SLO BYTES PC User's Group Newsletter November, 1989 What's New Our last meeting was very well attended. I don't know if it was the magnetic personality and computer expertise of Dr. DOS or the video tapes presented at the general meeting. Dr. DOS, alias George Campbell, started the early meeting showing some of his favorite shareware programs. It's something to get George to use utilities, TSR's, or anything close to it. They must be useful and unique for him to give up even a few K of precious hard disk space. Here's a list of programs he reviewed: SAVE&LOAD - an alternative backup system for hard disks. CVOICE - A talking clock for the PC SILENCER - Shuts up noisy programs, permanently! AT-SLOW - Slows down AT type computers. PCS - Tells you what's in your PC. All these files along with other utilities will be found on SLO disk #354. From the demonstrations he proceeded to the question and answer period for the remainder of the hour. After a short intermission we moved to our general meeting. A question was brought up about local store discounts. Are the discounts an incentive to buy local and are they being administered according to the statements in the newsletter? Our conclusion was to monitor the situation more closely. If you feel you did not receive your SLO Bytes discount or it was misrepresented, please contact one of the officers. No we don't want to be "cops" but we would like to clear up any misunderstandings. December is our big holiday give-a-way. As you walk in the door pick up a ticket, write your name on the back and return it to the white bucket. (The club is saving up for a fish bowl). Please limit yourself to ONE TICKET PER FAMILY. Keep your fingers crossed you may be a lucky winner. Here's a partial list of computer items: head cleaning kits, anti static strips, copy holder, designer printer paper, WordPerfect Pocket Reference, floppy disks, software, etc. This is the month to swap, trade or barter computer software and hardware. You have a computer trinket you couldn't live without a year ago but now it's gathering dust in some remote corner of your computer room. This is the place to delete it from your inventory. Only original software and documentation may be sold. When selling software, please state if this is the latest version or if it contains an upgrade card. A word of advice to the sellers; If you really want to walk away from the meeting with cash in-hand rather than the software or hardware you brought to the meeting, then put a reasonable price on the items. Knocking 20% off what you paid usually isn't enough. Buyers are a knowledgeable group who know the going discount catalog price. If you want to move it then offer 50%, 60%, or even 75% off what you paid for it. December is the month to "throw the scoundrels out!" We will have election of officers. If you wish to become an officer we'll even let you put yourself in nomination! Now's your chance to become President or Vice-President of SLO Bytes. Perhaps you would like to be a Secretary or as Treasurer, sit in the hall and sell disks, memberships, etc. Being an officer doesn't require much skill... and what is needed will quickly be acquired over time. We will describe the duties of the officers as they have evolved through the years just before the election. That doesn't mean all the work has to be done by the officers. If you like working in the background, we have plenty of boring, mundane jobs for you. Soon we'll need people to type up articles again, maybe someone to copy new disks for the meeting. We need someone to take a hard look at the first 50 disks of our library and cull out those programs that are useless. Some were written in Cuneiform on a cave wall, others don't work at all. So let us know and we will find something to keep you occupied. Lastly, the December meeting is the time where you can stand up before the audience and demonstrate your favorite shareware... just as George did this month. Beards are not required! Please limit your demonstration to no more than 2 to 3 minutes per program. Hit only the highlights, otherwise people become board. If the program is in our library state the disk number. If it is not, make it available to the members for copying after the meeting. Please call Bob Ward at 528-0121 a few days before December 3rd to schedule your demonstration. This will avoid duplications. GRAMMATIK IV By: Jim Borland, SLO Bytes PCUG A few months ago at our SLO-BYTES monthly meeting, the speaker was a representative of Reference Software, makers of Grammatik IV, a well known grammar checking software program. The demonstration impressed me, but since he told us a new version was soon to be released, I decided to delay my purchase. The newest