Shareware Solutions II Volume 3 Issue 2 1996 07 Kohn Joe US

Shareware Solutions II An Exciting Apple II Journey Into The Future Volume 3, Issue 2 September/October, 1996 Heard It Through The Grapevine Disk Shortages A number of Apple II owners have reported that they are un- able to find 5.25" or 3.5" disk- ettes of the DS/DD (Double Sid- ed, Double Density) variety. Out of desperation, some have tried to use the more widely available High Density (HD) diskettes. We therefore need to issue a very stern warning: if you value your data, do not purchase 5.25" HD disks and do not attempt to use 3.5" HD diskettes with a standard 800K Apple 3.5" disk drive or UniDisk 3.5" disk drive! When attempting to use 3.5" HD disks with a 3.5" disk drive designed to use DS/DD disks, it’s not simply a matter of whether you will lose your data; it’s a matter of when you will lose your data. In the case of 5.25" HD disks, you will not even be able to format those on a 5.25" disk drive attached to any Apple II computer. DS/DD and HD diskettes em- ploy different methods of writ- ing data to a disk; the main dif- ference between HD disks and DS/DD disks is the organization and density of the magnetic par- ticles on the disk surface. Densi- ty refers to how the particles are arranged on the disk and how they respond to the wavelength of the signal from the read/write head. DS/DD disks are getting harder to find when you shop at a local computer store or warehouse outlet, but they are still readily available from mail order com- panies, and you'd be well ad- vised to purchase the type of diskette that was designed to be used with your disk drive. Following are several mail order companies that currently sell 5.25" and 3.5" DS/DD diskettes. Keep in mind, when you contact them, that they may carry sev- eral different grades of disk- ettes. Although most do carry lifetime warranties, you may want to think about spending a few cents more for what the disk manufacturers refer to as “OEM Duplicator Grade Disks.” Media To-Go 245 Prickly Pear Road PO Box 616 Verdi, NV 89439 800-870-4569 (orders) 702-345-6662 (voice) 702-345-0754 (fax) Media To-Go has a $50 mini- mum per order requirement. Current costs for OEM Dupli- cator Grade DS/DD 3.5" disks are $.28 per disk, plus shipping and handling. Current costs for DS/DD 5.25" disks are $.18 per disk, plus an additional $.01 for a disk sleeve, plus shipping and handling. MEI/Micro Center 1100 Steelwood Road Columbus, OH 43212 800-634-3478 (voice) 614-486-6417 (Fax) MEI/Micro currently sells bulk DS/DD 3.5" disks in packages of 25 for $.28 per disk, plus ship- ping and handling. MEI/Micro currently sells bulk 5.25" DS/DD “OEM Grade” disks in packages of 100 for $.19 per disk (sleeves included), plus $1.20 shipping and handling per 100 disks. Vol- ume discounts are available. UltraMax For AppleWorks As small of a town as San Rafael, CA may be, it actually is the home of two businesses — Shareware Solutions II and Marin MacroWorks — that create and market products for the Apple II computer. Marin MacroWorks has been producing AppleWorks-related macro products since 1989. Owned and operated by Will Nelken, Marin MacroWorks has published a number of TimeOut- based AppleWorks applications, in addition to publishing several AppleWorks related books. Will has written AppleWorks related articles and software reviews for inCider/A+, the National Apple- Works User Group, The Apple- Works Educator, The Apple- Works Gazette and II Alive. Additionally, Will served as Randy Brandt’s associate editor for Resource-Central’s Apple- Works focused TimeOut-Central publication. Will Nelken’s latest Apple- Works related product is Ultra- Max, a collection of 17 TimeOut- based add-on programs for AppleWorks v4.x or 5.x. Avail- able at the low cost of $12.95, it works out to much less than $1 Shareware Solutions II 1 Shareware Solutions II Volume 3, Issue 2 Shareware Solutions II is pub- lished by Joe Kohn, 166 Alpine Street, San Rafael, CA 94901- 1008. Publisher/Writer: Joe Kohn Roving Reporter: Cynthia Field Contrib. Writer: Steve Disbrow Proofreader: Jane Kos Entire contents of Shareware Solutions II copyright (©) 1996 by Joe Kohn. All rights are reserved. Nothing may be re- printed or reproduced, in whole or in part, in any media without the prior written consent of Joe ‘Kohn. Available by subscription only, several options are available: |A) The first 18 issues: $55 for US/Canada; $75 elsewhere. 'B) The next 6 issues/Renewal: $25 for US/Canada; $40 else- where. Make all checks payable to Joe Kohn. US Funds Only. No charge cards, purchase orders or COD orders will be accepted. This newsletter was created entirely with an Apple IGS. All articles written in AppleWorks Classic. Page Layout prepared in AppleWorks GS. Printing was done on a Hewlett-Packard ‘LaserJet IIP Plus, connected to the IIGS courtesy of Vitesse’s Harmonie. The use of TrueType fonts is courtesy of WestCode Software’s Pointless. E-mail Addresses: CIS: 76702,565 GENIE: JOE.KOHN INTERNET: joko@crl.com 2 Shareware Solutions IT per application! Yet, the added utility that some of these appli- cations will give to AppleWorks owners is worth its weight in gold. Age Detective will calculate your age in years, months, weeks, and days. BatchFiler processes multiple desktop files at once, allowing you to save them, print them, and/or remove them. Beep Tester allows you to experiment with the sounds of the <.Beep> command. Block- Blanker allows you to blank a block of text in a word processor document. BlockCopy allows you to copy a block of columnar text in a word processing doc- ument to another area of the same document. Calendar Now displays a perpetual monthly calendar for all years from 1582 to 9999. Context Help displays a Solid-Apple keystroke com- mand helpscreen, according to the context (module) from which you call it. DBX Printer prints to a file an extended record of all data base categories, plus any linked helpfile data. DJ- BookletMaker allows you to easily print on a DeskJet any word processing document in booklet format and it automati- cally arranges the page order. Hyphenator adds automatic or interactive hyphenation to the word processor. IWBooklet- Maker allows you to easily print on an ImageWriter any word processing document in booklet format and it automatically ar- ranges the page order. IW Print- er Utilities allows you to choose from a menu many common ImageWriter printing proce- dures. Just-In-Case allows you to easily change all text to up- per or lower case, to capitalize every sentence, or to capitalize every word. Make FilePath makes the current path the “original path” for any existing file. RestorePath allows you to restore the Standard Data Path in AppleWorks with just a sin- gle keystroke. Text Sorter allows you to alphabetically sort se- lected lines of text in a word processor file. World Clock dis- plays the current time in all twenty-four time zones. UltraMax is available in two versions: one for AppleWorks v4.x and one for AppleWorks v5.x. You must specify which version you want when ordering. UltraMax costs $12.95, post- paid. Outside North America, add $3 for airmail delivery. To order UltraMax, send a check or money order in US funds to: Marin MacroWorks 1675 Grand Avenue, Suite 16 San Rafael, CA 94901-2211 USA 415-459-0845 (voice) 415-459-4273 (fax) w.nelken1@genie.com Two New IIGS CD-ROMs The cost of CD-ROM drives has been dropping steadily over the past several years, and they are now so affordable that Alltech Electronics is currently selling single speed SCSI-based CD- ROM drives for only $39 and double speed CD-ROM drives for $69. Since CD-ROM disks have the capability of storing up to a whopping 650 megabytes of data on a single disk, CD-ROMs offer an affordable and conven- ient method of distributing large archives of Apple II software. With more and more Apple IIGS owners purchasing CD-ROM drives, Shareware Solutions II has decided to make available on CD-ROM the two hypermedia collections that had originally September/October, 1996 been published by Resource- Central; Stack-Central (aka Studio City) is a HyperStudio based publication, and Script- Central is a HyperCard IGS based publication. The HyperStudio collection rep- resents 30 (two disk) issues of Studio City. This collection, shipped on 60 3.5" disks, is still for sale for $120 plus $6 ship- ping and handling for US deliv- ery (or $10 to Canada/Mexico or $20 elsewhere). The cost of the collection on CD-ROM is $110, with no additional shipping and handling charges required. The HyperCard collection repre- sents 22 (two disk) issues of Script-Central. This collection, shipped on 50 3.5" disks (which includes the six disks that com- prise HyperCard IIGS), is still for sale for $99 plus $6 for ship- ping and handling for US deliv- ery (or $20 anywhere else). The cost of the collection on CD- ROM is $89, with no additional shipping and handling charges required. Each CD-ROM disk contains a single HFS partition, and each collection is archived in two dif- ferent formats. One format con- tains the actual disk images as they were originally shipped on 3.5" disk. The second format contains the disks in an already uncompressed format pre-in- stalled on the CD-ROM, all set up to run. To order either collection (on CD-ROM or on 3.5" disk), send a check or money order in US funds to: Joe Kohn 166 Alpine St San Rafael, CA 94901-1008 Note: Sampler Disks from both Volume 3, Issue 2 collections can be downloaded from Genie’s A2 library or from the Internet’s Caltech Apple II ftp archive. For those without modems, a four disk sampler pack of Studio City (includes a one disk HyperStudio “player program”) is available from Shareware Solutions II for $6 and a two disk Script-Central sampler pack (includes a one disk HyperCard IIGS “player program”) is available for $5. For information on low cost CD- ROM drives, contact: Alltech Electronics 2618 Temple Heights Oceanside, CA 92056 619-724-2404 (voice) 619-724-8808 (fax) hitp:/ /www.allelec.com CheckWorks Shareware Solutions II, in asso- ciation with Dan Crutcher, is pleased to announce the release of CheckWorks 5, a sophisticat- ed Apple II checking account management program that works as a TimeOut module from within AppleWorks v5.x. With CheckWorks 5, users of AppleWorks v5 will be able to manage up to three different checking accounts, and will be able to write and print checks, maintain a checkbook register, show current balances, and