Apple 2000 Vol 3 No. 5 1988 10 BASUG GB

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The Granary, Trowse Bridge, Bracondale, Norwich NR1 2EG, England. Tel: (0603) 630636 Fax: 0603 630374 Apple2000 P.O.Box 3, e Liverpool, 121 8PY October 1988 oot Gam 4843 Editorial Mick Knapp 2 The Eprom Writer Martin Randall 39 Delivery Problems Mick Knapp 3 Mac2000 Norah Amold 41 Dealer Profile Mick Knapp 4 Music Mouse 44 Letters 5 LaserTalk John & Norah Amold 46 Apple II Product News 7 Network News 50 Alogol 68 Dave Miller 8 NFL Football Pictures MacLibrary 54 Time Out Update Keith Rookledge 14 Two new Macs. 55 ProSel Update Dave Ward 16 Crystal Paint Geoff Wood 56 Z-Basic Review Andreas Wennborg 17 Ancient Art of War Ceri Fisher 60 Megaboard Review Andreas Wennborg 18 News from the States 61 No-Slot Clock Review Andreas Wennborg 18 QuickDex PC Transporter Geoff Wood 21 and MacList Geoff Wood 62 The Nibbler's Comer 23 Double Helix II Bill Pearce 64 Vapour Condenses? Dave Ward 24 Crystal Quest Ceri & Daniel Fisher 68 /PROCMD Peter Davies 30 HyperCard Info Power User Tips 70 Apple II Product News 32 Press Releases 74 The GS Juke Box John Kishimoto 33, MacLibrary Norah Amold 76 The Boffin Answers 34 Members’ Small Ads. 80 Lolly Sticks Advertisers Index 80 and 'Lastic Bands Jim Harle 37 Important Contact Points There are a number of ways to contact Apple2000. Force users who have a query about the service can contact the administrator, John Lee, directly for help and advice. Call him on the number opposite or send a message to his box on the Force. If you wish to order goods or services from Apple2000, call Irene on (fi -Si2m-4 1142 or (during office hours) call Alison on S72: F404. Both have An- safones, in case they're not around. Alternatively you can write to the PO Box or, if you use comms, you can leave orders on TABBS addressed to the SYSOP. If you are experiencing problems with Apple hardware or software Dave Ward runs the Hotline and will get you out of the mire. ‘We are very interested in the activities of local user groups, and if you have any information which you would like publicised John Lee would like to hear from you. Moans and Groans - We don't gel many of these, but Mick Knapp has broad shoulders (and stomach, and thighs...) so send these to him via the PO Box. A little praise for a few of our authors wouldn't go amiss. Send all comments via the PO box, especially suggestions about what you would like to see in your magazine. The Force John Lee FD mae Administration Irene Flaxman Ri Sih iad Adverts / Admin. Alison Davies (Or se PH Hotline Dave Ward Cara Fea Mon-Fri 1900-2100 TABBS Ewen Wannop - SYSOP (ORS Fan Local Groups John Lee (BASF sme LL October 1988 Apple2000 Editorial Apple2000 comes face to face with its members at the Mac User Show It is entirely possible that you are reading this stood in the Islington Business Centre in London amongst a huge crowd of ardent Macintosh fans. The reason for this is that the October issue of Apple2000 magazine is the one that we will be taking with us to our stand at the MacUser Show, the premier event for all UK Macintosh Users. We'll be there on all three days, from the 8th to the 10th of November, so even if you are mainly interested in the Apple// range do come along and give us a bit of support. We will be offering advice and assistance, and if you want to put some faces to the names it is an ideal opportunity to meet the committee members. All the big names from the Apple dealer network will be there as well as Apple UK, and no doubt there will be some bargain offers. Unusual Offer We have had an unusual offer from one of our advertisers, who has sent us a copy of a letter he received from Apple UK and he says that we may publish the letter if we wish. The legal department of Apple UK have sent a vaguely threatening letter to a number of unofficial Apple dealers, some of whom import Apple goods directly rather than through Apple UK, and I wondered if Apple2000 members would like to view some of this behind the scenes activity. The letter is possibly rather too long to print in full, but if any of you are interested then we'll print a shrunk down version of the letter and ask Apple to comment on why they sent it out. The letter is, of course, about that old bone of contention, the price of Apple equipment in the UK. Apple are anxious to maintain a price structure which guarantees high margins for themselves and their dealers, and they feel that the end customer will obtain a better service in the long term. On the other hand, some end users feel that the present high prices (and there are rumours of Apple's prices rising by over 15% in the near future) are just a variation of the vice called greed. Please let us know what you think, and if any of you want tosee the letter then we'll publish it and also Apple’s comments. It will shortly be time to make up our Christmas Shopping lists, our next issue will be packed with games reviews! Mick Knapp ¢ Vez Ring TABBS on (l Apple2000 brings you two exclusive systems that will give you all you ever should need in z) modern communications and messaging. National and International messages, Telex, Software Downloading, Contacts, Problem Solving, Special Interest Groups, Teleshopping, Telecom Gold and a host of features tailored for Apple2000 members. 7427"> at any speed through V21 to V22bis 8N1. TABBS is available 24 hours a day Ring John Lee on |) 3* 4) S46! for details of The FORCE. NS 2 Annual subscription rates are £25.00 for UK residents, £30.00 for E.E.C, residents and £35.00 for other overseas members. Apple2000™ is a trading name of BASUG Ltd, a non. profit making independent company limited by guarantee. The contents of this journal are copyright of BASUG Ltd and/or the respective authors. Permission is granted for non commercial reproduction providing the author and source are properly credited and a copy of the relevant journal is sent. The opinions and views expressed are those of the vari- ous contributors, and are not necessarily supported by BASUG Ltd. This journal is published bi-monthly by BASUG Ltd as a benefit of membership in February, April, June, August, October and December. The copy date is the 5th day of the month preceding publication. Advertising rates are available on request. Apple™ and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh™ is a trademark of Macintosh Laboratory Inc and used with the express permission of the owner, Telecom Gold™ is a trademark of British Telecom ple. The FORCE™ and Apple2000™ are trademarks of BASUG \ Ltd. J The Editorial team is: a) Apple Il Macintosh Ewen Wannop Norah Amold Mick Knapp Irene Flaxman Many thanks to all those who work behind the scenes and who receive no personal credit. These people are the stalwarts of Apple2000. Additional thanks to Walter Lewis of Old Roan Press (051-227-4818) for our printing service, and to Ian Sharp of Sharp Studios (051-227-2788) for our cover design. (Graphics for the cover design supplied by Apple Computer UK Ltd, Adobe Systems Inc.) Apple2000 are Founder Members and Wholehearted Supporters of the Apple User Group Council y) 2 Apple2000 October 1988 Delivery Problems A Description of how the Apple2000 magazine arrives at your door by Mick Knapp The magazine is edited as a team effort. There are four people involved in this team, with numerous helpers doing ancillary activities. The major problem with this team effort is that we are located all around the country. Ewen Wannop and myself live about five miles apart in rural Wiltshire, Irene Flaxman lives in Liverpool and Norah Arnold lives in Luton. All of us have full time jobs, so making sure that we have enough of the right material for the magazine, laid out for the camera ready copy which we provide our printer, is a potential nightmare. So how is this done? Decision Time The starting point of the decision making process about the when/what/where of the magazine is at the committee meetings which are held every six weeks or so. The magazine sub- committee forms a sort of American football style huddle and sets itself deadlines for such activities as getting in all the advertising material, deciding which pages should have colour, getting in the promised articles, getting the copy to the printer etc. All of these deadlines are based on an estimated delivery date, and although things can slip we normally attempt to post in the first week of the month. So that the magazine has a good blend of articles to interest both the Apple// users and the Macintosh users, Ewen and I try to concentrate on putting together material pertinent to one group whilst Irene and Norah concentrate on the other. I'll leave it up to your intuition to guess who does which, but a quick scan through the magazine points clearly to our areas of interest. Variety of Material We try to ensure that the majority of material is generated by persons other than committee members, otherwise the magazine has the potential to become a mere forum for committee views. So we have contributions from people like Steve Gold and articles written by members from all walks of life about the software and hardware that they are particularly interested in. At the same time Alison Davies, our sterling administrator, in addition to despatching all the goodies that you order from us, finds the time to chase up our potential advertisers. The advertising in the magazine is charged for on a space-used basis, and it is a valuable source of revenue for the group. Alison makes sure that all the people who have ordered advertising send their copy to us in good time (otherwise you'd sce lots of blank pages scattered throughout the magazine). The focal point for all the material, both advertising and articles, is the Liverpool PO Box. Irene, with the help of her husband Dave, ensures that the mail fs collected from the PO Box on at least a daily basis, and then she distributes this to the relevant parties. She keeps the advertising copy as she will pass this on to the printer at a later stage, but the articles and letters are posted off to Ewen, Norah and myself. If the articles are not accompanied by either an Apple/ / or Macintosh text file, it is a nightmare! That is why we requested help from typists recently, and thanks to all concerned (so many typists responded that we do not have enough “work” for all of you, but we will be getting around to you all). Fortunately most of the articles are in text form already, so that leaves us some time to wrile a little piece like this one ourselves, and the rest of our spare time is devoted to laying out the text onto the pages. The Layout Sometimes this is very easy and sometimes this is extremely difficult. Generally, letters and articles can be laid out fairly quickly using a standard format devised by Norah earlier in the year. TABBS or Snail Mail We all get to the stage that we are happy with the layout of the pages that we are responsible for, normally about 30 seconds before the copy date, and then we have to get all the pages to the printer. We use both snail-mail and electronic mail for this, but we feel that we will move more towards electronic mail now, not only because of the vagaries of the postal service (you wouldn't catch me going on strike for less money) but also because all four of us have obtained high speed modems which makes downloading a magazine practical. To do this the Pagemaker file is saved as a new document to save space (that’s atip from Ewen), and then it is compacted an loaded onto our TABBS bulletin board. Irene then downloads it. unpacks the file and prints off the pages. She then has about a weeks work to do, correcting all the errors that the rest of us have made, putting in headers and contents lists, before she prints off a final copy on high quality paper. This is passed to the printer who generally delivers the bound magazines back to Irene about a week later. While this has been going on Keith Chamberlain, the chap who manages the membership database (he also finds time to complete the Force bills) prints off an up-to-date set of labels. These are sent to Irene, and she and her husband sit by the