Apple 2000 Vol 7 No. 2 1992 04 BASUG GB

THE NATIONAL APPLE USERS GROUP . APRIL 1992 | Apple2000 © Introducing the new Claris Office Because no office is complete without a database. An office without a database is like collecting the finest jewels, then putting them ina jacket with holes in the pockets. Not to be recommended. So when we produced Claris™ Office, we decided to help you keep track of your valuable information. And get to it whenever you wanted. ‘That's why we included FileMaker™ Pro. The number one database manager for the Macintosh. Because no office is really complete without a database. Claris Office also puts together MacWrite™ II, the essential Macintosh word processor; Claris Resolve™, the spreadsheet for visible results; MacDraw™ Pro, the powerful graphics standard for the Macintosh; and CE Software's QuickMail™, the leader in Macintosh electronic mail The new Claris Office has been designed in the same way as all Claris products — to evolve with you into greater power, without losing touch with the simplicity that makes them a joy to use. And understand. Se & Here’s how you can save £485.00 software must be purchased separately, All prices exclude VAT, The complete Macintosh 0 ry ad Claris Office jvity solarion: ofice print FileMaker Pro. £225.00 Claris Resolve © 275,00 MacWrite ll £175.00 MocDraw Pro & 325.00 CE’s QuickMailt £ 80.00 Total £1,080,00 Claris Office £595.00 Total Savings £485.00 CLARIS Simply powerful software” We call it “user centric.” It means the software works for you. Not the other way around. Which means a product family with a friendly and familiar feel. And consistency. Like comprehensive on-line help throughout, Which can even be customised to suit your own company standards. And spell checkers which all share the same dictionary. So when you personalise one, you personalise them all. What's more, the transparent translation built-in with Claris’ XTND technology offers a multi-platform mix providing read/write compatibility with over 50 Macintosh, PC, mini and mainframe file formats. So buy Claris Office for only £595 today from your nearest Claris Authorised Dealer. That's an immediate saving of £485. Upgrade to Claris Office from selected Claris products for just £445. Or trade up from other selected products for just £495. For a full upgrade and trade-up product listing, and to receive our Free Claris Catalogue containing a collection of other outstanding product offers, call us on Freephone: 0800.929005 in the UK, or 1800.732732 in the Republic of Ireland. April 1992 Apple2000 The All Apple User Group Committed to All Apple Users including Macintosh The Apple2000 magazine is published by Apple2000, P.O.Box 3 iverpool , L21 8PY can handle any disk size or format. le2000 v: | , 1 MUG NEWS SERVICE Advertisers’ Index MEER CONTENTS April 1992 « USER GROUP CHHHTHH Chairman's Comer Ewen Wannop 2 Letter Box 3 Contact Information and Contacts 10 e Applckires ProDOS 8 and Ilgs 12 Points What New A What's New in System 6.0? Tim Swihart 4 Jam Session —a review Dave Ferris 21 Administration: Irene Flaxman Science Toolkit — a review Jeff Clayton 23 Wane 20h rt Ultimate Words — a review Peter Stark 24 egage Gt) DAD LGA Hard Times Dave Ferris 26 Tips for DTP Phil Shapiro 27 Apple II Hotline: Dave Ward Apple II History Steven Weyhrich 29 Wiaded OUND Tatra Ty Fun + Games Peter Kemp 37 lieve iia wehin Aqua Blooper Piper — a review David Tointon 38 PGA Golf —a review David T Macintosh Hotline: John Amold CD-ROM Update Pou Keaaeh rH Wesitate Gi sepsis Odds ‘n' Ends Elizabeth Littlewood 44 odhanesitea| whe nt) MacChat Norah Arnold 48 bh Finder 7 Apple Computer 47 TABLES: Ever, Sr annop SYSOP CanOpener — a review ‘Terry Cymbalisty $1 AppleLink: BASUG.1 NewLife 2— a review Dick Menhinick 52 Macs at Jacksonville Apple Computer $4 Raviders: Biisabett Littlewood Macintosh VRAM Expansion Kit Apple Computer 55 Voice 0652 678 S66 calenDAr—a review Terry Cymbalisty 56 Collaborative Computing Apple Computer $7 Local Groups: John Lee Omnis 7 —a review Bill Pearce 58 Wena (7h Geri New Version XTIND Apple Computer 62 PowerBundle / Newsletter Cartoons T/Maker press releases 63 TimeOut & ProSel: Ken Dawson SuperMac & Daystar SuperMac press releases 64 (hil 4a ae Internal Disk Arrays MicroNet press release 6S Ethernet Adapters for the Mac Sonic Systems press release 65 AppleWorks: John Richey Apple News AppleLink 66 WETS WE ae HandiWorks / NetOctopus MacVonk press releases 68 Macintosh Client Support under OS/2 Miramar press release 69 Apple2000 supports users of all ISDN Interface for USA Apple Computer 70 the Apple computers. The ITT 2020, Apple in CIS Apple Computer 71 1, I, lis, //e, //c, //e+, Ugs, Ugs+, Macintosh Inside Out — book reviews John Amold 72 ///, Lisa, XL, Mac 128, 512, VIRTUS WalkThrough — a review John Amold 74 MacPlus, Classic, Classic II, SE, LabVIEW PID National Instruments press release 76 SE/30, Mac LC, I, Hsi, Hex, Hci, More Disk Space Alysis Software Corp. press release 76 IIx, IIfx, Quadra, Portable and AppleXtrns Mac 14 77 PowerBooks Mac Library 7 Contributions and articles for the Claris Office Claris press release 78 maj ne are always welcome. We SerialWay — AppleTalk Remote Access International Transware press release 79 Members’ Small Ads. 80 80 Send to PO Box 3, Liverpool, L21 8PY PLEASE NOTE Any articles of specific interest to Apple Il, Apple gs and Ne /// users are printed in the front half of the magazine, while those relating to the Macintosh and Lisa are at the back. 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 Trene on (hii #iittitiiiat® (Ansafone during, 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. Look for the page icons: the day). Alternatively you can Fax. your We reserve the right to publish, without a Key: order to @fiii-BHiB/ME? or write to the PO prejudice, any advice or comments given Apple Il, //e and //c Box. If you use comms you can leave orders to members as a result of letters received, =} pe on TABBS addressed to the SYSOP or in the journals of Apple2000. Apple /// comtactus cnr Applel Bie BSUS), Allittle praise for a few of our authors Apple IIgs If you are experiencing problems with wouldn't go amiss. Send all comments, Apple hardware or software Dave Ward and John Amold run the Hotlines and will try and help you solve it. and contributions, via the PO box, especially suggestions about what you would like to see in your magazine. 8 Macintosh, Lisa @ a Macintosh II Chairman's Corner Apple2000 1980-1992 Q The March batch of new Macintoshes has just been unveiled. The LC II is now available fitted with the 68030 chip instead of the current 68020. The old 68020 LC seems still to be on the price lists however at a new reduced price. A new price structure also brings the prices down yet again on all the low end Mac's. A Classic with a 40mb hard disk drive can now be bought for the price of the hard drive alone a short time ago. The special bundled prices of Classic, LC and StyleWriter which we saw in early January has now been dropped with the new price structure. The launch of the LaserWriter II NTR seems to have taken the wind out of the sales of the Personal LaserWriter NT. There will be an upgrade path we think. The round of new machines, drop in prices and up- dated specifications seems now to be an annual event. Whether Apple can sustain it we shall have to see. What is very clear of course is that the Apple II is now firmly and irrevocably dead in the UK and Europe. It has had a good run for its money with 15 years of evolution to its name. It will still be available in the States, but it would be a costly exercise to bring one back for home consump- tion. I can only hope that those still left working here in the UK will have a long life ahead of them. Q Many of you have commented on the lack of articles for the Apple II in recent issues. We have had a real problem getting material that is new, fresh and UK written. It seems that of the many members who can write about such things they have either moved on to other fields or just do not have the time to write any longer. We have had to resort to reprinting material from the other side of the pond. This however has given us the fascinating in- sight into the Apple II development in the series of articles on Apple History in this issue. There was not room to include the full set this time and so the remainder will have to wait till a future issue. System 6.0 for the IIgs has finally arrived. Apple got as far as mastering and distributing a first set of 'Golden Masters’, but had to withdraw them rapidly when a seri- ous bug was discovered in the DOS 3.3 FST. An interesting problem has arisen over the inclusion of CloseView with the new System software. CloseView patches QuickDraw as the system boots. Any program which decides to write directly to the SHR screen may well discover the ‘erasing cursor' syndrome if it incorrectly writes directly to screen without first checking where the screen is! Apple carefully warm programmers about the need to check the location of the screen, but only now has this warning had a real meaning! The solution is simple if you know what the problem is! Ewen Wannop « ple 2000 STOP PRESS GS/OS System 6.0 arrives ! U The complete set of six disks making up the new GS/OS System 6.0 are now available from the Apple2000 library. The set is priced at £20 inclusive of VAT and P&P. Order as disks numbers 2GS060 through 2GS065. Although System 6.0 can be mun on a basic 1.25mb computer, it is advised that you have at least 1.5 or 2mb for the system if you are going to run any amount of desk accessories or other Init's. Similarly it is advised that you run the system from a hard disk. A complete system disk can be built on a floppy, but you will not be able to use all the features without a hard drive. System 6.0 allows you to use both ProDOS and HFS disks as read and write storage media. It will also read DOS 3.3 and Pascal disks. It supports both 800k and 1.4mb HD disks in the Apple SuperDrive connected to the new 3.5 inch floppy controller card. This card cannot be obtained directly through Apple dealers in the UK. « (- >) ( The Editorial team is: ») Apple II Ewen Wannop Macintosh Norah Arnold, Irene Flaxman Reviews Elizabeth Littlewood 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 go to Val Evans for designing our front cover, and to Walter Lewis of Old Roan Press (051-227-4818) for our printing service. Apple2000 are Founder Members and Wholehearted Supporters of the Apple User Group Council Annual subscription rates are £30.00 for UK residents, £35.00 for E.E.C. residents and £40.00 for other overseas members. Apple2000™ is a trading name of BASUG Ltd, a non-profit making independent company limited by guarantee. The contents of this journal are copyright of BASUG Ltd and/ or the respective authors. Permission is granted fornon-commer- cial reproduction providing the author and source are properly credited and a copy of the relevant journal is sent to BASUG Ltd. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the various contributors, 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. Tle Apple Slices newsletter is published in the intervening months. The copy date ts the 1st day of the month preceding publication. Advertising rates are available on request. ‘Apple™ and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Compu- ter Inc. Macintosh™ is a trademark of Macintosh Laboratory Inc and used with the express permission of the owner. Telecom Gold™ is a trademark of British Telecom plc. Apple2000™, Apple Slices, AppleXtras, Mac2000 and The FORCE are trademarks of BASUG Ltd. Prepared using Aldus PageMaker™ 4,0, MicroSoft Word™ and Claris MacWrite™ under System 7.0 using Adobe™ Stone. \ y) S April 1992 Bd From: John Stanier, 100010,2611 To: Apple2000, 76004,3333 Subject: Mac II Power Supplies Ewen, In the last few weeks I have left a couple of messages on Compuserve Mac New Users and Help Forum asking for information on the wiring and component changes to cure this d...d fault of failure to switch on. You will be amused at the only three replies:- 1. If you find the solution, be sure to let me know, for I've the same problem. 