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Text File | 1986-01-10 | 19KB | 335 lines

------------------------------------- FARGO IBM PC NEWSLETTER CONTENTS -- JANUARY, 1986 ------------------------------------- December Meeting Notes......1 Hardware: Repairs...........1 Freeware: Master Menu.......2 Freeware: QMODEM 1.13.......2 Newslines: 3.5" Drives......2 Here and There: Card Disk...3 New User Notes: Batch Files.3 Editor's Screen.............3 User Group Officers.........3 President's Corner..........4 Fargo RBBS & Library Files..5 ------------------------------------- DECEMBER MEETING NOTES ------------------------------------- Around the Table. John Hilly from Systematics brought the Sperry- IT (AT-compatible) computer for users to see. Loren is buying one, so we'll hear more about this machine! November-December copies of IBM's Exchange were distributed. PROGRAM: OPTICAL LASER DISKS! Mr. Mark Foster, representing TMS, Inc., a firm specializing in digital Laser Technology, explained and demonstrated current applications of laser disk technology for the PC and AT computers. Mark presented a short course on the present state of laser technology. Contrary to what some of us may have thought, laser disks for PC's are available now. The majority of the presentation focused on the use of 12 cm. compact (CD-ROM) disks, similar to the audio disks on the market today. The hardware of the player is different from that of an audio player in two respects: the drive has been hardened, and the E-PROM is an error correction E-PROM. The units are basically the same in other respects. This size of compact disk has a capacity of roughly 550 megabytes (1,527 360K floppies). We were given several comparisons to describe the amount of material you could put on one such disk. How about the abstracts of every PhD dissertation in the U.S. since 1785? Or a million pages of information? Perhaps a chunk of your library fifty feet long and for feet high? All the public domain PC-DOS software currently available? You get the picture--room to burn. Such disks offer only read-only-memory. This means you can access the data stored on the disk, but cannnot alter or add to it. [Other options are available at much higher prices. Affordable read-write technology is not here yet.] TMS currently competes with three other manufacturers in producing the hardware and software for computer laser disk data storage. Information, including illustrations, is scanned in, coded, and indexed. The disks which are produced contain compressed data and an index for finding information. To read a compact disk, you must add to your hard disk system a specially designed controller card and cable, a video disk player, and software capable of reading the encoding pattern on the particular disk you are using. TMS charges approximately $1500 for the drive and coltroller. The search and retrieval software (including LaserDOS and a user interface) add approximately $500. Disks vary in price according to their content. An encyclopedia can be had for about $189. Is there a less expensive alternative? Well--sort of. TMS markets a plug-in card called the LCD-II controller. It purports to convert any NTSC video disk player's signals to digital format, enabling any PC with an empty slot to interface with virtually any $169 audio laser disk player. That takes care of hardware. Software is another problem. You will need to either buy or create software that can read the data stored on the particular laser disks you wish to use. The software will likely be incompatible among the major manufacturers, so it might be best to wait and see who wins the sales war. From the presentation it appears as though the basic technology is here today. As people in sales and marketing begin to push, and as as more information (both proprietary and public domain) is transferred to laser disk, we will see an increasing move to this format of data storage for our personal computers. A competitor of TMS, Reference Technology, Inc., is currently offering its CD-ROM DataDrive plus the interface card, cables, and its software package for $1595. With the package comes a CD-ROM disk containing 8,800 public domain software programs. They also offer a $149 audio card which will allow their player to play compact audio disks. Music to your ears? ------------------------------------- HARDWARE: Repairs ------------------------------------- Troubles, Friend? You don't have to own computer equipment very long before you run into the reality of maintenance and repair. My system is thirteen months old, and I've seen a floppy drive go bonkers, 64K RAM chips fail, and an RS-232 serial port suffer a heart attack. Maybe I should change my name to Glitch? Though you may not suffer from such problems, there may come a time when you want to upgrade your 8088 to the NEC V-20 chip, or change an E-PROM in your printer, or install a hard disk. We have persuaded our president to roll up his sleeves, grab his surgical mask, and demonstrate some of the techniques for CPR on your PC. Our members who are involved in servicing PC's know that there are ample breakdowns that the do-it-yourself-er cannot handle. Other routine tasks are within your grasp. Come to the February meeting and discover a few! ------------------------------------- Freeware: Master Menu ------------------------------------- A menu utility is one of the handiest creations a user can have. Instead of facing a bare list of DOS files, a menu triggered by an AUTOEXEC.BAT command helps you easily move to the program you want to use. Features. Master Menu offers you an uncomplicated way to create and execute twelve options