Text content (OCR)
Open-Apple
Releasing the power to everyone.
June 1988
Vol. 4, No. 5
ISSN 0885-4017
newstand price: $2.50
photocopy charge per page: $0.15,
The future of the Apple Il
Computer industry pundits have predicted the imminent death of
the Apple II so frequently that I expect one of our subscribers to send
in a ten-year seasonally-adjusted chart of the pronouncement rate any
day now. Meanwhile, the Apple ll continues to evolve from its humble
origins in a California garage.
One of the primary people behind the Apple II's evolution is
William Mensch of the Western Design Center in Mesa, Ariz. Mensch is
the one-man microprocessor progenitor who designed the 65C02 and
65C816 microprocessors that Apple inserts at the heart of all of
today's new Apple Ils.
Though an Apple representative once told Mensch that Apple
would never use his 65816, the IIgs is based on it. Likewise, Apple
has made no commitment to Mensch for any of the chips he is now
developing. Nonetheless, Mensch's upcoming chips are designed to
be inserted into the heart of tomorrow's Apple lls.
Apple's leaders have repeatedly said that they expect to be produc-
ing Apple Ils though the late 1990s. But they've given us no hint of
what vision they have for the II. Based on current trends at Apple, it's
easy to imagine the II squeezed into the pre-school market, with the
Macintosh being Apple's machine for business, home, and education.
In contrast, Mensch’s vision for the Apple 1 will take your breath
away. Mensch and his colleaque David O'Brien were guests at a con-
ference in the Apple II Programmer's and Developer's RoundTable on
GEnie April 25. One of the upcoming chips Mensch talked about was
the W65C832, the next generation of the 6502 family.
The "832" is pin-compatible with the "816" now used in the IIgs.
This means a IIgs owner can pull out the microprocessor that came in
her IIgs and plug in Mensch's new chip. That, by itself, won't do any-
thing for the performance of the computer. But, with the addition of
software that takes advantage of the 832's advanced features, a llgs
built today could become a screamer.
Like the 65816, the 65852 will be able to emutate the 6502. It will
also be able to do everything the 65816 can do. In addition, the two
unused operation codes on the 65816, WDM and COP (see August
1986, page 2.55), will be used as ‘prebytes' for new 32-bit instruc-
tions and for internal math coprocessor instructions.
Mensch expects the chip to compare favorably with the 32-bit
68030 microprocessor and the 68881 math coprocessor, which will
probably be used in the next generation of the Macintosh. Prototypes
of the 65832 are expected in about 18 months; production is expect-
ed to start in 1990 with 8Mhz chips (the 816 in today's ligs is rated at
4 Mhz-a chip's Mhz rating is how fast it can run; the speed at which it
actuallydoes run depends on the design of the computer it's in; thus,
pulling out a 4 Mhz chip and plugging in an 8 Mhz chip does nothing
for the performance of an existing computer). Mensch says he eventu-
ally will produce chips capable of running at 20 Mhz. The price of the
8 Mhz chip, in large quantities, is expected to be about $25,
(Incidentally, Mensch said he thinks Apple could increase the
speed of the Ilgs to 8 to 10 Mhz with minor design changes, including
static RAMs instead of dynamic RAMs and faster custom chips, in line
with industry performance improvements since the IIgs was intro-
duced.)
A second chip under development at Western Design is the
W65C265. This chip, which Mensch calls the "265", is a static, one-
chip microcomputer (yes, I said microcomputer, not microprocessor)
designed to be used for parallel processing. ‘Parallel processing’
means several microprocessors executing different parts of a program
simultaneously. Each takes a share of the task. With a spreadsheet
Program, for example, one chip might do nothing but recalculations,
another nothing but handle the keyboard and screen. Meanwhile,
other processors in the computer might be left to handle such things
as automatically saving your work to disk, receiving the electronic
mail people are sending you, and managing the system as a whole.
The concept of parallel processing is in its infancy. It has been used
in experimental computers at universities and several companies are
at work now using parallel processing to build supercomputers.
Western Design's 265 microcomputer will be based on the 65816
used in the Apple ligs. In addition to its 816 heart, Mensch expects to
be able to squeeze the equivalent of two serial chips, eight timers, a
realtime clock, a token-passing local area network chip, and a high
performance interface for parallel processing into the 265. It will
even have 256 bytes of internal RAM, 4K bytes of ROM, and com-
mands for multiplying and dividing 16-bit integers.
Mensch said that there doesn't seem to be any direct competition
with the 265. Other major chip manufacturers are working on 32-bit
data bus RISC (reduced instruction set) processors as their next gen-
eration. Mensch says his end product will be comparable to the paral-
lel processor concepts of Cray on the high end and Apollo on the low
end. Mensch says he expects 265-based machines to start out com-
paring favorably with products from Apollo, but at a much lower cost.
His long term goal is to take on Cray’s parallel machines head to
head, using gallium arsenide technology, while remaining software
compatible with the Apple Il. How's that for vision?
Mensch's strategy is intriguing. The institutionally-oriented IBMs and
InfoWorlds are forever talking about multiuser systems, Massive insti-
tutional systems have hundreds of terminals attached to them and
“OH GREAT! JUST WHEN WE'VE FOUND A WAY TO RUN THE SYSTEM AT
HIGHER SPEEDS, YOU GUYS HAVE TO PLAY ‘DOU!
COOLING CHAMBER.”
IBLE-DARE’ WITH THE
4.34 Open-Apple
each user appears to have the system's full attention...until some guy
in Lone Jack decides to sort his 200,000-name mailing list by zip
code, at any rate, at which point everybody else remarks that the sys-
tem seems to be pumping Crisco instead of electrons.
The two major jumps in computing technology (minicomputers and
microcomputers) resulted in attaching fewer people to each comput-
er. ‘One person, one computer!" has been the rallying cry of the
microcomputer. Escaping from multiuser systems gives each of us
consistent performance, better security, and greater control.
The IBMs and InfoWorlds within large organizations hate to see
computers outside of their reach, however, so just as glaciers move
downhill, institutional systems are always moving toward multiple
users connected to each machine. This is the antithesis of the Apple
II philosophy. Apple II users are committed to being in control of their
own computers and most of us have begun to realize that one isn't
enough. "One person, many computers!" is today's rallying cry.
Bill Mensch's low-cost multiple-processor vision for the Apple II
could mean we'll have to extend that seasonally-adjusted chart of
Apple Il obituaries out for several more decades to come. The first
product to use the 265 with parallel processing will be an experimen-
tal software development card for the Apple llgs. The card will hold
four 265s. Preliminary technical data for the 265 is available now to
interested parties (Western Design Center, 2166 East Brown Rd, Mesa,
AZ 85203 602-962-4545). The approximate cost for each chip is
expected to be about $25 in large quantities.
The virus metaphor
A virus, a real virus | mean, is a submicroscopic packet of genetic
material, wearing a protein coat, that sneaks inside a living cell and
commandeers the cell's reproductive system. Rather than allowing the
cell to continue making more cells, the virus tricks the cell into mak-
ing more viruses. Then you sneeze and the baby viruses, dressed in
their shiny little protein coats, fly off to find other cells and to make
more babies.
Ideas act like viruses. Ideas infect people and cause us to make
little idea packets to put in our children’s lunches. | myself have
recently been infected with the idea that ideas-act-like-viruses. And
I'm about to infect you with it.
