| Jan 2002 | Issue 236 |
MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - JAN 12 th
A NEW YEAR & MORE HELP!
This month we have a very, very special program planned. As a result, we'll begin with only a brief announcement period - sort of "must hear" type stuff. If we have time after the program, we can pick up the announcements and/or Q & A again.
As, presumably, all of you know, MLCUG has operated a BBS for its members and other interested Computer users for much of our history. It began with a C-64 and a 1541 disk drive or two. Then it was migrated to a flat C-128 which was its home for many years.
Then, a few years ago, it was again migrated - to an Amiga 2000. This system had a hard drive, accelerator card, etc. So, we have the speed capability for the fastest modems and an ample supply of hard drive space to house a significant library of files.
The software we run - called MAX's BBS - allows us to be platform independent (as was the EBBS we used on the 128) and provides a very versatile system. For the first time since we moved our meeting place to the St. Augustine Center, we will be having a full and complete demonstration of the BBS!!!
See more details below - BUT - plan to COME and get your questions about using it CLEARED UP! Our Sysop, John Deker, will be bringing the BBS right to the meeting, don't miss this opportunity!!!
While MLCUG has a very capable BBS system (and has had for many years), it is a highly underutilized resource. Even the current users take advantage of only a portion of its capabilities. We have been trying to rectify that situation for a long time. BUT, the inability to do real, live demos - especially since we moved our meeting place to the St. Augustine Center several years ago - has hampered our ability to promote its use and help our members get the full benefit from it.
It now appears that, AT LAST!, we can change that. Thru the efforts of Sysop, John Deker, and some fortuitous happenings, we will bring the BBS (cont'd.)
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THE NEW YEAR! - well, I reckon we all made it thru the 2001->2002 time change (no shades of
Y2K!) and have all our clocks right. Let's hope that this year is a lot better all around the
planet than the one just finished!!!
From the looks of the first couple of days, the hackers, crackers and "malicious code" purveyors
are going to give us a continuing run for our money!
And, not surprisingly, they will go for where they can cause the most havoc - that means Windows
for personal users, Windows for business users and other large targets like AOL Time Warner (who
have felt the first attack we heard about in 2002)!
Since the main emphasis of the club has become support of users of these large systems, it
behooves us all to share our experiences and learnings to minimize the problems we are likely to
face. Come on out to the meetings - we enjoy ourselves while we learn & share...
20TH ANNIVERSARY! - at last month's steering meeting, the leanings seem to be toward having a
#20 celebration in April - hopefully to avoid any conflicts with schedules around Villanova.
The most likely venue will be an off-site lunch - place and details TBD. If any member would
like to help with arrangements, please do not hesitate to let us know. I'm sure help will be
needed and appreciated.
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From: Bob Weir
On Dec. 12, 1991, Paul Kunz sent an e-mail to Tim Berners-Lee asking him to try out SLAC's newly
installed web server. Using NeXT computers (re: Steve Jobs and the core code of MacOS X), they
started the World Wide Web!! [posted on the Appleworks listserv:ejv]
BROADBAND: - continues to be big news! AT&T, the largest cable service on the planet, sold that
business to Comcast. So, the latter has now become #1, but in a much bigger way. Watch for
further developments - and especially in our locale where Comcast is almost exclusively the
cable provider and will aim to give all the phone companies a real run for the money!!!
WINDOWS XP - any members encountered it? Anyone purchase a new PC recently, that came with XP
pre-installed? Tell us about your experience.
LUNCH - some of us regularly adjourn after the meeting for lunch at the Villanova diner. Why
not come join us - and continue the converse?
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[Got this tidbit of info via an email list for the Wilmington Delaware PC Users Group.ejv]
Most Recent Microsoft support information
Hopefully, we can find out a bit more about just what this means. Hard to envision that
Microsoft would give up totally on its founding technology (MS-DOS - that IBM provided the
wherewithall lo these many years ago. About twenty years ago; so it really hasn't been THAT
long...)
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to the meeting! We plan - as announced - to devote the bulk of the session to showing off and
answering queries about the system and how YOU can take advantage of it, no matter WHAT COMPUTER
PLATFORM you use!
Starting from square one, John will cover the following aspects of the system and its use:
1. Introduction: Why use the BBS?
Comparison with the Internet
2. The demo hardware setup and
differences from the actual BBS
3. The jargon: ASCII, ANSI, VT100,
Upload, Download;
Zmodem, Ymodem, Xmodem
Modem, Baud, Bits/sec,
XON/XOFF, CTS/RTS, etc.
4. Installing Hyperterminal (the free
terminal emulator included with
your version of Windows)
5. Configuring Hyperterminal
6. Connecting to the BBS
7. Personal BBS profile settings
8. BBS navigation
9. Reading msgs - single & bulk
10. Posting msgs - line editor vs FSE
11. Selecting & downloading files
12. Uploading files
13. Attaching & grabbing files
14. Q&A session
Remember, this is intended to be a real tutorial demonstration. So, bring all your own
questions and DO NOT HESITATE to ask when something you see is not clear to you.
NOTE: the demo will use a PC running Windows, as the user system; but the BBS is NOT sensitive
to the user system. So, if you are using a 64 or 128, a Mac, a Linux box or any other platform,
you should be able to locate a terminal emulator that will run on it. Your editor uses Dialogue
128 on his C-128D, Telix on his IBM compatibles and ZTerm on his PowerMac. After the main demo,
we can address other terminal emulators (or at future meetings).
Only if everyone gets comfortable can we hope to make current users more facile and bring more
members to user status...
