Next meeting: WEDNESDAY, September 3, 1997 Be there
Contents
1. That I think is our problem Only a few souls are involved and on hand to carry out the wishes of the group at large Many people are quick to criticize but when it comes time to be part of the solution then that is another matter My thanks go to all of the SIG coordinators and those that help them achieve their goals My thanks to those that work behind the scenes and never get any recognition at all Thanks to the rest of the executive past and present that have plugged away consistently over the years when there was no one else to take on the tasks at hand It is time for the OPCUG to move forward and that is what your executive wishes to do We would honestly like to implement every identified element of the report Unfortunately that would probably be too much all at once Opportunities are available for you to get involved and take our User Group into the future It doesn t have to be a single person a group of individuals could form a consortium to take on a task and to get it going and maintain it Outlined elsewhere are opportunities for SYSOP and Webmaster This is a great opportunity to try something new or gain valuable expertise Experience is a great teacher and looks formidable on a resume Think about it and come to the meeting prepared to do something about it I 12 Meeting calendar Club news Tips and tricks The case of the disappearing modem Special Interest Groups FoxPro SIG Desktop Publishing SIG Produc2. Membership 25 per year Mailing address 3 Thatcher St Nepean Ontario K2G 1856 Telephone answering machine 723 1329 Bulletin board the PUB BBS Up to 28 8 kbps v 34 Chairman Harald Freise hfreise fox nstn ca 828 3411 Treasurer Willem Bill Vandijk Bvdijk igs net 256 3054 228 0665 5 lines Secretary David Reeves david_reeves nt com 723 9658 Membership Chairman Mark Cayer cayemar statcan ca 823 0354 BBS Sysop Chris Taylor ctaylor nrcan gc ca 723 1329 Newsletter Chris Seal editor cseal fox nstn ca 831 0280 Julie Dustin assistant editor micropro fox nstn ca 823 1552 Mr Jean Vaumoron layout vaumojav magi com 731 7847 Public Relations Bob Cross cross fox nstn ca Facilities Bob Walker skywalk istar ca 489 2084 Beginners corner facilitator Duncan Petrie 841 6119 DTP SIG coordinator Bert Schopf blackbird cyberus ca 232 8427 Fox SIG coordinator BobThomas msn com Internet SIG coordinator David Curling Curlingd loday com 731 5381 OS 2 SIG coordinator Mr Jocelyn Doire Paradox SIG coordinator Larry Chop chopla magi com Windows SIG coordinator Chris Taylor ctaylor nrcan gc ca 723 1329 595 1002 after 6 p m voice fax 596 3313 Please contact via PUB 236 8761 days on of pora eat computer Use Ge is Ma ANT Zs aaa a4 D riveCo py by Harald Freise h recently undergone a forced increase in hard disk space brought on by looking into and keeping
3. St Ottawa Paradox Users Group To be announced 6 15 pm Inly Systems 1221a Cyrville Rd FOX SIG Power of MS Visual FoxPro 5 0 7 30 pm location to be announced Future of The PUB ay chris Taylor sysop E isewhere in this issue of the newsletter there is a report that came out of a series of meetings on the Users Group OPCUG Core Strategy Development Committee Report to the board of directors Ed One of the things that was clear to me from the results was that members wanted more from the bulletin board system BBS than is currently offered by The PUB Unfortunately there is little that can be done with the current software used for The PUB to satisfy the needs and desires expressed in the report I think this presents a real opportunity to me as well as one or more individuals For my part I have decided that this is the last year I will act as Sysop for the Group I have truly enjoyed the time as Sysop but I think it is time to pass the reins on to someone else For one or more people in the Group this presents an opportunity to setup a new bulletin board service a PUB IT if you will One that can offer the members a more modern on line service Just look to the report to get a feel for what the membership is looking for Other than those basic ideas the slate is clean The last four months of 1997 should provide ample opportunity for the smooth transition to a new service The PUB will continue to
4. dreaded program that was used to partition a hard disk in the dark ages of computerdom has finally met a timely death Fdisk is not intuitive It had a cryptic DOS interface that was used maybe once to set up a hard disk Most of the time one ended up with one big DOS partition and very large cluster sizes Any time Fdisk was used thereafter came the realisation that everything that was on your hard disk before was completely and irrevocably GONE forever With PowerQuest s powerful 32 bit software tool you can dynamically create resize format and move hard disk partitions This ability maximises the efficiency of any file system and takes advantage of smaller cluster sizes All this can be done on the fly and with very easy to use graphical menus There is no loss of files or directories and you can easily copy files between partitions Why consider repartitioning For all computer users with large hard disks Fat 32 multiple disks Win 95 N T and OS 2 up to 50 of your 4Gb hard disk space could be wasted The smallest area of a hard drive that can be written to is a cluster Cluster sizes are determined by a disk limitation of 65 575 clusters The larger the hard disk the larger the cluster size A one byte file would take up 32Kb of disk space on a 1024Mb hard disk and would use 64Kb on a 2048Mb or larger hard disk A hard disk between one and two gigabytes with a single large partition has a cluster size of 32Kb Thi
