VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER
MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - APR 8 th
Daylight Saving Time Is In !!
As in recent meetings, following the announcements, we'll take the time for folks to share experiences, problems and get questions answered. The routine of taking turns round the table with info sharing, then problem solving has generated a lot of interaction. We'll do it again; so bring those tidbits that you think other members will appreciate - and your problems, as well defined as you can make them!
For the program, John Murphy will be back, with part 2 of emulators. This time, he'll concentrate on how to get your Commodore programs from your C= media to a PC; so you can run the software and use the data files. Have a favorite? Let's see if we can run it.
MAIN LINE AMIGA USERS - John's Place
REMINDER
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.
Our March meeting was a small group indeed, and we were able to cover a lot of ground. Though I had hinted at the possibility of covering a Unix OS variant running on Amiga hardware from the month before, that was not to be. Instead we covered a wide range of utilities and associated subjects.
Your Main Line Computer Users Group still runs one of the few remaining BBS's
(Bulletin Board System). Many clubs have closed theirs down - some have gone
to the web, others have just closed. Many of us find the BBS to be a unique
and valuable resource; so we expect to maintain it as long as we have a
dedicated sysop to do the dogwork (such as our faithful sysop). To encourage
ALL our members to use it, I have prepared a series of handouts on key aspects
of using the system - the first on establishing a new user's account. It will
be available at the meeting - come and get one!
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WE'RE LOSING ONE - Ted Dean has been an MLCUG member for quite a few years now.
He got his start, as I recall, by getting a C-128 plus accessories, for a
disgustingly small amount of $$$ when it was being excessed at the school where
he taught. He joined MLCUG not long after.
As Ted gained experience, he got interested in much more compute intensive
tasks. Along that way, he acquired an Amiga (or two) and became an ardent
student - and problem provider - to our Amiga SIG leader, John Deker. In the
last couple of years, Ted added a PC to his armory and become a real multi-
platformite like many of us.
In the last month, Ted moved to Arizona and will make it his new home. We will
miss his humor, friendliness and the occasional free lunch! Good luck, Ted!
BTW - the March 9th issue of the Main Line Times, on p.9, had a feature
article on Ted's early career with the Philadelphia Eagles, including his role
in their NFL championship win in 1960.
Tired of the banners? - if you are a watcher of the world wide wait (aka the
web), you may be getting more than a bit tired of flashing banners, pop-up ads,
pop-out ad windows (that all conveniently load to your screen first; so you can
watch them while the part of the pages you REALLY want sloooooowly loads
afterwards).
If so, then you might want to give a look at a utility called "AdBlaster" that
Parsons Technology recently started selling. It runs in the background when
your web browser is running (IE or Netscape) and intercepts much (tho not quite
all) of the banners, flashers, winkers, pop-ups, etc. I have been using it and
get a definite improvement in the visual aspects of many cluttered webpages.
Check out the next Parsons catalog when it arrives. You GET them, don't
you???
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
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
emilvccil.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?????
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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 - he has most of the stuff and the prices are VERY reasonable!!!
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We started the March meeting with about an hour of round-the-table
announcements, followed by Q&A (ie. problem solving, we hope!). This format
has provided the opportunity for every attendee to get a word in edgewise!
And, we appear to be providing help - the main reason for the club's
existence...
Then, we had a (short) Linux moment - which is covered by Pete Whinnery on p.2
of this issue.
For the "meeting program", we turned things over to member John Murphy. John
is a computer support person in real life, with emphasis on network operations.
One of his hobbies has been learning the early Commodore products - in addition
to his early experience with the 64. He has been playing with emulators that
run on the PC or the Mac - that allow him to use his old software on his
laptop(s); so he can have the old games and stuff when he is on the road and
can't have an 8-bit machine with him.
For this meeting, John showed us the freeware C-64 emulator called FRODO. This
one has recently been distributed by Loadstar as the base for the eLoadstar
sampler disk. And, John showed us that sampler. The emulator and sample
eLoadstar issue is available on the MLCUG BBS as the file SAMPLER.EXE, which
you can download and try out.
The second demo covered the extremely versatile WinVICE emulator. This
freeware item has emulators for the PET (many flavors), VIC, 64 and 128! It is
available as a single zipped file which de-archives into the collection of
emulators and you can then run the "machine" of your choice.
Because of the lateness of the hour, John could only briefly hint at the
capabilities of this versatile software. So, in future sessions, we'll try to
cover smaller pieces in more detail.
To make those sessions most valuable, we can use some insight from the members,
in two forms: 1) identification of 8-bit software that interests you and that
you would like to run on your pC and 2) an experiences that you have while
testing the emulator(s) yourself...