version, Grammatik IV, was just released and I have bought a copy. One thing I remember hearing at the SLO-BYTES meeting was that the next release of the program could "pop-up" within your word processor. Previous versions required that one save their document, exit the word processor, load the grammar checking program, and then edit the document. That sounded awfully cumbersome and I was eager to see the next version that would allegedly "pop- up." If you wish to activate Grammatik IV while inside your word processor, it must be initially started using a special file created by the Grammatik IV installation procedure. If you run the word processor as you normally do, without the special file, Grammatik IV will not be accessible. There is a special hot key that starts Grammatik IV from inside the word processor. However, instead of "popping-up" within the document, the computer will save your document, exit the word processor, load Grammatik IV and be ready for editing. When you finish editing and exit Grammatik IV, it will reload the word processing program and retrieve the edited document. It does all this automatically, which is nice, but is a far cry from being a "pop-up" program. It is also possible to run Grammatik IV directly from the DOS prompt, as with the previous versions. On my computer, which is an older "non-turbo" XT type IBM clone, the program takes a long time to initialize by loading all its dictionaries and grammar rules. I'm sure it would be faster on a more modern CPU. Once the program loads, it will do an impressive number of checks for many different types of errors such as sentence structure, punctuation, paragraph problems and of course spelling. It will identify long sentences, inappropriate jargon, and phrases that are long-winded, wordy or pretentious. It checks gender, similar spellings, capitalizations, double negatives and doubled words. One thing I particularly like is the way it identifies instances of passive voice. I still don't completely understand passive voice (there is a nice help screen that gives some good examples), but I'm surprised to find how often I use it. The program is very flexible in allowing you to customize its operation for several different writing styles. The different rule classes can be turned on or off at will, and you can choose from different rule dictionaries. There also is a feature that allows you to design your own style guide, grammar rules, and help screens. Interactive editing is easy. You get an explanation for the error found, advice how it can be corrected, and an opportunity to get in and edit the document. Many errors can be fixed automatically by pressing a single key. Another option is to have the program go through a whole document all at once, mark all the mistakes, add its advice, and you can then edit the document from within your word processor. The on-line help system is very good. All you do is highlight any item, press the F1 key, and get a quick explanation. After the edit session, the program prints a statistical summary that shows readability level, percent of passive voice, and average lengths of sentences, words and paragraphs. You also can get a word usage profile that lists every word in the document and tells you how often you used it. That's a fun feature to use. The title on the documentation states the program is the easy way to "improve your writing." I believe this is a slight exaggeration. The program will indeed find many common writing mistakes, but I question the implication that the program will make you a better writer. All things considered, I like the program and think it will help me somewhat "improve" my writing. Though it is not everything I had hoped for, I'm glad I bought it. The list price is $99.00, but I called a company with an 800 number whose ad runs in PC Magazine, paid half that price, and received it in the mail six days later. GRAMMATIK IV $99.00 Reference Software 330 Townsend Street, Suite 123 San Francisco, CA. 94107 Message 1030ATE/TIME: 11-17-89 12:03p Bits n' Bytes *** We will not decide on refreshments until after looking at our budget. Right now it's a possibility but undecided. One last note, Winter is coming and the room gets very cold. The heating is turned off for the weekend as an energy conservation measure. So DRESS WARM. We promise snow will not fall inside the room, although we did have a snow flurry outside during a meeting last year. *** Prime Solutions special User Group discount will remain in effect until the end of February, 1990. To receive your 50% discount on either Disk Technician Pro (retail $59.95) or Advanced (retail $149.95) call 800-847-5000. You must state you are a member of SLO Bytes and you want the 