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Silicon Times Report Issue 0404
*---== CPU NEWSWIRE ONLINE MAGAZINE ==---*
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"The Original 16/32bit Online Magazine"
_____________________________________
from
STR Publishing Inc.
""""""""""""""""""
January 26, 1990 No.4.04
=======================================================================
CPU NewsWire Online Magazine¿
featuring
STReport¿~ Online
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Jacksonville, Florida
32205 ~ 6672
R.F. Mariano
Publisher - Editor
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> 01/26/90: CPU Newswire¿ #404 The Original 16/32 bit Online Magazine!
----------------------------
- The Editor's Podium - CPU REPORT
- BBS TERRORISM - EYEWITNESS REPORT NAMM
- PC-DITTO II (sigh) - WOA/1990 Anaheim
- DynaCADD 1.7 - CPU Confidential
---===*** LOWBALLERS DESTROY ATARI'S IMAGE ***===---
--==** ATARI TO PASS ON SPRING COMDEX?? **==--
--==* MAC LAPTOP CHOKES ON MIDI! *==--
==========================================================================
CPU NEWSWIRE¿
"UP-TO-DATE News and Information"
-* FEATURING *-
Current Events, Up to Date News, Hot Tips, and Information
Hardware - Software - Corporate - R & D - Imports
==========================================================================
CPU/STR's support BBS, NODE # 350 invites systems using Forem ST BBS to
participate in Forem BBS's F-Net mail network. Or, Please call # 350
direct at 904-786-4176, and enjoy the excitement of exchanging ideas about
the Atari ST computers through an excellent International ST Mail Network.
==========================================================================
AVAILABLE ON: COMP-U-SERVE ~ DELPHI ~ GENIE ~ BIX
==========================================================================
> The Editor's Podium¿
As we hail an end to January and 1/3 of the first quarter of 1990,
what have we seen? Well for starters, the Lynx was very well received by
those able to find and purchase this little jewel. The STE was warmly
welcomed in all parts of the world except the USA, hmmm another punch in
the nose of the US Userbase. Whomever is allowing this continual insult
and outrage to occur must go. Use the revolving door for some real good
one time. Enough of this harping, everybody can see for themselves at
this point as it is painfully obvious Sam and Atari apparently had NO
intention of keeping any of the promises made at the very last online
conference he merely told us what we wanted to hear. tsk.tsk.tsk.
The Lynx may very well carry Atari through 1990, now it appears that
there are no less than eight LCD manufacturers wooing Atari for the deal
to make them use in the Lynx. Six are reported to be mediocre and two are
top quality. Anyone wanna take bets as to which is selected?
The new control panel (X) and its CPX modules should prove to push
Atari and its software technology to the forefront of creativity and ease
of use for the developer corps. Time will tell. In this issue we present
an in depth overview of the NAMM show, and many other interesting and
exclusive items of interest.
Thanks again for your strong support,
Ralph.......
ps; Next Week, the story behind FaST Technology....
**********************************************************************
:HOW TO GET YOUR OWN GENIE ACCOUNT:
_________________________________
To sign up for GEnie service: Call: (with modem) 800-638-8369.
Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that).
Wait for the U#= prompt.
Type: XTX99587,CPUREPT then, hit RETURN.
**** SIGN UP FEE WAIVED ****
The system will now prompt you for your information.
THE GENIE ATARI ST ROUNDTABLE - AN OVERVIEW
___________________________________________
The Roundtable is an area of GEnie specifically set aside for owners and
users of Atari ST computers, although all are welcome to participate.
There are three main sections to the Roundtable: the Bulletin Board, the
Software Library and the Real Time Conference area.
The Bulletin Board contains messages from Roundtable members on a variety
of Topics, organized under several Categories. These messages are all
Open and available for all to read (GEnie Mail should be used for private
messages).
If you have a question, comment, hot rumor or an answer to someone else's
question, the Bulletin Board is the place to share it.
The Software Library is where we keep the Public Domain software files
that are available to all Roundtable members. You can 'download' any of
these files to your own computer system by using a Terminal Program which
uses the 'XMODEM' file-transfer method. You can also share your favorite
Public Domain programs and files with other Roundtable members by
'uploading' them to the Software Library. Uploading on GEnie is FREE, so
you are encouraged to participate and help your Roundtable grow.
The Real Time Conference is an area where two or more Roundtable members
may get together and 'talk' in 'real-time'. You can participate in
organized conferences with special guests, drop in on our weekly Open
COnference, or simply join in on an impromptu chat session. Unlike
posting messages or Mail for other members to read at some later time,
everyone in the Conference area can see what you type immediately, and can
respond to you right away, in an 'electronic conversation'.
**********************************************************************
> CPU REPORT¿
==========
Issue # 51
by Michael Arthur
Remember When....
In 1980, a newly formed company called Apollo Computer introduced
the first workstation, the Domain DN100, with characteristics such as an
integrated network and a $60,000 price tag, and when, in 1982, Sun
Microsystems introduced its first workstation, naming itself after the
Stanford University Network terminal?
CPU Systems Roundup¿ XXII
=========================
Theories behind Graphical User Interfaces in Computers
------------------------------------------------------
In 1988, Tim Oren wrote a series of articles called the
"Professional GEM" series, in order to teach aspiring ST GEM programmers
needed tips on the internals of writing GEM Applications. In this essay,
Tim Oren has provided a great source of knowledge about both the very
ideas that GEM and Mac Finder are based on, and information that could be
very helpful in designing User Interfaces for applications. His article
is shown unchanged....
ANTIC PUBLISHING INC.
COPYRIGHT 1988
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION.
Professional GEM by Tim Oren
Column #8 - User Interfaces, Homily #1
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
In response to a number of requests, this installment of ST PRO GEM
will be devoted to examining a few of the principles of computer/human
interface design, or "religion" as some would have it. I'm going to
start with basic ergonomic laws, and try to draw some conclusions
which are fairly specific to designing for the ST. If this article
meets with general approval, further "homilies" may appear at
irregular intervals as part of the ST PRO GEM series.
For those who did NOT ask for this topic, it seems fair to explain
why your diet of hard-core technical information has been interrupted
by a sermon! As a motivater, we might consider why some programs are
said by reviewers to have a "hot" feel (and hence sell well!) while
others are "confusing" or "boring".
Alan Kay has said that "user interface is theatre". I think we may
be able to take it further, and suggest that a successful program
works a bit of magic, persuading the user to suspend his disbelief and
enter an imaginary world behind the screen, whether it is the
mathematical world of a spreadsheet, or the land of Pacman pursued by
ghosts.
A reader of a novel or science fiction story also suspends
disbelief to participate in the work. Bad grammar and clumsy plotting
by the author are jarring, and break down the illusion. Similarly, a
programmer who fails to pay attention to making his interface fast and
consistent will annoy the user, and distract him from whatever care
has been lavished on the functional core of the program.
CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE
Before launching into the discussion of user interface, I should
mention that the general treatment and many of the specific research
results are drawn from Card, Newell, and Moran's landmark book on the
topic, which is cited at the end of the article. Any errors in
interpretation and application to GEM and the ST are entirely my own,
however.
FINGERTIPS
We'll start right at the user's fingers with the basic equation
governing positioning of the mouse, Fitt's Law, which is given as
T = I * LOG2( D / S + .5)
where T is the amount of time to move to a target, D is the distance
of the target from the current position, and S is the size of the
target, stated in equivalent units. LOG2 is the base 2 (binary)
logarithm function, and I is a proportionality constant, about 100
milliseconds per bit, which corresponds to the human's "clock rate"
for making incremental movements.
We can squeeze an amazing amount of information out of this formula
when attempting to speed up an interface. Since motion time goes up
with distance, we should arrange the screen with the usual working
area near the center, so the mouse will have to move a smaller
distance on average from a selected object to a menu or panel.
Likewise, any items which are usually used together should be placed
together.
The most common operations will have the greater impact on speed,
so they should be closest to the working area and perhaps larger than
other icons or menu entries. If you want to have all other operations
take about the same time, then the targets farthest from the working
area should be larger, and those closer may be proportionately
smaller.
Consider also the implications for dialogs. Small check boxes are
out. Large buttons which are easy to hit are in. There should be
ample space between selectable items to allow for positioning error.
Dangerous options should be widely separated from common selections.
MUSCLES
Anyone who has used the ST Desktop for any period of time has
probably noticed that his fingers now know where to find the File
menu. This phenomenon is sometimes called "muscle memory", and its
rate of onset is given by the Power Law of Practice:
T(n) = T(1) * n ** (-a)
where T(n) is the time on the nth trial, T(1) is the time on the first
trial, and a is approximately 0.4. (I have appropriated ** from
Fortran as an exponentiation operator, since C lacks one.)
This first thing to note about the Power Law is that it only works
if a target stays in the same place! This should be a potent argument
against rearranging icons, menus, or dialogs without some explicit
request by the user. The time to hit a target which moves around
arbitrarily will always be T(1)!
In many cases, the Power Law will also work for sequences of
operations to even greater effect. If you are a touch typist, you can
observe this effect by comparing how fast you can enter "the" in
comparison to three random letters. We'll come back shortly to
consider what we can do to encourage this phenomenon.
EYES
Just as fingers are the way the user sends data to the computer, so
the eyes are his channel from the machine. The rate at which
information may be passed to the user is determined by the "cycle
time" of his visual processor. Experimental results show that this
time ranges between 50 and 200 milliseconds.
Events separated by 50 milliseconds or less are always perceived as
a single event. Those separated by more than 200 milliseconds are
always seen as separate. We can use these facts in optimizing user of
the computer's power when driving the interface.
Suppose your application's interface contains an icon which should
be inverted when the mouse passes over it. We now know that flipping
it within one twentieth of a second is necessary and sufficient.
Therefore, if a "first cut" at the program achieves this performance,
there is no need for further optimization, unless you want to
interleave other operations. If it falls short, it will be necessary
to do some assembly coding to achieve a smooth feel.
On the other hand, two actions which you want to appear distinct or
convey two different pieces of information must be separated by an
absolute minimum of a fifth of a second, even assuming that they
occur in an identical location on which the user's attention is
already focused.
We are able to influence the visual processing rate within the 50
to 200 millisecond range by changing the intensity of the stimulus
presented. This can be done with color, by flashing a target, or by
more subtle enhancements such as bold face type. For instance, most
people using GEM soon become accustomed to the "paper white"
background of most windows and dialogs. A dialog which uses a reverse
color scheme, white letters on black, is visually shocking in its
starkness, and will immediately draw the user's eyes.
It should be quickly added that stimulus enhancement will only work
when it unambiguously draws attention to the target. Three or four
blinking objects scattered around the screen are confusing, and worse
than no enhancement at all!
SHORT-TERM MEMORY
Both the information gathered by the eyes and movement commands on
their way to the hand pass through short-term memory (also called
working memory). The amount of information which can be held in
short-term memory at any one time is limited. You can demonstrate
this limit on yourself by attempting to type a sheet of random numbers
by looking back and forth from the numbers to the screen. If you are
like most people, you will be able to remember between five and nine
numbers at a time. So universal is this finding that it is sometimes
called "the magic number seven, plus or minus two".
This short-term capacity sets a limit on the number of choices
which the user can be expected to grasp at once. It suggests that the
number of independent choices in a menu, for instance, should be
around seven, and never exceed nine. If this limit is violated, then
the user will have to take several glances, with pauses to think, in
order to make a choice.
CHUNKING
The effective capacity of short-term memory can be increased when
several related items are mentally grouped as a "chunk". Humans
automatically adopt this strategy to save themselves time. For
instance, random numbers had to be used instead of text in the example
above, because people do not type their native language as individual
characters. Instead, they combine the letters into words and remember
these chunks instead. Put another way, the characters are no longer
considered as individual choices.
