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Syndicate ZMagazine Issue 045
_______________________________________
ZMAGAZINE MARCH 1987
_______________________________________
ZMAGAZINE ISSUE 45 MARCH 30, 1987
NEW JERSEY EDITION
_______________________________________
PUBLISHER: SYNDICATE SERVICES
EDITOR IN CHIEF: RON KOVACS
EDITOR: ALAN KLOZA
SPECIAL FEATURES EDITOR: STEVE GODUN
ASST PUBLISHER: KEN KIRCHNER
ZMAG HEADQUARTERS:
THE SYNDICATE BBS
(201) 968-8148 300/1200 BAUD
PO BOX 74
MIDDLESEX, NJ 08846-0074
_______________________________________
////This week in Zmag////
<*> Special Sysop Survey Request
<*> Computer Show Schedule
<*> Updated 1088XE Documentaion
<*> Zmag Newswire
<*> Special Zmag/GEnie Sign-on
<*> FCC
All this and more in Issue 45
_______________________________________
////Zmag and GEnie////
If you are interested in more info
on siging up without a registration
fee, then please read on. We have been
givin passes with sign-up information
and I pass these on to the readers who
send me a letter with their address.
You can now sign-up without charges.
For free signup pass, send your name
and address to:
Zmagazine
PO BOX 74
Middlesex, NJ 08846
GEnie provides no extra charges for
1200 baud service. You can call at
300/1200 for only $5.00/hr. Join the
Atari Roundtable where you will
discover dozens of files, Atari Live
confrences, CB Simulator, Electronic
Mail, multiplayer games and more.
As stated above, as a Zmag reader,
you are eligible to recieve a special
limited offer from GEnie. If you sign
up before December 31 1987, the normal
registration fee of $18.00 will be
waived.
If you would like more information on
GEnie services, call: 1 (800) 638-9636
Comparison Chart:
1)The Source: 2)CompuServe 3)GEnie
REG.Fee Monthly Min 300 1200 **
---------------------------------------
1)49.95 10.00 8.40 10.80
2)39.95 none 6.00 12.50
3)none none 5.00 5.00
Non Prime time hours are:
Monday-Friday 6pm-8am, All day
Saturday/Sunday and national holidays.
Additional surcharge for 2400 baud.
_______________________________________
////XE1088 Documentation Update////
_______________________________________
Provided by the CHAOS BBS(517) 371-1106
The final step, the 1088XE. Version 2.0
(This one works!) By Scott Peterson,
June 1986.
Well, this is it for me, the last
installment on the 130XE. I have not
built this mother, but one has been
built and tested by another person in
Mass., and it works!!
This doc assumes you have allready
built and tested a 576K 130XE. to
finish it you will need the following
parts;
Quanity part no. description.
-------------------------------
16 41256-15 256K DRAM'S
1 7432 quad OR gate
1 7404 quad invert buff.
2 33 omh resistors.
Small piece of PC board.
-------------------------------
Note: On the 74 series, you can sub
them with 74LS series chips, they use
less power...
Tools;
Nothing fancy, a fine tip soldering
iron, screwdriver, needle nose pliers,
and some fine wire, ect.
Mount the 7404 and the 7432 on a small
PC board(1in. X 2in.) connect together
pin 14 on the 7432 and pin 14 on the
7404 with a length of fine wire. This
is the +5v supply to the chips, connect
it to pin 14 of any 14 pin chip in the
130XE or pin 16 of any 16 pin chip in
the 130XE. Next connect a lenght of
wire to pin 7 of the 7432 and pin 7 of
the 7404, this is ground for the two
chips, connect it to pin 7 of any 14
pin chip in the 130XE or pin 8 of and
16 pin chip.
