From u5a77@uga.keele.ac.uk Fri May 07 20:34:40 1999
Received: from knotty.kis.keele.ac.uk ([160.5.47.1])
	by frodo.teach.cs.keele.ac.uk with smtp (Exim 2.02 #13)
	id 10fqON-0007DV-00
	for u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk; Fri, 7 May 1999 20:34:39 +0100
Received: from u5a77 by knotty.kis.keele.ac.uk with local (Exim 1.70 #4)
	id 10fqOJ-0002zt-00; Fri, 7 May 1999 20:34:35 +0100
Subject: thing
To: u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 20:34:35 +0100 (BST)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 28296     
Message-Id: 
From: A Halliwell 
Status: O

                    ********************

                            QL
                           CLUB
                       INTERNATIONAL

                    ********************

                         ISSUE 120

                       February 1999

                                             MIKE KENNEALLY
                         E-MAIL MIKEKENNEALLY1@COMPUSERVE.COM
                                        MIKEKENNEALLY1@BIGFOOT.COM
			WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/SILICONVALLEY/VISTA/4807/


ANY AND ALL SOFTWARE SENT TO THE CLUB/NEWSLETTER WILL BE TREATED
AS PUBLIC DOMAIN UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED.

HI ALL,

YES I'M LATE AGAIN.

I OWE THANKS TO ANDY PRATT FOR THE QL HE SENT,I HAVE NOT YET TRIED IT
OUT OWING TO THE FACT THE ONE HE SENT ME HAS A PC INTERFACE ON IT
AND IT HAS 5 PINS,BUT ALL THE KEYBOARDS I HAVE HAVE 6 PINS.THE ONE
IN THE MIDDLE GETS IN THE WAY! ANYONE GOT A SPARE 5 PIN KEYBOARD
THEY ARE NOT USING?

MY THANKS ALSO TO TERRY FOR THE MONETARY CONTRIBUTION,IT WILL GO
TOWARDS WHAT I OWE ANDY.

THERE ARE A COUPLE OF LETTERS THAT I MISSED FROM OTHER ISSUES IN THIS
NEWSLETTER,I GET THERE IN THE END!

I AM HOPING IN THE FUTURE TO ORGANISE A QL SHOW IN AND AROUND STOCKPORT
SOMETIME IN AUGUST OR SEPTEMBER DEPENDING ON AVAILABLE DATES AND
WHETHER OR NOT QUANTA WANT TO GET INVOLVED,DILWYN IS HANDLING THAT
SIDE OF IT.HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A 2 DAY THING OR 1 AND A HALF AT
LEAST,SO QL CLUB MEMBERS CAN HAVE SOME TIME TOGETHER BEFORE THE
ACTUAL WORKSHOP.ANYWAY MORE DETAILS AS AND WHEN THEY BECOME
AVAILABLE.



Email: torm1358@aol.com

Dear All,

   I hope you all had good Christmases.  I didn't get anything QL
related, but did get some book tokens, which have been spent on
some expensive books. I did try and contribute to last month's
issue, and although Mike acknowledged receiving the letter, it
seems to have got lost amongst his computer problems,so I am
sending it again with this letter.

   However, all were to do with my interest in Korea, and not on
computers or the QL. 


    I have spent most of the month working on my web page and trying to
learn HTML. I have now divided some of the pages in two; though I
don't really have enough sections to make the left window
scrolling. We have a bargain book shop in Woking, and finally,
they a useful book on creating web pages.It seems to include some
information on HTML and even JAVA. 


    I am still looking for web addresses, so if anyone knows of any
good QL sites, please tell me. I have been thinking about my
computer page, and hopefully I will find time to re-order it in a
more logical fashion. Any information about the Acorn/Sinclair
competition and the history of the British computer industry would
be appreciated. I would also like to have a picture of a QL on the
site. Does anyone know where I can get a digitised picture of a QL
(JPEG format)??

I AM SURE THERE ARE SOME QL PICTURES ON SOME OF THE QL SITES,BUT I
CAN'T REMEMBER WHERE,BUT I AM SURE SOMEONE CAN TELL YOU.AS FOR
GOOD QL PAGES WHAT ABOUT OURS? AND THERE ARE LOADS OF OTHERS OUT
THERE.

