mlyons@pro-fla.cts.com (mlyons, SysAdmin) (06/05/91)
| Notes and Comments - Apple II | Dedicated to the Deprived Apple II Users Everywhere, June 1991 ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' /\> In this Issue - Comments - GS+ Magazine - Chip Market - KansasFest - Drive Market - Software - FTA - New Apple II? - System 6.0 /\> Comments Apple Computer may be comming out with a new Apple IIGS+, I hope that Apple will allow us IIGS users to afford it.... Great News if it true but the $$$! Don't call Applied Engineering for your Technical Support, it now cost you $1.50 an minute for questions or answers that in the manuals was free for the asking.... Applied Engineering charges for support. Boycott AE products! Sure wish I could go to KansasFest. "Some where over my Apple." If you are going to KansasFest, write us here at N&C and let us know what you seen or better, send money for us to go to that show place.... Thank you! Did you know that this is still a very grass roots publication, Apple II news sometimes comes to different people at different times and ways, if you know of some Apple II news, send them to Notes and Comments, you can send them to the email, or though the US mail.... Do it today! Shareware Apple II programs show up everyday, but users don't see it, pass them on to N&Cs and I will binskii them out.... Thats a great idea! What do you think? Should N&C do interviews of Steven Disbrow, Morgan Davis, Roger Wagner, Floyd Zink, Glen Bredon, other programers and Apple II supporters?.... Write and let me know today! ProLine sites, "Notes and Comments: Apple II" will be 'batched out' next issue, Please watch for it. Remember; Any Apple II user and BBSs can write a article which may be used in the next issue.... Do it today!!! ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> GS+ Magazine GS+ Magazine is the first IIGS specific Magazine + Disk publication. Each bi-monthly, 48+ pages, issue of GS+ features reviews, articles, programs, graphics, icons, rumors, tips, and a "no fluff" attitude. In addition to the magazine, each issue of GS+ comes with a companion diskette. All of the programs, icons, graphics, etc., that are discussed in the magazine can be found on the companion diskette. Programs ALWAYS come complete with heavily commented source code on the companion diskette and user manuals and programming notes in the magazine. Individual copies of GS+ cost $8 for the Magazine + Disk. A single issue without the companion disk is $3. (Please add $1.50 for postage. This pays for First-Class delivery to United States addresses and air mail delivery to all Canadian and Mexican addresses. All other foreign orders add $1.50 for surface mail delivery or $5 for air mail delivery.) The cost of a one year subscription (6 issues), is $36 for the Magazine + Disk or $15 a year for a magazine only subscription. (United States subscriptions are shipped via third-class mail. Add $1.50 an issue ($9 for subscriptions) if you want First-Class delivery. Add $1.50 an issue ($9 for subscriptions) for foreign orders (this pays for air mail to Canada and Mexico or surface to all other countries). Add $5 per issue ($30 for subscriptions) for air mail to all other countries.) Back issues are available, but are in very limited supply. Please call for availability. The cost of back issues is the cover price plus $1.50 (for each back issue ordered) to cover postage and handling. If you want to place an order, we accept checks or Money Orders made payable to "EGO Systems." If you prefer to order by phone, or e-mail, we also accept Visa and MasterCard. Tennessee residents add 7.25% sales tax. For more information or to place an order, contact GS+ at: America OnLine: GSPlusDiz internet, usenet, proline networks: diz@pro-gsplus Voice phone: (615) 870-4960. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST. pro-gsplus BBS (615) 875-4607. 24 hours a day. 300/1200/2400 Baud. <8N1>. US Mail: GS+ Magazine, POB 15366, Chattanooga, TN 37415-0366 ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> The Chip Market _____________________________Dram__256x1___256x4___1meg___1meg Simms_ Quality Computers 800/996-1508 19.95 19.95 69.95 59.95 Roger Coats 800/438-2883 19.00 19.00 69.00 59.00 Programs Plus 800/832-3201 22.00 33.00 85.00 63.00 Preferred Computing 800/327-7234 21.00 21.00 81.00 63.00 CDA Computer Sales 800/526-5313 21.00 n/a 73.00 61.00 Fas-Track Computer 800/272-1600 19.95 19.95 59.95 61.00 LRO Computer Sales 800/869-9152 19.00 20.00 59.00 56.00 VMC Marketing 800/776-6601 19.95 14.95 68.00 61.00 Golem Computers 800/248-0363 23.00 22.00 69.95 61.00 Know of any other companys that sell chips at a good price? ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> Kansasfest Many Apple II developers are aware of the A2-Central Summer Conference, also nicknamed KansasFest. This is the event to rub elbows with well known Apple II developers and have a chance to talk with many of the members of the Apple II team from Cupertino. This will be the third annual get together of developers at KansasFest. For those who have attended the past conferences, they will find most of the schedule familiar. You can sign up for the Apple II College. This year the College will be a two day event covering four different topics. You could attend the IIgs College covering general Apple II programming information brought to you by Apple. If you'd rather learn another language, try the Pascal programming class taught by Mike Westerfield or the C programming class taught by Walker Archer and Gary