It was 50 disks ago today... AUTOCAD: an electronic
Contents
1. Apple BBS listing for WordPerfect went from a low of continued on page 6 Boards populars in area Based on list compiled April 1 1988 by Rene Kahle Additions by Andr Cyr The list below shows the name of the BBS its phone number baud rates support and network affiliation Beaver Eight 731 2945 300 1200 IBM 163 8 The Bureau 745 8015 300 2400 IBM 163 14 Canada s Capital BBS 233 1879 300 9600 IBM Carleton University 564 5672 300 2400 IBM Code Conjurers Opus 224 4480 300 2400 IBM 163 6 Concepts BBS 726 1720 300 2400 IBM 163 29 The Contact 839 5889 300 2400 IBM 163 26 Heath 728 4661 300 2400 IBM IOCTALP 825 9522 300 2400 IBM 163 20 KEBBS 836 7835 300 2400 Most 163 16 Mindbinder 237 6714 300 2400 IBM NavanBBS 837 5826 3001200 IBM 163 24 Next Generation BBS 592 4850 300 1200 IBM 163 18 NiteftlerBBS 749 1534 300 1200 163 31 Remote Control BBS 737 6058 300 2400 IBM 163 11 Rolling Hills 825 0899 300 1200 IBM Room 101 836 7667 300 2400 IBM 163 10 Solsbury Hill 825 2515 300 2400 IBM 163 5 Source Code Central BBS 738 1793 300 2400 IBM 163 4 SuperByteBBS 770 5163 300 2400 IBM 163 19 Synapse 561 5268 300 2400 IBM Twilight Zone BBS 225 9074 300 2400 Most 163 1 WholeBit TV News and 521 3690 300 1200 IBM 163 7 Page 3 Building code added to program AUTOCAD doesn t replace pen or ruler from page 1 walls how Steep the stairs No cal culator work no flipping through the tule book Of course we will go absolutely2. The GOOD news is that OPCUG is Still Stronger than it was at this time last year when only 272 members remained compared to 342 this year While we are saddened by the loss of all these members there are never theless some advantages One is that some of the group s services are now more readily available for instance the line up for the monthly diskette should be shorter and the access to the BUREAU OPCUG s BBS should be a little easier Speaking of the BBS as president Harry Gross mentioned at the April 27 own Ottawa IBM PC Users Club meeting the executive would like some indication from the membership about what it expects from the Bulletin Board should it be used exclusively for messaging for downloading of software or for a combination of the two as it is now Another advantage of a reduced membership is that there will be fewer name badges on the table at the meetings so that those of you who have yet to pick up theirs will perhaps find it easier to pick it now Ideally we should soon come to the point where the only badges to be laid on the table each month would be those of mem bers who joined at or Since the previ ous meeting However it s not enough to pick it up one must wear his name badge at all the OPCUG meetings seminars and other events Coming up Journalism and the computer will be the topic of the May 25 meeting of the OPCUG with special guest speaker Tom Hill of the Ottaw
3. One OPCUG member pur chased WordPerfect for 285 WordPerfect isn t the only software Paper deals A small 500 sheet package of 40 mil sells for 9 Larger quantities of 40 mil heavy and 30 mil light are available for 35 Usually large boxes contain between 2 100 to 2 850 sheets depending on the mil weight Price includes provincial sales tax for more information call your bulk purchasing dealers and ask Terry Tim Or Suzanne at 225 2630 or 226 2615 to be offered at every price level Copy II Mac for the Apple Macintosh computer followed an almost identical pattern One store sells it for 40 but there s a two day wait as Copy B is not a stock item The same store that offered WordPerfect for 550 sells Copy B for 59 IMPORTING At least one company in the U S sells Copy B for 20 U S plus another 10 US for shipping and handling Delivery times are usually a week from the day the order is placed When the dust settles this works out to about 43 Cdn A Chicago firm advertises WordPerfect for 185 U S The ads list the wholesale price The company actually charges that price plus eight per cent plus an annual membership fee of 10 U S When the bill finally arrived the cost had grown to more than 290 Cdn And this does not include the cost of the long distance phone call Lesson One while price must play a part in any purchase buyers must really shop around to ensure what they are paying is a realis
4. consideration Buying software By Mike Roy OPCUG Today it s easier than ever to purchase software WordPerfect Microsoft Word Lotus 1 2 3 and dBase III Plus can be purchased from computer stores ordered by phone and can even be imported from the U S Buying the software isn t a problem for today s consumer Price however can be as almost every company sets its own prices for the products it sells A recent telephone survey of Ot tawa area stores plus published ad vertisements personal interviews and experiences etc revealed a huge gap between the lowest and highest price for software WordPerfect v4 2 was chosen as Program raffle Help one of Canada s top chess players and possibly win the accounting package Calam Accountant The package is the prize in a raffle scheduled for the June 29 meetings of the OPCUG Proceeds from ticket sales at 2 minimum will go towards blind chess player Donald Deaulau The same meeting will fea ture Nancy D Amico of Sir Tech who will speak on ac counting and games Plan to attend this last meeting before the summer break Ottawa IBM PC Users Club shop around for best deal the test case but my findings seem to hold true for just about any computer software I also expanded my search to What really surprised me wasn t that the stores had different prices but the extent of the differences The range some products for that other computer Company you know