   Martin Burke asked, ' I was copying a backup disk with  many
differently dated files.  I  do not want to reset the QL clock for
each file:  there  has  to  be  a  simpler  way.Doesn't there?'

   I think that the JS rom always creates a new date, but Minerva keeps
the original date. The only snag is that TK2 tends to overwrite
the Minerva code.Have a word with Tony Firshman about dated files
and see what he says.

    There is some QL news I think. The Q40 seems ready for launch. The
specs make interesting reading. This will be the fastest QL board
to date and can run SVGA monitors and hard disks. Although speed
has been increased, it will still be much slower than PC's or
Apples, but that has not been a problem because the QL rom is so
efficient it doesn't need hugely fast processors that other
operating systems need to require. It should also make ProWes
nicer to use. The Q40 also seems to remove memory limits for the
foreseeable future.The Q40 comes with a standard, patched(sic),
JS(?) rom (now renamed a 'QL ClassicROM'), BUT Tony Tebby is
working on hi-res and colour drivers for the new board. This,
hopefully, will also benefit Aurora users as well.
 

   The only downsize is that  the QL hardware community has again been
split into two. Aurora is not needed, but I think the Goldfire
board is still under development so Aurora users, like me, might
hang on until that board arrives on the scene. That said, I hope
the Q40 sells well and keeps the remaining users interested in the
QL.

SO DO I MATE,THERE SEEMS TO BE TO MANY SLOWLY DISSAPEARING JUST LATELY.

   Well, that's about it for now. I did consider rabbiting on about
Apple and iMacs, but I think I will leave that for another day.

  Best Wishes,

Andrew




Email dilwyn.jones@dj.softnet.co.uk

GEAR: Black P100 PC with QPC, Canon BJ10sx printer; Toshiba
T2400CS laptop PC with QPC, HP Deskjet 320 printer; MinisQL
with Super Gold Card+Qubide; QL+Gold Card+RomDisq


Darren Branagh and I went to the Hove Quanta Workshop end of
February. This was a lovely little weekend out though it
ended badly with Darren missing his ferry back. Still, you
got an extra day in Wales out of it didn't you Darren? I
promise I won't mention the sheep...

SHEEP WOULD MAKE A NICE CHANGE FROM CHASING LEPRECHAUNS,BESIDES I
BET HE ENJOYED THE EXTRA DAY.

Tony Firshman brought a sample Q40 along with him. This is a cute
little board with a 68040 on it, 2 almost complete operating
systems (QDOS Classic by Mark Swift and SMSQ/E for Q40 by
Tony Tebby) and a complete implementation of Linux (by
Richard Zidlicky).

The Q40 is the first new native QL hardware since the Aurora, and
those present seemed to be drooling over it! Roy Wood and
Tony Firshman gave a sometimes amusing talk about it (e.g.
Roy described one of the operating systems progress as
'stable - it doesn't work at all').

THAT SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT FOR QL HARDWARE IN DEVELOPMENT.

In all, QBranch, TF Services, Miracle Systems, Q-Celt Software,
Geoff Wicks,Bill Richardson, Enrico Tedeschi (author of
Sinclair Archaelogy and owner of Hove Books), Quanta, RWAP
Software, Qubbesoft P/D, Jochen Merz and several well known
software authors were all present. There was a day-long
programme of talks and the workshop was quite well attended -
the venue was the Excelsior Hotel on Hove seafront.

IT WOULD BE NICE TO GET ALL THIS LOT TO THE ONE I AM ORGANISING.

Software tidbits at the show: Jonathan Hudson was
completing a utility to allow transfer of files between QL
and a Palm Pilot handheld PDA (I think that stands for
Personal Digital Assistant? Anyone know?). Ron Dunnett had
a Beta of a Phil Borman utility for decoding GIF files.
Rich Mellor had a route map of Ireland for his Q-Route
program and also had the latest set of updates for his
SuperBASIC/SBASIC Reference Guide.

That's all I've got to say this time, you'll be glad to
hear.

Dilwyn Jones


Andrew Halliwell

Gear: SuperGold card QL with Minerva 1.97, QubIDE, Star 24 pin
printer + lots of nice free software (Fileinfo, etc).

And now... A 486sx running Linux. (It's a PC that *ISN'T* a
Potential Catastrophy... :)

NOW WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE?
 

