VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER
MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - JUN 10 th
We'll start off by taking the opportunity to go round the table - for attendees to pass on information they'd like to share with the rest of us. Also, in a second go round, attendees can bring up problems they have encountered. If they've solved them, they can tell us how. If not, we can attempt to solve them - or provide pointers to possible solutions. A chance for everyone to help and get helped!
Then, assuming our internet connection remains alive, we can attempt to provide some guidance to attractive and useful websites. Hopefully, each of you who uses the web can provide a lead (which we can illustrate live!) to one or more useful websites. Come prepared to help us explore the web!
MAIN LINE AMIGA USERS - John's Place
Our May meeting was kind of a wandering in the wilderness. We discussed various aspects of JAVA and LINUX without any specific agenda or focus at times. Hopefully the few faithful attendees re-learned that not all new software installations are successful in terms of expected outcome, but then that's what makes the computing hobby a challenge at times. The long term objective is to overcome initial failures, and is one of the reasons our club exists to help each other.
Currently our June agenda is non-existent, but there is hope we'll put together at least a vague agenda in time for the next meeting. At a minimum we'll have a Q&A session.
Your editor's personal experience with "long distance" = lower speed IDSL
continues to be good. Like air conditioning in your car, once you have it, you
wonder how you did without! I'm taking this opportunity to solicit the
experiences of others. Are any other member currently using any form of DSL,
i.e. generically xDSL? Whether x = A, S or I, please let me know - and also
who you have the service with; and how that service is performing. For
example, my service is nominally limited to 144 Kbps, but downloads of
compressed files occasionally appear faster than that. How about yours?
***************************
by Emil Volcheck
SUMMARY TO DATE
Since the April 17th nominal startup time, with one possible short time
exception, my IDSL service has not had an outage; and the internet has been
continuously accessible 24/7/365.2422. That's the best ISP service that I have
ever experienced!
As best I can estimate, the connect rate that was advertised - 144 Kbps - has
definitely been achieved, possibly exceeeded slightly. So, I reckon others can
expect to do well with this type of service, if they are too far from a
telephone central office to qualify for regular ADSL or SDSL service.
REVIEW & UPDATE
The setup installed in my home consists of the following elements:
1. IDSL phone line from the downtown West Chester PA Bell-Atlantic Central
Office - as a separate line - to my home at a distance of 5.5+ miles (well
beyond the 2-3 mile normal DSL limit).
2. A Cisco Systems model 802 router - that sports a single ethernet port and a
single ISDN port - connected to the phone jack in the house.
3. A Linksys 10/100 Mbps, autosensing, ethernet switch. It is a 5-port switch,
with an uplink port to connect to additional ehternet switches or hubs. This
uplink port is connected via a CAT5 crossover cable to the ethernet port on the
router. The uplink port is shared with one of the five other ports; so one has
four ports available for devices on the ethernet.
4. Four computers are connected to those four posts on the ethernet switch:
- IBM Aptiva (4-ft cable)
- Mac Performa (25 ft cable)
- Russell PC (25 ft cable)
- Home built PC (50 ft cable)
The last connection actually goes to an RJ-45 2-port manual switch that
provides for two PCs to use the port (but not together, darn!). So, there are
actually five computers that can utilize the system.
All these connects are plug-and-go - just like your phone lines. You can plug
a cable in, or unplug, without needing to shut the devices down. This is a
real convenience when you're fiddling!
As I mentioned in my report last month, since I live so far from the phone
company central office, I had to settle for this low speed version of DSL, that
has an advertised limit of 144 Kbps (vs. a nominal 53 Kbps for the fastest
modem, tho not everyone is able to realize this speed). For most web stuff,
this is a more than adequate rate, as the net tends to be a bit clogged and
make the actual rate that you can get quite a bit less.
The place folks focus on is the rate that you can get files to download - the
faster, the better (especially as file sizes keep getting bigger!!). Over the
course of the last 18 months, our average download rate with a modem has been
about 2.7 K bytes/sec. ; so this is my standard of comparison.
With the IDSL connection, downloads typically start in the 2-3 K range, then
work up as the download progresses. It normally takes about 2-300 K file size
for the rate to stabilize. On the larger downloads, our IDSL experience has
ranged from about 10 K (4X modem) to about 17 K (6X modem) - not light speed,
but definitely better.
OPINION
When you combine the elements of: always-on, no wait for a dialup connection to
be established, NEVER a busy signal and much speedier performance; the service
is worth the cost.
