 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Members' Tips 'n' Tricks Ron Taylor |
Our ex-President's aim (see CPU, PC Update, March 95), to reappraise the role of Special Interest Groups within the club is a task worthy of support and should be commended. I take this action to be the first stage toward binding Melb PC User Group into a solid, coherent, highly energetic force, competently and fairly serving the needs of all members (almost 8,000 of us now).
SIGs and RIGs are a valuable part of the Group's services and activities. They do not exist for the purpose of no-cost training for the lucky few who are able to regularly attend nor are they intended to be convenient venues for breakaway splinter groups to go along and do their own thing while ever-willing to impose on the facilities, massive backup and resources of the club as a whole.
There is no place in the club for "Secluded Interest Groups," as the organisation grows so should our individual horizons. There is so much to be gained from avoiding taking isolated positions, while still maintaining, and enhancing, our valued personal interests. Yes, about time Colin, not only Melb PC overall, but all SIGs and their attendees will ultimately benefit from this one, we may even get more regular reports in the SIG section so our readers know what each SIG and RIG does.
I liked the new format of the magazine last month, especially the Members Free Ads all grouped together. A few bargains in there I see, and quite a few with an out of touch sense of worth also! Many of the prices from commercial vendors are far more attractive, it pays to shop around or at least do some informed negotiating.
Always on a limited budget I enjoy checking out the advertisements in PC Update, it's good to see so many nowadays, some of them from companies I have been using for years and certainly recommended. It's almost worth reading the mag just for the ads--note I did say "almost"! OK, the Llama's back so let's get on with it.
Clipping DOS apps in Windows
Alistair Lloyd
A common question I'm asked is how to Cut and Paste DOS application or system information into Windows, and vice versa. Microsoft, in their ongoing support (?) of the PC user, have included this function, but have hidden it away where it's not easily discovered.
So, to clip from DOS into Windows, try the following:
- Start Windows. (This is the easy bit. Most people know this trick already.)
- Run your DOS program, or open a DOS window by double-clicking on the MS-DOS icon.
- With the application running full-screen, press Alt+Enter together, so that the screen becomes a "window" with the Program Manager in the background. Note: If the DOS program you are running is particularly video-memory or run-time hungry, Windows might chuck a wobbly at you at this point!
- Click on the top-left hand Control-menu box ( [-] ) on the DOS window. This will pull down a small menu. One of the options on this menu is "Edit."
- Select "Edit" and a sub-menu will appear. From this menu, select "Mark."
- Windows will now let you "click and drag" over this window to select the information you want. The selected information will appear in reverse colours.
- If you press Enter at this stage, your selection will be copied into the Windows Clipboard.
- From here, the information can be passed into any Windows program you like, by entering that application and choosing "Paste."
- In Windows, copy information into the clipboard using a Paste action.
- Open a DOS window, with a program such as a text editor, and reduce it to a Windows screen as described in step 3 above.
- Click on the Control-menu bar again, and bring up the Edit submenu. This time, select the "Paste" option.
- Voila! The information is copied into the DOS application as if someone had typed it there!
Sound Blaster blues
Darryl Harrison
After one year of PC ownership, I now look back on all the upgrades I thought I didn't need. A sound card was my first addition.
Not really knowing what to get, I left all the thinking to Ron Taylor, who picked up an Audio Wave Green 16 card with non-powered speakers. This unit represents good value for money, is Sound Blaster, Adlib and CD-ROM compatible, and certainly made DOOM more interesting. No annoying TSRs in memory and some nice Windows toys to play with were real bonuses. I now had the taste for a CD-ROM drive.
The Panasonic CR-562B was a good choice. Hooking up to the sound card's interface and setting up with the install diskette supplied were no problem. A few months passed, and I now craved for a genuine Sound Blaster AWE32 and some powered speakers.
What a buzz, my old gear went to a workmate and I had all these new goodies to play with. Once the new card was installed, my CD-ROM couldn't be detected on boot up. No worries, I thought, run the Sound Blaster install program, it'll be okay. The install program couldn't detect my CD-ROM either, so I ran it without the CD option.