A well designed interface should promote the use of chunking as a
strategy by the user. One easy way is to gather together related
options in a single place. This is one reason that like commands are
grouped into a single menu which is hidden except for its title. If
all of the menu options were "in the open", the user would be
overwhelmed with dozens of alternatives at once. Instead, a "Show
Info" command, for instance, becomes two chunks: pick File menu, then
pick Show.
Sometimes the interface can accomplish the chunking for the user.
Consider the difference between a slider bar in a GEM program, and a
three digit entry field in a text mode application. Obviously, the
GEM user has fewer decisions to make in order to set the associated
variable.
THINK!
While we are puttering around trying to speed up the keyboard, the
mouse, and the screen, the user is actually trying to get some work
done. We need to back off now, and look at the ways of thinking, or
cognitive processes, that go into accomplishing the job.
The user's goal may be to enter and edit a letter, to retrieve
information from a database, or simply draw a picture, but it probably
has very little to do with programming. In fact, the Problem Space
Principle says that the task can be described as a set of states of
knowledge, a set of operators and associated constraints for changing
the states, and the knowledge to choose the appropriate operator,
which resides in the user's head.
Those with a background in systems theory can consider this as a
somewhat abstract, but straightforward, statement in terms of state
variables and operators. A programmer might compare the knowledge
states to the values of variables, the operators to arithmetic and
logic operations, the constraints to the rules of syntax, and the
user's knowledge to the algorithm embodied by a program.
ARE WE NOT MEN?
A rational person will try to attain his goals (get the job done)
by changing the state of his problem space from its initial state to
the goal state. The initial state, for instance, might be a blank
word processor screen. The desired final state is to have a completed
business letter on the screen.
The Rationality Principle says that the user's behavior in typing,
mousing, and so on, can be explained by considering the tasks required
to achieve the goal, the operators available to carry out the tasks,
and the limitations on the user's knowledge, observations, and
processing capacity. This sounds like the typical user of a computer
program must spend a good deal of time scratching his head and
wondering what to do next. In fact, one of Card and Moran's key
results is that this is NOT what takes place.
What happens, in fact, is that the trained user strikes a sort of
"modus vivendi" with his tool and adopts a set of repetitive, trained
behavior patterns as the best way to get the job done. He may go so
far as to ignore some functions of the program in order to set up a
reliable pattern. What we are looking for is a way of measuring and
predicting the "quality" of this trained behavior. Since using
computers is a human endeavor, we should consider not only the speed
with which the task is completed, but the degree of annoyance or
pleasure associated with the process.
Card and Moran constructed a series of behavioral models which they
called GOMS models, for Goals-Operators-Methods-Selection. These
models suggested that in the training process the user learned to
combine the basic operators in sequences (chunks!) which then became
methods for reaching the goals. Then these first level methods might
be combined again into second level methods, and so forth, as the
learning progressed.
The GOMS models were tested in a lengthy series of trials at Xerox
PARC using a variety of word processing software. (Among the subjects
of these experiments were the inventors of the windowing methods used
in GEM!) The results were again surprising: the level of detail in
the models was really unimportant!
It turned out to be sufficient to merely count up the number of
keystrokes, mouse movements, and thought intervals required by each
task. After summing up all of the tasks, any extra time for the
computer to respond, or the user to move his hands from keyboard to
mouse, or eyes from screen to printed page is added in. This
simplified version is called the Keystroke-Level Model.
As an example of the Keystroke Model, consider the task of changing
a mistyped letter on the screen of a GEM word processor. This might
be broken down as follows: 1) find the letter on the screen; 2) move
hand to mouse; 3) point to letter; 4) click mouse button; 5) move hand
to keyboard; 6) strike "Delete" key; 7) strike key for new character.
The sufficiency of the Keystroke Model is great news for our
attempt to design faster interfaces. It says we can concentrate our
efforts on minimizing the number of total actions to be taken, and
making sure that each action is as fast as possible. We have already
discussed some ways to speed up the mouse and keyboard actions, so
let's now consider how to speed up the thought intervals, and cut the
number of actions.
One way to cut down "think time" is to make sure that the capacity
of short-term memory is not exceeded during the course of a task. For
example, the fix-a-letter task described above required the user to
remember 1) his place in the overall job of typing the document; 2)
the task he is about to perform; 3) where the bad character appeared,
and 4) what the new character was. When this total of items creeps
toward seven, the user often loses his place and commits errors.
You can appreciate the ubiquity of this problem by considering how
many times you have made mistakes nesting parentheses, or had to go
back to count them, because too many things happened while typing the
line to remember the nesting levels. The moral is that operations with
long strings of operands should be avoided when designing an
interface.
The single most important factor in making an interface comfortable
to use is increasing its predictability, and decreasing the amount of
indecision present at each step during a task. There is (inevitably)
an Uncertainty Principle which relates the number of choices at each
step to the associated time for thought:
T = I * LOG2 ( N + 1)
where LOG2 is the binary logarithm function, N is the number of
equally probable choices, and I is a constant of approximately 140
msec/bit. When the alternates are not equally probable, the function
is more complex:
T = I * SUM-FOR-i-FROM-1-TO-N (P(i) * LOG2( 1 / P(i) + 1) )
where the P(i) are the probabilities of each of the choices (which
must sum to one). (SUM-FOR-i... is the best I can do for a sigma
operator on-line!) Those of you with some information theory
background will recognize this formula as the entropy of the decision;
we'll come back to that later.
So what can we learn from this hash? It turns out, as we might
expect, that we can decrease the decision time by making some of the
user's choices more probable than others. We do that by means of
feedback cues from the interface.
The important of reliable, continuous meaningful feedback cannot be
emphasized enough. It helps the beginner learn the system, and its
predictability makes the program comfortable for the expert. Programs
with no feedback, or unreliable cues, produce confusion, dissonance,
and frustration in the user.
This principle is so important that I going to give several
examples from common GEM practice. The Desktop provides several
instances. When an object is selected and a menu drops down, only
those choices which are legal for the object are in black. The others
are dimmed to grey, and are therefore removed from the decision. When
a pick is made from the menu, the bar entry remains black until the
operation is complete, reassuring the user that the correct choice was
made. In both the Desktop and the RCS, items which are double-clicked
open up with a "zoom box" from the object, again showing that the
right object was picked.
Other techniques are useful when operator icons are exposed on the
screen. When an object is picked, the legal operations might be
outlined, or the bad choices might be dimmed. If the screen flashing
produced by this is objectionable, the legal icons can be made mouse
sensitive, so they will "light up" when the cursor passes over - again
showing the user which choices are legal.
The desire for feedback is so strong that it should be provided
even while the computer is doing an operation on its own. The hour
glass mouse form is a primitive example of this. More sophisticated
are "progress indicators" such as animated thermometer bars, clocks,
or text displays of the processing steps. The ST Desktop provides
examples in the Format and Disk Copy functions. The purpose of all of
these is to reassure the user that the operation is progressing
normally. Their lack can lead to amusing spectacles such as
secretaries leaning over to hear if their disk drives are working!
Another commonly overlooked feature is error prevention and
correction. Card and Moran's results showed that in order to go
faster, people will tolerate error rates of up to 30% in their work.
Any program which does not give a fast way to fix mistakes will be
frustrating indeed!
The best way to cope with an error is to "make it didn't happen",
to quote a common child's phrase. The same feedback methods discussed
above are also effective in preventing the user from picking
inappropriate combinations of objects and operations. Replacement of
numeric type-ins with sliders or other visual controls eliminates the
common "Range Error". The use of radio buttons prevents the user from
picking incompatible options. When such techniques are used
consistently, the beginner also gains confidence that he may explore
the program without blundering into errors.
Once an error has occured, the best solution is to have an "inverse
operation" immediately available. For instance, the way to fix a bad
character is to hit the backspace key. If a line is inadvertantly
deleted, there should be a way to restore it.
Sometimes the mechanics of providing true inverses are impractical,
or end up cluttering the interface themselves. In these cases, a
global "Undo" command should be provided to reverse the effect of the
last operation, no matter what it was.
OF MODES AND BANDWIDTH
Now I am going to depart from the Card, Newell and Moran thread of
discussion to consider how we can minimize the number of operations in
a task by altering the modes of the interface. Although "no modes"
has been a watchword of Macintosh developers, the term may need
definition for Atarians.
Simply stated, a mode exists any time you cannot get to all of the
capabilities of the program without taking some intermediate step.
Familiar examples are old-style "menu-driven" programs, in which user
must make selections from a number of nested menus in order to perform
any operation. The options of any one menu are unavailable from the
others.
Recall that the user is trying to accomplish work in his own
problem space, by altering its states. A mode in the program adds
additional states to the problem space, which he is forced to consider
in order to get the job done. We might call an interface which is
completely modeless "transparent", because it adds no states between
the user and his work. One of the best examples of a transparent
program is the 15-puzzle in the Macintosh desk accessory set. The
problem space of rearranging the tiles is identical between the
program and a physical puzzle.
Unfortunately, most programmers find themselves forced to put modes
of some sort into their programs. These often arise due to
technological limitations, such as memory space, screen "real estate",
or performance limitations of peripherals. The question is how the
modes can be made least offensive.
I will make the general claim that the frustration which a mode
produces is directly proportional to the amount of the user's
bandwidth which it consumes. In other words, we need to consider how
many keystrokes, mouse clicks, eye movements, and so on, are going
into manipulating the true problem states, and how many are being
absorbed by the modes of the program. If the interface is wasting a
large amount of the user's effort, it will be perceived as slow and
annoying.
Here we can consider again the hierarchy of goals and methods which
the user employs. When the mode is low in the hierarchy, and close to
the user's "fingertips", it is encountered the most frequently. For
instance, consider how frustrating it would be to have to hit a
function key before typing in each character!
The "menu-driven" style of programs mentioned above are almost as
bad, since usually only one piece of information is collected at each
menu. Such a program becomes a labyrinth of states better suited to
an adventure game!
The least offensive modes are found at the higher, goal related
levels of the hierarchy. The better they align with changes in the
state of the original problem, the more they are tolerated. For
example, a word processing program might have one screen layout for
program editing, another for writing letters, and yet another while
printing the documents. A multi-function business package might have
one set of menus for the spreadsheet, another for a graphing module,
and a third for a database.
In some cases the problem solved by the program has convenient
"fracture lines" which can be used to define the modes. An example in
my own past is the RCS, where the editing of each type of resource
tree forms its own mode, with each of the modes nested within the
overall mode and problem of composing the entire resource tree.
TO DO IS TO BE!
Any narrative description of user interface is bound to be lacking.
There is no way text can convey the vibrancy and tactile pleasure of a
good interface, or the sullen boredom of a bad one. Therefore, I
encourage you to experiment. Get out your favorite arcade game and
see if you can spot some of the elements I have described. Dig into
your slush pile for the most annoying program you have ever seen, run
it and see if you can see mistakes. How would you fix them? Then...
go do it to your own program!
AMEN...
This concludes the sermon. I'd like some Feedback as to whether
you found this Boring Beyond Belief or Really Hot Stuff. If enough
people are interested, homily number two will appear a few episodes
from now. The very next installment of ST PRO GEM will go back to
basics to explore VDI drawing primitives. In the meantime, you might
investigate some of the Good Books on interface design referenced
below.
REFERENCES
Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran, and Allen Newell, THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale,
New Jersey, 1983. (Fundamental and indispensible. The volume of
experimental results make it weighty. The Good Parts are at the
beginning and end.)
"Macintosh User Interface Guidelines", in INSIDE MACINTOSH, Apple
Computer, Inc., 1984. (Yes, Atarians, we have something to learn
here. Though not everything "translates", this is a fine piece of
principled design work. Read and appreciate.)
