SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP NEWSLETTER April, 1988 CLUB INFORMATION The SLO BYTES Newsletter is a monthly publication of SLO BYTES of the Central Coast of California (San Luis Obispo) an IBM/compatible personal computer user's group. Information found in this Newsletter is derived from magazine articles, manuals, books, 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 IBM-PC's and compatible computers. Dues to SLO BYTES are $18 per year. Newsletter only is $10 per year. As a member you will receive a membership card, a new member manual, SLO BYTES monthly newsletter, and free use of our Public Domain Library. Contributors are asked to submit articles for the next issue by the 15th of each month either in writing or on disk (ASCII format preferred). Address all correspondence to SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP, % Bob Ward, 2100 Andre' Ave., Los Osos, Ca. 93402. Phone 8am-5pm 756-2164, after 5pm - (805)528-0121. Other user's groups have permission to publish any material found in this newsletter. Treasurer: John Rohde 1214 Vista Del Lego San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 Have a computer related item to sell? Tell the editor and we will put it in our newsletter. For further information call Bob Ward @ (805)528-0121 eves. ****************************************************** ****************************************************** Meetings are held the 1st Thursday of every month, unless noted otherwise in the newsletter calendar, at 7:15 pm. New users SIG 6:15 to 7:00 pm. Meeting place: Cal Poly University Biology Department, Science North 213 (new users SIG) & 215 General meeting. ****************************************************** DI$COUNT$-DI$COUNT$-DI$COUNT$-DI$COUNT$-DI$COUNT$ Discounts usually apply only to regularly priced merchandise. Ask a salesman to make sure. You must present your membership card to receive a discount. Paradise Computers 5% - all computers, peripherals, 441 Marsh St. and software. San Luis Obispo 10% - Ribbons, paper, disks & 544-7127 other expendable items. Star Computers 5% - any software in stock. 655 Morro Bay Blvd. Morro Bay 10% - paper, ribbons, cable & 772-7827 other supplies. Computer Logic 10% - off list - all computers, 973 Foothill Blvd. software, computer periphe- Store #4 rals and products. Contact San Luis Obispo Bruce, Paul, or Dave for 544-8347 your discount. WITCO Computers 10% off complete systems. 3563 Sueldo, 5% off computers alone Building B 10% off already discounted San Luis Obispo peripherals, & supplies but 549-0811 not including software. FISBOSA Systems 10% - off packaged systems, soft- 3121 S. Higuera, F ware &/or peripherals when San Luis Obispo purchased with system. Con- 549-9027 tact Lynne Boisen. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ====================================================== || || || || || FLOPPY DISKS 4-SALE || || || || @ || || || || THE MEETING || || || || DSDD UNFORMATTED SYNCOM GENERIC 360K || || with labels, tabs, and tyvek sleeves || || || || 1-9 ....... $.75 || || 10+ ....... $.70 || || || || HIGH DENSITY DISKS 1.2 MEG ...... $1.10 ea || || || || NEW LIBRARY DISKS ......... $.90 ea || || || || Epson Ribbons (MX,FX) || || Narrow - $3.00 || || || ====================================================== $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ TREASURER'S REPORT John Rohde, treasurer, reported the following income & expenses for the month of March, 1988: Beginning Balance: $ 2385.27 Income: $ 636.50 Interest: $ 40.13 General Expenses: $ -550.43 Demo Computer: $-1237.00 ========= Ending Balance: $ 1274.47 Current Membership: 171 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ COMINGS & GOINGS At the last meeting the membership overwhelmingly voted for a second computer... A Compaq portable with a hard disk for our demonstrations. This will be a great addition to our club and should last us until the 486 or 586 machines make their debut sometime in the 1990's. George, our president, presided over the new user's forum starting at 6:15pm. The topic of discussion was our new bulletin board. With the aid of overhead transparencies he showed many of the opening screens to the different areas of the BBS. Topics covered included: 1. Reading and leaving messages, 2. reading bulletins, 3. uploading and downloading files, 4. leaving private mail, and 5. logging off. Other topics were covered, but since your's truly was off bringing down materials I forgot for the computer setup, I'm just guessing he covered these topics and more! We couldn't muster a minimum number of individuals for a group purchase of