fireside solving allthe problems of the world while they tediously pack the magazines and label the envelopes. Fortunately she has a super agreement with the GPO so we don't have to stick stamps on the envelopes; she hands them over en bloc and a few days later your magazine pops through your letterbox, and we have a meeting to discuss the date of the next Mick Knapp é October 1988 Apple2000 Dealer Profile Decimal Business Machines, Bristol. Throughout coming issues of Apple2000 magazine we will be reviewing the profiles of a number of Apple dealers. The idea of this is to give you, the customer, a chance to find out a little about the history and specialisations of your local Apple organisation. This is the face that Apple presents itself to the public, and this month the platform is given over to Decimal Business Systems of Bristol, who not only fully support the complete range of Apple hardware and peripherals, they also host the Bristol Apple Users and Dabblers (BAUD) User group meetings. DECIMAL BUSINESS MACHINES LTD COMPANY PROFILE Decimal Business Machines Ltd is a general Office Equipment dealership who have been established for almost 30 years. Based in Central Bristol, with a Main Showroom and a separate administrative block, and a Branch in Tiverton, the Company is a Distributor for most of the major names in electronic office equipment and business systems spread over a customer base ranging from the small “one man” operation, to major national and multi-national organisations, Government Departments and Local Authorities. The Organisation With a staff of around 80 people, of whom over 20 are employed in the Service and Technical Support function, the Company operates in seven clearly defined Divisions - Typewriters and Word Processing, Photocopiers and Facsimile, Supplies, Dictation and Audio, Calculators, Service, and Systems and has seen steady growth over the years to its present position as one of the major suppliers in the City, and West Country. Not Just Apple! Systems Division, which is solely responsible for all Hardware and Software sales, has a staff of five, together with two engineers as full time cover for Technical Support, and has the Apple Dealership, with one other covering IBM _ compatible machines. As one of the first three Apple Dealerships in the West Country, there is a long established and comprehensive customer base of existing Apple users, who have remained loyal to both Apple and DBM since Apple first came to the UK, and with the national growth in the PC market over the past three years, the Division has increased its turover and profitability at a dramatic rate. Specialised Services Whilst catering for the all-round demands placed upon any system supplier by customers requiring both software and hardware, the Division also specialises in four specific markets - CAD, Customised Software, Desk Top Publishing and Accounting Systems, and some interesting projects have been undertaken in all areas, particularly Customised Software, where programs have been written for such diverse applications as running a County Agricultural Show including such reporting functions as milk yields on animals exhibited, to computing residual weight values for steel plate after processing for a major international Steel Stockholder !!! The Contacts Under the direction of Brian Bell, who runs the Division in addition to dealing with Accounting applications, other personnel are Steve Hodges who writes and markets Customised software, Ken Bell who deals with CAD and DTP, Mark Hooper who heads the Hardware and Software support function as well as becoming involved with DTP, and the youngest member Gary Bidwell, who is learning the support function to enable Mark to assist in other areas. All of them are dedicated Apple users with their own Macintosh SE HD20 on their desks, as well as having them linked into DBM's own in-house Macintosh network with a further 280mb at their disposal to play with !!! Needless to say, any of them will be pleased to assist Apple users in any way they can, and will welcome approaches on any application that may be required, at:- Decimal Business Machines Limited Decimal House Thomas Lane Bristol Tel: 0272 - 294591 «€ Decimal Business Machines Ltd. now houses the local user group BAUD (Bristol Apple Users and Dabblers). It is thanks to the dedication and interest from the staff at DBM that the group flourishes with a home of this kind. BAUD is as old as Apple2000 itself, and has had various ‘hosts’ over its ten years existence. Originally born in the days when the Apple II+ was the latest thing in computers, and through a need for educational and business users to get together and share experiences, BAUD now has members who cover the entire range of Apple machines from DTP to education. Contact Colin Rogers ({iiiv4i) i107 Mick Knapp «€ 4 Apple2000 October 1988 Letter Box The avalanche continues with this months Apple Postbag from Members F iiuae tees Gpuasadtaaae i PaaS Dear Editor, I'vejust received the August issuc of Apple2000 and find it even more interesting than the last one. Asanew reader left high and dry by both the French ‘Golden’ and English ‘Apple User’ I am very satisfied. Re ‘Apple User’, Database did not even give me an option (in fact the insert of ‘The Nibbler’s Corner’ p.28, was the first I's heard of this possibil- ity). I did, however, receive amagazine called ‘MacUser’ sent by Dennis Pub- lishing as a substitule. Being the owner of an Apple //e and an Apple / /c I though this most inappropriate and have asked for my repayment of my ‘Apple User’ subscription. 1 am increasingly worried by changes in the computer world, both in hardware and software. Take the Apple firm itself, no sooner had I bought my Apple //e in 1983 than the enhanced model was announced, fol- lowed a little later by great publicity for the mac and now the GS. I have a few friends who manage to follow the trend and update but this ts not a general move. In software there is the same problem, ‘Multiscribe’ has been the subject of several articles in American and European magazines and, after trying it out, 1 decided to adopt it for short articles and newslet- ters (the advantage over ‘Newsroom’ being that it can be made to print French accents). JustasI'd decided to invest in the associated utilities ‘Open Apple’ August 1988 Vol.4 No 7 in- forms me that Claris Corporation has purchased all the outstanding stock of StyleWare Inc. and has not decided on the future of the //e-//c products. This article also referred to the disap- pearance of ‘AppleWriter’. I know that the Apple people think that we //e-//c users are all kids playing games. Is there no way to convince them that this is not so? Right here in Paris (where it is becom- ing extremely difficult to find Apple II products), | know of a group of ac- countants, an important research unit in a hospital, doctors of all kinds (general practitioners and special- ists), a man making up an Italian dictionary, etc... all happily using Apple II's of all versions. Most of these people are over 40 and several over 60. My own //e (nickname ‘Compote’ or stewed Apple) was chosen way backin 1983 because I needed a computer capable of handling a data base of several thousand entries with a French/American keyboard and pos- sibilities of extensions. After trying out PFS file (useful in some cases but slow to consult), I bought QuickFile which, in addition to {is speed and capacities, interfaces with Ap- pleWriter. The original use was to enter data and produce text for a 40,000 word thesis obtained last year. As you can imagine, when doing such work. one does not ‘switch horses’ in the middle, Therefore there was no question of updating to the enhanced version during the dates this was offered at a reduced price, nor of later exchanging for the GS model. I could not run the risk of problems with the work already on disks. My AppleWriter program was the DOS version. Several people sug- gested 1 switch to AppleWorks in ProDOS thus having the possibility of incorporating all the QuickFile data and expanding the files. During the tryout the problems were many: I needed to learn a new operating sys- tem; some of the converted files showed a loss of data (DOS-ProDOS), the print files were the wrong way round, etc. but, above all, the Ameri- can AppleWorks had no accents and the French AppleWorks (with ac- cents) did not recognise an added Flipper 1 meg card. Neither program gave me the layout I needed with footnotes of various kinds. After reading an article in ‘A+’ on word processing programs I decided to try Gutenberg JR which I found easy and amusing to use. Expecting even better results! then tried Guten- berg SR but found the manual ex- tremely difficult to follow. The Guten- berg people were very friendly and even setup the layout for my thesis but, after running into problems with superscripts, they suggested I switch to their ProDOS version. I again lost data doing so. My final thesis was therefore pro- duced mainly with AppleWriter and QuickFile (thus speeding up work since I know both programs ex- tremely well) but using a combination of both Gutenberg programs (DOS version) to produce the title page, synopsis anda table of contents using roman numbering for the pages (lay- out stipulated by the university au- thorities). There was no problem for accents, even the ‘\’ which needs a backspace instruction, The main utility program tried is ‘Sensible Speller' which, not only counts words much quicker than the AppleWriter utility (WPL) but also helped me keep out unwanted French words (I think in that language) and correct typing errors. (I've also experi- mented with ‘Sensible Grammar’ but only have the ProDOS version). AppleWriter and QuickFile also been used to produce a library list of 700 books, magazines and manu- scripts in three versions: numerical. alphabetical and by subject. The cover page this year will be produced with ‘Printshop*. In my spare moments I like Print- shop. Newsroom and similar pro- grams but do not know how to teach them to include accents. I'd be very interested to hear from other //e users who word process in a language other than English. Margaret Audin Q Everywhere I look, whether it be Europe or the United States, the common experience is that the Apple Il is used for serious business or research purposes. I myself find that any tele-communications work is much easier on a II than on a Mac, mainly because an 80 column screen is faster and better for data than a Mac screen or even a Ilgs screen. Word processing of large documents is also easier on the Il. There is no need of a Macintosh or other machine ifthe II will do what you want of it. The ligs is the path that Apple would like us Apple II owners to upgrade to. However they persist in thinking of this as a ‘games’ machine, and cer- tainly in the UK do not market it with any seriousness. You mention another problem, that of machine and software upgrades. There is really no answer to this one. Inevitably as time goes on, the design- ers of both will improve and add fea- tures to an already successful prod- uct. They can launch a whole new machine or program, ortake ge October 1988 Apple2000 5 the simpler route of providing an up- grade. Time and money are spent in developing these new products, so a charge must be made of some kind. Without this development, where would we be? No Ilgs, or even no Macintosh ... Ewen Wannop € Soi Tthagdtas aie Dear Friends, The recent issues of Apple2000 have given this reader great feelings that even with the huge energies of Jim Panks gone from the Editorial chair (but not forgotten), each Apple2000 continues in good form. August letters from David Newman & John Marks mention use of the Apple II in business & ‘professional work’. This bears out my own experi- ence that the machines especially the GS are used much more for this than ‘home & play’ as Apple in the US & UK seem to feel. | saw a recent interview with one of Apple US's senior execs who was convinced that in the UK the current IIs are for the home market! Who could afford to have the GS used only for this? Dave Ward wrote of the Open Apple monthly newsletter, and I wonder if 1 might reiterate one point? The Open Apple editor Tom Weishaar feels that the overseas subscriber is so impor- tant that he has the same subscrip- tion for us as he sets for the US client, as well as the free trial subscription. I presume he feels it pays dividends, and having had Open Apple for a couple of years I have seen where an AppleWorks bug had been reported in the US Midwest, been confirmed around the US and finally solved in Australia. I find the bound annual volumes more useful for travel and dipping into so | will buy the complete set (Any one want to buy loose issues for the last two years?). Incidentally some news from the Open Apple was printed in the mag. and I presume a deal was struck to use such material, ifso what are the terms? The best use of such material would be of bugs, fixes and some news but not purely rumours and news, we can produce our own rumours, can’t we? Dave mentioned a bug in the Au- gust issue I had found in my own work early this year, whereby when using AppleWorks V2 to work and save a database set up under V 1.3 or earlier one can't recover it after saving. No fix has come up anywhere I can see to recover the file although the Ap- leCrackers bulletin board team of- fered to try for me & I have been too idle to follow through yet. There is a possible improvement for this bug in the new version of AppleWorks, see below. I will try the route that dave recommends however although Dave says in his letter ‘one should back up regularly’ its such a blinking chore. Oh for an automatic incremental back up method! The August edition of the Apple- Works Forum (US AppleWorks Users group monthly publication) features is a new Version 2.1 of AppleWorks from Claris US. Is there any word from Claris here on upgrades? The changes reported are: Support for up to 8 megs on the GS Increase from 67 files to 138 per sub- directory Spreadsheet; recalculation only in cells that have been changed Bug fixes for some accessories, data (files full (possibly my problenv. printer control codes, page numbers to 256 Pathnames to 64 characters now Use of ProDOS 8, version 1.5, that certainly sees the Apple GS clock Claris (0635 49138) via their dis- tributor Frontline Distributors (0256 463344) Lorraine French told me they had Version 2.01 since April! However this is not the improved version 2.1 as in the US, I feel its merely 2 under the Claris label I think. We will have to find out from our US friends. Claris has been busy in other direc- tions too, they have bought up the Styleware company that publishes amongstother things Multiscribe and the new GS Works. Lorraine French at Frontline says she is sending a press release about this soon to cover the British launch, perhaps Apple2000 can get a copy for review from whom- ever. With the demise of Apple User there are a few outlets for articles on the Apple computers, & it is encouraging to see the US Computer Shopper have a British version which although stuffed full of cheap and not so cheap IBM clones has an Apple GS section by John Molloy. He even mentions Apple2000. Ewen and the Bulletin Board. What I found puzzling is that the front index of the August edition showed 3 GS articles I found only one! Still thats a beginning. You may be interested to know that I went to see Zip Chip people in Los Angeles in May while on a business trip there, and was given a chip to bring back. I tried to get it going with the good folks at Bidmuthin but with- out success, the chip went back and has not been replaced. While waiting at the Zip chip office I saw a //e and //c with chip working away, and was shown how easy it was to switch from one speed to the another. Bill Mc- Caslin the president of the company explained that they had great produc- tion difficulties, in the printing of the chip circuits particularly, and at that time were just beginning to send out the chips to reviewers and others ina bid to counter the rumours & the self inflicted ‘vapourware’ atmosphere around the Zip Chip. Lastly is there a new ProSel version out and ifso what number and would some one review the version of Copy I+ 8.3? Huw Price Q With letters like these. we hardly need articles! Thanks a million Huw. Please support Open Apple, we carry their advertisements as part ofa deal to let us use parts of their maga- zine. We now have a team of typists lined up, so we should see more from OA in due course. It is quite unique as a publication, it has no advertise- ments itself, so is unbiased in its views. | take your points about what to include. I do not have the full details about the AppleWorks upgrade yet, but gather it is in the region of £501 You will see that the Zip chip is here in England, Dave Ward has done a magnificent job in reviewing it. It was plugged into my //e and worked a treat. I want one .... ProSel is now at version 3.8, and you will see reference to that as well by Dave. Copy II+ 8.3 is exactly the same as 8.2 except for the Parameter files. These are greatly increased for the 3.5 disc Bit copying. We have not done a review of this program, any volunteers? | am sure John Gurr at MGA would oblige with a copy ... Ewen Wannop BS kanye laneadl it Dear Apple2000. Using AppleWorks as the mainstay of my business, I have been happily expanding the capabilities of this program with the increasing range of add-ons that have come onto the market during the last two years, starting with a //e and now with the llgs as well. The first addition was 1 meg AE RAM-card, which coupled with Au- toworks made a combination that was a delight to use, With the expan- sion of the business as a good excuse, the next purchases were a GS, plusa 1.5 meg AE GS Ram card with two 3.5" drives - one for each machine. The latest purchase was Beagle Brothers Desk Tools - The Calendar has proved particularly useful, in spite of the nasty habit of the Calendar.data file of informing you that no changes have been made and so there is no need to save it, when you've added ten vital appointments or tasks & thrown out the notes that prompted them! HOWEVER AppleWorks is no longer easy to use. The new drives 6 Apple2000 October 1988 with their comparatively vast 800K, soon put up a message with the stern and chilling announcement “Cannot write to this drive’. Our friendly, help- ful (and idiot-worn) dealer rescued us from that one - we just weren't used to getting so many files onto a disk, so after 50 it seized up. The answer was to start exploring the wonderful world of ProDOS directories (of course). The acquisition of Desk Tools has brought us into the newest pit-fall. My wonderful macros don't work - or at least the best ones certainly don't, nor can I make new ones, and I'm back to doing things the hard way. despite Beagle Brothers providing and update on Autoworks. Beagle Brothers Technical support tell me that the combination of GS RAM, Autoworks and DeskTools is beyond the capacity of the GS, and Autoworks becomes Auto-partly- works. Eyeing with anticipatory gusto the new super accessories in the Beagle Brothers latest range of AppleWorks enhancements I need to know - will they all work together. OR, what combinations can I utilities? AND, do I now have to buy a Super Macros to replace Autoworks? Is this GS-indigestion the cause of the Data Conversion utility working on big files? It accepts and converts the first clip-board load, but stalls after that. And the Case Converter can't manage to Capitalise Initial Letters. Finally, is there an AppleWorks Business Users Group whom I can share these heart-aches (after all, a trouble shared is a trouble doubled) plus any good ideas, and put the Apples and AppleWorks to even better use? I would very much appreciate any light that you might be able to throw on these dark patches. Michael Corgan Q There are so many accessories for AppleWorks, it must be impossible for any one person to know them all. But collectively the members must be able to put this knowledge together. As the best selling business pack- age outside of Lotus 1-2-3, Apple- Works deserves its rightful place in the Apple lineup. The gauntlet is thrown down by Michael. We at Apple2000 can co-ordinate your ef forts through the magazine and our other services. I would suggest that those interested write to Michael, and try and organise yourselves together. I was interested to see that Michael had the old problem of filling the main directory of a ProDOS disk. In fact ProDOS can see any size of directory and expands its size as needed (the sub-directories show this). I have never seen ProDOS do this to the main directory though. There is noth- ing to stop it doing so .. why did Apple not make ProDOS work as it was in- tended? Ewen Wannop ¢€ Si inthametiae Risiadl eles (Eatinanns Dear Sirs, I write to tell you of my experiences to date and in the hope that you will print this letter, stir up some interest etc. In 1983 I bought a Tandy mode! 100 as I could not afford an Apple, al- though this was what | thought I needed. I quickly decided that the Tandy was too limited for my uses and was avidly scanning the pages of Exchange and Mart looking for bar- gains in used equipment. It was there I spotted an Apple Europlus with customised keyboard two half height drives and CP/M software including WordStar and Sage accounts. I studied hard and worked well with this machine also acquiring a copy of DBASE-II, running under CP/M. Af- ter some eighteen months and much experimentation, (using three drives etc.) [bought a Cirtech Plus ram. This made quite a difference to the Apple Il+ and I was quite pleased. However, one day the Apple would not start up from cold and after much telephoning asking dealers etc., I discovered the power supply was on the blink. I asked around for the cost of a new heavy duty supply and was quoted prices from #80.00 plus VAT to #34.00. After much deliberation anda kind friend I was able to sell my Il+ and purchase an Apple IIgs, com- plete with Cirtech CP/M plus. I was delighted with this machine {and still am). all my current CP/M software works fine and I have even installed Sage accounts to run of my expanded 1mb PlusRam and the single 800k floppy disc. I have an Apple modem and a CP/M comms programme but this requires the use ofa serial card, which I resent having to fit, seeing as my machine has a dedicated comms port. I have asked for help in reprogramming my comms package on many BBS and in Apple User but to no avail. What I would like is for any CP/M user to contact me and we could swop details, info and generally help each other. (Ed: we can co-ordinate your efforts through Apple2000 if needed) I have recently purchased the Cirtech CP/M programmers guide and am going to have a go myself. To complete my suite of programs I would like a program called SUPER- CALC that runs under CP/M and will work on my APPLE. Dan Finnimore «é Apple II Product News From Cirtech in Scotland come some new products and addi- tions to their range. The Champion Plus is a versatile interface card for any of the Apple II range. In one card it combines a serial (RS232) interface a parallel (Centronics) interface and is 100% compat- ible with the Apple Super Serial card and Parallel Printer card with the flick of a switch, Basic Champion card Serial only #68.00 Dual Champion Serial and parallel #78.00 Interface cables each #10.00 The popular PlusRAM 1 meg card has now been renamed PlusRAM-1, as it now has a big brother PlusRAM-16 that can be expanded to 16 meg with the same number of chips! Think of it, almost as much as a hard disc drive on one standard size Apple card! PlusRAM-1 256k-1 meg with 256k #99.00 PlusRAM-16 1-16 meg with 1 meg #229.00 The PlusDisk battery back up Ram board has now also got a big brother PlusDisk-SC, only this one lives outside the com- puter in a plastic box with a SCSI interface. For the first time we have a Cirtech product that our Macintosh brethern can use! For the present sizes start at 1 meg through 4 meg, but this limit will no doubt rise as chip prices tumble. Although an expensive way of providing expansion RAM disk facilties, the speed of access is very much faster