The Status Register


CHAMPAIGN-URBANA COMMODORE USERS GROUP INC. ____________ July, 1995


This newsletter will never appear on Prairienet BEFORE the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. It is, after all, THEIR newsletter. For advance notification of CUCUG's meeting, look in the "Information About CUCUG" section.

July 1995


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

July News:

The July Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, July 20, at 7:00 pm, at the IBEW Union Hall. Direction to the Hall are on the back of this newsletter.

The July 20th meeting will be one of our split SIG meetings. The C64/128 SIG will have Angelo Koutsos and Craig Kummerow conducting a User Help Clinic. If you are having trouble with a program or have one you would like to share with the other members, bring it in. Craig says, "I highly recommend that you bring in documentation. If you are having printer problems, bring in the printer, with the docs for both the printer and the interface."

The Amiga SIG will be treated to a demonstration of MIDI by Vic Serbe.

The Mac SIG will have Richard Rollins revealing some of the secrets of the Finder.

Should be a good night.

ToC

Modem deal from Motorola For CUCUG Members ONLY!

Here are some details of a modem deal CUCUG members have been exclusively offered by Motorola, through the auspices of Mark Bellon.

The deal:

Each member may order 1 or 2 modems. This offer is in place for the month of July but the order cutoff date for the offer to CUCUG is 7/25. Mark Bellon will be the Motorola interface to CUCUG for this offer. I can order modems whenever I wish and in any quantity so as soon as we get a decent number committed I can get an order off immediately and it will arrive within a few days. Taxes and shipping will be extra. Adding 10% to cover these items and any excess funds will be turned over to the CUCUG treasury.

This offer is open to CUCUG members only.

Motorola Power Class 28.8 modem with IBM PC support_______$210.00
Motorola Power Class 28.8 modem with Mac support__________$221.21
Motorola Life Style 28.8 modem with IBM PC support__________$182.00
Motorola Life Style 28.8 modem with Mac Support_____________$193.00

These are all external units. The Mac version is higher because it includes more software and a cable. Since a good cable is about $5-8 anyway it may make sense for some Mac people to get the package.

The Power Class 28.8 modem differs from the Life Style modem only in the support for downloadable firmware and the Life Style modem can be upgraded to a Power Class modem at any time for under $50. Given the ~$30 difference at purchase time I don't expect too many people to be getting the Life Style modems. The specifications of the Power Class modems will be posted by Jim Hulls but to put it simply it is the true competition for the USR Courier.

Mark says, "This modem is a true competitor of the Courier modem, quality for quality, feature for feature. Any CUCUG member may contact me and have a order placed immediately with product arriving in a few days. I intend to batch the orders in small groups so get your order in to me ASAP."

ToC

Welcome New Members

We would like to welcome back returning member Charlie Earle (C64) and extend a welcome to our newest members Edwin Hadley (Mac Centris 650), Christopher Youngworth (Mac Power PC), George Reese (Amiga 3000), and Bill Patton (C64). Let us know how we can help you and offer your help whenever you can. Welcome to the group.

ToC

CUCUG's IRS Status

From: Mark Landman, CUCUG Treasurer

I get nervous when a telephone conversation starts out "Hello Mr. Landman, this is so-and-so from the Internal Revenue Service...", but in this case it actually is good news...

I should get the official letter in the mail in a few days, but it looks like the IRS has APPROVED our change to Tax Exempt status. They still have a few flaming hoops they want me to jump through as far as paperwork is concerned, but the hard part is over! I'll fill everyone in on the details after I get the letter.

Now if I could just figure out how they were able to track me down at work. I don't recall ever giving them that info.

ToC

USR Modem Deal OFF!!!

From: Jim Huls, CUCUG President [07-10-95]

After talking with USR for months about CUCUG taking advantage of the discount on their user group program, things have finally come to a close. The deal is off! USR apparently likes to change their mind about how they want to setup the deal and with this and the run around they've given me, the deal is off!

Mark has managed to get the club set up with a deal through Motorola that appears to beat USR's. I won't enter a modem vs. modem debate but suffice it to say, that Motorola manufactures very nice modems. The magazines all rate it and USR as being virtually neck and neck in performance. With this being available to the club and the hassles that USR has and would be putting us through, I highly recommend that anyone in the club shopping for a new high speed modem consider going with the Motorola deal through Mark.

I apologize to those who have been looking forward to this. I, myself, was very disappointed not being able to offer this discount to the group, but at the current rate, it'd be almost Christmas before we could get the deal. USR will mostly like continue this deal so if in the future, members are interested in any products they have and have outgrown the Motorola modems, we can look into it again. This in no way hurts our chances. It's just that there is a better deal available and it would be some time before USR could give us their deal.

I encourage anyone interested in the Motorola deal, to contact Mark about ordering information or better yet come to the next meeting on July 20th.

ToC

The Latest Amiga Developments in the U.S.

From: Bill Zimmer (zim@ibx.com)

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Dan Stets wrote an article which appeared in Sunday's (June 18, 1995) edition. The highlights of the article are as follows:

"Amiga will get new life in Philadelphia area"

By Dan Stets, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

  1. Escom plans to start manufacturing Amiga A4000T computers in the Philadelphia area by August.

  2. Escom has been unable to work out a manufacturing agreement with a Chinese company. A European company has agreed to do some Amiga assembly.

  3. The circuit boards will be manufactured by Zober Industries which is located north of Philadelphia in Croydon, Bucks county.

  4. QuikPak Corp. of Norristown (just west of Philadelphia) will assemble the computers.

  5. Petro Tyschtschenko, general manager of Amiga Technologies GmbH states that the Chinese will not be ready to begin manufacturing for at least a year.

  6. Escom wants to produce 22,000 A4000s this year. The circuit boards for all 22,000 computers will be made in the Philadelphia area. Only 10,000 of the machines will be assembled near Philadelphia. The remaining 12,000 circuit boards will probably be shipped to Scotland for assembly. These 12,000 machines will be sold in Europe.

  7. Escom will also manufacture 100,000 to 120,000 A1200s in Europe for the European market.

  8. Edward Goff, who works for Escom as a consultant, states that the deal was almost final and that he would issue the final purchase orders soon.

  9. Escom is looking for alliances with companies interested in licensing Amiga technology for other applications, such as set-top boxes for television.

ToC

CEI to Distribute the Amiga to the Americas

From: Karl Frederick (frederik@teleport.com)

(Transcript from CEI fax this morning, two parts. First is a Press Release, the second is a letter to dealers.)

Friday, July 7 4:34am Creative Equipment Int.

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Creative Equipment International is pleased to announce that it will distribute the new line of Amiga computers through CEI dealers in North and South America. The first machines are already being built by Amiga Technologies in the United States and should be available in the last part of Q3.

Alex Amor, President of CEI, states, "We are excited to be able to re-introduce the Amiga back into the Americas. This agreement opens the door for joint future projects under discussions. We are and have always been committed to the Amiga."

Ed Goff, Amiga Technologies North American representative states, "We are extremely pleased that CEI will be distributing the Amiga into North and South America. They will be bringing a strong dealer network and countless years of Amiga experience.

The new Amiga 4000T is being positioned as a high end video workstation. The base model will have a Motorola 68040 processor operating at 25 Mhz. The new 4000T will be packaged in a sleek tower unit. Exact pricing and specifications will be announced shortly.

