Text content (OCR)
A2-Central’
.
A journal and exchange of Apple II discoveries
Open-Apple
:
April 1990
Vol.6, No.3
ISSN 0885-4017
newstand price: $2.50
photocopy charge per page: $0.15
Apple announces faster SCSI
On March 15, Apple Computer announced the Apple High-Speed
SCSI Card for the Apple figs and enhanced Apple Ile computers.
While retaining compatibility with the older Apple Il SCSI interface,
the new SCSI interface supports DMA (direct memory access) trans-
fers, raising the maximum data throughput to one megabyte per sec-
ond on the flgs and 511 kilobytes per second on the Apple Ile. The
interface has been enhanced to provide ANSI-standard compliance
and will support other SCSI devices (hard disks, tape drives, CD-ROM
drives, scanners, and so on) with the appropriate software.
DMA allows dala to be transferred to and from a computer's memo-
ry without the intervention of the computer's processor, eliminating
any “bottleneck” the processor introduces to the transfer. Apple
claims the new interface can transfer data at a maximum rate up to
ten times faster than the previous SCSI interface.
The card provides on-board termination, so a single additional ter-
minator will be required on the SCSI device al the end of the device
chain. The interface’s SCSI ID number is selected by a bank of switch-
es on the card, rather than by a jumper as on the earlier card.
The interface is neither a networking card nor a caching card. It
uses 32K of ROM and 8K of RAM for access as a SmartPort interface.
The GS/OS SCSI.Driver and SCSL.Manager do not use the RAM or
ROM.
Software included with the card comes on a 3.5 disk for the IIgs
and lle and a 5.25 disk for the Apple Ile. Software includes utilities
and device drivers for hard disks and CD-ROM drives, The utilities
include formatting, partitioning, and verification functions, as well as
new backup ulilities that can deal with the GS/OS “extended” file stor-
age type. The suggested retail price is identical with Apple's older
SCSI interface card, $129.—DJD
Developer group, Apple meet
On February 26, members of the board of directors of the Apple II
Developers Association met in a day-long session with the Apple man-
agers who are determining the future of the Apple II. The meeting was
held in Cupertino and included, in the developer group, Barney Stone
of Stone Edge Technologies, Mark Simonsen of Beagle Bros, Roger
Wagner of Roger Wagner Publishing, Ron Lewin of Micol Systems, Bob
Caroll and Bob Hardeman of Applied Engineering, Paul Boule and
Dan Muse of inCider, and me, Tom Weishaar of A2-Central.
Representing Apple were David Hancock, Senior Vice-President of
Marketing, Apple USA; Mike Homer, Director of Product Marketing,
Apple USA; Nancy Stark, Manager, Apple UJ and Peripheral Marketing,
Apple USA; Jane Lee, Manager, Apple II Product Marketing, Apple USA;
Sue Talley, Manager, Education Market Development, Apple USA; San-
dra Bateman, K-12 Education Public Relations Manager; Kirk Loevner,
Director, Developer Group; David Szetela, Manager, Developer Ser-
vices; Moria Cullen, Manager, Developer Programs; Scott Schnell, Man-
ager, Evangelism; Jonathan Fader, Manager, Education and Multi-
Media Evangelism; Rajiv Mehta, Manager, Apple Il Product Marketing,
Worldwide Product Marketing, and others.
For those of you who aren't counting, more than twenty people
attended at least part of the meeting. There are more than that many
views of what happened, if you count the rumors I've already heard.
My view of what happened is that Apple’s people demonstrated
they need continuing Apple Il sales to meet the growth goals they
have set for themselves, And they understand that to achieve those
sales they will have to do a better job of communicating their Apple Il
commitment to their customers. They are planning how they will
accomplish this right now and they asked for our reaction to some
proposals.
The first big step they've taken is one I've recommended for a long
time—they’ve hired an Appie II champion. She’s Jane Lee, a longtime
Apple marketer and fan of the Apple II. Lee’s job is to ensure that the
Apple Il gets appropriate visibility in Apple‘s marketing campaigns and
to ensure that Apple’s marketing communications position the Apple
Il as the computer of choice when the Apple Il is the appropriate
product for a market or customer.
Apple believes thal there continues to be significant business
opportunities for 3rd-party developers interested in the massive Apple
Il customer base. Apple intends to continue to develop products for
that customer base as long as it can do so profitably. It is a profitable
business for Apple right now and Apple badly needs those profits
right now.
However, Apple seems convinced for now that at some time in the
future it will no longer be able to produce Apple Il equipment at a
price that the market will bear. In Apple’s view, competitive machines,
using newer manufacturing and computer technology, will entice cus-
tomers with more features and jower costs. Apple intends to continue
its support of Apple II customers for years after that happens, howev-
er, and it hasn’t happened yet.
Apple divides its potential customers into two groups—education
and business. Apple recognizes a “consumer market” only as home-
education and home-office subsets of education and business. The
developers clearly would like to see Apple position the Apple [| more
strongly in homes and businesses. Apple clearly feels the Apple [! has
“BETTER CALL THE SUPERINTENDENT AD TELL HIM ONE OF OUR.
NETWORKS HAS GONE
6.18 A2-Central
a very high acceptance in education and a relatively weak acceptance
elsewhere and wants to position it accordingly.
I found no evidence that Apple deliberately weakens the Apple II to
make the Macintosh appear stronger. Apple’s people seemed to me to
be forthright and reasonable people who have a good understanding
of the Apple II's position in the marketplace and of the emotional
attachment many Apple II customers have to its products. More than
anything else, they seemed to want to make the Apple II experience a
happy and satisfying one for their customers. Over and over, Apple’s
managers emphasized thal they must demonstrate and provide a
long-term commitment to their Apple If customers.
Tleft the meeting feeling that I, as an Apple Il journalist and devel-
oper, would be able to continue making a living in the Apple II market
for many years to come.—TW
Miscellanea
Apple Computer announced implementation of a one-year
limited warranty for all Apple hardware products sold in the United
States on and after January 1, 1990. According to Apple’s March 8
press release, this warranty allows U.S, customers to obtain “warranty
service from any authorized Apple reseller in more than 80 countries
worldwide”. This supplants the previous 90-day U.S. warranty which
allowed for service only from U.S. resellers.
For warranty repairs, customers in the U.S. can take the system and
proof of purchase to any authorized Apple service provider for service
at no charge. Outside the U.S., the customer must pay the service
provider for repairs and then file a claim for reimbursement for Apple
U.S.A,
AppleCare, Apple's extended service plan for out-of-warranty prod-
ucts, is available at a special promotional price (6 months free when
six months of AppleCare are purchased) to customers who purchased
hardware products in the U.S. before January 1, 1990, AppleCare is
available only through authorized Apple resellers in the U.S., however.
This announcement will probably soothe many U.S, customers.
international customers and U.S. customers overseas who are Cur-
rently unable to find or purchase Apple product upgrades for older
systems purchased prior to 1990 or who must wait for reimbursement
after a repair may not be so easily placated, however.
AppleCD SC CD-ROM drive users who are having intermittent
problems with the drives can turn to an Apple service program to
fix the problem. The failures were caused by the accumulation of air-
born particles on the optical fens, The fan that drew air into the drive
for cooling could bring in enough dust and other particulates to accu-
muilate on the lens and attenuate the laser beam to the point of caus-
ing read failures. Drives manufactured on or after December 1989 no.
longer have the cooling fan, eliminating its side effects. Those who
purchased earlier versions of the drive are eligible to have the drive
Tepaired through their authorized Apple dealer; Apple will reimburse
those who paid for a drive repair associated with the problem if they
supply the completed repair order (with dealer name, date of repair,
parts used, and cost), proof of purchase, and proof of repair payment,
to:
Apple Computer, Inc.