NOTE: the emulators are limited in their ability to handle printing and to
access modems. Hopefully, the programmers will give these areas more attention
in the future. Since the main emphasis for the emulators has been to play
Commodore games - neither of these gaps in capability has been considered any
significant deficiency! Too bad for us non-gamers!!
And, remember, let us hear from you on this topic. You can contact John or
myself directly. Better yet, post a public message on the BBS (you can use
either the Commodore or the PC clone message areas and we should catch your
feedback). How about it?
MAKE YOUR OWN ICONS
Take any .BMP file, rename it with a .ICO extension, and voila! Instant icon!
You access the file in the normal way: Right-click on the current icon for a
shortcut, select Properties from the Context menu, select the Shortcut tab and
click on the Change Icon button. Now use the Browse button to find your new
one.
by Emil Volcheck
Last month, I touted the virtues of the DOS "diskcopy" command. But, I have to
admit that folks are more and more forgetting how to type! So, if you can't
just click, you just don't do! (Or at least so it seems to me based on the
kinds of questions I get called about).
So, there is a nice way to make it real easy - how about a new copy command,
say, VCOPY, for Verified copy of a floppy disk. Or, as you can easily see, the
same tip we talked about last time - but MUCH simpler...
You can make up your own DOS "commands" (and much more) via the very friendly
DOSKEY utility that is still included in the DOS remnant that comes with Win95
or 98 (not sure about Win 2000, or the still-to-come Win Me, for the rest of
us). This handy jobby lets you make macros for tasks like this.
In this case, you'll add two lines to your autoexec.bat file (in the root
directory of your C: drive). They are:
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY
DOSKEY VCOPY=diskcopy a: a: /v
When you powerup or reboot, you'll have at your disposal this handy floppy copy
command - VCOPY.
We can check this out at the next meeting - just remember to ask me
If you become enamoured of these macros, you'll not want to clutter up your
autoexec file with them. So, next time, I'll talk about a variant that will
let you make up all kinds of DOSKEY stuff while keeping your autoexec simple.
by Emil Volcheck
The SETI folks have again updated their software - version 2.03 (tho I have not
installed that one yet - probably won't until I find out what it's merits are).
The crowd of folks who have at least started to run SETI has passed the 1.85
million mark; so it will likely hit two (2) million soon! That's an amazing
lot of folks doing a mostly thankless task. Guess we are all betting on a
really long shot!
Well, as promised last month, I have determined a rough average performance for
the four (4) computers I'm using - and also got performance data on Charles
Curran's PC - which has processed some 50 SETI data packets by now (so his data
are very good - my numbers represent the average performance - to the nearest
minute - of ten packets processed). The results are tabulated below - in
column-scrunched form. Column 1 shows the computer type. Column 2 gives a
combo value of CPU type/clock rate in MHz/RAM in MB/cacheRAM in KB. Column 3
gives the average compute time for a packet in HH:MM format. Here are the
results:
PowerMac G3/240/72/1024 13:23
Mod Amer C/300/32/128 19:17
Powerspec W/233/32/512 21:48
Kehtron P/133/48/256 33:34
PowerSpec P/133/64/256 39:08
Where G3 = Motorola G3, C = Celeron 300A, W = Winchip and P = Pentium.
The only anomaly, at least at first glance, is the last one. It seems that it
should be faster than the one above it; so it is clear that compute speed has
some other factor(s) that are not evident. But, you can get a feel for what
your computer might be able to do by comparing to the above systems.
I'd like to see how the new high speed CPU's - preferably both Intel and AMD
types - perform. For example, will the new GHz chips do the job in 4 hours, or
less???
Anyway, as of this writing, my complement of machines has processed 300 SETI
data packets - and moved me to the 96.7% level - amongst the 1.8+ million
contributors. The company is getting more & 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: mtcubaudel.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!
Our March meeting was a small group indeed, and we were able to cover
a lot of ground. Though I had hinted at the possibility of covering
a Unix OS variant running on Amiga hardware from the month before,
that was not to be. Instead we covered a wide range of utilities and
associated subjects.
Like March, we do not have a firm agenda for our April meeting.
There's the possibility we will focus on installing a Unix variant
like BSD or Linux on an Amiga hardware platform, but I would classify
that as remote probability. 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 with some small
demos included.
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...
IC-R75 COMMUNICATIONS RADIO RECEIVER
As a lead-in to our meeting, and to demonstrate a new toy, I had a
brand new ICOM R75 shortwave communications receiver setup along with
my old Commodore C64 with RTTY (Radio Teletype) & CW (Morse Code) decoder
cartridge.
What was really on display was an old and new computer. The C64 was
obviously the old computer, but a still very useful one in a niche
application. However, it should be noted that a modern PC with
appropriate software can do exactly what the C64 was doing with
custom hardware.
