A great way to set up telephones for a one-person business

Installing Windows 95, 98, Me

The cheesecake your mother warned you about

"NO ROM BASIC -- System Halted"

Setting up a Web page is actually pretty simple

Cleaning up a corrupted driver

My CMOS clock stopped keeping time. What's up with that?

What resistor should I use to make an LED work in my circuit?

A great way to set up telephones for a one-person business.

Order two services from your phone company called "Busy Line Transfer" and "Alternate Answering".  These services are similar to "Call Forwarding", except that once you've set them up you can't change them yourself -- you have to call Repairs and put in a work order.  With these two services on your office line, calls will automatically be forwarded if the line is busy or not answered after several rings.  Set them both up to forward to your cellular phone.  Then, order voicemail with pager notification for your cellphone.

Now, when a call comes in you can answer it at your desk as always.  If you're on the phone the call will forward to the cellular.  But the cellular is off (because you're in the office!) -- so it goes to voicemail.  If you don't answer for some reason, the same thing happens.  To retrieve voicemail from your desk, just pick up the phone and call your own number. Since your phone is busy (you're calling from it!) the call gets bounced to cellular.  Which is off, so it goes to voicemail.  Punch in your code and you're in.  Note that you're not using any airtime for this.  What you end up with is "one-number reachability" and voicemail, on the cheap.

How cheap?  Well, here in Ameritech land the forwarding costs $1.20 a month; 60 cents for each of the two services.
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Installing Windows 95, 98, Me

If you're setting up a new system, or reformatting an existing one, here's a good way to do it.

You will need:

1. The CD for the operating system you're loading
2. A bootable floppy disk containing FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, and drivers for your CDROM drive
3. The Microsoft Product Key code for your copy of the OS. This code will probably be in the form, "XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX" although older versions of Windows 95 looked like "00000-OEM-00000000-00000"
   It is against the Microsoft End-User License Agreement to install one copy of Windows on more than one PC. You must purchase additional licences from Microsoft.
4. Drivers for your PC's unique hardware. Video, soundcard, LAN card, etc.

If your PC's BIOS supports booting from a CDROM, check to see if your Windows CD is bootable. Most OEM CDs are, the upgrade CDs are not. If you can boot from the CRDOM, you don't need item 2 above.

This procedure will completely, irrevocably, permanently delete all the data on your hard drive!

1. Boot the PC from the CD or floppy.
2. Run FDISK (If FDISK asks whether you want "large" support, answer "Yes". This will allow you to use the FAT32 filesystem, which I recommend.)
3. Delete all the partitions on the drive.
4. Create the largest partition you can. If you're running Windows 95, this may be only 2GB. Otherwise it will be the entire drive.
5. Exit FDISK and reboot the PC.
6. If you booted from the CDROM, set the default directory to the install directory on the CD. This will be D:\WIN95, D:\WIN98, or (for Me) D:\WIN9X.
7. Type "Format c:", press Enter, and tell it to go ahead and erase everything.
8. Type these commands:

   md c:\windows
   md c:\windows\options
   md c:\windows\options\cabs
   cd c:\windows\options\cabs
   copy *.* c:
   c:
   setup

   During setup, you may be told that the directory "C:\WINDOWS" already exists and given the suggestion to load windows into "C:\WINDOWS.000". Override that suggestion and load it into "C:\WINDOWS" anyway.

   You can use an upgrade CDROM to install onto a clean hard drive. Setup will say that it cannot find a "qualifying product" to upgrade, and ask you where the qualifying product is. Put a Windows 95 CD in the CDROM, and point to that drive, or put a WIN3.x floppy in A: and point there. Setup will scan the CD, or your set of floppies, and then continue loading the OS. This way you don't have to install one OS, then upgrade it, just because you have an upgrade CD.

   Now load all your drivers and you should be up and running. By loading Windows this way, you avoid the dreaded situation where Windows wants to load a driver from the CD but it can't see the CDROM drive because it hasn't loaded that driver yet. I don't know why the path is "c:\windows\options\cabs" though -- you can use anything. But this is what most system manufacturers use. I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason in some documentation I haven't read.
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   The cheesecake your mother warned you about

   I know a secret: there's no secret to great cheesecake! And yet for some reason, everyone seems to think cheesecake is difficult to prepare. The first time I ever made one I used this recipe and it came out perfect. So here's how to amaze your friends...

   Preheat oven to 325F

   Crust

   1 cup graham cracker crumbs
   3 tablespoons sugar
   3 tablespoons melted butter (don't substitute margarine!)

