Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_07/issue_08

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 14.9 KB | 275 lines

•  WordWorks problems − In reply to Dave Floyd’s WordWorks problems
(Archive 7.8 p43) one of our subscribers (I didn’t catch the name,
sorry) called in with a solution that works for him. Once you have
deleted the choices file and got the configurations back as you want
them, quit WordWorks and then load the choices file into Edit. Find the
line that starts NewView followed by some coordinates and comment it out
by placing a colon at the start of the line. Save the file back and all
should be well.  Dave Webb, NCS.
7.8
•  CC Turbo drivers − It has been stated in the past that to print from
Basic (or similar), you need to load the Turbo Driver before it will
work. This is not, in fact, the case. After installation, the !Printers
directory will contain a directory called td, which is where the Turbo
Driver resources are kept. In the subdirectory Resources.Modules is a
relocatable module ‘turbo’ which is all that is required to enable
printing from Basic. If you frequently wish to print in this way, it may
be beneficial to load the module as part of your boot sequence. G.
Smith, London.
7.8
•  Conditional Basic − Following hours of head-scratching and computer-
bashing, wondering why an “IF...THEN...ELSE...ENDIF” did not work as it
should, I made the following discovery. The problem occurs if you are
using !StrongEd when after the THEN, for whatever reason, there is a
space which you cannot see. (It is possible to make it visible in
!StrongEd since you can set the window and text background colours
independently, e.g. two different shades of grey. MH) In my case, it was
left there after splitting the line. The program then seems to ignore
the THEN and just continues its flow, and of course, if the condition
has not been satisfied, the wrong result is achieved. If you delete the
unseen space or spaces it works correctly. The same does not occur with
!Edit. How about other editors?  John Charman, Norfolk.
7.8
(I have tried this with the public domain editor, !Zap. If you edit in
BASTXT mode, the spaces are saved, but the program functions correctly.
If you edit in Basic mode, trailing spaces are removed. Is there a
difference if you run the program from within !StrongEd, rather than
saving the file and running it normally? MH)
7.8
•  Deskjet printing − Examining the printer graphics output for the
Deskjet from the Acorn Printer driver, I see that graphics output ends
with the code <esc>*rB. This was the accepted code until the DJ500 but,
thereafter, <esc>*rC is required. The latter is recommended to cover
both cases. In the !Paint code, it is immediately followed by <esc>E to
reinitialise the printer, so it would probably work OK but, in other
contexts, it could have undefined results. John Laski, London SW1.
7.8
•  Epson Stylus and Turbo Driver − If you are having problems with
spurious formfeeds being sent out to the Epson Stylus printer from the
CC Turbo Driver, don’t despair. It is a known problem and Computer
Concepts have a fixed version of the Turbo Driver. Contact them for more
details.  Michael Pullin, Cheltenham.
7.8
•  Ink Refills for Canon BJC-600 − The Canon Inkjet Colour Printer BJC-
600 is highly regarded as a suitable colour printer for Acorn 32-bit
(Archimedes) computers. It produces prints with 360 dpi resolution and
near-photographic quality in colour of an excellence previously
obtainable only with much more expensive printers. The method of
printing is to eject coloured inks in very small droplets from separate
reservoirs of ink of four colours (yellow, cyan, magenta and black)
through holes of microscopic size in a print-head which is traversed
laterally as the paper is advanced beneath it.
7.8
In the Canon BJC-600, the print-head is retained in the machine and only
requires renewal at long intervals. The four inks are contained in
liquid form in separate plastic cartridges which are conveniently
transparent to show the quantity of ink remaining. These four cartridges
plug into the print head and can be removed and replaced individually.
Each cartridge is sealed except for one hole which feeds ink to the
print head (the ink exit hole). A spongy material which is located
within the cartridge absorbs some of the ink and prevents it flowing too
freely from the cartridge.
7.8
Ink refill kits have become available to save on the cost of new
cartridges. It is particularly important, if refilling is contemplated,
that only inks of the special types used in inkjet printers should be
employed.
7.8
In my experience, it is not satisfactory to attempt to inject new ink
through the ink exit hole: Filling in that fashion can only be done
slowly as air must exit at the same time by the same hole. Furthermore,
there is a risk of disturbing the spongy material within the cartridge
at the critical position in the vicinity of the hole. So, my solution
has been to drill another hole in the cartridge for filling with ink.
Although this and the subsequent operations which I shall describe are
simple in nature, they require some dexterity. If you wish to experiment
at your own risk, proceed as follows:
7.8
To modify the cartridge, peel back the coloured adhesive label to expose
the top of the cartridge. Drill a small hole in the centre of the round
moulding depression on the top of the cartridge (see diagram opposite).
