VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER
MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - MAR 11 th
Might Programming be your bag ?
As in recent meetings, following the announcements, we'll take the time for folks to share experiences, problems and get questions answered. We'll take time for any followup questions on last month's personal programming. Pete Whinnery may have a "Linux moment" to offer us. Then, we will turn things over to John Murphy - who will enlighten us on this month's topic: C-65/C-128 emulation on PC compatibles.
Many of us are switching back and forth between our trusty C= machines and some other platform (this newsletter is still done on a 128). If we could only run some of our favorite software on that PC - well! Come to the meeting where we will START to explore emulators.
MAIN LINE AMIGA USERS - John's Place
We started our February meeting shortly after 9AM. In attendance were the few dedicated members. For Ted Dean, this was his last meeting with us as he prepares for his move to Arizona. I will miss his enthusiasm and dedication to learning the Amiga.
Our February meeting focused on Internet mail, net news, and FTP clients. A more detailed report of the meeting appears below.
We do not have a firm agenda for our March meeting. There's the possibility we will focus on installing a Unix variant like BSD or Linux on an Amiga hardware platform. It all depends how much time I have before the meeting to
Last month we devoted a portion of the meeting to the subject of personal PC programming. We highlighted some options for doing so - ranging from fairly simple to complex (but short of topics like C + + or Visual Basic). Three of them are summarized in this issue. The purpose of this message is to solicit indications of any interest on the part of members in pursueing the subject in some future meeting(s). So, I would appreciate hearing from the members about their interests and, if possible, what subjects would they like to pursue (or have pursued) - EJV ....
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by Peter Whinnery
Eric S. Raymond at Penn
Hacker extraordinaire, Eric S. Raymond, spoke to groups of students in
engineering, computer science, and business at the Univ of Pennsylvania this
month. Raymond wrote and maintains the well known "Jargon File" also known as
"The New Hackers Dictionary" - an insiders look at those who created and run
the Internet. He is probably best known for "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" an
analysis of open source vs. closed or proprietary software development.
Raymond is also one of the founders and technical director for Chester County
InterLink (CCIL), a non profit organization chartered to provide free internet
access to residents of Chester County. For more information, see Eric's web
page at: www.tuxedo.org/~esr.
There is also a link to "The Cathedral and the
Bazaar" on the MLCUG web page in the Linux section.
Connecting your Linux Computer
to the Internet
PPP - Point to Point Protocol
Means by which the vast majority
of ISPs make it possible for
their clients to connect.
Requirements:
Kernel Support - most recent Linux
distributions have it.
PPP Deamon - installed as a package
(Red Hat, Caldera, and others
that use RPM.) The actual file
is called /usr/sbin/pppd.
Information needed from ISP:
User Name (most likely email address
as well) and password
Domain Name Server (DNS) address(es)
POP (post office protocol) address
(to receive mail)
SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol)
address (to send mail)
First - Edit /etc/resolv.conf:
Second - Edit /etc/ppp/options
Notice the file /etc/ppp/ppp-on is called in the last line. It looks like:
And Finally - Start the PPP deamon:
bash:[~]# pppd
Ending the Session
ps aux |grep pppd kill -9 ###
or (on some distributions)
/etc/ppp/ppp-off
There are a number of GUIs to aid in this procedure. They include:
KPPP - The KDE ppp tool
eznet and xeznet
Xisp (needs xforms
v0.88)
########################################
LOADSTAR !!! - very, very interesting! A few days ago, I received my copy of
the LOADSTAR LETTER #76 - which announced that this was its last issue and LL
would fade from the scene. The interesting thing about this bit of bad news is
that yours truly is published in the letters to the editor section of that last
issue!
As I mentioned last month, the soon-to-appear #42 issue of the LOADSTAR 128
is also the last issue and it, too, will fade from the scene. The interesting
thing about this bit of bad news is that MLCUG member, John Murphy, will have a
program published in this last issue! John has written Maze Master 128 - for
the 80-column mode and has a very interesting story to tell about it.
Interesting and depressing coincidences!
NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWS! - some of you may be aware that I run a clone of the
MLCUG BBS on an Amiga A1200 at the Mt. Cuba Observatory, in Greenville DE,
under the nom de plume of the Astro BBS (its theme being astronomy-related
matters, the topic on which the observatory is based).
The bad news is that about two weeks ago, the hard drive on the A1200 croaked.
