BYTE MAY 1988 VOL. 13, NO. 5 $3.50 IN UNITED STATES S4.50 IN CANADA / £1.9«INU.K. A McGRAW-HILL PUBLICATION 0360-5280 THE SMALL SYSTEMS JOURNAL® )CUS " — T f PRODUCT FOCUS ! Top-of-the-Line Word Processors Good enough for desktop publishing? REVIEWS Windows 2.03 and Wind Dynamac Portable Apple LaserWriter lis PC/Mac File Transfers Silverado and ©BASE Quattro: I Twice the speed. Twice the power. With Quattro, Ouattro,™ our professional spreadsheet proves there are better and faster ways to do everything. To do graphics. To recalculate. To do macros. To save and retrieve. To search, sort, load. To do anything and everything that state-of-the-art spreadsheets should do. Technical superiority means product superiority Lotus Development, makers of 1-2-3,® is bigger by factors than Borland. Bigger, not better. Technical superiority is a Borland trademark, and Quattro is fresh proof that it produces a better product. Q i Quattro has features that 1-2-3 users will want— better graphics, easier macros, no copy protection— plus compatibility with the files and keystrokes they already use. Michael J. Miller, Infoworld J J 'Customer satislaclion is our main concern, il wilhm 60 days ol purchase UBS product (Joes nol per - form in accordance with our claims, call our customer service department, and we will arrange a refund. All Borland products are trademarks or registered trademarks of Borland International. Ire SQZ 1 Plus is a registered liademark ol Symantec' Turner Hall Publishing iotas 1-2-3 is a registered trademark ol Lolus Development Cocp Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks ol their respective holders Copyright ei9B8 Borland Iniemaiional 81 1234 Quattro gives you presentation-quality graphics Quattro brings new highs in quality graphics to your spread- sheet. It also brings new variety and diversity to the kinds of graphs and graphics you can produce from your spreadsheet, and you can produce hard copy of your graphics— with either printer or plotter— without leaving the spreadsheet. All you do is hit "Print." Quattro makes it easy to get hard copy— and you don't have to buy a separate graphics program. Naturally, Quattro has PostScript support Quattro is state of the art, so of course it supports PostScript™ —now the industry standard. Quattro merges desktop publish- ing into spreadsheets, lets you use tomorrow's technology today, and gives you access to all the latest laser printers and the pro- fessional results they provide. For the IBM PS/2" and the IBM* and Compaq' families ol personal computers and all 100% compatibles "What we show you" Quattro recalculates a lot faster than you-know-who The smartest and fastest way to recalculate a spreadsheet is to do what Quattro does, something called "intelligent recalc," which in English means you only re-count the numbers that count. In a spreadsheet, not all numbers are born equal, and changing one number doesn't always change everything. Quattro recalculates just the formulas that matter, not all the formulas it knows. (You wouldn't reshoot a whole movie just because you changed one scene, but unfortunately, that's the way 1-2-3 does it— and that's why it takes so long.) ^eing is Believing "What they show you" Quattro demystifies macros and makes your work go faster Using macros— electronic shortcuts— is easy with Quattro. Quattro offers a complete macro debugging environment and puts you in control as you "single- step" or fast-forward through your macros. Quattro's "Macro Learn Mode" lets you record macros as you work— which is something 1-2-3 users have been waiting for— and the wait is over. You can't lose with Quattro If you forget to close and save your spreadsheet— or a power outage shuts down your compu- ter—all is not lost. Quattro auto- matically keeps track of every change you've made to the spreadsheet during the session, so if disaster strikes, it misses. Quattro lets you build your own menus Quattro includes a Menu Builder that lets you customize menus. Coupled with macros, this application development feature allows you to create dedicated applications quickly and easily. Quattro includes SQZ!® Plus data compression A special implementation of SQZ! Plus, the spreadsheet file compression utility, is built into Quattro and comes to you ab- solutely free. SQZ! Plus for Quattro automatically compacts and expands Quattro spread- sheets by up to 95% during file saving and retrieving. You know how to use Quattro You can tell Quattro to respond to 1-2-3 commands. You don't have to learn a whole new program. Quattro works directly with all 1-2-3 file formats. No importing/exporting or macro translation is required. Quattro can also directly load and save ASCII, Paradox,® and dBASE,® files. Compatible with 1-2-3? Yes. Faster than 1-2-3? Yes. Technically superior to 1-2-3? Yes. Half the price of 1-2-3? Yes! Circle 42 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 43) 0 j G nuar:/ mo HAND-HUD CALCULATOR 1979 VISICALC 1982 LOTUS 1-2-r 1987 QUATTRO' Get Quattro, the profes- sional spreadsheet for only $247.50 Quattro is so advanced it's easy to use and it's half the price of 1-2-3. It's compatible with all your existing 1-2-3 files— but it makes everything in them look better, print better, and makes your work go faster. Quattro: The Professional Spreadsheet FEATURE QUATTRO LOTUS 2.01 ReCalc Cash Flow Model (5K cells) .27 2.90 sec. Delete Row 15K cells (Recalc Time) .78 sec. 2.38 sec. Load File (15K cells) 15.9 sec. 19.8 sec. Page Down (A1 to A1000) 12.2 sec. 17.4 sec. Presentation-quality Graphics YES NO to Graph Types 10 6 o 1 Integrated Graph Printing YES NO Full Graph Customization YES NO On-Screen Font Styles 11 1 PostScript Support YES NO User-modifiable Menus YES NO Menu Shortcuts YES NO Pull-down menus YES NO Point and Press Editing YES NO Automatic Installation YES NO o Macro Learn Mode YES NO Maximum Number of Macros Unlimited 27 a. Single Step Macro Debugging Environment YES NO Price $247.50 $495 Benchmark details available upon request. 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee* BORLAND INTERNATIONAL For the dealer nearest you or a brochure, Call (800) 543-7543 Circle 44 on Reader Service Card (Dealers: 45) Contents Product Focus/102 65 PRODUCTS IN PERSPECTIVE 67 What's New 89 102 121 127 134 143 Short Takes TurbosPort 386 Model 40, Zenith 's new portable Bridge-File, a safety net for the PS/2 user ELM2 version 2.07, Fujitsu 's finite-element program HP-19B and HP-28S, Hewlett-Packard's calculators WordPerfect for the Macintosh, with dozens of features Optasm, a new IBM PC assembler Think'n Time, a Macintosh desk accessory REVIEWS Product Focus: Word Processors for Desktop Publishing by Lamont Wood Advanced packages can perform some desktop-publishing functions, but a gap still exists. Upscaled Power in a Downscaled Box by John Unger The Amdek System/386 provides high-speed performance and a well-thought-out design. Dynamac's Portable Mac by Peter Wayner The Dynamac EL: the first truly portable Macintosh. Remaking a Classic by Curtis Franklin Jr. Apple's new series of LaserWriter II printers: powerful, fast, and easy to upgrade. PCs and Macs Working Together by Emil Flock QuickShare, DaynaFile, and MatchMaker bring harmony to a two-computer desktop. 153 Microsoft Windows 2.03 and Windows/386 by Namir Clement Shammas An improvement in an old version and a new multitasking environment designed for 80386-based systems. 157 Improved Command Processor by Alex Lane Get more versatility out of MS-DOS with Command Plus. 160 So Many Options— So Little Room by John McCormick and Jane Morrill Tazelaar Wendin-DOS promises a lot for $99. 171 Database Management via 1-2-3 by Diana Gabaldon Two new add-in products, Silverado and ©BASE, add the capabilities of a good database manager to Lotus 1-2-3. 176 Byline by Diana Gabaldon Desktop-publishing software for the PC that doesn't need extensive hardware. 180 A New-Wave Spreadsheet by Keith Weiskamp NexView combines spreadsheet practicality and relational power. COLUMNS 191 Computing at Chaos Manor: Shifting into High Gear by Jerry Pournelle Realizing that 9600 bits per second is the wave of the future, Jerry switches to a USRobotics Courier HST modem. 207 Applications Only: Pin-Money Programs by Ezra Shapiro A grab bag of inexpensive programs: Electronic Call Screening, The Worksheet Utilities, LaserSpeed, and Celebrity. 2 BYTE- MAY 1988 Cover illustration by Robert Tinney © 1988 BVTE MAY 1988 VOLUME 13 NUMBER 5 In Depth/211 Features/273 211 IN DEPTH: CPU Architectures 212 Introduction 213 The CPU Wars by Pete Wilson An overview of the fundamental design decisions inherent in processor architectures. 239 What They Did Wrong by Richard Grehan and Jane Morrill Tazelaar We conducted an informal poll on BIX to find out what peeves people about specific microprocessors. 253 Modeling Chaos by Peter Wayner Such complex mathematical problems as fluid-flow simulations are tailor-made for parallel-architecture machines. 263 Real-World RISCs by Trevor Marshall Today's RISC microprocessors are pushing operational speeds beyond the capabilities of current system designs. 273 FEATURES 275 Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar: The SmartSpooler Part 2: Software and Operation by Steve Ciarcia SmartSpooler can function as a complete remote data-processing computer to analyze data. 285 POP Goes the Macintosh by Dick Pountain POP-1 1 , a powerful AI programming language, is finally available on a microcomputer. 297 Searching for Text? Send an N-Gram! by Roy E. Kimbrell Short character strings called n-grams give every document a unique signature. 315 Juggling Multiple Processes by Gary Bricault With Pascal-S, you can experiment with the fundamentals of concurrent programming. DEPARTMENTS 6 Editorial: Graphics, DTP, and Price Wars 11 Microbytes 22 Letters 32 Chaos Manor Mail 36 Ask BYTE 51 Book Reviews 362 Coming Up in BYTE READER SERVICE 362 Editorial Index by Company 364 Alphabetical Index to Advertisers 366 Index to Advertisers by Product Category Inquiry Reply Cards: after 368 PROGRAM LISTINGS From BIX: see 294 FromBYTEnet: call (617) 861-9764 On disk or in print: see card after 336 BYTE (ISSN 0360-5280) is published monthly with an additional issue in October by McGraw-Hill Inc. Founder: James H. McGraw (1860-1948). Executive, editorial, circulation, and advertising offices: One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough. NH 03458, phone (603) 924-9281. 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Correspondence and payment should be sent direcUy to the CCC, 29 Congress St., Salem, MA 01970. Specify ISSN 0360-5280/83. $1.50. Copying done for other than personal or internal reference use without the permission of McGraw-Hill Inc. is prohibited. Requests for special permission or bulk orders should be addressed to the publisher. BYTE is available in microform from University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Rd.. Dept. PR. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 or 18 Bedford Row, Dept. PR, London WC1R4EJ, England. Subscription questions or problems should be addressed to: BYTE Subscriber Service, P.O. Box 7643, Teaneck NJ 07666-9866. Section art by Richard Goldberg © 1988 MAY 1988 -BYTE 3 BYTE THE SMALL SYSTEMS JOURNAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Frederic S. Langa PUBLISHER/GROUP VICE PRESIDENT J. BurtTotaro OPERATIONS Glenn Hartwig Associate Managing Editor REVIEWS (Hardware, Software, Product Focua) Cathryn Baskin Associate Managing Editor, Dennis Allen Senior Technical Editor, Software, Curtis Franklin Jr. Senior Testing Editor, BYTE Lab, Stephen Apiki Testing Editor. BYTE Lab, Stanford Diehl Testing Editor, BYTE Lab NEWS AND TECHNOLOGY (Mlcrobytea, What'a New, Short Takea) Rich Malloy Associate Managing Editor, 0. Barker Senior Editor. News and Technology, Anne Fischer Lent Senior Editor, New Products Peterborough: Martha Hicks Associate News Editor, Jeff Merron Associate News Editor We8t Coast: Gene Smarte Bureau Chief, Costa Mesa, Jonathan Erickson Senior Technical Editor, San Francisco, Nicholas Baran Associate Technical Editor, San Francisco, Jeffrey Bertolucci Editorial Assistant, San Francisco SENIOR TECHNICAL EDITORS Ken Sheldon Features, G. 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BYTEnet: (617) 861-9764 (set modem at 8-1-N or 7-1-E; 300 or 1200 baud). Fax: (603) 924-7507. Telex: (603) 924-7861 . SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMER SERVICE: Non-U.S. (201) 837-1315; inside U.S. (outside NJ) 1-800-423-8272; (inside NJ) 1-800-367-0218. ■j 1 4 Olficers of McGraw-Hill Information Systems Company: President: Richard B. Miller. Executive Vice Presidents: Frederick P. Jannott, Construction Information Group; Russell C. White, Computers and I ■ nil Communications Information Group; J. Thomas Ryan, Marketing and International. Senior Vice Presidents-Publishers: Laurence Altman, Electronics; David J. McGrath, Engineering News-Record. Group Vice Presidents: J. Burt Totaro, BYTE; Frank A. Shinal. Dodge; PetBr B. McCuen, Communications Information. Vice Presidents: Robert D. Daieo. Controller; Fred O. Jensen, Planning and Development; Michael J. Koeller, Human Resources; Julia Lenard, Systems Planning and Technology. Officers of McGraw-Hill Inc.: Harold W. McGraw Jr., Chairman; Joseph L. Dionne, President and Chiel Executive Officer; Robert N. Landes, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary; Walter D. Serwatka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Shel F. Asen, Senior Vice President, Manufacturing; Robert J. Bahash, Senior Vice President, Finance and Manufacturing; Frank D. Penglase, Senior Vice President, Treasury Operations; Ralph R. Schulz. Senior Vice President, Editorial. BYTE, BVTI , and The Small Systems Journal are registered trademarks of McGraw-Hill Inc. 4 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 310 on Reader Service Card — ► Hi WIRE Starts the Job that sm/IRTWORK' Finishes Introducing HiWIRE Wintek's smARTWORK® is used by thousands of engi- neers to design printed-circuit boards. Now Wintek intro- duces HiWIRE, an electronic- schematic program that is easy to learn and use. With a click of the mouse button, you can extract sym- bols from our library of over 700 common components and connect them with wires and buses. You can also easily modify the library's symbols or create your own by combining labels, lines, and arcs. HiWIRE Advantages □ Easy-to-learn mouse/menu- driven operation □ Complete documentation and tutorial O Extensive TTL, CMOS, micro- processor, and discrete- component libraries □ Rubberbanding □ Moving, copying, mirroring, and rotating of symbols □ Text-string searching □ Multiple display windows □ High-quality schematics from printers and plotters □ Hierarchical-design sup- port; netlist and bill-of- materials utilities □ Schematic/ layout cross checking □ 800 number for free tech- nical support System Requirements □ IBM Personal Computer, PC XT, or PC AT with 320K RAM, parallel printer port, 2 disk drives, and DOS V2.0 or later □ IBM Color/Graphics Adapter or EGA with RGB color monitor □ Microsoft Mouse □ IBM Graphics Printer or Epson FX/MX/RX-series dot-matrix printer, and/or: □ Houston Instrument DMP-40, 41, 42, 51, 52 or Hewlett- Packard 7470, 7475, 7550, 7580, 7585, 7586 plotter High Performance at Low Cost At $895, HiWIRE delivers quality schematics quickly and easily. You don't need to guess whether or not HiWIRE is right for you. Our money- back guarantee lets you try it for 30 days at absolutely no risk. Call (800) 742-6809 toll free today and put HiWIRE to work tomorrow. Wintek Corporation 1801 South Street Lafayette, IN 47904-2993 Telephone: (800) 742-6809 or in Indiana (317) 742-8428 Telex: 70-9079 WINTEK CORP UD "HiWIRE" is a trademark, and "smARTWORK", "Wintek", and the Wintek logo are registered trademarks of Wintek Corporation. Europe: MVA Terminals Ud., England, Phone: 04862-71001, Telex: 859502/ Australia: Entertainment Audio Ply. Ltd., Phono: KM) 363-0454/Brazil: Comlcro Inlormatlca E Tecnologla Uda., Phone: (041) 224-5616 EDITORIAL Graphics, DTP, and Price Wars As I write this, I'm on my way to the National Computer Graphics Association show in Anaheim, California. It promises to be a good show since the field of com- puter graphics is undergoing rapid growth and maturation on both the hard- ware and software fronts. For example, in anticipation of the show, we've been working behind the scenes with a major hardware manufac- turer to obtain early coverage of a new, highly sophisticated graphics copro- cessor that will let your IBM PC compat- ible handle graphics primitives and oper- ations (e.g. , area fills, arc and line draws, and rotations) with a speed you might normally associate with workstations. We'll get the specifics and present them to you in an upcoming issue. Other major players exhibiting at NCGA include AST Research (showing new VGA cards), Jasmine Technologies (with its latest Rembrandt board/monitor combos for the Macintosh), Texas Instru- ments, Mitsubishi, Seiko Instruments, Chips and Technologies, Adra Systems, Autodesk, and many more. Less familiar companies will be there in abundance, too. One I am looking for- ward to seeing is Nth Graphics, which will be showing its parallel-processing transputer-based IBM PC -compatible graphics cards that can write 40,000 three-dimensional vectors per second or draw 10,000 constant-shaded polygons (with 500 pixels each) per second. This is the first transputer-based graphics card I've heard of. Control Systems will be showing its new VGA-compatible graphics controller for the PS/2; it offers 1024- by 768-pixel noninterlaced output, plus a zoom feature that gives you a virtual resolution of 16,000 by 12,000. On the software side, Circuit Studio has introduced Velocity. This is a three- dimensional motion control and video animation package that lets you specify complex on-screen motions for manipu- lating solid, shaded objects in real time. Circuit Studio's background is in TV graphics, and it shows: Velocity supports ultrahigh resolution of up to 8000 lines for truly professional-looking, broadcast- quality results. There's lots more, and it's all inspir- ing, even for noncomputer graphics ap- plications: a timely inspiration, because we're engaged in a graphics redesign of BYTE— a freshening up and sprucing up of BYTE's classic appearance. Not that there's anything shabby about the way we are now: BYTE recently won 11 awards in the regional Society for Technical Communication's graphics competition, and we're now entered in the international competition. Also, our June 1987 cover recently was judged the "Best Newsstand Cover for 1987" among all computer magazines in Magazine & Bookseller's national competition. BYTE's classic visual style arose from two beliefs: first, the conviction that an authoritative publication need not be drab; and second, the equally certain knowledge that screaming colors, half- empty pages, and jumbled headline types were no substitute for solid content. But even a winning design can be im- proved. Just as we're working to make BYTE's text more readable and inviting without compromising our traditional editorial excellence, we also are looking to make every page as visually appealing as possible without losing the classic aesthetic we've defined over the years. You'll see the results in a few months; we think you'll like our new look. Who Needs DTP? There's publishing and then there's pub- lishing: At the desktop end, the pace is fast and furious— some estimates show desktop publishing (DTP) growing at the almost unbelievable annual compound growth rate of 47 percent. A full 36 percent of BYTE subscribers plan to fuel that fire by picking up DTP software sometime this year, edging out the 35 percent who plan to buy conven- tional word-processing software. But a new class of word-processing software may change that balance, and it's the sub- ject of this month's Product Focus: high- end word-processing packages that have some of the features found in DTP packages. For people who need a modest amount of page-layout ability coupled with world-class word-processing features, these hybrid packages could save money and time. They're worth a look. As is true with most BYTE articles, this one goes beyond the mere recitation of facts. In this case, Lamont Wood provides use- ful definitions of just what does— and does not — constitute true DTP. Moving away from the nitty-gritty of workhorse software, this month's In Depth section (superbly illustrated by cover artist Robert Tinney) offers some welcome perspective on CPU architec- ture. These articles detail how funda- mental design decisions made years ago in 4- and 8-bit chips still affect the perfor- mance and capabilities of today's 32-bit architectures and will affect tomorrow's designs, like 80486, 68030, and reduced- instruction-set-computer chips. Speaking of tomorrow's designs, you no longer have to wait for Apple's long- rumored portable Mac: The third-party Dynamac portable already exists. It is pricey (like all Mac things, unfortu- nately), but it's loaded and comes with a screen that offers even higher resolution than that of standard Macs. Nice stuff. It's reviewed in this issue. On the Intel side, with more competi- tion, the 80386 price wars are creating a consumer's paradise. Recendy, I decided to take the upgrade plunge when even re- ligious use of data-compression utilities wouldn't let me shoehorn another byte into my home computer's hard disk drive. (It wasn't an easy decision to make: Although working at BYTE lets me try all manner of very nice, no-holds- barred hardware, I still shop carefully for my home-use equipment, which I pay for myself.) After checking out our reviews and spelunking in BYTE's ad pages, I dis- covered a fantastic buy on a mail-order 80386-based machine, checked on the company with the Better Business Bureau, and phoned in my order. I now have a very fast, very inexpen- sive 80386-based machine with a large monitor, ample memory, and a fat, fast hard disk drive. It's wonderful. I can't believe I waited this long to get an 80386 for home use. The difference in real pro- ductivity is amazing — I honestly get more done in less time, which makes after- hours work a lot easier to take. If you haven't looked at prices recently, you owe it to yourself to do so: 80386 up- grades are probably a lot less expensive than you think. —FredLanga Editor in Chief 6 BYTE- MAY 1988 Never before has this level of Reliability and Durability been available in floppy disks. Introducing the new RD Series from Maxell. Twice the durability of the disks you're now using Twice the resistance to dust and dirt. And the RD Series is ten times more reliable than conventional floppy disks. The Gold Standard has always meant maximum safety for your data. Now it means even more. maxell "Have you read the latest from PC Magazine about ALR's FlexCache?" FlexCache 386 series: The performance of 80386 technology with the power of advanced FlexCache architecture. Compatible Novell, DOS 3.X, SCO Xenix 386, OS/2 Software $3 K'<>Xt, ''Even Compaq's DeskPro 386/220 eats the dust made by the ALR FlexCache 20386..." -PC Magazine, March 15, 1988 The philosophy of getting more for your money has become an unbroken tradition with ALR. A tradition that has been recognized by all the major trade journals with excellent reviews. ALR 386/220, PC magazine's choice as "The Best of 19871 Based on the ALR 386/220, PC magazine's choice as "The Best of 1987", ALR extends its product line and introduces the FlexCache 386 series. Now the fastest PCs available, the FlexCache 386 series approach minicomputer proportions and offer two new ways to get the most for your money: FlexCache 16386 - a 16MHz, 0-wait-state, 80386/82385 based system. FlexCache 20386 - a 20MHz, 0-wait-state, 80386/82385 based system. Both systems have ALR's advanced FlexCache architecture. The flexible dual bus design provides a wide open, high-speed data channel for up to 60% faster CPU/memory through-put than the IBM PS/2 model 80-071 with the much touted microchannel architecture. ALR FlexCache 20386- 150 S 7490>'° Compaq DESKPRO 386/20 $ 7490."-' 557 PMU 552 PMU ALR FlexCache 16386-60 Compaq DESKPRO 1 4690."' 386 $ 6490.=-' 379 PMU 318 PMU Power Meter Performance Index FlexCache 386 series edge out Compaq's DESKPRO 386/20 & DESKPRO 386 in CPU/memory aggregate performance test. The cache memory controller can eliminate wait-states 95% of the time 8 BYTE- MAY 1988 by keeping frequently used data close at hand, eliminating the need for the CPU to address main memory. This powerful blend of enhancements allows a FlexCache 16MHz CPU to move data along as fast as many 20MHz CPUs and a FlexCache 20MHz CPU to move data even faster than a Compaq DESKPRO 386/20™. The FlexCache 386 series comes equipped with the most fixed disk capacity for your money. The FlexCache 16386 has a 66 or 100 megabyte fixed disk. The FlexCache 20386 will give you an extra 45,000 pages of document disk storage for free. The FlexCache 20386 comes with either a 100, 150, or 300 megabyte fixed disk. The FlexCache 20386 will give you an extra 45,000 pages of document disk storage for free when you compare it to the performance and price of Compaq's DESKPRO 386/20 model 60. Compaq DESKPRO 386/20 I 7490.'* 345 KB/sec 60 MB ALR ^exCache Compaq 16386 - 60 DESKPRO S 4690."-' 386 650 $ 6490.* KB/sec 236 KB/sec 66 40 MB MB Disk Capacities & Transfer Rates FlexCache 386 fixed disks store more pages of documents and achieve transfer rates of up to twice that of the competition. FlexCache hard disk controllers transfer a full track of data in one disk revolution (1:1 interleave) instead of several disk revolutions as with (2:1 interleave) most current systems. Full track data transfering plus ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) look-ahead buffering, turns what used to be a data traffic bottleneck into a super high-speed corridor. So, FlexCache 386 systems achieve transfer rates twice that of Compaq's DESKPRO 386 and 386/20 model 60. Advanced Logic Research offers the FlexCache 386 series as a powerful solution for today's business growth and performance needs. The FlexCache series offers power and expansion possibilities not easily exhausted. The minicomputer-style chassis of FlexCache 20386 offers space for five internal peripheral devices, allowing more data storage devices than any other PC available. With the money you save on a FlexCache system you can afford additional data storage options. ALR FlexCache 20386 -150 $ 7490.°= .._ Compaq 3 - 5 " Support DESKPRO 386/20 Full height $ 7490." Full height Half height Half height Internal Device Support With the future in mind, the FlexCache 20386 is built to accomodate growth. To make some serious feature and cost comparisons give ALR a call at (800) 366-2574 for the name of the dealer nearest you. FlexCache 386 Series Specifications ALP designed and proven multi-layer system board Socketed for 80387 support 1MB 32 bit RAM , expandable to 2MB on system board 0-wait-state cache memory controller with its own 32KB of high-speed (35 ns) static RAM Enhanced 101 keyboard Phoenix BIOS Dual drive support OS/2 compatible FlexCache 163B6 Model 60 ...$4690" • FlexCache 386 series specifications • 80386 CPU with 1 6MHz system clock • 80387 support with 1 6MHz clock • 66Mbyte <30ms hard disk FlexCache 16386 Model 100.. $5690" • FlexCache 386 series specifications • 80386 CPU with 1 6MHz system clock • 80387 support with 16MHz clock • 100Mbyte <30ms hard disk FlexCache 20386 Model 60...$5990 ss • FlexCache 386 series specifications • 80386 CPU with 20MHz system clock • 80387 support with 20MHz clock • 66Mbyte <30ms hard disk FlexCache 20386 Model I00...$6490" • FlexCache 386 series specifications • 80386 CPU with 20MHz system clock • 80387 support with 20MHz clock • 1 00Mbyte <30ms hard disk FlexCache 20386 Model I50...$7490" • FlexCache 386 series specifications • 80386 CPU with 20MHz system clock • 80387 support with 20MHz clock • 1 50Mbyte <23ms, track buffered, ESDI hard disk FlexCache 20386 Model 300.. .$9990" • FlexCache 386 series specifications • 80386 CPU with 20MHz system clock • 80387 support with 20MHz clock • 300Mbyte <20ms. track buffered, ESDI hard disk Advanced Logic Research, Inc. 10 Chrysler, Irvine, CA 92718 714-581-6770 FAX: 714-581-9240 Telex: 5106014525, Answer back Advanced Logic See us at Comdex Atlanta Booth #3934 FlexCache is a trademark of Advanced Logic Research. Inc. Compaq, DESKPRO 386 & 386/20 are trademarks of Compaq Computer Corp. Circle 11 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 12) MAY 1988 'BYTE 9 Create a high capacity Diskette with no capacity for error. Make no mistake. Every bit, every byte, on every track of each BASF 5.25" HD Diskette is certified 100% error -free and warranted for life.Call 800- 343-4600 for the name of your nearest supplier. The Spirit of Innovation. Circle 39 on Reader Service Card BASF MICROBYTES Staff-written highlights of developments in technology and the microcomputer industry Getting Small: Engineers on a Chip If a prototype "thermal print head on a chip" is any indication of things to come, thermal printers will continue to get smaller and less expensive. The CMOS chip, developed by Sony engi- neers in Japan, provides a density of 180 dots per inch with a dot pitch of 140 micrometers for character printing, and 8 dots per millimeter and a dot pitch of 125 /tm for graphics printing. Current versions of the chip measure less than % by y w inch. Finer lithography will lead to resolutions as high as 32 dots per mm, according to Yuji Hayashi, one of the engineers on the project. The silicon chip holds heating ele- ments, power transistors, enable gates, latches, and shift registers. For graph- ics printing, it uses 1 1 ,448 thin-film transistors; for character printing, it uses only 1272 transistors. Although engineers have for some time tried to develop thermal print heads on a chip, they have been stymied by their inability to integrate heating ele- ments and drivers on a single chip be- Put Print Head cause silicon has a high thermal conduc- tivity, making it impossible for the silicon substrate to hold the necessary heat. With the Sony chip, which has a quartz substrate, the highest temperature point on the chip— about 50° C— is at the center of the heating element. This ensures that the heating elements do not adversely affect the driving circuits, Sony engineers said. The variation be- tween conventional heating elements and power transistors is about 15 percent; with the Sony chip, the variation is only 1 percent to 2 percent. Designers have also been unable to reduce the size of power transistors, so they had to resort to using inefficient wire bonds between heating elements and drivers. Sony got around this obstacle by using superthin-film transis- tors that resulted in relatively small drivers. Sony officials would not comment on when the chip might be used in an actual thermal printer. Apple's Sculley to Lone As the Apple/DEC Computing Center drew crowds at the Dexpo show in New York recently, some longtime users of Apple computers tried to gauge the ef- fects of the "repositioning" of the per- sonal computer company. Connectivity between groups of users is certainly more readily available, but what about the single user, who has traditionally been Apple's installed base? What are Apple's plans for the people who don't need to tie into a VAX or who don't want to work with a "workgroup"? "Single users should hang in there, " Apple CEO John Sculley told Micro- Users: "Hang in There" bytes Daily. "We introduced two new processors last year to meet the needs of our users. This year we are focusing on the extension of those machines into the multi vendor workplace, which is important. "As has already been said, we are not going to introduce any new CPUs this year," Sculley said, "but that doesn't mean Apple has forgotten about the single user. Far from it. I think that '89 will bring new products that address the single user's needs with the kind of technology that people have come to ex- pect from Apple." Intel Designs C Compiler for Embedded Applications In the midst of the excitement about the 80386 and protected-mode applications, it's easy to forget the huge market for embedded applications, in which micro- processors are used with code in ROM to control data or processes. Unlike re- programmable software applications continued Nanobytes • That Dylan guy was right when he said the times are a-changin' . And if you need sup- porting evidence, look at what IBM executives have been doing: They've been commenting on unannounced products. Wil- liam Lowe, president of the Entry Systems Division, has been tell- ing just about everyone that the company will gradually move its entire PS/2 line up to the 80386, will come out with an 80286- based system in the vague range of $1300 to $2300, will release PC- DOS 3.4 sometime this year, and will deliver a 32-bit version of OS/2 next year. A Big Blue vice president said the company will roll out as many new systems this year as it did last year. Bigger hard disks in smaller packages were also promised. • So what's the deal with this new verbosity at IBM? Several in- dustry watchers say that IBM wants to keep its current custom- ers, and potential customers, from looking at equipment from other vendors who might deliv- er similar goods first. "We're go- ing to come out with some new products sometime, so don't go buying them elsewhere, " is how one observer interpreted IBM's pre-announcement announce- ments. • Personal computers at DEC sites aren't news anymore, but the rate of infiltration could be sur- prising. According to a survey taken at a recent DEC exhibi- tion, 84 percent of the attendees said they use an IBM PC or compatible at work; 54 percent said they use a Macintosh. With all the recent announcements of Macs-to-VAX connections, peo- ple at DEC sites will be able to use their Macintoshes for more than graphics and presentations. • Ashton-Tate chairman Ed Esber said a future version of continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 11 MICROBYTES dBASE for the Mac will be able to read dBASE programs from IBM-compatible systems. Esber conceded that it was maybe a mis- take not to have implemented that power in the initial version. • Tandy and Apple computers each represent 23 percent of the models sold through computer stores (including Tandy computer stores) last year, according to figures from the research firm InfoCorp (Cupertino, CA). The numbers are based on monthly sales. The statistics as quoted say that IBM computers made up 17 percent of sales, and Com- paqs made up 6 percent, followed by Epson and Leading Edge with 4 percent each, AT&T with 2 per- cent, and the popular "Other" at 20 percent. • Addison- Wesley (Reading, MA) will publish a new volume in its series on Adobe PostScript. The new tome, PostScript Lan- guage Program Design, is aimed at software developers who need more information on the me- chanics of the page-description language. It will sell for $22.95. • Sharp Electronics (Mahwah, NJ) knocked $300 off the price of its PC-4501 laptop computer. The little unit now sells for $995; it comes with a supertwist LCD screen, a 3 X A -inch floppy disk drive, a parallel port, and 256K bytes of memory. • Votan (Fremont, CA) has given voice-recognition capability to its IBM PC -based TeleCenter voice-mail system. A new soft- ware module lets an authorized caller step through the mail menu by talking, rather than pushing phone buttons. Unlike other voice- mail systems, TeleCenter with the Voice Entry module lets you check in from a rotary phone rather than requiring a push- button model. • Applied Reasoning (Cam- bridge, MA) lowered the price of its PC-Elevator 386 accelerator for the IBM PC, XT, and AT to $1795 and added a few things, most notably the ability to use more forms of memory, includ- ing as much as 13 megabytes on the board (it comes with 1 mega- byte), motherboard RAM of the host machine, extended mem- ory, and expanded memory. continued that you run on a microcomputer, em- bedded applications must reside in ab- solute addresses in ROM. Microcon- trollers are being used in everything from laser printers to lawn sprinklers to refrigerators. To facilitate writing the program code that controls these embedded microprocessors, Intel's Development Tools Operation (Hillsboro, OR) is bringing out a new C compiler, the iC-86 R4.0, which generates pre- defined machine functions and "ROM- able" code, which would normally re- quire assembly language routines using a standard compiler. The iC-86 compiler functions include the ability to set regis- ter flags and enable or disable inter- rupts directly, thus avoiding the debug- ging and maintenance complications inherent in assembly language. The use of predefined machine func- tions reduces the overhead associated with assembly language and improves performance, according to Intel spokes- persons. The iC-86 compiler has a "locator" that lets you specify absolute memory addresses for storing the code in ROM. The iC-86 is designed to work with Intel's line of in-circuit emulators (ICEs) to allow full symbolic debugging of the program to be downloaded into the microprocessor. An ICE from Intel costs about $7000 for the 8086/80286 and about $15,000 for the 80386. Al- though you can use iC-86 with 80286 or 80386, it is designed for use only in the processor's real mode. The new compiler is priced at $750 and is currently available with prepro- duction libraries. Updated libraries will be shipped at no additional cost in July, Intel said. Scoff If You Must, But Ada Is "Doomed to Success" Calling Ada "everybody's six favorite programming languages," Hewlett- Packard's Larry Rosier told a group of developers in San Francisco recently that the language is "doomed to success." Rosier, manager of HP's Computer Lan- guages Laboratory, said that Ada "is exactly in the same situation as COBOL was 25 years ago. Everybody scoffed at it, but today 85 percent of all code is COBOL. " Rosier doesn't necessarily claim that Ada is the best programming language available to developers, but he did say it will be a "commercial success." The rise of Ada will be largely due to Department of Defense and other gov- ernment agency requirements. As Rosier pointed out, the DoD requires that Ada be used in all embedded sys- tems and, more recently, has extended the Ada mandate to all programming- related projects, embedded or not. Other parts of the government are following suit. Rosier added that, even though Unix is being pushed as an operating system standard in government environ- ments, "if you want Unix to be a suc- cess, it is inevitable that it will be Unix with Ada. " Recent reports indicate that the government currently spends more than $20 billion a year on program- ming projects, a figure that does not in- clude hardware or software purchases. One thing that will help make Ada a commercial success, said Rosier, is the vast number of Ada-trained program- mers who will filter down from govern- ment projects to develop commercial applications. "They [Ada programmers] will do indirectly what students did to C," said Rosier. "For Ada, this will mean a thrust from above [the govern- ment] and from underneath [programmers]." Even though Ada critics say the lan- guage is bulky, it has standard tools and was created with portability in mind, Rosier said. Ada also offers some of the object-oriented features that C+ + provides. "With Ada, everything is in there," he said, "that is, if you know how to look." C++ developer Bjarne Stroustrup agreed with Rosier, saying that "Ada will succeed because it is the only lan- guage people are willing to throw tens of billions of dollars at. " ISDN Demo Works, But Is Demand for It Here Yet? Predicting an "ISDN explosion" with- in the next couple of years, AT&T, Pa- cific Bell, and Lockheed demonstrated in California recently some of the powerful capabilities of Integrated Ser- vices Digital Network (ISDN) technol- ogy. (ISDN divides a standard two- wire telephone line into three digital channels [B,D, and H] capable of si- multaneously transmitting voice, data, and video over a single wire.) "ISDN continued 12 BYTE* MAY 1988 Discover a new world of C performance. At a special low introductory price! WATCOM announces a new team of high- performance C language development systems that deliver proven superior results. Both are available now, at low introductory prices, for IBM PCs, PS/2s, and compatibles. Best of Both Worlds. Both systems are optimizers. Express C optimizes your time, WATCOM C6.0 optimizes your code. You win both waysl WATCOM C6.0 Optimizing Compiler and Tools For the Fastest Tightest Code. This unique development system produces the fastest execution speeds and smallest code available, as shown in benchmark tests against Microsoft C5.0 and Turbo C. It includes the new WATCOM VIDEO Debugger which quickly diagnoses elusive bugs without the need for extended memory even in very large programs. WATCOM C6.0 comes with a copy of Express C and offers a broad spectrum of advantages including: Extensive fine-tuning capabilities. A sophisticated register allocation scheme that eliminates many costly memory references. True register variables. Flow analysis. Altogether it allows your code to run its quickest. Without a doubt, WATCOM C6.0 is the ideal choice for all memory models, small to huge, and on systems with or without 80x87. Its flexible run-time conventions also allow efficient interfacing with a wide range of libraries and language processors. Superlative Performance 0 Full ANSI C Optimizing 0 On-line Help Text Compiler 0 Disassembler 0 Visual Interactive Debugger 0 Overlay Linker 0 Full ANSI C Run-time 0 Object Librarian Library 0 MAKE 0 Source Editor 0 Express C 0 WATCOM C and Express List Price: C User's Guides $495 0 WATCOM C Language and Library Relerences 0 WATCOM Editor User's Guide Introductory Price: $ 295 fill Break iidUi] Zulus Diailay < r.trl> i i VJH& VtM.% ClfcWM BhSXI S1:8B2 DUW92 KMt7f> Mt78 r3!I>ijiia si 111 mm i&ot ftffl ss*h &m \r-~aa ss: st- m ma em m ec% hlk m km m m% mi mi it* ww nun *Z3 call louitine i«in"<» nw -«»1,«X" B;tt7WWr rain t29 tush IWO UiririiUetm (Uinta nw «LNM iain"(38 push (X =^_Wte: cal \ ' " ' = Kli It dtau ralmtar tor this north Ui_ncin, tiprMn ocar, 19, 26, U1K Uidclillc ); 883? 0931 n d™ ulmbr (or last ninth •/ =^ Dialogue | ' — . i- terforarv breal point at nain.(cal329) (tn.Ht;2B, Uijiirct, UiJiounC, In ntfas:9, til norcl), In maS, In uku:], DurtipM, In iatetfl) Sun Hon Tne Ifcrf thi Fri Sat With the WATCOM VIDEO debugger you can debug large applications without extended memory. Software Credentials WATCOM C6.0 is the product of 20 years of computer language experience dating back to the creation of WATFOR in 1965. Our commitment to technical support matches our commitment to deliver the world's fastest and System Requirements • System: IBM PC, PC XT, PC AT, PS/2, or true compatible • Recommended memory: 51 2K • Operating system: PC-DOS or MS-DOS, version 2.0 or later. most productive programming tools. With more than 400,000 software products in worldwide use and site licensing available for multiple machines and networks, you simply cannot find a better source of software development tools. The fastest, tightest code (small memory model') 141 11.4 182 13.0 154 14.1 992 89.0 1246^^ 98.0 1144^-^ ^^121.0 WATCOM C6.0 Microsc1lC5.0 TurDoC "IBM PC XT The fastest, tightest code (medium memory model - ) 150 2.7 184 3.0 159 3.4 1001^^' 18.0 1232^^ 19.0 1156^^ 24.0 25 Iterations Sieve Dhrystone 25 Iterations Sieve Dhrystone WATCOM C6.0 Microsoft C5 0 Turbo C ■IBM PS 2Mo0el60 Turnaround Time (compile t llnloload) 14.12 Floating point compulation _ 7 98 _ lii OBJ liles created irom 1391 source lines IBM PS 2 Model 60. small memory model Program used' GREP ■ WATCOM Express C Microsoft Quick C □ Turbo C ; XT IBM PS 2 Model 167 60 with emulalion ;Onds 10 tun 25 iterations ol ory model |64K code, 64K dala) I WATCOM C6.0 Microsoft C5.0 1 Turbo C WATCOM Express C For the Fastest Development Environment. This seamless development environment offers high speed compilation and the ultimate in programming ease. It is an integrated editor, compiler, debugger, linker and run-time system. With unexcelled diagnostic capabilities, it quickly checks apparently correct code and uncovers common or difficult bugs that other compilers miss. Express C provides you with reliable code and exceptional productivity. Unparalleled Productivity 0 Full ANSI C Compiler 0 Integrated Source Editor 0 Integrated Debugger 0 Full ANSI C Run-time Library 0 Integrated linker/loader 0 On-line Help Text 0 WATCOM C Library Reference 0 WATCOM Express C User's Guide 0 WATCOM C Language Reference 0 Overlay Linker 0 Object Librarian 0 MAKE List Price: $125 Introductory Price: $ 75 SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER! C6.0 at introductory price $295 Express C, at introductory price $75 Please send product information. Please contact re: site licensing and corporate price quotes. 'Limited time introductory prices apply only to prepaid orders. (VISA/MasterCard) Shipping and handling extra. Company . Dept. BY-05, Suite 306-21 stree , 1430 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 City . Tel. #_ . State . -Zip. Available now. For immediate delivery in the USA and Canada call: visa MasterCard Card # . Exp. Date Signature 1 -800-265-4555 WATCOM and Express C are tradsmarka ol WATCOM Systems Inc. G Copyright 1 9BB WATCOM Products Inc. Circle 304 on Reader Service Card MICROBYTES • Extended Systems (Boise, ID) has a new device that lets four computers share an HP LaserJet II printer. The ShareSpool board slips into the printer's extra I/O slot and talks directly to the printer backplane. The company says the $495 device provides "true simultaneous inputs, " has a 256K-byte memory buffer, and is totally transparent to the users. • Sony Microsystems (Palo Alto, CA), the new arm of the electronics giant, is seeking de- velopers to work with its NEWS workstations, a line of Unix- based 32-bit computers. Sony is aiming the systems, which range in price from $3995 to $19,900, at CAD and publishing markets. • Tiara Computer Systems (Mountain View, CA) has a new adapter card that links 386-based personal computers to Ethernet networks. The $395 LanCard E- 386 fits in a short slot and oper- ates at 16 MHz with no wait states. capability is here today," said AT&T spokesperson Jerry Herman, while Pa- cific Bell's Pat Bergmann added that "ISDN is where we are migrating our customers." The beauty of ISDN, its proponents say, is that it will enable personal com- puter users who now have two or more phone lines running into their offices- one for voice phone and one for a modem — to have a single phone line that can be used simultaneously for both voice and data transmission. Instead of a standard phone and modem, you would need a phone with a built-in terminal adapter. Your computer would be con- nected to the phone, which would, in turn, be connected to the wall jack. No other modifications would be needed. However, your central telephone office would have to have an ISDN telephone service switch installed. Herman emphasized that ISDN will not be adapted by users or local phone companies until it is at least as cheap as today's methods. "For ISDN to make any sense, it will have to be less expen- sive than existing telephone lines," he said. Estimates are that ISDN costs are from 1 .5 to 1.6 times that of current technology. When ISDN benefits reach a low enough cost, Herman said, we will see companies aggressively attacking the potentially multibillion-dollar ISDN market. Herman told us that "there are a ton of companies, including Apple, working on ISDN products" and that we should begin to see those products within the next year. As part of its demonstration, the companies connected three MS-DOS- based AT&T PC 6300s and accompa- nying voice/data phones via standard phone lines. After establishing voice communication with users at the other PCs, Herman sent and received files (created with Microsoft Word) while talking on the same phone line. In this instance, packet-switched data was trav- eling over one channel while voice communication went over another. The PCs were using unmodified EZLAN communications software. Her- man added that they had previously used unmodified versions of Crosstalk to accomplish the same operations. In a separate demo, files were transferred from a Macintosh SE to a Mac II, both running unmodified MacTerminal soft- ware. In another demonstration, video was transmitted at 64K bits per second over standard phone lines using CLI's Rembrandt hardware; remote video cam- eras were connected to telephone lines and simply dialed up. GaAs Chip Beats the Clock; Designers Claim at Least 100 GHz A gallium-arsenide-based IC, built by researchers at Stanford University's Ul- trafast Electronics Laboratory, is per- forming at such high levels that its de- signers say they're having trouble measuring its speed. So far, they say, they've determined that the chip is run- ning at least at 100 gigahertz (GHz), or 100 billion cycles per second, which is about 10,000 times faster than standard 16-MHz microprocessors. What's particularly unique about the chip, said Mark Rodwell, one of its de- velopers, is that it's based on "very simple ideas that were conceived in the early 1960s but that no one ever built. " Rodwell said that "the real conceptual breakthrough for the chip is that we took old ideas and made the sort of de- vice that can be developed only with today's technologies." The new circuit is basically a non- linear transmission line that may eventu- ally replace the step-recovery diodes used in today's high-performance elec- tronic measuring devices. Rodwell said the circuit itself consists of a transmis- sion line that has Shockley diodes at- tached at regular intervals. Since the di- odes provide reverse bias, the different parts of the line have different voltages, and, as a signal travels down the line, its "parts" travel at different speeds, each successively faster. The chip will be used initially to generate pulses for driving high-speed measuring devices that will have a time resolution comparable to that of a laser- based system. Such a device would also be much smaller, less complex, and less expensive than current measure- ment systems. Among those devices might be a diode-sampling oscillo- scope. (Some of today's measurement devices can also get up to 100 GHz; however, they do so by generating 10-GHz signals that are then mixed to generate detect signals of much higher frequency. The new chip will generate the higher-frequency signals directiy.) These higher-performance measure- ment devices, said Rodwell, will make possible the development of ultrahigh- speed computers. Scoreboarding Boosts Speed of Forthcoming Intel Processors Intel (Hillsboro, OR) has resurrected a relatively old approach to circuit design in order to boost performance on its emerging generation of microprocessors. The on-chip circuitry, called "register scoreboarding," essentially separates memory reads from the operation that uses the memory. (Or, in more technical terms, scoreboarding decouples the ex- ternal memory access latency from the microprocessor's instruction execu- tion.) The net result is that the average access time of the memory subsystem is lowered, since the microprocessor does not have to spend so much time waiting for memory access to be com- pleted. Because high-performance microprocessors are executing more in- structions in fewer cycles, the memory system gets slowed even more. According to Intel engineer Glen Hinton, scoreboarding has provided average performance increases of from continued 14 BYTE- MAY 1988 WHEN YOU WANT HE BEST, YOU CAN ALWAYS DEPEND ON THE FIRST. 1 6, a, 10, 12, and 14/16MHZ MULTI-SPEED BUSINESS COMPUTERS You only want the best. You want it first. And, you work hard to get it. When you choose Wells American's A* Star® microcomputers, that's exactly what you get. Not only the best, but also the first. Wells American was the first to release a 12MHz AT class computer. The first with 14MHz. The first with a no-hassle 31 day money-back guarantee. And yes— we were even the first in business. We've been making microcomputers longer than IBM, Compaq®and Apple®In fact, we've probably been making them longer than anybody. Our A*Star computers are the only PC/AT compatibles that can run at 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14/16MHz. The press has rated them as "the best on the market." That's because they not only out- perform the competition, they're also less expen- sive. A 14MHz model with 20MB of storage sells for under $1800. Basic unit prices start as low as $995! But being best is more than just impressive statistics and low prices. It's also a lot of little "extras". Extras like a one year factory warranty, nationwide on-site service from GE and, here's another first, free schematics! What does all this mean to you? Simply put, it means we have the resources and the technology to provide you with the best. And to provide it first. And in a company with so many "firsts," it's not surprising that's how we rate our customers. As one noted computer publication said: "The effort that Wells American takes on behalf of its customers is remarkable, showing a degree of concern that a number of computer com- panies should copy." Of course, many have tried to do just that. But, according to our customers, no one comes close to matching our 15-year reputation for exceptional customer support. No one. Don't you think you deserve the best? Call us at 803/796-7800 for details on our special one month A* Star trial offer. Do it today and you could have the "best" on your desk tomorrow morning. Isn't that what you really wanted in the first place? 3243 SUNSET BOULEVARD W. COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA 29169 IBM PC1AT AT and OSrz are Trademarks oi inicmai.nnai Business Machines Coin Circle 305 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 15 MICROBYTES 10 percent to 50 percent. In large C pro- grams, for instance, Hinton said per- formance gains have been about 10 per- cent; in assembly language programs, gains have been about 40 percent. Hin- ton wouldn't say on which chips Intel has implemented scoreboarding, but he did say it wasn't the 80386. "It can help performance only with processors that have wait states," he explained. "It [scoreboarding] lets the internal operation proceed where wait states occur. " Scoreboarding is simply one tech- nique that designers can use to offset the bogging down of the system due to microprocessors operating at a higher frequency than the external bus pins. A more common, but more costly, alterna- tive is the use of an external memory cache. The basic approach was devel- oped in the late 1960s as a method of enabling concurrency on mainframe computers. With scoreboarding, the read access is sent to the external bus controller and the destination register is marked as busy whenever a memory read is exe- cuted. Execution then immediately continues with the next instruction. The source and destination registers of the new instruction are checked; if they are busy, the instruction is canceled and is then tried again later. If the registers are not busy, however, the instruction is completed. Hinton said scoreboarding is helpful only when the system uses independent instructions that execute concurrently with the external bus access of the previ- ous read access. With dependent in- structions, execution is delayed until memory reads are complete. Promise Too Much Lotus's Manzi Warns CD Sometimes stating the obvious is a good place to start. Jim Manzi, president of Lotus Development (Cambridge, MA), did just that when he told an audi- ence at Microsoft's CD-ROM confer- ence in Seattle that "customers won't buy what they can't use. " Manzi said the personal computer industry has a history of "overpromising and underdelivering," and he urged developers not to make this mistake with CD-ROM. Manzi warned against what he termed the technological arrogance ROM Developers: Don't that afflicted the mainframe and mini- computer industry 5 to 10 years ago. He suggested that sometimes the best re- search and technological advancements come from an unexpected source: lis- tening to customers. Packing large amounts of raw data on a disk is not the ultimate objective of CD-ROM, he said. "There's more to it than loading data and producing a ge- neric lookup engine." People are look- ing for ways to transform raw data into useful information; according to Manzi, this is the promise of CD-ROM. "Customers don't care about the un- derlying technology. They just want use- ful information" and want to spend less time in front of their computers, he said. "Our industry will be truly successful when it frees customers from their com- puters to spend more time thinking creatively." One of the potential benefits of CD- ROM, according to Manzi, is "freeing customers from information middle- continued With Maplnfo, More Ways Than Ever To Map Your Data /Deliveries , . Pin Map. Automatically use your existing database (from dBASE III or others) with street maps that we can supply. Maps from over 300 U.S. cities and towns contain all addresses, accurate to the correct block and side of the street. Type any address and Maplnfo will find it for you. Call to the screen your complete record. Map Thematic. Use our boundaries (state or county) or draw your own (sales regions, election districts, etc.). Create a database for the region (population, average income, etc.) Color code boundaries or entire regions based on parameters you define. Presentation. Use powerful graphics commands to add your own titles, legends and text. Create arrows, windows or callouts. Turn on or off labels of points, streets, bridges, regions, etc. Visual Database. Draw anything from a floor plan to aircraft design. Store data on any point or region. Create multiple layers to add flexibility to your display. And that's just a sample. If you need to map your data, Maplnfo can do it for as little as $750. IBM PC or 100% compatibles, with 640K memory, a hard disk drive, and graphics capability. To order, call 1-800-FASTMAR In New York State, call 1-518-274-8673 (Telex 371-5584). Maplnfo Corp., 200 Broadway, Troy, NY 12180 dBASE III is a trademark of Ashton-Tate. IBM and IBM PC are trademarks ot International Business Machines Corp. 16 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 172 on Reader Service Card Right. If you've got better things to do than debug pages and pages of code, you need ASYST™ It's the programming environment developed specifically for scientific and engineering applications. ASYST simplifies data analysis and graphic display, and integrates them with data acquisition. Using ASYST, you can replace pages of low-level code with a few specialized commands. And it's easy to tailor to your changing applications. ASYST 's simple configuration menus and our technical support will get you up and running quickly— and keep you there. Call and discuss your application with one of our technical specialists. Or request more information. Just make the next line of code you enter 1-800-348-0033 .It'll put you on-line with ASYST, the scientific way to program. Features: ■ Analog-to-Digital, Digital-to-Analog, and Digital I/O Support ■ GPIB/IEEE-488 Interface ■ RS-232 Interface ■ Sophisticated Analysis and Graphics System requires IBM PC, XT, AT, or 100% compatible. SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 100 Corporate Woods Rochester, NY 14623 1-800-348-0033 (or 716-272-0070) System Developers: Ask about our new ASYST Run-time License. ASYST is a trademark of Asyst Software Technologies, Inc. IBM, IBM PC, IBM PC/XTand IBM PC/AT are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Come see us at the Electro Show, Booth *2965, May 10-1 2, Boston, MA. Circle 29 on Reader Service Card Circle 95 on Reader Service Card DUNNET:YOUR STOCK-TO-CASH INTERFACE Mass storage is a useful computer facility; but when applied to computers and electronicequipment in a sales context, it means capital tied up, instead of working for you. Dunnet has the answer. As one of Europe's largest importers and distributors of electronic goods, we have both the financial strength and the market outlets to reduce manufacturer's stock problems. Our purchasing power enables us to buy up job-lots at highly competitive prices. Large quantities, not just of computers and computer products, but also consumer electronics such as telephones and facsimile machines. If your working capital is locked-up in the warehouse, let us act as your stock-to-cash interface. Whatever the volume, and regardless of brand name, we are in the market to buy. And, furthermore, we will agree the distribution areas of your products in advance. This will ensure that your pre-existing marketing strategies are not undermined. Dunnet's leadership in electronics mass purchasing and distribution in Europe, built up over the past 20 years, is a clear indication of our professional ability. Put it to work for you. J.J. Bergman General Manager Dunnet International Trading Company b.v. Kipstraat 16, 3011 RT Rotterdam. The Netherlands. TeL 31.10-4008100. Telex: 23496 krali. Fax: 31.10-4128073. Dunnet MICROBYTES men and the charges of on-line ser- vices." CD-ROM products will some- day be updated frequently enough that users will be able to spend less time using on-line services, he said. Manzi predicted big times ahead for the CD-ROM industry, saying that in 5 years the medium will be indispensable in government, business, and education, After the medium becomes essential to those markets, CD-ROM-related sales will account for 10 percent of revenues at software companies (up from 1 per- cent now), he predicted. We trust he wasn't overpredicting. Toshiba Designs Graphics Processor for Fast 3-D Drawing Companies that have been considered the leaders in the graphics processing market— like Intel and Texas Instru- ments, with their respective powerful graphics engines on chips — could be seriously challenged by Toshiba with its new high-performance graphics processor. Toshiba claims that its chip can draw and render three-dimensional images at up to 10 million pixels per second. The processor could find its way into CAD workstations and graphics boards for personal computers, if Toshiba can con- vince designers to use it. The CMOS device contains more than 130,000 transistors and provides graphics functions such as Gouraud and constant shading, line drawing, depth cuing, image data transfer, and hidden-surface removal. Although as many as four processors can be linked in parallel in a multichip architecture (with resulting perfor- mance of up to 40 million pixels shaded per second, Toshiba says), the chip it- self consists of four parts: a 32-bit com- mand processor, a 32-bit pixel proces- sor, a memory interface, and a window block for multi window support. The command processor, which includes firmware, executes preprocessing op- erations and sends instructions to the pixel processor. The pixel processor is the main engine for shading, drawing, and bit-map operations. The memory interface generates the memory timing signals. A special multiprocessor mode makes parallel processing possi- ble. Special algorithms for smooth shading are in the firmware. For constant shading, Toshiba claims the chip can execute at the rate of 160 million pixels per second and draw 1 million lines per second. TECHNOLOGY NEWS WANTED. The news staff at BYTE is always interested in hearing about new technological and scientific developments that might have an impact on microcomputers and the people who use them. We also want to keep track of innovative uses of that technology. If you know of advances or projects that involve research relevant to microcomputing and want to share that information, please contact us. Call the Microbytes staff at (603) 924-9281, send mail on BIX to Microbytes, or write to us at One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. 18 BYTE- MAY 1988 Imagine the speed and power of a $100,000 minicomputer in a desktop PC cost ing under $7,000. Now imagine all that power going to waste because the operating system you chose was never meant to take advan- tage of a computer this powerful. It will take more than just a "window environ- ment" or an outdated operating system to unlock the 80386. It will take PC-MOS/386™ The First 80386 Operating System. Specifically designed for the 80386 computer, PC-MOS/386™ opens doors. Doors to more memory and multi-tasking. Doors to thousands of DOS programs as well as upcom- ing 80386-specific software. It's the gateway to the latest technology..., and your networking future. Memory Management Without Boards. PC-MOS exploits the memory management capabilities built into the 80386. So, up to four GIGABYTES of memory are access- ible to multiple users and to future 80386-specific applications requiring megabytes of memory. Multi-Tasking, Multi- User Support for One, Five or 25 Users. PC-MOS/386™ allows up to 25 inexpensive terminals to be driven by a single 80386 machine. So the features of the 80386 can be utilized at every terminal. And it comes in three versions so you can upgrade your system as your com- pany grows... without having to learn new commands or install new hardware. UP TO 25 USERS. MADE FOR THE 80386. Software Support for Thousands of DOS Programs. Although PC-MOS/386™ totally replaces DOS, it doesn't make you replace your favorite DOS programs. So you can run programs like Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar, dBASE III, and WordPerfect on the 80386. Best of all, it uses familiar commands like DIR and COPY-so you'll feel comfortable with our system. The Gateway to Endless Features. Distinctive characteristics like file/system security, remote access, file/record locking, and built-in color graphics support for EACH user set PC-MOS/386™ apart from all previous operating systems. Open the Doors to Your Future TODAY! Call The Software Link TODAY for more information and the authorized dealer nearest you. PC-MOS/386™ comes in single, five & 25-user versions starting at $195. PC-MOS/386 MODULAR OPERATING SYSTEM THE SOFTWARE LINK \J Developers of LANLink™&MultiLink* Advanced 3577 Parkway Lane, Atlanta, GA 30092 Telex 4996147 SWLINK FAX 404/263-6474 For the dealer nearest you, CALL: 800/451-LINK ' In Georgia: 404/448-LINK OEM/Int'l Sales: 404/2634006 Resellers/VARs: 404/448-5465 OEM/Dealer Inquiries Invited RE LINK/CANADA CALL: 800/387-0453 Circle 275 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 276) ?^^^ K ic CK '^cfe E ,^F^. E ^ M ^ iLink * i " a re 8 islered trademark of The Software Link. PC-MOS/38BI" MultiLink'Advanced, and LANLink™ are trademarks of The Software Link. Lotus Wordstar. dBASL ill, & WordPerfect are trademarks of Lotus Development Corp., MicroPro, AshtonTate, & WordPerfect Corp., respectively. Prices and technical specifications subject to change. When you want to talk computers.. ATARI COMPUTERS 65XE64K Computer 99.99 130XE 132K Computer 139.00 520ST-FM Monochrome Syst. ..Call 1040ST Color System 939.00 SF124 Monochrome Monitor . 149.00 SF1224 Color Monitor 329.00 □ Atari 520 Color System $ 779 Includes: 520ST-FM, 512K RAM with 3 1 /2" Drive Built-in, Basic, RF-MOD, Atari Mouse, and SF-1224 Color Monitor ATARI ST SOFTWARE Access Leaderboard Golf 24.99 Antic Stereo CAD 30 Flash 24.99 Avant Garde PC Ditto (IBM Emulation) 69.99 Batteries Included Degas Elite 44.99 DAC Easy Accounting 64.99 Soft Logik Corp. Publishing Partner 64.99 Timeworks Swiftcalc/Wordwriter 49.99 VIP Professional Gem 144.00 Absoft AC Basic 139.00 Aegis Development Animator/Images 89.99 Draw Plus 149.00 Sonix 49.99 Discovery Software Maranderll 31.99 Electronic Arts Deluxe Video 1.2 89.99 Gold Disk Software Pagesetter w/Text ed 89.99 Micro Illusions Dynamic Cad 349.00 AMIGA SOFTWARE AMIGA SOFTWARE Micro Systems Software Scribble 69.99 New Tek Inc. Digi-View2.0 149.00 Digi-Paint 44.99 Sub-Logic Corp. Flight Simulator II 39.99 Word Perfect Corp. Word Perfect 199.00 MACINTOSH PRODUCTS EVfMX L-jg— ■ — ' 'f T EVGTGX EMAC 60T Tape _ _ _ Back-Up $ 1099 Hard Drives CMS MacStack43 849.00 Everex 91 MB SCSI 1499.00 PCDC Mac Bottom 4032 999.00 Floppy Disks Cutting Edge by Ehman 800K External 189.00 Mirror Technologies Magnum 800K 199.00 Monitors Network Specialities Big Top 20" 1499.00 Sigma Designs Laser View Display Syst 1 ,749.00 Memory Upgrades Dove Computer Mac Snap 524S 199.00 Mac Memory Max Plus Mega 329.00 Turbo SE 16 MHz 369.00 Scanners AST Turboscan 1,299.00 Datacopy 720 Flatbed Scanner 1,199.00 MS/DOS SYSTEMS Ast Premium 140 Desktop. .2,499.00 MS/DOS SYSTEMS Compaq deskpro and portables . Cal I IBM PS/2 model 30 and 50 Call IBM PS/2 model 60 and 80 Call Leading Edge 899.00 NECAPC-IVPowermate ...2,399.00 NEC Multispeed Laptop 1229.00 PC-TOO 80286 1.2MB, 51 2K ..999.00 769 Toshiba T-1000 Laptop MULTIFUNCTION CARDS AST 6-Pak Plus 576 Board 139.00 Hot Shot 286 Accelerator 349.00 Hercules Color Card 129.00 Graphics Card Plus 159.00 5th Generation Logical Connection 256K 349.00 Quadram Quad386XT 80386 PC-Upgr. . .799.00 Video 7 Vega V.G.A. Adapter 319.00 Zuckerboard Color Card w/Parallel Port 89.99 MS/DOS SOFTWARE Ashton-Tate d-Baselll+ 389.00 Borland Quattro 129.00 5th Generation Fastback Plus 89.99 IMSI Optimouse w/dr. Halo 89.99 Logitech Hi-Res Buss Mouse 119.00 Lotus Lotus 1.2.3 Software Publishing First Choice 99.00 Micropro Professional 4.0 w/GL 239.00 Word Perfect Corp. Word Perfect 4.2 . . .209.00 WE SHIP 90% OF ALL ORDERS WITHIN 24 HOURS SELECT FROM OVER 3000 PRODUCTS COMPUTER MAIL ORDER 20 BYTE- MAY 1988 MONITORS MODEMS PRINTERS Amdek Video 310A 12" Amber 99.00 Video 41 0 1 2" A/G/W (ea.) 1 49.00 Magnavox 7BM623 12" TTL Amber 99.00 CM8502 13" Composite Color 159.00 CM8515 14" RGB/Composite. 269.00 CM8762 14" RGB/Composite ..New NEC GS-1400 14" Monochr. TTI 219.00 JC-1402Multisync-ll 599.00 Packard Bell PB-1418F 14" Flat TTL A/G/W (ea.) 119.00 PB-1420CG 14" Mid-Res CGA 269.00 PB-1422EG 14" Hi-Res EGA . .369.00 PB-8526-MJ Uniscan Monitor. 399.00 Princeton Graphics Max-12 12" TTL Amber 149.00 Thomson 450 15" 132 col. TTL Amber ..119.00 Thomson Model 4120 RGB/ Composite DRIVES S 219 Atari AA314 DS/DD ST Disk 199.00 SH D204 20M B ST Hard Drive . 569.00 C.LTD (For Amiga) C.LTD 20MB 899.00 C.LTD 33MB 999.00 C.LTD A500 SCSI Controller .179.00 Indus GT Disk Drive Atari XL/XE ... 1 79.00 GTS-100 ST Drive 199.00 Racore Jr. Expansion Chassis 299.00 Seagate Technologies ST-225 20MB Drive 249.00 Supra Atari ST 20MB Hard Drive 559.00 Amiga 2000 20MB Hard Drive. 649.00 Xebec Amiga 20MB Hard Drive 799.00 Anchor 6480 C64/128 1200 Baud 99.99 Vu-520 ST520/1040 1200 Baud 129.00 1200E 1200 Baud External ...129.00 Atari XMM301 XL/XE 300 Baud 44.99 SX-212 ST Modem 94.99 AVdtGX 1200 HC External 99.99 2400 External 199.00 Best Products 2400 Baud Vi Card w/software 159.00 Everex Evercom 2400 Baud External .239.00 Hayes Smartmodem 1200 5 ___ External 279 Smartmodem 300 149.00 Packard Bell 1200 External 89.99 2400 External 169.00 Practical Peripherials Complete Telecom Package ..99.99 2400 Baud Stand-Alone 199.00 Supra 2400AT 2400 Baud Atari 169.00 U.S. Robotics Direct 1200 Baud External 89.99 Direct 2400 Baud External ...199.00 DISKETTES Maxell MD1-M SS/DD5V4" 8.49 MD2-DM DS/DD 5V4" 9.49 MF1-DDMSS/DD3V2" 12.49 MF2-DDM DS/DD 3V 2 " 18.49 MC-6000 DC-600 Tape 23.99 Sony MD1DSS/DD5V2" 6.99 MD2D DS/DD 5 1 /2" 7.99 MFD-1DDSS/DD3V2" 11.99 MFD-2DD DS/DD 3V2" 16.99 Atari 1020 XL/XE Plotter 31.99 XDM-121 Letter Quality XL-XE 199.00 XM-M801 XL-XE Dot Matrix . .199.00 XM-M804 ST Dot Matrix 189.00 Brother M-1109100cps Dot Matrix . . .199.00 M-1409 180 cps Dot Matrix . . .309.00 Citizen 120D 120 cps Dot Matrix 149.00 Premier-35 35cps Diasywhl. .479.00 C.ltoh 315-XP Epson/IBM 132 col.. . .549.00 Epson LX-800 150 cps, 80 col 179.00 FX-86E 240 cps, 80 col 289.00 FX-286E240cps, 132 col Call LQ-500 180cps,24-wire Call LQ-850 330 cps, 80 col Call LQ-1050 330cps, 24-wire Call EX-800 300 cps, 80 col Call Hewlett-Packard HP-2225Thinkjet 369.00 NEC P2200 Pinwriter 24-wire 379.00 P660 Pinwriter 24-wire 459.00 P760 Pinwriter 132 col 679.00 Okidata Okimate 20 color printer 129.00 ML-182 120 cps 80 col 229.00 ML-192+ 200 cps, 80 col 359.00 ML-193+ 200 cps, 132 col. . . .469.00 Panasonic KX-P1080i 144CPS, 80 Column 5 175 KX-P1091i 194 cps, 80 col. ...199.00 KX-P1092I 240 cps, 80 col. ...339.00 Star Micronics NX-1000 140 cps, 80 col 169.00 NX-1000CC64/128 Interface .189.00 NX-15120cps, 132 col 319.00 Toshiba P321-SL 216 cps, 24-wire 539.00 P351-SX 300 cps, 24-wire 999.00 In the U.S.A. and in Canada Call toll-free: 1-800-233-8950 Outside the U.S.A. call 717-327-9575, Fax 717-327-1217 Educational, Governmental and Corporate Organizations call toll-free 1-800-221-4283 CMO. 477 East Third Street, Dept. A1, Williamsport, PA 17701 ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED POLICY: Add 3% (minimum $7.00) shipping and handling. Larger shipments may require additional charges. Personal and company checks require 3 weeks to clear. For faster delivery, use your credit card or send cashier's check or bank money order. Credit cards are not charged until we ship. Pennsylvania residents add 6% sales tax. All prices are U.S.A. prices and are subject to change, and all items are subject to availability. Defective software will be replaced with the same item only. Hardware will be replaced or repaired at our discretion within the terms and limits of the manufacturer's warranty. We cannot guarantee com- patibility. All sales are final and returned shipments are subject to a restocking fee. A105 Circle 68 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 21 LETTERS Top-Down Gets Thumbs Up Although I enjoyed your In Depth section on Lisp (February), I found it unfortu- nate that "Lisp: A Language for Strati- fied Design" by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman included an attack on top-down structured design. The authors claim that top-down methodology is "flawed" and that it cannot be used to create systems that are "robust" because it does not let designers "stratify com- plex designs." This assertion is simply not correct. Top-down design and the stepwise refine- ment that is inherent in the approach pro- vide a methodology in which stratifica- tion is the norm. You can't use any of the CASE tools based on structured design techniques without becoming immedi- ately aware of the conscious development of different levels of abstraction, with hidden details at each level. Beyond this narrow issue, it is regret- table that someone as experienced as Harold Abelson would think it necessary to mount an attack on a methodology that has produced many useful, flexible, and reliable systems. After years of bickering about the merits of different languages and programming environments, it has become obvious to most of us that there is no universal "best method" to be applied to any or all of the work we ask computers to do for us. The Lisp environment may offer advantages in some situations, but a Modula-2 or SQL environment might be preferable in others. A good case can be made for under- standing Lisp and the manner in which it can aid analysis, but we should be con- scious of the warning given by Edsger Dijkstra in his book Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective (Springer- Verlag, 1982): "The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influ- ence on our thinking habits, and, there- fore, on our thinking abilities." The task facing system designers is not to master one language or methodology, but to de- velop the knowledge and flexibility that allow selection of the most appropriate tools for the job to be done. John Boddie Newark, DE Conveying Information Mathematical theory is so many years ahead of its practical use that mathemati- cians are eager to find a field in which to apply their knowledge, lest some would say they are useless. Dr. Claude E. Shannon seems to be trying to apply the mathematics of proba- bility to something somewhere. His aim, and perhaps his victim, seems to be information. Let's look at the example selected by Ramachandran Bharath in "Information Theory" (December 1987): "If you have a 10-year-old son, and someone tells you that you have a son, no information has been conveyed." The man who believes that no information has been conveyed will become poor indeed. If messages in daily life were scanned only for the sim- plest content, there would be no commu- nication at all— and maybe no human culture. In the example used, the parent of the 10-year-old son now knows that the per- son speaking to him also knows that the son exists and that this person thought he was the first to tell the parent. That is part of a certain content. And in combination with the context, the content— probable, hypothetical, and so on— would be much larger. You could write a book about all these contents of the sentence. But I am not a mathematician, and maybe for a math- ematician there is only noise in my message. M.-C. Strieker Strasbourg, France Speech Software from Dataf lo I bought my Heath HV-2000 speech card after reading about it in What's New (January, page 86). I wanted to write a spelling tutorial for my second-grader, and I thought the task would be relatively easy. Programming the card was a snap, but developing a fully integrated program that was tailored to the needs of a 7-year- old was something else. When I called Heath to find out what programs were available for the card, I was disappointed to learn that there was nothing on the market. Ever optimistic, I called my local bookstore and discovered that a nearby software company publishes an entire line of educational programs for the card. The company is Dataflo Computer Services (HC 32, P.O. Box 1, Enfield, NH 03748, (603) 448-2223). I purchased Dataflo's Spell And Tell program, and it has proved to be the perfect program for my child. The company has several pro- grams, and some of them even come in foreign languages. I'm sure other users of this card will be happy to know that there is software for it. Dennis Draper West Lebanon, NH While attending the Northeast Com- puter Faire in Boston last year, I was in- trigued by the educational speech soft- ware offerings of a small New Hampshire firm, Dataflo Computer Services, which were exhibited on both IBM and Apple II machines. To date, this is the only ready- to-run speech software I've been able to find. My only hesitation arose over the prices of the two supported speech syn- thesis boards for the IBM, one from Votrax and the other from Artie Technol- ogies. Both cost over $200. For some users who would like to give their chil- dren talking educational software, this might seem a steep investment. But, lo! Good ol' Heath now advertises a speech board in kit form for only $89.95. A call to Dataflo confirmed that its entire educational speech software line (including several spelling and math pro- grams) is now available in a version for the Heath board. I also learned that, for those who already own the Votrax or Artie synthesizers and are inclined to- ward writing their own speech programs, Dataflo offers S0NC0M, the only utility the company knows of that allows access to those boards from compiled BASIC. As always, Apple users are in a differ- ent boat. Apple JJs must use Applied En- continued LETTERS POLICY: When submitting a let- ter for publication, double-space it on one side of the paper and include your name and address. Express your comments and ideas as clearly and concisely as possible. We can print listings and tables along with a letter if they are short and legible. Because we receive hundreds of letters each month, we cannot publish all of them. We cannot return letters to authors. Gener- ally, it takes four months from the time we re- ceive a letter until we publish it. 22 BYTE • MAY 1988 Who Says FoxBASE+ is Better than dBASE ? Nicholas Petreley, Info World Review Board: "FoxBASE+ has outdone itself. Once again, FoxBASE+ earns an "excellent" in performance, with kudos for responding to user suggestions. For sheer productivity, there is no other choice." P.L. Olympia, Founder & President, International Dbase User's Group I Government Computer News : "FoxBASE+ is a supercharged dBASE, with all the features Ashton-Tate forgot. If you're into serious dBASE development and have not tried FoxBASE+, you are living in the dark ages and wasting your company's money." George F. Goley IV, Contributing Editor, Data Based Advisor : "The product is fast, very compatible, fast, easy to use, fast, relatively inexpensive, and very fast. In every test, FoxBASE + outperformed the other products. And people who answer the phone at Fox know what they are talking about." David Irwin, Former President/CEO, Data Based Advisor : "From the dBASE compatibility standpoint, FoxBASE+ is flaw- less. From the speed standpoint, FoxBASE+ is unbelievable. From the "lazy factor" standpoint, FoxBASE+ is perfect." Glenn Hart, Contributing Editor, PC Magazine : "Initial tests of FoxBASE+ were simply stunning. In many ways, FoxBASE+ gives you the best of both worlds: all the ben- efits of interactive development and debugging, plus the speed and code protection of a compiler." Pat Adams, Founder, International Dbase Users Group/NYPC Consultants SIG: "Imagine a dBASE without bugs! Imagine a dBASE that is at least six times faster and comes with its own runtime 'com- piler.' Imagine a company whose tech support department is reachable on the first telephone call, and whose staff knows what it is talking about. Imagine all that — and more — and you have FoxBASE + ." Adam Green, Contributing Editor; Data Based Advisor, dBASE Author: "For the PC, FoxBASE+ has consistently set the performance standard for dBASE compatible languages. For the Macintosh, FoxBASE+/Mac will set standards for innovation and leader- ship in a new dBASE implementation." Don Crabb, Contributing Editor, InfoWorld : "You can expect blazing speed on the Mac. FoxBASE+/Mac breezes past tests that have proven stumbling blocks for Macintosh databases in the past. FoxBASE+/Mac combines complete dBASE compatibility with a genuine Macintosh user interface." Why not join the experts — get your copy of FoxBASE+ now ! Visit your nearest quality software dealer, or order directly from us by calling (419) 874-0162. Because when it comes to speed, compatibility and value, nothin g runs like a FOX! FoxBASE, FoxBASE+ and FoxBASE + Mac are trademarks of Fox Software, dBASE and dBASE III PLUS are trademarks of Ashton-Tate. Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Circle 118 on Reader Service Card Fox Software " Nothing Runs Like a Fox. Fox Software, Inc. (419) 874-0162 118 W South Boundary FAX: (419) 874-8678 Perrysburg, OH 43551 Telex: 6503040827 HARMONY COMPUTERS 23S7 CONEY ISLAND AVE IBET AVES 1 ft Ul BKLVN NV 11223 ORDER OEPT ONLY B00-4J1 1 14-1 OR 718-627-1000 - INFORMATION 7IB-627 BBaB LETTERS NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE FOR CHED1T CARDS IBM PS II MODEL 30 (20 Meg) S1679.00 EPSON LX 800 S 189. 00 PANASONIC 1091 i I $169.00 TOSHIBA -T 1000 S 709. 00 Apple Image Writer 11 Citizen 130D Citi;en 1BOO en MSP 10 Citizen MSP 15 Citizen MSP 40 Citizen MSP 45 Citizen Premier 35 mix Ink Jet 150 Epson LXB00 "10 and 86 Cutsheel Feed Epson LQ500 Epson LO B60 Epson LQ 1050 Epson FX 86E Epson FX 286E "PRINTER SPECIALS" IBM PS 2 Model 30 <3 Drives) IBM PS 3 Model 30 (20 Meg ] IBM PS 2 Model 50 (20 Meg I IBM P S 2 Mono Monitor IBM P S 2 Color (8512) Monitor IBM P'S 2 Color (8513) Monitor Hertz il (10 MHZ) 256 K, w Drive Hertz At 286 w. 1.2 Meg Drive AST Rampage 286 (40 Meg) AST Rampage 286 (70 Meg) Toshiba 5'/. Disk Or (360 K) Toshiba 3'i Disk Dr (720 K) Toshiba 3'-? Disk Dr (1 44 Megl AST Si> Pack 64K AST Si* Pack Premium 256 K AST Rampage (286) Hercules Color Card Hercules Monographic pi us NEC EGA GB1 Ouad Prosync (with mouse! Quadram Ultra VGA (with mouse) Video 7 Ooluxe Video 7 VGA Genoa Hi Res Card Plus w Gem Graph ATI Wonder EGA ATI VGA Wonder idise [350) idise Auto Switch (480) Paradise VGA Everex Auto Sync (480) Everex Auto Sync (480) v Printer Port ire* VGA ;l 8087-3 ;l 8087-2 Intel 80287-6 Intel 80267-8 Intel 80287-10 Intel 803B7-16 ™ Epson EX80O 239 Epson EX I00O 319 Epson LQ2500 283 IBM Proprmier II 3" IBM Proprinler 24 429 IBM Proprinler XL24 299 NEC 3550 189 NEC 8850 2i NEC 2200 3'9 NEC P6 499 NEC P7 669 NEC Color P6 279 NEC Color P7 429 Okidata 182 Plus Okidata 192 Plus 1229 | 1679 Seagate 20 Meg. w/controter 2629 Seagate 30 Meg w 'control 1 6' 199 Seagate 30 Meg AT : 4038 1,49 Seagate 4D Meg. £51 499 Seagate 40 Meg #351 -l 499 Tandon 20 Meg Hard Card 899 Miniscribe 30 Meg Hard Card 2299 Tandon 40 Meg Hard Card 2799 Plus Hard Card (20 meg .] ^ Plus Hard Card (40 meg.) gg (Miniscribe) MAC 20 Meg External 129 | Jog 1571 Drive (5) igg Commodore 64C 309 1541C Disk Drive 109 1581 Disk Drive |3V>) 139 Comm 1804 Monitor 199 1351 Mouse ™ Star NX 10O0C Amiga 500 with 1084 Monit 269 Am '9 a '^34 Color Moniior ilga 500 Computer iiga 512 HAM Upgrade (or Amiga 500) Okidata 193 Plus Okidata 292 w INTFC Okidata 293 w Intfc Okidata 393 Panasonic KXP iQBO i Model 2 Panasonic KXP 1091 i Model 2 Panasonic KXP 1092 i Panasonic KXP 3131 Hewlett Packard Laserjet I Hewlett Packard Deskjet Panasonic 1524 Siekosha 1200 Star NX 1000 Star NX 1000R (color) Star NX 1000C Star NX 15 Star ND 10 Slar ND 15 Slar NB 2410 Star NB 2415 Toshiba 341 SL Toshiba 321 SL Panasonic KXP 3151 Panasonic KXP 1592 Panasonic KXP 1595 2GS wilh 256K 339 A PP le Dflve ' s '"l 49g Apple Drive (3VS) 42d MAC Plus 4 99 MACSE (2 Drives) 33 g MACSE (20 Meg.) 37g MACSE Keyboard 4 g 4 MAC SE Extended Keyboard 575 Imagewriler II 749 Apple Color Monitor (RGB) 559 Apple Black 8 While Monitor Milac Drive (2E, 3C. MAC) 5".' Miniscribe MAC 20 Meg Ext Everex MAC Modem 1200 Ei 40? Toshiba 3S1 SX ArnrJek 300 A Amdek 310A Amdek 410A Princeton Max 12E Princeton Ultra Sync Scan Doubler Video Card NEC Multisync G S 199 NEC Multisync II Drrvc NEC Multisync Plus Thompson Uilra Scan |B00 x 560)- Gold Star TTL Amber Goid Slar RGB Color Magnavoi (RGB. Composite) 8562 176 179 Microsoll Excel Microsoft Word 3 01 Microsoll Works Spellwell More (Symanlic) Superswirl D Base Mac 299 ATT 6300 Drive. 640K w keyboard, monitor AMDEK 725 Color Monitor (720 x 400) Master Card and Visa welcome For your prolectio replaced or repaired ai our discretion within the terms of NEC Multispeed NEC Multispeed EL 15 g NEC Multispeed H D (20 Meg.) 249 Toshiba T 1000 109 ToshhibaT 1100 Plus (2 Drives) 168 Toshiba T 1300 (20 Meg.) '69 Toshiba T 3100 (20 Meg.) ™ Toshiba 3200 (40 meg.) ™ Sharp 4503 (2 Drive. El Screen Zenith 181 (3 Drive) Zenith 183 (20 Meg) Diconex Ink Jel Port Primer 975 Fastwire II (Date Transfer 399 Software 3'A to S'A) N NEC 20 Meg Hard Drive1549 w NEC 40 Meg Hard Drive-3159 3 #386 NEC 40 meg 3349 3 check lor stolen credi !hS9 Haves '2°° 7Q g Hayes 1300B v 1349 Haves 300 2325 Haves 2400 3 g4 9 Hayes 2400B w Smarlcom 3 ggg Hayes Smartcom II 1179 M'Cromodem 2E 1429 EvB,e * Internal 1200B 2159 Everex 2400 Internal 39 g Everex 2400 External Everex Mac 2400 External 7g Packard Bell 1200 External Promethius 2400 Internal Shipping A handling e Lotus 133 Lotus Symphoney 3 0 D Base 3+ Plus 3/5 Framework 3 Ver 1 1 299 Microsoft Word 4.0 209 Microsoft Excel (IBM) 396 Microsoll Windows 2 03 59 Word Perfect 4.2 194 Word Perlecl Library 60 Q & A Call PFS Professional Write 109 Norton Utilities 4.0 49 Norton Utilities Advanced 79 Microsoft Mouse 99 Logitech Mouse 79 Logitech Paint 20 Logitech with Publisher 129 Logitech with Cad 139 Wordstar Professional Rel. 4 309 Mullimate Advantage Pel. 2 347 Venture Desk Top Publishing 469 Managing Your Money - Release 4 119 Fast Wire II (Dmq Transfer Software and cables) 79 3 1/2 Inch Software Call s final Price and a Deleciive merchandist II be ulily subject 10 change without notio What is a Best Western? IHH9HH9ESH9SI "My home office wherever I travel!' The right place at the right price. Make reservations at any Best Western, see your travel agent, or call toll-free 1-800-528-1234 "World's largest chain of independently owned and operated hotels, motor inns and resorts" gineering's more sophisticated Phasor board, which costs about $179. All the same, it appears that after being little more than an experimenter's curiosity for some time, speech synthesis is beginning to carve a practical place for itself in the personal computer market. Shades of HAL! Michael Dawidziak Central blip, NY MathCAD and Bessel Functions George A. Stewart's review of MathCAD 2.0 (February) was thorough and infor- mative. The comparison with TK Solver Plus and Eureka was especially helpful. However, Mr. Stewart is incorrect when he states that TK Solver Plus lacks built- in Bessel functions. TK Solver Plus does have Bessel functions, but they're not mentioned in the reference manual. The manual, Application Notes, covers the Bessel function feature on page 4-2. TK Solver Plus also includes the gamma function as well as the Gaussian error function. Programs like TK Solver Plus, Math- CAD 2.0, and Eureka add a new dimen- sion to computing. Engineering and sci- entific problems of significant difficulty that could previously be solved only through custom programming can now be solved much more easily. Setting up problems with these programs is much easier to learn than programming, and you can set up most problems much more quickly than you can write a conventional program. I have found TK Solver Plus very valuable in teaching various engi- neering courses. Edwin G. Wiggins EastNorthport, NY Answers on AI I am writing in response to Marin David Condic's letter (January, page 30). This letter raises two questions, the simpler of which I shall answer first. Should artificial intelligence (AI) re- search be supported if it is unable to achieve its stated goals? Yes. Research has given us many practical applications, such as expert systems, and promises more, such as natural language process- ing. Research of any type always pays off if you are persistent. As long as it pro- duces results, whether they are practical or theoretical, it should be supported. This can be answered only by comparing its merits with the relative merits of other endeavors. Can AI achieve its goals, or are there inherent limits to it? We do not, as yet, know the extent of AI and what is possi- ble. It is difficult to say if there is an in- surmountable barrier somewhere in this continued 24 BYTE* MAY 1988 Did You Know? Everex supplies a complete line of modem products Whether you own IBM® PCs, XTs™, ATs® or compatibles, PS/2™ systems or Apple® Macintosh™ computers, our complete line of Evercom™ modems will work for you. From the early days of the IBM PC, Everex has delivered quality add-on products at affordable prices. Our most recent introductions are the pocket size, full-featured Mini Modem and one of the first internal modems for PS/2 systems. Quality and Features at Affordable Prices If you need an internal modem for your home system, a Mini Modem™ for the road, or a rugged external modem for work, an Everex modem can satisfy all your data commu- nications needs. Everex modems are a cost effective way to add data communications capability to your personal compu- ter. Being a large volume supplier of modems, Everex has extensive experience in developing and supplying modems. Industry Compatible Each Everex modem assures you of compatibility with existing standards no matter where you are in the world. Our Everex engineers are active on national and international committees developing communications protocols and the latest standards. This involvement strengthens our commitment to the industry and assures our customers 100% com- patibility with other modems. Everex, Evercom, Mini Modem and EverFax are trademarks, and EVER for Excellence Is a registered trademark of Everex Systems, Inc. IBM and AT are registered trademarks and PC, XT and PS/2 are trademarks of In- ternational Business Machines Corp. Apple is a registered trademark and Macinlosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer, Inc. MNP is a trademark of MICROCOM, Inc. © Copyright 1988 Everex Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. The Latest Technology The Everex family of data modems now includes FAX capabilities with our EverFax™ product. The EverFax 12/48 offers the simplicity of Fax communication through your PC with over two million facsimile machines. When you can't afford any transmission errors, Everex has MNP™ error correction modems (in- ternal or external) at 2400 bps for PC/XT/ AT and PS/2 computers. Our Commitment to Data Communications The name Everex has come to mean quality, reliability and outstanding customer support in modems. So whatever your data communications needs, Everex has the right product for you. For more information or the name of your nearest Everex dealer please call: in usa 1-800-821-0806 in caiif 1-800-821-0807 EVER lor Excellence " 48431 Milmont Drive, Fremont, CA 94538 Circle 105 on Reader Service Card (Dealers: 106) Circle 183 on Reader Service Card OUTSTANDING SOFTWARE For IBM PC's and Compatibles LETTERS $050 per $000 PER * O DISK O DISK Small Quantities For Ten or More SHIPPED WITHIN 24 HOURS! Satisfaction Guaranteed or Money Back! □ BUSINESS 1— EZ-FORMS business form generation, completion and printing program. □ CAD 3— The PC-Flow 1 .0 computer aided flow- chart generation program. Color graphics required. [5] COMM 4a,b,C,d,e— (5 disks} Join the world of sysops with RBBS Bulletin Board System 1 4.1 D. U] DATABASE 1a,b— (2 disks) File Express 3.8 menu driven general purpose database manager. G EDUCATION 1— Interactive DOS tutorial for new PC users. Makes learning DOS painless. [2] FINANCE 1a,b— (2 disks) PC Accountant 2.0 personal bookkeeping and finance management. 3] GAMES 1 — 3-D Pacman, Kong, Spacewar, Janit- Joe, futuristic Flightmare and more. Color required. □ GAMES 2— Qubert, Pango, Centipede, dun- geons and dragons style Zoarre, etc. Color req. | | GAMES 3 — Blackjack with customizable rules, Armchair Quarterback (you call plays), and more. □ GAMES 4— Star Trek, the Castle adventure game, and the original Colossal Caves Adventure. g> | | GAMES 5 — The Hack adventure game from the ^ universities. Like Rogue, only much richer. ^ □ GAMES 6— Pinball, Othello, Dragons, Sopwith (fly a Sopwith Camel) and more. Color required. [2] INFO 1a,b — (2 disks) Cooking recipes database with keyword/ingredient retrieval. Add your own. \Z\ MUSIC 2a,b— (2 disks) PianoMan 3.0 polyphonic music recording and playback program. □ ORGANIZER 1— DeskTeam, a Sidekick clone, and the Judy personal calendar program. 0 PRINTER 1— Resident print control and font utility, intelligent spooler, banner maker, and more. | | SIMULATION 1 — Maze making program, MIT's Life simulation, starfields, etc. Color graphics req. 1 | UTILITIES 1 — A collection of invaluable general purpose DOS utilities. An absolute must for all. □ UTILITIES 2— More invaluable DOS utilities in- cluding screen burnout, ram disk, and more. | I UTILITIES 3 — A comprehensive set of debugging and diagnostic utilities for monitoring your computer. NEW RE L EA SE S/UPDA TES f~] BUSINESS 2— Expressgraph business graphics. Chart your data and find trends. Color graphics req. [2] CAD 1a,b— (2 disks) Fingerpaint 1 .2 advanced painting and Altamira object oriented design. Color. [2] CAD 2a,b— (2 disks) DanCad3d, an advanced 2D/3D drafting program w/animation. 640K, color. QF) COMM 2a,b— (2 disks) Procomm 2.42, an excel- lent modem program with terminal emulation. □ EDUCATION 3— PC-Fastype 1 .20 typing tutor, ideal for beginners and advanced students alike. [2] FINANCES 3a,b— (2 disks) Express Calc 3.12, a powerful and user friendly spreadsheet program. □ GAMES 8— Striker helicopter attack and Risk, the game of world domination. Color required. n GAMES 12 — Backgammon (play the computer) and Wheel of Fortune based on the gameshow. | I GRAPHICS 1 — Record and play back screen im- ages! Excellent for demo, etc. Color required. [3] GRAPHICS 2a,b,C— (3 disks) An excellent 3-D surface modelling and shading program. Color. [2] INFO 2a,b— (2 disks) Zip-Phone, national areacode/prefix to zip-code cross reference. [2] LANGUAGE 3a,b— {2 disks) The A86 3.09 macro assembler and debugger for 8088/86/286s. [2] SHELL 4a,b— (2 disks) Automenu and HDM II 4.04 hard disk prog, for custom full-screen menus. □ UTILITIES 5— Hard disk utilities for verifying, for- matting, parking and optimizing your disk drives. I | UTILITIES 6 — Advanced utilities including Mark/Release (remove resident progs w/o reboot!) r~| UTILITIES 7 — More advanced utilities including Masterkey (undeletes files from hard disks). [2] WORD 1 a,b— (2 disks) PC Write 2.71 , a powerful word processing system w/spell checker, laser supt. Most software listed is shareware or user-supported. 3.5" formal add $1/disk. 125 page directory, add $2. MicroCom Systems Cost of items 3673 Enochs Street Shipping $3.00 Santa Clara, CA CA res tax 95051 Total end field. Until it's reached, this question will remain unanswered. What Mr. Condic seems to be saying- he does not explicitly state it— is that humans have a special piece of magic that no other animal has and that cannot be duplicated in machines. The question be- comes, "How does the next generation acquire this special piece of magic?" Children grow up to be as smart as, and, in some cases (e.g., Einstein), much smarter than their parents. Their devel- opment is based on two factors: the genes they inherit and the environment in which they grow up. Is this special magic trans- ferred by the environment? Do we teach children how to be intelligent? And if we teach children, why can't we use the same methods to teach machines? The answer often given is that children have intelligence built in; we are only expand- ing on what is already there. If so, this leaves genetics as the means of transfer- ring this magic. All we need to do is to map out the human chromosomes and de- cipher the coding. Since function is inde- pendent of the hardware, it is possible to have intelligent machines. No? Well, what's left? Nothing. Or, rather, no known mechanism. Let's as- sume there is an unknown mechanism in- volved. One of its properties is that this unknown, unpredictable, and uncontrol- lable but reliable mechanism is supposed to transfer this special magic from adults to their children. Yet, if we make a con- scious effort to use it, it will always fail. To answer Mr. Condic's last ques- tion—why do AI researchers seem un- aware of other work on intelligence?— they are not. Many of these authors make the assumption that humans have a spe- cial something that they cannot possibly duplicate. (The above discussion shows it must be duplicated for our children to be intelligent.) Since the researchers dis- agree with this, they ignore these studies because they do not pertain to their work. Shawn Corey Winchester, Ontario, Canada A Can of Worms We were gratified to see Wayne Rash Jr. 's review of the Optotech 5984 drive in "A Quintet of WORMs " (February). Clear- ly, Mr. Rash has identified many of the important factors that must be considered when selecting a WORM drive. In the interest of accuracy, we at Opto- tech feel compelled to correct one re- mark. Mr. Rash stated that it takes "a minute or two" for our drive to spin down. While it may seem like that to Mr. Rash, our watches here tell us that it's more like 6 or 7 seconds. In February we released a single-board controller that improves our product's performance by a factor of 2 and elimi- nates the bulky double-board controller that Mr. Rash was working with. In addi- tion, the software that accompanies our new release has been downsized consid- erably by exploiting any EMS memory the user may have. This allows large pro- grams like Ventura and AutoCAD to be executed while our driver is loaded. Edward Beshore Manager, Applications Engineering Optotech Colorado Springs, CO I would like to thank Wayne Rash Jr. for his review of WORM optical disk drives. However, I would like to point out one serious error and several significant omissions. Mr. Rash incorrectly states that the Maximum Storage drive is made by ISI. The APX-3200 Optical Storage Subsys- tem is designed and manufactured by Maximum Storage. The omissions were due largely to the lack of explanation about the very differ- ent software implementations. Only Maximum Storage and IBM add an opti- cal file system shell to DOS. All the other WORM optical disk drives are imple- mented as magnetic disk emulators. This difference in implementation ap- proach shows up in disk overhead, file system functionality, and data portabil- ity. The magnetic disk emulators typi- cally consume large amounts of overhead because they are emulating a system that was not designed to conserve disk space. Other features unique to WORM storage applications that are not supported by emulator software include multiple-vol- ume partitions and full file audit (who, what, when, and so on, for each file entry) . The most important aspect of WORM data storage suggests that the data may outlive the machine that was used to gen- erate the data. It is, therefore, imperative that the file system used to access data on a WORM disk be portable to and support the capabilities of other operating systems. The MAXSYS-DOS system is the only WORM file system available that has this capability. Maximum Storage recently announced version 2.0 of MAXSYS-DOS; it is faster and more efficient and has more func- tionality (e.g., executes programs on the optical drive, supports multiple drives, accesses previous file versions) than 1.1, which was used to derive the benchmark data for this article. David R. Wooten Vice President, Product Development Maximum Storage Inc. Colorado Springs, CO continued 26 BYTE • MAY 1988 . . .and a complete line of graphics adapters Everex is the only graphics board vendor you need. Whether you are selecting your first personal com- puter or buying hundreds for your office, choosing the right graphics card is easy with Everex. With PGA, VGA, EGA, CGA, MDA, or ultra-high monochrome resolution, Everex has just what you need. Everex has been there From the Beginning Everex introduced the Graphics Edge™ graphics card for the IBM® PC in 1983, providing the then unique capability to run CGA and Hercules® programs on the same monochrome monitor. Since those early days of the PC, Everex has continued to innovate graphics technology, bringing new products to the marketplace. Compatibility with Existing Standards All Everex graphics adapters are fully compatible with all the existing graphic modes established by IBM. And while we include unique features on many of our graphics products, we make sure that none of the established standards are compromised. Advanced Engineering The Everex dedication to excellence has led us to develop our own pro- prietary chip sets. This allows us greater control in the design of our graphics cards. Our use of ASIC (Application- Specific Integrated Circuit) technology reduces chip count for cooler operation and improved reliability. Most important, our own chip sets enable our design teams to incorporate the many special features you have requested, while maintaining the standard features you have come to expect from Everex products. Fully Tested with a Human Touch We hand test every Everex graphics card for true color and tone on a video monitor in our factory before it's shipped. So before you ever install your Everex graphics card, we've made sure that it's just right for you. For more information or the name of your nearest Everex dealer please call: in usa 1-800-821-0806 in caiif 1-800-821-0807 Everex and Graphics Edge are trademarks, and EVER for Excellence is a registered trademark of Everex Systems, Inc. IBM is a registered trademark and PC is a trademark of International Business Machines Corp. Hercules is a registered trademark of Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. © Copyright 1988 Everex Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. EVER for Excellence® 48431 Milmont Drive, Fremont, CA 94538 Circle 107 on Reader Service Card (Dealers: 108) LETTERS 68000 Relative Addressing I was interested in Mike Wilson's com- ments about position-independent code (PIC) and the 68000 relative to the size of a code segment in his review "MPW C for the Mac" (February). Here are a few comments: For anyone who is curious, 32-bit per- sonal computer relative addressing can be accomplished at the assembly level on the 68000, though not as readily as on the 68020. The following code sequence will cause a position-independent call or jump anywhere in the address space, without using registers: RPSH PEA RDISP-2(PC) return address PEA 2 (PC) current address JPAD ADD.L #JDISP,(A7) make * target on stack RTS jump RDISP SET *-RPSH displace- * ment to return to code * continues here and, after the * procedure is declared, JDISP SET PR0C-JPAD displace- * ment to procedure The symbol * in an expression is the current location counter. At run time, the processor pushes the return address, pushes the address of the ADD instruction, adds the constant difference between the last address pushed and the procedure en- try address, then pops the procedure ad- dress into the computer. For a simple jump, the programmer will not push the return address. You can generate a faster, and more understandable, call or jump using a register: M0VE.L # JDISP, AO procedure offset JPAD JSR -2(PC,A0.L) PC = PC + offset * and after the procedure declaration JDISP SET PROC-JPAD At run time, the offset to the procedure is loaded in a register; then the return ad- dress is pushed and the offset is added into the computer, adjusted by the space consumed by the instruction extension word. On a personal computer, relative data addressing for jump tables and such beyond the 32K-byte limit can be gener- ated with the latter method. Most assemblers should be able to han- dle the order of declaration given above. It is faster and cleaner, of course, to use the 32-bit branches allowed by the 68020. Now, as to whether it should be done or not, part of the PIC methodology is the idea that large programs should be di- vided into smaller, independent, commu- nicating pieces. When the 68000 was designed, it was hoped that the PIC meth- odology would eliminate the need to jump directly to code more than 32K bytes away. System calls and interprocess communication were thought to provide the necessary flow of control. Whether these are really sufficient is still not known. In the meantime, the 68020 is proof that PIC-oriented architecture can function well with the traditional methodologies. Joel Matthew Rees Salt Lake City, UT Sequel to SQL SQL/QIT is another database package that would hold its own with those dis- cussed in the January BYTE. In fact, from some of the local benchmarks against Oracle and Ingres, it could be considered superior. However, later revi- sions of Oracle, at least, have since been released. SQL/QIT is a homegrown Aus- continued If you think jrou can buy a better C compiler, don't. Well buy it for you. Buy Let's C* with csd™ for just $75. If you're not satisfied, get Turbo Cor QuickC. Free* Why are we making this incredible offer? Because we're absolutely cer- tain Lets C and csd C Source Debugger are the best C programming tools you can own. Rest assured that, like its competition. Let's C features incredibly fast in-memory compilation and produces extremely tight, high quality code. The differences lie in how much faster you can perform other programming chores. Our debugger, for example, can cut development time in half. But that's not all: "csd is close to the ideal debugging environment.. . a definite aid to learning C and an indispensable tool/or program development." -William G. Wong, BYTE And comparatively speaking: "No debugger is included in the Tiirbo C package ... a serious shortcoming." —Michael Abrash, Programmer's Journal Unlike our competition. Let's C includes its own full-featured assembler, features documentation with complete examples and technical support with complete answers-the jlrst time you call. LET'S C: ■ Now compiles twice as fast • Integrated edit-compile cycle: editor automatically points to errors • Includes both small and large memory model • Integrated environment or command line interface • 8087 sensing and support LET'S C AND csd FEATURES ■ Full UNIX compatibility and complete libraries • Many powerful utilities including make, assembler, archiver • MicroEMACS full screen editor wifh source code included • Supported by dozens of third parly libraries csd: • Debug in C source code, not assembler • Provides separate source, evaluation, program and history windows ■ Ability to set trace points and monitor variables • Can interactively evaluate any C expression • Can execute any C function in your program • Trace back function So if you're thinking about buying any other C compiler, think again. But this offer is only available for a limited time. So think fast. And see your software dealer or call 1-800-MWC-1700 soon. (1-312-472-6659 in Illinois.) lb exchange Let's C and csd for Turbo C or QuickC, return registration card within 15 days of purchase date, notify Mark Williams Company that you are returning products and receive a return authorization number. Products must be returned within 30 days of purchase date or within 30 days of shipping date on telephone orders. I Mark I Williams Company 1430 West Wrightwood, Chicago, Illinois 60614, 312-472-6659 ) 1988 Mark Williams Company 28 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 173 on Reader Service Card . . .and a complete line of tape backup products Since 1984, Everex has been an industry leader in the PC tape backup market. Every day, Everex tape products are used to protect data on IBM® PCs, XTs™, ATs® or compatibles, PS/2™ systems and Apple® Macintosh™ computers. A Wide Selection Because we know that everybody's backup requirements— and budgets— are different, Everex provides a wide selection of tape drive models. You can choose from cassette, mini-cartridge, or cartridge tape drive models that have capacities ranging from 40MB to 125MB. And, to reduce your overall backup equipment costs, you can share one external tape drive among several PC systems by installing controllers in each system and rotating the tape unit from PC to PC. PC to PS/2 and Back— Effortlessly With our Micro Channel ™ tape controller, Everex provides backup capability for the PS/2 family of personal computers. And, because we maintain the same data recording format between PCs and PS/2 systems, you are assured of error-free data migration between PCs and PS/2s. Backup Software that Thinks for You Everex supplies easy to follow, menu-based software with all of its tape systems. You can save or restore an entire mirror image of your disk, including non-DOS information. Or you can restore individual files from a tape that contains a complete image backup. Backup and restoration of data over Operation 'Manual Novell® networks, including the Bindery and Trustee files that contain Novell network security information, is another standard feature. And, our software-guided installation and configuration of both hardware and software makes installing our tape system a breeze. The tape diagnostic utilities are the most extensive available, and if you get lost, we offer context sensitive on-line help information. Friendly, Knowledgeable Support In case you might need help, our knowledgeable Technical Support Staff is ready to answer your questions. They know our products inside and out and are ready to provide expert assistance whenever you need it. Everex is a trademark and EVER for Excellence is a registered trademark of Everex Systems, Inc. IBM and AT are registered trademarks and PS/2, PC, XT and Micro Channel are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp. Apple is a registered trademark and Macintosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer, Inc. Novell is a registered trademark of Novell Inc. © Copyright 1988 Everex Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. For more information or the name of your nearest Everex dealer please call: in usa 1-800-821-0806 n cai. 1-800-821-0807 EVER lor Excellence « ! 48431 Milmont Drive, Fremont, CA 94538 Circle 109 on Reader Service Card (Dealers: 110) LETTERS tralian product that was developed by Queensland Information Technology. SQL/QIT has an additional forms package that provides the user with a powerful tool to design screen forms or hard-copy reports without having to use ancillary programming languages and compilers. Its features, on paper, appear similar to Oracle constructs, in that each field can have "triggers" attached to it, such as ON ENTRY, ON_EXIT, and ON CHAR. Other features of the forms package include subforms that allow multiple rows of the same type to be dis- played and scrolled both forward and backward. Another powerful feature that is not mentioned in the article is the product's ability to nest a SELECT statement within the SELECT command to generate a col- umn. For example, SELECT NAME, (SELECT GROSS FROM PAY_DETAILS WHERE PAY_DETAILS.SALARY_CODE = EMPLOYEE . SALARY_CODE ) FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE EMPLOYEE. DEPT = ' SALES ' This facility can provide a more efficient query compared to a table copy, because of the additional overhead involved in table joins and because the number of rows considered is reduced by the WHERE clause. This means that there will be fewer rows to determine the value of gross pay. Being able to use nulls is an important feature for any user confronted with missing data values. The use of an arbi- tary value like -1 or -999 to show a missing value means that these rows need to be filtered out before any mathematical functions can be employed on that col- umn. This becomes even more of a nui- sance if the missing values occur in dif- ferent rows of different columns, because it means that no mathematical function can be used simultaneously for different columns in the same query. Routines can be used within SQL/QIT by embedding SQL commands within a routine table, thus saving retyping similar queries because placeholders allow for variables to be substituted within a command. As a user of the Open Access database module, I found that some queries were faster than SQL/QIT. It remains to be seen whether this would still hold true for large-scale databases. However, Open Access employs only a subset of SQL commands, so many direct SQL queries would require a print mask to implement them in Open Access, if indeed they could be done at all (e.g., correlated subqueries). One area where relational databases really fall down is in generating a two- way table, because a table copy has to be made for each column that is generated. Such joins are very expensive in terms of processing time. By contrast, Open Ac- cess has a table feature that greatly sim- plifies this procedure. I would like to commend BYTE for taking a serious look at benchmarks, and I hope to see more as competition be- tween SQL packages increases and fur- ther revisions are made to existing products. Such benchmarks should be expanded to include tests on large-scale (i.e., at least 50,000 rows) databases and com- parisons of computer resources in terms of memory and disk space requirements. Appraisals of the interface with third- generation languages like C are also nec- essary, because there are times when you need to choose whether to use forms or a third-generation language. In applica- tions involving mathematical functions, a third-generation language is indeed the only alternative. Cec Chardon Taringa, Queensland, Australia ■ ONLY F0RTR0N COMES WITH ONE FULL YEAR OF SERVICE. FREE. ON-SITE. When you buy any Fortran 286 and 386-based IBM-compatible, one full year of service at your site is part of the package. Just call the service hotline, and we'll take care of you from a network of 300 service locations throughout the country. Because we design and build our systems right here, ourselves, you always know exactly who to call for any kind of support you need. And you'll get it. Fast. Call toll-free for more information, and for the name of your nearest Fortran dealer: 800-821-9771. In California, (408) 432-1191. Small Footprint 80286 80386, 16 MHz or 20 MHz Desktop 80286 or 80386 FCRTRCN 2380 Qume Drive, Ste. F San Jose, CA 95131 30 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 116 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 117) Everex has the Answer Whatever you need for your PCs, XTs™, ATs® or compatibles, PS/2™ systems and Apple® Macintosh™ computers, Everex has the answer. Everex designs and manufactures products to enhance the power and capability of your system. From modems to graphics adapters and tape backup, Everex makes more than 100 products— including our popular hard disks, tape backup and memory/multifunction boards. Everex can provide the right solution— at the right price. And Everex products support the newest technologies, from OS/2™ to EMS 4.0. We also have advanced 20 MHz/80386 and 16 MHz/80286 personal computers. From our beginning in 1983, the people at Everex have provided quality products at affordable prices, with a commitment to personal ser- vice. Our honest, straight-forward approach has transformed Everex into a multi-hundred million dollar company employing over 1300 people worldwide. With more than 175 engineers involved in research and development, we consistently develop the innovative PC products that you need. And because 100% of all Everex products undergo final assembly and test in our 250,000 square foot headquarters in Fremont, California, we offer unparalleled quality, response and service to our rapidly growing family of dealers. A staff of over 200 service- oriented people is available to answer your questions and insure that orders are processed and ready to ship within 48 hours. Everex also has knowledgeable people to help with technical support, too. From initial design through manufacturing, testing, and after-sale support, Everex's complete dedication to quality, affordability, innovation, and service assures you of the best value in personal computers and enhancement products. So, whatever your personal computing needs, Everex has the answer. Everex System 386/20 {:-, j ; — 1 ! — i For more information or the name of your nearest Everex dealer please call: in usa 1-800-821-0806 in caiif 1-800-821-0807 Everex is a trademark and EVER for Excellence is a registered trademark of Everex Syslems, Inc. PC, XT, PS/2 and OS/2 are trademarks and AT is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp. Apple is a registered trademark and Macintosh is a trademark licensed lo Apple Computer Inc. © Copyright 1988 Everex Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. EVER lor Excellence'" 48431 Milmont Drive, Fremont, CA 94538 Circle 111 on Reader Service Card (Dealers: 112) Circle 41 on Reader Service Card CHAOS MANOR MAIL Jerry Pournelle answers questions about his column and related computer topics Create Powerful Programs with Blaise TOOLS ♦ Whether you're an expert or a novice, you can benefit from using special tools to enhance your programs, make them reliable, and give them a professional look. With windows, menus, pop-up memory resident programs, and communications support, Blaise Computing offers you a wide range of programming tools to let you take full advantage of the Microsoft and Borland pro- gramming environments. All language support packages include fully commented source code, complete comprehensive manuals and sample programs. C TOOLS PLUS/5.0 $129.00 Full spectrum of general service utility functions including: windows; menus; memory resident applications; interrupt service routines; interven- tion code; and direct video access for fast screen handling. Specifically designed for Microsoft C 5.0 and QuickC. Turbo C TOOLS $129.00 Windows and menus; ISRs; intervention code; screen handling including EGA 43-line text mode support; direct screen access; and memory resi- dent applications. Carefully crafted specifically to complement Turbo C. Turbo POWER SCREEN $129. 00 NEW! General screen management; paint screens; block mode data entry or field-by-field control with instant screen access. Now for Turbo Pascal 4.0, soon for C and BASIC. Turbo POWER TOOLS PLUS $129.00 NEW VERSION! Now supports Turbo Pascal 4.0. Screen, window, and menu management includ- ing EGA support; DOS memory control; ISRs; scheduled intervention code; and much more. Turbo ASYNCH PLUS $129.00 NEW VERSION! Now supports Turbo Pascal 4.0. Interrupt driven support for the COM ports. I/O buffers up to 64K; XON/XOFF; up to 9600 baud; modem and XMODEM control. ASYNCH MANAGER $175.00 Full featured interrupt driven support for the COM ports. I/O buffers up to 64K; XON/XOFF; up to 9600 baud; modem control and XMODEM. For Microsoft C, Turbo C or MS Pascal. KeyPilot $49.95 "Super-batch" program. Create batch files which can invoke programs and provide input to them; run any program unattended; create demonstra- tion programs; analyze keyboard usage. PASCAL TOOLS/TOOLS 2 $175.00 Expanded string and screen handling; graphics routines; memory management; general program control; DOS file support and more. For MS- Pascal. EXEC $95.00 NEW VERSION! Program chaining executive. Chain one program from another in different languages; specify common data areas; less than 2K of overhead. RUNOFF $49.95 Text formatter for all programmers. Written in Turbo Pascal: flexible printer control; user-defined variables; index generation ; and a general macro facility. TO ORDER CALL TOLL FREE 800-333-8087! ^£ BLAISE COMPUTING INC. 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 316 Berkeley, CA 94710 (415) 540-5441 32 BYTE- MAY 1988 Multitasking Defense Dear Jerry, In recent months, you have spoken out strongly against the use of multitasking operating systems such as OS/2 for per- sonal computers. While I agree com- pletely with your philosophy of one per- son, one CPU, I disagree that the CPU should be limited to a single task. I be- lieve that the IBM PC and its 5-MHz clones are incapable of supporting a multitasking environment due to their less than overwhelming performance. I also believe, however, that the 8-MHz 80286-based machines and 16- or 20- MHz 80386- and 68020-based machines are very capable of providing a useful multitasking environment. One of your major concerns seems to be, "What can a multitasking system bring to a personal computer?" I believe that the biggest advantage of multitasking is that it will clean up the interface that all software has with the underlying hard- ware. You often mention problems you experience in trying to load terminate- and-stay-resident programs under DOS in the correct order to make them all function properly. Under a multitasking operating system, this is no longer a prob- lem because those programs become one of the many processes managed by the operating system. They are activated by the operating system instead of each pro- gram using its own method of "waking up." In addition, the process no longer has to be aware of the state of other pro- cesses to function properly. This envi- ronment would greatly simplify the soft- ware developer's job as well as the configuration issues for the eventual users. Given your partiality toward these utilities, I suspect that you would find an environment like OS/2 much more desir- able than MS-DOS. Your concern that performing more than one task simultaneously on a single CPU would create performance degrada- tion is only partly true. In any computing system, the CPU can easily be faster than many of the other devices with which it must interface. Machines based on the faster 80286 CPU and all the 80386 and 68020 CPUs will have more time avail- able because of slow disk drives, printers, tape drives, and people. This time can be used to service additional processes run- ning on the machine. It is true, however, that when the mix of processes shifts to- ward exclusive compute-intensive tasks, performance degradation occurs. I currently use a Sun-3/75 every day running Sun's version of Unix. If I want to do serious text processing, I don't try to do compiles or other compute- intensive tasks simultaneously. I do, however, edit text files, read my mail, look at spreadsheet files, and check my appointment calendar while I am compil- ing. I typically have a Mandelbrot set generating in a background window while I do a lot of those tasks. When the machine becomes too slow, I stop some processes and run them later. I particu- larly enjoy being given the choice of run- ning more than one program, as opposed to the designers of the operating system telling me that I am capable of doing only one thing at a time. Finally, many types of things that you like to do are implemented through some hack or patch to MS-DOS; these really require a multitasking operating system to be done correctly. I'm referring to items like electronic mail, networking, print spooling, and all those wonderful pop-up tools that you truly enjoy. I believe much of your opposition to OS/2 comes from a lack of understanding of the potential that it holds. I assure you that the engineers who have to use a PC- based product on a daily basis are truly excited and welcome a multitasking oper- ating system— especially one with virtual memory. Dan Mutchler San Jose, CA Well, I've recently been to a Microsoft conference on OS/2 and talked with its systems architect, and I agree, if the com- pany can pull it off, it will be wonderful. I don 't even question that Microsoft can make it work for the 386. I do have some worries about whether the company has made everything reliable for all the various steps and revisions of the 286, and on that we '11 just have to see. continued Jerry Pournelle holds a doctorate in psy- chology and is a science fiction writer who also earns a comfortable living writ- ing about computers present and future. He can be reached c/o BYTE, One Phoe- nix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. THE LIBRARY Of COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCES (the oldest, largest, and most respected computer book club in the world) UJ Please accept my application for trial membership and send me the three-volume Handbook of Computer-Communications Standards (52121) billing me only $4.95, plus shipping and handling. I agree to purchase at least three additional Selections or Alternates over the next 12 months. Savings range up to 30% and occasionally even more. My membership is cancelable any time after 1 buy these three additional books. A shipping and handling charge is added to all shipments. J2 No-Risk Guarantee: If I am not satisfied— for any reason— I may return the Hand- book of Computer-Communications Standards within 10 days. My membership will be canceled, and I will owe nothing. Name Name of Firm (If you want subscription sent to your office) Address Apt City State Zip_ (Books purchased for professional purposes may be a tax-deductible expense. 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Name Name of Firm (If you want subscription sent to your office) Address Apt City State Zip_ (Books purchased for professional purposes may be a tax-deductible expense. Offer good in Continental U.S. and Canada only. Prices slightly higher in Canada.) Byte 5/88 BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST CLASS PERMIT NO. 230 RIVERSIDE, NJ NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNfTED STATES POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE THE LIBRARY Of COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCES Riverside, New Jersey 08075-9889 1 1 1 . . . I . . 1 . 1 1 . . . I . . . I . I . I . I . I . . I . . I . I . , I . I . I . . . 1 1 . . I BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST CLASS PERMIT NO. 230 RIVEFISIDE, NJ NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNFTED STATES POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE THE LIBRARY OF COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCES Riverside, New Jersey 08075-9889 ...I..I.II.mI..,I.I.I.I.I.,I..I.I..I.I.I,„II„I COMPLETE ■ OSI ■ DOD STANDARDS IN A COMPACT 3-VOLUME SET OPEN SYSTEMS INTERCONNECTION (OSI) MODEL / . William Stallings. The first book on OSI related standards for pro- fessionals in data processing and data commu- nications, computer systems managers and cus- tomers, system designers and implementers, Bestselling computer book author William Stall- ings offers in-depth tutorials, comparative analy- sis and technological commentary not found in the standard literature for each of OSI's 7-layer architecture. Highlights include— - PHYSICAL LAYER (RS-232-C), (RS- 449/422-A/423-A X.21) ■ DATA LINK LAYER (HDLC) ■ NETWORK LAYER (X.25, X.75, IRISO) - TRANSPORT LAYER - SESSION LAYER ■ PRESENTATION LAYER (ASN.l) and ■ APPLICATION LAYER. VOLUME 2: LOCAL NETWORK STANDARDS. William Stallings. A clear analysis of the two most important OSI- related standards for local networks in wide- spread use by local network vendors and cus- tomers: the IEEE 802 and the new FDDI. Here, in a single volume, are complete details on LAN topologies (star, ring, and bus/tree), transmission media (twisted pair, coaxial cable and optical fiber), mechanisms, protocols and more! Special topics include— • LOGICAL LINK CONTROL (LLC, \ IEEE 802.2), CSMA/CD (IEEE 802.3) ■ TOKEN BUS (IEEE 802.4) - TOKEN RING (IEEE 802.5) • and FIBER DISTRIBUTED DATA INTERFACE (FDDI, ANS X3T9.5). ..HEN** a iMGS : 3: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) PROTOCOL STANDARDS. William Stallings, Paul Mockapetris, Sue Mcteod-Reisig and Anthony Michel. An outstanding tutorial and reference for a com- munications model which will be important well into the next decade. Includes detailed informa- tion on the technology implementation, design and application of the 5 major protocols man- dated for all DOD procurement programs, and many commercial local network installations, A "must" for anyone needing a clear understand- ing of the mechanisms and services of military standards. DOD standards featured— « INTERNET (IP) « TRANSMISSION CONTROL (TPC) ■ FILE TRANSFER (FTP) for transfer of ASCII, EBCDIC, plus binary files « SIMPLE MAIL TRANSFER (SMTP) for electronic mail and -TELNET (TP). 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THE LIBRARY OF COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCES is the oldest, largest book club especially designed for computer professionals. In the incredibly fast- moving world of data processing, where up-to-the-moment knowledge is essential, we make it easy to keep totally informed on all areas of the information sciences. What's more, our selections offer you discounts of up to 30% or more off publishers' prices. If reply card is missing, please write to The Library of Computer and Informa- tion Sciences, Dept. 7-ER7-52121, Riverside, NJ 08075, for membership informa- tion and an application. BYTE 5/88 CHAOS MANOR MAIL / have no objection to multitasking if it works as you describe your life. I've just yet to see that happen on a micro. —Jerry Why Not Unix? Dear Jerry, Have you seen the button that reads, "OS/2 = half an operating system"? The person wearing it is probably a Unix person, which leads me to the topic I wish to comment on. In the "Hackers 3.0" section of your January column, you said, "I think of little that OS/2 promises that you can't do with Unix." Me, too. I can also think of a lot of things it doesn't promise that you can do with Unix, such as allowing multiple users. You mentioned that Unix isn't going anywhere without a major backer, and that the obvious major backer is AT&T. Oh, no! Please, not AT&T. If it weren't for the University of California at Berke- ley, AT&T would have destroyed Unix. How about a major backer being a cus- tomer? Like the Department of Defense, which just put out a bid for 4 or 5 billion dollars' worth of Unix machines. I don't think we will ever see even a $100 million bid for OS/2 machines. As to whether there will be as many OS/2 users as Unix users a year after OS/2 comes out: I don't think so. OS/2 is out as of this writing. There is no soft- ware for it, and you need an 80286/80386 chip to run it. Granted, the software will come, but those 8088 boxes will not all be upgraded to 286/386 boxes. Finally, you said that the main objec- tion to Unix was that it's too big and too slow. I thought the main objection to Unix was that it is cryptic and difficult to learn. If it is too slow, then buy faster hardware. That is the solution Microsoft is offering for Windows. Note also that I am (and I assume you were) talking only about microprocessor- based computers. If you were to include all computers, many of my above answers would be subject to change. Michael Tighe Freehold, NJ I suspect that Microsoft/IBM will be more than happy to leave the 8086/8088 market to Unix. Unix on a vanilla PC is like a dog playing chess: You don 't expect it to be done well; the miracle is that it can be done at all. Without a major backer, Unix is not going to go far in the micro community. The obvious candidate for major backer is AT&T; as my friend Paul Chisholm says, the people at AT&T know how to write good compilers— they invented Unix. I'm doing a major essay on Unix and OS/2 for the column; watch for it. —Jerry Thunder and Writing Dear Jerry, Your comments about what you want in a spelling checker (Computing at Chaos Manor, January) seemed to me to describe perfectly Thunder for the Atari ST. Normally, such a coincidence would not move me to write to you; however, coupled with your closing comment about Atari being the "machine for the rest of us, " I could not resist. Thunder was written by Mark Ska- pinker at Batteries Included, but I am not sure what its status is since BI was gob- bled up by Electronic Arts. The program has all the features you described and can be used in either batch or interactive mode. In interactive mode it uses a bell to inform you of an unrecognized word (I read somewhere that there is also a ver- sion available for the hearing impaired that uses a visual indicator), and you can either correct it yourself or use the mouse to call up a list of possible corrections and continued on page 324 Keceiving Report Transmitted Invoice Price, Qty, Part* Matched Invoi' j Stamped 'oded , aU o* otS ' Checks Printed & Signed i i Open Accounts Payable ,-fe*-'< RftTTON&PATT O Software Corporati 81 Great Oaks Blvd., San Jose, CA 95119 « 1-800/672-3470, ext. 897 California 1-800/538-8157, ext. 897 Outside California 408/629-5044 International 'plus shipping. In California add tax. 34 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 219 on Reader Service Card 10 Important Reasons C Programmers Use Our File Manager 1. It's written in C. Clearly the growing language of choice for applications that are fast, portable and efficient. All of db_V!STA's source code is written in C. 2 . If s fast - almost 3 times faster than a leading competitor. Fast access that comes from the unique combination of the B-tree indexing method and the "network" or direct "set" relationships between records. A winning combination for fast performance. 