Open Apple Vol 5 No 12 JAN 1990

A2-Central i) ee A journal and exchange of Apple Il discoveries formerly Open-Apple January 1990 Vol. 5, No, 12 ISSN 0885-4017 newstand price: $2.50 photocopy charge per page: $0.15 Farewell, old friend On a Christmas eve in 1977 a gentleman walked into a Computer- Land store to look at the only computer he was familiar with that had color capability: a Cromemco system. He spotted an Apple II running a demo program and left with it instead. The original manual was 32 mimeographed pages (the computer was serial number 759). That man was Val Golding. In those days, faced with a new toy and very sparse information, many Apple II users started to congregate at the store to share infor- mation. Val met another Apple II user, Bob Huelsdonk, at the store one day and they started to talk. Eventually, the owner of the store, Max Cook, suggested to Val and Bob that they form a user group to help out other Apple users. In January 1978, a single-sided one page meeting notice went out announcing a user group meeling for February 16, 1978. That notice could be considered to be the first issue of what was to become the “World's Largest Apple User Group Magazine”: Call-A.P.P.L.E.. The A.P.PL.E. acronym stands for “Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange”, referring to the location of the group near Seattle, Washington and their intent to create and share a library of Apple II information. The association eventually expanded to several thousand members nationally and internationally. Their newsletter was to become the premier user-group exchange for technical information about the Apple Il, fueled by original contributions and by collecting and disseminating information from other user groups. To the “limit- ed” Apple If came lower case modifications, custom character sets, software to support various printers and interfaces, and more. User groups did it by challenging companies and themselves. Cail- A.P.P.L.E. cartied the Apple II banner proudly to the masses. Call-A.P.P.L.E.'s parent organization became a cooperative and finally TechAlliance. The magazine itself outlasted others that started the microcomputer hobby such as Kilobaud Microcomputing, and those that eventually left the hobbyist arena such as Byte. Cail- A-P.P.L.E. was around before any of the Apple [I commercial maga- zines, and outlived a good many of them. Recently, both Cal-A.P.P.L.E. and the group’s Macintosh journal, MacTech Quarterly, went to quarterly (rather than monthly) publica- tion. This is why the news from Val Golding that the next issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. will be the last came as a milder, if still heart-rendering, shock. It seems only fitting that Val tell the story himself: “Maybe your readers will hear it first in A2-Central. The 12-year itlumination of Cail/-A.P.P.L.E.’s guiding light is about to be extin- guished, The next issue will be the last. Call was my baby and | loved it very much, even these last several years when | didn’t play a direct role. It is, after all, like a death in the family. | cried when Softalk died. Certainly you did also, Tom. Now | cry again. “1 doubt there is an Apple programmer alive who hasn't been weaned on our primitive explorations. And J believe our research and exploitation of Applesoft internals and the ampersand command opened the doorway to sophisticated programming far earlier than it otherwise would have been. “Somehow Call-A.P.P.L.E. survived the thin years while fatter maga- zines slid down the tube. | like to believe it was the members’s belief in our philosophy and their faith in our goals that kept us going. Even though the magazine is now en route to that great RAMcard in the sky, 1 know the spirit will linger, particularly at A2-Central. “Each time | pick up an issue of A2-Central, | see names of my friends from Call-A.P.P.L.E.. Kathryn and | thank them all for their con- tributions. Fortunately, A2 has captured totally that elusive concept of sharing we were always proud of. | wish you continued success. “I was invited to write an editorial for the final issue of Call- A.P.P.L.E.. A copy is enclosed which you are free to print if you care to: The Editor Bytes Back Val J. Golding, editor emeritus Pull Circle “Perhaps I've lived in a private dream world all this time, where visions of-ampersand faeries were real and 16K of RAM sufficed. My 1978 world where, still wrapped in swaddling clothes, the infant Call- A.P.P.LE., with wise men guiding, exploded upon the technological night sky—its contagious fountain of knowledge spreading like a Washington wildfire, a depth and rugged determination to share never before and never again to be seen. “Volume 12, number Nine; there will be no Volume 13. Words I thought would never be written blur my vision and scar the moist paper with ugly burn marks. ‘Our last issue’, A doorway to another dimension has closed after 12 years. “It would take pages to list our accomplishments and firsts, more still for our failures. But we stood proud while others perished. And so it will be in the future, the Alliance remains to serve its members. “None of it would have been possible without those brilliant pio- neering researchers and authors, far too numerous to even consider thanking individually. Virtually every Apple author writing today appeared first in these pages. It isn’t fair, however, to leave without at least expressing my gratitude to and admiration for Kathryn Hallgrim- son Suther, without whom we would not have survived thus far. I love you, Ms. K. “Still, everything is O.K. | wouldn’t have missed it for anything. The moving finger, having writ, moves on...” We will miss Call-A.P.P.L.E., for everything —DJD “A PORTABLE COMPUTER? YOUD,PETTER TALK TO OLD BOB OVER THERE. HES OWED PORTABLE LONGER THAN ANY ONE HERE.” 5.90 A2-Central Miscellanea Apparent bugs in Filer 1.1 and System Utilities 3.1 prevent them from correctly copying large (about 10,000 block) files between ProDOS devices. Copying a 9806-block text file of 50,000 100-byte records with Filer 1.1 resulted in a file containing only about the first 20,000 records; the copy apparently broke down at about block 3872. System Utilities 3.t stopped with an “tncompatinne: fi file type” error after transferring 7968 blocks of the file. Version 3.0 of the Apple II System Utilities seems to handle:the file correctly, as do the ProSel 16 ulilities, Cat Doctor (from the 8-bit ver- sion of FroSel), Copy if Plus, and the GS/OS Finder, If you copy a file approaching the sizes mentioned, you should double-check it after copying to verify that the “endfile” value for the copy seems reason- able, and (since somé of the mentioned copy failures did report the same endfiie as the original file) that all-of the file is accessible. Thanks to Barney Stone of Stone Edge Technologies for passing this on to us. The GS/OS Finder didn’t do as well with AppleWorks GS. Since the Installer script supplied with AppleWorks GS wouldn't put the program files where { wanted them (in a subdirectory), | tried copying the AppleWorks.GS file to my hard disk “manually” with Finder. When | tried launching AppleWorks GS and loading a file, the screen “dis- solved” as the data apparently was transferred into areas of Ilgs mem- ory that were also being used by the program. Booting from a fresh copy of my 5.0.2 master (with SCSI driver installed) and launching the application didn’t improve the situation. Finally, | broke down and used the Claris’s provided Installer script to install AppleWorks.GS where it wanted to {in the root directory of my hard disk}. Then | drug the AppleWorks GS application and support fites into my subdirectory and everything worked. (dragging to a different folder.on the same vol- ume merely moves the file entry to the new directory, rather than cre- ating a copy of the original file). The AppleWorks.Gs file contains a resource fork, so the number of utilities that can. work with the entire file are currently limited. Thanks to the Equal utility from APDA’s new Programming Tools and Inter- faces for APW ($50, part number A0228LL/A), | compared the data and resource forks of the original AppleWorks.GS file and a duplicate created by the Finder's “open-apple-D” command. The resource forks were identical, but the data forks diverged at byte $5FEOO (392704 decimal). The ProSel 16 utilities (and obviously the System 5.0 Installer) handled the file copy without problems. The new Beagle Compiler 3.0 now adds support for the innova- tive Systems’s Floating Point Engine and Applied Engineering's Fast- Math math coprocessors. Alan Bird sent these sample timings along: Applesoft BASIC 21.2 (1.0) 140.0 (1.0) Compiled 8 (1.3) 138.0 (1.0) Compiled w/FastMath 7.1 (3.0) 36.3 (3.9) Compiled w/?.P.5. 