Not a software failure, but failure of the hard drive mechanics; so it could
not be accessed at all! So, no data could be recovered from it - and we would
have to start over from scratch - not nice!!
I put in a call to MLCUG master sysop, John Deker, who zoomed down to Delaware
to help diagnose the problem. When we found that it was physical and nothing
we could do would get back the data, John took the A1200 home with him
immediately.
Over the next week, he replaced the hard drive with one that had been excessed
from yet another A1200 in an upgrade. Then, re-cloned the MLCUG BBS and re-
created Astro BBS. On Sunday, the 27th, he brought the beast to my place and
we jointly reviewed the operation while he tweaked the system to get it
"right".
On Monday, the 28th, I fired her up at the observatory - and Astro BBS is back
in action - ready (I hope) for some years of good behavior!
I wanted to tell you about this because: 1) I want to thank John for his fast,
dedicated and careful help and 2) especially, to let folks know that help is on
call from folks in the user group like John and that 3) keeping such a group
going is a good way to make our more-and-more complicated computerized lives a
bit more bearable. Thanks, John.....
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going
on.
This person must be fired.
It appears to be more and more true that security (and privacy) are going by
the board for those who use the internet. The media are full of articles that
titilate us with all kinds of tales of horror - with the ring of "it could
happen to me" being more frequent, and believable!
However, there are things you can do - with two areas being amenable to user
control:
Most, if not all, histories of the computer give the credit to Eckert and
Mauchly - and their creation ENIAC (completed in December 1945) - as being the
first programmable electronic computer. However, that may not really be the
case.
During WW II, in work that remained classified until many years after the war,
the codebreakers in Britain developed an electronic computer that preceded
ENIAC by at least a couple of years. The question I wondered about was whether
this computer - named COLOSSUS - was programmable and, therefore, deserved the
honor of being the known as first. My curiosity was tantalized by the story
shown in the PBS special, THE CODEBREAKERS.
As it turns out, my son who works at the NSA, had attended a talk on the
activities of the Bletchley Park codebreakers some years ago. Here is what he
learned:
-----
www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?1124027
The story appears in The Times (of London) dated 24 Feb 1999.
Thomas H. (Tommy) Flowers, a British cryptanalyst, built the Colossus. He died
28 October 1998 at age 92. Colossus was created to attack the Lorenz machine,
a German cipher machine that protected high-level communications (as opposed to
the Enigma, which was routinely used for tactical communications). The
Colossus weighed one ton, was built of tubes, and had dimensions of 16 by 7
feet. The Colossus was built from standard parts used in telephone switching
systems and switchboards, so the hardware could be purchased at commodity
prices. December 1943 was when the first Colossus went into operation. A
total of ten Colossi were in operation by the end of war. On 6 June 1996, a
ceremony was held at the Bletchley Park museum where the Duke of Kent turned on
the reproduced Colossus. There is a New York Times obituary of Tommy Flowers
dated 8 November 1998. According to a GCHQ webpage, the Colossus was/is a
programmable computer, not merely a special purpose device."
Sure sounds to me like the credit goes to the Brits for the first - even tho
the classification prevented the rest of us from knowing about it. It seems
clear that Eckert and Mauchly would not have known about Colossus; so ENIAC was
also a true creation in its own right.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
FOR SALE: the club still has a very large inventory of Commodore stuff -
software, computers, disk drives, monitors, printers, etc. We have recently
been getting a number of sales via the info posted on the MLCUG web page. But,
those sales have just scratched the surface of our inventory!
So, if you are in need of replacements or augmentation, please contact Charles
Curran - he has most of the stuff and the prices are VERY reasonable!!!
***************************
As in recent past meetings, we held an hour+ of roundtable discussion plus Q&A.
Based on the level of participation, it appears that folks appreciate the
opportunity to talk things over - and there is plenty to talk about!
Then, we had a (short) Linux moment - which is covered by Pete Whinnery on p.2
of this issue.
For the "meeting program", we briefly discussed and briefly illustrated some
possibilities for folks to do their own programming on their PCs. These
possibilities range from the fairly simple to the potentially complex.
Three techniques were illustrated:
by Emil Volcheck
When Microsoft began the process of gradually replacing the PC's basic
operating system (DOS) with Windows, they did not do (have not done?) it in one
step. The first versions of Windows up thru Windows for Workgroups v3.11 were
unabashedly overlaid onto DOS. They were simply continually enhanced
"shells".
