Copyright: Courtesy of NOCCC
Citation: Courtesy of North Orange County Computer Club, California


Contents
Orange Bytes

Vol. 20	No. 09	September 1995

Contents

September 10th Programs	SIG Meeting Reports
Columns	Club Stuff
Reviews	Club BBS Items
Tips & Techniques	Are You an NOCCC Member?
NOCCC Computer Fair and Swapmeet	Free Raffle Tickets


Meeting Reports
SIG Meeting Reports

Main Meeting

Advance Modem SIG

Computer Aided Investing SIG

C++ and Object Oriented Programming SIG

Explorer SIG

Home Networking SIG

IBM General SIG

Lotus and Business SIG

Macintosh SIG

Novice PC User SIG

Visual Programming SIG

Windows SIG

Wordprocessing & Desktop Publishing SIG


Columns

President's Message

Limerick of the Month

Rambling PC User

David Em

A Neophyte's Look at Microsoft Windows 95

My Peak Experience at the Pinnacle

The Future of Computer User Groups

Honor System

What If Dr. Seuss Did Technical Training Manuals?

Computerphobia - Another Feminine Disease?

Computerphobia II -- Boys and their Toys


Reviews

Software Reviews

ABC FlowCharter 4.0 for Windows

AnyTime for Windows v3.0

Automenu 5.0

Coaster

PC-Kwik Power Pak for Windows v4

SPSS for the Macintosh

CD-ROMS Reviews

Rebel Assault

The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies

Book Reviews

Running Linux

Quicken 4 for Windows Answers

IRC Survival Guide

Microsoft's Natural Keyboard

The Review Editor's Corner

Preparing a Review Article for the Orange Bytes

How to Write an Article for this Newsletter


Tips & Techniques

Fast On and Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 3

What is a Software Cache?


NOCCC BBS Items
BBS Items

About The Club BBS

Bulletin Board Developments

Introduction to the Club Board BBS

How To Access the NOCCC Private Line

The Club BBS Information

Files on this system - why the .ZIP extension?

The Club BBS News

Fast On, Fast Off the BBS - Part 1

Fast On, Fast Off the BBS - Part 2

Fast On, Fast Off the BBS - Part 3

Fidonet

Directories on the BBS

The Club BBS

Cypress BBS LIne Active

Browsing the Club BBS

You are invited to select and review files of interest and merit from the NOCCC BBS for publication in Orange Bytes. The files may be DOS, Windows or OS/2 programs, utilities, games or simply text files of interest. Controversy and bias are encouraged. Upload copies of your reviews to the BBS attention Sam Miller, Editor.


Membership Information

Are You An NOCCC Member?

Application

Family Memberships

Has Your Phone Number Changed


About Orange Bytes

The Orange Bytes Needs Your Help

Staff

Guidlines for Submittals

To Our Authors

How to Write an Article for the Orange Bytes

Preparing a Review Article for the Orange Bytes

The Review Editor's Corner

The Electronic Orange Bytes

Orange Bytes on TimesLink

Legal Stuff and How the Windows version is constructed.


Club Stuff

Free Raffle Tickets

The NOCCC Computer Fair and Swapmeet

The NOCCC Treasurer's Report

Orange Bytes on TimesLink

Upcoming Events

Perks for NOCCC Members

Wear Your Badge

BBS Items

Board Minutes

Upcoming Events

NOCCC Officers

SIG Leaders

Telephone HelpLine

Telephone Needs Your Input

HP Laser Cartridge Returns

Magazine Subscription Offer Update

Early Notice of NOCCC Programs

Membership Information

Has Your Phone Number Changed?

About the Orange Bytes

Hints on using extra features provided


Upcoming Events
Events

Post Your Upcoming Events Here

Upcoming Computer Shows

NOCCC Computer Fair and Swapmeet


Perks for NOCCC Members

Local Computer Stores Give Club Discounts


Orange Bytes Index
Club Stuff

Program Schedule for September 10, 1995

Free Raffle Tickets

NOCCC Computer Fair and Swapmeet

NOCCC Treasurer Reports

Club BBS Developments

The Orange Bytes on TimesLink

Are You an NOCCC Member?

Early Notice of NOCCC Programs

HP Laser Cartridge Returns

Magazine Subscription Offer

NOCCC Board Minutes

NOCCC Membership Application

NOCCC Family Membership

NOCCC Officers / Directors / Committees & Projects

SIG Leaders

SIG Leaters - Attention!

Telephone HelpLine

Telephone HelpLine Neets Your Input

Wear Your Badge

NOCCC SIG Reports

Main Meeting

Advanced Modem SIG

Computer Aided Investing SIG

C++ and Object Oriented Programming SIG

Explorer SIG

Home Networking SIG

IBM General SIG

Lotus and Business SIG

Macintosh SIG

Novice PC User SIG

Visual Programming SIG

Windows SIG

Wordprocessing & Desktop Publishing SIG

Columns

President's Message

Limerick of the Month

Rambling PC User

David Em

My Peak Experience at the Pinnacle

A Neophyte's Look at Microsoft Windows 95

Honor System

The Future of Computer User Groups

What If Dr. Seuss Did Technical Training Manuals?

Computerphobia - Another Feminine Disease?

Computerphobia II -- Boys and their Toys

Reviews

Software Reviews

ABC FlowCharter 4.0 for Windows

AnyTime for Windows v3.0

Automenu 5.0

Coaster

PC-Kwik Power Pak for Windows 4

SPSS for the Macintosh

CD-ROMS Reviews

Rebel Assault

The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies

Book Reviews

Running Linux

Quicken 4 for Windows Answers

IRC Survival Guide

Microsoft Natural Keyboard

The Review Editors Corner

Preparing a Review Article for the Orange Bytes

How to Write an Article for this Newsletter

Tips & Techniques

Fast On, Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 3

What is a Software Cache?

Perks for NOCCC Members

Local Computer Stores Give Club Discount!

Events

Post Your Upcoming Events Here

Upcoming Computer Shows

NOCCC Computer Fair and Swapmeet

BBS Items

About The Club BBS

Bulletin Board Developments

Introduction to the Club Board BBS

How to Access the NOCCC Private Line

The Club BBS Information

Files on this system - why the .ZIP extension?

The Club BBS News

Fast On, Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 1

Fast On, Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 2

Fast On, Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 3

Fidonet

Directories on the BBS

The Club BBS

Cypress BBS Line Active

Browsing the Club BBS

You are invited to select and review files of interest and merit from the NOCCC BBS for publication in Orange Bytes. The files may be DOS, Windows, Mac or OS/2 programs, utilities, games or simply text files of interest. Controversy and bias are encouraged. Upload copies of your reviews to the BBS attention Sam Miller, Editor.

About the Orange Bytes

The Orange Bytes Needs Your Help

Staff

Guidlines for Submittals

To Our Authors

How to Write an Article for the Orange Bytes

Preparing a Review Article for the Orange Bytes

Electronic Versions of the Orange Bytes

The Orange Bytes on TimesLink

Legal Stuff and How the Windows version is constructed.


Main Meeting Report: No Report This Month
Main Meeting

by Katherine Baum

Feel The Power of ISDN

The August main meeting featured a presentation of Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), the rapidly evolving communications technology offering enormous benefits to telecommuters, home business owners, and Internet surfers. Pacific Bell representative, Quinn Munton, compared the difference between POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) and ISDN dial up service to the difference between a lime green pinto and a red Ferrari. Modem transmission, assuming a 9600 speed, of a 25 page Microsoft Word file (about 50 megabytes) takes a little less than 12 hours with POTS against 52 minutes using both B channels of an ISDN 128K line.

The basic ISDN service lets you carry two voice and data calls at the same time through the same line with a third channel available for data transmissions. If you don't understand how this new technology works, try to remember that the ISDN architecture offers 3 channels on one twisted pair cable. This new dial-up service, allows greater information access and transmission over your existing cable than your regular telephone service.

The sound is cleaner over ISDN. The digital line uses repeaters to clean up sound noise as voice communication gets pushed down the telephone line. Over regular telephone lines, voice hits amplifiers beefing up the sound but unfortunately the noise too.

Questions from the audience indicate that some NOCCC members want the digital service so they can "play" with the possibilities. ISDN is a terrific new toy to play with at home but may require the addition of an ISDN telephone and an ISDN modem to your hardware menage. Install fiber optic cable and you can operate multiple computers on-line at the same time, some with multimedia, and support video conferencing allow speeds up to 128 Kbps.

When is ISDN a viable option to POTS? If you have one telephone line for your phone and another for your office, ISDN will provide you with one line allowing both functions on the same line.

To get Basic ISDN you need the Pacific Bell ISDN home service ($24.50 per month, installation cost waived if you sign up now) and a terminal adapter containing a power supply and a terminator. Pac Bell provides the ISDN service with a flick of a central office switch, but cannot, by law, sell the terminal adapter. The terminal adapter, in case you don't already have one, can cost about $400 or more. A power supply and terminator contained in the adapter. Once your ISDN service is established with Pac Bell, installation is easy. Plug your existing POTS telephone line jack into whichever of the 3 holes on the back of your terminal adapter the jack fits. Then attach your computer RS-232 cable to the terminal adapter.

Quinn says, "Upgrade for Free -- Now." Just call and say, "I want to feel the Power."


Advanced Modem SIG Report
Advanced Modem SIG

by Bill Hinds

In September it's ISDN for Real!! NOCCC member G. L. Hollander, of Hollander Associates, Fullerton will give the engineering approach to deciding on ISDN benefits for you. Modems have reached their limits, and now we need more phone line bandwidth. The phone companies, PacBell and competitors, provide 128K bandwidth for about the cost of two phone lines, but give you at least two lines. You can simultaneously use your modem, your fax, and get an incoming data call.

Gary, an electrical engineer, who has recently participated in PacBell, AT&T, and hardware-vendor seminars, will cover specific configurations useful for home and small business users. If you have currently multiple lines, you may be able to lower total line charges.

Gary has a full slate scheduled but if time permits we will begain an introduction into WWW, the World Wide Web and how to use HTML, HyperText Markup Language.

See you online.

See you at the Advanced Modem SIG.


CAI SIG Report
Computer Assisted Investing SIG

by John Willner

Bulls and Bears

We had a twenty-one to twenty-one tie in the vote last month. With a no count vote the score for the year remains at six right, six wrong and one sustain. So now we get a small downturn. 4702.73 eased to 4683.46, and that was a drop of 19.27 points. After the Smith Hall contingent joined the Argyros Hall contingent the vote for next month was sixteen up and twenty-three down.

Info

The latest buzzword is EVA for Economic Value Added. One can read about it in a new recommended book called Quest for Value. According to Prudential Diversified Investment Strategies losing mutual funds have double the fees and expenses on average versus the winners.

Presentation

We had the pleasure of a talk by Harlan Retzky, Vice President of Marketing for the Investors Business Daily. This financial newspaper known to most of us has grown rapidly to 200,000 subscribers and an estimated 700,000 readers. Started by William O'Neil, the main objective has been to supply daily information in simple formats that will aid investors in making intelligent investment decisions. IBD's growth attests to the success they have had in meeting this goal.

But changes are coming, and that was what a part of the talk was about. The other part discussed features that are already incorporated, although not everyone may be familiar with them. Also, IBD is going on line August 21. The Internet address will be HTTT://IBD.ENSEMBLE.COM. One advantage will be the use of polarized colors. Text features will also be available on AOL and Prodigy for a fee of course.

About Labor Day, September 1, IBD will add to the stock tables the following additional information: Annual earnings growth rate, last quarters increase or decrease in earnings, the same data for the prior quarter, consensus estimates of analysts and return on equity. That will mean that each column will be wider and the paper will grow in size.

Details were given about present column headings, such as EPS/Relative Strength, Accumulation/Distribution, 52-week Highs and Lows, the Volume Percent Change and Group Strength. One of the interesting items was the four-part makeup of the EPS Rank value. 35% of it is composed of the 5-year annual growth rate, 35% comes from the most recent quarterly earnings, 25% is from improved growth over the past quarter and 5% is from stability of earnings. These are combined to give a numerical ranking from 1 to 99 against all other stocks. Another detail is that Accumulation/Distribution letters from A to E are determined from buy-sell data of middle market makers. This data incorporates volume direction and tick volume.

IBD maintains its own data base on all of the prices and figures they publish. Litigations have been filed to protect this data from commercialization by outside firms. Also, internal security measures are taken to avoid any possibility of an employee taking advantage of insider information.

The intelligent tables published daily show 60 of the NYSE stocks with greatest percentage rise and fall , 100 of the NASDAQ stocks and 15 of the ASE stocks. The criteria for displaying graphs of new emerging market leaders was given, including the fact that 99 out of 100 appear on stock leader lists sooner or later. Industry Group Relative Strength is given on Mondays, P/E ratios on Tuesdays, Sponsorship Rank on Wednesdays, Percent Owned by Management on Thursdays and Dividend Percent Yields on Fridays. Many other features were presented. Most of them are explained in an IBD book that comes with a new subscription called Guide to High-Performance Investing. Post cards to obtain free trial subscriptions were handed out as well as copies of Mondays IBD. This was a very well received talk.

Future Speakers

Doug Fabian is scheduled to speak at the September meeting and the Sierra brothers in October.


Software and Programming SIG Report
C++ and Object Oriented Programming SIG

by Walter Clark

Object Oriented Arrogance

I know a trick. "Don't criticize other languages." That way you're never challenged to prove that XXX is indeed YYYYY bla bla ZZZZZ. This little trick has kept me out of a lot of urinating contests. For some reason people can't resist complaining about languages. I guess it's better than complaining about people, but not much. Visual Basic is especially not a good language to put down. It has completely lost its reputation as an amateur language and --more to the point of this essay-- there's a lot that is object oriented about it. At the August meeting, Herb Wong shared with us the object oriented aspects of Visual Basic. This was particularly hard on Herb because he hates Microsoft so. He also explained what about the language is not object oriented.

I will continue this discussion on OOP across languages next month. In September Tracy Lenocker will show us how to compile to a .dll (in C++) and then use it in Visual Basic.

Simplicity

As a teacher of C++ and object oriented programming, I'm constantly trying to put details into perspective. Perspective means more to me than object oriented. For example, the function (I'm convinced) is the most important single concept in computers, perhaps in all technology. The function isn't very new let alone "object oriented" but it still gets my vote. Also up there pretty high (and a concept that is indeed object oriented) is the notion of a family of functions which share a set of variables. Even though grouping functions is very object oriented you do not need an object oriented language to do it. Five or six features down (near the bottom of the list, as far as I'm concerned) is inheritance. It is the most famous object oriented feature but it does have its detractors (it's difficult for other programmers to do code review or maintenance.) These examples show OOP is not the exclusive domain of cleverness; nor is it limited to C++. The point is that "object oriented" is not physics where debate is settled by experiment. It isn't even a language where a compiler will confirm your argument about the correct syntax. Object Oriented is an attitude... a way of thinking; and a way of thinking that isn't crystal clear.

It is this lack of clarity that distracts students from the purpose of OOP. Object Oriented, I believe, is a particular arrangement of variables and functions to make smart modules (i.e. code fragments that are capable of standing alone). The purpose of the smart modules is to make programming easier. That's it. It is not to make your program a piece of poetry only 1% of the programmers can appreciate. Nor is it to make the computer run quicker or have fewer lines of code.

An Analogy

In the business world and in hardware design, you see object oriented concepts catching on. Divisions of corporations are becoming more antonimous. That means they are now more loosly connected to the rest of the corporation; less things for the boss (corporate offices) to worry about. The analogy in hardware can be seen in the remote pieces of a complicated machine. They are becoming smarter. Smart pressure guages can now be purchased which not only retain the calibration values, but also the means to make the calibration; one less thing for the boss (controller) to worry about.

Timing

If it is a trend more than a language, "why now?" you may ask. Why couldn't we have given departments more atonimy 30 years ago, why were the thermocouples on the Apollo heat shield dumb? and in software, why is encapsulation-heirarchy-overloading-instance/abstraction etc. popular only now? I think it's because our culture is changing. From FDR until the fall of the Berlin Wall, centralization, bigger-is-better, five-year plan etc. were acceptable paradigms. Now they're not. Also, in the last few years, the cost of inefficiency has gone down. Standalone sensors and company entities will have duplication of effort, but that duplication is cheap. Some economist argue that the cost of redundancy and inefficiency has always been overestimated.

What's It All For?

Just as a school of fish can change directions faster than the equivalent weight whale, atonimous parts of a company, machine or program can be redesigned quicker.


Explorer SIG Report
Explorer SIG

by Leonard Leventhal, NOCCC

NOCCC is starting an exciting new SIG for young men and women, aged 14 to 20, who are interested in developing the capabilities of computers for their future careers and their personal use.

The Explorer SIG will be associated with the young adult division of the Boy Scouts of America, which sponsors many Explorer Posts for young men and women of high school and college age. We will need experienced NOCCC advisors to help plan the projects, activities and field trips which the SIG will sponsor. To foster the goals of the new Explorer Post, the volunteer adult advisors will be given training in the "exploring method," which aims to bring young people and adult role models together in rewarding activities they both enjoy.

Currently, besides looking for volunteer advisors, we are looking for a computer equipped training room.

For more information as to getting involved, please call Leonard Leventhal at 714-528-6344.


Eleven members have already signed up to help organizing this new SIG which is in collaboration with the Boy Scouts of America but dedicated to young people of high school and college age. There will be a meeting this month. Call leader Len Leventhal at 714-528-6344 and get involved.


Home Networking SIG

by Terry Warren

Now that you've gone out and bought a new pentium PC with tons of memory and disk space, what do you do with your old "outdated" 486 and/or 386 machine? One answer: build your very own local area network. Why would you want to? What additional hardware and operating system software do you need? How do you put the hardware and software into your machines? How do you configure applications to take advantage of a simple network environment? What does it feel like to have the power and prestige of being a "Network Administrator"?

For the answers to these and other socially significant questions come to the first (and possibly last) meeting of the new Home Networking SIG in September. See demos of the hottest networking operating systems on the market (or we might just show Windows95) and partcipate in the raffle. Get your own questions about networking answered and participate in the raffle. Suggest additional topics for future SIG meetings and participate in the raffle.

The SIG will meet in Science 130 at 10 a.m.

Be there or be forever unconnected.


IBM General SIG Report
IBM General SIG

by Cathy Grammer-Margolin

Oh Brother!

Our guest speaker this month was from the Brother International Printer Division in exotic Irvine, California. Mary Anne Ortega, Western District Sales Manager of Brother, and Laura Ozawa, Training, wowed us with their new printers and mult-function copier/fax/printer/etc. machines that would be perfect for the small business and home office.

Brother has been in the office equipment business over 15 years and are now number one in fax machines, number one in labelers (Ptouch), and number 2 in the laser printer market (guess who is number one -- yup, Hewlett Packard). But last August they launched a new printer line that really gives HP a run for their money.

Anyone out there who has a HP model 4 series has experienced problems with the convoluted paper path it has. The paper makes a 180 degree turn in a very short space, leading to curled paper that cannot be directly placed into fax machines, and will not use heavy paper, such as card stock (even business cards) that tend to get stuck or just can't be used in the HP 4 series. Brother decided there was a very good market here to capitalize on HP's mistakes (which by the way have not yet been all corrected with the HP 5 series).

Brother has a straight paper path that can use card stock, envelopes, announcements, (up to 110 pound paper -- normal paper is 20 pound) and even manila folders (they printed one before our very eyes!!! and it did not get stuck !!). Their model 630 costs under $400 most places also. Their next model up, the 660 (6 pages a minute with 600 DPI -- dots per inch) runs about $600. This competes with the HP 4P for about the same price but is faster at 6 PPM versus 4 PPM for the HP. It emulates the HP 4P for printer drivers and comes with 2 meg. of memory and postscript emulation.

They have done a lot of customer research to get these product to meet the needs of their customers such as no paper curl on fax machine paper (this was before plain paper faxes), and then applied the same philosophy to printers -- same output but without the paper handling problems. HP uses a Canon engine, but Brother designed it's own engine, but one that will take the HP Font cartridges.

Listening to customer needs, the Fax machines they developed include a paper tray on the top for straight through paper handling, a shorter paper path for speed, and cheap consumables (about 2.4 cents /page), and microfine toner (for all those graphics you print).

They also have a 12 PPM printer (HL 1260) which even has a 1200 DPI class Graphical output, networks slot, PC Card (PCMCIA) slot for increased storage (you can put a hard drive in to just print from the hard drive on the printer without a computer), PCL 5e and BR-Script level 2 postscript emulation with 2 meg upgradable to 26 meg using standard SIMMs, and two trays holding 650 sheets of paper. Cost is about $1299 (about the price of a HP 4), but these printers produce marvelous output, they do NOT use the straight paper path.

How to Save Money for Home Office

Brother came up with an idea that seems to work - combine a fax, laser printer, copier, scanner, and fax modem into one machine with a small footprint to save space and money for all those home offices out there (called 5 in 1- starts at model MFC-4500ML). It is a plain paper fax with a 30 sheet document feeder, a true laser printer (most others use inkjet), reduction/enlargement copier, 30 page scanner at 300 x 300, and a PC fax modem at 9600BPS (stand -alone faxes are 9600 BPS). There are separate boards for the printer and fax so both will not die if one dies. Cost is about $999 (yes, for all 5 functions). Mary said that they can do multiple functions at once -- print and fax, etc. (Note -- our NOCCC price will probably be hundreds of dollars cheaper!)

This also has a straight paper path, 200 sheet paper tray, at less than 3 cents per page. Other models offered include a 3 in 1 (no scanner, fax modem) for about $899, and a step up model MFC 5500ML with 1 meg in the laser printer, and 50 page memory.

Mary said that there is Color planned in the future. The printers are produced in Irvine (read that as U.S. made).

Now one of my personal favorites is their Brother Ptouch labeling machine. Yes, I label everything, even George (isn't it tacky to put MINE all over a person?). The Ptouch PC model hooks to your serial port ( I use the hand model which doesn't connect to your PC -- it was cheaper), can handle 1/4 to 1 inch wide tapes on 50 foot rolls with any fonts or graphics. It is great for labeling the back of a computer to show which is which serial or parallel port. I always or label the spines of CD jewel cases so you can find the proper CD -- no one labels these anymore, it seems. But DO NOT place labels on the CD itself -- especially the underside.....

Brother is working on Win 95 drivers but don't forget they emulate the HP drivers, so they will be immediately usable with Win 95 (if you like to live dangerously enough to use it).

Note: George is getting pretty HOT discounts for our NOCCC members on some or most of the Brother products. If you are interested in buying one of the products shown before the next meeting where we will have a list of the prices -- call us at 714-645-5950 and we'll let you know the latest about the discount campaign he is waging for us.


Lotus and Business SIG Report
Lotus and Business Applications SIG

by Vance Jochim ("Yokum")

Agenda for the September Meeting

If we get the modem line, we will show different news gathering applications. Corporations and individuals are using many different methods to gather news or information on competitors, their industry, research subjects, etc. We will look at several methods:

  - Compuserve's "Journalist" program, which creates a personal newsletter from news extracted from Compuserve vendors.

  - The new, commercial Netscape version, with a leap to "Crayon" an Internet web site that also allows you to create a custom newsletter that draws business, sports and other specified news from many internet sources.

  - Another news gathering product from Lotus that feeds business article data from a vendor into a Lotus Notes database for distribution in a company.

  - A quick demo of Carthage, another daily news feed system for Lotus Notes users.

  - We will peruse some of the interesting business magazine forums on America online. Maybe there will a be quick detour to the Road & Track forum to see how to download a picture of a Ferrari or Shelby Mustang GT350.

If we do not get the modem line, we will demonstrate:

  - Timeslips for Windows, version 6, a higher end timesheet tracking system used by lawyers, accountants and others who need to track time spent by project, etc.

  - a Lotus Notes timesheet system that uses a 1-2-3 timesheet template and Lotus field exchange (F/X) technology,

  - and some other job estimating applications.

Agenda for the October 1st Meeting

We expect Lotus to provide a speaker at both the earlier IBM SIG, and our SIG to demonstrate one or more new products, perhaps Approach and the new WordPro.

What Happened at the August SIG meeting?

We demonstrated WinZip, a Windows shareware application that zips and unzips compressed "zip" files. I recommend it. It is on the NOCCC BBS.

We showed how to create maps in version 5.0 of Lotus 1-2-3 with the new mapping feature, and also how to use OLE (via the clipboard) to link or embed such a file into another application like Lotus Notes or Ami Pro.

We also showed how to use a dBase database file from ACT and create a statistical barchart in Approach, and also use OLE to paste it (using the link feature of Paste Special) into Notes so the source data always updated the image in the linked application like a Notes document.

We demonstrated Lotus Smartext, a little known application that can be used to create slick hypertext, full text search help files, policy manuals, etc.

WordPro is coming, but our "Beta" version was not very quick and was missing some features, so we did not show it. We will wait for the "real thing".

The Lotus & Business Applications SIG is in its 12th year, and meets the first Sunday (usually, except for September) of each month at 11:15 am at Irvine Hall at Chapman College, City of Orange. SIG leader Vance Jochim is at 714/962-2517 and our Technical Advisor, Gerry Resch, is at 714/772-6667. Attendance ranges from 50-150, and entrance is free. You can also call the NOCCC hotline at 714/998-8080.

See you at the September meeting!


Macintosh SIG Report
Macintosh SIG

by Kurt Schuster

For the August meeting, I demonstrated "Contact" and "Up-to-Date" (versions 3.5) from Now Software of Portland, Oregon."Contact" is the leading personal information manager for the Mac and comes with "QuickContact," a Control Panel which places itself in the menu bar and allows you to put your most frequently-called people within a single click.

"Contact" can produce all sorts of template-based forms including envelopes, labels, FAX letters, form letters, contact reports, phone books, lead lists, etc. It also has a built-in word processor. "Contact" allows you to have almost endless views of your data, both on paper, and on the screen (in both columnar format and detail view, one record at a time). It also allows you to store information about your contacts in a free-form notes field and, of course, you can date-stamp them. "Contact" can dial your phone, either by producing tones for the phone or dialing your modem, and can also time your calls while you take notes directly into the program. But that's not all. "Contact" is integrated with "Up-to-Date," which is basically a calendar program with a Control Panel that puts your day within a single mouse-click. The Control Panel "QuickDay" also has the capability of reminding you by putting a dialog box on the screen and playing a reminder sound.

"Up-to-Date" also can produce printed forms for all the available day-planner formats. "Up-to-Date" links records with "Contact". For instance, you can plan an action with "Up-to-Date" and link it to the record in "Contact," or, while in "Contact," you can schedule an event which will be entered onto the "Up-to-Date" calendar. Either way both programs are seamlessly integrated using "AppleEvents," the System 7 Inter-Application Communication structure.

Both programs also have the ability to drag and drop information rather than cutting and pasting. And there's more. With the current release of the program, Now Software has introduced "QuickPad," a small program that is just a hot-key away and links with "Contact" and "Up-to-Date." With QuickPad you type your hot-key and enter something like, "call Jack." Then tab out of the title box, and the program will look up all the Jacks in your "Contact" file. The program automatically enters the company name and phone number of the first Jack found, as well as a time of day for placing the call. When that time arrives, the program reminds you to dial the number, times your phone call.

If you press Command-S the program will save the "call event" into "Up-to-Date" and post the call to Jack's file record. And if that weren't enough, you also have a free-form "notes" area where you can type while you are on the phone; after you are done with your call, you can drag and drop information from the "notes" field into your "Contact" or calendar file. And all this functionality is simple. You can network all these parts together. These programs are terrific.

At the September meeting, we will have a representative from MacPlay of Irvine, who'll be demonstrating games. Come and play!

Mail-order price is about $99.00 for the whole set and upgrades are available. From AOL, eWorld, or CompuServe, you can download a free, full-functioning demos, which is good for sixty days.

See you next month.


Novice PC SIG Report
Novice PC SIG

by Cathy Grammer-Margolin

Computer Basics

Our topic for August for the Novice PC SIG was Computer Basics -- how to find out what you have on your PC and talk intelligently with the PC store salesperson/repairperson.

This Month -- Word for Windows

Cathy Grammer-Margolin (and maybe even a guest speaker on Word) with Jim Sanders and Elise Edgell will cover tricks and tips of Word for Windows and show you what you can do with this all-encompassing Word Processor/Desktop Publishing program. There will be a Microsoft handout provided.

We will also answer your questions - so bring them to Science 306 !! Yes, we are even reachable by elevator!


Visual Programming SIG Report
Visual Programming SIGs

by Bill Hinds

The Visual Programming SIG's schedules are arranged so as not to conflict with the C++, and OOP SIG. our SIG line up is as follows:

9:00 AM. Visual Programming I. Visual C++ Programming.

At the next meeting we will continue to explore Plug and Play portion of Windows 95. We will also take a look into JAVA a new Internet multi-media language.

10:00 AM. Visual Programming II. Visual Basic Professional.

Anson Chapman of CRC Software has given us some great presentations and is an important technical guru for us in using Visual Basic to solve complex issues in implementing databases. As a contigency in the future if we do not have Anson or another speaker we will have a Visual Basic Demo or a Visual Basic tutorial video. Our next backup for a missing speaker will be a demo of PDQComm from Crescent Software.

11:00 AM. Visual Programming III. Visual Basic for Applications.

This last hour is devoted to the "macro-basics" for Window's applications. In September we will look at using VBA and Excel with HTML, HyperText Markup Language. After last month's meeting I was approached by a NOCCC member relating his problems with using Visual Basic for Applications in his business. I hope I have persuaded him to appear at our next meeting to relate his problems as a learning experience for the rest of us. This is what SIG meetings are all about.

See you at the SIG


Windows SIG Report
Windows SIG

by John S. Krill

On Vacation

I will be on vacation for the month of September but you will have a most able replacement leader, Tracy Lenocker. He has been using the Beta version of Windows 95 for some months now and will be answering all your questions about Windows 95.

Room Change for the Month of September

The Windows SIG will be meeting in Science 130. This is for September only.

See you in October

In October I will talk about shareware and freeware programs that are available for Windows 95.


Word Processing - Desktop Publishing SIG Report
Wordprocessing/DTP SIG

by Jim Karsjens

The Wordprocessing and Desktop Publishing SIG, which meets regularly at 11:15 a.m. in Science 130 on the regular monthly Sunday meeting day, provides a forum for discussion and resolution of problems relating to all aspects of our field.

The regulars who attend represent a wealth of knowledge in the intricacies of WordStar, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, Ventura Publisher, Pagemaker, Laser, Inkjet, Dot Matrix Printers, and various and sundry similar and related matters. In a typical meeting, we field all kinds of questions, sharing our expertise and learning a lot ourselves. Sometimes a question will draw comments from three or four members.