Morrison. Maybe you don't like "in-depth" programming and would rather attend the HyperStudio authoring session led by Roger Wagner. Again, following the optional College will be the actual KansasFest, where developers can sit in on a variety of seminars covering various topics and methods of "creating" software for the Apple II. In the past there have been seminars on fast animation, making sound, hints on using development tools to their fullest, and last year there was a sneak preview of HyperCard GS...... what will this year bring... be there and you'll find out !! A new event has been added to the schedule. The last two days will be an Apple Central Expo. This show is being promoted as a two day Applefest type event. A popular "Attraction" has been the bug busting room, and again this year it will be open so you can bring your programming problems to the experts and see if they can help. Apple's Developer Technical Support (DTS) team will be on hand to help out with any difficult bugs. In the past Avila College had rooms available for attendees. Again this year they will provide rooms, and will also have the option to get a private room for a few dollars more. If you would like to attend as an exhibitor call 800-955-6630 or 617-784-4531 and ask for Bob Berkowitz. If you are a developer (or would like to attend the Apple Central Expo) you can call DaySpring Travel for airfare, railfare, or hotel accommodations. Show attendance can be set up through A2-Central by calling 913-469-6502. If you're not sure about who to call, where to call, or have more questions call 913-469-6502. The dates for this show will be July 16th - 21st. tue wed thur fri sat sun 16th | 17th | 18th | 19th | 20th | 21st | developer Kansasfest Apple Central Expo college KansasFest is being held at Avila College and at the National Office Machine Dealer's Association (NOMDA) in Kansas City, Mo. and is sponsored by A2-Central. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> Drive Market Programs Plus Quick40/585 Quick60/665 Vulcan40/648 AE3.5/189 Quality Computers Qdrive40/600 Qdrive100/850 Vulcan40/650 AE3.5/200 Roger Coats HD40/579 HD60/659 Vulcan40/639 AE3.5/195 Preferred Computing HD40/573 Vulcan20/499 Vulcan40/639 AE3.5/189 CDA Computer Sales Vulcan20/519 Vulcan40/659 Vulcan100/1299 AE3.5/209 LRO Computer Sales Power40/599 Power80/ 889 Vulcan40/639 AE3.5/199 Golem Computers HD40/575 HD60/680 Vulcan40/649 AE3.5/199 TMS Peripherals Pro40/349 Pro105/499 Pro210/899 N/A Tulin Corporation Ahive40/489 Ahive65/549 Ahive200/1039 N/A Know of any other companys that sell Hard Drives at a good price? ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> Software Custom Software Inc. is proud to announce an update to two very old but very fun games for the Apple IIgs. ** Tass Times in ToneTown and Bard's Tale I. ** You send your ORIGINAL disk (No packaging please, just the disk) as proof of ownership and $20 and I will send you a GS/OS specific version of either game. Tass Times in ToneTown has been updated to fully support NDA's, the Control Panel and is a TRUE GS/OS application. It has multiple save games and will save as files. No copy protection (Never had it, and never will) and works on ANY hard drive partition. Bard's Tale I has Auto-Mapping, is a GS/OS application, No copy protection, Allow NDA'S, runs 50% faster, multiple save games and can save ANYWHERE in the game. Allows the use of an AppleShare network and can run from ANY hard drive partition. Please send you original disk and a check for $20 to... Bill Heineman 7734 S. Broadway Road Whittier CA, 90606-2301 Please make the check out to Bill Heineman, He still doesn't have a Custom Software Inc bank account yet... -------- BTW: Does anyone know the address to the owner of MouseTalk sense United Software Industries is now out of business, they are the makers of Ascii Express, and other software, Morgan Davis was the programmer. Email from him was of no avail. mlyons@pro-fla would like to buy ownership of all USI software. --------- /\> FTA (Free Tools Association) and ToolBox present... Photonix was a smash hit as a utility for the Apple IIgs. Photonix could copy a 3.5" disk in as little as a minute, and was shareware. FTA who did Photonix, did a sequel called Photonix II. Photonix II had a configurable control panel with english / french language displays. Other choices included how many times to read a track, and a choice of two different eject sounds. As an added bonus it will also check for some viruses. Those of you who have had to make backups of Macintosh disks know how slow the Mac can be... well Photonix II can copy those same Mac disks just as quickly as it can do GS disks. Photonix runs on a ROM 01 or 03 machine, and will work off a hard drive. The only flaw occurs when using a hard drive. After using Photonix II, you must reboot, you can not quit back to the Finder. ToolBox distributes Photonix II (which is NOT shareware) for $45.00 + $5.00 for airmail shipping. You can order your program direct from ToolBox at: ToolBox 6, Rue Henri Barbusse 95100 Argenteuil France or you can contact them by fax at : 0 11 33 1 39 47 44 08 ToolBox is also distributing two GS Arcade games. Bouncing Bluster II - Breakout style game includes screen editor. Loosely based on the old Breakout game, with GS Graphics, GS Sound, monsters, magic capsules, and more !! $59.00 + $5.00 shipping Space Shark - Defender style game. You fly around in your space craft shooting your laser cannon, and dropping bombs on the invading aliens. 