than a normal hard drive. The RAM is fully battery backed up, and memory is guaranteed to hold for 2 months. To complement the PlusDisk-SC, Cirtech have also introduced a SCSI card for the II series. PlusDisk-SC 1 meg #348.00 PlusDisk-SC 2 meg #579.00 PlusDisk-SC 4 meg #1090.00 SCSI interface card #54.00 Cirtech (UK) Ltd. Currie Road Industrial Estate Galashiels, Selkirkshire Scotland, TD1 2BP (0896) 57790 « October 1988 Apple2000 @@, Algol-68 Dave Miller continues with his series of articles on Algol ALGOL-68 In this instalment I shall complete my discussion on ALGOL by covering ALGOL-68 (if you have not read the last two instalments covering ALGOL’s back- ground and ALGOL-60 then I suggest that you read them before reading on). In the years directly after the first ALGOL Report was issued in 1960, several revisions were suggested in an attempt to better the language. The three most important were: “Some proposals for improving the efficiency of ALGOL-60" (1961, C Strachey & M V Wilkes) “Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL-60” (1963, P Naur) “Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL-68” (1976. A Wijngaarden et al The latter was the result of a near-complete refor- mulation of the ALGOL language which resulted in ALGOL-68. ALGOL-68, although based upon AL- GOL-60, embodies such drastic changes that it can not really be considered the same language. The key note in ALGOL-68's design is “orthogonal- ity” which means that the language revolves around a few fundamental principles which apply uniformly to the whole language. This means that syntacti- cally, (i.e. in terms of the actual structure of the language), ALGOL-68 is simple: there are no excep- tions to the basic rules governing the language. Of course, this does not mean that the is language simple. In fact, ALGOL-68 is rather complicated, in a uniform sort of way (!). ALGOL-68 is reckoned to be one of the most powerful general purpose computer languages available offering many features, allowing struc- tured programming and producing efficient ma- chine code. The sheer scale of ALGOL-68 means that, until recently, full implementations of the language were relatively rare. Those which did exist were notorious for hogging computer resources, especially during compilation. Rather than listing out the features of ALGOL-68 (a near-impossible task in less than a few hundred pages!) I shall limit myself to discussing the main areas in which ALGOL-68 differs from ALGOL-60. To emphasise the difference, code fragments in ALGOL- 60 will be written with the keywords enclosed in primes, (as adopted in the previous articles), and ALGOL-68 code will be written with the keywords emboldened (the standard practice when including ALGOL-68 code in reports and publications). Language structure The general language structure of ALGOL-60 is retained in ALGOL-68. There are two obvious changes: Q Keywords ALGOL-68 has many more keywords then ALGOL- 60. Some keywords are common to both languages while others have been changed when included in ALGOL-68. Actual ALGOL code, when entered into the computer, uses the ‘keywords-in-primes' method. Q Compound statements These have been effectively removed from the language. It is still legal to place one in a program but it performs no function. You will remember that ALGOL-60 uses compound statements to force IF and FOR statements to apply to a series of state- ments rather than to just one: ‘begin’ ‘integer''array' a [1: 10], b [1: 10); ‘integer’ index; ‘for’ index := 1 'step' 1 ‘until’ 10 ‘do’ a [index] := 0; b [index] := 0; ‘comment’ other statements ‘end' In the above FOR statement, only the assignment to “a” is performed repeatedly. To force the FOR statement to apply to both assignments it has to be rewritten thus: ‘begin’ ‘integer''array' a [1: 10], b [1: 10]; ‘integer’ index; ‘for' index := 1 'step' 1 ‘until’ 10 ‘do’ "begin' a [index] := 0; b [index] :- 0 ‘end’; ‘comment' other statements ‘end! What happens, though, if there be a mistake involving the semicolon? The use of the semicolon sometimes causes confusion, since in some situ- ations the semicolon is not needed (e.g. when a statement is followed by ‘end’). Some people have the habit of appending unnecessary semicolons to the end of statements in the hope that too many are better than too few: extra semicolons are usually ignored by the compiler. It takes one slip and a misplaced semicolon can completely change the operation of the above FOR statement: ‘begin’ ‘integer''array’ a [1: 10], b [1: 10]; ‘integer’ index; ‘for’ index := 1 'step' 1 'until' 10 'do'; or 8 Apple2000 October 1988 Please add VAT Your Apple Dealer for all wee APPLIED ENGINEERING PRODUCTS Now available at greatly reduced prices! For Apple Il+, Ile, Ilcs PC Transporter with 384K £249.00 PC Transporter with 640K 329.00 Kit for Apple llcs 29.00 Kit for Apple Ile 29.00 ransDrive 360K Single-Drive 149.00 TransDrive 360K Dual-Drive 199.00 360K additional Half-height TransDrive 79.00 IBM-style Keyboard including Cable 79.00 Digital RGB adaptor 15.00 ColorSwitch Analog RGB adaptor 25.00 8087-2 Math Co-processor Chip (PC Transporter) 149.00 RamFactor 256K 149.00 TimeMaster HO 69.00 Phasor 99.00 A/D + D/A Card 109.00 16 Channel, 12 Bit A/D 159.00 V/O 32 Card 49.00 High Output Power Supply (Not lias) 69.00 For Apple lle RamWorks III 256K 139.00 RamWorks 111 512K 219.00 RamWorks Ill 1Meg 359.00 RamWorks III 3Meg 999.00 TransWarp Accelerator Card 129.00 For Apple llc Z-RAM Ultra Ill 256K 219.00 Z-RAM Ultra Ill 512K 299.00 Z-RAM Ultra Ill 1Meg 459.00 Z-RAM Ultra Il 256K 169.00 Z-RAM Ultra Il 512K 249.00 Z-RAM Ultra Il 1Meg 429.00 Z-RAM Ultra | 256K 139.00 Z-RAM Ultra 1 512K 219.00 HOLDENS COMPUTER SERVICES 191-195 Marsh Lane, Preston PR1 8NL Telephone (0772) 561321 or 52686 ‘begin’ a [index] := 0; b [index] := 0 ‘end'; ‘comment' ‘end’ other statements Here a semicolon has been appended after the ‘do’. This is perfectly legal and terminates the FOR state- ment thus causing the computer to loop around the FOR statement doing nothing at all. The assign- ments to "a" and "b" are performed once after the loop has exited inside what is now a superfluous compound statement. The chances are that the program will crash because the value of "index" will either be 11 or some undefined number when the loop is exited thus causing an "array subscript over- flow error" when the arrays are assigned. ALGOL-68 removes any chance of this happening by demanding that constructs have mandatory predefined beginning and end keywords: begin {1: 10] int a, b; int index; for index to 10 do a [index] := 0; b [index] := 0 od; comment other statements comment end The beginning marker for the above FOR state- ment is do and the ending marker is od. This removes such ambiguities from the language as the following, where it is difficult to know which “if an ‘else’ applies to: ‘if’ cl ‘then’ ‘if' c2 'then' sl ‘else’ s2 Is "s2" performed when "c1" is false or when "c2" is false? In fact ALGOL-60 states that the ‘else’ applies to the lastmost ‘if but there is nothing in the code which indicates this. ALGOL-68, though, leaves nothing to doubt: if cl then if c2 then sl else s2 fi fi | I ee | a-+ The end of each IF statement is marked by the keyword fi. The above IF statement indicates that statement "s2" is performed when condition "c2" is false since else is inside the IF statement govemed by condition "c2". Data structures ALGOL-60 offers only three types of variable: Integer, real and Boolean. ALGOL-68 supplements these with char which holds a character value. Arrays of char are used in much the same way as BASIC's strings. ALGOL-68 also offers arrays, as does ALGOL-60, but with many more facilities. Multidimensional arrays can be sliced into ‘columns’ and ‘rows’: begin (1: 5, 1: 5) int matrix; comment “matrix" is a square array of 1 to 5 on each side comment int index; for index to 10 do comment take slices of “matrix" dosomething (matrix [index,}) od end comment The above passes each of the five columns of "matrix" to procedure "dosomething" in tum. This slicing can be performed on arrays of any dimension (greater than one of course!). Arrays can also be split: bagin [1: 11) char text := “hello there"; comment define character array and initialise it comment print ((text [1: 5], newline)) end The above isolates the first five elements of the character array "text" and prints them out followed by a carriage return and line feed; “hello” is output. ALGOL-68 offers STRUCTURES. These allow vari- ables to be grouped together into larger chunks of data which can be manipulated as a whole (see December 1987 article on COBOL for a further discussion on the benefits of record handling). struct ([1: 15] char name, person int telephone) The above declaration defines a structure called “person” with two fields: a 15-character string, called "name", and an integer number, called "tele- phone”. The fields are treated as normal variables are accessed as follows: name of person := “Ivor Notion ws telephone of person := 1234 Referencing "person" accesses all fields of the structure as if they were one data item. Structures can be applied to new variable types in a similar fashion: mode persrec = struct ([1: 15] char name, int telephone) ; (1: 20] persrec personinformation; persrec somemoreinfo; The above defines "persrec" as a new variable type (or "mode") and then declares "personinformation" as an array of “persrec" elements ranging from 1 to 20. The variable "somemoreinfo" is also declared as being of the type "persrec". The mode "persrec" is Redarden by ALOGOL-68 in the same way as int or real. 10 Apple2000 October 1988 | | Program statements As has been already stated, the compound state- ment is still legal in ALGOL-68 but performs no function. Blocks are still supported in the same way as in ALGOL-60. Most of the main statements have been modified in their transition to ALGOL-68. OIF statements. IF statements now have not only an optional else construct but also have an elif construct which is else and if merged together: if condl then dosomething elif cond? then dosomethingelse else doanotherthing fi The above ALGOL-68 IF statement is equivalent to the following ALGOL-60 IF statement: ‘if’ condl 'then' dosomething ‘else' 'if' cond2 'then' dosomethingelse ‘else’ doanotherthing ALGOL-68 also allows IF statements to be con- tracted. The ALGOL-68 IF statement could be writ- ten as: (condl | domesomething | :cond2 | dosomethingelse | doanotherthing) This, although totally unambiguous, is rather dif- ficult to understand! O FOR statements. ALGOL-68 has only one type of FOR statement: for index from start by step to stop while cond do statements od This is the full version of the FOR loop. ALGOL-68 allows various parts to be omitted (only do and od are mandatory). If parts be omitted then they take on default values as indicated below: for index from 1 by 1 to infinity while true do statements od Thus: for index te 10 do comment count from 1 to 10 in unitary steps commant do while i> 8 do comment loop while i > 8 comment od do comment loop forever comment od O CASE statement. This is a new type of statement not supported by ALGOL-60. It provides a short-hand notation for the following IF statement: if x = 1 then procxis1 elif x = 2 then procxis2 elif x = 3 then procxis3 elif x = 4 then procxis4 else procxbig fi This is equivalent to: x in procxisl, procxis2, procxis3, procxis4 out procxbig esac Like the IF statement, this can be contracted to: (x | procxisl, procxis2, procxis3, procxis4 | procxbig) QO Comments. In ALGOL-68 comments are not regarded as state- ments and so do not require a semicolon between the end of the comment and the following statement. The keyword comment is used to mark both the begin- ning and the end of the comment; comment can be reduced to co. O Assignments ALGOL-68 allows some special contracted assign- ments: at := 1 co=n nt+lco n- i= 2 co=>n i= n - 2 co b* t= 3 co => b := b * 3 co b/ := 4 co =>b := b/ 4 co Procedure parameters ALGOL-68 offers value and reference parameters like ALGOL-60 but the method of parameter specifi- cation has changed. ALGOL-60 assumes