A^A
1 f ij i]jY
r
s
AU THE POWER YOU COULD WISH FOR!
HI-RES WINDOWS!
EVERYTHING YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT r
DISPLAY S1ANDARDS
TOP SHAREWARE!
SUPER SOFTWARE
FOR PENNIES
'SSt-i-Ow
ENCAfim _^
GREAT GAMESfOR KIDS
SKTOP FORGERY
..t86"02193'
4^ ..^
beckons you, laughing.
In her mad quest for power, Scotia has ravaged the
kingdom. She seeks the throne, yet it eludes her.
She's getting desperate. She's getting mean.
■ Can YOU STOP HER? DO YOU DARE?
M'^^^^
^* Ulake Frieniki and Influence
People -Coopcratt' with the helpful,
sidestep the treacherous and destroy
the dangerous.
^A- Quick and Ea«i;^' Combat and
Spell Casting.
FEATURING
^*- Compaq and Airtomapper
Included - Adventure through
ancient keeps and living forests.
Unearth hidden ruins and
haunted caves.
^^ Indulge in a Land of Sensory
Delists- Over 20 megabytes of
compressed art and special
effects. Actually hear the clash of
steel! Feel the blows of terrors
who slip beneath your guard !
AN INSPIRED FANTASY
RPG EXPERIENCE FROM
THE DEVELOPMENT
TEAM THAT CREATED
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER™ I AND 11.
Westwood'
DismbiJie4E;icUisively by
Available for your IBM PC.
Eye of tlie Beholder I iind II are trademitrks of TSR, Lac
The Eye of the feeholder gariies.TSR. Inc. and SSI are not connected or related
in any way to the La^id-S of Lore game, Vii'gin Games, inc. or Westwood Studios, Inc.
Lands of Lore is a titidemark of Westwixxi Studios. Inc. © 1993 Westwood Studios, Inc
.411 rights resci'ved. Virginis anegistered tradeinark- of Virgin Enterprises. Ltd.
Circle Reader Service Nuinber 132
CDfUIPUTE
VOLUME 15, NO. 9, ISSUE 156
SEPTEMBER 1993
FEATURES
6
SEEING IS BELIEVING
By William Harrel
Here's what you should
know about your computer's
display system.
18
TEST LAB
Edited by Mike Hudnall
We check out ten
of the hottest
486 notebooks going,
58
GREAT SHAREWARE
By Philip Chien
How to save money by
tapping into this
nearly unlimited source.
66
PRODUCTIVITY CHOICE
By Mark Minasi
MS-DOS 6 from Microsoft.
COLUMNS
4
EDITORIAL LICENSE
By Clifton Karnes
PC Expo in New York.
38
NEWS & NOTES
By Jill Champion
Top computer news.
42
FEEDBACK
Answers to tough questions.
46
WINDOWS WORKSHOP
By Clifton Karnes
Stacker versus
DoubleSpace.
48
TIPS & TOOLS
Edited by
Richard C. Leinecker
Tips from our readers.
50
INTRODOS
By Tony Roberts
DOS 6 adds two essential
disk commands.
Cover photo by Mark Wagoner
54
HARDWARE CLINIC
By Mark Minasi
More on DOS 6's
MultJConfig.
56
PROGRAMMING POWER
By Tom Campbell
Paradox for Windows.
68
PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY
By Rosalind B. Resnick
Highlights from COMDEX.
70
MULTIMEDIA PC
By David English
New voice control programs
for the PC.
72
ART WORKS
By Robert Bixby
Major upgrades of
WordPerfect and
CorelDRAW!.
120
COMDEX/CES REPORT
By Robert Bixby
Computing was hot
in Atlanta and even hotter
in Chicago.
ENTERTAINMEN1
74
DISCOVERY CHOICE
By Stephen Levy
Encarta from Microsoft.
76
GAME INSIDER
By Shay Addams
More adventures
and power simulations.
80
ENTERTAINMENT CHOICE
By Scott A. May
Front Page Sports: Football
from Dynamix.
82
GAMEPLAY
By Paul C. Schuytema
Controversy causes
educational role-playing
game to be pulled.
85
PUSHING FUN TO THE LIMIT
By Carol Ellison
Muitimedia and computing
power make the difference in
new programs aimed at
kids.
REVIEWS
89
Gateway 2000 Nomad
450DXL Notebook,
Cricket Paint for Windows,
Compaq Prolinea 4/50,
DeskJet 550C,
Creepers,
PentaCalc,
Texel DM-5024
External CD-ROM Kit,
Eric the Unready,
Kid Desk,
Instant Rolodex,
ThrustMaster Rudder
Control System,
AV-SB Harrier Assauit,
Air Bucks Version 1.2,
Dynodex for Windows.
BestBooks,
Primera,
NEC Ready 425,
QuickComm Spirit II,
and Virtual Pilot.
ADVERTISERS INDEX
See page 97.
COMPUTE (ISSN 0194-357X) is putjlsstieci monthly in me United Siatss and Canada by COMPUTE Publications Iniernalional Lid., 1965 Broadway. New Vork. NY 10023-5965. Vblume i5.
Number 9, Issue 156- Copyright ® 1993 t>i COMPUTE Publicaiions Intenationat Lid All fights reserved. COMPUTE is a registered Irademark ot COMPUTE Publications IniemaConai Ltd
Distributed worldwide (excepi Australia and ihe UK) oy Curiis Circulation Company. PQ. Box 9102, Pennsauken, NJ 08109 Distributed in Australia by The Horwilz Group. RO. Box 306,
Cammeray NSW 2062 Australia and in the UK by Norinern and Shell Pic . RO, Box381. Millharbour, London E14 9TW. Second-class poslage paid a! New York. NY. and al additional mailing
offices- POSTMASTEfi: Send address Changes to COMPUTE Magazine, P.O. Box 3245, Harlan, lA 51537-3Q41 Tel. (BOO) 727-6937 Entire conlents copyrighted- All rghts resen/ed
Nothing may be reproduced In whole or in part v^iihout written permission from the publisher Subscripiions: US, AFO - S19-94 one year. Canada and elsewhere -£25 94 one year Single
copies S2-95 m US The publisher disclaims all responsibility to return unsolicited matter, and all rights in portions published thereat remain the sole property of COMPUTE Publir:ations
International Lid- Letters sent lo COMPUTE or its editors become the property of the magazine Edilorial offices are located at 32"! W. Wsndover Ave., Ste. 200. Greensboro NC 27408
Tel. (919)275-9309.
Printed in the USA by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Inc. #fl126607415
2 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
Not just a new Sound Blasten
A new 16-bit audio standard.
Introducing the Sound Blaster" 16
Digital Audio Platform. A new concept
in sound cards. And a new standard
for 16-bit PC audio.
You WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EARS.
PC audio never sounded so good-
genuine CD-quality audio with fully
12% more dynamic
response and 15%
Hands-free ^^ better sigual-to-
voiceamtwi noise ratio than
any competing 16-bit sound board. Plus
sofavare data compression diat delivers
16-bit fidelit}' while maximizing disk storage capacit}".
But there's more. Included in the Sound Blaster 16
package is the biggest advancement in PC conh-ol since
the invention of the mouse: our exclusive VoiceAssist"
software. It's a sophisticated speech recognition interface
that uses a 32,000-command library to control Windows
applications hands-free!
THE Only Sound Card that Grows With you.
Unlike other 16-bit cards, Sound Blaster 16 comes with
built-in interfaces for CD-ROM, MPU-401 MIDI and
mwwWMWWWU j oy stick control . And tlie unique
modular, scalable architecture
lets you add more ad\'anced
features and technolo-
gies as you need them.
Like our Ad\'anced
Signal Processing
chip that delivers 4:1
real-time hardware
data compression
while reducing CPU time up to
65%. Or professional-qualit^'
sampled wave synthesis miy oui
State<if-the-Ait PC Sound -d.'ith
l&bit Codec digfial audio diip.
l&M Data Compies«or
SUITS disk spaa -tvUhoiit toss
ofsi^mil ijiuilihi.
Upgradable, Modular Platfonn
makes it aisy lo add iiew !edi-
mlogies like Advanced Signal
Processing and Wave Biasler.
ixmcmpsmm-Mihaii
Sound Blaster applications,
plus cross platfonn support for
Wi»dcm3.1,DOSor05/2.
ipgiade to
Adrnna'd A""-
H«/ Processing
with one chip.
ii\c k:\: :■■:;..-! mdio standard: Indiidesprogmmimibkmixer, mkroplwne,
VoiceAssist speecit recognition sofhtme, plus more timn SiOOO in scifhmreapplicaticms.
plug-in Wave Blaster'" daughter board.
And- ur\like other cards-the
Sound Blaster 16 is 100% compatible loith
every game and application ever written
for the Sound Blaster. . . wliich is to say
virtually every game and application a\'ailable for sound.
in 1/ i!i:ii'Jitr} Iniiird.
Nobody packs in more Value Than
THE Industry LEADER.
And as if that weren't enough, we'\'e completed the package
with more tlian $1000 worth of leading software- not too
shabby considering the entire package retails for just S249.*
So let's face it. When it comes to audio quality, fea-
tures, and bottom-line value, we've got it all right here. With
the Sound Blaster 16-the new 16-bit PC audio standard.
For more information about Creative Labs products
and the name of your nearest Sound Blaster Dealer,
call 1-800-998-5227.
souridl CRE \TIVE
blaste:r
CREATIVE LABS
:iifl"L| ® Copyright 1993 Creative Technology Lid. 5ound Blaster, VoiceAssisl, Wave Bkster and the Sotmd Blaster and Creative Labs logos arc trademarks of Creative Technolog)^' Ltd.
MtuKCfT' All Other trademarks are owned by their rcspeotivo companies. Creative Labs 1-408-428-6600.
aSwml^ International inquiries: Creative Technology L(d., Singapore. TEL 65-773*0233 FAX 6S-773-0353.
Circle RAad«f Service Number 125
EDITORIAL LICENSE
Clifton Karnes
Each June, PC
Expo transforms
New York into
a liigti-tech Mecca.
This is reatly the season for
computer shows. Last
month it was COMDEX in
Atlanta, and this month
it's PC Expo in New York. I
thought that PC Expo, coming
so soon after COMDEX,
would be just a repeat of that
show, but it wasn't. Of
course, there were a lot of
products I'd already seen at
COMDEX, but there were lots
of new ones, and some of
them were outstanding.
One of the neatest prod-
ucts I saw at PC Expo was
Tapestry, from Pixar. This Win-
dows app creates stunning vis-
ual effects with fonts. You
can, for example, make a
word look as if it's construct-
ed from chrome, wood, or al-
most any other material. Pixar
also produces photographic-
quality textured backgrounds
and special add-in font ef-
fects. This program is a deal
at $199.
Teleconferencing is a topic
that's been batted around for
years, but only a few compa-
nies have done anything with
it, usually using ultraexpen-
sive dedicated hardware. Fu-
ture Labs has a new twist on
teleconferencing with Talk-
Show, a Windows program
that lets any number of peo-
ple, connected by modem or
LAN, annotate a document in
realtime so everyone sees
everyone else's marks and
comments. The idea) situation
is for this visual conference to
be accompanied by a tele-
4 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
phone conference call. If this
isn't possible, however, the
program offers a floating talk
box, so the people connect-
ed can type in a conversa-
tion. A two-player TalkShow
pack is $395.
Microsoft has been busy
lately, and Ihe company
showed a raft of new prod-
ucts at PC Expo. One of the
most interesting was Micro-
soft at Work, which is a group
of add-ins that make office
equipment easier to use by im-
proving its interface. The dem-
onstration concentrated on
the Microsoft at Work tele-
phone interface,
which transforms
the phone into a
really intelligent
device. A small
high-resolution
screen is embed-
ded in the phone,
and it shows all
kinds of informa-
tion, like who's
calling now and
who called while
you were out. It al-
so provides an easy way to
manage your phone messag-
es. Microsoft at Work is a little
hard to describe, but I was
impressed.
On the main show floor,
Stac Electronics was counter-
ing Microsoft's new Dou-
bleSpace with the introduc-
tion of Stacker 3.1. This new
version of Stacker has a
score of neat features. The
most useful of these inte-
grates Stacker into the operat-
ing system — just like DOS 6's
DoubleSpace — so there are
no longer two sets of system
files to deal with. It also has
some very well thought-out
safety features. For example,
it automatically flushes the
SMARTDrive cache when you
close Windows and go to
DOS. For a general overview
of Stacker versus Dou-
bleSpace, see my "Windows
Workshop" column in this is-
sue, which was written, by the
way, before I saw Stacker
3.1. Stacker's upgrade price
is $49.95.
Behind closed doors, Hewl-
ett-Packard was showing
Dashboard 2.0, its second-
generation Windows shell.
Dashboard 1.0 was pretty
cool, and this new version
adds many new features, in-
cluding snap-off quick-
launch toolboxes, The inter-
face is also much more config-
urable. Dashboard has a sug-
gested retail price of $99.
COMPUTE was impressed
with Approach 1.0 when it
was released in 1992. In fact,
we gave the program a COM-
PUTE Choice Award as the
best database product of the
year. Approach 2.0, released
late in 1992, was even better.
This past June, Approach
was acquired by Lotus, fa-
mous for 1-2-3, Ami Pro, and
Freelance Graphics. Besides
giving Approach the market-
ing muscle it needs, Lotus
has introduced several small,
but significant, changes to
the product. The version be-
ing shown to the press at PC
Expo has a more flexible inter-
face (one that matches Lo-
tus's other products) and was
even easier to use than previ-
ous versions.
Do Visual Basic program-
mers have more fun? If they
use Sheridan's VB Assist 3.0.
they do. This Visual Basic
add-in can double the produc-
tivity of almost any VB pro-
grammer, VB Assist adds two
toolbars to the VB screen
with features that make design-
ing, coding, and managing
projects amazingly easy This
superb tool improves on VB's
already excellent interface;
it's available for $179.
All in all, PC Expo was a
good show. Although I didn't
get to see each of the 800 ex-
hibits, I do think I bumped
into most of the 85,000
attendees. D
Mission
IBM Progiamming Systems introduces
C Set++™ the most complete application
development package vou can buv for
■ OS/2® Its 32-bit C/C++
compiler lets you unleash
all the power of OS/2 — so you can
create the most advanced, high-
performance applications.
It has an extraordinary code optimizer with a
fuU set of options. Even a switch to optimize for the new
Pentium™ processor. Plus a full set of class libraries,
including application frameworks for PM, container
classes and classes for multitasking, streams and more.
There's also a fiiU complement of other helpful
features. Such as an interactive source level debugger.
And the unique Execudon Trace
Analyzer traces the
execution of a program,
then graphically displays
diagrams of the
analysis. Plus a class
library browser that
shows class Kbrar}^ relationships.
What's more, you get Workframe/2™ a language-
independent tool that lets you customize your own envi-
ronment. It's adaptable and flexible — you can use atiy 16
and 32-bit DOS, Windows™ and OS/2 tools.
1 C Set ++ Technical Features
ANSICX3.159-1989
NIST validated
Standards
ANSI C++ X3J16 (Full ARM)
L. . .:
150 9899:1990
Global
^^Hjmization
Inter-module
Function inlinmg
■ - . •■ ■ ■ •-•{
■ Instruction sctieduling
To order C Set++ ,
contact your nearest dealer or call
1-800-342-6672 (USA) or
1-800-465-7999 ext. 460 (Canada).
Qearly, there's only one place to start, C Set++ .
starts
here
IBM and OS/2 are registered trademarks and C Set^-i- and Wbrkfram^ are tiademaris of International Business Mactiinss Corporation. Pentium is a trademarli o) Intel Corporation.
Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corp. ® 1993 IBM Corp,
Circle Reader Service Numlwr 207
Now^
You wanted the power to choose from a world of dif-
ferent applications. DOS applications. Windows™
applications. OS/2® applications. OS/2 2.0
gav<^ you the power. And the res|)onse \vas
impressive, to say the least. Over two million
copies shipped in less than one year. More than
1,200 OS/2 applications already available* But now
you want more. More features. More functions. More
applications to choose from. That's why were intro-
ducing OS/2 2.1.
The new OS/2 2.1 lets you run the latest
Windows 3.1 applications, in addition to the
DOS, Windows and OS/2 ap|)lications vou can
already run. WeVe also added TrueType fonts, select
Windows applets, File Manager and support lor
Windows 3.1 printer and display drivers, including
32-bit seamless SVGA support. And now yon can
start DOS and OS/2 applications from a WlN-OS/2
session, too.
Portable users will be glad to know that
OS/2 2.1 provides industry-standard Advanced Power
W IVilh 0Sf2 2.1 at the heart of your PC, you can run a norld of DOS, f^indows and OS/2 applicaliiins.
There's no need In buy DOS anil If iiiiUms in run DOS
and Windows applications.
Management (APM) support, to help extend
battery life. We've made the cursor larger so it's
easier to find your place on the screen. And
OS/2 2.1 continues to exploit
the very latest in technology.
You'll find impro\ed support for
rnnlti-media ap|»lications and
pen-based capaljitities, along
with built-in CD-liOM and
AS/400® terminal emulation
support.
Ofcourse, OS/2 2.1 still
gives you true pre-emptive
multitasking,
superior OS/2
Crash Protection"
and the easy-to-use
object-oriented Workplace
Shell™ interface. All the
features that made Version 2.0
an award-wituier, lint now,
vou also get a whole new world
of possibilities.
6
Introducing
Version 2.1
chance
OS/2 2.1 is now also available on
CD-ROM. It comes with exciting
multimedia samplers, full-motion video
demos and more.
Demand OS/2 2.1
preloaded on your
next PC.
With our free demo diskette, vou
can find out even more about all the
the
•■RP'^ powerful features OS/2 2.1 has to
^^^ offer. For your copy, to find out
^ ''^^ more about OS/2 2.1, or to order,
to run
OS/2 2.1 Advantages
Improves productivity
Easy to use
• Now runs OS/2, DOS
• Now also available on
and new Windows 3.1
CD-ROM.
applications.
• Obiect-oriemed Workplace
• New TrueType fonts.
Shell interface.
Windows applets.
Advanced 32-bit
File Manager
architecture
• Advanced Power
• Seamless SVGA support.
Management (APM)
■ Fully exploits latest
support extends battery
multimedia applications.
lite for portables.
• Supports CD-ROM,
• OS/2 Crash Protection and
PCMCIA and pen
pre-emptive multitasking,
techinologies.
calll8003-IBM-OS2.
Calljor yimrjree
demo dkkeuc. In Canada, call 1 800 465-7999.
Operate at a higher level."
world
■To ordei CD-R0I\1 with list of 03/2 applications, call Walnut Creek at 1 BOO 7B6-9907 IBM. AS/400 anc OS/2 are regislereci trademarks and
OS/2 Crash Protection. Workplace Shell and "Operate at a higher level " are trademarks of Interrialional Business Machines Corporation. Windows
IS a trademark of Ivlicrosoft Corporation, TrueType is a trademark of Apple Computer. Inc ©1993 IBfJl Ccrp
What you should know about your
computer's display system
SEEIJVG
BELIEVING
Have you ever wondered why Windows looks so different on your monitor
from the way it looks on the monitor at the computer store? Or why your
friend Joe's fonts appear so much crisper and clearer? Or how come his
colors are so plentiful and pure and his graphics display is so much
faster? The answer is simple. Like cars, washing machines, and lawn
mowers, computer display systems come with a variety of options, and,
of course, in a wide range of prices.
Since the introduction of Windows 3.0, with its support of high resolu-
tions and 16.7 million colors, hardware vendors have been scrambling to
find ways to make what shows up on your monitor faster and prettier.
While the results are impressive — never before have type and graphics
displayed so well on so many computer screens — the resulting plethora
of display system types and sizes has become mind-boggling. You have
8-bit, 16-bit, and 24-bit color displaying at four or five different resolu-
tions; graphics accelerators; local-bus adapters; analog and digital
video; VGA and Super VGA— no wonder it's so confusing!
Let's see if we can't make it all make sense,
Your Display System
To display information, be it text or graphics, all computers require two
components: a display adapter and a monitor Display systems run in
various modes providing different palettes and resolutions. Keep in mind
during this discussion that for you to get the most from a display system,
your display adapter and monitor must support the same modes. It does
you little good, for example, to spend the extra money on a Super VGA
display adapter if your monitor supports only VGA.
Often called a graphics card, the display adapter is usually a separate
card that slips into a bus slot on the motherboard {some computers have
display adapters built onto the motherboard). The display adapter
processes information from the computer and sends it to the monitor.
When looking for a graphics card, you should consider the resolution,
number of colors (or bits per pixel), the screen refresh rate, and whether
it supports interlaced or noninterlaced display. Also determine whether
the card is accelerated. (Accelerated cards are discussed in the accom-
panying sidebar "Fiunning Windows at the Speed of Light.")
By William Harrel
i
Resolution
Resolution refers to the number
of dots, or pixels, on tfie screen.
The higher the resolution, the
more information you can fit on
the screen. In Windows that
means that you can view more
open windows at the same time,
or, in a desktop publishing pro-
gram, such as PageMaker, you
get a better what-you-see-is-
what-you-gef (WYSIWYG) repre-
sentation of how the page will
print.
Standard VGA has a resolu-
tion of 640 pixels across and 480
pixels down (640 x 480}. Super
VGA mode is 800 x 600 or high-
er. VGA and Super VGA are the
most common resolutions, but
1024 X 768 and even 1280 x
1024 (sometimes called Ultra or
Extended VGA) are becoming
increasingly popular.
When you choose a resolu-
tion, you1l also need to consider
the screen size of the monitor. If
you cram too many pixels onto a
14-inch monitor, text becomes
too small to be read easily. A
good rule of thumb is to use a
system that approximates the
size of the final printed text. This
table should help you match res-
olution and monitor sizes.
Resolution
VGA (640 X 480)
SuperVGA
(800 X 600)
Extended VGA
(1024x768)
(1280x1024)
Screen Size
14 inches
15-16 inches
17 inches or
higher
19-21 inches
Keep in mind that these reso-
lution recommendations are
helpful for viewing text. However,
no matter what size your monitor,
graphics applications benefit
greatly from high resolutions. If
you edit graphics in Corel-
DRAW!, Micrografx Works, or
some other application (and use
a small monitor), you should
choose a card that lets you
switch resolutions, so you don't
have to strain your eyes when editing
text. Whether you use a 14- or a 21-
inch monitor, editing graphics in 640 x
480 mode is hardly adequate. You1l
get a much better WYSIWYG repre-
sentation of what the final output will
look like at 1024 x 768. Desktop pub-
lishers also benefit from the higher-
resolution displays with large moni-
tors. The idea is that the better your
display, the easier it is to proof layouts
onscreen, rather than by printing
drafts. This saves both time and paper.
10 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
The higher the resolution of your display, the bet-
ter the quality and the larger the editing area.
From top to bottom, the resolutions of these
screen captures are 640 x 480, 800 x 600, and
1024 X 768.
Presentations and multimedia applica-
tions also benefit from high resolutions.
Millions of Colors
Perhaps even more confusing than
resolution is color. Graphics cards are
rated by the number of distinct colors
they can display on a screen at one
time. The range is from 16 colors to
16.7 million colors, with 256 being the
most common number of colors. The
number of colors a card is capable of
producing depends on its bits-per-
pixel rate. A rate of four bits per
pixel, for example, provides 16
colors; a rate of 24 bits per pixel
provides 16.7 million colors.
The 16-color model is the
easiest one to use to demon-
strate this concept. Since there
are four bits per pixel, you have
4 x 4 (16) possible RGB combi-
nations. As the number of bits
per pixel increases, the possible
combinations also increase sub-
stantially.
For most applications, 256
colors are fine. If you work with
graphics, you should use high
color. Most people, except for
users of high-end photograph-
editing software, such as
PhotoShop or PhotoStyler, don't
need 24-bit color.
(Note that just because a dis-
play is capable of only 16 or 256
colors, this doesn't mean that
unsupported colors do not dis-
play. In Windows, for example,
when an image calls for more
colors than the graphics card is
capable of, the additional colors
are displayed through a process
called dithering. Dithering mixes
two or more solid colors to form
another. If you have a low-resolu-
tion display that doesn't support
many colors, you've probably
noticed that some hues seem
coarse. This is the result of
dithering. In many applications,
dithering is not a problem, but in
graphics and photograph pro-
cessing, where color purity is
critical, it is not acceptable.)
Finally, as in everything else
in life, there are trade-offs for
these beautiful, high-resolution
displays. The more colors and
the higher the resolution, the
more computing that is required
of your CPU, which slows down
your system, You can get around
the demand that high resolution
and numerous colors place on
your computer by choosing an
accelerated graphics card.
Today's graphics cards come in
four color standards, as depict-
ed in the following table.
Bits/
Mode
Colors
Pixel
Name
4
minimum color
16
8
pseudo color
256
16
high color
32,768
24
true color
16.7 million
Caution: Just because a display
adapter claims 32,768 or 16.7 million
colors doesn't mean it supports them
at all resolutions. When you increase
the number of colors, the dis-
play adapter needs more
memory to store the additional
information. When looking at a
card's color (and resolution)
specifications, make sure it's
capable of the number of col-
ors you need at the desired
resolution. Sometimes you can
add RAM to a graphics card
to increase resolution and
color capabilities. You should
also be careful that the card is
shipped with a Windows driver
(software that lets Windows
use the card) that supports
the number of colors and res-
olutions you need. If you don't
use Windows, make sure you
have the needed drivers for
the applications you do use.
Refresh Rate
If you spend a lot of time at
your computer, be on the look-
out for a card with a high
refresh rate. Your eyes will be
forever grateful. The refresh
rate is the speed at which the
screen gets repainted. If the
refresh rate is too low, your
monitor flickers, which is
annoying and hard on the
eyes. It can cause headaches
and lead to long-ternn vision
problems.
Refresh rates are mea-
sured in hertz (Hz). A rate of
72 Hz means the screen is
refreshed 72 times per sec-
ond. Anything less than 72 Hz
can cause noticeable flicker.
Just because a card claims
"up to 72 Hz" doesn't mean it
supports that rate in all
modes. Match the refresh rate
to the number of colors and
resolution at which you plan to
use the card.
Interlaced Versus
Noninterlaced
Also critical to how a display
system treats your eyes is
whether or not it's noninter-
laced. In an interlaced dis-
play, the electron gun paints
every other line on the monitor
each time it is refreshed — first,
even lines and then odd lines
on the next trip down the screen —
which causes flicker. Many graphics
adapters claim to be noninterlaced,
but if you took closely at the advertis-
ing material or documentation, you'll
see that they are interlaced at higher
resolutions. Remember that the moni-
tor must also support noninterlacing in
the modes you plan to run.
More colors, less dithering: With 16 colors (top) and 256
colors (middle), Windows dithers to compensate for the
lacl< of pure colors. With 16.7 miliion colors (bottom),
dithering Is unnecessary.
Monitors
Once the display adapter collects a
screenful of data from the CPU, the
video signal moves on to the monitor.
The monitor uses an electron gun to
paint the picture. The electron gun.
which scans back and forth very
rapidly, causes phosphors on the
inside of the screen to glow. On a
color monitor, the phosphors
are red, green, and blue
(RGB). Depending on the
color capabilities of the
graphics card, RGB combi-
nations are mixed to create
other colors — up to 16.7 mil-
lion, which, by the way, is far
more than the human eye
can discern at one time.
The phosphors glow for
only a small fraction of a sec-
ond, so the electron gun
must repaint (refresh) them
many times per second. The
electron gun paints the
screen one line at a time.
When it finishes one line, it
moves down to the next.
When it reaches the bottom
of the screen, it moves back
to the top. The rate at which
the electron gun repaints the
lines is the refresh rate. The
rate that the gun moves from
the top to the bottom is the
scan rate. As mentioned, the
two primary considerations
when buying a monitor are its
size and whether it supports
the resolution and refresh
rate of the graphics card in
your system. Some other
things to consider when pur-
chasing a monitor include
multlscanning, dot pitch, and
screen type.
Before looking at monitor-
specific concerns, however,
let's bhefly review the issues
that affect both monitors and
graphics cards.
Resolution. Remember
that the monitor must support
the resolutions of the graph-
ics card, including the high-
est one you plan to use. The
good news is that you don't
have to worry about buying a
monitor that supports the
number of colors you need.
All color monitors support as
many colors as your display
adapter can generate.
Refresh rate. The monitor
also must have the same
refresh rate as your graphics
card at the resolutions you plan
to use. Again, make sure the
desired resolutions and
desired refresh rates match. Just be-
cause a monitor supports 72 Hz at 640 x
480 doesn't mean it will at 1024 x 768.
Screen size. Remember that it's
important to match screen size to text
size. However, where the size of your
monitor really counts is in graphics
and page layout applications. (Large
monitors also help immensely when
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 11
giving onscreen presentations to siz-
able audiences.) When laying out a
double-sided, two-page document,
for example, tiie extra screen real
estate provided by a large monitor is
very tielpful. A 19- to 21 -inch screen
provides a much more accurate
WYSIWYG view of the final document.
Tills makes it easier to judge how well
elements line up and to assess your
overall layout, and it saves a lot of
time by reducing the number of print-
ed drafts needed.
Having reviewed the primary con-
siderations, we can turn to monitor-
specific concerns,
Multiscanning. Multiscanning
refers to the monitor's ability to syn-
chronize refresh rates automatically.
Basically, this allows you to use differ-
ent graphics cards with the same
monitor. It also allows you to switch in
and out of DOS applications from
Windows without having to manually
adjust the monitor.
Dot pitch. The size of a monitor's
pixels is measured by dot pitch. The
smaller the dot pitch, the crisper and
cleaner the display. A good rule to fol-
low is that 16-inch or smaller monitors
should have a dot pitch of 0.28 mm or
lower; 17-inch or larger monitors can
Microsoft's Video for Windows lets
your computer run full-motion video.
get by with 0.31 mm or lower.
Screen type. The screen type
can also affect the quality of your dis-
play. All monitors should contain an
antiglare mechanism, either a sepa-
rate coating on the screen or a built-in
filtering device. Some people prefer
flat screens to the traditional convex
(or spherical) designs. The theory Is
that the flat screens more closely rep-
resent a sheet of paper.
Before You Buy
There are, of course, some other things
to think about when upgrading your
display system. Chief among these
other considerations is price. Monitors
and graphics cards are designed for a
variety of applications, ranging from
simple word processing to very high-
end graphic design. Naturally, the
demands of digital photograph editing
are much higher than, say, balancing
your checkbook In Quicken.
Prices for graphics cards and mon-
itors run from reasonable to absurd.
You can pick up a good Super VGA
graphics card for between $150 and
$500. Or you can go to the extreme
and choose a high-end graphics
design station card for upwards of
$3,000. When looking at the vast
selection, it's difficult to tell why some
cost so much more than others. The
differences in quality and speed are
often indiscernible. Monitor prices also
fluctuate dramatically. However, since
monitor prices generally vary directly
with size, refresh rate, and resolution,
and inversely with dot pitch, the pric-
Ruiminci l^indoTTS at tKe Speed of Lifjht
A common complaint among users
who switch from DOS character-
based applications to Windows is
that Windows' GUI (Graphical User
Interface) slows down their comput-
ers. Depending on the machine in
question, the performance hit can be
substantial.
The reason for the sluggishness Is
that, unlike character-based applica-
tions, the Windows interface uses
every pixel on your monitor to paint
the screen. This requires hundreds
of times more Information flowing
from the CPU to the screen than the
average DOS application.
This rush of information causes an
immense logjam at the bus port,
where the display information is
passed on to the graphics card. One
way to relieve the bottleneck is v/ith a
graphics accelerator. These cards
take the bulk of the display process-
ing on themselves, winich frees up
the CPU to do more fundamental
tasks, such as calculating your
spreadsheet or sorting a mailing list.
A number of accelerator cards
are available, ranging widely in
price. The cost of the accelerator
depends primarily on supported res-
olution, number of colors, and
refresh rate. The cards also come in
many configurations, with various
coprocessor chips and RAM config-
urations.
While I am not usually reluctant to
recommend one product over anoth-
er, the field here is wide open. The
important issue in this category is not
what chips are on the board, but
rather the board's performance. How
fast does the card speed up screen
redraw in Windows? Some claim up
to 30-fold speed boosts, but double,
triple, or quadruple the speed of
your current display system is more
likely, especially if you work with
large graphics.
It takes a lot of horsepower to dis-
play thousands of colors at high res-
olution. Most Windows users should
look into accelerated graphics
cards. The Immense increase in per-
formance far outweighs the small
increase in price. In some cases,
you'll pay only $50 to $100 more lor
an accelerated version of a vendor's
graphics card.
In other words, the only reason
not to go for an accelerated card is if
you believe you'll never need to dis-
play more than, say, 256 colors at
800 X 600 resolution.
Clalcliinfj the Local Bus
Another way to speed up Windows is
with a local-bus graphics card.
However, the only way to get one is
by buying a new computer — one
equipped with a locai-bus port on
the motherboard.
Most computers interface with
graphics cards at 8 or 16 bits.
However, today's 386 and 486
machines process data at 32 bits.
The result is a bottleneck between the
computer and the display adapter.
The local bus is a 32-bit bus port that
holds a 32-blt adapter, which doubles
the rate at which the computer can
send data to the monitor.
If you're in the market for a new
computer to run Windows, especially
Windows graphics applications,
such as CorelDRAW! or PhotoFinish,
make sure your new machine is
equipped with a local-bus display
system.
Which is more important? An
accelerated ISA-bus card will actual-
ly drive your display faster than an
unaccelerated local-bus card.
12 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
, -, -»•;-;=;,:-. -V|,.: , ■3.'.^.^* '^t
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THECOMPUTEF
SPEAK UP!
Is there a feature topic
you'd like to see covered
in COMPUTE? Let us
know by calling
(900) 884-8681 ,
extension 7010101
(sponsored by Pure
Entertainment,
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Irlo'vieis on m ouii* Jrlonilor
The word video brings to mind rent-
ing Terminator 2 at the video store or
watching Ivladonna on MTV. Recent
hardware and software technology
has brought motion pictures, or
video, to the computer screen, As
with the desktop publishing craze of
a few years ago. it won't be long
before virtually anybody can create
and edit videos on a computer.
Personal computers, both Mac-
intoshes and PCs running Windows,
process video with one of two stan-
dards: analog or digital video.
Analog ViJeo
Analog video is the standard used
by TVs, VCRs, laser disc players,
and camcorders. Analog video is
typically stored on videotape or
videodisc.
To use analog video with your
computer, you'll need a special dis-
play adapter known as a video-in-a-
window card. You can then run
video from any VCR, TV cable, or
other analog device. One of the
more popular video cards is Creative
Labs' Video Blaster.
Dicfital ^iJeo
Digital video is a digital form of video
that can be stored as a computer
file. Two examples are Microsoft's
Video for Windows and Apple's
QuickTime. These full-motion video
standards run with or without a video
board; however, for the best perfor-
mance, you need the additional
hardware.
If you're looking for a quick, inex-
pensive, and easy way to put video
in Windows, choose Video for
Windows. It's easy to install and
comes with several video strips to
get you started.
ing seems to make a lot more sense
than the pncing of graphics cards.
When you start doing your
research, you'll find that there are hun-
dreds of cards and monitors available.
(That's the reason I didn't mention any
by name in this article. There are so
many good ones that I didn't want to
penalize vendors by not mentioning
them.) The best test for a graphics dis-
play is to see it in action. If you can,
get a demonstration. Ask to see the
applications you run displayed, and
put them through their paces on a sys-
tem with your prospective adapter and
monitor installed. If you buy through
mail order, make sure you get a
money-back guarantee, □
14 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
ADVERTISEMENT
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
How to get surround
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An amazing new surround sound decoder turns your
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By Chuck Anion
As much as I lovi! renting videos, it's just
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The Secret of Surround Sound
Surround sound has become the rage of the
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To "fill a room" with sound you need more
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Dynaco offers rear ctiannel speakers specif-
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Breakthrougli 'L minus f1.'
Back in the l%l)'s, Dynaco dis-
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Circle Reader Service Number 10S
TEST LAB
Edited by Mike HudnaN
Reviews by Tom Benford
As you make your way
througli \Ue reviews of this
1 montli's notebook comput-
lers, paying attention to pric-
es, performance, and important
features, the professional in you
will doubtless note with approval
how well this technology could
serve your purposes and make
you more productive. Practical,
sensible, and well designed,
these notebooks could be great
for you or your business and
could possibly give you just the
competitive advantage you've
been looking for.
If you're like me, however, the
kid in you will probably be
wowed by the latest innovations
in these notebooks, like the built-
in bubble-jet printer in the Canon
notebook or the ergonomicatly
designed pointing devices and
the PCMCIA slots on several of
the units we evaluated. Then
there are the features that,
though not really new, continue to
impress because manufacturers
keep finding ways to make them
better and less expensive — fea-
tures like hard drives, color dis-
plays, and power management.
For this Test Lab. we asked for
486 notebooks with 4M8 of RAM
and hard drives of at least 80MB.
18 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
As you'll see when you peruse
our grid of features, these note-
books have 486 chips from four
different manufacturers (Cyrix,
IBM, Intel, and Texas Instru-
ments), and their speeds range
from 25 MHz ail the way up to 50
MHz. We could have tested note-
books with 8MB of RAM, but
since most come standard with
4MB, and since we felt most COM-
PUTE readers would go with
4MB, that was our choice, As for
the hard drives, we had no trou-
ble at all coming up with large
ones. In fact, the smallest ones
were 120MB, and a couple of note-
books sported 200MB drives,
more than enough space to take
care of business on the road.
It's a sign of Windows' accep-
tance, I think, that every notebook
we tested came with Windows and
a pointing device of some kind.
Micro Electronics even calls its com-
puter the WinBook. So if you want
to do Windows on the road, these
notebooks are ready.
It's also worth noting that the
manufacturers of these notebooks
have put a premium on expand-
ability. Now upgrading memory,
adding communications hard-
ware, and hooking up to a network
are easier than ever. Docking sta-
tions, expansion boxes, and port
replicators have helped; 1 think
that PCMCIA slots and cards will
help even more while eliminating
much of the bulk and complication
of earlier solutions.
AST RESEARCH
16215 Alton Pkwy.
P.O. Box 19658
[rvine, CA 92713-9658
(BOO) 876-4AST
(714) 727-4141
Suggesteti retail price: S4,199 with
80MB drive; $4,499 with 200MB
drive, Windows 3.1, and AST
SmartPoInt trackball
Warranty: one year, parts and latior,
including 48-hour repair upon
receipt at AST {AST pays Ireight
each way)
To see how these notebooks
performed, look to the bar
graphs with benchmark data.
There you'll find not only perform-
ance ratings based upon the Nor-
ton Indexes but also real-world
test data involving a word proc-
essor, a database, and more. We
had planned a test involving Win-
dows spreadsheet calculations;
however, we had to scrap it,
since ali of these 486 notebooks
were abie to perform complex
numerical spreadsheet calcula-
tions so quickly that performance
differences were negligible. In
addition to the application bench-
mark data, you'll find the results
of our battery depletion test.
If you compute on the road
and want information about the lat-
est and greatest in notebook tech-
nology, read on. Test Lab has
reviews, benchmark data, and fea-
ture information you can use,
MIKE HUDNALL
AST POWEREXEC
4/25SL COLORPLUS
Looking for a high-performance
color notebook with a genuine
25-MHz Intel 486SL CPU? Then
you'll want to learn more about
AST's PowerExec 4/25SL Col-
orPlus notebook computer.
AST offers the PowerExec
4/25SL with three different dis-
plays. The 4/25SL Color version
features a passive matrix color
LCD screen, a 25-degree horizon-
tal viewing angle, and a lower
cost than the 4/25SL ColorPlus.
which comes equipped with an
active matrix color display that
affords a 70-degree viewing
angle and brighter, more vibrant
colors. AST's monochrome ver-
sion of this notebook, called sim-
ply the 4/25SL, can display 64
shades of gray with a 45-degree
viewing angle. Both of the color
models have 9.5-inch (diagonal-
ly measured) displays and can
support 256 simultaneous colors
at 640 X 480 resolution. External-
ly connected monitors can dis-
play 800 x 600 resolution with
256 colors, and you can use the
external monitor simultaneousiy
with the notebook's LCD.
AST provides plenty of power
management support in the
4/25SL ColorPlus, and computing
sessions well in excess of four
hours were common during my
review of the unit. With all of the
power management options
turned off, the nicad battery will
still provide in excess of two hours
of continuous use before you
need to recharge it. This great
charge life is attributable to AST's
3.3-volt low-power memory de-
signed specificaily for its note-
books (5 volts is the usual current
drain in conventional designs).
A medium and charcoal gray
color scheme gives the 4/25SL
ColorPlus a smart, businesslike
appearance. With this notebook,
AST includes a nifty detachable
miniature trackball, which snaps
on the front of the machine just
beiow the space bar. The manu-
facturer has positioned the two
buttons on either side of the ball;
1 found this pointing device to be
exceptionally well designed and
easy to use. It gets Its power
from a dedicated port concealed
behind a spnng-loaded panel,
and the connection is made
automatically when you snap the
trackball on the notebook,
The keyboard has ali of the fea-
tures serious users will favor:
dimpled F and J keys, good key
spacing, contoured key tops, a
dedicated inverted-T cursor con-
trol pad, an embedded numeric
keypad, and a light, crisp touch.
AST provides a row of LEDs with
Icons under them to help you
keep up with power, battery stat-
us, hard and floppy drive activi-
ty and lock key status.
The 4/25SL ColorPlus provides
two Type II PCf^^CIA expansion
slots for adding options, and you
can expand the standard memo-
ry configuration of 4MB up to
32MB, using the two user-acces-
sible memory sockets. Since the
i486SL CPU has an internal math
CANON COMPUTER SYSTEMS
P.O. Box 5048
123 East Paularino Ave.
Costa Mesa, CA 92628-5048
(800) 848-4123
(714) 438-3000
Suggested retail price: $2,499 for
Model 1 witii 85MB drive; $2,799 lor"
Model 2 with 135MB drive; $2,999
for Model 3 witli 180MB drive; $48
lor six-oacl< ot print cartridges; S43
for print tiead
Warranty: one year, parts and labor
coprocessor and 8K of internal
cache memory, it's unlikely that
you'll outgrow the power this note-
book can provide, especially
with additional RAM installed in it.
The PowerExec 4/25SL Col-
orPlus Is bound to appeal to the
discriminating user who wants a
superior color notebook.
circle Reader Service Number 371
aNONNOTEJET486
Canon has taken portability a
step further with its printer-
equipped, 486-based NoteJet
486 tVlodel 2.
The NoteJet has a Canon Bub-
ble Jet printer integrated right
into the case of the computer,
making this truly a portable office
that will fit easily into a briefcase.
The printer is functionally Identi-
cal to the Canon BJ-130e in that
it uses a head configuration with
64 nozzles and provides a maxi-
mum: pnnt resolution of 360 x 360
dots per inch with a maximum
print speed of 1 1 6 characters per
second. Because it also emulates
the IBM ProPhnter X24E and the
Epson LQ-510, you have real print-
ing versatility. An automatic
sheet feeder capable of holding
ten sheets at a time is also built
into the printer portion of the
NoteJet, and the Bubble Jet ink
cartridge yields approximately
100,000 characters before it
requires replacement.
The heart of the NoteJet, a
Texas Instruments 486SLC CPU
running at 25 MHz, endows the
machine with respectable perform-
ance while maintaining a miserly
current draw from the machine's
nicad battery
A Cyrix CX83S87 25-MHz
math coprocessor can be in-
stalled as an option should your
work require enhanced math
coprocessing, and you can
expand the NoteJet's standard
RAM configuration of 4MB to
6MB, 8MB, or 12MB with the
optional SIMM board that
mounts in a single available
SIMM slot. You can easily install
either of these upgrade options,
since both the math coprocessor
socket and the SIMM socket are
accessible via a snap-off cover
on the bottom of the machine.
This is a nice touch Canon add-
ed here, since installing such
upgrades on other notebook com-
puters usually requires disassem-
bly of the computer by a techni-
cian. For adding other options,
you have two PCMCIA card slots
behind another snap-off panel on
the left side of the NoteJet.
A wand-style pointing device
provided with the NoteJet plugs
into the machine's mouse-or-key-
pad porL Although Canon calls It
a trackball, that name doesn't con-
jure an accurate mental picture of
what it really looks like. A palm-
size unit, the device connects to
the machine's port via a 24-inch
cable. You use your thumb to con-
trol a marble-size ball while your
index and ring fingers activate
the dual buttons at the front of the
unit, mounted one on top of the
other. At first this configuration
seems awkward, especially if
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 19
TEST LAB
you're accustomed to a desktop
mouse or a large-ball device, but
you get used to it after a short
wtiile. If there's one weak spot in
an otherwise excellent machine,
I think it's this pointing device. Of
course, you can always substi-
tute another pointing device
more to your (iking.
The LCD screen displays 16 lev-
els of gray at 640 x 480 resolution,
and you can plug an external
SVGA monitor into the notebook
via the 15-pin D connector locat-
ed at the rear of the unit.
The Canon NoteJet 486 is a
very good Windows-ready com-
puter for people on the go who
want to have a printer avail-
able whenever — and wherever —
they compute.
circle Reader Service Number 372
EPSON ACTIONNOTE
4SLC/25
A truly compact notebook PC
that has a good assortment of
standard features, Epson's Action-
Note 4SLC/25 is convenient to
tote, provides good performance.
EPSON AMERICA
20770 Madrona Ave.
Torrance, GA 99503
(800)922-8911 (in USA)
(800) 463-7766 (In Canada)
Estimated street price: $1,429 witti
80MB drive; 31,499 with 120IVIB
drive; 81,699 wittt 120IVIB drive and
fax/data modem
Warranty: one year, parts and latior;
includes on-site service
and is easy on the wallet.
With a textured, charcoal gray
case, the stylish ActionNote is the
thinnest notebook covered here,
measuring just a tad over 1 .5 inch-
es thick with its lid closed. It has
a footprint just slightly larger than
a sheet of letter paper, measuring
8,7 X 11 inches; and with a weight
of only 5.5 pounds with its recharge-
able nicad battery installed, it's
certainly no burden to take along
with you.
A Logitech TrackMan trackball,
included as standard equipment
with the ActionNote, plugs into a
mouse-or-keyboard port on the
left side of the machine. You also
CRTS MIPS TEST AVERAGES
The CPT5 MIPS TbsIs arc a series of proprietory tesis which measure the system's speed in MIPS
(Millioits of Imtrutllons Per Second) to give o numerical profile of its performonce. The tests lime ond
(ount general instructions, ifileger instiudions, memory-to-meraory operations, raemory-lo-regisler
operations, ond reglster-to-regisler operations, and they aDtomottcolly cobkite M!PS (ask averages
based on these disirete test results.
Better
10
"■5
S
■a
4-
WorsB
2
n
^ %
20 COtvlPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
get a good-quality compart-
mented carrying case as part of
the standard package, along with
a mouse-or-keyboard adapter for
the machine's PS/2-$tyle port.
The standard 4rvlB of RAM will
meet the computing needs of
many of COMPUTE'S readers; if
necessary, however, you can
expand the memory to 8MB. The
ActionNote includes 256K of vid-
eo RAM and uses a paper-white,
two-lilm CCFT (Cold Cathode
Fluorescent Tube) backlit mono-
chrome LCD which measures a
generous ten inches diagonally.
The LCD is capable of displaying
64 levels of gray at 320 x 200 res-
olution and 32 levels of gray at 640
X 480. Slider controls allow you to
adjust the display's brightness and
contrast, and a 15-pin D connec-
tor lets you attach an external moni-
tor {simultaneous display of both
the LCD and CRT is supported).
The Cyrix 486SLC CPU at the
heart of the ActionNote runs at 25
MHz. To add number-crunching
muscle for handling more demand-
ing applications, you can add an
optional Cyrix CX387SLC or Intel
3B7SX numeric coprocessor.
The keyboard features a mod-
erately light touch and short key
travel, along with a very nice feel.
Bumps on the F and J keys con-
firm home row position, and an
inverted-T cursor control pad
makes moving around the screen
easy. Epson also provides an
embedded numeric keypad.
The review unit came
equipped with a 120MB hard
drive, although you can order the
ActionNote with an BOMB drive.
You can also install an optional
nternal 2400/9600 fax/modem
When it comes to legal mat-
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The all new It's Leg;il is alw available fmm ihesc and odier
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^PARSONS
K TECHNOLOCy
Ortf Panom Dtiw. FO Rax 100, /ii.jit Jljla, lA ^2233-0100
your priority coda is SI a723J
CircJe Reader Service Number 164
TEST LAB
(Epson installed one on the
review machine}. WinFax Lite and
BitCom come preloaded on
ActionNote configurations or-
dered with the modem installed.
A row of LEDs with illuminated
icons below them lets you know
the status of the power, the bat-
tery charge. AC power (whether
it's being used), and floppy and
hard drive activity, as well as
whether the caps, scroll, or numer-
ic locks are in effect.
With prices ranging from
about $1 ,399 for the base model
to $1 ,649 for the configuration as
reviewed, the ActionNote pro-
vides a way to get 486 process-
ing muscle without breaking the
bank.
Cfrcie Reader Service Number 373
IBM THINKPAD 720C
IBM packs a lot of computing
punch into its ThinkPad 720C.
For starters, it has the biggest,
brightest color LCD I've seen on
any notebook to date, and its IBM
486SLC2 CPU runs at a brisk 50
MHz. If I've piqued your interest
already, read on. You'll find that
IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER
Box 100, Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
(800) 772-2227
E9t4) 706-1900
Direct price: $4,695
Warranty: tliree years
there are lots of other desirable
features in this take-it-with-you col-
or notebook from Big Blue.
The ThinkPad's case features
squared edges and sharp cor-
ners; no frills or nonfunctional
embellishments are to be found.
That isn't to say it's unattractive,
however. Quite the opposite is
true. The case is molded in a hand-
some matte black plastic, which
resists fingerprints well (but tends
to show dust and dirt). The overall
appearance of the machine tells
you it's a serious device that's
ready to do business-
Lifting the ThinkPad's lid expos-
es the 10.5-inch TFT (Thin Film
Transistor) 4096-color LCD,
which is a joy to view. The LCD
screen can display VGA at 640 x
480 resolution. Slider controls at
BAHERY DURATION TEST
Tlie Botlery Dorolion TesI is performed with all power-saving functions deodivnted to provide reolfime
chaige-litc expecloncies (or the notebooks' boneries. A proprielory program wEiicli (rentes, reads, writes,
ond ernses files ond wriles a time-stonip log entry ot ibe end of eacii cycle is used lo keep lb CPU, hard
drive, ond video display busy la simulote constGnt use during the test. The elopsed time between the start
of the test mi i\\e lost recorded log entry before the botlery forls totnlly is calculated and recorded.
Better
150
120
90-
Wocse
60
__ ji I I I i _i I I I I
"^ \\^^<^%^^\ir%%%
»\
22 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
the right side of the LCD adjust
brightness and contrast, al-
though I found the display to
provide excellent viewing, even in
bright light, without my having to
change the settings.
Below the display a bank of
LED indicators keeps tabs on the
system's status. They show the
status of the speaker, AC adapt-
er, power, battery hard disk, and
floppy disk, as well as the caps,
scroll, and numeric locks.
I found the ThinkPad's key-
board well laid out with regard to
key spacing and key-top contour;
raised dots on the F and J keys
confirm home row position for
touch-typists, and there's a sep-
arate tnverted-T cursor control key-
pad, as well as an embedded
numeric keypad.
Just above the B key, nestled
between the bottoms of the G
and H keys, is the ThinkPad's
pointing device, an elevated red
button that looks like a pencil eras-
er with a case of sunburn. Below
the space bar, at the edge of the
case, are two flat keys, each
about one inch long; these corre-
spond to the control buttons on
a standard mouse.
While the idea of an integrated
pointing device is good, I person-
ally didn't care for the "eraser-
ball" built into the keyboard. For
my taste (and touch), it was too
sensitive, and having the action
buttons separate resulted in awk-
ward operation, Suffice it to say
that I found this setup anything
but intuitive. I used the embed-
ded pointing device throughout
the review to give it a fair shake,
but I must admit I was happy to
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Circle Reader Servrce Number 161
TEST LAB
get back to my desktop PC with
a trusty oid Microsoft mouse
attached to it.
The ThinkPad 720C comes
equipped with a 50-MHz IBM
486SLC2 CPU, a 180MB hard
drive, and 4MB of RAM as its stan-
dard configuration. Two PCMCIA
slots are also provided to accom-
modate any expansion options
you may desire. For power users,
this machine is a great choice.
Circle Reader Service Number 37A
MICRO ELECTRONICS
WINBOOK
Designed specifically with the
Windows user in mind, the
WinBook from Micro Electronics
comes with plenty of desirable
standard features that are fre-
quently extra-cost options with
other notebook computers.
Notebook describes the Win-
Book well, since it occupies
about the same amount of space
as an average three-ring binder
and weighs in at a trim and easy-
to-tote 5.4 pounds with its
rechargeable nickel-metal-
hydride (NiMH) battery installed.
The WinBook's standard con-
figuration includes 4MB of RAM,
a 120MB hard drive, a 2400-bps
modem and 9600-bps send/4800-
bps receive fax. For adding op-
tions, there's a Type II PCMCIA
slot, an increasingly pervasive
feature in this latest generation of
notebooks.
For its CPU, our review Win-
Book uses a 33-MHz Cyrix
CX486SLC rather than an Intel
chip. Described in the WinBook's
manual as an "enhanced version
of the 80386 CPU," the Cyrix
chip "includes a built-in 1Kbyte
cache to increase the speed of da-
ta access."
The overall design of the
machine is quite good, and it's evi-
dent that plenty of thought went
into the placement of various sys-
tem components. For example, a
trackball is built into the WinBook;
the manufacturer places this point-
24 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
MICRO ELECTRONICS
1160 Steeiwood Rd.
Columbus, OH 43Z1 2
(8001 468-2162
(614) 481-7460
Suggested retail price: 81,799
Warranty: one year, parts and labor
ing device conveniently between
the two wrist-support pads below
the keyboard. About the size of a
marble or gum ball, the trackball
is flanked by its two buttons.
While the trackball eliminates the
need for an external mouse, you
can still use one if you want.
Controls for adjusting the bright-
ness and contrast of the LCD are
also conveniently located — at the
right side of the screen, along
with LED indicators for power flop-
py drive activity, hard disk activi-
ty, suspend mode, and the stat-
us of the Num Lock, Scroll Lock,
and Caps Lock keys. The Win-
Book has an easy-to-look-at ten-
inch display; the 512K of video
memory allows 640 x 480 reso-
lution for the internal screen and
1024 X 768 resolution for an
external monitor.
Need expansion capabilities?
You can upgrade from the Win-
Book's standard 120MB hard
drive to a 250IVIB drive, add a
math coprocessor, or buy a dock-
ing station for desktop use; a 160-
pin connector on the WinBook ac-
commodates the docking station.
The WinBook has a good assort-
ment of power-saving features
which, according to the manufac-
turer, will extend battery life to a
maximum of four hours. I found
the machine to be faster and
more responsive with all of the
power-saving functions deactivat-
ed (this brought battery life down
to about 1 V?-2Vi hours between
charges).
While the Vi/inBook as re-
viewed is a good value at $1 ,699,
if that's more than your wallet can
handle, Micro Electronics is also
offering a 25-MHz entry-level mod-
el of the WinBook, which has an
80MB hard drive and 2MB of
RAM without the fax/modem for
only $1 ,499. In either version, the
WinBook is an attractive ma-
chine, especially If you want to
take your Windows applications
on the road.
circle Reader Service Number 375
NEC ULTRALITE
VERSA 25C
This color notebook offers good
loot^s and sizzling performance.
NEC offers the UltraLite Versa
series of notebooks in several
models: 20-MHz models are avail-
able with either color or mono-
chrome displays, while the
25-MHz models are available with
both monochrome and color dis-
plays and with and without pen
capabilities. The review unit is a
25-MH2 model based on the Intel
80486SL CPU and equipped with
an active matrix TFT color LCD
screen measuring 9.45 inches
diagonally. A real treat for the
eyes, it can display 256 colors at
640 X 480 resolution (800 x 600
resolution with 256 colors and
1024 X 768 resolution with 16 col-
ors are supported via externally
connected monitors).
One of the truly outstanding fea-
tures of the UltraLite Versa 25C—
its local-bus video— accounts for
its blistering performance with
graphics-related applications
such as CAD and Video for Win-
dows. This machine is no slouch
when it comes to nongraphical
chores such as database and
word-processing work, either.
Ergonomic design and aesthet-
ic appeal are obvious concerns,
and the UUraLite Versa 25C tri-
umphs in both areas. NEC uses an
attractive medium gray matte-fin-
ish plastic that hides fingerprints
and resists scuffing well. A single
slider control next to the screen
adjusts the brightness of the color
display. Rather than the usual
array of LEDs commonly used for
system status messaging, the
UUraLite Versa 25C uses an LCD
window which employs icons to
convey system information. The
NEC TECHNOLOGIES
1414 Massaciiusetts Ave.
Boxborough, MA 01719
(800) NEC-INFO (in USA)
(800) 343-4418 (in Canada)
(508)264-8000
Suggested retail price: $3,869 with
iOIVIB drive: $4,269 with 120mB
drive; S4,539 witti 180IVIB drive:
S2,659 witti mono screen and 80IVIB
drive
Warranty: ttiree years, witli (ree llrsl-
year upgrade to NEC Uitracare
usual items — including floppy and
hard drive activity, power, power
source, and battery condition —
are all indicated, in addition to
caps and numeric locks.
I liked the keyboard action and
key placement, although I found
the space bar to be considerably
shorter than it is on other noiebook
keyboards, measuring 3.75 inch-
es. While this wasn't a problem for
me, some users with big hands or
wide thumbs may not find it to
their liking. However, other fea-
tures, such as a dedicated cursor
keypad, an embedded numeric
keypad, and 12 function keys
more than make up for the short
space bar. Of course, you can
always plug a full-size keyboard
into the dedicated socket provid-
ed for it at the rear of the machine.
The package includes a Ivlicro-
soft Ballpoint mouse, which
plugs directly into the dedicated
mouse port (also at the rear). For
adding options, the UltraLite Ver-
sa 25C also has one Type III PC-
MCIA slot, which can accommo-
date one Type III PCfvlCIA card
or two Type II cards.
NEC has done a nice job of
combining form and function in
an attractive notebook with a su-
perb color display.
circle Reader Service Number 376
NORTON BENCHAAARKS
The Norton Ulililin 6.0 served os on overoll "winilow" for viewing ihe systems' cDnligurotions, interruph, ond iriDmory oddresses.
litis group of utililns abo provided o generic performance hasehe, consisting of the CPt) speed, the disk speed, and an overall index.
Setter
WoRe
ilU
r-1
/u
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L J
r-|
n
iU [-1
J
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1
-1
40
30 " "
20 ■ "
10 ■ "
1 i
i
. —
L 1
Overall Index
Disk Speed
CPU Speed
^ %
A % \
^ -^
^A \ \
%
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 25
TEST LAB
SAMSUNG
NOTEMASTER
486SLC
Samsung shows lots of ingenuity
and some novel design concepts
in its NoteMaster 486SLC Model
S3800 notebook.
This trim notebook has tasteful
styling and a dark, charcoal
gray, nonglossy finish which
hides fingerprints and light
scuffs well. Lifting the lid of the
unit reveals a ten-inch mono-
chrome LCD capable of produc-
ing 64 levels of gray to produce
640 X 480 VGA resolution.
The Notefvl aster has 256K of vid-
eo RAfvl and allows you to run its
display and an external SVGA moni-
tor simultaneously. While the
display is certainly large enough,
it isn't one of the best mono-
chrome screens I've seen. With
the brightness and contrast adjust-
ed for comfortable viewing, I
could see several of the LCD's
"pathways" {intersecting lines in
the display's background), and une-
ven image density across the
screen was also noticeable. The
shortcomings of this display aren't
serious enough for it to be con-
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA
Information Systems Division
105 Challenger Rd.
Ridgefieid Park, NJ 07660-0510
1800) 446-0262
Suggested retail price: $1,9S9 witli
2KIB RAM and SfiMB drive (standard
configuration; $1,599 estimated
street price); $2,298 witli extra 2m
RAM (review contigtiration; $1,699
estimated street price)
Warranty: one year, parts and labor
sidered defective, but it did have
a wearying effect on my eyes after
only brief stints of looking at it.
The high-density floppy drive
resides at the right side of the
machine near the front, while the
removable 2.5-inch hard drive
resides just behind it, also on the
right side. Yes, you read that cor-
rectly— the hard drive is remova-
ble on the Notefvlaster, and that
is its most unique feature. The
advantages of a removable hard
drive are many; for example, if
you need additional storage, you
can easily upgrade to a higher-
capacity (120MB) drive.
Using Samsung's Drivefvlaster
expansion kit, you can use the
NoteMaster's hard drive on your
DBASE SORT TEST
Our dotabase tests use a nonindexeil 2S,636record dotobase (each record contains 32 fieldsl. The Sort
Test times how long it tckes fo sort this database on a secondary field arrd creote a sorted dotafaose.
15
Worse
12
1 9-
6-
Better
n F
-j r-j
.1 .1 . 1 r-i 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
"^ \\'^<t^^r\^4^\%
%
^\
■%
26 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
desktop PC to make data trans-
fer between systems easy; you
can keep your data secure by tak-
ing the drive with you when you
leave the office, or multiple users
of the same NoteMaster can
have their own individual hard
disks. There are plenty of other in-
stances as well in which the re-
movable drive would be a highly
desirable feature.
Samsung provides 2fyiB of
RAM and an BOMB hard drive as
standard equipment on the
NoteMaster. The review unit
came equipped with 4MB of RAfvl
as requested, and it also sported
the optional 120MB hard drive.
The CPU for the NoteMaster is
the Cyrix 486SLC running at 25
MHz. You can add an optional
Intel 80387SX coprocessor to
give the machine enhanced math-
calculating power; Samsung
makes the installation easy by pro-
viding access to a socket
beneath a snap-off plastic cover
on the bottom of the case.
You can also easily install an
optional fax/modem yourself. To
expand the computer's memory
you'll use proprietary memory
modules that simply snap into a
compartment adjacent to the
modem space. RAM can be
expanded to a maximum of 8MB.
No PCMCIA slots are provided.
The NoteMaster 486SLC Mod-
el S3800 is a good choice if you
like the convenience of a remov-
able hard drive, especially if you'll
be using it with an external moni-
tor most of the time.
Circle Header Service Number 377
Move faster
//
Fly higher.
Higher. Faster. Farther.
CH Products is defining new
standards of design and
performance for computer pilots.
We'll empower you to effortlessly
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and soar like never before.
Get your hands on the
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FLIGHTSTICK™ series joysticks. Or
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PRODUCTS
970 Park Center Drive Visla, CA 92083
Phone: 619.598.2518 Fax: 619.59B.2524
TM 1S93 CH Producw. a Joysiick TocJviolof^eB Inc. Ca.
Circle Reader Service Number 1SE
TEST LAB
Tl TRAVELMATE
4000 WINSX/25
COLOR
If you're interested in adding
some color to your portable com-
puting, backed by 486 process-
ing power, then you may want to
consider the TravelMate 4000
WinSX/25 Color notebook from
Texas Instruments. This is the new-
est addition to Tl's highly success-
ful TravelMate 4000 series of 486
notebook computers,
The WinSX/25's 9,4-inch (diag-
onally measured) color LCD
screen delivers 256 colors simul-
taneously at normal 640 x 480
VGA resolution and is supported
with 512K of video RAM. You can
plug in an external Super VGA
monitor and find support for the
following modes: 640 x 480 res-
olution with 256 colors, 800 x 600
with 256 colors, 1024 x 768 with
16 colors. Simultaneous display
of both the LCD screen and a mon-
itor is also possible.
The WinSX/25's keyboard fea-
tures a nice touch with moderate-
ly light action and nicely
contoured key tops. Raised dots
on the F and J keys help you find
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS
P.O. Box 202230
Auslin, TX 78720-2230
(8D0) 527-3500
Suggested retail price: $2,399
Warranty: one year, limited parts
and labor
the home row, and there's an
embedded numeric keypad and
a separate inverted-T cursor con-
trol keypad. A color-coordinated
Microsoft BaHPoint mouse includ-
ed with the WinSX/25 attaches to
the QuickPort on the machine's
right side.
Molded in two tones of gray,
the WinSX/25 is a tastefully
styled machine that does a good
job of combining form and func-
tion. Dual slider controls for adjust-
ing the color LCD's brightness
and contrast come in handy, as
some adjustment is frequently
required when ambient light condi-
tions change or when you switch
from one application to another.
I noticed some of the LCD's "path-
ways" visible in back of the video
image when the brightness of the
display was turned up all the way,
and color saturation wasn't perfect-
ly even across the full width of the
TEXT TEST
Using m BO-pige Microsofi Word text document, the Text Test times bow long it
takes to search and replace a keyword occurring 1423 iimes in the douimenl.
20 1 '
Woru
15
10
Better
xIL
^ W'^ -A^^r \4,x\
%
^\
% %
28 COMPUTE SEPTEIVIBER 1993
screen (these are characteristics
of passive matrix color displays).