Creative Equipment International is a Miami based international distributor of multimedia products. Amiga Technologies GmbH is a German based company. Amiga is a trademark of Escom AG. For more information contact Director of Marketing Chuck Schenk at (305) 266-2800 ext 111.

(On company letterhead)

Dear CEI Dealers:

Good news as promised! The Amiga 4000T will be the first machine to be available. New models will follow shortly thereafter. In North America, Amiga Technologies GmbH is concentrating on the high end desktop video market first. CEI is assisting Amiga Technologies in various aspects of creative marketing and product development.

The Amiga 4000T will be a tower based model with the Motorola 68040 processor operating at 25Mhz. Initial configurations are expected to be 6MBs of Ram and 540MB hard disk. Introductory pricing is set for a street price of $3499.00 CEI will be offering different configurations including complete Flyer workstations ready to plug and play.

Everything that is humanly and legally possible to maintain the dealers profit margins will be done. Our goal is to make all dealers profitable. We will be instituting a number of programs that will reward dealers that maintain high service standards, local customer support and proper profit margins.

Enclosed (BY MAIL) you will find our new dealer application, dealer contract, credit application and forecast sheet. CEI is reinstituting credit terms to those that qualify. Machines will only be available to those that return the completed forms. If you assume that because you purchased from us in the past you do not need to fill out the new applications, you are mistaken. A new marketing campaign with dealer referral service is being instituted and without the applications you will be left off.

We realize that the price of the Amiga 4000T is slightly higher than we all would have wished. At the same token there is pent up market demand and the A4000T/FLYER combo is still unbeatable.

The number of computers built will be determined by the number of completed dealer applications and your forecasts. Please fax the forecast as soon as possible. Mail the other forms to our address above.

We are quite excited about the Amiga's long term prospects. During the coming months, you will see a number of announcements that will regain our dominance in the multimedia markets.

Sincerely,
Alex Amor

ToC

Reaction to the Pricing of the A4000T

from Kevin Hopkins, CUCUG

Reaction to the $3499.00 street price for the A4000T has been almost universally condemned on the net. It has been deemed everything from price gouging to blatant stupidity to a death wish for what remains of the Amiga market. There has actually been a petition drive for the dismissal of Ed Goff, the man responsible for setting the price. However, a few voices of dissent have suggested that because of the limited number of machines being made available, Escom is aiming them at corporate buyers who could afford the price.

Be that as it may, here's a representative response to the news:

From: Rex B. Grigg (rgrigg@europa.com)

I had my heart set on buying a 4000T until I read this message. I guess my 1200 will be the last Amiga I own.

For the 4000T/040 with 6 megs of RAM and a 540 meg hard drive, I would pay no more than $1500 and that would hinge on Escom coming out with a decent 15" or larger monitor for the Amiga at a decent price point. For under $3000, I can get a 120 Mhz Pentium with 16 megs of RAM, a 1 gig or better HD, 4x CD-ROM, software, 15" monitor, video card, 28.8 modem, speakers, and sound card.

About the only things I do with my Amiga are games, modeming and write a letter once in a while. A PC will do all these things at a much lower price. I hate the PC DOS and GUI, but is it worth it to pay 4 times the price for less performance and a lot less software availability? I can walk into any Walmart, Fred Meyers, Safeway, Target, or K-Mart and buy software for an IBM clone. There are damn few places where I can get NEW Amiga software.

I hope and pray that someone from Escom reads this area and that they can talk some sense into the marketing guys. I would love to have an Amiga 4000T and the next generation Amiga. The Amiga must catch up. Forget about AAA. That chipset is going to be 5-7 years old before we see a machine that uses it, if we ever do. Enough for now.

ToC

Smith Corona Files For Bankruptcy

NEW CANAAN, Conn. (AP) - Smith Corona Corp., one of the last American typewriter makers, filed for bankruptcy court protection Wednesday (7/5/95), citing a losing effort to compete with computers.

Demand for the company's product has eroded in recent years with the growing use and affordability of personal computers.

The number of electronic typewriters sold has fallen dramatically, from 1.4 million a year between 1986 and 1988 to about 800,000 in 1993.

Smith Corona, known for its portable typewriters, has been struggling to cut costs. The company filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, freeing it from the need to pay bills immediately so it can negotiate new term with its creditors.

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Wilmington, Del., granted the company's request to continue normal operations as it restructures. Smith Corona's filing listed assets at $207.9 million and liabilities of $198.8 million. It listed 17 subsidiaries, none of which were part of the bankruptcy filing.

Smith Corona's sales fell off rapidly in recent months after its main competitor, Japan's Brother Industries Ltd., cut prices on many of its models. Smith Corona was unable to match some of the prices.

The company suspended dividends in May after reporting a loss of $12.1 million, or 40 cents a share, for its fiscal third quarter.

In the same period a year ago, it earned $1.4 million, or 5 cents a share.

Smith Corona tried numerous times to improve its financial situation short of a bankruptcy filing.

In 1992, the New Canaan-based company announced it was moving its typewriter manufacturing operations from Cortland, N.Y., to Tijuana, Mexico, as a way of saving about $15 million a year in wages.

In May, the company said it planned to cut 26 percent of its work force, or 750 workers, as part of a restructuring.

The job cuts, to be completed over the next year, were expected to save the company about $21 million a year after 1996.

[Editor's Note: This story is the epitome and a microcosm of our times. It shows the effects of technological obsolescence, Japanese competition, the continuing Mexicanization of American jobs, and American workers paying the price of management decisions. With the examples of Commodore and General Motors still fresh is everyone's minds, it clear to see the trend continues.]

ToC

The Humor Page:

Microsoft Renames Windows 95

REDMOND, WASHINGTON - In an effort to dispel confusion surrounding Microsoft's upcoming new version of Windows, Microsoft announced today that it would rename the upgrade - formerly known as Windows 95 - to WinEver.

"There seemed to be a great deal of anxiety about when the product would ship. We felt it was in the best interest of our users to free them from this distress," said a Microsoft spokesperson who requested to remain anonymous.

Industry analysts were quick to praise the decision. "Winever gives Windows a new timeless quality. It will free Windows users from space and time constraints," said a member of Ziff-Davis Publisher's Editorial Staff. "This is precisely why OS/2 is failing in the marketplace - they have failed to deliver a strategy for their product."

When asked when Winever would be available, a Microsoft spokesperson religiously responded "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man." The same spokesperson added "It really doesn't matter since Winever is destined to be the most powerful and popular operating system ever." Market and industry analysts quickly agreed, adding that "WinEver has already revolutionized the industry."

A spokesperson from IBM disagreed, however. "Microsoft is still trying to sell a product that doesn't exist. IBM has been shipping a 32-bit operating system for personal computers since 1992 that runs today's DOS, Windows and OS/2 applications in a stable 32-bit environment with an advanced user interface. Winever - or WhatEver it's called now - still relies on DOS device drivers and is not a true 32-bit OS, unlike OS/2." He added that "Users who think that WinEver will have no compatibility problem will be in for a surprise."

Most users seem to remain unconvinced, however. "WinEver will run everything and it won't have any bugs or compatibility problems because it's from Microsoft. Why should I buy OS/2 which is less than perfect when WinEver is right around the corner?"