2.0 (10.6) 4.8 (29.2) (Timings are in seconds; the figures in parentheses are the approxi- mate factors of improvement over standard Applesoft.) The new compiler also includes a new version of GS.SYSTEM that uses better memory management; loading string arrays may be up to 20 times faster. Beagle's new AW 3,0 Companion by Mark Munz and Randy Brandt fixes some bugs in the newest release of AppleWorks and also allows to you alter or add features. The bug repairs include solving a cursor jump to the beginning of the text when entering certain codes in the word processor, fixing the data base to allow (correctly) printing up to 255 copies of the same report, correcting a data*base “import” bug, an editing fix for the spreadsheet and data base, avoiding crash- es when deleting more than 255 rows in a spreadsheet, solving prob- lems with removing the default printer (a common problem for non- ImageWriter users), and more. The bug fixes will also be available for downloading on major on-line services; we'll also have them on this month's disk. Patch capabilities include forcing the IIgs to use “Slinky” RAM rather than the Ilgs memory expansion, limiting the amount of (Slinky or auxiliary slot) expanded memory AppleWorks uses, canceling some “Yes/No“ prompts, modifying cursor characteristics, changing the nor- Vol. 5, No. 12 mal error bell sounds, canceling the “file changed” indication normal- ly registered after printing a word processor file, printing spaces instead. of zeros in the data base, limiting the spreadsheet to 999 rows (speeds. catculation if you can live with the size limitation), and (again) more. Also included are TimeOut utilities that will show you the names and origina! pathnames of desktop files, allow you to empty the clip- board (to recover memory allocated to the clipboard contents), and load (multiple) text files into the word processor. AW 3,0 Companion ($39.95) will be available January 1, 1990. *’ Beagle Bros author Randy Brandt's “other” company, JEM software, has also announced new AppleWorks enhancements, along with a ligs paint program and a re-issue of a classic Beagle Bros game. SpeliCopy ($12.95) will copy your AppleWorks 3.0 dictionaries to a RAM disk volume at startup for faster access, Or, you can modify AppleWorks to use the dictionaries from a disk other than your Appie- Works disk, for more flexibility in configuring your AppleWorks sys- tem. DoubleData ($30.00) allows you to double the number of cate- gories for each database record to 60. Open-appleJ allows you to “jump” between two pages of up to 30 categories each, Flexical ($30.00) is a macro-driven appointment calendar program for AppleWorks 2.0/2. 1/3.0. Mr. Invoice ($40.00) is a macro-driven invoicing system for Apple- Works 3.0. Each program includes a special version of UltraMacros so that you can use the macro features without having to purchase Ultra- Macros specifically for each program. MiniPaint ($25) is a llgs paint program that supports both 320 and 640 modes, Finally, 1.0.Silver is an arcade game for any Apple I! with at least 64K of memory. All are available from JEM Software, P.O, Box 20920, El Cajon, Calif. 92021. Closing the Gap is a national newspaper dedicated to making computer technology for special education and rehabilitation accessi- ble to the public. A2-Central reader Donald Lipman mailed us a sam- ple; the subscription rate is one year (six issues) for $26 ($41 in Canada and Mexico via First Class mail; $50 overseas via airmail) or two years (12 issues) for $42 from Closing the Gap, PO Box 68, Hen- derson, Minn. 56044. Apples new Apple H Technical Bulletin (part number BO134LL/A at $129 per year; six issues) is available from: Technical Bulletins Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Avenue, M/S 37H Cupertino, Calif. 95014 AppleLink: TECHBULLETIN A Macintosh Technical Bulletin is also available (also $129}; both versions include the full text in a hardcopy form as well as on disk. One technical problem Apple was apparently unable to overcome was translation of disk formats: the first Apple Il issue was supplied on a Mac HFS disk in a proprietary word processor format. Softdisk now comes in Apple Il and ligs versions. The IIgs ver- sion costs $29.95 for a three-month trial subscription; $89.95 for a 12-month subscription. Issue number 2 includes the arcade-style game Zappa Koidz (asteroid shoot-em-up), Measure for Measure Part I! (AppleWorks GS spreadsheet templates), a Jukebox player for Music Studio songs, and (as they say more). Entries on the Apple II disk ($39.95 for 6 months) include Dinosorcerer (a dinosaur design program), Micro Byte List Manager, and Measure for Measure Part 2 spreadsheet templates in AppleWorks format. Contact Softdisk at 606 Common St., Shreveport, La. 71101, (318) 221-8718 for more infor- mation. Our favorite new toy is ORCA/Disassembler for the IIgs. The package comes with both desktop and text-based versions; the desk- top version can be run stand-alone from the Finder or other program launcher, the text version requires the ORCA/M (igs) or APW com- mand shells. It can be used to disassemble files in the ligs Loader Object Module Format, as well as ProDOS 8 SYS and BIN files and the igs ROM. January, 1990 You can identify labels, data areas, code areas, and so on and insert comments as you scroll through the interim disassembly listing dis- played on your screen. The display mode can be toggled between a hex and ASCII display of the file being examined, or the default assembly listing format. You can save the template for your disassem- bly at any time and quit; if you re-load the template.when you resume disassembling the file you can pick up where you left off. The disassembler also has a scripting feature that allows you to auto- mate common functions; a script can be used to convert a common A2-Central 5.91 data structure such as a window record into commented source, for example. A file containing several utility scripts is provided. When everything is as you like it, you can generate the ORCA/M (APW) assembly source code for the disassembly (this is Merlin quer- rilla Jay Jennings’s least-liked feature). The Orca/Disassembler requires an Apple llgs, one 3.5 drive, and 512K for the text version or 800K for the desktop version. The price is $49.95 from The Byte Works, Inc., 4700 Irving Blvd. NW, Suite 207, Albuquerque, N. M. 87114, (505) 898-8183.—DuD. Ask Corrections and amplifications We mentioned GRIDS+ last-month (“Forms generation”, p. 5.85) but omitted the author: Applause!, PO Box 8240, Lake Street Station, Minneapolis, MN 55408. Thanks to GRIDS+ dealer Beverly Cadieux at Kingwood Micro Software, 5103 Lake Stream Drive, Kingwood, TX 77339, (713) 360-5015, for passing this on (a version of GRIDS+ for MultiScribe was also mentioned in the literature). When discussing the creation of PostScript files using the ligs LaserWriter driver (‘PostScript files and you", December 1989, p. 5.88), we neglected to mention that in order for the driver to work, you have to have AppleTalk selected in your ligs Control! Panel. For the older llgs’s, this means you must set ‘Slot 7 to “Internal AppleTalk", and either slot ! or 2 to “Your Card”; this may mean some “slot shuffling’ when you want to generate the PostScript file. The new ligs is less awkward, you can select among “Printer, “Modem”, “AppleTalk”, and “Your Card” for either slot 1 or 2, and it isn't necessary to also change slot 7 to “AppleTalk”. Bruce Rosenblum of Turning Point Software (one of the authors of TimeWorks’s Publish-It! program) called to tell us that the combination of PhoenixPage and the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet probably wouldn’t work as a Laser- Writer replacement. The PostScript drivers for Apple systems (H and Mac), inciuding the one in Publish-It!, normally assume a two-way communication between the printer and com- puter; the computer (actually, the driver) sends commands and expects to receive cer- tain status messages back from the printer. PostScript printing systems designed for use from MS-DOS may assume one-way (computer to printer only} communications, and therefore may not send the expected status messages that the Apple drivers expect. His conversation with Phoenix Technologies confirmed this was the case with the PhoenixPage system. If we'd just read Don Lancaster's LaserWrit- er Secrets book, we would have known. Don dropped us a copy in the mail; it contains many tips from how to refill cartridges to how to find inexpensive PostScript printers. The sample programs are supplied on a ProDOS disk, and Don prints the book using his pre- ferred engine: an Apple ile hooked to a Laser- Writer NIX. The hunt for affordable high-quality print continues... The Apple II Way Here’s my latest update in the continuing saga of Hewlett-Packard printer drivers for the Apple ligs... Early in the week, Ms. Bailey at HP’s cus- tomer support phoned to tell me that HP does not have any in-house Apple programming expertise. The drivers for the Mac are from a third party (contract) software house. However, she noted that, due to the number of phone calls and other indications of interest in this type of product, she is redoubling her efforts to see how HP can help all Apple I owners. In the interim, ! was able to obtain the name and address of the third party programming house which produces Mac drivers for HP's products, ! got a phone number and proceeded to contact them. Insight Development Corp. is very interested in hearing from Apple II owners who are inter- ested in being able to use HP and other prod- ucts with their Apple Ils. In the course of my very long, very pleasant conversation with Mr. Roger Mein, a sales repre- sentative for Insight Development, he asked that 1 and any other interested Apple users write to their software engineering department, expressing a strong interest in drivers for HP’s products. He noted, quite rightly, that while phone calls are perhaps more convenient, the written word has greater impact. It puts the needs down in black and white, and can be used to convince management of a need, a market, an opportunity. Mr. Mein also noted that the product his firm makes for HP (MacPrinter) will enable printing on all HP prod- ucts which use HP’s printer control language (PCL). This includes, inter alia, the Deskjet, DeskJet Plus, LaserJet, InkJet, ThinkJet, Paint- Jet, and the new LaserJet JIP. Insight also pro- vides Postscript products for the Mac, and could probably do likewise for the Apple I line...at the very least for the IIgs. Needless to say, after that conversation, | wrote a letter, which went out today. Late this morning, | again contacted Ms. Bai- wa She was very happy to tell me that our forts are having an effect at HP. The director of marketing has been contacted and the nec- essary memos are now being circulated house. She also told me that the printer divi- sion(s) have been brought into the loop now. Believe it, friends...that is real progress in a short time! | discussed with Ms. Bailey the con- versation I had had with Insight Development. She then asked me to send her a copy of my letter to Insight, along with a cover letter. She assured me that the letters will’ be faxed to the printer division, the developers, the people who. take care of outside contracting, and to HP's marketing division. She also noted that the writ ten word will carry far more weight than the phone calls. Ms. Bailey also promised that my letters would be provided to the folks “upstairs” as a way to demonstrate the interest in having Apple fl products developed. When I asked both Mr. Mein and Ms. Bailey if they were ready for a flood of letters, each of them responded “yes”. Mr. Mein said the ark is standing by and we should flood away. Ms. Bai- ley said she would welcome any and every let- ter we can send to her in support of our needs. So there you have it friends. The wheels are beginning to turn. Let’s warm up the ol’ word- processors and get the letters out. Even a line or two showing your interest will help. Get your local user groups. involved and let’s go for it. My letter to Ms. Bailey will be on its way tomorrow morning. Let’s not fall into the old thing of “you don’t have, because you don’t ask”. For Insight Development: Mr. Surt Cohnson Insight Develonmen: 2200 Powell St. Suite 500 Eneryville, Calif. For Hewlett-Packard: 94608 or on GEnie in the HOSB RoundTable, page 370, Cat 19, Top 8 for HP-Help from Curtis Hopewell. ‘And from me, THANK YOU ALL for your sup- Port and for helping mount this effort. Daniel Slaven Coltege Park, Maryland Grappling with control-| As a new user of AppleWorks 3.0 | am writing to provide some information on a problem | had in setting up a custom printer for this pro- gram, in the hope that it might save other users some time and frustration. 1 am using an Epson DX-10 (a Diablo 630 compatible printer) for letter quality printing. This printer is driven by a Grappler: interface card. The problem | had arose the first time | used the printer in AppleWorks. The results of printing with AppleWorks were quite bizarre with characters being missed and character and line spacing upset, With this printer the standard 6 line per inch Spacing is set by the command string: Bae? Ctel-* Ctrl Unfortunately, controll is also the command code used by the Grappler interface itself. 5.92 A2-Central The solution to the problem was obvious once the problem was recognized—the 6 line per inch command was changed to: Ctrl-I Ctrl-2 <Bsc> ctrl-* Ctrl-I Ctrl-2 Ctrl-1 which changes the Grappler code temporarily from control to control-Z. The AppleWorks manual gives no hint of the possibility of this problem. In fact the PRINTER CODES data base file included with AppleWorks lists the “<Esc> Ctrl-* CtrHI” code for a Brother HR-15 printer (a very similar printer), When Word Juggler Iie (my usual word pro- cessing program) Is given the same printer con- tral string no problems occur, so AppleWorks must be using the Grappler firmware while Word Juggler must be bypassing this firmware. Tracking this problem down was somewhat time consuming. Perhaps other readers setting up custom printers in AppleWorks can save some time by looking carefully at the interface card control codes as well as the printer codes. D. G. Chapman Winnipeg, Manitoba lIgs taxed? As always, we read your December issue with great interest and general agreement. Noting your mention of Softview’s dropping of their tax software for the Apple ligs (joining the ranks of Simon and Schuster’s J.K. Lasser, by the way, which dropped the Apple II linea while back), we'd like to point out that HowardSolt’s Tax Preparer continues strong in tax software for the entire Apple Il family. Tax Preparer is pricier than the less serious packages ($250 suggested retail for a new pack- age and $79 annually for updates), but it has the tax depth that individuals need and tax pro- fessionals demand. And we've been updating it annually since 1979 not only for the tax laws but to take advantage of the new technologies. True, it runs faster on a sped-up Apple Ile or IIgs with 512K of memory, but it still works on the original Apple II Plus, a commitment we've been dedicated to from the start. In fact, thou- sands of professional tax preparers still use their original Apple Ils to prepare tax returns for their customers with HowardSoft’s Tax Pre- parer. | believe that Softview’s failure in the Apple II market has more to do with the inap- propriateness of porting an Apple Mac program to an Apple fl environment than any supposed demise of the Apple Ii market. Apple and Soft- view may think that the Apple UU is not a serious business machine, but Apple’s users know bet- ter. Keep up the good work. J. E. Howard, Ph.D. President Howardsoft 1224 Prospect Street, Suite 150 La Jolla, Calif. 