The standard configuration
includes 4MB of RAM, which you
can increase to a maximum of
20MB. A 120MB hard drive and
a front-mounted 1.44MB floppy
drive also come standard. One of
the upgrade options, a 14,400-
bps V,32bis modenn with 9600-
NOTEBOOK PC
TRAVEL KIT
Want to get the most out of your lap-
top or notebook? Today's portable
computers are great, but if you're
like most people who compute on
the go, you need accessories. Luck-
ily, Microcomputer Accessories tias
assembled a compact kit of ten
essentials for laptop anci notebook
users.
The kit lias a suggested retail
price of $29.95 and includes a flat-
ribbon parallel cable for connecting
your portable to a borrowed printer;
a 12-foot telephone cord, a modular
Y adapter, and a male-to-male con-
nector for connecting your modem;
a combination Phillips-fiat blade
screwdriver; an illuminated magni-
fying glass; reusable cable ties; two
sizes of removable white labels;
five strips of clear tape for affixing
your business card to all your hard-
ware; and a reference card with
phone numbers for common E-mail
and online services. Ail this fits neat-
ly in a 7- X 8-inch nylon pouch (with
room left over).
For more information, contact Micro-
computer Accessories at 9920 La
Cienega Bouievard, tnglewood, Cali-
fornia 90308-7032, or call (800) 521-
8270 or (310) 645-9400,
—PHILLIP MORGAN
Circle Reader Service Number 381
bps send-and-receive fax capa-
bility, plugs Into an internal slot
provided on all of the TravefMate
notebook models.
A proprietary expansion bus
built into the rear of the machine
lets you connect additional exter-
nal peripherals; when not in use,
this bus is concealed from view by
a snap-off panel door. All of the 1/
O connectors (serial, parallel,
mouse, and externai video ports)
reside on the left side of the note-
book beneath a drop-down panel.
The WinSX/25's Drop N* Go soft-
ware utility is particularly useful,
permitting accelerated access to
your applications and thus saving
both time and battery life. With all
of Tl's power-saving features
enabled, battery life can exceed
four hours, depending on the
type of computing you're doing.
Even with all of the power man-
agement features turned off, the
machine regularly delivered aver-
age work times of two hours or
more during my review before I
had to recharge.
The CPU is a 486SX running at
25 fvlHz. DOS 5 and Windows 3.1
come preloaded on the WinSX/
25, so you're ready to start doing
useful work as soon as you turn
the power on. Check it out
Circle Reader Service Number 378
TOSHIBA AMERICA mFORMATION
SYSTEMS
Compuler Systems Division
974Q Irvine Blvd.
Irvine, CA 92718
IBOO] 334-3445
(714] 583-3000
Suggested retail price: $3,799 with
120MB drive and color display
TOSHIBA T4500C
With its great assortment of desir-
able features, Toshiba's T4500C
is another example of state-of-the-
art technology in a 486-based col-
or notebook computer.
The T4500C provides a bright
and colorful 8.5-inch TFT active ma-
trix color display for working with
Windows or DOS applications.
Surprisingly, Toshiba provides no
discrete controls for adjusting the
brightness or contrast of the dis-
play. This didn't prove to be trou-
blesome, however, as the display
was sharp and easily visible even
in bright light, requiring only a
slight movement of the lid back-
ward or forward to change the view-
ing angle for optimum visibility.
The built-in display can provide
VGA 640 X 480 resolution with 256
colors, while connecting an exler-
CAD TESTS
50
Wone
40
„30
20
10
Better
0
-|
r
-1
r 1 1
, r
i_ .
1 r
-J
-J
.!_
1 r
CAO
Rotation
Graphics
Generation
^
\\
nal SVGA monitor enables the
T4500C to produce 800 x 600
and 1024 X 768 resolutions.
Like manufacturers of some oth-
er top-of-the-line color notebooks
covered here, Toshiba has forsak-
en the traditional LED status indi-
cators in favor of an LCD window,
which is separated into four
"panes." In addition to providing
information about hard and floppy
disk activity, lock key status, and
more, the window also provides a
countdown clock, which gives you
a realtime indication of how much
operating time remains under
current load conditions before the
nickel-metal-hydride (NifvlH) bat-
CAD TESTS
Ttie Graphics Generation Test times
thie load of a complex color graphic
file with thousands of unique ele-
ments, using AutoCAD's 3-D Con-
cepts software. Since these elements
must be calculated on the fly, this test
is particularly indicative of the sys-
tem's floating-point calculation capa-
bilities and video speed.
The CAD Rotation Test times how
long it takes to rotate and regenerate
a CAD drawing with 57,657 elements
in it- Since these operations are
intensely numerical in nature, this test
provides additional information about
the system's ability to process lloafing-
point calculations in realtime, This
test was used in place of a spread-
sheet calculation test, since ali of
these 486 notebooks were able to per-
form complex numerical spreadsheet
calculations so quickly that perform-
ance differences were negligible.
—TOM BENFORD. PflESIDEt^
COMPUTER PRODUCT TESTirjG SERVICES
SEPTE[\iiaER 1993 COMPUTE 29
TEST LAB
tery pack requires recharging.
The power-saving options are
well thought-out and easily
accessed via the machine's set-
up nnenus. As with other note-
books, the power-saving features
cause some delays in the respon-
siveness of the T4500C, such as
when the hard drive "goes to
sleep" and takes a second or two
to wake up again when file I/O
operations are required
A Ballpoint mouse attaches via
the machine's QuickPort. Although
indeed a fvlicrosoft BallPomt, it's
molded in the same light, bone
gray color as the T4500C and
bears the Toshiba logo instead of
the fvlicrosoft name on its top (the
underside identifies it as a Micro-
soft product, however).
Toshiba provides a single
PCMCIA slot beneath a cover on
the left side of the T4500C, and
a similarly concealed cavity on
the right side of the machine
accepts a dedicated modem
unit. The unit's 1,44MB floppy
drive resides at the front of the
machine toward the right side. Ail
of the I/O ports (single serial, paral-
lel, mouse, keyboard, and SVGA
video) are hidden behind a drop-
down door at the rear, and a pro-
ZENITH DATA SYSTEMS
215QE. Lahe Cook Rd.
Buffalo Grove, tl 80089
(800) 553-0331
§708) 808-5000
Direct price: $3,999
Warranty: one year, llmiied; 4S-
hour iurnaround for rejialrs,
whetfier carry-in or malt-In;
30-day money-back guarantee
if purcnased from Z-OlflECT
prietary connector for mating the
T4500C with a desktop docking
bay is concealed behind another
panel next to the I/O bank.
The T4500C is a respectable
performer with a terrific color dis-
play, a comfortable keyboard,
great styling, and excellent expan-
sion possibilities. It makes a
great choice if you're looking for
a color 486-based notebook.
Circle Reader Service Number 379
ZENITH Z-NOTE
425LNC
Its bone white case and bold, ver-
ticai lines accented by embossed-
square designs around the case
KEYPADS YOU CAN COUNT ON
For all their power and convenience,
notebooks can leave you frustrated
when it comes to entering numeric
data quickly and accurately. One
solution is to attach a portable nu-
meric keypad, such as those of-
fered by Genovation and CNF,
The 17-key fvlicropad from Gen-
ovation is modeled after the numer-
ic pad of the familiar enhanced AT
keyboard. It attaches to your com-
puter via a pass-through parallel in-
terface, and there are serial- and key-
board-port versions as well. A five-
foot cable is available witti Mi-
cropad, and additional options in-
clude a form-fitting polyskin cover
and 17 key tops with clear,
removable lenses. The Micropad
sells for about $95.
The Numeric Keypads from CNF
also feature 17 keys, and ttiey have
a rated reliability of a! ieast 10 mil-
lion keystrokes between failures.
These units plug into your PS/2 (mini
DIN) port and include a two-foot ca-
ble, allowing them lo be positioned
on either the left or right side of
most notebooks. The Numeric Key-
pads range in price from $69 to $99.
To receive more information
about the Micropad, contact Gen-
ovation by calling (800) 822-4333 or
by writing to 17741 Mitchell North, Irv-
ine, California 92714.
Circle Reader Service Number 382
To receive more information
about Numeric Keypads, contact
CNF at 17705 Hale Avenue 1-1, Mor-
gan Hill, California 95037. CNPs
phone number is (408) 778-1160.
Circle Reader Service Kumber 363
—LISA YOUNG
30 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
perimeter make the Z-Note
425Lnc Model 200 a good-look-
er with lots of great features that
become apparent when you
open this notebook and turn it on.
Like other Z-Notes in the Zenith
line, the 425Lnc has an LCD stat-
us panel which provides informa-
tion about system status using
icons rather than mere LEDs. The
display takes the form of a four-
pane LCD "window" in which graph-
ical indicators signify the status of
AC power operation, standby
mode, battery power operation,
hard drive activity, floppy drive
activity, port replicator attachment,
external CRT enablement, modem
enablement, U\N controller enable-
ment, and speaker enablement,
as well as whether the Num Lock,
Caps Lock, Pad Lock, and Scroll
Lock keys are active. As you can
see, this LCD window provides a
wealth of information about which
features are enabled or currently
in use.
A single indicator, located in the
center of the machine just below
the display screen, shows power
status with the lid closed; this LED
changes color according to the cur-
rent power/battery conditions.
The 425Lnc uses an Intel
Benchmark/performance testing
was conducted by Computer Prod-
uct Testing Services Inc. OPTS is an
independent testing and evaluation
laboratory based in Ivlanasquan, NJ.
Every effort has been made to en-
sure the accuracy and complete-
ness o' this data as of the date of test-
ing, Performance may vary among
samples.
Role Playing Then.
You push a button. You open a door. Leave the life of paperwork and laundry, of squalling kids and car trouble.
Enter new worlds. Of adventure. Horror. Magic. Love. Death. Solve a mystery. Save a kingdom. Live by your wits, tap
the reserves. Find out who you are, the stuff you're made of. With the power of 1300 floppies on a single disc,
CD-ROM LETS YOU ESCAPE INTO THE DEPTHS OF YOUR OWN IMAGINATION.
Role Playing Now.
Video clip,s from David Lynch'.^ cult
film of Prank Herbert's famed sci-fi epic
heighten the reality of DUNE'", as you
battle to control production of the
consciousness-expanding spice Melange.
THE 7TH GUEST™ assembles a cast of 23
actors [ 24, including you] in the world's
first true Interactive Drama'" set inside
the haunted hilltop mansion of twisted
loymaker Henry Stauf.
In FABLES AND FIENDS": THE
LEGEND OF KYRANDIA", you arc
the rightful prince of Kyrandia who
must recover the precious Kyragem, the
source of d11 the magic in the land.
Circle Reader Service Number 122
THE 7TH GUEST o'd bWroc'-wDiamoar* fodcTofLji:^ Vnjin G<unei Inc. o^d TtiWt^. Inc. O IW^ VuglnGomM, Ik and Trklobi/*, ^ AJ rtghi, lewived FABtESfi FIENDSortdTHE lEGENDOF KYaAN!>!A
ai» iroci«nvaikj cf W«^rt3od SiudiiM, lix O W2 Wo,!vrt»d S^Jdlo,, if,c AH iighfi losofved, DLINE ii 0 hadwrafk of Dino Ob U)iWffli»i Cotp-Mr.ci end ttsnwd by MCA/Un^wsol Wefct,5,Ki'i-r,g. Inc
© I9M0'r,oD«la,tf*fl'litCotpfxalrt)n AH iigk<» rw^wed. Deve^aped by Cr^ En^iiainrwnf &^tf«^i C IW?3 Vtfl*, Gam«,. Irc A* i,g)iii roicfved ^.fglfi li o ,iKj^»bfftd rfoderrofl of Vnig^f, Eni«*p(i«i. W trfili'j
TEST LAB
^^^K^*^""
=^5=^r- ■ ■ ■ ; ■
486 Notebook Features
..s/g
AST PowerExec
4/2SSL ColorPluE
Canon NoteJet
48G
Epson ActionNote
4SLC/25
IBM ThinkPad
720C
Micro
Electronics
Winbook
Physical Characteristics
Dimensions
1.98" X 11.5" X 8.5"
2.2"x12.2"xl0"
1.6"xll"x8.7"
2.2" X 1 1 .7" X 8.3"
1 .75 ' X 1 1 " X 8,75"
Weight + transformer
7.8 ibs.
7.7 ibs.
6.9 ibs.
7.6 Ibs,
6.4 lbs.
Weigi^t of extra battery
T.Sibs.
1.3 ibs.
0.75 lb.
1.5 Ibs,
0.9 1b.
System Electronics
CPU manuiacturer
Intel
Tl
Cyrix or Tl
IBM
Cyrix
CPU
25-MHz 486SL
25-MHz 486SLG
25-MHz 486SLC
50-MHz 486SLC2
33-MHz 486SLG/E
BIOS
AST
Phoenix
Seiko Epson
IBM
AMI
Caciie
8K
IK
IK
16K
IK
Proprietary slot for modem
no
no
yes
NA
yes
Number of PCMCIA slots
2
2
0
2
1
Standard RAM
4MB
4MB
4MB
4MB
4MB
Max RAM
32MB
12MB
8MB
16MB
8MB
Display
Type
active matrix color
monochrome
monochrome
active matrix color
monochrome
lliumlnatlon
backlit
bacWit
backlit
backli!
backlit
Max res
640 X 480
640 X 460
640 X 480
640 X 480
640 X 480
Max colofs
256
NA
NA
256
NA
Shades of gray
NA
16
64 or 32
NA
64
Diagonal screen size
9.5"
9,5"
10"
10.5"
approx. 10"
External monitor support
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Simultaneous
display + external
yes
no
yes
yes
yes
Modular display
no
no
no
no
no
Drives
Size of hard drive
200MB
135MB
120MB
165MB
128MB
Floppy drive placement
right side
left side
right side
front left
left side
input/Output . ;, :
- J -;:•;--:. ^^.;-v^;_oj . . ;-; t ■ -. ^
Parallel ports
1
1
1
1
1
Serial ports
1
1
2
1
1
External keyboard port
mouse/keyboard
mouse/keyboard
mouse/keyboard
no
mouse/keyboard
Mouse port
mouse/keyboard
mouse/keyboard
mouse/keyboard
yes
mouse/keyboard
Pointing device
Integrated keyboard
trackball
mouse/trackball
Logitech TrackMan
TrackPqInt II
integrated Alps
trackball
Expansion unit port
yes
yes
no
yes
yes
External drive port
no
no
parallel port doubles as
ext. drive port
NA
NA
Power
Battery type
nicad
nIcad
nicad
NIMH
NiMH
Hardware power
management
yes
NA
yes
yes
yes
Software power
management
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Software |
In addition to standard
DOS and Windows
AST Online user
manual
NoteJe) software
WinFax Lite, BItCom
Prodigy kit
BitCom and BitFax
NA=not applicable or informa
tion on this feature not avi
allable at press lime
32 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
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The academic program includes comprehen-
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SHENCES
'tlw k'liding cdfif ojlmruing
TEST LAB
486 Notebook Features
NEC UltraLite
Versa 25C
Samsung
NoteMaster
4B6SLC
Tl TravelMate
4000 WmSX/25
Color
Toshiba
T4500C
Zenith Z-Note
425Lnc
Physical Characteristics
Dimensions
2.09- X 11.69- X 9.33-
i.a'x8.5'xir
2.1- X 11- X 8.5-
2-x 1 1.7- X 8.3'
2.r X 11.9- X 8.5-
Weight + transformer
8.1 lbs.
5.9 lbs.
6.3 lbs.
6.9 lbs.
7.5 lbs.
Weigh! of extra battery
1 lb
1,2 lbs
1,35 lbs.
1,5 lbs.
1,ieibs,
System Electronics
CPU manufacturer
Intel
Cyrix
Intel
Intel
Intel
CPU
25-MH2 486SL
25-MHz 486SLC
25-MHz 486SX
25-MHz 486SX
25-MHz 486SL
BIOS
Phoenix
Phoenix
Phoenix
NA
ZDS
Cache
8K
1K
8K
aK
8K
Proprietary slot for modem
no
yes
no
no
yes
Number of PCMCIA slots
2 Type II or 1 Type III
0
0
1
0
Standard RAM
4MB
2MB
4MB
4MB
4MB
Max RAfvl
20MB
8MB
20MB
20MB
SSMB
Display
Type
active matrix color
monochrome
passive color STN
active matrix color
active matrix color
llluminalion
sidelit
backlit
edgeiit
NA
NA
Max res
640 X 480
640 X 480
640 X 480
640 X 480
640 X 480
Max colors
256
NA
256
256
256
Shades of qray
NA
64
NA
NA
NA
Diagonal screen size
9.5-
10-
9,4"
8,5-
8,4-
External monitor support
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Simultaneous
display + external
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Modular display
yes
NA
no
no
yes
Drives
Size of hard drive
179MB
12(]MB
120MB
120MB
2Q0MB
Boppv drive placement
right side
right side
front right
front nght
right side
Input/Output
Parallel por,s
1
1
1
1
Serial ports
1
1
1
1
1
External kevboard port
yes
mouse/keyboard
yes
yes
yes
Mouse port
yes
mouse/keyboard
yes
yes
yes
Pointing device
Microsoft Ballpoint
internal mouse
Microsoft Ballpoint
Microsoft BallPolnl
Logitech TrackMan
Expansion unit port
yes (for docking
station)
no
yes
yes
port replicator
External drive port
no
no
yes
yes
no
Power
Battery type
f^iMH
nicad
nicad
NiMH
NiMH
Hardware power
management
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Software power
management
yes
NA
yes
yes
yes
Software
In addition lo standard
DOS and Windows
remote diagnostics
NA
Tl utilities (Battery Pro.
L^rge Cursor. Drop N'
Go, power
management)
Ultrafont, hypertext
online documentation
Windows for
Workgroups. Network
Client Shells
NA=not applicable or informa
ion on this feature not av
atlable at press time
34
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
vmm
■12550
$16.95
43203 S19.95
ttytb'bisK
i COMPA.M0N
^
52392
$24.95
63001-2 $29.95
(counts as 2 choiccsl
61957-2 S29.95
(counU as 2 cfaolcei)
53645
SI 5.00
67517
S16.95
70565
$19.95
87487
$21.95
87230
$16.95
87148-2 $39.95
(counts as 2 choices)
Take Any
3 BOOKS
For only
SIEACH
as your introduction to the
PC User's Book Club
You simply agree to buy ihree [nore books — al
significant sa\'inEs — wilhiii the nex! 1 2 montlis.
(Publishers' prices shown.)
64024 $19.95
65299-2 $29.95
(counts as 2 chgins)
73125
$22.95
73243-2 $29.95
(counts a^ 2 choices)
MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS In addition to get-
ting 3 txx)ks for only S 1 .00 each when you join,
you'll also receive discounts on books you
choose to purchase. Discounts generally range
from 159? to 30% off Ihc publishers' prices, and
occasionally even more. • Also, you will imme-
diately become eligible to participate in our
Bonus Book Plan, with savings of 50% off the
publishers' prices. ■ Moreover, our books arc
always identical to the publisher's editions.
You'll never receive an "economy edition" with
inferior paper and bindings from us. • At 3-4
week inlerval.s (15 times per year), you will
receive the PC User's Book Club News, describ-
ing the coming Main Selection and Alternate
Selections, together with a dated reply card. • In
addition, up to three times a year, you may
receive offers of Special Selections which will be
made available to a group of select members. • If
you want the Main Selection, do nothing, and it
will be sent to you automatically. • If you prefer
anotlier .selection, or no book at all, simply indi-
cate your choice on the cattl and return it by the
date specified. ■ You will have at least 10 days to
decide. If, because of late mail delivery' of the
News, you should receive a book j'ou do not
want, we guarantee rx;lum postage.
© Newbridge Communications. Inc.
Quickeal'6
46238 $21.95
111
IIYIABASI^
4S607 S19.9S
55947 S19.9S
57762 $24.95
67507
$24.95
67511 $9.95
78360
$14.00
S5904
$19.95
"pC User's Book Club ,
A Newbridge Book Cliih I
3000 Cindel Drive, Delran, NJ 08370-0001 ■
Please accept my iipplication for trial membeiship '
and send me the'three volumes indicated, billing me
only S 1 .00 each, plus shipping and handling. I agree
lo purchase al least ihree additional Selections or
Alternates o\ er the ncAl 1 2 months. Savings gener-
ally range from l5Tr to 3l)9t off The puhlisnerri'
prices. My membership is cancelable any time after
I buy these ^hKc additional books. A shipping and
handling charge is added to all shipments.
No- Risk Guarantee; Ifl am not satisfied — for any
reason — 1 may return my introductory books withm
10 days. My membership will be canceled, and 1
will owe nothing.
3 books for $1.00 each:
fndicaie hv mimhi'r tfjf hiHtks yttu u-anr,
A few expensive boots (a.s noted) count as more
than one choice.
Name
Address .
City
Apt..
State _
Zip.
(Books purchased for professional purposes may tje a
ta^ -deductible expense. Offer gixn in U.S. and Canada
■g<
onlv. Pric&s slightly higher in Canada-)
Compute 9/93
B-BD5
TEST LAB
80486SL CPU running at 25 MHz
as the source of its computing
power and comes witli 4MB of
RAM as the standard comple-
ment; for ttiose wlic need more
oompSi, the RAM can be expand-
ed up to 28MB. No PCMCIA slots
are provided on the 425Lnc.
A few words about the
425Lnc"s comfortable keyboard
are in order here, since it is one
of the best keyboards I've come
across on a notebook or laptop
PC. The key tops themselves are
gently contoured with softly round-
ed edges that fit the fingertips
well. The action is firm, not
"mushy." and fast touch-typists
wiir find it a joy to use. The
embedded numeric keypad and
dedicated cursor direction keys
complement the alphanumeric
keys, and the F and J keys have
raised dots on them for confirm-
ing home row position.
Data input doesn't end with the
keyboard, however, and Zenith
covered thai end well by provid-
ing a Logitech TrackMan pointing
device, which conveniently clips
onto either side of the 425Lnc.
The notebook also comes
equipped with a dedicated PS/2
mouse port, which accepts the
plug from the TrackMan's cable
to make using Windows and oth-
er GUI-based applications more
efficient. The TrackMan's color per-
fectly matches that of the
425Lnc, and the turquoise-col-
ored trackball "works" with the
blue-green color of the Zenith
logo on the notebook.
Color plays a big part in the
425Lnc, since it comes equipped
with a TFT active matrix color dis-
play, which measures almost 8.5
inches diagonally The display is
clear and bright, providing 640 x
480 VGA resolution internally; if
you plug an external SVGA moni-
tor into the 425Lnc. you can use
resolutions of 800 x 600 with 256
colors or 1024 x 768 with 16 col-
ors. While not the largest color
LCD I've seen, the 425Lnc's is cer-
tainly one of the best.
The Z-Note 425Lnc is a good
choice for discriminating users
who don't mind spending a bit
more for a color notebook that
performs well.
circle Reader Service Number 360
For coverage of another
486 notebook, The Gate-
way 2000 Nomad 450DXL,
see the review section.
VIDEO FOR WINDOWS
Our Video for Windows Test records the elapsed time required
lo play D I MB video file in Microsoft AVI formol.
Worse
s 7
Belter
~|
^- \%^S.^\4%\S
%
36 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
SPEAK UP!
Is there a group of hard-
ware or software products
you'd like to see covered in
an upcoming Test Lab? Let
us know by calling (900)
884-8681, extension
7010102 (sponsored by
Pure Entertainment,
P.O. Box 186, Hollywood,
California 90078}. The call
will cost 95 cents per
minute, you must be 18 or
older, and you must use
a touch-tone phone.
A NOTE ON PRICES
With computer products changing
more rapidly than ever and with
options more plentiful than ever,
computer prices can be a tricky
business, indeed.
It pays to keep the following
points in mind:
Street and direct prices can be
considerably lower than list prices.
Shopping around helps you find
the best price.
Because computer technology
evolves rapidly, a product may
have changed by the time our re-
view sees print. A manufacturer may
decide to change the software or
the hard drive, for example.
Because consumers are more
sophisticated than ever about what
they want in computer products and
because manufacturers have
responded with more options and
configurations than ever, one com-
puter model may be subject to doz-
ens of variations, each with a slight-
ly diffarant price.
At COIvlPUTE, we make every ef-
fort to verify prices and differentiate
between the price for a review
configuration and the price for a
standard configuration, it's still a
good idea, however, to call the
manufacturer or vendor to make
sure that the configuration you
want matches the price you have
in mind.
—MIKE HUDNALL
You've heard about tl, you've read about it, now expe-
rience the bfeakthrough of Microsoft's- Flight Simulator'
V. 5.0 with the breathtaking photo-realism of Mallard
Software's new scenery.
Never before seen real-time ray traced Images take
you over terrain so real you'll be checking for a seat belt.
Layers of realistic clouds wisp past your screen just before
connpletely obscuring your vision. Shadows change
occording to longitudinal and latitudinal position as the
seasons and weather change along your course.
The new satellite sceneries will take you over our
nation's capital, Washington D.C. and the natural vistos
of the west coast; Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles ond
San Diego. These images ore so detailed and so real,
you'll see w/hat it rea//y means to have a bird's eye view.
So look for Mallard to bring you the nnost exciting new
products in the coming months that will keep you on the
edge of your seat and above all the rest.
Mjilkd.
For more information or to order coil
l-80aWEB^FEET
e 1 W3 Molbrd SoKvoce, Inc
Circle Reader Service Number 138
NEWS & NOTES
Jill Champion
Leaping lizards
make Arts &
letters Jurassic
ART from
Computer Support
a sure bet.
38
No More Blandsiapes
No more staring at a boring
monitor, now that Screenies
have arrived. These illustrated
frames for your screen, burst-
ing with color, will rescue you
from "the visual monotony*' of
your putty-colored monitor
and "individualize your work-
space at home and at the of-
fice," says Screenies inventor
Rusty Schwartz, who also
owns an art gallery in Sono-
ma, California.
Choosing from the 51
Screenies in the introductory
First Edition Collection, for
whicfi many of America's top
illustrators were commis-
sioned, you can frame your
monitor with a space station,
inquisitive news media, mis-
chievous kitties at the cat
box, children at school, a rain
forest, even Ren & Stimpy —
and much more.
Functional Screenies in-
clude a corkboard for posting
notes, a dry-erase memo
board, and a photo-frame col-
lection. A line of holiday
Screenies is currently in pro-
duction. Each design is mount-
ed on sturdy yet flexible art
board, varnished for protec-
tion, and packaged in a reseal-
able vinyl envelope. At
$11.95 each, the Velcro-af-
fixed frames are infinitely inter-
changeable.
Look for this new trend in
"computerwear" at computer
supply stores and gift and sta-
tionery shops across the U.S.
For more information, contact
Screenies, 18971 Sonoma
Highway, Sonoma, California
95476; (707) 939-6060, (707)
939-6065 (fax).
Double Protection
Notebooks and laptops don't
have to take a beating during
travel. Colorado-based Double-
case manufactures a line of
Eurodesigned attache-style
cases that offer extra protec-
tion for your delicate equip-
ment. What's special about
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
the Doublecase line is that
each piece is engineered as
a case within a case, with a
double wall of tough, high-im-
pact polyethylene that traps a
cushion of air for extra protec-
tion from impact. The most ver-
satile Doublecases are mod-
els NB-360Q and NB-4600,
which allow you to easily cus-
tomize your case interior by re-
moving small cubes of foam.
And these two are big
enough to hold 17- x 11 -inch
notebook computers plus ac-
cessories. The NB-4600 does
double duty as a briefcase,
with extra compartments for
files, pens, and cards. Double-
case prices range from $60
to S200. For more information,
contact Doublecase, 5350
North Academy Boulevard,
Colorado Springs, Colorado
80918; (800) 475-0707, (719)
594-9331 (fax).
Now Hear This
Wouldn't it be nice to tell your
computer what to do? Voice
Blaster from COVOX lets you
do just that by adding power-
ful voice recognition capabili-
ties to popular sound cards
and keystroke-intensive appli-
cations. This is an easy-to-
use, entry-level product rather
than an expensive, high-end
technology that's difficult to
learn and implement. It's de-
signed to increase your per-
sonal productivity by adding
a voice command interface
that can be tied to keyboard
and mouse macros.
Corporate PC users, hobby-
ists, PC game players, and
program developers ail can
add voice commands to
more than 1000 DOS and Win-
dows business, educational,
and entertainment software ti-
tles, including dBASE, Fox-
Pro, Quattro Pro, Quicken,
WordPerfect 5.1, and Auto-
CAD as well as games from
Electronic Arts, GameTek, Lu-
casArts Entertainment, Micro-
Prose, Sir-Tech, and Villa Cres-
po. The system includes a
high-fidelity headset (with a mi-
crophone and speaker) that
connects to your computer
via the parallel port. '\/oice
Blaster also works with a vari-
ety of existing PC microphone
systems and improves record-
ing capabilities on most pop-
ular sound boards. It requires
a Sound Blaster-compatible
sound board. Suggested re-
tail phce is $119,95.
If you would like to know
more, contact COVOX, 675
Conger Street, Eugene, Ore-
gon 97402; (503) 342-1271,
(503) 342-1283 (fax).
Hot Chip, Cool Solution
If your machine uses one of
the new Intel Pentium chips,
you could have a hot problem
on your hands. The elevated
temperature of an uncon-
trolled Pentium can cause sys-
tem halts, UAEs in Windows,
hard drive data corruption,
and total loss of data.
PCubid's Pentium CPU Kool-
er, installed on the Pentium
chip, provides an environ-
ment fully compliant with In-
tel's specifications for thermal
control. Incorporating a cus-
tom-machined heat sink and
a miniature fan, the CPU Kool-
er includes a temperature-
probe port that allows you to
add Radio Shack's Micronta
digital thermometer as an op-
tional accessory for measur-
ing the heat sink temperature
to ensure that the Pentium is
being adequately cooled.
With or without the tempera-
The best sound is not in the cards.
Perk up your
presentations. IVlake
training nnore effective.
And, put some guts
into your gaming
pastimes. Anytime.
Anywhere. Intact, if you
are not a card carrying
member of the computer set, you have to hear
PORT-ABLE Sound Plus from DSP Solutions.
You know, those real smart people who make
simple sound solutions.
PORT-ABLE Sound Plus is the first portable
external sound peripheral to deliver 16 Bit CD
quality music with stereo audio capabilities.
And, since you just plug into your IBlVl PC or
compatible, desktop or laptop parallel port, you
do not need an engineering degree or even a
screwdriver.
When you compare
PORT-ABLE Sound Plus to
any other external sound
peripherals, you will see
why anything else is just
noise, PORT-ABLE Sound
Plus is based on advanced
Digital Signal Processing
technology, so you
will enjoy the greatest
compression capability with the highest quality
sounds. Here is something else that will tie music
to your ears. PORT-ABLE Sound Plus comes
complete with everything you need including a
high fidelity speaker and built-in microphone.
There is an "Audio-in" for a CD or tape player
and a "Line-ouL' for external powered stereo
speakers. Even a built-in smart parallel port pass
through so you can keep printing.
Whether you take your work across the hall
or across the country, with PORT-ABLE Sound
Plus, you have all the cards you need to play
right in your hip pocket. The hinged design lets
you flip up the unit if you are short on desk space
or lap space. And, the power will always be with
you whether you use rechargeable or non-
rechargeable AA batteries. PORT-ABLE Sound
Plus also comes equipped with an AC/DC power
converter,
As a bonus, you will get
all the software you need to
communicate. Like Lotus
Sound "an OLE server for
Windows 3.1. WinReader for
Windows 3.1, a handy text-
tchspeech utility. DSP Solution's
DOSTalk and DOSReader
text-to-speech applications.
Show & Tell For Kids"' for
Windows - an easy to use IVIulfilviedia Authoring
program. It is also Sound Blaster and AdLib
compatible.
Why compromise on quality, portability,
compatibility or affordability? When all the cards
are on the table, PORT-ABLE Sound Plus from
DSP Solutions is your ace in the hole. Suggested
retail is only $198.95.
To order or obtain more information about
PORT-ABLE Sound Plus, write Of call DSP
Solutions, or, contact your local dealer.
Sales Office: 550 iVlain Street, Suite J, Placervllle,
Califomia 95667. Telephone: (916) 621-1787.
Fax (916) 621-2093.
NEWS & NOTES
Balance the budget,
capture your
screens, and cool
your Pentium.
ture probe, however, PCu-
bid's Pentium CPU Kooler
solves the temperature con-
trol problem for the Pentium
chip — and at a very afforda-
ble price. Available direct
from PCubid, the Pentium
CPU Kooler is $39.95, Micron-
ta Digital Thermometers can
be purchased at Radio
Shack stores for about
$15.00. For more information,
contact PCubid, 6705 Silver-
thorne Circle, Sacramento, Cal-
ifornia 95842: (916) 338-1338
{voice or fax).
Jurossic Art
Take a walk through fh/s Juras-
sic park — er, art — and you'll
see velociraptors dancing,
not the vicious killers that run.
loose in Michael Crichton's
bestseller Arts & Letters Juras-
sic ART a complete drawing
program from Computer Sup-
port, incorporates the compa-
ny's new Hex-Art technology,
which allows you to actually
customize its hundreds of col-
orful, detailed clip art images
of dinosaurs. The program al-
so includes an exceptionally
well illustrated informational
booklet. The Age of Dino-
saurs, and an online data-
base that provides instant ac-
cess to dinosaur facts, charts,
paleontoiogical terms, and
maps showing (fay state)
where dinosaur tracks, quar-
ries,-and exhibits can be
found.
What's more, when you pur-
chase Arts & Letters Jurassic
ART, a portion of the sales
will be contributed to "Quest
for the African Dinosaur" spon-
sored by the Institute for the
Study of Earth and Man (IS-
EM). ISEM is raising funds to
bring the fossilized skeleton
of a new type of dinosaur
from Malawi, in Africa, to the
United States, where it will be
reassembled and a model of
it made.
Once Malawisaurus comes
to life in model form, the orig-
inal skeleton will be returned
to the citizens of Malawi and
supervised by Malawian pale-
ontoiogists trained under the
ISEM program.
Arts & Letters Jurassic ART
retails for $59,95. If you
v^ould like more information,
contact Computer Support,
15926 Midway Road, Dallas,
Texas 75244; (214) 661-8960,
(214) 661-5429 (fax).
It Can Be Done
Can the federal budget be bal-
anced? Congress says no,
but consumers say yes. Ban-
ner Blue released its Uncle
Sam's Budget Balancer soft-
ware last fall, offering it free to
all consumers as a public serv-
ice to help increase American
taxpayers' awareness of the
budget crisis. Banner Blue
says the response was out-
standing. Results from the
company's customer survey
show that while many of
those who used the program
are pessimistic about the gov-
ernment's current solutions to
the budget problem, 52 per-
cent of those who tried the pro-
gram have already balanced
the budget themselves. For
those who want to tackle fis-
cal year 1994, Banner Blue is
offering an upgraded version
of Budget Balancer for
S19.99 plus $4.00 shipping
(39500 Stevenson Place,
Suite 204, Fremont, California
94539; 510-794-6850, 510-
794-9152 [fax]).
One response from a
Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, cus-
tomer summed up the feeling
for most users — and probably
most frustrated American tax-
payers: "The program al-
lowed me to see that a work-
able solution to the budget
problem is possible ... so
why can't the government
come up with a soiution?"
Capture It All
Screen shots don't have to be
a hassle. Collage Complete,
the easy new screen-capture
program from Inner Media, is
a complete image-handling
system for both DOS and Win-
dows that captures, converts,
and catalogs images fast. Cap-
ture all or a cropped portion
of a screen — with or without
the cursor — in one of numer-
ous formats supported, includ-
ing PCX, TIF, GIF, Targa,
BMP, and JPEG, in color,
black-and-white, and dithered
or true gray. The program's
unique "countdown" timer al-
lows you to make your picture
just right, and with Preview
mode, you're sure to save the
right screen the first time
around.
Use the image-cataloging
system to group, save, and re-
trieve related images, and
then view them as a collec-
tion of thumbnails for easy se-
lection, conversion, or print-
ing. Borders of any color can
be added, as well as text, rec-
tangles, and other objects. A
powerful set of batch-style op-
erations allows you to modify
and/or print several images in
one operation. Coliage Com-
plete fully supports Windows
3.1 Drag & Drop, Twain scan-
ners, Kodak Photo CD-ROM
images, and much more.
Easy enough for anyone to
use, Collage Complete retails
for S199. Current owners of
Coilage Plus can upgrade di-
rectly through Inner Media for
$59. For more information, con-
tact Inner Media, 60 Plain
Road, Mollis, New Hampshire
03049; (800) 962-2949, (603)
465-7195 (fax).
Companies or public reiations
firms with items suitable for
"News & Notes" sfiouid serjd
information along with a color
slide or transparency to News
& Notes, Attention: Jill Cham-
pion. COr^PUTE, 324 West
Wendover Avenue, Suite 200,
Greensboro, North Carolina
27408. a
40 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
Only ICS j^iies yoii the nmsl pouerjul lliM-coinpnIible .jS65A' coiiipiiter tirailabk' in any Desktop Fitblishing & Design Course!
Get into a money-making career in
Desktop Publishing & Design
The U.S. Dept. of Labor stales that many highly-
qiialifted Desktop Publishing & Design Specialuts are
c'ciniing over $30,000 a year. And the desktop
puhlishirtg field is targeted for higher-thcin-aventge
growth throughout this decade and beyond!
DTP Career
Opporiunilies
Manual
tiivcs \:ilu3b]e advice on
how to LTKile a winning
re.sume, and Ijsis ihe many
places where you can
pursue a cartrt-r in dtskiop
publish inn ^^'^ *lcS!gn,
386SX Personal Computer includes:
* high-speed central ' 1 megabyte RAM
processing unit • high-density 3 1/2"
* 40 megabyte IDE hard drive disk drive
' full expansion capabilities * Microsoft compatible mouse
14 inch VGA monochrome monitor
^.. ...J...., ^..., . .v,^ — ^ , *^,iroT)luc pcndl, J^ AlSilrHjlffiiSr^ /
iiitisf.-' knivtrs. cniscr ;miJ ghic Mick .^ ^0P*^^^V/'
rain at home to enter one of the fastest-growing, highest-paying computer careers! J$¥^
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iHlisf.s knivts. cniscr ;mU ghic Mick
Only ICS, the world's leader in home study,
gives you hands-on training with a high-
perfomiance 386SX computer so you master the
latest innovations in desktop publishing &
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money before you finish your course.
Our computer specialists have spared no
effort in ensuring that this is the finest
desktop publishing & design course available
through home study.
Gimpare ICS training — you get
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Donl be confLiSL'd by other schools that try to
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You receive a 386SX IBM<ompatihle personal
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circle Header Service Numtjer 110
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I SINCE IBM Dtpt- PDZS8JS. 925 Oik Sial. Soanlon, PA iSili
, YES! Plt-'J^^' st'i'l nw fret faa.s ihai itll how I
I can iraln ai home to learn deskiop pubRshin!< and
I design. 1 undersiand there is no ohligation and no
saksman will visit me- S
I Name
I Addre.ss
I Ciiy/Siate_
I I'hcne (
-^ Age .
Apt, * .
.ap —
FEEDBACK
Screens you can use,
sorts you can
count on, ports you
can find, mice
you can program, and
applications you
can nin once a day
Save That Screen
I want to save a screen creat-
ed with a BASIC program in a
format that I can do some-
thing with.
JIM BROWN
ATLANTA, GA
Here's a routine written in DBA
SIC that saves whatever's on
the screen as a BMP file, the
kind of file you could use as a
Windows wallpaper file or
load Into Windows Paintbrush
(or any program that can
load a BMP file) to edit.
SCREEN 12
DIM b(1345j, a&(16)
FOR1 = OT0 15
a&(i} = INT(RND * 64) + INT(RND
* 64) * 256 + INT(RND * 64) *
65536
NEXT
PALEHE USING a&(0)
cur=0
REM Place draw routine here.
REM The following lines are
REM 3 dummy drawing routine
REM just to put something on
REM tlie screen.
FOR I = 0 to 639
LIKE (i, 0)-(l, 480), I AND 15
NEXT
GOSUB SAVESCREEN
END
SAVESCREEN:
GET (0, 0)-(200, 16), b
LINE (0, 0)-(200, 16), 0, BF
LOCATE 1, 1
c& = a&(cur + 15)
b& ^ a&(cur)
a&(cur) = 63 + 256 * 63 + 65536 *
63
a&(cur + 15) = 63
PALEHE USING a&(cur)
INPUT "Filename: ", FILES
a&(cur + 15) = [:&
a&(cur) = 0
PALETTE USING a&(cur)
PUT (0, 0), b, PSET
IFIlleS=""THEN RETURN
OPEN FILES FOR OUTPUT AS #1
RESTORE bmpdata
FOR i = 0 TO 53
READ a: PRINT #1, CHR$(a);
NEXT
FOR i = 0 TO 15
PRINT #1, CHR$(((a&(cur+i)AND
6SS36* 63)/ 65536) ' 4);
PRINT #1, CHR$({(a&(cur+i)AND
256* 63)/ 256) * 4);
PRINT #1, CHRS((a&(cur + i) AND
63) * 4);
PRINT #1, CHRS(O);
NEXT
points = ""
GET(0, Q)-(1D, 479), b
FOR i = 479 TO 0 STEP -1
c = (c + 1)AND15
L1NE(0, 4ai)-(9, I + 1), c, BF
FOR i = 0 TO 639 STEP 2
points = points ^CHR$(PGINT(j,i)
* 16 + P0INT(j + 1, i)}
NEXT
PRINT #1, points; : points = ""
NEXT
CLOSE
PUT (0, 0), b, PSET
aJi(cur) = b&
RETURN
bmpdata:
DATA 66, 77, 118, 88. 2, 0, 0, 0
DATA 0, 0, 118, 0, 0, 0, 40, 0
DATAO, 0,128,2, 0, 0, 224,1, 0
DATAO, 1, 0,4, 0,0, 0, 0,0, 0
DATA 88. 2, 0, 132, 61, 0, 0. 132
DATA 61. 0,0, 0, 0.0, 0, 0.0. 0
DATA D, 0, D, 0
Sort of a Problem
I want to sort a file, but not
based on the first character in
each line. Can you show me
a BASIC program that will ac-
complish this?
CHAR THEUNE
GROSSE POINTE FARMS, Ml
A BASIC program would be
easy enough to write, but why
not just use the MS-DOS com-
mand SORT? Usually SORT
is used to arrange files in al-
phanumeric order according
to the first character in each
line, but this command is far
more flexible than that. To
sort based on the second char-
acter in a line, use the com-
mand S0RT/-I-2. To sort in re-
verse order, use SORT /R.
The newer versions of DOS
have help built in. To see all
the things that SORT can do,
type sort /?.
BASIC Appreciation
I would like to express my
thanks to your publication for
including BASIC in its month-
ly coverage of the computer
world,
I understand that some say
that BASIC is a less-than-use-
ful language, but, speaking
as someone who uses it regu-
larly and is constantly study-
ing it, I am glad that not all
feel this way.
I hope that you will contin-
ue to cover all of the comput-
er world as well and complete-
ly as you have in the past. As
a reader, I never stop learn-
ing from your publication.
DIRK R LAUBER
DELTA. OH
Remouse
My language of choice is BA-
SIC. I decided to make a
menu program for running alt
my other programs. Every-
thing works fine, but it's key-
board-driven, and I'd like to
make use of the mouse in
QBASIC. Is there any way to
do this?
MARIUS ZYDYK
CALGARY, AB
Probably not in QBASIC, but
a routine for accepting
mouse input Into QuickBASIC
ran in "Tips & Tools" in April
1992. Here's a shorter pro-
gram for getting mouse data.
You have to run QuickBASIC
with the library QB.QLB. To
do this, start up QuickBASIC
with the command QB /L
QB.QLB.
REM Original program by
REM Mike Konesky of
REM Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
'SINCLUDE: 'qb.bi'
DECLARE SUB hide ()
DECLARE SUB show 0
DECLARE SUB getm (k7o, x%, v%)
DIM SHARED Inregs AS RegType,
Outregs AS RegType
DO
getm k%, x%, y%
LOCATE 1, 1
42 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
Bad Diwin Bagdad!
You've been cast out of the palace as a beggar. The princess has
turned against you. The palace guards want your head on a skewer,
And you haven't even had breakfast yet. This is not good. Ji It gets
worse. One minute you're fleeing for your very life across roof tops.
The next, you find yourself washed up on a desert island... or amidst
ancient ruins, face to face with a disembodied head (and boy is it
hungiy!), This is really not good.*!* You stumble upon quicksand,
serpents, spikes, magic spells, a skeleton Mth a sick sense of humor,
and then... well... things get just a mite tricky, i* Introducing
Prince of Persia 2®: The Shadoiu & the Flam^^ Some call it a dozen
ammd Arabian Nights movies rolled into one. Actually, it's your worst
Arabian nightmare. J* So get some sleep. Once this
swashbuckler begins, you may never sleep again.
^Bfoderbund
PULSE-QUICKENING ACTION • RICH MOVIE-LIKE STORY AND SOUNDTRACK • INCREDIBLY REALISTIC ANIMATIOK
A CINEMATIC ACTIOK GAME BY JORDAN MECHNER • SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICE; S69.95 (MS-DOS VERSION). SEE VOIR LOCAL DEALER OR CALL
1-800-52 1-6263 .AND REFE R TO CODE 261TO ORDER .AT A 25S; S.AVINGS. • REQUIRES 10 MHZ 286 OR RASTER .\LAC HINE. H ARD DRIVE AN D VGA REQUIRE D.
®1 993 BrBdeibuiK) SolMare. Inc- Pnnca of Persia is a regisiefso ifaitemarti and Ttie Shattev a ne Flame is a ifaUemaft of BfKfeitRirid Software. All rljnts resamd.
Circle Reaider Service Number 245 JV
FEEDBACK
PRINT x%, y%, k%, "Press both
mousE billons to end program."
LOOP WHILE k% <> 3
hide
END
SUB gelm (k%. x%, y%)
lnregs.ax% = 3
CALL INTERRUPT(&H33, Inregs,
Outregs)
x% = Outregs. cx%/ 8 + 1
y% = 0utregs.dx%/8 + 1
k% = Outregs.bx%
END SUB
SUB hide
[nregs.ax% = 2
CALL INTERRUPT(&H33, Inregs,
Outregs)
END SUB
SUB show
Inregs. ax% = 1
CALL INTERRUPT(&H33, Inregs,
Outregs)
END SUB
An Ez in Every Port
In the May Test Lab on tape drives,
product information for the Irwin
EzPort was accidentally left out. The
250MB EzPort lists for $548, and a
120MB version is available for $448.
For more information, contact Maynard
Electronics, a division of Conner Periph-
erals, at (800) 222-5871, Maynard of-
fers a one-year warranty on the
EzPort,
In the July issue, the article on Bl-
OSs is accompanied by the sidebar
"Flash BIOS," which contains the state-
ment that updating a flash BIOS can on-
ly be accomplished with specialized
equipment. That is incorrect. A flash BI-
OS can be upgraded by the user, as-
sisted by a utility that can be download-
ed from the computer manufacturer's
BBS.
THE EDITORS ■
Better 1DAY
Here's a better solution to the problem
of running a program only once a day.
It's better because it doesn't use BA-
SIC, so it accompiishes in about 3000
bytes what your solution ("Feedback,"
April 1993) took 80K to do. There are
three batch files. The first is called
1DAY.BAT
44 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
©ECHO OFF
ECHO I MORE IDATE>I@#.BAT
CALL !@#
IF NOT EXIST 1!#.BAT GOTO DOIT
CALL ll#
IF %LASTDATE%==%TODAY%
GOTO END
:DOIT
ECHO II! %TODAY% > l!#,BAT
REM This is where you should
REM put the commands to
REM run the programs you
REM only want to run once
REM a day,
ECHO.
:END
SET TODAY=
SET LASTDATE=
The second batch file is called CUR-
RENT, BAT
SET T0DAY=%4
The third batch file is called MI.BAT.
SET LASTDATE=%1
You have to have More and each
of these batch files in your path
for the program to work. Any programs
you list where the REM statements
appear in 1DAY.BAT will run only
once a day.
R C MARCUS
ST THOMAS, ON
Thank you for your elegant solution.
Do you have a question about
hardware or software? Or have you
discovered something that could help
other PC users? If so. we want to
hear from you. Call our special
'■Feedback'' line: (900) 884-8681.
extension 7010201 (sponsored by
Pure Entertainment. P.O. Box 186.
Hollywood. California 90078). The
call will cost 95 cents per minute,
you must be 18 or older and you must
use a touch-tone phone. Or write
to "Feedback" in care of this
magazine. Readers whose letters or
calls appear In "Feedback" will
receive a free COMPUTE baseball cap-
while supplies last. We regret that we
cannot provide personal replies to tech-
nical questions. D
EOrrOBIAL
Editor ClitTon Kafnes
Art Director Robin C Case
Managing Editor Davtd English
Features Editor RobGrl Bixby
Reviews Editor Mil^e Hudnail
Editor, Oazelte Tom Netsel
Editor, Amiga Resource Denny Atltin
Senior Copy Editor Karen Huffman
Copy Editor Margaicl Ramsey
Ediloria! Assistant Pclty Crilpam
Contributing Editors Sylvia Graham, Edde Huffman.
Tony Roberts, Karen Srepak
interns Phillip Morgan, Lisa Young
ART
Assistant Art Director Konnett^ A. Hardy
Designer Katie f^urdock
Copy Production Manager Terry Cash
PRODUCTICW
Production Manager De Poller
Traffic Manager Barbara A. Wii^ams
PROGRAMMING S ONLINE SERVICES
Manager Troy Tucker
Praarammera Bruce M. Bowden
Sieve Draper
Braillev M Small
ADMINISTRAnON
President, COO Kalhy Keeton
Executive Vice President, William Tynan
Operations
Edilonal Director Keith Ferrell
Operations Manager David Hensley Jr
Office Manager Sybil Agee
Sr, Administrative Assistant Julia Fleming
Administrative Assistant Lisa G. Casinger
Heceplionist LeWarida Fox
ADVERTISINQ
Vice President, Peier T Johnsmeyef
Associate Publisher (212) 496-6100
ADVERTISING SALES OFFICES
East Coast Full-Page and Standard Display Ads— Peter T Johns-
meye'. Cfiris Coemo; COf^PUTE Publications international Ltd .
t965 Broadway, Netv York. NY 10023. (212) 49S-6100 Southeast—
Harf«l Rogers. 503 A St., SE, Wastiington, D.C, 20003, |202| 646-
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182. Avenlura. FL 33180: (305) 933-1467. (305) 933-S302 (fSX),
MkJwest— Full-Page and standard [Display Ads— Starr Lane, Narbn-
al Accounts -Uanager. ni East Wacker Dr . Suite SOB. Chicago,
IL 60601. (312)819-0900 (312)819-0813 (FAX). Detroit-Jim Cbau-
vin. 1400 N. Woodward Ave . Suite 101, BloomliBid Hills. Ml 48304:
(313) 433-1016; (313) 433-1201 (Fan); No'thwBSt— Jerry
ThomDson. Jules E. Tbompson Co., 1290 Howard Ave.. Suile 303.
BurlingamB. CA 94010: (416) 348-8222 Lucille Dennis, (707) 451-
8209 Soulhuesl— Ian LingMJOd. 6728 Eton Ave , Canoga ftrk. CA
91303: (816) 992-4777. PrcOucI Mart Ads— Lucille Dennis. Jules
E. Thompson Co 1^0 HaA'arrl Ave . Suite 303. Burlingame, CA
34010: (707) 451-8209 U.K s Europe-Beverly Wardaie, Fiat 2, 10
Stafford Terrace. London V/87 BH. England. 011-4711-937-1517
Japan— Inlergrcup Cornmunlcations. Ltd . Jiro SemOa. President
3F Tiger Bidg 5-22 Shiba-koen. 3-Ctiome. Wmaio ku, Tokyo 105,
Japan; 03434-2607. Classified Ads— Mana Wanasen. i Vtooes Ci.,
Huntinglon, NY 11743; (TEL'FAX) (516) 757.9662
THE CORPORATION
Bob Guccione (chairman and CEO)
Kathy Keetoh (wee-chairman)
David J- Myersan (president and CEO)
William F. Marlieb (presidenl. marketing, sales and circulation)
Palrick J. Gavin (senior vice president and CFO)
Rcfiard Cohen (execulrve vice president and treasurer)
Frank DeVino (executive vice president, graphics director)
Jim Martise (executive vice president, circulation)
Jeri Winston (executive vice p:esidenl, corporate services)
Hal Halpner (vice president, director of manufacturing)
Wifllam Tynan (vice president, lecfinalogy and information
services)
ADVERTISING AND IMARKETING
Sr VP/Corp D.I,, New Business Development Beverly Wardale; VP/
D.r , (3roup A(Jveriising Sales: Nancy KesienbauTi. Sr VP/South-
ern and Midwest Advertising Dir ; Peler CSoidsman Oifices: New
York: 1965 Broadway. New York. NY 10023-5965, Tel (212) 496-
6100. Telex 237128 Midvwsi- 111 East Wacker Or . SuHe 506, Chca-
go. IL 60601; (312) 819-00)0. (312) 819-0813 ((!«(). South: 1725
K St NftV Suite 903. V/ashngion, DC 20006. Tel (202) 728-0320.
West Coast. 6728 Eton Ave.. Canoga Park, CA 91303 Tel. (318)
992-4777 UK and Europe' Rat 2. 10 Stafford Terrace, London Wa7
BH.EnQland; Tel. 011-4711-937-1517 Japan InierQfoup Jiio Sem-
ba. Telex J254691GLTYO. Fax 434-5970, Korea: Kaya Advtsog.,
Inc., Rm. 402 Kunahin Annex B/D 251-1. Dohwa Dong, Mapo-Ku,
Seoul, torsa (121), Tel. 719..6906, Telex K32144Kay8ad.
ADUINISTRATION
Sr. VP, CFO; Patrick J. Gavin; EVP/Coiporate Sereices: Jen Win-
slon; VP Orector Sales Pronxjtions; Beveny Greiper; Dr. t^e,vsstand
Cireulat-Oh: Paul Rolnick; Dlr,, Newsstano Operations: Joe Gaho;
Dir Subscription Circuiat'on: Beatrice J Hanks, VP Director of Re-
search: Rotjert Rattner; Acf^eriising Production Orector Charlene
Smith. Advertising Producton Traffic Mgr: Pafn Rizk, Traffic D<r:
William Hart3uu: Dir,. Budget and Finance: Tom Maley; F^oduction
Mgr: Tom Stinson; Assi Production Mgr Nancy Rice; fi^gr., Inler-
nailonai Div.: George Rajas; Exec, Asst, to Bob Quccione; Diane
0 Connell, Exec. Assl. to David J, Myerson: Teri Pisani; Special
A5st to Bob Gucc'one: Jane Homirsh
"BLTEMBBTS IMClUBBSm UBST IMPBiSSi
-COMPUTER GAMINS WORLD
■J-'f-ft ::■
' "— ' '"^SHSfSS
ASTONIBHINB 3-0
RAY-TnACED BRAPHICB,
DIGITIZED EXPLOSIONB
AND SPeCIAt. EFFECTS.
CHOOSE FROM THREE DIFFERENT ULTRABOTS, EACH
WITH ITS OWN FULLY INTERACTIVE, SIMULATION-
STYLE COCKPIT.
VERY tMASe VOU SEE HERE 15 AN
ACTUAL SCHEEIM GRAPHIC. ANC
LOOKS AREN'T EVERYTHING.
THERE'S ALSO THE FEBLINO OF HANOS-ON
CONTROL OVER A FLEET OF FIQHTING
MACHINES, THE SOU/MO OF PLASMA CAN-
NONS TAKING OUT AN ENEMY BASE, THE
EXPERfEA/CE OF ALL-OUT BATTLE AGAINST
STAGGERING OOOS. ULTRABOTS tS A SCi-Fl
SIMULATION SO FRIGHTENINGLY
REAL, YOU WILL BELIEVE THE jJL m^^ 5
FATE OF THE PLANET LIES "■
IN YOUR HAN05. . J^^SL ~-. \
FROM NOVALOBIC, THE CREATORS OF COMANCHE^'
MAXIMUM OVERKILL'"
Ulcrabacs is a nraaemerk of ^S^^ii"--
NovsLogic. Inc. i'-tSSS, Carrtanche
and Maiwmum QveiS<in are cracja-
morka of NQvstogic. Inc. ^LEC 1" R 1'5 N" K' \\\
Circle Reader Seivitre Numtxr 236
f
■4,. -'"
WINDOWS WORKSHOP
Clifton Karnes
With DoubleSpace.
you can check
on your free disk
space and the
compression ratio
tor any file
or group ol files
from inside
Fite Manager.
Last month, I promised to
talk about DOS 6's Dou-
bleSpace, especially as it
compares to Stac Electron-
ics' Stacker. I've been using
Stacker since version 1.0,
and it's always performed
flawlessly. I have to admit
that I was a little queasy
about trying a new compres-
sion product, but I wanted to
test DoubleSpace and com-
pare it with Stacker, so I decid-
ed to give it a try.
For Stacker users, Micro-
soft has a $10 product that
will convert a Stacker-com-
pressed volume to a Dou-
bleSpace one (there's a cou-
pon in your DOS manual). 1
had hoped to use that prod-
uct to convert my Stacker
drive to a DoubleSpace
drive, but it didn't arrive in
time, so I did the conversion
the hard way,
Here's the procedure I fol-
lowed: I backed up my hard
disk to tape, reformatted the
disk, installed DoubleSpace,
and restored the tape back-
up. It was not quite as simple
as this sounds, but that's the
gist of it. Since I wanted to
run some benchmarks on my
Stacker volume before I refor-
matted, I first optimized the
Stacker dhve and ran my da-
tabase benchmarks and a
suite of Windows programs. I
ran each benchmark three
times and averaged the
scores.
Next, I backed up my hard
disk. With Stacker, my hard
drive is about 400MB, and
the backup took about two
hours. Then I created a DOS
6 bootable floppy and refor-
matted my hard disk with the
/s option to make the disk
bootable.
Before I could install Double-
Space, I needed to restore all
the files I use that create vir-
tual drives, because these
need to be active when Dou-
bleSpace runs so it can intel-
ligently choose a drive letter
for itself. This meant that I
had to reinstall my network
files so the network drives
would be available. I had to
run Windows and build a per-
manent swap file, because
after DoubleSpace was in-
stalled, this would not be pos-
sible. And I had to restore
all my CD-ROM software so
the CD-ROM drives could be
installed.
After these files were re-
stored, I booted up DOS (with
Its CD-ROM drives) and
togged on to the network.
Next, I ran DoubleSpace and
followed the onscreen instruc-
tions to build a compressed vol-
ume. DoubleSpace works like
Stacker in that it creates a com-
pressed drive that in reality is
a hidden system file on your
physical drive. After the Dou-
bleSpace (or Stacker) driver is
installed, this file looks just like
another drive to your comput-
er. Traditionally, the real drive
is called the physical drive,
and the compressed drive is
called the logical drive. This log-
ical drive is, as mentioned
above, really just a large file on
your physical drive. After Dou-
bleSpace installed itself, my
drive 0 was a logical drive,
and my physical drive be-
came drive E.
Next, I restored the rest of
my files (this took about four
hours), and I was ready to go.
I wanted to run my bench-
marks using DoubleSpace,
but just to be on the safe
side, I optimized the Dou-
bleSpace volume first and
then ran the programs.
The results were about
what I'd expected. Dou-
bleSpace proved to be essen-
tially as fast as Stacker (Stack-
er averaged 2 percent faster,
which I consider insignifi-
cant), and it provided about
the same compression ratio —
1 .8 to 1 .
I have been running Dou-
bleSpace for about two
months, and it's performed
without a hitch.
For Windows users, Dou-
bleSpace does two things.
First, it gives you more disk
space for disk-hungry Win-
dows applications. Second, it
lets you check on your free
disk space and the compres-
sion ratio for any file or group
of files from inside File Manag-
er. If you click on the Dou-
bleSpace icon or select
Tools, DoubleSpace Info,
you'll see a 3-D pie chart of
your hard disk indicating free
space. Click on More, and
you'll see the compression ra-
tio of the selected file or files.
Pretty cool.
DoubleSpace has one big
advantage over Stacker that I
haven't discussed so far, and
that's that the driver is loaded
before your system runs CON-
FIG.SYS. This means that
with DoubleSpace there's no
more problem synchronizing
CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEX-
EC.BAT files on both your log-
ical and physical volumes (usu-
ally drives C and D, respective-
ly). The next version of Stack-
er should incorporate this en-
hancement, too.
So what do you do about
DoubleSpace? If you're al-
ready using Stacker, there's lit-
tle reason to switch, especial-
ly since it will cost you $10 if
you use the conversion pro-
gram. If you have DOS 6 and
haven't installed a compres-
sion program yet, go ahead
and install DoubleSpace, and
reinstall a couple of those big
applications you've had to
knock off your hard disk in
the last year. □
46 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
GDnnPUTE's
ULTIMATE POWER DISK
Don't miss the dazzling, ready-to-run DOS and Windows
programs on this issue's disk!
Binary Editor
Edit disk fiies
and programs with
ttiis full-screen
binary file editor.
> ; VLUHTSsG(t1PUTC^Hrf3\E*tMirJ»»f<M>t
The Runner
Utilities
nese neat Windows
utilities include
GroupRunner,
WinRunner,
TaskRunner, and
RightClick.
■H .__ _. n.m>i««i« l.|-
S. dHii. W-U. b* '-^
•1 nan l-l*
^ ^ 0 m
?! # £i Bf
« p le m € E
jg El <$ ■ i^ es
M BQ
CirpBrate Logo Sen cm Sbvh
JSWP»«»OT»<.. ]
3lMii*M«fe i«pltn(t»n Is nftitnri.
Grow Prompit
Grow Prompt's
growing prompt
gives you a
visible reminder
that you're
operating in a
COMMAND,COf^/l
sfiell.
Corporate
Screen Saver
Use your own
logo as a
Windows 3.1
screen-
saver image.
Subscribe to COMPUTE'S PC Disk, and every other month — six times
a year — you'll receive a disk chock-full of great DOS and
Windows shareware and freeware programs, including powerful
applications, sleek utilities, and eye-popping graphics.
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TIPS & TOOLS
Edited by Richard C, Leinecker
Finding a Debug
alternative
and skipping Uie
perforations
Easier Debug
I've had a number of re-
quests for instructions on how
to create those Debug
scripts we publish. If you
know a little assembly lan-
guage, it's not too hard. Just
write a small program that
does something useful; then
convert it to a text file that we
can publish. Check out previ-
ous issues to see what the for-
mat looks like. Some of you
have done just that, and we
appreciate it very much. The
"Tips & Tools" column
wouldn't be much without the
readers' input.
Other readers have written
in saying that using Debug is
awkward. I agree. Not only
that, but DR DOS doesn't
even have Debug.
I've spent a considerable
amount of time addressing
both of these issues. I wrote a
program that does two
things. It makes typing in
those Debug scripts easier
and even gives you an auto-
matic checksum amount. It'll al-
so give you the tools you
need to create the scripts
from your own programs. Be-
sides that, I've collected a
bunch of old programs for ex-
amples. The last thing I put to-
gether was a text file explain-
ing the entire process.
The program, under the
name TIP_TOOL.Z!P is avail-
able on GEnie, CompuServe,
and America Online.
RICHARD C. LEINECKER
REIDSVILLE. NC
Skip the Perfs
The rather long BASIC pro-
gram in answer to Abigail
Furth's question published in
"Feedback" in March 1993
seems to be overkill. All she
wanted to know was how to
skip the perforations while cop-
ying a file to PRN. A simple
one-line program will do the
trick.
tvtany 9-pin printers emu-
late the Epson FX line of print-
48 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
ers. These printers all skip the
perforations when sent the
three-byte command se-
quence Esc-N-#. The #
stands for the number of
lines to skip over. I like 8, so
the printer sequence I send is
Esc-N-8. You can use the fol-
lowing BASIC program to do
this.
LPRINT CHRS(27) + '
+ CHRS(8)
W
The program can be com-
piled and put somewhere in
your path. If you don't have a
compiler but QBASIC is in
your path, save the program
as SKIPPERF.BAS and run it
with the line QBASIC /RUN
SKIPPERF. You'll also need to
add a line to the program con-
taining the command SYS-
TEM, which returns you to the
system. Here's the program if
you plan to use this ap-
proach.
LPRINT CHRS(27) + '
+ CHRS(8)
SYSTEM
W
If you don't want to use BA-
SIC, you can create a special
file and send it to the printer.
You'll have to use Debug to
create a three-byte binary
file. Type the following. In
these examples, the italic text
is what the computer prints;
the roman text is what you
should type.
debug sklpperf.dat
File not found
-e1Q0 1B4E08
RCX
CX 0000
:3
-W
Wriling 0003 bytes
■Q
To make your printer skip the
perforations, type {or put in a
batch file) copy sklpperf.dat
prn.
You can reset your printer
to its default settings with the
following BASIC program.
