Apple 2000 Vol 5 No. 5 1990 10 BASUG GB

ctor} VOLUME (5) paawns) panne’ Change up for better performance. Product Price (£) Maker Pro Retails for £225 Upgrade from Product Price (£) MacDraw I Lt Rerails for £325 Upgrade from MacDraw II 25.00 MacDraw 220,00 FileMaker II or FileMaker 4 75,00 FileMaker or FileMaker Plus 75.0 Other Macintosh databases* 95,00 Claris CAD 2.0 Retails for £675 Upgrade from Claris CAD 1.0 60.00 MacDraw I 350,00 MaeWrite I Retails for £175 Upgrade from MacWrite 5.0 45.00 Other Macintosh word processors** 55.00 MacProject 11 2.1 Rerails for £395 Upgrade from MacProject 135.00 MacPi 45.00 MacPaint 2.0 Retails for £95 Upgrade from MacPaint 30.00 “Includes FileForce, MS Works, MS File. (BASE Mac Double Helix **Includes MS Word, MS Write, Nisus, WriteNow, WordPerfect, FullWrite Professional Wouldn't it be nice if you could trade in your old model whenever a new one comes out? With cars and alas, computers, this is not so easy to do, But with software, you can. Because we build ever greater levels of performance into each new generation of our software. Asa loyal user, you are eligible for our special upgrade prices, with huge discounts from current recommended retail prices. Simply call our hotline on 0800 899005 to obtain an official Claris Upgrade Kit, then upon receipt of your payment and old software we'll swiftly send you your upgrade. It’s our way of saying thank you for being a Claris customer- and as you can see above, even users of other software can benefit! CLARIS” Claris Product Upgrades Freefone 0800 899005* Charis Conn All rights re FuleMute lemnarh of Ap at x Dram, Man Pa pe tendemnurhs or registered tradensarks of thetr respestive omnes ley Park, Usbridge, Middlesex UBIIBG Telephone (081) 78 0101 For upgrade prices for the Republic of Ireland call Dublin (01) 76 Moc Project und Mur Write are rademarks of Claris Corporutiem. 14 Distributed i the U.K. by: Froatline Disaibution, Intec: Wasde Revd, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG24 ONE Telephone (0250) 461344 Apple2000 The All Apple User Group Committed to All Apple Users including Macintosh Apple2 October 1990 CONTENTS Chairman's Corner Ewen Wannop 2 Letter Box 3 Hotline News Dave Ward 8 Aggiougds Gate Competition 9 Disk Zaps and all that (Part 2) Ewen Wannop 10 AppleXtras ProDOS 8 and IIgs 12 Ilgs Drive Spin — Technical Note Apple Computer 13 App Stats & Graph — A Review Paul McMullin 14 SofiCat Corner Jon Gurr 16 Silpheed — A Review Dave Ferris 18 Cirtech PRIMO — A Review Dave Ward 20 AppleWorks 3.0 Hints Andreas Wennborg 21 A2-Central on Disk — A Review Peter Stark 22 AppleWorks GS 1.1 — A Review Fredrick Greatorex 23 TimeOut MacroEase — A Review Harvey Nyman 24 Nexus — A Review Peter Stark 25 Hard Disks (non SCSI) Eric Sausse 27 Wet Disks Pete Crosta 29 Installing GS/OS on SCSI Drives Apple Tech. Support 30 AppleLink TidBits Apple Computer 32 The Nibbler — Comment 34 Apple User Group Advisory Council William Watson 36 MacChat Norah Arnold 42 Apple/Adobe Agreement 44 Mac Ilfk Q & A Apple Computer 45 Mac Viruses John Norstad 47 Switching Between the Finder & Multifinder Apple Computer 50 More 3.0 Symantec 52 HOPS Bob Perez 53 MaeWrite II v WriteNow 2.0 56 Press Releases — Claris, CE Software, Logitech 58 Network News 60 Welltris — A Review Dale Thatcher 64 Moriarty’s Revenge Norah Arnold/Peter Kemp 65 Members’ Small Ads. 65 Book Reviews John Arnold 66 Press Releases — Letraset, Acme Computer 67 Sensible Grammar 1.6 — A Review Geoff Wood 68 Hypereport Info Concentrix 70 The Mysteries of Memory Revealed Peter Corless 12. Getting a Bite on System 7 Keith Redfield 74 App! Mac 5 76 Mac Library 77 Local Groups 78 Members' Small Ads. 80 Advertisers’ Index 80 There are a number of ways to contact Apple2000 If you wish to order goods or services from Apple2000 or just leave us a message, call Irene on (jill iit4i4e (Ansafone during the day). Alternatively you can Fax. your order to ({ffil- Si (OM8F or write to the PO Box. If you use comms you can leave orders on TABBS addressed to the SYSOP or contact us on AppleLink (BASUG. 1). Ifyou are Reals literate with Apple hardware or so! re Dave Ward and Tony Dart run the Hotlines and will try and help you. October 1990 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. We reserve the right to publish, without prejudice, any advice or comments given to members as a result of letters received, in the journals of Apple2000. A little praise for a few of our authors wouldn't go amiss. Send all comments, and contributions, via the PO box. especially suggestions about what you would like to see in your magazine. Apple2000 Apple2000 P.O.Box 3 Liverpool 121 8PY eb zm anes Fax: (i $29 G07 ( Apple2000 supports users of all the Apple computers. The Feige ‘ec, //e+, , Ligs+, ///, Lisa, XL, Mac 128, 512 MacPlus, SE, SE/30, Mac II, Tex, Ici, Ix, Ifx and Portable Contributions and articles for the magazine are always welcome, We can handle any disk size or format. Please send to the PO Bax, L21 8PY. NOTE: In general the front half of the magazine is for the Apple II, Apple IIgs and Apple /// ¢ back half for the Macin- tosh and Lisa. Look out for the descriptive page icons, Key: Apple Il, //e and //c Apple /// Apple IIgs Macintosh, Lisa | sie Il fA 2 = @ 8 ES) yy YN Z Contact Points Local Groups John Lee ea Weeitin aii Administration Irene Flaxman BASH 4 i) 484 Sos) GIR Apple II Reviews Elizabeth Littlewood Wrie GRE? Seis: Apple II Hotlin: are Ward e. Wiese (GND FeaibtateD Mon-Fri 1900-2100 Macintosh Hotline Tony Dart Waihi GHsSeh Reid Mon-Fri 1900-2100 TABBS Ewen Wannop - SYSOP Wheeden CIEE. Fa HTEAT iS AppleLink: BASUG, 1 ‘S Chairman's Corner Apple2000 1980-1990 Happy Birthday! An important milestone will be reached shortly after you receive this magazine. Apple2000 neé BASUG (British Apple Systems User Group) will be ten years old. Pre-dating Apple UK, the Macintosh and every Apple computer since the II+, we have been continuously serving the UK and Eu- ropean Apple community as a self- help group of volunteers. It was ten years ago that a group of Apple enthusiasts met in a store in the Tottenham Court Road and decided to mect on a regular basis. From these ariel seeds, Appiea OL nan flourished into the largest Apple pect Cuba ai fe are as souvenir iomaiithecteacher Walch for details in the December issue of Apple2000. What next? As we have all come to know so well, Apple keep their secrets very close to their collective chests. The launch of the Mac portable was widely ‘ted, but it was not till the actual launch day itself that Apple would admit it existed. At the time of writing it is widely expected that a new low cost Macin- tosh will arrive by mid October. Apple will say nothing of course, but they have been getting very excited about telling all and sundry to turn up to the various presentations that will be made from mid October onwards, They will not say what they will be steaieen | The list of tations is endless. A low cost black and white Mac (the Classic?), a low-cost colour Mac, Sys- tem 7.0, a new Ilgs, a Ilgs emulator for the Mac and much more. System 7.0 seems to have been fraught with problems, and its delay, like that of HyperCard 2.0, has been put back far beyond the original launch date. Anew Iigs is a dream many of us would like realised. We shall just have to wait and see what appears. The Force RIP Back in April 1985, Telecom Gold was a new and fresh idea. We all had hopes that E-Mail would become the communication system of the future. With a magnificent effort by Richard Boyd and Tony Game, we negotiated one of the very first closed user groups on Gold. This pre-dated MicroLink and provide full access to Gold facilities at a much reduced cost. At first many of you flocked to join this new system of sending messages and Telex. In time we added a user friendly menu structure to the Force. Gold had said it could not be done, but we managed to do it! In time the menu structure was copied by Gold itselft However Telecom became a public company, they lost interest in develop- ing new system. Competition from American systems, from our own Bulletin Board, and with the increased costs and explosive growth of the Fax machine, saw many of you move to easier and more productive systems, started to take its toll. A critical point has now been passed and the com- Mittee feel we can no longer subsidise the Force any longer. Outstanding debts from members’ accountsarejust too high. We have to pay Telecom all charges made and then we try and RSS ies eae cocoa jhe mem- As from the beginning of November, the Force will cease to exist. Exis' members accounts will be toTelecom at the same level of charges that you now pay. New members will have to join at the full BT rate. The fate of the Force menu structure has not been decided at the time of writing. We shall be writ individ toall Force members ig them of the changes. Ifyou have not heard from us by the time you read this, contact BT on 0800-200700 as an Apple2000 Force member, and ask for a registra- tion form for the new service. Meanwhile for the rest of live TABBS, APPLELINK an: Mac User Show We shall be appearing in person at the Mac User show. Make sure you pay us a visit before you go and look at the new Macintosh machine. Apple didnot appear last year for many reasons, but are expected to be there in full force this year. u, long cls. New Membership Fees For those of you who attended the AGM you will remember that we asked you for a mandate to increase the membership fee by £5 later this year. This was to take into account risin; costs of postage and printing. We shall be increasing the fee for all new mem- berships taken out from the Ist of November. Existing memberships due before or in January may rejoin in advance at the old fee of £25. Watch for yourrenewal notice and rejoin early for ie just that we shall all be very intereste: The falling membership of the Force this saving. Ewen Wannop = Annual subscription rates are £25.00 for UK residents, : £30.00 for E.E.C. residents and £35.00 for other overseas toe Econ ecm: members. Apple2000™ {s a trading name of BASUG Ltd, a non-profit Apple Il Macintosh making independent company limited by guarantee. Ewen Wannop Norah Arnold ‘The contents of this journal are copyright of BASUG Ltd Elizabeth Littlewood Irene Flaxman on request. 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 {s sent. The opinions and views expressed are those of the various con- tributors, and are not necessarily endorsed 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 1st day of the month preceding publication. Advertising rates are available 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 owncr. Telecom Gold™ is a trademark of British Telecom ple. The FORCE™ and Apple2000™ are trademarks of BASUG Ltd. ‘This issue was prepared using Aldus PageMaker™ 3.0. and Gua MicroSoft Word™ and Claris MacWrite™. design. 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 Apple2000 are Founder Members and Wholehearted Supporters of the Apple User Group Council 2 ad Apple2000 October 1990 20th August 90 Letraset UK's upgrade policy from RSG to DesignStudio Dear Sir, When Letraset first offered me the “opportunity” to upgrade from RSG to DesignStudio for £495 I thought they had made a mistake. However, their marketing water tried to explain to me that it was all worth it. I was not convinced. When I saw the letter to the editor (MacWorld US) of Letraset US explaining that registered US RSG users were offered opportunity to oan for $100 !!! I was not amused and wrote another letter toLetraset UK asking for an explanation. I have just received their answer. A photocopied circular letter making a “generous” upgrade offer for £300 + VAT I! Do the think UK users are all suckers and don't know what goes on elsewhere? We are used to being overcharged for so-called UK software versions with little or no support, but this fs ridiculous! Mail order houses in the US are selling the full product for about $450! Thave been a convinced user of RSG since version 2 and have recommended it to of my friends against the advice of my dealer who preferred PageMaker. I have also standardised all Mac's in my officeon RSG. However, I shall no longer want to deal with a company that treats its loyal custom- ers with such utter contempt. Walter E Haefliger Q From MacWorld (US) August 1990 DesignStudio Upgrade Path In your May issue you said the up- grade path from ReadySetGo to Desi Studio was $100 (“Picking a Publish- ing Program"). This was actually a special time limited offer for registered ReadySetGo users. The current up- rade policy for registered users who purchased tGo between Feb- Tuary | and March 31, 1990, is $295, while those who bought tGo before February 1 may upgrade to DesignStudio for $150. Michelle Blank Letraset US October 1990 Q To Letraset UK London, 6th August 1990 Mr. David Skepper Marketing Manager h Das oft Graphic Design Software 198-203 Waterloo Road London SEI 8XJ Upgrade from R.S.G. to Design Stu- dio and other matters Dear Mr. Skepper, Iam sending this letter by registered mail as my last letter does not seem to Dave pea sereiea uu. I am re- verting to my letter of 9th December 1989 and your reply of 2nd January 1990 as well as my further letter of 24th January 1990 (wrongly dated 1989) to which I received neither a reply nor the requested upgrade. As I have been travelling quite a lot in the last few months it was only when read the enclosed article in MacWorld (USA) about up; from RSG to Design Studio that I suddenly realised that I had never received the requested up- de nor an answer to my above tter. lam soeraing copies of all the correspondence with you to make it easier ee SOU As you will see, I com- plained it the eas, Pte’! high Price of the upgrade. £495.- for an upgrade I felt was rather steep! I was therefore intrigued to read in MacWorld that our American friends were allowed to upgrade for US$100.- + quite a difference wouldn't you say Andeven for people who did not up; then the price today 1s only $150.- for the upgrade. 1 assume that registered U.K. users Ee Ee a similarly favourable upgrade policy (obviously after more people com- plained) and that through some over- sight I was not informed. As you your- self confirmed voor in your letter of 5th December 1989 that I have been a registered user fora long time assume that there should be no difficulty in sending me the upgrade I requested in my letter of 24th January 1990 but at the much more reasonable price of the equivalent of US$100.- or thereabouts. Tam looking forward to hearing from you by return of mail. Yours sincerely, Walter E. Haefliger Q ied Letraset UK Premporeied. reply Som 195/203 Waterloo Road London SEI 8XJ Telephone 071-928 7551 Telex 917233 Fax No. 071-633 9456 Cables Letraex London SE1 July 1990 Dear Ready Set Go User, We have had alot offavourable press coverage since we launched DesignStudio this year. Consequently we have had many enquiries from Ready Set Go! Users for a “painless” route toup-grade RSG to DesignStudio. Therefore, we have made it as easy as possible for all UK registered users of the RSG to migrate to DesignStudio. Just write to us quoting your regis- tration number and send a photocopy of your master disk with a cheque, made out to Letraset UK, for £300 plus VAT ( £345) to LINDA BULL. We will then Fedex a complete package of DesignStudio and you may still keep your copy of RSG. Using DesignStudio will give you more creative mon the desktop! You will be able to rotate text and &raphics in specified one degree in- crements; put text and graphics in different shapes and even use the polygon to create your own shapes. Moving circles, lines and other graphics around your page will be a easy using the group and ungroup commands. Yet, even with all these new features you will still feel comfortable as the menu as tools will be familiar to you. Many of our Users up-grading t Designstudio is segeaieesfehoa cause they do not have to re-learn a totally new package. There is never enough time ... is there? This up-grade offer is available to all UK registered users of Set Go until the end of October 1990, You will be eligible for future up-grades and free technical support on our “hotline* as usual, yours sincerely UieMonas ote hic De: Software) er (Graphic Design fare) ESSELTE A Division of Esselte Letraset Ltd. Registered in England and Wales No. 627602 é Please submit all letters and articles to the magazine on disk wherever possible. The disks will be returned to you when the magazine is published. If you have a modem, send us letters. articles and Public Domain programs either to BSG005 or to TABBS |(iii- FANS), Appie2000 oaks Bideford, Devon Dear Ewen, You it be interested in the fol- lowing information on the program "Desk", ee called “DeskWorks” until tit oes toad that the name was an unintentional in- fringement of a registered trademark, is a multiple progam for the Mac comprising seven int ited sections:- DeskCale. AS; eet and ing program. eSeske is issued on three 3.5 inch disks with two very comprehensive manuals of some 400 pages each, a Reference Manual containing details of all the Commands and their use. and a Tutorial Manual with examples and exercises. The program requires a Mac with a hard disk and one mega- byte minimum (two Mb if you're going to use Colour Graphics). All the pro- grams are claimed to be compatible with each other, and with programs such as PageMaker and of course their own ZBasic. So faras| have been able to test, the claim seems justified. Disk 1 is the Installation Disk and there is a comprehensive manual on Inst the program. It's a pity that this installation program doesn’t work - or at least {t didn't in my case - and tion proceedure. Even that took an- other couple of of intermittent labour, no doubt to my lack of , and I still haven't manage to foad the Spelling Diconary, part of the Word Processing program. The Word Processing program dou- bles up as aquite: Fonprenie ease program with Text Wrap Teall arts eects and the Draw and Paint programs allow one to rotate text in one increments, shrink, expand and text and pictures. It's quite adequate to me to produce and print a small club . There are some ting jugs I have discovered, mos mostly asso- ciated with the elaborate tabbing fa- onke Telecoms progres gram has its own phone book and one can send and receive files in the background whilest the Mac does other a oe with- out Multifinder, The if menu hasa nasty bug, in that when asked to dial a stored number from the phone book, the program dials, establishes communication and chalks up one call, immediately hangs up and re- dials, establishes communication and chalks up a second call, immediately hangs up and re-dials and so on ad nauseum. The only way round the problem that I have found is to drag orn the poe yee menu Wer program is dialling out but to the mouse button down until the mo- dem tones indicate that communica- tion has been established. You have to be quick on the draw. When one has learnt how to cir- cumvent the several bugs and ideosyncracies of Desk, it's a program which sults my requirements admira- tions tons covered by Desk ie it's a ca Support Is dees to be from Zedcor by telephone cheer I'm not prepared to pack out the wallets of Brsshareho! by trying toclear the bugs over the transatlantic phone. Support by Air Mail is non-existent and Zedcor haven't yet come into the 20th century with an E.Mallbox. John Stanier FACI ¢ A ee Dear Elizabeth & Ewen, Graham Doubtfires letter to Apple 2000 published in the August issue persuades me towriteof my experiences and pleasures with my ‘Second User’ //e. It was most interesting to read of his endeavours, and if my tale can also help other Apple II ‘rapellers then we will both have done well. I came late to computing after a com early retirement at 60: old. One year later, after the usual long holidays, Lind house repainted and the len under ieee I age spiel’ aes rey A one tory I grant way out the door. A usual story I grant you but one that has to be experienced to be believed. But help was at hand, for my supportive family saw the smoke signals leaking thro: by roof tiles and took appropriate action, The family Mafioso met, tec led, and in walked Son-in-lawNumber two with anoffer! could not refuse. Nowlaman Apple Junkie and my wife a computer widow. My original basic setup came froma buses situation which was upgrad- to Amstrads (would you believe?). after a couple of days of tration.I bly. andat farless thanonetenthofthe Ww thin the year they had moved on reverted to the standard Mac installa- total price of separate commercially again, due, I understand, to servicing (7 ) TUMAATTTTTT TANT SNAG AAS The TEED WL UAT MAL VE Abd VT Ld ho Way i ie 11” Hit Apple2000 | 72% TBs Tor Menu <<<<< Md VA MAL AL AAA A A “i a WT WTI MATA A ATS Bulletin <#>Endcall <.>Utilities LLL <;>Time <G>oodbye 11/7 The Apple Bulletin Board System Board <I> Apple }[ folder Speeds: V21(300) to V22bIs(2400) 8N1 24 hours System <2> Mois Hye folder <3> Macintosh folder <4> Apple2000 folder The TABBS message system is more than just a Bulletin Board. With a shopping | $62 Developers folder mall where youcan browse the Apple2000 catalogues and order the goods you require; a library with over 7Smb of compressed files for the Apple II, IIgs and Macintosh; the <D>ownload Libraries NewsBytes™ news files updated weckly bring you the latest in world computer news; <Mailbox a private and public E-mail service; file transfers that can be enclosed in private or | <N2ews Columns 7 public mail; message areas covering many topics including the Apple Il, the Igsand | <27Svertisment Hoarding Macintosh; Xmodem, 1k Xmodem and Ymodem file transfers; multi-speed access at <What's dig on TABBS all common speeds; 24 hour operation; and much, much more make TABBS the <iHD>elp files for TABBS premier Apple Bulletin Board serving Europe. Give TABBS a call today! \_ Be, Ring TABBS on @023H) 742997 at any speed through V21, V22, V23 to V22bis 8N1 TABBS is available 24 hours a day 7 NS ee Apple2000 October 1990 problems. My trusty Apple soldiers on as before. I now possess an unenhanced //¢e with an Apple 64k 80 col card in slot 3, Duodisk in slot 6, Super Serial card and ImageWriter I in Slot 1.A Z80 card for CP/M 2.23 in slot 4, anda 19 eee Symbiotic hard drive (DOS3.3, CP/M) in slot 5. Eric Sausse pores some of this equipment and also been a great help in explaining those sometimes stupidly simple things that completely fox the ir. His prices are helpful too. Apart from the basic DOS & PRODOS. system discs and a copy program that arrived with the computer I had very little idea of which way to go, but an advertisement in the local paper soon solved that problem, with a good Sa- maritan in the City of York virtually showering me with old Apple II discs and even more importantly books and magazines. I trust he still en} his canoes as much as! the laetem So, if you are starting to exp! ie Apple, get that three line advert in the local paper right away. it even more important than a program is the manual. as an example I would quote my experience of finding a AppleWriter //e disk (no manual), with ed ieeshtaae I manual coming from another source acoupleofmonths later. With the help screens on the // e and the still relevant parts of the Apple II Manual many happy hours were spent creating my own guide to AppleWriter. Apple 2000, both Magazine and li- bi are my mainsp) , one issue ee enough notgutio last until the next with a further boost when Apple Slices pops through the door. Ewen Wannop took the trouble towrite ahelpful letter tome over small detail on my Apple 2000 introductory dise that I queried. Dave Ward on help line putme on to Eric Sausse for hard drive info. Thank you all. The advertisers in Apple 2000 have also been useful to me, I am writing this letter with the P.D. program FredWriter purchased from Goanpuite abibivat Southampton. This isa nice, ple educational wordprocessing program created in America, notnearly so povertul as AppleWriter or AppleWorks, but then again I don't need Mailmerge & etc. Chameleon at Pinchbeck re-inked my ImageWriter ribbons with what must have been a ‘same day” turnaround, Once , by looking and asking the good ippen. I never a computer shop of any kind without looking in and asking if they have Apple Il software or hardware. Nine times out of ten the poor blind fools behind the counter look on you with pity and reply with an air of superiority that have thelatestequipment in their shop. Smile sweetly at them and journey on. Odds and ends came year really pd ot Gh my pth call year it off. my tent I picked up my hard drive for £45 October 1990 complete with a superseded commer- Seibatabens |. CP/Mand card. I read the mant that came with my find, took a little advice, and after a couple of false starts divided the drive into the three formats available. programs I soon experienced the pleasure of the almost instant loading ofa program or Peo overlay when called. are some of the good times, there has not been many bad times that I remember except when I wiped my favourite graphics disks. Don'task me how I managed that - after all the rogram only did what I told it to do, ut right 2 for a week after. pee me it for trying to improve! an al- excellent program. After this one of: ‘stood a cardon the to} of tele eomted with the legend AP PROACH THIS COMPUTER WITH BRAIN IN GEARAND FOREFINGERIN NEUTRAL’. And what of the future? I would like to enhance my //e, it would also be nice to run ProDOS on my hard drive and be able to call my collection of ProDOS programs with the touch ofa finger. I'm getting there, it will take time, but the pleasure of travelling the Apple ll road is great, Ican understand the business users of computers needing more and more K's and faster runt CPU's but my trusty old 8 bit is stilla heck ofa sight faster than] am. Happy Appleing. Eric Leadbeatter é Great Sankey Warrington Via Justified Decimal Number Input Dear Ed, This letter is on paper because my Macintosh ts down and | am far from home. Hence this routine is in GWBASIC, as {s the WP which I wrote for typing the odd letter. The object of this routine is to enter a decimal- justified number directly into its cell. Writers of spreadsheets or databases may purloin this routine if they wish. Obviously you cannot use as 2 must intercept every keypress. lor can you use PRINT USING as this requires the number to be already in memory. SP$=SPACE$(10) AC is the horizontal position of the cell, DN its vertical position, X the horizontal position of the decimal point, Lis the length of the number, I the position of the decimal in the number, 8 the offset that deter- mines where to print the number as it currently stands during input. 505 NUS="": LaO; I=7: XmAC+8: S=0 ‘Initialises 510 LOCATE DN,X,1,0,7 ‘turns the cursor on at full height 520 ISmINKEYS: IF I$=”” THEN 520 ‘GB stores INKEYS 525 IF I$=CHRS$(13) OR IS=CHR$(10) THEN 570 ‘NEWLINE is CHR$(3) Appie2000 on the Mac 527 IF IS=CHRS$(8) THEN 700 ‘T nearly forgot about deleting 530 IF I$=”.” THEN I=L+l: GOTO 540 532 IF (LeS) AND (I=7) THEN 520 ‘Mustapha Decimal 535 IF I$<“0” OR I$>”9" THEN 520 ‘Mustapha Number 540 NUMS=NUMS$+IS$: Le=L+l: 8=L: IF I<7 THEN S=I-1 545 LOCATE DN,X-S: PRINT NUMS; 550 IF I<I+2 THEN 520 ‘There may be more to come 570 IF I=7 THEN NUMS=NUMS+”.00" 575 IF I=L THEN NUM$=NUMS$+"00" 580 IF T=I-l THEN NUMS=NUMS+”0" 585 LOCATE DN,X-6: PRINT NUMS; * Turns cursor off 590 NUM-VAL(NUMS) ‘Now do what you want with NUM then return to main menu 700 LOCATE DN,X-6: LeL+(L>O): NUMS=LEFTS (NUMS, L) 705 PRINT SPACES (L+1);: IF I>L THEN S=L; I=7 710 LOCATE DN,X-S: PRINT NUM$;: GOTO 520 NB. Not a single horrid time-wasting GOSUB The above routine ensures that any number you enter Is correctly justified as you enter it. The parameters set in this. tare for two decimal places and a maximum length of eight char- acters. Yours sincerely Bill Pearce é Haslemere Surrey Dear Irene An supa ie you tal t think useful to help other ICE hard disk users. You may recall that I wrote on 26 June listing some printing problems I had with the ICE and AppleWorks and the following could help others. The printing problem is tied into the mounting of volumes on the ICE disk. The disk unit must have volumes mounted in pairs and after assigning slot7 tovolumes | and 2 lassigned slot 1 to volumes 3 and 4. This was the printing problem! So the lesson ts if you want to mount more than 2 vol- umes on the ICE disk, mount the third and forth volume on an unused slot. (Owners ofthe ICE disk will understand I now have to out a way of stopping AppleWorks sending a mass of control codes to the printer every time I print anything as it keeps “switching off the eek set-up I set on the printer contro! 1. Another tale for those who might need to know. My son blew the house fuses in the middle of me saving a spreadsheet to disk! A quick repair put Hoe ite te rigs Wt ryt te get back my programs almost made me poke son's fingers in the plug by way of retribution! geo ait I could get into volumes 2,3 and 4 but not vol. 1 my main volume holding all programs and the data directory. Fortunately! had Glen Bredon’s ProSel in one of the other volumes and when I tried to ‘catalog’ vol 1 or even switch prefixes to it the message ‘directory structure damaged’ (or something like this) came up. I tried to restore from my latest backup but of course as the main root directory was damaged nothing would work. I then entered a utility called “Block Warden” on ProSel went to block 0002 where some recognisable files should have been seen. Garbage. Block 0003 was OK however and | could read various files which | knew were on the root directory. 1 then loaded the backup disk and examined block 0002 and tried to compare the scrambled one on my harddisk with the backup. Nothing similar at all, so on the basis that I didn't think | could more damage than was there already (oh the pleasures of ignorance!) 1 copied block 0002 from the backup to the hard disk. Bingo. I could at least get back into my first hard volume and all the pro- rams were there although the data les were of course out of date. I then copied file by file every single file off vol 1 onto floppies as certain programs still either dumped me in the monitor or gave me ‘directory structure damaged’ responses. | deleted volume 1 and even unmounted it to ensure all directory information was lost then remounted thevolume and laboriously copied every file back onto the hard disk. Over 27 floppies worth! It all works fine now but the above took about a week to what todo and how to doit. Thanks to Dave Ward and Eric Sausse who both gave in- valuable advice. I pass this on to other ICE users in the hope that it might ise if something similar happens to em. Lastly, although I have no real desire to know the quirks of the ICE disk, through necessity I have had tolearna fair bitabout the system and ifanybody is stuck with a problem I'll be pleased tosec if] can makea suggestion or two. Regards Dear Apple 2000 Graham G Doubtfire I have four qucrics that I would like some help with please. South Croydon, Surrey. (1) Having upgraded Apple //e with the cece ROM chips, Iam looking to upgrade my 80-col text card to the extended version. Is it possible to buy a memory chip which I could install on my existing 80-col card or must I buy a completely new card. (2) When I received my Apple Xtras disks last month, I subscribed at the TA pe end of say. I unpacked and ran the wordsearch pi . found that there is a ‘syntax error’ in line 2462, as lam not too familiar yet with ProDOS Basic, Iam not sure what is wrong could you help me with this. (3) I would like to use the APA of of the Pascale maa Apr a TO} g, is there a patch that rep aes (4) Has anybody there had experi- ence with the adventure game Perils of Princess Emiline offofthe APPLE USER GAMES DISK vol 2. If so can you offer me any advice as to how to get passed the guard in the tower. Richard Shipley Q(1) It may be possible toupgrade your existing80colcard depending on which card you have. There are quite a few cards around, made both by Apple and other sources. Memory is normally added as 8 chips, one for each bitof the data bus, so a single chip is not suffi- cient. If you have 8 spare sockets on your card, it will be dable using 8 x 64k RAM chips. If there are no empty sockets then I am afraid you will need to get a new card. Q (2) WordSearch is quite a complex proj and shows what can be done with an AppleSoft Basic program and machine code calls. | have examined line 2462 and found the problem. Somewhere or other a ‘z' has crept in where a ‘:’ should be. The correct line 2462 of file SEARCH.EDIT should read: 2462 VIAB V1: POKE OC,H1: & LINE, 32,45: RETURN By the way, AppleSoft Basic is built in to every Apple II computer, and it ‘an be accessed from both DOS 3.3 and ProDOS. It ts not specific to either disk operating system, though some of ge eooiial nds inst are sacitonal to Apple: are specific to each oper- ating system. This will only cause a problem where programs are trans- ported from the one environment to the other. & (3) Which leads to your third ques- tion. Unfortunately the DOS 3.3 Toolkit programs are precisely what they say. they are only for DOS 3.3, They just will not work under ProDOS when copied into the ProDOS environment. Many calls are made to DOS vectors that just do not exist within ProDOS. I am not sure which of the APA commands you are most interested in, but if you create a text file from your Basic program you can always edit the file with a vod processerand then EXEC it back into Basic when you are finished. This will allow you to enter lower case and other forbidden char- acters into the Basic listing, and of course use the Find and Replace commands to change line numbers. Q (4) This is a new game to me, so I throw it open to other members for their comments. The Boffin « Apple2000 Hallbankfield nes f Dear Ewen, Thank you for answering my query about the 800k drives and the UDC card. Indeed, the UDC card turned out to be faulty and MGA replaced it under warranty, A question here perhaps should be for the Boffin. This concerns AppleWorks 2.0 and entering printer codes. lam trying toadd an emphasise print on and off control codes which are ESC E and ESC F - these I can get to work from AppleSoft Basic, but not AppleWorks. | have gone through the AppleWorks Specify Information about Printers, Change Printer Specifications, Printer Codes, Boldface, Underlining, Superscript. Under Boldface begin | have entered the codes by pressing Escape key, letter E and “ to end the entry. Under Boldface end I have en- tered the codes by pressing Escape key and letter F and the 4 to end the entry, then Escaped back to my document. | have enclosed the boldface begin and end options, but when I print it those features don't work! It just prints in “normal” 10cpi mode, I have also tried sett this up under custom printer but it is still the same. Am I doing something wrong? Finally a viene complaint. I pur- chased some PD disks penyet disks D118 and D123, only to find that they are exactly the same in content as those I acquired from Computability. Computability sell their disks at £1.50 (including VAT P&P) and Apple2000 £4.00 (including VAT P&P). Just to save further unwanted “du- plication”, are all of Computability's disks in Apple2000 library? (1 know Computability only sell DOS/ProDOS software). What differences exist in purchasing a disk from Apple2000 or Comput- ability? (I know Computability require a donation to be sent to program au- thor). David Beale Q Ihave asked Dave Ward to comment on your printing problem. He replies: “It would appear that you are doing everything correctly. So try the following suggestions:- 1) Try a fresh AppleWorks diskette. 2) Try it with another version if possible. 3} Try defining boldface start as ESC and boldface end as blank!! Then for the real boldface start, you guessed it, use boldface start followed by E and then boldface end. For the real boldface end use boldface start followed by F and then boldface endl! See if this works. If not use the same idea but use, say, underline code instead of E . Ifnone of these work then there may be a problem with AppleWorks.” Dave Ward Cc October 1990 OQ Some of the disks in the Apple2000 and Computability’s libraries will in- deed be duplicated. Most of the PD software comes from the States. and the sources are limited. We list the Cai of all our disks and so you should be able to see if there is dupli- cation if have a Comput- putabulty do not list the Catalogs 60 yu not e so ‘volt Carinol cheek thet cltiek waly toatiil Many of our disks have been assem- bled by us and sowill not be duplicated, but not all of them by any means. There are of course other sources of PD disks, mainly from US User Groups, so Apple2000 require you to pay any ShareWare fees due to the authors concerned, this is a standard require- mentofusing any ShareWare software. As to pricing policy, will have seen that we have recently reduced the price of our 5.25 disks to £3.50. This reflects the reduced price of the media these days. However, when you add ether the cost of the media, the cost of a disk mailer. the postage (which has just gone up by the way!) and all the other costs in . tcosts rather more than £1.50 to supply you with a library disk. We can only assume that Computability is running at a loss. Asmall margin of profit is made on each disk sold byApple2000. This towards the various overheads involved in running a library. We have to store masters of lib ‘disks, purchase new software elther directly or from online services safe corer many net costs concerned with running the library. Apple2000 provides you with many free perviece such as he Hotline, bi- mont) fazine, Apple Slices etc. The meinbershi fee does not cover the full cost of all of these services, and so the small profit on the various items sold help us run the group and break even. I hope you will continue to buy from our library and help us maintain a high quality of service. Ewen Wannop « Green Vale London. Dear Ewen, Iam concerned that Boffin's response to your correspondent David Beale mislead, Original Macintosh Book (& . Original tosh 800k (& 400k) drives work well with the J[e using the UDC (Universal Disk Con- Laces ten A aca. rate, aa 0c 30) shows, a card emulates protocol converter! calls to some degree, since I wasableto use these to program a soft eject fea- ture, External smartport devices don’t all work with the: |, as Boffin infers. An important case in point is the Chinook CT20c hard disk drive. This works with the 3.5 version J[c or the converter (3.5 Unidisk controller card) October 1990 ina le. It takes an appropriate place in the chain in lieu of a 3.5 inch cae The UDC won't ae it stel even though daisy chain unit one are directed to drive one, and unit two calls to drive two. Advertisements I have seen suggest that the }[gs ‘external drive’ works with . but I have no personal experience of this as I do not own a 3.5in ‘Platinum’ drive. Bryn Jones é Dear Ewen, a This month's Apple 2000 seems a lot more interesting. Compuserve I.D.'s Mine is 73457,3614. My Gold number is 74:MIK956 . foagess) Sorting routines e 33); Inow use a binary chop sort, so called because it divides the list in two. It goes like this. Fulready Road London For a list of N strings W8(N): 40 Del 50 = D=D*2 60 IF D<=N THEN GOTO 50 70 DeINT((D-1) /2) 71s IF D=0 THEN GOTO 220 80 FOR I=1 TO N-D 90 Jat 100 Lev+D 110 IF WS(L)< W$(J) THEN GOTO 130 120 GOTO 200 130 TS=W$ (J) :WS (J) =WS (L) :WS (L) =TS 140 JeJ-D 150 IF J>0 THEN GOTO 100 200 NEXT I 210 GOTO 70 I am currently trying out a “loga- rithmic” searching routine - for finding a name in a database -and can't make it print out more than one occurrence of the name. Any thoughts on this? p.7- Printer smudging: I have long since given up trying to print on en- velopes, although my Epson does it peseclly, well. I use continuous paper for eve! g and use vertical tabu- lation to print the address at the bot- tom of a page where it is visible inside a window envelope. It saves work. Case history (p.3) Hard disks and ProDOS. I have a Symbiotic disc, now for sale (see August small ads). Its ProDOS version is 1.1 and the makers recommended that I substitute this version of ProDOS for the later versions on eh dies such as Gazelle and pe orks (not that! use. ‘Works very much - it is overrated). The newer version of ProDOS can be installed as @ separate task. As Theva onan 3 printing, I take it that you have “added” your printer when setting up AppleWorks? Finally, I shall send Ewen from time to time copies of the Apple Library Users Group newsletter where he might find an occasional snippet of interest. Arthur Robinson 6 Apple2000 Wendover Bucks Dear Editor, In the August issue (Hotline), Dave Ward an Applesoft sort routine, briefly mentioned Quicksort and in- vited er contributions. Tomymind the definitive Applesoft sort (see listin, was published in an article in Windfall/ Apple User some years ago (since when, as the old soap advertisement used to say, I have used no other). Unfortu- nately I have lost the copy and am unable to give the author a proper and due citation. The routine is aversion of Professor Hoare's Quicksort but uses a stack - ST (1,N) - for recursive pur- poses. Four points: 1, The second dimension of ST has anon-linear relationship with the size of the array(s) to be sorted. The rithm for its calculation I have lost, but since the value of 20 almost an over-kill for any array which could feasibly be sorted ina 64K Apple, I have never bothered with its caleu- lation and always used 20 regardless. More mathematically readers (or the original author) may be able to supply the algorithm for the benefit of the finicky. 2. The start and finish (BEGIN/ FINISH) of the sort array must be set before using the sub-routine. BEGIN is normally 0 or 1 and FINISH the top paris may wish to sort a section ol . 3. The swaps are in line 22. In the particular example, real array D0 is sorted via a temporary variable T and the second aoe, LO is similarly sorted into the order of D0. The arrays may be integer, real or string or a combination of any. 4. The sub-routine has here been located as near to the start of the program as possible. Applesoft deals with GOTOs/GOSUBs by each time starting at the first line and galloping up each instruction to the destination line. Any intensively repetitive sub- routine such as a sort will therefore have a significant speed advantage if these journeys are kept short (see Applesoft manual). Richard Brown Applesoft sort listing: 1 DIM STACK (1,20) : GOTO 100 10 HOME : VTAB 10 HTAB 15 FLASH PRINT “ SORTING “ : NORMAL 12 Bel 2 BEGIN FINISH pie) - HI sP = D(((JL + KH) / 2)) 16 IF JL > KH THEN 26 m okt 14 18 IF D(KH) >P THEN KH = KH-1 : GOTO 18 20 IF D(JL) < THEN JL = Ji+i : GOTO 20 22 IF JL <= KH THEN T = D(JL) :D(JL) = D(KH) :D(KH) = T :T = L(JL) :L(JL) = L(KH) :L(KH) =T iL = WL+1 :KH = KH -1 24 GOTO 16 26 B-B+l :ST(0,B) = HI :ST(1,B) = JL :HI = KH : If LO < HI THEN GOSUB 14 28 10 = ST(1,B) :HI = ST(0,B) :B=B-1 : IF LO < HI THEN GOSUB 14 30 RETURN 100 REM MAIN PROGRAM é Dear Sir, I have a query about connecting a Microline 182A printer to an Apple //e. Lhave an Apple printer card and a Super Serial Card are they compat- ible ete.? I also need to know where I it buy the cables and cards if need be, and also do you have any information relating to the printer concerned. TW it Catton Estate Norwich Q There are two kinds of interface cards, serial cards and parallel cards. The former are generally used for mo- dem communications ports, but are increasingly being used now for printers like the ImageWriter. The lel card is more usually used by printers, and was almost the only of card used by the older printers like your Microline printer. The Apple printer card is one of those. You will find that most parallel printers use the 36 way Centronics type of connector and that most cards will use a 20 way IDC connector, A ribbon cable no connects the two. Precisely which combination you have will decide the cable you need. You could try your local dealer, but also try Eric Sausse (0724 855795) who holdsastockofcardsand manuals that it be of help. The Boftin e « Altens Industrial Estate Aberdeen Dear Sir, Can you recommend an internal fan for my ligs that does not cause interfer- ence to my stereo card? P Marsh QYou should not be getting any inter- tA ference from a normal fan running from the 12v power supply, and you should be of adding any capaci- tors as to the supply. Of course if the fan is too near the stereo card it could cause induced noise into the audio circuits of the board. Have you tried moving the card to another it? slot Cirtech supply an excellent low noise {audible sound!) fan that might be better than the one you have. Apart from that solution, you would need to take the more expensive answer of an external fan that does not use the internal power supply. The Cirtech fan is available cither direct or from most dealers. As you have found, it is well worth fitting a fan toa llgs to keep the insides cool. If you have many cards, and es if you have a TransWarp Wisin essential to keep the llgs cool toavold random problems through overheating. Make sure none of your cards mask or stop the air flow. Editor Q We asked you to send ue. Your Compuserve /Forum ID's. We nowhave two more to add to our collection and these are printed below. There are still some of you that have not responded. We cannot contact you online unless we know who you are. Please send us ur ID's either to the Apple2000 ID '6004,3333 or to the PO Box in Liv- erpool or of course to the Sysop of TABBS. Apple2000 76004,3333 Mateen Greenaway 100016,602 Bryn Jones 71307, 1457 Peter Kemp 100016, 1172 Elizabeth LitUewood 100016,.401 Mark O'Neill 100016,476 Jeremy Quinn 100016,560 John Richey 10006, 1037 Russell Ridout 72007,211 Arthur Robinson 73457,3614 Andreas Wennborg 100012,342 Ewen Wannop 76224,211 OQ Many ofyou will already be members of AppleLink™ and others may be thinking of joining. For simple E-Mail it cannot be beaten. It will also keep you up to the minute with what is ppening at Apple headquarters. We would like you to send us your contact ID's to add to this list. Apple2000 BASUG.1 Herts User Group NA.HERTSUG Liverpool Group LIVERPOOL.UG Appie2000 For those who have had Apple com- puters for many years a problem with their machines not boot properly may occur on the odd occasion; this could, of course, be serious but is ust very simply remedied. If this should happen time you boot-u; your machine even after leaving it o! for a minute or so, don't worry. try the following:- 1} Switch off the machine and any- thing attached to it. 2) Remove the lid of the machine. 3} Remove and immediately replace each card in the machine; I usually earth myself whilst carrying out any such operation. 4) Check that you've done rer iing correctly then replace the lid an switch on: magically it should work properly! This problem can occur on all Apple //computers, even the Apple //cwhich has not slots. One such problem oc- curred where the machine, which was second-hand, worked for months and then simply refused to boot. In this case a memory card specially designed for the Apple //c had been installed after removing it and replacing the machine worked perfec! Another point to watch for is the power connector from the power sup- ply. This has also been known to cause problems through blackening of the contacts due to arcing through poor contact. The screen may well flicker as ararung tat this is happening. Ona Ilgs, random 3.5 disk write problems were traced back to a loose power connector. Dave Ward ¢ CORRECTION QOn page 17 of the August 1990 issue ofApple2000, the last ph ofthe New Stick Bears Talking Alphabet re- view was truncated. Our apologies go to Dave Ferris. The correct wording is as follows: ‘This is an excellent program that I have enjoyed playing with as much as daughter. It’s only problem is the lerence between English Englishand American English. For instance 'Z’ is pronounced zee and aeroplane is spelt airplane, but I think we can live with these minor details. What I would like to see now is a talking version of Stickybear Numbers". « October 1990 Apple-pie Order Rules of Engagement The first correct entry drawn from the postbag wins first prize. Please remember to indicate which of the two prize choices you would like, Only entries from current mem- bers of Apple2000 will be eligible. No member of the committee or the editorial team may enter. Our decision will be final. Only entries received in the PO box in Liverpool before the 30th of November will be deemed eligible. How to Contact You AOA OGS 2 oo8ocscesecscecncesesstatcresenes Post your completed entry to: October Competition, PO Box 3, Liverpool, L21 8PY. Choose Your Prize Ifyou were to win first prize, please indicate which prize you would like. Chessmaster 2100 for the IIgs or the new Weltris super action game for the Macintosh. Please tick your choice: C1 chessmaster 2100 OO weltris A H M P T PRIME CUP by Doodlewit CLUES ACROSS CLUES DOWN = (k + g)° =(p +m)? G(reversed) = g? + d? B=k+] H=f ¥p C=(p +b)? K=b+d D =p? +c? L=n¥m E.=.b M = p? + k? F = (k +h)? N =p? + 1? J =(p +i)? Pz=i+d Bail? 4:07 Q=g Q=n¥k S=a¥i R=e T=(i+]) Apple2000 prize competition October 1990 Appie2000 eoee oh’ Disk Zaps and all that (part 2) | APSR Setar CASAS RNS eae ea Tinkering with the Disk - Ewen Wannop continues his series on Disk Operating Systems - reprinted from April 1986 The DOS 3.3 Disk In last month’s article, I explained how to use Disk er. | will now launch you into the forbidden sectors of the DOS 3.3 disc, But first there are two important things to say. All the addresses I will give will be in Hexa- decimal, that is to a base 16, counting from $0 through $F, the dollar sign is standardly used by Apple to signify a value in HEX. You will notice that in most computer numerology, the first number is $00, this means that the sixteenth number will be $OF. This off- by-one effect, can cause innumerable confusions and bugs in your programs if you do not understand it. Secondly before you ge any further, copy thedisc you are going to work on, and ONLY use the copy. I will not be held re- sponsible for any fatal mistakes .... Setting the Hi-Bit I mention the ‘hi-bit’ quite often. Printable ASCII values run from $20 to $7F. The Apple tends to use these with the hi-bit, bit 7 set, thus running from $A0 to $FF. Sometimes however it has it off and they run from $00 to $7F. Simply use them from the appropriate rangeas and when they are referred to. Sector Range The DOS 3.3 disc, although it has $23 times $10 or $230 sectors, only $1FO are available normally to you as the user. Tracks $00-$02 are used by the DOS image itself, and track $11 is used for the Catalog track and other information such as a disc map. A hint here, you will find that although DOS marks the disc as using all of Track $02. in fact it only uses Sectors $00 through $04. This means that $11 sectors are not used, and wasted. You can put secret messages on these if you like. However, although these $04 tracks are not immediately accessible to you from Basic or from DOS itself, we can do some interesting things using Disk Manager if we fiddle about with them. So here we go, boot up Disk Manager, and put your working copy in the drive, select the Disc Patch option, and away we go... How many times have you wished you could auto-boot into your favour- 0A ite program, instead of having to end up in Basic, and do a BRUN or an EXEC. Help is at hand. We have to do two things however, change the boot name from HELLO to the required rogram name, and change the type of file that DOS is looking or on boot. Changing the Boot name First we change the name, to do this we read in Track $01 Sector $09, and at offset +$75, you should see the current boot filename. This is in ASCII with the hi-bit set. If you do not have a table of ASCII into HEX, you will have to work it out yourself, start with capital ‘A’ as HEX $C1. You must put inspaces, $A0, to pad over any char- acters left from the previous name. The maxi- mumilengthis thirty characters long. Now write the changed sector back to disc. and read in Track $00 Sector $OD. At off- set +$42 you will find the value of $06 for a normal DOS disc. Change this to one of the following, and write the sector back to disc. Use $06 for Applesoft boot files, $34 for Binary files and $14 for EXEC files. That's all you need todo, and away you go. DOS Commands While we are in the DOS tracks, take a look at Track $01 Sectors $07, $08 and $09, You will see lots of the disc messages and commands that DOS uses. Provided you do not make the length of these entries greater than theyare, youcanrename toyourhearts content. Why not ‘SHOW.ME' instead of ‘CATALOG’? Note that in the com- mands, you cannot have a space in the name. The ASCII is put in with the hi- bit off except for the last character which has it set. This means that we Apple2000 can put in shorter names, ending with the last character having the hi-bit set. You can fool your friends thoroughly this way. yourself, if you forget what you have changed them to! Now read in Track $02 Sector $02, and look at the bytes $AF through $BA, notice that they spell ‘ EMULOV KSID*. Look familia: fell it is ‘DISK VOLUME * backwards, so we can change to ‘FRED'S DISK ‘ or any message you want provided that it fits twelve char acters. You should have a space at the end, as the volume number is printed by DOS after this string. Remember to put itall in backwards, all of this string has the hi-bit set. The Catalog Tracks Finally, this month, let us look at the Catalog tracks. Read in Track $11 Sector $OF. This is the first sector of the Catalog, the Catalog runs for the next fourteen sectors down to Sector $01. You will see the filenames listed there, and lots of other numbers. Don't try to alter these other numbers yet, but change the filenames if you want. ‘They are thirty bytes long from the first character, and should end in spaces, $A0, to fill ifneeded. The hi-bit is set here. You can be clever and put in lower case characters, or even put in inverse characters, or even cursor commands. Try it and sce, if it doesn't work, make a new copy of the disc, and try again. To make inverse characters, set the ASCII running from $00 to $1F with capital ‘A’ being $01. Flashing ones Tun through $40 to $5F with capital ‘A’ being $41, Cur- sor com- mands are, $8A as line feed. $88 as backspace. This is how the funny Catalog’s you may have seen on some discs, are done. Final Word Next edition I will tell you how to look at files, and restore a Catalog that has been destroyed. And for those who still cannot think in Hexadecimal, this might help: $8=8 $9o=9 $A= 10 $B=11 $C =12 $D = 13 $E=14 $F = 15 Ewen Wannop C7 October 1990 BIDMUTHIN New Products This Month for the Macintosh Applied Engineering - the world's leading manufacturers of Apple II peripherals (and for whom Bidmuthin are proud to be UK agents) have now produced some new peripherals for the Macintosh. 1) High Density 3.5" External Drive features the same 1.44 Mb drive mechanism as the Apple SuperDrive. Price is just £295. 2) QuadraLink - for those with a Macintosh with only two serial ports, (i.e. everyone), and who want more this is the answer. A NuBus Slot Card for the Mac II Series which gives 4 serial ports in the same mini 8 connectors as the current two ports. Price on this useful addition is £249. 3) Enhancements to the Macintosh Modems - The internal datalink modem for the Mac II Series a 2400 baud modem costing £249, can now be supplied with a “Send Fax” option installed. Cost with the “Send Fax” option installed is just £349. And allows faxes to be sent to any Group 3 fax machine in the world direct from your Mac. 4) Also available is the DataLink for the Mac Portable which includes the “Send Fax" option and costs just £259. 5) Also on the subject of the portable - from the giants of the memory expansion world of the Apple II comes a giant Memory expansion for the Mac Portable. No longer are you limited to a measly 2 Meg on the Mac Portable, but AE have just announced a new card which can hold up to 8, yes 8, Megabytes of static RAM. This increases the Mac Portable’s capacity up to 9 Megabytes. Prices - the full extra 8 Megs will cost you somewhere in the region of £2000 but a realistic 2 Megabyte upgrade is £695. A 4 Megabyte upgrade is £1195. e Call for details. Bidmuthin Technologies Ltd. Brent House 214 Kenton Road : : Harrow Middx Tel: 081-907-8516 HA3 8BT Fax: 081-907-2756 October 1990 Apple2000 \ 1 AppleXtras /XTRAS.P8.NO.5/ =SHK3.DOCS.TXT TXT 44 5-APR-90 =SHRINKIT sys 81 3-MAY-90 =SHRINKIT.SYSTEM SYS 1 31-MAR-89 =PATCHERLS.SHK $E0 41 22-JUL-90 =ADDRSBK41.SHK SEO 27° +12-SEP-90 OTHELLO. SHK $E0 73° 12-SEP-90 /XTRAS.GS.NO.5/ =PRODOS sys 32 8-JUL-88 “BOOT. SYSTEM sys 1 6-JAN-90 TITLE $c1 65 12-SEP-90 =PROGRAMS, DIR 1 12-SEP-90 =GSHK103.SHK SEO 214 1-AUG-90 =FINDER.PATCH DIR 1 12-SEP-90 =FINDER.PIC $cl 65 27-MAY-90 =FINDERPATCHER2 $B3 245 27-MAY-90 =DESK.ACCS DIR 1 12-SEP-90 =BASERR.BXY SEO Sé 14-JUL-90 =RUNQ.V1.31.SHK SEO 82 11-AUG-90 =BASIC.CDA.SHK $E0 6 8-AUG-90 “GAMES DIR 1 12-SEP-90 =SENVO2 . BXY TXT 276 6-AUG-90 GRAPHICS DIR 1 12-SEP-90 VIEW. SHK SEO 13 5-AUG-90 =PICS32A.SHK SEO 174 +14-AUG-90 =PICS32B.SHK $EO 176 14-AUG-90 =PICS32C.SHK SEO 166 14-AUG-90 QAt the time of writing there has been no feedback from members about the issue of Xtras No. 4 and so! presume that all the teething problems of the Xtras System have now been overcome. I shall continue to use ‘shrunk’ files as a means of getting more onto the Xtras disks. The Shrinkit/NuFx archive protocol has continued to be developed by Andy Nicholas and the GS Shrinkit has modified the protocols to allow for the resource forks now being found on IIgs programs. As those who download programs from TABBS have found, some of these newer files will not unpack with the //e or Il+ Shrinklt. Included on the Xtras P8 disk No. 5 is the latest version of the //e Shrinkit program. This will unpack these newer files. It will not however unpack files having resource forks, but then these are of no use to a //e owner any way. ‘The P8 disk also includes the latest ‘official’ bug patching program for Apne was 3.0 to come from the authors Beagle Bros. they say will be the last patch, as all known bugs have now been cured. It is up to Claris to support the program from now on, and any further prob- lems that may arise. Users of AppleWorks 3.0 TimeOut modules will be in- terested toknow that A2-Central have just started a TimeOut- Central bi-monthly disk subscription. This 3.5-disk-based publication will be published every other month and will include the latest news, ips and tricks igh berber and ‘TimeOut. Actual examp! and files of course be included on the disks. Cost of 6 Issues (1 year) is $42, 12 issues (2 years) $81 and 18 issues (3 years) is $117. Costs include world-wide air-mail delivery. Check with the advertisement on Page 13 of this issue for the A2-Central address, « as Apple2000 /XTRAS.P8.NO.5/ All the files on this disk must be unpacked with Shrinkit from Xtras.P8.No.1 or Xtras P8.No.5 SH3.DOCS.TXT ‘Text file explaining how to use the Shrinkit files and NuFx system. SHRINKIT Shrinkit version 3.0.2 which allows type 3 NuFx files to be unpacked, It will not unpack any files containing resource forks ras files are specific to the be This version of Shrinkit is for the //e, the //cand the ligs only. You may run SHRINKIT directly from a program selector like ProSel or by running the file ... SHRINKIT.SYSTEM Boot file that will run SHRINKIT from ProDOS on boot or from Basic. PATCHER15.SHK Version 5, the latest and last of the official Apple Works 3.0 bug patches all the way from our friends at Beagle Bros. ADDRSBK41,SHK. A Basic p. phone numl included. OTHELLO.SHK The original and Classic game of Othello for the 40 column screen, that will keep tabs on your friends rs and addresses. Full instructions /XTRAS.GS.NO.5/ Programs Directory GSH103.SHK Version 1.0.3 of the GS specific archive program. This update fixes many bugs that were in previous versions and improves the user interface with separate source and target prefixes. Extract toa 3.5 disk and then copy the files using the Finder. FINDERPATCH2 You always wanted to customise yous copy of the Finder, now you can. Quit to the launch program, move folders to the desktop and many other features may be modified easily and quickly. Desk Accessory Directory BASERR.BXY A pair of CDA's that explain all those common and mysterious ProDOS and Basic errors. RUNQ.V1.31.SHK Extract to a 3.5 disk and copy the Run@ file to the SYSTEM.SETUP folder using the Finder. RunQ Iisa quick and easy way of launching programs without using the Finder. BASIC.CDA.S) Visit and work with Basic from any program running on the IIgs (ProDOS is inactive). Games Directory SENVO2.BXY See how you fare against the evil forces of our society in this topical and fast arcade game. Needs a joystick. Graphics Directory VIEW.SHK Viewer for the 3200 colour pictures, By a clever use of dithering and palette changes, these