John has kindly agreed to a repeat of the talk he gave at the EAUG in March, since Tony is not well enough to give his talk at present. (See Editorial). I believe this talk relates to Frank's family history so I am sure it will be intriguing.
This was a somewhat unorthodox meeting. Unusual since we had to meet in the Snooker room but this was an advantage since there were a lot of people watching the football matches on television in the main bar and it was quite noisy there. However the Snooker room is a bit dark and it was difficult to see to connect up.
We had several computers and several printers to try out. Unorthodox in hat we did not really have a defined start. Peter had brought both his Acorn RPC as well as Windows PC but realised when connecting things up that he had brought the wrong printer cable and had to return home to get the right one since everyone else used a USB connection and his Epson Stylus Photo 700 used only the parallel Centronics interface. Whilst this was happening Frank, Tony and Michael were busy printing out images on the same type of paper in order to compare prints.
When Peter returned with the correct cable he decided to print the same image both from the PC using windows drivers and from the RISC PC from Photodesk using Photoreal drivers directly.
Now begins a salutary tale ...unfortunately in his haste to connect his system up he first tried to plug into the RPC and then changed his mind and tried to unplug the cable hurriedly, but found the left hand nut on the connector came loose on the back of the RPC and he twisted the connector sideways. Eventually managed to undo the nut and replace it. He then went to connect up the cable to the PC parallel port but found it did not fit very well and needed to to be pushed in rather hard before the printer would work and the printer heads could be cleaned.
Finally the printed image came out unexpectedly darker and browner than all the others. when printing from Photodesk, so everyone said well that is why we had to use the Windows drivers because Photoreal was not good enough. Trying with the PC directly however did not improve matters, which was puzzling since Peter did not think his printer was that bad! We never really reached a firm conclusion during the evening, except that everyone agreed that it had been quite interesting and we should have another printing evening with better preparation and decisions on what format to print and achieve.
Results so far:
| User | Printer | System | Result |
| Tony | Lexmark | PC Fax/photoviewer | Slightly warm reds but good skin tones. |
| Frank | Canon i965 | VA(Risc OS) using Ovation Pro | More realistic colour than the Lexmark, good skin tones higher contrast with good highlight and shadow detail. |
| Peter | Epson Stylus Photo 700 | RPC Photodesk Photoreal driver | Slightly muddy print background steps poorly defined. |
| Peter | Epson Stylus Photo 700 | PC Windows driver | Better than Photoreal but still brownish tones compared to the other prints. |
Michael's printer unfortunately ran out of ink before he could produce a print.
The same file was used for all the prints. The subject was a little girl in a white flower girl dress sitting on church steps with her flower basket by her side containing red and pink flowers. This showed some bright highlights on the dress with subtle shadows, good skin tones and good hair colouring. The Church background had good detail in the shadows of the stonework steps and wooden doors. The paper used was Epson Photo quality inkjet paper with a matt surface and a 6"x4" size. Unfortunately we forgot to standardise the resolution.
(Ed. I shall not publish the picture here without permission of the author.)
When Peter got home and started to reconnect his system he had a look at the cable, which is not often used, to see why it had caused the problem. Then all was revealed! In his twisting of the connector he had bent the left most pin to one side of the connector and in forcing it into the next socket had bent it further still until it touched the metal casing. Hence when trying to print the D5 signal from Pin 13 was missing and shorted out as far as the printer was concerned hence a rather brown and muddy print! The moral of this story is better preparation, less haste and more care in assembling connectors. You will be glad to know that the pin was straightened without breaking and now works as normal.
A future meeting might consider running costs and more rigorous quality comparisons. Peter's hidden agenda for the meeting was to get some hands-on experience of various modern printers so that when the day comes to replace his aging Epson Stylus he knows what to buy!
The printouts from the meeting were collected and will be shown at the next meeting.
You will be glad to know that Gareth's father is now home and doing well. Unfortunately Tony has also been taken ill after returning from Wakefield with stroke like symptoms affecting his left side. We wish him well and hope he makes a full recovery soon. Because of this his talk on "The History of Royalty in England for 1000 years" will be postponed until he is well and instead John Rye has very kindly agreed to give a repeat of his talk on Family History which he gave at an EAUG meeting earlier this year.
| 2007 | ||
| June 6th | "Genealogy" | John Rye |
| July 4th | Virtualisation - running multiple platforms on one machine. | Gareth |
| August TBA | Social evening. | All |
| September 5th | Outside speaker | TBA |
| October 3rd | JPEG Slideshow presentations | All |
| November 7th | What is a server? - (Microsoft based) | Michael |
| December 5th | Gadgets and party evening | All |
So far we have only one evening planned with a visiting speaker but this may change.
Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. We will give more details as soon as they are confirmed.
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website. http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com
The first visit is free and subsequent visits for non - members is £2. The membership fee is £18 due from the AGM date in April, but may be reduced for those joining late in the year.
Continuing our publicity for EAUG events - please see their Website for details of their next meeting.
| 13th June 2007 | "Optical Character Recognition" |
| 10th July 2007 | "Voice Recognition" |
| TBA | "BBQ" |
| 11th September 2007 | "Voice over Internet Protocol" |
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall, on the second Tuesday of the month
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.eaug.org.uk or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.eaug.org.uk/ppl.htm
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
P.S. My insurance company have added my computer cover away from home with no extra premium required, yours might do the same.(Ed.)
If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website.
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com as a virtual domain,
it can also be reached using http://www.btinternet.com/~icenicomputerclub
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk