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Syndicate ZMagazine Issue 081
______________________________________
ZMAGAZINE 81 November 27, 1987
______________________________________
Publisher/Editor: Ron Kovacs
Assistant Publishers: Ken Kirchner
Susan Perry
Guest Editor: Lisa Kovacs
______________________________________
Xx Editor Message
______________________________________
This issue was compiled and edited by
my wife. During my absense and short
illness of the past week. Since we
are also preparing for the coming of
child number 2 in February, we have
been extra busy with LaMaz classes and
editing time has been far and in
between.
This week in Zmag.. We went into the
Zmag archives and reproduced a few
article from our first issues. I hope
you dont mind reading these old
articles.
Next week we should be back on track.
We hope everyone had an enjoyable
Thanksgiving.
If you are interested in the older
issues of Zmagazine, you can send a
disk to:
Zmagazine
Post Office Box 74
Middlesex, NJ 08846-0074
Please specify what issues you are
interested in.
The Zmag BBS is online 24 hours a day
at 300/1200 baud. (201) 968-8148
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* FoReM BBS Coupon Offer *
*The Most Powerful BBS System for the*
* Atari ST and IBM/PC *
* Exclusively for Zmag and ST-Report*
* *
* NEW 2.0! * $59.95 *
* *
*Fifteen Dollars!Off With This Coupon*
* *
* Commnet Systems *
* 50 Eaton Road *
* Farmington, MA 01701 *
* (617)877-0257 (Voice) *
* (617)877-8756 (BBS) *
* Specify ST or PC Please *
* *
*This Offer May Be Withdrawn Any Time*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **
______________________________________
Xx INDEX 81
______________________________________
<*> Software Review.....Lawrence Estep
<*> Vitruoso Database...Jeff Lyons
<*> ZMAG BBS Update.....Ron Kovacs
<*> Real Estate BBS.....B Wisniewski
<*> Zmag Archives
<*> CIS Atari Update
______________________________________
Xx SOFTWARE REVIEW
______________________________________
JINGLEDISK
by Lawrence R. Estep
Hi Tech Expressions,Inc.
2699 South Bayshore Drive Suite 1000A
Coconut Grove,FL 33133
305/854-2318 1-800-848-9273 $9.95
The holiday season is once again
quickly approaching,and while
decorating and preparing for
Christmas, why leave your computer
out? Jingledisk by Hi Tech Expressions
is a fantastic program for the Atari
8-bits! This program allows you to
print full page graphics, or folded
cards with your own personalized
greeting inside.
After all of the cards have been made,
and the decorating is done, you can
sit back and watch a wonderful
graphics display full of yuletide
cheer and excitement. This program is
just one of the many fine budget-
priced programs from Hi Tech. This
program retails for around $9.95 and
supports the following printers:
-Atari XMM801
-Epson LX80,MX80,MX100
-Okidata 192/193 92/93
-Panasonic 1090/1091
-Star Gemini SG-10 and Gemini.
There is also a Holiday Paper Pack
available to print your cards on. This
Pack includes 150 sheets of paper in 3
different holiday designs,and 24
stickers in 4 different designs. This
piece of software can be ordered
direct from Hi Tech at 1-800-848-9273
or from most mail order companies.
Let's show our support for Hi Tech by
purchasing this fine piece of
software!
Happy Holidays Lawrence Estep
______________________________________
Xx NEW AREA ON COMPUSERVE's ATARI8
______________________________________
VIRTUOSO DESKTOP PERFORMANCE STUDIO -
introduction, concepts and
applications
Welcome to the VIRTUOSO area of the
Atari 8 bit forum.
Those of you who already have Desktop
Performance Studio, congratulations,
please feel free to upload and
download pieces to and from the Atari
8 bit sig DL 13.