In a related story, IBM has reportedly been working on incorporating WinEver compatibility into a future version of OS/2. Microsoft was quick to express fear, uncertainty and doubt in regards to IBM's chances of success. "IBM is chasing a moving target and without the source code." Industry analysts and the media agreed, adding that this is yet another example of "OS/2's failing strategy."

[Source: Commo-Hawk Commodore Users Group's "The File", July, 1995 (with minor alterations). CCUG's address is P.O. Box 2724, Cedar Rapids, IA 52406-2724.]

ToC

Common Ground:

On The Fence About Buying a PC?

by Mike Noreen (radharc@karkis.canit.se)

Are you wondering whether you're going to buy a PC or Mac, or stay with the Amiga?

Well, read this first. I DID buy a PC, a 90Mhz Pentium with 64-bit gfx, so here goes.

The hardware: The PC hardware is better per $. However, the risk of buying hardware which will not run with the app, game, or even OS of your choice is very real: my Diamond Stealth 64bit DRAM gfx card hangs Windows quite frequently, and the OS/2 Warp drivers are poor in the extreme. The same is true to a much higher degree wrt soundcards; you either buy a Soundblaster16 which has worse sound than the Amiga, or you buy a good card which probably won't work with anything but DOS and Windows, and isn't supported by many games.

The OS's: DOS, Windows, Warp and System7 just aren't anywhere near as good as AmigaOS 3.1. If you think you won't suffer from that, you're deluding yourself. You will. (Warp is decent, though, but even less supported than AmigaOS.) (One major difference between AmigaOS and the other OS's is that you cannot change the parts you don't like. If you don't like DOS, you can't get anything equivalent to KingCON and replace it; if you don't like the cache, you can't get a replacement; if you don't like the look of the GUI, you can't change it with any MagicWB/MagicUI.)

The apps: They're good, no doubt about that. However, if you're into animation or music - forget it. There's no good animation packages at all; the best are comparable to Deluxe Paint. Word processors, databases, spreadsheets - that's the PC's strongest side, just as DTP is the Mac's. There's just two BUTs: these apps are HUGE. A wordprocessor is easily 30MB - MS Office is over 100MB. I'm not kidding. And apps cost, on average, three times more than on the Amiga, so if you're not a pirate, be prepared to pay.

The games: They're excellent. If you like texture mapped vector gfx like me, that is. If you're a shoot'em up/beat'em up fanatic, you've really not got much to chose from, and what there is isn't as good as, say, Project X or Chaos Engine. Partly this is due to the fact that there aren't any digital joysticks (like on the Amiga), and partly because the PC simply isn't well suited to those kinds of games.

The PD software: There's oodles, but you won't find replacements for many of your favourite Amiga programs anyway. You use NComm, PowerSnap, MagicUI, MagicWB, KingCON, DiskMaster, DirOpus or Spot? You won't find anything which matches them, sorry. The communications programs are weak, which surprised me, and there simply aren't any good dirutilities or snapping utilities at all. The same is true of module players. There are a few, but they generally only support one soundcard each, and often they don't even have a GUI.

All in all: Think about what you use your computer for. If you animate, compose/listen to mods, modem, or play action games - stay with the Amiga. I'm serious.

ToC

The Magic Behind Virtual Memory

by Robert L. Hummel

Asked to describe virtual memory, Abraham Lincoln might have said: "You can access all of the memory some of the time, some of the memory all of the time, but you can't access all of the memory all of the time." Or maybe he wouldn't have. Virtual memory is a processing sleight-of-hand that fools your system into thinking that a hard disk or other storage device is memory.

Virtual memory has been a hot topic for large computer systems since the early 1960s. It wasn't until 1982, however, when Intel made 1974's 8086 obsolete and introduced the 80286 with its protected-mode memory management, that PCs could take advantage of this power.

Remember the 8088? The 8086? These processors use a very simple memory addressing method called real mode. Applications compiled for these processors generate memory addresses that map directly to physical addresses in RAM. Put into simple terms, real mode means your applications can use only as much memory as you have RAM in your system; virtual memory is not possible.

The 286 replaced real mode with protected mode. Under protected mode, applications generate logical memory addresses that the processor translates into physical memory locations. In other words, when an application requests a specific byte from memory, that request runs through the 286's translation table, which identifies where that byte actually resides in the computer's memory.

Tracking Segments: To keep track of memory, the 286 assigns areas, or segments, to an application as necessary. A segment's size depends on the application. It's even possible to move segments out of memory onto the hard disk in a process called swapping. If an application attempts to access a segment that the operating system has swapped out of memory, the processor signals the operating system to move the required date back into memory. When a microprocessor make use of a hard disk as though it were RAM, it is using virtual memory - it's not really RAM, but it looks just like RAM to applications.

One of the problems with the 286's segment-based virtual memory is that it moves entire segments into and out of memory. Segments can be relatively (and arbitrarily) large. Thus, swapping on a 286 can be inefficient and slow. The 386's demand-paging scheme solved this problem.

Although new to the PC, demand paging was a well-established mainframe memory-management technique. Paging divides the PC's memory space into uniformly sized chunks called pages. When your computer needs to access a memory address, instead of loading a 4GB segment (for example), the processor needs to load only the 4K page that contains the address. Paging enables parts of applications to reside in RAM, and other parts to be swapped onto the disk. Consequently, because less of each application needs to be resident in physical memory, more applications can run in the same amount of RAM.

Demand paging adds a level of complexity to the 386's address translations: a paging unit on the 386 must perform additional translations to identify required pages. If a particular page is not currently in physical memory, the processor send a signal to the operating system to retrieve it. The CPU swaps the page in and completes the translation to a physical address.

Virtual memory sounds as if it's too good to be true. It is: virtual memory extracts a cost in system performance.

Each time an application accesses a page that isn't in RAM, the processor interrupts the operating system and tells it to bring in a page from the swapping device (usually your hard disk). This usually means that the CPU must also make room in memory by saving one of the pages to disk. Because accessing a disk takes about 1,000 times longer than accessing memory, performance degrades.

To keep page swapping and disk activity to a minimum - the operating system determines which pages to swap out by identifying the least recently used (LRU) page. If you load too many applications into memory, or the LRU algorithm incorrectly predicts an application's behavior, the CPU can swap pages in and out continuously. This situation is called thrashing and it slows your system's performance. The fix is simple but not particularly elegant: either close some applications or add more physical memory.

A Virtual Tune-up: Two of virtual memory's drawbacks are that it requires disk space for the swap file and it decreases processing speed when swapping. Although the information doesn't appear in the Windows User's Guide, you're not helpless to control your system's use of paging and virtual memory. Windows enhanced modes enables paging by default. To disable paging, insert the following line in your SYSTEM.INI file under the [386Enh] heading:

paging=off

Now Windows won't use virtual memory so there's no swapping. You may find that you can't run as many applications simultaneously as before, but your applications won't be slowed by swapping.

If you're willing to sacrifice some potential performance, go in the opposite direction and increase the amount of virtual memory. By default, Windows calculates the size of your virtual memory pool according to the following formula: it takes the amount of physical memory in your system rounded up to a multiple of 4MB, then multiples the result by the PageOverCommit factor (set to 4 by default). Finally, it subtracts the amount of physical memory.