pictures appear to have many more colours than the 16 colour limit of the IIgs. PICS32A.SHK PICS32B.SHK PICS32C.SHK Three packed files of demonstration pictures to use with the 3200 picture viewer. « October 1990 ligs 3.5 - 5.25 Drive Spin Q We have mentioned a few times before the problem that can occur on the IIgs while using both 3.5 and 5.25 drives daisy-chained from the SmartPort. For noapparent reason the 3.5 and the 5.25 drive will suddenly start spinning together, the program will crash when a reset is made, the 3.5 drive willapparently disappear. US dealers were notified of the problem anda fix was available free. As the problem did not show on the Mac, no UK dealer was aware of the fix. Thanks to an anonymous donor, we now have a copy of the official Apple literature on the subject. Get round to your dealer fast and show him this article! It is from the 1988 Additional procedures Technical note. APPLE 3.5 DRIVE SPINNING PROBLEM In certain configurations a spinning problem may occur when Apple 3.5 drives and UniDisk 5.25 drives are HARD-TO-FIND, rom the daisy-chained and connected to an Apple lIGS. When this happens, one or more of the drives suddenly start to spin and can no longer be accessed. The problem only occurs on Apple 3.5 drives with Revision A daisy chain interface boards in the following con- figurations: * An Apple IIGS with one or more Apple 3.5 drives attached, and one or more UniDisk 5.25 drives daisy- chained to one of the Apple 3.5 drives. * An Apple [IGS with one or more Apple 3.5 drives attached, and a DuoDisk daisy-chained to one of the 3.5 drives, ‘The spinning problemis the result of electrostatic buildup within the cir- pei of the Revision A daisy chain interface board. This problem causes no permanent damage to the drive, and normal functioning returns if the system is powered off and back on. If an Apple 3.5 drive exhibits the spinning problem while in one of the configurations described above, replace the Revision A daisy chain interface board with a Revision B board. IMPORTANT: Do not replace the Revi- stonA board unless the has exhib- ited the spinning problem. Only when used in the configurations described above does the Revision A board have @ performance problem. To identify and replace the Revision A daisy chain interface board: 1. Place the Apple 3.5 Drive on the grounded workbench pad. 2. Remove the case. the external cable and shield, and the daisy chain interface board. (Take-Apart, if nec- essary). 3. Locate the part number on the gate array component (Figure 1, #1). ‘The gate array is located on the side of the chain interface board with- out a cable. Part number CXD1085A indicates a Revision A board, and part number CXD1085B indicates a Revi- sion B board. If the part number is CXDIO85A (1 1, #1), replace the Revision Aboard witha Revision B board. é llgs Batteries Land ad gs lots ack ol ie and ca ol panel setings, it means your bata iets vt mobectoard, seme deaees actualy want you to pay oe 4 mobarteard oxchange t fi fhe problem. Instead, Halo ub ad ora of ew replacements. No toldrng necessary. Kit indudes Ny campaieWhan Darya capita eaten NO-001 HOM Sde-On Bary fora $1495 Cheap 3.5 drives For months you've been asking us to carry Inerpannive 35 drives. For mont what yeutve wanted ‘ieply wort avalabe in a eve we coud support. A ow AMR has produced an 800K 3.5 chive thats Just Ie an Appia 35 at a Raton of Apple's 1429 price. Plugs In Rigs ole Pus ck hanyenain. Alco works on ale wits AMES ck cone o on your Macineh AM-001. AMA.3.5 drive $199.00 ‘AN-062 AMR 5 controlier for'le $59.00 Prosel 8 and 16 Proval a a comerobensive disk utlty package. Prose 8 works in the ProD0S 8 environment, Prosel 16 (inckudes Prosal 8) in the GSVOS environment of the ‘Agel ligs. Indudes Ble and disk copy and backup ilies, program salactr, scheduler, and mach mor, GB.001 Prose! 8 GB-002 Prosel 16 Stack Support ‘Stacks have arived in the Azria It kingdom and wera yout as a set of stacks ard distituiad on 3.5 disks, ‘Stach Central inches tr lates information on Arde Uieiness openers sibabanss aiated sounds, and samples of the best pubic domain shareware stacks wo can fd. Recuires SC-1 Stack Central, six 3.5 disks $42.00 HyperStudio HyparStudio is the first program to take full sdvaetage of the sound and graphics of tw Apele ligt. ‘Te HyparCard- thks, tor those of you tamiiar with fe ‘Macintosh, but cards can usa the Ail-color capatiites of ‘he figs ard no scrping language is required. You can (Goats stacks and add sounds by point and click. RW-005 HyperStudlo $129.00 ‘SCWH-1 Special HyparSuurto/Stack-Cantrat$ 139,00 Network Connectors Thase are Bho connectors you need te create an ‘AppleTalk network. Not only do they cost less than ‘Appla’s connectors, these work with inexpansive lsphone wie (ot supped) rater man Ate’ News and solutions ‘ce you ted of Apri fnonssant that only the Macintosh is a serious computer? people tke you subscribe to our manihly Apple Ii newsletter, A2-Cemtral. it's a small, ersonailzed publication concerned only with the ‘exchange of meaning lnormaon about tw Acrie IL bst 8 pages thn, each issu» is professional ypaset and packed tght with answers the questions Acie I sees around the world are asking. Irs punched for a ttwoe-ting binder, indexed wach February, and is considered by many te be the single most important inkermation resource in the Aggie Il wert. A.3.5 disk subscription is also available, which of fe ck i Med wit programs fom our subscribers, from our Btxary on GEnie, tach notes, system cisk ‘vpdates, and oer hot sat ANI A2Central, scons boa A2D1 A2Central, 35 disk, 1 yr ice Apple I books Wo camry in stack vinuty avery Book i print thats about fhe Appla Il From Addison-Wesiey’s Apple Technical Library © Sama manus 1p AppleWorks Ts and Techoiques, we have tam al ‘Wiki Tor out fe catalog or call and ask about the book you'r interested in, We also have in stock the sks for mary books. Full Set Specials You can get very iesue of A2-Cemtral we've over pxtfiched-Ave years werth of Apel Il fps, ticks, anc ‘tkutone te your problame-—tor Just £39. Paper back ‘eau ar bound and indiana Back eet on ck a8 for Afb-wert saarches using softeare such at FasDate Pro ard chute sx 35 caks-wol ove 4 manabyres of ‘rformaton, FS-N Indexed back issues, P80 Back iswe tocton 3 dete $38 FD-001 FastData Pro, for searches base |A2-Central Po Box 11250, Overland Park, KS. 66207 voice: 913-469-6502 tem# | qty | price Cl Send me your full catalog FREE! USA fax: 913-469-6507 arpansive, epacial cables. You nead one rein ‘cach compaame are pinion fe pater, — 0E-001 Moduitet 8-pln $H.95 0E-002 Modufet S-pin $4.95 pinpoint Stl INo Risk Guarantee! i you arent completely satisfied wh your purchase, retum the merchandise In its original package and we will A2-Central” Tuned sour mone ef. We Deck eur emda 4S-day unconditional Erloee are In U8. dolar. Al prlegs O Visa 0 MasterCard COOOL guaranter means you take tod Stee ree arc higping card number expiration dae 2 eee Sstuciaey poectpaba sere cherie, Pees cel dw ane OOOO October 1990 Apple2000 B ed App Stats & Graph Paul MeMullin graphically charts his data with an update on this dynamic duo of analysis programs APP Stats is a set of powerful statis- tical analysis programmes which has been available for Apple Il computers for a number of . Some readers may remember that it was reviewed by Mike Tickle in Apple 2000 (December 1988, p. 32). The statistical component of this new package (one side of the 5 1/4 floppy disk) seems to be essentially identical to that reviewed by Mike. We will not review it again, but there are some points about it which bear em- phasising before going on to look in some detail at the new graphics func- tions on the flip side of the disk. The Statistics. This is essentially the ProDOS ver- sion of APP Stats, and it will run on any Apple II with a compatible 80 column display. The programmes are written in good old Applesoft Basic and there is. no copy protection. Some of you are probably thinking “What's so good abouta programme written in that old- fashioned. slow. non-structured lan- guage ?". Well, the main advantage is that ifthe user does not like something about the programme, it's not a major job to change it. Let's look at some examples of this. It seemed totally unreasonable that a ProDOS-based programme should re- quire that the programme disk be maintained in Drive 1 during use. This anna ines epee mcalanT programme on fer capacity media. simply madea copy of the orieanal files, loaded trusty pro; e editor (PLE) and sot acliarake tne requked changes. Mireinirey M3 oa was find a programme lines whic! “,D1" ane remove it from them! Although this juired editing 55 lines spread over the 10 different programmes, it only took me 20 minutes to finish the job. I also changed line 1500 in FILE1 so that quitting from the main menu ex- ited to the PRODOS BYE routine rather than falling intoApplesoft. Many more changes are possible but be careful to make them only to copies of the files, not the originals. While the main programme has a limit of around 1500 data points, one writer in Open Apple (4.30), lains that the Beagle ‘Compiler acidilarge memory cards can greatly increase the WA wg capacity. The writer claimed that he could “do number crunching much easier than on a mainframe, and with the accuracy and speed ... that rival a mainframe”. I have not done it but I have every reason to believe that it is possible. Of course, for many users, the way the programme runs without any modification will be perlectly ad- equate. The manual for APP Stats is highly informative and has some useful tips in a number of anpendies: Itis nota text on statistics though, nor will use of this pr ¢ turn the user auto- matic into a statistician. Now fora few quibbles! Personally, I would have preferred to be able to select data files from a lst rather than type in a name. I would also have preferred to have the capacity to read data in DIF files, and directly in AppleWorks files. It can however sapets data quite efficiently in standard text files (and provides detailed instructions on importing data from AppleWorks). It has to be said that the look and feel of this see “how the other half lives”. The Graphs The reverse side of the disk ts all new to APP Stats. It is, in fact, a special edition of a business graphics pro- Es called “Magna Charta* which been adapted to read APP Stats data files directly. ‘The first thing which strikes the user about this programme is that it has a much more modern userinterface than APP Stats itself. It is text-based but relies heavily on pull-down menus similar to GS-OS. As always there is a price to pay. This pro; uires an enhanced Apple //e, a //corallgs. On first booting we start with a simple configuration module to identify the printer interface card and printer. One really nice thing about this programme is that the operator can use a mouse, the arrow keys or a joy-stick for navi- gating around the screen and choos- ing options. Ifall three are attached, it is possible to jump from one to the other at will. The mouse ts by far the ee rege wae 4 e Open. le forms some functions hich pcr le ecutally be expected of RETURN, and the Escape key does not always work when it should. The Closed-Apple or Option key is used in combination with other keys to by- pass the pull-down menus. Like APP Stats proper, the manual is well written and produced. Help screens are available when the menu bar is visible. Unfortunately it also resembles APP Stats in that the file names must be entered rather than selected from a list, although it is possible to scan volumes to establish the prefix. The data files are limited to a maximum of 400 data points (eg. 4 A PERSONAL VIEW OF MICROCOMPUTER UTILITY y 168. 