92037 (619) 454-0121 We estimate the split of the 5 million Apple If systems that have been manufactured at about one million Apple H and il Plus machines, about one million Apple ilgs sys- tems, and the remainder as Ie and Sic machines. We don’t have a clue as to how many Apple Il clones are out there, except to say most are I! Plus or lle compatibles. The largest market is obviously to go for the II Plus, or at least the Ile and llc, as the “lowest common denominator’. HowardSoft should be commended for its commitment to this entire market in its first decade. A tax program with annual updates is much more useful than one you have to leam anew each year, The situation with companies such as Soft- view is a special case for ligs owners; certainly one of the reasons for buying a figs (rather than enhancing a Ile or fic) is in order to run desktop-based applications. Merely blaniing the “environment” of the ligs may be overioo! ing some stronger factors. One is that “porting’ a product from the Mac (or MS-DOS) environ- ment to the equivalent’ ligs environment won't yield a product that performs as well as one written specifically for the igs. Companies may then blame the performance of the machine, rather than a “poor fit’ of its soft- ware, for any perceived weaknesses. But another problem may not lie with Soft- view; they are a company that at least attempt- ed to enter the ligs market with a program that utilized the desktop environment of the ligs. Softview got caught in the same trap as a lot of prospective igs companies: their product release pre-dated Apple‘s release of System 5.0, and the associated performance improve- ments that may haye made it more attractive to users. The greatest shame here is that com- panies that have invested in long development curves to bring Ilgs products to market before System 5.0 may not decide to test the waters again. Users (and Apple) should encourage them; make yourself heard.—DJD More REM remarks In the December 1989 A2-Central (p. 5.84), J. E. Douglas of Baton Rouge, La., mentioned using “REMark statements at the top of (his) pro- gram listings that explain the use of all vari- ables.” Documenting the variables is a very good idea, especially if you go for months with- out using or modifying the program. In this time you become unfamiliar with the inner workings of the BASIC program and that makes it difficult to modify it. But instead of wasting precious disk space with REM statements, why not use A-DOC? It’s an excellent shareware program by Robert M. Merrill (6180 Via Real #25, Carpinteria, Calif. 93013, $15). A-DOC will find all ampersand calls, CALLs, defined functions, GOSUBs, PEEKs, and POKEs, and variables contained in the BASIC program. In addition, it finds every fine number that uses each item. You may also enter a usage definition of up to 56 characters in length for each one. For standard CALLs and PEEKs and POKEs, A-DOC will fill in a descrip- tion for you! A-DOC also has a full-featured text editor for entering and editing the usage line. It contains sample files on your disk for your ref- erence, too. After entering descriptions, you may save the entire list for future reference (type SF1 file). You may also save the list as a standard text (TXT) file that includes the program name and date, Or if you want a hard copy, A-DOC will print out the list. You can choose from haif a dozen printers or create your own custom print- er. Each time you use A-DOC, It will update each entry in the list. New line numbers are added and old ones are removed. New items are added to the list in alphanumeric order. Unused entries are marked so that you may purge (delete) them from the list. You may re-save the file at any time with the new information. Best of all, A-DOC will work on any Apple, from the original Il to the new Ilgs. If you want to document a DOS 3.3 file, simply use a utility Vol. 5, No. 12 program such as Copy Il Plus to transfer the BASIC program from DOS 3.3 to ProDOS. A- DOC requires ProDOS 8 and BASIC.SYSTEM. David Kilzer Eldridge, lowa Scanning on the horizon? Will a hand scan unit be built for business applications? Will a tiein be made to use a software busi- ness program, cash drawer or register, printer for customers, regarding inventory control, sales, and so on? M. Howard Imlay City, Mich. Two companies we know of currently make bar code scanners for the Apple Il series, One is a slot-based product for the H, Il Plus, and le: Data Recall 1771 Dell. Avenue Campbell, Calif, 95008 {800) 621-0854 x470 The other connects to the Apple Desktop Bus connector of the igs: 1S Electronics 4047 Transport Palo Alto, Calif. 94303 (415) 856-6833 FAK: (415) 856-3843 We don’t know of commercial Apple I! prod- ucts that directly support the use of bar codes, but the TPS device we have seems to lend itself to straightforward use. The TPS interface attaches to the Hgs ADB port and will send the ASCII equivalent of the code it scans (followed by a carriage return) to your program just as if you typed it in from the keyboard. To print the barcodes themselves, we have a short program that downloads a “3 of 9° set of bar code char- acters to the ImageWriter for printing. Another type of scanner is one used for con- verting printed or video images into a form that can be digested and manipulated by the com- puter. Usually, the range of colors and intensi- ties that the computer can represent are limit- ed so the image rendered in the computer will be simplified to use only the number of hues that the computer can support for its graphics. Image scanners for the Apple Il include: InageWorks IT ($350) Redshift Limited PO Box 4335 Mountain View CA 94040 (415) 322-7373 Computertyes/2 ($129.95) Computerzyes IIgs ($249.95) Digital Vision, Inc. 66 Eastern Avenue Dedham MA 02026 (617) 329-5400 (800) 346-0090 ThunderScan ($219) ‘Thunderware 21 Orinda Way Orinda CA 94563 (415). 254-6581 ImageWorks I was mentioned in the June 1988 issue, pages 4.35b and 4.35c., and in the May 1988 issue of Sky and Telescope, page 526, It’s designed primarily for digitizing January, 1990 and analyzing images rather than for producing purely Apple i! graphics. The ComputerEyes/2 and ComputerEyes figs are for the Apple Hl and ilgs respectively, and take their input from a video source such as a video camera or videocassette player. We have worked with the figs version and it gives nice results, especially when digitizing images as 16-level grayscale (a mode where colors are translated into the closest corresponding inten- sity out of 16 levels of gray) in the super high- res format of the IIgs. Color super high-res ren- derings were less satisfactory as the number of colors avallable to represent the image seemed rather limited; the ligs is capable of using one of 16 tables (‘palettes’) of 16 avail- able colors for each of the 200 vertical scan lines but the ComputerEyes software doesn’t appear to deal with optimizing the palette for each line. But a wonderful feature is that Com- putereyes can save the raw data collected to a file and the format of this data is documented in the manual so an enterprising programmer can try to write a better display routine. Images can be saved in Ilgs super high-res formats for 320 and 640 modes (of horizontal resolution), as well as converted into standard Apple If video modes such as single and double high- res graphics, The ThunderScan is a device that can be plugged into an ImageWriter (other than the LQ) in place of the printer ribbon. You then feed the image to be digitized through the printer and fet the ThunderScan scan the information into the computer's memory. The ThunderScan is limited to 16-level grayscale images. All of these devices create computer-based representations of the graphics image itself. In the Mac and MS-DOS worlds, there are also hand-held and desktop scanners resembling copy machines that digitize printed images and send them into a computer, as well as optical character recognition software that allows decoding of printed characters into ASCII text that can be digested by word processing pro- grams, Unfortunately, we have not seen such a combination for the Apple Il. In particular, Apple has not provided Apple il support soft- ware for their own scanner, despite a number of requests,—DJD Ultramacros primer Is there any book available to the general public that teaches how to write macros using TimeOut UltraMacros? The manual helps with simple macros. However, | am not a program- mer and | would like to learn about writing more complex macros, Greg Kebbekus Monona, Wisc. AppleWorks enthusiast Mark Munz has writ- ten a 250-page introduction called The Ultra- Macros Primer, which is being sold through: National Applevorks Users Group B. 0. Box 07453 Canton, Mich. 48187 (313) 454-1115 It's $19.95 to NAUG nonmembers ($17.95 to members) plus $2 shipping for each book,—DJD Monitor alternatives Vm running a Thompson 4125 monitor with my ligs. After running all over the world with it attached to my Ilc, | bought a Iigs, Where you come in is your great article on the pinout and type of output the IIgs has. I paid $200 for the Thompson two years ago in Singapore, when my old Taxan amber moni- tor was accidentally plugged into 220 volts. 