Australian Apple Review The Vol 1 No 1 1983 10 Gareth Powell AU

= SS Registered by Australia Post Publication No NBG6313 e * Recommended retail price ustralian pple Review e Independent Magazine October Vol.1No.1 $3 goodisafake Apple? Word Processors ustralia versus the world The Olympia 100 printer-typewriter Top Ten Progran ow your Apple The Vision 1@8K RAM w good is afake Apple? Word Processors ustralia versus the world The Olympia | 100 printer-typewriter Top Ten Progran | iow your Apple The Visionle8K RAM § pd Buglettes The Auto-Ice Printer Inter- | e News from Apple Adventurer’s Corner isis Mountain The Great Apple Game Document Name: A Word CONTRAC :WJ 3 OCT Processor for the real world When you buy a personal computer for your of- fice, you don’t want to take a college degree to use it. Computer Solutions has Word Processing software so good that it will make you want to buy an Apple II. We call it ZARDAX —a wonderful writing tool for business use. Powerful and versatile, yet easy to use and natural. You enter your text in free-form, insert- ing carriage returns only when you want definite paragraph breaks. Then watch while ZARDAX prints up your copy, breaking it into lines where appropriate. Change margin, pagewidth and pagelength with simple commands and print up a new copy in a different format. With ZARDAX, printing 100 copies is easy. Inserting different specific information into each copy is easy. You can be in control of the format of your words and sentences. Fast recording of your documents on inexpensive magnetic diskettes. Retrieve your documents from ZARDAX is a trademark of Computer Solutions requires a 48K, 16-sector disk-based ‘Apple II Plus diskette so easily, make some changes, and record the altered version. Then ZARDAX will print your new improved version. Never again will you retype a whole document just because you wanted a few changes. Standard paragraphs recorded on diskette can be combined in different ways to make new documents. There are all kinds of possibilities. ZARDAX supports a wide variety of printers. From the best (and most expensive) letter-quality printers to the cheapest dot-matrix printers. ZARDAX’s best feature is its price — only $295 at your Apple dealer. If your dealer doesn’t carry ZARDAX, have him mail us on The Source CL1791. Or have him call one of our distributors. In the USA, Action-Research Northwest, 11442 Marine View Drive SW, Seattle, WA 98146. In the UK, Rocon Ltd, Radley Road Industrial Estate, Abingdon Oxon. Or dealers may write us at Computer Solutions, P.O. Box 397, Mount Gravatt. 4122. Australia. APPLE is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Ine. oO The ts - Australian _ Apple Revi we "opr Sood is a fake Apple? Word Processors —Aastralia versus the world The Olympia E5100 Es ‘Top Ten Program if O8K os Bite 28K RAD a Buglettes The e Printer Inter- News from Ay Mslience The Wor Apple Dealers ‘Bow good isa fake Apple? Word Processors Australia versus the world The Olympia 155100 printer-typewriter “op Ten Progre HEnow your Apple The Vision 128K RAM ‘card Buglettes The Auto-lce Printer Inter- "Bate News from Apple Acventurer's Cor Gesis Mountain The Great Apple Game Australian Apple Review, Top Rear, 4 Carrington Rd, ick, NSW 2031. Published by Gareth Powell Pty Ltd Managing Director — Rosetta McGee Managing Editor — Gareth Powell Editor — Graeme Philipson ‘Art Director — Avrille Goldsworthy Production Manager — Sian Powell Technical Advisers — Felix Macri, Wed Hyrapietian Advertising Enquiries — ‘S09 Hoskinson or Peter Hardwicke, | Gercth Powell Pty Ltd, Toe Rear, 4 Carrington Rd, ‘Bendwick, NSW 2031 Pre 398 5111 Subscription Manager — Sirpa Bukkuri Pre 398 5111 ‘Typesetting — Rochester Paotosetting Printing — Offset Alpine Distribution: GORDON & GOTCH LTD SYDNEY Contents 2 EDITORIAL 3 NEWS FROM APPLE 6 ARTICLE The real truth about the fake Apple 1 1 PRINTED PAGES The Olympia ES-100 Typewriter-Printer BUGLETTES 1 3 Disks and Disk Drives, Random Numbers not so random GAMES 1 5 The Great Apple Game Challenge Adventurer’s Corner, Crisis Mountain 1 8 PRODUCT REVIEW The Vision-128 RAM card SOFTWARE REPORT 2 O Word Processors — Australia versus the World 2 6 KNOW YOUR APPLE 2 8 THE WORM IN THE APPLE 3 ) DEALER’S DIRECTORY 3 2 TOP TEN APPLE COPY Ii PLUS The most sophisticated Bit copy Program is now available in Australia! It handles synchronized tracks, half tracks, nibble counting, bit insertion and other protection schemes. It also includes a comprehensive discussion of disk format and protection techniques, and instructions on how to back up hundreds of popular programs, from Advanced Visicale to Zork. ‘A disk system and speed check assure your drives are running in top condition and a nibble editor will allow you to repair. BACK UP YOUR PROTECTED DISKS! This is also the last DOS utility you will need. Fully Menu driven and includes a catalogue display with binary files, addresses and lengths, a disk usage map, and ‘can copy, lock, unlock delete and undelete files. The copy Il plus sector editor will allow you to view and modify data in either hex or ASCII format. : HANDLES BOTH DO53.2and3.3$59.95) THE SUPER PLOTTER $79.95 A professionally oriented, extended graphics plot ting system for the Apple. Includes pie charts, bar charts, point and line graphs. Features include data file editor, graphics screen text editor, function blotter, overlay modes and much more. Compre: hensive manual. EDUCATIONAL State of the art in computer assisted instruction programs. Kid tested and inexpensive. These pro grams are recently imported from the USA, and al make extensive use of the Apple’s magnificent colour graphics and sound to make learning fun. THE MATHS MACHINE — $79.95 Designed to improve maths skills, from kinder- garten to grade 6. Handles class sizes up to 6C students, but is equally suitable in the home. THE SPELLING MACHINE — $59.95 For improvement of spelling skills. Stores up to 70¢ words and sentences which are completely change able by you the teacher. THE READING MACHINE — $64.95 Gives reading instruction from kindergarten to 3rd grade. Over 28 skill levels and a comprehensive manual to guide parents and teachers, $44.95 SPELLING SORCERY — Uses the power of arcade games to make spelling fun for all ages. Ability to input user selected words with edit facility. For schools and the home. MATHS WARS - $49.95 Exiting graphics arcade game that makes maths fun for all ages. Over 35 skill levels. $29.95 HODGE PODGE = Popular childrens program of colour graphics and sound responses to hitting any key. For ages 18 months to 7 years, CHILDREN’S CARROUSEL — $29.95 Popular collection of educational games for 2 to 7 year olds. RL are proud to announce the arrival of the following games of strategy from the good ole USA. SINGLES NIGHT AT MOLLY'S $29.95 Two challenging solitaire card games played on Hires screen, The graphics are unbelievable. Tough and mentally fatiguing but lots of fun. PANDEMONIUM = $39.95 A well executed solid thinking game. You must form words horizontally, vertically and diagonally ona5x5 box grid. Includes 5000 word dictionary VALDEZ — $29.95 Highiy rated simulation of a supertanker using helm and engine controls. You have to contend with tides, icebergs and other ships. R L COMPUTING SERVICES 33 NEY STREET MORANBAH 4744 QLD. *Write for our free Software Catalogue TMApple is a registered Trademark of ‘Apple Computers Inc. EDITORIAL ‘elcome to the first issue of ‘The Wises Apple Review’. This will be a magazine by and for users of Apple computers in this country. As well as we can estimate, there are over 20,000 Apple computers in Australia today, easily enough to support a magazine. Our decision to launch the magazine was not taken lightly. We had been looking at the possibility for some time, but the catalyst which brought about the decision was the opening of Apple in Australia. The time, like the Apple, is ripe. Despite the fact that we have the friendliest relations with Apple — and specifically with David Roman who has given us tremendous support and encouragement — we are not an official Apple magazine. It is most important that we get this point across, otherwise readers will be under the impression that when we talk about Apple products it will be as a public relations exercise. This is not the case. We will write about the Apple and its products as we see them. If they are ill conceived or hastily released (as the Apple /// was) we shall say so. If there are worms in the Apple we shall have no hesitation in digging them out. But in fairness we should say that the editorial staff of this magazine has had a love affair with the Apple — and indeed with all microcomputers — which has been constant, on our side at least. In this issue we look at word processors in some detail. That is because word processors are to this company a vital life- line. Over the past few years we have used a large number of Apple word processors — from the Applewriter | onwards. It will be seen from our reviews that we favour Zardax, an Australian program which has been in a state of continual improvement since we first started using it. And this, we think, shows our lack of editorial bias, because a senior member of our editorial staff has just finished writing a new handbook for Sandy's Word Processor for the Apple /le, a word processing system which we also review in this issue. We also have a special relationship with the rotund Harry Harper who produced the Vision-80 and has now produced a 128K RAM board which we review in this issue. Harry may not necessarily like the review, but editorial integrity comes before mateship. We also doubt whether the legal department of Apple Inc. in America will leap up and down with joy regarding our article about fake Apples. We point the finger of blame firmly in their direction, and look forward to some form of reply. This magazine has been written on Apples and the disks then formatted for typesetting — a major use for typesetting which has not yet got into its stride in Australia, Every member of the staff knows Apples intimately, plays with them, works with them, writes with them. We will be concentrating on areas of interest to all, or a majority, of readers. Obviously some items will interest only a few, but these will be kept to a minimum. A magazine exists to serve its readers, so the best way for us to determine what we will include is for you to tell us what you want. At all times we will welcome criticism, suggestions and advice. This is your magazine. We have immensely enjoyed producing this first issue. We hope that you will get the same enjoyment from reading it Graeme Philipson NEWS FROM APPLE Fighting the fakes on two continents Apple Inc has been awarded a preliminary injunction against a Los Angeles distributor of one of the copies of the Apple Il computer being sold in the US. A judge of the US District Court in California enjoined Formula International, distributor of the “Pineapple” computer, from copying or selling any of Apple's copyrighted software in the computer's memory or on disk, specifically the Autostart ROM, Applesoft, DOS 3.3 and Integer BASIC. The judge concluded that US copyright statutes cover programs stored in ROM, and said that Congress intended to __ include Operating Systems such as DOS under the protection granted by the copyright laws. In asimilar case between Apple and the Franklin Computer Corporation now pending in Philadelphia, a District Court judge found that ‘the intent of Congress is unclear on the computer software protection granted by US copyright laws. Meanwhile Apple Australia have been granted a court order prohibiting Newcastle microcomputer dealer Microeductional from selling the “Golden Il’ and — ‘‘Wombat’’ computers, which contain substantial amounts of Apple software in their ROMs. Commenting on the order, David Strong of Apple Australia said “We will continue our efforts to prevent the public being misled by Apple ‘look alikes’ which often do not have the same warranty protection as the genuine article. While we support suppliers of Apple-compatible products, we will continue to take whatever steps are necessary against products copyright.” (See ‘Fake Apples” in this issue) which infringe our Netcomm and Apple The small Australian company Netcomm has signed an agreement with Apple Computer Inc in the US giving Apple the worldwide