HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: huot@cray.com (Tom Huot)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: CheckFree Anybody...
Date: 5 Nov 92 20:31:50 GMT
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.

In article <henley.720879827@lead9> henley@rtsg.mot.com (Aaron Henley) writes:
>Anybody out there use CHECKFREE and care to comment about
>what you like and dislike about it?  Currently CHECKFREE gives
>you 1 free month and then a 90 day money back option if your
>still not satisfied after 90 days.

I use Checkfree and I really wouldn't want to do without it any more.
I always seemed to run out of stamps, or forget to pay a bill on time,
but now, I just sit down at the computer, and pay the bill the day
I get it. It gets paid on the day you request so you keep your money
as long as possible. The fee is $9.95 per month for up to 20 transactions,
so considering the price of postage, that's not too bad.

Checkfree software does leave something to be desired which led me to
use Quicken for Windows checkfree utility. (I was using CF software
and Money Counts before) Maybe I'm just not used to it, but I'm not
sure Quicken is the best route to take here either. I think both of
these programs / services could be improved upon to make them easier
to use and less prone to error. Quicken is real dangerous, since I
have lost transactions without knowing it before.

To sum it up, though, electronic banking is definitely the way to
go. Just be sure to print out your registers and back up your accounts!

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________________
Tom Huot        			       
huot@cray.com 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: ternlund@CS.ColoState.EDU (John Ternlund)
Subject: Pntr
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 23:14:15 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University


  Has anyone successfully been able to hook up an Imagewriter II (Apple)
printer to thier IBM?  How did you do it?  What are the pinouts on the
IBM and Apple end? Does the printer port on the IBM side have a send/GND/
etc which is always the same?

All opinions expressed or otherwise implied are my own.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
John Ternlund              Software Engineer, Integrated Decision Support,
                                               Colorado State University
Internet: ternlund@mozart.cs.colostate.edu
From: kxj6@po.CWRU.Edu (Kijin Jung)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Stacker and XtraDrive
Date: 7 Nov 1992 00:10:07 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: kxj6@po.CWRU.Edu (Kijin Jung)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


Hello, I own Stacker 2.0 but I've never permanently installed it
on my hard disk because of reliablity problems. I also find it VERY
awkward to have an extra compressed drive created for each uncompressed
logical drive that exists. I have C: D: E: and F: partitions on two
drives - Stacker then creates G: H: I: and J: !

Lately, I've heard some sketchy information on IIT's XtraDrive, but
it looks promising. For those who have it, could you comment on it's
compatibility with Window's swapfile, and whether I can use PC Tools'
Compress or Norton's defragger on an XtraDrive compressed disk? For
those who say that it is slow, _how_ slow? And if I understand correctly,
XtraDrive does not require you to have an uncompressed partition?

Thanks in advance...
                -Kijin


Xref: sparky comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:14589 misc.invest:13605
From: rfinch@water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,misc.invest
Subject: Stock Market Software
Date: 11 Nov 92 15:36:57 GMT
Followup-To: misc.invest
Distribution: na
Organization: Calif. Dept. of Water Resources

I didn't see this in the FAQ in comp.misc:  can anybody provide
recommendations for software to analyze stock market data?

Actually, I'm more interested in powerful plotting programs, rather
than mathematical analysis.  So, if you are doing this, what's your
preferred source of stock market data (both US and international), and
what's your preferred software to examine the data?

A bit more specifically, I'm seeing ads in, e.g., "Investor's Business
Daily" for, say, Trendsetter, Signal, TeleChart 2000, Prodigy, AIQ,
etc., all of which provide data and/or analysis software.  How is the
software? What about non-conventional analysis, such as looking at the
data in the frequency domain (fourier analysis); non-conventional
plotting/graphing, and so on.  Anybody in this group try to look at
the data using fractal/chaotic techniques? Somewhere I read about a
few National Lab people starting a company to do this...