5. Pere eet ae OTTAWA PC NEWS Vol 14 No 7 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users Group September 1997 Coming up The future of the OPCUG rsu reis This month s meeting will focus on our User Group and the SIGs that are part of our group The initial portion of the evening will briefly be a round table to discuss the recommendations of the OPCUG Core Strategy Development Committee report found elsewhere in this issue and chart the course for the future The balance of the evening will give an opportunity to the SIGs during their User helping User session to plan their coming season Let me explain further During the summer the OPCUG has been busy With many thanks to Richard Bazinet and Bob Cross as well as all the participants for accomplishing the task that they set out to do Under a three step process consulting with various members and non members they have more or less taken the pulse of those vocal within the club as well as how a non members view the OPCUG what they wanted from the OPCUG and what they didn t What this did was reaffirm that the OPCUG executive were already on the right track Looking through the past minutes I saw that most of those same needs were identified The problem was that the your executive could not get them moved forward and implemented In essence we didn t have the time to do it all by ourselves nor were we successful in finding those who would champion a project
6. e were trying to resources we have been unable to implement do was what the membership wanted the needed solutions and new programs It is hoped the OPCUG can move forward on some if not all of the items mentioned in the report Our success is dependent on responsible qualified members stepping forward and implementing solutions to these issues We want to thank Bob Cross and Richard Bazinet for managing a program that obtained the information we needed Over the past six months three meetings were held with Board members SIG coordinators members at large and non members Bob Cross and Richard Bazinet have prepared a report that lists the issues facing the OPCUG membership wey The OPCUG Core Strategy Development Committee report is based on data gained from the focus groups at the three meetings It is included as part of this newsletter OPCUG Core Strategy Development Committee Report to the board of directors July 31 1997 Are several workshop sessions the Core Strategy Development OPCUG s membership demographics is a process is in its final stages You will recall that the Board of Directors poor reflection of the community An influx of discussed and identified issues during two workshops held on May 27 younger newer members is required to 1997 and June 3 A similar workshop was held with members and revitalize the club with fresh ideas and non members of the OPCUG on July 12 th energy Richard Bazinet and I met for two
7. from the account that you want to receive the notices with the subject containing one of FoxSIG if you want to receive FoxSIG notices only DevsSIG if you want to receive Developers SIG notices only BothSIG if you want to receive notices for both the FoxPro and Developers SIGs Send it to BobThomas msn com How to contact us Andrew MacNeill is the FoxSIG Leader MeisterMacNeill msn com Terry Mahoney is the DevSIG Leader 102770 3574 CompuServe Com Bob Thomas coordinates the SIGs BobThomas msn com Check out the FoxSIG s Page at hitp lt s ourworld compuserve com homepages AndrewRMacNeill You can leave voice messages for the FoxSIG at 596 3313 pee The case of the disappearing modem z w any people with older 486 computers were pleasantly surprised when they converted to Microsoft Windows 95 and found that the Plug n Play features of Win 95 worked even though their machines did not have a Plug n Play BIOS However things were not always all that they seemed On some machines the Plug n Play versions of some modems specifically USRobotics 14 4 in my case would appear to work fine but would have flaky behaviour such as dropping out and disappearing from Win 95 s point of view Sure enough the next time you turned on the computer the modem would work fine but would die an hour or two later In order to fix this I tried setting the jumpers on the modem man