marketing and distribution rights for the Netcomm communications interface card. The Netcomm card, which was unveiled at the Australian Computer Conference last year, enables the Apple computer to communicate with most IBM mainframes. Announcing the agreement, Netcomm managing director Chris Howells said the deal would be worth up to $7m in sales in the first year, and would provide Netcomm with some $3m in revenue over the next five years. Netcomm cards are currently available for the Apple Il and //e and Apple /// computers, at a cost of around $700. Netcomm are working on other protocols which will allow a direct interface with all major mainframes and virtually any serial protocol. It complements Apple's local area networking facility, Applenet, which was announced earlier this year. The agreement represents a major triumph for Netcomm, which was competing against 19 American contenders for the contract. The Netcomm card. Apple and Control Data Apple Computer Australia are making arrangements for the appointment of Control Data Australia as its third-party maintenance organisation in Australia. The agreement will result in users having access to a nation-wide on-site main- tenance service. Control Data will install and maintain Apple II, Apple // and Lisa computers and peripherals, including printers and video monitors. The on-site support offered by Control Data will complement Apple’s current dealer maintenance service. “This agreement will have a number of advantages for Apple users’’, Apple Australia’s General Manager, David Strong, said in a joint announcement with Control Data. “On-site maintenance has never been available for Apple computers on a national basis before. Its availability will now be ideal for the professional user who needs to get full productivity out of his installation and cannot afford to have his computer taken away for service, as well as for those in high-security areas.” Apple introduce consumer credit card The first manufacturer-sponsored credit card in the retail computer industry has been announced in the US by General Electric Credit Corporation (GECC) and Apple Computer. The card is the centrepiece of a new consumer credit financing program exclusively for US buyers of Apple Personal Computers and compatible hardware and software. The Apple card will enable customers to purchase Apple computers and system components without drawing on other lines of credit. It is an alternative or complement to common bank credit cards, which may have credit limits inadequate to finance a computer with desirable system components. Apple Australia have no plans to introduce the credit card system in Australia. NEWS FROM APPLE Apple Education Centre In September Apple Australia are opening an Education Centre within their premises at North Ryde. The centre will be used to run a series of free introductory courses for parents and teachers, including talks on the components and functions of Apple computers. By the end of the year Apple hope to involve software publishers in sessions where dealers, teachers and parents can view available software before committing themselves to a purchase. A new monitor for the Apple Il Apple has announced a new monochrome video display designed to blend aesthetically with the Apple II. The new monitor features superior The new Apple monitor. resolution for 80-column text and graphics display, an anti-reflective, high contrast screen, and a tilt mechanism for adjusting the screen's angle. The monitor's 12-inch screen displays up to twenty-four 80-charac- ter lines of text, and high-resolution graphics in P31 green phosphor, a colour that minimises eye strain. The monitor's tilt mechanism and_anti- reflective high contrast screen also help to reduce eye fatigue. The monitor Il can be used with any Apple Il, Apple !I Plus or Apple //e computer. Every Apple //e computer comes with a video cable that allows the monitor to be easily connected to the computer's back panel. Video cables that were provided with Apple ll and Apple II Plus computers also work with the monitor. New multi-colour plotter Apple Computer Australia launched a new multi-colour plotter compatible with its full range of personal com- puters at the 10th Australian Computer Conference in Melbourne in September. The Apple Colour Plotter, which produces presentation quality graphs and charts on either paper or overhead transparencies, is priced at $1,295, making it one of the most advanced plotters available at that price. The plotter is compatible with Apple Business Graphics and many other software programs which utilise the high-resolution multi-colour graphs capabilities of the Apple ll, Il Plus, /e and Apple ///. “The Apple Colour Plotter allows the user to create quality printouts of charts and graphs for any type of busi- ness situation. It can also help display complicated scientific or engineering data or serve as a training or teaching aid,” Marketing Manager for Apple Australia, David Roman said. The plotter features four colour pens which can be interchanged automati- cally during operation. Commands given to the plotter by the graphics software determine pen selection, so a user does not need to stop the plotter’s operation to change pens. Designed for both plotting accuracy and speed, the plotter provides 0.1 mm resolution, 0.2 mm repeatability, and 10 cmisec plotting speed. Its variable- width plotting bed and adjustable pinch roller mechanisms permit a wide choice of media choices up to 297 mm x 420 mm (A3). The Apple Colour Plotter uses a standard RS-232C serial interface and will connect directly to the Apple ///'s built-in serial port. Apple’s Super Serial Interface Card connects the plotter to the Apple II, Apple I Plus, or Apple //e. An accessory kit and a multi-pen The new Apple Plotter.- 2 capper are also included with each plotter. The kit contains a user’s operating manual, connector cables, and one 50-sheet package of paper printouts. Designed for convenient pen storage when the plotter is not being. used, the multi-pen capper allows all four pens to be capped in a single motion. A complete range of Apple plotter supplies is available for separate purchase, including four types of pens in eight colours, two sizes of paper, paper-backed transparencies, and the multi-pen capper. New DOS for the Apple II Apple Australia is distributing a new DOS to Apple-licensed software developers for applications development. Called ‘Prodos’, it provides increased compatibility between the Apple Il and Apple ///, and the higher performance required for more sophisticated Apple Il applications. Prodos uses the hierarchical file structure, file naming conventions and data formats of the Apple /i/ Sophisticated _ Operating System (SOS). Thus, Prodos data files and data media are interchangeable on the Apple Il or Apple ///. Prodos’ design frees the Apple II from the physical limitations of the 143K Apple disk Il drive. Using Prodos, the Apple Il can handle larger files, such as those often required by word processing and data base applications, and can recognise any disk storage device that uses Apple’s protocols. Prodos-based applications will never need to be rewritten to recognise new storage devices for the Apple II In addition, Prodos’ hierarchical Unix-like structure provides the Apple Il user with an organised method for managing larger numbers of files on larger storage devices. Prodos supports _ interrupt-driven processing, which is required for technically-advanced applications such as networking and data communications. Because it shares common data formats with SOS, Prodos supports mixed network environments, such as Apple's forthcoming local area network Applenet, that accommodates both Apple Il and Apple /// computers. Due to its sophisticated design, Prodos also offers more efficient memory management and a faster user response _ time. These enhancements will give Prodos-based application programs increased performance in locating and transferring data. Similarities between Prodos and SOS will allow developers to write single assembly language source code for an application that can be used to easily create common Apple |! and Apple /// applications. This capability increases developers’ productivity and gives users an easy upgrade path from the Apple II to the Apple ///. Prodos does not make the Apple DOS 3.3, SOS or Pascal operating environments obsolete, and all will continue to be available as licensed products from Apple. Users will be able to convert DOS 3.3 data files so that they work with Prodos-based application programs to take advantage of the advanced capabilities that Prodos provides. Prodos-based applications will not require hardware changes to the Apple Il, Apple Il Plus or Apple //e. The current disk II interface card will work with DOS 3.3, Apple Pascal and Prodos applications on all Apple Ils. Millionth Apple II The one millionth Apple computer was produced recently at Apple’s Texas manufacturing plant. The millionth computer was the first in a program where Apple are giving a computer to each of California's 9,000 schools. “This computer represents the one millionth time Apple has bought technology to individuals through personal computing,"” said Steve Jobs, chairman of the board and co- founder of Apple. “The world is moving from an industrial to an information society and we believe the Apple personal computer has done much to foster that transition.”” Production of the Apple Il — which has evolved into the Apple //e model — is being increased. They are now being built at the rate of one every eight seconds during the working day. GOOD... BETTER... BEST. That's us ... After 3 years’ of selling Apples, longer than anyone else in Sydney, we know we can support you better. Come in for some friendly service from people who know Apple. PRINTER BONANZA New! Lower prices on the world’s best printers: Epson Rx-80 Epson Rx-80 AT Epson Fx-80 Epson Fx-100 Epson Rx-100 (oct) Ice Graphics Interface APPLICARDS The remarkable new cards which give you a choice of 4 or 6 MHz Z80 with up to 428K RAM and optional RAMDISK software. 4MHz 6MHz| Applicard, 64K with CPM 2.2 With Applicdisk SW $495 $625 With 128K+ Applidisk Just watch Wordstar and dBase Il fly with these Pervonal and Sal usiens Computer Systems 75 Castlereagh St 233 8992 CROWS NEST 385 Pacific Hwy 922 3600 ARTICLE The real truth about fake Apple by Gareth Powell lsewhere in this issue we mention E« this company became intimately involved with Apple computers. Because of our interest in Apples, and because we maintained a close contact with Hong Kong, Manila (where we have offices) and Taiwan, we probably know collectively more about fake Apples than any other company in Australia. Fake Apples first emerged about three years ago. At the time the distributor in Hong Kong for real Apple computers was one Neville McKay, an Australian flight engineer with Cathay Pacific. In fact, at that time his company, Delta, had a fair claim to the distribution rights for the Apple throughout most of Asia and Australia. He ran his operation from part of a large house in Kowloon in an area notorious for short-time motels. Neville McKay was flying throughout Asia and it was he that spotted the first fake Apples starting to be manufactured in Taiwan. At his own expense he carefully investigated the scene and sent a full report to Apple in America, in their palatial premises in Cupertino. No apparent action resulted. Despite a mound of growing evidence, for two years Apple Inc appeared to do effectively nothing about the pirates who were happily churning out Apple copies. This writer was involved with Neville McKay and Jeremy Lack (the managing director of Delta) in writing a memo to Apple in America telling them yet again of the situation in Taiwan. The memo named the 26 manufacturers who were then operating, gave their addresses, and pointed out that of the 178 members of the Taiwan Apple Users’ Club only three had genuine Apples. There was no response to this memo. Apple Inc now appear to have woken up to the threat of these fake Apples and have indeed sent a team of lawyers to Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. In some ways they have been effective. In some, not. Obviously, the suggestion that The power supply of a fake Apple. This one has already been repaired once. we are making here is that this problem