From: Bert Haskins (bhaskins_at_triton.net)
Date: Sun Sep 16 2001 - 23:16:19 EDT
farracrs wrote:
> Thanks so much for the reply:
> Here are the answers to the best of my knowledge.
>
> 1. How much memory? (it shows on the screen on powerup).
> Ok, this one I am having problems with. On startup it says "20096KB" then
> goes to MS Dos startup. It runs to fast to read anything else. I do not
> have the computer with 95 on it here, but other than the OS they are
> Identical.
>
> 2. Are you running windows 3.1 or later on the laptops?.
> One has 3.1 and the other has Windows 95
>
> 3. What model number { Pfaff machine} and do you have "Pfaff PC-Designer"
> One is the Pfaff 7560 and the other is 7570. We have the PCD software and
> 2 cables with 4 PCMCIA blank cards. ( I used to work for Pfaff as a DSN
> and was able to get school prices for both machine.)
>
> 4. Do the Pfaff machines have RS-232 connections on them?
> Yes and cables for both machines and computers to operate in different areas
> of the workroom
>
> 5. Do you have a desktop machine with RS-232 and a cdrom drive available?
> Yes, but these machines are connected to the entire school, use windows 3.1
> and are very old and slow with no CD rom drive. We lost our computer teacher
> to cutbacks and he was the only one with knowledge on how to program and
> operate these. Thanks Mr. Harris (premier of Ontario) for the wonderful
> funding.
>
> Where does your wife teach.
She does classes for area distributors.
> I worked for Pfaff for about 7 years in the
> Direct Sales Network.
Does this mean that PCD and digitizing in general is not a problem for you?
If this is true, you have about 95% of the problem whipped.
The PCD manuals are excellent examples of how NOT to write a manual!!!!!!! (yes
I'm yelling)
If this statement is not true, you need an internet resource called Digibuddies
and/or to talk to my wife
who went through ~!@# trying to learn from that ~!@#$ manual.
PCD is not very large or resource intensive, I have it up on one of my many
laptops and it's only 3.31MB installed.
In short, this means that it would fit on two or three floppies and you probably
don't even need a cd drive.
The first thing that you want to do is to makes certain that you have a (dos)
program
called PS2.
It is probably on either or both of the machines.
Enter PS2 /? and you will see some menus, one of which is the rs232 setup.
Rs232 should be enabled and if it isn't, use the PS2 program to enable it.
You don't care if it ends up on COM1 or COM2, you just need to know which
one when you get into PCD.
You may also need a 25 pin to 9 pin adapter.
All of the Pfaff cables that I;ve seen are 25 pin, all the Thinkpad cables are 9
pin.
So, it looks like your biggest problem is how to get PCD onto the laptops.
You can do this if you can find a friend who can
(1) install PCD on their machine
(2) Use PKZip (pkzip -o -ex -rp -& a:\tmp.zip *.*) from dos and the Pcd_win
directory..
(3) mkdir Pcd_win (on the Tpad)
(4) cd to Pcd_win and (unzip -d) into that directory.
Please note!!! PCD does not do anything to the registry
so your friend can safely just delete all of the Pcd_win directory
after you make the floppys.
(5) Do a simple test program in PCD and see if you can
send it to one of the 75xx machines.
If any of this doesn't makes sense to you, just block off
those parts and I'll try to expalin them.
Cheers, Bert
> I volunteer teach at the school about 30 hours a
> week. When HV took over Pfaff they fired about 200 of us here in Ontario
> Canada and I have all this knowledge they gave me monthly so I want to
> share. Pfaff was a terrific company to work for. I miss them and the
> people I worked with daily.
> Again I want to thank you for all your help. It is appreciated.
> Gayle
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