We also conduct raffles! In the last meeting a drawing for a copy of Stacker 4.0 for OS/2 and DOS was won by Les Shobe. A Stacker tee shirt was won by Myra Milgrom. (Last month's drawing for a Combo Pak of OS/2 Warp and Stacker 4.0 was won by Don Rosenfield.

In the noon hour following the meeting, a Publications Committee meeting is held. In additions to other club publications matters, the printed and electronic editions of the Orange Bytes are discussed with a view toward continued improvement.

On behalf of our leader, Jim Karsjens, and the rest of our group, you are cordially invited to participate in the SIG.

And if you'd like to participate in the Publications Committee, we'd like to have your support there as well.


Main Meeting: 1pm. in Irvine Hall


Accounting / Income Tax: 2:30pm in Science 130


Accounting / Preachtree: Now meets the second Tuesday of the month at 12038 Centralia, Suite H, in Lakewood at 7:00 p.m. The discussion will cover Peachtree 8.0 for DOS and 3.0 for Windows. For more information call George Shaefer at 714-228-544.


IBM General Meeting: 9:30am in Irvine Hall


IBM DOS Beginners Meeting: 11:15am in Argyros Forum 211


Novice PC Meeting: 11:15am in Science 306.


Visual Programing: 9:30am in Science 102.


Home Computing: 10am in Wilkinson 221 (Help/Copy Session) 11:15am in Wilkinson 202 (Demo Session)


Business and Spreadsheet: 11:15am in Irvine Hall


Computer Assisted Investors: 11:15am in Argyros Forum 208


Database: 11:15am in Science 233


Desktop Publishing / Wordprocessing: 11:15am in Science 130


C++ & OOP: 11:15am in Science 202


Advanced Modem: 12 noon in Science 102


Macintosh: 2:30pm in Science 306


Beginners Modem: 10:00am in Argyros Forum 207


OS/2: 2:30pm in Argyros Forum 211


Windows: 2:30pm in Irvine Hall


Network: Meets Monday evenings at 7:30pm immediately following the monthly NOCCC meeting at the ROP Center Computer Lab. The location is on the southwest corner of Chapman Ave. and Yorba Street at the ROP Center south of the Little League baseball fields. This intersection is the first light east of the 55 Freeway on Chapman Ave. The Computer Lab is in room D.


Internet: 2:30pm in Science 202


Home Networking: 10:00am in Science 130


The President's Column
President's Message

by John Krill

SIG Changes

Two of our SIGs have closed up shop. Ron Osborn has retired the Artificial Intelligence SIG and Dave Tennant has decided to stop the Geoworks SIG.

I would like to thank both Jim and Dave. Running a SIG is not an easy task. You must come up with interesting subjects every month and have all the answers.

Ron plans to start a new SIG about multimedia in the near future. Look for it.

As we lose two SIGs we gain a new one. Terry Warren is starting a SIG on Home Networking. If you have two or more computers and you have always wanted to network them but were afraid of the cost and complexity, then join Terry at 10am in Science 130.

We Get Published!

Jim Benson, our Internet SIG leader, wrote an article on getting started on the Internet, 'To Web or not to Web,' that appeared in the July 1995 issue of the Orange Bytes. This same article has been published in the August issue of WWWIZ, a magazine dedicated to the World Wide Web. Remember you saw it here first. Good work Jim.

Thank-you Volunteers

I would like to thank all the volunteers that help open and close the August meeting. By the time I closed the Windows SIG everything had been picked-up and put away. Again, thanks!

Swap Meet

The NOCCC Swap Meet is coming up in October. If you would like to give a short seminar on a subject that is close to you, contact O.T. Stoll. Subjects could be: the Internet, Windows 95, Multimedia, Mac or Windows, Which disk interface -- SCSI or EIDE. We could use four to six speakers. Again, contact O. T. Stoll if you would like to be a speaker.

Ideas Wanted!

If you have any ideas for the Club let me know. We are always looking for subjects for the main meeting.


Rambling PC User
The Rambling PC User

by Vance Jochim ("Yokum")

Birthday Presents

So Kathy (not George's Cathy) asks me what I want for my upcoming birthday. "Every year," she says, "you always say you have to go to NOCCC on that weekend!"

It's true, I have spent many birthday weekends hunkered over the PC getting ready for a SIG presentation on some great Lotus product or other business or utility application so I can show it at the "first Sunday" meeting of August.

So, she said, why not celebrate the following weekend. "What would you like to do?" From prior experience, I know she won't fix the roof, and asking for a Dell Pentium or Toshiba active matrix color laptop might be a bit too much for the wallet.

So, how about visiting the Getty museum, since the computer museum in Boston is more than two days away, and anyway I saw it several years ago... they probably are still showing the Apple II's and Cromemco CPM machines, and the Honeywell wire sculptures.

Then, I had it! My uncle had hosted football parties for his friends during football season. They all came over and the men huddled by the TV trying to hear the scores while the women kept talking right through critical plays.

Zing! How about doing the same thing, but watching all those demonstration videos I have accumulated on PC products! Invite some NOCCC buddies, order some pizza, and sit down to watch six hours of dBase 4.1 launch videos, Bill Gates on Windows version 3.1, and some earlier Tapes on how to explain and sell Lotus Notes to Accountants. Besides, Kathy could wear a cheerleader costume and serve Jolt Cola and Twinkies while we technocrats overdosed on PC visions. I could even hook up the sound card and play a bunch of Lotus Screencam videos with sound demonstrating Network capabilities of Lotus Organizer! And finally, at the end, we can watch the old movie War Games (you know, the one where the kid used an Altair to hack into a Defense system computer and almost launched WW3).

So, that is what I proposed -- Kathy said she will get back to me on it after she finishes that book I gave her on Netware. I'll keep you posted!

So, What to Do about Windows 95?

Let's see, my new "Windows 95 Reference Guide" from TigerSoftware says that I really need to upgrade to Windows 95 for $89. And, Microsoft did set up that huge conference at the Disney hotel for about 1000 NOCCC and other user group zealots to see their traveling road show. It looked neat, but just what is there that I need? Tigersoft says that Win95 provides:

1. "Almost twice as fast" speed to "perform several common tasks." But after reading their two pages of gushing information, I still did not understand WHAT tasks, and where was the speed increased? Was it in the completely new interface and menus that I would have to learn? Was it faster because a new person could figure out faster what to do compared to the Win 3.1 I have learned over the last two years? Was it faster because you need 8, 12 or 16 mb of ram to use Win 95 and they compared it to Win 3.1 on 4mb of ram? And, do the faster figures rely on you having a faster 32 bit motherboard, video card, etc? I don't know, so I will wait for better, objective reports.

2. "Not much more disk space" is needed than with your current DOS AND Windows 3.1. Is that the "minimum" laptop installation, or "full" installation. Since WIN 95 does NOT need DOS, but some of my old applications may still need it, will I later have to load that old DOS 6mb of files back on the system? I don't know, but I will wait and read what others say. And, Tigersoft says, I can still leave my existing Win 3.1 and DOS in their directories, and load Win 95 in another. Nothing then tells me how much more disk space that conservative approach will take.

3. Win 95 will not let you use some of those utilities you always used, such as Norton or Central Point, etc. which depend on DOS. BUT, it says, you can get Win 95 upgrades of them. An UPGRADE of Norton utilities for Win 95 is $57. So, figure that any DOS utilities you like may have to be upgraded. In some cases, some of the features may be built into Win 95, but your cost is now going up.

4. WIN 95 does provide some features that would be neat to have:

Long file names - which will also MAY confuse any existing application you have if WIN 95 does not help them know what to do with long filenames.

Full motion video improvements - but, it uses 32 bit capabilities, and I really don't know if that means a new motherboard, a new hard disk or hard disk controller, a new video card, or a new sound card to use that feature.

E-mail, Internet is "easier". Sure, as long as you connect to Microsoft's' proprietary Microsoft Network. The last I read, they only had about 1/10th the number of service providers as Compuserve or AOL, which both provide Internet gateways.

Plug and Play capability - this is the ability to recognize and configure new hardware or peripherals when you install them, including many "drivers" to configure older, existing hardware cards, hard drives, modems, etc. that you have. If it is already installed, you won't need this unless you change or add hardware, then it might be useful. But, if you spent the last three years figuring out how to configure Windows 3.1, you will toss all that learning out, and learn how to troubleshoot the few, but expected problems with Win 95.

Multi-tasking - this allows more than one program to RUN (not just sit in a hidden window) at a time. I would really like this, but it appears again it is a "32 bit" capability, and again, I don't know what this means in term of needed hardware. Again, do I need a new PC, motherboard, etc. to actually use it?

As you can see, I plan on waiting awhile to figure out what system I have to invest in before I commit to Win 95. I will keep you posted.

See you next time!


Limerick of the Month

There was this pious programming priest

Who lived almost wholly on yeast.

   "For," he said, "it is plain

   We must all rise again,

And I want to get started at least."


David Em

This is the first column I'm writing from the keyboard of my new whizbang multimedia PC. Regular readers of this column know it's taken me months to set this system up, and these words are the first productive work I'm doing with it.

The Birth Of A New Machine

Getting ready for a new machine is a little like preparing for a new baby in the family. Before the system arrived, I had the carpets steam cleaned, refinished my work tables, and revamped the house wiring scheme. Alex Pournelle from Workman and Associates acted as the system's midwife, assembling boards, drives and input devices from a dozen different manufacturers, and a week ago today, we plugged it in.

As expected, there were a few problems with the new arrival's delivery. After years of screwing around with digital machines, I take it for granted that getting a new system to work is kind of like process art, i.e. it's going to be an ongoing part of my life for a while before it gets running right.

Video Hell

The one thing, however, that consistently pushes me near the brink of the edge of sanity is digital video. Back in the nasty old dark ages of the mid-Seventies, when the personal computer was still a concept, some friends and I cobbled together a system with a digital video input. We cheered when we saw our four-frame-per-second black and white faces on the screen in 128x128 pixel resolution. We added circuitry to output rock solid NTSC video to tape, and immediately started working on building a videotape input for the system, a process known as genlocking.

A year and a half went by. The whole time, almost from day two, the genlock almost worked. Almost. Almost, but not quite. As the weeks became months, I became increasingly aggravated, tore out hairs, lost my temper, became a general wreck over the situation, and finally melted down. I swore I wouldn't touch digital video again until it was a mainstream product in the real world.

I've followed the progress of digital video over the years, and decided to take the plunge with the new system. My goal was to capture video that was somewhere between the high end of the low end or the low end of the high end. Since the purpose of the machine is to prototype (as opposed to doing production on it), I don't need broadcast quality output (a four thousand dollar board plus at least nine gigabytes of fast hard drive to do anything practical), but I did want to encode the digital video so I could send it out to videotape. The board that fit the bill was the Vidiola Premiere from Orchid Technology, a seven to eight hundred dollar board (street price) that captures hardware-compressed MJPEG files.

The board installed comparatively easily, and I played back a video clip with it. Hurrah! Then I tried to capture video with it. Hours later, I was still trying. I followed all the directions in the manual, but no, nada, nicht, nothing. So we called Orchid. Eventually, and I do mean eventually, we got a human being on the other end. "Ah, yes," he said, "your problem is simple. The Vidiola can't communicate with your souped up Diamond Stealth graphics board, see. In fact, it won't talk to any boards that use VRAM instead of DRAM."

How the mind does boggle. You mean my dandy video capture board won't work with the most popular high performance graphics boards out there that the typical multimedia user of your product almost surely has in his or her machine? Well gosh, we said, what do we do?

"No problem," Orchidman replied, " just buy one of OUR graphics boards, which we absolutely guarantee will work. Of course it won't be quite as capable as the board you just paid six hundred bucks for, but that's life."

I took some ice packs out of the refrigerator and placed them on strategic parts of my body so that my blood wouldn't boil over. Then I looked at the box the video board came in and read through the manual. Nowhere did I find a single word that would lead me to believe that this fundamental compatibility problem was even an issue.

Next we called Diamond to see if they perhaps had come up with a new set of drivers recently that knew about the Vidiola board. After a good half hour of trying to reach a human being, we left a message on their phone system about our problem. Two days later it's column deadline time and no response yet.

Will I return the Vidiola card? Will Stealth call us back after I send them a nastygram tonight? Will I ever be able to capture video on my PC? Be sure to tune in next month for another episode of Digital Video Madness.

Where Have All The Megabytes Gone?

Well, the good news is that most of my software is now installed and running. I've got a word processor, a couple of image editors, a video editor, an interactive authoring package, a paint program, various plugins, some modem stuff, and a couple of games. Nothing extraordinary, really. So why does it take up a whopping 450 Megabytes? I haven't even started to do any original work, and I'm already up to nearly half a gigabyte of storage. Chihuahua!

It seems hard to believe that a mere fifteen years ago, I was working on a fairly ported out hundred thousand dollar DEC PDP 11/45 computer with 64k of RAM (no that's not a typo, I'm talking 64K here). There were about half a dozen of us sharing the system, and everyone was ecstatic when we got a 52 Megabyte disk, which seemed like a nearly unlimited amount of space at the time. Our buggy Evans and Sutherland eight-bit frame buffer (what we call a graphics card today) had 512x480 resolution, lived in its own box, and weighed in at a hefty eighty-five thousand dollars (I think we got a government deal on it of sixty-five grand, which was quite a savings).

I remember going out to New York Tech on Long Island, where they had bought three E&S frame buffers (affectionately known as pixel packers) and ganged them together into the first full color 24 bit buffer. I remember being in awe of the richness of the visuals produced by this quarter-million dollar device. So by those standards, my little one-card graphics board is worth something on the order of around a million and a quarter simoleons, and my Pentium 120 I'm guessing would come to roughly two or three million bucks. Not to mention that I have about 500 times as much RAM, a hundred times as much disk space, and best of all, it sits on my work table at home instead of a giant refrigerated room in a guarded government, corporate, or University facility.

The Wonderful World of Cream

On the other hand, some things haven't evolved as far as one might like. Why, for instance, is virtually every Mac and PC computer, monitor, pointing device, and component cream-colored? What's with this wishy-washy cream fetish? I guess the idea is that cream is a color that is nonthreatening and goes with every decor, especially office decor. But hey. I've got news for computer manufacturers: real people are buying computers for their homes, and their motivation is not to balance their checkbooks, it's to play games and be entertained.

Go down to your local consumer electronics store and what do you see? Cool black stereos, CD players, speakers, and TVs. Go to the local car store and what do you see? Sleek lines and comfortable interiors and gleaming hot red, emerald green, and midnight blue paint jobs. People like their technology to be an extension of themselves. What are the computer manufacturers telling us? That they think we're a bunch of dorks who can only relate to clunkily designed cream-colored machines? Give me a break.

Now, for some reason, portables all look cool. Blacks and dark grays predominate in that domain, but in the desktop universe it's cream, cream, cream. NeXT tried to break the mold with their elegant black cube design, but the world didn't need yet another computer standard, and it died a lingering death. Nokia recently has been nationally advertising a series of beautifully colored 17 inch monitors, and based on a CompUSA ad, I went to CompUSA to see one. Not only didn't they have one in any of their LA stores, they told me it would take at least six weeks to get one, sight unseen except for a brochure they told me I could keep.

Reminds me of the old saw from Henry Ford about the model T: you can buy a computer in any color you want as long as it's cream.

The Evil Bob

Next month I'll be talking about integrated interfaces and physical ergonomics, but as a prelude, let's talk about Bob. Bob, as we all know, is the new "Social Interface" from Microsoft, as well as probably the most maligned piece of software in history. But who is Bob, really?

When I heard all the criticism about Bob, I thought perhaps a lot of it was misplaced, simply because I like the idea of customizable interfaces a lot. And it struck me that Bob could work very nicely as an introduction to computers for kids, so I kept my own counsel. Then I met Bob.

According to Microsoft, all sorts of sociologists, psychologists, University professors, and "human-machine social interaction" experts were involved in bringing Bob to life. They chose the name Bob because it is friendly, familiar and unassuming (they really said this -- I guess none of the "perfessers" ever watched Twin Peaks on TV). Actually, Bob appears on the screen as a rather sinister looking smiley face with glasses. His expression smacks of total insincerity, and I certainly wouldn't trust him with my wallet.

When I started Bob up, I met my onscreen "personal guide," a cutesy dog named Rover. Rover started asking me a remarkably long and intrusive list of personal questions about myself, which I eventually decided to cut short. Rover didn't like this. Rover didn't like this at all. In fact, Rover didn't like it so much, he growled at me. He GROWLED at me. What's more, he refused to move forward with the installation until he'd squeezed every last bit unnecessary personal data about myself out of me. Then he got friendlier again. If this was a sample interaction with a "friend of Bob," I didn't feel exactly driven to meet any more of his good buddies.

Once inside Bob, I found myself in "my" home. The customizable aspect of the interface is that you can move screen elements, such as furniture and books, around in the rooms that serve as the interface's primary metaphor. But moving the elements around doesn't really do anything except make them harder to find when they cover each other up. Curiously, one element that can be moved around the room is the fire in the fireplace. I figured that maybe this was a subtle message that playing with matches in my "home" is OK, so I placed the fire under the living room easy chair, but to my disappointment nothing happened.

A number of the utilities in beady-eyed Bob such as the calendar, datebook, family budgeter, and so forth are in fact perfectly useful tools, but the clunky cutesyness I found trying, and as far as children go, I think Microsoft would be better served with input from real kids (many of whom are pretty darn sophisticated as far as computing goes), instead of dozens of egghead experts.

Late Breaking SIGGRAPH 95 Report

I'm just back from the annual Siggraph computer graphics conference, which was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center this year. Siggraph draws a remarkably eclectic audience ranging from computer scientists, programmers, and corporate managers, to artists, filmmakers, educators and students. It has the best technical papers and panels related to computer graphics on the face of the earth, covering areas as disparate as "Applications of Irradiance Tensors to the Simulation of Non-Lambertian Phenomena" and "A General Construction Scheme for Unit Quaternian Curves with Simple High-Order Derivatives" to "Creative Computer Graphics Teachings for Artistic Minds" and "Museums Without Walls: New Media for New Museums."

Time was I used to get to Siggraph every year the Saturday before the Conference officially began on Monday, and then talk, absorb, brainstorm and party nonstop for the next seven days straight. Sleep was not an option. But these days there's so much great cheap hardware and software for PCs, that a simple monthly perusal of a half dozen magazines keeps me completely informed of what's going on in the field. So I've missed the last few Siggraphs and not really noticed it.

This year the event was huge with attendance estimated at over 35,000 (I won't even get into my memories of early more sparsely attended Siggraphs, maybe some other time). I got to the Convention Center on Sunday to get registered before the conference really got underway. Already there was a mob of people there, many of whom had been waiting nearly three hours to get registered. Fortunately, as a juror for this year's Electronic Theater Film Show, I got to queue up in a shorter line and twenty minutes later I headed off to a Contributors Reception (Siggraph is basically a never ending round of talks, receptions, and parties) in the "Virtual Communities" exhibit area, which was loaded with all sorts of really interesting looking interactive displays.

There is just one problem with interactivity and groups. It never works. Interactivity is about making choices about how to navigate through information, be it picture, sound, video, or realtime 3D virtual databases. Earlier this year, Sony put their "Interfilm" process in theaters that had the seats rigged up with interactive controls. A computer sampled the audience response to what branch the film's story should follow, with the majority ruling. Result? Nobody came. Nevertheless, it's great to see Siggraph moving into these New Media areas, because there indeed lies the future.

A couple days later I went to the Siggraph Art Show in which it was evident that computers have made an indelible mark on all aspects of the fine arts, from painting to printing to photography to video to performance. I ran into my friend Barbara Nessim there. Barbara is a Fine Artist and Illustrator who started working with computers in the early Eighties, and has shown her digital work in exhibitions around the world. Recently, she did the cover and interior art work for Time Magazine's cover story on "Women in America."

The illustrations to the article had a refinement one seldom sees in computer generated work, so I asked her what system and software she had used. "Oh, I never use the computer for that kind of job," she said, "it takes too long. I was on a very tight deadline and on the way to Europe the next day, so I just did everything by hand. I'd never use the computer in a case like that."

Hmmm....How about that.


A Neophyte's Look at Microsoft Windows 95

By O. T. Stoll, NOCCC

You may have read a lot of reports written by "professionals" about Windows 95 with its good points and its bad points. I consider myself a rank neophyte who is amazed by computers and every time I think I am beginning to understand them I find another frustration.

I was one of those that couldn't wait for the "real" version to go on sale so when Microsoft offered the "Final Beta" for a small sum, I jumped. Of course they wouldn't send it to me until they recorded in my own voice that no manner what happened, it was my problem and I would not sue.

I had two computers in a network using Windows 3.11. One was a 486DX-33 with four megabytes of memory and the other was a 486DX-66 VLB with eight megabytes. After reading about all of the possible problems that could occur, I installed WIN 95 on the 486DX-33. It installed without any problems and worked fine when one program was running. With two, it slowed down but still ran. After such success, I installed WIN 95 on the 486-66 and used WIN 95 networking capabilities to tie them together.

One problem I encountered after installing the system on the 486-33 was that the Mitsummi CD ROM drive would work some time and some time not. After a long talk with the techs at Microsoft, it was concluded that either the drive was bad or that since WIN 95 does not have a driver for the Mitsummi, it was using a generic driver. I had heard a number of not so good comments about the Mitsummi so I replaced it with a Panasonic. WIN 95 has a Panasonic driver and there were no more problems.

If you have Windows 3.1 or 3.11 installed and working well with your system, I think you can eliminate possible installation problems if you install WIN 95 it over WINDOWS 3.1 or 3.11. I believe WIN 95 will use your existing drivers rather than those furnished with WIN 95.

After setup, and when WIN 95 boots for the first time, look for BOOTLOG.TXT in the root directory. This file shows the WIN 95 components and drivers loaded and initialized, and the status of each. After the installation, if there are problems, boot the computer and when DOS starts, press F8 key. This will allow you the options of starting with DOS or WIN 95 and logging each step and document the loading in BOOTLOG.TXT. A print out of BOOTLOG.TXT is a very handy thing to have -- if all else fails, and you call Microsoft with this file in hand.

You will notice a couple of things, (at least), the Program Manager is different and great hints comes up each time you boot up. If you don't like the screen layout, don't worry NORTON and others will have programs coming out with the WIN 95 release that will fix that problem. Try it a while. I think you will like it.

You will find that the right mouse button gets you a lot of information in WIN 95. Press the right mouse button with the pointer on the task bar: that's the one that has "start" on it. Then click PROPERTIES. You can add or delete your start menu programs. Shortcuts are another way to improve your desk top. These will allow you to put shortcut icons on the desk top that you can click on to open a program. Explore EXPLORER and the changes in the way files can be presented. EXPLORER is where you set up the Shortcuts.

Use the DOS icon in WIN 95 to go to DOS, open the EDITOR and look at your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. You will find that WIN 95 has REMed out most if not all of the lines. With WIN 95 you probably don't need these files and you will get more memory if you delete them. Run all your DOS programs from WIN 95 and you will be able to cut and paste with many of them.

Try WIN 95. I think you will like it. If you have any problems, we have many professionals in NOCCC that will help you.


My Peak Experience at the Pinnacle

by George D. Margolin, NOCCC

Computers are fun! Computer clubs are fun! The North Orange County Computer Club is even more fun, especially when you get the chance to play with the latest, greatest and at the moment, one of the most unusual and interesting pieces of computer equipment -- a Pinnacle CD-ROM burner, for FREE!!!

That was my luck as IBM SIG Leader and Program Chairman when I called Pinnacle Micro -- a wonderfully successful local company, and asked them to come to our club to show and tell us about their line of fast and inexpensive Optical Disks and Very Inexpensive CD-ROM burners.

Needless to say, (I did say to Stuart Thomas, Marketing Maven from Pinnacle) -- in order for me to properly introduce you and your products to our members -- wouldn't it be nice if I could get, be given, gifted, granted -- or something -- one of your highly rated 2X CD-ROM burners? THEN I could tell everyone how terrific they are? Well -- I missed out on the given, gifted or granted -- and got the something -- which turned out to be a pretty exciting something and very useful, at that. I was loaned his personal demonstration unit and the software to run it for a week while he was out of town and didn't need it for demonstrations.

During that free week of free file fooling around and transferring, I stole my wife's Adaptec SCSI card (Cathy tells me the payback is going to be a tough one) so I could set up a spare computer for copying some Patent Office derived information on CD- ROMs. These contained listings of ALL the patents and ALL inventors who were granted patents from 1969 until a couple of months ago. Since I already subscribed to this Patent Office CD- ROM service, I really didn't "need" to copy them since I already had them, but I did copy them because it was legal and I didn't want to lose this information in the event that "The BIG ONE" happened and the originals were damaged.

The copies came out beautifully -- but I discovered that IF you are going to copy from CD-ROM to CD-ROM -- you needed to use a 4X unit as your source for the Pinnacle 2X unit to be used as the receiver. Actually, I ran the Pinnacle at 1X to make certain that there was enough buffered information to allow the CD-ROM burner to operate continuously. and make perfect copies on the fly. And perfect copies, they were. They were (and are) EXACTLY like the originals. And their expected shelf life is claimed to be 60 to 100 years. Look me up in about 60 years (I'll be 125 -- how old will you be?) and we can check out -- together -- whether or not these disks are still useable. Now don't forget, because I might! And the Pinnacle software was absolutely simple to use -- at least at this task of making direct one-to-one copies of another CD-ROM. More about this later.

But now, let me tell you about the real, really, realest, cool use of this truly sensational device -- cleaning off and safely archiving the very important, but disk killing monster graphics files from your (my)hard disk.

Now I don't consider my hard disks small. One is a DEC l.4 GIG SCSI drive. The other is a Conner 1.2 GIG SCSI drive. So together I have TWO and a half Gigabytes of rotating storage. This is slightly larger than the 10 meg hard drive I started out with on my first IBM XT. Let's call it substantially larger. Let's even call it two hundred and fifty times larger! But even with that capacity -- I have run out of most of my disk space!!! Why? Graphics!

I do DTP (Desk Top Publishing) and am also a dealer for the Fargo Color Printer. This means that I am always producing and/or scanning large color pages. At 300 DPI, each one of these pictures runs about 28 Megabytes! Like the old story "28 million dollars here, 28 million dollars there -- and it soon adds up to some serious money." Well, for me, it adds up to some serious disk-space-elimination. So I thought to myself --wouldn't it be nice if I could offload and archive those huge files which I need, but don't need every day, unto a CD-ROM so it was available for use at any time, but will give me back over a fourth of my hard disk space.

Yes- I answered myself. And since I had a borrowed Pinnacle CD- ROM burner -- I proceeded to do so.

First, I backed up my drives onto the 2 GIG native/4 GIG compressed Conner Tapestore 4000 tape drive. then I partitioned my Conner 1.2 GIG drive into two partitions with 600 Megabytes each and proceeded to make a "Virtual CD-ROM" by copying all of the large graphics files that would fit -- unto one of the new 600 Meg partitions. That meant that IF the hard drive would continuously feed the information to the Pinnnacle burner -- I would have a real CD-ROM I could store and use.

I tried it. It worked. It worked perfectly. It meant I could remove over 500 Megabytes of graphics files from my computer. It also meant I could make another CD-ROM which I could keep off site. I did and it is.

Actually -- it all worked even more easily that it sounds above. The Pinnacle software worked easily and well. And the prices for the blank writeable CD-ROMS? You might not believe this so please read it carefully -- $7.50 each. That is seven dollars and fifty cents each. Not bad for over 700 Megabyte capacity. That works out to almost exactly ONE PENNY PER MEGABYTE for safe and permanent storage!!!

Had I bought the burner -- it's price at that time would have been $1500, but members of NOCCC would have gotten a Ten Percent discount from that price, making it $1350. But that was then (July 1995) and by year end, we are expecting the list price to be down to $1000 or below. And I expect us to still be able to get the ten percent discount.

Regarding the cost of the media -- contact me and I'm sure I can get a price of less than $7.50 each for all of us who can lay our hands on these units.

 If I sound enthusiastic -- I am. This is a great way to offload and archive the BIG stuff and still have it instantly on hand. I also means that anyone of us can PUBLISH our own CD-ROMs. We can also use this fantastic medium for storing all of our photographs (Yes, it will do the Kodak CD system) and other graphics, such as video clips.

This means that our club (NOCCC) can PUBLISH our own CD-ROMS. Some of which could contain ALL of the Orange Byes from time zero. We could also publish some or all of the wonderful work many of our members are doing, as well as some great Shareware and Public Domain software.

IOMEGA is a coming

Those of you who know me know that I (and my wife as well) are Big Bernoulli Lovers. And we know that there is a brand new One GIGABYTE Bernoulli drive coming out this year, which will be shown at COMDEX. We will have it demonstrated here, as soon as we can get Iomega here. If the price is anywhere near right, and it is being touted at about $600 with about $100 for the removable media -- I will get one and so, I'm sure, will many of our members -- because we usually get GREAT deals on Iomega products. But for Archiving -- the price per megabyte would be about fourteen cents per Megabyte -- or about fourteen times the cost of putting it on a CD-ROM. So while Cathy and I are hot, hot, hot to get one of the new Bernoullis -- I'm sure that when the price of the CD-ROM burner gets low enough -- sooooooooon -- we will stand in line to get one. A penny a meg for permanent storage is certainly be better than fourteen penny's a meg for storing on an eraseable medium that could better be used for changeable information.

Yes -- it's a great time to be alive and in the wild world of computing -- and to be part of the North Orange County Computer Club. By the way -- we were founded in 1976 -- so look forward to a 20th celebration next year!


The Future of Computer User Groups

by Jim Taunt, SMUG

I recently found myself wondering just how long our club (or any computer club) would last. Why do people join and why do they stay? Then I began to think about individuals in the club. I came up with eight reasons for being in the club: 1. Just bought a computer and want to learn about it; 2. Don't fully understand what they have; 3. Having some problems and need a little help; 4. Wonder if there is better software 5. Have a little spare time and looking for something else; 6. Would like to share experiences; 7. Get a kick out of talking to fellow sufferers; and 8. Like to expound on what they know. I'm sure there are other reasons, but these eight probably cover most of the group.

Being the age I am, I sometimes think that we are still in the "mechanic's age" of computers. What I mean by this is best explained by the history of the car.

When autos were first introduced, one had to be a mechanic to drive one. The gear shifts, the spark control, and the carburation were so marginal that you had to understand the innards of the beast in order to drive it. Indeed, nobody took a ride into the country without a tool kit. One never knew what would go wrong before returning. You had to be a mechanic to drive, just as you have to be a computer nut to install or use some of our computer programs.

In the early days of the car, there were many auto clubs. These clubs did very much what our Users Groups do. They exchanged ideas on how to make the car work better or determined the best route to Silver Lake. They evaluated the latest gismos designed to make the horseless carriage the best. Then these clubs merged and disappeared. The triple A is a residue of these clubs and it is mostly an insurance company now.