However, with Windows 95 some argue that MS got past the shell approach and
have something more like a true operating system. Whether you want to argue
that or not, it is true that DOS has taken more and more of a back seat. BUT,
even in Windows 98, she is still around. This strategy continues to provide
backward compatibility with older software (I just recently installed a very
new DOS program on my Windows 98 laptop!) - while at the same time slowing down
the transition to a true windows OS.
The increasingly underground nature of DOS has been spotty in terms of just
what basic DOS commands are still available. You can check them out for your
PC by reviewing the contents of the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ folder. You'll note it
has an awful lot missing compared to the DOS folder on an older machine - or
one that might still be running Windows 3.1x (with DOS 6.22, the last "full"
version of MS-DOS). You can find some extra DOS commands on your Windows 9x CD
and port them over to use - should you so desire (see a bit later in this issue
for an example).
One of the remaining commands is DISKCOPY - which I find more useful than the
"copy disk" option in Windows Explorer or File Manager. The reason? DISKCOPY
allows you to verify the copy of a disk that you produce. To my mind, this is
a small bit of extra safety, especially when you make a backup of your precious
install disks or want to make a quality copy of information on a disk that will
be used by someone else.
The procedure I use is as follows:
NOTE: how do you get to the DOS prompt? If you use the normal process: click
on START, click on PROGRAMS, click on MS-DOS prompt, you'll get there, but
usually to the C:\WINDOWS\ prompt.
I prefer a quicker way - and one that gets me to the C:\ prompt. I set up a
hotkey shortcut that does it with a simple key press. Are you interested?
More next time?
by Emil Volcheck
The SETI folks have UP-updated their software to version 2.02 - for both
Windows and Mac systems. It had been updated just a couple of weeks prior -
not sure exactly what small change (or bug) they were dealing with. However,
I'm hoping they keep this one for awhile as I'd like to compare how various
computers process the data - then see how my results compare to other folks
experiences.
As I told you all previously, I'm running four (4) computers with SETI in their
spare time (and they all have lots of it - like most computer users do!). They
are three PCs (with different CPUs - a Celeron 300A, a Pentium 133 and a
Pentium 233 MMX), as well as a Mac - with a 240 MHz G3 CPU. All have different
capabilities - tho the Celeron and the Pentium 233 are pretty close. I should
be able to report on that next time.
As of this writing, my complement of machines had processed 220 SETI data
packets. This level of accomplishment has placed the mtcuba account at the
95.7% level - amongst the 1.7+ million contributors. The company is getting
still more rarified....
You can check my progress at any time, by logging onto the website
(setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), selecting User Accounts, then Account Status.
At the dialogue box, enter: mtcuba@udel.edu. When you press return, you'll see
my stats!!!
If you would like to learn more, ask at the next meeting. Or just download the
software and GO!
We started our February meeting shortly after 9AM. In attendance
were the few dedicated members. For Ted Dean, this was his last
meeting with us as he prepares for his move to Arizona. I will miss
his enthusiasm and dedication to learning the Amiga.
Our February meeting focused on Internet mail, net news, and FTP
clients. A more detailed report of the meeting appears below.
We do not have a firm agenda for our March meeting. There's the
possibility we will focus on installing a Unix variant like BSD or
Linux on an Amiga hardware platform. It all depends how much time I
have before the meeting to prepare. Otherwise, we will likely fall
into a question and answer mode of Amiga concerns and issues.
THE FUTURE OF OUR AMIGA SIG MEETINGS
We will no longer meet regularly at Villanova University. Instead we
will continue to meet at 2210 Lantern Lane in Lafayette Hill. We
will also be trying to start our meetings a half hour earlier at
9:00AM instead of 9:30AM. So, please note the change of starting
time.
MEETING REVIEW...
Y2K ISSUES
Following up on last month's mention of Y2K problems related to the
LHA and LZX archive utilities, I'm glad to announce the quick
patchwork done by Amiga supporters and programmers. There are now
several various patches on Aminet for these favorite Amiga archivers.
THUNDEROUS THOR
Following the brief announcement of the Y2K patches above, we got
going with one of the core features of the presentation. THOR is
probably a heavy weight when it comes to Amiga mail and news reading
software. I say heavy weight because THOR is the proverbial Swiss
army knife when it comes to mail and news reading. It was designed
to be a news and mail reader for BBS's as well as the Internet. In
addition it can be used to maintain a database of all Aminet files,
and that's a fair sized database in some respects as there are
currently about 65,000 files listed on Aminet. THOR is shareware,
but is fully functional in its unregistered version. However, if you
do not register, all the world will know that you are using the
unregistered version from the header description in your email and
news postings.
