Q. I recently saw an ad for a hand scanner. It was supposed to work with PCs and clones, but will this work with the PC jr? A scanner seems like it would be a useful tool for many things such as newsletters and graphics. F. E. Johnson, Big Bend WI and R. B. Hermon, N. Vancouver BC. A. You are right about scanners being useful tools. The scanners we have investigated so far all require some kind of standard PC bus internal card, rather than a simple port input. If anyone knows of or is using a scanner which is compatible and works on a jr., we would be most interested, and would be pleased to publish such information. One note about input devices which "copy" data or graphics to your newsletters or graphics presentations: Be very careful about copyrighted and / or registered material! You do not have the right to use such material without the express permission of the legal holder of the registration or copyright! The law is very specific about this. Q. I have a single-drive jr with the jr Hotshot 512k memory, giving me 640k. Recently I acquired First Choice v. 3.0 after reading the favorable review in the jr Newsletter. Have been unable to load past the message informing me that a two drive system is required. When I set up a (required 300k) RAMdisk, the message is insufficient memory to run the program. Excluding the addition of a real second drive, have you any ideas? L. M. Smalec, Forest VA. A. You might try to delete various files from the second drive which are not absolutely necessary for whatever configuration you need with First Choice, thereby reducing the size of the RAMdisk. This would have to be done in stages until the program loads properly. At this point, you might still not have much memory left for the data files, so further reduction of the size should continue until you have the absolute minimum of files on the smallest possible RAM disk. Programs which need lots and lots of overlays (files) during operation are generally a pain, are slow and are memory hogs. Q. I continue to have read/write errors with the original jr drive. The errors usually occur between tracks 25 and 39, usually side 1. I have had the drive adjusted locally but the problem persists. My set-up is as follows: Racore add-ons of 384k, parallel port, and DMA. It also has Nickle Express turbo board, V 20 chip, and Data Desk keyboard. I have tried changing the step rate of the drive head, but it makes no difference. T. Newton Kalamazoo MI. A. The problem seems to be one of signal timing at either the buss or the controller. It is showing up at the extreme end of the head travel (Tk 39) which probably means the problem is marginal. Sometimes, the Nickle Express board will expose various slow chips installed either in RAM or on controllers. Our experience is that the genuine IBM or Microsoft add-ons are OK with this board, while some others are not. The supplier of the turbo board will have information and recommendations for installation of this board. The speed rating of ALL the chips in the jr must be adequate for the new speed. Q. We have PC Paint Plus. Our jr has 640k and a PC jr Mouse. The initial screen won’t show the 16 color bar, but is interrupted with horizontal dark lines. The program does work in both 4 colors and 16 colors when we get into the "control box" for palette colors. Is it something we are doing wrong? R. G. Sattan, Barnegat NJ A. We have heard that some paint type programs work well if you initialize them as if on a PS/2 model 30! Other than that, do you really care if the initial screen is a blotch? If you are, as you say following the proper procedures to get into the program, don’t worry about it. Q. I am having difficulty running Microsoft Works on my jr. Microsoft is of no help at all. I heard that there are patches for various Microsoft products. Is there one which would allow me to use Works with a mouse and/or keyboard? D. C. Patton, New York NY A. Assuming you have enough memory, and are booting up with at least 32k of reserved video RAM, the INT9.sys or the new Boot sector systems might work. These are available on Disk #56 from the jr Newsletter Software Store. It seems that 99% of recent Microsoft releases will work OK once these are installed. The mouse problem may be different. The drivers with whatever mouse you have should be 100% compatible with the Microsoft mouse software drivers. We don’t know which mouse or drivers you have, but you could experiment. Note that QuickBASIC version 4.5 has a new MOUSE.COM included which can replace the MOUSE.SYS device driver. This does not go into the CONFIG.SYS file but can be typed in or put in any BATch file; it is completely compatible with the original. Q. We are still having trouble with the printing function of MultiMate (v. 3.20) and your suggestions don’t work. We can only get it to print by re-booting. Any more ideas? Tom Porpiglia, Rochester NY A. We think our original question was about version 3.31, but that is no excuse if we did not make it clear. Our best information is that v. 3.31 works, and in a relatively small system such as 256k but more memory is always desirable. If a program such as MultiMate needs overlays to change from edit to print functions, there may be a need for an increase in the number of buffers and files because the files may not be closed when switching between functions. Set up at least BUFFERS=10 in your CONFIG.SYS file along with FILES=20. Use larger figures if necessary. If that doesn’t do it, we are at a loss to help. We could suggest that you send it back to the people who wrote it. Q. I have a PC jr with Racore Drive 2 Plus. Is it possible to add or replace one of my drives with a 3 1/2" and/or hard drive without the expense of extra hardware? M. Bean, Merchantville NJ A. No. The reason is that the 3 1/2" drives need a different controller card as well as the proper software. A hard drive also needs a different controller than either your existing or the new 