1 hated the thought of buying a new Apple moni- tor with the Ilgs so | ran through your articles. The Thompson will take 50 or 60 cycles, 90 to 220 volts, digital or analog RGB and has proven highly impact resistant. Your pinout was all | needed to do a cable, as Thompson supplied their connector and pinout. I’m a merchant sea- man, which means I use a very poor power sup- ply. Each of our IBM PS/2’s needs an uninter- ruptable power source to isolate it or it will occasionally re-boot after a power surge. Nei- ther Apple has ever done more than flicker. Thanks again, and keep that power coming, Robert E. Wilson Fremont, Calif. We just purchased a Magnavox model 8CM515 color monitor for one of our new ligs’s and ordered the cable from Redmond Cable (which stocks cables for several other monitors). We like the combination enough that we're selling them (see this month’s cata- Ie Be careful when ordering monitors mail- order; we had to return one model (A Mag- navox model CM8762) that was advertised as “analog RGB” because it wasn’t.—DJD More input, please Any of you know where I could get a gal- vanometer that could be hooked up to an Apple ligs? Todd M. Land Conshohocken, Penn. 1 am interested in setting up a weather sta- tion at Catawba College, to be used in general science and science education courses. Of course, many manufacturers of fine weather instruments exist around the world, but | have not seen any that advertise sensors, interface hardware and software for the Apple I. One company at least, Digitar, makes a weather sta- tions that can be connected to an IBM PC, but the system has some seeming shortcomings. (For example, data can be graphed only over 24-hour periods. One would like to be able to graph weather information over any desired time interval.) Do you know of other options? Here's my fantasy. The weather station will include a full array of analog gauges, for quick glances at the current situation, as well as a dig- ital data logger. The data file(s) will be in appro- priate form so that AppleWorks users (perhaps networked to the data logger) willbe able to review the accumulating information, even though we expect to be collecting mountains of data. Speaking of mountains of data—is it better to design the system so that it mechanically records data at preset intervals, or design it so that it records data only when it detects a change in the data of preset magnitude (for example, one degree change in temperature, 0.2mm change in pressure, etc.) Doug Brower Catawba College Salisbury, N. Y. A2-Central 5.93 It may not be possible to find an “off the shelf’ product ready to just plug into your device and the Apple; you may need to create some software for your specific application. Several companies make interfaces for attaching equipment specifically to an Apple II, or to any computer with an RS-232C (serial) interface. One type of common interface is an analog to digital converter (ADC) that takes a voltage from an instrument and converts it into a digital number that the computer can manip- ulate; the built-in Apple iI paddle circuit is a simple example. A digital to analog converter does the opposite; it takes a digital signal and converts it to a voltage that may be used to control a device. There are also devices to interface switches to the computer (such as the built-in paddie button circuits for the Apple), devices to detect an ‘on/off’ signal from the Apple (such as from the built-in annunciators), and so on. The complexity {and Price} of these devices can vary widely, based on their resolution (the relative amount of a change they can register), their speed of opera- tion, and other factors. You may want to try asking the following companies about their products (these are sug- gestions, our direct experience with these com- panies is limited or nonexistant) and their applicability for your purposes: A-BUS adaptable interface bus ‘Alpha Products 242-B Rest Avenue Darien, Conn. 06820 (203) 656-1806 RS-232C interface and conitoring equipment BEB Electronics 4004 Baker Road PO Box 1040 Ottawa IL 61350 (@15) 434-0846 Data acquisition, commsications, and indus~ trial control interfaces ABO MetraByte 440 Myles Standish Blvd. ‘Taunton MA 02780 {508} 880-3000 FAX: (508) 880-0179 Scientific supply/interfaces Ouega Engineering, Inc, One Ouega Drive Box 4047 Stanford C1 06907 (203) 359-7874 (800) 826-6342 Products available specifically for the Apple Il are available: ‘Analog/digital conversion interfaces dpplied Engineering . 0. Box 5100 Carrollton 1X 75011 (2ud) 241-6060 ADALab Laboratory interfaces; data acquisition, display, and analysis software Interactive Microvare, Inc. ?0 Box 139 j State College PA 16804-0133 (O14) 238-8294 5.94 A2-Central ‘Analog Connection ($490) Stravberry Tree, Inc. 160 8, Wolfe Road Sunnyvale, Cali. $4086 (408) 736-8800 Interfacing and analysis software Vernier Softvare 2920 SH 89th Street Portland oR 97225 (503) 287-5317 Some of the first products Applied Engineer- ing produced were interfaces: analog to digital, digital to analog and so on. Interactive MicroSystems and Strawberry Tree, Inc., also have years of stature in Apple It interfacing. Vernier’s catalog lists Temperture Plotter Mf hardware and software to record tempera- ture changes. In addition to their hardware and software products, Vernier Software produces publications describing Apple Il interfacing for experimentation. They are the authors of the How to Build a Better Mousetrap manual (which we stock) that describes simple inter- facing experiments with the Apple game port including “Humidity meter’ and “Temperature Probe” projects.—DJD Reading /RAM from BASIC Do you know of a fix for (or to) ProDOS that will allow BASIC to read a /RAM directory? Ted Faust Greendale, Wisc. BASIC.SYSTEM will allow you to open a directory file (by specifying the filetype in the OPEN command) and use the Applesoft INPUT statement to read the directory information as if the directory was a text file. In order to do this, BASIC.SYSTEM has to convert the directo- ry information (which is not in text format) into the format that is eventually fed to INPUT. OPENing and READing a directory file is there- fore a special case, distinct from normal text file access. For example, you can’t interrupt READing the directory file to READ another file or BASIC.SYSTEM loses its place. BASIC.SYSTEM assumes /RAM’s volume directory is the standard four blocks in size when in reality it’s only | block in length for the standard ProDOS /RAM driver. When you try OPENing and READing /RAM, after you read the last filename BASIC.SYSTEM hits the end of the directory before it expects to and gener- ates an OUT OF DATA error, which shuts down your READ operation. This means you can't access the “BLOCKS” information line which is normally generated at the end of the directory listing. Incidentally, the program side of the 5.25 AppleWorks disk also has a “short” volume directory, and can cause the same crash. Some other programs may also expect a four block volume directory, so trying to modify the 5 | ile limit by “extending” the directory is also not recommended. Our solution from BASIC is two-fold; we OPEN and READ the directory file, but we make sure we have an error trap for odd-sized