For those who are closer to a CO, you can get much more speed and lower cost;
so you ought to give it a whirl!!
########################################
The following is a news item that I thought would be of interest to our
members:
GATES GRANT - recently, the Chester County Library system received a grant from
the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation to improve their computing center. A
condition of the grant is that the library would have to cease any useage
charges for the center's systems.
As a result, the Library management has announced that, in the future, there
will no longer be such useage charges. I think they will still charge for
consumables - like printer paper (presumably to discourage using the center for
"free" publishing!).
When word of this grant got to the local Mac club, one of its more active (and
activist?) members sent the following email:
Begin Quote
The recent grant to upgrade your computers for the public is great news. I hope
that you will bear in mind that there are many Macintosh users in the area. The
Main Line Macintosh Users Group meets monthly at Paoli Hospital. There are over
200 members.
Whom do you advise our letting the financial powers that be know of this
population? I read that a Paul Sullivan is the head of the Board. Is it
possible to contact the Board effectively by email or do you advise writing
them?
Mimi Connelly of Devon
coeli@aol.com
Here is the reply from the reference department at Chester County Library. Mimi
Connelly
Dear Ms. Coeli:
I was glad to get your message about the many Macintosh users in the area
because it gives me a chance to let you know more about the Library's Public
Computing Center, which serves both Mac and PC users. The news article about
the Gates Grant gave the impression that the Center is solely a PC center, and
that is not the case. The Center has two Macs, both with scanners and good
printers. There are fewer Macs than PCs in the Center because there is less
demand for them. More information about the Public Computing Center, including
its hours, is available at: www.ccls.org/MyWeb3/index.htm, or by phone at 610-
280-2666.
If you would like to contact the Library Board about the Macintosh users in our
community, the person to write to is Stephen Long, Board Chairman, at the
Library's address. Or, if you prefer e-mail, you could send a message to me and
I will forward it. (Paul Sullivan is chair of the Friends of the Library Board
and is not involved in decisions about budgets and resources.)
Thank you for taking the time to send us a message about this, and I invite you
to visit the Center and see more of what is available.
Toni Hoffacker, Director
END QUOTE
Those of you who hail from or visit in Chester County might want to make the
effort to buzz over and visit the Center.
***************************
WIN TIP OF THE MONTH
What about all those Drivers (Win 9x)?
Do you have an assortment of floppy disks and CD-ROMs with the drivers on them
for your various devices (like the CD-ROM drive, the zip drive, the network
card, the modem, the video, the sound card and even the motherboard)?
Do you also have a CD-R or CD-RW drive?
Then, you may have another option. That is, make yourself up a combo CD with
ALL THE DRIVERS on one CD. With 650 MB available, it will be more than enough
for all the drivers (not necessarily for all the auxiliary or extra stuff they
put on those CDs).
Then, you can boot from the Win 98 startup disk which gives you access to your
CD drive and you can then install - or re-install - whatever you need. That
startup disk will work on your Win95 machine; so you can do the same thing.
And, if you have a CD-RW drive, you can even update your combo CD very easily.
Sound interesting? Give it a whirl and tell us about your experiences with the
concept.....
Next Tip
***************************
HERE'S WHAT I GOT !!
Last issue, I printed the first contribution resulting from my appeal for items
from the members - dying to get into print. I was gratified to get a quick
response and looked forward to a flood of items!
So, the next paragraph has the next item I received:
[the paragraph]
Get the hint?
***************************
SETI UPDATE
By Emil Volcheck
Around the middle of November 1999, I started a single computer on the massive
SETI computation project. It is one of three or so computation projects that
involve a large number of computer owners using their own computers to help
create a giant computing engine. As of this writing the SETI program - with
over two (2) million participants - holds the position of the largest
computation project ever!
On May 28 2000, I sent in the results for my 500th data packet - since that
first one back in November. With that benchmark, I came to the 97.577th
percentile of participants. With so many folks involved, and with so many
having a lot of compute power being applied, progress up the percentile ladder
comes at a dearer and dearer price!
For example - at packet 400, I reached the 97.169% level. In fact, I was
already at 92.077% with only a 100 packets!
I reckon this will be the last of the monthly updates, as there will now be
little news to report. Assuming that I hit the 98% one of these days, I'll let
you know what that takes.
I'm still collecting information on the performance of different PCs. Lately,
I got some prelininary data from a PC that is running a 700 MHz AMD Athlon CPU
with 128 MB of RAM! It looks like it can do a packet in about 8.5 hours. With
that much horsepower available, I think you get a better idea of the difficulty
of the computation ......