I believe this is what will happen to UGs. Reread my reasons for being in a UG, and note the number that will disappear with reliable, fully functional and well described software. UGs will gradually die out as computers and software get more reliable and people can concentrate their attention on what they want to do rather than how they have to do it. The parallel between auto clubs and UGs is not perfect. Cars have mostly mechanical problems. The radiator wouldn't radiate, the choke wouldn't choke, and the pistons wouldn't . . . You get the idea. But, there are parallels also. For example, I can't get the thing to do what I want it to do; no one seems to know what caused the problem; I want to change the way it is working. Notice that those comments could apply to cars or computers.

Some of the people were just crazy about the car itself. We still have Hot Rod magazine. People spend their life painting and decorating their cars. We also have antique auto clubs. But the vast majority of people use the car as a tool to get from here to there. The car is so reliable and useful that one doesn't need a club to get the best out of a car. The auto clubs disappeared because the reason for them disappeared. People could spend their time thinking about where they wanted to travel rather than how to get the car to operate.

Before this comes to pass, the software has to get a lot better. The hardware, although not organized in an ideal way, is reliable. It is the software that is a pain in the keyster. Today's software says, "Not enough memory, Abort." Tomorrow's software will say, "Memory limits, chose options:

1. Put part of the program on disk and run slower?; 2. Put part of the data on disk, for a slower execution? 3. Enlarge the heap area? 4. Supply more details of limit? 5. Store for further analysis? 6. AbortT' We need software that finds and offers solutions to obstacles.

Another limitation of today's programs is that you know what you want to do, and you know the system can do it, but you cannot convey that to the software. For example I may want to "Llst all the programs I haven't used in the last six months; write those programs to the B drive, one program to each disk or of disks; print labels." I don't know how I can do this automatically now. Tomorrow's software will take general instructions, in English, and execute.

One of the things we need is a Consumer's Union' of software. I read many UG magazines that come in from around the country. It is obvious that all groups have the same problems. Most of the magazines are rating the same software as everyone else. How much more efficient it would be to have one organization rate one package really well and a second group rate another package. Then they could exchange information. This concentration of reviews would be sharper and deeper. Eventually some organization will get the message and we will have a "UGSR" or Users Group Software Report.

What will happen to the UGs if my analysis is correct?

When the software problems are under control, UGs will gradually disappear. People will be able to use computers to solve their problems, without worrying about the process or consulting with friends to find out what the process is. I will guess this will happen gradually in ten years. Recruiting will become harder and harder for the clubs. Special clubs, SIGs will hold on longer. Maybe some of the larger clubs will start to review the software with a more national outlook. Club magazines will spend less time on internal problems and more on the needs of the readers. Clubs will merge and disappear.

You must admit that both the auto clubs and the computer clubs are a lot of fun. Maybe progress isn't always so great, but we can't stop it. People have a delightful way of finding reasons to associate. I think it can be called gregariousness, or, the love of one for another.


Honor System

by Julia Pitta, Forbes Magazine

Reprinted from Temecula Valley UG Newsletter

When John McAfee started a software outfit five years ago, he knew he would have a hard time getting his antivirus program onto those crowded store shelves. So McAfee Associates gave the program away-with an entreaty to the customer to try it and then mail in a check for $25 if he found the program useful.

"Everyone said I was crazy," McAfee remembers. All the more so in the pirate-plagued software business. Computer jockeys are notorious for copying software and passing it on to friends. And it isn't just teenage nerds who pirate: McAfee, 49, a computer programmer for General Electric and Lockheed in the 20 years before he became an entrepreneur, admits that he had often copied software before he began peddling it. "It's not something I do anymore," he says, somewhat sheepishly.

Hence his reliance on an honor system to bring in the money. Since the stuff was vulnerable to free-riders anyhow, maybe a sense of guilt would bring in the cash. McAfee sells "shareware," software that's posted on electronic bulletin boards and thus accessible to anyone with a modem equipped personal computer.

Shareware has been around for nearly as long as the PC (FORBES, Nov. 28, 1988), its purveyors never reaching the top ranks of software vendors but nonetheless surviving on low revenues by dint of minimal marketing costs. One thing going for shareware programs is that their suggested (not to mention actual) prices are usually much lower than those of software sold in retail stores. The main drawback is that shareware has typically been harder to use. Its designers generally lack the resources needed to test-market, debug and refine their product, let alone provide on-line advice to users.

Nevertheless, such efforts chip away at conventional distribution -- and the traditional retail distribution channel is under attack from other quarters. Manufacturers IBM, Apple Computer and Gateway 2000, and wholesaler Ingram Micro are enclosing CD-ROM software catalogs with their PCS; the PC owner can gain access to the software by downloading it from the telephone.

McAfee sells two software packages: VirusScan, which protects your PC from viruses, and Netshield, which monitors security in local area networks. To try one out, just log on to Prodigy, America Online, CompuServe or the Internet, and hunt down the McAfee bulletin board (net address: mcafee@BULLETIN BOARD'S NAME.com).

When you get it, the network's server makes a copy of the software and routes it via the telephone line to your PC, which stores it on the hard disk. With a 9,600-bit-per-second modem, you can download McAfee's 200-kilobyte virus protector in a little less than three minutes.

About 100,000 potential customers download McAfee's software each month. Of those, about 2000 eventually pay for it. In theory, the trial period is 60 days. After that time, those who want to continue using the software are urged to register with McAfee. The $100 fee entitles the customer to technical support and future upgrades.

There is no honor among thieves, but plenty of chutzpa: McAfee's technical support reps frequently field calls from nonpaying users. Advice is politely dispensed. Software still being a word-of-mouth business, McAfee has a benevolent view of the freeloaders, hoping in time to turn their goodwill into cash. "The people who steal software are highly technical," McAfee explains. "At work, they tend to be the people who make decisions on who buys what. "

Despite the larcenous nature of many computer users, McAfee found $18 million worth of paying customers in 1993. Analysts project revenues of $32 million by the end of this year; the Nasdaq-listed stock has climbed to a recent 8-3/ 4 from its low last October of 4-1/2.

Most of the company's revenue is coming from large corporations. Ford Motor Co., for example, has a license for 52,000 users, Mobil Corp. has one for 36,300.

McAfee took some of the $15 million the company hauled in with a public offering in 1992 to bolster marketing. He hired away William Larson from Sun Microsystems to assemble a sales force to call on corporate customers. Last fall Larson launched a multimillion-dollar print advertising campaign.

Having gained entree to corporate computing departments, hasn't McAfee outgrown sharing? Not quite. It still depends on pirates to popularize its products by spreading them widely. When they reach corporate users, the money starts flowing to the home office.

"It's kind of a Zen perspective, " McAfee says. "If you plant the seeds, you will reap the benefits.


What If Dr. Seuss Did Technical Training Manuals?

by Art Scott

Here's an easy game to play. Here's an easy thing to say:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash !

You can't say this? What a shame sir! We'll find you Another game sir.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk, Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

Found on the Internet. Thanks to Bryan D. Boyle, bdboyle@erenj.com


Computerphobia - Another Feminine Disease?

by Frank Hilliard, Big Blue & Cousins

This article is copyrighted by The Greater Victoria PC Users Association, Victoria BC Canada.

There is something very odd going on in the computer world that I suppose I've noticed for years, but only really hit home in the past few weeks.

If you're a man, you probably know what I' m getting at, but it sounds sexist or chauvinist to say it, so you haven't bothered to ask the women you know for an explanation.

Well, here goes nothing.

Where, exactly, are all the women in the current computer revolution?

Computer stores across Canada are boiling with business. New outlets are springing up like mushrooms. Software and hardware sales are causing a frenzy. All of this is taking place in an almost exclusively male environment!

Oh, there are a few female sales clerks, even a few women doing program demonstrations, but the vast majority of salesmen and customers are, in a word, men. Every time I've gone into my local computer store in the past three months, the line-ups in front of the sales and service counters have been exclusively made up of men.

One woman acquaintance told me, "Well, men like computers." Oh, I thought, good answer. Is it something to do with the size of our fingers?

The specific trigger that provoked this line of thought was what happened when a new Local Area Network (LAN) was installed in the office where my wife is a manager. A new computer had been put on her desk. "What kind have you got," I asked innocently over the dinner table.

She didn't know-she hadn't turned it on.

What she did want was my help in moving it from the middle of her desk into the corner, where it wouldn't be so much "in the way." The next day, we went in to her work together and I began setting up the desktop on her 486/33 which was running Windows for Workgroups V3.1. I then began to have a look at the Mail program, which was new to me because my machine is a standalone.

"Aren't you finished playing with that?" she asked.

That was when it hit home. Women have a totally different view of computers and computing than men . They don't use them the same way and, frankly, can't understand what all the excitement is about. To the average woman, a computer is something you work at. They go to work, sit down, work, work, work on the computer, get up and go home. Period. Not once in the day does the typical secretary close her word processor, close Windows and go down to DOS to poke around and see what other programs are on her machine or available across the network. Because she doesn't look, she doesn't find out.

Women executives have exactly the same attitude. They feel computers are instruments of servitude and toil. The mark of a woman executive is that she doesn't use a computer. Women executives I know would rather dictate their letters so that a "typist," one of the lower orders presumably, can transcribe them

Recently I had to send something on diskette to a company secretary in another city. I had formatted my document in AmiPro, one of the big three word processors. However, I was unsure if the word processor the secretary used had an AmiPro filter.

I called up and asked. She had no idea. Indeed, she didn't know where in Microsoft Word to find out what formats Word would import.

She is not alone.

Another woman acquaintance of mine had a computer at home and wanted to send me a file over the telephone. "Fine," I said "dial me up and I'll put my communications program in answer mode. Then just use the prompts." You can guess what the problem was. She had never used her communications program or her modem before, even though they had been on her machine for months.

The men of my acquaintance, on the other hand, have not only used their modems for months or years, they have upgraded them for faster models with a 16550 UART chip. They have explored every nook and cranny of their programs, opened up their CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT and WIN.INI files, Optimized their memory, added RAM and bought sound cards. Well you get the idea. They have been into the guts of their machines both literally and figuratively. Now most of them are trying to figure out how to use the Internet.

I keep telling women that computers are power things. It's a product that can increase their knowledge, productivity and enjoyment. I tell them computers are particularly suited to a woman's manual dexterity and mental agility. With a modem the female strengths in interpersonal skills and networking increase. After all, what is the Internet, if not a network?

Computers can, specifically, help women by providing them with the same non-sexually biased information doorways as men -- surely a commendable capability. Computers even the balance between men and women precisely because, as machines, they have no gender bias. This, it seems to me, is a great opportunity for women to empower themselves.

But it won't happen any time soon unless women in general get over the emotional feeling that computers are expensive typewriters that somehow represent a second class working status.

The irony in all this is that it's the secretary with her existing skills who could become a corporate terror if she started utilizing the information already on her machine. But it's the boss, with the door closed to his office, pecking away at the keyboard -- who will wind up holding all the power.


Computerphobia II -- Boys and their Toys

by Joan Mcllmoyl Cleghorn

Reprinted from Blue Chip News, a publication of the Saginaw Valley Computer Association

Frank Hilliard ' s article "Computerphobia" was thoroughly enjoyable. It was also, I think, accurate as far as it went.

To introduce myself, I am female, racing towards my 50th birthday and do not suffer from "Computerphobia." In fact, I own a computer and have been fascinated by them for the past eleven years. Prior to that time, not only was I terrified of them but when informed at work that I had to learn to use a Wang Wordprocessor, I didn't know what they were talking about! For the next seven years, I progressed from being a computerphobe to becoming an operator, then a system administrator in the Wang environment.

Meanwhile, I watched enviously as the men in the office, with a few privileged women, became acquainted with personal computers. As I was a secretary, there was no reason for me to have access to a PC. I suspect that many systems people were aware, as Frank notes in his article, of the power potential for anyone even moderately knowledgeable about PCs.

I was sufficiently interested in computers to start reading library books on the history of computers. Soon my priorities in life (husband, kids, job and finances) led to allotting my free time in other directions. Meanwhile, the inexorable takeover by the PC was progressing. Four years ago, having progressed to a Wang PC from the Wang system, I graduated to an IBM PC. This was also my introduction to using DOS, Lotus and WordPerfect. After a few introductory courses, for which I had to literally beg and plead, and the devouring of a multitude of manuals -- my personal goal became the ownership of a PC. This goal was to be very long term, due to finances and my computerphobic husband.

I'm sure many women find themselves in the same position as myself. I couldn't afford nor justify the expenditure of $3,000 - $4,000 for what would be, in essence, a toy. I did not earn enough for that. Plus, my husband was terrified of the very word computer! So it wouldn't be a joint investment.

I have noticed that most women who own computers are divided into two groups. One group are full-time, or almost full-time students, find that owning a computer actually saves time and money by allowing them to stay at home to do a lot of their work. The second are those who are in business for themselves, or about to do so, thereby making the purchase a legitimate business expense. In other words, women view a PC as a valuable tool from which they expect a return for their investment be it in time or money. This is more a reflection of their financial status than a lack of curiosity about PCs.

Lower prices for, and the proliferation of PCs into all facets of our lives, increases the likelihood of women owning them. Those with children will want them to have PCs and will use them to understand what their children are talking about. Very few work environments are left that don't have PCs in them so most women will have personal contact with PCs at work. Frank's observations about the lack of knowledge and curiosity shown by women towards their PCs at work are valid.

As I see it, the problem is twofold. First, the employer's typical attitude is that the PC is an enhanced electronic typewriter and/or bookkeeping machine and passes that attitude on to employees. This attitude is reinforced by the type of training (if any) given to the employees, usually a basic introductory wordprocessing and/or spreadsheet course or basic instruction on an environment specific program. Rarely is information about the overall capabilities of the PC passed on to the employees. This is particularly applicable to employers and women who received no computer instruction at school. Once the computer literate generation takes over, this will be a non-issue.

Second, reality is that most women have at least two jobs. If they work outside the home they still shoulder most of the household tasks as well. If they have children and work outside the home, they have the bulk of two jobs at home. This means they have much less time available to poke around and explore the guts of their machines both literally and figuratively, as Frank puts it. This exploration would have to be done on their own time. Few employers recognize the value of apparently non-productive time spent on a PC just figuring out how it all works. If they do, they also recognize the power potential and attempt to control it. If a woman doesn't work outside the home, her opportunities to have access to a PC, or to develop curiosity about a PC, are limited.

To change this situation, we women must take the same steps as we have done with cars. We must read books and articles, watch TV programs, take courses and/or pick men's brains to increase our basic knowledge. Once so armed, we should ensure that we learn to operate a PC. Then we shall have the tools to be informed purchasers of a PC.

If you are a computerphobe (male or female), take heart as there is a cure! My husband was an example. It was obvious when he informed me that if I ever brought a computer into the house, both it and I were going out the door. When I made the decision to set up a home-based business, I told him I would need to have a computer for the business. He made no comment, so I proceeded to prepare for my purchase.

I brought the PC into the house five months ago and set it up. My husband sat in front of it and I haven't been able to remove him except while he's sleeping! A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but close to true. He first created a table complete with a formula in WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows.

Next, he designed a database in Paradox to track discipline procedures in youth soccer. He has set up spreadsheets in Quattro Pro and complex templates in WordPerfect 6.0.

In only five months, he has progressed from being computerphobic to contemplating a career change from sheet metal work to some facet of computers! This can happen to anyone, male or female, who gets past the fear of computers to the realization that they are such fun and incredibly useful.


Application

Good for new applicants and those renewing as well.  Please Print.

Date:__________________ I am a  new - renewing - returning  member.

(please circle one of the above)

My membership number is:____________

Name:_____________________________________________________

Address:___________________________________________________

City:_______________________________________________________

State:_____ ZIP:____________ Phone:___________________________

Please list your computer interests, hardware and most used software:

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Fees: $30.00 per year plus $15.00 for each additional Family Member.

Amount enclosed: $_______________ please make check to NOCCC

and mail with application to:

North Orange County Computer Club

Box 3616

Orange, CA 92665


Family Memberships

The other people in your family can now become NOCCC members.Your spouse and kids can have the privileges of regular members, except that they will not receive extra copies of Orange Bytes. Family membership will cost you $15.00 per year for each additional family member.

Family members can be converniently initiated for regular members at an initial registration or at renewal registation time.


Orange Bytes Staff

Editor	Sam Miller	(310)421-5701

Assistant Editor	Dale Blank	(714)774-2302

Production Advisor	Stew Wilson	(714)542-7804

Reviews Editor	Bob Singer	(909)941-8413

Copy Editor	Elsie Williams	(714)531-5758

HelpLine Editor	Terry Warren	(714)633-5467

Classified Ads Editor	Jim Sanders	(714)636-5523

Technical Editor	Jim Karsjens	(310)923-3934

Circulation	O.T. Stoll	(714)521-6915

Newsletter Exchange	Barth Bybee	(310)439-5640

APCUG Editor	Mike Banchi	(714)898-8471

Editors - Electronic Editions

Windows	John Krill	(714)496-5882

TimesLink	Gerry Resch	(714)772-6667

Typists:

Don Stewart	Matthew Bennett
Donnamae Hathaway	Jacqueline Keller
Chuck Puma	Andrew Smallman
Jeremy Lin	Joe Sherry
Talib Hirij	Don Dobbs


Orange Bytes Guidelines
Guidelines for Submittals to Orange Bytes

Manner of Submittal

•	Dale Blank is handling SIG reports and meeting announcements. Sam Miller and others on the staff are handling the rest of the articles and other announcements. So deliver your SIG report and meeting announcemnts to Dale, other articles and announcements to Sam. Their addresses are given below.

•	 Upload to the NOCCC Club BBS private lines at 714-730-6790 or (Cypress area) 714-821-0317; or the NOCCC public access line at 714-730-6743. If not already enrolled on the NOCCC private lines, you should send a message to sysop Bert via the 714-730-6743 public access line requesting private line enrollment.

•	If not already enrolled on the NOCCC private lines, you should send a message to sysop Bert via the 714-730-6743 public access line requesting private line enrollment.

•	NEW PROCEDURE: We now prefer you do not upload to the main menu. Instead, access conference J 1  (NOCCC conference) and then upload. Leave a message to Dale or Sam about your file. Mention you've uploaded to conference 1. If you've never uploaded a file, try downloading it after you upload it to make sure it's in there correctly.

•	If you don't have a modem, mail your articles on disk to Sam Miller at 4228 Nelsonbark Avenue, Lakewood, CA 90712 (call him at 310-421-5701). Mail your SIG report to Dale Blank at 1739 West Greenleaf Avenue, Anaheim, CA 92801 (call Dale at 714-774- 2302). Send a hard copy with your disk.

•	We request you limit your review or general article to a maximum of 1300 words, and SIG reports to 700 words. As far as the minimum is concerned, we'd just like to see you do justice to any general article or to any product that's reviewed. A $600 software package deserves something close to 1300 words. But a $50 program probably shouldn't have more than 500 words.

•	Please use ASCII if at all possible-it's a lot easier on us. However, other formats can be accepted. All documents should have flush left margins, and double carriage returns (skip a line) between paragraphs.

•	For paragraph headings use Bolds. For emphasis use Italics. To do this use <b>bolded phrase<d> for a bolded phrase and <i>italicized phrase<d> for an italicized phrase. These are the angle bracket codes which Ventura Publisher recognizes.

•	Please don't use CAPS for emphasis-that's like shouting at someone! We usually have to delete and retype them as proper italics, or bolds, which can be a lot of work. CAPS are used for computer commands or filenames, like AUTOEXEC.BAT or KNOW.TXT.

•	Please also spellcheck your article, and try to follow the ordinary rules of grammar. Don't put this load on your editors.

•	Try not to include columns, tabs, indents, right justification, hyphens and formatting codes. If you feel you must have these special features, be sure to give or mail a hard copy to Sam or Dale at his address (given above) showing exactly how you want the finished article to look.

Filenames

•	For the filename extension: Use .TXT for ASCII text, .WP for WordPerfect, .WS for WordStar, .WRD for MS-Word.

•	For the filename itself: As an example, our president, using WordPerfect, would have named his message following the September 1995 general meeting for the forthcoming October 1995 Bytes as 9510PREZ.WP.

Schedule

•	Your submittal should be received by Friday following the main Sunday meeting. Otherwise it will be published in the next issue.


Orange Bytes Needs Help
Orange Bytes Needs Help!

by the Editors

Volunteers Needed for Proofing!

We need volunteers for proofing the Bytes. Proofing has to be done from printouts off of PageMaker to make life easier for Dale Blank and the proofreader. The work can possibly be done on a Tuesday or Wednesday in the second week following the main Sunday meeting.

If you are skilled in this kind of work (you have to be good at English to catch all our typos) and would like to help, call Dale Blank at 714-774-2302.


How to Write for this Newsletter

by Sam Miller, Editor

Before you start.

Before you start to write: do your research, test the product (if that's what your article is about) and think carefully about the article. Firm your conclusions and create an outline in your mind.

Initial outline.

Now, quickly write an initial outline. If you've done your preliminary work, this shouldn't take more than a few minutes. It's just for reference while you write your first draft.

First Draft.

With this initial outline before you, type as fast as you can the first draft of your article, complete. (Some writers prefer to do the first draft longhand.) Don't stop to make typo corrections, or cut-and-paste reorganization. A creative surge is delivering the contents of your mind to paper and you don't want to interrupt - it could subtract from the completeness and spontaneity of your final version.

Rewrite.

Now, edit the draft, reorganize and delete where needed to reduce the article to its essentials.

Reduce Wordiness.

An initial draft often contains too many words. Since newspaper style publication demands spare language, you must concentrate on reducing wordiness.

• Example: `Wilson was really fearing a negative recommendation by the doctors, which could only mean that he would have to be operated on.'

• Revision: `Wilson feared the doctors would have to operate.'

Note how the revision shortened the sentence, converted two passives to a single active construction, and removed unnecessary descriptive words.

Many of the examples given below reduce wordiness.

Long paragraphs. Long sentences. Obscure words.

Long paragraphs. Look at the first page of the New York Times or the Orange County Register. You will find a paragraph seldom goes to more than three sentences. Neither should our newsletter's paragraphs.

Long sentences. Some long sentences contain a number of statements, separated by commas, which can be complete in themselves. If possible, convert the statements into separate sentences. Try to avoid the use of semicolons. A sequence separated by semicolons often can be broken up into several sentences.

Go over the entire draft carefully and rewrite any phrases that you can efficiently restate with fewer words.

Shorter sentences are easier to read.

Obscure words. Replace words like `paradigm,' `tour-de-force,' and `extirpate' with ordinary English words.

Delete unneeded adjectives and adverbs.

Quite often you can make a sentence stronger if you delete adjectives and adverbs which aren't necessary. You should look over all your adjectives and adverbs to see what you can do without. (But try especially to replace or delete overused words like truly, interesting, really, great.)

• Example: I highly recommend this truly marvelous spreadsheet program.

• Revision: I recommend this spreadsheet program.

Write with action verbs.

Newspaper and technical editors demand writing with action verbs. They lead to more forceful writing and eliminate wordiness. With action verbs you can replace certain nouns (created from verbs or adjectives), replace forms of the verb `to be,' and replace the passive form with the active form. Examples are given below.

Replace certain nouns with action verbs.

• Example: It is our expectation that we will see productivity improvement when the workers learn the new system.

• Revision: We expect the workers to produce more when they learn the new system.

In this case the action verbs expect and produce replace nouns which had been formed from verbs, boosting clarity and vigor in the recreated sentence. Look for such nouns to see if you can replace them with action verbs. They frequently have the endings -tion, -ment, -ance, and -ing.

Replace forms of the verb `to be' with action verbs.

• Example: I find it is extremely distasteful for me to work here.

• Revision: I hate to work here.

The example sentence contained the `to be' verb is. The forms of `to be' are colorless in themselves. Their removal can often tighten and strengthen a sentence. `To be' words you should attempt to remove include is, am, was, are, were, be, been, being and it's.

Replace the passive form with the active form.

• Example: A little lamb was owned by Mary.

• Revision: Mary had a little lamb.

This example of the passive was converted to the active by removing the `to be' verb was. You can recognize a passive construction by the use of a form of the verb `to be' combined with a past participle.

Voice and Tense.

Don't mix up your use of I-you-he/she/the user and present-past-future.

• Example: I installed the program easily. You will find the second menu tricky, however, and a user will be best advised to avoid using it.

• Revision: The program installs easily. The second menu is tricky, however, and should be avoided.

Note that the example paragraph employs all three of the I-you-the user voices, but the revision is exclusively in the third person. (The revision could have been rewritten exclusively in either the first or second persons).

Note also that the example paragraph uses both the past and future tenses, but the revision uses exclusively the present tense.

Stand up for your convictions. Don't write wishy-washy.

The other night at a local restaurant, my daughter-in-law asked the waiter, `Do you folks use MSG?' He answered, `No, I think we don't.' What he meant was `I don't really know,' or possibly, `Actually, we do use MSG.'

But everyone sitting at the table knew that he was evading the truth. The evasive statement didn't cover up his intellectual dishonesty.

Timid, inexperienced technical writers may hesitate to draw conclusions and make positive statements on the matters they write about. They may fear that a generalized statement could somehow compromise them, and therefore resort to weak and evasive language. Unfortunately, readers see through this, just as we did at the table.

• Example: From the data submitted, we might conclude that the data pattern seems to be best expressed by a third order exponential curve.

• Revision: We conclude that a third order exponential curve best expresses the data submitted.

The tell-tales of this kind of wishy-washy writing are expressions of this nature: It appears that..., ...seems to be..., We might conclude...

Look for these tell-tales and replace them, as illustrated. Readers readily accept positive statements, but do not value weak evasive language.

Punctuation and Grammar.

Look for and correct any too-often repeated words or expressions, check out your punctuation and grammar, and spell check the article.

Above all, correct the two most frequent punctuation errors - the confusion of `it's' and `its,' and the incorrect use of a comma or period ending a quote. The correct usages are illustrated in these examples:

1. `It's' is a contraction for `it is,' as in

`It's incredible.'

2. `Its' is a posessive, as in

She read its first two chapters.

Observe in the first example that the period (the same applies to a comma or exclamation point) must precede the quotation marks. It doesn't seem logical, but it's correct American grammar.

Final thoughts.

Sometimes it's better not to make a rewrite change, because you can't find a better way to express the thought, or the alternate seems clumsy or silly.

Get a qualified person to both critically review and proofread your draft.

It's a good idea to put your article away, review it yourself after a day or two and continue to improve it.


To Our Authors

For general articles and software/hardware evaluation articles try for 1300 words maximum. For SIG reports 700 words. For book reviews 600 words. Articles will be edited down to approach these maximum wordcounts.

As far as the minimum for product reviews is concerned, we'd just like to see you do justice to whatever product is evaluated. A $600 piece of hardware or software package deserves the full 1300 word treatment. A $50 program probably should have no more than 500 words.

Again, we are getting lots of product and book reviews. What we need from you is articles! We need articles that, for example, update a field of current interest, outline something you are a specialist in, or give vent to a situation you feel strongly about. Give us a piece of computer humor. Or some graphic material. It's all welcome.

Please - include your name with your submittal, and, if it's a review, at the end of your article identify the producer of the product, the company address and telephone number, plus where to purchase and the current price.

By all means, read `Guidelines for Submittals to Orange Bytes' in this issue.

As has been the case for a while, due to the great backload of review articles, we are not able to include all contributions in the current month. Please be patient - we are trying hard to get all articles published within two to three months of submittal.

The Editors

That's correct! We got'em all in here. Just look!....Window's Edition Editor


Important Message to our Authors
An Important Message to Our Authors

In recent issues of the Bytes, your editors requested you limit your submittals. We now new request you limit general articles and software reviews to a maximum of 1300 words, SIG reports to 700 words, book reviews to 600 words, low cost CDROM titles to 600 words, and more sophisticated CDROMs to 1000 words.

Please use your judgement -- a $50 game or software title doesn't justify going over the 600 word max.

With the flood of reviews we are receiving, there simply isn't enough room for more than this. Please observe these guidelines.

We'll try our best, but may also have to defer some articles for publication until next month.


Early Notice of NOCCC Programs
Early Notice for NOCCC Programs

You can preview the SIG and general meeting program listings for a given month from our Club's BBS. Look at Bulletin No. 4.

Even better, download either the DOS, Windows, or the OS/2 Electronic version of our newsletter, which will give you the entire version early, plus some additional articles for which space wasn't available in the mailed version. There is information on how to do this elsewhere in the Bytes. Both the bulletin and the Electronic Orange Bytes versions should be on the Club's BBS about 12 days after the general meeting, long before you get your regular mailed edition of the Orange Bytes.

Or look at (and download if you wish) a file with a name like PRGM.MAY in Uploads or File Directory 70, and you'll get the same agenda you'd find in Bulletin 4.

And, if you don't have OS/2, Windows or DOS, don't have a modem, and still want program information, dial the NOCCC recorded message on your telephone: 714-998-8080. The recorded message may also have some recent information - which developed too late to get into the Bytes.


The Electronic Versions of the Orange Bytes
The Latest on Electronic Versions of the Orange Bytes

Windows Edition

The Windows version is alive and well, and you can continue to download it well before you receive the printed version of our newsletter in the mail. It appears about seven to ten days before the end of the month. John Krill deserves credit for the excellent job he is doing in putting together this hypertext version of the Bytes. In essence you call it up as a Windows 3.1 Help file. Mike Banchi uploads it to the APCUG Globalnet BBS, and articles extracted from it have appeared in computer club newsletters all over the map.

The nomenclature for the Windows edition file name is BYTEWmmy.ZIP. "mm" represents the month and "y" the last digit of the year. For example the Windows file for the August edition would be BYTEW085.ZIP.

DOS Edition

Starting this month a new DOS version of the Orange Bytes will become available to you on the Club BBS, even earlier than the Windows version. It is an outgrowth of the "Raw Bytes" which Sam Miller puts out each month for the Windows and printed versions of the newsletter. The filename for the DOS edition (the same as it has been for Sam Miller's "Raw Bytes" edition) will be yymmNOCC.ZIP, where "yy" represents the year and "mm" the month.

As an example the filename for August is 9508NOCC.ZIP.

It is an all-ASCI random group of files, but files are easily identifiable by their extensions:

*.SIG files are Meeting Reports.

*.SAG files are Computer Topics.

*.RRR files are Product Reviews.

*.BOK files are Book Reviews.

*.CDR files are CD-ROM Reviews.

*.AD files are announcements. Editors use discretion in including or excluding these in a particular month.

*.JUL, *.AUG, etc. are all other articles or notices timely and important to be included in the particular month.

