by Jack Kincaid / jkinca1@cugkc.cjb.net
Here it is May already, and I was just getting used to April! Time - where does it go? Usually I don't think too much about it except when someone asks me how long I have worked here or how long I have been in the Commodore club. It causes me to stop and think back to those times and in the case of the Club, when we had 50 or 60 people at each meeting and that usually meant more people involved with the activities. But, that has changed with time. Some have complained that we have gotten away from showing and explaining how to do things with the Commodore, and they're right - we have. But one of the problems, as I see it, is that the members think that the three or four members that get up in front of the rest of the people have all the KNOWLEDGE and we are there to pass that on to you. That is not how it is. I think most of you really know that, and for one reason or another, no one wants to say, "Can we do this?" or "I would like to demo this." I realize that is getting harder to do with only 10 to 15 people showing up for each meeting. But maybe we can try.
At the April meeting we had Vance Kellinger and Bethyl Bundridge renew their vows - oops, dues to the club. We also had a visitor - Fuzzy Brooks - drop in to see what we were about.
For the third month Leslie Lacy is doing battle with GEOS to try and get the newsletter back on track. How to use the CMD RAMDrive still eludes us. We get it installed, but then GEOS hangs up; it is a frustrating experience. Is there any HELP out there?
Is there anyone that would like to upgrade from a 64 to 128? 1 have two or maybe three 128s if someone wants them; call or see me at the meeting. Also available are monitors and disk drives, so if you want a spare or a second or third drive, now is a good time. I need to get rid of some of this stuff to keep peace in the household. I also have printers such as an Okimate 10 color with docs and interface.
Financial Report
Balance Mar. 2000.................... $315.81
Income: Apr. 2000
Renewal (2)..........................
$ 50.00
Expenses:............................-$
0.00
Closing Balance Apr. 2000............ $365.81
by Scott Heider / sheide1@cugkc.cjb.net
The Group meeting for April was held on Wednesday, April 5th at the Plaza Library. The attendance was approximately 10 members.
Rich Wagner mentioned that a Y2K patch
has been written for Geos. It's a $5 shareware program that can be downloaded
from
http://home.t-online.de/home/wweicht/english.htm.
The Disk of the Month for April contains printer utility programs, a spelling checker program, and (last but not least) the excellent word processor program Speedscript 3.0. If you would like to purchase this or any previous Disk of the Month, they will be available at the next Group meeting for the low price of $3 each.
Finally, a reminder about the next Group meeting. See you at the Plaza Library at 7:00 on Wednesday, May 3rd.
by Lenard R Roach / lroach1@cugkc.cjb.net
Everyone who has read this column for the last few years knows about my two boys Robert and Gabriel. You have known about their antics from putting superhero collecting cards into my 1541, in the hopes of getting the pictures to show up on my monitor, to giving my 1571 a Southern Baptist immersion in skim milk. You also know about their efforts to make my work on the Commodore a lot easier, from cleaning up my stand to blindly fixing my machines when they are broken. For those of you who don't know either one of them, let me tell you a short story on each that happened just recently...
When I got GEOS 128 v2.0 finally started, I, in my ignorance, put some important files in the waste basket icon of the program; files like GEOS 64 and Desktop 128. These came off my System disk. Now a GEOS user would tell me that this is a major/minor problem since I have a Backup System disk provided with the package, but when GEOS from the master disk refused to load, I panicked, grabbed my backup disk, and through a series of hurried yet unknowledged steps and events, I messed it up as well. But providence gave me wisdom enough to transfer a copy of Desktop 128 to a couple of workdisks, as per the GEOS manual. I could load GEOS from the master disk, but it would ask for Desktop and I would have to insert a workdisk then the program would boot up. No problem as long as I had a second disk of anything GEOS in drive #9. This was curious to me, but I let a sleeping dog lie in this matter. I had GEOS running and that was good enough for me.
I did this for about six months until a day came when Gabriel (age 6 at this time) wanted to use GEOPaint. He did everything I showed him to do about disk swapping three or four times to get GEOS to come up, but instead of using the master disk, he used the backup master disk and the main menu was before him without swapping any disks out. He brought this to my attention believing he did something wrong, but when I saw that he used the backup disk, which I believed to be somewhat damaged, I was flabbergasted. How did he do this? Every time I booted the backup disk, the program would loop and reboot until I turned off the Commodore. I had to have him show me what he did. What he did was -- nothing. All he did different was put the backup disk in drive #8 instead of the master. GEOS would, upon loading the program from the backup disk, look for a GEOS formatted disk in drive #9, then continue to load and finally run the program if it found the disk. If not, then the program would loop and load again. I owe a debt of gratitude to my six year old son Gabriel, for getting GEOS 128 to work right even after I messed it up for what I thought was for good.
Now a story about my oldest son... Robert (age fourteen at this time) hates my Commodore, basically because it is not am IBM. He wants to play racing games like "Viper" which is only on IBM. I got him "Test Drive" and "The Duel -- Test Drive II" for Commodore. He played them once, then shelved them. In his opinion, those games didin't match up with "Test Drive 4" and "Test Drive 5" on Playstation when it comes to playability and graphics. Now when it comes to getting into the Commodore machinery, he's all gung ho.