direc- tories. Second, rather than trying to read the block usage from the last line of the directory listing (which we can’t get to for /RAM), we'll steal it from the get_file_info information BASIC.SYSTEM generates when it OPENs the file. Here’s our test routine to get a directory file- name to read into F$: 1000 REM -- read any dizectory ~ 1010 D$ = cHRS (4) 1020 DIM A$ (200): REM Lamit of 200 filenames 1040 INPUT “Path?: “:F§ 1050 GOSUB 2000; REM read directory 1080 FOR F = 1 10 I: PRINT AS(F): BEXT F: REM show files 1090 PRINT “Blocks total = ";BT;", blocks used = "Bo 1100 BD Our subroutine to read the directory starts by opening the file and snatching the block counts from BASIC.SYSTEM’s global page. BT is total blocks available; BU is blocks used: 2000 REM — “Catalog” routine — 2010 REM enter with F§ = dizectory 2020 PRINT D9; "ORY *;F$;",TDIR": REM open directory 2030 REM — get block count fron B/$ get file info list 2040 BT = PEEK (49825) + PEEK (48826) * 256: REM blocks total 2050 BG = PEER (40828) + PEEK (48829) * 256: REM blocks used Now we read the directory. Line 2070 reads and discards the directory name, the header line, and a blank spacing line: 2060 PRINT D§;"READ “;P§: REM now zead files 2070 FOR I = 170 3: INPUT “*;A: NEXT I; REM dia- card header Next we activate the error trap and read file- names. until we hit the blank spacing line (null string “*) at the end of the file list, or until an error occurs. Line 2110 continues this loop until the error subroutine returns a non-zero error code: 2080 ONERR GOTO 10000: REM trap OUT OF DATA error for /RM 2090 I = 0: REM number of files read 2100 EC = 0: REM clear error code 2110 IF BC = 0 THEN INPUT “*;AS(I + 1): IP AS( + 1) oO“ THN IT=1 +1; or 2110 If we didn’t have an error, then we have read one line past the last file (the nuil line), so for that case line 2120 reduces the file count by one. Then we close the directory and retum BT, BU, | (the number of filenames read), and the array of filenames (A$(1)): 2120, IF NOT (EC) THEN I = 1° 1: ROM adjust count if not /RAM 2130 PRENT DS; "CLOSE “;¥5: REM close directory 2140 PORE 216,0: REM cancel ONERR 2150. RETURN All our error routine does is grab the error code out of zero page and retum it; 10000 REM —- error recovery — 10010 £0 = PEER (222): RESUME : RIM just get error code Since the IF statement in Line 2110 depends on EC being equal to 0 in order to get the next INPUT line, when we RESUME from the error trap the IF statement “falls through” and the loop is broken.—DJD ProDOS 8 and partitioning I have a question about hard disk partition- ing, At present, I have two 20 meg hard disks daisy-chained onto a SCSI card in slot 7 of my IIgs, and it’s easy to understand that one disk is mapped to slot 7, drive 1 and the other to slot 7, drive 2. Lately I've been thinking of replacing the other two with a single disk of even greater capacity, but | am confused about how it and/or Vol. 5, No. 12 its partitions would be handled. | have read that GS/OS 5.0 allows numerous partitions on a sin- gle disk. | also seem to remember having read that while ProDOS limits each partition to 32 megabytes in size, GS/OS has no such limits. Is that true? On the other hand, if limitations are necessary and one has, for example, a 100 meg hard disk with four partitions (three at 50 megs and one at 10 megs), how are they addressed assuming the SCSI card (or equivalent) is in slot 7? Are they all addressed as slot 7, drive 1, with each partition named separately like subdirecto- ries or are they addressed as separate drives in various slots? Constance L. Graves San Jose, Calif. System Software 5.0 and the Apple If SCSI interface will allow you to connect up to 7 SCSI devices with up to 32 partitions per device; that should cover most needs. The 32 megabyte limitation on the volume size for each ProDOS partition is not a function of GS/OS: in itself, but only of the ProDOS FST which GS/OS uses to “communicate” with the hard disk volume(s). Since the ProDOS FST is currently the only one available for use with a non-network hard disk, the 52 megabyte con- straint remains. GS/OS (and the ProDOS FST). does not equate the devices with “slot and drive” set- tings, and you'll be able to see all the parti- tions of your hard disk from GS/OS (up to its limits, and those of the application you're using). ProDOS 8 does depend on the slot and drive metaphor, and furthermore has a limit of two devices per slot. A mechanism was added to later versions of ProDOS to allow it to attempt to re-assign up to two extra devices under select circumstances. ProDOS 8 versions 1.2 and later first check for a disk interface ROM in slot 2. If none is found, and a SmartPort interface is found in slot 5, ProDOS will perform a STATUS call (see “How to keep from getting pregnant’, January 1987) to see how many devices are attached, If drives 3 and 4 are found, they will be “mir- rored” to slot 2 as devices | and 2 respective- ly, This is all explained in Apple Il Technicai Note #20 for ProDOS 8. The note also explains how the firmware finds devices 5 and 4, since the ProDOS unit.number identifying the drive only has one bit assigned to designate the drive, and that leaves only two possibilities (“0 for drive 1, and *1* for drive 2), The note says: “When ProDOS makes an MLI call with the unit_number of a mirrored device, it sets up the call to the device driver then goes through the vector in the device-driver table starting at $BFOO. When the block devices driver (located on the interface card or the firmware) gets this MU call, it checks the unit number which is stored at $45 and verifies if the slot number (bits four, five, and six) is the same as that of the interface, If it is _not_, the ProDOS block device driver of the interface realizes it is deal- ing with a mirrored device, internally adds three to the slot number and two to the drive number, then processes it, retuming the desired information or data to ProDOS.” If that were fully tue, you could move the SCSI card to slot 7 and either (not recommend- ed) patch ProDOS 8 to search any slot 7 Smart- Port for extra devices and map them to slot 4, or (better) write a ".SYSTEM* program to do the re-mapping. Since slot 4 is not often used fora January, 1990 for a SCSI card!), that would allow you to re- map up to two slot 7 drives to slot 4 (this would Jet ProDOS 8 still mirror slot 5 drives to slot 2). If the interface cards indeed added three to the slot in which the mirrored devices are assigned, this would be easy. Unfortunate- ly, the Apple I! SCSI interface doesn’t; it specif- ically checks for slot 5. Craig Peterson has written a utility (SWAP- SCSI, available on on-line services) which adds a command to ProDOS BASIC that allows you to “swap” drive volumes; you aren't allowed access fo more than two SCSI volumes, but you can at least pick which two. —DJD Other European sources In your August ‘89 issue, a letter from Ger- many (June Baker, Wiesbaden) caught my atten- tion! She recommended two companies which sell hardware and software for the Apple Il series. For people living in Germany | would not rec- ommend either of them! Both have a great dis- advantage, they are very expensive. The British Apple il market, compared to the German mar- ket, has a higher price level so it does not pay to buy in Britain. If you {ike you can publish my address and | will inform interested people about the alterna- tives on the German market!!! I believe that this is the best way, because I don’t think that it is very useful to waste the valuable A2-Central space with five German addresses! Stuart Hollywood Bohnstedtstr. 