bill@utastro.UUCP (07/05/83)
I recently posted an article on the ALS Smartterm II card I bought for my Apple. One question that came back in response was of sufficient interest that I thought I would post my response to the net. I read somewhere that the 80-column cards consume a lot of power and may cause overheating of systems without some provision for cooling. Has this been your experience? Also, does the card support lower case with true descenders? Well, I have a fan which I got some time ago just "in case" I plugged in more than the vanilla Apple power supply could handle, so I really can't answer the question as it is posed. Right now I have cards in slots 0 (16K ramcard), 1 (Printer interface), 2 (Micromodem), 3 (Smartterm II) and 6 (Disc controller/2 discs). I haven't had any problems. My impression is that the complaints of high power consumption were true of some of the earlier-designed 80 column cards, but that it isn't much of a problem with the new ones (which this is). The characters look very good, and have true descenders on the lower case. By the way, I have managed to interface the card with Aztec C (it's a bit trickier than I expected) and if anyone is in need of information on doing this, I will be glad to supply it by Snail Mail. Bill Jefferys Astronomy Dept University of Texas Austin TX 78712 (...decvax!eagle!ut-ngp!utastro!bill) ( utastro!bill@utexas-11)