dacs.doc electric

Q. I have a Mac 3400C running System 8 and AOL 3.0 that freezes if it fails to connect to AOL on the second phone call attempt. To get the machine running again, I have to re-install AOL 3.0. Numerous calls to AOL have not helped, except for one call when I was told it was a known problem

A. Others who had observed the same problem had to roll back to AOL 2.6 or 2.7. In addition, the problem was observed under System 7 as well. Take a look at the O'Grady Powerbook page for further details.

Q. I run Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. I used to disconnect by clicking on the connection icon and then click Disconnect. Now when I do that, I get a message saying "another service is using the modem." How do I disconnect?

A. You are clicking on the icon in the connections folder, which is trying to start another connection. You want to "wake up" the current connection, which has been reduced to a button on the task bar (usually at the bottom of the screen.) It will offer a disconnect button.

Q. I have installed a huge hard disk as a second drive on a machine running Windows 95. I copied the contents of the old drive to the new one. When the system starts, it reports in the Control Panel/System/Performance page that the drives are running in "DOS compatibility mode" or something like that. If I run the machine with just the new drive, it runs FAT-32. The jumpers on the drive get changed to Master and Slave as appropriate. Both drives are reported as FAT-32 when they are alone in the machine.

A. The general consensus was that you probably have both drives marked as "Active," which means that both are bootable. You should only have one drive in the machine marked as bootable. You can remove the bootable attribute with FDISK, without affecting the content of the drive. The other suggestion was that since the new drive is working correctly when it is alone, remove the original drive as was your original intent, FDISK and FORMAT it, and use it in the other machine.

Q. I have a P-100 with 256K L2 cache. Can I upgrade the cache to 512K?

A. You will have to check with the motherboard manual to determine if the cache is in a socket, or if there is a socket for additional cache. It varies from motherboard model to model.

Q. I have a small business that I would like to sell via a "write an essay" contest. Is there a company on the Internet that could help me do this?

A. Do you intend to have your own Web site promoting the company? If so, you might look at http://network.compuserve.com, or http://www.ibm.net to see about hosting services. If you are looking to have a listing on an existing Web site, then you might do a search on "business for sale" using a search engine such as Yahoo! or AltaVista. Lastly, you might look in Entrepreneur Magazine to see how others have put businesses up for sale.

Q. I need a 5.25" 1.2MB floppy disk drive that I can install in a machine so that I can read some old data diskettes. Does anyone have one for sale.

A. Several attendees got into a bidding war during the break.

Q. When I run PowerPoint 7 and I select the Organizational Charts template, I get an error message that says that it cannot find the template on the server. This is the only wizard that doesn't work. There is no file server.

A. Your installation is configured such that it thinks the particular template is in a "shared folder" on a file server. This is usually done in corporate installations to conserve space. Since there is no server, it can't find the file. You will have to reinstall specifying that you are not performing a server installation.

Q. Can anyone recommend software that will let my notebook access files on my desktop computer via a telephone link?

A. LapLink for Windows got most of the recommendations. There is a Windows 3.1 version and a version for 32-bit Windows (95 and NT). Other products mentioned were pcAnywhere, CarbonCopy, and the Windows 95 RAS. (RAS usually requires Windows NT, so it is less likely.)

Q. I have a parallel port to which I want to connect several devices, such as a printer, a SNAPPY image capture device, a ZIP drive, etc. I know that I have options such as "Smart Switches," A/B boxes, etc.

A. First, beware of your total cable length: Two feet is the maximum for reliable operation. For a ZIP drive, you will get considerably better performance if you install a SCSI card and attach the ZIP drive there. (The ZIP Plus will auto-detect whether it is connected to a SCSI or a parallel drive, so you can connect the drive to a notebook as well.) If you decide to go with just the parallel configuration, then you might look into getting a second parallel for a few dollars. You will need to have an available ISA slot and an available IRQ.

Q. What is the advantage of a 32X CD-ROM drive over an 8, 12, 16, etc.

A. There are very few applications in which the extra speed would make a noticeable difference. You would notice the difference in applications like an Encyclopedia or MS TechNet that allow you to do text searches. For video applications, the current industry standard for mastering is a 4X drive—which means that there are enough video frames that they will be delivered by a 4X drive without the need to drop frames. If the video is mastered with additional frames, then some of them would be dropped by a 4X (or slower) drive so as to maintain "real time" display and remain synchronized with the sound.