 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Members' tips 'n' tricks Ron Taylor |
With retail prices of most popular commercial software being dragged down to more realistic levels over recent years there is no excuse for pirating. Licensing also has worthwhile side effects. Have you ever known a "pirate" who actually knows much about, or can really use the software? Enough said!
Unfortunately many shareware programs have not followed suit with price reductions. Of course it would be difficult for authors to market their goods at a further reduced rate when much of it barely covers development costs now. But let's admit it, it would be hard to live without shareware and the authors deserve some payment for their work, let alone encouragement to keep on doing it.
A new service being set up by Trevor Jacobs will give members the opportunity to register their favourite shareware through the club, thereby saving money and hassles. Also, with some shareware titles, the registration fee is "lifetime" - yes, all updates from then on are gratis - good value.
Hands up those who are sick and tired of all the media hype about the Internet - it gets to you doesn't it? The way it is sometimes portrayed on TV, radio and in newspapers makes one think that if you are not up with all then you must be some form of lesser being!
Like bulletin boards, albeit on a much larger scale, the strength of the net lies in public electronic communicating with others via e-mail and Usenet (news-groups). While many find it difficult to adapt to this form of interpersonal exchange - it can be unruly, even anarchaic - it would be difficult to argue against the proposition that it is one of the few remaining forums for true freedom of speech and opinion, for that reason alone the use of these valuable resources must be encouraged and made available to all.
Our new Melb PC Internet service is now up and running - one of the best and least expensive around it is very popular indeed. We have many help facilities set up, as well as training courses available which are highly recommended. That superhighway is not an easy road, but you can rest assured that as a member of this club you will never be left out in the cold. Our regular tipster Michael Palmer is an old hand on the net and has supplied us with some tips and Alistair has produced a little beauty for the cashless travellers, so - on with the show.
The Internet on a 286
Michael Palmer
Now, before all the well-heeled members with Pentiums, 28.8 modems and Colour HP DeskJets start ROFLHST (rolling on the floor laughing, holding stomach tightly!), bear with me while I have a word with the remainder of the membership.
Don't feel that if you only have a 286 the Internet is closed to you. You may have read articles, as I have, that tell you if you want to run the latest high-tech Web browsers such as Netscape or Mosaic you need the minimum of a 486 and 8 MB of RAM, but don't let that put you off. You can explore all facets of the net providing you are happy to stick to text-based formats and you can even read all the articles in the fabled World Wide Web.
"What does this mean?" I hear you cry. Well, it means that you use the Internet just as you use a BBS. You won't see any pretty pictures but you can do anything else. You will already have a modem I guess, but if you haven't and have been thinking about it I suggest you get a 14.4 kbps internal modem, costing about as much as a 2400 bps one cost two years ago.
The reason I say internal is that it should come with the 16550 UART chip on board and I would guess that your current 286 I/O card won't have one, meaning you would have to stick your hand in your pocket and buy a new serial card to run an external modem. Fitting an internal modem isn't hard, if I can do it, you can! You won't need any new comms software as you can use Telemate or Telix. Just set the emulation to VT100 or VT102 not ANSI.
To start off you need to find an Internet provider and who better and cheaper than Melb PC? When you settle on your provider request a shell account. [Ed: Melb PC recommends SLIP/PPP accounts for beginners. - AN] This usually takes you straight into the UNIX prompt and you will need to learn a few basic commands but as you have already done this with DOS, believe me, you can do it with UNIX. I would recommend a book called "The First Book of UNIX" published by Alpha Books, which covers the basics very well.
OK - now you are all set to go and are asking what you can do. To me the best part of the an Internet account is the e-mail address which you are given. You can mail anyone, anywhere in the world who has an e-mail address and it costs you almost nothing. If you have friends or relations on the north side of the world with Internet access, watch your phone bills go down. You are sure to find some people or companies you want to contact once you have your account. I have used e-mail to buy software and get almost instant support. Try that with a local supplier!
This is definitely a text application, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a breeze with text. Find the site you want with a simple command, look through the directories, select the file you want and download it. You don't need any pictures to guide you through this simple procedure.
Doing a file search with Archie is not a problem nor is using Gopher and if your provider has a World Wide Web access program such as Lynx then away you go. All you need to do, for example, is to type:
lynx http://www.playboy.com
and you will connect to the Playboy site. You won't be able to see the pictures but I am sure you only buy it for the articles!
Plaza Suite
Michael Palmer
Plaza is an Internet ftp site and the suite is their wonderful collection of shareware and freeware files, open to anyone with Internet access. The full address is plaza.aarnet.edu.au and as you can see is an Australian site so you don't need to hook up to an overseas site to find that file you want, needlessly using bandwith.
Use the ftp command to get there and it is most likely that your provider will use the ncftp program and you will see ncftp at the prompt. Type
open plaza.aarnet.edu.au
press Enter and you will be logged on automatically with ncftp entering your e-mail address for you as your id.
When you get the prompt from plaza type "cd /micros/pc/garbo" and press Enter. This directory holds all the subdirectories for both DOS and Windows programs. If you want to look at the DOS files type pc/ and press Enter. If it is Windows files which interest you then type windows/ and press enter. Easy, isn't it?
If you have selected pc/ you will be taken to /micros/pc/garbo/pc. Then type ls and press Enter and you will see a screenful of subdirectories. If, for example, you chose editor, you will be taken to a screen showing all the available editors. This is where I found my favourite vi for DOS editor, CALVIN22.ZIP.