10 1000 Berlin 49 West Germany Data transfer revisited 1 thought I would clarify my MS-DOS refer- ence in my earlier letter (“lle extensions, Octo- ber 1989, p. 5.66). When doing file conversions to and from the Mac/Apple II environments, it is necessary to deal with the different file formats used by the various programs used on each side of the fence. Word processors are the easiest to work with. Most al] programs can save text as raw ASCII code. This makes it a snap to convert to or from the Mac using Apple File Exchange. Spreadsheets and data base formats are a different matter entirely. AppleWorks can print data base information to a text file where a car- tiage return is used to delimit field information “in the records. Each actual field name is Ignored, as is the individual nature of the record. Other data bases such as PFS:File can do the same thing. The Mac world follows the MS-DOS world; most data bases use tabs to delimit fields in a record, with cariage returns marking the end of each record. The field names are used as a header on the file itself. This follows dBASE protocol. The problem comes up when attempting to move Mac database information to the AppleWorks database. AppleWorks cannot read the data properly when it is in this form. My experience has shown that even those Mac programs that create a text file still follow this format. The solution which | have used quite often is to convert the Mac file to MS-DOS format using Maclink Plus software and either a Daynafile drive (for reading/writing MS-DOS disks on the Mac) or direct serial hookup of the computers. Once into MS-DOS, the file still contains the combination of tabs and carriage returns. The next step is to use CrossWorks to send the file to the Apple Il which produces a native Apple- Works database file. This same basic procedure is used to get the spreadsheet files from Mac to Apple Il. First go to MS-DOS, then to Apple via CrossWorks. (CrossWorks is a very good program. It is fast, goof proof, and works perfectly.) I have done other conversions where | have used a series of Mac programs to do the conver- sion without resorting to MS-DOS tools. This involves the use of database software which can convert the tab-delimited format to the return-delimited format for the text file. From there you go to a word processor to strip off the unneeded file header information and extrane- ous stuff and then through Apple File Exchange to Apple ti format. This method is time consum- ing but it works, My favorite approach is the Mac to MS-DOS to Apple Il. This may sound like a lot of running around the block, but of all the file conversion approaches | have tried, it works the best. Vern L, Mastel Mandan, N. D. What has Claris done now? Released an AppleWorks Classic database fixer and a new Macintosh Apple File Exchange translator? Read on... Bag of Tricks won't help? RepairWorks can’t recover? Before you throw that “lost” database disk in the trash, try this last trick to recover your data (without using the word processor and deleting extra characters and adding returns in). Many database errors'can be traced to damaged report formats—the data is intact, but basically inaccessible by AppleWorks. Step in AppleWorks GS! Since it “ignores” report for- mats when it imports AppleWorks Classic database files, I've used it to recover a number of databases and then exported it as an ASCII file. How to get it back to AppleWorks format? Use AppleWorks 3.0 to start a new database from an ASCII file (using tabs between cate- gories). Save this in standard AppleWorks for- mat and, since the file format on the 3.0 database has been changed the least, the resulting file can still be loaded into earlier ver- sions of AppleWorks. Finally, a good use for the database module of AppleWorks GS! Now for the Apple File Exchange translator... With the release of AppleWorks 3.0, Claris has in effect given us the second half of the Macin- tosh Apple File Exchange/Works to Works trans- porter, AppleWorks to MicroSoft Works transfers have always gone relatively smoothly, but the reverse has not been the case (much to Microsoft's delight). Since AppleWorks 3.0 han- dles tabs properly in all three modules, simply ‘save your Macintosh document in ASCII format, use Apple File Exchange to bring it to ProDOS format and import it into the proper module of AppleWorks through the use of the ASCII file. No more having to use slow, graphics-based Macintosh applications! Do your “real” work in AppleWorks and then send it back. Saving AppleWorks documents in ASCII format with version 3.0 also insures complete compatibility with most Macintosh word processing, database, and spreadsheet applications in addi- tion to Microsoft Works. The gray line just hit another one of those 256 shades of gray. James Hirsch Coon Rapids, Minn. A2-Central 5.95 Can you help me? I have several Format If data base files that | need to convert to Apple- Works. These data base disks have special for- matting which cannot be cataloged or copied. I hope in your archives there is a program that will accomplish part or all of this task. If not, could you give me a clue as to how to proceed? Edwin L. Dyer Lake Havasu City, Ariz. We've since had occasion to convert a MicroSoft Works database file to AppleWorks 5.0 and the new capability of AppleWorks 3.0 to import “tab delimited” files indeed makes it easy. We have mentioned the Works to Works utility in the past, but the new formats of AppleWorks 3,0 will render it useless unless the translator is upgraded. One company that advertises format conver- sions to AppleWorks is: Burke Software Data Transfer Division PO Box 515 Park Ridge IL 60068 (312) 823-1357 Formats mentioned include PFS, DB Mas- ter, Data Factory, Data Handle, and “other” (unspecified), at a cost of $59.95 (for the first 1000 records) up.—DJD Hyper hype? L read your article In A2-Central on rumors with interest. I like your observations about HyperStudio, Your implication that hyper-stuff is an important direction for education is probably correct for several reasons. One is that it pro- vides access to multiple media including still photos, “film clips”, and sound. CD technology is essential to hyperstuff. Text stacks alone don’t hold much promise. Another is that it is random access. The linear property of media (tapes, film strips, videotapes, etc.) is their greatest disadvantage: lack of flexibility. Hyper- media overcomes that. But economics is the overriding factor. | was told by one major software distributor that school software sales were soft, that piracy was so rampant that many software producers (writ- ers) were leaving the education market. Further, he felt that the vision of two computers for every student (school and home) was unrealis- tic: rooms full of equipment were not becoming reality. Growth slowing? His suggestion was that a single set of equip- ment in each classroom, including a data-pro- jection screen and an overhead projector, was the coming trend. Maybe there could be a few extra sets in the library or “media room.” He said his ideas followed that of Tom Sny- der (famed software author.) Your suggestion that the video-overlay card would turn the Apple monitor into a TV monitor (with extras) is the first | have heard of this idea. Don’t keep that a secret! It was just this problem (plus its huge size) that was the obsta- cle for me getting into this stuff. Now a system could be just two IIgs‘s wide, with one monitor. Maybe the GS is about to BOOM. | applaud A2-Central for being on the fore- front of this trend. Robert R. fall Nantucket, Maine 5.96 A2-Central Hard work, not hype | enjoyed very much your “dissertation” in the December 1989 issue of A2-Central. It's not often that { see prognosticated ideas (about the Apple II) supported with any semblance of logical thought. Everyone seems to argue from the “heart” instead of the “head*. One thing I will mention: 1 don’t think enough is said about the devotion and hard work of the Apple Il crew puts in at Apple, Inc., to continue improving the system software etc. The hard line Apple II folks may find Apple, Inc., motives suspect at times, but those Apple II guys and gals seem to be working their tails off for a machine that | think they really care for. We should all remember this and make sure we direct our frustrations (and appreciations) toward the correct people. Craig Peterson Santa Monica, Calif. Apple boosters down under You guys must get an unbelievable number of letters every day. | don’t know how you cope. | was prompted to write this time by the enclosed Apple Talks newsletter | received the other day from Apple Australia. It has been diffi- cult to convince Apple that the Apple II series computers can be anything but primary school education tools and home game machines, but the two articles on