A whole weekend was wasted pondering over my problem until I finally remembered a README file on the CR-562B disk. It contained a batch file for running that drive with Sound Blaster cards. End of problem, AWE32 sound, CD-ROM working, a whole heap of device drivers and even more Windows applications.
The original device driver (CDMKE.SYS) that was supplied with my Panasonic CR562B model CD Drive is a bit outdated now and as yet I haven't been able to obtain an update for it. One day while browsing the Melb PC BBS files sections I found a later version to suit the Creative Labs CR563B model of the Panasonic, which uses a driver named SBCD.SYS, now up to v4.19.
This update can improve performance while running many of the newer, resources demanding games direct from CD but it will not load with the 562. Here is a way to patch the SBCD.SYS v4.19 device driver to make it run with CR562B model drives. Using the external command DEBUG, from the DOS prompt just enter the following:
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DEBUG SBCD.SYS E 2E3E B2 W Q |
And all is fixed. Another small but important point, most PCs come with a game port as standard, most sound cards give you a joystick port as well, which one would normally disable. In my case, running a four button joystick through the standard port wouldn't allow the two extra buttons to function, whilst the SB card would! Try changing your card settings if you experience this problem.
Coming to grips with all these additions has been difficult. I have yet to bother with using most of the SB utilities and why do I need all those memory eating drivers? AWE32 music is great while DOOMing and playing other games, but I have yet to discover the many features of this much praised product--only time will tell, I suppose.
Stay tuned for more Sound Blaster tips as I delve heavily into the documentation.
ANSI antics
Michael Palmer
Browsing through an old copy of a magazine I came across the following little batch file which I quite like and think some users may find useful to experiment with ANSI Escape Codes. Like many batch files it was not copyrighted in any way but I still convey my thanks to the anonymous author for such an interesting idea. You must have ANSI.SYS or another ANSI driver loaded before you run the batch file.
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S.BAT IF "%1"=="" GOTO HELP GOTO OK :HELP ECHO Syntax: TIMES A B C D ECHO A=Text Color: ECHO 30=BLACK 31=RED ECHO 32=GREEN 33=YELLOW ECHO 34=BLUE 35=MAGENTA ECHO 36=CYAN 37=WHITE ECHO B=Background Color: ECHO 40=BLACK 41=RED ECHO 42=GREEN 43=YELLOW ECHO 44=BLUE 45=MAGENTA ECHO 46=CYAN 47=WHITE ECHO C=Row Number ECHO D=Col Number GOTO EXIT :OK PROMPT $P$G$e[s$e[%1m $e[%2m$e[%3;%4H$d $t $e[37m$e[40m $e[u :EXIT |
(Note: type all of the three lines for PROMPT, above, into one line of your batch file.)
If you type TIMES you get a Help Screen showing the choices available and if you then type (for example)
CALL TIMES.BAT 37 44 1 50
you get the current time and date in white on blue in the upper right corner of your screen. and so on ad infinitum with your choices of colors and positions. It's a good time waster! I have added to it slightly by inserting $h$h$h$h$h$h after $t to get rid of the seconds.
The unshifted colon
Ron Taylor
Now that Michael has got us all primed-up with Fancy-ANSI Escape sequences, here is another which can be useful, especially for those who are new to computer keyboarding (or just plain lazy like me).
I find it illogical that the colon (:), was chosen as the drive letter suffix character in DOS, it's bad enough having to type in long drive and directory names, let alone remember that one of the characters has to be in shift-key state. Why didn't they choose the unshifted semicolon? I guess there must be a reason.
Never mind, it's easy enough to change it. Hmmm... I should qualify that statement; we will not actually be changing the keys themselves or in fact the actual character that DOS wants to "see", we will simply redefine the keyboard to swap the action of the colon/semicolon key, and it won't harm a thing.
The plan is when we type a colon we won't have to hold down the shift key, and when we type a shifted colon we will get a semicolon on the screen. All you need is to have the ANSI.SYS device driver loaded in CONFIG.SYS, then create and run the following batch file:
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Colon/Semi-Colon Keys :: and Set Prompt string. PROMPT=$e[58;59p PROMPT=$e[59;58p PROMPT=$P$G :: end |
Don't worry, doing this will not upset the "real" definitions of this key when programs are running, it will only be operative at the DOS command line where you need it most. Enjoy!
