The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - July, 2001


This newsletter will never appear on CUCUG.ORG before the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. They get each edition hot off the presses. If you'd like to join our group, you can get the pertinent facts by looking in the "Information About CUCUG" page. If you'd care to look at prior editions of the newsletter, they may be found via the Status Register Newsletter page.
News     Common     PC     Mac     Amiga     CUCUG

July 2001


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

July News:

The July Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, July 19th, at 7:00 pm, at the Illinois Technology Center. Directions to the ITC are at the end of this newsletter.

The July 19 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. Jim Lewis and Kevin Hisel will be running through the features of Easy CD-DA Extractor, a shareware ripper using LAME. Very cool we're told. The PC SIG should really enjoy this one. The Macintosh SIG presentation will be done by Charles Melby-Thompson in his farewell appearance at a CUCUG meeting, before going off to Princeton this fall.

ToC

Welcome New Member

We'd like to welcome the newest member of our group, joining us in the last month: John B. Ross (Intel-based Linux machine).

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.

ToC

Usenet Creator Jim Ellis Dies

TidBITS#586/02-Jul-01

Jim Ellis, one of the creators of the globe-spanning messaging system Usenet, died 28-Jun-01 from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was 45. Jim and colleague Tom Truscott came up with the basic Usenet idea at Duke University in 1979, along with its first implementation between Duke and the University of North Carolina. At its simplest, Usenet is just a way for computers to share and synchronize sets of files, but its social impact was far more significant. For years Usenet was the primary instrument of the Internet community, and today plays host to tens of thousands of groups devoted to a wide variety of topics. Usenet culture was also the breeding ground for things like smileys, flame wars, quoting and reply etiquette, and (of course) spam. Jim had most recently been working as a security consultant for Sun Microsystems, and - though he never made any money from Usenet - received numerous honors for his contributions to the Internet world. [GD]

ToC

Apple Recalls AC Power Adapters for PowerBook G3s

TidBITS#587/09-Jul-01

Apple has announced a partial recall of AC power adapters which shipped with PowerBook G3 computers between May 1998 and March 2000. According to Apple, six of these adapters have overheated, creating a potential fire hazard. The affected adapters have two-prong electrical connectors, and are labelled "Macintosh PowerBook 45W Adapter" and "Model Number: M4402." Three-prong power adapters for use in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East which shipped with PowerBook G3s are not affected by this recall, nor are power adapters for any iBook or the PowerBook G4 Titanium. To get a new adapter, enter your shipping information and PowerBook G3 serial number on Apple's Web page for the adapter exchange program. Apple urges all affected PowerBook users to order a new adapter, and not to leave the current adapter plugged in unattended.

http://exchange.info.apple.com/exchange/

Although recalls like this can be alarming, Apple still has a better track record than other computer manufacturers when it comes to hardware recalls. For instance, last October, both Compaq and Dell had to recall tens of thousands of laptop batteries due to issues with overheating and short circuits which could catch fire, and in May 2001 Dell had to recall nearly 300,000 laptop batteries due to a problem which caused at least one Dell laptop to go up in flames. [GD]

http://www.compaq.com/newsroom/pr/2000/pr2000102701.html

http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/corporate/press/pressoffice_us_2000-10-13-rr-000.htm

http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/corporate/press/pressoffice_us_2001-05-03-aus-000.htm

ToC

Apple Discontinues G4 Cube

TidBITS#587/09-Jul-01

Looks like the square computer does fit in the round file: Apple Computer has announced it is discontinuing the Power Mac G4 Cube, which it introduced a year ago at Macworld Expo in New York. The tiny, silent, 8-inch square computer won lots of points for nifty design, but sales never took off (even after Apple upgraded and steeply discounted the machines), and the machines lacked expandability, leading the mid-range professional users for whom the machines were intended to choose Power Mac G4 minitowers instead. The Cubes also suffered flurries of bad publicity concerning perceived case cracks and problems with the unique power switches (which operate using static capacitance rather than a physical switch). Apple says there's a small chance they will re-introduce an upgraded version of the Cube in the future, but it seems unlikely; instead, we hope some of the Cube's engineering expertise is applied to future iMacs and professional Macintosh systems. [GD]

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/jul/03cube.html

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06049

ToC

Dave Haynie at Merlancia

From: Dave Haynie (dhaynie@jersey.net)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:53:16 -0400

[Editor's Note: This item appeared on the Team Amiga mailing list. For those who don't know who Dave Haynie is - he was one of the principle architects of the Amiga during its Commodore years and he is probably the most respected Amigan extant. Dave has put in stints at Scala and Metabox since the demised of Commodore back in 1994.]