P.O. Box 78901
Nev Augusta, Ind, 46278
Attention: AppleCD SC Repair Extension Program,
Customers with questions should contact Apple Customer Rela-
tions at (408) 252-APPL.
The symptoms of the drive problem are indicated by failures to
read or identify the presence of a disk, such as failure of the disc to
“mount” onto the Finder Desktop or the unexpected ejection of a CD-
ROM disc. The serial number (located on the back panel) of the affect-
ed drive will start with "F7”, "F8”, or “FO”.
Apple has lowered the price of the AppleCD SC CD-ROM drive
significantly, from $1199 to $899. When we reviewed the unit (Febru-
ary 1990), our major concern was the price/utilily ratio; Apple has
now improved that somewhat.
Visible commitment to Apple Ile and IIgs applications of the drive,
and to available software for use with those systems, would balance
the other end of the equation. Apple’s press release does give credi-
Vol. 6, No. 3
ble “equal time” to the Apple II in the product description, though it
neglects to mention the significance of the price reduction in anything
but Macintosh terms.
Apple has also lowered LaserlWriter prices. The price of the
LaserWriter NT has been dropped to $4499 from $4999 (a $500
teduction) and the price of the LaserWriter NTX has been lowered to
$5999 from $6999 (a $1000 reduction).
Apple's new outline font format will be called TrueType. “Out-
line fonts” are drawn_using mathematical equations rather than repro-
duced from a scaled bitmap representation.
Apple has been promoting the advantages of outline font technolo-
gy with respect to the Macintosh System Software 7.0 since the World-
wide Developer's Conference last May. There has been no word of
possible implications for a IIgs System Software release.
Jean Louis-Gassée's resignation was confirmed by an Apple
press release on March 2. Apple’s new Chief Operating Officer,
Michael Spindler, now oversees the company's worldwide product
marketing and manufacturing functions. Engineering, networking,
communication, and advanced technology functions now report
directly to John Sculley.
Cirtech has sent us an evaluation unit of its CID-20 hard-disk-
on-a-card for the Apple Il series. The CID-20 uses a 2.5 inch, low-
power, hard-disk mechanism with 28 millisecond (average) access
time. It connects to your Apple II-Plus, Ile, or Iigs via a revised version
of the Cirtech SCSI card (now with GS/OS driver support) to create a
single-card hard-disk peripheral. Just plug the drive into an available
slot, copy any necessary or desired files on it, and off you go.
The drive mechanism is still a little too thick to fit within the con-
fines of a single slot width; that means it will usually block access to
using a peripheral card in one of the adjacent slots. The side on
which a slot is blocked can be changed by disconnecting the drive
from the interface card (this requires only a screwdriver} and reposi-
tioning the drive to overhang the slot on the other side of the card.
The drive draws a burst of power on startup as the drive “spins up”
(within the capabilities of the Apple {I power supply, however). This
falls to a modest demand within a few moments. We tried the drive in
a Jigs and a Ile for several hours with no problems and with some
amazement at how small and fast it is. (We should mention that the
{le did not contain any infamous power-hungry cards other than 512K
of expansion RAM on an auxiliary slot card.)
Since the drive mounts onto a Cirtech SCSI card, the assembly
includes a SCSi connector you can use to attach additional SCSI
drives to your computer. These will appear to your computer as Pro-
DOS block devices or SmartPort devices. Normally the devices you
can attach will be confined to ProDOS volumes with non-temovable
media, however, Cirtech plans a SCSI to parallel printer box that
could save a slot. Apple is creating drivers for devices such as scan-
ners and CD-ROM drives that work with its SCSI controller. These
drivers will not work with Cirtech's card.
For the Il-Plus and unenhanced Ile, a jumper can configure the
interface to appear as a (non-SmartPort) ProDOS block device that
can be booted automatically on powerup. (The Il-Plus and unen-
hanced Ile ROMs don’t normally recognize peripheral cards other than
a Disk II interface or “clone” as startup devices.)
Cirtech provides the necessary software for partitioning large drives
into multiple ProDOS volumes and software to allow partitioning the
first ProDOS volume into sections for DOS 3.3, Pascal 1.3, and CP/M
(MicroSoft or Cirtech).
The most attractive feature of the drive Is that you can pick up your
entire workdisk, slip it into your pocket (well, a large, antistatic pock-
et) and carry it to another computer as easily as you would any other
peripheral card; this is an advantage even over other internal hard
disks. It's also very fast, it's quiet, it takes up no room on your desk,
and it includes a SCSI interface card, The least attractive feature is
likely to be the price; the 2.5 inch drive mechanism is brand new and
still expensive. It will push the retail price for the drive near the top
end of the Apple II hard-drive price range (well, not as high as Apple's
own drives, but no one counts those), Look for a $695 price on the
20-megabyte CID-20 and an $895 price on the 40-megabyte CID-40.
Availability on the CID-40 is expected in 4 to 6 weeks, with the CID-20
available between now and our next catalog—DJD
April 1990
Corrections and amplifications
We managed to drop a °5* from the sireet
address for Virtual Realities (“Miscetlanea’,
March 1990, page 6.10), but Virtual says not to
worry, the mail is being forwarded. They have a
new address in any case: Virtual Realities,
1650 Spruce Street, Suite 209, Riverside, Calif.
92507, 714-768-0176.
Last month a reader supplied an address for
a PaintWorks Gold upgrade. We've received
calls from readers who have a version 1.5 that
have had trouble applying the patch in the
February 1990 issue (page 6.7b), apparently
this is the updated PaintWorks Gold and it
does not require the patch (so you can quit try-
ing). The new version's “PaintWorks.Gold” file
is small, and most of the PaintWorks Gold
program is in the large file named “PROGRAM”.
If you have trouble using any Jarge file after
copying it to a mass storage device attached to
an Apple SCSI Card (and using the System
Software 5.0.2 SCSI.Driver and SCSI.Manager),
Suspect that the file may have been munged
by the file copy operation. We've received
comments further delineating that the problem
appears to occur occasionally with a file over
256K in size when it is written to a device
using the 3.0.2 SCSI driver. Rather than use
the System 4.0 driver to compiete the installa-
tion as a reader suggested last month, Claris
has released a technical brief with a more rea-
sonable method which involves disabling the
SCSI.Driver for the purpose of completing the
installation. To do this, first boot your hard
disk. use the Finder to open the “Icon info”
box for the SCSI.Driver icon {in the
SYSTEM/DRIVERS folder of the boot disk) and
lick the “Inactive” checkbox. Then shut down
and restart the system from the hard disk. This
will cause GS/OS to use the generated driver
for the boot device (hard disk), which is at
least (unlike the 4.0 SCSI.Driver) version-con-
sistent with 5.0.2. Complete your file copy or
installation and then re-enable the SCSI driver
and re-boot. Apple Is aware of the problem and
we assume it is reasonable to anticipate a fix
to be forthcoming.
To our answer on connecting a galvanome-
ter to an Apple I (“More input, please”, Jan-
uary 1990, page 5.93) we should now add that
the premiere edition of 8/16 contains an arti-
cle entitled “Galvanic Skin Response” starting
on page 10.—DJD
lle: the past and future
| have a current need for information on the
Status of Apple Ile technology. Could anyone at
A2-Central help me?
|. Any current plans to discontinue the ile?
2, How is the Ile selling these days? Does it
represent a substantial part of Apple’s gross
income?
3. Any stats on how far education is commit-
ted to Apple II's in general and Apple Ile’s
specifically?
D. M. Buller
Cedar Falls, lowa
Here is the state of the Ile: Apple plans to
continue selling the Apple fle (and the Apple
ligs) to schools for many more years.
The Ile’s sales through retail stores are near
zero, however, about a third of Apple’s sales to
Schools are Ife’s, This is a considerable num-
ber of machines. They can’t get that revenue
any other way and they need it badly.
