SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP NEWSLETTER - JUNE, 1989 WHAT'S NEW Last month's early meeting was conducted by Bilbo Baggins, alias George Campbell. We started with installation of Qmodem 4.0 including a look at all the drop down menu's and proper settings for most modems. We then tried logging on to our own BBS, but as usual, the line was busy..... What else is new! So we satisfied ourselves by calling The Message Center, logging on as a new user (Bilbo Baggins) and exploring a variety of menus offered by the SYSOP (System's Operator), J.T. George then called GENIE, a national bulletin board owned by General Electric Company, showing us but a small number of the many services it offers. After a short intermission, the general meeting started with our twice yearly swap meet. Trading, selling and buying wasn't as brisk as in past meetings. Although much software and hardware was offered little was purchased. Remember sellers, prices must be LOW to move your computer treasurers. Considering the many items offered, we should have a full page in every newsletter under items 4-Sale. Members may advertise free of charge. Take advantage of this service. We had a raffle where a dozen software items were given away. Congratulations to the many winners, and thanks to George, our president, for his generosity in providing the door prizes. Earl Gustafson then presented Accu Weather, a software package which gives the latest weather in the continental U.S. within a one hundred mile radius. The data is downloaded through their own communications software and presented either graphically or as text. Choose among barometric pressures, temperatures, or several other weather parameters. A quick download of file data is all it takes. Earl took us through a typical request of weather for the local San Luis Obispo region. Thanks to Early for an interesting presentation. Next month our early meeting will start as usual with George Campbell answering all your computer questions. Following a short intermission, French Morgan will demonstrate PrintRite from Rite Software. This program will handle all your printing needs. Better than a typical print spooler or buffer, Print Rite spools printer output to disk in a compressed form to save disk space. Print Rite comes with pull-down menus for fast selection, pop-up print queue's to display and manage print jobs easily, and a translation table for IBM character set translation to non IBM printers. We will have several discount coupons available saving you $25 off their regular price of $99.95. BITS N' BYTES *** We have received a large number of PC World Discount coupons for User Group members. 12 issues for $16.95. Get your subscription soon enough and read George's latest article. *** The BASIC SIG will not meet during the next meeting. SIG leader, George Tway, will not be in town for the next meeting. Attendance has been less than we had hoped. Interest will have to increase if we are to sustain this SIG. We are open to suggestions. *** We still have several issues of IBM Personal Systems Issue 2, 1989. Pick yours up during the next meeting. *** Check out the prices at Pacific Software Supply in San Luis Obispo. Call (800)327-8241 and tell them you are a member of SLO BYTES PCUG. This company is mail order and has considerable savings on both software and hardware products. *** Comdex this year is Monday, November 13th through Friday, November 17th in Las Vegas. It's never too early to make room reservations. Try Circus Circus for accomidations. Only $42 per night for two people and they have rooms. If you wait till September you'll probably be too late as motels and hotels book up far in advance for this event. TIP Before installing a new program on your computer, check to make sure the installation program doesn't overwrite the AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file in your hard disk root directory. Usually installation programs are invoked from a BATCH file. Look at this file with the TYPE command for clues on how the program will be copied to your hard disk. TREASURER'S REPORT Here's an accounting of the "bucks in the bank" by treasurer, Teri Sorgatz: Beginning Balance $1425.25 Deposit $ 271.15 Expenses $ 878.67 ======= Balance $ 821.73 Bank of America's Home Banking Demo For all you telecommunication enthusiasts, you can now check out Bank Of America's newest Home Banking Demo. Just call your local San Luis Obispo Tymnet phone number 549-0770 (1200/7/E/1). After a line and one half of garbage cursors across your screen hit the letter "a" on you keyboard. At the prompt type in HOMEBANK. The ID is DEMO and the password is BANK. After that enjoy all the simulated transactions you wish. This is the one time you can pay your bills and know there is money in the bank to cover them. Calendar July 2nd PrintRite Print Spooler by French Morgan August 6th WordPerfect 5.0 to be demonstrated by WP regional manager News From Our Library The following disks are being added to our library during the month of June: #331 Games: SNIPE, a maze type game with degrees of difficulty. REFLEX is an arcade game. Both require CGA. WORDFIND makes word puzzles and BESTBIO is one of the more sophisticated Biorythum programs. #332 Business programs: CHEX is a personal checkbook manager. EZ-Forms Lite creates and stores business forms. RESUME is a good personal resume editor. #333 Application Programs: RUSS is a Russian language editor. (requires CGA). SIGN301 teaches the basics of sign language for the hearing impaired. If you are using a AT type computer or "turbo XT" then use SLOWDOWN to decrease the speed of hand movement on the screen. (graphics required). VM-SYS is a vehicle maintenance logging program. Keep all your vehicle maintenance records on this one. #334 