James D. Foley, Victor L. Wallace, and Peggy Chan, "The Human
Factors of Computer Graphics Interaction Techniques", IEEE Computer
Graphics (CG & A), November 1984, pp. 13-48. (A good overview,
including higher level topics which I have postponed to a later
article. Excellent bibliography.)
J. D. Foley and A. Van Dam, FUNDAMENTALS OF INTERACTIVE COMPUTER
GRAPHICS, Addison Wesley, 1984, Chapters 5 and 6. (If you can't get
the article above, read this. If you are designing graphics apps, buy
the whole book! Staggering bibliography.)
Ben Schneidermann, "Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond
Programming Languages", IEEE Computer, August 1983, pp. 57-69. (What
do Pacman and Visicalc have in common? Schneidermann's analysis is
vital to creating hot interfaces.
But ponder, if you will, this question:
1) What other potential applications exist for this research into optimal
human/computer interaction with a user interface?
__________________________________________________________
> BBS TERRORIST CPU/STR Spotlight¿ The extremes a creep will go to....
===============================
PROFILE OF A SICKIE
===================
by Dana P. Jacobson
For over a year, three of Greater Boston's Atari bulletin boards have
been pestered by a 'known' user who has been flooding the message bases
with obscenities, threats, and fake names. For most of us who call
bulletin boards; and especially those of us who run one, this is not "too"
unusual. This case is a little more unusual however, because the user is
extremely persistent in his endeavors. Most remote users of these systems
have learned to, at least, try and ignore this person. The SysOps of these
boards (myself included) have worn out fingers hitting the delete key on
his messages and fake accounts. This user has been deleted from just
about every legitimate BBS in the area, and his hatred for this happening
to him grows. Until recently, he has been resigned to the fact that he
has to log on to boards under assumed names to keep active. Then, he
decided to get revenge on those of us who originated his mass deletion
from the area boards. As he put it, we were heading a conspiracy to ban
him from all boards. Well, I have to admit, we were spreading the word
about him wherever we saw his name. Conspiracy, no. There's an unwritten
bond between SysOps to help each other protect the integrity of our
boards, so this was a natural occurrence among us.
This "pest" finally got fed up with what was happening to him (HE got
fed up - what about us?) and decided to retaliate. One of the last
bulletin boards to delete this guy's account was BCS/Atari, run by Harry
Steele. It was Harry's contention that if you left the guy alone, he'd go
away. Well, as per normal, this user didn't go away and continued to
leave abusive messages on the BBS. Users were complaining more than
usual, so Harry reluctantly deleted the account. I happened to be online
(BCS/Atari has 2 lines) when the person logged on after being deleted. He
re- registered and Harry engaged him in Chat. Having WizOp access (we run
MichTron BBS), I was able to "spy" on the chat discussion and find out
what this user was up to. Without going into detail, the essence of the
"discussion" ended with this user threatening to do something to make
Harry sorry for deleting him. A few hours later, the three major Atari
boards in the area were crashed, and the majority of files were deleted!
The next day, there was a message on another local BBS, from an
individual calling himself the "Bbs Vigllante". In that message, he
stated what he had done, and why. He then went on to state that until his
"demands" were met (to be aired later), that this trashing would occur
again. Needless to say, the three respective WizOps were speechless, and
hurried to restore their boards. The phones were busy that day trying to
reconstruct the events of the night before. Let me try and reconstruct
the background leading up to this heinous destruction, starting back over
a year ago.
I belong to the South Shore Atari Group (SSAG), since its "revival"
just over two years ago. Kevin Champagne, owner of the newly opened Atari
store, Computer Cache, talked to former SSAG members and offered to host
the meetings. The members took him up on it, and SSAG was reformed. The
old group had its own BBS, and Kevin offered the new group a discounted
copy of MichTron BBS. The group bought it, and were back online as well as
meeting regularly again. Since the SysOp of the former SSAG board
allegedly had a "tainted" past, some of the members of the Steering
Committee wanted access to the new BBS to "keep tabs" on it. Well, after
a few months of access, we lost it. The SysOp felt "restricted" in his
running the BBS, and wanted to do it his way without any "watchdogs".
Heated discussions went on for a couple of months, and the committee
requested that the BBS software be returned. Meanwhile, on of the ST SIG
SysOps was our "friend, the pest", who at that time, was a typical active
and regularly-contributing user on the boards.
To make the connections between this user and the "soon-to-
be-defunct" SSAG board, we learned that this SysOp managed to make a copy
of the board's userlog, containing among other info, the passwords of
every user! I was given this info much later, by the person who ran the
BBS, after the SSAG BBS was down, and tensions diminished among the
parties involved. By the way, the BBS went down shortly after, and some of
those who ran that board quit the group. Now that this SysOp didn't have
a BBS to "hang-out", he began to frequent the other Atari boards more
often. On occasion, he'd log on under aliases, starting message threads
that were anti-SSAG because of our involvement in that board going
offline. Also, this past summer, Computer Cache closed its doors, adding
more fuel to this user's anger - he now had no access to a nearby computer
store; and he also blamed SSAG for the store's demise.
Now his activity on the local boards was increasing, and he had
numerous phony accounts which we kept deleting. He also was using some of
the former-SSAG board's accounts, to keep his anonymity. As we learned of
these accounts, we deleted them. When he called under his real name, we
cautioned him to act responsibly to retain his access. We warned him on
numerous occasions, we restricted his time-limit, and finally deleted his
"good" account. None of this kept him from calling and continuing his
abuse of SSAG and the closing of the store. His tirades grew. When he
lost one account, he'd create another. He called other boards and
continued his tirade there. One by one, he lost most of his legitimate
accounts, and many phony ones - still no end in sight, even now.
The old SSAG board was back on-line, under a different name now; and
had no connection to the usergroup. Our frustrated user became a user
there again, but was not made a SysOp again. The board went down a few
months ago for personal reasons, and our user was again blaming that on
SSAG. Just a short while ago, that board was back again, supposedly
running on a pirated version of FoRem BBS. I have no idea if there is any
validity to this, and the "source" of this information was, you guessed
it, our "pal". The reason he told us, supposedly, was that the BBS was now
a pirate board. Now, since Computer Cache was closed, and there were "no
good" stores nearby, he resorted to piracy to obtain new software. He
"snitched" on his local source because he even got himself dumped from
there! He even called the author of FoRem to turn the board in (I thought
there was "honor among thieves!"). Now this guy is really furious. He now
has to call long-distance pirate boards to obtain his software! Again, I
only know what this user has left in messages about the alleged local
pirate board. I have talked voice with the person allegedly running that
board, and he says no, not that he'd admit to running one, but he added he
wasn't even up. I can't verify that information.
Now, our pest is running out of local sources for anything, public
domain or pirated. He's left my bulletin board alone for awhile, and has
resorted to calling the last three boards that he had legitimate access
to. His comments, threats, etc. have not stopped however. He has
continued to get even with those who have been conspiring against him, for
giving him such a bad time (is this guy for real?).
On the evening of December 30th, I happened to log on to the
BCS/Atari BBS while our "friend" was online. Having the access to do so,
and being the curious type, I went to check up on what he was doing.
Thanks to Tim Purves, author of the MichTron BBS, I was able to use a
"screen-display" command which enabled me to actually "see" what he was
doing. He was engaged in Chat with the SysOp, and I watched the
conversation progress. The SysOp (Harry Steele) was telling the user that
users were finally fed up with this guy's antics on the board, and his
access was about to be taken away, again, only for good. The user
complained that he was being wrongly treated, and pressure by the other
users should not be used against him. Well, since the board is backed by
the BCS, Harry was obligated to listen to its members. Our user didn't
want to listen to reason. Personally, I don't think he's capable of
reason! The discussion went on for a bit more, and finally the user
threatened to get even, to make "us" pay for how we were treating him.
About 8:00 am the next morning (an ungodly hour for me on a Saturday
morning!), I got a phone call from Harry. He told me to go check on my
BBS (Toad Hall EBBS). I turned the monitor on, and was faced with the
ST's desktop instead of the usual BBS's "call- waiting" screen. The first
thing I thought to myself as I tried to wake up was that there was a power
outage in the area that night, and Toad Hall got "hit". When I "clicked"
on the BBS run program, I got that dreaded message to check the drive.
Something was seriously wrong. I got back on the phone and discovered
that not only was my BBS down, but so was BCS/Atari and Harbour Light BBS
(the former in-house BBS of Computer Cache, now run elsewhere).
I asked Harry what happened, and he informed me that around 3:00 that
morning, his wife was awakened by the BBS's hard drive making an unusual
amount of noise so she went to investigate. She turned on the monitor and
saw "me" deleting files from the hard drive! She knew "something" was
wrong, so she hit the reset button to the ST. Apparently, someone had
systematically deleted files from all three boards in the "darkness of the
night.
The BCS/Atari board was fortunate that Mrs. Steele was awakened. The
damage to that board was limited to one of two hard drives connected to
the BBS. The culprit was "stopped" before he got to the second hard drive
which wasn't backed-up at all. The affected drive was recently backed up
a few days before the "attack". Harbour Light was also fortunate. That
MichTron board is running on an IBM-clone, and the internal set-up was
different from the Atari-run boards. The "terrorist" didn't know, or was
unaware of how or where to look to find all the files. So, little damage
was done, and back-ups of the system files and the affected downloads were
relatively current as well. Toad Hall was hit the hardest. Just about
every file on the 48-meg hard drive was deleted. All that remained were a
few hard drive utility files, and a few other worthless ones. To make
matters worse, the most current back-up of the system files and downloads
were in an area of the hard drive which had a lot of available space, not
on floppies. The most recent floppy back-up was from late-August, almost
4-month's old!
Well, all three boards were restored and back on-line by the end of
the day. Once things were as back to "normal" as possible, we tried to
piece together how this was accomplished, and who did it. The "who" was
fairly obvious from the start. After seeing the messages on various
boards in the area from the "Bbs Vigllante" (his spelling, not mine!)
stating what was done, why, and further threats, we knew there was only
one suspect: our disgruntled user. But how?
Well, we knew that he had the old SSAG userfile. Now all of the
affected SysOps had been users on that board before the usergroup took
back the software, almost a year ago. All of us had changed our passwords
to be sure that the one we used on the SSAG board wasn't repeated
elsewhere. Or did we? Apparently, one of the SysOps did not change his
passwords (to keep from embarrassing that person, I won't reveal who, but
it wasn't me!). Our Bbs Vigllante finally used his purloined userfile to
call various boards, looking for one where that same user had high access.
From there, he got WizOp access to all three boards, using one password to
gain others. Once that access was his, the systematic deletion of the
boards was simple. After seeing the additional threatening messages on
other boards, two of us immediately downgraded all users with SysOp-access
or higher, knowing that the Vigllante had copies of all three userlogs.
One system didn't do so immediately, and subsequently was uploaded a
pirate file which was downloaded twice before discovering it. We were
more concerned with getting the boards back to normal than checking out
uploads. The file was subsequently deleted, and users on all three boards
were told to change their passwords or expect that the possibility of
their accounts to be misused was inevitable.
To this day, not all users have done so, so there is still a password
abuse on all three boards. We're currently considering deleting the
entire userlist and starting from scratch. This would be a drastic
measure, and we're considering others. Our first concern was to protect
our boards from similar "terrorism" and finding a way to bring the "Bbs
Vigllante" to justice and end this abuse.
We voice-validated all high-access password changes. Those we
couldn't contact are still "demoted" until we do so. Some of us have
taken further precautions and enhanced our password menus to include
secondary (or more) passwords. We've also tried to point out to, not only
our users, but on other boards as well, that passwords should be changed
regularly on every board a user calls; and not to use the same password on
other boards. We learned what could happen, the hard way.