LPRINT CHR$(27) + "@"
Or you can use the file creat-
ed with the following Debug
script.
debug restprnt.dat
File not iounti
-e 100 18 40
RCX
CX 0000
:2
-W
Writing 0002 bytes
■Q
E STUART JOHNSON
ATHENS, AL
Batch Version of Deletex
The DELETEX.COM program
which was phnted in the Jan-
uary 1993 issue of COMPUTE
inspired this batch file,
ERASENOT.BAT. Much like
Richard C. Leinecker's crea-
tion, this batch file erases eve-
rything in the current directo-
ry except the files you speci-
fy. The advantage over DE-
LETEX.COM is that it's easier
to type it in and make chang-
es. The disadvantage is that
it's kind of slow.
ECHO OFF
IF "%r' ==
GOTO USAGE
REM Here, we create a temporary
REM directory to hold all of
REM the files in this directory
REM that we don't want to delete.
REM II this directory name
REM conflicts with anything in
REM your system, use another
REM name that doesn't.
MD \TEMP
rDOCOPY
COPY %1 \TEMP
REM We do a shift so that up
REM to nine arguments can be
REM used.
SHIFT
IF "%1" = "" GOTO DONE
GOTO DOCOPY
:DONE
REM First, we delete everything
REIVI in the current directory.
ECHO Y I DEL *.*
REfA Then, we copy ojr temporary
REIVI files tiack here.
COPYUEMPv*.*
REM Now, we delete the files in
REM the temporary directory.
ECHO Y IDELUEMPV*.*
REM And last, we remove the
REM temporary directory.
ROMEMP
GOTO END
:USAGE
ECHO Usage: ERASENOT flle-
mask1 filemask2 . . . filemask9
ECHO This batch file erases all but
the given file masks.
:END
ILYA TROYCHANSKY
BROOKLYN, NY
Files Thof Read Themselves
It never fails. I compress col-
lections of files and send
them to people, and they call
back asking questions. To
solve this problem, I include
README files. Then they call
and ask how to read the
README files.
There are lots of other exam-
ples where groups of files
need some explanation. You
might be distributing disks to
clients with records, pro-
grams, or batch files. Or you
might upload files to an online
service or BBS.
I have a solution that lets
you create a program called
MAKEREAD.COM. To use it,
just create a file called READ-
ME.TXT in the current directo-
ry and then run MA-
KEREAD.COM. It'll create a
file called README.COM that
displays a text file and allows
users to cursor up and down
through it. Press Esc to quit.
You can type Makeread in
using the DOS Debug com-
mand (or with Com2hex, part
of TIP_TOOL.ZIP, which is
available for download on
many online services). Make
sure the DOS program called
Debug is in your path or the
current directory. In these ex-
amples, the italic text is what
the computer prints; the re-
man text is what you should
type. One way to be sure you
get these programs exactly
right is to have someone
read the numbers to you. An-
other way is to read the num-
bers into a tape recorder and
then play them back as you
enter the program code. This
program will only work with col-
or monitors.
debug makeread.com
File not found
-efOO BACE Ot BS 00 3D CD 21
-e 103 72 43 SB F8 BA C3 01 2B
-ellO C9 B4 3C CD 21 72 36 SB
-e118 D8BA51 01 B9 72 00 B4
■e120 40 CD 21 B9 01 00 87 FB
-el 28 B4 3F CD 21 OB CO 74 08
■e130 87 FB B4 40 CD 21 EB EE
-e138 87 DFCB 06 51 01 1A B4
■e140 40 CD 21 B4 3E CD 21 SB
-e148 DFB4 3ECD21 B4 4C CD
-e150 21 83 00 B8 8E CO B4 01
-e158 B9 09 69CD10 2BC9 2B
-elBO FF B8 20 IF 51 B9 DO 07
-e1B8 F3 AB59 BE 72 01 2B DB
-e170 2BED2B D2 8B FD AC 3C
-e178 1A74 IE 3C0D74 07 3B
-e180 CB7F F3 AB EB FO 3B CB
-el 88 7F 04 81 C5 AO 00 43 46
-8190 8BD3 2B D1 30 R^ 19 75
-e198 DB2AE4CD16 3C IB 74
-elaO 19 80 FC 50 75 08 80 FA
-e1a8 19 7CEE 41 EB B1 80 FC
-e1b0 48 75 E6 OB C9 74 E2 49
-elbS EB A5 BS03 00 CD 10 B4
-eIcO 4C CD 21 52 45 41 44 40
-e 1C8 45 2E 43 4F 40 00 52 45
-e Ida 41 44 40 45 2E 54 53 54
-e1dS 00
-RCX
CX 0000
:00D9
-W
Writing 00D9 bytes
-Q
The checksum value (see the
July 1993 "Tips & Tools" for
the new Checksum program)
is 25423.
RICHARD C, LEINECKER
REIDSVILLE, NC
Viewing ZIPs in Windows
I use archives to compress
files to floppy disks. From
DOS it's easy to see what's in
the compressed file; you just
type pkzip -vn zip file I more.
From Windows it's harder; nor-
mally, I shell to DOS because
it's easier than using the Fife
Manager to run the program.
I solved the problem by cre-
ating a batch file called
ZIRBAT
PKUNZIP -VN %1
PAUSE
I MORE
While in the Windows File Man-
ager, highlight a ZIP file.
From the File menu select As-
sociate. Then choose the
Browse button to select
ZIP.BAT from the directory
where it exists. Now, to view
ZIP files, just double-click on
those files.
STEVEN R. PETERS
BETHLEHEM, PA
Correction
In the October 1992 "Tips &
Tools," a tip was published
with the name Andeep
Tamlianiiar. The name that ap-
peared should have been San-
deep Tamhanl<ar. Our apolo-
gies for the mistake.
RICHARD C- LEIMECKER
REIDSVILLE, NC
If you have an Interesting tip
ttiat you think would help oth-
er PC users, send It along
with your name, address, and
Social Security number to
COMPUTE'S Tips & Tools,
324 West Wendover Avenue,
Suite 200, Greensboro, North
Carolina 27408. For each tip
we publish, we'll pay you $25-
$50. All tips submitted be-
come the property of General
Media International. D
Creating self-typing
README nies
and peeking tiirough
Windows to
see what's inside
ZIP files
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 49
INTRODOS
Tony Roberts
These two new
disk-management
commands
make it easier to
work in DOS 6.
MOVE AND
DELTREE
They've been a long time com-
ing, but Microsoft's new DOS
lias a couple of important disk-
management tools — Move
and Deltree — that shouldn't
be overlooked.
Unless you already have
some kind of a file mover on
your system, getting a file
from one place to another is a
three-step process: First, you
copy the file to its new loca-
tion; second, you check to see
that the copy was successful;
and third, you delete the file
from its original location.
With [X>S 6, you can accom-
plish the move in a single com-
mand. The syntax is Movefile-
name destination.
To move more than one file,
you can use wildcards, as in
Move *.TXT C:\TXTFILES. If wild-
cards won't work, explicitly
name all the files you want to
move, separating t he source fi le-
names with commas; Move
AUTOEXEC.BAK.CONFIG.BAK
C:\BACKUPS.
DOS informs you if the des-
tination subdirectory doesn't ex-
ist and asks if you want to cre-
ate it. This feature saves time,
but it comes back to haunt
you if you attempt to move
files to the root directory For
some reason, DOS doesn't
know that the root directory ex-
ists and asks. Make directory
c:\? [yn]. Although you know
the root directory exists, press
Y and the files will be moved.
Move, like its older cousin
Copy, doesn't warn you if the
files you're moving will over-
write files of the same name.
This requires that you know
what files exist on the destina-
tion end of your move.
With Move, it's also possi-
ble to rename a file as it's be-
ing moved, but only if you're
moving a single file. The syn-
tax that accomplishes this is
Move OLDNAME.EXT C;\DEST
XNEWNAME.EXT
Use this trick to rename a
subdirectory, too. For exam-
ple, use Move C;\SEP93
C;\OCT93 to rename your
monthly project subdirectory
Note that Move isn't as com-
plex as the "prune and graft"
commands found in some file
managers. All Move can do is
change the name of the sub-
directory; it can't change its po-
sition on the directory tree. To
relocate a directory full of files
on the directory tree, create
the new subdirectory, use
Move to put the files in the
new location, and then re-
move the old subdirectory
Since the old subdirectory
is now empty, it will be easy to
remove it the traditional way —
with RD, However, when cir-
cumstances call for you to de-
lete subdirectories full of files,
you'll want to use DOS 6's
Deltree command.
Prior to DOS 6, removing a
subdirectory could be a
chore. DOS wouldn't remove
a subdirectory containing
files, so you had to erase the
files before using RD. If the
subdirectory contained hid-
den files, the DOS Erase com-
mand missed them, but RD
knew they were there and re-
fused to delete the directory
So, you had to use the Attrib
command to make the hidden
files visible and then erase
them before you could remove
the subdirectory. If you had
subdirectories nested within
subdirectories, you had to
start at the lowest level and re-
peat this process as you
worked your way up,
Deltree untangles this
sticky web. Typing deltree
path wipes out the subdirecto-
ry, all of its files — including sys-
tem, hidden, and read only —
and the subdirectories nested
within it.
It's powerful, but danger-
ous, so make certain you
know what you're doing. Even
Undelete running in Delete Sen-
try mode can't bring back files
that were stored in deleted sub-
directories.
Normally, unless you use
the /y switch, Deltree will ask
for a confirmation before it
takes any action. Sometimes,
though, it returns to the DOS
prompt without saying any-
thing. This simply means that
Deltree didn't find the subdirec-
tory you specified. You may
have made a typo as you en-
tered its name or failed to iden-
tify the entire pathname. Try
again. If you're successful,
you'll receive a confirmation re-
quest followed by the mes-
sage Deleting pathname. . . .
Deltree suffers from some oth-
er anomalies. First, if you try to
delete the current subdirectory,
Deltree's messages will indi-
cate that it's being done, but
the operation won't be com-
plete. The files and any subdi-
rectories will be removed, but
the active subdirectory won't
be deleted. Second, if the sub-
directory you're removing has
any of its attributes set, Deltree
thinks the subdirectory is a file
and prompts you with Delete
file "filename"? [yn]. Although
the prompt is erroneous,
Deltree takes the expected ac-
tion and deletes the specified
subdirectory
Finally, either one of these
commands can help you cor-
rect an illegal-directory-name
problem. For example, al-
though spaces aren't allowed
in directory names, some ap-
plications or installation pro-
grams manage to create direc-
tory names with spaces in
them.
To delete such a directory
with Deltree, place quotation
marks around the directory
name when typing the Deltree
command; deltree "93 data".
If you [ust want to change
the directory name so it's le-
gal, use Move, again surround-
ing the illegal name with quo-
tation marks when you enter it;
move "93 data" data. n
50 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
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The WinBook comes with the power and speai needed
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HARDWARE CLINIC
Mark Minasi
Use DOS 6's
MultiConlig and
batch files
to supercharge your
AUTOEXECBAT
anil CONFIG.SYS files.
DOS 6's
MULTICONFIG,
PARTS
In the August column. I sug-
gested one way to easily com-
bine a number of AUTOEX-
EC. BATs into a single MultiCon-
fig-ready file. If ycu tried exper-
imenting with your system, per-
haps you learned that the con-
figuration names get passed
to AUTOEXEC.BAT in the
same case that you wrote
them in CONFIG.SYS. If the
configuration name is interlnk.
don't write the IF statement as
IF %config% = = INTERLNK
GOTO . . . , for that'll never
match. The case must match;
the statement would have to
be IF %config%==interlnk
GOTO ....
If you're batch-savvy, you
may know about the CALL
statement. The CALL state-
ment makes it possible for one
batch job to activate another
batch job without DOS's forget-
ting about the original batch
job. For you nonbatchers, ac-
tivating one batch program
from inside another doesn't or-
dinarily cause DOS to finish
the first batch job once the sec-
ond has been run. For exam-
ple, assume that you have a
batch job called X.BAT that
looks like this.
©echo off
ecfio Message from X
Y
echo Last message from X
Also, assume that you have a
batch program called Y.BAT
that looks like this.
©echo off
echo Message from Y
Running X will result in the
screen's showing this.
54 COMPUTE
Message from X
Message from Y
SEPTEMBER 1993
There will be no Last mes-
sage from X.
That's because starting
one batch program from in-
side another batch program
causes C0MMAND.COM—
the program that executes
batch programs — to load
Y.BAT in anticipation of execut-
ing it and to accidentally over-
write X.BAT in COM-
MAND,COM's memory, As a
result, when Y ends, COM-
MAND.COM returns to the
command prompt, not to the
finishing lines of X.BAT If, on
the other hand, the line Y that
stands by itself in X.BAT is re-
placed by CALL Y, COM-
MAND.COM will remember
X.BAT and the output will be
as follows.
Message from X
Message from Y
Last message from X
The CALL command will,
then, provide an alternative to
inserting the various AUTOEX-
EC.BATs physically into the
master AUTOEXEC.BAT To
apply this, recall the AUTOEX-
EC.BAT that we ended up
with in August looks iike this,
with three sections,
©ECHO OFF
IF %config%==standard GOTO
STANDARD
IF %config%==maxmemory GOTO
MAXMEMORY
IF %CDnfig%==wingcomm GOTO
WINGCOfVIM
:STANDARD
PROMPT $P$G
PATH C:\DOS
DOSKEY
PRINT IQ
SMARTDRV
GOTO END
iMAXMEMORY
PROMPT $P$G
PATH C:\DOS
LH DOSKEY
GOTO END
:WINGCOMM
CD\GAMES\WC2 WC2
GOTO END
The standard section is the
stuff that you usually use, the
interlnk section sets up an In-
terlnk server, and the wing-
comm section sets up a con-
figuration that aliows Wing
Commander II — a very memo-
ry-intensive game — to run.
But instead of merging these
files, imagine that you have
batch files called STAN-
DARD.BAT MAXMEM.BAT
and WINGCOMM.BAT Inside
the sections you could simply
insert CALL STANDARD,
CALL MAXMEM, or CALL
WINGCOMM. The final AU-
TOEXEC.BAT look like this.
©ECHO OFF
IF %config%=slan()ard GOTO
STANDARD
IF %config%==n!iaxmemory GOTO
MAXMEMORY
IF %config%==wingcamm GOTO
WINGCOMM
:STANDARD
CALL STANDARD
GOTO END
:MAXMEMORY
CALL MAXMEM
GOTO END
:WINGCOMM
CALL WINGCOMM
GOTO END
:END
Now, there's an even more
compact way of doing this
that involves just doing the
CALL statements from inside
the IFs; the AUTOEXEC.BAT
would look like this.
©ECHO OFF
IF %config%==standard CALL
STANDARD
IF %config%==maxmemory CALL
MAXMEM
IF %con(ig%==wingcDmm CALL
WINGCOMM
That's probably an accepta-
ble alternative, and it certain-
ly makes converting a bunch
of configurations to a single
AUTOEXEC.BAT easier, but it
won't work if the %config%
variable gets altered by one
of the batch files. The
chances of that happening
are small, so this may be the
simplest method of unifying
AUTOEXEC. BATs for most
people.
If you're a batch expert, a
look at the amalgamated
batch file above will probably
lead you to notice that I
could've reorganized some of
the statements to make the
AUTOEXEC.BAT smaller.
That's certainly true, and if
you want to do that for your
AUTOEXEC.BAT go ahead. I
didn't because I like the clear-
ly defined separate areas for
the different configurations.
Making It Simple
Let's get back to the CON-
FIG.SYS part of MultiConfig.
In my example, I end up with
a CONFIG.SYS that looks like
this.
[menu]
menuilem normal, Standard setup
menuitem interink, Setup witfi
interink driver
menudefault normal,2
[narmall
FILES=60
BUFFERS=30
STACKS=9,256
DEVICE=C:\D0S\KIIV1EM.SYS
DOS=HIGH
[inJerInk]
FILES=BO
BUFFERS=3D
STACKS=9,256
DEV!CE=C:\D0S\HIIV1E1V1.SYS
DOS=HIGH
OEViCE=C:\D0S\INTERLNK,EXE
You'll notice that a group of
statements is common to
both configurations. There are
just a few statements that you
can expect ail configurations
to have— perhaps an essen-
tial device driver, FILES/BUFF-
ER 8/ LASTDR IV E/STACKS
statements, and the like. In
the case of my example con-
figuration, the commands
that are common to the two
configurations are as follows.
FILES=60
BUFFERS=30
STACKS=g,25B
DEVICE=C:\D0S\HI!V1EIVI.SYS
DOS=HIGH
You can save yourself some
typing by extracting a com-
mon group of statements and
making it a block by giving it
a block name and using the
IvlultiConfig command IN-
CLUDE. Just remove the
group of statements from all
configurations that use it, and
precede it with a name in
brackets, just like the config-
urations that you've been build-
ing so far.
Where the group of state-
ments used to be in each con-
figuration, insert the phrase IN-
CLUDE [biockname], where
blockname is whatever you've
called the block of statements
common to the configurations.
For example, if I create a
block called [shared] that con-
tains the statements that are
shared between the configura-
tions, the CONFIG.SYS looks
like this.
[menu]
menuitem normal, Standard setup
menuitem Interink, Setup witti
Interink driver
menudetault normal, 2
[sliared]
FILES=60
BUFFERS=30
STACKS=9,256
DEVICE=C:\D0S\HIIV1EIVI.SYS
DOS=HIGH
[normal]
INCLUDE shared
[Interink]
INCLUDE shared
DEVICE=C:\DOS\INTERLNK.EXE
You can have as many IN-
CLUDE blocks as you like.
For exannple, you might have
an INCLUDE block with your
memory management com-
mands (Ef\/1M386/HIMEM/
D0S=HIGH,Ufv1B), another
with your LAN drivers, anoth-
er with Interink commands,
and so on.
If you have a bunch of state-
ments that are common to all
configurations, you can cre-
ate a block containing those
statements, and then include
them in each block. But
there's an easier way: using
the [common] block.
There's a predefined block
called [common], which, if in-
cluded in your CONFIG.SYS,
will automatically be executed
at the end of every configura-
tion. Just include [common] on
a line and follow it with whatev-
er statements you want to see
executed, no matter which con-
figuration gets selected.
I strongly recommend that
you have a [common] block
and that you put it at the end
of your CONFIG.SYS. That
way, when you install a pro-
gram that inserts commands
Into your CONFIG.SYS state-
ment, the new statements will
usually be placed at the end.
If the last block is the [com-
mon] block, you know that the
statements will be executed; if
the last block Isn't the [com-
mon] block, the newfy inserted
statements won't be executed
unless the last block happens
to get executed, which would
probably cause the newly in-
stalled program to fail.
Speak Up!
Do you have a tough hard-
ware problem that you would
like fvlark to tackle? Let him
know about it by calling
(900) 884-8681, extension
7010202. The call will cost
95 cents per minute, you
must be 18 or older, and
you must use a touch-tone
phone. Sponsored by Pure
Entertainment, P.O. Box
186, Hollywood, Califor-
nia 90078. □
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE
55
PROGRAMMING POWER
Tom Campbell
Read ttie tutorial fii^
if you don't tfiink
you need it read The
ODjectPAL
Developer's Guide
first if you tfiinl<
you need the tutorial.
PARADOX AS A
WINDOWS DATA-
BASE MANAGER
This month, I find myself in a
strange position. I'm going to
tell you why I think Paradox is
a great Windows database
manager to use for serious ap-
plications development. Then
I'm going to tell you to break
all the rules. Borland has
some of the best manuals I've
ever seen for a fanguage prod-
uct, but it tells you to use them
the wrong way. Below, you'll
find my new rules, which will
tell you how to use them the
right way.
Remember that I'm looking
at this from a programmer's
standpoint, but you don't
need experience in any other
computer languages to learn
how to program Paradox. It
will take a while, probably at
least three months, to get the
hang of it if you've never pro-
grammed before. This is true
for any programming lan-
guage. Learning ObjectPAL
{PAL stands for Paradox Appli-
cation Language) is very easy
in some respects but daunting
in others. It is well worth the
time you put into it.
1 . Read the tutorial first if
you don't think you need ii;
read The ObjectPAL Develop-
er's Guide first if you think you
need the tutorial. The Borland
documentation says you
should read the Learning Ob-
jectPAL tutorial if you don't
have any programming expe-
rience. The problem is that it
jumps right into hard-core con-
cepts like objects and meth-
ods while neglecting to ex-
plain more basic things like
constants and variables. All
are important, but the basics
are called that for a reason.
They should always come
first. If you understand none of
these things, worry not. The
Borland manuals offer hope if
you break the rules. The Ob-
jectPAL Developer's Guide, os-
tensibly for programmers who
have read Learning Ob-
jectPAL and are now ready to
start developing fuli-fledged
applications, has four intro-
ductory chapters that really
belong in the tutorial. They are
very well written, just mis-
placed. The first rule, then, is
to read chapters 1-4 of The
ObjectPAL Developer's Guide
if the Learning ObjectPAL
book leaves you a bit unful-
filled. None of this is to say
that the guide falls short. It's a
milestone in Borland docu-
mentation and should be a
model tor all language prod-
ucts. Usually, languages give
you a reference and, if you're
lucky, a tutorial. The problem
is what happens in between.
They never seem to have a
book that addresses the
needs of the person who has
mastered the rudiments but
doesn't know where to go
next. It's the basis of a multi-
million-dollar book industry.
I'm delighted to see Borland
tackling this very difficult sub-
ject, I'd like to see Borland do
the same thing with its Pascal
and C products, and Microsoft
should do the same with its
languages.
2. Use the reference as a tu-
torial no matter what. As good
as The ObjectPAL Develop-
er's Guide IS (and that's very
good), you can learn even
more by thumbing through
The ObjectPAL Reference.
Reference books aren't de-
signed to be used as tutorials
or even to be browsed. You're
expected to have an idea of
what you're looking for before
you crack the book. Ob-
jectPAL is such a big lan-
guage that no tutorial could
cover all its facets. Spend an
occasional lunch hour or bus
ride just thumbing through
The ObjectPAL Reference,
and you will assuredly discov-
er useful, timesaving features
that you might never learn
about otherwise. Do this once
while you're learning Ob-
jectPAL, expecting to learn
very little, and then severai
times after you've learned it,
It's a synergistic process. The
more you learn about Ob-
jectPAL, the more usefu
these free-form sessions will be-
come and the more they'll
help you learn the language.
A side note: If you're trying to
learn how to program Win-
dows in C, this technique
might be the glue you need to
hold together the concepts
you've been learning.
3. Quit planning. The Ob-
jectPAL Developer's Guide
quotes the party line of data-
base programming, which is
that you should plan an appli-
cation extensively before start-
ing it, This may make sense in
large corporations, although
there is ample evidence sug-
gesting this isn't automatically
true. It's also the first rule of eve-
ry database textbook written
since the Jurassic Period.
Throw that rule out the window
if you use Paradox. Object-
oriented programming tends
to seal off the parts of large pro-
grams in such a way that shuf-
fling them around and trying
out new ideas is easier than it
ever was before with tradition-
al programming techniques.
Paradox enforces many good
object-oriented techniques,
and because of this, I've had
a lot more, well, fun letting
applications evolve naturally.
The Paradox programming
environment is responsive, ef-
ficient, flawlessly designed,
and a joy to use. Borland's lan-
guage manuals used to be full
of corny jokes and asides
about just how fun the products
were to use. And they were
right! Paradox 1 .0 is as cool as
Turbo Pascal 1 .0 was, but the
manuals forget to mention it.
Quit planning. Learn the lan-
guage, but play as you go. The
rest will take care of itself. O
56 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
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WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO, YO
What would you expect ContrCKt registering it according to the
to pay for a good word- There are many variations on the terms in the contract is technically
processing program: shareware contract. Some pro- a violation of coovright laws.
What would you expect
to pay for a good word-
processing program:
$200 or $400— or even more?
How about $5 — or even less?
That's what some ads for share-
ware products imply. Shareware is
an inexpensive method of distriti-
uting software that relies on an
author's efforts— and the integrity
of the program's users. Shareware
authors give away copies of their
programs for free or for low disk
duplication charges.
The programs typically contain
messages asking you to send
money if you like and use them. If
enough users like a particular pro-
gram enough to send in the rec-
ommended payment, the author
will recoup his or her investment of
time and effort.
Contrary to what some ads
imply, the actual value of a share-
ware product can range from noth-
ing to several thousand dollars.
While the price you pay for a disk
may be just a couple of dollars,
the actual program can be worth
much more.
Advantage
Shareware offers an author an
excellent opportunity to be in com-
plete control of the product. The
alternative is to sell or license it to
a publisher, who may change it or
decide it isn't worth the effort to
promote it. A shareware author
gets all of the profits from his or
her program — not a small royalty
fee for each copy sold.
Shareware offers the user one
of the best ways to determine
whether the software has the
needed features and power.
Contract
There are many variations on the
shareware contract. Some pro-
grammers encourage you to try
the program for a period of time,
after which you're expected to
send in a specified amount of
money. As with commercial prod-
ucts, there are both reasonably
priced and overpriced shareware-
registering it according to the
terms in the contract is technically
a violation of copyright laws,
although neither the Association of
Shareware Professionals nor the
Software Publishers Association
has prosecuted such a copyright
violation, according to Jan Abbott,
executive director of the Associ-
ation of Shareware Professionals,
products. Other programmers ask
you to send in whatever amount
you feel is reasonable. Still others
offer a demonstration version of a
program and encourage you to
register by sending a more fully
featured program when the regis-
tration fee is received.
Most shareware is copyrighted,
and using the shareware without
and Ken Wasch. executive direc-
tor of the Software Publishers
Association.
Many users choose to send in
shareware payments for programs
that they actually use. It's an
excellent way to tell the author that
you care about the effort that went
into writing the program and to
encourage future versions. In
U CAN DO IT WITH SHAREWARE.
addition, most autliors will give
tectinical support (if any is avail-
able) only to registered users and
will notify them about new ver-
sions and upgrades when they
become available.
A variation on shareware is
blackmailware. These programs
look like shareware products, but
they won't give you full access
another shareware product that
doesn't restrict you.
Some restrictive shareware
programs purposely destroy them-
selves after a given period of time
unless they've been registered.
After you pay the registration fee,
you're given either a new version
or a password that disables the
erase function in your copy.
until you send in the required pay-
ment. Obviously, a program that
doesn't permit complete access
forces you to buy the unlocked
copy if you wish to use it. While
there are several blackmailware
programs, they aren't widely dis-
tributed simply because they are
so annoying to users. Its almost
always easier just to search for
A variation on the password
theme is a program that constantly
prompts you to send in your regis-
tration payment. When your pay-
ment is received, you're given a
password that disables the
prompt.
Even major software compa-
nies get into the shareware act.
t^any distribute commercial demo
programs. A demo program is
generally a limited version of the
real program— enough for you to
see how the program works but
not enough for you to use it for
any practical application. For
example, the program may lock
out the capability to save files or
print them. Rather than prompting
you to send in a registration fee,
these programs are intended to
whet your appetite for the features
and power you glimpse so that
you will buy the fully operational
commercial version. Technically,
these programs are just fancy
advertisements, but shareware
collections often include them.
Most shareware products are
fully operational programs or utili-
ties, and for the most part, they
have reasonable registration fees.
Some of the best shareware pro-
grams have innovative payment
methods, For example, some
authors ask you to donate money
to their favorite charities as a reg-
istration fee. Beerware authors
request that you make a toast in
honor of the programmer if you
like the product.
f\/lany shareware contracts
include limitations on how the
shareware can be used. A pro-
gram may be limited !o noncom-
mercial uses, or there may be limi-
tations on how its data can be dis-
tributed. Typically, there is a pric-
ing tier where noncommercial
users are asked to send in smaller
payments than commercial users.
Site licenses are often available as
options.
Many businesses require some
kind of invoice before they can pay
for anything, and most shareware
programs include invoice-printing
functions for businesses' convenience.
Avoiding the Plague
One of the biggest concerns v/itli
shareware is how it enters the distribu-
tion channel. With a commercial pro-
gram, you know that all of the disks
were written by the manufacturer,
probably with the same disk duplica-
tion equipment and hopefully with
strict quality control. It's unlikely,
although not impossible, for a virus to
be accidentally distributed with a
commercial product.
On the other hand, shareware
products often go through many inter-
mediate duplications before they
reach the consumer, with no guaran-
tee of antivirus precautions, In addi-
tion, most shareware products are dis-
tributed as plain, unsealed disks. How
can you protect yourself from viruses
when you're using software that's
passed through so many hands?
Many shareware distributors
advertise their products as virus-free,
accepting responsibility for the
integrity of the media they distribute.
Some shareware designed for the
retai! market comes in fancy packag-
ing {fancy for shareware) with a seal
labeled virusproof. Whether or not
that seal can prevent a virus from get-
ting into the duplication process is
debatable. In any case, you should
treat any floppy disk you receive,
whether it's shareware, commercial
software, or a data disk, as potentially
infected. Make it a practice to scan
disks with a virus checker.
Swimming the Channel
Some companies will charge as much
as $5 or $10 per shareware disk; oth-
ers will charge as little as $1 for the
same product. What's the difference?
Shareware sold from a retail store ori-
ented toward fancy packaging (for
example, most shopping mall software
stores) will probably come in a fancy
package with a display card. That
packaging translates into increased
costs passed on to the user. On the
opposite end of the price spectrum,
the least expensive shareware often
comes without guarantees or ex-
change privileges — even for damaged
disks. In any case, there's no credible
reason for paying more than $2-$5
per disk for shareware products.
With the proliferation of CD-ROM
drives and reduced prices for both dri-
ves and media, shareware CD-ROM
collections have become popular. A
huge collection of shareware programs
can be put onto a single CD-ROM and
distributed much less expensively than
the equivalent stack of floppy disks. It's
a good bet that files on a CD-ROM do
not have any viruses, but this is not an
absolute guarantee. Conceivably, the
files on a CD-ROM could have embed-
ded viruses, if the person who assem-
bled the programs wasn't careful. It's
also possible that the utilities you use
to transfer files from the CD-ROM to
your computer — or even your comput-
er's operating system — could have a
virus that could affect the programs as
you use them.
It's important to note that while you
pay for a shareware CD-ROM, you
pay for the physical medium, not the
programs on it, You are still expected
to send in your shareware registration
fees. The primary disadvantage of
shareware CD-ROMs is that the discs
may have dated shareware.
Publishers pay a high one-time cost
each time a new CD-ROM is mas-
tered, and many companies are reluc-
tant to remaster their collections until
they start to lose sales,
Being a read-only medium, CD-
ROMs are limited in their usefulness
for many applications. Data files
(graphic libraries are a good example)
can remain on the CD-ROM for load-
ing into memory as required. But
many programs must first be trans-
ferred from the CD-ROM to your hard
IF YOUR WlDEA DF A GOOD TIME
;:>i-'t'.^r;r-
M^-
IS SITTING ALDNE IN THE DARK.
■-am. -'
FIGHTING DFF EVIL FORCES
TIL THE SUN ¥. COMES UP..
drive before they can be used.
Despite the huge capacity of a CD-
ROM, many publishers also compress
the files on the disc, which means that
a decompression utility transfers the
files to your hard drive.
Happy Hunting
So what is available in shareware?
Everything from truly free programs
without any financial obligations up
through multithousand-dollar vertical-
market products. You can obtain clip
art, databases of information, or useful
productivity programs.
The primary advantage of share-
ware is the concept of checking
something out before you make your
full payment. For the most part, com-
mercial software is sold on the you-
break-it-you-bought-it principle—/? in
this case referring to the product's
shrink-wrap. As a rule, the only guar-
antee you have of the product's per-
formance is its advertisements, the
company's reputation, and the opin-
ions of friends and reviewers. With
shareware you're actually encouraged
to test before you invest.
There are many good shareware
productivity products. Which product
is better is often a matter of personal
preference, but there are many pro-
grams that are generally considered
excellent. Here are some of my
favorites. It would be possible to run a
business office using only programs
from this short list.
Word processing. So far, a share-
ware product on the level of Microsoft
Word or WordPerfect has not
appeared, but if you need a function-
al, friendly DOS word processor for
writing letters, short documents, and
notes, PC-Write is an excellent, inex-
pensive shareware choice.
Spreadsheet. The capabilities of
shareware spreadsheet programs lil<e
PC-Calc, Express-Calc, and Free Calc
compare favorably with those of pro-
fessional programs like VisiCalc and
Lotus 1-2-3. The documentation for
these shareware products is not on a
par with the documentation shipped
with the professional products, but if
you already know how to use a
spreadsheet program, you'll probably
be satisfied with their performance.
Database. As a file-card-style data-
base program, PC-File or File-Express
performs adequately. If you need a
more reiational database utility, try 1 on
1 = 3, a workalike clone of dBASE II!.
A!so, keep an eye out for WAtyiPUM.
Communications. Telecommu-
nications programs are one area
where shareware really excels. Pro-
comm is one of the most popular com-
munications programs, even when
considering professional products. It's
gone professional (Procomm Plus for
Windows was a COMPUTE Choice
award winner), but version 2.43 is still
available in shareware collections.
Other categories where there are
excellent shareware productivity pro-
grams include graphics, desktop pub-
lishing, and utilities.
Until recently, there wasn't much
Windows shareware available. Several
shareware programming utilities for
Windows programmers have made it
easier to develop Windows-based
applications, and there are now collec-
tions of shareware Windows programs.
Sharing ts Caring
The biggest shareware question is, If
shareware is better than commercial-
ware, why would anybody buy com-
mercial software?
The primary disadvantage of
shareware is explained by Sturgeon's
Law, Science-fiction author Ted
Sturgeon once shocked his col-
leagues by stating, "Ninety percent of
science fiction is crap." He continued,
"But so is 90 percent of everything
else." Well, shareware probably
approaches the 99th percentile. With
commercial programs, especially
those from a reputable company, you
...YOU NFED [JH0fF;i;ilDi1AL flap.
A mouse and keyboard are fine for tackling
spreadsheets, not teeming legions of
blood-thirsty marauders. State-
of-the-art CyberMan" puts an unlimited ^
range of motion within your grasp:
three directions [x, y, and z] and three
rotations [pitch, yaw, and roll].
Just move or twist it any way you
want to go. Plus it's tfie only con-
troller with vibrating feedback that
lets you feel the action. CyberMan is
100% compatible with conventional
mouse applications, and comes with 3D game
titles that will pull you into the next dimension in
PC entertainment. CyberMan is available now at
your local dealer, or call 1-800-732-2923.
^" Trademarks belong to cheir registered owners.
3D INTERACTIVE
CONTROLLER
The Senseware' Company
circle Reader Service Number 255
Hotware
What's hot in shareware? We called
CompuServe to get the titles of the
hottest shareware and freeware.
Here's the list.
Windows
Here are some of the most popular
Windows shareware and freeware
packages on CompuServe.
1. Switcher (filename SWITCH.ZiP);
15,943 bytes. This utility lets you
quickly switch video modes.
2. fvlonitor Saver (filename MS20B-
.ZIP}; 16,700 bytes. This screen saver
includes five blanking options.
3. Flipper (filename FLIPPE.ZIP),
6530 bytes. Flipper is a utility that
flips the printer orientation from por-
trait to landscape when you double-
click on its icon.
4. Makefont (filename MAKEFO.ZIP};
1 1 ,389 bytes, Makefont converts the
fonts found in your system ROfvl into
Windows FNT files.
5. Gtoys (filename GTOYS.ZIP);
40,128 bytes. This fractal generator
draws Mandelbrot, Julia, and fractal
dragon sets.
6. Winlak (filename WINTAK.ZIP);
101,376 bytes. WinTak is a Windows
video benchmark that analyzes the
performance of your video card.
Created by Texas Instruments, it
uses the Tl 34010 or Tl 34020 graph-
ics accelerator as the standard
against which your video card is
measured. It requires Windows 3.1.
7. POSTNET Bar Code Font (filename
POSTAL.ZIP), 7347 bytes. This file is
actually a font file that contains
TrueType and ATfvl versions of the bar
code used by the U.S. Postal Service.
It will print the nine-digit ZIP code or
the POSTNET bar code on envelopes.
8. DisplayText (filename DRVTST-
.ZIP); 93,249 bytes. This utility tells
the user about the display technolo-
gy in use by Windows. It also can list
all of the modules loaded, giving
expanded fife data about them.
9. DISK SPOOL (filename DS.EXE);
118,151 bytes. This is a pnnt spooler
for Windows.
10. WinZip (filename WINZIP.ZIP);
153,964 bytes. This is a shell for all of
the most popular archiving products,
such as PKZip and LHARC. This
does not actually include the archiv-
ing products, which must be down-
loaded or purchased separately.
DOS
Here are some of the most popular
DOS shareware and freeware pack-
ages on CompuServe.
1. Ur^BDVR.EXE: 40,389 bytes. This
utility uses shadow RAM to provide
upper memory and XMS to provide
EMS for DOS 5. It loads high.
2. LXEX91.ZIP; 43,975 bytes. It com-
presses EXE files (typically 30-40
percent) while leaving the files exe-
cutable. Warning: Screen messages
are in French.
3. TSR.COM; 75,277 bytes. This is a
library of TSR management utilities
including the well-known utilities
Mark and Release.
4. FDATE.ZIP; 60,477 bytes. This
utility allows you to use date manipu-
lation in batch files. Use it to put the
date of your choice into an environ-
ment variable.
5. JCScroll (filename JCSCRO.ZIP),
8202 bytes. This TSR screen-scrolling
utility lets you scroll She screen back-
ward to see information that has
scrolled upward off the screen.
6. VIRX.ZIP; 107.708 bytes. This virus
scanner has 1300 virus strings and
will identify over 1400 viruses,
7. DIET (filename D1ET14.ZIP);
40,925 bytes. This utility compresses
executable files and data files. It
decompresses and compresses on
the fly as a TSR, thus saving disk
space.
8. PRINDIR (filename PRINDl.ZIP);
28,328 bytes. This TSR allows redi-
rection of printer output from one LPT
or COM port to another port, to a disk
file, or to the screen.
9. MEMKIT.ZIP; 140,547 bytes. This
creates upper memory from shadow
RAM and loads TSRs and device dri-
vers into high memory on 8088s and
80286s.
10. LIST Plus (filename LIST77.EXE);
108,729 bytes. This file browser and
viewer includes menuing, selective
printing, and a telephone dialer.
can be fairly sure that the product is
useful. On the other hand, many
shareware collections proudly claim to
include every shareware program the
distributors could find, actually taking
pride in being indiscriminate about
what they include.
Generally, you get better support
for commercial programs, including
better help screens, better manuals,
and better telephone support. As a
rule, a programmer who can write an
excellent program probably can't
write a good instruction manual. With
a commercial program, the manual,
packaging, and other components
were probably created by different
specialists. The program itself was
probably written by a team — each
programmer specializing in a particu-
lar module. Most shareware pro-
62 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
grams are individual efforts; the pro-
grammer is the manual writer, the
tutorial writer, and the technical sup-
port department.
Another disadvantage of a single-
author effort is bad programming
habits. All programmers have them,
and they range from simple typos and
crude menus to calculation mistakes.
With multiple programmers it's less
likely that mistakes will get by.
The best shareware eventually
becomes commercialware. The author
may suddenly realize that a product is
popular enough to start a one-product
business. A program may be pur-
posely first introduced as shareware
to evaluate users' responses: what
features they want, which features are
confusing, which features cause the
program to freeze solid. Or a software
publisher may offer to purchase a
product. When this happens, the last
shareware version often remains on
bulletin boards as an advertisement
for the commercial product,
Even with the limitations, there are
many good shareware products that
are certainly worth searching for. But
is it worth paying $1 to $5 per disk
and sifting through hundreds of share-
ware programs until you find one you
want? Again, Sturgeon's Law applies.
It's best to assume that the good
products you find will make up for the
effort of winnowing the rest. Under the
worst circumstances, you can always
reformat the disk and partially recoup
your loss with a blank disk.
Occasionally, you will find share-
ware specials. In an effort to reduce
stock or use it as a loss leader to get
AllVKRTISKMriNr
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
900 MHz breakthrough!
New technology launches
wireless speaker revolution. . .
Recoton develops breakthrough technology which transmits
stereo sound through walls, ceilings and floors up to ISO feet.
^^ '
By Charles Anton
If you had to name just
one new product "She
most innovative of the
year," what would you
choose? Well, at the recent hiteniatioim!
CMiisiiiucr EUrtnmics Shnr, critics gave Recoion's
new wireless stereo speaker system the Design
and Engiiiemng Award
for being the "most in-
novative and outstand-
ing new product."
Recoton \vas able to
introduce this whole
new generation of
powerful wireless
speakers due to the ad-
vent of 90(1 MHz tech-
nology. This newly
approved breakthrough
enables Recoton's \vii^
less speakers to rival the
sound of expensive
wired speakers.
Recently approved
technology. In June
of 1989, the Federal
Communications Com-
mission allocated a
band of radio frequen-
cies stretching from 902
to 928 MHz for wireless,
in-home product ap-
plications. Recoton, one
of the world's leading wireless speaker man-
ufacturers, took ad\'antage of the FCC ruling
by creating and introducing a now speaker
system thai utilizes the recently approved fre-
quency band to transmit clearer, stronger
stereo signals throughout your home.
1 50 foot range through walls!
Recoton gives you the freedom to lis-
ten to music wherever you want. Your
music is no longer limited to the room your
stereo is in. With the wireless headphones
you can listen to your TV, stereo or CD
player while you move freely between
rooms, exercise or do other activities. And
unlike infrared headphones, you cion't have
to be in a line-of-sight with the transmit-
ter, giving you a full 1 50 loot range.
The headphones and speakers have
their own built-in receiver, so no wires are
needed between you and your stereo. One
transmitter operates an unlimited number
of speakers and headphones,
n, 4
Wirijrojj':; rmiisiHiHer st'rrrfi muik {hrvii^h \vii\h
Crisp sound throughout your
home. Just imagine being able to
isten to your stereo, TV, VCR or CD
player in any room of your home with-
out having to run miles of speaker wire.
Plus, you'll never have to worry about range
because the new 900 Ml-iz toclinology allows
stereo signals to travel
over distances of 150 feet
or more through walls,
ceilings^and floors with-
out losing sound quality.
One transmitter, un-
limited receivers. The
powerful transmitter
plugs into a headphone,
audio-out or tape-out jack
on your stereo or TV com-
ponent, transmitting mu-
sic wirelessly to your
speakers or headphones.
The speakers plug into an
outlet. The one transmit-
ter can broadcast to an un-
limited iiumbcr of stereo
speakers and headphones.
And since each speaker
contains its own built in
receiver /amplifier, there
are no wires running from
the stereo to the speakers.
Full dynamic range.
The speaker, mounted in
a bookshelf-sized acoustically constructed cab-
inet, provides a two-way bass reflex design
for individual bass boost control. Full dynamic
range is achieved by the use of a T tweeter
and 4" woofer. Plus, automatic digital lock-in
m^T^
dd.
il
AWARD WINNING WIRELESS SPEAKER
Til Fillip'
. Tiiiii'it fvrt^
, 4 " aiXj/tY
Indkidiuil left, right
IfJwiiiiult Jm.« boost
fotllrtil fiiij hii'k)
iia>. 9-H X 6-W X 5.6'L
■.•.:)hil-tij-uoiA'mtic: 60 dB
hiiincl Sf;iflnrti(wi: 30 dB
:'uv-way bas? rt^x liKtgn
10 :ivlls!ihiniv^ RA1S itmp>
frafUttiL-y RjfSfvnsf:
50 hlz-15 KHz
Don't take our word for it. Try it yourself.
We're so sure you'll love the new award'Winning
Recoton wireless speaker system that we offer
you the Dare to Compare Speaker Challenge.
Compare Recoton's rich sound quaiify to that of
any S200 wired speaker. If you're not completely
convinced thai these wireless speakers offer the
same outstanding
sound quality as wired
speakers, simply retum
them within 90 days for
a full "No Questions
Asked' refund.
Raolcm'f Disign rtpirf
Engineering Auvrd
BrenklhrmiKh wirflcsf speaker desigti
blaiikiis t/oiir liotne loilh music.
tuning guarantees optimum reception and
eliminates drift. The new technology' prowdes
static-free, interference-free sound in virtual-
ly any environment. TItese speakers are also
self-amplified; they can't be blown out no mat-
ter what vour stereo's wattage.
Stereo or hi-fi, you decide. These speak-
ers have the option of either stereo or hi-fi
sound. You can use two speakers, one set on
right channel and the other on left, for full
stereo separation. Or, if you just want an ex-
tra speaker in another room, set it on mono and
listen to both channels
on one speaker. Mono
combines both left and
right channels for hi-fi
sound. This option lets
you put a pair of speak-
ers in the den and get
full stereo separation or
pu t one speaker in the ^^,^,^, -,i,ireiess stereo
kitchen and get com- hendi'lioiies hniv n
plete hi-fi sound. hiiill-iii receivei.
Factory direct savings. Because of our com-
mitment to quality and our factory direct pric-
ing, we sell more wireless speakers than
anyone! For this reason, you can get these
speakers far belo\v retail with our 90 day "Dnre
to Coinpnrc" money-back guarantee and full
tnainifacturer's warranty. Through this limit-
ed time offer, the Recoton trarismitter is only
S(')9. It will operate an unlimited number of
wireless speakers priced at only S89 and wire-
less headphones at S59 each. So take advan-
tage of this special offer to fill your home with
music. Your order will be processed in 72 hours.
Recoton Transmitter S69 S4S4H
Wireless products compatible with the Recoton transmitter:
Recoton Wireless Speaker S89 S6 S&h
Recoton Wireless Headphones $59 S4 s&h
Please mention promotional code161-CU11tl3.
For fastest service cail loll-free 24 hours a day
800-992-?966
•■■■ A??ER^wl
To order by mail send cht'ck nr money ordtr for Ihe total
atmoiint induding S&H (VA residt'iils ,idd 4.5% sales tax).
Or cliargi.' it to your cTL'dit c*ird by L'nclosLng your account
lumilxT and exp. dato. Send to:
INDUSTRIES
2820 Waterford Lake Drive Suite 106
Midlothian, Virginia 23113
Shareware Sources
Finto Software
Shareware Central
Rte. 2, Box 44
P.O. Box 897
Here is a list of some sources for
Rosebud, TX 76570
29 Erie St. N
shareware. Remember that share-
(817)583-2151
Wheatley, ON
ware is also available for download-
Canada NOP 2P0
ing from online services and bulletin
Free Spirit Software
(519) 825-7480
board services.
720 Sycamore St.
Columbus, IN 47201
SoftShoppe
American Software
(800) 638-5757
P.O. Box 247
P.O. Box 509, Ste, M22
(812) 376-9964
Artesia, CA 90701
Roseville, M\ 48066
(800) 829-2378
IkeaMo Enterprises
(310)802-1333
The Amish Outlaw
255 W. SOON
3705 Richmond Ave,
Howe, IN 46746
Software Labs
Staten Island, NY 10312
(219)463-5246
100 Corporate Pointe, Ste. 195
(800) 947-4346
Culver City, CA 90231
M & M Computing
(800) 569-7900
Bright Futures
P.O. Box 1030
43 Maple St.
(310)410-3040
Newburgh, NY 12550
E. Windsor, CT 06088
(914)569-0510
Software of the Month Club
(800) 235-3475
5816 Dryden PI.
PC Shareware
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Caloke Industries
1 763 Garnet Ave.
(619)931-8111
P.O. Box 18477
San Diego, CA 92109
Raytown, MO 64133
(800)447-2181
Software Twenty Twenty
(816)478-6185
(619) 272-6673
P.O. Box 1078
Lorton, VA 22079
Chestnut CD-ROf^fl
PCSIG
(800)800-3122
222 Third St., Ste. 3212
1030 E. DuaneAve.,Ste. D
(703) 339-0961
Cambridge, MA 02142
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(617)864-8326
(800)245-6717
Value Software
Y Nl' t ' JF ^rf ■-# 1 ^.J'm^^—X^
(408) 730-9291
P.O. Box 4638
Christella Enterprise
P,0, Box 82205
Pendragon Software Library
Medford, OR 97501
Rochester, f\/1f 48307
P.O. Box 56
Walnut Creek CD-ROM
E. Greenwich. Rl 02818
1547 Palos Verdes, Ste, 260
Compro Software
P.O, Box 4426
(800) 828-3475
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
(401)884-6825
(800) 786-9907
Star City, WV 26504
(510)674-0783
(304)599-7183
The Profit Group
2956 N. Campbell Ave.
Windows 900
Crosley Software
Box 276
Tucson, AZ 85719
(800) 843-7990
P,0. 60x85178
Las Vegas, NV 89185
Alburg, VT 05440
(602) 577-9696
(702) 386-8048
(514) 739-9328
Save-On Software
Disks O'Plenty
8362 Pines Blvd., Ste. 270
P.O. Box 1312
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18703
Pembroke Pines, PL 33024
(800)962-6107
(305) 963-7750
(717)822-9531
more sales elsewhere, a distributor
might charge a dollar or less for
each shareware disk, or $20-$30 for
a CD-ROM with 500MB of shareware.
If you can find shareware at those
prices, it's difficult to go wrong.
Strictly Business
In addition to programs, you can find
excellent shareware data files. For
example, you can get an entire library
of prewritten generic business corre-
spondence as text files that you can
load into your word processor and
edit to suit your needs. You'll find pre-
made spreadsheet and desktop pub-
64 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
lishing templates, and a museum's
worth of clip art.
It's not unlikely that you could
start and run a business office using
shareware exclusively. At some
point you might want to move to
commercial software, but there's no
less expensive or less risky way to
get started.
The high popularity of shareware
has forced the software industry to
become more competitive. Originally,
commercial software publishers
looked down on shareware products
as amateurish and unsophisticated.
But as shareware has proliferated, it
has influenced the commercial soft-
ware industry. Many commercial prod-
ucts have reduced their prices to
become more competitive with share-
ware products, and new releases
often include features first introduced
in shareware products.
The personal computer industry
has its roots in the garage operations
of people like Steve Jobs, Steve
Wozniak, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates.
What are the struggling little garage-
style operations of today up to? By
the hundreds, they're writing, debug-
ging, and distributing shareware of
every deschption. □
THE r.rrn'!iajR''.Ar
tO^iy fi hK-'^-* I. «- j-Tfrta'— 'i^i ^ ■ -
.^^^'t
M
|:(rfMJw>. W. >..inlM>i>v»-. MtlifuW tl
«•>. Wl kivt l-IWH *a Uwli ( )4rflU tl Qltl
%t<u
tt--^l ~g~
1 W'^^S^. '
..?n>,»>J.— — ..-
■ Authentic historic imerludes/aithjutly recreate the
^"■-'Vs ■• atmosphere of (he period!
Where will j^a«/ fire the first shot?
Recreate the power and excitement of the Civil War! As the
leader of either side in this challenging simulation, you
recruit, train and direct your armies around the American
countryside. When two armies clash, fight out a Micro Miniatures
battle in fast, high-resolution animation! Historically authentic,
The Blue and the Gray features up to 200 animated figures per
battle, naval units and blockades, river and rail transport,
breathtaking graphics atmospheric sound and music.
Includes a FREE copy of a specially commissioned book on the civil War'.
Wauiifoiir armies battle in/asi. high-resolurion
animation
Impressions
circle Reader Service Number 11 7
^ ®( 993 Impresstons Software Inc IBM PC VGA Screenshols
Impressions Sollware, inc. 222 Third Street, Suite 234, Cambridge MA 021 <12
PRODUCTIVITY CHOICE
It's the less publicized
features of this upgrade that make
it so attractive.
Mark Minasi
Mc_nnc L
MS-DOS 6 is the latest ver-
sion of Microsoft's best-selling
operating system, The DOS 6
features that you probably
haven't heard much about are,
strangely, the ones that make
the upgrade worthwhile.
There's a lot to like in DOS 6,
Probably the most useful
new feature is MultiConfig, If
you have one CONFIG, SYS
{and AUTOEXEC.BAT) for
your normal work, another
one that you use sometimes
when you need the most free
memory, another that's com-
pletely vanilla, and perhaps
one other to play Wing Com-
mander II, then you have to
have MultiConfig. There are
boot manager programs, but
they always seemed to give
me heartburn when I used
them with OS/2 or NT
In contrast, MultiConfig is a
fairly simple program that's
built into the operating sys-
tem. It lets you put a pile of
configurations into a single AU-
TOEXEC. BAT/CON FIG. SYS,
and two keystrokes let you
choose a specific setup
that's right for today. Best of
all, it coexists with other oper-
ating systems with no muss,
fuss, or greasy aftertaste. So
I call MultiConfig the best sin-
gle reason to buy DOS 6.
But that's not all there is to
this upgrade. The memory
manager is better, although
it isn't perfect (yet). The
EMM386. EXE/HI MEM. SYS
two-part memory manager
shipped with DOS 5 is a
good basic memory manag-
er. It's particularly well adapt-
ed to working with Windows,
and it can accomplish about
90 percent of what a full-
blown memory manager like
QEMM-386 or 386Max can
do, DOS 5's memory manag-
es COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
er really lacks only two impor-
tant tools: program placement
and program squeezing, On
that front, when we look at
DOS 6, there's some good
news, and there's some bad
news.
Program placement makes
it possible to say to the mem-
ory manager, "Not only do I
want to load this program
high — into an upper memory
block — but I also want to
load it to this particular loca-
tion." DOS 5 can't do this, but
DOS 6 can. That's the good
news.
But what about program
squeezing? Program squeez-
ing is necessary when you're
trying to load a program that
seems very large when it be-
gins loading but then settles
down to a small memory foot-
print. Such a yo-yo program
can cause a memory manag-
er to erroneously refuse to
load the program high. What
happens is that the memory
manager sees the program in
its initial huge configuration
and reckons that a program
that large will be unable to fit
into the upper memory area.
As a consequence, the mem-
ory manager loads the pro-
gram into low memory.
A squeeze feature allows
you to inform your memory
manager that a program is a
yo-yo. Duly informed, the mem-
ory manager will exercise a lit-
tle patience and load the pro-
gram high on the basis of its
final load size, not on its over-
stated initial load size. Other
memory managers have this
capability, but — here's the
bad news— DOS 6 doesn't.
Maybe next time?
Next on the list of new fea-
tures is Interlnk. If you travel,
you'll appreciate Interlnk. I trav-
el all the time, so there are
few weekdays that I'm writing
with my desktop machines.
Sunday through Thursday
nights, 1 bang out PC prose
on my notebook. And when I
return home, I want to easily
move the fruits of my labors
to one of my desktop ma-
chines. But shuffling floppies
around is a pain. I've tried Lap-
Link — all the pundits say that
it's the best — but I find its men-
us confusing. DOS 6's serial/
parallel file transfer program,
Interlnk, is exactly what I've
been looking for.
Interink lets me connect
two machines parallel port to
parallel port and load a de-
vice driver. Then one of the
machines acts like a LJ\N serv-
er. I had an extra parallel
port, so I installed it in my
desktop machine as LPT2
and put a parallel transfer ca-
ble on it. Now, when I come
home, I just plug the other
end of the cable into the par-
allel port on my notebook com-
puter, run Interink (I don't
even have to mess with CON-
FIG.SYS—I have MultiConfig
set to offer an Interink option-
al setup), and voila! My note-
book connputer now has a
new drive, E. Drive E is, of
course, really drive C on my
desktop machine. An Xcopy
command or two, and my da-
ta's transferred.
I find the new DOS online
help to be of great value
when i'm editing a CON-
FIG.SYS file. (What were
those Interink parameters,
anyway?) And while I've al-
ways had virus scanner pro-
grams around, DOS's built-in
virus scanner is OK. That
means that carrying DOS
disks around with me will
serve the virus-scanning func-
tion, allowing me to carry few-
er disks.
Up through DOS 5. batch
files could talk, but they
couldn't listen. However,
that's no longer true. There's
a new batch command
called CHOICE, which allows
your batch files to prompt for
single-character answers. Fur-
thermore, the CtHOICE com-
mand can be used in a timer
role. You can use CHOICE as
a kind of poor man's time
activator,
Undeletion capabilities ap-
peared in DOS 5. but DOS 6
takes undeletion a step fur-
ther in reliability with a feature
called Delete Sentry Once ac-
tivated, Delete Sentry pre-
vents DOS from actually eras-
ing fries when you issue a Del
or Erase command. Instead,
DOS moves the files to a hid-
den directory. It holds them
there for a while (you can de-
fine a while however you
like), which gives you a
chance to change your mind
and restore the files later.
DOS 6's new features
bring with them some oppor-
tunities for trouble, as is the
case with all new pieces of
software. In particular, you
may want to be careful about
installing DoubleSpace, the
new disk compression rou-
tine. If you do plan to use Dou-
bleSpace, try doing a few
things to minimize the
chance that you'll stumble on
the path to more disk space.
First, prepare your disk be-
fore installing DoubleSpace (it
isn't installed automatically;
you install DOS 6 and type
dblspace when you're ready
to start using this feature).
DoubleSpace has a hard
job, so It's a good idea to
make the job as easy as pos-
sible for it. Clean your disk by
getting rid of any extra disk
files; get rid of anything that
you haven't used in a while.
Then defragment your disk
with the new Defrag com-
mand. Finally, do not com-
press the entirety of your C
drive; instead, let Dou-
bleSpace create a new drive
out of the empty space on
your C drive. If you find it nec-
essary, remove some things
from C, create a new drive
from the empty space, and
then restore the files to the
new drive. Be aware that the
new SMARTDrive requires
that you reboot your system
by executing a Ctrl-Alt-Delete
keystroke combination — don't
use your reset switch! Keep
that in mind, and you'll be
able to get up and running
with more disk space in short
order.
DOS 6's Memfvlaker will or-
ganize your memory manager
to give you more memory,
and you will probably v/ant to
run it soon after installing
DOS 6. But heed one word of
advice: Don't run Express Set-
IBM PC or
compatible, 51 2K
RAM, floppy drive;
mouse opllonal—
<;i 29.95
DoubleSpsci: Info
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Cornpiession ratio for the seler.lcd liiRs: 2 0 lo I
Up, Run Custom Setup in-
stead; you'll eventually see
the question Search upper
memory aggressively? Re-
spond by answering no; then
let 'er rip! You may find your-
self with more RAM than ever
before. (All of a sudden, run-
ning Wing Commander with
the sound effects becomes
possible,)
DOS 6 is a good buy; it's
an even better buy if you
take a close look at some of
its less publicized features. If
you didn't go for this upgrade
when It was offered at a spe-
cial introductory price, don't
feel too bad. At least you can
still get it — and the new utili-
ties bundled with it definitely
justify the cost, lI
circle Reader Service Nuinber 391
MICROSOFT
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA
98052-6399
(80Q) 426-9400
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 67
PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY
Rosalind B. Resnick
COMDEX
HIGHLIGHTS
Home and
smalt
office productivity
boosters
sliowcased at
COIVIDEX
68
COMPUTE
For computer professionals
worldwide, COMDEX offers a
dazzling array of high-tech
gadgetry. But COMDEX also
features plenty for the home of-
fice user, and this spring's
show in Atlanta was no excep-
tion. Stashed among ttie
splashy displays of high-end
products were lots of offerings
capable of boosting produc-
tivity without busting your
bank account.
Here are several new hard-
ware and software releases
that caught my eye:
The Microsoft tVlouse.
Reengineered to be more er-
gonomically correct, Micro-
soft's mitten-shaped pointing
device won't make you reach
for the Motrin at the end of the
day. Capable of being used
with equal comfort in either
hand, the new, improved
mouse is designed to boost
your speed and efficiency
when you're working with one
of Microsoft's better-known
products, Windows. Mouse
mashers will also enjoy the
snazzy, new software driver
that minimizes mouse move-
ment on the screen with fea-
tures like Snap To, which auto-
matically snaps the cursor to
the default button in Windows'
dialog boxes, and Locate,
which returns the cursor to the
center of the screen if you mo-
mentarily lose it. The serial
and mouse port versions cost
$109.00 each; the driver atone
sells for SI 9.95.
PackRat 5.0. Polaris Soft-
ware's award-winning person-
al information manager for Win-
dows has been totally re-
vamped, so you can spend
less time figuring out how to
use it and more tinne putting it
to work. New features include
customizable folders, forms,
and lists; electronic mail capa-
bility; full integration with oth-
SEPTEMBER 1993
er Windows applications; mac-
ro scripts and a programming
language; and SmartStart cus-
tomized workspaces for law-
yers, managers, and other pro-
fessionals. The upgrade costs
$99; the stand-alone version
had not been released in
stores at press time.
HP 100LX. The latest ver-
sion of Hewlett-Packard's pop-
ular palmtop PC is a savvier
road warrior than the original
{the HP 95LX). The HP 10GLX
features built-in Lotus cc;Mail
Remote, data communica-
tions, and PC-software compat-
ibility for number-crunchers on
the go. It still comes in a trim
black case and weighs in at
11 ounces, but the guts of the
machine have been totally re-
designed. It has everything
from the faster CPU to the high-
er-resolution screen to the in-
teractive serial port. All this for
only $749 (list price),
PagePlus 2.0 for Windows.
This full-featured page layout
program by Serif provides a
low-cost alternative to such
desktop publishing heavy-
weights as QuarkXPress and
Aldus PageMaker. PagePlus,
which retails for $59.95, offers
style sheets, floating palettes,
rotation of text and objects,
kerning, tracking, text filters for
a variety of Windows word proc-
essors, PANTONE color selec-
tion, spot and process color
separations, and support for
Object Linking and Embed-
ding (OLE). Serif also offers
low-cost add-on packages
such as TypePlus ($19.95),
which lets you manipulate
text, and FontPack One
($19.95), which offers 100
TrueType fonts.
TravelMate 4000E WinDX2/
50. If you have some extra mon-
ey burning a hole in your pock-
et, consider Texas Instru-
ments' hot new 486 color note-
book ($4,999), which gives
you alt the power of a desktop
PC in a slim 6.2-pound case.
The newest TravelMate fea-
tures a brilliant 640 x 480
VGA display a high-speed vid-
eo system for iightning-fast
graphics, advanced Bat-
teryPro power management
for longer battery life, and a
full-travel keyboard with 1 2 sep-
arate function keys plus dedi-
cated Page Up, Page Down,
Home, and End keys.
Stacker Special Edition. Un-
willing to let DOS 6's new Dou-
bleSpace data compression
utility go unchallenged, Stac
Electronics rolled out Stacker
Special Edition ($49.95) at the
show, trumpeting it as a low-
cost solution for computer us-
ers leery of trusting their valu-
able data to a first-generation
product, The new Stacker, de-
signed only for PCs with DOS
6 already installed, replaces
DoubleSpace with Stacker
files and adds such features
as Stackometer, which lets
you monitor your hard drive's
data compression ratio, and
Stacker Tuner, which lets you
balance speed and space.
Stacker Special Edition also
lets you use powerful DOS com-
mands like Dir, Chkdsk, and
Defrag on your Stacker
drives.
QmodemPro 1.5 and Qmo-
dem for Windows. Mustang
Software's latest releases let
you send and receive electron-
ic mail using one integrated
program regardless of the orig-
inating E-mail source. Version
1 .5's new Remote Imaging Pro-
tocol (RIP) emulation allows
callers to view full-screen
graphics and use a mouse
when connected to an online
bulletin board system with RIP
support. The Windows version
lets you view GIF images dur-
ing transfer (with magnify
mode for closeups); it also sup-
ports DDE and drag-and-
drop capabilities for file selec-
tion and message text.
With productivity boosters
like these, you won't need to
spend like a power user to get
your office up to speed. 3
HIPS & BITS inc.