A system with 16MB of memory, for example, would create 16 x 4 -16 = 48MB of virtual memory. Of course, other factors, including available disk space for the swap file, influence the maximum size of your virtual memory pool. PCs with 4MB or less of memory typically use smaller swap files.

You can even change the PageOverCommit factor. This number can range from 1 (no virtual memory) to 20 (lots and lots of virtual memory). The larger the number, the more disk space your swap file will occupy when Windows performs its calculation. To change this factor, insert the following line in your SYSTEM.INI file under the [386Enh] heading, where n is the desired factor:

PageOverCommit=n

Be warned: the more virtual memory you create, the more likely thrashing is to occur, but if you're trying to run a large application of an under endowed machine, running slowly is better than not running at all.

[Note: Robert L. Hummel is the author of Programmer's Technical Reference: The Processor and Coprocessor, from Ziff-Davis Press (1991). You can reach him on CompuServe at 72241,222 or by writing PC Computing, 950 Tower Lane, 19th Floor, Foster City, CA 94404.]

[Source: PC Computing, June 1994 via the Kankakee River Valley Computer Users Group newsletter, "Interface" June/July, 1995. KRVCUG's address is P.O. Box 931, Kankakee, Illinois 60901.]

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

Virtual Memory on the Macintosh

by Mark Bellon, CUCUG

Virtual memory is handled by the operating system (OS). Until Copland (e.g system 8) arrives it's not too difficult to understand either. Basically, you turn it on and you say how much disk space you want to surrender as "backing store". On a m68k Mac, the limit is twice your physical RAM. On a PowerMac, you can set it to whatever you want. The "backing store" is the place where everything goes when it doesn't fit into RAM. In effect, the amount of memory you have to work with is equal to the amount of "backing store".

The OS then divides memory into 4K segments called pages and keeps track of how often each page is touched and if it has been changed (modified). It attempts to keep the pages that are used the most in real RAM. Eventually you can have more pages used than you have real RAM. The OS then starts paging. If a page has been modified (written to) in real RAM and it's the oldest page lying around, the OS will write it into the backing store and free the page in memory for another program or page to use. If a page contains something that doesn't change, like code, the OS writes it out once and then, if it needs to reclaim the page for other use, it simply frees up the page since it can always get another copy of it from the backing store. If a page was modified in the past, but hasn't been changed recently, the OS is able to simply free the page when space is required since the page was written to the backing store the last time it was modified and needed to be reused.

All this happens independently of all programs and everything works just fine. The OS always tries to keep as much in RAM as it can and, provided that the amount of virtual RAM isn't too much bigger than the amount of physical RAM, the system runs reasonably fast, too.

Things don't always run well though. If you run a program that is much larger than your physical RAM and it jumps around memory all over the place (something that isn't too frequent), it can force your system to "thrash" or page constantly. Things get pretty slow since a disk access is necessary in order to be able to execute a relatively small number of instructions.

Another thing you notice is that it takes a few more seconds to start a program. This is due to the OS copying the image of the pages onto the backing store for the first time. This isn't the best policy but it's one of the easiest.

On a PowerMac things get a little more reasonable when you use the "modern memory manager" and the "code fragment manager". Instead of bringing the whole program into memory and copying it to the backing store, the system just loads the minimum number of pages necessary and sets up a map that points the backing store of the program code right into the code area of the executable file itself (e.g. memory mapping). This saves on backing store space. It also allows the system to bring in the pages when they are necessary, instead of bring all of them in and then flushing them out when the system runs out of memory. More programs can run in physical RAM and the demands for backing store are radically decreased. The startup delay is also minimized. Otherwise, the aging and frequency counting and deciding which pages has to be written out is much the same.

I've simplified this a bit, but not by much. The exact details of how you make this really work can be quite nasty and such things are best left for a discussion with those who are brave of heart. I happen to do this kind of thing for a living, but it doesn't mean I relish dealing with it!

ToC

Welcome to Sound Manager 3.1

The Sound Manager 3.1 software consists of:

Available since the introduction of the Macintosh II in 1987, the Sound Manager is Apple's digital audio software solution that allows any application to play and record sounds using the built-in sound hardware found on Macintosh computers. Sound Manager 3.0, released in 1993, added support for 16-bit CD-quality audio, redirection of sound to third-party hardware cards, and plug-in audio compression/decompression software (codecs).

Sound Manager 3.1 adds two new audio codecs, significant performance increases on the Power Macintosh line of computers, better integration with QuickTime, and asynchronous alert sounds. It is completely backwards compatible with previous versions of the Sound Manager.

NEW FEATURES OF SOUND MANAGER 3.1

  1. New audio codecs The Sound Manager previously supported only MACE audio compression at ratios of 3:1 and 6:1. Sound Manager 3.1 adds two new compression formats: IMA and uLaw.

    The IMA 4:1 audio compression format is based on a standard proposed by the Interactive Multimedia Association, and is used to compress 16-bit sound with a ratio of 4:1. It is particularly good at compressing CD-quality music and is fully integrated into QuickTime.

    The uLaw 2:1 format (pronounced "mu-law") is an international standard for compressing voice-quality audio (typically 16-bit, 8 kHz speech) with a ratio of 2:1. It is often used in telephony applications, and also on the Internet as the encoding format for ".au" sound files.

  2. Better performance on Power Macintosh Sound Manager 3.1 is much faster on Power Macintosh computers --in many cases 4-7 times more efficient than previous versions. This means that your application can do more while sound is playing or recording. Sound Manager 3.1 is also more robust: many bugs have been fixed and a number of commonly requested features have been added. Refer to the Technical Note for more information.

  3. Improved integration with QuickTime QuickTime 2.1 uses the new audio codecs included in Sound Manager 3.1 to allow compressed audio capture in the IMA and uLaw formats and compressed audio export from a movie to an AIFF file. QuickTime 2.1 will also use Sound Manager 3.1 to directly import common audio file formats such as ".wav" and ".au".

  4. Support for asynchronous alert sounds The Sound Manager previously tied up your Macintosh while playing an alert sound, forcing you to wait until the sound was done playing before you could continue. Sound Manager 3.1 removes this limitation by playing alert sounds asynchronously, so alert dialogs and other interface elements can continue processing while the alert sound is playing.

1995 Apple Computer, Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.

ToC

The C64/128 Section:

Living With GEOS' Copy Protection

by Herman Yan, CWest

Disclaimer: I provide the following information solely for the purpose of allowing fellow CWest members to make safe, personal backup copies of GEOS and its related applications.

One of the most aggravating aspects of GEOS is its copy protection. There are, in fact, three forms of copy protection in GEOS: a "booting protection", a serial number "key" system, and a nasty "Trojan horse". For safe computing under GEOS, all three forms of copy protection need to be removed. Here's why.

The Booting Protection

The booting protection is the copy protection which prevents you from using a simple disk copier to make a bootable backup copy of GEOS.

If, for instance, you were to copy your boot disk using the disk copy program included with GEOS, you would find that your will not boot! The importance of having a backup disk that's bootable can never be understated.

Also, what if you want to customize your boot disk (i.e., add various autoexec files to your boot disk)? If you don't boot from a copy of the original boot disk, that means you have to alter the original boot disk - a definite no-no (and you also run the risk of the Trojan horse, explained later).