is, in the main, one of Apple’s own making. If they had acted promptly and effectively as soon as a fake appeared then the situation might still exist, but it would be one of controllable proportions. The Current Situation If you are in Hong Kong you can catch the Mass Transit Railway to Shamshuipo. When you get off head for the exit marked “Fuk Wa Street/Kweilin Street”. As you come out into the street you will see in front of you, slighty to the left, a large building with signs in Chinese you do not understand. Starting at the basement you have three floors which sell nothing but fake Apples and fake Apple peripherals. These stores are raided by the Hong Kong police at regular intervals and charges laid. The store-owners pay their fines and continue selling their fake Apples — much to the distress of the new official Apple distributor in Hong Kong who is, incidentally, not Neville McKay or Delta. (They have turned their energies to making and selling the Med Fly computer, of which more later). All of these fake Apples are totally illegal under Hong Kong law, but it is highly unlikely that the sales will ever be stopped until effective action is taken in Taiwan, the source of all these troubles. Whether it is possible to take such action at this late stage of the game is a matter for debate. Daniel G. Wendin, Associate Counsel for Apple Computer, has said in an interview that litle can be easily accomplished in Taiwan. And he is probably right. However, Apple has the cooperation of the United States customs in stopping the importation of fake Apples into the United States, and it is possible that other countries may be persuaded to take that line of action. At the moment cases are pending against two Taiwanese manufacturers — but the likely results will not be known for some time. (It has been suggested that fake Apple manufacturers in Taiwan are now turning their attention to producing legal IBM compatible machines. Which is One of the newer fake Apples, with a numeric keypad and different case. This ‘machine is comparatively reliable. interesting if true. It has also been suggested in the last two weeks that the Taiwanese government, concerned with its public image, is introducing new laws in January of 1984 which will increase the penalties for copying copyrighted articles. However, the penalties will be prison sentences which can be paid for as fines. In other words, the only penalties against the Taiwanese manufacturers will, in fact, be financial. In our opinion it is unlikely that this will work although it is a step in the right direction.) In the United States Apple took the manufacturers of the Franklin Computer, amachine derived very closely from the Apple Il, to court to try to obtain an injunction against continued sales of the Franklin. Despite stories that have appeared elsewhere, Apple did not lose that case. The judge in denying the injunction merely stated that he was unable to determine the law and that a full trial was needed to decide the issue. Apple has now appealed that verdict to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and have won quite decisively. The decision is a landmark decision because it gives the protection of Copyright to an operating system. Legal opinion, heretofore has thought such an argument untenable and there is not much doubt that Franklin will appeal. Whether they will win is anyone's guess but the judgement as handed in Apple's favour will, if it stands, effectively stop all Apple copies in the United States. Australia The situation complex. There is no doubt that it is not illegal to own an Apple copy (whether it is a wise decision we will discuss later). It is almost certainly illegal to sell them, under at least two counts, passing off and infringement of patent. Injunctions have already been success- fully obtained. These injunctions will, eventually, have to be tested in court, where the decision will be made as to whether these pirate copies are illegal. The best legal opinion that we have been able to obtain suggests that Apple would win such an action in the Australian courts. Finally, it is worth noting that pride goeth before a fall. Daniel G. Wendin — the aforementioned Associate Counsel for Apple Computer — stated in an interview that the new Apple //e was a solution to the problem. He said, God bless his innocent soul, “This changes things, their Apple Il in Australia is more copies won't sell so well any more.” We have sad news for Mr Wendin. Machines that copy the //e in almost every function — 64K on the board, upper and lower case — are already widely available. This article is being written on one. Are they worth the money? That then is the current and complex legal situation. The question is, are fake Apples worth the money? Let's look at the machines themselves. All fake Apple salespeople try to give the impression that their machines are made in Japan. Frequently Japanese names (Uchi Yama is the most common) printed on sticky paper tags are stuck in strategic parts of the machine. The words “Made in Japan” can often be seen inscribed on one of the boards. As far as we can ascertain — and we are in a better position to check this than most people — the number of fake Apples that have actually been made in Japan is infinitesimal, if indeed any at all have been built there. The statement made by the vendor that this is a “Japanese” fake Apple and consequently of a superior quality is therefore not true. It is marginally possible that some power supplies come from Japan and there is no doubt that non-standard disc drives are manufactured there in a big way. But not fake Apples. The majority of fake Apples are made in Taiwan or Hong Kong. And they are most definitely built on a “cottage industry’’ basis. Cast from your mind any idea of electronic factories with _trained- technicians working under clinically clean conditions with careful inspection of the finished product. That ain't the way it happens. In most cases a manufacturer acquires a set of boards and sends them out for soldering on a piece-work basis. In Hong Kong you can frequently see shop attendants at the aforementioned Golden Supermarket assembling boards during slack periods. They are, indeed, making the fake Apples that will later be offered for sale to customers as “Manufactured in Japan’’ The result of this piece-work approach is obvious if you carefully inspect any machine that is tendered for sale. Here is 7 ARTICLE how to look at a fake Apple and see its faults (and its strengths). 1, Baseboard. First turn the machine over and look at the metal base. Over the past year the quality of these has deteriorated rapidly as the Taiwanese and Hong Kong manufacturers fight to save a dollar in a highly competitive market. The boards are now almost all made by a tinware manufacturer who specialises in making baking trays. You will notice the resemblance at once. You will also note that there are several holes in the baseboard which appear to serve no useful function. Again, that is because the baseboard manufacturer is making his product for possibly twenty or thirty assembler/manufacturers and the board has to be infinitely adaptable. You will also see that at least one and probably three holding screws are missing. These have been removed by the shopkeeper to use as spares. Although, as on a real Apple, these are black screws, they are always of a smaller diameter and frequently have a straight slot rather than a Philips head. 2. Casing. The casing of the machine will be one of many shades ranging from white to dark tan. This is an approximation of the Apple colour (which acute observers will also have noticed ranges fairly widely). Note carefully that on all fake Apples this is very soft plastic indeed and scratches very easily. The lid will not fit as well as the genuine Apple lid but the arrangements for fixing it in position are, in many cases, superior to those used by Apple. On the standard Apple the lid is held down by two rubber The ROMs on a fake Apple. They have been juggled around from a number of different machines to get a working set. Note jumper in front of them, a common sight in these machines Fake Apple keyboard. Note how the metal tray at the bottom protrudes from the body of the machine. pads which cling to each other and which frequently fall off. On the fake Apples it is normal for the lid to have two built-in hook projections under it which fit into the Apple main case. The lid therefore has to be slid back about five centimetres before it is lifted. This is a positive and excellent locking system. 3. The power supply. Inside the machine all is familiar with, apparently, everything in its rightful place. But beware. The first and biggest problem lies in the power supply. Apples need a diet of +12, -12, +5 and —5V DC to work correctly and these measurements are critical. Further, in order for the disk drive or any peripheral to work there has to be enough power expressed in amps. Lastly, there must be a built-in fuse otherwise any fault can be very costly indeed. Until very recently, no fake Apple power supply fulfilled any of these conditions. Workshops in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia are full of these power supplies which have failed and cannot be economically fixed. Now that the buying public in Hong Kong and Taiwan has caught on to this problem, there is a flood of power supplies being offered which are, so the unsuspecting buyer is told, of American, Japanese, German or English manufacture and guaranteed not to go wrong. Power output is frequently claimed to be 7 amps or more. However, a close inspection of the interior of these power supplies shows that they are still from Taiwan and still made in the old way, but with two differences. The casing is sprayed black instead of gold and fuses are now inserted. Only a trained electronics engineer can check out one of these power supllies accurately. At the moment, over the whole range of fake Apples available, the Mean Time Between Failure on the power supplies would be of the order of 24 hours. The worst feature of all fake Apples is the power supply. We have seen one power supply in Hong Kong, which we had tested by an electronic engineer. It passed all his tests with flying colours. It can be easily identified by having a whale-like hump at one end. BUT, at this writing, it is not available as standard equipment in any fake Apples that we have seen and its price is over Aus$100. 4. The motherboard. It is normal practice to assure all customers that the board was made in Japan and the the ROM and RAM chips are of NEC quality at the very least. Again, this is rarely true. If you see a motherboard outside a machine and run your hand over the bottom (the non-socketed side) you will feel that it is sticky. This is a dead giveaway that the board was assembled at home or in the shop, where they do not have the facilities nor the inclination to clean up the boards after soldering. There are several types of motherboard of which the most reliable is known as the Golden Ill. (Names on all the machines are totally pointless. A take Apple is a fake Apple by any other name. The knowledgeable Chinese users ignore the names of the machines and concentrate their buying expertise on the components.) The Golden Ill (and yes, Virginia, there is a Golden II and a Golden |) has 48K on the board and works relatively satisfactorily. In keeping with the move to imitate the Apple //e there are now 64K boards of which the most common is the Vectorio. Sadly, these boards are full of bugs and many programs will simply not Sein to that extra 16K of space, including Zardax and, sometimes, Visicalc. The slots at the top end of the board on the real Apple have spring loaded gold fingers which grasp interface cards firmly. Diligent inspection with a flashlight (which will not be encouraged by any Oriental shopkeeper) will show that these fake sockets are not gold plated and not spring loaded. It is common practice either to use a sponge rubber pad in the cover of the machine to hold cards in their slots or to use a piece of rubber inner tube that goes around the motherboard and over the top of the different cards. Eventually, this last solution causes the motherboard to buckle, bringing sadness and confusion to all 5. The keyboard. This is the best part of a fake Apple. It is, in the opinion of