rec- oncile checking accounts without ever having to leave the friendly, familiar and integrated environ- ment of AppleWorks Classic. Noted AppleWorks expert Dan Crutcher originally released CheckWorks 3 as a shareware program for use with Apple- Works v3 (enhanced with Ultra- Macros 4). After AppleWorks v4 was released by Quality Com- puters, CheckWorks 4 was en- hanced, updated and released by Quality as a commercial add-on program for use with Apple- Works v4. At the current time, the com- plete CheckWorks package is available only from Shareware Solutions II; it includes the previously released CheckWorks 3 and CheckWorks 4, as well as CheckWorks 5. So, no matter which version of AppleWorks you use, CheckWorks can help you organize and keep track of your checking accounts. The complete CheckWorks pack- age is available from Shareware Solutions II for only $20, plus an additional $3 for airmail post- age to anywhere in the world. Additionally, low cost upgrades are now available to owners of older versions of CheckWorks. Those who use CheckWorks 3 for AppleWorks 3 can upgrade to CheckWorks 4/5 for only $10, plus $3 additional for postage to anywhere in the world. Those who currently use CheckWorks 4 with AppleWorks 4 can upgrade to CheckWorks 5, for use with AppleWorks v5, for only $5 with no additional postage required. To receive the special upgrade pricing, you must return your original disk to Shareware Solu- tions II for verification; the disk will be returned to you. CheckWorks 4 and 5 will work with AppleWorks v4 and v5 with no additional add-ons necessary. CheckWorks 3, for use with Ap- pleWorks v3, does require Ultra- Macros 4. UltraMacros 4 may be purchased separately from Scantron Quality Computers. To order CheckWorks, make a check or money order payable to Shareware Solutions IT 3 Joe Kohn, in US funds only, and send it to: Joe Kohn Shareware Solutions II 166 Alpine St San Rafael, CA 94901-1008 Contacts GS Update Contacts GS, a name and ad- dress database program con- tained within a IIGS New Desk Accessory, has been published by Shareware Solutions II since 1994. However, a recent discov- ery has come to light that indi- cates that there is a basic in- compatibility problem that ex- ists between Contacts GS v1.0.2 and the database module of AppleWorks GS. For that rea- son, Bill Heineman has created an updated version — Contacts GS v1.0.3. This update is cur- rently available, but read on to see if you really need it. If you are aware of the problem, there are several simple yet effective work-around solutions available that overcome the in- compatibility problem. Contacts GS saves its datafile in the exact same format as AppleWorks Classic — with tab characters separating fields within a record, and with a car- riage return at the end of each record. On the other hand, the database module of Apple- Works GS saves its data in a slightly different format, and it’s that format that is causing problems when attempting to cut and paste or copy and paste data from the AppleWorks GS database module directly into the Contacts GS NDA. As it turns out, Contacts GS supports the GS/OS clipboard, but only if the clipboard con- tains just text. When cutting 4 Shareware Solutions IT and pasting information from the AppleWorks GS database module into Contacts GS, sever- al extraneous carriage returns are introduced into Contacts GS, and it’s those nonessential carriage returns that cause havoc when the two programs interact with one another. If you value your data, do not ever directly cut and paste or copy and paste entries from the AppleWorks Database into Contacts GS v1.0.2! Instead, use one of these alternative methods to move your data from the AppleWorks GS database into Contacts GS: 1) Highlight a field or records within the AppleWorks GS Database module. Then cut or copy them, and paste them into an AppleWorks GS Word Pro- cessing document. Once the en- tries are pasted into the Apple- Works GS Word Processing Module, you can then safely cut and paste that information from the word processor into Contacts GS. 2) Similarly, you can use the “Create Report” option in the AppleWorks GS Database, and the report will copy all the data- base information into the Ap- pleWorks GS Word Processing Module. From there, you can safely cut and paste the infor- mation into Contacts GS. 3) The final method of moving information from the Apple- Works GS Database into Con- tacts GS is perhaps the most efficient, elegant and flexible method. If you have an Apple- Works GS database set up that contains 10 fields (the same number of fields that Contacts GS uses), you can simply use the Save As command in Apple- Works GS, and save your file as an ASCII text file using the file- name Contactsdata. If you then save the file to your /System/ Desk.Aces folder, it will in- stantly appear as soon as you open Contacts GS. By following this final proce- dure, you can actually use the AppleWorks GS Database to create, update or edit your Contacts GS database. The author of Contacts GS, Bill Heineman, was able to filter out those problematic carriage re- turns in v1.0.3. If you maintain a name and address database in AppleWorks GS, and want to copy information from it directly into Contacts GS, then, and only then, do you need Contacts GS v1.0.3. If you are a registered owner of Contacts GS, then there are sev- eral methods available for you to obtain the update. This up- date is available via electronic mail free of charge, or it can be supplied to you on disk for a $3 shipping and handling fee. If you have an account on CompuServe, send an e-mail to 76702,565 to request the free update; it will then be forwarded to you via CompuServe’s e-mail system as a Binary mail file. If you have an account on Genie, send an e-mail to JOE.KOHN to request the free update; it will then be forwarded to you via Genie’s e-mail system as an Attached mail file. The file will be compressed with ShrinkIt, so you will need to have the IIGS version of ShrinkIt in order to uncompress it. If you have an account on any other system, send an Internet e-mail to joko@crl.com to re- quest the free update; it will then be forwarded to you via the September/October, 1996 Internet e-mail system as a standard ASCII text file. The file sent via Internet e-mail will be compressed with ShrinkIt and BinScii, so you will need to have the IIGS version of Shrink- It, and either BinScii or GSCii+ in order to uncompress it. If you’d prefer to receive a disk by mail that contains Contacts GS v1.0.3, send $3 to Shareware Solutions IT. If you purchased a used copy of Contacts GS v1.0.2, you'll need to return your original disk so that we can verify that you own Contacts GS. Corrections * The toll free number for EGO Systems that was listed in the last issue was incorrect. The cor- rect number is 1-800-662-3634. ¢ Air Force Colonel Dave Grenda points out that the description in the last issue of the Me-109 aircraft was inaccurate. This airplane was a piston powered fighter and was the principal Luftwaffe fighter for the entire Second World War. Colonel Grenda points out that the Me- 262 was the world’s first jet powered combat aircraft. @ CD-ROMs And The Apple IIGS So you want to hook a CD-ROM drive up to your Apple IIGS? Well go ahead, I won’t stop you... What? You want to know how to hook a CD-ROM drive up to your TIGS? Well, that’s easy enough to do. First though, we need to go over a few basic concepts. It’s SCSI Or Nothing First of all, any CD-ROM drive that you hook to your IIGS should be a “SCSI” drive. “SCSI” stands for “Small Com- puter Systems Interface” and it’s just a fancy term for a stan- dardized way to hook devices up to a computer. If you have an ex- ternal hard drive on your IIGS, chances are that it’s a SCSI drive. (For much more informa- tion on SCSI devices and how to hook them up together on a IIGS, check out Joe Wankerl’s excellent article “SCSI (Simple Connections, Says Igor)” in the November/December 1993 issue of GS+ Magazine.) Now, there are some CD-ROM drives out there (for IBM PC clones) that attach to a PC through its parallel printer port. You do not want to buy one of Volume 3, Issue 2 By Steven W. Disbrow these parallel drives by mis- take, or an IDE-based CD-ROM drive, because it will not work with your IIGS. If in doubt, just buy a CD-ROM drive that’s in- tended for a Macintosh and it should work fine on your IIGS. But There’s A Catch! But of course there’s a catch! Before you can use a SCSI CD- ROM drive (or any SCSI device) on your IIGS, you have to have a SCSI controller card! This card plugs into one of your IIGS’s ex- pansion slots (usually slot 6 or slot 7) and lets your IIGS “talk” to SCSI devices like CD-ROM and hard drives. If you don’t yet have a SCSI card, you'll have to buy one be- fore you can hook a CD-ROM drive up to your IIGS. Fortu- nately (or unfortunately I sup- pose), there’s only one SCSI card that’s sold and supported for the IIGS these days: the RamFAST SCSI card from Se- quential Systems. Frankly, even if there were a whole slew of SCSI cards out there, the Ram- FAST is probably the one I'd recommend. As the name im- plies, it’s fast, and more impor- tantly, it’s very, very compatible. Another good reason to have a SCSI card in your IIGS is that it will let you hook up a SCSI hard drive too. (And if you are using your JIGS without a hard drive, you might as well be using a Ile {and you really won’t have any use for a CD-ROM drive], but that’s a whole different article.) In fact, you can hook up to six devices to a SCSI card! You could have a hard drive, a CD- ROM drive, a Zip Drive, a Sy- Quest EZ drive, another hard drive, and, um, another CD- ROM drive all attached at the same time! If you already have a SCSI card in your system, it’s probably a RamFAST SCSI card (which again, is great) or an Apple II High-Speed SCSI card (which isn’t great, but it will work). Selecting A CD-ROM Drive Actually, the SCSI card you have (RamFAST or Apple II High-Speed) will affect your se- lection of a CD-ROM drive, but before we get into that, let’s go over some basic guidelines for selecting a CD-ROM drive for Shareware Solutions II 5 your IIGS. 1) Make sure it’s a SCSI drive. Tm mentioning this again sim- ply because it’s the single most important thing to keep in mind when you pick a drive. If you buy a drive and it isn’t a SCSI drive, it isn’t going to work. 2) Don’t bother buying a super- fast CD-ROM drive. Let’s face it, the main reason folks want super-fast CD-ROM drives is because they want to play “Super-Doominator X” at full- speed. Unfortunately, on the IGS we don’t have any games like that, so we don’t need to use a super-fast CD-ROM drive. In fact, if you buy a drive that’s faster than double-speed, you are probably wasting your mon- ey on speed you won’t use with your IIGS. But, if you plan on sharing the drive with another computer, (one that needs that kind of speedy access) that’s a different matter (and again, a different article). (By the way, speeds of CD-ROM drives are determined relative to the speed of the original CD-ROM drives that hit the market in the early 1990s. Those original drives transferred data at a rate of about 150K per second. So, a double-speed [2X] drive transfers data at about 300K per second, a 4X drive moves data at about 600K per second, and so on.) Of course, one other thing to consider is that slower drives can be hard to find these days, but when you find them, they are dirt cheap (sometimes less than $50). 