HALIFAX AREA
       PERSONAL COMPUTER SOCIETY

           NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 1995

Meets 4th Sunday of each month, 7:00 pm
     Nova Scotia Community College
     Institute of Technology Campus (NSIT)
     Leeds Street, Halifax, N.S.

24 September Meeting

Intro Topics
     - Windows Feature - Bill Marchant
     - Question and Answer - Rob MacCara
Feature Topic:
Windows 95 - Is It For You?



IN THIS MONTH'S ISSUE:

Announcements

- Canada/US            
- A comment on doing business here
- Computer Problems-Part 2
- More experiences on trying to fix what went wrong with the
  computer
- The Path Command
- A look at how and why this is important

Last Planning Meeting 
This was held on September 5th and was attended by Norman
DeForest, Arthur Layton, Bill Marchant, Henry Hill, George
Richards, Garth Bennet and Andy Cornwall.  The next planning
meeting will be held on the 2nd of October, at 7,30 pm at the
Institute of Technology Campus.

The Newsletter
A few notes about what goes into this document

Meeting Schedule 95/96
Meeting dates for the upcoming meeting year

GENERAL INFORMATION

This document is mailed to all paid up members and to
anyone who
has attended a meeting within the past three months.  Yearly
membership dues are $15.00.  The text of the newsletter is
available on Chebucto Community Net and other local bulletin
boards.
Society Address Change -
Please note the new mailing address for the Society
     P.O. Box 185 Stn. Main Dartmouth N.S. B2Y 3Y3
We had to do this as the Post Office is closing down the Armdale
office where we used to have our P.O. box.  The new address is on
this years business cards.

Executive
     Chairperson - David Potter
     Vice-Chair - Bill Marchant - 477-2069 (h)
     Secretary/Newsletter Editor - Colin Stuart - 461-0370 (h)
     Treasurer - Garth Bennett - 492-3368 (h)
     Disk Librarian - Thayne MacLean - 461-0082 (h)
     and but not least Norman DeForest, Henry Hill, Arthur
     Layton, Rob MacCara, Andy Cornwall, George Richards, and
     Diane Smith

Announcements

Membership Expiry Dates

For those of you who are not already aware, the
membership expiry dates are printed in the upper right
corner of your newsletter mailing label.  If you wish
to continue to receive this newsletter and know what
interesting meetings are coming up, you either have to
renew ($15 per year) or come to the meetings and put
your name on the list that is passed around.

Many of us (including me) have memberships that expire
within the next few months so please check.

DELPHI

The Halifax Delphi Users Group will hold its official
start-up meeting from 7:00 to 9:00pm on Tuesday October
3, 1995 at the CCL Group building at 2669 Dutch Village
Road in Halifax (Near the Maritime Life Building at the
Armdale Rotary).  Everyone is welcome.  Further
information may be obtained from Dave Hackett 835-3894,
CIS:71650,2646 or from Carey Rolfe at 462-4551,
Internet: rolfe@ra.isisnet.com.

OS/2 Users Group

The Greater Halifax OS/2 Special Interest Group (GHOS/2
SIG)  meets on the second Tuesday of each month in the
CCL Group building at 2669 Dutch Village Road in
Halifax.  (Near the Maritime Life Building at the
Armdale Rotary) at 7:00pm.

Anyone wishing further information on this group may
contact Donovan Long at 422 1975, or by e-mail 
tsst@isisnet.com.  The September meeting was attended
by ten individuals who are keen to be joined by other
OS/2 users or just the OS/2 curious.  Everyone is
welcome.

For Sale

Mini tower case c/w power supply and an ATI Advantage video card
with 1 mb - call Henry Hill at 457-4267.

Advertising and Want Ads

We don't charge for small individual want ads like the one above. 
That is any Society member or other interested person with some
computer related item that they wish to sell, trade, or give away
can contact the editor to place an ad in the newsletter.  We
would expect that more commercially oriented advertising provide
the Society with some remuneration for carrying the ad.