many, in some ways superior to the genuine article on the Apple II but not the Apple //e. It always has real upper and lower case built in and uses a system known as the Hall effect which makes for a pleasant keyboard to type on and which lasts much longer than the genuine Apple Il keyboard. There have been complaints of key bounce but we have never experienced this problem. If it is going to be used with the Zardax word processor it needs considerable modification by an expert. As far as we are able to ascertain at this moment it is impossible to build in an automatic repeat key function 6. Accessory boards. The most common board available from the pirates is an 80 column board which is a direct rip-off of the Videx board. The characters it produces are not of the best and there is a lot of snow on the screen. Its only advantage is that it is cheap. The 16k add-on boards in our experience almost never work. The Z80 card which allows you to use C/PM does. Now comes the ten thousand dollar question — would we buy one? We have. Many of them. And in every single case they have _broken down very quickly and had to be repaired. @ GRAPHICS DUMP @ COMPATIBLE WITH ALL POPULAR PRINTERS @ HALF THE PRICE OF THE OTHERS Call Dennis O'Keefe on (049) 63 3188 AUTOMATIC ICE CO., 40 SMITH ST., CHARLESTOWN 2290 J APPLE DEALERS! APPLE USERS! APPLE STUDENTS! APPLE BUSINESSMEN! A new low-cost Parallel Printer Interface for the Apple J[ and //e. @ SPOOLING ARTICLE In Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent in the Philippines, this is easy, as fake Apples are catered for in a major way. The quickest way to repair them is by cannibalisation, and thus any fake Apple owner quickly becomes very expert at it and has a non-operating machine sitting there and looking at him with dumb reproach. These machines are unreliable to the nth degree, where ‘“n'’ approaches infinity. It is logical that they should be. They are built down to a price in a highly competitive market. And they are built under conditions which are frequently Dickensian. For a hobbyist who knows which ends of a soldering iron to use and can afford to buy two machines at once — one for working, one for fixing — then such a machine may be no bad idea. However, it is significant that in Hong Kong, where we have direct access to the biggest fake Apple market in the world, we have now switched back to genuine Apples — simply because we cannot afford the down time involved in having the machines fixed on an almost daily basis. When the legal department of Apple get their act together — and their performance to date inspires no cheers from the editors of this magazine — then it is possible but not probable that the supply of fake Apples will dry up, certainly in Australia. Until then they will continue to be available. But if you buy one bear in mind that you are paying two prices One is the cash you lay down for the machine. The second is the cash you will undoubtedly have to pay to get it fixed when, as sure.as God made little Apples, the power supply goes on the fritz, the chips malfunction and the accessory boards start to fall out. Believe us, we've been there, done that STOP PRESS Since this article was written, there have been further developments in the case concerning Franklin in the USA. A three- judge panel in the Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a lower court’s ruling in favour of Franklin. The judges ruled that object programs could be copyrighted, even if they were contained on silicon chips, and that silicon chips are not just machine parts. Rather, they are a proper embodiment of Apple's original creative work"’, and could be copyrighted as a literary work under existing laws. Franklin intend appealling the ruling, going to the Supreme Court if necessary. “We still contend that Apple was abusing the copyright laws to gain a monopoly on equipment compatible with its machine’’, said Franklin’s lawyer Jerome Shestack. Apple are now seeking to have an injuction served against Franklin, stopping them selling their computers. a WE CAN GIVE YOU THE POWER 545 Fixed/Removable Hard Disk Drive. We have the answer to your storage problems @ Reliable @ Locally Supported @ Affordable For all popular microcomputers Also 5, 10, 15 and 25 megabyte Hard Disks 10 MEGABYTES OF ON-LINE STORAGE S.A. COMPUTER MART PTY. LTD. 123 Gouger Street, Adelaide, SA 5000 Phone: (08) 51 5363, 212 2888 N.SW. 75 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest, NSW 2065 Phone: (02) 439 6300 Telex: AA 24816 act DEALER ENQUIRIES WELCOME WA. . MICRO E.D.P. HARDWARE, Qa/1 Leura Avenue, Claremont, WA 6010 Phone: (09) 384 5511 PRINTED PAGES The OLYMPIA ES-100° Typewriter-Printer Review by Tom Price ost Apples are used as word Mee at least part of the time. Many are used solely for that function. As anyone who has ever used ‘one knows, one of the most important parts of a word processor is the printer. After alll, a word processor exists to process and create the printed word. It is the output of the printer that is the end result of word processing. A bad word processing program can produce a beautiful looking document if it uses a good printer. The program may be cumbersome to use, but the end result will be what is desired. Similarly, the best word processing program in the world will be limited in the quality of its output by the printer it uses. The choice of a printer for use with a word processor is determined by three factors: speed, quality and price. As with everything, the user is looking for value for money, a printer which will do his job adequately at an affordable price. In most commercial environments both a reasonable print speed and typewriter OLYMPIA quality are necessary. This can mean an investment in a printer which costs twice as much as the computer. If you are prepared to sacrifice speed and quality, you can save a lot of money. For private use, an inexpensive dot matrix printer will usually do, but many individuals and companies with low to moderate word processing needs still want good quality output. One answer is the typewriter-printer, one of the new breed of electric and electronic typewriters with an interface that also allows them to be used as a printer to a microcomputer. Although such machines are comparitively new they have become very popular. Today virtually all of the major typewriter manufacturers allow __ their standard office typewriters to be interfaced. They are cheaper than daisy-wheel printers, and have the added advantage of being useful as a typewriter for small or quick jobs, or when the computer is tied up doing other things. Their main disadvantage is their speed. They are usually so slow that they are unsuitable where speed of output is a major consideration. Their place is with someone who wants top-quality word processor output but doesn’t want to pay a lot of money for it, and who doesn’t generate a lot of output. If you are such a person, a typewriter-printer could be for you. Olympia’s ES-100 One of the most popular typewriter- printers connected to Apples in Australia is the Olympia ES-100. It is quite a large unit, but very attractive and very easy to connect to an Apple, via a serial interface. We personally know of at least a dozen sites where the ES-100 is being employed as the printer for an Apple II word processor, and at every one of these installations the performance has been without complaint. The ES-100 has a daisywheel print action. The print hammer strikes one of many characters arranged around the outside of a disk. The impression of each character sticks out from the disk, which makes the print wheel look a little like a The Olympia ES 100. 1 PRINTED PAGES daisy. Daisywheels are reliable, but generally slow the ES-100 is rated at just 17 characters per second. Although the print wheel is Olympia’s own and is not changeable with wheels from other manufacturers this should be no problem, as a wide range of typefaces are available, over twenty. Olympia actually print their customer newsletter on an ES-100 as an advertisement for the machine itself and the different typefaces. One small peculiarity of the daisy wheel is the method used to change it. You must insert the entry cartridge into a slot, the daisywheel clips into its cartridge and is easily withdrawn. The first time | tried to do it | didn’t have the manual (my fault, not Olympia’s) and | couldn't for the life of me work out how they got that daisywheel to slide down between the print head and the ribbon. For about the hundredth time in my life, | realised that | should “read the manual”. Olympia have recently released a more sophisticated model with a builtin memory, the ES-105. It is a better typewriter, if you are using it primarily as a printer there is no real difference to the performance. It has a decimal TAB capability, automatic underline, bold face, and a 1000 character common phrase memory (glossary). Service Olympia’s service is also impressive. | once earned a living as that lowest form of life, a microcomputer salesman. On every occasion that | sold an ES-100, a representative from Olympia contacted the buyer direct and arranged for someone to go out and spend a half hour or so demonstrating the machine's use. Apart from the quality of the type, the most important factor in a typewriter’s use is the feel of the keys. While some keyboards are definitely better than others, this is largely an area of personal preference. The ES-100 has a light touch which feels a little spongy to some people, especially when they are used to typing on an Apple keyboard. If you're not changing from one keyboard to another all the time, you won't notice any peculiarities — the Olympia is a superb keyboard for heavy use. Connection to the Apple is via an RS-232C Serial interface. With most of the serial cards sold with an Apple, this means just a straight-through cable connection. This is always an advantage: some types of printers can be a nightmare to connect. If the ES-100 is to be used as a printer, it comes with a toggle switch at the back for printer use or typewriter use. Thus it only requires a flick of a switch, but it's a good idea to put a little note on the front of the machine to tell you which position is which. PRICES (recommended retail including sales tax) ES-100 (typewriter alone) — $1595 Interface (necessary for printer use) — $369 Tractor feed (necessary for continuous stationery) — $375 Single sheet feed — $1355 You will also need an serial interface card for the Apple, at around $200 (the Digitek works very well), and a cable, which your dealer may well make up for free as part of the deal: make sure you clarify this beforehand or you may be up for an extra $50. oO The AUTO-ICE Parallel Printer interface. T: Automatic Ice interface! Turns your Apple into a refrigerator! Not really, it's just the name of the company in Newcastle NSW = which manufactures this new low-cost parallel interface for the Apple Il and //e. Dennis O'Keefe, who designed the device, explains that yes, the company once did make ice-making machines, but now concentrates on more high-tech projects. Add it to your list of weird Apple names. The first thing which impresses about this new interface is the price, $99. (RRP ex tax). This compares very favourably with such interfaces as the Digitek Printmaster at $200. The next thing that impressed me was that it worked when | plugged it in. That's always a good start, and it doesn’t always happen. Printer interfaces can very frustrating devices to get to work properly. The card comes with rudimentary but 12 adequate documentation that is apparently being improved at the moment (which seems to be a continuous process with all computer documentation). When | first got it | plugged it in and turned it on, typed in the old “PR#1", and voila! she works. There’s a little routine in the front of the manual you can follow to see if it’s working properly. A nice little touch is that if the printer runs out of paper, a “PRINTER” prompt appears at the top right hand corner of the screen. It's nice to see a designer pay attention to such a small detail. The Auto- Ice interface does of course support graphics printers, such as the Epson and C.ltoh and most of the others. As with most of these cards manufactured on a relatively small scale, the packaging is a little basic, but that’s the sort of thing which improves