The meeting opened on a bright sunny but cold morning. I didn't count attendees but there were fewer than normal. From Philip: >The meeting opened on a bright sunny but cold morning. I didn't count >attendees but there were fewer than normal. TREVOR, I COUNTED 37, and only two came by bus! JohnS was elected chair and I took a note of the headings of topics discussed. BobV was a new member. 1. "Sec Slave Drive - ATAPI Incompatible Press F1 to resume." - TrevorF I've been getting two short beeps followed by one short beep and the above message appears on screen each time a cold boot has been performed. I then am not able to read anything on the CD ROM reader H: but I can read/write to the CD ROM read/writer G: Secondly, each time this happens I get a new Autoexec.bat written to the root directory of C: To stop the above happening I have copied from the folder \Safe the autoexec.bat containing the lines: SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H7 P330 T6 SET SBPCI=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\AUDIO\DOSDRV C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000 I then reboot and I then see the CD ROM drives OK. CharlieK said to consult with Jim Eshelman a MS MVP on the net. Jim Eshelmans site is at http://www.aumha.org/ He has a search engine, so you should quickly be able to see if he has previously addressed your problem. I did consult his site and it had addressed it and raised the following possibilities. 1. Ribbon cable faulty 2. Both CD ROMs are hooked or switched to the same location (both slaves or masters). 3. A few other items that I printed out. I took the machine to the place where the new HDD had been installed and they said it was likely that the fault was caused by the former primary HDD drive sharing the same slave relationship with the CD ROM reader. The disconnected it after asking me if that was OK. It was because it had no useful data on it. They disconnected it and the machine took forever to boot. They couldn't get it to do so because it was just like watching paint drying. It sat there forever with a busy mouse pointer. I took the machine home. I booted from a floppy with the AVG signatures on it and scanned the whole 32Gb drive and found there were no viruses causing the problem. I then booted from a floppy with CD ROM drivers, fdisk, command.com and most of the stuff that normally resides in the Windows\Command folder. Then I did what I normally do for all my unfixable problems... Fomat C: /s. Naturally, it did the usual dire warning message but I'm largely inured from such fears and went ahead because most of my documents were on drive D: and many other useful items were on CD ROM. I did all OK and came to installing most of my programs but when I installed Quicken v7 and then Lotus Organizer v.5 I encountered dire problems when reading the data from attached to both of these apps. After much head scratching and almost losing what's left of my hair I then formatted drive C: again. Shortly after doing so I discovered that my date had been set to the year 2022. I think it was when the business who disconnected the secondary HDD had set the date that way. All is now OK, most apps are installed and I really do have some hair left.. One major annoyance for me is when attempting to register Quicken their telephone answering machine said they were undergoing some technical difficulties and to try again some time (unspecified). Why on earth does one need to re-register software in one's name and get a different serial number for the programs like Omnipage Pro v9 and 10 and any version of Quicken larger than 6? Yes, I know it's to prevent it being simple to get a serial number and install it on more than one machine but what happens when the company no longer supports the product? I note that Omnipage has now merged with Textbridge and the latter are now handling the product. 2. How to access pcug activated web page space - Lynn From CharlieK: Relative to Item 2, I think Lynn asked about free web hosting services. I got the following from the aus.net.access newsgroup where someone was asking for something similar. Have no idea how good (or free) these are, but could be worth checking out. http://www.hypermart.net/ http://www.freewebspace.net/ http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ http://www.0catch.com From Lynn: thanks - I've printed your message. I also looked at cjb, and austnet, and google offers the 10 "best value" - as JS said mostly about $5.95/month. I am unsure whether one needs a host first or a domain name first. I may try a commercial "small business" site for a year and then decide if it was worth it. I must admit 50% of my last year's business came through the net. But so far loading files into the pcug site eludes me - they load happily into the ftp site but get barred from the pcug site! I think I'll try a Bex and a good lie-down instead! From JohnS: Hi Lynn.. I don't understand your phrase "they load happily into the ftp site but get barred from the pcug site!". You need to upload your files to your WWW folder, which in your case will be called /home/pcug/lmcevoy/WWW Note the direction of the 'slashes' and the case (all lower case except the WWW). You can get there by navigation in WS_FTP but that is where your files need to be stored... Good luck - JohnS 3. XTEQ - JohnA 4. Don't always believe error messages - KenM After much fiddling I eventually got my computer set up the way I wanted it and reinstalled my programs. I have three printers: a Canon S600 connected through a USB port, an HP820, and a large carriage dot matrix, the two connected to the parallel port and selected through a switch. The Canon worked beatifully but trying to use the HP820 I got an error message: "Out of paper" when quite clearly it was not out of paper. After days of trying everything I could think of I rang HP. They wanted $27.50 to have a technician talk me through it over the phone but the girl herself eventually talked me through it. No go. Because the printer is connected through a switch I thought it worthwhile to connect the printer directly in case one of the cables or connections was faulty. The cable was not plugged into the printer! So don't always believe error messages. 