Minutes of C&C Meeting 20 October 1998 (INCLUDES MELBOURNE CUP LUNCH NEWS -- #1) Co-ordinator John welcomed 41 members, including newcomer Chris, who has followed the C&C Newsgroup for some time, and who has much valuable experience with UNIX, Windows, DOS, and programming. John also welcomed Gloria, just returned from a stint as an outback volunteer. Wolf reported that the Group was well in funds. Topics covered included: 1. C&C Meeting 3 November (with Melbourne Cup Day Luncheon) 2. Report on experiences as outback volunteer trainer: Gloria 3. Real Player for Real Audio files 4. Viruses; Partition Magic 5. Misleading error messages 6. Format c 7. IE "Favourites" function 8. Peformance above 52 KBs 9. Who are these people hitting my wife's web page? 10. Video capture; HP scanner servicing 11. TIP connection. 1. C&C Meeting 3 November (with Melbourne Cup Day Luncheon) The Group will meet at the PCUG Centre Belconnen as usual at 9.30-10 till 11.30h. on Melbourne Cup Day, Tuesday 3 November. Lunch will be served from 12.30h. Partners are invited to this function. After investigating several options, we decided to employ a caterer to provide an appetising non-sandwich meal, cost $7.50 per head. The number of people attending must be finally confirmed two days before the lunch, so if you wish to attend and have not already done so, PLEASE NOTIFY GORDON AT gordonu@pcug.org.au NO LATER THAN SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER 1998. More volunteers are welcome to assist Gordon as coordinator; please contact Gordon. 2. Report on experiences as outback volunteer trainer: Gloria Gloria spent 17 days near Cobar in western NSW helping ten families connect to and use the Internet. She praised the warm hospitality and kindness she encountered, as well as the wonderful help she received from VISE coordinators in arranging her tour. Farming families were particularly interested in using modems (eight out of the ten were using internal modems), setting up email, games, and weather forecasts. She introduced nine families to the following five-day satellite forecast which had been discovered by the tenth: ftp://grads.iges.org/www/mirror/pix/prec7.gif. Gloria found Julian of Maestro Modems at Mac's Reef Road to be a great expert on modem problems. Telstra, on the other hand, needed to get its act together, for example, each technician contacted for help had given a different initialisation string for a given modem. Gloria used Eudora or Internet Express with IE4 for email connection, plus Hotmail. John said it was important, when downloading email from TIP to Hotmail, to use the option "leave mail on server". The Group agreed that future problems encountered by Gloria's ten families which she herself could not solve, could be referred to the Group. Gloria encouraged Group members to participate in the outback assistance program. 3. Real Player for Real Audio files Gavin has installed Real Player for Real Audio files with the result that his computer's audio function now does not work. John advised him to go to Windows Explorer, find *.wave, click on this to launch the function. If this fails, RP for RA files has destroyed associations. Mike suggested deleting the ordinary audio drivers , taking off RP for RA files, and reinstalling the audio drivers. Chris suggested Gavin should check the sound mixer through the icon: all mute squares should be cleared; all play squares checked. If all else fails Gavin's computer-wiz son is coming home in two weeks. 4. Viruses; Partition Magic Trevor has recently expunged a virus from his system using ThunderByte. Jim noted that Microsoft has a patch for W98 that rejects viruses. Trevor praised Partition Magic. 5. Misleading error messages Peter, running W98 and with plenty of RAM, sometimes gets the deadly blue screen plus the message "there are no spare stack pages" when he is not running a video function. Later the program tells him that "seven spare stack pages are allocated." This has happened three or four times, and when he presses any key as instructed, the problem disappears: he would like to hear others' experience of this. The Group agreed that operating systems are getting too complex, and some of the messages they send us cannot be taken at face value. John said Peter's messages indicated a problem left over from DOS days. Error messages can be translated into what they really mean, through Microsoft's Knowledge Base, though this is hard to use. 6. Format c Mike said that anyone who up to now may have been alarmed at the prospect of having to reinstall, especially format c, should not be over-concerned. He copied drive c into a safe place, then reformatted c painlessly – due he believes to his having kept programs separate from the operating system. Most programs were enabled by pulling icons onto the desktop, clicking to launch them. 7. Internet Explorer "Favourites" function Mike said that W98, which he has just acquired, launches you into the world of IE, with its less than well-organised favourites function. Ted loads his bookmarks onto the Web. John said organising favourites was painful and recommended Cache sentry (see C&C minutes 22 September 1998); also Outlook Express. After the meeting, Chris kindly gave a demonstration of Outlook Express. 8. Performance above 52 KBs Mike lamented that his X-Link modem still cannot get reliable performance above 52KBs: this tune was taken up by other members but no solution was forthcoming. Perhaps, Neville suggested, Mike should change the spiders in his junction box out on the pole. 9. Who are these people hitting my wife's web page? Paul would like to know how he can identify the people hitting his wife's web page, (it contains a rare book which has sparked a sudden jump in interest). Chris suggested Paul should write a simple PERL script which, located on the page, logs the connecting host and records who downloaded the page. 10. Video capture; HP Scanner servicing Paul is puzzled to find that his video capture card, which stubbornly refused to work for 18 months, now suddenly is working perfectly. We were at a loss also, and the only explanation seems to be that video capture cards appreciate being nicely spoken to. Paul warned that HP scanners all have to be serviced in Adelaide. 11. TIP connection We all had a lovely whinge about the current drop-out rate from TIP. Allan reported that Kryten3 is less tolerant of incompatibilities than K2 ever was. In five per cent of calls, the telephone connection is established but there is no connection to Kryten; and the number of calls which drop out under two minutes is higher. He noted that the problem can be reduced by using a different initialisation string. What is the correct string? That is indeed the $64K question. JL 21/10/98 1099 ********************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, including archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/~rcook/c&c.htm These Archives are now searchable. ***********************************************************
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