2. Why bother to switch off at all? Mine has been running for two years nonstop. | replied that my cat sneaked up to sleep on the monitor when my back was tured, doing the ventilation a power of no good if the machine was left on. And leaving a Mac II on costs around 300 pounds a year in electricity charges. 3. You must have a faulty power pack. 1 am heartened by the replies. There ARE people around who know less about computers than me! But I still haven’t the information. John Stanier QO The solution to your long running problem seems to be just as far away as ever. It is a good idea to leave the computer ‘on, butyou do not need to leave the monitor on as well, the cat will just have to find somewhere else to sleep! Ewen Wannop é a When Apple introduced the Macintosh, a new and simpler method of using a computer was revealed to the public. Instead of having to type an incomprehensible series of characters to open some function or other, the Mac needed just a few clicks with the mouse, and, lo and behold, up comes the function or file. With the much hyped arrival of System 7, Apple have taken a couple of steps backward, and seem to have gone out of their way to make use of the Mac as difficult as possible. A friend hazarded a guess that, now that Apple and IBM are in the same bed together, Apple are trying to switch everyone to a standard operating system with Windows on a PC. I know that the hype on System 7 flaunts all the bells and whistles alleged to be on the new system, but what actually happens in practice? Tedit, print (and largely write) a small Club Magazine which goes out to our tiny but world-wide membership, and I'store the Current issue of mixed text and illustrations page by page as it is prepared in a folder on a removable disc on my Mac Ilcx. i.) From: John Stanier, 100010,2611 To: Apple2000, 76004,3333 Subject: System 7 and All That 3 When I switch on - a task which can take up to ten minutes since no-one has yet described how to cure the standard IIcx problem of “I won't switch on” - I double click the ‘Removable disc’ icon to open the disc. If | double click the required folder, it doesn’t open, and T have to Double Click on the program in the Apple menu or wherever it is. This brings up the list of folders on the Start- up disc which used this and I scroll through the drives to pick up the removable disc.This brings up the list of folders on the removable disc which used this program. I scroll down the list and Double Click on the selected folder. The folder opens and a list of files within the folder is displayed. I scroll down the list to select the page I want. If I then need a file prepared under another program, I have to go back and open that program on the Apple menu or wherever before I can access the file, even though it may be in the same folder. That makes a minimum of ten mouse operations to get the first page on the screen and another eight to access an alternative page. By contrast, System 6 needed only five mouse opera- tions to do the same job, and a file prepared under any program is available with just a Double Click without having to find and open that program. Trying to open a CD folder can be a nightmare, for the program reports insufficient memory, when I have 4MB RAM, 8MB HD and 33MB RD free. Works all right under system 6. Iam sure that the experts can manage to chart a way through the maze which is an easier path than I have to use, but the Mac was supposed to be a computer for the layman. John Stanier QI agree with you that things have got more complex with System 7.0, but I think this is outweighed by the advantages that it brings. I now have 14 Macintoshes of various flavours in the college where I work. Two of these are IIcx’s. We must have been lucky because they always start up fine. What I have done to make the life of the student easier, is to make an alias of all the programs on the hard disk, then edit these down to a sensible description of the program, and put them all into the Apple Menu Items folder. With one mouse drag and click the program is launched. If the program is not on this list, then a ‘Command F’ brings up the Find box. I can type ahead as the box is coming up and enter a partial name of the program | want. If the program is around on any of the hard disk directly attached, or even on another computer mounted on the network, then the folder is opened in front of my eyes and I can double click on the program icon to run it. All this is under MultiFinder so I don’t need to put away any program I am using, just Hide it from view to run the next one. This is only one command, some typing and a double click. Faster than System 6.0 I think. The advantage of having AppleShare built in to Sys- tem 7.0 means that if I need to service the 14 Macintoshes to remove the files that students love to litter around the folders, all I need to do is to find the nearest unused one, mountall of the others on the desktop through AppleShare and then open the folders one by one and clean out the garbage. All this while the other 13 are in full use! While I was doing this one day, a student sitting next to me asked where a file was she had saved earlier that day. I realised she must have saved it on one of the other computers, but which one she could not remember. As I had all of the computers mounted on my desktop, I used the Find command with a partial name and found the file a 4 across the network in seconds. I then dragged the icon from the open folder I saw on my machine to the icon of the computer she was using. She was happy, and got on with her work without any further delay. These are some of the advantages, the disadvantage is of course the cost of all the extra memory we had to buy! ¢ Dear Apple2000, Ewen Wannop ImageWriter Il Colour Printing Problems When I attempt to print in colour from a Macintosh Ilsi the result is hopeless; few of the colours bear any resem- blance to those on the screen and shades of grey are not even reproduced - see attached sheet. The colours that are reproduced are not very even but by its nature, I suppose, one cannot expect a ribbon printer to do any better. The same printer was used with an Apple Il GS and produced colours that did have some resemblance to the screen colours, and also printed shades of grey. Is there any way of getting results from the Mac that are as good as those from the IIGS? I believe it was mentioned in the October issue of the magazine that a review of DeskWriter C would soon be pub- lished - when will this be? Also, is there likely to be a review of COLOURJET 132? The only place, other than Apple2000, where I have seen this printer advertised, or even mentioned, is in Electronics World. If any members have a ColourJet 132 | would be interested to know what they think of it. Ron Perkins Douchapt France OI cannot give you the answer you really want to hear but can make some observations from seeing the sample sheet you sent. 0 FIND UNIQUE PRODU most reputable fax/phone/mail ord Stack Support Stacks have amiadin he Acie kingdom ard ware ligs Batteries When yout ligs loses wack of tima and cant tamamber your cone panel setings, it means your ‘tary is Gad. Since the Bigs batwry is sokdered the ‘moterboad, some deakers ackty want you to pay fr ‘a motherboard exchange to fx fh problem. Insoad, 15 cat ty complet instalation patticaton about Yea 35 a set ol sacks and dstibuied on 3.5 disks. ‘Studio Clty hades he latct normation on Ap i hypermeda developments, authoring tps, dp art and sounds, and campos of fhe beet pubic domain and shareware stad we can led, Regquees HyperStudo, S-1 Studio City six 3.5 disks $48.00 HyperStudio HyperStudio is the tist program to take full avaniagp of the sound and graphics ol Agee igs ts HyperCard.tka, for hose ot you familar wit the Macitosh, but cards can use fhe hil-colarcapabites of the lips and no scr language bs required. You can eae stacks and add sounds by point and ck RW-005 MyperStudio Ver.3.0 $125.00 Network Connectors Thats are the connectors you need to create an AppleTalk network. Not only do they cost lass than Apple's connectors, thase work with inexpensive telephone wire (not supplied) rather than Apple's frpansive, special catfes. You need ane connect for ‘each computer arc printer on te network E001 ModuNet 8-pin E002 Moduftet 9-pin wont | Stide-On Battery forligs $14.95, Cheap 3.5 drives For months you've been ashing us to carry smerpansive 35 drves, Fer months what youve wanted simply wasrit avalate ina chive wo coud support. But row AMA has produced an 800K 35 ote thats just he an Appia 35 at a hacton of Appie's $429 price Pgs nb Igs or Pus dick daychan. Alka works on a le wih ANTS ck conta ofan your Macias AM-001 AMR 355 drive $189.00 ‘AM-002 AMR 35 controtier for lle $59.00 Prosel 8 and 16 Protalic a comprehensive dik Proval & works in the PreDOS 8 environment, Prosel 16 (indudes Prosel 8) in the GS'OS environment of he ‘Apple ls. Indudes Ble and disk copy and backup lle, program select, schadkse and much mere, GB-001 Prose! 8 $40.00 GB-002 Prose 16 $85.00 54.95, $4.95 No Risk Guarantee! 11 you arent completely satisfied with your purchase, return] Resource Central” %,™eshandise In its original package and we will al refund your money In full. We back our products! Our ‘4Sday unconditional guarantee means you take no risk| on any product you buy from us. 8 Apple 2000 Those of us who own or remember the old ImageWriter or DMP printer will know that it was able to produce a more even printing of flat blacks than the newer colour ImageWriter II. This explains the poor greys on the colour chart, they are no worse than I would expect from the ImageWriter II. As to the colours themselves, there are of course only three colours on the ribbon to print all the colours that you can have. The sheet you have printed from ClarisWorks seems to have made no effort to dither the printing. It has simply printed flat colour giving no subtleties of tone at all between the whole range. I would not expect it to look anything like the screen when printing like that. You found the IIgs printed with truer colour. The IIgs usually prints using a colour dither technique. Although this method reduces resolution, it improves the colour range you can get. The IIgs screen is lower resolution than a Mac anyway, so this usually does not matter, I would expect that you might get quite different results using different types of programs on the Mac, with better colour traded for resolution in the paint programs. The DeskWriter C review has of course been published in the February magazine. It was not possible to print any of the test results in colour, but I found that colours varied from good to poor depending on the program that was used. The best were very near the screen colours, albeit flatter and greyer, the worst were way out. I have seen the Colourjet in operation and was not impressed. It was not as good as the DeskWriter C for many things, though as for others. I think itis worth looking at, though I found its main disadvantage was the lack of proper paper tray as it seems to prefer pin feed paper like a dot matrix printer. We have no plans to do a review on this printer at the moment, but perhaps there is a member using one who would like to send us a review. Ewen Wannop ¢ 1S FOR APPLE II ENTHUSIA T: oo Il books We cary in sock virualy every book i print acs about the Apple Il. From Addison-Wesloy's Apple ‘Technical Library © Same Computertects manwals 1a Apple orks Tips and Techniques, we have thorn al Wenn for our fe catalog o eal and ack about the book you're interested in. We also have in stock the ‘accompanying dicks for many books. Full Set Specials You can get every issue of AZ-Central we've over ‘ubiistedfve years worh of Aoce Il fos, wicks, ard solutions to your problems-tor just $39, Paper back Issues are bound and indexed. Back issues on dik ae for tibtost searches uring solware such as FastDais ro and include on 3.5 ccks-wll over 4 mogabyies of inbomaton, News and ponrtians ‘Ae you tre of Accte Computers noessart messape thal only the Macintosh is a serious computer? Thousands the you subscribe Bou monty Apple Il newsletter, A2-Cemtral. It's a small, personalized publication concerned nly with the three-ring binder, indexed each February, and is considered by many 10 be he single most important \nfrmasn resource in tw Ages word ‘A355 dish subscription is also available, which lndudes both a papa newsleter and te ful txt of fat Issue in a dk Ne fr Mbioxt searches, The comainder cl the dich is Bad wih programs tom our subscribers, trom our Recary on GEnie, tech notes, system disk Updates, and ofr hotel FS-N Indexed back issues, paper $43.00 AQNI AZCentrat, pay $34.00 FSD Back issue text on 3.5 disks $49.00 A2D1 A2Central, Sak hy $90.00 FD.001 FastDals Pro, for searches $49.95 [Resource Central PO Box 11250, Overland Park, KS. 66207 voice: 913-469-6502 item# , qty , price USA fax: 913-469-6507 CO Send me your full catalog FREE! name. ar O Visa CO MasterCard A ond ‘Stack- ra sur wane ahi ‘card number ee) mer expictiondae [LT] Pepornclles neste nn Mi o April 1992 Largs Ayrshire Dear Sir, I use a HP DeskWriter C printer with a Mac Ilsi. | am having trouble printing from certain applications. ScanMan 2.1 - The following message appears when I try to print anything: ‘A printer error occurred: No Printer is selected’ Digital Darkroom 2.0 - The system hangs (wristwatch forever) when I try to print anything. Prior to printing, clicking the Image Information button gives a Printed Image Size about 14.6 times what it should be. I use a Mac IlIsi running under System 7.0. The DeskWriter C (Serial) driver is version 1.0. Is there a new version of the DeskWriter C driver available which will solve this problem? 1.G.Dalgleish QI don’t know precisely which version number they are now up to with the DeskWriter C drivers, and cannot find mention in the extensive notes included on disk of these particular problems. I would suggest getting in touch With Hewlett Packard to see if they have a solution. Hewlett Packard Ltd., Cain Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1HN, Tel: 0344 360000 Editor ¢ Dear Irene, This letter is being typed using Word 4 not on a Mac but on an Atari running the Spectre GCR Mac emulator, and printed on a Panasonic 24-pin printer using a custom printer driver and ATM. Not great results, particularly with serifs, but the set-up is on the whole better than a Mac Plus and it lets me bring work home. I would be interested to know of anyone else in this user group with similar equipment—as you can imagine, fairly unique problems arise from time to time! Dave Woods « Dear Sir Although I use an Apple //e, and sometimes a II+, for most “serious” matters, I also use a Cambridge Z88 be- cause of its portability and versatility. I have not yet seen described a method of getting text files from the 2788's “Pipedream” program into the //e or, less importantly for me, the other way round. I feel that it should be a simple matter; can anyone help? As a user of the Apple II range since the early days and my main concem has been the creation of BASIC pro- grams for my own business use. The early parallel printers only had one Character Set and were driven without much complication by an Apple Parallel Printer Card. However modern dot matrix printers now have two character sets which are selected by the value of bit 7 of the output byte. Often, as with my Citizen LSP10, the alternative set is italic type; however some printers offer foreign characters and graphic shapes. From BASIC, the Apple Il and //e always output text with the high bit set, consequently you do not get the print that you want. oS Beeston Nottingham Bolgam Street CAMPBELTOWN 5 The Apple Parallel Card, unlike some others, such as the Simon Computers “Aristocard”, does not offer a method of tuning the high bit off. Some printers make a gesture of meeting the problem even if they get the situation com- pletely wrong: my Citizen manual claims that the Apple II output has its high bit off and provides a method of turning it on! 1 originally overcame the problem by butchering the Apple Parallel Card and earthed the line for bit 7. This worked perfectly until I tried using commercial programs such as “Publish-It” that require the use of bit 7. After having a discussion with David Ward on “Hotline” I tried to find a software fix and have come up with the following relatively simple solution under ProDOS BASIC. Lines 10 to 60 of the following demonstration program should be run at the start of or before the main applica- tion program and not again. It initialises a printer in Slot 1 and then redirects the output for future printer output to a six byte machine code program in PAGE 3 of the Apple's memory. If page 3 is going to be used by another routine then the value of the variable P in line 10 should be changed to any location where there are 6 spare bytes. It cannot be used as it stands in DOS 3.3 because the command “PR#1,A768” is not supported: a slightly more involved routine would have to be written. Control I commands do not always work as expected if included in the main program so Control I 255N has been included in the printer initialisation in line 50. There are some slight and unimportant peculiarities in the behaviour of this routine, but what do you expect from 6 bytes of machine code? Has this printer problem being mentioned in Apple 2000 before? Many members must have found it in the past. If there is a better way of fixing it I should be grateful to know. 10 P = 768: REM ADDRESS FOR M/C PROGRAM 20 D$ = CHRS$ (4) 30 FOR I = P TO P + 5: READ A: POKE I,A: NEXT 40 DATA 216, 41,127, 76,2,193 50 PRINT D$"PR#1": PRINT CHR$ (9)”K"; CHRS (9)255"N": PRINT D$”PR#0"; REM INITIAL- ISE CARD, SUPPRESS LINEFEED & ECHO 60 PRINT D$"PR#1,A”P: REM REDIRECT OUTPUT TO M/C PROGRAM 70 REM THE VARIABLES A, I & P ARE AVAILABLE FOR REUSE 80 INPUT “OUTPUT LINKS SET <RETN>: “;AS 100 INPUT “INPUT STRING TO PRINT: “;A$ 110 PRINT DS$”PR#1" 120 PRINT “IS THIS IT? - “; CHR$ (27)”E”AS 130 PRINT CHR$ (27)"F";"And again - “; CHRS (27) "E"AS 140 PRINT D$”PR#0” 150 PRINT D$”PR#1" 160 PRINT CHRS$ (27)"F” CHRS (15)"Now smaller - “;AS$ CHR$ (18) 170 PRINT D$”"PR#0" 180 END Hedley G Wright « Andoversford Cheltenham Dear Sir/Madam, I currently run two //e’s one fairly standard the other fairly enhanced ie- 8MHz ZlpChip 1Mb Plusram Board + SBeags 6 10Mb Ice Hard disk. I use the main system with AppleWorks.3 for my business use. 1 own a Boarding Kennels and have a Data base of over 100 clients and their various animals. The other system is mainly used for stuff like Print Shop & Print Magic for advertising etc. I m currently very keen to obtain access to bulletin boards etc., and would appreciate any advice on suitable Modems etc., I do have a CCS Model 7710 Asynchronous Serial Interface would this be of any use? Paul Crippen O The three elements you need to access a Bulletin Board or any of the online services are a modem, serial port and software. The //c and the IIgs both have onboard serial ports and so answer one of the three requirements. The CCS 7710 serial card is an excellent one for comms use. Its only disadvantage is that you must set the baud rate (speed) by means of small switches on the card itself. Software must of course be suitable for the machine in question. On the //e you can use Talk Is Cheap, Gazelle or Point to Point amongst the many communications pro- grams available. The modem is a trickier question. There are hundreds to choose from. The cheapest are probably imported US modems. These are often available for under a £100 ina fixed speed version. The disadvantage of a US modem is that you will usually need to rewire the phone plug to a UK one, and can only plug it into a private phone network as British Telecom will not let you use them on its phone lines. Modems with the magic green sticker allowing you to use them in the UK, will cost upwards of a £100, reaching a ceiling of around a £1000. Basically the more you pay the faster the modem will go. Most callers to our own Bulletin Board TABBS are now using 2400 baud, with a few at the exotic speed of 9600 baud! If you call Irene on our Liverpool number of 051 928 4142, she will arrange a quote for one of the PACE Linnet modems. These are good all round modems which will give you full Hayes compatibility as well as a range of speeds. Ewen Wannop « Dear Irene, In my opinion, the Public Domain Software for the Apple II catalogue you sent me is not up to date... It stops at Xtras.GS.No.4 and according to your magazine the current disk is Xtras.GS.No.12: there is a gap of 8 disks! The same for Disks IIGS which go beyond number 34... I do not blame you but I would like to receive a new up to date PD catalogue. Since I have already a great number of PD software, it was hard with a ‘incomplete’ catalogue to take advantage of your “Special Offer” on PD software. I would like to know as well if you are interested in receiving PD that is not recorded in your catalogue... When I read your magazine Letter Box, I thought that there are many people who don’t take full advantage of their Apple IIGS (like the one asking if GS/OS 5.0 is of any use. Of course, it is! And I think that GS/OS 6.0 will be awesome!), There is one more thing I would like to know: is Zip Chip GS a reliable accelerator and what about its ru- &&@ Les Couets BOUGUENAIS FRANCE Apple 2000 moured incompatibility with AppleTalk (perhaps Apple 2000 authors could review such products as TransWarp GS and Zip Chip GS in the magazine if it wasn’t made before)? Could you tell me also what happened to Com- plete Technology and its Complete Pascal 2.0 a sent money but I never received it...)? Michael Guitton QAs you will have seen in AppleSlices we are now issuing all the library catalogs on disk. New members will now receive an appropriate copy of the library catalog with their welcome pack. For other members who would like an up to date catalog, please send £2 for the cost of disk and P&P, with a note of the machine you use, and we shall send you the correct disk catalog. There are five to choose from, the ][+, the //e and //c, the IIgs, Macintosh HyperCard and Macintosh Hypercard 2.0. We welcome submitted ShareWare and PD software, as well as programs that members might like to put in the Special Release sections of the library. The Zip Chip GS has had good reports. I have not had experience of it on the AppleTalk so will need to rely on members experience on that one. We have reviewed both the TransWarp and the Zip in the past. The TransWarp has no problems at all with anything I have thrown at it! As to Complete Technology ... perhaps a member can help us with up to date news? Editor « Dear Ewen, Some new powers can be bolted on. Thave been doing my homework in anticipation of GS/ OS System 6. There are some very interesting items in it, which have caught the headlines. Even the mundane Basic.system and ProDOS files have some interesting changes. Basic.System (launched from GS/OS) will now start an $16 file without the “FILE TYPE MISMATCH” error that until now required a patch to get round. The quit code in P8 V2.0 looks similar to that in V1.9, but with a slight boost. You can use it directly to launch PRODOS (the prelude to initiating the GS/OS system) with- out a hang. (It won't launch and S16 file.) T have always rather liked Glen Bredon’s Select.System (part of ProSel 8) as a means of dropping out of GS.OS, staying in P8, yet having a very simple, memory resident launcher. Sadly it doesn’t quite have the capability of the new ProDOS Quit Code. So what about having a little system file with the launching powers of P8, I hear you ask ? It can be very easily done by bolting it to part of Select.System. (The files need to be in the same directory. We've been doing this sort of thing for years with Birds Better BYE.) Orpington Kent 10 REM Transpose PRODOS Quit to SELECT.SYSTEM 15 REM P8 V1.8 $SA00 20 REM P8 V1.9 $5D00 25 REM P8 V2.0 $5D00 30 DS = CHRS (4) 35 PRINT D$"bload P8, A$2000, tsys” 40 PRINT D$”bsave P.ATE.QUIT, AS$S5SD00, L$300" 45 PRINT “Done - Extracted ProDOS Quit” 50 PRINT “Deal with Select.System 2”;: GET A$ o April 1992 55 PRINT D$"bload SELECT.SYSTEM, A$2000, tSYS” 60 PRINT D$"bload P.ATE.QUIT, A$20ED” 65 PRINT D$"bsave SELECT.SYSTEM, A$2000, tSYS” Peter Davis é Mellstock Avenue Dorchester Dear Friends, Tam an enthusiastic ][e user with particular interests in education/kids programs, AppleWorks/Publish-it and comms, and would like to ask Elizabeth Littlewood if I can join her team of software reviewers. As a writer - 1 am a staff reporter with a local paper - I am also interested in moving text from Apple }[ to Mac (and PC) and back (which I currently do by means of a hard wire and Gazelle) . Software Dinosaurs The trouble with buying software for the Apple ][ is that you never quite know when you are buying a dino- saur and when you are buying something really useful. MGA Softcat’s offer last year of the “brilliant” Com- plete Graphics System by Penguin for a tenner had to be too good to be true - and it was. I don’t imagine I was the only one to splash out their hard earned cash to discover that what was brilliant in 1983 may be positively lack lustre in 1991. Of course we have all been spoiled by programs like Publish it and AppleWorks with Timeout which take the ][ way beyond the wildest dreams of anybody in the early days. Expectations have of course changed, but because the Apple ][ has been around such a long time, there is a lot of old software around. Thanks of course to the American market, there is also a huge amount of software available and it is great to see programs like Publish-it still being developed and up- graded. I would like to see more Apple 2000 members writing in to the magazine telling the rest of us what they do with their machines, what games still give them a kick, what software they like and dislike. Although I use my Apple mainly for word processing, it's a great kids machine, and I am always on the look out for good software for my children to use. (And if it wasn’t so expensive, I would buy more - MGA SoftCat please note!) My current favourites are Where in the World is Car- men Santiago and the Audubon Whales package. Despite Elizabeth Littlewood’s lukewarm review I think Carmen Santiago has to be one of the best Apple }[ games. For those who have not played it, you become a detective given the job of pursuing a band of criminals across the world, following clues, and learning about different coun- tries as you go. It’s fun, highly addictive, and fairly educa- tional in that you leam about obscure places like San Marino, and often have to do some fairly detailed re- search in the huge World Almanac (which comes with the program) to follow the clues the criminals leave behind. The Audubon Whales package, on three 5.25 in discs is a great way of learning about whales - and that other endangered sea mammal the Florida manatee. You choose from four different adventures to track whales, rescue whales, meet the ghost of an old whaler, or work on a manatee hotline. o Z You can go on a voyage with a whale expert and learn to identify whales by their calls, or hunt for clues in the old whaler’s house and take them to a whaling museum. In each of the adventures there is series of characters you meet, ranging from the friendly whale tracking skip- per Bill Martinez to the breathless Florida Sun reporter Nick Puck who you call for help in protecting the manatees. The program also introduces users to the idea of a database - you can spot a whale as it jumps out of the water, and then hunt for an identifying characteristic in the date base. Aswell as “taking photographs” and identifying whales as they jump out of the water, you can also listen to the high pitched calls of many of the whales, recorded and digitised into the program. In Apple ][ terms you get a lot for you money. Whales will keep you interested and amused for hours. My only quibble is that if you are changing adventures, there is a lot of disk swapping. It is a shame it won't support the use of two drives, or a RAM disk. Given the graphics limitations of the Apple ][, this is a superb package which has taught both me, and my chil- dren a huge amount about whales. In contrast, the Britannica Software program Designasaurus was something of a disappointment. Poor graphics in mono became worse when I tried to view them on my Microvitec colour monitor - the colours were all wrong. MGA took the trouble to write to both Microvitec and Britannica, who replied that they had not heard of Microvitec and could not guarantee the use of their software with third party equipment. The idea is to walk a dinosaur through four different environments while trying to avoid either dying of starva- tion or being eaten by a predator. The other part of the program enables you to print out a dozen different pic- tures of dinosaurs and brief descriptions of them. You can also make up your own fossil picture of an imaginary dinosaur and print it - a great idea, but again a disappointment. The quality of the pictures was decidedly low-res - however it has to be said that when I printed out a set and my wife photocopied them for her six year olds at first school, they thought they were absolutely wonder- ful and coloured them all in beautifully! Dorset Apple ][ User Group folds The Dorset group which met every couple of months in Broadstone has effectively packed up through a combina- tion of lack of people turning up and accountant Stuart Magnus, who hosted the meetings, switching to Macin- toshes. Until last Spring he ran his business on around a dozen J[es, which served him superbly for ten years. lam in touch with one or two users in the area and am happy to be a Dorset contact. Anybody interested in get- ting together for the occasional Apple 2 chat can contact me on Dorchester 0305 268655. Alastair Nisbet. Can anybody recommend some good software for the ]{e which will output to a plotter? I have acquired a handsome Graphtec MP 1000 A3 plotter (without a manual!) and am looking for some inexpensive software which will enable me to do some simple CAD with it. Any suggestions gratefully received. Alastair Nisbet U Thanks Alastair, what more can I add? We welcome reviewers and article writers. The magazine only exists because members contribute! We would especially like articles that can help the growing band of beginners at the Apple II. Many of the newer members do not know how to pa 8 use the machines we love so well. They often do not have system disks let alone the operating manuals. If any members would like to become a reviewer or regular contributor, please send details and range of ex- pertise, preferably with a sample article, to Elizabeth Littlewood c/o Apple2000, PO Box 3, Liverpool, L21 ae Editor Dear ladies and gentlemen, Ihave been for some time been contemplating ProDOS with a view to updating it. Can you give me some advice? The system is a “grey” Apple ][+ (1978 with 48k on board, Microsoft 16k expansion, Videx Videoterm, 64k print buffer, printer interface, Z80 card, Apple disk controller, colour card and 128k Ram board all in various slots!) 1. Will it work on this system? Is the position of the cards going to make any difference and if so where should I put them? 2. If it will work, is it worth it and how do I get hold of a ProDOS master etc., for such an old system? Rex M. F. Smith itary) Weal London O When you say you have a “grey” Apple II, I wonder exactly what you mean. If you mean a Taiwanese copy of the Apple II, then you will have problems running ProDOS upon it. ProDOS checks to see the computer is a real Apple one before it will run! You require 64k of memory to run ProDOS. With your Microsoft 16k language card you have enough memory. Those with only the standard 48k memory must install a memory expansion card in Slot 0 to bring the computer up to 64k. You will then need a copy of the ProDOS system disk. Order disk $004 from our Apple II library for a copy of the ProDOS 1.8 master disk. The position of the cards does not matter in general, but much software expects certain things in certain places. The usual positions are as follows: Slot 0 Memory expansion card (][+ only) Slot 1 Printer card Slot 2 Serial card for comms Slot 3 80 column video card Slot 4 Z80 CP/M card or Mouse controller card Slot S 3.5 inch disk controller card Slot 6 §.25 inch disk controller card Slot 7 Colour video card Whether you will find ProDOS useful or not will de- pend on the kind of work you want to do. Programs running under DOS 3.3 will not usually run under ProDOs. This in itself is not a problem, as a copy of DOS 3.3 is usually found on all program disks operating in this envi- ronment. Similarly ProDOS is usually found on most pro- gram disks running under ProDOS. What a ProDOS mas- ter disk gives you are some other useful programs and file utilities. Where you are going to notice the biggest problem is if you are in the habit of using files generated in one pro- gram on an other. Some files can be moved between the two environments, but not all. Usually only text files can be moved in this way. The other problem will arise from ProDOS being the current operating system for the II series and that most &@ Apple 2000 Americans run the //e not the }[+. The newer software that we include on our 5.25 Xtras disks virtually all runs under ProDOS and in most cases is also //e specific, and also usually enhanced //e specific as well. This software will not run on the }[+. Much of our older Apple II library is under DOS 3.3. These programs will run on your ][+ without problems. If you try a ProDOS disk you will see if it will run on your system as you have it. No harm will happen to the compu- ter or a locked disk if it will not. The biggest problem most new users of ProDOS have is understanding the pathname conventions. This is really too big a subject to cover here. It has been covered in the past in the magazine and will be covered again in the future, but in the meantime please read the reply to Cathi Lillis-James further down these letter pages. Editor « Chesham Bucks Dear Ewen, I wonder if you know of any ‘free’ macro makers for AppleWorks v3.0? My problem is I want to type descriptions of a film of photos with a header which puts the film number and a consecutive negative number on each negative. But if I have some 36 page breaks the inevitable ‘bug’ causes problems ie, after some 7+ pages it won't print from the page where the cursor is shown on screen when I send it to print from “this page”. The only solution has been to replace page breaks with another symbol ie. xxx, until near the ‘page’ (photo) | want to print on. Doing this manually is very time consuming! (I insert the photos into a carrier sheet and the ImageWriter prints quite well onto the back - I don’t want the thickness of a sticker in the folder of photos.) Merrin Molesworth Q There are no free macro makers that I know of, but perhaps someone else does. Can anyone help further with Merrin's dilemma? Ewen Wannop « Dear Apple2000, I received the PD software I requested, but unfortu- nately am completely baffled by the ProDOS disks. I have tried every command style I can think of but cannot get the files loaded. The screen messages which come up are FILE TYPE MISMATCH, PATH NOT FOUND, SYNTAX ER- ROR. Please could you tell me how to enter a ProDOS com- mand because I have exhausted the possibilities! Cathi Lillis-James Tolteesaennsnetthy (hetandl Watford Q Normally ProDOs will run the first program it finds ona bootable ProDOS disk (that is it has a copy of ProDOS on it) having a filetype of SYS ($FF) and the name suffix of SYSTEM. You would then usually access its own files through the program itself. If the first program it finds is BASIC.SYSTEM, it will run this and leave you at the (un)friendly ‘]’ prompt. Here you can run AppleSoft Basic, Exec and System S April 1992 programs by typing a minus sign immediately in front of the filename. Binary files or other text files will not run and are intended to be used by a suitable program only. If the program you wish to use is in a subdirectory you will need to make sure you either give the complete pathname or set the prefix to the correct subdirectory: -/MYDISK/MYFOLDER/MYPROG.SYSTEMruns MYPROG.SYSTEM in the folder MYFOLDER on MYDISK. Alternatively I could have type PREFIX /MYDISK/ MYFOLDER to set the prefix to MYFOLDER and then ~MYPROG. SYSTEMto run the program. For further reference you could get one of the many books that explain how to use the Apple II series, DOS 3.3 and ProDOS or get a copy of the Apple ][ User’s Guide for Apple ][ Plus and Apple //e from Apple2000. This book should tell you all you want to know about the Apple II, / /e, DOS 3.3 and ProDOS. Check with Liverpool for the current price and order as 0 07 881176 7. Editor « Dear Ewen, Having written to you about my difficulties with AppleWorks 3.0 and my printer, on receiving your reply I had a word with this bloke Percy Veer (persevere) and have been able to solve my