Over 60% of the computers in schools today
are Apple. Apple intends to keep customers
happy, and educators are expected to continue
to use the Ile where it is appropriate for years
to come.—TW
Il versus Il
A2-Central and the remaining Apple Il line
magazines have been struggling to meet the
needs of both {I and IIgs users, Nibble tried to
combine Il and Mac articles in the same issue
for a while, but finally realized that it didn’t
work, and split the two.
When are you writers/editors going to stop
pretending that the I! and the Iigs are brothers?
At best they are cousins. Apple has placed you
in the uncomfortable position of splitting your
once mostiy united readers into two distinct
sections, and | don’t think you can continue to
try and please all of them with a combined pub-
lication for a lot longer. My fear is that you won't
be able to survive as two smaller circulation
publications, and neither the true Il nor new II
will be served.
Toby W. Acheson
Lewiston, Maine
I'd like to quote a paragraph from a letter
that | recently received from an Eamon Adven-
ture Guild member and tle owner:
Would yeu please include an updated list of
public domain sources for Zamon adventures
when the disks are returned. I have just about
quit readiag what remains of Apple IL naga-
zines.
Personally, 1 quit reading Apple I! publica.
tions back in 1985-86 when “They” went’ 80%
ligs (or lle-specific) and 100% ProDOS. And now
the Ile owners are bailing out too, it would
seem.
Friends, there are hundreds of thousands of
He's out there in dally use, and if they can’t find
anything to do with their tle’s many of them will
move on to other computers besides the Ilgs. |
originally got so deeply into Eamon because it
offered me a hobby that didn’t require throwing
out $6,000 worth of hardware and software and
Starting over from scratch.
So what's my point? Many if not most llgs
power users are techno-junkies who live for the
new and exciting, and a lot of these people will
bail out if Apple ever does drop the II line to
simple maintenance. Sometimes | get the
impression around here that if we all think pure
thoughts and tell Apple, Inc. what we think, why
then they will see the light and the Iigs will
regain the glory that the Ile line once had in
the personal computer world.
Well, maybe Apple will come around, and
maybe they won’t. In my humbte opinion the
A2-Central 6.19
ligs world is driven entirely too much by the
techno-junkie outlook and devotes more time
than it should to getting up to snuff with the
newest and the niftiest. And if Apple should pull
the plug? The people who live by this mind-set
will be devastated!
So what's my solution? Well, 1 don’t really
have any (wait, don’t hit me yets), But f think
that Apple users and A2-Central would benefit
greatly if there was a greater push to develop
and support Ilgs and lle activities that could
continue to grow and flourish and be fun even
if Apple development stopped cold tomorrow.
And just imagine if word got around that A2-
Central was a central touchpoint for such activ-
ities.
As a il-Plus owner it wouldn't affect me one
whit if Apple pulled the plug on the !igs; from
my standpoint they pulled the plug on me years
ago, and 1 am probably having more fun with
my Il-Plus now than { did when it was new. Most
Eamon people are of a similar mind, and there
are darned few llgs people among our ranks.
But we are having fun and my renewal rate for
membership in the Eamon Adventure Guild
runs about 85%, I think the Ilgs crowd could
learn a lesson here,
My Apple computing world does not revolve
around the antics of Apple, Inc., and there is no
need for yours to, either,
As a parting note: a friend of mine, being
concerned about being left behind, retired his
I-Plus and bought a PC-XT clone in 1983. To
this day he doesn’t use that clone for anything
that he couldn't have done just as well with
Plusworks, and finds the 8086 to be more than
adequate for his needs. If he had had the bene-
fit of a M-Plus support group he would still be
among us today.
Tom Zuchowski
Clemmons, N.C,
We've been watching the situation on cover-
age of the ligs versus other systems since com-
plaints started to rise a few months ago, and
though we agree the llgs makes up a signifi-
cant amount of coverage, we can't agree that
the bias Is as strongly pro-ligs as some readers
seem to feel. Here are our conclusions.
The letters we receive mentioning disparities
in the amount of coverage align themselves as
Jigs owners wanting no Ile (8-bit) coverage, and
Hle/lic owners wanting no llgs (16-bit) cover-
age. On reviewing complaints in these letters,
it seems that an article or letter that doesn’t
pertain exactly to their interests is often auto-
matically categorized as one for the “other sys-
tem“; we received several letters about “ligs
only” content after the “Applesoft database”
article (A2-Central, November 1989), and that
program will run on a I-Plust
Believing the Apple Il series may indeed be
unique in this regard, we picked up a few Mac
and MS-DOS journals. The Mac magazines
cover little applicable to machines prior fo the
Mac Plus; there are some significant differ-
ences between the types of applications that
are available for the Mac SE and Mac II series,
and there will likely be another type of split
when the Macintosh System Software 7.0 is
released (due to its system requirements). MS-
DOS journals are strongly admonishing com-
mitment to 80386 machines and are orienting
their editorial content accordingly: their world
is also split between the changing hardware
6.20 A2-Central
and the differing requirements of the MS-DOS
and OS/2 operating systems. Regardless of
platform, technology moves forward, and
those who don't move with it will eventually be
left behind,
In coyering the Apple Il, we similarly believe
we have to present the current and future
technology while keeping a perspective on the
heritage of the machines. The IIgs does share
a significant amount of its character with the
previous models, and it is the most compati-
bie upgrade path for those who may eventually
outgrow the 8-bit systems.
Denial of the older systems excludes many
products that we still use. Tom Weishaar, for
example, does use a figs, but he runs &-bit
software almost exclusively. flis reason for
using the Hgs is the availability of Roger Wagn-
er Publishing's SeftSwitch program to allow
several 8-bit programs in the ligs’s memory at
one time. Normally he has the llgs set up to
act like three 128K lle machines: one with
Talk is Cheap, one with AppleWorks, and one
to run miscellaneous ProDOS 8 programs. He
is only a few keystrokes away from each envi-
ronment, And it has been a lot more reliable
than our occasional attempts to use similar
applications under MultiFinder on our Mac.
Denial of the ligs excludes coverage of the
features that will be needed to carry the Apple
H line into the future. We believe the ligs’s suc-
cess is important to all current Apple li owners
due to a “coattail effect". As long as there is a
current Apple I! product on the market, the
chances of continuing support from third par-
ties for Apple I! customers are much greater.
Apple It-Plus or ile owners who perceive the
success or failure of the llgs as no more signif-
icant to them than the Mac are doing them-
selves potential harm. The ligs is the forward
direction; not everyone needs to move forward
at the same pace, though.
We do believe that ali owners of Apple It
systems should attempt to move to the mini-
mum system configuration for their current
CPU thal is most likely to be supported (64K if
Plus, 128K enhanced Ile, one megabyte llgs).
On all systems, you should aiso always use
the latest version of the system software that
is available. This means ProDOS 8 for the Ii-
Plus, He, and tlc, and GS/OS (which includes
ProDOS 8) for the ligs. if using the latest sys-
tem software requires upgrading your system,
plan for the upgrade. DOS 3.3 and other older
operating systems can be executed when you
need to use them, but continuing to look back-
ward at this stage is suicide. In 1984 when
ProDOS inside and Out was written, an
appendix made several points against immedi-
ately converting to ProDOS. This situation has
had several years to reverse itself as products
have appeared that negate many of those argu-
ments, If you have not changed, make the
break now.