50% discount. A small additional charge for tax and shipping will be included. *** Central Point Software has a 50% discount on PC Tools Delux v5.5. We have coupons for the asking. All orders must be postmarked by December 31, 1989. $70 will take it away. If we run out of coupons a photocopy will be accepted. *** Some of you will be winning copies of software at the next meeting. As an expression of gratitude, wouldn't it be nice if you wrote a review article on the software you won. The editor would be for ever endebted. *** Effective January 1, 1990 ButtonWare is discontinuing support and production of PC-Dial, PC-Style, PC-Tickle, and XD-Extended DOS. They are requesting we remove these files from both our BBS and our Shareware library. If you wish to have these programs you must copy them before the deadline. On the first day of 1990 they will be history. The following programs are presently in our library: PC-Style #173, PC-Tickle #172, and Extended DOS #190. PC-Dial is not in our library. Calendar December 3rd Fun with SLO Bytes. Many door prizes and a brief demonstration of club members' most popular Shareware programs. Nomination of officers. Don't miss this one. === CORRECTION === A very important character was left out of last month's DOS TIPS. Under "Saving Your Hard Disk Structure" the command should read C:\tree/f >A:C_PART.FIL. The redirection arrow was lost between my wordprocessor and importation into Ventura. PC PHYSICS FACT AND FOLKLORE by Dennis Persyk (reprinted in the January, 1989 Monterery Bay Users Group Personal Computer newsletter from the July, 1988 Tokyo PC Newsletter which was taken from NEI, March 1987!!!!) The purpose of this article is to discuss and then dispel a few PC myths regarding CRT radiation which is generally misunderstood even though PC users are generally savvy about their machines. CRT Radiation The broad term radiation applies to all energy that spreads via electromagnetic waves. It encompasses heat (infrared radiation), visible light (visible optical radiation), ultraviolet radiation (which can cause sunburn), radio waves (RF, or radio frequency radiation) and finally, ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation can adversely alter body cells, and is, therefore, worthy of consideration. The controversial subject of CRT (cathode ray tube - another name for your monitor) radiation is clouded by the lack of a qualifier for the radiation. What kind of radiation does your CRT radiate? Your monitor clearly radiates energy in the optical spectrum -- it must for your eyes to detect the light from the text or graphics on the screen. But this optical radiation is harmless because its intensity is low (CRT's are not overly bright). There is no significant infrared or ultraviolet radiation emitted from your CRT. However, a few computer magazines and catalogs list CRT screens to "filter out infrared radiation." These devices are worthless, as there is nothing worth filtering. As an aside, polarizing glare filters (or glare screens) are also not a good investment for your monitor. A polarizing filter transmits less than 50% of the visible radiation. Therefore, when you put a glare screen on your monitor, you must turn up the intensity (brightness) to make up for the light lost in the glare screen. The result is decreased CRT lifetime. While there are also harmless (but measurable) radiations in the RF spectrum emanating from your computer, the real target for misinformation is ionizing radiation. There is NO significant ionizing radiation emitted from a conventional PC monitor. I use the qualifier significant only because I believe that a skillful physicist might be able to detect weak X-rays from a CRT. It would be a very difficult measurement because the level would be much lower than the earth's normal radiation background. It is also worth noting that the Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act has severely restricted ionizing radiation from CRT devices for the past 15 years. I hope you will accept the technical judgment of those who work with and understand ionizing radiation so that this concern can be dismissed. A CO-PROCESSOR DAUGHTER BOARD by Scott Baker (reprinted in the January 1989 Monterey Bay Users Group - Personal Computer Newsletter from the November 1988 Portland PC Club Newsletter) If you're a user of Autocad or any math-intensive software, then you probably have an 80287 math co-processor in your PC/AT clone. But, here's a question that most of you won't know the answer to: What is the clock rate of your co- processor? Most people assume that is the same as their CPU clock rate, but usually this is not the case. In most PC/AT clones, the co-processor either runs at 2/3 the CPU