For those of you who have not gotten
Virtuoso yet, download the VPLAY.OBJ
file and the demo pieces. VPLAY.OBJ is
a play only shell program that allows
you to see and hear any Desktop
Performance piece. You will not have
any editing capability without the
full Desktop Performance Studio
program, this is a play only feature.
To order Desktop Performance Studio,
please use the Electronic Mall (GO VC)
or contact Virtusonics directly. Our
phone number is 212 316 6945.
All of the graphic, music and text
images from demos were created on an
Atari 130XE using Desktop Performance
Studio Software. Our graphic, music
and text editors make animation easy,
quick and exciting. What you are
seeing is not frame by frame
animation. We have developed a
methodology for expressing graphic,
music and text data in a -dataflow-
format that allows for the real time
animation of multiple objects. Graphic
objects are animated by path and scale
patterns (8 animated geometric
objects, 3 sprite objects, 16 filled
background objects). Music is animated
by shift, volume, and envelope
patterns (4 animated music objects).
Text is animated by scrolling (4
animated text objects). Each animator
(path, scale, shift, volume, scroll)
has its own loop and speed variables.
Speed is the concept. Virtuoso is a
new perspective that controls as many
parallel, independent, variable speed
parameters as are required to execute
ideas. Desktop Performance Studio is
our first application of this kind of
thinking.
If you have any comments, ideas,
questions or suggestions please leave
me a message, I will respond. I would
like to share our thinking about the
design of Virtuoso Software in terms
of its application to different
hardware and software concepts; its
relationship to a conceptual manner of
thinking; its interaction with
reality; and its present application
in Desktop Performance Studio. We are
interested in dialogue about the
Virtuoso Software concepts and the
Desktop Performance Studio
applications.
All Virtuoso Software users are
encouraged to share their works with
others. Please upload and download
freely through DL13. Once you have
downloaded and reviewed a piece from
the DL, you can use the NEW command to
erase the time stream and use the
libraries to make your own pieces.
This is one of the exciting elements
of Virtuoso. We can all share each
others pieces and performances, and
then use each others libraries to make
our own new pieces.
Joseph Lyons,
President of Virtusonics Corporation
[70007,1565]
______________________________________
Xx ZMAG BBS UPDATE
______________________________________
Here are a few additions to the Zmag
Official BBS Carrier list.
Liberty Bell Express (904) 783-3675
Pirate Busters BBS (216) 545-4817
ST Underground (402) 466-5339
Orion Connection (301) 967-2207
Bread Board (201) 778-0154
InfoNet BBS (703) 665-0087
Help BBS NEW NUMBER (918) 251-5450
Vanishing Point (615) 665-1217
The Ark (703) 560-6318
Abacus BBS (415) 587-8062
Eagle BBS (415) 565-9742
ACEC BBS (614) 471-8559
Pandora BBS (614) 471-9209
______________________________________
Xx NEW REAL ESTATE BBS
______________________________________
ANNOUNCEMENT
<C>ommercial
<I>nvestment
<P>roperties
TELEPHONE # 813-488-8131 300
(REGISTERED USERS)/1200/2400 BPS
A new bulletin board has been started
in Venice. This board is dedicated to
Commercial Real Estate only. The board
lists commercial properties for sale,
exchange and or lease.
There are some financial and real
estate programs available for
downloading.
The purpose of this board is to
provide any caller with commercial
real estate information regarding
availability, prices, contact points
and more.
The board will allow any caller to
download property informaton.
The board will only allow uploads of
property data and programs by
registered users, typically real
estate agents and financial
institutions.
Steps are being taken to pass our
commercial real estate information to
Real Estate oriented bulletin boards
and services in Iowa, Mass., Calif,
New York and England. I expect that
the audience for this information will
continue to grow.
Thanks for reading this!
Sysop , <C><I><P>
Bill Wisniewski
______________________________________
Xx ZMAG ARCHIVES
______________________________________
The following text appeared in a few
issues during our start back in 1986.