JAPANESE - learn to speak simple Japanese, TEACHERS - quiz generator with multiple choice and True/False answers. Tracks right/wrong answers. MATHMATT is simple math program for youngsters. #335 Utilities: BENCH50 - Newest PC Magazine Benchmark tests. COPY2 will copy a whole hard disk subdirectory to disks fragmenting a large file between two disks. EMS40 creates Extended memory from your Expanded memory. Uses 64K to do this. EMXXX87 can be used to fool many programs which require a math co- processor chip. Works on 80286 & 80386 machines UPDATES: #019 HOOPER FINANCE MANAGER II to version 1.3e #324 MICROTXT now supports 4 pages print on HP Laser Jet II DEMONSTRATION DISKS: #44A-B Supercalc V (update) #116 Decision Pad #117 Grammatik III #118 Oracle - Database Add-in for Lotus 123 #119 FastBack Plus #120 4-in-1 Basic Accounting #121 StarGate Activity Planner #122 Loan Plus 4-SALE Cordata LP-300 Laser Printer........ $1250.00 36 fonts resident Call Rona Lee @ 544-2591 NEW MEMBERS The following individuals joined SLO BYTES last month. A hardy WELCOME to our group. Richard Cletsoway, M.D. 543-8719 Robert Culbertson 238-7418 Steve Derks 466-4480 Shelley McGuire 544-9213 Uh Oh! Expired membership. You will be dropped from the honored SLO BYTES membership rolls if renewal isn't received by July 1st: Marlyn Bumpus Jud Frye Mark Harklerode Howard Hotchkiss David Knoch Mark & Mary Putnam Doris A. Ruste Joseph Seebach Steven Turkheimer Documentation Marking: Teaching Yourself Software and Earning Straight A's By: Karen Little Blinkin Cursor, Newsletter of the Milwaukee Area IBM PC Users Group, March 1989 Wow! The package just arrived in the mail. In it is the $165 software you could finally afford after kindly Aunt Mini gave you that last $25 for a birthday present. Your wife didn't even flinch (much) when you placed the order. Everything looks good. There is a sparkling plastic ring binder, two cello packages containing pages and dividers, several powder blue tutorial pamphlets, a cardboard punch-it-out-yourself keyboard template, and enough disks wrapped in flashy green envelopes to make the whole thing seem worth the cash outlay. You rush it to your machine for a trial spin. It is at this point you come to grips with something more threatening than your pinched budget (or your wife's limited patience). With all your wealth of knowledge about PCs, you don't know a darned thing about this particular program. Barriers to Understanding Computer documentation has a number of flaws: 1. Too many words: They are usually written as a piece of literature using full sentences and chunky paragraphs. 2. Conversational: Sometimes the text is written as though the author was talking with you. Unfortunately, you are reading, not listening to it, and his droll remarks are holding you back from quickly finding key information. 3. Exceptions to the rule come first: The fact that a simple routine can be performed the same way through 22 different key combinations is ALWAYS presented before you learn how to use just one key. 4. Hidden charts: Menus, key-commands, and flow-charts are scattered at random throughout the manual. Worse, what you need to know first is often buried in the appendix. 5. Assumption you don't have a computer: Manuals are written as though you are not looking at your CRT. While you might want to leisurely read the docs over coffee after dinner, it is more likely that you'll be tensely squinting at them while sitting under dim light in front of your machine. 6. Lack of working data: Tutorials often give you everything except a couple of on-disk ready-to-use "databases" to diddle around with. This is a big problem for non-typists who must spend hours entering information as tediously doled out in tutorials. The time spent entering and proofing data would be better used in actually learning the program's mechanics. 7. Concepts not presented for quick eye-sweep: Numerous tutorials feature comments like C:[anything]{everything}\Next.dbf{/p or r} [Other | Setup | Parameters | Other Options | Video Snow Checking] Tools of Learning In order to tackle documentation FAST, you will need the following tools: 1. Post-it-Notes (any size, shape or color) 2. Highlighters (or felt tip markers) 3. Pencil or pen 4. Photocopier (or plans to use a photocopier with enlarging capability) Installation You need to quickly find the exact installation pattern for your machine. Do you need to create a directory first? Does the program do it for you? Is the program based on a A: C: drive configuration when you are doing a B: G:? 1. Tag the page with the instructions YOU need. Write on the tag "install". 2. Highlight the specific directions. There are two benefits to this method. First, you strip the material of all the superfluous words so you can flawlessly install your program. Second, in the event that you must remove or reinstall it elsewhere, you will never have to search for this information again. If you read page-upon-page of installation directions that can be condensed as: Make a directory Copy files into it Setup by SETUP ...summarize on a Post-It-Note and paste it on page one. Learning Key Movement Before you start, try to find the following information: 1. Function key commands 2. Any other key combination commands 3. All menu or flow charts Tag these pages with Post-It-Notes. Later, photocopy and highlight the pages for fast reference. Sometimes software firs abbreviate (read "cripple") the meanings of Function Keys so that they can print them on a teeny-tiny template. If this is the case, you will need to create a full-page template with expanded descriptions. OR --> blowup the itty-bitty template on a photocopier and write in expanded meanings. Learning the Lingo The biggest problem in mastering software is discovering freshly