problem after long and pain- ful attempts. Thank you for your letter anyway as I feel it made me try again and again, though I now have a lot of double-sided waste paper, so if you know of any re-cyclers they can have it. In some future publication maybe someone could ex- plain how (if possible) files kept under the Quickfile //e could be transferred to AppleWorks. Just a thought. G Philipson Barrow-in-Fumess Cumbria QDo you not have a waste paper recycle point in a nearby car park? Or have you filled it up already! Can anyone help on the Quickfile problem? Editor é Dear Ewen, Having just acquired a Hard Disk for my IIgs, and having faced the problems of installation of the operating system, I was interested to read your advice in December Apple2000. However my machine only has 1.25 mb of memory and therefore installation on a RAM disk was not possible, However there is a simpler way of getting round the problem. If the two ‘tutorial’ directories are removed from the system disk, there is room to install “SCSI Hard Disk” on this disk. One can simply boot the computer with the SYSTEM.DISK with these files removed, and from the SYSTEM.TOOLS disk launch the Installer, from the root directory of that disk. Scroll to “SCSI Hard Disk” and then click on the disk button, with the SYSTEM.DISK in a drive, until that disk is indicated as the target device. Then click to install the SCSI drivers. Now with the drivers on your copy of GS/OS, booted from that disk the system will “see” the Hard Disk, and if the computer is booted again from the modified disk, a S Edgeware Middlesex 9 normal installation of GS/OS and necessary drivers can be carried out, on to the first partition of the Hard Drive. While writing about GS/OS may I commend to mem- bers a careful; study of Gary Utter’s very useful ‘Informa- tion on Icons and the Finder’, which can be found in the file LAUNCH.TXT in ICNPIX.BXY on the XTRAS.GS.NO.10 disk (and elsewhere). First you will learn a lot about GS/OS and the operating system. The intention is to show how the Finder can be used as an efficient program launcher. Having just switched from ProSel 8 on a //c, I find the Finder set up in the way Gary describes, makes it a very acceptable alternative to a text based system, and in many ways superior. And this is with GS/OS version 5.0.4; Iam looking forward to version 6, impatiently! Harvey Nyman U There is more than one way to crack the IIgs nut! Thanks for the alternative solution to the hard drive in- stallation problem. They have finally realised what a problem we had installing GS/OS as a first time hard disk user and so System 6.0 installs easily without all this fuss. Ewen Wannop € Dear Apple2000, I use both an Apple //e and an AT (for home use and part time business) and have an urgent need to transfer large data files from the 10mb disc on the Apple, which they have outgrown, over to the PC’s 44mb disc, ie from Omnis3 to DBaselll. I wonder if you can recommend to me someone who could do this for me or could sell me a program to achieve it? I have already rung a nuinber of Apple enthusiasts and have heard rumours of a programme called “Brooklyn Bridge”, and of another called “CrossWorks” but have no details about either. I was also referred to “Gray Matter” in Devon but they say they are unable to do the transfer for me as they have no hard disc on their Apple II and the largest file I need to transfer is at least ten times too big for a floppy. One problem I anticipate if I try to use either of the above programs myself is that the data is in Pascal, not the AppleDos partition, and getting it converted to and accessible by the DOS, if this will be necessary, doesn't appear to be as straightforward as I had imagined: al- though Omnis offers a Pascal to DOS file conversion on its disk utilities menu so far this has failed to work. It always alleges that “the output directory is not a DOS disc”. I wonder if you can think of any reason that this error is happening? Rob Cann hassidh head Nottingham QI have published your letter in the hope that someone may have better news for you than I have. As far as I can see you have an insurmountable prob- lem unless you can find someone who can write a custom program, running under Pascal, which could use a serial port on your //e to transfer the data in the files to the AT computer. The main problems you face are that you have the data on one of the old hard disks that do not conform to Apple's block device format. This means that you have got customised operating systems running and programs such as Chameleon will not be able to transfer files between the Pascal and other environments, as it just does not recog- @@ 10 nise the devices you have. It is also for this reason that Omnis would not see the DOS conversion as having an output directory available on a DOS disk. You cannot of course use a normal DOS disk in a floppy drive as output as there is a 128k limit on those disks! I cannot see how you are going to be able to move the data unless it is done directly from the Pascal environ- ment. This is where you need customised programming as there are no Pascal comms programs that I know of. So please, can anyone else help? Ewen Wannop « Q If you have an urgent problem you should ring the Hotline to get help. Letters and Fax submitted to Apple2000 will normally be dealt with as part of the editorial content of the next magazine. We shall endeavour to answer problems if at all possible before publication, but due to the large volume of letters received this may not be possible in all circumstances. Please submit all letters and articles to the magazine on disk wherever possible. The disks will be returned to you when the magazine is Puplined The publication deadline is the beginning of the month preceeding publication. If you have a modem, send us letters, articles, reviews and PD and ShareWare programs to the Sysop on TABBS North West Apple Computer Club All meetings start at 8.00 p.m. prompt on Thursday eve- nings at the Chetwode Arms, Lower Whitley, Nr. Warrington. Visitors welcome. 9th April Beginners 2: AppleWorks in Action, some examples of uses 14th May Guest Speaker 1lthJune Beginners 3: How to Improve AppleWorks with Ultramacros MAC: HyperCard demo by W. Lamb 9th July Summer Bring and Buy Sale 13th Aug General meeting to exchange ideas, etc. 10th Sept. Communications including Modems N. Robinson 8th October Beginners 4: Advanced AppleWorks with TimeOut modules MAC: MacWrite Pro 12th Nov Annual General Meeting followed by Quiz Night 10th Dec Social - Dinner at Chetwode Arms Committee - 1992 Chairman Steve Armitage Cae va ag Vice-Chairman Jack Rowe Crit ete Secretary Jim Leecy (CRD HALL Treasurer Gordon Danby CTE e se bg Librarian Neil Robinson (Cometh vt tune Ken Dawson Cri ae Jim Roscoe George Evans Bill Lamb O Send us details of your clubs programme and we shall publish it in the Apple2000 magazine. é BSeewes Apple 2000 Compuserve’ O Please send us your ID's either to the Apple2000 ID 76004,3333 or to the PO Box in Liverpool or of course to the Sysop of TABBS (0225-743797). Apple2000 76004,3333 John Beattie 100012,360 Peter Bell 100010,404 David Collins 100016,3060 Ken Dawson 100016,2275 Michael Dawson 100015,2232 Gary Doades 100016,2353 Felim Doyle 100016,1151 Greg Elkin 100023,616 David Evans 100014,1161 Mateen Greenaway 100016,602 Alastair Greenstreet 100010,742 Dale James 100016,1152 Bryn Jones 71307,1457 Mark Hooper (DiscWorld) 100014,374 Jihad Jaafar 100016,526 Richard Kelly 100029,177 Peter Kem 100016,1172 Andy Letchford 100016,1771 Elizabeth Littlewood 100016,401 John Maltby 100014,2216 Peter Marsh 100031,341 Mark O'Neill 100016,476 Philip Ormond (Theatre Dispatch) 100013,1162 Steve Perry 100013,365 Jeremy Quinn 100016,560 John Richey 100016,1037 Russell Ridout 72007,211 Arthur Robinson 73457,3614 John Stanier 100010,2611 James Southward 73767,1336 Ahmet Turkistanli 100016,3365 Donald Walker 100015,256 Andreas Wennborg 100012,342 James Walker 100013,142 Ewen Wannop 76224,211 Brian Williams 100016,2735 | Membership Compuserve/Forum World's largest online database with many specialist Apple forums. Large libraries of PD and ShareWare soft- ware, real time conferences, message areas and much more. Accessed ether directly on 071-490 8881, or through the BT DialPlus network. You do not need to have a DialPlus account to access Compuserve. It will cost you around £8-£12 an hour inclusive of all online charges, network access and local phone call. To join contact: Compuserve/Forum Freepost (BS 6971) 15/16 Lower Park Row PO Box 676 Bristol BS99 1YN 0800-289 378 or 0272-255111 Q If you are a Macintosh user then you should order a copy of Compuserve Information Manager when you join. S April 1992 [Help Lines O Members having offered specialist help facilities are listed below: Alan Armstrong (Apple II+, IIgs) Ken Dawson (TimeOut, ProSel) Dave Edmundson (A/UX) Michael Foy (Amateur Radio) A.W. Harmer (Mac) Leonard Horthy (4th Dimension) John Richey (AppleWorks) A2-Central A2-Central magazine $34 A2-Central (disk) $90 Time-Out Central (disk) $48 Script-Central (disk) $48 Studio City (disk) $48 Hyperbole (disk) $48 QAll prices are for one year's subscription and include world- wide airmail delivery. All usual credit cards accepted. O Resource Central are also the distributors for all APDA Apple II development products. Please contact them for a current price list. Order from: Resource Central P.O. Box 11250 Overland Park Kansas 66207-1250 U.S.A. GS+ magazine O GS+ the magazine for software developers is published by EGO Systems. This magazine is published bi-monthly and is now the only magazine devoted to programming on the Apple IIgs now that 8/16-Central has ceased to be. Contact: EGO Systems PO Box 15366 Chattanooga TN 374150366 A+ magazine Q The A+ magazine is published every month and costs $82.97 for one year. Contact: inCider/A+ PO Box 50358 Boulder CO 80321-0358 é 11 Genie” (0 CompuServe is the biggest online system that interests Apple users. It has many areas within MAUG of specific interest to us. However, there is another online system in the States that has special areas for Apple users. GEnie is a branch of the General Electric company and the online service is now available for UK users. The GE Services network that is used from the UK is in fact the one also used by AppleLink. Online charges to GEnie are charged in two price bands, Peak periods (Mon-Fri 8 am to 6 pm Eastern Standard Time) are charged at $20 and offpeak (all other times) at $8. The offpeak charge is therefore cheaper than CompuServe. These however are the online charges only. You have to access GEnie in the first place. So far they have not installed a similar access to CompuServe so it will be necessary to have your own PSS or DialPlus account and call the NUA '334219601282'. This isa UK NUA so only the £1.65 an hour PSS charge will apply. The total charges for GEnie therefore work out at around £7.06 an hour offpeak. Enter XJM11797,CENTRAL at the U#= prompt when you reach GEnie and follow instructions. To obtain a DialPlus account contact: British Telecom Customer Service Managed Network Services St. Andrews House Portland Street Manchester M60 1BT AppleLink™ O Send us your AppleLink ID's to the Apple2000 box. Apple2000 BASUG.1 Cumbrian Computers CUMP.COMP Herts User Group NA.HERTSUG Liverpool Group LIVERPOOL.UG | Radio Hams O We now have more call signs! Trevor Baker - G4CLE Mike Bass ‘ G30JE Harold Bennet - G4LPV lan Bryden - GOPMZ Jim Danby GZOVM (Packet Radio Mbox) GB7FCI Michael Foy G7KOD Andy Harrington - GIXLW (Packet Radio Mbox) - GB7SUT Rev John Lincoln - GMOJOL Tony Gatrell - G4SVB Arthur Owen. = G2FUD John Stanier - G3APU BS@epesg |AppleXtras Xtras.P8.No.14 Side One T A2PX8.SHK LIB 26523 T DESKJET.SHK LIB 8871 T Eamon.120.SHK LIB 47648 T LIFE.BXY BIN 44672 Issue.Programs DIR > 1 512 1 NO.SCROLL BAS 379 1 MACHINE.ID BAS 1182 1 DHR.TEST BAS 1627 1 SAMPLE.W.AVE ASP 2157 1 BLANK BAS 409 Side Two T EAMO33.BXY BIN 27008 T EAMO34.BXY BIN 35712 T EAM069.BXY BIN 34048 T EAMO77.BXY BIN 38656 Xtras.GS.No.14 Applications DIR. = 2 512 2 SHRV35.BXY BIN 23168 IconChecker DIR> 3 512 3 IconAppChecker $16 35379 3 IconAppChk.Docs TXT 4914 Memory .Usage DIR= 4 512 4 Memory.Use NDA 2629 4 MemoryUse.docs TXT 1104 ShowPic DIR.