Meanwhile, the threats have continued. I've included a bunch of
these messages captured in my term program's buffer for proof, should the
opportunity be made available to use them against the vigllante. He's
also resorted to "BBS extortion", making demands on the three trashed
boards AND the SSAG. Briefly, these demands include: WizOp access on all
three boards, a public apology for the way HE's been treated, and a
monthly column in the SSAG Newsletter (non-edited)! If these demands
aren't met, then we will be leaving ourselves open to similar, or worse,
attacks.
Dana P. Jacobson
WizOp - Toad Hall EBBS
Boston, MA
617-567-8642
______________________________________________________
> BBS GRIEF CPU/STR Spotlight¿ Boston Computer Society gets involved...
============================
FROM THE MIDDLESEX NEWS, FRAMINGHAM, 1/9/89
===========================================
A hacker, apparently using a year-old list of passwords, has managed to
crash three Atari-based computer bulletin-board systems in the Boston area
and is now threatening to do the same to a fourth.
Calling himself the ``BBS Vigilante,'' the hacker has, over the past two
weeks, gained phone access to the internal operating systems of the three
systems, one of them run by the Boston Computer Society. He has deleted
hundreds of files, including scores of messages and programs left by users
and even the software that runs the boards themselves.
Harry Steele, who runs the Boston Computer Society Atari board from his
Medford home, said the hacker, using the purloined password of another
system operator, cracked into his system early on Dec. 30. But around 3:15
a.m., he said, his wife was awakened because "she heard the hard drive
going cuckoo." She turned on the monitor, saw what was happening and
promptly shut the machine, he said, adding he was especially lucky because
the hacker was deleting files on a disk drive he had backed up just a few
days before - rather than a second drive that had about 400 programs he
had never backed up. Still, Steele said it took him eight or nine hours
to fully restore the roughly 20 megabytes of software the hacker did
delete.
Toad Hall, an East Boston system, was not so lucky. Although the system
operator there had backed up his files, he had done it on a section of his
disk drive that the "Vigilante" managed to delete. Steele said the
sysops strongly suspect the culprit is a teen-ager once involved in a BBS
and club run by a now-defunct software store. As an active member, he was
able to gain access to that BBSs' password list, of which he apparently
made a copy.
When the store closed about a year ago, Steele said, he turned vicious,
calling up Atari-based boards and leaving nasty messages for users. Faced
with complaints from other users, the system operators kicked him off -
something they had to do several times because he was using a number of
assumed names.
What the board operators did not realize, Steele said, was that the list
the kid had included some names and passwords of either system operators
or "co-sysops," people who maintain conferences on the systems and who
generally can gain entry into the system's internal programs over the
phone lines.
In December, he threatened to take the systems down. Then, after he did,
he left messages threatening to do it again. Steele said that if need be,
he and the other operators can simply shut their systems down, delete
their password files and then not give anyone access until they are
contacted by telephone to ensure they are 'real.' One board, which the
hacker has threatened to crash, now requires all users to send in a $1
check with their name and telephone number on the back before they are
given more than three minutes worth of access.
Steel also said the problem, beyond dealing with this kid, is that many
people use the same password on all the systems they log onto, even
though most systems ask them not to. If the sysops or co-sysops on the
list had used different passwords on each system, the hacker might never
have been able to gain access, he said.
Fred, the Middlesex News Computer, eagerly awaits your call. With
a computer and modem, you can call him, any time, day or night,
at; (508) 872-8461.
_____________________________________________________________
> NAMM 1990 CPU/STR FOCUS¿ Eyewitness Report NAMM Show...
========================
N.A.M.M. 1990
=============
by Mike Rosen and Eric Casteel
Flash!!!
For the first time in history, Roland Corp. U.S.A. is supporting the
Atari ST with a BRAND NEW line of computer synthesizer modules and
software! These modules are called the CM32L,CM32P and the CM64. These
modules fit perfectly underneath any Atari monitor and are MIDI compatible
with any MIDI keyboard or controller. In fact, the NEW Sierra On Line
games support the CM32L. The software is called Artist and is developed
by the same folks who brought you Pro-24 and Cubase, thats right;
Steinberg. This software is geared for the novice and has very sharp
graphical interfacing surprises. (I can feel a review comming on
already!).
Passport Designs Inc. has a revolutionary new division called; Music
Data. This new division makes a product that has songs on floppy disk in
standard MIDI file format. These disks are smartly packaged in a compact
audio disk case and range in all kinds of styles of music to satisfy every
taste and desire in music appreciation.
Also, at NAMM, I was quite surprised to see the large quantity of
STACY 4's. Most of the major publishers had them on display demonstrating
their most current software. (Dr.T's had three of them!) Which by the way
was wonderful since the Apple Laptop cannot handle midi software at all.
Digidesign demonstrated "Sound Tools for the MEGA 2 and 4". This is a
hard disk sampler/recorder that has previously only been available for the
Macintosh SE and Mac II. The Atari version will be available late march.
Digidesign also showed C-Labs famous Notator SL, as well as their
editor/librarians. Hybrid Arts is planning to come back strong this year
with thier updated versions of the products that put them on the map.
Also from Hybrid Arts, is the ADAPT II Hard Disk recording system that has
done very well in Europe and is now getting much more attention in the
USA.
Those fine folks from Dr.T's very proudly showed thier new hot seller
Tiger Cub. This program gives you a great sequencer, graphic editing and
quickscore music notation for only $99.00! Also showing at Dr.T's were
KCS Level II 3.0 with quickscore, Copyist, Tiger, and XOR (Universal
Editor/Librarian).
Steinberg was showing Cubase version 1.5 that features the new Dynamic
MIDI manager. Also shown was the new editor/librarian for the EMU Systems
Proteus. This editor/librarian supports M.ROS for a multi-tasking
environment with Cubase. Speaking of multi-tasking, Intelligent Music
showed a multi-tasking operating system that works in a GEM shell. This
allows any TOS program to work in a multi-tasking environment!
Atari had, what could easily be deemed, office space in the upstairs
portion of the convention center. Quite different a location from
previous years. As a matter of fact, I had to ask four different people
where to look just to find it, and even then, I walked right past the
entrance! Once I got there however I was impressed. It looked very
professional and the location was away from the noise, hustle and bustle
that you so easily get used to putting up with after a couple of hours of
walking around show's main floor. Atari featured the Hotz box and of
course, had record producer/engineer Jimmy Hotz demonstrating it. Also
featured was the Megafile 60 and the Megafile 30 removable media storage
systems.
All this and much more will be reviewed and discussed in the March issue
of ST World.
Mike Rosen
Eric Casteel
________________________________________________________________
> WOA ANAHEIM STR FOCUS¿ The show must go on!
=====================
WORLD OF ATARI SHOW -> ANAHEIM, CA.
===================================
WORLD OF ATARI
==============
APRIL 7 & 8 1990
WORLD OF ATARI will be held at the Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim California,
on April 7th and 8th. For Reservations, Car Rentals and Airline tickets,
call: 1-800-842-9034. The hours of the show are 10 am till 6pm on
Saturday, the 7th and on Sunday; 10am till 5pm. Admission is $5.00 per
day or $7.00 for both days.
Atari Corporation will feature their full line of products. Of course,
many of the companies we are all familiar with will be displaying their
latest products.
Preliminary Exhibitor Listing;
-----------------------------
Avant Garde Best Electronics
Computer Games + FAST TECHNOLOGY
LucasFilms Software Maverick Creations
Megamax Inc. MichTron Inc.
Mid-City Compu-Soft Micro Creations
Sierra Online Seymor/Radix
Softrek Marketing Wuztech Inc.
plus many more...
<*- SPECIAL OFFER -*>
for the readers of CPU NewsWire/STReport
ST WORLD MAGAZINE has offered to the readers of our humble offering,
an opportunity to enjoy their monthly publication, featuring such
notables as Dave Small, Dr. Dave Brewton, Joe Speigel, Earl Hill, Bob
Mulholland, George Miller, Milt Creighton, Brian Miller, Mike Rosen
and of course, Larry Payne and Charlie Young.
For a limited time only, the readers of STReport may subscribe to ST
World Magazine for the low, low price of $12.00 (REG $18.00!) per
year. To take advantage of this offer, you must include the name
STReport in your subscription form. Or, use the one provided below:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(clip)
ST WORLD Subscription Mail To:
ST WORLD MAGAZINE
2463 LANTONA CT. ne
Please enter my subscription to ST World for SALEM, OR., 97303
a period of (1)one year @ $12.00 { } 1-503-393-9688
Name: _______________________________________________________________
Address: ____________________________________________________________
City:______________________State:____Zip:_____________Apt:___________
Phone:______________________Computer System:_________________________
Amount:$______________Check#__________Money Order#________DO NOT SEND
CASH!!
American Express - VISA - MasterCard#_______________________exp:__/__
Signature____________________________________________date:___________
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(clip)
__________________________________________________
> pc ditto II (sigh) CPU/STR Spotlight¿ What's up Doc?
====================================
ctsy GEnie Atari RT
AS THE THE CHIP FLIP-FLOPS
==========================
C.HAGGERTY; posts...
Well, I might as well add my story to this tale of woe! I finally received
PCDII today after nearly five months of waiting and checking this RT on a
frequent basis. Unlike others, my unit appeared in good condition with all
nessasary parts, and I had little problem in following AG's installation
proceedures. I might even be able to fit the board in my old 520ST with
some modifications, but alas, My unit locks up after trying to boot DOS.
Usually I get 4 bombs, but occasionally it just freezes. Although I seem
to have a good connection with the clip I may try soldering it tommorow to
see if this will help. On a editorial note... During these long months I
have followed discussions on the RT about PCDII with great interest. I
have felt all along that AG had some difficulties beyound its control and
would make it alright in the end. Now however, we see a product which
simply does not work, wh ich AG knows not to work, continued to be
shipped, apparently without regard for the user. Furthermore, since AG's
last message over a week ago acknowledging the problem we've received no
communication of any kind. Come on Bill! Would it kill you to take 5 min
everyday or two to give us some idea on how it's going? Please take the
time to help your users and save your reputation.
Craig H. Haggerty M.D.
E.BURGESS; posts,
Well it seems a few of them work ,so they arent all bad. Now if they can
find out what the diff between the ones that work and the ones that dont
they'll have the problem solved
Jan 24, 1990
W.C.JENKINS; posts,
Well, I got this piece of garbage in the mail today called
"PCDittoII" No, mine is not working either. I installed everything,
everything looks fine, but I can't get past the "not installed properly
prompt."
One source of problem is the clip is in no way, shape, or form tight
on the 68000, it keeps popping off.
I'll be darned if I'm going to pay someone to solder it on.
There are too many reports here of units being soldered and still not
working (after a $60 or so ADDITIONAL EXPENSE!). Not to mention machines
being damaged in the process.
This is real garbage. I should be allowed to use the "s" word here,
Avant Garde deserves it. The unit does not work as advertised period. In
my opinion, this is fraud.
I'm sending the unit back tomorrow. If I do not get a refund pronto,
this will become a mail fraud matter.
What really gauls me is that Avant=Garde knows that virtually no
boards are working, they've admitted that here, yet they seem to go on
shipping boards that, apparantly are no better than the boards they
shipped before? What does that mean? As long as they ship something they
can access another $154?
As far as I am concerned, Avant-Garde owes me more than $154. How
about all the money I've wasted here on Genie following and anticipating
this piece of garbage???
Well, here is one poor consumer who feels he has gotten the shaft.
Darn!
DOUG.W; posts,
W.C. Jenkins, my dictionary defined Fraud as "deception deliberately
practiced." I think you'd have a tough time proving that Avant Garde did
this deliberately.
--Doug
------------
R.LOWREY; posts,
Well, I received my PCDII today. I haven't installed it yet, as I am
waiting for my EE friend to come over and assist. I'll let you know what
happens, but from the likes of the messages here, it doesn't look very
promising to me.
