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 $18 per year. As a member you will receive a membership card, an updated membership list, SLO BYTES monthly newsletter, and free use of our Public Domain Library. Contributors are asked to submit articles for the next issue by the 10th of each month either in writing or on disk (ASCII format preferred). Address all correspondence to SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP, % Bob Ward, 2100 Andre' Ave., Los Osos, Ca. 93402. Phone 8am-5pm 546-2164, after 5pm - (805)528-0121. Other user's groups have permission to publish any material found in this newsletter. Have a computer related item to sell? Tell the editor and we will put it in our newsletter. For further information call Bob Ward @ (805)528-0121 eves. ****************************************************** Meetings are held the 4th Thursday of every month, unless noted otherwise in the newsletter calendar, at 7:15 pm. New users SIG 6:15 to 7 pm. They are hosted by the Biology Department and located at Cal Poly University, Biology's Science North, Room 313. ****************************************************** DI$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. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ A Note From Our President Another Viewpoint . . . Each and every month our most excellent Host and News Publisher outdoes himself by putting forth a superb Club Newsletter. In an effort to help him, and hopefully insure he continues, I will be adding a few comments of my own, as time permits, to fill the small gaps and maybe assist some of you with a problem or two you may be having. First, I am really enjoying my new MiniScribe 32 megabyte hard card! I don't know how I managed before. The speed and capacity are a real dream. I find there's a noticeable difference from the 10 MB hard disk I use at work, and with all the directories and subdirectories on my new disk, I find I can get easily "lost" on the thing! Solution: There are several good disk managers on the market, so I tested a few of the common ones (that I have access to) and find that QDOS by Gazelle Software is fast, easy to install, easy to use, intuitive and user friendly. As soon as the Eagle flys again, I will be ordering the new QDOS + for my system. I recommend it over Norton's Commander, 1DIR, Desk and Poly Windows. It's soooooooo simple! From the "I don't believe I did that" department comes the sad but true story of the Electronics Shop Foreman who sent off his bucks for a ROM BIOS upgrade on his Columbia computer. The chips finally arrived and the eager electronics "expert" tore open the package, hastily read the 7 pages of instructions and 15 different warnings about installing the chips backwards. [Nothing worse than installing micro chips backwards, you know. It burns them up in just a few nanoseconds, once the power's applied.] So this "expert" opened the computer's case, removed the power supply and disk drives as well as his new hard disk card; made sure his ground strap was working, very carefully removed the 3 original chips and laid them beside the new ones (on his static dissipating pad). Note: He laid the original chips beside the new chips with the labels on the top all reading in the same direction, because he didn't want to stick the wrong chip in the wrong socket, you know!! Unfortunately, the chips' notches happened to be on opposite ends of each other. The "expert" INSTALLED the new chips with the LABELS facing the same direction and ignored [even after 15 warnings] the direction the notches were facing. He reassembled the whole thing, applied the power and, you guessed it, he blew up those little chippers! [No real explosion, just a continuous blast from the speaker.] Well, he reinstalled the original chips, re-read the instructions and cried in his diet Coke. On the very last page of the instructions was another warning notice: "If the ROM's are installed with the notches pointing in the wrong direction they will be destroyed and completely useless to everybody!! They may be cont. Presidents note..... cont. returned for replacement at a cost of $25.00." Immediately a check and the burnt out ROMS were sent back with humble apologies. The replacement chips arrived faster than the original order and were installed correctly without a problem. I still haven't found any difference between the old and new versions of the BIOS, but I did get a refund check for $25.00 from the supplier. The note said: "Reason for Credit: Customer paid for replacement ROMS he burned out - A. Welsh says refund the check." So who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? After all the check was from the "GODFATHER'S Used Computer Syndicate"!!!!! Welsh, Syndicate, the Godfather...... I'm not sure what's going on here but I hope I live to tell more about it. It's refreshing to know that a company can have compassion on a Computer-holic Hacker. Till next time . . . Byron Smith MiniScibe 32MB Hard Cards are available from Hamilton- Avenet for $449.00 at 800-521-7088 Columbia Data Products, Inc. has been purchased by: Godfather's Used Computer Syndicate 1154 W. Hwy 436, P.O. Box 3037 Forest City, FL 32714 They also handle the Violin-ATC computer and various other clones. (P.S. from the Editor) At some future date Byron will give us a demonstration on chip installation. He needs someone to volunteer their computer. Any takers? How about a $250 80287 math coprocessor? ====================================================== NEW MEMBERS