modems. So it's everyone for themselves. I brought in my SUPRA 2400 baud modem for those who were interested in an inexpensive 2400 baud modem that hasn't given me a problem yet. Hopefully it never will, short of a direct lightning strike. The feature presentation was by Gus Thomasson, computer guru of GEM, a mouse driven operating environment. A short interesting discussion preceded his demonstration on the history of graphics, pixels, and windows. This was followed with an overview of the many capabilities of GEM. Windows on windows, graphics and text mixtures, importation of files from other applications, and graphing of data was just a few areas he touched upon. Our many thanks to Gus for his display of GEM. He demonstrated version 1.1 which is no longer available. Individuals interested in GEM should be looking for version 2.1. I found it for sale through PC Connection. The topic for next month's New User's SIG will be "software everyone should have." George will make up some special disks with the "best" public domain programs available. We will have several copies of this disk for diskcopy purposes at the library room, Fisher Hall 292. Telecommunications will be the topic at our next general meeting. Come see the live, on-line demonstration of both local and distant bulletin boards. The computer will be running with Qmodem SST telecommunications package, an upgraded version of what you were exposed to at the last meeting. Of course our first board will be SLO BYTES providing it isn't busy. We will also try Cygnus and SLO FILE TRANSFER; two other local PC BBS's with many programs to download. Two local popular message boards are The Message Center (TMC) and Pentode. We'll pop in and say hi. Then our horizons will be expanded when we call GEnie, General Electric communication services, through a local phone number. Here you will see MEGA MEGA bytes of software for the PC, much of which is downloaded for use on our board and library. Software is just one small aspect of GEnie with other areas of interest including financial, medical, travel and hobbies. Perhaps we will talk directly with the author of a popular software package as on-line forums are always available. Time permitting, we will connect with ISAAC, an educational forum in Washington state sponsered by IBM. By this time the modem shall be a smok'en and we'll call it a night. And what will it cost in telephone calls ???? Nothing, except for GEnie's $7.50/hour connect charge. All the other calls are toll free. I will also go over the basic installation of Qmodem and many of the fine features presented in this shareware package. ====================================================== Pacific Bell... You Say What? by Bob Ward (reprinted from an earlier newsletter) If you have "CALL WAITING" then you know the problem when trying to use a modem with your computer. Any incoming call disconnects your computer and there you are dead in the water. One way of getting around this is to also have CALL FORWARDING, whereby you can forward your calls to a "dead" number at work or to the dog house in the back yard. In this way you will not be disturbed while accessing your favorite bulletin board. Now Pacific Bell has the solution for those select individuals who live in San Luis Obispo... (Not Los Osos, Arroyo Grande, etc. unfortunately. There is a "Cancel Call Waiting" code which eliminates the disconnect problem. Dialing 1170 on your "pulse dial" phone before making the connect call disables call waiting during that call. When you hang up, "Call Waiting" is automatically enabled again. You must use *70 if using "touch tone". The easiest way to use this feature is to precede all dialing numbers in your telecommunications dialing directory by either *70 or 1170, then any calls made from your computer will automatically cancel CALL WAITING. ====================================================== Are You Ready for WordPerfect 5.0 and/or dBASE IV? by French Morgan A better question would be, 'Is your machine ready for either of these products?' As the capabilities of various software packages expand, so will the needs of your computer system. The major consideration in regards to system requirements will be how much memory will be required to run the more powerful programs. Lights, bells, and whistles are fun, nice, and convenient to use from time to time, but there are trade-offs to be made. The toughest requirement will be meeting the 512K of free memory (or RAM). Most people won't run multiple programs at once (WINDOWS, DESQVIEW, etc.) or have any memory resident programs loaded (SIDEKICK, SUPERKEY, SMARTKEY, or any of the PC