ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/MAGAZINE/MISC/TN_2H90.ZIP/DEC90.DOC

Text File | 1990-11-29 | 9.2 KB | 191 lines

             TOM'S COMPUTER NOTES FOR DECEMBER 1990

                          Public Domain

     SPINRIGHT "will fix anything that spins" or so the ads
state. My HD crashed and SPINRIGHT couldn't even find it much
less fix it.... Looked like my partition table had been
corrupted. No problem, I had once run MIRROR/PARTN from PC TOOLS
so I had a copy of the table on a floppy disk. Got it out, ran
RESTORE/PARTN which was supposed to fix the problem. Instead I
got a message, "Wrong Version." Ah ha, my partition table had
been saved with Version 5.5 of PC TOOLS which of course wasn't
worth a dime as far as Version 6.0 was concerned. Tried to find
my Version 5.5, which I couldn't. Another problem, bad
directories. No sweat, NORTON 5.0 had earlier been run (actually
it is run every time I shut down) and IMAGE.IDX and IMAGE.DAT
were on the drive. So, I run NORTON's DISKFIX and it looks over
the whole drive and sez, "Can't find IMAGE files." By this time
I'm able to access the hard drive if I first boot from a floppy
and I CAN SEE the IMAGE files and look at them with NORTON
COMMANDER so I know they are there..... Alls well that ends well.
I played with more tools and eventually got everything fixed
without having to reformat which is a first (keeping my fingers
crossed.)

     IN THE U.S.S.R. there are "Beroiska" stores that sell a
variety of goods not available to the general public. They are
"hard currency" stores and although things are priced in rubles
you have to pay in dollars, marks, yen, etc. The exchange rate is
somewhat ridiculous (see below). Saw several computers for sale.
They had keyboards with two symbols per key, our alphabet (ASDF,
etc) and cyrillic for programs written in that alphabet. An XT
clone was $1,200 U.S. and an AT clone was $2,400.... In a
Beroiska you pay $1.65 for a ruble. At the bank it's 5 rubles for
a buck and on the street they give you 15 rubles for the U.S.
dollar.

     GOT A NeXT COMPUTER? There is a new magazine just for you.
NeXTWORLD, $30 a year.

     PROBLEMS WITH a new 1.2 meg drive. CompuAdd tried to be
helpful in getting it to work. It worked on their computer (in
the repair section) but it didn't work for me. They made some
suggestions but failed to think of the floppy card jumper
settings. When I pulled my card I found 11 jumpers. Dug up the
card manual and got the drive A: jumper reset and now all is
well. I'm getting 82 tracks and 1.4 megs via MAXI DISK and also
(with MAXI DISK) formatting 360K disks to 812K.

     I was going to buy a laptop to use at work. $1,100 or so for
a TOSHIBA. Then I saw an ad for an ACER 1030 for $399 plus
shipping. It's a turbo XT clone with a 14 inch VGA (mono) monitor
and some other nice features. I could hardly resist but first I
called ACER. "What's wrong with the Model 1030?", I asked. They
said, "Nothing. But, the IBM PS/2 Model 30 didn't go over so well
so we didn't sell many of our 1030's. We decided to dump them and
offer the 386SX as our bottom line machine." I'll evaluate the
1030 next month. (I think EPSON has quit making anything less
than their SX also.)

     SPEAKING OF THE SX... You may have heard people say, "If you
are going to spend that kind of money you might as well get a
'real' 386 as in 386DX." Well, a 386 DX won't do any more than an
SX in the standard (ISA) configuration. It doesn't do any good to
have a 32 bit data path available in the chip if your bus is the
16 bit AT architecture. Only if you have an EISA or MCA bus can
you take advantage of your CPU's ability to talk to peripherals
in 32 bit chunks and then you also have to have the appropriate
hardware for the bus to communicate with.

     FREE LOTUS 1-2-3 Ver. 3.1 demo disk (you need EGA or VGA)...
Call 1-800-872-3387, ext. 986.

     FREE DEMO DISK for Microsoft Excel for Windows.  Call them
at 1-800-541-1261, Dept. M67. (Needs EGA or VGA).

     I ALWAYS WONDERED HOW those cells in LOTUS and QUATTRO got
BOLD??? I would get a spreadsheet template from someone and some
cells were BOLD (or a different color on a color monitor). Never
could find anything in the manual. There is no BOLD command on
any menu. How's this for non-intuitive?? You do a RANGE/UNPROTECT
on the cell or group of cells to set the BOLD attribute.