A BIG welcome to our new members who signed up at the February meeting. We hope the new member packet is helping you to get started. If you have any questions about the club please feel free to call a fellow member on the membership disk. L. Lotz 528-6740 | P. Young 467-3549 M. Brixey 772-4306 | E. Miller 543-8267 G. Tway 772-4126 | C. Currey 528-1022 R. Villar 544-9507 | S. Powers 528-4555 K. Malcomsom 528-8663 | K. Levee 528-4580 J. Koehn 489-1165 | M. Johnson 528-2382 R. Ferguson 466-1523 | D. Philbin 544-8362 B. Ingram 541-3603 | J. Read 481-0792 ====================================================== David Ahl's Basic Computer Adventures Microsoft Press ISBN 0-914845-92-6 By Pat Farley It was just last year that I was browsing in a bookstore, thinking to myself, "What a thrill it would be to walk the 2,007 miles of the Appalachian Trail." Before I took my first step, I was stopped by the cost of all the gear one needed to undertake such a hike. "Nah," I thought, "I'd better stay home this year." I returned to my book-browsing activity and, as luck would have it, the very next book I happened upon provided me not only the chance to walk the Appalachian Trail, but to enter the famous Tour de France bike race; take a trip on the Orient Express; sit beside Amelia Earhart on her around-the-world flight; visit New York City and Honk Kong - and all without ever leaving the house. The book, by Creative Computing founder David Ahl, is a step-up from the "YOU ARE IN such-and-such ROOM ... YOU CAN SEE such-and-such WEAPON(s)" brand of text adventure found in today's magazines and "How-to" books. In each of the ten, separate, BASIC programs, David presents you and your IBM with a unique challenge. For instance, in The Orient Express, you travel the very same route the famous train took back in 1923, but during your trip, you're faced with a murder case involving logic and deduction. In Subway Scavenger, you're working for a messenger service, running around New York city on 11 of it's 51 subway routes, covering 264 of it's more than 700 stations. To help you out, David includes the address of the NYTA, where you can get a NY subway map for the price of a #10 envelope. It comes in mighty handy when you decide to play the game. In Tour de France, you assign two keys to be the pedals of your racing bike, and actually pedal (well, finger) your bike along the route. Let me tell you, it's not easy. In The Longest Automobile Race, you're funded along the way by the man who built your 1908 car. When you run out of money, you have to wire a properly-worded telegram to him for more funds. How you word it decides whether or not you get your money. Don't be misled by thinking that you can find an answer in the listings. David thought about that. The identity of the killer on The Orient Express, as well as the wording you must use in your telegram is well hidden in the program's logic. If the thought of typing in x-pages of source makes your fingers start to itch, don't worry. For $20 ($1 p&h), David will provide you with a compan-ion disk containing all the source listings from the book, along with a BASIC menu program to make your adventuring easier. David thinks a lot of his trek- kers, and will send all disk purchasers a typo letter to clean up the source code (what a guy!) David adds a small incentive to the purchase by inviting disk (cont.) ADVENTURE CONT. buyers to share the wealth in the publishing of adventures converted to other systems, like the Apple or the Mac. David offers conversion hints in the back of the book, but warns that converting programs like these is a formidable task. Considering the presentation of the material, the variety of the adven-tures, and the reputation of the author, your investment in the book ($9.95 + tax) and disk is not wasted. I heartily recommend this to all you IBM armchair adventurers. ====================================================== CALENDAR March 26th Demonstration of Kodak's DataShow with with ShowMaker slide-making software. Hard Disk Backup Systems: TakeTwo, and DS Backup+. April 23rd WORDPERFECT 4.2 by Bryan Johanson, regional marketing manager. May 28th Word Processing and Data Entry filing systems by Larrie Ciano. Swap Meet.... Bring hardware / software for sale or trade. June 25th ON GUARD A hard disk access control program will be demonstrated by a representative from United Software Security, Inc. July 23rd Computer applications in Medical Imaging by Barry Mayer ======================================================= TID BITS Make your PROMPT command work for you. Place the following in your autoexec.bat file and the top of your screen will become an information center displaying the current directory, date, and time... all highlighted. Note: ANSI.SYS must be in your config.sys file. The command is DEVICE=ANSI.SYS (F6). (The statement below must be all in one line. Substitute spaces for the periods shown and use no more that one space between prompt and $e.) prompt $e[s$e[24A$e[1D$e[K$e[7m$p.....$t$h$h$h.....$d. ..