created vocabulary that has absolutely no rational meaning in this context. The use of the terms "Parent" and "Child" in Lotus' Agenda is an example of the mangled use of language, and is the probable reason Agenda is having so much trouble getting market acceptance. With a highlighter in your hand, quickly scan the glossary, and immediately highlight any term that is absolutely incomprehensible. Separate the Steps Use two different highlighter colors to mark the SLOW step-by-step directions which are necessary for immediate understanding, and the SPEEDY exceptions to the rule. Documentation tends to apologetically tell you at every step of basic instructions that there are faster ways to do things. This means you must learn both ways at the same time. Separate the instructions so that you can concentrate on getting up and running. At your leisure, you can re-scan the information to learn how to speed up things. Highlight & Tag Immediately Immediately highlight and tag the information you need to know. You will soon discover that you may flip through numerous pages before you actually get to necessary information. tag those pages. Example: I recently received a beautifully printed 60 page document that goes with a favorite program I had been using. It took 7 pages to get to the fact that installation was a simple Copy *.*. More mystical were instructions on the SET command which I neither knew or understood. That page I tagged. It took a full paragraph plus several exception-to-the-rule trailer sentences to discover that to start the program, all you have to do is type NAME. Page 27 caught my eye because of a PRINT /D:PRN>NUL: which made me vow never to print from that program. Information you DON'T need to read goes like this: "In most cases, selecting a function from the menu bar results in a "pull-down" submenu being opened. Submenus are a set of choices that appear in a box under the corresponding top level option. You select a submenu entry by either pressing the letter that is highlighted in the sub-menu entry (not always the first letter), or by using the up and down arrow keys (or mouse) to highlight the desired entry and then pressing Enter. The Esc key can be used to exit a submenu without selecting any of the choices." That paragraph was written from the 'the reader doesn't own a computer and never will' point of view. Creating Personalized Documentation Once you tag and highlight the documentation, plus find charts explaining function keys and menus, you cut your learning curve by 75% or more. Tagging and highlighting will: 1. Reduce the amount of reading 2. Make key points pop out 3. Define only what you need to learn With regard to point 3, a lot of people feel guilty if they don't read every nuance printed. And, because there is so much reading, they set the whole project aside and never get around to learning the program. It is important to realize that God will not strike you dead if you avoid reading information what [sic] you already know despite what a high school English teacher may have told you. This stuff ain't literature. If you are learning from your company's manual and are forbidden to highlight it, increase your tagging with Post-It-Notes and queue the information with arrows and brief words. A better way would be to buy your own book that you can custom highlight and tag. A $20 investment will reduce frustration and learning time. Some people subscribe to the pure cowboy, "just put it on the machine and do it" scenario. I don't recommend this as you can back yourself into corners that will make the program seem more frustrating to learn than it really is. Cowboy-mentality combined with documentation-marking, however, will get you what you want: Knowledge of how to quickly make that bull of a program purrr like a kittycat. Karen Little, President Office Technology Academy Milwaukee, WI Karen Little is a documentation writer, trainer, and president of a non-profit computer training school. MEMORY WAIT STATES (SPACE COAST PC USER'S GROUP, TITUSVILLE FL, JANUARY 1989 NEWSLETTER) Reprinted by permission of the IBM Personal System Technical Journal A wait state is used within the system to allow slow devices to be used with a faster processor. One or more wait states may be needed because an I/O device or memory cannot respond fast enough for the processor. When the processor needs to access memory, it goes through a two-part process. First, it sets its address lines to the address of the desired memory location. Second, if the operation is a write operation, the process places data on the bus, and the data is accepted by memory devices. If the operation is a read operation, data from memory is placed in the bus and the processor takes this data and places it into an internal register. In terms of processor clock cycles, a memory operation, whether a read or a write, uses two clock cycles; the first sets up the address and the second accomplishes the data transfer. The length of time for a clock cycle is derived from the speed of the processor clock. The faster the clock speed, the shorter the clock cycle. Thus a 6 MHz processor has a clock cycle time of 167ns, while a 10 MHz processor has a clock time of 100ns. To illustrate, let's assume we have 150 nanosecond memory and an 80286 processor with a clock cycle time of 100 nanoseconds. During the first cycle of 100ns, the processor sets up the memory address and begins to access the desired memory. However, the memory access cannot be completed during the first 100ns cycle because the response time for the memory is 150ns. Therefore, a processor wait state is inserted so that the desired memory access can be completed. The second clock cycle of 100ns is used as the wait state. The desired memory address is accessed by the time the wait state