For example, if you wish to see a list of the filenames of "Product Reviews" for example, you can easily enter a command like the following at the DOS prompt:

DIR *.RRR

If you are so fortunate as to have a DOS shell program like Norton Commander, you can ask the program to sort the files according to extension in groups, and then in effect produce a Menu from which you can access any of the articles from listed extension groups -- with a key tap.

Times-Link/Prodigy Electronic DOS Edition

The DOS version described above, with appropriate modification, is being trial run for its near future incorporation into the new Times-Link/Prodigy online service which the Los Angeles Times introduced some months back, with NOCCC members as Beta testers. Gerry Resch has been spearheading the NOCCC efforts on the project.

It is an exciting development, read all about it in Gerry Resch's article in this issue of the Bytes.

PRGM.xxx

With a quick download from the Club BBS, get an early program listing for the next general meeting with this file.

PRGM.xxx is the same monthly program listing which appears on page 1 of the printed edition of the Orange Bytes. "xxx" represents the month, and you will find it on our BBS, for example as PRGM.AUG for the August meetings. You will find it uploaded ten days after the general meeting, at the same time as DOS version 9509NOCC.ZIP (for September) described above, and it will be included inside 9509NOCC.ZIP also.


Orange Bytes On TimesLink

By Gerry Resch, NOCCC

You can now read the Orange Bytes on TimesLink, a new service provided by LA Times. It is a subscription service which cost $6.95/mo. You can receive a free one month trial subscription by calling (800) 792-LINK (5465) x274 or pick one up at the September club meeting from me. They are available for DOS, Windows, or Macintosh.

The phone access is provided through Prodigy and is therefore accessible from anywhere in the US. As a TimesLink subscriber you will also receive about 90% of the Prodigy free services. If you are already a Prodigy subscriber ($9.95/mo) you can reach the TimesLink services for an addition $4.95/mo.

To read the Orange Bytes, log onto TimesLink. On the Opening Startup TimesLink Menu, select the "BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY" button. On the next menu select the "COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY" button. From the next menu select "NORTH OC CLUB NEWS". You will now see a list of the Orange Bytes topics which are button selectable. You will see 10 topics per screen. There are generally 50 to 75 topics to select from. On the bottom button bar you will find buttons for moving forwards or backwards and to return to the Main Menu. You may also use the Page Up, Page Down, and the Arrow keys.

There are many activities which must take place and many people involved in getting the Orange Bytes on TimesLink. If all goes well I will try and have the new Orange Bytes on line one to two weeks before the first of the month. If you see anything that might improve the service, have a suggestion or a question please call be -- Gerry Resch (714) 772-6667.


Programs
Program Schedule for September 10, 1995

Telephone Info Line	Program on the BBS

9am SIG Meetings

Visual Programming SIG	Science 102

Session I We'll focus on programming for Windows.

9:30am SIG Meetings

IBM General SIG	Irvine Hall

Our speaker will be freelance writer Michelle Branison.

10am SIG Meetings

Home Computing SIG -- Copy Session	Wilkinson 221

At this hour we copy PD Software disks on 1.44 Mb disks and help members with home computer problems.

Home Networking SIG	Science 130

NEW SIG!! We will discuss hardware and software to network home PCs. This SIG is for people who know little about networking but wish to learn about it. We'll discuss a number of software programs.

Modem Beginners SIG	Science 202

Come and ask your modem questions.

Visual Programming SIG	Science 102

Session II We'll continue Visual Basic demos and tutorials.

11:15am SIG Meetings

Lotus & Business Applications SIG	Irvine Hall

Assuming we get a modem line, we will show news gathering applications. Corporations and individuals are using many different methods to gather news or information on competitors, their industry, research subjects, etc.

C++ & OOP SIG	Science 202

Walter Clark will speak on "aggregation" with Delphi, C++, and Visual Basic.

Computer Assisted Investing SIG	Argyros Forum 202

Doug Fabian is scheduled to speak at the September meeting.

Database SIG	Science 233

Bob Mikun will discuss Windows and DOS database.

DTP / Word Processing SIG	Science 130

Our forum answers your questions on Desktop Publishing, Wordprocessing, Printers and related subjects.

Home Computing SIG -- Demo Session	Wilkinson 221

We'll put on another exciting demo for home users.

IBM Beginners SIG	Argyros Forum 211

Get help for beginning and intermediate DOS problems!

Novice PC SIG	Science 306

This meeting will cover tricks and tips of Word for Windows and show you all about this all-encompassing Word Processor/Desktop Publishing program.

Visual Programming SIG	Science 102

Session III We'll go further into programming for Windows.

12Noon SIG Meetings

Modem Advanced SIG	Science 102

Our study of modem hardware and software continues.

1pm Main Meeting

Main Meeting	Irvine Hall

CyberFlix will do a presentation of their exciting new developments.

2:30pm SIG Meetings

Internet SIG	Irvine Hall

We'll continue technical discussions and answer your questions about Internet.

Macintosh SIG	Science 306

We will have a representative from MacPlay of Irvine, who'll demo games. Come and play!

OS/2 SIG	Argyros Forum 202

Get involved in our discussions and presentations of OS/2.

Windows SIG	Science 130

Tracy Lenocker will be available to answer your questions about Windows 95.

Off-Campus SIG Meetings

Networking SIG	Off-Campus

Meets the Thursday following the Main Sunday Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the ROP Center Computer Lab. The center is located on the southwest corner of Chapman Ave. and Yorba Street south of the Little League baseball fields. This intersection is the first light east of the 55 Freeway on Chapman Ave. The Computer Lab is in room D. For more information call Andy Anderson at 714-637-6688.

Accounting/Peachtree SIG 	Off-Campus

Now meets the second Tuesday of the month at 12038 Centralia, Suite H, in Lakewood at 7:00 p.m. The discussion will cover Peachtree 8.0 for DOS and 3.0 for Windows. For more information call George Shaefer at 714-228-544.

Explorer SIG

This new SIG is in collaboration with the Boy Scouts of America but dedicated to young people of high school and college age. There will be a meeting this month. Call leader Len Leventhal at 714-528-6344 and get involved.

SIG Leaders and Reporters: Announce your current program features on this page!


Note: Irvine/Hashinger Hall meetings will be held in Bertea Hall -- Follow the Red Cones to this location.


Note: Since Argyros Forum is not available for this meeting, those meetings will be held in Smith Hall or elsewhere. Please look for posted notice at Irvine Hall.


SIG Leaders

SIG Coordinator

Terry Warren	(714)633-5467

Room assignments, listings, help, etc.

Accounting / Tax SIG

Leader:	Jim Karsjens	(310)861-6233

Accounting / Preachtree SIG

Leader:	George Schaefer	(714)228-5444

C, C++, and OOP SIG

Leader:	Walter Clark	(714)738-3686

Computer Assisted Investing

Leader:	Murray Boobar	(714)538-7764

Reporter:	John Willner

Database SIG

Leader:	Bob Mikum	(310)926-6021

DTP / Word Processing SIG

Leader:	Jim Karsjens	(310)861-6233

Explorer SIG

Leader:	Leonard Leventhal	(714)528-6344

Home Computing SIG

Leader:	Dain Leese	(714)957-2829

Co-Leader	Fred MacGregor	(714)751-3090

Librarian	Fred MacGregor	(714)751-3090

Home Networking SIG

Leader:	Terry Warren	(714)595-1744

IBM Biginners SIG

Leader:	Charlie Moore	(714)529-9071

IBM-PC General SIG

Leader:	George Margolin	(714)645-5950

Reporter:	Cathy Grammer-Margolin

Internet SIG

Leader:	Jim Benson	(714)538-7495

Lotus & Business SIG

Leader:	Vance Jochim	(714)962-2517

Advisor	Gerry Resch	(714)772-6667

Macintosh SIG

Leader:	Kurt Schuster	(714)472-4255

Librarian:	Bob Proctor

Modem Beginners SIG

Leader:	Vic Bangle	(714)521-6591

Modem Advanced SIG

Leader:	Bill Hinds	(714)639-5792

Networking SIG

Leader: 	Andy Anderson	(714)637-6876

Novice PC SIG

Leader:	Elsie Edgell	(714)544-3589

Reporter:	Kathy Grammer-Margolin	(714)645-5950

OS/2 SIG

Leader:	Rollin White	(310)493-1674

Visual Programming SIG

Leader:	Bill Hinds	(714)639-5792

Windows SIG

Leader:	John Krill	(714)496-5882


Appeal to the SIG Leaders
Appeal to SIG Leaders

by the Editors of the Orange Bytes

Several of our SIGs lack Reporters.

Even if you don't have an assigned SIG Reporter, we'd appreciate if you would take the trouble to jot down at least a paragraph or two, and send it in -- in doing so you indicate to the membership that your NOCCC group is alive and well.

Other NOCCC members want to know the news about your SIG and its activities.

The manner of sending in your report is described in the guidelines elsewhere in this issue. If you don't have a modem, put your report on a floppy and mail it to Dale Blank or Sam Miller . If you have any questions, phone one of them. Their phone numbers and addresses are in the guidelines.


Officers / Directors / Committees and Projects
NOCCC Officers

President	John Krill	(714)496-5882

Vice-President	Cathy Grammer-Margolin

(714)645-5950

Secretary	Terry Warren	(714)633-6567

Treasurer	Bert Langer	(714)730-5221

Past-President	Tracy Lenocker	(714)996-2900

Directors

Terry Currier	(714)774-2018

Elsie Edgell	(714)544-3589

John Johnson	(714)991-3314

Juanita Lockwood	(714)343-0624

George Margolin	(714)645-5950

Gerry Resch	(714)772-6667

O. T. Stoll	(714)521-6915

Club BBS SysOp

Bert Langer	(714)730-5221

Orange Bytes Editor

Sam Miller	(310)421-5701

Committees & Projects

Classified Advertising	Jim Sanders	(714)636-5523

Commercial Advertising	John Krill	(714)496-5882

Consignment Table	Cathy Shimozono	(310)437-1463

Lecture Series / Business Solicitations

George Margolin	(714)645-5950

Membership Database	John Johnson	(714)991-3314

Membership Desk	John Johnson	(714)991-3314

Programs	George Margolin	(714)645-5950

Public Relations	Gene Soltys	(213)465-5605

Publications Committee	Jim Karsjens	(310)861-6233

Raffle	Pat Boyer	(714)639-7565

Rules Committee	Tracy Lenocker	(714)998-2900

SIG Committee	Terry Warren	(714)633-5467

Swapmeet	O. T. Stoll	(714)521-6915

University Liason	Tracy Lenocker	(714)998-2900


ABC FlowCharter 4.0 for Windows

by Robert Singer, NOCCC

Introduction

The expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" is ever so appropriate when attempting to describe an engineering, accounting, or auditing process.

ABC FlowCharter, published by Micrografx Corporation, includes four standalone programming modules: a FlowCharter, Data Analyzer, Viewer, and Diagrammer: designed to help the engineer, accountant, project manager, and/or quality control analyst.

The Flowcharting program is used to create Cause-and-Effect, Organization, Function, Dataflow, and Deployment charts; The ABC DataAnalyzer is used to produce statistical graphs; The Viewer is designed for presentation purposes; the Diagrammer is used to produce Pyramid Charts, Venn Diagram, Target Charts and Timeline diagrams quickly and efficiently.

Installation

Installing ABC FlowCharter 4.0 was quick and easy, and took approximately 15 minutes to install under Windows. Installation options allow for installing some or all of the flowchart modules, and example files.

The program comes complete with Users Guide, Quick Reference, and bonus CD-ROM that includes over 200 TrueType fonts, a 30-day free trial version of Designer 4.1 Technical Edition, and a 30-day free trial version of Picture Publisher 5.0.

Users Guide

The Users Guide is divided into four sections for Flowcharting, Analysis, Viewing and Diagramming. Within each section is a tutorial which is designed to be used with files supplied during installation.

Both The Users Guide and tutorial are thorough. Example files that come with the tutorial illustrate ABC FlowCharter's usefulness by showing examples, and also serve as an instructional guide.

ABC Flowcharter

Many of ABC FlowCharter's features are intuitive making the product easy to use. In fact, entering graphic symbols on the screen is literally as simple a matter as selecting a thumbnail print from the appropriate palette, and clicking it's position on the screen.

The menu bar, toolbar, and general Windows environment look similar to the environment you would expect to find when working with other Microsoft products. A Windows person should feel immediately comfortable using the ABC Flowcharter.

Before using the ABC FlowCharter, I reviewed the Users Guide looking particularly at the Flowcharter module. I then read the tutorial following the instructions using the tutorial files to walk me through the features I wanted to learn.

I found the tutorial straightforward, and in most cases easy to understand. I especially liked the explanation given of object linking and embedding (OLE), which was short, but well done and the power of this product.

Features

ABC FlowCharter comes with an abundance of high quality shapes, designed for literally any flowcharting assignment that an accountant, auditor, project manager and engineer would wish to attempt.

With the ABC FlowCharter you can customize graphic shapes from over 500 existing images, or import graphics of your choice and place them conveniently in a custom palette to produce custom flowcharts -- that meet your specific need.

Users of Visual Basic can use ABC OLE Automation to draw network diagrams, organization charts, or other charts from databases, and simplify access to databases by creating graphical front ends.

Other customizing features include the following:

Shapes and Palettes which can be copied and pasted from any Windows drawing or bitmap image.

Style Settings and templates such as font settings, and line styles that can be saved. Custom colors that can be created to match corporate standards or presentation styles.

Object linking and embedding to link to ABC's Data Analyzer, and ABC SnapGraphics modules.

ABC FlowCharter lets you attach a data descriptions, and project information to your chart's shapes by allowing you to define data fields for each shape in your chart.

The field table applies to all shapes and lines in a chart; therefore, any changes you make to the field description are applied to all. Field tables can be stored as templates, so you can use them again in other charts.

Data fields can be used to identify names and titles within an Organization chart, or for describing activity, duration and labor costs within a Gant Chart.

Data from ABC FlowCharter can be easily pasted and moved to Windows applications such as MS Word to produce files and/or reports. Data can also be pasted directly into ABC Data Analyzer, Microsoft Excel, and many other Windows programs.

Included in the Flowcharting module are:

A spell checker that can be used to check the spelling of all words or selected words in your chart.

An index that lets you display, copy and print information about charts and shapes. And which can also be used to examine linked shapes and text.

Context-sensitive help screen and the bubble help to identify the icons.

Ability to launch various Windows applications from within ABC Flowcharter.

ABC Viewer

ABC Viewer, a companion program, allows you to display or "run" ABC FlowCharter charts from computers or workstations that do not have ABC FlowCharter. It is designed for anyone familiar with Microsoft Windows. It has a easy-to-use interface with step-by-step instruction on Cue Cards to guide users through tasks.

With ABC Viewer you can produce video and sound within your presentations.

Locate display and print specifications from a database.

Update Human Resource database by modifying the information in an organization chart.

ABC Data Analyzer

The ABC Data Analyzer is used to create statistical quality charts such as histograms, run charts, pareto charts, control charts, scatter diagrams and Pie Charts.

The ABC Data Analyzer works with two types of files: graph files and data files. By definition every graph file used by the data analyzer has an associated data file.

Graph files contain information about objects on the page, such as charts text, and symbols. Graph files also contain formatting information such as colors and fonts. Data files store all data information in the worksheet.

ABC Data Analyzer creates statistical charts based on selected data in the worksheet. As with the ABC Flowchart module the user has a wide assortment of options from annotating charts, to changing the style and color of the charts that are created. Legends can also be added to make charts more readable.

The Data Analyzer provides several basic drawing tools to accentuate charts including: lines, rectangles, ellipses and polygon shapes. Rectangles can be used to frame charts, and ellipse can be used to encircle text for emphasis.

The Data Analyzer can import both text, and graphics from Lotus 1-2-3, or Excel.

ABC Snap Graphics (for Diagramming)

For the individual that needs to create diagrams and flowcharts on the fly, and does not require complex flowcharting tools, ABC SnapGraphics module can be quite useful.

With SnapGraphics a user simple fills in the desired template with the information required. You can use the template to create timelines, organizational charts, comparison charts, flowcharts, business forms and a variety of other graphics. For even more flexibility you can even create your own templates.

SnapGraphics comes with more than 300 pre-drawn SnapShapes that can be placed and aligned in a chart just by clicking the mouse button.

Summary

ABC FlowCharter 4.0 is a full featured program designed for the business and/or engineering professional. It is well integrated with its companion products: ABC Viewer, Data Analyze, and Snap Graphics; as well as with other Windows products because of ABC's program launching capability and OLE technology.

Of all the modules that make up this product, it is my opinion that Data Analyzer is perhaps the weakest module, because of the lack of statistical charts that can be created; however, I suspect that this module will satisfy most users. And because the Data Analyzer can import data and graphic images from Lotus 1- 2-3 and Excel most users should be satisfied.

I especially enjoyed the SnapGraphics module for Diagramming and found that it is surprisingly flexible.

If you are an individual that needs a program to flowchart and graph statistical analysis extensively and that is powerful and easy to use you will be pleased with ABC Flowcharter.

System Requirements

System requirements for ABC FlowCharter 4.0 include any system running Windows 3.1 or higher; minimum hard drive install 5 MB (for FlowCharter module), 21 MB for full installation; Windows compatible graphics adapter (VGA or better); 4MB RAM and a mouse. Optional: CD-ROM drive to access fonts.

ABC Flowcharter 4.0 for Windows can be purchased at most computer stores and retails for ($386). For further information write to: Micrografx, 1303 Arapaho, Richardson, TX 75081, or call (214)-234-1769.


AnyTime for Windows V3.0

by Robert Singer, NOCCC

AnyTime for Windows is a Personal Information Manager (PIM) designed to keep track of day-to-day appointments, events, personal contacts, and to do list items.

This program comes with a User's Guide that is well illustrated, over 200 pages long; the program itself requires only 3MB of hard drive space.

AnyTime for Windows uses the metaphor of a Day Planner to help keep track of your activities/events.

The Day Planner can be setup to display varying amounts of information and to access the information you wish to view/edit easily through its book-like interface.

One neat feature I like is the ability to change the amount of information that is displayed on the screen for easy viewing. This is a particularly handy feature, and allows the user to display appointments/events to do list, and notes all on the same viewing screen, or to suppress information that is not required for viewing.

From the Day Planner screen it is easy to keep track of contacts, and to access the address book by simply clicking on the appropriate icon within the tool bar.

I especially like the notes section, that can be used to serve as a memory jog regarding activities with particular clients. A drag and drop feature allows you to move appointments to the Day Planner by simply dragging the contact from the address book into the Day Planner. It is also easy to change appointments by simply clicking on the appointment note you wish to change and than clicking on the appropriate icon which opens up a dialog box and prompts you for rescheduling information.

After installing Anytime for Windows, I took the on-line tutorial to become familiar with this product. However most of the features are intuitive, so I doubt you'll need either the on-line tutorial, or User's Guide to get through it.

I was impressed with how easy it was to use this PIM. I was especially struck with the variety of templates that one could choose to print contact forms, the ease of locating and editing data, and the to-do list feature that is part of the Day Planner.

A filtering system can be set up to allow you to locate business contacts, birthdays, anniversaries dates, etc. easily, It allows for both importing and exporting data.

In summary, AnyTime for Windows is a PIM with many features you would expect in a much more expensive product. It is user friendly, and considering it sells for less than $30.00, I recommend it to anyone who needs a good PIM for home use.

System requirements include a 386-Based or higher Windows compatible Computer, Microsoft Windows 3.1 or higher, 3 MB RAM, a hard drive with 3MB Available, a VGA or higher display.

AnyTime for Windows is published by Individual Software Inc., 5870 Stoneridge Dr., Pleasanton, CA 94588-9900. Call 800 833-3313 for additional product information. AnyTime for Windows is available at Computer City.


Automenu 5.0

by Irv Saunders, NOCCC

AUTOMENU is a Menuing Program that automatically displays your list of software programs in menu form each time you turn on your computer.

When the menu appears you select the number assigned, or highlight the program you want to call up, and it appears immediately. Automenu will work whether you have DOS programs only, or both Windows and DOS programs.

The main advantage to using Automenu is you don't have to commit to memory all the different command names for each program. It's a great time saver.

If you are installing Automenu for the first time, the Install program will create whatever directories you need. If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Automenu the Install program carefully copies the new program files onto your hard drive and removes any old program files that are no longer needed. The Install will not affect any of the menus you created with your earlier Automenu...you'll still be able to use them with Ver 5.0.

The User's Guide contains seven well documented and easy to follow chapters...a detailed Index...and appendices which include various commands and troubleshooting solutions.

If you already have some experience with Automenu or other menuing programs, you might want to skim Chapter #3, and the novice Chapters #4 and #5. Chapters #6, #7 and the appendices contain advanced Automenu features and necessary detailed information. You may encounter some redundancy in different sections but that's to be expected when you use any "reference guide."

Automenu has five principal elements:

1. AUTOMAKE is the part that let's you make the menus that list your DOS programs;

2. AUTOCUST is the part that let's you personalize your copy of Automenu, i.e., screen colors, etc.

3. AUTOSCAN is an invisible part of Automenu that can be told to look through all the programs on your hard drive and make a list of any DOS programs it can recognize.

4. AUTOMON is an optional part of the program. If you choose to turn it on it keeps an eye open and won't let you accidentally end up in DOS 5.0. 5. CUSTOM MENUS are the lists of your own DOS programs that will appear every time you start up your computer.

Automenu 5.0, by default, requires a paltry amount of memory. It leaves a conventional footprint of around 7.5/k when running items in Resident mode. The remainder of Automenu's run time image, around 290/k, is stored in XMS, EMS, or on disk. However, when running in Resident mode the conventional memory used by Automenu can vary depending on the setting of the "Autoswap" environment variable.

If used in Automenu in Non-Resident mode, it requires absolutely no memory at all to operate. That's right...Zero-KB. In environments that are extremely short on resources, it's recommended that all items be set up to run in Non-Resident mode.

The writer has been using earlier versions of Automenu for many years and recommends it highly...especially for novices who find it difficult to memorize and/or call-up various DOS programs. The manual has only 62 pages and can be mastered in one session.

System Requirements: IBM PC's, including XT, AT, PS/2 and other 100% compatible systems; DOS 3.0 or later version, 1-megabyte of free disk space.

Many stores called do not carry Automenu in stock. It is available from Egghead on special order. Call 1-800/344-4323. Cost: $42.75 + 5.00 S&H plus CA tax. (Mention NOCCC recommendation, perhaps they will give you a discount.)


Coaster

by Sean Perkins, NOCCC

Coaster from Disney Software is a program that lets your imagination loose. In Coaster, you design a roller coaster (from its drops, loops, and twists, down to the color of the track and its name).

But that's not what makes Coaster such an incredible program. What makes it so great is the fact that after constructing your work of art, you can actually ride it in a first-person simulated perspective. Even after riding your coaster, that's not the end of the fun. Afterwards you can examine your average and top speeds, test your greatest vertical and horizontal gravitational pulls and look at how many heart-stopping inversions (loops, corkscrews, etc.) and gut-wrenching turns your coaster contains.

Coaster even comes complete with six coaster fanatics who will ride your coaster, give their consenting remarks about it, and tally an average score for your coaster from 0 to 100. In Coaster, you can affect the pull of gravity, and if you feel like a daredevil, remove the upstops which holds your vehicle in place on the track.

Overall, I thought Coaster to be one of the better programs I've seen in a while, especially for its price. For days on end I was hooked by my tantalizing computer screen as I built a coaster, rode a coaster, rated a coaster, and continued to restart a never-ending cycle.

Coaster has two very positive aspects to it: its easy-to-use menus and track selectors that even the most inexperienced computer user can use with ease and the fun and creativity that it allows you to express.

Coaster's distributor is Disney Software. Retail Cost: $15-20. Comes on 3.5" floppies


PC-Kwik Power Pak for Windows v4

by Rick Reynolds, NOCCC

PC-Kwik Power Pak for Windows is a set of performance utilities that have been designed to speed up Windows applications. Tools are added to the operating system to speed up hard drives, CD-ROM drives, screens, and printing.

I installed the PC-Kwik Power Pak on a 75MHz Pentium computer with 8 MB of RAM running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. PC-Kwik installed easily and without any noticeable problems. The serial number from the original disk is required during installation and is displayed on-screen during the boot process. The installation program asks you what you want to do at every step and will make no change to your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files unless you approve. After installation I had only 961 KB less of hard disk space available, but I did not install the video support. The manual states that a maximum of 2MB is required.

Super PC-Kwik speeds up disk activity generated by the installed software programs by using a portion of your computer's RAM for a cache buffer. Then Super PC-Kwik uses special techniques to figure what data is needed next, moves that data from the hard drive to the cache and that data is then available to the software program from very fast memory and not from the relatively slow hard drive. Super PC-Kwik also caches floppy disks and CD-ROM drives. The improvement that any system will experience is dependent upon many variables, including the CPU, the amount of RAM installed, the software program(s) in use and the configuration of the cache as well as the hard drive and any drivers. A configuration program allows you to modify the default cache and RAM disk settings. The disk cache, RAM disk and CD-ROM cache are automatically set to accommodate your system's configuration, and in most cases this will be sufficient.

An option provided during installation is the ability to set up a RAM disk. A RAM disk is a RAM-resident disk which shares memory dynamically with the Super PC-Kwik disk cache program. The RAM disk simulates a physical disk drive, but all the information stored on a RAM disk is saved only as long as the system is powered on. Setting up temporary data storage on a RAM drive is an excellent way to speed up your programs, but it is extremely important to save any data on the RAM disk prior to shutting down the system, otherwise the data will be lost.

SuperWin is an application that tracks the status of the disk cache by showing the percentage of transfers from the cache, the number of logical transfers (to both the disk and cache), and the physical transfers (to the disk only). Status information shows general information about the disk data, such as the percent of disk accesses avoided by using the cache and the number of logical and physical transfers completed. You use menu commands to disable, enable, flush the cache and control the display of the monitoring activity.

In my analysis of the effectiveness of the PC-Kwik Cache, I used the Windows Magazine application, WINTUNE 2.0 to test my disk drive data transfer rate. I did not make extensive modifications to the cache configuration since I believe that the average person will install it and expect it to work better "right out of the box" than the SmartDrive cache that comes with Windows. The PC-Kwik disk cache, with default settings, showed a slight decrease in data transfer rate than I experienced with SmartDrive on my system. However, you can tweak away at the cache settings and monitor your progress if you so desire and you might be able to achieve better performance than I experienced. The ability to monitor the cache is a nice touch not available in Windows.

KwikPrint is the print spooler. During installation the Windows Print Manager is disabled and KwikPrint is installed. A selection is provided to allow you to choose which of your printers/devices will be spooled. Calling up KwikPrint allows you to view the current activity, call up the print queue, call up the installed printers for spooling or other modification and allows you to set various other KwikPrint options. I liked this spooler primarily because it allows you greater control over the printing process.

KwikScreen is a Windows screen accelerator for non-accelerated 256-color video cards. The Super VGA video card must have 512 KB of video memory and to use 800 by 600 or 1024 by 768 resolutions, you must have 1 MB of memory. Full access to the KwikScreen settings is provided by a configuration utility that allows you to set your screen resolution and font size and to set hardware and BIOS options. PC-Kwik claims that KwikScreen makes 256-color mode as fast as 16-color mode, but unfortunately my Hercules Stingray (PCI) video adapter is not supported so I was unable to test KwikScreen.

The KwikLoad Optimizer feature of the utilities is executed once by typing in "WINOPT" from the command line instead of "WIN." It then records information that is used to make Windows load faster by optimizing Super PC-Kwik. After running the Optimizer, just type in WIN as you normally would to execute Windows and it "should" load substantially faster. My experience is that it did not load Windows faster on my particular system.

A nice touch that I hope will one day be part of every Windows program is the Remove PC-Kwik utility that will remove the program from your system. Power Pak 4.0 is listed in the Windows Magazine Top 100 Software Picks in the Feb. 1995 issue.

PC Power Pak for Windows requires a '386, '486 or Pentium, Windows 3.1, 4MB of RAM, 2MB free hard disk space and a non-accelerated Super VGA video card and monitor capable of supporting 256-color mode at resolutions of 640 by 480 or higher.

If one needs maximum depth in solving statistical problems, then SPSS is the way to go. It has outstanding support and is recognized throughout the world. A Windows version is also soon to be available.  With SPSS in hand I am now looking toward applying it to certain theories on investment timing using stock price and volume data.

PC-Kwik Power Pak for Windows lists for $99.95, but street prices are running about $69.95 PC-Kwik Corporation is located at 15100 SW Kroll Parkway, Beaverton, OR 97006, (800)284-5945, (503)644-5644, or FAX (503)646-8267. They can also be contacted through Compuserve (76004,151) or the Internet (76004.151@compuserve.com).


SPSS For the Macintosh

by John Willner, NOCCC

SPSS is a huge, sophisticated statistical analysis and data management program with alphanumeric displays and graphical outputs in technicolor. It is somewhat similar to having a data base program like Filemaker, combined with a spreadsheet program like Excel, combined with a graphics program like Delta Graph, combined with a statistical engine and several editors all rolled into one. It can do descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations, frequencies, analysis of variance, non-parametric tests, regression tests, multidimensional scaling, reliability and cluster analyses. A syntax language permits coding of unique applications. Plots include histograms, bar charts, scatter plots, contour plots, box plots and stem-and-leaf plots. If that doesn't satisfy your statistical needs a group of add-on modules to perform specialized functions are available from Prentice-Hall.

At first the possibility of reviewing this program appeared to be remote, because one needs at least 12 megabytes of RAM to run it and 32-bit addressing. My old Macintosh IIcx was equipped with only 8 megabytes of RAM and 24-bit addressing. But the acquisition of RAM Doubler gave me an equivalent 16 megabytes. Mode32 fulfilled the addressing requirement. Then it is a good idea to have at least 25 megabytes of hard disk space available, and a math co-processor, which the IIcx has. A final caveat for older Macintoshes, learned from a very helpful young lady in the service department, is the necessity to go into the Preferences folder in the System Folder, find the SPSS Processor, Get Info and increase its memory allocation. That was a first for any program, but memory allocation did not have to be increased at the application icon itself. By the way, this program runs only on 68030 processors and up using system 7.0 and up.

Another concern was reading about procedures to perform if the system locks up. So it did lock up, and those procedures had to be followed. The increased memory allocation, however, fixed this problem. The main conclusion at this point was that this is one gigantic program requiring lots of memory.