Anyone have info to add to the story???
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
FOR SALE: the club has an increasingly 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 (610-446-5239 or ccurran@icdc.com) - he has most of the stuff and the
prices are VERY reasonable!!!
***************************
We again started the May meeting with about an hour of round-the-table
announcements, followed by Q&A (i.e. problem solving, we hope!)! This format
again provided the opportunity for every attendee to get a word(s) in edgewise!
And, we appear to be providing help - the MAIN reason for the club's
existence...
For the program, Emil Volcheck gave us a review of his experiences in
installing or re-installing Windows 95. Since he has quite a few PCs that he
has been upgrading where he works, this has become a rather common exercise.
So, he has developed an approach to uniformize the installations and to help
remember just what all needs to be done.
The procedure is embodied in a checklist that he showed at the meeting (you can
download a copy of the spreadsheet file from the MLCUG BBS (it is in the Clone
Utilities library as an MS Works .wks file) which you should be able to import
into your favorite spreadsheet software and customize it for your own
predilections!
Emil noted that the few initial steps are quite critical in his opinion. They
go as follows:
1. if at all possible, start with a completely clean system. His preferred
route to that is to backup everything citical on the system. Then boot from a
floppy and run the "fdisk" utility with "large disk" support (translate that to
FAT32). He normally partitions the hard drive into a C: and a D: drive - then
formats the two partitions.
2. set up a CABS directory (folder) on the D: drive and copy the Windows 95B
setup files (a convenient way to do this is with a parallel port zip drive that
has those files on a 100 MB zip disk).
3. switch to the D:\CABS directory and run the SETUP.EXE file to start the
Windows 95 installation. Usually, he uses the CUSTOM setup option to get the
components he wants to install and avoid installing components that normally
install, but which he does not want.
4. once the installation is finished and the computer successfully (we hope!)
boots into Windows, he runs the 11/98 version of the Windows 95 Y2K updater.
This is a relatively small (256K) program that fixes the date related problems,
but keeps the installation lean and clean. The later version(s) of the Y2K
updater make a lot more changes and complications; so he avoids them.
At this point, one can proceed with the installation pretty much as one
desires. The published checklist is obviously oriented towards astronomy,
since Emil's workplace is an observatory. You can/should set the list up for
your needs - using his version as a guideline.
The checklist also serves as a very handy place to keep serial numbers,
registration keys, etc. in one spot; so you KNOW WHERE THEY ARE! Nuff said!!!
***************************
WIN TIP OF THE MONTH - EASY
Making a Desktop Icon (Win9x)
If you'd like program icons on your dektop, instead of having to browse thru
the Start menu, then try:
RIGHT-click the Start button, choose OPEN, DOUBLE-click the PROGRAMS icon, then
DOUBLE-click a FOLDER. When you navigate to the desired program icon, RIGHT-
click and DRAG the icon onto the desktop. Release the RIGHT mouse button and
choose COPY. You're done.
[reprinted from the BATCHFILE newsletter of EPCC]
***************************
DOS CAN BE VERY HELPFUL!
by Emil Volcheck
Last month, we took advantage of a BATCH file that is frequently present on
your PC - the AUTOEXEC.BAT file - to enable DOSKEY macros. And another batch
file - MACROS.BAT - that actually generates those macros.
Both of the are simple examples of "Personal Programming". The sort of thing
we talked about in our February meeting. You can get mighty complex with batch
file programming - as many did when DOS and Win 3.xx were the primary OSes for
PCs. Such programming has fallen by the wayside with most users, many of whom
have not noticed the DOS prompt, let alone do anything with it!
But, it can still come in handy. Here's another very simple example of a
useful batch file:
I've been using such backup batch files for many years now. It's a LOT quicker
and simpler than running a backup utility. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you
can just as easily have the backup go to a zip disk - or other removable - if
you need more storage space than a floppy provides.
Our May meeting was kind of a wandering in the wilderness. We
discussed various aspects of JAVA and LINUX without any specific
agenda or focus at times. Hopefully the few faithful attendees
re-learned that not all new software installations are successful in
terms of expected outcome, but then that's what makes the computing
hobby a challenge at times. The long term objective is to overcome
initial failures, and is one of the reasons our club exists to help
each other.
Currently our June agenda is non-existent, but there is hope we'll
put together at least a vague agenda in time for the next meeting.