5.a. Recent quotes on new systems esp at Computer Markets Philip B. first enquired as to who might have recent quotes from the markets. He has been asked to advise the Gowrie Flats community association in Narrabundah re a purchase of three computers for the Digital Divide project. Here is a quote from Todaytech. The quote is to supply 3 of everything, including a cd burner. Only one would be needed. TODAYTECH COMPUTERS No. Processor:3INTEL 1.8A GHZ 478 P4 512K CPU Mainboard: 3INTEL D845GLADL 478PIN uATX Memory: 3MEMORY 256MB DDR 266 184PIN Case: 3ATX MEDIUM TOWER CASE Floppv Disk: 3SONY FLOPPY DISK DRIVE 1.44MB Cd/Dvd: 3NIA Hard Drive 3WESTERN DIGITAL 40GB 7200 RPM Video Card: 3ON BOARD INTEL EXTREME GRAPHICS Monitor:3NIA Keyboard: 3MS 104K INTERNET PS2 KEYBOARD Mouse: 3MOEBIUS MOUSE Mat: 3MAT Speakers: 3INTERNAL SPEAKER 5.25 BAY Sound Card. 3ON BOARD AC97 SOUND CARD O/S Software: 3MS WIN XP HOME DSP CD Cdrw: 3LG 40X32X10 CDRW BULK PACK Modem: NAN/A Network Card: 3ON BOARD INTEL 10/100 Warranty:3TODAYTECH 2Y RTB WARRANTY Cost before GST$3,697.74 GST$369.77 TOTAL$4,057.51 Any feedback on these quotes would be appreciated. How a community of 73 flats is going to use 3 computers, has Philip mystified. He supposes this will be discovered as they go along. Perhaps they will have only web-based email. 5.b. Suitability of Win98 for this network - Philip The Gowrie flats computers will be hooked up to broadband to machine one and the other two networked to this machine. JohnS recommended using WinXP for ease of networking. 6. Mikes - Jeff Jeff showed a colour print of Mike's homepage family group photo showing a comparison of results obtained with his Canon colour printer using 4 ink cartridges (3 colours) to produce a "Photo" print and 6 cartridges (5 colours) to produce a "SuperPhoto" print. At least some were impressed by the difference. Jeff 7. Create a .cfg file? - TonyB 8. Loose ends - Moby Item 8 - Loose Ends (moby). (a) New hard disk and Disk Manager. The last meeting at Irish discussed problems that Disk Manager (a Seagate utility) caused when attempting to use Partition Magic in partitioning a new hard disk. A friend who had this problem then used Gdisk (part of Norton Ghost) and found that PM would then work. (b) Zone Alarm and System Restore. For reasons unknown to me at the time, System Restore in Windows ME decided to stop creating any regular restore points. A similar problem was discussed last week and suspicion fell upon Zone Alarm. I have now uninstalled the very latest version of ZA (installed just before my troubles began) and reinstalled the previous version. Scheduled restore points are now back in fashion on my machine. Was new ZA really the culprit? Well I probably won't really know unless I go for the latest ZA again, and I am not about to tempt fate on this one. 9. Telstra ISDN experience - Charlie Being a resident of Gungahlin, I have been forced to accept a very slow net connection (28k) because Gungahlin is served by a Telstra RIM (Remote Integrated Multiplexer) which has the same effect as pair gaining. After some unrest in the suburb, resulting in a public meeting called by local pollies, Telstra set up a Gungahlin help line phone number 1300 134 239. I called this number and queried the opportunity to use Telstra's ISDN facility in a downgraded (and cheaper) fashion. Full ISDN requires expensive ISP support and use of timed calls (min of 30c per hour up to $1.10 per hour) but also offers connect speeds up to 128k through the use of dual lines. The proposal I was considering was connection of an analogue modem to one of the output ports on the Network Termination Unit installed on the phone line. This would slow the connection, but would mean use of normal analogue phone line (with untimed calls) rather than the data line. I was referred to a technician (based in Townsville) who is working on the Gungahlin problem. He confirmed that this solution should work and anticipated a connection speed of around 52k. I made the necessary arrangements for connection - which involved transferring my local calls back to Telstra from AAPT - and Telstra duly arrived at 4.00pm on a Thursday to install the NTU. Unfortunately the technician who arrived was not aware of the type of connection that I required and was expecting to carry out a full ISDN install. After much discussion, he agreed to try the set up, but was very sceptical about whether I would get a worthwhile connection. He encountered some local problems and had to make a couple of trips back to the Crace exchange in Mitchell to execute some jiggery pokery there. By 7.00pm that evening we got a connection, but