I will say that without even trying it, the 68K "clip" looks pretty hokey
to me--I realize that with our 68K's soldered in, AG had little choice,
but this looks like trouble to me. Hoping I'll have the 2nd one that
works,
Robert L.
------------
NEVIN-S; posts,
Robert, some other GEnie fellow has his working (saw a message here a few
days ago) so you would be number 3..! <grin>
I do not know if/why Bill is still shipping. I am in NYC and he is in
Florida. Oh well. Hopefully he will drop by here soon and fill us all in
on what is going on.
--Nevin
------------
DON.WYMAN; posts,
I just joined the DOA club. I got my DITTO-II today and have the same
problems as everyone else. It asks for a Dos disk and goes into
never-never land. The drive spins a couple of times and just lays there.
I haven't even started to figure out how to find room for this monster. I
have a 1040ST that requires removing the drive in order to get the RF
shield off. Is this thing supposed to fit under the RF shield? I had to
bend the pins of the clip inward on one side to get it to stay on the
68000. I tried to find the upload of the programs just in case it was in
the software but couldn't find it. Does anyone know where it is? Sad but
still hoping.
Don Wyman
------------
DAVESMALL; posts,
This is really sad. I feel for both "sides" here because I was involved
in a similar mess when the Translator One first shipped. A hundred went
out, probably 90 came back as "bad".
So, it turns out the HP MIDI chips weren't up to spec on some ST's. And
there was ringing on the write-data line. And and and and...
Eventually kinda sorta, we got the Translator working; the final ROM
version, which would have fixed formatting for many drives, was never
done. By then, I was gone from dP.
I feel sorry for Bill that it's turned out this way, and ask you all not
to let this "avalanche". He's an honorable guy; I've seen it many times.
Give him a chance to straighten things out, and I feel sure he will.
Making the transition from tested prototypes to fullscale production is
just awful, and Bill got burned by it, clearly. I've had it happen too --
I had to desolder lots of HP chips that were under spec, for instance.
The GCR,knock wood, was trouble free, but that was my second try at
reading Mac disks.
I know some of you are frustrated beyond belief, but hang on a bit. My
guess would be Bill's not on GEnie not because he won't take the heat, but
because he's working his tail off resolving the problem. Similar things
happen here in a crisis, too.
Other products arrived with bugs, too, as you'll see elsewhere online.
They're cleaned up.
So give him time. He's shown us what he can do; he needs time to do it.
I don't think he would keep shipping known bad boards; he might have
shipped a large batch of bad boards *all at once*, and be getting a bad
rap.
Just from what I know of him personally, I would be very hesitant to even
return money on a PCDII. He knows what he's doing; give him a chance to
fix this mistake, and I bet he comes out with a good, clean one.
-- Just my two cent's worth.
-- thanks, Dave / Gadgets
------------
J.ALLEN27; posts,
I'd like to second Dave's feelings, I have seen it work and it is a really
nice Pc emulator. I don't understand the size and many just won't be able
to use it but I think Bill will come through. I have talked to him and he
seems to be hot on the trail. It seems all the boards shipped...almost
all... are just fine. It is somekind of difference in the circuit in
different STs that is the root of our troubles. He tested a bunch of "bad"
boards in working machines...1040s like Nevins...and they work fine. There
is some difference between those systems and other STs that is screwing up
the process.
Apparently, and a look at the scope confirms, the PCDII is not "crashed"
when it freezes on the DOS boot. The V30 is in control but the transfer
mechanism used to switch between 68000/V30 is not working right. It may
be as simple as the pullup resistors used in different machines. But with
the V30 running OK it is not somekind of major timing screwup like not
being synchronized with RAM timing, etc. When he ask me if I thought he
should go up and spend daily periods online I said...NO. It made more
sense to nail down what's wrong and have good news rather than come by
each day and get dumped on. I think the unit returns and this mess in
general has he and Ginnie pretty bummed. I'd give him another week before
looking for blood. I also think the first thing he needs to do is send a
unit across town to CPU NewsWire/STReport and let them do a review so
someone in the press can get a solid, hands on look see, and report back
impartially.
What AG is going through is a HW developers worse nightmare, mostly his
fault, but a nightmare. A feel really bad for him, and any developer that
tries so hard to put out a nice product and gets into trouble. It's not
like the aren't trying and are sitting back counting our money planning a
good vacation, this market has been their lives for years now. This is
where they make their living and you just don't #$%@ in your own backyard.
Dave had no trouble, I had some trouble, and AG is in trouble...no black
and white, all gray scale. Just like life.
------------
Above, we presented a number of online posts, (open letters), from
obviously concerned individuals who were kind enough to present both
viewpoints; that of the highly vulnerable customer and the
developer/manufacturer. When all the smoke clears, the bottom line is
still evident, that the customer; (a)- comes first, and (b)- must be kept
abreast of the developments in this situation. We strenously disagree
with the premise that the online presence or the obvious lack of this
presence is justifiable. If anything, an online presence would
undoubtedly place many minds at ease....
In fact, a simple statement expressing;
"Shipment of all units has been suspended pending the discovery and
rectification of the apparent problem, as soon as this problem is
corrected shipment of PC-DITTO II will resume in earnest."
But no.... shipments go on as if there is nothing the matter. Why?
And why is the statement being made to visitors amidst the floor to
ceiling stacks of PC-DITTO II that are being packed and shipped by Bill
and his family, (Wife, Mom and Dad) that the major cause of his problems
is Atari? Also why is this board for PC-DITTO II so big? We feel Bill
should be searching for the problem with the units and NOT shipping any
more until is recognized and fixed.
We have the opinion that Bill Teal will eventually come through for
his trusting customers and as such, for those with the fortitude for
patiently waiting then this is, of course the only way to go. For those
who simply must have an MS Dos emulator yesterday, then by all means, take
the steps necessary to accomplish your goals. Complaining and posturing
veiled or direct threats does nothing but bring forward the alarmists and
doomsayers. The hardware business is quirky at best and at times the
results are less than disappointing. Ask Atari. <grin> Over the course
of the next few weeks we are sure to see this problem situation alleviate
itself through the discovery of the cause and I might add, its sure to be
corrected.
Another in the long list of those who care enough to comment....
RE: AVANT-GARDE'S UNFORGIVABLE CUSTOMER RELATIONS
I just thought I would bring you and everyone else up-to- date on
what I consider a very disturbing policy by Avant-Garde. Let me begin by
saying that I believe that Avant-Garde has created a superior ST product
in PC Ditto and PC Ditto II. However, their policy toward their past
customers is like a garbage dump in July. In other words, it stinks.
Case in point:
-------------
I purchased PC Ditto long before PC Ditto II was released. However,
I neglected to register my copy with Avant-Garde by their "Upgrade
deadline" (a deadline I was unaware of though I visit several local Atari
dealers very regularly). I of course thought that upgrades would start
when the improved product was released which would be the intelligent
though incorrect assumption.
When I wrote Avant-Garde to find out how to upgrade my copy of PC
Ditto to PC Ditto II, I received a rude reply from a Mrs. Ginny Teal. She
told me that Avant-Garde ended their upgrade policy on June 30th 1989
(approximately 7 months before PC Ditto II actually began to ship). She
said that they had only offered an upgrade on a temporary basis. For
their loyal customers who had missed that deadline their upgrade policy
was as follows: "Go down to the store and buy a new one at full price."
She furthermore made the absurd claim that honoring their upgrade policy
would mean that Avant-Garde would never be able to make a profit and that
their dealers would all abandon them. She also claimed that I had
probably purchased PC Ditto just to try to get a discount on PC Ditto
II...Not at all true, but even if I had what would it matter. One would
always expect to be able to upgrade a product like this.
Apparently Avant-Garde cares little about their loyal customers.
They are more than willing to take your money, but don't expect them to
return that loyalty in any way. PC Ditto is still being sold by all the
local dealers and I still see it in all the mail order ads. These dealers
should put up a sign that warns customers not to buy PC Ditto because
Avant-Garde is coming out with PC Ditto II and not allowing people to
upgrade.
I called Avant-Garde in December of 1988 to find out when PC Ditto II
was to be released. The person I spoke to in customer support told me
that it would be on the market in February of 1989. I think that the
entire idea of having a deadline for upgrades is a ridiculously poor
policy, but I only missed Avant- Garde's upgrade deadline by less than 60
days. They missed their release date by nearly a year.
It is certainly not a matter of money that prompts this letter, it is
my outrage at Avant-Garde's terrible customer support. I am a
professional business consultant. I make my living teaching businesses
how to operate more successfully and profitably. Avant-Garde's customer
"support" would receive a failing grade.
Bill Jurinjak
LATE ARRIVAL
============
Fri Jan 26, 1990
AVANTGARDE; posts,
We haven't read all the e-mail and messages yet, but we wanted to give
you an update of where we are.
First, all of the pc-ditto II boards we have shipped have been burned
in before being shipped. However, when the boards were installed by
users, they failed to boot up. So, we know the boards are OK. Thus, we
felt the problem was related to the machine hardware.
Since we learned of this last week, we purchased five 1040 STs. Four
had the same problem as users had (DOS would not boot), but a fifth
worked. We compared all the machines. This is what we found:
1. The machines are Rev.1; different from what we have seen before (and
the schematics for the 1040 differ as well).
2. We swapped all the socketed chips between the working 1040 and a
non-working 1040. The working 1040 still continued to work.
Consequently, the socketed chips (GLU,MMU,DMA) are not affecting
pc-ditto II.
3. The working 1040 has the video shifter soldered in, whereas the
remaining four non-working 1040s had socketed video shifters.
(Furthermore, the other machines in our stable which work have
soldered video shifters).
4. It doesn't make sense that the shifter should be the culprit, but we
did take a non-working 1040, removed the video socket, and soldered
the shifter. The machine still worked, but the pc-ditto II continued
to fail.
5. We also replaced the 373 and 244 buffer chips with AS parts, but to no
improvement.
In the past couple of days, we learned that we could disable our
interrupts, and everything works fine (DOS boots). And, we have
determined that the failure is due to a timing difference between various
machines. In collaboration with Jim Allen at FaST Technologies, he
concurs with our analysis of the hardware differences so far.
It appears that the fix will be nothing more than a software update
(to change the timings), which will be uploaded to this network the
moment we work it out. In any event, we are close on the heals of
finding this bug very shortly and getting a fix to everyone who needs it.
We'll be back online with the good news in the next few days.
Thanks for your patience.
Avant-Garde
EDITOR NOTE;
Lookin' good Bill but one thing is painfully missing, what about all the
folks who own and use the Mega style Atari computer, you make no mention
of one at all.... There are three (3) available here for testing at our
facilities. And, we are certain, there are many anxious users waiting to
hear if the Mega units will get along with PCD II considering the Blitter.
______________________________________________________________
> CALAMUS - ISD Sales CPU/STR Feature¿ Good things are on the way.......
===================================
from Nathan Potechin of ISD
One element remains constant in the history of printing, despite all
the changes and upheaval; the effort to improve the quality of
reproduction and to increase the flexibility of the layout. During the
first step-up from hand- written originals to typeset printed editions,
the easier distribution of books and flyers stood in the foreground as a
distinct advantage of various methods of reproduction. While in principle
nothing has greatly changed since then, an inked matrix colors the paper
that passes through, the publishing technology of the twentieth century
has rapidly developed since then. The traditional lead printer was
replaced by the typesetter, which in turn was replaced by the method of
cathode-ray beams, and which was finally replaced by the laser
imagesetter, which represents today's state of the art method.
In the course of this development the typesetting process has also
gone through many changes, from hand setting with a composing stick, to
key in photoprinting commands, to the current method of using a computer
terminal for word processing. The methods have become much more automated
and unfortunately as a consequence also much more abstract. It is no
longer immediately clear what a coded command sequence has to do with, for
example, a right justified paragraph.