on your screen. Beyond the menus, it displays the time and blanks the screen after four minutes of inactivity. You can select foreground, background, and border colors as well. Each option (labeled A-L) can have a title of up to 24 characters. When you program the menu options, you are allowed 38 characters in your command, including path (but not drive) names. You can change the name of the menu itself, if you wish. Both the menu name and the title of the options may include graphic characters. You may also adjust the foreground, background, and border colors to suit your preferences. The most practical way to use this program is to link each menu option to a batch file. The filename of the batch file, however, must be at least two characters long. If you wish to return to the menu after executing one of the options, MM (the master menu batch file) must be the last command in your own batch file. The program is available as a 41K archive file titled MMPRG.ARC. 36K of disk space is needed to run the unsqueezed program itself. Evaluation. If you don't have a menu on your system, this would be a fair one to start with. The donation request is a bit high for the features you get. It does not display your available memory, or the condition of CAPS LOCK or other keys as does AUTOMENU [also available from the user group]. Master Menu is simple to run and use, however. You can obtain this program from the user group librarian, from the FARGO RBBS, or from the author directly. John Franck, 1200 Jefferson Davis Rd., Martinsville, VA 24112 requests a $25 donation. ------------------------------------- Freeware: QMODEM 1.13 ------------------------------------- You can almost chart your age in the user group by the version of QMODEM you first used and by the number of upgrades John Friel has introduced since you first heard of his program. Most recent (as of this date) is version 1.13. There were problems with 1.12 that apparently have been corrected in 1.13. The biggest departure from earlier releases is John's decision to create a separate installation program (alla Sidekick). This choice has both advantages and disadvantages. If you wish to change the name of your capture file, screen dump file, or other parameters, you have to re- install QMODEM. If you don't change these settings often, QMODEM saves you space, since you can banish the two installation files to a library disk until you need them. Version 1.13 also adds another twist to your exit options. You can now type in x and exit QMODEM to DOS and maintain your phone connection if you are on line. You can then invoke another program and afterwards resume QMODEM and continue your telecommunications session. (You could also run up your phone bill by using this option and forgetting about it!) This new release maintain's QMODEM's reputation as one of the most frequently upgraded freeware packages around. ------------------------------------- NEWSLINES: 3.5" Floppy Drives ------------------------------------- Aspirations. If you're like me, you might find yourself envious of the handy little 3.5" floppy disk drive that Macintosh and Amiga owners use. The disk drive itself is smaller and capable of storing much more information than your standard 5.25" floppy. In addition, the disk is pocket size and safely encased in a sturdy plastic container. Will this smaller disk become standard on PCs in the near future? Statistics. To date, sales of these smaller drives have not been exciting. The 5.25" floppy drives outsold these smaller contenders by a ratio of 16 to 1 in the U.S. and Canada this last year. Problems. Two reasons underly the slow growth of the 3.5" drive market. First, your current DOS doesn't recognize the 3.5" format and thus cannot take advantage of its denser (720-2000K) storage. In order for DOS to read it, the 3.5" disk must be formatted like its 5.25" counterpart. The result is no real gain in storage. The second reason for slow acceptance is the absence of IBM's blessing. All domestic machines continue to use the 5.25" drives. Both factors may change this year. By the time you read this IBM may have released a new version of DOS that recognizes the denser format and takes advantage of the additional storage of the 3.5" floppy drive. IBM is also expected to soon introduce a laptop portable machine with a 3.5" drive on the American market. IBM has already instructed software vendors to produce software for the 3.5" format. The odds are high that the 3.5" drive will be a part of your computing future. Who knows? Manufacturers may soon create my kind of PC--one with with an internal hard disk, optical disk, and 3.5" floppy drive. ------------------------------------- HERE & THERE: Express Hard Disk ------------------------------------- Card-size Hard Disks. One of the innovations of the past year has been the introduction of hard disks reduced to the width of a plug-in card for your computer. The forerunner was the Hardcard from Plus Development Systems. Western Digital has entered the market with their FileCard. Mountain Computer offers the DriveCard--10MB for $1095 and 20MB for $1195. Recently, a corporation called Express Systems from Schaumburg, Illinois has been advertising a 20Mb disk card for $595. If this product works as advertised, it looks like a real bargain for those who want to install an affordable internal drive in minutes. Peter Norton reports that the Hardcard may not work as a second drive in some systems. The card-size drive was designed to work with the IBM-Xebec controller board, but may not recognize other controllers, even those made by Xebec. ------------------------------------- NEW USER NOTES: Batch