A few readers have asked to read a few
of our older issues and I thought I
would include a few articles this
week.
Enjoy.
_____________________________________
Atari News!!!!
.......From June 18, 1986 Zmag.......
_____________________________________
ATARI PLANNING SUMMER PRODUCTS
Atari Corp. is holding some product
announcements from the CES and
scheduling them for later in the
summer. Compatible with the ST product
line, the new products will include a
3.5 floppy with 10MB storage capacity,
a super-hi-res graphics board with
1,000 line resolution and a new sound
chip. Other new products are memory
and multitasking upgrades as well as a
new expansion box for holding the
multiple upgrades.
ATARI'S 32-BIT MICRO COMING SOON
Atari has a 32-bit computer in
development. The company recently
signed a Unix licensing agreement with
AT&T and Atari chairman Jack Tramiel
has indicated that the new machine
will run under Unix. When the new
computer is introduced, current ST
owners will be offered an option to
upgrade their machines to use the Unix
operating system. No release date was
specified for the new computer.
ATARI TO QUIT TAIWAN PLANT
Jack Tramiel is planning to shut down
Atari's production line in Taiwan. In
remarks posted on a bulletin board
service after he met with Atari owners
in Massachusetts, the Atari chairman
said that under the right conditions
computers could be constructed in the
US with the same cost efficiency as in
Taiwan. Tramiel set no deadline for
the manufacturing changeover but he
did indicate the move was not in the
immediate future.
_____________________________________
Xx Summer CES Rap-Up
....From June 15, 1986 Zmag....
_____________________________________
ANTIC ONLINE PUBLISHING COPYRIGHT
1986, REPRINTED BY PERMISSION
By Jack Powell
Associate Editor, STart
6/4/86 CHICAGO
Tantalizing glimpses of the long-
rumored ST 32-bit machine were offered
by Atari Software President Sig
Hartmann and Computer Product
Marketing Manager Brian Kerr.
Hartmann said,- presumably an
operating system compatible with UNIX,
the multi-tasking operating system
developed by ATT Bell Labs. According
to Kerr, the 32/32 uses the Motorola
68020 chip. The 68020 is in the same
-family- as the 68000, making all
520ST and 1040ST software -downwardly-
compatible- with the new machine.
Atari is toying with two possible
configurations: either an open
architecture machine with slots, or
using the ST as front end to the
32-bit as number cruncher.
This all happened when the Chicagoland
Atari User's Group (C.L.A.U.G.)
invited Atari Corp., Antic magazine,
Analog magazine, and Bill Wilkinson
(representing both his company
Optimized Systems Software and
Compute! magazine) to participate in a
Tuesday night dinner meeting at
Trinity College. The Atari
representatives fielded questions from
over 250 members of several midwestern
Atari user's groups during the
informal panel session.
MORE ATARI MAGAZINES: At the meeting,
Bill Wilkinson announced Compute!'s
new ST magazine, expected in
September. Like Antic Publishing's
STart, the new Compute magazine will
include a 3 1/2-inch disk. Lee Pappas
of Analog Computing magazine announced
a special, one-time, exclusively 8-bit
issue. At the same time, Pappas took
the opportunity to announce that ST
Log, the ST section of Analog, will
become a separate magazine -by the end
of the year.-
SUPRA DRIVERS: Did I mention the
Supra 20-meg hard disk that is about
3 1/2-inches longer than an Atari 3
1/2-inch drive, but otherwise the same
size? How about the Supra 60-meg hard
disk which is the size of the old
Supra 10-meg? Supra scattered a few
of these at select booths at CES just
so we would believe they really exist.
______________________________________
Xx Special Interview
.....Atari Connection BBS Part 2.....
______________________________________
The following is the transcript of an
interview with the Sysop of the Atari
Connection BBS that was shut down last
week. This is a follow up to the
article which appeared in last weeks
Zmag.
The sysop has asked that I keep his
name private. The sysop's responses
are in upper case text.