Now for the good news. It didn't take long to figure out that SPSS is really a mainframe program that has been moved down to desktop computers. It runs on Digital Equipment Corporation VAX's, for example, under VMS and UNIX operating systems. It runs on high speed work stations and a variety of larger computers. Most universities that have courses in statistics use one or more of about three mainframe programs for their students. SPSS is one of the three. The students interviewed said SPSS was the Cadillac of the group. Under those circumstances it is quite an achievement to have this program run on any 68030 Macintosh in addition to the Power PC and 68040-based Macintoshes. Advantage has been taken of the System 7.x operating system (required) and of the excellent graphical capabilities on these computers. An earlier alpha-numeric version of this program did exist for the Macintosh, but this is a major rewrite.

SPSS, according to their slogan, is designed to make real statistics real easy. Using SPSS a retired engineer, such as myself, can obtain statistical results in a fairly straightforward manner without having to have a minor degree in mathematics. However, this program does require an understanding of built in philosophies. That became evident when first running a chi-square test that required a different arrangement for the data than had first been attempted. Nevertheless, when the philosophy was understood and the changes made the results were as expected. The program ran quickly and efficiently.

For a majority of applications the command syntax's are built in and can be selected with the mouse from a pulldown screen. A single click on a button in the tool bar initiates many common operations. The tool bar contains groups of core tools and window-specific tools. Selections are divided into those for data, output or syntax windows and a separate group for chart windows. Dialog boxes for each choice appear when needed in typical Macintosh fashion.

Upon starting the program two windows appear. One is for entering data and the other is for outputs. The first step is to label and select the data types for columns. Inputs to rows (cases) can be entered manually. However, outstanding import capabilities are provided. Many formats can be accepted. They can come from Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, tab delimited text from almost any word processor, downloaded communications from data banks, etc. Outputs in both alpha-numeric and high resolution graphical formats are produced, and they are outstanding. The choices are broad and easily selected. The maximum data size appears to be limited only by the amount of memory available.

When preparing a problem for analysis there are the usual caveats associated with statistics to contend with. Is the distribution of values really Gaussian or non-Gaussian? What types of data should go into each column in order to facilitate analysis? Does the order matter? What are the objectives, and which procedures would best apply? Also, memory allocations may have to be increased for certain procedures such as frequencies, crosstabs, means and nonparametric tests (Chi-Square, Binomial Test, Runs Test, etc.).

The chief competitor to SPSS in the MacIntosh world is Statistica. The reports say this is a good program too, although it requires even more memory. Some modules are built in that are available as add-ons for SPSS. However, those specialized add-on modules are readily available, and they have been proven on university and industrial applications. This category represents only a small percentage of typical needs.

SPSS has a huge following in the statistical community, and it is familiar to many experts. This can be an advantage. The consensus is that if you need maximum depth in solving statistical problems, then SPSS is the way to go. It has outstanding support and is recognized throughout the world. A Windows version is also soon to be available. With SPSS in hand I am now looking toward applying it to certain theories on investment timing using stock price and volume data.


Rebel Assault

by Sean Perkins, NOCCC

Rebel Assault is another fancy CD-ROM Star Wars game from LucasArts. It is a first-person shoot the bad guy, destroy the evil villain, and save the day type of game. If you like piloting aircraft, dodging lasers, and blowing away enemies (whether with your X-Wing or Blaster), then Rebel Assault is just for you.

You start out in pilot training and as you advance you soon become a leading force in the fight against the Empire. The game per se isn't bad. It has some of the best graphics I've seen in a game and the voices and sounds are also especially good.

But my favorite part wasn't actually the game itself. In fact, I enjoyed the introduction overall. But I can't see myself playing this game for hours on end because of the lousy play control. Your ship skips across the screen on the slightest touch of the joystick or mouse, with hardly any control over it at all (I was running this on a quad speed CD-ROM drive -- Rebel Assault was only designed for a triple at the most). I also had some trouble with the sound, but I got that to work finally. Rebel Assault is a good game with good content and plot, but its play control really gave me a tough time while playing.

And if you do decide to get this game, I recommend you listen to the introduction with the sound, then turn off the sound as you play the game. It will give you much better control over the game.

Rebel Assault. Distributor: LucasArts. Retail Price: $30 or less. CD-ROM.


The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies - A CD ROM
The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies, A CD ROM

By Chet Brisco

"Get proven, practical advice in a dazzling multimedia home health guide," proclaimed the Home Remedies box. The registration card advised "register and you will be provided with a chance to win a free trip for two to Orlando. Three days and two nights at a Disney Property Hotel." Depending on the odds, that opportunity may be the most valuable feature of this product.

I do not know how my body works. As long as it does, that level of ignorance is satisfactory. There are times when a little medical knowledge can be a useful thing and the Home Remedies CD-ROM seeks to supply that need. Windows installation is painless, and the files occupy about 11 megabytes on your hard disk directory of choice.

Double click on the icon installed in the newly-created Compton's program group and the beautiful opening screen appears. Seven nicely sculptured square buttons are displayed down the left side of the screen. These provide access to various menus including the Topic Tree. Clicking here brings a list of topics with sub-trees which list associated ailments. For example, "caffeine," is discussed in 25 sub-tree articles, as well as in one on women which has its own sub-tree of eight additional articles. The top-left button brings forth a horizontal menu along the top of the screen for on-line Help, Bookmark List (make your own), Notebook (Window's write.exe), Picture Tour, Dictionary, Set Up, and Credits.

The screen's center is graced by six larger rectangular buttons labeled, respectively: Alternate Remedies, Medical Information, Personal Checkup, Medical Alert, Multimedia, and Home Remedies. The Multimedia button gives access to "25 minutes of full motion video and medical illustrations."

The claimed "full-motion video" is a comic, arthritic joke. There is insufficient graphic information to display more than the roughly 2 inch by 1.5 inch-size still pictures, the smallest size offered. Enlarging them up to five times yields grotesque, indecipherable images formed of one-sixteenth inch pastel-colored squares. There are some larger still pictures, but they are indistinct blurs compared to the embarrassingly detailed pictures of the human body often displayed in doctors' waiting rooms.

Sound accompanies the multimedia pictures, but I do not have a sound board. What is the sound of a knee joint flexing?

The other rectangular buttons are more useful. The Alternate Route button brings forth a list of homeopathic remedies for common ailments from arthritis to wrinkles. Clicking on a name produces textual explanation of the remedy. (If the remedies worked, they would not be called "alternate." Right?)

Clicking on Medical Alert brings forth a list of ailments from Acne to Yeast Infection. This latter affliction, I can personally testify, is not confined to women, although the discussion does not admit this fact. The offered advice, after describing Yeast Infection symptoms, more-or-less says "get a doctor's diagnosis" and suggests clicking on the line "Yeast Infections article." I did that and an article appeared entitled YEAST INFECTIONS: 26 Natural Antidotes. Antidotes listed included "sleep like Eve" (naked) and "use uncolored toilet paper."

Further along, a line suggested I double-click on the icon for more information on SEX. Idle interest compelled me to follow instructions. I learned, according to Home Remedies, sex has healing powers and "use it or lose it has some validity." I always wondered.

Although much lower in my scale of interests, I next clicked on "Athlete's Foot." This produced some useful information. In general, the Medical Alert button leads to a quick summary with an invitation to move on to the article on the subject. The summary, I found, comprises the first couple of paragraphs of the article. These articles can be reached directly from the list of ailments found under the Home Remedies button. The two buttons obviously access a single text file.

The Personal Checkup button promises a report supposedly attuned to your physical state. I followed the menu by entering my sex (M), age (68), weight (190), height (6 feet), packs of cigarettes per day (0), alcoholic drinks per day (0 -- I fudged a little), and whether my style is sedentary, active, or very active (active). Then, I clicked on Results. The lower portion of the screen told me I was 12 pounds overweight. I was also informed:

Recommended daily caloric intake: 2670

Recommended maximum total fat intake (grams/day): 89

Recommended maximum total saturated fat intake (grams/day): 27

Recommended target heart rate during exercise: 90 to 135 beats per minute

Desirable blood pressure level: less than 140 mm Hg systolic / 90 mm Hg diastolic

Mean serum cholesterol levels, mg/dL (Total: 218, LDL: 142, HDL: 45, VLDL: 31, Triglycerides: 159)

Below appeared a canned discussion called "Health Risks" consisting of definitions and recommended levels of cholesterol (serum cholesterol, LDL, and HDL), and triglycerides. I do not know how a physician would define "personal checkup," but the program obviously cannot check up on very much because of the limited amount of information it requests.

The program includes Compton's dictionary -- a complete dictionary. Double click on any word and the definition, after a wait, it pops up.

My conclusion is that the pictures are not useful, although the program contains much pertinent information about many common ailments. I'll do my level best to follow Home Remedies advice about sex. That, in itself, is worth the $29.95.

The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies, Premier Edition CD ROM (Compton's New Media, $29.95). The recommended system is a multimedia 486 PC, Windows 3.1, MSCDEX v. 2.2 or later, MS-DOS 3.1 or later, 8 MB RAM, MPC-compatible CD-ROM, SVGA graphics card (640x480 with 256 colors), MPC-compatible audio board with Wave table.


Running Linux

by Thom Allen, NOCCC

This book is an excellent guide on how to install and maintain the Linux operating system. The 575-page how-to book goes from purchase and installation of Linux to system maintenance and configuration of its networking capabilities.

Linux is a Unix clone written from scratch by Linus Torvalds, an undergraduate student at the University of Helsinki. Years ago I remember Prentice Hall's mail offers for the first UNIX operating system clone, Minix. For $110 you could get a user's reference manual and all its source code, the obvious dream of a serious hacker.

Torvalds was so wild about Minix that he totally rewrote its kernel, several times in fact. Within three years, working in chaos and anarchy with other enthusiastic hackers in the internet community, Linux evolved into a full-fledged Unix.

Linux is a 32-bit, fully multitasking, multi-user operating system for the Intel processor. It has proper paged virtual memory, shared libraries and executables, demand loading and TCP/IP networking. This includes ethernet, SLIP and PPP. It comes with all source code, the Xfree86 X Window System, as well as C/C++ compilers, debuggers and the hundreds of utility programs that UNIX systems are famous for.

This book is one of many new publications about the internet and UNIX from O'Reilly & Associates. I have read several Linux books recently and this is the best overall for getting a system installed and running. Because there are many distributions of Linux, each with unique installation procedures, the authors cover the installation concepts common to all distributions. They spend a chapter explaining basic UNIX concepts and commands and a chapter for the essentials of managing the system once operational. Two long chapters cover implementing networking and C programming in the UNIX environment. A `Power Tools' chapter does a good job of explaining various text editors and text processing tools; and the installation and configuration of the X Window System.

What makes Linux different is that it's free and fully distributable. Consequently, you can download it from many sites on the internet. The complete package is incredibly large, however, so most people buy a commercial distribution of it.

I purchased the Slackware distribution by InfoMagic, a four-CD set for $14 at the ACP swapmeet. After many nights of examining the hundreds of files on the CDs, I cleared off my desk, took a deep breath and took the big plunge into the world without DOS. Emerging two hours later, I was convinced the authors knew their stuff. I had Linux installed on a spare 130 Mb drive that had been hastily lashed to the side of my tower case with string. With Linux's loader also installed on my C drive boot partition, I could boot either operating system.

Linux is the real thing. It's stable and robust. It has all the bells and whistles of a commercial UNIX system and trusted enough to be used commercially as World Wide Web servers, network routers and real-time data collection.

For anyone seriously interested in Linux, I would rate this book a definite two thumbs up.

Running Linux by Matt Welsh and Lar Kaufman is published by O'Reilly & Associates. ISBN: 1-56592-100-3. List Price $24.95.


Quicken 4 for Windows Answers

A Book by Mary and David Campbell

by Chet Brisco, NOCCC

There was a time when program application manuals were written by programmers during odd moments grudgingly taken from their primary mission: writing the unspeakable language only computers understand. Writing manuals, programmers merely shifted from the unspeakable to the unreadable. From the users' standpoint, the manuals were badly organized, opaque in their explanations, and altogether not very helpful because they typically presumed a knowledge level far above that of the average user. This criticism cannot be levied at manuals provided by Intuit for its Quicken programs. Nevertheless, after-market help books abound. In a quick tour of a local computer store I counted half a dozen books offering safe-sex entry into the innermost parts of Quicken 4.

There are two basic ways to write a manual: narrative description of the program's features, logically (hopefully) organized by subject, or the question-and-answer method. Quicken 4 for Windows Answers guides the user through a question and answer format. Like:

Is there a way to subdivide existing categories? (You can.)

I deleted the wrong transaction. How do I get it back (You can't.)

How do I record my stock dividend? ("Stock dividend" is explained and six data entry steps are detailed along with a technical explanation of the difference between a stock dividend and a stock split.)

As in the law, one must first frame the right question in order to obtain a useful answer. But having asked the right question of yourself, how do you find the question in the book? Two ways. The questions are organized into chapters treating a general subject: Starting Out and Setting Up in Chapter 2; Registers and Transactions in Chapter 3; Checks and Reconciliation in Chapter 4, and so on.

If scanning a chapter does not reveal the question, the reader then uses the alphabetical index by subject to find the page. For example, under Categories there are 21 subjects from "adding" to "using description in reports."

Figuring that adding a category would be a simple question, I looked as directed to pages 28-29 and found the question "I selected the wrong type of categories when I created my Quicken file. How do I fix it now?" The answer displayed a list of standard business categories supplied with Quicken, preceded by an explanation that included the instruction: "If you wanted to include the categories for home or business but didn't select the check box, you can add the second set of categories afterwards. This is all right as far as it goes, but what if my specific question is "How do I add a category that is not in the standard list?" No help here.

I tried the Quicken 4 Manual. Starting on page 10, I found an explanation of categories and how to change them, complete with views of the data entry screens used by Quicken. Complete, clear, and logical.

Quicken 4 for Windows Answers contains some information not found in the Manual. On the occasional page headed Frustration Busters!, it offers a narrative on a particular topic. For example, on page 198 the distinction between cash and accrual accounting is discussed. This is an important consideration tax wise, and it is not found in the Quicken 4 Manual. I suppose Answers includes it because one of the authors is a CPA. As a generalization, Answers includes more tax advice than does the Manual.

Do you need Answers to effectively use Quicken 4? Not if you read the Manual.

This book by Campbell and Campbell has recently been published by Osborn McGraw Hill. The Long Beach Public Library didn't yet have the current price, but suggested it probably can be available from your favorite computer book source in the $20-$30 range.


IRC Survival Guide

by An Anonymous NOCCC Reviewer

Having used various chats in the past before, I was curious to find out more about IRC, the Internet Relay Chat.

So, when this book by Stuart Harris was offered for review at the Internet SIG, I took it. I suspected that IRC was really a hacker's delight and this book confirmed my suspicion. Additionally, though it was helpful, it still hasn't motivated me to bite the bullet and upgrade my PC just so I can get Internet access.

I'll give you a quick overview. For those of you who don't know it, chatting is having a keyboard conversation with people who're logged onto the system. Computers on the Internet backbone have IRC software on them. By finding an IRC server's address, you can log onto it, and through that server, communicate with other people on IRC.

Well, IRC software, like all software, has commands you must learn, and that's where this book comes in. The good news is that Windows and Mac implementations have been created. They'll get you up and running without having to know any UNIX arcana. But just like any shell, which only help beginners go from nowhere to the basics, these programs will just get you connected and make some settings. The author used a UNIX character based implementation.

Now for the review. I'll take it chapter by chapter.

Chapter 1 is a historical introduction. It discusses the origin of IRC (a summer project for an electrical engineering grad student in Finland!), that it's an originally UNIX utility (read cryptic and abstract) and that many freeware permutations have evolved since then for a variety of platforms from VAX/VMS to point & click Windows implementations. Finally, it has an explanation of what a typical character based IRC screen's functions are.

Chapter 2 gets you into the water. The author claims that you can use IRC if you know five commands. (Contrast that to the fourteen page table, Appendix A! It lists hundreds of commands and their parameters and on which platforms they're found.)

These five commands are NICK(name), LIST, NAMES, SET and JOIN. "/" must precede all commands. Of course, there's the obligatory BYE. After logging in you, change your login id to a nickname. At this point you find out that IRC is channel based. Similar to forums or chat-rooms in other on-line services, you must select a channel. So, which channels are available?

Use the LIST command. The author enumerates LIST parameters and why and how to use them. At this point comes your real exposure to IRC and why to avoid it! Whereas in on-line services, people have a tendency to stick to a subject, in IRC anything goes. The book provides many screen captures (character based), in all their ugliness.

Some examples, from one screen shot:

*** #estonia 10 /3estonia If u think pollution is bad now, + just imagine if EVERYONE ate animals!

*** #Croatia 10 WELCOME TO CROATIA !!!

*** #polaska 31 Anon ftp site: eleet.appli.mimuw.edu.pl

*** #Romance 7 What, me worry?

*** #khfans 17 come in and join the fun !!!!!!!1

Oh, and that's an English channel; there are channels in many languages, like Malaysian. You get the idea -- it's not for the faint of heart. Next, you get to /JOIN a channel, if they'll have you. At this point you can join the conversation(s) that is/are (simultaneously?) happening. Mr. Harris finishes this chapter with a few notes on Netiquette.

Chapter 3, Intermediate Commands, is about people on an IRC channel. As the author says "As your experience of IRC grows and you acquire IRC friends, you will be less interested in how many people are around and more in who's there. The /NAMES command satisfies this need." But /NAMES is a global listing, so we're next introduced to /WHO, which, when followed by a modifier, filters out those not satisfying the modifier. The most common modifiers are channel names and user ids. These modifiers also accept wild cards, so, to quote the book again, "/WHO *.il.* will pick out everyone who is logged on from Israel." And "/WHO *.bu.edu will show only irc-ers from Boston University." It also discusses /AWAY, /INVITE, /LASTLOG/ and /HISTORY, commands dealing with being on-line. You'll also learn about using multiple channels simultaneously. He also discusses ircrc files, which are user configuration files. When you login, this file is read and your environment is configured the way you like it.

Finally, modes are introduced. They control how/whether your presence is detected and give you control over others, if, for example, you can get status as ircop (irc cop) or chanop -- channel operator. Channels can also be private and secret, so, jump right in, if you know where to jump. If you're into doing serious research, this gives you an idea of both how powerful and tedious finding the people who can help you will be!

But, there is an advantage: when standard lines of communication are unavailable, such as during war and after earthquakes, IRC is often still available, and used to get news out. Examples cited are Bosnia and the Northridge earthquake.

Chapter 4 is "Advanced Commands and Processes." It covers aliases in some depth. An alias is a user-defined string used to represent a command. So, if you edit your ircrc file to contain "ALIAS JTZ JOIN #TWILIGHT_ZONE", when you type "jtz", the system will type "JOIN #TWILIGHT_ZONE" for you. Typical of UNIX, aliases can be longer than one line, can contain cryptic parameters, about 25 beginning with "$", text variables and also other UNIX commands. The author then proceeds to tell us "More of the 101 things you can do with /SET". /SET is another way to set various system parameters. It ends with using multiple windows simultaneously.

Chapter 5 is entitled "Use and Abuse of Freedom of Speech." But this chapter is where you're really introduced to UNIX. First, after relating a few upsetting experiences with offensive language, and people, Mr. Harris teaches us how to filter out unwanted people with /IGNORE and /KICK. But then he get to bots, short for robots. "Bots" is usually used as a prefix or suffix, such as infobots or botwars. IRC contains a set of subcommands, beginning with /ON, which make bots possible. A bot is a script which intercepts various incoming events and reacts to them as programmed. One of the most dangerous aspects of a bot is that, per UNIX, a programmer can just create one, then logout and walk away. The program will continue running, consuming CPU time, telephone bandwidth. It can even wreak havoc, for example, by traveling to other servers, shutting them down as it goes. Welcome to UNIX.

This book should be entitled "Everything you ever wanted to know, and then some, about IRC." I can imagine some people using IRC to find friends, specialists in technical fields or weirdoes. I can imagine myself using it someday if I have a chance to do serious research or look for people who share some of my idiosyncrasies. It was originally conceived for university students to communicate. Finding people with high IQs isn't easy. But for the average user, character based IRC will go the way of DOS.

There's no point in reviewing the book any further. Orange Bytes readers will get the idea.

I expect that, as the Internet community grows, the Internet backbone is what will retain value. All these servers, ListServ, irc, Majordomo, ftp, gopher, Archie, Jughead, Veronica and who knows what else, will be forever relegated to the UHF of the Internet.

IRC Survival Guide by Stuart Harris is published by Addison-Wesley. List price is $17.95. The ISDN number 020141000 would be helpful in ordering. You can order from the publisher at 800-447-2226.


Microsoft's Natural Keyboard

by Tom Kaye, Tulsa Computer Society

Melted!

Yes, it looks like you left your keyboard in the hot sun. Yes, you've seen it and I've tried it. The new Microsoft ergonomically designed keyboard called a "Natural keyboard." The difference in the design of this keyboard seems startling at first until you realize that it's a natural fit to your hand. A lot of anatomical research went into the molding of the ergometric shaping of this keyboard. This keyboard fits your natural flexure of the fingers, wrist and extended arms. The "Natural" is touted to reduce the incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome, but I saw no reference to any study to document this case. I am a fast pecker with little style. I cross over the keyboard like a vagabond crossing the ocean. I'll admit that the transition to this keyboard was a tad bit tough for me. The keyboard layout stresses good typing skills and form. My wife, who evaluated the keyboard also, absolutely loved the "Natural." She said that she could type faster with a lot less fatigue.

The "Natural" offers more than ergonomic design. The keyboard tactical feel is good, key layout is well tailored to finger movement. Two additional keys are designed to take advantage of Windows 95 when it is released. These two keys will enable program access rapidly in Windows 95. A third key will allow for specific program access through vendor programs. The space bar is a T affair, but your thumbs fit nicely over the space bar to allow for free access.

The "Natural" is a modern state of the art keyboard that will serve many who type large amounts of text very well. For those like me in the hunt and peck system it is doubtful any keyboard will ever help my poor typing habits. I guess that I could claim that the root of my horrible typing habits must have stemmed from my childhood. I know something must have happened to me but I don't know whom to blame.

Microsoft is to be complimented for introducing this bold concept. Microsoft has always been innovative, creative and pushing the edge of technology. This keyboard is an example of the results of research and technology. The "Natural" offers many positive attributes to the user other than just the shape. The "Natural" comes with its own software to allow enhancement to keyboard functionality and an adapter to allow use with laptops or the standard adapter.

The street price: Less than $99.00. For additional information call Microsoft: 800-426-9400.


The Review Editor's Corner

by Robert Singer, NOCCC

As a member of the North Orange County Computer Club (NOCCC) you have the opportunity to acquire computer related software, books and hardware for free. All you need to do to get in on this great deal is to choose a product from the available list below, write the review and when the review is accepted for publication the product is yours to keep forever.

All that I ask is that you choose a product that you have some knowledge of, and that you submit your article for publication within a two month time frame.

To get in on this deal, contact me, your Reviews Editor, Bob Singer at (909) 941-8413 up until 10:00 P.M. and, I will make sure that you receive the product at the next monthly meeting. If you will be unable to attend a monthly meeting , you have the opportunity to download a listing of available products for review from the club bulletin board. Members are free to call for the latest available product information during the month.

At the monthly meeting, either I or an appointed club official will distribute products for review and answer your questions. Also available will be a document with some w4riting tips you may find useful in putting together your first review.

To download the most current listing, access directory 70 and download file REVxxxyy.TXT, where xxx is a three-letter abbreviation for the month and yy is a two digit number representing the day of the month the file was created. Example REVaug05.TXT would represent product listing effective July 13th.

Completing a product review is a great way to obtain software for yourself and your family, improve writing skills, and learn about new products. Do yourself a favor get involved!

Products Available for NOCCC Members to Review effective August 5th, 1995.

Books

A Passion For Technology (Book set by Steve Gibson of his articles.)

Be Your Own Headhunter (Get the job you want using the information superhighway. Post your electronic resume on the internet, prepare for job interviews with last minute research, and tap into thousands of job leads around the globe.)

C The Complete Reference (If this is the only C reference book, make it this one by Osborn McGraw Hill.)

C++ The Complete Reference (Most comprehensive guide available. Covers the proposed Ansi C++ standard.)

C++ Windows Nt 3.5 Programming Book (Book/disk for intermed/advanced programmers from M&T Books.)

Clipper Developer's Guide (disk) (Comprehensive Developers guide for Clipper programmers.)

Confessions Of A Used Program Salesman (With tongue in cheek and pun in hand Will Tracy explores serious and important topics of software reuse. Published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company)

Designer Photoshop 3.0 (Learn Adobe Photoshop 3.0 for MAC/Windows for intermediate to advanced users from by Rob Day published by Random House.)

Desktop Publishing for Word Version 2.0 for Windows (Unleash the power MS Word. Learn the fine art of producing professionally looking documents by Ventana Press.)

Excel 5 - Work Like a Pro with Excel 5 (Learn Excel and become a power user from this highly condensed booklet in less than 10 minutes a day by Anne Prince and published by Mike Murach.)

Having Fun With Alpha Five: Tips, Tricks And Tech (Tips, tricks, and techniques for everyone. An indispensable quick reference for both novice and expert users by Prentice Hall)

It's Alive! Book (diskette for Macintosh) (Viruses! They grow, reproduce, age, and die; they even evolve and create ecosystems. Learn about this new life form that may be lurking on your computer. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. - comes complete with disk for Mac Computer.)

Lan Security Handbook (disk) (Latest in LAN Securities & Technology by M&T Books.)

Mac Shop Photo 3 Bible 2nd Edition (Ultimate reference for aritists designers and anyone working with image editing software by McClelland IDG books.)

Metrics & Models In Software Quality Eng (How to measure software quality, and to use measuring tools to improve software development from Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.)

Microsoft Access Answers Certified Tech Support 1 (Answers to your tough Access questions.)

Oracle: A Beginner's Guide (At last - a concise, comprehensive guide to Oracle for novice users (Covers 7.x) by Osborne McGraw Hill.)

OS/2 Warp Answers Certified Tech Support (24 hour technical support for all your OS/2 questions.)

Outrageous Pc Fx #1 (Book/CD-ROM for intermed users-tools/techniques for morphing, photo retouching, animation & other graphic effects)

PCs in Plain English (Essential computer reference; In--depth glossary of hardware terms, & buying advice for new or upgraded systems (great book for novice or intermediate computer hobiest) by MIS: Press)

Peachtree Accounting for Windows Made Easy (Take control of your Business Finances!. Peachtree Accounting for Windows provides you with step-by-step instructions, explicit examples, undocumented tips and more by Osborne McGraw Hill.)

Power Of Corel Draw 5 (CD-ROM) (Comprehensive guide to Corel Draw includes step by step tutorial and more by James Karney from MIS: Press.)

Powerbuilder 4 Developer's Guide (disk) (Client server development tool written for the professional that needs to know Powerbuilder for Mac.)

Prog & Interfac 8051 Microcontroller (Theory behind 8051 microcontroller by Addison-Wesley publishing.)

Programming The Power Pc For Mac (Book/disk on RISC programming by Dan Parks Sydow from MIS: Press.)

Taking Flight Book (disk) (History, fundamentals, and applications of flight simulation. Book/disk by Watkins & Marenka and published by M&T Books)

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol 2 Book++ (Leading resource for any one working with TCP/IP protocol by Gary R. Wright and published by Addison-Wesley.)

Teach Yourself... FoxPro 3 (diskette) (Learn FoxPro - Microsoft's newest object-oriented database language by MIS: Press)

Teach Yourself... Photoshop 3.0 for Mac (diskette) (Learn Photoshop by doing step-by-step by MIS Press)

Teach Yourself...Coreldraw! 5.0 #1 (Learn to use Corel Draw in step by step fash for the beginning and intermediate user by Dawn Erdos from MIS: Press.)

The Underground Guide to Word for Windows (Woody Leonhard takes you on a guided tour of Win Word's dark underside, telling you what works, and what doesn't, how to get the most out of WinWord by Addison-Wesley Publishing.)

Troubleshouting Your Multimedia Pc (Singing the hardware blues? Need help dealing with a less than reputable dealer. Take the matter into your own hands with this easy to read book. Includes plenty of photos and troubleshooting advice from Addison Publishing.)

Welcome To Home Based Business Computing #1 (Perfect for the individual wishing to setup a home based business and requiring answers to both software and hardware related questions by MIS: Press.)

Welcome To Home Based Business Computing #2 (Perfect for the individual wishing to setup a home based business and requiring answers to both software and hardware related questions by MIS: Press.)

Welcome To...Personal Finance on your Computer (Guide to savings, tax planning, and investing with the computer by MIS: Press.)

Windows Nt Network Programming (Book/disk by Ralph Davis from Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.)

Word 6 - How to Use the Mail Merge Feature (Learn the mail merge feature so that you can prepare form letters, envelopes, labels and more in this highly condensed and user friendly booklet by Mike Murach Publishing.)

Writing Windows Apps W M/S Foundation Class (Develop professional Windows applications for the intermed-level software developers with C++ background from M&T.)

Software

ABC SnapGraphics 2.0 (Create great looking diagram., charts & more - as simple as ABC by Micrografx.)

Alien Arcade For Windows (disk) (Non-violent arcade game from Luxenberg Software.)

Arts & Letters Draw (CDROM) (A powerful drawing program with over 3,000 clip-art images by Computer Support Corporation.)

Ascend 5.0 for Windows (disk) (Complete Personal and Contact Manager for Windows by Franklin Quest)

Astound 2.0 for Windows (CD-ROM) (Create business presentations, slide shows, demos and more by Gold Disk)

Cica (CDROM) #1 (4855 Programs (1,072 MB) for Microsoft Windows, Utilities, Games, Icons, Programming Tools.)

Cica (CDROM) #2 (4855 Programs (1,072 MB) for Microsoft Windows, Utilities, Games, Icons, Programming Tools.)

Clickbook 1.1 For Windows (disk) (Create instant booklets from any document with ease by Bookmaker Corp.)

Corel Gallery 2 For Windows (CD-ROM) (World's best CD-ROM Clipart...and More by Corel Corporation.)

Cuba Dead For DOS (CD-ROM) (Adventure game from ViaCom New Media.)

Day To Day Contacts For Windows (disk) (Comprehensive address book management system. Can quickly search one or more contact files, copy address labels, dial phone numbers and create access Notepad files from Portfolio.)

Day To Day Notepad For Windows (disk) (Fast and flexible outliner and note taker - an ideal tool for capturing thoughts, outlining projects or papers, creating to-do lists and writing agendas by Portfolio.)

Delta Graphic Prof 3.5 For Windows (The number 1 charting & graphing program. Features an incredible array of chart types and import/export options published by Delta Point)

Easy Flow 8.0 For DOS (disk) (Create professional looking flowcharts, organization charts and data flow diagrams from Haven Tree.)