3) Be sure you can return the drive and get your money back. This should be obvious, but I still get phone calls from IIGS owners who don’t do their home- work, buy some incompatible hardware, and end up stuck 6 Shareware Solutions IT with it. Don’t let this happen to you. Using a CD-ROM drive with your IIGS should be as simple as “plug it in and go,” but just in case something goes wrong, you don’t want to be out a couple of hundred dollars. (And if the seller wants to know what kind of computer you will be using the drive with, just swallow your pride and say, “a Mac.” It only hurts the first 1,000 times or so.) It’s In The Cards With those basic considerations out of the way, your choice of a CD-ROM drive now hinges on the type of SCSI card that you own. Let’s look at each card and how it will affect the drive you buy. RamF AST SCSI card: Actually, there’s really nothing to consid- er here. As I said earlier, the RamFAST card is VERY com- patible. You can plug just about any CD-ROM drive or hard drive into it and Bingo, it will work right away. This will be espe- cially true if you stick with an older, and slower, model of CD- ROM drive. So, if you have a RamFAST SCSI card, you are pretty much ready to go. Skip on down to the “Hooking It Up” section and I'll be with you in a minute. Apple II High-Speed SCSI card: Honestly, if you have an Apple II High-Speed SCSI card, I would seriously think about selling it and buying a Ram- FAST SCSI card. And I’m not just saying that because Se- quential Systems advertises in my catalog. The RamF AST card is just more compatible than the Apple II High-Speed card and that extra compatibility can save you all sorts of head- aches and hassles. But, if you don’t want to go through the trouble of selling your card and buying a new RamFAST, here’s what you need to know... First, try to find the oldest CD- ROM drive you can. The reason for this is that the Apple II High-Speed SCSI card is most likely to be compatible with an older drive that was built to fol- low the original SCSI standard. Newer drives are built to follow an enhanced SCSI standard called “SCSI-2.” Unfortunately, the Apple II High-Speed SCSI card isn’t as compatible with these drives as it should be. However, you can buy a driver from Sequential Systems that will allow the Apple II High- Speed SCSI card to work with most SCSI-2 drives. (The driver costs about $25 as I write this. Contact Sequential Systems for current pricing and a complete list of CD-ROM drives that the driver supports.) Your best bet however, is to find an old Apple CD 150 to use with your Apple II High-Speed SCSI card. This is the drive that the Apple II High-Speed SCSI card was intended to be used with and the drivers for it are in- cluded with the IIGS System Software. The bottom line with the Apple II High-Speed SCSI card is: Do your homework! If there is a par- ticular drive you want to use, check with Sequential Systems to see if their driver supports it and ask around on Genie, Delphi or comp.sys.apple2 to find out if anyone else has had experience with that drive. Again, my advice is to find som- eone to buy your Apple II High- Speed SCSI card and get a RamF AST. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble. September/October, 1996 Hooking It Up Once you've got your SCSI card installed, you need to hook your CD-ROM drive up to it. The GS+ Magazine article I mentioned earlier is an excellent source of information on how to do this (it’s got pictures and every- thing!), but basically, here’s how you do it: 1) Run a SCSI cable from your computer to your first SCSI de- vice. If you only have one SCSI device, you’re done! If you have another SCSI device, you'll need to run another cable from the first SCSI device to the second. If you have more SCSI devices, you'll have to keep running cable until you either run out of de- vices or cables. You'll also need to check the SCSI “IDs” and “termination” on all of your SCSI devices. Each device in the SCSI chain must have a unique ID number that can be set with a switch on the device, and the first and last device on the SCSI chain must have a termi- nator plug attached to it; the first device on the chain is the SCSI card itself, so that’s ter- minated right out of the box. None of the devices between the first and the last should be ter- minated. Please note that the manual that comes with your CD-ROM drive should have a short tutorial on SCSI IDs and termination. 2) Power everything up and in- stall the appropriate CD-ROM drivers, the HFS FST (File System Translator) and the High Sierra FST. If you are using the RamFAST card, you won't have to install the CD- ROM drivers, but you will need to use the Installer on your IIGS System Software disks to make sure you have the HFS FST and the High Sierra FST installed. Volume 3, Issue 2 The HFS FST allows your IIGS to access Mac disks (many CD- ROMs are formatted as Macin- tosh disks) and the High Sierra FST allows your IIGS to access CD-ROMs that are formatted using the High Sierra format (also known as “ISO 9660” disks.) You might also want to install two System Software patches that will make your life a lot easier. The first is a utility that fixes a problem in the Sys- tem 6.0.1 HFS FST. This prob- lem causes the HFS FST to sometimes incorrectly handle large HFS volumes. And “large HFS volumes” is exactly what most IIGS CD-ROMs are! This patch is available for free in the A2 file library on Genie (file number 26120 - file name “PATCHHFS.BXY”). The second utility is a patch called Dr. Bazyar. Dr. Bazyar fixes a nasty bug in the High Sierra FST that keeps it from recognizing High Sierra CD-ROMs that have cer- tain “illegal” characters in their volume names. (Dr. Bazyar is available in yet another back is- sue of GS+ Magazine. See “Con- tact Information” for more.) 3) Reboot your IIGS, go to the Finder, and put in a CD-ROM. Unless the CD-ROM is bootable (which is very rare for a IIGS CD-ROM), you shouldn’t put a CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive until your IIGS is powered up and the Finder is loaded. 4) After a few moments (the time depends on how much stuff is on the CD-ROM), the CD- ROM should appear on the Finder’s desktop. From here on out, you'll need to follow the in- structions that came with the CD-ROM disk. What’s Available? Of course, once you've got your CD-ROM drive hooked up, you'll probably want some CDs to put in it. At this point, there are about 25 CD-ROMs available for the Apple IIGS. Most of these (about 20 of them) CD- ROMs are part of the discQuest collection that is available from Sequential Systems. These disks range in subject matter from “The Family Doctor Medi- cal Reference” to the “Complete Works of Shakespeare.” The remaining CD-ROMs are “collection” disks that are avail- able from a variety of sources. These disks collect Apple II and JIGS shareware and freeware and often give you a lot of bang for your buck. The most popular of these collection disks is the Golden Orchard CD-ROM which has over 600MB (most of it com- pressed) of stuff on it. Two new disks for the IIGS are the Studio City/Stack Central CD-ROM and the Script Central CD- ROM. These two disks contain the complete run of each of these disk-a-zine publications that were published by Resource Central. (Blatant Plug: My com- pany, EGO Systems, sells all three of these CD-ROMs. The Script Central and Studio City/ Stack Central CD-ROMs are also available from Shareware Solutions II.) That’s It! Really, it’s that simple! From this point on, you should be able to use your CD-ROM drive just like you would any other disk drive on your IIGS. The only dif- ference is that it can hold up to 650MB of stuff! Contact Information Dr. Bazyar - GS+ V7.N1 “SCSI (Simple Connections, Says Igor)” - GS+ V5.N2 Shareware Solutions IT 7 EGO Systems 7918 Cove Ridge Rd. Hixson, TN 37343-1808 423-843-1775 (voice) 423-843-0661 (fax) Apple II High-Speed SCSI-2 Driver Sequential Systems 1200 Diamond Circle Lafayette, CO 80026 (Note from Joe: The Apple High- Speed SCSI card works just fine with the single and double speed CD-ROM drives available from Alltech Electronics. Also, please note when ordering either CD- diz@chattanooga.net ROM disk from Shareware Solu- 303-666-4549 (voice) tions II that the patched HFS RamFAST SCSI Card and 303-665-0933 (fax) FST is included. @ sales@sequential.com Kansas City, Here I Come delicious barbecued ribs and one to experience airline prob- Just as they have for the past eight years, the Apple II faithful descended on Kansas City’s Avila College on July 17, 1996 for the annual Apple II Summer Conference, commonly known as KansasFest or Kfest. Men and women, children and grandpar- ents, teachers and students came from all over the United States, and from such far away and exotic locales as Australia, England and Japan, to spend four long thunderstorm-filled nights and five glorious days celebrating the magic of the Apple II computer. The 76 paid attendees listened to, and participated in, informa- tive and educational seminars conducted by Apple II program- mers, publishers, engineers and hobbyists. They were privileged to see sneak peeks of several soon-to-be-released Apple IIGS games and utility programs. They witnessed the official re- lease of several new Apple II software products. They mar- veled at a Mark Twain proto- type IIGS computer. They expe- rienced euphoria as they wit- nessed AppleWorks GS, Hyper- Card IIGS and Convert 3200 running on a speedy laptop com- puter. They ate pizza by the truckload, visited Kansas City’s finest restaurants to consume 8 Shareware Solutions IT steak dinners, and joked about the corn dogs served in the Avila College cafeteria. They played Bite The Bag, socialized with new friends, and got very little sleep. And they laughed hysteri- cally as I was raked over the coals by my peers during the traditional KansasFest Roast. Organized by Cindy Adams, sponsored by Tim Kellers, and coordinated by Steve (Godzilla) Gozdziewski, the 1996 Kansas- Fest steering committee did a wonderful and thorough job and succeeded in putting on what many long-time KansasFest at- tendees agreed was the best and most enjoyable Kfest yet. Kansas City Or Bust Like many others, I had some real problems getting to Kansas City. When I arrived early in the morning at the San Francisco airport, I was informed that my flight had been cancelled, and I was forced to make alternate flight plans that involved a sev- eral hour layover at the new Denver airport. I was so disap- pointed. After all, I’d been eagerly waiting an entire year to return to KansasFest, and those extra few hours just seemed in- terminable. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only lems. Within mere minutes of stepping off the plane in Denver, I spotted Doug Pendleton and his wife Ann. Doug is an Apple II hardware expert who, among other things, serves as the Pro- motions Coordinator for Genie’s A2 Roundtable. So the time flew by quite quickly as we talked about our favorite computer and our favorite online system. As the subject turned to modi- fying ZipGS accelerators, anoth- er KansasFest bound attendee alighted from his delayed air- plane and joined us, albeit briefly. That was Greg Temple- man, a JIGS programmer prima- rily known for his numerous contributions to Softdisk G-S. Greg immediately regaled us with tales of his latest project, a JIGS movie and animation crea- tor and playback program. Greg described the new IIGS movie format in such a way that it sounded as if it would provide for the IIGS a high quality mov- ie format similar to the Macin- tosh based QuickTime format. But, before we could get all the details, the plane that would take Doug, Ann and me to Kan- sas City started boarding and at long last, we were on our way. Upon arrival, Doug rented a spa- cious van in order to transport all of the Apple II computer e- September/October, 1996 quipment he planned to use in the numerous sessions that he would lead at KansasFest. With great anticipation, we made the 45 minute drive to Overland Park, the home of the world famous KC Masterpiece restau- rant, and our first KansasFest stop. By the time we arrived, there were already more than 30 Apple II owners eating their enormous meals. There’s just nothing better in life than sharing a delicious dinner with 30 fellow Apple II fanatics. KansasFest ’96 had started. Avila Arrival After dinner, Avila was only a short 10 minute drive away, and as we approached the campus, happy memories of previous KansasFests flooded through my mind. I started smiling, and felt as if I’d never left; I was home again. Unlike in previous years, all of the KansasFest attendees were housed in the same dormitory, making it very convenient to just wander the halls and drop into rooms where people were basking in the phosphor glow of an Apple II monitor. That first night, I was pleased to see that Tony Diaz had brought along his Mark Twain prototype IIGS. I was stunned to see a massive 21" color monitor connected to Geoff Weiss’s IIGS via a Second Sight card. I was awestruck by how many IIGS computers oper- ated at 12, 13 or even 14 Mhz. I was astounded to see so many CD-ROM drives connected to IIGS computers. But, more than anything else, I was thrilled to see so many old friends and ex- cited to meet so many new ones. Before I knew it, it was nearly 3AM; I hadn’t been up that late since the last time I’d been at Avila College. Volume 3, Issue 2 Day One Sessions were planned through- out the day, with the first ones starting at 9AM and the last ones scheduled to last until 9PM. Each session was 90 min- utes in length, and in order to fit in all of the sessions, three ses- sions were generally conducted concurrently. Once again, it would be impossible to be pres- ent at all of the sessions that I wanted to attend. There were some tough choices to be made; should I attend Dave Ciotti’s session on sol- dering, Mike Westerfield’s ses- sion on programming the GS/OS Toolbox, or Will Nelken’s pres- entation on AppleWorks and UltraMacros? Since I’ve used AppleWorks on a daily basis for at least ten years, I decided to attend Will Nelken’s presenta- tion in the hopes that I could learn even more about Apple- Works. What I saw that morn- ing caused my jaw to drop. There were about 15 of us in the room, and Will started out by conducting an informal survey to determine our level of Apple- Works expertise. Surprisingly, all of us had used the program on a daily basis for five to ten years, but all of us character- ized ourselves as intermediate level users. Will started us out by defining some basic AppleWorks and UltraMacros terminology, and proceeded to show us how to or- ganize our macros and TimeOut applications by grouping mod- ule specific applications. He showed us how it was possible, by having macros call up Task Files, to have literally 100s of macros installed; macros that would bestow upon AppleWorks power undreamed of by the orig- inal author of the program. He demonstrated how we can record our keystrokes as a macro and guided us through the process of writing a macro from scratch. His talk was truly inspirational, and from what we saw Will do with AppleWorks, everyone in attendance was motivated and eager to try out their new found knowledge by creating new and exciting macros that could make AppleWorks even friendlier and more powerful than it already is. Will concluded his session by announcing his newest product — UltraMax — an add-on for Apple- Works that provides 17 new TimeOut modules. Although he didn’t have time to demo the full product, he did show us a pro- fessional looking booklet that had been created from an Apple- Works word processing docu- ment using UltraMax’s Booklet- Maker TimeOut application. I have used the Page Layout mod- ule of AppleWorks GS to create similar booklets, so I know just how time consuming it can be to get a booklet printed out with the correct page order. Seeing the results achieved with Apple- Works Classic was very very impressive, especially consider- ing that it is the TimeOut appli- cation itself, and not the person using it, that calculates the cor- rect page order. The choices offered during the second session of the day made it equally difficult to decide which session to attend. I could learn all about Spectrum from the program’s author Ewan Wannop, learn about keyboard repairs from Doug Pendleton and Dave Ciotti, or learn about Applesoft Basic from Charles Hartley. Since Ewan had trav- eled from England on what was his first trip ever to the United States, I was curious to meet Shareware Solutions IT 9 him and to hear what he had to say about Spectrum, a GS/OS telecommunications program. Ewan started out by announcing that a new version of Spectrum, v2.1 had just been completed and the rest of the session was spent describing all of the new features offered. Ewan shared with us that he thinks of Spec- trum as being so much more than just a telecommunications program; to him, it has become a full blown development envi- ronment due to its very powerful scripting and XCMD (External Command) capabilities. He showed us how an online help system is now available through the implementation of the brand new !Help! New Desk Accessory (NDA) that Seven Hills plans to release as free- ware. !Help! allows program- mers to easily display a sophis- ticated online help system from the Apple Menu; the help files themselves are standard ASCII text files. He went on to show that Spec- trum v2.1 now supports the Ker- mit file transfer protocol, Bin- Hex and BinScii encoded files, and it can wrap or unwrap files in MacBinary format. Addition- ally, the improved ANSI display mode works with the Second Sight card, and there are now nearly a dozen new XMCDs. Ewan was proudest of “Crock Of Gold,” a universal XCMD-based offline messaging system. It’s not completed yet but when it is, it will initially work with Ge- nie. It will be able to be easily modified, by use of the Data- base XCMD, to work with any other system such as Usenet or CompuServe. Spectrum v2.1 requires a IIGS running System 6.0.1, and an 10 Shareware Solutions IT accelerator card is recom- mended although not required. Dave Hecker, the Seven Hills representative, told us that the full list cost of Spectrum was $129, or people could trade up from any other telecommuni- cations program for $65. Up- date costs are $25 for registered owners of Spectrum. But, as a KansasFest special, Dave pro- vided the update to Spectrum owners for only $15. Just prior to the end of the ses- sion, Dave Hecker gave us a sneak peek at SuperConvert v4.0, the long awaited update to Jason Harper’s popular IIGS graphics conversion program. In addition to a speed increase, the new version will offer support for Jpeg format graphics. Dave said that the update was nearly complete, but didn’t venture a guess as to when the update would actually be available. For additional information, con- tact: Seven Hills Software 2310 Oxford Road Tallahassee, FL, 32304-3930 904-575-0566 (voice) 904-575-2015 (fax) sevenhills@aol.com We then broke for lunch in the Avila cafeteria and afterwards faced some more difficult ses- sion choices. Richard Bennett and Dave Hecker were talking about GraphicWriter III v2. Doug Pendleton and Dave Ciotti were teaching another session on soldering, and Auri Rahim- zadeh was talking about Macin- tosh Basics. I decided to attend the session on GraphicWriter III. Admitted- ly, I've owned the latest version since it was released late last year but had never really put it through its paces. But, from all I’ve heard about the program, I have considered switching over from the AppleWorks GS Page Layout module. I attended the session hoping to get a real edu- cation; I wasn’t disappointed in the least bit. Richard Bennett of Sydney, Aus- tralia has been hard at work programming the update for nearly three years, following Dave Hecker’s directions, recom- mendations and