rate, or at a fixed rate of 6 megahertz. CPU Clock Rate 80287 Clock Rate 6 Mhz 4.0 Mhz 8 Mhz 5.3 Mhz 10 Mhz 6.7 Mhz To find out if this is the case for your machine, you either need a frequency counter, an oscilloscope, or ATPERF.EXE, a "PC Tech Journal" benchmark which is available on many bulletin boards. The solution to running an 8 or 10 megahertz 80287 at its rated clock speed in most PC/AT clones is to add a co-processor daughter board which has its own clock generator circuit on board. This is possible because the interface between the CPU and the co-processor is asynchronous. In fact, it is possible to run a 10 Mhz co-processor in an 8 Mhz clone or vice-versa. The co-processor daughter board has a footprint which is only slightly larger than the 80287 itself so it will fit most PC/AT clone motherboards. The board was designed by Scott Baker at Sierra Circuit Designs (502-645-0734). Please feel free to call if you have any questions. This board is available from Zephyr Computer (503-297-9117) for $38. Author's Note: News Flash: Recently 20 Mhz 286 motherboards have been introduced. These systems run their co-processors at 13.3 Mhz, which is too fast for the fastest 80287s. The above board is also a solution to this problem and will allow you to run either an 8 or 10 Mhz 80287 in a 20 Mhz PC/AT clone. DEAR DR. DOS by Steve Bass (reprinted in Monterey User's Group - Personal Computer newsletter for January 1989 from the Twin Cities PC User Group Newsletter, July 1988) Dear Dr. Dos.... Every time I sit down at the computer I feel a great sense of discomfort as the time seems to speed by very quickly. Just what is happening? Whoosh, New York. Dear Whoosh - Computer time is different from other time. Time pieces seem to become inaccurate when you're at the computer. For every five minutes at the computer, 25 minutes goes by on the clock. It's a simple recalculation based on the number of time splices your computer uses. For example, a computer running an 8088 has an internal clock that ticks about 18 times a second (Mean Greenwich Time). This time factor (8088s only) pushes time ahead 25 minutes for each 5 minutes of real or actual time. The ratio of 5:1 is obvious (except to you, Whoosh). An AT class machine (80286) pushes the time factor to 10:1 while the new 80386 machines will provide an even faster 30:1 ratio. Experiment with these machines in conjunction with your spouse. "Dinner is ready," they say. "Five minutes, Honey," you respond. Take careful note of the strong relationship between the time factor of 8088s and 80386s and the length, depth and substance of your marriage. DISK CLINIC by Geoff Mitchell Big Blue & Cousins, September 1987 Programs such as Norton's UnErase will recover only single files that have been accidentally erased. If you have erased multiple fragmented files using global deletes, automatic unerasing no longer works. You are forced to examine the deleted files sector by sector and manually add them to your recovery file. This procedure is cumbersome and hazardous. Unerase programs are of no use whatever for recovering data from disks with damaged directories and of only questionable use for those with File Allocation Table (FAT) damage. Directory damage is manifested by peculiar characters appearing on your screen as the result of a DIR command. DOS provides no direct method of coping with directory damage. FAT damage is revealed by error messages which can range from "Abort, Retry, Ignore" from the DOS prompt to "Disk error reading FAT", "File allocation table bad drive x:", or any one of a number of other messages courtesy of CHKDSK. For some CHKDSK messages, the MS- DOS manual tells you nothing can and to reformat the diskette. Don't do it. CHKDSK with the /F (fixup) option often recovers some data. It converts lost clusters into files which you can then examine and manipulate with an editor and normal DOS functions. If CHKDSK does seem to be bringing results, then take it as far as it will go and see what materializes. But before you do a CHKDSK /F, DISKCOPY your disk and work on the copy. That goes for any kind a recovery procedure which writes to the damaged disk. Always try to work on a copy. If it won't DISKCOPY, then your disk has unreadable sectors. It may not be possible to get anything out of those sectors through a normal disk drive. But it won't hurt to go ahead and try the following procedure anyway. This procedure is geared to recovering text files. If the data on the damaged disk consists of binary (program) files, it will be of little help. Your program files should be backed up somewhere else anyway. If you are using a program which encodes its data in some illegible form (ie. so when it is TYPEd, it doesn't