1 133. L j 186. Yee. bi Res, i * KK 2 QQ YEAR Fig. 5 An area chart printed using rotation, double height and double strike. programme ts a bit dated, probably as a result of an attempt to maintain compatibility across the full range of Apple I's. It ts all text-based with full screen menus and selection by enter- ing a number. The reason for the sub- ide of this review is thal the two major components of this package look as different from each other as Batman and Robin. So now let's choose “Graphs” from the main menu, or sim- ply flip the disk and re-boot so we can Apple2000 columns by 100 rows. or 50 columns by 8 rows etc.). When opening a new file to enter data within Magna Charta it is necessary to specify the desired number of rows and columns. There seemed to be a problem with the fields for specifying the number of rows and columnson my ligs. Icould not change them from the default 20 X 20. I cone get around this by entering the data in APP Stats and importing in that format (in this case the number of rows and October 1990 AA PERSONAL VIEN OF MICROCOMPUTER UTILITY <r ax QV fpple II 8X28 uo MP B YEAR Fig. 4 A line chart printed using the double-height option. 7 FoR VEO MIRKOMUI TRY eh enbeet ee chart cheater Fig. 1 Simple coven re (histogeal using norm: POOR. VO NERO VIRIN Ms Fig. 2 Stacked columns using double strike printing. 7 PORDA Van MOKLDPURR TRY eae ae ae 5 Na ph using normal tis eine i is like a histogram placed on Its side. Note that the axis labels have not been swapped automatically. SPRL VO RRL VIAL columns are read from the file). Data files can also be imported as text files from AppleWorks (but I ran into the same problem with specifying the number of rows and columns). The data can be edited in a spreadsheet- like data display window. Ifyou need toentera fe volume of data you will probably prefer doing it in AppleWorks and expecting asa text file toAPP Stats and to Magna Charta. What about the graphs themselves? There are extensive functions avail- able tn pull-down menus which allow us to: O save data QOprint graphs in different ways OQ choose different graph types a modify axis and cai lines reat details of graph. Gast antremevetie ttle, legend and axis Qo pig als to re-draw, view and modify the graphs. The current settings are stored along with the data when a file is saved. To test these functions I entered some fictitious (or at least subjective!) data on the usefulness to me of two major types of microcomputer in the 80's. October 1990 The resulting graphs were printed very quickly (about 30 seconds for the standard mode) on my Panasonic KX- P1180 (emulating an Epson FX) and are shown in Figures 1 to6. Additional chart types which the programme can prepare but which are not shown are ; scatter chart, line and column chart, and pie chart. Here we have two powerful applica- tions in one package, one for statistics and the other for creating a variety of charts. They have very different user interfaces and integration between the two fs restricted to the importation of the statistics data files by the graphics programme. However anyone who has anenhanced //e, //corallgsandwho needs powerful programmes in these areas would do well to consider this package. U; and Availability pgrades for dating nee of App Stats and Graph can be obtained di- phe from the publishers in the States. peas cost $39 (plus $5 shipping dling). Overseas customers rae add $8 (Instead of $5) for Air Mail (insured) shipping and handling. Also available from MGA. Paul McMullin é Appie2000 TT TT ime kone veae Fig 6. A 3-D chart using normal printing. info Product : App Stats & Graph Publisher : Statsoft Available from : MGA SoftCat 41 Cinque Port Street Rye East Sussex TN31 7AD 0797-226601 Price: £115.85 WYSIWYP Value : ddd Performance : ede Documentation : éddd i” SoftCat Corner i” WEIRDEST APPLE Il PERIPHERAL YET? Ive just been sent “Calmpute”, a hardware/software package from Thought Technology of Montreal. Its a biofe ck stress monitoring device which with the included software “helps you reduce tension & experience deep relaxation”, (their words; not mine). ‘This wondrous bit of kit plugs into the game port on a |[+, //e, //¢, or UGS, then you connect your hand to the device and “that's where the fun begins”. Calmpute measures your level of tension through galvanic skin resistance, or more basically, the eer) & closing of the pores of the skin. There's even an included car game called ‘Calmprix’, which stimulates you but hopefully teaches you to stay calm under pressure. At *£99.00 I would guess that this is a tool more geared to private healthcare, or educational estab- lishments than your average Appler. [Apple 2000 reviewer required] CABLING TIP If you ever have to check the pin-connections on cables with female D-type connectors, you might find that your multi-meter’s probe is too large to fit into the socket. For years I've been pushing a short piece of wire into the socket then struggling to hold that and the probe together to check aconnection, - almost impossible when you've got to do the other end of the cable at the same time! The simple answer (as with most things) is to connect an unused solder plug to the female socket so that you now have easy access to the connections whatever the size of your probe... TEACHER'S MAG Although not Apple II specific, educators may be inter. ested in “Classroom Computer Learning”, an 8-issue per year magazine with a current USA readership of 80,000. As Apple Il is still the foremost educator's tool in the States, this is probably a good read for just $24.00 p.a. (add $8.00 for foreign shipping). To get your subs, write to: CLASSROOM COMPUTERLEARNING, 2451 East River Road, Dayton, OH 45439 USA. CROSS WORKING Today! was just about to redo my USA PriceList which has been an AppleWorks word-processor file for years, (we don't sell many products to America). I decided for no particular reason that it was time it was updated and given a DTP facelift. Now, I use TimeWorks Publisher (Publish-It!) on an IBM-PC in order to get cheap 300dpi output. I was going to fire up my DTP system and simply type in the few items and create a fancy layout. STOP! - I thought: what's with all this hype about con- pectivity: if you don't bother taking advantage of it? So, off the shelf came a copy of CrossWorks, the cable plugged into my IIGS modem port, and the other end into my PC/286 using three 2m M/F D-25 extension cables. I installed the PC & Apple CrossWorks software into both machines, ran them both up, selected the file & filetype at both ends, and whamo! It worked first time! AND, I hadn't even read the manual, nor needed to do any fancy serial port switch or jumper resetting, it worked flawlessly first time on the default settings! This is kind of software I like! I then simply exited CrossWorks at the PC machine, loaded my Publisher, created a frame, and imported the (was) AppleWorks file, and tarted the titles etc. up with large (and 300dp)) fonts. So now the CrossWorks cable is a permanent feature between my Apple & PC desks. Sue's tripped over it once, so Ive developed an ingenious solution; - I disconnect the cable halfway along & leave both ends under the tables! There's a high-tech solution for you... EASY DRIVING As an avid MouseDesk user, (yes, I'm still using it on my in Apple2000 IIGS}), I was pleasantly surprised (surprised is really the word!) when I decided to install EasyDrive onto my ProFILE (yes, I'm still using it on my IIGS)). Firstly, the intention was just to use it to replace my old Apple BackUp //, and to use ss Cocmnine feature to speed up access time on the ProFILE pie has been fragmenting files all over the drive unchecked years. But. after installation, I found I wasn't able to access my MouseDesk any longer, and in fact everything reverted to EasyDrive after quitting any application just as it used to revert to MouscDesk. Perturbed. I looked into this, and found that EasyDrive really does install itself rather than just being another application, and in fact does a bit of sneaky rei here & there so that it becomes your new ‘DOS Shell’. Not being partic clever is these depart- ments, I temporarily accepted the inevitable, and reinstalled all my applications which used to be selectable from my MouseDesk ‘Applications Run List’ as selectable from EasyDrive. This was child's play, and far easier to do than in MouseDesk. So now I have Saint hes aA as my hard disk front end and I'm ecstatic! It's much faster, cleaner, easier, and I just, well, love it, - there's no going back now... CHEAP IMAGEWRITERS-3 As promised. here is the latest info on this printer. Well, it seems that the Olympia NP-30APL is actually going to be available in 240v. The UK distributor saw my last mention in the August edition and called me to advise same. Pricing details are:- £345 (incl. VAT, for the base 240v unit, with serial & parallel ports plus the ImageWriter emulation ROM fitted, push tractor feed is fitted but it seems to be only adjustable for approx 8.5" paper - 2 oe want to use lup labels, you will need an additional pull tractor @ £51.75). A single sheet feeder is also available at £143.75. COMPUTERS & GENEALOGY Ifyou are interested in family history research & comput- ers here are addresses for two regular newsletters:- Met Ge, Computing”, Data Transfer Assocs, 5102 Pommeroy Drive, Fairfax, 'A 22032, USA (tel: 0101 703 978 3532). “Computers in Genealogy”, Society of Genealogists, 14 Charterhouse Bldgs., Goswell Rd., London EC1M 7BA (tel: 071-251-8799). EXTENDED ENHANCEMENT KIT The current model //e differs from the original model in two ways, firstly it is supplied as a 128K unit, as well as containing three different ROMs and an improved 6502 cpu. Most recent software requires this configuration, (a typical application is Publish-It!), and you can upgrade by buying two kits from Apple. The first is sewn as “Extended 80-Column Card", and thisreplaces the original “80-Column Text Card” and provides an additional 64K RAM as well as the 80-column facility and double hi-res graphics, (this is required for programs such as AppleWorks v3, BeagleWrite etc.). Apple currently lists this card @ £158.23 (P/No.661- 91097), and our fully compatible version costs just *£39,95, (recently reduced from *£49.95). The second upgrade is called “Apple //e Enhancement Kit" and it costs £69.00 from Apple, but just *£34.95 from MGA. For people wanting to run modern Apple // software we have created the “Extended Enhancement Kit” which con- tains both the Enhancement Kit as well as an Extended 80- Column Card, - price *£69.95. By my calculator I reckon that's a saving of £157.28... SLOTBUSTERS! Mentioned in apne Slices Jul'90 pp3/4, “SlotBuster* is a very useful multifunction card for the Apple ]| or //e or IGS which many members will not have heard of before. SlotBuster Il can be configured to have the following:- Apple Parallel Card-compatible printer port; Apple Super Serial- comipstiie modem & serial printer ports (both): speech synthesiser with speaker port; ProDOS/AppleWorks clock; October 1990 <64K buffer for serial, parallel or synthesiser ports; anda BSR-compat- ible electrical device control port (re- quires BSR Console). All this on a single card! Incredible? No, - but definitely pricey! The base card with 8K buffer & ASSC printer port costs *£149.95, then add these options:- Speech £39.95; Paral- lel Port £19.95; Modem Port £29.95; BSR Port £29.95, Clock £39.95; 32K Buffer £29.95; 64K Buffer £57.95, Parallel Cable £14.95, Serial Cable £11.95. In addition, there is the optional “SCAT” software for blind users @ £19.95, plus Manual” (in- cluding SCAT) @ £34.55, and “Apple- Works Companion” @ £39.95. This AppleWorks Companionis not the same as MGA's old AW-Companion. which was a collection of PD AWP/ADB/ASP files for AppleWorks. RC Systems’ opie Woke Com n is software which vis -impaired Apple II users full access to AppleWorks. It enhances the AW word-processor, database and 5; eet by provid- ingoral and full screen-review features, The companion automatically speaks important screen information, but the user can use any of the many new speech commands added to AW by the Companion to help use AW more effectively, (requires speech op- tion). LOWER CASE - BEATS UNDOING CASE As we are now selling Muse's SuperText Pro (STP) @ "£27.95, many {+ users have been tempted to buy this excellent word processor (which used to cost $175.00). STP works in 40- columns & requires a lower case adaptor (LCA), or in 80-columns with pe sppcopiate card, (or indeed ona / ec) The problem for some users has been that they just don't know whether or not they have a LCA fitted. To find out, you have to dismantle the Apple and check the ROM in location A-4/5/ 6 (ROM SPCL). If it is the