FreeBSD 2.0.5 (CD-ROM) #1 (A full 4.4 BSD Lite based 32-bit Operating System by Walnut Creek)

FreeBSD 2.0.5 (CD-ROM) #2 (A full 4.4 BSD Lite based 32-bit Operating System by Walnut Creek)

Hobbes OS/2 #1 (CDROM) (Thousands of OS/2 programs direct from the Hobbes Internet software collection.)

Hobbes OS/2 #2 (CDROM) (Thousands of OS/2 programs direct from the Hobbes Internet software collection.)

Infinity & Disk Professional (disk) (The ultimate automated storage management system by Chili Pepper.)

Info Select Version 3 (Information management program that combines both free-form and structured data managment in a way that readily adapts to user needs by Micro Logic)

InfoNation For DOS (CD-ROM) (Rates the most popular cities in all 50 states published by Software Marketing Group.)

Instant Internet Access (CD-ROM) (Learn about internet.)

Kid's Family Tree For Windows #2 (CD-ROM) (Kid's program designed to create personalized family tree.)

Links 386 Pro For Mac (disk) (Simulated golf game. Your ticket to play on the PGA tour at the famous Firestone Country Club by Access.)

Ms. Winkle's Class for Windows (CD-ROM) (Interactive leaning adventure for ages 6-10 from Adudoe.)

Multimedia IQ Test (hybrid CD-ROM) (Take a multimedia IQ test as featured in Newsweek. Includes video interviews and movies, optional musical background during testing and much more - from Virtual Entertainment.)

Multimedia Typing Instructor for Win #1 (CD-ROM) (Typing adventure. Complete with 3D graphics, high resolution color and Virtual Adventures from Individual Software.)

Multimedia Typing Instructor for Win #2 (CD-ROM) (Typing adventure. Complete with 3D graphics, high resolution color and Virtual Adventures from Individual Software.)

Music Workshop (CDROM) (The most comprehensive collection of music related software and professional, commerical demos by Walnut Creek CDROM)

Nettalk -10 User Version (disk) (LAN software designed for Novel Netware System Ver 2.x or greater. Used for cross message network communications))

Nutritionist IV for Windows (Nutritional Analysis)

Office Accelerator (The only way to manage your contacts, phone calls, to-do's, calendar and mail merge inside Word, WordPerfect and Ami Pro by Baseline Data Systems, Inc.)

Official Linux Slackware #1 (CDROM) (Linux is a clone of Unix. 2 disk slackware turns your machine into a multitasking worksation with a full range of software development, text editing, and image processing tools. Includes DOOM arcade game from id software from Walnut Creek.)

Official Linux Slackware #2 (CDROM) (Linux is a clone of Unix. 2 disk slackware turns your machine into a multitasking worksation with a full range of software development, text editing, and image processing tools. Includes DOOM arcade game from id software from Walnut Creek.)

OrgPlus for Windows (disk) (Create professional organization charts automatically. Most widely used org char maker in the world by Banner Blue Software.)

Pagetools For Windows (disk) (10 Utilities that make using Pagemaker faster and easier to work with by Extensis.)

PC DOS 7 Upgrade Edition (disk) (More memory, space, performance, and value. Features include: online help, Ramboost, Rexx, scheduler, undelete, E editor and more from IBM.)

Peachtree First Accounting (Specifically designed for business that are automating their finances for the first time. Pay bills, manage cash flow, print financials by Peachtree & ADP Company.)

QRZ! Ham Radio (CDROM) (Contains listing for 935,764 callsigns, names and addresses. Along with the most up-to-date US FCC amateur radio data, this edition includes an extensive shareare collection with over 7000 files covering all facets of amateur radio.)

Quattro Pro 5 For Win Workgroup Edition (disk) (Find out why Quatro Pro is hands down the top spreadsheet program on the market from Borland International.)

Ray Dream Designer 3 for Windows (disk) (Leading 3D illustration software package. Designer enables you to quickly and easily add the visual impact and realism of 3D to your digital images by Ray Dream Designer)

Raytrace! The Official POV-RAY #1 (CDROM) (Create 3-D graphics. No artistic ability required.)

Raytrace! The Official POV-RAY #2 (CDROM) (Create 3-D graphics. No artistic ability required.)

Shanghai: Great Moments (CD-ROM) (4 tile games, nine multimedia sets, over 150 video clipart, and 300 original animation's by Activision.)

Simply Tax For Windows (disk) (Final 1994 edition of federal income tax prog from 4Home.)

Simtel (CDROM) (2disk set includes: ham radio, satellite programs, comm packages, editor, programs for the handicapped, database & spreadsheet, animation, and Assembly, Basic, C, Forth by Walnut Creek.)

Smartcom BBS Dialer (disk) (Easy access to bulletin boards for everyone by Hayes.)

Smartcom Data/Fax Pro (disk) (Make your PC a Powerful Windows Communication System)

Space Adventure For DOS/WIN (CD-ROM) (An adventure in space: examine the constellation, watch movie clips and journey beyond the stars by Knowledge Adventure.)

Speed For DOS/ Windows (CD-ROM) (Everything you would like to know about speed complete with movie clips and library. Educational and well as entertaining by Knowledge Adventure.)

Timeslips Deluxe For Windows 6.0 (Comprehensive billing program that keeps track of your time. Perfect for Lawyers, Accountants, Consultants, Architects, and Service Professionals by Timeslips Corporations.)

Wild Africa: Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Tarangire (CD ROM) #2 (First in a new series of CD-ROMs (hybrid IBM/Mac compatible) focusing on the world's wild places and creatures by Sumeria.)

If you are interested in checking out any of the above items, give Bob Singer a call at (909)941-8413 or see him at the monthly meeting.

When you accept an item, you have up to two months to write a review and upload it to our BBS or copy it on a diskette attention Sam Miller, for publication in the Orange Bytes.

Guidelines for preparing and submitting your article are detailed in the Orange Bytes. Please be sure to mention the vendor, his location and telephone no., list price, and any special deal for purchase by Club members. After that, the product belongs to you! However, until then, it is the property of NOCCC.

If you cannot complete your review, please call me or just return the product (no questions asked) to me at the Information Desk at the next meeting. The vendors who provide their software, books, and hardware expect to receive review articles from the Bytes in a timely manner before providing us with other products.

Past Due Product Reviews

I wish to remind North Orange County Computer Club (NOCCC) members that have received computer related products for review that are over 60 days past due to call and let me know whether or not a review will be forthcoming.

Should you decided to review the product that is in your possession, your review can be uploaded to the club BBS, or mailed to Sam Miller. Guidelines for preparing and submitting your article are detailed in the Orange Bytes.

Products you choose not to review can be returned at the information both in front of the membership desk at the main meeting hall to either myself, or an appointed individual to remain eligible to review future products.

My ability to obtain products for members to review is based upon a fullfilling an obligation to have reviews printed in the Orange Bytes in a timely fashion.

Because of the considerable effort and expense that publisher go through in distributing products for members to review, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to obtain products, when we do not fullfill our side of the bargin.

For those of you that have reviews that are past due, please consider this a friendly reminder to either get your reviews into Sam Miller, or to get in touch with me so that you can make arrangements to return products that you are not interested in reviewing.

Software and books that are considered to old to be of general interest for review purposes, should be returned anyway, so that they can be raffled to interested club members to raise money for the club.


How To Prepare a Review
Preparing a Review Article for the Orange Bytes

by Ted Littman, NOCCC

The following suggestions for preparing a review article for the Orange Bytes have been extracted from an OCIPUG article and are intended as a guide only. As a reviewer, your audience wants to know your opinion (as an end user) of the product you are reviewing. Please fully identify the product so that interested club members may be able to purchase it.

After you have tested the product consider these questions:

I. Does the product meet its stated purpose?

II. Within its category of software (ie:spreadsheet, database) does it stand out?

III. What are its major features?

IV. Is it easy to use? Can a novice use it?

V. Can you quote or reference articles/reviews in the computer magazines?

The following list contains more specific questions that apply to either software or hardware:

I. Requirements:

A. Operating systems?

B. Windows?

C. Memory?

D. Disk space?

E. Is a Mouse supported?

II. Installation (do not overemphasize details):

A. Was it difficult?

B. Copy or write protected?

C. Does it allow drive and directory selection?

D. Does it automatically configure system? Can you control it?

III. Information about your system:

A. Hardware?

B. Operating system? Version?

C. Memory?

D. Video display?

IV. Documentation:

A. What is supplied? Tutorial? Templates? Table of Contents? Index?

B. Was it concise and helpful?

V. Product Support:

A. How is the vendor's tech support?

C. Does it cost anything?

D. Is it a toll call?

VI. About the product:

A. What comes with the product?

B. What is the cost? (list & street)

C. Version number and release date?

D. How difficult is the learning curve?

E. Would you buy/use the product?

F. Do you recommend it?

G. What don't you like about it?

H. What improvements or changes would you like to see?

I. What is the Name, Address, and Phone number (including 800#) of the vendor?

After you have answered all these questions you should have enough information to write your review. Please be precise but do not make it so technical that only a few persons can understand. Please advise the Orange Bytes Editor, Sam Miller if you need graphics, pictures, or illustrations to get your point across. And hold your article to a maximum of 1300 words! We will try to work with you.

Please see Guidelines for Submittals to Orange Bytes and How To Write for this Newsletter elsewhere in this newsletter for additional information. Reviews must be completed within two months so that I can, in a timely manner, send a copy to the vendor. If you change your mind about doing the review, please call me (714-779-1936) ASAP to make arrangements for returning the product for reassignment.

Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy writing your review.


Fast On and Fast Off the NOCCC BBS. Part 3

by Phil Barr, NOCCC

It was my plan to conclude this series with instructions for getting a list of the files that had been uploaded since the last time you got a list so it could be examined offline at your leisure. But our SYSOP has been successful getting this feature implemented in the new QMAIL so you can now get it in the same QWK packet that contains your messages.

The last thing to be mentioned for getting on and off as fast as possible is the way you can automate the series of steps to get this QWK packet while you are doing something else. Nearly all communications programs provide a way of recording each thing you do from the time you log on until the time you log off and this record can be a "script" that you can use to automatically go through the same steps each time you get on our BBS.

So after you have manually gone through the procedure of dialing in to the BBS, entering your name and password (you can enter first name, last name and password when you are asked for the first name), typing QM to get to QMAIL, D & G to download your packet and log off you can make a record of it and use that record as a script to do the whole thing for you unattended. Since each communications program handles the recording and scripting in different ways you should check your documentation for the details but it is not complicated.

And if you get into an area you don't understand you can rely on the Modem SIGS and people like Bill Hinds to bail you out.

Finally, once you have the script working the way you want it to you can even schedule your computer to access your communications program, dial the BBS, get your packet of messages and files and log off while you are making the coffee or whatever.


What is a Software Cache?

A software cache is an area set up in memory -- typically high, extended memory -- by a cache manager (program), where files that have been accessed are stored on a fifo (first-in, first-out) basis. The files may be executables (programs) or data. The next time the computer is looking for those files (i.e., when you order the computer to run a program, or access a file), at the direction of the cache manager it looks first in the cache, and if they're found there they are run, or loaded. As files are accessed they assume the highest priority in the cache, and when there's no more room the oldest file(s) in the cache, are discarded

The whole purpose is speed. When instructed to load a file, the computer typically has to do so from disk, a relatively slow process. When the cache manager is active, it tells the computer to access the file in the cache (RAM) if it exists there, and loading is almost instantaneous. If not the computer then searches the path to find it and must load it from the much slower mechanical device.


Telephone HelpLine

HelpLine Volunteers Needed!

The HelpLine is in the true spirit of NOCCC - which is to help and teach others and and to learn more ourselves about computers. The following is a list of Telephone HelpLine volunteers and the software and hardware subjects they are willing to answer questions about.

Please call Terry Warren at (714)633-5467 for additions, changes, or corrections.

ACT	John Heenan	998-7633
ACT Contact Mgr	Vance Jochim	962-2517
AI	Ron Osborn	991-5887
AIQ Trading Expert	Don Rosenfield	995-6363	1-10 pm
Amiga	Ron Osborn	991-5887
Apple	Ron Osborn	991-5887
Apple/Educator	Gerry Resch	772-6667
C	Frank McAnninch	846-5134
Beginning C or ANSI C	Jim Abell	846-9878	8 am-Noon
Commence	George Jensen	776-4326	6-10 pm
Computer Boards	Martin LaRocque	(310)697-4318	days
COREL Draw!	Al Shkoler	996-0128	9am-6pm
COREL Draw!	Roy Boorman	524-9483	6pm-9pm
COREL Draw	Jim Peugh	(909)989-5840	10am-10pm
CP/M	Bob Ross	(818)791-2399
dBASE II-IV	Max Harper	533-3892	after 12:00 Noon
DOS	Steve Erwin	552-5338
DOS (Beginners)	Wally Townsend	281-4800
Equis Metastock	Jerry Aldrich	786-8967	5-9 pm
FoxPlus	Leonard Prince	526-7881
Grandview Outliner	Vance Jochim	962-2517
IBM/Clone Hardware	Gary Hollander	879-9005	Eves.
Lotus 123	Stan Keturakis	630-5745
Lotus 123 2.01	Wally Townsend	998-2400
Lotus for Windows	Juanita Lockwood	(310)802-7807	Eves
Lotus Notes	Vance Jochim	962-2517
Lotus Smartsuite	Vance Jochim	962-2517
Lotus for Workgroups	Vance Jochim	962-2517
MA590	Lorna Cooney	892-5734
Macintosh	Bob Krishfield	532-3096
Macintosh	Ron Osborn	991-5887
Market Manager Plus Pro	Robert J. Lamb	828-7294
MASM	Steve Erwin	552-5338
Memory/Interrupts	Mart LaRocque	(310)697-4318	days
Microsoft Access	Richard Jordan	263-2768	9am-5pm
Microsoft Excel	Bob Krishfield	532-3096
Microsoft Mail/Schedule Plus	Gene Bateman	(310) 943-5048	after 6 pm
Microsoft Word	Jim Samuelson	472-9822
Microsoft Word for Windows	John Heenan	998-7633
MIDI	Kurt Schuster	472-4255	9-9 pm
Modem Hardware	Bill Hinds	639-5792	5pm-9 pm
Modem Software	Bill Hinds	639-5792	5pm-9pm
Networking	Andy Anderson	832-2626	9-5 pm
Neural Networks	Ron Osborn	991-5887
Oracle	Thomas Moses	545-2581
OS/2	Rollin White	(310)493-1674	days 9-9
OS/2	Jim Peugh	(909)989-5840	10am-10pm
Pagemaker	Peg Morell	527-1146
Pagemaker	Dale Blank	774-2302
Paradox	Jim Samuelson	472-9822
PC Beginners	Ron Osborn	991-5887
PC Hardware	Ron Osborn	991-5887
Printers (Laser)	Richard Jordan	263-2768	9am-5pm
Procomm Beginners	Bill Hinds	639-5792	5pm-9pm
Procomm Plus Beginners	Bill Hinds	639-5792	5pm-9pm
PULSE	Jerry Aldrich	786-8967
Quattro	Leonard Prince	526-7881
Quattro Pro	John Heenan	998-7633
Quattro Pro	Lorna Cooney	892-5734
QuickMail	Bill Hinds	639-5792	5pm-9pm
Quick BASIC	Tom Moses	545-2581
Quick BASIC	Leonard Prince	526-7881
Quicken! 3.0 for Windows	Hoyt Crider	492-0824
Quicken! 6.0 for DOS	Jay Chaisson	997-2707	after 6 pm
Quickbooks 2.0 for Windows	Jay Chaisson	997-2707	after 6 pm
Realtime Control	Frank McAnninch	846-5134
Robotics	Frank McAnninch	846-5134
SLMR	Bill Hinds	639-5792	5pm-9pm
SQL	Thomas Moses	545-2581
SuperPrint	Peg Morell	527-1146
Symphony	Stan Keturakis	630-5745
Turbo Pascal/Tool Box	Lon Rolland	380-7127	6-9 pm
Unix	Andy Anderson	832-2626	9-5 pm
Ventura Publisher	Al Shkoler	996-0128	9am-6pm
Ventura Publisher	Tom Kean	978-7398
Ventura Publisher (Corel Version)	Stew Wilson	542-7804	9 am-10 pm
Windows	Nels Kennard	(310)496-1389	10 am-10 pm
Windows 3	Jim Samuelson	472-9822
Windows 95	Scott Melugin	(909)276-1523
Windows for Workgroups	Bob Fritts	498-3941	MWF 10 am-noon
Windows for Workgroups	Vance Jochim	962-2517
Windows Shells	Joe Bustillos	832-7778	Evenings
WordPerfect	Gary Hollander	879-9005	Evenings
WordPerfect	Ron Osborn	991-5887
WordPerfect 5.1	Linda Amanna	528-2509	Evenings
WordPerfect 5.1	Lorna Cooney	892-5734
WordPerfect for Windows (beginner)	Hoyt Crider	492-0824
WordStar 5.5	Leonard Prince	526-7881


HP Laser Cartridge Returns
Make Money for NOCCC

Make Money for NOCCC. Help the Environment. Bring Us Your Used HP Laser Cartridges. When you buy a new HP Laser cartridge, put the old one in the box that the new one came in, along with the replaceable wand, and bring  the box and contents to the NOCCC Membership Desk at the entry to Irvine Hall. NOCCC will get sawbucks for each cartridge.

Tell your friends, your boss and your business associates. They can all play a part in this worthwhile project.

We'll all be doing our bit for the environment through recycling.


Consignment Table
Consignment Table Roundup

by Cathy Shimozono, NOCCC

Well here I am again. I hope your holiday was as great as mine.

Did you notice how many tables we utilized this month?and it still wasn't enough! We had merchandise three thick on a couple of tables! We had all kinds of goodies. Software and hardware, modems and boards, cable and books were everywhere!

We had a HUGE selection of tutorial videos -everything you always wanted to know about... about... everything. Word Perfect, Quicken, Windows and Dos were there - to name a few. And BOY did they go fast!

A woman, Arlene Melugin, checked out the Consignment Corner and now has in her possession a cute little laptop she plans to take all over the country. Arlene is an antique dealer and takes many buying trips. If you have any antique questions, she's the expert. She's also is a computer novice and had joined NOCCC just a few minutes earlier.

Welcome to all our new members and if you haven't come by our Consignment Corner yet, please do! You'll hear me saying "What can I sell you - you just can't live another day without" and you'll take home some very good deals.


Wear Your Badge
Wear Your Badge!  Members are now requested to wear their club badges at NOCCC meetings. Those who forget will be provided with temporary badges, available at the membership table. And, if lost, replacement badges may be ordered for $1.00.

First time visitors, speakers and other non-members will be provided with a special visitor's badge which will be available at the membership table.

Our purpose is not to exclude anyone from attending, but rather to provide newcomers with a means of identification so that board members can greet them and welcome them to our meetings.


Are You an NOCCC Member?

If you haven't joined, you're missing a lot. Consider what you get with membership:

•	Meetings. Keep up with what's going on in the computer world. Hear outstanding industry representatives make presentations of the latest and greatest in computer products.

•	Special Interest Groups. Our 22 SIGs cover a broad spectrum of user interest; they invite you, whether you rank as beginner or seasoned computerist, to take in the lectures and demonstrations they sponsor, and to share computer knowledge.

•	Get help with your current computer problem. In the Random Access portions of the meetings you ask your question of the entire assemblage, and more than likely someone will have the answer.

•	The NOCCC HelpLine. Some 100+ NOCCC volunteers, experts in their field, stand ready to assist with your problems, as close as your telephone.

•	The Orange Bytes Newsletter. Our 40 page newsletter, mailed monthly to your address, reports on current activities and gives you articles and reviews geared toward your needs.

•	Fast private access to the Club Bulletin Board. One od the largest and finest computer bulletin board in Southern California, our Club Board provides gigabytes of public domain, shareware and general interest files, as well as messaging.

•	Raffles. We distribute thousands of dollars worth of hardware and software raffle prizes at our general and SIG meetings.

•	Product Reviews. Write a review for this newsletter and keep the software, hardware, book, or CD-ROM. members review more then 20 products a month!

•	Consignment Table. We have a thriving consignment table on our regular meeting day, in which we assist members to sell or buy all kinds of computer items.

•	Volunteer Work. You are given opportunities to help our activities with interesting assignments. An all-volunteer organization, you can join with other members in a variety of activities, from the writing of articles for our newsletter to conducting a seminar, assisting in our swap meets, and more.

•	Help and teach others, learn a lot yourself, make friends and have fun. It's only $30 a year to do all this.

Attend One Of Our Meetings Free. And Then Join Up!

Become an NOCCC member by mailing in our form or by signing up at the membership table at Irvine Hall on our general meeting day, the first Sunday of the month.


Day and Location of Monthly Meetings
Day & Schedule: With few exceptions, meetings are held the first Sunday of the month (holidays permitting) at Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St. in Orange. Irvine Hall is located at the southeast corner of the campus near Palm Ave. and Center St. Reach Glassell from any of the four freeways shown. Go north to Palm, east to Center, and North to one of the College's parking lots.

For current meeting information, please call (714)998-8080 for a recorded message.


Help Your HelpLine
Help our HelpLine:  We are in the process of revising the NOCCC telephone Helpline information and need your inputs. The Helpline provides a valuable service for club members and it is important to keep its information up to date.

If you are currently listed, please review your categories, phone number and availability hours, and report any appropriate modifications.

If you are not listed but feel qualified to provide assistance, please let us know your areas of expertise as well as how and when you may be contacted.

If you need assistance in areas not currently listed OR can think of new categories which should be added, please tell us so that our helpline can be "modernized."

Please communicate your inputs to Terry Warren, either by phone (633-5467) or BBS message or at this month's Main Meeting session.


Irvine Hall
No Eating or Drinking in Irvine Hall: SIG Leaders will delay meetings until coke cans and the like are taken out. Chapman University insists on this. Please realize that we are guests on their property.

-----------------------------

Important Notice: Club members are welcome to post wanted / for sale notices on the kiosk and have them printed in the Orange Bytes  -  but do not tape them on doors, windows, or walls.

-----------------------------

That's right, the name has been changed. It's now Irvine Hall of the Hashinger Science Center.


Disclaimer
All opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors only, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the NOCCC, its Officers, Board of Directors, the Orange Bytes newsletter or its Editor. The NOCCC does not guarantee the accuracy or the correctness of advertising or articles in the Orange Bytes , nor does the NOCCC intend to endorse, rate, or otherwise officially comment on products available. Therefore, the readers are cautioned to rely on opinions presented exclusively at their own risk.

The mention of names of products in this publication without Trademark or Copyright symbols does not imply that they are not so protected by law.

Toolbox: This issue of Orange Bytes  was created using Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 and the EasyHelp template. The source files are then compiled with the Microsoft Help Compiler 3.1 into a Windows Help file. Required is the program WINHELP.EXE version 3.1. This version of WinHelp is provided with Windows 3.1 and can be executed from Windows 3.0.

Orange Bytes - Windows Editor: John S. Krill - 714 496-5882


Recorded Message
Recorded Message: For a recorded message about NOCCC and upcoming meetings call 714-998-8080.


NOCCC
The newsletter of the:

North Orange County Computer Club

Box  3616

Orange, CA 92665

Founded in April, 1976


Has Your Phone Number Changed?
Has Your Telephone Number Changed?  If your telephone number has changed recently (Riverside County members please take notice), please advise the Membership Desk so that we can correct the number in the club database.


Attention SIG Leaders! Clean Up or Suffer!

We'd like to call attention to the fact that at every general meeting, several members of the Board of Directors take on the onerous duty of what has been called "Closing."

"Closing" means checking up to see that every SIG meeting room is as clean as the condition in which your group found it. This means no garbage, nothing on the blackboard, no empty pop bottles, no tape pasted on the door, all chairs lined up the way they were found initially, and so forth.

Recently our "Closers" have reported that some of the rooms have been found in a condition they describe as a "mess." They stated, in somewhat less delicate language, "We didn't expect that as Board Members we'd wind up being Garbage Collectors as well." In point of fact, several barrels of garbage were collected this past general meeting.

The importance of cleaning up relates to the privileged relationship with Chapman University we have enjoyed for so many years. Chapman University has been patient but they could be less tolerant were the reported conditions to prevail.

The Board of Directors, in solemn assembly, decreed (yes, this is serious) that for each (single) instance of any SIG meeting room which the "Closers" report being in a stae inferior to the condition in which it was found, that SIG will not be permitted a meeting room at Chapman University the following month.


Board Minutes
Board Meeting Minutes: August 1995

by Terry Warren, Secretary

The monthly Board of Directors meeting was held at Chapman University on Wednesday, August 9, 1995. The meeting was called to order at 7:30 p.m. by club president John Krill.

In attendance were: John Krill, Cathy Grammar-Margolin, Terry Warren, Bert Langer, O.T. Stoll, Terry Currier, Elise Edgell, John Johnson, George Margolin, Gerry Resch, Dale Blank, and Len Leventhal.

There were no corrections to the published minutes of the July meeting.

President's report (John Krill)

John thanked the officers who arrived early to help with the additional setup needed for last Sunday's meeting and also those who stayed to help with closing.

Vice-President - no report

Secretary - no report

Treasurer (Bert Langer)

Bert submitted income and trial balance statements for July. The checking account balance was $540.22 and savings balance was $10413.78. He also indicated that the monthly statements would be based on the date of the board meetings (rather than month-end). Also, he has not received books or accounting yet from Vance. John Krill indicated that he will talk to Tracy and Vance about this matter.

Next Meeting

The next board meeting will take place at 7:30 p,m, on September 13 at Chapman University. Cathy Grammar-Margolin will chair the meeting in John Krill's absence.

August Meeting Discussion

In general the meeting went well with the room and building changes. It was felt that there should have been a sign posted near Irvine Hall or on the orange cones to help people get to Bertea.

Rollin White will be reminded to try to get the video tablet back to supply room by 4:15 so that the people helping to close the meeting can leave earlier.

SIG leaders who need video equipment can be given the locker combination.

There was a mixup with the CAI SIG -- we were able to let them use their normal room in Argyros, but adequate notification was not given to those who went to the published meeting room in Smith Hall. John Krill will send a letter to all SIG leaders with information about the January meeting.

Publications Committee (Dale Blank)

Dale requested three names for Volunteer of the Month and was given: Len Leventhal (September), Terry Warren (October) and Bob Singer (November). A request was made to have a stripe printed on the cover fold to help distinguish the month - it would move down the cover from January to December.

O.T. has told the current printer that they have a one-year contract to print the Bytes. They will be getting a 600 dpi laser printer and PageMaker software so that they can print from a diskette file.

Gerry Resch reported that the TimesLink feed is working and he will demonstrate the club's information at the main meeting in September.

Cathy reported that Jim Peugh has agreed to help in creating and posting the club's WEB page.

Terry Currier has given O.T. the Windows95 brochure and Terry Warren will upload the OS/2 Warp brochure.

Membership (John Johnson)

At the August meeting there were 3 new members, 12 renewals, 12 newsletters sold and $172 in raffle tickets for a combined income of $634.

Consigment Table (Bert Langer)

A total of $142 was made at the consigment table.

Swap Meet (O.T. Stoll)

The response has been good for the October 15th swapmeet. Expenses so far have been about $800 and the publicity flyers will continue next month.

A seminar room is available for the day, but a volunteer is needed to solicit and organize sessions if the club is to use the room. This will be brought up at the next club meeting.

Sysop (Bert Langer)

There is now limited support for Fidonet with about 25 newsgroups being fed. Bert is still working on the automated message and file processing portions and will then tackle the internet groups. The three 28.8 modems are working smoothly.

SIGs (Terry Warren)

Two SIGS have disbanded: Geoworks and AI. The Bytes front page and Sig leaders listings will be updated in the September issue. Len reported that he visited CompUSA to verify that the training room is still available (it is). He also requested a SIG meeting room for 12 noon at the September meeting. Terry will assign one and publish it in the Bytes. Two motions were passed regarding the Explorers' relationship to NOCCC. The first allows them to have full NOCCC membership priveliges for an annual fee of $15. The second requires that each member of the NOCCC explorer post be a club member.

Audio-Visual (Terry Warren)

Cathy reported that a replacement microphone was purchased ($15) but is not the correct type and will be exchanged. Elise indicated that she would like to have a checkout sheet posted on the equipment cabinet to identify which SIG has equipment and when it should be returned.

Programs (George Margolin)

John Krill reiterated that if a SIG leader (or anyone else) contacts potential speakers, they should let George know so that duplicate requests can be eliminated.

For September, the speaker at the IBM SIG will be freelance writer Michelle Branison and CyberFlix will do a presentation at the main meeting.

For October, Lotus will be doing presentations at the IBM and Lotus/Business SIGS and Microsoft will follow at the main meeting and the Windows SIG.

Opening and Closing

O.T. Stoll will handle opening and Jim Sanders was volunteered to handle closing.

Old/New Business

George and Cathy will host a pool party for volunteers at their house on Saturday September 9 (the day before the club meeting). O.T. will mail flyers to volunteers, SIG leaders, etc.

There was discussion about Comdex and APCUG. George will assist John Krill in determining event attendance for NOCCC representatives.

There was also discussion about the magazine table being a mess throughout the day. No resolution other than to periodically clean it up.

Jim Karsjens needs to be contacted to create a new set of officer badges.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 p.m.


Magazine Subscriptions
New Magazine Subscriptions Update for August

by Phil Barr, NOCCC

For the next month or so those of you wanting to subscribe to magazines will be asked to send your applications directly to:

    Herman Segal

    User Group Supervisor

    Delta Publishing Group, Ltd.

    1243 48th Street

    Brooklyn, NY  11219

As before, if you have any difficulties with your application you can reach them directly by phoning 1-800-SAVE-SAVE as shown on all of the Delta forms.

The latest version of the DELTA magazine subscription form, dated 11/07/94, is now available at the INFORMATION DESK. There are some new changes in availability and some new prices, both lower and higher making it important that only this new form is used on future orders. This new edition of the form also lets you order from a list of over 150 magazines other than computer magazines such as American Photo, Business Week, Cosmopolitan, Golf Digest, Esquire, etc. and notes the availability of a complete list of over 850 magazine titles.

NEW with this issue is an offer of a CD-ROM disk containing over 3,000 of the latest full featured shareware programs for $19.95 or $14.95 when ordered with a magazine subscription.

On this page you can see a scaled down copy of a typical ORDER FORM to help you select the computer magazines you would most like to order. It is important that you keep in mind that it often takes two to three months for the subscription order to be processed, especially renewals, so get your orders in early.

Order forms should be complete, accurate and legible for processing by Delta. And when you are renewing a subscription the forms should include a recent mailing label from the magazine. For several reasons, the preferred method of paying is by MasterCharge or Visa but checks made out to Delta Publishing Group, Ltd. are acceptable.


Notice: This order form is only in the Hard Copy of the Orange Bytes.