IBM MAC & AMIGA GAMES FOR LESS
Shipping 10 US,PR,AK,HI,APO & FPO S4 per order. Air Mail lo Canada SB per order. Handling SI per shipment
^"■"■"-Ws Day Air US S6 per order; PR, HI 512 1st Item * S2 ea. add'l; AK St9 1st Item + S2 ea. add'l. Handling SI per shipment.
p. America Air Mall $19 Ul Item + $S ea. add'l. Aala, Australta, Africa, Air Mall S25 tst Item + S6 ea. add'l. Handling $1
PO Box 234
.Chester, VT 05767
Call 800-600-4263
Infl 802-767-3033
Fax 802-767-3382
IBM HARDWARE
AdLib Sound Card
$39
Adiib Gold Sound Card
$149
Adv. Gravis Ultrasound
S139
Flight Stick Joystick
$36
Rightstick Pro
$55
Maxx Cobra Flightstick
$54
Media Concept
S72
Pro Audio Spectrum 16
S17S
Sound Blaster 16 ASP
$21 9
Sound Blaster Deluxe
$S9
Sound Blaster Pro DIx
$129
Sound Galaxy BX2
$65
Sound Galaxy NX2
S89
Sound Gaiaxy NXPRO
SI 25
Snd Galaxy NXPRO 16
SI 69
Sound Machine
$99
Thmslmaster PCS
S59
Thrustmaster PCS Pro
$99
Thrustmaster Game Card $27
Thrustmaster Rudder CS
$99
Thmstmasler WCS 2
$99
Voice Blaster
$69
IBM CD ROM
7th Guest
S56
Buzz Aldrin Race Space
S59
Campaign
335
Curse of Enchantia
S26
Day of the Tentacle
S45
Dragon's Lair
S36
EcoQuest
$42
European Racers
$44
Eye of the Beholder 3
$48
Hell Cab
$52
Hi-Tech Aircraft
$43
ndy Jones Fate Altantis
$52
ron Helix
$60
King's Quest 6
S48
.egend of Kyrandia
S49
^ebelAsault
$45
Return of the Phantom
542
Secret Weap Luftwaffe
S48
Star Trek 25 Anniversary
S46
Stronghold
S36
Ultima Underworld 1 & 2
S52
IBM ADVENTURE
Alone in the Dark
$36
Amazon
S36
Batman Returns
S32
Blue Force: Next of Kin
$45
Castle Wolfstein
$37
Coaster
$32
Day of the Tentacle
$39
Eric the Unready
$38
Etemam
$36
Flashback
$33
Fred Pharkas Frntir Phrm
$42
King's Quest 6 VGA
$45
Lords of the Rising Sun
S34
Master of Orion
S45
Out of this World
536
Pepper's Adventure Time
$29
Police Quest 4
$46
Prince of Persia 2
S45
Return of the Phantom
S42
Return to Zork
S38
Hex NebulrCos Gen Ben
$39
Riftwar Legacy
$39
Space Quest 5
$39
Star Trek: Next Gen ration $46
Starship
$38
Zool
S34
S^
'LINKS 386
VlPi
PRO' offers SU-
PERVGAgraph-
ics and advanced
features de-
signed for your
^^^^j^^^^^
386or486. New
^^^^3^^^^^^!?*
features include
\ - ' ' '^^jf' /
computer oppo-
\ ^, ^^^/
nent, save game
option that allows
XT .~' '
your friends to
play against you
i«
in an existing
IBISifSNM^M
game. Play at
HarboufTownor
p yi 1 '« ■ 'V V T Ri < I T^ 1
Prr.
use tfie add on
course disks for
ffM-.V.HaS
extfafun. S36
IBM STRATEGY
IBM SIMULATION
'SOUND GALAXY NX PRO 16' supports the 5 most
popular sound cards. Features CD ROM interface, 16 Bit
stereo playback with 20 voices at up to 14.4 KHz, volume
control, midi interface, game port, & software setup. $169
A Train
$34
Jump Jet
$39
Airbucks
$36
Mantis Experimental Ftr
$39
Armada 2525
$29
Maximum Overkill
$44
Ashes of Empire
$48
Mxmum Overkill Miss 1or2$28
Battles of Destiny
S36
MegaFortress
$12
Breach 3
S36
Megafortress Mega-Pak
S3S
Buzz Aldrin Race Space
$42
Megafortress Miss 1 or 2
S26
Caesar
S36
Privateer
SS2
Campaign 2
$36
Rags to Riches
$36
Capitalist Pig WIN
$36
Red Baron
$36
Carrier Command
$9
Seal Team
$42
Carriers at War
S37
Strike Commander
$48
Carriers at War 2
$50
Sub War 2025
$42
Castles 2
$36
Syndicate
$48
Civilization
$32
Tie Fighter
$46
Clash of Steel
$42
Tornado
$52
Conquered Kingdoms
$36
Ultrabots Sanction Earth
$39
Discovery Sip Columbus
$34
Wing Commander 1 DIx
$48
Empire Deluxe
$37
Wing Commander 2
$48
Fantasy Empires
$36
Wing Commndr Academy
$42
Fields of Glory
$36
Wortd Circuit
S32
Gobliiins2
S24
X-Wing
540
Lemmings 2: Ttie Tribes
$32
X-Wing Mission Disk 1
S24
Liberty or Death
S37
$19
$44
$23
Lost Admiral
Lost Admiral Enhanced
■ IBM ROLEPLAYING
Lost Admiral Seen Disk
Pacific Theater Ops
$42
ADD Collector's Edition 2
S45
Paladin 2
$34
Champions
S37
Perfect General
$32
CHARACTER EDITORS
316
Perfect General 2
$44
Cobra Mission
S49
Perfect General Seen 1
$21
Dark Sun
S48
Perfect General Seen 2
$23
Darklands
S39
Powermonger
$34
Daughter of Serpents
$32
Railroad Tycoon 2
$52
Dusk of the Gods
$24
Red Zone
$32
Elvira 2 Jaws of Cerbenjs $19
Rules ol Engagement Z
$38
Eye of the Beholder 1
$19
Second Conflict WIN
$34
Eye of the Beholder 2
$38
Seven Cities Gold 2
$38
Eye of the Beholder 3
$42
Shadow President
$39
Legacy: Realm Of Terror
$34
ShadowGateWIN
$32
Lure of the Temptress
$37
Sid Meir's Civil War
$58
Magic Candle 3
$38
Siege
$21
MegaTravellerS
$39
Sim City 2000
$43
Might & Magic 3
$24
Soldier of Foriune
$42
Might & Magic 4
336
Space Hulk
S38
Might & Magic 5
$42
Spaceward Ho! DOSWIN $38
Pirates Goid
$42
Star Control 2
$36
Protostar
S42
StarM aster
$46
Realms of Arkania
$37
Task Force 1942
$39
Red Crystal
$38
Tegel's Mercenaries
$38
Speltoraft: Aspect of Valor
$38
Tegel's Mercenaries 2
$44
Stonekeep
$54
War in the Gulf
$38
Ultima 7 Black Gate
$48
Warlords
$12
Ultima 7 Forge of Virtue
318
Wariords 2
S42
Ultima 7.5 Serpent Isle
$43
When Two Worids War
$42
Ultima Trilogy
$39
Ultima Trilogy 2
S48
IBM SIMULATION
Ultima Undenvorld 1 or 2
Unlimited Adventures
Veil of Darkness
$48
$38
S37
Visa & MC Accepted. CODs S6. Checks Held 4 Weeks. Money Orders Trcatsil as
Casll. Mosl ttems Stiipped Same Day. Shipping times nDt guaranteed. Cticck
compatibility t}e1orc you buy. Detectives replaced with same product. Price A
availability subject to ctiange. All Sates Final.
Circle Reader Service Number 149
A320 Airbus S44
Aces Over Europe S42
Aces Europe Mission 1or2 $27
Aces of the Pacific $42
Aces Pacific Mission Disk $27
Air Combat Classic $45
Armoured Fist $38
F15 Strike Eagle 111 S44
Falcon 3.0 $48
Falcon 3 Seen 1 $24
Falcon 3 Seen 2 Mig 29 $25
Great Naval Battles $44
Great Nav Bat America Atl $21
Great Nav Bat Super Ship $19
Great Nav Bat Seen Build $28
Gunship 2000 $37
Iron Helix $49
Wizardry 6 Cosmic Forge S34
Wizardry 7 Crusaders S42
IBM SPORTS
David Robison NBA Action S44
Front Page Football S39
Hardball 3 $34
Joe Montana Football 2 $42
Links Pro 386 Golf $36
Michael Jordan Flight Sim $38
NFL Challenge Premium $59
QuarterPole $39
Tony La Russa Baseball 2 $36
Tony LaRussa 92 Team $12
Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3 $39
SEP COM 1
MULTIMEDIA PC
David English
Many of us talk to
our computers. Now
our computers
are leaming to listen.
COMPUTER,
STATUS REPORT
When you hear Captain Picard
casually call up the ship's com-
puter on "Star Trek: The Next
Generation," do you ever won-
der when you'll be able to con-
trol your own computer by
voice? We're a long way from
having intelligent computers,
but simple voice recognition soft-
ware (also called speech rec-
ognition software) has finally ar-
rived. By the time you read this,
many of the popular sound
cards will be shipping with
some form of voice control soft-
ware. In this column, I'll discuss
how well this software works,
what's available, and who
might want to use this futuristic
technology.
A number of factors deter-
mine how accurate a voice rec-
ognition program will be.
These include how well the soft-
ware is designed, your consis-
tency in pronouncing the
words, the number of com-
mands that are active (espe-
cially similar-sounding words),
the quality of your microphone
and sound card, and the level
of background noise.
Most voice programs are
speaker-dependent, which
means they work best when
you train them to your own
voice, repeating each com-
mand three or four times dur-
ing an initial training session.
Most programs let you save
multiple command sets so
that more than one person
can use the program.
With a good 8- or 16-bit
sound card, decent micro-
phone, relatively quiet environ-
ment, and careful training,
most of these programs are be-
tween 80 and 95 percent ac-
curate. That means they'll on-
ly occasionally confuse one
command with another or re-
quire you to repeat a com-
mand a second or third time.
How does a voice program
work? Most programs record
your voice command and com-
pare it to a database of trained
commands using a pattern-
matching algorithnn. The pro-
gram calculates a score that rep-
resents how close your voice
command is to each trained
command and chooses the
trained command with the clos-
est score. If the score is within
the acceptable limits, the pro-
gram initiates the macro that's
associated with the trained com-
mand. If the score is outside
the acceptable limits, the pro-
gram alerts the user that it
didn't understand the com-
mand. The entire process
takes place almost instantly.
The first major sound card to
ship with voice software was Mi-
crosoft's Windows Sound Sys-
tem. Its software, called Voice
Pilot, includes command tem-
plates for many Windows appli-
cations. It also lets you add
your own commands. MediaVi-
sion's software, called ExecuVo-
ice, is nearly identical to Micro-
soft's Voice Pilot because Drag-
on Systems wrote both pro-
grams. Media Vision uses a new-
er version of the Dragon en-
gine, but it doesn't include the
ability to add additional com-
mands (though you can
launch any new application).
Both ExecuVoice and a button-
style microphone are included
with the new Pro Audio Studio
16 sound card and in an up-
grade kit for the Pro AudioSpec-
trum 16. Dragon also offers two
voice programs through IBM.
They're called iBM VoiceType
Control for Windows ($129.
with microphone) and IBM Vo-
iceType 2 ($2, 195, with a vocab-
ulary base of 7000 words).
The voice software that Cre-
ative Labs is bundling with its
sound cards was developed
by Voice Processing of Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts. It's
called VoiceAssist, it supports
as many as 1024 commands
per application (256 active at a
time), and it adds a built-in mac-
ro program. VoiceAssist is ship-
ping with all Sound Blaster 16
sound cards. Creative Labs of-
fers an upgrade path for cur-
rent Sound Blaster 16 owners,
Covox has been making
voice recognition products for
many years. In addition to its
own sound boards with voice
support, Covox offers a pro-
gram, called Voice Blaster
($119.95), for Sound Blaster-
compatible sound cards. It in-
cludes both DOS and Windows
interfaces, support for Win-
dows OLE, and a headset with
a microphone and earphone.
Digital Soup plans to release a
basic voice program called Fiov-
er ($129, with an introductory
price of $49) that translates
voice commands into key-
board commands. And Sierra
Semiconductor is providing a
number of sound card manufac-
turers with its new hardware-
based Aria Listener technolo-
gy. Some of these boards are
shipping with a Star Trek game
from Interplay that can be
voice controlled.
Who would want to use
voice recognition technology?
It's most appropriate for hand-
icapped individuals, though a
less-than-perfect recognition
rate could cause the computer
to hang occasionally It's also
appropriate for special work sit-
uations, where an employee
must use his or her hands do-
ing something else, as on a fac-
tory assembly line. For the rest
of us, voice programs provide
a great way to impress our
friends and relatives, though I
suspect few of us will use
voice control every day.
Perhaps in five years or so,
when the technology is perfect-
ed, you'll be able to walk down
an office hall and hear people
say, "Print page three" or
"Send memo to George
Smith." We may also have to
contend with the disgruntled em-
ployee who yells, "Reformat
hard drive!" as he's escorted
out the front door. D
70 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
^^ili
Relentless Space Combat - ^
For Naive Rookies or Hardened Vets
As a student at the TCSN Academy, you custom-
design and fly unique combat, rescue, and
search and retrieval missions from the
CyberSchool's holodeck console. In the Wing
^ ,, Commander^ tradition, the game features a
dynamic musical score, improved rendered, bit-mapped
graphics, and a dazzling array of customizing options. But
Wing Commander Academy isn't another cinematic extrava-
ganza — it's an intense dogfighting marathon. .
♦ Custom-design a variely of missions that match your skill level as you pla
fighters, capital ships, data pods and ejected pilots - up to 10 in each of the
four action spheres.
♦ Save up to 24 games to disk and trade with your friends or upload them to
bulletin boards to challenge others.
♦ Request random missions where each action sphere yields an unknown num-
ber of enemy ships with pilots of varying skill levels.
♦ Climb into the cockpits of the new Confederation Wraith or Kilrathi frathek
fighters for a new combat experience.
♦ Select a cybernet wingman - from a frightened cadet to a hotshot veteran.
♦ Fly from the cockpit view or try the chase-plane view for a new perspective
on the dogfighting action.
♦ Sharpen your combat skills as you compete for high-point honors.
♦ Engage the "Wave" - a dogfighting marathon with 1 5 progressively difficult
levels of attacking ships - including three flights of fighters in each level.
♦ Build missions so tough that even our professional Wing Commander pilots
can't survive. :^^M^
A Stand Alone Gome — No previous Wing Commander experience necessary.
■ w n E £3 □ d
mm
Actual screens may vary.
'^BRIGIN
An Electronic Arts' Compony
For MS-DOS :{a6SX, ^m, 4B6 or 100".;. compatible systems.
©Cofjyrighl TJ^S ORIGIN Syslems., Inc. Origin, Wt trt-ate
Sound Support: Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Ruliind lAPC-1 or 100% compatible sound card worlds and VViiiH Commander are registered trademarks o(
required lor music. Jjli |||fe ORICilN Systems, Inc. Academy is a trademark of ORIGIN
Requires: 25f.-cu!or VGA, 2 megs RAM, 7 megs hard drive space free, joyslick. " " Syslems, lix. Electronic Arts is a registered trademark of
Electronic Arls. al
ARTWORKS
Robert Bixby
WordPerfect 6.0
for DOS is Ihe flrsl
WordPerfect
lliat's as friendly
to first-lime
users as H is to
power users.
FORCE MAJEURE
First, it was DOS 6; then, Win-
dows NT. Rarely have so
many exciting major programs
been released in new versions
at once. Summer seems to be
the season for productivity soft-
ware, probably because long
magazine lead times make it
important that editors become
familiar with the programs in
time for the end-of-year
awards issues. But perhaps
I'm just being cynical. Maybe
it's just a coincidence that
spring, traditionally the mating
season, has become the beta
WordPerfect
72
season and that everyone
seems to be pushing software
out the door by the end of
June.
In this spirit, WordPerfect
has brought out the first
WordPerfect word processor I
can unhesitatingly recom-
mend to a beginner.
WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS is
a work of art. It has all the pow-
er of earlier versions and a
friendly almost-standard inter-
face that is not a nightmare to
learn. Throw away your cheat
sheets and function key sten-
cils. All you need to operate
WordPerfect 6.0 is a mouse
and a passing understanding
of the functioning of a word
processor.
Want to send a WordPer-
fect document as a fax? No
problem. WordPerfect has bun-
dled a fax module to make
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
(hat simple. Want to spell-
check, style-check, or look
something up in the thesau-
rus? You're two mouse clicks
away from any tool. And the
macro language (finally) is sim-
plicity itself. Forget all those til-
des (no one couid ever figure
out how many to use or where
they should go). WordPerfect
6.0 has a macro language
very similar to that of WordPer-
fect 5.1 for Windows— a mac-
ro language that looks like a
language rather than a
keypress script.
Is there room in the market
for an innovative, easy-to-use
DOS word processor? Don't
ask Borland. Don't ask Word-
Star International. But neither
of these companies is WordPer-
fect, which seems to have a
lock on DOS word processing.
If anyone can pull it off,
WordPerfect can. It has the
clout, and now it has a prod-
uct that will appeal to the
whole DOS market (and with
its new, optional graphical in-
terface, some of the Windows
market as well).
Speaking of new releases,
WordPerfect's release was ac-
companied by fvlicrosoft's re-
lease of Word 6.0 for DOS. Un-
fortunately, I haven't had the
opportunity to see this product
yet. I hope to obtain a review
copy soon.
Obviously, Corel is intent on
pulling light years ahead of its
competition. It couldn't resist
the temptation to amaze us
again with a new Co-
relDRAW!.
CorelDRAW! 4.0 doesn't rep-
resent a massive overhaul of
last year's 3,0 version, but
throughout the program you
can find important improve-
ments over last year's COfvl-
PUTE Choice award winner.
A more intuitive organiza-
tion of commands, multiple
pages, and a new fill feature
are among the most exciting
parts of CorelDRAW! itself.
Each of its companion pro-
grams has also gone through
an evolutionary change — add-
ing and reorganizing in a gen-
eral housekeeping effort.
One completely new fea-
ture in the package is Corei-
MOVE!, an Addlmpact-like an-
imation product that makes cre-
ating animated panels for your
CorelSHOW! presentations
much simpler.
CorelDRAW! added layers
to its 3.0 release. For the 4,0
release it also added pages,
which allow you to create a
publication up to 999 pages
long. This makes CorelDRAW!
the most graphically intensive
desktop publishing package
ever. And it's clear from the
way Corel implemented pag-
es that this was its Intention.
The Page Setup dialog box al-
lows you to select from sever-
al common desktop publish-
ing options, including a sad-
dle-stitched or bound book.
Since CorelDRAW! already
boasted a spelling checker
and thesaurus, it might be all
the word processor many peo-
ple need. (Thank you, Corel, for
quoting me in your annual re-
port. The name is Robert, not
Bill, but I'll answer to either.)
Now that the last rose has
faded and we've sweltered
our way through August, I'm
left with one nagging ques-
tion: Where was Ami Pro? It
hardly seemed like summer
without a new word processor
from Lotus.
Have a DTP tip you'd like to
share? Let me know about it
by calling (900) 884-8681, ex-
tension 7010203 (sponsored
by Pure Entertainment, P.O.
Box 186, Hollywood, California
90078). The call will cost 95
cents per minute, you must be
18 or older, and you must use
a touch-tone phone. Or write
to "Art Works" in care of this
magazine. And if you don't
have a tip, please let me know
what you're publishing, what
software you're using, and
how "Art Works" can help. D
Select any 5 books
eeigsoP'XX S39.95
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FOR WimWWSZ
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436«P S29.95 881016P S29.9S S»ir?DP 519.95
Circle Reader Service Number 112
If card (s missing^ write 1o;
The Computer Book Club. Blue Ridge Suramil. PA 17294-0B20
As a member of
The Computer Book Club. . .
. . .you'll enjoy receiving Club bulletins every 3-4 vi^eel
containing exciting offers on the latest books in thie field
at savings of up to 50% off of regular publishers' prices.
If you want tiie Main Selection do nothing and it w/i!l be
shipped automaticaily. If you want another book, or no
book at all, simply return the reply form to us by the date
specified. You'll have at least 10 days to decide. If you ever
receive a book you don't want, due to late mail delivery
of the Bulletin, you can return it at our expense. And you'li
be eligible for FREE BOOKS through our Bonus Book
Program. Your only obligation is to purchase 3 more books
during the next 2 years, after which you may cancel your
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counts as 2 choices. wr*le Itie book numljer m one box 3nd XX in Ihe new. A shipptng/handiing
charge & sales lax w*i be adtled lo ^1 ordeis (u1993 CBC
DISCOVERY CHOICE
Research has never been as easy or entertaining as it
is with this comprehensive multimedia
encyclopedia, complete with animation and sound.
Stephen Levy
ENCARTA
It's Sunday evening, about
9:00, and your 12-year-old
daughter is reading quietly in
the family room. Suddenly, a
horrified look overtakes her
face. "Tine report!" she cries
out. "It's due tomorrow!" ■
If you have a good refer-
ence library In your home,
then you have no problem.
Most of us, though, don't
have the space for a compre-
hensive library, But we do
have room for Encarta, the
much-anticipated multimedia
encyclopedia from fvlicrosoft.
And with access to its more
than 25,000 articles, 7000 pho-
tographs, seven hours of
sound, 800 maps, and nearly
100 animated sequences,
your daughter just might get
that report written. i
Developed from the
ground up as a multimedia
computer encyclopedia, Encar-
ta is much more than Funk
and Wagnalls New Encyclope-
dia, on which it is based. In-
deed, Microsoft has incorporat-
ed an abundance of copyright-
ed material that it licensed
from numerous sources to cre-
ate both an excellent re-
search tool and entertaining
software.
Encarta has three main
parts: an encyclopedia, an at-
las, and a time line. The latter
two draw on the information in
the encyclopedia. Microsoft
has also included the game
MindMaze.
And it's an intuitive, easy-to-
use Windows application to
boot. Want to learn about Abra-
ham Lincoln's ability as a mili-
tary leader? Easy. Simply
click on the Contents button
and type lincoln; then click on
Lincoln, Abraham. In a few
seconds the appropriate arti-
cle appears onscreen. This
74 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
task is analogous to looking
up an article in a standard en-
cyclopedia, complete with pic-
tures and headlines that help
you find the exact information
you want. This similarity en-
sures that most users will
have little trouble learning to
use Encarta,
Encarta's basic textual infor-
mation is just what you would
expect from a standard desk-
top encyclopedia: a survey of
thousands of topics with vary-
ing levels of detail. It's a
great place to quickly learn
about a topic or to begin a re-
search paper,
In addition to its simple Con-
tents-button method of locat-
ing information, Encarta has a
fast and efficient Find com-
mand. You simply type in the
topic, concept, or words you
want to explore, and Encarta
gives you a list of articles that
include the words you've
typed. The program also al-
lows more precise search re-
quests: birds and food, birds
or food, and similar options.
Even as a standard encyclo-
pedia, Encarta offers more
than its printed bound cous-
ins. And it's much more than
a standard encyclopedia with
great search capabilities; it's
a multimedia reference guide
with animation, pictures,
sound, and more.
The program's information
database is organized concep-
tually All information falls into
nine general categories, from
Physical Science and Technol-
ogy to Sports, Games, Hob-
bies, and Pets. Each of these
broad conceptual groups is di-
vided into as many as 15 spe-
cific areas, which again are
broken down into scores of
topics,
Once you've found a topic
that interests you, Encarta
takes you to the appropriate ar-
ticle. When reviewing the arlh
cle, you'll immediately notice
the small icons that appear
within it. These icons indicate
a related picture (which
shows on the screen automat-
ically as you scroll through
the article), sound, animation,
map, chart, or table. Each of
these is well done, but the
ones I find most impressive
are the animation and sound.
TInis is whiere it is obvious
that Encarta was designed for
tfie situation instead of being
simply an electronic version
of ttie printed page,
Animation is used as a tool
to hielp comprefiension; it
takes the printed word one
step further to aid in under-
standing. With nearly 100 ani-
mated sequences in the pro-
gram, it was impossible for
me to watch each one. By
way of illustration, I'll describe
just one sequence. It shows,
through animated pictures, di-
agrams, and audio, exactly
how a television camera con-
verts an image from the real-
life object into the image you
see broadcast on your
screen. This is something
that could not possibly be ac-
complished as clearly and ef-
ficiently with printed words
and stagnant pictures,
Sound, including music, is
also important to the Encarta
experience. For instance, se-
lecting Language Sample un-
der the Gallery Special List
group lets you hear a variety
of expressions and words in
dozens of different languag-
es. Or you can hear an assort-
ment of folk music from
around the world. These are
just two of many examples of
how Encarta can entertain
and provide a true multimedia
experience without losing
sight of its goal as a vast store-
house of information.
The "hot links" feature is an-
other that shows Encarta's
strengths. As you read an ar-
ticle, you'll notice immediate-
ly that some words are print-
ed in another color and are
underlined. These words are
hot links to other articles.
Click on one, and in a few sec-
onds you'll be transferred to
the related article. You can
continue to do this and ex-
plore articles in any direction
and depth you want. And
when you want to go back to
where you've been, simply se-
lect Topic Tracker from the
menu; you'll see a list of the
topics for your entire session.
In this list, you just click on
the topic you want to return
to, and there you'll be.
To assist the student who
is using Encarta as a re-
search tool, Microsoft has in-
cluded several conveniences
such as a dictionary and the-
saurus, as well as access to
Write (Windows" word proces-
sor). In addition, it's easy to
print pictures, entire articles,
or portions of articles. Pasting
text and pictures into Write is
accomplished in the same
way as in any other Windows
application.
Although the encyclopedia
is the heart of Encarta, the pro-
gram does include two other
important parts, an atlas and
a time line. Selecting Timeline
from the main window con-
verts the computer monitor in-
to a 2G-foot scrolling historical
time line from 15 million B,C.
to the present. Using the ar-
rows, you can scroll through
time as pictures and a list of
historical events move by,
Click on any picture or event,
and a short text box appears,
giving more detail. To Micro-
soft's credit, this time line is a
true world historical time line;
it doesn't concentrate on just
Western events. Although
well done and interesting to ex-
plore, it, like any other time
line, is limited in its value.
The third part of Encarta is
the atlas. Use the pointer to
move the globe to the desired
world location, or click on
Place Finder to locate any ar-
ea of the world. The map is
filled with hot spots where the
arrow pointer turns into a point-
ing finger. Click on any hot-
spot country, sea, or conti-
nent, and the atlas zooms in
to give you a closer look.
Click on the name of a city or
on the currently highlighted
country, and you can learn
more about that place.
Although Encarta is an ex-
cellent implementation of mul-
timedia and a useful educa-
tional tool, some will say that
the articles lack the depth
and content of other encyclo-
pedias. A more objective con-
IBM PC or
compatible (8038S
compatible), 2MB
RAM (4MB
recommended],
VGA or SVGA, CD-
ROM drive, mouse,
malor sounii card,
speakers— $395
($249 lor students,
cern is one that's common to
most CD-ROM software:
speed. You'll have to wait sev-
eral seconds before Encarta
retrieves information from the
CD-ROM. The speed, of
course, depends a lot on the
access time of your CD-ROM
drive and microprocessor.
But on balance, Microsoft's im-
plementation of this multime-
dia encyclopedia is well
done with lots added to the
original base encyclopedia.
Encarta is well worth its
price, and who knows? It
might come in handy late one
Sunday evening. D
circle Reader Service Number 392
educators, anii
administrators),
future updates
slated to be under
$100 eacli
MICROSOFT
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA
98052
(800) 426-9400
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 75
GAME INSIDER
Shay Addams
POWER
SIMULATIONS
The reunion of the
Zork team,
more adventures and
Sims, Peter
Pan, and Vietnam
76 COMPUTE
Basketball fans — who have
probably been playing a lot of
Electronic Arts' fvlichael Jor-
dan in Flight lately — may want
to pick up the latest sports
Sim, David Robinson: NBA Ac-
tion. A center for the San An-
tonio Spurs, Robinson worked
with Park Place Productions
(which did a similar Sega
game) to create what is appar-
ently the only basketball simu-
lation with all 27 NBA teams.
The designers digitized vid-
eotapes of Robinson in action
on the court, enhancing the
game with a full complement
of the moves that made him fa-
mous. Other features of the
game, being marketed by
Spectrum HoloByte, include
league and season options
and instant replay
Mystery fans will prefer the
latest Sierra adventure, which
stars an all-new character —
Gabriel Knight. Instead of us-
ing a traditional horror theme.
Sierra aimed at creating
suspense in the style of Hitch-
cock in this animated adven-
ture. Knight is from a family of
shadow hunters whose desti-
ny is to fight the forces of evil —
and what better place for hunt-
ing shadows than the French
Quarter in contemporary New
Orleans? The game was de-
signed by Jane Jensen, who
worked with Roberta Williams
on King's Quest VI.
Electronic Arts has some in-
congruous titles due by Sep-
tember; Seal Team and Peter
Pan. The former is a Vietnam-
era war game that, in addition
to the conventional aeriat-
view maps of the battle area
and units, incorporates the
kind of 3-D graphics usually
seen in flight simulators. So,
you'll encounter enemy sol-
diers face to face in a rice pad-
dy, rather than just view them
as icons on a map — a fresh per-
SEPTEWBER 1993
spective on war gaming that
should make Seal Team attrac-
tive to a wider audience than
just hard-core strategy
gamers.
Peter Pan is the latest in the
EA Kids line of children's
games. You can alter the sto-
ry by using tools, such as a
paintbrush or spray can, to
save Peter from a bear by turn-
ing it into a bunny
Running a bit behind sched-
ule, fvlaxis says its SimFarm,
originally set for midsummer,
should be on the shelves by
the time you read this. Sam &
Max Hit the Road is on the
way from LucasArts, Even
though it is based on a comic
book about a team of
freelance police detectives
who happen to be a dog and
a bunny, this graphic adven-
ture will appeal more to adults
than kids.
Ecological overtones sur-
face in Sir-Tech's upcoming
Jagged Alliance. Your goal in
this strategic role-manage-
ment game is to protect a spe-
cies of tree from destruction
by the villains. You direct up to
eight characters on a remote is-
land in the south Atlantic. Ac-
tivities range fronn managing
the harvest of the trees' valua-
ble serum (used to fight a chil-
dren's disease) to hiring mer-
cenaries whom you control in
combat. Look for it by October.
A couple of side trips this
month led me to the Comput-
er Game Developers Confer-
ence (CGDC) in Silicon Valley
and to Westwood Studios in
Las Vegas. The hottest round
table at CGDC was the one on
vehicle simulations. Novalog-
ic's dramatic ride to the top
with Comanche: Maximum
Overkill has convinced many
fledgling designers that simu-
lations are the fast track to over-
night success.
One hot topic at the show
was the recent acquisition of
ICOM Simulations (which did
Deja Vu and Uninvited) by
Viacom International. A few
days after the show, another
major deal emerged when Si-
erra announced that its TSN
gaming network and commu-
nications giant AT&T would
work together in TSN-related
projects. AT&T would pick up
some of TSN's stock, while pro-
viding capital as well as other
resources.
The most interesting thing
about the show, however, was
a spontaneous reunion of the
original Infocom staff, includ-
ing ZorkfvSaster fvlarc Blank,
who vanished from the adven-
ture game scene after Activi-
sion bought Infocom several
years ago. Brian Moriarty, who
was also with Infocom in the
golden age of adventure
games, revealed that he's do-
ing his first adventure since
his highly acclaimed Loom ap-
peared three years ago. The
Dig, set for this fall, involves a
space shuttle crew swept
away to a distant world. (Lu-
casArts says a "very famous
film director/producer" is col-
laborating with fvloriarty on
The Dig.)
In Vegas, Westwood Studi-
os was showing Lands of Lore
and Legend of Kyrandia II,
both set for the Christmas sea-
son. Lands of Lore is the first
role-playing game Westwood
has done under its own iabel
(Westwood also designed ma-
jor hits such as SSI's Eye of
the Beholder). The game uses
inventive storytelling sequenc-
es to round out the panoply of
role-playing activities. Kyran-
dia II is a dazzling sequel star-
ring Zanthia, a femaie charac-
ter who played a role in the
first game. It should be out by
November.
Despite previous announce-
ments of mission disks and se-
quels, Westwood has elected
not to do either for Dune 2. In-
stead, it is developing an all-
new tactical game called Com-
mand and Conquer that will
be out early next year. D
nterprismg.
:'t;-'--"'-'si '-■:^
-^'■^■-^
H«Pl4™
t7922f4l(h Avenue, Inint, U 92714
[711)553-3530
wo years of graphical 3D renderings have resulted in
a record setting 90 minutes of full motion ghostly video.
F//YD OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER SIX..,
'This is the new standard in multimedia entertainment "
Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft®
I^One Gigabyte of groundbreaking full frame
animation for the CD-ROM and complex
graphic processing techniques including
rendering and morphs!
track by The Fat Man of Wing
•mmander™ fame as well as extensive use
>of digitized dialogue recorded by live actors.
-^ ',;,■- ;-.^_^ "^j;", i, '•'■ ' . .'-rSi'f. " ^.'■^C^'*^'^
1^ Based on an original story and screenplay
written by horror author Matthew Costello.
,. : " -\ 'Hi: >;^->-'.t,^^5[^f^ j1 ■■ ?-^"v;" --,ij— ''■;^''- .r
DistrBiuted ejiclusively by
THE Tth QUEST m< Miinlhc Dnni irc tiKleiraib o( n^ (Samcl. loL Vlii^ b I rtgliteicd tndu^
Circle Reader Service Number 267
ENTERTAINMENT CHOICE
The only thing better than playing this incredibly
realistic football simulation is
putting on a uniform and playing the real thing.
Scott A. May
FRONT PAGE
SPORTS: FOOTBALL
In a blitz of cutting-edge lecti-
nology, Dynamix's Front
Page Sports: Football blind-
sides the competition and
knocks them out cold. We're
not talking about a playful
beating here, but a crushing
blow — one so powerful that it
renders almost every gridiron
game before it instantly obso-
lete, Sporting a game plan
that bursts with realistic ac-
tion, in-depth strategy, and sta-
tistical detail, this is a pigskin
lover's dream come true.
It's hard to believe that
something this good repre-
sents Dynamix's first foray in-
to sports simulation. After on-
ly a cursory tour of the game,
you'll notice the same commit-
ment to excellence that's
marked such previous bestsell-
ers as Red Baron and Aces
of the Pacific. The design
turned out so well that Dy-
namix has slated an entire se-
ries of Front Page Sports titles.
The game divides itself in-
to three separate, but directly
connected, sections: on-field
action, coaching playbook,
and team management. You
can compete against the com-
puter or head to head against
another player, You can
choose exhibition, single sea-
son, or career league play.
The game boasts full 47-man
teams, complete with injured
reserve, free agent pools, draft-
ing, training camp, and trad-
ing. Seasons can be de-
signed in one of five league
sizes divided into one or two
conferences with up to three
divisions each. Seasons culmi-
nate with divisional champion-
ships, postseason playoffs,
and a final Super Bowl-style
showdown.
Almost every detail of a
team's franchise can be cus-
tomized by the owner: team
name, nickname, head
coach, jersey colors, stadium
type (domed or outdoor), and
nearest city. The last two op-
tions also have a direct influ-
ence on weather conditions,
temperature, humidity, and
precipitation, which in turn af-
fect field conditions and play-
er performance.
Statistical jocks will love the
game's exhaustive number
crunching, fvlore than 300
Stat categories are automatical-
ly compiled, updated, and dis-
played onscreen or printed.
Detailed box scores are avail-
able during and after games,
as well as match-ups from the
previous week. League lead-
er stats compare all teams
and players in the league in a
wide range of categories.
Players are rated from 0 to
99 in eight performance clas-
sifications. Team and player
editors are available as share-
ware on many electronic infor-
mation services, and you can
find unofficial, user-created
tiles for the 1992 NFL season.
In career leagues, the pro-
gram maintains a sharp distinc-
tion between potential and ac-
tual ratings, affected by such
factors as training, injuries,
and aging. This attention to
subtle cause and effect not on-
ly increases the realism but
also deepens the game's con-
siderable role-playing as-
pects. As general manager,
you attempt to handpick the
best players. As coach,
you're responsible for working
with each player to bnng out
everyone's best abilities. On
the field, your players are com-
pelled to excel both individu-
ally and as a team. No other
computer football simulation
offers such well-rounded, per-
sonal involvement with every
phase of the game.
Strategic-minded players
will revel in the game's extraor-
dinary playbook editor —
which is without doubt the
most comprehensive and intu-
itive yet seen. More than 200
stock plays are included, divid-
ed among standard offensive
and defensive formations. Util-
izing a CAD-style point-and-
click drawing interface, you
80 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
can easily alter any of these
predesigned piays or create
your own. Movement patlis
are represented by lines, end-
ing with or segmented by log-
ic boxes. Assembled with sim-
ple menu-driven text com-
mands, logic boxes are instruc-
tional scripts that tell each
player how to react as a play
unfolds. Instructions may be
absolute, causing an action
to be performed regardless of
circumstances, or conditional,
allowing players to react logi-
cally to each unique situation.
Logic boxes offer incredi-
ble control over every nuance
of play. Defensive players
can be "taught" to adopt an
aggressive, conservative, or
balanced stance. Offensive
and defensive plays can be
practiced with or without oppo-
sition. Try experimental pass
routes against different forma-
tions, or select a killer offen-
sive attack and mold a de-
fense to stop it. Much of the
game's appeal comes from
testing, dissecting, and fine-
tuning your plays into gridiron
ballets of power and beauty.
More than 8000 frames of
animation were used to cre-
ate the astonishingly lifelike
piayer movement, digitized
from human models with a
technique called rotoscoping.
Rendered from a 256-color
VGA palette, the graphics are
bright and expressive, aug-
mented with bone-crushing
sound effects and crisp digit-
ized speech.
Although Dynamix recom-
mends an 80386SX as its min-
imum system requirement, the
game performs better on a 33-
MHz 80386. and it positively
smokes on an 80486. On slow-
er machines, the players
move as if they're running un-
derwater. Luckily, most sound
and graphic effects can be
selectively turned off, speed-
ing up the action considerably
The game also makes excel-
lent use of expanded memory
for reduced disk access.
The on-field action is fantas-
tic. Three skill ievels offer you
full or partial control of the ac-
tion and coaching duties. The
game supports keyboard,
mouse, and dual joysticks.
The joysticks option is definite-
ly preferred. Arcade controls
are fast and reliable. Your
view of the action can be
changed either before or dur-
ing play to one of nine fixed
camera positions. These
views, as well as a free-float-
ing camera, also contribute to
the game's extraordinary in-
stant-replay system. Using
standard VCR-style controls,
you can easily view, edit, and
save pivotal plays as a high-
light film.
Like all other great works,
this game has its share of
problems and shortcomings.
Entire playbooks must be
memorized by their often cryp-
tic eight-character abbrevia-
tions. Unfortunately, there's
no provision for printing actu-
al play diagrams to create a re-
al coach's playbook. Missing
play options include impro-
vised hand-offs, laterals, and
shovel passes, but these re-
quire realtime action that
would admittedly be difficult
to program. An option for short-
er quarter iengths (five or ten
minutes) would also add zest
to pure arcade contests.
Another major inconven-
ience occurs when you simu-
late a series of weekly league
games. For realism's sake,
the program simulates every
game — sans graphics — in-
stead of quickly generating re-
sults. This means agonizingly
long periods of computer inac-
tivity On a 25-MHz 80386. for
example, the average comput-
er-simulated game takes 11
minutes. Multiply this by the
full 28-team weekly schedule,
and you're looking at 2-3
hours of nonstop number
crunching and hard drive activ-
ity. On a 66-MHz 80486, this
figure drops to about 30 min-
utes. Regardless, players
should be given the option for
a quick resolve. Adding insult
to injury, the only way to stop
the computer simulation is to
exit to DOS or reboot.
IBM PC or
compalible
(803a6SX
compalible), 640K
RAM (2MB
expanded memory
recommended),
DOS 5 or higher,
256-color VGA,
hard drive, high-
density floppy
drive; joystick(s) or
mouse strongly
Despite these problems, a
big stadium wave is in order
for Dynamix's support team,
especially those folks in-
volved with the game's out-
standing documentation. The
indexed manual brims with il-
lustrated examples, playbook
tutorials, and suggested read-
ing. The folks at Dynamix
also earn high marks for their
quick response to customer-
reported bugs and suggest-
ed improvements.
Front Page Sports: Football
kicks our perception of com-
puter sports simulations into
another dimension. The only
thing that gets better than
this requires a uniform. 3
circle Reader Service Number 393
recommended,
supports Sound
Blaster, Ad LIh,
Thunder Board,
PAS Plus/16,
Roland MT-32, and
compatible sound
cards— $69.95
DYNAMIX
Distributed by
Sierra On-Llne
RD. Box 485
Coarsegold, CA
936U
(BOG) 326-6654
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 81
GAMEPLAY
Paul C. Schuytema
Can teaching children
about the gross
reality of slavery
inspire them
to worif together
to create
iiarmonious race
relations?
WHAT COST
FREEDOM?
MECC has been at the fore-
front of educational software
development tor years, paying
special attention to classroom-
based games. Its Oregon
Trail is a classic — and is still a
vibrant educational tool after
more than a dozen years.
Last fall MECC released
Freedom!, another historical
simulation. In it, children in
grades 5-8 assume the role of
a slave attempting to escape
to freedom through the Under-
ground Railroad.
The game's historical detail
was provided by African-Amer-
ican scholar Kamau Sebabu
Kambui. Freedom! attempts to
recreate the experience of the
antebellum period in the east-
ern U,S,
Players choose a character
who has certain skills, such as
literacy (though usually the char-
acter is illiterate). Children, as
slaves, have the option to
speak with elders on the plan-
tation to glean necessary ad-
vice such as "Moss grows on
the north side of trees,"
Play proceeds as children
attempt to travel from safe
house to safe house, learning
survival and communication
skills plus resource manage-
ment. One of the game's most
exciting aspects is the way it
handles illiteracy: If a slave
can't read, then any notes or
signs encountered appear on-
screen as indecipherabte sym-
bols. Children can learn to
match symbols to see if
they're on the right track.
Freedom! hit classrooms
last fall. By the beginning of
1993, it had been pulled from
the market and all its field li-
censes had been revoked.
Why? Freedom!, as a simula-
tion, opens an interesting Pan-
dora's box of questions.
A parents' group in Merrill-
viile, Indiana, objected to sev-
eral prominent features of the
game. After meeting with the
group, Kambui, and an NAACP
representative, MECC decided
that the parents' objections
were of sufficient magnitude to
justify pulling it from the market.
Paulette Davis, spokesper-
son for the parents' group,
told me that Freedom!, intro-
duced into the school's open
computer lab, was offered as
something students could ex-
plore with their free time. No
curriculum was attached.
Freedom! attempts to recre-
ate the attitudes, prejudices,
and speaking patterns of the
times. Davis felt that the
slaves' uneducated, dialect-
heavy speaking manner pre-
sented the wrong impression
of African-Americans to a pre-
dominately white student
body. She felt that the
school's few African-American
students were being alienated
and misrepresented.
Davis also felt that since the
game's outcome is either win-
ning freedom or losing by be-
ing killed or recaptured, and
since it's a very challenging
simulation, children with strong
computer skills had a serious ad-
vantage. Consequently, other
students were not receiving
healthy feedback or positive
reinforcement.
Perhaps her strongest objec-
tion— that African-American his-
tory doesn't begin with slav-
ery, but in the kingdoms of
Africa — is not so much a fault
of the game as it is a fault of
historical curricula in general.
For Davis's group. Freedom!
trivialized and "Nintendo-
ized" a traumatic and difficult
period. Thus, it sent the
wrong messages to students.
On the other side of the ar-
gument, Helen Cartier, librari-
an and computer educator at
the Hoover Elementary
School in Wisconsin, was
shocked when MECC pulled
her school's licenses for Free-
dom!. She had it installed on
over 30 computers in fifth- and
sixth-grade classrooms.
In her experience. Free-
dom! provided an exciting ve-
hicle that enabled students to
understand some of the chal-
lenges that African-Americans
faced when fleeing captivity.
Her students reacted better
than she had hoped to the
game's handling of illiteracy.
She found them challenged to
learn new problem-solving
skills and excited enough to
seek more information.
For Cartier and other teach-
ers across the country. Free-
dom! was an exciting addition
to their curriculum, presenting
the time's struggles, prejudic-
es, dialect, and history in an
interactive manner that chal-
, lenged students to think and
learn, not just to memohze,
Cartier feels that the par-
ents in Merrillville had the
right motivation: to enhance
awareness of and education
about the African-American
experience. But by initiating
the action that pulled the
game, they actually hurt their
larger cause by depriving stu-
dents of a valuable education-
al tool.
The question is. While prej-
udice, ignorance, and cultural
ethnocentrism remain with us,
how should we approach
games and simulations such
as Freedom!, which portray a
time when the attitudes we're
trying to eradicate were the
norm? Do they trivialize the
struggle and further ingrain
the long-standing attitudes, or
do they provide an exciting,
kid-friendly vehicle with which
to educate and inform?
If there's one thing that
both sides adamantly agree up-
on, it's that a game such as
Freedom! should not exist in a
vacuum. It's up to parents,
teachers, and school systems
to ensure that a solid curricu-
lum supports such a product.
Only then will its educational
merit truly come through. D
82 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
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For the cost of shipping and handling, dhly $4.00, you'U receive
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Not Recommended for Younger Viewers Due to Realistic Depictions of Violence
Wolfenstein 3-D requires an IBM or 100% compatible computer with 64QK RAM, a VGA graphics card, and a hard disk drive. Extended memory (XMS), expanded
memory (EMS), joystick, and mouse are optional. IBM is a registered trademark o1 International Business Machines, Inc. Sound Blaster is a registered trademark of
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VIDEOS
Four CD-ROMs packed with hundreds of professionally shot videos oitd
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Our photagraphers have canvassed the globe to capture the world's most
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JASMINE tv1ULTIMEDIA'"PUBLISHING
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PUSHING FUN TO THE UNIT
>i*W
V
.N. /.
VlifMk
These doiis, pfogroins hove To provide deptli,
poiuef. ond value— ooiny far heyond oreai enferfainment— to
lieep children interested.
Bi| Carol Ellison
Have you heard the news about kids'
games? They're not just for kids
anymore. They're bigger, better,
and more challenging than ever- And
they're pushing the high end of com-
puting technology. If you want to give
your children the best software that
the market has to offer — the programs
with fast-paced action, hi-res anima-
tion, and concert-quality sound —
you're looking at an upgrade akin to
what it takes to run Windows apps,
Gone are the days of trickle-down
economics in home computer bud-
gets. No longer can you simply move
your PC into the playroom when you
trade up to a heftier model for your-
self. If you still think the kids will be
satisfied with any system you pass
along, think again.
Ihe Games Platform
"I finally had to turn my 386 with the
300MB hard dhve over to my kids," a
programmer in California confided, "I
got tired of them pirating my VGA
monitor and hounding me to uninstall
software so they could install new pro-
grams; 12QMB wasn't enough. Now,
the kids have a better system than I
do. Life's just easier that way."
It's also more fun. And unless
you're a programmer, it's unlikely that
your children's software will require
that much disk space. Still, plan on
allowing 6MB-8MB per game if you
want to install programs packed with
sound and animation.
The newest and niftiest programs
on the market make use of multimedia
effects that raise the bar on hardware
requirements. And we're not simpiy
talking about the programs on CD-
ROM, True, Sierra On-Line and
Brederbund, two leaders in children's
software, have pioneered CD-
ROM-based games: Sierra by taking
its classic Mixed-Up Mother Goose to
disk three years ago and Br0derbund
with its more recent series of interac-
tive Living Books. But these companies
and others now are delivering high-
quality multimedia programs that you
can run directly from your hard disk. If,
that is, you have the PC power for it.
Arnold Waldstein, director of mar-
keting for Creative Labs, which makes
the popular and widely supported
Sound Blaster cards, recommends a
PC with an 80386 or higher processor,
at least 2MB of memory, Windows 3.1,
and no less than a 30MB hard drive
as an entry point to the world of chil-
dren's entertainment software.
VGA has become the video stan-
dard for the latest children's games.
And virtually all new games — certainly
the best ones — require a sound card
for full enjoyment. Plus, many chil-
86 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
dren's programs consume hard disk
space soaring into the megabytes.
Binary Zoo's animated romp
though the Smithsonian Institution,
Smithsonian Mystery at the Museums,
requires 5MB of disk space to accom-
modate the games and scanned art
images from the real museum. And its
Wild Science Arcade (which presents
kids with wacky exercises to illustrate
concepts like the force of gravity)
even requires expanded memory.
Squeeze Out Power
Superior compression techniques
allow developers (ike Knowledge
Adventure's Bill Gross to imbue that
company's latest release, The Tale of
Peter Rabbit Talking Storybook, with
sound, action, and interactive hyper-
Cfe9fivifijls:FynfofEvfift|one
Pick a color, any color. Then, pick
a background, one that explodes
with starbursts. Mix it with thunder-
ing applause and a beat to rock a
coliseum. Add some reverb, and
loop the routine so the end links to
the beginning and it plays and
plays and plays and . . .
This little scenario is what plays
out in Rock and Bach Studio. The
software not only turns kids into bud-
ding MTV producers but also gives
them something new to work with
every time they sit down at the PC.
Programs like Rock and Bach,
Davidson's Kid Works 2, Breder-
bund's Kid Pix and Print Shop
Deluxe, MECC's Storybook Weaver,
and the Disney print kits aren't just
games. They're tools — programs
that a kid can come back to when
there's a project to complete.
They're as versatile as adult desk-
top publishing programs, word
processors, or draw and paint soft-
ware. In fact. Kid Pix and Kid Works
2 put in a little of each of these
applications and throw in animation
and sound effects to boot.
These programs are the elec-
tronic equivalent of finger paints,
crayons, and chemistry sets.
They're limited only by the imagina-
tion. And two minds often being bet-
ter than one, these games are also
better suited to group play than
ones that challenge kids individually
to attain a higher score.
The beauty of these programs is
that they grow with the children.
Adults who want to include a family
newsletter in a greeting card or
produce their own announcements
will even enjoy using them.
textlike capabilities. The software
reads the complete text of the story-
book aloud to an original musical
score, and children can explore illus-
trative elements in the story. Best of
all, it runs from your hard disk and
uses only 3MB of space. These new
compression techniques are marvels,
but don't expect them to shrink the
size of software. Developers are using
these newfound schemes to pack
more sound and graphics into their
already sizable programs.
Superior compression schemes
are what make The Sierra Network's
online gaming service possible. The
Sierra Network lets you and your chil-
dren pit your skills at everything from
poker to Boogers (a children's game,
as you can tell from its name) against
those of gamers across the country.
The games actually reside on your
hard disk; they consume a whopping
SMB. But because the games run
locally on your system as part of the
front-end software that accesses the
network, the graphics achieve near-
VGA quality, and animation runs at a
reasonable speed.
Voicel Orchestra!
Strides in audio technology are pro-
ducing far more realistic sounds,
New, quicker 16-bit sound cards,
such as Creative Labs' $99 Sound
Blaster Pro Deluxe, are downward
compatible with software written for
the old 8-bit cards and are able to
take advantage of new technologies
that produce more natural sounds.
The company's new Sound Blaster 16,
scheduled to list for $279 and ship by
the time you read this, will combine
16-bit sound quality, downward com-
patibility, and upward expandability in
a bundle that includes a variety of
games, applications, and voice
recognition software.
The new 16-bit Sound Blaster sup-
ports both FM (synthesized) sound
and sampled sound, which is record-
ed and digitized. A new technology
called wavetable synthesis merges
the two to produce a wider, more
even range of tones. This makes your
PC's sound capabilities leap to a new
range of fidelity that can produce
everything from the high notes of a
soprano's aria to the chirp of crickets
on a hot summer's night, a Mozart
concerto, or a stentorian monologue.
Voice recognition is the newest
multimedia frontier. Voice recognition
will probably first make a significant
appearance in children's software in
the form of verbally entering players'
names so that the games programs
can speak them back at appropriate
moments. Creative Labs' bundled
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voice recognition software is called
Voice Assist, from Voice Processing
Corporation (VPC). Voice Assist
comes trained to recognize 256
words, including those on familiar
Windows menus. Understandably, it
initially will be most useful for
Windows-based software.
At this writing, voice recognition has
not made an appearance in children's
games. However, at the Computer
Game Developers Conference last
spring, attention focused on its poten-
tial. With voice recognition and a bit of
artificial intelligence (Al) built into the
software, and with a sound card, speak-
ers, and a microphone installed, a com-
puter wilt be able to interact with a child
in more natural ways. The child will be
able to speak commands instead of
entering them from the keyboard.
Creative Labs, in testing Voice
Assist, actually wrote an Al program
that took orders for pizza and assem-
bled the pizza, with the user's choice
of pepperoni, extra cheese, onions, or
anchovies, onscreen as an order was
entered verbally.
Sound is important in entertaining
educational games. Unless you have
a sound card, you simply can't hear
ground control monitoring Carmen
Sandiego's moves through the solar
system in Where in Space Is Carmen
Sandiego?, Broderbund's latest entry
in its runaway hit mystery series. And
Neverwinter Nights— $14.95 (soft-
ware), $9.75/month {5 hours)
AMERICA ONLINE
8619 Westwood Center Dr.
Vienna, VA 22182
(800) 827-6364
(703) 448-8700
Rock and Bach Studio— $49.95
Smithsonian Mystery at the
Museums — S49.95
Wild Science Arcade— $49.95
BINARY ZOO
P.O. 80x3210
Champlain, NY 12919
(518) 298-2740
Kid Pix— $59.95
Living Books— $49.95 (Just Grandma
and Me), $59.95 (Arthur's Teacher
Trouble)
Print Shop Deluxe— $79,95
Where in Space Is Carmen
Sandiego?— $79,95
BR0DERBUND
P.O. 60x6125
Novate, CA 94948-61 25
(800)521-6263
unless your hard disk can accommo-
date the 8MB the program consumes,
you won't even be able to install it.
And what's a music video without
sound and animated effects? Binary
Zoo's Rock and Bach Studio lets kids
stage music and light shows, a la ani-
mated music videos, right there on the
monitor. It, too, requires a sound
card — not to mention a large amount
of disk space to hold the sound and
animation files that make video cre-
ation possible. If you let your children
save their videos, your disk needs
start rising incrementally.
TKe Man Be<omes the Child
The latest games software from com-
panies like Briaderbund, Sierra (and
The Sierra Network), Davidson &
Associates, and Binary' Zoo combine
fun and challenges with state-of-the-
art technology that the whole family
will enjoy.
What's more, these new technolo-
gies are remarkably interactive, allow-
ing children young and old to interact
with the computer, with one another in
multiplayer games, and even with the
masses in online interactive game
arenas like The Sierra Network and
America Online's Neverwinter Nights
adventure game.
You'll still find software with age rat-
ings on the box, but a number of com-
panies are following the lead of
Davidson. Last fall that company
erased the age rating on its Davidson's
Kid Works 2, a paint and publishing
program packed with animation and
sound effects, and began advertising
the package "for kids of all ages."
Davidson's Kid Works 2 is just one
of the multimedia products that popu-
late the top of the children's software
charts. It's a creativity kit that's sold
with a companion clip art library, called
Kid Pictures. Kid Pictures can also be
used with the competition, Br0der-
bund's runaway paint hit, Kid Pix.
These creative kits make wackiness
the norm. The sight gags and sound
bloopers you can build into pictures
and stories are limited only by your
imagination — oops! We meant to say
your to'cys' imaginations, of course!
If you haven't perused the software
store shelves lately, take time to do so.
You'll find that these incredible chil-
dren's packages are affordable. But be
forewarned: Once you take these pro-
grams home, you'll probably have to
relinquish your computer to your kids.
That is, until you try out some of the
programs yourself. Indeed, they aren't
just for kids anymore.
Carol Ellison is coauthor of the book
Parents, Kids, & Computers (Random
House). Her column "Of Mice & Kids"
appears in the Education Review of the
Washington Post. □
Stiopper's MM
Davidson's Kid Works 2— $59.95
The Sierra Network— $12.95/month
Kid Pictures— $29.95
(30 hours), S4.00/month (LAN)
DAVIDSON & ASSOCIATES
THE SIERRA NETWORK
19840 Pioneer Ave.
P.O. Box 1550
Torrance, CA 90503
Oakhurst, CA 93644
(800) 545-7677
(800) 743-7721
(310)793-0600
Mtxed-Up Mother Goose
The Tale of Peter Rabbit Talking
(CD-ROM)— $69.95
Storybook (CD-ROM)— $34.95
Mixed-Up Mother Goose
The Tale of Peter Rabbit Talking
(floppy)— $29.95
Storybook (floppy)— $19.95
SIERRA ON-LINE
KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURE
P.O. Box 485
4502 Dyer St.
Coarsegold, CA 93614
LaCrescenta, CA 91214
(800) 328-6654
(818) 542-4200
Aladdin Print Kit— $19.95
Storybook Weaver— $49.00
Beauty and the Beast Print Kit—
MECC
$19.95
6160 Summit Dr. N
Dick Tracy Crimestoppers Print Kit—
Minneapolis, MN 55430
$19.95
(800) 685-6322
Mickey & Minnie Fun Time Print Kit—
(612)569-1500
$19.95
WALT DISNEY COMPUTER
SOFTWARE
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91521
(818)841-3326
88 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
64/128 VIEW
COMPUTE says goodbye to
Amiga Resource, but Gazette will
continue — witli your help!
Tom Netsel
There's good news and
bad news this month.
Let's get the depressing
item out of the way and
then finish on a couple of up-
beat notes.
The bad news is that this
issue marks the final edition
of Amiga Resource. As Ga-
zette is available for 64 and
128 users, Amiga Resource
was available to Amiga sub-
scribers as a special section
in COMPUTE. Subscribers
to COMPUTE'S multiedition
received both the Amiga
and Gazette sections.
What began in 1988 as a
sporadic buyer's guide for
Amiga products evolved in-
to a quarterly publication in
the spring of 1989. Reader
response was enthusiastic,
and Amiga Resource be-
came a bimonthly publica-
tion less than a year later. In
the summer of 1990, Gener-
al Media bought COMPUTE
Publications and re-
launched the magazines in
their present format. Amiga
Resource went monthly with
Denny All<in as editor.
In a computer market dom-
inated by IBM and clones,
Amiga Resource and Ga-
zette provided coverage for
a dedicated core of Commo-
dore users. As long as each
section had a sufficient sub-
scribers, publication could
continue. Those numbers
are no longer there for Ami-
ga Resource.
That's the bad news. The
good news is that Gazette
continues. Thanks to your
support, we still have
enough subscribers to war-
rant the time, effort, and ex-
pense of turning out a 40-
page section devoted to an
11 -year-old computer. How
long Gazette continues is
up to you readers. If you re-
nev</ your subscription and
encourage fellow Commo-
dore owners to subscribe,
then we'll continue. If you
feel it's time for Gazette to
call it quits, let your subscrip-
tion lapse.
Naturally, I hope you'll con-
tinue supporting Gazette as
you've done for the past ten
years. Commodore users
from around the world contin-
ue to produce amazing pro-
grams for the magazine and
its companion disk. And af-
ter more than a decade of
publishing, our columnists
and writers still haven't ex-
hausted their editorial pos-
sibilities. I've got some
great programs and articles
that I want to share with
you, and it'd be a shame to
waste all this valuable infor-
mation. I hope I can count
on your continuing support.
Here's some more good
news. Creative fvlicro De-
signs (CMD) is now han-
dling a lot more Commo-
dore software and hard-
ware. It recently purchased
all of the products that RUN
magazine once offered
through TechMedia.
CfVID has confirmed that
it is taking orders, and a
new catalog of products
that include the GEOS Com-
panion disks. Productivity
Pak, modems, and heavy-
duty power supplies should
be available by the time you
read this.
CfvID is searching for
more Commodore products
from other firms as well. The
Massachusetts-based com-
pany wants to become an
even greater resource for
Commodore owners by offer-
ing a wider range of soft-
ware and hard-to-find prod-
ucts. Keep up the good
work, CMD! n
GAZETTE
64/128 VIEW
COMPUTE says goodbye to Amiga Resource.
By Tom Netsel.
G-1
PRINTER POTPOURRI
Facts about dot-matrix printers.
By Ranjan Bose.
G-3
REVIEWS
BBU and BBG, 1 Paint, and Grafix Grab Bag.
G-10
FEEDBACK
Questions, answers, and comments.
G-1 4
PD PICKS G-16
1581 Directory Assistant and 1581 Disk Utilities.
By Steve Vander Ark.
MACHINE LANGUAGE
Load and run ML programs from BASIC.
By Jim Butterfield.
G-1 8
D'lVERSIONS
When your computer speaks, will you answer'
By Fred D'lgnazio.
G-20
BEGINNER BASIC
How does data get inside your computer?
By Larry Cotton.
6-22
GEOS
Have you heard GEOS lately?
By Steve Vander Ark.
G-23
PROGRAMMER'S PAGE
Programming hints and tips from readers.
By Randy Thompson.
G-24
PROGRAMS
DataBase (64)
Brick Layer (64)
CD+ (64)
Silicon Cobbler (64)
Teleword 128
The Automatic Proofreader (64/128)
MLX (64)
G-25
G-28
G-31
G-34
G-36
G-37
G'38
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-1
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iiU^
Printers are practically a requirement for any well-equipped
computer system. Through the use of an interface, a
64 or 1 28 can connect to almost any printer, but the dot-matrix
is still the choice of most Commodore users.
When the 64 was introduced 1 1 years ago. its users
were severely restricted in their selection of printers.
One of the reasons for this was because their computer
didn't come with an industry standard Centronics paral-
lel or RS-232 serial port.
Printers from Commodore were the only game in
town for some years, and they were generally high-
priced and of poor quality. f\/lost third-party printers
came equipped with Centronics parallel ports (RS-232
ports were available as an option), but they were
incompatible with Commodore hardware. Luckily for us
users- a number of companies produced printer inter-
faces that enabled us to use these third-party printers
with our Commodores.
transparent mode. This means that the output from your
program is sent unaltered to the printer. In this case,
the interface simply takes the Commodore serial data
bit by bit and sends the information as eight parallel
data bits. It also sends along a few handshake signals,
which the printer needs in order to communicate with
your computer. More about these later.
Then There's PETSCII
Not only Is the 64's hardware nonstandard, but the
numerical codes that it uses to represent characters is
also nonstandard. Practically all printers use what is
known as the ASCII standard, where a code value of 65
stands for an uppercase letter A. The 64, however, in-
POTPOURRI
These days, most any printer, be it dot-matrix, ink
jet, or laser, can be connected to a Commodore
through one of these printer interfaces. Although laser
printers have experienced dramatic price reductions,
most Commodore users still opt for dot-matrix printers,
which offer excellent quality at affordable prices.
In the Mode
Getting back to the interface, these devices take the
nonstandard Commodore serial port signal and make it
look like a Centronics-compatible signal, which most
third-party printers can recognize. Interfaces typically
allow several modes of operation. One mode always is
the downwardly compatible 1525-emulation mode. This
mode uses Commodore graphic characters stored in
the interface ROfvl and blocks all non-Commodore
printer codes from reaching the printer. This means that
a fancy printer is essentially downgraded into acting
like a 1525. This mode is useful only with ancient pro-
grams that don't support any other printer.
Printer interfaces also allow you to use all the fea-
tures of your printer through what is aptly named
terprets an ASCII value of 65 as a lowercase a.
For the benefit of the printer — and your printouts —
the interface translates the Commodore codes (some-
times called PETSCII or CBMSGII) that flow from the
computer into ASCII codes. Some 64 word processors
generate ASCII output directly, and these work very
well if you set the interface to its transparent mode.
Even if your 64 program sends true ASCII code, you
still need the interface in order to supply the correct
electrical signals for the printer.
interfaces also allow you to print program listings in
several ways. The embedded graphic characters and
control codes that represent color changes, cursor
movements, or screen-clearing functions that you see
when you list a program on your monitor can be made
to appear in the printed listing as graphic characters,
key combinations, or a numerical code.
Some interfaces also have a hex-dump mode in
which the hexadecimal values of all the characters that
are sent by the computer are printed. This comes fn
handy when you're debugging should a program hang
up the printer by sending an unwanted control char-
BY RANJAN BOSE
ruM.
Vj
j^m
^«^
wm
mM.
acter. Since many printers
can be set to work in this
mode, you probably won't
miss it if your interface lacl<s
a hex mode.
Interfaces also allow you
to turn linefeeds on or off as
needed. This is another fea-
ture that's present on many
of today's printers.
fvlost printer interfaces
come with a buffer. This* is
memory that is resident out-
side the computer. It can be
as tiny as 128 bytes or as
large as 32K. Rather than
waiting around for the print-
er to accept the printout
information, the computer
dumps it to the buffer. The
computer is free to work on
other chores, and the buffer
hangs onto the information
until the printer is ready to
print it. The bigger the
buffer, the sooner it frees the
computer when you have a
large file to print.
Making Contact
The printer and computer
first establish a common
time frame (handshake) by
using a strobe signal, which
is a volley of very fast and
regularly occurring electric
pulses. The computer then
waits for the printer to signal
its availability with a high
acknowledge signal or a low
busy signal. On receiving
the appropriate signal, the
connputer sends the
information that is to be
printed. These characters,
which are nothing more than
electrical pulses, get sent at
a rate of 400-600 characters
per second.
Few printers can handle
information this quickly.
Since most are limited to
printing at a much slower
rate, typically 40-150 char-
acters per second, the char-
acters coming from the
computer are stored in
buffers, v^hich may be in the
printer or in the interface.
When the buffers are full, the
computer receives a signal
to stop sending data. From
that moment, the computer
waits until the printer catch-
es up and signals that it's
ready for more data.
In a system with a tiny
buffer, this waiting game
can occur every few sec-
G-4 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
With a printer Interface, you can connect your 64 or 128 to practical-
ly any printer, such as these multifont models from Star Micronics.
ends until everything has
been printed. If a big buffer
is available, then the com-
puter can send a large
amount of data before it is
interrupted. After sending
the last packet of data, the
computer becomes avail-
able for further use.
A Dip into History
fvlodern-day dot-matrix print-
ers descend from line print-
ers, dinosaurs that were
used long ago when video
monitors were prohibitively
expensive. By firing a single
column of six to eight pins as
the printhead moved across
the page, the line printer was
able to reproduce charac-
ters and graphic shapes. Its
printing speed was compa-
rable with present stan-
dards, but the quality was
terrible. The dots that made
up the printout were visible
from a mile away.
For those requiring better
print quality, the only re-
course was to acquire a
heavy, expensive, noisy,
and slow daisywheel printer.
The daisywheel has all but
disappeared with the advent
of laser and ink-jet printers.
(These latter printers still
employ the dot-matrix meth-
od of printing, but they
employ very tiny dots.)
Still on the Dot
Despite the poor quality of
their early printouts, dot-
matrix printers have re-
mained popular. They've
survived primarily by a fierce
reduction in price, aided by
an increase in features and
a boost in print quality. In an
effort to keep their cus-
tomers and attract new
ones, printer companies
have increased the number
of pins in the printhead,
added color, and offered im-
proved paper handling.