15 levels all taking advantage of the GS's Sound and Graphics. $49.00 + $5.00 shipping Demo disk also available. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> New Apple II computer release KansasFest may be a BIG event this year. Sources say that Apple will be releasing a new computer. This new machine will contain an optional 40mb Hard drive, and include 2mb of Ram on the system board. Also included in every box will be Hypercard GS. Conflicting rumors say that the new GS will either include an internal 3.5 disk drive, or the SuperDrive. Others say that this drive will require an expansion card to work. The benefit of an expansion card will be the ability to connect the SuperDrive to the older Apple IIe also. The SuperDrive is a high density disk drive that is installed on all current Macintosh Computers. This disk drive allows you to hold 1.44mb of information on 1 disk. This would be like a mini hard drive for most Apple IIe users, and make life easier for GS owners with out hard drives. Another feature of this new machine may be a new improved graphics mode enabling graphics of 640 x 400 resolution. No information on how many colors yet. In order to use this new mode, the Apple IIgs may have to be connected to a new monitor, such as the 12" monitor used on the LC. Dealers may have noticed, since the LC went on to the price list, a GS adapter cable for the LC monitor has also been on the dealer price list. A possibility of a GS card for a Macintosh LC are also being discussed. Considering that a Macintosh LC has 2mb of Ram, a Super Drive, and a 40mb Hard drive, it may not be that far fetched, however most sources feel it is not true. Printer in the May 13, 1991 Computer Retail Week was the following blurb: "The first product from Apple's new Consumer Products Division is expected to be a palmtop computer based on the Apple II operating system. Sources said it will be similar in style and weight to Hewlett-Packard's 95LX, which was announced last month and lists for $699." Is this true? It could be done. We will just have to wait and see. If you want to see the new GS, plan on attending Kansas in mid July. Rumors point to KansasFest as the release (or at least sneak preview) of this new machine. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> System 6.0 for the Apple IIgs computer. If System 6.0 is anywhere as good of an upgrade as 5.0 was,it will be worth the wait. Rumored features include: Speed increase to almost double what System 5.0 does. Most FINDER operations will be quicker. GS owners who user hard drives and GS/OS will see a faster finder. This speed increase is due to some tighter and more compact code. Another big rumored feature is the use of more FSTs. FST stands for File System Translator. Currently GS/OS can't understand ProDos. In order to make all of your Apple ProDos disks work, GS/OS uses a FST for ProDos. The FST explains to GS/OS what a ProDos disk looks like, how files and directories are stored on the disk, and how to read and write to the disk. Macintosh and IBM FSTs are among the hopeful features. These new FSTs will allow you to put a Macintosh or IBM disk into your disk drive, and move through the directories as if it was a regular Prodos disk on your desktop. Another big feature could be a new driver for the SuperDrive which holds 1.44mb of information. Many IBM and Macintosh Disks are based on the 1.44 or high density format. In order to use these disks, you will need a SuperDrive. If you want to use the SuperDrive for storage of Apple II files, the drive needs a way to communicate with GS/OS. Enter the driver. This file would allow the use of the SuperDrive on the Apple IIgs. Another feature may be the inclusion of the MidiSynth Tool for better sound support, and the new Animation Toolkit which was demonstrated at KansasFest last year. The last "new" feature, which seems unlikely, is Inter Application Communication. This feature is what System 7.0 uses on the Macintosh, and what Windows 3.0 uses on IBM machines. To sum up Inter Application Communication I will use an example. You make a spreadsheet in Appleworks 3.0, taking the totals, you create a graph in a graphing program. Finally you use Publish IT to put the graph into a newsletter. At the last minute, the spreadsheet information is updated. The graph program automatically changes the chart based on the new information, and Publish IT changes the newsletter to reflect the new chart, all automatically. Now there is a problem, these programs would have to be written with the new Inter Application Communication feature built in. Current programs won't take advantage of it. When is System 6.0 going to be released? Sources say either at KansasFest in mid July, or sometime this fall. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo /\> General Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within these bytes do not necessarily reflect the views of Pro-Fla or any other electronic bulletin board service where this is found. Trademarks, logos, brand and product names are registered trademarks of their respective holders. If you wish to subscribe, submit an article, disagree with anything contained on these bytes, write or ask your sysop to send your message to; INET: editor@pro-fla.cts.com | Notes and Comments UUCP: crash!editor@pro-fla | Apple II Editor ProLine: pro-fla!editor | 9623 Sun Dial Dr. AOL: Handles | Tampa, FL 33635-1125 Call Pro-Fla (813)885-1552. <8N1> 1200-9600,v32,v42. Deadline: end of each month. *Copyright (c) Michael A.Lyons* Editor, founder, publisher, and gofor: mlyons@pro-fla.