5. trained our people in house and we don t teach them much about the computer beyond turning it on bringing up Autocad and backing up to floppies that s right floppies stored with their drawings Smith explained Don t throw away your drafting tools PAD and CAD make a great marriage You can overlay work from both sources Of course some of the guys go crazy working away with a quiet smile and suddenly there s an extra bedroom in there Even if the opera tors are not the program is pretty stable We have only had the program hang up once in nine months use on seven workstations and that happened today Smith said You can UNDO all the way back to where you started And because it s an open system you totally re configure it into FRITZCAD if you wish You can make your drawings 30 000 layers deep And zoom One fellow spent three hours zooming in before the program gave up on him so did we There s some bad news too Plotting is the bottleneck in the system Everybody is cued up trying to get a reasonable sized drawing out in hard copy And Autocad has just one more little problem they come out with so many updates it drives you absolutely batty to keep up with them But I got the impression that he has every intention continued on next page Page 4 Tips on computer maintenance Disk Technician will format hard drives fininpage2 Disk Technician operates from its own bootable floppy s
6. BBS 613 745 8015 Ottawa IBM PC Users Messages 613 723 1329 Group 3 Thatcher Street Ottawa Ontario K20 1S6 Program has lots of features AUTOCAD an electronic drafting table by Jackson Hibler OPCUG We walk in and there s this coffee pot on the screen No now it s squashed down to a tea pot now a nice one Whoops there it goes back up again What the Creating the coffee pot tea pot is Willie Smith an tocad a Computer Assisted Design CAD program Engineers architects surveyors and industrial designers ate on the periphery Draftsmen are at the center of this program s ability It isn t that it makes drafting easier the original drawings can be done as quickly on the board as they can be done On the screen It s the storage of data drawn on the screen that is the key Smith architect with Minto Construction and he is going to tell us about Au It was 50 disks ago today By Chris Taylor Software Librarian There is something about round numbers that cries out for attention As this is Disk number 50 I would like to take a look at some of the changes that the software library has seen during the past few years Disk 01 was released in March 1983 The librarian s name on the monthly disk was missing until Barry Arinstrong s name appeared at Disk 05 in October 1983 At Disk 07 in January 1984 Gord Hopkins and Mike Schupan took over as librarians The library benefit
7. M drives and BBSs have a habit of hard disk crashes The cost is less than a hard disk and I don t have any prob lems putting the wrong copy of Disk Technician in the wrong machine for normal use where the hard drives are not in constant use and you have sufficient funds to replace a drive if necessary you might like to consider whether the inconveniences of running and the cost justify the program I do not intend spending 12 to 15 minutes a day babysitting the machine while the program is running but plan to run it Ona less frequent basis I have recently been offered a 3 5 hard disk with a five year warranty so it appears that the new drives are more substantially built and in the long term these types of hard disk utilities will no longer be needed If you have any questions leave a note on either my board 163 24 613 837 5826 or on the club s board A note in echo AREA 163 on the club s board will find me more quickly than the general message area Page 5 Local firm may be best option Buying software the price range 1s staggering from page 3 280 to a high of 715 At the high end the store said the list price was 715 but WordPerfect was on sale for 550 Another store said the list price was 699 but he d let a Copy go for 384 Before the call was over he d dropped the price to 375 Another store offered WordPerfect for 475 while at least two Toronto area stores advertised this package for 280
8. Out of date because of fluctuations in the market place or because a special is on If you want to buy we check with all our wholesale suppliers of a particular item and pass any savings tealized back to you Generally if you see a lower advertised price or are quoted a lower price it means there is a special that we haven t received pric ing for Our experience has been that we can not provide 350 user group mem bers with accurate updated quotes from multiple suppliers unless they are actually ready to purchase not just shopping around Ball park quotes are a different matter It helps us to know when and where you have seen a better price Usually we can if you wait too long between the time of the ball park quote and when you decide to purchase your quote may be out of date Recently we have tried to make more time for you at the meetings by requesting volunteers to assist with disk and paper sales The absence of volunteers to help us is hurting you The Ottawa IBM PC User Group bulk purchasing service exists to serve you but the service is only as good as you make it If you require something tell us You re not alone By pooling the group s purchasing power we can get you better discounts Buying software caveat emptor rule still applies from page 6 when the same product is available in the same city for considerably less is just plain stupid Ordering by mail appears to be cheaper but there s a price