(Ron:)How long have you been running
your BBS?
(Atari Connection Sysop) WELL, LAST
SUMMER I RAN A BBS CALLED THE 800 BBS,
BUT I DIDN'T HAVE MUCH SUCCESS WITH
IT, I PUT THE ATARI CONNECTION UP ON
JUNE 2nd OF THIS YEAR.
(R)Why wasnt your old BBS a success?
(ACS) I THINK BECAUSE OF LACK OF
ADVERTISING. BUT I WAS SHARING A
PHONE AT THE TIME, AND SO MY HOURS
WOULD WERE NOT LONG.
(R)When you had your BBS up, What type
of features did you have, and In your
opinion what do you think was the
cause of your being caught with
pirated software, and also, Did you
have alot of software in your download
section?
(ACS) I DIDN'T HAVE MANY OUT-OF-THE
-ORDINARY FEATURES. IT WAS A BASIC
BBCS BOARD. BUT I THINK THAT SOMEONE
WHO WAS BLACKLISTED ON MY BOARD,
PROBABLY REPORTED ME BECAUSE OF IT.
AND I DIDN'T HAVE MANY DOWNLOADS
AVAILABLE. ALTHOUGH I DO HAVE TWO
1050'S, ONE WAS BEING REPAIRED WHEN I
HAD THE BOARD UP. SO AS A SPARE I USED
A RAMDISK.
(R)Why did you blacklist callers, did
they do bad things on your system?
(ACS)ONE PERSON HAD THREE DIFFERENT
HANDLES, AND WHEN I FOUND OUT, I
BLACKLISTED ALL OF THEM. HE ALSO LEFT
ME SOME NASTY MESSAGES ON OTHER
BOARDS.
(R)In the matter of your shutdown, can
you explain what happened?
(ACS)FIRST OF ALL, IT HAPPENED LAST
MONDAY AT ABOUT 5:00pm, EXACTLY AN
HOUR BEFORE I WAS TO LEAVE FOR A
CONCERT. I GOT A PHONE CALL SAYING
THAT IN A LITTLE WHILE, A DETECTIVE
WOULD BE AT MY HOUSE INVESTIGATING
SOME COMPLAINTS ABOUT A BBS. I
IMMEDIATELY RAN DOWN AND ERASED MY
USERLOG ON MY MAIN DISK, BUT I HID THE
BACKUP DISK IN MY CLOSET. WHEN THE
DETECTIVE ARRIVED, HE HAD SOMEONE ELSE
WITH HIM. THEY ASKED ME A FEW
QUESTIONS AND THEN TOOK MY MAIN DISK
AND A FEW OTHERS, I GUESS FOR
EVIDENCE. AND THEY TOLD ME THAT IF
THEY GET COMPLAINTS AGAIN, THEY WILL
REMOVE ALL OF MY HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
AND FINE ME $1000.
(R)Did you get any specific details as
to why they singled your BBS out?
(ACS) THEY SAID THEY GOT COMPLAINTS
FROM A FEW PEOPLE. BUT IT COULD HAVE
BEEN ONE. BUT I DOUBT IF THE POLICE
DEPARTMENT IS REALLY INTERESTED IN
SHUTTING DOWN A SMALL BBS.
(R)What is the current status of this
matter?
(ACS)RIGHT NOW I AM WAITING TO GET MY
DISKS BACK. BUT I DON'T THINK I WILL
HAVE TO GO TO COURT ANYMORE.
(R)Did you get a court notice or any
advice pertaining to a hearing before?
(ACS)NO, I WAS QUESTIONED ONCE
BEFORE, BUT IT WAS ABOUT SOMETHING
ELSE.
(R)Did the Police Department give you
any other warnings?
(ACS) NO, I DON'T THINK THERE IS MUCH
THEY CAN DO TO ME BESIDES FINE AND
TAKING MY STUFF.