Shortly following the rise of the personal computer a new typesetting
method was introduced. "What you see is what you get" (abbreviated as
"WYSIWYG") is the promise of the new layout and printing programs which
allow the user to see the end product of his work on the monitor while he
is still involved in the creating process. This allows the computer to
carry out enough working operations so that many corrections and
subsequent treatmentS are no longer necessary. The document is created
alone on the desktop. This process is therefore called Desktop Publishing,
or DTP for short. Ever since Desktop Publishing has expanded beyond the
normal computer output possibilities into the field of laser
imagesetters, it has become of increasing interest to professionals.
Unfortunately, it became apparent that the WYSIWYG system was not as
good in practice as in theory. On some machines, for example, the
typesets looked somewhat different when printed with a laser printer than
they looked on the monitor, and their appearance changed again when
printed with imagesetters. Sometimes hair-thin lines were not printed
precisely. The key to these problems lay within the applied technology.
The DTP concept came into being in a time when interface processing
between the computer and periphery equipment was very slow and when
computer memory space was very expensive and therefore hardly measured. In
order to save time and memory space, the documents were sent to the
printer in compressed form. This led to a record language which allowed
the computer and printer to agree upon the layout of a page. As this
language became standardized, it was possible to equip automatic
imagesetters with a special computer to translate this language, the so
called "Raster Image Processor" (RIP). The user was then able to
theoretically hook up any computer with any printer as long as they both
understood the same language.
In practice, however, the situation was not this simple. Subtle
differences in the language, "dialects", began to develop that sometimes
led to difficult outputs. In addition, since each computer, printer and
imagesetter has its own typesets, its handling became even more difficult
and misunderstandings more common. And finally, most DTP programs could
not or could only partially show complicated layouts on the monitor (for
example, letters in different sizes or text set on a diagonal). At its
best you had "WYSIAWYG" ("What you see is almost what you get"). It was
necessary to output many test prints and continually add corrections
before the final copy was produced.
All of these problems led us to use a completely new starting point in
the conception of Calamus. Calamus has the entire output logic built into
the program itself. Thus, the output devices no longer have anything to do
with the processing of the documents. They receive the finished layout of
each page as a bitmap, and a bitmap cannot be falsified. In addition, the
bitmap output requires minimal claim from the output device. A large
memory or special processor is no longer necessary. This saves money!
However, because the amount of data to be processed is so large, much more
efficient interfaces are required.
Therefore, Calamus works primarily with DMA transfer. In order to
make it compatible with the LINOTYPE imagesetter the Calamus LI2
Interface was developed, which also uses the DMA Interface. It doesn't
matter to Calamus whether the bitmap is sent to an imagesetter or to a
monitor. That's why the monitor can show the document in exactly the same
form as that which will later come from the imagesetter.
The advantage for the user: it is possible to photo print any complex
document right away Without a single test copy and without risk.
Calamus marks the beginning of a new generation of DTP use in the
professional field.
---====*****====---
> DynaCADD CPU/STR Feature¿ The Beginning... First in series.
========================
DynaCADD is the next generation in Computer Aided Design and Drafting.
Fully interactive 2D and TRUE 3D Capabilities.
All calculations are accurate to 16 decimal places.
Math Coprocessor support
Extremely user friendly GEM Icon based interface.
Uses Pull Down menus, mouse, keyboard and function keys.
Macro keys
Command Line Interpreter
Online context sensitive documentation
On Screen command help line
Outstanding Moniterm support
3D View Capabilites
-------------------
Multiple 3D views can be opened and modified at anytime. Geometric
Coordinate Planes (GCP) can be changed instantly. Translation of 3D
coordinate planes. Work can be done in any combination of views with all
views updating constantly. Automatic generation of any orthographic view
including user defined auxiliary views. Entities can be selectively
hidden in any view thus allowing easy generation of orthographically sound
views.
Dimensioning
------------
Auto Dimensioning features:
Mechanical and Architectural formats.
Full 2D and 3D Dimensioning.
Absolute control over dimensioning extents and text.
Optional modification of dimension text.
True horizontal and vertical base line and chaining.
Circular Radius, diameter and enter line.
Automatic linear and angular tolerancing in any of 3 different
styles.
Text orientation using any one of the three different systems
(unidirectional - angled - aligned)
Dimension text precision can be set from 0 - 9 decimal places.
Line Weights and Styles
-----------------------
Three line weights for use with all entities and visual
representation both on the screen and through the output. Up to sixty four
user definable line styles can be selected.
This is the first of an anticipated 10 - 15 segments covering all the
different aspects of DynaCADD 1.70 ....
_______________________________________________________________
> Stock Market ~ CPU NewsWire¿
===========================
THE TICKERTAPE
==============
by Michael Arthur
Concept by Glenn Gorman
Atari Stock went down 3/8 of a point on Monday, and was up 3/8 of a
point on Tuesday. On Wednesday it was down 1/4 of a point, and Atari
Stock went down 1/8 of a point on Thursday. On Friday, it was down
another 1/4 of a point. Finishing up the week at 8 1/4 points, Atari
stock is down 1/2 of a point from the last report.
Apple Stock is at the same price it was on Friday, January 15, 1990.
Commodore Stock is up 1/4 of a point from 1/15/90.
IBM Stock is up 3/4 of a point from 1/15/90.
Stock Report for Week of 1/15/90 to 1/19/90
_________________________________________________________________________
STock| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
Reprt|Last Chg.|Last Chg.|Last Chg.|Last Chg.|Last Chg. |
-----|------------|-------------|-------------|------------|-------------|
Atari|8 3/8 - 3/8|8 3/4 + 3/8|8 1/2 - 1/4|8 3/8 - 1/8|8 1/4 - 1/4|
| | | | | 29,100 Sls |
-----|------------+-------------+-------------+------------+-------------|
CBM |8 3/4 + 1/2|9 1/8 + 3/8|8 3/4 - 3/8|8 5/8 - 1/8|8 1/2 - 1/8|
| | | | | 73,100 Sls |
-----|------------+-------------+-------------+------------+-------------|
Apple|34 1/4 -1/4|34 7/8 + 5/8|33 1/4 -1 5/8|32 3/8 -7/8|34 1/4 +1 7/8|
| | | | |2,367,300 Sls|
-----|------------+-------------+-------------+------------+-------------|
IBM |98 1/8 +1/4|100 1/8 + 2|98 7/8 -1 1/4|99 1/2 +5/8|98 5/8 - 5/8|
| | | | |1,648,700 Sls|
-----'-------------------------------------------------------------------'
'Sls' refers to the # of stock shares that were traded that day.
'CBM' refers to Commodore Corporation.
______________________________________________________
> FTL ONLINE CONFERENCE CPU/STR Feature¿ FTL'S Wayne Holder ..
=====================================
=========================================================================
(C) 1989 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be
reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie
are *official* information services of Atari Corporation.
=========================================================================
January, 24,1990
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
On behalf of the Atari ST Roundtable, I welcome all of you to the
FTL RealTime Conference on GEnie. Before getting started, I
invite all of you to join us next week for an RTC with Lauren
Flanegan-Sellers. Lauren is the president of Blue Chip
International and will be with us to talk about WORDFLAIR, the new
document processor for the Atari ST.
And now, let's commence with the FTL RTC.
For those of you who are new to computing or have been in remote
seclusion for the last two years, FTL is the producer of one of
the most sophisticated and popular games for the ST and Amiga (and
soon, the PC), DUNGEON MASTER. It is very rare for one game to
fire the imagination and enthusiasm of players the way that
DUNGEON MASTER has. It is almost a cottage industry unto itself
with hint books, hint disks, maps, and an unending amount of
online chatter between players trying to help each other finish
this game. DUNGEON MASTER has done this. And now, it has spawned
a sequel. After much anticipation amongst DM fans, FTL has
released CHAOS STRIKES BACK for the ST. CHAOS STRIKES BACK is
proving that sequels aren't always a pale shadow of their
successful predecessors! <grin>
Our guests are Wayne Holder, President of FTL, Doug Bell, and
David Simon.
Gentlemen, my thanks to you for being with us this evening.
Before we start throwing questions at you, would you like to
introduce yourselves and make any opening comments?
<FTL>
Greetings everyone. And, thanks for the great response to Chaos
Strikes Back I'm not much at introductions, so I guess that's all.
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
DUNGEON MASTER has been a tremendously popular game. And it looks
like CHAOS STRIKES BACK is no slouch when it comes to popularity
also. Did you have any idea when doing DM that this would be the
case? And what do you attribute their popularity to?
<FTL>
Well, we had a "hunch" that DM would do OK. I guess because we
felt we were trying to do a type of game that had never been done
before. That is a game that blends real-time action with a rich
environment to play in. I guess the closest analog to what we
were trying to do was to create the dungeon equivalent of a
"flight simulator".
With CSB we were trying to build upon our game "technology" and
develop ways to develop new scenarios without needing changes to a
lot of code. In this sense, CSB was a bit of an experiment, and
we were a bit nervous about releasing it. Originally we intended
to make CSB require the original DM game (hence the comment on the
back of the box which we had already printed bookoo thousands of
before we changed our minds.) This would have limited CSB to the
original graphics But, after testing, we decided that we needed to
add new monsters and other graphics. So, we went with two disks.
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
DM and CSB each came out much later than everyone thought they
would. Obviously, you didn't compromise the integrity of these
games by trying to meet expected release dates. But why does it
take so long to get a new game out, especially with CSB, seeing
that the basic game mechanics had already been worked out
previously (in DM)?
<FTL>
The basic CSB scenario was done quite a while ago. But, we were
also working on moving Dungeon Master to many new computers.
During this conversion we kept finding problems with compatibility
between CSB (which was being designed on the Atari) and these new
computers. Because we didn't want to dig ourselves into a hole
with these new computers, we had to do a lot of redesign to plan
for everything fitting in the future. In the long run, I think
everyone will benefit more, even if it perhaps is a bit
frustrating for our users sometimes. (were sorry!)
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Thanks. One last one from me (for now). Which computer systems
are DM and CSB available/to be available on?
<FTL>
Currently in the USA Dungeon Master is available for the Atari ST,
the Amiga, and the Apple IIgs. In Japan, Dungeon Master is
available on CDROM for the Fujitsu "FM Towns" computer (a 386
IBM PC style computer.) the Sharp X68000 computer, and the NEC PC-
9801 computer (just shipping next week.) Soon DM will be out for
the IBM PC in the USA and also the Apple Macintosh (although
perhaps not as soon for the Mac.) For CSB, it is currently only
available for the Atari ST (because we like you.) but will soon be
out for the Amiga.
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
And we like -you- too! Thanks.
<JRHARRIS>
Thanks, Jeff, and thanks to FTL for two great games two quickies.
Even though I haven't finished CSB, yet, when can I expect the
next sequel and can we please have a 'multiple save' feature?
<FTL>
We hope to have at least another game out this year, but I can't
say much more because I'm not sure which of the several games we
have in development will come out when. Actually, I'd like to get
some more feedback on whether people would like another "expansion
set" like CSB And, if it should be "harder" or "easier" than CSB?
Sorry, I forgot about your "save" question. We've received many
requests for this and we'll look into supporting it for future
games. (Wayne looks left toward Doug Bell who will have to code
it :)
<[Chris] C.MCKINSEY>
Do you plan on making a ][gs version of CSB and if so when may we
expect it's release?
<FTL>
Currently, we're not sure about the IIgs. We lost our IIgs expert
last year and we have not yet found a good replacement for him.
However, we are very pleased with our IIgs sales and we'd "like"
to do a IIgs version.
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
BTW, JRHARRIS votes for a "three-quel" to DM. <grin>
<[JimR] J.RATKOS1>
Now that Atari has been shipping ALL their units with D/S drives
do you foresee that your products in the future will take
advantage of this, if not just to "add" more sounds, graphics for
those with 1meg or more and to speed up loading time?