Next, take U23(U23) out of the socket
and bend up pin 17, reinsert it in the
socket. Solder a piece of wire to pin
17 U23, and connect it to the 7432 pins
2 and 5. Next connect a wire to pin 14
on U23(PIA) run it to pin 1 on the 7404
and pin 1 on the 7432. Now connect a
wire from the 7432 pin 6 to pin 17 of
the socket U23 is in. Find the 74LS138
you piggy backed to the mother board
when doing the 576k mod, remove the
jumper from pins 1 and 16. solder a
wire from pin 3 of the 7432 on the PC
board to pin 1 of the piggybacked
74LS138. Run a jumper from the 7404 pin
2 to the 7432 pin 4. Put some double
backed tape on the PC board and stick
it somewhere on the mother board of the
130XE.
RAM-CHIP installation(lots of them!)
Take the 16 new ram chips and cut pin
15 on all of them in half so only the
'fat' part is left. Now, you have to
piggy back them on-top of the 64K rams
the left-most row of chips). Solder in
8 of them, connecting all pins except
pin 15, then connect a jumper to pin 15
of each new ram chip. Make sure you
have about a foot left over. Solder in
the next 8 doing the same thing (you
might want to piggy back the 256K
DRAM's prior to mounting them on-top of
the 64K DRAM's). When you get done you
should have 2 new rows of 256k DRAM's
solder in on-top of the 64K DRAM's,
with a 2 wires, one connected to all
the pin 15's of the middle row and
another connected to all the pin 15's
of the top row. Take one wire and go
out a few inches and install a 33 ohm
resistor in-line, cover with heat
shrink tubing and do the same to the
other wire. Connect one wire to pin 15
of the 74LS138 and the other to pin 13
of the 74LS138. Last but not least,
install a jumper to pin one of each of
the left bank of ram-chips, just like
you did in the 576k mod to the bank on
the right. After doing this run the
jumper to any pin one of the right
bank, what you should wind up with is a
common connection to every pin one of
both banks of ram-chips.
Your done!!!
Sorry, as of right now I know of no
software to run on this(maybe Mydos
4.2? or Top-Dos 1.5+). I will provide a
table for the control numbers, ect.
Good Luck
Scott
P.S. 2 meg is very, very possible. You
just need wwuunnn more control line.
This would have to be bit 0 of the PIA,
but you would lose the switch-able O.S.
Its up to you guys from here, thats
funny, the 1040 ST only has 1,024,000
bytes of ram.
_______________________________________
////Computer Show's////
_______________________________________
Ken Gordon Shows April-June 1987
April 5--
Long Island, NY Show
250 Tables, Grand Royal Hotel
Hempstead-Clinton Street
Sunday 10-4pm
May 9--
Boston Area Show
350 Tables, NE Trade Center
Woburn Exit #35 I-95 - 128
Saturday 10-4pm
May 16--
South Jersey Show
300 Tables, Betsy Ross Inn
Pennsauken, NJ RT 130
Saturday 10-4pm
June 6--
North Jersey Show
400 Tables, Meadowlands Hilton
Secaucus, New Jersey RT 3
Saturday 9-4pm
June 13--
Maryland/DC/VA Show
Sheraton Hotel
New Carroliton, MD Exit 20-B, I-95
Saturday 10-4pm
June 20--
Philadelphia Area Show
George Washington Confrence Center
Wollow Grove, PA TPKE Exit 27
_______________________________________
April 11-12
The 12th Annual Trenton Computer Fest
Trenton State College Recreation Center
For information:
Trenton State COllege
Hillwood Lakes, CN4700, Trenton, NJ
08650-4700 (609)771-2487
_______________________________________
May 3
Delaware Computer Fair
Ramada Inn, New Castle, Delaware
I-295,RT13
10-4pm Admission is $3.00
For more information:
(201) 553-1991
_______________________________________
June 14
Computer Central Multi-Vendor PC Show
Holiday Inn Itasca
860 Irving Park Road
Itasca, Il
9:30-4pm
Apple,Atari,IBM(clones),Commodork,Tandy
For more information:
(312) 940-7547
_______________________________________
////Zmag Newswire////
_______________________________________
The Department of Defense Proposes
Limitations on -Electronic Press- Easy
electronic access to public
information, the stock in trade of such
on-line providers as Dow Jones News
Retrieval, Mead, Newsnet, CompuServe,
and The Source, will be curtailed if
the Department Of Defense has it's way.