with time as the manufacturer sells a few more, which he deserves to do with this little beauty. The operation of the card seems simplicity itself. It did everything the manual said it would, though | did have a couple of small problems. One was that the “print to screen and printer” command didn't work when | was using my Vision-80 card. As a printer interface it’s as good as most and better than some, regardless of price. At less than $100, it’s one of the best bargains in town. Why is it so cheap? Basically because it's Australian-made. As scores of small Australian hardware and software manufacturers are discovering, you can put a good-quality product on the market here and compete with the biggest in the world. There are a few less steps in the distribution process, and local manufacture means local support. Everyone's better off. a BUGLETTES Disks and Disk Drives By Rocky Clark ost Apple users have a disk M drive, so for my first column | will cover some of the more impor- 41 fips on disk drive and disk care. When you remove and reinstall the Apple Disk II disk drive it is important to make sure that the disk drive cable is correctly seated on the connector on the @isk drive controller card. If this cable comes loose or is installed incorrectly it can cause the disk drive to malfunction, and it will fail to boot. If this happens you should exercise extreme care. Most times the LS125 chip on the disk drive analog board self- destructs. For some reason this also has the effect of destroying the DOS tracks of any disk that happens to be in the drive at the time. It also will destroy the DOS of any disk subsequently inserted in the drive. With protected disks there is no way that you will be able to reconstruct your disk (friendly safebreakers excepted). Therefore if you find that a disk will not boot don’t keep inserting all your valuable purchased program disks to find one that will, as you may be systematically destroying all of them (if you don’t believe me talk to your local Apple dealer, who will give you many examples of customers who have destroyed hundreds of dollars worth of disks this way). To play safe use only standard DOS disks. If these don’t boot and you rub out the DOS you will at least be able to FID the files across to another disk, then reinitialise the disk and use it again. Repairing Disk Drives If your drive has blown its LS125 chip it is quite easy repair the drive yourself. This will save you between $25 and $45 depending on the charges made by your dealer. The following information relates only to Apple Disk Drives, other brand drives may or may not be similiar. Some cheaper drives do not have the LS125 chip and others solder this chip onto the Board, making removal and replacement itickier. ff you are going to fix your own drive, you should be aware of the warranty Stuation. The LS125 chip is not covered under warranty if it blows because of a faulty connection (99% of the time this is the reason it blows). If your drive is still under warranty you can void this warranty by servicing the drive yourself Another point to note is that Apple Australia have a module exchange service on all their equipment. If they suspect that the drive has been tampered with they will not exchange your unit They will repair your own unit and charge a$25 handling surcharge. One way to tell whether or not a drive has been tampered with is by finding chips incorrectly inserted, missing, or in the wrong place. You will need: a spare 74LS125N chip (cost around $3), a chip puller, and a philips head screwdriver. First disconnect the disk drive from the controller card (make sure the computer is off) then remove the four philips head screws from the base of the drive unit. Now slide the cover off towards the rear of the unit. You will now notice a green circuit board with a number of computer chips on it. On the front side of the board there are the five numbers 12345, and on the left side the four letters ABCD. If you take the coordinates B5 you will find the 74LS125 chip. There may be visible signs of damage, such as a crack ora small piece missing. If this is the case then you have found the problem. If the chip is not visibly damaged replace it anyway. Use your chip puller to remove the old chip. Then replace it with your new 74LS125N chip. Make sure that it is correctly inserted. On the top of the chip there is a small notch cut out at one end. This end is to face the B on the analog board. Reassemble the drive and test using a standard DOS disk. How to Repair Physical Damage to your Disks If you physically damage your disk with something like finger prints, coffee or cigarette ash you may be able to recover data by cleaning the surface. This naturally is a last resort, as it could worsen the problem. However if all else has failed then you have nothing further to lose. Create a clean environment and carefully remove the disk from its sleeve (the sleeve it's always in, not the protective jacket). Do this by raising one of the three flaps at the back of the sleeve, then removing that flap with scissors or a sharp knife. Try not to damage the sleeve too much as you will be reinserting the disk when you have cleaned it. Use a solution of methylated spirits and water on a lint-free cloth and gently wipe the surface of the disk, making sure that you do not touch the surface with your fingers. When all of the offending material has been cleaned away reinsert the disk into the sleeve and tape it up. If the disk is now OK transfer the files onto another disk, using FID. o 13 BUGLETTES Random Numbers not so random Ihe ~Applesoft random number I generator, like all such routines, is only a pseudo-random number generator. It is possible that non-random patterns will occur. To avoid having predictable sequences occuring in your program you need to re-seed the random number generator. To do this it is best to use a number which is very hard to duplicate. In systems which have an inbuilt clock function this is easy, as you can read the number from the clock and insert it in your random number generator. The Apple does not have a clock, so we have to use other techniques. One of the easiest methods in Applesoft is to insert the following at the beginning of a program: 1 232X PEEK(78) + PEEK(79) * 256 RND(-S) The locations PEEK (78) and PEEK (79) continuously increment whilst waiting for a keyboard input. After seeding the random number generator use the following statement within the random generating portion of the program: Z = RND (—RND(@Q)) This will start a new random sequence. Another point to note is that when using the RND function to emulate the throwing of multiple dice you need to keep the correct probability ratios. When throwing two dice, for example, the probability of the number 2 occuring (1 in 18) is much lower than that of the number 7 (1 in 6). This is often overlooked in amateur (and some “‘professional’’) computer simula- tions of board games. To overcome this problem generate two random numbers (or as many as required to emulate a die). For two dice X = INT(RND(1)*6): Y = INMND(1)*6).Z=X+Y oO + Magazines Professional Typesetting + Catalogues + Books + Price Lists + Annual Reports + Theses, etc. Direct from YOUR Apple ZARDAX Word Processor Dise Large range of traditional and modern typefaces available Also available from most other Word Processors and main frame computers For more information and advice, contact Moving Type 28 Stillman Street, Richmond, Vic. 3121 Phone: (03) 428 4269 14 GAMES The Great Apple Game Challenge ear Ye, Hear Ye! We now H announce the Great Apple Game Challenge. Test your skills against the best in the land! Pit your wits and your reflexes against that most deadly of demons, the dreaded Apple Arcade Game! Not for the faint-hearted! The Great Apple Game Challenge is a contest in which contestants from all over Australia will be able to send in their scores of various Apple games. The contest will culminate in a play-off under competition conditions, with the winner being declared champion of all Australia. Full details of this fascinating contest will be announced in the next issue of “The Australian Apple Review’, but you can start sending your entries in now. The games we will be judging are: Chop Lifter Apple Panic Olympic Decathlon Snack Attack Crisis Mountain We'd like to think that we could trust you all 100% not to lie, or at least cheat just a little bit, about your scores. But it's hard, particularly when you see another score only two more than the one you spent months getting. So we must verify the scores. We've talked about this a lot, and the only way we can really do it is for you to send us a photograph of the screen showing your score. A Polaroid shot would be best, the frustration of scoring 9,990 in Olympic Decathlon and not photographing it because you left the lens cap on would be too much for even the strongest to bear. If you can think of another water-tight method of verification, let us know. Sorry you Adventure fans and keyboard Generals, only arcade-type games are included, for a couple of reasons. Strategic games take much longer to play and many have unorthodox scoring methods. Arcade games are played by a lot more people and are much more suited to our envisaged public play-off. Adventurer’s Corner with Ed Mehrtens an't get far with Adventure ( games? There are many different ways of playing these fascinating games, but with practically all of them there are certain common elements and general strategies to adopt. While there are many adventure-style games that are based on random number generators and offer litle scope to the true adventurer, there are many which are based on complex algorithms. It is these which offer the most challenge and enjoyment. Programs such as Adventure, Oo-Topos, Ultima, Wizardry, Zork and all of the Scott Adams and On-Line series are excellent. They all require planning and strategy rather than luck against a random number generator. Rooms Adventuring is based on solving puzzles and moving from one location to another towards a goal. Each location is called a ‘room’. A room is a separate entity and will normally have some distinguishing feature such as ‘wide river” or “twisty little maze". A “room” can be a forest, an ocean, a tunnel, any type of location. It need not be a conventional room. Each room may contain objects, monsters or other characters. It will normally have exits, any of which may be hidden. Puzzles must be solved before monsters are overcome, objects obtained or exits used. The simplest type of puzzle is the use of a key to unlock a door. In this type of Adventure there is a basic plot. Although there may be innumerable ways of proceeding it is this plot, devised by the programmer, which determines the quality of the adventure. The plots and subplots can be simple or complex, and movement from room to room easy or difficult. Finding the solutions to puzzles is the essence of Adventuring. Maps and Descriptions There are similarities to a short story. Both have plots and a scenario which sets the mood and gives the framework of reality. Descriptions of Adventure scenes should be complete without being verbose: Zork is one of the best in this regard. As an Adventurer, your aim is to solve the puzzles and arrive at some definite end. Your path is made much easier if you construct maps as you go. Without adequate maps it is impossible to remember which paths have been explored and which have not, and where an item was found (particularly if it was in a maze). It is only after completely mapping an Adventure that the most direct route can be found to your end. In some Adventures higher scores are obtained for solving the Adventure in the shortest number of steps. Notes on Mapping Adventures 1. Use different pieces of paper for different levels, (three dimensions), rather than attempting to overlay maps on one piece of paper. 15 : . é : GAMES 2. Use a consistent direction scheme where possible, e.g. Top = North, Left = West. 3. Use a box to indicate each room, write the name (if known) in the box and indicate the directions of all known exits with lines. 4. If something only works in one direction, indicate with an arrow. 