If you email replies, I'll summarize in 2-3 weeks.  Followups have
been directed to misc.invest
--
Ralph Finch			916-653-8268
rfinch@water.ca.gov		...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch
Any opinions expressed are my own; they do not represent the DWR
From: Jim_Johnson@abcd.Houghton.MI.US (Jim Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for a 'day of week checker' batch program
Distribution: world
Date: 6 Nov 92 23:32:13 EST
Organization: Amiga BitSwap Central Dispatch

In a message dated Fri  6 Nov 92 12:09, Don@chopin.udel.edu (donald R Lloyd
wrote:


 DRL>      I need to track down a small program for use in batch files
 DRL> that
 DRL> will check to see if it is a certain day of the week and call a 
 DRL> program or batch file if so.
 DRL>      Anyone know if a program such as this exists, or will I have to
 DRL> 
 DRL> track down a compiler somewhere and roll my own?

DOS Power Tools (1st edition) has a DEBUG routine for GETDAY.COM which
returns an error code based on the current day of the week.  Pop it into a
batch file and it will control program flow as needed above. (There is also
GETDATE, GETMONTH, etc.)

-- Via DLG Pro v0.995

jim_johnson@abcd.houghton.mi.us
from Calumet, Michigan, USA -the world's former copper mining capital, 
located on Lake Superior and home to America's newest National Park,
** The Keweenaw National Historic Park **
From: 6500boo@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (William Bushing)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: DOS program to decompress UNIX *.Z files
Date: 12 Nov 92 22:48:39 GMT
Distribution: comp

I know I saw a reference a year or two ago to DOS programs
that can decompress a UNIX *.Z file. Anyone give me a
pointer as to the name of the program. I assume I can find
it on WUARCHIVE.WUSTL.EDU but why navigate through the
maze if someone can give directions! Thanks in advance.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
William W. (Boo) Bushing  |  "Life is too important to be
6500boo@ucsbuxa.bitnet    |       taken seriously"
6500boo@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu  | 
bushing@lifesci.ucsb.edu  |            - Einstein
Marine Biotechnology Lab   Univ. of Calif. Santa Barbara
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: esl1@crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Eric Lambert)
Subject: Has anyone heard of Floptical drives?
Organization: Cornell Information Technologies
Date: 10 Nov 92 06:50:56 GMT

I read in a magazine yesterday about a new (?) disk for IBM's.
It is the size of a 3.5" disk, but optical, so the TPI is
somewhere over 1000.  It stores 21MB of data, and each disk costs
about $25.  The drives are standard size 3.5" drives and can
read/write to 720K. 1.44meg, and 21meg Floptical disks.  All for
about $500.  Is this new?  Does it work?  Does anyone have one?

Thanks.

--------
Eric Lambert				esl1@cornell.edu
Class of 1995, Cornell Law	

"Jesus saves...but Gretsky gets the rebound and SCORES!!!!!"

--
Eric Lambert				esl1@cornell.edu
Class of 1995, Cornell Law		esl1_ss@uhura.cc.rochester.edu

"Jesus saves...but Gretsky gets the rebound and SCORES!!!!!"
From: rfinch@water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: RCS ported to DOS?
Date: 1 Nov 92 07:39:44 GMT
Organization: Calif. Dept. of Water Resources

Does anybody know if RCS has been ported to DOS?
--
Ralph Finch			916-653-8268
rfinch@water.ca.gov		...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch
Any opinions expressed are my own; they do not represent the DWR
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola)
Subject: Re: 486 vs. 386
Reply-To: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 01:45:26 GMT

James Hague writes

> Now think about what the 486 is capable of.  There are very few
> people who need that sort of power. It is mostly a marketing thing;
> ....  A well-designed machine with
> properly balanced subsystems would be preferrable to a lackluster
> box with a screamingly fast CPU.
> 

Agreed that a there's no point in getting a blazing cpu and saddling  
it with slow i/o and graphics.
But i fear that the need for power is not just a marketing thing.   
Software requirements expand to fill the power available.  Most of  
today's software will simply not run adequately on a 286; some of it  
is borderline on a 386.  If you want to run that software, and newer  
one on the way, you'll need more power.  If you want a nicer  
interface, you'll need more power.