DOD's concerns focus on the
computerized ease with which an agent
of an unfriendly power might access
large amounts of unclassified
information, massage it electronically,
and discover patterns in national
behavior of great significance to
national security.
The Pentagon is an important source of
such information, regularly releasing
unclassified information to the news
media which electronic information
exchange services then repackage in an
easily accessible form.
To prevent potential adversaries from
accessing this convenient source of
information, DOD has proposed a new
security designation termed
-unclassified but sensitive-.
Such information, although
unclassified, would be restricted from
on-line databases.
The information industry sees this move
as a threat to First Amendment
freedoms. The Information Industry
Association (IIA), a trade group
representing vendors of online data
services, issued a policy statement in
January that acknowledged the
government's legitimate concern for
national defense, but opposed efforts
by DOD and the National Security
Council to restrict public access to
unclassified information. Carl
Valenti, chairman of the IIA board of
directors and vice president of
information services for Dow, Jones ompany, stated strong opposition to
-controlling access to information
that has always been available-
information that you can find in your
public library-. DOD is not the only
government agency attempting to
restrict access to publicly released
information.
The Commerce Department recently
requested private information companies
to identify subscribers who access the
Department of Energy's RECON database
(the request was later withdrawn after
pressure from IIA); NASA has
established a list of companies,
including American companies, that may
not subscribe to unclassified NASA
information; and the CIA and FBI have
visited Mead Data Central, providers of
the LEXIS legal research database and
the NEXIS news research database, to
discuss how Mead could limit access to
those unclassified databases and to
determine whether suspect foreigners
were subscribing.
According to a spokesman for
CompuServe, a major electronic
information exchange service, the
-unclassified but sensitive-
designation is poorly defined and thus
gives agencies arbitrary powers of
censorship. In response to government
requests that information providers
restrict data access voluntarily, he
said, -Compu$erve is not equipped to
provide these protections, and not
equipped to make these judgements- as
to who should have access and who
should not.
In addition to concerns over First
Amendment freedoms, many U.S. companies
fear that limited access to public
databases could take away a critical
competitive advantage. These
corporations have joined forces with
the information exchange companies, the
print media, and the American Civil
Liberties Union to monitor government
actions and prevent any restrictions on
the free flow of unclassified
information.
In a more general effort, the Media
Institute, a Washington D.C. based
non-profit research foundation, has
established the First Amendment Center
for New Media to protect the freedoms
of a range of electronic information
sources such as on-line databases,
videotext, teletext, cable television,
and satellite news gathering.
_______________________________________
////Zmag Special Report////
_______________________________________
[ed.]
Since I feel there are many SysOps
reading this publication on a weekly
basis, I decided to publish this
article. If you are not a SysOp, dont
respond to the requests listed, as they
are for SysOps only. Please take the
time and reply if you can.
Sysops Questionnaire for Shooshan ackson ONA Study
Introduction:
You have an opportunity to help improve
the services the telephone company
provides to sysops like you and to the
people who use your BBS.
In particular, we want your opinion on
the ONA BSEs. What's a BSE? Who cares?
What do BSEs and ONAs have to do with
me?
Please read on a couple paragraphs and
I will try to make it all clear.
Background:
Last June, (June 1986) the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), in its
Computer Inquiry III proceeding,
ordered the telephone companies to
develop -Open Network Architecture-
(ONA) plans which would allow for the
improved delivery of -Enhanced
Services- over the telephone network.
Telephone companies have to file these
ONA plans by February 1988. The FCC's
order developed out of a long history
which is too complex and detailed to
recount here. One way to restate what
they said in June is that the telephone
companies should take any reasonable
steps to make their networks better
able to support information vendors on
the network. By enhanced service
providers or information service
vendors the FCC means timesharing
companies such as GEnie, CompuServe or
the Source, value added networks (VANs)
such as Telenet and Tymnet, and a host
of non-computer services such as
telephone answering services or burglar
alarm services.