8. If a direction appears blocked, remember that you may need something like a magic wand to go that way. 5. Write important — information alongside the box, e.g. does the bog contain a blue ox? Do you need to move the rug to find a magic trap-door? 9. Once an adventure is complete, you can transfer your smaller maps to a master map. 6. Explore all directions, mapping as you go. 7. Map all mazes, even if you the descriptions of them sound the same. Good luck, and Good Adventuring! ADVENTURELAND VIEW * STATUE * TREE TOP BOG CLIMB DOWN SWIM TREE ("| SIGN SIGN * GOLDEN q TREES DRAGON N AXE FISH * FOREST |E wi] MEADOW w| SHORE LAKE WJ (start) - 7 Ss Ss Ss TREE SIGN MUD OIL * JEWEL FRUIT * CHIGERS N Grove |E—W] swamp Wl HOLE E DOWN GO SWAMP | GO TREE UP oe FLINT/STEEL TREE TOP |_UP TREE LEDGE DOWN 16 f By Dave Schroeder Review by Graeme Philipson igh on a mountain in the Pacific H Northwest of the USA the nuclear bombs are ticking away, hidden by terrorists in deep caves in the hillside. Falling rocks and lava make these caves almost impenetrable. Only the most daring or the most foolhardy would dare brave this hell on earth to defuse the bombs and prevent the mountain and millions of people being obliterated. That fool is you! Crisis Mountain has the most original Scenario | have ever seen in an arcade game. The object is to guide a small man around this network of caves and tunnels, digging up bombs before they count down to zero and explode. This brave little fellow can die a horrible death by many means: he can get hit by the rocks which roll everywhere and are sometimes inescapable; he can fall in the lava; he can fail to defuse a bomb; AND he can have a brush with Bertrum (the crazed radioactive bat) Crisis Mountain | have always found most arcade-type games boring after just a few playings. Not so Crisis Mountain. It has a subtlety missing in most games of this type. After playing it for weeks | was still discovering new things about the strategy, when to dodge certain types of rock, how to jump lava, new ways to avoid Bertrum (the crazed radioactive bat), why seemingly fatal situations could be turned to advantage The game can be played with paddles or a joystick. I’ve tried both, and it's really a case of personal preference. A self- centering joystick is best, because of the split-second changes of direction it is often necessary to make to avoid radioactive rocks or the dreaded Bertrum (the crazed radioactive bat). Crisis Mountain’s use of colour and animation. is superb, which is to be expected of a game nowadays. What really sets this game apart is its sophistication. It can be enjoyed by a beginner but it is always challenging no matter how good you get, because luck plays a part. There can be different amounts of time left before bombs explode, the special ‘‘Nova’’ prizes can appear close or at the other end of the screen, and Bertrum- (the crazed tadioactive bat) flies around the screen at random in the higher levels of the game, ever ready to dispense his own nasty brand of computer death. The game is unique in my experience in being almost as much fun to watch as to play. “‘Ooh!”, ‘“‘Aah!”’, ‘Watch out for Bertrum!" (the crazed radioactive bat). Watch out indeed! | can't wait for the next game from Dave Shroeder’s fertile imagination, ‘‘Dino Eggs’, but for now I'll keep playing Crisis Mountain to the exclusion of all other Apple games. Crisis Mountain by Dave Schroeder. Synergistic Software, distributed in Australia by Imagineering. RRP $49.950 Crisis Mountain. 7 PRODUCT REVIEW The Vision-128 RAM Card Reviewed by Gareth Powell efore you start reading this review B it is best that you know that there is the possibility of bias. The Vision- 128 RAM card is made by Harry Harper who runs Zofarry Enterprises and Vision-80 Pty Ltd. We are biased because Harry is a friend of ours and a former employer of the editor. Having got that caveat out of the way, let us look at what is being offered. Harry Harper was also responsible for the Vision-80 card, the Rolls Royce of 80 column cards. The Vision-80 includes in its largish bulk (not unlike Harry Harper himself) a multitude of goodies, including a communications facility that we use regularly to interface our Apples with a Wang word processor and typesetter. The Vision-80 is, in the opinion of some, over-engineered. It also produces a substantial amount of heat and for long sessions we believe it works better with a cooling fan installed in the Apple. Indeed, we think it's essential. It is interesting that Zofarry offer a service for installing such fans at a price of $70. You can get into a brisk argument with almost anyone as to the merits of various 80 column cards. This is especially true of the new Apple //e card which is generally frowned upon by the cognescenti, possibly because the characters it forms are not as elegant as those from the Vision-80 card. The difference is not enough to worry our old eyes and the advent of the Apple 80 column card, normally sold as part of an Apple ‘‘starter kit" has been a severe blow to the sale of other 80 column cards. The Apple card is also relatively small and does not give off enough heat to warrant a fan. In the same tradition asthe “Vision-80", the ‘Vision-128"" 128K RAM card is substantial in size and built to superb standards. It also works first time. We tested it by writing a major Visicalc program for a security company that required all of the memory available, as there were multiple sets of calculations which were interdependent and immensely complex. Those of you who are Visicalc fans will know that the shortage of memory on a standard Apple is one of its negative features. Those of you who have not used Visicalc or one of 18 The Vision-128. Note the provision for extra memory chips for conversion to 256K. its many clones have a treat in store. It has been said that Visicalc has sold more Apples than any other program written. We believe it. We have used Visicalc since its inception and we still have areas to explore, and techniques to test. Three pre-boot disks are available with the Vision-128. They are from Pynwon, the company run by Laurie Boshell of Linden, NSW. Once the board is installed (Slot 4 or 5 is best) the Apple Il becomes a machine with 172K bytes of RAM. Which is theoretically impossible. The Apple's processor is of course the 8 bit CMOS 6502, and therefore will address a maximum memory of 65,536 bits of information, or 64K. On the Apple II you can get to 64K by adding a 16K RAM card. On the //e this has already been done. To expand the RAM further a neat trick called ‘bank switching”’ is needed. “Bank switching” swaps slabs of memory around with lightning speed so that you the operator know nothing about it. All you know is that as far as RAM capabilities are concerned your machine believes it is a 172K machine. Indeed, there is an upgrade for this RAM board to take it up to 256K, at which point you are really cooking with gas. Apart from being ideal for expanding the capabilities of Visicalc, it can also become what is effectively another disk drive with, in theory, instantaneous access. How do you manage this? It is not easy to find out — to improve the intelligence and test the tempers of purchasers Harry Harper provides the absolute = minimum —_ documentation possible Not to provide full documentation with a board like this is inexcusable and Harry can hang his head in shame. However, the system is that you boot the ‘Vision-128" Utility disk and then boot any disk which contains DOS (or Pascal or CP/M, if that’s what you want) followed by a Carriage Return. The Operating Systems themselves are not included because they are proprietary software. If you are using normal Apple DOS, you then type RUN VISION DRIVE and answer the prompts, no Carriage Returns required. When you have finished the Applesoft square bracket prompt appears. Enter NEW. Then enter INIT HELLO, Sx, Dy. At this stage the V-128 acts as an extra drive. You can perform the above quite quickly. It works wonderfully well when you have a program which frequently has to address the disk for information. It works well with Apple DOS, CP/M and Pascal. But apparently it doesn’t work with Zardax as this has an unique DOS which will not respond. Zardax will use the extra RAM, but only as a printer spooling area. And it does not work with Multiplan, which is a great sadness to us all. If Visicalc is the best program that was ever written for Apple (and that is an argument we are happy to defend) then Multiplan is its worthy successor. It does what Visicalc does but does it better. It also has added facilities which take it very firmly into the second generation of spread sheet programs. The word from Harry Harper is that they are “working on it’ and that it is three to six months down the track. Being of a low and suspicious nature we simply do not believe it. If Multiplan could have been modified to work on a 256K board this would have been done a long time ago as the potential sales are staggering However, itis worth noting that the card will work with C/PM so that you can use SuperCalc and other similar programs. This is NOT indicated in the documenta- fion and was discovered by the redoubtable John Lehane when he was testing it for us. Is the Vision-128 worth the money? The answer is yes, especially if you work with Visicalc to any great extent, as we do. It is considerably cheaper than similar boards and to our mind is better made. Interestingly, there are no sockets and the RAMs go straight into the board. We have frequently been told that the weak link in the Apple is the sockets and Harry confirmed this. His view is that sockets are responsible for intermittent faults because they interpose yet another problem area. This confirms what we have heard from other sources — that 20% of faults can be traced to sockets. You can use sockets which will have a much lower fault rate but they have gold- plated pins and cost $1.80 retail, which would make the final cost of the board stratospheric. The Vision-128 also has a built in buffer which makes data transfer more reliable and protects the board whilst reducing power consumption. The board boasts seven LEDs which show which banks are being used and how. Now if only we had good documentation we could do something with that. It is worth knowing that on the disk is a program called “DIAGNOSTICS” which does just that, diagnoses the board and tells you if it is faulty. Can the board be improved? Yes, in the documentation. ft also seems that the board takes fonger than it should to load and access programs in the board when it is operating as a RAM disk. But this may be our imagination and until we test the board comprehensively against samples of the opposition is not a fair criticism At the price this is the best expansion board we have seen. When and if the Gocumentation is sorted out and when énd if it accepts Multiplan it will be the Gest RAM expansion board currently @vallable for the Apple |I or //e. Paces Vision-128 $499 Vision-256 $699 Vision-VCE $ 69 (Visicalc pre-boot) Vision-AWII $ 49 (Applewriter II pre-boot) Vision-Util $ 99 (Uiilities) Vison-Combo $799 (128. V-VCE, V-Util) a) What’s a revolution without a demonstration? A Lisa demonstration, that is. It’s our way of introducing you to Lisa, Apple’s revolutionary new personal computer. So powerful, it lets you control many major management functions at one time. And so simple you can run it with one hand (Literally!). All of which you'll experience for yourself, at Zofarry Enterprises. So come and see Lisa. It’s the best step into the future. 