When it comes time to revise your hard-
ware, if is also a good time to evaluate
whether the cost of upgrading your current sys-
tem might exceed its value. The classic exam-
ple is trying to modify a IL-Pius fo run Apple-
Works; if you already have an 80-column card,
lower case, and a memory expansion then
adding AppleWorks and PlusWorks may be
reasonable. If you have to buy all of the items,
you may find that retiring your I-Plus in favor
of a (new or used) 128K He, lc, Laser 128, or
even a Iigs (planning only to run 68-bit software
initially) may be more profitable in the long
tun. Not only will you be able to use Apple-
Works, but also other software expecting the
newer systems,
As part of that evaluation you should con-
sider that older systems do not see as much
product deveiopment as newer ones, and that
most problems (and, where possible, solu-
tions) involving older systems have already
been documented. This necessarily means that
the I-Plus, which has not even been manufac-
tured since 1983, will receive much less cover-
WEA nenty
y :
age than the later
receive the most. We will continue fo cover
new products for all of these systems when
appropriate, as for AppleWorks and the antici-
pated Publish-Itl 3.0. But the chances of A2-
Central covering older products such as DOS
3.3 in detail are low, although we do still try
to answer such questions by mail when we
can. And were certainly willing fo sell you our
back issues, where many questions about
older systems have already been answered.
We believe both ihe He and ligs will have a
long future. The IIgs has a capacity for more
complicated (and, potentially, more powerful)
programs to be written for it, but these are not
the programs everyone desires to run. For
those who prefer programs that run in the 8-bit
environment for reasons of speed (the text dis-
play will always be faster than graphics), sim-
plicity (why change if the program does what
you want?), and so on, the He and lic models
will be viable for years to come.
We also agree with the philosophy that
users should perceive that what Apple for A2-
Central) does of themselves has only a limited
effect. We try to use this to our advantage, and
publish many letters in the hope that an
answer will spring from the Apple If users who
have found solutions without waiting for some-
one else’s agenda; much of our “power” lies in
the expertise of our subscribers, Let us be
clear: We want those H-Plus avd Ue tips,
too!—DJD
No waste of space
How do I set HIMEM in BASIC/ProDOS so it
does not waste 1024 bytes all of the time?
Donald Burritt
Riverside, Calif.
The 1024 byte “system” buffer is needed as
workspace for operations other than just a file
buffer; it can’t be freed as long as you are
using BASIC.System as your interface to Pro-
DOS disks. If you really need to find more
space for your BASIC program, you might con-
Sider segmenting it (using CHAIN or overlays)
or using an alternative environment such as
MicraDat (see Apri! 1969, p. 5.21) or the Bea-
gle Compiler —DJD
Vol. 6, No. 3
Laser UDC connections
Here is some advice related to the combina-
tion of Laser Universal Disk Controllers with
AMR 3.5 drives. The two connection jumpers J1
and J2 are marked on the board; users need to
keep track of this and also mark these at the
connectors on the backs of their Apples. If you
accidentally plug into J2, leaving JI open as I
did, you will experience (a) an inability to eject
disks manually, (b) a very sluggish AppleWorks,
and (c) slow file transfer rates; e.g. booting
AppleWorks in 53 seconds and AppleWorks and
UltraMacros in 75 seconds.
1 had initially ruled out the "J2° possibility
since remote ejects could always be made by
using the “FASTCOPY” program, concluding that
the drive had a bad switch.
| tried the other connector before packing
the drive up. The improvement in performance
was unbelievable. The Laser manual did not
appear that explicit, although no configurations
appeared on page 4 with JI unused.
Perhaps others wil) benefit from this experi-
ence.
John L. Callahan
Winchester, Md,
UniDisk 3.5 and the UDC
| have a UniDisk 3,5 and Apple's UniDisk
3.5 controller card. Can you recommend any
5.25 disk drives that will daisy-chain to this con-
figuration, How about another 5.25 drive and
controller combination that will allow me to
daisy-chain the UniDisk 3.5?
Wally Wong
Fullerton, Calif.
The UniDisk 3.5 controller won't recognize
any Apple-compatible 5.25 drive that we know
of. The only current controller we know of that
will recognize both Is the Multi-Rache, a com-
paratively expensive solution,
We seem to remember that some older ver-
sions of the Universal Disk Controller would
allow you to connect 5.25 drives and a Uni-
Disk 3.5, but the newer versions of the cards
that we have do not recognize the UniDisk 3.5
and the manual claims compatibility only with
the Apple 3.5 (“ligs platinum") type drives,
—DID
PostScript print-to-disk
Continuing the saga of how to spool a
PostScript file to disk: you do not need to fiddle
with AppleTalk, or the Control Panel, or any-
thing even remotely clever. Simply rename the
“LaserWriler’ driver file to “LaserSpooler” (or
anything else really) and it will appear in your
Chooser menu. Use as normal; that is, hold
down open-appleF while you click on the
“Print” button.
For those readers without a phobia about the
world of the IBM PC compatibles or Apple’s
“other platform”: there is a vicious circle in the
world of computing; software is only written for
popular computers, computers only become
popular if they have lots of software.
{ recently contacted Nantucket Corporation,
the extremely clever producers of my favorite
development language Clipper. They are cur-
rently working on a Macintosh version, and |
wrote to ask if they could do a Ilgs one while
they were al it. They replied that “our market
research indicates that most Iigs users don’t
require a powerful application development
environment” ... “however we will continue to
April 1990
look into this area’. If you would like a full
blown development language that exploits the
Ilgs's Apple Human Interface, would be cross
compalible with a Mac Clipper and a PC Clipper
then blow the dust off your printer, launch your
word processor and start writing to Nantucket.
Stress the value of an industry standard lan-
guage in schools/universities, the commercial
benefits to Nantucket and anything else you can
think of, The circle can be broken!
larry einendinger
Nantucket Corporation
12555 #. Jefferson Blvd.
Suite 300
los Angeles, Calif. 90066
In liew of “Clipper-GS", | use TML Pascal H.
It's OK; not brilliant but OK. However, it is hard
to use the Apple Human Interface. If any other
TML Pascal Il users out there would like to swap
ideas, hints, tips, techniques, and bugs please
write to me. When I get enough letters I'll send
‘out a list of our names/addresses and the major
hints/tips, etc. Please enclose a reply-paid enve-
lope for me to mail your list back. (If you can’t
do that, enclose $2.)
Phil Tyler
13 Premier Street
Old Trafford
Manchester, Mi6 9WB
England
AppleWorks defaults
In the November 1986 Issue of Open-Apple,
page 75, you printed a set of patches by Alan
Bird to modify the page defaults for Apple-
Works. Since these patches only function with
AppleWorks 1.3, is there an update to this
patch?
James B. Wight
Murrieta, Calif.
Actually, we later discovered that those
patches affected the displayed page margins
{and so on) on the screen, but they did not
appear to actually work for the printout.
Beagle Bros’ AW 3.0 Companion (see Jan-
uary 1990, p. 5.90) contains a patch option to
modify {he page defaults. Early versions of the
Patch program reportedly had problems with
the patch, but this was fixed in version 1,2. An
update for owners of the earlier versions is
available from Beagle Buddies and has also
been uploaded to the major electronic ser-
vices:—DJD
ProSel, GS/OS, and OS/2
Your write-up in the March issue, regarding
the use of ProSel-16 for backing up GS/OS hard
drives, has convinced me | need it.
GS/OS on a Vulcan with a TransWarp GS is
truly a pleasure to use. At the office, I laugh
when watching an 80386 machine boot OS/2
from a hard drive in more time than GS/OS orig-
inally took from a floppy!
Clay Ruth
Schererville, Ind.
Too protected
1 recently wrote Broderbund Software, Inc.,
about a problem [ am having with The Ancient
Art of War at Sea on my tgs which has a Kam-
Keeper, a GSRam, a GSRam+, and a TransWarp
Gs installed. In the reply that I received, Hilary
Jo Nation states that Broderbund ”...software is
not compatible with the AE equipment. It may
have to do with our copy protection scheme.”
