drw@ecsvax.UUCP (Don Wright) (06/05/85)
In response to Kit's request, here is the text of two bulletins concerning
Atari and the CES from Antic Publishing. They were offloaded from COMPUSERV
Information Service, the Atari SIG, Data Library 7.
There were actually 3 bulletins available. I am including only these
two because the other one was a very detailed description of new game
offerings for the Atari from Lucas films (detailed and *long*). One of
these 2 bulletins is also long, but I hope of wide enough interest to
justify posting. Especially the part about the CD with the encyclopedia
on it...and how they did it!
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Antic On-Line Special Bulletin
Copyright 1985, Antic Publishing Inc.
Permission to reprint is hereby granted if article is reprinted in its
entirety and credited to Antic Publishing.
by Michael Ciraolo
Sunday, June 2, 1985
Chicago, IL--Atari Corp. introduced two new computers at the summer Consumer
Electronics Show today, and is expected to make more major announcements
tomorrow.
Atari introduced two new computers, the 260ST and the 260STD.
The 260ST is a 256K version of the 68000-based 16-bit ST machines
previously announced by Atari.
According to Atari marketing official Brian Kerr, the new machine is
expected to retail in the $399 range and will be shipped this fall.
Atari also announced the 260STD, identical to the 260, with the
addition of a built-in 3-1/2 inch disk drive. Kerr said the expected price is
$499.
Both of the 256K machines will have the operating system and Graphics
Environment Manager (GEM) built in ROM, according to Kerr.
However, the long-awaited 520ST, which is now scheduled for shipping
in July, will have an operating system installed in RAM, according to
Kerr.
The company is expected to announce a read only memory device in the
form of a compact laser disk for use with the new ST computers.
Although not officially announced, the CDROM was designed by
Activenture in Monterey, Calif.
Activenture demonstrated the CDROM privately to Antic shortly before
the Consumer Electronics Show, where we learned that the CD has a 500 megabyte
capacity.
The first product available on the CDROM will is expected to be a 100
megabyte encyclopedia from Grollier.
Called an "inverted database" by its developers, the CDROM
encyclopedia lets users type in words or strings of words to be searched
throughout any portion of the text, all 20 volumes of the encyclopedia.
Further details are expected tomorrow, when Atari officials have
promised to introduce the product.
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ANTIC ON-LINE SPECIAL BULLETIN
Copyright 1985, Antic Publishing Inc.
Permission to reprint is hereby granted if article is reprinted in its entirety
and credited to Antic Publishing.
Monday, June 3, 1985
by Michael Ciraolo
Chicago, IL -- Imagine always having an encyclopedia available on your Atari,
as readable as a conventional book, but as searchable as an industrial
database.
Imagine, also, that you could search through 26-volume's worth of encyclopedia
for term's such as "Costa Rica" and find 57 references in less than three
seconds.
And imagine a $500 price tag for this technology.
Such technology, under development by Activenture in an exclusive agreement
with Atari, was demonstrated at Atari's CES booth today.
Called a CDROM, the technology includes a compact laser disk player connected
to the direct memory access port (DMA) on an Atari ST, according to
Activenture's engineering vice president Tom Rollander.
The CDROM can hold a half gigabyte of information (500 megabytes), although the
encyclopedia demonstrated occupied only a quarter of the disk's actual space.
Rollander told ANTIC that independent publishers would announce specific
products for use on the CDROM in the future, starting with the encyclopedia,
and with more products introduced in the fall.
Atari officials would not name the exact price or release date of the CDROM,
and said they were still discussing whether Activenture or Atari would
distribute the product.
Rollander said the CDROM "would be available in the fall."
Using the CDROM, you can browse through text, exactly as you might with a
hard-copy volume from an encyclopedia, using the mouse for control. You can
move foward or backwards by page, choose individual volumes, chapters or
entries and so on.
You can also specify any section of text for dumping to a printer, Rollander
said.
Or you can search for specific words or phrases, using powerful techniques
familiar to industrial database subscribers.
Specify a word or phrase and look for it in all of the text, in bibliographies,
in tables, in subheadings, in specific entries, or in combination with other
unspecified terms.
Regardless of the search you choose, the computer screen will tell you how many
entries were retrieved and let you look at each one. In each case, the text is
black on white, with red cursor control and green highlighting of the chosen
word.
The amazing speed of the CDROM search is the product of previous indexing, said
Rollander. In fact, the computer is not searching the text of the encyclopedia
each time, but is searching a specially prepared index, which is larger than
the actual text.
The full text of the encyclopedia occupies 58 megabytes, while the index
structure takes up 60 megabytes.
"We've traded hours of processing time on a VAX for the data storage capacity
of the compact disk," explained Rollander.
His company took the magnetic storage tape used by typesetters and professional
database suppliers and dumped an encyclopedia into a VAX computer.
Using the VAX, Activenture identified, indexed and cross-indexed 141,000 unique
words in the text, producing a structure Rollander called "an inverted
database".
The entire disk has a half gigabyte capacity, the same amount as 100,500
standard floppy disks, said Rollander.
THE INFORMATION AGE
Atari officials were ecstatic and called the CDROM "the most important
innovation since home computers".
"This is what computers are all about," said one Atari marketing manager.
"This will change everything. This is IT!"
Other reaction to the CDROM was mixed. In a crowd of distributors, retailers
and members of the press, many people expressed their enthusiasm to ANTIC.
Others were simply speechless.
"We asked ourselves 'What are most people doing with computers in the home?'
They're using them as doorstops, playing games with them and eventually
throwing them in the closet," said Rollander. "Now there's a real reason to
use the machines."
"I expect resistance from many publishers, but eventually CDROMs will have
greater market penetration than current encyclopedias," Rollander predicted.
Nor is optical storage/inverted database technology limited to encyclopedias.
Rollander said the principle may be applied to cookbooks and airline guides,
and that his company was talking to a variety of other publishers.
"I expect to see publications in the $100 to $150 range at first, dropping to
$50 in time," he said.
The cost of such optically stored databases is not high for two reasons:
Activenture's indexing procedure uses the magnetic tape already in common use
by publishers, so computer input is simple, with most books already existing on
tape.
Rollander also indicated that material stored on microfiche could easily be
read, so databases of journals, the New York Times and out-of-print materials
could be produced.
Then there's the technology of the compact laser disk. Mastering such a disk
costs only a few thousand dollars, and the mass production cost is less than
that of magnetic tapes and disks.
Because optical disks are mastered and pressed like records, there are no
recording heads to wear out and no lengthy time spent making a recording, said
Rollander.
INFOMANIACS DELIGHT
There is distinct pleasure in discovering all of the references to a particular
word, references that you might never have found if you had simply looked up a
primary entry.
For instance, Rollander demonstrated a search using the word "toothache". In
addition to the expected references under dentistry, he also found mentions in
connection with cloves, henbane and certain painful medical procedures
developed during the Middle Ages.
The CDROM "gives students more appreciation for information than they get by
simply looking up the subject," said Rollander.
(ANTIC Note: CDROMs are capable of storing object code (programs) as well as
text. In the near future, exclusive Activenture interviews with ANTIC will
reveal other potential types of CDROM-based information, such as videotapes,
photographs, and software.)
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end of bulletins