suggestions. Since Dave has been manning the Seven Hills technical sup- port hotline ever since Graphic- Writer III was released, he knows the strengths and weak- nesses of GraphicWriter better than anyone on earth, and he’s also heard every single user-sub- mitted suggestion ever made. In essence then, Dave Hecker man- aged the update effort while Richard Bennett followed Dave’s directions. This team effort re- sulted in a masterpiece. GraphicWriter III is a desktop publishing program that allows IIGS owners to create and print out such materials as signs, bro- chures or newsletters. Although the previous version did have some shortcomings, it worked, and it worked well. Graphic- Writer III v2.0 has, in many ways, given the IIGS a very pow- erful desktop publishing pro- gram that must now surely rival any desktop publishing program for any computer platform. Dave and Richard provided a guided tour of GraphicWriter III, showing off the new features and answering questions from the audience. My question — “How easy will it be to make the switch from the AppleWorks GS Page Layout module?” — was an- swered after viewing the guided September/October, 1996 tour. “Easy; real easy.” Dave also told us about Babel- fish, a new product under devel- opment by Seven Hills. We were told that it’s a new graphic im- port utility that will work with many different programs, and that it will work with all of the various graphic formats that can be converted in Super- Convert v4.0. With Babelfish, it will be possible, for example, to load a Jpeg graphic directly into GraphicWriter III. Babelfish will also apparently work with text and fonts. Dave ended the session by letting us know that we should expect to see at least one more update to Graphic- Writer; that next update will make GraphicWriter fully com- patible with Babelfish. The three sessions held during the next time slot were geared towards people with very di- verse interests. Eric Shepherd’s talk about Human Interface Guidelines was geared towards programmers. David Kerwood’s talk on Netscape was geared towards those who “surf the net” using a Macintosh. Erick Wagner and Mike Westerfield teamed up to present a demo on Robotics that was geared to- wards Apple II hobbyists. For the past several years, Erick Wagner has led Kfest ses- sions that showed how to inter- face real-world devices, such as temperature probes, with the Apple II. Mike Westerfield at- tended those previous sessions, and they served as a stimulus for him to start his own hobby- ist project — attaching and con- trolling a tethered robot to his IIGS. The result was John Skulley, a plastic robot whose mouth moved but who said nothing very meaningful. John Skulley’s jaw was attached to a Volume 3, Issue 2 stepper motor, the entire skull was interfaced with the IIGS via the game port, and it was driven by custom software that Mike had written. During the session, Erick and Mike talked about the various types of robotic kits that are available from a mail order company named Mondo-Tronics, and demoed quite a few of them. They told us about the various robotic resources available on the Internet, and even told us about some of the robotic com- petitions held at institutions such as MIT. Finally, Mike shared his vision of the perfect home robot: “It would sneak up quietly on a cat and bop the cat on the head.” For additional information on mail order robotic kits, contact: Mondo-tronics 524 San Anselmo Ave 107-11 San Anselmo, CA 94960 800-374-5764 (orders) 415-455-9330 (voice) 415-455-9333 (fax) info@mondo.com Portable Word Processor Throughout the first day’s ses- sions, I’d seen fellow attendee Greg Nelson typing up notes on a small, battery operated key- board. I was extremely curious about that keyboard, so Greg in- vited me up to his room to learn all about the AlphaSmart Pro. The AlphaSmart Pro is a com- pact stand-alone word pro- cessing system that weighs only two pounds yet consists of a full sized keyboard and a built-in LCD that can display four lines of text. What makes the Alpha- Smart Pro so exceptional is that it is compatible with the Apple TIGS, Macintosh, and IBM PC. In this case, compatible means that you can type text on the AlphaSmart Pro, and can then easily transfer that text to any GS/OS based word processor!! So, if all you’ve ever wanted in a laptop computer was a trans- portable word processing sys- tem, the AlphaSmart Pro should meet your needs for a laptop computer system, but at a frac- tion of the cost of an actual lap- top computer. The AlphaSmart Pro can be powered by an AC adaptor, or it can run on two AA alkaline bat- teries for up to 200 hours! It can store, within its 128K of memo- ry, approximately 64 pages of text. Transferring the text from the AlphaSmart Pro is amazing- ly simple. The AlphaSmart Pro is actually an ADB device, so you can simply substitute the AlphaSmart Pro for your usual keyboard. Once the AlphaSmart Pro is connected to your system via the ADB keyboard cable, just start up any GS/OS word processor such as AppleWorks GS, EgoEd or Hermes, open a new document, and press the AlphaSmart’s “Send” key. As if by magic, the text you typed on the portable keyboard will ap- pear in your word processing program, where it can be edited, formatted, spellchecked, printed or simply saved to disk. The price list that Greg had showed a Suggested Retail Price of $299, but an introductory price of $249 was valid until July 31, 1996. On a recent call to the manufacturer, I was in- formed that the introductory pricing had been extended until December 31, 1996. I was also told that volume discounts are available and that school pur- chase orders can be accepted. Shareware Solutions IT i For more information, contact: Intelligent Peripheral Devices 20380 Town Center Lane, # 270 Cupertino, CA 95014 408-252-9400 (voice) 408-252-9409 (fax) info@alphasmart.com http:/ /www.alphasmart.com The Keynote Speech After a forgettable dinner at the Avila cafeteria, we all went to listen to Gary Utter, the chief Sysop of Genie’s A2 Roundtable, deliver the keynote speech. Gary formulated many passion- ate words in an attempt to de- scribe just what is so special about the Apple II. Let’s listen in to a portion of that speech: “Those of us in this room, and a lot of other people who would be here if they could, have forged a community around the Apple II, but, odd as it may seem to say so, it is not the Apple II that is important. “I know that a lot of you just tweaked when I said that. “However, it happens to be true. Tm not saying that the Apple II isn’t important to each and every one of us, but that in the greater scheme of things, in the larger world, the Apple II com- munity is far more significant than the Apple II itself. “The Apple II, and all the won- derful things about it, are no longer recognized outside our little family. Most of the things that made the Apple II special are now becoming available on other platforms. The world is catching up with us, people. “But I have not yet seen any 12 Shareware Solutions IT other community of users that has what we have. The spirit, the willingness to help anyone, the support, the friendliness, the warmth and the interaction that typifies the Apple II com- munity are qualities that are simply not found elsewhere.” As Gary Utter spoke, we were all keenly aware of the sense of friendship, camaraderie and family that we all share; a friendship that has been forged by our common love of the Apple II computer. Gary had truly suc- ceeded in putting into words the magic that is the Apple II com- puter. Fun And Games After the keynote speech, there was one more difficult decision to make; whether to attend Doug Pendleton’s session about modifying ZipGS accelerators or to see the first ever public demo of Wolfenstein 3-D. Since Wolfenstein 3-D is possi- bly the most eagerly awaited TIGS game of all time, I wanted to see it, as did just about every other IIGS owner at Kfest. The lounge was packed as Eric Shepherd explained how he had taken over, from Burger Bill Heineman, as chief programmer of the project. Several years before, Bill had first demoed Wolf 3-D at Kfest, but work on the project was delayed by a number of factors, not the least of which was legal in nature. ID Software, the owners of the Wolf 3-D copyright, had insisted all along that if the game were ported to the IIGS, it should be released as freeware. Eric, quite literally, stunned everyone when he stated that Wolf 3-D is nearing completion and that it would indeed be re- leased as freeware! He then proceeded to demo the action packed shoot ’em up game. The premise of the game seems simple enough; you find yourself in a Nazi stronghold and it’s your goal to shoot every- thing in sight. To accomplish the task at hand, you have a variety of weapons at your disposal and can access an auto-mapping feature that shows you where you are in the mazes of passages and hidden rooms that make up the fortress. Eric said that as the game gets nearer to completion, it would, in most probability, be uploaded to Genie and that anyone with access to Genie could then be involved in an “open beta test.” The one thing that Eric failed to mention is that there are Easter Egg cheats built into the pro- gram. If you type in the correct words, you'll get unlimited lives and unlimited weapons. When you eventually get to play Wolf 3-D, just remember the magic words: Burger and Apple IIGS. And with that, the first day of KansasFest officially ended. It was now time for the real fun and games, and pizza. Despite the fact that Hyper- Studio Publisher Roger Wagner did not attend Kfest 96, he was there in spirit. Just as he had for the past three years, Roger purchased pizza for everyone in attendance. He’d made arrange- ments for Mike Westerfield to order 20 pizzas, and Roger “footed the bill.” Talk about the spirit of the Apple II communi- ty! Roger Wagner certainly ex- emplified the generous nature of our community. It was then time for the annual September/October, 1996 “Bite The Bag” contest, a wild and crazy competitive event that was invented at Kansas- Fest. To participate, all you have to do is stand on one foot and try to pick up a paper bag in your teeth. Just as the festiv- ities got underway, a dozen of us piled into Burger Bill’s rented van and went to see “Independ- ence Day.” Day Two The second day of seminars started out with a representa- tive of Apple Computer talking about new products that Apple would be releasing. Since