The March meeting of the TI-Chips was called to order, and minutes from the February meeting were read and accepted. Lin Shaw gave the Treasurer's report. Les Kee had nothing to report from the club's disk library. However, Les inquired whether it would be advisable to install a Corcomp disk controller card he might have received sometime ago from Curt Gadd. We advised Les to make the switch from the original TI controller to the Corcomp. It was explained that he will gain much more flexibility and power with the Corcomp card/system.
Norb Setter said he took the opportunity to look at the Cleveland Area Newsletter CD that was put together by Rich Polivka. Norb said he was very impressed to say the least with the quality of the documentation. He said it was great to be able to read past, historic articles about the TI-99/4A in an easy to view PDF format.
Les Kee brought in a recent publication of LINUX Magazine for us to look at. Norb and Les started a discussion about the Linux operating system and how it compared to Windows and Apple's systems. Les offered detailed explanations about how the Linux system works. Thanks for the insight, Les.
Lin Shaw brought in a shopping bag FULL of 5¼ floppies. Many of which contained TI-99/4A software and documentation. Lin gave the bag to Les for safekeeping. (More TI floppies for Les to store in his house.)
There was a discussion concerning data protection and security on hard drives. I said that I've learned that data is recorded on a hard drive, or on any magnetic media, in three dimensions rather than what is normally thought to be in two dimensions. That is, data can be stored in the molecular depth of the magnetic recording film instead of just on the surface, as is commonly thought. Norb said, "The best way to remove sensitive files from your hard drive is with a sledge hammer by breaking up the hard drive disk into as many small pieces as possible." Norb also recommended that the hard drive be removed and destroyed before old computers are given to resale stores or thrown into the rubbish. There is computer forensic software that can recover old files from even a reformatted disk. (Good advice, Norb.)
Norb won the monthly 50:50 Raffle. (Hmm, I guess this might be considered as repayment for all his good advice at this month's meeting.) Congratulations, Norb.
The next meeting of the TI-Chips will be on Saturday, April 19, from 10:00 'til noon, in the Story Time Room of the North Royalton branch of the Cuyahoga County Library System.