On 11 Jul 2001 21:24:23 -0400, suka jammed all night, and by sunrise was heard saying:

> Maybe this isn't news, I might have missed that. Anybody else recognized
> that Dave Haynie is now back in the Amiga Game and listed as a CTO at
> the Merlancia Homepage? - http://www.merlancia.com/staff/dave_haynie.html

It probably is news, since I didn't say anything yet. Not because of any problem with Merlancia -- Ryan's got some good things and real energy there. But basically, I'm uncomfortable with failure, and unfortunately, that's the situation: Metabox USA is no more. We had a few possibilities for resurrection, but between the economy, bad luck, and the rules surrounding Metabox AG in bankruptcy, this didn't happen.

I had intended to go the summer with some consulting jobs, just in case, then (for the first time since I interviewed with Commodore), hit the street with resume (and a few STB designs) in-hand.

> So Dave, as Merlancia recently stated that they are using the bplan
> board for the Tsunami, what exactly is your job there?

Chief Technology Officer. Initially, I'm working on advanced set-top-box systems. But the ultimate goal is to have a full line of in-house hardware, small to large. And anything else we think will be a success. The basic job is "direct technology".

--
Dave Haynie       d.haynie@merlancia.com       http://www.merlancia.com
Chief Technology Officer, Merlancia Industries

ToC

Netgear RT314 Deal

From: "Kevin Hisel" (khisel @ kevinhisel.com)
Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 16:59:14 -0500

If you ever thought of doing a network at home, now might be the time. The Netgear RT314 Gateway is $69 at Best Buy (after rebate). Your cable modem plugs right into it and you can share the connection and all your files. It also provides some semblance of a firewall since no one can get into your computer from the outside (NAT takes care of this).

Just thought I'd mention it.

http://www.netgear.com/product_view.asp?xrp=4&yrp=12&zrp=55

ToC

Common Ground:

VisIT the 'net - New tool makes Web search a graphic experience

by Craig Chamberlain, News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu
Inside Illinois, Vol. 20, No. 22, June 21, 2001
URL: http://www.news.uiuc.edu/ii/01/0621visit.html

The campus that produced Mosaic, the graphical browser that helped produce the explosive growth of the World Wide Web, now has a graphical solution for searching the WebÕs vast resources.

"We think it can change the way people search and learn from things on the Web," says Daniel Kauwell, a doctoral student in educational psychology and co-developer of the software, called VisIT.

A beta version of VisIT (for Visualization of Information Tool) recently was made available for free download at www.visit.uiuc.edu.

With help from news stories on CNN Headline News and in a large German daily newspaper, among others, more than 8,600 copies of the software were downloaded in the two weeks starting June 5. Kauwell said he suspected the story also was running in other international media, since he has gotten inquires from users around the world.

The software will run on Windows-based computers; a version should soon be available for use on Macintosh computers running OS X. A patent is pending on the software.

Instead of producing lists, like most search engines, the VisIT search tool uses one or more of those engines simultaneously to get search results, and then forms them into a graphical layout. Pages are shown as small icons, grouped by the sites where theyÕre located, and with the most-relevant sites toward the center. Arrows show the hyperlinks between, making it possible to see which pages are seen by others as authoritative or very useful, and giving clues as to which pages cover similar topics.

All the arrows, appropriately, give the layout a web-like look.

And unlike often-long and confusing search lists, itÕs a layout that eliminates duplicate pages, identifies broken links, can be rearranged, added to, deleted from, annotated, saved and passed on to others. VisIT also locates key text from a page, and pops it up when the user passes the mouse pointer over the pageÕs icon. The user can then always click on the icon to see the full page in a browser.

The combination of features allows users, in a sense, to see both the forest and the trees, and then rearrange the forest to suit their needs.

VisIT was designed with learning and research in mind, noted James Levin, a professor of educational psychology and the other co-developer. "It becomes a kind of knowledge-construction tool," incorporating the theory "that people learn best when theyÕre building the knowledge, rather than when itÕs transmitted (to them)," Levin said.

It also serves as a valuable tool for teachers. One motivated teacher, for instance, can conduct a search, organize and edit the results, then share it with students or other teachers, Kauwell said. Another feature makes it possible to add a background image Š such as a Civil War map or a drawing of human anatomy Š so page icons can then be set at appropriate points as reference links.