Well.... I didn't manage to write in last month, and this month, I
might be too late. Work, holidays, laziness, etc...

Well... New things...
I will admit not having messed with the ol' faithful for a few
weeks.John kindly gave me an old 486, which I promptly did
what I always said I'd do, and formatted the harddrive and
installed Linux. I've been playing with that a lot since.
Installing, uninstalling and recompiling it.

 AND YOU THINK IT WON'T CRASH!

Anyone thinking of moving over to linux in favour of M$ rubbish? I
strongly recommend the SuSE distribution. It contains several
programs that make it extremely easy to install and configure
Linux.

Oh.... If you DO want to try Linux, but don't want to get rid of
all your M$ Winblows software, it is possible (and infact,
quite easy) to set it up to give you alternative OSs at
startup, using a program called LILO. (LInux LOader).

A new version of MicroEmacs has been put up on Thierrys page, as
has another further debugged version of Paragraph (The
wordprocessor for Prowess). It's not stable yet, but seems to
be improving (Not that I have Prowess to try it with).

I HAVE THE OLD MICROEMACS,CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT IT DOES AND HOW ITS
USED?

And now...On with the show....
Only one little thing to say on QL116....

(Yes,yes, I know I'm being pedantic... It's a hobby, OK?)

Martin Wheatly said a couple of months ago....
"Possibly as a consequence of this turning down of permission Tony
Firshman has made the 1.89 version of Aurora freely
downloadable"

If only... :) I wish I could download a hardware addon like Aurora, but
StarTrek transporter technology is very primative at the moment. You did,of
course,mean Minerva....

On to QL117 Dilwyn said about Frank Davies... 

"As to Frank Davies, he and I have managed to tread on each
other's toes once or twice too. Frank is a busy guy, he and
his wife sell products for 3 or 4 different computers and in
my experience he's reasonable if asked politely (that WASN'T
a dig at you BTW)."

Unfortunately, that wasn't how he came across on the list. He
basically blew his top. (All I did was ask "Why just not
release the ROMs for emulator use instead of insisting people
ask?") and he replied by accusing me of being rude, said it
was none of my business, and then went into a long rant which
implied that I condoned software piracy. Not exactly polite, that,
is it?

All he had to say was that he'd paid for it.
(Although that was pretty obvious from the outset). I tried to
point out that it is quite possible to sell the ROMS *AND*
release the code, but to no avail.

Anyway. That argument ended a couple of months ago, so that's the
last I'll say on it.

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE SPIKE,HE HAS TO MAKE A LIVING WHEN ALL SAID AND
DONE.PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.

Hmmmmm...
Unfortunately, apart from saying "Ooops" to my comment on
Q-Emulator being Freeware when it's actually Shareware,
there's not much more to add this month...

Still... It beat Mr Wheatleys post for length...:)

Happy New Year.

Thanks for the latest edition Mike, much appreciated, not taken it
all in yet but no doubt will over the weekend, that is if I
don't get dragged out as the weather is so nice here today
[Saturday] hopefully you are getting the same.
What is the trouble you keep having your end, is it just the pc
playing up, as keep seeing comments made by others about you
and your computer, perhaps those who are moaning should treat
you to a new model!!!!!

NICE THOUGHT MATE,ANY TAKERS?

Regards,
Tony@Borehamwood.




Terry Williams                         27/02//99

                                            WTCWilliam@aol.com


GEAR:  2 JS  QLs, 1JM  QL,SGC,GC,TRUMPCARD,TWIN ED  DRIVES,TWIN HD
DRIVES,TWIN DD DRIVES,14", QMIMI MOUSE,  GOLD  STAR  COLOUR  MONITOR  ,
9"SONY TRITRON  MONITOR, 12" FERGUSON GREEN  MONITOR, SPECTRUM 48K WITH
TELETEXT ADAPTOR, Fountain PC,CD Drive, HD Drive, modem, sound card etc


                     QL 120?

Hi! Mike and Friends

Mike: I have not received my QL119? (last months disk) back as yet.
Are you in trouble with PC  again?.  I  will  add  my  last  months
contribution once more  on this disk  as well as  this one (QL120?)
and you can use it or delete it as you like.