I caught the ideas-act-like-viruses idea-virus from “Memetics: The
Science of Information Viruses,” by Keith Henson. This article
appeared in the August 1987 ANALOG and again in the winter 1987
Whole Earth Review. Memetics is the study of memes (sounds like
beams), which is a new word that means idea-virus. Not all ideas are
memes, only the infectious ones. For example, you may have an idea
for a better mousetrap, but if the world doesn't beat a path to your
door, all you have is an idea, not a meme. The essential characteristic
of a meme is that it causes those it has “successfully infected to
spread the meme....Such memes become more common in the cul-
ture pool.”
Some viruses destroy the cell they have commandeered. Likewise,
a few memes destroy the individuals they infect. These memes are so
powerful they override human survival instincts. For example, there's
the Kamikaze meme. There's the William Travis at the Alamo meme (‘I
now call upon every man who is determined to stay here and die with
me to cross this line’). There's the Reverend Jim Jones and his Peo-
ple's Temple meme. Memes (and viruses) like these are virulent, but
at least they are also self-limiting,
Some viruses destroy the cells adjacent to the cell they have com-
mandeered. Likewise, some memes cause people to destroy other
people in their community. As examples, Henson cites the Inquisition,
the Pol Pot meme that infected Cambodia in the 1970s, and the Nazi
meme.
Nonetheless, Henson says:
Most memes, like most microorganisms, are either helpful or at
least harmless. Some memes may even provide a certain amount of
defense from the very harmful ones. It is the natural progression of
parasites to become helpful symbiotes, and the first such behavior
that emerges in a proto-symbiote is for it to start protecting its host
from other parasites. | have come to appreciate the common religions
in this light. Even if they were harmful when they started, the ones
that survive over generations evolve and do not cause too much dam-
Vol. 4, No. 5
age to their hosts. Calvin (who had dozens of people executed over
theological disputes) would hardly recognize Presbyterians three
hundred years later. Contrariwise, the Shaker meme is now confined
to books, and the Shakers are gone. It is clearly safer to believe in a
well-aged religion than to be susceptible to a potentially fatal
Cults...
If most conflict in the world is an indirect effect of memes, memet-
ics holds as much potential for reducing human misery as the germ
theory for reducing disease. Just being able to model the interac-
tions among the Soviets, the West, and the Islamic groups may make
the world a safer place. Widespread understanding of hard-to-avoid
human susceptibilities...may lead to the development of meme evalu-
ating ‘mental health practices," just as knowledge of disease has
changed our behavior in regard to drinking ditch water. If this article
has succeeded in infecting you with the meme-about-memes, perhaps
it will help you be more responsible about the memes you spread and
less likely to be infected with a meme that will harm you or those
around you.
There are two vigorous and robust memes currently causing
mental influenza throughout the Apple Il community. Neither
one is life-threatening, but they do keep people up nights coughing
and sneezing infectious packets through their modems and tele-
phones.
One of these memes has to do with new Apple lis. The second has
to do with software viruses-yet another permutation of the viral epi-
demic model.
Like a Macintosh file, the new Apple Il meme has two forks, the IIc
fork and the llgs fork. On the llc fork is talk of an accelerated
machine with a built-in 3.5 drive and a megabyte of memory. In its
June issue (page 24), A+ even predicted that Apple would announce
this new llc at Applefest. Since Im writing this before Applefest and
youre reading it afterward, I'd like to hide in the time warp on this
one. I don't know anything about it.
Over on the ligs fork we've had rumors of the obvious for months.
Apple is going to speed up the Ilgs, the rumors say. Since Apple is
committed to the IIgs and it's selling well, and since its biggest limita-
tion is the lethargic pace of the ProDOS 16 operating system, I'm
absolutely positive we'll see a faster Ilgs someday. The question is
when and how much. Estimates range from last week to fall 1989 and
from free to ‘more than I paid for it to begin with." My prediction is
that the truth lies closer to the middle than to the edges of those
guesses.
During mid-May, a message supposedly written by a software devel-
oper who had been seeded with a new ‘IIgs Plus’ flashed from bulletin
board system to bulletin board system around the world. The mes-
sage talked about a Iigs with higher speeds, new super-hi-res graphics
modes with more colors or 400 lines of resolution, better sound,
reassignable slots, a built-in SCSI port, and more built-in RAM and
ROM. | have no idea whether the message was accurate, but for the
most part it was reasonable. It predicted a September 1988
announcement. The dangerous part of resneezing that meme is that if
it doesn't come true there's going to be a lot of disappointment in sec-
tions of our community. But | couldn't help myself. It was just so
infectious.
The second meme currently reaching epidemic proportions,
not only in the Apple il community, but everywhere computers
are used, is the software virus meme. A software virus is a small
program that has the primary purpose of reproducing itself as much
at it can. Given the panic about software viruses that's been sweeping
the known universe since the first of the year, you'd think that every
virus would have to be destructive, but that's not necessarily so. In
fact, the most successful software viruses will be ones that never do
anything other than reproduce themselves (unless somebody comes
up with one that actually helps the system-it could prove very popu-
lar). Viruses that destroy files or otherwise harm systems are thereby
discovered and eliminated.
What panics me isn't software viruses, but idea-viruses concerning
software viruses. Up until January or so, when people encountered a
problem with a program, they figured it was a ‘bug’-an unintentional
programming error. Nowadays, when something goes wrong, people
write and ask us if they have a ‘virus’-an intentional, self-replicating,
destructive packet of code. Paranoia is mounting. And all the people
who never understood how their computers worked to begin with now
Downloaded from www.Apple2Online.com
June 1988
have something new to blame every programming and operator error
on.
The number of anti-reality idea-viruses concerning software viruses
infecting today's computer users is stunning, In the last six weeks I've
read articles that claim viruses can move from Amigas to IBMs to
Apples. I've read articles that insinuate that a virus can infect your
computer while you're online reading electronic mail. And I've read
many articles that suppose that a single virus can infect any kind of
file on a disk. All these idea-viruses are anti-reality because they con-
sist of misinformation. Anybody got some aspirin?
Don't get me wrong-software viruses are real and they can be very
dangerous to your computer system. But if you understand where
they come from and how they work, you'll be less likely to participate
in some of the stupid, superstitious rumors now popping up wherever
computers are used.
First of all, understand that a software virus is a program. A soft-
ware virus can't corrode the copper traces on your motherboard and it
cant cause your monitor to explode.
Since a software virus is a program, it can't do anything until you
‘bring it to life’ by running it. Since no one is going to purposely start
up a software virus on their own computer, viruses will always be hid-
den inside other programs. A virus hidden inside a data file is dead
meat. Since data files are never ‘executed’, a virus hidden inside one
could-never-‘come to-life’and-could never have a chance to repro-
duce. You can bury your computer in data files teeming with viruses
and still have absolute confidence that none of them will ever repro-
duce; none of them can do anything to harm your system. Think
about it. Your computer can't catch a virus from a graphic file, from a
sound file, from a spreadsheet file, from a word processor document,
or from a database. It can’t catch a virus while you're reading electron-
ic bulletin boards or while you're transmitting files to other people.
The only way your computer can catch a virus is by executing a pro-
gram that contains a virus.
On the other hand, any program has the potential to contain a
virus. But the journey from potential to actual is arduous. As a virus
replicates itself and attaches itself to another program, it has to attach
itself in such a way that it will be executed when the other program is
tun. At the same time, it has to attach itself in such a way that it will
not damage the other program. If it causes damage, the user will stop
executing the program and the virus will die.