The new computer on display was the ICOM receiver, half receiver and
half embedded computer. The "receiver" boasts an RS232 port, 101
non-volatile memory slots, DSP (Digital Signal Processing like a
sound card), a ROM, non-volatile memory for configuration storage,
and a keyboard interface. Does this sound like a receiver or
computer?
APDF
APDF was demonstrated as the newest Amiga PDF reader. I had been
using APDF to view and print the shortwave receiver review articles
from the ARRL (American Radio Relay League) Web site. APDF can be
found as freeware on Aminet, but for maximum functionality it is best
to download the version that supports encryption from:
http://berlin.all.de/~termi/ftp/apdf060.lzx
This shows the URL of the 68060 support file. There are also other
versions for different processors at the same site.
Speaking of processors, this is one application where the more
computing horsepower you have, the better the performance of APDF.
My 68060 was just tolerable. A PowerPC would have been very welcome.
Hardcopy printouts from APDF using TURBOPRINT V7 postscript support
were of very nice quality.
HTTX
Since my recent re-acquaintance with amateur radio and shortwave
listening, I've been using HTTX to convert Web page HTML text to
something I could easily post on our BBS. HTTX is available on
Aminet or as a utility that is included with the commercial AWEB
browser.
HTTX has configuration options for handling HTML horizontal rule
lines, ordered & un-ordered HTML lists, embedded graphics, Web
page titles & URL data, and overall line length.
HTTX is one of the best little utilities for converting HTML code to
a nicely formatted ASCII or ANSI text file.
TFC
I know I've mentioned TFC (Text File Converter) in the past, but here
I go again. TFC is old (1987) command line driven software for
changing the EOL (End-Of-Line) delimiters within a text file. In
addition TFC will convert old Commodore C64 PETASCII to ASCII and
remove unprintable characters. You should be able to find TFC on the
club BBS.
I use TFC to make text files, like those created by HTTX, ready for
text transfer uploads to the club BBS using TERM, an Amiga terminal
program.
WWW.GRC.COM
In last month's newsletter, Emil made note of a Web site for checking
how secure your computer is from prying eyes when you're on the
Internet. I had made the effort to visit the Web site
(http://www.grc.com/)
since my computers are setup as service
providers on my LAN, and are therefore potentially more vulnerable to
attack when I'm on the Internet.
If you decide to visit the site, you'll need a browser that can
support the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol. I was successful
using the Amiga Voyager 3.x browser.
My Amigas were not stealthy, but were generally secure except for the
Genesis-AmiTCP open IDENT service on port 113. This was easily
corrected. Users of Genesis may want to make a special effort to
check their:
AmiTCP:db/inet.access
file and read the included:
AmiTCP:Docs/database.html
documentation.
On the other hand, a check of my PC showed it to be bleeding
information like a sieve traps water. I've since installed the GRC
site recommended ZONEALARM software. I found it easier going this
route on my PC since Microsoft doesn't provide adequate documentation
with WIN95 on how to secure their network stack and protocols when
sharing multiple services. The GRC site documentation was confusing
and short on examples for the WIN95 Network Control Panel.
NTPSYNC
From the Internet security issues, we jumped into the subject of how
best to keep your computer clock on time. The best Network Time
Protocol for this is NTP. NTPSYNC is the only available software on
the Amiga to support this protocol, and NTPSYNC can be retrieved from
Aminet as NTPSYNC22.LHA.
For more information on the 3 different networking time protocols,
visit the government Web site at:
http://www.bldrdoc.gov/timefreq/service/nts.htm
You can also find more general information about Time at:
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/index.html
GRABURL
The last of the utilities presented during the March meeting was
GRABURL. This utility can be found on Aminet as GRABURL.LHA.
Have you ever visited a Web site only to wish that most of Web site's
pages and pictures could be retrieved for local reference and
browsing. Well then GRABURL is one of several Amiga utilities that
will download the contents of a Web site or several sites to your
disk for storage and as a local reference.
GRABURL will recursively grab all linked documents and files. If
you're not careful when using the GRABURL command, the software will
try to download a big chunk of the Internet to your computer with the
obvious result of filling up your hard drive. To avoid this problem,
make sure to use the pattern matching command arguments to limit your
downloaded Web pages to what you intend and need.
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.
DIRECTIONS FOR ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER MEETING ROOM
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.
ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMENTS
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Your fortune for today
$ TRADING POST $
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
PC/128/64 MEETING
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WIN TIP OF THE MONTH
DOS CAN BE VERY HELPFUL!
SETI HOME - Continuing Saga!
MAIN LINE AMIGA USER HAPPENINGS
by John Deker
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FUTURE MEETINGS