Magazine utilities), ... right!?! That means that as long the your system is loaded to the max with conventional memory (640K RAM), you'll be able to 'play' with these hot products. The second major requirement to be met is that of disk space or mass storage. Both WordPerfect 5.0 and dBASE IV are definitely hard disk based programs. As the cost of mass storage comes down and more hard disks are out in the market place, at home, and in small business, more program power and features will be made available. The last major requirement will be for some sort of graphics display capability. The standard display will be EGA or extended graphics display. CGA may be workable, but the IN display is EGA. There is no comparison between CGA and EGA, except for color ... and there is more of it with EGA. With the modest improvement with VGA (virtual graphics array ... IBM's PS/2 video display) over EGA, the trend is toward dotless screens. That is, soon we will have monitors that display pictures are clear as photographs with color displays, especially decent ones, it makes it hard to go back to monochrome. A good monochrome system is also hard to beat for desktop publishing ... as in fancy newsletters (as WYSE 700 and VIKING high resolution monitors and video display adapters). Because both WordPerfect 5.0 and dBASE IV require more from the computer they will be running on, both manufacturers will support their current releases at least through 1990. This means that WordPerfect 4.2 and dBASE III + will be around for some time establishing a more solid standard than exists ... is that possible?! Therefore, don't fret that your computer is being pushed to the limits or won't come close to the new requirements without spending ANOTHER $1000! The old standards will be with us for some time to come. But if you have ever worked on a minicomputer or mainframe, and miss the power you once touched ... the future is near! It'll only take more money! ====================================================== USEFUL UTILITIES UPDATE by Dick Trueman Since the initial column in the January newsletter, listing all the programs available on the PC Magazine Utilities disk #1, one additional program, ASPRN, has been added, and a second disk has been started. ASPRN is a memory-resident program which allows you to imbed up to 26 user-selected printer control strings in text files by using simple two-character macros. While printing, ASPRN recognizes any macro character combinations and substitutes the designated printer control codes. This allows complete line-by-line control of fonts, underlining, line spacing, etc. within any text file. Disk #1 is now full and will not be changed except for any possible program corrections or revisions. By the way, RUN.COM has been corrected. For some strange reason, the first copy of RUN downloaded was actually HELP.COM. RUN now works just as it's supposed to. The three initial programs, with .DOC files as always, on PC Magazine Utilities disk #2 are: Program Description ======== ============================================ CALC Programmer's pop-up calculator, with base conversion, bit-shifting, logical operators, modify functions and 32-bit number repre- sentation STAYDOWN Permits entering two-key Ctrl-, Alt-, and Shift-key combinations as separate keystrokes. Great for programs with numerous two-key combinations, like Word- Perfect, so that you can execute, say, Shift F7 by first pressing Shift, releasing it, and then pressing F7 -- no need to hold down both keys simultaneously. You can use just one hand even with the new "enhanced" keyboards. (Unfortunately for me, STAYDOWN totally locks up my AT&T 6300.) TOUCH Changes the DOS date and/or time designation of a file or group of files either to the current system values or to user-designated values. Recently, I saw an ad in one of the computer magazines for a "free" set of three utilities disks. They asked for $3.50 for shipping and handling, so I decided that was reasonable enough and sent away my check. The disk arrived with 33 programs, some of them duplicates of programs readily available to us. But you may find some worthwhile programs, such as the following: DD DoubleDir displays files on two drives or directories HOTDOS Task-switching program QUERY2 Helps in writing interactive batch files SPLITIT Splits files in half and/or reduces double spacing to single spacing In addition, they have several excellent demo programs to explain the various programs and to tout other programs they offer for sale (public domain and shareware) -- interesting to watch. If you find their offer of interest, send your $3.50 check to (or simply