that all parameters be reference unless they be explicitly marked as value by a ‘value’ statement. ALGOL-68 adopts the reverse: all parameters are assumed to be value unless explicitly marked as reference oc October 1988 Apple2000 "1 by a ref attribute: proc add = (int a, int b, ref int result) void: comment "add" is a procedure which returns no value (i.e. it is not a function)- "a" and "b" are value parameters and "result" is a reference parameter comment begin result := a + b comment return a value in "result" comment end Procedure “add” is called as follows: add (2, 5, sum) comment sum := 2 + 5 comment ALGOL-68 Units ALGOL-68 is based not upon statements, but upon “units”, A unit is an item which may return, or yield, avalue: 2,a+b, (23 / 14) * mare all units. In fact any expression is a unit (this includes function calls), Statements are also regarded as units and can yield values (this is hinted at in ALGOL-60 by the condi- tional expression: a special IF statement which returns a value). ALGOL-68 allows some very odd-looking construc- tions: value := (case x in 10, 30, 18, 30, 18 out ° esac) * (Af limit then 1 else scale £i) Determining what the above assignment does is left as an exercise for the reader but I will say that when "x" is 1, “limit” is false and "scale" is 5, "value" isset to50 and whenever"x" is greater than 5, "value" is always zero. I could use ALGOL-68's contracted IF and CASE forms to give the following version of the same assignment: r= (x | 10, 30, 18, 30, (limit | 1 | scale) value 18 | 0) * This looks even more hairy! An interesting aside is that both the contacted IF and CASE statements look very similar. This is because CASE is really only a special abbreviated form of IF statement. Since statements are units, CASE and IF state- ments can be used as values in an expression so long as they yield values. This philosophy is also applicd to procedures ("orthoganality", remember?). Each procedure can yield a value- these are, of course, functions. In ALGOL-68 all procedures yield values unless ex- pressly indicated otherwise (as in the procedure “add” listed above: "add" is given the type void which means that it yields no value at all). Even assignments can yield values: a := 2 actually yields the value 2 so the following is valid, but rather pointless, ALGOL-68: if ((a := 2) > 3) then print ("2 > 3!") else print ("All is OK, 2 < 3") fi The assignment to "a" yields the value 2 which is compared with the value 3 in the IF statement. Since 2 is never greater than 3 the else construct is executed. Note that "a" is assigned the value 2 before the condition is tested. Observe the following wonder-assignment: x r= (y := 16) + 3 this is equivalent to: yin 16; ximy +3 In fact everything which is executable can theoreti- cally yield a value and is classified as a unit. Like ALGOL-60 statements, units can comprise of many individual units which may be statements. The overall value yielded by the unit is the value yielded by the last constituent unit. Thus for the following unit (a procedure which yields an integer value- i.e. an integer function): proc func = int: comment "func" is a parameterless procedure which yields an integer value comment begin int a, a@ i= 2; b i= 3: cis5 b, GF end Procedure "func" yields the value 5 because the last unit inside it (the assignment to "c") yields 5. Thus the following outputs the number 5: print (func) Generally functions return values by specifying the last unit as a expression: proc factorial = (int number): int comment calculate factorial (recursively) comment begin if number < 1 then ° elif number =1 then 12 Apple2000 October 1988 1 else number * factorial (number - 1) fi end Procedure "factorial" consists of one unit, an IF statement, which yields three possible values, 0 if "number" be less than 1 (error trap), 1 if "number" be 1 and number * factorial (number - 1) for all other values (this is a recursive call to procedure "facto- rial"). The yielded value is then passed back to the caller as the result of the procedure. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to trace the operation of the "factorial": try "factorial (5)"- the result is 120. Conclusion I could go on and on (and on and on...) but, to the cheers of thousands, I think that I have said enough about ALGOL-68 to keep most people happy/con- fused (delete as appropriate). I think that everyone will agree that ALGOL-68 is by no means a limited or poor language. Indeed, it is rather too complicated because the number of valid combinations is almost mind boggling. ALGOL-68's orthoganality, whilst mathematically and syntacti- cally very elegant seems rather too free as far as humans are concerned. Whilst ALGOL-68 is very powerful it still has short- comings: the most important is that its file handling facilities are rather limited. ALGOL-68's fans say that its deficiencies are not too important and that its benefits far outweigh any failings. They point to the fact that leamed and theoretical computer science publications have code listed in ALGOL-68 as proof of the language's suita- bility for general purpose scientific applications. Sceptics, whilst mostly agreeing that ALGOL-68 is very powerful, point out that ALGOL-68 may be ideal for theoretical work but better languages exist for more practical computing. They also point out that reliable, cheap and efficient ALGOL-68 implementa- tions are relatively new, giving other languages time to catch up on the benelits offered by ALGOL-68. One such language, ironically also a descendent of ALGOL-60, has established itself in an almost un- shakable position in the general purpose scientific and business computing field. This is one of the fields that ALGOL-68 was originally designed for. It seems unlikely that ALGOL-68 will ever displace this language from its leading position. What is this language? It is Pascal- the language which was to take ALGOL-like structured programming to the masses and it is the language which I will discuss in the next instalment. Example program: The following ALGOL-68 program performs ex- actly the same task as the ALGOL-60 example program given in the last instalment. It asks the user to type ina series of integer numbers and then writes them out after they have been sorted into ascending numerical order. program numbersort; comment this program reads in a series of numbers, sorts them and then outputs the sorted numbers comment begin int number; proc readvalues = (ref [] int sortlist) void: commant this procedure reads in the set of numbers to be sorted- note that the reference parameter sortlist is an undimensioned array (indicated by "[]") comment begin int i; comment: read in all the values required- note the use of upb - this gives the upper bound value of an array (the lower bound is given by lwb) comment for i := to upb sortlist do print ((newline, “Enter value to be sorted:")); read (sortlist [i]) od end; proc sortvalues - (ref [] int sortlist) void: comment this subroutine performs the . Bubble sort * comment: begin bool sorted := fals int i, maxnumbers; maxnumbers := upb sortlist - 1; comment loop until the Boolean variable "sorted" becomes true indicatin that the array is sorted comment while not sorted do comment assume that all be sorted comment sorted := true; comment examine all the elements of the array in turn comment for i := to maxnumbers do comment swap adjacent elements if the first be greater than the second commant 4f sortlist [i] > sortlist [i+1] then begin int exchange; exchange := a [i]; a (i) ra [i + 1); a October 1988 Appie2000 13 a [i + 1) := exchange; comment array is not yet sorted comment sorted := false end fi od od end; proc writevalues = ({) int sortlist) void: comment print four spaces comment print (" "Ye count+ := 1 fi od end; comment this is the main program comment comment clear the screen comment print (newpage) ; readnumber: comment this procedure writes out the comment ask for the number of values sorted numbers- note that comment. "sortlist" is a value parameter print here because its values are ("How many values are to be sorted? "); being read and not written read (number) ; comment comment only allow for a number greater begin than 1 int i, count := 0; comment comment clear screen, write heading and if number < 1 then feed two lines comment print (("Please type in a number print ((newpage, greater than 1", newline)); "The sorted values "are: ", goto readnumber newline, comment. for i := to upb sortlist do comment print 10 values per line comment: print (sortlist [i]); if count = 10 then comment move to next line comment print (newline); count := 0 else newline)); comment write out all the values fi; comment: comment. begin define the array and then read in the values, sort them and then output the sorted values [1: number] int sortlist; readvalues (sortlist); sortvalues (sortlist); writevalues (sortlist) end end DAVE MILLER @ Time Out Update Keith Rookledge looks at the latest releases from Beagle Brothers Well, Beagle Bros do it again! They have launched four new applications to enhance Apple Works and I am going to talk about two of these, Thesaurus and Powertools. The new Timeout Applications are: Thesaurus - exactly what it says itis. PowerPack - a number of power- ful desk top tools Desktools II - again what it says it is. Macrotools - a number of new macro facilities. I have reviewed the first two, as I found that they have the most interesting use for my system and the others will be reviewed at a later date. The new applications come boxed in the usual Beagle Bros way, well documented, together with two vouchers giving you discounts for both OpenApple and NAWUG (National Apple- Works Used Group). I have subscribed to the latter and will keep you updated as to what it offers. Thesaurus: Avery easy to use manual as we have all come to expect from Beagle Bros. There is a consid- erable difference in the process of installation compared to previous TimeOut Applications. The first step involves updat- ing any existing TimeOut utili- ties facility. This only has to be carried out once with the new applications, however. You then have to load the application. I had a problem here. I do not yet have a hard, disc so I retain the applications on my boot disc - I have a IIGS by the way. I found that with all the other items, I did not have sufficient space to load the Synonyms to disc, so I first had to make space. I removed my comms to a separate disc as I leave AppleWorks to enter comms. This move in fact was later restored, as PowerPack enables you to exit AppleWorks without the usual exit procedure and re-enter without rebooting, but more of this later. Once I had installed Thesau- Tus, it’s use is simplicity itself. You position the cursor over the word in question and from the applications menu, OpenApple- Escape, one mearly selects Thesaurus and your of! The synonym dictionary is most easily selected from the 402 B Apple2000 October 1988 same disc, but for those people who use 5.25 drives it can just as easily be accessed from the second drive. There is not much else that one can say about a thesaurus it works and this one is very rapid and complements QuickSpell. PowerPack: I am not sure why this name has been chosen as these applications are desk top resident the same as previous Beagle Bros applications. There are ten of them in the system : 1,ASCII Values: Entry into the application is as usual Ope- nApple-Esc. Selection of the value is achieved simply by use of arrows and the display panel gives not only the ASCII value but also the binary,code,hexadecimal and decimal values.This is obviously of great use to anyone programming and creating Macros as it is very rapidly accessed. 2. AWP to TXT: Why another such application I ask? Apparently AppleWorks 2.0 adds carriage returns to the ends of lines and is a problem when programming in Basic. I find this application of use when convert- ing from AWP to TXT for transmission to TABBS and the Force. Again a very easy to use application. 