VisIT is being developed as part of a project at the UIÕs Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Partial funding has come from the U.S. Department of Education, through the UIÕs National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

------

News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
807 South Wright Street. Suite 520 East, Champaign, Illinois 61820-6219
Telephone 217 333-1085, Fax 217 244-0161

ToC

The PC Section:

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

by Geoff Duncan (geoff@tidbits.com)

TidBITS#586/02-Jul-01

In a substantial victory for Microsoft Corporation, last week the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously reversed Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ordered breakup of Microsoft under U.S. antitrust laws. The 125-page ruling comes more than a year after Judge Jackson's initial order to break up the company, and more than eighteen months after his finding of fact that Microsoft constituted a monopoly.

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200106/00-5212a.txt

Although the Appeals Court upheld that Microsoft is indeed a monopoly and engaged in anti-competitive practices, it also concluded that Judge Jackson engaged in "serious judicial misconduct" in his statements outside of court and to the media during the penalty phase of the trial. The Appeals Court then remanded a portion of the case back to district court, but under terms which gut substantial portions of the government's case against Microsoft. The bottom line is that Microsoft was found to have violated the law, but is unlikely to face serious consequences for those actions, and almost certainly will not be broken into two or more companies.

We've repeatedly examined the Microsoft antitrust case in TidBITS, but in essence two central points of the government's case were reviewed by the Appeals court:

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1152

The Government's Victory

The first point above is largely established through Judge Jackson's findings of fact from late 1999, and an Appeals Court can't just toss out those findings unless they're plainly erroneous or it can be proven the trial court was substantially biased. The Appeals Court overturned a handful of Judge Jackson's findings of fact, but for the most part, those findings were upheld and the Appeals Court was not able to find instances of _actual_ bias in Judge Jackson's findings.

This is the part of the Appeals Court decision the government can tout as their victory: unless Microsoft appeals to the Supreme Court (and wins), Microsoft now has a monopoly in the eyes of the law. Contrary to popular opinion, under U.S. law it's not illegal to have a monopoly in a particular market. However, it _is_ illegal to create or protect a monopoly by stifling competition in that market. This means that in the future, anyone who wants to come after Microsoft has half their case made for them: they won't have to prove Microsoft has a monopoly, they'll only have to prove that Microsoft has deliberately stifled or eliminated competition in that market. This potentially exposes Microsoft to heaps of litigation from other companies, particularly as Microsoft continues to integrate more and more previously separate functionality into what it considers to be its core operating system. Microsoft's never-subtle CEO Steve Ballmer has repeatedly said he doesn't feel there's any limit to what Microsoft can unilaterally declare part of its operating system; now he may find that stance is more frequently challenged in court.

Incidentally, this is the part of the case where Apple figured most prominently: the Appeals Court upheld that Microsoft illegally engaged in anti-competitive practices when it used threats of cancelling Microsoft Office for the Mac "as a club" to force Apple to adopt Internet Explorer as the default Web browser installed with the Mac OS.

Microsoft's Victory

It's on the second point - that Microsoft illegally tried to leverage its Windows monopoly to create a monopoly in the browser market - that Microsoft can declare its victory. First, the Appeals Court found that the government failed either to define the browser market or to establish that Microsoft set up barriers to protect that market for itself. Furthermore, it reversed this finding _without_remand_, which means the government can't even try to make the point again in a retrial. Unless the government appeals to the Supreme Court (and wins), it's now a matter of law that Microsoft did not attempt to monopolize the browser market.

Further, the Appeals Court disagreed with Judge Jackson's finding that Microsoft committed a "per se" violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by integrating its browser with the operating system. As a legal standard, "per se" basically means Microsoft's integration of the two products was "in itself" a violation of law, simply because they did it. However, the Appeals Court found that since the software industry is unlike other industries to which antitrust laws have been applied, a "per se" analysis of the law wasn't valid. Instead, Microsoft would have to be found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by "rule of reason," a different legal standard which basically grants leeway to the first company to integrate what had previously been perceived as two disparate markets. The Appeals Court tossed this issue back to the district court for resolution (also stipulating that it be heard by someone other than Judge Jackson). However, since the Appeals Court found that the government failed to define a browser market, the government would have to prove integrating Internet Explorer with Windows harmed competition in the browser market without "arguing any theory of harm that depends on a precise definition of browsers or barriers to entry." That's going to be hard to do, so the government faces a heavy burden to prove this part of its case at a retrial.