And she suggests that 1 *...remove the alternate
equipment, and it will run fine.” In addition
Broderbund offered a 20% discount on a fur-
ther purchase of Broderbund software. (Of
course, it [s highly unlikely that | would be
tempted to purchase any more software that
may not work on my system.) Perhaps other
potential buyers of Broderbund software will
want to forestall their purchases until they are
assured by the company that this problem has
been fixed. It is too bad that a copy protection
scheme, which is abhorrent in the first place, is
the cause of a technical glitch that causes
Broderbund software to crash. Perhaps Brader-
bund should reconsider Its copy protection poli-
cy. I am sure if enough people let Broderbund
know of their concern something will get done.
After the discussion about Hewlett-Packard
printers in several recent issues of A2-Central,
1 wrote letters to the people suggested by
Daniel Slaven. | would like you to know that |
received a very nice reply from Lee Bailey at
Hewlett-Packard. At least they are listening and
responding. Let’s keep those cards and letters
coming, folks.
Jack Clay
Leysin, Switzerland
Desktop programming help
Could you recommend a good text on Apple
Desktop programming which includes the fol
lowing topics—fast window drawing techniques,
custom controls, text editing?
What is your opinion on the book The Macin-
tosh Revealed: Vol 2, Programming with the
ToolBox, by Stephen Cherticoff? | have pur-
chased almost all the programming books listed
in your catalog from various sources. Yet | feel
the techniques presented are still primitive or
inefficient.
P.M. Lim
Singapore
We have not reviewed that specific book.
Although we have found Mac books helpful in
explaining concepts of the. Desktop environ-
ment, they are less helpful when the program-
ming considerations start becoming very tightly
bound to the specific system the program is
for.
The Hgs system software is stil! evolving
rapidly, and the lead time on a book is several
months to a year (or more}. Although the Addi-
son-Wesley technical manuals on the ligs form
the core of a ligs programming library, at this
time the sources for the most current manuals
is Apple Computer's APDA program, Manuals
available only through APDA at this time are
the GS/OS Reference (Volumes ! and 2) and
the third volume of the Apple ligs Toolbox
Reference, which contains information on the
newer toolsets.
APDA also sells figs Demo Sampler Source
Code disks which contain more current pro-
gramming examples from Apple’s Developer
Technical Support staff; these include special-
ized tricks showing how to make the llgs Tool
box perform at its best. Also available are the
Apple If Technical Notes which are used to
update and expound upon information from
the core manuals.
Very up-to-the-minute information can be
found in the Apple If programming sections of
electronic services such as America Online,
CompuServe, GEnie, and so on, if access is
available in your area. You can exchange ques-
tions and techniques with other programmers,
A2-Central 6.21
and source code examples are available in
their software libraries.
Jt is impossible fo stay current with the Hgs
(or Mac) programming environment without
having access to the current manuals and tech-
nical notes which makes membership in APDA
mandantory if you wish to be on top of new
developments. Though the volume of new
information for the less complicated 8-bit envi-
ronment of the He and lic is not expanding as
rapidly, even this information is updated regu-
Jarly and requires attention to the new manuals
and tech notes for these systems. For exam-
ple, APDA is currently the only source of the
newest Apple He Technical Reference, which
contains information on the IIc Plus.
You can obtain a membership form from:
20h
Apple Computer, Inc.
20525 Mariani Avene
WS: 336
Cupertino, Calif. 95014-6299
Membership is $20 per year in the U.S., $25
for Canada and Mexico, and $35 in all other
countries (payable in U.S. dollars). —DJD
Megaboard in Europe
D. J, Rotenberg told us about the manufac-
turer of the Megaboard, Prisma Dalensysteme
(“Megaboard found”, December 1989, pp. 5.86-
7}. This company is not supporting the
Megaboard anymore; they sold the rights to;
Te? Gaba
Aschaffenbuzger Str, 133
8758 Goldbach
WEST GERMANY
quite a while ago.
1 recommend for anyone having problems
with the Megaboard outside the U.S.A, to con-
tact ICT,
Stuart Hollywood
Berlin, West Germany
Smarter booting
I thought you might like to let your readers
with hard disks know about a useful public
domain program that | have written and upload-
ed to GEnie. It allows the hard disk user to turn
on his computer and all peripherals (including
the hard disk) at the same time. For example,
consider this system: a Ilgs with a hard disk in
slot 7 and the boot slot from the Control Panel
set to 7. If both the hard disk and the lIgs are
powered up at the same time, you will get the
“Check startup device” message, since the hard
disk will not yet be up to speed. You then have
to press control-open-apple-reset after the hard
disk is ready. That is inconvenient; | didn’t care
for it on my IIc which is why | wrote SmartBoot.
Using this program, you make some device that
is immediately ready when the computer is
powered up (such as a 5.25 or 3.5 disk drive)
the “primary” boot disk. On booting to that
disk, SmartBoot is loaded into memory instead
of ProDOS. SmartBoot wails until it has deter-
mined that the “secondary” boot disk (in this
case, the hard disk) is ready; it then transfers
controt to that device and performs a normal
boot. This will work with either ProDOS 6 or
GS/OS, and works with all Apple Il series except
the Il-Pius and original Ile (SmartBoot uses
opcodes not available on the original 6502 pro-
cessor),
6.22 A2-Central
The program will also boot to any device on a
SmartPort chain, not just the first one. This
would be useful if a hard disk on a SmartPort
chain {as on a IIc) was necessary to be put in a
position other than the first in the chain.
If it is not possible for A2-Central readers to
download this from GEnie, | would be willing to
send it to them. All 1 ask is either a disk (5.25
or 3.5) and return postage, $5.00 if you want a
new disk. | will also notify you if I update the
program. And if a version that works on a il-Plus
or original Ile is really needed, that could be
done also,
Steven Weyhrich
2715 N. 112th Street
Omaha, Neb. 68164
ROM disks
| have a Iigs with a one-half megabyte Cirtech
ROM-512 disk card attached to the memory
expansion card. On it | have placed AppleWorks
(with speller), AppleWriter, ProDOS and
BASIC.System, DOS 3.3 (Pronto-DOS version),
Copy il-Plus, and a half dozen other programs
that are selected from a menu that is automati-
cally booted. | do not have to boot from a drive
or wait for the hard drive to come up to speed.
The drives can be accessed after booting from
the ROM disk. All programs load instantaneous-
ly with AppleWorks taking a maximum time of
two seconds. By using the three finger reset 1
can reboot the menu to switch between DOS
5.5 and ProDOS programs that 1 have on the
ROM disk.
To set up a one-half meg card you format
512K of RAM, place all the programs you want
onto that KAM disk and make sure they run.
Then place a driver program (furnished by the
manufacturer) at the beginning of the RAM and
transfer sequential segments of the RAM onto
disks as binary files. This can be done from the
monitor or with a short BASIC program. Finally,
burn these 64K segments into 512K EPROMS,
insert them into the card, and you're ready to
go.
What surprises me is that so little has been
said or promoted about ROM cards. I realize
that static RAM cards are available and one
would need an EPROM burner to use a ROM
card, but the cost of EPROMs are about half that
of static RAMs and one does not have to worry
about batteries. Perhaps the problem is that
some assembly is required?
D. Herrmann
Beloit, Wisc.
The major disadvantages to the EPROM
cards are limited size, and the necessity to
bum new EPROMs whenever a change is
required. In addition, some programs (like
AppleWorks} have to be modified to operate
from a ROM disk since they expect to be able
to write to the boot device.
We agree that there are applications for
such devices. We sold so few of the Cirtech
versions that we no longer list them in our cat-
alog, though they are still available (the card
attaches to the Cirtech GS-2 or GS-8 RAM
expansion).
For older Apple It’s, a slot-based EPROM
device is the quikLoader ($179.50) from
Southern California Research Group, Post
Office Box 593, Moorpark, Calif. 93020, 805-
529-2082. The quikLoader’s maximum capac-
ity is 512K (using 27512 EPROMs) and it can
be used in Apple Il, Il-Plus, and Ile systems.