8. he hard drive be compressed You can either upgrade to a larger capacity drive and leave the original drive in the system or eliminate the original drive from the system to make room for another large drive It even copied a SCSI drive when I changed to an EIDE drive type No files are deleted from the source drive Should something happen during the copy process to cause an interruption then the process can be started all over again without any penalty Any existing information on the target drive will be understandably lost If you are upgrading to a larger capacity hard disk then this is the program for you With disk capacity so inexpensive these days why struggle along with a small drive Changing disks isn t the pain in the disk as it used to be pee Ottawa PC User s Group September 1997
9. hours on the evening of July 30 Quality content of monthly meetings has During this meeting the issues from all the workshops were reviewed deteriorated discussed compared and prioritized In the end the following list was prepared to identify the primary common issues of all parties involved PO bet Board Ob Dirccrors 1H yIewed ag unreceptive of input ideas from the Users helping Users is no longer happening within OPCUG membership Communication methods within OPCUG are poor and need Community awareness of OPCUG is low modernization The next stage of the process is for the Board of No database exists of members skills and areas of expertise Directors to review the list and identify and Current dial in BBS PUB format is outdated and requires discuss solutions to these issues If you have any modernization questions or require clarification please contact Richard or myself Too many files available on the PUB are outdated and or of poor quality Sincerely Bob Cross cross fox nstn ca Richard Bazinet rbazinet sympatico ca 2 Ottawa PC User s Group June1997 Meetings Date Time and venue 7 30 pm Museum of Science and OPCUG General Meeting Sept 3 OPCUG Future Technology 1867 St Laurent Blvd aoe 7 30 pm Griffin Computer Training Desktop Publishing SIG Sept 9 Trials amp Tribulations of DTP Cotitre 275 Slnter St Ge Kent Internet SIG To be announced ay pm eno 111 Lisgar
10. isk then this is the program for you For more information visit http www powergquest com lt Wacom back to everyone after a great summer I hope yours was filled with BBQs sun and relaxation The DTP SIG is looking forward to another exciting season of presentations at Griffin Computer Training Centre formerly Lemmex This season the DTP SIG will try to meet for Q amp A sessions after the main presentation at general meetings Plan on dropping in and adding your input Trials amp tribulations of a DTP publication sao DTP SIG The Desktop Publishing SIG will meet September 9 for a member s presentation by H Clem McClemens on the the hardware software and technical challenges he faced while producing a publication for his department Learn from his experiences and share in the technical discussions September 1997 Ottawa PC User s Group 5 OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users Group OPCUG and is published monthly except in July and August The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members Deadline for submissions is four Saturdays before the general meeting Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the first Wednesday in the month except in July and August at the National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St Laurent Blvd Ottawa Meeting times are 7 30 p m to 10 p m Fees
11. operate in this interim period and will cease operations as we know it at the end of December I would like to thank all who have contributed to the success of The PUB There are two sides to this One the one side are those who contributed with solutions both in the form of uploading shareware and answering questions in the message areas On the other side are the people who came looking for these solutions often not knowing exactly what they were looking for until they found it Both sides are important and I thanks everyone who participated in The PUB in any form It has truly been a rewarding experience over the nine years I have been involved with The PUB As I always thought so befitting a signoff for a BBS called The PUB Cheers Chris pee September 1997 Ottawa PC User s Group 3 a Coming up by Bob Thomas The FoxPro Developers SIG is gearing up for the Fall season We will be meeting at a downtown location to be announced which should be more convenient location for our members For those of you that missed the original showing we will be showing the Power of Microsoft Visual FoxPro 5 0 again This season s program will also include a development project for the Web I have changed E mail software and need to update our mailing list once again If you want to be notified of FoxSIG DevSIG meetings and events please E mail me
