1984 09 BMUG Fall 1984

Newsletter of The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group Copyright ©1984: Reese Jones, Publisher /editor Fall 1984 Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, Suite #153 Section 1 of 5 14424 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA 94709 This newsletter disk is for distribution to the membership of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group (BMUG) only. Membership dues are $15.00 per semester which includes a copy of this newsletter disk containing the newsletter and a selection of public domain software programs available for distribution. The Berkeley Macintosh Group can only survive if material like this is not exploited. If you obtained a copy of this disk or the material on it, and you find it useful, then we would appreciate you becoming a member. Please support future efforts of the group and sign up now! For membership info contact: Reese Jones at (415) 849-9114 or at BMUG, Suite #153, 14424 Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA. 94709. To join and recieve your Newsletter disk, send a SASE w/2 stamps or sign up at one of the meetings. The material appearing in this newsletter may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, for any commercial purpose without written permission from The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group (BMUG). Material appearing in the BMUG newsletter which is not specifically copyrighted by the authors, may be reproduced for non-profit distribution between individuals or within other Apple users groups assuming proper citation is made to the author and the BMUG newsletter issue from which the material was copied. Copyright © 1984 by Reese M. Jones, Editor “Publisher :BMUG. Newsletter Contents: Section One Introduction (‘hat the BMUG is about) Dues /Meetings The BMUG Newsletter Disk The BMUG Library The BMUG Bulletin Board System Product Discounts for Members The First Meeting Rumors in the Wind Section Two: News (Memory upgrades, new prices, etc.) News from Other Groups (Followed by members) Why You should get a Modem News from Other BBS systems (Followed by members) Developers (of special interest to software developers) Section Three sis iss siscsssesase sewers we waceoe oe wwoncevers wee pages 13-16 Discoveries on Using the Mac The scrapbook column . . . . by David Foster Waiting for the Mac . . . by Jay Joseph Section Four: ........ 00... 2. eee pages 17-20 Notes on the Mac: Cables, Daisywheel printers, modems, ete. .........4 (submitted by members) MacQuestions Discussed (Submitted and answered by members) Product Reviews ........... (submitted by members) Public Domain & Commercial Software and Hardware Products Think Tank 128 (reviewed by Laurie Edwards) Recommended Software Recommended products for Everyone Section Five: .. seamen Programs Included on this Disk A brief description of each program, including who wrote it, and the source. (By David Foster: BMUG Librarian) pages 6-12 pages 21-24 Newsletter of The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group Copyright ©1984: RMJ/BMUG Fall 1984 Introduction: The purpose of this users group is to facilitate the free exchange of information regarding the use of the Apple Macintosh and Lisa microcomputers. The membership of the group consists of faculty, staff, and students at the University of California Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Participation in meetings and contributions to the newsletter are open to all interested individuals. Dues and Meetings: Membership dues are $15.00 per semester which includes a disk containing the newsletter and a selection of public domain programs. Dues will go towards supporting the activities of the group including maintenance of a library, newsletter, administrative expenses, and a BBS account. Until further notice, the group will hold weekly meetings each Thursday at 5:30 pm in room 145 Dwinelle Hall. For further information contact Reese Jones at (415)849-9114 or BMUG Suite 153, 14424 Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA 94709. The Newsletter Disk: The newsletter disk will be distributed each semester. The newsletter will consist of material submitted by the membership. Material for publication should be submitted on a 3-1/2" Macintosh disk as a Macwrite document using 12 point New York font (disks will be returned). Legible hard copy is also acceptable-if it is short. Contact Reese for further information. Submissions don't have to be long --but should be at least 3 words. Contributers will be properly credited. Let's share what we've found out. Articles on any topic relevant to the Mac are welcome, particularly: *product reviews (why you like it, what you don't like about it) *interesting tricks, discoveries, or tips you have for using the Mac *the happenings at other Mac groups, schools, or BBS networks *new public domain software that you have encountered *documentation about how to use a Public Domain program ‘items of interest on campus (facilities you know about, etc.) *rumors, gossip re: Macintosh or Lisa Any help of any kind in production of the newsletter is welcome. Also on the disk will be a selection of particularly useful or good public domain programs from our group library. Contributions to the library are welcome. The better the contributions - the better the library for all of us. We have agreements already with several other Mac groups to pool our libraries so if you have a neat program that you think a lot of people would like (or want to let others see what a great programmer you 2 Newsletter of The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group Copyright ©1984: RMJ/BMUG Fall 1984 are) then let us include it in the library. Documentation written by users of specific programs would also be very welcome, so if you can figure out how to make use of some of these programs, let others know by submitting your discoveries to the newsletter or the library. The Users Group Library: The public domain software library will be managed by David Foster. We are still working on arranging a campus location for both the software and book libraries. Library disks can be purchased for $8.00 each. This disk, BMUG disk number one, contains the fall newsletter and a collection of selected programs (see the program directory in section three). BMUG disk number two contains the RedRyder terminal emulation package and documentation. Disk number three will be a collection of system utilities and additional MSBasic programs. Disk number four will be a collection of Forth programs. Bulletin Board System: We are currently working on setting up a remote BBS message system specifically for the Berkeley Macintosh Group. The most likley prospect for now is a public access