About THOR:
THOR is an advanced multi-format offline reader, supporting the QWK,
Fido, UUCP, SOUP, Bluewave, Omen, ABBS, MBBS and Hippo (BBBS) message
formats. It will also handle TCP-connections with NNTP, SMTP and
POP3, with extensive MIME support.
More information about THOR can be found at:
There are several other mailers and newsreaders for the Amiga, but
none so comprehensive as THOR. Several can be found on Aminet as
either freeware or shareware. Others are commercial software. THOR
can be found at its home site mentioned above or on Aminet.
QT OR CUTEY?
We took a bit of an intermission between the session on THOR and the
FTP client presentation. The intermission took the form of several
cute Shania Twain movies of the QT or QuickTime format.
Besides the interest in the cute Shania Twain, those in attendance
also expressed an interest in the player software. One can buy
commercial Amiga software that will play most of the often used video
formats including .mov, .avi, and .mpg files. Or, one can download
several of the various players that exist on Aminet. In my case I
was using the QT player from the Aminet QT14.LHA archive and
interfacing it with the Directory Opus filetype definition files for
easy play.
FTP WITH A TWIST
Following our intermission, we continued with a look at a few FTP
clients. These included AMFTP, AMIFTP, MFTP, the DOPUS FTP client,
and FTPMOUNT. We quickly reviewed the first 4 after first spending a
little time on AMFTP as an example of an FTP client with a GUI front
end.
Most interesting among all the clients was and is FTPMOUNT. FTPMOUNT
is unique in that it essentially mounts as a file system. Local
applications like editors or players can open remote files on a
server through FTPMOUNT just like they were sharing files on a LAN or
accessing files on a local drive. In fact, FTP connections with
FTPMOUNT can be called like they were a local drive and directory as
in:
FTPMount:Voicenet/
Not only is FTPMOUNT a unique FTP client on the Amiga, it is also a
unique FTP client when compared to other FTP clients on other
platforms. There may be similar clients on other platforms, but I
currently do not know of any!
UNIVERSAL PERIPHERAL DEVICE BOX
In the process of preparing to install a Unix variant on my Amiga, I
found that I needed to upgrade my hard drive capacity. Rather than
change out an existing hard drive I decided it would provide more
flexibility if added an external hard drive. This would allow me the
flexibility to share or move the hard drive between my two Amigas and
boot either of my Amigas into a Unix operating mode if properly
configured.
When I described to Software Hut what I wanted to do, they pointed me
to one of the Universal External Enclosures for SCSI or IDE/ATAPI
devices that they sell. The enclosure is made by a company called
CE. That's all the information I could find on the carton for the
enclosure or the contents of the carton. The enclosure costs about
$75 at Software Hut.
What do you get when you buy the enclosure? First thing is you don't
get any instructions. So, you either must be knowledgeable about
such devices yourself or find someone who is to do the assembly.
The enclosure box is designed to mount either a 3.5 inch devices or a
5.25 inch device. It measures approximately 8x10.5x2.5 inches in
dimension. The base of the enclosure has mounting points for two
device sizes. This makes it convenient for mounting either 3.5 inch
hard drives or 5.25 inch CDROM drives that don't have their own
external case.
Inside the enclosure is a power supply along the right side. A power
switch is at the front of the box on the same side along with a dual
element LED indicator. The AC power connector is also on the same
side of the box, but at the rear. An appropriate power lead is
provided internally to connect to the internally mounted device of
your choosing. One lead from the dual LED is used to connect to the
device to provide an indication of device activity. The second lead
from the dual LED is permanently connected to the power supply to
indicate when the power is on.
There are 3 front bezels for the case to accommodate the type and
size of device you mount within the box. Obviously, you would use
the open face bezels to provide access for a CDROM drive door and the
closed face bezel for a hard drive.
A mini fan is mounted on the back panel next to the AC power
connector.
Adjacent to the left of the fan are two Centronics connectors to
provide a standard SCSI type pass-through connection for a SCSI type
device. These connections would also be used with IDE or ATAPI type
devices provided you supply the appropriate external cabling. The
two Centronics connectors are joined internally by a ribbon cable. A
ribbon type connector is installed midway on the ribbon cable to
connect to the internally mounted device.
