ncahec@ecsvax.UUCP (Jim Gogan) (12/15/84)
If you try to run SPSS/PC (a wonderful product - but more about that in a future article) after having run dBaseIII without first re-booting, your system completely locks/freezes up, requiring a cold boot! (A pain in the royal XT with 512K+ RAM.) Letters to both Ashton-Tate and SPSS, Inc. about this problem produced an almost immediate reply from SPSS. They had some helpful suggestions, but nothing that worked. So, their "techies" contacted Ashton-Tate's, and (as I learned in phone calls last week from both Ashton-Tate and SPSS) the culprit was traced to Prolok - dBaseIII's "infamous" copy protection mechanism! Seems as though Prolok leaves behind some garbage in RAM that doesn't effect the majority of software packages out there, but is fatal to those that it does effect. The solution: Ashton-Tate has said that, beginning next week, registered users of dBaseIII will receive upgrade notices for replacement of Prolok. (They didn't say if there would be any charge.) In the meantime, those of you with both dBaseIII and SPSS/PC, the problems you've been having are not the fault of you or SPSS/PC. Just remember for now: if anyone might have been using dBaseIII on your machine, re-boot before starting SPSS/PC. Jim Gogan (ncahec@ecsvax) AHEC Program UNC-CH School of Medicine Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514 (919) 966-2461