This should be an intriguing venue for our dinner. I hope the weather will continue in this good spell and we shall have a pleasant evening. Starting time is 7.30pm. If anyone still needs directions on how to get there please phone me. If anyone else would like to come please let me know ASAP we haven't reached my suggested 12 people yet so there will be room.
CO7 6DH http://www.dedhamboathouse.com Tel: 01206 323 153
See you there!
The bulk of Tony's talk and demonstration is based on his own notes which form the major part of the report on the evening.
MECHANICS REQUIRED TO TRANSFER FILES FROM OLD TO NEW SYSTEMS
My need to do this originated from my 2005 talk when I started to process transparency slides. The first medium I tried was the floppy disc, but this would only take a maximum of 10 slides.
During November 2005, Martin of EAUG sold me a Iomega 100MB drive for the parallel port. Without an Acorn driver I spent two months unsuccessfully getting it to work on Windows XP.
During January 2006, Dan also of EAUG, discovered an old Acorn driver for RISC OS 3. This worked perfectly on the old RISC OS 3 (model 3.50) machine bought from Silicon Alley. Being a driver version 1.00a it would load on to RISC OS 4 Kinetic, but would not recognise anything. Frank then informed me that his wife Anne was transferring her files from Zip to CD recording. Anne`s Iomega Zip Drive was a modern 250MB version complete with USB lead for power up.
On finding 100MB discs were compatible with both old and new Iomegas, I bought it from her.
Iomega 100MB discs will take over 600 slides: 100MB ÷ 1.44MB floppy of 10 should be 694! (Ed. File Allocation unit size and other overheads like directories reduce the "ideal" figure).
Iomega discs are DOS formatted, so an Archive filing system such as SPARK FS must be used in order for long file names to be accommodated.
I use Image Bank 0.58 (Aug.1994) to record my processed transparencies as thumbnail images. Image Bank will not work on RISC OS 4 which is yet another reason for not using my Kinetic. Being short file names of 10 digits, these must be amended once they are transferred to laptop.
For Windows XP to recognise JPEG archived images, the SPARK FS name must end with "/ZIP" Unfortunately Image Bank itself will not allow this so it must be done at the SPARK FS stage. I have also included examples of different types of files such as Pipedream, Fireworkz & Text. From trial and error, it would always seem the best thing to Zip up each type of file separately. For some reason files including images make the Acorn 3.50 machine totally freeze operation.
(It was noted during the demonstrations that Tony has only 13MB of total memory in his machine which meant that large files were extremely slow to process. Addition of more memory should sort this out. Ed.)
Going to Windows XP laptop click on "Start", then "My Computer" followed by "Zip-100(F)". After clicking on "Start" followed by "My Pictures", open a new folder and call it ZipSamples. Try transferring to it some of "Tonyemail" files and "Notepad" under programs will open them.
"AngliaNorfolk", "DadsSlides", "EastSurrey" and "EastSussex" will need .jpg after each name.
Obviously "Fireworkz" & "Pipedream" are Acorn programs and will not work on Windows XP Before using the Iomega Zip file on Virtual Acorn a ZipDisc icon has to be created as follows:-
Load Virtual Acorn and make sure it is running in a window: or press ALT/ENTER, if it is not.
Using the white pointer go to the Tools menu and click on "Options" followed by "HostFS" tab. Ignore the top two thirds of the window and go to "Path", found under "Show dos extensions".
Type in a "Path" name of F:\. (note the trailing fullstop):
Type in a "Mount" name of "ZipDisc".
Click "Add", then Click "Apply", followed by Click "OK": then quit and re-load Virtual Acorn. A new drive icon called ZipDisc will appear, which when clicked on will open the Iomega disc.
Click on "ZipDisc" and then click on "Fireworkz" and "Pipedream" icons upon the HardDisc 4.
The "Fireworkz" and "Pipedream" archives will then open, to display their respective contents. All transformed transparency slides will display as JPEGs:
Menu/Scale/1000% will fill the screen.
When finished on Virtual Acorn side, click "Menu" followed by "Shutdown" over "Task" icon. Click on "Shutdown" and switch off: the Zip disc will automatically discharge & laptop closes.
RISC OS 4 (MODEL 4.03) KINETIC
At Stuart Tyrrell`s lecture to the Iceni on 7 June 2006, I bought Unipod from him for £125.00. On installing it into my Kinetic`s top slot Unipod gave the advantage of Network Link & USB. After merging his !Boot with the Kinetic`s !Boot and rebooting, ZIP 250 appeared on iconbar. From trial and error SPARK FS opened Archive alright, but SPARK PLUG did peculiar things.
I can now transfer files from Kinetic to Laptop, but Process1 still applies to transparencies.
Tony Lister, 5 July 2006.
This was our first full use of the overhead projector it was easy for everyone to see. Tony also used the splitter box with two monitors which enabled him to show the screen form the laptops at the same time as the RISC PC output on the overhead projector. There was quite a lot of discussion on the various difficulties Tony had met e.g. availability of drivers for old equipment, the need to show the full file name in windows when doing file transfers, and machine memory. It was an enjoyable club evening. Thank you Tony for preparing and delivering the talk and demonstrations.
I am looking forward to the Dinner next week. It will be good trying out the Boathouse. Start time 7:30pm.
Don't forget our IRC sessions are on Tuesday's from 8 - 10pm and at other times if you wish.
You will need some Internet relay chat software running on a RISC machine or a Windows PC.
The Chat room is hosted on a server called Undernet (port 6667). In order to register with Undernet the first time you will need to present your email address and choose a nickname.
Once you have set up your software and registered you will need to connect to our channel which is called #computer_corner. In order to do this type the join command followed by the channel name, in our case use
/join #computer_corner
Audrey - a club member, whose nickname is "dogdaze" is usually there as the operator and will make you welcome.
| 2nd August | Social meeting - The Boathouse Restaurant, Dedham. | All |
| September 6th | Quercus Magazine | John Cartmell |
| October 4th | PDF creation using Ghostscript | Frank |
| November 1st | JPEG slideshow | All |
| December 6th | Gadgets evening and Party | All |
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. Currently these are:-
Note there is no meeting in August.
12th September "Conversion of Taped Slideshows"
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.)
Following on from a brief discussion at the last club meeting it has been agreed that I should remove a lot of the old newsletters from the website and archive them to CD/DVD. I'll probably not do this before the end of February. If anyone would like a copy of the CD I'm sure this could be arranged.
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the new 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