They also manufacture an inexpensive
EPROM burner, the PROmGRAMER, for
$149,50.—DJD
Faster AppleWorks search
In Bill Long's letter (October 1989, page
5.69), he speaks of the long AppleWorks time to
search 2400+ records using five criteria. | won-
der if the following approach will speed things
up for him and others:
1. Rename the up-to-date file temporarily to
Temp.
2. Search on the opposite of the first two cri-
teria. By this | mean that if you want records’ of
males who own Buicks, plus three other criteria,
select records where “sex is not male OR car
owned does not include Buick”,
5. Then delete those records (from your
Temp file only, of course), Use open-apple-1,
then open-apple-9, then Return, while still in the
records selected in 2,
4, Now re-select records with the remaining
three criteria. Your database is less than half its
previous size, so selection is faster yet.
5. When you are done printing the list, saving
it under a new name, or whatever, you can
remove it from the desktop and load the origi-
nal file from disk and do the next task.
I’ve used this on a 2000 name list and it
works fine. It is one of the unsung merits of a
database that is memory-based, not disk-based!
W. Henry Linton, Jr.
Wilmington, Del.
Can you help us find.
Is there any way | can change the video dis-
play of AppleWorks? My eyes are poor and It
would be less eye strain if | could enlarge the
text displayed on the screen while writing or
editing in AppleWorks. Playing with the 40 and
80 character switch on my Laser has no effect.
Is there some software package which can
change the text size?
Russ McClain
APO New York, N. ¥.
1 work in a school with a diverse ethnic popu-
lation. We are currently looking for a program
that can translate text between English and Pol-
ish or Spanish. We also would like to be able to
print Polish characters on our ImageWriter Il
printer. Do you know of any products which
might serve our purposes?
Carole Dale
Wilmette, Ill.
I have an eight year old 20 megabyte Seagate
drive built by Mountain Computer. I have used it
since 1981 on successive II's but they never
implemented the ProDOS version of their soft-
ware. It runs under DOS 3.5, CP/M and Pascal.
Have you or any of your readers any sugges-
tions where | can find someone to help me
implement ProDOS on this drive? I am willing to
pay a fee for this service if someone is interest-
ed.
Michael D. Merren
San Antonio, Texas
Do you or any of your readers out there know
what happened to the Pinpoint Publishing pro-
gram, Micro Cookbook? \'m looking for a Pro-
DOS-based recipe program which can be put on
a hard drive. Any ideas?
David Ziebarth
Rockford, Mich.
We don’t know: we hope someone does.
We'd also be interested in the status of ProFil-
er and Let’s Talk, which were sold indepen-
Vol. 6, No. 3
dently before being marketed by Pinpoint.
Often, when a company discontinues selling
packages it has acquired from other sources,
usually (but not always) the rights to the pack
age revert to the original owner or copyright
holder, who may then sell the package directly
(as for HyperDyne Software, which owns Com-
mand.Com) or sell it to another company to
distribute (as for Gary Little’s Point-to-Point
package, now sold through Beagle Bros). We
are always interested to know where Appie JI
products have gone, though often the informa-
tion doesn’t reach us. if you know of such
products, please let them know about us; we
hope they'll send us literature; what doesn’t
get used in the newsletter may very well be
used when we answer the mail.
Occasionally, products are just discontin-
ved, as eventually occurred with VisiCalc,
never to be seen again. In thal case, the best
attack is to search for a currently supported
product with similar capabilities —DJD
Page breaks broken?
I have been experiencing a very unnerving
problem when using both MultiScribe GS and
AppleWorks GS and hope you can help me
solve it. When printing documents two pages or
longer the printer consistently prints on the
page break. | have tried readjusting the platen
prior to the onset of printing but this resutts in
‘smearing the first line of text and little or no
bottom margin. Any help would be appreciated.
Matt Zimmer
Vero Beach, Fla.
if the printed page seems to be “overlap-
ping” to the next page, it might be paper align-
ment (as you suspect) or the length of the
printed page.
Check the length of the text printed for one
page. If it exceeds the length of one page of
your paper (11 inches for a standard U. S. let-
ter; your mileage may vary), check the setting
for the paper length in your program’s printer
Settings and in any form definition that you are
using.
Some programs (such as AppleWorks 5.0)
have a “standard settings” option for installing
a printer as well as individual “printer setting”
options in the various modules that allow you
to change the length of the page being printed.
You have to check both of these to make sure
that the page length defined for your printed
document is the same as the length of the
page you are printing on if you want the print-
ed output to fit correctly,
For llgs desktop applications such as Apple-
Works GS and MultiScribe GS, the “Page
Setup” options are normally accessed as an
item on the “File” menu. There are options
here allowing you to select standard page sizes
for “US Letter” (8 by 11) or “US Legal” (8 by
14) formats as well as intemational “A4° and
“BS” page sizes. If you choose a different print-
er, you should always check “Page Setup” after
‘your selection to make sure you have the prop-
er assignments for the current printer.
The other place to check is within the pro-
gram or program module you are using to
print. In AppleWorks GS's word processor, we
have noticed the lack of an option to set top
and bottom margins, which would (if left
unmodified) cause the full length of a page to
April 1990
be used for printing. If you don’t have the top
of the paper aligned exactly at the top of anew
Page, then you'll overlap the page break when
you print more than a page of text.
You can simulate a top or bottom margin in
AppleWorks GS by defining a “Header” or
’Footer* (respectively) with the desired number
of blank lines, up to the limit that the “header”
of “footer” can sustain for the font in use. If
you already have the print head positioned to
the line where you want printing fo start at the
top of your first page, defining a sufficiently
Jarge footer should cause enough blank space
to be printed at the bottom of each page to
avoid printing on the perforations.—DJD
Epson LX help
| have used an Epson LX-80 for several years
with my enhanced Apple lle and AppleWorks
{various versions). One feature I need for super-
scripts is a backspace. | installed the Epson LX-
80 as a Custom Printer and defined subscript as
control-H. This allowed me to print the follow-
ing:
8 Janes 8. Sibley
That is, the superscript begins above the period
instead of after it.
This works fine, but when | installed the LX-
80 as a Custom Printer | lost the bi-directional
printing capability. | called Epson and Apple
and several Apple dealers in the Dallas/Ft.
Worth area asking for an initialization string that
would correct the problem. Nobody could help
me!
In AppleWorks 3.0 the printer commands are
shown for all the printers and what is there for
the Epson LX-80? “Escape p0 Control-R”. I have
added that to my custom LX-80 setup and it
works great. Why couldn’t Epson, Apple, or
some other folks have told me that years ago?
James Sibley
Midlothian, Texas
Transtar codes
I need the printer codes for a Transtar 120 to
enhance it. The ROM of the 120 seems to have
acquired a problem where It prints out small 11
or parallel lines for an “e" which sort of botches
up the printing.
I'd appreciate it if you could chase down the
Transtar printer codes or tell me where to keep
looking. It’s a parallel printer; { have an old
Microtek card in slot 1.
Vd also like to find a club for grandmothers
trying to get literate; computing with training
wheels, you might say. | don’t ken bits and
bytes too well yet.
Ann MacKay
Salisbury, Md.
We came up empty on the Transtar here;
possibly a reader knows of the manufacturer or
a current source for parts and manuals. From
your description, it sounds as if there may be a
hardware problem somewhere in the system; if
the printer has a self-test mode (this may
require a manual to find out), it may help to
execute it to see if the problem is in the printer
itself or if characters are being “transliterated”
on their way to the printer from the comput-
er—DJD
24-pin driver found
I'm considering buying a Panasonic KX-
P1124 to replace my aging FX-85. Do you have
any idea about how compatible 24-wire printers
are with Apple software? | don’t expect too
many problems with character-based programs
like AppleWorks 3.0, but would it be reasonable
to expect that graphics-based programs like
AppleWorks GS, Beagle Write, Publish-It!, etc.
need a driver specific to the 1124?
