free disks has not been found - yet. Remember it is a message implanted on a disk between #80 and #90. If you run the software, you probably will find it. Blood hound Smith did say he is hot on the trail after finding a deleted file, on one of the disks, which was a small part of the message. Unfortunately for him, the creator of this message anticipated snoopy's ways and placed several "dead-ends" on different disks. Good luck Byron & others. Time is running out. The updated P.D. file directory is found in the front of each binder. Copy it every meeting to keep up to date. Everything in the binders is printed from the disk. Note: Last meeting one of our P.D. disks "died" of tetanus. There was a puncture wound on the disk itself. Please make sure the disks are immediately placed back in their respective sleaves when you are finished copying them. Of course there is a happy ending to the story. Our back-up disk saved the day. Please report problems with copying any disk to me at the meeting. ***************************************************************** _ _ by Carole Larsen As I worked through some programming problems in dBase III, I often found the user manual to be lacking specific details on how to really accomplish what I wanted to do. Then I found Understanding and Using dBase II and III written by Rob Krumm and published by Brady Communications Company, Inc. The cost is around $20.00. This book has been useful in explaining the new features found in dBase III, especially when working with multiple files and merging for special reports. The program examples of custom-designed reports and labels were great, and I was able to utilize some of the features in my reports. This book is helpful for someone just beginning to learn about dBase programming and for the more experienced user. I recommend it! (Editor' note) There has been an interest in starting up the dBase SIG again by Carole, French and others after the first of the year. Lets discuss meeting times at the next meeting. ***************************************************************** _ _ November 20th - 24th Comdex Fall Computer Show - Las Vegas November 28th Thanksgiving - meeting CANCELLED December 12th Regular meeting Nov. - Dec. combined Smith/Ward PC-WRITE December 26th Regular meeting CANCELLED January 22nd Secret message contest ends January 23rd Regular meeting *****************************************************************