Jackson's Packin'

The harshest words of the Appeals Court ruling were reserved for Thomas Penfield Jackson, the trial judge for the Microsoft case. Judge Jackson and the Appeals Court have previously disagreed in regard to Microsoft: in 1998, a three judge panel on the Appeals Court overturned Jackson's preliminary injunction barring Microsoft from requiring computers pre-install Internet Explorer with Windows. Although the Appeals Court did not find any instance where Jackson demonstrated actual bias in his handling of the case, they held that Jackson violated ethical rules by holding "secret sessions" with journalists during the penalty phase of the trial, which "seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process." In reversing Jackson's ruling, the Appeals Court also requires that any new penalty consideration or retrial take place before a different judge. So, this case is over for the man who made history presiding over the Microsoft antitrust trial.

You Get What You Settle For

Since Judge Jackson's original ruling, the U.S. presidency has changed hands. During his campaign, President Bush repeatedly stated he wasn't in favor of breaking up Microsoft, and his Republican administration is generally not in favor of regulating markets or business activity. Although Attorney General John Ashcroft has said very little about the Microsoft case since assuming his post, in the wake of the Appeals Court decision, it would seem the odds that Microsoft and the government will settle out of court have increased.

However, the federal government isn't the only plaintiff: nineteen states are also party to the antitrust case, and so far haven't shown much interest in backing down. During settlement talks in mid-2000, the states were said to have resisted settlement proposals, and so far the states seem to feel the Appeals Court ruling upholds the core of the case. It's conceivable the Justice Department and Microsoft might agree to terms of a settlement, but the states could refuse to go along with it. Under a statute known as the Tunney Act, any proposed settlement would have to be reviewed by a federal judge in a hearing, and the states could urge the judge to stop any proposed deal on the basis it wasn't in the public interest. After all, Microsoft's failure to adhere to the terms of a 1995 court settlement are how the current antitrust case got underway in the first place.

For now, the next move is in the hands of the Justice Department, which must decide whether to pursue the case or a settlement, and the whole process will undoubtedly take several more years to unravel.

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

OS X for Legacy Macs

June 18, 2001
Ryan Rempel (osxguru@macsales.com)
URL: http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/

While Apple has limited its support for Mac OS X to those machines that originally came with a G3 or G4 processor, it is possible to install Mac OS X on some earlier machines. The unsupported machines that work now are the 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500 and 9600, as well the clones that were based on one of these systems (the Umax S900 and J700, and the Power Computing PowerWave and PowerTowerPro). Other models that use the PCI architecture may be made to work in time. (Models based on the Nubus architecture are less likely to ever work with Mac OS X).

I put together the kernel extensions that make Mac OS X work on unsupported machines, based on the source code that Apple made available in the Darwin project. I had never done any operating system programming before, but I really wanted Mac OS X to run on my 7300. When I made the installation instructions available on my web site (on the day Mac OS X was released!) I was overwhelmed by the response from people who were so pleased to be able to use Mac OS X on their computers.

Now, Other World Computing has generously provided resources to allow me to spend more time working on Mac OS X for unsupported systems. Here's what's available now:

There aren't any guarantees, but we hope that Mac OS X on unsupported systems can be made to work better and better.

http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/framework.cfm?page=Instructions.html

ToC

Re: OS X on legacy Macs

Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 22:53:10 -0400
From: Mark Roth (mpno@columbus.rr.com)

[Editor's Note: This appeared on the PowerMac 8500 mailing list - http://www.bigfat.com/mac8500-l/ ]

> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:52:59 -0400
> From: Carol Porteous & Jean Detheux (jcydp@perth.igs.net)
> Subject: Re: OS X on legacy Macs.
>
> mpno wrote:
>
>> I've installed OSX on my 8500 successfully. I'll try to post the details
>> here soon.
>
> Mark,
>
> Good news.
> What I really would like to know, was it possible to do some "real" work
> in OS X on your 8500?
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> Jean

I suppose not, but it should be soon. I've surfed the net and looked at photos, etc. but as far as using things like Photoshop or Office, you have to launch Classic and what's the point, you should just boot OS9 anyway for that. To really make the most of OSX, you're going to need native apps or at least carbonized ones (I believe that is right, the ones that run on either OS9 or X.) Right now there are some things ready to go, like iTunes and QuickTime.

