Williamsport Area Computer Club

Newsletter / Meeting Minutes

June / July, 1998

Our last formal meeting of the Spring was held on June 9, 1998, with a presentation on wireless data networking services by Cellular One. In July, many of our members met at Benjies, a local restaurant, for good food and good conversation.

Correction: In May's minutes, the name "Kwik Kopy" was spelled incorrectly. We regret the error, and wish to again thank Kwik Kopy and Margaret Curchoe for their donation of printing services for our business cards.

Please note, our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 11, at 7 PM. We will be meeting in room C-303 for August instead of our usual location. Our speaker will be member and local computer consultant Sharon Souter discussing, and demonstrating, Windows 98.

Committee Reports:

Advertising / Awareness / Public Relations / Home Page:

• No feedback or other correspondence was received via the home page, other than hardware donations.
• All members are asked to please distribute our flyers and business cards wherever possible. Advertising for the Computer Show is crucial!

Computer Show / Swap Meet:

• St. Mark's wants $100 instead of $50 since we'll be using part of the afternoon. Kathy decided to pay the difference herself. We would need to pay over $400 for a hall elsewhere.
• Lou is still contacting possible vendors. A report will be presented in August.
• We need to schedule work sessions for August and September.
• Andy suggested putting a copy of our flyer on Susquehanna Communications' public-access channel.
• Lou will contact Ken Sawyer about radio coverage and get the show put on the KISS Calendar.
• We will also try for radio coverage on WWPA and Star-107.

Computer Recycling (finding charitable uses for old computers):

• Kathy followed up on a suggestion that the Army might have surplus computers available for donation, but the program only supplies them to schools for use in math and science programs.
• Kathy also passed on a donation offer received via e-mail to Robbie.
• Jim received an offer of a non-working '386 system for parts.
• Robbie, our donations coordinator, reported that he has batteries for motherboards, but needs someone to solder them in place.
• Andy has manuals and old software to donate.
• The Kennedy-King Center is again looking for systems.
• Rose View Manor needs a printer with a Windows 95 driver.

Other Business:

• SkyCable is willing to address the Club this fall on the subject of satellite Internet feeds. Lou will contact them to finalize a date.
• Kathy suggested a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) demo.
• Only 13 members are paid up for 1998. Dues are needed now to support our Computer Show effort.

Computer Networking / ISP News:

• GeoCities now offers 11M of space per user for free home pages.
• Jim is going to update the Local Users Homepages List. If you have a personal home page, or you know of a free homepage hosting service or URL-redirector that isn't listed, please send it in.
• The ICQ program has been bought by AOL.

Program:

In June, we were pleased to have Greg Deighan and Mark Cherry from Cellular One as guest speakers. Their presentation concerned Cellular Digital Packet Data, a new method for establishing network connections over the cellular phone network. CDPD allows users to perform Internet tasks such as reading their email from laptops and PDAs which run Windows CE.

CDPD does not require any additional frequency allocations from the crowded radio spectrum, but runs over the 395 voice channels already available in the 800-MHz cellular band. This is possible because only 48% of the channels in a market are in use simultaneously even at peak periods.

CDPD currently runs at 19.2 kilobits per second, which may not seem like much compared to some of the new landline technologies, but is quite good considering its usefulness as a mobile service. An upgrade to 33k compressed transmission is possible when the hardware becomes economical. Transmission is controlled in time-division multiple-access fashion, with up to three simultaneous transmissions per cellular network channel. All data is encrypted with RC4 by the CDPD modem, which takes the form of a PCMCIA card and currently costs around $350.

CDPD is currently deployed in 89% of Cellular One's market, and despite new technologies such as PCS and Iridium, they foresee a lifetime of at least 10 more years of analog cellular telephony.

Data received at Cellular One via CDPD can be routed through the telephone network to your existing Internet service provider, or Cellular One's ISP can be used. In either case, the cost is determined by the metered data size.

Cellular One also operates a dialup ISP, with a DS-3 connection to the Net and 24-hour/7-day support via a toll-free number.

Treasurer's Report:

As of June's meeting, our balance was $368.19. During May, $11.46 was paid to the Sun-Gazette for the usual classified ad, and $75 was paid to Kathy to buy gifts for guest speakers and Computer Show door prizes.

Because we do not meet in July, there will be no expenses for the month of June.

Gene Loveland regrets that he must resign his position as Treasurer due to time conflicts. We thank him for his services. Dan has put the money in a bank account and will serve as Treasurer for the rest of the term with the approval of the membership.

Our June business meeting began at 8:16 PM due to placing the program first, and adjourned at 8:40. There were 15 people attending, including many for the first time.

We are in need of speakers, and suggestions for speakers, for our meetings. Any computer-related topic is welcome.

The next meeting is Tuesday, August 11, at 7 PM, in the Lycoming College Academic Center room C-303 (note temporary change of location.)

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