Minutes of the Meeting held 6 November 2001
Meeting was in the small conference room due to Melbourne cup lunch
preparations - did not count attendees but a short trip outside the room
confirmed that there must have been many, judging by the noise level {:-))
RodB kindly agreed to be volunteered to wield the gavel.
1. JimH kindly organised a sweep - winners will be paid at the next S'side
meeting on 20th Nov.
2. A. SSoft Sandra report - 500 pages plus . - TedMcA
B. 256 Mb RAM O.K
3.WinME stopping A: being activated - GloriaR
4. JohnS
A. Password Saga.
I previously recommended a new computer for this member, and set up TIP
access and various other items. A year later there were problems logging
onto TIP and the system had a couple of virus infections. Turns out that the
owners PCUG membership had lapsed and this was renewed - but the system was
taken to the builder (A. B. & T.) who cleaned up the virii and diagnosed the
TIP access problem as "too few alpha characters in the original password"
(which had worked for 12 months!). Then the crazy stuff started - they
apparently gave her a new password which WORKED when checked at the PCUG
centre!!!! Eventually AllanM helped me diagnose that although the owner's
PCUG membership had been renewed her TIP access had not. A.B. & T. must have
"Telnet'd" into TIP using Basic access and the original password, and
changed to the new one. By this time the TIP membership had been renewed and
needless to say we changed the new password again!
B. Check for XP compatibility/Capability
Finally the SMH "Icon" free magazine gave a URL to download the MS program
to check your system hardware and software for Win XP compatibility and
capability. A check of the URL indicated that the file could indeed be
downloaded but it is more than 50 Mb! At least MS mention that a download
should not be attempted unless "you have a broadband connection"..... Graham
McC noted that this month's APC CD includes this software which I have tried
and works well - producing an HTML report similar to the one published in
the Canberra Times of 5th Nov.
C. Enigma
I mentioned that the Robert Harris book is a great read. I've now seen the
movie which is also good - but not IMHO as good as the book.
D. Irish club associate m'ship.
Having the S'Side meetings at the Irish Club is a "win win" situation for
both CnC and the club. But the club would really prefer it if CnC members
took out the $3 annual "associate membership" - so please check that you are
still "legal".
5. WinME restore/Various - GrahamMcC
Graham writes:
I recently found I could log in to TIP but not go any further into news,
mail or browser. The problem was identified as a protocol problem and many
attempts were made to re-install TCP. but to no avail. I recall that the
last time I had made a successful log on was before I uninstalled Zone
Alarm. So, with Dr Saxon's help I opened that wonderful facility in
Windows Me, System Restore, selected a date before I took Zone Alarm off
and had the computer 'restored'. It all went beautifully. I now had Zone
Alarm back on again so I again uninstalled it, to have my TIP connection
fail again. I finally got Zone Alarm off and the system working. Praise
be for System Restore.
6. Visual Basic course - JohnA.
Visual Basic course will be held on Sunday Dec 2nd at the
PCUG Centre. Enrolments via Petra. Tutors John Armstrong and Ric Geary.
Morning Intro to VB. Afternoon Demonstration of scope of VB with some
emphasis on the control/monitoring of peripheral devices
7. PCUG matters - AllanM
8. Internet connection warning - PaulH
Windows has a function that, when logged on to an Internet
connection, asks the user if disconnection is desired. The message pops up
after both IE and OE are closed, Windows presuming that you have probably
finished using your Internet connection. This used to happen on my machine
but ceased some time ago, probably when something new was installed.
Several suggestions were made by members and tried with no success.
9. MSIE 6.0 problem - LeighD
10. Connecting speakers - EmilJ
Emil writes:
Well, actually, that topic should have read "How to connect your
stereo unit's speaker ports to your computer via the line-in port of
the sound card"! But that was a mouthful.
My stereo unit, in common with most units, have 2 audio outputs. A
stereo socket for Headphone connection and 4 wire clamps for speakers'
connection.
Conventional wisdom suggests connecting the Headphone output to the
line-in socket of the sound card. Good results is obtained.
I wondered whether it is possible to obtain a better results
connecting the speaker-ports to the line-in socket. A Google search
that this could be done via the use of an audio converter stocked by
Jaycar called "Car Stereo High to Low level converter" (product id
AA-0480 $23.95). A very simple d-i-y circuit (with handy explanation)
by a Finnish author is at:
http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/speaker_to_line.html
(Incidentally, www.epanorama,net/pc/sound.html has a good resource on PC
soundcards)
Anyhow, connecting the speakers ports to the line-in (using the Jaycar
gadget) yielded good results, but it was no better than those yielded
via the Headphone connection.
By the way, in case any reader is wondering why I wanted to connect
the stereo unit to the computer in the first place, the reason is
quite simple. I wanted to record audio outputs from the stereo unit
into computer files in wav or mp3 formats.
11. RAM limitation using Win98? - PaulH
Anna described an inability to run Windows 98 on a PC with 1.25GB
of RAM, although LINUX would happily run and use all the available memory.
No member present had (understandably) met this problem yet. However, a
Google search was suggested. The Google search revealed the answer in the
Microsoft Support article
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP . Which
says, in part, "On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache
size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the
system arena". The article gives a couple of work-arounds to the problem.
(Editor: I happened across a mention of this in APC mag today. There was a
bald statement that "Win 98 & ME have BSOD problems with RAM > 512 Mb but XP
would not suffer the same problem". I must mention though that with current
rock bottom RAM prices I could not resist loading my ME system with it's
current 640 Mb {:-)) So far no bad effects have been noted).
12. TerryB - kindly sent the following URLs.
How to Uninstall Internet Explorer 6 (Q293907)
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q293/9/07.ASP
and:
OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6 (Q291387)
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q291/3/87.ASP
13. For those who did not make it, you'll be sorry to hear that we enjoyed a
great Melbourne cup lunch!
Cheers.... JohnS
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