I shall call this the filling hole.
7.8
Take a piece of adhesive tape of about ¾“ square − the common brown
adhesive packaging tape is ideal as it adheres strongly to the material
of the cartridge. Place this tape to cover the filling hole which you
have drilled and bend the tape to extend it over the side of the
cartridge. This extension will facilitate its removal later. Finally,
smooth back the coloured label to its normal position at the top of the
cartridge. This completes the modification of the cartridge.
7.8
Filling a modified cartridge.
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(a) My experience in refilling cartridges is limited to the use of ink
obtained from System Insight of Welwyn Garden City which I have found to
be satisfactory. The ink is supplied in plastic squeeze bottles which
are very convenient − specify that ink is required for the BJC-600 and
the bottles will be fitted with long straight hollow needles (or probes)
somewhat like a hypodermic syringe. Ink of all four colours will be
required.
7.8
(b) Seal off temporarily the ink exit hole in the cartridge with tape.
This requires care as the exit hole is near a corner of the cartridge. A
clamp against a soft rubber washer as a seal is a better solution.
7.8
(c) Peel back the coloured label at the top of an empty cartridge to
expose the brown tape and remove this brown tape to expose the filling
hole. Insert the probe of a squeeze bottle containing ink of the correct
colour (check the colour of the cartridge label carefully) and fill the
cartridge with ink. Do not overfill but move the cartridge as necessary
to ensure that air is not trapped.
7.8
(d) Seal the filling hole again with a fresh piece of brown adhesive
tape. Smooth back the coloured label over the top of the cartridge.
Remove the tape (or other seal) which was placed temporarily over the
ink exit hole.
7.8
(e) Place the cartridges vertically on a flat surface (in the stance
they would normally occupy when in the printer) and leave them overnight
to stabilize. There should be no leakage.
7.8
(f) Place the newly filled cartridges in the printer and perform the
four-colour cleaning operation which would normally be carried out with
new cartridges.
7.8
You should note that you will be unlikely to complete these filling
operations without spilling some ink especially until experience is
gained. So take care to undertake filling where spilled ink is of no
consequence. Toilet tissue is the best material for mopping up surplus
ink. A small quantity of ink on the hands is of little consequence as it
soon disappears with normal washing.
7.8
The amount of money to be saved by refilling cartridges is worth the
effort if the printer is used extensively. On the other hand, success
will depend considerably on your manipulative skill − you may consider
it preferable to employ only new cartridges as supplied by Canon.
George Foot, Oxted.
7.8
•  Laser Direct and RISC OS 3 − Having recently upgraded to the RISC OS
3 version of the Laser Direct printer driver (v2.61), I’ve hit a couple
of snags when using a Canon LBP-4 printer fitted with a paper cassette.
Thinking these were new bugs, I reported them to Computer Concepts but
have been advised that they are ‘features’ of the (RISC OS 3) model.
7.8
In neither case do the problems stop successful printing but they do
need to be taken into account, thus making the system not quite so user-
friendly.
7.8
When the driver is first loaded and the paper cassette is selected, the
printer Alarm LED now remains on and the Status window shows ‘No paper
in multi-purpose tray’. This is not normally a problem as, once the
first page of a document has been assembled, the Ready LED comes on and
the printer fires up (thereafter, the Ready LED remains on). However,
where an application allows individual pages to be selected, e.g.
Pipedream’s ‘Wait between pages’ option, the printer may not fire up
until the final page of the document has been accepted or rejected. With
a large document, many minutes can be lost.
7.8
There are two work-around solutions; put a sheet of paper in the multi-
purpose tray or first print another full document. Either action will
bring on the Ready LED and allow printing to start as soon as the first
selected page has been assembled.
7.8
Secondly, when you use the ‘Print to file’ option, the paper feed
selected at the time is now saved with the file and, on printing, will
override any other setting. So, when printing to file, you must decide
where you want the paper to come from when the file is finally printed,
and pre-select Cassette or Multi-Purpose before printing to file.  Jim
Nottingham, York.
7.8
•  PipeDream to Impression − In Archive 7.7 p56, Paul mentioned getting
files from Pipedream to Impression via DeskEdit. If you have PipeDream4,
there is an option “Paragraph” on the save window. If you click that,
you can drop the text straight from PipeDream into Impression.  Michael
Wright, Teignmouth.