= 5 512 5 ShowPic6 NDA 36756 5 ShowPic6.1.Doc TXT 27718 5 ShowPic.History TXT 8830 5 JesusAware.List TXT 3515 Cpu DIR = 6 512 6 Cpu.Cda CDA 5632 6 Cpu.Dox TxT 9126 6 Cpu.Mac TXT 2842 6 Cpu.Make SRC 191 6 Cpu.S SRC 43175 6 Ctrl.Pnl.Util CDA 5632 ImageWriter DIR = 7 512 7 Iw2cda.Doc TXT 1642 7 Iw2.Da CDA 12260 IntDetect DIR = 8 512 8 IntDetect CDA $12 8 IntDetect.Asm SRC 3704 8 IntDetect .Mac TXT 1670 8 IntDetect.Make SRC 86 Frantic DIR= 9 512 9 Franticnda NDA 3584 9 Frantic.P SRC 3110 Games DIR < 10 512 10 SENSEI.BXY UNK 454912 10 PACNDA.BXY BIN 28928 Apple 2000 /XTRAS.P8.NO.14/ Q Use Shrinklt to unpack .SHK and .BXY files. A2FX8.SHK A utility to allow you to read the files direct from Macintosh 3.5 inch 800k disks. It will handle both the data and the resource forks, DESKJET.SHK A suite of files to allow you to use your Deskjet with AppleWorks Classic. EAMON.120.SHK Enter the realm of Orb of My Life! and take part in another Eamon adventure. Use the Games Hall master from Xtras.P8.No.13 for this program and the four on the flip side of the disk. LIFE.BXY Conway's game of life brought up to date. Issuc. Pro; A suite of sample programs to assist the beginner programming on the Apple II. EAM033.BXY ‘Orb of Polaris’. An Eamon adventure game. EAM034.BXY ‘Death's Gateway’. An Eamon adventure game. EAM069.BXY ‘The Black Castle of Nagog’. An Eamon adventure game. EAM077.BXY ‘Temple of the Trolls'. An Eamon adventure game. /XTRAS.GS.NO.14/ SHRV35.BXY SHR View v3.5 slide show and picture display system. SHR View displays virtually every picture format there 1s, including all the 3200 types. A must if you use clip art. IconChecker A handy utility that checks that your Icons have the correct pathnames attached. It will automatically update them for you if they are incorrect. Memory.Usage Asmall NDA that shows you the current free memory. ShowPic pees v1.6 NDA displaysmost picture types. A CDA that saves the current state of the Control Panel and allows you to restore from a stored file. ImageWriter A Classic Desk Accessory that lets you send control codes direct to your ImageWriter from the Ilgs serial port. IntDetect A handy program for the programmer. It will beep when it detects an interrupt has happened. Frantic A mesmeric screen saver that doodles while you watch! SENSELBXY Have you ever wanted to be a Karate expert but were too shy to show of your prowess. Sensei is a full feature action packed game of Karate. Will keep you glued for hours to your screen while you learn how to be a real expert! PACNDA.BXY You must remember this. Yes it is the original PacMan, but brought up to date as a miniature game in an NDA! o April 1992 | Library Il Update / aerary: PRO.26/= TN.INDEX.90.11 TXT t Read.Me TXT Tf TN.ABOUT.90.11 TxT AlIc DIR > 1 1 TN.AIIc.001 TXT 1 TN.AIIc.002 TXT 1 TN.AIIc.003 TXT 1 TN.AIIc.004 TXT 1 TN.AITc.005 TXT 1 TN.ATIc.006 TXT 1 TN.AIIc.007 TXT 1 TN.ATIc.008 TXT 1 TN.ATIC.009 TXT MemX DIR= 2 2 TN.Memx.001 TXT UDsk DIR= 3 3 TN.UDsk.001 TXT 3 TN.UDsk.002 TXT 3 TN.UDsk.003 TXT 3 TN.UDsk.004 TXT 3 TN.UDsk.005 TXT /Library.PRO.27/= Misc DIR> 1 1 TN.Misc.001 TXT 1 TN.Misc.002 TXT 1 TN.Misc.003 TXT 1 TN.Misc.004 TXT 1 TN.Misc.005 TXT 1 TN.Mise.006 TXT 1 TN.Misc.007 TXT 1 TN.Misc.008 TXT 1 TN.Misc.009 TXT 1 TN.Misc.010 TXT 1 TN.Misc.011 TXT 1 TN.Misc.012 TXT 1 TN.Misc.014 TXT 1 TN.Misc.015 TXT 1 TN.Misc.016 TXT 1 TN.Misc.017 TXT ImWr DIR'= 2 2 TN. ImWr.001 TXT /Library.PRO.28/= Mous DIR> 1 1 TN.Mous.001 TXT 1 TN.Mous .002 TXT 1 TN.Mous .003 TXT 1 TN.Mous.004 TXT 1 TN.MOUS.005 TXT 1 TN.Mous.006 TXT 1 TN.Mous.007 TXT Pasc DIR = 2 2 TN.Pasc.004 TXT 2 TN.Pasc.010 TXT 2 TN.Pasc.012 TXT 2 TN.Pasc.014 TXT 2 TN.Pasc.015 TXT 2 TN.Pasc.016 TXT 2 TN.PASC.017 TxT PDOS.1 DIR= 3 3 TN.PDOS.001 TXT 3 TN.PDOS.005 TXT 3 TN.PDOS.004 TXT 3 TN.PDOS.003 TXT 3 TN.PDOS.002 TXT 52765 783 20149 512 4814 3639 965 3759 4058 3131 3130 1251 1330 512 4332 512 1057 2162 3243 7199 4336 1024 4519 30485 2572 1521 1888 3330 4548 4711 2096 7550 2148 2348 8556 1890 7609 15263 $12 1201 512 2615 2096 2043 2939 1630 6425 2851 512 856 37978 13951 8219 71446 15428 2015 512 2196 1279 1788 1361 891 13 3 TN.PDOS.006 TXT 854 3 TN,PDOS.007 TXT 912 3 TN,PDOS.008 TXT 1604 /Library.PRO.29/= PDOS.2 DIR> 1 1024 1 TN.PDOS.011 TXT 2308 1 TN.PDOS.010 TXT 934 1 TN.PDOS.012 TXT 2626 1 TN.PDOS.009 TXT 3585 1 TN.PDOS.013 TXT 840 1 TN.PDOS.014 TXT 912 1 TN.PDOS.015 TXT 2997 1 TN.PDOS.016 TXT 2956 1 TN.PDOS.017 TXT 34379 1 TN.PDOS.018 TxXT 2490 1 TN.PDOS.019 TXT 3245 1 TN.PDOS.020 TXT 6178 1 TN.PDOS.021 TXT 22510 1 TN.PDOS.022 TXT 1115 1 TN.PDOS.023 TXT 17391 1 TN.PDOS.024 TXT 3353 1 TN.PDOS.025 TXT 10156 1 TN.PDOS.026 TXT 5875 /Library.PRO.30/= PDOS.3 DIR> 1 512 1 TN.PDOS.027 TXT 3817 1 TN.PDOS.028 TXT 3708 1 TN.PDOS.029 TXT 3395 AlITe.1 DIR = 2 512 2 TN.AIIe.001 TXT 848 2 TN.AIIe.005 TAT 12453 2 TN.AIIe.004 TXT 17087 2 TN.ATIe.003 TXT 63399 2 TN.AIIe.002 TXT 25329 /Library.PRO.31/= Alle.2 DIR > 1 512 1 TN.ATIe.006 TXT 17858 1 TN.AIIe.007 TXT 6354 1 TN.AIIe.008 TXT S061 1 TN.AIIe.009 TXT 2639 T FT.Assign.Form TXT 2711 T FIN.ABOUT.90.11 TXT 21616 T FT,Letter TXT 3353 »Notes DIR= 2 $12 2 FIN.1A.xxxx TXT 13837 2 FIN.1B.xxxx TXT 27683 2 FIN.19.xxxx TXT 23042 2 FIN.0O.xxxx TXT 1743 2 FIN.O1.xxxx TXT 1618 /Library.PRO32/= FT.Notes DIR > 1 ote 1 FIN.E0.8000 TXT 27180 1 FTN.E0.0002.3 TXT 22453 1 FIN.D6.xxxx TXT 2210 1 FIN.D7.xxxx TXT 2437 1 FIN.C8.0000 TXT 1777 1 FIN.08.4001 TXT 1761 1 FIN.08.0000 TXT 2456 1 FTN.08.4000 TXT 1633 1 FIN.E0.8002 TXT 50936 1 FITN.E0.0001 TXT 16938 G Disks PRO26 through PRO32 are the official Apple II Technical Notes recently released in the library on 3.5 disks. We have extracted the Ilgs specific files and only include here those files relevant to the Apple II+, the //e and the //c. Order from the Apple II Disk Library, PO Box 3, Liver- pool, L21 8PY priced at £3.40 each. ¢ &s8 What's New in System 6.0? Tim Swihart from A2-Central gives us a preview of the new System Here's an inside look at what's new and/or improved in Apple IIgs System Software version 6.0, better known simply as System 6. Here at Apple, we consider System 6 to be a major release since it introduces significant new functional- ity in the form of new tool sets, new applications, new NDAs, new control panels, and much more. Some of the new components were frequently requested by users (the HFS File System Translator [FST] for Macintosh disks is a prime example) and some are unexpected (like the Media Control Toolset). System 6 is expected to require about as much memory as a similarly configured system 5.0.4 disk. It’s important to note the words similarly configured - additional items that were not available with System 5.0.4, such as the new tool sets and FST’s, require memory above and beyond what was needed for 5.0.4. A fully configured System 6 set up (fully configured equals all FST’s, all NDA’s, all Control panels, all drivers, etc. installed) will require slightly more memory than 5.0.4 did. All that extra func- tionality has to go somewhere. When the System 6 Beta CD was released to developers, it could cleanly boot on a stock ROM 03 Apple IIgs and leave a small amount of RAM available while in the Finder. And the CD included more than just all of the FST’s, drivers, etc, - it also included GSBug and NiftyList (both of which take up additional memory). The footprint of golden mas- ter System 6 may wind up slightly larger than the footprint at beta, but it should be obvious that the engineers behind System 6 took great pains in keeping things as small as possible while still providing some exciting new capabilities. Speaking of exciting new capabilities, system 6 includes three new applications: Teach, Archiver, and synthLAB. Teach is an elegant text processing envi- ronment, perfect for Read Me files, perfect for quick notes to family and friends, and perfect for reading a variety of other file formats. Teach can read files saved in the standard Apple Ilgs styled text format (text in the data fork, styling information in the resource fork), plain ASCII, AppleWorks (8-bit) format, AppleWorks GS format, and MacWrite v.5.0 format (right off of a Macintosh floppy if you have the HFS FST installed). Teach can save documents as styled text files, as plain ASCII files, or as installer scripts. Teach does not support saving files in AppleWorks, AppleWorks GS, or MacWiite v.5.0 files. Teach includes the bare bones features you'd expect ina text processor: Find, Find Same, Replace, Replace Same, printing, and full control over fonts/styles/sizes. You won't find high-end word processor features such as a spelling checker, a ruler (where you'd adjust TAB stops, margins, etc), colored text, or the ability to mix text and graphics. Apple 2000 Teach is intended to provide a general purpose solution for text handling on the Apple IIgs, not be the next great word processor to end all word processors. Archiver is a hard drive backup utility with a desktop interface (unlike Backup II, which is an 8- bit application). Archiver provides the basic services many users need in a disk backup utility: simple compres- sion to reduce the number of disks required to hold the backup, support for tape drives, and the ability to backup either an exact image or individual files. There are third- party disk backup applications already available that have more functionality than Archiver, but Archiver’s definitely worth checking out if you own a hard drive. synthLAB is a sample application that show- cases the power of the new MIDI synth toolset. Originally available in beta format from APDA for use with System 5.0.4, synthLAB combines a synthesizer, a sequencer, and a MIDI driver to let users create new instruments, record their own custom MIDI sequences, or play back other user's sequences. Until you’ve heard your Apple Ilgs’s sound hardware being put through its paces by synthLAB, you just haven't heard what that sound hardware can really do. The MIDI Synth toolset is a second generation note synthesizer that handles most of the work required by an application in order to create incredible music. MIDI Synth requires about 25-30 percent of the CPU's time while run- ning in the background (less if your Apple Ilgs is acceler- ated). There's already a commercial game for the Apple IIgs that takes advantage of the power of MIDI Synth (Dragon Wars GS from Interplay), and XCMD’s for using MIDI Synth from HyperCard IIgs or HyperStudio (ClipTunes from Triad Software). MIDI synth isn’t the only new toolset in system 6. There’s also the media control toolset, which provides a standard interface to non-standard media devices such as laser discs and CD's. These devices have a common high- level feature set; they can play, jump forward or backward, pause, eject,and so on. But they have a very non-standard application interface; some players have a serial interface, others connect to the game port, some use numeric codes as commands, other use short ASCII strings. The situation is so bad that laser disc players from one company are controlled radically differently from those of another and in fact, different models of players from one company are control- led very differently from other models from the same com- pany. Good examples are the popular consumer and in- dustrial models produced by Pioneer. All are excellent players, but they are controlled very differently by comput- ers. Prior to System 6, few applications implemented support for such devices because of the inconsistent approach needed for each type of device. Those applications that did implement such support generally only worked with a small handful of players. During the course of providing support for mul- timedia devices from within Hypercard Ilgs, it be- came obvious that a general purpose solution was needed; one that provided access to a multitude of radically different devices with essentially no im- pact on the applications. The Media Control Toolset offers such a general purpose solution, not just to Hyper- Card Ilgs, but to any GS/OS application that wants to push multimedia to the limits, Up to eight different devices can o April 1992 be controlled at one time by assigning each device to a channel. A channel is defined as the combination of a type of device and a description of how it’s connected to your Apple IIgs. For example, a channel might have a Pioneer 4200 video disk player connected via the modem port or a CD-drive