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The opening topics of our general November 23rd meeting, will be on operating systems by Bill Marchant,
WordPerfect topics by Diane Smith and hardware by Rob MacCara, followed by a coffee break.
The feature topic will be on stocking stuffers, or toys, hardware and software under a hundred dollars by Troy
Dolomont from Business Depot.
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NOTE NEW MEETING FACILITIES | |
The HAPCC general meeting is on 4th Sunday of each month. The HAPCC has a new meeting place at: Maritime Museum of the Atlantic 1675 Lower Water Street , Halifax, NS
Meeting time 7:00 - 9:00 pm.
Parking available in the nearby Government parking lot or in the Museum parking lot. Access to the building is via the Night Entrance Doors, located just to the right of the regular front doors. If door is locked, use the bell on upper left side of the Night Entrance Doors.
The meeting room is on the second floor and has a theater type of layout. Washrooms are located close by. Elevator service is available. Coffee served.
Adding a second hard drive
by Rob MacCara
Creating a Wordperfect Data File and Form Letter
by Diane Smith
A humourous news release from Microsoft
from the internet
Meeting schedule for the upcoming year
We have only a few announcements for this
month's issue. 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 new or renew list
that is passed around.
DELPHI - The Delphi User's Group meets on the
first Tuesday of each month. The meetings are held at the CCL
Group building 2669 Dutch Village Road in Halifax, at 7:00PM. For
more information call Carey Rolfe at 462-4551 or on e-mail
crolfe@fox.nstn.ns. ca. or Dave Hackett at 835-3894
Advertising and Want Ads - we do not charge for,
like the small individual want ad above. That is, any Society
member or other interested person with computer related items
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 their ad. Ads will normally only
appear once unless other wise stated when placing the original ad.
You can choose give to me at a meeting, call me two weeks before the
next general meeting(newsletter deadline)
For this talk, we will assume that you are adding a second and newer/larger IDE type hard drive to your
system. It may also be referred to as EIDE or Fast ATA. This being the case, it will be advantageous to
make the new drive the primary bootable/primary or "C" drive.
Unlike a floppy drive which uses the data cable to designate "A" or "B", IDE drives use jumpers to
designate Single, Master, or Slave. Some manufacturers combine the Single and Master to one jumper.
In our example, we will make the new drive the Master, and change the older drive to be the Slave. For
that we will need to look on the drive label or go to the manufacturer to find the correct jumper settings.
To physically mount the drive in the case, we must use the correct size a thread type of screws so as not to
damage the drive's controller card or internal workings! It does not matter if the new drive is at the end or
middle position of the data cable - again, it is the jumpers that designate the drive's position in life.
Don't forget correct ESD procedures when working with the top off the computer!
Now that the drive is mounted, we will want to use the drive to its fullest capacity possible. This often
presents a problem with "older" computers - sometimes as even as new as one year old!
Some BIOS's can handle a maximum of 528 Mb, or 1024 cylinders. Even some newer BIOS's cannot see
more than 4096 cylinders which allows up to a drive size of 2.1 Gb. Therefore, to overcome these
limitations, we must either update the computer BIOS or use software to provide a means to allow the
system to use the whole of the hard drive we just bought.
If everything goes smoothly, your new 9 Gb hard drive will be automatically recognized by the BIOS and
then you can move on to partitioning and formatting. If you are forced to use software to update your
system, it will generally move you right into automatic partitioning and formatting.
Partitioning allows you to divide your drive into multiple sections which function as separate drives.
Formatting creates the root directory, file allocation table, and other basic configurations.
There are two ways to format and partition your hard drive. You can use the installation software that you
received with your drive or you can use the DOS utilities. It is recommended to back up your existing
drive before partitioning and formatting your new drive. This is good advice when ever you install new
hardware/software to your system - especially those that talk directly to your hard drive ie. Controller
cards etc.
Manually Partitioning Your Hard Drive Using FDISK:
Use the DOS FDISK utility to display a series of menus that help you partition your hard drive for DOS.
FDISK automatically assigns drive ID's to the partitions. We will assume that your version of DOS is at
least version 3.3 or higher! DOS versions 3.3 and higher allow you to create a primary partition, create an
extended partition, change the active partition, delete a partition, and display partition data.
1. Insert your DOS system diskette into drive A.
2. Reboot the system. Make sure the DOS diskette with FDISK, SYS, and FORMAT on it is inserted in drive A.
3. Type FDISK at the A: prompt.
4. Press the ENTER key.
5. Follow the default options.
Formatting the Drive using FORMAT: To manually format your drive and make the drive bootable, you
must type the following: FORMAT C:/S
You do not need to perform a low-level format.
When using FDISK, make sure that you have selected the correct drive. Do not delete any partitions that
are on the first drive. Doing so will result in lost data.
When using FORMAT, make sure that you select the proper drive letter in the FORMAT command line.
Formatting a partition that already contains data will result in the loss of that data.
If you designated other drives or partitions during the FDISK routine, you must format those drives as
well.
At this point you are ready to boot your system with the new drive.
Troubleshooting:
Make sure that you partitioned and formatted the drive and any additional drive with DOS FDISK and
FORMAT utilities or the drive's installation software.
If you are making this drive bootable, remember to specify the /S parameter.