An ad will normally only appear once but let me know if you need
it repeated.  Ads can be given to me at meetings or give me a
call two weeks to ten days before the next general meeting
(newsletter deadline).
  
CANADA / US - A COMMENT

By Bill Marchant

Those of you who attended our June meeting (or was it May?) will
recall the excellent presentation by Agnes Ballentyne, of
WordPerfect version 6.1, and other elements of Novell Perfect
Office.  Near the end of her presentation I asked a question
regarding the fact the Novell is marketing Novell Perfect Office
by mail from an address in Ontario, and asking Canadians to pay
in US Dollars.  I suggested that it would be better if the price
to Canadians was quoted in Canadian Dollars.

Agnes  invited me to send her an e-mail on the subject, which I
did a few days later.  The gist of my beef was that companies
doing business in Canada with Canadian based customers should
expect to be paid in Canadian money.  I expressed the opinion
that the price, while it was important, was not the most
important thing, and that fluctuations in the value of the
currency could easily be taken into account.

I did say that if currency value was the chief problem then
perhaps the Japanese Yen would be even more suitable than the US
dollar.

I complained about the need to go to a post office, and pay the
usurious rates charged there for changing Canadian to US money. 
Writing a Canadian dollar check at my own desk is so much easier. 
Surely a company like Novell can get more favourable exchange
rates than individual customers.   

In connection with the e-mail, you may also recall at the meeting
that we were treated to an expose of how Novell e-mail is always
answered.  I am expecting an answer anytime now.

Biblical Bits #21

-- Did they spell that right? --
and didst debase thyself even into hell..   Isaiah 57:9

COMPUTER PROBLEMS - PART TWO

By Colin Stuart

Well here is another month and I have to think up something to
write about.  I think I will continue on with my computer problem
experiences.  For those of you who didn't read last month's
column, I currently work at the Nova Scotia Department of
Education in the MIS (computer) section.  We have over 300
computers which myself and another fellow do most of the support
for.  So I have encountered a couple of interesting episodes
regarding the problems that various people have encountered.

The people using these computers have a greatly varied level of
expertise with computers so we get many calls about "why won't my
computer work".  This is sometimes as simple as plugging in the
correct cord to the wall outlet or such but there are other much
more interesting happenings and these are what I will attempt to
relate.

One person came to us a few weeks back and said that she had
forgotten her password.  This is not an uncommon occurrence, I
have done it myself.  The problem here was that the password that
she had forgotten was for a system that we don't control so we
called over and asked them to look it up (if possible).  In the
meantime she is trying to remember and said "I think it was the
name of one of my old boyfriends".  I said "Well you could try
them out -- or are there too many?".  I couldn't resist that last
one and she likes a good joke - she's a blonde (that part is
important to the story).

Next day we get a call and they have managed to find the
password.  In order to make sure I got it right they spelled it
out for me and then I went down to tell her, it was
"b-l-o-n-d-e".  Then
she remembered it.  She couldn't stop laughing.  Now
anytime I pass her desk, she starts laughing.

Well on to something more serious.  This is for those of you who
have a 486DX2-66 or such with a heat sink and fan on the CPU.  We
had one machine that had a number of problems.  One time the
other guy I work with got to install a new larger hard drive in
this particular machine.  Within a few days of this we got a
complaint that Corel Draw was generating "divide by zero" errors. 
He checked all sorts of things and couldn't find anything
obviously wrong.  We find that if GPF's start happening in
Windows that one thing we have to examine is the memory.  He ran
Norton's diags on it and it failed on the numeric processor tests
consistently.  This was a DX2-66 CPU which of course has a math
processor built in.  A new chip was ordered, and of course the
computer was just out of warranty.

When the new CPU arrived and the cover was taken off, it was
found that the heat sink and fan had been pushed part way off the
chip.  Tries the tests with the unit back in its proper place but
it still failed.  So what is the lesson here?  The heat sink and
fan are important.  Be careful when working "under the hood". 
This CPU still works on everything except the numeric processor
functions so it has managed to turn itself into an SX chip.