4 ZOFARRY ENTERPRISES PTY. LTD. Commercial Microcomputer Systems Corner of Burwood & Parramatta Roads, Burwood 2134 PHONE 745 1888 19 SOFTWARE REVIEW Word Processors — Australia versus the World This is an Australian magazine and we like to support Australian products, particularly if they are the best. There are two very good Australian word processing programs available for the Apple Il and //e. GRAEME PHILIPSON reviews them below. efore word processors were Bre people used to write things down with a pen on lined paper or type information serially in what now seem primitive ways. The word processor is banishing scissors and paste from the editor's desk, liquid paper from the typist's elbow, and much of the frustration from the writer's task. The sheer popularity of the Apple II has meant that it has always been heavily used as a word processor. Despite two major disadvantages — its forty column upper- case only video display and its sparse keyboard — the Apple Il has found major use as a word processor, because clever design and new peripherals have largely alleviated these problems. The new Apple Hle goes even further towards answering these criticisms. Its keyboard is much better and an eighty column display is a common option. The First Apple Word Processors Word processing programs for the Apple ll have been around since just after Apple Ils were around — or Apple I! disk drives, anyway. The first to surface in Australia was “Sandy's Word Processor’, by Sandy Donald of Dundas in Sydney. He marketed it himself, as he still does, as well as through Rudi Hoess’s Computerland- Electronic Concepts organisation. That was in 1979, It was rudimentary, but it was a word processor. The Apple II had no eighty column card then, and the Dan Paymar lower case adaptor was a rare novelty. Sandy's program displayed upper case characters by using inverse, which looked pretty horrible at first but you soon got used to it. The main problem was the narrow forty column screen, which meant you couldn't 20 display a normal page width (65-75 characters) on the screen. But Sandy's program sold well from the start, basically because there was no competition. What there was consisted mostly of dreadful programs written in BASIC, which wouldn't allow you to put more than 256 characters in a line, or to use any commas. Imagine what they were like. There was a program called ‘“Easywriter”, popularly known as “Hardwriter’’. Then in March of 1980 the first eighty column card arrived in Australia in Rudi Hoess's briefcase (the same way as the first Visicalc and the first Z-80 card and most other firsts in those days). The Apple began getting the peripherals and software it deserved. The Apple program “Applewriter” arrived, but it was no serious competition for “Sandy's Word Processor’. Sandy was constantly improving his program and his documentation, and it was still the best around. The ‘‘Zardax’’ story Meanwhile in Brisbane, Paul Rees of Computerland Brisbane was growing increasingly frustrated with the low quality of U.S. word processing software. He commissioned schoolteacher and micro buff lan Phillips to write a program they called “Wordmaster II, with a simpler “Wordmaster |" version. This program didn’t have the features of Sandy's, but it was easier to use and still much better than any imported program. It amazed everybody that programs by two Australian “backyarders” were better than anything available from large and small American designers. Where was the much-vaunted American ingenuity and know-how? The American eighty column cards were also of a poor standard. At the end of 1980 the first Australian-designed Vision-80 card appeared, designed by Ken Thompson and Harry Harper. It had a superior character set and was much easier for a programmer to use. Both Australian word processors were soon working with it, giving the Apple II true wide-screen word processing for the first time. There were soon some Fair Average Quality programs available from the U.S., including a spate of CP/M programs such as ‘Wordstar’ and ‘‘Spellbinder’’. In Queensland lan Phillips's ‘‘Wordmaster’’ was upgraded to ‘'Wordmaster II” , then “A Word Processor by Computer Solutions” and “Penultimate” before becoming ‘Zardax” in October 1981. lan explains the changes of name by the difficulty in finding a name that he could register in Australia, the U.S.A. and the U.K. With “Zardax’’ came a vastly improved manual and increased capabilities. At this point it became what it remains to this day: the best allround word processing program available for the Apple Il. “Sandy's Word Processor’ has more capabilities but it is more difficult to use — and cheaper; the CP/M programs do a lot but they are too slow, too expensive, and are severely hampered by the limited Apple keyboard; the mass-market American software is just not nearly as good. Anyone wanting a word processing program for the Apple II or Apple //e need not look beyond the two Australian programs. Zardax Today The current version of Zardax is a very impressive piece of work. | use it myself — this article is being written using Zardax. What do | like about it? Zardax is very easy to learn, much easier than any other word processing program | have ever seen. Its instruction manual is a model of concise writing and easy-to-follow instructions, and its internal structure is simple and elegant. Yet it still has all of the features that | use in a word processing programs. What do | dislike about Zardax? It should have better textmoving and mailing-list capabilities. That's it. Code Document Notes Code Document Notes GLOSSARY na] c—) FRED MANUAL SANPLE1 SAMPLE2 SAMPLES SAMPLES SAMPLES SAMPLEG SAMPLE? Create E4 Print = £5 Hultipe EG Vidaulti = £7 Retrieve ® Fl Transfer = F2 = F3 = Fq = FS = FG # FT Glossary * 61 Newdisk Index Exit Delete Lock Unlock SAMPLES Zardax Main Menu, using a Vision-80 card. Setting Up When you first boot Zardax, a “SETUP program automatically runs to allow you to configure your system. On an Apple II it is necessary to make a small modification, supplied with the program, to the Apple keyboard to give you upper and lower case. The SETUP program asks you a number of questions, such as the type of eighty column card (if any), and the type of printer you are using. The program comes with a “Utilities” disk, which contains the drivers for these different peripherals. Virtually everything you could imagine is catered for, with the Utilities disk constantly being upgraded to cover new eighty column cards and new printers. Once the program disk has booted you don’t need it again till you reboot, letting you run the program on a single drive system. This is one of Zardax's strong points. By incorporating drivers for a large range of printers and seighty column cards, Computer Solutions has ensured the widest possible market and the highest degree of customer satisfaction. It's no fun to get an SAMPLES NAMES SAMPLE1@ BUSINESS SAMPLE11 PERSONAL SANPLE12 CLOSE ERRATA INTRO 3 4 a 4 3 g ] 3 2 3 a 3 4 2 expensive printer and find that you can't do underlining with it because your word processor doesn’t support that printer. You can run SETUP at any time later if your system configuration changes. After the SETUP program has run, you come into Zardax at the “Main Menu”. This displays a number of options, such as Create a new document, Transfer or Retrieve a document, Lock or Delete a document. The names of the documents (text files) on that disk are also displayed on screen, with their sizes and codes. The size is displayed in sectors, a not very useful measurement equal to 256 characters; and the code is a two-character unique identifier, which the program assigns to every text file. Editing To create a document, you just type “C’”” You need to type only the first letter of each option displayed on the main menu. You are then prompted to enter the name of the document, then ‘notes’, which are optional. | usually type the date in here. You then immediately enter edit mode, and you are free to start typing your document. It is quite easy to move around and edit your text, though this is not Zardax's strongest point. My main complaint is that to move to the end of a line you must either move to the beginning of the line below then left, or to the beginning of the same line and move repeatedly right. I'd like some sort of ‘End of Line” function. One recent enhancement of Zardax allows you to move easily ten spaces to the left or right, and that has largely solved this problem. The auto- repeat on the Apple //e is a help, too. With a 48K Apple II you can create files up to about 13K in size. Zardax creates lower case by using part of the memory as a high resolution screen for the characters. If you have an eighty-column card this memory is not needed, freeing an extra 8K of RAM for your files. Adding a RAM card adds another 10K, giving a maximum of about 31K of user space on an Apple //e or a fully optioned Apple Il. And you can easily string small files together for printing purposes. 21 SOFTWARE REVIEW Zardax text in forty columns. This-is-an-example- een- looks-on-a-convern Play, -without-any-eig otice-the-dots---- Gere care. abcdefghi jklanoparstuvuxyzel i 1 1 sel Document Name: FRED Complaints My major complaint against Zardax has to do with moving around chunks of text. There is no easy way to do it. You can move single paragraphs reasonably easily, but moving more or less than this involves adding or subtracting carriage returns so that all you want to move becomes one paragraph. Then you fix it up again when you've moved it. With large pieces of text you can first get rid of the rest of the text, then rename your text to be moved under a different name, save it, reload your original text, delete the text you want to move, then insert your renamed file in the spot you want to move to. It is as cumbersome to do as it sounds. Still, it is a pretty small criticism in the wider picture. | don't need to move great swags of text terribly often. Juggling around and maintaining files is simplicity itself. Formatting of documents is very easy with the inclusion of printer commands in the text. There is an extensive range of formatting options, more than most people will ever use. All files created by Zardax are standard Apple DOS text files, which means Zardax can be used in conjunction with a range of other programs that use the same format of file, such as some databases and spelling checking programs. This can be awkward, as you have to exit from Zardax and then reboot your disk each time you use the 22 other program. Zardax has no builtin “Sort'' function, so sorting a Zardax file into alphabetic order using another program can be messy. Zardax does have a built-in mailing list function that works quite well. Mailing lists are created in a standard format, which can then be inserted into letters or onto mailing labels. The only drawbacks are that you cannot sort your mailing list and you must print out mailing labels on single-width labels. Although it lacks some more complex features, such as a builtin calculator for adding columns, as an all-round word processor Zardax is hard to beat. With its many capablities it remains very easy to use. Its “visual ergonomics” are good — it looks good and feels good to use. It is well- supported by the manufacturer, another big advantage. Sandy’s Word Processor | have been acquainted with this program and its designer since Sandy Donald first displayed it to Rudi Hoess at Computerland in 1979. It was very rough then. The only documentation was on a small text file contained on the program disk, and it was a forty column upper case only display. But it was all there was, and it sold Sandy has constantly revised the program since then. At times it seemed like -h ‘the -Zardax-s Shevonal Apple ita hty:>column-card.<i between-the-words, - d-how-nicely-formed-the- lower -case- cha cor is an ra course,-if-you-have-an-Apple-7/e-you- 1-get‘ lower-case, Sbut - mit y- Of -memory:- usage.