7.8
•  Quieter fans? − David Lenthall (Archive 7.6 p23) asked for a supply
of quiet Papst fans. You could try a company called Papst Direct,
Andover, Hants, SP10 3RT (0264-335714) (0264-332182) who advertised in
Computer Shopper some while back. Their Variofan will “run as fast as
your PC needs”. I haven’t tried them myself so if anyone does, perhaps
they would report back so we can all benefit. Thanks.  David White,
Cambridge.
7.8
•  Rodent sunglasses? − As a person of the bearded persuasion (those who
met Dave at Acorn World or the NCS Open Day can confirm that!) who
sometimes eats digestive biscuits whilst working at my Archimedes, my
keyboard and mouse mat often suffer a shower of crumbs and small hairs
as I scratch my chin. This requires frequent removal and cleaning of the
rubber ball in the mouse.
7.8
I have become accustomed to this so the other day, when the mouse
pointer started moving in jerks I removed the ball and cleaned it. No
improvement. I tried again, this time cleaning the little rollers with a
cotton bud as well. Still it wouldn’t work properly. I washed the mouse
mat but again, it misbehaved.
7.8
The mouse I normally use was actually taken from an A3020 because I
prefer it to the one supplied with my A5000, so at this point, I decided
to try the original mouse and everything worked perfectly.
7.8
A little later, determined not to be beaten, I took the top off the
mouse to give it a thorough clean. This still produced no improvement. I
therefore tried using it with the top cover removed in the hope of being
able to see what was going wrong. All the little rollers appeared to be
turning, but the mouse pointer wasn’t moving, just vibrating as I moved
the mouse.
7.8
The mouse uses an optical sensor with a slotted disc and, with the top
removed, there was too much light for this to function whereas shielding
the works with my hand made it function correctly.
7.8
Suddenly the penny dropped! I refitted the cover, placed my hand
completely over the mouse (instead of just moving it held between thumb
and little finger as usual) and it worked. The trouble was that I work
with my desk in a bay window, and it was the first sunny day of the
year. The afternoon sun shining through the window was landing on my
desk just where I had positioned the mouse mat. Enough of this bright
sunlight was penetrating the casing of the mouse to confuse the optical
sensor. I had wasted about an hour trying to find a non-existent fault
when all that was needed was to partially draw the curtains!
7.8
I have now stuck some kitchen foil to the inside of my mouse casing!
David Holden, Sydenham.
7.8
•  !Spark(plug) 2.22 − John Laski also writes of !Spark “this
successfully unzips some files, but not others.” Unfortunately there
have been later versions of ZIP on the PC than !Spark will currently
handle. If you have access to the PC Emulator, I would recommend that
you use the PKUNZIP program within the PC partition. While slower than
!Spark, it does have the advantage that the decompressed files have the
correct extensions (which !Spark does not (yet?) offer), and if the
software is PC anyway, extracting it via !Spark to the PC partition and
then having to rename all the files is more hassle than resorting to
DOS. If you are sending the files to a Pocket Book (much of the Psion 3
software is distributed through PC media) then with PocketFS2 you can
drag a file directly from the PC partition to the PocketFS filer (not
the translation window), which is another advantage of the PC method.
Hopefully, future versions of !Spark will support extensions, as well as
later versions of ZIP files, thus making my PC partition redundant!
Matthew Hunter, NCS
7.8
•  Taxan 789 problems − I’ve been offered quite a bit of advice on my
Taxan 789 problem; unfortunately, none of it is definitive and some of
it is contradictory. However, the general consensus is that the Taxan
789 should run OK direct from ‘new’ machines, i.e. A5000 or later. It
may run off ‘old’ machines, with or without multisync VIDC enhancers,
but this is unlikely. It probably will run OK with SVGA VIDC enhancers,
such as the version marketed by Watford Electronics.
7.8
Apparently, the clue is whether the computer/VIDC enhancer produces a
composite sync or the preferred separate horizontal and vertical syncs.
This may explain why I had identical problems trying to run it from an
A410/1, with multisync enhancer, or an A540 with built-in equivalent
hardware.
7.8
I’m now running the monitor successfully from a State Machine G16 card
and am extremely impressed with the display quality in the higher-
resolution modes, which is only marginally down on that of my Eizo
F550i. While I agree entirely with Stuart Bell’s rationale on 14“ versus
17” monitors (Archive 7.4 p31), for someone who cannot justify the
expense of the latter, a 14“ monitor and colour card (and, in my case, a
pair of reading glasses...) would make a relatively economical
compromise.  Jim Nottingham, York.  A
7.8