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Keyboarded by Gloria Church.CIG Notes
December 14, 1995
Notes from the December 14, 1995 meeting of the Rochester Genealogical Society / Computer Interest Group:
There were 36 attendees, including 2 visitors.
Mark Bewicke led the meeting, reminding all to pay their RGS & CIG dues before Jan. 6, or be dropped from the mailing list. He has joined the FROG POND Computer Interest Group and has an E-mail address and invites others with E-mail address to contact him. Membership in the CIG is 157, about 35 unpaid at this time. Dick Halsey is using Internet primarily. Bob Wombach gave the number for a BBS with genealogy files, AUTOMANIA, 1-315-483-9455. The number for Logan's List is 328-2914, to get an update of all the BBS' in Monroe County area.
Jim Hall reported that Flower City Central is off-line, but the RGS/CIG has copies of all their files. We will try to get a separate genealogy area on FROG. Jim is appointed reporter on events on FROG and will give an update at the CIG meetings. FROG starts at 6 o'clock for "tadpoles," with a business meeting at 7:30 and program at 8 o'clock. He suggested that CIG members attend a meeting to get familiar with it. NOTE: Later in the meeting the BB Sysop, Nick Francesco, indicated that if enough members request a separate area for genealogy, the Board of Directors will likely agree to this. Subsequently, Ken Veneron suggested that he would offer a 150 mb hard drive for FROG to use to support the genealogy file area. Mark noted the advantages of FROG, where you can not only use the BB, but also meet the sysop in person, for full information.
Mark also noted the available shareware and other software in our DOS and MAC libraries. Jim noted the special accomplishment of Ken Veneron in downloading over 60 megabytes of files from Flower City Central. A well deserved round of applause was given.
Fred Kolb noted that the next meeting of the Kodak Genealogy Society is Jan. 10th. The topics will be a panel at 6:30-7:15, Immigration, Naturalization, Citizenship. At 8:00, James Rice will talk on "Insights from an Ahnentafel Pedigree."
Ken Veneron reported on the Family History Centers. Kraeg Road has stopped ordering films until after the renovation. Westfall Road has another installed computer, with CD-ROM, to allow searching the Federal Census Index CD's purchased by RGS a couple of years ago. He handed out instruction sheets for the CD's. Copies are available at the Family History Center. He described some of his successes in searching. The disks cover pre-colonial times up to 1860, mostly the northeast and mid-Atlantic. He has added 1994 phone directories for east and west of the Mississippi.
Mark noted the advantages for beginners of using the Ancestral File; etc. at Westfall Road. The current open hours are Tues., Wed., Thurs., 9AM-3PM, 7PM-9:30PM; Fri. and Sat., 9AM to noon. Call 271-9454 to confirm these times.
Ed Gaulin asked Jim Swarts to announce the next RGS meeting Jan. 18th at Asbury/Friendship Hall. The theme is European research, starting with Eastern European studies.
The rest of the Spring sessions will be announced in Hear Ye.
Speaking of Hear Ye, Jim Paprocki has agreed to resume editing. He is looking for early Rochester photos. Feature articles are needed, preferred on disk or E-mail. He requested articles on the Internet, Bulletin Boards, or technologies being used. Bob Hesselberth noted his experiences (incomplete success) on sending photos by E-mail. Suggestions on software were forthcoming.
Jim Paprocki suggested that some of the articles on genealogy, prepared for submission to newspapers, be used in Hear Ye or on our Web page.
Assistance in preparing the Hear Ye for mailing was requested. Bulk mailing reduces some of the work, as the stamps are avoided using the bulk permit.
Gale Smith has contacted Dennis Gorman regarding the Mt. Hope Cemetery Records. Dennis has provided Gale with the total project on disk. Editing help is needed mostly for capitalization. He is looking at preparing the output for the FGS conference; printed copy, CD-ROM and fiche. Proofreading will start soon.
Mark asked for assistance for the January meeting. Suggestions included:
A beginner's PAF course, inputting data into a database. One person indicated the need for assistance. Other members needing assistance should call Mark at 637-2681.
Another suggestion was having a presentation on Multimedia in genealogy. Those members using some form of photos or pictures in their genealogies are requested to describe their process/equipment. Then a similar process will be directed to Kinkos for preparation of a commercial disk.
Tracking blood lines vs. social genealogies is also suggested for a future meeting.
Connie Reda still has need to distribute packets for keyboarding Civil War military data, under a FGS and NARA program. She has received the microfilms to assist in interpreting the records, which are very simple.
Jim Swarts asked for assistance in the March RGS meeting workshop, related to Irish record research. Call Jim at 473-3042, soon!
Mark introduced Nick Francesco, member of the Sound Byte team (Saturday, 1-2PM, 1370 AM, WXXI-AM), and guest speaker on the Computer Helper, Channel 9 on Cable, WGRC, 7PM, 3rd Tuesday. Some members of the audience were familiar to Nick from the FROG POND meetings.
