Rich's Ramblings

by Rich Schinnell

Speaking of the plethora of humongous hard disks. They're getting dirt cheap, and boy-oh-boy some people are in for a surprise. There is no longer a reason to get rid of old files and such as all we need to do is buy another large hard disk. We don't buy backup tape drives or such as nothing will ever happen to my hard disk. Sure. There is one rule I always try to follow: If I would cry or anguish over the loss of a file, I always copy it to a floppy disk. No one likes to see adults cry . . . especially in front of the kids.

Oftentimes inventive people will buy two hard disks of the same type so that they can effectively mirror their data with the XCOPY option in DOS. This works well as long as the machine does not get destroyed. The possibility of both hard disks crashing at the same time is quite slim.

But watch out for the gotcha . . . the larger the partition on your hard disk, the larger the minimum file size. Remember that if you partition a 1.2 Gigabyte hard disk as a single drive, i.e. C:., your minimum file size will be around 32,000 bytes, even for a 50-byte file. This is due to the FAT (File Allocation Table) entry limitation. Of course, our OS/2 friends will say use their operating system and that problem will go away with its HPFS (High Performance File System) file management system.

One option for backing up is that the prices of CD-ROM-R writers are now less than $1,000. I predict that they will be less than $700 by the middle of 1996. These hold 650MB of data on a single CD-ROM, and anyone's CD-ROM drive can read it. CompUSA had 4X CD-ROM read only drives for sale for less than $100. . . .

A couple of years ago I predicted and wished for a combination fax, copier, printer, and scanner device all rolled into one. Sure enough, as of today there are about four or more of these devices on the market, and the prices are down in the $700 or less range. That is great, and I can recommend the Hewlett Packard and Canon versions. Especially for the small home office. At least these major players will be around for a while, and you will be able to get service and parts.

As long as I am talking about service and parts: When you buy cheap versions of the more popular products (like laser printers), remember that the original purchase price is only part of what you need to consider. Remember, if it is a printer, you will need to get either ribbons, laser cartridges, or ink cartridges for it.

My one rule that I always follow: never buy a device where the consumables can only be purchased from a single source. If you buy a laser printer from one of the smaller or less well known companies, ask around for where you can buy the cartridges from. If you can't get them from Office Depot, Staples, and the major super stores, don't buy it. You could be purchasing an orphan. And all the savings will just go out the window.

Same thing with InkJet or regular dot matrix printers. This bit of advice could save you some money.

I think that the hype over 6X and greater CD-ROM drives is just that. Most people use their CD-ROMs to either load software or play music on. I find that having a CD-ROM that is either 2X or 4X is more than sufficient to install software. I can hear the music without any skipping or drop outs from the Patsy Cline audio CD using my 2X CD-ROM. I think this hype is for trapping the "techies" and the unwashed that feel that they need to brag about their CD-ROM drive's speed.

Same thing for memory. Mine is bigger or faster than yours. . .

At COMDEX (COMputer Dealers EXposition), held each year in Las Vegas Nevada, there were so many CD-ROM drives that it was maddening. And the capacity of CD-ROMs is growing. I saw some that hold over 2 Gigs of data. The tide is running so fast that it will become a standard part of every computer, just like a power supply or floppy drive.

This of course is to placate the software creators who continually build bigger and bigger applications. Look at the 60MB that Microsoft Office needs to install. Or even the new WinFAX Pro for Windows 95 . . . over 27MB of disk space if you install it all. With disk space so cheap, there is no incentive for software manufacturers to keep their programs and disk space required to a minimum.

I see that they are selling 8 Gigabyte SCSI hard disks for around $2,000; this probably means that they will be down below a grand in another year, if the past is any prediction for the future. About seven years ago, I paid over $800 for a 30MB hard disk, and a couple of years later the same for an 80MB disk. Look at the prices now. . . .

I have had the opportunity to help some others install Windows 95 on their machines, and from my experience, I have found it better to install DOS, then Windows 3.1 and all the software and hardware drivers. Get everything working -- sound card, video, and CD-ROM -- then upgrade to Windows 95. It just seems to automatically recognize all the devices with a minimum of aggravation. Isn't that what these computers are all about, less aggravation so that we can get some real work done?

I still love my Iomega ZIP drives. I have the SCSI and the parallel port versions. I found the drivers for the parallel port version under Windows 95, and the drive worked great. The drivers that came with my Adaptec SCSI controller allow the SCSI ZIP drive to also work great.

I still don't use Iomega's ZIP utilities. I use the ZIP disks mainly as removable disks without problems. (Under Windows 95, I still use the DOS prompt to do a lot of work.) I can take the parallel port version of the drive to a client's office and back up their machine in very little time. The Iomega program to load the parallel port driver seems to work on most any machine that I have tried it on. Great for portables.

I see where a competitor, Syquest, has a 135MB removable that is (according to the ads) faster and easier than the Iomega ZIP. Syquest's drives come in two versions, SCSI (external $234) or IDE (internal $189), so the portability of having a parallel port version would be lost here. I understand that Iomega will have their IDE internal version out soon. I don't have any financial interest in Iomega, except I wished I had bought their stock at 9 as it is over 42 as of today.

The Iomega ZIP drives are $199.00 most everywhere except at Egghead where they are around $210, unless you have one of their 5% CUE discount cards, then you can get them for $199.00. Of course, you have to be able to write your name and address to get one of these CUE cards.

I would like to additionally thank Hewlett Packard for making good machines, such as the HP LaserJet series of printers. I am still using the original HPLJ-series II, and it works great. Built like a tank and still gives perfect copies. I use the Pacific Page Postscript cartridge with it to let me run Postscript printing programs. Just thought I would throw that in for reference . . . and a big THANK YOU to Hewlett Packard.

They did contribute an HP LJ IIID to the CPCUG offices that also works great. I have never seen a word processor or applications program that did not have HP printer drivers as part of the basic package. You might have to get updated drivers for the newer HP printers, but the older ones are always supported.

Here I am going to reprint sample CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files for you to create when your computer is almost beyond help. (i.e., nothing works correctly).

REM CONFIG.SYS
BUFFERS=30
FILES=25
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
DOS=HIGH,UMB

REM AUTOEXEC.BAT
PROMPT $P$G
PATH C:\;C:\DOS

My best advice when you're having problems is to copy your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to a subdirectory so that you can always restore them to their previous condition in case something happens. Of course printing them out to your printer helps tremendously too.

Start commenting the existing lines out of your CONFIG.SYS file by placing the three letters REM at the front of the lines you wish to comment out. In the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, you can either use REM or the : (colon) to keep a line from executing.

It is always a good idea to use the power on/off switch when making some of the changes as many programs survive a CTRL-ALT-DEL and keep themselves in memory. Turning the machine off clears memory totally. Good idea number one is to only change one line at a time so that you know what change will have the desired or undesired effect. . . .

OK, enough of this rambling Rich. This has to go off to our editor so that he will have the time to use the knife on my English.

Rich Schinnell is the president of Capital PC User Group, retired from the USN and from Vitro Corporation. Soon to retire from the CPCUG presidency. He does a bit of network and PC consulting on the side and enjoys helping members with their problems. He can be reached at (301) 949-9292 in the evenings and via e-mail at schinnel@cpcug.org. His personal home page on the Internet is http://www.cpcug.org/users/schinnel.

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