Writing a short piece of code that's smart enough to attach itself to
any Apple II program and satisfy these two requirements approaches
the impossible. A successful virus is more likely to look for a specific
program or a specific class of programs to infect. For example, imag-
ine a virus embedded in a ProDOS 16 desk accessory. Whenever that
desk accessory is used, the virus might look on all the disks attached
to the system for the PRODOS file and reproduce itself there. Then,
whenever you boot your system with that infected PRODOS file, the
virus might reproduce itself on desk accessory files that it's familiar
with. In this scenario, the virus would jump from system to system as
disks containing infected PRODOS files or infected desk accessories
were used on other computers.
This is scary and it's the kind of software virus we all need to pro-
tect ourselves against. However, it's not as scary as many of the idea-
viruses about software viruses that are currently infecting society.
Software viruses aren't magic. They don't have spiritual powers. They
can't jump through the ether and they can't animate inanimate
objects. They are just little programs, probably full of obscure little
bugs, that need to write on disks to reproduce themselves.
Most of the virus attacks actually suffered by computers to date
have been on mainframes, MS-DOS machines, and Macintoshes. As it
turns out, it's quite a bit easier to write a virus for an ‘advanced’ oper-
ating system than it is to write one for the Apple Il. For example, most
people think of a Macintosh Hypercard Stack as a data file, but it's
really a program. Viruses have already been written that can jump
from stack to stack.
But don't feel like the Apple II has been left out. Even if we've
never had a widely-identified virus, we already have some sophisticat-
ed viral detection software. Remember that in order to reproduce
itself, a virus has to write on your disk. Glen Bredon, of ProSel fame,
has written a program called Apple.Rx that you can use to create a
"snapshot' of the program files and other vulnerable areas on a disk.
After that you run Apple.Rx in ‘check" mode-it will tell you if anything
Open-Apple 4.35
has been changed since the last snapshot was taken. Changed files
are suspect and should be deleted and replaced with the original ver-
sion.
(Apple.Rx will be available on disk directly from Bredon, 521 State
Road, Princeton, NJ 08540, for $25 beginning in September. It
requires a lgs or an enhanced Ile or IIc with a 65802 microprocessor.
A 65802 chip can be bought for under $20 and can be easily inserted
in place of the 65C02 in the latter two machines. Apple.Rx is also
available right now, for a $20 shareware fee, on the major online
information services. On GEnie, search for the keyword ‘Apple.RX’.
Bredon asks in his documentation that Apple. Rx not be distributed on
local bulletin boards or in the standard shareware manner because it
is, itself, a prime target for attack by virus programmers. Unofficial
versions may be bogus!)
Even without Apple. Rx, there are many sensible things you can do
to protect yourself from viruses and other programs that could dam-
age your system. Apple. Rx, for example, can do nothing about a non-
viral but hostile program. It's easy to write programs that erase disks
when they are run or after a certain date. This kind of program is hos-
tile, but not it's not a virus. It can't reproduce itself,
The most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to keep
backups of your disks. Write-protect all original commercial software
disks before you even insert them in your computer. Make a copy and
work from the copy. Avoid copy-protected software.
If you have a ligs, try write-protecting your System Disk-the disk
you boot ProDOS 16 with. There are several programs that legitimate-
ly write on the System Disk, however, so this suggestion may prove
unworkable for some of you.
The most important safeguard is to avoid running software on your
machine that is of dubious origin. While viruses have been found on
commercial disks (not Apple Il commercial disks, however), they are
much more probable in the public domain. Pirate software that can't
be traced back to any specific programmer is particularly suspicious.
Rumors abound of software companies attacking piracy by uploading
infected versions of their own programs to pirate bulletin boards,
Nonetheless, | think the more dangerous virus is the idea-virus
about software viruses. Go out into the world with an understanding
of how a software virus works, use care, and it's very unlikely your
system will ever be infected. What | can't tell you is how to protect
your mind. Nobody knows how idea-viruses work. That's what's really
scary. If software viruses happen to lead to a better understanding of
idea-viruses, any trouble they cause could be absorbed with a smile.
Miscellanea
What kind of computer would you buy if you wanted to do
some image processing without spending wads of money? For
$295, far less than the cost of most video cameras, you can get a
card for your Apple Il-Plus, Ile, or ligs that can grab a ‘frame’ of an
electronic image (from a video camera or recorder) in 1/60th of a sec-
ond, store it as a 256-by-256 pixel image, and display 190 lines of it
on your computer's monitor (composite monitor required).
While 256-by-256 may seem like relatively low resolution com-
pared to the 640-by-200 super hi-res mode on the ligs, each of these
pixels will be set to one of 256 levels of gray. This kind of gray-scale
image looks like a black-and-white photograph on your monitor. You'd
have to go to 4,096-by-4,096 pixels to get the same information con-
tent into an image in which each pixel could be only black or white
(for example, a Macintosh or an Apple II in double-hi-res 560-by-192.
monochrome mode).
Not only can you see the image, you can manipulate it. When an
image is captured, the numerical values that tell the card what to dis-
play are stored in 64K of RAM on the card. You can transfer this infor-
mation into your Apple, where different pictures could be compared,
measured, or enhanced by special software (the card comes with a
demonstration program). Images can also be transferred into a sec-
ond, $129, false-color display board.
The manufacturer of these boards is Redshift Limited (P.O. Box
4335, Mountain View, CA 94040 415-322-7573). Redshift's largest
customer uses them to build image processing systems that attach to
microscopes. They have also been used in astronomy, satellite data
analysis, and education. Other potential applications are robotics and
4.36 Open-Apple
security. For more information, go to your local library and ask for the
May 1988 issue of Sky and Telescope, and look at page 526, whereon
some of Open-Apple’s friends at the State University of New York at
Geneseo have an article about how they use Redshift's equipment to
teach and demonstrate image processing and measurement in an
introductory college astronomy course.
Chinook Technology is a new start-up company building hard
disk drives for Apple Is. Their first product is a 20 meg external
SCSI drive priced at $650 (10 meg drives are available for less, but
Cheaper 20 meg drives are hard to find). The drive comes with a SCSI
controller card and cables. It also works with an Apple SCSI card.
We've been beta testing one of these drives for the last couple of
months, but couldn't come up with anything for Chinook to fix. It
worked flawlessly. Compared to other hard drives on the market for
the Apple II, the remarkable things about Chinook's drive is its size (7°
high by 3° wide by 8 5/8" long), weight (under 5 pounds), and noise
level (very quiet). Chinook is now at work on a 30 meg SCSI drive and
on a hard drive for the IIc. As shipped, the drive doesn't support the
DOS 3.5 or Apple Pascal operating systems, but software for putting
DOS 3.3 on ProDOS devices is widely available, as mentioned in this
month's letters. (Chinook Technology, 601 Main St, #635, Longmont,
CO 80501 303-678-5544).
Ive mentioned the magazine indexes available from Kula Soft-
ware before, but they've added a few products some of you might be
Vol. 4, No. 5
interested in. A unique feature of the Kula indexes is that they are dis-
tributed in AppleWorks database files (they require AppleWorks and a
55K desktop). Each index disk costs $6.95. The indexes are available
by year (1985, 1986, 1987) or by publication type. The publication-
type indexes include a range of years and are available for Apple Il
publications, general publications (Byte, InfoWorld, etc.), and enter-
tainment publications (Creative Computing, Softline, etc.). Also avail-
able from Kula is an index that covers every issue of Softalk, if you
remember that beloved magazine (Kula Software, 2118 Kula St, Hon-
olulu, HI 96817 808-595-8151).