SORRY  TERRY,MY FAULT I FOUND YOUR DISC UNDER A LOAD OF STUFF ON MY
DINING ROOM TABLE AFTER I HAD FINISHED THE LAST ISSUE.

I am  happy to report that  my problems with logging  on to the NET
are  now over!!. After contacting BT  and receiving the report that
my  line was OK I received a further call from them at 18.20 on the
following  Saturday and the engineer said he had just 'tweeked it a
bit', and since then I have only failed a couple of times to log on
even though I have all the family gear connected including an extra
phone in the modem socket!! Amazing!!

I have visited the  QL International   page on  the WWW  and wonder
what I  must do to make a  copy of it to my  hard disk and how long
this would take   (ie   cost?). I  have printed  out some  pages on
line, of various  items, but this  takes an age  before the printer
even  wakes up after the  menu "PRINTING TO SPOOLER"  comes on so I
dread to  think how  long it  would take  to print  out all  the QL
INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE.

YOU COULD  ALWAYS DO WHAT I DO AND  DOWNLOAD TO DISC AND THEN PRINT
OUT  OFF LINE,SPIKE IS THE ONE WHO SET THE PAGE UP SO HE IS THE ONE
TO GIVE INFO ON HOW TO USE IT.HE CAN WRITE IN AND TELL US ALL,CAN'T
YOU SPIKE?

TTFN  Terry



                                           FRANK MERRISON,             

                                           26-2-1999

GEAR includes 3 x JM QL's: Gold Card: DMP: Epson Stylus 800 printer:
2 x HD disc drives. 486 DX33 & Knee deep in paper & problems!

Mike I have just spent some time tidying up some of my discs. This led
me to going through some  back issues where I noticed that there have
been an occasional question asked by a member. At the time I was so
certain that someone  would jump at the chance of explaining the
problem that I did nothing about it myself.

YOU KNOW SOMETHING FRANK,I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK EXACTLY THE SAME
AS YOU.

As an example; in QL118  Colin asked about the method of changing fonts
and their size using the ESC P2 drivers. In a fit of  energy I sorted
out my manual and looked up the codes to use. My first reaction was one
of slight horror because there was little in the way of explanation as
to how these were used. I thought of taking the easy way out and
sending Colin a photo-copy and letting him see if he could follow just
what to do. Lo! and behold! (and other old fashioned rude words)
another member gave all this info in the next issue - QL119_doc.

In the previous issue - QL118 - you (Mike) wrote that you had four u/s
QLs. What do you mean by ..."2 with no keyboards"?.... Do you mean that
they have "Taken up their beds and walked" or they don't work? How on
earth did you break the pins off the interface plug? Thats a nice
little job soldering in a new one. 


I HAVE 2 QL'S WITH NO KEYBOARDS,ie NO TOPS.PEOPLE HAVE BORROWED THEM
OVER TIME AND NEVER RETURNED THEM.I HAVE ONE WITH A SCHON INTERFACE
THAT HAS COME APART AND YOU KNOW ME,I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PUT IT BACK
TOGETHER AGAIN.AND THE FINAL ONE I LENT TO MY NEPHEW FOR HIS COLLEGE
WORK AND HE BROKE ONE OF THE PINS IN THE EXPANSION SLOT.THEREFORE 4
QL'S IN BITS.

If the keyboards are still around and they don't work it is sometimes
possible to cut about a 1/4" off the ends of the membrane where it
usually cracks when it gets bent on fitting it into the slots. Even
fitting a new membrane is simple if you go carefully. Regarding the
other usual faults I have found two main reasons for failure both
easily cured. No1 is dirty pins on the removeable chips. Don't take
them right out of the sockets as they can be damaged trying  to align
the pins when refitting. Just ease them up in their holders and press
them home again. Do this a couple of times and the corrosion is cleaned
off. No2 is a damaged chip due to the reason given last month -
switching on or off a printer or monitor with the QL on line. 


You need a working QL in which you test ALL the removeable chips from
your non-working machines. Throw away the dud ones and you should have
enough good spares  to get at least a couple of your machines "on the
road" again. Tony will sell you replacements for the duds. Have you
taken the u/s QLs to your local workshop? This type of repair is going
on at most London meetings.