On my day off I was going to make a demo video for a buddy of mine at work, but when it came to running the program, the SID chip only played half the notes to the music I was videoing. In order for the program to be fully effective, I needed whole sound. I searched my back stock of 64's and 128's and found a keyboard that had a great SID, but something unidentified within the circuit board would only let me run it for five minutes, then the keyboard froze up. Robert had the radical idea of switching out the SID chips, but this meant pulling the chips, a task neither one of us have done before. I've always heard that such work should be done by an experienced computer maintenance repair person and not the home user, but my present usable machine had a bad SID anyway, so I figured we couldn't do any worse to it.
After a call to Mr. Jon Searle to find the location of the SID chip in the 128 we dove in. Cracking the case and removing the heat shield required much undoing of many screws, but soon we were looking at the circuit board of a Commodore 128. Finding chip location U5, Robert took the tongs of a chip puller I had bought recently and gently pried the SID chip out of its location. The thing looked like a retangular black centipede with silver legs. We did the same for the 128 we were using for parts.
My son then suggested that since we were inside my usable 128, we should take JiffyDOS out of the parting 128 and put it into the 128 we were doing surgery on. Drilling a hole with a punch into the case of the good 128 took some time, and Robert was patient about it. Soon the hole was made and Robert inserted the toggle switch into that hole, securing it with a flat nut. He grabbed the chip puller again and removed ever so gently the JiffyDOS kernals from the 64 and 128 parts of the 128 and inserted them into the proper chip locations on the repaired 128, making ever so sure that each pin was lined up before it was pressed into place. After we placed the heat shield back on, we set the keyboard back on but did not bolt it down just in case there was an error we could get in quickly and change anything out.
Now was the moment of truth. We reconnected all the serial bus cables and power supply cord. I looked at my son, who stared at me with unsteady eyes. He knew how much I needed my Commodore to get my work done and I just gave him full trust to operate on its very functioning. If this fails, we were back to square one -- or worse. I gave him a reassuring, confident nod and he flipped the power switch to the "on" position. The red LED on the 128's face came on indicating power, the drives whirred to life, and the basic screen came up on the monitor. I placed my hand on his shoulder. So far, so good. He insisted that he load the music program I wanted to hear, so I let him boot it up. After a short prayer, Robert typed "RUN" and we waited. The Commodore calculated all the data statements and in a very short period of time beautiful, full, harmonious music came flowing out of the speakers. I just about crushed my son with a hug of joy for the fact that both the SID and the JiffyDOS were working perfectly. Our attempt to step out and repair my machine paid off. Rich sound resonated throughout the house and JiffyDOS gave me quick access to everything.
So my deepest gratitude (and possibly a gift or two for each, pending mom's approval) goes to my two sons. Robert, for having the hutzpah to go into the unknown by faith and come out a champion and Gabriel, who in his innocence came up with a better way to deal with an otherwise tedious way to load and run GEOS. These men are tops in my book.
Upon proofreading the draft of this article I noticed I mentioned speakers in the plural. This little piece of engineering came from the combined genius of both boys. Robert suggested some time ago to run the sound of Gabriel's Nintendo 64 through the auxillary ports of my stereo. Robert also found two extra stereo speakers in the basement from an old stereo I had years ago when LP's were still the top thing and merged them with the whole setup. Gabriel suggested I make the Commodore run on all the stereo's speakers, too. With the purchase of four splitters from the discount store and the boy's help, we successfully merged the Nintendo 64's and Commodore's sound system together and ran them through the stereo's auxillary and out through four speakers. With the replacement of the SID chip in my 128, I got deep, resonating bass and sharp, keen high pitches from the tweeters, all in quadrophonic sound.
These boys went from making my Commodore repair guy rich to keeping some of my money in my pocket. Now I can buy some stuff like a 1750 REU and more JiffyDOS chips for my drives. I guess an RS232 wouldn't hurt either. God bless both my sons.
Also, a note of appreciation goes to Jon Searle for giving us his guidance in replacing chips over the phone. We would have surely pulled all the wrong chips if it wasn't for his leading us in the right path.
The Commodore Users Group of Kansas City is a not-for-profit educational support group for persons using Commodore computers.
Membership benefits include a monthly newsletter as well as access to CUGKC's Bulletin Board System (BBS) open 23.5 hours every day, with upload and download privileges, plus electronic mail, and access to over 500 doors of the FidoNet (part of a world-wide network). Also, members receive access to a library of over 1000 public domain and shareware disks.
Dues are $30 the first year, $25 annually thereafter. Disks of the month and library disks cost $3 each for members.
Meetings are held on the first Wednesday of every month in the Lower Level Meeting Room of the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri. Visitors are welcome to attend any meeting. For more information, contact any officer:
Email us at cugkc@cugkc.cjb.net
or visit our web site at http://cugkc.cjb.net.
Our snail-mail address is:
CUGKC
PO Box 36034
Kansas City, Missouri 64111