Here is the summary I wrote after successfully installing OSX:

Mac OS X on a Power Mac 8500 - A Success story (so far)

Configuration: 8500/G3/366(Newer)/128MB(now 384MB)/4MBVRAM\

You can accuse me of being a glutton for attempting this, considering attempts to install the public beta ended with an install that I never was able to boot. The first step was to prepare the disk drives needed, and that meant backing up. Almost 8 gigs, which should have taken around 2.5 hours to my 9500 and Powerbook. The 8500 kept disconnecting from the network, I eventually succeeded by copying smaller items instead of the whole volume. This stretched out to several hours already. I had to break up my SoftRAID-ed IBM beasts, which together could almost max out the internal bus, and reformat them with Intech HDST, since SoftRAID is incompatible with OS X (so far) and Drive Setup won't take over drives that were formatted with another utility. HDST fortunately is working fine with OS X, with the exception listed below.

Of course this all involves the Old World Support from Ryan Rempel, and has to be done according to his directions. One step involves using Apple Software Restore, and this requires a drive formatted with Drive Setup for the install partition. That eliminated the IBMs, so I grabbed a 2 gig, put 9.1 on one partition and the other partition (750 MB) was for the installer. Three or four attempts here failed, then I changed the procedure to NOT erase the install partition, and I was successful on the second try then. More hours.

After that, installation was pretty simple and trouble free. I got the L2 cache enabled, a big plus, and the Energy settings. Even got my Asante 10/100 card working. One real problem was getting a correct DHCP address from the router. I've since gone to the built in ethernet port because of this. One time I had Apple Talk working and the Internet wasn't, later I couldn't get either. I still haven't figured this out, there are some Unix network utilities, but I don't have a clue.

It also requires the System Disk CP (included), but it seems you can go back to OS 9 anytime you feel like it with just a restart. How is it you ask? Pretty cool. The text is super sharp, and the look is beautiful and well organized, though I still haven't decided about the Dock. It is a little slow in the hard disk department, but drivers and SCSI cards for OS X are starting to appear, and it is Alti-vec aware, so G4s must love it, in fact it makes me want a G4 card for the 8500. I must admit I'm not used to the UNIX stuff, but the interface is excellent, though some of the extra nice OS 9 features are missing such as the ability to use 24 hour time or the Appearance CP. There doesn't appear to be much software available yet. Most notable are two things. The preemptive multitasking is a treat, I launched Internet Explorer and then opened the system preferences, while IE was still launching. Don't try that with OS 9! And it does appear to be almost uncrashable. When Seti at home for OSX crashed, all I had to do was restart the Finder.

I'm not sure if my SCSI chain is correctly terminated. Aside from the problems backing up, I've gotten crashes and errors reading CD-ROMs.

Even with all this seemingly good, the news about 9.2 makes me wonder if eventually Classic will be unavailable on the 8500. I can envision a version of OSX that requires 9.2 minimum and that's not good.

Good luck to anyone who tries this! I'm lucky that my 8500 is my second Mac, I have my 9500 to work and I can set up the 8500 how I want because it has no other purpose. Even so, I can boot OS9 anytime.

Oh yeah, speed. With the L2 cache enabled, speed seems decent. There was a marked improvement going from 128MB to 384MB RAM. I think that with the extra memory the booting was much faster because there was no virtual memory hard disk activity like there was with only 128MB. Some major spinning before the upgrade. I would give it a B-/C+ for speed, with the biggest problem being the limited speed of the internal SCSI bus. With a PCI card and a G4 I think it would better still.

Anyone else have a story?

Mark Roth

ToC

The Amiga Section:

Executive Update - June 21, 2001

URL: http://www.amiga.com/corporate/news062101.shtml

Greetings To The Amiga Family:

There have been some recent mis-representations that I have recently received about Amiga, Inc., and our office locations. Amiga is doing very well, and we are excited about the future of Amiga. The Amiga Family continues to grow with new partners, new products, and the very near release of AmigaDE 1.0.

However with all of this activity there have been some out there who have recently sent out false information about Amiga, and I need to clarify this now.

Amiga Incorporated in headquartered in Snoqualmie, Washington USA.

Amiga Deutschland is still in business. We have only closed the Langen office. There are going to be some new additions, and a new office location announced in the next couple of weeks, but know now that Amiga International was a Gateway company, and was not and has not been associated with Amiga, Inc. since 1999. The dealer in Germany that is making claims that they are Amiga International is completely false, and Amiga Incorporated the parent company of Amiga Deutschland is going to take legal action against those who make these false claims.

There is another dealer in India who has started claiming that they are Amiga in India. This again is also false. Amiga does NOT have any official representation in India outside of the Amiga dealers who are there. Amiga Incorporated is currently evaluating an office in India, and other countries where we do business.

To those of you who continue to try and tear Amiga apart, it is time to stop. Amiga is moving forward, there are great things ahead, and for the first time in many years, the Amiga family will have new products, and choices.