THE ONLY PERSON I HAVE SEEN REPAIRING QL'S AT MANCHESTER IS JOHN
SOUTHERN,MAYBE IF I GET ON MY KNEES AND PLEAD WITH HIM,HE MAY
JUST.......

You also said that one of your machines had a Schoen interface "in
bits" Does this refer to the QL or the Interface? Is the interface the
QL or the actual keyboard not working?

Have fun!!!!                               Frank Merrison.



Terry Williams                        27/01//99
                                            WTCWilliam@aol.com

                     QL 119?

Hi! Mike and Friends

I  think I had better throw my hat in!!. I have missed the last two
months due to being busy taking Marian back and fore to the doctor,
hospital,  dentist, and chiropodist, not to mention the Xmas school
holidays with Sam, my grandson, ordering me about. Marian is now on
insulin injections so  we have to  keep regular meal  times, and do
blood tests at various times. Things have calmed down a bit now.

I'M GLAD SHE'S  FEELING BETTER MATE,HOPE  YOU PUT IN  YOUR BILL FOR
ALL THE TAXI RIDES!

It's been a  mad  on  the  computer  front  as  well!.  Barrie,  my
son-in-law is  taking  an  open  university  course  and  has  just
upgraded  to a  PC with  all the  bells and  whistles and  a 17inch
monitor. He has  bequeathed his Windows   3.1 machine to  me! It is
complete with  cd drive  and modem  so I  am  now  on the  net! and
learning to surf!!. It is quite an old machine, all of 5 years!!!
Only an 80  meg Pentium. I am  now on AOL and  sending Email etc to
the family, but am finding it a pain to log on, it only works first
time occasionally,the  message  'No  carrier  found  trying  second
number' and it ploughs on and dials the same numbers again!! mostly
to no avail. It sometimes  takes  15  or  even  more  tries  before
getting AOL!!

TRY CHANGING  YOUR SERVER TO ONE OF  THE FREE ONES,ie FREESERVE AND
THE LIKE.

Barrie tells me that he had no trouble.
In desperation  I put the whole box of  tricks in the car on Sunday
and took  it over  to my  daughters place  in Amondsbury,  tried it
there.  Success!! it worked faultlessly!!. Brought it back home and
it took 12 attempts  to log  on. Rang  BT and  told them  the sorry
tale,  they tested my line and said it was OK!!! but they would get
their expert in another dept to scratch his head!!. Still waiting.
It does not seem to make any difference whether it is the only Item
plugged in, or  several  phones  and  an  answer  machine,  it  can
sometime work first time or take umpteen tries.
If anyone has any ideas I will be grateful to hear them!!

MIKE: I  have been meaningto ask for some  time, "Is OK to send you
HD  disks instead or in preference of  DD disks?" I suspect that as
you use a PC, you now have only one HD drive.

NO PROBLEM MATE,IT READS BOTH HD AND DD OR YOU COULD EVEN E-MAIL IT
TO ME NOW!

Must run to the post or I will miss the 28 th once more!! 


TTFN Terry

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


#!                            Martin Burke,
                              0973 144940 (mobile)
                                       

                              20th February, 1999.
                   


Dear Mike and Friends,

JM version + Trump 768 + HermesLite + twin HD & ED 3.5"
drives, JS + Gold Card, Philips CM8833 colour monitor (under
repair) and its Tandy twin, 8056 printer, Epson RX80 F/T, and
Brother HR10 daisy-wheel printer; PSION3a, Z88.

I still agree with Frank: how do we QUANTIfy the concepts,
uses and usage of QPACII?  I have rarely used it since being able
to: it has a number of features - especially the listing/ordering
of directories - that it is wonderful to have immediate access to.
But being able to use those facilities without meeting
complications is unusual.  Most of the complications may not matter
much of the time.  But it would be helpful if in the manual they
were clearly indicated.  I was a little surprised that each time I
did a directory of flp1_ I got a new "button/frame" for it at the
top of the screen each time.  If this meant that each directory was
now available without the disk, that has uses.  But it did not seem
to work like that.  I do not want to re-read the manual each time
something like this happens.  It might not be too bad if there was
a full and complete index leading to sections where all the
ramifications could be identified.  But it does not seem to work
like that. 