The FCC's order didn't refer to sysops,
RBBSs, or FIDO nodes -- but clearly
these all fall into the category of
enhanced service providers -- even if
most of them don't charge for the
service.
Our firm was hired by a regional bell
holding company to study enhanced
service providers' needs for basic
service elements (BSEs) in an open
network architecture (ONA) environment.
We have been meeting with all the major
corporate enhanced service providers to
understand their needs for improved
network services.
However, we feel that sysops have a
tremendous store of knowledge based
upon their experience with the
provision of data base services and
electronic mail over the telephone
network. We would like to tap into
that resource. Hence, this
questionnaire. Sysops and the personal
computer communications world will
benefit from this questionnaire since
they will have an opportunity for input
into the BSE definition process (at one
regional company).
If you could just edit this document --
inserting your answers -- and send a
plain ASCII version or a printout to me
at one of the addresses below I would
appreciate it.
Background on Respondent
(optional -- anonymous is okay -- but I
can't get back to you for clarification
if your response is anonymous)
Name:
Address:
Phone number (data):
Phone number (voice):
For how long have you been a sysop
(years and months)?
What BBS system do you operate?
Computer
Software
How many calls a month are made to your
BBS?
Calls:
Hours of activity:
The building blocks of the ONA
environment are basic service elements
(BSEs). I would like to ask you some
questions about possible BSEs. These
have not been fully investigated for
feasibility -- so please don't regard
my questions about their value as a
statement about the technical or
economic feasibility of such BSEs.
One possible BSE is the provision of
calling number identification (CLI) to
the called party. With CLI, the
telephone company would signal to your
BBS the telephone number of the calling
party before connecting the calling
party to your machine.
Would you use CLI?
Without regard to cost, on what
fraction of the calls to your BBS would
you use CLI?
Would you be willing to pay two cents
per call to get CLI?
How would you prefer CLI be transmitted
to your PC?
A second possible BSE is suppressed
ringing (though it may be technically
difficult, impossible or horribly
expensive on many older switches).
This would allow a BBS to dial-up
another PC and to open the connection
without sending a ringing signal. Thus,
you could call another system at 2 a.m.
and download to that system without
waking anyone up.
Would you use suppressed ringing?
How many calls a month would you make
using suppressed ringing?
A third possible BSE is -single number
access- which would provide firms like
CompuServe and Telenet with a single
seven digit number which would be valid
over a wide area (area code region,
state, etc.).
Would single number access to such
firms be useful to you?
How would it help you?
A fourth possible BSE is suppression of
call waiting. In this option, call
waiting could be turned off by dialing
a specific code before dialing a call.
Would this be useful to you?
About how many calls a month would you
use this feature on?
Would you be willing to pay $3.00 per
month for this feature?
Now for the fun questions. The
preceding questions have given you the
basic concept of a BSE. What BSEs do
you think the telephone companies
SHOULD offer?
How much would you pay for them?
Do you need them on every telephone
line in your city, state, the nation or
could you use them if only a few
telephone lines had these features?
What else can telephone companies do to
facilitate BBS operation and the growth
and health of PC communications?
Please feel free to add any other
comments you have on the Computer
InquiryIII/ONA/BSE definition issues.
Please send completed questionnaire to
me at:
(US Mail)
Chuck Jackson
Shooshan Jackson Inc.
Suite 450, 1990 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
or
MCI Mail CLJ
or
(CompuServe)
Chuck Jackson [70220,271] on CompuServe
or(GEnie Email)
CLJ
BIX
AMcDonald
Please forward this questionnaire to
other sysops. I would prefer not to
see it distributed to non-sysops
because they lack the experience of
sysops and their responses could dilute
the responses from sysops.
Note: I will prepare a summary of the
responses to this questionnaire and
will post that summary back into the
sysop world. It should be in
circulation by mid-April.