I look forward to a great year.

Kindest regards,

Bill McEwen,
CEO Amiga, Inc.

ToC

The CUCUG Section:

June General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

June 21, 2001 - President Jim Lewis began with the traditional introduction of officers. Jim then announced that the PC SIG needs PC program volunteers. Anyone with a possible presentation should contact Jim.

The next item of business was the desire of the PC SIG to upgrade the club PC. Jim requested approval from the membership to spend up to $650 for that purpose. With a majority show of hands, the measure was approved.

Finally, President Jim Lewis announced that he won't run for President or Corporate Agent next year, so the members should be thinking about a replacement. Jim said he'd still be around.

John Ross, one of our visitors from a month or two ago, returned and joined our group. John is involved in the Linux user group here in town and there was a discussion to see if there was any interest in starting a Linux SIG within CUCUG and/or incorporating the Linux group. There was a positive response to both ideas.

Jim then asked Mike Latinovich for any new PC news. Mike spoke first about the recent release of DirOpus for the PC. Many of our members are former Amigans and are quite familiar with DirOpus and its Amiga heritage. Mike had copies of the free demo on CD available for those who desired to try it out. He said it is a great replacement for Windows Explorer (that's not Internet Explore, for those less versed in the ways of the PC). Richard Rollins said it is similar to File Buddy on the Mac. Mike said DirOpus 5 on the Amiga and DirOpus 6 for the PC are really twins. Some of its features are programmable buttons and identifying files by examining them rather than the Windows convention of just looking at the filename extension. As with the Amiga version before, DirOpus for the PC is very programmable. Mike said that through a special offer, anyone in the club who would like to buy it can get a 25% discount. DirOpus for the PC is being sold for $75 list.

"RAM is goddamn cheap," Mike said. That is PC133 RAM. Others concurred. Mike said you should buy now while the prices are low, although there is no indication that it's going up any time soon. The two most trustworthy and inexpensive sources are Crucial.com and Mushkin.com. There was then a discussion of RAM types. DDR (Double Data Rate) memory is the most desirable right now for the cutting edge machines as it works with the Athlon processor. Rambus memory is two times more expensive than DDR which is four times more than PC133. KT133 chip set and AMD chip set.

Maxtor has announced a 100 GB hard drive for $300. It's a slim line, 6-platter, half height drive.

Jim then asked Jack Melby for the Macintosh news of the month. Jack began with the news that Apple had just released OS X 1.0.4 today. Jack said he had purchased a new flat panel monitor and would be willing to donate his old (?) CRT monitor to the club if we upgraded the club's CPU. He noted that it's a newer model monitor with the proprietary cable which works with the Gigabit Mac, the Cube, and new Macs. Jack concluded by saying this evening's Mac SIG presentation would be on ridding the System of garbage and he would cover a few OS X goodies if time permitted.

Jim Lewis followed up by saying the PC SIG demo would be on Windows 200, provided by Jim Huls.

Richard Rollins expanded on the Mac news, speaking about the success of the new iBook, modelled on the G4 Titanium Powerbook. He spoke about some of it's features and noted the various models are selling in the $1499 to $1799 range.

Richard also reported that OS 9.2 would be coming out in four to five days.

We then moved into the Question and Answer Section of the meeting. Mike Latinovich asked about Ricoh CDR drives, Jim Huls said he'd heard OK things about the new ones.

Jack Melby said Apple is opening retail stores and they are being very well received. You can walk right in and buy stuff on the spot. This prompted Jim Lewis to comment on the new Gateway Country store that recently opened up here in Champaign. The store is located on north Prospect, just north of Best Buy and behind the Meijer gas station. Jim said you can't buy a machine there. You pick out what you want and it's ordered out of South Dakota with delivery in about four to five days. He said there is also no in-house warranty work. Again, machines are sent to South Dakota for repairs. Richard Rollins said, "If you would like to see this place, go soon." Jim and Richard felt that the Gateway store is a great showroom for Best Buy or Circuit City. You can actually buy machines at those stores. Richard said Gateway won't even sell peripherals. However, on the pro side, Jim said it's kind of like a Saturn dealership. It's quiet. You can talk to a salesperson who is knowledgeable. You can try out a machine. And, take training sessions to learn what you need to know. It will service the neophyte very well.

As a final FYI, Kevin Hisel announced that Carrol O'Conner had died of a heart attack today in L.A. - "Archie Bunker is dead." Kevin Hopkins added that the great blues musician, John Lee Hooker had also passed away today.