As lasers and inl< jets con-
tinue to drop In price, it's quite
possible that some day peo-
ple will find it economical to
have a laser printer for letter
quality printouts and keep a
dot-matrix printer on hand for
printing multipart forms. Forms
are beyond the capability of
the mighty laser printer right
now because it doesn't use
impact technology.
SOFTWARE SUPPORT
INTERNATIONAL
We Stock America's Largest Selection Of C-64/C-128
IfwtLsands of Commodore Oitmers Cfioose Us
Jis Their One Stop SuppCier . ^Here's 'Why!
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After six years in business, nobody in the Commodore marlcet
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service yourevery need. If you've heard of a product, odds are
that we can locate it for you. And, we stock most major
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+ Hardware & Peripherals.
Although we cant gel keyboards and disk drives any longer,
we can offer disks, modems, cables, interfaces, and much
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+ Used Software Selection.
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♦ Un-Advertised Specials.
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that are hard to pass up.
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As a regular Software Support customer, you have access to
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you as Sandy, Mike and Claressa.
+ Fast Order Processing.
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* Worldwide Distributor Of Major Products.
Ever hear of Maverick, Super Snapshot, Super 1750 Clone,
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* Purchase From Us With Confidence.
We were very pleased when
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Beyond Zork 128 $1297
4 X 4 Off Road Racing $9.97
Sega Arcade Smash Hits $14.97
Hardball/ Tony LaRussa $1297
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PRODUcnvriY
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(206) 695-1393
CALL TOLL FREE TODAY!
Major Credit Cards Accepted.
The print quality on
today's dot-matrix printers is
far from bad. Even 9-pin
printers can produce near
letter quality printouts by
using multiple passes. This
does affect printing speed,
liowever. Thie printing speed
in NLQ mode is about 30-50
percent slower than when
printing in draft mode.
You may experience
some reduction in print quali-
ty when using fanfold paper.
Since the printer grips fan-
fold paper less firmiy than
{fiction-fed single sheets,
you often get a line or two of
text with jagged characters
because of unavoidable
paper movement between
the multiple passes of the
printhead. A 24-pin print-
head avoids this problem by
printing LQ characters in a
single pass. Also, by using a
denser dot-matrix (up to 30 x
48 dots per character as
opposed to 18 X 18 on a 9-
pin printer), a 24-pin printer
produces letters that are bet-
ter shaped with smoother
curves than its 9-pin cousin.
It generally prints faster, too.
Some Useful Features
As I mentioned earlier,
prices of dot-matrix printers
have dropped dramatically
over the years, and to make
them even more appealing,
manufacturers have piled on
the features. Here are a few
that can mai^e your printing
sessions more enjoyable.
Paper parking. In older printers,
at any gri/en instant, you were limited
to using either fanfold paper or single
sheets. If you had fanfold paper in the
printer and wanted to print on letter-
head or other single-sheet stoct^, you
had to remove the fanfold paper.
When you'd finished with the single
sheets, you then had to go through
the whole tedious procedure of
reloading and aligning the fanfold
paper.
In newer printers, you don't have to
remove fanfold paper in order to use
single sheets. It can be "parked" out
of the way while single sheets are
used. When you're ready to switch
back to fanfold, it can be brought
back into position by moving a lever
or pressing a switch.
In some printers, the parked paper
is held in a curved shape. If the paper
is left for a day or two like this, the curl
can cause the paper to jam or at least
G-6 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
PRINTER LIFESAVERS
Dot-matrix printers typically need minimal care, but here
are a few things to keep them online even longer.
• Use the best quality paper. Cheap paper sheds a lot
of minute particles. This paper dust can mix with lubri-
cants to form a dough that can clog moving parts.
• Clean the printer by lightly vacuuming, taking care not
to touch ICs, cables, or other electronic parts. Static elec-
tricity generated during vacuuming can be damaging.
• Smoking, eating, and drinking near computer equip-
ment is like playing Russian roulette! You'll win most of
the time, but you'll remember the time you lose.
• Once or twice a year, depending on usage, clean the
guide rail supporting the print head with a dry lint-free
cloth. Lubricate the rail sparingly with a very light oil.
• Once a year, clean the rubber platen and paper bail
rollers with ethanol (or special cleaning solution avail-
able for this purpose from office supply stores) and with
a rubber-conditioning compound.
• If the print head becomes dirty and begins to smudge
printouts, remove the ribbon and then use a strip of lint-
free wipes, moistened in alcohol to gently floss the print
head and the ribbon mask {the plastic or metal frame that
lies between the print head and the paper).
• Never use a ribbon with a weak area, one that
appears as a translucent patch when the ribbon is
viewed against light. Don't use one that has an actual
tear in it as this could snag the print head pins.
• Never use the printer for extended periods of time.
Most printers have a detector that shuts the printer
down automatically when the print head overheats.
When printing more than a few pages, it's wise to leave
the cover open for promoting ventilation,
• Re-inking a printer ribbon might appeal to the Scrooge in
you, but it could cost you the print head! For proper opera-
tion, ribbons need to have the right amount of ink and lubri-
cant. Darker printing ribbons may look good on paper, but
they generally have less lubricants. A cheap ribbon that's
short on lubricant could rip and catch the delicate pins,
costing you an expensive print head replacement.
give an unsightly top page on the next
document that's printed.
Other printers hold the parked pa-
per flat and don't have this curly prob-
lem. In fact, even when using fanfold
paper, it's a good practice to park the
paper at the end of each session. Pa-
per left wrapped around the platen
can definitely develop a curl, giving
you a top page that looks unruly.
Zero-inch tear off. With earlier
printers equipped with pull-tractors,
when you finished printing a document,
you normally had to advance the fan-
fold, tear off the printed pages, and
then use friction feed to print the first
half of the next page until it caught the
tractor sprockets. You then took the
printer offline, engaged the paper in the
sprockets properly, disengaged the
friction-feed, and printed the rest. It was
as painful a procedure as it sounds.
This procedure was prone to
numerous frustrating problems, espe-
cially when several people
used the same printer. It
was very easy to have mis-
aligned sprocket holes.
Often, someone would for-
get to disengage the friction
setting after loading the fan-
fold. This situation usually
occurred when you went for
a cup of coffee after starting
to print your 20-page docu-
ment.
The other option was to
use the fanfold from the
beginning and to discard
the blank top page. The
trees would probably like to
say something about this
wasteful procedure.
In newer printers equip-
ped with pushfeeds, it's
possible to advance the
page after printing, tear off
the last printed page, and
then retract the paper to the
top printing position. Rather
than going through the con-
tortions outlined earlier, all
you have to do is press a
switch to move the paper.
Improved paper han-
dling. Newer impact dot-
matrix printers allow a
greater adjustment of the
gap between the printhead
and the platen, thereby per-
mitting the use of thicker
forms. In general, paper
handling is more positive,
precise, and predictable on
newer printers than on
those from even a few years
ago. The improvement
makes it much easier to
print envelopes, multipart
forms, and labels.
Scalable fonts. No matter how
good a regular font looks {even on 24-
pin printers), the jaggies show up
when you print them in double width
or double height. Scalable fonts
smooth out the jaggies. With them,
new printers can print out slick-look-
ing characters over a wide range of
sizes. A few printers have scalable
fonts built in, whiie others print those
with the help of special software.
Quiet operation. While improved
print quality attracts users, the noise
that dot-matrix printers generate turns
quite a few prospective users away. A
typical workhorse, churning out 40-80
ops in letter quality mode, is noisy
enough to render nearby conversation
impossible. Printer hoods can bring
the noise down considerably, but they
take away easy access to the printer's
controls and paper.
Most new phnters come with a quiet
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35*4
5*1
5*1
4tl
4*1
7tl
7tl
7*1
7*1
2+)
Send SflSE for IHFO on The HEHL Collection or The CLEARANCE ITEMS.
Reg. cost/disk side: $3 1/1-3 (2.50 1/4-9 H.75 t/10-19, etc,
CATALOG y/ 1 disk; C64/128-47p [$2*21 i i 1 J J Plus/4-18p [»2*1]
PlfhT-H0/CMI51/Bank-CA.fies.*8.25t tx/itei total-No COD'S/Crt Crd.
HANDLING: BnkChk/NO-!st i Chk w/clrd SIH: USPS Ooi/Intnat Rates
TO: KFPDS/Kenneth Franklin-P.O. Box 470464-L.A.,Ca. 90047-0464
He've lost of the PO Select C= Library, lie're in year 13. Thanks!
Circle Reader Service Number 197
JHOO-Bible liie i4/64 25G 6*1
JH0I-*/4 G-Pak Over 200 G 30*5
JH02-*/4/64 Teninal Pak 9*1
JH03-C16 Coibo 70 prgs *
]H04-Siiperbase */4 i Docs
JH05-H. A. L.( update In/docs
Speedscrpt/ftssitilr+4
JH06-tJ?t/4..Priitr, Cprs,
]H07-Printed Ud/Fle.-C64
JH08-5pell Checkers +4/64
JK09-«any PROJECTS *4/64
JHIO-HAH RAOIS PROGRANS +4
JHU-G 1 Progs. C16/+4/64
JH12-ACE *4/t4 Fl.Sii jystk
JHI3-5A80IEUfi +4/64 Spy Adv
JH14-RUe RIOER *4/64 joystk
JH15-Graphics + Progs, t/4
]K16-HacP3int Vieur «/pics
'J^ Big Blue Reader 128/64 - 4.1
Transfers word processing, text, ASCII, and binary files between
C64/1 28 and IBM PC compatible 360K 5.25' and 720K 3.5" disks.
New Version 4.1 features: Transfers ASCII, PET ASCII and Screen
Code files including: WordWfiter, PocketWriter, SpeedScript, PaperClip,
WriteStuff, GEOS, EasyScript, Fleet System and most others.
Supports drives # 8-30. New Backup (C128) and Format (1571/1581)
programs. Reads MS-DOS sub-directories, uses joystick, and more.
Includes C128&C64 programs. Requires 1571 or 1581 Disk Drive,
Big Blue Reader 128/64 - 4.1 only $44.95
Version 4.1 upgrade, send original BBR disk plus $18.
^iSCe Searcfi 3.2
1. The entire Old & New Testament text on 4-1541/71 disks.
2. An Exhaustive English Concordance on 2-1541/71 disks.
Indexes every word in the entire Bible; 700,000+ references.
3. IncrwSible five (5) second look-up time, per/word, per/disk.
4. Instant, automatic spell checking of more than 12,800 words.
5. Wildcard and boolean AND, OR & NOT search options.
6. Search the entire Bible in 5 seconds with 1581 or HD (v 3.52).
7. Money back guaranteed!
KJV $49.95 1 NIV $59.95 | KJV & NIV $90
Includes: C64 & Ct28 programs; screen, printer and disk output;
users guide, disk case. Available on 7-1541/71, or 4- 1581 disks.
■*■ Any questions? Call or write for more infornnation.
Also available! Amiga. Bible Search
Order by check, money order, or COD. US funds only.
t* FREE Bookrate shipping in US. No Credit Card orders.
Canada & Mexico add £4 S/H, Overseas add $10 S/H ($5 BBR)
SOGWAP Software ^ (219)724-3900
115 Bellmont Road; Decatur, Indiana 46733
^^$ AND
$ MONEY
Yes, save time antJ money! Subscribe to the Gazette
Disk and get all the exciting, fun-filled Gazette pro-
grams for your Commodore 64 or 128— already on
disk!
Subscribe today, and month after month you'll
get all the latest, most challenging, and fascinating
programs published in the corresponding issue of
COMPUTE.
New on the Gazette Disk! In addition to the
programs that appear in the magazine, you'll also
get outstanding bonus programs. These programs,
which are often too large to offer as type-ins, are
available only on disk— they appear nowhere else.
As another Gazette Disk extra, check out '
"Gazette Gallery," where each month we present the
very best in original 64 and 128 artwork.
So don't waste another moment. Subscribe to-
day to COMPUTE'S Gazette Disk and get 12 issues
for only $49.95. You save almost 60% off the single-
issue price. Clip or photocopy and mail completed
coupon today.
Individual issues of the disk are available for
$9.95 (plus $2.00 shipping and handling) by writing
to COMPUTE, 324 West Wendover Avenue, Suite
200, Greensboro, North Carolina 27408.
:i
T tda Start my one-year subscription
to COMPUTE'S Gazette Disk right away
for only $49.95.*
D Payment enclosed (check or money order)
D Charge D MasterCard D Visa
Acct. No Exp. Date
Signature
(ReqLitred)
Name —
Address .
City
State/ ZIP/
Province Postal Code
Mail to COMPUTES Gazette Disk, PO- Box 3250. Harlan, lA 51593-2430
' Residents of NO and NY, please add appropriate sales tax for your area. Canadian
orders, add T^o goods and services lax.
mode, which reduces the printing
noise by slowing down the printing
speed. Panasonic, followed by others,
has gone beyond this technique to
equip newer printers with quieter mov-
ing parts and added insulation.
There's even a superquiet mode that
aiters the method of firing pins in two
passes. Even at regular speeds, these
printers are supposed to produce
about ''■(. as much noise as earlier
printers.
Color. Practically all self-respect-
ing dot-matrix printer manufacturers
now have at least one model that
prints in color. Color printers use a rib-
bon with tracks of colored ink and a
motor which moves the ribbon up and
down to bring one of the (usually)
four-colored bands against the print-
ing pins. By printing in one color and
then reprinting over it in another color,
up to seven colors can be generated.
Since accurate registration of
superimposed characters is essential,
most of the printers become unidirec-
tional when printing in color. The
resultant output is slower than when
the printer is printing with a black rib-
bon, but the only other alternative
would be to purchase an ink jet or
color laser costing many times more.
Color intensity varies from printer to
printer, and one band of color in the
ribbons usually dries out faster than
the others, leading to shifts in hue
over a period of use. Colored ribbons
are generally two to three times more
expensive than biack ribbon, and they
have a shorter life.
Improved prlnthead move-
ment. Printers rely on major move-
ment in two directions. The paper
moves up and down (vertical move-
ment) while the printhead moves left
and right (lateral movement). Some
heads rest at the left edge of the print-
ing line, while others rest in the mid-
dle. Most heads print a line from left to
right and then the next line from hght
to left. Printers that use this bidirec-
tional printing can often figure out
after printing a line whether it would
be quicker to start the next line from
the left or right edge (logic-seeking).
When printing graphics, you can
either select bidirectional or
unidirectional movement for improving
vertical alignment, the lack of which
shows up when printing a long vertical
straight line. The faster a printer is, the
more likely it is to print a vertical line
that appears to zigzag. Some printers
compensate for this by allowing you to
adjust the timing for the printhead to
reach the starting point for each line
(bidirectional timing adjustment).
As a printer grows old and the cog
belts that move the head become
loose, the misalignnnent becomes
more noticeable. By adjusting the tim-
ing, you can get a few more miles out
of it before you'll be forced to see a
service technician.
Printheads must move parallel to
the platen (paper) in order to make an
even impression across the page.
With age, this alignment could go out
of whack, resulting in printouts with a
darker left or right edge. A sawtooth
test pattern that can be generated on
some printers can readily reveal such
a misalignment. The adjustment that
corrects this problem shouldn't be
attempted by an untrained person.
This adjustment may also be required
when replacing the printhead. (Such
replacements aren't common unless
you are heavily into printing bit-
mapped images and large banners.)
Check out today's feature-packed
printers. Their low price and high
quality make them a great buy. 3
'^<=^4{)l^' "
G-8 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
COMMODORE 64/128
PUBLIC DOMAIN
SHAREWARE PROGRAMS
CALL OR WRITE FOR FREE
DESCRIPTIVE CATALOG OF
COMMODORE 64/128 PUBLIC
DOMAIN & SHAREWARE SOFT-
WARE OR SEND $2.00 FOR DE-
SCRIPTIVE CATALOG AND
SAMPLE DISK. ADULT SOFT-
WARE LISTING AVAILABLE TO
THOSE OF LEGAL ADULT AGE.
DISKS O'PLENTY INC.
8362 PINES BLVD., SUITE 270
PEMBROKE PINES, FL 33024
(305) 963-7750
Circle Reader Service Number 253
WESTERN HERITAGE
THE BIQ3EST VARIETT OF ALL NEW
PROFESSIONAL WESTERN PRINT SHOP
GRAPHICS, BORDERS AND FONTS. FROM
WILD WET RODEOS TO MODERN HORSE
SHOWS, YOU WILL HAVE QRAPHICS
FOR EVERY WESTERN OCCASION.
S24.95 PLUS USAS/H MM WA R£S ti.95 TAX
PLLrS:UKS/H»12D0 * AUSTRALIA S/K t IS, 00
APO. FPO, AX. HI Sffl Sa 00 * CANADA SIH 15 OO
6 FAVMENT IN USA RINDS * OR CANADA
0W5ERS tT7 50 TOTAL IN CANADIAN RJNDS
Call NOW 509-276-6928
C E4 -ir WRTIE 70R ?REE BROCHURE * IBH
HORSE FEATHERS GRAPHICS
N. 273 10 Short Rd, Deer Pari:, WA 99006
REQUEST 5 25 OR 3 5 FOR IBM
SPECIFY IBM OR C64
?fe
Circle Reader Service Number 234
WHEN YOU
CANT BREATHE,
niOTHiniG ELSE
MATTERS.
Help die
American Lung Association
fight lung disease.
t
AMERICAN
LUNG
ASSOCIATION^
Space contributed by iho publisher as a public ser^ ice.
KeyDOS ROM Version 2 is here!
The KeyDOS ROM w a chip for (he empty socket inside your C12e that adds more than 40
powerful features. KeyDOS is available ln$tanttv ss $oon as you switch on your 12SI
KevDOS is loaded wjlh useful lools lo simplify (i!e access on multiple drive sysiems without typ-
ing file names— all major DOS functions included. Select multiple files for copyirig, viewing,
printing, renaming or scratching. ASCll/C6M/Scf een code converter. Full support for 1 58 1
subdireclortes. Buillin RAMDOS for REUs up to 2MB. New GEOS Sup<RBoot
Alarm clocV. DisV editor. Powerful debugger.
Only $32.50. Satisfaction Guaranteed! Write for more information.
Enhance your system with the speed and convenience that KeyDOS provides!
Antigrav Toolkit, PO Box 1074, Cambridge, MA 02142
Shipping outside of US, Canada and Mexico add $3
Circle Reader Service Number 244
- 'the MOST FOWER for the 3UCK'
• 'powit ihml only AMIGA ohvnwn hMV» tnloy»d unfit now'
• fit** ttiA-... puttiH the C- 128 lo the tdgt of tfn gfwptyicw tfivrtop*
■RUHOcl. l«l
I Palnl lelsymj crtale on a 640 by 400 pwel scrwn-- Ihnl's
AT LEAST DOUBL.!- Ihc siie used by any other graphic! ^nn^Ju.^rcl
¥ — Tttf^r'fi/iihlff ' P^lnl"5 Inlerlace screen offers the unique ahilitv to Mend colur^ for
J i/JC/CUICtC. 65,536 APPARFNT CtJLORS!
Supports 24 pin, COLOR, S LASER Printers, i RA¥ ExpansionI
I p.:ni A Paint»;$ 39,95 ppd?
F<Ki^'<flMouMindCM2iBD<IO'C I7(
■v«ik ^dH RAU 4w«d*i
FPortr.. 1.2 r $24.95
. SAVK! hoth $54.95^
I PQlnt
/= Interlace!
I Port.
ImpcrVExpW
iBiponnif. MAr.GF.OS. B^.fcS, n.-rt*JI(, rriw^cp"
Fjpon ] Psjnl ui GIF' Define niiwm Gil' ptieilei'
,vd»' Ytnwn I 2 tip Tfl I VMf.!: FASTh/l'
Pilui hy U S.A. ChBcii or nwnty ordAi only. MKiflS add 6- 1 '2% salss tas fii\c*i2 A woftlis tordanyeiy
Lhmg rrrK>r, Ltd
Ft) hmi mi]i
MirinE*p.ili'. M»;
circle Reader Service Number 146
Fast Action Arcade Style Game
'^ for the Commodore 64/128+1541
^And <J20/I Q^ plus $3 Shipping and
tP^rr*c/tJ Handling in the U.S.A.
S/H in Canada $5 and $10 for all others.
— American Currency Only ■
Sliders
Send Check
or Money
Order to:
Box 1086. Sidney, MT 59270
circle Reader Service Number 289
NEW GEOS SOFTWARE
THE LANDMARK SERIES
Dual Top ■ The PREMIER Desk Top feplaeemenl. Provides full four drive -.uppon, RAM i
priimiy system, one elick access 10 major file furclions, comprehensive error icpoiTs, full «.:t iii
keyboard shortcul^. multiple usi^r opiions plus many mor^ feamres. 40 and SO col modes.
Lace II - Display GcoPaint. [Paint, and BasicS picuiies. Full color. 128-80 column mode only.
GeoTtl - Relax and enjoy a game of logic and skill. Full color 40 and 80 column modes.
CcuSoKtalre . I'ly your hand al America's favorile card game. Full color, 4t} and 80 columns.
ClH-cktrhnnrd . Play and old fashoincd games of checkers with a friend. Full color. 40 columns.
iiiriuiiiwaaiBiMHiiiLiiHiwiwinT
circle Header Service Number 135
REU uiara: Battery BaO< any 17xx, or GEORAM, wiBi Iha BBU. Use with GEOS (V1.3 up),
RAMDOS or other progranu SJial u» REUs. Greal for BBS. No heavy power supply needeO.
GEOS ueere; BBGFlim, Battery backed RAM for GEOS 2.0. A fast, reliable alternative to
mechanical drives. Supports all drive types, multiple partitions and alternate DESKTOPS.
PERFORfVlANCE PERIPHERALS, Inc.
5 Upper Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY 12211.
us orten, literature: 800-925-9774. Tech suppoit. oroerj. FAX: 5 1 8-436-0485
BBUS59, BBGRam512KSB9, BBGRam 1M S119, BBGRam 2MS159.
us S&H se. us coo 14. Canada & Me»ca S&H $10. Other countries S&H St9.
30 day money back guarantee. 90 day warrantee. Master Card / VISA welcome
Circle Reader Service Number 153
eiEws
BBU AND BBG
Experts said these products could nev-
er be made. It's a good thing Perform-
anoe Peripherals didn't hear that, or it
might not have created BBU and BBG.
BBU i& a battery backup cartridge for
the 64 or ^?.Q that provides permanent
memory fnonvolatile) for Commodore
RAM expansion units and geoRAM.
BBG is a backup RAM disk for GEOS
2.0 GEOS 128. or Gateway (CMDs
GEOS system). BBG is available in siz-
es ranging from 512K to 2MB.
BBU
One RAM cartridge technician told me
that if a battery backup for an REU
were develooed. it would be the size of
a car battery and wouldn't hold power
for more than a few minutes. BBU us-
es an AC power supply backed up by
four D batteries. While the power must
be on for the cartridge contents to be
accessible, I have left only the batter-
ies connected for over a day without
any loss of cartridge memory. With
care, cartridge portability between com-
puters should be possible as long as
the batteries are connected.
BBU allows an REU to be used in its
normal way. If you don't initialize the
REU when you load the Commodore
RAfvlDOS, whatever was previously
stored in the REU will still be available.
In my case, I've found programs that
I'd copied between disks, Speed-
Script, and images used by The Print
Shop still in memory. Of course, if the
program you use automatically initial-
izes the REU, then its memory will be
erased.
The Write Stuff word processor lets
yoii use an REU to store its large dic-
tionary and text files. I know an opera-
tor of a mail-order business who uses
this word processor, and he would
leave his 64 turned on from Monday to
Fridav, JList to be sure he didn't lose any-
thing. With BBU, the computer can be
turned off without the fear of losing any
files.
fvlanv BBU users will place GEOS or
Gateway in their cartridges. When
Rboot is loaded from disk, GEOS and
all reouired files are available in less
than eight seconds. This technique
nnakes GEOS a true operating system,
since it no longer has to be loaded
G-10 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
from disk like a program.
BBG
BBG doesn't use an REU. It holds only
GEOS 2.0 or Gateway. Loading BBG
Rboot from a floppy disk provides equal-
ly fast access to the cartridge con-
tents. This backup cartridge is availa-
ble in sizes ranging from 512K to 2MB.
If GEOS 2.0 is used with the provided
BBU IS a battery backup interface module
for t/OO- series REUS and geoRAM 512.
BBG is a battery baci^up RAfvl disk for
GEOS 2.0 and GEOS 128.
software, the cartridge configures itself
in sections like the 1750-series RAM
disk. On the 2MB model, this is like hav-
ing five RAM disks, if Gateway is
used, BBG is configured as one large
RAM, disk. With Gateway's Slider and
Browse functions, this makes all files
easily accessible.
The Aprospand board has four slots
that allow up to four cartridges to be
switched on or off with a 64 or 128. I
have connected one of these boards
to my cartridge port via a ribbon ex-
tender. This ribbon allows more eco-
nomical use of table space. In the Apro-
spand slots I have connected a Quick
Brown Box (QBB) and BBU connected
to a 1750 REU. A QBB-specific version
of The Write Stuff word processor is in
the QBB; the BBU-REU combination
contains Gatev/ay, With this setup, it's
possible to stop writing in the middle of
a text document, load geoTerm from
the REU in eight seconds, and return
to my word processor with no loss of
text.
The Aprospand makes another inter-
esting combination possible. I have
used one board to access both BBU
and BBG. I placed Gateway in both,
and found that I could run GEOS from
either with no interference from the oth-
er. This could increase your total avail-
able RAM for GEOS {separately accessi-
ble), or allow use of GEOS in one car-
tridge and Gateway in the other, since
each system has different advantages.
Employment of BBG and BBU togeth-
er would require ordering BBG with the
optional disable switch, so that it
would not be available when BBU was
being accessed. A reset switch is stan-
dard with BBU and available as an op-
tion with BBG.
None of my other cartridges works
with either BBG or BBU. In order to use
Gateway in my BBU-REU combination,
I have sacrificed the ability to use the
REU with other programs for fast disk
and file copying.
Many Commodore users will
choose to place BBG or BBU directly
in their cartridge ports, This is how
BBG and BBU were designed to be
used. There should be no problems for
any 64 or 128 with this configuration.
For very little money, REU owners
can turn their 64s into permanent-mem-
ory machines with several thousand ki-
lobytes of memory. GEOS users who
don't own an REIJ should appreciate
BBG especially for the large memory it
offers. It's a tribute to Peter Fiset, the
designer of both BBG and BBU, that a
number of other combinations are pos-
sible with these devices.
Fiset is in a sense competing
against himself, since he also devel-
oped the CMD RAMDrive, but
RAMDrive is more expensive than
these cartridges. BBU and BBG are for
those of us who don't have a large
budget, and who have more specific
needs for our computers.
Although the experts said it couldn't
be done, Fiset went
proved them wrong, t,
glad he was successful.
JOHN ELLIOTT
ahead and
for one, am
Performance Peripherals
5 Upper Loudon Rd.
Loudonville, NY 12211
(800) 925-977^
BBU-S59
BBG (512K)— SB9
BOG {1MB)— S1 19
BBG {2MB)— $159
Circle Reader Service Number 414
I PAINT
Do we really need another drawing pro-
gram? If it's for the 128 and if it's a qual-
ity program, then, yes, we do! You can
now add I Paint to your short list of
good graphics programs for the 128. It
requires a 128D or 128 with 64K video
RAM added, a 1351 or compatible
mouse, and an RGBI orSO-column mon-
itor. In return, ! Paint offers you a 640-
X 400-pixel screen and the ability to
blend more than 65,000 apparent col-
ors. While they aren't required, I Paint
supports 1700, 1764, or 1750 RAM ex-
pansion units, 24-pin, color, and laser
pnnters,
The manual describes I Paint as pro-
ducing hi-res interlaced color graphics
for the 128D. I immediately found my-
self wondering what interlaced meant,
I didn't have to look any further than
the manual for an explanation.
Basically, a video image is made up
of horizontal scan lines which are bro-
ken into two fields, one displaying even
lines and the other odd lines. If an im-
age is interlaced, the image of one
field appears between the lines of the
other field. This method doubles the
number of lines holding information,
which in turn doubles the vertical pixel
resolution. I realize that this probably
doesn't make much sense to a lot of
computer users, but this is what gives
you the greater resolution and all of the
apparent colors. After all, interlaced
graphics is what this program is
about.
Getting started with the program
posed a problem for me. I couldn't get
it to load with my 1571 drive. The au-
thor provided me with a new program,
but the same problem still plagued me.
Finally, we hooked up a 1541 drive.
CMD Sets Pace for 1993 with New Products and Lower Prices
CMD Offers One-Stop Shopping to Commodore Owners
EilKIiva Hay 1 , 1M3 CMD acquired all ngnss !o RUN soUwaiB and Km p,jn u^_ ^^^^ ,55^33 MicropiDii Bimes Bmnk disks - 3 5' S 5.!5'
puidiaspd ail TO-ns linm Itieii inventory. As lesuH, CMD »f II be oBenng ms o! bun nefiUN solwire Kew Pnmr wbUjms «,ic IC Cliips
t^« largest se^HrJ3r.s of Ccmmodore&il^SsO'Twafe and haidwareavatai]ie Aaacus books & sorrwaro Elecironc Ans Gaiiei RAM Chfs SIMMs
!Ccay.CMO'sdeoSHQnfeinftKcesiIscommlmen1loC-&+12So*neiswOfttiNide. GEOS 2.0 4 aopica-jDra SkylesEroctncWcKks .- and MUCH Mo!e
IliSourhopelhaiwecanoBer 19/»5/£pillt]i^:'SloConimodOfei)Wlws.H TmsMte Soltwais Dr Ti Muse Solwari
ASOCnlf-a.t: wanS'XaS'yflJ ; HfSiSasa^.a'IStOflJ-lXiLCS.Fo'a Sase'Ssa? S Sarfscnrf P™'"5j5ri'M_ ^
*i-
CMD Utilities
FCOPY+ A (VfD drive fillf copier lontUfJng 1M1.71,ei, HEUanclCMO
device cDrflpaTibilily whicti is capa&o ot copying any SilG PHG. SEQ,
REL, USH File NEW taaiufes .rrclufle
Scratch'UnsctatchFihs -Copy^DeieleCISBBooi SeclDf ■ Dishj'Psrlition
U^N&iV • File Compare • Accsss DOS Comfuands thru Ms.ius • lock/
Uff!ock Files * Formal DisK'ParTitton • Cfeate/Remove Sijb Directories -
Rsi^ams ri'e-Psn<tiot\Head&t - Change Current ParuiionSjodirecayy
MCOPY A iwo drive whole disk.paniiPon h\e copierwfiich suppons CMD
sto'aqo devices and CommcxAire 1541, 71. 81 diskdfives.
SCOPY+ A powQrlul bachuprestom uWity *tiicrt backs up an^ CMD
tJevicoorpaditiontoa 1 54 T. 7 1.31 d'lveorCMD FO SencsfSoppy Stive
This new version incorpoalos Ihe abiiily to duinp an entife CMO dovice
lo an HD Sstigs hard drive
RHD SoarcHes specified pailit.ons on CMD devices Fr:r t es'f.i; iTTtr-ch
a userde!infidliienamepaiiefn. In<:!ui3es handy pnniiMSCieer; wgaio.
A Powerful and Unique Collection ai Disk Ulilities
lor Commodore and CMD Storage Devices
DIR SORT Alphabeluirg MWy lor 1541.?! .81 drives and all CMD
s,to'*^ge devices makos il easy lo organize large d^r eclOrieS
MCOMPARETiivodiived.Si(cornpafou!jij|yrnahcSi[eaS)ftOeva w..t-j
iho accurancy 0I a CMD paniTion againsi a disk copy
FOLLOW LINKS Ho'ps to locale and remove corrupt files
CONVEFIT 4lo71 Convers Seween 1541 S 71 forrriats Alia-s'S
incieasedsSO'aS'S on 15^1 disks alter MCOPVlr.glo I67l orpaniljon
ZAP REU'DACC Clears rnemory n REU or RAMLtnk DACC parlition.
HD POWER TOOLS Allows ed.t ng of CMD Dev-o? PartiiJofi Table
REB UILD POIRHolpsio recover panilions after comptetel^ recr«ai<rc;
the sysiem on CMD Ddvpcqs.
Shareware Ulilities Included:
DED1T64 1 28, SuperDEDrT64'i23 Sort or na-i^jn: y etJtc focor t- 5
■■>utn3;recI(Dri(;r.^inctp,irt!li3nsOM 1 Si-ll .71 .Bl clriue^ and a C^'D Dflif;c:.es
NEW LOWER PRICES
■^AMUnK
=1AMLr>,Ar:UBRAWCa-d
SlMSi
RjL'ji.rr. *■-■ uanAjjCi-o
i?29 5S
Ri,!,f.-.*i- JM&RAWCitJ
S3«3i
Rea MTi-j Co:k[arFLAMCanliOpbonjO
MO 03
RAML.-. e,3:t7 BAd-Lf (Qpttyal)
i?-: -■
'>.'S'. 4l.'2SiUUttxMBS
=-; ■ i:^-raml«idhoi
i--:^-
RAMQrive
~v.\y
HD-Series Hard Disk Dilves
HD-O lSw;-3^EiJfli5rTA'e5MBrK.v9l I
KD':: Jf^^'^Edilwiw U'OMBD'i;*;
1^" :■:: ^r-;.=: tOion III 20, MfiO'r.ei
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0
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-11
C64/128 PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE
REQUEST FREE CATALOG or send S2 for sample disk and catolog (RE-
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G-12 COtvlPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
REVIEWS
and tlie program loaded. Tire author
took my disk and loaded it witin his
1571 drive, so I'm inclined to think my
drive was to blame.
To start, plug your mouse into port 1
and then boot the program. The first
menu provides four options: Start, Set-
up, Install RAMDOS, or Exit. For the
first time, choose Start. You can play
around with the Setup process later.
When you get around to setting up the
program, one of the choices involves
the mouse. It can be set up as either a
left-handed or right-handed mouse.
The setup configures the On button un-
der your index finger and the Off but-
ton under your middle finger.
The next menu will be the main
menu, which will present a selection of
14 options. These are Pen, Brush,
Spray Can, Shapes. Fill, Palette, Mag-
nify, Areas, Drawmode, Text, Files,
Print, Options, and Clear. You'll notice
that the Pen icon will be reversed.
This indicates that the Pen mode is ac-
tive. From this point on, the artist in you
is given the freedom and power to cre-
ate works from the most simple to the
intricately involved.
I'm not an artist — computer or other-
wise— but as I sat in front of the com-
puter drawing cute little geometrical
shapes and filling them in with different
blocks of color, I felt rather creative
and proud of what I could do with this
program. Then I loaded some files of
pictures the author had supplied. The
impact of what could be done with
this program was overwhelming. For
the person who enjoys computer-aided
drawing and creating personal de-
signs, this is an ideal program.
You are provided with three modes
of freehand drawing: Pen, Brush, and
Spray Can. Each of these modes al-
lows you to clip and paste and select
colors while maintaining your choice of
drawing mode. Each is represented by
an icon on the main menu.
The Palette icon on the main menu
calls up its own menu when clicked on.
In the color mode, ink and paper col-
ors are selected for both fields of the in-
terlace screen. There are 16 colors
from which to choose. By clicking on
the palette on the submenu, you enter
the Color Wash mode. Here, you are
able to change colors without affecting
the bitmap data, it is well worth the
time to experiment with the effects
that can be created using the various
coloring combinations.
I Paint includes all of the basic tools
that can be found in most drawing pro-
grams, it gives you the ability to clip,
paste, reverse, flip, and create pat-
terns. There's also a text mode that of-
fers a choice of six fonts, a system
font, and one loadable custom font.
You can manipulate text as to its direc-
tion on the drawing and character
size, and there are six other options for
greater flexibility and creativity.
My only real complaint is that the pro-
gram is slow to load and to print out
my creations, but we can thank Com-
modore for that. Perhaps even that
drawback has its advantage. I can
start loading the program, go make my
necessary cup of tea, and be back at
the computer ready to work by the
time that the program has loaded.
I Paint is a powerful graphics pro-
gram, It's loaded with features that
time and space don't allow me to go in-
to, so I can't give them their proper
due. If you're the type of person who en-
joys drawing at the computer and cre-
ating graphic designs, then this pro-
gram is well worth your time and finan-
cial investment,
CHERYL SCHUH
Living Pfcraf
P.O. Box 80714
Minneapolis, MN 55408-8714
$39.95
Circle Reader Service Number 413
GRAFfX GRAB BAG
The Print Shop has long been a favor-
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this collection and grab one.
TOM NETSEL
Clip Art Cupboard
P.O. Box 317774
Clncinnali, OH 45231
S1 1.95
Circle Reader Service Number 416
TM
f it'operiy ,:i ^onintOiJoK' SuSifi
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INTERNATIOMAL ORDER UNE: (9141 357-2424
is Md, ' .'tTs ire Wnis OT call for puces
Circte Reader Service Number 159
Record Filer I
FOR BUSENESS OR
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Our easy to use 0 Primer
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Standard or Italic print
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Laliel Prinioul 1 , 2, or 3 lolumii!. NO SETU P-BOOK/MAN UAL
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GALACTIC CONQUEST
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SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-13
FEEDBACK
Questions
and answers about
switcliing out
ROM to get more
RAM, printers,
interlaces, and more
IWore RAM
I know Ihe 64 has 8K of RAM
under BASIC ROM at 40960-
49151 and that it can be
used as long as BASIC isn't
being used. Which machine
language LDA and STA do I
need to use to switch be-
tween ROM and RAM?
NICOLE BLAKE
NEW YORK. NY
I'd like to write a program en-
tirely in ML, but I need about
50K of free RAM, My machine
language book says I can
free a memory block from
S0801 to SCFFF with LDA
#$36: STA $01. But when I do
this, the computer crashes. Ei-
ther something's wrong with
my computer or I can't use
this free RAM in direct mode.
Can you tell me how can I pro-
gram this memory?
JASPER HOUK
OUINBYCUL. VA
G-14
Bit 0 of location 1 determines
wliettier ttie computer sees
memory at $AOOO-$BFFF as
BASIC ROM or as Ihe RAM un-
derneath. Bit 1. likewise,
sees memory at $E000-
$FFFF as Kernal ROM or as
the RAM underneath. If either
bit is on. ROM is enabled. If
both are off, the memory is
available. On the 64, lo turn
off the BASIC ROM, store a
$06 into location $01. To turn
off both BASIC and Kernal
ROM, store a $04 in location
$01. To recover both, store a
$07 in the same location. You
mustn't turn off the Kernal
ROM with BASIC ROM still en-
gaged because BASIC relies
upon the Kernal.
If you make this memory
available without copying
ROM to the RAM underneath,
you pay a price — you lose BA
SIC ROM and/or Kernal ROM.
BASIC is gone, which is fine if
you're writing a program entire-
ly in ML and If the program
doesn't call any built-in ROM
routines from that area. But
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
you must store a $07 to loca-
tion $01 before you end the
ML program and return to di-
rect mode. BASIC is In
charge of monitoring your
keypresses, printing them to
the screen, and interpreting
commands (such as RUN or
SYS) thai you might type. If
you've switched out BASIC, di-
rect mode will seem to be lock-
ed up.
What about the case
where you've copied the
ROM routines to the RAM un-
derneath? Well, as long as
the process was done correct-
ly and that RAM wasn't over-
written later, switching out
ROM should be no problem.
The correct way of writing BA-
SIC ROM to RAM Is as simple
as the following.
FOR X=40960 TO 49151: POKE X,
PEEK{X): NEXT
Just modify the range to cov-
er the addresses from 57344
to 65535 if you want the Ker-
nal ROM copied also. Whatev-
er you do, don't disable BA-
S!G until after this routine has
run, because it uses BASIC to
work!
Software or Interface?
I have a 64, a 1541 disk
drive, an Epson RX-80 printer,
and a Turboprint/GT inter-
face. I wrote a multipage re-
port in Homeword with top,
bottom, and side borders de-
fined according to the word
processor's instructions.
When the report was printed,
the first page was OK, but
each succeeding page want
beyond the bottom border
and crossed over the page
serrations.
When I initially set up the
printer and interface, I set ihe
DIP switches by the instruc-
tions, I did find that I had to
set one on the printer to off to
prevent doubie-spacing be-
cause the computer controls
the linefeed. The test pro-
gram built into the printer
worked perfectly across multi-
page prints, recognizing the
end of the page and going to
the next page.
Am I the one at fault? Or is
the problem with the software
or the interface?
SCARLET LYNCH
WAYCflOSS. GA
There are a couple of solu-
tions to your problem. But
first here's an explanation
which applies to printers and
interfaces in general.
'\A/hen the printer finishes
printing a line, two things
need to happen: The print-
head should move to the be-
ginning of the line, and the pa-
per should advance one line.
Traditionally, a carriage return
(OR) only moves the print-
head to the beginning of the
line It's on. It can thus be
used to print a line and go
back to the beginning to un-
derline or overstrike various
characters that are already
printed. A separate linefeed
(LF) character causes the pa-
per to move up a line. The AS-
CII codes for CR and LF are
CHR$(t3) and CHR$(10). re-
spectively
Commodore printers and
screens use only a CR at the
end of a line. In this case,
CHR$(13) means move to the
beginning of a line and move
to the next line. It also means
you need to add a linefeed
when you print something to
the printer.
The printer, the Interface,
and the computer are all pro-
grammable. There are a vari-
ety of ASCII codes you can
use to send commands to
each of them. In addition, print-
ers and Interfaces generally
have rows of DIP switches
you can set to create various
effects.
All three devices— the com-
puter, the interface, and the
printer— are capable of add-
ing the linefeed. The question
is, who's in charge? If no de-
vice adds a CHR$(10), every-
thing will print on the same
line. On the other hand, you
could have a program that
sends a 13 plus a 10. The in-
terface sees the 13 and adds
another CHR$(10), and the
printer says to itself, "Aha, a
13 just arrived. I'd better add
a linefeed. " In this case,
you'd have triple spacing.
It doesn't really matter
which device adds the line-
feed, as long as one (and on-
ly one) does so.
The same idea applies to
skipping over the perforation
at the end of the page.
You've indicated that the print-
er is set to skip over the per-
foration. The printer keeps a
tally of how many lines have
been printed so far VWien the
page Is nearly full. It skips
ahead a few lines to start a
new page.
The problem is that your
word processing program is
doing the same thing. When it
approaches the bottom of a
page, it sends some blank
lines. In the meantime, the
printer has also decided to
move to the next page and,
when it gets there, starts print-
ing the blank lines the comput-
er has sent.
You'll have to decide who's
in charge of skipping over the
perforation between pages. If
it's the printer, then set the
word processing program to
have no margin at the top or
bottom. If the word processor
controls the margins, then
you'll have to turn off the au-
tomatic paging feature of the
printer.
Empty Arrays
I'm writing a program on my
128 using 80 columns, and
Tm having a problem han-
dling arrays. If no data is en-
tered in an array, the data
doesn't stay where 1 put it.
The first time through the pro-
gram, everything is where it
should be, On each subse-
quent reading of the sequen-
tial file, data shifts to the left
to fill any empty arrays.
ALVIN DWINDLE
MCLEAN. VA
When you create an array us-
ing DIM, numeric arrays are in-
itialized to Os, and string ar-
rays are initialized to null
strings. A null string contains
no characters; It's a string full
of nothing. If you open a se-
quential file and write a null
string to it, you're writing noth-
ing at all to the file. A PRINT#
statement generally adds a
carriage return-~CHR$(13)—
after each string or number,
so if you examine the con-
tents of the file, you'll see a
CHR$(13) only We experi-
mented a bit with sequential
files and discovered that IN-
PUT# doesn't like null sthngs.
For example, if you PRINTS
"ABC" followed by a null
string and then "DEF" and
read through the characters
(with GET#). you'll see 65, 66.
67. 13. 13. 68. 69, 70, 13-^
three ASCII characters for
ABC, a 13. nothing for the
null string, another 13, then
three ASCII characters for
DEF, followed by another 13
(carriage return).
If you INPUr# from the file,
you'll receive an ABC and a
DEF, but no null string. This is
true in both 64 and 128
modes.
A couple of solutions are
available. The first is to avoid
writing a null string if you're go-
ing to use INPUTS to read the
file. Instead, send some char-
acter to indicate a null entry
INPUT and INPUT# ignore
leading spaces, so don't
send a space. You should be
able to use any other charac-
ter— including a shifted
space. CHR$ (160). The sec-
ond is to avoid using INPUTff.
' If you use GET# to retrieve
one character at a time, you
can concatenate the string un-
til it encounters a CHRS(13).
Graphics Mode
While trying to write a simula-
tion program for the Commo-
dore 128, I can't get variables
to print in the graphics mode.
Here is part of my program.
10 GRAPHICI.I
15 H=180
20 CHAR 1,5,5, 'HEADING;"
;H
The variable in line 20 doesn't
print out. what's wrong?
STEVE PETnGREW
COLTON. CA
BASIC 7.0's CHAR statement
won't print the value of a nu-
meric variable; it will display
only strings (or the contents
of string variables). Fortunate-
ly. BASIC provides a simple
way to generate a string con-
taining the digits of a numeric
variable — the STH$ function.
For example. A$=STR$(123)
produces the same result as
AS="123". and STR$(H) will
produce the string equivalent
of the value of the numeric var-
iable H. There's just one oth-
er consideration; Unlike
PRINT CHAR will display on-
ly a single string, so you can 't
use print separators like the
semicolon you have In line 20
above. Instead, you must use
the + operator to concatenate
(join) any substrings into a sin-
gle string. Here's a workable
version of line 20 for your pro-
gram fragment:
20 CHAR 1,5,5,
+STRS(H)
'HEADING:
Working with
arrays and printing
variables in
grapliics mode on
the 128
Do you have a question or
comment? Have you discov-
ered something that could
help other Commodore us-
ers? Write to Gazette Feed-
back. COMPUTE Publica-
tions, 324 West 'Wendover Av-
enue. Suite 200, Greensboro,
North Carolina 27408. 3
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-15
PD PICKS
Steve Vander Ark
Here are a couDle
of excellent,
head-banging utilities
that'll make
managing a 1581
drive almost fun.
G-16
1581 UTILITIES
For the past two issues I've
been rummaging around in
QuantumLJnks's more exciting
(sillier?) corners, pulling out
some dynamite games — the
kind of games that'll keep you
glued to your monitor for
hours. Hey, I happen to like
games! So, sue me!
But enough games! How
about something for you 1581
users? This month ( figured I'd
dish up something a little dif-
ferent: utilities — some really ex-
cellent, head-banging utilities.
A contradiction of terms, you
say? Not on your life. Utilities
have their own kind of cool, es-
pecially the ones I've
scrounged up for you. The
point is, when you need utili-
ties, these will do the job with
that little extra oompf that al-
most makes the work fun.
If you're humming "Spoon-
ful of Sugar" now and shaking
your head, just hang on. You
need to format a disk and re-
arrange a directory now and
then, same as anyone else. Un-
less you get a thrill out of mem-
orizing BASIC'S gobbledy-
gook commands, you'll be
glad to have these utilities
around. Trust me!
1581 DIsl( Utilities
By Joe Gilberto
Q-Link filename: 1581 UT-
128R1.5, uploaded by DrJoe.
This program requires a 128
with a 1581 or other drive and
an 80-column monitor.
It's hard to find a good
disk utility on Q-Link by sim-
ply browsing the libraries. Eve-
ry one of the myriad files in
that area has the name Disk
Utility, which tells you nothing.
That's why I'm all for gutsy
names, the kind that get your
attention. Fortunately, Q-Link
users often leave comments
on files after they've download-
ed them and taken them for a
spin, I started perusing the
comments and quickly nar-
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
rowed the utilities down to
just a few that really have
some substance.
This nifty program was the
winner, hands down. I do
wish it had a snazzier name,
something macho like Disk
Commander or clever like
Disk-Functional or even just
plain weird like DisKom-
BooBaLate. A good name
would make you want to try
this puppy out. But it's a utili-
ty so it's got a boring name.
You won't have to look
deeper than a sprite or two to
notice this program's elegant
touches. It uses windows to
set up the 80-column screen
in two sections, one for the
menu of options and the oth-
er for displaying disk directo-
ries, It does this with all the
sleekness of a Jaguar parked
in front of the opera. It flips
you back and forth between
menus just as smoothly, al-
ways taking you where you
want to go in the program
with quiet ease. Unobtrusive
prompts remind you to turn
up your monitor's sound so
you'll get the full effect of the
SID chip's contribution.
I don't know why, but the
80-column screen always
seems to have its own special
elegance, a kind of ambience
of efficiency with a touch of a
smile. If you don't have a
clue as to what I'm talking
about, check out this pro-
gram for a good example.
Its list of options includes
all the usual disk and file func-
tions: copying, renaming, de-
leting, and so on. The 1581
drive in particular is support-
ed with numerous features de-
signed for that device only.
The program works with
CMD's RAM devices, but not
between their partitions. If you
do heavy-duty work on those
devices, you're better off with
CMD's own utility disks.
And last but not least, get
a load of that error sound!
There's no way I can de-
scribe it to you, but it's almost
worth getting this program
just to hear it!
1581 Directory Assistant
By Captain Morgan
Q-Link filename: 1581DIR/
CAPCODE, uploaded by
Dakkri, This program works
with a 1581 and a 64 or 128.
I have been running myself
ragged trying to find a 64
disk utility program with as
much pizazz as the 128's
1581 Disk Utilities. This one,
1581 Directory Assistant, is
similar, with a slick opening
graphics screen and inter-
face. In addition to the usual
formatting and file handling, it
features an option to add a
dashed line in the directory list-
ing to separate group files.
There are a few drawbacks
to this program. For one
thing, it didn't seem to want to
recognize my CMD FD-4000
disk drive as a 1581, even
though I had a 1581-format
disk in the drive. That sur-
prised me, since the FD has al-
ways doubled as a 1581 with-
out the slightest hitch. Sec-
ond— and this will affect more
of you — this program is for
the 1581 drive only; it in-
cludes no commands for the
1541, 1571, or any RAM de-
vice. I know that quite a few
of you use one of those other
types of drives at least as
much as you do a 1581, so
this utility must be only one of
several you'll need to get
your work done,
But don't get me wrong;
this program is a very nice
piece of work, It does what
it's supposed to and even
manages to do it with a little
flair. The author has tried to in-
clude every type of 1581 op-
tion he could imagine.
So if you have a 1581,
you'll want to check out these
two programs. Look for them
on a BBS near you, on Quan-
tumLink. or on this month's Ga-
zette Disk. 0
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MACHINE LANGUAGE
Jim Butterfield
Load and run
a machine language
program from
within a BASIC one.
BOOT BASICS
There are several ways to
choose a location for a ma-
chine language program. One
good method is to stick it onto
the end of a BASIC program.
That way, BASIC and ML will
load together. A method that
I often use in this column is to
poke the program into a cho-
sen part of memory.
When a machine language
program is located away from
its BASIC driver, it's often nec-
essary for the BASIC and ML
programs to be loaded in sep-
arate actions. To spare the us-
er from the need to type a com-
plex loading sequence, pro-
grammers use boot programs.
A boot program may load
many items into various parts
of memory. For example, you
could have it load a video
screen, a machine language
program, and a music player.
We'll look at a simple boot
program that loads a machine
language program from disk
and then proceeds to call it as
needed, First, let's create a
very simple ML program that
prints the message HELLO.
2000 LDX #$00
2002 LOA $2Q0E,X
JSR SFFD2
INX
CPX #$07
BNE $2002
RTS
0200E 43 45 4C 4C 4F 21 OD
Using a machine language
monitor program, you could en-
ter the code almost exactly as
shown above and then save it
to disk with a command such
as: S "HI.ML",08,2000,2015.
You could also create the pro-
gram using the following BA-
SIC program.
100 REM HELLO ML MAKER
110 DATA 0,32
120 DATA 162.0,189,14,32,32,
210,255
130 DATA 232,224,7,208,245,96
G-ie COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
140 DATA 72,69,76,76,79,33,13
200 OPEN 1, 8,2, "0:HLML,P,W"
210 READ A:T=T+A
22DPRINT#1,CHR$(A|;
230 N=N+1
240 IF N<23 GOTO 210
250 CLOSE 1
260 PRINT "FILE WRIHEN!"
270 IF T<>2356 THEN PRINT
"... WRONG!"
Do not overlook the semico-
lon at the end of line 220. Run
the program, and it will gener-
ate file HI. ML, Later, if you en-
ter LOAD ■■HI.ML-.S.l fol-
lowed by SYS 8192. the pro-
gram prints HELLOIJhe extra
,1 at the end of the LOAD com-
mand forces the program to
be loaded without relocation
at address hex 2000 (decimal
8192).
Now, we'll ask a BASIC pro-
gram to act as a boot, bring-
ing in our HI. ML program and
then calling upon it to perform
the greeting. Before we do,
however, we must go to
"boot camp" and learn some
new rules.
On the Commodore 128,
command BLOAD "HI. ML"
would do everything we need-
ed: It would bring in the pro-
gram and allow us to contin-
ue with more code. On other
machines, we must deal with
the chain effect.
When a program brings
something into memory using
LOAD, a curious thing hap-
pens. The program returns to
its first statement because the
computer anticipates a
chain, a program destroying it-
self by loading in a fresh pro-
gram over its own memory
space.
It's fun to work with BASIC
chaining, getting one pro-
gram to do some work, then
calling in another program to
continue the job. That's not
our task here. But before we
pick up our HI. ML job, here's
a tip for those who would like
to play with BASIC chaining:
Programs loaded by chaining
must be no bigger than the
first program of the chain.
Back to our task. We wish
to load the machine language
program into memory, but
this loading action will cause
our program to go back to its
first statement. That's almost
the same as the program start-
ing over, except that now the
program's variables couid con-
tain values. You might think
that the program must end up
caught in a loop. First, it will
load, then it will go back and
load, and so on. But there's a
way around this problem.
When a program goes
back to its first statement after
performing LOAD, it doesn't
lose its variable values. Sup-
pose the first program state-
ment is IF X=1 GOTO. When
the program starts, all varia-
bles, X included, are 0. So we
won't take the GOTO branch.
As our program continues,
we may now set X=1 and
then LOAD. The program will
return to its first statement,
but this time it will take the
GOTO and then proceed.
The following code uses
ON X instead of if X=1, but
the principle is the same.
When we start, the program
proceeds to lines 110 and
120 and executes the LOAD
command. The program nev-
er reaches line 130; instead, it
returns to its first statement.
This time, X has a value of 1,
so the program immediately
leaps to line 200.
Here's the tiny program.
Don't forget to use the com-
mand NEW before entering it.
100 ON X GOTO 200
110 X=1
120 LOAD "HI. ML", 8,1
130 STOP
200 PRINT "ML NOW
LOADED"
210 SYS 8192
220 END
Can you see why the program
never reaches line 130? □
The Gazette
Productivity
Manager
Harness the productivity
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Memo Card — Unleashes the power of a full-blown
database without the fuss! Nothing's easier — it's a
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your data on any one of the index cards. Need to edit?
Just use the standard Commodore editing keys.
Finished? Just save the data to floppy. What could be
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Financial Planner — Answers all of those questions
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can plan for your children's education and know
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DIVERSIONS
Fred D'Ignazio
When your Gomiiuter
starts to talk
with the voice of your
favorite movie
star, will you be cast
in merely a
supporting role?
HELLO, TOON
TOWN!
When 1 began writing for COM-
PUTE 11 years ago, I wrote a
series of articles about a "com-
puter friend" program that par-
ents could load into the com-
puter for their children, The
computer friend was a user-
friendly interface for young chil-
dren that would take their or-
ders, play games, and ad-
dress the children by name.
At the time, having a friend
who lived inside a computer
seemed like something out of
science fiction. Today, howev-
er, this vision may be close to
reality. The Qualix Group in
San Mateo, California, has a
program called Saylt that fea-
tures a little onscreen charac-
ter named Simon. Simon can
actually hear and understand
you. This is accomplished
through a sound card and the
Saylt program's voice-recogni-
tion functions.
When the program is first
loaded into the computer, Si-
mon pops onto the screen in
ready mode. Once you attach
a microphone and activate
him, he puts his hand to his
ear and announces that he's
listening for your first voice
command. If he understands
your command, he gives you
the thumbs-up sign. If he can't
understand your command,
he scratches his head to
show you that he's confused.
If you don't want him eaves-
dropping on your regular con-
versations, you issue the
voice command, "Cover your
earsl" and he puts his fingers
in his ears to show you that
he's not listening.
Voice-recognition pro-
grams aren't new. What is new
is personalizing the program
with a computer friend like Si-
mon. Even more important,
the newest programs have far
greater power than their older
counterparts, and they run on
standard computers. Simon,
for example, runs only on Sun
Workstations, but he costs on-
ly $295 and can be trained to
recognize more than a thou-
sand words.
Two other programs, IBM's
VoiceType Control for Win-
dows and Microsoft Windows
Sound System cost even less
($129 and $289 respectively)
and run on standard Windows-
based PCs. A similar program.
Voice Navigator SW, runs on
Macintosh computers and
costs $399, and Apple is
about to introduce its highly
touted Caspar voice-recogni-
tion program, also for the Mac.
Except for VoiceType (which
recognizes only 64 spoken
commands), all of the pro-
grams recognize 1000 or
more spoken commands.
While they're not up to the
pace of normal speech, they
can handle complicated com-
mands if spoken slowly.
It's not clear yet if all the pro-
grams will follow Saylt's lead
v/ith a cute, friendly character
like Simon, but it is clear that
these programs will revolution-
ize the way v/e use comput-
ers. And the newer speech-
recognition programs are cou-
pled with high-fidelity speech
synthesis programs that let the
computer talk back.
One immediate application
of the new speech technology
that is already available to all
of us (even those of us without
PCs) is AT&T's new talking tel-
ephone that was introduced
nationwide last summer.
When you dial O in many
parts of the country, you no
longer get a human operator
Instead, you get a computer
equipped with speech recog-
nition and speech synthesis.
The computer prompts you to
place your collect, person-to-
person, or credit-card call. If
it can't understand you, how-
ever, it's supposed to ask a hu-
man operator to step in.
Theoretically, this is great.
but sometimes things don't
work as we would like. For ex-
ample, last week my 14-year-
old son Eric was downtown,
and he needed his mother to
pick him up in the car when it
started to rain. He had no mon-
ey, so he dialed O to place a
collect call to our home. When
my wife answered the phone,
she heard Eric identifying him-
self to the computer operator.
"Eric D'Ignazio," he said.
"I don't understand you,"
said the computerized voice.
"Please repeat."
"E-ric D'Ig-nay-zee-oh,"
Eric repeated, enunciating
slowly and clearly
"I don't understand you,"
the computer said. And it
hung up!
Eric has spent 14 years in
the company of a mad hacker
father, so he's learned to be tol-
erant of computers. He prompt-
ly redialed and tried his luck
again. Still no luck. He tried
again. No luck. Finally, Eric
gave up and walked home in
the cold, pouring rain.
When he arrived home, drip-
ping wet and sneezing, he
and his mother vowed that the
next time this happened, they
would rip the offending pay
phone from the wall and deliv-
er it personally to the local tel-
ephone company executives
who have replaced human op-
erators with brain-damaged
computers who can't under-
stand English!
Unfortunately, even the
phone company's advanced
voice-recognition systems are
far from perfect, If you have a
stuffy nose or a frog in your
throat, it's less likely that the
computer will understand
your spoken commands. Also,
background noise can mix
with your voice and confuse
the computer. So it seems
that even though we are stuck
with computer operators, it
may still be some time before
they can even remotely be clas-
sified as computer friends,
G-20 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
But the real frontiers in human-com-
puter relations still lie ahead. Imagine
a whole office full of talking, listening
computers. If the experts are right and
the keyboard really is a dinosaur, then
in the future we'll all be communicating
with our computers via voice. We'll
give a verbal order to our computers,
and they will respond with a verbal re-
ply. If only one or two workers in the of-
fice are carrying on conversations with
their computers, then it's little more
than a nuisance or curiosity to the other
workers. But can you imagine five, ten,
or twenty people firing off voice com-
mands to their computers and their com-
puters answering back? Remember,
too, that most people tend to talk to a
computer in a loud voice in order to
make sure that the computer under-
stands. They also speak to the comput-
er slowly and clearly as if the computer
were a not-so-bright servant or pet.
The result is obvious: computer ca-
cophony. But that's not the worst of it.
With voice-sensitive computers sitting
on everyone's desktop, it's likely that a
command intended for one computer
will mistakenly be obeyed by another
computer. Having an office full of eaves-
dropping computers could lead to ca-
tastrophe if someone orders one comput-
er to delete a file or format a disk. It
could also lead to office-wide insanity
if a number of commands are picked up
by other people's computers and they
start dialing telephones, changing ther-
mostats, turning off lights, printing docu-
ments, and playing music files and
voice mail.
We may have to adopt radical meth-
ods to curb this computer eavesdrop-
ping and cacophony. One solution is to
make computer microphones highly di-
rectional and ultrasensitive. This would
permit us to become highly intimate
with our computers. We could lean over
them confidentially and whisper sweet
commands into their tiny little ears. An-
other solution would be for us to stag-
ger our working hours so that we could
come into the office late at odd hours
to have our serious human-to-comput-
er conversations.
This is only the tip of the iceberg.
When talking and listening computers
really invade our offices, we'll generate
enough materials to keep psycholo-
gists, sociologists, and comedians hap-
py for years. Since most computers are
going portable, this new human-ma-
chine relationship will not be confined
to the office.
Our little chatty computers will soon
go under our arms to libraries, onto air-
planes, and into classrooms and auditori-
ums. And judging from the new gener-
ation of talking screen savers and soft-
ware that licenses the voices of famous
celebrities and personalities, we'll
soon be inundated with a symphony of
little voices that sound like Ronald Re-
agan, Clint Eastwood, Scotty on the
Starship Enterprise, and Rod Serling on
"The Twilight Zone."
We'll want to personalize our comput-
ers and turn them into cute little pets.
We'll want our computers to speak to us
in the voice of our favorite rock musi-
cian, politician, or soap opera star The
cumulative effect will be an intense feel-
ing of vertigo, as if we had fallen into a
Roger Rabbit cartoon and were sur-
rounded by animated characters and
disembodied voices. The result will be
that the real world, already disorienting
and absurd, may soon come to resem-
ble a kind of cybernetic Toon Town.
And we'll be wondering if we're just one
of the players. □
ATTENTION
USER GROUPS!
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Gazette will soon publish an up-to-
date list of all Commodore 64/128 us-
er groups across the U.S., through-
out Canada, and around the world.
We are now in the process to updat-
ing this information. If your user
group has not appeared in any of
our previous lists and you'd like to
be included, please send your club
name, address, and bulletin board
service telephone number to the fol-
lowing address.
Commodore 64/128
User Group Update
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keyboard, joystick, or mouse con-
trol. Features include super-fast
searching and sorting capabilities.
An options screen allows you to
choose text colors, drive number,
and input device. And there's full
documentation on disk.
Choose from three modes of opera-
tion— browse for quick scanning,
view for detailed information and
descriptions, and edit for adding
items from upcoming issues — and
print to any printer. There's even a
turbo-load option for maximum
disk-access speed.
To order, send $7.95 per disk, the
quantity of disks ordered, check
or money order,* your name and
complete street address:
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• Please add S2 snipping & handling (IS foreign) for
each disk (fesidenis ol NC Hi. NY piease add appli-
cable sales tax; Canadian orders, add 7% goods
and sen/ices lax).
All payments musi be in U.S funds. Please allow 4
weeks for delivery.
SEPTEMBER 1993 COI^PUTE G-21
BEGINNER BASIC
Larry Cotton
As the raw material
that a computer
processes, data can be
either pari of
the program or entered
by the u^r.
READING DATA
Data is one of the more com-
mon words in computer lingo,
ranl<ing right up there with the
words bytes and RAM. Data is
what the computer uses to
solve problems, create imag-
es, make music, or write let-
ters, Data consists of words
that are processed, numbers
that are crunched, and points
to which lines are connected.
Data can be processed
once it's in the computer, but
how does it get there? The an-
swer to that question depends
on the programmer and on
how the program is construct-
ed. Data is often written into
the program itself, in which
case the BASIC keywords
READ and DATA are neces-
sary to process it. Here's a sim-
ple example.
10 READ A,B
20 PRINT A+B
30 DATA 4,5
a-22
This program reads two piec-
es of data in line 30 v/hich the
programmer has included as
part of the program. It then
adds the two data items and
prints the sum. The syntax of
READ and DATA statements
is very important. Make sure
that the variable names (such
as A and B) and the data it-
self are separated by com-
mas, not periods or spaces.
When the computer encoun-
ters the command READ, it im-
mediately looks for variable val-
ues to read. In this case,
since A and B are numeric var-
iabies (as opposed to varia-
bles which represent words),
the computer looks for two
numbers to read in a DATA
line. If more than two num-
bers are in the DATA line, the
above program wili read only
the first two. If the DATA line
contains less than two num-
bers, the program will stop
with an OUT-OF-DATA error
message.
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
To get the computer to han-
dle words (known as literal or
string data), we have to make
a few changes.