3. It's flexible. Because of db_VISTA's combination of access methods, you can program to your application needs with ultimate design flexibility. Use db_VISTA as an ISAM file manager or to design database applications. You decide how to optimize run-time performance. No other tool gives you this flexibility without sacrificing performance. db_VISTA is also well behaved to work with most any other C libraries! 4. It's portable. db_ VISTA operates on most popular computers and operating systems like UNIX, MS-DOS and VMS. You can write applications for micros, minis, or even mainframes. 5. Complete Source Code available. We make our entire C Source Code available so you can optimize performance or port to new environments yourself. 6. It uses space efficiently. db_VISTA lets you precisely define relationships to minimize redundant data. It is non-RAM resident; only those functions necessary for opera- tion become part of the run-time program. 7. Royalty free run-time Whether you're developing applications for yourself or for thousands, you pay for db_VISTA or db_QUERY only once. If you currently pay royalties to someone else for your hard work, isn't it time you switched to royalty-free db_VISTA? clb.VlSTA Features ♦ Multi-user support allows flexibility to run on local area networks ♦ File structure is based on the B-tree indexing method ♦ Transaction processing assures multi-user consistency ♦ File locking support provides read and write locks ♦ SQL-based db_QUERY is linkable ♦ File transfer utilities included for ASCII, dBASE optional ♦ Royalty-free run-time distribution ♦ Source Code available ♦ Data Definition Language for specifying the content and organization of your files ♦ Interactive database access utility ♦ Database consistency check utility File Management Record and File Sizes ♦ Maximum record length limited only by acces- sible RAM ♦ Maximum records per file is 16,777,215 ♦ Maximum file size limited only by available disk storage ♦ Maximum of 256 index and data files ♦ Key length maximum 246 bytes ♦ No limit on number of key fields per record ♦ No limit on maximum number of fields per record Operating System & Compiler Support ♦Operating systems: MS-DOS, UNIX, XENIX, (JLTRIX, Microport, VMS, Macintosh ♦ C compilers: Lattice, Microsoft, IBM, Aztec, Turbo C, XENIX, UNIX and LightspeedC 10. Upward database compatibility Start out with file management in a single-user PC environment— then move up to a multi-user LAN or a VAX database application with millions of records. You'll still be using db_VISTA. That's why so many C programmers are choosing db_VISTA. Mn, Yw forgot one - 8. db_QUERY & db_REVISE. Add the SQL-based, ad hoc query and report writer for a relational view of db_VISTA databases. Use db REVISE to re-design your database easily and quickly! Both royalty free! 9. Free tech support. 60 days of free technical and application development support for every Raima product. Of course, extended support and training classes are also available at your place or ours. and Tnfern^ . ofcve/opwnt cotfs a to* June l3-!7 30-day Money Back Guarantee! Try db_VISTA in your environment for 30 days and prove it to yourself. If not completely satisfied, return it for a full refund. Price Schedule db_visTA db_QUERY □ Single user $ 195 $ 195 □ Single user w/Source $ 495 $ 495 □ Multi-user $ 495 $ 495 □ Multi-user w/Source $ 990 $ 990 NEW: □ VAX Multi-user $ 990 $ 990 □ VAX Multi-user w/Source $1980 $1980 Order Now. Put db VISTA to work in your application program. Ordering is easy— simply call toll-free. We'll answer your technical questions and get you started. Call today. Call Toll- Free Today! l(800)db-RAIMA (800/327-2462) or 206/828-4636 VISA il RAIMA Ml CORPORATION 3055 - 112th NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 USA (206) 828-4636 Telex: 6503018237 MCI UW CO m ASK BYTE Circuit Cellar's Steve Ciarcia answers your questions on microcomputing A Bigger Buffer Dear Steve, I own an IBM Proprinter XL, and I'd like to expand its buffer. There is an empty 28-pin IC socket on the Pro- printer's board, but I can't figure out which IC to use. I've called IBM and its service centers numerous times, but to no avail. I was told that I would have to bring the printer to a dealer to have the needed IC installed. This is more of a problem (and expense) than it's worth. Can you help? Anthony Camp Peekskill, NY Aha! An easy one! Despite all the mumbo jumbo you 've heard, all you need to do is buy a simple static RAM (SRAM) chip, drop it in the socket, and you 're on the air. There are no switches to set and no software to install. . . . How 's that for simple? The RAM is an 8K-byte SRAM. The part number depends on the manu- facturer, but the generic number for it is 6264 (Hitachi calls it an HM6264, To- shiba calls it a T5565, and so on). The 1 50-nanosecond version (usually indi- cated by a "-15" suffix) will work just fine. You can get these things from nearly any mail-order outlet. Microprocessors Unlimited (24000 South Peoria Ave., Beggs, OK 74421, (918) 267-4961) is selling 6264L P-15 ICs for $3.30 each with no minimum order. Line the IC up with the notched end to- ward the rear of the Proprinter, just like the EPROM in the adjacent socket. Make sure that the power is off, touch a metal- lic part of the printer before you tuck the IC in the socket, and take care not to bend any pins underneath. Happy buffering! —Steve Call Forwarding Dear Steve, I'm writing to you in hopes that you know where I can get information con- cerning a specific type of telephone (or computer board) that will automatically perform the call forwarding function. We have more than two telephone lines in this office, so it would be no problem to route an incoming call back out over the second line. Our lines are all high-speed. The push-button telephone lines here in Eu- rope—when you can get them— are faster than their counterparts in the U.S. The European PTT made the decision about 10 years ago to upgrade all its lines to handle both voice and high-speed data. I have heard that a couple of companies in the U.S. sell telephones that will auto- matically perform call forwarding for you if you have two lines available. Do you know the names of any companies with such equipment? Alternatively, if there is some computer peripheral board that could handle call forwarding, I would be interested in contacting the board's manufacturer. Please note that compatibility is not a problem. American equipment that has passed the FCC requirements or that can handle the V22.bis protocols works fine; you just plug it in. The European PTT tries desperately to deny this fact. For in- stance, in this office we use an off-the- shelf Hayes internal 2400-bit-per-second (bps) modem. It works great and costs about one-fourth the price of the junk the PTT tries to peddle. Dr. J. F. Kenney Rotterdam, Holland I found a device that does just what you 're looking for. It 's called the Remote Access Call Diverter, and it 's available from Fordham Radio (260 Motor Pkwy. , Hauppauge, NY 11788, (800) 645-9518 or (516) 435-8080). Its catalog number is DAC-200, and it is available for just over $100. You should be able to perform a simi- lar function on data with different hard- ware. There are at least two multiplexed serial interface boards for IBM-type computers. These boards can, with ap- propriate software, operate several modems simultaneously. Intended pri- marily for use with multiline/multiuser bulletin board systems (BBSes), these de- vices are advertised as being capable of "conference call" operation. That is, they can link several remote computers together for data exchange and provide automatic, unattended transfer/forward- ing of data and messages. You may have to do some software work to get what you require. Two sources for these boards are as follows: ONLINE Store 1 996 Eastman Ave. Ventura, CA 93003 (805) 656-3741 G-TEK Drawer 1346 399 Highway 90 Bay St. Louis, MS 39520 (601)461-8048 —Steve Turbo Turbo Pascal Dear Steve, When I first tried to write a large pro- gram in Turbo Pascal on the IBM PC XT, I came to the conclusion that Turbo Pas- cal's compilation process could be slight- ly changed to achieve a significant de- crease in the effective compilation time. As an example, consider a 5000-line program, 80 percent of which consists of tested graphics procedures and in which only a few lines at the very end contain errors. In this case, even if the compiler detects an error some 10 lines from the last end statement, you're forced to wait another few minutes until Turbo Pascal completes the compilation process. If you're debugging, these minutes can be- continued IN ASK BYTE, Steve Ciarcia, a computer con- sultant and electronics engineer, answers questions on any area of microcomputing and his Circuit Cellar projects. The most repre- sentative questions will be answered and pub- lished. Send your inquiry to Ask BYTE c/o Steve Ciarcia P.O. Box 582 Glastonbury, CT 06033 Due to the high volume of inquiries, we cannot guarantee a personal reply. All letters and photographs become the property of Steve Ciarcia and cannot be returned. The Ask BYTE staff includes manager Harv Weiner and researchers Eric Albert, Tom Cantrell, Bill Curlew, Ken Davidson, Jeannette Dojan, Jon Elson, Frank Kuech- mann, Tim McDonough, Edward Nisley, Dick Sawyer, Robert Stek, and Mark Voorhees. 36 BYTE* MAY 1988 Upgrade Your Technology We're Programmer's Connection, the leading independent dealer of quality programmer's development tools for IBM personal com- puters and compatibles. We can help you upgrade your programming technology with some of the best software tools available. Comprehensive Buyer's Guide. The CONNECTION, our new Buyers Guide, contains prices and up-to-date descriptions of over 600 programmer's development tools by over 200 manufacturers. Each description covers major product features as well as special re- quirements, version numbers, diskette sizes, and guarantees. How to Get Your FREE Copy: 1 ) Use the reader ser- vice card provided by this journal; 2) Mail us a card or letter with your name and address; or 3) Call one of our convenient toll free telephone numbers. If you haven't yet received your copy of the Programmer's Connection Buyer's Guide, act now. Upgrading your programming technol- ogy could be one of the wisest and most profitable decisions you'll ever make. 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Copyright 1988 Programmer's Connection Incorporated 386 products List 0urs 386 ASM/386 LINK byPhar Lap Soltv/are 495 377 386 DEBUGGERS Phai Lap Sollware 195 129 NDPC-386/jyMcraWay 595 529 NDP FORTRAN -386 byMicroWay 595 529 PC-M0S/386 Single-User by Vie Sollware Link 195 155 PC-MOS/3865-lta6y Trie Sollware Unk 595 539 ?C-M0S/m25-UserbyTheSottwareUnk 995 869 blaise products ASYNCH MANAGER Speci/yCorfSsca/ 175 135 C TOOLS PLUS/5.0 129 99 PASCAL TOOLS/TOOLS 2 175 135 Turbo ASYNCH PLUS/4.0 129 99 Turbo C TOOLS 129 99 Turbo POWER TOOLS PLUS/4.0 129 99 VIEW MANAGER Speo/yCorfasca/ 275 199 borland products EUREKA£ow»flSo/w;r 167 115 Paradox 1.1 by AnsalBorland ' 495 359 Paradox 2.0 byAnsa/Borimd 725 525 Paradox 386 by AnsalBorland New 895 CALL Paradox Nelwork Pack/iy Artsa/Boriand 995 725 Quattro: The Professional Spreadsheet 247 1 79 Rellex: The Analyst 150 105 Sidekick 85 65 Sidekick Plus New 200 139 Superkey 100 68 Turbo Basic Compiler 100 68 Turbo Basic Support Products All Varieties 1 00 68 Turbo C Compiler 100 68 Turbo Lightning 100 68 Turbo Lightning with Word Wizard New 150 105 Turbo Pascal 100 68 Turbo Pascal Database Toolbox 100 68 Turbo Pascal Developer's Toolkit 395 285 Turbo Pascal Editor Toolbox 100 68 Turbo Pascal Gameworks Toolbox 100 68 Turbo Pascal Graphix Toolbox 100 68 Turbo Pascal Numerical Methods Toolbox 100 68 Turbo Pascal Tutor 70 49 Turbo Prolog Compiler 100 68 Turbo Prolog Toolbox 100 68 c language CJalk oyCA/S New 150 119 ECO-C88 Modeling Compiler by Ecosoft 1 00 69 Lattice C Compiler tonlaffifce New Version 450 239 Mark Williams Let's C with FREE csd 75 54 Uniware 68000 C Cross Compiler hySDS 995 829 Uniware Z-80 C Cross Compiler by SDS 995 829 database management Clipper by Nantucket 695 379 dBASE III Plus by Ashlon-Tale 695 389 AW3S\(BAS£lllPlusCompbydBFast New 69 59 FoxBASE+ by Fox Sol/ware 395 249 FoxBASE+/386fiyftxSo(M9re New 595 399 Geniferfjyoyfe/ 395 249 R:Base50006yMcronm 495 359 R:Base System V byMicronm 700 439 Tom Rettig's Library by Tom fieiSs & Assoc 100 79 digitalk products Smalltalk/V 100 84 EGA/VGA Color Option 50 45 Goodies Diskette #1 50 45 Goodies Diskette #2 New 50 45 Goodies Diskette #3 New 50 45 Smalltalk, Corrm 50 45 Smalltalk/V 286 New 200 159 golden bow products Vcache 60 55 Vfeature Hard Disk Utility 80 74 Vteature Deluxe 120 111 VoptHarrf Disk Optimisation Utility 60 55 komputerwerk products Finally BASIC routines 99 85 Finally Modules 99 85 Finally XGral 99 85 logitech products 10G\M0USE All Vaneties CALL CALL LOGITECH Modula-2 Development System 249 199 Modula-2 Compiler Pack 99 75 Modula-2 Toolkit 1 69 139 microcompatibles products GRAFMATIC 135 117 GRAFMATIC With PLOTMATIC 240 215 PLOTMATIC 135 117 microport products 00SMerqe2W Specify 2-Users or Unlimited 149 129 D0SMerge3862-Users 395 345 DOSMerge386 Unlimited Users 495 429 System V 386 Complete Package 799 669 System V/AT Complete Package 549 465 microsoft products Microsoft C Compiler 5 wlCodeView Afeiv Version 450 285 Microsoft COBOL Compiler with COBOL Tools 700 439 Microsoft Excel 495 319 Microsoft FORTRAN Optimizing Comp New Version 450 285 Microsoft Macro Assembler New Version 150 99 Microsoft Mouse All Varieties CALL CALL Microsoft OS/2 Programmer's Toolkit New 350 CALL Microsoft Pascal Compiler New Version 300 189 Microsoft QuickBASIC 4 99 69 Microsoft QuickC 99 69 Microsoft Windows 99 69 Microsoft Windows 386 195 129 ORDERING INFORMATION FREE SHIPPING. 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Also, consider the fact that— after the compiler finds the above error— Turbo Pascal's text editor lets you make the necessary change to correct the problem. The compilation that follows should begin only in the vicinity of the change, since the preceding code com- piled properly the first time. This change in the compiler should result in a radi- cally reduced compilation time. What do you think of this idea? Wojciech Skaba Torun, Poland The newer versions of Turbo Pascal support compilation of the Pascal pro- gram in sections. If you have a graphics library, you can compile it separately and link the library to the main program, thus avoiding recompiling code that you've already tested. This is one of the features of Turbopower Software 's Opti- mizer. It requires Turbo Pascal 3.0 or higher. Contact Turbopower Software at 3109Scotts Valley Dr., Suite 122, Scotts Valley, CA 95066. -Steve Breaking the 64K Boundary Dear Steve, I need to transfer some in-house finite- element programs (for engineering anal- ysis) coded in FORTRAN from an "an- cient" DEC minicomputer to a family of nine IBM PCs, XTs, and ATs. Individual floating-point arrays in the programs contain 20,000 to 25,000 elements each. If I reduce the array size or use commer- cially available finite-element software packages that are still confined to the 64K-byte barrier, I'll be limiting the size of the problems the program can analyze or jeopardizing the accuracy of the out- put. I'd like to continue using MS-DOS software (we currently have Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler version 3.30 for MS-DOS), since we have a great deal of data saved on MS-DOS disks. I've been looking into the TeleVideo and ALR 386 machines, Intel's Inboard 386 AT, and The Software Link's PC- MOS. I have not been able to inquire about Compaq's Deskpro 386 or IBM's PS/2 Model 80. However, I would like to find out about Microsoft FORTRAN ver- sion 4.0, Xenix, and a rumored 386 DOS from Microsoft. I hope you can shed some light on the matter and perhaps give hardware and software suggestions. Muhd. A. AbdulRahman Coral Gables, FL There are several FORTRAN com- pilers that are no longer bound to the 64K-byte limit. Certainly, the 80386 is a match for the PDP-11 (or were you talking about the DEC-10/20 or VAX machines?). Since you already have an installed base of MS-DOS software, you may not need to change your operating system to Xenix or some other operating system. You probably don 't need multitasking to run analyses, and you will do better to get more computers than more users on one computer. Xenix is not likely to make your programs complete any faster. Microsoft FORTRAN 4.0 is advertised on pages 216 and 217 of the May 1987 BYTE, and Microsoft indicates that it supports the large memory model and math coprocessors. Microsoft specifically states that common blocks and arrays can be larger than 64K bytes. Actually, three memory models are supported. There is also a source-level debugger, which should be a big help. —Steve CCAT in the Mac Dear Steve, Would it be possible to make the CCAT fit the Macintosh II? It looks like the CCAT would be a cheaper and more ef- ficient design than AST Research's Mac286. Ellis Lai Higginsville , MO Unfortunately, though the CCAT in- cludes the entire CPU and memory sec- tion of an IBM PC, it is not at all suitable for use in the Macintosh II. The most ob- vious problem is that the ZYMOS chips are designed to work with the AT bus. Retrofitting this design onto the Mac II NuBus would definitely be a nontrivial task. However, the real problem would be getting the Mac screen to emulate an IBM display standard such as MDA, CGA, or EGA. This is the real break- through of the AST design, and it prob- ably requires a lot of tricky hardware and software. Without this, the system couldn 't run existing PC software. Actually, I find the general idea of an IBM PC "coprocessor" for the Mac hu- morous. In my experience, Mac users have little interest in (and, in fact, are quite opposed to) the PC. For those who need to run PC applications, it is almost as inexpensive to buy a low-cost PC clone as it is to install a PC coprocessor. I don 't think many of the coprocessors will be sold.— Steve Correlating Channels Dear Steve, I'm looking for a new large-format (30-inch) TV that can reallocate the se- lected channels to the way that I want them rather than the standard factory set- tings (i.e., instead of having selection 8 tune in channel 8, 1 want to alter it to tune in channel 1 1 , because in my area the sta- continued :iSJH *JI 1MB l[t f mil A-siSAaU!, GOmPUTER WAREHOUSE CALL TOLL FREE FREE Air Express Shipping 1-800-528-1054 See Details Below PRINTERS ipping ^ LOWEST PRICES FAST DELIVERY Alps All Models Call AST TurboLazer $2829 Citizen 120D $145 180D 15E $315 MSP-40 S289 MSP-45 $415 MSP-50 $385 MSP-55 S479 Premier 35 $455 Tribute 124 S445 Tribute 224 $609 120 D S145 Citizen 180D $160 Citizen 15E $315 Dyconics 150 $309 300 EPSON All Printer Models . . . Call Hewlett-Packard LazerJet II . 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Discover the Many Advantages of Paradise .. . • Lowest price guaranteed • Latest versions Dealers an* ^"('or'special Buye Ssxoun\Und benefit- • Huge inventory, immediate shipment • Knowledgeable sales staff We'll Match Any Nationally Advertised P • Special orders • 30-day money-back guarantee* LIST OURS 386 SOFTWARE 386-TO-THE-MAX 75 66 ADVANTAGE 386 C OR PASCAL 895 839 DESQVIEW 130 115 FOXBASE + /386 595 459 HIGH C-386 895 839 MICROPORT DOS/MERGE 395 349 MICROPORT SYSTEM V/386 (COMPLETE) 799 679 RUNTIME SYSTEM 199 169 MS WINDOWS/386 195 130 NDP C OR FORTRAN-386 595 553 PC-MOS 386 CALL CALL PHARLAP 386IASM/LINK 495 422 PHARLAP 386IASM/LINKLOC 695 595 PHARLAP 386 DEBUG 195 157 PROFESSIONAL PASCAL 895 839 SCO XENIX SYSTEM V 386 (COMPLETE) 1495 1199 OPERATING SYSTEM 695 589 VP/IX 2 USER 495 399 UNLIMITED 995 799 VM/386 245 182 X-AM 595 519 ADA ALSYS ADA (W/MAINTENANCE) 3655 3399 ALSYS ADA TOOLSETS 995 929 ALSYS 386 ADA 3655 3399 JANUS ADA 'JET SET' 99 90 'ED' PACK 395 382 'D' PACK 799 754 APL APL'PLUS PC 695 499 APL'PLUS PC TOOLS 295 205 POCKET APL 95 80 AI/LISP MULISP-87 INTERPRETER 300 199 MULISP-87 INTERP/COMPILER 400 262 PC SCHEME 95 86 AI/PROLOG ARITY PROLOG INTERPRETER 295 232 COMPILER AND INTERPRETER 650 574 STANDARD PROLOG 95 80 COGENT PROLOG COMPILER 200 181 TURBO PROLOG 100 69 TURBO PROLOG TOOLBOXES 100 69 ASSEMBLERS/LINKERS ADVANTAGE DISASSEMBLER 295 279 ASMLIB 149 127 MS MACRO ASM (DOS OR OS/2) 150 99 OPTASM 195 172 PASM86 195 115 PLINK86PLUS 495 279 VISIBLE COMPUTER 80286 100 90 BASIC DB/LIB 139 121 FINALLY! 99 90 FLASH-UP 89 80 MACH 2 75 66 MS BASIC COMP. 6.0 (DOS OR OS/2) 295 189 MS QUICKBASIC 99 69 QBASE 99 90 QUICKPAK 69 60 QUICK-TOOLS 130 111 QUICKWINDOWS W/SOURCE 99 90 SCREEN SCULPTOR 125 96 STAY-RES 69 56 TRUE BASIC 100 80 TURBO BASIC 100 69 TURBO BASIC TOOLBOXES 100 69 C COMPILERS AZTEC C COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 499 CALL C86PLUS 497 369 HIGH C 595 549 LATTICE C 500 272 W/SOURCE 900 199 MICROSOFT C (DOS OR OS/2) 150 285 LIST OURS 99 QUICK C TURBO C 100 WATCOM C NEW 295 C INTERPRETERS C-TERP 298 C-TERP FOR TURBO C 139 INSTANT C 495 RUN/C 120 RUN/C PROFESSIONAL 250 CLIBRARIES/UTILITIES BLACKSTAR FUNCTIONS 125 C ASYNCH MANAGER 175 C-FOOD SMORGASBORD 150 C TOOLS PLUS/5.0 129 C UTILITY LIBRARY 185 ESSENTIAL COMM LIBRARY 185 COMMUNICATIONS PLUS 250 GREENLEAF C SAMPLER 95 GREENLEAF COMM LIBRARY GREENLEAF FUNCTIONS MULTI-C PFORCE POLYTRON C BEAUTIFIER PRO C RESIDENT C W/SOURCE TIMESL1CER W/SOURCE TURBO C TOOLS WKS LIBRARY COBOL COBOL SPII E-Z PAGE MICRO FOCUS COBOL/2 COBOL/2 TOOLSET PC-CICS LEVEL II COBOL PERSONAL COBOL OTHERS MICROSOFT COBOL 700 MICROSOFT SORT 195 OPT-TECH SORT 149 REALCICS 995 REALIA COBOL 995 W/REALMENU 1145 RM/COBOL 950 RM/COBOL-85 1250 185 149 395 49 495 198 295 1000 129 89 395 295 900 900 1500 349 149 69 269 232 122 381 85 159 101 137 97 101 125 125 125 125 137 215 15 399 169 279 332 269 733 733 1189 282 119 CALL CALL 452 130 105 799 794 899 763 999 OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING ACTOR 495 423 ADVANTAGE C+ + 495 479 C-TALK 150 137 PFORCE + + 395 215 SMALLTALK/V 100 85 COMMUNICATION APPLIC. PACK 50 46 EGA/VGA COLOR EXT. PACK 50 45 GOODIES #1,2, or 3 APPLIC. PACKS 50 45 SMALLTALK/V286 200 169 RM/SCREENS 395 339 SCREENIO 400 382 SCREENPLAY 175 131 SORTEX NEW 99 89 COMMUNICATIONS ASCOM IV 195 177 CARBON COPY PLUS 195 142 CLOSE-UP SUPPORT 245 222 CUSTOMER 195 167 CO-SESSION (2 USER) 249 227 SUPPORT 175 157 APPLICATION 125 116 PTEL 50 45 SIDETALK 120 90 DATABASE COMPILERS CLIPPER 695 399 DBFAST 69 60 FORCE III 129 117 FOXBASE+ 395 269 QUICKSILVER 599 369 R:TURBO 695 CALL DBASE-TOOLS APPLICATIONS PLUS 499 279 DBASE III PLUS 695 399 DBASE TOOLS FOR C OR PASCAL 90 69 DBFAST 69 60 DEBUG III 195 181 FOX TOOL BOX 295 267 FRIENDLY FINDER 99 90 GENIFER 395 282 GENIFER SOLUTIONS 95 80 HI-SCREEN XL 149 129 QUICK ENTRY 99 90 R&R 150 139 REPORT PLUS 150 131 SILVERCOMM LIBRARY 150 139 SQUISH 79 69 THE DOCUMENTOR 295 249 TOM RETTIG'S LIBRARY 100 80 UI PROGRAMMER 295 249 DEBUGGERS ADVANCED TRACE-86 175 121 BREAKOUT 125 89 C-SPRITE 175 121 DEBUG III 195 181 PERISCOPE I 345 282 PERISCOPE II 175 141 PERISCOPE II-X 145 106 PERISCOPE III 8 MHZ 1095 899 PERISCOPE III 10 MHZ 1195 979 PFIX 86 PLUS 395 215 T-DEBUG PLUSV. 4.0 45 39 W/SOURCE 90 80 DISK/DOS/KEYBOARD UTILITIES ADVANCED NORTON UTILITIES 150 101 BACK-IT 130 120 COMMAND PLUS V. 2.0 80 70 DISK OPTIMIZER 70 56 FANSI CONSOLE 75 66 FASTBACK 175 111 FAST FORWARD 70 60 FETCH 55 19 MACE UTILITIES 99 90 NORTON COMMANDER 75 56 NORTON UTILITIES 100 61 PC TOOLS DELUXE 80 70 PDISK 145 107 Q-DOS II 70 60 VFEATURE 80 75 VFEATURE DELUXE 120 111 X TREE PRO 129 111 EDITORS BRIEF 195 CALL W/DBRIEF 275 CALL CVUE W/SOURCE 250 199 EDIX 195 169 EMACS 295 268 EPSILON 195 151 FIRSTIME (C) 295 232 KEDIT 125 101 LSE 125 101 MKS Vi 75 66 MULTI-EDIT 99 90 NORTON EDITOR 75 70 PC/EDT + 295 269 PI EDITOR 195 165 PMATE 195 115 SPF/PC 245 185 VEDIT PLUS 185 131 XTC 99 80 EQUATION SOLVERS EUREKA: THE SOLVER 167 119 MATHCAD 395 282 SOLVE IT 79 75~ T K SOLVER PLUS 395 382 FILE MANAGEMENT BTRIEVE 245 XTRIEVE 245 REPORT OPTION 145 BTRIEVE/N 595 XTRIEVE/N 595 REPORT OPTION/N 345 CBTREE 159 C-TREE 395 R-TREE 295 C-TREE/R-TREE BUNDLE 650 D-TREE DBC III DBC III/II W/SOURCE DBC III PLUS DB.VISTA OR DB.QUERY SINGLE USER W/SOURCE MULTIUSER MULTIUSER W/SOURCE INFORMIX ESQL/C INFORMIX 4GL 995 INFORMIX SQL 795 PHACT MANAGER 249 XQL 795 FORTRAN COMPILERS LAHEY FORTRAN 477 LAHEY FORTRAN F77L-EM/16 695 LAHEY PERSONAL FORTRAN 77 95 MS FORTRAN (DOS OR OS/2) 450 RM/FORTRAN 595 FORTRAN LIBRARIES/UTILITIES DIAGRAM'ER OR DOCUMENT'ER 129 EXTEND 150 FORTRAN ADDENDA 165 FORTRAN ADDENDUM 95 GRAFMATIC OR PLOTMATIC 135 MAGUS NUMERICAL ANALYST 295 MATHPAC 495 PANEL 295 SPINDRIFT LIBRARY 149 SSP/PC 350 TEKMAR GRAPHICS LIB. 195 GRAPHICS ADVANTAGE GRAPHICS (C) 250 DRAWBRIDGE 129 ESSENTIAL GRAPHICS 299 W/SOURCE 598 GRAPHIC 395 GSS GRAPHIC DEV. TOOLKIT 495 HALO '88 325 HALO '88 (5 MICROSOFT LANG.) 595 METAWINDOW 195 METAWINDOW PLUS 275 TURBO WINDOW/C 95 TURBO HALO (FOR TURBO C) 99 LINT PC-LINT 139 PRE-C 295 MODULA-2 LOGITECH MODULA-2 COMPILER KIT 99 DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM 249 TOOLKIT 169 SOLID B + TOOLBOX 99 STONYBROOK MODULA-2 195 W/UTILITIES 345 OPERATING SYSTEMS MICROPORT: 286 DOS MERGE 149 SYSTEM V/AT 549 RUNTIME PACKAGE 199 SOFTWARE DEV. PACKAGE 249 TEXT PREPARATION PACKAGE 199 UNLIMITED LICENSE KIT 249 185 189 109 455 459 279 141 318 211 523 395 CALL 250 172 500 363 750 599 195 CALL 495 CALL 495 CALL 990 CALL 595 539 899 719 222 599 439 629 115 131 139 85 119 252 415 199 135 272 169 229 111 229 509 322 399 229 399 162 232 81 199 111 89 179 299 129 469 169 209 169 209 FEATURED PRODUCTS ESSENTIAL COMM LIBRARY 2.0— New version includes driven support for 8 ports, baud rates up to 38,400 bps., transmit and receive buffering, a complete set of Hayes compatible modem functions and more. List:S185 Our»:»125 w/ Breakout, the async comm debugger List:$125 Ours:$89 GREENLEAF C SAMPLER— For the Quick C or Turbo C programmer. A selection of over 100 of the best (unctions from Greenleafs otherpopular products, The Greenleaf Functions, The Greenleaf Comm Library, and Greenleaf Data Windows. Includes logical windows, pull-down menus, intelligent keyboard and time and date functions, interrupt communications and much more. List:$95 Ours:$69 SMALLTALK V/286 — Latest version of Smalltalk/ V takes advantage of the power of 286 and 386 systems, running in protected mode and addressing up to 16 meg directly. Smalltalk V/286 operates at least twice as fast as SmalltaLk/V, and includes support for multitasking. List: $200 Our»:J169 SORTEX — Flexible, general purpose sort7merge facility. No practical limitations on the file size, record size, field size, number of records or number of keys. Comprehensive error reporting. List: $99 Ours:S89 SCO: XENIX SYSTEM V (COMPLETE) 1295 999 DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM 595 479 OPERATING SYSTEM 595 179 TEXT PROCESSING PACKAGE 195 149 XENIX FOR PS/2 50,60.80 CALL CALL WENDIN: OPERATING SYSTEM TOOLBOX 99 SO PCVMS 99 80 PCNX 99 80 WEND1N-DOS 99 80 WENDIN-DOS APPLICATION KIT 99 80 PASCAL COMPILERS MARSHAL PASCAL 189 159 MICROSOFT PASCAL (DOS OR OS/2) 300 189 PASCAL-2 229 CALL PROFESSIONAL PASCAL 595 549 TURBO PASCAL 100 69 TURBO PASCAL DEV. LIB. 395 289 TURBO PASCAL ADD-ONS ASCII TURBO GHOST WRITER STARTER 99 80 COMPLETE 289 262 40 BYTE' MAY 1988 LIST OURS AZATAR DOS TOOLKIT 99 86 DOS/BIOS & MOUSE TOOLS 75 70 FLASH-UP 89 80 FI A9H-IIP TflDI RflV r L/ijii-ur i uuldua 49 46 75 66 UFTD4GVTC n ATA jpn Tflfll C Mt 1 KflDI 1 1 JJA1A ALIrJ. 1 UULo 100 90 cncwrtr lun rwriH Trim c oL.lt.INLE, AINU tNljlN. lUULa 75 69 Cf DCUM CflTI DTAD al_.KkE.IN bLULrlUK 125 96 CVCTCInl DTTTT CD SiolfcM bUlLDhK 150 131 rvnri^rv-T- mm _ 100 90 REPORT BUILDER 130 116 1-Uc.dUO rLUb V. 4.U 45 39 W/oUUKLfc 90 80 TI IDDA A m/A MTA/"" C 1 UKBU AUVAIN IAGL 50 45 80 1 UKnU ADVAW 1AOL UUMrLLX 90 1 UKoU AUVAN IAIjE, UlarLAi 70 66 TITDDH AC** 1 UKdU. AbM 99 70 1 UKdU AbiNLn rLUb 129 101 1 UKDU OfcUMb I Ki LlbKAKi 100 90 1 UKdU n ALU 99 80 IURDU IVL-UjlL 99 90 1 UKDU rASVjAL lUULDUAto 100 69 100 69 u ftivi n. w u k i\ o 100 69 PD A DUIV unnrniA 100 69 mi imc dip a i MrTunnc INUMlKILAL MLlHULIb 100 69 TUTOR 70 45 TURBO POWER TOOLS PLUS 129 101 TURRO POWFR I1TI1 ITIFQ 95 79 TIIDRH PDPlCCCQinM A I A r\ I UKDU rKUr CoolUiNAL 4.U 99 80 Tiipnn u/iMr»piu;/DACP a i 95 80 IINIVPR^AI P.RAPHTPC; T IRPADV Ulil V LKOHL UKrtrnil^O L1DKAKI 150 121 CP pit v M C/u.' i iinnu'u P CP A DC 299 282 PIIPCCC U//CAIIDf"C 250 172 r.RPPMi fap nATA wiwnnwc 295 209 495 453 tVACC IAM 750 684 IVll^KUoUr 1 TV IINUUVYo 99 69 Ma WIiNIJUYVb LJLVE.LUrM.hIN 1 MI 500 319 295 215 DAM PI PI IIC 495 395 PA MCI /riP rvD (TP rAJNEX/yL, UK /1L. 129 99 m iipvcpditcw 195 175 cpdccwctad u//crsTTDPc bLKttJNblAK W/bUUKLt 198 169 our i uuun 195 119 VIEW MANAGER 275 199 VITAMIN C VC SCREEN 99 80 WINDOWS FOR C 195 169 WINDOWS FOR DATA 295 239 W/SOURCE 590 479 SOURCE CODE MAINTENANCE ADVANTAGE MAKE 125 99 LIST OURS »nwavTirr vmc AUVAIN lAUfc. VLMo 379 339 LMK 195 141 LUGARU MAKE 69 CALL MKS RCS 189 162 PVCS-CORPORATE 395 333 PVCS-NETWORK CALL CALL PVCS-PERSONAL 149 131 XENIX/UNIX SOFTWARE M1CR0P0RT & SCO PRODUCTS CALL CALL 695 625 595 455 niRPPTOPV CUFI 1 /noe HP qqc\ LMK&U1UKI orlCLL 1 Zoo UK ,100) CALL CALL PPCII flN DrotLUlN 195 152 FPiYP. A CP _i_ iOOR 795 599 r UAOnSL + MOO 895 679 IMFPiDXjflY PDnnilPTC CALL CALL JYACC FORMAKER 895 809 JYACC JAM 1350 1224 KORN SHELL 145 115 MICROSOFT LANGUAGES CALL CALL PANEL PLUS 795 675 RM/COBOL 1250 954 RM/FORTRAN 750 553 WINDOWS FOR DATA 795 CALL POLY LIBRARIAN 99 90 POLYMAKE 149 131 SEIDL VERSION MANAGER 300 269 NETWORK VERSION 1000 849 SEIDL MAKE UTILITY 100 90 SMK GEN 50 45 SOURCE TOOLS 595 499 TL1B 100 89 TRANSLATORS BAS_C OR BAS_PAS CALL 179 BASTOC 495 399 DB2C 299 272 DBX TRANSLATOR 350 299 RTC PLUS 325 299 ADDITIONAL LANGUAGES BABY/36 (RPG II) NEW 3000 2699 HS/FORTH 395 359 LATTICE RPG II DEV. SYS. 1400 1119 RPG II COMPILER 750 629 RPG II SEU 250 199 RPG II SORT MERGE 250 199 RPG II SCREEN DESIGN AID 350 309 MASTER FORTH 125 115 PC FORTH 150 109 PERSONAL REXX 125 101 PL1_86 750 675 VP EXPERT 100 90 LIST OURS ADDITIONAL PRODUCTS CROSS REFERENCE GENERATOR 50 39 DAN BRICKLIN'S DEMO PROGRAM 75 59 DAN BRICKLIN'S DEMO PROG. II 195 179 DAN BRICKLIN'S DEMO TUTORIAL 50 45 FLOW CHARTING II 229 205 MKS AWK 75 66 MKS-SQPS 495 473 POLYBOOST 80 70 POLYDESK III 99 79 SAPIENS V8 300 269 SOFTSCREEN HELP 195, 149 SOURCE PRINT 95 81 TEXT MANAGEMENT UTILITIES 120 89 TREE D1AGRAMMER 77 70 BLAISE ASYNCH MANAGER (C/PASCAL) 175 137 C TOOLS PLUS/5.0 129 101 EXEC 95 76 PASCAL TOOLS/TOOLS 2 175 137 TURBO ASYNCH PLUS 129 101 TURBO C TOOLS 129 101 TURBO POWER TOOLS PLUS 129 101 VIEW MANAGER (C/PASCAL) 275 199 BORLAND EUREKA 167 119 PARADOX 1.1 495 369 PARADOX 2.0 725 529 QUATTRO 247 169 SIDEKICK 85 59 TURBO BASIC COMPILER 100 69 DATABASE TOOLBOX 100 69 EDITOR TOOLBOX 100 69 TELECOM TOOLBOX 100 69 TURBO C COMPILER 100 69 TURBO PASCAL 100 69 TURBO PASCAL DEV. LIB. 395 289 TURBO TUTOR 70 45 NUMERICAL METHODS TB 100 69 DATABASE TOOLBOX 100 69 EDITOR TOOLBOX 100 69 GAMEWORKS TOOLBOX 100 69 GRAPHIX TOOLBOX 100 69 TURBO PROLOG COMPILER 100 69 TURBO PROLOG TOOLBOX 100 69 ESSENTIAL BREAKOUT DEBUGGER 125 89 C UTILITY LIBRARY 185 125 COMMUNICATIONS PLUS 250 199 ESSENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS 185 125 ESSENTIAL GRAPHICS 299 229 /*RESIDENT_C*/ 99 85 W/SOURCE 198 169 LIST OURS SCREEN STAR 99 85 W/SOURCE 198 169 GREENLEAF GREENLEAF C SAMPLER Q GREENLEAF COMM LIBRARY i?S GREENLEAF DATA WINDOWS 9nq W/SOURCE sjjjj 97Q GREENLEAF FUNCTIONS 19' I2b MICROSOFT MS BASIC COMP 6.0 (DOS OR OS/2 MS BASIC COMPILER (XENIX) J10 MS BASIC INTERPRETER (XENIX) 990 MS C COMPILER (DOS OR OS/2) MS COBOL COMPILER FOR XENIX V£l K10 MS EXCEL 495 329 MS FORTRAN (DOS OR OS/2) 450 285 FOR XENIX 695 419 MS LEARNING DOS 50 39 MS MACRO ASM (DOS OR OS/2) 150 99 MS MOUSE SERIAL OR BUS 150 99 W/EASY CAD 175 119 W/MS WINDOWS 200 139 MS MUMATH 300 189 MS OS/2 PROGRAMMER'S TOOLKIT 350 229 MS PASCAL COMP (DOS OR OS/2) 300 189 MOUSE PRODUCTS LOGITECH SERIAL OR BUS MOUSE W/PLUS. SOFTWARE 119 99 W/PLUS. LOGICPAINT 149 119 W/PLUS. LOGICADD 189 149 W/PLUS. PUBLISHER MOUSE 179 145 W/PLUS, PAINT, CADD 199 159 W/PLUS, CADD, PUBL. MOUSE 239 189 W/PLUS, PAINT, PUBL. MOUSE 199 159 W/PLUS, PAINT, CADD, PUBL. 253 205 LOGITECH SERIES 2 W/PLUS 99 79 MICROSOFT SER OR BUS MOUSE 150 99 W/EASY CAD 175 119 W/MS WINDOWS 200 139 PC MOUSE BUS W/PNT & POPUPS 179 129 PC MOUSE SER W/PNT & POPUPS J59 115 SUMMAMOUSE 119 99 FOR XENIX 695 449 MS QUICK BASIC 99 69 MS QUICK C 99 69 MS SORT 195 130 MS WINDOWS 99 69 MS WINDOWS DEVELOPMENT KIT 500 319 MS WINDOWS/386 195 130 MS WORD 450 285 MS WORKS 195 129 — Discover the power of Microsoft's new OS-2 languages — Introducing five new language versions, a new "smart" programmer's text editor, and an enhanced version of CodeView debugger plus a Programmer's Toolkit. Each designed for OS/2 development with support for DOS. All languages include the new reconfigurable editor, CodeView which now debugs programs up to 128MB, the ability to mm* mm,. break the 640K barrier, support for protected and real mode programs, /nUPCf O SO** plus more . . . OS/2 Programmer's Toolkit Provides documentation and special utilities for development of OS/2 applications. Contains three reference manuals for a complete description of system functions, structures, and file formats. Includes two free hours of support via Microsoft's electronic-mail product support system. List: $350 Ours $229 Basic Compiler/6.0 New compiler offers: extensive math and customizable runtime libraries, selective library linking, user defined event trapping, and inter-module error handling. Advanced language features such as user defined types, recur- sion, and huge arrays. QuickBASIC and enhanced CodeView integrated. List: $295 Ours $189 Pascal Compiler/4.0 Now bolstered by CodeView for quick and efficient debugging. Ability to compile any standard ISO or ANSI program. Meet target requirements with your choice of math options. Link and edit with greater efficiency with new incremental linker. List: $300 Ours $189 Terms and Policies • We honor MC, VISA, AMERICAN EXPRESS No surcharge on credit card or C.O.D. Prepayment by check. New York State residents add applicable sales lax. Shipping and handling S3. 95 per item, sent UPS ground. Rush service available, prevailing rates. • Programmer's Paradise will match any current nation- ally advertised price for the products listed in this ad. • Prices and Policies subject to change without notice. • Hours 9AM EST — 7PM EST • Well Match any Nationally Advertised Price ■ Hail Orrfert include your phone number •Ask (or details. Some manufacturers will not allow returns once disk seals are broken. Dealers and Corporate Buyers — Call for special discounts and benefits! 1-800-445-7899 In NY: 914-332-4548 Customer Service: 914-332-0869 International Orders: 914-332-4548 Telex: 510-601-7602 C Optimizing Compiler/5.1 Produces the fastest code available on a PC. In-line code generation, removal of invariant code from loops, automatic register allocation and constant folding. Integrated QuickC for quick compilation and prototyping. List: $450 Ours $285 Macro Assembler/5.1 Simplified segment directives allow easy program and subroutine setup. Assembly rate of 25,000 lines per minute. Special constructs make the writing of a mixed language routine as simple as identifying the calling language and the parameters to be passed. List: $150 Ours $99 FORTRAN Optimizing Compiler/4.1 Extensive math options, memory model support, and outstanding code optimizations. New incremental linker. Full and complete implementation of the ANSI 77 FORTRAN standard. CodeView debugging. GSA-certified, error free. List: $450 Ours $285 # *«— v Programmer's r0u\JDUOJU A Division of Hudson Technologies, Inc. 42 River Street, Tarrytown, NY 10591 Circle 237 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 41 ASK BYTE LABELING SOFTWARE ■ LABELS For DOT MATRIX and Laser Printers (Epson/ IBM/Okidafa/LaserJet) • Labels for shelves, bins, inventory • 13 text sizes readable up to 50 ft. • Bar Codes: 2 of 5, UPC/EAN, 128, MIL-STD, AIAG, MSI, Code 39 • Any size label • Flexible format • Color options • Reversals • Fast • File input • Menu driven • $279 • Other bar code programs from $49. • Font Cartridges NOT required • Fast • Easy • Not Copy Protected! 30 Day Money Back Guarantee! Bar Code Readers for PC, XT, AT, PS/2 nun • Reads 2 of 5, UPC/EAN, Code 39 • Attaches as 2nd Keyboard • No software changes to add bar codes to any program • Rugged stainless steel wand • Optional Magnetic Stripe Reader only $100 additional • External attach to all PS/2 models • External OR Internal to PC, XT, AT • Upgrade from PC to PS/2-only $30 PC, XT, AT model-complete $385 ALL PS/2 models-complete $399 RS-232 & Kimtron-complete $399 30 Day Money Back Guarantee! ^ yORTHINGTON DATA SOLUTIONS 417-A Ingalls Street, Santa Cruz, California 95060 408/458-9938 tion broadcasting on channel 8 is carried on cable channel 11). This would reset the TV selector to the way that the TV stations are listed in the TV Guide, rather than the way the signals are received from cable. I have been hunting for this feature for several months now, and it appears that all the TVs that are now made use fre- quency-synthesized tuning that automati- cally locks into all the available channels. This is great for the Neanderthals who want to plug the cable into the TV and be up and running a minute after the TV is unpacked. Unfortunately for people like myself, who are capable and willing to play around with toys, there is no way to adjust these settings (short of fine-tuning) . The manufacturers expect me to keep remem- bering that 8 means 11,6 means 9, 12 means 26, and so on. I always thought that increasing the logic of the TVs would make this feature easier to implement, es- pecially since I remember being able to do this with an old mechanical tuner sev- eral years ago. What I really can't under- stand is why this feature is available on VCRs but is too old-fashioned for TVs. In my conversations with salespeople, when they find out that I have a VCR (which I have readjusted already), they are quick to suggest that I use the VCR's tuner for the channel selections and leave the TV on channel 3. Great idea— until I want to record one station and watch an- other. Now I have to remember that sta- tion CFAN is 8 on the VCR, but 1 1 on the TV; CAPC is 6 on the VCR, but 9 on the TV. This is progress? One salesperson suggested that I should have the TV and VCR set to the actual cable signals. I assume that this person hasn't ever been in the situation where, rushing around in the morning getting ready for work, he remembers there is something he wanted to record while he's at the office and quickly pro- grams the VCR. Unfortunately, he for- gets that 8 means 11 (6 means 9, 12 means 26, and so on) in the TV Guide and winds up getting several hours of the wrong programs from the wrong channels. It is absolutely impossible to find a TV that does this. My last resort is to go cheapie-tech and tape cheat sheets to the VCR, TV, and remote control to remind methat8is 11, 6 is 9, 12 is 26. . . There has to be a better way. James S. Bertram Vancouver, BC, Canada I have shared in your frustrations of trying to correlate the cable channel as- signments with the actual broadcast channel assignments. Some cable sys- tems go to the effort of using the proper channel number to transmit the signals on the cable; alas, I've never been so for- tunate as to have a system like that con- nected to my home. Some manufacturers address this problem. Some Fisher and Toshiba VCRs and TVs/monitors (and some high-end Magnavox units) sold in the U. S. let you program the frequency and the displayed number separately (some manufacturers change models slightly for Canadian sale, so I don 't know if these are avail- able there). Technological progress is actually adding to the problem. Newer tuner de- signs, and the ICs that control them, sim- plify the tuner design dramatically and lower the cost. Unfortunately, the idea of a "tuner control on a chip" virtually eliminates the ability to modify the circuit in the way you describe, since the same IC that generates the control signals in the tuner also generates the numbers. Rarely are there any programmable de- vices in this area, since the channel as- signments are fixed by international treaty, so we are in somewhat of a corner. Another thought: Converters available through some of the high-end video stores let you set your TV or VCR to a single channel and do all your tuning from the converters. There are also similar tuner- only devices made for inclusion in stereo systems that do the same job. Perhaps one of these could fit your needs. —Steve Hercules vs. IBM Graphics Dear Steve, I have a Hercules-compatible mono- chrome graphics card that didn't come with any information. When I try to change the mode from text to graphics, nothing happens. But when I run certain programs, such as Microsoft Windows, I get graphics. Please tell me where Her- cules graphics memory starts and how I can access it. Eugene Verba Monmouth Beach, NJ That's the trouble with the clones — they assume that you know everything there is to know and skimp on the docu- mentation. Here's a fast education in display adapters. It turns out that DOS supports only the "IBM standard" display hardware: the Monochrome display, the Color Graph- ics display, the Enhanced Graphics display, and lately the Video Graphics display, each more commonly known by its acronym— MD A, CGA, EGA, and VGA. That's reasonable, given the close continued 42 BYTE* MAY 1988 THE AUTHORITY ON OS/2... Members of the OS/2 design team bring you the authoritative guide to OS/2's powerful features and functions: OS/2 memory and multitasking facilities I OS/2 dynamic linking and I/O capabilities • Interrupt-driven device management • Interprocess communications • C programming examples that describe OS/2 application programming interfaces down to a functional level OS/2™ $24.95 Features, Functions, and Applications You need a business perspective to help you compare the advantages of OS/2 over DOS. Now Dick Conklin an IBM insider who develops and presents OS/2 seminars to dealers nationwide, explains all the fea- tures and functions of OS/2, including: ® How OS/2 outperforms DOS in every way— from memory, graphics, and multitasking, to business applications ® How to install, customize, and manage OS/2 to meet your business needs @ How to convert from DOS to OS/2 and migrate your existing programs to run on it OS/2™ A Business Perspective $21.95 At bookstores or use this coupon to order ORDER NOW PWILEY Business/Law/General Books Division 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012 In Canada: 22 Worcester Road Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 1L1 JOHN WILEY & SONS 605 Third Avenue New York, NY 10158-0012 Attn: M. Schustack Please send me copy(ies) of Krantz/OS/2: Features, Functions, and Applications (0 471-60709-6) $24.95 per copy plus applicable sales tax. Please send me copy(ies) of Conklin/OS/2: A Business Perspective (0 471-63503-0) $21.95 per copy plus applicable sales tax. □ Payment enclosed, Wiley pays postage/handling. Bill my □ VISA □ MasterCard □ American Express Acct. Exp. Signature Name Address City/State/Zip Price subject to change and higher in Canada. Circle 150 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 43 Circle 101 on Reader Service Card UTAH COBOL ASK BYTE NEW VERSION 4.0 (3) I For IBM* PC's, XT's, AT's and other DOS machines. This is the one you've heard so much about - with fast compile times, small object code modules, no royalties, and clear error messages. Version 4.0 is based upon ANSI-74 standards with new features including: • Indexed files (ISAM) with up to 24 keys. This advanced feature requires the software package Btrieve - which is optionally available @ $190.00. • Windowing, pop-ups, color and overlays. This advanced feature requires the software package Saywhat?!™ which is optionally available @$45.00. • ACCEPT (1,5) numerics with decimal point alignment, numeric checking, AUTO-SKIP, SECURITY, LENGTH-CHECK, EMPTY-CHECK. • Fast memory mapped DISPLA's (1,5) ERASE, BEEP, ATTRIBUTE. • An easy-to-use, COBOL source code EDITOR with auto line numbering, A-margin, B- margin tabbing with full screen cursor control. Also available: Utah SuperSorf @$39.95, a fast sort program callable from Utah COBOL; Utah FORTRAN @$39.95; Utah BASIC @$39.95; Utah PASCAL @$39.95; Utah PILOT @$39.95. Used by 50,000 professionals, students and teachers in 40 countries. MasteiCord To order call: (702) 827-3030 0 Since 1977 Ellis Computing, Inc. 5655 Riggins Court, Suite 10 Reno, Nevada 89502 IBM is a registered trademark of international Business Machines, Inc. Btrieve is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. Saywhat?! is a trademark of The Research Group. SuperSort is a registered trademark of Micropro International Corporation. Utah COBOL is a trademark of Ellis Computing. Inc. © 1987 Ellis Computing, Inc. PowerStatiori A Complete VT220 / VT241 Work Station Upgrade for the IBM PC/XT/AT and PS/2 PowerStatlon™ 240 $435 EGAmate'" VT240 style keyboard and ZSTEM VT240 Emulation Software. Optional WPS labelled keys (GOLD KEY MODEL) add $30. ZSTEM pc~ VT240 Emulator Emulation Software only. $295 VT240/241 Emulation Software with all the features of ZSTEM VT220 plus ZSTEM 4014, sixel and ReGIS graphics. PowerStalion 1 " 220 $289 VT220 style keyboard and ZSTEM VT220 Emulation Software. Optional WPS labelled keys (GOLD KEY MODEL) add $30. ZSTEMpc~-VT220 Emulator Emulation Software only. $150 All the features of ZSTEM VT100 plus 8-bit mode, downloadable fonts, user defined keys, full national/multi-national modes. Extended macros- /script language. True 132 columns on Hercules, VGAs, Super EGAs, and standard EGAs using the EGAmate option. 128 columns on CGAs. 43 line support on EGAs. Enhanced keyboard support. Ungermann Bass Net/One and VMS Services for MS-DOS support. "Now true 800 pixel wide VT241 display and support for VMS Services for MS-DOS." $39 Daughterboard option lor 132 columns and true 800 pixel wide ReGIS display on standard EGA adapters. PS220/2 $19 Keyboard adapter cable for PS200 on PS/2 systems. ZSTEMpc™-4014 Emulator $99 Use with ZSTEM VT100, VT220, or stand-alone. Interactive zoom and pan. Save/recall images from disk. Keypad, mouse, digitizer, printer, plotter, and TIFF support. 4100 color and line style color mapping. 640 x 400 and 640 x 480 on some adapter/monitors. ZSTEMpc , "-VT100 Emulator $99 High performance COLOR VT100. True double high/wide, smooth scrolling. ISO and attribute mapped color. XMODEM and KERMIT, soflkey/MAC- R0S, DOS access. KEA Systems Ltd. #412 - 2150 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6K 4L9 Telephone (604) 732-7411 Telex 04-352848 VCR Fax (604) 732-0715 Order Toll Free (800) 663-8702 30 day money back guarantee AMEX/MC/VISA relationship between IBM and Microsoft, but it 's a nuisance for the rest of us. Conspicuously absent from that list is Hercules graphics. Although Hercules cards are a standard, they 're not an IBM standard, so DOS simply ignores them. PC-DOS BASIC graphics commands don 't work on Hercules displays, and the MODE command won't switch them into graphics. But programs that generate graphics handle Hercules cards by writing directly to the hardware, completely bypassing DOS and the BIOS in the process. That 's why Windows (from Microsoft, no less) runs just fine. As far as writing your own graphics code for the Hercules card, I'm not sure that it's worthwhile. A more practical course would be to get a language like Turbo C, which supports the Hercules card through the normal graphics li- brary; you simply write C code calling the library functions , and your program can draw on any graphics display. —Steve S-100 Sources Dear Steve, Some years back, I bought an S-100 system from Morrow, which subse- quently went out of business. I'd like to know sources of parts and kits, as well as books, because I would like to be able to at least get some kind of S-100 system running. Could you give me a starting point for my research? My only other choice is to spend the money on jazzing up my Apple lie and learning to be content. Luther Atkinson Richmond, VA The S-100 standard machines, while not as widely available as they were a few years ago, are still alive and well. As you note in your letter, Morrow is no longer in business. There are, however, several companies that can help with your S-100 needs, among them the following: Vision Computers 2235 Melvin Rd. Oakland, CA 94602 S. C. Digital P.O. Box 906 Aurora, IL 60507 Keptronix P.O. Box 2022 Columbia, MD 21045 Lomas Data Products 182 Cedar Hill St. Marlborough, MA 01752 continued 44 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 157 on Reader Service Card STATGRAPHICS INCOME US SWINGS AHALVSIS Ulft INTERACT IUE OUTL1EF REGRESS 191 ZQeO 3800 DISPOSABLE IKOIE 1000 2S00 3660 1000 59W disposable mcmr BO: B.3M SE: 1.1173 T: 7.13Z1 Bl: 1.0655E-3SE- 7.19Q2EH T: 1.1ZZ5 UJRR: 8.2«36 USE: 20.691 DP: 33 POINTS DELETED: Select the points you want to remove from your regression model. . . B8: 7.1%2 SE'. 1.1736 T: 6.1319 Bl; 2.7WIE-3 SE: 1.8231E-3 T ! 2.7166 COBR: 01M33 BSE: 19.147 DF: 30 POINTS DELETED ! CMWM, SWEDEN, UNITES 3TME3 . . . Then press F6 to refit the model and recalculate the statistics. Because "Statistical Graphics" Is Better Than Just Statistics and Graphics Most of today's PC statistical packages give you all the statistics you'll ever need. Some even give you a few graphics. But only STATGRAPHICS from STSC gives you integrated statistical graphics in an environment you control. Unique "What If" Interactivity STATGRAPHICS lets you explore data relationships fully, producing higher quality, more timely solutions. Define your data and assumptions, run the procedure and review the results, modify data and assumptions repeatedly and take another look— and another. All without leaving the procedure or making permanent changes to your data. Integrated Statistical Graphics Coupled with STATGRAPHICS' interactive environment are over 50 types of graphs— traditional pie and bar charts, histograms, 3-D line and surface plots, quality control charts, and more. All are integrated with the procedures so that they can be displayed instantly and modified repeatedly. Query data points, do on-screen forecasting and model fitting, overlay graphs, or zoom-in on any area for a closer look. With flexibility like that, you can spot and investigate visual trends in your data— trends you may have missed if you looked only at the numbers. 1* CAR MILEAGE BV CDUNTRV § Over 250 Statistical Procedures • Direct Lotus® and dBASE® interfaces • ANOVA and regression analysis • Experimental design • Quality control procedures • Multivariate techniques • Nonparametric methods • Exploratory data analysis • Forecasting, time series analysis, and more. STATGRAPHICS— The Best Way to Do Statistics! Put the power of STATGRAPHICS to work for you today— all for only $895*. For our free convincer kit or the name of a dealer near you, call (800) 592-0050 ext. 400 In Maryland, (301) 984-5123; Internationally, (301) 984-5412. Telex 898085 STSC ROVE STSC STSC, Inc. 2115 East Jefferson Street Rockville, Maryland 20852 A wide variety of graphs supported on over 100 displays, printers and plotters, including the new IBM PS/2™ Series. 'Suggested retail price in U.S. and Canada. International prices vary. Available through dealers and distributors worldwide. STATGRAPHICS, PLUS*WARE, Lotus, and dBASE are registered trademarks of Statistical Graphics Corporation, STSC, Inc., Lotus Development Corporation, and AshtonTate, respectively. A PLUS* WARE PRODUCT Circle 281 on Reader Service Card Circle 272 on Reader Service Card A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH JONATHAN'S WAVE: THE "THINKING" COMPUTER Jonathan's Wave, the brainchild of Michael Archer, is considered by some to be an artificial intelligence "thinking" computer system. It is comprised of over one hundred dif- ferent expert trading programs. Its knowledge data base acts as a high tech filter drawing from the best parts of each program while ignoring the worst. Jonathan's Wave constantly updates itself, altering and eliminating certain trading guidelines in response to both failure and success as if it had its own evolutionary process built in to make it better and better. Ac- cording to Jonathan's Wave January 28, 1988 Risk Disclosure Document each $10,000 invested in Jonathan's Wave managed account program in May 1986 with all returns reinvested would have grown to $24,800 on October 31, 1987 for a compounded rate of return of 148%.* We believe the most impressive part about achieving this performance record is the fact that the worst monthly percentage drop in equity experienced was only 5.3%. Jonathan's Wave only compensation from its clients is a percentage of profits! Call now for a free copy of Jonathan's Wave Risk disclosure document and performance record. Those who act now under no obligation , may ask about our highly informative free video tape on managed speculative investing, introducing some of our advisors, which in our opinion could make you a better investor in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures, op- tions or any managed speculative investment by educating you on some key elements in their evaluation and selection. Call Super Fund Financial Group, Inc. 90 West Street, New York, New York 10006, 1-800-225-5561 or 1-800-221-2917. In New York 212-227-5208. Print Name: . Address: City: State: Zip: Phone #. Res.: Bus.: Best Time to Call. Res.: Bus.: Inquiries without phone number will not be processed. 'Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. The risk of loss was invovled in achieving these returns as in any managed speculative investment. BY ASK BYTE You might also want to get an issue of SUPERMICRO magazine (also known as S-100 Journal) for further information on boards and peripherals available for your machine. —Steve Using the Fax Machine as a Digitizer Dear Steve, I have an idea that seems reasonable, but it may not be quite as simple as it sounds to me. Because I'm involved in desktop pub- lishing, I have used many types of scan- ners and digitizers to send images to the screen, including a Ricoh FAX20. Is it possible to use this facsimile machine as a digitizer for my computer? I am working with a monochrome 520ST (640 by 400 pixels) and would like to send a picture to DEGAS Elite. Pete Reitano Santa Cruz, CA There 's no limit to the number of ideas that "sound reasonable" but turn out to be such a pain that you 'd rather take up knitting for a living . . . You 're exactly right about fax ma- chines. They scan an image (at 200 dots per inch, no less), convert it into a run- length encoded bit stream, and mail it off over a 9600-bps modem. The wonder of it is that any two fax machines anywhere can talk to each other, because they ex- change credentials to decide how fast to send data and what encoding to use. Pretty slick. Obviously, if you had a suitable modem, you could tap into the fax ma- chine's output and bash the beeps and boops back into bits (sorry). That's ex- actly what the fax boards for your PC do. The big expense is the 9600-bps modem, which must be designed to work with fax machines, because there are several dif- ferent 9600-bps transmission "stan- dards " around. PC Magazine had a write-up on fax boards in the January 26 issue. Basi- cally, if you 've already got a fax ma- chine, you '11 just need the board to act as a receiver; prices seem to range from $400 to $1000 for the boards (remember, the boards contain a very tricky modem) and some software. The only trick might be that the boards expect to answer a ringing phone line; you 'd have to make sure that the software could handle a direct connection. But, after that, the code will grab the data and create a file in any one of several differ- ent graphic "standard" formats— which you can then convert into a paint pro- gram file, import into a desktop pub- lisher, or whatever you want. And you don 't have to build a thing or write a line of code!— Steve ■ 46 BYTE' MAY 1988 Circle 283 on Reader Service Card It took 8 million FLOPS before we produced a winner. Now appearing: the DT7020 Array Processor for the IBM PC AT. In this business, connections mean everything. Since our DT7020 array processor connects directly to our frame grabber and data acquisition boards for true 8 MFLOPS execution, it'll be an overnight success. And the supporting roles played by our MACH™ Vector and MACH DSP Subroutine libraries and our MACH Microcode Assembler and Simulator are truly award winning. Nothing beats this package when it comes to real-world image processing. Give us a call today. We'll tell you how to connect your IBM PC AT to a rising star: the DT7020 array processor. (617) 481-3700. 4 DT-ConnecF is an open interface specification which permits the direct connection of stand-alone data acquisi- tion and frame grabber boards to pro- cessor boards for greatly accelerated signal (DSP) and image processing. Digital Signal Processing "^^^^ Image Processing DT-Con/iecf™ Processor Board FFT 1024 Points Real FFT 1024 Points Complex Inverse FFT 1024 Points Real Inverse FFT 1024 Points Complex Vector Add 1024 Points Real Vector Add 1024 Points Complex Vector Multiply 1024 Points Real Vector Multiply 1024 Points Complex FFT 512x512 image Real FFT 512x512 image Complex Frame Average (2) 512x512 images Multiply by a Constant Frame Addition 512x512 image DT7020 13.0ms 23.0ms 13.0ms 23.0ms 2.6ms 5.0ms 2.5ms 8.5ms 6.29s 11.90s 0.82s 0.47s 0.68s DATA TRANSLATION World Headquarters: Data Translation, Inc., 100 Locke Drive, Marlboro, MA 01752-1192, (617) 481-3700 Tlx 951646 United Kingdom Headquarters: Data Translation Ltd., The Mulberry Business Park, Wokingham, Berkshire RG112QJ, U.K. (0734) 793838 Tlx 94011914 West Germany Headquarters: Data Translation GmbH, Stuttgarter Strasse 66, 7120 Bietigheim-Bissingen, West Germany 07142-54025 International Sales Offices: Australia (2) 662-4255: Belgium (2) 735-2135; Canada (416) 625-1907; Chile (2) 25-3689; China (408) 727-8222, (8) 721-4017; Denmark (2) 274511; Finland (90) 372-144- France (1) 69077802; Greece 951-4944, 527-039; Hong Kong (3) 771-8585; India (22) 23-1040; Israel (3) 32-4298; Italy (2) 82470.1; Japan (3) 502-5550, (3) 375-1551, (3) 355-1111; Korea (82) 756-9954; Netherlands (70) 99-6360; New Zealand (9) 504-759; Norway (02) 55 90 50; Portugal 545313; Singapore 7797621; South Africa (12) 46-9221; Spain (1) 455-8112; Sweden (8) 761-7820; Switzerland (1) 723-1410; Taiwan (2) 709-1394; United Kingdom (0734) 793838; West Germany 07142-54025. IBM and Personal Computer ATare registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Data Translation is a registered trademark, and MACH is a trademark, of Data Translation, Inc. Circle 84 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 47 SYSTEM 310 SYSTEM 220 SYSTEM 200 SYSTEM 100 The New Dell Personal Computers Are Here. Dell Computer Corporation has just introduced a new line of high performance compatible personal computer systems. To learn more about them, just send for our new 24 page catalog. It includes detailed specifications and prices on everything from our high performance 386, 286, and 8088-based models to our complete line of printers, software and peripheral devices. It will also tell you all about our excellent service and support programs. Call toll-free 800-426-5150 or return this card today. TITLE CO. NAME PHONE ( ) TYPE OF BUSINESS ADDRESS CITY AUSTIN 8 0 0 - •TEXAS 4 2 6 - 5 15 0 DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION 5IE04 © DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION 1988 BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST CLASS PERMIT NO. 6514 AUSTIN, TEXAS POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION 9505 Arboretum Blvd. Austin, Texas 78759-9969 II. . 1. 1. .. I.I. 1. 1. 1. .I. I. .I. I. ..ILI. I Ill Y lou ou never know when somebody's going to come around the corner and surprise you with something that needs doing right away. So you might want to look into our new System 310, an 80386-based PC running at Being Able To Run Faster Could Come In Real Handy. 20 MHz.With the advanced Intel 82385 cache memory controller and 32KB of high-speed static RAM, it performs faster than 386 computers priced thousands of dollars higher. The new System 220 is our 80286 PC. It too runs at 20 MHz, or twice as fast as the IBM PS/2 models 50 and 60. What's more, while others claim OS/2 compatibility, we guarantee it. Because we sell and support MS" OS/2 written just for Dell Computer systems. And it all comes to you directly from us. To order, or to get a copy of our 1988 catalog, call us at 800-426-5150. The computers will be shipped in as little as three business days. With a no risk guarantee. And our complete systems prices include a one year, on-site service contract from Honeywell Bull, plus easy access to our technical support people over toll free phone lines. That's why it's taken us just four years to become one of the top seven personal computer companies in the country. Or what you might call the fastest computer company in the country. Some of [he fastest per- sonal computers around also feature some of the lowest prices. Our new System 310 starts at just $3599. And you can get the System 220 for as little as $1799. That's more power for the money than any t» other line of personal | computers. WU r > 800-426-5150 Call in the US and Canada. 11ED9 Circle 88 on Reader Service Card NEW AVOCET C FOR MICROCONTROLLERS - A BREAKTHROUGH IN SPEED AND QUALITY Introducing Avocet C™ Fast, opti- mizing cross-compilers that can cut microcontroller development time in half— without sacrificing code quality. From concept to code in a fraction of the time. Programming in C lets you concen- trate on end results, not annoying details— so you get more done, faster. And rapid compilation takes the frustra- tion out. But for microcontrollers, you need more than speed. You need tight, high-quality code. That's why we spent two years field-testing and perfecting Avocet C for both speed and quality. We built in three separate phases of optimization— for object code tight enough for real applications. And we integrated Avocet C with an assembler package that's mature in its own right— not an after- thought. So you can still work magic at the bits-and-bytes level. Avocet C saves you time in all phases of development. Our run-time library is extensive— no need to write the routines yourself. You'll arrive at bug-free code faster, thanks to LINT-like type checking. And your program's use- ful life is extended, because you can recompile for other target chips. Testing is easier, too. Avocet C is ANSI-standard— so you can test generic parts of your program with host- resident systems like Microsoft Quick- C™ and Codeview™ And when you're ready for hardware-specific testing, Avocet's AVSIM Simulator/Debugger tests microcontroller code right on your PC. An excellent value. Just $895 buys Avocet C for your favorite chip: Intel 8051 or 8096, Hitachi 64180, or Zilog Z80— with more to follow. And Avocet C includes the lat- est version of AVMAC— Avocet's super- fast, professional assembly-language development package. (If you're already a registered AVMAC owner, you can upgrade to Avocet C for only $595.) AVOCET Free Catalog Call Toll-Free 800-448-8500* For your free Avocet catalog— to order— or for more information about Avocet C and other Avocet products. The best technology — responsive, personal service. Avocet offers a powerful, compre- hensive approach to microcontroller development. Avocet development tools put the most advanced technology at your fingertips. The Avocet staff stands ready to give you complete support- including technical assistance— on a moment's notice. And we'll ship your order in 48 hours or less. Call 800-448-8500. Discover how Avocet can speed up your next project. Avocet Systems, Inc., 120 Union Street P.O. Box 490AQ, Rockport, Maine 04856 *In Maine, or outside U.S., call (207) 236-9055 TLX: 467210 AVOCET CI, FAX: (207) 236-6713 © 1988 Avocet Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Quick-C and Codeview arc trademarks of Microsoft Corp Logo and name Avocet are registered irademarks of Avocet Systems, Inc. SYSTEMS, INC.® THE SOURCE FOR QUALITY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT TOOLS. Circle 33 on Reader Service Card BOOK REVIEWS Computing a Butterfly's Effect on the Weather Hugh Kenner CHAOS: MAKING A NEW SCIENCE James Gleick Viking, New York, NY: 1987, 352 pages, $19.95 The physical sciences for perhaps four centuries have cherished the dream of seeing their work finished- all but the grunt work, for which we have machines. With the last exponent in place in the last equation, the ultimate program purged of its final bug, the dishes feasting on data from myriad satellites, might we not be close to call- ing every shot? For if every state of a system causes the next— well, given ample data (and processing power), shouldn't we expect to know in mid-December if Topeka next August 9 at 3 p.m. will be having picnic weather on its southwest side? But at present we're lucky if a local five-day forecast is not utterly misleading. Fluid systems (air and water) are rife with instabilities. The equations that describe them, though as definite as the ones that define planetary motions, have unstable points likewise, where the fourth decimal place of an input— 0.5061 instead of 0.5060— can spell the difference between calm and hurricane. Small changes make catastrophes. This is stuffily called "sensi- tive dependence on initial conditions"; more picturesquely, the Butterfly Effect. "A butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York": James Gleick's tour through chaos theory begins with that butterfly. Gleick is a science writer for The New York Times, and his journalistic skills are evident in the narrative's lively pace and thorough documentation. Rather than fill space with opinions about Chaos— a. tour de force of popular exposition, and almost rigorous enough to please a specialist— I'll offer a walk through some of the material. While drawing on details from other books, I'll stay within Gleick's outline. Once discovered (in 1961, by a meteorologist named Edward Lorenz), the Butterfly Effect seemed to end all hope of long- range projections, not just of weather but of most unruly phe- nomena. Still, a Newtonian might argue, the Great Picture is unaltered. Let our input data include all butterflies; if that's unlikely in practice, doesn't it preserve the prin- ciple? Isn't what we lack just better information? More- over, despite butterflies, doesn't the weather system display a large-scale stability? Summers always follow win- ters. Miami stays balmier than Nome. Likewise, a marble in the bottom of a bowl, however often perturbed, seeks equi- librium. So "practically all dynamic systems" ought to settle, most of the time, "into behavior that was not too strange." Right? Wrong. Most of them don't. (Partly, we've been misled by preoccupation with the few nonlinear equations we know how to solve. The rest were "monsters. ") For the weather is an atypi- cal example, "locally unpre- dictable, globally stable." It's more typical, "in a back- ground sea of chaos," for some self-organizing system to assert itself. Thus the Great Red Spot on Jupiter is local but stable, "a hurricane-like system of swirling f low, " host to endless variation that doesn't destroy continued ALSO REVIEWED Programming Secrets for the Macintosh Programming the Intel 80386 Computers in Battle: Will They Work? Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography Desktop Publishing Type & Graphics Illustration by James Endicott © 1988 MAY 1988 'BYTE 51 BOOK REVIEWS □ f h i i EBMi i r r f 1 mm *= ft iii i i iii ii i- .. n !: 1: 1: !;. u — r . 1 Our range of computer add-ons offer facilities you've always wanted - at prices that will surprise you. Here's just some of the ideas on offer this month. FastTrap™ The perfect alternative to a mouse. Takes up far less room - and has features never seen on a mouse - like 3D pointer control. Can be used as a direct replacement for Microsoft® serial mouse. PSION Organiser II A phenomenal hand-held programmable computer. Comes with software for Diary, Filing System and Address Book. Other applications are available. Can be linked to your computer to exchange data in either direction. Handy Scanner Capable of scanning in various standard graphics file formats at 200 DPI in both directions, this is the perfect add-on for DTP - line or halftones easily input and edited. A must for today's serious computer user. NumeriKeys™ A perfect extra for portables. Easy to install as it plugs in between the parallel port and the printer and can be configured for special applications through the easy-to-use software provided. Extended Function Guides Designed to fit either Standard or Enhanced boards, these guides show you all the functions for the most popular software available - together with a mini manual for extra information. Electrone Dashboard™ A full function "enhanced" board to fit the AMSTRAD PC port that comes with some smart software that allows you to configure any key for virtually any application, FastTrap is a trademark of Microspeed Inc. Microsoft is a registered Trademark of Microsoft Inc NumeriKeys is a Trademark of Genest Technologies Inc Dashboard is a trademark of Electrone Ltd Products may vary slightly from those illustrated Catalogic PO Box 300249 1700 Lincoln Denver CO 80203 its form. Though our weather hurricanes die out in days, the Red Spot has been a fluid presence for 400 years that we know of. On Jupiter, chaos has modes of stubborn order. On Earth, too, as we've just begun to notice. After T. R. Malthus stated, in 1798, that population (say, in a fish pond) will always increase until food shortage stifles it, population bi- ologists needed an equation that models the drop in population when competition for a fixed food supply increases. A good one (Verhulst's Law of 1845) is essentially x ma = rx{\ -x), where x is the population (0 = extinction, 1 = maximum) and r is the rate of growth. That's an easy loop to program. Start it with r = 2.7, and from the range 0 < x < 1 pick any initial x you like. Iterate through successive generations, and watch how x (the population) shoots up until things get too crowded, then declines and levels off. It soon settles down to 0.6296; at a 2.7 growth rate, our fish pond stabilizes at just under 2 A capacity. That's what we used to think dynamic systems generally did: They stabilized. Run it again with r = 2.9 (slightly more rapid growth); again x stabilizes, at 0.6552. For r = 2.96, x stabilizes at 0.6622. But try r = 3.4, and x is no longer stable but is leaping to and fro between two populations, 0.4520 and 0.8422. (That's still pre- dictable; for 0.4520 one year, expect 0.8422 the next.) By r = 3.5, it's cycling through four different values; by r = 3.55, through eight. Disconcerting, yes, but those regular cycles do keep us in touch with order. Now, push r up to 3.57, and be- hold, patternless chaos!— seemingly random results generation after generation, and no way at all to guess what the next popu- lation will be. And these changes of behavior— from stability, to ever-larger cycles, to chaos— happen at quite sudden thresholds. Nor is chaos absolute. Inch up further to r = 3.58212, and, whoops, we're back with cycling values, 12 of them. But by r = 3.58283, chaos shows signs of returning, and by r = 3.584 it definitely has. On and on, order and chaos alternating, until just past r = 4.0, the equation blows up. Pondering those zones where numbers seem drawn to one or another value, you get a first feeling for what Lorenz dubbed "attractors." That's been familiar (though unconnected with chaos) ever since Newton published his iterative method for finding an equation's roots. You start with a guess, and when several roots are possible, the one you find is the one your guess "attracted." Strange attractors have since received the accolade of deep theory. They underlie both bathtub turbulence and the dynamics of galactic clusters. There are three more things to notice about the Verhulst equa- tion. First, there seems no way to predict how long the discon- tinuities will last; you just run the iterations and watch. In 1976, though, their duration turned out to be governed by Feigen- baum's Constant, 4.6692016. . . , a number so ubiquitous in chaos theory that it seems structured into the universe like ir. That asserts a commonality for all manner of local disorders: rolling streams, perturbed pendulums, or columns of smoke. Second, it seems that what we've often shrugged off as in- scrutable "randomness" (in genetics, economics, and fluid dy- namics) is really a periodic chaos that's built into simple deter- ministic models. Thus, epidemics come in cycles, but a sudden kick to the system — say, a program of inoculation— can send the incidence of a disease into near-chaotic oscillations. That hap- pened in Britain when they started wiping out rubella. Third, a definite pattern recurs throughout chaos theory: Any detail is apt to resemble the big picture. That's easiest to see when the Verhulst equation is put on-screen as a graph; A. K. Dewdney outlined a program to do that in the July 1987 Scien- continued 52 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 98 on Reader Service Card OVERSTOCKED WITH COMPUTER HARDWARE? PST CAN ANSWER YOUR PROBLEMS EUROPES LARGEST SURPLUS STOCK BUYERS NEED MORE COMPUTER HARDWARE $50 MILLION MUST BE SPENT BY JUNE 1 988. Constant product innovation to keep pace with the ever changing market place has made manufacturers and multiple retailers seek efficient ways of dealing with obsolescence and overstock problems. Many companies will offer their services to purchase your stocks, but when it comes to paying for them, you'll hear more excuses in five minutes than a traffic cop hears in a week! If your company has a stock problem, we can solve it and that's a promise, not next week or the week after - today! With unrivalled experience in international trading, PST works closely with household name client companies to ensure that stock is dissipated to our customer network in over 80 countries. We will make an immediate decision, arrange instant payment by "Swift" telegraphic transfer or international bankers draft and can collect your goods an ywhere in the USA - within 48 hours! To find out how PST can help you, contact Tom McLoughlin, Henry Padolsey or Peter King. It could be the fastest and easiest sale you have ever made! Our resource is bigger than your problem! B UT PST (TRADING) LTD • STOCKLEY PARK • UXBRIDGE • UB11 IAS • ENGLAND TEL: (0)1-756 1616 TLX: 925474 PST-G FAX: (0)1-756 0119 Part of the Cannon Street Investments PLC. Group Circle 331 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 53 BOOK REVIEWS New dBase III Plus ™ Compiler ■ Smaller EXE's ■ Faster compilation ■ Faster execution ■ Lower price! OPERATION dB Fast Clipper Minimum .EXE file size lkb I40kb Compiling/Linking 2 Seconds 4 Minutes Execution time 6 Seconds 17 Seconds PRICE $695 d-Smallest! With Clipper™ the smallest program you can create is 140k. And it goes up from there! dB Fast™ creates programs as small as lk with typical program sizes from 5 to 10k. Just think, now it's possible to fit all your programs on one floppy disk. And if you send files via modem — look what happens to your modem phone bill. . .it almost disappears! d-Fastest! dB Fast compiles and links in a blistering 3 seconds. Clipper slugs along at 4 minutes. dB Fast compiled programs also run faster. A program that took over 1 full minute to run using dBase HI Plus and an additional 17 seconds using Clipper, ran in just 6 seconds with dB Fast! d-Cheapest! See for yourself why dB Fast is d-Biggest Bang for d-Buck! Nowhere can you get all these features for such X'-"-%f)t a low price: ■ dBase III Plus compatible ■ LAN compatible ■ Unlimited runtime ■ Protected source code ■ No need to modify your .PRC flies ■ Speed, efficiency, price ^60 day Guarantee Try dB Fast for 60 days. If you're not totally satisfied for any reason, just send it back for a full refund (less $10 handling fee). Call today! 1-800-356-6356 sales information call ' Dealer inquiries welcome -206-392-0368 Qty Subtotal rlR Fast (ft) Sfio. Shipping: $4 U.S., J25 outside U.S. (add 14 for each additional package) Ma-.te ADVERTISEMENT Tech Talk By Steve Gibson FEBRUARY S, 1988 Finding the Ideal Keyboard: One That Won't Throw Spitwads With Its Recoil You might think that the best keyboard would be the last thing I'd worry about as I was assembling my "dream machine," but it was almost my first concern. Have you ever stopped to really think about the "feel" of your keyboard? I've long believed that the feel of a computer's keyboard might almost be the single most important aspect of the machine. After all, except for occasional mouse and modem usage, the keyboard is the sole entry point for all of a machine's data. I care tremendously about the feel of the keyboard I'm typing with. I want it to feel just right under my fingers. I want to know from mechanical feedback, without looking, when I've pressed a key successfully. Yet I don't want my biceps enlarged as a consequence. It's been my experience that most keyboards are utterly horrible, seeming to come only at the far extremes of the scale. Either they just lie there like dead sponges, unresponsive and unreacting, or they fight back tooth and nail, daring you to press the next key. To either extreme I say, "No thanks." The original IBM keyboard must have been tough to engineer. I can't imagine the mechanical contrivance that was used to induce such a ridiculous snap action underneath such small keys. A keyboard should not be able to launch spitwads across the room with its recoil. Bruised fingertips are not my idea of a typing reward, and it's no fun having to close the windows on a hot summer night for fear of keeping the neighbors awake with the clack-clacking din. At the other end of the scale we have the ubiquitous sponge-press keyboard. This keyboard dares you to determine whether the computer has sensed your data entry — which is not easy when you sure couldn't sense it yourself. I'm always worried that the keys are just lying there still depressed after I've removed my fingers. So imagine my joy about a year ago when I stumbled upon a keyboard that knocked me flat (and not from its key recoil). Feeling a bit like Goldilocks, I ran my fingers over its keys. Here was a masterpiece that was neither too stiff nor too mushy — it was just right. It had a marvelous snap action. Since the company selling this goody was one of those "here today, gone tomorrow" generic Taiwan clone outfits, I purchased seven keyboards on the spot! I was determined never to be caught without one of these beauties underneath me again. As I proudly carried my collection home, I reasoned that I'd be adding machines over the years, and I needed them all to be outfitted not only with the best feeling keyboard I'd ever had the joy of touching but also with identical keyboards. There's nothing worse than moving to another machine after really getting used to one keyboard only to find that the Esc key has jumped to the other side of the room. Better to have plenty of spares in the garage. Shortly afterward, the Taiwan-based company from which I'd purchased my keyboards stopped carrying the one I loved, and then it stopped carrying anything. Well about two months ago I received a call out of the blue from a crazy- sounding guy identifying himself as the president of Northgate Computer Sys- tems. Art asked if I was aware of his ads in the back of InfoWorld, and he was a bit peeved when I said, "No, not really." So he made me turn to the back of InfoWorld to take a look. "Oh yeah, that's the ad with the tactile snap action diagram," I said. Art said this Steve Gibson is the developer and publisher of Flicker Free and president of Gibson Research Corp. of Irvine, Califor- nia. The views expressed are his own. was the most incredible keyboard on earth and that he was going to send me one because he could tell from reading my column that I was a "touchy feely" kind of guy. I warned him about me and key- boards. I told him about my inventory of spare keyboards in the garage, and I said that nothing would move me away from these beauties since there was no way to improve upon what I already had. Art was not swayed. He told me about celebrities who were using his keyboard and said he had lots of congratulatory letters, and it was simply the best keyboard anywhere. "Boy, this guy is a pain," I thought. I shrugged and told him to send it out but that I couldn't promise anything. When it arrived, my curiosity took over. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found myself facing my dream keyboard, exactly like the four I still had in my garage! If you want the best key- board I've ever had my hands on, check out Northgate's snap action keyboard. Critics, Corporations, Individuals Around the World Agree with Steve Gibson, Northgate's "C/T" is the Best Keyboard ★ 10-Day Money Back Satisfaction Guaranteed! ★ 3-Year Unlimited Warranty! The Ibuch and Feel of An Electric Typewriter The sensation of the computer world. North- gate's Click/Tactile keyboards are setting the new standard for the touch of typing. Not only Steve Gibson, but computer experts everywhere agree, Northgate has come up with what's been missing in keyboards— positive entry. Some day all keyboards will use the same keyswitches and quality components Northgate incorporates in its 84-key and 101-key boards. But for now, Northgate leads the way. Order yours today. If you are not 100% satisfied in every way, return it within 10 days for full refund. "C/T" 101 KEYBOARD $99.00 "C/T" 84 KEYBOARD $79.00 FOR IBM PS MODELS ADD $15.00 FOR QUANTITY ORDERS CALL 612-553-0111 TOLL FREE 800 453-1400 ANSWERED 24 HOURS COMPATIBLE WITH MOST CURRENT MODEL XT AND AT TYPE SYSTEMS WITH STANDARD 5-PIN DIN CONNECTOR. SOME COM- PUTERS ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH STANDARD IBM CONNECTORS— THESE MAY INCLUDE SOME MODELS OF ZENITH. TANDY. ATKT. EPSON EQUITY, PC LIMITED 286. Phone Your Order lb 11 Free VISA B91 W^WS NORTHGATE COMPUTED SYSTEMS " M H 13895 INDUSTRIAL PARK BLVD.. PLYMOUTH. MN 55441 SHIP (QUANTITY) ••C/T" 101 @ $99.00 (QUANTITY) "C/T" 84 @ $79.00 FOR IBM PS MODELS ADD $15.00 NORTHGATE COMPUTER SYSTEMS NAME COMPANY . ADDRESS _ CITY VISA/MC NO. SIGNATURE . EXP. DATE . 13895 INDUSTRIAL PARK BLVD., SUITE 110 PLYMOUTH. MINNESOTA 55441 IBM. PS and AT are registered trademarks of IBM Corp. NOTE: ORDER PROCESSING TAKES 3-4 DAYS. WE SHIP UPS. I FOR GROUND SHIPPING ADD $7.00 EA. FOR SECOND DAY L AFTER PROCESSING TIME ADD S12. 00 EA. FOR OVERNIGHT AFTER PROCESSING TIME ADD S22.00 EA. j 58 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 208 on Reader Service Card Circle 291 on Reader Service Card BOOK REVIEWS for special effects or drawing high-resolution objects, such as hairlines for page layout. Despite the slight saccharine aftertaste left by Knaster's overdone humor, I recommend the book. —Tom Thompson PROGRAMMING THE INTEL 80386 by Bud E. Smith and Mark T. Johnson, Scott, Foresman & Co. , Glenview, IL: 1987, 346 pages, $22.95. The authors present the 80386 as the next logical plateau in microcomputer development after the 8088/ 8086 machines, with the 80286 as a relatively minor intermedi- ate step. The bulk of this work is made up of descriptions of the microprocessor instructions ordered and laid out for easy refer- ence. In addition to the information you would expect, the authors include pseudocode descriptions of what the instruction does, and fragments of assembly language, showing usage. The real strength of the book is in its description of the chip's features and its differences from predecessors in the 80x86 fam- ily. Smith and Johnson clearly explain why the 80386 is so much faster than earlier chips and describe how you can write programs that take advantage of this capability. They also give good descriptions of 80386 features, such as multitasking, pag- ing, virtual memory, and operation in virtual 8086 mode. On the other hand, the book does not contain sufficient source code to fully justify its title as a programming guide; missing are complete, working programs that demonstrate tech- niques and features unique to the 80386. But it's a useful, if not complete, reference for your 80386 library. — John linger COMPUTERS IN BATTLE: WILL THEY WORK? edited by David Bellin and Gary Chapman, Harcourt Brace Jovano- vich, New York, NY: 1987, 362 pages, $14.95. Almost half the contributors to this collection of essays belong to an organiza- tion called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Do the authors think computers will work in battle? Of course not. Most of the book is essentially an anti-SDI screed. One-sided advocacy books like this have a generic problem: They offer little more than preaching to the already converted. The military use of computers is an extremely complicated sub- ject, and to load the dice for either side doesn't do much for the cause of truth. Anybody working with computers knows that they are (a) fallible and (b) no substitute for human judgment, but many of the book's authors keep reinventing these creaky wheels in their analyses. The most thoughtful essay in the book is Clark Thombor- son's "The Role of Military Funding in Academic Computer Science," which makes the case that "If the DoD is allowed to maintain control of our R&D establishment, it will continue to sap our nation's commercial and political vitality." For exam- ple, the Defense Department's mania for stamping everything Top Secret (especially everything involving SDI) hasn't done private space commercialization much good. The book scores some points, but it's too bad the editors weren't secure enough to include some contributors from the other side. By providing balance, they would have made what's there more convincing . —Jack D. Kirwan PROGRAMMER'S GUIDE TO PC & PS/2 VIDEO SYS- TEMS by Richard Wilton, Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA: 1987, 532 pages, $24. 95. Richard Wilton does a marvelous job of exposing the strata of PC and PS/2 graphics systems. You'll find all you need here: from assembly language code for com- municating with the video BIOS, to C source code of efficient line- and ellipse-drawing algorithms. The author even presents Pascal, BASIC, and FORTRAN programs and shows how to in- terface them to his assembly language graphics primitives routines. continued RS-232 TO RS-485 CONVERTER MODEL 66 • Implements Low Cost LAN • Supports 32 Users • Single Twisted Pair Required • Programmable Contention • Selectable Termination TELEBVTE A PUBLIC COMPANY Remark Division • Telebyte Technology, Inc. • 270 E. Pulaski Rd. Greenlawn, NY 1 1740 • (516) 423-3232 800-835-3298 THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN HIGHLY GRAPHIC MATERIAL A fast-paced, half-hour pro- gram that takes you to the 1988 NCGA Show. See highlights of trends and technologies through the eyes of industry experts. A collection of product videos from key computer graphics manufacturers. Quickly preview new products - through the medium that shows them best. Name_ Company . City. . State _ . Zip- Payment method (No purchase orders accepted): □ Check or money order enclosed (make payable to EDR ENTERPRISES) Charge to my credit card: C: VISA □ MasterCard □ American Express Card number Signature . Expiration Date_ Date_ Qty. iV'VHS Qty. V«"U-Matic Amount NCGA'88 VIDEO REPORT $69.95" S89.95" COMPUTER GRAPHICS '88 PRODUCT REVIEW 319.95 S29.95 * 1 0 % discount tor NCGA members. Subtotal Provide member number:. - 7 % Sales Tax (Ohio Residents) Mail to: EDR ENTERPRISES 3592 Lee Road Shaker Heights. Ohio 44120 (216) 751-7360 Total Allow 6 to 8 weeks for processing. Circle 97 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 59 LIFE & T M E S Create personalized gifts for family and friends. 1of2 Report Formats from Footprints. 1909, . . . . . . APR Ol CARL SMITH WAS BORN IN LAKE CHARLES, IDAHO /' APR 06 Robert E. Peary and 5 others tJBcam« thii first to re*i MAV 01 Minidoka Dam btrcame the first federal hydroolectric | MAY 03 Th» 33th Kentucky Derby was won by Wintnrgrsen (giOB MAY 07 Edwin Land wa* born (devised the Polaroid process ih JUNOS London publishers accused Hark Twain of plagiarizing S JUN 15 B.9. Shlbe patented a cork-centered baseball JUN 30 Forbes Field opened i n Pi t taburgh , firat fireproof bo 19E0- - • ■ • MAR £9 Film stars Douglas Fa: APR 03 The firat U.S. indoor tot MAV 31 Th» flth InrtiAnftOQlia 500 banks and Mary Pic June 3rd'» PLACE IN HISTORY ;o San F least ing :he rigf Anti-Saloon League established in completed the 1st U.S. space walk U.S. the oldest known copy of the Ohio IIB93: (Gemini U, ) Magna Ctrti OTHER FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN IN 1935 . . . Edward wh (19&3) ... Brl 1976) tied exist ■th y< YOU WERE BDHifig a .fchund- COMPANV ON Elvis Presley Robert Conrad : : : Gloria Steinem Richard Chamberlai: Loretta Lynn : Acto • Singe A LITTLE OF THE BEST FROM 1933 ■Jeff en Confederate ftanaom Eli > Auto Maker El len Corby Col le Da\ adw, the John Ford Victor Mclagien Bette Davis Cathode ray tube LIFE'S UPS I DOWNS EVENT •n Dewhi McMur tr' h sank German battleship ■ Kennedy conducted White 26 Jacquelir MERRY MELOD: 1 0(3 Report Formats from Special Days. Special Days™ Timescripts Timescripts are one-page documents that highlight the people and headlines from a day gone by. They make excellent gifts for birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, retirements and other special days. You can create thousands of different Timescripts with Special Days historical databases that span all the way back to 1850. Three different report formats are available: Birthday, Anniversary or Flashback. Footprints" TimeLines TimeLines are multi-page documents that show key events from one's life embedded in the fabric of history. You can create TimeLines that chart a relative's, your family's, or a company's history from before the Civil War to modern times. You pick the types of historical events to display alongside the personal events. You can pick any combination of Footprints' databases: Sports, Business, U.S. History, Inter- national, Science & Technology, Arts & Entertainment or Strange & Weird. Only $39.95 each! Order Today - Introductory Prices Good For A Limited Time! Special Days & Footprints Will Run On IBM PC's or Compatibles. DOS 2.1 + , 256k. With DOS 3.0+ Footprints requires 320k. To Order: Call 800-722-0054 (Check, Visa/MC/AmEx) S39.95 + $2 s/h for each copy ordered. S74.95 for both products (save $5.00). In Texas add 8% Sales Tax. THE SALINON Corporation P.O. Box 31047, Dallas, Texas 75231 For more information call (214) 692-9091. BOOK REVIEWS Few books can claim the distinction of being complete; this one comes as close as any I've seen. The author provides code for CGA, EGA, VGA, MCGA, and Hercules monochrome adapters. In addition to interfacing details, Wilton provides top- notch C code for drawing lines, ellipses, fills, bit-block opera- tions, and even animation. For the fill operation alone, he pre- sents three different algorithms. My only complaint with this work is not its content, but its delivery: AH the listings are printed in light green. If my vision fails, it's because of all the time I've spent squinting at the list- ings in this invaluable reference. — Richard Grehan A COURSE IN NUMBER THEORY AND CRYPTOGRA- PHY by Neal Koblitz, Springer-Verlag , New York, NY: 1987, 204 pages, $34. G. H. Hardy boasts in his autobiography that number theory is one of the few fields where the pure mathema- tician's work is safe from exploitation by practical applications. Neal Koblitz opens his excellent survey with that quote, but he means it ironically. For, today, number theory is at the heart of a very practical and worldly field: cryptography. The traditional lock and sealed envelope mean nothing in the realm of networks and electronic mail; instead, formerly arcane theorems about factoring numbers and finding primes are the essential tools in the quest to keep— or steal— secret information. The first chapters review selected topics in number theory in an attempt to make the book accessible to lay readers as well as students and specialists. The presentations are clear, concise, and lightly spiced with humor. Later chapters attack more ad- vanced concepts, like quadratic residuosity and public key sys- tems. The final chapter discusses recent work on using elliptic curves to encrypt messages and factor large numbers. The im- portance of the computer in cryptography is reflected through- out the book by numerous exercises and examples involving computer algorithms for encoding data. —Peter Wayner DESKTOP PUBLISHING TYPE & GRAPHICS by Deke McClelland and Craig Danuloff, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, NY: 1987, 312 pages, $29.95. This illustrated "shop reference" to PostScript typefaces is highly instructive and ac- cessible. Apple screen faces, PostScript and Apple laser type- faces, and typefaces available from other sources are all thor- oughly detailed: One page in each section is devoted to stylistic variations available within a given typeface— type weights, re- verse type, condensed and expanded type, and so on. A graphics chapter offers illustrations and usage advice for lines and shapes, screens and patterns, and clip art. The appen- dixes give background information on every typeface used in the book, listing available screen and printer fonts, font ID num- bers, size in bytes of the available Macintosh screen fonts, total memory required for all sizes of a font, exact PostScript names, amount of memory the font requires, and the vendor. If you're interested in using page layout software and find yourself frustrated by questions like, "How will 24-point Pala- tino headlines look next to 10-point Optima text in a 20-pica column?" get this book. It will seldom be left unopened while you design with the Mac or IBM PC . —George R. Beinhorn CONTRIBUTORS LEAD REVIEW: Critic and author Hugh Kenner lives in Bal- timore, Maryland. BRIEFLY NOTED: Tom Thompson is a senior technical editor at BYTE. John linger is a U. S. geophys- icist in Washington, DC. Jack D. Kirwan teaches economics at the University of Arizona. Richard Grehan is a senior technical editor at BYTE. Peter Wayner studies computer science at Cor- nell University. George R. Beinhorn (North San Juan, Nevada) is a nonfiction writer who uses desktop-publishing tools. 60 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 264 on Reader Service Card MERGER ! UDS Puts Sync & Async Protocols on a Single Board One expansion slot on your IBM PC or com- patible can now do double duty. UDS has packaged both synchronous and asynchro- nous protocols, plus a V.22 bis compliant modem, on a single Sync-Up™ card. The unit also provides true synchronous autodialing via bus-directed commands and responses. In the asynchronous mode, the unit is com- patible with the AT command set. For the user, this means unparalleled flexi- bility in micro-to-mainframe, micro-to-mini and micro-to-micro communications. Data rate (2400, 1200 or 600 bps synchronous; 2400, ;m %^ 1200 ' 600 or 0-300 bps asynchro- nous), private line or dial-up operation and RTS/CTS delay are software selectable options. The device provides full-duplex operation over either two-wire private or dial-up circuits; 2780/3780/3270 BSC and 3270/3770/5251 SNA software is available. The unit is compatible with most asynchronous communication packages, including Mirror II. For additional specifications, quantity prices, and information on other Sync-Up products, contact Universal Data Systems, 5000 Bradford Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805. D 5 Universal Data Systems (M) MOTOROLA INC. Information Systems Group PHONE 800/451-2369 COMDEX: Booth #3852 Circle 300 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 61 Above® Board 2 is the first memory board for the PS/2™ that comes with the new expanded memory specification — LIM 4.0. Because only Above Board 2 comes from Intel.The company that developed LIM 4.0. So now your users can access more memory. And run the very latest DOS appli- cation software well beyond 640K. Which will give everyone powerful, new capabilities they never thought possible. Above Board 2 also promises 100% com- patibility with OS/2'" application software. Along with guaranteeing compatibility with the PS/2's microchannel technology. Add to that Intel's technical support, award-winning documentation and five-year warranty, and Above Board 2 is clearly your one and only choice. Of course you could always wait for the competition to catch up. But, where would that leave you? For more information, call 800-538-33^3 Trademarks/owner: Above, Intel/Intel Corporation: PS/2. OS/2 /International Business Machines Corporation.© 1988 Intel Corporation. Circle 142 on Reader Service Card PETITION OUT ON A UNI 'w;;r^7M •• - . — ^ ■ ■ -; 0 to 60 in 5 seconds with new UniLab 8620 analyzer-emulator. ■ 64Kbytes from hard disk in 5 seconds. That's moving. But today you've got to be fast just to stay in the race for better micro- processor designs. ■ The secret is a new, high-speed parallel interface: the Orion bus. Which zips data between your PC/AT and the 8620 analyzer- emulator, breaking the RS-232 bottleneck. ■ The 8620 with O-bus gives you complete program diagnosis — and solutions — in real time. For more than 150 different micro- processors. Using the same command set environment. ■ A generous 2730 trace-cycle buffer with selective filtering lets you cut through the clutter and display just the traces you wish. And you get ljusec resolution in program time measurement. Plus continuous InSight monitoring of your program's key functions as they are performed. Fuel Injection Controller TMb display show the wine* held in registers and selected senary locations. Display Is updated 5 tines/sec. fwts ES for Help. thro it 1 pressur tesp vacaiw 1F3B 3ZR3-E1 lEft? 1EE8-B9 advance delay decel rp* nth ftF=8BB5 (sx-a-PnC) K=9FB9 D&3B8B HL=6473 1X=4958 1V4K7 rate conpr hyst SMBBfl ftF'=FPF3(SZ-fl-pnC) BC'=7439 BE'=89S3 HL'=8B19 count=«Z7 global vareidalay fuel cylil :Z S3 :4 jwssaga status 1B£8-1BsT B6«aHB128BB17ZE«6T74ZlZEEBF8 .H.tl, . .r.Hntt. . stack lSfB-lBFF E2 4D 16 66 89 24 72MBfl3Qe95F73ME8Ffl .I1...$rd....sd, InSight Display. InSight blends analyzer- emulator techniques to give you continuous, real time monitoring of key processorfunctions. And still services user interrupts. It displays changing register contents, I/O lines, ports, user-defined memory windows. With your own labels. ■ On top of that, you get UniLab 's trade- mark ability to debug by symptom, not just by breakpoint and single step. And, to help you complete the job on time, on the spot, a stimulus generator and EPROM programmer are included. ■ Ease of use, another Orion trademark, is also built in. So you have all the familiar features and formats you're used to working with. It doesn't matter if your project is a single chip controller or complex 16-bit Reset and trace first cycles after startup Shou current activity (trace innediately) Trigger on an address Trigger an a urite to an address (or range) Trigger on a read to an address (or range) Trigger on a Fetch fro* an address (or range) Trigger on a fetch outside a range of addresses Trigger on a data value after an address Filter a range of addresses Filter excluding a range of addresses after an address Filter read cycles Fi Iter read cycles aTter an address Filter urite cycles Filter urite cycles after an address Count cycles between tuo addresses Analyzer Triggers. Commonly used triggers can be selected quicklyfrom a list of standard and user-defined triggers. microprocessor, the 8620 is the top price/ performance analyzer-emulator that does it all. At just $4380. With processor Personality Paks typically $550 each. ■ UniLab 8620. Fast-lane debugging that gets you to market quicker. Call toll-free: 800/245-8500. In CA: 415/361-8883 INSTRUMENTS See us at Electro Booth 2741-45 64 BYTE' MAY 1988 702 Marshall St. , Redwood City, CA 94063 TLX 530942 FAX 415/361-8970 Computer Integrated Instrumentation Circle 212 on Reader Service Card mm Products in Perspective 67 What's New 89 Short Takes TurbosPort 386 Model 40 Bridge-File ELM2 version 2.07 HP-19BandHP-28S WordPerfect for the Macintosh Optasm Think 'n Time Reviews 102 Word Processors for Desktop Publishing 121 The Amdek System/386 127 Dynamac's Portable Mac 134 Apple's new series of LaserWriter II printers 143 QuickShare, DaynaFile, and MatchMaker 153 Microsoft Windows 2.03 and Windows/386 157 Command Plus 160 Wendin-DOS 171 Silverado and ©BASE 176 Byline 180 NexView 191 Computing at Chaos Manor by Jerry Pournelle 207 Applications Only by Ezra Shapiro or m «_« at as em m m mm m m sssis. tarn at. a u m m m m m m m m i ■ m -a m .m m m - immm » Aww^w m ,m. .«# m m * MAY 1988 -BYTE 65 IT'S TIME TO DO SOME SERIOUS 386 BUGBUSTING! PROBE'S menu bar and pull- down menus set a new standard for debugger interfaces. PROBE has , source-level debugging to let you "C" your program. POP registers up and down with a single key. This is an out-of-range memory-overwrite bug. Since it is interrupt related, it only appears in real time. Welcome to your nightmare. Your company has bet the farm on your product. Your demonstration wowed the operating committee, and beta ship- ments were out on time. Then wham! All your beta customers seemed to call on the same day. "Your software is doing some really bizarre things',' they say. Your credibility is at stake. Your profits are at stake. Your sanity is at stake. THIS BUG'S FOR YOU You rack your brain, trying to figure something out. Is it a random memory overwrite? Or worse, an overwrite to a stack- based local variable? Is it sequence dependent? Or worse, randomly caused by interrupts? Overwritten code? Undocu- mented "features" in the software you're linking to? And to top it off, your program is too big. The software debugger, your program and it's symbol table can't fit into memory at the same time. Opening a bicycle shop suddenly isn't such a bad idea. THIS DEBUGGER'S FOR YOU Announcing the 386 PROBE™ Bugbuster,*from Atron. Nine of the top-ten software developers sleep better at night because of Atron hardware-assisted debuggers. Because they can set real-time breakpoints which instantly detect memory reads and writes. Now, with the 386 PROBE, you have the capability to set a qualified breakpoint, so the breakpoint triggers only if the events are coming from the wrong procedures. So you don't have to be halted by breakpoints from legitimate areas. You can even detect obscure, sequence-dependent problems by stopping a breakpoint only after a specific chain of events has occurred in a specific order. Then, so you can look at the cause of the problem, the 386 PROBE automatically stores the last 2K cycles of program execution. Although other debuggers may try to do the same thing, Atron is the only company in the world to dequeue the pipelined trace data so you can easily understand it. Finally, 386 PROBE's megabyte of hidden, write-protected memory stores your symbol table and debugger. So your bug can't roach the debugger. And so you have room enough to debug a really big program. COULD A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP PUT YOU IN THE TOP TEN? Look at it this way. Nine of the top-ten software products in any given category were created by Atron customers. Maybe their edge is — a good night's sleep. Call and get your free, 56-page bugbusting bible today. And if you're in the middle^ f of a nightmare right now, give us a purchase order number. We'll FEDEX you a sweet dream. BUGBUSTERS A division of Northwest Instrument Systems, Inc. Saratoga Office Center • 1 2950 Saratoga Avenue Saratoga, CA 95070 • Call 408/253-5933 today. •Versions for COMPAQ. PS/2-80S and compatibles. Copyright *> 1987 by Atron. 386 PROBE is a trademark of Atron. Call 44-2-855-888 in the UK and 49-8-985-8620 in West Germany. Circle 31 on Reader Service Card WHAT'S NEW PC Power in Your Palm Datacomputer 3.0 is a 35- ounce, hand-held, 16-bit computer designed for "those who work while in motion, " according to National Data- computer. Measuring 10 by 5 by 1 Vi inches, it's based on a low-power 80C88 micropro- cessor and includes an 8-line by 26-character backlit super- twist LCD display. Since users of this type of system pri- marily work with numbers, it has a full-size numeric keypad. But there's also a downsized QWERTY keyboard for enter- ing alphabetic data. The Datacomputer 3.0 comes with an 8-pin DIN serial printer connector, an RJ-11 phone jack for an optional modem, a bar code wand port, an external power supply port, and RS-232C serial ports. It can also get its power from standard AA alkaline batteries, and it has power con- nectors for peripherals such as the bar code wand or laser scanner. Interactive Data Manager, a memory-resident program, is shipped with the system. It lets you program the computer for data collection and trans- mit data in Lotus 1-2-3- and dBASE-compatible files. And since most MS-DOS applica- tions won't run directly on the Datacomputer, it comes with software tools for cus- tomizing and developing appli- cations. Datacomputer 3.0 comes with either 128K or 384K bytes of memory on the main board. Price: 128K-byte version, $1995; 3 84K-byte version, $2245; Hayes-compatible modem, $199. Contact: National Datacom- S Y S T puter, The Middlesex Technol- ogy Center, 900 Middlesex Turnpike, Building 5, Billeri- ca, MA 01821, (617) 663- 7677. Inquiry 751. ALR Speeds Up Its 386-Based Systems Using Compaq's Flex Bus Architecture, the Intel 82385 cache memory con- troller with 32K bytes of RAM, and high-speed hard disk drives, Advanced Logic Re- search claims its two new 80386-based systems zip along up to 50 percent faster than comparable IBM PS/2 Micro Channel systems. The FlexCache 16386 runs at 16 MHz, and the FlexCache 20386 runs at 20 MHz, both with zero wait states. Each comes with 1 megabyte of 32-bit RAM (expandable to 2 megabytes on the mother- board). Also included are two 32-bit, four 16-bit, and two 8-bit expansion slots and a 1.2-megabyte 5 W -inch floppy disk drive. The FlexCache 16386 comes with either a 66- or a 100-megabyte hard disk drive with an average access time of 30 milliseconds. To further speed things up, the RLL (run- length-limited) controller uses a 1 -to- 1 interleave for a data transfer rate of 650K bytes per second, according to the company. ALR is now using Compaq 's Flex Bus Architecture. The 20386 comes in three configurations, with a 100-, 150-, or 300-megabyte hard disk drive. Its controller also uses a 1 -to- 1 interleave for a data transfer rate of 779K bytes per second. The FlexCache 16386 measures 5 Vi by 15 Vi by 21 inches and weighs about 75 pounds. The 20386 measures 7 'A by 17 by 26 inches and tips the scales at about 100 pounds. Price: 16386 with 66-mega- byte drive, $4690; 16386 with 100-megabyte drive, $5690; 20386 with 100-megabyte drive, $6490; 20386 with 150-megabyte drive, $7490; 20386 with 300-megabyte drive, $9990. Contact: Advanced Logic Research Inc., 10 Chrysler, Irvine, CA 92718, (714) 581-6770. Inquiry 752. SEND US YOUR NEW PRODUCT RELEASE We 'd like to consider your product for publication. Send us full in- formation, including its price, ship date, and an address and tele- phone number where readers can get further information. Send to New Products Editor, BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peter- borough, NH 03458. Information contained in these items is based on manufacturers ' written statements and/or telephone interviews with BYTE reporters. BYTE has not formally reviewed each prod- uct mentioned. A 286 from the Golden Arche rche Technologies' cor- porate logo is a large sin- gle yellow arch, and it's prominently displayed on the front panel of its Rival 286, an AT-compatible system that runs at both 8 MHz and 12 MHz with one wait state. Stan- dard configurations include either 640K bytes or 1 mega- byte of 100-nanosecond (ns) RAM on the motherboard (ex- pandable to 16 megabytes), six 16-bit and two 8-bit expan- sion slots, and the expected parallel and serial ports. The Rival 286 also comes with single or dual 1 .2-mega- byte 5 V4-inch floppy disk drives, a 101-key keyboard, and an out-front control panel with both reset and turbo switches. You can further customize your Arche with a variety of hard disk drives ranging from 20 to 80 megabytes. Price: $1795 to $4195. Contact: Arche Technologies Inc., 745 High St., Westwood, MA 02090, (800) 422-4674; in Massachusetts, (617) 461-1111. Inquiry 753. continued MAY 1988 'BYTE 67 WHAT'S NEW Eight-Pen Plotter Plots from A to D Signaling what could be a trend in high-performance pen plotters, CalComp's new model 1023, priced at $4895, has eight pens and two 68000 microprocessors. It can produce A- to D-size draw- ings and works with the IBM PC and compatibles to PS/2s to Macs to DEC Micro VAXes. According to a company spokesperson, the 1023 incor- porates new approaches to plotter engineering that have produced performance speci- fications of 30 inches per sec- ond on an axis and 42 ips on the diagonal. Along with sepa- rate 68000s to control paper and pen motors and data com- munications, a proprietary plotting algorithm searches the plot data to find the vector endpoint nearest to the present pen position. Some additional features of the 1023 include addressable resolution of 0.0005 inch; re- peatability of 0.005 inch; accu- racy of 0. 1 percent of the move or 0.01 inch, whichever is greater; and a mean time before failure of 3000 hours. Price: $4895; buffer memory boards, $985 (1 megabyte) and $1450 (2 megabytes). Contact: CalComp, 2411 West La Palma Ave. , Anaheim, CA 92801, (714) 821-2142. Inquiry 754. Logitech says its new HiRez Mouse is just the thing for you if your desk space is cramped: The com- pany claims the mouse needs 62 percent less desk- top real estate than your gar- den-variety type of electron- ic rodent. The HiRez Mouse has three buttons and a resolu- tion of 320 dots per inch, as opposed to the 200-dpi reso- lution of most of its competi- tors. As a result, you don't The CalComp 1023 plots it all. Add a 1 .44-megabyte Floppy Disk Drive to Your System TT oshiba's newest Univer- I sal Installation Kit now in- cludes the ND356T, its 2- megabyte (1 .44-megabyte formatted) 3 l A -inch floppy disk drive. The kit adapts the 3 '/2-inch drive to fit into the mounting space of any 5 W -inch floppy disk drive. The ND356T lets you need to move it as far to move the cursor on the screen. The company says the mouse is especially ef- fective with large screens or high-resolution displays such as an EGA or VGA. HiRez Mouse comes with driver and custom applica- tion software, but no cheese. Price: $149. Contact: Logitech, 6505 Kaiser Dr., Fremont, CA 94555,(415)795-8500. Inquiry 757. transfer software and data be- tween 3 Vi-inch and 5 !4-inch floppy disks and gives you compatibility between IBM XT and AT desktops, porta- bles, and PS/2 computers. The drive operates with most standard floppy disk con- trollers; however, to use the 1. 44-megabyte mode on an IBM PC-type computer, you need a controller that supports a 500K-byte data transfer rate. If you don't have DOS 3.2 or 3.3, which directly support 3 '/2-inch floppy disk drives, you can get an optional soft- ware device driver that lets you use the ND356T with MS- DOS or PC-DOS 2.0 to 3.1. The kit contains the 3 Vi- inch floppy disk drive, space plates, and jumper cables. Price: $219; $14.95 for the software driver. Contact: Toshiba America Inc., Information Systems Division, 9740 Irvine Blvd. , Irvine, CA 92718, (714) 380-3000. Inquiry 755. The Little Drive That Can— Move Around For you PC users who like your data to go, Western Dynex has a hard disk drive that holds 32 megabytes, weighs about 2 pounds, and is said to be as easy to snap in or out of a PC as an expan- sion card. You can pop the Dynamodule out of one ma- chine and put it into another without losing any data, the company says, or you can take it out of the machine and store it elsewhere for security reasons. The Dynamodule has a track-to-track seek time of 3 milliseconds. Head settling time is 15 ms, and data rate is 5 megabits per second. When used in a computer with an- other hard disk drive, either the Datamodule or the other hard disk can be used as the primary storage unit. You can snap in more Datamodules to provide more storage space. Price: $1095. Contact: Western Dynex, 3536 West OsboraRd., Phoenix, AZ 85019, (602) 269-6401. Inquiry 756. DEC Modems Offer Security and Error Correction I f you have a computer sys- I tern that lets folks dial in for data and you're concerned with security, Digital Equip- ment Corp.'s DF212 and DF242 stand-alone modems may be just the ticket to peace of mind. And they provide error correction to boot. The DF212 works at 300/1200 bps, the DF242 at 300/2400 bps. Both modems give you four levels of security against unauthorized access. You can set the level of security from simple passwords to complete password and telephone num- ber verification and callback. The modems can store up to 30 telephone numbers, each up to 36 characters long, and can call predefined numbers continued NEW MOUSE USES LESS SPACE 68 BYTE* MAY 1988 For problems involving engineering calculations or scientific analysis, the answer is MathCAD. 0 Transporting an iceberg to Southern California is a formidable task. Calculat- ing the variables is just as demanding. How many tugboats would be needed to tow the ice mass? At what cost? How much fresh water would be lost 7 Innovative solutions require extra- ordinary tools. For problems involving calculations or what-if analysis, the answer is MathCAD. MathCAD is the only PC-based soft- ware package specifically designed to give technical professionals the freedom to follow their own scientific intuition. Requires IBM " PC or compatible You decide how to solve the problem - MathCAD does the "grunt work." □ Ends programming and debugging. □ Recalculates as variables change. □ Generates quick plots. Easy to learn and use, MathCAD operates interactively in standard math notation. And its built-in functions pro- vide all the power you need to solve real-world problems. MathCAD handles matrix operations, solves simultaneous equations, works with real and complex numbers, does automatic unit conver- sion, displays Greek characters and HOW other math symbols, performs FFTs and much more. There's never been a better way to get fast, accurate solutions to analytical problems. That's why 20,000 engineers and researchers are using MathCAD daily in applications as diverse as fluid mechanics, signal processing and molecular modeling. To find out what MathCAD can do for you, call us today for a free demo disk: 1-800-MathCAD (in MA, 617-577-1017). Or write to MathSoft, Inc., One Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA 02139. Math Soft Software Tools for Calculating Minds MANY GLASSES OF WATER IBM'" ; International Business Machines Corporation MathCAD'" MathSott, Inc Convnqhl MathSoft, Inc. 1988. CAN THIS ICEBERG SUPPLY TOLA.? Circle 175 on Reader Sen ice Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 69 WHAT'S NEW PERIPHERALS and make connections over WATS lines. Both modems feature Microcom Networking Proto- col (MNP) and X.PC proto- col, and they can operate with the Digital Modem Com- mand Language (DMCL) and the Hayes AT command language. Price: $645 for theDF212; $795 for the DF242. Contact: Digital Equipment Corp., Computer Special Sys- tems Group, Nashua, NH 03062, (603) 884-5111. Inquiry 758. Put It on Tape Irwin Magnetics has two new external tape systems for backing up data from a Macintosh; one holds 40 mega- bytes, and the other holds 64 megabytes. The backup drives use DC 2000 minicartridge tapes and connect to a Mac's SCSI port. They do file-by-file image backups and streaming file-by-file backups. The com- pany says the drives generally take about a minute to back up or restore 2 megabytes. The control software, called EzTape/Mac, uses icons to take you through the pro- cess of putting your data on tape; the icons indicate which folders you've chosen to back up. EzTape/Mac also lets the drives read tapes from the IBM PC and compatibles and PS/2s. It supports MacFinder ColorVueSE adds color capabilities to your Mac. and Apple's A/UX. The drives use embedded servo technology for accurate head tracking, Irwin says, and they employ FM (modified frequency modulation) en- coding. In streaming mode, the data transfer rate is 500,000 bps. Tape speed is 50 inches per second for the 40-mega- byte unit, and 38 ips for the 64-megabyte model. Price: 40-megabyte model, $1395; 64-megabyte model, $1595. Contact: Irwin Magnetics, 2101 Commonwealth Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI 48105, (313) 996-3300. Inquiry 759. Interface Brings Color to Your Mac SE Orchid Technology's ColorVueSE is a color video interface card for the Mac SE that lets you see color displays of your applications programs. To use the interface, you need an additional color monitor, such as an Apple Color RGB monitor or an IBM or compatible VGA monitor. You can display images on both the color monitor and the SE's standard screen at the same time, with an optional FatBits version on the SE's normal screen, and you can use up to 16 colors from a palette EzTape/Mac. MAC SOUND RECORDER If you'd like to hear more out of your Macintosh than an occasional beep beep, you have to put more into it. Farallon Computing, maker of the PhoneNet net- working system for the Mac, has a hardware/software combination that lets you use a microphone to record sounds directly into the computer. The MacRecorder Sound System consists of a sound digitizer and editing soft- ware. A bundled application called HyperSound lets you record material and paste it into a HyperCard stack. The digitizer comes in a box (about twice the size of a mouse) that hooks to the Mac's serial port. It has a built-in microphone, a line for another microphone, and an input line for taking sound from an external source, such as a stereo. If you have a Mac II, you can get true stereo by plugging in two MacRecorders. The editing software, called SoundEdit, lets you record, edit, and play back sounds in several formats, including StudioSession, VideoWorks, Beep INITs, and HyperCard. The soft- ware can control sampling rates, compress sounds, create loops, set pitch and echo, and mix sounds. Sam- pling rates are 22, 11, 7.5, and 5 kHz. Price: $199. Contact: Farallon Comput- ing, 2150 Kittredge St., Berkeley, CA 94704, (415) 849-2331. Inquiry 762. of 4096 at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. You can adjust the hue, brightness, and satura- tion of the colors; highlight areas; and color your pictures. Horizontal panning and an automatic Screensaver are also featured. You can print images in color on the Imagewriter II, the Imagewriter LQ, or the Hew- lett-Packard PaintJet. The PaintJet can produce color overhead transparencies. ColorVueSE is compatible with most Mac software, in- cluding SuperPaint, Mac- Draw, Cricket Draw, Video- Works, QuarkXpress, and Cricket Presents. Price: $695. Contact: Orchid Technology, 45365 Northport Loop W, Fremont, CA 94538, (415) 683-0300. Inquiry 760. A Pair of Analog Monitors for Your PS/2 Princeton Graphics Sys- tems' PSC-28 is a 12-inch high-resolution analog color monitor with a maximum reso- lution of 770 by 570 pixels and an infinite color palette. Other features include a color button for green, amber, or cyan text; 0.28-millimeter dot pitch for text and graphics; and a black matrix tube with a nonglare etched screen and dark tinted glass. Then there's the PSM-03, a 12-inch high-resolution ana- log monochrome monitor with a resolution of 800 by 630 pixels and infinite shades of gray in analog mode. It has dy- namic focusing circuitry and a white phosphor display. Both monitors are compat- ible with IBM PS/2s and VGA and MDGA. Price: $695 for the PSC-28; $250 for the PSM-03. Contact: Princeton Graphics Systems, 601 Ewing St., Build- ing A, Princeton, NJ, 80540, (609) 683-1660. Inquiry 761. continued 70 BYTE- MAY 1988 "Within a few days, SideKick Plus became even more indispensable than SideKick " Dick Pountain, Personal Computer World Here's what Personal Computer World had to say about SideKick® Plus: "When the news of SideKick Plus arrived, I made up a shopping list of the improvements I would like to see . . . Borland has provided all these things and much, much more." Intelligence and elegance of design "I discovered that the same intelligence and elegance of design that initially attracted me are still there, and certain new features like the custom- izable menu system represent a real breakthrough in user interface design." Sophisticated memory management "Memory management in SideKick Plus is so sophisticated that it almost amounts to an alternative operating system ... The amount of memory tied up is tiny (less in fact than old SideKick!) ..." The Phonebook: Fully-featured communications "The Phonebook has come a long way ... For one thing, it has acquired a fully featured communications package which can work in the background; you can upload and download files while continuing to work on your PC . . . The Script language is one of the best 1 have seen." The Notepad: Power for serious writing "The Notepad is as powerful as many word processors ... I would happily use it for serious writing." "Up to nine notepads can be opened simultaneously with SideKick Plus." Outlook: The best outline processor "Outlook is . . . the best outline pro- / cessor I've tried, comfortably beating ThinkTank, PC-Outline, and Ready! in elegance and ease of use." 3'h" and 5'A" disks included. Hard disk required. For il"' IBM I*/'-'" il Hie IHM« Uimily nl lersnnai h.iih.uuts .mil al 1110% n>m[Ki!llili'.s All H'.tlilinl friMliKLs art' Iraili'mni'kMH' R'Heleri'd irailemarkMi! Itiirlanil Interim inl. Ilu' Al»vc lioartl is ll irailrmarr nl Intel Cnra Milne In . mil I jinnlur! names an' trademarks nf their resaertive lialilers. (niriurlfilll eilttll! Herlanil liilrnn nil lar HI 1227 Circle 46 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 47) The File Manager: Competing with the standalones "The File Manager . . . performs a similar function to standalone utilities like Xtree, Quick DOS, or the Norton Commander, and shares features with all of them." The Time Planner: Hugely enhanced "The Time Planner has advanced even further than the Phonebook ... it has been designed with networking in mind." Plus a lot more "The enhanced cut-and-paste functions are perhaps the most attractive feature of SideKick Plus . . . [it] has a powerful, consistent ability to cut-and-paste from any application to any other." "The calculator is no longer one, but four calculators; you can switch the type to Business, Scientific, Programmer, or Formula." Positively addicting! "In my view, the individual applications in SideKick Plus are of such a standard that I would be hard put to better them with a collection of standalone applications r^-^Qe^t'S^y^- • • • I remain an addict." •£^2^ Excerpts from Dick Pountain 's review of SideKick Pius in Personal Computer World. March 1988. If you have the Intel 9 Above'"Board you can load the SideKick Plus desk accessories into expanded or extended memory and leave most of your conventional memory to run your other applications. Ask your dealer about Borland's special offer for SideKick owners. 60-Day Money- Back Guarantee* BORLAND 8 3 For the dealer nearest you or a brochure, call (800) 543-7543 MAY 1988 -BYTE 71 WHAT'S NEW A D D - I N S RamQuest packs up to 8 megabytes into your PS/2. Ex Post Facto PostScript If you have an HP LaserJet Series II printer but want or need PostScript compatibil- ity, QMS offers a solution. The company's JetScript control- ler board lets the HP laser printer function as a full- fledged PostScript printer. The product consists of three parts: a printer controller card that fits into an expan- sion slot of an IBM XT, AT, or compatible; an adapter card that fits into the LaserJet printer; and the PostScript software, which you install on your hard disk. The printer controller card features a 16-MHz 68000 microproces- sor and 3 megabytes of mem- ory, with 2 megabytes for data and 1 megabyte for the PostScript code. Since the PostScript code resides on your hard disk rather than in ROM, you can easily upgrade it as the software matures. QMS claims that combin- ing JetScript with the HP LaserJet Series II results in the fastest PostScript printer available. Price: $2495. Contact: QMS Inc., One Magnum Pass, Mobile, AL 36618, (205) 633-4300. Inquiry 763. PS/2 Boards Pack PS/2 Memory The memory needs of new applications and the OS/2 operating system are creating a hunger for more and more memory — a hunger that add- on board makers are more than happy to feed. First, Orchid Technology has expanded its line of mem- ory boards with two new boards for the IBM PS/2 Models 50, 60, and 80. There's a basic model, and there's one for those with truly large working-memory needs. The RamQuest II board is your basic add-some-memory board. It has 1 megabyte of on-board memory, but you can double its capacity by simply adding 256K-byte RAM chips. But for truly "mondo" memory needs, the RamQuest Extra board has space for up to 8 megabytes of RAM, using either 256K-byte RAM chips or 1 -megabyte SIMMs (single in-line memory modules) in any combination. The board also has two RS-232C serial ports. Both boards come with autoconfiguration software to make installation a breeze. Orchid says the boards support DOS, EMS 4.0, and OS/2. The RamQuest Extra board has its own Micro Channel ID number, so you don't need to modify your IBM reference disk if you pack the board with more than 2 megabytes. Price: RamQuest II, $649; RamQuest Extra, $599 (with OK bytes) and $749 (512K bytes) . Contact: Orchid Technology, 45365 Northport Loop W, Fremont, CA 94538, (415) 683-0300. Inquiry 764. Meanwhile, Tecmar, one of the first companies to provide boards for the old IBM PC, has two new memory boards for the PS/2 Models 50, 60, and 80. Like the Orchid boards, the two new Tecmar boards feature maxi- mum capacities of 2 mega- bytes and 8 megabytes. The MicroRAM 50/60 memory board is designed spe- cifically for the PS/2 Models 50 and 60. It gives you up to 2 megabytes of RAM com- patible with EMS 4.0 and OS/2. You can use the board with either its own ID number or— for software compatibil- ity purposes— the ID number of IBM's memory board. Tecmar 's second board, the MicroRAM AD (Advanced Design), can hold up to 8 megabytes of RAM. According to the company, all 8 mega- bytes are OS/2-addressable, as well as compatible with EMS 4.0. Two optional I/O modules for the board ($200 each) provide PS/2 users with two extra serial ports or an extra serial port and a single parallel port. Price: MicroRAM 50/60, $350 (OK bytes) and $995 (2 megabytes); MicroRAM AD, $445 (OK bytes), $1145 (2 megabytes), and $4945 (8 megabytes). Contact: Tecmar Inc., 6225 Cochran Rd.. Solon, OH 44139. (216) 349-0600. Inquiry 765. Networking Card If you want a quick way to add a four-user network to your IBM PC AT or compat- ible, QuickLink-IV may be your answer. The latest QuickLink product from Inter- continental Microsystems. QuickLink-IV is a full-length add-in card with four NEC V40 processors, each with 768K bytes of zero-wait-state RAM. All you need to do is connect four terminals to the board and install the network software, and you're set to network. According to the company, QuickLink-IV is unique be- cause you can hook up any PC-based terminal, as well as most ASCII and ANSI termi- nals, including the new Her- cules graphics terminals. You can simplify your installation by using your building's existing telephone wiring. Ter- minals can be up to 4000 feet from the file server. Want to add more users to the network? Just plug in addi- tional QuickLink-IV cards or the company's QuickLink sin- gle-user cards. The system is compatible with NetWare 286 software. Price: $2295. Contact: Intercontinental Microsystems, 4020 Leaverton Court, Anaheim, CA 92807, (714) 630-3714. Inquiry 766. Ethernet Connects the Mac II 3Com Corp. has expanded its line of Ethernet local area network adapters by introducing one for the Mac II. Like other Ethernet adapt- ers, the new EtherLink/NB (which stands for NuBus) supports a network data trans- mission rate of 10 megabits per second. For higher throughput, the EtherLink/NB has a 16K-byte packet buffer and can do 32- bit transfers using the NuBus. The company says the new board is compatible with Apple's AppIeShare network operating system, as well as with its own 3 + network op- erating system. Price: $595. Contact: 3Com Corp., 3165 Kifer Rd., Santa Clara, CA 95052, (408) 562-6400. Inquiry 767. continued 72 BYTE- MAY 1988 mouse ever to set on a desktop. The LOGITECH HiREZ Mouse- the only mouse expressly designed for high-resolution screens. With a resolution of 320 dots-per- inch (as compared with 200 dpi or less for ordinary mice), it covers the same area on your high-res screen, but needs less of your desk to do it. More than 50% less. Saving you valuable desk space, and effort: mouse maneuvers that used to require a sweep of the hand are now reduced to a flick of the wrist. The LOGITF.C.H HiREZ mouse needs 50% less desk space to cover the same amount of screen area as a 200 dpi mouse. Which makes this new mouse a hand s best friend. And a more reliable, long-lasting companion— fully compatible with all popular software, and equipped with a Lifetime Guarantee. Equipped, too, with other advantages exclusive to all Logitech mice: A unique lightweight ergonomic design. Low- angled buttons for maximum comfort and minimum fatigue. An exclusive tech- nology that guarantees a much greater life span. An exceptionally smooth-moving, dirt-resistant roller ball. And natural compatibility with all PCs, look-a- likes, and virtually any software. So if you've got your eyes on a high-res screen, get your hands on the one mouse that's agile enough to keep up with it. The LOGITECH HiREZ Mouse. For the dealer nearest you, call 800- 231-7717 (800-552-8885 in California), or write Logitech, Inc., 6505 Kaiser Drive, Fremont, CA 94555. In Europe, call or write: Logitech Switzerland, European Headquarters, CH-1111 Romanel/Morges, Switzerland (++41-21-869-9656). HLOGITECH Circle 167 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 168) How to pick th Though most mice out there look pretty much alike, they're not all equal in performance. It pays to be just a little choosy to make sure you end up with the right mouse for your needs. Starting with software. If you want full com- patibility with all of your software, all you have to do is look for a mouse with the Logitech name. There are four in all, each one designed for dif- ferent hardware needs. THE HiREZ MOUSE If you've got your eyes on a high-resolution screen, the mouse to get your hand on is the new LOGITECH HiREZ Mouse. With a resolution of 320 dots-per-inch (as compared with 200 dpi or less for ordinary mice), it covers the same area on your high-res screen but needs less of your desk to do it. More than 50% less. Saving you valuable desk space, and 74 BYTE- MAY 1988 The LOGITECH HiREZ Mouse needs 50% lass desk space to cover the same amount of screen area as a 200 dpi mouse. Good instincts run in this family (left to right): the new LOGITECH HiREZ Mouse ($179), the only mouse designed expressly far high-res screens; the LOGITECH Series 2 Mouse for the IBM P$/2 ($99, plugs right into mouse port); and the LOGI TECH Mouse for standard screens (S 1 19, in bus and serial versions). All come with Logitech's awn Tins Software, which assures ease of use with virtually any software, mouse-based or not. effort: mouse maneuvers that used to require sweeps of the hand are now reduced to a flick of the wrist. Which makes this new mouse a hand's best friend. And a more reliable, long-lasting com- panion. And, like all Logitech mice, it's fully compatible with all popular software, and equipped with a Lifetime Guarantee. THE SERIES 2 MOUSE For those who've chosen the Personal System/2,™ the most logical choice is the LOGITECH Series 2 Mouse. It's 100% compati- ble with PS/2, and plugs right into the mouse port, leaving the serial port free to accommodate other peripherals. e right mouse Ilogocd THE ALL-PURPOSE MOUSE: SERIAL OR BUS Most people find our standard mouse is still the best choice for their systems. It's available in both bus and serial versions, one of which is sure to fit perfectly with your hardware. And with all your favorite software— whether mouse-based or not. It's hardly an accident that only Logitech offers you such a complete selection— we're the only mouse company to design and manufacture our own products. We make more mice, in fact, than anyone else. Including custom-designed models for OEMs like AT&T, DEC, and Hewlett-Packard. The three mice pictured to the left come with all this expertise built right in. Which explains an interesting paradox: while _^^^^^| you may pay less for a Logitech mouse, you'll ' surely get more in performance. A Logitech mouse plus Logitech application software equals a complete solution (all prices include mouse, Phis Software, and application): LOGICADD. . . $189. PUBLISHER PACKAGE Turns your PC into 79. PUBLISHER a full-featured ('.ADD software lets beginners and workstation. Every- experts alike produce pro- thing you need for fessitmal, high-impact dimensioned line documents. Design template drawing and ('.ADD. make page layout easy. LOGIPAINT SET. . . $149. Eleven type fonts and a 16 color palette. Creates files that move easily into both LOGICADD and PUBLISHER documents. (800-552-8885 in California). Or fill out and mail the coupon below to: Logitech, Inc., 6505 Kaiser Drive, Fremont, CA 94555. In Europe, call or write: Logitech Switzerland, European Headquarters, CH-1111 Romanel/Morges, Switzerland (++41-21-869-9656). . ■ And in comfort. With a unique lightweight ergonomic design. Low-angled buttons for maxi- mum comfort and minimum fatigue. An exclusive technology that guarantees a much greater life span. An exceptionally smooth-moving, dirt- resistant roller ball. And natural compatibility with all PCs, look-a-likes, and virtually any software. All of which leads to an inescapable conclu- sion: if you want to end up with the right mouse, start with the right mouse company. Logitech. We've got a mouse for whatever the task at hand. For the dealer nearest you, call 800-231-7717 Circle 169 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 1 70) Logitech, Inc., 6505 Kaiser Drive, Fremont, CA 94555. I Logitech Switzerland, European Headquarters, | CH-1111 Romanel/Morges, Switzerland. | Yes! Please send me the name of the nearest Logitech dealer. | Name I Company/Title j Address | Phone ! ffl LOG ITECH 'J Personal System/2 is a trademark of International Business Machines, Corporation. MAY 1988 -BYTE 75 WHAT'S NEW HARDWARE • OTHER Get the Picture? With the Image Phone system, StarSignal says you can store, retrieve, and send full-bandwidth color video pictures over conven- tional phone lines in 5 to 15 seconds. The system includes an IBM PC AT-compatible com- puter with a keyboard, a dual-purpose RGB/NTSC (data/video) monitor, a video compression and frame capture board, a 40-megabyte hard disk drive, a color camera, software, a 9600-bps modem, and a mouse. You can store up to 2000 TV-resolution color stills on the 40-megabyte hard disk drive. You can also up- grade the system to NTSC (Na- tional Television System Committee) standards, making it usable for broadcast, cable, and other standard video applications. Price: $12,995 for the com- plete system; $1995 for Starlite video compression board. Contact: StarSignal Inc., 1210 South Bascom Ave., Suite 221 , San Jose, CA 95128, (408) 294-9604. Inquiry 768. Quick Copy Do you need to make lots of copies of floppy disks? The process is simple and quick with the aptly named Quick Copy, a 12-pound disk duplicator that copies unpro- tected 5 (4 -inch or 3 '/2-inch disks 3 to 5 times faster than a Image Phone sends full-bandwidth color over phone lines. PC, according to ALF Products. To make copies, you insert the original into the top floppy disk drive and a blank disk into the bottom drive. Quick Copy reads the original and formats and copies the blank disk at the same time. With the original in memory, you can then use both drives to make two more copies simulta- neously. Quick Copy for- mats, copies, and checks each disk; you can also choose to have it format only. Quick Copy comes in five models: Model 701 , for 5 14- inch IBM-format disks; Model 801 , for 5 '4-inch multi- ple-format disks; Model 811, for 5 14 -inch high-density disks; Model 821, for 3 Vi- inch multiple-format disks; and Model 822, for 3 Vi -inch multiple-format, high-density disks. Price: 701, $1495; 801, $1995; 811, $2495; 821, $2495; 822, $3495. Contact: ALF Products Inc., 1315F Nelson St., Denver, CO 80215, (800) 321-4668; in Colorado, (303) 234-0871. Inquiry 769. Tracking the Elusive SCSI To know what's happen- ing in your small-com- puter-system-interface (SCSI) channels, use the RT101 SCSI Byte Grabber. It connects be- tween your SCSI port and any SCSI controller or embedded SCSI drive. The face of the in- strument has 10 hexadecimal LEDs that display all control- bus signals, including data parity status. A latched display indicates the data bus status and has a switch that lets you choose free-running or sin- gle-step modes. The Byte Grabber operates from a single 5-volt DC power source, and a UL-approved power pack lets you operate from a standard AC line. Using the Byte Grabber's own reset switch, you can reset the target device without resetting or rebooting the system. The Byte Grabber mea- sures 5 '4 by 4 by 1 Vi inches and comes with connectors. Price: $380; optional 3-foot ribbon cables, $15 each. Contact: Rancho Technology Inc., Rancho Technology Cen- ter, 8632 Archibald Ave., Suite 109, Rancho Cuca- monga, CA 91730, (714) 987-3966. Inquiry 770. continued PLAY THE NUMBERS GAME The Touchstone 3 nu- meric keypad was de- signed for laptops, but it works with larger portables and standard PCs as well. The 22-key layout in- cludes math, cursor- control, Backspace, Escape, Enter, and function keys, as well as 10 nu- meric keys. The keyboard uses stan- dard ASCII character codes and attaches to any RS-232C serial port. It comes with a 4-foot cable and requires no batteries or external power. Touchstone says the key- board draws only 6 milli- amperes of current from the serial port. The RAM-resident soft- ware that is included lets you use the numeric and main keyboards at the same time. Touchstone 3 measures a svelte 5 by 7 'A inches and weighs just under a pound. Price: $129.95. Contact: Touchstone Tech- nology Inc., 955 Buffalo Rd., P.O. Box 24954, Roch- ester, NY 14624,(716)235- 8358. Inquiry 771. 