Without the Virtual PC Console running, the mouse takes about 3″ of desk space to cross the screen. As soon as the Virtual PC Console is started (no virtual machines are running) and it has the Windows focus, the mouse takes 6 to 7″. Change the focus to another window, such as explorer, and the mouse is back to normal.

Solution: Logitech has a setting under the Motion tab (Control Panel>Mouse Properties) called ‘Disable acceleration in games’ which was checked. Changing this setting corrected the problem.

Vista Media Center

This is something that is not a secret, but is also not very widely known. I would imagine that it is because not too many people have a use for it or know how it could be used.

Of course, I’m talking about creating video playlists that can be used within Vista Media Center. I’m sure everyone knows what a playlist is, as they are most commonly used for music playback on just about any media player available. Anyway, I don’t like rambling that much, so I’ll get right into it. Continue reading →

Introduction

If you’ve ever had to transfer files between a host mainframe and a PC workstation, you already know it can be time consuming and tedious. This is especially true if you need to transfer multiple members of a Partitioned Data Set (PDS). Don’t you wish there was an easy way to simply select the members to be transferred directly from a member list? If so, good news!

One of ISPF’s “best kept secrets” is the Work Station Agent, or WSA for short. It’s an executable file that’s downloaded from the mainframe and installed on a PC. Once the WSA has been installed, a “connection” between the mainframe and PC allows any of the following to occur:

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The basic red-book CD-ROM standard for audio CDs divides a CD into logical sectors that each contain 2352 bytes (the actual raw sectors contain additional bytes for error detection and correction and control). The yellow-book standard is an outgrowth of the red-book standard, and provides a standard format for storing computer data on a CD, otherwise known as a CD-ROM. The yellow-book standard defines two modes for storing data, named unimaginatively but practically, mode 1 and mode 2. Both start with the original red-book logical sector size of 2352 bytes. Mode 1 divides those 2352 bytes into 12 synchronization bytes, 4 header bytes, 2048 bytes of user data, and 288 bytes of EDC (error detection code) and ECC (error correcting code). Mode 2 divides the 2352 bytes into 12 synchronization bytes, 4 header bytes, and 2336 bytes of user data. Continue reading →