<FTL>
Well, this is a difficult question, because my intelligence
indicates there are still quite a few single sided systems out
there I don't think we can abandon them. Especially since many
are in Europe where we have great sales. But, I understand your
desire to take full advantage of your computer. We have
considered going to multiple disks and supporting a double-sided
or hard disk install, but there are still some unresolved
technical problems with this.
<J.RATKOS1>
I think that the way that it has been done in the past is
agreeable to most of us but there are some of us who will always
want more <grin>, and yes to another expansion set.
<FTL>
BTW, I am online about once a week. Please post your votes on how
you'd like an expansion set to be.
<[Jeff] JBEADLES>
First of all, Yes to another expansion set. Two questions.
First, are there plans to allow DM/CSB to be installed on hard
disks, and second, are there plans for user-created adventures,
ala Oids?
<FTL>
Currently, we can't support installation to a hard drive and still
run on a 512K ST. We have to take complete control of the machine
at boot to recover enough RAM from the system. So, we have these
hard choices again. Usually, we opt for the answer that gets our
games into the hands of the most people. Although, we are working
on ways to make this work for future games.
Sorry. Again I forgot your second question. We have plans to
slowly introduce the elements of a complete user configurable
game. However, there are still many technical questions to solve.
What we will do is to continue to add new pieces to the puzzle.
For example, the Champion Portrait Editor is an example of a
module which gives you a little more control for customizing
your games. Look for more modules like this in the future.
<MIKE-ELLIS>
First I would like to commend you for producing (in my opinion)
two of the best games I have ever seen. However, I was
disappointed when I found that the Amiga version was better in
that it supported many more sounds, etc. My question is this,
"Why didn't the ST version of CSB support these enhancements?
<FTL>
Well the Amiga version requires more RAM than the ST version. (1
meg vs 512K.) Also, the Amiga has special sound hardware which
the older STs lack. However, we are planning on supporting the
new STe machines which have great sound hardware. The sounds on
the ST are currently very difficult to do without slowing down the
game. With the new hardware on STe we can add some optional
sounds for the new machines to use.
<T.KURILLA>
Hello, I've just about completed CSB, but I want to solve it with
the CSB characters. Is there a way to obtain both Kazai and Lor?
And if so, could I get a hint?
<FTL>
No, sorry, they don't like each other very much and we had to
separate them so that they wouldn't fight all the time.
<[Vinny] SALVIUS>
Thanks, Jeff. You guys had discussed the possibility of taking
the DM code and turning it into scenarios other than fantasy.
What do you have in the works? A space Station futuristic type
thing perhaps?
<FTL>
Yes! Perhaps. We have a futuristic game in development now.
Please send me your thoughts on the regular board. Perhaps you
can influence what we do?
<D.BIXLER1>
First let me say. As a programmer, I have much admiration for the
people at FTL. It must be absolutely fun working on games such as
DM in stead of EXCITING business packages. Now the two questions:
1) As a programmer, I would think that a good way to create a
different feel and "quick" game generation would be to create
libraries which contain the "frames" necessary for displaying
different objects, monsters, WALL TYPES, etc. (As far as I know
you may already do this). Do you think that doing so could help
create the sequels quicker, and at the same time make a world of
difference in the look and feel of the sequels? (All you would
have to do is edit the libraries and select the objects/ monsters
which will be used in the next software release)
<FTL>
Sigh, I wish that creating a new game was as simple as hacking new
code The hard part always turns out to be the "details" which
everyone enjoys so much. (Except sometimes the programmers.)
<D.BIXLER1>
2) As a user, I have heard NOTHING (0) about CSB, can you tell me
what the major differences are from DM (What is the Champion
Portrait Editor)?
<FTL>
OK. CSB continues the original DM adventure. In CSB you discover
that Chaos has foreseen his defeat in the DM scenario, and has
planned a revenge upon the world, which, if successful, will
restore him to power CSB is based mostly on the DM code, but adds
several new modules on a separate "utility" disk. One is the
Champion Portrait Editor which can pluck Champions from one saved
game, allowing you to edit their appearance, and then insert them
into the new CSB scenario. Also, you can use the CPE to edit the
pictures of Champions in any DM or CSB game while the game is in
progress. The second new feature is the "Hint Oracle" which is a
powerful deity (named "John") who can read your saved games for
CSB and offer specific hints on your current situation.
<F.KISH1>
Anything to speed up booting?????? Perhaps a key disc in drive A
for Hard Disc users (even at extra sigh, cost??)
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
This was really covered earlier. Anything else to add to this
issue, Wayne?
<FTL>
No, except that we are sorry it takes so long to load. But, there
is a lot of stuff to load.
<L.HUNNEFIELD>
Hi FTL! I just wanted to say thanks for the games you have
produced thus far. I was curious if you were ever going to do a
Sundog II?
<FTL>
We might. I assume you'd like it?
<L.HUNNEFIELD>
Absolutely. Preferably with a Dungeon-Master-like interface and
graphics. That was a GREAT game!!!
<FTL>
One thing I mention from time to time, is to suggest that people
write us (us the PO box in the the front of the manual.) We read
every letter and so do the programmers and game designers. This
helps us get a "feel" for what people want.
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
For everyone's information, the DM topic is in Category 9, Topic
39...
<FTL>
Yes, I am active in cat 9
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
...and the CSB topic is in Category 9, Topic 38. And Wayne's
email address is. ..FTL! Gee, that works out great!
<[Brian] B.LOSCHIAVO>
In DM, which is the best combo of characters to complete the game?
<FTL>
Actually, it's mostly up to you regardless of who you choose, your
characters will advance far beyond their starting stats before you
get even halfway into DM. I normally say that reincarnation is
better in the long run, but makes for a tougher start. If you can
get past level 4 (the worms) with reincarnated Champions, then
you're probably home free.
<[love broker] J.DOTSETH1>
Hi Wayne, thanks for the great games, two quickies first, is there
any talk of supporting MIDI on future games and what do you have
to say about the anti-climax rumors going around??
<FTL>
Sorry, do you mean MIDI for music? And clarify "anticlimax".
<[love broker] J.DOTSETH1>
O.K. MIDI as a sound track in the background and people have said
the game is very anti-climatic at the end, I think they want their
monitor to melt or something.
<FTL>
With regard to Midi. We may support more music options in the
future. But so far it doesn't seem to be requested very often.
With regard to the ending. I suppose we suffer from the fault
that we put all of our effort into the scenario rather than a
fancy ending animation. This is a difficult choice. We
understand that after you've put in 70 plus hours you're expecting
a really amazing ending. However, to live up to most peoples'
expectations would probably require a second disk. (DM and CSB
are tough acts to follow.)
<[Eric] E.WEEKS>
Although I would be one of the first to buy an expansion set,
there are times when those old dungeon walls seem a bit dreary.
Question: what is the status of the character extractor utility? I
hope you still bury the character information in the extracted
file so no one can find it.
<FTL>
I have assigned the task to one of our programmers. I hope to
have it completed in about a week. (see cat 9 top 38 for
details.)
<[DARK_ELF] K.WELTY>
I was wondering if you ever considered the option of offering the
ability to link multiple computers together (MIDI or RS232) to
create a true multi-player version?
<FTL>
Yes, we actually did a multiplayer game a while ago, but we never
released it. Watch this space...
<[Al] A.HORTON>
I hope my question is not redundant. Three people in my home play
CSB. I would love to back it up, but can't. Is there a way that
key disks, doc copy protection, or code wheels could be used as
copy protection?
<FTL>
Actually, we think our current protection is less hassle than a
code wheel or manual based protection. Also, we do offer a backup
disk as a mail-in offer. (see the front of the Manual.)
<[Ralph] ST.REPORT>
Just wanted to say "Thank You" for many hours of first rate
entertainment derived from DM/CSB.
<FTL>
Thank you!!
<L.HUNNEFIELD>
Well, I just wanted to know when you will be printing a "hint
booklet" for the CSB.
<FTL>
We're considering it. What specially would you like? Send me your
thoughts in cat 9.
<J.RATKOS1>
You mean there is still hope for RVP? (fond memories of CES '87)
<FTL>
No, sorry. But something new is a brewin...
<[kiwi] J.CLARKE6>
When will you release CSB to the South Pacific, ie New Zealand?
<FTL>
You mean you don't have it?
<[kiwi] J.CLARKE6>
Not even close.
<FTL>
Well, I'll check into this. If you like you can order direct.
call USA <FTL> (619) 453-5711 and ask for Silvia or Debbi.
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Thanks everyone for all your questions. Wayne, any closing
comments before we pull the plug?
<FTL>
Thank you all for attending!!! And, talk to me in cat 9 top 38.
See you all later!
<[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Thanks again to Wayne Holder, Doug Bell, and David Simon from FTL
for being with us.
Please join us next week for the Wordflair RTC with Lauren
Flanegan-Sellers.
__________________________________________________________
> CPU NEWSWIRE CONFIDENTIAL¿ Sayin it like it is....
=========================
- Los Angeles, CA. ****** MAC LAPTOP CHOKES ON MIDI SW! ******
---------------
By the time you read this, the 50,000 piece order of Mac Laptops
should have reached Cupertino or should I say the CANCELLATION of that
order and the notice thereof WILL have reached Cupertino. It seems a
certain alert individual asked that a program or two be shown on the MAC
LAPTOP at NAMM, thus placing the Mac rep in the hot seat, he exclaimed
that there was a problem in the circuit design that would not allow midi
software to run using the laptop.... The individual who asked to see the
software run was given a Cross Pen and Pencil set by the grateful folks
from the music house who had ordered 50,000 laptops. They are currently
looking very carefully at the Stacy Midi controller. Yep, thats the name
folks and its claim to fame is it is the only laptop midi-controller in
the industry with 2-4mb of power ram available for the musicians.
- Sunnyvale, CA. ****** AUSTERITY AT ITS BEST? *****
--------------
Seems Atari has decided to force its users to fund AT&T unjustly. Oh
well. Perhaps after throwing away $100,000,000 to $300,000,000 on a dead
electronics chain, (Federated, you don't have $750 for five 2400 baud
modems. Don't tell me, are the "cheaps" creeping back into the hallowed
halls of Sunnyvale?
- Sunnyvale, CA. ******* NEW MONITORS FROM ATARI *******
--------------
They are alledged to be made by Sony and the picture quality is 1st
rate. (Now throw in a trinitron tuner!) The really great part is the
absolutely fantastic sound quality! The way my dealer explained it, there
are now 2 speakers. One on either side of the monitor. Now the ST sound
chip supports 3 voices and with this new monitor, 2 voices come out one
speaker and one comes out the other. The effect is spectacular!
- Sunnyvale, CA. ******** MONOCHROME MONITORS SCARCE! ********
--------------
Hmmmmm, history repeats itself... remember when the color monitors
seemed to phhhhft into the woodwork? Well, thats what has happened to the
mono monitors this year!! WHY?? Can't our favorite fearless leaders get
their act together? Or is is a case of the right hand not knowing what
the left hand is doing and both thought the other took care of it??
- San Antonio, TX. ****** DEEP DISCOUNTING IS DUMB! ******
---------------
Recently, a Texas Atari dealer took the intitiative to do a mailout to
special customers and friends, this mailout was for the promotion of
advance sales of the Stacy it went like this..
From: STACE [Mark] at 17:23 EST
Seems our good friends at Computer Emporium are determined to be the first
on the block to sell STacy at the lowest prices around...
Just retrieved a postcard from our club mailbox containing the following
information:
The Atari STacy Laptop
Computer Emporium is now taking orders
for the new laptop ST from Atari.
1 meg of memory is standard.
20 meg hard drive is optional.
ORDER YOURS NOW!!