9. a Citizen contribution to the club We do it as a hobby and service to the users group members Now the service we can provide has expanded to the point that it encompasses thousands of products It extends from computers to software from chips to printers In fact we can now get almost anything related to PCs The volume of items has become a problem Often we get requests for price lists so users will know what is available If you can tell me how we can earn a living and still keep a price list of more than 10 000 items on a voluntary basis I m willing to listen to you Keep in mind that most suppliers change prices at least twice a quarter continued on page 8 Calendar Meetings of the Ottawa IBM PC Users Group are held on the last Wednesday of the month except in July and December The Meeting are held at the National Research Council Auditorium 100 Sussex Drive Gothic Building facing King Edward Avenue Memberships and club disks are available at 7 30 p m with the regular meeting starting at 8 p m Free parking is available at the rear of the Gothic Building The next meeting will be On June 29 Page 7 Everyone benefits when everyone helps Volume buying 1s key to success of service from page 7 and have weekly as well as longer term specials On request we ate able to provide a ball park quote on almost anything from the catalogs and price lists we receive by mail This information may be
10. ca s bulletin board network Thinking about it this menu inter face may be customized for almost any software eg Basic Turbo Pascal PC WRITE for those of us who want the basic benefits of the software without learning all of the intricacies Food for though Page 6 Service offers almost any PC Bulb purchasing five years of excellent service By Terry Mahoney Tim Suzanne and I have been in volved with bulk purchases and user group members for five years We operate a small business specializing in Management Information Systems and Scientific Information Systems and related services We like to provide complete solutions including hardware and software needs for our clients Through the years we have helped keep our own expenses down through the work we contribute to the users groups It has also kept us familiar with the rapid changes in hardware and software We do not operate a computer store We assist the user s group with bulk purchasing as our OPCUG continues to grow By Claude Jarry Memberships There s some BAD NEWS and there s some GOOD news The BAD news is that we have cleaned our Slate of 169 members who decided to op out or have forgotten to renew their membership in OPCUG In last month s newsletter we had indicated that 213 members still had not renewed This means that luckily 44 members did renew between the time the article was published and the April meeting THE GOOD NEWS
11. e draw backs you might not have seen men tioned in the other reviews On the back of the package it stated that it now contains the following NEW features Works with two physi cal disk drives on a single system up to 136 Mb for an MFM type drive and up to 272 Mb for an RLL type drive It also claims to work with RLL control lers up to a maximum of 31 sectors per track and it has a built in non destructive low level formatter for AT type machines If you are thinking of buying a copy and have two drives or think you might have two drives then be sure to purchase the Plus version Not only is the program copy pro tected but at the end of the first run it Last TV show of season Graphics from both the artist s perspective and the needs of the animator are the subjects of the next edition of the Whole Bit television show The show is aired on the third Tuesday of every month with the next broadcast scheduled for June 21 at 10 p m on Ch 220 Ottawa Cablevision and 22s Skyline Cablevision The Ottawa IBM PC Users Group along with other computer clubs in the area is an active participant in this show No shows are scheduled for July or August Educational software is the topic of the next TV Bits show scheduled for September 20 Ottawa IBM PC Users Club writes its identification safety mark ings on each hard disk drive and records this information onto its key disk floppy If you happen to do a low level format repa
12. ed greatly as Gord had come from the Northern Alberta PC Users Group and had brought their library with him Also Gord had written an elegant BASIC program to provide a nice menuing system for the monthly disks The entire library which consists of the monthly disks the specialty library and demo disks now contains more than 300 disks There are programs of virtually every type in the library My thanks to everyone who has made the library what it is today Ottawa IBM PC Users Club May 1988 said Listening to Smith I start to realize that CAD is to the draftsman what word processing is to the writer Its still just as much work to get the original ideas down But editing Ali the editing You want a larger dining room Lets just use the stretch command here Want to bring over that patio design from another plan No problem where do you want it to go A little smaller over here No problem Once you have the drawing in the machine there s a lot you can do with it besides editing of course From calculating the area of a portion of a drawing to structural analysis Autocad can do it Autocad has spawned an industry of add on programs too If you know how to use a camera you know how to use Autoshade to produce a 3 D perspective that can underlay an artists drawing Smith added Then there s a program called Autoflex that gives you animation for 35 I think that s what created that oscillating coffee po
