FAQS! FACTS! FAX! 066 (23/07/97)

RADIO TIMES

I work from home, it can be rather lonely at times so I like to have music in the background. After a lot of messing around and calls to helplines I finally managed to get my Gateway multimedia PC to play audio CDs. When I was shopping around for computers I recall one sales assistant saying that you can also program a PC to pick up FM radio stations. I have been unable to find anyone who knows anything about this, can you help?

Sandra Shilling, Gravend, Essex

A

You need an extra piece of hardware,  essentially a PC-powered radio receiver. We’ve managed to track down two such devices. The simplest is the Vale FM Radio module, a matchbox sized gizmo costing £34. It is fully self-contained with a built in antenna, and very easy to install as it connects to the PCs serial port. Control software displays channel presets, frequency and tuning buttons on the PC screen. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a bypass facility, so you will loose the use of the serial port whilst it’s connected. This means you won’t be able to use your modem, or any other peripherals that connect to the serial port.

The more flexible alternative is the Aztech FM Radio Card costing £29. This fits inside the machine, occupying a spare ISA expansion card socket. It needs to be connected to an external aerial (one is supplied) and a set of speakers, or the audio line input of your PC’s sound card. It also comes with operating software, this time looking like the front panel of a car radio. Unlike the Vale receiver this one doesn’t interfere with the normal operation of your computer, moreover you can configure it to come on when Windows (3.1 or 95) boots up. It’s not difficult to fit, but if you don’t fancy the idea of tinkering around inside your machine an engineer will be able to do it for you, hopefully for a relatively modest fee. For more information about the Vale FM Stereo radio card, contact Evesham Micros, telephone 0800 6345 999. The Aztech Radio Card, is available from Software Warehouse, telephone (01675) 466467 

MISSING FILE

I have recently purchased my first ever personal computer, a Fujitsu Myrica P166X, with Windows 95 pre-installed. However, I find that ‘Cardfile’ does not appear in the accessories list, and this is an application I particularly wanted to use. Is there any way I can install this program?

E. A. Gallop, Rye, East Sussex.

A

Cardfile was not included in Windows 95, though if you had upgraded from Windows 3.x, it would have been carried across intact. The original Cardfile program cannot be easily extracted from the Windows operating system and there’s no direct equivalent in Windows 95 but there are other options. Microsoft Schedule+ (version 7) has similar functionality to Cardfile and Calendar (also dropped on Win 95), though at £80 or so it is a somewhat pricey. You may be better off investigating shareware programs; you will find plenty of them in the numerous libraries dotted around the net. There’s a fair selection of suitable utilities listed on C-Net, their address is: http://www.cnet.com/

WORD IMPERFECT

I have recently been given an old Compaq SLT286 portable computer. It has 640K Ram and a 40 megabyte hard drive. The system is in very good condition and I have loaded it with DOS 6.22 and a few games. I would like to upgrade it for my daughter to use as a word processor. Is this possible, are there any DOS based word processor packages?

Alan Rankin, Helensburgh, Scotland

A

Word Perfect and Microsoft Word for DOS are both still available, the trouble is they cost upwards of £180, which seems rather a lot to spend on such an old PC. You may be able to find second-hand copies available at sensible prices, advertised in magazines like Micro Mart. Alternatively, if you can get access to an internet PC, you can download popular shareware DOS word processors such as Miniword, Boxer and FastEdit. Try looking in the PC File Finder sections on CompuServe and AOL.

KEY QUESTIONS

Can any one tell me why telephone and TV remote control handsets have ‘1 2 3’ on the top row, whilst the keypads on calculators and computer keyboard have them on the bottom row ? After all, the calculators, albeit mechanical ones, came first!

Bob Pfister

A

The layout of calculator keypads evolved with the most frequently used digits -- ‘0’ and ‘1’ -- at the bottom, to be the most accessible. Back in the 1960s, when all-number push-button phones were being developed, BT’s predecessors, the GPO, conducted a series of trials, using various keypad layouts. Four prototypes were field-tested, to find out which was the quickest and easiest to use, with the least mis-dialling. The present pattern was found to work best. That’s one explanation, the other is that the US, who adopted tone dialling much earlier than the UK, kept to an alphanumeric system -- using both letters and numbers -- so having 1-2-3 at the top of the keypad meant that the alphabet ran in the logical order --i.e. from left to right and top to bottom. Incidentally, the four GPO prototype push-button phones are on display at the BT Technology Showcase in London’s Queen Victoria Street, but hurry, it will be closing soon, hopefully to move to new and as yet unspecified premises.

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