$e[m$e[u$n$g ====================================================== COMINGS N' GOINGS Last month we had a potpourri of hardware and software demonstrations by French Morgan, including his AST 286 computer, plus the unveiling of Kaypro's new "286 I" personal computer by Jim Erlach of Paradise Computers. Both the AST 286 and Kaypro 286 I are 10 MHz machines and comparable in most of the bench mark tests we ran. The big plus for the AST is the ability to be upgraded to a 386 machine at a later date; although no price has been quoted by AST for this modification. Cost for the AST 286 is $3063 including tax and shipping. For this you get a fast (28 msec) 40 meg hard disk, 1 meg of RAM, a 1.2 meg & 360 K floppy drives, a multisync graphics card, and keyboard. The Kaypro 286 I comes equiped with a 30 meg hard disk, 1 meg of RAM, a 1.2 meg & 360 K floppy drives, monochrome monitor, keyboard, and bundled software. The price at Paradise Computers is $3095. Also on last months agenda was a demonstration of LeMenu from Bartel Software. This hard disk menuing system and DOS manager saves keystrokes and makes DOS commands easier to use. French also discussed a new chip, DOTS-PERFECT, which turns your old Epson MX and FX series printer into a 286 look-a-like. The ROM chip has a near letter quality font and other features like skip-over perf all selectable from the existing buttons on the top of the printer. He finished his presentation with an honorable mention of CRUISE CONTROL, a cursor control program. This speeds up cursor movement, turns off your color monitor, and puts breaks on that runaway cursor with an antiskid device. WHEW!!!! A little something for everyone at the last meeting. Thanks to all who participated! This coming month we hope to slow our runaway cursor down a little with a demonstration of the Kodak Datashow overhead LCD projector which we have been using the past few months. Rose Bowker will show us some of the finer points including ShowMaker, the software packaged with the projector. With this program screens may be captured, placed in a file and called up at a later time along with other screens to make a presentation similar to a slide show. The Datashow comes with a wireless controller so the presenter is not chained to the proximity of the datashow projector. We are anxiously awaiting the release of a similar product from Sharp Electronics. When the time is right, this will be our first priority in equipment acquisition for the club. Bob Ward will finish with two presentations on hard disk back-up systems. He (I) will compare TakeTwo, a cont.... hard disk back-up program from United Software Security, and DS BACKUP+ from Design Software. These software programs are much more comprehensive and sophisticated than the original BACKUP file found on your DOS disk, not to mention much faster! ====================================================== NEWS FROM OUR LIBRARY We are adding the following disks to the SLO BYTES public domain library this month. #180 A series of ARC'D hard disk programs including a file defragmenter, menuing system, protection system , subdirectory back up system + PC-SIG #605 - PACKDISK #181 PC-SIG #595 An introduction to the BASIC programming language with BASIC program examples. #182 PC-SIG #607 Text Utilities: PRIVACODE - translates ASCII into secret code; HEBREW - Hebrew character font for Epson printer; TEXT CHECKER - Checks WordStar files for errors; CDIR - disk cataloging program; SMX - Sends escape codes to Epson printer; INDEXER - creates index file with page numbers from text file; #183 PC-SIG #611 - BlackBeard v 6.1 Programmers editor for source code editing in Pascal, C, Fortran, etc. #184 PC-SIG #612 - Foreign Language Tutor in French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Italian. Remember, these disks may be purchased already copied for $.90 each at the meeting or do it yourself if you wish. ====================================================== BITS N' BYTES *** Many thanks to Rona Lee, member and owner of R&R Typing for designing our letter head stationary on her laser printer. Were look'n better all the time. *** LOST at the last meeting...1 gold wedding ring... Call Bill Ingram @ 541-3603 *** Many thanks to those of you who are donating public domain software to our library. *** Do you have a computer item to sell? Are you looking for a printer, monitor, or even another computer? List your items or needs in the newsletter. Free to members! ====================================================== **NOTICE**-**NOTICE**-**NOTICE**-**NOTICE**-** After the last meeting, the officers met and instuted some PERMANENT changes. Because our organization has grown so large, we have lost that close contact we had between members in the past and the ability to help each other with computer problems. Effective with the March 26th meeting, and thereafter, SLO BYTES' regular meeting will start at 7:15 pm. We are reserving the 6:15 to 7:00 pm time slot for new computer users, neophytes and new members. We will take this time to present topics on DOS, hard disk configuration, batch files, and other software topics of a general nature. It will be a time of instruction and learning, on an individual basis. We will NOT collect money for dues, sell disks, or make the public domain library available until after 7 pm. This time is open to all individuals, although experienced users will not gain little by attending these workshops. Those who do attend, please have SPECIFIC questions about your problems so we can help you. Bring your DOS manual and any other reference material. If you have questions about how to use a specific commercial software program, we still encourage you to call a fellow user from the membership disk. The topics at these early meetings will be of a general nature, designed for new users. The meeting will start promptly at 6:15 pm. Please don't be late if you plan to attend. As need dictates, we may split up these early groups into separate rooms and eventually add