make sense), you have no one but yourself to blame for picking dangerous software. If you really must recover the information in such files, then it is time to seek professional help from Dr. $$$, the world renowned disaster recovery consultant. Prepare to pay big bucks. This procedure is free. It consists of piping a script file to DEBUG. The example works for any standard 360K nine-sector diskette, If your disk is in some other format, then the parameters will have to be modified, but the general procedure works for any DOS formatted disk including hard disks. The example presumes you have two floppy disk drives, a C: drive which may be either a RAM or hard disk and about 96K of RAM available to work with. If your machine does not conform to that configuration, the procedure can be modified to suit. Rather than trying to explain what is going on, I suggest you just follow the instructions. If you must really know, then get out your DOS manual and examine the DEBUG commands Register, Load, Name, Write, and Quit. If you have access to a DOS Technical Reference Manual or a DOS programmer's handbook of some sort, then learn how disks are organized and sectors numbered. Pay particular attention to DOS interrupts 37 and 38 (25H & 26H) for they are what DEBUG uses to accomplish the magic. With a normal ASCII editor create the following file. Call it RCV360K.DBG or whatever you want. R BX 0001 L CS:0100 0 C 80 N B:FILE1.RCV W L CS:0100 0 8C 80 N B:FILE2.RCV W L CS:0100 0 10C 80 N B:FILE3.RCV W L CS:0100 0 18C 80 N B:FILE4.RCV W L CS:0100 0 20C 80 N B:FILE5.RCV W L CS:0100 0 28C 44 N B:FILE6.RCV R BX 0000 R CX 8800 W Q Format a fresh floppy in Drive B and leave it there. Copy DEBUG.COM and RCV360K.DBG to your third drive and make it current. Put your damaged diskette in Drive A. Now invoke DEBUG while piping RCV360K.DBG into it using the command DEBUG : 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 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: Teri Sorgatz, 832 S. 7th Street, Grover City, CA. 93433 Phone 489-2516 Treasurer's Report Here's whats in the bank after deposits and expenses in October: Beginning Balance: $1891.88 Expenses: XMAS Gifts: $ 102.23 MEI Micro - disks $ 373.00 Newsletter $ 131.20 Stamps $ 75.00 Tape Backup For $ 320.00 BBS - old one died Income: $ 538.90 ======== Balance $1429.33 BBS Talk From: DALE WILLIAMS To: HJ ROMA Subject: Hard drive shortcuts? Folder : B, "Ask Dr. Dos" A while back my clone gave some sort of drive error message while a friend was here. He did something very quickly (without using any fancy utility) and said the problem was solved, but now there is a file with a strange name taking up 400K or so. Is it safe to say that if any space is bad, using the right utilities would avoid losing so much space? I find it hard to believe that one error would wipe out 400K. Message 1031 DATE/TIME: 11-17-89 5:01p From: JOE EMENAKER To: DALE WILLIAMS Subject: Hard drive shortcuts? Folder : B, "Ask Dr. Dos" Sounds like your friend used CHKDSK. The file is probably called FILE0000.CHK if I'm right. You need to understand how DOS remembers where all of your files are. It keeps two things: The directory and the FAT (File Allocation Table). The FAT is where DOS basically keeps track of every sector on your disk.. whether it's used by a file, available for use or a bad sector is kept in the FAT. (Special note to hackers: I'm not this misinformed about DOS. The following explanation isn't exactly true, but it's short and it gets the point across, so don't go saying to yourselves 'boy, that Joe Emenaker is really clueless'.) Anyway Dale, in essence, a file is put on your disk, DOS marks the area it's on as in-use in the FAT and puts it's name in the directory. Just like when you use the rest room on an airplane, you go in and switch the little sign to say "Occupied". Well the FAT is a big table in which it remembers each sector as "Occupied", Vacant", or "Out of Order". Every now and then, the FAT gets a bit tweaked. The FAT says that a certain range of sectors is "Occupied", but the Directory doesn't have a name of anything being there. That's where CHKDSK comes in. CHKDSK looks in and says "Hey, here're some sectors marked as in-use but you can't ever get to them because the Directory doesn't have a name for them. So CHKDSK gives them a name; FILE0000.CHK and sticks that name in the directory. Now, you can get to that range of sectors that was tied up and invisible before. You see, that 400K WAS being tied up in your hard disk earlier because you couldn't get to it. After CHKDSK, you can delete it and get that 400K back. You'd better look at the file with an editor or something first and make sure it's not something important. ###