If using DOS 3.3 and above, be certain to make one partition active during formatting.
Check the physical installation of your system. Make sure:
- The jumper selections on the drive are correct for your installation.
- The cables are correctly connected and seated.- The adapter card, if required, is properly seated, connected, and configured.
- Power is properly connected to your system and the system is plugged in.
- There is not an ST506 AT controller in the system. Another 16-bit (AT) hard drive controller cannot generally be used in the same system.
Most of the hard drive manufacturers maintain web sites with information readily available. Here are just a few sites:
Though not a manufacturer, TheRef is a good site for general information as well.
TheRef ™ Drive and Controller Guide Answers.
Q: I get the message "HDD Controller Failure" after installing my hard drive. What do I do?
A: This is a normal occurrence and may happen when you first boot the system after installing the hard
drive. Press F1 to continue. If the message continues to display, recheck the CMOS setup, cabling, and
jumper configuration.
Q. What is a megabyte?
A: A: Hard drive suppliers define a decimal megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes (10 6 ). Alternatively, a binary
megabyte is defined as 1,048,576 (2 20 ). This is why different utilities will display different numbers of
megabytes available for the same drive.
Q: What should I check if my system will not start after I turn the power on?
A: A: Ensure that:
1. The IDE controller card, if installed, is properly seated and connected.
2. The connections at both ends of the hard drive cable are secure and correctly oriented.
3. The jumper selections on your hard drive(s) are correctly set for your installation.
4. The drive is connected to the computer's power supply via the 4-pin power connector.
Q: I can't boot DOS from my newly installed hard drive or access the hard drive after I've completed the
software installation.
A: Check the system to make sure:
1. You entered the correct hard drive parameters during your system setup procedure.
2. Some CMOS system setup utilities might have a boot sequence option. If yours does, verify that the boot sequence is A: then C: .
3. You correctly partitioned (via the operating system FDISK utility) and formatted (via the operating system FORMAT utility) your newly installed hard drive.
4. You made your primary drive bootable (formatted with /S option).
5. During the FDISK procedure you marked your bootable partition active.
Q: My drive will not spin up or spins down after a few seconds.
A: Ensure that:
1. Your power connector is in securely and working properly.
2. The orientation of pin socket 1 on the 40-pin IDE cable matches pin 1 on the connector.
3. The drive type in your CMOS setup is correct.
1. Open WordPerfect
2. Click Tools, merge, data. a dialogue box opens. Your have 2 choices:
straight date file, or a table data file(if you want this one click the box,
then data.
3. By clicking the data box a new drop down "Create Data File" appears.
Type in each field title and when finished click ok. By a title I mean
(Mr/Mrs/Ms, first name, last name, address, city, province, postal code and so on).
4. Quick data entry drop down appears. This is where you add each line of the address
information of the database.
5. Click close when all addresses are entered.
6. Save changes to disk appears. Click ok and name your field and use the 3 digit extension
as .dat.
7. Next click go to form box, create.
8. To add the date in your letter use CTRL+SHIFT+D if this will be a letter used over and over.
Press enter 4 or 5 times.
9. Click insert field box. Another dialogue box opens, highlight the field you want and click insert.
Continue to do this until all needed fields are in. Remember to add the necessary spaces and carriage
returns after each insert. Press enter twice. Type Dear or any salutation you wish to use,
then a space and click insert field and add your salutation name. Close, press enter twice and type
the body of your letter.
10. When finished, including your closing and your name, click MERGE, and a new dialogue box appears.
Click form file, data file and where you want the merge to go. When all ok click OK and the
merge will take place.
How things would be different if Microsoft was headquartered in
Alabama: (or Texas???).... a challenge, what if they located in Nova Scotia , how would it read.
1. Their # 1 product would be Winders 95.
2. Instead of an hourglass icon, you'd get an empty beer bottle.
3. Occasionally you'd bring up a window that was covered with a hefty bag.
4. Dialog boxes would give you the choice of Ahhw-right or Naw.
5. Instead of Ta-Da!, the opening sound would be Dueling Banjos.
6. The recycle bin in Winders 95 would be an outhouse.
7. Whenever you pulled the Sound Player you'd hear a digitized drunk redneck yelling 'Play Freebird'.
8. Instead of "Start Me Up", the Winders 95 theme song would be 'Achy-Breaky Heart'.
9. PowerPoint would be called parpawnt.
10. Microsoft programming tools would be Vishul Basic and Vishul See++.
11. Winders 95 logo would incorporate the Confederate Flag.
12. Microsoft Word would be just that: one word.
13. Instead of latte carts, we'd have grits carts.
14. New shutdown WAV: 'Ya'll come back now, ya hear!'
15. Instead of VP, Microsoft big shots would be called 'cuz'.
16. Hardware could be repaired using parts from an old Trans Am.
17. Four words: Daisy Dukes Screen Saver.
18. Spreadsheet software would include examples to inventory dead cars in your front yard.
19. Flight Simulator replaced by Tractor Pull Simulator.
..... and finally...........
20. Microsoft CEO: Bubba Gates.
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.
November 23rd
January-4
January-25
February-22
March-22
April-26
May-17
June-28
The planning meetings are normally held on the second Monday (8 days) after the general meeting.
They are currently held at a members home and the address is announced at the meeting prior to the
planning meeting. 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.