Along the left side of the rear panel are two RCA type phono
connectors to provide an external audio connection for an internal
CDROM device. In addition there is a device unit number changer like
the ones found on external SCSI CDROM drives. The number changer and
phono connectors have internal ribbon leads to provide an easy
connection to an internally mounted CDROM drive.
When I showed the enclosure at the meeting, everyone was impressed by
the quality and complete detailing of the case, power supply, and
support cabling.
If you have either software or hardware for your Amiga that has taken
your fancy, please bring it to our attention. I'm sure your specific
interests will be of interest to others. Let me know if this is the
case at the next meeting, or leave me email on our BBS. Remember, a
user group is only as rewarding as the sum of the efforts of its
individual members.
Meetings are in the St. Augustine Center at Villanova University. The 8-bit
and PC sessions will be in Room 110 (Amigans at John Deker's house).
[ Map goes here ]
Enter from the ITHAN AVENUE main gate, then proceed to the 2-level parking
building adjacent to St. Augustine, on the Ithan Avenue side.
NOTE: maps on our webpage -
http://astro4.ast.vill.edu/mlcug/
March 11 March 15
April 8 April 12 **
May 13 May 17
* = first Saturday ** = second Wednesday
**********************************************************
EDITOR: Emil J. Volcheck, Jr. 1046 General Allen Lane West Chester, PA
19382-8030
(Produced with C-128D/SCPU 128, RAMlink, HD-40/85, 1571, FD-4000, THE WRITE
STUFF 128, XETEC Super Grafix, Canon BJ-200ex, Swiftlink and Motorola 288
modem)
MLCUG BBS: 610-828-1359 ( 300 --> 33600 bps ), 24 hr/day
WWW: http://astro4.ast.vill.edu/mlcug/
PUBLICITY: Robyn Josephs 610-565-4058
DISK ORDERS: Charlie Curran 610-446-5239
VILLANOVA SPONSOR: Prof. Frank Maloney, Dept. of Astronomy
MLCUG STEERING COMMITTEE:
PRESIDENT: Emil Volcheck 610-388-1581 SECRETARY: Charles Curran 610-
446-5239
TREAS./MEMBERS:Dewitt Stewart 610-623-5145 SYSOP/AMIGA SIG: John Deker 610-
828-7897
INTERNET/Linux:Peter Whinnery 610-284-5234 DATABASE: Layton Fireng 610-
688-2080
AT LARGE: Tom Johnson 610-525-3440 AT LARGE: John Murphy 610-
935-4398
Linux Moments
search your.isp.domain
nameserver 123.45.678.9
nameserver 123.45.678.0
/dev/modem
57600 #baud rate modem
crtscts #hardware flow control
lock #keep others from
trying to use modem
defaultroute #route to ppp inter-
face established on
connect
noipdefault #no local ip address
asigned
connect
"/usr/sbin/chat -vf /etc/ppp/ppp-on"
#used to make call
#/etc/ppp/ppp-on (classic "expect/send script")
"" ATZ OK ATDT5551212 CONNECT ""
ogin: MyUserName
ssword: MyPassword
http://www.hwaci.com/sw/eznet
http://users.hol.gr/dbouras
http://blooch.phus.uwm.edu/xforms
ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMENTS
########################################
Your fortune for today
SECURITY & THE INTERNET
THE FIRST COMPUTER?
Mr. Tony Sale helped found the Bletchley Park Memorial. Some of the buildings
at Bletchley Park have been preserved as historical buildings, and there is a
museum there. Mr. Sale gave an address at NSA in November 1996. The title was
"Was Colossus the world's first computer?" He, personally, built a new
Colossus machine based on the declassified documents. All the original Colossi
were destroyed after the war. A webpage for a story on Colossus is at:
$ TRADING POST $
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PC/128/64 MEETING
***************************
If members are interested in following thru on any of these programming
activities, bring it up at the meetings or post to the BBS. Hopefully, we can
aid the curious.....
DOS CAN BE VERY HELPFUL!
You'll find the process - primarily the write to the new disk - to be
significantly slower than the Windows copy disk process. But, I prefer to take
the extra minute or so to get a more trustworthy disk copy.
SETI @ HOME - Continuing Saga!
MAIN LINE AMIGA USER HAPPENINGS
by John Deker
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FUTURE MEETINGS
DIRECTIONS FOR ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER MEETING ROOM
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64/128/PC/Amiga Meetings 2000 Steering Committee Meetings