3. Category Search: AppleWorks searches the data base reasonably rapidly but if using large data bases it can take time. This new facility speeds up the process. I have one database where I have title and initials in front of the name. With the standard Ope- nApple-F you cannot find the name when viewing the entire file but you can with this facility. Searches are carried out by total field and very rapidly too! In addition to a simple word or other code search you can search by using a single ‘wild- card’, For example B??S will yield all words with ‘b’ at the beginning ‘s’ at the end and with two letters in the middle. Multiple ‘wildcard’ searches are carried out using * instead of ? and then the number of letters within the delineated letters is not defined. In addition the command ‘@' is a special com- mand which enables you to find only matches that start at the beginning of the word. Again a useful and powerful tool with a number of applications. 4. Desk Top Sort: A simple but useful application that enables you to sort the desk top either alphabetically or in any order you require. Of use when you have a full desk to and especially with the new triple desktop. 5. File Library: For the first time a mild criticism of Beagle Bros. The first instruction reads “Add the Data Base file called ‘File Library’ to the AppleWorks desktop”. Question? Where is it? o Mcinker™, Automatic Ribbon Re-inker even in one day depending on printer use. Average cartridge can be re-inked 60-100times. ‘support over 12000 printers, car- tridges, sj ls, multicolor car- tridges. Ask for complete catalog. Universal Mcinker (cartridge or spool, 68.50 Multicolor Adaptor (4 color upon . 40.00 Dot matrix Ink (20z £3.00, 1 pint £18.50 any color) IMAGEWRITER SPECIAL a |>100,000 sold since 1982 (prices include VAT) MGA _SOFTCAT 0233-83571 MGA SoftCat PEAR TREE é APPLEDORE, KENT TN26 2AR ENGLAND CLOCKP20 SLOTLESS TIMEKEEPING Every IBM and Apple // computer needs a clock. The ClockPro keeps perfect time and doesn't waste a valuable slot. It's easy to install and works on any !BM PC, XT, AT, Apple fle, Ile, 1[+ and all compatibles and is covered by a full 10 year warranty MGA SoftCat £48%, TELEPHONE 0233 83571 COMPETITIVE PRICES ON ALL SERVICES * TRADE ENQUIRIES WELCOME * Most Makes of COMPUTER, MONITOR, PRINTER EXAMPLES au wewwsive prices APPLE][ + OR //e Power Supply £32 APPLE][ + OR //e Motherboar £32 Apple Interface Card (most makes) £25 Disk Drive - cleaned & aligned £25 Please ring for other repair prices or send equipment for free estimate Quantity Discounts available SUPERCHARGE YOUR MACINTOSH AVAILABLE NOW ! 1MB SIMM'S - EASY TO INSTALL Take your Mac+/SE to 2.5 MB or even 4MB Take your Mac II to SMB or even 8MB WE WILL NOT BE BEATEN ON PRICE TRADE ENQUIRIES WELCOME NOW IN STOCK MacPlus Connectors, Serial & AppleTalk Price depends on quantity COMTEC ST GEORGES MILL 3 ST GEORGES STREET MACCLESFIELD, CHESHIRE. SK11 6TG TEL (0625) 34691 October1988 Apple2000 Be 1 I looked on the TimeOut Disc and sure enough there it is! Once you have found it then all is clear. From within this file, File Librarian is selected and in a trice you have a list in this Data Base, of all the files on the current disc. The data base is created in such a way,that all the lines on the file are readily readable in the “all records” section. This is obviously of great use in storing information on what files are on which dise and in addition if you have a clock, in enables you to check the last update. 6. Help Screens: This is once more exactly what it says it is. It creates ‘Help’ screens.There is a good example of a help screen already on the file called Help Sample. The instructions on how to set up the screen are good and the application will be of great use to people who have an applica- tion for it. It should be noted that once the screen is set up, it does not require PowerTools to run, it is just like any other help screen. 7. Line Sorter: This application enables you to sort any Word Processor file alphabetically by line. In addi- tion you can use the ASCII values application to see the priority order for the lines that are sorted. 8. Program Selector: This is one application that is of great use to me, as I get tired of quitting AppleWorks for comms programs and vice versa. The application requires con- figuration to access the alter- nate program. This is a simple process and once you wish to enter an alternate program, life is much easier than it was before. One word of warning however. If you have enhance- ments on your AppleWorks there may be a problem with reentry of AppleWorks. I had this diffi- culty and had to remove the enhancement first. Any informa- tion on these problems would be gratefully appreciated. Write to me about them or better still put them up on TABBS. 9. Triple Clipboard. Once more exactly what it says it is. 1am not sure exactly as to how I would use this applica- tion. Only one clipboard is active at any one time, which one would expect. One clip board is enough for me. Again informa- tion on its uses would, I am sure be of use to others. 10. Triple Desk Top: I often put up 12 files in a day and then try to add one more. The usual error message comes up and after a short removal se- quence I am off again. Triple desk top enables you to have upto 36 files available which are stored in three desk tops. Movement of these is very rapid and thus much quickly than normal ‘removal’ of files. Thus we now have even more enhancements for AppleWorks. Most of these I found useful so perhaps the title ‘Powertools’ is justified. There is a hint that one should read the AWP files on the disc. This is a worthwhile activity as it reveals details of other en- hancements for AppleWorks The two Timeout units are sold by Bidmuthin at £49 each. Keith Rookledge ProSel Update When I reviewed ProSel in June 1988 edition I had assumed that the package to be fairly mature and that only minor changes and the stamping out of bugs would occur in future versions. It would appear, however, that Glen Bredon keeps adding new features, improvements and even now and again fresh utilities. The main part of the review in June centred about ProSel version 3.0 with some part taken from ProSel version that had arrived just a few days prior to the June deadline. Now version 3.8 has appeared so here is a presentation of some of the changes that have occurred since the review :- PROSEL.ED This the external editor utility, now in version 2.9, which allows one to make application screens and has been greatly improved, in my opinion, since version 3.0. The improvement is a clever routine that allows one to automatically create application screens, When you invoke the external editor you are given the choice between Automatic and Manual entry. If you choose the Automatic option you are pre- sented with a list of all the SYStem and SYS16 files on the volume you opted for. Picking the one you require causes the application to be automatically generated. The only change you might want to make is to change the name since the routine uses the name of the file. You can also choose Applesoft programs providing that a copy of BASIC.SYSTEM resides some- where in the volume you have chosen. INFO. DESK The information desk has had an extra option to the other four in that you can now print out a ‘tree’ showing the subdirectories on a particular volume. COPY.GS This a disk copy program for the Apple IIgs; it will copy all types of disks including RAM disks and borrows as much of the free memory in the machine that is available. If it can copy the whole disk into memory you will be allowed to make further copies without having to read the source disk again. RAM.DRV.GS This is a brand new utility for the Apple IIgs computer to make a RAM disk from some of the free memory in the machine and is usually assigned slot 3 drive 1. This RAM disk works only under ProDOS 8 and will be lost when you boot up a ProDOS 16 application. The RAM disk is compatible with the RAM disk that you create from the control panel. Dave Ward 6 DB Apple2000 October 1988 AUG Sweden Our friends from the Apple User Group Sweden send us three reviews REVIEW 1: Z-BASIC SOMETHING FOR YOU? Those who are developing programs on Apple II are a little short of good developing-tools. Investigations in the U.S.A. show that most programmers write their programs in old reliable Applesoft BASIC or in assembly-language. Apple's UCSD Pascal has been the best (only) alternative available for professional program develop- ment on the Apple II. However, the last two years have brought on a change, and I intend to present here one of the alterna- tives: ZBasic by Zedcor Com- pany in the U.S.A. As the name suggests, ZBasic is a compiling dialect of BASIC. Zedcor calls its product ‘Interac- tive BASIC Compiler’ because ‘direct compiling’ is available for a few editor commands, Fur- thermore, the compiling is so fast that it almost could be called interactive. The special feature of ZBasic is that it is available for a number of different computers and is intended to be compatible between them. The idea is that it shall be possible to complete a program on, for instance, an Apple Il and then to recompile the program on, say, an IBM PC to make it work on that type of computer too. In addition to Apple II, ZBasic is available for MS-DOS, CP/M and Macintosh. The aspiration of making relo- catable source code makes ZBasic differ _ strikingly from Applesoft BASIC on several points. Many commands are more like MBASIC in a CP/M- oriented computer, and many functions are rather ‘broad’ to make them easy to move. One example is graphics which offers the programmer a lot of goodies. In graphics, absolute coordi- nates are never stated; you work with an imagined resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. ZBasic recalculates the coordinates to suit the current computer. In standard Applesoft, to draw a line from one corner of the screen to the other you would use the command: HPLOT 0,0 TO 279,159. In ZBasic, the corresponding would be: PLOT 0,0 TO 1023,767. This com- mand would draw a line from one corner to another on all computers, even on a CP/M- oriented machine without graphics! Since ZBasic is a modern version of BASIC, many a weak- ness inherent in Applesoft BASIC has been removed. For instance, in ZBasic you can manage completely without line numbers if you wish. Naturally, you can use ‘GOTO 100’ and similar abominations: in ZBasic you may just as easily jump toa ‘label’ instead. You create a label by writing, for instance, “Main- menu” at the beginning of a program line. Then, when you want to jump to it you have only to write GOSUB “Mainmenu”. GOTO as well as GOSUB will both be obsolete because you may define your own functions over several lines with the instruction ‘LONG FN Function- name’ that later may be called by the instruction ‘FN Function- name’. ZBasic has also been improved regarding another weakness in Applesolt BASIC: variable names. Variable names may contain up to 240 (!) characters in ZBasic. The leading 15 char- acters are significant, as com- pared with the first two only in Applesoft. ZBasic has four different types of variables: strings, integers, single- and double precision floating-point numbers. Strings may have 255 characters and must be given dimension; if not, a default-value of 255 will be used. Regarding mathematics, ZBasic can have a maximum of 54 digits in calculations, but in that case you must have plenty of time... Structured programming is likewise made easy, because WHILE-WEND as well as DO- UNTIL are included in the language, also LONG IF THEN- XELSE-ENDIF. In ZBasic you may mix graph- ics and text on the screen, and, as far as I know, it is the only language capable of handling ‘double hires’ on 128k ma- chines. You can use a standard AppleMouse or joystick and mix Videx-compatible 80-column cards with Apple's own cards. Furthermore, ZBasic does manage Super Serial Card and the ports of Apple//c. As has been previously men- tioned ZBasic is a compiling BASIC but it compiles so fast that you never feel any interfer- ence or delay. Of course, if you have no RAM-disk the compila- tion takes considerably more time, but ZBasic must still be considered to compile very fast. The