I knew that none of the products were at all related to the Apple II, I decided that I would benefit more from getting another hour or two of sleep, so I skipped that session completely. As much as I would have liked to attend Steve Buggie’s session about “Disk II And Apple Diag- nostics” or Mike Westerfield’s “Meet The Toolbox, Part 2,” I was scheduled to participate in the “Publishers And Writers Fo- rum.” On the panel with me was Max Jones of Juiced.GS and Howard Katz of The Apple- Works Gazette. Ryan Suenaga, a writer whose words have ap- peared in a number of Apple II publications, served as the mod- erator. Although I’d never met Howard or Max before, I’m pleased to now call them my friends, and I think that we’re all fortunate that they have started up brand new Apple II publications. The focal point of The AppleWorks Gazette is AppleWorks Classic while Juiced.GS is devoted to the Apple IIGS. We each took about ten minutes to talk about ourselves, our pub- Volume 3, Issue 2 lications, our goals and our plans for the future. We were all very enthusiastic, and the a- mazing thing of it all is that none of us viewed the other publications as competition. We joked around quite a bit during our session, and I just hope that those in the audience had as good a time as those who partic- ipated on the panel. Td like to again take this oppor- tunity to recommend that you subscribe to those other Apple II publications. Max Jones is a professional journalist whose Juiced.GS looks beautiful and is a real joy to read. Howard Katz and his co-publisher, France- based Chris Serreau, are long time AppleWorks supporters, and in their disk based bi- monthly publication, they teach fellow AppleWorks users how to push AppleWorks to the limit. You can help support those who support the Apple II by taking out a subscription to one, or both, of these excellent publica- tions. You won't regret it. For additional information on Juiced.GS, contact: Max Jones Juiced.GS 2217 Lakeview Drive Sullivan, IN 47882 mjones145@genie.com http:/ /users.ids.net |~kerwood | juiced.gs For additional information on The AppleWorks Gazette, con- tact the co-publishers at: Howard Katz 1104 Lorlyn Circle #2D Batavia, IL 60510 Attp:/ /users.ids.net /~kerwood | tag.html Christian Serreau 12, rue de la Censerie 49100 Angers, France After lunch, there were three sessions offered: Max Jones on “Desktop Publishing And The Apple IIGS,” Doug Pendleton and Dave Ciotti on “Advanced Soldering Techniques” and Bri- an Gillespie on “HyperCard.” As impressed as I have been by Juiced.GS, I just had to attend Max’s session. I’m glad I did. Max started out by telling us a little about his experience over the last 20 years as a journalist. He served for 10 years as the ed- itor of a small rural newspaper, and is now employed as the Ed- itorial Page writer for the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, where he writes and lays out the editorial page six days per week. With all of Max’s experience in the news- paper business, he had lots of desktop publishing information to share with us. Max stated that the primary goal of a desktop publisher is to “grab and hold the attention of the audience by making a good first impression.” He offered eight major tips that all desktop publishers should follow: * Keep it simple, and always keep the reader in mind. Be precise. Only use graphics to enhance the content. Don’t be afraid to be bold. Use elements of design to set the tone for the contents. © Use headlines, sub-headlines and drop caps. * Use cut-lines to explain the contents of the graphics. * Don’t be afraid to experiment. Since I don’t want to steal Max’s thunder, let me mention that he has promised to expand his ses- Shareware Solutions IT 13 sion into a feature length article that he will publish in an up- coming issue of Juiced.GS. The next series of sessions con- sisted of Tony Diaz talking about “The Portable IIGS,” Doug Pendleton and Dave Ciotti explaining “Monitors — Inside And Out” and Charles Hartley teaching about the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the computer language on which all Home Pages on the World Wide Web are based. Another tough decision had to be made. For the past three or four years, Ihave been Number Two on the waiting list for one of Tony Diaz’s homebrew portable IIGS computers, so I attended his session hoping that he’d build my portable for me right in front of my eyes. I had no such luck but the second I walked into the session, I knew it was going to be an outrageous one. With a dremel tool in one hand, and a Macintosh portable in the other, Tony proceeded to rip apart the Mac portable and showed us exactly how a IIGS could be reassembled inside the relatively compact case. When he started up the dremel tool and used it to cut and remove all of the internal Macintosh architecture, several in the au- dience started cracking jokes about the KansasFest Chain- saw Massacre. Imagine, if you can, a room full of Apple II fa- natics watching someone de- stroy a Macintosh with a power tool. Everyone loved it. During the demo, Tony showed us how to secure the IIGS moth- erboard to the case, where to add the internal hard drive and 3.5” disk assembly, how to add an accelerator and how to pump up the RAM. And, sure enough, 14 Shareware Solutions IT everything fit. The demo, how- ever, was more theoretical than practical as Tony really just showed how it could be done; building a functional IIGS por- table would take many hours or days of work. And with that, the sessions were over and I braced myself for what came next. The Annual Roast Early in 1996, Cindy Adams contacted me to tell me I’d been chosen to be the recipient of a dubious KansasFest honor. I was to be the Roastee at the traditional Roast. I was extremely reluctant; so reluctant, in fact, that I refused that honor. But, Cindy was very persistent, and for almost five months I kept telling her that I just didn’t want that honor. Finally, I relented, and you can thank Burger Bill Heineman for my change of heart. One day, Bill and I were talking on the phone and I told him of Cindy Adams’ plans. Without missing a beat, Bill said that I’d be an ideal roastee, and he launched into a five minute mini-roast that had me in hysterics. I was game. I was nervous as Steve Disbrow, Will Nelken, Dave Kerwood and Tim Kellers joined me center stage. I leaned over and whis- pered: “Be gentle on me guys; I’m the sensitive writer type.” They wouldn’t hear of it. As it turned out, all my fears of being humiliated and ridiculed were unfounded. The roast near- ly brought me to tears, and they were tears of joy. It was the most heart-warming testimoni- al that the Apple II community could have bestowed on me. Dave Kerwood’s remarks were among the most poignant. He concluded: “In one of Joe’s last articles for inCider/A+ before the plug was pulled on that magazine, he signed off on what turned out to be his last cover story with these words: “Thanks to a dedicated com- munity of volunteers and a rich variety of resources, Apple II users everywhere have many more years of power computing to look forward to. After all, for millions of Apple II enthusiasts who rely on their computers every day for work and play at home, in school, and in the office, ‘Apple II Forever’ isn’t just a slogan — it’s a way of life. “There’s a gratuitous rock lyric that says a lot about how Joe has lived his life in the past nine years: “Comes a time when the blind- man takes your hand, says Don’t you see? Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe.’ Don’t give it up, you got an empty cup only love can fill. “Congratulations Joe, on contin- uing to be able to make ‘Apple II Forever’ a way of life for you as well, making it happen on a dream you still believe. We still believe, and we thank you, and we ask you to remember that we all love what you do.” Td really like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, all who took part in the roast. It was certain- ly the high point of my career working with the Apple II and I will fondly remember it forever. The Vendor Fair After spending at least half the September/October, 1996 night talking about the Apple II and watching a truly spectacu- lar lightning storm, I had to get up early on Saturday morning in order to set up for the vendor fair. All of those in attendance who represented Apple II com- panies had an opportunity to have a table at the mini-Apple- Fest type of trade show. Tony Diaz of Alltech Electronics set his table up right next to mine, and I immediately pur- chased a 200 megabyte Focus hard drive for the discounted price of $179. That was, in my opinion, a wonderful deal for a wonderful product. Many of the vendors offered products at a discount, and many reported that they sold everything that they’d brought with them. I wish I could report similar success, but I ended up bringing home with me lots of unsold products. Nonetheless, I attended KansasFest primarily to have a good time, and at the vendor fair, I sure had a great time talking about Shareware Solutions II and about all the products that are published and/or distributed by Share- ware Solutions II. Product Introductions After lunch, an hour block of time had been set aside for me to demo new products. I talked about Brutal Deluxe’s LemminGS. Brutal Deluxe has been working on this exciting new game since March, and I have been fortu- nate enough to be able to see it evolve. Brutal Deluxe has been sending me updates every few weeks, and it’s been fascinating to watch as the program has taken shape before my eyes. Volume 3, Issue 2 The first version of Brutal Deluxe’s LemminGS was little more than a series of Super Hi Res graphics. Next came the screens of sprites that would eventually evolve into animated graphics. After the first month of work, the program code actually started to work, and those graphic screens started to resemble an actual game. After a few more weeks, the frame- work for the first 20 levels was in place. After a few more months, I received a special KansasFest version, and it was that which I demoed. Brutal Deluxe’s LemminGS is inspired by the smash hit game of Lemmings that is available on many other computer plat- forms. It’s a tribute to that game, but it is not Lemmings, per se. It is Brutal Deluxe’s LemminGS, programmed from scratch by Brutal Deluxe. De- spite that fact, or perhaps be- cause of it, Ewan Wannop said, after seeing the demo, that the graphics