The Coffee and Chat meeting for the 2nd of April was well
attended, some 25 plus turned up. As an introduction, Jime Hume
canvassed support for the 1PHR program, looking for volunteers to help
make a weekly PCUG talk.  Anyone interested, contact Jim at
jhume@pcug.org.au

Computer Chat

	Emil Joseph introduced his latest exciting interest, Voice
Chat, in which the Internet can be used for making calls at a fraction
of the cost of standard ISD or STD calls. The Telecoms are worried as
it shows up the difference in pricing between what the Telecoms charge
and the true "effective" cost of the service.

	At a meeting some time ago, Darrell Burkey demonstrated a
Voice Command system, and the headset come boom mike arrangement he
had made for this. Emil stated he was uncomfortable with this and
preferred a "normal" telephone handset, so with the assistance of
Charlie Rann, Emil now has a telephone handset to use on the Internet.
	Not all handsets work, carbon mikes are a no no, but those
with dynamic mikes are OK. Emil can advise where to get the good
handsets.

	On the subject of software, it was advised that the next, or
subsequent issue of Sixteen Bits will have a run down on:
	Interphone
	Cyberphone
	Freetel
	Welfone
	and maybe PowWow, whose latest version operates with a 14.4 k
modem.
Emil gave a rundown on Freetel. It has these features:
	Allows full duplex, as opposed to half duplex of the others.
	Has a text chat mode
 	It's free, but you may pay for it, if you wish to remove the
ads.
	Operates on a 14.4 k modem
	It's on the PCUG BBS
	It's not on the Undernet.

	This technology is just over a year old, the developments in
that time have been stagering, and one might ask what the next year
will bring.

Problems

Excel
Was it possible to plot the variable data in a 2D graph along the X
axis, rather than the Y axis which seems to be the standard.  If
anyone knows, I would be interested to hear.

V34 to Vfast
Neville Anderson noted delays in responses from the BBS and Internet
and wondered if this was due to an incompatibility between V34 and
Vfast. After some discussion, it was suggested that the response times
he was getting was normal and not to worry about. 

Adaptors
Kieth Sayers was having all sorts of problems making up an adaptor to
connect an old drive to a new drive. Don Nicol was able to assist and
we hope he gets it sorted out.

High ASCII
Paul Thomson was concerned that he could not get get high ASCII
symbols. Some discussion took place and the Center's library was
called upon to decipher various style keyboards and the ASCII symbols.
In the end it was decided he would be best to use the "Insert Symbol"
of his WP package.




Text Conversion
Maureen Grundy noted that a particular file she gets on a regular
basis has to be reformatted, ie, carriage returns etc put in it and
this was a real pain in the neck. Darrell Burkey offerred to have a
look and recommend how she should cope with this problem. It was
believed to be simply a matter of identifying the file type and the
finding an appropriate editor.

Original Disks
Les Davey had a disk crash, but now is more or less back in business.
But he is missing a few things. It turns out when he bought his
equipment a year or so ago, everthing was preloaded and he had very
few of the original disks. As the firm was still in business, it was
suggested he go back to them and get what he was missing, and
hopefully the original disks as well.

Miniscribe
Derrick Boyd is 83 years old, he has pulled his computer to pieces,
and rebuilding it to take another hard drive. He wanted to know where
a particular plug went. Don Nicol fortunately had a book with him that
gave sufficient clues and no doubt we will hear from Derrick on this
matter again.

The BBS
Don Nicol wondered about the BBS, has it changed etc. No one knew for
sure, but it was understood that the BBS still gets about 2000 calls a
week. Other rumours included;
  	Internet subscribers can now FTP the BBS for files
	The status of the CD juke box was not known
	Volunteers were being sought to implement a FIG


Next Meeting.............16 April 1996

Cheers till then


Owen

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