76 BYTE* MAY 1988 ANNOUNCING ORACLE FOR 1-2-3. JUST TIME - $1 ® Spreadsheet growing too big and complex? You need a database. No time to learn a database? You need the ORACLE database add-in for Lotus 1-2-3. If you have Lotus 1-2-3 and $199, you can now solve the six biggest spreadsheet problems: IHas your spreadsheet grown so complex you can't keep track of the formulas any more? 2 Have you had to break down your large spreadsheet into many smaller ones? 3 Do you have to manually re-enter data that's duplicated in several spreadsheets? 4 Do you have to manually manipu- late rows into meaningful groups? 5 Is recalculation time for seldom- used reference variables eating you alive? 6 Do you wish you could simul- taneously share spreadsheet data with other PCs, as well as with minis and mainframes? Now, ORACLE for 1-2-3 turns your spreadsheet into the world-class database you already know how to use. And without learning a new database language, you can use the very same ORACLE that's the most requested DBMS by minicomputer and mainframe users. All for only $199. ORACLE for 1-2-3 lets data rela- tionships replace ever more complex spreadsheet formulas. No more time is wasted recalculating seldom-used reference cells. In short, ORACLE puts data back where it belongs. In a database. With simple extensions to existing Lotus menus, ORACLE for 1-2-3 lets you create new database tables right from rows and columns in your spreadsheet. When you query the database from a cell, you immediately see current database information. Update a spreadsheet cell, and the database is simultaneously updated. A range of cells in your 1-2-3 spread- sheet could really be a window into an online micro, mini or mainframe database anywhere in the world. It's network ready, from LAN to WAN. All as easy as... 1-2-3. ORACLE FOR 1-2-3: THE NEW STANDARD ORACLE is the number one data- base for mainframes, minicomputers and workstations. Software Digest recently rated ORACLE the most powerful and versatile relational DBMS for the PC. And ORACLE is based on SQL, the data management standard endorsed by IBM, ANSI, ISO and the federal government. Now, there is a new standard: ORACLE for 1-2-3. It has the simplicity you've always had, with the power you've always wanted. THE ADVANTAGES OF DATABASE TECHNOLOGY If your data is in a database, yojir spreadsheet only has to deal with* the data you're interested in. Which means spreadsheet performance is dramatically improved. But this is just the beginning. Multiple users can share the same data. Different users can have differ- ent levels of security. Mainframe-class data integrity and error recovery mean never having to say "Ooops!" • CREATE YOUR DATABASE FROM SPREADSHEET COLUMNS AND ROWS. Familiar menus and context-sensitive help guide you through the process. • QUERY YOUR DATABASE AS EASY AS 1-2-3. Have the query built for you, or write SQL queries your- self. Learn why SQL is the industry data management standard. • UPDATE YOUR DATABASE AS YOU UPDATE SPREADSHEET CELLS. In update mode, changes in your spreadsheet become changes in your database. And if you make a mistake, you can . . . • COMMIT OR UNDO CHANGES. Finally, an "UNDO" command for 1-2-3! When your database changes are complete, you can COMMIT them, or ROLLBACK your database and your spreadsheet. • AROUND YOUR OFFICE OR AROUND THE WORLD, ORACLE for 1-2-3 is network ready for data distribution on LANs and WANs. So data on PCs, workstations, minis and even on mainframes appears as if it's on your local hard disk. HEARD ENOUGH? WE'LL PAY SALES TAX AND SHIPPING IF YOU FILL OUT AND MAIL THE ATTACHED COUPON, OR CALL TODAY. YOU CAN ALSO SEE A DEMONSTRATION AT YOUR FAVORITE COMPUTER STORE. fDear Oracle, ORACLE for 1-2-3 ■ Oracle Corporation 20 Davis Drive * Belmont. CA 94002 - and I I Lotus relea; YesJ have an 41*80286/80386 PCrunning tfoOS 3 .0+ and IS Lotus release 2.01. [ also have lj 640KB of RAM, plus either lL 1MB of extended memory or I'll reassign 1MB of my expanded (above-board) memory as extended memory. Please send me the database I already know how to use: The ORACLE Database Add-in for Lotus 1-2-3, Enclosed is my □ check, or 0 VISA/ □ MC7 □ Am Ex credit card authorization for $199. Hurry. Company Street (No PO boxes, please) Zip Credit Card Number Card Expiration Date ORACLGT CALL 1-800-0RACLE1 COMPATIBILITY - PORTABILITY - CONNECTABILITY EXT. 149 TODAY. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. The following are also trademarks: Lotus and 1-2-3 of Lotus Development Corporation; IBM of International Business Machines. TRBA MAY 1988 • BYTE 77 WHAT'S NEW SOFTWARE PROGRAMMING BRICKL1N DOES IT AGAIN Demo II helps you to produce full-fledged mock applications, demos, and tutorials. The new ver- sion has 75 added features. It lets you create 80- by 25- character text slides, capture text or bit-mapped graphics images from other pro- grams, and construct text screen images from other slides. It also now comes shrink-wrapped with stan- dard documentation. The bit-mapped graphics screen images can include normal text or bit-mapped images in CGA, EGA, or Hercules modes. In the new version, you can set and test string and numeric variables to turn overlays on and off or change their positions. Other new actions that you can perform while it's running include arithmetic operations, If, While, Se- lect/Case, file, and printer I/O. Slide Switch settings in Demo II let you create spe- cial effects, controlling how the screen changes from one slide to another. Other minor changes in the new version include copy/paste, text-block word wrapping, type-ahead buffer flushing, and an upgraded Capture program. The manual has grown from 29 to 200 pages, and the program comes with an on-line tutorial and func- tion-key templates. Demo II lets you produce an un- limited number of copies of the run-time module— a change from the old ver- sion's run-time license for just 50 copies. Demo II runs on the IBM PC, AT, PS/2s, and compat- ibles with DOS 2.0 or high- er and 51 2K bytes of RAM. It supports monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA, Hercules adapters, or their equiva- lents. (The run-time version requires 256K bytes of RAM.) Price: $195. Contact: Software Garden Inc., P.O. Box 373, Newton Highlands, MA 02161, (617) 332-2240. Inquiry 775. Talking to DOS DOSTALK is a DOS shell that lets you submit your DOS requests in plain En- glish. It then translates the re- quest into its MS-DOS equiv- alent, and, using artificial intelligence and parsing tech- niques, enhances the transla- tion with other information needed, according to SAK Technologies. The company reports that most sentences are parsed, understood, and transformed into a DOS com- mand in less than 2 seconds on a conventional IBM PC. The package includes DOS utilities such as search and locate, undo, find, erase, and copy, as well as an input history buffer. All DOS ex- ternal commands are listed in a menu with their respective options. The program is written in MuLisp, with a small portion in Turbo Pascal. The major DOSTALK module does not remain resident, although you can invoke it by pressing the F2 key at the DOS prompt. It comes in two parts: an 18K- byte section and a 190K-byte section. When you invoke an external program, the 190K- byte part is removed from RAM, and just the 18K-byte part stays resident. Once the external program is termi- nated, the 18K-byte part re- invokes the main body. To run DOSTALK, you need an IBM PC or compatible with at least 256K bytes of RAM and DOS 2. 1 or higher. It is not copy-protected. Price: $89.95. Contact: SAK Technologies Inc., 1600 North Oak St., Suite 931 W, Arlington, VA 22209, (703) 522-6425. Inquiry 772. Program in Prolog, with C and Pascal on the Side Arity/Prolog version 5.0 includes an embedded C compiler that lets you use C and Pascal with Prolog. The Arity/Prolog compiler and interpreter are written in Arity/Prolog and assembly language and are a superset of Edinburgh Prolog. The pro- gram includes a development and run-time environment for writing, debugging, and run- ning Prolog and assembly language programs. You can purchase the compiler and in- terpreter separately. Arity/Prolog contains a C compiler that handles C decla- rations, preprocessor direc- tives, and C expressions em- bedded within Prolog source code. Arity reports that it is 2 to 10 times faster than other microcomputer implementa- tions of Prolog and that it out- performs many minicomputer implementations. It supports expanded LIM (Lotus/Intel/ Microsoft) memory and gen- erates standard MS-DOS .OBJ files that you can link to create stand-alone programs. It also includes object-oriented routines that let you create win- dows, pull-down menus, and edit and dialog boxes. Arity 's programming shell lets you use its built-in editor or a text editor of your choice. Arity/Prolog also includes a virtual database. Arity re- ports that you can manage databases of up to 2 gigabytes. Sequential, hashed, and binary-tree access methods are included, and you can also define custom-access methods. Arity/Prolog supports IEEE floating-point arith- metic, including transcen- dentals. It also supports the 8087, 80287, and 80387 coprocessors. Other Arity programs, such as Arity /Expert, Arity /SQL, or Arity/ Ad- vanced Toolkit, can be added onto the basic Arity/Prolog programming environment. Arity/Prolog runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compat- ibles with at least 640K bytes of RAM and a hard disk drive. Price: Arity/Prolog compiler and interpreter, $650; interpreter alone, $295; Arity Combination Pak (includes all add-ons), $1095. Contact: Arity Corp., 30 Domino Dr., Concord, MA 01742, (617) 371-1243. Inquiry 773. Disassemble and Patch Your Code Soft-X-Plore is a disas- sembler and patcher that uses four algorithms to sepa- rate code from your data. RJ Swantek reports that the package does this at a rate of 10,000 lines per minute on a hard disk drive. The disassembler is com- patible with the 80386 and 80387 instruction sets. It dis- assembles what's in the files or in RAM memory and patches files using the same addresses given in the disassembled listing. It creates a MASM- ready output and generates labels for Jump, Branch, Call, Data, and Stack. The program can generate comments for MS-DOS and BIOS services. And it will keep patches in separate files for documentation. To speed up creation of future listings, it saves the results of its first program pass. Soft-X-Plore runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compat- ibles with at least 256K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher. Price: $99.95. Contact: RJ Swantek, P.O. Box 1032, Hartford, CT 06111, (203) 560-0236. Inquiry 774. continued 78 BYTE* MAY 1988 Will The Real VGA Please Stand Up It's easy to identify the leader in VGA resolution-just look to the company that brought you the first 800 x 600 EGA card. 800 x 600 VGA with 256 Colors 1024 x 768, too. Either way, Genoa's SuperVGA HiRes™ is the best way to see VGA. And your spreadsheets will look great, with 132 columns and 60 rows for your viewing pleasure. Crash-free Windows Yes, we do Windows-no problem. And SuperVGA HiRes is compatible with both the VGA PS/2 monitors and the EGA Multisync monitors, in VGA and EGA modes. So don't settle for inadequate imitations. Get the highest VGA performance at the best price, in true Genoa tradition. For the dealer nearest you, contact: Genoa Systems Corporation, 73 E. Trimble Road, San Jose, CA 95131 FAX: 408-434-0997 Telex: 172319 Telephone: 408-432-9090 Genoa SYSTEMS CORPORATION Genoa Systems Limited (U.K.) Tel: 01-720-5064 © 1987 Genoa Systems Corporation. SuperVGA HiRes is a trademark of Genoa Systems Corporation. Windows is a trademark of MicroSoft, Iiic. Multisync is a trademark of NEC Home Electronics. Circle 123 on Reader Service Card Introducing the new JPI Modula-2 Faster than C Smoother than Pascal Sieve benchmark: 3.2 seconds $59.95 * Yes, you can really get it today!** What these distinguished users have to say: "JPI Modula-2 is the Modula-2 compiler we've all been waiting for. Its speed and ease of use are an unbeatable combination. It is a delight to use." — K. N. King, Dep't of Mathematics & Computer Science, Georgia State U. "The JPI compiler is the best on the market; fantastic code; lovely environment.*' — Paul Curtis "JPI Modula-2 is a landmark product. IfoundJPI Modula-2 to be not just a good product, but an exceptional product. The compiler is superb, the programming environment is better than anything on offer from Borland or Microsoft . . ." — //////' Collingbourne, Computer Sb\>pper. "I've now got my copy of JPI Modula-2, and can see what people are raving about. Super com- piler, very good development environment (powerful and unfussy)." —Martin Rand, PCIL Introductory price until July 4, 1988. Then S99.95. Has been shipping in Europe since December. "I HkeJPI Modula-2 a lot better than any other M2 I've tried." — Owen Linderholm, Personal Computer World. IBM and IBM PC are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp.; Logitech Modula-2 is a trade- mark of Logitech, Inc.; Microsoft & Microsoft C are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.; Turbo C and Turbo Pascal are trademarks of Borland International, Inc.; and Repertoire is a trademark of PMI of Portland, Oregon. 80 BYTE • MAY 1988 JPI Modula-2 brings you the full power of Modula-2, the language of the future. Modula-2 was designed by Niklaus Wirth as the successor to Pascal. But Modula-2 is not merely an updated Pascal. It is also ideally suited for serious systems programming, just like C. In fact, anything you can do in C you can do in Modula-2. This includes all kinds of bit-twiddling and type-casting, and the use of procedure variables. In addition you get multi-tasking in the form of co-routines and all the other advantages a modern programming language offers. Moreover, the JPI programming environment takes the state of the art a step further. You get a completely window-based en- vironment which lets you edit several files simultaneously in separate windows. It compiles, links and runs your programs at a single keystroke. But the bottom line is code quality. The code should be com- pact and fast. Independent benchmarks carried out by the Brit- ish Standards Institute confirm that JPI Modula-2 excels (see table on Sieve benchmark). Beyond all this, if you already know Pascal, you already know enough Modula-2 to get you started. All it takes is half an hour getting familiar with the new powerful features in Modula-2. The powerful JPI environment in action COMPILER HIGHLIGHTS: • Full edition 3 implementation as defined by Niklaus Wirth • Long data types (LONG- INT, LONGCARD, LONGREAL) • Structured constants • Compiles 4-6000 lines/minute (PC AT 8 Mhz) • Up to 1M bytes code and data • Long and short pointers, short pointers in any segment • Total segment control (memory models) • Supports multi-tasking • Uses standard .OBJ file format • Separate compilation of modules • Automatic "librar- ian", smart linking • Automatic "make" facility • Supports hardware 80x87 and soft- ware emulation • Direct DOS/BIOS calls • Supports TSR programming (no assembler needed) • High-performance window management • Multiple overlapping win- dows • Write to partially obscured windows • Full cursor and attribute control • Move, re-size, re-color, re-stack windows freely. ENVIRONMENT HIGHLIGHTS: • Multi-window/multi-file editing • Compile, link and run with a single keystroke • Pin- points multiple compile-time errors in source • Pin-points run-time errors in source without delay • Interactive or batch operation • High- speed linker • All environment and editor commands and menus are re-configurable • Windows may be re-sized, re-colored, and moved around any time • Hot restart . LIBRARY HIGHLIGHTS: • Direct keyboard and screen input/output • File input/output and directory manage- ment • String handling • Storage manage- ment • Logarithmic and trigonometric functions • Time-sliced process scheduling • High-speed graphics for CGA, EGA, VGA • Procedure tracing and variable trapping • Sorting, random number generation, DOS/BIOS calls, long jumps, sound gener- ation, error-handling • Full Modula-2 source supplied! TECHNICAL KIT: • High-performance JPI assembler • Assem- bler source for run-time library and start-up code • Binary locator for PROM use • Interrupt-driven communications driver • General JPI Modula-2 Terminate-and-Stay- Resident module . JPI Jensen & Partners International, Inc. 1101 San Antonio Road, Suite 301 Mountain View, CA 94043 (415) 967-3200 z Sieve benchmark execution time; 25 iterations measured by British Standards Institute. zn CODE SIZE COMPILE TIME EXECUTION TIME LINK TIME JPI-LOGITECH COMPARISON Here's a comparison of JPI-Modula-2 with Logitech Modula-2 using the real-life program "Repertoire" pro- duced by PMI of Portland. As shown, JPI-Modula-2 compiled the huge 39-module program 2.8X faster than Logitech, linked the program 4X faster, reduced the resulting code size for "screen compile" by 26%, and achieved a speed increase of 75%. (Benchmarks run on Compaq 286 8MHz) $59.95* $49.95 JPI-MODULA-2 JPI-MODULA-2 COMPILER KIT TECHNICAL KIT (IBM PC) (IBM PC) Includes free language Includes communications, TSR mod- tutorial, compiler, en- ules; start-up assembler source code, vironment, ed'r, linker. PROM locator and much more. OTHER DATA Runs on all IBM PCs and compatibles. Requires 384K available RAM, two floppy drives (hard disk preferred). ORDER NOW 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. Only $59.95 until July 4, 1988. Regularly $99.95 call 1-800-443-0100 Ext. 255 free of charge, 24 hours. Or use coupon. COD, credit cards, checks accepted. Shipping charges in U.S. in- cluded in sales price. Calif, residents add 6% sales tax pluscounty tax. JPI • 1101 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, CA 94043 Please ship: □ One JPI-Modula-2 Compiler @ $59.95*. TO: □ SVt" □ 3Vi" '99.95 after July 4. □ One Technical Kit @ $49.95. □ 5V4" □ 31/2" Circle 151 on Reader Service Card In Europe, send coupon to: Jensen & Partners, U.K. Ltd., 63 Clerkenwell Rd., London EC1M 5NP, Phone: (01) 253-4333, Free phone: 0800-444-143, 24 hours. COD, credit cards and checks accepted. London Prices: Compiler £59.95; Technical Kit £29.95. MAY 1988 'BYTE 81 WHAT'S NEW SOFTWARE • SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING Digital signal processing with graphics functions. Digital Signal Processing and Display PC Data Master is a com- mand shell that runs on top of DOS 2.0 or higher. The program comes with appli- cations routines including graphics, data sampling, test data generation, real and complex data file math, and digital signal processing rou- tines. You can integrate your own applications programs in most languages. The program uses windows to break the screen into the standard user interface and a graphics screen. You can ac- cess the console window by any of the standard DOS and BIOS screen interrupt calls. Or you can access the graphics window with simple shell in- terrupt calls that provide color graphics primitives. DSP utility modules provided in- clude forward and inverse fast-Fourier-transform (FFT) routines, convolution, corre- lation, window generation, and test data generation. Many data-file math operations are also included. The basic program con- tains the shell, the signal pro- cessing utilities, and all the information you need to inte- grate your own data analysis routines with the supplied modules. An optional Appli- cation Development Toolkit of- fers information on the shell's enhanced BIOS calls for con- trolling the console and graphics screen windows and hardware-independent graph- ics primitives. The Toolkit also contains sample source code in C and FORTRAN. The program provides separate shells for systems with CGA, Hercules, EGA, or VGA graphics. Written in assembly lan- guage and C, PC Data Master runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compatibles with 256K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher. A math copro- cessor is recommended, as is additional RAM for data pipes. The program also runs on the PS/2s. It is not copy -protected. Price: $115 for the basic package; $45 for the Applica- tion Development Toolkit; $95 for an academic site license. Contact: Durham Technical Images, P.O. Box 72, Durham, NH 03824, (603) 868-7203. Inquiry 776. Graphics for the Scientist CobraSystems' precom- piled set of C routines lets you incorporate on-screen windowed data plotting, graph- ics, and text into your acqui- sition, analysis, and signal-pro- cessing programs. It includes 24 window formats, or you can specify your own screen for- mat in a particular program, with up to 10 simultaneous windows. Scientific Graphics Library maintains up to five nested pop-up windows of any size, located anywhere on the screen. The program supports linear, log, and similar Carte- sian plotting, with up to three independent y axes, polar plot- ting, and three-dimensional perspective plotting. Data plot formats include multiple point and line style, envelopes, filled and unfilled bar charts, and vertical lines. The library also includes graphics primitives such as point, line, and polyline drawing; filled and unfilled rectangles, circles, and arcs; and polygon drawing. Text input and output is done with all positions defined in x,y window character coor- dinates. The package includes a set of character, string, and line input and output routines, with automatic cursor genera- tion on the input routines. Ad- ditional utilities are provided for selective erasure, underlin- ing, and highlighting. Scientific Graphics Library runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compatibles with a Her- cules monochrome adapter or EGA. Price: $180. Contact: CobraSystems, 14700 Main St., Suite 3, Bellevue, WA 98007, (206) 641-2759. Inquiry 777. continued CAD DREAMS TO DEBUT IN SUMMER Dreams is a modular CAD program from In- novative Data Design (IDD), the makers of MacDraft. The program will be available in a base version, or with separate symbol libraries, plotter drivers, an integrated data- base, and palettes, depend- ing on your needs. The pro- gram is not going to replace MacDraft; it will support drawings created with Mac- Draft by means of a resident conversion utility. The Dreams base product includes a Drafting Palette consisting of a set of tools for creating text, lines, or shapes. An Accessory Pal- ette offers tools for zooming, rotating objects around vari- ous axes, extending lines to their intersections, and creating fillets. A Dimen- sion Palette supports point- to-point and object-depen- dent dimensioning in a va- riety of ways. With a Mac II , you can have up to 255 colors per drawing, and pattern librar- ies of up to 255 patterns. Bezier and spline curves are included, along with a li- brary of drawing tools. The program imports encapsu- lated PostScript files and bit-mapped images. Layers are limited only by memory, and keyboard entry is sup- ported. You can zoom up to 32 times. Other features in- clude floating palettes, hier- archical menus, and pop-out menus. IDD plans to offer symbol libraries for both residential and commercial construc- tion, electrical and mechani- cal engineering, and interior design. The program will also support user-defined symbol libraries. Dreams is scheduled to ship in July. Price: $500 for base pack- age; add-on prices not yet announced. Contact: Innovative Data Design, 2280 Bates Ave., Suite A, Concord, CA 94520,(415) 680-6818. Inquiry 778. 82 BYTE- MAY 1988 Introducing FRONTRUNNER New... for dBASE III PLUS Users! Fast. . .Resident. . .Powerful. FrontRunner offers all this and morel • CREATE MEMORY-RESIDENT dBASE 111 PLUS™ PROGRAMS - FrontRunner™ is the first memory -resident applications development tool to contain a large subset of dBASE 111 PLUS commands and allows you to distribute RunTime"'' applications . • dBASE III PLUS DATABASE AND INDEX FILE COMPATIBILITY - Allows you to use FrontRunner immediately. • UNIQUE KEYBOARD FEATURE - Bind commands or entire programs to a single Hotkey for rapid execution from within other applications. • PASTE COMMAND - This powerful command allows you to extract data from your dBASE III PLUS files and paste it into your spreadsheet or word processing application. Buy FrontRunner by June 30, J 988 and get a FrontRunner version of RunTime and an unlimited RunTime license for royalty -free applications. FrontRunner is not copy -protected and comes with a 30-day money -back guarantee. The suggested retail price is $195. See your local Ashton-Tate dealer now. For more information, or the name of the dealer nearest you, call (800) 437-4329, Ext. 555 * *In Colorado, call (303) 799-4900, Ext. 555. A ASHTONTATE Trademarks / owner: dBASE /// PLUS, RunTime, Ashton-Tate / Ashton-Tate Corporation; FrontRunner / Apex Software Corporation. © 1988 Ashton-Tate Corporation. All rights reserved. Circle 26 on Reader Service Card WHAT'S NEW SOFTWARE • BUSINESS An Oracle with a Sequel Oracle's database add-in for Lotus 1-2-3 lets you store SQL (Structured Query Language) commands as 1-2-3 functions. You retrieve Ora- cle data from menus that are transparentiy converted to SQL statements, or you can choose to type the SQL state- ments yourself. Oracle for 1-2-3 also has a feature that updates the data- base when you change work- sheet cells. You can interface with other versions of Oracle on microcomputers, minicom- puters, or mainframes. In ad- dition, the database offers data security, protected mode and support for 80286 and 80386 technology, distributed data- base functionality, and trans- action management and recovery. The program runs on 80286- and 80386-based sys- NBI has a desktop-pub- lishing program for the IBM PC AT. The company says that the new product, Legend, combines the fea- tures of a standard desktop- publishing package with those of a full word proces- sor and graphics package. Legend runs under Win- dows 2.0 and uses that envi- ronment's user interface. terns and requires Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.01, DOS 3.0 or higher, 640K bytes of RAM, 896K bytes of extended mem- ory, 5 megabytes of hard disk space, and a floppy disk drive. Price: $199. Contact: Oracle Corp., 20 Davis Dr., Belmont, CA 94002, (415) 598-8000. Inquiry 779. Button Pops Out New Programs ButtonWare is adding fea- tures and new command options to PC-Calc. The new version, PC-Calc + , includes graphing, split screens, ac- cess to DOS, 8087 and 80287 support, formatting features, and sideways printing capabili- ties. It also includes business and financial, date and time, and additional trigonometric capabilities. PC-Calc + runs on IBM The desktop-publishing fea- tures of the program include automatic kerning and hyphenation, and automatic text flow into linked frames. The program handles up to 750 pages, page sizes up to 22 inches long or wide, and up to 32 columns per page. The program's word-pro- cessing capabilities include an 80,000-word spelling PCs with at least 280K bytes ofRAMandDOS2.0 or higher. It supports EGA and VGA graphics, along with monochrome and color. ButtonWare has also up- graded its database program, PC-File+ . Version 2.0 sup- ports summary graphics with horizontal and vertical bar charts, and line, scatter, and pie graphs. A hot key has been added to the calculator to let you perform calculations at any time. The program uses the Microsoft 5.0 compiler, which speeds up operation, accord- ing to ButtonWare. It supports the 8087 and 80287 floating- point coprocessors. And addi- tional passwords, stored in an encrypted file, enhance secur- ity features. Field size has been in- creased from 65 to 200 charac- ters; record size has increased from 1665 to 3000 characters; and macros have increased checker and mail-merge capabilities. The graphics features are similar to those of Windows Draw, from Micrographx. This object-oriented graph- ics package is compatible with files created by a num- ber of other different graph- ics packages. Legend runs on 80286- and 80386-based IBM PC ATs or compatibles with at least 640K bytes of RAM and a 20-megabyte hard disk drive, an EGA, a Hercules graphics card, or other Windows 2.0-compatible display devices. You also need a two- or three-button Windows 2.0-compatible serial or bus mouse, DOS 3.2, and Microsoft Win- dows 2.0. The program does not support CGA. Price: $695. Contact: NBI Inc., 3450 Mitchell Lane, P.O. Box 9001, Boulder, CO 80301, (303) 938-2584. Inquiry 782. from 12 to 22. An enhanced report writer lets you keep field data in head- ers, footers, and subtotals. The program now supports date arithmetic as well. PC-File + 2.0 runs on IBM PCs with at least 384K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher. Price: PC-Calc + , $69.95; PC-File+ 2.0, $69.95. Contact: ButtonWare Inc., P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue, WA 98006, (206) 454-0479. Inquiry 780. Check Those Changes If you've ever had to com- pare document revisions against each other, you know it can be a time-consuming and error-prone task. The pro- gram DocuComp will compare two versions of a document, even if they were created on different word processors, ac- cording to Advanced Software. The program highlights revi- sions in the following ways: on a split-screen display, show- ing the original and revised documents simultaneously; in printed form, showing in- serted, deleted, replaced, and moved text; in a comparison file on disk; and in summary report form. The summary report gives a condensed view of every revi- sion, showing the text that was changed, along with the page and line number of the change. Version 1.0 of DocuComp is currently available, with ver- sion 1 . 1 following closely be- hind. The update will add a virtual memory scheme and will support a few more word- processing programs. Docu- Comp runs on the IBM PC and compatibles with 512K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher. Price: $149.95. Contact: Advanced Soft- ware, 1095 East Duane Ave., Suite 212, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, (800) 346-5392; in Cal- ifornia, (408) 733-0745. Inquiry 781. continued A desktop publisher with word processing and graphics. A NEW LEGEND IN DESKTOP PUBLISHING 84 BYTE- MAY 1988 Honeywell The easiest way ^ mm to upgrade your system is right at your FINGERTIPS. Add a Honeywell Silent-Tactile™ keyboard to your system... and touch the quality. From the ergonomic design to the light, crisp feel, we make Honeywell Silent-Tactile™ keyboards with one thing in mind - making you more productive. You'll appreciate the silent keystrokes, and you'll notice less finger and hand fatigue - even after hours of continuous use. When you need a PC-compatible keyboard for replacement or upgrade, make the quality choice - ask for Honeywell Silent-Tactile™ keyboards. For the dealer nearest you, call toll-free: 1-800-445-6939 In Texas call collect: 915/543-5566 Keyboard Division, 4171 North Mesa, Building D. El Paso, Texas 79902 915/544-5511 Circle 136 on Reader Service Card WHAT'S NEW SOFTWARE • BUSINESS Managing people, projects, and time with Who/What/When. Who/What/When he time and information management program Who/What/When from Chronos Software presents a view of people, projects, and time. You can look at lists of people, resources, and dead- lines from a project-oriented view; view lists by projects, tasks, and schedules from a people-oriented view; or scroll through its daily calendar for a time-oriented view. The program handles an unlimited number of people, resource projects, sub- projects, and tasks. You can attach memos, notes, and ex- pense and budget reports to people, resources, and proj- ects. You can also create a to- do list ranked by priority. Gantt charts are included in the project time lines, along with week-in-review and project-in-review overviews. Other features include a mail- ing list manager, address and phone book, card file, calcu- lator, auto-dialer, and a note- book with preprinted forms that you can use in meetings. Who/What/When runs on the IBM PC, AT, XT, and compatibles with at least 512K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.1 or higher. It also runs on PS/2s, and it is not copy- protected. Price: $189. Contact: Chronos Software, 1500 16th St., San Francisco, CA 94103, (415)626-4244. Inquiry 783. Two for 1-2-3 Flash-In lets you view any Lotus 1-2-3 worksheet without leaving your work. It adds search, replace, and locate features to Lotus 1-2-3. A zoom-out function is compatible with any graphics adapter that works with 1-2-3. A label search and re- place function accesses labels, numbers, or formulas. A second add-in is Graph-Mania, which adds rows, columns, and a graph in a window. You can com- press or expand the worksheet for access to a larger or smaller block of data, and a variable-size window displays a graph that is updated in real time as you work on your spreadsheet. Both add-ins run on IBM PCs with at least 320K bytes of RAM, DOS 3.0 or higher, and Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.0 or 2.01. Price: Flash-In, $99.95; Graph-Mania, $79.95. Contact: PC Publishing Inc., 1801 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 800, Los Angeles, CA 90067, (213) 556-3630. Inquiry 784. Paradox Picks Up Speed Paradox 386 sorts, queries, and produces re- ports 5 times faster than pre- vious versions. The 386 version hasaPharLap386|DOS- Extender embedded within the program, letting you access Paradox in the same manner as with earlier releases. The program is available on 3 '/2-inch and 5 x k -inch flop- py disks. Borland reports that it supports the Intel Inboard and runs under DESQview 386 from Quarterdeck. Price: $895. Contact: Borland Interna- tional, 4585 Scotts Valley Dr., Scotts Valley, CA 95066, (408) 438-8400. Inquiry 785. A dBASE III Workalike for $39 One on One Computer Solutions' dBASE III workalike, 1 on 1 = 3, is compatible with dBASE ITI commands and functions in the dot prompt and program- ming mode. Its databases, memo, memory, report con- trol, and label control files are compatible with dBASE II files. Index files are not. It can also read dBASE II files and report the information, but it cannot write them. The company reports that 1 on 1 = 3 places no limit on the total number of lines of code. You can customize the menu structure and add func- tions to the assist mode. The program lets you enter a read- only mode. 1 on 1 = 3 is written with the FoxBASE Plus compiler. It runs on IBM PCs with at least 5 12K bytes of RAM. Price: $39. Contact: One on One Com- puter Solutions Inc. , 26 Finch- wood Dr., Trumbull, CT 06611, (203) 375-0914. Inquiry 786. continued ASHTON-TATE GETS MACSERIOUS Ashton-Tate has three new Macintosh appli- cations: a new dBASE Mac, a new word processor, and a spreadsheet. The new version of dBASE Mac is an execute- only program that cuts the cost of distributing applica- tions you've developed with dBASE Mac. RunTime in- cludes a full version of dBASE Mac, the relational database system that ac- cesses IBM-compatible dBASE data files. Ashton-Tate 's new word processor, FullWrite Profes- sional, was previously an- nounced as an upcoming product by Ann Arbor Soft- works. With this WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word processor, you can create and manipulate text and graphics. It has an outlining capability that up- dates an outline as you create the document. The program also features page layout capabilities with a built-in draw environment that lets you create graphics as you write. The last of the trio is Full Impact, a spreadsheet that includes a mini word proces- sor, import and export capa- bilities, global and C-like macros, and formatting con- trol. The program lets you have up to eight spread- sheets open at one time, with up to eight views in each. Ashton-Tate reports that the new spreadsheet will ship on July 31. Price: dBASE Mac Run- Time, $795; FullWrite Pro- fessional, $395; Full Im- pact, $395. Contact: Ashton-Tate Inc., 20101 Hamilton Ave., Tor- rance, CA 90502, (213) 329-8000. Inquiry 787. 86 BYTE- MAY 1988 Perfect matches to DEC user needs. Hip. Hip. And Hooray. One-size-fits-all is an attribute best reserved for inexpensive socks. In the realm of PC-based emulation and communications software for DEC mainframe users, it's important to match specific user needs with specific product attributes. We have. SmarTerm® 240 features exact four-color emulation of a DEC® VT241 terminal. Along with delivering full-screen ReGIS®and Tektronix® 4010/4014 graphics, SmarTerm240 offers precise VT220,VT102,VT100, and VT52 text emulation. For non-graphics applications, SmarTerm® 220 duplicates virtually every SmarTerm 240 text communication, and ease-of-use feature. Three error-free file transfer protocols, including Kermit and Xmodem, are provided. Downloading minimizes on-line time requirements to boost overall system efficiency. And an optional network package allows direct LAN access to shared modems, printers, as well as host mainframes. As SmarTerm 240 and 220 focus on graphics and text, new S ma rtMOVE® makes PC-to-the-rest-of-the-World communications sharper than ever Speed connect, auto redial, and background file transfer features make this VT100 emulator a loud and clear choice for advanced communications requirements. Graphics, text, and communications. If you're looking for a perfect fit, seek the software sized and priced to match your needs. Persoft has it. Period. See us at COMDEX/Atlanta-East Hall 352, visit your dealer, or phone us at 608 273-6000. C. 19K7 Persoft. Inc All rights reserved. Persoft. SmarTerm and SmartMOVE are registered trademarks of Persoft. Inc. DEC, VT and ReCtS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation Tektronix is a registered trademark of Tektronix. Inc persofr Circle 50 on Reader Service Card WHAT'S NEW SOFTWARE • OTHER Extend Your Imagination on a Mac The simulation program Extend uses block dia- grams and an internal lan- guage that lets you predict the outcome of large and com- plex natural or man-made events. To begin, you build a block diagram, enter data into the blocks, and connect the blocks to form a model. You can double-click on a block to view its dialog box and enter any necessary data. You then have an opportunity to change the data or the model, and to click on the run menu to exe- cute the simulation. The ModL scripting lan- guage has built-in plotting rou- tines that create independent, multipanel plotting and tabular data windows. It includes over 60 built-in functions for plotting, math, file I/O, data formatting, and diagnostics. The language generates 68000 machine code and sup- ports real, integer, and string data types. Extend blocks are actually programs written with the ModL language. You can ac- cess needed blocks by opening up to 20 libraries, each con- taining up to 64 different types of blocks. You can also create new libraries. The program will run on AppleTalk networks and is compatible with the Mac Forming a model from Extend 's block diagram Plus, SE, and II. Price: $495. Contact: Imagine That! , 7109 Via Carmela, San Jose, CA 95139, (408) 365-0305. Inquiry 788. Draw Applause Ashton-Tate's presenta- tion graphics program, Draw Applause, has charting abilities, a drawing board, and word charting, and it accepts a variety of input and display methods. The program is compatible with dBASE III Plus, Master Graphics Series, and Presen- tation Pack. You can also im- port WK1 and DIF files, and you can import and export Designing applications in Draw Applause 's picture window. Computer Graphic Metafiles (CGM). Input device options include a variety of mice and the Summagraphics Summa- Sketch tablet. The program's charting features let you create line, bar, pie, area, mixed, and nu- meric table charts. You can customize data with multiple axes, three-dimensional ef- fects, stacking, horizontal or vertical bars, exploded pie slices, and legend and chart frame options. Drawing features let you customize solid or hollow fills, outline color and width, line type and thickness, and pointed or rounded corners. You can also zoom in on images; align shapes with custom and snap grids; and select colors, shapes and backgrounds for gradated ef- fects. You can choose up to 256 colors to be displayed at one time from a choice of 16.7 million. Draw Applause comes in 5 W-inch and 3 '/2-inch floppy disk versions. It runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compat- ibles, with DOS 2.0 or higher for the 5 14 -inch disk version or DOS 3.3 for the 3Vi -inch disk version. It also runs on the PS/2s. Price: $495. Contact: Ashton-Tate Inc., 20101 Hamilton Ave., Tor- rance, CA 90502, (213) 329-8000. Inquiry 789. Got Disk Problems? Disk Technician is a util- ity designed to prevent hard disk failure. You can set up the program to run automat- ically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. According to Prime Solu- tions, the program reads and writes to every bit on the hard disk, whether it is occupied or not. It uses testing and repair algorithms that predict and cor- rect failures before they occur. The program also includes SafePark. This memory-resi- dent program creates a safe area on the hard disk where it can place the disk heads in the event of a brown-out or power failure, thus preventing data loss. Disk Technician runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compatibles with 256K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.1 or higher. It works on hard disk drives with up to 32 mega- bytes. With more than 32 megabytes, it works on the first DOS partition only. Price: $99.95. Contact: Prime Solutions Inc., 1940 Garnet Ave., San Diego, CA 92109, (619) 274-5000. Inquiry 790. Upgraded Thesaurus for the Mac WordFinder now runs with Apple's Hyper- Card and MultiFinder. It lets you look up synonyms while operating within any of the information stacks you create with HyperCard or while running any MultiFinder application. The 220,000-synonym the- saurus uses less than 50K bytes of RAM. Price: $59.95. Contact: Microlytics Inc., Techniplex, 300 Main St., East Rochester, NY 14445, (716) 248-9150. Inquiry 791. 88 BYTE- MAY 1988 DISCOVER WHAT A SHOULD Austin Computer Systems, along with Western Digital Corporation, are pleased to announce the new Austin 286 Computer. COMPUTER: EGA MONITOR INCLUDED: Our system price includes an EGA Monitor. If you prefer mono- chrome, or other brands, we're happy to accommodate. 40 MEG HIGH SPEED HARDDISK INCLUDED: Everybody needs one, so we include it in our price. We use Seagate fast access drives as standard equipment. Others are available upon request. ONE 1 .2 or 360K FLOPPY IN- CLUDED: We give you the choice. Of course if you prefer more drives, or other sizes, we have them available. NAME BRAND 101 KEYBOARD INCLUDED: Our contract doesn't allow us to use their name, but if you know the biggest name in Key- boards, you know who we're using. 200 WATT POWER SUPPLY IN- CLUDED: Quiet operation, and clean power. A GREAT CHASSIS AND CASE INCLUDED: It has FIVE Vi height drives bays available, THREE bays are open from the front panel. You get this all in a SMALL FOOTPRINT AT CHASSIS. WARRANTY: You get one full year parts and la- bor, and you get a 30 day satisfac- tion guarantee. Call or write for full details. WESTERN DIGITAL MOTHERBOARD: Our 6 LAYER MOTHERBOARD, using SURFACE MOUNT TECH- NOLOGY, allows us to produce a higher quality American made computer, for less money than the Far East imports. SIMM RAM gives you ONE MEG of system ram on the motherboard, expandable to FOUR MEG on board. EXTENDED EGA Graphics (640*480), autoswitching to Plantronics MGA (16 shades of gray), also CGA and Hercules Monochrome, all built-in. INPUT/OUTPUT has TWO SERIAL ports, ONE PARALLEL port, ONE PS/2 Compatible MOUSE PORT, and a 20 YEAR RATED BATTERY/BACKED CLOCK. Our built-in WESTERN DIGITAL HARDDISK CONTROLLER sup- ports 1 to 1 INTERLEAVING, allowing for tremendously fast harddisk drives. Up to FOUR 1.4, 1.2, 720k, and 360k Floppy drives are supported by our built-in FLOPPY CONTROLLER. INCREDIBLE PERFORMANCE is achieved using our 12.5 MHZ 80286 PROCESSOR combined with 100 NANO SIMM RAMS. COMPARE. Compu-Add 286 2378.00 Dell PC-200 2698.00 Club 286-12 2349.00 Austin 286-12 1995.00 • Prices attained 3 - 20 - 1 988 COMPLETE SYSTEM $1995 Free Shipping and Handling! WE ACCEPT CCD'S, CORPO- RATE PC's, AND VISA OR MASTERCARD. ORDER TOLL FREE 1-800-752-1577 Mon-Sat 10 to 6 Central Time COMPUTER SYSTEMS 7801 N. Lamar, Suite C-65 Austin, Texas 78752 Other brands and product names are trademarks or register trademarks of their respective holders. PS/2 is a trademark ol IBM Corporation. Western Digital logo is a trademark ot the Western Digital Corporation. Sh,pp,ng is U.P.S. ground-insured. Please allow 1 -5 weeks delivery. Personal Checks, and Company checks please allow 1-18 days clearance. Prices subject to change without notice, call for current prices. Circle 482 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 88NE-1 WHAT'S NEW REGIONAL SECTION METRO NEW YORK • NEW ENGLAND NEC's New 286 ased on an 80286 micro- processor running at 8 or 10 MHz, the APC IV Power- Mate 1 from NEC provides 640K bytes of RAM, a 1.2- megabyte or 360K-byte 5 U - inch floppy disk drive, and a hard disk drive controller. The APC IV PowerMate 1 comes with five full-size 16-bit expansion slots, one half-size 16-bit slot, and one 8-bit slot. An RS-232C serial port, par- allel port, and clock/calendar are also included. MS-DOS 3.2andGWBASIC3.2are standard. Options include ad- ditional disk drives. Price: $1845. Contact: NEC Information Systems Inc., 1414 Massachu- setts Ave. , Boxborough, MA 01719, (617) 264-8000. Inquiry 820. NEC's PowerMate 1 includes seven expansion slots. E-Mail, Communications Program for LANs nBox/PC is a communica- tions and electronic mail program for IBM PCs con- nected to a local-area network (LAN) . The memory-resi- dent program enables you to create, send, and receive memos and phone messages. You can choose to be alerted audibly or visually when new messages arrive. The pro- gram runs in the background. InBox/PC supports multi- ple message centers and pro- vides file-transfer and pass- word-protection capabilities. It also includes an address book, routing lists, public mailboxes, forward and reply capabilities, and RSVP notices. The program runs on the continued NeuralWare's Introduction to Neural Computing For your free booklet, "Teaching Computers j to Learn: Applications for Neural Computing" | and for information on our neural computing I products, send in this coupon. S Name \ FREE Company . Address _ City . State . Zip. Phone . Teach your PC to learn with neural computing. Expert system generation, forecasting, noise fil- tering and process control are just a few of the many exciting and innovative applications for neural computing in industry. Now you can learn more about neural computing, its history and its applications from the author of the 1987 Annotated Bibliography of Neuro-Com- puting and the founder of the industry's largest selling neural computing software company, Casimir C. "Casey" Klimasauskas. EURAL , m AREINC: 103 Buckskin Court Sewickley, PA 15143 (412) 741-5959 88NE-2 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 483 on Reader Service Card INDEPENDENT STORE IN NYC DEDICATED TO IBM PC SOFTWARE AND PERIPHERALS ONLY Jlllll LI Z4 LZn_LJIk_J_. If We Don't Have It, It's Probably Not Worth Having. STORE HOURS: 9:00 A.M.-5:30 P.M. E.S.T. MON.-FRI. SATURDAYS: 10:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M. Terms, Conditions and Prices May Differ In Our Store, n^. ■ ■..■/ ~« CORPORATE ACCOUNTS WELCOMED. PC LINK, CORP. 29 WEST 38TH STREET. 2ND FL, NEW YORK, NY 1001 8 call TOLL FREE I-800-22I-0343 FOR ORDERS ONLY All prices listed in this ad are effective May. 1-31, 1988. All Brands are Registered Trademarks. IBM is a Registered Trademark of IBM Corp. in new york CALL I -2 1 2-73 0 - 8 03 6 FOR ORDERS & INQUIRIES THIS MONTH'S SPECIALS HEWELET PACKARD. AMDEK. DESKJET PRINTER SPECIAL 1280X800 Hi Res. MONITOR ..699.00 BUSINESS SOFTWARE ANSA PARADOX V 2.0 459 00 ASHTON-TATE dBASE III PLUS I.I CALL M ULTIMATE ADVANTAGE II CALL BORLAND INT. EUREKA 99.00 PROLOG I.I 69 00 SIDEKICK PLUS 149 00 TURBO BASIC 69 00 TURBO C 69 00 TURBO PASCAL 4.0 79.00 QUATTRO 159.00 CHIPSOFT TURBO TAX PERSONAL 49.00 CLEAR SOFT. CLEAR (CHART dBASE CODE) CALL CONSENTRIC DATA R & R REPORT WRITERFOR DBASE III + 129.00 CROSSTALK COMMUNICATIONS CROSSTALK MK.4 1 29.00 CROSSTALK XVI 3.6 95.00 REMOTE I.3 95.00 FOX SOFTWARE FOX BASE PLUS V 2.0 229.00 FOX BASE+ MULTIUSER 379.00 GREAT PLAINS ACCOUNTING PACKAGES CALL JAVELIN SOFT. JAVELIN 75.00 KORTEK FREEWAY ADVANCED 109.00 LIFETREE SOFT. VOLKSWRITER 3 1 29.00 LOTUS DEV. CORP LOTUS l-2-3(SOLD IN OUR STORE) CALL MANUSCRIPT(SOLD IN OUR STORE) CALL SYMPHONY (SOLD IN OUR STORE) CALL MECA MANAGING YOUR MONEY 4.0 139.00 MICRO PRO WORDSTAR 2000+ REL.3 229.00 WORDSTAR 2000+ REL.3 LEGAL VERSION CALL WORDSTAR PROFESSIONAL REL.4 249.00 MICROSOFT CHART V 3.0 295.00 C COMPILER 309.00 FORTRAN COMPILER 309.00 MACROASSEMBLER 119.00 EXCEL 339.00 PROJECT 349.00 QUICK BASIC 69.00 QUICKC 69.00 WINDOWS 69.00 WINDOWS 386 145.00 WORD VERSION 4.0 239.00 WORKS 139.00 MIGENT ABILITY 55.00 ENRICH 109.00 MONOGRAM DOLLARS & SENSE . MAY 1ST through 31ST. TOSHIBA LAP TOP COMPUTER. HAYES SMARTMODEM. T5100 2MB RAM 40MB H/D . SPECIAL 2400 & 2400B ea.429.00 99 00 NANTUCKET CLIPPER 399^00 OWL INT. GUIDE 89.00 QUARTERDECK DESQ VIEW 89.00 QUARTERDECK MEMORY MANAGER ... 49.00 SBT ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE (SOLD IN STORE) CALL SSC SOFTWARE BRIDGE 129.00 STSC APL*PLUS V 7.0 599.00 STATGRAPHICS 649.00 SOPHCO PROTEC (HARD DISK PROTECTION) 1 85.00 SOFTWARE GROUP ENABLE V 2.0 399.00 SOFTWARE PUBLISHING HARVARD TOTAL PROJECT MANAGERII 369.00 P.F.S. GRAPH/PLAN ea. 89.00 FIRST CHOICE 99.00 PROFESSIONAL FILE/PLAN ea. 159.00 PROFESSIONAL WRITE 1 39.00 WALLSOFT THE Ul PROGRAMMER 199.00 THE DOCUMENTOR 1 99.00 WORDPERFECT CORP WORDPERFECT V 5.0 CALL WORDPERFECT V 4.2 209.00 WORDTECH SYSTEMS D B X L 99.00 QUICK SILVER DIAMOND 369.00 XYQUEST XY WRITE III + 399.00 GRAPHIC *. DESK TOP PUBUSHING ALDUS PAGE MAKER CALL ASHTON TATE CHART/DIAGRAM/SIGN MASTER CALL LOTUS DEV. FREE LANCE+ (SOLD IN STORE) CALL MICROGRAFX WINDOWS DRAW 229.00 SOFTWARE PUBLISHING PRESENTATION GRAPHICS 295.00 XEROX VENTURA DESKTOP PUBLISHER CALL Z SOFT. PC PAINTBRUSH + 99.00 Z SOFT. PUBLISHER PAINTBRUSH 179.00 UTILITIES CORE INT. CORE FAST 1 1 9.00 EXECUSYSTEMS XTREE PRO 79.00 FIFTH GENERATION FAST BACK+ 129.00 FUNK SOFT. SIDEWAYS 3.2 . MICROSOFT LEARNING DOS NORTON UTILITIES V 4.0 NORTON UTILITIES ADVANCED 4.0 . REVOLUTION CRUISE CONTROL SIM/SCH TYPING TUTOR IV . 59.00 39.00 59.00 99.00 29.00 39 00 SOFT CRAFT FANCY FONT 1 49^00 SOFT CRAFT LASER FONT . TRAVELING SOFT. LAP-LINK WHITE CRANE BROOKLYN BRIDGE . 149.00 89.00 89.00 GRAPHIC TABLETS, KEYBOARDS, MICE DATA DESK TURBO KEYBOARD 1 39.00 LOGITECH HIREZ MOUSE (BUS VERSION) 129.00 LOGITECH C7 MOUSE+PC PAINTBRUSH +169.00 LOGITECH C7 MOUSE+PC PAINTBRUSH 99.00 LOGITECH C7 MOUSE+PAINT+ CAD 149.00 LOGITECH C7 PUBLISHERS MOUSE 119.00 MICROSOFT SERIAL OR BUS MOUSE .... 105.00 MICROSOFT MOUSE WITH WINDOWS ... 145.00 PRINTERS BROTHER TWINRITER5 BROTHER M-I709 240 CPS PAR/SER . BROTHER HR-20 20CPS DAISY 359.00 BROTHER HR40 DAISY 589.00 EPSON FX-86/FX-286E HEWLET-PACKARD LASERJET II .... HEWLET-PACKARD DESKJET SPECIAL OKIDATA292 519.00 OKIDATA 293 699.00 OUTPUT TECH OT-850XL 850 CPS CALL TOSHIBA P35I MODEL SX 1095.00 CALL CALL CALL CALL TOSHIBA P32ISL. 549.00 HP LASER ACCESORIES BITSTREAM FONTWARE (SOFT FONTS) . CALL HEWLETT-PACKARD FONT CARTRIDGES (AC.D.E.G.H.) EA 129.00 B.F.J, K,L,M,N,P,Q,T,U,V,W,X,Y) EA 219.00 (R,Z) EA 295.00 SOFT FONTS EA 169.00 MEMORY FOR LASERJET II ONLY IMB/2MB/4MB MEMORY BOARDS CALL MONITORS AMDEK I280 MONITOR 699.00 AMDEK 41 OA MONITOR 1 89.00 PGS MAX-I2 (MONO MONITOR) 189.00 NEC MULTISYNC II EGA 689.00 SONY CPD-I302/CPD-1303 MULTISCAN EGA CALL WYSE 700 I280X800 HI RES. MONITOR ... 789.00 EXPANSION BOARDS 64KI50NS RAM CHIPS. 256K I50NS RAM CHIPS . CALL CALL AST SIXPAK PREMIUM 256 C/S/P 259.00 DCA IRMA BOARD I HERCULES MONO GRAPHICS PLUS . INTEL ABOVE BOARD PS/2B6 5I2K TALL TREE JRAM-3 OK (TO 2MB) VIDEO 7 VEGA DELUX 799.00 199.00 439.00 179.00 199.00 DISKDRIVES I OMEGA 20MB BETA II INT. DRIVE.. I OMEGA TRI/PAK CARTRIDGES I0MB ... 179.00 MINISCRIBE 70MB HARD DISK FOR AT .. 859.00 MINISCRIBE 40MB HARD DISK FOR AT .. 629.00 PLUS DEV. 20MB HARD CARD 49MS 579.00 PLUS DEV. 40MB HARD CARD 49MS 879.00 SEAGATE ST-225 20MB WITH W/D 289.00 SEAGATE ST-251 -1 40MB FOR AT 595.00 SYSGEN QIC FILE 60 EXT.BACKUP 859.00 SYSGEN SMARTIMAGE 60 EXT.BACKUP. 695.00 TOSHIBA 3 1/2- 1/2 HT. 720KB 149.00 TOSHIBA 3 1/2" I/2 HT. 1.44MB 199.00 TOSHIBA ND-04D I/2 HT. 360KB 149.00 TOSHIBA ND-04DE-G 360KB FOR AT 159.00 TOSHIBA ND-08DE-G I.2MB FOR AT 199.00 MODEMS HAYES SMARTMODEM 2400 HAYES SMARTMODEM I200 HAYES I200B + SMARTCOM II HAYES 2400B + SMARTCOM II ... MIGENT I200 POCKET MODEM . NETWORKING SERVER TECHNOLOGY EASYLAN STARTER KIT FOR 2 PC'S EASYLAN EXPANSION KIT FOR I PC'S.. SCANNERS & FACSIMILE BROTHER PERSONAL FAX-100 . DEST PC SCANNERS 429.00 299.00 299.00 429.00 139.00 179.00 99.00 975.00 CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL SPECIAL CALL CALL COMPUTERS TOSHIBA TIOOO 512KB ONE 3 I/2 - D/D 4.77MHZ ... TIIO0+ 640KB TWO 3 1/2" D/D TI200 IMBKB 20MB HD. ONE 3 I/2 - D/D . T3IO0/20 640KB ONE 3 i/2 - , 20MB HD ... T5I00 2MB RAM ONE 3 t/2\ 40MB HD ... WYSE PC 286 1.2MB D/D 640KB 6/8 MHZ CPU, 101-KEY KEYBOARD MS DOS 3.1 PC 386 (16MHz) ZERO WAIT-STATES 1MB RAM, 1.2MB D/D, KEYBOARD, MS DOS 3.2 (8MHz) MODE.SERIAL/PARALLEL PORT.. HAUPPAUGE COMPUTER WORKS. HAUPPAUGE 386 REPLACES IBM/XT MOTHER BOARD. 1MB RAM. FIVE 8-BIT (2 SHORT), 2-16 BIT, 1-32 BIT SLOTS & SOCKET FOR 80387. MAJOR SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE 1395.00 INTRODUCING THE PC LINK 386 COMPUTER The PC LINK 386 Is a powerful 80386 16 MHz. zero wait state computer based upon the highly rated Hauppauge 386 MotherBoard and the Award Software Modular 386 ROM BIOS. Tests of the PC LINK 386 show a Norton SI index of 15.3 relative to the IBM-PC, Indicating the PC LINK 386 runs approx. 15.3 times faster than an IBM-PC. The Landmark CPU Speed Test (SPEED99) shows a performance of 13.0 relative to the IBM PC/XT and Indicates the syslem performs like an IBM-AT running at 21 .0 MHz. (The SPEED99 ratings are the same attained when the test is run on the Compaq 386 Model 40. The 21.0 MHz. rating occurs in both machines due to the zero wait state.) This group of tests were performed on the PC LINK 386 configured with the Video Seven Vega Deluxe EGA board, an Intel 80387-16 math coprocessor, a 16 bit disk controller, and a Miniscribe 70 Mb. hard disk. Minimum Configuration The PC LINK 386 provides 1 Mb. of high speed 100ns RAM on the motherboard, One 32 bit, two 16 bits and 5 eight bit expansion slots. One 5 1 /4" 1 .2MB or one 3 1/2" 1.44MB disk drive, 16 bit hard & floppy controller with all cables. One serial & parallel port, 1 01 enhanced Keyboard, 200 Watt power supply. Limited one year warrantee (3 months parts & labor 9 months parts) Due to FCC Class A approval system can be sold only to corporations At a affordable price of ZZ9D.0U -TERMS AND CONDITIONS. - We reserve the right to repair, replace or return to manufacturer for repair, all goods acknowledged faulty or damaged on receipt by customer. Customer Must Call For Return Authorization Number Before Returning Any Goods. Prompt attention will be given to all damaged and faulty returned goods. Any goods returned for credit are subject to 20% restocking charge, plus shipping charge. No Returns For Credit On Any Software. Customer must deal directly with the manufacturer if the customer finds any false claims made by the manufacturer. All goods are shipped VIA U.P.S. ONLY. Shipping charges are 2% of the total purchase price or $3.00, whichever is greater. Please call for shipping charges on Printers & Accesories. C.O.D. are shipped tor Cash or Cashier's Check Only. Max $ 1 500.00. Please allow 7 to 1 0 working days for personal or corporate checks to clear. To expedite shipping send money order or cashier's check, or charge to your VISA OR MASTERCARD. WE DO NOT Add a Service Charge For Credit Card Usage. PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. NOT RFSPQNR I RI F FOR TYPOGRAPHICAI FRRORS MAY 1988 -BYTE 88NE-3 WHAT'S NEW METRO NEW YORK • NEW ENGLAND IBM PC and compatibles with DOS 3.1 or higher, 256K bytes of RAM (640K bytes is recommended), and at least 95K bytes of free disk space. It runs on any LAN that sup- ports DOS 3. 1 or higher. Price: $99 (supports 3 users); $599 (supports 100 users). Contact: Symantec, Think Technologies Division, 135 South Rd., Bedford, MA 01730, (617) 275-4800. Inquiry 824. Books in Print Plus: Mac Version on CD-ROM With over 770,000 cita- tions in 17 categories, Books in Print Plus is a CD-ROM database for the Macintosh that enables you to perform searches by author, title, subject, keyword, pub- lisher, language, price, publication date, edition, and audience. You can then save, print, or edit the information and place orders elec- tronically. Books in Print with Book Reviews Plus is another CD- ROM database that includes the Books in Print citations and about 38,000 book reviews from ALA Booklist, Choice, Library Journal, School Li- brary Journal, and Publisher's Weekly. Both databases are avail- able in 1- and 3-year subscrip- tions that are updated on a quarterly basis. They run on Macintoshes with at least 1 megabyte of RAM and will be available in July, according to Bowker Electronic Publishing. Price: 1-year subscription, Books in Print Plus, $995; 1-year subscription, Books in Print with Book Reviews Plus, $1395. Contact: Bowker Electronic Publishing, 245 West 17th St., New York, NY 10011,(212) 337-6989. Inquiry 825. BASIC Software for the Mac Supports Math Coprocessor True BASIC 2.0 for the Macintosh supports the 68881 math coprocessor. It writes to and reads directly from the coprocessor. Sup- port has also been added for color graphics on the Macin- tosh II; you can select colors either by name or by number. Other additions to True BASIC 2.0 include support for full-page displays and the Imagewriter and LaserWriter. You can organize collections of subroutines, functions, and data as modules; you can then share routines and data within a module while keeping them hidden from the main program. The modules support public, shared, and private variables, and have their own initializa- tion sections. You can also add your own functions and sub- routines to the language. Additions to the editor in- clude a SCRIPT command that lets you add a sequence of editor commands and program responses into a file. When you execute a SCRIPT com- mand, the sequence passes to the editor, compiler, or program. Among True BASIC 2.0's new debugging tools is one that allows you to trace through a program and view changing variables. It also has the XREF cross-reference utility. True BASIC 2.0 runs on any Macintosh with at least 512K bytes of RAM. It sup- ports MultiFinder. Price: $99.95. Contact: True BASIC Inc. , 39 South Main St. , Hanover, NH 03755, (603) 643-3882. Inquiry 821. You never know when it's going to happen or what it will do! We're talking about unclean power which causes electrical fluctuations, spikes, surges, glitches or outages. They assault your delicate equipment circuits. No trace. Nothing to warn you. Just complete power failure and data loss which spells lost productivity. Emerson Power Systems eliminate all this. They produce refined, clean power AP300 Series UPS that puts performance and through-put back where it belongs. Our systems are more reliable, simpler and easier to operate. And this pays off for you in failure-free operation for the equipment you now have and the next and the next. Emerson products run the gamut. From large Uninterruptable Power Supplies AP101 Series UPS -ET UPS SURGE PROTECTOR AP1000 Series UPS 1500 AUTOMATIC VOLTAGE REGULATOR (UPS) for computer mainframes to surge suppressors for small electrical phone systems. We also offer a full line of power conditioning distribution systems. Don't wait until something happens. Protect yourself. Give us a call now! EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTOR: LOWELL CORPORATION P.O. Box 158, Worcester, MA 01613 (617) 756-5103 m IEMIERSDN Computer Power ■ma 88NE-4 BYTE* MAY 1988 Series 3000 DISTRIBUTION ISOLATION SYSTEM Series 4000 LINE CONDITIONER UN INE Series 2000 LINE CONDITIONER AP130 Series UPS MICROPOWER II LINE CONDITIONER AP1000 Series UPS 300 ■BE mm Circle 481 on Reader Service Card YOUR NEW ENGLAND STORE FOR HIGH QUALITY DISCOUNTS THE HIGHLY ACCLAIMED ALR 386 COMPUTERS 386/2 Computers 2nd Generation of Fast Microcomputing • 16 and 20 MHz Versions • 2MB RAM • Fast 40MB Drive • 1.2MB Floppy • Serial/Parallel 1:1 Interleave • Floor Stand $3,590 INDTECH 12-Slot AT Industrial Quality 286 Computer • 10MHz 0 Wait State • 640K RAM • 1.2MB Floppy • 40MB Hard Drive • 238W Power Supply • Serial/Parallel • Monochrome card with H-res monitor • Makes an excellent low-cost fileserver $2,149 PRINTERS Many Configurations Available MONITORS FlexCache 386 Computers 0 Wait State • 16 or 20MHz • Uses 82385 Cache controller and 35 ns Cache memory • 1MB RAM • 1:1 Interleave controller • Minicomputer power at PC prices 16MHz with 60MB drive: $3,999 20MHz with 100MB drive: $5,499 100% XT Computer 10MHz • 640K RAM • 360K Floppy • 20MB Hard Drive • Serial/Parallel/Clock/Game • Hi-resolution monochrome $999 HARD DRIVES Panasonic 1080i 144cps . .$199 Magnavox Multimode $569 Seagate 20MB Kit $319 Panasonic 1091 i 192cps . .$239 Thomson Ultrascan $469 Seagate 30MB Kit $359 Panasonic 1524 24-pin . . .$645 CTX EGA $399 Seagate 40MB 40ms $469 NEC P2200 24-pin $450 Seagate 40MB 28ms . . .$599 MATH COPROCESSORS 8087-2 $160 80287-8 $260 80287-10 $310 80387-16 $525 80387-20 $900 EXPANSION BOARDS FLOPPY DRIVES Everex Microenhancer EGA/VGA .$159 5Va' Sigma VGA Analog $399 51/4' 2MB Bocaram AT (w/OK RAM) . . .$159 3 1 / 2 ' Western Digital WD 1006-WAH . . .$199 3Vz' AT 4 port serial card $129 360K $89 1.2MB $119 720K $119 1.44MB $159 CLOSEOUT SOFTWARE SPECIALS!! One FREE Program with this ad. Five FREE Programs with every computer purchase from this ad. Come and See! 1 We stock and sell surge protectors, cables, connectors, sheet feeders, stands, switch, boxes, mouses, joysticks, drives, expansion cards, modems, and many other accessories. HORIZON SALES 59 Fountain St., Framingham, MA 01701 »23f M *iZ 617-875-4433 B H Circle 480 on Reader Service Card mtmm VISA MAY 1988 -BYTE 88NE-5 BLAST IS THE UNCHALLENGED LEADER IN COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE PERFORMANCE LOSS WITH INCREASING NOISE BLAST 1 1 — 1/25 1/20 1/15 Error Rate/Second Noise simulation tests run with a 30K binary spreadsheet file at 1200 baud between IBM-PC's, using BLAST II, rev. 8. 1. Com- parable or better results on VAX and other environments. Most communications software per- forms well under ideal conditions. But in the real world of noisy communications circuits and satellite-routed phone calls, there's only one consistent performance leader— BLAST. The secret is BLocked Asynchronous Transmission, BLAST'S protected-pipe- lining protocol that won't slow down to a snail's pace, drop data or disconnect in adverse conditions. Noisy phone lines . . . satellites . . . PBX switches . . . X.25 packet network delays — your valuable data BLASTS through it all. 88NE-6 BYTE' MAY 1988 Link PCs, Macs, Minis & Mainframes Only BLAST guarantees you fast, 100% error-free file transfer among micros, minis and mainframes running under 30 different operating systems. No matter what systems you need to connect, BLAST software links them all. Connect hundreds of sites at down-to-earth prices — and let BLAST'S speed cut your phone charges, too. And the new BLAST II expands upon this rugged power with a streamlined user interface, VT-100/220 emulation, superior data compression, auto-dialing and all the other "state-of-the-art" features you'd expect. Plus, you get BlastScript a powerful English-like programming language that lets you quickly create custom menu-driven applications on multiple systems. Easily set up remote polling, data collection, order entry and other powerful applications. The choice of the FORTUNE 500 When Bankers' Trust, Blue Cross, Exxon, Nabisco and many other FOR- TUNE 500 companies chose communica- tions software for their financial data transfer operations, they chose BLAST to cut through the noise. Shouldn't you choose BLAST too? Give us a call today. 1-800-24-BLAST Any computer with BLAST can talk to any other computer with BLAST: IBM VM/CMS or MVS/TS0 DEC VAX/VMS; PDWRSX; RT-11 DATA GENERAL RD0S; AOS; A0S/VS WANG VS PRIME PRIM0S HEWLETT-PACKARD 3000/MPE; 1000/RTE HARRIS V0S UNYSIS BT0S, CT0S, UNIX IBM-PC & PS/2 MS-DOS APPLE Macintosh UNIX/XENIX AT&T; Altos; NCR; Sun; Tandem; HP; VAX & mVAX; SCO Xenix; etc. Many others available; please inquire. Communications Research Group 5615 Corporate Boulevard • Baton Rouge, LA 70808 ■ (504) 923-08B8 Crosstalk is a registered trademark of Digital Communications Associates, Inc. © Copyright 1988. Communications Research Group. Inc. Circle 485 on Reader Service Card AUTHORIZEDEaSSBUSINESS / REPAIR CENTER < UJ o 1 — CO o D DQ CC I- < o o I- (/) < 111 o Lil o o CO LU o CC < HEWLETT PACKARD $1575 What HEWLETT mL'/iM PACKARD The original LaserJet printer is now better than ever! Introducing LaserJet Series II. LaserJet Series II, the second gen- eration of the world's most popular laser printer, is waiting for you at your local Hewlett-Packard dealer. Exciting new features make LaserJet Series II the best value in desktop laser printing today. If you're thinking about stepping up to laser printing, you definitely need to see the remarkable LaserJet Series II printer from HP. VISA' Hyundai's Super-286C gives you pro-quality performance at an affordable price. The Power Hitter. Hyundai's new Super-286C packs the punch of a PC AT, without socking it to your wallet. The Super-286C handles today's biggest applications: database management, desktop publishing, computer-aided design. And it packs this power into a remarkably compact unit — ideally suited for even the tightest quarters. Like the rest of Hyundai's new PC line, the Super- 2 8 6C comes with an 18- month warranty, plus service and support from a hand-picked nationwide dealer network. And they're backed by one of the world's largest manufacturing organizations: $14 billion Hyundai corporation. »- 80286 microprocessor svvitchable to 8 or 10MHz— for the right combination of speed and compatibility. ► High-capacity 1.2MB, 5.25" floppy disk drives. ► Built-in 512KB RAM is expandable to 1MB, to support larger application programs. ► f) expansion slots allow you to enhance the system for graphics or extended memory. ► Add your choice of hard disk drives: 30MB, 40MB and 70MB. ► Two serial ports and one parallel port for modems, printers, and other input/ output devices. ► bull 101-key keyboard gives vou complete control and ease of data entry. /HYUNDAI COMPUTERS CALL & ORDER NOW Board Level Service Facility 1-800-447-1176 (NATIONAL WATTS) 1-800-553-1176 Applifd • Progressive • Electronics • Inc 200 Soulhwosi CuiOfl, Roule 20. Norlhboro. MAO! 532 (617)393-7220 • 1 -800-553-1 1 76 wassi 1-80O-447-11 76 ina,, . (61 7) 393-31 24 ,fa PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE CALL & ORDER NOW $1575 (List $2595) With Additional Toner Cartridge $1625 IN STOCK DESKJET $725 Lay Away Available Ordering Infsrttfitloi: We ship anywhere in the continental United States via UPS. Prices are subject to change without notice. We accept VISA, MasterCard, oersonal and company checks and money orders. All returns must have prior authorization from our customer service department within 7 days of receipt. All returns must be in like-new condition, complete and in original packaging. Incomplete merchandise will not be accepted for return. Returned products are subject to a 20% restocking fee ($80 maximum). Defective products will be repaired or replaced at APE's discretion. We do not guarantee compatibility. Not responsible for typographical errors. WHILE STOCK LASTS SAME INCREDIBLY LOW PRICING ON ALL PRODUCTS Circle 484 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 "BYTE 88NE-7 MICROMINDS Gold Standard in Single Board Computers & Controllers BCC180 - $395.00 MULTITASKING CONTROLLER ImageWise™ Serial Digital Imaging System The BCC180. only 4.5" x 8.5" uses ihe same 6A ibo CMOS Z-BO instruction compatible processor as Micromtnt's SBieo and SBieoFX single board computers Configured primarily for process control w/J84K o! memory, 6 parallel I/O ports, console serial port. BSKM/422/-i^5 selectable auxiliary serial pori. and an inierrupr driven ROM- resideni multitasking BASIC-iso compiler, ihe BCCI80 uses the same -M-pin I/O expansion bus as Micromints BCC52 controller board. nt CPU, tis-pm Pi.cc p.M"l- , 'H,v PUOCESSOH •CMOS II MEMORY • Up lo js.iK byies total memory tin-bodn! ■ USKel .'lilicr sunt RAM twe^l or EPROM > • as*K dynamic RAM SIMM • Full -hi net ion eh POM monitor inducted INPUPOUTPUT • GOosoteBSSJS serial port with auto baud raw select to m.soobaud • JVnph.LT.il senal |HJN. ise-i". .w luiul s.-L-u,ibl..- RS -"J. RS-123 or RS-185 • -i? bits bKfirenioml parallel I/O • wK It) available through tbe &CC bus edge connector DIMENSIONS J nil CONNECTIONS • Dual m pin to iv'l^lcv connector • Compalible wiiii .ill Mi.:ronii:ii Bi.V-^n^ 1 O i-..|>ansion boards • Tta.i sts-pln header tor six tHs senal port, hill hand • Line pnnier parallel in pon • a* bits bi-directional parallel PO • 10-bii address decoding. IO port decod itmj. and dual bus interlace broutfhi out to eapanston bus connector uo color graphics adapter • Fully implemented SCSI hard disb and FLOPPYIHARD DISK INTERFACE • Uses Standard Microsystems «66 disk controller • Compatible wiih KEC 76JA conlroller • One hip digital data separaior •Can control vfc*. j'Lvand rr Hoppy dob dnws-up to 4 in any combiiuiion • Handles bolh FM encoded Islnfile den siryl and MFM encoilfd (doubt* density) • NCR 5)C80 SCSI bus contfoller loi hard dtsb or nerwtirb communicaiion SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY • CP/M. ZRDOS ZCPR) Compalible 5B180FX-1 SBiaoFX c 144 MHicampuierbOMdpopulSietl wr 2S6K byies RAM sK byte ROM monitor without SCSI chip Add VM M for d MHj. SBI80FX-I-30 SBlOORt-l computer board asdeKribcd above with Z-System software including ZRDOS ZCPR? editor, uiiliiies ZAS assembler and ZOM debugger, BIOS and ROM monitor sources and BIOS lor SCSI hard dub Supplied cm lire Vu" Sf. i.-a lorrn.ii li.Mil idista. GT180 $395.00 Graphics Display System The OTI60 has bolh TTI. RGB lied tjreen-blue intensity) and analoy RGB outputs, is totally compatible iwth viriually all siandard and multtscan CRT monilors, and has a connector tor an IBM PC keyboard The OT180 offers these features • Advanced graphics conlroller provides intelligent Imp between tompuler and • Only 5.75- x 8\ piwy haclfs on eiiheran S&iaoor SB18OFX computer • High resolution at a low cosi 640 x 480 wiih 16 oi 4C*)6 colors • Hardware drawing commands LINE. RECTANGLE IXM.YI.INE. POLYGON. CIR- CLE. ELLIPSE. ARC, FILLED RECTANGLE. PAINT, PATTERN WINDOW, and COPY to name but a few • Automatic translation ot logical X Y coordinates to physical Ir.ime buffet addresses • Fasi drawing speed of 'i million pixels pet second • Provides fully programmable honzontal spin screens and window screen • Fully supported by GT180 Gtaphix Toolbox wrinen in Modular OTI8O-I OT 180-2 Graphic Display Expansion Board tm RGB only) Graphic Display Expansion Board (TTL RGB and Analog RGB! $393.00 $449.00 MIC ROM I NT INTRODUCES A STANDALONE SERIAL DIGITAL IMAGING SYSTEM. The Ml. p. ".mint imageWlse" Serial Digital Imaging Sywem is the most cosi ettecir.v ,„.,! vfi-~iiik- Mivh tvihirm.iiit...' gfLivsctle video dn;iuiinv; system on the marbet today The ImaoeWieed Ha-!i AH) convener anil 64 K hyit's nl sialic RAM 10 <■ .lpiure an image m I'oOlh second • ■Wfpisativ BfW hi color WTSC video signal • sioic. pi." tines a- :u lines oi pixels 1-1 levels grayscale • Rc-sduiiiui oi ir.inMiniU' t liiria;v is ^liwaie table all images are represenied in 04 levels ol gray scale Selectable Resolutions High 256xi44Xb Med 12Bxl22x(i Low 64X61X6 • Video Inpui 1 vol! peat to- peak. B&W 111 color rs ohm termination • Cideo Ompui: TS Ohm. 1 5 V peat lo [n-ab NTSC composite video • STuilliipul/Oulpui Rs t. bil. one step Ini no parity >CO bps -- S7 SKbps selectable dai.i r.ne ■ Xt.n ( Xoil Handslidling Switch selecr able data compression (on toff) • Modem compatible Easily junctions as a video telephone to send video images attywhete • Video pn • cs'inc: upl ■.ail'ilii-j-nlo.1,1 aiuhlispluv iiiilmes pRivuleil lor PC-DOS ami MS-DOS machines Optional PC UUliilea Dish and Paint Programs, ImageWisc" Rles for use with popular Desbtop Im.igeWisc Digitize! I Tiansmitlet lmageWise Receiver / Display frt^Tc^ OEMt286 — $620.00 "•OV> complete PC/AT-CPU MICROMlNT's OEM-286 is a complete PC/AT-CPU and more The OEM-286 is ihe first low power. 100% AT compatible which has been specifically designed for OEM use wilhin the industrial and business sectors The OEM-286 features the Zymos CMOS POACH set and 100% compatible Award BIOS The development ot the POACH chip set has allowed Ihe ISO IC s on a standard AT to be reduced to 20 IG'S and two SIMMS UTtiai this means lot you is. 1) The overall size ol a standard AT/CPU has been condensed into the expansion card form factor, (is 1 /.- x S'W) 2) Power requirements are less then 1 A @ 5 volts 3) OEM-286 plugs inio a passive backplane for easy connection to other expan- sion peri pherafs The OEM-286 is available in boili 8 and 10 Mhz versions and comes wiih ihe Award OEM-286 F&ATUBES • 100* AT compalible • B0S86 Microprocessor, sot ioMh: • 8OT07 Coprocessor opnonal • 64 Kbytes ol ROM can accommodate inn Kbytes • si 1 -' Kbytes oi RAM • Keyboard Conlroller • Expansion card size lactor • Standard interim 10 0 1 - - S\-sieni txp,insion hus " &,itiery bacbed real lime clocb • Award BIOS included 100 QUANTITY PRICE The MICROMINT BCC52 Computer/ Controlkr is a stand alone single board microcomputer which needs only a power supply and terminal 10 become a complete system progtammable in BASIC or machine language The BCC32 uses ihe Intel 8052AH-BASIC microprocessor which contains a ROM resident flK byte floating poini BASIC interpreter It contains socbeis ion - to 48K bytes of RAM/EPROM. an " itelligent" 2764/128 EPROM pro- grammer, j parallel pons, a serial terminal pori with auto baud rate selection, a serial printer pori BCC52" Basic-52 Computer 'Con irollei $199.00 OEM 100 QUANTITY PRICE $149.00 BCC53 Mulli Function Expansion Board w'OK adtfs 6 pons antl 63 K byies i NOW AVAi LABLL IN INDUSTRIAL TEMPEBATURE RANGE - CALL FOR INFORMATION BCC11 — $139.00 Basic Controller Features: • Uses Z8 single chip microcomputer • On board liny basic interpreter • 2 on board parallel ports 4 serial port • 6 interrupts (4 external) • lust connect a CRT and write control programs in Basic • 6K Bytes of RAM or EPROM memory on board • Baud rates 1 10-9600 bps • Data and address bus available lot 56K memory and I/O expansion • Consumes only 1 5 watts at -fS. 4-12 4 - IBV Been* BASIC System Controller $139.00 OEM 100 QUANTITY. PRICE $89.00 • NOV? AVAILABLE IN INDUSTRIAL TEMPERATURE HANOE - CALL FOR INFORMATION BCC22- $249.00 Term-Mile Smart Terminal Why pay 1500 or more lot a smatt terminal' The TERM-MITE ST oilers you all oi Ihe following on a single board lor less than 'k the price • Dimensions: 4" x6V • 128 displayable characters • 24 lines x so eharaciers • Separate transmit & receiver baud retestl 10 19.200bps! • CRT refresh at so - 60 Hz • Supports scanned and encoded keyboards • 1 1 Graphic characters • 25th line reverse video status displa •21 escape runciions • 14 control functions • Directly drrves composite video or separated sync monilor " All [unctions ate firmware controlled Source code available EDITING FEATURES typeover.clear to screen to space or null, erase to end ol page, erase 10 end ot line, absolute cursor addressing VIDEO ATTRIBUTES reverse video, half intensity, double height, double width. underlined, blinking and blanb characters BUS CONFIGURATION MICROMINT BCC compatible or no bus connection neccessary for stand-alone operation wiih parallel keyboard BCC22 TERM- MITE Smart Terminal Board SJ49.00 BCC22K PARALLEL Encoded ASCII KEYBOARD S 79.00 plugs direcily inio TERM MITE European Distributor: IB. Designs Cirencester, Glos. England GL7 2PB Tel: 0285-68122 Manufacturer Representatives: Access Technology Placentia. CA 92670 Tel: (714)996-3917 Microfuture Fremont. CA 94538 Tel: (415) 657-0264 To order call 1-300-635-3355 for technical information i-(203)-87i-6i70 TELEX: 643331 FAX (203) 872-2204 Micromint, Inc 4 Park Street Vernon, CT 06066 88NE-8 BYTE* MAY 1988 You'll Like Our Prices Even Better When You See What You Get At No Charge: Monday March 198 8 Ship First, Bill Later. Some companies will charge I your credit card weeks before ; the system is shipped. We never do. .............. Hit Plenty of companies offer you low prices on computer systems. But sometimes you get a few things you didn't bargain for. Like defective equipment. "No Returns" policies. Hidden charges. Or charges for unshipped merchandise. We're out to change all that. We're First Micro. We believe 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE The system or components you purchase from First Micro will rti&etydver- Uscrj specifications, and deliver superior performance for 3 lifetime of service ; if for any reason you ara.ynhapw wffii your purchase within the first thirty days, you rnoy return me system or component to First Micro for 3 full tetond. No Hidden Charges. Other companies charge you extra for using your credit card. And there's never any sales tax when you buy from First Micro. it's possible to sell really good PC's, at a really good price. But more important, we believe in satisfying customers. Because we think a happy customer will come back again. Hopefully, with a friend. And that's why we offer this guarantee: If for any reason you Total Quality Assurance. Your First Micro XT or aT will be everything it's cracked up to be— or we give you your money back, no questions asked. decide to return your First Micro xT or aT within thirty days of receipt, we'll give you your money back, no questions asked. So when you need a good, fast system and you need it good and fast— make your first call, your First call. 20 MB Thrbo xT 4.77/8 MHz • 512K RAM • Eight Slots • 360K DS/DD Half-Height Floppy • 20MB Half- Height Hard Disk • Hi-Res Amber Monitor w/ Tilt-Swivel Base • Mono Text/Graphics Card • Parallel Port • AT-style Keyboard • 150W Power Supply • LEDs for Power/Turbo/Fixed Disk • Keyboard Lock 40 MB Hirbo aT 6/10 MHz • 512K RAM • Eight Slots • 1.2M' DS/DD Half-Height Floppy • 40MB Half- Hefght Hard Disk • Hi-Res Amber Monitor w/Tilt-Swivel Base • Mono Text/Graphics Card • Parallel Port • AT-style Keyboard • 200W Power Supply • LEDs for Power/Turbo/ Fixed Disk • Keyboard Lock $895 'arallel Port • AT-style -ver/Turbo/Fixed Disk *1595 VISA Masit-tCard jmepted 10-Day r. y back guarantee on all saks Sales hours; O i ESI' Othe spwifisations and pii FIRST MICRO CORP. 47A Route 28 Windham. NH 030S7 800-634-5872 In NH: 603 -S9S- 3430 li|ect to chJiige without lUMiLe Circle 478 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 88NE-9 • IN PORTABILITY* 286 386 SYSTEM INCLUDES: • 3.5" 720KB DRIVE • 5.25" 1.2MB DRIVE • 20MB HARD DISK • 1200/300 INTERNAL MODEM • PARALLEL/SERIAL/GAME PORT • REAL TIME CLOCK/CALENDAR • 9" EGA OR DUAL SYNC MONITOR • MODIFIED 84 KEY AT-STYLE KEYBOARD • RESET AND TURBO SWITCH • KEYLOCK/DRIVE LED/POWER LED 80286-12 CPU Multi-Speed Runs at 6/8/10/12 MHz 640K Main Memory 80287 Math Co-Processor Socket 7 Full Expansion Slots OS/2 Compatible • WE PROVIDE COMPLETE SYSTEMS - NOT BARE BONES • SYSTEMS ARE READY TO GO - JUST PLUG IT IN. Choose From a Full Line of Systems. . . TRIDATA TURBO 8088 SYSTEMS • 4.77/10 MHz 8088-1 CPU, keyboard or hardware selectable, math coprocessor socket • 512K RAM on main board > 8 Expansion slots ■ AT style case with keylock, power on LED, turbo switch and LED • 150W power supply (110/220 V) • Enhanced AT style keyboard • Multi I/O card includes 1 parallel port, 1 serial port (2nd serial port optional), 1 game port, 1 real time clock, calendar, bat- tery backup, 2 floppy drive controller » 2 hard drive controller • 360KB DS/DD (loppy drive • 20 MB hard drive • Monochrome Graphics Adapter (compatible with Hercules Graphics Adapter) with parallel port • High resolution monochrome monitor • Full IBM PC/XT compatibility • 2.1 times faster than PC, XT PRICE: $1095.00 TRIDATA TURBO 286 SYSTEMS < 6/10 MHz 80286-10 CPU, 0/1 wait state, keyboard or hardware selectable, math coprocessor socket, real time clock, calen- dar, battery backup ■ 640K RAM on main board 1 8 Expansion slots, 6 16-bit, 2 8-bit slots ■ AT style case with keylock, power on LED, turbo LED, reset button > 200W power supply (110/220 V) • Enhanced AT style keyboard • Multi I/O card includes 1 parallel port, 1 serial port (2nd serial port optional), 1 game port > 2 hard & 2 floppy drive controller > 1.2 MB Hi-density floppy drive can format both 1.2MB & 360 KB floppies • 40 MB Hi-speed hard drive • Monochrome Graphics Adapter (compatible with Hercules Graphics Adapter) with parallel port > 14" Flat Screen monochrome monitor ■ Full IBM AT compatibility • 7 times faster than PC.XT • OS/2 Compatible when OS becomes available PRICE: $1890.00 TRIDATA 388 TURBO SYSTEMS • 6/16 MHz 80386 CPU (20 MHz optional) keyboard or hardware selectable, 1 Wait State (0 wait optional), 80287 & 80387 math coprocessor socket, real time clock, calendar, battery backup, 2 serial, 1 parallel ports on main board, 16 interrupts, 7 DMA channels, support up to 16 MB with 32-bit wide memory bus • 2 MB RAM memory board • 8 Expansion slots, 2 32-bit, 4 16-bit, 2 8-bit slots • AT style case with keylock, power on LED, turbo LED, reset button • 200W power supply (110/220 V) • Enhanced AT style keyboard • 2 hard & 2 floppy drive controller • 1.2 MB Hi-density floppy drive can format both 1.2MB & 360 KB floppies • 40 MB Hi-speed hard drive • Monochrome Graphics Adapter (compatible with Hercules Graphics Adapter) with parallel port • 14" Flat Screen monochrome monitor • Full IBM AT compatibility • 9 times faster than PC, XT • OS/2 Compatible when OS becomes available PRICE: $3295.00 FREE $70.00 Nylon Carrying Case with Purchase SYSTEM OPTIONS • 14" Color Monitor w/card 250.00 • EGA Monitor w/card 450.00 • Multisync EGA w/ATI card 650.00 • 1200/300 Internal w/software 85.00 • 2400/300 Internal w/software 165.00 • AT 80286-12MHZ System 65.00 • 386-12MHZ 0 Wait State CALL • YOUR ORDER SHIPPED WITHIN 24 HRS • • ONE YEAR WARRANTY AND 24 HRS REPAIR SERVICE • • MONEY BACK GUARANTEE* • FOR YOUR ORDER CALL NOW (617) 655-3434 Prices quoted are for cash. We accept MIC and VISA 'Notice must be filed with us within 21 days of receipt Prices, terms and conditions are subject to change w/o notice Not responsible for typographical errors DIGICOM TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION 220 W. Central St., Natick, MA 01780 • (617) 655-3434 PC/XT & AT are registered trademarks of International Business Machines. OS/2 is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. 88NE-10 BYTE- MAY 1 988 Circle 477 on Reader Service Card F&cW Communications 194 MAIN ST. MARLBORO, MA 01752 CAD- GRAPHICS & ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING LOW COST SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR IMAGE PROCESSING NEEDS 19 VGA Monitors! MICROTEK SCANNERS Hitachi 3619A VGA $1299.00 Video 7 256 color VGA card $345.00 19"CAD monitor/card package displays 1024x800,16 colors $1799.00 Magnavox Multimode 14"monitor with 800x600 card $759.00 Create and edit images with your computer from photos or artwork. Use the Eyestar Plus software for paint and pixel editing at 300dpi to produce customized images. A publisher's must from $1485.00 The Summagraphic digitizer tablets allow electronic tracing at .001 inch resolution for any drawing or photos. Summa Plus 12"x 12" $399.00 Summa MM1812 18"xl2" $675.00 Summa Mouse (optical) $87.50 SOFTWARE SPECIALS Dr. HALO III $49.00 Use this famous paint program as a business tool for mixed text and graphics. Create presentations animating charts and graphs with 21 fonts for word processed text. DRAFIX I PLUS.. $192. 00 An advanced, low cost CAD package which produces Autocad compatible drawing files and contains many of the advanced features of software packages costing well over $2000. PagePerf ect. . NEW ! . $399. 00 A powerful desktop publisher which combines word processing, color page layout, with scanning and printing functions in one package! GENIUS MOUSE $35.00 200 DPI, no power supply needed LOGITECH MOUSE $119.00 WITH DR. HALO.. 200 DPI OPTIMOUSE $129.00 WITH DR. HALO, no moving parts BIG SAVINGS ON YOUR HARD COPY NEEDS The Mural 'D' size flatbed plotter will plot media sizes to 25" x 34". Call for full details!! $2195.00 The Blaser II laser printer is perfect for FULL PAGE graphics at 300 dots per inch. Button selectable emulation offers almost universal compatibility at 8 pages per minute. Blacker fill than others!! $1650.00 Houston Instruments Plotters!!! F&W offers the complete line of fine drafting plotters including the multi— media size. CALL CALL US FOR THE BEST DEAL, Attention architects, artists, designers and publishers! Our unique experience allows us to offer you the equipment which will give you a competitive edge !! Want to Read More? Call Our Dial— Up Catalog/Bulletin Board (300—2400 baud) at (617)4-81—7222 to Access Our Database !! CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED! LL! (617)485-1144 OR VISIT OUR DISPLAY ROOM WE ARE LOCATED OFF RT. 20 1 MILE EAST OF 1-495 IN DOWNTOWN MARLBORO, AT THE SIGN OF FARADAY AND WHEATST0NE Circle 479 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 88NE-11 QUALITY & SERVICE!! ONE YEAR WARRANTY!!! 24 HOUR SHIPPING!!!* 10 MHz XT 12 MHz AT $499 4.77 -10 MHZ DUAL SPEED (SWITCHABLE BY TURBO BUTTON) AT TYPE CASE RESET BUTTON TURBO BUTTON KEYBOARD LOCK POWER LED 640K RAM 1-360K DISK DRIVE - FUJITSU AT STYLE KEYBOARD 150 WATT POWER SUPPLY 8088-1 CPU w/8087 OPTION FLOPPY CONTROLLER CARD MS-DOS 3.1 USER'S GUIDE $995 ' MOST ITEMS ADD $85 FOR ADDITIONAL 6/8/10/12 MHz HARDWARE/SOFTWARE SWITCHABLE VLSI TECHNOLOGY 80286 CPU w/80287 OPTION 200 WATT POWER SUPPLY 640K RAM, 1.0 MB EXP FLOPPY DRIVE - FUJITSU 1.2 MB HARD /FLOPPY CONTROLLER CARD WESTERN DIGITAL, WA2 AT STYLE KEYBOARD CLOCK/CALENDAR MS-DOS 3.1 USER'S GUIDE 360K FLOPPY DRIVE XT/ AT SYSTEMS MONO SYSTEM: Complete with HERCULES compatible card w/printer port & Samsung TTL monitor XT AT $649 $1149 COLOR SYSTEM: Complete with color graphic card w/printer port & Samsung 14" RGB color monitor XT AT $829$1329 EGA SYSTEM Complete with EGA graphic card w/printer port & Samsung 14" EGA monitor XT AT $1049$ 1549 ^Seagate HARD DRIVES. 20 MB KIT ST-225 $289 30MB KIT ST-238 $329 40 MB KIT F A T ST-251 $429 20 MB HARD CARD $329 30 MB HARD CARD $429 40 MB HARD CARD $499 ALL XT DRIVES COME WITH CONTROLLER CARD, CABLES & MOUNTING INSTRUCTIONS. ALL DRIVES ARE FORMATTED. ALL DRIVES ARE INTERNAL. HARD CARDS ARE MANUFACTURED BY CMS. SH Samsung MONITORS Electron Devices " MONOCHROME, TTL $85 $279 $389 1 2" MONOCHROME, TTL 14" COLOR RGB 14" EGA COLOR W/SWIVEL BASE W/SWIVEL BASE W/SWIVEL BASE W/ EGA CARD $539 MATH PROCESSORS: 8087-3 5Mhz $109 8087-2 8 MHz $159 80287-6 6 MHz $169 80287-8 8 MHz $259 80287-10 10-MHz $299 SmartLink MODEMS: 1200 BAUD 1200 BAUD 2400 BAUD 2400 BAUD $89 $99 $179 $199 INTERNAL EXTERNAL INTERNAL EXTERNAL ALL MODEMS COME WITH COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE & USER'S GUIDE MOUSES: GENIUS GM6+ 03 LOGITECH $79 $89 W/GENIUS PAINT W/ DR. MALLO ALL MOUSES ARE SERIAL, W/PLUS SOFTWARE OPTOMECHANICAL. 1 -800-537-4344 ° 0 R N D L E Y R , S ORDER NOW! HOURS: M-F: 8:30 A.M. -5:30 P.M. SAT: 9:30 A.M. -1:30 P.M. ComputerAge, Inc. 55 Fishlry Street Hartford, CT 06120 FAX: (203)724-3565 TLX: 5106008830 (C0MPR AGE UQ) Info &Tech Support:(203) 724-5100 « NO SURCHARGE FOR MASTERCARD. VISP* ■NO ORDERS CHARGED UNTIL SHIPPED •ALLOW 15 DAYS FOR PERSONAL CHECK ORDERS • DEFECTIVE MERCHANDISE MAY BE RETURNED FOR REPAIR OR EXCHANGE ONLY • WE DO NOT GUARANTEE COMPATIBILITY • ANY GOODS RETURNED FOR CREDIT ARE SUBJECT TO A 10% RESTICKING FEE ■ ALL PRICIES AND POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE • NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR TYPO-GRAPHICAL ERRORS 88NE-12 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 476 on Reader Service Card i SHORT TAKES BYTE editors offer hands-on views of new products An LCD as Crisp as a CRT Zenith's TurbosPort 386 Model 40 incorporates some of the most advanced technology I've ever seen in a battery- powered portable computer, including a one-of-a-kind display and "intelligent power management. " To conserve battery power, Zenith elected to run the 386 with zero wait states at a nonstandard 12 MHz. The slower speed is offset by fewer idle cycles, yielding excellent throughput: A preproduction TurbosPort (with no coprocessor) ran a sampling of our benchmarks from 86 percent to 99 percent as fast as a coprocessor-equipped IBM PS/2 Model 80. Besides the clock speed, numerous other design features let the TurbosPort make the most of its battery power. One such feature, the intelligent power management (IPS) system, lets you use a pop-up menu to selectively power down I/O circuitry you might not need for a given task. You also can switch to a 6-MHz speed for maximum battery life during applications that are not computationally intensive. The IPS is also supposed to dramatically reduce recharge time and prevent the power-robbing "memory effect" that sometimes limits the usefulness of nickel-cadmium batteries. However, a spectacular failure in our prototype's IPS (one that caused a low-battery condition to lock the machine to the point where even plugging it into AC power and cycling the on/off switch would not force a reboot) left me unable to verify this. I eventually disconnected the batteries to reboot. You have to expect glitches in a hand-assembled prototype. Zenith's technological prowess is most clearly evident in the TurbosPort 's screen, which is the centerpiece of the machine: The display is a fluorescently backlit supertwist liquid crystal display (LCD) that produces black-on-white images with a contrast ratio close to that of a conventional monitor and— to my eyes— better for extended viewing than a plasma screen. With its lOVi-inch (diagonal) image area, 8- by 16-character matrix, 400-line resolution, and gray- scale CGA compatibility, this screen could be used full-time— not just when on the road. In fact, after 2 days of use with the TurbosPort side by side with a 12-inch monochrome graphics monitor, I preferred the LCD. The display consists of two separate panels: active and passive LCD screens, separated by an air space and backed by fluorescent tubes in a reflector/diffuser assembly. The passive LCD corrects the chromatic aberration caused by the active, character-forming LCD much the same way that optical crown and flint glass combine to produce achromatic lenses. The net result is a screen that's very bright, with contrast ranging from near white to near black. The screen assembly and the motherboard are mounted in the TurbosPort's clamshell lid, which lifts to reveal a detachable lightweight keyboard with 79 full-size keys. The back of the unit contains the power supply, battery, hard and floppy disk drives, and I/O connectors. The complete machine weighs about 18 pounds. Placing the motherboard in the lid allows the TurbosPort to be convectively cooled. Although the hard disk drive and the power circuitry combined to produce a noticeable high- The Facts: TurbosPort 386 Model 40 $7599 Zenith Data Systems 1000 Milwaukee Ave. Glenview, IL 60025 (800) 842-9000 Inquiry 851. Options: 1200-bps internal modem, $299; 2400-bps internal modem, $549; 2400-bps autosync modem, $699; external 5 '4 -inch 360K-byte floppy disk drive, $399; 8-MHz 8087, $285; 16-MHz 80387, $1199. pitched whine in the preproduction TurbosPort, overall, the fanless machine is quieter than most desktop machines— the Macintosh excepted. The basic TurbosPort system includes an 80386 CPU with 2 megabytes of RAM (expandable to 3 megabytes); a real-time clock /calendar; one 40-megabyte, 28-millisecond internal hard disk drive; one 1 .4-megabyte/720K-byte 3 '/2-inch floppy disk drive; a 25-line by 80-character "page white" backlit LCD; the 79-key detachable keyboard with a connector for an optional keypad; one serial port (D-9); one parallel port (D- 25); RGB video out (D-15); two internal proprietary expansion slots (one for a modem, one for memory); a proprietary expansion bus connector; battery and charger/power supply; MS-DOS 3.2; and Windows/386. We'll examine some of the technology incorporated in the TurbosPort in an upcoming First Impression. We'll also be reporting in the near future on the other new portables just announced by Zenith: the SupersPort and the SupersPort 286 (based on 80C88 and 80C286 CPUs, respectively). — Fred Langa continued MAY 1988 - BYTE 89 SHORT TAKES Safety Net for the PS/2 User Sysgen's Bridge-File comes in two configurations. The first can add 1 .2-megabyte/360K-byte 5 14 -inch capability to IBM PS/2 Models 30, 50, and 60. A second version gives the IBM PC, XT, and AT the ability to read, write, and format both 720K-byte and 1.44-megabyte 3 '/2 -inch disks. A PS/2 Model 80 version is now said to be available, but it was not part of the package I reviewed. My primary concern was to somehow get the ability to attach a high-density 5 '4 -inch floppy disk drive to a PS/2 Model 50. IBM's external 360K-byte 5 14 -inch drive could get me only halfway home, and IBM's Data Transfer Facility requires two computers and a lot of time. The Bridge-File, on the other hand, lets you use just about any MS-DOS-formatted medium and is a simple, obvious solution to a vexing problem. Installing Bridge-File is simple and requires no tools. You boot the system using the IBM Reference Disk to The Facts: Bridge-File Requirements: $325 IBM PS/2 Model 30, 50, or 60; or an IBM PC, Sysgen Inc. XT, or AT (or compatible). 556 Gibraltar Milpitas, CA 95035 (408) 263-4411 Inquiry 857. reconfigure the PS/2, reboot to establish the new con- figuration, run an installation program provided by Sysgen, and reboot one more time. That's it. The whole operation takes about 20 minutes. Sysgen's documentation was a big help, incidentally, and could serve as an industry model for clarity, brevity, and organization. You can read and write with any 5 '4 -inch disk and run programs on the PS/2 from the newly designated drive D. You can format high-density disks on the external drive for 1.2- megabyte capacity, and, while I had no trouble formatting 360K-byte disks, Sysgen warns against it because such disks may prove unreliable in other 360K-byte drives. My overall assessment of the Bridge-File is that it could make people a lot happier about owning a PS/2. 1 know I greeted both the concept and Sysgen's execution with a sigh of relief. —Glenn Hartwig Finite Element Analysis I n the past, most finite-element-analysis programs were I written in FORTRAN by engineers who had neither the time nor the training to implement slick user interfaces. Thus, last summer's announcement of ELM interested me. Fujitsu intro- duced this finite-element program for the IBM PC, which is written in C and features icons and a menu-driven mouse interface. Fujitsu's demonstration of the program was impressive, with the user easily pointing and clicking through a complete analysis. Unfortunately, the finished product, which did not ship until January, bears little resemblance to the polished demonstration I saw last summer. The version I reviewed (ELM2 version 2.07) had many menu options on the screen in faded blue, which, according to the manual, means "not implemented in ELM2." Among these nonimplementations were all element types except for beam elements; not even a truss or a spring element is included in this version. It seems that if the options can't be implemented, they shouldn't be in the menu bars. To make matters worse, the system— I used an IBM PC XT with an Orchid TurboEGA board— would hang up periodically when I attempted various operations. For example, I tried the mirror option for creating a mirror image of a beam model and ended up having to reboot. I tried to print the screen to my printer and got gibberish. There was virtually no information in the two manuals about how to print your model. Both manuals lack an index. Another major problem is the mouse interface. You can perform some operations with the mouse, but sometimes you're forced to use the keyboard to enter a yes/no response. You should be able to use the mouse for all one-click responses. Having to switch back and forth is confusing at best. The mouse interface is supposed to help you create geometries quickly and easily. However, with ELM2, it is easy to overlap lines and node coordinates inadvertently. I also hung the system trying to erase part of a model and redrawing it. Fujitsu's concept of a menu-driven mouse interface for finite elements is extremely attractive. However, the current version is simply not solid enough to be a commercial product. —Nick Baran The Facts: ELM2 version 2.07 $3995 Fujitsu America 3055 Orchard Dr. San Jose, CA 95134 (408) 432-1300 Inquiry 853. Requirements: IBM PC, XT, AT, or compatible with an EGA card, 640K bytes of RAM, a hard disk drive, a numeric coprocessor, a Microsoft Mouse (or compatible), and DOS 2.0 or higher. continued 90 BYTE- MAY 1988 Daily Care For A Hard Day's Work: 1 . Backup YOlir Hard DiSk. ] What The y Said About The Original Disk Technician 2. Run Disk Technician Advanced. Learn from experienced users: DAIL Y BACKUPS WILL NOT STOP DATA CORRUPTION AND LOSS — YOU COULD BE COLLECTING GARBAGE. Nor will software utilities that claim to "repair," "block-out" or "re-align" bad sectors. There are many things about your hard disk computer system you have no control over. It is subjected to so many inherent, external conditions that random data corruption and losses will happen during normal use. In fact, the average business computer user experiences data corruption or loss many times each year. And does not even know it! Your Data Is Your Business. Data losses will cost you plenty. In time and money. You will first see these disguised as unfriendly screen messages like "ABORT, RETRY, IGNORE, FAIL?" Then — suddenly — you have a top-priority business emergency on your hands. So you pay a technician for repair or replacement that would be unnecessary if you had been using Disk Technician Advanced"" Automated Al Software System. Pay overtime attempting to recover as much of your scrambled data as possible. Spend even more time trying to redo projects from scratch. Then find out later that a few things just slipped through the cracks. Now You Can Take Control of Your Time, Money and Valuable Data. You brush your teeth to prevent cavities. You change the oil in your car to prevent engine damage. Now use Disk Techni- cian Advanced to prevent costly data corruption and loss. Disk Technician Advanced is a powerful Artificial Intelligence (Al) software system that does daily, weekly and monthly "check-ups" to predict and repair previously undetectable problems before they cause data corruption and loss. Your part is easy: Just press ENTER a few times. In less than 60 seconds, you can walk away and let Disk Technician Advanced do the rest. Automatically. Unattended. The Best Can Only Outdo Itself. You asked for them. And we gave you ... everything. Now, check out all the new features in Disk Technician Advanced: •Not copy-protected. •Built-in end user program resetability. •Displays current interleaving. •Tests and accurately determines optimal interleaving of your system and programs for maximum speed. •Changes interleaving non-destructively. •Runs from the hard disk OR floppy drive. •Non-destructive low-level formatter. •Automated repair and testing of all partitions on drives in one operation — OR individually. •Advanced Al pattern recognition and expert system. •4 different seek tests. •3-1/2" AND 5-1/4" floppy drive compatiblity. •Optional SafePark""RAM-resident program AND safe zone; end user selectable safe zone location. •Screen saver. •Windowed help screens. Cut A Corner And Save! If you can afford to lose everything on your system, Disk Technician Advanced is not for you. But if your data is your business, don't wait. Order today. Because our special intro- ductory offer will end soon. So go right ahead! Cut a corner. And save $40.00 on the best data protection available at any price. Circle 329 on Reader Service Card Hard Disk Management in the PC & MS DOS Environment by Thomas Sheldon (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1988): "Disk Technician is the best data pro- tection on the market today. Do yourself a favor and buy this program." PC Magazine, Mitt Jones, June 23, 1987: "Prime Solu- tions claims its Disk Technician can prevent hard disk errors, repair even left-for-dead hard disks, and recover data — all automatically and without any technical skills on your part. Sound too good to be true? I thought so, too. But after witnessing a few minor miracles and a major miracle or two, I'm a believer. This $99 software may be the best investment you could ever make." New York Times, Erik Sandberg-Dimennt, August 4, 1987: "Disk Technician seems like a product every owner of a hard disk should seriously consider buying and using daily for preventive maintenance. Think of it as dental floss for your computer." Inside Track, John C. Dvorak, June 23, 1987: "If you're one of those souls who are plagued by hard disk prob- lems, then take a look at Disk Technician from Prime Solutions." PC Al Magazine, Paul Anacker, Winter, 1987: "Disk Technician uses both an internal expert system and pat- tern recognition techniques. It is a utility program that can help prevent disk errors, recover lost data, and possi- bly repair assumed dead hard disks." Disk TechnlclanAdvanced"" Automated Al Software System Disk Technician Advanced is designed to work with 2 physical hard disk drives on IBM PC/XT/AT, PS/2, derivatives and true hardware/software BIOS compatible IBM clones • Works with drives up to 136 megabytes each with MFM-type controllers, or 208 megabytes each with RLL-type controllers — provided they are partitioned in up to 24 logical drives up to 32 megabytes each • Requires 51 2K of RAM. $189.95 sugg. retail — Now At Better Dealers Everywhere, w — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — * YES! I want Disk Technician Advanced Registered Owners of Disk Technician and Disk Technician+ may upgrade to Disk Technician Advanced by sending the original front and back covers of their User's Manual and $69.95. To upgrade if you have not registered your product, include the original registration form with original front and back covers of your User's Manual. Product List SAVE ! YOUR COST Disk Technician Advanced $ 1 89.95 $40.00 Registered Owner Upgrade to Disk Technician Advanced — SUBTOTAL: California residents, add 6-1/2% Sales Tax: Add shipping & handling (Continental US $4.50; Alaska, Hawaii & Puerto Rico $8.50; Canada $1 2.50; all other countries $1 6.50): _ $149.95 $69.95 TOTAL: Please specify diskette size: i J 5-1/4" Payment must accompany your order. Prime Solutions Inc accepts VISA, MasterCard, EuroCard, and checks or drafts in US dollars payable at US banks. Allow 15 banking days for checks to clear. If paying by credit card: include card number, expiration date, and cardholder's home address and telephone number. Sorry, no CODs or purchase orders. To Order Disk Technician Advanced: complete this form and mail to: Prime Solutions Inc; Cut-A-Corner Offer; 1940 Garnet Avenue; San Diego, CA 92109 USA. Include your name and complete shipping address (no PO boxes, please). Orders must Include the original upper righthand comer of this page containing the words "Cut-A-Comer SAVE $40.00 BYTE Magazine 0588'. This offer expires on July 31 , 1 988 and orders must be received by August 25, 1 988. Offer void where restricted or prohibited by law. Offer is not valid in conjunction with any other Prime Solutions Inc promotion. PRIME SOLUTIONS INC sm We Make Technology Easy And Affordable sm 1 940 Garnet Avenue • San Diego, CA 921 09 USA 800 847 5000 or 619 274 5000 See us at COMDEX booth #5134 MAY 1988 -BYTE 91 SHORT TAKES GET SUPERSOFT's Service Diagnostics All the software, alignment diskettes, parallel/serial wrap-around plugs, ROM POSTs and extensive, professional documentation to provide the most comprehensive testing available for IBM PCs, XTs.ATs and all compatibles under DOS or Stand Alone. No other diagnostics offers such in-depth testing on as many different types of equipment by isolating problems to the board and chip level. NEW: SuperSoft's ROM POST performs the most advanced Power-on-Self-Test available for system boards that are compatible with the IBM ROM BIOS. It works even in circumstances when the Service Diagnostics diskette cannot be loaded. NEW: 386 diagnostics for hybrids and PS/2s! For over nine years, major manufacturers have been relying on SuperSoft's diagnostics software to help them and their customers repair microcomputers. End users have been relying on SuperSoft's Diagnostics II for the most thorough hardware error isolation available. Now versions of Service Diagnostics are available to save everyone (including every serious repairtechnician) time, money, and headaches in fixing their computers, even non-IBM equipment. All CPUs & Numeric Co-processors System Expansion & Extended Memory Floppy, Fixed & Non-standard Disk Drives Standard & Non-standard Printers System Board: DMA, Timers, Interrupt, Real-time Clock & CMOS config. RAM All ColorGraphics & Monochrome Monitors Parallels Serial Ports Mono, CGA, Hercules & EGA Adapters All Keyboards & the 8042 Controller Join the ranks of XEROX, NCR, CDC, SONY, PRIME, ... who have bundled SuperSoft's diagnostics with their microcomputers at no risk because of our 30 day money back guarantee. Service Diagnostics for PC, PC/XT, and compatibles only $1 69 Alignment Diskette tor PC, PC/XT and compatibles (48 tpi drives) $ 50 Wrap-around Plug for PC, PC/XT and compatibles (parallel and serial) $ 30 Service Diagnostics for AT and compatibles only $1 69 AlignmentDisketteforATandcompatibles(96tpidrives) $ 50 Wrap-around Plug for AT (serial) $ 15 ROM POST for PC, PC/XT, and compatiblesonly $245 ROM POST for AT and compatibles only $245 Service Diagnostics: The KIT (includes all of the above — save $502) $495 Service Diagnostics for all other CPUs (386, V20, V30, Harris, etc.) $1 95 Diagnostics 1 1 is the solution to the service problems of users of all CP/M-80, CP/M-86 and MS-DOS computers $1 25 ROM POST for PS/2 and compatibles only $245 Alignment Diskette for PS/2 and compatibles (3.5 inch) $ 50 To order, call 800-678-3600 or 217-359-2112, FAX 217-398-5923, or write SuperSoft. SuperS ft FIRST IN SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY P.O.Box1628 Champaign, IL61820 (217)359-2112 Telex 270365 SUPERSOFT is a registered trademark of SuperSoft. Inc.; CDC of Control Data Corp.; IBM PC. AT & XT of International Business Machines Corp.; MS-DOS of Microsoft Corp.; NEC of NEC Information Systems, Inc., PRIME of PRIME INC.; Sony of Sony Corp. Hewlett-Packard's New Calculators The Facts: HP-19B Business Calculator $175 HP-28S Scientific Calculator $235 Hewlett-Packard 1000 Northeast Circle Blvd. Corvallis, OR 97330 (800) 752-0900 Inquiry 856. Although Hewlett-Packard has struggled in the personal computer marketplace, the company is still the leader when it comes to hand calculators. HP's new 28S Scientific Calculator ($235) and 19B Business Calculator ($175) are marvels of modern electronics and computer science. The 28S, a calculator for scientists and engineers, is designed to perform sophisticated numerical analyses, including matrix algebra, differential equations, and complex numbers. In addition to a large function library, the 28S includes a comprehensive set of programming commands, including conditional and looping functions. The 19B is a calculator for business and financial professionals performing calculations involving economics, accounting, and time management. The 19B includes a wide array of built-in financial and statistical functions. Both calculators fold out to IVi by 6Vi inches. On the right side, you'll find a standard numeric keypad and a variety of functions that you can access with a Shift key. The left side has alphanumeric keys for entering text values for program commands, variable names, or data lists. You can fold the left side behind the right side if all you need is the numeric keypad. The calculators have 4-line LCDs allowing 23 characters per line and a resolution of 32 by 137 pixels. I found the display hard to read, however, even after adjusting the contrast. Both calculators have an infrared printer interface, letting you print results on HP's 82240A infrared printer. The 28S has 32K bytes of user-available RAM for storing programs and data; the 19B has 6.5K bytes. An impressive feature on the 28S is the ability to design menus and submenus of calcula- tion options, which appear in the bottom row of the display and are selected by pressing the corresponding key below each option. The 28S also has a hierarchical directory system for storing variables for different programs. Both calculators support graph plotting. The 19B allows plotting of statistical functions as well as curve fits and net continued 92 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 284 on Reader Service Card The graphics tool for all seasons! Announcing "ColoRIX" VGA Paint, the graphics editor for all EGA and VGA modes with the same easy to learn, icon- free interface you all know and love ! RIX (creators of EGA Paint) have something we've been working on for almost three years that we think will knock your socks off! Introducing, RIX SoftWorks "ColoRIX" VGA Paint program! This is the one you've all been waiting for! With features programs costing over four times as much don't have ! "ColoRIX" is designed for the new VGA standard and special "ZGA" high resolutions (640X480X256, etc.) as well as all the popular EGA resolutions up to 800 X 600 X 16 colors. "ColoRIX" has features like our exclusive Grad command (Automatic Color- Graduation Fill) which lets you select colors, press a button and you get a precisely computed color-graduated fill up to full- screen size instantly ! A special Auto-Palette Organizer to help you quickly sort and manipulate your 256 color palette out of the 25 6,000 that are now available for use in VGA modes! You'll love our VGA Smoother too, with up to four levels of automatic anti-aliasing to smooth up those awful "jaggies". Yes, "ColoRIX" has all the features contained in our superlative EGA Paint 2005 Final Version (the only "final version" of any software program ever!). For a limited time, as a special introductory bonus, customers of "ColoRIX" who order direct will receive a $200.00 discount on our fantastic "TARGA™ Utilities" package! "TARGA™ Utilities"translates TARGA™ files to any of our supported EGA or VGA screens and comes with the best TARGA printing program in the industry! Save big bucks and get the one and only "ColoRIX" from those wild and crazy folks in Irvine, CA! ColoRIX VGA Paint - Just $199.00 CALL NOW TO ORDER - Toll Free: RIX SoftWorks Inc. In CA: (800)233-5983 Outside CA: (800)345-9059 18552 MacArtto bi. * Suite 375 * Irvine, Calif. 92715 targa- is a Trademark of Truevision, ine. circ[e 332 on K ea j er Service Card (DEALERS: 333) Circle 126 on Reader Service Card - SHORT TAKES D2D Convert AutoCAD* Drawings to Your CAD System SoftWest™ D2D from The Great SoftWestern Company, Inc.® allows you to quickly and efficiently convert AutoCAD® drawing files to DXF format. SoftWest D2D also primes AutoCAD drawing files (via DXF) for input into other systems three to five times faster than AutoCAD. This conversion assists in recovering drawings that AutoCAD cannot read. Since SoftWest D2D is a stand alone product, AutoCAD is not required to use this program. SoftWest D2D is another idea from the people at The Great SoftWestern Company, Inc.® , also the creator of AutoBoard System®, SoftWest™ GPI, and SoftWest™ PPL 1-800-231-6880 INFORMATION & ORDERS 1-817-383-4434 TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE AutoCAD is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Ire 3The Great) /SoftWestern ( Company. Inr The Original SERIOUS ABOUT , SPORTS? X, 1 1 GET IT ALL WITH COMPUTER SPORTS WORLD America's oldest and largest sports and horseracing database with over 4200 files of computerized information. AT YOUR FINGERTIPS! 24 HOURS — UP TO THE MINUTE Scores In Progress • Weather • Transactions Injuries • Team Logs • Fantasy Stats • Call now and speak to a representative for your demonstration account number and password. 800-321-5562 CSW. COMPUTER SPORTS WORLD A service of The Chronicle Publishing Company, San Fransisco. present value versus cost of capital. The 28S has more flexible graphing capabilities, including Cartesian or polar coordinates and scaling. You can store graphs in memory for later recall, and you can digitize any point on the graph to retrieve specific coordinates or data points. The 28S uses postfix notation (also known as reverse Polish notation or stack logic) with a stack of four levels. The basic principle of postfix notation is that you enter values (arguments) on the stack before executing the arithmetic function. However, you can enter algebraic expressions in parentheses before storing the values on the stack. The 19B uses standard algebraic notation, which is more familiar to businesspeople. Being an old HP calculator user, I was dis- appointed in HP's decision to abandon postfix notation for its business calculator, but this is what the market demands. While you can quickly perform basic calculations, these calculators are extremely powerful if you're willing to take the time to learn how to use them. —Nick Baran Word Processing with the Macintosh The Facts: WordPerfect for the Macintosh $395 WordPerfect Corp. 288 West Center St. Orem, UT 84057 (801) 225-5000 Inquiry 855. Requirements: Macintosh 512KE, Plus, SE, or II with System 4. 1 or higher and two floppy disk drives or a hard disk drive. WordPerfect for the Macintosh is a powerful program that expands the Macintosh interface in several ways. For example, a full-screen option lets you hide the menu bar until you need it, making about two additional lines visible. The program also uses hierarchical menus. WordPerfect has dozens of major features, including out- lining capabilities, a 115,000-word spelling checker, a thesaurus, footnotes and end notes, automatic creation of indexes and tables of contents, nested and chained macros, and redlining and strikeout options. One feature that makes the program stand out is automatic timed backup of files, which I used to save my text every minute, since the beta copy I was using crashed often. An continued 94 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 69 on Reader Service Card At 9,600 bps At 19,200 bps A MODEM THAT IS TWICE AS GOOD AS IT LOOKS. It says 9,600 bps. But for this modem, trans- mitting data at 9,600 bps over dial-up lines isn't the half of it. Its built-in data compression can boost throughput to 19,200 bps. While error-control pre- vents loss of data. With no effort on your part — no selecting protocols, no compressing files. AV-series Smartmodem 9600™ can even take the place of two modems. Because it communicates in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. All of which makes our 9600 at least twice as good as it seems. Or, looking at it the other way, more than double your money's worth. For your nearest Hayes dealer, call 800-635-1225. Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc.. P.O. Box 105203. Atlanta. GA 30348 Circle 129 on Reader Service Card Hayes. MAY 1988 -BYTE 95 SHORT TAKES REPRINTED FROM DEC PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE, MAY 1987 (WITH REVIEWS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS CLEVER HEADLINES?) Find out why magazines like DEC Professional and PC Week and over 60,000 PC users appreciate the convenient yet powerful features of VTERM/ 220, VTERM III and VTERM/4010. Send in this coupon to see for yourself the most functionally complete emulation of DEC VT220, VT100, VT52 IfTED M or Tektronix 4010 terminals. V I Elf Iff! I would like to find out why magazines like DEC Professional, ' PC Week and others rate VTERM/220 so highly. I I Please send me the DEC Professional and PC Week reviews. □ Please send me information on your free 30-day evaluation of VTERM/220, VTERM III and VTERM/4010. NAME TITLE COMPANY _ ADDRESS _ CITY . STATE . ZIP. PHONE NUMBER . L. Write: Coefficient Systems Corporation 611 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012 0^7(212) 777-6707 m~415 FAX: (212) 228-3137 TELEX: 6503156498 ■VTERM refers lo VTERM/220. VTERM III and VTERM 4010 Ifom Coefficient Systems Corporoiion, J append function lets you copy to an unopened document; a retrieve function enables you to do the opposite, add the contents of an unopened document to the current file. WordPerfect lets you view formatting codes in a separate window at the bottom of the screen, a useful feature in laying out complex documents. You can perform many file-management chores from within the program, eliminating the need to return to the Finder when you want to delete, copy, retrieve, or rename files and folders. You can also view unopened files and perform text searches on words or phrases. — Jeff Merron An Assembler that's Better and Faster than MASM? Optasm $195 SLR Systems 1622 North Main St. Butler, PA 16001 (412) 282-0864 Inquiry 852. Requirements: IBM PC, XT, AT, or compatible, DOS 2.0 or higher, and 128K bytes of memory. ptasm has one goal in life: to be better than Microsoft's Macro Assembler (MASM), the definitive IBM PC assembler. Now, when I say better, I don't mean just faster. Optasm seeks to make your job easier. Say you've written a patch of 8088 code that ends with a comparison and a conditional jump to another patch of code you've eyeballed as being just inside the magical 127 -byte limit. But you run it through the assembler and find that the jump's destination is 132 bytes away, so you've got to go back and recode the conditional jump into its opposite (i.e. , turn a JNZ into a JZ) followed by an unconditional jump. This scenario will never happen with Optasm: It automatically generates a conditional/unconditional jump pair for conditional branches whose distance you've underestimated. There's lots more goodies. Optasm won't sneak in NOP instructions for forward references, it will replace some instructions with shorter and faster equivalents where it deems appropriate (LEA with a MOV instruction, for example), and it lets you define local labels within procedures, so you don't have to contrive a unique name for the destination of something like a trivial loop. There's a price to pay for all this wonderfulness: Optasm does not support the 80386, will not generate pass 1 listings, does not generate CodeView local symbols, and costs $195. The pass 1 listings issue isn't much of one, since you're usually generating a pass 1 listing to find phase errors, which Optasm does not permit. To verify Optasm's claims of superior speed and output code efficiency, I ran an informal test. I assembled a source- code file of about 16K bytes on a 10-MHz IBM PC AT clone using both Optasm and MASM 5.0. Optasm completed it in a little over a second; MASM required over 5 seconds. Also, Optasm generated code that was about 30 bytes smaller than MASM's output. I couldn't measure any difference in the execution time— though it was nice to see that Optasm did in fact generate object code that was compatible with the linker and executed without a hitch. ^Rick Grehan continued 96 BYTE • MAY 1988 Circle 59 on Reader Service Card Aztec C Power to go the distance... Whatever that distance might be From real time embedded applications to comprehensive commercial applications on Macintosh, IBM PC, Amiga, Atari, and others, Aztec C has earned a well-deserved reputa- tion as an innovative, tough to beat, rock-solid C development system. But don't just take our word for it — try it yourself. We know that the best way to understand what puts you ahead with Aztec C is to use it. That's why Aztec C systems purchased directly from Manx come with a 30-day, no questions asked, satisfaction guarantee. Call for yours today. We can also send you informa- tion that details the special fea- tures and options of Aztec C. Plus information on support soft- ware, extended technical sup- port options, and all of the services and specialized sup- port that you may need when you're pushing your software to the limits and . . . beyond. MS-DOS Hosted ROM Development Systems Host -(-Target: $750 Additional Targets: $500 Targets: • 6502 family • 8080-8085-Z80-Z1 80-641 80 • 8088-8086-801 86-80286/8087-80287 • 68000-68010-68020/68881 Components: • C compiler for host and target • Assembler for host and target • linker and librarian • Unix utilities make, diff, grep • Unix vi editor • debugger • download support Features: • Complete development system • Fast development times • Prototype and debug non-specific code under MS-DOS • Compilers produce modifiable assembler output, support inline assembly, and will link with assembly modules • Support for INTEL hex, S record, and other formats • source for UNIX run time library • processor dependent features • source for startup Aztec C Micro Systems Aztec C is available for most micro- computers in three configurations: The Professional; The Developer; and The Commercial system. All systems are upgradable. Aztec C68k Am Amiga source debugger-optional Aztec C68k Mac . . . Macintosh MPWand MAC II support Aztec C86 MS-DOS source debugger • CP/M libraries The followng have special pricing and configurations. Call for details. Aztec C68k/At Atari ST Aztec C80 CP/M-80 Aztec C65 Apple II & II GS Standard System $199 • C compiler • Macro Assembler • overlay linker with librarian • debugger • UNIX and other libraries • utilities Developer System $299 • all Standard System features • UNIX utilities make, diff, grep • UNIX vi editor Commercial System $499 • all Developer features • source for run time libraries • one year of updates C.O.D., VISA, MasterCard, American Ex- press, wire (domestic and international), and terms are available. One and two day deliv- ery available for all domestic and most international destinations. Circle 171 on Reader Service Card Manx Software Systems One Industrial Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 Azfec C is available on a thirty-day money back guarantee. Call now and find out why over 50,000 users give Aztec C one of the highest user-satisfaction ratings in the industry Call 1-800-221-0440 In NJ or outside the USA, call 201-542-2121 Telex: 4995812 Fax 201-542-8386 MAY !988 'BYTE 97 Circle 127 on Reader Service Card 98 BYTE- MAY 1988 (DEALERS: 128) SHORT TAKES Organizing the Desktop with a Free-Form Database I have one of BYTE's most cluttered and chaotic offices, I which I take some pride in. But as the stacks of paper slide into mounds of paper, and I find it harder to keep track of just what's in each mound, I know it's time to get organized. Think'n Time, a Macintosh desk accessory, is a program that might help me cut the clutter. It's based on the metaphor of a desktop with room for many stacks of paper. Blocks of information, represented by little sheets of paper on the screen, can contain just about anything you want to put in there. Click on a sheet, and you'll find the information you've connected to it, be it a daily schedule, notes on a particular subject, or a grocery list. But this program, which could be described as a free- form database, does a lot more than just visually organize informa- tion or concepts on an electronic desktop. It also lets you link all that information in both graphic and intelligent ways. Every time you set up a stack of paper, you can then propagate related stacks. You end up with a tree structure, with tagged stacks of paper linked by lines making your organization clear visually. These stacks of paper can stand for anything you want them to, depending on what you're using the program for. Each stack essentially has its own text editor, which works like your standard Macintosh editor. When you click appropriately, you jump into a text window, where you can enter the information (text or numbers) you want to link to that stack or sheet. You just have to be able to say it in about 32,000 characters. After you've entered the information, you pop back to the tree structure. The paper icon now looks as if it has writing on it, which tells you that there's text in that stack or sheet of paper. OK, so this is great for getting organized, for setting up tree charts and linking boxes, and for putting information into those boxes. But the thing I really like about this program is its search capability. Give it a keyword, and it will look at every stack tag and every sheet of text in the file. Think'n Time has other features, like the ability to generate calendars, calculate numbers, import ASCII files, and save trees in MORE format. Nothing radical, but it is very handy having all this in a program that occupies just 50K bytes. It, however, is not a program you just sit down and use. I worked through the tutorial and read the manual (130 pages of big type) several times before I felt like I knew most of what the program could do. The calendar part I found particularly confounding. But Think'n Time looks like a good way to turn the clutter on my desk into neat little stacks of paper on my electronic desktop. The only problem now is getting those mounds of information into the Macintosh. ■ — D. Barker The Facts: Think'n Time Requirements: $99.95 Macintosh 512KE, Plus, SE, or II; it comes on an 800K- Mainstay byte floppy disk but will 53 1 1 -B Derry Ave. access 400K-byte disks or Agoura Hills, CA 91301 any Hierarchical File System (8 1 8) 99 1 -6540 hard disk drive; occupies 50K Inquiry 854. bytes. Circle 318 on Reader Service Card — » r^tf t TOOLKITS FOR ' TURBO C & QUICK C frnm 7CiBTFCU IMC HOTKEY " ~ m — — -™ - — * A complete set of Terminate Stay Resident (TSR) functions that help you to write reliable 'pop-up' programs. Now you can make your programs 'Sidekickable'. Two SUPERTEXT example programs are included, This is not simply an 'Editor 1 a 'pop-up Calculator' and a pop- toolkit, but a full-blown, up 'Critical Error Handler". 