12. s leads to a potential waste of approximately 40 in disk space Similarly a hard disk between 512Mb and 1023Mb would have 16Kb clusters and a potential waste of 25 Repartitioning a hard disk as smaller multiple logical drives would naturally cause less waste Multiple operating systems For those of you who run multiple operating systems you can partition a disk with its maximum of four primary partitions each partition can house a separate operating system The ability to shield one operating system from another insures the absence of inter operating system compatibility problems Boot Manager from IBM is included and you can use this to switch easily between operating systems Partition control Partitions can easily be reconfigured from a primary partition to an extended partition Logical drives can be created sized and easily formatted in any extended partition FAT32 partitions are recognised and can be changed to FAT16 partitions Partition Magic can be loaded and run in text mode from a bootable floppy disk which can be a real savior in certain situations This is one very powerful and easy to use piece of software The excellent easy to read and understand manual explains not only the functionality of Partition Magic but also hard disks sectors tracks clusters and effective partitioning of the hard disk If you are concerned about waste of disk space run multiple operating systems and want better control of your hard d
13. t reviews Partition Magic Drive Copy For my part I am relinquishing the duties of coordinating the general meeting program and all the other stuff that I ve been doing to concentrate in affording the opportunities to those who will be taking the OPC UG forward into the future I hope that the new program coordinator will find the type of presentations that the group is truly interested in and will attend I have no idea what the alternative is should no one come forward I will not hold the position of chairman in the coming year I have been goaded into the position way too many times much longer than I intended to Personal circumstances have limited the time that I can spend as your chairperson As the owner of a small computer consulting firm specialising in hardware and training and a young family I just don t have the cycles available anymore I hope that the next chairperson has as much pleasure working with the OPCUG as I have had It certainly is a rewarding experience pee Next meeting WEDNESDAY September 3 1997 s ner Report from the OPCUG Core Strategy Development Committee by David Reeves Secretary OPCUG Board of Directors Daring the past year and a half the Board of Directors have been The results have confirmed that the Board was struggling with what course of action the future development of the heading in the right direction but with limited OPCUG was to follow We needed to confirm that what w
14. too many new and wonderful things With this came the realisation that I had to reinstall every program that I had been using up until that point Had I known about DriveCopy from PowerQuest this process would have taken minutes and not several intensive and counterproductive days The next time that I upgraded another machine I used DriveCopy It transferred everything from my old hard drive to my new hard drive without losing anything in minutes NOT days This was no easy task as I use multiple file systems on my hard disk A hash of Windows NTFS DOS and leftover OS 2 HPFS partition No data loss no settings no preferences no nothing It did all this while copying multiple partitions while DriveCopy proportionally expanded those partitions to fit the new and much larger hard disk After this I did some fine tuning of the partitions using Partition Magic which they also happen to make DriveCopy is a DOS program that runs from a 3 5 floppy disk and has a very small user manual It is simple to use and purportedly works with any Intel 386 or higher and needs 8Mb of RAM unless you are working with FAT32 or NTFS file systems in which case a minimum of 16Mb is required DriveCopy is not meant for copying files from one computer to another but from one drive within a single machine to that of a larger capacity within that same system Within each partition 5Mb free space must be available for DriveCopy to work including the host drive should t
15. ually rather than letting Win 95 and Plug n Play determine the settings automatically When this was done Win 95 would not see the modem at all After talking with the dealer and with USRobotics Canadian distributor Keating Associates and after having the modem replaced four times I finally stumbled on the solution Like many people when I added this new hardware to my machine I did not let Win 95 do a complete scan for new hardware since this can take five to ten minutes I just manually selected the modem model and told Win 95 it was there When doing this after manually setting the jumpers on the modem Windows did not see the device However if you let Windows do the autodetect routine it will finally see the internal modem as a com port Let it install the com port then next time you boot up Win 95 it should detect a modem installed on this port After setting it up this way it should work fine Even though the dealer and the USRobotics rep didn t seem to know of this fix I have since learned that several people had the same problem and came upon the fix by playing around the same way I did All other Plug n Play devices that I have installed on my older 486DX33 have worked fine with the Plug n Play install so this problem was unique pee Ottawa PC User s Group September 1997 Pa rtition Magic by Harald Freise f you haven t heard about Partition Magic it s time you got wise FDISK EXE that
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