result of compilation is a B-file under DOS 3.3 or a SYS- file under ProDOS. Under ProDOS one or three (128k- version) runtime -files are needed. Another pleasant quality of ZBasic's is that you don't have to pay royalties to use the runtime files in your own pro- grams. There are four versions of ZBasic that can be used on the Apple II: If you have a CP/M-card with your Apple II you may use the CP/M-version of ZBasic. There is a DOS 3.3-version that requires 128k of memory for program developing; the program may then be run ona 64k computer. There are two versions for ProDOS (both versions are October 1988 Apple2000 @ eg 7 included in the price), one for 64k computers and the other for 128k ‘enhanced’ //e, //c and llGS. My recommendation ts to use the 64k-version on the following grounds: firstly com- patibility with ‘smaller’ ma- chines, secondly speeding up compiling by being able to have in memory a /RAM disk. In a 128k-machine that prevents shuttling the compiler between the disk and the primary mem- ory. There is a nice little full screen editor accompanying the ProDOS-version in addition to the line editor which is the same for all versions. The only objection to the full screen editor is that it does not use the same Apple-keys as AppleWorks; an Apple key plus a digit are used instead, obviously an inheritance from IBM's function keys. ZBasic is delivered on a non- protected 5.25-inch floppy dise and with an excellent manual containing about 500 pages. It may be bought from Zedcor'’s Swedish retailer Reda Nova of Storebro and the price is Sek 995:-, VAT and postage not included. Personally | recommend the ProDOS version which I use myself for program development when I'm not using assembly language. SUMMARY: ZBasic - DOS 3.3: 128k Ile, //c, IGS for program- ming; 64k for running. ProDOS 128k: 128k ‘enhanced’ //e, //c, IIGS for both programming and running. Additional Ram- memory (RAM-disk) strongly recommended for programming. £76.95 inc VAT from MGA /Per Lindstrom Translated by Paul Mitlid é REVIEW 2: MEGABOARD HARD DISC CONTROLLER In the beginning of 1988 I read an advertisement in the A+ Magazine about a disk controller board to which could be con- nected such hard disks as are generally used with IBM PC and compatibles. With MEGABOARD in a slot in Apple Il+, Ile or GS you could buy moderately priced hard disk drives, able to store, from 20 MB to 60 MB of data. You would then be able to access a glori- ously large data base. There was nothing to hesitate about so I ordered a card for delivery as soon as possible. When the board finally arrived, Thad only to start installing it, following the manufacturer's directions. These, however, dealt only with Apple Il+ and Ie, not the GS. Still, it appears that, concerning the Apple II GS, you have to install MEGABOARD in slot 6 at present; later on it will be possible to use slot 7 as well. In all other Apple computers you can install the card in any slot except slot 0; it thinks it is in slot 7 wherever you place it. You start by formatting the hard disk, which takes about one minute per MB. Thus it takes about twenty minutes to format a 20 MB disk. Then you must partition the disk, depend- ing on how many operative systems you want to have at the same time. The card accepts four operative systems: DOS 3.3, ProDOS, CP/M and Pascal. You can have as much as 38 volumes of DOS 3.3, corre- sponding to 76 floppy disk drives! Notice that each volume has two drives (D1 and D2). With CP/M you can have as much as 6 drives. It’s the same with Pascal, a maximum of 6 drives. When you arrange the disk for the operating systems you are going to use, you might let the disk know, simultaneously, which system you are going to use for booting; my choice was ProDOS. Then I decided to have a single DOS 3.3 volume, (at least one volume is mandatory), the remaining part of the disk forming one large ProDOS volume (maximum ProDOS volume is 32 MB). This arrange- ment gives me permanent storage for about 19 MB, around 39000 blocks, to be divided between various ProDOS pro- grams. Before getting the hard disk I had only 1600 blocks on a 3.5" disk, not to mention a paltry 280 blocks on a 5 1/4" floppy disk, which was the only permanent storage I had in the beginning. The space which I now have on my hard disk is equivalent to 140 floppy disks 5 1/4" plus one 3.5" and one 5 1/ 3 @8 B 4" drive. You can use MEGABOARD with hard disks, made by the following manufacturers: Seagate, Maxtor, Teac, Lapine, Rodime and Miniscribe, but only if the hard disk has less than 64 MB, has 2, 4, 6 or 8 heads and not more than 1024 cylinders. The price of the MEGABOARD is $195 plus freight, about $10. It may be ordered from: Perlin Electronics, Inc 7394 Calle Real, Suite EGOOLETA, CA 93117 U.S.A. /Birre Genberg Translated by: Paul Mitlid é REVIEW 3: NO-SLOT CLOCK Why should one have a clock in one's Apple II? Until last year I had only used the DOS 3.3 operating system and my opin- ion was that clock cards weren't necessary. If you want to know the time, you have your wrist watch or a wall clock. On the other hand, you must have some sort of system to keep your various files in order, especially slightly different versions of, say, a new applica- tion program which you are developing. A common method is to name the consecutive tentative versions TEST, TEST1, TEST2, TEST.OLD, etc, etc... and we all know the result: you can't remember which one was the latest version, A clock in the computer might be another, better solution. A year ago I began (reluctantly) to use ProDOS, and now I am using it to 98 %. After some time I realised that ProDOS was able to register time and date; surely all of us have seen the message <NO DATE> only too often. Later, when I started using AppleWorks, I soon grew tired of typing the date every time I started the computer and, to make things worse, to have to do it in the absurd American way, putting the month first, the day second and the year third. | could sit quite a while trying to hit the keys in the right (wrong) sequence. In connection with my begin- ning to use ProDOS | started to convert my own invoicing pro- Apple2000 October 1988 gram from DOS 3.3/Applesoft to ProDOS/ZBasic, not an entirely painless operation. As I was making changes to my program anyhow, I thought that this was an excellent occasion to develop the program a little further (that is, to put in a few extra bugs). When I was juggling half a dozen versions of my program around at the same time, I realised that some sort of order had to be observed. So therefore I began using a little routine in which I recorded date and time manually, which was then “poked” into ProDOS. All of a sudden I was spared from having to see this irritating <NO DATE>. What a relief! But there were disadvantages. I often forgot to load the routine before I started the ZBasic, and if I produced several files during the same session they all had the same time. One night I was alternating between ten different versions, all having the same time! No, it was high time for getting a clock, but how? My //e hadn't a single slot free and I wouldn't contemplate giving up one of my cards to swap it for a clock card. Well, a combination card then; there are several on the market, the most common a series card with a clock. However, advertise- ments started to crop up in American computer magazines about a gadget called No-Slot- Clock. It wouldn't occupy a slot and should be the very thing for me, What is a No-Slot-Clock? It is a clock/calendar in the shape of a ROM, or, if you prefer that, the other way round. Thus it doesn't occupy a slot. It is provided with two Lithium batteries which supply current to the clock when the computer is shut off. The batteries are supposed to last for ten years. I haven't the slightest idea about what hap- pens after that, it seems impos- sible to change the batteries. No-Slot-Clock has year, month, day, hour, minutes, seconds and hundredths of seconds. If you must be able to read seconds and hundredths of seconds you have to use a special program because ProDOS is only con- cerned with hours and minutes. In addition to ProDOS, No-Slot- Clock can also be used with DOS 3.3. and it fits Apple //e, / /c and IBM PC computers. My own No-Slot-Clock sits in an // e. It is possible that No-Slot- Clock might be used with an Apple I+, but there is nothing written in the manual about that. On the other hand it says that No-Slot-Clock should function with almost every type of computer that has a 28-pin ROM. Installation. No-Slot-Clock is delivered with a loose-leaf manual (you have to supply a cover according to American standard yourself) and a floppy disk. The manual and disk are designed for use with Apple and IBM. In fact, you may move a No-Slot-Clock directly to an IBM PC computer (but there is no reason whatsoever to do that, is there?). The Apple side of the disk is a hybrid side, containing ProDOS as well as DOS 3.3, but you have to start up in ProDOS. You have to use a DOS 3.3 filecopy program to get at the DOS 3.3 files. The manual is easy to understand, perhaps a bit too inclined to lose itself in details. Installation of the No- Slot-Clock hardware in the computer is simple. Very care- fully you remove a 28-pin ROM and in its place you push the No-Slot-Clock down. Then you push the ROM down on top of it; you “piggyback” the ROM on top of the No-Slot-Clock, Needless to say, the computer must be shut off during this operation and you should touch the power supply box a few times to get rid of any static electricity on your person. In other words, if you have some experience so that you feel sure that you are able to change and install cards you should have no problems with the No-Slot-Clock. Well, that was what I thought. But it was not that easy. It appeared that the distance between pins on the Clock is a tiny bit too large. It didn't fit properly in the empty ROM socket. This isn’t true for all Apples, it varies between differ- ent units. I tested the Clock in another Apple where it fitted perfectly. To keep my No-Slot- Clock in its place in my com- puter, I placed a two-pound weight on top of it, but then it was impossible to put the top back on the computer. Finally, at long last, a test run! The first results were very disappointing. The Clock start- up program seemed to work all it, I could read the No-Slot- Clock and set the time and date. But when I patched ProDOS on my own disks the programs crashed, Disappointed I re- moved the No-Slot-Clock and had a tough job copying a pure ProDOS back to all my disks, Well, shame on him that gives up. Perhaps a two-pound weight in an Apple isn't the right thing. I visited an electronics shop and placed my problem before them, explaining that the No-Slot- Clock pushed the ROM out of the socket because it was too wide. A small gadget fitting in the empty ROM socket in the Apple solved the problem, and it was possible to push the No- Slot-Clock down correctly, into the gadget. and lock it there. #8.5 the poorer I had now good contact for the Clock as well as for the ROM. Unfortunately the Clock start- up program accompanying the No-Slot-Clock is confusing and bug-ridden. You have to tell the program where in the computer the No-Slot-Clock is placed. By the way, you may even mount it on an expansion card (which I haven't tested). If you let the program search for the position of the No-Slot-Clock, it will report that the Clock is ona card in Slot 3, although you know for sure that it is sitting on the mother-board. I worked with this problem so many times that I can't account for them all, and used so much time that you wouldn't believe me if I told you. The solution: copy the Apple side of the Clock start-up disk onto a new, empty disk, and, this done, put the original Clock start-up disk away. A truly pure ProDOS, version 1.4 for in- stance, should then be copied onto the new disk with the Clock start-up program. Test your ProDOS for pureness by trying to read the Clock, and if it is pure, the Clock should show zeros only. Now run the Clock start-up program and don't mind what it says about the position of the No-Slot-Clock. You