Elementary, my dear Watson
Michael Palmer
Ever wonder exactly what is happening in Windows 3.1 when the hard disk chatters away and nothing results for what seems an eternity. Microsoft has provided your own personal diagnostician but did not tell you about him for reasons known only to itself.
I refer to Dr Watson. Yes, I know that Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson," but we can ignore that fact.
Open your File Manager and in your Windows directory find DRWATSON.EXE. Now double-click on this file and then exit File Manager. When you go back to your desktop you will see a new icon of a young doctor holding a stethoscope. He looks more like a doctor from an American soap than my idea of Conan Doyle's character but never mind!
Now when things appear to go awry wait until the hard disk light goes out then double-click on the Dr Watson icon. If he reports "No faults detected" you have no worries. If he reports something else, then using your text editor or viewer (I use Drag and View--available from the Melb PC BBS), look at a file the good doctor has created called DRWATSON.LOG. This will tell you more than you want to know but will identify the offending program and its conflicts.
I always delete DRWATSON.LOG at the end of every session so I can start afresh when I next switch on.
A slimming exercise?
Ron Taylor
Many Windows users often ask me "What files can I safely delete?" I have many answers to this quite innocent question, the more honest one being "How would I b... well know!?!".
Another answer could go like this: "You give me a list of every piece of software you now use and want to keep, (don't forget to include every option and/or preference you may have selected, like screen savers etc...) Along with that a complete list of any and all software that you have ever installed in the past. With all of this make sure you specify exact version numbers, and include a complete current filespec listing direct from the PC with original date/time stamps on every file, plus a fully detailed description of all hardware equipment in use. Then I will attempt to tell you what you can safely delete."
Get the picture? It's not that easy is it? The reality is all our systems are different, hardware, software, usage habits and user requirements. There is no simple solution, I am pretty familiar with DOS and, having used Windows fairly intensively for about three years, am slowly getting some grasp of that too, but 300+ files spanning 20 MB in \SYSTEM alone ain't chicken feed. Have also tried those Uninstaller-type programs, both commercial and shareware with little real success. Believe me I know how you feel on this subject!
What I do recommend is to try and avoid installing unnecessary stuff that you really won't use just for the sake of trying it, (Hmm, if you are anything like me that statement was a waste of space). And keep reading T'n'T--I'll try and dig up some pointers on the subject, here's a start:
The Alt+Enter key combo in Program Manager pops up a "Properties" box for a Program or Group Item. True to convention the same keys in File Manager give Properties info., in this case for a file or directory. Best of all, in Windows for Workgroups, the File Manager Properties dialog box contains two extra scrolling list boxes with some very useful stuff, version information on the file!
Yes we are not alone, the "problem" is acknowledged by most good software vendors (some of the latest shareware has inbuilt uninstall), and Windows 95 is much improved in this area, just don't expect miracles though, we'll still be running a lot of "old" software apps with it. In the meantime...
Have you noticed that after installing a piece software its setup program has gone ahead and installed an earlier version of a file with the same name? You are sure that your original was a different size or had a later date/time stamp and the stupid "new" program has overwritten
it - and without asking too, very inelegant!
The File Manager Properties feature can be handy to check up on these things, e.g. the so-called "newer" file with one of same name from our original system disks or backup. It is always prudent to use the latest available, some software will not even run on early versions of critical support components. You can also use the perennial classic LIST.COM to peek in the file, the juicy info is usually put by the compiler toward the end and it doesn't take much nouse to get the gist of the convention used.
Not all Windows system-type files have complete (or any) info coded inside them, it seems to be more prevalent with the later ones. However it can be a worthwhile exercise, and quite educational too, to examine some of those cryptic DLLs and DRVs that seem to breed and clutter our valuable HD real estate, perhaps deleting the unwanted ones or multiple copies of the same. Use the old trick: if it's suspect, then move it to a \SPARE dir and if "everything" still works OK afterward give it the whammo!
Many thanks again to our contributors for this month, without them we wouldn't have a T'n'T column. It's great to see so much enthusiam and willingness to pass on the little secrets that many of us seem to take for granted if we happen to know the answers...wish I knew them all. Bye till next month.
Reprinted from the April 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