'WordStar' compatible The Hotkey toolkit handles all wordprocessor with the full floating point functions in resident source coete - mode. As well as all the normal The 32 page manual includes an interesting discussion of the origin and history of undocumented MS-DOS function calls, together with a full explanation of the theory and practical use of TSR's. Only $49.95 ! State Turbo C or Quick C version.) COMMS Do you need to incorporate serial communications into your applications? Yes! Then get this inexpensive but highly professional COMMS toolkit from Zortech Inc. Look at the list of features: Xmodem, Kermit and ASCII file transfer, Hayes modem control, VT52, VTWO and ANSI terminal emulation, supports up to 8 serial ports, speeds up to 19.2k baud rate and higher. Two demonstration programs are included, MINICOM and MAXICOM (like Procomm) together with the 120 page manual and full source code FREE! Only $49.95! (State Turbo C orQuickC version.) GAMES Have you ever wondered how to write a chess program ? No w we reveal the secret algorithms and techniques of the masters with this dynamic Games toolkit. The package comes complete with the full source code to three ready to play games of strategy Chess, Backgammon and Wari (an ancient African game). A comprehensive 150 page manual is provided giving an in depth look at the history, structure and program design of such 'Strategy Games'. Only $49.95! SUPERTEXT This is not simply an 'Editor 1 toolkit, but a full-blown, 'WordStar' compatible wordprocessor with the full source code. As well as all the normal editing functions, you will also find 'dof commands and full printer control. TheSuperText toolkit handles files of any size and allows full on-screen configuration. Do you need to incorporate a wordprocessor into your application? Yes! Then get the SuperText toolkit complete with full source code and ISO page manual now! Only $49.95! (State Turbo C or Quick C version.) PROSCREEN Generate high quality data entry screens with the Pro-Screen — Screen Designer and Code Generator. You can draw the data entry screen, define the input fields, define the input criteria, set screen colors and attributes, draw single or double lines, make boxes — press a few buttons and 'hey presto' Pro-Screen generates the C source code for your application! Professional applications ' programmers will find this versatile utility and ifs associated functions invaluable. Comes complete with a substantial 78 page manual and demo programs Only $49.95! (State Turbo C or QuickC version. Rush i these items! ONLY WINDOWS Add super-fast text screen handling to your applications with the WINDOWS library from Zortech Inc. Give your applications the professional look — with instant zooming and exploding windows. Incorporate drop-down menus and Lotus style menus with our easy to use functions. Automatically handles memory saving and buffering of window text. Use any number of overlapping windows in your applications. Write to any window, read from any window, close any window, pull any window to the top. Over 55 functions together 1 with a big 85 page manual and remember, you get the full source code. Only $49.95! (State Turbo C or QuickC version.) VIDEO HOTKEY V □ PRO-SC » 1ST REEN a UE LJI □ i SUPERTEXT Ol C VIDEO Now learn C the easy way! Get the 'Complete C Video Course' from Zortech Inc. together with our big 365 page workbook. Ten 1 hour tapes — 36 lessons! Easy to follow course, you get \ an excellent introduction to the C language. Takes you step-by-step up to the intermediate and advanced levels. Teach yourself at home or the office — at your own speed. (State Turbo Qor QuickC version.) VISA/MC/COD/CHECK Name Address Phone VISAorMC# Exp. Date ZORTECH Inc. 361 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA 02174 Orders & Enquiries Tel: (617) 646 6703 ORDER HOTLINE 800-848-8408 These give you high-performance personal computers. Intel" 80386-20 Intel* 80386-20 Intel" 80386-16 Intel' 80286-12 Intel" 80286-12 COMPAQ personal computers offer far more than advanced, high-speed microprocessors. Each offers a combination of innovative features which work with the processor to maximize overall system performance. So there's nothing to slow you down. Take system architecture, for example. The COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/20 and COMPAQ PORTABLE 386 are built around an advanced 32-bit concurrent bus architecture which exploits the speed of the computers' 20-MHz 80386 microprocessors. Two buses— one for memory and one for peripherals— eliminate information bottlenecks, allowing each component to run at its maximum speed. This ensures the highest system performance without sacrificing compat- ibility with industry-standard hardware and the world's largest library of business productivity software. Similar performance enhancements are engineered into each subsystem of every COMPAQ personal computer. Each component is then optimized individually, yet designed to work as part of the total system. For instance, COMPAQ Fixed Disk Drives deliver both high capacity and high performance. You can install up to a 300-megabyte fixed disk drive in the COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/20 and up to a 100-megabyte drive in the COMPAQ PORTABLE 386. More importantly, you can get to that data almost instantly thanks to some of the indus- try's fastest access times— averaging less than 30 millisec- onds. When you combine this speed and capacity with disk caching, the result is the highest-performance stor- age subsystem in the industry. To take it one step further, Compaq helps you protect that data with internal high- •Based on an independent study of major brands. COMPAQ", COMPAQ DESKPRO 386* and COMPAQ DESKPRO 286"are registered trademarks of Compaq Computer Corporation. ^Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/20™ COMPAQ PORTABLE 386™ and COMPAQ PORTABLE III™ are trademarks of Compaq Computer Corporation. IBM* is a registered trademark and IBM PS/2™ is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Intel* is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. ©1988 Compaq Computer Corporation. All rights reserved. 100 BYTE* MAY 1988 These give you the highest-performance personal computers. r 1 comPAa [ COMPAQ. COMPAQ. I (MMMMmS3BE COMPAQ COMPAQ L — - - speed fixed disk drive tape backup systems. Another graphic example of Compaq total system performance comes from the COMPAQ Video Graphics System. This system supplies VGA graphics with high- resolution COMPAQ Color and Monochrome Monitors along with speed enhancements from the COMPAQ Video Graphics Controller Board. When the board is used in a 16-bit slot, it makes screen updating 50% faster than the IBM® PS/2™ Video Graphics Array and other compara- bly equipped systems. Uncommon performance innovations like these are common to all COMPAQ desktop and portable personal computers. That's clearly why each one is the best in its class, and why together, they represent the most powerful line of personal computers in the world. That's also why Compaq consistently earns the highest performance and quality ratings from computer experts. And unsurpassed satisfaction ratings from computer users* Any computer can use a fast microprocessor. But it takes high-performance subsystems surrounding the proces- sor to achieve the highest system performance in the world. The kind achieved by Compaq. For more information and the location of the Authorized COMPAQ Computer Dealer nearest you, call 1-800-231-0900, Operator 49. In Canada, 1-800-263-5868, Operator 49. COMPAQ It simply works better. MAY 1988 -BYTE 101 PRODUCT FOCUS Word Processors for Desktop Publishing Lamont Wood Can any top-of-the-line MS- DOS word processor do desk- top publishing? Theoretically, yes. Ever since word processors came into being, their manufac- turers have been upgrading them with successive versions— not redesigning them, but piling new features on top of what they originally fashioned. Many present-day packages can do a lot, but in a few cases, this "add-on" phi- losophy has created monsters. Some of them now require over 20 disks to run, and users must try to wade through a huge set of manuals. Despite efforts that have been made, though, there's still a big gap between desktop publishing (DTP) and word pro- cessing. At least, that's what I've gleaned from a review of 10 leading MS-DOS word-processing packages, selected for their claims to have DTP-like features. The manufacturers state that these pack- ages can, at the very least, support multi- ple fonts within a document. That fact was borne out in my evaluations. The Gap DTP was developed to enable people and companies, not necessarily professional printers, to produce material similar to that appearing in books and magazines. DTP gives nonprofessionals the ability to visually combine text and graphics on the same page and see the result before it is printed. To fulfill this mission, DTP packages, such as Xerox's Ventura Publisher and Aldus's PageMaker, must be able to fur- nish the same typographical characteris- tics that a print shop can supply. Such features (see the text box "True Desktop Publishing" on page 108) include: • font selection • proportional text • WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) display • ruling lines • graphics integration • column formatting Advanced packages can do some desktop-publishing functions, but a gap still exists In the least-case scenario, you should be able to see these features on the screen as you use them so that, as you create your document, you will know what your printed page will look like. This kind of representation is called WYSIWYG— pronounced "whizzy-whig." Without the benefit of WYSIWYG, you can't do layouts— you'll have to settle for imple- menting your needs by programming. Graphics design is tricky enough without interposing a user-indifferent computer between the designer and the product. Generally, DTP software now avail- able offers WYSIWYG graphics, either pictures or drawings in selected formats. You compose these with a graphics pro- gram or digitize them with a document scanner and add them to the page. DTP programs also should be powerful enough to make the text format wrap around a picture. The picture is shown on the screen as just another part of the doc- ument, faithful within the limits of the available resolution. These features let you prevent fatal errors or problems creeping in by default. It's heady stuff. On the other hand, DTP software usually lacks all but the most rudimentary text-generation tools. Currently, about all you can do with DTP software is to move the cursor around and change a few things. DTP software assumes you've generated the raw text with a full-featured word proces- sor; that is, you've used a word processor that has functions like a spelling checker, thesaurus, mail-merge facility, outliner, word counter, redliner (i.e. , a feature that lets you overstrike text and have it invisi- ble on the printout), search/replace, on- screen math, footnotes, end notes, table- of-authorities generator (e.g., lawyers' footnotes), and a document comparer (to track ongoing < The software packages re- viewed were tested as word pro- cessors and examined for their DTP potential. Table 1 shows each program's features; table 2 gives the results of the bench- mark tests. DisplayWrite 4 Version 1.0 DisplayWrite 4 is a $495 package from IBM, requiring at least one floppy disk drive or one floppy disk drive and one hard disk drive and DOS 2. 1 or higher. It needs 3 10K bytes of RAM for use with a hard disk drive and 384K bytes for use with floppy disk drives. Of course, no one should ever need to use anything except IBM products. At least, that's the idea you better buy into before using DisplayWrite, since the first thing you'll discover about it is that it sup- ports only IBM printers. DisplayWrite gives the impression it's intended as a replacement for the type- writer. The list of available fonts is limited, and they are described in terms of pitch (typewriter terminology for char- acters per inch) rather than point size (printer terminology for character height in units of 1/72 inch). The pitches— which are 8.55, 10, 12, proportional, 15, and 17.1— are broken down into "type- styles," each with an ID number. The ID numbers actually refer to daisy wheels or printer cartridges for various IBM printers. You can't, incidentally, change pitch inside a line— a severe limi- tation for anyone interested in "real" DTP, but typical if you're geared to typewriters. What DisplayWrite puts on your screen only suggests what you should get on the page. Centered text is not centered on the screen, although it is printed that way. Changes in pitch, designed to change the number of characters that can fit on a line, are shown by adjusting the right margin. First, though, you have to either make a correction within that paragraph or use the reformat command to trigger 102 BYTE* MAY 1988 DisplayWrite 4 MASS-1 1 Microsoft Word MultiMate OfficeWriter Samna SmartWord WordPerfect WordStar XyWrite reformatting for the specific paragraph. The View command only lets you read a document without being able to change it (so you can refer to old material). On the plus side, for those who like this mode of operation, DisplayWrite 4 does use a mouse. But because the screen does not utilize the graphics mode, the mouse jumps from character cell to char- acter cell. The use of a mouse does expe- dite cursor movement and gave good re- sults on the keystroke benchmark test. Other test results are competitive, ex- cept for the global search and replace test, which operated at about half the speed of the average nongraphics system. The software has a spelling checker with 125,000 words. It also contains a math routine, which is rather clumsy to operate since you have to keep referring to a menu while you are using it. This version of DisplayWrite 4 does not let you integrate graphics. It has a line-drawing routine, but newspaper- style columns are not possible. When the documentation refers to columns, it actu- ally means tabular lists. However, an OS/2 version, DisplayWrite 4/2, with a DTP multicolumn-text enhancement has been announced but was not available at press time. Most of DisplayWrite 4's special fea- tures are indicated with extended ASCII characters— superscript is an up arrow, for instance. In normal mode, these char- acters appear only when the cursor is on them, an eerie feeling because at no other time are you able to see them. You may call it a gimmick, but this product has at least one unique feature- integration with the IBM voice communi- cations operating subsystem. With the proper audio hardware interfaced to your computer, a spoken message can be re- corded and placed inside the document, where its presence is shown by a musical note. When you place the cursor at that point, it triggers the recording. Although DisplayWrite 4 is a solid word processor, it is comparably over- priced and underfeatured. Its main attrac- continued Illustration by Rob Colvin © 1988 MAY 1988 -BYTE 103 WORD PROCESSORS The Testing Procedure Each package was tested on the same computer: an Eagle PC/XL with a plain vanilla 4.77-MHz 8088 CPU, 640K bytes of RAM, a 20-megabyte hard disk drive with a 65-millisecond access time, a Hercules monochrome graphics display, and a Logitech Serial Mouse. Output was tested with Quad- ram's QuadLaser printer, emulating a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Plus with the B-font cartridge. B's fonts are 12-point Courier (typewriter style); 14-point Helvetica; 10-point normal, bold, and Times Roman italic; and 8-point Times Roman normal. The software was used to process two files: One contained 4000 words, and the other was a single page of three para- graphs. The 4000- word file was used as a test to determine load, save, conver- sion, search and replace, formatting, and printing speeds. The results indicate whether the system is cumbersome or swift. Also instructive is the cursor test that measures the time it takes to scroll from the top to the bottom of a refor- matted document. This operation is de- signed to tell you whether the system feels fairly responsive or as if molasses has been poured into it. While making a series of editing changes to the single page of three para- graphs, total keystrokes were counted— not only the keystrokes necessary for the editing tasks, but also the keystrokes necessary to traverse the text between tasks. Every effort was made to use all applicable keyboard shortcuts offered by the software. The two packages that used a mouse thus benefited because one mouse movement, no matter how far, was counted as one keystroke. Cursor keys were not continuously depressed to move a great distance. They were depressed separately for each line or space. Mice aside, the keystroke count is a good indication of a software's sophistication— the fancier programs had more keyboard shortcuts and thus fewer keystrokes. I also examined the packages for their use of fonts, proportional text, graphics, the ability to draw lines and boxes on the page, newspaper-style column format- ting (important for doing newsletters), degree of WYSIWYG, and other aspects related to DTP. The packages are dis- cussed in alphabetical order. tion is those three blue initials on the cover. MASS-11 Version 7B This strangely named $395 package re- quires a hard disk drive and 384K bytes of RAM. While the manual says that DOS 3.1 or higher is required, it loaded and ran fine under DOS 2.11. MASS-11 is the microcomputer equivalent of soft- ware that its maker sells for the DEC VAX minicomputer, a fact that explains the hard disk drive requirement. A list of fonts— each with an ID num- ber—is assigned to your printer during the installation procedure, and you can view the list through a separate, external printer facility. To change a font, you just type a command into the text. If you input , for instance, it means, with the LaserJet B cartridge, change to 14-point Helvetica. The screen shows no immediate reac- tion to font changes. However, if you run the text through MASS-1 1 's hyphenation facility, it emerges with the line lengths adjusted so that a line of the specified font text fits within the margins you chose. In other words, the right margin changes to accommodate however many characters now fit on the line. Likewise, to see the line length as it will be for proportional text, you run the text through the hyphen- ation facility, a process that adjusts the line length for your font size. You can draw lines with a follow-the- cursor routine, and a box-expander fea- ture operates just by moving the cursor diagonally. If you have a laser printer, you can embed commands to draw boxes and lines of various line widths to your specifications. With PostScript, you can do this with circles and arcs. MASS-11 uses screen graphics, but I saw little evidence of this feature, except when using superscripts or subscripts and when drawing scientific equations, some- thing MASS-1 1 emphasizes. In this situa- tion, what you see is indeed what you get. Graphics can be imported from a $495 companion product, called MASS-11 Draw; Lotus PIC; Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language; and encapsulated PostScript files. You insert the name of the graphics file, along with its dimen- continued Photo 1: While, for true WYSIWYG, desktop publishing emphasizes the on-screen inclusion of graphics images, word- processing software has not quite made the leap. Although some word-processing packages, like MASS-11 on the right, allow the sizing and cropping of picture files, graphics integration generally means that space is left by embedded commands in the document for the insertion of graphics at printing time. On the other hand, desktop-publishing software often integrates the graphics with the text on the screen, as in the Ventura Publisher screen on the left. 104 BYTE' MAY 1988 VM/386. The Fast Track To Multitasking. Run smart. Run efficient. Run VM/386 on your 386-based PC and start multitasking now ! No detours, no waiting, no runaround. True multitasking. VM/386 uses the virtual 8086 mode of the 80386 processor to create many Virtual Machines (VMs) in one computer. You can load a different application into each VM. Each VM has up to 640K RAM, plus its own DOS, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT and memory-resident programs along with its applications. Tailor each VM to your needs. You have complete control. Each VM is protected from the others. A malfunction in one VM won't affect the others, but all VMs can share the same disk and other peripherals. Recalculate a spreadsheet, sort a database file, and receive your E-mail — all at the same time. You can even work with two AutoCAD™ programs concurrently. EGA applications run perfectly too — background and foreground. Protect your investment in software. No need to buy anything new. VM/386 runs existing DOS programs, unmodified. No PIF files required. Eliminate the hidden costs of retraining. VM/386 is easy to install, easy to learn, and easy to use. There's no new operating system, interface, or application to learn. Get on the fast track to multitasking. Call (408) 986 8373 for more information or to order VM/386. Everything else is just the runaround. System Requirements 80386-based computer such as IBM* PS/2'" Model 80 or COMPAQ® DESKPRO 386® or 80286-based computer with Intel® Inboard™ 386/AT. One 1.2 Mb (544") or one iVi" microfloppy disk drive. One hard disk drive. DOS 3.0 or later. 2 Mb RAM recommended. Supports monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA, and Hercules" monitors. Not copy protected. The Professional MultiTasker 4800 Great America Parkway Santa Clara, CA 95054 (408) 986-8373 VM/386 is a trademark of ICC IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation COMPAQ and DPSKPRO .(«6 tire registered trademarks oj Compaq Computer Corporation Intel is a registered trademark and Inboard is a trademark of Intel Corporation Hercules is a trademark of Hercules Computer Technology. AutoCAD is a trademark of Autodesk. Inf Circle 140 on Reader Service Card WORD PROCESSORS Table 1: All these word processors offer ways to dress up your documents. Besides general features, this table includes categories that show each program 's desktop-publishing-like features. Name Version Price Format Documentation Language Operating system Memory requirements DisplayWrite 4 1.0 $495 5 5 1 /4-inch disks 3 manuals/ 422 pages total N/A DOS 2.1 or higher 31 OK bytes of RAM for a hard disk drive; 384K bytes for floppy disk drives MASS-11 7B $395 10 5V4-inch disks 3 manuals/ 506 pages total Pascal, assembly language, and rUH I HAN DOS 3.1 or higher 384K bytes of RAM Microsoft Word 4.0 $450 5 3V2-inch disks 5 manuals/ 884 pages total C and assembly language DOS 2.0 or higher 256K bytes of RAM MultiMate Advantage II 1.0 $565 6 31/2-ineh and 1 1 5 1 /4- inch disks 9 manuals/ 1 025 pages total N/A DOS 2.0 for 5 1 /4-inch disks; DOS 3.2 for 3Va- inch disks 384K bytes of RAM OfficeWriter 5.0 $495 7 5V4-inch disks 3 manuals/ 390 pages total C and assembly language DOS 2.0 or higher 256K bytes of RAM Samna Word IV 1.1 $595 13 5 1 /4-inch disks 2 manuals/ 530 pages total C and assembly language DOS 2.0 or higher 51 2K bytes of RAM SmartWord 3,1 $395 ($895 for Smart- Ware) 1 1 5V4-inoh disks 1 manual/ 1 80 pages; for SmartWare, 4 manuals/ 635 pages total C DOS 2.0 or higher 230K bytes of RAM; 294K bytes with spelling checker WordPerfect 4.2 $495 6 5 1 /4-inch disks 3 manuals/ 635 pages total Assembly language DOS 2.0 or higher 256K bytes of RAM WordStar 2000 Plus 3.0 $495 21 5 1 A-inch disks 5 manuals/ 984 pages total N/A DOS 2.0 or higher 384K bytes of RAM; 51 2K for graphics XyWrlte III Plus 3.52 $445 5 5 1 /4-inch disks 4 manuals/ 1 020 pages total Assembly language DOS 2.0 or higher 384K bytes of RAM with speller; 256K bytes without sion (see photo 1), and the software leaves enough room on the page for it (but the picture does not appear on the screen). MASS- 1 1 does include a facility for trimming, scaling, and rotating the graphics. Again, the picture does not ap- pear on the screen. The manual urges you to first print it out for reference purposes before you fiddle with it. You can format text as newspaper col- umns, but the columns cannot be shown side by side on the screen. You can see them lined up, however, with a special preview command, where printer output is directed to the screen. MASS- 1 1 does not use a mouse. How- ever, the Num Lock key toggles the nu- meric keypad between two states: stan- dard cursor controls and a set of keyboard shorthand functions. In normal mode, the program operates with straight cursor functions. With the Num Lock key set, you can go forward or backward by word, sentence, line, tab, or paragraph. Also, in the toggled mode, certain keys assign underlining, boldfacing, and uppercasing and paste previously saved text. Cutting text has to be done separately. Using the numeric keypad is fairly easy— as long as you keep your eyes on the keyboard template rather than on the keyboard. This information is buried deep in the manual, however, and I got startling results until I learned to pay con- stant attention to the state of the Num Lock key. Included in this package are many other keyboard shorthand features that, all else remaining equal, would have re- sulted in the lowest keystroke count of the nonmouse packages. Unfortunately, it cannot impose superscripts or subscripts on existing text (a keystroke-test cri- terion). When you need a superscript or subscript, you have to retype text and de- lete the old text— efforts that add about 50 keystrokes to the count. Among this package's other features are outlining, redlining, indexing, table- of-contents and table-of-authorities gen- eration, and a spelling checker with 100,000 words. Also, it includes an in- teresting on-screen math function, where you can move the cursor from number to number and— using the math function keys— add to, subtract from, multiply by, or divide by the number the cursor is on. The depth of this little-known system was a real surprise to me, although its un- conventional use of the numeric-pad key- board layout may make it more appealing to those who already use MASS-1 1 on the VAX. Version 8 A is due out about May 1 . According to the manufacturer, this up- date will have enhanced WYSIWYG ca- pabilities, including a review mode and 106 BYTE' MAY 1988 WORD PROCESSORS • Yes O No Megabytes on hard disk System configuration Mouse PostScript WYSIYWG preview Import art Line drawing Newspaper columns 1.5 A minimum of 1 360K-byte (or 1 .2- megabyte) floppy disk drive or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive • o O O • O 3.4 Hard disk drive O • O • • • 1.8 2 floppy disk drives or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive • • 0 • © • 3 2 floppy disk drives or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive o o 0 o • • 2.1 2 floppy disk drives or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive; a hard disk drive is recommended o o o o • • 1.4 2 floppy disk drives, 1 with 1 .2 megabytes available o o G reeked • • • 2.2 2 floppy disk drives or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive 0 0 O • • 0 1.8 2 floppy disk drives or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive o • 0 o • • 4.4 2 floppy disk drives or 1 floppy disk drive and 1 hard disk drive o • • • • • 0.9 1 or 2 floppy disk drives; a hard disk drive is recommended o • O o • • support of print graphics at printer type- setter resolution (up to 2500 dots per inch depending on your printer). Microsoft Word 4.0 Microsoft Word 4.0 costs $450 and re- quires at least two floppy disk drives, 256K bytes of RAM, and DOS 2.0 or higher. You can change fonts within a line, but the line widths do not change unless you elect to see the output in "printer dis- play" mode. For the LaserJet, Word dis- plays a list of fonts, all of which you are free to try to use. The software does not keep track of what's installed in your printer. You have to do that and limit yourself to the fonts that are actually in the printer. LaserJet interface software works by transmitting a list of font attributes to the printer rather than a font ID number. If the font's description matches a font resi- dent in the LaserJet— either in a cartridge or downloaded from the computer— it's used. Otherwise, the LaserJet invokes whatever font it has that's closest to the description. This is a big caveat with Word. "Know thy printer, " or you may be surprised at the looks of the output. Word's manual advises against using the space bar to align columns when you want proportional text. You should use tabs instead. If the space bar is used, what you see may not be what you get. The extent of this program's line- drawing capability is a simple follow-the- cursor routine. However, Word does have a feature that lets you automatically en- close selected paragraphs in boxes or straddle the paragraphs with ruling lines. Interestingly, Word has a dual person- ality: one based on a graphics screen and one based on a text screen. You can tog- gle between the two— and you'll want to. The scroll test took 10 times longer in graphics mode than in text mode. For- matting operations that are essentially in- stantaneous in text mode take about 4 sec- onds in graphics mode because the screen has to be repainted. According to Micro- soft, though, with an IBM CGA monitor and a fast processor, graphics mode can actually be faster than text mode. With the graphics screen, the mouse is easy to use. Unfortunately, though, with its use, everything else slows to a crawl. In text mode, the mouse cursor, while usable, shows up as a ghostly square that jerks between words. Aside from making the mouse control more precise, Word uses the graphics mode only to show superscripting or sub- scripting with half-size characters, ital- ics, double underlining, overstrikes, and continued MAY 1988 'BYTE 107 WORD PROCESSORS True Desktop Publishing What constitutes true DTP? For laying out and producing pages that combine text and graphics in the most aesthetic way possible, a software package needs to have several specific features. To create titles and headlines, the DTP software must have a font-selection feature. A font is a combination of a par- ticular typeface and size. Unless the text is going to look like typewriter output does, it also has to be proportional— so that the letters Wand take up radically different amounts of space on the line of type. Another factor having to do with fonts is kerning, which is a method whereby spaces between letters are allowed to overlap in certain ways depending on the configuration of the adjacent letters. Ruling lines (of various widths) are used to separate columns; boxed text is used to highlight the material, frame a page, and create other special effects. Graphics integration allows externally created graphics or digitized pictures to be included on the page— even at the preview stage. Newspaper-style column formatting requires multiple columns to be placed on a page, with the text at the bottom of one column running to the text at the top of the next. Special characters include copyright, trademark, and legal citation symbols, as well as other common symbols that would be found in a print shop but not on a microcomputer keyboard. With these tools, people can create materials that range anywhere from fancy personal letters to newsletters to brochures to actual books and maga- zines. The pervasiveness of DTP has al- ready reached the point where an experi- enced user can pick up an industrial newsletter and deduce with which soft- ware it was produced. Many print shops now are offering typesetting through the PostScript page- description language. This means you can use DTP to create your document utilizing 300-dot-per-inch laser-printer output as the "proof copy." Then you can transmit the PostScript file to the typesetter as "camera-ready copy . " other typewriter-like enhancements. Through the usual method of assigning a filename and appropriate measure- ments to a blank area on the page, you can incorporate graphics into the document, but they show up only when a page is printed. You do not see any evidence of the graphics or commands on the screen. Word can import any kind of graphics "print file," as long as that file doesn't reset the printer, send out linefeeds or formfeeds, or use about a dozen specifi- cally prohibited PostScript commands. When I tried to incorporate graphics into some of my material, however, the graph- ics kept turning up on a separate page. To preclude this glitch, says the company, you must purchase a companion product called Page View, which sells for $49.95 and runs under Microsoft Windows. When formatting in newspaper col- umns, only one column is shown on the screen, even in printer display mode. Word does, however, let you print in columns. Disappointingly, the help messages are not contextual— you have to wade through the same menu each time— and the manual's index does not always give you the right page number. The instruc- tions for converting a word-processing file into ASCII just didn't work. Micro- soft called it a "reported error. " The program also includes a whole raft of top-of-the-line word-processing fea- tures: footnotes, form generation, boiler- plate, indexes, math, sorting, a spelling checker with 130,000 words, hyphen- ation, spreadsheet insertion, tables of contents, and a thesaurus with 15,000 root words. Word embodies the typewriter-emula- tion approach to a full-functioned, pro- fessional word-processing system. This also means it's a long way from DTP. If your needs are conventional, Word is a very good package. MultiMate Advantage EL 1.0 MultiMate costs $565 and requires 384K bytes of RAM, DOS 2.0 for 5'/4-inch disks, and DOS 3.2 for 3V4-inch disks. A hard disk drive is recommended. MultiMate does not use a mouse, but you are able to do nearly everything in two ways: with pull-down menus or key- stroke combinations. The keystroke com- binations are faster. MultiMate suffered in the keystroke benchmark test because, after translation, the test file had a mar- gin set to the length of the first line. The margin had to be moved to the right by 40 spaces, and there is no shortcut way to move the margin marker in this situation. The manual actually consists of six booklets in a binder— separate installa- tion booklets for 3 Vi- and 5 !4-inch disks, basic editing, a tutorial, and applications and printer guides— plus three reference manuals: a general manual, advanced topics, and one covering On-File, a com- panion database product. The indexes of some of these booklets cross-reference each other— and some do not— leaving you with no central reference point. As a sort of trade-off, though, MultiMate of- fers the largest keyboard template I've ever seen, and it is one of MultiMate 's useful features. To change fonts, you type Alt-C, which inserts a Pt symbol in the text. At this point, pressing the question-mark key gives you a list of available fonts. Then you type a letter identifying the font you want. In MultiMate, the left margin is set in terms of character widths, so changing a font inside a paragraph (if it also changes the pitch) can result in a left margin as ragged as an unjustified right margin. This condition occurs because the char- acter widths used to count the margin have suddenly changed size. Since the screen pitch never changes, though, you must remember to change the left margin when you change the font. There is a line-drawing function, but no use of graphics and no way to print graphics files. Newspaper columns can be handled, but formatting and printing them took more than twice the normal amount of time— 3 Vi minutes versus 1 l A minutes for the faster programs. MultiMate, however, can convert doc- uments created with 12 different word- processing formats. Among its other use- ful features are a 110,000-word spelling checker, a thesaurus with 40,000 root words, a minidatabase, math for rows or columns of numbers, table-of-contents generation, and support for 400 printers. It does not have indexing capabilities. Very fast and very slow speeds show up in the 4000-word-file benchmark tests run on MultiMate. Scrolling and file con- version are slow. Loading and saving happen immediately, and search and re- place is very fast. A preview mode is available to check pagination, footers, and headers, but it takes more than a min- ute to repaginate after reformatting. MultiMate is a fairly full-functioned word processor, but it still lacks the red- line function. The program, though, is still firmly rooted in the typewriter- emulation world. Office Writer 5.0 OfficeWriter costs $495 and requires 256K bytes of RAM, DOS 2.0 or higher, and two floppy disk drives (or a hard disk drive if you use the thesaurus). continued 108 BYTE- MAY 1988 LaserJet font Nirvana Or your $99. 95 back. Witness a LaserJet miracle. Glyphix generates a dazzling variety of downloadable fonts from a set of four flexible typeface outlines. Working with your PC, Glyphix makes creating a font as simple as picking an effect from a menu. Select sizes from 6 to 60 point. Choose from 14 different weights. Portrait or landscape. Condensed. Expanded. Slanted. Patterned. Shaded. The possibilities? Mil- lions of them. Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Glyphix and our font managers: a match made in heaven. Let our font managers free you from the Purgatory of using fonts with Microsoft Word® and WordPerfect®. Sorting through PRD files and printer drivers is a thing of the past. Our managers build fonts right into Word and WordPerfect, giving you the freedom to change font as often as you like. Best of all, the font managers use Glyphix to create and download your fonts automatically, liberating megabytes of disk space from font storage. With a Glyphix font set and a font manager, you have an army of fonts at your fingertips. If you're using Aldus Pagemaker® or Ven- tura Publisher®, you're ready to use Glyphix. (Any package that can read HP soft fonts can manage Glyphix fonts.' ^Swfte Software with capability. And credibility. Circle 285 on Reader Service Card GLYPHIX HP Bitstream FONTS TO 60 POINT FONT SCALING DEGREES OF BOLD PATTERNED FONTS 300 x 300 DOT QUALITY TIME TO CREATE 30 POINT FONT PRICE YES YES NO YES 1:34 $195°° $200°° YES Let the Glyphix Basics lead you through the pearly gates. The Basics is a collection of four typeface outlines, each representing one of the major lettering styles. Roman, our version of Times Roman®, is a classical serif face that has become a standard for body copy. Helvette, our version of Helvetica®, is a modern sans serif face designed for presentations and headlines. Chancelor is a decorative face that reflects a cursive handwritten look. And rounding out the family is Rockland, a versatile square serif font that commands attention in headline and body copy. The Glyphix Basics. The Glyphix Font Managers. Products that give your documents a look of celestial beauty. Order yours today. r 1 i i I :: I i i i I i i i i i i i l i i L Take me to Heaven! □ □ □ □ Send me the Glyphix Basics for $99.95. Send me your MS Word Font Manager for $79.95. Send me your WordPerfect Manager for $79.95. Send me a catalog of all the Glyphix type collections. Glyphix Basics: Roman Helvette Chanceior Rockland Name Address City Telephone State Zip co co IS LU I— ORDER TOLL FREE: (800) 237-9383 IN DELAWARE CALL (302) 733-0956 Include $5.00 shipping and handling for one item. $2.50 each additional item. Mail orders to SWFTE International, Box 5773, Wilmington, DE 19808. Money back guarantee is extended for 30 days from the date of sale. MAY 1988 -BYTE 109 WORD PROCESSORS Table 2: No one package came out tops in all the benchmark tests, but several did well. WordPerfect, MASS-11, Off ice Writer, and Xy Write scored in the more-than-acceptable range. Due to their use of a mouse, Microsoft Word and DisplayWrite 4 won the keystroke contest hands down. (Times are in seconds.) Name Keystroke count Search/ replace Reformat 4K file Convert ASCII toWP Convert WPto ASCII Print in columns Scroll test Load WP file Save WP file DisplayWrite 4 183 114 32 23 39 120* 61 9 3 MASS-11 247 25 10 137 117 105 118 5 6 Microsoft Word Text Graphics 158 158 24 26 <1 4 1 4 5 5 160 160 35 320 3 8 6 8 MultiMate 296 17 <1 160 160 293 63 3 <1 OfficeWriter 263 88 <1 12 25 70 46 4 4 Samna 273 231 58 90 27 177 74 4 1 Smart Word 400 102 4 7 13 75* 33 12 13 WordPerfect 246 8 <1 7 12 90 89 2 4 WordStar 234 38 3 199 129 230 33 5 7 XyWrite 270 18 <1 1 2 89 33 1 2 * Formatting in columns not available <1 Less than a second You can select fonts from a list of ID numbers assigned to your installed printer. Up to 60 fonts can be assigned to a printer. The only on-screen indication that you have changed fonts is a font- change symbol, f. You have no way to preview the effects of proportional spac- ing and font changes. OfficeWriter, like MultiMate, shows its typewriter roots— margins are counted in character spaces— but the left margins of the printed page manage to stay an- chored when you change fonts. On the other hand, OfficeWriter does not re- spond by resetting the right margin— the same number of characters remains on the line after you change font sizes. You have to remember to change the margin. Photo 2: "Greeking, " the representation of text with shaded bars, is a common approach for representing full-page layouts in both desktop-publishing and advanced word-processing software. Shown here is a page layout with Samna greeked text. Since the manuals are well laid out and answers are easy to find, the learning pro- cess is smooth. An expanding-box func- tion lets you "pull" the corners of a box around text, and the lines can pass over the text without obliterating it. To incor- porate graphics into your document, the company suggests that you use Office- Graphics, a companion product that costs $145. Office Writer's test results are competi- tive, except that the keystroke count suf- fered because the available keyboard shortcuts (jump ahead and jump to line number) do not work during the move- text or the margin-setting procedures, when they are needed. The package does newspaper-style column formats. Special features include a legal and medical spelling checker (as well as a standard spelling checker), an 80,000- word dictionary, a thesaurus with 40,000 root words, and a range of conversion utilities. Generally, the package seemed to live up to its name— office word processing. But it also lives up to the typewriter- emulation limitations of conventional of- fice word processing. Samna Word IV 1.1 Samna requires DOS 2.0 or higher, 512K bytes of RAM, and two floppy disk drives. The package costs $595. With Samna we arrive at a word pro- cessor with one foot truly in the DTP en- vironment. WYSIWYG isn't among its list of features, but a zoom command shows a full view of the page with the text "greeked"; that is, you can see what the page looks like, but you can't read it be- cause the text is represented by shaded bars (see photo 2). Having designated your printer as a LaserJet, Samna gives you a list of Laser- Jet fonts to chose from: 358 of them in all. You can assign 30 fonts (called "print- wheel sequences" by Samna— the typewriter heritage again) to a printer. I picked only six fonts for the B-cartridge equivalent, but Samna then filled out the continued 110 BYTE- MAY 1988 MINUTE ', MAN UNINTERRUPTIBLE POWER SUPPLIES TOTAL POWER PROTECTION • Blackouts — Enables user to operate during complete loss of power. • Brownouts — User is protected from low AC voltage below 1 02 volts. • Overload Protection — Automatic shutdown in overload situation to protect UPS from inverter burnout. • Overvoltage Protection — UPS runs on inverter (117 volts) when AC voltage exceeds I3Z volts. • Surges/Spikes — Clamps transients above 200 volts with an energy rating of 100 joules or less. • EMI/RFI — Three stage filtering for clean AC power. • Syncronized Sinewave* — Eliminates voltage reversal to input or your equipment. • 1 Millisecond Transfer Time* — This includes detection and transfer so your machine never notices loss of electrical power. • Two Audible Alarm Levels — Notifies user of battery usage and two (2) minute warning. • LED Display — Informs user of operation mode, power utilized on AC, plus "On Battery" and battery power status. • Alarm Silencer — Enables user to silence alarm for quiet con- tinued operation during battery operation. • Optional Signal Port — Enables UPS to notify computer of loss of AC power to allow computer to backup or shut down. • 250 watt and 500 watt units offer 4 msec transfer time. PWM wave form. Suggested Retail 250 WATT 1 20 Volt $ 359.00 300 WATT 1 20 Volt $ 549.00 500 WATT 1 20 Volt $ 699.00 600 WATT i 20 Volt $ 899.00 1 200 WATT 1 20 Volt $1499.00 1 600 WATT 1 20 Volt $1999.00 230 Watt Units Also Available PARA SYSTEMS, INC. 1455 LeMay Drive Carrollton, Texas 75007 Telephone: (214) 446-7363 1-800-238-7272 FAX: (214) 446-901 I TELEX: 140275 OMEGA Circle 218 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 111 WORD PROCESSORS rest with default values. Changing fonts (by inserting a "print- wheel change" marker) does not change the display or cause Samna to refigure the line lengths. Again, you must figure your own margins. Changing to a proportional pitch, however, causes changes in the zoom display— the lines are shorter. Line drawing is a simple follow-the-cursor routine. Some oddities are involved in the edit- ing process. Backspacing leaves blanks in the line rather than closing up text. Going into insert mode drops the text to the right of the cursor and down a line, and the text reformats when you're finished. There is no on-screen indication of superscripted or subscripted characters. During pagi- nation, Samna asks for your approval of each page break. You can avoid this te- dium by having it done automatically at printout time. Nothing on the editing screen— including the line counter— indi- cates double spacing. You have to zoom to see it. Samna can include graphics— in the Tag Image File Format bit-mapped image standard or those produced by Samna De- cision Graphics (available for $450)— in a document. It manages this via the usual method of embedding a command with the graphics filename and its dimensions. Only blank spaces with a label are shown on the screen. Newspaper columns are possible, but they are handled rather crudely. You must format the text in narrow-enough columns so that two rows can fit on a page. In the printing procedure, you tell Samna to print the text as two columns. You can't put both columnar and non- columnar text on the same page. The keyboard layout takes some get- ting used to. Home is Next Word or Previous Word. PageUp is Next Sentence or Previous Sentence. End is Next Para- graph or Previous Paragraph. Print- Screen is Go to File. In all, you'll find some good keyboard shortcuts, but the need to manually traverse the format line to set the margin (shortcuts do not work during the margin-setting procedure) in- creased Samna' s keystroke count by about 60. Otherwise, it would have done very well. Other Samna test results are competi- tive, except for search and replace. Each Find is scrolled to, highlighted, and then replaced with a pop— more on the order of an arcade game than a word processor. Special features include on-screen math, a spelling checker with 100,000 words, footnotes, indexes, table of con- tents, forms generation, and special func- tions to write math equations (using clever combinations of line drawing, superscripting and subscripting, half-line spacing, and extended graphics charac- ters). The software also includes an 8V2- by 14-inch clear plastic overlay with a 12- pitch grid for designing forms. Samna is serious about office use. For its somewhat hefty price, though, you'd expect to get a thesaurus. And its stab at WYSIWYG— greeking— is of little real use, except perhaps for getting an ordi- nary memo nicely balanced on the page. An upgrade, version 2.0, is slated to be available this spring. Samna people say it will include a 40,000-word thesaurus, on-screen graphics and font display, sup- port for two additional file formats for graphics printing with Lotus PIC and PC Paintbrush, a table-of-authority function, and support for the Hercules RAMfont. SmartWord 3.1 SmartWord costs $395 by itself and $895 as part of SmartWare. It requires DOS 2.0 or higher; DOS 3.1, if used with a local-area network. It needs 230K bytes of RAM unless it is used with the spelling checker, which takes another 64K bytes. It will run on two floppy disk drives, but a hard disk drive is recommended. SmartWord has a unique way of limit- ing your use of fonts, which just about, but not quite, results in WYSIWYG. With the LaserJet, SmartWord offers 10 optional (or "enhanced") fonts— not the fonts inside the LaserJet, but "soft" fonts that SmartWord itself downloads. All the fonts are 10-pitch monospaced, so what you see on the screen is indeed what you get on the page, at least in terms of line lengths. The enhanced fonts available are italic, superscript, subscript, strikeout (for red- lining), Greek, two sets of box-drawing characters, gothic, script, and small capitals. Two custom fonts also are available so you can design with SmartWord' s font- design function. You may want to do this, because SmartWord's fonts use "stroke- weights" that are so light I thought the printer had run out of ink. Don't get any ideas about designing different-size fonts— you get only a standard-size char- acter cell in which to design each letter. The default or normal LaserJet font is Courier. Sticking to it will save you time, since it takes 3 minutes to download the SmartWord fonts. This company has solved the problems of proportional spac- ing, font sizes, and pitches simply by pre- tending they don't exist. There is a line-drawing facility, but no way to format text into newspaper col- umns. Graphics, produced by the busi- ness graphics subsystem, can be incorpo- rated but not shown on the editing screen— although you can see them in a separate window as part of the spread- sheet software. These SmartWord graph- ics do not have to take up the width of the page, and text can wrap around them. This mammoth system obviously is in- tended for people more seriously inter- ested in the use of data, not just the pretty presentation of text. If SmartWord has neglected a few de- tails, forgiveness comes fairly easily when you realize that it is just one part of Innovative Software's SmartWare. The Photo 3: When you embed the font command in WordPerfect text at the point where you want the change to occur, no visible character appears on the screen. When it is printed out, however, the printing has changed, along with the margins if you also changed the font pitch. Currently, few word processors show font changes on the screen. This Is a sample text file. This paragraph shows on the screen in Courier font. But when It Is printed out, It will be printed out In Font 2 at 10 pitch. This paragraph, while also showing on the screen In Courier font, when printed out will show up In Font 3 at 10 pitch. The final paragraph. In Courier font on-screen, will print out In 12 pitch In font 6. The text Is narrower In 12 pitch because the margins were not changed to Justify the difference. 112 BYTE- MAY 1988 What happened to the article on page 208? Someone ahead of you knows. He has information you'll never see. Make a career move now! Keep up with your peers — order your own subscription today. Save $23 off the newsstand price— 13 issues at $22.95 instead of $45.95. If you're not satisfied write "cancel" on your invoice and keep the first issue free. □ U.S. □ Canada/Mexico Europe- Air Delivery $22.95 (1 yr.) $25.95 U.S. (1 yr.) $75.00 U.S. (1 yr.) ] Worldwide-Surface Delivery $45.00 U.S. (1 yr.) □ Bill me (North America only) □ Payment enclosed. (U.S. Funds drawn on a U.S. bank only) □ Charge to my DVISA □MasterCard Card # Expires Signature For direct ordering call toll free weekdavs 9:00am-5 :00pm EST: 1 800 423-8272 (in New Jersey: 1 800 367-0218). Name Company _ Address City/State Country 485ASU-2 Code Please allow 6-8 weeks for processing your subscription. BYTE BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 684 TEANECK, NJ POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE: BYTE Subscription Dept. P.O. Box 7640 Teaneck, NJ 07666-9866 Ml...l...l,ll,,.ll,,.ll, 66215 (312) 882-0111 (913) 492-3800 Inquiry 908. Inquiry 913. Microsoft Word WordPertect Microsoft Corp. WordPertect Corp. 1 601 1 INortneast Jotn Way Ijjj jNortn technology way r .u. box y /01 / urem, ui o4io/ Keamona, wa y»o 15 (oUl ) ZZj-DUUU (206) 882-8080 Inquiry 914. inquiry yuv. UL.JC*n« TAAA ill..,, WordStar 2000 Plus MultiMate Advantage II MicroPro International Corp Asnton- 1 ate jj oan raoio Ave. 90101 Wnmiltrm Avp rldJIilllUIl.rt.VC. San Rafael PA Q4Q0^ Oall l\aklCl, V_rt 7t7UJ Torrance, CA 90502 (415) 499-1200 (213) 329-8000 Inquiry 915. Inquiry 910. Xy Write III Plus Office Writer XyQuest Inc. Office Solutions Inc. 44 Manning Rd. 2802 Coho St. Billerica, MA 01821 Madison, WI 53713 (617) 671-0888 (608) 274-5047 Inquiry 916. Inquiry 911. fine how each font would be displayed on the screen. If you have a color screen, you can get pretty exotic by working with each font in a different color. In the case of the LaserJet B cartridge, PT1 is Courier and PT2 is 10-point Times Roman. But PT3 is a strangely formatted Courier. Reading the printer-description file shows that the file wants to address something on cartridge F. I was immedi- ately able to make PT3 invoke Times Roman italic. In another 2 minutes, I was able to cook up PT4 (by copying PT3 and changing some values) to invoke 14-point Helvetica. As usual, the screen handles font size differences by unanchoring the right mar- gin. There was no other pretense at WYSIWYG. Newspaper columns are shown in one column but printed as two columns. Xy Write has a reputation for speed. And it is fast, although not the fastest in all categories. File conversion is not a problem because XyWrite documents are straight ASCII files with embedded commands. There is also a spelling checker with 100,000 words, a thesaurus with 35,000 words, redlining, table-of-contents and index generation, and footnotes. XyWrite is well suited for professional publishing environments with a staffed department to take care of graphics and other related matters. Otherwise, this program is no closer to achieving DTP functions than most other packages. And it's overkill for most basic tasks. Program of Action Overall, it looks as if we have another generation or two to go before we'll have DTP and word-processing features com- bined in one package. The first of those, NBI Legend, has been announced and will be reviewed in a subsequent issue. Looking over the current crop of word processors, you can see that the ability to easily make large-scale font changes is limited. WYSIWYG of a sort is available only through special preview screens. Little use is made of graphics beyond showing superscript or subscript charac- ters. On-screen text remains as mono- spaced typewriter emulation. Proportional text — if the system even recognizes this concept exists— is repre- sented by stretching the right margins. If graphics can be integrated at all, it's by assigning a graphics file to a blank area on the page— the picture is not shown on the screen. Of these reviewed packages, the clos- est to producing DTP output is WordStar with its view screen. But even this feature is WYSIWYG on a macro scale. For seri- ous work, you must get a close view of the material to fine-tune everything the reader will see. Samna, with its greeking ability, is at least in the ball game. The most disappointing of them is Display- Write 4, an underfeatured package with a full-featured price. But it may be too much to ask for a true combination of DTP and word process- ing. To assure WYSIWYG, word proces- sors will need graphics screens with "screen fonts" that mimic the printer fonts. For the sake of speed, however, perhaps the best way for this feature to be handled is to have the ability to toggle to a nongraphics screen while ordinary edit- ing is underway— an approach already taken by Microsoft Word. To control the outcome on the page, the software should also have its own matching printer fonts that it can download, to free it from its de- pendence on the laser printer. The DTP program Ventura Publisher takes up more than 3 megabytes on a hard disk. Some word processors consume just as much. Successfully combining DTP and word-processing approaches may result in gargantuan programs that require the most powerful hardware. And last but not least, the user must also be considered. Today's state-of-the- art word-processing software is complex. Some packages use more than a dozen distribution disks and 10 pounds of docu- mentation. This complexity factor could explain the general abandonment of copy protection, since with these mammoth packages, the copy -protection scheme becomes analogous to chaining the Great Pyramid to a lamppost. Eventually, what could be known as "word-publishing" software, by defini- tion, will be powerful. But it must also be approachable. It will happen. But for now, our reach still exceeds our grasp. ■ Lamont Wood is a freelance writer from San Antonio, Texas in the computer and electronics fields. He has been using word processors professionally for more than 10 years. 116 BYTE* MAY 1988 Introducing Mic for OS/2 Microsoft Pascal 4.0 Ompikr The people who co-developed the indus- try's most powerful personal computer operating system are now proud to announce programming languages to match. Introducing Microsoft® Macro Assembler 5.1, C 5.1, Pascal 4.0, FORTRAN 4.1 and BASIC Compiler 6.0. Five industrial-strength, stand-alone lang- uages that combine the implementation flexibility you've enjoyed under MS-DOS® (which, of course, they still support) with the advanced capabilities you've anticipated from OS/2. Capabilities such as the ability to develop large, sophisticated applications which go beyond the 640K barrier, taking advantage of up to 16MB of RAM, and utilizing the potential of today's microprocessors. Just like their MS-DOS predecessors, these five new languages are equipped with powerful, professional features you work with, not around: Support of direct calls to the operating system, and inter-language calling for mixing multiple languages on the same project. Access to OS/2 system calls and a full complement of utilities, including an incredibly fast incremental linker and the first protected mode programmer's editor that works equally well in real mode. Microsoft CodeViewf our popular, advanced debugger that lets you untangle program logic at the source code level, no matter what code you're using. (It even lets you debug protected mode programs up to 128MB of virtual memory, and larger programs than ever before in real mode.) As the perfect complement to our new languages, we're also offering the Microsoft OS/2 Programmer's Toolkit. It contains a parameter-by-parameter breakdown of all OS/2 system calls and samples to get you started. All the tools you need for turning out larger, more powerful, more complex OS/2 applications. (And, incidentally, all the tools we rely on for creating our own commercial software.) For the name of your nearest Microsoft professional languages dealer, simply call 800-541-1261, Dept. B95. Ask him for some more information on our OS/2 family. He'll show you some languages you can really swear by. Microsoft. MS-DOS and CodeView are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Circle 190 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 191) And now fertile strongest wordinthe English language: The Norton On-Line Program- mer's Guide for OS/2 API is the first complete on-line manual for OS/2 programming. Instead of thumbing through pages of documentation, it's all there at your fingertips with a few simple keystrokes. Normally it costs $150, but it's yours free when you acquire the Microsoft OS/2 Programmer's Toolkit and one of the high level languages listed op- posite (an upgrade is fine). <1 The ultimate productiviiy tod I : | for programmers. ■ Puis volumes . I of data at your fingertips. I J H Replaces most manual searches *'* a few simple keystrokes. 3 Includes compiler for . creating your own databases. ■ Also 1 auaOabie for BASIC, J BIOS/DOS/Assembry, 1 C and PascaL Please send me my free copy of the Norton Guide for OS/2 API. I enclose a copy of my dated sales receipts and my registration cards? The high level language I have licensed is (please check): □ Microsoft C Optimizing Compiler 5.10. □ Microsoft FORTRAN Optimizing Compiler 4.10. □ Microsoft Macro Assembler 5.10. □ Microsoft Pascal Compiler 4.00. □ Microsoft BASIC Compiler 6.00. Redeem to: Norton Guide for OS/2 API offer, Microsoft Corporation, 13221 SE 26th, Suite L,Bellevue,WA 98005. Name : Address: State: City: Daytime telephone: ( If you have any questions about this offer, call (800) 426-9400. In WA, (206) 882-8088. Zip:. )- B95 Microsoft •Registration cards are not required for upgrades. This offer is only valid in the 50 United States. It is not valid with any other offers, and is effective only for purchases from 4/1/88 through 6/30/88. The coupon must be redeemed by 7/31/88. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Circle 192 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 193) SYSTEM REVIEW Upscaled Power in a Downscaled Box John Unger The Amdek System/386's small size and pleasing looks belie its serious side as an 80386-based microcomputer whose performance ranks among the best of the 16-MHz 80386 machines. Its CPU runs with zero wait states at 16 MHz (or with one wait state at 8 MHz) and is mounted on a card that plugs into the computer's backplane; there is no mother- board in the traditional sense of the word. Amdek' s entry into the high- speed 80386 microcomputer race has a clean and pleasing design. Its small-footprint chas- sis is only 15 inches wide, and the front panel has a small LCD that displays system messages. Three switches beneath the LCD let you monitor the date, time, and CPU activity, as well as display and switch the clock speed between 8 and 16 MHz. The review unit came with 1 megabyte of 100-nanosecond (ns) RAM, a high-performance 40-megabyte hard disk drive, and a 1 .2-megabyte 5 U-inch floppy disk drive. I also received Amdek's optional 1280 high-resolution display adapter and 15-inch paper-white monitor. This display combination gives a striking 1280- by 800-pixel monochrome resolu- tion and is perfect for CAD/CAM and desktop-publishing chores. It does not have color, however. The System/386 with these components lists for $5949. Amdek is a subsidiary of WYSE Tech- nology, and WYSE makes most of the components in the machine. In fact, the System/386 and the WYSEpc 386 (April BYTE) share many components and per- form similarly. They even use the same keyboard. , Just Plug It In The System/386's overall hardware de- sign is based on an uncomplicated back- Amdek's System/386 is small, modular, and fast- very fast •t-| cos prrc T — - : | l 1 l ' ' - plane composed of eight expansion slots; all the components plug into these slots. This configuration is in contrast to the conventional design, where the CPU, I/O ports, memory, and other components are mounted on the motherboard. The 80386 CPU comes on a plug-in expansion card, just like such compo- nents as the display adapter and disk con- troller. The CPU card is actually made up of three separate piggybacked cards and occupies the space of two 16-bit slots on the backplane. The 80386 and its re- lated chips are mounted on a mother/ daughter card combination; the system memory occupies the third card of the group. A separate 32-bit bus that extends across the top of the piggybacked cards connects the memory card to the CPU. You can install up to 6 megabytes of 100-ns dynamic RAM (DRAM) in the System/386: 2 megabytes on the original card, and 4 more on a second memory card. The re- view system had three slots free for expansion: two 16-bit slots and one 8-bit slot. Like the WYSEpc 386, the CPU card has one 9-pin serial connector on it. A second serial connector and a parallel con- nector are mounted on a half- length card connected to the CPU card by a ribbon cable. The serial port on the second card is designated as COM1, and the port on the CPU card is designated as COM2. One difference between the WYSEpc 386 and the Sys- tem/386 is that the Amdek com- puter uses a conventional disk controller card mounted in one of the 16-bit expansion slots, while the WYSE controller doesn't require any expansion slots (it lies at the bottom of its case and connects to the back- plane via a special edge connec- tor). The Amdek disk control- ler card supports up to two floppy disk drives and two hard disk drives. The review unit had a Panasonic 1.2- megabyte 5 '4 -inch floppy disk drive and a Control Data Corp. 40-megabyte hard disk drive installed in two of the three available half-height storage-device bays. The Coretest utility shows that the hard disk drive has an average seek time of 25 milliseconds (ms) and a track-to-track seek time of 4.3 ms. It performed very well. However, initial access to the floppy disk drive seemed slow. For ex- ample, when I used the A : DIR command to access the floppy disk from the hard disk, it took a few seconds before any- thing appeared on the screen— a delay that seemed intolerable when compared to the high performance of the rest of the hardware. Once the drive is up and run- continued MAY 1988 'BYTE 121 UPSCALED POWER IN A DOWNSCALED BOX Amdek System/386 Company Amdek Corp. 1901 ZankerRd. San Jose, CA 951 12 (800) 722-6335 (408) 436-8570 Components Processor: 1 6-MHz Intel 32-bit 80386 with no wait states, switchable to 8 MHz with one wait state; optional 80287 (from 6- to 1 0-MHz) or 80387 (16-MHz) math coprocessor Memory: 1 megabyte of 100-ns, 32-bit, interleaved static-column RAM, expandable to 6 megabytes; 32K bytes of ROM Mass storage: One 1 .2-megabyte 5 1 A- inch floppy disk drive; one 40-megabyte hard disk drive Display: Optional Amdek 1280 MDA and monochrome monitor with 1 280- by 800-pixel resolution, compatible with IBM monochrome and CGA Keyboard: 1 02 full-size keys with 1 2 function keys, separate editing keys, and numeric keypad (IBM-Enhanced style); LED indicators on Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock keys I/O interfaces: Two RS-232C serial ports (DB-9); one Centronics-compatible parallel printer port (DB-25); eight ex- pansion slots: six AT-compatible 871 6-bit slots and two PC-compatible 8-bit slots Size 1 7 by 1 5 by 6 Va inches; 38 pounds Softwsr© MS-DOS 3.21 ;GWBASIC 3.20 Options High-resolution display system: $995 CGA: $130 MDA: $130 1 -megabyte 32-bit memory upgrade: $549 2-megabyte 32-bit memory upgrade: $1395 360K-byte floppy disk drive: $1 90 Documentation 70-page Installation and Assembly Manual; 1 1 0-page Amdek Enhanced MS- DOS 3.2 User's Guide; 98-page Amdek 1280 User's Guide and Programmer's Manual; on-line Help facility Price System/386 with a 1 .2-megabyte floppy disk drive (no monitor or display adapter): $3850 System/386 with a 1 .2-megabyte floppy disk drive and a 40-megabyte hard disk drive (no monitor or display adapter): $4950 System as reviewed (without 80287 coprocessor): $5949 Dhrystone* Fibonacci Float Savage Sieve Sort Amdek System/386 (80287-8) 3974 50.37 9.78 31.14 5.71 7.49 PS/2 Model 80(80387-16) 3626 57.26 1.62 9.49 6.45 7.74 Compaq 386 (80387-16) 3748 53.11 1.43 8.95 5.98 5.58 Compaq 386 (80287-8) 3748 53.12 6.80 21.53 5.99 5.58 IBM PC AT (80287-8) 1590 126.22 10.98 37.30 24.60 43.17 *For the Dhrystone test only, higher figures denote faster performance. DISK ACCESS IN BASIC (IN SECONDS) WRITE READ 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 BASIC PERFORMANCE (IN SECONDS) SIEVE CALCULATIONS 0 5 10 15 20 25 SPREADSHEET (IN SECONDS) LOAD 0 5 10 15 20 25 RECALCULATE 10 15 20 25 SYSTEM UTILITIES (IN SECONDS) 40K FILE COPY 0 5 10 15 20 25 ■■■3.6 ■ 0.7 ■ 1.1 5.0 AMDEK SYSTEM/386 IBM PS/2 MODEL 80 COMPAQ DESKPRO 386 IBM PC AT (8 MHZ) inquiry 883. The table contains the results of the C language benchmarks (see "A Closer Look" by Richard Grehan in the September 1987 BYTE). All times are in seconds, except for the Dhrystone, which is in Dhrystones per second. The Disk Access benchmarks write and then read a 64K-byte sequential text file to a hard disk. Sieve runs one iteration of the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Calculations performs 10,000 multiplication and division opera- tions. The Spreadsheet tests load and recalculate a 100-row by 25-column Multiplan (1.06) spreadsheet. The 40K File Copy benchmark copies a 40K-byte file on the hard disk. The BASIC benchmark programs were run with MS-DOS 3.2 and GWBASIC 3.2 on the Amdek System/386 and IBM PC AT. The IBM PS/2 Model 80 used PC-DOS 3.3 and BASICA 3.3. The Compaq Deskpro 386 used MS-DOS 3.1 and BASIC 3.1 1 . 122 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 79 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 80) UPSCALED POWER IN A DOWNSCALED BOX ning, however, the actual data transfer rates are normal and acceptable. Great Graphics One component that separates the Sys- tem/386 from the crowd is the optional Amdek 1280 high-resolution display adapter and monitor. This system can display graphics of up to 1280 by 800 pixels in true monochrome (black-and- white dots) in high-resolution mode. It also supports both the WYSE/ Amdek high-resolution and IBM PC-compatible monochrome and CGA modes. The principal advantage of the Amdek 1280 in standard 80- by 25-character mode is the large number of pixels it uses per character cell— 16 by 32— resulting in smooth, well-formed characters that are easy on the eyes. I was, however, both- ered by the look of the lowercase nr. When my eyes scanned down a page of text, each m popped out from the other characters as if it were in a bold font. I prefer using the monitor with black char- acters on a paper- white background; it provides good contrast and is easy on the eyes. However, the m problem was even more noticeable in that mode. The high-resolution modes aren't very useful unless you have software that can take advantage of them. In my collection of programs, only Brief 2.01 , a program- ming editor, has a driver that lets you display the high-resolution text mode of 50 lines with 80 or 160 characters per line. I was able to integrate the graphics capabilities of the 1280 into some of my C language graphics programs by using Metagraphics' Meta Windows for C 3.2B; this is a library of graphics functions for C language compilers that has a driver for both the Amdek 1280 and the WYSE 700 display adapters. Graphics are impressive with ail those pixels. The 1280 display adapter comes with a utilities disk and a demonstration disk. The utilities disk includes a SCREEN pro- gram so you can change the display's text mode to any of the IBM-compatible or high-resolution modes. It's most impres- sive to be able to see an entire directory listing on the screen in 160 by 50 mode. However, the individual characters in this mode are tiny (8 by 16 pixels per charac- ter cell) and take real concentration to read. The 80 by 50 mode (16 by 16 pixels per cell) is much more legible, and you still have 50 lines of text on the screen. The utilities disk also has drivers for Digital Research's GEM 2.2 and Micro- soft Windows 1.x. I loaded the Windows driver onto my oldish version of this pro- gram (1 .03) and had no problems getting the high-resolution window to appear on the 1280 monitor. However, when I tried to run either the Paint or Write programs, Windows told me I didn't have sufficient disk space— although I had over 30 mega- bytes left on the disk. I suspect the prob- lem is an incompatibility between a very old version of Windows and a fast 80386 microprocessor. [Editor's note: The com- pany says that the driver now supports Windows/386 and 2.O.] The demonstration disk contains some impressive examples of the 1280's graph- ics capabilities. Two of the images look like they were created with CAD/CAM software, and a third is a picture of a GEM window. The only problem I had in setting up the System/386 was related to the 1280 display adapter. When I first received my review unit, it booted fine from the flop- py disk but wouldn't boot from the hard disk. After reinitializing and reformat- ting the hard disk, I still couldn't boot the system without loading a floppy disk into the A drive. Finally, I called Amdek's technical-support number (not toll-free). After a couple of false starts, Amdek's technicians pinned the problem down to a conflict between the display adapter and the system bus. The display-adapter man- ual clearly states that if the 1280 is the only display card connected to your com- puter, you don't need to make any changes to the card before you install it. In reality, however, you have to set either the Color or Mono jumper settings on the card to "Off" before the System/386 will boot properly from its hard disk. The computer worked fine after that fix. The only compatibility problems I en- countered also centered around the op- tional Amdek 1280 display adapter. This card emulates the CGA colors as four shades of gray. In certain situations, the adapter's choice of how the colors from the CGA's palette correspond to the shades of gray can give rise to unreadable combinations of background and text. For example, if you have magenta charac- ters on a blue background, you'll get dark gray on dark gray. You can solve this problem by changing the defaults when your software allows you to. In general, if your software doesn't specifically sup- port the Amdek 1280 or the WYSE 700, you should set it up as a monochrome display to avoid any possible confusion with CGA emulation. Fast, Fast, Fast The enhanced versions of MS-DOS 3.21 and GWBASIC 3.20 included with the System/386 appear to be identical to those that come with the WYSEpc 386, right down to the utility programs and the Help system. The Amdek SCREEN com- mand is used only for the 1280 display adapter and monitor. The disk-caching continued Use it or lose it! Use DataSaver standby uninterruptible power supply, and protect your microcomputer against costly data loss and hardware damage. • Constant AC line protection against power disturbances and interruptions. • Built-in spike/transient suppression and EMI noise filtering. • Powerful sizes to protect any system from the earliest Apples to the latest PS/2's. International models, also. For more information, call: TOLL-FREE 800/332-3440. In California, call 805/541-4160. Or write to us at the address below. GSA No. GS 00K-87-AGS5393 PS01 Dealer/VAR inquiries invited I.T.I 1 ■ 1 ■ 1 1 ■ 1 I 1 i i an i — ■ — i ■ i ^SL. * E D 1 T O R ' S CHOICE Cuesta Systems Corporation 3440 Roberto Court San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 MAY 1988 -BYTE 123 UPSCALED POWER IN A DOWNSCALED BOX program improves the overall perfor- mance of hard disk I/O by between 15 percent and 25 percent, depending on the situation. For example, the File Read benchmark ran 20 percent faster with 256K bytes of cache installed. The speed improvement that the caching program provides is most evident when you use software with overlays or programs like compilers and some database managers that read and write temporary files to the disk while they are running. The benchmark results show that the System/386 is among the fastest of the 16-MHz 80386 microcomputers. The re- view unit didn't come with an 80287 or an 80387 math coprocessor installed, so, for benchmarking purposes, BYTE added an 8-MHz 80287. Of course, a 10- MHz 80387 would have improved the Float and Savage benchmark results. Getting Help The installation manual is clear and well written. You should have no problem in- stalling optional hardware or running the SETUP program. The MS-DOS user's guide contains good sections on getting IDEAS TRANSLATE LIKE YOU IMAGINE TYPESEJ& U A L S, FORMULAS & in the samel FORMAT BIG dlfFerEriT if: W I D El IT'S NICE TO KNOW \:\ irr^i: pc TeJC™ Y OUR i t ! boTd: i IMAGINATION. Great ideas should look great on paper. The translation is easy with PCTEX®: the full implementation of Prof. D. Knuth's revolutionary T£X formatting/ typesetting program. It offers PC users the capabilites & advantages of professional typesetting. P C 1EX gives you control — of design format, type & symbols, quality — for complex WITH PERSONAL INC To order or for information, call: 415/388-8853 or write: Personal TeX, Inc. 12 Madrona Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 USA r*Tg3( is ;i registered TM ■>! Personal IteX. Inc. IHX is .in Amori.nn Mruliemniknl Suoieiy 'I'M. Manufacturers' pmducl mum's are Iheir TMs. mathematical & engineering material, statistical tables or straight matter. So whether you're writing the next starshot manual or the great American novel, depend on pcT^X for camera/publisher-ready manuscripts to be proud of, quick & simple. From Personal TEX, Inc., starting at $249; VISA/MC welcome. Satisfaction guaranteed. PCTEX FORMATTING/TYPESETTING SYSTEM • FINE TYPESET QUALITY Irom dot matrix or laser printers, or phototypesetters. • A COMPLETE PRODUCT. Includes • our specially written PCTeX Manual that lets you use TeX immediately • custom 'macro package' formats for letters, manuals, technical documents, etc. • the LaTfX document preparation system (with user's manual) macro package for article, book, report preparation • AMS-TeX, developed by the American Mathematical Society for professional mathematical typesetting. • OUTPUT DEVICE DRIVERS available for Epson FX, LQ • Toshiba • HP LaserJet Series • Apple LaserWriter • Screen preview, with EGA, VGA or Hercules card. • REQUIRES: IBM PC/XT, AT or compatible, DOS 2.0 or higher 8, 512K RAM; hard disk for printer drivers & fonts. Tnis 3d is typeset S composed osmg PCTeX. Bttslteam" 1 fonts & laser punier Logotype 6 black backgrounds done pnotograpnically started and on using a few of the more common operating- system commands, but it ignores most of the commands, as well as EDLIN and DEBUG; Amdek relies on the Help utility to provide the rest of the information. To use the Help program, you simply type HELP and the name of the DOS com- mand or utility you need to know more about. The program responds with de- tails of the syntax and examples; it's simi- lar to what you would normally find in an MS-DOS manual. This is fine for some users, but others feel more comfortable with some sort of manual to study and browse at their leisure. Ideally, both an on-line Help utility like the one Amdek provides and a detailed paper manual should be furnished. The display-adapter user's guide has full information on installing and using the 1280 system and is invaluable if you want to write software that uses its high- resolution character and graphics modes. The System/386 comes with a one- year warranty and has FCC Class B certification. A Lot of Computer The Amdek System/386 is a lot of com- puter in a small, attractive, desktop box. In performance, it ranks with the better microcomputers in the 16-MHz 80386 class. The fact that WYSE manufactures the hardware doesn't detract from its ca- pabilities: WYSE has an excellent reputa- tion for its hardware and has been making terminals for microcomputers since CP/M days. The optional high-resolution 1280 display adapter and monitor are a plea- sure to use, but I wish more software was available to take advantage of their capa- bilities. However, for $995, this ultra- high-resolution monochrome system is best suited for desktop publishing or CAD/CAM. Most users might opt in- stead to buy a good multiscan color moni- tor and an EGA or VGA board. The System/386 itself is solidly put to- gether, and its well-thought-out design will let you upgrade to a faster or better CPU just by plugging in a new CPU card. Its only possible limitation is the few free slots available in the system. (Amdek also sells a larger version of the System/386, called the System/3 86E, which has more expansion slots and additional space for disk drives.) However, if you need a good 80386 machine, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this microcomputer. ■ John Unger is a geophysicist for the U.S. government and lives in Hamilton, Vir- ginia. He writes graphics software and uses computers to study the structure of the earth 's crust. 124 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 228 on Reader Service Card How fast is Fast ? Ten Times Faster* konan s TenTimr Intelligent Caching Disk Controller *Ten times faster than standard AT 16 bit controller cards Waiting for your disk? The TenTime™ Controller eliminates disk bottlenecks • Zero Latency Time • 1 to 1 Interleave • Elevator Seeks • Automatic Preread • Optional Floppy Contro (goggles not included) Available for IBM AT, Tandy AT and compatibles 10X Faster Access Speed* • 3X - 10X Faster Throughput • 4Mb/sec Transfer Rate + • 16 Bit AT Controller • On-board Cache Ram • DOS/Unix Compatible • Intelligent Cache Routine + data transfer from controller to PC See us at IB/Spring '88 Circle 160 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 161) Leading Innovator Since 1978 May 9-12, 1988 Georgia World Congress Center Atlanta, GA— Booth #2549 4720 South Ash Avenue, Tempe, Arizona 85282, FAX 602-345-2829, (602) 345-1300 (602) 345-1300 Stanford Systems. The Computer Maker with a Human Face. ". ... a modest public image hides a substantial maker. 786 sells directly to large end users who are buying in volume. SYSTEMS Basic System Features HD/FD Controller • 1.2 MB floppy drive • Serial port (Com 1) and parallel port • Optional 2nd serial port (Com 2) & optional game port • 200 Watt P/S • High quality metal case • Hardware reset switch and turbo L.E.D. • Optional digital L.E.D. • Clock/ 'calendar w i battery back-up * Complete documentation • En- hanced keyboard (101 keys) • Heavy duty packaging. Stanford 386-20 9/20 MHz 23 MHz Throughput Intel true 32 Bit 80386-20 CPU (20 MHz) 9/20 MHz software (keyboard) switchable clock • CMOS memory, 16 channel Interrupt, 7 DMA channels • RAM can be expanded to 16.5 MB of 32 bit high speed interleaved memory • 2-32 bit, 4-16 bit and 2-8 bit expansion slots • Supports 80387-20 and/ or 80387-1 6 Math co-processors • Award BIOS Ver. 3.03, all set up utilities are programmed in ROM • (Phoenix BIOS optional) • Plus basic system features. $2299* Stanford 386-18 9/18 MHz 21 MHz Throughput Same configuration as in system 386-20 except: intel "ffue 32 bit 80386-16 CPU • Plus basic system NETWORKING Stanford Intelligent Net-II Card Ether Net/Cheaper Net specification • 801 86 processor & 82586 LAN co-proces- sor • Data transfer rate: 10 MB/S. Net- work software compatibility: PC-NET, MS- NET, Novell. $499 Xenix Multi-Terminal Card Microprocessor-based intelligent terminal controller. Z-80B CPU • 16 KB dual port RAM, 8 KB local RAM • 6 asynch. serial channels. $2049 features. 3;;E;« Stanford 286-16 SI 12 MHz 16 MHz Throughput Intel 80286-12 cpu, 8/12 MHz software (keyboard) switchable clock • Award BIOS, Norton SI (Ver 3.0): 15.8 • DRAM can be expanded to 1 MB on M/B • Selectable between 0 wait state or one wait state • 8 expansion slots (5-16 bits, 3-8 bits) • Socket for 80287 math co-processor • Plus basic system fea- tures.'; Stanford 286-12 6/8/10/12 MHz 1 Wait State Same configuration as in 286/16 except: Intel 80286- 1 0 CPU, 6/8/10/12 MHz software (keyboard) Switch- able clock • Plus basic system features. $1119 $989 SYSTEM OPTIONS • Seagate/Miniscribe/Micropolis HD Drives • Thomson/Samsung Monitors • EGA/ VGA/ CG A Video Graphic Cards • EEMS Memory Expansion Cards • 300/1200/2400 Baud Modems • Optical Mouse/No Slot Clock • Panasonic Printers • Panasonic Facsimile Cards International $599 Dealer Inquiries Welcome. Call us for Volume/ Dealer/ Reseller Discounts Ask us for our Optional On-Site Service FREE Shipping and credit card usage TO ORDER CALL: 1-C800) 248-4786 IN CALIFORNIA: (408) 435-1515 Tech Support: (408) 435-2626 FAX (International Sales): (408) 435-8424 TELEX (International Sales): 4943373 WASAE Hours: Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 5:30 pm P.S.T. Circle 4 on Reader Service Card *System price does, not include memory (DRAMS). 'Reprinted by permission from Computer & Software News Feb. 22, 1988 Copyrigrit-Lebhar-Friedman, inc., 425 Park Ave., NY, NY 10022 STANFORD SYSTEMS 786 COMPUTER COMPANY 174 Component Drive, San Jose, CA 95131 Stanford Systems will run OS/2, MS DOS, Xenix, Unix, MicraSolt Excel, AutoCad Ver. 9.0, Lolus and D-Base III . . . or your money back. II Stanford Systems prove incompatible, return the system with original published version of the software mentioned within 30 days of invoice dale. We will replace with a compatible system, or at our option, refund purchase price. Prices, terms of sale, and specifications are subject to change without notice. We reserve the right to substitute equivalent or better products. Errors and omissions are excepted. All Irademarks are copyrighted by their respective owners. Special Offer w/System Purchase! Dr. Halo ill... $49.99 (retail value $139.95) or Desktop Publishers' Graphics . . . $59.99 (retail value $195.00) SYSTEM REVIEW Q Dynamac's Portable Mac Peter Wayner the The Holy Grail of the Macin- tosh world is a portable version of the computer— after all, what good is the power and conve- nience of the Mac if you have to leave it behind when you travel? Both the Mac Plus and the Mac SE, at 17 pounds and with built- in handles, might be considered portable, but their dimensions put them in a category best de- scribed as "luggable." Enter the Dynamac EL, the first truly portable Mac, from Dynamac Computer Products. Dynamac Computer takes the internal components of a Mac Plus out of its boxy hous- ing and places them in an easy- to-carry, sleek black case with a fold-up, flat-panel display and a built-in keyboard. The result is a machine with a soul made by Apple but the look of an ex- ecutive briefcase. A Dynamac EL with an in- ternal hard disk drive weighs 1 pound more (18 pounds total) than a Mac Plus without a hard disk drive, and 8 pounds less than a Mac SE with an internal hard disk drive. The cost of this portability is high, however: A standard Dynamac EL with an 800K-byte 3 '/2-inch floppy disk drive, 1 megabyte of memory, and a large elec- troluminescent display costs $4995. 1 re- viewed a fully loaded Dynamac EL, priced at $8334 and equipped with 4 megabytes of RAM, a 40-megabyte inter- nal hard disk drive, and a 300-/1200-bit- per- second (bps) internal modem. The Soul of the New Machine Dynamac Computer takes the basic cir- cuits for the Dynamac straight from a Mac Plus. These circuits consist of a 68000 processor operating at 7.83 MHz, the latest version ("platinum") of the 128K-byte ROMs, 1 megabyte of RAM (expandable to 2.5 or 4 megabytes), and the 800K-byte 3 '/2-inch floppy disk Dynamac repackages Mac Plus to prove that you take it with you can drive. The back panel holds the SCSI port, audio port, external floppy disk drive port, external keyboard connector, and two serial ports using DIN-8 connec- tors (see photo 1). The internal similarity ends here, how- ever, because Dynamac Computer pro- vides its own circuitry to add a switchable external keyboard connector, an optional internal hard disk drive, and an optional internal modem. The Dynamac EL's 640- by 400-pixel electroluminescent display comes close to the 640- by 480- pixel screen size of a Mac II using the Apple video board. It also has connectors for composite video output and for E- Machines Inc.'s 1024- by 808-pixel Big Picture monitor. These peripherals attach to the main Macintosh board in various ways. The large screen of the Dynamac EL receives its signals from a bus attached directly to the 68000 processor. This bus is powerful enough to drive E-Machines' monitor, but it is not designed to receive other cards. The port on the Dynamac EL that drives the Big Picture monitor can also drive any monitor or projector that accepts a 67-MHz video signal with 22-kHz horizontal sweep rates and a 60. 15-Hz field. On power-up, an INIT file supplied with the Dynamac EL checks for a Big Picture moni- tor attached to the back panel. If one is found, the video signal adapts to a 1024- by 808-pixel display; otherwise, the display is set to 640 by 400 pixels. One nice feature of this INIT file is that if you hold the Option key down while the machine boots, the display hardware reverts to the standard 512- by 342-pixel display. This lets you run any software that doesn't work properly on a large display. The composite video output comes from the same port as the large monitor signals. At start-up, if you hold down the Option key and the Dynamac detects a composite monitor connected to the port, the system will generate a composite video signal. This display is limited to 512 by 342 pixels. The optional internal hard disk drive is available in 20-megabyte and 40-mega- byte versions and attaches to the SCSI bus within the computer. The circuitry of the SCSI is unaffected, and other SCSI pe- ripherals can be attached to the external DB-25 SCSI connector as long they don't use address 4, which is the SCSI ID of the internal hard disk drive. The Dynamac uses a fan-cooled switching power supply. This avoids some of the power supply problems that normally confront Mac Plus owners who want to add internal enhancements to continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 127 DYNAMAC'S PORTABLE MAC Dynamac EL Company Dynamac Computer Products Inc. 1536 Cole Blvd., Suite 252 Golden, CO 80401 (303) 233-7626 Components Processor: Motorola 68000 running at 7.83 MHz Memory: 1 megabyte of RAM, expandable to 2.5 megabytes or 4 megabytes on the motherboard; 1 28K bytes of ROM Mass storage: One internal 800K-byte 3 1 /2-inch floppy disk drive; optional 20- or 40-megabyte internal hard disk drive I/O interfaces: Two DIN-8 serial connectors; SCSI port; external keyboard port; audio port; external floppy disk drive port; mouse port; video port, for connecting either an E-Machines Big Picture monitor or an external video monitor; models equipped with an internal modem have a telephone port Display: Built-in 19- by 12-centimeter electroluminescent bit-mapped screen; 640 by 400 pixels Keyboard: 61 keys with cursor keys Other: Optomechanical one-button mouse Size 1 5% by 1 3% by 3Vz inches; 1 5 1 /2 to 1 8 pounds Software Version 5.0 distribution disk with System 4.2/Finder 6.0; disk and desk accessory utilities; HyperCard Options 2.5-megabyte memory expansion: $695 4-megabyte memory expansion: $1549 Internal 300-/1200-bps modem: $295 20-megabyte internal hard disk drive: $849 40-megabyte internal hard disk drive: $1495 Big Picture monitor: $1595 Standard carrying case: $99 Deluxe carrying case: $199 Documentation 1 00-page user's manual Price Base system: $4995 System as reviewed: $8334 Inquiry 884. DISK ACCESS IN BASIC (IN SECONDS) WRITE READ 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 BASIC PERFORMANCE (IN SECONDS) SIEVE CALCULATIONS 0 5 10 15 20 25 SPREADSHEET (IN SECONDS) LOAD 0 5 10 15 20 25 RECALCULATE ■ 7.6 ■17.5 i SYSTEM UTILITIES (IN SECONDS) 40K FILE COPY 0 5 10 15 20 25 ca DYNAMAC hk MAC PLUS m, MAC SE The Disk Access benchmarks write and then read a 64-byte sequential text file to a floppy disk. Sieve runs one iteration of the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Calculations performs 10,000 multiplication and division operations. The Spreadsheet tests load (from a hard disk) and recalculate a 25-row by 25-column Multiplan spreadsheet. The 40K File Copy benchmark copies a 40K-byte file on the floppy disk. The Mac Plus used System 3.0/Finder 5.0 and MS-BASIC 1 .0. The Mac SE ran System 4. 1 /Finder 5.5 and MS-BASIC 2.1(b). The Dynamac ran System 4.2/Finder 6.0 and MS-BASIC 2.1(b). Multiplan version 1 .02 was used for the Dynamac and Mac Plus tests, and Multiplan 1 .1 was used for the tests on the Mac SE. their computers. The power supply is switch-settable to accept either 1 10 volts or 220 volts, making it ideal for interna- tional travel. Unfortunately, there's no battery pack available that would let you operate the computer away from a power outlet. The optional 300-/ 1200-bps modem is attached in line with the serial port. One switch on the back panel directs signals to either the internal modem or the serial port, and another switch sets the commu- nication protocols of the modem to either U.S. standards (Bell 212) or CCITT Eu- ropean standards (V.21). This is another feature that begs for a trip to Europe. The Body of the New Machine The slim, easily portable package of the Dynamac EL is responsible for most of the machine's appeal. Dynamac Com- 128 BYTE- MAY 1988 Don't wait on line for your copy of BYTE! If you want to keep posted on product and technology developments in the personal computer field, get your own copy of BYTE! Join your peers and subscribe to BYTE at our low price introductory offer: Save $23 off the newstand price— 13 issues at $22.95 instead of $45.95. If you're not satisfied write "cancel" on your invoice and keep the first issue free. □ U.S. □ Canada/Mexico [ $22.95 (1 yr.) $25.95 U.S. (1 yr.) ! Europe-Air Delivery □ Worldwide-Surface Delivery $75.00 U.S. (1 yr.) $45.00 U.S. (1 yr.) □ Bill me (North America only) □ Payment enclosed. (U.S. Funds drawn on a U.S. bank only) □ Charge to my □ VISAC MasterCard Card # Expires Signature For direct ordering call toll free weekdays 9:OOam-5:OOpm EST: 1 800 423-8272 (in New Jersey: 1 800 367-0218). Name Company. Address City/State Country Code 485TSU-8 Please allow 6-8 weeks for processing your subscription. BYTE M Don't wait on line for your copy of BYTE! If you want to keep posted on product and technology developments in the personal computer field, get your own copy of BYTE! Join your peers and subscribe to BYTE at our low price introductory offer: Save $23 off the newstand price — 13 issues at $22.95 instead of $45.95. If you're not satisfied write "cancel" on your invoice and keep the first issue free. □ U.S. □ Canada/Mexico □ Europe-Air Delivery □ Worldwide-Surface Delivery $22.95 (lyr.) $25.95 U.S. (1 yr.) $75.00 U.S. (1 yr.) $45.00 U.S. (1 yr.) □ Bill me (North America only) □ Payment enclosed. (U.S. Funds drawn on a U.S. bank only) □ Charge to my □ VISAD MasterCard Card # Expires Signature Name Company. Address City/State Country Code For direct ordering call toll free weekdays 9:00am-5:00pm EST: 1 800 423-8272 (in New Jersey: 1 800 367-0218). 485TSU-8 Please allow 6-8 weeks for processing your subscription. BYTE ftui BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 684 TEANECK, NJ NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE: BYTE Subscription Dept. P.O. Box 7640 Teaneck, NJ 07666-9866 .I.MMImlLJInMnlnLILJI.Hll, BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 684 TEANECK, NJ POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE: EVTE Subscription Dept. P.O. Box 7640 Teaneck, NJ 07666-9866 NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES lll,..l...l.ll...tl...ll,.l.l..l..l..ll.,.ll...ll..l DYNAMAC'S PORTABLE MAC puter replaced the round-edged boxy styling of the Macintosh with a compact style that appeals to corporate executives and Star Wars set designers. The bottom of the shell is fashioned from steel, and the top covering and folding display are of molded plastic. Everything is jet-black except the keyboard and the mouse, which are colored that sooty gray Apple calls "platinum." The flat screen lies over the keyboard when stowed, and two sliding catches lock it in place. The screen folds up from a hinge that is located halfway along the top of the computer's body. When you unlock and open the screen panel, it un- veils the keyboard and an internal 3'/2- inch floppy disk drive that's placed below and to the left of the screen for easy access. The Dynamac EL uses an electrolumi- nescent screen that displays the pixels in black, and the background appears as either a saffron yellow (in incandescent light) or a pale yellow-orange (under flu- orescent lighting). The yellow-orange and black screen does not have as much contrast as the black-and-white screen of the Mac, but after a several-minute ad- justment period, I didn't find this to be a problem. The screen's yellow color is quite pleasant to use because it seems to cut glare— much like the way yellow legal pads strain the eyes less than white ones. This is just a coincidence of physics, however, and not an example of ergo- nomic design. The Dynamac EL's display uses a thin film of doped zinc sul- fide deposited on glass that glows in this color when stimulated by the video cir- cuits. The film is etched photographi- cally, yielding an array of fine square pixels. The precision of the etching pro- duces a crisp display with excellent clar- ity, perfect aspect ratio, and readability that is better than that of the original Macintosh display. It packs 46 percent more pixels (640 by 400 pixels versus 512 by 342 pixels) into only 22 percent more screen area (19 centimeters by 12 centi- meters versus 17 centimeters by 1 1 centi- meters). Given the choice of working with either a Mac SE or the Dynamac EL, I often chose the Dynamac EL with its large, comfortable screen. The Dynamac EL's screen sits at a fixed angle to the keyboard. The hinge does not have a friction mount that would let you adjust this angle; a sliding handle built into the Dynamac lets you prop up the rear of the computer and gives you a second viewing angle, but that's it. Nor does the Dynamac EL have a knob for brightness or contrast, so you're stuck with what the display offers. These two fixed parts of the design would be a big problem for LCD screens, but this isn't the case for the electroluminescent tech- nology because the display is readable from every angle. However, they are fea- tures that could be improved upon. The mouse is the standard first-genera- tion Apple mouse that came with the Mac Plus used to make the Dynamac; it plugs into a socket in the back panel. There isn't any place to store the mouse when the computer is folded up for traveling, nor is there a place to store the power cord. This is a bit of a disappointment, since I think a portable machine should be as self-contained as possible. The op- tional nylon and leather carrying case does have a pouch for both the mouse and the power cord, however. This brings us to one of the big prob- lems for designers of mouse-based porta- bles: The mouse can't be used without a flat surface next to the machine, and that rules out many good working opportuni- ties. One solution is to use the Easy Ac- cess INIT file provided by Apple. Easy Access was designed to aid handicapped people (who can have difficulty using a mouse) in using a Mac computer. This software also lets you operate the Dyna- mac without a mouse— but that doesn't mean that Easy Access is easy or desir- able in this situation. This is one problem that requires fur- ther examination by the engineers. For example, Grid Computer's first laptop had a touchpad above the keyboard that duplicated all the functions of the mouse. It is disappointing not to find a touchpad or a small built-in trackball to serve as a mouse on the Dynamac. The keyboard is also cannibalized from the Mac Plus. The numeric keypad is missing, but a desk accessory (DA) called Keypad Overlay, provided with the computer, turns the M, J, K, L, U, I, O, 7, 8, and 9 keys into a numeric keypad. Once you've activated Keypad Overlay, these keys function as a keypad whenever you hold down the Option key. You use the same DA to remove this capability. The Enter key from the numeric key- pad is now directly above the Return key. This is a good feature, since many appli- cations distinguish between the two keys. It shows that the Dynamac designers an- ticipated the many possible ways their modifications could inhibit compatibil- ity. If the built-in keyboard is still not ad- equate for you, you can attach another keyboard to the extra keyboard port in the rear. This additional port is also suitable for people who want to use a separate keyboard in front of a large screen monitor. Standard Software, Slim Documentation Initially, the Dynamac EL came with System 4. 1 and Finder 5.5. However, it's now being shipped with version 5.0 sys- tem software (System 4.2 and Finder 6.0) and copies of HyperCard. With the generous 4 megabytes of RAM on the review machine, I could run MultiFinder, HyperCard, and several other applications without problems. I hooked the Dynamac up to a LocalTalk network to test its AppleTalk capabilities, and I printed several documents to a LaserWriter and a LaserWriter NT without problems. I also connected an Apple Hard Disk 20 to the external flop- py disk drive port of the Dynamac EL. As is typical of the Mac Plus ROMs, at start- up the Dynamac checks the floppy disk drives and then the SCSI port for boot- able volumes, so the Hard Disk 20 be- came the start-up volume rather than the Dynamac 's internal SCSI hard disk. This behavior is normal, and the Dynamac op- continued Photo 1: The Dynamac 's back panel holds (from left to right) the audio port, the mouse port, the external floppy disk drive port, the video port, the SCSI port, the external keyboard connector, the telephone port connector, and two serial ports using DINS connectors. MAY 1988 -BYTE 129 Circle 253 on Reader Service Card PC-Write 4 Share the Benefits! PC-Write gives you fast, powerful word processing at low cost and low risk. Get a shareware copy of PC-Write from us or a friend Then try it. On your computer. For your kind of writing. Let PC-Write prove itself to you. Then order a registered copy if you use it on a regular basis. MORE FEATURES PC-Write has more capabilities than any other word processor under $100. It's like expensive software - only easier to use! You get powerful editing and cursor control, spelling check, mail merge, support for over 400 printers including LaserJet and Post Script, proportional justify, split-screen editing, keyboard macros, and much, much more. MORE BENEFITS PC-Write helps you create high quality documents productively. Full Registration includes: • Most current Diskette Pair • 360-Page Manual & Reference • One Year of Phone Support • Four Quarterly Newsletters • Two Future Product Updates • 125 Shareware Commissions Byte May 1988 "Everyone ought to have a copy." -Jerry Pournelle Byte, August 1987 Next version is FREE with Full Registration purchase - offering more power and ease of use with better WYSIWYG, "box" operations, and large file support. Order Today! $16- Shareware Diskettes $89 - Full Registration 1-800-888-8088 Ref:BYT5 90 Day Money-Back Guarantee! Group, Campus, & Volume Discounts. Ad by PC-Write using HP Laserjet(tm). Quicksoji 219 First North Box 224-BYT5 Seattle. WA 98109 (206) 282-0452 DYNAMAC'S PORTABLE MAC erated flawlessly with the external hard disk drive. The Dynamac EL comes with one slim manual that describes the basic facts about the Macintosh desk software and the back panel of the computer. My copy of the manual was labeled "Preliminary Release— Summer 1987." A short sec- tion in the back gives hints for trouble- shooting the computer. While the manual is small and pales in comparison to the extensive Apple documents, Dynamac didn't miss anything. The manual has a few irregularities, however. For example, the communica- tions entry in the index reads, "See Mac- Terminal; modems," despite the fact that there is no entry for Mac Terminal in the manual and the program is not supplied with the computer. The manual doesn't hold a new user's hand, either, and you'll have to look elsewhere for descriptions of the more arcane utility programs on the System disk. For those who do experi- ence problems, Dynamac Computer of- fers free telephone support and lists the number to call at the very beginning of the manual. Performance and Portability The benchmarks did not reveal anything particularly surprising about the Dyna- mac: It performs just like a Mac Plus. In both the Sieve and the Calculations tests, the Dynamac and the Mac Plus tied. The Disk Write and Read tests, which evaluate the floppy disk drive, were slightly slower for the Dynamac than for the Mac Plus. The hard disk drive also worked slightly slower than my SE's hard disk drive. These differences in performance were not significant. It should come as no surprise that there were no problems with software compati- bility. Most of the software packages have been modified by now so that they utilize the variable-size screens used on the Mac II. I tested Word 3.01 , Mac Write 4.6, MacDraw 1.95, Red Ryder 10.3, Write Now 1.0, SuperPaint 1.0, Mac- Paint 1.5, Excel 1.04, and HyperCard 1 .01 . Each ran without problems. The better programs, such as Word, opened windows the size of the larger screen, while older programs, like Mac- Paint 1.5, left you with lots of unused screen space. Claris Corp. has released the MacPaint 2 . 0 upgrade that does detect and use the larger screen, but it wasn't available at the time of this review. VideoWorks 1.0 ran on the large display, but the screen animation was er- ratic. The solution is to use the Mac II- compatible VideoWorks II, which uses the larger screen and didn't exhibit any flicker during animation. One hidden cost of the Dynamac EL is that you'll have to upgrade your software to use the larger screen, or else run it on the 512- by 342-pixel display mode. The machine's portability is one im- portant facet that cannot be tested with ordinary benchmarks. With a hard disk drive, the Dynamac EL is slightly heavier than a Mac Plus, but it has the advantage in size and shape. The original Mac is small enough to be used as a portable computer when it is packed into the spe- cially designed suitcases, but its rectan- gular shape can be ungainly when slung over your back. The Dynamac 's briefcase shape makes it easy to carry at your side without bumping into other people. The bag comes with a shoulder strap because the computer is heavy enough to make long walks tiresome. A Lightweight Computer with a Hefty Price Tag The Dynamac EL is a Mac Plus computer in a slim case that sidesteps compatibility problems by using the actual circuits from a disassembled Macintosh. The Dynamac 's screen is one of the best dis- plays I've seen on a portable computer and is good enough to make the Dynamac the day-to-day machine of anyone who buys it. When I wrote this review, I had the choice of using a Mac SE, a Mac Plus, or this computer. The large, sharp screen of the Dynamac won. The only drawback to this computer is its price. The top-of-the-line model with 4 megabytes of RAM, a 40-megabyte hard disk drive, and a built-in modem costs $8334. For just under the same price ($8089), you can buy a Mac II sys- tem with the following Apple compo- nents: 2 megabytes of memory, a 40- megabyte hard disk drive, an extended keyboard, a 13-inch color monitor, a video board with the 256-color upgrade, and an Image Writer n printer. Of course, you're more likely to lug a Mac Plus or Mac SE around than to even think of mov- ing a Mac II; but unless portability is an absolute priority, there are better ways of spending your hard-earned dollars in this price range. However, if portability is indeed the issue, then the Dynamac fills the bill ad- mirably. The Dynamac fits under any seat, and, with the carrying case, you can tote the computer just about anywhere. If you simply want to do a bit of word processing on the road, you can make do with a cheaper portable. If you must have everything that a Mac can offer, and you must have this capability wherever you go, then this machine's a must. ■ Peter Wayner is a graduate student in the department of computer science at Cor- nell University in Ithaca, New York. 130 BYTE- MAY 1988 he class drive , for iass computers. The ST251 If you're willing to settle for less, you can put other drives in your AT-class computer. But if you want AT-class performance from your hard disc drive, there's only one choice. Seagate's ST251. The ST251 is the 40 MB half-height drive designed to get the most performance out of your IBM* PC, XTf AT* or compatible. With 40 msec access time, the ST251 delivers cost- effective AT-class performance while reducing power consumption to only 11 watts. For easy installation under DOS, we provide partitioning software — free. The ST251 features autopark with a balanced positioner, which eliminates the need for a locking mechanism. Reliability is assured because the drive is built at Seagate's auto- mated manufacturing facility, using our own printed circuit board assembly. Our field-proven, proprietary stepper motors match the fast access time normally found only with the more expensive voice coil actuators. Features like these have made Seagate the leading independent manufacturer of small disc drives in 5H" and BYz" form factors. And they've made the ST251 the class of the AT class. 40 megabytes. 40 milliseconds. Why settle for less in your AT? Call Seagate. 800-468-DISC. *IBM, XT and AT are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp. Seagate and (2? are trademarks of Seagate Technology. Circle 267 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 268) (SP Seagate The first name in disc drives. MAY 1988 -BYTE 131 With Modems you can Get Smart ...or Get Smarter 2400etC The Next Generation in Modems ■ A Custom designed 2400 Baud Internal PC modem by the makers of the world- famous EGAWONDER, means high performance & reliability. ■ Built-in microprocessor & digital signal processor ensures 100% error-free data using MNP-5. ■ Data compression increases throughput to 4800bps. ■ Background data spooling or Electronic Mail* $239 Smart price to pay for Smart technology 00 Suggested List Price *Full package of software included, Free. ATI is a registered trademark of ATI Technologies Inc. MNP is a trademark of Microcorn Corporation. Mirror II is a trademark of Softklone Distribution Corporation. Circle 30 on Reader Service Card TECHNOLOGIES INC. Technology you can Trust ATI Technologies Inc., 3761 Victoria Park Ave. Scarborough, Ontario, Canada M 1 W 3S2 Tel: (416) 7S6 071 1 , Tlx: 06-966640 (ATI TOR) Fax: (416) 756-0720 MAY 1988 -BYTE lii HARDWARE REVIEWS Remaking a Classic Curtis Franklin Jr. A laser printer with three personalities: Apple's LaserWriter IISC,IINT,andllNTX Changing a successful product is a sticky matter: Just ask Coca-Cola. But when you can take a classic, give it new power and speed, and wrap the whole package in a sleek new housing, as Apple has done with its new series of LaserWriter U printers, you just may have a big winner on your hands. The LaserWriter lis give Mac users who want laser-quality print three ways to pick and choose from low-cost Quick- Draw printing to high-end PostScript, with a clear and easy upgrade path from the bottom to the top. The LaserWriter U printers are de- signed around a 300-dot-per-inch (dpi) Canon second-generation LBP-SX print- ing engine placed within a shell holding a power supply and various controls (see photo 1). One of three "personality boards" fits into a slot on the bottom of this shell (see photos 2 and 3). This board determines the printer's characteristics. The printer's modular design allows Apple to reduce its development costs and, more important, lets you purchase a new board to improve the performance or capabilities of the printer when your needs demand it. The LaserWriter IISC is, at $2799, the entry-level LaserWriter JJ. It does not support PostScript or AppleTalk. Next is the LaserWriter JJNT, which costs more than the USC ($4599) but adds PostScript and AppleTalk networking capabilities. The UNT is the most direct replacement for the discontinued LaserWriter Plus. At the top of the line, the LaserWriter IINTX gives you PostScript, AppleTalk networking, 2 megabytes of memory (ex- pandable to 12 megabytes), hard disk drive expansion capability, and a Motor- ola 68020 processor. For this, you pay $6599. A Single-User Printer The LaserWriter JJSC (the "SC" stands for SCSI) is a single-user printer that con- nects to a Macintosh through the com- puter's SCSI port. The USC's personal- ity board is built around a 7.5-MHz Motorola 68000 processor and has 1 megabyte of RAM. One of the nice fea- tures of the IISC (and the other two printers as well) is its dual paper path. Since different word-processing, page layout, and graphics programs print pages in different orders (first-to-last ver- sus last-to-first), the LaserWriter II shell offers two different ways for the pages to be collected after they're printed. Nor- mally, the paper is collected face-down on the top of the printer— perfect for first- to-last printing software. But by simply opening a door, you can have the paper collected face-up at the side of the printer. Since the USC uses the same print en- gine as the other LaserWriter lis, the out- put's resolution is the same as the more expensive printers. In spite of this, the lack of PostScript makes "How's the quality?" the first question asked about the IISC. The answer is that, especially for text, the output is quite good. I found that on standard-size text (9 through 14 points), it is difficult to tell the output of the IISC from that of the IINT or the IINTX. In larger point sizes, and espe- cially in large boldface fonts, the results were considerably more ragged (i.e., showing "stair-stepped" edges) than equivalent PostScript fonts. The good results at normal point sizes come from a technique similar to that used by Imagewriter printers. For each font to be printed, two font sizes must be loaded into the System file. The first font size is the font used for the screen display. The second font is 4 times the size of the screen font and is used by the printer driver. Apple achieves high-qual- ity print without the computational com- plexities of PostScript by scaling this large font down to 25 percent of its original size during the printing operation. Graphics printed on the JJSC are obviously different from those printed on PostScript- equipped printers. All IISC images are generated on the host com- puter by QuickDraw, Apple's propri- etary graphics routines that are em- bedded in the ROM of every Macintosh. QuickDraw does not provide the auto- matic high quality of PostScript, but it does allow the meticulous user the oppor- tunity to "hand-smooth" objects. Circles and diagonal lines showed some jagged- ness, but the quality was miles ahead of Imagewriter resolution and was on a par with non-PostScript output (such as that from MacPaint) on the LaserWriter. Installing the LaserWriter IISC was easy. The 126-page owner's guide pro- vided clear instructions for installing the hardware and software for the printer. When I was ready to connect the printer to the Mac SE, I found that I did not have the SCSI terminator called for in the doc- umentation. I plugged everything to- gether anyway, and everything worked just fine. However, for permanent instal- lations, I recommend that you follow the directions in the manual. The LaserWriter USC comes with four disks of software: one installation disk, one disk with the LaserWriter IISC driver version 1.0B12, and two font disks. The manual includes directions for installing this software, but since all the utilities follow Macintosh convention, most expe- rienced Mac users will have no trouble. I did find that the fonts (Helvetica, Cour- ier, Times Roman, and Symbol, in 9- through 96-point sizes) took up a lot of disk space, making me glad I had a hard disk drive on both the Mac SE and Mac IJ used to test the printer: For example, add- ing the complete Times, Helvetica, and Courier fonts to your System file balloons the size of this file by more than 1 mega- byte. If you intend to connect a Laser- Writer IISC to a floppy-disk-drive-only 134 BYTE • MAY 1988 Mac, you'll want to carefully choose those fonts that you install on your system disk. I tried PageMaker 1 . 1 with the Laser- Writer IISC and was surprised to find that pages printed with no translation or extra driver needed. The output from Page- Maker was high-quality— not quite up to the standards of PostScript but very smooth and even. The only problem was that, between my early version (1.1) of PageMaker and the early version of the LaserWriter IISC printer driver, the com- puter consistently locked up about 45 seconds after printing. Apple says this problem is eliminated with the latest ver- sion (3.0) of PageMaker. The LaserWriter IISC is the slowest printer in the LaserWriter family, taking more time than even the LaserWriter to print most of the benchmark documents (see figure 1). Only the 90K-byte Mac- Draw test file (described later) printed in significantly less time on the IISC than on the LaserWriter or the LaserWriter IINT. This is because the IISC's printing process eliminates a conversion step. Normally, the standard LaserWriter driver does a complicated conversion of QuickDraw graphics into PostScript commands for a print job. For the Laser- Writer IISC, the Macintosh draws the page image in its memory using Quick- Draw primitives, and this image is sent to the printer. This process has two impor- tant consequences: First, your Mac is tied continued Photo 1: The LaserWriter II shell, shown here with the paper tray attached, includes the print engine, controls, and power supply. Photo 2: The LaserWriter IINTX board (top) has space for an extra megabyte of RAM using 256K-byte- density SIMMs. The IINT board (middle) holds 2 megabytes of RAM, and the IISC board (bottom) comes standard with 1 megabyte. MAY 1988 -BYTE 135 REMAKING A CLASSIC LaserWriter IISC LaserWriter IINT LaserWriter IINTX Type Company Features QuickDraw-based laser printer PostScript laser printer Size Hardware Needed Software Needed Documentation Price Apple Computer Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave. Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 996-1010 Canon LBP-SX laser xerographic print engine, rated at 8 pages per minute; 300- by 300-dpi res- olution; personality board with 7.5-MHz 68000 CPU, 16K bytes of ROM, 1 megabyte of RAM, SCSI with externally switchable address, and ADB connector; LaserWriter IISC printer driver and IISC font files. Power re- quirements: 90 volts to 1 26 V AC, 50 to 60 Hz. 8V2 by 20 by 18% inches (without letter-size cassette); 45 pounds Macintosh Plus, SE, or II; SCSI cable and terminator None 126-page spiral-bound user's manual $2799 (includes toner cartridge and letter cassette) Apple Computer Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave. Cupertino, CA95014 (408)996-1010 Canon LBP-SX laser xerographic print engine, rated at 8 ppm; 300- by 300-dpi resolution; Post- Script interpreter; Diablo 630 emulation; personality board with 11. 5-MHz 68000 CPU, 1 megabyte of ROM, 2 megabytes of RAM, LocalTalk interface, ADB interface, and RS-232C serial interface; LaserWriter and LaserPrep version 5.1 printer driver and IINT font files. Power requirements: 90 V to 126 V AC, 50 to 60 Hz. 8 1 /2 by 20 by I8V2 inches (without letter-size cassette); 45 pounds Macintosh Plus, SE, or II; two LocalTalk nodes and a LocalTalk cable None 152-page spiral-bound user's manual $4599 (includes toner cartridge and letter cassette) PostScript laser printer Apple Computer Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave. Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 996-1010 Canon LBP-SX laser xerographic print engine, rated at 8 ppm; 300- by 300-dpi resolution; Post- Script interpreter with batch or interactive modes; Diablo 630 emulation; HP LaserJet Plus emulation; personality board with 16.7-MHz 68020 CPU, 1 megabyte of ROM, 2 megabytes of RAM expandable to 1 2 mega- bytes, LocalTalk interface, ADB interface, RS-232C serial inter- face, SCSI, and font expansion slot; LaserWriter and LaserPrep version 5.1 printer driver and IINT font files. Power requirements: 90 V to 1 26 V AC, 50 to 60 Hz. . 8V2 by 20 by 18V2 inches (without letter-size cassette); 45 pounds Macintosh Plus, SE, or II; two LocalTalk nodes and a LocalTalk cable None 152-page spiral-bound user's manual $6599 (includes toner cartridge and letter cassette) Inquiry 888. Inquiry 889. Inquiry 890. up during a print job, and second, the faster your Mac, the faster the Laser- Writer nSC will print. An Upgraded Classic The LaserWriter IINT (the "NT" stands for networking) is the most direct re- placement for the discontinued Laser- Writer Plus. Like the LaserWriter Plus, the LaserWriter IINT personality board has a 1 1 .5-MHz Motorola 68000 proces- sor, 1 megabyte of ROM, and 2 mega- bytes of RAM. Included on the board is a faster version of PostScript (version 47.0, as compared to version 38 . 0 on the Laser- Writer), an Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) port (for future expansion), a LocalTalk connector, and a DB-25 serial port. Fi- nally, a special Diablo 630 emulation is built into the software. The net result is a printer that is a worthy successor to the venerable LaserWriters that it replaces. Setting up the printer was just as easy as setting up the LaserWriter IISC: I dis- connected the IISC board by loosening two screws, pulled the ESC board out of the LaserWriter U shell, and inserted the TINT board. All that was left to do was tighten the same two screws and plug in a LocalTalk connector. The whole re- placement process took about 5 minutes. In a welcome change from the original LaserWriters, the LaserWriter IINT and IINTX boards now use the same DIN-8 connectors for LocalTalk that are used by the Mac Plus, Mac SE, and Mac II serial ports. The LaserWriter and LaserWriter Plus used DB-9 connectors, making the printer hookup to a network a headache if you forgot this little detail when you pur- chased the LocalTalk nodes. Software installation is just as easy. You get three disks: one with the System/ Finder combination and Installer pro- gram, one with the new LaserWriter/ LaserPrep version 5.1 drivers and a font utility, and the last with the LaserWriter IINT screen fonts to match the fonts in the board's ROM. You also get a 152-page owner's guide that does double duty as the manual for both the LaserWriter IINT and the LaserWriter IINTX. It is lavishly illustrated and even includes information for connecting an MS-DOS machine to the LaserWriter IINT's serial port. The IINT has 11 resident fonts: ITC Bookman, Courier, New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, Times, ITC Zapf Chancery, ITC Avant Garde, Helvetica, Helvetica Narrow, Symbol, and ITC Zapf Dingbats. Like the LaserWriter it replaces, the LaserWriter IINT can use downloadable fonts from a number of commercial, shareware, or freeware sources. A utility application called continued 136 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 24 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 25) — UMtQStit Boldly Goes Where No LAN Has Gone ^sJ^B^ Before... .'. . into networking environments needing a fast and powerful network that is easy to use, compatible with NETBIOS and DOS 3.1 -based applications, requires minimal memory and is inexpensive. Warp Speed Communications LANtastic's fast transmission rate of 2.0 megabits per second and efficient NETBIOS processing means data gets delivered to your programs faster. And because each LANtastic adapter contains a powerful 10MHz network coprocessor that handles all network traffic, Low Memory Requirements LANtastic's network operating system is the smallest NOS available, requiring less than 40K on a Server and 10K on a Node. LANtastic NOS offers DOS 3.1 record and file locking, peer-to-peer networking, powerful access control, audit trails, print spooling and electronic mail. No extended memory boards are necessary, you don't have to reformat your hard drive or dedicate a file server and you can be networking in 20-30 minutes including installation time. 3550 North 1st Avenue Suite 330 Tucson Arizona 85719 Fax: 602-293-8065 100% NETBIOS Compatibility The NETBIOS standard is completely implemented by the LANtastic adapter. NETBIOS compatibility allows you to choose from many different network operating systems, gateways, micro-to-mainframe links and network applications. LANtastic's NETBIOS only requires 2.5K of memory and delivers data two to six times faster than other manufacturer's implementations. A Complete Network Package LANtastic provides fast network hardware, real peer-to-peer network software, in one package from one source You can try LANtastic at no risk with our 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee. Order your LANtastic today! 602-293-6363 REMAKING A CLASSIC The LaserWriter II gives Mac users three ways to pick and choose with a clear and easy upgrade path from the bottom to the top. LaserWriter Font Utility, provided with the installation software, lets you select the font files you wish to download to the LaserWriter ITNT's memory. When I benchmarked the LaserWriter IINT, it became obvious that the biggest improvement in speed over the Laser- Writer was in printing PostScript graph- ics files. In most of the text benchmarks (the 7-page Mac Write file on the Mac SE being the exception), the LaserWriter IINT was a few seconds faster than the LaserWriter. In comparison, the 90K- byte MacDraw file that took 1392 sec- onds to print on the Mac SE/LaserWriter combination took only 1088 seconds with the Mac SE/LaserWriter IINT. The LaserWriter IINT was consis- tently faster than the LaserWriter IISC, with the exception of that 90K-byte Mac- Draw file. Since the LaserWriter IISC does not use the QuickDraw translation and PostScript processing, it was able to print the large MacDraw graphics file 2 minutes faster than the LaserWriter IINT paired with the Mac SE, and 7 minutes faster than the LaserWriter IINT coupled with the Mac II. The LaserWriter IINT is a very capa- ble PostScript printer that ably anchors the middle of the Apple LaserWriter printer family. The price of a LaserWriter IISC-to-LaserWriter IINT upgrade is $2099. The fact that you can have a IINT by upgrading from a LaserWriter IISC, and can upgrade the IINT to a Laser- Writer IINTX, makes it a great choice for a small, growing office or workgroup. And at the Top. . . When you exchange the LaserWriter IINT board for a LaserWriter IINTX board (a $2499 procedure), you enter a realm of serious printer intelligence. The standard IINTX has a 16.7-MHz Motor- ola 68020, 1 megabyte of ROM, 2 mega- bytes of RAM, PostScript version 47.0, a 50-pin SCSI hard disk drive interface, a DB-25 serial port, and LocalTalk and ADB ports. Three SIMM (single in-line memory module) sockets hold the on- board RAM, and by populating these sockets with 1 -megabyte-density SIMMs you can expand the board's total RAM capacity to 12 megabytes. It's amazing to realize that there are 32-user supermicro- computers that have less raw horsepower than this printer. Unfortunately, I didn't get to sample the full power of the printer; the unit sent for review had the standard 2 megabytes of RAM and no hard disk drive. It was still the fastest of the LaserWriters, be they new or old. Installing the LaserWriter IINTX was just like installing the IINT, a 5-minute procedure involving two screws and a LocalTalk connection. The software in- stallation was unnecessary because the LaserWriter IINT and the LaserWriter IINTX use the same fonts. The LaserWriter IINTX has the same 11 resident fonts as the LaserWriter IINT, but where the LaserWriter IINT can have fonts downloaded to its RAM, the IINTX can store downloaded fonts either in its considerable RAM or on one of the chain of hard disk drives that can be attached to the SCSI port. If you do add hard disk drives, setting the SCSI address of the printer is a simple matter of push- ing a button and watching addresses click past in a window on the LaserWriter IINTX board. The LaserWriter Font Utility lets you download fonts into the LaserWriter's memory or to the hard disk drive. One problem in chaining a new SCSI hard disk drive off an existing hard disk drive that's holding fonts is that you must reformat both disks and download all the fonts again to add the new drive. This can be a major job if you are chain- ing a hard disk drive off a 40-megabyte drive already packed with fonts. If neither of these font options appeals to you, the LaserWriter IINTX also has an expansion slot where you can install font ROM boards. In addition to its Post- Script graphics, the IINTX can emulate the HP LaserJet Plus and Diablo 630 printers. With the various ways of inter- facing with the printer and the number of fonts and emulations it offers, this is one of the most flexible printers around. The performance of the LaserWriter IINTX is, quite simply, wonderful. When I paired the IINTX with a Macin- tosh n, printing even large and complex files became a fast procedure. The most striking example was the 90K-byte Mac- Draw file. This file took over 20 minutes to print on the LaserWriter/Mac II com- bination. When I printed it using the IINTX with the Mac II, it took just 8 min- continued Photo 3: The LaserWriter II boards offer a full range of connectors. The IINTX board (top, left to right): ADB port, SCSI port, configuration DIP switches , serial port, LocalTalk port. The IINT board (middle, left to right): ADB port, configuration switches , serial port, LocalTalk port. The IISC board (bottom, left to right): ADB port, SCSI port, board SCSI address selector, SCSI port. 138 BYTE* MAY 1988 Sysgen brings you the best buys in backup. $795 60Mb QIC-File™ • Compatibility with all PCs and PSI2s (New QIC-File Plus available for PS/2 Models 50, 60 and 80 at $995 ) ' Streaming tape technology with superior 90 IPS speeds • Dual read/write heads for simulta- neous backup and verification • QIC-File and QIC-File Plus tapes are fully interchangeable between PCs and PSI2s $595 60Mb Smart Image™ • Compatibility with all PCs and PS/2s (New Smart Image Plus for PS/2 Models 50, 60 and 80 at $795 ) • Streaming tape technology with superior 90 IPS speeds • Dual read/write heads for simulta- neous backup and verification • Smart Image and Smart Image Plus tapes are fully interchangeable between PCs and PSI2s Sysgen™ gives you a lot more backup for a lot less. Choose a Sysgen W tape cartridge system or a Sysgen cassette tape system for all your PC and PS/2 backup needs. Or choose other leading backup products from the complete Sysgen family, including the 120Mb Net- File™ for backing up entire Novell® networks and the 40Mb Bridge-Tape™ subsystem that's PC and PS/2 compatible, for total backup and data transfer flexibility. Sysgen backup systems offer you the highest performance at the lowest prices in the marketplace. With the proven reliability of 100,000 installed backup systems. And a #1 rating by industry experts. Ask your dealer for a Sysgen backup system or call the Sysgen hotline for more information. 1-800-821-2151 SYSGEN INCORPORATED SYSGEN Inc., 556 Gibrallar Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035, (408) 263-4411. © Copyright, Sysgen, Inc. 1988. Trademarks: QIC-File, Smart Image, Sysgen, Net-File, Bridge-Tapc-Sysgeii, Inc.; PS/2-1BM Corp. Refiistered Trademark: Novell-Novell, Inc. REMAKING A CLASSIC MACSE 90K MACDRAW Printer Print time MAC II Plus IISC IINT IINTX 24:38 16:10 19:55 7:52 6K MACDRAW Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 1:05 1:43 0:55 0:41 MIXED TEXT AND GRAPHICS Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 3:49 5:38 2:53 1:34 30-PAGE TEXT Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 4:49 10:44 4:30 4:11 7-PAGE TEXT Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 1:41 2:22 1:31 1:17 3-PAGE TEXT Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 1:10 1:10 0:56 0:49 LaserWriter Plus LaserWriter IISC LaserWriter IINT LaserWriter IINTX 90K MACDRAW Printer Print time Plus 24:37 IISC 9:51 IINT 18:21 IINTX 7:57 6K MACDRAW Printer Print time Plus 0:59 IISC 0:52 IINT 0:53 IINTX 0:32 MIXED TEXT AND GRAPHICS Printer Print time Plus 3:43 IISC 2:47 IINT 2:41 IINTX 1:24 30-PAGE TEXT Printer Print time Plus 4:39 IISC 6:28 IINT 4:21 IINTX 4:04 7-PAGE TEXT Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 1:39 1:30 1:26 1:12 3-PAGE TEXT Printer Print time Plus IISC IINT IINTX 1:06 0:49 0:52 0:40 LaserWriter Plus LaserWriter IISC LaserWriter IINT LaserWriter IINT Figure 1: These tests compare an original LaserWriter against the LaserWriter IISC, IINT, and IINTX. The IINTX was fastest overall; the IISC was quicker than the IINT on complicated graphics or on very short text files. 