ToC

The Macintosh SIG: Jack Melby Deals with Deadwood in the System

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

Jack began his presentation by saying it was in response to a question from Kevin Hopkins on how to rid a Macintosh system of deadwood Extensions. The club's demonstration machine is particularly susceptible to accumulating leftover junk after multiple meetings.

The first thing to do was define what an extension is. An extension is additional code that adds functionality to the base Macintosh system. It can either be in the form of shared libraries that can be called upon by a program or it can be a hook into the system itself.

Jack noted that extensions are not the only source of code conflicts or lost disk space. He said that Disk Burner puts an invisible file in Preferences during a burn of a CD. But, if the burn chokes, that file remains there and it's sizable.

Jack talked about the use of several programs that help you discover what's going on with your system. First, he talked about Installer Observer. This program can take a snapshot of your system and when run again later can tell you the changes that have been made to it. It is particularly useful in discovering just exactly what has been placed on your system by a software install. Installer Observer is freeware.

Another program Jack likes is Snitch, a shareware program that adds information to the Macintosh's Get Info command. Snitch can tell you what four letter Creator code a program has and by using Sherlock's Edit command, you can user that Creator code to find every instance of that program's presence on you machine. Once you've found the program and all the files it has spawned, you can delete them.

Filetyper is another valuable utility. It can reveal invisible files among other things and can be used to search out information. The MVP MP3 player that comes with Toast is a perfect example. If you try to delete the MVP folder, it seems to be magically impervious to deletion. Even though the system reports the folder to be empty, it will not delete. In what seems to be a contradiction, the system says it contains a locked item. Using Filetyper, you can go in and find that the folder contains an invisible, locked icon file. Unlock it, and you can delete the folder from your hard drive ... and everywhere else you've copied it in your attempt to get rid of it.

Next, Jack talked about Extension Overload. This is a program similar to Conflict Catcher or Extension Manager. He also spoke about the Type/Creator Database for Apple Macintosh Computers (http://www.angelfire.com/il/szekely/). Using the TCDB, you can find out what program created a particular file by looking it up by its four letter creator code in the database. During the discussion surrounding these programs, Jack mentioned that the Macintouch (http://www.macintouch.com/resources.shtml) and MacFixIt software archives (http://www.macfixit.com/library.shtml) are valuable sources of program help.

Turning to commercial offerings, Jack said if you really get in trouble and have to rebuild your system from scratch, Conflict Catcher has a Clean Install System Merge option under its Special menu. This will allow you to more quickly reconstruct your additions to a system after wiping the slate clean. The Clean Install System Merge won't do anything until you tell it to. Conflict Catcher sells for $69.95 list but you can almost always find it for less. Other programs Jack recommended were Norton Utilities 6.0.2, TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior. The latter is particularly good for rebuilding the directory on OS X disks. Another honorable mention was Plus Optimizer, a defragmentation program that comes with the Disk Warrior suite. Plus Optimizer is also sold separately.

Jack also mentioned that TechTool Lite 3.0.1 had just been released. It's a free download (http://www.macupdate.com/download.php/techtool301.hqx?id=5995).

As the meeting moved into Questions and Answers, John Ross asked about OS X and when would be the best time to take the plunge. With OS X now coming installed on new machines from Apple, this was an interesting topic of discussion.

Lastly, Edwin Hadley asked about how high an OS version can an '040 run. The consensus was maybe OS 8.6. Edwin needs it to handle SCSI.

Thanks for the program, Jack. That's what I call service.

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June Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

June 26, 2001 - The June meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, June 26, 2001, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Jim Lewis, Dave Witt, Emil Cobb, Mike Latinovich, Anderson Yau, Richard Rollins, Jack Melby, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin Hisel, Dave Witt, Jim Huls and Rich Hall.

Jim Lewis: Jim commented that Jim Huls' presentation on Windows 2000 was very good.

Jim noted that his request for PC program volunteers had gone out at the meeting, but that there had been no response yet. He determined we have four slots open for volunteers till the end of the year. There was a discussion of possible program ideas.

Jim confirmed that the PC SIG has approval from the membership to upgrade the club's PC. There was a discussion of the direction and quality of parts to get.

Next month's PC SIG program will be Jim and Kevin Hisel doing Easy CD-DA Extractor, a shareware ripper using LAME (which Mike Latinovich informed us means Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder - originally it wasn't for patent reasons, now it is). Kevin says it's very fast.

Dave Witt said he and Ed Serbe could possibly do a program on net gaming.