   Combine all 3 ingredients and press onto bottom of a 10-inch springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven, and turn the oven up to 450F.

   Filling

   32 ounces cream cheese
   1 cup sugar
   3 tablespoons flour

   Combine in blender; mix until smooth. If you're lucky enough to have a KitchenAid mixer (like mine!) you can put the cream cheese in straight from the refrigerator. Use the flat paddle attachment, not the whip. Do not overmix; we don't want too much air in the batter.  (The more air you incorporate into the batter, the more the cake will crack as it cools)

   Add (1 at a time):

   4 eggs

   blending well after each. Add:

   1 cup sour cream (reduce to 1/2 cup if you used neufchâtel instead of cream cheese)
   1 tablespoon vanilla
   (optional: 2/3 cup lime juice)

   and mix until smooth. Pour filling over crust. Bake for 10 minutes at 450F, then reduce oven to 250 and bake one hour more. Cool very slowly (if it cools too fast it will crack), then serve well chilled. I just turn the oven off and leave the door open a bit. After a couple of hours, the cheesecake is down to around room temperature; then I move it to the fridge.

   Recipe may be halved and prepared in an 8-inch round cake pan; reduce cooking time at 250F to 45 minutes.

   Dietary exchanges

   If you're counting exchanges for any reason you can't eat this cheesecake.
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   "NO ROM BASIC -- System Halted"

   When the IBM PC was first invented, most people with computers in their homes used cassette tapes to store their programs and data. The original IBM PC base model included 64K RAM (expandable to 256K), and maybe a single-sided (160K) floppy drive. No hard drive. If you were buying a computer for business use you would buy a monochrome monitor and connect it to an interface card which included a printer port. If you were buying one for entertainment you would buy the Color Graphics adapter, which could output composite video for your TV. When you turned on the computer, it would first try to boot DOS (or CP/M) from a floppy. If that didn't work it would then load BASIC from a ROM chip next to the BIOS. You could then load software from your cassette player; the built-in BASIC didn't know how to talk to disk drives at all.

   For compatibility reasons, the BIOSes used in most PCs today will still try to find the cassette BASIC if they can't boot from anything else. However since there's no demand for a cassette-only BASIC (the cassette port itself was only included on the original PC and the PCjr) not even IBM installs ROM BASIC in their PCs any more. Usually, the "NO ROM BASIC" message means your PC can't communicate with the hard drive.

   Here are some things to check:

   • Is the drive connected? Data and power? And the data cable is right-side up?
   • Is the drive itself OK? Try setting it up in another PC as a test.
   • Is the drive configured correctly in the CMOS?
   • Are the jumpers on the drive set properly?
   • Is the partition you're booting from set to "Active"? Run FDISK to check/fix it.
   
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   Setting up a Web page is actually pretty simple

   (NOTE: This is old information; it's accurate but much has changed since I wrote it.  My website now lives on a server in the store, for instance.  And Netscape is up to version 6.)

   When I decided to set up a Web page, I downloaded a whole bunch of stuff from a whole bunch of places. HTML references, tutorials, and so on. Turns out I didn't need any of it.

   Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0 includes all the tools for producing your own pages... I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz ("You've always had the power...")  First, create a new subdirectory on your hard drive. Then fire up NG3.0, click on the File menu, and select "New Document". You can start from a blank page or a template, or you can let a Wizard help you. In any case, as soon as you start you should immediately do a "Save" to the new directory, and then NG3.0 will put everything needed for your website in that directory. After you've built your site, you can just upload the entire directory to a server. I looked at the Wizard and one of the templates, but ended up producing everything from scratch anyway. I still don't know anything about HTML.

   Now, before you experts get all ruffled, let me point out some things:

   • I'm sure there are programs besides Navigator Gold 3.0 which produce Web pages. Many of the Web authoring tools are actually just Microsoft Word macros. (I use WordPerfect, myself, although I didn't use it for this. Just Netscape.)
   • I could do "cooler" stuff here if I actually learned HTML.
   • This is not bad for a first effort.
   • Lighten up.
   So after you've got your page(s) laid out, then what? Well, you've got to get 'em out there, of course. One intersting place is WebJump; they give you 25MB of storage, with no restrictions on number of hits or volume of traffic, they allow business sites, and it's free! They do plaster a banner ad across the top of your page, though.

   I pay $4.95 a month to America Online for an account which includes 10MB of storage for my web page. The AOL terms of service don't mention business use of the websites which means that while they are currenntly permitted they could easily be denied in the future...