At a minimum we'll have a Q&A session.
SUMMER AMIGA SIG MEETINGS
As you probably know by now, the Amiga SIG 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.
During our last meeting we discussed our summer schedule. Since the
SIG is so small it is important that members keep each other informed
of their vacation schedules. I don't want to schedule a meeting that
has no attendees. As it is right now, non of the attendees at the
last meeting have a vacation conflict with the summer schedule. I
ask that members keep the SIG leader informed if there is a change
which would cause a conflict. Thank you.
TED DEAN EMAIL
Members wishing to stay in contact with Ted by email can reach him at:
BOOT TO AMIGA SHELL ONLY
Not that many people would want their Amiga to boot to just a FULLY
CONFIGURED Shell environment without the Amiga Workbench, but we
killed some time early in last month's meeting talking about how this
could be accomplished. It is indeed very easy to do. You only need
to "remark out" two lines at the end of S:STARTUP-SEQUENCE. Change
the following standard lines:
C:LoadWB
to:
;C:LoadWB
Note the addition of the semicolons at the beginning of each line.
AMIGA JAVA
As far as I know, there isn't a good working version of JAVA for the
Amiga. Bill Bacon has been searching for an Amiga JAVA since last
Fall when he took a course in JAVA programming at the local community
college. We took some time during the early part of the meeting to
review the status of JAVA for the Amiga. The most promising Amiga
JAVA release to date has been the one from the "Politikill's JAVA For
Amiga Page!" at
http://members.tripod.com/~Politikill/.
Politikill's
Java is a Unix port written by a person with the last name of Pootle.
Since the meeting, another Web site has hinted at a promise of
further JAVA development for the Amiga. This site can be found on
the Amiga Java Environment Web page at
http://www.merlancia.com/aje/.
Running Pootle's Java port on the Amiga has turned out to be mostly a
mixed bag of failure's and one apparent success. First the
instructions seemingly leave something to be desired. One of the
instructions is to increase the Shell stack size to 64000 using the
Shell icon stack setting, but this did not seem to work for me when I
typed the stack command at the Shell prompt and got a response
indicating the stack size was much smaller. I corrected this problem
by putting the stack command within S:SHELL-STARTUP. Also, setting
up the CLASSPATH environment variable as described did not work for
me. I corrected this like I did the stack command. My CLASSPATH
variable in ENV: is now defined as:
Java:share/kaffe/
and the Java part of my S:SHELL-STARTUP file now looks like:
;begin JAVA stuff
Even so, both of my Amiga's just crash and burn when I try to run the
Java compiler, but somehow Bill Bacon is able to get his Amiga to
compile a simple Java source file. However, Bill was not able to get
the compiled program to run. So, that's the current status of Java
on the Amiga as we know it.
THE CURVE
Getting on the Linux learning curve is not an easy thing to do. With
the current state of Amiga Linux installations you quickly come to
the point of scratching your head and wondering what to do next. The
major part of the problem is the documentation, or more appropriately
the apparent lack of it on the available Amiga CDROM installations.
The newcomer will need to aggressively search the literature both on
disk and on the Internet, and digest documentation written by Geeks
who forget what it means to be a neophyte. I get the impression that
the Unix Geeks figure if they learned Unix the hard way then everyone
else should too.
Needless to say, I'm not a pleased "user" of Linux nor enthralled by
all the hype that surrounds it. Maybe I just haven't stumbled on
some well written and comprehensive documentation. All I know is
that the learning curve seems steeper than the C64/128, CP/M, and
MSDOS. By comparison GEOS, Amiga OS, Mac, and variations of Windows
were a snap to learn, navigate, and manipulate.
The only Unix variant that has impressed me so far has been the PC
demo download from QNX. If this system were the NG (next generation)
Amiga, I would hop on the proverbial bandwagon. The QNX Web site can
be found at http://www.qnx.com.
MORE THAN PROCESSOR SPEED
I've frequently read that PC users are amazed at the responsiveness
of a well equipped Amiga. In a recent demo during the last year I
was asked about the speed of my Amiga's CPU. In my own use, I'm
surprised at how sluggish and sometimes unresponsive 450MHz PC's seem
compared to my 50MHz Amiga.
The standard of performance measure in the PC world has been the
speed of the on-board CPU. Only recently are PC users seemingly
becoming more aware that processor speed does not alone make for a
pleasing to use computer. PC makers have been slow to adopt the
basics that made the Amiga a GREAT computer from the day it was
introduced to the market. Much of this resistance has been in the
name of backward compatability, but the reality has more likely been
issues of cost and a willingness to "steal" money from users by
misleading them down the performance path by hyping on CPU speed as
the only answer.