MegaBytes
MB: Megabytes, One Million Bytes. Each byte is 8 binary bits of information. Each binary bit is either a zero or one (on or off). Unlike our decimal system where each decimal bit is one of 10 states, zero to nine.


KiloBytes
KB: Kilobytes, One Thousand Bytes. Each byte is 8 binary bits of information. Each binary bit is either a zero or one (on or off). Unlike our decimal system where each decimal bit is one of 10 states, zero to nine.


CD-ROM
CD-ROM: Compact Disk - Read Only Memory


CAD
CAD: Computer Aided Drafting.


RAM
RAM: Random Access Memory.


SIG
SIG: Special Interest Group.


GUI
GUI: Graphical User Interface.


Hz
Hz: Hertz. Cycles per Second. MHz = One Million Cycles per Second.


Hints on using this Help Hypermedia file

To make life easier for the reader extra command buttons and accelerator keys were added.

The new command button:

Index:  Selects the Index Topic. This topic list everything (almost) that's in the Orange Bytes. The I keyboard accelerator will also go to the Index topic.

Accelerator keys added:

Right Arrow: 	Go to the Next Topic

Left Arrow: 	Go to the Previous Topic

I:	Go To the Index Topic.

M:	Enable the Floating (Popup) Menu.

O:	Copy the current Topic to the Clipboard.

P:	Print the current Topic.

Printing and Coping a Topic:

There may come a time when you want to copy or print a topic, but it only appears as a pop-up and you can't copy or print a pop-up. To get around this do a Search on the title or name that appears at the top of the pop-up. Go to the topic. Now you can print or copy the topic.


Floating Menu:  This is a popup style menu. The right mouse button, if right handed, or the left mouse button, if you are left handed, will enable the floating menu. The M keyboard accelerator will also enable the Floating Menu.


Free Raffle Tickets
Notice! Free Raffle Tickets! It is hereby made known to all and sundry that every club volunteer who assists at a Sunday General Meeting will be presented with Three free raffle tickets.


Notice: Argyros Forum and Irvine/Hashinger Hall are not available this month. They will be replaced by Smith Hall and Bertea Hall, respectively. Check at the membership desk to confirm the correct location of your SIG meeting. Red markers will guide you to Bertea Hall.


Treasurer's Report

For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1995

by Vance Jochim

The NOCCC fiscal year ended with an improvement in cash balances, with $3475 in the checking account and $10,396 in the NOCCC savings account. Additionally, we also have $1673 in prepaid advances and assets.

Earlier this year, we were spending more than we were collecting, but the Board of Directors implemented some actions to reduce expenses and increase earnings so we are now seeing a positive cash flow. WE never did need to use any funds from the savings account.

The checking and savings account and signature authority for the NOCCC cash was turned over to the new Treasurer, Bert Langer, in early July. All vendors or members who need to submit reimbursement requests should send them to Bert.

Now that I am not Treasurer, I plan to submit my spending request for a trip to Seattle, or was it Comdex, or was it Windows 95 in San Jose? See you there!!

Vance Jochim Outgoing (going, going, gone) Treasurer for 1994/95


Treasurer Report - Balance Sheet
                       NOCCC Year End Balance Sheet

                                 As of 6/30/95

NOCCC-All Accounts                                                        Page 1

8/11/95

                                                          6/30/95

                              Account                    Balance

             ----------------------------------------- -----------

             ASSETS

               CURRENT ASSETS

                 NOCCC Checking-Main Checking Acct.       3,475.84

                 NOCCC Savings-So. Calif Savings Acc     10,396.30

                 Postage Advance-Bulk Postage Permits       473.37

                 Prepaid/Advance-Various                  1,200.00

                                                       -----------

                 TOTAL CURRENT ASSETS                    15,545.51

               FIXED ASSETS

                 Fixed Assets/Eq-For fixed assets           532.99

                                                       -----------

                 TOTAL FIXED ASSETS                         532.99

                                                       -----------

               TOTAL ASSETS                              16,078.50

                                                       ===========

             TOTAL LIABILITIES                                0.00

             EQUITY

               EQUITY ACCOUNTS

                 Open Bal Equity-Opening Bal Equity      20,198.60

                                                       -----------

                 TOTAL EQUITY ACCOUNTS                   20,198.60

               CURRENT EARNINGS                          -4,120.10

                                                       -----------

               TOTAL EQUITY                              16,078.50

                                                       -----------

               TOTAL LIABILITIES AND EQUITY              16,078.50

                                                       ===========


Treasurer Report - P & L
                           NOCCC 12 month P&L

                             7/ 1/94 Through 6/30/95

NOCCC-All Accounts                                                        Page 1

8/11/95

                                                                7/ 1/94-

                   Inc/Exp Description                          6/30/95

 ------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------

 INCOME/EXPENSE

   INCOME

     Income Dues-Consolidated Account:

       Dues - New Mbr-Dues for new members                 4,090.00

       Dues - Renewals-Membership Renewals                20,200.50

                                                        -----------

       Total Income Dues-Consolidated Account                        24,290.50

     Income Other-Miscellaneous Income:

       Bytes Advert-Bytes Advertising Income                 380.00

       Consignment Tbl-Income from Consignments            1,886.21

       I-Net Conf 4/95-Diamond Bar 4/95                    1,073.50

       Interest Income-Interest Income                       250.41

       NOCCC Souvenirs-Mugs, Tshirts, etc. Inc               263.00

       Raffle Income-Meeting Raffle Income                 3,282.25

       X Misc Income-Various Revenues                      3,257.72

                                                        -----------

       Total Income Other-Miscellaneous Income                       10,393.09

     Swap Meet/Fall-Income for Fall Swap Meet:

       Spaces - Fall-Space Sales - Fall                    3,940.00

                                                        -----------

       Total Swap Meet/Fall-Income for Fall Swap Meet                 3,940.00

     Swap Meet/Sprng-Spring Swap Meet Income:

       Spaces - Spring-Income for Spring Spaces            3,783.00

                                                        -----------

       Total Swap Meet/Sprng-Spring Swap Meet Income                  3,783.00

                                                                   -----------

     TOTAL INCOME                                                    42,406.59

   EXPENSES

     Admin/Office-Various Admin/Office Exp:

       Advert-Advertising                                    242.09

       Annual PO box-Annual fee                               93.00

       Bank Charges-All Bank Charges                          64.00

       Insurance-Insurance                                 3,525.00

       Printing-Non-Bytes Printing Exp.                       25.86

       Tax/CPA Fees-Exp for Tax, CPA                           5.00

                                                        -----------

       Total Admin/Office-Various Admin/Office Exp                    3,954.95

     BBS Expense-Total BBS Expenses:

       BBS 730-4098-Bert's Line                               51.34

       BBS 730-6596-BBS outcall line                       1,672.28

       BBS 730-6790-Private Member Line                      850.20

       BBS 821-0317-Sanders BBS phone                        570.47

       BBS Equipment-BBS Capital Equipt. Purch             1,498.35

       BBS XMisc Exp-Misc. BBS Expenses                      738.23

                                                        -----------

       Total BBS Expense-Total BBS Expenses                           5,380.87

     Board Expense-NOCCC Board Misc. Exp.:

       Board Misc. Exp-                                      526.85

       Committees Exp-Expense for Board Committ              421.76

       Equipt - Misc-Non BBS Equipt Purchases              1,137.85

       Membership Exp-Expenses for Membership                805.70

                                                        -----------

       Total Board Expense-NOCCC Board Misc. Exp.                     2,892.16

     Bytes Newslettr-Newsletter Exp:

       Bytes Editor Ex-Editor's Expenses                     441.00

       Bytes Mail Proc-Mailing Service Fees                1,003.76

       Bytes Photo Exp-Soltys Assoc.                         135.42

       Bytes Postage-Postage Exp for Bytes                 2,114.14

       Bytes Postcards-Meeting notice postcards              275.27

       Bytes Printing-Printing Exp for Bytes              16,663.56

       Bytes Publisher-Production Exp                         53.88

       Bytes Review Ed-Review Editor Expenses                340.02

                                                        -----------

       Total Bytes Newslettr-Newsletter Exp                          21,027.05

     Meeting Expense-Expenses for Meetings:

       Equipt Rent-Rental of Meeting Equipt                3,232.56

       Meeting Misc.-Misc. Meeting Expense                   453.14

       Meeting Photos-                                        19.66

       Meeting Rent-Chapman Rental Fees                    2,975.00

                                                        -----------

       Total Meeting Expense-Expenses for Meetings                    6,680.36

     NOCCC Souvenirs-Items for Sale at Table:

       T-shirt Purch.-NOCCC shirts                           372.69

       NOCCC Souvenirs-Items for Sale at Table - Other       200.00

                                                        -----------

       Total NOCCC Souvenirs-Items for Sale at Table                    572.69

     Scholarships-Chapman College Scholrshp                           3,000.00

     Swap - Fall Exp-Fall Swap Meet expens:

       Fall Advert-Fall Swap Meet Adv Exp                    681.00

       Fall Loc Rent-Fall Swap Meet Loc Rent                 420.00

       Fall Postage-Fall Swap Meet Postg Exp                  34.80

       Fall Printing-Fall Swap Printing Exp.                 275.00

       Fall XMisc. Exp-Fall Swap Meet Misc. Exp              174.52

                                                        -----------

       Total Swap - Fall Exp-Fall Swap Meet expens                    1,585.32

     Swap - Sprg Exp-Spring Swap Meet Expenses:

       Spring Advert-Advert Exp - Spring Swap                259.33

       Spring Postage-Postage Exp - Spring Swap               63.56

       Spring Printing-Printing Exp for Spr. Swp             213.26

       Spring RentOthr-Other Rent Exp Spring Swp             420.00

       Spring XMisc Ex-Misc Expense Spring Swap               75.46

                                                        -----------

       Total Swap - Sprg Exp-Spring Swap Meet Expenses                1,031.61

     Telephone-Telephone:

       Chapman Modem-633-9259 at Chapman?                    190.30

       Phone - Hotline-998-8080  -  Lenocker                 191.68

                                                        -----------

       Total Telephone-Telephone                                        381.98

     X-Misc Exp-Miscellaneous                                             0.00

                                                                   -----------

     TOTAL EXPENSES                                                  46,506.99

                                                                   -----------

   TOTAL INCOME/EXPENSE                                              -4,100.40

                                                                   ===========


Sam Miller - Editor Orange Bytes
Sam Miller, Editor of Orange Bytes, is a long time member of the Club. Sam can be reached on either of the Club's Bulletin Boards. If its really important he can be reach at (310)421-5701. If you are interested in contributing to Orange Bytes and you cannot use the bulletin boards to submitt your articles, try mailing it to him. Information on submitting to Orange Bytes can be found under About Orange Bytes.


Dale Blank
Dale Blank, Assistant Editor of the Orange Bytes, has written a half dozen books, and is current editor of an Elks newsletter.


Upcoming Computer Shows
Upcoming Commerical Computer Shows

by O. T. Stoll - NOCCC

The operators of the computer shows noted below provide our club with a free booth at their meets. You ought to go and see the latest in the state of the art at prices that are hard to beat.

North Orange County Computer Club

At the Anaheim MarketPlace, 1440 South Anaheim Boulevard, Anaheim -- October 15, 1995

Advanced Computer Products

1210 E. Edinger Avenue, Santa Ana -- September 24, November 26, 1995.

Buena Park Sequoia Conference Center

September 10, October 1, November 5, 1995

Computer Marketplace

LA County Fairgrounds -- October 7-8,  28-29, November 18-19, 19955

Robert Austin

Anaheim Stadium -- Setember 16, October 14, November 4, 1995

Ham Meets

Inland Empire Amateur Radio Club - Second Saturday - A. B. Miller High School, Fontana

TRW - Last Saturday - TRW parking lot Redondo Beach

Santee Drive In - 1st and 3rd Saturdays - North San Diego

CMRA - De Vry Institute of Technology, 901 Corporate Center Drive, Pomona -- The 3rd Saturday of each month.

We really need help at these meets, to pass out information and answer questions.

Come out, get in free, help the club and enjoy meeting other computerists. Call 714-521-6915 to sign up.


NOCCC Computer Fair and Swap Meet

To Take Place Sunday October 15th

by O. T. Stoll, NOCCC

We are putting on our 34th Computer Fair and Swap Meet on Sunday, October 15, 1995.

These Computer Fair and Swap Meet events are our primary way of funding both the NOCCC Scholarships at Chapman University and the Club BBS.

The event hours will be 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and the location is the Anaheim Marketplace parking lot. The Anaheim Marketplace is located at 1440 South Anaheim Boulevard in Anaheim. This is at the corner of Anaheim Boulevard and Cerritos Avenue, between Katella and Ball.

We have had in past up to 120 vendors at each swap meet and approximately 3000 to 4000 buyers. Lately a number of our vendors have been selling Amateur Radio and Electronic supplies.

All members need to get the word out to vendors and buyers to make this the best event ever. We need volunteers to help in passing out over 15,000 flyers at trade shows, other computer clubs, new car showrooms, colleges, universities, high schools, and local electronic stores. I will be passing a clipboard around at the March and April general meetings for volunteers to sign up to help on the day before the October 14th meet and on the day of the meet, October 15th.

It is very important that you volunteer. It only need to be for a couple of hours. You will be a big help to the club and will find it enjoyable. If we do not get more help than in the recent past, this could be our last meet.

We will have advertising in the Orange County Register. Press releases have been sent to the computer magazines, local newspapers and cable TV companies. You can participate in promoting our swap meet -- send a flyer or call on the phone any cable companies or local newspapers that have calendar sections.

Phone me at (714) 521-6915 if you need flyers, vendor forms or wish to volunteer to help at the meet.


Post Information about Your Event
Post Your Special Events: If you would like to post information about an event coming up, then let the Orange Bytes know. Leave a message on the BBS to John Krill or leave the information at the Membership Desk during the NOCCC monthly meeting addressed to John Krill.


Bulletin Board Information
The Club Bulletin Board

NOCCC maintains the Club Board BBS for Membership and Public Use.

The BBS is one of the largest in Southern California. It maintains and constantly updates gigabytes of files of general interest, shareware, and public domain software. Three lines are accessible for 14,400 baud modems.

Line 1 is open to the public: 714-730-6743. It is more difficult of access. Non members are urged to join NOCCC to obtain easier access through private lines 2 and 3.

Lines 2 and 3 are private lines limited to NOCCC members: 714-730-6790 and 714- 821-0317 (Cypress). Members of NOCCC usually can gain access easily to lines 2 and 3.

Members renewing must renew your private line access by contacting line 1 for reauthorization.

NOCCC makes every attempt to make sure that the materials located on our BBS are appropriate for our membership's needs, are free of viruses and do not violate any copyrights or software patent rights of the owners. Because portions of the information are uploaded to our BBS automatically and other files are uploaded by both NOCCC members and non-members, NOCCC cannot and does not guarantee the programs, information and files on our BBS. If any BBS user feels that they have discovered materials which violate NOCCC BBS policies or applicable laws he is requested to notify the BBS sysop or any NOCCC Board of Directors member.


Club BBS Developments

by Bert Langer, Sysop

This is a generic message being sent to all users. It does not require a reply, although discussion is welcome and suggestions are solicited.

NOCCC has decided that while full file access will continue to be made available to the public, other enhancements to the BBS will be for members only. We hope that some users will join NOCCC, both to lend support to what has become a pretty expensive facility to maintain as well as to gain access to the board enhancements.

Non-members will have: 30 minutes per day, with full access to the file libraries including the CD-ROMs; use of the local message base; and pretty much everything they have now through the five access lines except for the shortened access time.

Club members will get in addition:

60 minutes per day.

28,800 modems on all three private lines.

Little or no waiting even during the peak hours.

Use of the QMAIL door.

Use of the enhanced File View feature.

Access to the FIDONET conferences.

Internet access for USEMAIL and a limited number of NEWSGROUPS.

Note: The FIDONET and Internet connections are current work in progress; I estimate we will be on the air by August 7th.

All of the other outstanding benefits of Club membership: the monthly 40 page Orange Bytes newsletter, the monthly meetings, those marvelous raffles, the consignment table, the "HelpLine," great vendor presentations and "special deals."

YOU ARE A NON-MEMBER INTERESTED IN JOINING? Just fill out the form on page 39 and mail it with your check (only $30/yr!) for my attention at the address shown at the bottom -- you will be entered as a member and I will upgrade your security as soon as I receive your application.

If you have any questions, just leave me a message.


The Club BBS News

Changes to the BBS

Each of you has mail waiting to be read which describes changes to the BBS. The most important changes are that the public line daily time limit is reduced to 30 minutes per day; public line users should now enter EMAIL instead of QMAIL to create a QWK packet for downloading or to upload a REP file; and QMAIL is now available on the private lines only. There are several other changes also, so read your mail. Incidentally, I have made a minor configuration change. You are now required to read any mail addressed to you before proceeding with other activities.

QMAIL

For NOCCC Club members only! QMAIL has been modified to activate the New Files feature. You will have to add it in the Configuration of QMAIL. Please let me know if you have any problems. P.S. It is only activated for the Main and NOCCC conferences.

Bad Spelling

Folks, I'm fed up with the bad spelling in the message areas <grin> so I have installed a spell checker for you (and me). After typing your message, note the message number and exit to the main menu. Then type SPELL <msg. #> and it will spell check your message. It's no SHARE SPELL, but its pretty cute. Only callers with NOCCC private line clearance can add words to the dictionary; and for you chosen few, please don't add every new word you come across - it would soon slow the checker down to a crawl. If that happens I will have to disable the ability to add words. I hope you enjoy it; please let me know so I can register it if we want to go on using it.

File View Fixed

I managed to fix the (V)iew problem in the FILES function. Now you can view as well as tag for download. However, the view only lists the files in the archive; you still can't read files or selectively download them. I'm still looking for a way to bring this capability back.

Mail Door

I have located a nice substitute for QMAIL! It is still accessed by typing QMA at the main menu. Let me know what you think about it - if you like it I'll register it.

New Files Scan

I have installed an improved (N)ew files scan PPE. The scan will now only look at the hard drive directories, skipping the CD-ROMS. It also lets you enter the number of days back to scan, rather than a date. Please try it out; if all is well it will obviate the need for Conference 4, HARDDRIVE, so I will close that conference.

Timebank

I've had it with the current TIMEBANK, so I have installed a different PPE to provide this capability. It is still called by TIME at the main menu. I suggest you shift to Novice mode before exploring this new time bank (X at the main menu toggles between Novice and Expert mode). As an additional note, you exit the bank by pressing ENTER at the timebank main prompt. Unfortunately any balance you had in the earlier time bank has been lost. There was no reasonable way to transfer balances. My condolences to the bereaved.

Replacement Disks

I have replaced the Nightowl 13 and Nightowl 14 disks with Nightowl 15, released January 1995. I have also replaced the HOBBES OS/2 disk with the CICA Windows disks. These are two CD-ROMS with 4855 Windows files, released February 1995.

I have replaced the two SIMTEL CD-ROMS with the latest (January 1995)

Newsclips Conference

For many months, Steve Guich ( and to a limited extent, others) have been kind enough to take time to upload interesting news items as messages. Unfortunately, there are some callers who have no interest in these rather lengthy messages and have requested that they be placed in a separate conference so that they do not clutter up the QWK packages. In response, I have established CONFERENCE 6 as the NEWSCLIPS Conference. Uploaders should join Conference 6 before posting news clips. I would also appreciate having messages commenting upon these news clips posted in the conference rather than the main message base.

Internet Conference

I have established Conference 7 as the INTERNET INFO conference for the exchange of messages concerning INTERNET matters. Please use this conference in the future for discussion of INTERNET related topics.

Time of Event

I am moving the EVENT time to 3:30 A.M. It takes 15 - 20 minutes, so be aware, night-owls, you may find your time interrupted in the wee hours.

No More Chat

Sorry, folks - CHATTING is just tying up the board too much during prime time, so the CHAT facility has been closed.

If you want to know what node you are on (needed with every trouble report!) please type WHO at the main menu.


Introduction to the Club Board BBS
Introduction to Using the Club Board BBS

Whenever the Club Board prompts you for an answer, it will usually try and 'guess' your response and default to that answer when you simply press the [Enter] key. Yes or No answers may simply be answered by entering [Y] or [N] respectively.  the Club Board commands are not case-sensitive (i.e. "Y" and "y" have the same effect).

Logging In

When you connect with the Club Board at (714) 730-6743, you are asked a series of questions that must be answered before access to commands and downloads is permitted. The Club Board will initially ask you the following questions:

Do you like your display to be in color? (Enter)=YES?

Most callers choose [enter key} or [Y] for this option. By doing so, the Club Board displays all text in ANSI color, making your screen displays more colorful and usually easier to read. In order to take advantage of the ANSI color mode, your terminal program must support ANSI graphics. By choosing [N], however, you can slightly increase speed since color codes are no longer transmitted to your machine.

What is your First Name

Enter your first name at the prompt.

The Club Board will then prompt you for your last name.

If you've never before logged into the Club Board, it will recognize that you're a new user and ask if you'd like to continue. By indicating [C]ontinue you will be presented with the WELCOME screen, which briefly sets forth the purposes and policies of the BBS. The Club Board will then ask you to select a password. Type in any combination of up to 12 letters and numbers (and some special characters) that you wish to use during future log-ons. It's a good idea to record your password and keep it in a safe place, as the Club Board will not allow you to login without your proper password should you forget it. Additionally, it is advised that you keep your passwords secret and use a different password for each bulletin board that you call to prevent unauthorized use, or 'hacking' of your various bulletin board accounts.

Following this procedure the Club Board will ask several questions that are relatively straight forward - like your data phone number, home phone number and whether or not you want to clear the screen between each message (I recommend a [Y] answer). It will then ask you to select a default Protocol. Without going into detail at this point, if the communications program you are using on your computer supports ZMODEM (most do) then select [Z]. If not, select [C].

When you have answered all the questions asked, the Club Board will continue with the logon process. Once the Club Board has established your identity it will display the NEWS file to you. I suggest that you read the entire file the first time on. After that you need only read the new entries.

After having seen the NEWS file you will enter the Main Board. This is the root of the the Club Board structure, where every caller allowed to enter the system begins his or her session. Here is what it looks like:

========================  THE CLUB BOARD BBS  ====================

+--------------------+ +-------------------+ +-------------------+

¦   Mail Commands    ¦ ¦    File Areas     ¦ ¦  Other Commands   ¦

+--------------------¦ +-------------------¦ +-------------------¦

¦[A]bandon Conference¦ ¦[D]ownload file    ¦ ¦[B]ulletins        ¦

¦[C]omment to Sysop  ¦ ¦[DB]ownload batch  ¦ ¦[G]oodbye [BYE]    ¦

¦[E]nter a message   ¦ ¦[F]ile Directories ¦ ¦[H]elp Functions   ¦

¦[J]oin a conference ¦ ¦[FL]ag file for d/l¦ ¦[I]nitial Welcome  ¦

¦[Q]uick message scan¦ ¦[N]ew files date   ¦ ¦[M]ode color/mono  ¦

¦[R]ead mail         ¦ ¦[U]pload file      ¦ ¦[NEWS]File display ¦

¦[RM]Re-read mem #   ¦ ¦[UB]pload batch    ¦ ¦[O]perator page    ¦

¦[RE]ply to msg #    ¦ ¦[Z]ippy DIR scan   ¦ ¦[P]age length set  ¦

¦[TS]Txt srch Msgs   ¦ ¦[T]rans. Protocol  ¦ ¦[TI]mebank         ¦

¦[SELECT] Conferences¦ ¦[L]ocate files     ¦ ¦[USERS]List users  ¦

¦ for scanning or    ¦ ¦[F V]iew a file    ¦ ¦[V]iew settings    ¦

¦reading.            ¦ +-------------------+ ¦[W]rite user info  ¦

¦[MA]il CAM-MAIL Door¦                       ¦[X]pert on/off     ¦

¦[QMA]il QMAIL Door  ¦                       +-------------------+

+--------------------+

Please see file area 61 for lists of downloadable files.

==The North Orange County Computer Club welcomes you to the CLUB BOARD==

(58 min. left) Main Board Command?

At this point, if you are an NOCCC member you would enter a [C], to leave a [C]omment to the sysop requesting access to the private lines. This will display a message urging you to carefully reconsider your intent to enter a comment; at this time you may safely ignore this admonishment and enter a [Y].

When the editor screen appears, simply type in your request (I don't need your name - that is already displayed to me) and give your membership number. I will upgrade your security, usually within 24 hours. This will allow you to make future calls using the private line; (714) 730-6790 or (714) 821-0317 if you are in the Cypress area. In general, you will only rarely encounter a busy signal on the private lines.

But Wait! There's More!

Now that you have finally been able to connect using the public line (usually not an easy task) take time to look around. Don't be afraid to explore the Club Board!  Often people feel intimidated by the many commands available to them and thus are reluctant to try commands they may not understand for fear of 'crashing' the system or destroying valuable data. The Club Board has been designed to be friendly as well as safe; if you enter an invalid command, the Club Board will simply ignore the command and return you to the command prompt. Help is always available by typing either [?] or [H] at nearly any prompt.

Downloading Files

Before signing off the Club Board you might want to try downloading a file. I suggest you start with the utility used to "unpack" the other files on the BBS. It is called PKZ204G.EXE To do this, at the main menu type [D] for Download. It will ask you for the filename to download; respond [PKZ204G.EXE]. If you did not select a protocol when you first registered it will now ask you for a selection; if you did make a selection during registration this will be skipped and you will proceed directly to the next prompt, which repeats the request (if you selected a BATCH protocol such as ZMODEM; if you selected C for XMODEM-CRC it will not ask you for further file selections.) If you get the repeated request you may select another file, such as CALGUIDE.ZIP, the file from which some of this article was abstracted.

When you are done listing selections, press [ENTER] at the request prompt. This will result in a short screen detailing the transfer statistics, followed by the following prompt:

(A)bort, (E)dit, (G)oodbye, (L)ist, (P)rotocol, (Enter)=continue? ( )

At this point you could [A]bort the download, [E]dit the list of files selected for download, [L]ist the files selected for download, select a different [P]rotocol, start the download with an automatic [G]oodbye at the end of the download or finally just press [ENTER] to start the download and then gain control again at the conclusion of the operation.

If you selected ZMODEM and are using any one of several communications programs, the download will start automatically upon pressing [G] or [ENTER]; if you selected another protocol or your communications program does not support ZMODEM autostart, you will have to manually start the download from your end; many programs use the PAGE DOWN key to display a menu of protocols to select from to start the download. You must use the same protocol you requested on the Club Board! A frequent point of confusion for new users is the the Club Board uses C to denote XMODEM-CRC while many communications programs use an X to identify XMODEM-CRC.

Pkware's Pkunzip and Pkzip utilities

Finally, if you did download PKZ204G.EXE, do the following:

1. Make a sub-directory on your hard disk called PKZIP.

2. Copy PKZ204G.EXE from your communications program download directory to the PKZIP sub-directory.

3. Change to the PKZIP sub-directory and type PKZ204G

4. There will be some activity, and at the conclusion a DIRectory listing of PKZIP will disclose a number of programs, including PKUNZIP.EXE. This is the program you will need to "unpack" almost any program you download from the Club Board or almost any other BBS. I suggest you copy it into a sub-directory that is in your PATH as listed in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

5. To "unpack", or as they say, "unzip" a file such as CALGUIDE.ZIP, simply type PKUNZIP CALGUIDE and it will "unpack" the CALGUIDE.ZIP file for you.

6. For much more extensive help with navigating a BBS or handling file downloads and uploads, as well as reading and responding to mail, etc., I strongly recommend that you attend the Beginners Modem SIG at the next NOCCC meeting.


How to Access the NOCCC Private Line
How to Access the NOCCC BBS Members Only Line

by Alan Pearlman, NOCCC

1. 	Call the BBS using the public line (714) 730-6743.

2. 	When the main menu appears, type C for Comment to SYSOP. The BBS will respond with the following message:

Unless you are about to leave a comment containing ONLY personal information, please consider that others might benefit from what you have to say - leaving a comment addressed to the SYSOP would deprive them; furthermore, if in my opinion your comment is not private information he will normally NOT respond to it. So please review carefully what you wish to say, and if feasible, consider aborting this entry and, using the function `[E]nter a message', leave a communication that may precipitate participation by other callers; otherwise, you may simply enter `Y' at the following prompt, leaving your comment.

3. 	Of course you want to leave a personal message, so at the question mark, you enter a Y.

4. 	You will then be asked to enter your message. Please enter the following line if you are a new member (after determining your membership number at the membership desk or by calling O.T. Stoll, Alan Pearlman or John Johnson, whose telephone numbers are in the NOCCC Officers column on page 3 of the Bytes):

I have recently joined NOCCC. Please give me access to the private line. My membership number is ####.

5. 	After you have entered the appropriate line from step 4, press the enter key and then the escape key.

6. 	At the next prompt, type S

7. 	The BBS will respond with a message similar to the line below

Saving Comment #18509

and then return you to a prompt.

8. 	You're done. In about 24 hours, you will be able to call the BBS using the members only line. Bert will leave you a message when you have access to the private line. The phone number for the private line is (714) 730-6790. If you are calling from the Cypress area, you may call (714) 821-0317.


BBS - Files on this system - why the ZIP extension?
Files on this system - why the ZIP extension?

This is Item 1 form the Club BBS Bulletins.

Quick note: if you have trouble with a ZIP'd file - download PKZ204G.EXE

Most all of the files on our system have a ZIP extension on them, for example, in directory #2 there is a file called K9X85-1.ZIP.

What is the significance of ZIP and why is it used here?

A program called PKZIP, created by Phil Katz, has been used to create the files you see on this system with the ZIP extension. Each of those files may contain within themselves one or more files in a compressed format.

The reasons for ZIPing a file are:

  1)  it creates a smaller file which saves disk space

  2)  the same file, being smaller, takes less time to download

  3)  because the file can contain entire groups of files (even directories) inside of a single file it is easier to download one file and get all of the necessary components of a program or system at one time

For example, the file I mentioned above, called K9X85-1.ZIP, contains within itself 38 separate files relating to the K9 Communications Program. All told - the size of the separate files adds up to 486,610 bytes - which could take nearly 45 minutes download at 1200 baud. Incidentally, you might also note that there are two other files in this series - K9X85-2 and K9X85-3; The total package is so large (over 1 megabyte) that we broke it up into pieces so 1200-baud callers could get it in several sessions without running afoul of the one-hour-per-day time limit.

By compressing all 38 files into one file you are able to download all 38 files at once and the size of the download is now only 258,658 bytes (a savings of nearly an 20 minutes of download time at 1200 baud).

What do I do with a ZIP file after I've downloaded it?

To extract the files from a ZIP file you use the companion program to PKZIP called PKUNZIP.  An example might be:

PKUNZIP K9X85-1

which will extract all 38 files into the current directory.