13. ince it requires its own CONFIG SYS and AUTOEXEC BAT file This means that any run requires your attendance at both the start and end of the run On one of my disks I d tun one of the Norton utilities which had identified several bad sectors Disk Technician said there were too many and Suggested running FDISK followed by a re format I Simply tried re formatting first This gave me a number of bad Sectors When I ran FDISK followed by refor matting the reformat Showed no bad sectors Perhaps if you don t wish to buy Disk Technician you might like to try FDISK and reformat your hard disk if one of the disk utilities identifies bad sectors Also it was suggested that FDISK could be used to Start the DOS partition at a different track Such as 1 5 if necessary The program sets up a safe landing zone for the heads to reduce the possi bility of errors due to power failures etc A memory resident program moves your head to this zone after seven seconds of inactivity This time period can be varied from one to 15 Seconds Additionally the program will do a low level reformat Of a rack Disk Technician helps keep your computer in tip top shape if it s out of alignment including restoring the data after the reformat ting This could Save backing up the entire disk low level reformatting and then having to restore the files Copy ing 30 Mbs on 360 kb diskettes is not fun I understand that the program can ex
14. nuts when they change the building code Smith Said Now the building code is not the only thing that will force changes Autocad is an American program you know inches dozens pounds that sort of stuff Metric is better in Smith s industry but with Autocad that meant redrawing 1 200 symbols from win dows to toilets to have the items shown in metric measurements Smart 1988 IBM PC Club Executive President Harry Gross 733 7989 Past President Anne Moxley 592 4933 Treasurer Mike Luckham 832 3829 Secretary Eric Clyde 749 2387 Membership Chairman Claude Jarry 521 3366 Meeting Facilities Stu Moxley 592 4933 Publicity Gord Hopkins 828 3834 Software Librarian Chris Taylor 723 1329 Software Assistant John Ings Newsletter Editor Andr Cyr 561 5207 Newsletter Team Ted Havrot 733 2710 Jackson Hibler 836 4863 Mike Luckham 832 3829 Marc Riou 733 2092 Mike Roy 744 0047 BBS Sysop Bruce Miller 745 1151 Bulk Purchasing Terry Mahoney 226 2615 Special Interest Groups PCjr Tom Mimee 828 9705 Enable Bob Laidlaw 995 3708 PC AT Gord Hopkins 828 3834 Packages Eric Clyde 749 2387 Whole Bit TV Show Sandy Shaw 733 5088 Ottawa IBM PC Users Club manufacturers like Pella now supply drawings of their windows on disk And how hard is it to do that draw ing in anyway aren t there more than 300 commands in the latest version of Autocad Smith suggests you start with draftsmen guys who know PAD pencil aided design not CAD We
15. oduct or suffering hours of frus tration because the seller is in another city province or even another country Most of the large software companies do offer telephone hotlines to handle technical problems and many of these hotlines are via toll tree lines However you may be better off paying 300 locally for the product than 280 by mail because you have a real breathing human being to deal with and not just a voice on the phone ox a box office address While there are fly by night opera tors everywhere there are also a lot of reputable firms that want to keep your business Ordering by mail or import ing software has its risks So does shopping at the neighbourhood store I suppose the really important rule for buyers is caveat emptor let the buyer beware Page 8
16. ration your disk with FDISK replace your hard disk or at tempt to use the product on another system the user manual tells you to press an Q character which will give you a 10 figure safety number Then you call the technical support number 619 area code quoting the safety number and the error message number and your serial number to enable you to use the program again Rumor has it if you copy the disk with a product such as Copywrit before running the program the first time it will run from the copy This could save you a couple of long dis tance phone calls The product interacts with Mace utilities RXBAK The solution needs long distance phone call for technical support Disk Technician Plus and PC Tools Mirror Cannot operate together You may have to un install copy protected software before the product will run You will be able to re install your other copy protected software after Disk Technician has run once Disk Technician does three types of runs daily weekly or monthly The maximum time for a single monthly run on a single drive is 22 hours The runs can be aborted but will take up to 20 minutes before control is returned On my machine with two 30 Mb drives the daily run takes about six minutes the weekly run about an hour and the monthly run about four hours per drive Any power failures during this time and it appears your disk gets scrambled continued on page 5 Page 2 Price is not only