   You didn't know you could get an AOL account that cheap? Well, you can. They just don't advertise it that much. It includes only 3 hours per month; additional hours cost $2.50. each. I only connect to the AOL account to upload my web pages, so 3 hours per month is plenty. And I got 50 hours free the first month to get the kinks worked out.

   Here are some things to watch out for:

   • If you use the "Browse" button in Netscape's editor then Netscape will store links to other files on your local drive with the filenames in UPPERCASE. And in the real world (i.e. a unix server somewhere) case is important; INDEX.HTML is not the same as INDEX.html which is not the same as index.html or index.htm.
   • You can reference files with the extension "html" on your DOS PC, and DOS will access the "htm" files. Then, when you upload them, make sure the remote filenames are correct. For example, AOL wants your initial page to be called "index.html". So you have to reference it like that from other pages even though it may be called "INDEX.HTM" on your DOS/WIN3 PC.
   Now, I wanted my own domain address. "http://members.aol.com/crashelex" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "http://www.crashelex.com", you know? So I went to an outfit called Namesecure. They will handle the paperwork with Internic for you. Then they simply "reflect" web accesses to whatever site you designate. They will also forward email. You can change the forwarding destinations as often as you like, without charge, through their website. Namesecure charges $49.95 to set up the basic service which includes one year of reflecting www and one email address. Subsequent years are $24.95 per year. This is pretty cheap, IMO.

   Internic charges $35.00 per year for the domain name, and they want two years paid initially -- these charges are in addition to the Namesecure charges. However, you are billed directly by Internic for these charges, so there's no chance of hanky-panky at Namesecure. You could also register in one of the new "experimental" domains (*.corp, *.biz, etc.) through Alternic but I don't know whether Namesecure is working with alternic domains yet.

   It took three business days (applied on Friday, connected on Tuesday) from my electronic application at Namesecure's home page until I was able to receive email using my new domain address.
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   Cleaning up a corrupted driver

   Sometimes Windows 95, 98, or Me will start complaining about the driver for a device such as a VGA card, soundcard, or modem (particularly a winmodem (yech!)). Usually this happens when something goes wrong while you're installing or upgrading the driver. It can be hard to clean out all the references to the old, nonfunctioning driver. This method usually works for me:

   1. boot the PC in Safe Mode.
   2. In Device Manager, delete all entries for the device. Also delete entries for similar devices which don't exist. For instance, you may find an entry for your VGA card, and another for "PCI Graphics Array", and another for a VGA card you don't even own. Delete them all.
   3. Open "My Computer" and browse to C:\WINDOWS\INF". You need to have "show all files" enabled to see this hidden folder.
   4. If there is a folder in C:\WINDOWS\INF" called, "OTHER" then delete any files in there which relate to the device you're working on.
   5. In C:\WINDOWS\INF, delete the two files called, "DRVDATA.BIN" and "DRVIDX.BIN".
   6. Shut down the PC.
   7. If the device you're working is the video adapter, skip to step 12.
   8. Remove the device from the system.
   9. Boot the PC in normal mode.
   10. Shut down the PC.
   11. Install the device.
   12. Boot the PC in normal mode. Windows should detect the device and ask for the driver. Point it to the floppy, CD, or subdirectory containing the correct driver.
   13. If Windows does not detect the device, or automatically loads a "reference" driver, then run the Setup program which (hopefully) came with the driver.
   14. If there is no Setup program, right-click on the device in Device Manager, select Properties, Update Driver, and point to the correct folder.
   
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   My CMOS clock stopped keeping time. What's up with that?

   The CMOS clock is powered by the same battery that retains information like hard drive type, floppy drives installed, and so on. But it requires more power to run the clock than it takes to simply hold the information. So when the CMOS battery is close to dead, the clock will often stop running. It keeps time just fine while the machine's on -- because it's not using the battery. And the CMOS data is retained just fine (for now!) because there's just enough voltage to hold it up. Some motherboards want 6-volt backups for their CMOS, and some are happy with 3-volt batteries. If you put a brand new 3-volt battery in a motherboard which wants 6-volts, it often will act just the same as if the battery were dead. So make sure you replace with the proper type of battery.
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   What resistor should I use to make an LED work in my circuit?

   Use Ohms law to calculate the resistance and power needed:

   r = e / i

   If you don't know how to use Ohms law, use our handy LED Calculator. Enter the desired current, applied voltage, and forward drop of the LED, and the LED Calculator will give you the resistor value to use.

   
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