contact): National Software Labs 13376 Washington Blvd. #7 Los Angeles, CA 90066 Their phone number is (213) 827-7889, just in case. ====================================================== SLO BYTE'S NEW COMPUTER Thanks to the overwhelming vote to go ahead with the purchase of a demonstration computer we now have a used COMPAQ portable with a 20 meg Plus Development HardCard (new). The evening after the last meeting I received a call from Harry Clark, SLO BYTES member from Santa Maria telling me of a COMPAQ he saw in a Lompoc newspaper. Within a week we had purchased it, and 3 days later purchased a Plus HardCard. The machine is very clean and looks like it has had very little use. It was purchased new in November, 1986 and owned by the same individual until sale to us. After checking it out for 2 days the final payment was made to the seller. As many of you know many business transactions between members and SLO BYTES occurs in the Cal Poly Administration parking lot. In keeping with the tradition I picked up the computer in the BIG-5 parking lot at the Madonna Shopping Center. It sure was easier than driving to Vandenberg Air Force Base! Or many thanks to French Morgan for selling us the hardcard at his cost and to George Campbell for donating an I/O card with a much needed serial port. Also we thank Teri Sorgatz for giving us her "not so reliable" Gemini-15 printer. I will use it for printing mailing labels and other club correspondence. Sometimes it has a mind of it's own but hopefully all of you will receive your monthly newsletter. At least now I have an excuse when the newsletter is late.... Just blame it on the printer. ====================================================== MINUTES OF SLO BYTES FIRST BOARD MEETING Yes, believe it or not we had a board meeting and discussed several issues which confront us as the club grows larger each month. I will list what we discussed and some of our conclusions, mostly by wrote memory, as much of the meeting was held in my spa and started after dark! I did have a flash light to keep the agenda on track. The following individuals were present: George Campbell (president), Bob Ward (secretary & bartender), and Sam Powers (Library monitor). Although Sam is not an elected official of the club he was invited to discuss any problems with our library and copying session during the meeting. (+ he brought some of the refreshments). Really we heard this is how they hold meetings in Silicon Valley so thought we would try it. John Rohde, treasurer, was absent due to illness in the family and John Read, vice president, has resigned due to conflict with a new job. Library: We will have a sign-up sheet in front of each disk box. We ask that you put your name and the disks you are copying on this list. The purpose is two fold: 1. We will be keeping a record of which disks are being copied. Sometime in the future we want to remove some of the older unused disks from the library. 2. Occasionally we come up a few library disks "short" at the end of a meeting. If we had a record of who copied what we could give you a call and see if mistakenly the library disk became mixed up with your copies. This is usually the case. We will have a computer strictly for library searches. This computer will not be used for copying any library disks but will have the hard disk version of the SLO BYTES FILE LOCATOR. It will be available during library hours - 6:15 until closing. Meetings: This will be discussed at the next meeting. Our conclusion is that we will have little choice but to change the meeting time to SUNDAYS starting sometime in the fall (September). We feel that between 1:15pm and 2pm would be an optimum time to meet. It is after lunch and/or church for most and will conclude before Sunday dinnertime. SLO BYTES must have the largest lecture hall available in the science complex (Fisher Hall 286). We can only be assured that Sundays will not conflict with any other school activities. We could meet off campus but you would not have the ability to copy library disks at the meetings. The formation of Special Interest Groups (SIGS) was also discussed. This would involve 3 or 4 dedicated leaders, one for each group. Meeting times and locations must still be planned. It was also resolved that any activities not directly connected with the presentation at the meeting, with the exception of the swap meets in June and December, will be conducted in the library area and not in the meeting room. If you wish to sell something, please feel free to bring it up at the appropriate time, but reserve display and sale of any hardware or software to the library room, Fisher Hall 