If you're an Open-Apple subscriber located outside of North
America and you haven't yet heard of a company called MGA
MicroSystems, I've got a tip for you. MGA is the largest Apple II mail
order supplier in the UK. In addition to serving the United Kingdom,
MGA imports from Apple II manufacturers and publishers and exports
to Apple Il users all over the world. All of MGA’s marketing, advertis-
ing, and promotional materials are created on Apple Ils. The company
has been supporting the Apple Il since 1977 and intends to do so
‘just as long as we can obtain products,’ which I figure is about forev-
er. MGA publishes a series of catalogs on different kinds of Apple II
software and mails its customers a quarterly catalog, called update
//. listing new Apple Il goodies. This is a mailing list many of you
ought to be on. Just write and ask to be added to it (MGA MicroSys-
tems, Pear Tree, Appledore, Kent TN26 2AR, UK 0235-83571).
Ask
(or tell)
Uncle
Copy Il Plus changed
In reference to the ‘archive’ feature of Copy
II Plus that you mentioned last month (‘Copy I!
Plus praised,” page 4.31), version 8.2 of the
program no longer has this feature. I kind of
miss it and make a motion that the guys at Cen-
tral Point put it back in.
Sven Barzanallana
El Paso, Texas
1 wholeheartedly concur with recent reader
comments about Copy ! Plus. | find the "disk
image’ copy routine superb for loading my
768K RAMdisk from a 3.5 drive. | can restore
my 768K RamFactor is less than three minutes.
The hitch that was unmentioned is that the
new version of Copy II Plus (8.2) does not sup-
port disk image files. 1 keep two versions avail-
able. The new version, with its memory manage-
ment and one-pass copy of 3.5 disks, is essen-
tial for backup. The older version is essential
for dealing with my RAMdisk.
Eric T. Olson
Portland, Maine
Not Apple's fault
In regard to your comments about the 140-
student high school that bought a Mac Il, 60-
meg hard disk, and LaserWriter (April, page
4.19)—no you are not crazy and yes, this is a
waste of taxpayers’ money. That is the easy
part. The hard part is getting schools to buy
computers in a rational, well-planned manner.
We have been an Apple education dealer for
over eight years. The situation is getting worse,
not better.
The schools are at least as paranoid about
purchasing computers as is the average individ-
ual. They are terrified of making the ‘wrong’
decision, of buying the ‘wrong’ computer. You
and | know that this is hogwash, but these peo-
ple dont. It is a decision that they would rather
have someone else make for them. When in
doubt, they try to err in the direction of the
biggest or most common.
School systems are closer to being political
entities than educational entities. Too many
times we have seen school boards sharply
divided over whether to purchase IBM or Apple.
The decision ultimately depends on who gives
the best discount, who includes the most free
goods, and so on.
The teachers in most schools fit into two cat-
egories—they either love the computer or they
wish it would go away and leave them alone.
The administrators in most schools have their
hands full of basketball, budgets, and school
board pressures. They arentt eager to jump into
the computer quagmire.
The real problem is that schools are not well-
equipped to deal with technology and the deci-
sions it requires. The school in question chose
the Mac II because it was convinced that it was
the best choice. Why and how the school
arrived at this decision is unknown and irrele-
vant in the final analysis.
To blame Apple for the school's insecurity is
neither fair nor reasonable. For comparison,
you should see what the IBM guys stick schools
with.
Vern L, Mastel
Bismarck, N.D.
More you can do with a Il
We are communications consultants and one
of the services we provide is to set up the rout-
ing instructions for telephone company digital
central offices. In offices with new equipment,
routing information is entered on a series of
screens. The equipment uses the data to deter-
mine the proper path for a call.
What we do is query a working office, save
the data, and then. load it into AppleWorks. Next
we make the needed changes. Finally, we send
the information, one line at a time, to the new
office. Depending on the type of translation we
are doing, | sometimes build the file using a
spreadsheet, because of the ease of copying
columns. At other times | just use the word pro-
cessor.
There must be a touch of irony somewhere
there. Here we are using a $800 Apple II to pro-
gram a million dollar computer and Apple wants
to make the II into a games and sound
machine. I'l never understand.
Pete Johnson
P.O. Box 84
New London, MN 56273
Johnson provides a disk recovery service for
Apple Il users, mentioned here back in Novem-
ber 1986, page 2.76, that we've heard good
things about from the poor souls who've had
need of his services. Other disk recovery ser-
vices were mentioned in October 1986, page
68.
DB bug in SS, too
Regarding the problem of AppleWorks
database crashes (March, page 3.87, 3.96;
April, page 4.16)—it's not only a problem for
database files, but also for spreadsheet files. A
friend of mine lost a large spreadsheet docu-
ment. Examination of the disk on the block
level showed that AppleWorks wrote over the
first 128 bytes of a block deep within the
spreadsheet with the header data—the same
128 bytes found in the first block of the file.
The problem seems to occur with AppleWorks
2.0 only (known as version 1.4 in Germany) on
an Apple Ile or IIc. 1 couldnt duplicate the bug
on the ligs.
Regarding the control-@ patch you gave last
month (page 4.29), the equivalent POKEs for
the German 1.4 version are: POKE 12893,112 :
POKE 11755,257. The BSAVE length also differs
from version to version. The directory includes
the exact specification.
Rudolf Rotering
Soest, West Germany
June 1988
For the time being, it appears that you should
never answer "YES" to the question ‘Insuffi-
cient room on this disk—is it okay to delete the
old copy?" Always answer no, go into ‘Other~
activities,’ delete the file manually, and then
save it. Were any of the rest of you who have
had this problem using a ligs?
Open-apple-V bug
There are three of us using AppleWorks to
track circulation in a high school library. After
many cries of ‘What happened!" and ‘Really, |
didn't do anything," we've found a bug in Apple-
Works that causes it to lock up. The bug is relat-
ed to using open-apple-V to change standard
values. We used to use OA-V to check to see if
the checkout date were correct. With earlier ver-
sions of AppleWorks this never caused a prob-
lem.
Here's the sequence.
1. Ob-¥. (change one of the values}
2, OS.
3. OAV (don't change any values)
4, OT or OY
‘You-can prevent a crash by using OA-Insert
between stcps 2 and 3 or by actually changing
something in step 3.
We like version 2.0 pretty well and we'll like it
even better now that we know not to look at
‘set standard values’ unless we mean it.
Tom Whipple
Washington High School
Kansas City, Mo.
Feature disabled
The revised AppleWorks patch to avoid dis-
abling of features at the end of a line, described
in your May issue (page 4.29), works fine if you
have the left margin set to zero. But if you have
any margin at all, it prints an underline in the
margin where no text exists. Any suggestions?
Tim Lamas
Puyallup, Wash.
If you want to be able to underline, don't
make the patch for the underline command. The
idea of these patches, inadequately explained
heretofore, is to make it easier to use, for exam-
ple, ‘Boldface Begin* and ‘Boldface End’ for
something like italics (if you own a printer that
can do italics) rather than for boldface. You
would have to go into ‘Other Activities’, ‘Spec-
ify information about your printer’ and substi-
tute your printer's italics on and off codes for
the existing boldface on and off codes,
The problem people have when they try to do
this is that AppleWorks turns boldface, and
thus italics, off at the end of each line. The
patch we published avoids this. If you aren't
trying to do tricks like these, the patch is
worthless, Even people who are trying to do
tricks like these will probably want to enter
the patch for just one or two of the features, not
all four of them.
Do not pass date, again
You've recently mentioned two things that
cause AppleWorks to hang up at the date
prompt (Time stopped for ProDOS 1.1.1," page
4.2; "Time to set the clock," page 4.16) and I've
recently discovered a third.