SIG'S (special interest groups) for software applications and specific interests such as dBASE (to French's delight!). We have not abandon the question and answer period at the regular meetings but, because individual introductions have been taking up much of our time, we will reserve this exercise for the early meetings. The membership disk is still the best way to contact people and get help. We encourage everyone to return the survey sheet to be added to the list. We are working on a larger meeting place at Cal Poly. A letter has been sent to the president requesting offical recognition of our group which would allow us to compete with other organizations on campus for a lecture hall. This does not mean that SLO BYTES is becoming a Cal Poly student organization. Quite to the contrary, will will maintain our independent status from the university. ====================================================== TakeTwo Hard Disk Backup System Reviewed by Bob Ward So you have just bought a new hard disk, Uh? In looking through the myriad of specifications you glance at all the numbers, abbreviations, etc., then put the manual aside to collect dust with all the other interesting and meaningless documents. One specification was probably MFR followed by a number 25000 hrs or there abouts. The 25000 hrs you understand, but the MFR could be anything from the persons initials who put the disk together to the number of hours it will take to fill up the disk. MFR is the abbreviation for Mean Failure Rate. Of course; why would any hard disk manufacturer state in plain English the fact that their hard disk could ever fail or "crash". But it does happen, and more often than one would like to believe. Getting out your calculator or bringing up Sidekick's computer calculator, a few quick keystrokes tell you this is almost 3 years without turning the machine off, or almost 9 years using your computer 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. All well and good, BUT to make up that average, the extremes must be taken into account. Perhaps you're the lucky one and your hard disk beats the odds, or if you're not so lucky, your hard disk doesn't live up to the MFR and "dies" a horrible death way before its time. Most individuals buy life insurance but have you bought insurance for your hard disk? No I don't mean hard cash to Prudential for insuring the life of your hard disk, but a good, easy to use, hard disk backup system. If you're rich, you can afford a tape backup, most of which cost more than the hard disk they're backing up. But what about you and me? Sure you can backup individual files occasionally to a floppy then carelessly store them next to the computer. Doesn't do much good when someone steals your computer AND software. Rule of thumb: Always make duplicate backups; and store the extra set away from your computer, or better yet at work or a friends home. This is your insurance. Hardware can be replaced, software, especially personal files, may not! If your hard disk "crashes", you are still left with the problem of reloading all those files back on to the hard disk, figuring out the subdirectories, path names, etc. You say; "I did it once, I can do it again." Perhaps you didn't do it the first time; maybe it was done for you by the person selling you the computer. Or if you did set up your own hard disk, it may have been over a long period of time, adding a subdirectory and files as you went. All this diatribe is leading up to a point. There are several inexpensive, easy to use, and painless software backup systems on the market which, except for shoving floppy disks into your floppy drive, will backup all your files automatically. United Software Security has created just that kind of program: TakeTwo. It was reviewed with several other software backup programs in the August, 1986 edition of PC Magazine and received the Editors choice award. The name, TakeTwo, comes from the fact that it takes about 2 minutes to back up your whole hard disk on a daily basis. This discounts the fact that the first backup does take considerably longer, but it is only done once. INSTALLATION: Before running TakeTwo the first time, it must be installed onto the hard disk. A:TT INSTALL is your part, TakeTwo does the rest. A separate subdirectory, {{_TT_}}, is created and the necessary files are copied to it. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION: The system configuration is set up for normal 360K floppy drives. The latest version 1.10 also supports the following devices: 5.25" 1.2 meg high density drives 3.50" floppy disks DOS removable cartridges (Bernoulli Box) Non Removable DOS file servers The configuration menu displays the System Default Class, System Default Frequency, Days of Old Versions, and Signal Tone, to mention a few parameters. The System Default Class defaults on REGULAR, although you may choose to back up certain files once only, or never. The REGULAR mode will back up any file which has been changed since the last backup. A backup frequency of 1 to 60 days may be chosen. Using 5 days as an example, if you backup up your hard disk 6 days after the last backup, all files which have been changed within the past 5 days will be backed up, newer files will not. The system configuration menu also allows for the automatic formatting of floppy disks should you not have enough when into a backup session. Days of Old gives reference as to how many days you want to save old backups until discarding them. The default is 14 days. After that