140 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 203 on Reader Service Card High-Performance IEEE-488 Solutions REMAKING A CLASSIC A Forest Gave Its All for Benchmarks I went through ream upon ream of paper in testing the three printers against one another, the original Laser- Writer, and a stopwatch. I used two Macintosh computers — a Mac SE with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 20-megabyte hard disk drive, and a Mac II with 5 megabytes of RAM and an 80-megabyte hard disk drive. With each combination of printer and computer, I used Mac- Write 4.6, MacDraw 1.9.5, System 4.2, and Finder 6.0. To get results that apply to real-world situations, I came up with six bench- mark tests: a 3-page Mac Write docu- ment using Apple Macintosh Tech Note #154; a 7-page MacWrite document (Apple Macintosh Tech Note #12); a 30- page MacWrite document composed of 24 pages of BIX material and one of my old manuscripts spliced into the middle; a 6K-byte MacDraw File that prints on one page; a Mixed Text and Graphics document using the 3-page MacWrite document with the 6K-byte MacDraw file inserted into it, making that docu- ment 5 pages long; and a 90K-byte Mac- Draw File composed of a complex Mac- Draw diagram that printed on 16 pages. All the tests were run with no INITs active on the host computer. For the LaserWriter IISC tests, I disabled AppleTalk. For the printers using AppleTalk, I removed the computer and printer from the larger network outside of the lab so that the printer would not have to spend cycles responding to other network traffic. After running the benchmarks and comparing the results, I reached a conclusion that should star- tle no one: The more you spend, the more power and speed you get. utes. Speed like this can make a huge dif- ference in a large office or workgroup, where waiting for the printer can have se- rious effects on productivity. For most individuals, the IINTX will be overkill. But for graphic designers, engineers, or publishers who need com- plex graphics or pages output on letter- size sheets, and who need them in a hur- ry, the IINTX certainly fills the bill. In a larger networked environment, the IINTX has the power and expandability to provide most users with the services they need while not bogging down the net with queued-up print requests. New and Improved When a reviewer looks at any product that is supposed to be an improvement over and replacement of an established and successful product, the tendency is to look not only for improvements, but for those areas where the designers fumbled when they were adding features. I fol- lowed this tendency and looked for slip- ups, tragic deletions, or simple mistakes, and the only possible problem I saw was the IINTX' s requirement that you refor- mat the SCSI hard disk when you chain a new one— something you might be able to live with. Apple redesigned the Laser- Writer from the inside out, and I can't honestly say that the designers have done anything wrong. The output from the new Canon print engine was consistently darker and more even than that from the first-generation Canon engine in my LaserWriter. When the output emerged from the printer, the options for stacking the pages saved a lot of time by putting the pages in the correct order for the type of software used. One of the biggest problems with the original LaserWriter was the lack of an envelope feed. Apple engineers have solved that problem with the addition of a special feed tray for envelopes. This sin- gle improvement makes the LaserWriter II family much more feasible as general- purpose office printers, instead of just specialized report and graphics printers. To top things off, Apple has taken a cue from the PC world and provided a clear upgrade path for users who want a low- cost, single-user QuickDraw printer now but who may need more from a printer down the road. By setting up the upgrade as a 5-minute procedure that can be done at any authorized service center, Apple has given LaserWriter IISC buyers great incentive to stay within the LaserWriter II family as their needs grow. From the en- try-level LaserWriter IISC to the top-of- the-line LaserWriter IINTX, the new series of LaserWriter Us should leave no one, except perhaps Apple's competitors, pin- ing for the days of LaserWriter Classic . ■ Curtis Franklin Jr. is senior testing editor for the BYTE Testing Lab. He can be reached at One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. for your IBM PS/2 COMPARE THESE BENEFITS • Runs on Personal System/2 models 50, 60, and 80 (Micro Channel") • Most extensive software library - program in the language of your choice • Highest performance available - up to 1M bytes/sec data transfer rate using NI Turbo488™ gate array • ON SRQ interrupt response • Applications Monitor - real-time error checking and program tracing with pop-up windows : • Best price/perfor with toll • FREE technical support free telephone service • 30-day money back guarantee • 2 -year warranty The CALL 800 Le: i3i Fl O EE] £3 58" Aus 53 10S Te dim >loc y Bl vd tin Tetfas 1-4742* 512/2 78' FOR FRiW CATALOG 27 6204 50- 9119 MAY 1988 'BYTE Ul $299 For 3-D CAD you can't fo^j by spending thousands more. =£5 5=5=111 ^HSiBL HIIIU HP* You can spend thousands of dollars for three dimensional CAD software and still not get the power and capability that DesignCAD 3-D offers for a remarkable $299! DesignCAD 3-D is proof positive that you don't have to spend a fortune for quality. I The compatibility that DesignCAD 3-D offers you means that it can be used with almost any PC compatible system. It supports more than 200 dot matrix printers, more than 80 plotters and most digitizers and graphic adapters. DesignCAD 3-D can read drawings from most other CAD systems. DesignCAD 3-D allows you to develop and advance any design in 3 dimensional space, while providing you with features such as shading, hidden line removal, printer and plotter support. DesignCAD 3-D's extensive file transfer utilities allow you to: transfer documents to and from IGES, DXF HPGL, transfer to GEM and Post Script and to read ASCII text files and X, Y, Z coordinate files. It allows up to 4 simultaneous views (any angle or perspective) on the screen. Complex extrusions, extensive 3-D text capabilities, auto dimensioning and a host of other features are all included with PC Resource Magazine DesignCAD 3-D, all at no extra charge as one of the six new computer products worth watching in 1988. The best reason to buy DesignCAD 3-D is not the low price, the performance or the compatibility. The best reason is the amazing ease of use. DesignCAD 3-D's powerful commands mean that you can produce professional 3-D drawings in less time than you thought possible. In fact, we think you'll agree that DesignCAD 3-D is easier to learn and easier to use than any 3-D CAD system for IBM PC, at any price! See your local computer dealer for DesignCAD 3-D, or contact: vXAmerican Small Business Computers, Inc. 327 S. Mill St., Pryor, OK 74361 (918)825-4844 FAX 918-825-6359 Telex 9102400302 142 BYTE' MAY 1988 Circle 21 on Reader Service Card PCS AND MACS WORKING TOGETHER PCs and Macs Working Together Emil Flock QuickShare, DaynaFile, and MatchMaker marry Macs and PCs Until now, passing files between IBM PCs and Macintosh computers has too often been a stormy affair, involving serial cables, communications packages, and special programs to try and match file formats. Now, a number of com- panies are trying to marry Macs and PCs. I looked at three different approaches to bringing harmony to a two-computer desktop: QuickShare from Compatible Systems, DaynaFile from Dayna Com- munications, and MatchMaker from Micro Solutions. QuickShare ($465) consists of a PC ex- pansion card with a cable to the Mac's SCSI port, plus a bevy of programs. It of- fers high-speed (1.4 million bits per sec- ond on a Mac Plus or SE) data exchange and translation. As a bonus, QuickShare lets the Mac share the PC's hard disk drive. DaynaFile disk drives ($595 and $849) plug into the Mac's SCSI, allowing you to read and write PC files. Both QuickShare and DaynaFile are accessed normally from the Macintosh desktop. MatchMaker ($149) is a PC expansion card with a port and software that lets you read from and write to a Macintosh disk drive from your PC. All three products do a reliable job of moving information from the PC's data format to the Mac's and vice versa. Un- fortunately, that's less than half the job: File format translation is the real chal- lenge. None of these products meets it en- tirely, but each saves considerable time and work. I tested these products on a Mylex 386 running at 16 MHz with a MiniScribe 23-millisecond (ms) hard disk drive, a 1.2-megabyte floppy disk drive, and a 400K-byte floppy (Mac) disk drive; and on a Mac Plus with one inter- nal and one external 800K-byte floppy disk drive. Fast Boots from a PC Want to double or triple the speed of your floppy-disk-based Mac? QuickShare can let your Mac use part of your PC's hard disk drive— and even boot from it. With- out QuickShare, it takes 39 seconds to boot my Mac Plus from a floppy disk drive. With QuickShare (and my Mylex 386's superfast 23-ms-access-time hard disk drive), I can boot in 15 seconds. For someone who is continually crashing the Mac, this is a godsend. Besides, when you do crash the Mac, you can turn your head about 10 degrees, shift keyboards, and use your PC while the Mac reboots. (Unhappily, most non-hard-disk-drive Macs are 512Ks that don't come with the SCSI port necessary to use QuickShare, but QuickShare is just about good enough to make you spring for the SCSI up- grade.) In addition to faster boots, Quick- Share is up to 55 percent faster than the Mac's floppy disk drive when loading and exiting Omnis 3 Plus, Excel 1.04, Word 3 .01 , and Mac Write 4.6. All this increased speed is really only a by-product of QuickShare 's intended use. The real raison d'etre of QuickShare is to share files between PCs and Macs. QuickShare helps widen the Mac/PC niche — it's one of those devices that leaves you wondering how you ever got along without it. You get to concentrate on your work instead of moving files around. File transfers through null- modem cables using telecommunications software at each end are not cost-effective when compared to spending less than $500 for QuickShare. QuickShare comes bundled with soft- ware on two disks— one 3 Vi-inch disk for the Mac and one 5 14 -inch disk for the PC. PC Transfer is the sole inhabitant of the Mac disk, while the PC disk has four files: QSINSTLL.EXE, QUICKSHR.EXE, QSPC.EXE, and MACDRIVR.BIN. You need a Mac with a SCSI port and an IBM PC XT- or PC AT-compatible computer running under MS-DOS 3. 1 or higher. Creating a Virtual Disk It takes 15 minutes to plug in the Quick- Share expansion board and connect the cable to your Mac's SCSI port. The QuickShare installation package called QSINST.EXE, gives you a choice of two basic configurations: a minimum setup for file transfer only, or a larger setup where Macintosh files can be stored and accessed on the PC disk. In either case, it creates what the manual calls a "virtual disk" on your PC's hard disk. It makes a directory, called \QUICKSHR, and a file in that directory called RFS01, which be- comes the virtual disk. In the minimum (6K-byte) setup, you have just enough room to run PC Transfer, but you cannot store Macintosh files on your PC's hard disk. You might choose this option if your Mac already has its own hard disk drive. The real advantages of QuickShare ac- crue when you give it enough room for at least the Macintosh System and Finder. Then you can boot the Mac from the PC ' s hard disk drive. If you allocate enough memory to QuickShare, you can put any or all of your Macintosh applications pro- grams on the PC's hard disk drive and run them from there. QUICKSHR.EXE is the device driver that makes QuickShare go. It gets copied to your \QUICKSHR subdirectory during in- stallation, and you're expected to run it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. It takes about 17K bytes of RAM to activate the Quick- Share connection. Living Together, Working Together Since the Mac came out, my desk has been set up with the PC and the Mac cheek by jowl. When I got QuickShare, the two machines began to work produc- tively together for the first time. When they both try to access the PC's hard disk drive at the same time, each suffers a small degradation in perfor- mance. But it's still one man, two micro- processors when it comes to throughput and "dual-tasking." For instance, my Mac can copy files onto my PC's hard disk drive without SideKick's Notepad seeming to slow down a bit, and Paradox 386 can do a query on the PC without holding up my Mac spreadsheet. But run- ning PC-Talk hangs up QuickShare en- tirely, crashing the Mac— although re- booting the PC and reloading QUICK- SHR.EXE brings the Mac back to life. The Mac can be locked out when you try to boot if your PC is too busy doing disk accesses. For example, if Paradox is grinding away on a modify/restructure and you try to boot your Mac from the virtual disk, you get Unhappy Face num- ber 0FOOOA, and you must flick your power switch to reboot when the PC ap- plication is finished with the hard disk drive. This is because when the Mac's ROM boot sequence has to wait too long, it eventually produces a time-out. PC Drives for the Mac DaynaFile consists of external PC disk drives for Macintosh computers. So continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 143 PCS AND MACS WORKING TOGETHER QuickShare DaynaFile MatchMaker Type Company Size Features Hardware Needed Software Needed Documentation Options Price PC expansion board for PC-to-Macintosh file transfer Compatible Systems Corp. P.O. Drawer 17220 Boulder, CO 80308 (800) 356-0283 (303) 444-9532 5.25 by 3.88 inches 1 .4-million-bit-per-second (mbps) file exchange between PC and Mac 51 2E (with SCSI) or Mac Plus; 1 ,75-mbps file exchange between PC and Mac SE; 4.2- mbps file exchange between PC and Mac II. Includes PC Transfer for Macintosh on 3 1 /2-inch disk; QUICKSHR.EXE, QSINSTLL.EXE, MAC- DRIVR.BIN, and QSPC.EXE for PC on 5V4-inch disk; 10-foot SCSI cable IBM XT, AT, or compatible and Mac Plus, SE, II, or other Macintosh with SCSI port MS-DOS 3.1 or higher 68-page Installation and Operations Manual, no index $465 Macintosh disk drive to read PC disk formats Dayna Communications Inc. 50 South Main St. Salt Lake City, UT84144 (801)531-0600 5 by 6.60 by 10 inches; Single drive: 9 pounds; Dual drive: 12 pounds Read/write of PC disks from Mac desktop; MacLink Plus Translator included Mac Plus, SE, II with SCSI port or other Mac Macintosh System 3.2 and Finder 5.3 or higher 91 -page Guide, with index 1 ,2-megabyte, 5 1 /4-inch drive: $255 (add-in) 1 ,44-megabyte, 3 1 /2-inch drive: $355 (add-in) MacLink Plus OEM version: $95 SCSI cable: $40 $595 (360K-byte 5 1 /4-inch drive) $849 (360K-byte 5 1 /4-inch drive and 720K-byte 3 1 /2-inch drive) PC expansion board to interface with Macintosh disk drive Micro Solutions 132 West Lincoln Highway DeKalb, IL 601 15 (815)756-3411 4.41 by 3.88 inches Copy, display, and delete files on Macintosh disks from PC; includes maccom driver, MAC2TEXT.EXE, and adaptations of MS-DOS file commands IBM XT, AT, or compatible with 1 92K bytes of RAM; external Macintosh disk drive with cable MS-DOS 2.0 or higher 56-page User's Guide, no index $149 Inquiry 885. Inquiry 886. Inquiry 887. equipped, a Mac can read directly from PC data disks — and write to them as well, right from the Finder. You need a SCSI port on your Mac. DaynaFile works with the Mac II, SE, or Plus, or any Mac that has had a SCSI port added. My review unit had two flop- py disk drives: a 360K-byte 5 '4 -inch drive and a 720K-byte 3 '/2 -inch drive. DaynaFile is also available with 1.2- megabyte 5 W-inch floppy disk drives and 1.44-megabyte 31/2-inch floppy disk drives. It takes less than half an hour to install DaynaFile — about 10 minutes to uncrate it, cable its 50-pin port to the Mac's 25- pin SCSI, insert the terminator plug, choose a SCSI ID number on a rotary switch, and power up the unit through its transformer with extra-long cables (which are a nice touch); and about 20 minutes to install the software. There is no power-on lamp on the unit, and it must be turned on before the Mac (this detail isn't mentioned until well into the manual). It's impossible to shoehorn the Dayna- File driver (which requires 61K bytes of disk space) onto the same floppy disk with the System, the Finder, and the LaserWriter printer drivers and still have room for any major applications pro- gram. For example, since System 4.2 takes up 321K bytes, Finder 6.0 takes up 99K bytes, and the LaserWriter drivers require 75K bytes, that leaves only 244K bytes on a single 800K-byte disk. Without a hard disk drive, you are forced to mix data with your applications program in the second disk drive. Good, but Not Perfect Until I got my hands on QuickShare, I thought DaynaFile was the cat's pajamas. Two simple flicks of the wrist to remove a disk from my PC and insert it into my Mac— what could be simpler? Now that I'm spoiled by hard-wiring, it seems in- convenient to use mere floppy disks. DaynaFile can provide as much as 3 megabytes of storage between two 1.44- megabyte drives, but it doesn't let me for- get floppy disks altogether, as Quick- Share can. DaynaFile deserves much of the praise it's garnered; there are some problems, continued 144 BYTE- MAY 1988 Maybe you dorit think you need a new word processor. If you answer yes to just one of these questions , you ' 11 find that you're a prime candidate for a new, advanced level of word processing. Yes No Do you create any of the following types of business documents: | | reports, plans, proposals, presentations, manuals, contracts, documentation, specifications? Do your documents call for more than words? Or have you considered a desktop publishing package to mix graphics, spreadsheets or tables with text on a page? In the process of creating a document, do you or others frequently have to review and revise it? Have you ever had occasion to create a document without sufficient time to turn it around? Is it critical that your documents look great? © 1988 Lotus Development Corporation, Louis. Lotus Manuscript, 1-2-3, Symphony, Freelance and Graphwriter are registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. AutoCAD is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc. 'Manuscript and Manuscript evaluation kit require 512K and a hard disk. Turn this page over and fold on the dotted line to find out why you may be a candidate for a whole new level of word processing. you do need processor. If you answered yes to just one of these questions, you are a candidate for Lotus 8 Manuscript? 2.0. Manuscript is specifically designed for documents with tables, graphics, auto- matic numbering and tables of contents, cross-references or indexes. It can easily handle routine correspondence, too. Manuscript merges text with graph- ics created in 1-2-3 • Symphony,® Freelance® Plus, and Graphwritef H, as well as Postscriptf .TIF, .PCX, AutoCAD® files and more. And it's great at handling tables. Manuscript has many editing features aid even provides for reviewer's com- ments. Our draft copies look just like the final version, with the right type- faces, graphics and tables in place. n. Manuscript easily supports major revi- j sions to text, data, and format, so that | last minute changes are a cinch . Plus | it can link your most current 1-2-3 or | Symphony spreadsheet data to tables j in your document. £ Manuscript produces higher quality pages than conventional word proces- sors, with sophisticated hyphenation and justification, plus balanced news- paper-style columns previously available only on high-end publishing systems. Manuscript 2.0 gives you all the advantages of full-featured word processing, along with the powerful design and typeset- ting capabilities of desktop and electronic publishing— for the highest quality printed pages. Try Manuscript. Order our $15 demo kit and get working software and a tutorial manual* Call 1-800-345-1043 and ask for demo kitACC-1450. Lotus Manuscript 2.0 PCS AND MACS WORKING TOGETHER but they're mostly nits. If you open the disk drive door on the DaynaFile before ejecting the disk from the Mac desktop, you get a beep and a dialog box: Please insert the disk: Untitled. When you close the drive door again, the system crashes. This is one of those intermittent, nonreproducible, goes-away-when-the- doctor-comes annoyances. PC users need to train themselves to ask the operating system's permission to eject a disk. Having a DaynaFile connected to a Mac Plus slows down the operating sys- tem somewhat. There's a lag when you return to the Finder and the screen icons are refreshed— and there are often two extra icons. Additionally, when you load a DaynaFile-produced .WKS file into Lotus 1-2-3, it takes considerably longer than loading the same file saved by Lotus 1-2-3 itself because it's necessary for a conversion routine to parse the file. Mac Drives for the PC MatchMaker forges a marriage of conve- nience between IBM and Macintosh data formats. MatchMaker is an inexpensive expansion board for a PC; you plug a Macintosh disk drive into it. MatchMaker takes about 15 minutes to install and comes with a software device driver, MAC.COM (38K bytes for your AUTOEXEC.BAT file). You can plug any Macintosh floppy disk drive into Match- Maker— 800K-byte or 400K-byte, Hier- archical File System (HFS) or Macintosh File System (MFS). MatchMaker re- quires an IBM PC XT, PC AT, or com- patible with a minimum of 192K bytes of RAM. Many types of files can make the leap between operating systems with Match- Maker's help. MatchMaker's device driver provides M-prefixed versions of familiar PC commands: MType, MDir, MCopy, and MDel, although what should be called MFormat ends up illogically as MInit. MInit lets you choose between three possible formats (/H for HFS, /M for MFS, or II for 400K bytes in an 800K- byte disk drive). For HFS disks, the di- rectory commands (e.g., MCd, MMd, MRd, and MTree) are active. MCopy provides a good deal of flexibil- ity with these optional parameters: /B for binary, /Cxxxx (where xxxx lets you specify a file creator), /D for data fork, /R for resource fork, /Fxxx for file type, /L to lock a file, /I for DOS image files, and /T for text files. For example, Omcopy m: chap*.wor a:book.don copies every chapter of a book from the M (Match- Maker) drive into a DOS file on the A drive. This can produce an entire book in one file, concatenating the chapters auto- matically. MCopy would assume the /T (text) option in this case. Another advantage of MCopy is the abil- ity to specify a file type. If you do so with the /Fxxxx option (where xxxx is the four-letter file type), you can double- click on the document and it will be loaded into its application. With Quick- Share and DaynaFile transfers, there is no provision for specifying the file type. Lots of Features, Lots of Switches At first I could format only MFS disks with MatchMaker; it wouldn't handle the HFS and kept crashing my Mylex 386. Then, at the suggestion of Micro Solu- tions, I recopied the release software onto my hard disk drive. The MatchMaker hardware performed admirably there- after, but time and date stamps were not retained. Because there are so many commands and so many options, MatchMaker's M-prefixed commands aren't as easy to use as QuickShare's PC Transfer or DaynaFile 's MacLink Plus transfer soft- ware. An unsophisticated filter program called MAC2TEXT.EXE comes with Match- Maker to bring Mac Write files into DOS. The skimpy PRINT. ME manual addendum gives seven lines about MAC2TEXT, ex- plaining that you need the /I (image) op- tion when you Mcopy a MacWrite docu- ment before running MAC2TEXT to convert to DOS format. Unfortunately, the re- sulting file does not retain print enhance- ments made under MacWrite. PRINT. ME consigns all of 19 additional lines to two further rules of thumb: You can use Save As in MacWrite and choose text only if you don't want to bother with MAC2TEXT at all, and you might want to check out Document Content Archi- tecture (DCA) if you mind losing all print-formatting information in transition. The simple ASCII PRINT. ME file itself, for example, is easily MCopyed to and MTyped from MatchMaker's M drive. But if you don't use the /T (text) option with MCopy on a single-spaced file like PRINT. ME, it comes back double-spaced with MType. MatchMaker does not address the broader problem of file translation be- tween formats other than MacWrite and DOS text files. The MatchMaker docu- mentation pretty much sidesteps the question of what to do with nontext files. For instance, there is no indication of how to take a PC Symphony worksheet into an Omnis 3 Plus database on the Mac. Nor is there any mention of what to do with Mac Word files to make them us- able under DOS with WordStar. For $149, MatchMaker can help ferry files back and forth between your ma- chines—a bargain at 2 or 3 times the continued I VIDEOTRAX DATA BACK UP WE JUST INTRODUCED IT. AND ALREADY 50 MILLION PEOPLE OWN HALF OF IT. Every human in the hemisphere who owns a standard VCR has half of what's needed to back up data. The rest of what you need is neatly con- tained on the new Videotrax® con- troller board by Alpha Micro. Slip the half-size Videotrax board into the expansion slot of any PC. Meaning any IBM? PC, XT, AT, Com- paq® 386 or true compatible. ■A (HI I f: 1 I f M 1 \mmm 1 High-tech. Open your PC and slide the con troller board into any expansion slot Low-tech. Hook up VCR to com- puter with standard connector cables. Connect the computer to a VCR with standard connector cables. And, as of that moment, you are under the pro- tection of a highly sophisticated, strin- gently reliable, data backup system. In fact, exhaustive testing and the long term experience of over 20,000 Alpha Micro users have proven Video- trax technology to be more reliable than any other backup option avail- able. More dependable, even, than the hard disk you're covering for. QUICK STUDY Videotrax has been designed to extremely demanding standards. So that it won't put a lot of demands on you. Anyone who can run a VCR knows most of the drill.The rest is covered by our menu-driven software. By clear, concise docu- mentation. And by a range of backup modes that keeps it simple: Insert a blank video cas- sette tape and follow the direc- tions which appear on screen. These guide you through the painless steps for copying or restoring an entire hard disk, specific flies, or only files mod- ified since the last backup. Meanwhile, Videotrax rigor- ously monitors it- self for proper functioning. WE MAKE THE VCR PART OF IT, TOO. If you like, opt for our enhanced Videotrax VCR and experience the extra joy of its automatic, un- attended backup capabilities. It will be a most prudent invest- ment. Because, for the price of BKF JBK tBf'Bff BIB W fifif SSB WS SfSR taping Dallas you can preserve your most precious A data. Up to 80MB ^l&K on a single Your basic video cassettes. Reliable, inexpensive, k easy to find. cassette, at less than a tenth of the cost of streamer tape. And now the price is low. Just . for the board and $1199 for the board and enhanced VCR , su gg ested retail. And of course, if you ever require service, your authorized Alpha Micro dealer and our worldwide network of factory service centers will provide all the support you need. For the name of your near- est Videotrax dealer, call Alpha Micro at 1-800-992-9779. In California, call 1-800-821-0612. The Videotrax System. It's a great leap forward in backing up. Circle 15 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 16) mi m •; illinium Corporate Headquarters: 3501 Sunjloieer, P.O. Bax25Q59 x SanlaAm CA 92799. ©Alplia Microsystems 1988. Ml rights reserved. IBM 'is a regkiemi trademark Of International Business Machines. Yidintm.ri.sa remsterea trademark of Alpha Mcrosusteins. Cr/mpaqisa registered tradeniarkofCniit/xigCnn/ptdfrQirp. Hndin Shack Compiler Center is a registered trademark of Tandy Corporation. Available at Radio /hack Computer Centers VPlus Computer Centers and other fine computer dealers worldwide. PCS AND MACS WORKING TOGETHER price. But don't expect much translation help from this package. Transferring Is Not Converting All three vendors claim to have the file- format mountain climbed, but I'm here to tell you horror stories about translation. Just keeping track of the names, let alone the features, of all the translation soft- ware can give you a headache. Quick- Share comes with PC Transfer and QSPC. DaynaFile has MacLink Plus Local Mode, and MatchMaker provides the MCopy command. I had grandiose plans to prepare benchmarks comparing translation times, but I got few files trans- lated to my satisfaction. So I logged the glitches, goofs, inconveniences, and in- congruities instead. Aside from its MCopy command, MatchMaker opts out of the translation fray. The company has done a compe- tent, inexpensive piece of work for trans- ferring files, and its engineers say a good translator would have cost another year. Micro Solutions relies instead on third parties for translation software but makes no specific recommendations in the man- ual. Over the telephone, the company refers you to Apple File Exchange and RDOC/X. QuickShare's PC Transfer software smoothly effects the change in data for- mat from PC to Mac or vice versa. But if file format alterations are required, PC Transfer offers only partial solutions; the task is too difficult in some cases, absurd in others. PC Transfer has built-in translation software that gives indifferent results in many cases, but it isn't because the com- pany hasn't tried hard. You get a choice of five translation options. Copy appro- priately is the default, which decides on a translation format— text or MacBin- ary— for itself as it moves through a file byte by byte. Printer Capture is the fifth choice. "QSPC" stands for QuickShare Printer Capture. Compatible Systems has tried to provide a universal PC-to-Mac text and graphics converter. This is the scenario: You reconfigure your PC appli- cations program to drive the IBM Graph- ics Printer. (It is assumed that your PC applications all have IBM Graphics Printer drivers.) QSPC. EXE is a memory- resident program (using 8K bytes of con- ventional RAM) that redirects printer output to a file, filtering it all the while. You produce this print image file and use PC Transfer to change it to the Mac data format. Then you should be able to load the transferred, translated file into the target application. To take a specific Printer Capture ex- ample, suppose you have a 5K-byte docu- ment file in WordStar on the PC that has several centered lines, is right-justified, and has one sentence of underlining and one with boldface. You tell WordStar to print the file, but it never gets to the printer because QSPC jumps up and lets you redirect it to a disk capture file. When the capture is finished, QSPC waits 2 seconds and then beeps, indicat- ing that the file has been closed (total time elapsed is about 4 minutes). When you hand that capture file to PC Transfer, you get a Mac Write file that ap- proximates its WordStar antecedent (an- other 4 minutes). Too bad that the lines that were centered aren't centered; they're not flush right, either. The right justification is lost in those paragraphs that contain underlining and boldfacing (but at least those print enhancements are intact). The original 2-page document becomes 3 pages in translation— the last page is blank. All in all, it takes about 15 minutes in MacWrite to fix it. That's a total of almost 25 minutes of shenanigans to transfer a file you could have typed in Pick. |HHf ADOBE WMMHB I PostScript I H«H SOFTWARE MB Choosing a laser printer? Easy. Pick one equipped with Adobe'" Post- Script® software. PostScript is a page descrip- tion language that comes as resident software in leading laser printers. And it's the first and only standard adopted by virtually every major company in the computer industry. Which means printers equipped with PostScript software work with any comput- ers you now have. Or plan to get. Including IBM® PCs, Macintoshsf minicomputers, and mainframes. So you get complete vendor indepen- dence. And total flexibility. Let's say you have a report, proposal or newsletter that needs printing. Just use any printer in the office that is equipped with Post- Script software. From low to high resolution. Even color. It's your choice. And only printers equipped with Post- Script software can handle the most powerful electronic publishing and graphics software tools in the business. Like the Adobe Type Library. With hun- dreds of typefaces to expand your range of communication. Adobe Illustrator'" software. A program that lets anyone draw like a pro. From the simplest to the most complex art. And Display PostScript'" — system soft- ware that brings the power of PostScript to any PC or workstation display. For details on any Adobe product, call 800-29-ADOBE. In Alaska and Canada, call (415) 962-2100. And see how being picky actually increases your choices. PostScript is the registered traOemark of Adobe Systems Incorporated IBM is the regisieied trademark ot International Bosiness Machines Macintosh is the registeied trademark ol Apple Computer. Inc. Adobe Illustrator. Display PosiScnpt and Adobe are trademarks ol Adobe Systems Incorporated All products are registered tiademorks and trademarks ol their manufacturers 148 BYTE* MAY 1988 PCS AND MACS WORKING TOGETHER from scratch in about 10 minutes. Simi- larly, an Excel spreadsheet saved in .WKS format and translated/transferred by PC Transfer doesn't fare very well. On the graphics side, I was able to get a Symphony .PIC file into MacPaint using QSPC and PC Transfer as the intermedi- aries. The transition between MacPaint's 72 dots per inch (dpi) and the 1/216-inch IBM Graphics Printer format QSPC cap- tures is less than graceful. And you can forget about going from MacPaint into Symphony, although you can transfer and store MacPaint files in MacBinary format on the PC. Too Many Formats For an extra $95, DaynaFile offers Mac- Link Plus Local Mode to provide some help. Unfortunately, there are limitations to the help it provides. How is MacWrite supposed to respond to WordStar's use of its extended character set, for example? You can try running WordStar's PRINT. TST file through MacLink Plus (or QuickShare's QSPC or MatchMaker's MCopy) and taking a look in MacWrite. MacWrite finally gets so befuddled that the last two pages are all in underline/out- line/shadow/superscript/subscript. Dot commands are ignored. Likewise, a MacWrite document gets short shrift in WordStar: Double-width stands in for shadow text, and outline becomes strike- out. And this is the easy stuff. It gets worse when what you really wanted was a Macintosh Word document coming over from WordStar (MacLink Plus doesn't do this conversion— or win- dows, for that matter). You have at least two less-than-palatable choices. You can open the MacWrite file that MacLink Plus has created in Word, which gives you a dozen alert boxes stating Error encountered-ignoring part of Mac- Write file. (That's right: It skips the material entirely.) Or you can try to load your original WordStar file into Word on the PC (if you have a copy) and feed the Word-formatted file to MacLink Plus to convert to the Mac format. Suppose you want to get a Paradox table into Omnis 3 Plus on the Mac. It's straightforward enough (if unsavory) to export the table via dBASE format with Paradox's Tools/Exportlmport. Then MacLink Plus will shovel it onto the Mac in Data Interchange Format (DIF), with running commentary as to exactly what cell is being converted: 0 Warnings, 0 Errors. When you invoke Omnis 3 Plus and locate the Import data menu, you find you have to make a field list— it can't come up with its own field names or fig- ure them out from your DIF file. There- fore, you have to type in the field names yourself before Omnis can finally import your Paradox table. QuickShare Gets the Nod All three products are impressive, but my preference is for QuickShare. It has the best transfer and translation capabilities, and it gets big brownie points for giving my Mac a hard disk drive. DaynaFile, though expensive, pro- vides utilitarian, high-test disk (not sim- ply file) transfers. MatchMaker is quite a value. It's no mean feat to resurrect an old 400K-byte disk drive cum boat anchor (that cost $400 when new) to do important file movement between oper- ating systems. ■ Emil Flock runs Computer Hand Holding (San Francisco, California), which spe- cializes in third-party telephone technical support. He is coauthor of The Shareware Book: Using PC-Write, PC- File, and PC-Talk (Osborne/McGraw- Hill, 1986) and WordStar: The Second Phase (Scott, Foresman & Company, forthcoming). And choose Qume Corporation ScriptTEN'" Linotype Company Linotronic'" 100, 300, 500 Texas Instruments OmniLaser"2106 Texas Instruments The Laser Connection OmniLaser" 2108, 2115 PS Jet/PS Jet +,u Digital Equipment Corp. PrintServer 40'," ScriptPrinter'" General Computer Business LaserPrinter Plus'" Wang LCS15" NEC Information Systems SilentWriter'" LC-890 Dataproducts Corp. LZFT 2665 Circle 8 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 149 ALPSPRIN HAVE . .the speed, print quality, and other thoughtful features of the ALPS P2000 . . . make this wide- carriage 9-pin matrix printer my favorite new printer of the year." —PC Magazine "The ALPS ALQ300 and P2400C are both rugged wide-carriage dot matrix printers with excellent letter quality type . . ." —PC Magazine "ALPS America keeps on com- ing back with more attention- getting dot matrix printers!' PC Magazine "To distinguish letter-quality from daisy wheel output re- quires a magnifying glass'.' —PC Week It takes some awfully good PC printers to generate reviews like this. But if you're not easily swayed by public opinion, consider this: Since our first print- ers were introduced / mwmm in the U.S. in late 1985, ALPS America has become one of the fastest growing printer companies in the nation. Which should come as no surprise. After all, ALPS printers give you — v more for your money. Like "" "' "' 1 ' \m speeds up to 400 cps. [ . ' .v.*-. i Seven-color printing. Snap-in/out, inter- TERSEVEN BEST INK. ". . . so quiet that we doubt even a library would need the 'quiet' mode!' -MoWorld "...its controls are the most accessible of any printer we have used . . ." -MoWorJd "In almost every phase of con- struction, ALPS seems to have relied on sturdier materials than it might have had to — something which is a definite advantage for the user." -PCPioducts ". . . a real workhorse printer that prints faster than others in its price range and is loaded with features . . ." —PC Products changeable 18- and 24-pin print heads. An array of paper feed methods. And full compatibility with most all the leading PCs and software. But as good as the ALPS look on paper, they look even better in person. So call us for a free demo or more information at 800-828- ALPS. Circle 18 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 19) In California, call 800-257-7872. Or settle for printers of a lesser type. ALPS AMERICA IT'S TIME YOU SAW THE ALPS. c 1988, ALPS America. CLEO is your SNA or BSCGateway Remote Sites Communication Whatever your industry, your remote computers need to share information with your mainframe. Or, they need to exchange data with other remotes. In either case, you need a total solution at the remote sites. You need software, hardware interfaces and modems that all work together smoothly. You need CLEO! CLEO software products allow micro- computers to communicate with mini- computers and mainframes, and to emulate their workstations. Since 1981, CLEO has provided remote communications between micros and mainframes for the automotive, insurance, medical and banking industries. Today over 66,000 CLEO users worldwide are running on all major brands of micro- processors. The greatest number of these users run CLEO software on IBM Personal Computers and NETBIOS LANs. Complete Software/Hardware Package Every CLEO package contains all the soft- ware and hardware accessories needed at the remote site. Your selected CLEO SNA or BSC software is packaged with 1) an internal modem card for dial-up applications, or 2) an interface card and cable for use with your existing modem. There's no waiting for non- CLEO add-ons. And, you get prompt, single- source service. Package prices range from S795.00for most stand-alone packages, up to SI, 995-00 for the 32-user SNA gateway. Call us today to discuss your application. CLEO Software 1639 North Alpine Rd. Rockford, IL 61107 Telex 703639 FAX 815/397-6535 Headquarters: USA: 1-800/233-2536 Illinois: 1-800/422-2536 International: 815/397-8110 Sales and Distribution: Benelux: 31(71)215281 Canada, East: 800/361-3185 Canada, West: 800/361-1210 Canada, Montreal: 514/737-3631 Colombia, S.A.: 12172266 Denmark: 1628300 England: 0908667737 France: 146861136 Italy: (0331) 634 562 Mexico City: 596-5539 Sweden: 8 740 5070 CLEO CLEO and 3780Plus arc registered trademarks of CLEO Software. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. SOFTWARE REVIEWS □ Microsoft Windows 2.03 and Windows/386 Namir Clement Shammas We've all waited a long time for these: Microsoft Windows 2.03 for the 8088 and 80286 CPUs and Windows/386 for the 80386 CPU. The first version of Win- dows was slow; it did not sup- port concurrency, nor did it di- rectly use more than 640K bytes of memory. It also required more complex software development with limited choices of development language (mainly a Microsoft C toolbox). Version 2.03 ($99) is faster than the original Windows product and makes the best of microcomputers without the 80386 chips. The 386 version ($195) offers true multitasking, thanks to the power of the 80386. Microsoft claims that both of these versions strongly resemble the Pre- sentation Manager of OS/2. There are many aspects that are common between Windows 2.03 and Windows/386, and if you learn to use one, you can (to a good extent) utilize the other version. The Windows 2.03 environment runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2s, or com- patibles. It runs under DOS 3.0 or higher and requires 512K bytes of memory, and you can use any additional memory (ex- panded or extended) with the SMART- Drive disk cache to enhance the system speed. You will need up to 2 megabytes of hard disk space to copy files from the seven 360K-byte distribution disks. You will also need a graphics adapter compat- ible with CGA, EGA, Hercules, or VGA. The Windows/386 environment re- quires you to have an 80386 CPU, with 1 (preferably 2 or more) megabytes of memory, including extended or ex- panded memory. A high-density floppy disk drive is required to read the three distribution disks of this version, while 2 megabytes of hard disk space are needed to store Windows files. Windows/386 runs under DOS 3.1 or higher. You will also need a graphics adapter compatible with CGA, EGA, or VGA. For both ver- sions, a mouse is optional. You might find that building reflexes for the combi- nation keys works better. An updated version and a multitasking environment for 80386-based systems Setup Considerations The setup of Windows 2.03 is easy and straightforward. A SETUP.EXE utility guides you to select the various machine, printer, display, and mouse options. I was able to run Windows 2.03 without modifying my CONFIG.SYS or AUTO- EXEC.BAT files. For this review, I in- stalled Windows 2.03 in my second (card-type) hard disk and was able to run it successfully. I could not do the same with Windows/386, however. I had to in- stall that version on my main hard disk, and I could not access the second hard disk. You can use the AUTOEXEC.BAT (or a specialized batch file), or you can issue a normal DOS command to invoke Win- dows 2.03. The setup of Windows/386 is similar to that of Windows 2.03: You need to re- move any RAM-resident pop-up utilities, such as SideKick and SuperKey. To use Windows/386, you have to create new CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. If you plan to use Windows/386 consis- tently, you must make the changes to the files in the main hard disk directory. The other alternative, which I used for this re- view, is to prepare a separate boot disk, which should contain new versions of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. The CONFIG.SYS files should not install the usual RAM-disk drive. Instead, you may install the Windows SMARTDrive disk cache. The AUTOEXEC.BAT should not install any RAM-resident pop-up util- ities, since Windows/386 can easily and intelligently manage them. You can use the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to invoke Windows/386. The Windows environment uses the text file WIN. INI to store various system parameters and special instructions. You can edit this file to fine-tune the param- eters or alter the special instruc- tions. The WIN. INI file repre- sents a new variation of the combined AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in DOS. Among the interesting options is the list of "load" and "run" programs. Whenever you load Windows, the applications shown in the load list automatically load and display as icons. Similarly, the run list names the applica- tions that automatically execute when you load Windows. The programs list defines the program file-extension names. This list is set to EXE, COM, and BAT, and the MS-DOS Executive window uses it to select program files for the directory display. The WIN. INI file enables you to specify numerous parameters, such as spooling status, printer selection, font se- lection, I/O port selection, and beeping status. I look forward to seeing future DOS versions support a file similar to WIN. INI. If you are afraid of corrupting the WIN. INI file with your text editor, Win- dows has another, more formal, route. You can alter many of these parameters by accessing the control panel, which is a window with menus that permits you to add or delete fonts and printers, alter window colors, change communication ports and data transfer rates, and so on. The MS-DOS Executive When you invoke either Windows ver- sion, the MS-DOS Executive windows appear. In general, there are three display levels for any windows application: full screen, window, or icon. Only Win- dows/386 is able to support these three levels of display for standard programs (i.e. , those not designed as Windows-ori- ented applications). An application in either full-screen or window display uses the upper screen line to display the con- trol-menu box, a title bar, and the maxi- mize/minimize boxes. The latter boxes permit you to go between a full screen, a window, and an icon display. continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 153 MICROSOFT WINDOWS 2.03 AND WINDOWS/386 Table 1: Comparing loop timings for the benchmark programs reveals that Windows 2. 03 and DOS are able to run the benchmark programs at the same speed. The results also reflect the slowing down of the benchmark programs as Windows/386 allocates less resources for it. This is particularly interesting when you compare the timings for the exclusive , foreground, and background execution modes. Environment Mode Time (seconds) DOS time PC-DOS 3.1 N/A 15 100% Windows 2.03 N/A 15 100% Windows/386 Exclusive 19 79% Foreground 23 65% Background 26 58% Windows applications use the second line to display their menu bars. You can use a mouse or key combinations to ac- cess the boxes in the top line or the menu options in the second line. The control box of any application enables you to manipulate the related window in the fol- lowing ways: move, resize, manipulate the display status (e.g. , maximize or min- imize the window), close, or restore. At that point, the window displays any option that is not available to you by using blurred characters or faded colors. With Windows applications, you can use the close command to end the applications. With standard applications, you need to exit them using their own particular commands first, and then close their windows. The MS-DOS Executive window is the launching point for many applications. It displays the names of the files and subdi- rectories of the current directory. Subdi- rectory names are displayed first in bold characters, and the list of sorted file- names is shown in normal characters. The Executive window also displays the current file or subdirectory selection in reverse video. Since you do not have ac- cess to a command-line processor, you must perform everything using pull-down menus. The MS-DOS Executive win- dows have three menu options: file, view, and special. The file menu offers you the ability to perform a number of internal DOS commands, such as rename, copy, and delete files, as well as load and run programs. These options work on the currently selected file. Among the interesting features that I found in the MS-DOS Executive is that you can mark multiple files for collective copying or deletion. A File command lets you load an application and its related data file by simply loading the latter (this is similar to how the Apple Macintosh works). For example, if you load a text file created by the Window word proces- sor WRITE.EXE, you create a special icon. When you click on the icon, you find yourself in a word-processing session with the text file being displayed. The view menu enables you to view files in either a short format (just the file- name) or a long format that includes file size and date/time stamps. You can also elect to display all or some of the files, or just programs. The MS-DOS Executive displays the filenames sorted by name, date, size, or time. The "special" menu offers more important commands that you would generally use less frequently. These options permit you to create a di- rectory, change the current directory, format a disk, create a system disk, and set the volume name. The two Windows versions come with the same set of applications, which vary in usefulness. Among the most versatile are Write, Paint, Terminal, Calc, PIF Editor, Notepad, Cardfile, and Clipboard. Other applications are the famous Clock pro- gram and the Reversi game. The Write program provides you with a scaled-down version of Microsoft's full-fledged word processor, Word. In addition, the two text files produced by either word processor are compatible. Write is also able to read pure ASCII text files. The manual dedi- cates about 100 pages to Write. The Paint program is the other major Windows application, with about 70 pages dedicated to it in the product man- ual. You can regard Paint as a scaled- down version of the Macintosh popular MacPaint program. Paint supports draw- ing tools, such as the paint brush, pen, spray paint, color filling bucket, empty/ full shapes (e.g., rectangles, triangles, circles, ovals, polygons, and freehand shapes), and the rubber band. Both versions of Windows let you cut, paste, and copy text between different ap- plications. For example, you can copy a drawing from Paint onto the Clipboard and then paste it into a Write text file. Launching Applications Under Windows, the proper way for launching standard applications requires the use of program information files (PIFs). These files give the Windows en- vironment more information on the appli- cation, such as its directory location, memory requirements, and display mode, for example. In a sense, PIFs rep- resent a new class of batch files (you can still use .BAT files). The PIF editor is an application supplied to create new PIFs and edit old ones. Through PIFs, you can specify the file- name to invoke an application, the pro- gram title to be displayed, the program parameters, the disk directory, and the memory for the application you are launching. PIFs also handle interaction with the display, communications ports, memory, and the keyboard. In addition, they store the status of program and screen swapping, and they optionally close a window when you exit an applica- tion. The Windows/386 environment also offers the option of setting the execution mode of the application. PIFs make it easier for the environ- ment to manage the applications that you launch. They also give you a section level of batch-like control. I hope that future text-based DOS versions support both batch and PIF programs, like Windows does. PIFs can work with batch files in Win- dows/386 to invoke standard applications and their accompanying RAM-resident pop-up utilities. For example, I can write a batch file that works with a PIF to load SuperKey, a set of Pascal macros, and the Turbo Pascal environment. Once I am finished with Turbo Pascal, I exit its win- dow, and the Windows/386 environment removes the copy of SuperKey and the macros I loaded. The above scheme of- fers an interesting autonomy for applica- tions. Consider the case where you are working on two language development environments. You load each with its own copy of a keyboard macro utility and its own unique set of macros. You can switch from one to the other without reloading macros, source code files, or even lan- guage environments. This is an impres- sive aspect of Windows/386. If you miss the DOS command-line processor, you can set up a PIF to create a C0MMAND.COM window. You allocate the appropriate memory in the PIF for a copy of C0MMAND.COM. Under Windows/386, I was also able to load Command Plus (from ESP Software Systems), a com- mand-line processor that is compatible with C0MMAND.COM 2.x and 3.x. Once I loaded Command Plus, I was able to suc- cessfully perform some simple DIB oper- ations. This is an indication that Win- dows/386 tolerates highly compatible alternate command-line processors. continued 154 BYTE* MAY 1988 ...ABOUT ANALYZING VfM TD riATTA You m '9 nt be spreading your HJUI\ Ui\li\. spreadsheet a little too thin. Or maybe you're starting from scratch. But if you're serious about data analysis, you're ready for SPSS/PC+'" - a full software family that brings you eight high-powered ways to complete any data analysis task. Enter it. SPSS Data Entry II™ is a fully integrated data entry, cleaning and editing tool. Analyze it. The SPSS/PC+ base package provides a powerful array of statistical and reporting procedures. Picture it. SPSS/PC+ Graph-in-the-Box'" featuring New England Software's Graph-in-the-Box™ offers full color "snapshot" graphics. Examine it. SPSS/PC+ Advanced Statistics'" lets you get more serious with your data. Predict it. SPSS/PC+ Trends'"-our latest option-is the complete time series analysis/forecasting tool. Table it. SPSS/PC+ Tables'" produces presentation- ready tables instantly. Chart it. SPSS/PC + Graphics'" featuring Microsoft* Chart creates show-stopping graphs and charts. Map it. SPSS/PC+ Mapping'" featuring MAP-MASTER" creates maps where vast amounts of data can be sum- marized and presented in one, simple picture. SPSS/PC+ products are being put to productive use by serious fact finders in business, government and edu- cation. For countless purposes such as market research. Wage and salary studies. Survey analysis. And guality control. Plus each product is superbly documented and supported by SPSS Inc., a leader in statistical software for nearly 20 years. While specially tailored customer support is available through the VALUE PLUS™ plan. And SPSS now offers a SPSS/PC+ version for Novell LANs. So if you're serious about data analysis, step up to SPSS/PC+. For details, contact our Marketing Department 1/312 /329-3315 SPSSincT SPSS Inc. • 444 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 3000 • Chicago, Illinois 6061 1 In Europe: SPSS Europe BY • RO. Box 1 1 5 • 4200 AC Gorinchem, The Netherlands • Telephone: + 31 1 8303671 1 • TWX: 21 019 SPSS/PC+ runs on IBM PC/XT/AT's with hard disk. Contact SPSS Inc. for compatible microcomputers. SPSS/PC+ , SPSS Data Entry II, SPSS/PC+ Graph-in-the-Box, SPSS/PC+ Advanced Statistics SPSS/PC+ Trends, SPSS/PC i- Tables, SPSS/PC+ Graphics and SPSS/PC+ Mapping are trademarks of SPSS Inc. VALUE PLUS is a trademark of SPSS Inc. Chart and Microsoft are trademarks oi Microsoft Corporation. MAP-MASTER is a trademark of Ashton-Tate. Graph-in-the-Box is a trademark of New England Software, Inc. @ 1g87 g pss | Circle 280 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 155 MICROSOFT WINDOWS 2.03 AND WINDOWS/386 Windows 2.03 Type Graphics-based environment Company Microsoft Corp. 16011 Northeast 36th Way P.O. Box 97017 Redmond, WA 98073 (206) 882-8080 Format Seven double-sided, double-density 360K-byte 5 1 /4-inch floppy disks Language Assembly and C Hardware Needed IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2s, or compatibles with 51 2K bytes of RAM (640K bytes is recommended); two floppy disk drives or one floppy disk drive and one hard disk drive; a monochrome or color monitor attached to a graphics adapter; a mouse is optional Software Needed DOS 3.0 or higher Documentation 500-page User's Guide Price $99 Inquiry 904. The Windows/386 environment en- ables you to run multiple standard appli- cations. When you invoke any such appli- cation, it begins to run in the usual manner, and it occupies the entire screen. You press Alt-space bar to display the control menu. This permits you to shift from full screen to the window display. Windows/386 Type Graphics-based environment Company Microsoft Corp. 16011 Northeast 36th Way P.O. Box 97017 Redmond, WA 98073 (206) 882-8080 Format Three high-density 5 1 A-inch floppy disks and three 3 1 /2-inch floppy disks Language Assembly and C Hardware Needed MS-DOS-based computer with an Intel 80386 CPU; 1 megabyte of RAM (2 megabytes are recommended); one high-density floppy disk drive and a hard disk drive; a monochrome or color monitor attached to a graphics adapter; a mouse is optional Software Needed DOS 3.1 or higher Documentation 500-page User's Guide; 33-page Using Microsoft Windows/386 Price $195 Inquiry 905. When you move to a window display, you change the color of a nonmonochrome application very slightly (the visual effect is as if the display has fogged up a bit). The control menu for an application running under Windows/386 offers sev- eral options, such as full-screen or win- dow-display modes. It also lets you choose either exclusive, foreground, or background tasking. The exclusive task- ing mode dedicates all the resources of the machine to execute an application, suspending any other applications. The foreground mode executes programs that require interaction with the user. You use the background mode for applications that can run unattended. Other options in the control menu in- clude suspended or resumed execution and the ability to terminate the execution of an application. You would use the lat- ter when a program seems to no longer respond in a normal way. This option en- ables you to properly close other applica- tions and avoid an across-the-board sys- tem crash. I was able to load a copy of WordStar version 4 and WordStar 2000 version 3. Each word processor handled one text file. Switching from one application to another was interesting. Both applica- tions ran in the foreground mode and con- sequently ran a bit slower. When I ran either in exclusive tasking mode, the speed increased, but it was still slightly slower than the same application running under standard DOS. I could not load more than these two large applications at one time. I experienced similar speed re- ductions with other applications. Performance Results To test the speed of the multitasking fea- ture of Windows/386, I wrote two Turbo Pascal programs. Both programs looped continuously and used the KeyPressed command to trigger an exit. The primary benchmark program performed integer calculations in a FOR loop; then it beeped and displayed the time required to execute the F0R-D0 loop (see table 1). The sec- ondary benchmark program performed the same calculations and displayed the loop control variable. I used this as a vi- sual indication of whether the copy of the program was actually running. The sec- ond purpose for displaying the numbers was to show how fast or slow a copy of the secondary benchmark was running. I conducted the test on an IBM PC AT with an Intel Inboard/386, 1 megabyte of 16-bit memory, 1.6 megabytes of 8-bit memory, an 80387 chip, a 20-megabyte primary hard disk, and a 30-megabyte secondary hard disk. I used PC-DOS 3.1 to boot the system, and a Microsoft Mouse to manipulate the menus and windows. From the MS-DOS Executive window, I started a PIF that executed a copy of the primary program. The PIF requests 64K bytes of memory to invoke the program. The program window reduced, and the MS-DOS Executive window moved into an icon. Then I read the time following Table 2: With multiple copies of the secondary benchmark program, Windows /3 86 pays more attention to the first few secondary background programs. As the number of the secondary programs initially increases, the primary benchmark program slows down, reaching a minimum at 5 programs. Beyond that minimum, Windows/386 appears to allocate more resources to the primary program. The loop timing reached an asymptote when 8 programs ran concurrently. Total number of programs Time (seconds) DOS time 1 26 58% 2 34 44% 3 46 33% 4 40 38% 5 52 29% 6 47 32% 7 39 38% 8 38 39% 9 38 39% 156 BYTE' MAY 1988 IMPROVED COMMAND PROCESSOR Improved Command Processor Alex Lane the next beep. (I took several readings and averaged them.) During the multi- tasking benchmark test, I used only one copy of the primary program. The slow- est timings are about 60 percent of the normal speed under PC-DOS, which is roughly the speed of a PC AT. To load a copy of the secondary pro- gram, I activated the MS-DOS Executive icon and restored its window. I invoked another PIF to load a copy of this pro- gram in the same manner that I used for the primary program. The new window of the secondary program was reposi- tioned, and the primary program window was reselected as the primary window. After carrying out these steps, I read the time following the next beep. (Again, I took several readings and averaged them.) I also performed the tests with several copies of the secondary program loaded. During the benchmark testing, I did not interrupt the primary program. At the end of the test, I selected and pressed any key to close each copy of a secondary program window. This promptiy halts the selected copy of the secondary program and closes its window (as specified in the PIF). You close the primary program window by selecting and pressing any key, and then you wait for the current loop to complete. I found that when the total number of concurrent programs is low, each re- ceives a bigger time slice (see table 2). When the number of concurrent pro- grams increases, Windows/386 appears to reallocate more resources to the pri- mary selected window. During the test, I observed the slowing down of the second- ary program copies that I loaded earlier. The later copies ran much faster. The Windows 2.03 package should ap- peal to the owners of IBM PC systems and compatibles running with 8086 and 80286 CPUs. Its promised similarity to the OS/2 Presentation Manager and en- hanced speed are the major points of interest. Windows/386 has a greater appeal for the users of 80386 machines, due to its ability to support multitasking and to break the 640K-byte memory barrier (making use of expanded or extended memory). Indeed, Windows/386 is a se- rious rival for OS/2. While OS/2 is seen as being weighed down by its compatibil- ity with the 80286 chip, the Win- dows/386 system taps into the power of the 80386 tasking software productivity, taking it to a new level. ■ Namir Clement Shammas is a columnist for several computer magazines and a freelance writer living in Glen Allen, Virginia. Get more versatility out of MS-DOS with Command Plus 2.01 Many people mistake C0MMAND.COM for the operating system, because it is the only visible part of MS-DOS. But COM- MAND. COM is really just a shell— a com- mand processor that you can enhance. One alternative, Command Plus, lets you add several useful bells and whistles, as well as a more versatile script facility than DOS's batch files. Among its enhancements, Command Plus lets you log all commands to a disk file, recall and edit previous commands, create command macros (called aliases, for often-used commands), create an en- vironment up to 32K bytes in size, and display file directories in several formats. It sells for $79.95 and runs on the IBM PC, XT, or AT with at least 384K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher. The Command Plus 2.01 package con- sists of a 138-page user's manual, a quick reference card, and a single 5!4-inch floppy disk. The manual is well orga- nized and has an adequate table of con- tents and index; explanations are clear, and they are illustrated with numerous examples. You will want to keep the ref- erence card close at hand as you start to use the program, although you can enter any command with a /? flag to obtain help. Help is also displayed if the pro- gram detects incorrect flags. The program files on the disk take up nearly 200K bytes of disk space. In addi- tion, the disk contains a number of sam- ple files that illustrate some of the fea- tures of Command Plus. Although you can run the program on a floppies-only system, the storage requirements for the shell and accompanying files make this impractical. With its default provision for 10 aliases and 10 history buffers, the Command Plus shell, C0MPLUS.EXE, oc- cupies about 50K bytes of memory. I tested the package on an IBM PC XT equipped with a hard disk drive and PC- DOS 3.1. Command Plus requires no special in- stallation procedure. After copying the software onto the hard disk, however, you must decide whether to use C0MPLUS.EXE as a shell under C0MMAND.COM (if you run DOS 3.0 or higher), or to load C0MPLUS- .EXE as the default shell, sidestepping C0MMAND.COM altogether. If your version of DOS is earlier than 3.0, you are limited to the first option. If you run the system under COM- MAND. COM, you don't need to make any changes to the CONFIG.SYS file or to any batch files. Once you install the directory containing the Command Plus software in the path environment variable, C0M- PLUS.EXE runs like any other program in DOS. After printing a copyright message to the screen, the system prompt (typi- cally C> in a hard disk system) is displayed, and although it seems as if nothing has happened, C0MPLUS.EXE sub- sequently handles your commands. To leave C0MPLUS.EXE, type exit at the sys- tem prompt, and you will return to DOS underC0MMAND.COM. To load C0MPLUS.EXE during the boot process, the CONFIG.SYS system config- uration file must have a SHELL= statement in it that tells DOS to load C0MPLUS.EXE instead of C0MMAND.COM as the boot shell. For those users who don't have an exist- ing system configuration file, a sample file comes with the Command Plus software. Bells and Whistles With some minor exceptions, if you type tried-and-true DOS commands to C0M- PLUS.EXE, it gives you the same output as you would get from C0MMAND.COM. I found the first notable exception (and an- noyance) to be that any time you invoke a DIR, COPY, or DEL command, the system displays a two-line copyright message. Fortunately, you can suppress the mes- sage by invoking these commands with the /M switch, which you can set automati- cally using the aliasing feature of Com- mand Plus. I also found the output from the COPY command somewhat more verbose when I specified filenames using wild-card characters. For example, the command COPY #.* A: will output a descriptive line to the screen as every file is copied. You can suppress this output, too, using a continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 157 IMPROVED COMMAND PROCESSOR Command Plus 2.01 Company ESP Software Systems Inc. 1 1965 Venice Blvd., Suite 309 Los Angeles, CA 90066 (213) 390-7408 Format One 5 1 /4-inch floppy disk Language C and Assembly Hardware Needed IBM PC, XT, or AT with at least 384K bytes of RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher Documentation 138-page Reference Manual; quick reference card Price $79.95 Inquiry 903. switch on the command line. Command Plus provides a Unix-like regular-expression syntax for filename specification. For example, [*a-z]*.* matches any file with a name not begin- ning with a letter, and [*]+ABC*.* matches any file with "ABC" anywhere in its name. Admittedly, you must over- come a learning curve to master this shorthand, but the added versatility is worth the trouble. A variety of switch options in the DIR command gives you control over how you would like your directories listed. You can specify date ranges so that if, for ex- ample, you want to see only those files created today, you'd type DIR/D0. You can specify time ranges in a similar fash- ion. You control what types of file entries and file information to include or exclude from the listing. For example, in the com- mand DIR/F/E/ID/M, the /F switch gener- ates a filename-only listing, /E places ex- tensions flush against the filename, /ID suppresses listing of directory files, and /M suppresses the directory copyright no- tice. If you direct the output from this command to a file, you can subsequently use that file as input to the COPY and DEL commands. The use of multiple character flags in Command Plus makes it advis- able to use spaces between flags; other- wise, they may be misinterpreted by the program. The COPY command provides many features often found in hard disk backup programs. For example, you can copy en- tire directory trees to the floppy disk, and C0MPLUS.EXE will prompt you to change disks as they fill. You can choose to copy only those files whose "archive" bit is set, you can select files by date and by time, and you can exclude files from being copied. For example, COPY *.BAK A: /E will copy all files except those with the extension .BAK to the A drive. You can even do a "dry run" of a copy to see just what files would be copied as a result of a particular COPY command line, which is useful to prevent accidental overwriting of files. I particularly found the/Q switch, which prompts for a yes/no/quit response before each copy, to be valuable since you can issue the command COPY *.* A: /Q and selectively copy files that may other- wise be difficult to specify using wild cards. Like DIR and COPY, options for the DEL command let you specify date and time ranges, exclude files, and do dry runs. You can also delete files in subdirectories and then remove the subdirectories. As with COPY, you can ask for a yes/no/ Their Series n. Listen to Our Range of Capabilities. Compared with the similarly priced PCPI Laserlmage 1000, the HP Series II is just ho-hum. Versatility makes the Laserlmage 1000 your printer of choice. Espe- cially when you compare software compatibility and memory. Emulation Sensation. The HP Series II only offers its own emulation. Our Laserlmage gives you more— HP Series II, plus down- loadable emulations for the IBM Proprinter, Epson FX/80, Diablo 630, and HPGL Subset for spread- sheet graphics. You can even get Laserlmage with an optional HPGL 7475A plug-in cartridge. This summer you will be able to upgrade to ImageScript™ our PostScript® language emulation, with a single plug-in cartridge. So with Laserlmage, the choice is yours. More Memorable. HP's Series II comes with an underwhelming 512K of memory. Which is fine, if you limit yourself to simple documents. The Laserlmage gives you twice as much, with a full megabyte of memory. Standard, right out of the box. So it's a much better choice 158 BYTE- MAY 1988 IMPROVED COMMAND PROCESSOR quit prompt to force verification before you delete the files. As a convenience, you can also specify multiple files on the command line in the form: DEL filename filename. . . . Although the TYPE command is avail- able through COMPLUS.EXE, the BROWSE facility is vastly more useful. It lets you page up and page down within a file, perform forward and backward searches for Unix-like regular expressions, and browse through a series of files. I found BROWSE to be useful, but the program does not respond well to files with em- bedded control characters. I was unable, for example, to use BROWSE to view a 7K- byte file that I generated by printing a Microsoft Word document to disk. Getting Around Some Confusion Although the enhancements offered by Command Plus are powerful, they are, nonetheless, confusing. Again, you have to spend some time with COMPLUS.EXE to master it, but here the aliasing feature can help ease the pain. Aliases provide you with macro pro- cessing that lets you define up to 64 Our Laserlmage. for newsletters and presentations. The Laserlmage 1000 is one of a whole family of fine printers with even more memory, more speed, and long, reliable duty cycles. Nationwide on-site service is Call your dealer today for a Laserlmage 1000 solo. Ask about our extended warranty. And compare our Laserlmage with the HP Series II for yourself. Then, you decide which one makes the sweeter sound. HI Personal Computer A.n. Products, Inc. Technology + Choice. (619) 485-8411 Toll Free Information: 1-800-225-4098 In California; 1-800-262-0522 © 1988 Personal Computer Prodmly tnt The fnllomng irr rtRislcml and unrtjiisltritl trademarks of tile lompanics listed Laser! maRt. ImijtrStnpi. Personal Computer Prwluus, Im : HP Series II. IIPCL Substl. IIP(,L Kcnlm-Paclcird Compam IBM Pmprinier. International Business Muhines I .orpo ration. Epson RUBD, fpson Amemi lliablu (>UV Xtrrn (jirpdNlton. I'usiSiripi sduhr Sssremj Inc PCPI is i puhln lompim ahose shires are leaded on ihe NASDAQ euhanar aliases, each of which consists of a name and a definition. For example, if you wanted to suppress the copyright notice every time you typed DIR, you could define the alias DIR to mean DIR /M. Afterward, if you type DIR, it will be expanded to the command DIR /M. You can turn alias expansion on and off from the command line; and you can clear aliases en masse, remove them individ- ually, or disable them temporarily. A supplemental script file that comes with the package loads files of aliases on demand. Command Plus's history feature allows up to 48 previous command lines for you to recall and edit for immediate use. You can recall commands either by number (the command HISTORY outputs a numerical list of previous commands), by string segment, or by repeated tapping of the up arrow key. You edit the commands using the left and right arrow keys along with Backspace, Delete, and Insert. This arrangement beats DOS 's painfully prim- itive command-editing procedure using the function keys. In what I consider fea- ture overkill, you can even edit the com- mand line using a customized set of key- strokes or a set that conforms to the WordStar or BRIEF editors. The log feature of Command Plus gives you the option of automatically keeping a time-stamped record of every command you enter into the computer. You can also make manual entries like Beginning work on Project X whether or not you enable the automatic log fea- ture. You will find this log feature useful for keeping track of your time. The problem with organizing your hard disk into subdirectories is that you have to type long directory paths in your CD com- mands. With Command Plus, however, you can store your paths as variables in the environment and then access them by preceding their names in a command with a $. For example, with the environ- ment variable KERMIT set to C:\UTIL\ COMM \ KERMIT, you can type CD $ KERMIT to change directories. The commands PUSHD and P0PD, respectively, push and pop directories from a special stack. When you use a P0PD, it has the same effect as changing to the directory on the top of the stack. You use the DIRS command to view the contents of the stack. Albeit a minor feature, the ability to edit environment variables won my heart. To do this, you enter the variable name at the system prompt and type Control-E. COMPLUS.EXE then offers an editable SET command for that variable. I've found this feature invaluable in editing my PATH variable, which I continually modify. continued Circle 222 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 223) MAY 1988 •BYTE 159 WENDIN-DOS So Many Options— So Little Room John McCormick and Jane Morrill Tazelaar The ability to execute command files in DOS is limited to its batch facility. Command Plus executes its own brand of command files using scripts, all of which have an extension of .S, through a sepa- rate program called SCRIPT.EXE. Learning to use SCRIPT.EXE is like learning a programming language. There are integers, long integers, and string variables; string-to-numeric conversions; assignment of variables; arithmetic and Boolean operators; and FOR, WHILE, and CASE control structures. There are also extensive file-operation routines that allow parsing of filenames and fetching of file-creation dates, times, and file sizes. This list of features is not complete, but you get the idea. A variety of sample SCRIPT files comes with the package to help you master the language. Although DOS's batch files cannot ex- ecute directly under COMPLUS.EXE, you can get the job done by running a tempo- rary version of C0MMAND.COM, provided it is available on the disk. You must rewrite any .BAT file that changes or sets environ- ment variables as an .S file, because if you execute the .BAT file under COMMAND- .COM, the changes introduced are lost when C0MMAND.COM exits to COMPLUS- .EXE. The same thing goes for .BAT files that install terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) programs. If a TSR loads above C0MMAND.COM while the latter executes a .BAT file, a hole is left in memory after C0MMAND.COM exits. The same caveat ap- plies to Command Plus script files: Since COMPLUS.EXE loads SCRIPT.EXE to exe- cute all script files, TSRs must load only from AUTOEXEC. S (which is a special file that executes by itself). Left-Handed Criticism Command Plus's features mimic those found on terminals attached to more powerful machines, like DEC's VAX. At $79.95, this package offers exceptional value for the money. But in this era of ever-more-user- friendly software, Command Plus may stand out as something of an anomaly. To use it well requires an investment of time and effort that the casual user— one who, perhaps, knows only enough about DOS to run Lotus 1-2-3— may not be willing to make. For the experienced user who con- tinually deals with DOS, however, the ef- fort required to master Command Plus will be well spent. The only major criti- cism I can level at this software is some- what left-handed: The more you use it, the harder it is to settle for mere COM- MAND. COM. ■ Alex Lane is a knowledge engineer with Technology Applications Inc. in Jackson- ville, Florida. Wendin-DOS promises a lot for $99— is it too good to be true? A multitasking, multiuser, windowing, MS-DOS-compatible operating system for $99? Impossible! Or is it? Wendin-DOS 2.12 from Wendin Inc. runs MS-DOS and Wendin-DOS pro- grams in a multitasking environment with multiple windows on standard IBM PCs, XTs, ATs, and true compatibles with a minimum of 512K bytes of RAM. It also runs on 80386 machines, and you can add up to 3 1 users to your system. But let's not go crazy, folks. Reason prevails. The capability may exist in the operating system, but you can't run much in 512K bytes. Wendin-DOS itself takes up 300K bytes. Time Slicing True multitasking exists when the operat- ing system controls the scheduling, prior- itization, and execution of more than one task at a time without manual interven- tion. Time slicing often controls the maximum amount of time each task has to perform a particular function; that is, when the task receives control of the sys- tem, it has a limited amount of time to ex- ecute before control passes to another task. Some multitasking systems allow a task to maintain control of the system until that task's immediate function is complete; compute-bound programs can effectively tie up these systems. Wendin-DOS uses time slicing to de- termine the maximum amount of time a task, called a process in Wendin-DOS, can maintain control of the system. Checking the schedule is event-driven, meaning that the operating system checks to see whether the currently active pro- cess has finished its time slice based on the occurrence of certain events. These events are a timer tick, which occurs ap- proximately 18 times per second, and a key press (either local or remote), which initiates a rescheduling so that the pro- cess reading the keyboard input can inter- pret the character. The system chooses which process should receive control based on priori- ties: The process with the highest priority receives control. If more than one pro- cess has the highest priority, then sched- uling proceeds in a round-robin fashion. Priorities range from 0 to 31; the default is 5, but you can modify that with the PRI0RITY=n command in Wendin-DOS's CONFIG.SYS file. The system reserves priorities between 16 and 31, inclusive, for real-time processes. Setting Your Priorities You can boost priorities based on certain events (e.g., a key press). Wendin-DOS automatically boosts the priority of the process reading the keyboard input so that it is likely to be scheduled when the input is complete. This helps to ensure a quick response for the user and, thus, a smoother overall system performance. You can modify the priority assigned to a specific process by changing certain optional parameters in the CONFIG.SYS file, including SVCB00ST=n, which lets you raise by n the priority of processes requesting operating system services, and I0B00ST=n, which lets you raise the priority of processes requesting I/O ser- vices (this is one parameter to tweak when you're trying to hone your system's performance). Swapping Processes To handle multiple processes, Wendin- DOS uses an optional high-priority sys- tem process called the Swapper. When an executing process needs more memory, the Swapper transfers processes not in execution to a RAM disk or disk file to free the memory those processes occupy. If you wish to enable swapping, you must add the SWAPFILE=filename command to the CONFIG.SYS file. If you don't in- clude this command, the operating sys- tem will not swap, and if you try to exe- cute more than a few programs at one time, Wendin warns that you will run out of memory quickly. Using a RAM disk, if you have one, is faster than using a reg- ular disk file. You can control how often the Swapper takes control with the SWAPRATE=n com- mand (also in CONFIG.SYS), where n is the number of timer ticks between Swap- per "wakeups." This is another param- continued 160 BYTE- MAY 1988 The Janus/Adc Difference- More Than Just the Price! Contrary to what you may believe, all Ada compilers are not equal. The popular misconception is that all Ada compilers are the same for any machine, just differently priced. But the price is just one of the differences. Compilation speed, the ability to emulate floating point, usability on all of the Intel 80 X 86 family, as well as support of networking sites, can make a big difference to your project. That Pig differ- ence is the Janus/Ada difference!!! Janus/Ada is substantially different from other Ada compilers. It was developed on the microcomputer, for the microcomputer, and was bootstrapped version by version. The resulting compiler is faster, more robust and more flexible than other Ada compilers. Minimizing the expenses of add-on hardware, run- time library fees and tutorials also makes Janus/Ada different. Take a look at the charts below and see what we mean when we say we're different. Product Features: Janus/Ada 2.0 Compiler A 3.2* Compiler M 2.0* 80X87 emulation YES NO NO Royalty free run time libraries YES NO NO Site licensing YES NO NO All 80X86 covered YES NO NO Tutorial included with all Paks YES NO NO Ada applications for only $12 YES NO NO Runs on floppy disks YES' ' NO NO Validation Suite ACVC 1.9 ACVC 1.8 ACVC 1.8 Validated compiler cost $99.00 $3,000.00 $795.00 'Comparisons made on product information obtained on 12/11/87. * *3 1 /2", 720K Floppies and 5 : A", 1.2M Floppies only. The differences don't end with the facts above; the performance issues, which make or break a produc- tion compiler, demonstrate why Janus/Ada is not just different, but better! Compile and Link Janus/Ada Compiler A Compiler M Timings": Sieve 0:50 1:39 1 25 Calculation 0:43 2:14 1 00 Disk Write 0:45 1:33 1 25 Disk Read 0:43 1:34 1 23 Integer Sort 0:47 2:13 1 34 Dynamic Allocation 0:47 2:02 1 32 Matrix Inversion 0:46 2:24 1 39 Recursion 0:47 2:10 1 34 • "(These results are from BYTE Magazine. July 1987 issue; full details on the tests, as well as the standard equipment used, can be found in that issue.) Our seven years of providing quality Ada software to over ten thousand users reflects the commitment we have to your programming needs. Our policy has always put you, the customer, first and foremost. We think it's a difference you can appreciate! You can order our "JET SET" (Ada compiler and tutorial) tor only $99. Please call our toll free number 1-800-722-3248 (1-800PC ADA 4 U) to place your order or request our probucts brochure. '^Copyright R.R. Software. Inc. 1988. OFTWARE, INC. specialists in state of the art programming P.O. Box 1512 Madison, Wisconsin 53701 (608) 244-6436 TELEX 4998168 1-800-722-3248 Circle 262 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 •BYTE 161 WENDIN-DOS Wendin-DOS2.12 Type Multitasking, multiuser, windowing operating system Company Wendin Inc. P.O. Box 3888 Spokane, WA 99220 (509) 624-8088 Format Two 5 1 /4-inch floppy disks Language C Hardware Needed IBM PC, XT, AT, or 100 percent compatible or 80386-based system with 51 2K bytes of RAM and two disk drives Documentation 1 20-page Wendin-DOS User's Manual Price $99 Inquiry 917. eter you'll need to tweak for good perfor- mance. If the number is too low, the Swapper will hog the system and the sys- tem performance will go down, because no other process will get any compute time. If the number is too high, the Swap- per will hibernate too long and the re- sponse time will go down. The manual contains suggestions about numbers to start with; from there, it's trial and error, because each system makes unique de- mands based on the number of users and the exact program mix at any one time. Multiuser Operations To accommodate multiuser operations in addition to the default single-user system, Wendin-DOS differentiates between a console and a terminal. Wendin-DOS de- fines the console as the keyboard and monitor combination on the controlling computer, the one running Wendin-DOS. It defines a terminal as a device that oper- ates in two-way serial communications with the controlling computer. Remote terminals connected to the host computer via a serial-communications port have access to the system if the serial port is defined in the CONFIG.SYS file with a TERMINAL command. TERMINAL= ttyname AT portaddress ON IRQfl lets you assign a name of your choice, tty- name, to the device on the serial port at the hexadecimal portaddress and lets you specify which hardware interrupt re- quest line, n, to use. Other terminals physically connected to the system but lacking the TERMINAL definition can ac- cess the system if they have communica- tions software that completely takes over the serial port. You can use multiport add-in adapter boards with Wendin-DOS to increase the number of serial ports available, if the boards contain an indus- try-standard 8250 communications chip. The file management system in Wen- din-DOS provides security controlled by a permission mask that is located in the directory entry for each file control. This mask includes four classes of access rights: SYSTEM (for system management, such as systems and applications software maintenance programmers), GROUP (for all users of a particular type, such as a programming class; a group ID code, or GIC, determines group membership), OWNER (for the particular user or users who own a file; a user identification code, or UIC, establishes file owner- ship—you can authorize more than one user to have a particular UIC), and WORLD (for everyone). You can be a member of more than one class. In addition, you can have up to four possible file-access permissions: READ (needed to execute a program that reads the file), WRITE (needed to share files like a spreadsheet with other users), EXECUTE (needed to run a program, although, with some overlay structures, you also need to have READ permission to execute), and DELETE (needed both to delete a file or to recreate it, since that process involves de- leting the old version). You can alter file permissions with the PROTECT command. You can set up all the file permissions and protections you want, but none of them will do any good if you don't set VALIDATE=YES in the CONFIG.SYS file. The system default is not to validate, which grants everyone access to every- thing. (L0GIN=YES requires that each user log into the system with the LOGIN command and thus pass a security check at that level as well.) Also, since MS- DOS doesn't check permissions, it can bypass Wendin-DOS 's security setup. This could cause a problem with data se- curity if MS-DOS is available on your system. The company suggests that you use a file-encryption system to encode such data. As for keeping unauthorized users from getting into the system, the first line of defense is the USER=ttynarae:baud, parity ,datab its ,stopb its command in the CONFIG.SYS file. A USER statement must accompany and follow, although not necessarily directly, each TERMINAL statement in the configuration file if you want Wendin-DOS to start a shell process at that terminal. A shell process accepts commands and then interprets and exe- cutes them. The default is the Wendin- DOS shell; however, you can select an al- ternative program as a shell for all user tasks by adding the SHELL=filena/ne command to the CONFIG.SYS file. The various parameters in the USER command tie it to a particular TERMINAL command via the ttyname and initialize the communications port, specified in TERMINAL, to the stated data transfer rate, parity, data bits, and stop bits. Another line of defense is the LOGIN process that requires you to enter your user name and password— both are case- sensitive— to gain access to the system. The AUTHORIZE command lets you add or delete users, assign or change privileges, and create or change passwords. Privi- leges involve the user's authorization to perform certain operations; for example, if you have 0PER privilege, you can change the system date and time; if you have PHYI0 privilege, you can perform physical I/O; and so on. To create the password file, PASSWD, you first set up file-access permissions so that only you can write to its directory, ETC; Wendin-DOS encrypts the pass- words so that you can let anyone read the file. AUTHORIZE stores the user name, password, home directory, UIC, GIC, and privilege mask in the password file. (The UIC command lets you change a user's UIC or GIC.) Users can also enter the AUTHORIZE command, but they can modify only their own passwords, and they must know the old password before they can change it. Entering the AUTHO- RIZE command followed by HELP pro- vides a list of commands acceptable to the AUTHORIZE utility. Multiple Windows, Multiple Tasks The operating system lets you create multiple on-screen windows on the con- sole. To activate windows, you must in- clude the WIND0WS=n command (where n is the number of windows allowed, up to a maximum of 20) in the CONFIG.SYS file. Windows are memory-hungry, however; each one takes 21 .5K bytes. You can overlap windows, move them, resize them, or select them with various function-key combinations called "hot keys." For example, Alt-Fl changes the active window; Alt-F2 lets you resize the window with the arrow keys; Alt-F3 lets you move the window with the arrows; Alt-F4 rearranges the windows so that the active one is in front of any others; Alt-F5 puts the active window in the back; and continued 162 BYTE' MAY 1988 TWIST ESS I ainaiBiHansamiMMiiwBuvB ■■■■mm mm bbbbbb »H a ana nits* ■ !■■■« UIIIHMHIMBBI B ■ ■■■ MMHBM UH HM • ■■>HS MBHMBB Baaaasansa iia ii |i| ■ aaaaBaaaflBBBaa « b" ■a •■■sin aawaaa IB ■ BBS B m rsbbbi BMBBBfJg. . ""■'■km. ■ • ■ SB IBB 3 a BSIB a m ■ iiRBfl * a b atnaaaa • a aaaaaraiBaa m . Baaaaaxaaaaas aaa _ » bbbb aaBBBaioiaiaaaatiBnB Baiaaaaaaaaai -m 552S ■-5!«S2SS52222Sf SSHSSH*** mbbbbiib -wmm. *BBfl2aSBMi8fiBBBaMBm H % VBBflii'iaaaii' B »5|f«jUiSsIIIiISfs; ' aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaB b MHfRWjgHNilflltf aBBBBBaaaaaaaa imhiiu i amnmm hdi aaaaaaaaaaaaa a IBB SB BIIBailHiaiRBBVBa ■ vminniiiiii .::;::!::::.■■■ »s «s» ; iiiHinniHi a a - igaiaaaiaaa at aa " ssssss ■« »>u aaSaS ■■■■I aaaaaaia «■•» aaaaiaa agi nn mm CGA EGA VGA [PS-2] MULTI-SCAN / ANALOG □UAL SCAN GREEN/ AMBER /WHITE 132 COLUMN ALL WITH TWO-YEAR WARRANTY U.S. HEADQUARTERS: CTX INTERNATIONAL, INC. 260 PASEO TESORO/WALNUT, CA 91789 TEL: (714) 595-6146 FAX: (714) 595-6293 EASTERN REGIONAL OFFICE CONTINENTAL TECHNOLOGY, INC. 300 McGAVV DRIVE EDISON, NEW JERSEY 08837 TEL: (201) 225-7377 FAX: (201) 225-6355 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTOR ELCO COMPUTERS 215 S. RAYMOND ST. ALHAMBRA, CA 91803 TEL: (818) 284-3281 FAX: (818) 284-4871 FACTORY CHUNTEX ELECTRONIC CO., LTD. ROOM 401, NO. 50 SEC.l, HSIN-SHENG S. RD.. TAIPEI, TAIWAN, R.O.C. TEL: (02) 3921171 FAX: (02) 3919780 PS-2 is a trademark of International Business Machine Corp. Circle 77 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 78) WENDIN-DOS Alt-F6 creates a new window with a shell process in it. The HOTKEY command lets you choose a different set of hot keys if the current ones interfere with your appli- cation's use of the function keys. Some applications won't run properly in Wendin-DOS windows. In particular, any programs that write directly to screen memory won't conform to existing win- dow boundaries; they may run, but they seize control of the entire screen and ig- nore any existing windows. This same kind of problem also occurs when run- ning these programs from remote termi- nals. If a program writes directly to screen memory, its output will appear on the console instead of on the remote ter- minal's screen. Wendin-DOS includes several differ- ent multitasking commands to create pro- cesses (SPAWN, CALL, and WINDOW); to display the status of all running processes (PSTAT); and to control processes (SUS- PEND, RESUME, and KILL). SPAWN com- mand initiates a command as a separate process and returns control to the spawn- ing process immediately, while CALL command waits for that command to com- plete processing before returning control. WINDOW window-name creates a new win- dow running a command-interpreter pro- cess. You can enter the WINDOW command only from the console. If you have en- abled windows on your system, each new process you CALL or SPAWN at the console will appear in its own window. PSTAT displays the ID numbers for all processes (the system assigns these num- bers when the processes are initiated), along with the time each process started, the user name, the process name, the type of task (such as system), and the current state or status. The possible state condi- tions are COM (computable; in other words, waiting for a slice of CPU time), CUR (currently running), HIB (hibernat- ing), LEF (local-event flag wait; that is, waiting for I/O or another process to fin- ish), and SUSP (suspended). A 0 at the end of a process state (e.g., HIBO) indi- cates that part of the process is currently swapped out. The SUSPEND process-id command lets you suspend execution of a specific process temporarily; you can resume its execution with the RESUME process-id command. KILL process-id lets you terminate a process and delete it from the system as long as you have the proper privilege and ID code. You can't KILL a suspended process; you must RESUME it first. The system will accept the KILL but will hold it until the process resumes. You also can't KILL your own process (you wouldn't be able to enter com- mands) or any of the system processes: System, Disk, Terminal, or Swapper (the system would crash) . How Compatible Is It? Although many of the Wendin-DOS com- mands have the same names as their MS- DOS counterparts, it is important to use the Wendin-DOS versions, because they contain extensions that utilize Wendin- DOS 's capabilities. MS-DOS limits the maximum size of the disk partitions it can support to 32 megabytes, while Wendin-DOS says it can handle sizes into the gigabytes. (Needless to say, we couldn't test this fea- ture.) Wendin-DOS also lets you mix Unix partitions and Wendin-DOS parti- tions on the same disk. While Wendin- DOS reads MS-DOS programs and files, it ignores Unix partitions, allowing a peaceful coexistence. If you wish, you can program access to Unix files in Unix partitions with the optional Application Developer's Kit ($99). You need not sep- arate MS-DOS partitions from Wendin- DOS partitions unless you wish to, be- cause Wendin-DOS reads MS-DOS files ions^bu Color display monitors for personal computers XC1410C EGA Compatible XC1430C EGA Compatible XC1409C CGA Compatible XC1412C PGC Compatible XC1434C AT&T Compatible © 1988 Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp. Apple is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. AUM1371A screen image by Visual Information, Inc. XC1429C screen image by Glen Schofield of EAS1. WENDIN-DOS and programs without conversion. If you are more comfortable with Unix or VAX/ VMS file specification formats, you can enable them. The SWITCH com- mand lets you notify Wendin-DOS that you wish to use forward slashes in path- names, as Unix does, or square or angle brackets, as VAX/VMS does. Wendin- DOS also lets you use piping and redirec- tion commands. Up, Up, and Away Wendin-DOS can boot from any floppy or hard disk drive except those that are RLL (run-length-limited) controlled. Wendin-DOS 's INSTALL program creates a basic CONFIG.SYS file for you. You sim- ply answer questions, which are accom- panied by detailed, well-thought-out ex- planations, at each step. The INSTALL program doesn't generate TERMINAL and USER commands, however, or priority- elevation commands, among others; you still need to go through the options in the manual and figure out what you want. The installation procedure also doesn't tell you that you need to copy the .EXE files from the original system disk and the contents of the utility disk to your sys- tem disk. Fine-tuning the system involves time, familiarity, and experience. It would be a good idea to take a couple of hours and read the manual, cover to cover, before you install Wendin-DOS. The manual gives you a good feel for the many options and variables you need to consider when you decide how to set up your system: how many windows to use, how much memory to allocate for different func- tions, how often to check the scheduler, and so on. For one thing, if you aren't fa- miliar with multitasking systems, you need to become aware of the many differ- ent facets that you have to consider. Checking It Out We tested Wendin-DOS on a Zenith Z- 386 with 1 megabyte of memory and an 80-megabyte hard disk drive, on a Micro- Serve Pro-Plus + AT Turbo with 1 mega- byte of memory and a 30-megabyte hard disk drive, and on an IBM PC with 5 12K bytes of memory and two floppy disk drives. We had a variety of problems. Installation was smooth and easy on the Z-386 and on the AT Turbo. On the two-floppy-disk-drive IBM PC, however, it would not install. Although the instruc- tions indicate that you can install it on a two-floppy-drive system and although the entire system takes 300K bytes, it ran out of room on a 360K-byte floppy disk at the very beginning of installation. We had a few problems with some of the Wendin-DOS commands, such as CHKDSK, which gave us a garbage display of non-ASCII characters on the Z-386 (although it worked fine on the AT Turbo), and FIND, which died with no re- sponse before freezing up the keyboard on both machines, necessitating a reboot. We tried to test a variety of applica- tions, with mixed success. • Reflex 1.11 was too large to fit into memory with Wendin-DOS. Wendin hasn't yet broken the 640K-byte barrier, and you can't use extended memory, ex- cept as a RAM disk or expanded mem- ory. Considering that the system itself takes 300K bytes, you aren't left with much to play with. • dBASE m Plus 3.51 ran fine. • Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.01 ran fine, but with the 640K-byte memory restriction, you'd better keep your spreadsheet small. • Xy Write in Plus 3.51 ran into prob- lems: It appeared to be loaded and ready to run, but it wouldn't work. • Peachtext 5000 version 2.02 worked fine as long as Wendin-DOS 's windows continued Mitsubishi Electronics can support all your monitor requirements with solutions you can see. Mitsubishi® brand name monitors continue to set the standards in quality, reliability and value. For IBM® PC, XT, AT, PS/2, Apple 8 Macintosh™ II or AT&T compatibility, Mitsubishi can provide the right monitor at an affordable price. Sharper, Brighter Images On A 13V714" Screen. Each Mitsubishi brand name monitor combines advanced, proven technology to produce an image that's uniformly bright along with clear, vibrant colors— all without annoying flicker. Commitment To Customer Satisfaction. Mtsubishi Electronics is the experienced and proven vendor of high quality monitors for a wide range of appli- cations, including presentation graphics, CAD/CAM, desktop publishing, or image processing. For product information or authorized Mitsubishi Electronics representatives, please call 1-800-556-1234 Ext. 54. In California, call 1-800-441-2345 Ext. 54. Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc., Computer Peripherals Division, 991 Knox Street, Torrance, CA 90502 (213) 515-3993. Visit us at NCGA Booth #1154 MITSUBISHI JFm ELECTRONICS Circle 322 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 323) WENDIN-DOS weren't loaded. When they were, the screen showed a lot of confusion; Peach- text is one of those programs that seize control of the screen. If you avoid win- dows, the only apparent problem is that you can't exit from Peachtext. You must reboot after you're done with it. • WordPerfect 4.1 worked without any apparent problems. • PC -TALK in wouldn't run in Wendin- DOS's windows, but as long as windows were out of the picture it ran fine and al- lowed BIX communications. • GWBASIC 3.2 loaded fine, but when we tried to LOAD a program using the F3 function key, the response was "illegal function call." • Turbo Pascal 3.01 A compiled and ran CHESS. PAS. Wendin-DOS's privilege and permission protections for a couple of users worked easily, as did the authorization and log- ging functions. Clearly, Wendin-DOS still has bugs, lots of them. Minicomputer and main- frame experience, however, tells us that the sheer number of setup parameters in a multitasking system creates a huge num- ber of possible parameter combinations. With each new qualifier, the possibility of error increases factorially. The com- pany is aware of many of the bugs, and as solutions are found, it issues updates. Wendin-DOS is being actively updated at this time. In fact, during the two months in which we wrote this review, the com- pany issued two updates. Complain, Complain Wendin-DOS generates a series of system error messages that the manual covers in detail for such conditions as insufficient memory, bad file name, and so on. Wen- din has "cute" names— a little too cute— for catastrophic system errors: Guru alerts or Guru meditations. We also found that the Guru alert messages gave a lot of information indicators— PSL (pro- cess status longword) number, event mask number, event flags number, and state number— without any source for what these numbers mean. In other words, we found the Guru alerts terse and not at all helpful. A few short paragraphs in the manual give you possible reasons for a few of them, but for the majority, you are supposed to call the company. That's not an acceptable way to handle errors. Another complaint is that there isn't nearly enough documentation. The ba- sics are there, but some of the details are missing. The manual has the same prob- lem that many of us in the computer in- dustry share: We think that we are speak- ing simply and comprehensibly, but some aspects of the computer world have become so ingrained in us that we don't even realize we are using buzzwords. The documentation has this problem in the area of multitasking systems. Certain functions and phrases are second nature to those experienced in the area, but microcomputer owners aren't necessarily familiar with multitasking systems. Other problems are that the manual lags behind the software updates and that it has no index. Wendin-DOS doesn't have its own edi- tor, but then, with its MS-DOS compati- bility, perhaps it doesn't need one. You can transfer your favorite editor over and run it under Wendin-DOS. Don't, how- ever, transfer your favorite TSRs (termi- nate-and-stay-resident programs) over, because they are unlikely to run. TSRs tend to take control of hardware inter- rupts that they can't receive while they're hibernating; thus, Wendin makes no claims about running TSRs. Similarly, programs and device drivers that are ill- behaved won't work under Wendin-DOS because they bypass normal operating system calls. A Bit of a Mismatch The list of features and capabilities in Wendin-DOS is long and impressive— but it's still on the drawing board. In con- cept, it may be a bit of a mismatch. When— and if— Wendin breaks the 640K- byte barrier, IBM PCs, XTs, ATs, and compatibles still won't be big enough to make full use of its tools. Can you imag- ine the response time of an 8-MHz AT with 1 megabyte of memory that has 16 terminals connected to it? The 80386 machines show a lot more promise for an operating system like Wendin-DOS. It may be capable of far more than the systems it runs on, but for $99, you can use whatever capabilities you have room for and experiment with the others. Wendin-DOS definitely has a future— after it is debugged. ■ John McCormick is a freelance writer and computer consultant in Mahaffey, Pennsylvania. Jane Morrill Tazelaar is a BYTE senior technical editor with eight years of expe- rience in programming multitasking, multiuser, mainframe systems. She can be reached at BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. DESQview API Reference Manual This is the primary source of information about the DESQview API. It contains all you need to know to write assembly language pro- grams that take full advantage of DESQview's capabilities. The Reference manual comes with an include file containing symbols and macros to aid you in development. AVAILABLE NOW! DESQview API C Library The DESQview API C Library provides C Language interfaces for the entire set of API functions. It supports the Lattice C, Metaware C, Microsoft C, and Turbo C compilers for all memory models. Included with the C Library package is a copy of the API Reference Manual and source code for the library. AVAILABLE NOW! DESQview API Debugger The DESQview API Debugger is an interactive tool that enables the API pro- grammer to trace and single step through API calls from several concurrently running DESQview-specific programs. Trace infor- mation is reported symbolically along with the program counter, registers, and stack at the time of the call. Trace conditions can be specified so that only those calls of interest are reported. AVAILABLE JUNE 88 DESQview API Panel Designer The DESQview API Panel Designer is an interactive tool to aid you in designing win- Introducing DESQview ZO API Tools Bri nging new power to DOS dows, menus, help screens, error messages, and forms. It includes an editor that lets you construct an image of your panel using simple commands to enter, edit, copy, and move text as well as draw lines and boxes. You can then define the characteristics of the window that will contain the panel, such as its position, size, and title. Finally, you can specify the locations and types of fields in the panel. The Panel Designer automatically generates all the DESQview API data streams necessary to display and take input from your panel. These data streams may be grouped together Circle 251 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 252) H5E5Q view Quarterdeck into panel libraries and stored on disk or as part of your program. AVAILABLE JUNE 88 DESQview API Pulldown Menu Manager The DESQview API Pulldown Menu Manager is an interactive tool to aid you in designing pulldown menus. This DESQview API tool assists you in giving your DOS program an OS/2-like look and feel. AVAILABLE JULY 88 i MS-DOS and IBM PC-DOS are both trademarks of Microsoft Corporation and IBM Corporation respectively. Quarterdeck Office Systems 150 Pico Boulevard Santa Monica, CA 90405 (213) 392-9851 CLUB American Technologies Presents: The Ultimate 386 Workstation Discover the power of the CLUB macnim « sentations mputer aided Inventory control and data base applications with DBASE 111 + . Spreadsheets with Lotus 12 3. Run Informix, Unix, and Xenix. also run OS/2 which means you can do more than one task at a time. will work for you. $1795 80386 Basic System Features: • Intel 80386-16 microprocessor • 16/8MHZ keyboard - selectable clock speeds • 101 keyboard standard • HD/ Floppy controller / 1.2M floppy • Wait state selectable, zero or one, from the keyboard • UL listed, switchable 120/240 VAC • 48 hour burn-in and testing • Surge protector available IBM AT. OS/2, Microsoft, DBase 111- WordStar, and Word are trademarks CLUB 1 i/8/88 , Lulus 123. AutoCAD. Xenix, Unix. Informix. Gem. Intel, :>r registered rrademarks of [heir respective company Our machines are assembled and tested here in the USA. Come visit our corporate headquarters in Fremont and see your machine being built right in front of you. Quality control, quality assurance, design and manufacturing here in the USA. Come visit our corporate headquarters. ORDER BY MAIL: Check and Money Order. California add 7% Sales Tax. ORDER BY PHONE: COD. Cashier Check. VISA (3%). American Express (-4%) or approved Company P.O. TERMS: All prices are subject to changes and quantity may be limited and we reserve the righr ro substitute equivalent items. Unauthorized returns arc subject to 10% restocking fee. Call for RMA numbers for returns and repairs. Returning items must he sent shipping prepaid by customct. Limited warranty. 1 year parts and 6 months labor 168 BYTE- MAY 1988 .and Ultimate 286 12 MHz PULSE Canadian Distributor PC Centre Tel: (416) 470-0560 FAX <4l6> 470-2644 Pricing in this ad docs noi match pricing in Canada Dealers & Corporate P.O's Welcome Model PULSE-2BE IBM PC Limited COMPAQ Premium 286 Proc»s5or Clock speed 80286-12 80286-10 80286-12 80286-12 80286-10 Wail Stales 0 1 0 1 0 Norton sum) 15.3 10.1 13.3 11.5 11.5 Mon - Fri 7:30 - 6:30 (West Coast) Mon - Fri 10:30 - 9:30 (East Coast) Saturday 10:30 - 3:00 (West Coast) Saturday 1:30 - 6:00 (East Coast) America's #1 Choice (41 5) 490 - 2201 KJ Look at how The PULSE rates against the competition! Circle 56 on Reader Service Card FAX (415) 490-2687 (24 hrs.) Tech Support (415) 683-6580 Corporate Desk (415) 683-6636 American Technologies, Inc. 3401 W. Warren Ave., Fremont, CA 94539 MAY 1988 -BYTE 169 The Graphics Toolkit for Contemporary Software Developers I Already the fastest and most r powerful graphics toolkit on the market, the new HALO® delivers subroutines and device support for exciting, contemporary applications in publishing, office automation, vision, and image processing. HALO '88 is a device independent library of 190 graphics subroutines. It is compatible with 18 programming languages, and over 140 hardware devices such as image scanners; graphics, vision, and imaging boards; printers and plotters; and mice. HALO '88 is designed for the complete IBM compatible microcomputer line including the PS/2 and VGA. Today's Tools for Tomorrow's Applications HALO '88 has new subroutines which control scanners and scanned images — even images which are larger than screen resolution and available memory. Extended character set support enables software developers to address IBM's full 255 characters in graphics and to design foreign language fonts. Among contemporary HALO '88 applications are CAD, Computer- Based Training, Presentation Graphics, Graphic Arts, Mapping, Machine Vision, Silicon Wafer Manufacturing, Sound System Design, Vehicle Scheduling and Routing, and Real Estate. Join the HALO Family HALO has an installed base of 60,000+ end-users, hundreds of site-licensed corporations, government agencies, universities, and national laboratories and most importantly, over 220 Independent Software Developers (ISVs) who market applications written with HALO. HALO '88 provides the software designer with the richest environment of graphics functions; the programmer with reliable and HALO infinite possibilities in graphics and imaging well-documented tools, and DP managers with continuity of user interface and database format. Reach for the Future If you need high performance graphics development software that provides a migration path to OS/2 and other future technology, follow the industry leaders — call (800) 992- HALO (4256). HALO '88 is just $325 and includes all device drivers, 20 fonts, your choice of one compiler binding, completely new documentation, an interactive tutorial and free 800# technical support. Update from HALO for $150. Ask about the new HALO Programmers' Workbook which provides C program examples for HALO '88 applications developers. media cybernetics 8484 Georgia Ave. Silver Spring, MD 20910 (301) 495-3305, (800). 992-HALO HALO is a registered trademark of Media Cybernetics, Ine. IBM PS/2, VGA and OS/2 are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corp. Circle 1 77 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 1 78) APPLICATION REVIEWS Database Management via 1 -2-3 Diana Gabaldon Lotus 1-2-3 wasn't really in- tended for database manage- ment—one of the common things people use it for. Sure, it can handle up to 800 or so data records, and it can sort and select records, but it has none of the more advanced capabilities of a true database manager. Also, as the number of records increases, the program's speed slows to a maddening crawl. Beyond 800 records, the program comes to a virtual standstill. Now, however, there are alternatives. Two add-in products, Silverado and ©BASE, add the capabilities of a reason- ably good database manager to Lotus 1-2-3. Both products require that you have 1-2-3, as well as an MS-DOS system to run it. But just what should a good database manager do? Minimally, it should allow you to add, delete, and edit records eas- ily, to sort all or part of the database quickly, and to select records on the basis of any single key field or several key fields in a combination. In addition, a good database manager indexes the data in some manner so that you don't have to do each and every sort absolutely from scratch. A relational database manager, com- pared to a file manager, also lets you ac- cess and use several databases and the re- lationships between data elements in the multiple databases. A simple flat-file manager, which is what 1-2-3 has, lets you use only one unindexed database at a time, providing only a rudimentary data- base system. In 1-2-3's database, a record is just a row in a spreadsheet. Each cell's value is a field. You can specify a range of cells to extract records and blocks. You can then sort these extracted records by specifying which column to use as the key field. But that's it. There is no simple method for data entry or editing, and no indexing to speed up sorts. Another important feature, though not specific to a database management func- Silverado and @BASE give you real database features from your spreadsheet tion, is the ability to generate formatted reports from a database. Silverado 1.0 Like many add-ins, you load Silverado 1.0 first and then Lotus 1-2-3. You can specify the key combination that activates Silverado from within 1-2-3. When Sil- verado is active, the forward slash calls the Silverado menu line rather than the 1-2-3 menu. Silverado integrates well with Lotus 1-2-3. Menus are similar in appearance and operation to the 1-2-3 menus; only the mode indicator tells you whether you are in 1-2-3 or Silverado. Also, you can control Silverado using 1-2-3 macros, which is a major benefit. The program does not actually operate on a 1-2-3 spreadsheet. In fact, it creates a small separate database, displayed in a window in the 1-2-3 worksheet screen. All database operations, calculations, and so forth are carried out in this sepa- rate database, not in the worksheet. How- ever, you can copy data back and forth between the worksheet and the database. Once in the Silverado mode, you can define a database range, which must not overlap existing spreadsheet columns. Unlike many other database or file man- agers, you need not specify the length or the type of information that you will store before you enter data. You can enter data directly into the database or copy it from a worksheet range. A Silverado database looks superfi- cially like a worksheet. You can enter values, functions, formulas, and the like into cells, with minor variations on the usual 1-2-3 formats for special cases, such as when you enter dates and numeric digits as label information. You edit with the F2 key, just as in worksheets. Database columns are the data fields, just as they are when using 1-2-3's rudimen- tary data handler. You can add, rename, move, or hide fields, and you can specify field size as small or regular. This affects screen display and sorting speeds (where the screen displays records automati- cally) but does not affect other database operations; for example, the program adjusts reports automatically. If you define a small "window" in the 1-2-3 spreadsheet, displays, and there- fore sorts, are quick. If you ask to have a large database displayed, a sort operation can take upwards of 2 or 3 minutes to complete from initiation to final display of the sorted database. In addition, the first time you request a sort, Silverado automatically generates an index, and this speeds up subsequent manipulations. For data storage, Silverado uses virtual memory. It stores data in memory or on a disk, and it updates the database con- stantly by moving data back and forth between RAM and disk, unlike 1-2-3, which uses a static database. You can also adjust the amount of RAM available that Silverado uses. The default amount is 32K bytes, but you can allocate amounts from 25K bytes to 256K bytes. Naturally, the more RAM you al- locate, the faster the program completes operations. As a nice touch, Silverado accepts data that you enter into a blank column, and it automatically creates a new field and as- signs a temporary default name to the field. Silverado is more than just a conve- nient data-entry device and speedy sorter for worksheet data, though. There are considerable calculation capabilities built in, such as summary calculations, which are displayed as a special type of record called a "total record." Silverado auto- matically closes and saves your database to minimize the risk of losing records. It also has automatic database recalcula- continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 171 DATABASE MANAGEMENT VIA 1-2-3 Silverado 1.0 s BASE 1.0 Type Add-in database manager for Lotus 1-2-3 Company Computer Associates 1240 McKay Dr. San Jose, CA 95131 (408) 432-1727 Format Two 5 1 /4-inch floppy disks Language C Hardware Needed IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2, Convertible, or compatible with 51 2K bytes of RAM and two floppy disk drives or one floppy disk drive and a hard disk drive Software Needed Lotus 1 -2-3 version 2.0 or 2.1 ; DOS 2.0 or higher Documentation 250-page user's manual; keyboard templates; Quick Reference Guide Price $149 Inquiry 902. tion, which you can turn off, just like 1-2-3's worksheet Recalc. One of the most powerful functions of Silverado is the "crosstab" capability, which is a tool for analyzing relationships in your data. A crosstab shows the break- down of information by category or range of value. This is especially useful in the analysis of two- or three-variable rela- tionships among data. The program gives the user considerable control over the crosstab function. You can use "basic crosstab," in which Silverado does most of the work, or "advanced crosstab," in which you specify the complete design of the crosstab. Silverado has a good report generator that lets you design reports interactively, including user-designated fields in stan- dard or custom formats. A nice feature is that, once designed, you can print forms in the background while you do other work. However, you cannot print forms in the background simultaneously with macro control. Inasmuch as Silverado is a relational database manager, you can link two or more database files using a common field and then view, edit, or extract informa- tion from the linked files. Also, Silver- ado will directly read dBASE files, Type Add-in database manager for Lotus 1-2-3 Company Personics Corp. 2352 Main St., Building 2 Concord, MA 01 742 (617) 897-1575 Format One 5V4-inch floppy disk Language C Hardware Needed IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2, or compatible with 51 2K bytes of RAM and two floppy disk drives Software Needed Lotus 1 -2-3 version 2.0 or 2.1 ; DOS 2.0 or higher Documentation 202-page user's manual Price ©BASE: $195 ©BASE Options Pac: $89.95 Inquiry 906. though it does not use the ,NDX (index) file from dBASE; instead, it creates an equivalent Silverado index when you sort the file. ©BASE 1.0 Unlike Silverado, ©BASE 1.0 is some- what difficult to load. You must use something called the Add-in Manager, invoked from within 1-2-3. When this menu appears, you must attach two sepa- rate files to use @BASE. Once attached, the program is available anytime by pressing Alt-F8, until you use the Add-in Manager to detach the files or the 1-2-3 session ends. You can, however, set up the program to load automatically every time you use 1-2-3. In general, both Silverado and ©BASE have equivalent database managing capa- bilities. There are significant differences in style and speed, however. ©BASE is a little cruder in operation and requires more decisions and input from the user. For example, while Sil- verado automates such things as file- names and new data fields by providing default values, ©BASE requires that you supply a filename before opening and, rather strangely, before closing a file. Unlike Silverado, ©BASE uses disk- based storage only for database files; thus, it's not quite as fast as Silverado, al- though it's still much faster than 1-2-3. However, ©BASE will sort and select records from a database file without dis- playing the file on-screen, which speeds up its operation considerably. It does not allow adjustments in display or RAM allocation. As is, ©BASE does not support index- ing. However, Personics Corp. will soon offer an ©BASE Options Pac that pro- vides this feature at an additional cost of $89.95. It will also give ©BASE the abil- ity to link two or more data files using a common field (giving it "relational" capabilities) and the ability to generate computed fields— all of which should place ©BASE more in line with Sil- verado. These two packages are roughly com- parable in the time each takes to execute a command, although, depending on the specific operation, one or the other may be slightly faster. For example, ©BASE is somewhat faster than Silverado at searching for a record because it doesn't use a special data window for its opera- tions. However, this is an obvious trade- off; since ©BASE uses the regular spreadsheet display, you can't view a spreadsheet and a separate database si- multaneously, as you can with Silverado. Although ©BASE is not a relational database manager, it can read and write dBASE files directly. It can even convert a 1-2-3 worksheet into a dBASE III or III Plus database on disk. This means you can also use 1-2-3 as a "front end" for existing dBASE applications— a boon to those whose data is heavily spreadsheet- oriented. In fact, the ability to analyze or convert files from 1-2-3 to dBASE format on disk, without bringing them on screen, is a real advantage for ©BASE. ©BASE has a report generator, though it is not nearly as comprehensive and flexible as Silverado's. You must define customized reports by retrieving a special worksheet file (provided on a distribution disk) and by redefining cell labels in it. This is much less flexible than the in- teractive Silverado report generator. ©BASE does not allow background forms generation. Like Silverado, ©BASE integrates well with 1-2-3. Also like Silverado, ©BASE can work in an "unlinked" mode; that is, you can manipulate data without necessarily transferring it into a worksheet. If you want to use any of the 1-2-3 functions or macros, you will need to transfer the data into a worksheet. ©BASE gives you somewhat more power in its unlinked mode, which pro- vides you with a "browse" window. You can display and query a database in a 172 BYTE- MAY 1988 DATABASE MANAGEMENT VIA 1-2-3 window on-screen and use the ©BASE analytical functions without importing the data into the worksheet. Since the data remains on disk, you do not use worksheet memory. In addition, ©BASE has a good data filter, so you can select records quickly and easily. You set the criteria for selec- tion through a series of prompts. You can use the data filter in the browse window. Getting up to Speed The learning curve is quite short for Sil- verado, owing to the excellent design of the program, the completeness of the documentation, and its operational simi- larity to 1-2-3. You can have an opera- tional database within minutes of install- ing Silverado, and you can construct simple reports within an hour. If you are familiar with 1-2-3 already, you will have no difficulty at all in using Silverado. If you are a new 1-2-3 user, it may take you a little longer to become used to the menu structure and cursor moves. If you get into trouble, the 1-2-3 help key (Fl) brings help for Silverado. Due to a poorly organized manual, it will take you somewhat longer to learn ©BASE. The program is not designed to be particularly friendly to the inexperi- enced user. It depends more heavily on built-in functions than Silverado does, and the menu commands require more steps. However, learning ©BASE is not difficult. You can create and query a database within several minutes, but you'll have to do it without an on-line help function to fall back on. Both Silverado and ©BASE have func- tions that they share with 1-2-3, such as SDBSUM and @DBMAX. Likewise, both have logical and database functions that you can use only within the database add-in. For example, Silverado lets you use data- base range functions, such as @UPT0 and ©THRU, and logical functions such as 8IS- FORMAT (for setting data format). ©BASE includes similar (though not always iden- tical) functions. It also contains more analytical database functions than Silver- ado, though you could use the Lotus macro capability to make Silverado per- form these functions. Manuals for both programs include reasonable tutorials that introduce the user to the general pro- gram features. For help in solving problems, Silver- ado comes with 6 months of free basic phone support for registered users, plus a free subscription to CA News, the Com- puter Associates newsletter. An extended SupportPlus maintenance plan is also available. Computer Associates does en- force its registration plan; you must give a valid registration number in order to get support. Personics gives unlimited phone support for ©BASE to any user, without asking for a registration number. One potential problem area with Sil- verado arises from its capacity for instant updates. Since data is in movement be- tween RAM and disk, you must set the data directory or insert a blank disk be- fore you create a new database; other- wise, an error may occur. Likewise, you cannot swap disks or change directories while performing database operations. Silverado automatically saves and closes database files, thus minimizing the risk of losing data. Both the documentation and the screen warn you of permanent field deletions. ©BASE lets you exit to DOS and ac- cess a file that ©BASE currently uses. However, if you do this, the program doesn't monitor changes made to the file, so you run a considerable risk of losing data. The documentation notes this dan- ger, but only on an insert sheet of "Late Additions." I encountered very few errors in using continued JTHEL llMVl^VII BRIDGE Why? Because The Brooklyn Bridge"' is the File Transfer Utility betwo IBM compatible desktop, laptop and PS/2 computers with features lik< • Power— immediate sharing of all peripherals and 5 new enhanced DOS utilities including dual independent processing • Versatility— bi-directional transfer between all size floppy and hard disks on any 2 computers • Ease of use— uses DOS commands you already know • Speed— the fastest serial transfer rate at 115,200 baud The Brooklyn Bridge can be yours for just $129.95. For more information contact your local dealer or White Crane Systems, Inc. at (404) 394-3119. Suile 151 6889 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard Norcross, Georgia 30092 THE BROOKLYN HUM > ■Uquiiilalfn.ru PCMaf IBM « I" CKANK SYSTEMS, ami Wlntr C .S Jinn jib rmdrmjrks nf Wtltl See us at Booth 4601 §i»;/Spring', Circle 308 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 173 DATABASE MANAGEMENT VIA 1-2-3 Table 1: The benchmark tests gave mixed results. Although Silverado was slow completing the sort test, it also created a new index in the process. The general lack of an index in @BASE resulted in a long wait when looking for a nonexistent record. Times are in minutes .seconds. Sort Search for last record Search for record #1001 Save file Load Index file file ©BASE 0:38 0:03 0:20 0:03 0:03 N/A Silverado: w/32K bytes of RAM 2:19 0:02 <0:01 0:36 1:22 0:16 w/256K bytes of RAM 1:55 0:02 <0:01 0:25 1:10 0:10 Note: Silverado displayed the entire database in its data window during these operations. Displaying a smaller window significantly speeds up completion of sort and retrieval operations. either program. My own data-input errors prompted most error messages. Silverado has a facility for validating data during entry. ©BASE uses the Lotus 1-2-3 data checker, which will beep at you if you enter an improperly formatted value into a cell. I tested both products with a database of 1000 records. I used an IBM PC XT with a hard disk drive and 512K bytes of RAM. I timed how long each system took to save and retrieve the file, to sort the file in reverse order (from ascending order to descending order or vice versa), and to search for the last record (record #1000) and a nonexistent record (record #1001). I also timed how long Silverado needed to index the file; ©BASE does not have an indexing capability. The results were mixed (see table 1). When I ran the sort on Silverado with a standard display format, it took addi- tional time to create an index and display each record; ©BASE was nearly 4 times faster. With a smaller display and on sub- sequent sorts, however, the times were comparable. ©BASE was many times faster than Silverado at saving or loading the database file. But, when it came to searching for a nonexistent record (a typi- cal error usually caused by an erroneous entry), Silverado responded instantly, while ©BASE took 20 seconds. The whole question of speed is tricky to define when dealing with these two database managers. Should you consider the actual speed in completing an opera- tion as separate from the information dis- played on the screen? When you sort or select from an ©BASE file, the results are not displayed automatically; you must go back to the menu and enter the data- browse mode to see anything. Silverado repaints the screen whenever you resort an open file, and while the sort itself is reasonably quick, the screen display is very slow if you have a large data window defined. v continued -^_J IN-HOUSE DATA TRANSMISSION MARATHON Out of breath Now go the Are your RS-232data lines out of breath before they cross the finish line? Are you restricted from placing your computers and peripherals where you need them due to the 50 foot limit imposed by the RS-232 standard? Now you can extend your serial data commu- nication lines up to 5000 feet without even at SO feet? distance. breathing hard. Using standard, inexpensive twisted pair telephone wiring and our easy- connect LD series long line drivers, you can achieve data rates in excess of 56 kilobits per second. Contact us today and we'll rush to get you more ffg^^ information... MlOVSH, 174 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 306 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 307) The problem is simple. Your XT is slow by today's personal computing standards, and it won't be able to run the software of tomorrow. You could trade it in for an AT® but you don't want to sacrifice aEasaKB^^xs the investment you've already made in moni- tors, disk drives and enhancements by buying a new computer. Now there's a simple solution If s the AST Xformer/286™ (pronounced "Transformer"), the ultra-fast, 10 MHz, 80286 system board that actually re- places the system board on your XT. With a few simple connections, you'll have increased processing speed, access to extended memory and assured compatibility with 80286 software. It's like getting a brand new AT-compatible computer— at a fraction of the cost Think about it Acceler- ated 80286 speed more available memory, com- patibility with XT and AT software, support for an 80287 math coprocessor and eight expansion slots (four of which are 16-bit) all add up to one very powerful computer. And there's one other feature that comes standard with the AST Xformer/ 286— built-in AST quality and relia- bility. With a history of enhancing over 2 million PCs, as well as produc- ing our own highly acclaimed AST Premium™ computers, we're a company you can count on to do tilings right For more information on how to change your XT, inside and out, call AST about the Xformer/ 286 at (714) 863-9991, operator AB008, or send in the coupon ® RcscnncH inc. Yes, please send me information on the AST Xformer/286" today. □ Please have an AST representative call me. Name _ Title _ Company _ Address City _State. _Zip_ ' Telephone I Send to: AST Research, Inc. 2121 Alton Avenue, Irvine j^CA 92714-4992, Ann: MC AST markets produce »orldwide-in Europe and the Middle East call: 44 ,568 4350, in the Ear East call 852 5 7,7223, In Canada call 416 826 75l4.ASrjyAST^ xt slemiandXJm,^286and ASrr^mu,,, ImdvmM ASTBesmrcK Inc. IBM and AT ngsfcmf and XT trademark MMW Business Mutter Corp. Copyrigfil w 19S7, AST research Inc. All riglUs reserved. Circle 27 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 28) BYLINE The Smoothest Ride You can program 1-2-3 to do almost any- thing, including database manipulations. But is it worth the effort? You can use the 1-2-3 macro language to force 1-2-3 to access multiple files and approximate a relational database manager, but doing so requires advanced programming skills and is very cumbersome. At $100 to $200, it's more economical and much more efficient to buy an add-in database management package like Silverado or ©BASE. Of course, neither package is quite the equivalent of a full-featured stand-alone database manager, such as dBASE III. For instance, neither has its own pro- gramming language. Both, however, can use the 1-2-3 macro language, which gives them considerable power and flexi- bility. In general, either package is capa- ble of satisfactory database performance on the scale that a 1-2-3 user would likely need. Someone whose chief concern is han- dling very large or complex databases should still opt for the speed and sophisti- cation (hashing algorithms, program- ming languages, and so forth) available only in a large, stand-alone database manager. Silverado and ©BASE are in- tended for the person who generally uses only Lotus 1-2-3 but definitely needs more speed and power in data handling and more flexibility in report generation. Overall, the feel of ©BASE is a lot more nuts-and-bolts than Silverado, which glides along, not bothering the user with trivia, such as file closing. In terms of power, performance is similar between the two programs. Silverado also has a significant advantage in that its indexing capability is built in, while ©BASE requires the additional, and yet- to-be tested, Options Pac. The Options Pac promises to make a major difference in terms of relational database handling, and some difference in speed. Silverado is a more refined and even better-designed program. Although ©BASE offers some powerful features, such as analysis and built-in statistical functions, it is significantly less easy to use and slower than Silverado unless you spring for the additional $89.95 Options Pac. It boils down to this: Silverado is a BMW with cruise control, while ©BASE is a stick-shift Chevy. Both will get you there, but the ride is more pleasant with Silverado. ■ Diana Gabaldon is the editor of Science Software and an assistant research pro- fessor at the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Byline Diana Gabaldon Desktop publishing for the IBM PC without extensive hardware Ashton-Tate's newest entry in the IBM PC -compatible side of desktop publish- ing differs from most other desktop-pub- lishing packages. First, it does not re- quire a mouse, nor much hardware. Second, it is relatively inexpensive. Byline 1.0 is for people with fairly simple desktop-publishing applications in mind. While competent at the things it does, it doesn't have the power of estab- lished large packages like Ventura Pub- lisher and PageMaker. On the other hand, it has features with considerable range and flexibility and is remarkably easy to use. It's ideal if you would like to produce stylish reports and general-pur- pose business documents, but don't want to set up as a professional typesetter. To run Byline, you need an IBM PC or compatible with two 360K-byte 5 '4 -inch floppy disk drives (or a hard disk drive and one floppy disk drive), 384K bytes of RAM, a graphics adapter and display, and DOS 2.0 or higher. It supports a number of 9-pin and 24-pin dot-matrix printers, as well as several laser printers, including Apple's LaserWriter, Laser- Writer Plus, and other PostScript de- vices. It sells for $295. Easy Operation Byline's greatest strength is its ease of use. While out-and-out typesetting pack- ages like TgX take weeks of work to mas- ter, and the "big" desktop-publishing packages take days, you can have Byline producing respectable documents within an hour. The package works with a vertically split screen. The right side displays a "minipage," a small image of the laid- out document in progress. The left side of the screen is for several things: layout specifications, the main menu, and edit- ing of text files. Naturally, you wouldn't use the left side for all these things simul- taneously; the left screen defaults to lay- out specifications. You can call the main menu anytime with F10 and load a text file for editing by pressing F8. When called, the main menu or a text file temporarily replace the layout specifica- tions, which return automatically when you discard the menu or store the text file. You can zoom either side of the screen to fill the entire screen by pressing F7. Most frequently, you'll want to view the minipage up close to check text. Zoom overdoes it a bit here. When you zoom a minipage, the top half of the page fills the screen; you have to use the down arrow to view the bottom half. Of course, this pre- serves the minipage 's proportions, but it sometimes makes it hard to tell whether text ends where you want it. The key definitions are logically de- signed; in general, arrow keys select functions, Return executes any selected function, and Escape gets you out of whatever you are doing. The keyboard template provided is largely unnecessary. Each function key has only one function, and most are displayed in the bottom-of- screen menu most of the time. The package works from two types of menus: bottom-of-screen function-key menus and a main pop-up menu in two tiers. The menus are small and well de- signed. The main menu is especially nice— very compact and explicit. The second tier of choices for each high- lighted main choice pops up as you move the cursor over the first-tier choices. Si- multaneously, a very detailed help prompt pops up beneath the menu, telling you what that choice does. Fl produces a context-sensitive help screen at any point in the program, and most of these are, in fact, helpful. Besides the menus and function keys, Byline has several useful speed keys, which execute functions directly without going through a menu. These include a Quick Save function and keys for execut- ing an alternate view or preview of a page. With these functions, you can view two pages simultaneously or obtain an overview of your document, among other things. Byline also has a keystroke-capture utility, which you can use to produce boilerplate text, automate frequently per- formed operations, or integrate Byline operations with DOS batch files. Byline has a speed key that you can use to open a DOS window. There is a limit to the size of the publi- cations that Byline can handle, but this is difficult to specify. Maximum size is de- termined not only by the number of pages, but by the number and type of ele- 176 BYTE* MAY 1988 BYLINE merits you include in the publication. Generally, you should have no problem with 100 pages or even more. You can adjust both leading and kern- ing in Byline. Adjusting leading (the space between lines of text) is simple; you just change the numbers in a spec sheet. Changing kerning (the space between let- ters) is more complicated; you must edit a kerning table for the specific typeface in use, and you must adjust kerning one let- ter pair at a time, which is simple, but very tedious. Flexible Page Construction Byline is quite flexible in its approach to document construction. Using the layout specification menus, you can develop "master pages" that are basically style sheets for the document. Master pages control margins, column placement, and general page formatting. In addition, you can completely customize a page by creating text elements or photo elements. An element is an empty shape that you place on the page, using the arrow keys to drag a square to the desired position. Once you determine the initial position for an element, you can change the size and shape by typing measurements (given in inches) into the chart of layout specifi- cations at the left side of the screen. Each element has its own spec sheet, which de- fines the left, right, top, and bottom bounds of the element, number of col- umns, typeface and type size for headings and body text, vertical rules between col- umns, and solid borders for the element, if you want them. You can change an element's size, shape, or other attributes at any time. Making many changes can be compli- cated, however; you may cause elements to overlap. Overlapping elements don't have any boundaries in the area where they intersect, so the minipage may be confusing to look at. Fortunately, you can discard a messed - up page or file. Loading a new file erases the one displayed. You can enter text under a specified filename after assign- ing the filename to a page or element, or you can assign a file with already existing text to a page or element. If you assign an existing text file to an element, the text is poured into the element displayed on the minipage. The photo editor works simi- larly, inserting material from a graphics file into an element displayed on the minipage. When you pour text or a graphics file into an element, it likely won't fit exactly on the first try. If the text fills more or less space than the element has reserved, you might need to resize or reshape the element. You can do this easily by chang- ing parameters in the spec layout menu on the left side of the screen. If the text overflows the element, the surplus text is simply not displayed, unless you have assigned the same text file to several ele- ments. In this case, the text fills the ele- ments in turn. One minor difficulty is that sometimes an element will not be large enough to accommodate both text and borders. You must keep a certain minimum distance between the edge of a border and the nearest text. If you make a long, skinny element with fat borders, for example, there might not be enough room in the middle for text to display, because the necessary empty spaces on the insides of the borders overlap. The program does not warn you when this occurs. The ele- ment shape and borders will display on the minipage and will print correctly, but no text will appear inside the element, even though the text file is correctly as- signed. This is easily curable by expand- ing the size of the element or by reducing the size of the borders, but a novice user might easily wonder what on earth hap- pened to the text in that element. Adequate Text Editor You can zoom the left side of the page so that the text file you are editing can fill the whole screen. The text editor is fairly simple, but adequate. It has standard cursor moves, including PageUp, Page- Down, and word-by- word moves. The text editor includes character styles such as underlining, bold, italic, superscript, and subscript. However, you can't turn these styles on as you type. You must enter text, then define the block of text that you want to underline, embolden, and so forth, and select the appropriate style. The text editor includes a cut-and- paste facility, a go-to-page capability, and a Find function, all of which are as- signed to function keys. The program adds your changes to the right-hand pasted-up minipage. The package can cut or copy a block of text, photo, or what have you to a clipboard, where it will re- main until you overwrite it with another one. One of the nicest features of Byline is the connection between a text or graphics file on the left and the minipage on the right. The minipage layout reflects any editing changes you make to the source file as soon as you save the source file. This is something many bigger packages don't have. Ventura Publisher, for exam- ple, forces you to exit the desktop pub- lisher entirely and load a text file into an external text editor or word processor for major editing changes (you can make small replacements and deletions inside Ventura). After editing, you then reenter Byline 1.0 Type Low-end desktop-publishing program Company Ashton-Tate 20101 Hamilton Ave. Torrance, CA 90502 (203) 522-2116 Format Five 5 1 /4-inch floppy disks; not copy-protected Language Assembly Hardware Needed IBM PC or compatible with two 360K- byte 5 1 /4-inch floppy disk drives (or one floppy disk drive and a hard disk drive), 384K bytes of RAM, DOS 2.0 or higher, and a graphics display and adapter (e.g., CGA, EGA, Hercules, or Hercules Plus) Documentation 307-page user's manual; Customer Support Guide; keyboard template; printer's sizing guide Price $295 Inquiry 901. the desktop publisher and reload the text file. In Byline, you can move back and forth from editor to layout with one or two keystrokes. Byline automatically up- dates a publication file whenever you change its source files, text, or photos. However, if you want to save a copy of a publication with an earlier version of source files, the Archive utility lets you do so. The text editor can also directiy import text files produced by several popular word processors: Xy Write II, III, and ffl Plus; WordPerfect 4. 