Regards Chuck
_______________________________________
////FCC Update////
_______________________________________
ACTION ALERT -- FCC'S COMPUTER III
Many of you have recently asked about
the FCC's pending -Computer Inquiry
III- ruling and its implications.
In a nutshell, the FCC is considering
taking action which would subject the
competitive packet switching market to
government regulation, dramatically
increase the costs of local dial access
to packet networks, and threaten the
very existence of innovative new
services such as PC Pursuit. The FCC
currently plans to decide this issue on
March 26, so it is of great importance
to let the Commission know your views
immediately.
Letters should be sent to:
The Honorable Mark Fowler, Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, DC 20554
202/632-6600
with copies to the other Commissioners:
Commissioner James H. Quello
202/632-7557
Commissioner Mimi Weyforth Dawson
202/632-6446
Commissioner Dennis R. Patrick
202/632-7117
Commissioner Patricia Diaz Dennis
202/632-6996
The following provides some background
on this subject. Additional information
on Computer III can be found in the
general file section of the NetExchange
BBS. Computer III is a proceeding in
which the FCC is considering whether to
-re-regulate- public packet switching
networks such as Telenet, that were
deregulated in 1980. As a result of
the FCC's 1980 decision, the packet
market has flourished; many new
competitors have entered the market,
and new services such as PC Pursuit
have been introduced. ATand the
Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) are now
also entering the packet market, and
prefer to offer their services on a
regulated, tariffed basis rather than
in a nonregulated mode. They would also
like to see the existing packet
networks, such as Telenet, regulated as
well.
There are three principal reasons for
this ATBOC attitude. First, these
carriers would like to subsidize their
packet services with revenues from
their basic telephone service. This
would enable them to price their packet
services below cost, at least long
enough to drive out competition in this
market.
Second, the BOCs would like to be able
to charge competing packet networks
-carrier access charges- for the use of
local dial access lines, which would
add more than $7.00 per hour to the
cost of providing a service such as PC
Pursuit. This would provide additional
revenue for the BOCs and greatly
increase the prices which packet
competitors would have to charge for
their services, undermining their
ability to price their services at
attractive levels.
Third, re-regulation of packet services
is likely to reduce the enthusiasm of
entrepreneurs to enter this market and
provide additional competition to the
ATBOC services. Many companies
simply do not wish to operate in a
regulated industry, with all the
restrictions and red tape that
regulation may imply.
In order to achieve these three
objectives, ATand the BOCs have
pressured the FCC to reverse its 1980
decision and re-regulate all packet
networks.
In an address on Computer III, Paolo
Guidi, President of Telenet
Communications Corp., explained what
would result for the consumer if the
full extent of the proposal is voted
into being: -With the competitors
driven out of the market, prospects for
success of their own (ATs and the
RBOCS) packet services would improve.
Of course, the user would be deprived
of the benefits of competition, and
would be left with no choice but a
carrier-provided packet service which
fails to offer many of the innovative
features that have been introduced by
the Value Added Networks. Continued
rapid advancement of the remote
computer industry would be dealt a
serious blow, and the consumer would be
the ultimate loser.-
The potential consequences of the FCC's
Computer III proposal for the value
-added services you know and enjoy are
quite serious. There is no need to
take such action, and it would be
contrary to the entire deregulatory
thrust of the Reagan Administration and
the FCC in recent years. The proposal
should be stopped.
Again, time is extremely short on this
issue. Any letters or phone calls to
the FCC must be received no later than
March 23 in order to be effective.
If this change occurs, the cost of
using all online services via networks
(Tymnet, Telenet, GEISCO, etc.) will
increase substantially! Last I heard,
the FCC had received just 60 letters
objecting to the changes.
So...write to the FCC now...or pay
later!
[ED] Although this article is a bit
late. I think the news of the pending
decision is of interest to us all. I
will try to persue this story and
report my findings in the weeks ahead.
_______________________________________
////Zmagazine New Jersey////
_______________________________________
(C) Copyright 1987 Syndicate Services
Reprinting permission granted.
_______________________________________