account on a UCB Computing Services UNIX machine. The Computing Services people are still holding meetings to decide how such a system will be set up. Their system programmers are developing software for their end of the system (see Bill Wells or Edward Moy for the latest). We probably will have to pay a usage fee for this account out of BMUG group funds, so use of the system will be restricted to members only. Here's one more reason to join BMUG and to get other interested people to join! Product discounts: We have been negotiating with several product manufacturers and software companies and distributors about getting discount prices for group members on products that the ASUC store does not carry or can't give much of a discount on. We are also looking into a variety of other ways to get get product discounts for members. Any ideas? Established discount offers available to BMUG members include the following: Cheapie Software 587-2486 (Mail Order) Has very good prices and a good selection of Mac products (delivery in less that 3 days). We will have Cheapie catalogs at our meetings. Spintronics 843-2743 (Berkeley) offers things for the Mac at 20% below list. The Computer Connection 781-0200 (214 California St., SF, ask for Erik) Has generously offered us the use of their facilities (Mac projector Jand are offering a 10% discount to BMUG members. You must show your BMUG disk or membership card to get the discount. 3 Newsletter of The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group Copyright ©1984: RMJ/BMUG Fall 1984 The Computer Store of Oakland (TCS) 763-7900 (1320 Webster St, near 14th & Webster in downtown Oakland, ask for Bill Gandy). Offers discounts of at least 15% to BMUG members and also requires proof of membership, ask for Bill Gandy. The Computer Store of Oakland, in conjunction with BMUG, is offering the 512K upgrade to BMUG members for a group discount rate of $900 ea (minimum of 20 ordered). This is the same price as from the ASUC store. TCS has been a microcomputer retailer for over 7 years and is a fully authorized Apple dealer. The TCS has an established, experienced service department which can process your upgrade promptly as soon as the parts are available from Apple. Our first group order will be placed October 20 and installations should start no later than November. Contact Bill Gandy at 763-7900 to sign up. Applications Unlimited (in Colorado: 303-699-0441) Has offered to sell us a group purchase of their MacGAS spelling checker program at dealer cost (as soon as it becomes available, sometime in Oct/Nov). Reese Stationers,(no relation to Reese Jones), (845-4801, at 1636 University Ave. in Berkeley) carries a variety of computer accessories, and has offered to give the BMUG a group purchase rates on some nice disk filing boxes. The boxes, made by Evco, hold 12 disks, and come in black, smoke, and Mac color. They will cost us $3.80+tax each. Other discounts are in the works, if you find one contact Reese. The Hirst Meeking: The first official BMUG meeting was held Thursday, September 13th. More than 100 people attended, and most of those present filled out and returned the informational data base form prepared by Jay Joseph. We discussed what the the users group should do and what types of services we should try to provide. Several people offered to write brief paragraphs about specialized areas they follow for inclusion in the newsletter. So info is forthcoming about the activities of: the U.C. Forth group, Compuserve, the Boston Computer Society, U.C. UNIX services for the Mac, the San Francisco Mac group, the Stanford Mac group, ClubMac in Denver, etc. People agreed that a remote BBS system for the group was a good idea, and several individuals offered to investigate further. Some space was offered to house the group library (a books/manuals library and the public domain software library). Stay posted to find out where this will be located. Representitives from Popular Computing, Byte and MacWorld magazines were present. MacWorld was collecting information for an upcoming article on users groups and they donated copies of all of their 4 Newsletter of The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group Copyright ©1984: RMJ/BMUG Fall 1984 back issues for our library (thanks, that’s the sort of thing we need |). The newsletter disk was discussed and the software to be provided on it was briefly described. Dues and meeting times were discussed. A list of “what's best of each type” of software for the Mac was reviewed (see "Recommended" section here) and we put up another list of software that “everyone should probably have" which included several freeware programs as well as some particularly good commercial programs. David Foster reviewed some of the data base programs available for the Mac, and he is writing up a review for the next newsletter. A brief demonstration of the Mac-in-Talk program was given. This is a speech synthesis program that can read English text and produce speech using the Mac's internal sound generators and speaker. (Kelley Wicks is writing a review of this program for our next newsletter). Also demonstrated and discussed were the MacForth programming language in addition to a breif demonstration of the Davong10 Megabyte hard disk system for use with the Mac. We discussed using the Mac to communicate with other computers by using a modem and a terminal emulation program (a version of which is included on the first disk). Cables and software for printing onto daisywheel or other printers from the Mac were also discussed. Several people remained after the meeting to compare notes, try out the hard disk, and run some of the newer programs that were available at the meeting. Rumors Department: *The university just negotiated a large purchase of ThinkTank programs. *One of you clever hardware hackers could make an adaptor to go between the 68000 chip and the mother board that would allow for attaching a lot more RAM (the 68000 can address up to 16 Meg). *The Apple/Mac laser printer is almost ready and will use the Canon print engine (printing at about 6 pages/min). One hold up is that the printer will have 2 Megabytes of RAM made up of the same 256K chips that, because of the availability problems, are slowing the introduction of the 512K Fat Mac. *4 new version of Macwrite is in the works that will allow spooling to the disk--this will allow any sized file to be edited. It will also allow you to make independent columns. If Apple stays in character, for software at least, you should be able to upgrade your current version for minimal cost. *A new version of MacPaint is also in the works. It is capable, among other things, of editing larger sized pictures. *Heard anything interesting lately? Give us a call. 5