1 and 4.2; WordStar 3.3 and 4.0; and MultiMate 3.3, Multi- Mate Advantage, and MultiMate Advan- tage II. Naturally, you can use plain ASCH text files. Photo Imports In addition to the text editor, Byline has a photo editor. Analogous to the text edi- tor, the photo editor occupies the left side of the screen when you define a photo ele- ment. The photo editor uses the arrow continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 177 BYLINE > cr ° hony^ Hows- ' 1 • n,s ^' , more- tus Auto' any cA P, rrio C K9 nte e (216) Ann /innn Tele * 6502820864 t|Oy-*Hjy I Fax (216) 439-4093 25971 Cannon Road • Cleveland, Ohio44146 London 11)7.141 86-12-87 • Paris 1 1 ) 34810178 • Zurich (01) 821 9444 Milan 02-4 S 20360 • Linkoping 01 3 II 01 40 • Amsterdam 01830-35333 Vienna (0222)253626 • Munich .and oilier European. North African, and Middle hast countries nol listed (089)710020. keys to crop an image to the desired dimensions. Byline directly imports quite a few dif- ferent graphics file formats, and it is not at all picky about filenames and exten- sions. It can directly use worksheet files from Lotus 1-2-3 versions 1A and 2.0; Symphony 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2; graphs from Lotus and Symphony (.PIC files); PC Paintbrush and PC Paintbrush Plus images; Publisher's Paintbrush images; MacPaint images; Fontasy Art folders; Windows Paint files; and high-resolution graphics saved in the BASICA BSAVE format. The program also imports .DBF and .-NDX files created from dBASE III Plus. I tried Byline with Lotus 1-2-3 worksheet and graph files in the photo editor with no problem. In addition to the standard graphics file formats, Byline imports images scanned by any scanner that produces images in the ZSoft (PC Paintbrush) format. Also, Byline's own camera utility, which takes snapshots of screens (such as Framework II pie charts and graphs) and stores them in a format Byline can use, can capture screens from any IBM PC graphics pro- gram. The camera utility is a terminate- and-stay-resident program, and it takes about 8K bytes of overhead. A Few Limitations Desktop-publishing packages, by their nature, tend to be slow, especially on an IBM PC. The constant screen rewriting required by layout edits even slows down packages running on 80386 machines. However, running as it does on an IBM PC or clone, Byline is really slow. Screen painting of a new minipage takes 3 to v 7 seconds. While Byline isn't in the same league with big desktop-publishing packages, you can't help making comparisons. By- line's most significant limitation is that it cannot do landscape orientation. Also, you can do portrait-orientation docu- ments only on pages that are 8V2 by 11 inches or smaller. Otherwise, limitations fall mostly in the realm of special effects; there is no reverse printing, solid-block printing, or special symbols available. Byline borders are limited to solid lines, and only solid-line vertical rules are available. You can achieve some special effects by nesting elements with different border specifications or creating grids using Byline's column grid feature, but this is not as simple or as varied as the selections from a Ventura menu. Byline uses rectangular elements only. Though you can have multiple columns within elements, you can't have irregu- larly shaped elements. This means that you can't flow text with irregular margins or with dropped initial letters, or at least not without an unconscionable amount of trouble. Byline includes only five available typefaces: Times, Courier, Bookman, Swiss, and dBASE Elite. This is adequate for most business and general-purpose documents, but far less than the type se- lection usable with bigger desktop-pub- lishing packages. Typefaces in large packages are virtually unlimited, as soft- ware like Ventura Publisher and Page- Maker can use downloadable software fonts. Byline can't. Desktop Publishing for the Masses On the plus side, the user's manual is very good, especially for the first release of a new product. The manual includes a tutorial, reference guide, glossary, and index, with a small "Other Information" section for advanced users. This section has instructions for such things as editing the kerning tables, as well as details on importing various kinds of text and graphics files. There are chapters on mail-merge, database publishing, and the archive utility. I found the error trapping to be satis- factory. The program detected and warned me about an unready printer and an open drive door, and after I corrected the condition, it resumed execution prop- erly. Few other error messages occurred while I was using the program, but all of them were adequate. Technical support is classic Ashton- Tate; a labyrinth of telephone operators, but very well organized. The package comes with 90 days of free technical sup- port, provided that you send in your reg- istration card. The first call is free, re- gardless, but your registration card must be in before you can call again. After 90 days, you have to purchase one of the company's paid support plans. Some companies have policies like this but don't enforce them. Ashton-Tate does. Basically, Byline is desktop publishing for the masses. You need not have ex- pensive hardware or spend a lot for the software, either. The package is very friendly— thoughtfully laid out and easy to use. It's also very egalitarian in the kinds of files it will work with. However, it's not meant for highly sophisticated jobs that require lots of fancy special ef- fects. One thing to bear in mind when comparing a package like this to bigger packages, such as PageMaker and Ven- tura Publisher, is that the average desk- top-publishing user is generally going to use only about 70 percent of the features that a big package offers. If you can do without landscape orientation and special printing effects, Byline is an excellent value. ■ continued Circle 143 on Reader Service Card If you can see the difference, you must be looking at the price. Hewlett-Packard Company 18110 S.E. 34th Street Camas, WA 98607 Dear Reader: This letter was printed on two of the finest printers available today. One half on a laser prints r, the other on the new HP DeskJet Printer. But which one pr inted which half? Hard to tell, isn't it? Small and quiet enough for your ow n desk, our HP DeskJet Printer gives you clean, crisp text and gr aphics. Just like a laser. You get perfect printing from A to Z. Look for yourself. The New HP DeskJet Printer. Laser-Quality Output for Under WOO. HEWLETT PACKARD ©Hewlett-Packard Co. 1987 Circle 132 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 - BYTE 179 A NEW-WAVE SPREADSHEET A New- Wave Spreadsheet Keith Weiskamp NexView combines spreadsheet practicality and relational power Just when it seemed that spreadsheets were going to give up the torch to the new technologies of hypertext or expert sys- tems, the second wave hit. Now spread- sheets are smarter, faster, slicker, and easier to use. NexView, the relational spreadsheet from ADC & Associates ($595), is one of this new breed of spreadsheets. It supports relational attri- butes, a powerful concept inherited from database technology. With NexView, you can create spreadsheets and easily link them to each other using the product's built-in Distributed Spreadsheet Data- base System (DSDS). The Essentials NexView 1.1B runs on the IBM XT, AT, or compatibles with a hard disk drive, at least 512K bytes of RAM, and a mono- chrome or graphics display adapter. While I ran the program on an IBM PC XT, the company recommends an AT- class computer for best performance. NexView is a mode-based program that includes spreadsheet, ready, auto, help, report, formula, and edit modes. Spreadsheet mode supports the typical Lotus 1-2-3-like menu system. In this mode, you can enter and edit data, read spreadsheet files, edit macros, and select any of the other modes and commands. Ready mode provides a powerful com- mand-language interpreter that processes a variety of instructions, from customiz- ing the screen to reading ASCII files into NexView 's editor. Auto mode executes NexView commands stored in user-de- fined logic and macro files. You can acti- vate a special help mode at any time to display pop-up help windows and on-line index cards. To generate custom reports on spreadsheet files, NexView provides a report mode. The formula and edit modes let you process spreadsheet for- mulas and edit NexView files. Spreadsheet mode acts as the gateway to all the major commands and modes. The developers of NexView went out of their way to create an environment that looks like 1-2-3. Unfortunately, while the initial menu bars greatly resemble 1-2-3's, the results, after you select an item, are far different from anything Lotus does. You can select commands using a highlighted letter or function key. If you get stuck, help is available from anywhere within the program from the on-line manual or the on-line help index cards and pop-up help windows, which appear when you select commands that require data entry. NexView introduces the concept of the "super spreadsheet," a device that you use to link multiple spreadsheet win- dows. Once inside the spreadsheet mode, you can define the size of the super spreadsheet and divide it into as many as nine different windows. NexView re- serves the tenth window as the default for the super spreadsheet. The windows are a nice feature, because they let you read or edit data and perform calculations in one region of the super spreadsheet without affecting the other areas. You can also perform operations in such a way that the relationships between a set of windows (spreadsheets) are represented in another window. For example, you can define a super spreadsheet with 20 rows and 60 columns and divide it into three windows. You can also dimension each window as 20 rows by 20 columns. Window 1 represents col- umns A to T, window 2 represents col- umns U to AN, and window 3 represents columns AM to BH. Now you can select window 2 as the active window and read data from a Lotus spreadsheet file into this window (columns U to AN in the super spreadsheet). You can repeat this operation using the second window and a different spreadsheet file and then add the two windows containing data together and place the result in the third window. The concept is powerful. The windows allow you to better organize both your data and the types of calculations that you need to perform. Unfortunately, to really pull off these features, NexView needs an improved user interface. When working with the super spreadsheet, I found it dif- ficult to keep track of which region was assigned to a given window. NexView lets you use a function key to toggle be- tween a view of the window mapping of the super spreadsheet and the normal spreadsheet mode. I found that constantly flipping between views was a clumsy and confusing way to work. Ready mode really expands the power and flexibility of NexView. It provides a command interpreter that allows you to perform operations such as reading ASCII files, executing a file of stored commands, searching and replacing se- lected data in a spreadsheet, setting the foreground and background color of the screen, and selecting other editing com- mands. It supports over 35 commands. Comparing Apples to Apples Let's face it, there are a lot of new spread- sheets on the market. The latest trend, es- tablished recently by the release of Bor- land's Quattro and Microsoft's Excel for the PC, is toward the modern interface sporting features such as high-quality presentation graphics, windows, context- sensitive help, and multiple fonts. Nex- View, on the other hand, is designed around an older technology similar to that found in 1-2-3 version 2. NexView does not support a mouse, PostScript, or graphics. In general, NexView supports most of the basic features found in the other major spreadsheet packages, including macros, a limited degree of 1-2-3 com- patibility, formula support, mathemati- cal and statistical functions, symbolic labels (NexView calls these lexicons, which are user-defined labels that refer- ence rows and columns in a spreadsheet), and a wide assortment of spreadsheet editing features. Although NexView can read and write 1-2-3 files, it's not truly compatible. First off, it does not support all the stan- dard mathematical functions that 1-2-3 provides. In fact, I discovered that NexView does not currently provide a square root function (@SQRT). If you're a real 1-2-3 or Quattro power user, you'll miss the useful set of mathematical func- tions that these programs provide. Nex- View also uses a different formula syntax than 1-2-3. In 1-2-3, functions are pref- aced with §, as in 20 + @L0G(A2) . Nex- View uses a syntax of the form A,#l = 20 + L0G(A,#2). The second compatibility problem is NexView 's method of storing and using macros. Lotus 1-2-3 stores macros in in- dividual spreadsheet cells. NexView macros are actually stored in macro files. Because of this technique, you can use the same NexView macro on multiple spreadsheets. Unfortunately, it also means that you cannot use 1-2-3 macro files in NexView spreadsheets. You can use the macro-learn mode to create and continued 180 BYTE- MAY 1988 asking How to look good from start . . . vl to finish. The HP LaserJet Series II Printer. Nothing brings your ideas to life like the HP LaserJet Series n Printer— from office memos to forms to newsletters. As the leading laser printer, it works with all popular PCs and PC software packages. And, with a wide range of fonts, you get more options to create superior looking documents. 9 — ' With additional memory you can even print sophisticated 300 DPI full-page graphics. And with HP's ScanJet scanner, you can also easily add photographs, illustrations and text. No wonder more people choose the original over all other laser printers combined. So call 1 800 752-0900, Ext. 900D for your nearest HP dealer. HEWLETT PACKARD © Hewlett-Packard 1988 Circle 133 on Reader Service Card Print samples were created using Microsoft Word. Microsoft Excel, and Aldus PageMaker MAY 1988 'BYTE 181 Circle 141 on Reader Service Card A NEW-WAVE SPREADSHEET Integrand's new Chassis/System is not another IBM mechanical and electrical clone. An entirely fresh packaging design approach has been taken using modular construction. At present, over 40 optional slock modules allow you to customize our standard chassis to nearly any requirement. Integrand offers high quality, advanced design hardware along with applications and technical support all at prices competitive with imports. Why settle for less? Rack & Desk PC/AT Chassis Rack & Desk Models Accepts PC, XT, AT Motherboards and Passive Backplanes D oesn 't Look Like IBM Rugged, Modular Construction Excellent Air Flow & Cooling Optional Card Cage Fan Designed to meet FCC 204 Watt Supply, UL Recognized 145W& 85Walso available Reasonably Priced RESEARCH CORP. Call or write for descriptive brochure and prices: 8620 Roosevelt Ave. • Visalia, CA 93291 209/651-1203 TELEX 5106012830 (INTEGRAND UD) EZUNK 62926572 We accept BankAmericard/VISA and MasterCard IBM. PC, XT, AT trademarks of Internationa] Business Machines. Drives and computer boards not included. 182 BYTE- MAY 1988 NexView I. IB Type Relational spreadsheet Company ADC & Associates Inc. P.O. Box 273 Marlboro, NJ 07746 (201)536-1524 Format Four 5 1 /4-inch floppy disks; not copy-protected Language C Hardware Needed IBM PC XT, PC AT, or compatible with a hard disk drive, at least 51 2K bytes of RAM, and a monochrome or graphics display adapter (AT-class PC recommended) Software Needed PC-DOS/MS-DOS 2.0 or higher Documentation 261 -page Reference Manual; 100-page Beginners Guide Price $595 Inquiry 900. test a set of macros for the current spreadsheet. You can also save these macros in a file of their own, independent of the spreadsheet you created them for. You can later use the macros with other spreadsheet files. Macros are easy to create and modify because of NexView 's interactive macro-development envi- ronment. Relational Features With NexView 's relational capabilities, you can link Lotus-compatible data files and perform operations on data from se- lected spreadsheets. By linking files using the DSDS, you can merge work- sheet files, or you can piece together smaller spreadsheets to create a very large spreadsheet. The DSDS provides its own menu, and you can access it from the spreadsheet mode, the formula command prompt, or a logic file. The DSDS maintains a mas- ter database file for each set of spread- sheets that you link. You can easily ac- cess this master file to obtain information about the linked spreadsheets, such as the number of linked spreadsheets, the range of the labels (lexicons) you used to link spreadsheets, and the ranges of the linked spreadsheet files. This feature helps you keep track of how spreadsheets are re- lated to each other when you use the DSDS. Since you can specify all opera- tions in the DSDS by using symbolic names, linking spreadsheets isn't as diffi- cult as you might think. Keep in mind, however, that the complexity of the rela- tionships stored in a super spreadsheet can rapidly increase as you start to link spreadsheet files. If you want to take full advantage of NexView 's linking capability, you'll need to master the BASIC-like custom programming language that NexView provides. The language contains over 40 instructions for performing mathematical operations and expressing logical rela- tionships. You can type the instructions interactively in ready mode, or you can create a file of instructions and execute them. NexView stores instructions in logic files, which are organized into two sections: data instructions and rules. Data instructions perform tasks such as data I/O, setting windows, and setting ac- cess limits to cells in the spreadsheet. Rules, on the other hand, alter data cur- rently stored in a spreadsheet. Logic files let you completely custom- ize NexView for other users. One of the more useful features is the SINPUT in- struction, which displays a question and performs an action based on the user's re- sponse. With the conditional expression statements, such as IF, ELSE, and FOR, you also can easily test relationships be- tween cells in a spreadsheet and execute additional instructions. Debugging help is important with a complex language such as this, and NexView lets you run a program in single-step mode where you can execute one instruction at a time and see the results of each operation. NexView 's report generator is another useful programmable feature. You can print reports that reflect the status of the data stored in a super spreadsheet, display reports on the screen, or save them in a disk file. To support this fea- ture, NexView provides a set of instruc- tions to specify the rules for generating reports. The program stores these in- structions in line-oriented ASCII files, called report files, or in other files (e.g. , logic files). Instructions define attributes for the report, such as the dimensions (width and number of lines per page), the titles for rows and columns, and the ranges to specify the number of columns and rows to include in a report. Ease of Use The basic spreadsheet data-entry and editing commands are relatively easy to continued Every presenter wants to make a com- pelling, persuasive case. And color, you'll agree, makes all the difference. n It's more eye- catching. More * readily under- ■ — — stood. More memorable. In short, color makes any desktop presentation more effective. And research proves it. All you need is a Hewlett-Packard ColorPro Plotter like we used here, or the HP PaintJet Color Graphics Printer. Together with a PC— IBM compatible or Apple Macintosh— you can use all the popular graphics software like Lotus Freelance Plus, Cricket Presents, HP's Graphics Gallery (used below), Microsoft Chart and Harvard Graphics. At under $1,300, the HP ColorPro Plotter may be just where you want to start. It will turn your ideas into colorful, easy-to-grasp visuals. Or, if you need to combine near-letter quality text with color graphics, you can rely on the HP PaintJet Color Graphics Printer for under $1,400. Whichever you choose, you'll create desktop presentations with startling color and greater impact. For a colorful sample overhead and the name of your nearest dealer, call 1 800 752-0900, Ext. 903A. Freelance Plus 1 ' 1 and Lotus-' are U.S. registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation. Microsoft'' c is a U S registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. © Hewlett-Packard 1988 HEWLETT PACKARD Circle 134 on Reader Service Card Guess whichpresentation made the sale. A NEW-WAVE SPREADSHEET perform, especially if you're familiar with 1-2-3. Menus at the top or bottom of the screen list all the basic editing com- mands. NexView reserves the menu at the top of the screen for listing commands for calculating formulas, editing and run- ning macros, altering the dimensions of the super spreadsheet, and loading and saving files. You can select any of these commands by entering a single letter. The bottom menu is reserved for the function key operations. NexView uses the function keys to perform tasks such as activating the command mode, setting the current window, and calling the on-line help system. In addition, NexView uses the function keys and control key combi- nations as command shortcuts. You can easily customize NexView by setting help levels and selecting the fore- ground and background colors of the spreadsheet mode screen. When you first use the program, I recommend that you set the help level to the basic level, which causes pop-up help windows to be dis- played whenever NexView expects a re- sponse. The information displayed in the help windows is useful and in most cases saves you from having to use the manual. In general, the documentation is well written and easy to use. The product in- cludes an eight-part Beginner's Guide and a Reference Manual, all packaged in a small three-ring binder. The Beginner's Guide starts with the basics on how to use the program and then covers most of the major topics of NexView, including load- ing 1-2-3 files, working with the super spreadsheet and windows, moving around menus, creating formulas, creat- ing and editing macros, and using the basic spreadsheet entry and editing com- mands. Unfortunately, the tutorial text does not provide any useful information on some of the more interesting and powerful features of NexView, such as the DSDS, the reporting features, and the logic programming commands. The Reference Manual suffers from the same problems of organization and in- dexing found in many reference manuals. I discovered that some of the basic math- ematical functions, such as log, were not documented in the manual. Because of this, it is difficult to determine which functions the program supports. In fact, I had to call ADC's technical-support of- fice to find out if NexView supports the standard functions found in 1-2-3. The coverage of macros is also very brief; the manual devotes only nine pages to this topic. Fortunately, the Beginner's Guide presents a fairly complete tutorial on how to create, edit, and use macros. NexView contains a wide assortment of powerful commands and features, but I found it difficult to extract the needed information out of the Reference Manual in order to use these features and commands. NexView does provide an on-line man- ual with a search feature. You can select the manual by pressing the F8 key from the main menu in the spreadsheet mode. Once you activate the on-line manual, you can select a topic using the cursor keys, or you can use the built-in search feature to locate a topic. If you use the search feature, be patient because it re- sponds agonizingly slowly. I searched for the topic "help" and it took NexView over 3 minutes to search the manual file. NexView provides a utility program that lets you customize the on-line help sys- tem. You can use a standard word proces- sor to add, remove, or modify text in the on-line help file and then run the utility program to index the file for NexView. Performance Trade-Offs I reviewed NexView on an IBM PC XT with a 10-megabyte hard disk drive and no coprocessor. Since NexView does not continued Before you buy 7 books and 2 compilers, get the C Workshop. C is a great programming language. Now the C Workshop makes it easy. Whether you're new to pro- gramming or a dBase pro. You get: • Interactive tutorial with 100+ program examples • Full-screen editor with popup menus • Online help in context • Standard "K&R" C compiler • Coordinated 384-page book The C Workshop guides you with feedback on your program exer- cises. It's like getting private les- sons from your computer. Only the C Workshop gives you everything you need to learn and use C in one economical package. Move among tutorial, editor and compiler with a keystroke or two. It's all in RAM memory to give you instant response. Here's the clearest presentation of C pointers you'll find. The C Workshop covers it all, from struc- tured programming to advanced list techniques. Write your own programs (up to 64K) or modules of a big project. Your code will move to virtually any other compiler. Join major companies like AT&T and thousands of people like Al Patrizio, who says, "What I learned in five days with your book and software has taken me over a month before." ComputerWorld's William Zach- mann advises, "I'd offer the C Workshop, an extremely well-done in- structional package, to anybody on my staff who wanted one." Satisfaction guaranteed or return in 30 days for refund. Order now and C how easy it is! r^i"(800) 880-0852] i ext. 955. It's toll-free! ; ! Or write Wordcraft, 3827 Penniman , l Av, Oakland, CA 94619. Only $69.95 I | plus $5 shipping ^ = ^^ j | (Priority Mail). In CA, / | | i I add $4.90 sales tax. H wordcraft ! [ Visa/MC/AmEx or l | I j I check. Runs on IBM ^ i PC compatibles, uses ■■■■■T j ] 220K RAM. j 184 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 312 on Reader Service Card GetyourPC and phone working together... without a modem. INTRODUCTORY OFFER $QQ95 ONLY KJZ/ + SHIPPING Introducing a totally new voice communication product that makes it easy for people to stay in touch. NyTalk integrates your telephone and IBM PC, XT, AT, compatibles or PS/2 without the use and cost of a modem. It is ideal for use in tele- marketing, sales, credit collec- tions, corporate, professional and personal applications. Perfect, fast dialing at the touch of a key. No more costly wrong long distance numbers! NyTalk consists of a half size card providing all dialing functions, as well as software which provides a powerful resident directory, extended dialing and telephone statis- tical functions. It's as easy to use as your telephone, and as simple to install. And at $89.95, talk is cheap. FEATURES ® pop-up the directory when the hand- set is lifted or the line is engaged, e directory entry dialing, last number re-dial, speed dialing, dial by tag, keypad dialing, manual screen dialing. • dial any number automatically from any form displayed on your screen. Ideal for use with mainframe data bases. • automatically records the duration of calls for each directory entry. • records the last time and date an entry was called. • records the total number of calls, total time on phone, and the average time per call. © maintains a detailed telephone log. • directories are provided which con- tain area codes for the CIS, Canada and codes for international calls. s> print and file conversion utilities are provided so that directories may be utilized with a variety of applications such as dBase III and Lotus 1-2-3. « design your own application which makes use of NyTalk's extended dialing functionality, o works with standard telephone lines and most PBXs. TM YOU'RE TALKING. FOR IMMEDIATE SHIPMENT 1-800-668-8620 Alaska, Hawaii: (416) 470-1203 Circle 138 on Reader Service Card HUMMINGBIRD COMMUNICATIONS LTD. 104-60 Queens Blvd. Forest Hills, NY. NY 11375 NyTalk - Hummingbird Communications Ltd.; IBM, PC, \ XT, AT, PS/2 - International Business Machines; dBase I Ashton Tate Inc.; Lotus 1-2-3 - Lotus Development Corporation. A NEW-WAVE SPREADSHEET provide arctangent or natural log (In) functions, I was unable to run the Savage benchmark, which is based on the follow- ing formula: tan(arctan(exp(ln(sqrt ((PREV_CELL)~2)))))+1 When I entered this formula in Nex- View's formula mode, the program locked up the computer. I was, however, able to run the Recalc benchmark for both 1-2-3 and NexView. To run the Recalc test in 1-2-3, you copy a formula created with relative addressing to each spreadsheet cell. When you place a value in the first cell, the complete spreadsheet automatically recalculates. This process took 9Vi seconds. When I ran the benchmark on Nex- View, it was not as easy. To begin with, the program does not provide a mecha- nism for easily assigning formulas to spreadsheet cells. In order to run the benchmark, I had to use NexView's logic programming language. The second problem occurred because I had diffi- NOW THERE'S AN EXPERT SYSTEM EVEN THESE GUYS CAN USE. Expert systems aren't just for experts anymore. Thousands of our customers use lst-CLASS® to help troubleshoot complex equip- ment, assist with telephone support, analyze financial applications, and prepare complex documents. lst-CLASS Expert Systems are the recognized industry leaders in ease of use. They require no training to use, and no royalty pay- ments when you distribute your work. Whether you're saving money for your company or making money selling knowl- edge systems, we'll make your performance lst-CLASS. For IBM® PC and DEC VAX"" computers. Priced from $495 to $1295. T^CLASS Expert Systems, Inc. For more information, or to order, call toll-free today: 1-800-872-8812 (1-617-358-7722 in MA) 286 Boston Post Road Way land, MA 01778 culty with one of the logic statements. NexView provides a REPEAT instruction for duplicating a task or set of tasks; how- ever, this instruction did not always func- tion consistently. The operation that failed was B,#l = (A,#l) * 1.001 REPEAT 99 This statement instructs the program to multiply the contents of cell (A,l) by 1 .001, place the results in (B,l), and re- peat the operation for each column in the first row. Each time the program repeats the instruction, the column index is auto- matically incremented. Unfortunately, this statement would not always repeat the specified number of times. A call to the technical-support group at ADC revealed that the REPEAT instruction has a serious bug. A spokesman for ADC said any users experiencing this bug should call the company for information on a free update. I discovered an alternative approach for performing the benchmark by using an instruction called GROWTH, which in- creases a cell value by a specified per- centage. In order to use this instruction to perform the Recalc operation for each row in the spreadsheet, I had to write a program that included 25 GROWTH instruc- tions. Using this logic file, NexView re- quired 35 seconds to perform the Recalc benchmark. In the Scroll Right benchmark, where the display scrolls from the first column of the spreadsheet to the last, NexView beat 1-2-3, taking 1 minute and 12 sec- onds, compared to 1-2-3's 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Not for Beginners NexView is not a program designed for beginning spreadsheet users. The com- plexity of the program make it difficult to use at times. Although it contains a menu system similar to 1-2-3 and provides a complete on-line manual, many of the features and commands differ signifi- cantly from those of 1-2-3. If you're looking only for a program that has true 1-2-3 compatibility and supports graph- ics, NexView might not meet your needs. However, if you're looking for an anal- ysis tool that has the capability of linking spreadsheets and producing detailed re- ports, you'll appreciate NexView's ad- vanced features. NexView offers many state-of-the-art spreadsheet processing capabilities, but you'll need to put on your programmer's hat in order to take advantage of its real power. ■ Keith Weiskamp is the editor of PC AI magazine and a freelance writer living in Phoenix, Arizona. 186 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 3 on Reader Service Card i NORTON UTIUTIES DATA RECOVERY DISK MANAGEMENT Pot tiw Cflfrtpleie iiiM't'C tmtity ind compttibtog, ■ "Don't compute without it!' - New York Times. ■ "Highly jm, 1 m W r\ recommended for business users," I 1 I I J —Time-Life Access Newsletter, ■ "Indispensable."— PC Maga- \„' . BP zine. ■ "Essential in dav-to-dav ^^^^ personal computing."— Personal Computing Magazine. ■ Three years voted "World Class" Best Utilities, -PC World. ■ "A pleasure to use."- PC Week. ■ "You 'II bless this disk." -Peter McWilliams/ The Personal Computer Book, A life saver for your data. us fne n,n„ " Now i& not so lonely at the top. At last After five long years alone at the top of the best-seller lists, the Norton Utilities™ is being challenged by another software package. Which is no small feat considering that Version 4.0 is selling even faster than its prede- cessors did. Unfair competition. Of course, in order to compete with the Utilities, this upstart new package first had to copy it It had to include the famous UnErase" which has rescued the derrieres of thousands of grateful PC users. As well as the unique File Info, which lets you attach de- scriptions of up to 65 characters to your files. Not to mention the Norton Integrator, which lets you con- trol everything from a single program and gives you on-line help for each function. In fact The Advanced Edition of the Norton Utilities includes every single one of the features, functions and enhancements that have made Version 4.0 so popular. Right down to the user inter- face which, according to the InfoWorld Review Board makes the Advanced Edition "as easy to use as possible." Andthafs not all. The more the merrier. Because the Advanced Edition goes on to include a wish list of brand new technical features and functions. Like Speed Disk, for tighten- ing up disk space and optimiz- ing access. And Format Recover, for unformatting your accidentally reformatted hard disk. As well as a FAT Editor, a Par- tition Table Editor, a Directory Editor and access to absolute disk sectors. All of which explains why InfoWorld called the Advanced Edition "a great program that has gotten even better." We just call it good company. CSpter Norton- COMPUTING Designed for the IBM " PC, PC-AT and DOS compatibles. Available at most software dealers, or direct from Peter Norton Computing, Inc., 2210 Wilshire Blvd. #186, Santa Monica, CA 90403. To order, call 213-453-2361 (VISA and MasterCard welcome). MCI Mail: PNCI.Fax 213-453-6398.© 1987 Peter Norton Computing. Circle 231 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 232) MAY 1988 - BYTE 187 6th Annual Volume Buying Week in New York June 21-23, 1988 Jaeob Javits Convention Center On June 21-23, 1988, atthejavils Convention Center, PC EXPO will host thousands of Volume Buyers and Resellers at its Sixth Annual Volume Buying Week in New York. Don't get caught in long registration lines. You can avoid any waiting and save some Line" registration coupon below. Just fill it out, send it with your check, and we'll send you your badge and conference guide well in advance of showtime. In its sixth year, PC EXPO in New York offers 2000 exhibit booths, over 500 exhibitors, 175 speakers, 42 seminar topics to choose from, plus new connectivity-focused additions — Connections 88 and Connections Lab — that no one concerned with computers can afford to miss. And, in keeping with our tradition, all of the lectures in our world-class Seminar Series are free to all attendees. money by using the hassle-free, "No Don't wait in lines unnecessarily. Save your valuable time and money. Register now! 100's of the Industry's Leading Vendors Want to Talk to You. If] Net Communications • 4C Data Systems, Inc. • Adobe Systems Inc. ■ AESP Inc. • Aldus Corp. • ALT' Products Inc. • Alps America • Alton Computer Systems • Amdek Corporation • American Power Conversion • AMI • Applied Business Tech. Corp. • Applied Creative Technology • Ashton-Tatc ■ AST Research Inc. • AT&T • Atrium Information Group • Attachmale Corporation • Banyan Systems Inc. ■ BASF Systems Corp. • BABCO Electronics. Inc. • BDT Products, Inc. • Beaman Porter Inc. ■ Borland International • BusinessWeek/Reality Tech. • Byte Magazine • Cahners Publishing Co. • Canadian Government • CI'.S Training Corporation • Channolmark Corporation • Citizen America Corporation • Clary Corporation • CMP Publications, Inc. • Compaq Computer Corporation • Computer Applic. Learn. Ctr. ' Computer Associates • Computer Hot Line • Computer Living/New York • Computer Maintenance Corp. • CompulerPREP • Computer Technology Croup • Computer Workshop Inc. • Computer-world • Conographic Corporation ■ CORE International • Crosstalk Communications • Data Access Corporation ■ Dalaeopy Corporation • DalaEase International • Data Technology Corporation • Datamation ■ Dalamcdia Corp. • Datapro Research Corporation • Dataproducts Corporation • Datastorm Technologies Inc. • Datavue Portables • Dealers' Digest • DEC Professional • Dell Computer Corp. • Destiny Technology • Dialog Information Services • Diconix, Inc. • Digital Commun. Associates ■ Digital Equipment Corp. • Digital Products Inc. • Disc Services Corporation • Dow Jones News/Retrieval • DSC Nestar Systems, Inc. • Dynamic Decisions, Inc. • Dynamic Microprocessor Assoc. • Eastman Kodak Company • Klectrohome, Ltd. • Emerald Systems Corp. * Epson America, Inc. ■ Excelan, Inc. ■ Executive Systems Inc. • Extended Systems ' Eifth Generation Systems • First Class Peripherals ' Fischer International Systems • Eivestar Computers ' The Forhan & Wakefield Group • Fountain Technologies Inc. • Fox Research, Inc. ■ Fox Software • Fujitsu America ' Gateway Communications, Inc. • CBC Technologies • Gemidex ■ General Information, Inc. • Genoa Systems Corporation ■ Glenmont Communications ■ Gordon Pub. /Computer Products • Government of Canada • Grid Systems Corporation • Harris Corporation • Hauppaugc Computer Works inc. • Haventree Software Ltd. • Hercules • Herko Electronics • Hertz Computer Corp. • Hewlett-Packard Co. • Holmes Microsytems Inc. • Honeywell Bull • Hyundai Electronics America • IBM • ICCP ■ IDG Communications Inc. ■ [MSI., Inc. • Information Builders, Inc. • Informix ' Innovative Software. Inc. • Intel Corp. • Iomega Corp. • Irwin Magnetics • KAO Corp. • Kelly Services, Inc. ■ Key Systems ■ Key Systems, Inc. • Key Tronic Corporation ■ Kinetic Corporation • Kinetic Presentations Inc. • Kurzweil Computer Products • Leading Edge Hardware Prod. • Learn-PC Video Systems ■ Lifctree Software Inc. • Locus Computing Corporation ' Logical Operations, Inc. • Logitech Inc. ■ Lotus Development Corp. • Mansfield Software Group • Mapinfo Corp. ■ Memorex Corporation • Meridian Technology, Inc. ■ MelaMicro Computer Consulting • Microcomputer Managers Assoc. ■ MicroDisk Services • Micron Technology, Inc. • Microrim, Inc. • Microsoft Corporation ■ Microstuf, Inc. • Micros To Co • Microsystems Engineering Corp • Micro Video Learning Systems • Migcnt, Inc. • Mini-Micro Systems • Minitab, Inc. • MIS Week ■ Mitsubishi Electronics Amcr. • Momentum Service Corporation ■ Multi-Tech Systems Inc. • Nantucket Corporation • National Micro Rentals Inc. ■ NCR Corporation • Network Software Associates • Net World 8!! • New York Personal Computer • N/Hance ■ Northern Telecom, Inc. • Norton-Lambert Corp. • Novell Inc. • NYNEX Corporation • The Office Magazine ■ Office Solutions Inc. ■ Official Airline Guides • Okidala • On-Line Software Inter. • Oracle Corporation • Orchid Technology • Osicom Technologies • Output Technology Corporation • Panasonic Industrial Company • Paperback Software Intl. • Para Systems • Partieians Plus Inc. • PC EXPO in Chicago ■ PC's Limited • PC Technology Inc. ■ Performance Technology • Pivar Computing Services • Plus Development ' Polaroid Corp. • Polygon Data Products Inc. • PRIAM Corporation • Princeton Graphic Systems • Printronix • The Processor • Productivity Center • Quadrant • Quarterdeck Office Systems • Quieksoft • Reference Software Inc. • Renaissance GRX Inc. • Reynolds & Reynolds • Ricoh Corporation • Rose Electronics ■ SAS Institute Inc. • SBT Corporation • Scientific Micro Systems • Seagate Technology • Sirex USA, Inc. • Small Computer Company, The • SoftKey Software Products ' Software Group, The • Software News • Software. Publishing Corp. * Sorbus. Atlantic Bell • Source EDI 1 • Sourcemale Informations Systems • Spencer Organization • Standard Brand Products • Standard Microsystems Corp. • Star Mieronies • STB Systems, Inc. • Storage Dimensions • STSC, Inc. • Sun Tops • SYBEX Computer Books • Symantec Corp. • Systek ' Systronics Computer Systems • Tandon Corporation ' Tandy Corp. • Technology Concepts Inc. ■ Teemar Inc. • Telebyle Technology' Inc. ■ Telex Communications, Inc. • TPS Electronics • Tiger Information Systems • Toshiba America, Inc. ■ Trace Incorporated • Traveling Software, Inc. • Triton Technologies Inc. • UNISYS • Universal Data Systems " Unlimited Processing, Inc. " U.S. Robotics. Inc. 1 Ven-Tel, Inc. • Victory Enterprises Tech. • VM Personal Computing ■ Warner Computer Systems, Inc. • Waterloo Microsystems • Welcom Software Technology • Westchester PC Users Group • Western Telematie, Inc. • WordPerfect Corp. • Wysc Technology • Zenith Data Systems • Zenographics • Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. Exhibitor listing as of 12/30/87. In June, over 500 exhibitors will participate. 188 BYTE- MAY 1988 Tuesday, June 21 Keynote: Ned C. Lautenbach, Vice President, IHM Corporation and President of its National Distribution Division. Management Overview of LANs/Terms & Technology* Software 1989: What Corporations Can Expect. What Users Want Selecting a Desktop Publishing System CASE: A Primer Making the VAX Connections* CD-ROM Security Decisions in a Microcomputer Environment 80386 and Beyond Distributed Database Management Systems* Modern Clones and the Corporate Marketplace Legal Issues in the Technology Field Costs and Benefits of Microcomputers 6th Annual PC EXPO in New York Seminar Series Thursday, June 23 Wednesday, June 22 Dealing with the Inevitable: Departmental Systems The Macintosh in the Corporate Environment* Artificial Intelligence/Expert Systems Softline: Candid Comments from Industry Leaders Network Management: Keeping Your Network Running* Desktop Publishing — What Corporations are Doing Electronic Mail and Beyond* Vendor Quotas: Their Impact on Resellers and End Users The Backbone's Connected to the.. ..TCP/IP and Other Protocols* Promoting Responsible End-User Computing Enhancing Your Computer Graphics LANs - User Views* Portable Computers Miero-to-Mainframe Connections* How to Grow your Net* Executive Information Systems The Changing Concept of an Information Center Workgroup Computing* New Lives for Old — What to do with Out-dated Equipment Micro-to-Mini Connections* End-User Support Soltwarc Support and Upgrades OS/2 and Networking* Microcomputer Maintenance Current Training Issues LANs and Multiuser Systems* Implementing Project Management Mass Storage Issues Micro-channel Architecture : Connections 88 Sessions Latest Developments in Spreadsheet Software Schedule subject to change without notice June 21-23, 1988 Jacob J arils Convention Center ^ ADVANCE NO-LINE REGISTRATION FORM BUSINESS TITLE CO. ADDRESS . MAIL STOP (if any) Use one form per person. Pholocopy if necessary. By unending the 6th Annual PC EXPO in New York. I conscnl to the use of photographs of mc in any promotional materials related to ihc show and/or events -Check here for hotel information Check only your main job function from box below AA Accountant TTT Administrator 111 BB CC Consultant DD Corporate Officer EE Creative Arts (All) FF Designer (All) GG DP/WP Manager Operator HH Engineer (All) 11 MIS Dir./Mgr. JJ Programmer KK Purchasing LL Sales/Marketing MM Scientist NN Securities/Fin. Analyst 00 Service Technician IT Systems Analyst QQ Systems/ Aplctn. Mgr. RR Systems/Architect SS Systems/Maintenance TT Systems/Mgr. UU Systems/Project Mgr. vv Systems/ Prototyper WW (Tlhi'r 1 Bjimo.ify) 1 Day $25- On-site registrations are Date must be given here $30 for 1 day. 2 or 3 Days - $50 $60 for 2 or more days MAIL ORDERS must be received by PC EXPO no later than May 20, in which case your show badge will be mailed to you on or before June 7. Mail orders received after May 20 will be processed and the badge held for arrival under the individual's name at the "Pre-registered attendee" counter in the Crystal Palace Lobby. Registration fees must be in U.S. funds. All foreign mail orders, except Canada, must be received by May 13, and such badges will not be sent by return mail, but held at the "Pre-registered attendee" counter far pick- up on arrival. All registrations are non-refundable. Confirmation for all registrations will be sent by PC EXPO upon receipt of your registration form and payment. Mail check payable to PC EXPO with completed registration form to: PC EXPO. P.O. Box 1026. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632. Incomplete or improperly completed forms will be returned. PC EXPO attendees must be qualified. Minors under 18 may not register. Check your co.'s main activity from only one of the boxes below TRADE RESELLERS 1 Computer Consultant j Computer Dealcr/Dist. 3 Computer OEM 4 Office Products Dealer 5 Service Vendor 6 Software Developer 7 Systems House 8 Turnkev Vendor 9 Value Adder 1(1 Other f specify! CORPORATE VOLUME BUYERS A B Accounting Firm II Advertising C Banking D Communication E Const. /Architects F Credit G Education 1! Engineering 1 Government/ Military .1 Hospital K Hotel L Industrial Design M 1 nsurance N Law Office O Management Conslt. P Manufacturing Q Publishing R Real Estate S Research Development T Retail Sales I Securities Broker V Transportation (All) w Utility X Wholesale/Retail Sales Y Other fspeeifyl Circle 220 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 189 Train Your PC to Bead .the Same Things You Read! See us at Spring Comdex Booth #6714 m$> At Flagstaff Engineering's Mjfg^! ,^°Bk^P° 7 ^> optical character recognition software reads almost any printed or typewritten text. SPOT,* our trainable OCR program, alio' you to compile information from books,, ^magazines, typewritten records, genealogical data, directories, catalogs, and public documents, including foreign- language material. The data captured by SPOT can be used by database, word processing, desktop publishing and typesetting applications. SPOT'S flexible output options allow you to preserve the original page format, including columns and margins. Reformatting options include the choice of DCA or ASCII output files, with options to generate single- column output from multiple-column text. FLAGSTAFF ENGINEERING Features: High recognition accuracy Fast, easy training Up to five fonts per page Handles ligatures and kerned type Foreign language character sets Spelling and context checking On-line correction Affordable at $995.00 Flagstaff Engineering leads the PC industry in desk- top conversion systems for 9-track tape and 8-inch diskette data files. We have already supplied thousands of customers worldwide with our OCR systems. Call for the best prices on Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, and Canon scanners. Dealer and volume discounts are available. Flagstaff Engineering can modify the software code to meet your custom applications. For details, call us at (602)779-3341. *Syntactic Pattern Optical Translator "JOIN" FLAGENG for vendor support on BIX! 1 120 Kaibab Lane • Flagstaff, AZ 86001 (602)779-3341 . Telex 705609 . FAX (602)779-5998 Circle 113 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 114) COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR Shifting into High Gear Jerry Pournelle This is going to be one of those columns. It's Friday night, the absolute drop-dead deadline is Monday morning, and I don't have a lead item. I'd intended to write about changing over from Fast Kat the Kaypro 386 to the new Zenith Z-386. Be- fore you ask, no, there's nothing wrong with Fast Kat, and I have no hesitation in recommending Kaypro equipment. Fast Kat has served me well, what with his math chip (80287 and adapter), big (44- megabyte) Priam hard disk drive, and 2 megabytes of Kaypro 32-bit memory plus another 2 megabytes of Cheetah 16-bit memory. I've used him hard for nearly a year, with never a glitch. However, Fast Kat isn't Kaypro's latest 640K-byte backplane 386; he's an early model you can't buy anymore, based on the Intel 540K-byte motherboard, and re- quires software kludges to bring him up to 640K bytes of memory. That hasn't been a problem so far; DESQview and its companion— Quarter- deck's Expanded Memory Manager 386 (QEMM)— work wonderfully well with Fast Kat. However, I am about to do ex- periments with alternative operating sys- tems, particularly Xenix and VM/386, and those are said to work a lot better in systems that have hard- wired 640K bytes. I want to compare them to DESQview. Unfortunately, although I've had the Z-386 for some time, I don't have any ex- tra memory for it. Zenith has been selling 4-megabyte 32-bit memory boards as fast as they can make them— Larry Niven had to wait 2 weeks to buy one for his Z- 386— so they haven't had too many to ship to reviewers. However, when I called earlier this week, they said they'd have one to me by Thursday; when it didn't come yesterday, I put off the col- umn, expecting the board to arrive today. Alas. I could have stuffed the Zenith with Cheetah 16-bit memory boards, but that didn't seem quite fair to Xenix and VM/386. The boards would work, but Installing a USRobotics Courier HST modem lets Jerry move into the future 16-bit memory is slower than 32-bit memory, so I'd have it to do all over again when the new Zenith board comes; best to put the whole thing off until next week. One plans for this sort of thing, and I thought I had another possible lead: I've had a write once, read many (WORM) drive from Information Storage sitting next to the Z-386's cabinet for over a week, and I figured that would do. Alas, when I uncrated the WORM drive, I dis- covered that they had neglected to send me the disk controller card for it. I'll call them Monday; but by then this column's got to be on the wire. Of course, there's no shortage of stuff to write about, and, indeed, I have a whole bunch of items lying about. Modem Problems I have been using OmniTel internal modems in my IBM PCompatible ma- chines for a couple of years now. They work quite well. We've used several of them, and the one time we had any trou- ble with one, Alex got it taken care of under the warranty without ever mention- ing me or the column. I always preferred internal modems be- cause they are easy to install and don't take up any extra room on my desk or computer stand. You can address them (at least the OmniTel modems I've used) to any port from 1 to 4. I preferred to set mine at port 3; that way, there's no inter- ference with the mouse and, more impor- tant, with Traveling Software's LapLink and DeskLink (more on them in a bit) communications programs, which want port 1 . Thus, when I began the changeover from CP/M-compatible to IBM PCom- patible machines, I needed a communica- tions program that could use a modem at port 3. Mycroft Labs' MITE— which I'd happily used on my CP/M systems— could address only ports 1 and 2. That's changed now; but before they came up with a version that could use port 3, I got used to Crosstalk and was always too busy to change back to MITE. Then I added Borland's SideKick to my system. SideKick is wonderful— I still use it, and I can't imagine doing without it— but I found that the blankety-blank SideKick dialer recognizes only ports 1 and 2! I could just as well have stuck with MITE. Anyway, for a long time that was my communications system: an OmniTel 300-/1200-baud modem, later OmniTel's 300-/1200-/2400-baud internal modem card, addressed to port 2; Crosstalk; and SideKick to keep track of phone numbers and dial the phone for me. I had a number of annoying experi- ences with Crosstalk. Most of them were caused by inadequate documentation (or insufficient spelunking in the documents on my part). For example, when I loaded a Crosstalk file, the program insisted on dialing the number even when I didn't want it to, and then it wanted to redial pe- riodically until I told it not to do that. Thus, it could take quite a while just to call in a Crosstalk file and change some- thing. I wrote about that problem several times, and although I always got some kind of response from Microstuf (now known as Crosstalk Communications), no one from there ever told me the secret of how to stop it. Finally, a reader did: when you create a Crosstalk file using their setup pro- gram, the program saves the result in a file with the extension .XTK and automati- cally adds a command line that looks something like GO /45. That command tells Crosstalk to dial the number and then redial at 45-second intervals. Since the .XTK file contains a lot of command lines, most of them needed and continued MAY 1988 'BYTE 191 CHAOS MANOR The real reason I've always preferred internal modems is that I don 't understand the RS-232C connector system. few explained, it's easy to miss that GO command. But if you eliminate that line (it helps to have a good programming edi- tor, such as Brief or Logitech's Point), Crosstalk waits for you to tell it to dial. Incidentally, another reader told me how to handle another problem I had. When I told Crosstalk to GO LOCAL, it still wouldn't connect, even though I could hear the carrier tone on the other end. If you do GO LOCO , the program is ready to send commands directly to the modem. If you have a Hayes-compat- ible modem, typing ATO will actually make the system listen to the modem; meaning that you can do GO LOCO, ATO, and manually dial the num- ber. When the carrier comes on, you'll be connected. With those two tricks, Crosstalk is considerably more docile than it used to be and is now fairly satisfactory. I'm told by people I respect that Procomm 2.4.2 is at least as good; but I'm used to Cross- talk, it uploads to BIX very well, and I've had no trouble using the capture facility for downloading. Better is the enemy of good enough. Right now, Crosstalk seems to be good enough. Hang-Ups Even so, I had problems. Sometimes I would try to connect to BIX, and my local Tymnet number would be busy. I'd issue Table 1: The RS-232C connections in my cable. These connections are for a female DB-9 to a male DB-25. All I know is that it worked for me. I don 't attempt to explain this. 9-pin (DB-9) 25-pin (DB-25) 1 is connected to 8 2 3 3 2 4 20 5 7 6 6 7 4 8 5 9 22 the Crosstalk command BYE— and even QUIT— to exit the Crosstalk program and close its DESQview window, but the modem still wouldn't hang up. I could no longer hear the busy signal on the modem; but if I lifted the telephone re- ceiver, it was still there. I could then yank the phone connection so that the modem was no longer con- nected to the phone line; that would let the phone hang up. But if I reconnected the modem, it wasn't cleared; it still thought it was connected, and so did Crosstalk. The only way to fix the prob- lem was to turn the modem off— and with an internal modem, that means turning the computer off. For me, that's a big deal: I work in DESQview, and I generally have the Logitech Mouse with Plus Software and Microsoft Bookshelf in main memory. Also, I have SideKick, Ready!, Q&A Write with WordFinder, and probably something else each in separate windows, and I may have another job going as well. It takes time to reload all those programs and reconfigure the system. I don't want to turn off the machine. So, thought I, the remedy is obvious: I'll put in an external modem. That way, if I have hang-up problems, I can reach back and turn off just the modem, not the whole computer. It was about time, anyway. I've had a USRobotics Courier HST since Decem- ber, and it has capability for 9600 baud. I also have a list of 9600-baud bulletin boards thoughtfully provided by US- Robotics. I'd intended to hook up the Courier HST with the Z-386 anyway; why not now? An external modem has three prob- lems you won't face with an internal modem. First, you have to find a place to put it. The Courier HST is 13 inches deep, 8 inches wide, and about an inch and a half tall. It has vents on top, mean- ing that you probably don't want to cover it with papers that block the airflow. It will sit nicely on top of a computer, or you can Velcro it to the side of your monitor, or you can do what I did. I got a little low-height rolling stand (originally designed for a big TV, I think) and put that under the desk, consolidating the computer itself, modem, Amdek CD- ROM drive, telephone answering ma- chine, and other auxiliary equipment into one place; but it's going to take up space no matter what you do. The second problem is trivial. Unlike an internal modem, you have to supply an external modem with power, meaning an- other gizmo to plug into the wall, and yet another cable to lead through the snakes' nest to your computer. The third problem is horrible. Cables The real reason I've always preferred in- ternal modems is that I don't understand the RS-232C connector system. Now, sure, I've read books on it, and one reader kindly supplied me with a video- tape, but the feet is I forget that stuff about as fast as I learn it. I have some evi- dence that I am not terminally stupid; but for the life of me, I cannot remember the difference between DTE and DCE and why DTR is important and all the rest of it. Pity, but there it is. However, one afternoon I got three busy signals in an hour, meaning that I had to turn off Fast Kat three different times, and enough was enough. Cables or no cables, it was time. Fast Kat, like all IBM PC AT compat- ibles, has a 9-pin male connector for his serial port. The Courier HST modem has a 25-pin female connector. The US- Robotics documents have a lot about which of those 25 pins connect to what; but there's not word one about what comes out of a 9-pin male connector. Now what? The Logitech Serial Mouse terminates in a 9-pin female connector so that you can connect it to an AT's serial port. They also provide, for people with PCs and XTs, a small gizmo with a 9-pin male connector on one end and a 25-pin female connector on the other end. Nothing is said about the internal mapping of those connections, but it works; we've used one to connect a 9-pin LogiMouse to Lucy Van Pelt, our ancient genuine IBM PC. I tried using that with a straight- through 9-pin-female-to-9-pin-female ex- tension cable. Of course, that required a 25-pin gender-change connector, but I have those. It made a weird lash-up, and when I got it connected, nothing happened. The modem wouldn't work. Then I tried put- ting a 25-pin connector thing that called itself a "null modem connector" in the lash-up. That didn't work either. Then I remembered the LapLink cables: four-headed monsters with both 9- and 25-pin connectors on each end, de- signed to link ATs with XTs. It took a sex changer to connect one, and then it didn't work. Putting the null modem connector into the loop didn't help. Clearly, it was time for a breakout box— only someone had lifted my won- derful little Hall-Comsec Wiretap gad- get. Now what? I must live right. In desperation, I rooted around in the cable closet — a hor- rible place infested with monsters— and eventually discovered a cable that had a 9-pin female connector on one end and a 25-pin male connector on the other end. I continued 192 BYTE' MAY 1988 We liked UNlock MasterKey, COPY PROTECTION RUN YOUR PROGRAM ON ANY HARD DISK UNlock MasterKey Removes Copy Protection from 140 PC Programs The new UNlock MasterKey "copying" disk by TranSec and best selling UNlock Albums A+ and D+ allow you to quickly and easily make unprotected DOS backup copies of more than 140 popular original PC programs. Your original disk is un- changed and the unprotected backup copies perform exactly the same as the original, as do copies of these copies. UNlock copies run on any hard disk, including Bernoulli Boxes. No original key disk is required in Drive A. You can also run on a RAM disk and conven- iently copy DOS 5 1/4" programs to 3 1/2" diskettes. • Take protection off programs not listed by using generic routines. • New UNlock MasterKey is TranSec's most comprehensive copy protection removal pro- gram. It unlocks all the pro- grams in TranSec's Albums A+, B+ and D+...and more than an additional 100 programs. It is in- tended for the user who wants the best and most comprehen- sive copy-busting program available. MasterKey has the ability to break more than 140 specific menu listed programs. In addi- tion you can take protection off programs not listed in the menus by using generic routines for the PROlok, SUPERlok and EVERlock protected programs. With UNlock MasterKey an analyser will tell you if the disk is protected by either PROlok or SUPERlok, so that you can sim- ply apply the proper UNlock lib- erating routine. Even many pro- grams using hardware protec-i tion schemes can be unlocked. 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Foreign orders $10.00 MasterKey unlocks the programs in Albums "A" Plus and "D" Plus and those below: Aldergraf (2.2) • AutoCad Etn & Wtn (2.5x) • Bancstar • Basic-2C Runtime Package (2.00.04 & 1 2/1 2/86) • Balance of Power '85 • Cadkey (2.1 1 .01 , 3.01 ) • Cadvance (1 .1 0, 1 .20. 1 .30) • Computer Aided Planning (CAP) 12/15/86 • Cadvance DXF Translator • CAP (3.00) • Chessmaster 2000 ('86) • Courtracting System (2'2) • CP2A (5.8) • DAM Busters i'86) • Data Highway Diagnostics (1.3) • Database Manager II (2.0, 2.02) ■ Diagram Master (5.1) • Diagraph (3.3, 3.4.1 , 3.5) • Discovery Litigation Support (2.3, 2.3e, 3.0) • Disk Optimizer (1 .4, 1 .5) • Erunacad (1 '1 OB) • Escribien (2, 2.0A) • Financial Analysis for Farmers (6.0) • Financial Profiles (1 .5, 2.2, 2.3) • Fund Master-TC (3.5) ■ GSS Arab World (1 36A) • Harmony (2.35, 3.00) • IBM Drawing Assistant (1.0) • IBM Graphing Assistant (1.0, 2.0) • IBM Planning Assistant (1.0) • ICSI Interactive IQ Program (1.11) • Insearch (1.02) • Insmark (4.03E) ■ Interceptor IV (1.0A,1.0B) • Intercom 102 (2.30S.4.14) • Kampfgruppe ('85) • Maintenance Analysis System (4.00) • Magnatype (1 .4) • Mapmaster (6.0) • Mean 18 Golf ('86 ) • Minitab (5.1 .1 ) • Multilingual Scholar (2.9) • Multilingual Scribe (2.9) • Paradox (1 .0) • PBS (1 .0) • PC Emulator (1 .03) • Petrocalc (85) • PCATE (3.3n-4) • PC FOCUS (1 .5, 2.0, 4.5) • PC Information System (9.21 ) • PCLINK (1 .0) • Pfs:Access ('84, C) • Pfs:File (Tandy B, C) ■ Pfs:Graph (Tandy, B) • Pfs:Plan (Tandy, B, C, 2.00) • Pfs:Report (Tandy, 1 .00, 1 .00.00, B, C) ■ Pfs:Write (Tandy, 1.00, 1.01, C, 2.00) • Picture Perfect (3.3, 3.5) • PLC-2 Ladder Logistics (2/1 1/87) • Pluto ('84) • Print Master (1 .1 P) • Print Shop (Early '85, Late '85, '86) • Pro-Cite (1.2) • Quicken ('84) • Real CICS (1.10) • Real Estate Appraisal System ('87) • Redboard • Residential Appraisal Processor (R8C) • Screenio for Cobol (2.0) • Sidekick (1.56B) • Sketch Processor (S5K) • SmARTWORK (1.0 r.8-10, 1.1, 1.2 r.3.,7) • Softbol II Runtime System (2.11 ) (11) • Softbridge Financial Planner (2.1) • Spectra Business Systems (3.01 ) • Spotlight (1 .0) • SPSS Statistics for the IBM PC (1 .1 ) • Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative • Superpage • Ststat (2) • Tango PCB Layout System (3.03, 3.04) •Tango Route (1 .1 0) • Techsonix Digitizer (2.6M) -Taylor Allen Bradley Programmer (6.19) ■ T-Bond Trading System ('84) • Tencore Authoring Sustem (3.00 Beta) • Toatex (1.5) -Type 1 (Broderbund) ('87) • Universal Life Pers. 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Circle 296 on Reader Service Card All software product names and trademarks are the sole properly ot their respective owners CHAOS MANOR have no idea where it came from, but it had the sexes right, so I tried it. Voila. Worked first time. What with my having tamed Crosstalk, I didn't even have any trouble altering my Crosstalk files to look for the modem at port 1. Everything went swimmingly.' Later, I traced that cable's connections; they're listed in table 1 , and they sure aren't intu- itive. I don't have the foggiest notion of which connections are critical; I can say that a cable like that will connect a US- Robotics Courier HST modem to an IBM PC AT clone. Once I had the proper cable, it was smooth sailing. I did have some problems with hanging up, but that turned out to be one of the little DIP switches on the back of the modem. USRobotics, bless them, prints nearly the entire manual on the bot- tom of the modem; using what's printed there you can, if you know what you're doing, set up the modem perfectly. I didn't know what I was doing, but fortu- nately Brett Glass ("glass" on BIX) knows more than I ever will, and from my re- ports of symptoms, he was able to tell me how to change my DIP-switch settings. The result is that I've been using the Courier HST for 2 weeks now, and it's wonderful. It may just be coincidence, but there seems to be less line noise now; and when there is line noise, it seems to be handled in a more comprehensible manner than the OmniTel modems used to do it. I've used the Courier HST at 1200, 2400, and 9600 baud; at 9600 baud on long-distance lines I've sometimes been blown off, but not too often, and it's sure the way to go if you want to transfer big files like this column. The really odd part is that I went to an external modem so I could handle busy signals by turning the modem off; but since I got the Courier HST connected up properly, it has been able to handle them itself. The Crosstalk BYE command works fine with this modem. I'm now rethinking my position re- garding internal and external modems. An internal modem certainly has less clutter and fewer cables. I thought it would be more convenient when I had to connect two machines serial to serial, but that turns out not to be the case. If I need to get at Fast Kat's serial port, it's not much more trouble to unplug the modem than it is to plug in the cable to link him to another machine. An external modem really shines if you temporarily need one on another machine; and, of course, it doesn't take up a slot in the computer. The USRobotics Courier HST comes with very complete documentation, in- cluding a satisfactory but not remarkable index and table of contents; as I've said, you could pretty well connect it up with just the information stenciled on the Cou- rier's bottom. And if there's anything you really need to know (other than how to connect it to a 9-pin system when you don't understand RS-232C), it's in the book somewhere. The box is rugged; I've managed to drop it on the floor half a dozen times, and that hasn't harmed it yet. There are plenty of winking red lights to show that you're connected. I can think of two improvements. I wish, first, that they'd put the vents on the side, since the temptation to put stuff on top of the modem is nearly irre- sistible; and second, that they'd put the switch on the front of the box. If I have to turn it off, it's not too easy to reach around behind it. Those are minor complaints. The fact is, 9600 baud is the wave of the future- more on that another time— and the Cou- rier HST is an elegant little gadget. Recommended. Live and Learn Just after I finished writing this, Federal Express brought the galleys of The continued Write Better Turbo 4.0 Programs . . . Or Your Money Back You'll write better Turbo Pascal 4.0 programs easier and faster using the powerful analytical tools of Turbo Analyst 4.0. You get • Pascal Formatter • Cross Referencer • Program Indexer • Program Lister • Execution Profiler, and more. Includes complete source code. Turbo Analyst 4.0 is the successor to the acclaimed TurboPower Utilities: "If you own Turbo Pascal you should own the Turbo Power Programmers Utilities, that's all there is to it" Bruce Webster, BYTE Magazine, Feb. 1986 Turbo Analyst 4.0 is only $75. A Library of Essential Routines Turbo Professional 4.0 is a library of more than 400 state-of-the-art routines optimized for Turbo Pascal 4.0. 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Box 66747 Scolts Valley, CA 95066-0747 194 BYTE' MAY 1988 Circle 297 on Reader Service Card tt i 8 > For more information please call (617) 746-7341. After July, 1988, call (508) 746-7341. The World Leader in PC Numerics P.O. Box 79, Kingston, Mass. 02364 USA (617) 746-7341 32 High St., Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK 01 -541 -5466 St. Leonards, NSW, Australia 02-439-8400 TRADEMARKS: Ouadpuler, Biputer and Monoputer of MicroWay. Inc. INMOS, Transputer, TDS, OCCAM ol INMOS Corp. MicroWay™ is a registered trademark of MicroWay, Inc. Circle 321 on Reader Service Card CHAOS MANOR The Modem Book has just about everything you need to know about modems and communications. Modem Book by Michael Banks (Brady Books/Simon & Schuster). Banks has put together just about everything you need to know about modems and communica- tions (as of late 1987). There are chapters on information services (like Compu- Serve and BEX), hardware, software, and on-line databases. Also, in an appendix, Banks covers cables. If I'd had this book, I could probably have saved myself con- siderable trouble. It's the best reference work on small computer communications I know of. It also reads well enough to serve as a pretty good introduction. If you've been think- ing of getting into modem communica- tions, get this book first. I definitely rec- ommend it. Incidentally, the reason I'm getting this book is that I told Banks that if I liked it I'd do a short preface. I do, and I will. I'm getting paid, too: Banks owes me a drink at the next convention. I may even make him buy me a double. Sundial If your problem is that you have to bill your time to any one of a bunch of clients , and you spend a lot of your time on the phone, and you don't like having to clock yourself, I have a solution. Sundial is not a communications pro- gram, although it wouldn't be too hard to make it one. It needs a modem, but that's just so it can dial the phone for you. What Sundial can do is keep track of your telephone calls: time them, bill the time to the proper account, and generate reports. It also lets you organize your notes and thoughts and keep track of those by client, phone call, or both. It works this way. If you call out, you tell Sundial to whom the call should be billed. You then let Sundial dial the num- ber and use the program's built-in editor to make notes. If you don't have a modem, you can dial the call yourself and Sundial will still do its thing. Incoming calls are handled in much the same way: you tell Sundial which account the call should be billed to, and it does the rest. If you want to review notes of previ- ous phone conversations, store or retrieve data about the caller, and suchlike, that's easy enough, too. Sundial doesn't look like a very so- phisticated program, although I under- stand it employs some pretty clever pro- gramming devices to make it look so simple. Written in Turbo Pascal, it's memory-resident and eats about 160K bytes plus whatever workspace you set aside (a stand-alone nonresident version is available as an option, but, of course, it can't automatically handle incoming calls). It doesn't use the Lotus/Intel/Micro- soft Expanded Memory Specification 4.0. Sundial's programmers are studying ways to do that. Since Sundial is an over- layed terminate-and-stay-resident pro- gram, this isn't simple. On the other hand, if you're a lawyer, a consulting engineer, or in any business that requires you to keep track of your time and bill it to particular accounts, Sundial can be a lifesaver. It eats too much memory, but it does leave a 640K- byte system enough memory to run WordStar or to access an on-line data- continued Travel Companions. The WorldPort 2400™ and the WorldPort 1200™ modems are the perfect travel companions for your portable computer. They work virtually anywhere in the world, including hotel rooms and phone booths, allowing you to connect in a few million more locations than other modems. With features superior to internal units, the WorldPort line of modems is the smart choice for all your communication needs. WorldPort modems operate from their own internal battery, drawing no power from your laptop. Cutting edge technology brings you features such as Bell and CCITT standards, direct connect and acoustic interface (300 and 1200 bps), tiny size and a tiny price. The WorldPort 1200™ can be easily upgraded to 2400 bps and both the WorldPort 2400™ and the upgrade come with Carbon Copy PLUS™ communications software. Find out more about the travel companions that won't tie down your portable computer. Call us today for more information about the WorldPort line of modems, or the name of your nearest dealer, at 800-541-0345. (In New York, 516-261-0423.) Touchbase Systems, Inc. 160 Laurel Avenue Northport, NY 11768 (516) 261-0423 TELEX: 6502848020 FAX: (516) 754-3491 WorldPort 1200 and WorldPort 2400 are trademarks of Touchbase Systems, Inc., Carbon Copy PLUS is a trademark of Meridian Technology Inc. 196 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 295 on Reader Service Card helps save time, money, and cut frustrations. Compare, evaluate, and find products. FREE Catalogs and Guarantee Whether you're searching tor an obscure product no one seems to know about, or you just want to know which of 5 competitors makes the most well-regarded product, our catalogs make finding software easier. - Comprehensive Product Listing, tilled with over 1 ,000 products. - Popular Programmer's Tools, containing the most-requested titles (over 300 in all) from each category. - Dbase Programmer's Catalog with over 60 development tools. We'll also help you select products with tree advice or literature. Plus full guarantee on any recommended product. Call to request a catalog or information today. Our Services: ' International Sales Desk • Compare Products ' Help find a Publisher ' Evaluation Literature FREE • Programmer's Update • Dealers Inquiry 1 Newsletter • Rush Order ■ Over 700 products 1 National Accounts Center RECENT DISCOVERY Automated Programmer by KGK - Math notation and technical English input produces FORTRAN code. Link to libraries, output in 'IMAGE' format, structured reports, pictures. PC $949 C Language-Compilers AZTEC C86 - Commercial C86 PLUS - by CI Datalight Optimum - C High C Optimizing Compiler lnstant-C/16M Lattice C - from Lattice Microsoft C 5.0 - Codevicw Microsoft Quick C Turbo C by Borland PC $499 MS $359 MS $ 99 PC $549 PC Call MS $259 Special* Special* PC $ 67 C-Screens, Windows, Graphics C-Worthy Interface Library PC $249 Curses by Aspen Scientific PC $109 dBASE Graphics for C PC $ 69 ESSENTIAL GRAPHICS - fast PC $185 FontWINDOW/PLUS PC $229 Graphic - new color version PC $279 Grecnlcaf Data Windows PC $155 w/source PC $259 Terminal Mapping System PC $279 TurboW I N DO W/C - for Turbo C PC $ 75 View Manager by Blaise PC $199 Vitamin C - screen I/O PC $ 1 59 VC Screen PC $ 79 Windows for C - fast PC Call Windows for Data - validation PC Call DBASE Language I Clipper compiler PC $399 dBASE III Plus PC- $399 dBASE III LANPack PC $649 DBXL Interpreter by Word Tech PC $ 99 FoxBASE+ Dev. - V2.0 MS $259 Quicksilver Diamond PC $369 Note: All prices subject to change without notice. Mention this ad. Some prices are specials. Ask about COD and POs. formats: 3" laptop now available, plus 200 others. UPS surface shipping add $3/item. Call for a catalog, literature, and solid value 800-421-8006 Till! IMUM.lt AMM! U S SHOP Your complete source for software, services and answers 5-B Pond Park Road, Hingham, MA 02043 Mass: 800-442-8070or 617-740-2510 2/88 Your Source for Debuggers [■imbedded code, C, Asm. Whatever you write, chances are it doesn't run right the first time. For clear windows on your code, consider these professional tools. Recover from even frozen machines, debug at high level, and keep inter- activity in the debugging process. Call one of our Tech Reps for help choosing TODAY. Order before 5/31/88 and mention "BY588" for these Special Prices: List Normal SPECIAL C Sprite by Lattice S 175 S 1 19 $ 99 DBug III -for dBASE $ [95 S179 $159 Periscope I-incl. board $ 345 S275 $255 Periscope Il-incl. switch $ 175 S139 $119 Periscope HI-10 MHZ version $ 095 $795 $749 SoftProbe II/TX-Rom $ 750 S695 $599 TURBOsmith-Turbo Pas $ 99 $ 79 $ 59 DBASE Support Other Products dAnalyst PC 6 219 ASMLIB - 170+ routines PC $125 dBASE Tools for C PC 6 65 Back-It by Gazelle MS $1 19 dBRIEF with BRIEF PC Call Baler PC $459 dBC III by Lattice MS 6 169 Dan Bricklin's Demo II PC $169 Documentor - dFlow superset MS S 229 Disk Technician-smart upkeep PC $ 89 Gcnifer by Bytel-codc generator MS i 279 Fast Back Plus PC $149 QuickCode III Plus MS ! 189 Flash-up PC $ 69 R&R Report Writer MS 6 139 Interactive Easy Flow V5.0 PC $125 Scck-It - Query-by-examplc PC . 6 79 Link & Locate - Intel tools MS $309 Silver Comm Library MS . ; 139 Mace Utilities MS $ 85 Torn Rettig's Library PC . 6 79 MKS RCS MS $155 Ul Programmer-user interfaces PC . 6 249 MKS Trilogy PC/Tools Deluxe-by Custom Plink 86 PLUS - overlays MS $ 99 | Editors for Programming PC MS $ 69 $275 BRIEF Programmer's Editor PC Call dc - EMACS-stylc PC $ 65 EMACS by UniPress Source: $895 $ 265 Epsilon - like EMACS PC $ 149 ME Macro Editor - Source PC $ 79 MKS VI MS $ 65 PC/EDT - macros PC $ 229 SPF/PC - Version 2.0 PC $ 179 Vedit PLUS MS $ 129 PVCS - by Polytron R-DOC/X risC by IMSI - H.A.L. Show Partner F/X Source Print - V3.0 TLIB Tree Diagrammer Visible Computer: 8088 WKS Library by Tenon Special * MS $135 79 $328 75 $ $ $ S MS PC PC PC PC PC PC 89 65 65 79 "Mention "Special BY588" and get both a good price and FREE Software Circle 238 on Reader Service Card BRIEF USERS: NoW^, you can have fast compilation AND an integrated, productive environment Over 5,000 of you went backwards in the past 12 months. Advanced compilers and new pro- gramming environments like Turbo C and QuickBASIC took up so much RAM that BRIEF could not fit in the same 640K. If you wanted to retain BRIEF's uniquely powerful features' while working with the larger programs, you had to sacrifice speed and continuity. Instead of a tight Edit- Compile-Edit loop, you had to slog along through an obsolete Edit-Exit- Compile-Exit-Edit loop. Now you now longer have to make that sacrifice. Version 2.1 of BRIEF can be swapped in and out with a single keystroke allowing immediate compilation with even the largest compilers: Microsoft C 5.0, Quick C, Turbo C, Lattice C, dBXL, FoxBASE+, Clipper, etc. You can enjoy the features' that have made BRIEF the best-selling and the best regarded 2 program- mer's editor without sacrificing environment integration. 1 For example: real multi-level Undo (not simply Undelete), flexible windowing, unlimited file size, unlimited number of simultaneous files, automatic language sensitive indentation. 2 Rave reviews in C Journal, Computer Language, Dr. Dobb's, Data Based Advisor, lnfoWorld.PC Magazine, Byte (in which Jerry Pournelle said "If you need a general purpose PC programming editor, look no further.") Call Louis at 800-821-2492 for information about 4 more BRIEF 2.1 enhancements. BRIEF 2.1 is available for $195. The update is only $35 to reg- istered users of version 2.0 or 2.01 Circle 278 on Reader Service Card .Systems < 1 541 Main St., Suite 410 systems So. Weymouth, MA 02169 CHAOS MANOR base. It works with most private-branch- exchange systems. There are rival pro- grams, but I haven't seen any I find preferable. All in all, Sundial is one of those things most readers won't need, but those who do need it need it a lot. HyperDialer Sundial wants a modem to dial your phone for you. Surely there's a better way? There is, if you have a Macintosh. DataDesk, the people who brought key- boards up to a high standard, have a new gadget: HyperDialer. HyperDialer is about halfway in size between a box of pocket matches and a box of kitchen matches. It has two lines and can attach to the side of your Macin- tosh or to your telephone. One line goes into the Mac's speaker port; the other connects to your telephone. Once that installation is made, the Mac can make phone calls for you; unsurpris- ingly, you access it through HyperCard programs. If you're a Mac and Hyper- Card user, you probably don't want to be without this or something like it. While you're ordering HyperDialer, also get a DataDesk Turbo-101 keyboard for your Macintosh; it's sure better than the one Apple furnishes. Business Class If all the hype about HyperCard were laid end to end, it would probably circle the earth; but, in fact, much of it is deserved. HyperCard really is a bright new idea, easy to use and very powerful. I don't suppose there's anyone left who doesn't know what HyperCard is, but just in case, it's a Macintosh programming sys- tem that organizes data and activities around logical "card stacks." A card can contain text, phone numbers, maps and graphics, or even instructions telling the computer to play music. The key concept of HyperCard is that cards can also contain "buttons": areas on the card that, when clicked on with the mouse, transfer you to other cards con- taining more data and still more buttons. What's really neat is that it's not just a static "product" ; HyperCard is more like a language that anyone can use to create new concepts in computer information service. Activision's Business Class, written by Danny Goodman, is an early example of what HyperCard can do. Business Class is, at bottom, a travel-information data- base that contains the same information a small atlas would. The novelty is in the way you use the program. The first time you use Business Class, you answer some questions about time zones and your local currency. When you've done that, a world map appears, bright in the areas currently in sunlight, dim elsewhere. Click on a country, and Business Class zooms in on its region. Click again, and it selects the country. Meanwhile, across the bottom of the screen is a series of icon buttons: a folded envelope to indicate post office informa- tion, an interracial handshake to indicate "local customs, " a picture of a wall outlet to indicate electrical power systems, and so on. Click on one of those, and you get information about the country you're cur- rently looking at. The electrical button, for example, will tell you the voltage and frequency used in the selected country and show you a picture of the favored electrical plugs. Click on the time button (a clock, natur- ally), and you'll be told not only the time difference, but what time it is in the se- lected country right now (assuming that your Mac knows what your local time really is). You can get information on visa re- quirements, weather, local travel, cur- continued CAN YOU REACH YOUR FULL POTENTIAL WTTHONIY HALF THE VIEW? Let CPT give you the total view — today. Upgrade your PC, XT, or AT- compatible computer with CPT's full-page displays, at a price far lower than you might expect. For more information on how CPT can expand your display-horizons, call 1-800-447-4700. More Than Office Automation. . .Office Productivity PC, XT and AT are trademarks of International Business Machines, Inc. 198 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 76 on Reader Service Card Great Selection + Superior Service l a + Competitive Prices = Top Value m We have the technical expertise to fulfill your specialized needs in soft- ware development, circuit design, data analysis, CAD and much more. Call today! ' No one offers you more variety. > 30-day Money-Back Guarantee' ■ Latest versions ■ Over 500 name-brand products in stock, if you don't see it — call! FoxBASE+/3S6 High C . Metaware NDP FORTRAN, Microway Pharlap 386 ASM.LINK 386 SOFTWARE Software Development Tools ASSEMBLERS ADVANTAGE Disassembler, Lifeboat S 279 Microsoft MASM (DOS or OS/2) 99 OPTASM, SLR Systems 172 PasmSG, Phoenix 115 FlaBh-up, Software Bottling Co S 80 MS Basic Comp. 6.0 (DOS or OS/2) 189 MS QuickBASIC 69 QuickPak, Crescent Software 60 T BASIC, TransEra Corp 453 Turbo Basic, Borland 69 Turbo Basic Toolboxes, Borland 69 AZTEC C- Commercial, Manx $ CALL C-terp, Gimpel 232 Lattice C 272 mi/source 499 Microsoft C (DOS or OS/2) 2B5 QuickC, Microsoft 69 Turbo C, Borland 69 C TOOLS PLUS 5.0, Blaise . ... S 101 C Utility Library, Essential 125 Essential Communications 125 Greenleaf C Sampler 69 Greenleaf Comm Library 125 Greenleaf Functions 125 PforCe. 3 hoenix. 215 TimeSlicer, L.feooat 279 Turbo C TOOLS. Blaise 101 Micro Focus Products $ CALL MS COBOL, Microsoft 452 Realia COBOL 794 RM/COBOL, Austec 763 MS Pascal, Microsoft (DOS or OS/2) $ 189 Pascal-2, Oregon Software CALL Turbo Pascal, Borland 69 Professional Pascal, Metaware 549 Turbo Pascal Dev. Lib., Borland $ 289 Metrabyte Data Acq. TOOLS, Oumn-Curtis.. 90 Turbo Pascal SGE Tools, Quinn-Curtis 69 Turbo HALO, Media Cybernetics 80 Turbo MAGIC, Sophisticated Software 90 Turbo ASYNCH PLUS, Blaise 101 Turbo Power Tools Plus, Blaise 101 III I II II II li^—— I LOGITECH Modula-2 Compiler Kit $ B1 Development System 199 Toolkit 141 SOLID B+ Toolkit, Advanced Sys Consultants 89 Stony Brook Modula-2 179 ^/Utilities 299 386 DEVELOPMENT TOOLS 386-Max, Oualitas ADVANTAGE 386 C, Lifeboat Science & Engineering Software CIRCUIT DESIGN/SCHEMATIC CAPTURE HiWIRE, Wintek Corp $ 849 MICRO-CAP II, Spectrum Software 759 PADS Drill. CAD Software CALL PADS PC8 CALL PADS Route CALL PSpice. MicroSim 899 Device Equations Source 309 Probe graphics post-processor 399 PartB parameter estimator 39S Monte Carlo Analysis 309 Digital Files 309 Schema II, Omaticn 449 smARTWORK, W ntek Corp 849 Tango PCS. ACCEL Tech . 469 Tango Route, ACCEL Tech . . 469 DATA ACQUISITION/SIGNAL ANALYSIS MathCAD 2.0, MathSoft Mathmate muMATH, Soft, Warehouse SolvolT!, Structured Scientific Software Solver-O, SDDC TK!Solver Plus, Universal Tech Sys 185 79 79 395 Asyst 2.9. 52,179 Asyst Modules 1,2,3 1 989 Asyst Modules 1,2,4 1.989 Asyst Modules 1.2 1.609 Asystant Plus . Macmiilan 849 Asystant, -Vacmillan. 469 DADISP. DSP Systems . 749 DADISP-488. DSP Systems 175 Fourier PERSPECTIVE II, Alligator Trans 329 HYPERSIGNAL, Hyperceptian 309 HYPERSIGNAL Plus 439 LABTECH Acquire, Lab Teen. Corp 1 79 LABTECH CHROM 709 LABTECH Notebook 759 LABTECH Real Time Access 269 Lotus Measure 445 Q.E.D. D.A. and Control, Hart Scientific 799 SNAP-CALC. HEM Data Corp 350 SNAP FFT. HEM Data Carp ..... .... 295 SNAPSHOT STORAGE SCOPE 495 Together 899 UnkclScope Junior, Unke' Software 109 UnkelScope Level 1 315 UnkelScope Level 2+ 499 AutoCAD, by Autodesk $ CALL Autosketch, by Autodesk 65 Speed Enhanced Version. 79 Design CAD, Amer can Small Bus Comp 219 Drafix 1 Plus, Fores.ght 239 Drafix 3-D Modeler, Foresight 159 EASYCAD, Evolution Computing . . 139 ECAO, Pelton Engineering 6gg FASTCAD, Evolution Computing 1.849 Generic CADD 69 Generic 3-D Solid Modeling 159 3-D Rendering Module 119 ln°A°Visian, Micrografx 459 Windows Draw w/Clip Art 239 Windows Graph 319 LaserCAD, DSL Link 89 PRO-3D/PC, Enabling Technologies 355 TurboCAD, MSA Group 79 PLOTTING AND GRAPHING ChartBuster PC, Interchart Software. .. Datatap Graph, Milhalism Assoc Omniplot, Scientific Endeavors PLOTZ, Curtis Technical Soft TECH" GRAPH 'PAD, binary engineering AUTOCAD ADD-ONS AutoESL, Systems Unlimited of CA $ 279 AutoSHAPES 189 FSIHPLEX 89 Turbo View, Sublogic Corp 449 LOGITECH HiREZ Mouse 149 LOGITECH Serial or Bos Mouse $ 99 LOGITECH Others CALL LOGITECH Series 2 Moose 79 LOGITECH Series 2 W/Plus 79 Microsoft Ser or Bus Moose 99 W/EasyCAO 119 W/MS Windows 139 APL LANGUAGE EQUATION SOLVERS Eureka: The Solver, Borland 259 APL PLUS PC. STSC S 499 253 APL • PLUS PC TOOLS 2D9 319 Pocket APL 79 259 | SCIENTIFIC TEXT PROCESSING B6 839 DESQview, Quarterdeck S 115 Microport — Complete 679 MS Windows/386, Microsoft 130 VM/38G, IGC 182 SCO XENIX -Complete 1199 Periscope II $ 141 OTHER Periscope ProductB CALL Advanced Trace-86, Morgan Computing 121 Breakout, Essential,... 89 TDebug PLUS V.A.O, Turbo Power Software 39 w/SDURCE 80 PfixBSplus, Phoenix 215 BRIEF, Solution Systems $ CALL w/dBRIEF CALL EDIX, Emerging Technology 169 EMACS, Jn:press . 268 Epsilon, Lugaru 151 KEDIT, Mansfield. . 101 LSE, Lattice 101 MULTI-EDIT. American Cybernetics 90 Norton Editor 70 PC/EOT +, Boston Business Computing 269 Pmate, Phoenix 115 SPF/PC, Command Technology. 185 UEDIT PLUS, CornpuView 13" XTC, Wendm 80 Btrieve, Softcraft $ 185 Xtrieve 189 Report Option 109 CBTREE, Peacock System 141 c-tree, Faircom 318 r-tree 241 rfBC Ml, Lattice 172 dBC III II W/source 363 dBC III PLUS 599 db_VISTA OR db_QUERY, Raima CALL XQL, Softcraft 599 ADVANTAGE Graphics, Lifeboat S 229 Drawbridge, Courseware Applic 111 Essential Graphics 229 Graphic, Software Endeavors 322 GSS Graphics Dev. Toolkit, Software ' Endeavors 399 HALO '88, Media Cybernetics 229 HOOPS, Ithaca Software 554 MetaWINDOW, Metagraphics 162 MetaWINDOW PLUS 232 Turbo WINDOW/C 80 Turbo HALO (Turbo CI, Media Cybernetics 80 OBJECT - ORIENTED ACTOR, Wn:te Water Group AOVANTAGE C++, Lifeboat PlorCe+ +, Phoenix Smalltalk/V, Digitalk Smalltalk V2B6 S 423 479 215 85 169 1 OPERATING SYSTEMS I Microport DOS Merge I 129 Microport Sys V/AT 469 SCO XENIX System V 999 Wendin-DOS 80 Other Microport, SCO, Wendin Products CALL [SCREENS WINDOWS FILE MANAGERS Greenleaf Data Windows MS Windows, Microsoft MS Windows Dev. Kit, Microsoft PANEL Plus, UFeboat PANEL /OC or/TC Vitamin C, Creative Programming. . . Windows lor Data, Vermont Creative ScreenStar w/source, Essential SoftCodc, Scftware Bottling Co OTHER PRODUCTS Dan Bricklin's Demo Program, Software Garden MKS Toolkit MS OS/2 Programmer's Toolkit PC lint. Gimpel PlinkB6Plus, Phoenix Polytron PVCS CORPORATE Pre-C, Phoenix SEIDL Version Manager Source Priot, Aldebarar Lao5 209 69 319 395 99 162 239 169 119 59 145 229 101 279 323 159 269 61 EXP, Breaks/Cole Publishing 129 For Math, Shantha Software 379 Lotus Maooscript 445 PC TEX, Personal TEX 229 T3Sci. Word Proc, TCI Software Res 499 ABstat, Anderson Bell $ 315 CSS. StatSoft 469 Microstat, =cosoft 319 NWA STATPAK, Northwest 749 P-STAT 659 The Scientific Wheel, Dalm Inc 99 SPSS IPC + 749 StatPac Gold, Waln.i ck Associates 539 STATS + , StatSoft 229 THE SVSTAT CALL System ID Toolbox 375 POINT FIVE, Pacific Crest 279 The Professional Wheel, Dalm Inc 199 Units, Curtis Technical Soft 25 IJ,hi; : M)lll'MI|.lMMMM DIFF-E-O, Microcompatibles $ 449 Extend, Design Decisions 131 Grafmatic or Plotmatic, Microcompatibles ... 119 Lahey FORTRAN 439 Lahey Personal FORTRAN 89 MathPac, Systo >c 5ystems 445 Microsoft FORTRAN w/CodeView 289 Numerical Analyst. Magus 249 RM/FORTRAN, Ryan-McFarland . 479 Spindrift Library, Laboratory LTD 135 SSP/PC, Lattice 279 ADDITIONAL SSE PRODUCTS ATLAS 0 GRAPHICS, STSC Atoms, Curtis Technical Soft Engineer's Aide, Eng Prog Concep LASCAUX 1000 Calculator PC-Matlab, The Math Works Control System Toolbox 339 GAUSS Prog. Lang., Aptech Sys S 189 25 GAUSS Math & Stat System 339 649 55 659 X-ASMS SIMULATORS CHEM-TEXT. Molecular Design Ltd EXACT, Technical Support Software. . .51,500 419 Ordering Information We accept AMERICAN EXPRESS, MC. VISA and PERSONAL CHECKS. There is no surcharge on credit card or C.Q.D. orders. New York State residents must add sales tax. Shipping and handling 53.95 per item. Rush service is available. • Dealers & Corporate buyers — Call for Special Discounts and Benefits • International orders add £10 for export preparation ■ Prices and policies may change without notice • Mail orders must include phone number "Ask for details before you buy, some manufacturers won't take returns if disk seals are broken 375 Microtec, Reims, Uniware, Quelo $ CALL Call for your FREE catalog today! In the U.S. call 1-800-333-3141 International Orders: 914-332-0756 Science 6 Engineering — 1 SOFTWARE CO. — 1 55 South Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591 Circle 266 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 - BYTE 199 CHAOS MANOR Business Class is an intriguing program, and it makes me anxious to see other HyperCard products. rency exchange rates, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's a lot of fun to browse through the world, finding out the names of currencies and what kind of electrical power they use. There's also a telephone button. Click on this, and you'll be told how to dial the particular country— and there are places to add local phone numbers that you can have the machine dial for you. That's the good news. The bad news is that there's no infor- mation at all on a number of countries, and what Business Class does give you is pretty sparse compared to what's in even the cheapest guidebooks. The maps aren't much use either; they show only the capital and maybe one or two other large cities. No terrain features, no roads or railroads; just a political-boundaries outline. Even worse: given the success Wash- ington has had in overcoming the "too strong" dollar, much of the information in Business Class is already obsolete, and much more will be shortly. Experienced hackers could get in and make changes, but there's no real provision for user edits of the database; so even if you find new information on currency exchange rates in the Wall Street Journal, you can't make corrections. In other words, Business Class is easy to learn and use, and fun to browse through; but if you want to plan a real trip, you'll probably still have to buy maps and guidebooks and keep notes on changing conditions. As an example, an Itinerary Planner lets you print out dates, hotels and their phone numbers, flight in- formation, and all the background and currency information in loose-leaf for- mat. This is a great idea, but you'll still have to check most of that data to be sure it's not obsolete. Business Class is intriguing, and it makes me anxious to see other Hyper- Card products. Imagine this program with a simple editor interface that would let you update the background data and LAHEY SETS NEW FORTRAN STANDARDS LAHEY PERSONAL FORTRAN 77 $95 Low cost, Full 77 Standard, Debugger, Fast Compilation F77L FORTRAN LANGUAGE SYSTEM $477 For porting or developing, this is the critics' choice. ••Editor's Choice" PC Magazine ". . .the most robust compiler tested." Micro/Systems ". . .the most efficient and productive FORTRAN development tool for the DOS environment" BYTE F77L-EM/32-bit $895 F77L-EM/1 6-bit $695 Break through the DOS 640K barrier. The most powerful PC Fortran Language Systems for downloading or writing large programs. PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS Profiler, ULI Mathematical Functions Library, Overlay Linker, Toolkit, Utility Libraries, Windows, Memory Boards, 80386 Humming Board. IF YOU DEMAND THE VERY BEST, THEN YOU SHOULD BE USING LAHEY. CALL US TO DISCUSS YOUR PC FORTRAN NEEDS. CALL FOR NEW FEATURES INCLUDING MATH COPROCESSOR EMULATION 30 DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE FOR INFORMATION OR TO ORDER: 1-800-548-4778 Lahey Computer Systems, Inc. P.O. Box 6091, Incline Village, NV 89450 TEL: 702-831-2500 TLX: 9102401256 add your own; then give it a provision to let you enter your trip expenses and get out a travel expense report. None of this would be very difficult. I can think of lots of things you can do with HyperCard programs; but I do won- der if they'll all suffer from lack of suffi- cient depth. HyperCard lets you build a lovely database, but it eats memory and disk storage space. Business Class, for example, fills two floppy disks and still has only 300 words per country on "local customs." The entry for Saudi Arabia doesn't even mention their fanatical laws regarding alcohol. (Foreigners living in Riyadh often have walk-in vaults in their homes; this isn't where they keep their money, but their scotch.) Where HyperCard— or something like it— would really shine would be in man- aging the enormous floods of data that will be available on CD-ROMs. I can imagine a program updated quarterly that had encyclopedic data on countries, cit- ies, and even individual firms. It would need a provision for electronic data files to update really volatile information, but that shouldn't be too hard to manage. HyperCard is one of the Mac's main weapons in the battle with IBM PCom- patibles. It's too bad the new CD-ROM reader Apple announced costs more than a complete Atari Mega ST with a CD- ROM reader, but overpricing to skim early cream is pretty traditional with Apple. Physics and Geometry The success of Apple's Macintosh rests partly on myth (its graphics don't really have any higher resolution than other monochrome PCs), partly on enthusiasm transmitted by Apple II users, and partly on solid achievement. The major achievement has been ease of learning; people with no computer background at all are often able to sit down and use the Macintosh with little assistance or training. This gives the ma- chine a strong boost as a possible tool for education. Case in point: two programs, Physics and Geometry, by Sensei and published by Broderbund Software. Both are high- school-level tutorials I sure wish I'd had when I was studying the subjects. You don't have to know much about the Mac to use them; the interface is sufficiently intuitive that 5 minutes of mucking about will let you use the programs without ever opening the manual. Alas, I suppose because the manual isn't needed, these programs are copy- protected with the key-disk scheme. It's worse than that. I couldn't even get Geometry to work from its own disks on my Mac Plus; if I booted with the Broder- 200 BYTE' MAY 1988 Circle 162 on Reader Service Card CHAOS MANOR bund disk, the Mac Plus kept insisting that their disk 1 wasn't a Macintosh disk and kept offering to format it. I solved the problem by copying both disks to the AST 2000 hard disk drive-I'm really fond of that thing— and running from that, inserting the key disk (which hap- pens to be disk 2, the one without a sys- tem track) when asked. This all seems a bit complicated. At the same time, I understand that schools are among the worst violators of copyright law— I once visited a school where the teacher had used the school's Xerox machine to make 40 copies of one of my books and was actually proud of it— and the key-disk scheme may be the best solution to the problem. Anyway, if you sit a reasonably bright kid down with these disks and a Mac, there's a chance that some learning will take place. Both Physics and Geometry compress a lot of really good knowledge— I use that word deliberately since they are teaching some of the most important prin- ciples of science— into a couple of disks. The programs aren't perfect. They have the approach of a reasonably bright but somewhat distracted schoolmaster. The student had better want to learn phys- ics and geometry, because the programs don't provide any motivation: no rewards for success in the problems, and little connection between what you're learning and reality. It has been my experience that if you tie abstract theory to something practical, students are more willing to work at learning; that, indeed, is what good teaching is all about. I may be hoping for too much from a computer program, but I don't think so; I suspect you could make physics and geometry more fun to learn than these programs do. On the other hand, I sure wish I'd had them when I was in high school. If your kids have access to a Mac, it's worth get- ting them these programs. I Wish I'd Thought of That One recent phenomenon in the science fiction community is the "rented world" book; a well-known author creates a world in a series of books, and another author writes stories about it. Probably the best known of these is the Robot City series, in which a number of younger authors write about a world created by Isaac Asimov (everyone is younger than Isaac. . .). I'm not sure what to make of these books: the income is generally divided among publisher, the author who created the setting and whose name will be used to promote the books, the junior author who actually wrote the stories, and often continued Circle 57 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 58) C programmers are talking about C_talk™ The easy way to add the POWER of OBJECT-ORIENTED Programming to C VI C_talk extends your C compiler to a real Object-Oriented Language (OOL). It is not a new language; it simply adds Smalltalk-like features to C: □ Encapsulation □ Messaging (Dynamic Binding) Q Inheritance Ctalk offers all of the advantages of OOLs: □ A highly modular software design methodology □ Reusable software components □ Extendable software components Plus the advantages of C: □ Speed, size, flexibility □ Ease of application delivery □ Access to C libraries and C tool sets C talk consists of an application development environment with: □ A powerful Smalltalk-like Browser for browsing, denning and editing an application's object class hierarchy □ A Preprocessor for converting object class descriptions into standard C programs that are compatable with popular C compilers □ An integrated, semiautomatic Make utility for controlling the preprocessing, compiling and linking of an application, object classes, C files or libraries C_talk is designed to run on an IBM® PC (or compatable) with one of the following C compilers: Microsoft® C, Lattice C, Turbo C, or C86. A system configured with a hard drive and mouse is highly recommended. To order: CNS, Inc. Software Products Dept. 7090 Shady Oak Road Eden Prairie, MN 55344 (612) 944-0170 Credit Cards: Master Card. Visa Shipping: S5 ■ L'S S25 ' Ijitcmaiioiml POWER TOOL. \ou get intelligent IEEE-488and RS232 ports to make instru- ment programming fast and easy. You can have up to 4 Mbytes of memory on the same board for your largest programs, RAM disks, and data acquisition tasks. ""WWMiH Compatibility is built-in so you can run your favorite programs or create new ones with our advanced programming tools. To get your FREE demo disk— call 617-273-1818. Capital Equipment Corp. Burlington, MA 01803 The bottom Iine-IEEE-488, RS232, par. port, 4MB EEM LLM, runs DOS and OS/2. Circle 53 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 - BYTE 201 CHAOS MANOR a packager who got the idea for the series and put it all together. I suppose if all par- ties are satisfied it must be all right. Any- way, that's irrelevant just now. The other day I got a packet of materi- als about a book by Paul Preuss set in Arthur C. Clarke's "future history." One of the features of this book is a series of line-drawing illustrations of space- craft, a space station, and other equip- ment. The drawings were done by Preuss using CAD-3D on an Atari ST. The instant I saw that I slapped myself on the head. "Holy cow!" I yelled, loud enough that my wife came up to see who had been murdered. A couple of weeks later when I was in New York to make a speech, I showed the stuff to my pub- lisher, Jim Baen. He too slapped himself on the head. I don't know how I missed thinking of the idea first, but once seen it's obvious. Line drawings cost no more per page to print than text, and if one picture is truly worth a thousand words, they're cost- effective. I've sometimes struggled for hours trying to describe a particularly complex piece of equipment. I've also "Developing my application in C would have taken 6 months to a year, but in Actor it took 2 months. " — Brian Feilske, Boeing Commercial Airplane Company ACTOR Actually, you don't have to make the choice. Once C was ideal for all PC pro- • g ramming. But it has been complicated by windowing and graphical interfaces. Now windows development with C is difficult, time-consuming and error-prone. You need a new language that simplifies win- dows programming. Introducing Actor® Actor is the first interactive object-oriented language made for commercial development. Its powerful browsers, inspectors and debuggers give you more insight into a windowing environment than C ever will. But your C work is not lost. C libraries can be linked to Actor. Plus, its procedural syntax is easy for C programmers to learn. Actor comes with windowing classes built in. Customize Actor's classes to create stand- alone windowing applications. And objects give you another layer of independence for a smooth transition to OS/2 and Presentation Manager. It's the quickest and easiest way to write a windowing program. "You can write Windows programs much faster with Actor than with C or assembly language. " —PC Magazine, June 9, 1987 • Runs with Microsoft Windows 1.04, 2.0 and 386. Extended memory under 2.0 and 386. • Pure, single-inheritance object-oriented language, incrementally compiled. • Dynamic linking to C, Pascal, Assembler, or Fortran libraries. Pass data in C structures. • Pascal and C-like syntax. • Programming tools: Browser, Inspector, Debugger, File Editor. • Full access to MS-Windows systems calls, multitasking, and DDE. • Fast device-independent graphics: lines, shapes, icons, cursors, bitmaps, metafiles, Turtle graphics, sample control language using YACC. • 150 classes, 1500 functions, fully extensible. • Window styles: tiled, overlap- ping, popup, child, edit, dialogs. Controls: list boxes, scroll bars, buttons, check boxes. • Data structures: stacks, arrays, queues, lists, dictionaries, sets, sorting, hashing, intervals. • AI support: frames, symbols, dictionaries, lists, symbolic program- ming, functional arguments. Parsing and lexical analysis YACG compatible. • String manipulation: substring, concat, append, insert, remove, search. • 643-page manual includes tutorial and reference. • No license fees. Generates stand-alone applications. • Fastest interactive OOl. available. • Fast incremental garbage collector. Actor $495 • Academic price $99 • Academic site license $99 • Manuals for site license $35 • New! Language Extension $99 • Shipping $5 US, $25 Int'l The Whitewater Group Technology Innovation Center 906 University Place, Evanston, Illinois 60201 (312)491-2370 Actor is a registered trademark of The Whitewater Group, Inc. done my own maps by hand. No more. I'm a lousy draftsman, but a good computer CAD program will solve that problem. It will require a change of habit to think in terms of good diagrams rather than long verbal descriptions, but I think that's the wave of the future. In 5 years— probably fewer— you'll see lots of books that integrate author-produced graphics with the text. Cyber Studio Preuss created his drawings with Cyber Studio, the core program of Antic's Cyber series. Studio contains CAD-3D, a program written by Tom Hudson (who also did the DEGAS paint program). CAD-3D uses an icon interface to let you draw objects, rotate or extrude them, and generally create shapes, which can then be shown as solids or as "wire frames" with all lines visible or with some lines hidden. Objects can be stretched, shrunk, glued together, rotated, and generally mashed about. After you create an object, you can light it. Three studio lights can be moved around and each light's intensity varied until you like the view. When every- thing's just right, you print the result and send it to your publisher. I've been using the system to draw maps for my new Prince of Mercenaries novel. All this is great, and I haven't seen anything on the Macintosh that's better, but it's not half of what the Mega ST and Cyber can do. What's really great is the animation you can get by invoking Cyber Control, the second program of the Stu- dio package. CAD-3D lets you create an object— as an example, your own name. Extrude it so that it's solid. Now save the image. Then, using the Cyber Control lan- guage—which is something like BASIC— change the lighting and rotate your name. While it's rotating, have it progress from the lower left to the upper right side of the screen, with perhaps a loop-the-loop in the middle. I've done that one, and while it takes a couple of hours of fiddling to learn how, once you know it's not very hard to do. You can get more compli- cated; one demonstration that comes with the program is a fully articulated human skeleton that does backflips. Once you've described what you want, you turn the programs loose on it, and they build the series of frames to make full animation. This takes time— up to several hours for something really com- plex—but it will run by itself, so it can be left to stew overnight. There's also Cyber Paint, which works on two-dimensional images but adds the time factor; stuff cut from frame 1 and continued 202 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 309 on Reader Service Card PRINCETON GRAPHIC SYSTEMS An Intelligent Systems Company THE VISIBLE EDGE 601 Ewing St., Building A, Princeton, NJ 08540 For information concerning software compatibility call 609-683-1 660. Circle 234 on Reader Service Card CHAOS MANOR pasted into frame 30 of an animation will appear to float across the screen. While you're at it, you can call up the ADO f/x menu— it's said to be named for the Am- pex Digital Optics system of the seven- ties—and by judicious clicking and drag- ging, you can rotate the object around any axis or all of them, scale it up or down, and draw a complex path for it to follow. All this takes memory; you'll need the 4-megabyte Atari Mega ST with a hard disk drive to do it right— but that's still a lot cheaper than anything else I've seen with that capability. Antic and Sony are ADULTS ONLY □ ADULTS ONLY/1 (147) German pomo. CGA req. □ STRIP POKER (148) Watch outl CGA & Basic req. □ XXX PRINT MASTER PLUS GRAPHICS (149) □ XXX PRTNTSHOP GRAPHICS (ISO) □ BAD-BAD (289) Adventure game. CGA req. □ ASTRO-|bleep] (297) Pomo arcade game. CGA req. □ STRIP BLACKJACK (433) Plus dirty humor. CGA req. □ NASTY GIRL (435) The name says It all. CGA req. BUSINESS □ EZ-FORMS Rev. C.24 (66) Forms generator pkg. □ EASY PROJECT V1.2 (440) Project mgmt system. O BUSINESS LETTERS (303 * 304) 650 letters. □ MR. BILL V3.2 (311 - 312) Time & billing package. □ RENTAL PROPERTY (318) Rental activity mgr. □ SLICWORK8 (321) Framework clone. □ FINANCE MANAGER V4.0 (77) Accounting package. COMMUNICATIONS a RBBS BULLETIN BOARD V1S.1 (290 - 292) (3 disks) O QMODEM V3.1 (293 at 294) Modem program. □ PROCOMM V2.42 (53&B4) Menudrlven modem pkg DATABASE □ FILE EXPRESS V4.01 (33 ft 34) Easy database. □ WAMPUM V3.1 (37 ft 38) dBase 111 clone. □ PC-FILE + V1.0 (298 ft 296) Excellent database;. □ DBASE m PROGRAMS (348) DBASE III req. □ DBASE m UTILITIES (349). DBASE III req. EDUCATION □ PIANOMAN (4 ft 8) A music synthesizer, w/ tunes. □ FAS TYPE V2.1 (120) 2 typing programs. CGA req. □ THE WORLD (127) Maps of the world. CGA required. □ FUNNELS ft BUCKETS V2.0 (130) Learn. Ages 5-10. O MATH -WHIZ (188) Ages 5 and up. Levels. Basic req. □ AMY8 1ST PRIMER (133) Age 4-8. CGA & Basic req. □ POLYGLOT V6.01 (139) Vocabulary builder. 7 & up. □ ANIMAL MATH (181) Ages 4 & up CGA req. GAMES □ BLACKJACK TUTOR (95) Best blackjack tutor avail. □ MONOPOLY V6.7 (106) Graphics. CGA req. □ DUNGEONS ft DRAGONS VI. 1 (205) □ LAS VEGAS (116) CGA req. Basic on some □ 3D CHESS Vl.Ol (215) 2D & 3D chess game. □ SOLITAIRE (211) 4 games. CGA req. □ SUPER PIN BALL (212) 5 games. CGA req. □ WORDPLAY (367) Wheel of Fortune Clone. CGA req. GRAPHICS □ PC-ART V1.0 (199) Easy to use windows CGA □ LIGHTING PRESS (266) Prlntmaster clone. O CALENDAR CREATOR (350) Create your own. □ PRTNTMASTER+ GRAPHICS (319) 3 llbrarless. □ PRINT8HOP GRAPHICS (320) 3 libraries. □ CAD CURVE DIGITIZER (339 ft 340) CGA/ EGA Or- der Disk Numbers 351 ft 352 for Mono. □ DAN CAD 3D V1.33 (424 ft 425) 2D/3D drafting pkg. working to create the Cyber VCR that should be out about the time you read this. It's supposed to turn your Mega ST into a video editor that will do serious professional video graphics. I understand that some ad agencies are already using the Atari Mega ST and Antic's Cyber software to block out television commer- cials for client approval before the really expensive work on finals is begun. DeskLink and LapLink Mac Traveling Software has done it again. I've previously mentioned LapLink, a pro- LANGUAGE □ "C' TUTOR (22 ft 23) 14 lesson tutorial. □ "C LANGUAGE V2.1 (299 ft 300) Complete. □ BASIC TUTOR (325) Beginning Basic user. □ TURBO PASCAL TUTOR (20) Tutor w/ samp. MISCELLANEOUS □ STRESS ft SHRINK (74) Diagnose yourself. □ HORSERACTNG (343) Handicap thoro races. □ FAMILY TIES VI. 15 (154) Genealogy pkg. □ FABTBUCK8 (191) Home finance package. □ BIORHYTHM (194) Calculate your own chart. SPREADSHEET □ LOTUS 123 PROGRAMS (28 - 32) (5 disks) □ LOTUS 123 TUTOR (177) Requires Lotus □ AS EASY AS V3.0 (302) LOTUS clone. UTILITIES □ DISK COMMANDO V2.0 (218 ft 219) Nor- ton's AdvancedUHlltlcs Clone. Many features. □ STM-COA (220) Simulate CGA graphics card. □ DOS HELP 3JCJC (255) - Help screen for DOS. □ DOS TUTORIAL V4.2 (256) A must □ BEGINNERS (257) The basics. □ PC MAGAZINE (277) Over 30 great utilities. □ DE8KMATE8 Vl.Ol (278) Sidekick utility. □ AUTOMENU V4.01 (280) Menu system. WORD PROCESSING □ 8TDEWRITER (6) SIDEWAYS clone. □ RELIANCE MAILING LIST V2.0 (161) Easy. □ PC-WRITE V2.71 (9 ft 10) Word processor. □ NY WORD V2.1 (190) Word processor. □ PC TYPE+ (373 - 375) (3 disks) Buttonware. i ORDER FORM i [ NAME I . Address 1 , CITY ST ZIP 1 I PHONE ( ) I I # of disks O $2.99 ea = | Calif. Sales Tax (6.5%) = ! | Shipping & Handling 2.00 I TOTAL = $ ======= [ I Mail order & check or money order to: f j California FREEWARE i J 1466 Springline Drive I Palmdale, CA 93550 1 i (805) 273-0300 , 1 Call or write for free catalog. | ! Available on 3.5" media - $3.99 ea. I ! We do not accept VISA or MC. ' , A Subsidiary of PC Plus Consulting. v BYTE-588 ' gram that connects portable IBM PCom- patibles like my Zenith Z-183 to desktop PCs (and thus makes it easy to move things from 3V2- to 5 14 -inch disks and vice versa). Now Traveling Software has DeskLink. LapLink connects machines with a cable about 4 feet long. DeskLink comes with small cable stubs to connect to your machine's serial port (as with LapLink, the DeskLink cables have both 9-pin and 25 -pin connectors). The stubs end in nor- mal telephone jack connectors. You then use telephone wire to connect machines up to 75 feet apart. After that, you have a two-computer network with the ability to transfer files, get programs from one computer and run them on the other, share a printer, and so forth. The user interface is different from LapLink, but it's no harder to use. It does require a memory-resident driver. Once that's installed, there's also a talk feature that lets you send messages to the other computer's operator. When I first saw DeskLink at COM- DEX, I asked Traveling Software's Mark Eppley when he'd have a link to the Mac- intosh. He acted amazed that I'd guessed what they were working on, but it was an easy prediction. I now have that version. LapLink Mac connects a PC to a Mac and allows file transfers at 57,600 baud- somewhat faster than AppleTalk. This is particularly useful when transferring large PageMaker files from the PC to the Mac. Like the other Traveling Software networking programs, LapLink Mac comes with the right cable and works about the way you expect it to. The docu- mentation will help you get it set up, but once that's done you probably won't need it anymore. I'm not sure how they got Mac and PC computers to talk to each other at 57,600 baud, but they've done it. If you have both a Mac and a PC, you'll want this program around just in case. Solving Equations I have TK! Solver Plus, Borland's Eure- ka: The Solver, and MathCAD. A real comparison would take more room than I have left; I fear it's short-shrift time. In my judgment, Eureka is the easiest to set up and use. It doesn't cost much, and there's a lot of bang for the buck. It's very intuitive, and no high school student with a PC should be without it. However, college students and advanced users will soon run up against its limits. The num- ber of variables and equations can't be greater than 20, and even within those limits, Eureka can be bloody slow when the problems get hairy. TK! Solver Plus is extremely power- ful. Alas, its cost is based on the profes- FREEWARE ONLY $2.99 PER DISK ONLY $2.99 PER DISK ONLY $2.99 PER DISK Public Domain & User-Supported Software for IBM and Compatibles 204 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 221 on Reader Service Card CHAOS MANOR sional tool it is; but if you're in the sci- ence or engineering business, you really can't afford to be without it, now that it's no longer copy-protected and can run cleanly from a hard disk drive. Unlike Eureka, TK! Solver Plus isn't particularly easy to learn, what with unit sheets, rule sheets, table sheets, variable sheets, and the like. I may be dense, but I found the introduction confusing on first read through. Still, it won't take more than a couple of hours to get started. Once you get the hang of it, TK! Solver Plus is fairly intuitive, and the manuals are certainly complete enough. MathCAD is the intermediate pro- gram. It's more powerful than Eureka and not as easy to learn; but it's less powerful than TK! Solver Plus. Math- CAD incorporates a vanilla text editor and some very clever tricks for creating mathematical symbols and simple graphs, making it easy to write mathe- matical documents. It would be quite suitable for a professor who wanted to write an engineering textbook. The pro- gram is billed as "The Engineer's Scratch Pad, " and to a large extent it lives up to that. For small problems of the sort one usu- ally encounters in college engineering classes, MathCAD is very intuitive— you basically just copy the problem out of the book, entering your equations with a sort of FORTRAN-like system, whereupon they are transformed on-screen into fairly standard mathematical symbols. MathCAD also includes a numerical integrator and differentiator; that is, it won't solve derivatives and definite inte- grals, but it will give a numerical approx- imation of their value. TK! Solver Plus has differentiation and integration in one of the library modules. It's considerably more powerful, but, of course, more complex. I don't think any college student should be without either TK! Solver Plus or MathCAD. My subjective opinion is that lower-division students will probably find MathCAD more useful. Because it's easier to learn and incorporates a text edi- tor, it will be used more often to do homework and extra credit assignments. When the student gets to upper divi- sions and more difficult problems, TK! Solver Plus's extra power and the avail- ability of a whole raft of TK! Solver Plus libraries— some keyed to standard engi- neering textbooks— make it the weapon of choice; and it will probably be more useful in professional life. Of course, TK! Solver Plus can be used by lower- division students and even in high school. I'm sending both down to my son, who's a sophomore in aerospace engi- neering; we'll see which one he prefers. Items Discussed ..$49.95 MathCAD $349 Activision Inc. MathSoft Inc. P.O. Box 7287 One Kendall Square Mountain View, CA 94039 Cambridge, MA 02139 (415) 960-0518 (617) 577-1017 Inquiry 939. Inquiry 943. Courier HST $995 Physics ht*itv $89 95 Good Software Corp. 13601 Preston Rd. Suite 500W LB 226 Dallas TX 75240 Innnirv 935 1I1UUU T S %J+J • Electronic Call Screening . . $49.95 Kanode Associates AlOQ Pact ^nnrira Tprrarp JTIlUCIllAj r\£-> OJUJi Tnnuirv 936. 111UU1I J S<±J\J • $99 Think Technologies Inc. 420 Bedford St. Lexington, MA 02173 (617) 275-4800 Inquiry 937. The Worksheet Utilities . . .$99.95 Funk Software Inc. 222 Third St. Cambridge, MA 02142 (617) 497-6339 Inquiry 938. continue to work in the foreground. When you've enabled the Aldus option, the temporary file is built to include any necessary downloadable fonts. Laser- Speed throws everything it needs into the disk file in a few seconds. Note that this procedure requires a goodly chunk of hard disk drive space; I've watched a 300K-byte PageMaker document grow to over a megabyte and a half of temporary spool file. The version of the program I tested (1.5) is controlled with a desk accessory that's a snap to use. This version was not equipped to deal with MultiFinder, but MultiFinder-compatible version 1.6 was just about to ship when I wrote this and ought to be available now. I should point out that the product works just as well on routine spooling from word processors, databases, and suchlike. I love it because of its magic with PageMaker, but that doesn't mean it isn't a great spooler in its own right. Top marks. YAWP "Yet another word processor." And yes, Celebrity (Good Software, $89.95) is yet another MS-DOS word processor. But it costs less than $100, and it's an excellent program, though not without a few limi- tations. Celebrity is certainly equal to— or better than— many programs priced much, much higher. It has all the basic features you'd ex- pect, plus a few extras: mail merge, a spelling checker with an 80,000-word main dictionary, an acceptable thesau- rus, a built-in calculator, an appointment calendar, and some macro programma- bility. Rudimentary databases, like those for mail merge, can be managed with well-designed entry forms. Formatting is done by means of multiple ruler lines and dot commands, like classic WordStar, though the dot commands are English rather than cryptic abbreviations. I like Celebrity's interface, which lets you enter commands in any of the three most popular fashions: select items from a Lotus/Microsoft-style horizontal menu; type in commands at a command line; or use function-, Control-, and Alt- key sequences. This flexibility makes Celebrity an easy migration path, wheth- er you want to change to it or from it. Celebrity runs beautifully on any IBM PC AT-class machine with a fast hard disk drive, but I also tried the program on my old 4.77-MHz two-floppy-disk-drive Compaq portable to see whether it could be used in simpler environments. Sure enough, it performed quite nicely; speed was more than adequate, and there wasn't an overbearing amount of disk-thrashing. There are enough support files (remem- ber the dictionary and the thesaurus) to strongly suggest a hard disk drive, but you could get by with floppies. Limitations? No table of contents or index. No footnoting. File conversion only from WordStar and Volkswriter. No word count. Stuff like that; mostly minor annoyances. I guess I would class Celebrity as an intermediate-level editor. If you don't have to do anything fancy, it has enough power to be your primary word proces- sor, but I wouldn't recommend it for complex projects. It would definitely make a good first word processor for someone just starting out. Does the world really need a midlevel program like this one? Hard to say. I have my doubts, but the program does seem to be growing in popularity. And my testing showed it to be relatively bulletproof; it won't hit you with any ugly surprises. Your move on this one. ■ Ezra Shapiro is a consulting editor for BYTE. Contact him do BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Because of the volume of mail he receives, Ezra, regretfully, cannot re- spond to each inquiry. 208 BYTE- MAY 1988 Order Status, Technical & Other Info. (602) 246-2222 FAX #(602) 246-7805 Call for programs not listed SPECIAL MICROSOFT WORD 4.0 $195 No Charge for MasterCard or Visa TOLL-FREE ORDER LINE 1-800-421-3135 - HARDWARE - FREE SOFTWARE! Purchase over $100 and receive one of these disks absolutely FREE! Purchases over $250 get two free disks, over $400 get three, or get all four disks when your purchase is over $500! 1) MIXED BAG -A great assortment of utilities and games all packed on one disk. 2) PC-WRITE-Try this famous feature packed word processor. It's a winner! 3) FONT-SET- Lets you set popular fonts like bold, underline, etc. on most late model printers from Citizen, Epson, NEC, Okidata, Panasonic, Star, Toshiba, etc. You can even use your printer like a typewriter! 