     SHAREWARE PROGRAM TO create "Books on Disk" from ASCII
files. It's called IRIS. The program and two science fiction
disk-books is $11 postpaid if you mention PC WORLD. BPLAN
Virtuals, Box 338, Waterville, ME 04901. ($8 to register if you
like the program.)

     PICKED UP A COPY OF MAC USER MAGAZINE just to see what was
going on in the MAC world. John Divorak has a monthly column and
it was interesting to read what he writes from Appleland.
Samples: "[There is] a cheap imitation of the MAC OS called
Windows that makes the IBM clones seem kinda like the MAC." And,
"IBM [has] an overpriced cheap-looking machine called the PS/1 to
try to muscle out the ubiquitous Apple II from the school
systems."

     THIS MONTHS BARGAINS: From FastMicro ---- 16 bit VGA card,
$99 (256K and user expandable.) 2400 baud internal modem, $69. XT
High Density floppy card, $35.

     To sign up on GEnie at $4.95 a month (downloading files has
a $6 an hour surcharge): Have a credit card handy and dial 1-800-
638-8369. <HHH> <Enter>, at the U#= prompt type XTX99492, GENIE
<Enter>.

     TEXTRA 6.0 arrived the last week of November. Initial
impression: Too little, too late. The authors are stuck in 1984
when it comes to modern menus, mouse support and other up to date
features. The printer drivers I tried are slow and mono-
directional. The page format seems buggy. At least, it's not up
to the power and flexibility of ver. 5.2 of TEXTRA. The only
thing that is really good (it was in 5.2 also) is the spell
checker. It make Word Perfect look like 1984! TEXTRA is $99 and
not recommended.

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

                 A SAMPLE FROM THE RUSSIA STORY

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

                     TRAVELS IN THE U.S.S.R.

                            AEROFLOT

     Flying domestic routes on the Soviet airline is an
interesting experience. The aircraft are jets but everything else
s stuck at 1950 or so. Along the edge of the runway during taxi
out you see piles of dirt, ditches, and pipes sticking up out of
the ground. Very hazardous to an aircraft that runs off the
runway. In the U.S. it would be a law suit waiting to happen. In
the U.S.S.R. there isn't anyone to sue as everything is owned by
the state and they are litigation proof.

     Metal detectors are in use at the airports. My heavy bronze
Special Forces belt buckle set off the alarm but the security
people showed no interest and always sent me on my way with a
wave of the hand.

     Aeroflot seating is very cramped. My knees were pressed
against the seat in front of me every time I flew. On the two
hour Leningrad to Murmansk flight the in-flight snack was a cup
of water! On the three hour Murmansk to Moscow flight it was a
cup of the popular (in Russia) watered down fruit juice. On one
flight it felt as though my feet were resting on someone's
overcoat. I was so squeezed into my seat that I couldn't see the
floor to figure out what I was standing on. Only when we got up
to leave the aircraft was I able to observe that I had been
seated over an area where the carpet was pulled up and bunched
into a pile. Moving forward towards the exit of the now empty
airplane I noticed that the carpet was pulled up in many places,
revealing bare metal.

     The flight attendants don't care if your seatbelt is worn
during takeoff and landing, if your seat is in the upright
position or if your tray is stowed. None of the Russians used
their seat belts though the Americans, out of force of habit,
did. All announcements were in Russian. My tray was permanently
stowed as the catch was completely missing from the seat. It was
tied up with several turns of wide gauze bandage. Out of the
plane's first aid kit? One Russian passenger brought his German
shepherd dog with him. It lay in the aisle during the flight.

     Just before takeoff for Murmansk there were still three
Americans standing in the aisle without seats. The flight
attendant made a Russian hold his son, about six years old, on
his lap. That left two Americans without seats. The flight
attendant then ordered two Russians off the aircraft. There was
no call for volunteers to be bumped. It was just, "You and you.
Off!"

     Our aircraft was a three engined TU-154. It had thousands of
non-flush rivets protruding from the wing surface. It was either
behind the times technically or an old design. One outstanding
feature noted was the great amount of available engine thrust.
When the pilot poured the coal to it on takeoff the acceleration
pushed me back into my seat to a noticeably greater degree than
that observed with U.S. built aircraft. The pilots were experts
at smooth landings.

     My final thoughts about Aeroflot: Flying Space "A" on MAC is
glamorous in comparison to Russia's number one (and only)
airline. But it does get you from point A to point B and I guess
that's what counts.


                             THE END