I came home and booted up AppleWorks a
couple of days ago and waited for the date
prompt. It came up and | tried to enter a date.
‘Peep,’ said the computer. No matter what |
tried, | could not get past the date prompt. |
made new copies of my program disk, | used
other software, and everything worked, but |
still couldnt get past the date prompt.
The first clue came when I booted up Multi-
Scribe. It booted successfully, but when I tried
to type in a phrase, all that happened was that
various menus kept opening and closing, It was
like my open-apple key was stuck. Out came
the tools as | got ready to do some major
surgery on the keyboard. Then I got clue num-
ber two.
Picture this. To the right of my Apple are two
disk drives, side by side, with a joystick on top
of the drives. On top of the joystick was a small
binder. Removing the binder solved all my prob-
lems. It was pressing down one of the buttons
on the joystick, which is functionally identical to
holding down the open-apple key.
[2
Po
Quicker numerical sorts
I have a rather large AppleWorks data base.
Its large enough that a numerical sort takes
well over two minutes. I've discovered that after
padding numerical fields with blanks or zeros to
give all numbers the same amount of digits, an
alphabetic sort will work correctly. And Apple-
Works' alphabetic sort is much quicker than its
numeric sort. The difference between waiting 3
minutes and waiting 90 seconds made the con-
version worth doing.
‘Sean Udell
Calgary, Alb.
Richard Wigand
Sioux City, lowa
Transferring values
How do you convert a line of calculated val-
ues in the AppleWorks spreadsheet into a line
of new values for the next spreadsheet?
John E, Wolff
Hamilton, New Zealand
The easiest way is to use AppleWorks 2.0. It
will ask you if you want to transfer ‘formulas
and values" or ‘values only’ when you copy or
move spreadsheet rows from the clipboard.
However, it can be tricky to get this feature to
work. It appears that the material on the clip-
board must include at least two rows. There has
to be a formula somewhere within the rows,
obviously, and there may have to bea ‘nori-for-
mula’ as well. For example, in moving or copy-
ing a row of formulas and a row of repeated
hyphens from the clipboard, | found that Apple-
Works wouldn't ask me whether | wanted formu-
Jas or values when the formulas were at the top
of the two rows. On the other hand, the formu-
las-or-values prompt did appear when the
hyphens were on top. Looks like a bug to me.
If you can't seem to get AppleWorks to ask
about formulas or values (and it never will if
you use a version prior to 2.0}, another alterna-
tive is to print the row you want to move to a
DIF file, create a new spreadsheet from that DIF
file, then move the values from the new spread-
sheet to wherever you want them. In this three-
step process the formulas will be converted to
values.
In his book AppleWorks Tips and Tech-
niques, Robert Ericson gives another trick
that's a bit simpler than the DIF journey. He
calls it ‘flagging’. For example, say you want to
move a row of totals from line 100 of one
Open-Apple 4.37
spreadsheet to line 10 of another. Create a new
row of @IF commands in your first spreadsheet
that display the totals you want to move when
the flag is set and their own values when the
flag is clear. Set the flag, recalculate, clear the
flag, recalculate, and then copy or move the
flagged row to the new spreadsheet. The new
spreadsheet will have a row of formulas not val-
ues, but each formula will point to itself and
display the values ‘captured from the original
spreadsheet. For example:
en)
2 2 z a
3 2 2 2
4)
Sitotals @SUM(BL...B3) 4 4
6}
Tiflag — @IE(A7=99,B5,87) 0 a
When you change ‘flag’ to "99", the answers
in row 5 will be brought down to row 7:
2) 2 2 2
3I 2 2 2
4 —————_.
S|totals @SUM(B1...3) 4 4
6)
7199 GIF (A7=99,B5,B7) 4 4
Now change ‘99° back to ‘flag’ (or ‘total’ or
whatever) and copy or move row 7 to your other
spreadsheet. The correct answers will be
trapped inside the self-referencing formulas,
Print date & time
Is there a way to put the date and time in an
AppleWorks header?
‘Chuck Collins
Arlington, Va.
Most AppleWorks macro programs have keys
that will type in the current date and time for
you. For example, with Beagle Bros TimeOut
UltraMacros, solid-apple-' or * types in the
date (Jun 1, 1988 or 06/01/88) and solid-apple-
= or + types in the time (1:42 pm or 13:42).
You didn't say whether you're looking for this
ability in the word processor, database, or
Spreadsheet.
Whenever you print an AppleWorks database
or spreadsheet document, you get an opportuni-
ty to ‘Type report date or press Return’ (unless
you've used open-apple-Options, PH to change
‘Print report Header at top of each page" to
‘No'). You-can actually enter any string you
want, up to 19 characters long, at the
report date’ prompt. “My boss is an idiot’, for
example, would exactly fit in the space provid-
ed. For a 17-character date and time, on the
other hand, just type solid-apple-, space,
solid-apple-= at this prompt if you have Ultra-
Macros.
However, I suspect what you really want is to
have the ‘print’ date and time automatically
included in the header of a word processing
document, AppleWorks includes a word-pro-
cessor printer option, ‘PP’, that will print the
current page number, whatever it is, in a header
or anywhere else on a page. But nothing similar
is built-in for date and time.
The best solution is to write a macro that can
move the cursor to the position that you want
the date and time to appear, erase what's already
there, and insert the current date and time. For
example, how about:
4.38 Open-Apple
<aup> word processor only
<oa-1> put cursor at top of docunent
<oa-£> find
0 2 printer opticn
he
ato
1
own?
<etrl-Y>
<date2>
<spe>
<time>
You can execute this macro from inside the
macro you use to automate printing. or you can
embellish this one so that it enters all the com-
mands for printing the document as well.
Print one page
I would like the ‘This page’ selection of the
AppleWorks ‘Print from? command to print just
‘one page—not keep going. Now I just turn off
my printer at the end of the page. Is there an
easier way?
Andrew Prinster III
Grand Junction, Colo.
Yes, there are a couple of ways. If you have a
printer definition left, define a new printer just
like the one you have, but specify ‘Yes’ for
°Stop at end of each page’. When the printer fin-
ishes your page, press Escape, and AppleWorks
won't bother with the rest of the document. Use
this printer definition whenever you want to
print just one page or when you want fo print on
single sheets rather than continuous paper. For
another way to do the same thing, see the next
letter.
Printing revisions
1 regularly have to print up revision pages for
a very long document. The easy way to do this
using AppleWorks is to insert the open-apple-
Options, PE (pause each page) command at the
beginning of the document, use open-apple-
Kaiculate to define the pages, and open-apple-
Find, Page, to go to the page you want to print.
The Find will take you to the bottom of the page
you want, so press the up arrow a couple of
limes and print “This page.’ I've even found that
AppleWorks will number pages correctly when
used like this.
Is there a way I can have Basic.system start
up in 80-column mode instead of 40-column
mode?
Larry Jorgensen
Vernal, Utah
Ericson's book gives a similar tip for print-
ing a range of pages within a document. He sug-
gests putting the PE command on the last page
‘you want to print rather than at the beginning of
the document. If you put it on page 15, for
example, and print from page 12, youll get just
‘one pause, not four of them.
The easiest way to get Basic.system to start
in 80-column mode is to write a short program
like this one:
10 PRINT CBRS (4) ;"PRA3*
20 NeW
Name it STARTUP and put it in the same
directory as Basic.system. Whenever you run
Basic.system, this program will get control and
will turn on 80-column mode and erase itself.
