I've been managing to get some use out of other folks' castoff computers
for years now. Before I bought my current machine (used), I had never
paid more than $75 for a PC-compatible computer. My old Tandy Color
Computers I bought new, so they were a bit more. <grin>
Anyway, I work for a Labor Union. My title is Office Secretary, but I
don't have any experience or training as a Secretary. I manage to
convince the computer at work do produce the stuff that Secretaries
produce.
Anyway...
My problem is that I'm about the -only- person there who knows how to
run computers. And they keep telling me they don't have any money, so
naturally, all the computers I get to work with are aging, slow, and
limited.
Took a couple of my old junk-closet machines and put them to work for
some low-tech computerization of a few things. They'd been getting
their schedules, their phone messages, and a bunch of other info as
printouts from my computer. Now I print them to text files and save
them on floppies.
The President's using my Zenith notebook, 8086 processor, no harddrive,
two floppies, both 720K. The Bargaining Chair's using my Tandy 1000EX,
again 8086 & no HD, two floppies again. the A: drive's 360k, and the B:
drive's 720K. So I print the reports to 720K floppies, and swap disks
with them with the latest stuff on them. "Sneaker net," they used to
call it.
Okay, so that part works. Saves a heck of a lot of paper & such, too.
And there's not so much confusion about which schedule is the -latest-
one, because the only one they have is the current one. Cheap as all
get-out. Two aging computers, some scripts for my database, four
floppies, a couple batch files.
Thing is, too, this is about as much as they can cope with in any case.
They simply don't know from computers. Can't type, but can find the
arrow keys for scanning through text files. And both machines are set
up so booting up puts them directly into the textfile reader (Vern
Boerg's LIST.COM, the obvious choice).
My next project is email. They have modems to use, but I have yet to
convince them to do anything very complex with them. So I'm trying to
find a "sneakernet" way to do email. Have a UUCP account for my BBS, an
Internet Gateway program called GIGO, and a number of options derived
from that.
I could for example generate QWK packets at the BBS (including Internet
Email), put those on floppies and set the guys up with QWK readers --
probably SLMR. But that's another program for them to learn. Kinda
iffy I can get them to put in that much time.
Another idea I like is to use GIGO's capability to save messages to a
particular address to individual text files. The upside of this is that
they can use the same program they're using now. Downside is, no
mechanism for replies. And it's a bit of a pain moving alla them files
around.
One thing that suggests possibilities is that the files GIGO saves to
are consistent with what Pegasus expects. In other words, if I could
point Pegasus for DOS at a directory full of these files, I could give
these guys honest-to-gosh email reading & replying capabilities. I can
manage to get these files on a floppy, once I deal with getting from the
BBS to the machines at work.
But the newest Pegasus for DOS is too big to fit on a 720K floppy, as
best I can figure out. And a 360K floppy (what I've got on the Tandy)
is just not gonna work. I't be nice, but if I gotta teach them Yet
Another Program, I'd just as soon do QWK packets.
Comments? Suggestions? War stories? Kvetching? <g>
* SLMR 2.1a * If you want to go on arguing, you'll have to pay again...
--
>> Sysop, American Tune BBS | DISCLAIMER: Hey, I -own- the place!
>> Anyway, my views are sometimes not even my own, much less anyone else's.
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