10READ A$,B$
2D PRINT AS+" "+BS
30 DATA BILL.CLINTON
The dollar sign denotes a
string variable. A$ (pro-
nounced A string) and BS are
treated literally. So, if the da-
ta were numbers, as string vari-
ables, A$ and B$ can't be
mathematicaily manipulated
(such as added or divided.)
Of course, you can do
many other things with data.
Here's an example using
mixed data types.
10 READ A$,B$,A,B
20 PRINT AS" IS"A"AND "B$
"IS'B
30 DATA BQNNIE.CLYDE, 40,42
The variables and the data
must have matching formats
and be in the proper order.
V(/hile a string variable can
read a number, a numeric var-
iable can't read a stnng.
Arrays — the pigeonholes I
mentioned last month — can
be filled with data as follov/s.
10FORT=1 TO 8
ZO READ A(T)
30 PRINT A(T)
40 NEXT
50 DATA 11,6,4,12,30,5,214,67
This example uses a FOR-
NEXT loop to fill an array with
data, a very useful technique
for manipulating lots of informa-
tion. A(1) will become 11,
A{2) will become 6, and so
on. Can you begin to see the
implications for using arrays
to store data?
Incidentally, if your array
has more than ten entries,
you must add a DIM state-
ment at the beginning of the
program. This statement sets
aside space within the comput-
er's memory to store the data,
10 DIM N$(15)
20 FOR J=1 TO 15
30 READ NS(J)
40 NEXT
50 DATA TOIVI,DICK,HARRY,
JANE,SUE,BRENDA,SUZANNE,
JIM,MARTIN,LOUISE,TERRY
60 DATA MADONNA,FLOPSY,
MOPSY,COnONTAIL
Again, make sure that the num-
ber of DATA items matches
the size of your array. In this
example, we've only filled the
array; we haven't done any-
thing with it. N$(3) will be HAR-
RY, N$(12) will be MADON-
NA, and so on.
What you do with data is
up to you. You can print it,
write a story with it, multiply it,
draw v/ith it, list it, catalog it,
and so on. But what if your da-
ta is changeable?
Suppose a class never has
the same 15 students in it?
You need to get information
from the person who's using
the program with the ubiqui-
tous INPUT statement. We've
reviewed INPUT recently, so I
won't dwell on it now. Here's
a simple example.
5 PRINT"[CLR][DOWN]PRESS
RETURN AFTER EACH ENTRY."
10 PR)NT:INPUT "HOW MANY
CLASS MEMBERS";IV!
20J=1:DIMN$(IVI):PRINT
30 INPUr'CLASS MEMBER
NAIVIE";CMS
40 N$(J)=CMS
50 IF J=M THEN 80
60 IF CM$=" " THEN 80
70 J=J+1:PRINT:G0TO 30
80 PRINT CHRS(147)
90 PRINT:PRINT"THE CLASS
MEMBERS ARE'iPRJNT
100 FOR T=1 TO J:PRINT
NS(T):NEXT
INPUT waits patiently until the
person at the keyboard types
something and presses the Re-
turn key. The data is stored in
the N${M) array-
Next month, we'll look at
ways to save your precious da-
ta for future use! □
GEOS
Steve Vander Ark
BEEP! BEEP!
There's been a lot ot noise com-
ing from ttie IBM crowd lately.
Most of it fias to do with that
GEOS clone that they call Win-
dows. The latest pastime for
Windows aficionados is to
load sound bites that are then
keyed to various system
events.
Whenever you click on a but-
ton, Windows cranks out that
digitized bit of sound that
you've selected. For example,
you might have the Roadrun-
ner cartoon character utter his
famous "Beep! Beep!" every
time you close a window.
These sound files are a lot of
fun, and there are scads of
them to be found on various
bulletin boards and on commer-
cial services such as GEnie
and CompuServe,
Of course, the 64 was do-
irig sound long before these
IBM wonders were even
born — and doing it better
than anyone. Back when the
IBM could barely beep, the 64
was gracing its games with
three-voice sound produced
by that amazing bit of electron-
ics, the SID chip. With a few
PEEKS and POKEs, any BA-
SIC programmer could create
sound and music.
It wasn't long before pro-
grams like Music Construction
Set put the ability to create mu-
sic within anyone's reach.
When the 128 came along, its
enhanced BASIC commands
made programming simple.
Six voices and stereo capabil-
ities became possible when
the SID Symphony cartridge
(available now from Creative Mi-
cro Designs) added an extra
SID chip to the Commodore
system.
1 realize that there's a differ-
ence between Commodore's
multivoice music and Win-
dows' digitized sounds, but
the 64 is capabie of playing dig-
itized sounds, too. Its only lim-
itation is memory, since digit-
ized sound eats kilobytes
about as fast as my daughter
gobbles potato chips.
The premier program for im-
porting and playing digitized
sound files is DigiPlayer by
Mark Dickenson. It's available
on QuantumLink as share-
ware. (To help you downioad
it more easily, its filename is
DIGIPLAYER31,SDA. and it
was uploaded by Mark AD I.)
OK, what's all this have to
do with GEOS? There are a
couple of programs on 0-Link
that will let you Import sound
files converted with DigiPlayer
into a format that GEOS can
use. Since DigiPlayer files use
the file extension RAW, I'll call
them RAW files. One GEOS
program which actually plays
them is an auto-exec file
called AUTORAW, (Filename:
AUTORAW, uploaded by
WillJ14.) Auto-exec files run au-
tomatically when you boot
your system.
Let me give you an exam-
ple of how you can put this
technique to use. In the
GEOS message area on 0-
Link, several users report that
they use geoRAW to signal
when their system has fin-
ished booting. Many people
use auto-exec files such as
QwikStash to load a RAM de-
vice automatically during the
boot process. This is conven-
ient, but time consuming. So,
rather than just sitting and star-
ing at the screen, let digitized
sounds or voice clips inform
you when everything is load-
ed. One popular sound file to
use for this is the voice of the
HAL 9000 computer from
2001: A Space Odyssey.
When you hear HAL's voice,
you know that your system is
up and waiting for you.
You can also use a pro-
gram called Raw (Q-Link file-
name: RAW VI. 1, uploaded
by Denton2) to play all of your
RAW files sequentially Unfor-
tunately, this utility was upload-
ed in an unfinished form. It
plays the sound files all right,
but it includes no slick inter-
face screens, no file selector
box to pick a file to play and
not even a real icon, but at
least it gives us digitized
sound.
Digitized sound is great,
but let's not forget all those
wonderful music files out
there. These files, usually re-
ferred to as SID files, often car-
ry the file extension MUS.
Some files even include
words and artwork. Stereo SID
files which utilize the extra SID
chip are also plentiful.
You can play all those won-
derful three-voice SIDs using
geoSIDPIayer, This neat utility
lets you choose SID music
files from a standard file selec-
tor dialog box. It then plays a
file for you while a little guy on
the screen taps his foot and
grins. GeoSIDPIayer is avail-
able in the Q-Link GEOS librar-
ies. Its filename is GEO-
SIDPLAYER, and it was upload-
ed by RogerLU. Unfortunately,
there is no stereo player for
GEOS, but since most GEOS
users have their cartridge port
already filled with a RAM de-
vice of some kind, they
wouldn't have room for a mu-
sic cartridge anyway
All these programs work
fine, but I would love to see
some more work done with
sound programs for GEOS. I'd
like to see the digitized sound
player cleaned up and given
a proper interface. I'd like a
SID player for GEOS that dis-
plays the words if a WRD file
is included. And that's not all.
Someone on Q-Link a few
weeks ago was talking about
programming a SID player
that would play in the back-
ground so you could listen to
your favorite tunes while
you're pounding the keys in
geoWrite or mouse-hopping in
geoPublish, Now that sounds
like a dream GEOS progrann
to me. I think I'd call it
geoJukebox. d
Vdu know GEOS is
geared toward
graphics, but have
you heard airaut
its outstanding audio
capaliiiities?
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-23
PROGRAMMER'S PAGE
Randy Thompson
Here are some
readers' programs
for adding
vectors, bouncing
screens, and
protecting programs
VECTORS,
BOUNCERS, AND
BASIC SAVERS
We have some more great
tips from readers this month,
so let's get to them.
Vector Addition
This program performs vector
addition on two vectors and
gives the resultant vector's
magnitude and angle. The
magnitudes and angles (be-
tween 0 and 360 degrees) of
the vectors to be added are
all that you enter. This can be
a useful little program for phys-
ics students.
NILES NOON AN
TINLEYPARK, IL
XD
180
REM VECTOR FINDBF
PJ
195
DIM M(31 ,A (3} ;QS«"Y"
J»
110
X«3:Y-fl
AC
12S
DEF FN H(X)-|inT(X«100B
+.5)1/1000
KQ
13e
FOR I-l TO 2
OA
148
PRINT
Aft
153
PRINT "MAGNITUDE OF VEC
TOR";l;
MJ
160
IMPOT M[I)
DQ
17e
PRINT "ANGLE OF VECTOR"
SF
IBO
r 1 1
INPUT A(!)
BH
198
Ad) -Ad) '^/IBB
GK
200
!fM(l}*SIN(fl(I) 1 +Y
HF
2ia
X=M(I|'C0S1A(1)1+X
QD
229
NEXT I
XR
230
M|3) =FN R(SQR(X*X+Y*y) )
DP
240
A13)-FN R( 1ATN(Y/X) )«18
0/1)
EA
250
IF X<0 THEN A{3|.A(3)+1
80
DR
260
IF A(3)<0 THEN A(3)-A(3
) t360
PC
270
IF Mf3)-0 THEN R(3)=0
HK
280
PRIMT
AK
290
PRINT "MAGNITUDE OF RES
ULTANT VECTOR =";M(3)
SK
300
PRINT "ANGLE OF RESULTA
NT VECTOR ■";AI3!
GM
310
PRINT
AA
320
PRINT "FIGURE ANOTHER";
BC
330
INPUT OS
liM
340
IF QS-"i(" THEN lia
Screen Bouncer
Using a technique known as
flexible line distance, the fol-
lowing program smoothly
"bounces" the 64's screen
down and up. Be sure to re-
move all cartridges from your
computer before you run the
program. After you load and
run the program, type SYS
4915210 set your screen in
motion. Press Run/Stop-Re-
store to return your computer
to a more stable state.
SE 5 D=9fl
KC 10 READ A:IFA=-lTHEN4a
PK 20 IFA>256THEN5(1
CF 30 B=BtA:POKE49152+C,A:C-C+
l:GOTO10
MA 40 PRINT "ALL DONE] [RVS)SV
S 49152(OFF} TO INSTALL.
":POKE163e3,170;END
RP 50 D=D + 10:IFB-ATHEKB=ia:GOTO
10
JD 60 PHINT"SCLR)lfOU TYPED LIN
E"D"IN WRONG. RECHECK AN
D(RVS)RUN[OFF) AGAINI"
CK 70 PRINT "[2 DOKN]lIST"D"
(3 UP1":POKE631,13:POKE
(SPACEU98,1
AF 100 DATA 169,147,32,210,255
, 129,162,1,142,26,208,2
02,142,32,208,2056
KG 110 DATA 169,49,141,18,203,
169, 127, 141, 13, 220, 169,
27,141,17,208,169,1985
SK 120 DATA 42,162,192,141,20,
3,142,21,3,88,96,238,25
,208, 238, 112,192,1923
XK 130 DATA 173,112,192,16,11,
41,127,141,111,192,159,
128,56,237,111,192,170,
2179
XE 140 DATA 208,2,162,1,172,13
,208,152,56,233,2,41,7,
9, 16,141, 17,1445
HC 150 DATA 20B , 204 , IB , 2B8 , 240
, 251, 201), 20 2, 2na, 236, 17
3,18,208,206,251,169,27
,3029
AJ 160 DATA 141,17,208,173,13,
220,75,49,234,0,0,0,1,1
132,-1
The secret to smoothly mov-
ing the 64's screen down and
up is simple yet ingenious.
This program installs a verti-
cal-blanl< interrupt that tempo-
rarily keeps the computer's
VIC chip (the chip responsi-
ble for the 64's video display)
so busy that It won't have
time to send any video informa-
tion to your monitor, The long-
er the program occupies the
VIC chip's time, the longer
the screen's video output is de-
layed, and the lower the
screen's graphics appear on
your television or monitor. To
get rid of the streaks the pro-
gram leaves in the empty are-
as at the top of the screen,
type POKE 16838,0 while the
program is running.
BOB BRODERICK
SAN RAMON. CA
Easy Program Protection
If you want to read-protect
your BASIC programs (make
them unloadable by BASIC),
Richard Reano of San Diego,
California, has two sugges-
tions: Save your programs as
sequential files, or, better yet,
save them as user files.
When using the SAVE com-
mand, add a comma and the
letter S after the filename to
save a program as a sequen-
tial file, or add a comma and
the letter Uto save It as a us-
er file.
SAVE "Wen3me,S",8
SAVE"f//ename,U",8
Now, when you list the disk di-
rectory, you'll find that your
PRG file has become a SEQ
or USR file. And if you try to
load the file, BASIC responds
with a FILE TYPE MISMATCH
error message.
Actually, there is a way to
load these modified files, but
you have to know the secret.
To load one of these files, use
the same ,S or ,U you used
when you saved the program.
For example, to load a BASIC
program saved with SAVE "file-
name.S",8, use LOAD "file-
name,S".8.
Taking It With You
Manning Vahlenkamp from Ma-
tawan, New Jersey, provides
this tip for 128 owners who do
a lot of BASIC programming
in 64 mode. To move from
128 mode to 64 mode without
losing the current BASIC pro-
gram, simply enter these two
POKEs after executing the
computer's GO 64 command.
POKE 43,1
POKE 44,28
These POKE statements
tell the 64 portion of your com-
puter that the current BASIC
program is located in memo-
ry starting al 7169 (SiCOl).
That's the default location
where BASIC programs are
stored when your computer is
in 128 mode. D
G-24 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
PROGRAMS
DATABASE
By Todd Piltingsrud
With DataBase you can store practically
any type of information to disk and then
retrieve or edit it as you like. DataBase
has a powerful screen editor that oper-
ates like a conventional word processor,
so it can be used for a variety of tasks.
DataBase consists of a BASIC pro-
gram and a short machine language rou-
tine. To enter the BASIC program, use
The Automatic Proofreader to help avoid
typing errors. Look for Proofreader else-
where in this section. Be sure to save a
copy of the program before you run it.
Enter the machine language routine
with MLX, our machine language entry
program, which can be found elsewhere
in this section. When MLX prompts, reply
with the following addresses.
Starting address: GOOD
Ending address: C397
Be sure to save this program with the
filename DATA. ML to the same disk
that contains the BASIC portion. The BA-
SIC program automatically searches
for and loads that filename.
Using the Program
After loading and running DataBase,
use the cursor keys and the Return key
to move around on the menu screen
and select the various options. The
first time you run the program, you'll
probably want to create an entry. Cur-
sor to this option and press Return.
Note the difference between an en-
try and a file on the menu. A file is
made up of several entries. For exam-
ple, you could have numerous entries
listing the names, addresses, and tele-
phone numbers of your friends. Taken
as a whole, these entries could then be
saved as a file, perhaps with the file-
name FRIENDS.
When you create an entry, the
screen clears, and the program goes
to input mode. DataBase doesn't ask
for a title for an entry. Instead, the first
line of each entry acts as its title, but
this line is still seen as part of the en-
try. Once you have entered the informa-
tion you wish, press f7 to return to the
menu. If you wish to create additional
entries at this time, simply press Return
with the cursor on the Create Entry op-
tion. After typing in several entries, you
can press f1 or f3 to move up and
down through the entries in the file.
After you have entered several en-
tries, you can then save them under
one filename. To do this, select the
Save File option from the menu. You'll
then be asked for a filename, Suppose
we used FRIENDS as suggested earli-
er. This sequential file will then be
saved to disk with all of the information
entered so far.
From the DataBase menu, you can
load a file back into memory, see a
disk directory, scratch files, print files,
and list or print all of the entries in a
file. You can also recall, erase, or print
individual entries within a larger file.
Once you have loaded a file and
you want to recall a specific entry, se-
lect the Recall Entry option. You'll be
asked for a name. Suppose you want
the entry that contains Jack Johnson's
information, simply type J or JACK. If
you have several friends in the file
whose names are Jack, simply enter
the full name of the entry you want.
Entries are alphabetized by the first
word on the line. Should you wish to
add a new name to your FRIENDS file,
load the file and select the Create En-
try option to add new information. Just
remember to save the file again when
you have finished editing. You can use
the same filename since DataBase
lets you overwrite the old file.
Defaults
DataBase is set to handle up to 60 en-
tries and 20 lines per entry. This de-
fault can be changed if you desire.
Load DataBase, but before running it,
list line 10. Notice that W equals the
number of entries and H equals the
number of lines per entry. By changing
these values, you can decrease or in-
crease the size of DataBase's memory
However, W can be no more than 255.
A warning is also in order here. The
64's memory has limits. Putting in num-
bers that are too high can lead to diffi-
culties such as garbage collecting.
This occurs when the 64 has to erase
old memory to make room for new in-
formation. In an extreme case, you
could run out of memory. Due to the
64's memory limitations, a practical lim-
it for DataBase should be 50-100 en-
tries and 15-20 lines per entry This as-
sumes that you probably won't i
individual entry to its limit.
each
Printing
DataBase is also set so that the device
number is 8 and the printer number is
4. These numbers can also be
changed if you desire. Before running,
list line 5. Here, D is the device num-
ber and P is the printer number. By
changing these numbers, DataBase
can be made to access other disk
drives and printers.
If changes are made to these varia-
bles, be sure to save a copy of Data-
Base to avoid having to change them
each time you load the program.
DATABASE
BM 0 REM COPYRIGHT 1993 -COMPU
TE PUBLICATIONS INTL LTD
{SPACE}- ALL RIGHTS RESER
VED
GS 5 D=8:P=4:REM DEVICE AND PR
INTER
SM 10 W=60:H=20:REM NUMBER OF
ESPACE]ENTRIES AND NUHBE
R OF LINES PER ENTRY
PX 15 POKE650,128:POKE53265,g:
POKE53281,6:POKE53 28 0,6
BJ 20 IFPEEK(49152) O76THENL0A
D"DATA.ML",D,1
EH 25 K=49152:DR=49155:IN=4915
8:AL=4 9161:EE=4 9164:CM=4
9167:BF=4 9170:LF=4 9173
QF 30 J=H+1:DIMAR$(W+1,H+1) ,TS
(12)
AX 35 N5="":AR$(l,0)="":X=4:y=
5:T = 1
EC 40 F0RA=1T012:READTS (A) :NEX
T
FK 45 POKE198,a:N$="":PRINT"
{CLR} {D0WN}{CYN|"CHRS(14
) TAB (15) "DATABASE {DOWN}"
CQ 50 PRINTTAB(4) " {A>* ** ******
********************* t^\
SX 55 F0RA=1T06:PRINTTAB (4) "
{CYN}-<7}"TS(A)TAB(23)T5
(A+e)TAB(3S} "{CYN}^":NEX
T
JS 60 PRINTTAB(4) "{CYN}{Z}****
************************
_l;^'tX}":POKE5326 5,27:GOTO
100
SJ 65 GETAS:IFAS=""THEN65
BQ 70 IFA5=CHRS(13)THENPOKE781
,12:POKE782,0:POKE783,0:
SYS65520:PRIKT"{7>"; :GOT
0110
AB 75 PRINTTAB (Y) "<7}"TS(T)
KK 80 IFA$ = "{UP}"AHDX>'1THENX=X
-1:T=T-1
BE 85 IFA$="{D0WN}"AHDX<9THENX
=X+1:T=T+1
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-25
PROGRAMS
MM 90 IFAS="{LEFT)"AMDY=23THEN
Y=5:T=T-6
MA 95 IFA$="{RIGHT)"ANDy=5THEN
Y=23:T=T+6
HK 100 POKE781,X:P0KE782,y:POK
E78 3,0:SYS65520:PRINTTA
B (Y) "{WHT}"T$ (T) "{UP)":
GOTO 6 5
MP 105 PRINT"{CLB}"; :END
RR 110 OHTGOTO125,175,565,210,
620,650,730,760,590,635
,160,105
BX 115 GOT065
EJ 120 REM LOAD FILE
SH 125 NN$="";INPUT"FILENAME";
NN$: IFNN$=""THEN45
EA 130 SYSCM:OPENl,D,15:OPEN8,
D,8,NN$+",S,R": INPUT#1,
A,B$,B,C:IFA<>0THEN710
QH 135 FORA=1TOW+1:SYSIH: ARS (A
,0)=AS:IFLEN(A$) =0THEHC
LOSE1:CLOSE8:GOT045
KJ 140 F0RB = 1T0J:SYSIN:AR$ (A,B
) =AS: IFLEN(AS) =0AtJDST = O
THENNEXTA:GOTOai0
EE 145 IFST=0THENNEXTB:NEXTA:G
OTO310
EQ 150 AR$(A+1,0)="":CLOSE1:CL
OSEa:GOT045
SR 155 REM CLEAR MEMORY
SR 160 PRIHT"ARE YOU SURE? Y/N
":HAIT198,1:IFPEEK(631)
=89THENRUN
MC 165 GOT045
BH 170 REM RECALL
PS 175 INPUT"NAME";bJ$:IFNS=""T
HEN45
DM 180 IFRrGHT$CNS,l)="*"THENN
S=LEFT$(NS,LEN(H$) -1)
PE 185 FORA=1TOW:IFAR${A,0) =""
THENN$="":GOTO803
GC 190 IFLEFT5 (ARS (A,0) ,LEH(N$
) ) <>N$THENNEXT : GOTO800
BQ 195 PRINT"{CLR)"ARS(A,0) ; :F
0RB=1T0H : TFB<25THENPRIN
TCHRS (13)AR$ (A,B) ; : NEXT
DA 200 G0TO215
FH 205 REM CREATE ENTRY
PE 210 PRINT"{CLR}"; :FORA=1TOW
: IFARS (A,0} <>""THENfJEXT
:GOTO810:REH FIND END 0
F FILE
EM 215 PRINT"(HOME}";:B=0:SX=0
CS 220 SYSK:GOSUB485
DR 225 ONPEEK(2)GOT0235,513,26
5,285,310,325,335,350,4
09,285,445,465,470,510
HG 230 REM LEFT
SJ 235 IFCXO0THEN513
BR 240 IFB=OTHEN220
SP 245 GOSUB435:SYSLF:ARS (A,B)
= NS
BK 250 IFB=SXTHENSX=SX-1:B=B-1
:GOSUB495:PRISTA$AS; iGO
TO220
GD 255 B=B-1:GOSUB500:PRINTA5A
$; :GOTO220
G-26 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
XH
260
HEM UP
FC
425
FS
265
rFB=0THEN220
GD
270
GOSUB485:SYSLF:ARS(A,B)
=NS;IFB=SXTHENSX=SX~1:B
= B-l:GOS!JB495:PRIHTAS; :
AX
430
GDTO220
DK
435
KC
275
B=B-1:GOSUB500:PRINTA5;
:GOTO220
XQ
440
SX
280
REM DOWN, SHIFTED RETUR
CP
445
N
FP
450
SQ
285
IFB=HTHEN220
JF
455
BC
290
SYSLF!AR$(A,B) =NS:GOSUB
500
JF
460
PJ
295
IFCY=24THENSX=SX+1:B=B+
FB
465
1:PRINTCHRS(13)ARS(A,B)
RJ
470
; :GOSrJB500:GOTO220
AG
475
MD
300
B=B+1:GOSUB500:PRINTAS;
:GOTO220
XE
480
HS
305
REM CLR/HOMS (GO TO BOT
TOM)
MP
485
cx
310
SYSLF:ARS (A,B) -N$ : F0RB=
0TOJ:IFAR$ (A,B+1) <>""TH
ENNEXT
XE
490
AE
315
SX=B;G0SUB4 9S:PRINT"
{HOME}";:GOTO220
SG
495
RP
320
REM HOME
SG
496
xc
325
SYSLF:ARS(A,B)=NS:B=0:S
X=B:G0SUB495:PRINTA5; :G
OTO220
XB
500
QH
330
REM INSERT
QD
335
GOSUB485;SYSLF:AR$(A,B)
=N5:GOSUB500:IFLEN(AR${
CG
505
A,B) ) =39THEN220
AP
510
EP
340
G0T0515
PC
345
REM DELETE
QQ
515
HH
353
FL=1:IFCX<>0THEN510
XE
355
IFB=0THEN220
FH
360
IFB=SXTHENSX=SX-1: PRINT
EC
520
"{DOWN}"; :GOSUB485:GOSy
JG
525
B495
XB
530
DJ
365
SYSLF:ARS ( A,B) =NS : I FLEN
(ARS (A,C-1) )«=39THENAR$(
AJ
535
A,B-1)=LEFT5(ARS[A,B-1)
,33)
HG
540
DJ
370
A$=LEFTS(AR$ (A,B) ,39-LE
N(ARS(A,B-1) ) )
RA
545
DB
375
AR$(A,B)=RIGHT$(AR$(A,B
) ,LEN(AR$(A,B) )-LEN(AS)
)
HE
DM
550
555
EG
383
IFARS (A,B) =""THENFORU=B
HX
560
T0H:ARS(A,U)=AR$(A,U+1)
AC
565
:HEXT
FE
385
B=B-l:CY=CY-l:GOSaB500:
PRINTARS (A,B) ; :GOSUB485
:PRINTA$; :SYSLF:ARS (A,B
HP
570
)=N5
AA
575
DQ
390
GOSUB495:GOTO220
AM
580
BA
395
REM RETURN
SD
585
KD
CG
400
405
IFB=HTHEN220
FL=1:IFAR$(A,H) <>""THEN
RE
590
290
BX
595
AS
410
IFCY=24THENSX=SX+1
FB
415
GOSUB485:SYSLF:ARS (A,B)
QR
600
XB
420
F0RU=HT0B+1STEP-1:ARS(A
,U)=ARS(A,U-1) :NEXT:REM
MJ
60S
INSERT
FG
610
B=B+1:GOSUB500:SYSBF:AR
$(A,B)=NS
ARS (A,B-1)=LEFT$(AR5(A,
B-1) ,LEN (ARS(A,B-1) ) -LE
N{ARS(A,B)))
PRINT:GOSUB48 5:GOSUB49 5
:GOTO220
REM Fi
IFA=1THEN220
IFFL=0THEN545
FL = 0:SYSLF:AR$ (A,B) =N$:
GOTO530
REM F3 AND F7
IFARS(A+1,0)=""THEN220
IFFL=0THEN545
FL=0:SYSLF: AR$ (A,B)=N$:
GOTQ530
REM SAVE CURSOR LOCATIO
N
POKE7 8 3,1:SYS65 52 0:CX=P
EEK(782) :CY=PEEK(781) :R
ETURN
REM REDRAW SCREEN
POKE212,0:PRINT"{CLR]"A
RS(A,SX) ;
FORU = SX + lTOSX+24: IFUOJ
THENPRINTCHR$ (13) ARS (A,
U) ; :NEXT
POKE 78 3,0: POKE 7 32, CX:PO
KE781,CY:SYS6 55 20; RETUR
N
REM PRINT TO SCREEN
FL=1:IFCX=3 8ANDB=HTHENP
RINTA$"{LEFT)"; :GOTO220
PRINTA$; :GOSUB4 85:IFCX=
39THENSYSLF:AR$ (A,B) =NS
: PRINT:B=B+1
GOTO220
REM ALPHABETIZE IT
B=0iFORU=0TOH: IFAR$ (A,U
) =""THENNEXT:GOTO540
NS=ARS (A,U) :ARS (A,U) =""
:ARS(A,B)=NS:B=B+1:NEXT
SYSAL
IFAS="CF1]"ANDA<>1THENA
=A-l:GOT0195
IFA$ = "{F3)"ANDARS (A4-l,0
) <>""THENA=A+l:GOT0195
GOT04 5
REM LIST ENTRIES
F0RA=1T0W: IFARS {A,0) =""
THEN815
PRINT:FORB=0TOH : IFAR$ (A
,B) <>""THENPRINTARS (A,B
) :NEXTB
IFPEEK(20 3) 0 64TKEN57 5
NEXTA:GOTOai0
REM ERASE ENTRY
INPUT '■nahE";nS: ifns=""t
HEN45
IFRIGHTS (NS, 1) ="*"THENN
$=LEFT5 (N$,LEN (N5) -1)
F0RA=1T0W+1 : IFARS (A, 0} =
""THENN5="":GOTO800
I FLEETS (ARS (A,3) ,LEN(NS
) ) <>NSTHENNEXT:GOTO800
ARS (A,0)="":SYSEE:GOTO4
MG 615 REM DIRECTORi'
KF 620 POKE186,D:SYSDS:PRrHT:G
OT0815
DJ 625 IFB=OTHEN810
XK 630 REM SCRATCH FILE
SX 635 INPUT"FILENRME";N5: IFN$
=""THEN45
HM 640 0PENl,D,15,"Sa:"+N$:CL0
SEl:GOT045
GG 645 REM SAVE FILE
PQ 650 CI,0SE1:CL0SE8:WNS="" : PO
KE19a,0:REM NO REPLACE
DP 655 IFRIGHT${NN$,1)="*"THEN
NN$=""
RM 660 IFNN$=""THENIMPUT"FILBH
AME";HN$:IFNN$=""THEN45
GJ 665 OPENl,D,15:OPEN8,D,8,""
+NN5+",S,W":ISPUT#1,A,B
$,B,C
XP 670 IFA = 63THF;t)CLOSG8: PRINT"
REPLACE "NHS"? Y/N":WAI
T198, 1:IFPEEK(63 1) 0 3 9T
HEH650
PJ 675 IFA=63THENOPEM3,D,8,"@0
: "+NN5+",S,W"; INPUT#1,A
,B5,B,C
SP 680 IFAO0THEN710
JX 685 F0RA-LT0W+l:PRI[JT!t3,AR$
(A,0) :IFARS (A,0)=""THEN
CLOSEl:CLOSE8:GOT0 4 5
GD 690 F0RB=lT0J:PRINTIi8, AR5 (A
,B) :IFARS (A,B) <>""THEN>]
EXTB
XX 695 WEXTA
XH 700 CLOSE1:CLOSE8:GOT045
MS 705 REM DRIVE STATUS
JP 710 PRINTA;BS;B;C:CL0SE1:CL
OSE8:GOT0315
KD 715 REM QUIT
KC 720 PRINT"{CLR}" ; :END
CJ 725 REM PRINT FILE
DG 73(3 PRINT"PRESS RETURN TO C
ANCEL"
GX 735 OPEN1,P,7:FORA=1TOW: IFA
RS (A,0)=""THEN750
CH 740 PRINT#1:FORB=0TOH: IFAR$
(A,B) <>""THEMPRINT#1, AR
S (A,B> :NEXTB
JG 74 5 GETA$:IFA5<>CHHSa3JTHE
NNEXTA
FD 750 CLOSEl:GOT0815
XS 755 REM PRINT ENTRY
DM 760 INPUT"NAME";NS:IFNS=""T
HEN45
XE 765 IFRIGHTS (N5,1)-"*"THENN
$=LEFT${H$,LEN(N$)~1)
DD 770 FORA=1TOW:IFAR$ (A, 0)=""
THENN$="":GOTO800
MX 775 IFLEFT$(AR5(A,0) ,LEN (NS
) ) <>NSTHENNEXTA:GOTO800
EM 783 PRINT"PRESS RETURN TO C
ANCEL"
BP 785 0PEN1,P, 7:PRINT*fl:F0RB =
0TOH:IFARS (A,B) <>""THEN
PRINT#l,ARS{A,a)
JG 790 GETA$:IFA5<>CHR$ (13)THE
NNEXT
KE 795 CLOSEl:GOT0815
FD B00 PRINT"NOT FOUND, ":GOTO
815
SF 805 CL0SE1:CL0SE8:PRINT"FIL
E NOT COMPATIBLE, ":ARS
(1,0)="";NNS="":GOTO815
KM 310 PRINT"FULL FILE, ";
HB 315 POI<E198,0:PRINT"{WHT;pR
ESS ANY KEY":WArTl93, 1:
GOT045
SQ 820 DATA LOAD FILE, RECALL E
NTHY,LIST FILE, CREATE E
NTRY, DIRECTORY, SAVE FIL
E
SS 825 DATA PRINT FILE, PRINT E
NTRY, ERASE ENTRY, SCRATC
H FILE, CLEAR MEMORY, QUI
T
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Todd Piltingsrud is attending Concor-
dia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-27
PROGRAMS
BRICK LAYER
By Maurice Yanney
You're the mason who has to repair
holes in a brick wall. To make matters
more interesting, each hole requires a
brick of a certain color. For an additional
twist, the wall you have to repair is mov-
ing, and the bricks you need are scat-
tered about a maze. How many mazes
can you complete in this arcade-style
game for the 64?
Typing It In
Brick Layer is written entirely in ma-
chine language, but it loads and runs
like a BASIC program. To type it in,
use MLX. our machine language entry
program, which you'll find elsewhere in
this section. When MLX prompts, you re-
spond with the following values.
Starting address: 0801
Ending address: 1990
Be sure to save a copy of the program
before exiting MLX.
Playing the Game
The object of this game is to fill all of
the holes which appear in the wall at
the bottom of the screen, The holes are
filled by dropping in a brick that has
the same color as the area around the
hole. Use a joystick in port 2 to move
your tank around the various mazes.
I didn't mention the tank? This
game has an element of danger as
well. Press the fire button to have the
tank fire bullets, pick up a brick, or
drop a brick.
When your tank is directly over a de-
sired brick, press the fire button to
pick it up. You can carry only one
brick at a time. When you're carrying a
brick, press the fire button again to
drop it (unless all of the spaces current-
ly under the tank contain bricks). If
your tank isn't carrying a brick and
there isn't one immediately beneath it,
pressing the fire button will shoot bul-
lets in all directions.
Obstacles
You need the bullets to make the
three electric wheelbarrows drop their
bricks. Each wheelbarrow is a different
color, and each moves about the
maze. The wheelbarrows carry bricks
G-28 COKAPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
that are the same color as the wheel-
barrow. When a wheelbarrow carrying
a brick is hit by a bullet, it drops a
brick. You want to pick up the
dropped brick before the wheelbarrow
can retrieve it.
When a wheelbarrow is empty, it
moves faster than it does when it is
filled. A wheelbarrow can pick up a
brick by moving over a brick of the
same color or by getting a new one at
the maze entrance at the top center of
the screen. Wheelbarrows will no long-
er move to the entrance for new bricks
when all bricks of the same color as
the wheelbarrow have been brought
out onto the maze.
If a wheelbarrow touches any part of
the tank, the tank becomes electrified
and is destroyed. There are four extra
tanks: when all your tanks are de-
stroyed, the game is over. Pressing the
fire button will start a new game.
When you pick up a brick, your
speed will be reduced, but you want to
take it to the bottom of the screen and
drop it directly over the hole with the ap-
propriate color. When all the holes are
filled, a new maze appears, and you
earn a bonus player.
To pause the game, hold down the
Shift key or press the Shift Lock key.
To continue playing, release the Shift
or Shift Lock key.
BRICK LAYER
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SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-29
PROGRAMS
1199
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A3
G-30 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
1829
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1971:
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1981:
3A
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1989:
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10
Maurice Yanney is the author of Cats &
Mice and Umbrellas, games that ap-
peared In Gazette earlier this year He
lives in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
CD+
By Daniel Lightner
Character Designer (September 1992) is
a utility program tliat lets you create
your own characters and use them to set
up animation sequences. With its sketch
pad you can create a design, character,
or picture that you can save as a sequen-
tial file.
CD+ is a special addition to Character
Designer (CD) that lets you use the orig-
inal program to design high-resolution
bitmapped graphics. (Note: You will
need a copy of Character Designer in or-
der to useCD+.)
CD+ is written in machine language.
To enter it, use MLX, Gazette's machine
language entry program, which you'll
find elsewhere in this section. When MLX
prompts for starting and ending address-
es, supply the following values.
Starting address: 0801
Ending address: 1003
When you have finished entering the
program:, be sure to save a copy of it
to a disk that contains the original Char-
acter Designer program. Character De-
signer must be named CD, because
CD+ looks for that name and loads it
while booting.
Using the Program
To use CD+. just load and run it as you
would any BASIC program. CD+ then
loads and activates Character Design-
er. The program begins on CD's work
screen. Using CD's design and draw-
ing features, you can create an image
in the program's sketch window.
When you have finished sketching,
press the back arrow key to exit
Sketch mode and then press the aster-
isk key ("). At this point, you'll see a
menu new to Character Designer.
CD Bitmap Menu
Option 1 is Enter Bitmap Mode. Select
this first option by pressing the 1 key.
If the screen contains garbage, press
Shift and CIr/Home simultaneously to
clear it. Press Return whenever you
wish to return to the Bitmap menu.
Your cursor will appear as four visi-
ble corners that define a section of the
screen. You can move to a new sec-
tion of the screen using your joystick or
the cursor keys. If you wish to stamp
the image from the sketch window into
one of these 12 screen sections,
move to the desired section and press
either the fire button or the f7 key.
You may stamp the image into as
many of the sections as you like. If you
want to remove an image, press the CIr/
Home key without using the Shift key.
Color
CD+ allows you to enter different col-
ors in different areas of the screen.
This color depends on the color used
in the sketch window, if you need to col-
or a section of the screen but don't
wish to stamp the graphic image
there, just press the C key. That sec-
tion of the screen will change to the
background color of the sketch win-
dow, but it won't contain any graphics.
You can equalize the color of the entire
screen by pressing the E key.
By pressing the f 1 key, you can trans-
fer whatever image is under the mark-
ers to the sketch window. This is just
the opposite of pressing f7. You can
toggle the markers on and off by press-
ing the asterisk key. Remember, to ex-
it Bitmap mode, just hit the Return key.
Loading and Saving
Option 2 lets you load a bitmap from
disk. Doodie sketches will load into
CD+ just fine.
Option 3 lets you save a screen to
disk. This gives you a more powerful
way to save character sets created us-
ing Character Designer. Just store
them in the sketch window as you cre-
ate them, When you wish to save
them, stamp them on the bitmap and
save the file. Later, you can load the
bitmap and add more characters or
take some or all from the bitmap and
save them as sequential files using
Character Designer's old Save option.
Disk Commands
Option 4 lets you enter a disk com-
mand. Be sure that you have the de-
sired disk in the drive.
Disk commands should follow the
same format that is used when open-
ing the command channel to drive 8. ex-
cept for the NEW disk command.
The COPYFILE command is CO: or
C: followed by the new filename, an
equal sign, and the old name. Here's
an example.
CG:NEW FILE=ORIGiNAL FILE
The RENAME FILE command works
with a similar syntax.
RO:NEW NAiVIE=OLD NAME
The SCRATCH command is SO: fol-
lowed by the filename to be
scratched. Wildcards are allowed. INI-
TIALIZE is 10, and VALIDATE is VO.
The NEW command to format a disk
works a little different from what you're
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-31
PROGRAMS
used to. The syntax for this command
is NO; followed by a disl< name, but
don't enter a unique ID at ttiis point.
Simply press Return, You will then be
prompted for a two-character ID. Enter
an ID and press Return again.
While in Disk Command mode, enter-
ing a dollar sign ($) will give you the
disk directory- You don't have to use
quotation marks. To abort any of the
above options, simply press the aster-
isk key and then press Return. The
last option (5) will return you lo Char-
acter Designer.
Doodle Converter
Although CD-i- can load Doodle
bitnnaps, Doodle cannot load CD+
bitmaps. So I've included a short utili-
ty program that will convert CD+
bitmaps to Doodle.
CD Doodle is whtten in machine lan-
guage, and it will have to be entered
with MLX, When entering it, use the fal-
lowing addresses.
Starting address: 0801
Ending address: OBAD
Be sure to save a copy of CD Doodle
to disk before leaving fvlLX.
First create and save a bitmap from
CD+. Then exit to BASIC and ioad and
run CD Doodle. You will be prompted
for the filename that you used to save
the bitmap graphic. Enter that fiiename
and press Return. Be sure that the
disk containing the graphic is in the
drive.
After the file loads, the program
prompts you to place a disk in the
drive onto which you want to save the
converted image. Do this and press
the spacebar when ready.
CD Doodle will save the file as DD
plus the filename that you used. This
file can now be used in Doodle.
CD+
0801;
0809;
0811;
0819:
0821;
0829;
0831;
0839;
9841;
0849:
0851;
0859;
22 08
38 20
39 33
55 54
00 00
24 08
8D B3
AD 27
FB A9
6D B2
6D B3
Bl FB
0A 00 9E
43 44 2B
3A 20 43
45 20 20
00 75 07
8D 82 02
02 AD 26
08 85 FE
08 85 FC
02 80 84
02 8D B5
91 FD 18
32
3B
38
88
20
31
39
5F
4F
4D
50
16
20
20
20
75
00
80
AD
6F
AD
25
08
43
08
85
FD
eA
A9
8E
35
84
18
AS
FB
A2
02
A5
FC
C8
02
AS
00
15
A5
FB
69
0C
08S1:
0869;
0871:
0879;
0881:
0389;
0891:
0899;
08A1;
08A9;
0881;
08B9:
08C1;
08C9:
08D1;
08D9:
08E1:
08E9:
08F1:
08F9:
0901:
0909:
0911:
0919:
0921:
0929:
0931:
0939:
0941:
0949:
0951:
0959:
0961:
0969:
0971:
0979:
0981:
0989:
0991:
0999:
39AI:
09A9:
09B1:
0969:
09C1:
09C9:
0901:
09D9:
09E1:
09E9:
09F1:
09F9:
0A01V
0A09:
0A11:
0A19:
0A21:
0A29:
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G-32 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
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74
74
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90
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1001
00
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00
00
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30
30
30
21
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FF
20
02
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A9
96
20
02
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60
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00
20
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20
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CD DOODLE
0A29
02
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08
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20
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20
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0A81
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20
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31
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09
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08
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00
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20
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20
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28
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03
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65
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20
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20
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19
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44
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50
59
27
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0B19:
52
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39
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54
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37
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29
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38
0B31:
43
41
54
49
4F
4E
53
20
D2
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-33
PROGRAMS
0B39
:49
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54
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20
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54
44
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0B41
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0B51
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45
44
43
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23
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C0
0B59
49
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2D
4D
41
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0B61
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3F
2C
50
2C
52
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0B69
4E
63
65
66
51
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5A
5B
92
0B71
44
4F
23
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4E
4F
54
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36
0B79
45
52
20
44
4F
4F
44
4C
9B
0B81
45
3F
20
59
2F
4E
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43
0B89
41
43
45
20
44
4F
4F
44
FD
0B91
4C
45
20
44
49
53
4B
20
B5
01199
49
4e:
20
44
52
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56
45
D9
0BA1
20
48
49
54
20
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44
0BA9
23
4B
45
59
00
00
00
00
E0
Daniel Lightner. the author of Risers
and Sliders, lives in Sidney, Montana.
SILICON COBBLER
By Bob Markland
Convenience! Webster defines conven-
ience as "anything that saves work."
Busy people of the nineties demand con-
venience. Recognizing this, many com-
mercial programs load and run with the
fewest possible keystrokes from the us-
er. Unfortunately, this convenience isn't
available on many disks and most short-
er programs.
Silicon Cobbler is an autoboot maker
that provides a simple solution to this and
requires no computer or programming ex-
perience. Although there have been a
number of autoboot makers written,
many attach themselves to a program
and permanently alter it. Some work on-
ly with BASiC programs: others work on-
ly with machine language routines.
Silicon Cobbler works with virtually any
program and allows maximum flexibility.
Most important, it creates a one-block au-
toboot program that is totally independ-
ent of the original program.
With an autoboot as the first file on the
disk followed by a menu/loader, you
have a combination that creates effort-
less program selection and loading.
Typing It In
Silicon Cobbler is written entirely in BA-
SIC. To help avoid errors, enter it with
The Automatic Proofreader, which you
will find elsewhere in this section. Be-
fore exiting Proofreader, be sure to
save a copy of the program to disk.
Creating an Autoboot
To use Silicon Cobbler, load and run it
as you would any BASIC program. It
G-34 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
takes only a few minutes to create an
autoboot. Silicon Cobbler walks you
through, letting you select the border,
screen, and character colors during
the initial loading. These attributes en-
able you to select the visual effects
you want for a smooth transition while
your main program loads.
You are then prompted for the
name of the program to be loaded and
run. Enter the filename of the program
for which you are creating the auto-
boot. You may type the first few letters
followed by an asterisk (*) wildcard, as
long as no filename conflicts result.
You are then asked for the com-
mand to activate the program. Type in
the command that you normally use to
activate the main program. This is usu-
ally RUN or SYS and a starting ad-
dress. The next prompt asks for a char-
acter color following the load, in most
cases, set this attribute to match the
screen and border color in steps 1 and
2. This provides for a smooth transition.
You are then asked for a filename for
the autoboot program. For easy identi-
fication, give the autoboot a name sim-
ilar to the name of the program it
boots. For example, you might add the
suffix LOAD or BOOT to the filename.
Silicon Cobbler then lists the choices
that you have made. Carefully check
each attribute. If you find an error,
press S to start over; otherwise, press
C to Continue.
When you continue, the autoboot
will be created. Be sure the destination
disk is in the drive. There are two tech-
niques for utilizing autoboots. If the au-
toboot is the first directory entry, the pro-
gram may be booted by typing
LOAD""', 8, 1. For programs elsewhere
in the directory, load the autoboot pro-
gram with the ,8,1 extension,
The final prompt gives you the op-
tion to make additional autoboots or
quit to BASIC.
Troubleshooting
If a BASIC program will not autoboot,
check the program's load address. If
it's not 2049, change it.
Silicon Cobbler checks for disk
drive errors. If a filename already exists
on your disk, select another name, or
overwrite the existing autoboot. If you
find that an autoboot does not work
properly, create a new autoboot and
overwrite the old one.
Advanced Techniques
Autoboots can be successfully added
to nearly all disks, including backups
of commercial software. If the program
uses a standard directory, save the au-
toboot as you normally would, and
then move its filename to the first direc-
tory position.
In cases where there is only one file
listed and no bytes free, there may
still be a solution. With a sector editor,
carefully check track 18's directory sec-
tors. They may be standard even if the
other tracks and sectors are not. If this
is the case, create an autoboot on an-
other disk and copy it to an unused sec-
tor on track 18. Use your sector editor
to move the existing filenames In order
to open the first position.
Finally, write the first directory entry
for the autoboot and set its pointers to
the sector on track 18 containing the au-
toboot, What with the possibility of a
crash, never attempt this on the origi-
nal commercial disk!
SILICON COBBLER
JS 10 REM: COPYRIGHT 1993 - CO
MPUTE PUBLICATIONS INTL
{SPACE}LTD - ALL RIGHTS
{SPACE}RESERVED
FF
JP
20
50
CM 60
HB 70
HB
GE
SP
SB
PX
FA
BD
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
PRINT"{CLR)"CHRS(14 2)CHR
$(8) : POKE 53 280, 2: POKE 53 2
81,7:DIMC$(15) : POKE 7 8 8, 5
2
PORR=0TO15 : READJUS : NEXT :
FORR=lT0125:READDT:CK=CK
+DT:NEXT
ifck015188thenprint"
{homeHblk}(10 down}
{8 spaces }err0r in nuher
ical data": stop
ml5="" : restore :forr=0to1
5:readc$(r) :next
bl$= forr=it039:bl$=bl
5+" ":NEXT
PRINT"{CLR) (BLK]"TAB(12
) "{DOWN}SILICON COBBLER
";PRINTTAB(11) "PROGRAM
{SPACE} BOOT MAKER"
PRINTTAB{12) "(DOWN}BY R
. MARKLAND"
PRINTTAB(16)"(C) 1993":
PRINTTAB (5) "COMPUTE PUB
LIGATIONS INTL LTD"
FORR=lT024;READDT:HL$=M
L9+CHRS(DT) :NEXT
GOSDB830:PRINT"
{4 SPACESlSELECT BORDER
COLOR DURING LOAD":PRI
NTTAB(16) " (0-15) [DOWN)"
PK 153 TB=18:NT=3:LE=2:GOSOB85
a:BC=VAL(TP$) :IFBC>15TH
EN140
EX 160 MLS=MLS+CHR$ (EC) :G0SUB8
20
HQ 170 F0RR=1T04:READDT:ML3=ML
$+CHRS (DT) :NEXT
CE 1B0 GOSUB830: PRINT"
[4 5PACES]SELECT SCREEN
COLOR DURING LOAD":PRI
.MTTAB(16) " (0-15) {DOWN}"
FP 190 TB = 13:NT = (l:LE = 2:GOSUB85
0:SC=VAL(TP$) :IFSC>15TH
EN180
HP 200 HLS=ML$+CHRS(SC) :G0SUB8
20
JS 210 F0RR=1T04:READDT:ML$=ML
$+CHRS (DT) :NEXT
KJ 220 GOSUB830:PRINT"
{3 SPACES) SELECT CHftRAC
TER COLOR DURING LOAD":
PRINTTAB(16) " (0-15)
{DOWN)"
XK 230 TB=18:NT=G:LE=2:GOSUB85
0:CL=VAL{TP$) :IFCL>15TH
EN220
FX 240 ML$=ML$+CHR5 (CL) :G0SUB8
20
GP 250 F0RR=1T033:READDT:HL$=M
LS+CHR$ (DT) :NEXT
CD 260 GOSUB830:PR:NTTAB (9) "EN
TER NAME OF PROGRAM"
{17 SPACES)
BF 270 PRINTTAB(ll) "TO BE LOAD
ED/RUH : " : PR I NTT AB ( 1 1 ) " (
1-16 CHARACTERS) [DOWN)"
HE 280 TB=12:NT=l:LE=16:GOSUB8
50:NAS=TPS:ML$=ML$+CHR$
{LEN (HAS) ) :GOSUQ820
QK 290 F0RR=1T031:READDT:MLS=M
LS+CHR5 (DT) :NEXT
FE 300 GOSUB830: PRINTTAB (8) "EN
TER NECESSARY COMMAND"
MF 310 PRINTTAB {10} "TO ACTIVAT
E PR0GRAM":PRINTTAB(11)
"YOU WISH TO BOOT: "
BK 320 PRINTTAB (8) " (E.G. RUN 0
R SYS49152) {DOWN}"
EP 333 TB=12:NT=l:LE=8:GOSUB35
0:CMS=TPS:MLS=MLS+CHR$ (
len{cm$) ) :gosub820
ak 343 f0rr=1t013:readdt:ml$=m
ls+chrs(dt) :next
ph 350 mls=mls+chr5(len (cms) +1
) :forr=1t011:readdt:hls
=ml$+chr$ (dt) :next
jr 360 gosob930:print" select
{space)character color
{spacsJfollowing load"
dr 370 printtab(16) " (0-15)
{ DOWN ) "
PQ 380 TB=18:NT=0:LE=2:GOSUB85
a:CP=VAL(TP$) :IFCP>15TH
EN360
MH 390 GOSUB820:HL$=ML$+CHRS (C
P) :F0RR=1T08:READDT:ML5
ES 400
CX 410
XC 420
PB 430
XA 440
KS 450
HD 460
PC 470
HP 480
GX 490
FX 500
GE 510
QF 520
ES 510
PP 540
CH 550
CB 560
HR 570
EE 580
EQ 590
JQ 603
CG 610
AF 620
DS 630
PS 640
CE 650
=ML9+CHRS
MLS=«L$+"
E WAIT. . .
F0RR=1T0L
$+HIDS{NA
LEN (NAS) =
FORR=LEN(
= riL$+CHRS
FORR=1TOL
5+MIDS (CM
S=ML5+CHR
GOSUB830:
NTER A FI
PRINTTAB (
UTOBOOT: "
(1-16 CHA
(DT) :NEXT
LOADING, PLEAS
."+CHR5{a)
EN(NAS) :MLS=ML
S,R,1} :NEXT:IF
16THEN430
NA$)+1T016:ML$
(234) :NEXT
EN (CMS) :MLS=ML
S,R,1) :NEXT:ML
S{13)
PRINTTA0{11) "E
LE NAME"
11) "FOR THIS A
:PRINTTAB (11) "
RACTERS) {DOWN}
TB=12tHT=l:LE=16:GOSUB8
50:LHS=TPS:GOSUB820
GOSUB830: PRINTTAB (2) "BO
RDER COLOR IS:"TAB(38-L
EN(CS(BC) ) )CS(BC)
PRINTTAB (2) "SCREEN COLO
R IS: "TAB(38-LEN(C$ (SO
))CS(SC)
PRINTTAB (2) "LOAD CHR CO
LOR IS:"TAB{38-LeN(C5{C
L)))CS(CL)
PRINTTAB (2) "PROGRAM TO
[SPACE] BOOT IS : "TAB (38-
LEN (NAS) )NAS
PRINT1>-AB{2) "CHD TO ACT I
VATE IS:"TAB (38-LEN (CMS
) )CMS
PRINTTAB (2) "PROG CHR CO
LOR IS:"TAB{38-LEN(C$(C
P}))CS{CP)
PRINTTAB(2) "AUTOBOOT NA
ME IS: "TAB (38-LEN (LNS) )
LN$
PRINTTAB (7) "[2 DOWNjPLE
ASE REVIEW VOUR CHOICES
": PRINTTAB (15) "[D0WN)TH
EN PRESS"
PRINT" (DOWN) (C) TO CON
TINUE -/- (S) TO START
(SPACE)OVER"
GETDS: IFDS=""THEN560
IFD$="S"THEN80
IFDS<>"C"THEN560
GOSUB830: PRINTTAB (8) "IN
SERT DESTINATION DISK":
PRINTTAB (15) "[D0HN}THEN
PRESS"
PRINTTAB (7) "{DOWN}ANY K
EY TO CREATE AUTOBOOT":
POKE198,0
GETDS: IFDS=""THEN610
GOSUB830:PRINTTAB(a) "
{4 DOWN5W0RKING, PLEASE
WAIT. . . ."
0PEN15,a,15, "I0:":OPEN8
,8,8,"0:"+LNS+",P,R":CL
OSEa:FL=0:GOSUB96a
IFFLTHEN470
OPEN 15, 8, 15: OPENS, 8, 8,"
0 : "+LNS+" , P,W" :CL0SE8 : F
CB
DX
DK
RC
GJ
JR
PK
RK
RE
660
670
680
690
700
710
720
730
740
SJ 75e
PX 760
DF 770
PQ
KF
MS
XD
780
790
800
810
L-0:GOSUB960
IFFLTHEN470
IFE1O63THEN740
GOSUB830:HS$="FILE "+CH
RS (34)+LN$+CHRS (34)+" A
LREADY EXISTS"
PRINTTAB ( (40- (LEN(MSS) )
)/2)MS$
PRINTTAB (13) "{D0WN}0VER
WRITE IT?":PRINTTAB{16)
"Y -/- N"
GETDS: I FD$=" "THEN? 10
IFDS=''n"THEN440
IFDS<>"Y"THeN710
OPEN15,8,15,"I0:":PRINT
#15, "50: " + LNS: CLOSE 15
OPENS, 8, a, "0: "+LN$+",P,
W" : PRINT If 8, MLS: CLOSES :C
L0SE15
GOSUB830;PRINT"{2 DOWN)
{2 SPACES}AUTOBOOT COMP
LETED, DO YOU WISH TO:"
PRINTTAB (10) "{D0WN)1.
{2 SPACES)CREATE ANOTHE
R?":PRINTTAB (10) "{DOWN}
2. [2 SPACES}QUIT?"
GETDS:IFDS=""THEN780
IFDS="1"THEN80
IFDS<>"2"THEN780
PRINT"{CLR}":P0KE64 6,14
: POKE 64 7, 14: POKE 53 2 8 0,1
4: POKE53 2 81,6:POKE78 8,4
9:END
PRINT:PRINTTAB(16) "
[DOWN}ENTERSD" :F0RT=1T0
1000:NEXT
PRINT" {HOME] {9 D0WN)":F
0RR=1T014:PRINTBLS:NEXT
: PRINT" {home) {9 DOWN}"
RETURN
POKE198,0:PRINTTAB{TB) ;
:POKE204,0:TPS=""
P0KE647,PEEK(646) :GETKI
$: IFKI5=""THEN860
IFKI5=CHR? C34)THEN86 0
IFKI$=CHR$ (13) ANDLEN(TP
S) >0THENPRINT" ";:P0KE2
04, 1: RETURN
IFKIS=CHR$ (20)AHDLEN(TP
S) >0THENTPS=LEFTS(TPS,L
EN (TPS)-l) :GOTO950
IFKI$=>CHRS (43) AHDKIS=<
CHRS (57)THEN930 »
IFNTTHENIFKI$=>CHRS (32)
ANDKIS=<CHRS(90)THEN930
GOTQ860
IFLEN(TPS)= (LE)THENa60
TPS=TP5+KI5
PRINTKIS; :GOTO860
INPUT#15,E1,ERS,E2,E3
IFE1=0ORE1=S2ORE1=G3THS
NCL0SE15:RET0RN
CL0SE15:FL=1
GO3UB830: PRINTTAB (9) "*
[SPACE)* * DISK ERROR *
KK 1000 PRINTTAB (10) "{DOWH)";E
BE 820
HF 830
CM
GM
840
850
GS 360
KM
JF
870
380
FR 890
KR 900
DB 910
CA
920
PG
930
SD
940
HK
950
GQ
960
GF
970
XF
980
HC
990
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-35
PROGRAMS/ THE AUTOMATIC PROOFREADER
BR 1010
MB 1023
EX 1030
DA 1043
PH 1050
KH 1060
RF 1070
RF 1080
QR 1090
RR 1100
BX 1110
GQ 1120
KB 1130
1;ER$|E2;E3
PRI«TTAB(3) "{DOWN}CHEC
S DISK & DRIVE, THEN T
RY AGAIN"
PRINTTAB (7) "{DOHN}PRES
S ANY KEY TO CONTINUE"
GET05: IFD$=""THENl03a
RETURH
DATA BLACK, WHITE, RED, C
Y AN, PURPLE, GREEN, BLUE,
YELLOW, ORANGE , BROWN, LI
GHT RED
DATA DARK GRAY, MEDIUM
{SPACE}GRAY, LIGHT GREE
N, LIGHT BLUE, LIGHT GRA
Y
DATA 44,3,60,3,102,254
,165,244,237,245,0,0,3
,0,0,0,0,3
DATA 169,147,32,210,25
5,169
DATA 141,32,208,169
DATA 141,33,208,169
DATA 141,134,2,32,138,
255,32,231,255,160,0,2
4,152,12,160,8,32,240,
255
DATA 160,0,185,174,3,2
40,6, 32,210,255,200,20
3,245,169
DATA 162,199,160,3,32,
189,255,169,1,168,162,
8,32,186,255,173,33,20
PE 1140 DATA 141,134,2,169,0,3
2,213,255,134,45, 132,4
6,160
MR 1150 DATA 185,215,3,153,119
,2,136,16,247,169
HP 1160 DATA 133,198,32,94,166
,169,147,32,210,255,16
9
AJ 1170 DATA 141,134,2,162,128
,103,2,3
Bob Markland is the author of Electron-
ic Billboard, a bonus program on the
March Gazette Disk. He lives in
Newcastle, Wyoming.
TELEWORD128
Donald G, Klich
Have you ever watched a television com-
mercial and been asked to call a tele-
phone number that's in the form of a
catchy phrase for the advertiser's prod-
uct? A financial lender might want you to
dial CASH NOW for a quicl<; loan, or per-
haps an automobile dealer might tell you
to call 1-800 CAR DEAL for a great deal
in a used car.
Except for numbers 1 and 0, each num-
ber on a standard U.S. telephone con-
G-36 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
tains a group of three letters. All the let-
ters of the alphabet except O and Zare
represented. So, to dial CASH NOW.
you'd press the numbers that correspond
to those letters on the dial. In this exam-
ple, those numbers would be 2274669.
Have you ever wondered if the letters
associated with your telephone number
might spell something clever? Rather
than trying to go through all of the com-
binations mentally, Teleword 128 is the
program you need.
Entering the Program
Teleword 128 is written entirely in BA-
SIC 7.0 for the 128. To help avoid typ-
ing errors, enter it with The Automatic
Proofreader, which can be found else-
where in this section. Be sure to save
a copy of the program before you try to
run it.
Number, Please
All you have to do is run Teleword 128
and enter a seven-digit number. The
program will print out or display on-
screen every combination of letters pos-
sible for that number. In case you are
wondering, the maximum number of
possibilities is 2178. {That's 3 to the sev-
enth power.) That many combinations
will fill four printed pages or 20
screens.
If you have any Os or Is in your tel-
ephone number, you'll end up with few-
er combinations since there are no cor-
responding letters for these numbers.
You may be surprised at how few
good word combinations turn up. I'm
convinced that the stores first devise a
clever word/number and then attempt
to get that number from the telephone
company. That's particularly easy to do
with 800 numbers.
Just in case you're wondenng, if you
have telephone number 266-7883.
that's the one that spells COMPUTE.
Of course, it also spells BOOSTUF.
whatever that means!
TELEWORD 128
MS 10 REM COPYRIGHT 1993 - COM
PUTE PUBLICATION.? INTL L
TD - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
XD 20 DIMA5 (10,3) :FORI=0TO9:FO
RJ=1T03:READB$:A$(I, J)=B
5 : NEXT J, I; COLOR 0, 1: COLOR
l,ll:COLOR4,l:GRAPHIC2,l
,7:L=2:R=0:LS=2:RS=0
SR 30 CHARl, 7, 4, "TELEPHONE NUM
XM S0
JM 90
XP 100
SD 110
BER CONVERTER":COLOR1,2:
CIRCLEl, 160,35,120,15
hd 40 input"cwht}output to the
{red3p{wht}rinter or
[RED}T{WHT}UBE P/T";Q5:I
FQ$="T"THENSW=0:GOTO7 0
FA 50 IFQS="P"THENSW=1:0PEN1,4
lELSERUN
JE 60 PRINT"(3 D0WN){CYN}BE SU
RE THAT YOUR PRINTER IS
(SPACEjSET TO THE":PRINT
SPC(ia)"TOP OF A PAGE...
{6}"
DP 70 PRINT"(3 DOWN} (2 SPACES}
WHAT IS THE TELEPHONE NU
MBER{2 SPACES}NNNNNNN"; :
SLEEP1:INPUT"{9 LEFT)";B
5: IFLEN (B$) >70RLEN (B?) <7
THENPRINT"{4 DOWN)SEVEN
{SPACE}DIGITS PLEASE":SL
EEP1:RUN
FDRI=1T07:CS«HID$(B$,I,1
) :IFVAL(C$) <2THENN (I)=l:
ELSEN (I)=3
NEXTI
IFSWTHENGOSUB160:GOTO11
0:ELSEGOSUB200
FORA=1TON (1) :F0RB = 1T0N (
2) :F0RC=1T0N (3) :F0RD = 1T
ON (4) :F0RE=1T0N (S) :FOHF
= 1T0N (6) :F0RG = 1T0N(7) :T
$=A${VAL(MID$(B5,1,1) ) ,
A)+A$ (VAL(MID$(B$,2,1) )
,B)
HC 120 T$=T5+A${VAL (MIDS (BS,3,
1) ) ,C)+A5(VAL(MID$(B$,4
, 1) ) ,D) +AS (VAL (MID$ (B$,
5,1) ) ,E)+AS(VAL{HID5 (B$
,6,1) ) ,F)+AS(VAL(HID$(B
S,7,l)) ,Q)
IFSWTHENGOSUB170:GOTO14
0:ELSEGOSUB21fl
NEXTG,F,E,D,C,B,A: IFSWG
OTO190:ELSE250
DATA0,0,0, 1,1,1,A,B,C,D
,E,F,G,H,I, J,K,L,M,N,0,
P,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y
PRINT#1, "PRINTOUT FOR T
ELEPHONE NUMBER "rLEFTS
(B$,3) ;"-";RIGHT9(B$,4)
:PRINT#1:RETURN
PRINT#1,T5;" ";:T=T+1:R
=R+1 : IFR=10THENR=0 : prin
T#1:L=L+1
IFL=60THENFORL=1TO6:PRI
NT#1:NEXTL:L = 0: RETURN: E
LSERETURN
PRINT#1:PRI NT #1, "THERE
{SPACE)WERE "T" COMBINA
TIONS":CLOSEl:END
GRAPHIC0,1:PRINT"DISPLA
y OF TELEPHONE NUMBER "
;LEFTS(e$,3) ;"-";RIGHT$
(BS,4) :print:RETURN
QG 210 Printt?;" "; :T=T + 1:RS = R
S+1:1FRS=5THENRS=0:PRIN
T:LS=LS-H
DS
130
EP
140
HE
150
BK
160
MM
170
JH
180
DJ
190
XR
200
KE 220 IFLS<>23THENRET0RN:ELSE
LS=2:PRINT"PRESS SPACE
{SPACE}TO CONTINUE"
FD 230 GETKEYQS;IFQ$<>" "THEN2
30
MM 240 GOSUB200:RETURN
QB 250 PRINT:PRINT"THERE WERE
{SPACE}"T" COMBINATIONS
":END
Donald Klich lives In Mount Prospect,
Illinois. He didn't say anything about
his own telephone number. 3
ONLY ON DISK
In addition to ihe type-in programs
found in each issue of the magazine,
Gazette Disl< offers bonus programs.
Here's a special program that you'll
find only on this month's disk.