only at 48k which quickly retrained to 46,667. Nonetheless, that is considerably better than my old connection and also means I have an additional phone line which provides the opportunity for permanent connection. Unfortunately after the techo left, I discovered that my existing phone line was only operating intermittently. I called Telstra and registered the fault. I also recalled the help line to see if there was any tweaking that could be done to pick up the speed. The Townsville techo called me back and ran some tests including a MOLDS test - Modem On-Line Diagnostic System. He advised that he had already done some tweaking, including fixing up my intermittent phone fault. However he eventually ran out of options, without significantly improving the connect speed, but has not given up and has arranged for another visit by the local techo. That is scheduled for Saturday 24th. We'll see what happens after that, but even if it doesn't get any better, 46k is much better than the old 28k. Cost of the ISDN service is $200 for set up and monthly line rental (for two phone lines) is $39 (that didn't go up when the normal phone rental increased, so is now a good bit less than double the single line rental). I also have to say that I have been very impressed by the co-operative and friendly approach from all Telstra staff. They have gone out of their way to be helpful. I am not a Telstra fan, but they really are making an effort here. Charlie K 10. Late October Public Transport event in Canberra - Philip As the whiteboard items were finished before 11am, Philip raised a matter of general community interest. The Friends of Black Mountain have arranged for Professor Peter Newman to visit Canberra in late October to speak and offer advice at a number of public events on the theme of sustainable transport for Canberra. Canberra's ecological footprint - its use of non-renewable resources - is about 15 times a sustainable level. Transport takes a sizeable chunk of these resources. European cities spend about 4 % of their income on transport; it is estimated that Canberra spends around 17% - not just in our personal transport costs, but in our large road deficit. Peter Newman is professor of city policy at Murdoch University, and visiting professor University of Pennsylvania. He is the founding director of the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP). A Google search on ISTP and Murdoch will show you some fascinating work. He has experts helping design car-free cities in Europe. The Canberra mindset boggles! Peter will be addressing a public meeting on State and Federal sustainability policy for the National Institute for the Environment on the ANU campus, probably at lunctime on Thursday 24 October date to be confirmed. On Saturday afternoon 2pm 26 October he will be speaking in the Botanic Gardens theatrette on global trends for auto cities like Canberra and public transport global trends. Peter will also describe the renaissance of rail in Perth over the last 20 years, with the recent Cabinet approval of the fastest suburban rail link in the world from Mandurah to Perth. The Bot Gardens theatrette only holds 90 people, so we will have to insist on people reserving their seat. Peter will assist with a panel to moderate a brainstorm session in the ACT Assembly functions area - date to be finalised on public transport futures for Canberra. I daresay ADART will get a mention. As will light rail, heavy rail, underground metros etc. How to get a transport system which can help a dispersed city like Canberra to work more sustainably, while reshaping the city in the longer term to make it more economic and environment-friendly. This will also be open to the public, but because of numbers will require booking. Kerrie Tucker will host this forum. Date and time to be finalised. The Friends groups organising the visit is also working on holding a Landcare style round-table of the various parties affected by the Gungahlin Drive Extension proposal - which is becoming more political as each month passes and more unpredictable in its outcome. This will be an invitation-only meeting to those groups who see themselves as "stakeholders" in the protracted argument over the road. Anyone interested to attend any of these meetings (and one or two more are under consideration during Peter Newman's visit here) could contact me for further info: pmbell@pcug.org.au. PS. Philip asked how many of the 37 CNC attendees came by bus. Two hands went up. This is 6%, which has been the level of PT usage in Canberra now for some time. PALM surveys have consistently found that 94% of Canberra people believe that ACTION does not offer them the service they need. ===================== The foregoing might well be the largest set of notes from Coffee and Chat for a long time. Sorry that I'm later than usual but you will understand I went through two iterations of format C: between the meeting and when I've collated the notes you can understand. Regards, Trevor -*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*- "Whenever I hear about a 'peacekeeping force'," I wonder: If they're so interested in peace, why do they use force?" -- George Carlin. ****************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, inluding archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/ ******************************************************
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