<i ike-Zardax, -it*s-a-good-word-processo hout -any- pe there was a new version every week or two. His philosophy is one of constant revision, always believing that what he was doing could be better. Sandy's Word Processor is excellent, but it suffers a little from this “‘organic’’ approach of Sandy's. A Good Program First, let it be said that Sandy's Word Processor is a more complete program than Zardax. It will do everything that Zardax does, and a good deal more. Once learnt, it is very powerful. It is also cheaper than Zardax ($200 vs. $300). What lets it down in comparison to Zardax is its untidier and more cumbersome operating procedures and its documentation. These are problems more to learning a program than to using it: a lot of people | know swear by Sandy’s program, and it’s easy to see what they like. It has a wealth of features of great interest to programmers. It is more flexible in its use with other programs and the manipulation of data. It is more of a programmer's program. When you first boot Sandy's you have a similar. program to Zardax’s “SETUP”, which allows you to answer certain questions regarding your system. If you have an Apple || and no eighty column card, Sandy's displays capitals as inverse. This doesn't look as nice as Zardax’s hi-res screen but it does give you more memory to work with. Sandy's doesn't support the Sandy's Word Processor catalog. same range of eighty-column cards or printers as Zardax, but all the common ones are there. Sandy's also uses a complicated method of code redefinition to drive different printers, which is much more Gifficult than Zardax’s driver files. Still, Sandy's method, once you've worked it out, gives you truly massive capabilities for controlling your printer. That's the keynote throughout Sandy's: it is more difficult or more untidy to do things, but you have enormous flexibility ADDDDDD Oooo intater tae PNAC ame Wz or oO Edit Mode Once you have entered Sandy's you are in “File Comand Mode”. The “modes” in Sandy's are only slightly less simple than they are in Zardax, and much simpler than those on most word processors. From file command mode you enter “Edit Mode” just by hitting the “Return” key. You are & R Ri BD bg Cc T 1G! L E Ul c L 25 OaAgao Sow AUG ready to save it. then ready to start creating a document — you do not give it a name until you are CE TO CONTINUE. In edit mode Zardax and Sandy's behave very much the same. Zardax runs words onto the next line, Sandy’s “wraps COMPAK Compak Computer Centre ®SIRIUS ®TRS 350 South Road, Moorabbin, Vic., 3180 Tel: (03) 555 3644 ® APPLE vic ®EPSON Q. What kills Apples? A. The Mediterranean Fruit Fly! THE GREAT NEW MEDEFLY from Basis Buy two computers in one — A 280 and 6502! FEATURES: Runs nearly all Apple software as well as CPM! ! ! Switches between 40 and 80 column as needed! ! ! PAL colour card built in. High Quality separate keyboard fSbulous styling ... Built in fan 64K standard memory size. Etre 64K acts like a disk drive — *entastic improvements in Grocessing speed possible! in S°= floppy or 8” floppy available. Hard disk soon- eo Sy We import and service these computers ourselves =e "md them the best machine of their class — and just §G0K St the price! Come and take a look before you buy =m Annie lie. S]x only $1415 (st. $236) 128K only $1570 (st. $261] OUR COMPETITORS ARE ASKING HOW LOW WE CAN GET! THE ANSWER — DT80 Includes bidirectional printing logic seeking 80 CPS ... 9x 9 matrix with full descenders . .. 96 ASCII characters Italics and International symbols . . . normal/ emphasised/double-strike/emphasised modes subscript, superscript and underline 10 or 5 or 17.16 or 8.58 CPI ... dot graphics for both line drawing or bit image full paper handling functions. $395 [ex tax] $450 [incl tax] COMPAK Computers for Australia i 23 SOFTWARE REVIEW Sandy's Word Processor text in forty columns. around”, never breaking words at the end of screen lines. Both programs insert automatically, where most word processors have a special ‘Insert’ button. After using both types | much prefer the Sandy/Zardax way. Sandy's really shines when it comes to text manipulation. Moving around chunks of text is very easy with the ‘Grab’ function, The searching and replacing functions are much more powerful than Zardax. One very strong feature is the three additional “Screen Modes” for specialised editing. There is ‘‘Word/Paragraph Mode” which allows you to operate on words and paragraphs rather than characters and lifes; there is “All Mode’, which deletes large slabs of text; and there is the amazing “Upper/Lower Mode”’, which allows you to change text from upper case to lower case and vice versa. Magic Feature One of the best and most remarkable features of Sandy's is the magical “Undelete capability”. If you erase something acccidentally and wish to retrieve it, you can “undelete” it by holding down a-function key and moving it in the opposite direction from which you deleted. The program has very powerful mailing list capabilities. You can sort your mailing 24 AR “WRA list alphabetically and you can print your labels on any width of paper, e.g., three labels across. Sandy's is especially good _ for programmers. There are detailed instructions on using the program to edit program files, and very good capabilities for interfacing other programs. You can also edit files larger than those in memory by using a blank disk as “‘scratch’”’ memory. New Version A greatly updated version of Sandy's Word Processor for the Apple //e is about to be released. It was many added features, such as a Glossary function even better than Zardax’s. It has a completely re- written and vastly improved manual, and it is a generally tidier program all round. It still bears the marks of its penny-ha'penny origins but it is a professional quality program. The main reason for this is the vastly improved keyboard of the //e, and the better use that Sandy is making of the Apple //e’s extra 16K of memory. With these improvements Sandy's Word Processor will rival. Zardax as a value for money product. Which you choose depends on what you want to do. If it's any commercial office work, or in WHICH WILL IN BSS PS AT THE OUND", s R END OF A = environment, I’d go for Zardax every time. If it's for personal use, it's a toss-up. If you're a programmer, Sandy's is the obvious choice. The CP/M Programs If you put a Z-80 card in your Apple II or //e, you have access to a large range of CP/M software, including many word Processing programs. These programs are generally much more sophisticated and more expensive than conventional Apple programs. Besides their cost, they have a couple of major drawbacks. Because they use the CP/M operating system, they are slow. The Apple Il is a slow CP/M machine. A lot of these programs also access their disk a lot, which slows them even further. They are also not designed specifically for the Apple, which usually means that some keys are different. It's not unusual for some of the functions to be unavailable because of this. It can be a nightmare trying to get some of them to run well on an Apple — most dealers don’t even know how to do it They are also very expensive. They typically cost about $500 each, but there are other costs. You must have a Z-80 card and the CP/M operating system. You must have an eighty-column card un at the actual cost. must have their up this reputation chiefly because it’s ound a long time, it runs on lots of LITIES therefore a good quality video . And you really must have more asingle disk drive and, if you have Apple Il, a 16K RAM card. If you have uy any of these just because of the you want to buy you should look programs continue to sell, so good sides. binder'’ and ‘'Wordstar’’, the most ones, are both very good very Sfessionally produced programs that do just about everything except type text in for you. They do, in fact, far ore than most people ever need, and 2y do itin an unnecessarily complicated a long time Wordstar has had a ely unwarranted reputation as a different machines, and it can perform virtually every possible word processing function. On an Apple it is very very slow, and compared to Zardax it is virtually impossible to learn. It has an instruction manual that refers to keys the Apple doesn't have, and a bulky and completely daunting reference volume. You MUST have a two-drive system to run Wordstar, as the program disk must remain resident at all times. This disk is constantly accessed, as many Wordstar functions are stored on disk rather than in memory. There are different levels of “Help” menu on the screen, which is a necessity when you are learning. As you learn more, you can erase them. Wordstar does everything. It also has other packages available with it, such as Datastar, Spellstar, and Supersort, which allow an integrated system. If you've got to go this far then you probably should have a bigger machine than the Apple to start with. If you've already got an Apple, it's definitely time to get a hard disk. ZARDAX DOS $295 8 No@ No 10 10 SANDY'S SPELLBINDER WORDSTAR’ Dos CPIM CPIM $195 $650 $595 9 (le) 6 5 3 (ll) 8 “6 5 9 9 9 7 7 6 8 9 9 i 7 5 8 8 8 4 7 7 10 8 8 8 (ile) 7 3 6 (il) 8 9 9 5 i 7 10 2 2 Spellbinder One of the main reasons Wordstar is so bad is that Spellbinder is so good — it’s a question of comparisons. Why get Wordstar when you can get Spellbinder, which is a better program in all departments. Although Spellbinder has all the features of Wordstar, it has only rarely- used functions on disk, which means it is much quicker. It is also much easier to learn and to use. Its strongest feature is its “Macro” capability, which allows you to write special functions to perform specialised tasks. Some macros have already been written and are supplied on disk, and allow you to do such things as a two-column print, and mailing list sort. There is a very powerful sorting function. Any list, e.g., names and addresses, can include a code line that contains certain information about that item in a list. Fourteen different catagories (AN) can have any one of 10,000 numeric attributes, and you can create sub-lists from all of the items having any combination of coding. Using this sort function with the macros can give you real database power combined with your word processor, which is particularly useful with the maintenance of certain types of mailing lists. So, within the limits of CP/M word processors, Spellbinder is the best available on the Apple. But before you buy a word processing program, ask yourself if you need all that extra power, because you pay for it in money and in ease of use. The Rest There are hundreds of word processing programs available for the Apple II nowadays. There is Apple's own “Applewriter Il’’, which has never really reached professional standards. There is the new ‘Bank Street Writer’, very popular in the States because of its use in many packages, and promoted as a “Home” word processor. There are a few programs based on the Pascal Editor, including a reasonable one from 6S in Geelong, Victoria. There is “‘Screenwriter lI, which gives you seventy ill-formed columns without an eighty column card. Again, it's a question of choice. Why get any of these when you can get Zardax or Sandy's or Spellbinder? ia} 25 KNOW YOUR APPLE Felix Macris name is well-known to many people in the Australian Apple scene. He has been closely associated with the Apple II since its introduction to this country, originally working as a technician with Rudi Hoess at Electronic Concepts. More recently he has formed his own Apple II repair business on Sydney's North Shore, and has begun writing a book on how to repair, maintain and interface Apple || computers. Excerpts from this forthcoming book will appear in each issue of “The Australian Apple Review’; building up into a comprehensive guide to the hardware operations of the Apple II. You too can “Know Your Apple’ Much has been written in books, magazines, papers and technical journals in recent years about the microcomputer revolution. Leading this revolution has been the Apple Il, by far the most powerful and popular micro ever placed at the disposal of the masses. Even today some newer micros, with six years of technological advance, still do not match the versatility of the Apple II. No doubt this will change one sad day. The story has it that two engineers named Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, with experience in calculator design at Hewlett- Packard and video game design at Atari, designed a completely new microcomputer. It was the _ first microprocessor system. on the market to integrate the display generation circuitry, microprocessor, memory, keyboard interface and power supply on the same circuit board. Wozniak was unable to convince management at Hewlett-Packard of its full potential as a personal computer. (Hewlett-Packard have of course now introduced their own personal computer). Going it alone Jobs and Wozniak decided to go it alone, despite the strong movement for the hobby standard S-100 type machines, They built their first Apple computer, the Apple |. They assembled it in Job's garage and sold a small number to local hobbyists and retail outlets, at a price under $700. Wozniak then designed the Apple II in late 1976. It was at about this time that three other gentlemen, namely, Rod Holt, Mike Scott and Mike Markulla teamed together with Wozniak and Jobs to form Apple Computer Inc. In April 1977 they introduced the Apple Il at the First West Computer Fair, and in June that year they began shipping them to customers. In 1977 microcomputers consisted of heavy square sheet metal boxes, full of rows of lights and switches. To get a working system you needed to buy seven or eight additional