We have received new computers from various sources over the past
year and a half.  Most work just fine out of the box.  However
there have been ones that do not.  One was setup by the person
who was going to use it without calling us to do it.  Afterwards
we got a call to say "it just beeps at me - what now?".  I went
to look and sure enough it did.  She said that it worked at first
but now does this.  I looked inside and it all looked okay at
first glance.  Since on many computers a bunch of beeps on
startup means that there is a video problem, I looked there.  I
found that the video card was not quite seated properly in the
slot.  Pushed it down and everything was okay.  You can look up
the POST codes in a reference manual such as the Upgrading and
Repairing PCS book.

We had similar problems with a number of computers that we got
from the same company.  Things such as the CD connector being
left hanging inside the machine.  I won't name the company, they
have apologized profusely.  What it points out is that you should
check a new computer for complete operation when you get it. 
Especially if you get it mail order as boards and such can creep
out while being "handled" in shipment.  Then it doesn't work
right and you can't get the company up in Ontario to come down
and check it out.

Another group of machines that came in had the floppy drive cable
connected across just one of  the two rows of pins.  Wouldn't
boot off the floppy.  Sloppy I would say - a small play on words
here.

There was one problem that we had to send out some months back. 
A machine was given to us to look at which was having some hard
disk trouble.  I managed to fix that (I don't remember exactly
what it was).  We also had an external ethernet adaptor that had
a bad power cord.  This was returned to the company that provided
it to be fixed or replaced.  It got tried on the computer I had
been working on - to copy some files from the network I think. 
Didn't work right and then the computer quit working.  It was a
Packard Bell machine and I seem to remember that it just beeped a
couple of times on power up and sat there.  Oh - oh.  Sent it out
to Electro Maintenance in Dartmouth and I checked the fixed power
cord for the adaptor.  It originally had a bad connector in the
end that gets plugged into the adaptor and the company, rather
than getting a new one, just soldered it.  The problem was that
the wires now touched when the cover was put on the end of the
cable.  Short out or what.  The adaptor plugs into the parallel
port which in this case was on the motherboard.  Bad thought ran
through my mind over this one.

Luckily it was a small fuse on the bottom of the motherboard that
blew.  The repair cost very little compared to a new motherboard. 
I sent the power cord back to the company after telling them what
happened with their "repair".

This can show people again what can happen if the wrong thing or
something wrong gets plugged into the back of the computer in the
wrong spot.

So this looks like a good point for me to end here.  There are
more interesting computer problems that I will try to think up/
remember for next month.

THE PATH COMMAND

By Bill Marchant

The PATH command which goes all the way back to DOS 2.0 in 1984
is used to enable DOS to find executable programs in
sub-directories. 
Until DOS 2.0, there was no need for the command
because DOS 1.x did not provide for the existence of
sub-directories. 
To execute a program. The user simply booted up
with the application in the A drive, or typed in the name of the
application at the DOS prompt.

When it began to be possible for applications to be hidden away
in sub-directories, it was not sufficient to simply type the
application name at the prompt.  If DOS couldn't find the
program, it couldn't run it.  Of course the user could always
type in the whole thing consisting of sub-directory name followed
by the program name, but this was inconvenient, so the PATH
command had to be invented.

The PATH command is placed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file so it is
always read on boot-up, and it is saved in the memory area known
as the environment.  A proper path command consists of the names
of all those sub-directories in which there are programs which
need to be executed from the DOS prompt.  Thus a typical command
might be  "PATH=C:\DOS;C:\WP;C:\123   " Etc etc.  Notice that the
sub-directory names are separated with semicolons.  There is no
punctuation mark at the end.  You can even specify the A: and B:
or other drives in the path if need be.  

If the user does not specify the sub-directory when a program
name is typed in to be executed, DOS simply looks in the
environment and checks out the path.  It runs down the list,
saying in effect;  "Is the application in the first
sub-directory?"  If so run
it.  If not, look in the next sub-directory.  And so on.  If the
application is
not found at all,
the user will get the familiar "Bad command or file name"
message.  If the application is found, DOS will run it.