You could add other features to it as well. For
example, I have a program like this on my sys-
tem disk that also does a PREFIX command to
the. subdirectory | use for testing Applesoft
programs.
AppleWorks disassembled
Have you been following the disassembly of
AppleWorks in Apple Assembly Lines? Pretty
interesting stuff for a beginning-intermediate
programmer like me.
Ron Berntson
Saskatoon, Saskat.
Yeah, there's some great stuff there. The
series started in the December 1987 issue. I've
always thought that the best way to improve
your assembly language skills was to study the
‘masters. And here you have one master, Bob
Sander-Cederlof, disassembling and explain-
ing the work of another master, Bob Lissner.
Back issues are $2.40 and a one-year subscrip-
tion is $24 in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico; $56
elsewhere (S-C Software, P.O. Box 280300, Dal-
Jas, TX 75228 214-324-2050).
DOS 3.3 and 3.5 drives
T have an Apple tle with both 5.25 and 5.5
drives. Aside from AppleWorks, | much prefer
DOS 3.3 for most of my work. How do | adapt
my 3.5 drives to work with DOS 3.32
William E. Coleman
St. Petersburg, Fla.
There are a number of products that allow
you to use DOS 5.5 on 5.5 drives; most were dis-
cussed here in October 1986, page 2.70. Short-
ly after printing that roundup, we got one more
entry, Oz DOS, from Australian Richard Ben-
nett, Because of our highly efficient materials
storage system here at Open-Apple, | was able
to find our copy of Oz DOS in one of the enve-
lope boxes stacked under the folding table in
the hallway in less than ten minutes. But dog
gone it, there wasnt any address or price on the
disk, which became separated from the letter
that accompanied it months ago.
One new product in this category is Glen
Bredon’s DOS.Master, a $20 shareware utility
that allows you to put DOS 3.3 ‘volumes’ on any
ProDOS device (521 State Road, Princeton, NJ
08540 or from our library on GEnie—search for
uploads by BREDON).
llc entry points
Is there a source for an inclusive, explanatory
list of stable CALL/entry point, PEEK, and POKE
addresses for the IIc, other than the list Beagle
Bros publishes?
Douglas Rochester
New York, N.Y.
If you want stability, the best choice is
Apple's ic Technical Reference from Addison-
Wesley. It's one of the books we carry ($21).
The addresses given are also inclusive and
explanatory.
Video commands ignored
I've discovered that enhanced video firmware
commands, such as PRINT CHR$(15) for
inverse, are ignored if they follow immediately
after a disk error. Why?
Doug Brower
Raleigh, N.C.
Dennis confirmed that the ligs does this. An
enhanced Ile does not. The problem is that
something on the Ilgs is clearing the high bit of
Vol. 4, No. 5
a location called MSLOT (2040, $7F8), which
causes the 80-column firmware to ignore video
firmware control characters. We're at a loss to
explain why it happens on a Ilgs and not on a
lle, since the Applesoft and ProDOS code on the
machines are identical. Perhaps it's a differ-
ence in the video firmware. A universal solu-
tion Dennis came up with is to add PRINT
CHR§$(0) to all error handling routines. The first
character printed after the disk error fixes
MSLOT. Otherwise, printing chr$(0) (control-@)
has no effect on the screen,
Loading desk accessories
Is there a way to load a Classic Desk Acces-
sory (or New Desk Accessory, for that matter)
outside of the ProDOS 16 booting process?
Leh-Wen Yau
Riverside, Calif. 92505
From ProDOS 8 you can load CDAs (but not
ProDOS 16-only NDAs, obviously) with a $10
shareware program called P8CDA. The p!
was written by David Lyons. It's probably in
your user group library, or you can download it
from GEnie (search for files uploaded by
D.LYONS2).
From ProDOS 16 you can load both CDAs and
NDAs with a freeware (copyrighted, but may be
used without fees) program called INSTALLDA
by Tom Stechow. If you can't find this one
locally we have it on GEnie (search for files
uploaded by T.STECHOW).
IIgs printer driver woes
Its my opinion that the situation regarding
lack of Epson (and other) printer drivers for Pro-
DOS 16 software is now at a scandalous state.
There is no satisfactory reason | can think of
why, this long after the release of the ligs, the
only printers supported by major software pack-
ages for the machine are the Imagewriter and
the Laserwriter.
1, for one, am using an Epson LQ-1000 print-
er, which produces excellent letter-quality print
and gives me wide-carriage capability for busi-
ness reports. This printer represents a major
investment and is only six months old (preced-
ing my llgs by four months), It just doesn't
make sense for me to have to buy a new printer
to get the most out of my software!
Is it possible that Apple is deliberately driving
the software producers in this direction to boost
their printer sales?
| fear for the future if the new machines can't
be used with equipment made by independent
manufacturers. My IL-Plus, which I've owned
since 1982, was supported by all sorts of
peripherals made by independents, That's one
of the things that made it such a good invest-
ment.
Mike Stupinski
Ellington, Conn.
While I agree that the lack of ProDOS 16
printer drivers is a serious problem, | think
you're laying the blame at the wrong doorstep.
Under ProDOS 16, Apple tells software devel-
opers, ‘your application doesn't need to know
what kind of printer is connected to the com-
puter."
ProDOS 16 printing is done by making a
series of toolbox calls, The first call a printing
routine is supposed to make puts a ‘Choose
Printer’ dialog box on the user's screen. This
box allows the user to select a printer type
(Imagewriter, Laserwriter, Epson LQ-1000, etc.)
June 1988
and a printer port (printer, modem, AppleTalk).
No matter what printer and port the user choos-
es, the application then proceeds in exactly.
the same way, making a series of toolbox calls
that result in something being printed on your
printer.
The trick is to get that "Epson LQ-1000°
choice to appear in the Choose Printer dialog
Dox. What appears there depends on what files
you have in the SYSTEM/DRIVERS subdirecto-
ty of your System Disk (the disk you booted
ProDOS 16 from), On the system disk Apple pro-
vides, you'll find five files in that subdirecto-
ry, all type $BB, called IMAGEWRITER, LASER-
WRITER, PRINTER, MODEM, and APPLETALK.
These are the ‘driver’ files for the two printers
and three ports that show up in the Choose
Printer dialog box. What you need is another
file in that directory called EPSON.LQ. 1000.
Where will that file come from? Since Apple
sells its own printers, I dont think you'll see
Apple develop one. And it would be a tremen-
dous waste of energy for each IIgs software
developer to develop one. | think the responsi-
ility-Lor providing the driver is Epson's, but
like Apple, they'd rather see you buy one of
their computers, so they're not going to do one.
I think the only possible source for the driv-
er you need is some independent Apple it
developer who's willing to risk several months
of his or her life creating a driver in the hopes
that you'll buy it. We haven't seen such drivers
appear yet, however, because even now—a year
and half after the introduction of the ligs and
ProDOS 16—Apple hasn't publicly released any
documentation on how to write such a driver.
Our sources in Apple II developer technical
support, however, say a 30-page tech note on
the subject will be available by the time this
newsletter reaches you.
Back in the old days, one way to work around
a lack of documentation was to disassemble
Apple's existing drivers. According to the
license agreement Apple and APDA enclose in
all developer documentation nowadays, how-
ever, "YOU MAY NOT MODIFY, REVERSE COM-
PILE, (or) DISASSEMBLE...THE SOFTWARE, OR
ANY COPY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART." The legal
boys strike again. This clause is short-sighted
and is more detrimental to Apple's customers
than it is helpful to Apple.
Enough bad news. Here's a little good news.