connected via your SCSI port. Instead of changing the application to support a new type of player, developers can simply create a media control driver for that player, drop it into the user’s System folder, and all applications that support the media control toolset now work with that new type of player. The Media Control Toolset includes drivers for Apple’s CD drives, Pioneer's consumer models, and Pioneer's indus- trial models. Other drivers may appear later, released separately from System 6 itself by Apple, or they may come from third parties. Their format is fairly straightforward and documented on the Systern 6 Beta CD, which means the information should be available to all developers once Sys- tem 6 is released. Essentially, third parties could provide packs of drivers for a variety of devices just like the current products that provide printer drivers for printers that aren't supported by Apple's drivers. Included in System 6 is a new NDA for use with the media control toolset. Called the Media Control Remote, this NDA acts like a super remote control; it con- trols all eight channels, provides access to device-specific controls, such as tuming on or off the left and right sound channels on a laser disc, and provides status information, such as which track is playing, or how many tracks there are on the disc. Coupled with the Video Overlay Card, the 15 Media Control Remote opens the door to some exciting new possibilities. The next release of HyperCard IIgs (version 1.1) includes a stack that takes advantage of the Media Control Toolset. Called the Media Control stack (ok, so the name's not all that original, at least it’s obvious what it does), it marries the ease of use of HyperCard IIgs with the power of both the Video Overlay Card and the Media Control toolset. Think of it asa user-scriptable super remote control for all those multimedia devices, you just point and click as you create whole new stacks that take advantage of all this new tech- nology. No scripting is required. The Media Control stack creates or contains most of the scripts you'll need for a very wide variety of media activities. The media control remote isn’t the only NDA being introduced with System 6. There’s a Find File NDA which quickly searches any online volume for a file. It can search in the background, allowing users to keep work- ing while a large volume is being searched. Find File NDA allows users to control whether the search string should be the exact file name, the beginning of a file’s name, the ending of a file’s name, or exist anywhere within a file’s name. There's also a Calculator Desk Accessory in System 6. Nothing too fancy, just your typical 4-function calculator that also handles hexadecimal. Users enter numbers by clicking the numbers on the calculator itself, pressing the corresponding number keys on their keyboards, or pasting a number in from the clipboard. To access the hexadecimal functions, just click in the Calculator’s zoom box and it will widen, revealing the hex keypad and two buttons that Wildcard Ramview (0323) 845098 Hailsham Special Offer to Apple 2000 Members £12.99 The copy card for Apple II+ and //e. Supplied with manual and utility disc. Wildcard Plus £19.99 Ourultimate copy/debugging card. Supplied with full manual and utility disc with full interactive monitor} debugger. £19.99 Extended 80 column card for //e. Terms : Prices include VAT and delivery. Offer available while stocks last, telephone for availability. Please send cheque with order and quote Apple 2000 membership number. All products guaranteed for three months. Elite Software Company : 4 Hawthylands Drive East Sussex, BN27 1HE 08 16 control whether the calculator is working in hex or decimal format. System 6 is the first release of Apple IIgs system software to incorporate the Universal Access Suite. Designed originally to aid users with a variety of disabilities, the components of the Universal Access suite are useful for all users. This suite is composed of CloseView, Video Key- board, and Easy Access, which in turn is composed of Sticky Keys and Mouse Keys. CloseView magnifies the screen from two to twelve times its original size, making the pixels much fatter and thus easier to read by users with some visual impairments. It also makes it easier to line up objects in any desktop appli- cation that doesn’t already provide a fat bits mode. Since the desktop can now be several times its original size, only part of it shows on your Apple IIgs's monitor. How then do you control which parts show and which parts don’t? Sim- ple - the area around the mouse is always shown on the monitor. To scroll the desktop so that other parts of it are shown on screen, simply move the mouse toward the area you want to see. As the mouse gets close to the edge of the visible area, the desktop will automatically scroll to show a previously hidden area. CloseView only works with desktop applications, but does have key equivalents for all of its major operations so that you can tum it on or off and even adjust the zoom without having to actually open the CloseView NDA. Video Keyboard has been around the longest of any component in the Universal Access Suite. It’s been available in beta format from APDA for quite some time and has been a regular on the dev elo p CDs. deve 10 pisa technical journal published by Apple that focuses primarily on the Macintosh, but its CD contains some useful Apple II material that’s often not available to the public anywhere else. Video Keyboard is a special window that exists above all other windows and even above dialogs and alerts. This window contains the layout of a regular keyboard, allowing users to click on the keys in the window instead of having to press a key on a physical keyboard. Coupled with an alternative pointing device such as the HeadMaster, Video Keyboard provides much richer access to the Apple IIgs than might otherwise be possible for some users. Users familiar with desktop applications are sure to point out that often modifier keys have to be held down while a key is pressed in order to access certain characters within a font, issue key equivalents, etc. No problem! Video Key- board allows users to click first on the modifier (or modifiers if more than one is needed) and then on the key. Video Keyboard simply holds down the modifier for you. To release a modifier you didn’t meant to click on, simply click ita second time. VideoKeyboard only works with desktop applications. MouseKeys allows the apple Ilgs’s keypad to be used to move the pointer on the screen instead of the actual mouse. Once activated, the 5 key is the same as clicking the mouse, the 8 key moves the pointer straight up the screen, the 2 key moves it straight down, the 9 key moves the pointer up and right, etc. Just think of the 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 keys as arrows instead of numbers, each pointing outward from the 5 key. The 0 key is the same thing as holding down the mouse button, so users can drag an item using only the keypad by Apple 2000 first maneuvering the mouse over the item, then typing 0 to hold the mouse button down, and then using the eight ‘arrow’ keys on the keypad to drag the item, and finally type the 5 key to release the mouse button. While that may sound like a lot of work, it’s actually quite simple and proves very handy when you're trying to align items on the screen (which is especially simple to do using MouseKeys since you can move the pointer in a single axis with ease). MouseKeys is toggled on and off by pressing Command-Sshift-Clear. StickyKeys is built into Rom 03 cpu’S, but System 6 brings that functionality to Rom 01 users as well! Some users have difficulty holding down modifier keys and pressing another key at the same time. StickyKeys simply remembers which modifier key (or keys) were pressed one at a time before the regular key was pressed. Thus, to type the equivalent of Command-Control-Esc using Sticky-Keys, a user would press and release the Command key, then press and release the Control key, then press and release the Esc key. StickyKeys can be activated by pressing the SHIFT key 5 times quickly. Once on, a small icon will appear in the upper right comer of the menu bar. If a modifier key (or © Chuckowiner 80 keys) is being held down by Sticky keys, the icon changes to include a down arrow, providing visual feedback since the keys aren’t physically held down. Once activated, a modi- fier can be locked down so it can be used with a series of key presses without having to be pressed again each time, sim- ply by pressing the modifier key twice in a row. For exam- ple, the sequence Select All, Copy, Paste three times can be typed using StickyKeys as Command, Command (the sec- ond Command locks it down), A, C, V, V, V which would be the equivalent of pressing Command-A, Command-C, and Command-V three times. StickyKeys can be turned off by again quickly pressing the SHIFT key 5 times or by simply pressing a modifier key AND a non-modifier key at the same time (which indicates to StickyKeys that it’s not needed since obviously you can press more than one key at a time). The components of the Universal Access Suite have all appeared for several months now on the developer CD’S and on the DEVELOP CD’S so that developers could have advanced notice in case they needed to change anything in their applications to be compatible with universal access. Developers un- certain whether or not they're doing everything they need to do in order to remain compatible should read Apple IIgs Tech Notes #91, The most likely cause of conflict between appli- o April 1992 cations and the components of universal access seems to be applications that write directly to the screen instead of going through QuickDraw nor- mally (this was typically done to get a slight per- formance improvements in the days before System 5.x’s faster QuickDraw was released). CloseView has to patch QuickDraw at boot time in order to work and applications going around QuickDraw are then going around CloseView as well. The end result is that even if CloseView is installed but the screen is not currently being magnified, screen update problems can occur in certain applications. If you suspect an application is incompatible with CloseView, or you simply seem to be having weird things happen to your screen under System 6, remove or inactivate CloseView, Teboot, and try again. Simply avoiding the use of CloseView isn’t enough, you'll have to either delete it from your boot disk or inactivate it using the Finder's Icon Info window for CloseView and making sure its Inactive check box is checked. The Alliance for Technology Access Centers were licensed to distribute the Universal Access suite, along with electronic documentation for it, in late 1991. This was possible be- cause Universal Access was finished before the rest of System 6 and there was a strong desire to get these important components to their target market as quickly as possible. Three new file system translators (FST) Are being introduced with System 6! The first two are read-only FST’s that allow Apple II DOS 3.3 and Apple II Pascal formatted disks to be used with any application that prop- erly supports GS/OS. These two FST's make it simple to move files formerly trapped on DOS 3.3 or Pascal floppies onto ProDOS, AppleShare, or HFS disks. The third translator is the long-awaited HFS FST - HFS is the file system used on the Macintosh. The introduction of this FST means that it’s now possible to read and write Mac floppies from Apple IIgs applications! You can’t run Macin- tosh applications on your Apple IIgs and only some Mac file formats are useful on a Apple IIgs, but there are definite benefits to this FST. The most noticeable benefit is the elimination of the 32 meg limit for hard drive partitions (ProDOS-formatted files will always be limited to 32 Megs, but now you can create HFS-formatted partitions). Only a ProDOS partition or an AppleShare server can be booted from, so a user with one high-capac- ity hard drive would typically have a 32 meg ProDOS partitions (for booting and for their 8-bit applica- tions) and the rest of the hard drive (well beyond the 32 meg limit of ProDOS) can be one big HFS partition. To drive this point home to developers, the special System 6 Beta CD that