were far superior to any of the commercial versions of Lemmings that he’d seen. At the time, only two levels were semi-playable. Movement was possible, but scoring had not yet been implemented. Of course, that’s changed, as Bru- tal Deluxe’s LemminGS nears completion. When Brutal Deluxe’s Lem- minGS is released, there are go- ing to be two versions. One ver- sion will serve as a demo, with only ten levels of play. The full blown version will have a total of 120 levels. As stated when the game was announced, Bru- tal Deluxe will be making the full LemminGS game available as a “Limited Edition Game.” It will be available only to those people who have purchased their speedy graphics conversion program Convert 3200. As a way of expressing thanks and grati- tude to all of those who have helped to make Convert 3200 such a raging success, Brutal Deluxe will be making the com- plete LemminGS game availa- ble for free through Shareware Solutions II. Shareware Solu- tions II will be asking for a $5 shipping and handling fee just to help cover mailing expenses. I then gave a brief sneak peek at CheckWorks, and showed off Contacts GS and Convert 3200. I was getting ready to demo the two new CD-ROMs and was somewhat surprised to see that two hours had elapsed since I had started. It was then that Cindy Adams tried to get me to finish up. I was determined, however, to continue for just as long as I possibly could. Finally, Cindy insisted that I finish, as Gus was scheduled to make his debut appearance. Gus Gus is an emulator for the Pow- erMac that runs Apple II and TIGS software. It is currently be- ing developed by several Apple employees, notably Dave Lyons and Andy Nicholas, in their spare time. David Kerwood and Cindy Adams have been testing Gus, and after word about Gus leaked out in a Mac magazine, David was able to secure per- mission to break his Non Disclo- sure Agreement in order to demo Gus at KansasFest. Cindy and David both had Pow- erBook 5300 models. David says that his grayscale version cost $1100 and Cindy said that her color version cost $2500. David’s PowerBook was connected to a large color screen, and when he started up Gus, a hushed silence Shareware Solutions II 15 fell across the room. I believe that everyone in attendance was shocked, stunned and amazed by what they saw during the fol- lowing hour. David and Cindy ran a number of different Apple II and IIGS programs during the demo, and everything worked! We were told that Gus would soon be entering into an “open beta test” phase and that a pre- release version of Gus would soon be available for down- loading from the World Wide Web. When Gus is eventually released, it appears that it will be available as freeware. There are, however, two major limitations that may or may not ever be overcome. Gus does not currently emulate the IIGS built-in Ensoniq chip, so high quality music does not emanate from the PowerMac speaker. Of more practical importance, how- ever, is the fact that Gus does not yet address the PowerMac’s serial ports, meaning that Gus cannot yet print documents or be used for telecommunications purposes. It is unknown, at this time, whether those deficiencies will ever be overcome. Gus is a PowerMac program that takes up less than 800K of disk space. It emulates a IIGS ROMS computer, and when Gus is first run, it displays that familiar GS/OS thermometer bar and once it is loaded, it dis- plays that familiar IIGS desk- top! Once Gus is loaded, any and all Apple II or IIGS soft- ware can be launched and run on the PowerMac!! The implications of Gus are simply staggering. It means that people who have moved from the IIGS to the PowerMac 16 Shareware Solutions IT can go back to using all their favorite Apple II software. It also means that Apple IIGS owners will finally be able to purchase an Apple IIGS laptop, in the form of a PowerMac Pow- erBook. Additionally, with Gus, Apple II programmers and de- velopers will be able to expand their potential market by of- fering low cost Apple II and JIGS software to the PowerMac users of the world. If you would like additional in- formation about Gus, and have access to the World Wide Web, visit: http:/ /users.ids.net /~kerwood | gus.html And, with that, the official part of KansasFest was over. New Beginnings After seeing Gus, some people started the long trip home while about 30 of us went to Jess and Jim’s, a wonderful steak house located just a mile or two from Avila. After seeing Gus, it be- came the primary topic of din- ner conversation, and after din- ner, people talked about Gus long into the night. On Sunday morning, most of us left to go home, but not before we heard that KansasFest ’97 was planned for the long week- end of July 30 through August 3, 1997. Thope to meet many of you there in 1997, and look forward to seeing all my old and new Apple II friends again. If you’ve never attended a Kan- sasFest, consider purchasing a videotape of the proceedings of Kfest 96. That VHS tape is currently being edited by Steve Disbrow and will soon be available for $24.95. For ad- ditional information about the video, contact: EGO Systems 7918 Cove Ridge Road Hixson, TN 37343-1808 423-843-1775 (voice) 423-843-0661 (fax) diz@chattanooga.net http:/ /www.hypermall.com /ego/ index.html While waiting for the videotape to arrive, you can visit two sites on the World Wide Web that are dedicated to KansasFest. The URLs for those sites are: http:/ /www.primenet.com | ~adams/kfest.html http:/ /www.woz.org / Pages / Kfest/ ‘ Such A Deal! Kitchen Sink Software Kitchen Sink Software, a ten year old company that special- izes in educational software for the Apple II, is no stranger to these pages. In Volume 2, sev- eral new Kitchen Sink products were showcased in “Apple II Product News” and an unprece- dented discount was offered through “Such A Deal” on its flagship product, AccuDraw, a sophisticated Computer Aided Design (CAD) program for the Apple Ile, IIc and IIGS. Guy Forsythe, the owner of September/October, 1996 Kitchen Sink, reports that the response to the AccuDraw dis- count offer was so spectacular and successful that he’d like to extend to you yet another spe- cial deal offering even greater savings than ever before! Effective immediately, the new “Such A Deal” price for Accu- Draw is just $30! Included in that price is not just the CAD program itself; Kitchen Sink will include, for free, several add-on graphic modules that contain more than 1,000 archi- tectural and electronic symbols. And, with the inclusion of the all new 1/4" exterior elevation symbol module, which provides nearly 400 pre-drawn symbols, and the all new 1/2" kitchen symbol module, which provides more than 800 pre-drawn sym- bols, AccuDraw is more power- ful and effective than ever be- fore. Whether you are a mechan- ical drawing and drafting teach- er, a building contractor, or a weekend handyman, AccuDraw should be a welcome addition to your Apple II software library. AccuDraw requires a IIe, IIc or IIGS with 64K and two 5.25" disk drives or one 3.5" disk drive. It is not copy protected and it is hard drive installable. (Note: As before, an AccuDraw Demo disk is available from Shareware Solutions II, on 5.25" or 3.5" disk, for $5.) Kitchen Sink is “throwing in the kitchen sink” on its latest dis- count offer by extending similar money saving offers on several other of its acclaimed products. System II is Kitchen Sink’s a- stonishing utility program that brings a ProDOS-8 based IIGS style, Finder-like graphical user interface to 128K Enhanced Ap- Volume 3, Issue 2 ple Ile and IIc computer sys- tems. For the new, low “Such A Deal” price of just $30, Kitchen Sink is now including the Sys- tem II Developer’s Kit as part of the package! System II is so much more than just a desktop based file utility and program launcher. With the Developer’s Kit, System II be- comes a complete operating sys- tem, allowing software develop- ers to easily create Applesoft Basic software that contains pull down menus, dialog boxes, buttons, check boxes, cursor con- trols, and graphic drawing tools. System II works in both single and double hires graphic modes. It works with both 5.25" and 3.5" disks, and with hard disks. It also works on Macintosh com- puters that have a Ile Card. The Developer’s Kit provides all of the programs, routines and information you need to write fast running and professional looking Applesoft programs run- ning under System II. Even rou- tines like a disk formatter are included. So, whether you want to simply run programs with ease or want to develop truly sophisticated ProDOS-8 soft- ware, System II will fit the bill and make computer life much easier for you. OmniPrint is an ImageWriter II enhancement program for Ap- pleWorks v3, v4.x and 5.0 that enables you to download fonts to your ImageWriter II, thereby allowing you to print documents with multiple fonts, including Mouse Text, border fonts, math symbols, and foreign language fonts. OmniPrint is now avail- able for just $15. (Please note that OmniPrint does not work with AppleWorks v5.1.) Amazing Window Gradesheet is a program that makes keeping track of grades almost a joy, by saving teachers time all through the grading period as well as at the end of the term. According to a review appearing in the 12/91 issue of inCider/A+ magazine, Amazing Window is “flexible... many noteworthy features...easy to get along with...I want to em- phasize how impressed I was... amazed at the program’s oper- ating speed...Amazing Window is unquestionably a good value... you should give Amazing Win- dow a close look.” If Amazing Window Gradesheet was a good value when it was offered at $49.95, at the “Such A Deal” price of $15, teachers can’t afford not to use it. Machinists in modern day ma- chine shops need to know how to operate (CNC) Computer Nu- merical Control equipment such as lathes, vertical mills, and metal engravers. CNC mills are quite expensive, so CNC train- ing is not generally offered in high school vocational training programs. But, Kitchen Sink’s CNC Trainer does provide on screen CNC simulations, and the $20 “Such A Deal” cost of CNC Trainer will allow even the most strapped for cash school district to provide training in this often neglected aspect of mechanical technology. Robot Assembly Lab is a fun way to introduce students to problem solving activities. With this simulation, your students will apply for a job, and go to the office for a contract lead. There, they'll design a robot from