time, TakeTwo releases some of the first floppy disks you used for backup so they may be used for the newest backups. And of course the most boring part of backing up a hard disk is shoveling disks into the disk drive. So you have a choice of sounds to signal when the next disk is to be placed in the drive. PC bell, door bell, trumpet, siren, or none (peace and quiet!) -- take your choice. Next page.... TakeTwo cont..... MAIN PROGRAM: TT/M gets you to the main menu. Here you have 6 choices: 1. Backup (B); 2. Restore (R); 3. System Configuration (S); 4. File Configuration (F); 5. History (H); or 6. Quit (Q) To backup your hard disk either chose #1 or just type TT from your C> prompt. First TT reads the names and dates of all files on the hard disk looking for changes in the file creation date. This date is first place on the file when you create it and then changes every time you change that file. It is important that the date and time is always correct or set correctly on you computer after being turned on or rebooted. Without this TakeTwo or any other backup system is worthless. After TT reads the hard disk files and dates, they are compared against the register which was created by the last backup and any files with a newer date are backed up. I found the original backup a bit time consuming but no more than any other backup program. TT copies files onto your formatted floppies at a rate of 400 to 500 KB/min using a standard PC with a 8088 CPU @ 4.77 MHz clock speed. (This time is considerably faster with an AT or faster CPU.) So 10 megabytes would take about 22 minutes not including disk swapping. But after the original full backup, the subsequent backups really fly! TakeTwo presents a fascinating informative screen during backups. Three columns run across the top of the screen: 1) TO DO, 2) DONE, and 3) PERCENTAGE, with 6 rows along the left side: 1) Total Dir, 2) Total Files, 3) Total Bytes, 4) Number of Floppies, 5) Files this Directory, and 6) Bytes this Directory. The numbers in the adjoining boxes constantly change as files are being backed up. The subdirectory and file being backed is also being displayed along with the raw speed in KB/min. You always know exactly where you are in the backup process with TakeTwo. The last floppy contains the register which is also present on the hard disk. The register is the "brains" of the backup, storing all the information on file location, date of backup, etc. TakeTwo does not use a proprietary format for backing up its files. This means the files copied to the backup floppy disks are in a usable format just like on the hard disk. Therefore, any file could be copied back to the hard disk without the aid of TakeTwo, although TT can do it for you much more easily. HISTORY: TT/H brings up the history screen. This summarizes all the old backups by date, time, type of backup, backup class, number of directories backed up, etc. The age of backup in days is displayed, and any backup older that the "days of old" is highlighted. The highlighted backups may not be restored and are lost, although their history remains. I call this the tomb stone highlight! Any previous backup may be deleted from the register with a few keystrokes or any backup within the "days of old" used to restore your hard disk, either selectively by file or a complete restoration. RESTORE: This is a command you hope will never be used. If you need to restore the files on you hard disk, just type A:TT REBUILD. After asking if you really want to rebuild your hard disk, TT asks for the last floppy disk. Remember this contains the latest register and "brains" for restructuring a hard disk. From here you can restore a hard disk to the original configuration with all files present. DOCUMENTATION AND LICENSE AGREEMENT TakeTwo comes with a 62 page manual and 50 preprinted labels + a last floppy jacket in which to store the disk with the register. The manual is easy to read, concise, and filled with figures representing the various screens you will see when using TT. Although telephone support was not mentioned in the manual I did call USS one time about compatibility problems I was having with an IBM clone. Their staff was very courteous , knowledgeable about the program and solved my problem quite quickly. The license agreement limits the use of TakeTwo to a single machine. The program may be transferred to another individual as long as they agree to the enclosed license. USS warrants the diskette on which the program is located for 90 days. OTHER NOTES OF INTEREST: TT will not backup certain copy protected software. These files must be marked NEVER for backup. Should you have a power failure during backup, need to abort the backup process, or run out of hard disk space for creating the register, TakeTwo is prepared to handle all these problems. TakeTwo can backup your files unattended to a file server at any time. A utility program, WAKEUP.EXE, handles it all. Great when you're on a large system and backups to the mainframe can't be made during regular working hours. In conclusion, TakeTwo is a program designed to save you time and make the process of periodically backing up your hard disk an easy process. United Software Security has done an excellent job in this field. TakeTwo (not copy protected) United Software Security, Inc. 8133 Leesburg Pike, Suite 800 Vienna, VA. 22180 1-800-892-0007 Price: $169.00 NEXT MONTH: DS BACKUP+ , a slightly different approach to hard disk backups. ======================================================