was sent to Apple II Partners and Associates in late 1991 included four ProDOS parti- tions, the first of which was bootable on an Apple IIgs, and one 160-Meg HFS partition, all of which was accessible from a stock ROM 03 simply by booting from the CD. The HFS FST was installed on the CD's boot partition. The 160-meg partition is no- where close to the maximum size of an HFS partition, it was simply all the room that was left on the hard drive that was used as the master for the CD. The control panel NDA has undergone radical surgery—the computer equivalent of a combina- tion face lift, tummy tuck, liposuction, and hair transplant. It barely resembles the Control Panel found in System 5.x. In fact, the changes are so dramatic that CDev’s (the items found within the Control Panel NDA) are no longer called CDev’s. Instead, they're each referred to as a control panel and users are no longer limited to only one S 17 CDev, er control panel, open at a time. All of your control panels can be open at once if you want, since each control panel opens into its own window. In fact, if you open the CDevs folder, you can open any control panel by simply double-clicking on its icon! Since each control panel has its own window under System 6, control panels can use smaller or larger windows than the standard size imposed by System 5.x - SetStart uses a very tiny window, while the AppleShare control panel uses a window that’s very wide and very tall. System 6 also introduces several new control panels including: sounds, Setstart, Media control, Namer, and even one to allow network booting directly into ProDOS 8. The Sounds control panel allows sounds, stored as rSound resources, to be assigned to various system events such as disk inserts, disk ejects, the regular beep, bad keypress, windows whooshing open/close, etc. These sounds are stored in the same format used by Hypercard ligs, in fact, HyperCard IIgs v.1.1 knows when it’s running under System 6 and will also search for a requested sound in the *:System:Sounds folder. Sound utilities such as Triad Venture’s Sound Convert should make it simple to create rSound files for use with System 6. Setstart allows users to easily boot into an appli- cation besides the Finder. SetStart allows users to pick the Finder (which facilitates restoring the factory settings), the currently running application, or any application on the boot volume via a Standard File dialog. The introduc- tion of SetStart means users no longer have to know exactly what file to rename in their System folder and no longer have to copy their desired boot application into the System folder (or play any other boot-time games) in order to boot into the application of their choice. The media control control panel (now there’s a mouthful) allows users to define how their multi- media devices are connected. Users pick each of the eight channels, ignoring any unused channels, and click on a list of drivers to indicate the type of device for a given channel, then click on a list of connection methods for that device. For example, my channel 1 is assigned to a CD- drive connected via my SCSI card and my channel 2 is assigned to a Pioneer 4200 Laser disc player via my modem port. I could also assign channel 4 (skipping channel 3 just because I can) to a Pioneer 2000 Laser Disc player connected via the game port (no serial interface adaptor needed!) and channel 5 could be assigned to a second CD drive (if I had two) which would probably also be connected via the same SCSI card that the first one was. Once your channels are assigned, the Media Control Remote is about all you need to start dabbling in the various media devices. Users familiar with AppleTalk networks have probably seen the old Namer application (an 8-bit application). Namer is used to assign names to printers on your network (something normally done by the network administrator). System 6 introduces a control panel version of Namer that’s much easier to use than the old 8-bit application. Once you've used the Namer control panel, you'll forget all about the old way of doing things. And speaking of networking Lacerta easier, System 6 includes a new Network control panel that allows users booting over a server to boot directly into GS/OS, like they did with System 5.x, or directly into ProDOS 8 without having to install a le Workstation card and connecting through it. Simply click the ProDOS 8 radio button in the Network control panel and the next time your Apple IIgs 18 boots from a server, it will quickly boot directly into ProDOS 8. Many of the control panels from System 5.X have been dramatically improved for better performance, a cleaner user interface, simplification through combining several small control panels into one, etc. The AppleShare control panel isa little wider than it used to be, making it easier to read the zone and server names. Perhaps this wasn’t a problem if your Apple ligs was on a tiny network, but users on larger networks should find this improvement to be quite a blessing. The AppleShare control panel also uses targetable con- trols (see the explanation below) for its server and zone lists. Asa result, users can jump right to a specific server or zone by typing the first few characters of that server's or zone’s name. On a network with hundreds of zones such as the one at Apple, this feature is almost mandatory -without it, selecting zones involves a lot of scrolling. The time control panel has been rewritten. It no longer uses pop-up menus to set the hours, minutes, and seconds. Instead, users click on the hour, minute, or second portions of the time display and either type a new value for it or click on the up/down arrow buttons in the Time control panel to adjust the value. The month, day, and year are adjusted in a similar fashion. Other changes in the Time control panel include a dis- play of what day of the year it is and how many days are left in the year (which simplifies planning your New Year's Eve ties). The Time control panel also features a checkbox that lets users decide whether or not they'd like the Time control 1 to handle adjusting their clocks automatically for Daylight Savings time. If you prefer to track that manually, there are radio buttons for Daylight Time and Standard Time, clicking the unselected button will adjust your current clock’s time up or back one hour. The general control panel is a combination of the old general CDEV, the mouse CDEV, and the alphabet CDEV. Now, you can adjust menu blinking, cursor flash rates, system speed, mouse speed, double-click timing, display language, keyboard layout (USA, Dvorak, etc.), and whether or not keyboard translation is performed. Keyboard translation allows or prevents access to characters within a font that requires the Option key to be held down. There's even a check box that allows you to have your NDA menu alphabetized. So much is new in System 6 that a shortcuts file was added to one of the disks. Prior to release, it was on the SystemTools2 disk but it could be moved to another disk if space constraints demand it. Once you have System 6 installed, open the Shortcuts file with Teach and you'll find tips for all aspects of System 6, including such gems as: OQ Command-W always closes the front window even ifit’sa desk accessory or control panel. QO Whenever you see a List control with a bold frame, you can use the up and down arrows to select various items in the list, and you can type the first one or more letters of an item to select it. (When typing the first several letters of an item, you have to type a key every two-thirds of a second or faster.) Q You can type letters to move around in the CDA menu (first letter only). Each press moves you to the next line that starts with that letter). Apple 2000 Q When Initializing or Erasing a disk (in the “Initialize device .SPLAT as...” dialog), Command-Return works for the Initialize or Erase button. Q In the Finder, you can hold down Option and choose Control Panels from the Apple menu to open the System:CDevs folder. O Command-Shift-Esc opens the Control Panels NDA, just like choosing Control Panels from the Apple menu. Q You can use letters and the arrow keys to select a control panel icon. 0 You can hold down the Command key and click on an icon to select several control panel icons at once, or youcan hold down Shift to select a whole range of control panel icons. There are some subtle changes to System 6 that may briefly trip up experienced users who don’t bother to read the shortcuts file or the manual for System 6. Most notably, TAB no longer advances to the next disk when a Standard File dialog is open. To under- stand why, I'll first need to explain the concept of targetable controls. Chuck oye SS System 6 supports the same concept of targetable con- trols that was first introduced in Macintosh System 7.0. A control is said to be the target if key presses from the user are handled by the control instead of being passed somewhere else or simply ignored. Let's look at a generic example first: a dialog with two text entry fields. Normally, users would have to click in one field or the other to move between them. Under System 6, if both are targetable controls, then the current target is the one that is sent the user's key presses. Pressing the TAB key tells the system to make the next control the target. For controls other than line edit/text edit controls, a bold frame is drawn around the current target to help inform the user where their key presses will be sent. Text entry fields have a blinking cursor when they're active (ora range of selected text), so no bold frame is needed. Ina Standard Save File dialog, the initial target is the file name field (where you type a name for the new file). Press- ing the TAB key makes the list of files/folders the target - pressing keys now simply moves through the list of existing files/folders. While this may seem a tad confusing at first, it take only a few tries to get used to this enhanced approach to navigating disks. So just how does a user advance to the next online device if tab now does something different? Command-TAB moves to the next disk. Also, Command- Esc is a new key equivalent for the Volumes button, making it much easier to move between your online devices. April 1992 Look around the system for other places that take ad- vantage of targetable controls. The AppleShare control panel is another great example, it’s much easier to move around large networks when the zone/server/volume lists can accept keyboard input to jump to your desired location without a lot of scrolling. The control panels NDA isn’t the only long-time component of apple IIgs system software that’s un- dergone a major rework for System 6. The Installer has been greatly simplified so it should no longer be intimidating to normal users. Instead of forcing users to pick which components of the System Software they want installed, a new EasyUpdate approach has been imple- mented. EasyUpdate tells the Installer to figure out what the user needs to have installed in order to bring an existing or new system disk up to date with System 6. The Installer looks at what you have already installed (drivers, FST’s, CDev's, etc) as well as what you have connected (in case you forgot to install a driver that you really needed). The old familiar list of scripts that could be installed is still available, just click the Customize button on the Install- er’s EasyUpdate screen. There are some changes in the custom installation area though. Mostly they are behind the scenes changes that simplify installation. If you select several scripts, each of which may include the same file, the System 5.x Installer would copy that file several times, once for each script that called for it. The System 6 Installer is smarter than that - it scans the selected scripts and com- bines them into one super script, eliminating all redundan- cies along the way. The result is a faster installation and fewer disk swaps. The installer in System 6 won't let you install to the disk you booted from, so make sure you boot from the floppy that the installer comes on. If you're not certain what portions of System 6 you need installed on your Apple IIgs, just let EasyUpdate handle things for you. Bear in mind though that EasyUpdate won’t add new items, like the