Mike Latinovich was somewhat volunteered to do a program on Dir Opus sometime in the future.

Dave Witt: Dave said he had called Jim Huls and told him his presentation on Windows 2000 was awesome.

Emil Cobb: Emil reported that we had twenty members in attendance at the June meeting.

Rich Hall: Rich reported that we had one new member join in June. He also reported that the battery in the club's Mac had been changed.

Mike Latinovich: Mike said Jim Huls' presentation was excellent. He wryly said he really loved the texture of the wallpaper Jim used. (It was the textured wall that Jim's video was being projected on.)

Anderson Yau: Anderson said he enjoyed Jim's presentation.

Richard Rollins: Richard said Jim's presentation was excellent. It has encouraged him to look into Windows 2000.

Richard said he is also looking into upgrading his older, clone Mac to OS X.

Jack Melby: Jack reported that Sonnet is taking over support for the out-of-business Newer Technology hardware.

He also said that the fact that the Unix software development tools are free is helping current Mac development.

Jack reported that the new iBook is selling "great guns" and that Apple is regaining the educational market.

Richard Rollins may be able to do a presentation on "Dave," which is software to facilitate connecting Macs to PCs in a network. On the PC, the compliment to this software is PCMacLan.

Jack reported that Charlie had just spent a couple of interesting days at Mac Hack.

A presentation on the Palm was discussed again.

Several Board members said they was very interested in a Linux/Unix SIG. There was a discussion about meetings with crossover interest.

Jack concluded his segment by asking if his presentation on doing searches by creator type to ferret out system deadwood had been helpful. Kevin Hopkins said it appeared more labor intensive than he had hoped, but that the information presented had definitely helped.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin reported that he had finally gotten the Iomega ZIPCD 650 burner to work on the club's PowerMac 8600/200 ... sort of. Although a burn will run to completion now, there are audible "hiccups" in the tracks. Not what is desired.

Kevin reported that he would not be at the next meeting and requested someone take notes of the proceedings for the next newsletter.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin said that OS X is kind of like when the Amiga came out - with a lot of freebie software being ported to it from Unix. It is a really exciting time for the Mac community.

Kevin let everybody know that the Netgear RT-314 router he uses for his home network can now be acquired at Best Buy for $68 after rebate.

On a sad note, Kevin reported that the Alpha processor is dead. Compaq sold it to Intel and they have buried it. Some of its features may make it into Intel products, but this once formidable processor has met a undeserved end. The Dec Alpha was one a front runner for the next generation Amiga, back in the mid nineties.

Kevin said Jim's presentation at the last PC SIG was real good. The subject matter was very interesting.

Jim Huls: Jim (who arrived late and missed most of the glowing reviews he'd received) said he need to see a PC to bring him back down to earth from what he'd just seen on his field trip to the State Farm Insurance data processing center. Their computational capabilities were truly awe inspiring.

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The Back Page:

The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Illinois Technology Center. The Center is located at 7101 Tomaras Ave in Savoy. To get to the Illinois Technology Center from Champaign or Urbana, take Neil Street (Rt 45) south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the McDonalds on the corner of Kirby/Florida and Neil in Champaign, you only go 2.4 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. Curtis will be at the two mile mark. Go past the Paradise Inn/Best Western motel to the next street, Tomaras Ave. on the west (right) side. Tomaras is at the 2.4 mile mark. Turn west (right) on Tomaras Ave. The parking lot entrance is immediately on the south (left) side of Tomaras Ave. Enter the building by the front door under the three flags facing Rt 45. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html . The Illinois Technology Center is also on the web at www.IL-Tech-Ctr.com .

Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.

Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):

   President/WinSIG:   Jim Lewis                359-1342  jlewis@computers4life.com
   Vice-President:     Emil Cobb                398-0149            e-cobb@uiuc.edu
   Secretary/Editor:   Kevin Hopkins            356-5026               kh2@uiuc.edu
   Treasurer:          Richard Hall             344-8687            rjhall1@uiuc.edu
   Corporate Agent:    Jim Lewis                359-1342  jlewis@computers4life.com
   Board Advisor:      Richard Rollins          469-2616
   Webmaster:          Kevin Hisel              406-948-1999      khisel @ kevinhisel.com
   Mac SIG Co-Chair:   John Melby               352-3638           jbmelby@home.com
   Mac SIG Co-Chair:   Charles Melby-Thompson   352-3638         charlesmt@home.com

Surf our web site at http://www.cucug.org/

CUCUG
912 Stratford Dr.
Champaign, IL
61821

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