292. Sale of Disks: We will have two points of sale for BLANK floppy disks. From 6:15 until the doors close, you may purchase disks from SAM POWERS in the Public Domain Library room (Fisher Hall 292). Blank disks plus recent additions to our library will be available from the treasurer, John Rohde. John will also handle new memberships and renewals and ATI training disks. His services will be available at any time EXCEPT during the general meeting - 7:30 to about 8:45 pm. Membership: Members will be dropped from the membership list if renewal is not received within 60 days of the due date. As an example, if you membership expires in FEB, 1988 you will receive the February and March Newsletter but be dropped from the membership list by the first week in April, 1988. Dues will remain at $18.00/year unless the members wish to discuss it at the next meeting. Swap Meets: Our June and December meetings have been designated "Swap Meets". At our regular meeting you will have the opportunity to sell or trade your unwanted computer accessories or software. This will be in addition to our regular meeting agenda. ====================================================== BITS N' BYTES *** Thanks to Teri Sorgatz for the donation of a printer for mailing labels. Her membership was extended for such generosity! *** Due to Jules Lieber's long expected recovery from heart surgery, we have cancelled this year's COMPUTER FAIRE. He was the chairman of the Computer Fair Council. *** SLO BYTES has rented a table at the Computer Swap Meet in Meadow Park on May 21st. We will be selling disks, memberships and probably something from under George's computer table. If you wish to sell an item through SLO BYTES, the club is asking for a 10% "handling fee" if we make the sale. Give us the merchandise, your asking price, your "rock bottom" price, and with a little luck we'll sell it for you. If it's software it must be original and include manuals. If it's hardware it must work. The buyers will receive the name of the individual we are selling for. Of course you too have the opportunity to rent a table ($5) and sit there for 4 hours to save the 10%. George Campbell and Bob Ward will be sitting the club table. *** We will be electing a new Vice President at the next meeting. Bring your favorite nominee. ====================================================== ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | | | COMPUTER SWAP MEET | | | | MEADOW PARK (on South Street near Broad) | | | | Saturday, May 21, 1988, 12:00 noon to 4:00pm | | | | Come & talk, swap, buy or sell computer | | hardware or software | | | | Call Dan Herron @ 489-3746 (eves) for details | | | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CALENDAR May 5th COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE - A live demo of QMODEM SST and logging on both local and distant bulletin boards. ---> SCIENCE NORTH 215 May 21st Computer Swap Meet - Meadow Park noon till 4pm. June 2nd Computer Magazines - The Best and Worst. An overview by George Campbell Rescheduled from March. NORTH 215. Swap meet during meeting. Please note the room change for the months of April, May and June. Disks will still be copied in Fisher Hall 292 during this time. ====================================================== NEW MEMBERS A hardy WELCOME to our new members for the month of April, 1988. David Andrews 489-9634 Harry Price 544-4348 Daniel Senst 466-2802 Richard Shirley 544-0402 Alan Tognazzini 481-4709 Teri Sorgatz 489-2516 If you did not receive your membership card or new user's manual at the last meeting let us know. ====================================================== NEWS FROM OUR LIBRARY The following disks have been added to our library: --- SLO #256 --- A series of educational programs including: an electrical formula calculator, time your engine, and a large series of educational programs for children. --- SLO #257 --- Graphic programs - some require CGA. CGA emulators on mono screen, EGA demos, make moving ANSI pictures, combine graphics & text. --- SLO #258 --- Right hand man desk top utility, fast formatter for DOS 3.2 & 3.3, AT hard disk park program, and many other useful utilities. --- SLO #259 --- Games... (Some require color graphics) - Aldo; a donkey kong like game for EGA, ARCHERY, PCPOOL; play billiards, RR-PC; railroad switching game, BURGER; make your own hamburger as the parts speed by and more. UPDATE: #102 Automenu updated to version 4.0 DEMO DISKS: #64 Bottom Line Financial Accounting Slide Show. #65 a&b Harvard Total Project Manager II #66 XChange unattended file transfer ======================================================