What you'll need is a more sophisticated copy system which first copies the original boot disk and then removes the copy protection from the copy (a process commonly called "using a parameter"). Several programs exist which can do this. The one I use is included with the Maverick 5.0 file utility program (Software Support International, 2700 NE Andresen Road, Ste A-10, Vancouver, WA 98661). The removal of the booting protection is simple -- just follow the prompts and be sure to read the section of the Maverick manual titled "GEOS Parameter Menu" on page 21-22. In addition, TechMedia Special Products (formerly RUN Magazine Special Products [now owned by Creative Micro Designs]) sells Geo-Makeboot which is supposed to make "... copies that will boot from any Commodore or CMD device." (Creative Micro Designs, Inc., P.O. Box 646, 15 Benton Drive East, Longmeadow, MA 01028, Orders: 800-6383-CMD, Info/Support: 413-525-0023.)

Note: Be sure to alter a copy of GEOS. Do not alter the original GEOS disk!

Serial Number Key System

A serial number key was created on your system when you ran GEOS for the very first time. GEOS generated a random serial number and permanently placed it on the boot disk. Everyone has a different number (in theory) since the number is randomly generated. So whenever you boot GEOS, this serial number is also loaded.

But the boot disk isn't installed in most of Berkeley SoftWorks' (now GeoWorks) major applications (e.g., geoWrite, geoFile, geoCalc, geoPublish, geoChart, etc.). The first time you ran one of those applications, GEOS copied the serial number from your boot disk onto the application. This serial number is now permanently embedded into your application. The GEOS 2.0 manual calls this process "keying your application to your boot disk" on pages 3-4.

Lets now say a fellow CWest member sells you his/her clicked on application of geoCalc. You run home, fire up GEOS, double click on the geoCalc icon, and lo and behold a dreaded message appears asking (demanding) that you re-boot GEOS with the copy of GEOS with which you originally installed (keyed) geoCalc. In other words, the serial number embedded in geoCalc does not match the serial number with which you booted GEOS. As a result, GEOS complains and does not allow you to run geoCalc. This is the serial number copy protection. Short of buying your fellow CWest member's copy of GEOS, the only other alternative is to remove the copy protection from the application.

There are several products which can do this. The one I use is also included in Maverick 5.0. With Maverick, the serial number removal is similar to the booting protection removal. Be sure to re-read the previously mentioned section of the Maverick manual.

Note 1: Be sure to alter a copy of the application. Do not alter the original application on the original disk!

Note 2: For consistency's sake, once you remove the protection from an application, replace the "old" version of the application with the "new" version on all your work/data disks.

The Trojan Horse

Finally, the trojan horse copy protection resides in BSW's DeskTop program. This is the one copy protection that makes me hate BSW, as it is totally unnecessary! They deliberately, without any warning, delete the three boot files (GEOS, GEOS boot, and GEOSKernal) whenever you move and/or delete certain files on your boot disk (regardless if you've removed the copy protection). Without those files on your boot disk, it is impossible for you to boot GEOS! So, as an example, if you booted from your original GEOS disk, deleted a file on the boot disk which triggered the trojan horse, and then leave GEOS, you'll find that you will not be able to boot GEOS ever from that original GEOS disk!

Fortunately, the trojan horse can easily be squashed. Once again, Maverick 5.0 can do this. However, if you don't already own Maverick, but still want to squash this disaster waiting to happen, the famous GEOS programmer Jim Collette (a.k.a. geoRep Jim on Q-Link) released (with the blessing of BSW, I believe) the public domain program Trojankiller, which "kills" the trojan horse. You can find this program on our club's Disk-Of-The-Month QUEST disk of September 1992, which I partially put together.

Note 1: Be sure to alter a copy of the DeskTop. Do not alter the original DeskTop on the original GEOS disk!

Note 2: For consistency's (and your sanity's) sake, once you remove the trojan horse from the DeskTop, replace the "old" version of the DeskTop with the "new" version on all your work/data disks, as well as on the backup disk (the one you made earlier when you removed the booting protection).

In summary, I hope you see why it's important to remove the three forms of copy protection in GEOS. Although you can still run GEOS with all copy protection in place, you are flirting with danger and severely restricting your software choices, since you won't be able to use used software. Once you've removed all the copy protection from your copy of the original, store your original GEOS disks in a safe place, and boot GEOS using the copy. ENJOY!

[Source: San Francisco's CWest and AWest Users Groups, February, 1993 via the Harrisburg Area Computer Group's newsletter "The Computer Chronicle", June 1993. HACG's address is 721 South 29th Street, Harrisburg, PA 17111.]

ToC

The Amiga Section:

The Lunatic Fringe: News, Net, TIA and the Cat

By Colin Thompson (colin@connectnet.com)
Editor of the NotePad, San Diego Amiga User's Group

It's summertime and the livin' is easy. The Amiga has a future, AmiNet is up to 15,000 files and our user group has survived the great "Commodore Depression" of the '90s. Life is sweet.

"How sweet," you ask? A couple of months ago ESCOM swept the bidding for the rights to return our Amiga to the forefront of personal computing. Since then they have held a smallish news conference, announced they are picking up the pieces, and hope to place 4000s and 1200s in Jim Lively's store by Christmas. That's a good start. They also mentioned a 1300. It may be a 68030 powered 1200. I only hope they use a true 030, and not one of the EC030s that I now have. I saw some "pictures" of a 5000T. I'm not sure if it was an artist's rendering or a picture of the real thing.

"How sweet," you ask? Until recently, San Diego, the eighth largest city in these United States, had but one Internet provider. Now there are four. Count 'em, FOUR. After some consideration, I switched my provider from CTS to CONNECTnet. Being the new kid on the block, CNET was hungry for my business. They offered me a shell account for $129/year. They operate four Sun SparcStations with the Solaris operating system. All their phone lines are connected to 28.8K modems. For a one time fee of $10 they set up a 5MB dropbox for me. Now I have a total of 10MB available for storage. My dropbox is now home to my two Home Pages.

Switching providers was not a hard decision for me to make. I am thrilled by the speed of the new system. I can also compile neat programs and run them under Solaris. The switch from a Pentium-based server to a Sun-based server has improved the quality of my life. Send Email to info@connectnet.com.

"How sweet," you ask? I've been attempting to install AmiTCP/IP and AMosaic on my A1200 for more than a year. I've battled bad installer scripts, poor documentation, buggy terminal programs and every other imaginable obstacle. A few months ago I threw my hands in the air and surrendered. I gave up. I discontinued my SLIP account and got on with my life, knowing I would only experience the World Wide Web by using Lynx.

A couple of weeks ago my friend, and fellow programmer Will Bow decided to solve this tacky little problem once and for all. After a careful examination of the problem, he figured out what all those TCP/IP scripts and executables do. And why. He actually made the whole thing work. Following his investigation, he wrote a text file called AmiTCP4dummies and we will publish it on AmiNet as soon as I've finished editing it. Once he had the problem in hand, the next step was to install a new UNIX program called Slirp. It's function is to allow you to use most of the features of a SLIP account without a SLIP account. Yes, that means AMosaic can be used on a shell account. After compiling Slirp on his server's UNIX box, the system worked well. Will contacted the author of Slirp and found that only two people in the world had successfully done this. This might give you an idea of how difficult the project is. I do not recommend you attempt this unless you are a UNIX wizard, grade 4 or higher.