17. t Programs like Lotus and dBase can be linked to come up with materials lists and do cost analysis Yet another program I think Smith called it Autolist can do parametric design just draw the outline and it fills in the details according to the building code how thick the continued on page 4 May prevent hard disk crash Disk Technician has lots of bells and whistles by John Whelan SYSOP 163 23 I happen to be a BBS Sysop not the one who runs the club s board but one who simply does it for fun Well sometimes it s easier to get on your own board than it is to get through to the Bureau I have already written a couple of articles on my own view of BBSing and I will like to Share Some of the problems I ve witnessed Many BBS SYSOPS have had their hard disk crash I ve had one 163 23 is having one at the moment 16311 lord one a few months ago They Seem to be the latest fashion these days Since these crashes are fairly expen sive many SYSOPs have their own myths folklore magic chants and magic charms Mine run along the lines of don t run disk organizers three times a day after meals Recently I decided to buy a new more powerful incantation that promised to protect my hard drives and ward off evil spells The product I brought was Disk Technician Plus I brought it after reading a couple of reviews in PC Magazine and thought that you might be interested in my experiences I ll start with some of th
18. tend the useful life of a hard disk even after it appears to have crashed Tips for extending the life of the PC are useful Such as removing Cards and cable connectors and then cleaning or AUTOCAD has many versions from previous page of keeping up If I think of my original Autocad version I now wonder why I bought it Smith added But bought it they did and use it they do to the point that every building Minto designs is on Autocad now About hardware the fancier it is the more likely it is to have an Autocad driver A digitizer tablet is much Ottawa IBM PC Users Club preferred by Minto over a mouse While Autocad will run on almost anything discuss hardware with your software dealer to be sure you are getting the Combination you want and need Smith suggested Smith had one more recommenda tion a book get Mastering Autocad from SYBEX It s by an architect for architects well written and an excel lent introduction for novices too replacing as needed The time frames recommended are from 18 months to 24 months for a smoke free environ ment six months where smoking is permitted It also mentioned that an occasional vacuuming inside to re move dust helps the machines cooling system and thus prolongs the life It also gives warnings about static electricity when handling the internal components I think the program is worthwhile I run RLL drives which appear to be more delicate than MF
19. tic and fair pries Paying more than 500 for a product continued on page 8 More menus for WordPerfect By Andr Cyr In the last issue of the Newsletter I raved about WPMENU2 ARC WPM COM on disk of the month number 50 and its capability of offer ing pull down menus for WordPerfect 4 x Since then I ve noticed an IBM AT priced to sell IBM AT computer 64OK 20 meg hard disk 1 2 meg floppy drive Hercules card monochrome monitor 2 serial and 3 parallel ports Microsoft mouse Also DOS v3 2 EBM At Technical Reference manual Basic manual and much more 3 600 Epson FX 100 wide carriage printer 350 TT X 1014 daisy wheel printer 250 VOT1tAX speech system c w 64k processor 300 Koala pad c w software 25 for Complete details contact Gord Hopkins at 763 3590 work or 828 3834 home Ottawa IBM PC Users Club alternative to WPMENU2 on the bul letin boards The Bureau and others The alternative is WP BAR ARC While not as attractive as WPMENU2 it does provide all the source codes necessaty to customize it to your own needs It uses PC Magazine s SLASHBAR utility ie alt to access the menu features For those of us who have already sent in their upgrade fees for WordPerfect v5 0 the source code for this menu utility will permit users to build a homebrewed WordPerfect 5 0 menu interface perhaps this will lead to a local menuing interface that will spread across North Ameri
20. to pay If everything works properly fine But what happens if there s a problem Dealing with firms by long distance either phone or by mail Can be frus trating and the buyer may not always get what he bargained for Importing on the surface appears to offer some attractive features In many cases U S dealers are selling the latest release of a product before it arrives here If being first on the block is important to you then this might be one route to follow But there can be pitfalls If they take your credit card number and don t deliver the goods you may be held responsible for the High quality disks return High quality generic diskettes made by AXIOM are available in boxes Of 10 complete with labels and write project tabs for 7 50 on demand or 7 prepaid delivered at the next meeting Lower quality generic diskettes by DYSAN are priced at 7 on demand and 6 50 prepaid with a minimum order of two boxes delivered at the next meeting Provincial sales tax included Reasonably priced AT high density diskettes and 3 1 2 diskettes are also available for more information call 225 2630 or 226 2615 and ask for Terry Tim or Suzanne your bulk purchasing dealers Ottawa IBM PC Users Club charges And then you end up chasing someone in another country The ageravation may not be worth it Lesson Two in addition to price service after sales can make all the difference between the buyer enjoying the pr
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search