General Meeting

by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the August, 2007 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

The July 31 TCS General meeting was held at the Hardesty Regional Library. Richard Hall began the meeting by saying that he had purchased additional memory for the Luggie Jr. computer and asked if the group wanted to help install it. Several members had not installed memory before and joined Richard to see how the chips fit on the motherboard. Richard said that the first step in the installation process was to get the right memory for the machine. He said that the machine or motherboard manual should have the proper memory specs. He said that there are three things that will make a computer run faster: additional memory, a fast video card and defragging the hard disk drive. He also said that the machine should be cleaned while it was open so that air would flow freely around the computer components. He showed the members a video card fan that had failed. He said that heat is the enemy of computer components and that computers that sit on the floor are particularly prone to collecting dust and pet fur.

Richard showed members how to push back the memory chip latches and remove the old chips. He installed the new chips while explaining that the key notch in the chip base allowed memory to be installed in the memory slot in only one way. Richard inserted the memory chips and latch them in place.

Richard informed the members of a Microsoft freeware memory diagnostic that he had downloaded. He changed the boot order in the BIOS so that the machine booted on the floppy containing the program. He booted up and the diagnostic program ran finding no memory problems. One of the members asked about flashing the BIOS and Richard explained the flashing process but said that it was not part of the memory diagnostic.

One of the members asked about a good defrag program to use. Richard said he used SpeedDisk in Norton Utilities, but he said that the technical staff at his work used Disk Keeper. Richard logged into the library wireless LAN and opened up Opera and surfed to the defrag software site. Richard also updated Opera while on line.

Richard said that he had been experimenting with the Comodo firewall and went to download.com to see what other users said about the program. Richard said that it was important that a firewall monitor inbound and outbound traffic. Members discussed what firewall software they used and the meeting adjourned before library closing time.



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Tulsa Computer Society 08/01/2007
Don Singleton, President