In a few years, we'll be discussing whether people 'really need' a  
986; after all, a 300MHz 886 is perfectly adequate...


--
-
Stefano Pagiola
Food Research Institute, Stanford University
spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)
spagiola@FRI-nxt-Pagiola.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: macster@iastate.edu (Michael C Mccarty)
Subject: Re: How fast is the P5 chip?
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Distribution: comp
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 18:01:46 GMT

In <BwD4xr.3Hv@newcastle.ac.uk> P.A.Brooks-Johnson@newcastle.ac.uk (P.A. Brooks-Johnson) writes:
>Line 39
>Keywords: 
>In article <jdtp=4k@lynx.unm.edu>, rgaudre@triton.unm.edu (Ron Gaudreau) writes:
>>  ...

>But then the P5 was meant to be released in September '92, now I think it's January '93.......
>The *announced* release date is 1994-1995, but then I don't think I'll be expecting it 'til 2000!!!

...

>What I'm really harping on about is when will it all end (never!). Why don't PC  programmers use the hardware that's there??? Take a look at Calamus on the Atari ST, even running a 68000 at 8 MHz, it's faster than PM4 on a 386DX 25Mhz -WHAT'S GOING WRONG??? The PC programmer's favourite line in response to critism must be:
>"So it doesn't run fast enough?- Buy a bigger computer..."


I agree completely!  Unfortunately, you have to look at it from the developers
point of view.  Why in the world would you want to write a program that is
optimized for a 386 when you know full well that the 486 is going to come out
within the next year?  Why not write a program on the speculation that it will
use the 486's power and offer more capabilities.  The reason that your Atari
ST's programs run so well is that the ST isn't upgraded every six months like
the average PC is.  The Atari developers know what they are dealing with and
know what the limitations are going to be.  The fact is that Intel IS spitting
out these damn CPU's at such a rate that the developers can't keep up (even if
they are delayed over a year like the P5).  Just because you paid $200 for a
piece of software does NOT mean its efficient.  

And what makes it worse is Intel's announcing of the P6 and P7.  Hell, if I see
either of these chips within the next 3 years, I'll probably faint.  But you
know that Microsoft is already thinking about Windows/P6 when they don't even
know what the chip can do yet.  Everyone's trying to get the upper hand...
leaving the consumer with a load of inefficient crap...

Its kinda scary when you realize that the most efficient software out there is
shareware...

				In Search of the Ultimate PC, 
				Mike.


-Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
 start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
 then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
 music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
                -- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"


Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: 486 vs. 386
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 16:34:33 GMT

James Hague (exuhag@exu.ericsson.se) wrote:
: Not to mention that very few people actually need a 586 (aka Pentium).
: How many people--excepting ray-tracing fanatics and people who do
: serious number crunching--have had any speed problems with a 33 MHz
: 486?  For the mass-market, the Pentium is a solution waiting for
: a problem (like CD-I).  I can't see people scrambling to buy them,
: unless they are one of the rising number of buzzword addicts.

I don't think that the "solution waiting for a problem" applies to
computing horse-power, ever.  PCs are now beginning to compete with
high-end workstations, and there a plenty of applications that can
always chew up just about any amount of computing horse-power you
throw at them.  Besides, with OSes like WNT the presentation level
alone (never mind the actual application) benefits enormously from
any additional throughput you can give it (although in this area
accelerated graphics boards are an alternate and probably more 
approriate solution.)

Personally, if I can get a Pentium based machine I can run Linux
on in the price range of current high-end 486 systems, I'll buy
it.  It's likely to be less than half the price of a comparable
RISC-based system, and plenty of people are buying those.

Of course running Messy Dogs on an Pentium would be the equivalent
of running CP/M on a Cray...  ;-)
--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629
From: Andrew McCallum <andrewm@zooid.guild.org>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Emulators
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 12:01:00 GMT
Organization: The Zoo of Ids
X-To: JMARKUS@ELECTRICAL.WATSTA

From jmarkus@electrical.watstar.uwaterloo.ca
>What other computers can be emulated on the PC via software?
>
>Are there Apple ][ and Amiga emulators out there?