have now a patched ProDOS on the disk you first copied to. October 1988 Apple2000 fg You should then copy it onto your own data disks instead of using the original Clock start-up program. It is faster to do it this way and safer, I think, consider- ing how lousy the program is. At last! The Clock successfully booted! When finally I had succeeded in starting-up the No- Slot-Clock in my Apple and patched ProDOS, I started copying the patched ProDOS onto my own ProDOS data disks. So far I haven't found a single ProDOS program that doesn’t work with the Clock, and I don't think I will. All programs reading ProDOS time/ date will give the correct time, provided they are ProDOS, No- Slot-Clock patched. AppleWorks reads the date and you have only to press RETURN, or patch AppleWorks to “push” RETURN itself. Either way, it is very pleasant to be spared from always having to print the date. Setting a No-Slot-Clock pre- cisely requires a watch or clock with a second-hand. It takes the program two seconds to adjust No-Slot-Clock to the correct time after you have set it. The Clock seems to be about one minute slow per month. These two minor problems also seem to affect the Apple II GS. After having used the No-Slot- Clock for more than three months I can't imagine living without a clock/calendar in my Apple. Summing up. If you are using many programs requiring date, for instance AppleWorks, or, if you yourself program under ProDOS, you ought to have a clock. In that case No-Slot-Clock is a very good alternative to common clock cards. - No-Slot- Clock does not occupy a slot. - It's less expensive than an ordinary clock card. I have seen No-Slot-Clock advertised in A+, Nibble and InCider magazines at a prize as low as USD 42, naturally plus customs and VAT. Once you have succeeded in installing the No-Slot-Clock it minds itself and the only thing you have to do is to set it from time to time. I can strongly recommend No-Slot-Clock to everyone needing a moderately priced, reliable clock/calendar. Facts: Price about $42, plus customs and VAT Manufacturer: SMT Inc. 1145 Linda Vista Drive, San Marcos, CA 92069, USA /Andreas Wennborg ‘Translated by: Paul Mitlid 3 Andreas can be reached on TABBS. We are exchanging reviews and articles with the Swedish Apple User Group. This group is for Apple II and was set up to provide a forum for Sedish users left in the cold by the policy of Apple (Sweden) not to sup- port the II series in any way. (7 >) Computer Consumables... PRINTER RIBBONS f.each £.each Apple Imagewriter II 3.35 Epson LX 80/86 2.75 Brother M1009/1109 295 Epson LX 800 3:46 Cannon PW1156/1080a 3.05 Epson FX 80/85/800 3,45 Centronics GLP 2.95 Epson FX 100/1000 3.55 Citizen 120D 4.05 Juki 5510/5520 3.15 Epson EX800/1000 4.60 Kaga KP 810/910 3.05 Epson GX 80 2.75 Mann/Tally MT 80 3.35 Epson LQ 500/800/850 3.35 Seikosha GP 100 2.40 Epson LQ 1000/1050 4.00 Shinwa CP 80 3.35 Epson LQ 1500 3.05 Star Gemini 1.35 Epson LQ 2500 5.15 Star NL10 4.70 DISKS, packs of 10, with labels etc 3.5" Sony disks,DS, 135 tpi 18.50 3.5" bulk packed, DS, 135 tpi 9.80 5.25" bulk packed, DS, 48 tpi 3.60 All prices include VAT and delivery ACCESS card accepted, telephone 0689 22196 T-systems Ltd, The Signal Cabin, 61 High St., Orpington, Kent, BR6 OJF 4 2 Apple2000 October 1988 PC Transporter This successful addition to the Apple II reviewed from a users point of view! In the second article on this po- tentially revolutionary piece of hardware, Geoff Wood looks at the transporter from the users point of view. Do you want to run both MS- DOS and ProDOS applications in your Apple II? If so, PC Trans- porter is the answer. It’s a plug-in card made by Applied Engincer- ing who are well known for their RamWorks and RamFactor cards. You may also need their 5.25" disc drive for MS-DOS 5.25" discs but you can use an Apple 3.5" disc drive (not the UniDrive) for MS- DOS 3.5" discs. The Card Itself The card can be used in the Apple II+, the Ile and the IIGS but the IIGS uses a different installa- tion kit from the II+ and Ile. The I+ also needs their IBM-style key- board which is an optional extra for the Ile and IIGS. The card has a 16-bit V-30 microprocessor with full 8086 in- struction set operating at 7.16 MHz so it runs three times faster than an IBM PC/XT but not faster than some PC clones. It has a set of ram chips giving from 256K to 640K in IBM mode (384K to 768K in Apple mode). It also has a socket for an 8087-2 co-processor chip for fast number-crunching. The card functions as a univer- sal disc drive controller for 5.25" and 3.5" MS-DOS disc drives. It can support up to 5 drives but only four drives can be physically connected to the card. For ex- ample, you could have a 360K dual 5.25" drive connected to the card with two daisy-chained Apple 3.5" drives and a ram card used as an IBM hard card. In addition, you can have the normal complement of Apple Pro- DOS drives P 3.5" or 5.25" or both P coupled to the IGS disc drive outlet or to disc drive controller cards in a II+ or Ile. Special soft- ware is supplied to allow you to transfer files from ProDOS to MS- DOS or vice versa. What it can do PC Transporter can configure most ProDOS hard discs for MS- DOS storage without disrupting the ProDOS files. It can also use 3.5" discs as MS-DOS hard disc volumes. However, MS-DOS never expects a hard disc to be re- movable so you must take care not so change a 3.5" disc that MS- DOS is using as a hard disc. The card comes with a hefty 190 page A4 manual, though the first 70 pages are concemed with in- Stallation of the hardware and software in the three models of Apple II. Even a novice would have no trouble following the clear instructions, diagrams and pho- tographs. The next 25 pages describe the operation of the sys- tem, then there are 20 pages on MS-DOS matters, 8 pages on keyboard differences, 35 pages on disc drives, 15 pages on printers and 15 pages of appendices. Testing the card I tested the IIGS version with a colour monitor and must say that Iwas very impressed. Installation iseasy. You just plug thecard into any slot except slot 3, attach the colour card to the back panel, connect the two cards with the cables supplied, plug in the disc drives and the monitor, then switch on. Initially, I had some problems with a zigzag display with the card in slot 4 and the colour card alongside it. I moved the card to slot 7 and mounted the colour card above slot 1, as recom- mended in the manual. It then worked perfectly but I am not sure whether the problem arose be- cause the cards were too close together or whether there was a poor connection somewhere. The Software The software is supplied on a ProDOS 3.5" disc and on two sides of a 5.25" disc. You place the startup disc in the appropriate Apple drive and switch on. (A warm boot can be done from Basic or ProDOS.) After a few seconds in which the startup screen displays messages from “Little Blue Limited”, a mem- ory test takes place and the screen shows the amount of memory, PC Transporter then looks for a bootable MS-DOS disc in drive A. If all goes well, the MS-DOS oper- ating system is loaded into PC Transporter and the MS-DOS system prompt A: \> is displayed. Starting Up The first time you start up, you will need a bootable MS-DOS disc with at least 120K free in order to copy some files from the PC- Transporter disc to what will be- come your MS-DOS boot disc. These files include a clock driver which will read the IGS system clock (or a suitable clock in a II+ or Ile) when you start up in future. They also include drivers for an Apple mouse. You will also need to configure the system to suit your arrange- ment of disc drives. This is quite easy to do from the PC Trans- porter main menu which is ac- cessed from MS-DOS by holding down the shift key and pressing the caps lock key twice. One of the options on this menu is to config- ure the drivers and this in turn brings up sub-menus which allow you to specify the location and type of disc drives. You can also specify whether you have the maths co-processor and a mouse. Configuration The configuration can be saved on the ProDOS startup dise soyou don't need to configure each time you start up. If you change the configuration, you must re-boot the system otherwise it may not recognise the changes and you could lose some data. October 1988 Apple2000 ae 2 One nice feature is that you can use the special PC Transporter drives to save ProDOS files and you can also use Apple disc drives to save MS-DOS files. If an Apple dise drive is plugged into an Apple controller card or IIGS port, the MS-DOS files are saved with GCR (Group Code Recording) tech- niques, as used by all Apple dise drives, whereas PC-compatible drives use MFM (Modified Fre- quency Response) techniques. You can copy such discs with the ProDOS system utilities but you cannot see the catalog or access the files from ProDOS. Another option on the PC Trans- porter main menuis to display the Apple Keyboard Map. Although there is a diagram in the manual which you could refer towhen you forget which key to press, this screen map can be accessed at almost any time from within an MS-DOS program. Differences The main difference between the IBM keyboard layout and the Apple II layout is that the former has ten special function keys. ‘These are emulated on the Apple keyboard by holding down the solid apple key (option key on the IIGS) and pressing the appropri- ate number key. On the IGS, the numeric key- pad emulates the keypad of a PC- compatible so that 7 acts as the Home key, 1 as the End key, 9 as PgUp, 3 as PgDn, ete. On the Ile, the keypad keys are emulated by holding down the Solid Apple key and pressing one of the top row of character keys. On both the Ie and the IIGS the Open Apple (command key) acts as the Alt key. Once you have started up you can run almost any MS-DOS program, including such favour- ites as Lotus 1-2-3, dBASE II & III, SuperCale 3 & 4, MultiMate, Wordstar, Word 3 & 4 and even Flight Simulator. Problems? I had no problems running the spreadsheet and word processor programs. The colour display on the IIGS was excellent. The IIGS colour monitor is analogue and it gives sharper images than anIBM CGA digital display. I copied some files from Super- Cale 3a (ProDOS) on to an MS- DOS disc and loaded them into SuperCalc 3 & 4. Similarly, I copied some files from VIP Profes- sional in ProDOS and loaded them into Lotus 1-2-3 in MS- DOS. 1also tried the transfers in the reverse direction and had no problems. Printing If you have an ImageWriter II it can be used as an IBM Graphics Printer. The PC Transporter soft- ware includes a driver for this purpose but you can also use other printers such as Epson, Okidata, Diablo and so on. There are drivers for both parallel and serial printer cards including the Apple Super Serial card and the IGS serial ports. The section of the manual that covers printers and printer cards is not as easy to follow as the sections that cover installation of the hardware. No blame need be attached to the authors of the manual. It's just that IBM sys- tems are inherently harder to understand than Apple systems. Switching languages You can switch easily and quickly from MS-DOS to ProDOS by using the PC Transporter main menu but you must remember to save your data before switching. There is less danger of losing data when you switch the other way because you have to quit the Pro- DOS program and boot MS-DOS; most good ProDOS programs warn you about saving when you try to quit. Cost As you would expect with Ap- plied Engineering products, the PC Transporter is well designed, well made and seems reliable. The only problem is price. The card that offers 256K is £299 but many MS-DOS programs need more memory $0 it is advisable to go for the 640K version at £399. These prices exclude VAT. To this must be added the cost of the installation kit (£39 forthe Il+ and Ile, £49 for the IIGS). With an Apple II Plus you also need the keyboard which costs £115. If you need the 5.25" disc drives as well, they cost £159 for the single drive and £259 for the dual drive. So a dual drive 640K system for a IIGS costs £707 (plus VAT) and for th