4) ABC-LIST— Great mailing list program! Sort on any field, do quali- fied searches, print reports and mailing labels, and more! - SOFTWARE - Accounting Cyma Low Price Dac Easy Acct $54 Dac Easy Payroll 39 Dollars & Sense 94 In House Acct 112 Managing Your Money 3.0 117 Communication Programs Carbon Copy Plus $108 Crosstalk XVI 89 Crosstalk MK4 110 Remote 89 Smartcom II 79 Data Base Managers Clipper $375 Condor 3 325 DBase III Plus Low Price DB-XL 80 Fox Base Plus 195 Genifer 189 Paradox 2.0 Premium 435 PFS: Pro File Low Price Powerbase 169 Q5A 189 Quicksilver Diamond 329 Revelation 464 R Base System V Low Price Reflex 81 Relate & Report 112 VP Info 65 Desktop Publishing Pagemaker $479 PFS: First Publisher 59 Ventura Publisher 493 Graphics Chartmaster $199 Design Cad 2 148 Diagram Master Low Price Easy Cad 109 Energraphics 2.01 294 Generic Cad 49 In-A-Vision 270 Microsoft Chart 3.0 . . . 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Phone Hours: Monday, Wednesday & Thursday 7 am-90am; Tuesday & Friday 7am-5 pm; Satruday 9am-5pm MSI Circle 303 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 209 Keeps you going full steam ahead when other debuggers let you down! With four models to pick from, you'll find a Periscope that has just the power you need. Start with the model that fits your current needs. If you need more horsepower, upgrade for the difference in price plus S10! When you move to another Periscope model, don't worry about having a lot to learn . . . Even when you move to the most powerful model, Periscope III, an extra dozen commands are all that's involved. A Periscope I user who recently began using Periscope III writes, "/ like the fact that within the first half hour of use I was debugging my program instead of learning to use the debugger" Periscope software & 200+ page manual ■ Periscope's software is solid, comprehensive, and flexible. It helps you debug just about any kind of program you can write . . . thoroughly and efficiently. Periscope's the answer for debugging device-drivers, memory-resident, non-DOS, and interrupt-driven programs. Periscope works with any language, and provides source and/or symbol support for programs written in high-level languages and assembler. ■ Periscope's hardware adds the power to solve the really tough debugging problems. The break-out switch lets you break into the system any time. You can track down a bug instantly, or just check what's going on, without having to reboot or power down and back up. That's really useful when your system hangs! The switch is included with Periscope I, Periscope II, and Periscope III. Periscope I has a board with 56K of write-protected RAM. The Periscope software resides in this memory, safe from run- periscope i Board away programs. DOS memory, where debugger software would normally reside, is Periscope Break-Out Switch thus freed up for your program. Periscope III has a board with 64K of write-protected RAM, which performs the same function as the Periscope I protected memory. AND . . . The Periscope III board adds another powerful dimension to your debugging. Its hardware breakpoints and real-time trace buffer let you track down bugs that a software- oriented debugger would take too long to find, or can't find at all! Periscope III Board What Periscope Users Like Best: "I like the clean, solid design and the crash recovery. Periscope I user "I like the ability to break out of (a) locked up system!" Periscope II user "I am very impressed with Periscope I I X ... it has become my 'heavy duty' debugger of choice, especially if 1 need to work on a memory resident utility or a device driver." Periscope II-X user ". . . Periscope 111 is the perfect answer to the debugging needs of anyone involved in real-time programming for the PC . . . The real time trace feature has saved me many hours of heartache already." Periscope III user ■ Periscope I includes a half-length board with 56K of write-protected RAM; break-out switch; software and manual for S345. ■ Periscope II includes break-out switch; software and manual for S175. ■ Periscope II-X includes software and manual (no hardware) for S145. ■ Periscope III includes a full-length board with 64K of write-protected RAM. hardware breakpoints and real-time trace buffer; break-out switch; software and manual. Periscope 111 for machines run- ning up to 8 MHz is S995; for machines running up to 10 MHz, SKWt. REQUIREMENTS: IBM PC, XT, AT, or close compatible (Periscope III requires hardware as well as software compatibility); DOS 2.0 or later; 64K available memory; one disk drive; an 80-column monitor. Call us with your questions. We'll be happy to send you free information or help you decide on the model that best fits your needs. Order Your Periscope, Toll-Free, Today! 800-722-7006 MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED The PERISCOPE Company, Inc. 1197 PEACHTREE ST. PLAZA LEVEL ATLANTA, GA 30361 404/875-8080 210 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 227 on Reader Service Card IN DEPTH CPU Architectures 213 The CPU Wars I — ' -— ■ by Pete Wilson 239 What They Did Wrong MAY 1988 'BYTE 211 Introduction CPU Architectures In his overview of microprocessor architectures, Pete Wil- son notes, "When talking about computers, you can use the word architecture in several different ways. " The impre- cision is not a result of a failure to understand the subject. Rather, it is an indication of just how personal the design cri- teria can sometimes be. It goes to show that hardware de- signers often disagree on some of the most bedrock aspects of computer design. This month's In Depth overview, "The CPU Wars, " reca- pitulates the evolution of microprocessors and shows the branchpoints at which one or another design factor assumed dominance and became a standard feature of succeeding chip generations. In addition, Mr. Wilson points to factors be- sides the mental activity of the designer that influence CPU design. Such pressures as economics, technology, intended use, and the expectations of others can and have played their parts in determining whether the design of the next genera- tion is presented in terms of maximum potential. Bearing in mind the intensely personal nature of what de- signers consider worthwhile, as well as the pressures they face, Richard Grehan and Jane Morrill Tazelaar decided to see if there were "lessons to be learned by looking at some of the glaring omissions in earlier-generation CPUs." In "What They Did Wrong, " our editors combine their own ex- perience with that of BIX members joined to microproces- sor-specific conferences, and the result is a list of what users think are vital characteristics essential to any design. In the provocatively tided article "Modeling Chaos," Peter Wayner points out that in some cases you really can't get there from here if all you're doing is boosting horse- power. Sometimes, he notes, you simply have to attack the problem from an entirely new angle. Such is the case with the application of parallel processing to otherwise over- whelming computation problems, such as fluid-flow simula- tions. The results achieved by parallel processing have been encouraging with certain types of problems. Although some drawbacks nag parallel-architecture machines, the design concept is proving itself, as the two examples in this article show. Finally, Trevor Marshall presents "Real- World RISCs," a revealing discussion of the proposition "it's not important how you play the game, but how you design the playing field." What matters these days is not so much how fast or what kind of memory a computer has, but the configuration of the memory interface. Put another way, a fast processor won't do you much good if you can't get the data in and out fast enough to capitalize on the high points of the CPU's design. Mr. Marshall looks at the problems and proposes some solutions. —Glenn Hartwig, Associate Managing Editor 212 BYTE* MAY 1988 CPU ARCHITECTURES The CPU Wars An overview of the microprocessor battlefield, and how it got that way MACINTOSH AND IBM PC machines differ in a more essential way than in their mutual inability (sans extra goodies) to read from or write to each other's disks. The PC family uses the Intel 8086-family architecture, and the Mac, the Motorola 68000-family architecture. The differ- ences between these two processor de- signs are quite fundamental. What led Motorola and Intel in such different directions? For the next few pages I'll look at the issue of processor architectures— that is, the fundamental design decisions inher- ent in a processor— and come to some conclusions about how the varying choices can be compared and how the de- cisions got made. Articles that follow in this section look at some of the problems that classic CPU designs exhibit, and ex- plore new designs, such as reduced- instruction-set computer (RISC) proces- sors and parallel-architecture systems. When talking about computers, you can use the word architecture in several different ways. While it always refers to something fundamental to the issue being discussed, the implications can be quite fuzzy ("The 6502 is an 8-bit architec- ture") or surprisingly focused ("The SPARC is an overlapping-windows RISC architecture"). I'll use the word to indicate the major functional decisions embodied in a design without being overly concerned about, for example, the size of the data object the processor can easily deal with. This makes it possible to discuss 6502s, 80286s, and T800s on an equal footing, which is more fun. The various microprocessors available Pete Wilson today show that competent designers can disagree strongly on fundamental aspects of computer design. To see how this arises, I'll recapitulate the evolution of microprocessors. I'll design (in broad outline) a series of computer architec- tures, starting with a very simple one whose capabilities will be strongly con- strained by technology and advancing through successive designs using better technology. And for each paper design, I'll show a commercial design that re- flects similar decisions. Constraining Factors Before jumping into that, though, it's worthwhile pointing out that computer architecture is not a purely cerebral activ- ity; a company implementing a micropro- cessor is constrained by several factors: chiefly economics, technology, needs, and fads. Economics— that is, general market forces— is perhaps the strongest. It can cut both ways: It can allow the con- tinued existence of a relatively poor design despite the ready availability of better ones (because there's so much software investment in the poorer design that no one wants to risk putting effort into a new machine); and it can facilitate the entrance of a new design (e.g., be- cause Sun has put SPARC architecture into the public domain, anyone can build it; this could well be the opportunity the Japanese semiconductor vendors have been waiting for— a competent design suitable for mass production that won't result in lawsuits when they churn them out by the million). Technology must always be a factor; the choice made when you've got a mil- lion transistors to play with may not be the same as when you're limited to 10,000. But technology and economics intertwine; most customers like some sort of continuity in the products they buy, so the decisions made for a design restricted to a small number of transistors can haunt a vendor even when the tech- nology allows better decisions. What you want the thing to do must also have some effect on a machine's ar- chitecture. A machine designed to be used in low-speed logic replacement may be out of place in a Unix system; a pro- cessor optimized for Pascal can be a poor fit to Prolog. Finally, what everybody expects of you (or your own pet theory) can constrain ar- chitectures. This year, it would be hard to introduce a new architecture as complex as a VAX or 32x32; the masses demand RISC designs. And within designs, the architects' predilections show: for in- stance, SPARC'S register windows and the T800's message-passing instructions. From Simple Beginnings Let's put these issues to one side and look at the purely technical issues. To begin with, assume we've got only a primitive technology and we want a reasonably general-purpose processor. We need some memory (to hold the program and data), an ALU (to do useful things like ADD and exclusive-OR), and something to tell us what instruction to execute next. To get the machine to do something, we have it execute a program, which is a col- continued MAY 1988 "BYTE 213 THE CPU WARS Architectural Metrics How can we compare one proposed architecture to another existing one? If we cannot measure the goodness of an architecture, we're going to have major difficulties designing a competi- tive processor. The first thing to note is that we cannot usefully compare archi- tectures, since the point of an architec- ture is as a specification for a real com- puter. Instead, we can say that if we compare implementations of architec- tures at constant technology, then we should get an indication of comparative worth. This really is a lot like a benchmark- ing exercise, but with two subtle twists- first, it's necessary to be fair to the other guys, and second, the notion of cost is a bit different. When comparing two per- sonal computers with roughly equiva- lent performance and different prices, you can pretty quickly decide on the cheaper one; however, the price of a sys- tem is only loosely based on physics and is more strongly affected by the manu- facturer's accounting practices, expec- tations, positioning, and other economic factors (of course, cost is one factor). Being fair to the other guys involves, for example, noticing that when your machine comes out it will be imple- mented in 1-micron CMOS while theirs— which already exists— is done in 1.5-micron CMOS. Your machine will go faster than theirs simply because the transistors are smaller and switch faster. So whatever performance figures you use, you must normalize to keep tech- nology level. The real cost of a processor is fairly difficult to estimate. There are two por- tions—the cost of the chip (or chips) it- self, plus the cost of the memory to hold the program and data. If the processor is very small and cheap but with horrid code density, it will be cheaper than a competitor's product with a bigger chip and good code density— only up to the point where the cost of memory for the cheap processor swamps the processor chip cost. Using these factors, we can imagine a method for comparing architectures. First, identify a range of programs span- ning the spectrum from small code/ small data up to large code/large data, and including large code/small data and small code/large data. Examples (in the same order) might be a washing ma- chine controller, a banking application, a complex real-time signal processing system, and a Lisp interpreter; in real- ity, many examples are needed. Now measure the machines using these benchmarks, normalize the results (to constant technology), and plot the ma- chine's performance surface. This is a three-dimensional surface where the height is the normalized performance and the x and y axes are code size and data size (see figure A). On such a graph, we can say that if ar- chitecture A's surface is always below the surface of architecture B, then A is worse than B. What's more likely to happen, though, is that the surfaces in- tersect, as in figure B. Then we can still say something very useful, such as A is 20 percent better than B for all systems requiring less than a megabyte. In real use, we'd have to be careful about what we mean by "big programs." Some big programs, for example, spend all their time in one of a small number of loops. The end result would probably be that, rather than a surface, we'd end up with a fuzzy "performance volume." To introduce cost-effectiveness rather than simply raw performance, we need only to replace the vertical axis with performance/cost, where we compute cost as the sum of the processor chip cost plus the cost of the memory. We can compute the normalized cost of the chips by estimating their areas (at con- stant technology)— cost goes up expo- nentially with area, making small chips attractive— and adding in the cost of the appropriate memory system. Performance Data size ■v Code size Performance Data size Code size Figure A: A method for comparing CPU architectures. The height of the surface is its normalized performance , and the x and y axes are code and data size. Figure B: Typical performance plot comparing two CPUs. 214 BYTE' MAY 1988 Illustration by Bruce Sanders, © 1988 Circle 5 on Reader Service Card THE CPU WARS lection of commands stored in the mem- ory. We have to encode the desired opera- tions in some reasonable manner, so that we can represent reasonably well what the machine should do, and also so that it can decode our intentions and obey them without using too much hardware. To start somewhere, look at all the things we want the ALU to do. We'd like it to do addition and subtraction (we'll let it use two's complement binary numbers, because they fit the technology well) and a bunch of logical operations, shifts, comparisons, and so forth. If we list them all (omitting multiplication and division, since they're too complicated to be done in roughly zero transistors), we'll find that there are fewer than 256 and more than 16; this makes it attractive to think about using a byte to indicate the opera- tion we'd like performed. Now we can say add, but we haven't said what to add to what. The simplest thing is to have a special register— call it the accumulator— belonging to the ALU, and to say that add means "take some- thing and add it into the value in the regis- ter, leaving the result in that register." Because we have few transistors, the ac- cumulator can be only 8 bits in size. Now, all we have to do is to specify the "something"; the obvious solution is to be able to add something from the mem- ory into the accumulator. If we do the sensible thing and limit the size of the memory to 64K bytes (if we don't have enough transistors to build a complex processor, we won't be able to afford much memory, either), we can specify any address in 16 bits. So that gives us 24-bit instructions (8 bits of op code and 16 bits of address). And we'll add load and store instructions to allow move- ment of data between the accumulator and memory. The number 24 looks nasty; not only is it not very binary, it's also very big— our programs will use up lots of expensive memory. And besides, we want the ma- chine to do more than loads, adds, and stores— we'd like, for example, to be able to look at each member of a collection of values in memory. We can do this by in- venting another operation— an indirect load. A normal load instruction uses the 16 bits to select a memory cell whose value we copy into the accumulator; an indirect load selects a memory cell whose value we use to select another memory cell whose value we load into the accu- mulator. Now, by messing around with a memory cell's value, we can play with data structures. But such an indirect load has two prob- lems. First, it involves two memory ac- cesses, and the first rule of microproces- sor design says that it's always easy to build a processor that can do something much faster than affordable memory can cycle. So we've just put a performance bottleneck into our machine. Second, play- ing with the address location in memory means destroying the value we had in the accumulator (so if we want to add up the values in 50 locations, we'll be doing a lot of loading and storing, which involves memory accesses and tends to be slow). Luckily, experience indicates that when we're playing with collections of values, we often play with successive ele- ments (or elements related in some way). This means that we will keep going back to play with a single address location— for example, to increment it by 1. Suppose we give the processor another register to be used as an address register? The only problem with this is that there aren't enough transistors to make this ad- dress register 16 bits— we can manage only 8. So we can't address all the mem- ory. Since we need to, we'll have to keep the original idea of indirect loads, but we'll change the meaning to "add the value of the address register to the value in the specified location to form an ad- dress." Now we've still got the memory access, but we can meddle with the ad- dress register (useful things like adding 1 to it) with a small number of extra in- structions, so we can compute a sequence of addresses without destroying the value in the accumulator. Now we can make one more optimiza- tion. We'll make the instructions 16 bits long instead of 24 bits by restricting the address portion of the instruction to 8 bits. Now we are restricted to using the bottom 256 locations of the memory as our indirection values, but the programs have all shrunk by 33 percent, and the machine goes faster (we need fewer mem- ory cycles to read the instructions from memory, since the instructions are smaller). A few more details, and the design is done. We need a few more registers— the program counter, a 16-bit register to indicate the next instruction to execute, plus some instructions to manipulate this (so we can jump). We need some method of comparing values so that we can write programs that are data-dependent; the simplest method is to have a set of bits in the ALU set on arithmetic or logical in- structions to indicate the result was 0, or greater than 0, or that overflow occurred, and so forth. And we need some instruc- tions that change the program counter if a particular bit is set. Finally, both common sense and a sense that memory is expensive lead us to want some method of having just one copy of a piece of code that does some- continued The best Modula-2 compilers for PCs and compatibles Taylor Modula-2 The professional high-performance compiler for PCs: the fas- test compiler in the world! * unrivalled speed of compilation 7,000-10,000 lines per minute (80286, 8 MHz). * excellent code Mini-computer standard global optimisation. Code per- forms 1580 Dhrystone tests per second! (80286,8 MHz) * ultra-compact high code density and a library of unrivalled compactness (23 modules in a total of 13K!) * completely standard implementation Follows N. Wirm's standard for Modula-2. BIOS indepen- dent-uses MS/PC DOS exclusively. * easy to use* «l Straightforward; user interface. Comprehensive documen- tation for system programmers. * Guarantee and support One year guarantee. 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International Orders add I ne Moauia-z people: MW INTERFACE Jar TECHNOLOGIES 3336 Richmond, Suite 323 Houston, TX 77098-9990 (713) 523 8422 Dealer inquiries welcome International Austria: 0222/4545010 Belgium: 071/366133 France: 20822662 Italy: 02/405174 Scandinavia: +45/3/512014 Switzerland: 01/9455432 United Kingdom: 01/6567333 Germany: 02983/8337; 0731/26932; 0821/85737; 04106/3998; 0531/347121 A. + L. Meier-Vogt Im Spaten 23 CH-8906 Bonstetten/ZH Switzerland Tel. (41)(1)700 30 37 MAY 1988 'BYTE 215 COMPUTER DISCOUNT WAREHOUSE NEC NEC Multispeed $1348.64 NEC Multispeed EL 1499.76 NEC Multispeed HD w/20 Meg . . .2365.77 NEC Powermate 2, 40 Meg NEW NEC Powermate 2, 66 Meg LOWER NEC Powermate 386, 66 Meg NEC NEC Powermate 386, 130 Meg . . PRICES TOSHIBA 1100 Plus $1519.10 3100 w/20 Meg 2998.50 1000 869.41 1200 2237.55 3200 SPECIAL BUY 5100 NEW MODEL WHY PAY RETAIL? 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Word Perfect 4.2 5VW3V4 dBase III+ 5V orders under SZOO OO please add SS.OO handling, fee Non-detective relurns subject mo. lee All prices rellect 3% discount lor casn Allow 10 business days lor shipping paying by personal check Software, chips and uther electronic components able All pricing subiect to change TM ■ Regisiered traflemarKs of IBM ar (800) 233- InTflinois FAX |»«i=™~t« In Illinois FAX f (312) 498-1426 (312) 291-1737 HIGH VOLUME BIDS INVITED 730 Anthony Trail Northbrook, IL 60062 FAX-A-BID (312) 291-1737 Circle 6 on Reader Service Card THE CPU WARS Designing an Architecture However you do it, comparing your proposed architecture with others is necessary before you commit to sili- con. This exercise is made more diffi- cult because you don't have any silicon to measure. Instead, architects will normally build a simulation of their proposed ma- chine. There are three major options: One is the traditional one of building some real hardware from logic gates; the trouble with this is that it's very hard to get the design right, and quite often the simulator bursts into life only after the first real microprocessor chips have been built and made to work. Another option is to purchase a de- sign automation suite from a CAD com- pany. You can buy a software package to run on your workstation, supermini- computer, or supercomputer that lets you design the architecture and all the implementation and simulate the ma- chine executing programs. This way, you can do a traditional top-down de- sign, sketching in the big picture and gradually refining it as the issues be- come clearer; then you try different hardware implementations of various portions (iterating the high-level spec as appropriate) while getting a very ac- curate picture of the performance and— equally important— being sure that the hardware actually implements exactly what it's supposed to. The trouble with this approach is simply up-front cost; the packages and the computers are hardly free. The final option is to do it yourself. Since the computer is going to be a col- lection of black boxes that work together to get the program executed, simply writing an instruction-set interpreter in C isn't enough; it won't tell you the per- formance effects of prefetching instruc- tions, or how big the cache should be, and so forth. (It will let you see what in- structions get executed most, though, which should give you some hints as to what instructions must be quick and what could be left out.) You have to somehow simulate the ef- fect of all these boxes (e.g., the instruc- tion prefetcher, the register bank, the ALU, the cache, the memory, and the I/O) working in parallel. The most obvi- ous way to deal with this is to write a de- scription in a suitable parallel program- ming language; it turns out that Occam— the language designed for programming collections of T800s— is a very good fit for this, allowing concise descriptions of the way the pieces interlock. Simply running the program gives you a simulation of the proposed design, and if you've got many T800s, you can run the program on the collection to speed things up. Then, using techniques similar to those outlined in my article "Floating-Point Survival Kit" (March BYTE), you can transform the design into a microcoded implementation and be pretty sure the actual silicon will do just what you want. If you don't mind missing out on the transformation stuff, you could just as well do the description in Definicon's Parallel C, which con- tains the same functionality as Occam for these purposes. If, however, you've missed out on getting a transputer into your PC or workstation, then you can't use Occam. Under those circumstances, you can build a simulator as a discrete event sim- ulation. This says the world is made up of separate events that affect each other and that happen at specific times. When an event happens, it can trigger the oc- currence of other events (including re- currences of itself). You write a procedure for each event type and then build a little time-ordered queue of event requests. The simulation simply looks at the front request on its queue, sets the simulation time to that event's time, and calls the correspond- ing procedure. The procedure does whatever is appropriate— including put- ting requests for other events onto the queue— and returns, whereupon the cycle repeats. This allows the time- dependent behavior of the design to be modeled just as we did in Occam, but somewhat more clumsily. thing interesting, so that a program want- ing to do that function can make use of it. We've invented subroutines; all that's needed is another register and a couple of instructions: A call saves the current program counter in memory whose ad- dress is specified by the new register, and then increments that register, while a re- *— Circle 73 on Reader Service Card turn decrements the register and reloads the program counter from the indicated memory location. The resulting machine is very close to the 6502, originally designed by Mostek and used in the Apple II and the Commo- dore PET. The 6502 has a few more fea- continued Tools and Toolboxes Modula-2 Applications Generator Amadeus $ 395 Generate Modula-2 programs directly from your own input, and save yourself hours of coding! Graphics M2Graph* Controls Hercules cards in Modula-2 M2EGA* Controls EGA cards in Modula-2. $65 $65 Modula Graphics Toolbox I* $ 112 A collection of extremely fast graphics routines for CGA cards written in Modula-2. Modula Graphics Toolbox II* $ 188 Comprehensive package of Modula-2 procedures for all cur- rently available graphics cards. Includes grahics window system, font generator, sprite handler, mouse driver, maths routines, as well aspie chart, histogram and line graph func- tions etc. Input/Output $133 LCR-Window Manager* Fast, compact window system. M2Windows* $ 188 Fast, professional window system. 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' ■ ' - ' ' \ ;V_ " Texas residents add 8% safes, tax. International Orders add ''.l,t H) INTERFACE TECHNOLOGIES 3336 Richmond, Suite 323 Houston, TX 77098-9990 (713) 523 8422 Dealer inquiries welcome International Austria: 0222/4545010 Belgium: 071/366133 France: 20822662 Italy: 02/405174 Scandinavia: +45/3/512014 Switzerland: 01/9455432 United Kingdom: 01/6567333 Germany: 02983/8337; 0731/26932; 0821/85737; 04106/3998; 0531/347121 A. + L. Meier-Vogt Im Spaten 23 CH-8906 Bonstetten/ZH Switzerland Tel. (41)(1)70030 37 MAY 1988 -BYTE 217 IBM/PC DOCUMENT CONVERSIONS RS-232C/422A USERS: BI-DIRECTIONAL CONVERTER for EXTENDED USE Convert RS-232C to RS-422A and/or RS-422A to RS-232C only $49.95 Guaranteed satisfaction. Bi-direclional. first-quality, wsaiile converter. Extends cable lengths up to 4,000 leet! Bit rates up to 90K Baud. (Two B & B RS-422C0N Converters can extend your RS-232C capability up to 4.000 ft.) 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Westerville, OH 43081 THE CPU WARS tures, but the major ones have been covered in the design process I've gone through. It uses fewer than 10,000 transistors. Segmentation Rears Its Ugly Head Time passes. Now we have more transis- tors available. What can we do to improve the machine? Obviously, we want to get all the registers up to 16 bits. Let's put in multiply and divide as instructions rather than having to call those subroutines. And, now that memory is cheaper, let's somehow get the size of memory up. Increasing the registers to 16 bits is simple enough. So is adding multiply and divide. (And— allowing economics into the picture— we can let the machine deal with its registers as either 16-bit or 8-bit values, so last year's programs can be ported without any real difficulty.) But those 16-bit registers simply won't ad- dress more than 64K bytes. To fix this, we remember what hap- pened with our first machine when we wanted to address more than 64K bytes; between the processor and the memory we put a little register— perhaps 4 bits or so— and the value in this register was al- ways added to the 16 bits the processor generated to provide 20 bits of address. Using a program, the processor wrote the correct values into the little register. To make sure it all worked, we made the logic use the 20-bit addresses only under certain circumstances, such as the ad- dress having its most significant (six- teenth) bit set. Well, that worked well enough. It's got limitations— we can skip around all over a big memory, but we can never see more than 64K bytes from any one place. But who's going to write programs that big? So let's implement it inside the processor (i.e., add some address-extension regis- ters to the processor itself), and tidy it up a bit. We want to be able to execute a pro- gram anywhere in the memory, but it's just possible that the chunk of program could be about 64K bytes in size, and this would make the size of data the program could easily play with somewhat small. So we'll provide one magic register for addressing code and another one for data. And sometimes the code will want to play with two different collections of data, so we'll add a third. That's not very binary, so we'll give the machine four such base registers. The base registers will be 16 bits (other sizes are difficult to deal with). We could stick the 16-bit base value beside the (up to) 16-bit value of the address to get a 32- bit address, but that's far too large. No one can afford a 32-bit address space. And having increments finer than 64K continued Circle 165 on Reader Service Card Circle 184 on Reader Service Card Circle 7 on Reader Service Card THE CPU WARS bytes in base addresses makes it simpler to have a new base address set up for each module of the program. A megabyte sounds large enough; let's arrange things so that the base address is shifted four places left and then added to the ma- chine's 16-bit address. Sounds like a good compromise. That machine, of course, is the 8086 design (which actually sprang from the 8085, not the 6502, but the story is still legitimate). The 8086 uses about 30,000 transistors. Removing Bottlenecks Again, technology doesn't stand still. What are the bottlenecks in our design? First, the machine is using that memory too often. Although memories have speeded up, the processor can still be faster; those loads and stores are crip- pling our performance. We need some- where to put a reasonable amount of data that we can get hold of at processor speeds. Second, that megabyte of mem- ory has people writing more ambitious continued Listing 1: A C program containing the inner loop of an instruction set simulator, a complex integer expression evaluator, and a matrix addition. /* code fragments to show processor architecture differences */ #define TRUE 1 #define FALSE 0 interpret ( ) { #define add 1 #define subtract 2 register int PC, acc, instruction, opcode, operand, running; int memory [ 102 4 ] ; running = TRUE; acc =0; PC = 0; while (running) { instruction = memory [PC++] ; operand = instruction s 255; opcode = instruction >> 8; switch (opcode) { case add: acc += operand; break; case subtract : acc -= operand; break; default : running = FALSE; break; } evaluate (x) int x; { register int a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h; a = x; b = x/2; c=x+l;d=x+2; e = x + a; f = x + b; g = x + c; h = x + d; a = ( (a + b) * (c + d) ) / ( (e + f) * (g + h) ) ; return a; matrix(ml, m2, m3, x, y) int x, y; register int * ml, * m2, * m3; { register int i, j ; for (i =0; i < x; i++) { for (j = 0; j < y; j++) { *ml++ = *m2++ + *m3++; } } continued A new concept in managing Megabytes of memory IX-BoX* Have you ever spent hours - searching for a letter which you know exists, but can't seem to find? - looking for an address which you can only re- member half of? -tracking down a variable which was initiali- sed somewhere in your programs, and which is now causing them to crash? - rummaging through your ultra-modern data- base, simply because you omitted to define a simple key field when setting it up? - searching'your literature index for an urgently needed article? -looking and looking, but without suc- cess? Then we can help! IX-BoX will instantly find all your correspondence, addresses, programs, entries, summaries - in fact, anything and everything stored on your computer. IX-BoX delivers the document you require in seconds, and you can carry out any necessary changes to it using the built-in editor. What more could you possibly need? IX-BoX is much more than a simple informa- tion retrieval system, yet it only costs $ 275 Demo disk costs $ 10 * IX-BoX is a trade mark of Snark AG, Zurich. Farsight Once you've used the Farsight integrated soft- ware package, you'll know the fun of working with and exploiting Megabytes of memory. Window manager, word processor and spread- sheet together cost only §gg , " rfJfk $; i residents add 8% sales tax. Internal INTERFACE TECHNOLOGIES 3336 Richmond, Suite 323 Houston, TX 77098 9990 (713) 523 8422 Dealer inquiries welcome International Austria: 0222/4545010 United Kingdom: 01/6567333 Belgium: 071 /366133 Germany: 02983/8337; France: 20822662 0731/26932; Italy: 02/405174 0821/85737; Scandinavia: +45/3/512014 04106/3998; Switzerland: 01/9455432 0531/347121 A. + L. Meier-Vogt Im Spaten 23 CH-8906 Bonstetten/ZH Switzerland Tel. (41)(1)700 30 37 MAY 1988 • BYTE 219 THE CPU WARS i int matl[4] [4], mat2[4][4], mat3 [4] [4] ; main ( ) { interpret () ; matrix(matl, mat2, mat3, 4, 4); evaluate (5) ; } Listing 2: The compiled 80286 code emitted by Turbo C given the source code in listing 1. Compare with listings 3 and 4. Turbo C output for a 286 • interpret proc near push si ! save registers on entry push di ! push bp ! mov bp, sp ! sub sp,2056 mov word ptr [bp-2850],l running is [bp-2050] xor di.di acc is di xor si, si ! PC is si @2: cmp word/ ptr [bp-2050],0 ! see if running is 0 je @3 ! give up if it is mov bx, si ! copy PC into a ! temporary register shl bx, 1 ! multiply by two for ! a byte offset lea ax, word ptr [bp-2048] ! memory[] starts at ! [bp- 2048]; put its ! address into ax add bx, ax ! compute address of mov ax, word ptr [bx] ! mem [PC], read from mov word ptr [bp-2056],ax ! it and and put it ! into 'instruction' inc si ! increment PC mov ax, word ptr [bp-2056] ! read 'instruction' ! into accumulator and ax, 255 ! AND with 255 mov word ptr [bp-2052],ax ! write into 'operand' mov ax, word ptr [bp-2056] ! get 'instruction' ! again. . mov cx, 8 ! set up for a shift.. sar ax, cl ! shift 8 places mov word ptr [bp-2054],ax ! and write into ! ' opcode' mov ax, word ptr [bp-2054] ! reload it . . dec ax cmp ax, 1 ja @7 mov bx, ax shl bx, 1 jmp word ptr cs:@8[bx] ! computed jump ! through jump table @8 label word dw 05 ! jump table entries @5: dw @6 add di.word ptr [bp-2052] ! the 'add' case jmp short 84 @6: sub di,word ptr [bp-2052] ! the 'subtract' case jmp short @4 @7: mov word ptr [bp-2050],0 ! default - continued programs, so they write in a high-level language to finish in a reasonable time. The use of high-level languages has three effects: First, programs are getting bigger (because the compilers aren't doing too good a job); second, programs are getting bigger (because more complicated pro- grams can be written more safely and more quickly); and third, these programs are using procedures all over the place. Let's first deal with the memory-ac- cess bottleneck by giving the processor several data registers. These will be on the same chip, so they can be accessed quickly (things slow down cruelly when your signals have to trickle off the edge of a chip, across a board, into a chip, and then retrace their steps). A nice number would be 16. Looking at our programs we see that we often— at the bottom of a loop, for example— have to increment or decrement a value by some amount. It's too complicated to put special hardware into each register so it can do this itself, so we'll do it by instructions. To do that in an instruction sounds like a Good Idea— but then we'll need to break with our instruction encoding (re- member, it's of the "add to accumulator" type). Rather than our one-address in- structions (one-address because the in- structions literally specified just one op- erand, the other being the accumulator), we'll have two-address instructions that say things like "take 13 and add it to reg- ister 8" or "take register 6 and multiply it by register 5." We've gained performance because we no longer need to go messing around put- ting things into an accumulator, adding stuff into that, and copying it out again. Now we can combine any two registers any old way we want. Given the registers, we'll see a much reduced need to access memory, and programs will go faster. But the compilers are still fairly stupid (actually, close to brain-dead), so the code's exploded in size. The limits im- posed by 16-bit registers are too con- straining. So we'll use up some transis- tors making them 32 bits. Now we've got a problem. When we encode all the things we want to do with the registers, we find that we need more than 16 bits to encode the typical instruc- tion. Looking at a program running on our shiny new machine, we notice that it's keeping addresses in those registers about as often as it keeps data. The ma- chine does different things with addresses (they access memory) and data (you do sums with data). If we split our registers between address registers and data regis- ters, then we can encode most of the fre- quent instructions in 16 bits, and the per- formance doesn't seem to suffer. Also, continued 220 BYTE* MAY 1988 " -1' 1 6 L if \1 ' 4 Am \ ! \ ! MICRO-CAP II. The CAE tool with fully interactive analog simulation for your PC. Spectrum Software's MICRO-CAP II® is fast, powerful, and feature rich. This fully interactive, advanced electronic circuit analysis program helps engineers speed through analog problems right at then- own PCs. MICRO-CAP II, which is based on our origi- nal MICRO-CAP software, is a field-proven, second-generation program. But it's dra- matically improved. Schematic Editor MICRO-CAP II has faster analysis routines. Better resolution and color. Larger librar- ies. All add up to a powerful, cost-effective CAE tool for your PC. The program has a sophisticated inte- grated schematic editor with a pan capa- bility. Just sketch and analyze. You can step Transient Analysis component values, and run worst- case scenarios — all interactively. And a 500-type* library of standard parts is at your finger- tips for added flexiblity. MICRO-CAP II is available for IBM® PCs and Macintosh™ The IBM version is CCA, EGA, and Hercules® compatible and costs only $895 complete. An evaluation version is available for $100. Call or write today for our free brochure and demo disk. We'd like to tell you more about analog solutions in the fast lane. ■ Integrated schematic editor ■ Fast analysis routines ■ High-resolution graphic output ■ Standard parts library of 500* types *IBM versions only. ■ Transient, AC, DC, and FFT routines ■ Op-amp and switch models ■ Spec-sheet-to model converter* ■ Printer and plotter* hard copy T.-cwsch ■ 1B9,88BB8t*B2 K CiU > -111.361 It Bm anjlo- -&W.23S fesreet Group AeUy: Ert Stt. tiert = -3fc9.E«*l£-ei WOCT fcii. gain = 1.82WBT- l%.5eesa:-E! AC Analysis 1021 S. Wolfe Road, Dept. E Sunnyvale, CA 94087 (408) 738-4387 MICRO-CAP II is a registered trademark of Spectrum Software. Macintosh is a trademark of Mcintosh Laboratory, Inc. and is being used with express permission of lis owner. Hercules is a registered trademark of Hercules Computer Technology IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines, Inc. Circle 279 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 • BYTE 221 THE CPU WARS @4: @3: 61: jmp short @2 mov sp, bp pop bp pop di pop si ret ret endp ite proc near push si push di push bp mov bp, sp sub sp, 12 mov si, word ptr bp+B J mov ax, word ptr ;bp+8 ] mov bx, 2 cwd idiv bx mov di, ax mov ax, word ptr [bp+8 J inc ax mov word ptr [bp - J , ax mov ax, word ptr [Dp + B J add ax, 2 mov WOlO pUI L^tr -10] , ax mov ax, word ptr [bp+8] add ax, si mov word ptr [bp -8] , ax mov ax, word ptr [DP+O J add ax, di mov word ptr [bp — b j , ax mov ax, word ptr rv.n+R 1 add ax, word ptr r V.n-1 0 1 L-Dp 1*1 j mov word ptr [bp -4] , ax mov ax, word ptr [bp+8] add ax, word ptr LDp-l« J mov word ptr [bp — 91 a v — c. j , ax mov ax, si acio. di mov dx, word ptr f bn-l ? 1 add dx, word pt r [Dp-lW J mul ax push ax mov ax, word ptr [bp-8] add ax, word pt r Lop- b J mov dx, word ptr r u n _d "i [Dp H J acta dx, word ptr Lop ^ j mul dx mov bx, ax pop ax cwd idiv bx mov si, ax mov ax, si mov sp, bp pop bp pop di pop si ret @9: _evaluate jnatrix proc push push ! clear 'running' ! exit - ! restore registers now begin the computation; copy 'a' into ax compute 'a+b' in ax load ' c' into dx add 'd' to dx ax = dx * ax we save that result (e + f) * (g + h) done same way the other multiplication save ax in bx get the save result ! do the division ! copy result to 'a' endp near s i di continued we can do interesting things with an ad- dress register and a data register, like read a value from memory at the location indicated by an address register and load it into a data register. Trouble is, we can now call for some pretty complex operations in one instruc- tion. Things that used to be done by a whole sequence of instructions now fit into one; it's really difficult to build logic that does all those complicated things. So let's implement the thing as an inter- preter. We'll build a much simpler ma- chine whose instructions are unbeliev- ably crude but very quick to execute, and have a tiny program in a ROM on-chip that will cycle our crude machine through the contortions necessary to do the com- plex stuff its instruction set calls for. The little program is called microcode, and since it's there, we can add facilities to the machine. We can have several dif- ferent instruction sizes, with the longer ones specifying a complex sequence of operations involving multiple steps (e.g., add this constant to an address register, look into memory, take the value, use that as an address, read from memory, and multiply register 7 by that value). Real power at last! This machine, though our description is hardly complete, is 68000-flavored. A 68000 needs around 70,000 transistors. Small Is Beautiful, Revisited More time passes. Programs get written. Then we notice something about the ma- chines: Those compilers aren't making much use of all the clever things in the in- struction set. The machine's spending too much time on procedure calls. Tech- nology is much better now— you can use a couple hundred thousand transistors if you want. What's the best way of making use of these extra transistors? Let's take these one at a time. The compilers aren't making good use of many of the instructions— sounds like the time has come to fire our compiler writ- ers for incompetence. But a closer look shows that our COBOL compiler is using a subset of the instructions, as is our Pas- cal compiler. Unfortunately, they're dif- ferent subsets. So the compilers are not the root of the problem. It looks like dif- ferent classes of problems need different resources— a general solution could be mediocre for everyone. And the instruc- tions that every compiler does use are the straightforward ones that mess around between the registers; and these aren't executing as quickly as they could be- cause there's all that microcode control (necessary for the complex instructions) in the way. 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MDA/CGA/ EGA SI49 • Genoa Super EGA & System Super EGA (800x600 Res.).... s 225 ComputerEx po :fi. POLICY Relumed nems musi be as new.noi modified or damag- ed with all manuals warraniycard and packaging rn- I8CI Returned Hems must Be wilh me Return Aulhon/a- honNo on Ihe shipping label NO CREDIT issued alter 30 days from me date ot shipment Restocking tee 20 u o TEXAS # 1 IBM™ COMPATIBLE COMPUTER CENTER 11238 WILCREST GREEN, HOUSTON, TEXAS 77042 Circle 67 on Reader Service Card ORDERS LINE ONLY 1-800-622-EXPO INQUIRE 713-784-0990 SERVICE 713-784-7817 e Hercules Hayes Everen Diomond IBM XT AT & registered trademarks ot their respective companies MAY 1988 'BYTE 223 THE CPU WARS push Dp mo v bp , sp xor si, si jmp snort is 1 4 Is iiO . xor 01,01 jmp snort isio @17 : now we do *ml++ = *m2++ + *m3++ mov bx,word ptr [bp+10] get the value of m2 into bx mov ax, word ptr [bx] read from that address into ax mov bx,word ptr [bp+12] get the value of m3 into bx add ax, word ptr [bx] add value from that address into ax mov bx,word ptr [bp+8] get value of ml mov word ptr [bx],ax copy ax into that location add word ptr Lbp+oJ,^ increment ml, m2, m3 add word ptr LDp+l«J,z add word ptr lbp+12J,2 @16 : inc di @18 : cmp di,word ptr [bp+16] jl 817 @15 : @12 : inc s i 19 1 H . cmp si, word ptr Lbp+14J jl @13 @10: pop bp pop di pop si ret matrix endp main proc near call near ptr interpret mov ax, 4 push ax mov ax, 4 push ax mov ax, offset dgroup: mat3 push ax mov ax, offset dgroup: mat2 push ax mov ax, offset dgroup: matl push ax call near ptr matrix add sp, 10 mov ax, 5 push ax call near ptr evaluate pop cx @19: ret main endp Listing 3: The compiled T800 code emitted by Logical Systems ' C TCX version 87. 8H (beta release) given the source code in listing 1. Compare with listings 2 and 4. ========= TCX beta release output for T800 ============== Compiled by TCX V87.8H (PC->Transputer ) . T800 continued long; of course they are. Here we are in one procedure, putting interesting values in registers for speed, when suddenly we need to dash off to another routine that wants to put its interesting data into the registers. So we have to save all the regis- ters to memory, call the new procedure, play around in there, exit, restore the values from memory, and carry on. A procedure call can easily use up 32 mem- ory cycles (save 16, restore 16 registers). But on average we execute only 20 to 30 instructions between the execution of a call and a return, so that easily half the machine's time is spent in this ridiculous save/restore registers nonsense. We can attack both these issues at once. First, let's have a simple machine. Some instructions will do arithmetic be- tween the registers. Other instructions will move values between memory and registers. We'll make the operations sim- ple so that they'll go blindingly quickly— goodbye, multiplication. It's so rare that having to call a subroutine to do a multi- ply makes the program less than 1 per- cent larger and actually run faster. The same solution is to be used for the various application-specific operations that we used to do in microcode— write a subroutine. The microcode used to take a clock tick per step, and so does our new approach— with the advantage that if you want to do something we didn't think of, you're not left there cursing; you just write a subroutine to do it. Because the machine's so simple, we don't need microcode, so the thing will execute in- structions at raw logic speeds. With all the silicon space we've saved, we can now tackle the register save/ restore problem. Let's have lots of regis- ters, but access them a few at a time. At any one time, let's limit ourselves to, say, 24. When we call a procedure, we'll ac- cess a new bunch of registers inside the new procedure. When we exit the proce- dure, we'll be back with the original set. The register sets are arranged as a circu- lar buffer, so that if we do exceed their capacity, we start over with the first reg- ister set (first storing to memory the con- tents of that set, of course). Given the statistics on how deeply calls are nested, we can choose to have enough registers (say, 8) to have to do a save/ restore only rarely. And even when we do run out of registers, examination of pro- grams suggests that we tend to get to a certain call depth and then bounce down only a limited amount from there; the sit- uation shows quite strong locality, behav- ing better than a random walk would sug- gest. In other words, we continue to have the benefit of our multiple register sets, even at great call depths, since we tend to continued 224 BYTE- MAY 1988 FULLY OVERLOAD PROTECTED TRANSISTOR. 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COPYRIGHT 1987 JDR MICR00EVICES S, 110 KN0WLES DRIVE, LOS GAT0S, CA 95030 RETAIL STORE: 1256 SOOTH BASC0M AVE, SAN JOSE, CA (408) 947-8881 orobh Circle 152 on Reader Service Card THE CPU WARS .MOD 0 .PUB interpret interpret : .VAL ?ws,1030 ! PC is in ws - 1030 ! acc =1829 instruction=1028 opcode=1027 ! operand=1026 running=1025 . VAL ?tb,0 AJW -?ws . LDC + 1 STL ?ws-1025 ! running = TRUE .LDC 0 STL ?ws-1029 ! acc = 0 .LDC 0 STL ?ws-1030 ! PC = 0 ?2 LDL ?ws-1025 ! look at running CJ @?3 ! jump to label 3 if it's zero LDL ?ws-1030 ! load PC DUP copy it ADC +1 ! increment STL ?ws-1030 ! store PC++ BCNT convert to a byte offset LDLP ?ws-1024 ! load the address of 'memory' ADD address of 'memory[PC]' LDNL 0 ! load the value 'memory [PC]' STL ?ws-1028 ! write it into 'instruction' LDL ?ws-1028 ! load ' instruction' .LDC +255 ! load the constant 255 AND AND instruction with 255 STL ?ws-1026 write result to 'operand' LDL ?ws-1028 get 'instruction' again .LDC +8 load up shift distance SHR do the shift STL ?ws-1027 store result in 'opcode' LDL ?ws-1027 load 'opcode' DUP make a copy ADC -1 CJ @?5 if it was ' 1' jump to label 5 DUP ADC -2 CJ @?6 if it was '2' jump to label 6 J @?7 default ?5 LDL ?ws-1029 add 'opcode' to 'acc' LDL ?ws-1026 ADD STL ?ws-1029 J @?4 . jump to end of switch ! statement ?6 LDL ?ws-1029 ! subtract 'opcode' from 'acc' LDL ?ws-102 6 SUB STL ?ws-1029 J @?4 11 .LDC 0 ! the default case - ! set ' running' to 0 STL ?ws-1025 J @?4 ?4 J @?2 ?3 .RETF ?ws .PUB evaluate evaluate : .VAL ?ws,9 .VAL ?tb,0 AJW -?ws LDL ?ws+l STL ?ws-8 LDL ?ws+l .LDC +2 continued stay near a given level for a while. The need to save/restore occurs only as the call depth crosses multiples of 8 (the hy- pothetical number of register sets). Given this multiple set of registers, there's just one other problem: How does a procedure pass parameters to a proce- dure it's calling? The simplest solution is to have the successive sets of registers overlap by some amount, so that a calling procedure can scribble in some of its reg- isters information that will be visible to the procedure it calls. Because the machine is simple and fast, we don't want to have lots of differ- ent instruction sizes; they'd best all be the same size to keep the logic small. Since we've got a 32-bit address space, we'll need more than 16 bits of instruction to be able to jump around the place effectively, so the instruction size had best be 32 bits. Now we can make the instructions a bit more general than in our earlier design: Rather than having instructions like add Rl, R2, we can have three-address in- structions like add Rl, R2, R3, meaning add Rl to R2 and put the result in R3. This can also speed up the machine, since we can pipeline the register reads (two reads of the register bank per in- struction) and write (one write to put the result in) so that the instruction cycle is faster than the time to read, operate, and write. This works as long as the next in- struction doesn't use as a source operand the register this instruction has just writ- ten to; we rely on the compiler to arrange this for us. This approach is the one adopted in the Sun SPARC. Currently implemented as a gate array, its performance is on a par with optimized custom designs like the MIPS R2000 and the Motorola 68030. Division of Labor This architecture, however, is based on the fallacy that all interesting computer programs are single-processor applica- tions broken up into procedures. Any rea- sonable analysis of reality will show that procedures are used, not because they're useful to the processor, but because they're useful to the programmer. And there's a much better modularization ve- hicle than the procedure— the process. A process has its own private data that stays intact between activities by the pro- cess. Unlike procedures, you can scatter processes over a collection of computers so they can all run at once to give you a system speedup proportional to the num- ber of machines you've got. Processes on separate computers can't call each other— they have to use some form of I/O to get data from one machine to the next. A computer needs a lot of processes continued 226 BYTE • MAY 1988 Now the Lattice C Compiler takes you where it's never gone before. With Version 3-3, it works on two operating systems: MS-DOS and 'OS/2! You may now use Version 3-3 on an MS-DOS system to create programs that run under OS/2 protected mode. Or vice versa. A simple "switch" has been put into the compiler to let you gener- ate code for either system or both. New improved standards. . . Version 3-3 is fully compliant with the latest ANSI C standards. It also has improved embedded system support, enhancements to the standard libraries and a host of other compiler advances too numerous to compile. At a new improved price and value! The suggested retail for Lattice C Version 3.3 is only $450. And 3-3 also includes "family" ver- sions of the Lattice Screen Editor (LSE) and the Lattice C-SPRITE™ symbolic debugger, compati- ble with both MS-DOS and OS/2 systems, at no charge. C for yourself why Lattice is the professional programmer's choice for serious MS-DOS and OS/2 programming. Lattice Subsidiary of SAS Institute Inc. Lattice, Incorporated 2500 S. Highland Avenue Lombard, IL 60148 Phone: 800/533-3577 In Illinois: 312/916-1600 Lattice is a registered trademark of Lattice, Incorporated. Circle 163 on Reader Service Card MS-DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines C. MAY 1988 • BYTE 111 THE CPU WARS DIV STL ?ws-7 LDL ?ws+l ADC +1 STL ?ws- 6 LDL ?ws+l ADC +2 STL ?ws-5 LDL ?ws+l LDL ?ws-8 ADD STL ?ws-4 LDL ?ws+l LDL ?ws-7 ADD STL ?ws-3 LDL ?ws + l LDL ?ws-6 ADD STL ?ws-2 LDL ?ws+l LDL ?ws-5 ADD STL ?ws-l ! and now the complex expression LDL ?ws-4 ! load 'a' LDL ?ws-3 ! load 'b' ADD ! a + b LDL ?ws-2 ! 'c' LDL ?ws-l ! 'd' ADD ! c + d PROD ! (a + b) * (c + d) STL ?tb ! save it somewhere temporary LDL ?ws-8 ! do same for (e + f) * (g + h) LDL ?ws-7 ADD LDL ?ws-6 LDL ?ws-5 ADD PROD LDL ?tb ! get the previous result back DIV ! do the divide STL ?ws-8 ! store it to 'a' LDL ?ws-8 .RETF ?ws .RETF ?ws .PUB matrix matrix : .VAL ?ws,2 .VAL ?tb,8 AJW -?ws . LDC 0 STL ?ws-2 ?10 LDL ?ws+4 LDL ?ws-2 GT CJ @?9 .LDC 0 STL ?ws-l 713 LDL ?ws+5 LDL ?ws-l GT CJ @?12 ! the code for *ml++ = *m2++ + *m3++ LDL ?ws+2 ! get m2 DUP ! make a copy ADC +4 ! increment (byte address) STL ?ws+2 ! store new value LDNL 0 ! load what m2 was pointing at LDL ?ws+3 ! same for m3 continued 228 BYTE' MAY 1988 running on it, so that when one is waiting for a process on another machine to re- spond, it can be running another of its own processes. In such a system, the tidy stack-flavored behavior of the multiple overlapping registers just doesn't occur, and the approach becomes a memory save/restore hog like the simple single- register architecture, but with the added disadvantage of all that silicon space be- ing given over to the useless registers. Now that we can build 200,000-tran- sistor systems, the sensible thing to do is to use most of them for memory on the same chip as the processor, and to build a simple processor. Then most of the data accesses will be to the on-chip memory, which is as fast as the processor. So we don't need registers and can simplify the instructions back to an accumulator- shaped architecture. We'll modify this, because with an ac- cumulator every instruction has to be able to access memory; the hardware is sim- pler if a number of accumulators are ar- ranged as a stack so that an add instruc- tion always adds one accumulator (the top of the stack) to another (next to the top), leaving the result in the top. The values get put into the stack with load instruc- tions, which will push their values onto the stack; loads will pop their values. Because all the values are kept in mem- ory, process switching can be horribly quick (there's hardly any context to save). Procedure calls are quick, too, since there's no register save/restore overhead. Interrupts (the real world is full of inter- rupts) are just as quick. And because the encodings of the operations are separated from the loads, stores, and other house- keeping activities, code gets much denser and programs shrink. It's actually easier to implement such a simple machine design as a very fast microcoded machine; this lets us do com- plicated things in the microcode to im- prove code size with no speed penalty. We can have instructions for process scheduling, message passing, event han- dling—a complete real-time kernel— in the microcode, along with multiplication, division, and so forth. That set of choices characterizes the INMOS T800, whose processor is about a sixth the size (at constant technology) of the 68030's (the chips are about the same size, but they use the remaining space in different ways; the T800 chip includes a floating-point coprocessor, for instance). The way this discussion has been laid out, it seems a natural conclusion that the T800 is "better" than the other architec- tures; this (whether true or not) is hardly fair, since the discussion was guided by a desire to reveal the sorts of decisions that continued This Software Won't Run* Without This* A nd that's the way Control \ 1 L\ Data wants it. And a host \ JL A. of other big and not-so- \ big software developers who * use our Software Sentinel. To make sure their successful software is pro- tected. So it stays successful. We've become used to being seen with top- notch software. A lot of the reason is how our engineers designed the Software Sentinel family. For the developer and the user. To make it the most technologically foolproof yet easiest to use software protec- tion key you or Control Data can get. For users of ED-Router and the thousands of other programs we're protecting, it's a cinch to get up and running. They simply plug the Software Sentinel into the PC's par- allel printer port. That's it. How much easier can it get? Users can even make unlimited backup copies. And run them wherever and whenever they need to -as long as they have the Software Sentinel key. As long as we're talking success, there's something else you should know. Right now, our engineers are putting the finishing touches on a new microprocessor that we'll use in a whole new generation of software and data protection products. With the same high-performance and high-reliability of our past successes but with many new features. Which no doubt is going to make life even easier for you and Control Data. The Software Sentinel. Making sure soft- ware developers stay successful with the successful software they've developed. For more information on the Software Sen- tinel family, contact Rainbow Technologies, 18011-A Mitchell South, Irvine, California 92714; or call (714) 261-0228. Software Sentinel Features: • Runs under DOS and Xenix • Uses algorithm technique, never a fixed response • Minimal implementation • Higher level language interfaces included • Transparent operation g# RAINBOW TECHNOLOGIES 18011-A Mitchell South, Irvine, CA 92714 • (714) 261-0228 • TELEX: 386078 • FAX: (714) 261-0260 ©1987 Rainbow Technologies, Inc. Software Sentinel is a trademark of Rainbow Technologies, Inc. ED-Router is a trademark of Control Data Corporation. Circle 256 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 257) MAY 1988 "BYTE 229 THE CPU WARS ?il ?12 ?8 ?9 matl : mat 2 : mat 3 : DUP ADC STL LDNL ADD LDL DUP ADC STL STNL LDL ADC STL J LDL ADC STL J .RETF .ALIGN .PUB .DS .ALIGN .PUB .DS .ALIGN .PUB .DS .PUB . VAL . VAL CALL AJW .VAL .VAL . LDC STL .LDC STL .LDC .LDC .LDC CALL AJW .VAL .VAL .LDC CALL .RETF .END +4 ?ws+3 ?ws+l +4 ?ws+l ?ws-l +1 ?ws-l @?13 ?ws-2 + 1 ?ws-2 @?18 ?ws matl + 64 mat2 + 64 mat 3 + 64 main ?ws, 0 ?tb,e Sinterpret -2 ?ws, ?ws+2 ?tb, ?tb+2 +4 + 1 + 4 0 mat 3 mat2 matl Smatrix +2 ?ws, ?ws-2 ?tb, ?tb-2 +5 Sevaluate ?ws add the two values get ml make a copy Increment store new Ml and write the addition result where ml points Listing 4: The compiled 68000 code emitted by Mark Williams Atari ST C given the source code in listing 1. Compare with listings 2 and 3. ===== Mark Williams Atari ST C for 6E module name byte . shri .globl interpret_ continued get made during the design process as ideas, technology, and perceptions change. It's pretty simple to point at areas that could be improved in the T800 in the same way we improved on the other ma- chines: For example, the performance begins to drop noticeably as soon as the on-chip memory is too small to hold all the frequently accessed data. And its premise— that the world is process- shaped rather than procedure-shaped— may well be true, but the majority of available software doesn't reflect that belief. Fitting Software to Silicon Enough of the unreal discussion. What's the effect of different architectures in the real world? Let's look briefly at the in- struction sequences used by three differ- ent architectures to implement some carefully chosen examples. The CPUs are the 80286, the 68000, and the T800. For simplicity, the code shown is com- piled from C (using Borland's Turbo C, Logical Systems' C for the T800, and Mark Williams C for the Atari ST). The little fragments of code aren't intended as benchmarks— I've chosen them to illus- trate certain points. And, of course, they don't allow the machines to show off all their characteristics— there isn't room. The idea is simply to highlight some of the differences. There are three examples, for which the source code is given in listing 1 . The first is the inner loop of an instruction-set simulator for an invented accumulator- based architecture. The second is a pro- cedure that evaluates a complex integer expression. The third does a matrix addi- tion. The resultant assembly language code emitted by three different compilers for three CPUs is shown in listings 2, 3, and 4. The first example is typical of an inter- preter application; for speed, we'd like the "registers" of the simulated ma- chine—its program counter, accumula- tor, and so forth— to be implemented as quickly as possible. Looking at the code for the 80286, the effect of not having enough registers is obvious (see listing 2) ; perhaps half the instructions access memory, since there are only enough 80286 registers for two of the simulated machine's registers. The T800 code also uses memory for its variables (see listing 3) , but there aren't very many of them, so they are all bound to fit in the very fast on-chip memory. The 68000 code has nearly enough registers for all the vari- ables to fit in and will provide good per- formance too, since very few memory ac- cesses are needed (see listing 4). Note, too, the different styles of the continued 230 BYTE' MAY 1988 QNX: Bend it, shape it, any way you want it. ARCHITECTURE If the micro world were not so varied, QNX would not be so suc- cessful. After all, it is the operating system which enhances or limits the potential capabilities of applications. QNX owes its success (over 30,000 systems sold since 1982) to the tremendous power and flexibility provided by its modular architecture. Based on message-passing, QNX is radi- cally more innovative than UNIX or OS/2.. Written by a small team of dedicated designers, it provides a fully integrated multi-user, multi-tasking, networked oper- ating system in a lean 148K. By comparison, both OS/2 and UNIX, written by many hands, are huge and cumbersome. Both are ex- amples of a monolithic operating system design fashionable over 20 years ago. MULTI-USER OS/2 is multi-tasking but NOT multi-user. For OS/2, this inherent deficiency is a serious handicap for ter- minal and remote access. QNX is both multi-tasking AND multi-user, allowing up to 16 terminals and modems to connect to any computer. INTEGRATED NETWORKING Neither UNIX nor OS/2 can provide integrated networking. With truly distributed pro- cessing and resource sharing, QNX makes all resources (processors, disks, printers and modems anywhere on the network) available to any user. Systems may be single computers, or, by simply adding micros without changes to user software, they can grow to large transparent multi- processor environments. QNX is the main- frame you build micro by micro. PC's, AT's and PS/2's OS/2 and UNIX severely restrict hardware that can be used : you must replace all your PC's with AT's. In contrast, QNX runs superbly on PC's and literally soars on AT's and PS/2's. You can run your unmodified QNX applications on any mix of machines, either standalone or in a QNX local area network, in real mode on PC's or in protected mode on AT's. Only QNX lets you run multi-user/multi- tasking with networking on all classes of machines. REAL TIME QNX real-time performance leaves both OS/2 and UNIX wallowing at the gate. In fact, QNX is in use at thousands of real-time sites, right now. DOS SUPPORT QNX allows you to run PC-DOS applications as single-user tasks, for both PC's and AT's in real or protected mode. With OS/2, 128K of the DOS memory is consumed to enable this facility. Within QNX protected mode, a full 640K can be used for PC-DOS. ANY WAY YOU WANT IT QNX has the power and flexibility you need. Call for details and a demo disk. THE ONLY MULTI-USER, MULTI-TASKING, NETWORKING, REAL-TIME OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE IBM PC, AT, PS/2, THE HP VECTRA, AND COMPATIBLES. Multi-User 10 (1 6) serial terminals per PC (AT). Multi-Tasking 40 (64) tasks per PC (AT). Networking 2.5 Megabit token ring. 255 PC's and/or AT's per network. 10,000 tasks per network. Thousands of users per network. Real Time 2,800 task switches/sec (AT). Message Fast intertask communication Passing between tasks on any machine. C Compiler Flexibility PC-DOS Cost Standard Kernighan and Ritchie. Single PC, networked PC's, single PC with terminals, networked PC's with terminals. No central servers. Full sharing of disks, devices and CPU's. PC-DOS runs as a QNX task. From US $450. Runtime pricing available. I For further information or a free demonstration diskette, please telephone (613) 591-0931. Quantum Software Systems Ltd. • Kanata South Business Park -175 Terrence Matthews Crescent • Kanata, Ontario, Canada • K2M t W8 UNIX is a registered trademark of AT 5 T Bell Labs. IBM. PC. AT. XT and PSr2. PC-DOS and OS/2 are trademarks of International Business Machines. HP and Vectra are registered trademarks ot Hewlett-Packard Company. Circle 250 on Reader Service Card THE CPU WARS ! PC is in d7 acc=d6 instruction =d5 opcode=d4 interpret_: link a6, $-2070 movem . 1 $248, (a7) moveq $1, d0 ! copy 1 into d0 move d0, -2 (a6) ! running at -2 (a6) ; set to 1 moveq $0, d6 ! acc = 0 moveq $0, d7 ! PC = 0 L3 : tst -2. (ab) ! does running=0? beq. s LI ! give up if so move d7, d0 ! copy 'PC into d0 addq $1, d7 ! increment PC in place ext . 1 d0 ! make 'PC a 32 bit value lsl . 1 $ 1 , d0 ! d0 * 2 movea . 1 d0, a0 ! copy the value int a0 adda . 1 a6, a0 ! add to the address of the local variables move -2050 (a0) , do ! get memory [PC] into ' instruction' move d5, d0 ! now compute 'instruction S 255' andi $255, d0 move d0, d3 ! into ' operand' move d5, d0 ! and 'instruction >> 8' into 'opcode' asr $8, d0 move d0, d4 move d4, d0 ! get 'opcode' cmpi $ 1 , d0 ! is it 1? beq . s L5 ! if so jump to label 5 cmpi $2, d0 beq . s L6 ! if it's 2 goto label 6 clr -2(a6) ! default — clear 'running' bra . s L3 ! jump to top of loop L5 : add d3 d6 ! acc = acc + operand bra . s L3 L6: sub d3, d6 ! acc = acc - operand bra . s L3 LI: movem. 1 (a7), $248 unlk a6 rts .globl evaluate evaluate : link ab, $ -2 6 movem. 1 $248, (a /) move o tab; , a / move 8 (a6) , d0 ext . 1 d0 divs $2, d0 move d0, d6 move 8(a6), d0 addq $1, d0 move d0, d5 move 8 (a6) , d0 addq $2, d0 move d0, d4 move 8(a6), d0 add d7, d0 move d0, d3 move 8 (a6) , d0 add d6, d0 move d0, -2(a6) move 8(a6), d0 add d5, d0 move d0, -4(a6) move 8(a6), d0 add d4, d0 move d0, -6(a6) continued compilers. Turbo C implements the switch statement as a jump table, while the other two compilers use a succession of tests and jumps. The Mark Williams compiler even manages to optimize away the wasteful jumps to jumps that the T800 compiler exhibits (but remember that this compiler is only a beta release). The next example is of arithmetic ex- pression evaluation. Here again, the 80286 has to shuffle stuff to and from memory. We can see that it can happily compute (a+b)X(c+d), but then it has to put it somewhere safe — so it pushes it into a memory stack. The T800 does the same thing, but it uses a temporary vari- able instead. The 68000 has enough reg- isters for all but three of the variables, so it can do the job quite nicely. Let's look at these examples a bit more closely. The 80286 not only spends a fair amount of time messing with memory, it also has to move values into special places for some operations (like multiply and divide). The T800 doesn't— all the operations are available on the stack-held variables, saving a load of housekeeping work. Of course, it will slow down from memory traffic if we use up the on-chip memory, but that can be avoided by com- mon sense (e.g., mallocing arrays so they are off-chip). The 68000 looks good, but it spends a good deal of its instructions shuffling stuff between registers (quicker than memory traffic, but still functionally use- less). Also, we can see several examples of successive instructions adding some- thing into a specific register; the 68000 is using a register as an accumulator (which in a T800 or a 6502 doesn't need to be mentioned in the instruction— its use is implicit) and having to waste instruction bits doing so. This tends to make 68000 programs bigger than T800 programs. Then there's the matrix example. This shows the 68000 to its best advantage. The code shows that the machine directly understands the C phrase m2++ ("use a variable as an address, read what it's pointing at out of memory, and then in- crement the pointer"). As a result, the 68000 code for the inner loop of the ma- trix procedure is by far the shortest of all the examples. The T800 is more long- winded, but pretty straightforward, and the 80286 is similar to the T800. The ap- parent advantage of the 68000 isn't so real, though; the processor still has to ac- cess the memory and to actually do an ad- dition. The code looks smaller on the page but doesn't run faster than the other machine's approach of doing it by hand. Finally, you can look at what it takes to call a procedure. The code in the main subroutine shows what each machine continued 232 BYTE- MAY 1988 . MODEL 24 DATA EXCHANGE SYSTEM Engineered for speed, flexibility and expandability Bay Technical Associates, Inc., Data Communications Products Division 200 N. Second St., Bay Saint Louis, MS 39520 USA Telex 910-333-1618 BAYTECH, Telephone 601-467-8231 or toll-free 800-523-2702 CHECK THE SPECS • The Data Exchange System, Model 24, allows high speed exchange of data between computers, printers and other peripherals. • Powerful 16-bit CPU plus multiple high performance I/O processors allow super high speed transfer of data demanded by new faster computers and software. • Optimum flexibility: Select the right combination of serial and parallel ports, and set any of these ports as a peripheral port or as a computer port. • Basic unit expandable to 24 ports by 4-port modules offered in serial/parallel combinations. • Standard 512KB buffer expandable to 4% megabytes, to handle big print/plot jobs and many small ones. • Buffer memory dynamically allocated to maximize buffer utilization. • Simultaneous data input and output on all ports, so no devices are kept waiting. • Computer-to-computer communication concurrent with all other operations. • Full duplex communication allows file transfer capability with many communications software packages. • Compatible with virtually all computers, printers, plotters, modems and other peripherals. • Pop-up RAM resident PC support software allows peripheral selection via hot key. • Super fast throughput allows data to pass through with no apparent processing delays. • Many user-definable parameters including separate baud rates, flow control and parity for each port. • Internal serial-to-parallel and parallel-to-serial conversion. • Cascading capability to increase available number of ports. • Unlimited hotline tech support. • Designed and manufactured in the U.S.A. Circle 40 on Reader Service Card THE CPU WARS 1 r.nA l ana now the comput a t ion move c i . CI A Oi — d \ a o ) , aw ! h moved to do ^AA auO A t&£\ AOt ! acta g in to eta i d3 d2 . e into qz add -9 lafil AO 1 *AA ' -f ' -i nl- <-> AO : aaa r inr_o az d0 d2 1 AO — AO * APi move A ^ A 1 ao , cij. \ C add d4 dl ! ' ' 4- 'A' . c t a Al APi 1 d. -5 A A AC AO ab, QH ! 'a' + ' b' mu 1 s Al A Ct i (a+£>/ x (c+a; ext . ± Ad ! make d0 32 bits long divs d2, d8 move d8, d7 ! put result into a move d7, d0 ! put result into • 1UI1L.L1UI1 VdlUc XTGylSTLSJ- movem . 1 (a7), $248 unlk a6 rts .globl matrix IT13 L r 1 JC link a6, $-26 movem. 1 $14528, (a7) movea . 1 8(a6), a5 movea . 1 12 (a6), a4 movea . 1 16(a6), a3 moveq $0, d7 L12 : cmp 26(a6), d7 bge . s L9 moveq $0, d6 L15 : cmp 22 (a6), d6 bge . s L13 move (a4)+, d0 ! a4 is m2 - read from memory ! then increment m2. ! putting result into dQ add (a3)+, d@ ! add *m3++ into d0 move d0, (a5) + ! write result into *ml++ addq $1, d6 bra . s L15 L13 " addq $1, d7 bra . s L12 L9 : movem. 1 (a7), $14528 unlk a6 rts . comm matl , 32 . comm mat2_, 32 . comm mat 3 , 32 .globl main main_. link a6, $0 jsr interpret moveq $4, d0 move d0, -(a7) moveq $4, de move de, -(a7) move . 1 $mat3 , -(a7) move . 1 $mat2_, -(a7) move . 1 $matl_, -(a7) jsr matrix adda $16, a7 moveq $5, d0 move d6, -(a7) jsr evaluate addq $2, a7 unlk a6 rt s does. The 80286 pushes the procedure parameters onto the stack and then calls the procedure. The first thing the proce- dure does is spend some time saving a few registers. The T800 passes three parameters on its processor stack, putting the others in locations in memory where they'll look like local variables to the called proce- dure. The called procedure itself has only to play with the frame pointer on entry, so the T800's call/return is pretty slick. The 68000 passes its parameters on the stack (it could in principle use registers, but that's difficult in C because of the separate compilation facilities— the caller doesn't know anything about the innards of the callee), and the called procedure doesn't have to do much more than the T800. Out of the Armchair You should see by now that there is no satisfying answer to the question of which architecture is the best. It all depends— on the technology, the problem, and the politics. But architecture is a fuzzy ques- tion; it's more practical to compare im- plementations, and this can be accom- plished to a certain degree of precision, given the weary task of collecting lots of data. The text box "Architectural Met- rics" on page 214 provides some sugges- tions as to how the measuring might be done. This discussion has glossed over the many very difficult technical decisions about what to put in and what to leave out of a design when only finite resources are available. During the actual design of a machine, more rigor is brought to bear; see the text box "Designing an Architec- ture" on page 217 for a look at some of the available methods. The discussion has taken us from the simplest practicable microprocessor to extremely advanced architectures. I've ignored other facets of computer design, such as prefetching instructions, the use of a cache, the effects of virtual memory, the provision of support for vector opera- tions, floating-point coprocessors, and how to handle I/O. While it's not possible to claim that the designers of the real ma- chines I referred to actually used the same metrics suggested here, the progression of ideas is legitimate. From it, you should have some idea of the technical forces shaping the machines on our desks, and why they are the shape they are. ■ Pete Wilson is a computer architecture engineer at Prisma Inc. (Colorado Springs, Colorado), working on the de- sign of a new gallium arsenide supercom- puter. He previously worked on the de- sign team for the INMOS transputer. 234 BYTE* MAY 1988 UNLEASH YOUR 80386! Your80386-based PC should run two to three times as fast as your old AT. This speed-up is primarily due to the doubl- ing of the clock speed from 8 to 1 6 MHz. The new MicroWay products discussed below take advantage of the real power of your 80386, which is actually 4 to 1 6 times that of the old AT! These new pro- ducts take advantage of the 32 bit regis- ters and data bus of the 80386 and the Weitek 1 1 67 numeric coprocessor chip set. They include a family of MicroWay 80386 compilers that run in protected mode and numeric coprocessor cards that utilize the Weitek technology. The benefits of our new technol- ogies include: • An increase in addressable memory from 640K to 4 gigabytes using MS- DOS or Unix. • A 1 2 fold increase in the speed of 32 bit integer arithmetic. • A 4 to 1 6 fold increase in floating point mW1 1 67 Numeric Coprocessor Board speed over the 80387/80287 numeric coprocessors. Equally important, whichever Micro- Way product you choose, you can be assured of the same excellent pre- and post-sales support that has made Micro- Way the world leader in PC numerics and high performance PC upgrades. For more information, please call the Technical Support Department at 617-746-7341 After July 1 988 call 508-746-7341 ® MicroWay 80386 Support MicroWay 80386 Compilers NDP Fortran-386 and NDP C-386 are globally optimizing 80386 native code compilers that support a number of Numeric Data Processors, including the 80287, 80387 and mW1 1 67. They generate mainframe quality optimized code and are syntactically and operationally compatible to the Berkeley 4.2 Unix f 77 and PCC compilers. MS-DOS specific extensions have been added where necessary to make it easy to port pro- grams written with Microsoft C or Fortran and R/M Fortran. The compilers are presently available in two formats: Microport Unix 5.3 or MS-DOS as ex- tended by the Phar Lap Tools. MicroWay will port them to other 80386 operating systems such as OS/2 as the need arises and as 80386 versions become available. The key to addressing more than 640 kbytes is the use of 32-bit integers to address arrays. NDP Fortran-386 generates 32-bit code which executes 3 to 8 times faster than the current generation of 1 6-bit compilers. There are three elements each of which contributes a factor of 2 to this speed increase: very efficient use of 80386 registers to store 32-bit entities, the use of inline 32-bit arithmetic instead of library calls, and a doubling in the effective utilization of the system data bus. An example of the benefit of excellent code is a 32-bit matrix multiply. In this benchmark an NDP Fortran-386 program is run against the same program compiled with a 16-bit Fortran. Both programs were run on the same 80386 system. However, the 32-bit code ran 7.5 times faster than the 1 6-bit code, and 58.5 times faster than the 16-bit code executing on an IBM PC. NDP FORTRAN-386'" $595 NDP C-386'" $595 Micro Way~ MicroWay Numerics The mW1 167'" is a MicroWay designed high speed numeric coprocessor that works with the 80386. It plugs into a 1 21 pin "Weitek" socket that is actually asuper set of the 80387. This soc- ket is available on a number of motherboards and accelerators including the AT&T 6386, Tandy 4000, Compaq 386/20, Hewlett Packard RS/20 and MicroWay Number Smasher 386. It combines the 64-bit Weitek 1163/64 floating point multiplier/adder with a Weitek/lntel de- signed "glue chip". The mW1 1 67'* runs at 3.6 MegaWhetstones (compiled with NDP Fortran- 386) which is a factor of 1 6 faster than an AT and 2 to 4 times faster than an 80387. mW1167 16 MHz $1495 mW1167 20 MHz $1995 Monoputer™ - The INMOS T800-20 Trans- puter is a 32-bit computer on a chip that features a built-in floating point coprocessor. The T800 can be used to build arbitrarily large parallel pro- cessing machines. The Monoputer comes with either the 20 MHz T800 or the T414 (a T800 without the NDP) and includes 2 megabytes of processor memory. Transputer language sup- port from MicroWay includes Occam, C, Fortran, Pascal and Prolog. Monoputer T41 4-20 with 2 meg 1 . . .$1 495 Monoputer T80O-20 with 2 meg 1 . . .$1 995 Quadputer™ can be purchased with 2, 3 or 4 transputers each of which has 1 or 4 megabytes of memory. Quadputers can be cabled together to build arbitrarily fast parallel processing systems that are as fast or faster than today's mainframes. A single T800 is as fast as an 80386/mW1 167 combination! Biputer'"T800/T414with2meg 1 . . . .$3495 Quadputer 4 T414-20 with 4 meg 1 . . .$6000 includes Occam 80386 Multi-User Solutions AT8™ - This intelligent serial controller series is designed to handle 4 to 1 6 users in a Xenix or Unix environment with as little as 3% degrada- tion in speed. It has been tested and approved by Compaq, Intel, NCR, Zenith, and the Department of Defense for use in high performance 80286 and 80386 Xenix or Unix based multi-user systems. AT4 - 4 users $795 ATS -8 users $995 AT16- 16 users $1295 Phar Lap™ created the first tools that make it possible to develop 80386 applications which run under MS-DOS yet take advantage of the full power of the 80386. These include an 80386 monitor/loader that runs the 80386 in protected linear address mode, an assembler, linker and debugger. These tools are required for the MS- DOS version of the MicroWay NDP Compilers. Phar Lap Tools $495 PC/AT ACCELERATORS 287Turbo-10 10 MHz $450 287Turbo-1 2 1 2 MHz. $550 287TurboPlus-12 12MHz $629 FASTCACHE-286 9 MHz $299 FASTCACHE-286 12 MHz $399 SUPERCACHE-286 $499 MATH COPROCESSORS 80387-20 20 MHz $795 80387-16 16 MHz $495 80287-10 10 MHz $349 80287-8 8 MHz $259 80287-6 6 MHz $179 8087-2 8 MHz $154 8087 5 MHz $99 The World Leader in PC Numerics P.O. Box 79, Kingston, Mass. 02364 USA (617) 746-7341 32 High St., Kingston-Upon-Thames, U.K., 01-541-5466 St. Leonards, NSW, Australia 02-439-8400 MAY 1988 • BYTE HZ The new Hercules Network Card Plus makes put- ting a network into place easier and less expensive than most people would have thought possible. But there's something else about the Network Card Plus that makes it even better. It's also an advanced graphics card with Hercules' proprietary RamFont technology. And since the Network Card Plus puts both graphics and network capabilities onto a single card, it saves you a slot - at the same time that it saves you money. As a network card, the Network Card Plus lets you connect PCs to other PCs, to Macintoshes, and to UNIX based sys- tems, quite easily and inexpensively. It lets you share costly resources such as laser printers. All via the AppleTalk network protocol. The Network Card Plus also lets you share files - even across differing operat- ing systems -using the normal interface of whichever machine you access those files with.* Once your network is up, it's easily expandable -so you aren't limited to the configuration you start with. You can add a peripheral or a computer whenever you wish. A network can include up to 32 nodes -or more if you link networks. Of course, the Network Card Plus is also rather "User must provide inexpensive networking software, such as TOPS/DOS. © 1988 Hercules Computer Technology, Inc., 921 Parker Street, Berkeley, California 94710. Technical Support 415-570-0749; Sales 415-540-0212. Hercules and RamFunt are trademarks of Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. Other products are trademarks of their respective holders. 236 BYTE' MAY 1988 formidable as a graphics card. It provides all the mono- chrome graphics and text func- tionality of the widely used Hercules Graphics Card Plus. Resolution of 720 x 348. Full compatibility with thousands of software pack- ages. As well as RamFont, which combines the versa- tility of graphics mode with the speed of text mode. RamFont gives you tremendous variety in character styles and sizes, and radically increases the functionality of a great many software products. Spreadsheets, such as Lotus 1-2-3, can display more information. Word processors, such as Word- Perfect 5.0 -can show actual italics and boldface and much more. And you can even mix graphics and text on the screen at the same time. All with no sacrifice of speed. In short, the Network Card Plus is just as advanced a graphics card as it is a net- working solution. It can be had at much less than the cost of buying cards for each job. And all of this makes the Network Card Plus a single card that can quite affordably answer the computing needs of today. And those of tomorrow. For more information on the Network Card Plus and where you can buy it call toll-free 1-800- 532-0600 ext. 402 (U.S.) or 1-800-323-0601 ext. 402 (Canada). irk Card Plus The easiest way to put a network into place is with a graphics card. Circle 130 on Reader Service Card (Dealers: 131) MAY 1988 • BYTE 237 ) VAX 11-785 1 ; ■ Use Premium Fuel Only Ditto. Take ] A gallon of gasoline formu- lated for high-performance motor cars. Add a clod of dirt, a quart of kerosene, a tablespoon of sugar, and a dollop of axle grease. Sprinkle with rust particles and dog hairs. Stir. You'd be crazy to put that in your Ferrari, right? But what we've just concocted is the petroleum equivalent of a kilowatt of ordinary electricity. Emerson UPS's Provide Clean Fuel For Computers. Since today's computers are no less high performance machines than the most sophisticated auto- mobiles, they need highly-refined fuel, too. An Emerson Uninterruptible Power Source is the electrical equivalent of a petroleum refinery. Raw fuel in, good fuel out. Such a simple solution to all the harm spikes, sags, and blackouts can do. Unrefined Electricity Does Crude Things To Computers. Unlike bandsaws, washing machines and tv's, computer circuits are hypersensitive to the slightest power variations. Data can be scrambled or vaporized in a few milliseconds. Programs can crash unceremoniously. Fact is, many problems blamed on hardware or software are, in reality, the fault of raw electricity. Industry statistics show that half the downtime, lost employee and machine productivity, and main- tenance costs are the direct result of bad electricity. A typical computer site expe- riences about 7 blackouts, over 500 sags and more than 2,000 spikes and surges per year. Plus there's almost continuous line noise at even the best locations. Power surges alone are credited by one insurance company with $35 million in pc losses just last year. Any way you look at it, making sure your computer gets premium fuel is up to you. Fortunately, it's easy and affordable. UPS Performance And Throughput. Most people think of Emerson UPS systems as just battery backup protection against power outages. In reality they're also the best power conditioners money can buy. They work continuously, uniquely providing an impene- trable barrier that isolates your computers from power problems. The result: You get the level of performance your computer was designed to deliver. The level you paid for. The High Performance UPS Manufacturer. Emerson makes a full line of UPS, power conditioning and dis- tribution systems, even simple surge protectors. All feature quiet operation, attractive design, UL-listed safety, operation that is one-switch simple, and proven reliability backed by the best service in the business. So, let us help you rev up your productivity. Simply call 1-800- BACK-UPS for our free introduc- tory brochure and the name of your local representative. Or write: Emerson Computer Power, 3300 S. Standard St., Santa Ana, CA 92702. I—I=MI=R5CIN ■■ Computer Power Computers Won't Run Right On The Wrong Fuel. See us at Comdex Atlanta Booth #2820. 238 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 102 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 103) CPU ARCHITECTURES What They Did Wrong The shortcomings and inadequacies of various CPU architectures Richard Grehan and Jane Morrill Tazelaar LET'S FACE IT— no CPU architecture is perfect. No matter what approach you take in designing a microprocessor, some aspect of it could be better if it were de- signed another way. The perfect logic of any approach runs into roadblocks from time to time. And no matter how much you include in the design, there's always something you missed, or found unim- portant, that is essential to someone else. Other articles in this section explore the way CPUs have evolved and explain where the newest generation of micropro- cessors is headed. They examine some other issues, like CPU-to-memory inter- facing, that influence computer perfor- mance. But maybe there are lessons to be learned by looking at some of the glaring omissions in earlier- generation CPUs. To add to some of our own experi- ences—and frustrations— with various architectures, we informally polled the members of some microprocessor-spe- cific conferences on BIX to find out what peeves them about their favorite— or not so favorite — microprocessor. (See table 1 for a comparison of the architectures dis- cussed.) Our emphasis is on assembly language programming, as that comes closest to the nitty-gritty. Here, then, are some of their comments, with some of ours, about the limitations and inadequa- cies of various CPU architectures. Intel's 8080 Some of the S- 100 machines, such as the Altair, use the 8080 chip as their CPU. It has 8-bit registers (although some regis- ters can pair up for a 16-bit total), an 8-bit data bus, and 16-bit addressing (for an address limit of 64K bytes). Registers are specialized. All jumps are absolute, mak- ing relocatable code extremely difficult — if not impossible— to create. The 8080 has no multiply or divide instructions, and addition is the only thing you can do in the 16-bit paired registers; there is no 16-bit subtract instruction. Originally, Mostek's 6502 The Apple II computer contains the 6502 CPU. It has 8-bit registers, an 8-bit data bus, 16-bit addressing, and is limited to 64K bytes of physical address space. It has no multiply or divide instructions (you couldn't have done much with them anyway). It has only one accumulator— you must use register A for math and logic operations. The maximum stack size is 256 bytes— it's restricted to page 1 of the memory area. The 6502 has no separate I/O instructions, so I/O devices must be mapped to memory addresses. Two instructions that would really be nice to see on the 6502 are TXY and TYX. Instead, you have to do some kind of push/pop or store/load sequence to trans- fer a byte from one index register to an- other. And how about that carry flag? All you want to do is a quick 8-bit add — no muss, no fuss. But no. If you're writing modular code, you've got to eat up that extra byte just to make sure there's noth- ing sitting in CY. Henry Vanderbilt from Roxbury Crossing, Massachusetts, says: "The first thing that comes to mind is [the omission of] 2-byte relative addressing. All the relative branch instructions take only a 1-byte operand, limiting their range severely. [And then there's] abso- lute addressing only when you're going farther than plus or minus 128 bytes or so. Relocatable code? Not on a 6502. A minor peeve— there's no unconditional branch. You have to use CLC BCC F00 BNR (branch for no reason) would elimi- nate that. " From John Fachini in Manchester, New Hampshire, comes a reply: "The 65C02 gives you BRA (branch always), and the 65C02 is, without doubt, what the 6502 should have been way back when. The biggest 6502 weakness is the fact that when you want to move some- thing you've got to put it in the accumula- tor. The 65816 has the MVP [block move positive] and MVN [block move negative] instructions (fair to middling); the 80x86 series has Rep MovSB/W (great); and— sigh— the 6502 has LDA ITEM,Y STA DEST , Y INY Landon Dyer from Sunnyvale, Califor- nia, responds: "On the other hand, there are probably more 6502s in the world than 80x86s and 680x0s combined. Might makes right. Quantity is quality. Naturally, most of those 6502s are sitting in closets. . .1 can't think of many changes I'd make to the 6502 that wouldn't also continued MAY 1988 • BYTE 239 WHAT THEY DID WRONG One item that irks me about the 6581 6 that I love about the 8086 is the switching between 8- and 16-bit modes. involve a complete redesign. I mean, if you're going to make just one change, what's it worth? Can you write commer- cial code that depends on it? I can just see your game cartridge coming with a 65C02 to install as well. But, at one time, I would have killed for an LDY ( n , X ) ! " Henry Vanderbilt: "The 6502 is a bit short on frills. After learning to write on one, the reduced-instruction-set-com- puter (RISC) concept seemed natural. However, I hear RISC chips tend to have a few more registers to work with than the 6502. One feature I always wanted: the ability to set the 8 most significant bits of the address bus to other than $00 [hexa- decimal zeros], for use with the zero- page addressing mode. I heard it said once that the 6502 actually has 256 8-bit registers, due to the speed and brevity of the zero-page mode. It would be useful to [be able to] keep more than one area of memory as zero-page." John Fachini: "There is a problem with the use of the JMP instruction where the address field falls on an FF/00 page boundary. The 6502 would look at, say, $3FF and $300 for the vector. The 65C02 and above look at $3FF/ $400. " And from Randy Hyde in Norco, Cali- fornia: "When considering the 6502 ar- chitecture, don't forget to look at the Mit- subishi 50750 family of CPUs. These are single-chippers based on the 6502 that in- clude such goodies as memory-to-mem- ory operations (in page zero) and lots of bit-test, set, and clear operations." Zilog's Z80 The TRS-80 and some S-100 machines use the Z80 chip: 8-bit registers and data bus, 16-bit addressing with a 64K-byte address limit, and no multiply or divide instructions. The Z80 made a lot of im- provements over the 8080. Relative jumps were a nice addition, as were the LDD, LDDR, LDI, and LDIR instructions (and others with built-in repeats and reg- ister increments and decrements). But why did the Z80 designers require an off- set every time you use the IX or IY regis- ters as index registers? You can't do LD (IX) ,n\ you have to do LD (IX+d) ,n. Sure, d can act as an index into an array for which IX is the base, but d has to be hard-coded. So, unless you like writing self-modifying code, it doesn't buy you much. From William Smith in Hamilton, Massachusetts: "Things that would be nice on the Z80 are things like LD (IX +C_REG) , (IY+B_REG) and, one of my personal favorites, LD HL, (HL) , which all comes down to having a complete in- struction set where you can use any and all addressing modes with any and all in- structions. This is why the VAX and Na- tional 32000 architectures [interest] me: You don't have to remember that some- thing isn't allowed. But it wasn't possible to make 64-bit machines with 256 regis- ters and complete instruction sets that run at 25 MHz and execute every instruction in one clock cycle, so we are 'stuck' with theZ80." Ray Duncan from Marina del Rey, California, responds: "It would have been nice if the (IX) and (IY) instruc- tions weren't so bloody slow. They make great-looking code on paper, but in gen- eral you can get better results by just sav- ing and loading the HL register as though the chip was an 8080. Also, they should have had a special set of op codes for (IY) and (IX) addressing without dis- placement, instead of requiring the zero displacement byte to always be there. " From Larry Sonderling in Los Ange- les, California: "I've always wished for 2-byte relative jumps. Relocatable code would surely be a lot easier that way. Also, [the ability] to swap any two single or double registers would be handy. And the IN (HL) form would be great if it worked." Steve Russell from Butier, Pennsylva- nia, adds: "Gee, remember way back when the Z800 was 'just about' out, and it was going to do all the things we wished the Z80 would do? Actually, the 64180 did a nice job of making the index in- structions clock respectably; only by then, who cared? We already had neat stuff making slick use of two index regis- ters as word-size register variables or some such." (For a build-it-yourself 64180 system, see "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" in the September and October 1985 BYTE.) And from Ralph Becker-Szendy in Honolulu, Hawaii: "Come on, the Z280 closes a lot of holes the Z80 instruction set has. But I have no clue as to how fast the new instructions are. " Intel's 8088, 8086, and 80286 The Intel family of chips is very familiar. The 8088 is the CPU for the IBM PC and some of its compatibles. Although it still has the 8-bit data bus, it has moved up to 16-bit registers and 20-bit addressing, al- lowing an address space of 1 megabyte. Some PC compatibles use the 8086 chip, which moves fully into the 16-bit world: registers and data bus. It maintains the 20-bit addressing and the 1 -megabyte ad- dress space. The 80286, which resides in the IBM PC AT and its clones, keeps the 16-bit data bus and registers and expands addressing to 24 bits for a maximum of 16 megabytes of addressable memory. These architectures have their prob- lems as well, such as those nasty segment registers. Even though the physical ad- dressing capability is in the megabytes, segments can be only 64K bytes long. continued Table 1: CPU chip capacities. CPU chip Register size (in bits) Data bus size (in bits) Address size (in bits) Physical addressing limit 8080 8 8 16 64K bytes 6502 8 8 16 64K bytes Z80 8 8 16 64K bytes 8088 16 8 20 1 megabyte 8086 16 16 20 1 megabyte 65816 16 8 24 1 6 megabytes 80286 16 16 24 1 6 megabytes 68000 32 16 24 1 6 megabytes 68020 32 32 32 4 gigabytes 80386 32 32 32 4 gigabytes 240 BYTE* MAY 1988 How to create high-performance programs without wasting your time or money Step 1: The $19.95 Power C compiler ? ower C is the new ANSI compatible C compiler that runs faster than Microsoft C and has more functions than Turbo C®. Power C combines high-performance software with superb docu- mentation, all for less than the price of most C books alone. It's your fast route to fast programs without the fast bucks. 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Power Ctrace will reduce the time you spend debugging your C programs by at least a factor of 10. With Power Ctrace, you'll be working smarter instead of harder. Actu- ally, you'll be having so much fun that it won't even feel like work anymore. Unlike other debuggers, Power Ctrace lets you debug graphics programs on a single monitor. You can even debug programs that write directly to video memory. However, the major advantage of Power Ctrace is simple operation. You won't waste any time trying to understand or remember cryptic commands. With Power Ctrace, a single keystroke is all it takes. Help screens show you which key to press and pop-up menus list your options. Invest just 10 minutes with PowerCtrace now and you'll save hours from now on. rder now by calling our toll free number or mail the coupon to Mix Software, 1132 Commerce Drive, Richardson, TX 75081. 1-800-333-0330 For technical support call: 1-214-783-6001 Minimum System Requirements: DOS 2.0 or later. 320K memory. 2 floppy drives or hard drive Runs on IBM PC XT. AT. PS/2 and compatibles. 60 day money back guarantee N/C no charge - N/A not available Benchmarks compiled using Make utility, command-line compiler, and medium memory model Circle 199 on Reader Service Card Name . Street . City State _ Zip. Telephone Paying by: □ Money Order □ Visa □ MC □ AX Card # □ Check □ Discover Card Expiration Date . Computer Name Disk Size □ 5'/4" □ 3V2" Product(s) (Not Copy Protected) □ Power C compiler ($19.95) S □ Power Ctrace debugger ($19.95) $ □ Library Source Code ($10.00) $ (includes assembler & library manager] □ BCD Business Math ($10.00) $ Add Shipping ($5 USA - $20 Foreign) $ Texas Residents add 8% Sales Tax $ Total amount of your order $ Power C & Power CIrace are trademarks of Mix Software loc Quick C & Codeview are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp Turbo C is a registered trademark of Borlaod loteroatiortal MAY 1988 • BYTE 241 WHAT THEY DID WRONG No matter how much you include, there's always something you missed that's essential to someone else. And registers are highly specialized. One pet peeve is that whenever you use the BP register as an index, you either have to use another index register or tack on an offset. You can never just use BP on its own. For instance, MOV AX, [BP] results in MOV AX, [BP+0]. Of course, BP means base pointer, and its intent is to act as the base for a frame of local storage on the stack. But some- times, you'd like to use BP as just an in- dex into the stack with no displacement; so why do you have to carry around that extra byte or two that you don't need? Too bad they didn't take the r/m field designa- tor for BP+DI+DISP and let it be just BP. Working on a small, Forth-like language some time ago, Richard decided to use separate data and return stacks. He ended up using BP a lot, and often with no off- set. Consequently, the program was lit- tered with all these zero offsets. In response to this, Russ Schnapp from San Diego, California, writes: "Actu- ally, I have no problem with the way Intel went with the BP register. Given the seg- mented architecture, they designed it quite well. You typically use BP as a frame pointer into the stack, in which case BP tends to point to the caller's BP and is seldom dereferenced with a zero offset. "I am constantly disgusted with the whole concept of the iapx86 segmented architecture. It was a pain when I wrote code generators for it; it is much more of a pain when you try to write (shudder) as- sembly language code for it. Though I've been writing iapx86 code for 9 years- yes, back when the 8088 was just a twin- kle in an Intel developer's eye— those darned segment registers still manage to reach out and 'byte' me [from time to time]. "And look at what [the architecture] does to high-level languages! All the silli- ness that percolates up to the source code. Not just the kludges that force you to rec- ognize the segmented nature of the ad- dress space, but also all those ridiculous memory models! Look at Turbo C: You get tiny, small, medium, compact, large, and— gotta catch my breath— humon- gous!" Terje Mathisen from New York, New York, says: "My main problem when try- ing to wring maximum speed out of the segmented 8086 has been too few seg- ment registers. It happens far too often that I need to process input from two dif- ferent areas, writing the output to a third. The only solutions are very ugly. Either swap the segment registers back and forth, or use SS to hold the third segment for a short time, while disabling all inter- rupts. The last solution, copying one set of input into local stack variables, is often impossible due to stack-size limitations. " From Edmund Burnette in Cary, North Carolina: "In the same vein, not being able to move or exchange segment registers without going through memory or another register is a pain. Besides the inconvenience, in protect mode, the hid- den-segment cache is lost. " A question from Cheyenne Wills in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: "In [80286] protected mode, what is the overhead of reloading a segment register with the same value? Is this something to continued THE BEST IS NEVER ENOUGH All MiniBar's wedge connections plus on-board dual RS-232 MAXI BAR MINI BAR Four inputs for laser, CCD, and contact scanners Dual processors for silmuHaneous decoding and transmission Over 1 10 keyboard wedge interfaces Single and dual RS-232 interface option Dual input from wands, badge readers, and RS-232 devices Heavy duty case and variable tone speaker Unlimited free telephone engineering support Software customization on demand Depot repair service with 48 hour average turnaround Easy to install and configure via bar code menus Mini size: only 14 square inches Barcode Industries constantly advances the power and flexibility of bar code technology to meet the customer's demands Ammendale Technology Park, 12240 Indian Creek Court, Belfsville, MD 20705 Tel: (301) 498-5400 BARCODE 242 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 38 on Reader Service Card Osborne / McGraw-Hill's ER USER'S GUIDE SERIES The Best Source of Unique Features and Expert Techniques for Sophisticated Users DOS: Power User's Guide by Kris Jamsa Learn to wield DOS in powerful ways. Com- pares advanced DOS and OS/2™ features. $22.95 Paperback, ISBN: 0-07-881310-7, 921 pp., Available Now Power User's Guide by Herbert Schildt Make C programs sizzle! All the slick tricks used in com- mercial software are unveiled to serious programmers. $22.95 Paperback, ISBN: 0-07-881307-7, 382 pp., Available Now 1-2-3®: Power User's Guide by Mary Campbell Extend 1-2-3® produc- tivity to the limit with masterful techniques that are unavailable elsewhere. $22.95 Paperback, ISBN: 0-07-881298-4, 861 pp., Available Now dBASE III PLUS: Power User's Guide by Edward Jones dBASE III PLUS limitations disappear with sophisticated analyses of dBASE III PLUS techniques. $22.95 Paperback, ISBN: 0-07-881317-4, 444 pp., Available Now Microsoft' Word: Power User's Guide by John V. 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Phone 416-293-1911 dBASE III PLUS is a trademark of Ashton-Tate. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. OS/2 is a trademark of International Business Machines, Corp. 1-2-3 is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corp. Quattro is a trademark of Borland International, Inc. WordPerfect is a registered trademark of WordPerfect Corp. Copyright © 1988 McGraw-Hill, Inc. MAY 1988 'BYTE 243 WHAT THEY DID WRONG be avoided, or are the checks for a seg- ment exception avoided in this case?" An answer comes from Bartosz Milewski from Bellevue, Washington: "Good question. The answer is: Reload- ing takes the same amount of time as loading a new descriptor. In fact, if you are expecting a lot of reloads, it is worth the trouble to write the code that would compare the new descriptor with the old value and do the conditional jump around the loading code. The same goes for the 80386. The latter, however, has two more segment registers, which can be really helpful." Western Design Center's 65816 The 65816 chip is the CPU used in the Apple IIGS computer. It has an 8-bit data bus, 16-bit registers, and 24-bit address- ing with its 16-megabyte memory-ad- dressing capacity. The segmentation is the same as on the 8088, 64K-byte maxi- mum size, only here the segments must align on 64K-byte boundaries— the 8088's segments align on 16-byte bound- aries. Basically, this is a souped-up 6502, and it still has no multiplication or divi- sion instructions, but it does have TYX and TXY. Why did the 65816 designers decide to force the direct-page register and the stack pointer onto the zero bank? The data-bank register is a step in the right di- rection, but why didn't they attach it to the direct-page register and the stack pointer? It seems that if the direct-page register also used the data-bank register, it would be easier to attach local storage to transient or shared routines. From John Fachini: "One item that irks me about the 65816 that I love about the 8086 is the switching between 8- and 16-bit modes. If I want to handle charac- ter input and output into a string of bytes on the 8086, 1 use AL (accumulator low) or AH; if I want to use the word, I use AX. Same for BX, CX, and DX. But on the 65816, I've got to clunk between 8-bit memory and 16-bit memory accesses with the status register. Since, for exam- ple, the LDA instruction is the same and the processor checks the M flat in the P register for sizing instead of generating a different byte for the LDA, you're stuck. I assume this has to do with the 1-byte limit on the op code with fields coming in up to 3 bytes after it. I'm not sure this is mak- ing sense, but I think you get the picture. At least, 8086 folks will get the picture. " Morgan Davis from La Mesa, Califor- nia, adds: "I have a lot of gripes about the 65816 (that are also applicable to the 65x02 series as well), but here's some- thing I just had some experience with that I wish the 65x02 series had: Stack rela- tive instructions and instructions such as PER (which basically pushes the program counter onto the stack, or the address of an object from PC plus an offset). If you write relocatable code, that sort of thing is indispensable. "Randy Hyde has written a tome about a proposed upgrade to the 65816. You'll find it in apple/long. msg [apple confer- ence, long.msg topic, on BIX] (four mes- sages in all). Randy's put a lot of good thought into it— an understatement. [It reads like a thesis for] a master's in com- puter science." Motorola's 68000 The 68000 chip is the power behind the Macintosh. It has a 16-bit data bus, 32-bit registers, and 24-bit addressing. How- ever, even though the registers are 32-bit, the multiply instruction can multiply only 16-bit quantities. (The 68020 chip solves this and moves up to 32-bit addressing and the 32-bit data bus as well.) Was it really such a good idea to have the MOVE instructions set the condition continued The UniWare™ 68000 C Cross Compiler gen- erates fully optimized code for your ROMable applications. It supports: * 68000 * 68010 * 68020 * 68008 * 68012 * 68881 You won't find a more complete package — the UniWare 68000 C Compiler comes with a relocating macro assembler, type-checking linker, librarian, and all the utilities you need to put your program into ROM. And it's just $995 under MS-DOS. Also available under UNIX. CALL TODAY (312) 971-8170 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS, 3110 Woodcreek Drive Downers Grove, IL 60515 INC. The Complete j % Z80 C Compiler ja The UniWare™ Z80 C Cross Compiler gener- ates fully optimized code for your ROMable applications. It supports: *Zilog Z80 *Zilog Z180 * Hitachi HD64180 You won't find a more complete package — the UniWare Z80 C Compiler comes with a relocat- ing macro assembler, type-checking linker, librarian, and all the utilities you need to put your program into ROM. And it's just $995 under MS-DOS. Also available under UNIX. CALL TODAY (312) 971-8170 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS, 3110 Woodcreek Drive Downers Grove, IL 60515 INC. 244 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 274 on Reader Service Card SmarTEAM Offers A Choice world wide Agents: U. S. A. PDM (713) 488-8830 MicroAge (206) 746-8045 SYSCOM TECH CORP (516) 756-0570 CANADA BUDGETRON INC. (416) 673-7800 NORWAY PROFESSIONAL SYSTEM A/S (02) 253350 BENELUX COMPUDATA BV 73-422045 ITALY DATATEC (06) 8321-213 w. c. RVS (089) 35-10-071 FINLAND MIKROMERIOY (90) 550-155 ICELAND TAEKNIVAL (1) 68 16 65 SWEDEN PROFESSIONAL SYSTEMS A/S (08) 7 33 00 95 SINGAPORE PET 292-9155 SAUDIARABI AL-JASSIM (3) 832-2148 PHILLIPINE RANK (2) 40-2391 SmarTEAM The Smart SmarTEAM 2400 * Bell 1 03/21 2A, CCITT V.22/22 bis * Auto dial, auto answer, auto speed selection * ASYN/SYN operation * Fully compatible with Hayes. SmarTEAM 2400 mnp * Sophisticated error checking and error correcting * Provided MNP mode and NON-MNP mode. * Compatible with Hayes.AT command. * ASYN/SYN operation. SmarTEAM 9600 plus * Utilizes the latest MNP class 6 to give error free data transfer. * Cheaper telephone bills with the MNP data compression provides throughput of up to 19200 bps with 9600 bps link. * Battery-backed CMOS RAM preserves con- figuration against power failures for up to 30 days. * Communicates with any MNP or NON-MNP modem which supporting Bell 1 03/21 2A, CCITT V.22/22bis/V.27/V.29 modulation standards. MNP is trade mark of MICROCOM Inc. HAYES is trade mark of Hayes Microcomputer Product. Inc. SmarTeam TEAM TECHNOLOGY INC. 10 Fl„ No. 270, Nanking E. Rd., Sec. 3, Taipei. Taiwan, R.O.C. Tel: (02)741-4270 (5 Lines) Fax: 886-2-7712985 Telex: 19725 TEAMTECH U.S.A. SALES AND SERVICE CENTER SmarTEAM INC. 19205 Parthenia St., Suite *J. Northridge. Ca. 91324 . Tel: (818)886-9726 Service No: (818)886-9729 Fax: (818)886-6731 Circle 290 on Reader Service Card WHAT THEY DID WRONG flags? It's frustrating when you run into situations where you've got to move something into a register, but you don't want to mess up the flags. Also, how much throughput do you gain by requiring words and doublewords to be on even-address boundaries? Con- sider the case of compilers— C com- pilers, in particular. Let's say you have a function that looks something like this: funcl(x) intx; { char a,b,c; The function funcl( ) will attempt to set aside 3 bytes of local storage— for a, b, and c— on the stack. On the Mac, at least, this sends the machine into the weeds. The situation can get worse if the function includes mixed char and int definitions: funcl(x) intx; { char a,b; inty.z; char c,d; There's at least one compiler that has a switch you can set to either allocate local storage as it appears in the source code, or to rearrange local variables to mini- mize "holes" on the stack. (This would amount to grouping all the char defini- tions above so that at most only 1 byte would be wasted on the stack.) From Chris Green in Champaign, Illi- nois: "The 68000 is desperately in need of a SWAP.B op code. Relative branch- instruction offsets waste 1 bit. You can't branch to an odd address, so why not pro- vide 256 or 65536 either way? Then just about every non-C program could avoid long branches. I [also] wish the 68000 al- lowed you to pop PC in a M0VEM from the stack. Then you could pop all your saved registers from the stack, along with the return address, and save an instruction. " Mark Riley in Simi Valley, California, adds: "I think the way the 68000 affects status flags in the MOVE instruction is OK. It's very handy to be able to move data and know if it's zero or negative. How- ever, I'm not sure why the carry bit is cleared. If your destination is an address register, then the flags aren't set; this is sometimes a problem— other times it's great. The M0VEM instruction very wisely does not alter the flags, as this allows subroutines that are restoring registers to return flags unaltered. "Now as to a problem: The X flag bit is poorly implemented, in my humble opin- ion. You should be able to branch on whether or not it is set. Since MOVE clears the carry, this would be desirable. Also, manipulating the X flag is a bit of a has- sle. I mean, getting it out of SR (and changing it) can cause you problems, de- pending on whether you're 68000, 68010, or whatever. In this respect, the 68010 is not 100.000 percent compatible with the 68000. Bummer. "Here's a quirk: There's both an AND sadr,Dn and an OR sadr,Dn but no E0R sadr,Dn in sight. In most respects, though, the 68000 series allows you to write straightforward, no-tricks type of code." From Tom Zerucha in Southfield, Michigan: "Problems with the 68000 ar- chitecture [include] : 1. The 68000 needs a 32 x 32 multiply and a 32/32 divide. 2. They should have left a 100 percent compatibility mode in the 68010 and 68020, so you wouldn't have to change anything to change processors but 'turn on' the extended mode, like the cache is turned on or the vector base register moved. 3. 1 don't think that the MOVE instructions continued PERSTOR ADVANCES HARD DISK STORAGE Other RLL controllers require drives approved for RLL encoding. The PERSTOR 200 Series Advanced RLL Controllers are compatible with standard MFM drives and RLL approved drives, whether oxide or plated media. Our competitors offer only a 50% increase in capacity with their controllers. The PERSTOR 200 Series Controllers allow a 90% or 100% increase in capacity. If speed is critical to you, the PERSTOR 200 Series Controllers are the answer. They deliver up to a 110% increase in data transfer rate, and a general decrease in system average access time. FEATURES: • ADVANCED CAPACITY — 90% or 100% increase in capacity. • ADVANCED PERFORMANCE — As much as a 110% increase in speed in your IBM compatible microcomputer. • ADVANCED COMPATIBILITY — Compatible with either MFM or RLL approved drives with oxide or plated media, including Maxtor, Miniscribe, Seagate, Newbury Data, CDC, and more* • ADVANCED VERSATILITY — Compatible with most PC, XT, AT, or 386 based systems in a single design. The bottom line is that you can upgrade current systems or design new systems with higher capacity, performance, and quality. •CDC is a trademark of Control Data Corporation. Maxtor is a trademark of Maxtor Coiporation. Miniseribe is a trademark of Miniscribe Corporation. Newbury Data is a trademark of Newbury Data. Inc. Seagate is a trademark of Seagate Technology. PERSTO R PERSTOR SYSTEMS INC. 7631 E. Greenway Rd. Scottsdale, AZ 85260 (602) 991-5451 246 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 229 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 230) These are just a fewof the 16,77^216 colors ^ your PC AT can process using our (HSI) Color Frame Grabber. Some color combinations may not grab you. But for the first time ever, our DT2871 (HSI) Color Frame Grabber and Aurora software let you grab, process, analyze, and display color images in real time on the PC AT. You can even import color images using the Tag Image File Format (TIFF). As if that's not enough of a breakthrough, the DT2871 offers 512 x 512 x 32-bit pixel resolution, text and graphics over- lays, and-grab this! -hardware hue, saturation, and intensity (gray level) processing. Even if we don't have the greatest taste for colors, you have to admit our taste for technology is excellent. Give us a call today. (617) 481-3700. 4 DT-Connecf" is an open interface specification which permits the direct connection of stand-alone data acquisition and frame grabber boards to pro- cessor boards for greatly accelerated signal (DSP) and image processing. Fred Molinari, President APPLICATIONS Business, Graphic Arts, and Entertainment Scientific Industrial f Animation ^ Electronic prepress B^ift Electronic publishing, either ■ 1 * true color or gray scale Film colonzation BM| Picture databases i^T- — ■ ■ ■ — Slidemaking ^■^M^ Training Astronomy Medical diagnostic imaging Microscopy Modeling Motion analysis Remote sensing Surveillance Machine guidance Machine vision inspection -Agriculture (fruits & vegetables) -Cosmetics -Electronic components -Food -Textiles Robot guidance DATA TRANSLATION World Headquarters: Data Translation, Inc., 100 Locke Drive, Marlboro, MA 01752-1192, (617) 481-3700 Tlx 951646 United Kingdom Headquarters: Data Translation Ltd., The Mulberry Business Park, Wokingham, Berkshire RG11 2QJ, U K (0734) 793838 Tlx 94011914 West Germany Headquarters: Data Translation GmbH, Stuttgarter Strasse 66, 7120 Bietigheim-Bissingen, West Germany 07142-54025 International Sales Offices: Australia (2) 662-4255; Belgium (2) 735-2135; Canada (416) 625-1907; Chile (2) 25-3689; China (408) 727-8222, (8) 721-4017; Denmark (2) 274511; Finland (90) « 'ii F Sff SI 8 ?^ G ™ 25 1 ; 4 , 944 ' 527 " 039 ; Hon 6 Kon e O) 771-8585; India (22) 23-1040; Israel (3) 32-4298; Italy (2) 82470.1; Japan (3) 502-5550, (3) 375-1551, (3) 355-1111- Korea (82) 756-9954; Netherlands (70) 99-6360; New Zealand (9) 504-759; Norway (02) 55 90 50; Portugal 545313; Singapore 7797621; South Africa (12) 46-9221; Spain (1) 455-8112- Sweden (8) 761-7820; Switzerland (1) 723-1410; Taiwan (2) 709-1394; United Kingdom (0734) 793838; West Germany 07142-54025. IBM PC AT is a registered trademark of IBM. Data Translation is a registered trademark of Data Translation, Inc. Circle 85 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 'BYTE 247 WHAT THEY DID WRONG setting the flags are bad, especially since moving addresses around doesn't affect them. Otherwise, you have to do a sepa- rate test/compare each time you want to check them. And you don't normally care what the status f lags are until you do a conditional jump, when you probably have just moved the thing you want to test. The DBcc instruction (especially in the 68010 loop-mode cache) makes use of this nicely. 4. They should load the initial SP and PC from somewhere else— the interrupt vec- tor table is normally in RAM, but the re- setting is normally done from RAM. 5. They should have had relative branches that can jump farther than 32K bytes (i.e., using a longword offset). It is not a big problem unless you have large modules that you want to be completely relocatable. They fixed this in the 68020. Also, some of the addressing modes take only word displacements. With com- pletely relocatable code, you don't need fix-up information. " Ed Tomlinson in Dorval, Canada, writes: "If you ever want to implement Forth on a 68000 machine, the NEXT in- struction takes two instructions: MOVE (AN)+,AM and JMP (AM). Why not allow JMP (AN) +. . .? I like the way MOVE sets the status flags. Another thing I would like would be the ability to tell the 68000 which address register to use as SP. This would take 3 bits in the status register. " Tom Zerucha: "You could emulate SP changes by doing an exchange with the other register. And there are very few in- structions you would use a stack for that don't work on the other registers. I agree a SWAP . B would help (R0R. W #8 , Dn is slow except on the 68020, and it is often needed). "In terms of odd word access, I don't code these into my programs, but if I have to work with other data files, I could use a 'move-from-odd-address' instruction. The idea of an extended status bit that is different from the carry flag looked strange, but I find it very useful. " 32-bit Architecture What about Motorola's 68020 and Intel's 80386? Well, since they were designed as evolutionary extensions of the previous architectures, many of the problems have been solved. They have 32-bit registers, 32-bit data buses, and 32-bit addressing, to a maximum of 4 gigabytes of physical address space. This doesn't mean that all the problems have been solved; it just means that new ones haven't surfaced to any great degree yet. Never Satisfied When you're in the middle of a field of assembly language code, wishing for that one instruction that will make it all per- fect, it's easy to believe that CPU de- signers neglected certain obviously criti- cal instructions, and did so because they thought "No one will need that instruc- tion anyway." It's more often the case that the designers were faced with a trade-off in design complexity (read: costs) versus a more "complete" instruc- tion set. Still, good programs do exist. We'll probably whine about proces- sors' shortcomings until the day when we type in a series of assembly language in- structions and the CPU looks up at us and says, "I'm sure you really meant to do this," then proceeds to change two or three of the instructions automatically. And when we get there, we'll probably wish we were back where we are now, where computers aren't so smart and we can still tell them what to do. ■ Richard Grehan and Jane Morrill Taze- laar are senior technical editors for BYTE. ALR 386 POWER!! ADVANCED LOGIC RESEARCH 386/2 Model 10 *80386-16mhz (20mhz Optional). ' 1MB of 32-bit RAM (80ns); 'Expandable to 2MB on board. * 1 Serial/ 1 Parallel Ports. 'Floppy Controller. * 1 1.2MB Floppy Drive. '101 Professional Keyboard. 'Phoenix Bios. '80387 and 80287 Sockets. '8 Slots. 386/2 Model 40 $2899 2 o^/t 386/2 Model R66 $2649 3»o/^ Other Models Too!! 20mhz versions now available!!! NOW AVAILABLE: "Flex Cache" Models From ALRH v ( ALR 'DART' 286s Avail.-Mod 10 $1199, Mod R66 $199"F) /'incredible Software and^ ^ W.P. Electronics, Inc. ^ 800-962-6778 Order Line 8AM - 5PM Pacific Time 555 S Palm Canyon Dr #A1 10-342, Palm Springs, CA 92264 v 619-320-6500 In CA. J Call For Catalog on our BBS 619-323-9681 2400/1200 8N1 f Our Other Quality Brands: "\ Aldus DesI Iomega Okidata Amdek Diconix Irwin Paradise AT&T Epson Lotus Plus Devlpmt. Ansa Hayes Microsoft Ricoh Ashton-Tate Hercules NCR Seagate AST HP NEC Western Digital ^ompaq IBM Novell Zenith J Xerox Ventura Publ. $435 Aldus PageMaker $415 PARADISE VGA BOARD $259 ATI VGA BOARD $279 V yiDEO & VGA BOARD $Call Novell Networking Lotus 123 HP LaserJet II w/Toner HP 7475A Plotter HP ScanJet w/PC Intrfc. $Call $299 $1695 $1299 $1395 Terms and Conditions: 'Bices shown art for prepayment. 'Prices are subject to change without notice. Some item are in short supply. 7&B Tabn Springs, CA- We accept MC/VlSA 2% extra; COD orders 2% extra. 20% RestoclQng Jet. Volume Inquiries 'Welcome. COMPAQ and ZENITH Deskpro 286-1 $1699 Deskpro 286-20 $2350 Deskpro 286-40 $2899 Deskpro 386 Systems $Call Portable III-20 $3499 Portable III-40 $4059 Portable 386 Systems $Call Compaq RAM Upgrades $Call Compaq Accessories $Call Z-181 Laptop $1549 Z-183+ 20MB $2287 1200 Modem $199 Carry Case $59 248 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 313 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 314) WINDOWS FOR DATA® Inwic^Create Review Print Exit INVOICE Invoice No. : 88 Date: Search for custoner record? (¥/N): Enter custoner information? (Y/N): Enter billing address? (Y/N): Enter marketing information? (Y/N): DESCRIPTION 12/83/87 ustomer art* (J Uindous for Data Hicrosoft Windows for Data Lattice Uindous for Data Turbo C Windows for Data XENI MM UD3B2 UDSU2 UDUM3 UDUN4 Windows for Data Windows for Data Windows for Data Windows for Data Windows for Data XENIX 3B2 Unix Sun Unix HicroUax Wax 788 Subtotal: 11325.6 Shipping: Cursor Jieys scroll, ENTER selects and ESC exits choice menu 25535* I f you program in C, take a few moments to learn how Windows for Data can help you build a state-of-the- art user interface. M Create and manage menus, data-entry forms, context- sensitive help, and text displays — all within windows. Sf Develop window-based OS/2 programs right now, without the headaches of learning OS/2 screen manage- ment. Run the same source code in PCDOS and OS/2 protected mode l?f Build a better front end for any DBMS that has a C- language interface (most popular ones do). FROM END TO BEGINNING Windows for Data begins where other screen packages end, with special features like nested pop-up forms and menus, field en- try from lists of choices, scrollable regions for the entry of variable numbers of line items, and an ex- elusive built-in debugging system. NO WALLS If you've been frustrated by the limitations of other screen utilities, don't be discouraged. You won't run into walls with Windows for Data. Our customers repeated- ly tell us how they've used our system in ways we never imagined — but which we anticipated by designing Win- dows for Data for unprecedented adapatability. You will be amazed at what you can do with Windows for Data. YOU ARE ALWAYS IN CHARGE Control functions that you write and attach to fields and£)r keys can read, compare, validate, and change the data values in all fields of the form. Upon entry or exit from any field, control functions can call up subsidiary forms and menus, change the active field, exit or abort the form, perform almost any task you can imagine. OUR WINDOWS WILL OPEN DOORS Our windows will open doors to new markets for your software. High-performance, source-code- compatible versions of Windows for Data are now available for PCDOS, OS/2, XENIX, UNIX, and VMS. PCDOS versions are fully compatible with Microsoft Windows. No royalties. MONEY BACK GUARANTEE You owe it to yourself and your programs to try Windows for Data. If not satisfied, you can return it for a full refund. Prices: PCDOS $295, Source $295. OS/2 $495 XENIX $795. UNIX, VMS, please call. ext. 51 FAX 802-848-3502 Call: (802) 848-7731 Telex: 510-601-4160 VCSOFT Vermont Creative Software 21 Elm Ave. Richford, VT 05476 The difference between having power and putting it to work. Today's new hardware has the power to let you do more with numbers than ever before. But only if you have software that's smart enough to put all that power to work. Enter Microsoft. Excel. It's the first spreadsheet explicitly de- signed to transform new heights of PC power into new heights of analytical power. With the kind of difference you can see on the bottom line. The powerful difference. Microsoft Excel works faster than any other spreadsheet. It's intelligent enough to recalculate only updated cells. And responsive enough to let you interrupt at any time with new entries. Microsoft Excel works smarter too. You can display and link multiple worksheets right on your screen for a more realistic view. You can even link your sheets into a three-dimensional model-without locking them into it. Perform any of 131 functions or easily customize your own. Manipulate arrays of data as simply as a single cell. Check your work with a complete set of built-in auditing tools. And produce annual-report-quality spreadsheets and charts that illuminate the most important part of any analysis. The point. What's more, you can do all this with files and macros created in Lotus . 1-2-3 .. Because the power of Microsoft Excel is meant to be shared. You've read the ad. Now see the movie. Now you can preview Microsoft Excel on a TV near you. To get your copy of our action- packed video, just call (800) 323-3577 ext.D53. Ask for the video. It's only $10, but you'll get that back when you get Microsoft Excel. Or just ask for our free product literature. You can also stop by your Microsoft dealer and give Microsoft Excel an analytical workout of your own. Find out why every copy of Microsoft Excel comes with a money-back guarantee. And discover what a powerful difference Microsoft Excel will make to you. Microsoft Excel * Benchmark Results* The numbers show why Microsoft Excel does the numbers faster. • Microsoft Lotus 1-2-3 Excel2.0 2.01 Quattro 1.0 Recalculate Addition File 0:03 0:06 0:07 Recalculate Multiplication File 0:03 0:07 0:06 Recalculate Mixed-FormulaFile 0:04 0:42 0:24 The soul of the new machines™ *Excerpted from MfaWorld, January II, 1988, Volume 10, Issue 2. page 55. Times are shown in seconds Money-back guarantee good on purchases made through June 30, 1988, and valid only in the USA and Canada. Some restrictions apply. Microsoft and the Microsoft logo are registered trademarks and The soul of the new machines is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Lotus and 1-2-3 are registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation. Company names and data used in the output are fictitious. Circle 194 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 195) MAY 1988 -BYTE 251 256K on Mother Board, 360K Brand !jlJlJQlj svt rtvt Name Floppy Drive, 135 Watt Power Supply, Slide Case, AT Style Keyboard, 4-10 MH Z Clock Speed, (Keyboard Selectable), 8 Expansion Slots. Bernoulli Box 10 Meg S 865 20 Meg ,-■ 1*0 40 Meg 1605 Seagate 20 MGw WD Controller. -. 290 2511 «9 AST COMPUTERS Model 80 $ 1509 Model 120 2130 Model 340 4185 Model 390 5695 NEC Mullispeed . . 1375 Multispeed EL 1609 Toshiba T-1000 . ■■<'. 