standard Apple 341-0036, then no LCA is resent, and one would be needed to purchased to run STP, Well, to save all that messing about, here's a simple test program you can use to check if an LCA {fs present without opening the case:- 10 FOR X = 33 TO 127 20 PRINT CHRS (X); 30 NEXT X Ifan LCA Is installed and functioning correctly, you will see two lines of characters with both upper & lower case featured. This program is included on our *£4.00 DOS Starter Disk. for those uotarulise with entering & running Appl {t programs, which apart from giving you this test, also provides a short tutorial on how to run programs from DOS and other beginner topics, as well as programs to test various October 1990 cards and an Apple II model type tester, (advises ifyou all+. //e, //e with eciinced ROMs, //cw/UniDiskROM, ete.). you use either of these programs you can join Rod Nelson's great club and receive his newsletter each month for just $42.00 first year; $30.00 oe es (these prices are paid to The Apple Fontrix/Printrix Club (AFC) is a group of enthusiasts who have joined together for the exchange of knowledge and to help the novice and the experienced user alike with problems or ideas. Rod currently works for Broderbund after Data Transforms (who make Fontrix & Printrix) stopped Apple II development. Rod probably knows more about these two programs than any man alive. AFC, P.O.Box 13774, San Rafael, CA 94913-3774 (0101 415 898 9031). NEW PRINT SHOP CLUB With the (at last) eventual release of Broderbund’s new version of Print Shop, Rod Nelson has decided to start a new club called NAPSC. This will be similar to AFC but bimonthly to start. I only have domestic USA prices at present. ($35 first year: $20.00 there- after), but phoning should give you UK airmail prices. First issue is expected to start Sep/Oct'90. Yours with good cheer ...... Jon Gurr (Apple II Product Manager, MGA SoftCat) é New Kit AWPW 128K RAMcard *£79.95 Expands Apple ic AppleWorks desktop to 16K, Lowest- Peicod RAM uynrade for /Je AppleWorks in the world! Goes in shows 2/4/5. Fujitsu 3.5" Drive *£199.00 Now our standard 35° drive for Macs and UDC users. ‘Available in either buff or platinum to match your system, this ‘new extemal 800K drive ix ultra-thin and can be desk-mounted at, tikted up a the front, of even vertically to save desktop space. IGS Heavy-Duty PSU (AE) —_*£99.00 60w switchable 110/240v PSU to replace Apple's 38w unit, Providks *SvGw/ + |2v2a/-Sv0.Sa/-12v0Sa outputs. ImageWriter II Case (Page Bags) *£64.95 (Carry care available in black, grey, or navy. 8-Pin Gender Changer (MGA) £9.95 P/F unit conversy mym mini 8-pin DIN cable to avf. 8-Pin Data Switch (Data Spec) £39.95 [Connects onc computer to two printers or vice versa. Requires: ‘special straight-thru data switch cable (£6.95) plus twa standard nym printer cables, or 2 dita switch cables and one printer | cable 8-Pin Data Switch-4 (Data Spec) £49.95 AS above, but connects 1:4 0 4:1 Primo (Cirtech) £79.95 4M Multifunction memory expansion card for IIGS, uses 410000type DRAMs. Unpopulited at this peice. Add-on SCSI port Jor 2040Mts hard disk drives available soon! Internal Fan £24.95 For [fe or 1%, fits lovkke care and attaches 10 existing connector, Provides muchencciky cooling for card-crowded system, New Prices NewsRoom (Springboard) *£34.95 64K newsletter program - the only one for the II * Echo Il (Street Electronics) *£129.95 Spocch syndhesizer card for II. fe or IGS. Includes exemat speaker. Echo Is the longest-running and most widely-supported speech system for education and vamos. If it speaks, i's almost ‘sure to he Echo-compatible. An extemal //e version ls also available @ *£149.95. 256K RAM Upgrade £24.95 Set of 8 x 41256-1ype DRAMs for RAMworks, phn RAM etc. MGA SoftCat =] Me ce ie 41 Cinque Ports Street, Rye Prce*™" , Sussex TN3t 7AD IMb RAM Upgrade £69.95 ‘Set of 8 x 4100004ype DRAMS for phusRAM-16, and all 4M NGS boards. GS Cooling Fan £24.95 Lowest-over price - fits inside IIGS case to existing fan connector. DB Master 5 (StoncWarc) *£16.00 DBMS has gone shareware! Unbelievable but truc! Specify 5.25” or 3.5", includes 50 pages of self-printing documentation con disk, Shareware foe is just $4 if you decide to use it. The ‘grandaddy of all Apple 11 databases is finally made available at 2 peice tn suit all packers. NewsRoom Clip Art Vols.1,2,3 (Springboard) each £19.95 Lowest-over price. Use with Publish-It!3, Print Magic, News- New Software ProDOS-8 System Disk v3.2 (Apple) *£4.00 The new version of ProDOS has two bug fixes; « problem with | loading programs larger thao 38K and a problem with calling ‘the “Program Too Large” error message were fixed. As an enhancement, v1.9 will load an enhanced quit rouine that is insalied on enhanced 128K //e sysems (or j/e & IGS). For] these systems you get a mini-selector instead of the “Enter Prefix” and ~Pathname” messages. (About time too!) Basic System 14.1 has boon altered to force clearing the ‘previous contents of the pointer to the previous file position before setting the end.of-file. Previoutly a value remaining in the high byte could prevent setting the correct EOF. Bouncing Bluster (Fantasia Entertainment) *£9.00 ‘Arkanoid It clone for the 1GS. All the action at » lower price ‘Shareware Fee 100FFr or US$15.00. HandWriting Analyst (CIASA) *£69.95 \Oraphology system, Personal Publisher (Expert) Budget newsletter/brochure/poster maker, lochdes fancy fonts sand clip art. NOTE: This, and all following Exper ties require a 128K /fecG$. ALSO: Each Expert title inchudes disks for ‘Apple, Commodore-64, AND IBM-PC1! £14.95 MGA SoftCat Tol: 0797-26601 [fax: 206721] GA % < Apple2000 NiLy’. WLF4-F Pearse 1ZED UPER DOGFIGHTER An arcade game for the llgs reviewed by Dave Ferris Introduction “How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown?" How many arcade games start off with quotation from Shakespeare (Cassius in Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1). Silpheed does. Silpheed is from Sierra On-Line by Game Arts, who also pro- duced Thexder. It is a Shoot-em-up- in-Space arcade e in the classic style for the Apple //GS, complete with musical accompaniment. It comes on two 3.5" discs, a boot/ Baa disc and a data disc. When ted from foppy it requires 512K. However if you have a hard disc and 760K the contents of both discs can be installed on the hard disc and launched from the finder. This is preferable, since the program is large and takes a good 2-3 minutes to load from floppy. If RAM ts no a then copy the program toa Ram Disc and get the title screen in 17 seconds. ‘The discs are not copy protected, but a tedious form of, areas is enforced by requirin; u to identify an enem cat from thes recognition chart in the manual before the game can be played. I do not understand the reasoning behind this, since the chart can be easily copied by anyone intent on mak- ing illegal copies of the program! The game may be played with either controls or nfeystick. butI'm certainly too ham fisted to manage it without the joystick. The Game Silpheed starts up, after the above quotation, with a complex introduc- tion with wire frame animations, remi- niscent of Elite, while playing one of the 9 original musical scores that ac- company all core of the game, Ifyou are patient can sit through the entire introduction (which is worth it at least once) you will then move on to the demonstration game play. For the less patient, hitting any key during the introduction or demo will take you to the start of the game proper. .. It is fast and furious and as addictive as all the bestarcade games. Here you are challenged by the talk- ing head of Xacalite, who has stolen the Unions new battleship Gloire, only ae in the protot SA-08 Super jogfighter Silpheed stand a chance of Apple2000 defeating him Battle is joined with the enemy forces in a seemingly endless stream of looping, swirling craft with assorted weaponry and tactics. At some levels you can collect extra attributes by collecting letter tiles (ala Arkanoid) released by zapped Golan cargo pods, which look like ordinary asteroids. These give you additional firepower, speed, extra shield power and other useful things. There are 20 levels to fight and navi- gate through, in space, al planets, inside a space fortress and in anaster- oid belt. Only when you have survived all these do you get to the final conflict with Xacalife aboard the Gloire. After each level you rendezvous with one of two tenders for repairs, replenishment of shield energy and to choose the weapons for the next level. What is available is dependent on your score, but care is required to select the right weapons for each level. You only have one ship to play with, when that gets destroyed the game is over, select carriage return to start again, shift-9 [ (] to restart at the last level achieved or shift-0 [) ] to load the highest level achieved. If you have finished playing, donothing afterGame Over, and you will be presented with the end title theme over credits that wouldn't look out of place at the end of a movie. Documentation The package contains a 16 page booklet with a short scenario to intro- duce the game, instructions for load- ing and playing. including a few useful hints (not enough for me though). It also has some ‘technical data’ on some of the friendly and enemy craft and a centrespread with the recognition chart that you need to start the game. Also included on a separate sheet are the pee for installation on a hard Conclusion I was able to sample the program in the shop before I bought it, but I knew, as soon as It started up, that I had to have it. I think it is probably worth it just for the music alone, which is ‘tter than shy ciber games I have tried. It can turned off with a keyboard command, otherwise it will continuously accompany all levels of play, not that this detracts in any way from the game play itself. It is fast and furious and as addictive as all the best arcade games. I have to admit here that this review cannot be complete since I haven't managed to get anywhere near the higher levels so far, this is a pity be- cause levels 6, 11 and 16 start with Cartoon Sequences. This game is no pushover and you can'tslowitdown by switching the processor speed to Nor- mal, that disables the joystick - Rats! I guess I'm just going to have to keep practising. Often. Dave Ferris é October 1990 nein ENHINE DAMAGE LEFT VERPON SELECT WERPOn RIGaT wenPon info Product : Silpheed Publisher : Sierra On-Line Inc. Available from : MGA SoftCat 41 Cinque Port Street Rye East Sussex TN31 7AD 0797-226601 Price: £29.95 WYSIWYP Value : eéded Performance : éeddd Documentation : edged October 1990 Personal Skills (Expert) £14.95 Includes Typing Tuwor, Memory Builder, Decision Maker, and ‘Spood Reading Twwor, Personal Finance (Expert) £14.95 More than just a chequebook balancing vystem, PF provides expense reports, income statements, trial balance, & more... ‘Moncy Power (Expert) £14.95 A systems for assessing loans & savings and much more, Disk Tool (Expert) £14.95 ProDOS utilities for day-to-day wse, like formatting & copying disks, making & renaming subdirectories, copying fils etc. Shows you what oo cach disk & even prints a listing to keep with dhe disk, PC Protection (Expert) £14.95 Hardware diagnostics system for 128K //ecGS pilus useful disk tities MultiColour Graphics GS155_ * £4.50 Compatible with Print Shop GS, Labels-Labels-Labels, und Publish-tt!3, Contains 100 colour depicting sports, hobbics and games. Price is for 3.5", a double-sided 5.25" versiou is also available for £5.00. New Clearance Prices ‘Apple //c Clone (Taiwan) *£199.95 This brand-new 64K unit is ideal as a second machine for AppleWorks or similar. Included in the price is a IMb RAMworks-compatible S0-columa 4 memory expansion card (with 256K). A real bargain at this incredibly low price. (Ooe aly) Publish-It! v1 (TimeWorks) £39.95 True DTP for 128K /JocGS at a price that makes sense. AppleWorks v1.2 w/PlusWorks *£89.95 lacrodible baryain! Now you can gut AppleWorks for the Jf at 4 fraction of the 1988 price. Provides spreadsheet, word- Provewor and database all in one, Now's the time to throw your Visicak & Apple Writert AppleWorks v2 *£99.95 128K Sysem for /JecGS users incorporating new mailmerge feature for p