So, what can the rest of us do if we want AMosaic to operate with a shell account? The answer is surprisingly easy. There is a commercial program called TIA, short for Terminal Interface Adaptor, I think, that does the same job as Slirp, but does not require a UNIX genius to install. The program can be downloaded under a 14 day trial licence, for no charge. Just get it, put it in the root directory of your shell account and go. You must already have AmiTCP/IP and AMosaic installed. In short, you would log into your shell account, and from the UNIX prompt, type TIA. That starts up TIA on the server. Then from your Amiga's shell, type STARTNET. That gets TCP/IP going. Then click the AMosaic icon. Bingo! You are connected to the Web.

When I installed TIA, I was so impressed with it, I bought the program for $25. Even ordering it was easy. I just filled out the order form that accompanied the program. I wanted to pay for TIA with my Visa card, so I called their 800 number and after entering my Visa number, I was issued a "fake credit card number" that can be safely sent over the Internet. I ordered the program by Email and within five minutes, I received my single user license and key file. For more information send blank Email to tia-info@marketplace.com

Now that I have TCP/IP installed, I am slowly adding new "clients" to my system. AMosaic was the first client and now I'm working on Pine. This is actually fun. I never considered UNIX to be fun. I must be ill.

So, here I am, armed with AMosaic and nowhere to go. Wrong. As soon as I got the system running, my cat, The USS Kitty Doe, gave birth to four small bundles of fun. I have never owned a cat, so I didn't know what to do with kittens. After a total of one minute on line, I discovered the mother lode of cat data. Everything I ever wanted to know about cats is available in WebSpace. I downloaded several files (directly to my hard drive) and began learning.

So, life is sweet. I may actually stop harping on TCP/IP.

ToC

Looking at the Options for the New Amiga

Gary Alan Peake (gpeake@cup.portal.com):

Being the best Amiga hardware guru ever, some of us on Fido have been discussing the options that Escom AG/Amiga Technologies now have. Among them: AAA, Hombre, PowerPC, or HP-RISC. Could you please elaborate, based on your own knowledge of the Amiga (and the last stages of development for AAA and Hombre) about each of these directions and which you would like to see Amiga Tech take and why?

Dave Haynie (dave.haynie@scala.com):

Wow, such an *easy* question ...

AAA

If you had a working AAA system today, it would be a real big improvement over the Amiga chip sets. On the surface, at least, it compares to what you get today on PCs -- 64-bit VRAM- based graphics, 1280x1024, 24-bit (though not together), 4Mbit floppies, audio input, multichannel 16-bit, CD quality audio, etc. It has some video compression modes like Ham-8, Ham-10, PACKLUT, and PACKHY, which are of interest to real-time animators.

When you look close, though, you'll find it a bit dated. No surprise really, it was started in the late 80s, whereas few of the PC chips took more than a year or two to develop. A typical 64-bit VRAM-based graphics system for a PC would be implemented in 1-3 chips, depending on whether or not they have the clock synth and RAMDAC built-in or not. The AAA implementation is at least seven chips, six of which are large, expensive ones (standard clock synths and RAMDACs are small and cheap). VRAM systems of today have much faster buses than AAA, so AAAs blits, copper, and CPU access speeds will not live up to expectations. It can't do real 24-bit displays at 1280x1024. It's 8 channels of audio aren't bad, but the typical PC setup of 2 channels of digital audio and 16-32 MIDI channels is far more flexible and less CPU intensive. The floppy support is nice, but there is evidence that dedicated floppy ports are on the way out, as 100MB+ floptical drives (like the Iomega ZIP Drive and this new thing in the works from Compaq et al) are coming down in price.

And AAA is *NOT* ready today. If they could get things going fast, it might be ready in a year. It would *still* be expensive. By next year, the next generations PC/MAC/Workstation graphics chips (all PCI bus) will be coming out. Many are going for built-in 3D and/or MPEG-2 support. MPEG-2 will outdo any of the compressed modes in AAA for canned animations, hands down. Also, time and money for development is an important factor. Escom might well use standard parts for the high-end systems and spend that money where it'll do more good.

Hombre

Hombre is a much better all around solution. It's more advanced in many, many ways than AAA. Of course, it's not at all Amiga compatible, but *I* think full RTG is a necessity, not a luxury, in the next AmigaOS anyway. Hombre supports the PCI bus, which will definitely be the system bus used in any proper future Amiga (I decided on it shortly after it came out, scrapping plans for my own similar 'AMI' bus). Hombre is cheap enough for low-end and game machines too.

I guess the real questions with Hombre are, is it good enough (I don't know), and can Escom get Dr Hepler back to work on it. It's hard for me to imagine Hombre being resurrected without Hepler. Also, is ESCOM interested in building game machines, given the nasty competition with Sony, Sega, Nintendo, etc. If so, this is probably their *only* shot at it, and the volume inherent in a successful game machine can lower the price of the chips (only two, though they only supply CPU and graphics last I heard) for use in home and high-end systems.

PowerPC

At this point in time at least, if you're moving to a RISC platform for personal computers, PowerPC is the *only* choice. IBM and Motorola are doing a fair job at providing powerful chips at low costs, Apple moving volume, and at least IBM and Apple are clearly staking their futures on the Power Architecture, moving all their machines to it.

While it took a few tries, there's finally (at least this week) a standard that they all agree on, CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform), which allows shrinkwrapped versions of the MacOS, Windows NT, Sunsoft's Solaris, IBM's AIX and OS/2, etc to run out of the box on any machine. The use of PCI bus allows CHRP machines to leverage off the hardware volumes of the PC Clone business, with full fledged hardware autoconfig and high performance.

Going to CHRP will allow Amiga that run *any* of these OSs, and it *will* allow AmigaOS to run, unmodified, on any CHRP machine. While you may not get a mass of MacOS converts on the day of its release, this would, for the first time, allow Amiga 3rd parties to make their own systems, and it would allow CHRP machines to be made cheap enough to be viable home systems (the 16MB or so you need for a practical system using any of the other OSs is still too much to compete against a 4-8MB entry-level PCs, much less undercut them as A1200s do today).

Simply put, this is a very good idea. I don't know what Escom plans, I hope they do what I have suggested here with AmigaOS.

HP PA-RISC

The PA-RISC was selected as the CPU engine for Hombre. It was selected for several reasons: the PA-RISC design is extensible (pixel manipulation instructions were added), it has good code density for a RISC chip, and more 680x0-like addressing modes than many (considered by the Hombre folks important, since games are often machine coded).

While there's no complaints about the performance of PA-RISC, HP has been using it as a competitive advantage in the workstation market. Because of this, they don't openly license and sell it like other RISC vendors do. So far, at least, a PC market works best when systems, chips, and software are available from different and/or multiple vendors. That's why the IBM PC caught on -- it wasn't anything great (sucked in many respects, even by then-current standards), but anyone could make one, since anyone could buy the parts or the OS. Sure, IBM dominated the system design at the beginning, but even that was lost to them by the time 386's came along. I think PA-RISC would be a problem as a general purpose processor because of this. HP might condone it in Hombre, games systems, set-top boxes even. They would get nervous about home systems, and probably block high-end systems altogether.