StyleWare, creators of MultiScribe and
other ProDOS 16 programs, got tired of waiting
and pulled an Epson printer driver out of its hat.
We know that this driver has been licensed to
Activision. and other software companies may
pick it up, too. For more information, contact
StyleWare at 5250 Gulfton, #2E, Houston, TX
77081 713-668-0745.
More good news. You wrote to us in April
(page 4.22) to say that Orange Micro's Grappler
C/Mac/GS could squeeze no more than 9-pin
output out of your 24-pin Epson. In response to
your letter, subscriber John Wargo of Akron,
Ohio wrote to tell us that Orange Micro has a
Separate interface, the Grappler LQ, for 24-pin
dot matrix and Hewlett Packard Laser-
Jet/DeskJet printers, Like the Grappler
C/Mac/GS, the Grappler LQ converts serial into
parallel. And it translates ImageWriter LQ com-
mands into commands for supported 24-pin
printers, Last month (page 4.30), one of our sub-
scribers complained that the Grappler
C/Mac/GS doesn't accurately translate a few
textmode commands, but we've heard nothing
but good things about the device's ability to
translate graphic commands.
More woes
I have an Apple tlgs (my third Apple in 6
years) and | am still waiting for a driver to come
out that would allow me to use my Apple Dot
Matrix Printer and Apple Parallel Card with gs-
specific programs.
Lee Luker
Brandon, Man.
See above. Only this time what you really
need is the Apple Parallel Card driver. The best
guess down here on the bottom of the stack is
that the ImageWriter driver would work fine on
your printer as long as you didn't try to print in
color.
Will anyone be supplying a driver so that the
ImageWriter LQ can be used for printing on the
igs?
Rupert F Goodspeed
Ojai, Calif.
See above. Only this time it's an Apple print-
er. Apple should have had a ProDOS_16 driver
ready for this printer the day it was announced.
Our sources at Apple say the ImageWriter driver
will work, but at 9-pin, not 24-pin, quality.
Apple's printer elves are reportedly working on
a true LQ driver, but there's no estimated
release date.
Can't dash P16
What's the Applesoft command to run a Pro-
DOS 16 application? | use a small startup pro-
gram that gives me a menu of my application
software. However, ‘-WP.SYS16" (to run Word-
Perfect) gives a FILE TYPE MISMATCH error.
BRUN doesn't work either.
Matt Cole
Lakewood, Colo.
You cant run a ProDOS 16 program until Pro-
DOS 16 has been booted. You can, however,
boot ProDOS 16, move over to ProDOS 8, run
Basic.system and your Applesoft program
selector, and then select a ProDOS 16 program.
There are some tricks involved, however.
First of all, here's the quickest way to get
your program selector running after you
boot—make sure Basic.system is the first
“SYSTEM or *.SYS16" file in your System
Disk's root directory. Name your selector
STARTUP. Now go into the subdirectory called
SYSTEM and delete or rename the file called
START. Boot this disk and you'll get ProDOS 16,
then ProDOS 8, then Basic.system, then your
own program selector.
Once ProDOS 16 has been booted, you can
start a ProDOS 16 application with the follow-
ing subroutine, which Dennis wrote. It expects
the complete pathname of the application in PS:
100 REM Run PL6 application fron P8
110 REM PS=full pathname of application
120 POKE 768,32 + REN jsr MAT
121 POKE 7690: REM
122 POKE 170,191 : REM
123 POKE 771,101 : REM quit. call ($65)
24 PORE 772,16: REM parm List at
125 PORE 773,3«: REN $310
126 PORE 774,0° + REM break on error
Open-Apple 4.39
+ REM parm count (4)
enhanced quit id (S62)
pathnane buffer
at $280
zero the rest
130 PORE 764,4
131 PORE 765, 2:
132 PORE 786, 128
133 PORE 787, 2
134 PORE 788,
135 PORE 789,
136 PORE 790,0
REM stuff pathnene
at $280
143 NEXT 1
150 CALL 768
+ REM now do it
A limitation of this trick is that when you
quit your ProDOS 16 program, there's no auto-
matic return to your Applesoft selector pro-
gram. You'll have to tell your ligs manually to
run Basic.system next. The solution to this is
to...all together now...get ProSEL.
IIgs modem cables
I recently purchased a modem from DAK
Industries in hopes of using it on my Apple ligs.
At the time, 1 assumed (obviously incorrectly)
that my computer had the same modem port
connector as the IIc, with which this modem is.
compatible. Upon receiving the modem, it
became obvious even to me that this cable
would not work. | have tested the modem and
cable on a llc and all works perfectly, so I
assume all | need is the proper cable, correctly
wired. Am | correct or is there something here I
don't quite understand?
Lee Bonnett
Rawlins, Wyo.
We haven't seen the DAK modem, but assum-
ing it has a normal 25-pin RS-252 connector, it
shouldn't be any problem to find a cable that
will work. What you're looking for is a ‘Mini-
DIN 8 to 25-pin modem cable’. The Mini-DIN 8
connector is used by the newest Macintoshes
as well as the Ilgs, so a new-Mac-to-RS-232
modem cable is exactly the same as a ligs-to-
RS-232 modem cable. If your local Apple deal-
ers cant come up with a cable that works, try
our friends at Redmond Cable, 206-882-2009.
If you'd rather leam something and roll your
own cable, the best place to start is with the
$18.95 book The RS-232 Solution, by Joe
Campbell. (See our book list.)
Downloading CP/M programs
{ just instalied an Applied Engineering Z-Ram
5 in my lic. 1 am interested in downloading
some CP/M programs but | don't have a CP/M
terminal program to use, only ProDOS. Is it pos-
sible to download CP/M programs without a
CP/M communications program and then con-
vert them?
Allen Polansky
Baltimore, Md.
Dennis responds: Yes, you can’ download
CP/M files and convert them, but (as you might
expect), there are a few problems.
Here's how to do the transfer: download as
normal using XMODEM, Next you need to
copy/convert the resulting file to CP/M. Here's
where the problem comes in. CP/M files don't
have ‘file types" as we know them. CP/M file
types are indicated by a three character file-
name suffix, If your ProDOS communications
software stores what you download in a text
file; your CP/M conversion program may
attempt a text translation and destroy the file.
4.40 Open-Apple
In order to prevent this, you need to change
the filetype to something that the conversion
wont mess with. For DOS 3.3, use 'R';
for ProDOS use "REL’. Programs to change file
types are available in most public domain
libraries, We also have them on GEnie (search
for the keyword ‘filetype’).
Another solution would be to use the $25
shareware progam CHAMELEON, written by
Ewen Wannop at Dark Star Systems in Britain. It
is ProDOS-based and supports converting files
between DOS 3.5, ProDOS, CP/M, and Apple
Pascal. It includes a number of special features
to control how data is altered or not altered dur-
ing conversion, including forcing filetypes on
both the source and destination disks. It will
even convert directly from AppleWorks word
processor files (type AWP) to text files in other
operating systems.
The only other problem is that most conver-
sion programs don't support disk devices other
than 5,25 drives, although CHAMELEON appar-
ently supports any ProDOS device. This limits
the size of the files you can convert to 140K. in
practical terms this may not be a big problem,
as the only files I've run into that are this big
are the SIG/M archive files (CP/M public
domain software archives).