    I've seen an Apple// one arround, but I haven't tried it out.

    There's an Amiga emulator floating arround.  There was a discussion
about it a few months back, and we came to the conclusion that it didn't
work.  It just sat there, spinning drive A: and asking for the Workbench
disk.

                                                Andrew

Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
From: lachlan@dmp.csiro.au (Lachlan Cranswick)
Subject: Re: IRQs and BUS mice.
Organization: CSIRO Division of Mineral Products, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 04:50:21 GMT

norm@bnr.ca (Norm MacNeil) writes:


>One a 386-33 machine, the IRQs are setup as the following:
>  IRQ1 Keyboard (I think)
>  IRQ2 [Cascade]
>  IRQ3 COM1
>  IRQ4 COM2
>  IRQ5 Mouse (bus)
>  IRQ6 (can't remember)
>  IRQ7 LPT1
>  ...
>The problem is the machine has a SoundBlaster, a bus mouse, and I want to
>connect a parallel printer (LPT1).  The I/O card manual says that LPT1 can
>be IRQ7 or IRQ5, but I can't seem to find out how to change the IRQ of the
>bus mouse even though when I type  MOUSE /?  it says its on IRQ5.  So right
>now I have the SoundBlaster on IRQ7 but cannot use the parallel port 'cause
>it'll lock up.  I could solve this if I could change the IRQ of the bus mouse
>to, say, IRQ10 but cannot find out how to do this.  Any ideas?  The video
>card does not have any jumpers on it so it is probably software changeable
>(if at all).  Another solution might be to change COM1 to IRQ10 but would
>this be advisable?

>Any info would be greatly appreciated.

You should be able to configure the interupt on the 
bus card itself.  On the old Microsoft bus mouse cards you
could set the interupt to 2 or 3 or 4 or 5.

I forget the correct explanation for the cascade - I think
it has something to do with getting into the A20
line or some such guff like that.  There was a series of posts
about IRQ2 and the cascade - history etc a while back.

Correct me if I am wrong but you should be able to set the 
bus mouse to IRQ2.  On my 486, I have the parallel port set
to the default of IRQ7 (I can't change it anyway) and
the soundblaster to IRQ5.  On most systems, you have to
set the soundblaster to something other than
its factory default of IRQ7 anyway as there is usually
a parallel port there.



-- 
  Lachlan Cranswick  -  CSIRO             _--_|\  lachlan@dmp.CSIRO.AU
  Division of Mineral Products           /      \ tel +61 3 647 0367
  PO Box 124, Port Melbourne 3207        \_.--._/ fax +61 3 646 3223
  AUSTRALIA                                    v 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: chow@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Christopher Chow)
Subject: Re: 486 vs. 386
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 04:45:11 GMT

In article <1992Nov11.164527.23898@exu.ericsson.se> exuhag@exu.ericsson.se writes:
>Now think about what the 486 is capable of.  There are very few
>people who need that sort of power.  It is mostly a marketing thing;
...
>wouldn't be so desperate for 486s.  A well-designed machine with
>properly balanced subsystems would be preferrable to a lackluster
>box with a screamingly fast CPU.
>

This is all true: however, the lackluster box is not the real problem.
Rather, its that the PC architecture is 10 years old, and is seriously
out of balance with the power of the 486. For example, I use my 486
primarily for games, and it (a 486-33) is only capable of running about
8 fps on Falcon 3.0 with all the options set to max detail. On Aces 
of the Pacific, it slows down and becomes jerkey on ground-attack
missions when there are buildings on fire.

Theoretically, is the 486-33 with a copy-back 256kb second level cache
fast enough to do the job well? Probably. But, when constrained with 
the aging ISA bus, the PC memory problem, that power is spent battling
the architecture (both h/w and s/w).