$1129.95 with 1 meg
$1499.95 with 1 meg/20 meg hard drive
ACT NOW!
(Quantities are limited)
Not to worry dear hearts.. Their quantities ARE limited, they have none.
And, according to our descrete sources, they have only two units on order.
Incidently, it was also made known that in all probabilities, they will
be hard pressed to ever recieve the Stacy machines.
While on the subject we see where good ole J & R Music is at it again..
this time we find the price most folks found so hard to believe when we
told you about it three weeks ago is now in effect. They are selling the
520 STF for $299.95. And... they said it could never happen.
- Chicago, IL ****** STE TO BE IN POWER PACK DEALS ******
-----------
According to our sources, the STE will be the machine shipped in the
power pack deals that ARE in the works. For Atari's positive marketing
push in the USA. In this instance, this is the best news yet for all of
us, as it means the userbase is going to grow, thus renewing developer
interest all the way 'round.
- Atlanta, GA. ****** ATARI MAY NOT BE AT SPRING COMDEX? ******
-----------
Why must our favorite computer company always play games like the
obviously late debutant at the 'coming out ball'. Perhaps the decision
makers at Sunnyvale have forgotten the rest of the real world who are
desperately TRYING to support them. These folks need to know in advance
of these shows so the proper travel and accomodation arrangements may be
made. Let's get off our indecisive little duffs guys and get with the
promotional program! After all, this is 1990. COMDEX is the name of the
game. Bar none.
How about a CEO who is present at an industry show and spends the best
part of the day watching a football game instead of glad-handing and
promoting the business???? Not bad.... Guess that company has all the
business it can handle.
- Toronto, Canada **** SEYBOLD & CEPS WILL MAKE ATARI DTP SHINE! ****
---------------
Sam Tramiel, of Atari Corp. has gone and done it again, in his usual
fashion of seeing the silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud, he has
decided to take full advantage of these shows and will have Atari's DTP
systems there in force to once and for all prove to the crowds that this
is the system to own. Therefore, keep your eyes open for the schedules
of these shows they should be very revealing as far as Atari is concerned.
_____________________________________________________________
> Canadian Expo CPU/STR InfoFile¿ Our neighbors to the north do it again!
==============================
Press Release
-------------
The Second CANDIAN ATARI USERS' CONVENTION
==========================================
The largest gathering ever of Atari computer users in Canada is expected
at the upcoming Second Canadian Atari Users' Convention to be held at the
Airport Hilton Hotel On April 1, 1990 from 10am to 6pm.
Sponsored by the Toronto Atari Federation, one of the largest computer
user groups in North America, the Convention will offer the public a
once-a-year opportunity to see what is new and exciting in the world of
Atari. There will be exhibits, seminars and demonstrations by a wide
variety of retailers, guest speakers, user groups from Canada and the
U.S., software developers and hardware manufacturers. "
Show Special" prices offered by retailers, Public Domain software from
user groups and reduced room rates at the Airport Hilton ensure bargains
for everyone.
A special feature will be a major exhibition by Atari Canada, where a full
range of their product line, from 8-bit computers and game machines,
through 1040ST's, Mega 2's, Mega 4's and PC clones will be on display.
One of the biggest draws is sure to be the recently released and widely
praised Atari Portfolio, an MS-DOS compatible computer which fits in the
inner pocket of a business suit and the latest new Atari STE and STacy.
Other highlights include new products, several from Europe, which enable
the ST line to emulate IBM and Macintosh machines quickly and more easily
than ever before. The Second Canadian Atari Users Convention is being
held at the Airport Hilton Hotel, located on Toronto Airport Stip, 5875
Airport Rd., Mississauga, Ontario.
For more information contact our Public Info-Line at (416)
425-5357, or the TAF On-Line BBS at (416) 235-0318
* * *
ATTENTION ATARI USER GROUPS:
The Toronto Atari Federation, sponsor of the upcoming SECOND CANADIAN
ATARI USERS' CONVENTION, is a non-profit users' group whose sole aim is to
serve the Atari community in Canada. As a user group, we understand fully
how attendance at computer shows can amount to a major item in the yearly
budget. However, we feel strongly that user groups are key players in the
world of Atari. Therefore, we are offering a special, reduced rental rate
for booths to all Atari user groups. As an Atari user group, your fee will
be 57% off the regular Exhibitor's Rate. That is, you pay only $125.00
Canadian. The SECOND CANADIAN ATARI USERS' CONVENTION will certainly be
the major Atari event of the year. The previous Convention was a runaway
success, and we are determined to outdo ourselves in 1990. We hope that
you will want to share in the excitement with us. This special offer for
usergroups is subject to the availability of booths. Only one booth per
user group at this special price. To ensure that your user group does not
miss out, please respond as soon as possible.
For more information, please do not hesitate to call me at:
(416) 477-2085 or,
Mike Searl (TAF President) at (416) 245-5543.
* Please note that booths rented at the special reduced rate for user
groups may not, in every instance, be a standard 10' x 10' due to the
shape of the room.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Exhibitors
The Toronto Atari Federation is pleased to announce an event
of special interest to Atari dealers and user groups. The SECOND CANADIAN
ATARI USERS' CONVENTION will be held on April 1, 1990 at the Airport
Hilton Hotel, 5875 Airport Rd. Mississauga, Ontario.
This special event comes as a direct result of the demand, both from
dealers and users, which followed the highly successful "First Canadian
Atari Users' Convention," held in November, 1988. That show exceeded
everybody's expectations, drawing a crowd of over 2,000 attendees in just
5 hours, generating a great deal of business for participating retailers,
receiving very favourable reviews in magazines such as Antic, STart and
Computer Shopper, and attracting a surprisingly large percentage of
attendees from outside the Toronto area and from the United States.
A conservative estimate of attendance for the upcoming show is 3,000
attendees, making this event the largest gathering of Atari users ever in
Canada. Dealers can look forward to immediate contact with a very large
segment of the Atari market. For dealers this is the premium segment of
the market - attendees are eager, enthusiastic and ready to make
significant hardware and software purchases. Users will be drawn by a very
wide variety of exhibitors and other attractions.
Exhibitors' costs will be kept as low as possible, since we are a
non-profit users' group whose only aim is to serve the Atari community in
Canada. Admission prices will also be kept low in order to attract the
largest crowd possible.
The SECOND CANADIAN ATARI USERS' CONVENTION will feature, retailers,
displays by software developers and hardware manufacturers, guest speakers
conducting a day-long series of seminars in our lecture rooms, and a major
exhibition by Atari Canada. The Airport Hilton Hotel is an excellent hotel
with the highest reputation and first-rate convention facilities,
conveniently located on the Toronto Airport Strip near several major
expressways and right on the public transit system. Room rates will be
specially discounted for everyone connected with the Convention.
Our promotion of the Convention will be even more dynamic and
professional than in 1988, supported by a much larger budget. The
advertising campaign will include major newspaper advertisements, press
releases, posters, pamphlets, and a BBS campaign across North America.
If you are interested in obtaining more information on how to be an
exhibitor at Canada's Atari event of the Year, please feel free to call
one of the phone numbers listed below or leave mail on GEnie to M.SEARL1.
Booths will measure 10'x10' and will be curtained on three sides; one 8'
table, draped. One Hydro outlet is included in the booth price.Power bars
and extension cords are the responsibility of the exhibitor. Extra tables
are also available for a nominal charge. We expect all booths to be sold
well before the show date. To confirm your participation in the Second
Canadian Atari Users' Convention, please respond as soon as possible. For
inquiries, do not hesitate to call me at (416) 477-2085 or Mike Searl at
(416) 245-5543. A FAX number will be provided from Feb 1st to April 1st
for your convenience. The number will be (416) 245-5089.
Yours truly,
Paul Collard,
Convention Coordinator
The Canadian Atari Users Convention
__________________________________________________________
> Hard Drive Info CPU/STR InfoFile¿ Affordable Mass Storage
================================
NEW PRICES! & MORE MODELS!!
============================
ABCO COMPUTER ELECTRONICS INC.
P.O. Box 6672 Jacksonville, Florida 32236-6672
Est. 1985
_________________________________________
Voice: 904-783-3319 10 AM - 4 PM EDT
BBS: 904-786-4176 12-24-96 HST
FAX: 904-783-3319 12 PM - 6 AM EDT
_________________________________________
HARD DISK SYSTEMS TO FIT EVERY BUDGET
_____________________________________
All systems are complete and ready to use, included at NO EXTRA COST
are clock/calendar and cooling blower(s).
ALL ABCO HARD DISK SYSTEMS ARE FULLY EXPANDABLE
(you are NOT limited to two drives ONLY!)
(all cables and connectors installed)
RUGGED SEAGATE HARD DISK MECHANISMS
* ICD HOST ADAPTERS USED EXCLUSIVELY * OMTI HIGH SPEED CONTROLLERS *
32mb #SG32238 549.00 42mb #SG44710 619.00
51mb #SGN4951 629.00 65mb #SG60101 689.00
80mb #SGN296 729.00 100mb #SG84011D 949.00
130mb #SG1244D 1099.00
145mb #SG3A421 1110.00
170mb #SGT41776 1389.00 260mb #SG1244Q 2169.00
320mb #SGN7788Q 3295.00
Listed above are a sampling of the systems available.
Prices also reflect various cabinet/power supply configurations
(over sixty configurations are available, flexibility is unlimited)
***** TAX RETURN SPECIALS ARE IN EFFECT! *****
*** ALL Units: Average Access Time: 24ms - 34ms ***
ALL UNITS COMPATIBLE WITH --> MAGIC SAC - PC-DITTO/II - SPECTRE/GCR
LARGER units are available - (special order only)
* Removable Media Devices NOW Available (44mb) Syquest 555 *
* SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICES *
EXTRA CARTRIDGES: 97.95 (anytime)
* SYQUEST 44MB (#555) REMOVABLE MEDIA DRIVE *
- SYQUEST 44 MB removable media drive - ICD ST Host Adapter
- ICD Mass Storage Utility Software - 3' DMA Cable
- Fan & Clock - Multi-Unit Power Supply
(1) 44 MB Syquest Cart.
Completely Assembled and READY TO RUN!
ONLY $869.00
We would offer floppy drives.. but Computer Shopper has 'em at the right
price. And.. you can plug 'em right into our cabinets and power supplies.
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* TWIN SYQUEST 44MB REMOVABLE MEDIA DRIVES ... PROGRAMMER'S DELIGHT *
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* SYQUEST 44MB REMOVABLE MEDIA DRIVE AND HARD DRIVE COMBINATIONS *
- Syquest 44 Model [555] and the following hard drives -
50mb SQG51 $1299.00 30mb SQG38 $1219.00
65mb SQG09 $1339.00 85mb SQG96 $1399.00
LOWBOY - STANDARD - DUAL BLOWER CABINETS
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-* 12 month FULL Guarantee *-
(A FULL YEAR of COVERAGE)
Quantity & Usergroup Discounts Available!
_________________________________________
DEALERS and DISTRIBUTORS WANTED!
Personal and Company Checks are accepted.
ORDER YOURS TODAY!
904-783-3319 9am - 8pm EDT
_______________________________________________________________
> A "Quotable Quote"¿
=================
"Those that can.. DO! Those that cannot ..CRITICIZE!!"
... A moment of stark reality
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU/STR¿ "Your Independent News Source" January 26, 1990
16/32bit Magazine copyright ½ 1989 No.4.04
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Views, Opinions and Articles Presented herein are not necessarily those of
the editors, staff, CPU NEWSWIRE¿ CPU/STR¿ or CPU Report¿. Reprint
permission is hereby granted, unless otherwise noted. All reprints must
include CPU NEWSWIRE, CPU/STR or CPU Report and the author's name. All
information presented herein is believed correct, the editors and staff
are not responsible for any use or misuse of information contained herein.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