Attacking the problem from a_ different
direction, there are freeware and shareware
CP/M-based communications programs for the
Apple I! available that support XMODEM. Some
are available in Propacker format. This means
you can download a file containing the CP/M
“disk image" under ProDOS; unpack it with
Propacker, which is a ProDOS program; and end
up with a CP/M 5.25 floppy containing the
CP/M communications software (almost) ready
Open-Apple
a written, edited, put
© ‘Copyright 1988 by
Tom Weishaar
feb tom
‘Tom Vanderpool Sally Dwyer
Dennis Doms Steve Kelly
Nos és cand. AI programs publsted in Open Apple are public
‘oman and may be copied ad dstiosted wit Care. ADE use Ups
_and signifcant thers may obtain permission fo repre articles rom tne fo be
by pate wen est
monthly since January 1985. Worc-wide
pens des aly rs oar e
ar $5 br 2 yeas: 7B 0 3 yeas. Alback tse a caer avalabo
‘Lead! ‘wie ted lotta fos lona on gto
‘ures end wih Be Jauay ue an ede e ptr wume need wh
‘the February issue,
Pease ser al crespondonceo-
Open-Apple
P.O. Box 11250
Overland Park, Kansas 66207 U.S.A.
‘Open Apple s avaliable on isk Yor speech syntesizer users trom
‘Speech Enlerptses, PO. Box 7986, Houston, Texas 77270.
‘Opes-Apples sold in an unprotected format fr your convenience. You
are encouraged 1o make backup archival copios or easy ovead enlarged
‘copies fr your own use witout charge. You may aso cony Opea-Apple fr
ert. The drt 15 a ppg po
"YARRANTY AND UMTATION OF UABILT.| ara ha most he
ion Opp sl ard caer, gh ad
takes are Include rom tne to tine, usualy unntentoraly. Unsatisfied
subectbers may carol thr subsipon at ary tine and rcove 2 t
"to et a sitseton pane, Te ule ten fay a
subscinto willbe relunded even o satis subsctbers upon request.
MY LIABILITY FOR ERAORS AND OMISSIONS {S LIMITED TO THIS
PUBLIGATIONS PURCHASE PRICE. In no case shall x my cotbuos
be lable fr any inionalo consequential damage, nor for ANY dam-
agesin excess ofthe los pad by subsrber.
SSN 0885-017
GEnie mai: OPEN-APPLE
Printed inthe U.S.A, ‘919-460-6502
torun,
. For example, take a look at file #4708 in the
CP/M RoundTable on GEnie. The help files in
the CP/M library have more information on this,
or contact Jim Lill (JIMLILL), the CP/M
RoundTable's Apple I! assistant, for help. The
Propacker program and CHAMELEON are avail-
able in GEnie's Apple II library (search for the
keywords PROPACKER and CHAMELEON).
Unable to copy
I have set up a second 800K drive using the
internal IIgs RAMdisk rather than buying a sec-
ond 3.5 drive. It works fine except when I want
to copy a whole disk. Every time I've attempted
to copy a disk to /RAMS (using any number of
utilities—Copy II Plus, System Utilities, ProSel)
I get the same error message, UNABLE TO COPY
- DEVICE SIZE MISMATCH. Is there any way
around this problem? Is there any way to Copy a
5.25 floppy onto a 3.5 disk?
Alan Zimbard
Scarsdale, N.Y.
Dennis tested Copy Ht Plus and ProSel and
found that if the maximum size of /RAM5 is set
in your control panel to exactly 800K, ‘copy
disk’ will copy from a 3.5 to /RAMS. We recom-
imend setting the minimum size to 800K as well,
though that doesn't seem to be absolutely nec-
essary in this case, Apple's new FAST-
COPY.SYSTEM on the ligs system disk, on the
other hand, won't copy between unlike
devices, even if they are the same size.
ProSel's copy program will also copy small-
er volumes onto larger volumes, after asking
you if that’s what you really want to do, and can
handle your 5.25 to 3.5 situation. Usually, how-
ever, when moving files from a 5.25 to a 3.5 it
better to do the copying on a file-by-file basis,
rather than a whole disk at a time, to avoid eras-
ing any other files already on the 3.5. ProSel's
CAT.DOCTOR makes it easy to select all the
files on a disk for copying—just press control-
All).
Rana schematics
Ive heard that schematics and other mainte-
nance information is available for Rana Three
drives. We have six of them and are in need of
help. Do you know where | can get this informa-
tion?
Martin A Townsley
Destin, Fla.
Howard Sams Publishing's Computerfacts
series includes manuals containing all of the
above for Rana Elite One, Two, and Three
drives, Each manual is separate—they are
$19.95 each. We can get them for you, as well as
other esoteric Computerfacts manuals. The
available Computerfacts manuals for Apple's
equipment is listed on the back of our monthly
book list, at the bottom of the page. If you need
a manual for something not listed there, write
and we'll let you know whether what you want
is available and how much it costs.
Sys.Utils and DOS 3.3
Try copying a DOS 3.5 file using the new Sys-
tem Utilities 3.0 that come on the ligs system
disk. Filenames come through with the high bit
cleared, causing all sorts of problems with flash-
ing/inverse characters and an unusable file. Not
too friendly!
Dave Hill
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Vol. 4, No. 5
Statistics, part Ill
Regarding the letters about statistical pro-
grams for the Apple II (April, page 4.20; May,
page 4.30), its true as you say that new lan-
guages and the ligs will permit more powerful
stat packs than those currently available, But
there's plenty of power in the Ile and Ilc using
ProDOS 8 and Basic.system that hasn't always
been available for statistical computation. The
Beagle Compiler, for example, is a very signifi-
cant resource for a statistical package. While it
will not speed up raw floating-point computa-
tions, the fact is that these computations in
practice can involve extensive integer (and
sometimes string) varlables—just those things
that the Beagle Compiler shines at.
For example, a multiple regression program
using the "sweep" procedure for matrix inver-
sion requires several loops with integer control
elements. A compiled version of such a proce-
dure is significantly faster than it is in Applesoft.
‘The same goes for analysis of variance for com-
plex designs, in which there can be a consider-
able amount of juggling of integer subscripts,
Add to this the use of /RAM under ProDOS to
minimize data file disk /O, and an AppleWorks
connection, and you have possibilities for the
lle and llc that weren't available for the first
generation of statistical packages. And on a IIgs,
you can achieve speeds exceeding that of com-
piled Basic on an 8088 machine.
I'd be happy to send a free demonstration
version of such a statistical package to any of
your readers who requests one.
Stephen Madigan, Ph.D.
The Data Mill
P.O. Box 2240
Culver City, CA 90230
213-836-9804
How to rescue /RAMdisks
What can I do about programs that trash Pro-
DOS in my slot 7 RAMdisk? Can this be over-
come? Every so often I boot a from a
5.25 disk and it runs fine. But when I try a
warm open-apple/control/reset reboot, | am
greeted with ‘Unable to load ProDOS.’ Some-
times if | boot ProDOS from a disk I can recover
the RAMdisk, but too often I lose it and must
reload.
Robert D. Peterson
Bamberg, West Germany
The problem is that the firmware on Apple's
memory card keeps some values in the ‘screen-
holes’ to remind itself what's going on. Too
many programs, particularly the copy-protect-
ed kind, assume they own the whole computer
and walk all over the screenholes, When you try
to reboot after using such a program, the
RAMdisk appears damaged. But it's not, only the
screenholes are.
The solution is to reboot ProDOS from one of
your other disk drives. Then fill all the screen-
holes with $A0, the ASCII code for the space
character. Next, catalog the RAMdisk. It will
reappear, undamaged. Next you must press
open-apple/control/reset to warm boot from
your RAMdisk (and fix the screenholes).
Here's how to fill the screenholes with $A0:
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