Even if they opened up, there's no momentum behind that CPU outside of HP. Sure, Intel and HP may one day release a new VLIW processor that can take PA-RISC and 80x86 binaries. They may not. Regardless, Escom needs an immediate move to RISC, and they need to be able to take advantage of the most available support for that chip, in terms of standards, hardware, and software. That's PowerPC!

ToC

The CUCUG Section:

June General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins

The June 15th meeting began with CUCUG's traditional introduction of officers. Lowella Biddle threw out a "Great newsletter" when your humble servant's name was called. Thanks, Lowella.

President Jim Huls noted the winners from last month's Computerfest raffle. He also point out the new ECI "June Specials!" Price List that Jon Sago brought in. For those interested, you can contact Jon's ECI Computer Exchange at 205 W. North, Box 135, Cisco, Illinois 61830, phone: 217-669-2343, fax: 217-669-2331, and check out his Amiga wares. (Thanks for the HD floppy, Jon.)

President Huls outlined the modem deal he has been pursuing with USRobotics. He learned of this offer through the Amiga Atlanta user group, but USR has since gotten more stringent in the pricing on their 28.8K modems after the Atlanta group availed themselves of the deal. USR is presently asking $249 for the Courier. A good price, to be sure, but not the under $200 Atlanta paid. USR is also placing a two modem per member limit on the purchase. Jim had details on other models, but it seemed that interest centered on the Courier. He will be supervising a sign-up sheet for those interested in purchasing modems at these special prices. Jim also had news that USR is offering a free upgrade ROM on their Sportster until June 30. It fixes a bug in the previous ROM.

There being no questions for the normal Question and Answer period, the floor was turned over to Chief Librarian Kevin Hisel to demonstrate the new Amiga disks for this month. Kevin noted that there were six selection per disk this time.

CUCUGAMI #145: AGraph (a stand-alone graphing package with the notable feature that the various styles of graphs resize to the window as you change it), Spider (a solitaire card game using two decks), Hexagons (Tetris with hexagon shaped pieces), PacMan (the best implementation of the venerable Pac Man to date. The TAB key puts it into NTSC mode. It was written by the same guy that wrote Galaga.).

CUCUGAMI #146: DayCount (calculates the number of days between two dates), MegaNote, Puzzle (takes an IFF file and turns it into a jigsaw puzzle by jumbling and turning the generated pieces), Snake (a snake game for the Workbench), Super Biaco (a full-blown graphic snake game), Super Trail (a game like Bump-A-Jump).

Following the disk demo, it was announced that the C64/128 SIG has finally gotten a new librarian. Angelo Koutsos has volunteered to take on those duties. Thanks, Angelo. If you have any program requests, see Angelo and he'll do his best to get them for you.

Mark Bellon then came up to speak on the evenings Macintosh activities. Mark first announced that the Macintosh deals noted in the newsletter have been so successful that Apple has temporarily run out of the 350 MB hard drives and has been substituting 500 MB hard drives in their place at no extra charge.

Donning his Macintosh Librarian's hat, Mark stated that he is releasing four disks this evening: one utilities disk, two mods and mod players disks, and a fourth disk made up of utilities and games. He said the programs have been test on a machine running System 7 with a color display.

Lastly, Mark said the Mac SIG will have Richard Rollins conducting an introduction to some of the special keystroke combinations that do useful things on the Mac.

Just before the break, Joe Palmer, our Grand Prize winner last month, asked for some help from anyone who could show him how to mount and use his ZIP drive. Ed Serbe offered to talk to him about it.

ToC

The Amiga and C64/128 SIGs

reported by Kevin Hopkins

The two Commodore SIGs joined this evening in a discussion of the Internet. The first of a panel of speakers was Kevin Hopkins.

Kevin's topic was how to write email using the UNIX program "Pine", available both on Prairienet and the University of Illinois machines. Kevin stressed how easy the process was if you just looked at the menu items at the bottom of most Pine screens.

Using his account at the University, since it is his principle one, Kevin showed how to launch Pine: simply, type "pine". On Prairienet, it is "go mail" and then select option 3 for "Read Mail". Kevin pointed out that option 4 "Send Mail" gets you the Unix "mail" program, which you absolutely do not want. So, always pick option 3 "Read Mail", since Pine is capable of both sending and reading mail.

The principle focus of Kevin's presentation was the use of the Addressbook: how to (T)ake addresses from incoming mail, so you don't have to write them down and then re-enter them every time you need them, and how to highlight a name in your Addressbook, hit C, for (C)ompose a new message, and have Pine automatically fill in the address for your outgoing message.

Another way to do this is to hit C, for (C)ompose, at the Main menu and then use a nickname in the To: line and have Pine automatically enter the address of the person you wish to correspond with, without you having to remember their address or locate that piece of paper you wrote it down on. This nickname concept lead into how you (A)dd names to your Addressbook if you haven't ever received mail from them. Kevin showed how easily this is done.

As a final curiosity, Kevin noted the difference between Pine on UX1 and Pine on Prairienet, which is the ability to read the newsgroups from within Pine. Prairieneters use actual newsreaders for this purpose and the topic of newsgroups lead smoothly into Jim Huls presentation.

Jim showed the newsgroup reader "Tin" and how to use it to locate that discussion group that may be just right for you. There are literally thousands of topics of discussion, each with their own newsgroup. Jim showed Lowella Biddle how to search for a newsgroup on knitting.

In a more general discussion, Jim explained the concept of "Netiquette" or how to conduct yourself on the net. He also explained how to find out the answers to those beginning questions you might have. You look for FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) files. Quentin Barnes suggested a good place to look for these is in the newsgroup comp.answers. [He's not kidding. There's tons of stuff there.]

Kevin Hopkins made the point Craig Kummerow wanted stressed to his SIG members that the C64/128 works just fine as a terminal for commanding those UNIX programs that you are running remotely.

If you are interested in more real time interaction, talking to people all over the world, Mike Latinovich showed you how it is done on the Internet. He logged in to CU-Online and showed us IRC (Internet Relay Chat). It was interesting to watch the conversations scroll by behind Mike as he explained the ins and out of the IRC.

The Final topic of the evening was the World Wide Web (WWW). Kevin Hisel gave a quick introduction of the Web and how to negotiate it using the program "Lynx". He pointed people to a good starting place: CUCUG's own homepage on Prairienet. It is a great jumping off point for the mind boggling wealth of information available on almost any topic you can imagine. As Kevin said, "One thing just leads to another and on and on."

ToC

June Board Meeting

recorded by Kevin Hopkins

The June meeting of the CUCUG executive board was held on Tuesday, June 20th at 7PM at Kevin Hisel's house (address and phone number, both in the book). Present at the meeting were Jim Huls, Dave Witt, Mark Landman, Craig Kummerow, Kevin Hopkins, Mark Bellon, Richard Rollins, Emil Cobb, Kevin Hisel and Jim Lewis.

Jim Huls: Jim said he was pretty satisfied with the June meeting. "A lot of people were taking notes."

Richard Rollins: Richard said that the phone line at the Union Hall is NOT digital, as we had been lead to believe, so the demonstration went off without a hitch. In fact, the nice folks at the Hall are going to drop in another phone line for us at the front of the room so we won't have to run so much cable. You gotta love that!

Jim Huls: Jim said he hadn't talked to USRobotics yet about the modems.

It was related that the prepaid rent for the Bresnan Center has been returned.