Rick Pedley
Kingston, Ont.
Graphics-based printing will require a spe-
cial driver to use the full resolution of the 24-
pin printer. The ligs programs should all use
the same driver, if installed; unfortunately, we
know of no GS/OS driver for the Panasonic.
In the 8-bit world, Publish-It! versions 2.0.2
and later now include a higher density driver
for the Epson LQ series that should also work
with printers that emulate those Epson models.
One reader has called to advise that he is
using the Panasonic KX-1124 with the driv-
er—DJD
VIP Professional
For a couple of years | have been using VIP
Professional, a Lotus 1-2-3 look-alike for the Ilgs
with an Apple Human Interface added, But the
folks at ISD Marketing that sell the program fell
into the trap of producing a complex program
before Apple produced an operating system. So
VIP Pro will not work with System Disk 5.0.2 (or
4.0). It must be cold booted from ProDOS 8. I
was concerned that the product would be
dropped, as so many have In recent months.
But recent phone calls to the company have
produced a bit of a surprise: they are working
on a new version, due in about one year(}), that
will be compatible with GS/OS and, I believe,
will be updated to the current Lotus version
level. The IIgs does not have a power spread-
Sheet except for VIP Pro, Lotus 1-2-3 has 97%
of the IBM spreadsheet market. To have a com-
patible product available for the Apple is a big
advantage, especially for those people who
have to interface to the IBM world.
For more information, contact ISD Marketing,
2651 John Street, Unit #3, Markham, Ontario,
Canada {.3R-2W5, (416) 479-1991.
Ken Lessing
Fresno, Ohio
Fractal source
Anyone Jooking for some interesting pro-
gramming exercises involving graphics should
get a copy of Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics by
Robert Devaney, published by Addison-Wesley.
High school algebra and trigonometry are the
only mathematics you need understand to fol-
low the book. “Computer experiments in mathe-
matics” is the book’s subtitle. Programming
exercises are blocked out for you to execute in
BASIC, Pascal, C, or whatever you are using,
Just make sure that you can write to the graph-
ics screen in color.
Bruce Ristow
Rochester, N.Y.
Disk labels
1 would like to thank you for your excellent
publication, which | have been reading since it
started. | would also like to add my thanks to
you for your continual pressuring of Apple
about the value of the {I series computers. | use
my lle and ligs at work as a molecular biologist.
I use AppleWorks GS for writing grants and
manuscripts using the LaserWriter for final out-
put. It isn’t perfect but it is at least as fast as
WordPerfect on the Mac SE.
My system uses the TransWarp GS and Sys-
A2-Central 6.23
tem 5.0.2. | use ORCA/Pascal for a series of
programs written for general use in phylogenet-
ic analysis of DNA sequences.
Another instance of excellent scientific pro-
gramming on the Il series is a DNA analysis
package distributed free by Christian Marck
from France. This uses very fast overlays of
Applesoft code using binary files and, when
appropriate, machine language for fast calcula-
tions. For instance, it will print a matrix compar-
ison to the ImageWriter ff (using the superior
resolution of the printer rather than the screen)
of a 1000 by 1000 matrix in less than 15 min-
utes. By comparison a program ported from an
IBM to the Mac SE/30 was going to take
overnight to do the same thing with less resolu-
tion on the screen.
My second point is in reply to the letter by
Don Goldblatt on page 6.7a (February issue). |
have published a program which will write
AppleWorks database files for ProDOS, CP/M,
Pascal, and DOS 3.3 format 5.25 disks and for
ProDOS, Pascal, UniDOS (DOS 3.3), and Appli-
card CP/M format 3.5 disks. For ProDOS it reads
all directories. Not only that, it will print labels
for both of the formats. For the 3.5 disk labels
it puts the name of the disk and a disk ID on
the spine so that you can find the disk in a box
without taking all of the disks out!
You might also want to give some publicity to
GS+, a new bimonthly magazine specifically for
the Ilgs which is published by EGO Systems,
P.O. Box 15366, Chatanooga, Tenn. 37415-
0366. It is only $15 per year or $36 with the
disk. There is much excellent source code on
the disk to help IIgs programmers.
John A. Hunt, Ph.D.
Honolulu, Hi.
Permanent Portable IIc
To Peter Schaper’s question from Australia.
What you are looking for is already available,
with a little imagination! Here goes:
SCREEN: Two are available, Apple’s LCD
Screen, and one by C-Vue, Although Apple does
not market their screen currently, you can still
find them used at user group garage sales, com-
puter flea markets, and occasionally in the
newspaper Classified. The C-Vue is available
from Roger Coats at; 4684 Firestone Street, San
Diego, Calif. 92117 Telephone: 619-274-1253
A tip with the Apple screen: although rather
dim, remove the plastic glare filter from the
screen, and replace with a sheet of clear
Plexiglas, and the improvement is about 400%
in “viewability’. Nothing like that is needed with
the C-Vue. *
POWER: Here you have several options. The
easiest is the Prairie Portable Power by Linco,
Inc. at $119. Again, Roger Coats was my
source (more on them later) and is sole distribu-
tor. This includes a 110 volt recharger. The
Prairie Power Pack includes a nice leatherette
camying case.
Since the power supply is 12 volts DC, a reg-
ular small battery such as sold by radio contro!
model stores (I use Tower Hobby P. 0, Box 778,
Champagne, Ill, 61824 (telephone 800-637-
6050 for assistance) for $29.95, can be used,
at a lot less cost. For a charger, a cheap battery
charger from the same source at $8.89 (or a
local car parts supplier such as Pep Boys) wilt
6.24 A2-Central
serve nicely at about 1/3 the cost. But no carry-
ing case comes with that arrangement!
But you must periodically have access to 110
volt AC line with this arrangement {so far.) Here,
a marine supply discount house can help. They
have available several sizes of solar cells vary-
ing in price between $100. and $400. The
smaller one will do nicely. These solar cells are
used for recharging marine battery on sailboats
for extended cruising. | purchased mine from E
& B Marine Discount Supply, 8807 Annapolis
Road, Lanham, Md. 20706 (telephone:
301+577-0660) at $98.99 for a 5 Watt unit. You
also need a diode to prevent back current, and
a kit for this is $9.95.
This arrangement works fine with the original
Apple llc. But what to do if you have to buy a
new Apple lic Plus? Two things: Advertise that
you will exchange EVEN a NEW Ilc+ for an older,
original IIc (in good condition, of course!), You
should get many takers for that offer! Also,
locally in Washington, DC. a new Apple llc Plus
can be had for $490. which makes it the best
computer buy around, in my opinion. And it
Tuns at 4 MHz (By the way, my original IIc has
an 8 MHz Zip chip from Macmanco, Inc. 2905
Davidson Road, Flint MI 48506 Telephone
312+232-0241 at $149.)
Incidentally, this will also power an Apple
Unidisk 3.5 as a part of the setup. No problem
at all.
The second choice is if you have a new Apple
lic Plus, and don’t want to give up the internal
3.5 drive, or the regular monitor. Back we go
again to the auto parts store, or the Marine Sup-
a
© Copyright 1990 by
A2-Central
Most rights reserved All programe pubisted in A2-Central are public
‘oman and may be copied and dsrnbuted wrrout charge. Apple usergroups
and siniicancthers may obtain permission ta reprint ates ftom time fo me
by spectic wren request.