Football
By Jack Rollan
New York, NY
Summer is drawing to a close, leaves
are beginning to change color, and
back-to-school sales are popping up at
the mall. These signs can mean just
one thing: FOOTBALL!
Jack Rollan's Football is a real-
time, solitaire football simulation that al-
lows users to design their own plays
and then attempt to execute them on
the field. You'll control the players in
the yellow and white uniforms (the
home team) with your joystick in port 2.
Load Football with the ,8,1 exten-
sion, and then type SYS 49152 to
start. This is a large game, and it takes
several minutes to load. If you have an
accelerator cartridge, it'll come in
handy here.
With your joystick, you design
plays to run. pass, punt, or attempt
field goals. After the center hikes the
ball, the screen changes to graphics
mode. At this point, you control the
quarterback on offense or the free safe-
ty on defense.
You can have this program, our
PD selections, and all the other pro-
grams in this issue by ordering the Sep-
tember Gazette Disk. The U.S. price is
S9.95 plus $2,00 shipping and han-
dling. Send your order to Gazette
Disk, COMPUTE Publications, 324
West Wendover Avenue, Suite 200,
Greensboro, North Carolina 27408.
The Automatic Proofreader fielps you
type in program listings for the 128 and
64 and prevents nearly every kind of
typing mistake.
Type in Proofreader exactly as list-
ed. Because the program can't check
itself, be sure to enter each line care-
fully to avoid typographical errors or oth-
er mistakes. Don't omit any lines, even
if they contain unusual commands. Af-
ter you've finished, save a copy of the
program before running it.
Next, type RUN and press Return. Af-
ter the program displays the message
Proofreader Active, you're ready to
type in a BASIC program.
Every time you finish typing a iine
and press Return, Proofreader displays
a two-letter checksum in the upper left
corner of the screen. Compare this re-
sult with the two-letter checksum print-
ed to the left of the line in the program
listing. If the letters match, the line prob-
ably was typed correctly. If not, check
for your mistake and correct the line. Al-
so, be sure not to skip any lines.
Proofreader ignores spaces not en-
closed in quotation marks, so you can
omit or add spaces between keywords
and still see a matching checksum.
Spaces inside quotes are almost al-
ways significant, so the program pays
attention to them.
Proofreader does not accept key-
word abbreviations (for example. ? in-
stead of PRINT), If you use abbrevi-
ations, you can still check the line by
listing it, moving the cursor back to the
line, and pressing Return.
If you're using Proofreader on the
128, do not perform any GRAPHIC com-
mands while Proofreader is active.
When you perform a command like
GRAPHIC 1, the computer moves eve-
rything at the start of BASIC program
space — including the Proofreader — to
another memory area, causing Proof-
reader to crash. The same thing hap-
pens if you run any program with a
GRAPHIC command while Proofreader
is in memory
Though Proofreader doesn't interfere
with other BASIC operations, it's a
good idea to disable it before running
another program. To disable it, turn the
computer off and then on. A gentler
method is to SYS to the computer's
built-in reset routine (65341 for the 128.
64738 for the 64).
AUTOMATIC PROOFREADER
0 CLR
10 VE=PEEK(772)+256*PEEK(773) :
LO=43:H 1=44: PRINT" (CLR)
{WHT} AUTOMATIC PROOFREADER
(SPACE) FOR ";
20 IF VE=42364 THEN PRINT "64"
30 IF VE=17165 THEN LO=45:HI=4
6:WAIT CLR:PRINT"128"
40 SA= (PEEK(LQ>+256*PEEK(HI) )+
6:F0R J=SA TO SA+166:READ B
:POKE J,B:CH=CH+B:NEXT
50 IF CH<>2a570 THEN PRIHT "*E
RROR* CHECK TYPING IN DATA
(SPACE) STATEMENTS": END
60 FOR J=l TO 5:READ RF,LF,HF:
RS=SAtRF:HB=IHT (RS/256) :LB=
RS- (256*HB)
70 CH=CH+8F+LF+HF:P0KE SA+LF,L
B:POKE SA+HF,HB:NEXT
80 IF CHO22054 THEN PRINT "*S
RROR* RELOAD PROGRAM AND CH
ECK FINAL LINE";END
90 IF VE = ni65 THEN POKE SA + 14
,22:POKE SA+-18,23:POKESA + 29
,224:POKESA+139,224
100 POKE SA+149,PEEK(772) :POKE
SA+150,PEEK(773) :PRINT"
{CLR}PROOFREADER ACTIVE"
110 SYS SA:POKE HI,PEEKCHI)+1:
POKE (PEEK(LO) +256*PEEK(HI
) ) -1,0: NEW
123 DATA120,169,73,141,4,3,169
,3,141,5,3,88,96,165,20,13
3,167
133 DATA165,21,i33,168,169,0,l
41,0,2 55,16 2,31,181,199,15
7,227
140 DATA3, 202, 16, 248, 169, 19, 32
,210,255,169,18,32,219,25 5
,160
150 DATA0, 132, 180, 132, 176, 136,
230,180,200,185,0,2,24 0,46
,201
160 DATA34,208,8,72,165,176,73
,255,133,176,104,72,201,32
,208
170 DATA7, 165, 176,208,3,104,20
a, 226, 104, 166, 180, 24, 165,1
67
180 DATA121, 0,2, 133, 167, 165,16
8,105,0,13 3,16 8,20 2,208,23
9,240
190 DATA202,165,167,69,168,72,
41,15,168,185,211,3,32,210
,255
200 DATAl04,74,74,74,74,168,ia
5,211,3,32,210,255,162,31,
189
210 DATA227,3,149,199,202,16,2
48,169,146,32,210,255,76,8
6,137
220 DATA65,66,67,6a,69,70,71,7
2,74,75,77,80,81,82,83,88
230 DATA 13,2,7,167,31,32,151,
116,117,151,128,129,167,13
6,137 a
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 6-37
m
Machine Language Entry Program
MLX for Commodore 64
Ottis R. Cowper
Type in and save some copies of
MLX — you'll want to use it to enter fu-
ture ivlll programs from Gazette. Whien
you're ready to'enter an ML program,
load and run MLX. It asks you for a start-
ing address and an ending address.
Tfiese addresses appear in tfie article
accompanying thie MLX-format pro-
gram listing you're typing.
If you're unfamiliar withi macfiine lan-
guage, the addresses {and all other val-
ues you enter in MLX} may appear
strange. Instead of tfie usual decimal
numbers you're accustomed to, these
numbers are in hexadecimal — a base
16 numbering system commonly used
by ML programmers. Hexadecimal —
hex for short — includes the numerals 0-
9 and the letters A-F. But even if you
know nothing about ML or hex, you
should have no trouble using MLX.
After you've entered the starting and
ending addresses, you'll be offered the
option of clearing the workspace.
Choose this option if you're starting to
enter a new listing. If you're continuing
a listing that's partially typed from a pre-
vious session, don't choose this option.
A functions menu will appear. The first
option in the menu is Enter Data. If
you're just starting to type in a pro-
gram, pick this. Press the E key and
type the first number in the first line of
the program listing. If you've already
typed in part of a program, type the
line number where you stopped typing
at the end of the previous session (be
sure to load the partially completed pro-
gram before you resume entry), In any
case, make sure the address you en-
ter corresponds to the address of a
line in the listing you are entering. Oth-
erwise, you'll be unable to enter the da-
ta correctly. If you pressed E by mis-
take, you can return to the command
menu by pressing Return alone when
asked for the address. (You can get
back to the menu from most options in
the program by pressing Return with
no other input.)
Enfering a Listing
Once you're in Enter nnode, MLX
prints the address for each program
line for you. You then type in all nine
numbers on that line, beginning with
the first two-digit number after the co-
lon {:). Each line represents eight data
bytes and a checksum. Although an
G-38 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
MLX-format listing appears similar to
the "hex dump" listings from a ma-
chine language monitor program, the
extra checksum number on the end al-
lows MLX to check your typing.
When you enter a line, MLX recalcu-
lates the checksum from the eight
bytes and the address and compares
this value to the number from the ninth
column. If the values match, you'll
hear a bell tone, the data will be add-
ed to the workspace area, and the
prompt for the next line of data will ap-
pear. But if MLX detects a typing error,
you'll hear a low buzz and see an er-
ror message. The line will then be re-
displayed for editing.
Invalid Characters Banned
Only a few keys are active while you're
entering data, so you may have to un-
learn some habits. You do no! type
spaces between the columns; MLX au-
tomatically inserts these for you. You
do not press Return after typing the
last number in a line; MLX automatical-
ly enters and checks the line after you
type the last digit.
64 MLX
Keypad
7
8
9
0
A
;
6
F
V
I
()
V
1
2
3
E
.)
K
L
A
It
C
D
M
•
•
/
N
0
Space
Only the numerals 0-9 and the letters
A-F can be entered. If you press any
other key (with some exceptions noted
below), you'll hear a warning buzz. To
simplify typing, a numeric keypad func-
tion is included. The keypad is active
only while entering data. Addresses
must be entered with the normal letter
and number keys. The figure below
shows the keypad configuration.
MLX checks for transposed charac-
ters. If you're supposed to type in AO
and instead enter OA, MLX will catch
your mistake. There is one error that
can slip past MLX: Because of the
checksum formula used, MLX won't no-
tice if you accidentally type FF in
place of 00, and vice versa. And
there's a very slim chance that you
could garble a line and still end up
with a combination of characters that
adds up to the proper checksum. How-
ever, these mistakes should not occur
if you take care while entering data.
Editing Features
To correct typing mistakes before fin-
ishing a line, use the Inst/Del key to de-
lete the character to the left of the cur-
sor. If you mess up a line badly, press
CIr/Home to start the line over. The Re-
turn key is also active, but only before
any data is typed on a line. Pressing Re-
turn at this point returns you to the com-
mand menu, After you type a charac-
ter, MLX disables Return until the cur-
sor returns to the start of a line. Remem-
ber, press CIr/Home to quickly get to a
line-number prompt. To make correc-
tions in a line that MLX has redisplayed
for editing, compare the line on the
screen with the one printed in the list-
ing and then move the cursor to the mis-
take and type the correct key. The cur-
sor- left and -right keys provide the
normal cursor controls. (The Inst/Del
key now works as an alternative cursor-
left key.) You cannot move left beyond
the first character in the line. If you try
to move beyond the rightmost charac-
ter, you'll reenter the line, During edit-
ing, Return is active; pressing it tells
MLX to recheck the line. You can
press the CIr/Home key to clear the en-
tire line if you want to start from
scratch or if you want to get to a line-
number prompt to use Return to get
back to the menu.
Display Data
The second menu choice, Display Da-
ta, examines memory and shows the
contents in the same format as the pro-
gram listing (including the checksum}.
When you press D, MLX asks you for a
starting address, Be sure that the start-
ing address you give corresponds to a
line number in the listing. Otherwise,
the checksum display will be meaning-
less. MLX displays program lines until
it reaches the end of the program, at
which point the menu is redisplayed.
You can pause the display by pressing
the space bar. (MLX finishes printing
the current line before halting.) Press
the space bar again to restart the dis-
play To break out of the display and
get back to the menu before the end-
ing address is reached, press Return.
Other Menu Options
Two more menu selections let you
save programs and load them back in-
to the computer. These are Save File
and Load File. When you press S or L,
f\yiLX asks you for the filename. You'll
then be asked to press either D or T to
select disk or tape.
You'll notice the disk drive starting
and stopping several times during a
load or save. This is normal behavior.
MIX opens and reads from or writes to
the file instead of using the usual
LOAD and SAVE commands. Also
note that the drive prefix 0: is added to
the filename (line 750), so this should
no! be included when entering the
name. This also precludes the use of
@ for save-with-replace, so be sure to
give each version saved a different
name.
Remember that MLX saves the en-
tire workspace area from the starting ad-
dress to the ending address, so the
save or load may take longer than you
might expect if you've entered only a
small amount of data from a long list-
ing. When you're saving a partially com-
pleted listing, make sure to note the ad-
dress where you stopped typing.
MLX reports the standard disk or
tape error messages if any problems
are detected during the save or load.
It also has three special load error mes-
sages: INCORRECT STARTING AD-
DRESS, which means the file you're try-
ing to load does not have the starting
address you specified when you ran
MLX; LOAD ENDED AT address.
which means the file you're trying to
load ends before the ending address
you specified when you started MLX;
and TRUNCATED AT ENDING AD-
DRESS, which means the file you're try-
ing to load extends beyond the ending
address you specified when you start-
ed MLX. If you see one of these mes-
sages and fee! certain that you've load-
ed the right file, exit and rerun MLX,
being careful to enter the correct start-
ing and ending addresses.
The Quit menu option has the obvi-
ous effect — it stops MLX and enters BA-
SIC. The Run/Stop key is disabled, so
the Q option lets you exit the program
without turning off the computer. {Of
course, Run/Stop-Restore also gets
you out.) You'll be asked for verifica-
tion; press Y to exit to BASIC, or press
any other key to return to the menu. Af-
ter quitting, you can type RUN again
and reenter MLX without losing your da-
ta, as long as you don't use the Clear
Workspace option.
The Finished Product
When you've finished typing all the da-
ta for an ML program and saved your
work, you're ready for the results. Re-
fer to the corresponding article for
details on loading and running the
program,
An Ounce of Prevention
Don't take chances — use The Automat-
ic Proofreader to type the new MLX,
and then test your copy thoroughly be-
fore first using it to enter any significant
amount of data. Make sure all the
menu options work as they should. En-
ter fragments of the program starting at
several different addresses; then use
the display option to verify that the da-
ta has been entered correctly. Test the
save and load options to ensure that
you can recall your work from disk.
64 MLX
SS 10 REM VERSION 1.1:
30,950 MODIFIED,
85-487 ADDED
EK 100 POKE 56,50:CLR:
I,J,A,B,AS,BS,R
DM 110 C4=48:C6=16:C7
4-254:Z5=255:Z6
127
CJ 120 Fft=PEEK(45)+Z6*
:BS=PEEK(55)+Z6
) :HS="012345678
SB 130 RS=CHRS(13) :LS-
:SS=" ":dS=Chr9
CHR$(0) :T$="{13
CQ 140 SD=S4272:FOR I
+23:POKE I,0SNE
{SPACE}SD+24,15
8,52
FC 150 PRINT" (CLR}"CHR
RS (8) :POKE 5328
E 53281,15
EJ 160 PRINT TS" (RED)
{2 SPACES}-t8 @}
LINES 8
LINES 4
DIM IN$,
(7) ,N$
7:z2=2:z
='256:Z7 =
PEEK(46)
*PEEK(56
9ABCDEF"
"Cleft}"
(20) :z$=
RIGHT)"
SD TO SD
XT: POKE
:POKE 78
$(142)CH
0,15:POK
{RVS)
{2 SPACES}"SPC(2B) "
{2 SPACES}{OFF}{BLU) ML
X ir {RED} {RVS}
{2 SPACES}"SPC(28) "
{12 SPACES) {BLU}"
FR 170 PRINT" {3 DOWN)
(3 SPACES}C0HPUTE1 'S MA
CHINE LANGUAGE EDITOR
(3 DOWN}"
JB 180 print"{blk5starting add
RES.'3t4>"; :GOSUB300 : SA = A
D:GOSUB1040:IF F THEN18
0
GF 190 PRINT"{BLK} {2 SPACES}EN
DING ADDRESS<4}"; :GOSUB
300:EA=AD:GOSUB103n: IF
{SPACE}F THEN190
KR 200 INPt;T"{3 DOWN}{BLK}CLEA
R WORKSPACE [Y/N]{4}";A
S:IF LEFTS (A$,1)<>"Y"TH
EN220
PG 210 PRINT"{2 DOWN} { BLU }WORK
ING. . ."; ;FORI=BS TO BS+
EA-SA+7:P0KE I,0:NEXT:P
RINT"DONE"
DR 220 PRINTTAB (10) "{2 DOWN)
{BLK}(RVS} MLX COMMAND
{SPACE}MENU {DQWN)i4}":
PRINT TS"{RVS)E{OFF}NTE
R DATA"
BD 230 PRINT TS" { RVS 3d {OFF } ISP
LAY DATA": PRINT TS"
{RVS}L(0FF}0AD FILE"
JS 240 PRINT TS"{RVS3S{0FF}AVE
FILE":PRINT TS"{RVS)Q
{0FF}UIT{2 D0WN}{BLK3"
GET A?:IF AS=NS THEN250
A=a:FOR 1=1 TO 5:IP AS=
MID$("EDLSQ",I,1)THEN A
=I:I=5
NEXTtON A GOTO420,610,6
9a,7 00,280:GOSUBl060;GO
TO250
PRINT"(RVS} QUIT ":INPU
T"{D0WN}<4JARE YOU SURE
lY/N] ";A5:IF LEFT5(A$,
1) <>"Y"THEN220
POKE SD+24,0:END
INS=NS:AD=0:INPUTINS:IF
LEN (IN$) 04THENRETURN
BS=IN$:GOSUB320:AD=A:BS
=MIDS(IN$,3) :GOSUB320:A
D=AD*256+A:RETURN
A=0:FOR J=l TO 2:AS=MID
S (BS,J,1) :B=ASC (A?) ~C4+
(AS>"@")*C7:A=A*C6+B
IF B<0 OR B>15 THEN AD=
0:A=-1:J=2
NEXT: RETURN
B=INT (A/C6) :PRINT MID$ (
H$,B+1,1) ; ;B=A-B*C6:PRI
NT MID$ (H$,B+1,1) ; :RETO
RN
RR 360 A=INT (AD/Z6) :GOSUB350: A
=AD-A*Z6:G0SUB 350: PRINT
fi . II .
" f
BE 370 CK=INT (AD/Z6) :CK=AD-Z4*
CK+Z5* (CK>Z7) :GOTO390
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE G-39
JH
250
HK
260
FD
273
EJ
280
EM
290
JX
300
KF
310
PP
320
JA
330
GX
340
CH
350
MLX
PX 380 CK=CK*Z2+Z5* (CK>Z7)+fl
JC 390 CK=CK+Z5*{CK>Z5) :RETURN
QS 400 PRINT" {DOWN}STARTING AT
{4^'; :GOSUB3B0:IF IN$<>
MS THEN GOSUB1030:IF F
{SPACE}THEN4a0
EX 410 RETURN
HD 420 PRINT" {RVS} ENTER DATA
(SPACE}":GOSUB400: IF IN
$=N$ THEN22B
JK 430 OPEN3,3:PRINT
SK 440 POKE198,0:GOSUB360:IF F
THEN PRINT INS: PRINT"
{aP}{5 RIGHT}";
GC 450 FOR 1=0 TO 24 STEP 3:BS
=SS:FOR J=l TO 2:IF F T
HEN BS=MID$ (IN$,I+J,1)
HA 460 PRINT"CRVS}"B$L$; :IF I<
24THEN PRINT'MOFF}";
HD 470 GET AS:1F AS=N$ THEN470
FK 480 IF(AS>"/"ANDA$<":")OR(A
$>"@"ANDAS<"G")THEN540
GS 485 A=- (AS="M") -2*(AS=",") -
3*(,AS = ".")-4*(A5="/") -5
* (AS="J") -6* (A$="K")
FX 486 A=A-7*(AS="L")-8*(A5=":
")-9*(A$="U")-10*(A5="I
")-ll*(A$="0")-12*{A$="
P")
CM 487 A=A-13*{A$=S$) :IF A THE
N A5=MID$ ("ABCD123E456F
0",A,1) :GOTO 540
HP 490 IF h$ = -R$ AND ((1=0) AND (J
=1>0R F)THEN PRINT BS ; :
J=2:NEXT:I=24:GOTO550
KC 500 IF A5="{H0ME)" THEN PRI
NT BS: J=2:NEXT:I=24:NEX
T:F=0:GOTO440
MX 510 IF(A$="{RIGHT}") ANDF TH
ENPRINT B5L$; :GOTO540
GK 520 IF A$<>L$ AND A$<>DS OR
( (I=0)AHD(J=1))THEN GOS
UB1060;GOTO470
HG 530 A$=LS+SS+LS:PRINT B$L$;
:J=2-J:IF J THEN PRINT
{SPACE}L5; :l=l-3
QS 540 PRINT A$;:NEXT J:PRINT
{SPACE}S5;
PM 550 NEXT I: PRINT: PRINT" {UP}
{5 RIGHT}"; :INPUT#3,IN$
:IF IN$=NS THEN CLOSES:
GOTO220
QC 560 FOR 1=1 TO 25 STEP3:BS=
MID$(INS,I) :GOSUB320:IF
I<25 THEN GOSUB380:A(I
/3)=A
PK S70 NEXT: IF ROCK THEN GOSU
B 1 060 : PRINT" {BLK}{ RVS}
{SPACE}ERR0R: REENTER L
INE <4>":F=1:GOTO440
HJ 580 GOSOB1080:B=BS4AD-SA:FO
R 1=0 TO 7:P0KE B+I,A(I
) :NEXT
QQ 590 AD=AD+8:IF AD>EA THEN C
L0SE3:PRINT"(D0WN} {BLU}
** END OF ENTRY **{BLK)
[2 DOWN}":GOTO700
GQ 600 F=0:GOTO440
QA 610 PRINT"{CLR} {DOWN} {RVS}
{SPACE}DISPLAY DATA ":G
OSUB400:IF IN$=N$ THEN2
20
RJ 620 PRINT" {DOWN} {BLU}PRESS:
{RVS} SPACE {OFF} TO PAU
SE, {RVS} RETURN {OFF} TO
BREAK<4}{D0WN}"
KS 630 GOSUB36{!l:B=BS+AD-SA:FOR
I=BTO B+7:A=PESK(I) xGOfi
UB350:GOSUB3a0:PRINT S$
r
CC 640 NEXT:PRINT"{RVS}"; :A=CK
:GOSUB350:PRINT
KH 650 F»1:AD=AD+8:IF AD>EA TH
ENPRINT"{DOWN} {BLU}** E
ND OF DATA **":GOTO220
KC 660 GET A$:IF A$=R$ THEN GO
SUB1080:GOTO220
EQ 670 IF A$=SS THEN F-F+1:G0S
UB1080
AD 680 ONFGOTO630,660,630
CM 690 PRINT"{DOWN} {RVS} LOAD
{SPACE}DATA ":0P=1:G0T0
710
PC 700 PRINT"{D0WN} {RVS} SAVE
{SPACE}FILE ":OP=0
RX 710 IN$=NS:INPUT"{DOWN}FILE
NAHE<4}"; IN$:IF IN$=NS
{SPACE}THEN220
PR 720 F=0:PRINT"{DOWN}{BLK}
{RVS}T{0FF}APE OR {RVS}
D{0FF}ISK: {4}";
FP 730 GET A$:IF A$="T"THEN PR
INT"T{DOWN}":GOTO8fl0
HQ 740 IF A$<>"D"THEN730
HH 750 PRINT"D{DOWN}":OPEN15,8
,15,"I0:":B=EA-SA: INS="
0:"+INS:IF OP THEN810
SQ 760 OPEN 1,8,8,IN$+",P,W":G
OSUB860:IF a THEN220
FJ 770 AH = INT (SA/256) :AL = SA-(A
H * 256 ): PRINT! 1,CHR$ (AL)
;CHR$ (AH) ;
PE 780 FOR 1=0 TO B:PRINT#1,CH
R5 (PEEK(BS + I) ) ; :IF ST T
HEN800
FC 790 NEXT:CLOSE1:CLOSE15:GOT
0940
GS 800 GOSUB1060:PRINT"{DOWN)
{BLK}ERROR DURING SAVE:
<4}":GOSUB860!GOTO220
MA 810 OPEN 1,8,B,INS+",P,R":G
OSUB860:IF A THEN220
GE B20 GET#1,AS,B$:AD=ASC(AS+Z
S)+256*ASC{BS+ZS) : IF AD
OSA THEN F = l:GOTOa50
RX 830 FOR 1=0 TO B:GET#1,AS:P
OKE BS+I,ASC(A$+Z5) :IF(
I<>B)AND ST THEN F=2:AD
=I:I=B
FA 840 NEXTlIF ST064 THEN F = 3
FQ 850 CL0EE1:CL0SE15:0N ADS (F
>0)+l GOTO960,970
SA 860 INPUT#15,A,A$:IF A THEN
CLOSE 1; CLOSE 15 :GOSUB10
60; PRINT" {RVS} ERROR: "A
5
GQ 870 RETURN
EJ 880 POKEl83,PEEK(FA+2) :POKE
187,PEEK(FA+3) :P0KE188,
PEEK (FA+4) : IFOP=0THEN92
0
HJ 890 SYS 63466:IF(PEEK(783) A
NDDTHEN GOSUB1060:PRIN
T"{DOWN} {RVS} FILE NOT
{SPACE} FOUND ":GOTO690
CS 900 AD=PEEK(829}+256*PEEK(8
30):IF ADOSA THEN F = l:
GOTO970
SC 910 A=PEEK(831)4256*PEEK(83
2) -i:F=F-2* (A<EA) -3* (A>
EA) :AD=A-AD:GOTO930
KM 920 A=SA:B=EA+1:GOSUB1010:P
OKE780,3:SYS 63338
JF 930 A=BS:B=BS+ (EA~SA)+1:G0S
UB1010:ON OP GOTO950:Sy
S 63591
AE 940 GOSUB1080:PRINT"{BLU}**
SAVE COMPLETED **":GOT
0220
XP 950 POKE147,0:SYS 63562:IF
{SPACE}ST>0 THEN970
FR 960 GOSUB1080:PRINT"{BLU}**
LOAD COMPLETED **":GOT
0220
DP 970 GOSUB1060:PRINT"{BLK}
{RVS}ERR0R DURING LOAD:
{D0WN}<4>":ON F GOSUB98
0,990,1000:GOTO220
PP 980 PRINT"INCORRECT STARTIN
G ADDRESS (" ; :GOSUB360:
PRINT") ":RETURN
GR 990 PRINT"LOAD ENDED AT ";:
AD=SA+AD:GOSUB3 60:PRINT
D$: RETURN
FD 1000 PRINT"TRUNCATED AT END
ING ADDRESS":RETURN
RX 1010 AH=INT (A/256) :AL=A-(AH
*256) :POKE193,AL:POKEl
94, AH
FF 1020 AH=INT (B/256) :AL=5-(AH
*256) : POKE 174, AL: POKE 1
75,AH:RETURN
PX 1030 IF AD<SA OR AD>EA THEN
1050
OR 1040 IF (AD>5H AND AD<6528
0) THEN GOSUBl0a0: F=0
: RETURN
HC 1050 GOSUB1060:PRINT"{RVS}
{SPACE}INVALID ADDRESS
{D0WN}{BLK}":F=1:RETU
RN
AR 1060 POKE SD+5,31:POKE SD+6
,208:POKE SD,240:POKE
{SPACE}SD+1,4:P0KE SD+
4,33
DX 1070 FOR S=l TO 100:NEXT:GO
TO1090
PF 1080 POKE SD+5,8:P0KE SD+6,
240:POKE SD,0:POKE SD+
1,90:POKE SD+4,17
AC 1090 FOR S=l TO 100 : NEXT :P0
KE SD+4,0:POKE SD,0:PO
KE SD+1,0: RETURN
G-40 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
REVIEWS
GATEWAY 2000
NOMAD 450DXL
NOTEBOOK
Gateway's new Nomad
450DXL was designed and
built specifically for power us-
ers who want all the muscle
usually found in a high-end
desktop PC but who also
want tfie convenience and
mobility of a notebook com-
puter. If you're one of those
users, the Nomad is what
you've been waiting for.
Weighing less than 6
pounds and measuring 8,5
X 11 X 1.8 inches, it tucks
easily under your arm or in a
briefcase.
The CPU is an Intel
80486DXLP2/50, a new
chip that consumes less pow-
er (hence the LP designa-
tion) than conventional DX2
CPUs. This low-power CPU,
combined with Gateway's
other power-management
features, gives the Nomad
excellent nicad battery life
(more than two hours, even
under heavy use) between
recharges.
The dark, charcoal gray
color and squared, no-frills
styling give the Nomad a
bold, handsome appear-
ance that would be equally
at home on an airline seat-
back tray or on a
boardroom conference ta-
ble. A custom, color-coordi-
nated, miniature hand-held
trackball provides a supple
and surprisingly easy-to-use
pointing device for navigat-
ing your way around Win-
dows (included with the com-
puter) or other GUI-based
applications. The trackball
connects to a dedicated
mouse port at the left side
of the machine via a two-
foot cable.
The Nomad's 10-inch
LCD {measured diagonally)
is a backlit, triple supertwist
unit that affords good view-
ing in all lighting conditions,
although some of the LCD's
pathways are visible when
the brightness or contrast
controls (dials located at the
right of the display) are
turned all the way up. Under
most conditions this isn't nec-
essary, however, and on the
tions, although the LCD's
pathways become more pro-
nounced in the reversed-vid-
eo mode.
The Nomad comes outfit-
ted with mB of RAM as the
standard configuration, and
this can be expanded to
20fylB if you need more mem-
ory. A fast Conner 200MB
Gateway 2000's Nomad 450DXL notebook uses a new low-power
version of the 486DX2/50 processor chip.
whole the display is quite
good. The Nomad is capa-
ble of displaying up to 64
shades of gray in normal
VGA (640 X 480) mode.
With an external monitor con-
nected, the Nomad can pro-
vide 800 x 600 and 1024x
768 SVGA resolutions as
well, and it supports simulta-
neous display of the LCD
and CRT. A unique feature
of the Nomad is its screen in-
version switch, also located
next to the LCD. By chang-
ing the position of this
switch, you can reverse the
video display from its nor-
mal dark-on-light display to
light-on-dark. This affords bet-
ter viewing for some applica-
hard drive is also standard
equipment on this model, as
is a front-mounted 1.44MB
high-density floppy drive.
LEDs are used to inform
the user of the system's stat-
us, and they're all located in
a line just above the upper-
most keyboard row. Power,
low-battery condition, turbo
mode, floppy and hard disk
activity, and Caps Lock,
Num Lock, and Scroll Lock
status are all signified by
this bank of helpful light-emit-
ting diodes.
All the I/O ports are con-
cealed beneath a drop-
down panel door on the left
side of the machine, while a
Microsoft-compatible Quick-
Port is found at the right
side for those who prefer a
Microsoft Ballpoint to the sup-
plied minitrackball. The sock-
et for attaching the AC pow-
er adapter and a compart-
ment that houses the propri-
etary expansion bus connec-
tor are located at the rear of
the machine.
With the Nomad 450DXL,
you don't have to stay at
your desktop to get your
work done. This notebook
makes it possible to take the
power you need where you
need it, easily.
TOM BErjFORD
Gateway 2000
(BOO) 846-2Q00
(605) 232-2000
$2,795 (review configuration)
$2,495 (with 4MB RAM and a
120MB hard drive)
Circle Raader Service Number 434
CRICKET PAINT
FOR WINDOWS
Computer Associates enters
the Windows graphics
world with Cricket Paint, a
powerful — though some-
what confusing — paint pro-
gram long familiar to Macin-
tosh users.
This company believes
that computer artists are
less interested in the under-
pinnings of a graphics pro-
gram than in working with
the art itself, so it took care
in putting a simple button-
and-slide-bar interface be-
tween you and the program.
Some will like the fact that
you don't have to access di-
alog boxes to achieve some
effects, though I found this
approach unintuitive. Any
Windows product that forc-
es you to be so dependent
on the manual has missed
the point of using a graphi-
cal user interface.
Computer Associates
warns that Cricket Paint's
functionality wasn't compro-
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 89
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REVIEWS
mlsed to suit low-errd PC hardware, I
used it on a 486DX2/50 machine and
experienced minimal delays.
Cricket Paint for Windows works in
24-bit color. If you load a file with a
more restricted palette, Cricket Paint
makes it 24-bit automatically. The ex-
■
ft
G-^-Cricker
. PainU
1
1 ^§5^ ■
Cricket Paint for Windows is a port of the
popular Mac program.
ception is 8-bit gray-scale files, which
aren't altered. Cricket Paint's color con-
trol is very good. It offers two kinds of
graduated color (and several options
for selecting colors) and a wide array
of masking options. You can also cap-
ture an area of a drawing and turn it in-
to a texture (or use one of the
"canned" textures available with the
product). When painting, you can se-
lect any of 100 levels of opacity. You
can also copy (and do most opera-
tions) in any level of opacity.
The product is almost obsessively
flexible. For example, you can specify
line widths to .01 of a pixel. Each tool
can be used anti-aliased, hard-
edged, or as an airbrush. And, as I men-
tioned, you can use any tool at any lev-
el of opacity. The program supports
the Wacom pressure-sensitive tablet.
If you buy Cricket Paint for Windows,
be prepared to spend some hours
with the manual. This isn't a product
you can sit down and immediately
start using. On the other hand, you'll
find that you have a powerful, feature-
rich program thai allows you to perform
most ordinary functions without using
menus or dialog boxes. You're unlikely
to find a more powerful drawing pack-
age at a lower cost.
ROBERT BIXBY
ComDuier Associates
(800) 225-5224
(516) 342-5224
S595
Circle Reader Service Number 435
90 COIVIPUTE SEPTEt\4BER 1993
COMPAQ PROLfNEA
4/50
Compaq's Prolinea 4/50 is a fast and ca-
pable 486DX2. Whether you have an
extensive database to search, a de-
manding modern game to run, or Win-
dows applications that you want to
come up quickly and smoothly, this
could be your machine.
The microprocessor zips along at 50
MHz in turbo mode, and the bus is of
the PC/AT ISA variety. The standard
configuration for this model — as well as
for the other Prolinea 486 models —
consists of 4f\/IB of RAM (expandable
to 32MB); one 3'/?-inch high-density
floppy drive; a 1024 x 768, 256-color
graphics controller; two additional
drive bays for a hard drive and 5Va-
inch floppy drive; one parallel port; two
serial ports; a pointing-device inter-
face; three 16-bit ISA expansion slots;
and DOS 5 preinstalled. The Prolinea
Windows+ models also have Windows
3.1 and PFS: WindowWorks preinstal-
led, as well as a Compaq mouse and
a 5V4-inch floppy drive.
In addition to these standard fea-
tures, the unit I tried came equipped
with a 240MB hard drive, 5120K of ex^
tended memory, a 101 -key keyboard,
and a Compaq SVGA coior monitor.
Among the nice security features includ-
ed on all of these models is power-on
password protection and keyboard
password protection. The unit's easy to
access and expand, especially when in-
serting additional RAM (except that the
hard drive must first be removed),
There are four memory expansion sock-
ets, which accept snap-in modules for
ease of insertion. Case dimensions are
about 16 inches wide, 15 inches
deep, and 4 inches high, so good de-
sign is evident in the way limited
space is handled here,
Upon first running the 4/50, I found
that there was a little adjustment nec-
essary for the SVGA display. The first
thing I noticed was that text mode was
in monochrome; I had to experiment
with some paint programs to find out
which video-board specification
worked best for high-resolution graph-
ics displays. One that did was a Sigma
VESA driver, and a brief online search
located one for nearly all my graphics
utilities, Windows and Mathematica
were still showing graphics in mono-
chrome, as was text mode. More on-
line searching revealed the source of
the problem, Conversation in the mes-
sage bases indicated that some Com-
paq Prolinea systems using Compaq
SVGA coior monitors come up in mon-
ochrome mode rather than color
mode. More searching turned up a de-
vice driver that prevents other drivers
from detecting a monochrome display.
At that point, I was down to serious test-
ing of the system with full color and
full resolution on all counts.
Although Windows and DOS 5
came preinstalled, I found that there
was a problem after reformatting the
hard drive for a UNIX partition. Fully ex-
pecting to replace Windows and DOS
upon completion, I was shocked to dis-
cover that neither was packaged with
the computer. That's bad — under oth-
er circumstances, the drive head
could get moved dunng shipment and
damage the installed software, I can't
emphasize enough the Importance of
having the floppy disks around for back-
up and system modification.
To test speed and smoothness of op-
eration, I ran several power-intensive
programs on the 4/50, a Data Stor
486SX/25, and a 3a6DX/33 These in-
cluded Windows applications such as
MacDraft and Hollywood — which are
heavily graphics and processing orient-
ed—and DOS applications like Dance
of the Planets, Color Works, Derive,
Lemmings 2, X-Wing, and DeluxePaint
lie — also heavily processing oriented.
This test wasn't entirely scientific be-
cause Dance of the Planets runs best
with a math coprocessor and fvlathe-
matica and Macsyma require one.
With all appropriate tested software,
the 4/50 visibly outpaced the others.
In order to obtain data not biased by
my own interpretation, I also ran the Nor-
ton Utilities SI program and looked at
the benchmark tests. The benchmarks
confirmed significant speed differenc-
es between the three computers in
both file access and processing. With
an IBM PC XT 8088 running at 4.77
MHz as a base value of 1 in all index-
es, the 4/50 has a computing index
(CPU speed) value of 95, a disk
speed index approximated at 8.2, and
an overall performance index value of
66. Compare this with the Data Stor
486SX/25 values of, respectively, 54,
7.5, and 38.5, and the 386DX/33 val-
ues of 34.8, 7, and 25.5. (One note
about the disk speed, however: The
benchmark test reported finding an ad-
vanced disk controller, further advising
that the disk controller had blocked the
drive-seek timing test. Many advanced
controllers will ignore attempts to
move the drive heads unless data's ac-
tually being transferred,)
Standard customer support is a one-
year on-site limited warranty with free
technical support to callers within
North America.
This seems a solid and capable com-
puter— one I wouldn't mind having for
my own use.
BRUCE M, BOWDEN
Shareware
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Libris Britannia CDROiUI
From the best British
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GIga Games CDROM
This disc feature.? an amazing
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Made In June 1993 $39.95*
CICA MS Windows CDROIVI
This disc contains a copy of
CICA, the internet's largest
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* Shareware programs require separate
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Circle Reader Service Number 189
REVIEWS
Compaq
(800)345-1518
(713) 370-0670
$1,899 (eslimated street price)
Circle Reader Service Number 436
DESKJET 550C
Few of us watch black-and-
white TV sets any more, and
most of us even have color
monitors on our computers.
So why do we put up with
boring gray-scale output? If
you're looking to add a
spiash of color to your doc-
uments and presentations,
Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet
550C printer is just what you
need.
The HP DeskJet series of
printers has been around
awhile, providing crisp, 300-
dots-per-inch output at a
low price. Last year's
DeskJet 5Q0C added 300-
dpi color to the line, allow-
ing you to remove the black
ink cartridge and replace it
with a color cart when you
needed color on your print-
ed output. This approach
wasn't without problems. It
was a pain to have to
switch cartridges whenever
you wanted to print color.
Worse, the color cartridge
had on!y cyan, magenta,
and yellow inks, so black
had to be created by mixing
all three colors. This result-
ed in a muddy, oversaturat-
ed printout whenever you
had large areas of black.
The new DeskJet 550C
cures these problems by hav-
ing both print carthdges on-
line simultaneously and let-
ting your printer driver con-
trol the mixing, if you print a
monochrome document, on-
ly the black cartridge is
used. When color comes in-
to play, the printer driver ac-
tivates the other cartridge,
mixing the colors with the
true black from the black ink
cartridge-
Output quality from the
DeskJet 550C is nothing
short of wonderful. The 300-
dpi text output rivals laser
printing — only a very close
look discerns any differ-
ence. Both gray-scale and
color graphics look very
good as well. The printer mix-
es and dithers the three pri-
mary colors and black to rep-
resent thousands of differ-
ent colors. I tested the print-
er using the included Win-
dows 3.1 driver on a 486
PC, and using the Creative
Focus Super_DJC2 driver
on an Amiga 4000. The
print quality on both comput-
ers was superb, with 24-bit
picture files looking {from a
small distance) almost like
matte-finish photographs.
The DeskJet uses a version
of the HP PCL printer lan-
guage, which tends to allow
much better-looking graph-
ics printouts than the Epson
emulation used by many
competing ink-jet printers.
You should make sure
you're using the latest HP
Windows driver, which you
can get from HP or down-
load from CompuServe.
The Windows driver af-
fords you great control over
font selection; Courier and
Elvis la Alive
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But wait, there's more ... Turtle Beach MIDI
Kai-aoke is the only Karoake application with the
bouncing ball. Yes, from word to word, our bouncing
ball guides you perfectly through the song so you sing
the right words at the ri^t tinie.
92 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
AND.. .most, most, most importantly,
it's the only Karaoke application Uial
allows you to record your owti \^oice
dira^Uy to the hard drive while you're singing
and then play back the entire Qle — music and
voice together!!
So don't get all shook up. Get all
this and more for only §49!
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call 80M455&M) and order your
Turtle Beach MIDI Karaoke today.
WORKS WITH ANY SOUND CARD!
IWllE BEACH SYSTEMS
P.O. 80X5074 . VoA, Pennsyivanta . 17405 • 7I7-B43-69I6 • FAX: 717-855-8319
Circle Reader Service Number 193
2 GREAT MEDICAL PROGRAMS
'JJ4
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Expert lUledical Advice j^l^l^ Includes . . .Interact '
CHOICE At The Touch Of A Key! mSU^^k Comprehensive Drug Interaction Program
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njuries, tests, poisons, nutrition & diets
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Your Medical Records
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MS-DOS and Windows Versions AmOable
ort
* List Price
''•.*!!£^J-!?.^'.?'A^f.''J 1 1 p-1 1 1 . ■ ■'>.fTJl^,''i.°'17.'!q' ^^5.'
ObCyn hlitaiy iibI BppJJciblr
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t I I mjttoYB>tM hiiiarv fti
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)
TEL 1*07) 777 - 5353 FAX (407) 777 - 0323
10460 So. Tropical Trail Merritt Island, FL 32952
1-800-788-2099
See your Sofhvare Dealer or, , ,CalI Us Today
All Trademarks are property of their respective owners
Circle Reader Service Number 169
YOUR XT
14 Complete Medical Histories
Keeps and prints YOUR important
medical records in two different formats
Medical-Legal Documents
Prints custom documents like the "Living
■'and "Durable Power of Attorney"
alyzes Over 2,400 Substances
^act, provides a complete analysis
of 250,000 possible drug interactions
^5 \M
Q
Letter Gothic fonts are built
into the printer in both por-
trait and landscape formats,
and CG Times and Univers
fonts are available in portrait
formal. In addition, scalable
Courier, Univers, and CG
Times fonts are included on
the Windows driver disk, Ad-
ditional fonts are available
on plug-in cartridges. True-
Type and ATM fonts from
Windows and Compugraph-
ic Intellifonts on the Amiga
looked just as good as the
built-in fonts, but printed sig-
nificantly slower.
DeskJet printouts used to
smear if they got wet, but
HP reformulated its ink car-
tridges a couple of years
ago: you can now spill cof-
fee on your printouts with
the best of them. The
DeskJet uses regular pa-
per— special ink-jet paper
isn't needed (which is
good, since it usually produc-
es poor results). Some pa-
pers will give better results
than others; I've found that
Strathmore Legacy and Ham-
mermill Laser Print papers
Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet 550C supports both monochrome and
full-color printing at 300 dots per inch.
give excellent results, as do
Paper Direct's fancy letter-
head papers, Only single-
sheet paper is supported;
the paper tray supports let-
ter, legal, and executive pa-
per sizes, as well as Europe-
an sizes. You can even print
on transparency film. New
to the DeskJet 550C is an en-
velope feeder that holds up
to 20 envelopes.
Quiet, flexible (with both
serial and parallel connec-
tors), and reliable, the
DeskJet 550C is a great print-
er for anyone bored with
black-and-white.
DENNY ATKIN
Hewlelt-Packa'd
(800) 538-8787
S879
Circle Reader Service Number 437
CREEPERS
Like an undercooked dish
pulled from the back burner,
there's something suspicious-
ly unpalatable about this
Psygnosis offering. Though
eminently playable, the
game lacks the spice and
polish we've come to expect
from Britain's premier soft-
ware publisher.
Gameplay offers a poten-
tially interesting blend of puz-
zle-solving strategy and real-
time arcade skills. Your job
is to herd creepers — caterpil-
lars—from one section of
the screen to another, drop-
ping them into a bowl to
turn into butterflies. Natural-
ly the path is strewn with pit-
falls, ranging from lethal to
simply annoying. To help
the little critters along,
you're given a limited num-
ber of creeper tools: swat-
ters, girders, fans, bombs,
magnets, and trampolines.
Tools can be placed and re-
moved as needed, but
each action drains energy
from your limited supply.
SEPTEMBER 1993 COMPUTE 93
IS THERE
Live psychics reveal what the
future halds for your love life.
LIVEI Specializing in
"uestions of love
$5 first min./$3 ea. addl. min.
Use the vuisdom of
psychic forces to
guide you in money,
career and happiness
1-900
773-OMEN
1 -900-773-6636
$5 first min./S3 ea. addl. min.
TALK TO A LIVE PSYCHIC!
For entertainment purposes
only. If you are under 18 years
of age, please get parental
permission. Live psychics are
available 24 hours a day.
Sponsored by Pet Inc., P.O. Box
166, Hollywood, CA 90078.
REVIEWS
Run out of energy, and the game
ends. You must rescue the required
number of bugs to advance through
73 levels, arranged in four stages of
increasing difficulty.
The game invites obvious compari-
sons to Sierra's Incredible Machine
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Psygiiosis' Creepers packs 73 levels of
increasingly difficult puzzles.
and Psygnosis's own Lemmings series.
Unfortunately, the puzzles lack the va-
riety and creative flair of the hit Sierra
title. The creepers also fail to evoke the
lively personality and wacky sense of
humor of their Lemmings counterparts.
Graphics are extremely bright and
colorful, but drawn with an almost de-
meaning childlike quality. The game's
best innovation is the Creeper Peeper,
a pop-up video window that can be set
to follow the lead creeper or focus on
a particular area of the screen. This
handy multitasking tool would've been
ideal for Lemmings 2 with its large vir-
tual play screens. Here, the feature's
wasted on levels that rarely extend be-
yond three screens wide.
Creepers plays well, but it lacks the
zest and individuality needed to stand
out in this popular genre.
SCOTT A. MAY
Psygnos'S
(617) 497-7794
S49.99
Circle Reader Service Number 438
PENTACALC
It's really a pain to be sitting before
that big, powerful computer and have
to resort to your hand-held calculator
for a result to be entered into the doc-
ument you're working on. Windows
does a nice job of meeting this need
with its built-in calculator. PentaCalc,
which runs under Windows, extends
this basic capability with many addition-
al features.
The program offers five modes of cal-
culation, The basic mode is the scien-
tific calculator, which performs all the
usual arithmetic operations plus trigo-
nometric, logarithmic, and exponential,
PENTHOUSE ONLINE^''
• State-of-the-Art
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• PetPoints^'^ Awards
Program
• Low monthly and
connect fees!
Exciting news! Penthouse introduces an
online service that's easier — and more
fun— to use. Called PENTHOUSE
ONLINE, this new service features 9600
bps capability and "real-time" graphics —
almost instantaneous online viewing of
photos and E-Mail with picture-attach
capability, Send a message., .and a
photo.. .at the same time!
Log on and access Chat, E-Mail,
Penthouse Letters, Penthouse
Photos. ..plus special Navigation and
Help areas. New areas are being added
continuously. Navigate anywhere using a
mouse or Tab key.
The Penthouse photos you'll find on
PENTHOUSE ONLINE are the same
high quality seen every month in
Penthouse. Our unique speed-view
system lets you browse in 256-color
VGA. then download the photos you
wish to keep. That's right. View BEFORE
you download.
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national and world events, the financial
markets, entertainment news and
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plus 20 cents a minute for most areas.
And NO 9600 BPS SURCHARGE!
As a member of PENTHOUSE ONLINE,
you receive valuable PetPoints for every
dollar you spend. Redeem PetPoints for
Penthouse ball caps, T-shirts, can
coolers, key rings , and more. Or use
them to purchase sought-after Pentfiouse
books and videos. Or trade points for free
online time. It's your choice!
Plus, we've arranged with a major
modem manufacturer, USRobotics, to
offer a deluxe, 9600 bps data/fax
modem, with custom Penthouse Key
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To order your membership kit
call 1-800-289-7368 or circle the
reader service number below.
Circle Reader Service Number 103
PHOOfl
including e^x. You can clnoose from bi-
nary, octal, decimal, or hexadecimal
number bases for these calculations.
In addition, there's a time base that
lets you calculate the time difference be-
tween two dates and will tell you the
day of the week of any date over a
very wide time range,
Another mode is that of a ten-key
tape calculator. Although limited to sim-
// Windows' simple calculator doesn't pack
the horsepower you need, try PentaCalc.
pie arithmetic operations, a "tape" re-
cord is kept of the entries and opera-
tions, and you may go back over the
tape to correct errors or change en-
tries. Text labels of the entries are al-
lowed, and you may save or print the
tape. A tax key is offered that shows
the tax on the current total at a tax
rate you define, just like at the grocery
store.
The financial mode performs time-
value-of-money or cash-flow calcula-
tions. It offers convenient definition and
evaluation of investment goals, and it
will create an amortization table for you
on your mortgage. It's a very powerful
tool if you pay attention to what your
money is doing — and should be doing.
The unit conversions mode is com-
prehensive; it converts just about any-
thing into other units. Length, area, ve-
locity, volume, pressure — there are 28
dimensions in all. The volume units are
interesting, offering conversions be-
tween the usual quarts, gallons, and li-
ters, along with cups, tablespoons,
and teaspoons. If you need to scale a
recipe for eight down to two, you
might find this useful.
Finally, the statistics mode operates
on a list of numbers, calculating the
mean, median, standard deviation,
sum, or range, as you prefer. You may
edit the list to make changes, addi-
tions, or deletions. In all modes, num-
bers can be transferred to or from oth-
er Windov/s documents by way of the
Clipboard.
PentaCalc is an unusual calculator,
offering many features not commonly
found. Fast and convenient, Pentacalc
could be a most useful addition to
your Windows utility library.
CHARLES IDOL
Headgaie
(800) 230-0652
S59.95
Circle Reader Service Number 439
TEXEL DM-5024
EXTERNAL CD-ROM KIT
Sooner or later, like hard drives, CD-
ROM drives will be required equipment
for even the most casual user, Though
hardly a household name, Texel has a
drive that boasts features comparable
to those with more familiar names, and
at a considerably lower price.
Texel is a subsidiary of a 74-year-
old Japanese manufacturing company
called Shinano Kenshi. It's been mak-
ing precision motors for computer pe-
ripherals since 1962, heavy-duty com-
mercial audio CD players (like the ones
used at radfo stations) since 1989. and
CD-ROM drives since 1990. With cre-
dentials like that, I think Texel's quali-
fied to compete.
This drive has some impressive fea-
tures, not the least of which are its 265-
ms access time and 300-kbps data
transfer rate. If this all sounds like
Greek to you, then think of it this way:
It's about ten times slower than a fast
hard drive and about two to three
times faster than a floppy drive. An au-
dio CD (the kind you listen to on your
stereo) player transfers data at 150
kbps. Because the Texel is twice as
fast as that, it's called a double-speed
drive.
Equally impressive is its ability to
read audio CDs, Kodak fvlultisession
Photo CDs, High Sierra CDs, and ISO
9660 CDs. It's also XA compliant,
which means that with a special decod-
er board, it won't necessarily have to
slow down to 150 kbps to play the au-
dio track on a game or encyclopedia
but instead can read it at 300 kbps
and buffer its output to the speakers.
As far as compatibility and ease of in-
stallation go, I had the dhve and card
installed and running in less than ten
minutes. The Texel operated impressive-
ly under both DOS and Windows. I al-
so received excellent — and freel— tech-
nical support when I ran into a problem
running it under OS/2.
If you need a CD-ROfvl drive, the
Texel is well worth consideration. It's a
very fast and quite reasonably priced
drive with excellent technical support.
It's the most drive for the money.
BRADLEY M. SMALL
Texel
(800) 886-3935
(40B) 980-1838
S499 — inlernal drive
S599 — external drive
Circle Reader Service Number 440
Circle Reader
Service Number 275
Dr.Ts Sing-A-Long
uniquely combines over 25 classic
children's songs, animations, song lyrics,
anct musical notation. Each wonderful song
has its own characters and animated story.
Parents and educators agree — it's a
delightful and fun *■
way to Introduce
children to the
wonders of music.
|I>r.T's
'^■■USIC SOFTWARE
REVIEWS
ERIC THE
UNREADY
Fantasy role-players get a
healthy kick in the pants
from Eric the Unready, a de-
lightfully twisted text-and-
graphic adventure, Packed
witli thriils, spills, and outra-
geous humor, the game is
without a doubt Legend En-
tertainment's best effort yet.
Step inside the tarnished
armor of young Eric, a fledg-
ling Knight of the Rhomboid
Table. Your task is to find
Princess Loreaile, abducted
by her wicked stepmother.
Queen Morgana, and her lov-
er. Sir PeotoraL Outwardly,
the story follows the stan-
dard fantasy formula, re-
plete with magic, puzzles,
monsters, and miniquests,
Hack away the slick veneer,
however, and you'll enter a
role-playing realm turned up-
side down and tickled till it
begs for mercy From mov-
ies and television to classic
computer games, few pop
culture icons escape the
swath of playful ribbing.
Designer Bob Bates and
programmer Duane Beck
have fashioned one of the
slickest system architec-
tures in the genre. Every-
thing needed to communi-
cate, manipulate, and moni-
tor your progress is within
easy reach on the high-res-
olution windowed interface.
You can either type full sen-
tences into the story window
or use the mouse to assem-
ble commands from the
scrolling verb, preposition,
and object menus. Other fea-
tures include one-touch com-
mand buttons to display
your inventory, status, and
score; call up online help;
run automapping: and tog-
gle the graphics window.
Bates's text parser is intel-
ligent, intuitive, and excruci-
atingly funny. Puzzles are of
96 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
average difficulty, but
they're varied enough to sus-
tain long-term interest. Graph-
ics are handsomely drawn
and feature an exciting mix
of windowed and full-
screen animated art. Almost
all pictures are interactive, in-
viting realtime participation
in a wide range of settings
ic animation, stunning hi-res
Super VGA graphics, and
an awesome soundtrack.
Princess Loreaile the Worthy
has never looked so good. Al-
so, the CD-ROtVl version us-
es only 3MB on your hard
drive, a welcome benefit in
the world of huge games.
Perfectly realized from con-
"Fear not, my lady. No one would dare harm the daughter
of good King Fudd. To do so woutd incur the wrath of that
flower of chivalry, the Knights of the Rhomboid Table. No
one would be so foolish as to take that risk - even for one
so beautiful as yourself."
Legend Entertainment's Eric the Unready packs megabytes of
humor on both floppy and CD-ROM versions.
Kid Desk lets you set up attractive and fun-filled menus tor every
kid in the house — including yourself.
and activities. Tastefully un-
derstated music and sound
effects lend a rich air of ele-
gance to the overall silliness
of the game.
If you have a CD-ROfvl
drive, check out the new CD
version of Eric the Unready,
which takes the same hilari-
ous story and adds cinemat-
cept to execution. Eric the
Unready is a rare treat
that's not to be missed.
SCOTT A MAY
Legend Enlertainment
Distributed by Accolade
(800) 245-7744
$59.95
Circle Reader Senice Number 441
KID DESK
EdMark's Kid Desk packs
more fun than you'll find in
any other menu program.
With it, you can set up attrac-
tive and fun-fil!ed individual
menus for every kid in the
house — including yourself!
Kid Desk places a color-
ful "menu" onscreen, but it
doesn't look like a tradition-
al computer menu; it looks
like a desk. The desk
comes with fun-filled acces-
sories: pen and pencil sets
you can click on to select a
different desk style, an Ear-
ly American scroll-top, for in-
stance; a single date calen-
dar that flips up to a monthly
calendar that you can write
on; a clock that speaks the
time; a desk light that turns
on or off to brighten or dark-
en the screen; and a tele-
phone that actually talks in
many languages when you
click on it to pick up the
handset.
Press a three-key combina-
tion, and the program switch-
es to Adult mode, where
f^om and Dad can add pro-
grams to the desktop, set
up individual menus for
each child, passv/ord-pro-
tect the Adult mode with a
word only they know, and se-
lect attractive icons to
launch the programs they
add to the desk.
Icons for each child ap-
pear on an opening menu.
Children click on their own
icons to launch their individ-
ual desktops. The program
can be installed so that Kid
Desk is launched when the
computer is turned on, and
you can configure it so that
children cannot escape to
DOS where they can get in-
to grownups' files.
Almost everything here
can be individualized. If you
have a scanned image of
your child, you can load it in-
to a picture frame displayed
Advertisers Index
Reader Service Number/Advertiser Page
162 8-Bil G-17
AlCS 33
268 Amish Outlaw Shareware Co 116
157 AMTEX Soltware Corporation 87
244 Antigrav Toolkil G-9
Bare Bones Sollware 116
298 Bare Bones Sollware A-13
151 Bea[ Technologies A-23
152 Bear Techwtogies G-12
BesI Personalized Books Ill
120 Better Concepts A-7
173 Blue Valle/ Soltwate 117
218 Body Cello 11B
245 Broderbund 43
121 B.B. ROMS 112
181 Caloke Industries G-12
lie Cell Micro 113
156 CH ProrJucls 27
149 Chips & Bits 69
139 CMD/Crealive Micro Designs G-11
174 ComPro Sollware 110
114 CompSull G-17
150 CompSull 112
IDS CompuServe 16,17
112 Computer Book Club 73
Computer Business Services 110
Computer tor Tracts. Inc A-7
254 Computer Friends 116
Comtrad 15
Comtrad ,63
125 Creative labs 3
123 Creative Pixels Lid A-7
113 Creative Pixels Lid G-12
226 Crosley Software 116
DS K Enterprises 111
161 Delphi 23
131 DemoSource 114
188 Digispeech Inc 39
180 Digital Direclmy Assislance 113
187 Digilsl Expressions Research A-17
167 Disks O'Plenly A-17
253 Disks O'Plenly G-9
208 Disk-Count Sollware 103
275 Dr T's Music Sollware 95
182 Eagle Tree Software A-11
296 Electronic Arts 45
FGIil Connection G-17
lis Free Spirit Sollware 99
159 Grapevine Group. The 6-13
234 Horse Feathers Grapfiics G-a
fleailer Service Number/Advertiser
Page Reader Servlca Number/Advertiser
Page
IBM 5
IBM 5.7
300 ID 83
117 Impressions Software 65
Interplay 77
231 Jackson tvlarking Products Co. Inc 110
Jasmine Mullimedia Publishing 84
140 JemmaSoll 113
JP P3M Products by Mail G-11
170 Ksysione Software G-12
197 KF-PD Software G-7
Kid Secure of America 110
192 Knowledge Adventure 107
178 UCE 116
LandTiark Solutions. Inc. ill
136 Legendary Design Technoligies A-1?
137 Legendary Design Techno ogles A-22
146 Living Proof. Ltd G-9
255 Logitech 60,61
250 Mad IVlan Software G-17
138 Mallard 37
194 Megagefvl A-17
206 Micro Electronics 51
289 MicroStorm Software G-9
191 Needhatps Electronics. Inc 115
124 Neuralink A-17
135 Ne*' Horizons SoftwafB G-9
Ne*bridge Book Club 35
133 Norris Software A-23
141 Odyssey OnLine 112
204 Origin 71
164 Parsons Technology 21
106 Partr Galen A-22
250 PC Enterprises 116
Pencragon Softwcire Library 1 16
Penthouse Interactive CD-ROM 90
107 PenttiousB tilodem 114
103 Penlfiouse Online 94
142 Peoples College 101
153 Performance Peripherals G-9
169 Pixel Perfect 93
Poor Person Software A-17
158 Power Shareware A-22
PowerDisk . . G-13
119 Professor Jones, Inc 109
256 Protil Group. The 109
Pure EnlerlainmenI 94
198 Puz2le Factory, The A-23
Q Enterprises Software G-13
257 Ramco Computer Sales , , A-13
212 SaleSoll Systems Inc .117
183 School ol Compuler Training 110
111 School ol PC Repair 110
116 SeXXy 112
171 Sfiareware Central 117
148 Sierra Online BC
109 Smart lur;k Sollware 112
155 SMC Sollware Publlstiers 117
196 SMC/Soltwate Publishers A-17
126 SollShoppe 112
195 Sollware Studio A-17
210 Soilware Support International 117
190 Soltware Support International G-5
297 Software Support International A-23
SOGWAP Solfivare A-11
SOGWAP Software G-7
203 Slar Micronics .13
130 Starware Publishing Coip 115
179 SubLogic 52,53
147 Thrustmasler 115
202 TEAS A-11
193 Turlle Beach Systems . . . ,:. 92
242 Tycom Inc G-12
301 US, Robotics IBC
127 Value Soltware.Inc 117
132 Virgin Games IFC.I
122 Virgin Games 31
267 Virgin Games 78,79
189 Walnut Creek CDROM 91
172 Wedgwood Computer 117
128 Windows 900 114
110 WOiySchool ol Computer Training 41
Product Mart 109.110111,112.113,114,115,116,117
Classilieds 118,119
104 COMPUTE Books 84,105,A-3,A-13,G-13
OMNI Books 90
COMPUTE Editor 900 line 93
COMPUTE Library Cases 104
COMPUTES SharePak Disk Subsription 57
Gaielfe Disk Subscription G-7
Gazette Index G-21
Gazette Proriuclivily Manager G-19
Gazelle Single Disk Order G-37
Gazelle Specially Disks G-2
PC Ultima Power Disk 47
CREDITS
Cover: Mark Wagoner; page 4: Joseph
Drivas/lmage Bank; pages 6-7: John
Patrick/Scott Hull Associates; page 18:
Mark Wagoner; page 20: Mark Wagoner;
page 22: Mark Wagoner; page 26: Mark
Wagoner; pages 58-59: © 1993 Theo
Rudnak/SIS; pages 66-67: Mark Wagon-
er; pages 74-75: Mark Wagoner; pages
80-81: Mark Wagoner; page 85: © 1993
P. Bliss/SIS; page A-5: Pete Turner/Image
Bank; page G-3: Westlight®.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
FOR
COMPUTE DISK
SUBSCRIBERS
COMPUTE offers two different disk products for
PC readers: fhe SharePak disk and PC Disk,
SharePok is monttiiy and has o subscripfion
price of S59.95 for S'A-incti disks and $64.95 for
3V2-incti disks. A subscription to SharePak
does nof include a subscripfion to the maga-
zine. PC Disk appears in odd-numbered
months and has a subscription price of $49.95,
which includes a subscription to COMPUTE. You
can subscribe to either disk or to both, but a
subscription to one does not include a subscrip-
tion to the other
SEPTEIVlBER 1993 COMPUTE 97
SPMKDP!
We at COMPUTE
strive to provide you with the latest
and most useful tiome, business
and entertainment computer news
and information. Now we're
opening the COMPUTE EDITOR
LINE-a direct link to our editorial
staff that lets you truly participate
in the shaping of COMPUTE
Magazine.
Using this program, you can
comment on articles and features in
COMPUTE. After hearing the
introduction, you'll be asked to
leave a message for the editor Your
message will be reviewed and may
be published in a future issue.
Here's how it works:
1. Call the COMPUTE EDITOR
LINE; 1-900-884-8681. The
charge is only $0.95 per min.
2. Select the month of the issue
you want to talk about.
3. Enter the extension number
printed at the end of the feature
or pictorial spread you want to
discuss. If you don't have the
extension number, just listen to
the menu selections, and they
will lead you to the proper
extension for each item.
4. Listen to the comment or
information corresponding to the
feature or pictorial you selected.
5. Then, at the tone, leave your
desired message!
6. If you would like to make
another selection, press ' *:*: ' to
return to the main menu.
PET INC, 60X166, Hllywd.,CA
90078. Must be 18 or older.
Touch Tone phones only.
REVIEWS
on the desk, or you can place clip art
pictures in the frame. If you have a
sound card with a microphone, a re-
corder on the desk lets you and your
child record messages to one another
that can be played back.
Kid Desk offers a unique — and
quite fun— menu solution just for kids,
one that assures children have fun
while parents' files and applications re-
main safe from curious hands.
CAROL ELLISON
EdWark
(206) 556-8484
339.95
Circle Reader Service Number 442
INSTANT ROLODEX
Instant Rolodex isn't the most complete
personal information manager (PIM) on
the market, but it may be the perfect or-
ganizer for smali-business managers, in-
cluded in this package are an eiectron-
ic Rolodex, an appointment calendar,
a to-do list, and sundry utilities for print-
ing forms, cards, and labels. To make
Instant Rolodex as convenient as pos-
sible, an icon bar across the top of the
main window and various toolboxes ac-
cess program features with a single but-
ton click.
As the program's name suggests,
the Rolodex module — an address-
book database using a Rolodex meta-
phor—is the package's focus. The Ro-
lodex allows you not only to create and
delete address cards but also to add
notes to each card. Fields in the data-
base include the usual name, address,
and phone, as well as additional fields
for storing alternative addresses; fax,
beeper, home, and car phone num-
bers; important dates; and titles. Nine
user-defined fields let you personalize
the database to your specific needs.
More than just a straight Rolodex
file. Instant Rolodex provides full data-
base search features. You can find a
card by searching the key field, or you
can create subgroups of cards using
search logic that compares specific
fields with such operators as equal-to,
less-than, greater-than, and between.
The calendar can be viewed as an
entire year, month, or week, or you can
bring up an appointment book for a spe-
cific day, which lists by time all activi-
ties planned for that day. Scheduling
events is as easy as clicking on a time
and typing a quick description. Recur-
ring events can also be scheduled. Fi-
nally, the built-in alarm function warns
you of any impending event.