Jim let it be known that Jason Compton has pretty much backed out of coming, so there was a discussion about what to do for the July Amiga SIG. There were several suggestions. One was an open meeting for Internet related questions now that people would have had a month to try what they were exposed to in the June meeting. Another was a demonstration of DirOpus 5. Both Ed and Vic Serbe have offered to do presentations. After checking, it was decided that the July program will be Vic Serbe showing his latest midi work.

Dave Witt: Dave, who had arrived a little late, wanted to know, "What's happening with the USR modems?" He was filled in.

Speaking of the June meeting, Dave said "The meeting was good. I knew most of it, but, for those that didn't, it was a good introduction."

On a personal note, Dave said he has started a new job at Carle Hospital. He will see how it impacts upon his attending meetings.

Craig Kummerow: When asked about his vacation, Craig said it was a great trip despite the trailer coming off 10 miles south of Ship Rock, New Mexico and disintegrating on the highway, and then a friend passing away back here, which caused the trip to be curtailed. He said the SX-64 kept the kids entertained, with games and writing about their experiences, which was great.

As for what the C64/128 SIG would do in July, Craig said he hadn't given it any thought as he had thought they would join in the Jason Compton session.

Jim Lewis: Jim said he hated missing out on the June Meeting. As Corporate Agent, he has nothing new to report. He said, "Nothing from the IRS."

Mark Bellon: Mark said the Mac side went well.

He reported that he has been averaging 10 megs of uploads a week to the BBS, so there is plenty for the new Mac members to look at.

Two disks have been added to the Mac Library, bringing the total to 24 disks.

New news will be coming for the newsletter. A lot of new text has been placed on the BBS.

I'm not sure how the topic of CDROM drives came up, but Mark commented that quad speed CDROM drives aren't really that much better than 2X drives. He said that seek time is the limiting factor in performance and "Seek time is seek time no matter what." If you are doing a lot of video (ie., large, continuous files - big chunks of data) then you would see a difference, but for searching an encyclopedia, no.

On another topic, Mark noted that the UI Mac group is dead.

Returning to club business, Mark expressed some real concerns about the pricing structure of the library disks. He was worried that people with net access were taking his disk listings and downloading the files themselves. "They're using my list like a road map to the good stuff out there." Mark believed that the disk price should be lowered to make it comparable to the amount of time and phone charges it would take someone to download the files. "Make it easier to buy the disks than to do it yourself." There was quite a lot of discussion on this. As disk revenue is the principle source of club funding, tampering with this is very critical. Kevin Hisel felt that we could take a look at it in three or four months. In the interim, special pricing for large purchases are well within past practices. This seemed to uncover the main problem Mark was having. Members were balking at the stiff price as the numbers of disks they wanted mounted. So, the club will extend an offer of any 10 disks for $35.

Richard Rollins: Richard said the Mac SIG group meeting went "really well." There were five people, Mark and Richard in attendance. The SIG now has nine members.

For the July meeting, they will be covering some issues on the Finder.

Richard again made the request to purchase a video adapter for the Mac to be able to display output on the big monitor. In light of the growing SIG membership and disk revenues, the request was approved.

Mark Bellon: Mark said he will be releasing three disks for the Macintosh next month.

Richard Rollins: Richard pointed out that on Saturdays at 8am on the USA channel there is a program called CNet Central which discussed Internet related topics. Check it out.

Mark Bellon: Mark reported that it has been rumored that IBM is buying into Apple. He said, "They didn't publically purchase any Apple that I know of but they did announce that the MacOs will be offered on the CHRP platforms in '96. A rather major commitment."

Richard Rollins: Richard brought up an interesting Web site for Mac users called "Everything Macintosh". It is very comprehensive. The address is:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~xray/mac.html

Richard also noted that America Online has released their Mac browser in beta.

Kevin Hopkins (KH2): Kevin presented the exchange newsletters and handed out the mail. He posed the question as to whether he should start seeking out Macintosh related newsletters.

Desiring feedback on last month's newsletter (the first addressing the Macintosh), Kevin asked if the balance of material had suited everyone. It seemed to have succeed in that regard. Kevin agreed that the font size was way too small. The Escom news conference and the Winners list had necessitated cramming "ten pounds of #%?* into a five pound bag."

Kevin said the newsletter needs a note taker for the Macintosh SIG. Craig has been covering the C64/128 SIG. Kevin has been taking the Amiga SIG. But, we need someone to record the Mac SIG proceedings. It doesn't require anything elaborate; just a simple presentation of what went on. A volunteer is needed immediately.

Kevin Hisel (KH1): Kevin reported that Macintosh disk sales outstripped Amiga disk sales in June.

BBS usage is at 13%.

The Thank You letters for the Computerfest went out on June 20th.

Finally, Kevin reported that the Amiga Web Page is receiving 950 hits a day.

Emil Cobb: Emil reported that attendance was "fine" at the last meeting.

He said he needs a modem for a C64/128 SIG member. The Board authorized the sale of one of the clubs 1200 baud modems.

Mark Landman: Mark gave the Treasurer's Report. He brought up the fact that we are being charged a $5.45 long distance access fee every month for the BBS phone line by our present phone company. The BBS never calls out. He will check into another long distance carrier that doesn't have a mandatory monthly fee.

Jim Huls: Jim wondered "Why don't we have CUCUG mouse pads? Or other merchandise. He will check into the cost of procuring such items.

ToC

The Back Page

The Champaign-Urbana Commodore Users Group, (CUCUG), a not-for-profit corporation and Authorized Commodore User Group #00251, was originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at the IBEW Local 601 Union Hall (352-1741), located at 2901 Research Road in the Interstate Research Park in northwest Champaign. To get there, go north on Mattis over I-74 and turn right at the second stop light, onto Interstate Drive. Then take the first "real" left at Research Road. The Electrician's Hall is the third building on your left. There's a big flag pole right out front and it's directly across the street from one of Hobbico's signs. You should park and enter the building in the back.

ASCII text files of all recent Status Register newsletters are available for downloading on our BBS or our WWW site. Other user group newsletter editors may leave a comment to the BBS Sysop to request free access. To initiate a newsletter exchange, just send us your newsletter. As a matter of CUCUG policy, a newsletter exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

This newsletter was prepared with PageStream 2.22 on an Amiga 3000 25/100 and output to an HP Laserjet IIP plus. Pagestream was donated to CUCUG by Soft-Logik Publishing Corporation.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers(all at area code 217):


President:         Jim Huls         892-8730
Vice-President:    David Witt       684-2815         maddog@prairienet.org
Secretary/Editor:  Kevin Hopkins    356-5026                  kh2@uiuc.edu
Treasurer:         Mark Landman     398-2910       mlandman@prairienet.org
Corporate Agent:   Jim Lewis        359-1342         NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com
Librarian/Sysop:   Kevin Hisel      406-948-1999         khisel @ cucug.org
C64/128 SIG:       Craig Kummerow   784-5919       cwkummer@prairienet.org
Macintosh SIG:     Richard Rollins  469-2616             RERollins@aol.com

Call our Starship CUCUG BBS at (217) 356-8056, always online, up to 14,400 baud, supporting all CBM computers. Surf our home page at

http://www.cucug.org/.

Call Prairienet free at (217) 255-9000. Login as "visitor".

ToC