 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Beginners' Bytes: Part 14 Ron Wilby |
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Lots of events to tell you about this month, with Ron venturing into the unknown world of Windows. That's confounded those of my critics who think I'm the original DOS Dinosaur!
Takeaway Update
You're all damn lucky to get this stuff this month. A hospitalised wife has restricted both time and energy for writing, but there was one bonus. Lots of takeaway meals were needed, and while waiting in the local Chinese restaurant I found myself surrounded by copies of PC Update. All of them featured The Beginner's Tale and Beginner's Bytes, but nobody recognised me. So, readers, don't throw away your old copies when they're no longer wanted. Instead, distribute them in takeaway waiting rooms or in doctors' waiting rooms or anywhere where they'll bring Melb PC to people's notice.
A Good DOS
Yes, news of the month, any month. A good DOS, a better DOS. Wow! Back in June 1994 we discussed the relative merits of the various versions of DOS available. If you read that you'll remember that what most of us are using is Microsoft's version of DOS, called MS-DOS. Alternatives are Novell's DR-DOS or IBM's PC-DOS. Now IBM has changed the whole DOS scene by releasing PC-DOS 6.3 which offers all the goodies of MS-DOS 6.2 and a few of its own as extras.
An upgrade from MS-DOS 5.x or 6.x is quite straightforward. Uses 3 MB of hard disk space though, for a full installation. This doesn't overwrite your old MS-DOS files unless their names are the same as the PC-DOS files. This means you can keep your MS-DOS Editor. It's much better than IBM's text editor, so hang on to it and use the best of each of them. So why would you spend more of your lovely money on this upgrade? Let's have a look.
Disk Compression
This is probably PC-DOS' greatest advantage over the Microsoft version. After all the troubles with Doublespace, legal and otherwise, IBM's SuperStor/DS looks very attractive. What you get is safe, effective problem-free operation. With SuperStor/DS you can read a compressed disk on any computer, even when SuperStor isn't running. And, in your next upgrade, you'll have available the top dog of compression methods, Stacker itself. IBM and Stac Electronics have already signed a deal to bundle Stacker with a future release of PC-DOS.
Memory Optimiser
The dynamic memory optimiser RAMBoost is an exciting new feature licensed from Central Point Software. This reconfigures your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT startup files every time you make any system changes affecting memory. It's a very strong feature of PC-DOS 6.3, putting it far ahead of either of the opposing DOS versions.
More Goodies
Also from Central Point comes an Undelete utility which can recover both directories and files (MS-DOS can't do that). PC-DOS includes a Backup utility with improved support for tape drives; virus protection; a new program scheduler to run DOS or Windows programs at user- defined times; Symantec's DEFRAG disk defragmenter and many features like single-pass DISKCOPY and file overwrite warnings that match the improvements Microsoft made in MS-DOS 6.2. It's a good DOS with some strong advantages.
LPT2?
For a while now I've been looking with some distaste at the output of my trusty seven-year-old 9-pin dot matrix printer. Robust, reliable and economical, yes, but poor print quality. So this month I finally lashed out and bought a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 520. Yes, I know inkjets are expensive to operate, but I did my sums and it would take me years to recover the extra cost of even the lowest cost laser. Also the DeskJet 520 has an economy mode which reduces its running cost. Now I have excellent print quality and the capability to print lots of things I couldn't do before. The snag is that, during a year, I print maybe 10,000 mailing labels, for which dot-matrix quality is fine and of course much cheaper. Also, I've got all the printing set up for continuous labels. I'm too lazy to change it. So, how to use the old and the new printers together? Buy a switch, someone told me, only about $50, put it behind the computer. But there's a better way. I bought a small card for $20 which gives me another parallel printer port (that's the plug on the back of your computer where the printer cable plugs in). I put this card in a vacant slot, now all I need to do is tell my label-printing program that its printer is to be found on LPT2. Then, hopefully, labels will pour out of the old dot-matrix and documents will appear in high quality from the DeskJet.
Printer Drivers Again
However, there's another snag. Of course! Most of my documents stem from my six year-old WordStar version 6.0. Unfortunately, in those days the HP DeskJet hadn't arrived, so there's no printer driver included. I phoned the local (Sydney) WordStar representatives. They suggested that I use the WordStar 7.0 driver which came with the printer. Didn't work, it would print a few lines of the document, then bring up another page and print a few more lines and so on, until one page was spread over six or more sheets of paper. Some formatting symbol in WS6 was telling the DeskJet to change pages.
Creaking memory (mine) recalled that printers have a "perforation skip" feature. This means they leave a space, hopefully where the page ends, when using fan-fold continuous paper. Sure enough, buried under the DeskJet, there were some of those tiny DIP switches, and one of them disabled the perforation skip. No good, problem still there. I found some WordStar 7 (WS7) printer drivers, but they didn't work either. My good friend Tony Robinson, a regular attender at the New Users East SIG, put a help message on the BBS, no result from that. He also downloaded a disk of HP printer drivers (I'm still waiting for my modem) and sent them to me. No result again.
As a last resort, I bought a WS7 upgrade and I'll use that with a printer driver that came with the DeskJet. I haven't installed WS7 yet, too busy with this, but it should work Ok. Trouble is, it's made my $600 printer cost $700+. Murphy's Law again.
Wilby Into Windows
Wonders will never cease! What next? That old DOS dinosaur is actually using Windows? Well, not yet, actually. I've installed it, and the accompanying mouse, and I've read the manuals and another book. I've written a document using the Windows word processor, Write, and printed it. Yes, Windows drives the DeskJet nicely and Write is easy to use although rather basic. So far, my stock of Windows applications is very small, being limited to shareware and those disks which came attached to magazine covers.
I'm finding there's quite a learning curve involved. If any of you are in the same position as I was, of wanting to include Windows in my armoury, then beware. You have some learning to do and, if you have any sizeable investment in DOS applications you will have some outlay to change them to Windows versions. A good move seems to be to run Windows and DOS side by side, then when you buy new applications, buy the Windows versions (they'll be the only ones available pretty soon). Your only alternative is to stay with DOS 6, a position which will become increasingly difficult-see my story above about upgrading my printer. Then if you can't stand Windows, you'll have to go to OS/2, where you'll have the same learning and software investment problems. So, you can't stand still, can you?
That's all for this month, the deadline is close. See you next month . . .
Reprinted from the November 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