Edted by:
Dennis Doms
wih hep fom:
Tom Weishaar Sally Dwyer Dean Esmay
Joyce Hammond Steve Kelly Jay Jennings
Tom Vanderpool Jean Weishaar
A2Central tied Open-Apple tough Janay. 1982—as beer pub-
Ished morthy sina danuary 1385. Warc-we pus (i US. dalers: anna
delvery meted wo acttona charge): $8 fr 1 year: $54 fr 2 yar; S78 or
23 years. Ak ack suas ave curently avalale fr $2 each bound, cevad ech
tons of ur fr four voles are $1425 each, Youre end wih he January
ss an inde forthe or vom = nuded wih fe Fotruary scu0,
‘The ful tex of each issue of A2-Cemtralis availabe on 2.5 disk. dong
wit a selection o he best rew aublc domain and shareware fles and ora
rams, for $84 aysar (newsleter and disk combined). Single disks ae $10
Pace send al somesponderas i:
A2-Central
P.O. Box 11250
Overland Park, Kansas 66207 U.S.A.
A2-Centtrals sok m an urgtcletd [ormat lo your convenienes. You
‘ae encouraged to make back-up archival cops or easy to read enlarged
‘copies fr your own use wihout charge. You may also cooy A2-Central for
dtrbuion to cers. The dsinbutn leet 15 con's per page per copy ds-
insted,
WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. | warant that most ofthe
injormation in A2-Centra is uselul ard come, allnough evel anc mis-
lakes ate indded fom tne to ime, usualy unintentionally. Unstisted
subscribers may cancel their cubscrgiton at any time and receiv fil
rohind ote lat ubsedigtion payment. The unfked porton cf any paid
subscipion wil be felunded evento satisfied subscribers upon request.
MY LIABILITY FOR ERRORS AND OMISSIONS IS LIMITED TO THS
PUBLICATIONS PURCHASE PRICE. in no case shill | or my crtinutos
be lable for any incidental o/ corsequerial damages, nor fr ANY dam-
ages in excess ol the fs pas bya subserber.
ISSN 0965-4017 Gnie mall: A2-CENTRAL
Voice: 913-489-8502
Primed in the U.S.A, Fax: 913-4696507
ply store. What you need is an Inverter. Marine
stores sell them for Sailboats so you can watch
TV, mun your electric razor, etc. Generally cost-
ing about $25 to $150, they will do the job
quite nicely, thank you. Although the cheaper
ones produce 110 volts AC in a “square sine”
wave, they will run well on the Apple Ilc. If you
are concerned, you can buy a more expensive
unit which will give you a nice curved sine
wave, Or you can purchase a transformer to
“smooth” the current. But not really needed.
PRINTER: Eastman Kodak, Inc. makes a bat-
tery powered portable Ink Jet printer called the
Diconix. It is available in both a serial and paral-
lel model for $299. (Roger Coats again!.) |
bought the parallel model, and use the Apri-
Corn seria! to parallel ($49) converter. This
printer uses 5 “C” size rechargeable nicad bat-
teries, and will print about 50 full pages single
spaced. To print 100 pages, Just carry a second
set of batteries!
ROGER COATS, Inc. This is the most pleasant
group of people | have ever dealt with. Roger,
Matt or Steve are the ones I have mostly talked
with. We had a burglary last November, with
$15,000 worth of Apple Il equipment and
accessories stolen. [ replaced it all through
Roger. And their pricing is very “aggressive”.
Very good!
So picture this: It is a bright, sunny afternoon
(could have been cloudy and the solar cell will
still work!) in an abandoned quarry in the sub-
urbs of Washington D.C. Sitting at a card table
(with an umbrella over his head to keep the
bright sun from the screen) is a young 59-year
old kid wearing a leather vest, jeans, and a hat
with a bright red plume, with an Apple IIc in
front of him, busily entering timing results for
the Quicky-200 race contestants in his Apple-
Works 3.0 spreadsheet, Printing them rapidly on
his printer with TimeOut SideSpread, within 30
seconds of the end of each heat, contestants
and judges have a printed copy of the cumula-
tive limes and scores of all entrants and their
relative positions within the group!
Well, | dearly love my Permanently Portable
Apple Ic, with 1 MEG of RAM, and an 8 MIlz
Zipper, and AppleWorks 3.01
Leon H. Raesly, LCSW
College Park, Md.
Lee is a member of the Washington Apple
Pi, Ltd. (7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 910,
Bethesda, Md. 20814 }, an Apple Il users group
of over 10 years standing. WAP publishes a
very comprehensive newsletter, complete with
regular Apple Il, Mac, and even Apple Ii! arti-
cles.—DJD
How fast?
Just when you (MS-DOS users) thought it was
safe...
The Apple is slow, the Apple is outdated, the
Apple is old, inadequate technology. Viva La
MS-DOS! Oh, yeah!
The February 1990 issue of PC Magazine has
a very interesting article on low-end desktop
publishing programs for the MS-DOS world.
Seven programs ranging in price from $129 to
$299 were examined, The testing was done
with a fixed format four page newsletter. That is
to say, the same newsletter design was used to
test each program.
The test hardware was an 8 Miz IBM AT
(80286 machine) with the usual 640K of main
memory, | megabyte of EMS memory, a 30 meg
hard drive, VGA monitor, and interface. The
Vol. 6, No. 3
printer was an HP LaserJet Plus with 2
megabytes of memory.
Speeds were measured for five activi
opening the test file, save the test file, turning
Page 1 to Page 2, turning Page 1 to Page 4, and
printing the document. The file size of the com-
plete document was also compared.
We took the liberty of doing our own
benchmarks using Publish-lt! for the Apple I.
{Not only is it the best Apple II DTP program, it
was one of the MS-DOS programs tested.) The
Apple hardware used was a stock Apple Ilgs
with one megabyte of memory, the RGB moni-
tor, and one 3.5” disk drive: the file size was
24K (third smallest), opening the file took 9 sec-
‘onds (fastest), saving the file took 15 seconds
(fifth}, turing page 1 to page 2 was 5 seconds
{second), turning page 1 te 4 was 18 seconds
(sixth), and printing took 23 minutes (seventh).
Nole the difference between the various DOS
programs and then look at how fast the “obso-
lete” Apple llgs computer is, Doing the same
tests with a SCSI hard drive equipped ligs was
even better. The load time dropped to several
seconds, the print time fell substantially. The
page turning didn’t change because the pro-
gram loads to RAM and doesn’t access the disk
when changing pages. Because of the excessive
emphasis placed on hardware numbers in the
DOS world, we deliberately used a minimal
Apple hardware configuration for the tests here.
The Apple print test was done with an
ImageWriter If using the Publish-It! double strike
print choice. Publish-tt! will print to Apple
PostScript laser printers bul one was not avail-
able at the time for test purposes.
The article is very informative. It is amazing
to read the evaluations of the different pro-
grams. Most were rated as poor for handling day
to day DTP tasks and only one program man-
aged a fair to good rating for most tasks. Con-
sidering the hardware necessary to merely run
the programs, it is interesting to observe how
DOS users are shortchanged in terms of perfor-
mance and ease of use. When viewed in the
light of the attitude common among computer
users and buyers that MS-DOS is the “right” way
to do things, it is a study in contradiction. The
reviewers made repeated mention of font diffi-
culties, the lack of uniform laser printer sup-
port, the lack of WYSIWYG consistency and the
extreme variations in the graphics processing
capabilities of the programs.
The MS-DOS world must be congratulated for
doing a magnificent job of convincing computer
users that hard to use, complex computer pro-
grams are the “best”. That straightforward, no
nonsense systems like the Apple Ile and the ligs
are past their time and only fools and zealots
would be caught dead with one.
Vern L. Mastel
Bismarck, N.D.
We couldn't reproduce the complete table
here, so we just reported the Apple i! times
and rankings (out of the eight programs listed).
Benchmarks are very tricky creatures, but we
were intrigued by the results, especially consid-
ering the Apple Il tests were done on a floppy-
based system.—-DJD