 WHEN DOES ANYTHING WORK AS YOU REALLY WANT IT TO.I THINK THE
BIGGEST PROBLEM I HAVE WITH IT IS WHEN YOU ACCESS WIN1,OR FLP1 AND
IT LEAVES YOU WITH A BOX ON THE SCREEN.OK,ITS HANDY HAVING IT THERE
TO RE-OPEN THE FILES BUT SOMETIMES I THINK IT LOOKS PRETTY
CLUTTERED.BEFORE ANYONE SAYS IT,I KNOW YOU CAN GO INTO RJOB AND
REMOVE IT.

QPACII almost certainly has advantages for the "technician"
but those same facilities can obscure its usefulness to others.  I
- like many others - do not want to "learn about QPACII", I merely
want to use some of its facilities.  That certainly involves some
learning but diversion is not wanted.  I want to know how to use
QPACII to do the things I want: I do not want to learn about
facilities I have no use for and I do not want to plough through
verbiage, trying and failing to make sense of it.

TRY ASKING A QUESTION ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT IT TO DO AND MAYHAP
SOMEONE WILL ANSWER IT.

It worries me that Mike has found so many people combining
arrogance and stupidity.  People who drive motor vehicles are not
reequired to understand the third law of thermodynamics.  The
vehicle is a means of transportation.  For me the QL is rarley a
plaything and while I have some interests in the mechanics of it,
for me the importance is getting the mundane work done.  


I THINK THIS IS TRUE OF MOST USERS OF ANY COMPUTER MARTIN,AS
FOR THERMODYNAMICS,YOU'D BE BUGGERED WITHOUT THE SPARK PLUGS!

Yours,                


Martin Burke.
                                

#!

                                               P. McPHERSON,
                                               22nd FEBRUARY 1999.
                                                                 

Fraternal Greetings Everybody,

Current equipment: JM QL with Gold Card, Cumana disk drives and an
Amstrad DMP3160 printer.

I received my copy of issue 119 as per usual, attenpted to load it
and once again into Xchange and Quill only to come up with an "i/o
incomplete" message, Perfection would not load QLCI-119 either. This
is something that has happened several times of late, a problem that
never used to occur, and ia one that does not happen with any other
files old, or new. When I have looked at the discs themselves, very
few sectors seem to have been used in saving the issues of QLCI  and I
occasionally get the first few lines of the document which indicates a
saving problem to me, but as you all know I am no expert. Could this
problem be the result of Mikes upgrading?

I WOULDN'T HAVE THOUGHT SO MATE,AS YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT SEEMS
TO BE HAVING THE PROBLEM.I CAN READ YOUR DISCS,I CAN SAVE TO YOUR
DISCS AND RELOAD FROM YOUR DISCS.HAS ANYONE GOT ANY IDEAS AS TO WHAT
MIGHT BE CAUSING THIS? DOES HIS DRIVE NEED CLEANING,RE-ALIGNING OR
WHAT?

All I know for sure is that the problem is extremely frustrating
and leaves me a couple of months behind everybody else when it comes
to the latest QL news, views and scandal! Can anybody suggest a cure
before I end up completely bald, whimpering in the corner of my living
room and foaming at the mouth!

Anyway, Mike I have enclosed a couple of formatted discs, can you
let me have issue 119 on one and issue 120 on the other? Thanks in
anticipation.

I MEAN,WHEN YOU SEND ME ANOTHER DISC FOR BOTH ISSUES,THEY MUST
BOTH LOAD OR YOU WOULD KEEP SENDING ME DISCS FOR THE SAME ISSUES OVER
AND OVER AGAIN.

                  BEST WISHES 

                      PAUL



!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#
J.C.Marcus

I KNOW THAT YOU LIKE ME TO PUT THIS ON YOUR RETURN ADDRESS,BUT OUR POSTMAN
HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE THAT IN REALITY ITS NORTHERN SPAIN!

