gwyn@BRL.ARPA.UUCP (04/03/87)
Questions about the //GS are welcome, although my experience with it is somewhat limited at this point. The MDI SuperSonic I have installed in slot 2 is enabled only when I'm doing music stuff, otherwise I use the serial port in pseudo-slot 2 to connect to my modem. MouseTalk is indeed the only telecomm program I use. The serial port is compatible with the Super Serial Card if and only if the software uses the DOS or Pascal firmware entry points. If the software uses the UART registers directly, or plays with any of the screen hole variables, it will not work the same on the //GS. Unfortunately, a lot of telecomm software seems to do things like that. However, you could move your //e serial port interface card, or slot modem such as Prometheus 1200, to the //GS and use that (by enabling the slot). I only had an old CCS "dumb" interface in my //e and never did have it doing much, so I was happy to use the //GS built-in serial port firmware instead. Although the manual isn't at hand, I seem to recall that MouseTalk could be configured for a variety of //c, //e, and //GS configurations, as well as several modems. I don't know how well it would support slot modems, but if they act just like a port + modem it is probably okay. I should have mentioned that the MDI SuperSonic includes a "dealer demo" of EA's Music Construction Set, which plays about 10 pieces but doesn't support interactive music creation. The SuperSonic Digitizer comes with demo software that lets one digitize, play back, save to disk, load from disk, and synchronize the two stereo channels (for stereo digitizing, one has to run the signal through twice, digitizing one channel at a time; this seems to be a feature of the Ensoniq or //GS, not the MDI). I paid list price for the MDI cards ($60 + $40), but if you buy MCS I think there's a coupon inside that gives a discount from the normal MDI list price for the SuperSonic (something like $12 or $15 off). I haven't heard MCS on a //e so I can't really compare the sound quality, other than to say that I am quite pleased with it on the //GS and can't imagine anything nearly as good being done on a //e (unless a special sound peripheral were added). The //GS graphics are pretty good, although there are still some restrictions on pixel color map combinations (i.e. it's not a general frame buffer). I don't have any paint programs yet other than the one that came with my old AppleMouse II, as I'm waiting for the bugs to be worked out. I think the //GS has a lot of potential, if developers support it as a //GS and not as an 8-bit II family member.