pages 2 and 3 of Apple Talks may be a sign that things are turning around. What is even more significant is that the Australian Wine industry is putting Australia A2-Central’ a © Copyright 1989 by A2-Central Most nghts reserved, Al aragrams published in AZ-Central a public oman and my be copied and dsinbuted wihout charge. Apple user groups and.sign feat thers may obtain permsson fo epi artes fom ne 3 me by peat wien request. Ecited by Dennis Doms wil hep from: Tom Weishaar Sally Dwyer Dean Esmay Joyce Hammond Steve Kelly Jay Jennings ‘Tom Vanderpool Jean Weishaar A2-Central,—ed Open Apple tough Jaruay, \989—tas been pub ished moh since Jaruery 1586 Werewae pices (n US dtars; ama every inde at na acral charge) $28 | year: $4 for? years; $79 oe 23 years Al hack issues are corres avcle fr $2 esc. bud indexed ed tons oo fret bur volures ae $1495 each. Volumes end wi he January isso, an dx fore poe oume sini wih he Febrcy sue ‘The lu text ofeach ssue of A2-Central s avalible on 3.5 dks, along wit 2 selection ofthe best new pubic damain and shareware fles and grams, or $84 a year (newleter and disk combined), Single cisks are S10. Please senda coesponcense A2-Central P.O. Box 11250 Overland Park, Kansas 66207 U.S.A. A2-Central is sold in an unprotected format far your convenience. You ate encouraged lo make back-up archival copies or easy-lo-'eed entargod ‘opies lor your own use without charge. You may 2's0 copy A2-Centraf or srioution lo olhers The dstrouton loo is 15 cents ner Dane per copy ds- Inibuiod, ‘WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. I warrart thal ost othe informaton in A2-Centrat is usetul and corract, athough drivel and mis- takes are included from ome to ime, usvally unintentional. Unsatstec subscribers may cance! tar subscision at any time and recewe 2 ful ‘lund ofthe last subscription payirent. The uniiled porton af any paic sunscripton ill be refunded even io saitied subscribers upon request MY LABILITY FOR ERRORS AND OMISSIONS IS LIMITED TO THIS PUBLICATIONS PURCHASE PRICE. In ro case shall | or my contribuors be ave ‘or ary incidental or consequential damages, nor for ANY dam ages in 2xcss ofthe fees pa bya subse. ISSN 0885-4017 Genie mail: AZCENTRAL Voice: 913-460-6502 Printed in the USA Fax: 9194460-6507 ‘on the international map and Yalumba is one of the best known of the Australian wineries. And they use the Apple II as a production control machine. And Apple Australia is giving them recognition for it! The Editorial on page 2 even asks for infor- mation about business software for the Apple Il. This is hard to believe, but it is a breath of fresh air. Maybe Apple is starting to support the II as a productivity machine. By the way, the Option key keyboard combi- nation features of System 5.0 that gives an alternate character set confuses WordPerfect GS v2.1 more than somewhat. Option key com- binations that activate macros and key equiva- lents of menu items don’t work unless the user sets the Alphabet Translation option in the Con- trol Panel NDA to “None”. WordPerfect Oz Tech Support didn’t know that, and in fact are still doing their homework to figure out what to do about this new feature of System 5.0. The letter in the November A2-Central from Stephen Harker (“Problems Solved") clued me in to this solution. | have passed it on to WordPerfect. Thanks for such a mind-boggingly useful newsletter. I have been hugely enjoying the newsletter and the disk and look forward each month to the next edition. You guys are doing a great job. Ross Barrell Queensland, Australia Peter Sandys (High Volume Marketing Man- ager for Apple Pacific) sent us an interesting note which may also be of interest to Aus- tralian (and possibly other) Apple H users: *..0 | can beat my Aussie counterpart, the Apple II Video Overlay Card should be avail- able in a PAL format by January 1990. Those interested should contact Frank Revill at Apple Australia.” We have the address listed as: Apple Computer Australia Pty. Ltd 16 Rodborough Road French's Porest, RSH 2086 for Apple Australia —DJD Can you spare a program? The CD-ROM Project that I'm working on is for the National Apple Users Group Conference. NAUGC, a non-profit organization, holds an annual conference, usually in April, where we have presentations that are geared toward User Group leaders. The 1990 Conference will be held in Arlington Heights, Ill. (my home, coinci- dentally) on April 20 through 23. The sponsor- ing groups of the 1990 Conference are TAU, the. Dearborn (Michigan) Apple Users, University of Chicago MUG, AppleTree, DuPage Apple User Group, ITTMUG, the Northern Illinois Computer Society (my group), and others (it’s a jong list). InterChange is the name of the company that we have formed to handle the finances of NAUGC ‘90. At previous NAUGC meetings, we had Public Domain disk swapping. Usually, one of the sponsoring groups of that year's Conference would provide the PD collection. Attendees could purchase copies of the entire collection to bring back to their User Groups. This time, we won't be having any disk swap- ping parties. Instead, we are producing a soft- ware collection on CD-ROMs. Our current plan is to create two disks, one for the Apple Il and one for the Macintosh. ] am co-ordinating the Apple II disk group, although any submissions for the Project, either Apple Ii or Macintosh, Vol. 5, No. 12 may be sent to me. I'll pass the Mac software ‘on to the Mac group. We intend to have a diversified collection of software on these disks, Not just the usual Pub- lic Domain stuff, but also the best Shareware that we can find, plus demo versions of com- mercial software. For my end of the Project, any good program is welcome, and all Apple JI oper- ating systems will be represented, Yes, even DOS 3.3 software |s being inciuded, as Shrink-It full-disk archives. The copyrights of any software that is submit- ted to us, be it commercial, shareware, free- ware, or public domain, remain with the holder of the copyright. If we find a particular applica- tion that we desire to include on our disks, and that application contains a copyright notice or a restriction on its distribution, we are attempting to make contact with the author to gain approval for the application's inclusion. (We don’t need any legal problems, thank you.) Demonstration versions of commercial soft- ware, especially recent releases, are appreciat- ed. As of today, we are including demonstration versions of HyperStudio, from Roger Wagner Publishing, and Talk is Cheap, by Don Fiton. Other programs are under consideration. The format of the Apple Il CD-ROM wilt be two 32 megabyte ProDOS-format partitions, with the remainder of the disk in High Sierra (or ISO 9660, which is the same thing) format. The Pro- DOS partitions will be present for any user who has a CD-ROM drive on a nondigs machine, and wishes to access the file descriptions on the disk. We're also planning on a front-end applica- tion to display the catalog, probably a hyperme- dia program. Since most Apple iI users, or User Groups, for that matter, do not have CD-ROM drives, we are also negotiating a deal to offer a new CD- ROM drive at a discounted price. At this time, we have no firm commitment from any particu- lar manufacturer. The cost of the disks is planned to be $40.00. (Yes, that’s forty dollars, and not a typo.) Since a CD-ROM disk can hold approxi- mately 550 megabytes of data, and since we intend to fill a disk with nothing but Apple {1 software, it’s a pretty reasonable price. All atten- dees to the Conference will be offered the change to purchase the disks; and after the con- clusion of the Conference, we will be offering the disks for sale to the general public, al the ‘same price. All profits from the sale of the disks will be applied toward the next NAUGC C meeting in 1991, If you want to send me anything, the address is: InterChange/NATSC 30 1865 W, Spring Ridge Drive Arlington Heights, 111, 60004-1217 Both Apple H and Macintosh submissions should be sent to this address. Questions? Answers? | can be reached at any of the following electronic addresses: GEnie: B.FLODEN CompuServe: 73220, 1624 America Online: Edward? ProLine: pro-harvest !edvard Edward Floden Arlington Heights, tll.