Castell Computers

“Better late than never!” is what I said when I came across a fix posted by a Paradox database guru for a BDE bug. That bug just happens to have also plagued GoldMine administrators since the dawn of the unholy marriage of GoldMine to the Borland Database Engine (BDE) back in GoldMine 4.0 days.

When you perform a database rebuild (and a few other functions), the BDE asks windows how much free disk space there is (in an attempt to avoid shredding your database.) This would be a good idea except the BDE trips up if the amount of free space you actually have (in GB) is evenly divisible by 4. So machines with 4.3GB, 16.8GB, 24.5GB, 88.2GB, etc. all choke on the regular BDE free-space request and report that there isn’t enough free space available.

When you NEED to perform a database rebuild, this can be a real problem. In the past, the solution was to free up (or take up) disk space to a point where the free space was not divisible by 4. This could get tricky, however, given that your database files shrink a bit when they’re packed and rebuilt by the maintenance procedure. This sometimes left GoldMine administrators doing a delicate dance with their database and free space throughout the maintenance procedure. Hair-raising, to say the least.

The fix I came across basically routes just this BDE request (the one that checks your free disk space) to a hacked DLL that you must place in your \windows\system32 directory which properly reports the value.

Numerous GoldMine admins have reported success with it, so I thought I’d share it with the community: Get it here!

If you’ve ever actually looked at the ‘My GoldMine’ feature in GoldMine 6.x, you’ve probably been annoyed by the inclusion of the FrontRange feed. While it’s not unheard of that the vendor might include some marketing of this nature in their product, the fact that you can’t remove it AND that the feed no longer actually available (leaving you with a big, ugly, useless empty space on your My GoldMine screen telling you that the FrontRange feed can’t be retrieved.)

Here’s a solution: (note: it’s conceivable that a mis-step while editing your GM.INI could render your entire GoldMine installation useless until the INI file is corrected/restored from backup. It’s highly recommended that you backup your GM.INI prior to modifying it!)

1. Open your GM.INI — It will be in the same folder your GoldMine executable is in. I find the simplest way to get to it is to right-click on the GoldMine shortcut you use every day and select Properties. Then press the Find Target button. Voila, you’re in the GoldMine directory.

2. Locate any existing ‘[MyGM]’ sections and delete them.

3. Paste the following code at the end of the existing text in the INI file:

[MyGm]
FRS_Title=Castell Computers
FRS_URL=http://www.castellcomputers.com/?feed=rss2

4. Restart GoldMine.

You’ll notice that the FrontRange feed is now gone and has been replaced with mine. Obviously you don’t have to use my feed here and are, of course, free to choose any feed you like. Just modify the above INI snippet accordingly.

Check out the new downloads section to find Clip Command, a free command-line driven GoldMine utility I wrote to allow the copying of data from the current contact record to the clipboard.

From the included readme.txt:

GoldMine versions 4, 5, 6 and 7 are supported though
earlier versions may also work.

Command line syntax:

Pull the ACCOUNTNO from the current record:
c:\apps\goldmine\Clip_command.exe /field:contact1->accountno

Pull the Name and Address block from the current record:
c:\apps\goldmine\Clip_command.exe /field:&NameAddress

Pull the first three characters from the Key1 field of the current record:
c:\apps\goldmine\Clip_command.exe /field:left(contact1->key1,3)

Enjoy!!

You may notice that the site has been redesigned.

Thanks go out to the Wordpress team for providing such a wonderful FREE platform and to Mike Little for the easy to work with Journalized Blue theme!

More tech content to come once I am satisfied with the site itself — I’ve been writing stuff, but have been putting off posting it until I got the site redesign complete!