ex- isting stock components, print a materials list and picture of their robot, and the program it- self will then evaluate the de- sign and give feedback. Previ- ously available for $50, you can Shareware Solutions IT 7 now acquire Robot Assembly Lab for only $15. Such a deal! In addition to the discounts of- fered on the programs individu- ally, Kitchen Sink is making all of the above software available for just $100. To take advan- tage of the $100 price, you must order all of the programs at the same time. Kitchen Sink accepts payment by check, money order, Master- Card, VISA, or school Purchase Orders. Please add $5 for ship- ping on each order. For ad- ditional info, contact: Kitchen Sink Software 903 Knebworth Court Westerville, OH 43081 614-891-2111 (voice) 614-891-4545 (fax) 800-235-5502 (orders) http:/ /www.kitchen-sink.com Shareware Solutions [e/IIc/Igs A2 Disks Of The Month The May, 1996 issue of the Ge- nie A2 Disk of the Month in- cludes the May issue of Genie- Lamp, a publication that is, in large part, a compilation of the most informative messages posted on Genie’s A2 Round- table. Among the top tidbits is an explanation of how to change the default fonts used in several of the AppleWorks GS modules, and a technical explanation of how to use some of Convert 3200's more advanced features. There’s also an engaging inter- view with Chris Serreau and Howard Katz, the two people re- sponsible for producing the bi- monthly disk-based Apple- Works Gazette publication. Software for the Ile/IIc on this disk includes only one program, but this program — CoolEd — is an instant classic! It is a Pro- DOS based 8-bit music editor and player for all Electric Duet style music files. It allows you to load, edit, play, save, and track the music. It also contains a staff editor to make writing music easier. (For those without a 3.5" disk drive, CoolEd is also available from Shareware Solu- tions II on a 5.25" disk for only $3.) Software for the IIGS on the May, 1996 DOM includes 18 Shareware Solutions IT Chunk’s IIGS Icons, all of which were derived from Apple’s Icons for the Mac-based Copland Op- erating System. Also included is Super Clock, a sophisticated digital or analog clock which is displayed in the IIGS Menu Bar; the Super Clock Control Panel includes an alarm func- tion, a chime function, and 20 sound files that can be used with the alarm. The June, 1996 issue of the Ge- nie A2 Disk of the Month in- cludes the June issue of Genie- Lamp. It features, among many other Apple II hints and tips, instructions for producing white text on a black background in GraphicWriter III, a news up- date on the web browser GS/ TCP project, and a product re- view of Brutal Deluxe’s Convert 3200. Software for the IIe/IIc on the June disk includes a New Print Shop font editor which allows you to create and edit fonts for use with the New Print Shop. Also included is ProDesk, a Pro- DOS-8 based program selector and utilities package. Software for the IIGS on the June, 1996 DOM includes Cool- Writer v2.0.2, a GS/OS based word processing program. There is also Fresher, an AppleWorks 5.x pre-launch utility that fixes the problem of diminished desk- top size that can occur upon sub- sequent launches of Apple- Works. Lastly, there is Math- Graphics, a sophisticated free- ware function plotting desktop program which allows you to enter functions into dialog boxes and evaluate function values, or to find, with a mouse click, func- tion roots and extremes. The A2 Disks of the Month are available from the Shareware Solutions II library, on 3.5" disk only, for $5 each or $8 for both. NAUG Printer Disk AppleWorks Classic is a flexible program that allows you to set up a Custom Printer in order to output your data to just about any printer ever made. For those who understand printer control codes, it’s relatively simple to transfer the codes listed in your printer's manual to the Apple- Works Custom Printer setup screens. But, that’s re-inventing the wheel. Shareware Solutions II distrib- utes all of the AppleWorks re- source disks that were created and distributed by the National AppleWorks User Group. One of those resources is “The NAUG Printer Disk.” This disk con- tains printer specifications for more than 100 different print- September/October, 1996 ers; simply copy the SEG.ER file from the NAUG Printer disk to your AppleWorks disk, make any changes necessary for your particular interface card, and then you'll be effortlessly and painlessly printing. I’ve personally used the NAUG Printer Disk with all of the ver- sions of AppleWorks from v3 to v5.1, and thanks to this disk, T’ve been able to install in mere minutes all I need in order to print from AppleWorks to my Hewlett-Packard LaserJet IIp+. Shareware Solutions II has combined all the various NAUG Printer Disks onto one 3.5" disk, and this 3.5" disk now offers custom printer set-ups for Ap- pleWorks v3, v4.x and 5.x. It is available from Shareware Solu- tions II for $5. If you do not own a 3.5" disk drive, you can alternately order the disk on 5.25" disk for $3. The 5.25" disk version supports only one version of AppleWorks, so you must specify whether you want the disk for use with Ap- pleWorks v3, v4.x or v5.x. @ Shareware Solutions Games In Progress David Ong Tat-Wee, a Singa- pore based IIGS programmer, started work on Defender Of The World in 1994, and on the 10th birthday of the Apple TIGS, he released an incomplete version of the game that limits you to playing just the first lev- el. But, that one level is so much fun and so challenging that it will provide you with days and days of fast shoot ’em up arcade action. Defender Of The World resem- bles the classic games of Space Fox and Defender. In it, you'll attempt to save earth by pilot- ing a battle cruiser spaceship as it meets and does battle with alien invaders. But watch out, as you will be under constant attack by wave upon wave of enemy assault vessels. As you maneuver through dangerous asteroid fields, you'll be blast- ing everything you see. After disabling enemy craft and de- stroying asteroids, you'll be awarded new and more powerful weapons, and you'll need all the missiles and shields you can get to destroy the most heavily de- fended enemy craft. Playable by either keyboard or Volume 3, Issue 2 joystick, Defender of the World is a real work of art that con- tains fast multi-layer parallax scrolling action, lots of sound effects, beautiful graphics, and introductory music. Unfortu- nately, David is not sure if he will ever find the time to com- plete the game, so he decided to release it in its current unfin- ished state. Defender Of The World shows such promise that we can only hope that David does eventually complete it. Helmet To Helmet, by Aaron Pulver, is a one or two player football game that is styled af- ter several handheld electronic football games that were popu- lar in the late 1970s. Aaron estimates that the program- ming is 90% complete, but says that work on the game ground to an abrupt halt when the entire source code was inadvertently deleted. Played against a mixed back- drop of text and graphic screens, all plays are initiated using the keyboard. Because Helmet To Helmet attempts to simulate a complete football game as if it were played on a game device that is nearly 20 years old, it is anything but state-of-the-art high tech. But, if you played UGS handheld football games 20 years ago, you may enjoy playing Helmet To Helmet. A disk containing both of these incomplete yet playable games is available from the Shareware Solutions II Library for $5. TIGS Potpourri This disk contains an eclectic variety of Apple IIGS software. If you've ever felt that teenagers spoke a different language than you, you need Kool Konvert, an amusing and satiric program which will translate any of your text files from English into Teen Speak. Also included is Cat- mania, a demo of a fabulous and sophisticated shareware GS/OS based disk catalog utility. There’s also Number Game, a guessing game in which you try to outsmart your IIGS. There’s also Bret Victor's Lamb- da Demo which contains ten playable levels of a game that many who have downloaded it are calling “the best game of the year.” Lambda Demo is a chal- lenging strategy game that is a subset of a bigger, 100 level game that is available directly from Bret. Shareware Solutions IT 19 Finally, we've collected a num- ber of programs from IIGS pro- grammer Nathan Mates. GUPP (Grand Unified Patcher Pro- gram) is a freeware GS/OS- based patch program that fixes several problems that have been discovered in System 6.0.1. The patch is supplied as a PIF file that needs to be copied to your GS/OS startup disk. The changes that GUPP makes are not permanent changes made to your system disk; instead, GUPP silently springs into ac- tion when any of the problems it has fixed are encountered and then makes changes only in memory. Game Hacker is a Classic Desk Accessory that allows you to “cheat” in 34 different IIGS games. Some of the cheats give you infinite lives while others grant you an unlimited amount of ammo, bombs, shields, or lives. This is a “must have” util- ity for all IIGS game players. Lastly, there are several fun Desk Accessories. LED Message allows you to type in a message, and then it displays that mes- sage scrolling across the screen. Fun House is impossible to de- scribe; in the documentation, it says: “Just open it up and see what it does by moving the mouse around.” Mouse Mileage displays how far your mouse has travelled today. Shredder provides an amusing special effect that literally shreds Find- er windows. The IIGS Potpourri disk is available from the Shareware Solutions II Library for $5. Time Machine Stack Gareth Jones’s HyperCard IIGS based Time Machine stack in- cludes the full text of HG Wells’ novel “The Time Machine.” The stack is set up in such a way that the text is displayed in very large letters and this text scrolls slowly, allowing someone to read the novel while sitting on the other side of the room. Instructions are also included that describe the steps you can follow in order to adopt this stack to display any of the more than 400 books that are current- ly available for downloading from the Internet’s Gutenberg Project. The Time Machine stack is available from the Shareware Solutions II Library for $5. To use this disk, you must have HyperCard IIGS. @ Joe Kohn Shareware Solutions II 166 Alpine Street San Rafael, CA 94901-1008 FIRST CLASS - AIR MAIL