-- 
Christopher Chow
---------------------------   Phone:          518-426-0687
1 Notre Dame Drive - Rm 317   Internet:       chow@theory.tc.cornell.edu
Albany, NY 12208-3413         America Online: Chris Chow
From: ming@werple.apana.org.au (Ming Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: HELP: FTP and ZIPS
Date: 7 Nov 1992 18:08:23 +1100
Organization: werple public-access unix, Melbourne
NNTP-Posting-Host: werple.apana.org.au

Hi there,

rg9538@ehsn2.cen.uiuc.edu (Ronald E Garnett) writes:
>Help!  I ftp'd a few files from an archive
>site (zips) and tried to unzip them with
>PKZIP 1.10.  It wouldn't work!
>What type of zipping program do those
>archive sites use and how can I get it?

1.  Have you made sure that you set the file type to binary when ftping from
the archive site to your account AND when ftping from your account to
floppy disk (unless your using a modem)?  Do this by typing "bin" at the
FTP prompt... It is a good idea to get used to doing this everytime you
start an FTP session... I have wasted a lot of time downloading binary
files which were useless because I forgot to do this! :-)

2. If you did set to binary, it could be because the file was zipped using
Pkzip 2.01 or later... This is an unofficial hack of the compression
program and many people advise against using it (future downward
compatibility and apparent hardware problems).  If this was the case your
pkzip program would have said something like "I don't know how to handle...".
So you could either try your luck at pkzip 2.01 or try to get the file
from another site.


btw. you can get a list of all the current compression schemes and the
names of sites to get them from, from:

ftp.cso.uiuc.edu (128.174.5.59) in the directory /doc/pcnet/compression

(unless, it has changed on me! :-)  mail me if you want it bad...


Catch ya,


,--------------------+--------------------------+--------,
|  Sender: Ming Lee  |                     _--_|\    O/  |
+--------------------+                    /      \  <|   |
|                                         \_.--._/  / \  |
| For quick reply:                              v 45c    |
|   p8dw001@stan.xx.swin.oz.au                  +--------+
|   (might die after 17 Dec 92, unless I'm lucky!)       |
|                                         _ _ _ _        |
| Otherwise:                             | | | | |       |
|   ming@werple.apana.org.au             |_|_|_|_|       |
|                                                        |
`--------------------------------------------------------'

Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
From: thssjyh@iitmax.iit.edu (Jianqing Hu)
Subject: Re: Solid State Disk Drive
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 08:52:25 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.103707.8667@iscsvax.uni.edu> simmons5275@iscsvax.uni.edu writes:
>I recently was reading about a solid state disk drive composed of
>banks of sram from one of the 1990 issues of radio electronics. I like
>the idea but the card that they had could only handle 512k. How 
>possible would It be to create the same idea, ie. ram backed up with
>battery for when the sys is off and set up like a disk drive with the 
>driver software, for 16-->who knows megabytes. Seems to me you could take
>a jdr microdevices 16 meg card that uses simms, and add some batery
>circuitry and write a driver for the drive. If this is possible I 
>would be very interested in it. Just think of how lightning quick
>that sucker would be. Almost the ideal place to install windows. I am 
>aware of current ramdisk software but it cant save on power down so it
>doesnt really interest me. I would be leaving my comp on most of the
>time anyway but if th power went out Id hate to have to reinstall everything
>again. Therefore the only logical solutin to me is a 32 meg solid state 
>disk drive. If anyone has info on either the existence or the feasibility 
>of this please let me know asap.
>

I think it is not practically possible. You must refresh those
DRAM at ms interval, so if you had a SOLID DRIVE based on DRAM,
you have to use an BIG bettery to back it up, as big as an
auto battery ? I don't know. But I guess this is why those RE guys
using SRAM in their version of SD.
Even though you run up window from a SD, chances are your VGA card 
may not fast enough to refresh the monitor screen.


Jianqing Hu                         |  Internet: thssjyh@iitmax.iit.edu
ECE Dept.  Illinois Inst. of Tech.  |  
Chicago, IL 60616                   |  Office phone: 312-567-6971

Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc