Minutes of the Meeting held 24 July 2001


When I counted early in the proceedings there were 27 people. KenM was
given the bell as chairperson. Two people were there for their first
time.

On the whiteboard were the following items:

1. Slide scanning - Greg

2.A Canon printers
2.B   DV Studio - JohnS:
A. Canon Printer problem. A friend had a problem with a Canon printer
which sounded as through the black cartridge had "dried out". As I use
HP printers I asked for any advice. Various suggestions were made
including gently wiping the print nozzles with a water soaked tissue,
hold nozzles over a steaming kettle, touch the nozzles onto hot water
(just to the meniscus), and of course to use the purge software. Tried
all of these methods on both the print head and the ink tank (turned
out they were separate) - but no luck. The manual indicated that the
printhead with separate ink tanks could be replaced by a larger black
only combined unit and this is what my friend opted to buy.

B. A success story! One reason I was tempted to buy my great little
Panasonic DS55A Digital camcorder was that it came bundled with a
firewire card and Ulead Video Studio software. If anyone else is
tempted - the camera is great - but negotiate a better price without
the bundled items! The card works well and allows digital video to be
captured to the hard disk - but the software is a disaster area. It
really only allows capture into individual scenes by manually starting
and stopping the camera - and the software interface is appalling and
even a simple trim of a video clip is really difficult. Eventually
after getting an enthusiastic report from a fellow CnC'er and much
on-line research, I gritted my teeth and ditched the Ulead software
and paid the Software shop $320 for StudioDV software from
Pinnacle systems. The software came bundled with a different type of
firewire card (who said there is an IEEE standard?). But StudioDV
turned out to be great! It reliably captures into individual "clips"
by detecting time discontinuities in the data. It captures an entire
60 minute tape into 150 Mb in compressed "preview" form. All trimming,
editing, scene manipulation, transitions, addition of background music
and voiceover etc. is done with these preview clips. Only when ready
to "render" the final video does the software control the camera to
input the trimmed clips at full data rate and volume to create the
finished movie. It really is a wonderful demonstration of what can be
done with modern PCs and software. Now to get the time to produce the
definitive epic from my 6 plus hours of uncut tapes!

3. Mozilla .jpg - Adele
A friend had received an e-mail with three jpg attachments which could
not be opened. I brought to C and C one on a floppy. Greg B tried very
hard to open it and the final message was that it was a Mozilla jpg
and needed Netscape facilitator to open it. But that too was
unsuccessful. We wondered what a Mozilla jpg was. John S said Netscape
and Mozilla were not a good combination. Mike D said the best thing to
when one receives a file which should open readily and does not is to
ask the originator to send it again. This was done and all three files
opened perfectly. Another success for the KISS principle! (keep it
simple stupid). 

4. a. Internet Explorer Upgrade to 5.5
    b. Screen freeze - Moby, Jim
Item on Internet Explorer:
Jim asked whether installing IE5.5 over 5.0 was a fresh install of a
new program or whether it would represent an upgrade to what was there
(ie, would 5.0 still be there as a seperate program). The answer was
that it would be an upgrade and would supersede 5.0. Help was also
sought on a problem with Internet Explorer. After logging on and
commencing browsing, after a minute or so the screen would freeze and
nothing could be done - the cursor would not work, no keys would
either, and the only thing to be done was to shut down the machine and
turn it on again. Advice was to try and restore IE through the
Add/Remove facility. But try to fix this problem before upgrading to
5.5.  

5. Cursor ghost - Bill
Re ITEM 5  -  Cursor Ghostlike effect

My cursor had developed a second strange image about one cm to the
right of the hourglass or arrow. My questions were:
Where had this come from?
How do I get rid of it?.
	
No one in the group had experienced this problem or knew what
had caused it.

There was a fear expressed that I may have a virus even though
running Inocculate-IT.

There was also a suggestion that I go to control panel and
look at mouse properties. 

I did this but could see nothing wrong. However, I noticed in
the MOTION options a provision to have "pointer trails". Lo & behold,
selecting this option got rid of the ghost. When I deselected the
option, the ghost reappeared.

I am now using the mouse with the shortest possible (almost
unnoticeable "pointer trail"

I still have no idea what is the cause of the original
problem.

6. Old386 - HDD details - BobS:
After standing idle for several months I tried to start the old 386,
but it gave a message about a dead BIOS battery. Leaving the power on
solved this problem, but then the CMOS wanted to know what HDD was
installed. Following today's C & C, I removed the HDD and found that
it was a Seagate Model S7324A and the Drive Parameters were printed on
it. On transferring these details to the CMOS the start-up continued,
but only to show messages such as;

"MISSING HIMEM . SYS"
"ERROR : Unable to control A20 line"
"XMS driver not installed"
"EMM386 not installed-XMS manager not present"

It looks as though there is still some life in the old 386, but how to
revive it completely?

7. Interactive CDs - Alan

8. New machine entertainment - RodB
Item 8: My problem with Outlook Express ('send' disconnected the line)
turned out to be a user error. Owen made the right suggestion during
the meeting (thank you, Owen). A Google search on 'Outlook Express
send disconnects' brought up a document at the top of the list which
explained exactly what needed to be set and confirmed the suggestion
that Owen made. It works beautifully now.

Other points I made in the meeting described my new machine: Asus
A7V133 mother board; Athlon 1.2 MHz processor; 256 MB memory; 30 GB
disk; GeForce 2 64 MB video card, Creative sound card; Ricoh CD burner
and an internal modem card. I added a an IDE Zip driver and the hard
disk from my old machine. 

When I installed W98SE it recognised my Zip drive as a floppy at
location B:, whereas my previous machine saw it as a removable disk at
E:. There was an IRQ conflict between the modem and the USB manager,
which prevented my scanner being recognised. At John Saxon's
suggestion (what would we do without you, John), the modem card was
removed and the scanner was recognised. I then swapped the modem card
with the sound card and all appears to be working.

There was also some discussion about my suggestion that a power supply
with multiple settable low voltage outlets was a needed product. The
meeting thought that such a thing could be farly easily made.

9. Computer slow to start - Trevor
Re: Item 9, my computer was moderately slow to start and would spend
about 30 seconds after processing the path statement in Autoexec.bat
with a blank screen. It was mentioned that both Startup Manager and
TweakAll would most likely clean dross from starting up. I used
TweakAll after which did a regclean. I didn't notice a lot of
difference but it was a bit faster.
JohnS suggested: that I might find
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2677916,00.html
interesting. I'll investigate after posting this article, thanks John.

10. Area program - MikeD
11. Dual monitors - CharlieK

Regards, Trevor


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