What if I get the message "warning don't know how to handle this file"?

That means that the file you are trying to UNZIP was created with a later release of PKZIP. For example, you might be using version 0.92 of PKZIP and PKUNZIP and if you try to extract files from a ZIP file created by version 1.10 of PKZIP then you will get that message. To correct this - you need to download a newer copy of PKZIP and PKUNZIP.

Where do I get PKZIP and PKUNZIP?

The file is available from here and is called PKZ204G.EXE. This is a self-extracting file - which means that you download only one file but when you run this file it will extract a number of files from itself (including the PKZIP.EXE and PKUNZIP.EXE files mentioned above).


Fast On and Fast Off the NOCCC BBS
Fast On and Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 1

by Phil Barr, NOCCC

I have often tried to encourage some of our members, especially SIG Leaders, and Board Members to use our BBS more often to keep in touch with each other between meetings. The usual reply was something about "not having the time" or for those further away "it costs too much in toll fees". The obvious answer to those objections is for them to use the BBS feature that allows the user to download all the new files and new messages in areas of interest. This is in the form of a packet or file (*.QWK) that can be read at your leisure off line. This download rarely takes more than a minute or two. This has become really important to me since relocating to Nevada and I discovered that the program QMAIL that I was familiar with had recently been replaced by Msg-Pack and required a reconfiguration. Having just gone through the configuration process makes this a good time for me to sum it up for those of you that still have that to do.

If you have been getting on to our BBS but not using this feature because you did not know where to start you can try the following procedure I've used and then modify it to suit your purposes if necessary. Before doing anything else of course you should select the transfer protocol (I like ZMODEM) and also tell The Board and your communications program what path and directory you routinely want it to use when you download files. At the Main Menu, after logging onto the Board, type QM to get you into Msg-Pack v1.5 . Since this is your first time to use Msg-Pack you will have to set it up (just this once unless you want to modify it later). You start by typing 1 to select the conferences from which you think you would find interesting messages (I selected 0 for MAIN, 1 for NOCCC, 5 for TECH and 6 for NEWSCLIPS). To get back to the Main Menu of Msg-Pack type Q and then type 4 to Alter the Configuration Options so you can specify the maximum file sizes you want to allow. I arbitrarily set mine at 5 for public messages, 5 for private messages, 20 for maximum number of messages per conference and 75 for the maximum number of messages per packet.

If you now type D (and enter of course) the program will create a QWK packet, named KLUB.QWK by the program, and if you have previously told the Board you use ZMODEM as a protocol and where you wanted download files to be placed the Board will take over and download the file for you. Typing G will get you off the Board entirely or Q will take you out of Msg-Pack and back to the Main Menu. The file KLUB.QWK is in a language that is easily read off-line with a program (several are on the BBS) like SLMR or Silly Little Mail Reader. With it you can read any or all of the messages in the packet, reply to any you like, enter any new messages you want while you are reading the packet and then upload those replies the next time you log on. But that is to be covered in a future article. Since Msg-Pack does not include a listing of the new files, as QMAIL did, you will probably want to get these from the Main Menu either before or after going into Msg-Pack and I will cover that in a follow-up article. Also to be covered at a later date are the easy way replies to messages are handled in Msg-Pack and the way a script can be created that will log you on to the board, get a list of new files, upload any replies you have from previous messages, download your packet of new messages since you were last on, and log you off - all in a couple minutes without any further input from you once you've gotten through to the Board.

Click here for Part 2


Fast On and Fast Off the NOCCC BBS - Part 2

by Phil Barr, NOCCC

Last month's article on this subject told how you might access and use a mail service on our BBS just by typing QM at the main menu. Here is where you can get a packet of all the messages that users had left in different areas of interest since the last time you had downloaded one of the packets. But the caveat was that the KLUB.QWK packet could only be read by an off-line mail reader like SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader).

If this is all new to you and you need a place to start I suggest you download SLMR from this BBS and install it on your computer. Fellow NOCCC member Bill Hinds introduced me to this program saying it was so easy to use it did not even have a manual with it and I can confirm that. However, if you do get into an area that is giving you problems, it is comforting to know that Bill is listed in the Help Line for SLMR and available generally from 5 to 9 p.m. to give you a boost and a few words of encouragement.

Once SLMR is installed the only thing you have to do is configure it to work with your set up. When you go into SLMR just press the designated key to continue and ALT-C for Configuration. You can start by accepting all of the default settings for eveything except DIRECTORIES where you tell SLMR where to find your QWK packets that will be downloaded from the BBS and the REP reply packets you will want to upload occasionally to the BBS. For these I used the same upload and download directories that were in my communications program. That should be all you have to do to be ready to read your packets and reply to messages. You can even enter new messages while you are reading off line so that they are there and ready to upload the next time you are in MSG-PACK avoiding the hassel of composing the message on-line while the clock is running.

Now all you have to do is get on NOCCC's BBS and type in QM when you get to the Main Menu to take you into MSG-PACK, type D or 3 to ask for your messages. MSG-PACK will create a QWK packet that will be downloaded into the Directory you specified in the configuration. Typing G will then take log you off the BBS.

Later on when you have some spare time you need only get into the SLMR you installed and configured earlier and you will find a KLUB.QWK file listed there that you can read at your leisure. If at that time you find a message to which you would like to add your two cent's worth type R for reply, write your reply and continue reading the messages. This will create a REP packet for you and the next time you log on to the BBS just (1) type QM to go to the MSG-PACK, (2) type 2 to upload your reply and after that (3) type 3 to download your new messages, (4) G to say Goodbye and you'll have been on and off that board in just a couple minutes.

After uploading replies and downloading the packet of new messages you might elect to use Q to return to the Main Menu instead of G to log off if there are other things you need to do. For example, you might want to get a list of the files that have been uploaded since you were last on and that is a subject to be covered in Part 3 of Fast On and Fast Off next month since that list can also be perused at your convenience off-line.

Click here for Part 3


Fidonet

by Kief S. Morris, ETPCUG

Note to NOCCC members: Our club is considering entering the FIDONET -- so this article from Tennessee was considered timely.

If you've called very many BBS's, you've probably run across those boards that demand that you press the escape key before the BBS presents you with a prompt for your name. You may have noticed that these boards have message areas that get hundreds of messages a day, most of whom aren't even posted by people who call that board. How the heck do they do that? What all does this Fidonet thing offer to BBS's and their users? Fidonet is the hobby BBS's answer to Internet. Over 20,000 sysops worldwide have joined into the network to become part of this international community. For users of a Fidonet BBS, the network offers communication with other users around the country and worldwide, allowing them to get the latest word on new products, and help in using them. Increasingly, Fidonet boards are using the system to offer their callers more and more benefits, including getting the latest shareware files through automatic distribution, and even Usenet Newsgroups and Internet E-Mail.

The Orgins of Fidonet

Fidonet's humble beginnings came with Tom Jennings, the San Francisco author of the Fido BBS software. Wanting to exchange messages with a friend helping test the program in Baltimore, Tom built in a feature that would let them automatically send messages back and forth. Thus, netmail was born. How odes the dang thing work? The key to a Fidonet BBS is it's "Front-End Mailer", or Mailer. This program runs when there is no activity on the BBS. When a call comes in, the mailer determines if it is another mailer or a human caller - if it's a human caller, who announces his nature by pounding on the escape key, the mailer turns over the reigns to the BBS program. If it's another BBS's mailer, the two exchange identification, and then exchange any mail or files they have intended for the other BBS. The mailer is also set up with a schedule for when to call out to deliver mail, or to "poll" another board to see if there is mail waiting.

What kind of stuff do they transfer?

The basic element of Fido communication is Netmail, a person to person message used extensively by sysops. It's a more or less private E-Mail message. Netmail was the sole reason for Fidonet in the beginning, but what really opened the net up was Echomail. Echomail, quite simply, is a way for different BBS's to share public message areas. When a user calls a local BBS and enters a message in a Fidonet conference, the message is exported from the BBS message base and packaged up for delivery to other BBS's. The program that does this is an "Echomail Processor". The next time the board's mailer connects to the mailer of the BBS with which it trades mail, the message will be passed on. The next BBS enters the message into its own message base, for its users to see, and also passes it on down the road to other boards.

Through this method, messages you post in the Fidonet "Windows" conference on one board are seen within days on every other Fidonet board that echoes that particular conference. Likewise, you see messages posted on other boards and can reply to them. Currently there are 480 different message area topics on the official Fidonet distribution system (the "Backbone"), ranging from "Abled", the disabled users' information exchange, to "Zymurgy", for discussion of beer home brewing. How do they organize over 20000 BBS's? Not easily! The largest organization level is the "Zone", which generally comprises a continent. These are:

1  North America

2  Europe

3  Pacific (Australia, etc)

4  South America

5  Africa

6  Asia

Below this level are Regions, which are comprised of nations or portions of a large nation. Tennessee is a part of Region 18, which includes the Southeast US and the Carribean. Nets are local organizations of Fidonet BBS's. Their geographical size depends on the concentration of BBS's in an area. In Tennessee we have 8 Nets:

Net	Net Name	NC's Location

116	Middle Tennessee	Nashville

123	Mid-South Net	Memphis

362	Chatta-Net Metro	Chattanooga

3615	Tennessee Valley Net	Pigeon Forge

3621	Clarksville	Clarksville

3627	Cumberland Area	Cookeville

3642	Upper East Tennessee	Kingsport

3643	Rural SE Tennessee	Madisonvilee

Each BBS in Fidonet is referred to as a "Node" (although a BBS with more than one line my have more than one node), and has a node number. The Zone, Net, and Node numbers are strung together to form a Fidonet Address. For example, a BBS in North America (Zone 1), in the Tennessee Valley Net (Net 3615), with the number 210 assigned to it within the net, would be "1:3615/210". At the Net, Region, and Zone levels there are Coordinators responsible for their group. The Net Coordinator (NC) helps new nodes join Fidonet by issuing them a Fidonet address, and putting an entry for them into the local Net's part of the Nodelist. The Nodelist is a weekly directory of all Fidonet BBS's, used by mailers and other software to get the phone number and other info for other members of the network.

The Nodelist, although not structured for humans to read easily, is credited as the largest and most accurate BBS list in existence. This is because it is administered at each level of the organization. The Net Coordinators make sure each node in their net is active, and send updated weekly listings for the net to the Region level. The Regional Coordinator (RC) compiles these into the Regional section of the Nodelist and sends that to the Zone Coordinator (ZC). The six Zone lists are compiled by one of the ZC's into the full nodelist, which, as of the most recent list, is 1.7 Megabytes in size. The Ecomail organization All of those Coordinator positions were thought up to handle the original, netmail oriented Fidonet. As Echomail became bigger and bigger, a parallel structure came into play to handle it. In each local net there is a NEC (Net Echomail Coordinator), who may be assisted by Hubs. Each node calls a hub to get its echomail. The hub, in turn, calls a Regional Hub, which is administered by the REC, which in turn calls one of three Zone Hubs, also known as "Backbone Hubs". This organization as a whole is referred to as the "Backbone", and runs all of the Echomail in Zone 1. There is no organized system for sharing echomail with other Zones, but many echoes are carried internationally anyways.

Still Growing!

Fidonet gets bigger every week, and is expanding in new directions. Just as echomail started as a new concept that grew to a major operation - in fact, the lifeblood of the network today - something new has been becoming a larger and larger part of the Fidonet. File Distribution has been around for some time, but this past year has become organized and widespread. File distribution is patterned after the echomail concept. If different BBS's can share messge areas, with all messages in each area sent to every other board that participates in that area, why not do the same thing with file areas? Unlike echomail areas, most File Distribution Areas (FDA's) can only have files entered from a limited number of locations. At these locations, new files are entered into the file area, and when a BBS set up to receive that area calls the first board, the files are automatically sent over, moved to the second board's download directories, and copied for that board's downlinks. Thus, the latest version of McAfee's Scan, a shareware virus detection program, can be distributed to hundreds of BBS's around the continent within a few days, requiring little or no itervention by the sysops.

This is a great boon to sysops, who can quickly build a large collection of recent, quality shareware. Users benefit as well, being able to find the latest shareware on local boards in a timely manner. The file distribution system began with the Shareware Distribution Network (SDN) and Shareware Distribution System (SDS), two closely related organizations. The SDS and SDN were generally restrictive about who could and couldn't participate in their distribution, but the software has advanced to the point where any Fidonet sysop can set it up. Thus, the old organizations are giving way to a new, more freely available group called the Filebone. The Filebone patterns itself in some ways after the Echomail "Backbone" system, letting any sysop with compatible software link in for easy, fast files. Playing with the big boys - Internet & Usenet vis Fido Gateways in many areas allow the interchange of Fidonet and Internet communication. The Internet is a system that connects different nets, mainly large systems at universities, military and other government installations, and corporations, to exchange mail and files. Usenet is a collection of message areas called newsgroups, which operate very much like Fidonet echomail, distributed via the Internet and other means.

Connecting to the Internet and Usenet is of growing interest to Fidonet systems. Those BBS's which have this connection can offer their users the Usenet Newsgroups, which are very active and interesting message areas. They can also offer Internet E-Mail, giving them a way to exchange person to person messages with practically anybody who has any interaction with computer networks. An Internet address is the closest thing to a universal E-Mail address there is - they can be used to communicate with individuals at universities, computer companies, newspapers, government, Fidonet, Compuserve, and more. Having this service available on your friendly neighborhood BBS can be very useful, not to mention economical. Sounds neat - where do I sign up? If you have a modem, just call up one of your friendly neighborhood Fidonet boards. If you're a sysop, contact a local Fidonet board to get copies of a mailer and echomail processor for your BBS, and ask the sysop for advice on who to contact to get your Fidonet address. Then you're ready to join the international electronic community!


The Club BBS Directories
Directories on the Club BBS

Directories on Hard Disk - Listed by Directory Number

Directories on the Hard Disk - Listed by Category

CICA Windows CD-ROM

Night Owl's v15  Directories

Simtel MSDOS Archive   Disk 1.  Sep. 94.   Walnut Creek CD-ROM

Simtel MSDOS Archive   Disk 2.  Sep. 94.   Walnut Creek CD-ROM


BBS Hard Disk Directories - Listed by Directory Number
Directories on Hard Disk - Listed by Directory Number

 1. Printer drivers

 2. COMM programs

 3. Mail and message utilities

 4. Video drivers

 5. Transfer protocols

 6. COMM utilities

 7. Directories and text files

 8. PC-Board programs and utilities

 9. Other BBS programs & utilities

10. File compression utilities

11. Clipart

12. Menu and shell programs

13. Directory programs

14. Catalog programs

15. File utilities

16. Video and color control

17. Graphics generators and colorizers

18. Graphics display utilities

19. Graphic displays

20. Music and sound

21. INTERNET, USENET & support programs

22. Printer setup, spoolers & misc.

23. Networks

24. Printing forms, envelopes, labels, etc.

25. File printing utilities

26. Mailing list mgt. & printing

27. Fonts

28. Database

29. Misc.business mgt. & utilities

30. Engineering, science, mathematics

31. The CP/M Files

32. Stock market

33. Memory management

34. BOOTUP, CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT

35. Magazines, newsletters & reviews

36. HAM radio and packet

37. Accounting programs

38. BASIC and QUICKBASIC

39. C language

40. Not in Use

41. Other languages and utilities

42. Text editors and utilities

43. Word processors and utilities

44. Text file utilities

45. PRODIGY

46. Genealogy

47. Spreadsheets & integrated packages

48. Hard disk utilities

49. Mouse drivers & utilities

50. Not in use

51. Diagnostics & benchmarks

52. OS/2 Programs and Utilities

53. Batch file utilities

54. Not in use

55. Not in use

56. Trojan and virus protection

57. Not in use

58. Miscellaneous utilities

59. Magazine utilities

60. The Bible and Bible utilities

61. Lists of files on this and other boards

62. Miscellaneous programs

63. Games other than DOOM

64. Not in use

65. Diet, health, food

66. Tutorials, education, teacher support

67. Operating Systems and Task Switchers

68. WINDOWS Utilities

70. The NOCCC Conference Files

71. Business/spreadsheet SIG files

72. Misc. device drivers

75. PCBoard v15.x PPL programs

76. Modem Stuff

77. Tape backup programs

78. DOOR Programs

79. Floppy disk utilities

80. FAX stuff

81. Astronomy

82. CD-ROM utilities

83. Home and personal management

84. PCBoard DIR file utilities

85. Misc. financial programs

86. WIN.NT

87. DESQVIEW

88. Calculators, ROLODEX,dialers/pagers

89. PIMs, appointment/contact managers

90. Not in use

91. Not in use

92. Not in use

93. DOOM

94. Not in use

95. Not in use

96. not in use

799. Recent Uploads


BBS Directories on Hard Disk - Listed by Category
Directories on the Hard Disk - Listed by Category

Communications Programs

2.  COMM programs

6.  COMM utilities

76. Modem stuff

80. FAX and modem/FAX stuff

3.  Mail and messaging utilities

21. INTERNET, USENET and support progs

5.  Transfer protocols

7.  Directories and text files

Bulletin Board Systems

8.  PCBoard programs and utilities

75. PCB15 Specific (.PPE, .MNU, Etc.)

84. PCBoard DIR file utilities

9.  Other bulletin board programs

78. DOOR programs

File Management

10.  File compression utilities

12.  Menu and shell programs

13.  Directory programs

14.  Catalog programs

15.  File utilities

Graphics and Music Programs

17.  Graphics generators and colorizers

18.  Graphics display utilities

19.  Graphic displays

 4.  Video drivers

11.  Clipart

20.  Music and sound

Printing

22.  Printer setup, spoolers & misc.

24.  Printing forms, envelopes labels, etc.

25.  File printing utilities

 1.  Printer drivers

27.  Fonts

Datbase

28.  Database

Engineering, Science, and Mathematics

30.  Engineering, science, mathematics

81.  Astronomy

Business and Financial Programs

32.  Stock market

37.  Accounting programs

85.  Misc. financial programs

29.  Desktop/office utilities, billing, etc.

88.  Calculators, ROLODEX, Dialers & Pagers

89.  PIMs, Appointment/contact Mgrs

26.  Mailing list management & printing

Programming and Program Languages

38.  BASIC and QUICKBASIC

39.  C language

88.  VISUAL Programming

41.  Other languages and utilities

Word Processing and Integrated Packages

42.  Text editors and utilities

64.  Business & Spreadsheet SIG Files

43.  Word processors and utilities

44.  Text file utilities

Spreadsheets

47.  Spreadsheets & integrated packages

Utilities

48.  Hard disk utilities and data

79.  Floppy disk utilities

77.  Tape backup programs

82.  CD-ROM utilities

49.  Mouse drivers & utilities

51.  Diagnostics and Benchmarks

87.  DESQVIEW

86.  WIN-NT

67.  Other Operating Systems and Task Switchers

53.  Batch file utilities

56.  Trojan and virus protection

16.  Video and color control

23.  Networks

33.  Memory management

34.  BOOTUP, CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT

36.  HAM radio and packet

52.  OS/2 Programs and Utilities

72.  Miscellaneous device drivers

58.  Miscellaneous utilities

68.  WINDOWS Utilities

PC Magazine and Magazine Utilities

35.  Magazines, newsletters & reviews

59.  Magazine utilities

Miscellaneous

61.  Lists of all files on this  and other boards

60.  The Bible and Bible utilities

63.  Games other than DOOM

93.  DOOM

45.  PRODIGY

46.  Genealogy

65.  Diet, health, food

83.  Home and personal management programs

31.  The CP/M program library

66.  Tutorials, education, teacher support

62.  Miscellaneous programs

70.  The NOCCC Conference Files


BBS CICA Windows CD-ROM
File Directories on the CICA Windowss CD-ROM

201  Microsoft Access Programs         217  Windows Supplemental Dev Lib

202  Various Windows Demo Programs     218  Asymetrix ToolBook Apps

203  Software Drivers\Printers         219  Windows Sockets (Winsock) Apps

204  Software Drivers\Video            220  Word for Win Utilities, Files

205  Microsoft Excel                   221  WordPerfect for Windows Utils

206  Windows NT Files                  222  Windows Resource Kit Files

207  Aldus PageMaker Files             223  Desktop Image, Util, BMP Files

208  Various Patches and Upgrades      224  Windows Soft Fonts

209  Official Symantec Corp Patches    225  Adobe Type Manager (ATM) Fonts

210  Paradox for Windows               226  TrueType Fonts

211  Windows Programming               227  Windows Games and Diversions

212  Borland C++ Windows Programs      228  Icons, Icon Editors, etc.

213  Pgm Listings from Publications    229  Misc Files (tips, etc.)

214  Turbo Pascal Programming          230  Windows Sounds and Util Files

215  Visual Basic Programming          231  General Windows Utilities

216  Visual Basic Library Files


BBS - Night Owl's v15  Directories
Night Owl's v15  Directories

301 Alt. Operating Systems  323 Game Scenery         341 Personal Appl.

302 ASP Member Submissions  322 Game Utilities       342 Printer

303 BBS - Doors             323 Game - DOOM Add-ons  343 Productivity

304 BBS - PCBoard PPEs      324 Genealogy            344 PROG - ASM, 'C'

305 BBS - Pgm & Util        325 GRPH - Images/Anim.  345 PROG - BASIC,QB,VB

306 Business / Finance      326 GRPH - Pgm/Util/Misc 346 PROG - Pascal, TP

307 Communications          327 HAM / SWL / Scanner  347 PROG - Pgm/Utl/Misc

308 Databasee / Spreadsheet 328 Hard Disk / CD-ROM   348 Religious

309 Demo Programs           329 Health & Medicine    349 Screen & Video

310 DTP / Clipart / CAD     330 Home Computing       350 Sound Pgm & Files

311 DOS & System Related    331 Info / Text / FAQ    351 Text Processing

312 Education               332 Magazine / Books     352 Virus Detection

313 E-Mail                  333 Math / Sci. / Eng.   353 Windows: A - I

314 File Compression        334 Menus and Shells     354 Windows: J - S

315 File Processing         335 Misc. and Leftovers  355 Windows: T - Z

316 Floppy Disk / Tape      336 Modem / Comm. Port   356 Windows: Games

317 Fonts                   337 Network / LAN        357 Windows/NT

318 Food / Nutrition        338 Offline Mail         358 Word Processing

319 Games & Recreation      339 OS/2: A - M          359 KBBS Software

320 Game Cheats/Hints/etc.  340 OS/2: N - Z          360 Wildcat V4.x Utils


BBS - Simtel MS-DOS Archive CD-ROM 1
Simtel MSDOS Archive - Disk 1. Sept 94. Walnut Creek CDROM.

403 4DOS command processor           404 Animation utilities

405 Bulletin board (BBS) programs    406 Doors for various BBS's

407 Lists of MSDOS, MSWindows BBS's  408 On-line versions of the Bible

409 Calculators                      410 Disk catalogs utilities

411 CD-ROM utilities                 412 Citadel BBS programs

413 On-screen clock utilities        414 Database mgmt programs

415 Calendar, appt sched, desktop    416 Utilities for DeskJet printers

417 Desktop publishing programs      418 Educational programs

419 Utilities for EGA monitors       420 Operating envrnmnt emulators

421 Ezycom BBS program               422 Falken BBS program

423 Fido BBS, Fidonet-related        424 SimTel indexes, utilities

425 Finance and money-management     426 Food/recipe mgmnt programs

427 Custom forms generators          428 Genealogy programs

429 Geography-related software       430 GIF viewing and handling progs

431 Scientific graphics utilities    432 Graphic viewing, handling progs

433 GTS music system files           434 Ham Radio programss

435 physically challanged Util's     436 Hebrew language support

437 Information files                438 Program installation utilities

439 IRIT solid modeler               440 KA9Q TCP/IP network utilities

441 MS-Kermit communications progs   442 Keyboard-related utilities

443 Foreign language tutorials       444 Fonts, utilities for HP Laserjet

445 Legal forms                      446 Linguistic-related software

447 Literature                       448 Utilities for Macintosh files

449 Programs creating menu systems   450 Manufacturing-related software

451 Modem / communications programs  452 Scriptures of the LDS Church

453 Music-related software           454 NAPLPS drawing programs

455 Notabene text-processing prog    456 OPUS BBS program and utilities

457 Packet Radio programs            458 Simple Network Paging Protocol

459 PCBoard BBS program              460 PibTerm communications program

461 Printer utilities                462 ProComm communications program

463 Prodigy on-line services         464 Project management programs

465 QModem communications program    466 Quarterdeck info/utilities

467 RBBS-PC BBS program              468 Personal recreation progs,info

469 RIP graphics utilities           470 Satellite tracking progs, info

471 Screen savers, drivers           472 Simulation programs

473 Audio sample players / editors   474 Spreadsheet programs

475 Statistics-related software      476 TAG BBS program and utilities

477 U.S. fed tax return prep         478 Classroom aids for teachers

479 Telegard BBS program             480 Telix communications programs

481 Tiff image utilities             482 Utilities for VGA monitors

483 Utilities generating speech      484 Voice-mail programs

485 Waffle BBS program               486 Wildcat BBS program

487 Utilities for MS Windows 3.*     488 Windows Socket (TCP/IP)

489 WordPerfect-related utilities    490 WWIV BBS program and utilities

491 Utilities for BSR,other X10      492 X/Y/Zmodem protocols prog


BBS - Simtel MS-DOS Archive CD-ROM 2
Simtel MSDOS Archive - Disk 2. Sept 94 Walnut Creek CDROM.

501 Information on Simtel cdroms     502 Essential info and utilities

503 ADA programming language         504 Artificial intelligence

505 Archiving (ARC, ARJ, LZH, etc.)  506 Handling archived files

507 Assembly language                508 Assembly Language 'Magazine'

509 Astronomy                        510 Utilities for PC AT+ machines

511 AutoCad and AutoLisp utilities   512 Unix awk programming language

513 Baker's PC press releases        514 BASIC programming language

515 Batch file utilities             516 Editing binary files

517 Biology                          518 System boot utilities

519 Borland's languages Utilities    520 C programming language

521 Computer Assisted Design         522 Chemistry

523 Clipper Utilities & code         524 Unix compress, gzip, etc

525 C++ programming language         526 Execute commands at set times

527 Cross-assemblers                 528 dBASE

529 DBMS Magazine                    530 Dr. Dobbs Journal magazine

531 UU/XX encoding/decoding          532 Demacs - MSDOS Emacs v18.55

533 Quarterdeck's DESQview Util's    534 Directory maintenance utilities

535 EXE and COM file disassemblers   536 Floppy / hard disk programs

537 GCC and related utilities        538 Quarterdeck's DESQview/X

539 Text editors                     540 Epsilon text editor

541 Electrical and electronics       542 Engineering

543 Environment handling utilities   544 Executable compressors

545 File Utilities                   546 Flow-charting programs

547 Forth programming language       548 Fortran programming language

549 FOSSIL drivers for BBS use       550 FreEMACS: Emacs-like editor

551 Geology                          552 Geoworks version 1 Util's

553 Geoworks version 2 Util's        554 GeoByte newsletters

555 MS-DOS ports of GNU utilities    556 Authoring hypertext documents

557 ICON programming language files  558 I/O port utilities / drivers

559 Local Area Network               560 LOGO programming language files

561 Lotus 123                        562 Map / mapping utilities

563 Mathematics programs             564 Math coprocessor utilities

565 Memory utilities / managers      566 Updates to Microsoft's MS-DOS

567 Miscellaneous programming        568 Modula2 programming language

569 Mouse utilities / drivers        570 MS Systems Journal magazine

571 NCSA Telnet programs             572 Network-related programs

573 Neural networks                  574 PC-NFS software

575 Novell Netware                   576 Oberon programming language

577 Oemacs - MSDOS Emacs v19.19      578 Pascal programming language

579 DOS's path Utilities             580 PC Magazine Programs

581 PC Tech Journal Programs         582 PC Techniques Magazine

583 PCVR Magazine                    584 MS-DOS Perl programming language

585 Programming utilities            586 Crynwr packet drivers

587 Plotting programs                588 PostScript files utilities

589 QuickBasic programming language  590 QEdit text editor

591 Quarterdeck's QEMM Utilities     592 EMS / XMS ramdisk programs

593 Science                          594 System security / password

595 Utilities for Sprint editor      596 StunnPc on-line magazine

597 Surface Modeling program         598 SWAP utilities

599 System information & benchmark   600 Miscellaneous system utilities

601 TeX typesetting programs         602 Utilities for processing text

603 Terminate-Stay-Resident (TSR)    604 Turbo Basic programming

605 Turbo Pascal programming         606 Turbo Vision programming

607 Turbo C programming language     608 UBASIC:  Basic interpreter

609 MicroEMACS - Emacs-like editor   610 UUCP programs and utilities

611 Ventura Publisher                612 Anti-virus software

613 Visual Basic programming         614 VISCII Vietnamese software

615 Vietnamese Professionals Soc.    616 Weather & hurricanes

617 World map viewing program        618 Windows Programmer's Journal

619 XLISP programming                620 X Window system for PC

621 ZIP archiver (ZIP/UNZIP)         622 Zoo archiver programs


NOCCC BBS
NOCCC Bulletin Boards

NOCCC maintains these club boards for Public and Membership use.

Bert Langer	System Operator

Public Line:	14,400 v.32 bis / v.42 bis	(714)730-6743

Private Line:	28,800 v.34 bis / v.42 bis	(714)730-6790

Cypress Line: 	28,800 v.34 bis / v.42 bis	(714)821-0317

New Club Bulletin Board number in Cypress: This number will help members in North County cut down on the cost of a call to the Club Board. (Club Members Only)

Click here for instructions on how to get access to the Club's private lines.

Click here for a brief overview of the Club Board

Click here for a list of Directories on the BBS.


Private Line: This line is a private line for paid NOCCC members only. Contact Line 1 for access authorization information.


Cypress BBS Line Active Again!

By the time you read this our Cypress BBS number will be back in business again. The number is the same: 714-821-0317.

Top honors go to Jim Sanders for his sensational work in resurrecting this club private line in record time.

Click here for instructions on how to get access to the Club's private lines.


Another NOCCC Perk!
Computer Store Discounts

For some time now NOCCC members have enjoyed a special discount ranging from 5 to 6% at some computer stores like CompUSA and Computer City (South Coast Plaza). Some of our members have reported savings that practically paid for their Club dues!

Andy Kubicki and Phil Barr have now made arrangements with the Circuit City Stores in the cities of Brea and Orange to provide a 6% discount off the regular price of systems or accessories. This is especially useful for those who prefer to shop close to home and want to avoid that freeway traffic.

If you have any questions on your first visits to these stores contact either Damon Estep and Joey Hofmann at the Brea store or Dave Delaney and Tom Mahon at the store in Orange.

Similar discounts have been under discussion with Fry's and Microcenter.