3 1/2" card. There may be a way to add both however, if a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) is installed and the Hard drive AND the 3 1/2" drives accept the interface. One card, two drives... We understand that Paul Rau’s hard drive interface is this type of adaptation. The MACs from Apple Corp. and others use this system. A bonus is that it has a pretty fast transfer time from disk to RAM and vice-versa. Q. Can you give more information about a math co-processor? Where can I get one, do they really speed up number crunching, etc.? (Various readers’ questions covering the same subject. ) A. Yes, they really do speed up number crunching, especially those math functions such as the trigonometry transcendentals (sin, cos, tan) division, multiplication, roots and powers, the ones most used in CAD programs. The calculating speed difference is terrific! Legacy Technologies sells an 8087 math co-processor. The board and chip cost about $200 last we heard. Their number is (800) 228-7257. Also, Tiac Manufacturing, 3080 Spring St., Port Moody, B.C., Canada, used to make them for PCjrs, but we don't think they do anymore. Q. I have a jr with 640k one disk drive and a Mouse Systems PC jr mouse. I also have an IBM XT-10 with 640k and two disk drives. Is there a cable or other device that I can buy to be able to connect the mouse to the XT? R. English, Vincennes IN A. Considering the mouse as a kind of simplified modem, here’s how we think you should approach the problem: First try the advertisers in this issue which supply various cables for the jr. Remembering that this is actually "reverse" adapter cabling, and that if none of them can supply you with what you want, you might want to take care of the problem yourself if you have the know-how, (or as we strongly recommend, have a technician in a computer repair house do this for you.) The serial port signals of the jr. are standard (COM 2: levels) so there really isn’t any reason it cannot be done. You will need both male and female DB 25 serial cable connectors which will plug into each other. (They are available at electronic supply houses such as Radio Shack.) Holding the mouse cable in your hand and looking into the square holes, they are numbered from RIGHT to LEFT, A1 to A8 TOP row, B1 to B8 BOTTOM row. Do Not read from left to right while holding the cable! Here’s the pin-out of the jr port and the signals for both it and a standard serial connector. jr connector Pin of standard DB 25 serial connector (the numbers are already labelled) A1 Not Used A2 DTR 20 A3 RTS 4 A4 TR data 2 A5 CD 8 (probably not used w/mouse) A6 DSR 6 (not used w/mouse, unless as +5v power) A7 CTS 5 (probably not used w/mouse) A8 RC data 3 B1 Shld GND 1 B2 Sig GND 7 B3 | through B8 Not Used Now comes the courage! Cut the cable about 8 - 10 inches from the jr connector. With an ohmmeter or light bulb tester, mark or write down the colors of the wires with the corresponding jr connections. You can now see how to connect each wire to the DB 25 connector, using the above chart. The wires FROM the Mouse are connected exactly color for color, number for number to the other connector. Be sure this is the connector which will plug into the XT! For those PCs with a DB 9 (9-pin) serial port connector, just get a 25 to 9 pin adapter and plug it in. If there is a second cable, it should be for the +5v and System Gnd, and should be tapped from the keyboard cable of the XT. Two wires, a male and female phono plug should take care of this. Take care that the polarity is correct. The mouse is now usable on both the jr and the XT by just disconnecting at the DB 25 and the phono plugs. Now that all this has been said, why not just buy a second mouse ($29.00 to $59.00 or so) with a serial connector and use it on the XT? The parts alone for the job above could approach the low-end price of a mouse! The addition of technical labor costs (if needed) would make this complicated adaptation even more costly. Q. Addendum to the above question. Will the $29.00 mouse above work with my jr? A. Yes, but... The power (+5v adapter) cord supplied is for a Standard PC, XT or AT keyboard cable, so if you have already gone this route, there is no problem, you already have the round DIN 5 pin adapter. If you don’t have the 25 pin serial adapter cable sold by most of our advertisers, you will need one because serial mice all plug into standard serial RS 232-C receptacles, just like modems. You will also need the jr keyboard cable. If you have the jr keyboard and cable you will only need 3 inexpensive items. 1) A 3 or 4 foot length of telephone wire with a CLEAR plastic snap-in jack connected to one end only. 2) A "Y" or second telephone set adapter. This is a connector which allows two phones to be connected where there is only one outlet. 3) A female power plug. (Radio Shack part# R-S 274-152 "Coaxial Power Plug" should do it, but compare in-store with the one which comes with the mouse to be sure!) Looking at the end of the telephone snap-in plug you will see SIX grooves, even though there are only four wires attached. With the snap lever on top and the END facing you the numbers of the GROOVES are 1 through 6, LEFT to RIGHT. The wire in GROOVE 5 which will be +5 volts (usually yellow) is to be connected to the (short) INSIDE connector of the power plug. The wire in GROOVE 3 (usually red) which will be Logic Ground, is to be connected to the (long) SHELL of the power plug. NEITHER of the other two wires is to touch anything, cut them short and be sure they are out of the way! Unplug the existing cord from the keyboard. Plug the two-way phone adapter into the keyboard. Plug the keyboard cord into one of the adapter receptacles and the cable you just made into the other. Push the power plug of the cable you just made into the serial mouse connector and off you go! This is a very inexpensive adaptation for a very inexpensive opto-mechanical ball-controlled mouse.