Now, don't get responsiveness confused with speed. The two terms can
be as confusing as if I tell you that the 1975 Plymouth Duster 360
was the QUICKEST American car sold in that year and the 1975
Chevrolet Corvette was the FASTEST American car sold that same year.
I leave it to you, the reader, to figure out the difference in terms.
Needless to say, responsiveness and speed do NOT necessarily reside
in the same machine.
So what has made the Amiga such a responsive computer these past 15
years? The truth is an efficient OS integrated with a solid hardware
design. The virtues of the AmigaOS have been getting a lot of hype
in the Amiga press for some time. Gateway and now the new Amiga Inc.
have virtually ignored the hardware in their NG Amiga proposals.
Why? Because designing custom hardware and bringing it to market for
a small user base is expensive! Designing just a new cross-platform
AmigaOS for off-the-shelf hardware is a lot less risky, but is it
enough to give the NG AmigaOS a niche in the market and just possibly
make it a Win-PC beater? That question may get an answer someday.
In my opinion, the responsiveness of the Amiga over the past 15 years
can be credited to efficiently engineered programming making minimum
demands on hardware. The AmigaOS does not use a slow disk cache!
The classic Amiga GUI was designed with EFFICIENCY and NOT PRETTY in
mind. Why use 256 or more colors and the associated RAM addressing
for programs that can do everything fine with just 16 colors and use
less RAM in the process? EACH Amiga program can define how many
screen colors and how much associated RAM to use. Can any other PC
do this independent of the OS? Credit also goes to 15 year old
hardware design that uses custom coprocessors for sound and video, a
dual pre-emptive bus system that allows parallel simultaneous
tasking, and a well integrated interrupt system. Ask an Amiga user
the last time he gave thought to the system interrupts. Most Amiga
users will tell you they wonder if they exist on their machine and
cannot understand why PC's still use such an archaic inflexible
hardware design in this area.
Bottom line, my 50MHz Amigas are generally more responsive than my
450MHz PC at work and even more so than my 233MHz PC at home. In
terms of raw computing power needed for rendering a graphic scene,
the PC's beat my Amiga. However, my Amiga is still my computer of
choice for everyday computing activities, and its responsiveness is
what makes me prefer it to a PC.
FUTURE MEETINGS
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.
AN xDSL STORY- PART II
ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMENTS
########################################
#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ @
@ How about an aid for your faithful @
@ editor? In the form of an article @
@ for YOUR newsletter? It can be a @
@ short or long one - in one or many @
@ parts. It can be a tip, review or @
@ harangue (polite, of course) on the @
@ software, hardware or technology of @
@ your interest and choice. @
@ @
@ You can get it to me by snail mail, @
@ on a floppy or zip - by email to @
@ emilv@ccil.org - by email on the @
@ MLCUG BBS (in the message body or @
@ as an attached file - it can take a @
@ file of ANY kind). @
@ @
@ With that much latitude, I'm sure @
@ that every MLCUG member surely has @
@ an item of value to pass on to the @
@ rest of us. How about it????? @
@ @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
$ TRADING POST $
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
PC/128/64 MEETING
***************************
@ECHO OFF
rem BACKUP SELECTED FILES
rem from the "Myfiles" directory to
rem a floppy disk, copying only files
rem that are new or have been
rem modified since the last run.
C:
CD\
XCOPY C:\MYFILES\*.* A: /M/V
This uses the DOS command, XCOPY, plus the /M switch which copies only new or
modified files and the /V switch which verifies the quality of the copy. In
addition to copying only the new/modified files, the /M switch causes the
archive bit (what's that?) to be changed to show that the file has been backed
up. Then it will NOT be copied again - unless it again gets changed.
MAIN LINE AMIGA USER HAPPENINGS
by John Deker
======================================
_ __ _ <>_ __ _
/\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\
/__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\
/ \\_| \/ ||_||_ \__//_/ \\_
======================================
MEETING REVIEW...
EndCLI >NIL:
;EndCLI >NIL:
STACK 64000
ASSIGN JAVA: Work:Languages/Java
ALIAS javac "Java:bin/kaffe sun.tools.javac.Main []"
ALIAS java "Java:bin/kaffe []"
PATH Java: add
SET CLASSPATH $classpath
;end JAVA stuff