He described himself as a 1st generation American from a tiny town outside Naples, Italy, San Laugi, where everybody knew each other. The prime product of the town is liqueur STREGA, (WITCH). Why would anyone leave? His sister-in-law is the family historian.
Nick started the session telling about the Internet, with a description of 7 vs. 8 bit characters, encoding with UUENCODE, and UUDECODE, for MAC & PC. Next he described the FROG POND, with various areas of files. As noted earlier, he stated that a group of members could request a separate area. Probably 10 members are needed. We now have 4, with June Feder, Mark Bewicke, Charles Summer, and Jim Hall, and perhaps more, unknown to the editor. If willing to join, and reap the benefits, call Jim Hall at 265-9514. We will get you an application. (The cost is $30 per year). Won't that be great! This can be a private or public area, uploading and downloading files for members only if desired, with a special mail area also.
He briefly described FIDONET and FREENET, networks of bulletin boards. At this time FROG's Internet connection does not allow attachments, but this is being reviewed.
A discussion of scanners ensued, 4 bit vs. 8 bit, with 8 having higher resolution, deeper colors. 4 bit=4 pieces of info/data, 8=more grays, color. 4 bits will give good quality black & white photos. A question on line drawing (maps) scanning resolved that the MAC to DOS transfer was O.K. Editing in DOS or Windows needed a special program like PHOTOSHOP (needs lots of disk space, costly) or LVIEWPRO (on the FROG BBS-shareware, can do much editing).
The FROG-BBS has a member ($30/yr.) line which is not very busy (271-7663) or a non-member line (461-1924) which is often busy (700 non-members vs. 250 members). Members use FROG mostly for E-mail, downloading and reading off-line in packets using BlueWave, etc. keeping the line open for others.
To get a directory for Windows 95, use DIR(space)>(space)RPTI:, will print a listing as seen. Other DIR switches are: /0 for order, /N by name, /D by date, /S by size (these are not in the WIN95 manual. DIR/? gives all DOS commands. Any command with /? will give HELP commands
Problem with DOUBLE SPACE: DBLSPACE is a hidden file, can be removed using ATTRIB (space)-R(space)-H(space)-S.DBLSPACE,BIN. Once it is seen, it can be removed. Do not use DOS back-up. Do not use UNINSTALL.RESTORE does not work. Use a NORTON utility.
For back-ups, use MSDOS/BACK-UP, not RESTORE. You can also use .ZIP or PCTOOLS. The IOMEGA ZIP drives are now available (about $200), 100 meg cartridges (about $20). These are good for document back-up. This is an external accessory. An internal type is EZ_DRIVE, 135 meg cartridge attached to a SCSI controller. This is 2X faster but inconvenient to handle. A program on the FROG POND, GUEST, is helpful to transfer data. IOMEGA is developing a new back-up, JAZZ, with a gegabyte on the cartridge! Use multiple tapes for complete transfer of disk data.
When using DISKMANAGER to condense files, do not run DISKSCAN. D-M fools the system to allow volumes larger than 520 meg, to 2 GIG. Low level programs cannot be fooled-read files by DOS or do by hand. It is better to have an enhanced IDE drive D-M user some RAM.
Word Perfect is losing market share to MS-WORD, as Word Perfect took it from WordStar earlier. Word Perfect has been handed around, is going downhill, may not be available soon!
The time to change a computer battery (for CMOS) is when the clock shows time losing seconds.
SNAPEE is a video captioning system, plug-in to the parallel port, adds video camera or VCR to the PC. Can add captions to videos, but it needs 16 meg RAM; a great system. A similar program/video card PC-TV can bring up a TV on the monitor.(Nick's E-mail address is nick@asknick.com)
Uninstaller to remove programs is dangerous, but others are safer to use. The uninstall program should be installed before other programs, so it can chart where the files are located. The LILY POND (FROG newsletter) of Nov. 1995 had a good review, recommends WindowWasher and Remove-it.
Memory expanders like Softram are debated on efficiency. When a program is loaded, Softram steals unused RAM from other programs, which is O.K. for small programs, but not big programs. There is no hardware to substitute for RAM chips, yet.
Hard drive selection should choose E(enhanced) Ide, to use up to 1 GIGABYTE. It uses 125 meg to swap files=get a 40 meg drive to use for swap files, to speed up the transfer to disk of seldom unused programs. This avoids much hard drive operation.
If there are boot time problems, check for a virus, and if running Disk Manager and DoubleSpace, etc., all of these are taking part of the processor cycles. If necessary, get another SCSI drive and put specials on it. SMARTDRIVE is worth using.
Computer speed can be determined at the boot box, using the pause key. Also there are files, MIPS and PMIPS on the FROG bulletin board, to run the calculations to determine if the system is operating at high efficiency.
A problem with CLOCK was defined as a result of changing a motherboard. The new motherboard (upgrade) should require deletion of CLOCK on C drive, also delete and .$$$ files.
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Keyboarded by Gloria Church.
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