(R)Can you put up another BBS?? And if
so, Would you?? and what would you do
differently this time?
(ACS)I CAN PUT UP ANOTHER BOARD, BUT,
THEY SAID I CAN'T PIRATE STUFF ON IT.
I AM IN FACT, PUTTING ANOTHER BOARD UP
IN EARLY NOVEMBER CALLED -THE CULT OF
ATARI-. IT WILL BE RUN ON BBS
EXPRESS. THIS TIME I WILL BE MUCH
MORE CAREFUL WITH WHO I LET ON. I WILL
ASK MANY MORE QUESTIONS THEN JUST
WHERE THEY LIVE.
(R)How old are you?
(ACS) 16, I TURN 17 IN OCTOBER.
(R)What has been your parents view of
this matter?
(ACS)THEY DIDN'T CARE. THEY TOLD ME
THAT IT IS MY PROBLEM AND I HAVE TO
DEAL WITH IT MYSELF.
Original date of this interview was
in August 1986
______________________________________
Xx COMPUSERVE ATARI UPDATE
______________________________________
WHAT'S NEW IN SIG*ATARI (Nov. 19)
DOWNLOAD MORE FOR LESS !!!
Speed up your download time on
CompuServe by using CompuServe's Quick
'B' protocol!
Quick 'B' is a faster version of
CompuServe's B protocol for
downloading files. It does this by a
send ahead technique that the
implementation of B protocol in FLASH
1.5 (for ST owners) supports.
Use the DOW/PROTO:QB command to
initiate a Quick B protocol download.
If you are experiencing any problems
or have any questions please leave the
Sysops a message in the ATARI 16-Bit
Forum.
HELP & INFORMATION
We have added a series of Help and
Information files to the ATARI USERS
NETWORK database. Type GO ATA-14 for
the current selection. More to come!
**The ATARI 8-Bit Forum (GO ATARI8)**
CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT!
The transcript for the -Future of
ATARI 8-Bit BBS's and
Telecommunications- Conference is now
available in DL 9 under the filename
BBS.CO!
**The ATARI Developers & Programmers
Forum (GO ATARIDEV)**
NEW DATA LIBRARY DL 5 in ATARIDEV has
been opened as a Programmers' TOOLBOX.
Be sure to upload your favorite
program development utilities to this
new Data Library!
NEW FILES
Julius Oklamcak has uploaded
MicroEMACS version 3.9 (with
documentation) to DL 0. Use the BRO
UE39* command to locate the related
files).
SYSOP*Charles McGuinness has put
together a file containing a brief
(one line) description of each file in
ATARIDEV's Data Library 0. Use the
BRO DL0DEV.SUM command to retrieve
this file.
The ATARI 16-Bit Forum (GO ATARI16)
OSS has provided the original PPascal
Manager in DL 3. Pascal users, take
note. PASMGR.ARC/binary Source,
resource file, etc., for the original
Personal Pascal version 1 manager
program. This shows you how to load
and use resource files, how to pass
info in the environment string,
commands via CHAIN, etc., etc. Source
is sparsely commented but pretty
clear.
** ANTIC ONLINE ** (GO ANTIC)
ANTIC ONLINE has a number of great new
programs and demos in the Cyber
Connection section. GO ANT-2785 for
the new version of the Cyber animator.
It plays Cyber Studio delta files and
Cyber Paint ultra-compressed sequence
files (ANIMATE3.PRG, plus animation by
Gavin Doughtie). GO ANT-2787 for the
SPECTRUM 512 file format and two Cyber
Control example programs that teach
how to easily use splines for camera
and object paths.
______________________________________
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Nuvicon)
Midtown TV-----------> 27 Midway Plaza
Tallmadge, Ohio 44278
(216)633-0997
______________________________________
Zmagazine Issue #81 Volume 2 No. 48
(c) 1987 Syndicate Services/Rovac
______________________________________