15-2-99

GEAR: Aurora + SGC, Minerva 1.97/SMSQ/E, Hermes, Qubide/100M ZIP
DRIVE, 2xHD, CUB 653, Epson LQ500; JS QL with GC and 2xDD

Hello Again All,

Well, some interesting letters in QL118 & 119.  I found the one
about the "Y2K bug" very informative, but possibly a bit too optimistic
(and obviously USA-centric).  I know that very few companies down here
have even started looking into this problem, never mind all the
countries of the developing world etc.  From what I can understand, it
is not necessarily just a matter of sorting out your system, but also
making sure that the guy next door, who happens to be supplying your
company, also does the same.  Since most of our raw materials come from
"poorer" countries, that may not have the resources to throw at this
problem, who knows?  I guess we'll find out soon enough.  Also, no
mention was made of the mobile phone network, which according to some,
might also fail- or is/will this just be used by the telecommunication
companies to get us to upgrade to newer systems?  Cynical?  Well, one
has to be....

WHY NOT?,THEY DID IT WITH COMPUTERS!

Frank Merrison:- It seems that the PE/QPAC2 has definitely become
the number one contentious issue of the moment.  As far as multitasking
is concerned, every computer in fact has to multitask - i.e. carry out
various tasks in the background - e.g. RAM refreshes, updating screen,
polling i/o etc., etc.  It is really us, the USERS that have the
problem multitasking!  I really don't think that we were designed to do
more than one thing (properly) at a time!  Even so, if you have a large
screen (Aurora, QXL etc.), or want to run programs in the background
(e.g. comms, spoolers, number-crunching), or want to keep several
often-used programs available in the background, or as "Buttons", the
PE/QPAC2 definitely does help you control your "personal computer" (in
small letters) environment.

However, if you are happy with your present set-up, and it serves
you well, there is really no need to change - except of course that we
are a curious lot, and if we see someone doing something a little
differently, we generally want to know why!  


The main problem with the PE/QPAC2, of course, is sorting out your
"boot" program - what to include and HOW to achieve the optimum set up
for yourself.  There are some example boot programs on the QPAC2 disc,
and the PD program "QPACer" (Qubbesoft PD and Quanta library, I
believe) helps set up a boot for the PE/QPAC1/2.  The QPACer
documentation is worth looking at in any case, as it has some simple
explanations of the PE keywords etc. (as far as I can remember!)  The
best way of getting to grips with the PE, really, is to use a simple
boot at first, and then add to it as you go on/get to see the light (do
I sound like some sort of religious nut - if so I'll stop here).

NO MATE,YOU CARRY ON.I WAS JUST BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND IT.JUST
REMEMBER CLUBQL HAD QPACER FIRST!

Paul McPherson mentions software licences (among other things).
What I've been told is that these are often "non-transferable", which
makes buying and selling some 2nd-hand software "illegal", or have I
got the wrong end of the stick here.  I wonder if anyone has any
comments on the subject.

Mike:- your list of QL bits and pieces has given me an idea (for
which I MOST definitely retain the Copyright - never mind what anyone
says!)  You should stick it all on a board (painted BLACK, of course)
and sell the resulting "Work Of Art" to the nearest gallery for a
couple of K (at least).  That way you might be able to afford to buy a
decent computer for once and all......

HA BLOODY HA!,BUT THERE AGAIN NOT A BAD IDEA.I HAVE JUST READ IN
THE PAPER TODAY OF A 21 YEAR OLD GIRL/WOMAN IN THE TOWN NEXT TO
ME,GOING INTO PHOTO BOOTHS IN SHOPS.STRIPPING OFF WHILE PHOTOS ARE
TAKEN,ENLARGING THEM AND SELLING THEM TO CRAZY AMERICANS FOR `2000
APIECE AS WORKS OF ART,SO THE IDEA ISN'T SO DAFT AFTER ALL.A QL HAS TO
LOOK BETTER THAN MY BODY!

Bye for now,

JC  

      !#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#


-- 
|u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk|                                                 |
|    Andrew Halliwell      | "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't |
|     Finallist  in:-      |  suck is probably the day they start making     |
|    Computer science      |  vacuum cleaners" - Ernst Jan Plugge            |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|GCv3.1 GCS/EL>$ d---(dpu) s+/- a- C++ U N++ o+ K- w-- M+/++ PS+++ PE- Y t+  |
|5++ X+/++ R+ tv+ b+ D G e>PhD h/h+ !r! !y-|I can't say F**K either now! :(  |

    Source: geocities.com/siliconvalley/vista/4807

               ( geocities.com/siliconvalley/vista)                   ( geocities.com/siliconvalley)