As many old(er) timers are aware, the BBS is a dying breed. But, ours is still alive and
kicking - we hope, after this meeting, that you'll decide to take advantage of it.
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By Emil Volcheck
Following the December meeting, I took the club PC home for a major rework.
The objective being to reduce or eliminate the multi-partitioned operating system arrangement
(that handles W95, W98, WMe and Linux on two hard drives). It would be replaced with a more
expensive; but interesting, swappable hard drive setup.
So, I first ran scandisk and defrag on the Win partitions, then used Drive Image 4.0 to put an
image of all five partitions (the 4 OSes plus the D drive) on CD-R discs.
Then I opened the box, removed the 5 GB original hard drive, leaving the second 10 GB drive in
its spot in one internal 3.5" drive bay. Next, I rearranged the rest of the drives; so I could
position the drive swapping tray as near to the 10 GB drive as possible. After hooking
everything back up, I inserted the 5 GB drive in a removable case that slides into the hard
drive swap tray.
This resulted in the following drive arrangement in the club PC - running from top to bottom of
the mid-tower case:
8x4x32 CD-RW drive 5.25" external
empty 5.25" ext.
5 GB hard drive 5.25" swappable
Floppy drive 3.5" ext.
100 MB SCSI zip drive 3.5" ext.
10 GB hard drive 3.5" internal
These are all the bays available in our mid-tower case.
Next came Partition Magic 4.01 used to partition the 10 GB into a D drive (W 3 GB) and an E
drive (W 7 GB). The former D drive info from the CD-R was restored to the new D partition with
Drive Image.
Then, I restored the Win95B partition to the 5 GB drive, making it the new C drive.
Finally, I pulled the 5 GB, stuck in a spare 3.1 GB that I had and restored the Win98 SE
partition to it.
So, now we can swap between these two OSes by swapping the drives with no chance for any
interferences between OSes or needing a startup manager.
Don't know if it is better, but it is newer!
Now I need a donation of a 3 GB or so drive or two to make our OS suite complete. Any takers
(or should I say givers)?
We'll see how she does at the January meeting, if time permits after the big demo of the MLCUG
BBS
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Since our last meeting, members Nelson Schrock and Pete Whinnery told us about some of their
favorites:
#1 for me would have to be one that I downloaded from the MLCUG BBS, it's End It All. I have
downloaded the newer version, but I much prefer the older version. The newer one gives you much
more control over what you can shut off. My problem is that I usually shut off something that
makes the machine crash! I never had that problem with the older version. [NS]
#2 would be Music Matchbox Jukebox. I use it as the default for all of my audio needs & use it
to remix CD's. I sometimes find that there are some tracks on CD's that I don't like. I "rip"
the tracks from the CDs and then burn them onto a CD-R. [NS]
#3 is a program called Mailwasher. I found that through the Langalist. I can screen my
incoming emails. I also use Eudora, which is basically a freebie. [NS]
#1 - dare I say it? Linux! [PW]
#2 - I have been using AbiWord on Linux for a year or so now. I use it mostly to read MS Word
files. [PW] (Note: AbiWord was highlighted in last month's "Good Free Stuff" article:ejv)
Any others that you'd like to tell folks about? Leave a post on the BBS, or email me. And, if
the app is not giant, you might want to put a freeware or shareware item in the club's BBS file
library...
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Firstly, December's meeting was attended by about 18 folks. Most, if not all of whom have
renewed for 2002. So, they represented 70% of the renewals!
Secondly, altho things got a bit hectic at times, I think everyone who came not only enjoyed the
meeting (with more comraderie than usual), but probably even learned something, too. Our
announcements, questions and answers session (A, Q & A) occupied essentially the whole program.
Thirdly, special thanks need to go to Charlie Curran for being: 1) our angel for the fine set of
raffle prizes and part of the door prizes and 2) for providing some much of the accoutrements of
the vittles we had. Without his generosity, things would have been leaner and a lot tougher!
Fourthly, special thanks to Marty Caulfield. Since Charlie is still rather incapacitated, Marty
took on the hauling, helping to setup, helping to take down/cleanup and return the truckload of
stuff we had. His contributions made things a whole lot easier. Oh yes, and his CD of hints
and tips even worked!
Fifthly, while we did not have much in the way of demos (except checking the net for various
tidbits as they came up in the discussion), John Murphy's brand new toy - the dedicated CD-ROM
duplicator that he had had all of one day - was a neat show. We'll try to ahve more info on it
for others who might have a need for such a widget.
Sixthly, the treasury got a nice bump up from another 4-5 renewals at the meeting, plus the
proceeds of the raffle (around $100). This will aid in giving us a slightly bigger cushion for
any hard/software emergency for the near term. Also, because Charlie donated more stuff than we
could conveniently raffle off, we may be able to have smaller events at upcoming meetings to add
a bit more to the cushion.
December 8th was a very enjoyable meeting. I hope the upcoming holidays and the new year will
also be so for all of you.
ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMENTS
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY WWW!!
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Microsoft Update
December 2001 - Microsoft will cease to support:
MSDOS
Windows 3.xx
Windows NT 3.5x
Limited support for:
Windows 95
Windows 95 OSR1 and 2
June 2002 - Microsoft will end all support for:
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 98 SE
Windows NT4x
Albert B. Winchell, President
Southwest Florida PC User Group
THE MLCUG BBS
UPDATE ON THE CLUB PC
USEFUL FREE/SHAREWARE?
LAST MONTH'S PC/128/64 MEETING
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