In WINDOWS, programs are not executed by typing names, their
icons  are clicked with a mouse cursor.  What then do we need to
know about the path to operate windows?  In fact the path for
each application icon is incorporated in the .GRP files which are
saved for each group.  To see how this works, go to the Program
Manager and click once on any icon.  Then got to the Menu  and
select File | Properties.  The Properties Dialogue box will
appear.  Three entries on that box are significant.  First,
Description is the name of the Application as it appears under
the Icon.  Second, Command Line consists of the name of the EXE
or COM file which is to be executed.  And finally, Working
Directory contains the PATH to that EXE or COM file.  Many times
you will notice that the Command Line contains the complete path
as well as the EXE,COM file name, so there is some redundancy
there, but WINDOWS doesn't care about the redundancy.  What would
be important would be if the PATH information was not present in
either the Command line or the working directory.  

Those of you who have written batch files to execute programs
under DOS will realize what WINDOWS is doing when it uses this
information.  First, it finds the application in its
sub-directory, then it
executes the application and when the user is
finished, it returns to the place it came from ready to obey
another command.

WINDOWS 95 may change some of this.  I have not yet had the
pleasure of exploring it so I can't say.  From what I hear about
WINDOWS 95, some of us will be using WINDOWS 3.x for a while yet,
so the old DOS PATH still has some relevance.

ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER

Newsletter Articles
We are almost always in need of good articles.  If anyone has
something that they feel would make a good article, an
interesting story to tell, or even a good meeting topic, please
don't hesitate to pass it on.

Articles can be submitted in almost any format, ASCII text, AMI
Pro, MS Word, Windows Write, WordStar and of course WordPerfect. 
How does one get an article to me?  Various ways are available. 
You can bring it to a meeting or give me a call and upload it to
me.  If you are on the Chebucto FreeNet, Internet, or any type of
e-mail system that has a gateway to the Internet, you can send
something to me via the internet to where I work -
hlfxtrad.educ.stuartce@gov.ns.ca

It does work, that is how a number of articles in previous
month's editions were received, but if you are sending a file
attachment to your message, it should be UUencoded and not a mime
attachment.

Newsletter Production Notes
For those who may be interested, the newsletter was formatted
this month with WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 running on either a
386SX-25 or a Pentium 75.  Each has 8mb of RAM but the Pentium
has a PCI video card (much faster).  This is the first time that
I have used a Pentium for this work and I figured that it has
saved maybe an hour's work.  I don't have to wait for the screen
to catch up when I am modifying the text in the columns.  On the
386SX it can be a few seconds for things to finish.

Much of the clipart used is from Novell (formerly WordPerfect)
Presentations 3.0 which comes as part of the Perfect Office
Suite.  The only problem is that there isn't a printed list of
the images so you have to  root' around a bit.

The original was printed at 600 dots per inch resolution on a HP
Laserjet 4M.

The main body of the newsletter is set in 10 point Palatino with
the article headings being 14 point bold.  The title on the first
page is ITC Zapf Chancery Medium Italic 19.2 and 16 points.

As this is the first issue of the new meeting year, we send this
out to anyone who attended a meeting during the previous year. 
There were about 100 copies produced of which around just under
90 were mailed out.  Any extra copies from the previous few
month's issues that I have will be brought to the next meeting
for those who are new to the group or may not be in regular
attendance.

I do have a complete set of all the previous newsletters and if
someone wanted to look through these, let me know and I can bring
them to the next meeting.

MEETING SCHEDULE - 95/96
The dates for this year's meetings  are listed below. 

24 September
22 October
26 November
7 January
28 January
25 February
24 March
28 April
26 May
23 June

As in previous years, the December meeting is moved to the early
part of January due Christmas Eve being the fourth Sunday of the
month.

The planning meetings are normally held on the second Monday (8
days) after the general meeting.  They are also located at NSIT,
normally in a small boardroom to the left as you come in.  Anyone
is welcome to assist in the planning of future meetings or
events.

Any changes to the scheduled dates will be announced where
possible at the regular monthly meetings and/or in this
newsletter.