Commands ------------------------------------- Replaceable Parameters. DOS allows you to create batch files that can behave almost like a simple BASIC program. This allows you to create a batch file which will outline a routine task you can use with different files. You need not rewrite the batch file in every case. The parameters begin with the percent sign and are labeled %0-%9. You must specify the parameters when you type in the name of the batch file. Suppose you wanted to copy a file from disk A to B (only with a new name) and then read the file on disk B. You could type from DOS: A>copy EGG.DOC B:CHICKEN.DOC A>TYPE B:CHICKEN.DOC Another option would be to create a batch file using replacable parameters: A>COPY CON CONVERT.BAT<RETURN> A>COPY %1 B:%2<RETURN> A>TYPE B:%2<F6><RETURN> Once the file is created you execute it by entering the following: A>CONVERT EGG.DOC CHICKEN.DOC The advantage of these parameters is that you can use the same batch file to copy, rename, and read another file, such as PIGS.TXT. A>CONVERT PIGS.TXT BACON.TXT Other commands allow you to check your parameter and choose an option accordingly. The following batch file looks to see if the filename you are looking for exists on your logged drive. It saves you the trouble of looking through a screen full of entries. COPY CON: F.BAT REM: Find a file ECHO OFF IF EXIST %1 GOTO X ECHO THAT FILE IS NOT ON THIS DISK GOTO END :X ECHO FILE %1 IS ON THIS DISK: ECHO ======================== :END<F6> Now you can determine whether or not a file exists by typing: A>F FILENAME.FILETYPE (such as ...) A> F COMMAND.COM or A> F MYTEXT.DOC Don't forget to include the filename after the name of the batch file. ------------------------------------- EDITOR'S SCREEN ------------------------------------- Thanks. It was exciting to see all of you show up for our December meeting. We had over 40 in attendance! Our goal is to continue to provide programs worth coming to. Thanks also to TLC press for producing the June-October Newsletters for last meeting. Now you know that they really did exist! PLEASE contact me (on the RBBS, by phone, at the user group, US Mail, carrier pigeon, etc.) if you have corrections, modifications, or personal contributions for the newsletter. 1986 looks like an exciting year! Though my pocket book will not allow me to take advantage of many of the innovations in hardware and software, I know that the user group will continue to help me improve my use of the equipment I do own. I count it a privilege to have a part in this kind of exchange with other users like yourselves! Jim Levitt, editor ------------------------------------- USER GROUP OFFICERS ------------------------------------- President & Sysop-----Loren Jones Vice-President------James Grettum Librarian----------Calvin Paulson Newsletter Ed.---------Jim Levitt Treasurer-------------Loren Jones User Group Address: 1339 7th Ave. S., Fargo ND 58000 Newsleter Address & Correspondence: Box 97, Wolverton, MN 56594 User Group Phone: FARGO RBBS Phone: 1-701-280-2608 1-701-293-5973 ------------------------------------- The Fargo IBM-PC User Group publishes this newsletter for the benefit of users of the IBM-PC and all compatible computers. The user group is not connected with IBM in any way. IBM is a trademark of International Business Machine Corporation. ------------------------------------- PRESIDENT'S CORNER ------------------------------------- Trends. We are moving into the new year with nticipation as new hardware and software continues to loom on the horizon. There is a whole group of new AT compatibles, both released and yet to come, that take performance far beyond the present performance of the AT. The Sperry IT, which we hope to reveiw at this months meeting, is just such a machine. And, not too far down the road, we are going to be seeing some 80386 based machines...another quantum leap forward in performance. Best of all, while all this is taking place with new machines, there are those smart enough to see the vast market in upgrading present PCs. In the latest PC Week there is an article about a $129 add on board which claims a 30-60% increase in speed for the standard PC by adding a higher clock rate 8088-2 or NEC V20 add-on card. Another manufacturer is ready to release (if not already) an 80286 board that is truly compatible and transparent to the PC. (These boards have been around for awhile but most are more trouble than they are worth, according to the reports I have read. Overall, I think this is going to be the year for SPEED!! It never ceases to amaze me how we always want more! Operations that used to take four hours our PCs now do in a matter of minutes.....as we impatiently pace and ask, "I wish this thing ran a little faster!" I suppose that will continue until the day the machines compute the results BEFORE we enter the data! Now THAT will be SPEED! See you at the meeting! -- Loren D. Jones, President ------------------------------------- WANT TO JOIN? ------------------------------------- Membership Dues. Dues are now assessed on an annual basis with October 1 as the starting point. Checks should be made to: "Fargo IBM-PC User Group." For $12 annually you receive the following benefits: (1) access to our disk library of public-domain and "freeware" programs. Copies are $5 per disk. (2) discounts at some local computer outlets and on products available through the user group directly, such as floppy disks. (3) copies of IBM's Exchange distributed exclusively through PC User Groups. (4) copies of this newsletter. (We are working toward monthly distribution.) (5) the chance to share your problems and discoveries with other users.