cycle completes. Now it is time to make the transfer of data between memory and processor. The data transfer is done during a third clock cycle. To summarize, a single read or write to memory requires three clock cycles of 100ns each, or 300ns total. In order for an 80286 processor to run with no wait states, the memory would have to respond in less than one clock cycle, which means less than 100ns. If the memory speed is 85ns, it means that for either a memory read or write operation, the 80286 processor can access a memory address in less than one processor clock cycle. Therefore the processor, which is the fastest component, does not have to wait for a memory access, and can operate with no wait states. By eliminating the wait state, the transfer of data between memory and processor can take place within two clock cycles, or 200ns total. This, with zero wait states, memory read and write operations are 1/3 more efficient than one wait state. The 16MHz clock speed of the 80386 processor results in a clock cycle time of 62.5 nanoseconds and the 20MHz processor has a clock cycle time of 40ns. In all of these cases, the processor is faster than the system memory. To compensate for this, memory is run as page-mode memory. A page is like a window that moves up and down through memory. Page-mode memory permits zero wait states for memory reads, provided that all the data being read is within the current page. If the data spills into the next page, two wait states are inserted while the next page is accessed. Memory writes to the current page required one wait state. In addition, if the amount of data to be written exceeds the page size, a second wait state is inserted while the next page is accessed. MEMORY CACHE Memory caching is a technique for improving the rate of data transfer between the main processor and real RAM memory. Processors such as the Intel 80386 can access memory at very high rates of speed. Real memory that is fast enough to enable the 80386 to run with zero wait states could be prohibitively expensive. To bring memory costs down while enabling the processor to run at zero wait states, the technique of memory caching is used. A memory cache consists of a cache controller and a small amount of high speed memory. The memory used is static RAM, which (unlike dynamic RAM) does not need to be refreshed. A memory cache of 64KB permits a large segment of memory to be in the cache, thereby making the cache more effective. The Intel 82835 cache controller is responsible for keeping requested memory addresses in the memory cache. The cache controller reads ahead of the main processor and tries to have the requested addresses in the memory cache before the processor needs them. Thus, when the main processor accesses through memory it is really accessing the memory cache. As long as the processor is working with cache memory, the processor runs with zero wait states. There are times, however, when the cache controller will not have the requested memory addresses in the cache. When this happens, the main processor uses one wait state while the cache controller loads the requested memory addresses into the memory cache. For a memory write operation, the cache is a write-through cache. That means that when the 80386 processor executes a write to memory, if that portion is already in the cache, both the memory cache and the corresponding addresses in real memory are updated. PC PHYSICS - FACT AND FOLKLORE: X-Rays by Dennis Persyk (reprinted by Monterey Bay Users Group - Personal Computer Newsletter for February, 1989, from Tokyo PC Newsletter July 1988 which was taken from NEI, March, 1987) There is a popular belief that baggage inspection machines erase floppy disks. This belief has spawned the sale of disk protectors, made of lead, to protect your floppies from the X-rays produced by the inspection machines. Unfortunately, the lead disk protectors are useless. While it is true that high speed photographic film can become slightly fogged after many passages through domestic baggage inspection X-ray machines, X-rays have no effect on floppy disks. Floppy disks can be damaged by magnetic fields, but not by X-rays. There are isolated cases of floppy disks being damaged in baggage inspection. But the damage was caused by magnetic fields within the machine, probably from electric motors. The best course of action if you travel and fear for the data on your floppies is to request hand inspection of them. If you can locate disk protectors made from magnetic shielding material ("mu metal" is a popular shielding material) you could use them. I've not seen any of this type advertised. Note that hard disks are very unlikely to be erased by baggage machine magnetic fields because the hard disk platters are shielded by virtue of their metal hermetic shields. The last source of (man-made) magnetic fields that you will encounter at an airport is the metal detector loop through which you pass. Fear not, as the magnetic field it produces is very tiny indeed, and of no consequence to your valuable data. ROMs and Baggage Inspection A service technician asked me if a baggage inspection machine could erase the EPROM (erasable programmable read only memory) on a custom board he was carrying. Our PC;s have ROM's (read only memories) which are more robust. The technician knew that EPROM's could be erased by ultraviolet light (from a very intense sunlamp sort of device), and therefore, reasoned that X-rays could similarly erase the EPROM's. He was partly right. While X-ray exposure could erase an EPROM, the intensity would have to be millions of times greater than that encountered in a baggage inspection machine. EPROM's are, therefore, safe at airports, and their kin, the ROM that we have in our machines and portables, is even safer.