The to-do list is Instant Rolodex's
weakest feature. While you can check
off tasks as you do them, the tasks ar-
en't related in any way to the calendar.
In other words, all tasks appear in a sin-
gle list that can be prioritized by task
but not by date.
Despite its weak task handling, in-
stant Rolodex is perfect for business
folks with modest needs. When you
add its ability to dial numbers and
send faxes. Instant Rolodex is a fine
package at a great price.
CLA-rTON WALNUM
DacEasy
(800) 222-8778
S49,95
Circle Reader Service Number 443
THRUSTMASTER
RUDDER CONTROL
SYSTEM
If you spend much time flying flight sim-
ulators, you know that reaching for the
keyboard can be the kiss of death. Se-
rious sim fans have looked to Thrust-
Master for relief; the company's Flight
Control System and Weapons Control
System put most of the controls on the
joystick and throttle, respectively. This
simulates the HOTAS (Hands On Throt-
tle And Stick) approach used in mod-
ern jet fighters. Even then, though,
you're still forced to use the keyboard
for rudder control, which can be a dead-
ly distraction when lining up for a diffi-
cult strafing run or landing approach.
The Thrustfy/laster Rudder Control Sys-
tem solves this problem by giving your
virtual cockpit a set of authentic rudder
pedals. Real aircraft use rudder pedals
to control yaw — a movement of the
plane's nose to the left or right without
banking. Rudder pedals come into
play most often when lining up for land-
ing, conducting strafing runs, or engag-
ing in slow air combat. If you're shoot-
ing at an enemy plane and you see
your tracers are flying by just to the
right of the plane's cockpit, for in-
stance, a quick kick of the left rudder
pedal will likely score a kill.
Unlike some less expensive pedals
that place the footpads right next to
each other, the ThrustMaster pedals
are distanced almost 20 inches apart,
allowing you to sit in a comfortable,
natural position. (I often use them as
footrests when I'm not flying simula-
tors.) They're very sturdily constructed,
built of gold-anodized aluminum and
ABB plastic, which is good for a device
whose main purpose is to be kicked
around. The heavy construction and rub-
ber feet on the bottom of the pedals
keep them in place on wood or tile
98
COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
t
ji ■ '^
_ ^
P^
(800)
638-i
>rders Only
i
s
Y&& ^|«'^'^
5757
r
Software
V ,
w^
mm
■
International Orders: (812) 376
'*-4186FAXi
Orders: (8
12,
I 376-9970
L^
w
VjS^
Chestnut""*15
All-in-one CD Bundle
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Bibies & RDligion • New & Old Testaments, study guides, covers Judaism, Christianity, Islam
ume control, sell-cleaning tens, dust
resistant seal, meets all MPC speciticati
3ns. Kodak
ftjl I 1 1 4 i »•» j-
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Clipart GollBtll Thcusands of images for all g$es. in PCX a TIFF (orrralt For DTP prograins
Photo CD compatible
M U 1 1 1 m G u 1 ci
Colossal Cockbook - Mom
rocipes Ihar "Joy of Cool,ing", Plus nutirlion guides, mora
Pro Audio Spectrum 16
SCSI host adaptor and sound card. Compatible with; MPC and M
Sound Blaster, & Real Sound. Digital sai^olino a playback uo to AA
ComplelD Bookshop- An
DoBlhslar Arcado Battles -
entire bookshop, tnclutJes; classics, poetry, humor, history, morel
EKClTing VGA space wars, stiootem-jps. sports. & more
3 Windows. AdLib
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Order with CheOt. Mor>ey Ortfar. VISA. MaslerCard. American Express, or COD Odef by phone, maji. or lax Note tfiere is dd surctiargs (or crad't card orders. For tha contiguous U. S
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Free Spirit Software, Inc. - 720 Sycamore Street
- Columbus, IN 47201 - Questions? Phone (812) 376-9457
CIrels Realtor Service Number 115
REVIEWS
floors. If you're using them
on a carpeted surface,
some Veicro may be helpful
for keeping tfiem from get-
ting shoved around.
Many MS-DOS flight sim-
ulators support rudder ped-
als, including Aces of the Pa-
cific, Comanche: Maximum
Overkill, Falcon 3.0, Gun-
ship 2000, Flight Simulator
4, ATP, Flight of the Intrud-
er, and A-10 Tank Killer 1.5.
ThrustMaster sells a special
TSR that will add rudder ped-
al support to Secret Weap-
ons of the Luftwaffe. The on-
ly problem I encountered
was trying to use the Thrust-
Master PCS joystick control-
ler and the Rudder Control
System with Flight Simulator
4; Ihe coolie-hat switch on
the top must be disabled {re-
quiring you to add a switch
to the stick yourself) for the
program to function correct-
ly, The pedals worked fine
with Flight Simulator 4 and a
different joystick. I also suc-
cessfully tested the pedals
using an adapter cabie on
an Amiga 4000 running Fight-
er Duel Pro.
Although the Rudder Con-
trol System is a bit expen-
sive for the occasional play-
er, serious simulator pilots
will find it well worth the mon-
ey for the added control
and realism it affords.
DENNY ATKIN
ThrustMastef
(503) 639-3200
$149.95
Circle Reader Service Number 444
AV-8B HARRIER
ASSAULT
Like the redoubtable jump
jet, Domark's AV-8B Harrier
Assault takes off in more
than one direction. Not only
is it a flight simulator, but it's
also a war game based on
a somewhat unlikely, UN-
backed invasion of the Indi-
100 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
an Ocean island of Timor.
Likely or not, though, both el-
ements are quite creditable.
Each benefits from the oth>
ar, with the result that Harri-
er Assault's whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.
For starters, the flight sim
is far superior to Domark's
previous effort in this field,
that makes a computer pilot
feel he's not operating in a
vacuum — that the mission
has more than an imagined
impact on the game's flow —
is valuable, and Harrier As-
sault conveys this well, albe-
it in a somewhat abstract
way. It allows you to order
amphibious landings, to set
Domark's AV-8B Harrier Assault is now available in a special Super
VGA version for computers wilti S3 video chips.
tvliG-29 Fulcrum, and com-
pares favorably to Micro-
Prose's Jump Jet. Harrier As-
sault flies beautifully, with a
smooth-as-butter update on
a 486/33 (a 16-MHz 386 ma-
chine is the minimum recom-
mended) and a delightful
view. I liked the hazy hori-
zons and the way terrain
emerges from mist as land-
fall approaches, lending a
you-are-there sense of mom-
entousness. I liked the
slight lag to the controls, a
feel more realistic than that
of some turn-on-a-dime
flight Sims. And I liked all
the stuff on the ground —
even the stuff shooting at
me. It's a lively place, this Ti-
mor. {Wish the explosions
were spiffier, though.)
The war game is fought
out on a console — a sharp
SVGA screen — aboard your
flotilla's flagship. Anything
up air missions against an
aggressive, intelligent ene-
my, and to zoom in on indi-
vidual trees, if you wish (I'm
not certain what this is good
for, but you can do it). This
isn't anything especially
new — games such as Fal-
con 3,0, ATAC, and Cam-
paign are ail variations on
this strategy/action combina-
tion—but it gets damnably in-
volving here when you
know that what you do
counts.
Harrier Assault doesn't
have the most intuitive com-
mand screen I've ever
seen, but its complexities
are nicely unraveled in a sub-
stantial, plain-English manu-
al. (But next time, use some-
thing stickier than chewing
gum to bind it, folks,)
It's also at the command
screen that the program com-
mits some rather basic tech-
nical gaffes. I consistently
ran into crashes (the comput-
er kind) when plotting mis-
sion way points on a
zoomed-in tactical screen,
and I couldn't get the
mouse pointer below the
top third of the screen.
(There's a work-around for
the latter problem — use a
joystick instead of the
mouse — and a fix is availa-
ble from Domark.)
But that's it for flak. Other-
wise, this Harrier goes up
like a rocket.
PETEH OLAFSON
Domark
(415)513-8929
$59.95
Circle Reader Service Number 445
AIR BUCKS
VERSION 1.2
A version number in a
game's title is a pretty sure
sign that the game in ques-
tion is a flight simulator: Wit-
ness Flight Simulator 4,0, Fal-
con 3,0, and Chuck Yea-
ger's Flight Trainer 2.0, You
could hardly be blamed for
figuring Air Bucks version
1.2 to be a flight sim as
well.
It is, but only in an ab-
stract sense, Air Bucks 1.2
is a substantially improved
version of Impressions' well-
received airline simulator,
and it's first class all the
way.
You're placed in charge
of a startup company with a
base of operations (Miami)
and a little pool of money
($100,000). Over the years
(beginning in 1946), you're
expected to transform the
company into the talk of the
industry. You can't control
the weather or the baggage-
handlers' union, but you do
have intimate control over
capital expenditures such
as new planes, landing
rights, routing, fares, adver-
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Circle Reader Service Number 142
REVEWS
tising, and maintenance —
all handled rather elegantly
via the mouse or keyboard.
Of course, there are as
many as three other little air-
lines — controlled either by
the computer or other aspir-
ing Richard Bransons — try-
ing to pull the same stunt.
They are acquiring landing
rights in the same cities and
flying the same domestic
and intercontinental routes.
And your board of directors
is watching how you do.
It's easy to play, even vi'ith-
out the manuals, and easy
to enjoy. {Beating out the
competition is quite another
matter.} There are lots of
pleasant little features — espe-
cially on the fare-setting
screen— and detailed finan-
cial information is always at
your fingertips. You can
even invent your airline's slo-
gan— a charming touch — or
pay for market research to
tell how you're doing. It's all
nicety knit together, so it's
never overwhelming. And
the hours spent in Air Bucks
drift by unbidden.
Unlike some corporate
Sims like Black Gold (oil) or
Ports of Call (freighters), how-
ever, this one doesn't have
any lighthearted arcade ex-
tras (no lining up incoming
planes with runway lights or
extracting seagulls from a tur-
bine engine). It's still a
game, naturally, but it's also
a broad business simulation
as opposed to a toy. And
though it has been sweet-
ened with digitized sound,
256-color graphics, and
some modest animation, it
never bumps that basic
premise, (The music's de-
lightful, too; it seems to take
off from Ultima VI.}
My only objections are a
certain lack of integration —
it would be nice to be able
to see and edit everything
about a route and its planes
on a single screen — and the
102 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
AirBucks 1.2 from Impressions isn'ta traditional flight simulator but
is instead an innovative airline simulator
'^, l)¥nnd«-tWlH31.n¥N| [-j
I lir itltX }tKLUjti Fipii! !i*!lci.l t_.ivijiil Wimiiiw!: HFlji j
M^zi^lviOj-^Jaj^lEii?
fs:;;::^:;:
tlSJS'-ir* iijfi
All II FuT;.t:)-j ■.■Kh;.}<::\
Dynodex for Windows manages not only names, addresses, and
pfione numbers, but your important notes as well.
absence of online help. An
Are you sure? requester
might have headed off situ-
ations in which, for example,
you assign a plane to a
route that exceeds its range
or neglect to assign ticket
prices. (Passengers then fly
free.)
For registered owners of
the original Air Bucks, ver-
sion 1 .2 is available free as
an upgrade. (There have
been a host of user-suggest-
ed changes, so basically it's
smarter, prettier, and better
stocked with info.) Impres-
sions also makes upgrades
to Air Bucks and its other
products available through
its online support area on
the CompuServe online net-
work. And if you haven't al-
ready had the pleasure of fly-
ing the not-so-friendly skies,
be sure all carry-on luggage
is safely stowed and raise
your seat back to its full up-
right position. You're in for a
delightful ride.
PETER OLAFSON
Impressions
(203) 676-9002
$59-95
Circle Reader Service Njmber 446
DYNODEX FOR
WINDOWS
Tired of thumbing through
the Rolodex every time you
need a name or number?
Dynodex, a contacts data-
base, can save you from
this hassle and offer some
options — such as printing ad-
dress books and dialing
your telephone — that may
prove very useful to your
business.
Dynodex is a Windows da-
tabase application that man-
ages the names, numbers,
and addresses of those cru-
cial to your business's oper-
ation, as well as any notes
you may want to keep track
of. It can print such things
as address books, mailing la-
bels, rotary cards, and enve-
lopes. Phone-dialing options
are also available. All you
need to begin are an IBM
PC or compatible computer,
2MB of RAM, a hard drive
with 2MB of available
space, a VGA display, DOS
version 3.1 or higher, Micro-
soft Windows 3.1 or higher,
a floppy drive, and a Micro-
soft-compatible mouse.
The Icon Palette at the
top of the screen allows you
to toggle back and forth be-
tween previously recorded
data or enter information for
a new record. You may then
proceed to delete or edit
the record, or you can
search, select, and sort the
records by specific data.
There's also a List window
that shows, in alphabetical or-
der, all the records you've re-
corded. You can highlight
the name you wish to look
up, click your mouse, and
voila! There it is before your
eyes. For information such
as the names of cities,
states, and countries,
there's a drop-down list box
you can open with your
mouse. It will allow you to
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Loom 39
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Our Solar System 29
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Pool Shark 19"
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Battlefield 37"
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Slack Crypt 31*
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Bodyworks 42
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Data Disk (ea.) 17"
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King's Quest 6 45
Knowledge Advent 42
Land Of Lore 34"
Legacy 39
Legacy NecromncrlS"
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Lemmings 29"
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Une in the Sand 25
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Unks 386 Pro 39
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Rodney Fun SaeenSI Transartica 35"
Rome 29" Treasure Cove 35
Rule Engagment 239" Treasur Math Storm 35
Sdenca Adventure 42 Treasure Mountain 35
Scooter Magk; CastlSZ Treebouse 35
Scrable Debt 32 Tristan Pinbal 29"
Seal Team 37" Turbo Science 30
Sot Weapn Luftwf 29* Turtle Tools 69
Tour of Duty ea. 20 Ull'ma7 47"
Seven Cites Gold 38 Forge of Virtue 17
Shadow President 39" Ulbma 7 Part 2 47"
ShadQwIands 29" Ultima Trilogy 37"
Sierra Actkjfi Five 25 Ultima Trik)gy 2 47*
Sierra Awartf Winnef47 Ultima Undetv,-orid 47*
Sierra Family Fun 32 Part 2 47"
Sierra Starter Bndl 39*
Silent Servics 2 19*
Sim Ant 34*
Sim City 19''
UltrabolS 37*
Uninvited Window 31"
U.S. Adas DOS 31
Utopia . . 29^
Sim Ant French 35 V (dr Victory (ea) 42'
Sim City Windows 34" Vegas Games 19"
Sim Earth 39" Virtual Realty St 2 59"
Sim Ufe Dos/Wind 39" Vista Pro 73"
Sing a Long Wind 31" Vocabulary Devi 32
Snap Dragon 32 Wacky Funsters T9*
Snoopy Game Club 29 WarlnGuH 29"
Sofitajte Window 29* Warrior of Legend 19*
Solitaires Journey 35 Wayne Grelzl^ 3 35
Space Ace 2:Soi1 35 What's My Angle 30
Space Adventure 42 When2Worids WarSS"
Spaoe Hulk
Space Guest 5
Spaceward Ho
Spear of Destiny
Special Forces
Spectre
Spellbound
Spellasdng 301
Spell-it Plus _ _ . .
SpelUammer 37" Wiki Science Arcad35*
Sports Adventure 33 Ween:Prophecy 34"
Star Control 2 35" WingComandr2 47*
Star Trek 25th AnV. 37 World Cirait 34"
StarTrek AudioClip34* MPE Edition 44"
Next Generation 38" Wortd Tour Tennis32"
StarTrek Screen Sav37 X Wing ^»
Stidqtx Math Tutor 30 Mission Disk 19"
Sli*ybf Pre-Schcd 30 Yobi Spelling Tri(A29*
Stid^ Read Tutor 30 Your Deck 45*
Sticicytx Spell Tutor 30 Your Prsnl Train SAT30
Slotm Across Eurp 38 Zodiac Signs 39"
Storybook Weaver29** Zoo Keepef 36
Sttike Commander 45* Zug's Soelling Adv 22
Adv of Eco Island ~"
,17"
Where Carmen
39"
San Diego
3,5"
AmencaPasI
34*
39*
Europe
30
29
Space
44"
as*
Time
30
31
USA
30
35
USA Deluxe
44"
30
Worid Deluxe
44"
Speech Disk
Stnp Poker 3
Oala Disk (ea)
17
32
17
22
Dinosaur Worid 22
Race "Rim Space 22
store: 1060 Randolph Ave. Rahway N.J.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Master Cixid, Visa, AmecLcan Expzess &
Discover Accepted. No Surcharge on
Credit Cards. By mail: P.O. Box 3,
Carteret, N.J. 07 006. All Sales Are
Pinal. NOREFUNDSl Exchange on defective
nerchandise with the same item only. No
exceptions. All Producta are new txom
nrajiufactucer . All claims and guarantees
are fron the manufactuier. Call for
current price and availability. GOVERMEJff
AND SCHOOL P.O. "3 WEIjCOKED. For your
protection, we will only ship to the
address the credit card cccrpany has on
file, therefore shipping to Ak., Hi.,
PR., P.O. BoKes, A?0/FPO extra.
International orders call for shipping
charges. N.J. Resident add 6% sales tax.
20% restocking fee for all refused items .
Circle Reader Service Number Z08
COMPUTE
LIBRARY CASES
1^^^
HpH
Store your issues of COMPUTE in our
new Custom Bound Library Cases made
of blue simulated leather embossed with
a wtiite COMPUTE logo on ttie spine.
It's built to last, and it will keep 12 issues
in mint condition indefinitely. Each case
has a gold transfer for recording the date.
Send your check or money order (S8.95
each. 3 for S24.95, 6 for S45.95)
postpaid USA orders only. Foreign orders
add SI ,50 additional for postage and
handling per case.
TO: COMPUTE Magazine
Jesse Jones Industries
499 E. Erie Ave,, Phila., PA 19134
CREDIT CARD HOLDERS
(orders over SI 5)
CALL TOLL FREE: 1-800-825-6690.
Or mail your order, clearly showing
your account number and signature.
PA. residents add 7% sales tax.
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED
REVIEWS
1-800-CALL-EDF
104 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
highlight and click on the information
you want to enter so that you don't
have to type it yourself. The date can
also be added to a record sinfiply by
clicking on the calendar shown in the
Icon Palette.
Records may be listed by either the
business name or the name of the con-
tact person. You can mark records
with a check mark if you wish to keep
some of them separated from the rest
to point out important information. Infor-
mation can also be copied and pasted
to the Clipboard so that you can trans-
fer it somewhere else, such as a letter
or label. Another shortcut that Dynodex
offers is entering data by using short-
hand keys. With city names, for exam-
ple, you can simply enter the letter A,
and the name Aspen will appear in the
city field. Options like this make Dyn-
odex quite a timesaver.
If you need to make changes to a
large number of records and don't
want to enter the data manually, Dyn-
odex will change each record globally
if you simply tell it what to find and the
correction that should be made. If
you're not sure of the exact spelling of
a word, you can use a question mark
as a placeholder for a letter, and Dyn-
odex will locate words that could fit
your example,
If you want to share files, Dynodex
for Windows is compatible with Dyn-
odex for the Apple Macintosh. Dyn-
odex can also import information from
software applications such as Micro-
soft Word and other Windows word-
processing programs so that you won't
have to waste time retyping data.
Dynodex is a complete contacts da-
tabase, with ail the options a success-
ful business should have. For all the
time that Dynodex will save you and
the intuitiveness it provides, it is well
worth the low suggested retail price.
KiM HAVLENA
Portfolio
(800) SAY-DYhJO
(408) 252-0420
SB9.95
Circle Reader Service Number 447
BESTBOOKS
Though the dividing lines aren't crystal-
clear, financial management software
falls into three basic groups: personal
finance products such as Quicken and
fvlanaging Your fVloney (used, too, by
small businesses): entry-level account-
ing packages (such as DacEasy and
One-Write Plus) used by small and mid-
sized businesses: and professional
packages (generally sold as separate
modules that integrate) used by
CPAs.
Teleware — which brought us the pop-
ular entry-level product MYOB for the
PC and Macintosh — has released a
product positioned somewhere be-
tween the first tv/o classes of financial
software. BestBooks, at a suggested re-
tail price of $99. is aimed at users
BestBooks is an entry-level accounting
package for home and small business use.
who've outgrown their personal finance
packages but don't need all the fea-
tures of the midrange systems.
Though it lacks sophisticated inven-
tory tracking, purchase orders, a real-
time balance sheet, P&L analysis, and
customer contact management, Best-
Books looks and feels much like its big
sister, MYOB.
Predefined Charts of Accounts for
more than 30 types of businesses
make it easy for you to get up and run-
ning quickly.
The main screen's Command Center
quickly shows you that the program's
functions are divided into Lists, Check-
book, Sales & Receivables, Purchases
& Payables, Card File, and Administra-
tion. Click on one of those buttons, and
a small flow chart in the right side of
the box illustrates the logical order to
go through tasks in that function. Then
click on the desired function, and Be-
stBooks pops up the correct form.
As is standard in most of today's fi-
nancial software, forms resemble their
real-life counterparts. You simply fill
them out. customizing their layout first
if you want. To speed up data entry,
keystroke combinations pop up lists of
your customers and vendors, for exam-
ple, and "zooming arrows" give you ac-
cess to deeper detail. If you're in the
CWlBTOMJlftBUgS
^ i -^
COMPUTE'S
Conquering Zelda™
Adventures
$12.95
The step-by-step guide to The
Legend of Zelda. The Adventure of
Lirtfe, and TCii' Legend of Zelda. A Link
to the Past. Packed full of maps,
flints, and strategies.
NEW
from
COMPUTE
To order send the appropriate amount plus
S2.50 sliipping and liandling (LI.S., S4 to Cana-
da and S6 other) to COMPUTE Bool<s, c/o
CCC, 2500 McClellan Ave., Pennsaul<en, NJ
08109. (Residents of NC, NJ, and NY please
add appropriate tax; Canadian orders add 7%
Goods and Services Tax.) All orders must be
paid in U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank. Offer
good while supplies last.
Nintendo, The Legend o1 Zelda, and Super Mario
Bros, are registered trademarks and The Adventure of
Link and the Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past are
trademarks of Nintendo of America Inc. which has not
endorsed either of these books.
SECONO EPITIOf^
COMPUTE'S
Conquering
Super Mario Bros.®
Adventures
$10.95
Sizzling tips for defeating Super
Mario Bros. I. 2. 3 and the new
SNES Super Mario Worid.
From
Pro
LInUs
$16.97
The Official Guide to Links and Micro-
soft Golf. Includes instructions for
playing all nine of the original
Links and Microsoft Golf courses.
For all versions of Links and Micro-
soft Golf, including Linb 386 Pro.
TRACKS
To
UNKS
COMPUTE
has the hints
you need.
To order send $16.95 per copy pitjs
$2.50 for sfiipping and handling (U.S.,
$4 to Canada and $6 other) to COtvl-
PUTE Books, c/o CCC, 2500 McClellan
Ave. Pennsauken, NJ 08109. (Resi-
dents of NC, NJ, and NY please add
appropriate tax; Canadian orders add
7% Goods and Services Tax.) All or-
ders must be paid in U.S. funds drawn
on a U.S. bank. Orders will be shipped
via UPS Ground Service. Offer good
while supplies last.
A-TraIn
RAilROAdiNq
$16.95
The definitive A-Train strategy
guide. Filled with playing tips, rail-
road lore, and tiistoric photo-
graphs. For the PC, Macintosh, and
Amiga versions and the A-Train
Construction Set.
REVIEWS
card file and click on a com-
pany name, a dialog box
pops up to show you its tax
and credit terms and sales
history.
As is also standard, Best-
Books doesn't require you
to know "CPA-ese"; wtiile it
performs double-entry book-
keeping, it uses terminology
easily understood by some-
one not well versed in book-
keeping language. And ai!
the program's functions are
integrated, which avoids rep-
etition of data entry and, ul-
timately, speeds up the ac-
counting process.
More than 70 reports can
be customized and printed,
including 21 financial re-
ports (P&L, Balance Sheet,
Trial Balance), six check-
book reports, and 23 sales
reports. The program also
lets you memorize transac-
tions for recurring entry and
post transactions alone or in
batches. It prints labels,
keeps an updated to-do list,
reconciles accounts, and
has password protection.
BestBooks lacks a payroll
module, and it's not a multi-
user system. But it's a great
choice for many users who ha-
ven't yet found an exact fit in
the accounting software mar-
ket, or who've outgrown less-
powerful products.
KATHY YAKAL
Teleware
(800) 322-6962
$99
Circle Reader Service Number 446
PRIMERA
Color printing has traditional-
ly been an expensive, time-
consuming process, particu-
larly when you're iooking for
the kind of color you can on-
ly get from thermal transfer
printing. Fargo Electronics,
a producer of bar-code print-
ers, has attempted to elimi-
nate the expense and delay
106 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
involved in the thermal trans-
fer process. The Primera is in-
expensive (at least when
compared to other printers
of similar technology) and
fairly rapid (taking about
180 seconds to produce a
three-color printout). But
there's a catch.
First, don't be misled by
special coated paper need-
ed by the printer isn't inex-
pensive, either.
The printer has a resolu-
tion of only 203 dots per
inch (dpi). A fax at fine res-
olution is 200 dpi, so if
you've ever seen a fax,
you've seen the kind of jag-
gies the Primera produces.
The Primera color printer from Fargo Electronics Ijnngs color
thermal printing into an affordable price range.
the term three-color printing.
The printer can produce vir-
tually any color by overprint-
ing. First, it prints yeliow,
then magenta, and then cy-
an. By printing these colors
on top of one another, the
Primera can produce
shades of gray and a rich
palette of colors. You have
the option of purchasing a
four-color ribbon that'll allow
you to add true black to the
palette (the black produced
by the three-color ribbon is
actually a dark bluish brown
that's very close to black),
Although the printer's inex-
pensive, the supplies aren't.
For S45.00 you can pur-
chase either a three-color rib-
bon that yields 115 pages
or a four-color ribbon that
yields 80 pages. Fargo also
offers a monochrome
(black) ribbon for $39.95
that'll print 400 pages. The
The color registration {color
alignment) of the printouts
was very good, and when I
used extremely smooth, coat-
ed paper (like the sample
sheets provided with the
printer) or acetate sheets,
my printouts had dense, sol-
id colors (the waxy thermal
transfer material left a
sheen, mal<ing the printouts
look vaguely photographic).
But when I used common
photocopy paper, my print-
outs were spotty and
plagued by dropouts where
one or all of the colors
didn't print.
If all you're doing is proof-
ing pictures and all you
need is an FPO (For Posi-
tion Only) graphic, the
Primera seems tailor-made
for this purpose, if you want
art-quality printouts similar
to those produced by a Tek-
tronix printer set at a low res-
olution, make sure you have
some very smooth paper on
hand. However, for far less
than the cost of this thermal
printer, you could purchase
a color ink-jet printer with
300-dpi resolution (or high-
er), and for most appiica-
tions that would be the pre-
ferred course ol action.
(ROBERT BIXBY
Fargo Elecironics
(800) 327-4622
(612) 941-9470
$995
Circle Header Service Number 449
NEC READY 425
If you're looking for NEC qual-
ity and engineering but are
new to computing and don't
have elaborate plans for ex-
panding a computer, take a
look at the NEC Ready 425,
The name Ready says it
all. Once you've unpacked
the system and made the
necessary connections, it's
ready to go. That's because
NEC has preconfigured it
and preinstalled all the soft-
ware that comes with it. If
you haven't set up a comput-
er before, don't worry NEC
inciudes a quick-setup
sheet and a video to walk
you through the steps.
Once the system's up and
running, you'll find an online
tutorial explaining how to
use your Ready. NEC pro-
vides manuals for DOS and
Windows in addition to the
Ready's first-rate user's man-
ual, v/hich is thorough, well
illustrated, and well written.
If you should run into troub-
le that you can't remedy your-
self, just dial up NEC's
ReadyRemote service,
through which NEC techni-
cians can check out your sys-
tem and help you come up
with a solution.
The Ready comes with
plenty of software, leaving
you ready to create a data-
base, a spreadsheet, or a
chart: write reports; avoid vi-
ruses; send a fax; download
a file: and use your Ready
for countless other comput-
ing activities. In addition to
MS-DOS and Windows 3.1,
you get PFS:WindowWorks,
Quicken for Windows, and
WinFax UltraLITE.
The standard hardware
leaves you ready to handle
most computing challenges.
You get SVa-inch and 5'/i-
inch high-density floppy
drives, a 170fvlB 3'/s-inch
IDE hard drive, a built-in fax/
data modem (2400 bps for
data, 9600 bps for fax trans-
mission, and 4800 bps for
fax reception), and a moni-
tor capable of 1024 x 768
pixels with 256 colors, Be-
cause the PS/2 mouse port,
keyboard port, parallel port,
serial port, and video adapt-
er are all built into the moth-
erboard, all three of the sys-
tem's full-length 16-bit slots
are available for any boards
you might wish to add. The
system comes with 4fVIB of
RAM, upgradable to 64MB
using SIMMs. You also get
1MB of video RAM for the
adapter and an upgradable
BIOS from Phoenix. Should
you ever decide to speed
up your Ready, NEC pro-
vides a press-pin socket for
an Intel overdrive processor.
I like the sleek design
and easy access (one sim-
ple cover release) of the sys-
tem box, the pieasing tactile
and auditory feedback of
the keyboard, and the com-
fortable and responsive op-
eration of the NEC mouse.
The Ready 1024 monitor per-
formed very well on the
whole. Its .28-mm dot pitch
made text easy to read for
long periods of time, and
this monitor didn't give me
the exaggerated bounce I
find on so many monitors
when I shift between text
and graphics modes.
No system is perfect for
every user, and there are
some things I missed in this
system. NEC didn't include
a reset button, you have to
request and pay shipping
and handling for floppy cop-
ies of the software, and
there are no available bays
for adding drives. If you
want a CD-ROM drive, a
tape drive, or some other
drive, you'll have to opt for
an external version. Be-
cause of the highly integrat-
ed system board and be-
cause the fax/data modem
doesn't take one of the bus
slots, the three available
slots will be enough for
many users — but not for all.
These problems can be
worked around and won't af-
fect the needs of many COM-
PUTE readers. In fact, if
your computing needs ar-
en't heavy-duty, you may
well be ready for this attrac-
tive and well-engineered sys-
tem from NEC.
MIKE HUDNALL
NEC
(800) NEC-INFO
$1 ,259 (estimaled sireet price)
Circle Reader Service Number 450
QUICKCOMM
SPIRIT II
No one writes letters any-
more. Faxes and E-mail (eiec-
tronic mail) have become
the order of the day.
QuickComm's Spirit II com-
bination fax/data modem of-
fers a low-cost way to make
your computer capable of
transmitting and receiving
both faxes and data. You
can quickiy send a letter to
fax machines or connect to
a BBS or online network for
E-mail,
There are numerous other
fax/data modems on the mar-
ket, but QuickComm's new
series offers the latest tech-
nology at low prices. The in-
Presenting Dinosaur Adventure. The award-winning fl
educational software that sends your kids on a 9
fascinating journey through information, images,
sounds and full-motion video never before available
without CD-ROM. Not only will they learn about ^
dinosaurs, but archeologicai digs, early mammals, ^
food chains, ancient plants, earth geology and more.
w, To say nothing of improving their reading, language fl
and computer skills. And you'll learn that dinosaurs
aren't just huge, pea-brained beasts. They can be the
best teachers your kids ever had. To find Dinosaur 9
Adventure, visit Comp USA, Computer City, Egghead,
Electronic Boutique, Software
Etc., Waldensoftware
or other fine stores.
To order at the
special price of
534.95, a ^15.00
savings, call us
direct at the
number below.
Every 40th caller
gets a copy free!
^Knowledge ^^^B^^^^^F''^ fl
la Adventure" ^^^^H^^B^^ ,J
1-800-4My- DINO
_,TM
REVIEWS
ternal and external Spirit II
modems are priced at $229
and $249, respectively.
They include V.42 and MNP
2-4 error correction proto-
cols and V.42bis and MNP
5 compression protocols.
MNP stands for Micro-
corn Networking Protocol. It
refers to standard protocol
methiods used by manufac-
turers of modems in provid-
ing error-free transfer of da-
ta from one computer to an-
otfier. V,42bis is a similar pro-
tocol set by the CCITT organ-
ization. These protocols en-
sure the fastest, most effi-
cient transfer speeds possi-
ble with the widest range of
other faxes and nnodems.
I tried the external version
of the Spirit. As long as
there's a serial port availa-
ble, hardware installation con-
sists of simply connecting
the fax/data modem to the
computer with the supplied
cable, plugging the phone
line into the standard modu-
lar connector on the Spirit II,
and attaching the unit's pow-
er supply. The documenta-
tion is clear, and phone sup-
port is available.
Three programs are includ-
ed with the Spirit II— the
Qmodem data communica-
tions software and both DosF-
ax Lite and WinFax Lite.
While all three programs
work well, the Spirit II also
works with other communica-
tions and fax programs. If
you already have modem
software installed, you can
continue using the program
you're familiar with white still
taking advantage of the Spir-
it ll's new technology.
In fact, after experiment-
ing with the supplied pro-
grams here, that's exactly
what I did. My regular com-
munications software — Pro-
YAM — worked just fine, as
did the many scripts pro-
grammed in over the years.
Now the good part— the
108 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
Hayes-compatible 9600-bps
modem {circa 1990) that I re-
placed with the Spirit II for
this review is in use every
day for data transfers. The
Spirit II, at the same bps
rates, was markedly faster in
both uploading and down-
loading files. The bottom
line: Modem technology has
improved a lot in the past
three years, and the Spirit li
gives you the advantage of
this improvement at a good
price.
But what about faxes?
That's the other side of this
dual-purpose device — send-
ing and receiving faxes —
and the Spirit II performs
well. The included fax soft-
ware does that for you. If
you want a fax program
with more features, there's
an upgrade offer enclosed
for either DosFax PRO or Win-
Fax PRO,
For considerably less
than the price of a separate
high-speed modem and fax
machine, you can fill both
functions by installing a Spir-
t II fax/data modem. In fact,
f you were buying it only for
ts modem capabilities, it
would still be a good deal.
RALPH ROBERTS
QuiokComnn
(800) 551-6166
(214) 732-0255
$229— internal
$249— external
Circle Reader Service Number 451
VIRTUAL PILOT
Your computer setup rivals
the best Air Force flight sim-
ulators. You've got a set of
rudder pedals down next to
your power strip, a throttle
control opposite your
mouse, and a joystick with
more buttons than the one
in a real F-18. For many
games it's the ultimate in re-
alism, but when you go to
fly a Cessna or a 747, the
combat-optimized joystick
doesn't exactly heighten the
feeling of realism.
Enter CH Products' Virtual
Pilot, an authentic flight
yoke controller. For you
nonpilots out there, a yoke
is the double-handled de-
vice resembling a steering
wheel that you find in most
private planes and commer-
cial jetliners. To bank right
or left, you simply turn the
yoke in that direction. To
dive, push the yoke forv/ard,
and to puli up, pull the yoke
toward you.
The Virtual Pilot is a
large, cream-colored box
that clamps onto your com-
puter desk or table. A full-
size control yoke protrudes
from the front of the box,
and a throttle control sits on
the top right. A slider on the
front of the yoke controls ai-
leron trim, while a wheel on
the front of the box handles
elevator trim. Dual fire but-
tons on the front of the yoke
can easily be pressed with
your thumbs while you main-
tain full control. The yoke sim-
ulates joystick 1 on a PC,
while the throttle simulates
the y-axis of a second joys-
tick and can be used for en-
gine power control in most
simulations. The Virtual Pilot
worked fine when plugged
in with my ThrustMaster rud-
der pedals, making for an ul-
trarealistic flight simulation
control environment.
So how does the Virtual Pi-
lot compare to a joystick? It
certainly makes Microsoft
Flight Simulator and Sub-
Logic ATP give a truer flight
experience. Most combat
games, such as F-15 Strike
Eagle III. are easier to con-
trol with my CH FiightStick
joystick, since rapid, jerky
movements are needed in
combat sIms. A notable ex-
ception is LucasArts' X-
Wing, which seems to lend it-
self well to yoke control, es-
pecially in the training scenar-
ios, If you play driving
games on your PC, you'll
love Virtual Pilot! The driving
experience is much more re-
alistic when you can steer
by turning a yoke — there's
just something about a joy-
stick-controlled Porsche
that doesn't cut it.
An updated version. Virtu-
al Pilot Pro, will add a coolie
hat for view control.
DENNY ATKIN
CH Products
(800) 624-5804
(619) 598-2518
$109.95
Circle Reader Service Njmber 452 lD
SPEAK UP!
Is there a hardware or softw/are product
you'd like to see reviewed in COMPUTE?
Let us know by calling
(900) 884-8681, extension. 7010103.
The call will cost 95 cents per minute,
you must be 18 or older,
and you must use a touch-tone phone.
Sponsored by Pure Entertainment,
P.O. Box 186, Hollywood, California 90078.
lb
D
□
K
vij
Derro and Test contains 350 megs d PC Shareware & PO software, Indudmg Specia! CO-ROM Benctimartt & TesI Utilities written
by our programming staff, and NOT available on any other CD-ROM Discs. Our Special Test Utilities measure througtiput as well as
access times in a reliable and consistent manner (or a meaningfull real-wortd benchmark tor CD drives, The Disc and Interface
Software are fully functional (even for BBS use) and not crippled in any way. When purchased seperately Mega Demo & Test is
S14.00 plus 36.00 for S&H - However for a Umited Time Only this Demo and Test CD-ROM Disc is Free with any CD Disc purctiase.
These are the Only Shareware & PD CD-ROM Discs with both a DOS, anda \/\^nclows3. 1 'Hypertext' Retrieval Interface. Plus Ail
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Over 600 MegaBytes
Many Not On FA0 123
256 color SVGA Gifs
With No BBS Logos!
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Fli's, Gl's, & Dl's,
Includes Games, &
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Retail Price S79.00 ea.
How. for a I Imftad Time Gnlft
$39.00 ea.
fao.
Volumes 1, 2, and 3
For Adults Only
■Wife Proof Labels"
256 color SVGA Gifs,
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Includes Games, &
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3 Disc Set 1,892 Megs
Witti Over 16,180 Files!
Retail Price
all/3 $199.00
Ken, toi a llmlleil Time Onlf!
lull 111 all 3 tar onlr!
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PC Au'o
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Our Newest Releasel
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PROFIT PRESS, 2956 N. Campbell Ave., Tucson, AZ 8571 9
Information (602) 577-9696 FAX (602) 577-9624
Profit Press BBS (602) 299-0693 FAO BBS (602) 577-6969
SONY Caddies $4.75 with any Non Demo CD purchasel
The prices listed atxive do not Include stiipping and handling.
Special shipping and shipping to foreign counlnes is available.
For More Information or Questions Call (602) 577-9696
ORDERS ONLY! Call Toll Free
1-800-843-7990
12
MamiCa^
Circle Reader Service Number 256
COMPUTE'S Product Mart
is a special advertising section designed to
benefit you, tine PC direct marketer, by letting
you advertise directly to the readers that buy.
We offer:
• Marketing Assistance
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Space closing: The 15t!i of the third month
preceding issue date (e.g. May issue closes
February 15th). Space limited to a first-
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For ad specifications or more information call
Lucille Dennis
Telephone (707)451-8209
Fax (707) 451-4269
Caff now to reserve your spacel
Artificial Intelligence
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Grid Master
Pro Series
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S 99.95
199.95
149.95
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150.00
Football Special 499.95
(Includes all items)
Shipping 450
This year Prof Jones has
added a sophisticated Neu-
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f
Call to Order, or for a FREE Catalog.
1-800-553-2256
PROF. JONES, INC. ■ 1940 W. Siate St.. Boise, Idaho 83702
THOROUGHBRED • GREYHOUND • STANDARDBRED
circle Reader Service Number 119
FREE 486 Computer
Color Monitor, Printer
You can earn $2,000 to $10,000 per month
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l'800O43'8014, ext. 303
{in Indiana 317-7584415) Fax to: (317) 758-5827 Or Write:
Computer Business Services, Inc., CBSI Plara, Ste. 303, Sheridan, IN 46069
SHAREWARE
fof IBM COMPATIBLE
ALL normal items $1.25
Same Price for 3,5" or 5.25"
Shipping & Handling: S2/ofder
VISA / MASTERCARD
REGULAR ITEMS $1.25
F-PROTECT SUPERB Virus acanning/cleanina
5CANV1Q4 McAffee's Latest Virus scanner.
We will *Np most lacent version BVBilablai
W0LF3D Super 3D uiew Qame. The besti IVGAI
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CATABS13 Calaiomb Abyss - Ukc W0LF3D even
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P.O. BOX 4426
Star City, WV 26504
1-800-PC-DISCS
This extraordinary program
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• A Business You Can Be Proud Of
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• Turnkey Package - Computer,
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CALL TODAY for
INFORiVlATION
214-248-9100
3216 ComraanJer Dt,
Suile 10! • Oept 27
Coirolllon, TX 75006
Circle Reader Service Number 174
Kicolt N. Allen
MUei
Ot/lWS
warn Bn Gro 42iii45lb
iwt* \ Nvii Allm
S2 itain 9trHt
Dillis, n 7SS
(2H! 535-1212
Hm
^ ^ Learn ^
Computers!
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Learn tine per-
sonal compu-
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Free booklet.
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The School OF
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606.'i Rosewcll iioad
Dcpt. KK680, AiUiniii, GA 30328
Circle Reader Service Number 183
-J
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P\^. RU6B6R STAMPS
^>*o'^'' for your oiun i;se or q
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Self-Inking and traditional
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]flCKSON MARKING PRODdCTS CO., INC.
Brownsville R.d„ D-iOO, Mt. Vernon, IL 62364
Phone: 800-851-4945 Fax; 618-242-773!
Circle Reader Service Number 231
r — — — — — — -I
I Be a computer
repair expert!
' Proiessioiial-level home
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Free career literature.
, 800 223 4542
Address _
Oly
. PlinilfC L
, 2il>.
110
I The School of PC Repair
■ 6065 Rosewcll Road
I Depl. JK68rK(2. Allanla. GA 3032S
Circle Reader Service Number 111
With Best Perainaitzed Books own a lifetime license for a patented
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friends and relatives join
in on e\'ery adventure. An
exteasive array of titles
appeal to a wide range of ages and tastes, and include."; well-written stories on
fcligioiisiind ethnic themes that reinforce family values.
No computer experience is necessary to
'^ ^'wrj^^i create Best Personalized Books. A compre-
' ^ ^'^ ^'* hcnsive training manual shows you how to
petsonallze a bcxik in just minutes. And
■ £ with Best's strong marketing program, you'll
find selling options are limitkss. You can
W'Otk at home, on location at malls, ciaft
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i^H conjuncrion with local businesses or fund-
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^ Strong dealer support is a priority, as is the
y commitment to helping you make ex'en bigger
. .)' profits with other popular personalized prixiucts
4r including clocks, audio cassette
For just $1495 start your own hi3hly profitable business
creatin3 personalized children's books witti a computer.
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Best Pcrsonaliicd Books lnc« (ti4) 3SS-38M
475 Best Penonalixed Plaxa • 4350 Sisma Drive • Oallas, Texas 75944 Call or write for free sample book and information kit
Best Petsonalized Boob holds US patent 5213461 to produce personalized books. Barbie'*', Bugs Bunny'", The Looney Tunes'*', the N.F.L."' and associated
trademarks are owned and used under exclusive licenses from Mattel Toys, Inc., Warner Bros, and ihe National Football League.
Get your kids the
New MAte[ game!
SkMATH
But i*itli» retail ffke ef enly ^29.95 it
won't: bi»tr:alnl«,w ftm pockotbookf
^ir / tuciuj-uf t>
Each of the fiye levels have hew
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«iifi«n Kids
\fvx the fjerce Draaon. Scorch
Match tile equations wB
dodging Ihe firebalk in"
dazzling arcade st>'le giune,
Alterttion Parertis
Helps kids improvf addition, subiraction.
I" Create voiir uwn moat multiplicatiun, and division skills
• Track Ki.i;li «:ores for comparing* Sep,irate eqiiadon and dexterity coatruis .
widi friends allow kids of all abilities to tiy\iy thii game !
t Experience 256 color animations » Provides positive reinforremait
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•■TT'T"'"'"''''""''"
yu^kuw
"IfllLDREM'S BOOKS
'". fr^- vy<t EUa. Tci> hail I
^ti'Sr^'j^'"'-^
'V&Uf' ^i^ 'P'^<^
• With our process and a computer you can instantly produce the highest
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• All books are hardbound with full color illustrations and laser quality
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• Very simple to operate and highly profitable.
• Only a limited number of dealerships available.
for a complete information packet call today.
:(3:l 4} 248-9100
D&K ENTERPRISES, INC. • 3216 COMMANDER DRIVE
SUITE 101 • DEPT 27 • CARROLLTON, TEXAS 75006
111
SeXXy Softwrare
TM '*■ £^:" %..
SeXXv OISKS-
SeXXcapades" . . . The GAME
Tho First Adult Game with TRUE SOUND
and 256 Color VGA Graphics
J^^
SeXXy Software
SeXXv CD-ROMS-
The gama everyone has b&en waiibg lor. For ihai evening you won": lorgm with a ioved ofie at group o', very dosD
Irienos, Fulliil ywr seiijaJ desires. Find our ho* your partner would reailly like to malfe lave. I Over SO Cofor VGA Scenes ■
Re&l Voices Guide ffifl Action - Fof epLa/ Option ■ Play wth 2-8 Ctos© Friends, Now supports Sound B^st&r"' cardsl
$79-Speeiai0tTer, S69 wjlh purcfiase Ql3nvCC(]i5<./VGA3n.d ?iard eUsK required- shipped on hia^ densfty disks.
CONNOiSSBUR COLLECTION ALL NEW! in 2S6 Color VGA!!
All mcv es tuvs £oijr«a - tfa^ L^ru s'ajxisjd speaker cr S«j:>dea5tBr^^
SiKXl Dirt (CC1 ■ * YOU BE THE STAR utTiM BRST CUSTOMIZABLE mow ailiiM you In unia the Mug and Itis tile.
SiXXl DItk IC« ■ THE FIRST SOUND MOVIE) Tlia (irsl CDKipliter nnove wilt) SOUND. S«« its incitd** J56 color VGA graphics while
nearr>a Ihe Klual Sial M OURS EXCLUSIVtLVi
SiXXf Diih ICC3 • TH£ BEST MOVIE! TiTfl best comouler tnmie available. Onf/ tor the seiious collector. 256 slunnino VGA colore
StXXy Dith ICC4 • VDLUFTUOUS MaVIEwlthSounilSeeardheara symphony of G>ccpliona]ly proportixied women.
St)0<j Dlik ICC5 ■ ODDITIES MOVIE Willi! SOLinat S« ™n o! mcrediblE proponjMis and women wilh jniguc al:ililies - UNBEU EVABLE!
Prices: 1 Ma vie S29. 3 Movies S65. 5 Movies S94
Now You Can Have Your Own GIRLFRIEND"
. . . a sensuous woman living in your computer!
GIFUFHIEND is Be 6:51 VIHTUAl WOMAN Yea can «Tzh her. n'k la her. ask her questora min'S'. w» her. O.'sr 1 M actiiat VGA pho-
tographs allow you to see your OJltlhEfld as yo^ ask her to wear diffranl ouUils, and nulde hf r irio dJlIerent seiual attjvilies As 3 irue artill-
cta] inldltgEfica program, GIRLFRIEND slarts wiih i 30CO wofd uocabul^fy and actually GROWS ffie n»re you use it She will rementjer
your naiT^. your biithday in your \ifii i^ disliVES. GIRLFRIEND corner Mth the t^^se sctlware ar,d GIRLFRIEND LISA. Addrnonal Qds will
be added TTiiE prafliam refluiies 7-lOMS ol tree space.
SG3 GWLFHIEND - Special Inlroduclory Price S69. FREE ■ Second GWLFfllEND Just AddeO.
ORIGINAL SeXXy DISKS'^" ■ 6 disk set with iTiovies, pictures, games $32
ADD S4 S.'H • 3.5' Or FOREIGN ORDERS ADD SIDISK ■ IN PA ADD TAX ■ MUST STATE AGE OVER 21 YEARS.
VISA/MC Orders Only: 800-243-1515 Ext. 600FI / 24HRS I 7 DAYS
Or CK'MO la: Sexy Sofr^rare, P.O. Bon 220, Dept, 600FI. Hatfield, PA 19440 FAX [215)597-2571
SeXXcBPBdes"
The MOVIE
First eoOMB Movie for tun PC
The most incredibia NEW CO-ROM Piodudl The FIRST comrielB 600 MB MOVIE with SOUND lof the
IBM PC The movie feahire^ a group ol friends playing our SeXXcapades game. The aUicn is tiol and
kiciedible! You wdl see un!>slievab1e uses ol a maose and joysHclL This beiulitui 256 ccJol VGA m^e
Mis 3/4 of Bie scrKn. You ■rll need a! teast a 3e6SX computer You can pause i Scan as on a TCR,
OURS EXCLUSIVELY. Windows NOT REOUIBED - NO HARD DISK SPACE USEO
Price: S9^ or buy with olhqr CD-ROKtS IwlQw for a$ low as S4g.
S»XXy CD-ROMS
SeXXy CD #1 tHoimiim Hun X« toUctsn - E» MB t( action mil: S!6S VGA pciupts. 87 niif.e5. 674 slo-
ra.tsnslMETOCOMP/lllE!
SeXXy CDCan BdusiWMlleafift coiillihno over 90C SLWt VGA piClires(1024t 766 i2S6) and cvef
4}0 VGA pictures (E40k 48^x256) These are ptcEures Hal cannot tn found inywfiere el»!The women
a^dlfiec;';alir/areslJRring
SeXXy CO « ano;tier CfiUectionol ovtrSSO IWB of ine hetlosl pcluies available. OverS.OCO VGA pictures.
TD-^es arc a:ites that wll hme yoL spending dj^ just try.ng Id see it all!
MENU DRIVEN V1EV1ING - NO DUPLICATION /P11ICE: SK each (SS9 wilti inyCCdiskor
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MIX St MATCH CD-ROMS
FlmlS: i99eech or 3 torS:99;
Then: S69anch or 3 tor SI49
SeXXy FIX"*
BUSTY BABES • ECSTACY • ASIAN LADIES
HOT FIX 2, 3 4 4 • PC PIX 1 . ! i 3
TflOPlCAl. GIRLS ■ STORM 3
EROTIC GIRLS • 7TH HEAVEN
EROTIC ENCOUraERS ■ ADULT PALETTE
MV PRIVATE COLLECTION 1 h !
ANIMATION FANTASIES 1 & ?■ PORKWVARE
SoXXy FUX"
SaXXEipidti . . . TT1E MOVIE
(see auove]
Yho totow^ Qutliln'o nowos roqi, re
VVntfowa 3.t a-d Mu^d ti-fl
NldHrwATCH INTERACTIVE
CD-nOM MOVIE DISK
HOUSE OF SLEEPINQ BEAUTIES
350ms Internal Di1v» Kll ■ $249 (wilh 3 CO purchase).
WhereAdults
ComeToPlay!
■ Local NLrnibos Cowiipg 700 U.Sl Cflisl
I CB-Style Group and Private Chatl
■ lOOO's Of Shareware Progiramsl
■ Bmlnc33 and Rs^sonal ScrvJccat
■ TVavcl & Fli^t Scheduling with OAGI
■ Giant Message Forums & Classlflcdsl
■ Live Multlpiaycr Gamcsl
I Matchmaker Dating Database!
■ Designed For Adult Useral
FoK SicNvr, More Iwormatios, Or A
Local Number Near Yov Caij.
818 358S968
BY MODEM, aimi-3ll2l2*00 BAUD
Circle Reader Service Number 141
BEATiHElOrnRY
Gail Howard's ALL NfWSmart Luck®
ADVANTAGE PLUS "
Use ADVANFAGE PlUS" & you'll tiosh all vour other lottery
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• NO OTHES SOFTWARE HAS MOM SCIENTIfIC TOOLS FOR
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U Icito Jackpot Winners Won $78J MilEion dollan
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^r SMART LUCKS SOFIWARE
~j-7i Deot C-11.P.Oeoi15l'?'Viiile Plains. NY 10602
E±3 600-876-GAIL (4245) or 914-761-2333
circle Reader Service (dumber 109
Circle Reader Service Numt]er 116
mnisimiifs^
For IBM/MS-DOS:
SUPER SIMULATOR SALE!
GUNSHIP 2000 VGA
-or-
F-117A STEALTH VGA
AwanJ winners from Wicfoprose
YOUR CHOICE $25 each
Available on 5.25'oi:iy.
LAND, SEA 9. AIR SUNOLEll
OHLYS13.5D
Includes: Pirolesf Airtjome
Ranger L Gunship. 5 25' only
SIERRA DEALS SIS EACH
ilANHUNTER 1 OR 2, MIXED UP
MOTHER GOOSE, FIBEHAWX
HOYLES BOOK OF GAfJES 2
MARVEL TRILOSY
ONLY »19,5(
lndu(}es: Dr. Doom's Revenge
Punisher S X-Men. 5 25' only.
ADULTS ONLY FUN
Sex Vrife.is liom Space S14.50
Sek Olympir^ S16,iO
CREDIT CARD ORDERS
S25 MINIMUM
1-800-67B-6B1 6
QfOeis Only, please I
GEQWQRK3 SPECIAL DEAL
GEOWORK^ WRITER SIS
GE0W0RK5 DESKTOP 515
GEOWORKS DESIGNER SI 5
-Of- GET ALL 3 FOR 130
SUPER SIERRA BUNDLE $30
Includes: A-10 TANK KILLER.
HEART OF CHINA & STELLAR 7
, CHEAP DEALS t5 EACH
^ulnjn. 5paco Hsmej, Slafquake
My Grand Piantj, Bal Gamic.
Calendiir^ & Staljonary, T/acke;,
Slreel Figtilmg Man., Crossbow,
Magic Jofir^son Ba&Xelball,
Gambler, Human Biology, Mind
Dance -or- U.S, Geography.
HATTl.FCHFaS ? i19 tio
COMPSULT
P O. BOX 5160
SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA 93403
W£ ALSO CARRY APPLE. MAC, C64I12B. AMIGA. ATARI & MDRE
Td onder, sBrdciiaci or Jione^ordef to theabove address. Caljlornfa orders
muil indide 1.2^% salies lai- All oidefs musl rnclude shinpinci charges ol
S5 fo/U.S.A.. sa for Canada, sr Jt5fBr InlernsrionBl. Forojr complele
catalDgseinii i2 in U.S. poilage slarrpsorcBsh. A calaloq fs sent FREE with
3ny Drier Be sure ios;ecif|yDLrcoiiputerl>pe&disk sua when orderir:g.
For III i/iquiriei & itfditionil in larrnitian. call {8051 544^661 G.
Circle Reader Service Number 150
IBM & MAC SOFTWARE
CATALOG
32 Pages! ASP Member
SOFTSHOPPE, INC
^ ft P.O. Box 247 f|o
ARTESIA, CA 90701
Tel: (310) 802-1333
FAX; (310) 802-1494
Toll-Free— 24 Hrs.
1-800-851-8089
Circle Reader Service Numt»r 126
^
i^>M!^^
h
C D ROMS
ALL CATEGORIES
BUSINESS-GAMES-CLIPART-GRAPHICS
RELIGION-EDUCATIONAL-HEALTH-
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CALL FOR LATEST USTIMGS
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V1SA-MC-AM-DIS-M0tJEY ORDER
tjlOST ORDERS SHIPPED 24 HRS.
P.O. BOX 216. LAFOMTAINE, IN.iV6940
Circle Reader Service Number 121
This spi
is seen by
more than
300,000
readers
each month,
112
J^a&evJW^ ULTIMATE In MULTIMEDIA!
NOW AVAILABLE WITH VOICE RECOGNITION
Sound Board CD-ROM
AdLib; SOUND BLASTER~PR0 II, COVOx'and DISK CAPACITY: 630MB -modes-
DISNEY SOUND SOURCE COMPATIBLE. DATA TRANSFER: 1 TSKB/SEC-hooej-
OPL3 FM STEREO SYNTHESIZER GENEFWTING ACCESS TIME: 350MS
20 VOICES WITH 4 OPERATORS. INTERFACE: AT
STEREO PRODUCTION AND PLAYBACK OF MEMORY BUFFER; 32KB
SOUNDS FROM FOUR SOUND SOURCES. SOFTWARE
Sampling RATE OF 4KH2 TO 44. 1 KHZ. windows~3.i drivers. windows~digital
ADPCM DECOMPRESSION UP TO 4: 1 . AUDIO TRANSPORT. MONOLOGUE. SOUND SCRIPT,
BUILT-IN MIDI AND GAME INTERFACE. JUKEBOX. SOUND TRACKS AND MICROSOFT
4 WATT AMPUFIER DRIVEN THROUGH 2 SPEAl^RS. '^'^ E"E'^S'°N.
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CD TfTLES
TOOLWORKS
l.Z.?,'^?^^^^'"™^*' ENCYCLOPEDIA: 2t VOLUME SET. 33,000
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'?ST^§-S3.\^™^- fiT PICTURES, 35 MINUTES OF VIDEO AND 35
MEMORY BUFFFR- §9KR MINUTES OF SOUNDS.
MEMORY BUFFER. 32KB WORLD ATLAS: 240 DETAILED VGA
taOFTWARE color maps
WlNDOWS-3.1 DRIVERS. WINDOWS-DIGITAL MS ATLAS- FULL COLOR MAPS OF ALL
AUDIO TRANSFORT. MONOLOGUE. SOUND SCRIPT,, hl^gT^'"'^^- ^^^'- '^^^^^ ^'^^ °^ *'"'-
rn''FX-?p''N.:?nr° "^'^'^"^ *"" "'^''°^°'^ GAME PACK 11: CheSSM ASTER 2100,
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Complete package
Gallery, backgammon a robot tank.
4,, IS ALJSO AVAILABLE IN SCSI CD-ROM '270ms ■ 300KB/SEC."
MICR(
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GAMES • KIDS
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1397 DARK AGES: PRINCE OF DESTINY (EGA)
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3234 CORNCOB 3D Flight Simulation (EGA)
205 PC POOL Rack'em Upl
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3357 JILL OF THE JUNGLE (HD, VGA)
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3841 HOME PLAN Draw your home
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119
NEWS BITS
Robert Bixby
REST AND
RELAXATION
New software
and hardware for
computer
lovers everywtiere
Time to recover from back-to-
back compuhypefests — COM-
DEX in Atlanta and CES in Ctii-
cago. For me, COMDEX was
boring. Favorite quote: "The
problem withi COMDEX isn't
so much infoglut as substance
anorexia." Said by: me.
Among ttie brigtit lights
were object-oriented paint pro-
grams from Micrografx (the lat-
est version of COMPUTE
Cfioice Award winner Picture
Publisher) and Fractal Design
(an add-on to COMPUTE
Choice Award winner Fractal
Design Painter called Painter/
X2). These paint programs al-
low you to paint or import ob-
jects on layers independent of
the painting surface.
Also at COMDEX I saw an
up-to-the-minute release of Mi-
crografx Designer with a
sharp new interface and tons
of new capabilities, and a dye-
sublimation add-on for the
Primera color printer that al-
lows the printer to create pho-
tographic-quality color print-
outs on special coated paper.
The add-on is only $249.95
(making the final cost of the
printer just $1 ,244.95). But get
ready for a Kodak moment.
The special paper and "rib-
bon" for dye sublimation print-
ing boost the $0.45 cost of an
ordinary Primera printout to
$3.00 per page.
CES, on the other hand,
was not boring. But it was re-
ally, really, really, really loud.
Ordinarily, you can maintain
your hearing at CES through
the simple expedient of avoid-
ing the cardiac arrhythmia-
inducing car stereo area, but
ever since sound moved to
the PC, the CES floor has be-
come a kind of blastfest, be-
tween the karaoke vendors,
rock bands, and computer
game sound effects. Each vol-
ume control has to be turned
120 COMPUTE SEPTEMBER 1993
to 1 1 to overwhelm the noise
pollution from the next booth.
Hot stuff? Lots. Like Micro-
soft's new Flight Simulator,
which brings greater realism
to the landscape, and Space
Simulator, which lets you fly to
distant galaxies — even gener-
ating planets to form undiscov-
ered solar systems. Microsoft
is also releasing a collection of
nostalgia arcade games for
Windows, including Asteroids,
Missile Command, Centipede,
and (a game I never thought
Vi'ould make it to the PC) Tem-
pest. These games feature ear-
ly-eighties-style graphics that
will surely bring a tear to the
eye of every erstwhile quarter-
pumping arcade junkie. Multi-
media Golf features Pro Notes
from COMPUTE Books' Pro-
Links: The Official Guide to
Links and Microsoft Golfoy for-
mer COMPUTE editor Peter
Scisco.
Great parties: Dynamix
chose the Chicago Museum
of Science and Industry
(home port of the only WWII
German U-boat in the Western
Hemisphere) to showcase Ac-
es over Europe and Graue
Wolfe, its new convoy-sinking
sub Sim. Knowledge Adven-
ture hired the Shedd Aquari-
um for the announcement of
its latest how-the-heck-did-
they-do-it floppy-based multi-
media product, Undersea Ad-
venture. Each introduction par-
ty had excellent food. And
drink. The work of a journalist
is tough, but somebody has to
do it.
IBM is bundling a raft of Dis-
ney products with its latest PS/
1 series of computers. The
computer giant will also be put-
ting a lot of effort into periph-
erals designed to be easy to
install on any machine (not
just IBM machines). Watch for
Windsurfer, an Mwave-based
do-it-all card with sound, fax-
ing, voice mail, and so on.
Maxis will be releasing
SimCity 2000, an upgrade to
its addictive SimCiy game,
that allows you to import your
"SimCity 1 .0" cities for further
development. Complete with
contour mapping (and lots of
terraforming tools), SimCity
2000's angled view makes
your cities stand out in three di-
mensions. New convenience
features abound.
MECC is releasing a busi-
ness simulator, DinoPark Ty-
coon, for budding entrepre-
neurs. It lets you develop your
own Jurassic Park-like theme
park while coping with budg-
ets, crowd appeal, and ecolo-
gy. Davidson is releasing Al-
geBlaster and a very exciting
upgrade to MathBlaster, plus
Kid CAD, a three-dimensional
architecture program special-
ly designed for children. The
tlearning Company is adding
Math Rabbit and a new Read-
er Rabbit for the prereader
called Reader Rabbit's Ready
for Letters, plus a new adven-
ture called Treasure Math-
Storm. The competition is heat-
ing up nicely in educational
software, yielding better, deep-
er, richer products across the
board. What a great time to be
small!
Sega and AT&T are collab-
orating on an online game-play-
ing network. Details were
sketchy, but this could give Se-
ga a definite edge in the
videogame-machine war.
Whatever your interests,
your favorite games will prob-
ably appear in multimedia for-
mat on CD-ROM and on much-
hyped 3D0 (if software sup-
port is any predictor of suc-
cess, 3D0 may already be
over the top). Virtually every-
thing is being upgraded to
multimedia and making use of
the huge capacity of CD-
ROM, which looks like the dis-
tribution medium of choice.
And to all the manufactur-
ers t left out, watch for upcom-
ing reviews. Despite the cold
Lake Michigan wind, it was a
hot time in Chicago. O
Have it delivered straight to jonr front door!
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and phone number. Circle numbers that corre-
spond to the key numbers appearing on adver-
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CARDS VAUD ONLY UNTIL EXPIRATION DATE.
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COMPUTE'S FREE PRODUCT mfORMTfOH SERVICE
Name .
Address .
Cf^y
Country _
. Slale/Provinca .
ZIP.
_ Phone -
A Whal typa computer(sl 00 you own? 1 1 486 PC n 386 PC n 386SX PC u 286 PC
a Other EM/PC Compaltole □ Laptop/Notebook
B Ai home, do you use yotr compular mosUy for g Persortal Fir-ancft 1 1 WorkHome Bjsinass
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D WTiicn onhne sefvce(s) tJo ytXJ use"? i: CorrpuServe uGEn* n Amarca Oniine n Prodigy
TS 16 17 '&
E Whai otlief corrpuWr magazines do you subscribe Id? G PC/Cofnpyiiitg - MPC li^biid
. Compuiet Gaming Wqj-W :^ Home OHice Computing n PC Magazine .iPCVrtnltf
Z1 22 22 i»
F Which Graphical User Inierlace do ^ou use? a Wirxiows u GwWbrks 1 1 Olhsf [i None
Z5 se ?7 7S
G Toial liine you sparvtl readlr*g COMPUTE? d < 30 min a 30+ min : 1 60+ mln ij 90f rnin
M 30 11 32
H. Do you regjiarty puichaae hardwara/sotware as a resuH ol ads in COMPUTE? 'j Yes
I Do you own a d CD-ttom Orive n Sound Card D Fax/MoOeni Board
H 3S 36
J. Vfliat IS your total hojsefwid income? a*$30.000 p$3O.OO0-^ n $50,000+ nS75.000-c
37 31 » 10
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■HI « 43 "
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