Should you choose /windows you will go to /micros/pc/garbo/windows and it is all yours. Type ls and press Enter for all the Windows subdirectories. When you have found what you want and downloaded it, exit plaza by typing by and pressing Enter and you will go back to the prompt.
If, as I suspect, you will be using ncftp, your site selection will be saved in your personal user file so the next time you visit plaza the program will remember where you were looking and put you back in that particular subdirectory without you doing anything. Marvellous, isn't it?
Telecard tone dialling (a modem application!)
Alistair Lloyd
Here's a tip for those of you who have modem, will travel. Telecom, bless their little black hearts, have a service called Telecard, which is a cheap and easy way of making local, interstate, or even international calls, and having them billed back to a central number.
They work on a similar concept to automatic teller machines. You dial a Telecom phone number, which connects you to a tone-actuated system. You can then dial your card number, a four-digit pin, your phone number and you are connected. The clever computer at the other end determines whether the number you are calling is busy and politely informs you. If you take too long or enter an incorrect number you are connected to a human operator.
It is a very easy process to use such a card to dial out through a tone-dialling modem. You will need a valid Telecom Telecard, your PIN number, a modem and a terminal interface program such as Telix, Terminate, or Telemate. (We will assume here that you have a PC.) Here is one we prepared earlier:
Say we hold card number 11223344, which has a PIN of 7788. We'll assume this number is charged back to our work number, 9123 4567. We will say the local Telecom phone number for accessing Telecard is 9898. If we need to dial up, for example, the Melb PC BBS, on (03) 9699 6611, we could enter in the following AT command:
ATDT9898,,,1122334477880396996611#
The first four numbers are for the modem to dial the Telecard service and the commas are modem delays. In this case, we are telling the modem to delay around three seconds before "dialling" the rest of the string. This delay may need to be extended for some areas. Three seconds is fine for my area, but I've needed a five-second delay in other areas. The Telecom Telecard system will give two small "beeps" and will start a recorded announcement when you dial it up.
The next 12 digits are the card number and the PIN. The final ten digits are the bulletin board phone number. Finally, the system demands that you put in a "hash" at the end of the string to show it you have finished.
If all is well the next thing you will hear is dialling and a carrier signal. Your call will be charged back to the phone service which you have nominated to be attached to your Telecard. This can be a great help if you are interstate or at a friend's house and don't want to burden them with expensive interstate calls.
There are some things to look out for: Please do not try the phone or card numbers above - they are not valid! Keep an ear on your modem - if the receiving number is busy or invalid, a computer generated voice will tell you this. Do not hang onto the line, or you will be put onto a human operator, and they don't like listening to your modem!
Decoding binary files from the Internet
Michael Palmer
Now you have your Internet account you will, no doubt, start wandering through the many groups that make up Usenet and before long you will encounter the "binaries" files. Some of these will contain screen after screen of what looks like indiscriminately written garbage but is, in fact, a method of posting pictures, usually in the .JPG or .GIF formats which you can download and view.
For example, in the newsgroup alt.binaries.clipart, you may see a message which starts off something like this:
begin 666 anyold.file
MLDIENGYNTHDSY54873980%$#@78&^% MPOMNVUNBRGDYJG34LHG3JHLG5G45J6...
rows and rows of more of this until it ends like:
end
What you have encountered is a binary file which has been converted to a text (ASCII) file using the UUENCODE standard so that it can be handled by the mail system. To decode this text, that is, to turn it back to binary format so that your viewer can understand what is going on you will need to use a utility called UUCODE that contains both UUENCODE and UUDECODE. All you need to bother about at this stage is the UUDECODE portion of the utility which will be called, as you might expect, UUDECODE.EXE.
Now the good news. The utility is freeware if you use it for noncommercial purposes and you can find it on most bulletin boards, including ours. The syntax for using the utility is simple, but remember to place UUDECODE.EXE in a directory which is in your path (yes, I know we always say this but if you don't do it then it makes an easy job hard!) I have the file in my UTIL subdirectory which contains all such items and UTIL is in my very short path.
Some of these encoded files are large, created multipart and labeled FILENAME 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, for instance, so when you "save" the file(s) to your home directory use the "append" command in your mail reader to make sure that you get all the bits in one file. Once you have downloaded the file which, let us say, is called CRICKET.JPG, by using the rz command to UNIX, it will be sitting in your download subdirectory. Go to DOS and change to this directory, which we will call C:\BWAVE\DOWN. Type DIR and press Enter to make sure that the file is still there and that you have not mistyped its name. Use the following command:
UUDECODE CRICKET.JPG CRICKET1.JPG
If you don't name the destination file differently from the source file, UUDECODE gets a bit confused and asks if you want to overwrite the original file. If you say yes then that means goodbye to the file!
By the way, don't worry if the original text file which you have downloaded contains text before the "begin..." and after the "end" as UUDECODE is smart enough to work out that these are not part of the file to be decoded and ignores them. At least my version of the utility does, so look for a smart decoder such as this. If you can't find it leave a message for me on the BBS and I will upload it.
Now the file will be back in its binary form and you can fire up your viewer (if you haven't installed one yet then try CSHOW.EXE) and gaze upon the picture in all its glory.
Reprinted from the June 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