785 T-1100 Supertwisl 1370 T-JiOO 2799 T-3120 3068 T-3200 3714 Other Models Call AT S T New Call Sharp New Call 4501 698 4502 1250 ✓ SPREADSHEETS Cambridge Analyst $ 55 HAL 89 Lotus 1-2-3 Ver. 2.01 295 MS Excel)-:- 285 Multipfan 3.0 Call Quotation Call PFS Pro Plan 52 Supercalc 4 269 Twin Classic 32 VP Planner Plus 82 LANGUAGES C Compiler (Microsoft) Call Fortran Compiler (Microsoft) .... Call Macro Assembler (Microsoft) .... 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Best Price 439 GRAPHICS/MICE Chartmaster $199 Diagram Master js^T. 185 Generic CAD w/Dot Plot 3.0 ... . 72 Harvard Graphics 2.1 " 239 IMSI Mouse w/Dr. Halo III . .• . . . 88 In-A-Vision 259 Logimouse 65 Logimouse w/painl 89 Microsoft Buss Mouse 1 .0 Call Microsoft Chart 3.0 Call Microsoft Serial Mouse 1.0 Call News Room 30 News Room Professional 65 PC Buss Plus Mouse (New Ver.) w/paint . 83 PC Mouse (New Ver.) w/paint ... 83 Printmaster 29 Print Shop 32 Signmaster 132 Turbo Graphix Tool Box 38 Windows Drawl! w/clip art 159 DATA BASE MANAGEMENT Clipper $ 368 dBase III Plus 374 DB-XL 79 Eureka 88 Fox Base Plus 2.0 185 Gentler 188 Nutshell 75 Paradox 2.0 Call PFS: Professional File 111 Q & A 185 Quickcode Plus 138 QuickReport 138 Revelation 459 R:Base System V 399 Reflex 78 VP Expert Call VP Info Call ACCESSORIES Copy II Option Board Call Masterpiece $ 84 Masterpiece Plus 93 Masterpiece Remote . : 107 MousePad by Mousetrac 9 Summasketch 12x12 Plus 369 ACCOUNTING Computer Associates Call DAC Easy Accounting Call One Write Plus 2.0 Call Time Slips 69 TRAINING Flight Simulator Call MS Learning DOS Call PC Logo $ 79 Turbo Tutor II 23 Typing Instructor 27 Typing Tutor IV 27 WORD PROCESSORS Microsoft Word 4,0 $185 Multimate Advantage II 249 PFS: Professional Write 102 Volkswnter 3 132 Volkswriter Deluxe Plus 59 Webster New World Writer 55 Webster Spell Checker 32 Webster Thesaurus 39 WordPerfect Call Word Perfect Executive Call Word Perfect Library Call Wordstar Pro Pack 4.0 205 Wordstar 2000 Plus 3 0 189 DESKTOP PUBLISHING Newsmaster $ 48 Pagemaker 442 PFS: First Publisher 52 Ventura Publishing Call MONEY MANAGEMENT Tobias Managing Your Money 4.0 . $114 Dollars & Sense w/Forcast 92 m MasterCard] No Charge for VISA and Mastercard We Do Hoi Chugs Your Card Until Your Order is Shipped You Pay the Ground Shipping - We Pay Ihe Air Ground Shipping & Handling $6 00 Free Air applies ONLY to orders up lo 10 lbs & Over ISO Ground Shipping & Handling $6 00 Free Air applies ONLY to orders up it All product carries a manulaclijrer'5 v, Guarantee rebates, trial period pnviledges & promotional programs are handlec) by Ihe manufacturer only Prices Terms & Availability Subject lo Change Without NotiC Add 5% lor CO D Orders We Do Not Guarantee Machine Compatibility Hailing Address: 8804 N 23rd Avenue'Phoemx . Arizona 85021 To place ai Order 1-800-634-0402 To lollow up on an Order: (602) 944-2552 Order Line Hours Mon-Fri 7am -6pm Saturday 9a m.-lp m Order Processing Hours (602) 944-1037 tOa m 3d m Won -Fn Circle 270 on Reader Service Card for MS DOS Products. (All others: 271) CPU ARCHITECTURES Modeling Chaos A parallel CPU architecture can take you where shorter clock ticks, smarter instructions, and more on-chip memory can't go Peter Wayner WHEN SCIENTISTS ATTEMPT to model the flow of water or air or any fluid, they write a Navier-Stokes differ- ential equation that describes how a small part of a continuous stream will behave. In easy cases, such as water flowing down a straight pipe, calculus and clever guessing can provide an exact solution that describes the flow. But in more diffi- cult problems, such as the turbulent flow of air around the wing of a new airplane (see photo 2 on page 258), the answer cannot be found with paper-and-pencil mathematics; numerical analysis by com- puter is required. Solving this type of problem on a tradi- tional, serial-architecture computer- even a very fast one— can be impractical because of the large number of separate and independent calculations to be per- formed. The problem seems tailor-made for a parallel architecture, and, in fact, it has become a primary application for parallel-architecture machines. The ap- proach has been so successful that many companies are replacing their wind-tun- nel tests with computational models run- ning on parallel-architecture computers. A look at two such computers illus- trates many of their strengths and some of the technical issues that come up in using them. In the Connection Machine, from Thinking Machines Inc. (Boston, Massa- chusetts), several thousand extremely simple CPUs are hooked into a large array with carefully arranged channels of communication between them. The de- sign allows many thousands of similar calculations to be executed literally at once (not just apparently, as is the case with multitasking architectures). An- other radical new design, implemented by researchers at Princeton, involves CPUs with only one instruction that is custom-designed to solve a single prob- lem at a very high speed. Instead of using standard numerical methods requiring accurate real-number arithmetic to simulate a process, both the Connection Machine and the Princeton computer use a cellular automaton to model the interaction between particles on a grid. It may not be elegant to the classical mathematician raised on smooth functions, but its simplicity makes it easy to compute in parallel. Before looking at the details of these machines, I'll briefly explain the cellular automaton model used on both of them to simulate fluid flows. Having the practical application in front of you makes the strengths and drawbacks of parallelism much clearer than would an abstract discussion. Fitting the Problem to the Architecture The cellular automaton model discussed here was proposed by a team of three sci- entists at the Los Alamos National Lab- oratory: Uriel Frisch, Brosl Hasslacher, and Yves Pomeau. Further studies have been made by others, including Jim Salem, Bruce Nemnich, and Steve Wol- fram at Thinking Machines. The model follows the movement of particles on a large hexagonal lattice. The particles interact according to a set of eas- ily computed rules that specify the out- come for every possible collision. After each time step, the computer checks for particles colliding. The hexagonal lattice lets up to six particles collide at once from six different directions; this yields 2" = 64 possibilities. However, the 64 possibilities can be reduced through re- flection and rotation of axes to a more manageable 14, and that is the number of rules the working model actually con- tains (see figure 1). All the particles are assumed to be moving at the same speed. Every rule conforms to the Newtonian law of conser- vation of momentum. Put differently, the vector sum of particles moving inside each grid is the same before and after each time step. The model can be adjusted to handle fluids and gases with different viscosities by adjusting the density of the grid. The dynamics of a fluid are measured by a number known as the Reynolds number, which is proportional to the particle ve- locity and size, and inversely propor- tional to the viscosity of the fluid. Slow- moving objects in thick liquids, like raisins in molasses, have a low Reynolds number; fast objects moving through slippery fluids, like bullets through air, are described by large numbers. In the simulation, the relative density of the grid determines the Reynolds num- ber. If there are many nodes close to- gether, the automaton behaves like a fluid with a high Reynolds number. If there are relatively fewer nodes, the simulated fluid will be thicker. Experiments have shown that the number of nodes per square inch is roughly proportional to the square of the fluid's Reynolds number. continued MAY 1988 - BYTE 253 MODELING CHAOS Rule* Before collision After collision Rule# Before collision After collision XX -XX 2R > 2U > 2V > 3S > xx xx XX XX XX XX 4L 4R XX XX XX XX XX • XX Figure 1: These 14 rules determine the effects of particles colliding in the fluid- flow cellular automaton. By rotating and reflecting the axes, the rules cover all 64 possibilities. Figure 2: The successive generations of a 2048- by 2048-cell automaton show how a plate can introduce turbulence into the model. Each arrow represents the average velocity computed over a 64- by 64-cell region. The frames are shown for 10,000- generation intervals, starting at generation 0. Using a Macintosh with Lightspeed Pascal, I wrote a program for calculating and displaying a microscopic version of the model (see the editor's note at the end of this article) . At this cut-down level, the behavior of particles appears random. A better picture of what happens at the macroscopic level requires that we use a much larger grid, divided into quadrants, and calculate an average direction for the particles in a given quadrant. Figure 2 shows a sequence of "snapshots" made every 10,000 time steps using the Con- nection Machine. Each of the arrows in figure 2 represents the average direction of the particles in a 64 by 64 group of cells; the entire model consists of 2048 by 2048 cells altogether. At this level, the re- strictions of the model begin to disappear and the behavior of the averages looks much more like a fluid. It would clearly be impractical to do work on this scale using a single-processor microcomputer. A Special CPU for the Cellular Automaton Parallel computing is the obvious solution to speeding up this problem, but it is not so easy as simply throwing more proces- sors into the box. The chips must com- municate with each other, and if the ar- chitecture of the machine is not carefully designed, most of the gain in computa- tion power can be lost to communication time. In the fluid-flow automaton, the communications step is even more signif- icant than in most parallel applications because the computation phase is almost trivial: Rules can be implemented by feeding the 6 bits that describe a node into a small set of Boolean gates. At Princeton University, Professor Kenneth Steiglitz and graduate student Steve Kugelmass have built a specialized computer with custom very-large-scale- integration (VLSI) chips to process the fluid-flow automaton particles. The speed of the machine comes from lining 10,000 20,000 254 BYTE* MAY 1988 MODELING CHAOS up many simple machines. In early de- signs of the chip, the individual proces- sors were placed in a hexagonal lattice with data lines running between them. Each processor computed a single node. This approach to the problem had an intuitive appeal, but it quickly ran into problems with the communications over- head. While it was quite easy to send the information about the particles between the processors on a chip, it was difficult to arrange the communications between two chips because of the physical limita- tions of the package. A simple chip with 37 processors arranged in concentric hexagons needed 84 pins just to handle the data coming to and from the neigh- boring chips. These obstacles could have been overcome using multiplexing and other techniques, but not without sacri- ficing speed and simplicity. Steiglitz and Kugelmass scrapped the one-processor-per-site architecture in favor of a pipeline of slightly more so- phisticated processors. Each processor has a shift register that holds three lines of the hexagonal grid (see figure 3). In an n by n array, the shift register holds 2n + 1 cells at once, mapped as shown in fig- ure 3 for a 4 by 4 array. It takes n 2 steps to compute an entire generation, but when x shift registers are lined up, the x genera- tions are done simultaneously in the same n 2 steps. (This doesn't include the time required to fill the pipeline with initial data, of course.) The size of the largest feasible shift register limits the width of simulations that can be done with the pipeline machine, but not the overall length. Long wind-tunnel experiments are particularly easy. This design removes the intercommu- nication bottleneck and interconnect dif- ficulties associated with the original two- dimensional model. It also makes it easier to present a picture of the current state of the automaton for display or other continued (a) 9-cell shift register a b • * ■ i * f 4 by 4 array Shift register contains sufficient data to compute the next generation for this cell (b) Heavy line shows current mapping of the shift register 12 3L 6 bits of ""^ information are processed New contents of ' current cell are fed to the next shift register 3 Figure 3: The Princeton machine 's pipelined architecture, (a) The two- dimensional array of cells is mapped onto a shift register. The illustration shows the case for a 4 by 4 array and a 9-cell shift register. At any given time step, the register has enough information to compute one cell 's next generation. It takes 16 time steps to do the entire 4 by 4 array, (b) By pipelining multiple shift registers, multiple generations can be computed at once. 30,000 40,000 50,000 MAY 1988 -BYTE 255 MODELING CHAOS computation. However, this picture is now available only once every x genera- tions (x being the number of shift regis- ters linked in the pipeline). Each of the new chips currently being tested at Princeton has two processors that share one shift register (see photo 1), letting them compute two cells in one Photo 1: The Princeton parallel-processing chip. The shift register dominates the top three-quarters of the photograph while the two processors are at the bottom. The shift register contains 512 memory words. The entire chip contains the equivalent of 68, 000 transistors implemented in 3-micron technology. clock cycle. To accomplish this, the shift register is simply extended in length to 2n + 2. Using this design, each chip is capa- ble of doing 20 million cell updates per second. The prototype machine, how- ever, is connected to a Sun-3 workstation with a bus that can process only % mil- lion sites per cycle. Once the pipeline is filled with data, the machine can process % million sites per second per chip. The Connection Machine One of the original implementations of the fluid-flow automaton was done on the Connection Machine (CM) by Jim Salem, Bruce Nemnich, and Steve Wolfram. The CM uses 65536 processors in a very flex- ible architecture. Each processor has links to 12 neighbors, letting it act as a "hypercube" in up to 12 dimensions. A front-end computer compiles the pro- gram and loads the code into the parallel processors. Each time step consists of a communications phase and a computa- tion phase. Each processor is a simple bit-oriented computer with its own 8192 bytes of memory. In the newer CM-2, each pro- cessor also has its own floating-point chip attached for very fast scientific com- puting. Extensions and new data types are provided for Lisp, C, and FORTRAN to make the parallelism transparent or at least accessible to programmers. Most of the limitations that exist with Steiglitz's initial prototype of one proces- sor per site are removed by the general- purpose architecture of the CM and its special software. The machine was de- signed to be a parallel-processing com- puter and can easily be programmed for any purpose, so wires run from each of the processors back to the front-end com- puter handling the input and output. For the fluid-flow automaton, the CM was configured as a plane with links be- tween each processor and its four neigh- continued 60,000 - -~ - ■ .NNN • - \ v \ I I I I ■■'III/// ■mr-. . „ . \ \ » - \ \ \ \ I 1 I I ' US . ///' ///■>■■ 70,000 80,000 X\\\\N XX- - P-Bus Address P-Bus control Memory Data cache management unit M-Bus control 88200 CMMU Instruction unit TI — 7$ iz. 32 P-Bus instruction P-Bus control Memory Data cache management unit M-Bus control M-Bus cycle, after the first bank does. Simi- larly, while the second bank is being ac- cessed, the first can be preparing to pre- sent its next data word to the CPU just 40 ns later. Thus, interleaved burst access with practical SRAM could take just one wait state to set up the burst, then zero wait states within it. Simulating this combina- tion yields 35,760 Dhrystones per second and 18.67 MIPS (85 percent of peak). The use of the instruction burst-mode configuration improves performance by 21 percent. The simulator output also shows that the CPU pipeline had 25.3 percent idle time, split mainly into 10.2 percent instruction-fetch waits and 12.3 percent data-transaction waits. There was also a 1.8 percent load/load transaction wait due to the wait states on the data RAM, and to CPU pipeline holds when switching from a write to a read cycle. Compared to peak performance, the continued MAY 1988 'BYTE 265 REAL-WORLD RISCS The Am29000 Chip Set To quote from the Am29000 user's manual, "The Am29000 Streamlined Instruction Processor is the result of a design philosophy which recognizes that processor per- formance must be considered in the light of the processor's hardware and software environment." Thus, the Am29000 draws on system concepts not only from early RISC technol- ogy, but also from the bit-slice and interface technologies that Advanced Micro Devices has pioneered. The Am29000 has 192 internal general-purpose registers and a full 32-bit architecture, and it currently operates with a 25-MHz clock, giv- ing a 40-ns cycle time (the most am- bitious for any of the currently re- leased RISC chip sets). Instructions are of three-address architecture; that is, of the form ADD Ra,Rb,Re, where the source operand in register a is added to the operand in register b, and the result placed in register c. The CPU includes demand-paged memory management (on-chip), a timer, and, like the MC880OO, mas- ter/slave redundancy checking. For floating-point operations, the Am29027 Arithmetic Accelerator supports not only the IEEE floating- point data formats but also the DEC D,F,G, and IBM 370 formats. The Am29027 has an 8-deep 64-bit regis- ter file that can be programmed in flow-through (for scalar computa- tions) or pipelined (for vector opera- tions) mode. The floating-point speed pre- dicted for the Am29027 is excep- tional. AMD predicts a LINPACK rating of 3 million floating-point op- erations per second (MFLOPS), sin- gle precision, before the end of 1988. Although 3 MFLOPS represents a tenfold speed increase over 1987's technology, the MC88000 is also ex- pected to deliver this order of perfor- mance. For reference, the CRAY- IS supercomputer achieves 13 MFLOPS. The Am29000 chip set is rounded out with the Am29041 Data Transfer (DMA) Controller. It attaches the high-performance local data bus of the Am29000 to asynchronous pe- ripherals and includes DMA buffer- ing to more effectively utilize the Am29000's burst-transfer modes. interleaved burst-instruction memory with real SRAM gives only 2.8 percent more instruction latency than perfect zero-wait-state memory using this Dhry- stone code. Thus, little is to be gained from further improvements (or complica- tions) to the instruction memory design. Pipelining In pipelining, the address of the next in- struction is placed on the address bus prior to the completion of the current cycle. External hardware latches this ad- dress, freeing the bus for the other chan- nel (either the instruction bus or the data bus). Performance improvement is mini- mal, 2 percent to 6 percent typically, and can be easily examined with the simu- lator. SCRAM is becoming prominent as the memory of choice for low-cost, high-speed computer systems. Even the 80386 clone on which I am writing this article uses it. SCRAM is just like normal DRAM with RAS and column-address strobe (CAS) cycles, except that the column ad- dress is not latched on the falling edge of CAS, but can be changed while RAS and CAS are held low. In this mode, the RAM looks just like a 256K-bit (64K- bitx4) SRAM. Thus, for minor address changes within the same row of the RAM array, SCRAM has the fast access times of SRAM (typically 40 to 55 ns). There is a problem, however. When a new row address needs to be latched, the RAS precharge interval plus a normal ac- cess time must elapse. This typically leads to extra wait states at the beginning of a burst sequence. The simulator has been designed to estimate additional SCRAM penalties. Since the instruction stream only rarely (less than 10 percent of the time) goes outside the current page, interleaved Dhrystone time (in cycles) for 50 passes = 31487 This machine benchmarks at 3 9698 dhrystones/second Loading Am29080 Memory from file: mw_dhry.bin. loading section " at address 80002000 [228 bytes of type data] at address 00801000 [1924 bytes of type text] at address 00003000 [10632 bytes of type bss] at address 00000000 [564 bytes of type data] at address 00801784 [1568 bytes of type text] 00001784 loading section " loading section " loading section " loading section * Entry at Address: Advanced Micro Devices Am29800 Simulator Ver 4.21-PC Copyright 1987 Sim complete — successful termination Environment of "mw_dhry.bin" simulation: Instruction Memory: 1 Cycles for a Simple access. (0 Wait States) No Burst accesses are allowed and no Pipelined accesses are allowed . (0 Cycles To Decode an Address) Instruction ROM Memory: 1 Cycles for a Simple access. 0 Cycles To Decode an address. Data Memory: 1 Cycles for a Simple access. (0 Wait States) No Burst accesses are allowed and no Pipelined accesses are allowed. (0 Cycles To Decode an Address) Statistics of "mw dhry.bin" simulation: User Mode: Supervisor Mode: Total : 32404 cycles 189 cycles 32593 cycles (0.00129616 seconds) (0.00000756 seconds) (0.00130372 seconds) Instructions Executed: 27006 Simulation speed: 20.71 MIPS (1.21 cycles per instruction) Figure 3: Simulator output for the interface design in figure 1. Note the Dhrystone (second line) and MIPS (last line, this page) predictions. 266 BYTE" MAY 1988 Circle 137 on Reader Service Card REAL-WORLD RISCS burst-mode SCRAM instruction memo- ries can be very effective. It Really Works I recently designed a Macintosh II copro- cessor board using the Am29000. It is typical of the designs that you can achieve using these memory interface architec- tures. Possibly the most important factor you need to determine in a design is how much memory you need and how much space you have available to hold it. This is usually the prime determining factor in choosing between SRAM and SCRAM and between externally bused and closely coupled (nonbused) systems. Deciding to go with an external bus (e.g. , the VME bus) for your memory in- terface immediately sets an upper bound on the performance of memory-intensive applications. Buses have considerable overhead when they have to match 40-ns cycle times. You just can't use interleaved burst mode in a bused system and achieve anywhere near the zero- wait-state perfor- mance of a closely coupled configura- tion, even when the bus is combined with an SRAM local cache. Thus, the neces- sity for a memory bus structure must be carefully balanced against the need for performance. Conversely, there is a limit to the amount of memory that can be closely coupled to a CPU. This limit is deter- mined not only by loading the CPU ad- dress and data outputs to capacity but also by the available space on the CPU board itself. At the moment, loading 512K bytes of SRAM (256K-bit technology) or 2 megabytes of SCRAM (1 -megabit tech- nology) to capacity would fully load each internal bus of the Am29000. In my case, I elected to use the Macin- tosh NuBus for access to peripherals, continued Pipeline 17.14% idle pipeline: 12.78% Instruction Fetch Wait 2.50% Data Transaction Wait 8.00% Page Boundary Crossing Fetch Wait 0.03% Unfilled Cache Fetch Wait 0.00% Load/Store Multiple Executing 1.54% Load/Load Transaction Wait 0.38% Pipeline Latency Branch Target Cache Branch cache access: 13511 Branch cache hits: 8197 Branch cache hit ratio: 60.67% Translation Lookaside Buffer TLB access: 9433 TLB hits: 9426 TLB hit ratio: 99.93% Bus Utilization Inst Bus Utilization: 71.44% 23285 Instruction Fetches Data Bus Utilization: 3380 Loads 2523 Stores 18.11% Instruction Mix 3.24% Calls 14.41% Jumps 12.52% Loads 9.34% Stores 6.49% No-ops Register File Spilling/Filling 8 Spills 8 Fills (Simulator Performance: 592.60 cycles per second) ChiWriter How are you currently producing your scientific documents? Are you using a 'golf ball' style type- writer? 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ChiWriter runs on IBM PC's with CGA graphics, one disk drive, 256K memory and Epson/IBM Graphics compatible and other 9 pin printers. Support disks with drivers and high resolution fonts for other graphics boards and printers are available. 'ChiWriter is a nitty product with a price I defy you to beat and performance I defy you to snub . . . ! know of several $500 programs that will do the job, but for the same money you could buy ChiWriter and a vacation. ' Phil Wiswell, PC Magazine □ ChiWriter Program S99.95 □ Hi Res Screen Support $24 95 Hercules, EGA, VGA, AT&T/Olivetti, Toshiba □ 24 Pin Printer Support $24.95 □ Laser Printer Supporl $59.95 HP Laser Jet, Postscript □ Chemistry Font Set $49.95 □ International Keyboard Supporl $19.95 □ WordPerfect Converter $49.95 □ Brochure □ Shipping & handling $ $5 U.S. & Canada, $10 Europe, $15 elsewhere Name Address . City .Stale. -Zip_ Country Phone ( ) Payment by: □ Check □ PO □ VISA □ MC Card # Exp I Horstmann Software Design Corporation 140 E. San Carlos Street, Suite #200 P.O. Box 5039, San Jose, CA 95150 (408)298-0828 horstmann ^[fesaaiT© MAY 1988 ■ BYTE 267 REAL-WORLD RISCS System clock j 29000 address valid r Instruction request IREQ Instruction burst request IBREQ Instruction data valid I i t i I I , Cycle 1 , Cycle 2 Cycle 3 Cycle 4 Cycle 5 Cycle 6 i Burst mode suspended Figure 4: The timing of a short burst-mode instruction-fetch access. Notice that the instruction fetch overlaps with the beginning of each cycle except the first. System clock j | CPU address bus — Bank 1 incrementer address — 1_ < Address n < XI n + 2 Bank 1 data valid Bank 2 incrementer address X E X O n*1 X n + 3 X n + 5 X Bank 2 data valid Cycle 1 Wait state Cycle 2 Cycle 3 Cycle 4 Cycle 5 Cycle 6 Start Figure 5: The timing for an interleaved instruction-burst access. Notice that the access switches back and forth between the two data banks. This process avoids the wait between accesses on a single bank. keeping the memory closely coupled to the CPU. I chose SCRAM for instruction memory, but due to the performance pen- alty incurred by SCRAM page-miss cycles, I selected SRAM for data mem- ory. Size considerations then led me to choose 5 1 2K bytes of 64K-bit x 4 chips in both technologies. It's interesting to note that the 512K bytes of SRAM costs al- most 10 times what the same amount of SCRAM costs. The performance simulation shows that the penalty for using SCRAM in the instruction memory was about 10 percent in this case. Although that may seem quite high, if you run the simulation for the same parameters using a 5 12- word page size (which is what you would get with 1-megabit SCRAMs), the penalty is only 2.3 percent. The usefulness of these new memory designs is intimately interwoven with the sophistication of the software they will execute. It's obvious that the early ver- sion of the MetaWare C compiler (and as- sociated run-time libraries) that I used makes frequent branches or calls that are not within the current page of 256K-bit SCRAMs. The real performance poten- tial of these new architectures will re- quire further development of compiler and linker technologies. For example, placing small subroutines in-line rather than calling them makes a major differ- ence in the performance of SCRAM- based systems. Pushing Beyond In 1985, the performance of microcom- puters rivaled that of minicomputers. When the DSI-32 achieved 1500 Dhry- stones (August 1985 BYTE), it was cause for celebration; yet today's high-end personal computer is capable of much greater performance. Today's RISC microprocessors aim their performance squarely at the super- computer user. Consequently, they are pushing operational speeds beyond the capabilities of current computer systems. As both hardware and software archi- tectures change to complement the im- provements in the CPUs themselves, a world of performance will open up that we couldn't even dream of just 3 years ago. ■ Trevor Marshall, Ph.D., is chief engi- neer at Yarc System Corp. in Thousand Oaks, California. 268 BYTE* MAY 1988 Ot& wot too latz, fan, a, WYSE decuuott, WYSEpc 386 SYSTEMS Standard Features • INTEL 80386 Processor Running at 16 MHz • Phoenix Bios 1.2 MB Floppy Drive • 1 MB of 0 Wait State Static Ram . Up to 24MB of True 32 Bit RAM . Socket for 80387 Math Co-Processor • WYSE Window System Status Display • 2 Serial and 1 Parallel Ports . 220 Watt Power Supply . MS-DOS 3.3'GW-BASIC • 11 Slots»Real Time Clock • 102-KEY Enhanced PC -Style Keyboard • 20 MB 28ms HARD DISK DRIVE WYSE P c 286 SYSTEMS Standard Features • INTEL 80286 Processor . Model 2108 Running at 8 MHz • Model 2108 512k RAM Standard . Model 2112 Running at 12.5 MHz • Model 2112 1MB RAM Standard • Phoenix Bios 1.2 MB Floppy Drive . MS-DOS 3.3 GW-BASIC • Small Footprint . 1 Serial & Parallel Port • 102-Key Enhanced PC-Style Keyboard • WYSE Window System Status Display • 20MB 28ms HARD DISK DRIVE Mode! 2108 Model 2112 -— '■— EGA COLOR SYSTEM • Hi Res 640 x 350 EGA Color • CGA, MDA & HGC Compatible . 752 x 410 Drivers Included • Autoswitching with CGA emulation . 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Hi Res 1280 x 600 . 256 Colors from Palette of 256,000 • Implements all 17 VGA modes • 640 x 400 & 512 x 480 . NEC MULTISYNC II Monitor Model 2108 System $2,545 Model 2112 System $2,995 Model 3216 System $4,190 B88V SuAkntA, Jnc. 1777 Guam, Am,. QatituMkiAt, Md. 20W *!& onck/u 1-800-638-9628 Fax # (301) 258-2753 For information call (301) 963-5800 Circle 341 on Reader Service Card Trademarks: WYSE - trademark of WYSE Technology • MS-DOS , OS/2 & XENIX trademark of Microsoft Corporation - Hercules - trademark of Hercules Computer Technology NEC - trademark of NEC Corporation - PC-MOS/386 - trademark of Software Link. Specifications, configurations, and prices are subject !o change without notice. Copyright 1988 Systems. W Online Access has been roaring down the tracks for a year now, taking advertisers full speed ahead to business professionals and information special- ists. These one million-plus business people use online services to get their business information. And they use Online Access to do it. The information industry and Online Access are picking up speed all the time. If you're trying to reach an information-savvy audience — 95% professional/ managerial; HHI $88,000; 250,000 readers per issue— hop on board. Call Robert Jordan today to reserve your space. 1-800-922-9232 These logos afolfiofc^isiQfraJltadOTatks and copytighlpioperty of their respeciiwe companies AmericanAirlines EaasySaWe. American Express. ChariesSe^^ international DalaTimes. DIALOG. Disclosure, Dow Jones News/Heineval. Dun & Bradslreel. Fidelity Investment. GE mlomiatton Service;;. Hitachi. InluMaster Weilcrn Union. NewsNei. The Source. USRoboltcs. VU/TEXT Circle 209 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 • B Y T E 271 Online access HypertExpert Systems ...something totally new from Knowledge Garden HYPERTEXT Hypertext lets you link related concepts, logic or procedures. It adds a whole new dimension to written material like training manuals, help systems and reference works. Hypertext allows users to access information in a non-linear fashion by follow- ing a train of thought. Hypertext lets the reader control the level of detail and the type of information displayed. But that's just one side of the coin. EXPERT SYSTEMS The other key ingredient to real exchange of knowl- edge via the computer is control by the author. That's why integration of hypertext and expert systems is such a breakthrough— it lets communi- cation take place between teacher and pupil, author and reader, expert and novice. It lets each side REACT to what the other says. Announcing Knowledge Garden. It i to create the world': unlike anytljing/you have seen before. nt environment, fro wit hypertext lyffyl expert systems knowledge processor. 3 KnowledgePro KNOWLEDGE PROCESSOR The age of packaged knowledge is upon us. 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Another intelligent tool in the Knowledge Garden family of products. Published by IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Inc. KnowledgePro is a trademark of Knowledge Garden Inc. DBASE III is a trademark of Ashton Tate. LOTUS 123 is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corp. Photo: Tcherevkoff© 272 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 159 on Reader Service Card BYTE Features 275 Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar: The SmartSpooler, Part 2: Software and Operation by Steve Garcia 285 POP Goes the Macintosh by Dick Fountain 297 Searching for Text? Send an N-Gram! by Roy E. Kimbrell 315 Juggling Multiple Processes by Gary Bricault MAY 1988 'BYTE 273 ^STATISTICS MicrostaMI will have you up and running in 5 minutes or your money back. I i perating Microstat-ll couldn't be easier. No matter what your ■T statistical needs are. Simply select the options you need from the menu system with a keyboard or a mouse and your answer is available instantly. 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Account Number □ VISA □ MC □ American Express Expiration Date OFT CIARCIA'S CIRCUIT CELLAR Steve Ciarcia The SmartSpooler Part 2: Software and Operation SmartSpooler can function as a complete remote data-processing computer to analyze data ■ Last month, I introduced my version of the ulti- H mate printer buffer: SmartSpooler. While Smart- Spooler has 256K bytes of memory and supports ™ both serial and parallel printers, it also has fea- tures that improve its versatility and ease of use. These features include a "switchbox" capability (i.e., for routing serial or parallel computer input to serial or parallel printer output), multiple-copy printing, a single-sheet- feeding mode, and buffer capacity indicators. Also, you can daisy chain multiple SmartSpoolers to control a whole network of peripherals. Most important, SmartSpooler is intelligent. While I've pre- sented it primarily as a printer buffer, SmartSpooler lets a host computer completely control its operation. You can even down- load executable code to SmartSpooler. Rather than being merely a simple printer buffer, SmartSpooler can function as a complete remote data-processing computer that analyzes and interprets the data flowing through it. This month, I'll finish the hardware discussion by explaining the user interface and then briefly describe SmartSpooler's operation. Push Buttons and LEDs A 6821 peripheral interface adapter (PI A) neatly connects four front-panel push buttons, eight front-panel LEDs, and an eight- position DIP switch. The PIA, which is IC24 in figure I, pro- vides two 8-bit ports (port A and port B) and four multipurpose handshaking lines (CA1, CA2, CB1, and CB2). The DIP switches connect to port A, which is programmed as an 8-bit input port. The switches specify options like data transfer rates and operating modes. Figure 2 contains switch settings and functions. The four front-panel push buttons set configuration, pause the output, enter copy requests, and clear present settings. The combination of a simple resistor/capacitor circuit and a Schmitt- trigger inverter debounces each push-button input. The condi- tioned inputs are connected to the handshaking lines, which are programmed so that any switch closure will generate a CPU interrupt. The eight LEDs with current-limiting resistors connect to port B. SmartSpooler sets this port up as an 8-bit output port. (Be aware that port B has the extra 10-milliampere current needed to drive the LEDs.) Four of the LEDs signify Smart- Spooler's operating mode: Config, Copy, Pause, and Clear. The remaining four LEDs indicate which ports are enabled: Copyright © 1988 Steven A. Ciarcia. All rights reserved. Parin (parallel in), Serin (serial in), Parout (parallel out), and Serout (serial out). During initial setup (Clear), these LEDs display the I/O port configuration (serial/parallel). When SmartSpooler is making copies (Copy), these LEDs display the number of copies requested (1 to 4) and then the number of copies remaining to be printed. During normal operation, the LEDs indicate how full the SmartSpooler buffer is: 0 percent, 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent, or 100 percent. The two DB-25S IBM PC-compatible parallel printer input and output connectors are mounted on the printed circuit board. I've mounted two 20-pin headers behind these connectors for the serial ports. These headers accommodate a pair of optional ribbon cables with DB-25P serial connectors on the end. You can operate SmartSpooler with either or both pairs of connec- tors installed. If you need only parallel-to-parallel operation, you use only the DB-25S connectors. Buffer-Manager Software The basic algorithm at the core of SmartSpooler is a FIFO buffer manager. A FIFO, whether a single chip or a box like SmartSpooler, consists of an input port and an output port, con- nected by a buffer memory (perhaps 256 bytes for a FIFO chip and 256K bytes for SmartSpooler). The buffer memory decou- ples the input and output data rates: fast dump from the com- puter, slow dump to the printer. A good analogy for a FD?0 is a water tank with fill (input) and drain (output) pipes, each pipe having a pump (see figure 3). The input can pump faster than the output, so the rate difference is absorbed as the tank fills. As is true with the water tank, the FIFO has to handle two special cases: full and empty. When the tank is full or empty, the respective pump (input or output) should be turned off. We can immediately dismiss the intuitive software algorithm for implementing a FIFO (i.e. , actually moving the data). While suitable for very small FIFOs, such an algorithm would choke on a full 256K-byte buffer. Instead, we use a scheme called a ring buffer, which manipulates input and output pointers, in- stead of actually moving the data (see figure 4). Interrupts and Direct Memory Access You can divide the implementation of the FIFO into three com- ponents: determining when an I/O port is ready for transfer, performing the transfer, and updating the pointers. You could use a pure software approach in which you poll the I/O ports for readiness, transfer data with IN and OUT instruc- tions, and have the program update buffer pointers. However, this scheme has some problems. First, polling is extremely inefficient. Consider the typical case of simultaneous high-speed input and low-speed output. For each input character, you have to check whether the output is ready, even though it normally won't be. Actually, it's much continued MAY 1988 -BYTE 275 CIRCUIT CELLAR worse, since you also have to check for handshaking, front- panel switch closure, and a number of other mundane events. The overhead adds up quickly, limiting performance. Second, software to access the buffer and maintain the buffer pointers is difficult to write for buffer sizes larger than 64K bytes. Eight-bit CPUs like the HD64180— and even 16-bit CPUs like the 8086/80286— must monitor each access and cal- culate memory -management-unit (HD64180) or segment- register (80286) reload values to manage a large buffer. continued RN4 10K IC25 74LS14 IC24 6821 cso CS1 IRQA IRQB RSO RSI R DO Dl D2 INT2 - f 37 T 36 AO 35 Al ' 34 RESET 33 DO E 32 Dl ' 31 D2 ^ 30 03 * 29 D4 28 D5 ■ 27 D6 26 ,D7 > 25 21 1 WR D0-D7.A0-A19 R13 IC25 4.7K 74LS14 /77 PAUSE COPY CONFIG CLEAR Figure 1: Schematic for SmartSpooler's DIP-switch and LED I/O circuitry. A single 6821 peripheral-interface-adapter chip handles all the switches and lights. Mode Off On Local Host (MSB) (LSB) IBR2 IBR1 IBR0 OBR2 OBR1 OBR0 IPORT OPORT On On On Note Note Note Note Off Test On On On On On On On On (Shipping position, all off: Parallel -» parallel mode) Local mode 38,400 19,200 9600 4800 2400 1200 300 N/A I/O BR2 Off I/O BR1 Off I/O BR0 Off Off Off On Off On Off Off On On On Off Off On Off On On On Off On On On I/O port Off = parallel, On = serial Host mode Note: Positions 4 to 7 off = last node in chain Test mode Push any button -> memory test Terminal on serial output port ( . . ) -* monitor Figure 2: DIP-switch settings and their effects on SmartSpooler's various operating modes. 276 BYTE' MAY 1988 95% of the Top U.S. Companies Solve Their Complex Numeric Problems with APL . . . Shouldn't You? APL is indispensable in devel- oping mathematical models for pricing financial securities such as options, futures, and bonds. Complex mathematical algo- rithms are programmed quickly and concisely. And, empirical research is facilitated by A PL's unmatched capabilities in manipulating and analyzing arrays of data. Mark Schroder Option Research Specialist Prudential Bache In businesses when complex numeric prol are a daily challenge, professionals from all walks of life rely on the APL* PLUS® System. The APLit PLUS System Thousands of professionals in a wide range of fields— invest- ment research, insurance, cor- porate finance, engineering, and science— find the APL* PLUS System the per- fect software for complex prob- lem solving. That's because its natural mathematical orienta- tion and conciseness of code provide the ideal environment for model building, array han- dling, system prototyping, and matrix manipulation. And for your connectivity needs, the APL* PLUS System runs on a wide range of machines and operating environments. Why not give yourself the analytical edge, for only $695? Call 800-592-0050 and we'll show you how to put the APL* PLUS System to work in your specific application. STSC STSC, Inc. 2115 East Jefferson Street Rockville, Maryland 20852 800-592-0050 301-984-5123 in Maryland or Canada Telex 898085 When you need to consider three classes of service, numer- ous fare types, and multiple connections, fare pricing anal- ysis without A PL is a Herculean task. A PL's ability to manipu- late tables of data with a single command enables us to explore a wider range of scenarios as fast as we can think of them. Mike Fisher Manager, Systems Development Pan American World Airways A PLUS* WARE PRODUCT The APL* PLUS System is available for Ihe mainframe. IBM PC and compatibles. Macintosh, and machines running UNIX and VAX/VMS. The APL* PLUS System may be purchased through dealers and distributors worldwide. APL* PLUS and PLUS* WARE are registered trademarks of STSC. Inc. UNIX, Macintosh, and IBM are registered trademarks of AT&T Bell Laboratories. Apple Computer, and International Business Machines Corporation, respectively. Top companies according to the April 17, 1987 issue of Business Week. *U.S. suggested retail for DOS version. International prices slightly higher. Circle 282 on Reader Service Card Each quarter we consolidate and analyze historical data, current data, and forecasts from over 800 entities within GEand then quickly compile it into a comprehensive series of reports. With A PL we get it done in a third of the time it would take us using other methods. Eric Baelen Manager, Business Systems Development General Electric Company CIRCUIT CELLAR Figure 3: A FIFO buffer is like a water tank, absorbing the difference between input and output rates. In a typical printer buffer task, the input is faster than the output. A basic function of the FIFO/tank is to control the pumps for the special cases of tank full and tank empty. Figure 4: (a) SmartSpooler's FIFO buffer operates using a ring-buffer algorithm that manipulates input and output data pointers rather than actually moving the data. The flowcharts shown here illustrate two key functions: (b) handling full and empty conditions and (c) checking for buffer wraparound. (a) Input pointer Output pointer *-BufferEnd BufferStart BufferStart/ BufferEnd Already printed I I Remaining to be printed (b) Q Input interrupt ^ Buffer(input) = port Input = input + 1 c Return 3 ■■ BufferStart Input = output Yes 9 Buffer=full ® ( Output interrupt ) Port = buffer(output) Output = output + 1 c Return 3 Output = BufferStart Buffer = empty 278 BYTE* MAY 1988 CIRCUIT CELLAR Table 1: SmartSpooler takes full advantage of the HD64180's interrupt capabilities. Note that the NMI and INTO signals are also gated with XBUS inputs, allowing I/O expansion boards to use them. NMI: Not used (parallel output port ERROR input is optional) INTO : Parallel input port INT1 : Parallel output port INT2: Front-panel switches PRT(Timer)0: Software delay timer PRT(Timer)1: Real-time timer DMAO: Not used DMA1: Not used CSI/O: Not used ASCI(UART)0: Serial input port ASCI(UART)1 : Serial output port The solution to the problem of inefficiency is to exploit the HD64180's excellent interrupt capabilities. SmartSpooler' s I/O is totally interrupt-driven, including the serial and parallel ports as well as the front-panel switches. Table 1 lists these interrupt assignments. To solve the problem of large buffer maintenance, Smart- Spooler uses the HD64180's direct-memory-access controller (DM AC), which has direct access to the entire physical address space. Besides performing the actual IN and OUT operations, the DMAC maintains the buffer pointers (using built-in DMA ad- dress registers with auto-increment). Channel 0 is the input channel, configured to perform I/O-to-memory DMA. Channel 1, as output, is configured for memory-to-I/O DMA. Usually, I/O DMA occurs by request of the I/O device itself. Unfortunately, this doesn't easily handle special cases like buffer full, buffer empty, Pause button, copies, and handshak- ing. To get more flexibilit y, Smar tSpooler uses a "soft" DMA technique. The HD64180 DREQ inputs are connected to CPU I/O ports instead of directly to the I/O peripheral ports. This lets the software initiate DMA. Hands Across the Buffer Both input and output ports need to provide handshaking. On the input side (host to SmartSpooler), the host must be signaled to stop when the buffer fills, to prevent overflow (remember the water tank example). On the output side (SmartSpooler to printer), SmartSpooler needs to pause when the printer is busy printing or goes off-line. In the formal world of data communi- cations, this is known as flow control. Flow control requires handshaking, which is a way of convey- ing start/stop information between the various devices. Hard- ware handshaking uses extra signal lines dedicated to flow con- trol. Software handshaking conveys flow-control information over the data channel itself. The Centronics paralle l interface uses hardware handshaking signals: STROBE , ACK , and BUSY. The RS-232C ports pro- vide both hardware handshaking (RTS and CTS) and software handshaking (XON/XOFF). The problem with serial handshaking (RTS , CTS , and XON/XOFF) protocols occurs when the receiver can't shut off the sender in time to prevent overflow. Those of you who have spent time trying to get terminals or computers to run at 19,200 or 38,400 bits per second know what I mean (the beeping termi- nal syndrome). Also, some sending devices check for hand- shaking only at the end of each line, rather than for each charac- ter. To avoid overflow, SmartSpooler' s serial port drivers incorporate a 256-byte "pad," allowing plenty of time for hand- shaking delays. Local, Test, and Host Modes SmartSpooler's operating mode is determined at power-on by DIP- switch settings. Local mode is the normal mode of operation. In this case, SmartSpooler enters the default port configuration (parallel to parallel) and is ready to spool incoming data. Using the front- panel switches and LEDs, you can enter commands to change the port configuration, pause the output, and request copies. Test mode works with a standard RS-232C terminal con- nected to one of the serial ports (see photos la and lb). Instead of entering the spooler routines, SmartSpooler executes a built- in monitor program, which contains routines to test the ports, switches, and LEDs, as well as a complement of traditional monitor commands (display, enter memory, and so on). Test mode is useful for diagnosing hardware, cable, and host driver software problems. Host mode lets the host computer download commands to continued M ASCII Table Bank Select Display Kerary Mate Terninal Fill lienors 6oto Progran Hexnath Input Port Hove Herory Output Port Printer Select Query dewy Set Henory Test Systen Upload Hex File Verify Herary Exanine Registers >X Yank I/O Registers^ )Bbank» (bank#=BBR) Mstartaddrl, [endaddr] JEIbaudrateT (Fstartaddr i endaddr ( dat a8 >6CgoaddrJ )GB brkaddr,[goaddr] JHdataI6,datal6 Hportaddr Htetartaddr , endaddr , destaddr >0>ortaddridata8 >P >Qdata8 , tdata83 , [dataS ] , CdataS ] >Saddr >Tdev (dev=A}5ync,B}Button/LFJ>,C)en, >ura >Vstartaddr,endaddr, destaddr £ 3C)TB PAUSE button DIP switch=llllllll SPOOL COPY button DIP Stfitch=llllltll SPOOL COHFG button SIP suitch=llllllll SPOOL CLEAR button DIP switeh=llllllll SPOOL PAUSE button DIP suitcft=B88«8880 TEST COPY button DIP suitch=8BBB18l8 HOST COHFG button DIP switdFltlBlBlB SPOOL CLEAR button DIP suitch=llllBllB SPOOL PAUSE button DIP suitdFlBl 18181 SPOOL COPY button DIP suitctpBBl 18181 SPOOL CONFG button DIP switdpllllBlBl SPOOL CLEAR button DIP suitch=lllllll8 SPOOL node PARALLEL -> PARALLEL node PARALLEL -> PARALLEL node PARALLEL -> PARALLEL node PARALLEL -> PARALLEL node node ADDR=85 node PARALLEL -) SERIAL ( 1200) node PARALLEL -> SERIALt 9688) node SERIAL ( 9688) -> PARALLEL node SERIAL ( 388 ) -> PARALLEL node SERIAL(38.4k) -> PARALLEL node PARALLEL -> SERIAL(38.4k)| Photo 1: (a) This screen shows the commands available while SmartSpooler is in test mode, (b) From this screen, you can individually test all four buttons, all eight LEDs, and all eight DIP switches. The right-hand column shows the SmartSpooler modes for several different DIP-switch settings. Whatever setting is last selected determines the default mode SmartSpooler enters when you reset it or power it up. MAY 1988 -BYTE 279 CIRCUIT CELLAR Operation Summary for SmartSpooler Power-on: • Clear LED goes on. • Config LED goes on, and the default port configuration is shown. • Clear LED goes off, and the LEDs switch to show buffer capacity. • SmartSpooler is ready for operation. Changing the port configuration, changing the pause mode, and aborting printout: • Push the Clear button. • Push the Config button to change the port configuration and the Pause but- ton to toggle the pause mode on/off. • Push the Clear button (Clear LED off) to start SmartSpooler operation. • The LEDs switch from showing the port configuration to monitoring the buffer capacity. Suspending/resuming printing: • Push the Pause button to suspend printing. • Push the Pause button again to resume printing. Making copies: • Press Clear prior to sending document to copy. • Send the document to SmartSpooler. • Push the Copy button. • Push the Config button to select the number of copies (0 to 4) desired. • Push the Copy button again (Config LED off) to finish the copy request. • The Copy LED will remain on until all copies are printed. Single-sheet printing: • Make sure you've selected the pause mode during power-on or Clear setup. • Make sure your computer transmits a formfeed character to SmartSpooler prior to each new page (including the first). • When the Pause LED goes on, insert a new page into the printer. • Push the Pause button to print the next page. Check buffer capacity, port config- uration, and the number of copies remaining: • During normal operation (Clear LED off), the parallel/serial In/Out LEDs show percent full (0, 25, 50, 75, or 100) the SmartSpooler buffer is, and the Pause LED controls print sus- pend/resume. SmartSpooler. One benefit of host mode is that it lets you use software— instead of switches and LEDs — to set the port config- uration and serial port format (data transfer rate, start/stop bits, parity, and so on). In fact, you can remove SmartSpooler' s switches, LEDs, and corresponding circuits if you never use SmartSpooler for local mode operation. For the ultimate in versatility, the host can even download a new control program to totally replace SmartSpooler' s control program. SmartSpooler 's ROM vectors all HD64180 interrupts through a RAM-based vector table, letting the new control pro- gram take over interrupt response. Combining SmartSpooler' s hardware with optional XBUS expansion boards (e.g., the Cir- cuit Cellar GT180 color graphics display or the COMM180 modem/small-computer-system-interface [SCSI] board) and your own control program opens the door for lots of interesting applications. Using SmartSpooler SmartSpooler is easy to use. The following is a summary of spe- cific button functions. Pushing the Clear button stops any operation (I/O) in prog- ress, initializes SmartSpooler, and lights the Clear LED. Any data in the buffer is lost upon Clear. You use the Clear button in the following instances: • to change the port configuration • to change the pause mode • before receiving a document that will be copied • to cancel a printout • to finish the Clear request (Clear, Config, and Pause LEDs off) The Pause button has two functions, one after the Clear but- ton is pushed and another during normal operation. After you've pushed the Clear button (Clear LED on), pushing Pause toggles the pause mode on or off. When pause mode is on (Pause LED on), SmartSpooler will suspend output after trans- mission of a formfeed character to the printer. Use this mode for single-sheet feeding; position the next sheet and push the Pause button (Pause LED off) to resume printing. When pause mode is off (Pause LED off), SmartSpooler will not check formfeed characters. Use this mode when printing continuous (i.e., platen or tractor-fed) forms. Push the Copy button (Copy LED on) to make copies of everything SmartSpooler has received since the last Clear. Then, increment the number of copies desired by pushing the Config button (Config LED blinks). The LEDs show how many copies are selected: One LED on means one copy (plus original); four LEDs on means four copies (plus original). After entering the number of copies de- sired, push the Copy button again (Config LED off) to complete the copy request. The Config button toggles the I/O (serial or parallel) port configuration when the Clear LED is on. The configuration is reflected on the parallel/serial In/Out LEDs. Two Functions SmartSpooler is actually two projects. One of these is a high- performance printer buffer; the second is a configurable intelli- gent peripheral controller. Most people will assemble it as a printer buffer, but others will find applications ideally suited for the host programmed mode. While SmartSpooler is not a trivial continued 280 BYTE- MAY 1988 "Jem steps to instant programming. Microsoft* QuickBASIC 4.0 is a revolution in BASIC programming. A revolution that earned PC Magazines Best of 1987 award and its Award for Technical Excellence for the last two years. Instant programming means instant results. With Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.0, you get a complete instant programming environment. Revolutionary technology lets you run, edit, debug, and then continue running your program. Without a time-consuming compile step. So you get instant results and instant productivity. Instant programming also means you're always ready to debug using a sophisticated collection of debugging tools. Control program execution easily with breakpoints. Use watch- points and watch expressions to see data values as your program runs. Even change data values and continue running! Advanced language extensions such as records, recursion, huge arrays, and FUNCTION procedures give the language more power and versatility, so you can really flex your BASIC muscles. And Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.0 still produces the fastest BASIC code around. A great value gets better. At $99 Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.0 is a great value. And now it's even better because it includes our Value-Pack Catalog containing coupons worth more than $600 on add-on packages and books. And if that's not enough, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. You just can't lose. Take the first step into instant program- ming. Just call us at (800) 541-1261, Dept. E19, for the name of your nearest Microsoft dealer and start your own revolution in instant programming with Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.0. Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.0 Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Offer valid only in the 50 U.S. States. Circle 196 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 197) MAY 1988 'BYTE 281 CIRCUIT CELLAR project, you can extend it to perform tasks that separate it from a mere buffer. One possibility is to use SmartSpooler between a host computer and a modem to filter incoming data, initiate and time calls, or encrypt and decrypt data. As a printer buffer, 256K bytes is more than adequate. How- ever, as a specific-application peripheral controller, Smart- Spooler might need additional capability. As I mentioned previously, it is not inconceivable to add 8 or 16 additional I/O ports, a 20-megabyte SCSI hard disk drive, or the GT 180 color graphics display to SmartSpooler through its XBUS expansion connector. The necessary hardware for such peripherals already exists for SmartSpooler from previous Cir- cuit Cellar articles. Experimenters While printed circuit board kits for SmartSpooler are available, I encourage you to build your own. If you don't mind doing a little work, I will support your efforts as usual. You can down- load a hexadecimal file of the executable code for Smart- Spooler's system EPROM (27128) from my bulletin board at (203) 871-1988. Alternatively, you can send me a preformatted IBM PC floppy disk with return postage, and I'll put all the files on it for you (add $6 for the SmartSpooler User's Manual). Of course, this free software is for noncommercial personal use only. Next Month The first part of a two-part article on a two-channel "biofeed- back" EEG brain-wave analyzer. ■ I'd like to personally thank Tom Cantrell for his extensive work on this project. Without his software expertise, I'd be hope- lessly mired in an ocean of bits forever. Editor's Note: Steve often refers to previous Circuit Cellar articles. Most of these past articles are available in book form from BYTE Books, McGraw-Hill Book Co. , P.O. Box 400, Hightstown, NJ 08250. Garcia 's Circuit Cellar, Volume I covers articles in BYTE from Sep- tember 1977 through November 1978. Volume II covers December 1978 through June 1980. Volume III covers July 1980 through Decem- ber 1981. Volume IV covers January 1982 through June 1983. Volume V covers July 1983 through December 1984. Volume VI covers January 1985 through June 1986. It's virtually impossible to provide all the pertinent details of a project or cover all the designs I'd like to in the pages of BYTE. For that reason, I have started a bimonthly supplemental publication called Circuit Cel- lar Ink, which presents additional information on projects published in BYTE, new projects, and supplemental applications-oriented materi- als. For a one-year subscription (6 issues), send $14.95 to Circuit Cel- lar Ink, P.O. Box 3378, Wallingford, CT 06494. Credit card orders can call (203) 875-2199. The following items are available from CCI P.O. Box 428 Tolland, CT 06084 (203) 875-2751 Inquiry 934. 1 . SmartSpooler RAMless full printed circuit board kit for parallel-to- parallel operation. Comes complete with printed circuit board and all printed-circuit-board-mounted components, including HD64180, IC sockets, SmartSpooler software on EPROM, and User's Manual. Less DRAM chips. SS01-KIT $119 2. SmartSpooler experimenter's kit for parallel-to-parallel operation. Comes with printed circuit board, crystal, HD64180 and plastic- leaded-chip-carrier socket, software on EPROM, and User's Manual. Available only through September 30, 1988. SS02-EXP $89 Optional serial port ribbon cables are available. Call for pricing. The SmartSpooler design is available for licensing to qualified manu- facturers. Call for information. All payments should be made in U.S. dollars by check, money order, MasterCard, or Visa. Surface delivery (U.S. and Canada only): add $5 for U.S. , $8 for Canada. For delivery to Europe via U.S. airmail, add $14. Three-day air freight delivery: add $10 for U.S. (UPS Blue), $25 for Canada (Purolator overnight), $45 for Europe (Federal Express), or $60 for Asia and elsewhere in the world (Federal Express). There is a multiline Circuit Cellar bulletin board system (running TBBS 2.0M) that supports past and present projects in BYTE and Ink. You are invited to call and exchange ideas and comments with other Circuit Cel- lar supporters. The 300-/1200-/2400-bps BBS is on-line 24 hours a day at (203) 871-1988. To receive information about the Circuit Cellar Ink publication for hardware designers and developers, please circle 100 on the Reader Service inquiry card at the back of the magazine. Steve Ciarcia (pronounced "see-ARE-see-ah ") is an electron- ics engineer and computer consultant with experience in pro- cess control, digital design, nuclear instrumentation, and prod- uct development. The author of several books on electronics, he can be reached at P. O. Box 582, Glastonbury, CT 06033. 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If a power failure occurs, a "hot" key will restore the data as if the user were actually re-typing the in- formation. DATABACK will pay for itself the first time you use it. DATABACK offers the following features: - User defined save intervals (defined in number of keystrokes) - Works with floppy disks or hard disks. - Variable time reminder to save data. - Easy to use via screen prompts. $69.95 -Can be used to automate processes, presentations, or demonstrations. - IdeaJ for use with editors, spreadsheets, and word processors. - Great for portables or laptops. Turbo G tm Turbo G is a graphics development environment for C. Supported displays include VGA, EGA, CGA, and Hercules. Display support does not require memory resident device drivers. Device driver support is included for HP and Houston Instrument plotters, and Epson style graphics printers. A programming hook and examples are provided to develop one's own device drivers. Turbo G has 60+ functions including lines, circles, arcs, fills, viewport, and user coordinate windows. Hidden line suppression is included for 3-D graphing. The command syntax is easy to use but powerful. The source is available, MackDOS was written using Turbo G. Library $79.95 Source $149.95 284 BYTE- MAY 1988 Circle 298 on Reader Service Card Dick Pountain POP Goes the Macintosh POP- 11, a powerful AI programming language, is finally available on a microcomputer or me, the ideal language would be an artful F blend of Pascal, Lisp, and Forth with a dash of Smalltalk and Prolog. From Pascal, it would take clean syntax and block structure that can make programs both readable and beautiful. From Lisp, it would take weak data typing, list processing, and the notion that procedures are indistinguishable from data. From Forth, it would take the ideas of extreme interactivity with executable subprograms, incremental compilation, and a simple compiler that the programmer can understand and whose ser- vices you can invoke from a user program. From Smalltalk, it would take the idea that a class of data objects should have pri- vate access procedures, known only to class members. From Prolog, it would take the built-in pattern matching and database facilities. My ideal language appears to exist already. It's called POP- 1 1 , a language I first discussed in a BYTE column in October 1984. Unfortunately, SNAP, the simplified IBM PC version of POP that I wrote about in 1984, was never released; the project ran out of funding and time. Now things are looking up: A full implementation of POP-11, called AlphaPOP, is available for the Apple Macintosh. It requires a Macintosh running the Hier- archical File System (HFS) with 512K bytes of memory. It comes on either single- or double-sided disks. (See the text box "AlphaPOP for the Macintosh" on page 288. ) POP History and Fundamentals POP-1 1 started life back in the late 1960s as POP-2, developed in the machine intelligence department of Scotland's Edinburgh University (the same department that produced the Edinburgh Prolog standard) by Robin Popplestone and Rod Burstall. It was designed as a replacement for Lisp, with a more acceptable syn- tax that would make it easier to learn. After being used as a main research language at Edinburgh for years, it migrated to Sussex University in Brighton, England, where a slightly simplified version was ported to the DEC PDP-1 1 and christened POP-1 1 . (For the rest of the article, I will refer to it simply as POP.) POP was designed especially to put powerful artificial intelligence (AI) programming techniques into the hands of noncomputer people; at Sussex, it was used in computing courses for arts and literature students. It has found widespread use in European AI departments, as has its relative, POPLOG— a combined POP/ Prolog system for the DEC VAX. POP is an incrementally compiled language, like Forth or Microsoft's QuickBASIC 4.0. New procedures are compiled into a heap-based dictionary in which a procedure can appear only once. Whenever you recompile a procedure, its name remains in place but the old code record is freed, eventually to be gob- bled up by a garbage collector that operates automatically when heap space gets too low. Procedures are compiled into a stack- based virtual machine code that has only 17 instructions. You can define new language keywords by using a set of procedures that directly compile these virtual machine instructions. This way, you can alter not just the surface syntax, but the compiler itself; for example, you can add new control structures to POP. POP is a highly interactive language, rivaled in this respect only by Smalltalk-80. Anything you can do inside a procedure (including looping), you can also do directly from the keyboard, and vice versa. It's a weakly typed language, like Lisp, so the same variable could, at different times, hold a number, a string, a list, a procedure, a vector, or one of many other kinds of ob- jects. You can predeclare variables as in Pascal or C, but if you don't, POP will declare them for you (with a message saying that it has done so). It supports integer, big-integer, and floating-point arithmetic (the latter are called decimal numbers), and, like BASIC, it's happy to let you mix the types in a calculation, performing auto- matic type conversions. Many trigonometric, logarithmic, and transcendental functions are built in, including even the hyper- bolic functions. Decimal precision is up to 16 places, and you continued Illustration by Chris Spollen © 1988 MAY 1988 - BYTE 285 POP GOES THE MAC can choose to output any number of places. You can also com- pute in any number base up to 36. An assignment statement in POP is written from left to right, the assignment operator being represented by the -> symbol; it's best to think of it as meaning "goes into. " So, [cows dogs pigs] -> x; puts the list on the left of the -> symbol into a variable x. I could have predeclared the variable by vars x; . Input and output parameters for procedures are declared sep- arately. In this procedure definition, define add_ten (numl) -> num2; numl + 10 -> num2; enddef ine; the output parameter is called num2. Stack-Based Architecture POP is a stack-based language, using an open stack like that in Forth to pass all its parameters. Mercifully unlike Forth, how- ever, POP looks after the stack contents automatically so the programmer need not worry about them. Named output vari- ables are just placeholders provided for readability, the results actually being left on the stack. The => operator prints the whole stack contents destructively and is smart enough to rec- ognize all the available data types and print them in a suitable format. You can inspect the value of any item using the print arrow (=>). So, add_ten(3) => prints 13 on the screen, while x => prints [cows dogs pigs] . One consequence of the stack-based architecture is that POP can easily handle procedures that take variable numbers of input parameters or produce variable numbers of results. Such proce- dures are very useful in certain problem domains, especially when returning lists. For example, you can make a list of the first 100 integers in POP like this: [% for i from 1 to 100 do i endfor %] -> ints; The % symbols tell POP to evaluate the expression lying between them; otherwise, the actual source code would have been as- signed to ints as a list. The for loop could be replaced by a procedure that returns a variable number of results. POP has a rich set of control structures, including ones for list manipulation and pattern matching. Syntactically, they are all fully (if verbosely) bracketed by adding end to the opening word, as in if . . .endif, until. . .enduntil. Hence, Pascal's begin. . .end and C's curly brackets need not enclose code blocks. I love this feature, and I marvel that so few languages adopt it (Modula-2 somehow stumbled at the last hurdle). The for loop has several special forms for iterating over lists, which is usually more efficient than using recursion, though re- cursion is supported too. Consider the clarity of this simple list reverse procedure: define reverse (listl) -> list2; [] -> list2; for item in listl do item : : list2 -> list2; endfor ; enddef ine ; continued CD SYSTEMS DESIGNERS POPLOG the power of 3 Featuring 3 Integrated incremental compilers: Common Lisp, Prolog and Pop- 1 1 Multi-language programming fully supported Dynamic external loading of C, Fortran, Pascal. Integral language-sensitive, full-screen editor Over 600 installations worldwide Running on VAX/VMS, VAX/UNIX, Sun-2 & 3, Apollo, HP-9000... i Systems Designers Scientific Division 55 Read's Way New Castle, DE 19720 USA Tel. 800-888-9988 Systems Designers Artificial Intelligence Business Center Pembroke House, Pembroke Broadway Camberley, Surrey GU15 3XD ENGLAND Tel. 0276-686200 Providing the Power of 3 for rapid solutions to your software development needs GD Systems Designers, a leading international consultancy - offering a full-range of services • expert systems • industrial systems • communications • financial systems PC demo disk: $25 286 BYTE' MAY 1988 Circle 287 on Reader Service Card HP ^ + ADOBE It's no secret, in the laser printer world, you select either PostScript or HP LaserJet compatibility You buy your printer from HP, your board from QMS and your software from Adobe. Destiny pulls it all together. Thanks to our LaserAct II"' laser printer, our Page- Styler (PostScript language compatible) software and PageStyler board. We go beyond HP LaserJet Series II com- patibility by offering complete PostScript compatibility with our own PageStyler software embedded in our ASIC processors for the IBM PC™ add-on board. The boards, printers and software offer full compatibility for the PostScript standard on our LaserAct II printer which is already fully compatible to the LaserJet Series EL The LaserAct II offers 512K memory, upgradable to 4.5MB, 50% faster throughput than HP LaserJet Series II, and can become a full HPGL plotter with vector graphics features. Four months on-site service from TRW is standard. Destiny's PageStyler software technology also extends to upgrade HP LaserJet Series, Canon LBP Series, and Acer LP Series laser printer users for PostScript compat- ibility at a much more affordable cost. Adobe and PostScript are Trademarks of Adobe Systems Inc. HP and LaserJet are trademarks of Hewlett-Packard. LaserAct and PageStyler are trademarks of Destiny Technology QMS is a trademark of QMS. Inc. LP is a trademark of Acer Technologies. UiP Ls a trademark of Canon Inc. Destiny Destiny Technology Corporation 930 Thompson Place Sunnyvale, California 94086 (408) 733-3171 See us at COMDEX Spring '88 at booth #5032 Circle 336 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 287 POP GOES THE MAC AlphaPOP for the Macintosh AlphaPOP 1.0, the first commer- cially available version of POP-1 1 for microcomputers, exploits the Macin- tosh user interface extensively. You can have several editor windows open on dif- ferent source files, and you can compile whole programs or selected procedures by clicking on menu options. A compre- hensive on-line help system provides a help window that explains the param- eters and actions of any built-in proce- dure. The package includes two excel- lent printed manuals, one of which is an alphabetically organized reference to all the procedures. AlphaPOP can access the ROM- based QuickDraw graphics so you can draw lines, rectangles, and ovals (filled with patterns if you wish) and display text in different sizes and fonts. Pictures are displayed in Graphics Windows, which AlphaPOP treats as POP devices, equivalent to files. What does AlphaPOP's high-level ex- pressive power cost in terms of effi- ciency? As with Lisp and Smalltalk, quite a lot. This is not the language of choice for real-time control systems. The Sieve benchmark runs in 168 sec- onds for 10 iterations, which is slow for a Mac n. The Sieve is hardly representa- tive of POP's strengths, however; the program in listing 1 takes 9.9 seconds to read in an 1 lK-byte file and sort the re- sulting list of 2420 words, while the re- verse procedure that I defined in the main text takes 1.8 seconds to reverse the final list. AlphaPOP comes from Cognitive Applications, a firm that was started on the campus of Sussex University and in which the university has a shareholding; the programmers are all ex-Sussex POP people. The availability of POP on a personal computer has been a long time coming because, even more than Lisp, it is a language that needs lots of memory and lots of processing power. AlphaPOP consists of a 240K-byte executable kernel with over 120K bytes of source code for library functions. The memory manager adjusts its use of memory to the amount of memory that you have. While AlphaPOP will run on a 512K-byte Mac, I ran it on a 4-mega- byte Mac II. There was 2.4 megabytes of free space, which is enough to write se- rious programs. The Atari Mega ST is a future target machine. The next release of AlphaPOP should be ready by the time this is published. According to the company, it will in- clude some little tweaks, such as the ability to store a default environment on disk (e.g. , macros and fonts to be loaded on start-up) and the ability to compile turnkey programs that can be launched without entering AlphaPOP. Cognitive Application's Ben Rubinstein informs me that the company has successfully at- tached an AlphaPOP procedure to a Hy- perCard button. AlphaPOP costs $400 with a special price of $300 to educational users. Multiuser licences are available. A de- veloper's version is in preparation, fea- turing lexical scoping, optimized compi- lation, processes, and full C and Mac Toolbox interfaces; it will be offered as an upgrade to existing users. You can get more information on AlphaPOP from: Computable Functions Inc. 35 South Orchard Dr. Amherst, MA 01002 (413) 253-7637 Cognitive Applications 4 Sillwood Terrace Brighton East Sussex BN1 2LR U.K. (0273)-821600 In a similar way, you can iterate on the successive tails of a list by for tailitems on listl do ... . One of the pleasures of POP is its semantic consistency. All the data types supported (including user-defined types) have a set of similar operators for manipulating them. Moreover, the names of these operators are formed by adding the same prefix to the type name, so you can usually guess what an operation is called without consulting the manual. For example, an operator that starts with is recognizes the type of its object. So isstring(x) returns true if x is a string, false otherwise. The equivalent for numbers is called isnumber( ) . You get the picture. A constructor creates objects of a type (e.g., conslist( ) is the constructor for lists), while an initializer creates initialized objects of a variable length type. A destructor breaks an object down into its parts (e.g. , deststring( ) turns a string into a set of characters) . A subscriptor operator allows you to access items in a repetitive data structure (like a list or a vector), while an accessor does the same for fields in a record structure; the name of an accessor is normally just the name of the field it accesses. For example, the subscriptor for lists is called subscrl( ), so subserl(3, [cat dog pig]) would return pig. Because sub- scripting is used so often, there's a concise alternative syntax modeled on the normal array notation, so mylist(4) returns the fourth element of mylist. All types also have a print procedure (class_print) that knows how best to display them on the screen, and an updater that changes the value of an object. Updaters have no names; they are represented by the assignment arrow. So frog -> my- list(3); replaces the third element of mylist with frog, using the updater for lists. Benefits of Modularity POP is object-oriented in a somewhat restricted sense. Because the class system in POP lacks inheritance, it is not usually pro- moted as an object-oriented language, but it achieves most of the benefits of program modularity. You can define new classes of object, and define the methods for operating on them, within the above-mentioned categories. What's more, you can replace the existing operators for the built-in types. If you want lists to be printed out in some special way, you can write a procedure and assign it to be the class_print for lists. In addition to these class-method operators, a group of uni- versal operators works on most types. These are the equality test =; the identity test ==; the concatenator <>; length ( ), which measures the size of objects; dataword( ), which returns the type of object; and explode ( ) , which is a universal deconstruc- tor. If you apply length( ) to a string, it tells you how many characters are in it, but for a list, it returns the number of top- level items, and so on. The <> operator joins together two strings, lists, vectors, procedures, or records of the same type. There is a related operator, X, which joins two objects of any type by concatenating their print representations into a string; it is often used for screen output. The equivalent of the Pascal write ( 1 That took 1 , count, 1 seconds ' ) ; continued 288 BYTE* MAY 1988 Select 5 Books for only $3 95 ENROLLMENT APPLICATION Please accept my membership in The Computer Book Club® and send the 5 volumes listed below, billing me $3.95 plus shipping and handling charges. If not satis- fied, I may return the books within ten days without obligation and have my membership canceled. I agree to purchase at least 3 books at regular Club Prices (plus shipping/handling) during the next 12 months, and may resign any time thereafter. Write your selections here: Name Address City State/Zip Phone Signature Signature of parent or guardian required for ail new members under 18 years of age. B Y - 5 8 3 Valid for new members only. Foreign applicants will receive special ordering instructions. Canada must remit in U.S. currency. This order subject to ac- ceptance by The Computer Book Club*. Please accept my membership in The Computer Book Club® and send the 5 volumes listed below, billing me $3.95 plus shipping and handling charges. If not satis- fied, I may return the books within ten days without obligation and have my membership canceled. I agree to purchase at least 3 books at regular Club Prices (plus shipping/handling) during the next 12 months, and may resign any time thereafter. Write your selections here: Name Address City State/Zip Phone Signature __ Signature of parent or guardian required tor all new members under 18 years of age. BY-588 Valid for new members only. Foreign applicants will receive special ordering instructions. Canada must remit in U.S. currency. This order subject to ac- ceptance by The Computer Book Club^. 5/5 o £ o b O w 5 Q Cu (j •= S E e en O U sortedlist; vars readnext, item; inputf ile .discin . incharitem -> readnext; until (readnext ->> item) == termin do if item. isnumber then consword ( itemx 1 ' ) elseif item. isstring then consword ( item) else item; endif ; endunt i 1 ; % ] .sort -> sortedlist; cndde fine ; in POP is pr ( 1 That took 1 <> count , 'seconds'); Where Pascal restricts the smartness to the write routine, POP provides a generalized mechanism so you can assign the string expression to a variable or pass it to a user procedure. Procedures as Data Procedures in POP are first-class objects, which is to say that you can handle them just luce any other data object. For exam- ple, you can assign a procedure to a variable and execute it just by passing parameters to the variable name: add_ten -> x; x(5) => 15 This means that you can create arrays and lists of procedures and then use them to devise extremely subtle control strategies. You can concatenate procedures just like strings or lists, and the re- sult is a procedure that performs both the original actions in sequence. Procedures can be passed as parameters to other procedures. A lovely example is the built-in routine newarray( ), which, not surprisingly, creates new arrays. It can take a procedure as its last parameter, which is then executed to calculate the initial values for the new array. So you could set up the elementary school multiplication table by saying vars mult table newarray ( [1 12 1 12], procedure (x, y) ,- x * y ; endprocedure) ; which creates a 12 by 12 table of products. The function proce- dure defines anonymous procedures that will be used only once (similar to the function LAMBDA in Lisp); indeed, define merely calls procedure and then assigns the result to a named variable. Because procedures are first-class objects, they can also be returned as results from other procedures. One area in which POP exploits this ability is for disk I/O. POP-1 1 was originally designed under Unix, and it has inherited Unix's streamed I/O 290 BYTE • MAY 1988 Circle 180 on Reader Service Card POP GOES THE MAC philosophy, whereby the disk is perceived in terms of an output and an input stream of single characters rather than blocks; C programmers will feel at home here. POP implements streamed input and output by creating procedures. The standard proce- dure discin( filename) returns as its value not a character from the disk file, but another procedure that itself returns char- acters from the disk; such a procedure is called a character repeater. Every time you call a character repeater, it returns the next character from the file, eventually returning the unique object termln, which is POP's equivalent to the end-of-file marker. Disk output is performed in a similar way using a character con- sumer procedure returned by discout( ) ; this swallows a char- acter given to it and writes it to the file. If you need to read from different parts of the same file, then you can create several re- peaters on the same file. This mechanism is simple and elegant but is limited to sequential access; there are no random-access files. To get a taste of the way POP works, I wrote a little program to read in a text file, make it into a list of words, sort the list, and return it as a result (see listing 1). The variable readnext gets assigned an item repeater. Item repeaters are procedures that read in whole POP objects rather than just single characters, and you make them with the built-in procedure incharitem, by passing to it a character repeater produced by disc in. The line inputf ile.discin. incharitem illustrates an alter- native syntax called dot notation that you can use to make nested function applications easier to read; it means exactly the same as incharitera(discin( inputf ile) ) . The function incharitem simply uses the tokenizer that POP itself uses when parsing input; here, then, is a good example of using the compiler as an extra resource. Readnext can return words (equivalent to Lisp atoms), numbers, or strings, so I need to convert them all to words by using consword( ) ; Sort( ) is a built-in procedure for sorting lists of a single type. With POP, you can define closures, which you could think of as procedures whose arguments have been partially supplied and are looking for the remainder. For example, if you already have a procedure nth_root(x,n) , you could economically define a new procedure square_root(x) as a closure of nth_root ( ) , with n frozen permanently to the value 2. POP supports dynamic lists, which some other languages call lazy lists. These are lists whose elements are produced only when they are asked for, so you can use them to represent infi- nite collections, such as "all the integers," without tying up in- finite memory. POP supports macros, not unlike the preprocessor macros of C. You can use them to customize the syntax, to avoid the over- head of a procedure call with in-line code, or to isolate program features that are subject to frequent changes. POP supports properties, which are hashed lookup tables with the hashing mechanism built in. They can be used to create databases in conjunction with other POP data structures like lists and records. Popping the Question Perhaps the most powerful features of POP are the pattern matcher and database. The fundamental operator is matches, which tests two lists, the second of which is a pattern (usually containing wild cards) and returns a Boolean result; [ salamander bright shall burn ] matches [ = bright == ] returns true because the wild card = matches any single word, and == matches any number of words. POP can bind variables as continued — IBM PC® COMPATIBLE- SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER Quark/PCM- 4" x 6" From 325. quantify one • Low Power — Less than 3 Watts • Optional on-board Video LCD Driver • Ideal for any PC compatible OEM product which is not a personal computer includes: 1. Powerful V40® CPU (Faster than a PC) 2. Math Co-Processor Socket 3. 5 Volt Only Operation (3 watts) 4. Speaker Port 5. Keyboard Port 6. Parallel Printer Port 7. PC Bus 8. PC Compatible BIOS ROM 9. 1 Serial Port On board Options Include: i 5 Mode Video Controller Option (Monochrome, Hercules® Graphics, CGA, High Res CGA, LCD Driver) 2. Floppy Disk Controller (3.5'75.25", 360K/720K/1.2 MB) 3. 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Creates DBase compatble records 217 E. 85th St. Suite 216 New York, NY 10028 TeL 212996-6999 Fax 212-439-9109 Compuserve 75530214 Free 3 Month Subscription to CD-ROM Review with orders over $300 INTERNATIONAL ORDERS A SPECIALTY Austrafen Agent KEWTCL 145 Cotham Rd. Kew, Vetera 3TJ1 a side effect of the pattern matching, so [ salamander bright shall burn ] matches [ ?x bright == ] not only returns true but leaves x with the value salamander, while [ salamander bright shall burn ] matches [ = bright ? ?x ] leaves x bound to the list [shall burn] . This form of matching is most often used in if statements and loops where the Boolean value is useful. Where no such return is required, you can use the — > operator, which merely binds variables and returns nothing, but which raises an error if it fails to match. [ salamander bright shall burn ] -- > [ = bright ??x ] You can make these matching statements still more powerful by applying restrictions to the pattern. For example, ?name:A will bind name only to words exactly four letters long, while ??y : 10 will bind y only to lists of 10 items. A restriction can also be the name of a procedure, which is executed with a found item as its argument; binding only occurs if the procedure does not return false. For example ?x : isnumber will bind x only to numbers. POP's built-in data structure, called database, is a list of lists, and is supplied with a set of procedures for adding and removing assertions and doing sophisticated matching. Add ( [Jim likes beans] ) would add the assertion about Jim to the database. There are two special forms of the for loop that work by matching in the database. One uses f oreach, which takes a pat- tern and executes the loop body once for each match, while the other uses f orevery , which takes a number of patterns and exe- cutes the loop for every set of values that satisfies them all. This is getting close to Prolog: f orevery [[?person likes ?x][?x is nutritious]] do ["person is well fed] => forevery; However, POP does not have automatic backtracking, which makes Prolog superior for certain applications (and which is why Prolog has been added to POP in the POPLOG system). Nevertheless, the humble POP database makes writing expert systems very easy and replaces a lot of code that the Lisp user would have to keep reinventing. Rich and Expressive In summary, POP is the richest and most expressive program- ming language I've ever used, and I've used a few. Despite its wealth of features, it is also easy to learn. The advanced features are entirely optional, and a beginner can use POP like BASIC or Logo without even knowing what a closure or a dynamic list is. While learning it, I never once experienced one of those Moments of Great Bewilderment (MGBs) that I remember from when I was learning Lisp and Prolog. Any programmer who knows C or Pascal should feel immedi- ately at home with POP because it's imperative, procedural, and statement-oriented. While experimenting with the Alpha- POP implementation, I found myself writing for sheer pleasure the sort of programs that AI students get out of their system in their first year: sentence parsers, travesty generators, and the rest. For me, it is almost the ideal programming language. ■ Dick Pountain is a technical author and software consultant liv- ing in London, England. He can be contacted c/o BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. 292 BYTE* MAY 1988 Circle 62 on Reader Service Card Mew From osborne/McGraw-Hill The OS/2 " Books by He OS/2 " Experts According to Bill Gates "Ed lacobucci was a key architect. . . and made very important contributions. Ed is one of the lew individuals who can explain the foundation that OS/2 will provide for the industry. . . what you will read here represents the real ideas behind the operat- ing system and what can be done with it." From the Foreword of OS/2'" Programmer's Guide OS/2™ Programmer's Guide by Ed lacobucci, Leader of the IBM® OS/2 D esign Team Foreword by Bill Gates Here are the techniques and insights on OS/2 version 1.0 that serious programmers need. Learn how and why the system works, lacobucci discusses • Dynamic linking and the system API • Memory management in a protected environment • OS/2 multi-tasking • Advanced inter-process communications facilities • The system I/O capabilities • Session management, user interface, utilities, and more. $24.95, ISBN: 0-07-881300-X, 650 pages Using OS/2 by Kris Jamsa, Author of the Bestseller DOS: The Complete Reference You'll get up to speed on OS/2 with Jamsa's exper- tise. This quick-paced guide covers fundamental to advanced concepts, illustrated with numerous exam- ples and screen displays. You'll find details on • Redirection of I/O ° System configuration • Multi-tasking ® Similarities between DOS and OS/2 • A complete command reference with syntax charts that are unavailable elsewhere • Tips for system configuration with analyses of configuration file entries $19.95, ISBN: 0-07-881306-9, 600 pages Available at Fine Book Stores and Computer Stores Everywhere Or Call Our Toil-Free Number 800-227-0900 (Outside California) 800-772-2531 (Inside California) (Use Your Visa or MasterCard) Available in Canada through McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Ltd. Phone 416-293.1911 ft'i'dk Osborne McGraw-Hill fjiFS 2600 Tenth Street ■ ■nil Berkeley, California 94710 Circle 214on Reader Service Card PICK BIX BRAINS . . . With a 10 Day Trial Membership If you've thought about joining BIX before but weren't sure it was what you needed, now is the time to try it. 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TOLL-FREE NUMBERS FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE: Subscriptions Sc Back Issues: 1-800-423-8272 (in N.J., 1-800-367-0218) BIX: 1-800-227-BYTE Program Listings Orders: 1-800-258-5485 EVTE m It's indispensable. Roy E. Kimbrell Searching for Text? Send an N-Gram! Short character strings called n-grams give every document a unique signature ere's the problem: You maintain a full-text data- base of all the stories printed by a large daily newspaper. With several hundred issues stored, you want to find all the stories relating to a par- ticular subject. How do you do it? The keyword approach is too limited; the database contains too many subjects. Artificial intelligence (AI) won't help much; machines and programs aren't that smart yet. You could use special pattern-recognition hardware, but the cost is prohibitive. The solution to the problem might be a novel approach devel- oped by Raymond D'Amore and Clinton Mah at PAR Govern- ment Systems Corp. in McLean, Virginia. Their technique is simple, elegant, and it works. It uses pieces of words, which they call n-grams. Fingerprinting Documents An n-gram is a sequence of a specified number of characters occurring in a word. For example, the two-character n-grams (or 2-grams) in the word "duck" are "du," "uc," and "ck." An n-gram vector is a list of the n-grams found in a document and the number of times each was found, as shown in figure 1 . To set up a document-retrieval system using n-grams, you de- rive an n-gram vector for each document as you are storing it. The n-gram vector comes from the text. It is an index of the document, a unique "fin- gerprint" that you can use to identify it. To create the n- gram vector, you remove the common words from the text; then you remove the common endings from the remaining words. You count selected n- grams in the word fragments that are left and keep them in a list; that's the n-gram vector. You then store the n-gram vector with a pointer to the lo- cation of the full-text docu- ment. You might want to store the vector along with other vectors that are similar to it. Now you are ready to re- trieve documents using words, phrases, or sentences that de- scribe the subjects of interest. You can even use a sample docu- ment as a query to find others similar to it. To do this, you create an n-gram vector of the query and compare it to the vectors of the documents. The retrieval program computes the degree of similarity between the query's n-gram vector and those of the documents. When the similarity is great enough, the program selects the document, as shown in figure 2. Beyond 2-Grams To differentiate all but the shortest documents, counting only 2- grams is not sufficient. Some 2-grams are very common, such as "te." Others, like "qz," never occur. The common 2-grams don't have much value in indexing a document. For an index to be useful, it must differentiate between dissimilar documents. But if an n-gram occurs often in every document, it doesn't tell you anything. Those that don't occur at all also have no value because they don't tell you anything, either. Rather than throwing away the common 2-grams, we can ex- tend them to 3-grams. For example, rather than using "te," you would count all the possible 3-gram combinations that use "te" ; that is, "tea," "teb," "tec," and so on. D'Amore and Mah say that about 200 of the 676 possible al- phabetic 2-grams (26 X 26) occur frequently enough to be can- didates for extension. Unfortunately, many 3-grams are also very common; but you can extend the common 3-grams to 4- grams, and so on. Extending the n-grams improves the system's performance. However, you don't always need to go to 4-grams to index a document. The shorter the document, the smaller the size of the n-gram necessary to index it. Short documents of a few hundred words might need only 2- or 3-grams (as common as they are) to differentiate them from one another. For example, 2-grams alone work well enough with directories, such as telephone books. D'Amore and Mah use about 12,000 different 2-, 3-, and 4-grams to index docu- ments. An n-gram vector created using all these terms won't have 12,000 n-grams in it, however. The number of n- grams occurring in a docu- ment increases slowly as the number of words in it rises; a 3000- word document, for ex- ample, might have only 600 different n-grams. But if you have to keep track of 12,000 different n-grams, it wouJd seem to make sense to use 4- continued Illustration by Alexa Grace © 1988 MAY 1988 -BYTE 297 N-GRAMS PETER PIPER t- t t \ t t t t t t t t The n-gram vector PE 2 ETE 1 ER 2 PIP 1 Figure 1: In this n-gram extraction, four kinds ofn-grams are included in the vector for the phrase "Peter Piper. " This vector contains two 2-grams (each of which occurs twice) and two 3-grams. Note that n-grams can overlap. grams instead. Not so; there are too many of them. There are 676 2-grams if you use only alphabetic characters. But there are 17,576 alphabetic 3-grams, and almost half a million alpha- betic 4-grams. You can also include nonalphabetic characters in n-grams. The only ones generally useful are numbers, which occur fre- quently in documents and are often the subject of queries. "Commodore 64," "256K bytes of RAM," and "TheBelchfire 8000 with 40 megabytes of hard disk storage" could all occur in a document and thus be the subjects of a query . None of the numeric and alphanumeric n-grams possible are considered common. You should probably store purely numeric n-grams as 3-grams. There are only 1000 possible numeric 3- grams. Compared to the number of alphabetic n-grams, this is a relatively small number. Cut Out the Noise Another way to reduce the number of n-grams you need to dif- ferentiate documents is by noise reduction. Noise, for purposes of indexing, is information contained in a document that doesn't add much to your ability to find that document. Punctuation is considered noise. Common words such as a, the, by, and for are also noise. Table 1 contains a list of 258 of the most commonly used words in American English. They comprise about 55 percent of the words used in the written language. Your database may have different common words. (If your database consists of articles about computers, for example, such words as mother and father might occur less frequently.) Because they are so common, these words add little information to text analysis. However, you must carefully consider their elimination. Mother, father, chil- dren, and school might be quite common in some contexts, but eliminating them might remove important information, particu- larly in an academic or sociological-factors database. Some words, too, are homonyms. Begin, the name of the former Israeli prime minister, is spelled the same as begin. Eliminating begin also, unfortunately, eliminates Begin. Listing 1, COMMON. C, provides an efficient method for recognizing these common words. A large table at the end of COMMON. C (not shown in listing 1) was taken from a spelling checker written in Pascal (thus the need for the program to offset subscripts by 1). It contains an array of structures, each with a single character, a wordend flag, a next index, and an alt in- dex. A word fragment enters the table by converting the first char- acter in the word to an index. This is simple: a is 1 , b is 2, and so on. The next index for this entry is taken to be the current in- dex. From this point, the characters of the word aren't used as indexes; they're just compared to the characters in each table entry. The function now works as in table 2. This method is fast, and you can expand it to include more words. You can also com- pact the table if you wish. You can even consider common word endings to be noise. Ended and endings have the same root: end. If you reduce both words to their common root, you eliminate superfluous differ- ences, and the similarity measurements will improve. This pro- cess of stemming a word down to its root is known as conflation. Digging Up the Roots Whenever a program must extract meaning from individual words of English text, the word forms are often conflated— that is, normalized or transformed into a simple, common form. Words such as civilization, fishing, and halted are transformed into their basic forms: civilize, fish, and halt. At least, that is the goal. To accomplish this, you need a set of rules similar to those used in knowledge-based systems. If you use only a few (20 or 30) rules, some transformations won't be accurate. Civilization might truncate to "civiliz." A word like the truncates to "th," as do they and these, when such words really shouldn't be con- flated at all. To deal accurately with this problem, you need 1000 or more rules that specify, for the most part, exceptions and special cases. When very high precision isn't necessary, a few rules continued Remove common words Remove common endings Create n-gram vector Document or query *- N-gram *■ *- >■ vector Documents 1 Lookup or insert 1 c Vectors for documents in the database Figure 2: An n-gram vector is a list of the n-grams in a text document, minus all common words and common endings. The n- gram vector is stored with a pointer to the location of the full-text document. By comparing the n-gram vector of a query to those of stored documents, you can find documents likely to contain what you 're looking for. 298 BYTE- MAY 1988 Compact, Low Power, Cost Effective Single Board Computers for Embedded Applications World's smallest PC — and CMOS too! A Motherboard and 4 Expansion Cards in the Space of a Half-Height 5-1/4" Disk Drive! from $359 Qty 1 4 WATTS! 5 VOLT ONLY OPERATION SCSI BUS OPTION (HARD DISK, ETC) Little Board /PC POWERFUL V40 CPU (8088 equiv.) FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLER (3.575.25", 360 K/720K, 1.2 MB, 1 .4 MB J UP TO 256 K EPROM/RAM/NOVRAM BATTERY BACKED RT CLOCK PC COMPATIBLE ROM-BIOS MOUNTS ON A 5.25" DRIVE (5.75"x8"x1") 2 RS232C SERIAL PORTS SPEAKER PORT KEYBOARD PORT PARALLEL PRINTER PORT PC BUS 4 MODE VIDEO CONTROLLER OPTION FITS ENTIRELY WITHIN BOARD DIMENSIONS The CMOS Little Board/PC represents a significant break- through in microcomputer technology, providing system de- signers with a highly compact, self-contained, low power, "PC-compatible" system module in the space of a half height 5-1/4-inch disk drive. Everything but the keyboard, monitor, disk drive, and power supply is included! The CMOS Little Board/PC is ideally suited for embedded microcomputer applications where IBM PC software and bus compatibility are required and where low power consump- tion, small size, and high reliability are critical. Its low power requirements, compactness, and solid state disk drive sup- port make the Little Board/PC especially useful in rugged or harsh operating environments. Typical applications for the Little Board/PC include: • Data acquisition and control • Diskless workstations • Portable instruments • Protocol conversion • Remote data logging • Point-of-sale terminals • Telecommunications • Security systems • Intelligent terminals • Network servers • Distributed processing • SCSI device control Development Chassis/ PC™ The Little Board/PC Development Chassis offers a low cost, "known good"developmentenvironmentfor projects and products based on the Little Board/PC single board computer. The Little Board/PC Development Chassis includes a two slot PC Expansion Bus, a 360K byte (DSDD) floppy disk drive, a power supply, and all I/O and power cables required for immediate operation with the Little Board/PC. All I/O connections are conve niently available. Included on the Development Chassis rear panel are standard con nectors for keyboard, par- allel printer, both serial ports, optional video monitor interface, and the AC power outlet and power switch. Distributors • Australia: Current Solutions (613) 720-3298 • Canada: Tri-M (604) 438-0028 • Denmark: Danbit (03) 66 20 20 • Italy: Microcom (6) 811-9406 • Finland: Symmetric OY 358-0-585-322 • France: Egal Plus (1) 4502-1800 • Germany, West: IST-Elektronik Vertribes GmbH 089-611-6151 • Israel: Alpha Terminals, Ltd. (03) 49-16-95 • Sweden: AB Akta 855 0065 • Switzerland: Thau Computer AG 41 1 740-41-05 - UK: Ambar Systems, Ltd. 0296 43551 1 • USA: Contact Ampro Computers Inc. 1130 Mountain View/Alviso Road Sunnyvale, California 94089 (408) 734-2800 COMPUTERS, INCORPORATED TLX 4940302 FAX (408) 734-2939 N-GRAMS Listing 1: COMMON. C, a C program used to recognize common words. /* this structure holds a directed graph used to recognize common words */ tdefine GRAFSIZE 405 struct { char c; char wordend; int next ; int alt; } stopgraf [GRAFSIZE] { } /* The data used to initialize stopgraf is given later */ int stopword (word, wl) char word [ ] ; int wl; /* word length */ /* stopword enters the common word graph with the value in word[]; if word[] is in the graph, return 1, else 0 */ { int j=0, p; p = word[j] - 'a' + 1; /* the first entry is 1, not zero */ while (j < wl-1 ss p) { j++; p = stopgraf [p] .next; while (p SS stopgraf [p] . c < word[j]) p = stopgraf [p] . alt ; if (stopgraf [p] .c != word[j]) p = NULL; } return (p SS stopgraf [p] . wordend) ; } will suffice, and the odd cases don't really matter. The C function in CONFLATE. C (see listing 2) does a sim- ple-minded job of conflation. The table endings is an array of structures that contains the rules. Each structure has the text of a word ending, its length, a possibly zero-length replacement string, its length, and the index of the next table entry so the program can check whether the current word ending matches one stored in the structure. A word enters the table at ending [0]. If the word ends in "ably," the program truncates it. The process repeats, starting at ending. next. However, if the word doesn't end in "ably," then "ibly," "ily," "ss," and so on are checked in order. The checking (and replacing) continues until the program reaches the end of the table. Notice that there are three endings where the check string is zero-length. The first two are traps to prevent falling through to the lower part of the table. The last terminates execution of the function. For example, the word readabilities passes the first few rules and then matches "ies." The program removes "ies" and re- places it with "y." The word becomes readability. Matching then continues at ending [14]. The program matches and re- moves "ability. " The word becomes read. The endings table is checked at location 24, but matching fails to the end. Notice that these rules don't always create reasonable stems. Movabilities conflates to "mov, " invisibilities to "invis. " However, the pro- gram also conflates move and invisible to "mov" and "invis." In other words, all forms of the same word conflate to the same root, although the root may not be the one you'd expect. Useful N-Grams: Worth the Weight Rare n-grams are more useful in discriminating between differ- ent documents than are common ones because the rare ones are weighted more heavily during similarity computations. The sys- tem's performance determines the weighting scheme used. D' Amore and Mah have found the following to work well: W, = 1 / \l~P~i where W t is the weight to be used for n-gram number i, continued Table 1: This list contains 258 of the most common words in American English. Such words fail to help distinguish documents from one another, and removing them makes documents ' n-gram vectors more unique. a before each got just about began earth great keep above being end had kind after below enough hand know again between even hard land air big ever has large all both every have last almost boy eyes he left along boys far head let also but father help life always by feet her light an called few here like and came find high line animals can first him little another children following his live any come food home long are could for house look around country form how looked as day found 1 made asked days four if make at did from important man away different get in many back do give into may be does go is me because don't going it men been down good its might more or should things well most other show think went mother our side this were Mr. out since those what much over small thought when must own so three where my page some through which name paper something time while near part sometimes times white need parts soon to who never people sound together why new picture still too will next place story took with night put study two without no read such under word not right take until words now said tell up work number same than us world of saw that use would off say the used write often school their very year old second them want years on see then was you once sentence there water your one set these way only she they we 300 BYTE* MAY 1988 An Incredible Display Of Power And Versatili ty For just $599* the new 965 gives you ASCII, ANSI and IBM 8 PC com- patibility in one terminal. The new 965's versatility is unparalleled. It supports 23 ter- minal emulations, more than any other model in its class. You even get your choice of ASCII, ANSI or IBM Enhanced PC keyboard styles. There's a 14" flat display in green or page-white with crisp, clear characters in a high-resolution 10x16 matrix. A 2-position keyboard with a true accounting keypad, 20 user- programmable editing keys, and 128 programmable function keys. The 965 can display up to 49 data lines, enough to show large spreadsheets or two normal display pages of text at the same time. No other terminal this affordable can do that. The 965's state-of-the-art single board design uses a 16-bit CPU and sophisticated gate array to give you a high-performance, very reliable terminal with a full one-year end- user limited warranty. The 965. A whole new look in terminals fromTeleVideo. Call us toll-free or write today for more information. TeleVideo Systems, Inc., 1170 Morse Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3568. Circle 337 on Reader Service Card TeleVidecr THE VISION YOU NEED TO SUCCEED Call 1-800-835-3228 0 N88 IWeVkkv Svsi ems. Inc. IBM is .1 iv^ir miti'iI iniLk'nurkoi l ritci national Business Machines Corporation 'Suggested Retail Price LOWEST CPM. LEAST DUPLICATED READERS. SMALLEST RATE INCREASE. Other computer magazines have been raising their rates way out of proportion to their circu- lation growth (costs up 30 or 40 percent). We've raised ours a modest 7%. While other magazines are breaking the $30, $40, $50, and even $100 B&W CPM baniers, ours remains an attractive $25.28. While other PC books are scrambling to figure out how to juggle the PC and Mac, we're already delivering. With a combined 95% PC, and 38% Mac penetration. While other magazines fight head to head for the same readership, 45% of our paid readers do not read any other major PC-specific books. And, when they're not reading BYTE, they're busy buying product. In fact, 90% of our subscribers directly influence their com- pany's microcomputer purchasing decisions. You'd like to find a way to keep your media budget in line. We're it. Call Dennis Riley at (603) 924-9281 for more facts. , Sources: Fail 1987 'MRI Study/1987 Sihcrikr Profile Study. BYTE IT'S INDISPENSABLE. N-GRAMS and Pi is that n-gram's probability of occurrence. You can calculate the probability that a specific n-gram will occur by counting all the occurrences of that n-gram in a large, representative body of documents. Then you divide this count by the total number of n-grams. You must calculate a weight for each n-gram used as an indexing term, but you do it only once; after that, the weight is a constant you look up in a table. Computing Similarity To determine the similarity between two n-gram vectors, you multiply the frequencies of corresponding n-grams by their weights and sum the results. When two n-gram vectors are dis- similar, the sum of the products of the corresponding frequen- cies is small: Where one vector has some of a particular kind of n-gram, the other hasn't any or has only a few. When the two numbers are multiplied, the result is zero or a small number. If two n-gram vectors are similar, they have more of the same n- grams, and the result is larger. There is a scale of similarity, then, from small similarity continued Table 2: The logical operation of the function in listing 1 after establishing a beginning current index. While there is a current index and you haven't run out of characters in the word, Get the next character from the word. Set the current index to the next value. While you have a current index and your current character in the word is greater than the character stored in the current table entry, Set the current index to the value at alt. Endwhile. If the character at the entry for the current index isn't the same as the current character in the word, you don't have a common word. Endwhile. When you finally come to the end of the word, if the current table entry's wordend flag is set and you haven't otherwise eliminated this word, it is a common word. Listing 2: CONFLATE. C. This routine will stem a word down to its root. /* A Conflating Function in C */ /*E*/ ■e", 1, 0, ABLend, ■al", 2, 0, IONend, ftdefine LT -1 /*IQN*/ 1 ion" , 3, 0, ATend, ((define EQ 0 0, 0, FIN, ((define GT 1 /*ARY*/ ' ary " , 3, 0 , FIN, s 1 teqgt (si , s2 ) 'ability' ,1, 0 , ISend, unsigned char *sl, *s2; ' ibility' ,1, 0, FIN, /* compares two strings */ 'ity", 3, 0 , I Vend, { 'ify", 3, 0, FIN, for(;;) { 1 II 0, 0 , FIN, if (*sl < *s2) return (LT); /*ABL*/ "abl". 3, 0, ISend, if (*sl > *s2) return (GT); 'ibl". 3, 0, FIN, if (*sl == *s2 SS !*sl) return (EQ); /*IV*/ " iv" , 2, 0, ATend, sl + + ; s2++; / *AT* / "at", 2, 0, ISend, ) /*IS*/ ' is " , 2, 0, FIN, } 'ific", 4, 0, FIN, 'olv" , 3, "olut", 4, FIN, /* the following are locations in /*FIN*/ 0, 0, FIN+1}; the conflation table */ ((define SSend 3 ((define Eend 10 ((define IONend 12 ((define ARYend 14 ((define ABLend 20 ftdef ine IVend 22 ((define ATend 23 (fdef ine ISend 24 Sdef ine FIN 27 (fdef ine ENDINGS 28 struct { char 'ending; /* ending string */ int offset; /* length */ char 'replace /* replacement */ int replen ; /* length */ int next ; /* goto */ ) endings (ENDINGS] ( 'ably", 4, 0, ISend, 'ibly", 4, 0, FIN, •ily", 3, ■i ti 0, SSend, /*SS*/ 'ss", 2, "ss", 2, FIN, ' ous " , 3, 0, FIN, ' ies" , 3, "y". 1, ARYend, 's " , 1, n ii o, Eend, 1 ied" , 3, "y", 1, ARYend, 'ed", 2, o, ABLend, ' ing" , 3, 0, ABLend, stem ( ) / if the ending of word[] is in endings . ending, it is removed and any replacement string is tacked on the end; search and replacement is controlled by endings. next */ int i; extern char word[]; extern int wl; i = 0; while (KENDINGS) { if ( slteqgt ( Sword [wl- endingsfi] .offset], endings [i] .ending) == EQ) ( cpystr ( Sword [wl-endings [i] .offset] endings [ i ] . replace , NULL) ; wl += endings [ i ]. replen - endings [i] .offset ; i = endings [i] .next; ) else i++; } MAY 1988 - BYTE 303 N-GRAMS False similarity can occur when the similarity threshold is too low. You're less likely to miss a document but more apt to get dissimilar ones. values to large ones. When responding to queries against a set of n-gram vectors for documents, you must determine the thresh- old above which you wish to select a document and below which you wish to reject it. Figure 3 represents the system's ability to discriminate between text items using similarity values. You can get raw similarity values by multiplying correspond- ing n-gram counts and weights and adding the products. The size of these raw values depends as much on the n-gram vector size as on the counts in the vectors. That is, two documents might be equally similar to a third, but similarity computations will probably produce different values. The longer document will probably have a longer n-gram vector (because of the greater chance for having some of the rarer n-grams in it). In a longer vector, there is a greater opportunity for matching corre- sponding n-grams in another vector during similarity computa- tions. This means the similarity value will be larger. The method for reducing the similarity values to a common measure, called the normalization process, is a little compli- cated. It requires that you compute an estimate of the standard deviation and the expected value of the similarity values. The standard deviation is a measure of the variability of raw similar- ity values, and the expected value is a mean, or average, value. Many of the values needed to compute the standard deviation are constants for a particular set of n-gram indexing terms. In addition, you need the total number of n-grams counted in each vector (the lengths of the vectors). For the formulas to use in normalizing the raw similarity values, see the text box "Making It Work." The n-gram system is large and complicated and can malfunc- tion. A malfunction occurs when a similarity computation pro- duces a value unexpectedly large enough to cross whatever simi- larity threshold you have set for document selection. Few, if any, of the words from the query might actually appear in the document. When a query contains mostly common n-grams, the chance for false-similarity matching is relatively high. This happens more frequently when you use only 2-grams or 3- grams as indexing terms. The purpose of extending the n-grams to longer strings is to reduce their frequency and therefore the chance of false similarity. False similarity can also occur when the similarity threshold is set too low. This reduces the chance of missing a document, but increases the chances of getting documents that don't apply to the query. In a mature system, false similarity can be well controlled and is relatively rare. Using a Thesaurus Synonyms can be a problem, particularly in short documents. For example, in a newspaper story about an aircraft accident, the word airplane might never appear. Instead, words such as craft, jet, and Boeing 747might be used. Further, mishap might not appear, while accident or crash does. In other words, a query of "airplane mishaps" might fail to produce this story from the database. To circumvent this problem, you can implement a thesaurus containing groups of words with similar or related meanings as well as synonyms. You create an n-gram vector for each word group. You only need to keep the vectors on-line; you don't need to use the words themselves during similarity matching. You can now compare the query to the n-gram vectors repre- senting the thesaurus. Those vectors that are similar to the query probably contain some of the words in it. Then you can use the query's n-gram vector and the thesaurus's n-gram vec- tors that are similar to the query and compare them to the docu- ments' n-gram vectors. A similarity above the threshold indi- cates which documents to retrieve. Creating the thesaurus is no small task. There are a lot of words to collect into groups and a lot of decisions to make. Your continued Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? Pied Piper of Hamlin Peter Piper 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers 31.5 30.9 16.4 26.0 -2.2 How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? 30.9 28.2 17.2 33.8 -1.9 Pied Piper of Hamlin 16.4 17.2 32.9 23.5 -9.9 Peter Piper 26.0 33.8 23.5 48.9 -1.7 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe -2.2 -1.7 -0.9 -1.9 20.8 Figure 3: This table shows the similarities between five phrases, four of which resemble one another. The similarities were computed using the method shown in the text box "Making It Work. " Higher values indicate greater similarity, while lower (or negative) numbers indicate dissimilarity. If, for example, you set the threshold to 25 and the query was "Peter Piper, " the system would select the first two phrases. If the query was "Pied Piper of Hamlin, " the system would select neither of those phrases. 304 BYTE- MAY 1988 RUSH POSTAGE-RAID §S CARD FOR YOUR FREE CATALOG! Every NRl course features practical, hands-on training with state-of- the-art equipment you keep. Only NRl gives you the training and the equipment for career advancement, part-time earnings, or even a business of your own. 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And check out NRI training in other high-tech fields such as Robotics, Data Com- munications, TV/Audio/Video Servicing, and more. If the card has been used, write to NRI Schools, 3939 Wisconsin Ave., N.W, Washington, DC. 20016 NRI Is the only technical school that trains you as you assemble a top-brand microcomputer. After building your own logic probe, you'll assemble the "intelligent" keyboard... MM . . . then install the power sup- ply, checking all connections with your digital multimeter. From there, you go on to install the floppy disk drive, monitor, and new 20 megabyte hard disk drive. SCHOOLS McGraw-Hill Continuing Education Center 3939 Wisconsin Avenue, NW . _ Washington, DC 20016 e-ViW We'll Give You Tomorrow. I,n * IBM Is a Registered Trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. MAY 1988 'BYTE 305 N-GRAMS Step I: Select the 10,000 to 15,000 2-, 3-, and 4-grams to be used as po- tential members of n-gram vectors. If the documents are short (such as tele- phone directories), you may need only 2- and 3-grams, or even just 2-grams. One way to select the n-grams is to find a large body of text representative of the text you want to store and search. Count the various 2-grams in it. Take the 200 or so most common 2-grams and add characters (at the end). Each com- mon 2-gram will expand to 26 3-grams . Count the number of 3-grams that occur in your representative documents. Ex- pand the 150 or so most common 3- grams to 4-grams. (If you want some- what better performance, you can also expand the 100 most common 4-grams to 5-grams.) If your documents are anything like ordinary text, you will end up with about 12,000 n-grams. You won't find many of the expanded n-grams in your repre- sentative text; they are either nonsense or very rare— you won't be able to tell which in most cases. For these n-grams, just assign an arbitrary count of 1 . Step 2: Compute the probability of oc- currence of each n-gram in the indexing set you've just created. This is the num- ber of times the n-gram was found di- vided by the total number of n-grams counted. Step 3: Compute weights for each n- gram. The weight is used to emphasize rarer n-grams and deemphasize more common n-grams when computing sim- ilarity. They improve the performance of the system. D'Amore and Mah found that the fol- lowing formula works well: W i = l/\TF. where i indicates an individual n-gram. W 0 is the weight for the first n-gram in the set, W x is the weight for the second, and so on; P i is the probability computed for the individual n-grams. Step 4: Compute the following constants (they will be used during the calculation of similarity values): Making It Work C 0 = sumlWfP*] C, = sumlWfP?] C 2 = sum\W,*P?} C 3 = smXsum^P^WfPfl] where i not = j The sum here means "compute the value inside the brackets for each n-gram and add up the values." In the last, C 3 , the weight times the probability squared for each n-gram is multiplied by the weight times the probability squared for every other n-gram. That is, the first is multi- plied by the second, third, fourth, etc.; the second by the third, fourth, etc. ; and so on. The values for all these multipli- cations are added together. Step 5: Create an n-gram weight table. This table will contain the n-grams to be used in n-gram vectors and the associ- ated weight for each n-gram. The table will be large, so storage and lookup might be a problem. While creating the n-gram vector for a document, n-grams are created and looked up in the table. If an n-gram is in the table, it is counted. When computing similarity, an n- gram's associated weight is used. Step 6: Implement the algorithm to create an n-gram vector. (This is not the optimal way, but it is a simple way.) Scan each word in the text. Try the longer n-grams before the shorter ones. You can do this by sliding a window across the word. At first the window is four characters wide. Look this up in the n-gram weight table. If you find this n- gram, count it. If you don't, narrow the window to three characters and try again. Keep narrowing and trying until you find a countable n-gram. Expand the window to four characters again, shift it to the right, and continue looking for countable n-grams. When narrowing the window, be sure you don't narrow the window so much that it falls com- pletely within the previous window. It should (if possible) overlap the previous window, but extend outside it as well. The n-gram vector is just a list of the n-grams found and their counts. Rather than saving the character-string repre- sentation of the n-gram, you might want to save its index in the n-gram weight table. This makes it easy to compare two n-gram vectors and to look up their re- spective weights. Step 7: Implement the algorithm to compute the similarity between two n-gram vectors and thus the similarity between a query and a document or be- tween two documents. Start by comput- ing R, the raw similarity value between them. If you have vectors a and b, then R = sumiw i *N°*N l b ] where W t is the weight for each n-gram and N° and N, h are the counts for the individual n-grams in each of the n-gram vectors (a and b are superscripts, not powers). Step 8: Implement the algorithm to nor- malize the raw similarity value. Because the size of the raw value will depend on the relative sizes of the source docu- ments for the vectors, you have to com- pensate for the document sizes. You do this by subtracting the expected similar- ity value from the raw similarity value and dividing by the estimated standard deviation of the raw similarity value. The formula for the expected similar- ity value is E = T"*T b *sum i [W i *P l 2 ] where T" is the total number of n-grams in the a vector, and T b the total number in the b vector. The formula for the standard devi- ation squared is D 2 = T°*T b *(C 0 +(.T°" -2)*C,-{T ab -\)*C 1 -(T ab - 1)*C 3 ) where T" b is T'+T and C 0 , C\, C 2 , and C 3 are the constants computed in step 4. The normalized similarity between the two vectors is then S = (R—E) I D. The normalized similarity values com- puted in this fashion seem to be stable and can be compared to one another and to constant thresholds. Optional Step: Rather than using raw n- gram counts, in each step where n- grams are counted, you can substitute the square root of the count. This trans- formation seems to improve perfor- mance somewhat. best bet might be to build the thesaurus a little at a time, as prob- lems appear. Natural Clusters One alternative to the thesaurus is clustering. There is a natural tendency for documents with related subject matter to have simi- lar n-gram vectors. You can look at one document as a compli- cated query and other, similar documents as the results of that query. Those documents that are similar to one another are clustered. You can create an n-gram vector for a cluster of docu- ments by adding the corresponding n-gram counts in each vector to create a new vector that represents the cluster of documents. When one document in a cluster is selected because the simi- continued 306 BYTE- MAY 1988 Instead, your software will stay on the job. Working better than ever. Because now it's linked to LaserPro™-the laser printer line with a range of emulations unmatched in the industry. The emulation advantage. Put your software to work with LaserPro's wide selection of emula- tions. 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For more information, contact Office Automation Systems, Inc. 8352 Clairemont Mesa Blvd ., San Diego, C A 92 1 1 1 . (619) 576-9500. Circle 327 on Reader Service Card (DEALERS: 328) See us at Comdex Atlanta Booth #1362. N-GRAMS larity between its vector and that of the query is greater than the threshold, the rest of the documents in that cluster are better candidates for selection. You might want to reduce the similar- ity threshold for these other documents so more of them will be selected. This helps prevent the synonym problem. However, if only one or very few of the documents in the cluster exhibit any similarity to the query, it is probably a spurious match. Using clustering can avoid false matching and missing valid documents. When a database contains many documents, computing simi- larity between a query and each of the vectors can take a long time. Clustering can reduce the search time. Instead of scanning continued N-Gram Vectors in C NGRAM.C in listing A is a central fragment of a real n-gram vector generator. The technique used here to extract n-grams from the text isn't used in practice; it's too slow. D'Amore and Mah use a highly optimized set of bit maps and tables to identify the n-grams to be used as indexing terms and to com- pute an index into a table of weights. This index also serves as a short, unique identifier for later use in an n-gram vec- tor. Despite this deviation, this fragment of a program explains how to extract n- grams from text. The program first defines a few con- stants and static variables. MAXNGLEN and MINNGLEN define the longest and shortest n-grams considered, respec- tively. The structure NGDATA defines an element of the ngrams array of 108,000 bytes that contains the n-gram strings used as index items and their weights. The purpose of ngf ind is to extract n- grams from words. The word (word) and word length (wl) are inputs to ngfind, which uses a variable-size window to frame possible n-grams. Its rules are: • Try a maximum-size window first. The maximum size is MAXNGLEN or the Listing A: NGRAM. C, a fragment of a vector generator in C. # define MAXNGLEN 4 #define MINNGLEN 2 #define VECTORSIZE 12D00 unsigned vector [VECTORSIZE] ; #define WL 43 char word [WL] ; /* longest English word is 42 chars */ int wl = 0; /* word length */ #define NNGRAMS 12000 struct NGDATA { char ngram [MAXNGLEN] ; float weight; } ngrams [NNGRAMS] ; int ngcount (gramid) unsigned gramid; { vector [gramid] ++; } int ngf ind (word, wl) char word [ ] ; int wl; ( int oldend, len, start; unsigned gramid; if (wl < MINNGLEN) return; oldend = wl; len = MAXNGLEN; if (len > wl) len = wl; start = 0; for(;;) ( if (gramid = lookup (Sword [start] , len) ) ( ngcount (gramid) ; oldend = start + len; if (oldend == wl) return; start++; len = MAXNGLEN; if (start + len > wl) len = wl - start; ) else ( if (len == MINNGLEN) ( /* didn't find 2-gram */ start++; len = MAXNGLEN; if (start + len > wl) len = wl - start; if (len < MINNGLEN) return; ) else { len — ; if (start-len <= oldend) start++; ) } ) main ( init whil 0 ; e (wl=getword (word) ) ( if ( ! stopword (word, wl) ) stem (word, wl) ; ngfind (word, wl) ; ) outvec ( ) ; } word length, whichever is shorter. Look up this size n-gram in the ngrams array using the lookup function. • If lookup returns 0, shorten the win- dow from the right and continue to look up n-grams. • If you can't find an n-gram of length MINNGLEN (this is considered an error), shift the beginning of the window to the right and expand it to maximum length. The shortest n-gram should be a 2- gram, and if you can't find any longer n- grams, you should at least be able to find a 2-gram. • When you find an n-gram, shift the window one position to the right and ex- pand the window to maximum length. • Don't allow the current window to fall completely within an older window- that is, don't look at the same data twice. When the end of the current win- dow falls within the previous one, move its start to the right. When you call lookup, it must find the input string in ngrams. This is not a trivial task. Several methods are us- able— B-trees, hashing, and so on. I used a hashing technique. The ngrams array is static (lookups only), so you can change hashing parameters until you ob- tain an optimal storage profile. The value returned by lookup is either 0, if the n-gram is not found, or the address of the string equal to the input n-gram string in the ngrams array, if it is found. The function ngcount uses the return value from lookup as an address in vec- tor. This works fairly well because ngrams is much larger than vector. There are many more locations in vec- tor than you need, but this unused space is your trade-off for speed. In main, init initializes ngrams. The function getword obtains the next word from the input stream. All characters have been converted to lowercase, and all but alphabetic and numeric charac- ters have been converted to spaces. The function stopword returns a 1 if word is common; stem conflates word. 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AT compatible which has been spei ii: L jliy designed for OEM use within the industrial and business sectors The OEM-286 leatures the Zymos CMOS POACH set and 100* compatible Award BIOS The development o! the POACH chip sei has allowed the i-M IC s on a standard AT to be reduced to 20 ICs and two 5IMMS What (his means lor you is. 1) The overall size of a standard AT'CPll has been condensed into the expansion card form laclor. i\i'U- x 5''»*f 2) Power requirements are less Ihen i A @ 5 volts, j) OEM-286 plugs inio a passive baclrpliine for easy connection to other expan- sion pen p he ra Is The OEM-286 is available in both a and to Mhz versions and comes with ihe Award BIOS OEM-286 FEATURES • 100*. AT compatible • ecra> can execute only after state- ment Sx has completed execution. Such relationships are critical if one statement or region in a program is dependent on another statement. An example of this is the variable parameter list asso- ciated to the writeln statement, S7 (in the program fragment below). Its parameters are calculated in the earlier statements S4, S5, and S6, as shown in figure I. The statements S4, S5, and S6 are in turn dependent on the prior statements, SI, S2, and S3, being executed and those respective outputs being available. a = y + z; ( SI } b = (a + 3) * c; { S2 } c = t * a; { S3 } d = -(b); { S4 } e = x + c; { S5 } f = y / c; { S6 } writeln (d, e, f ) ; { S7 } From the above example, the precedence graph of figure 1 shows the following relationships to exist: continued MAY 1988 'BYTE 315 JUGGLING MULTIPLE PROCESSES Figure 1: Precedence graph for sample code fragment (see text), indicating the order in which statements can execute. • S2 and S3 can execute after SI completes. • S4 can execute after S2 completes. • S5 and S6 can execute after S3 completes. • S7 can execute after S4, S5, and S6 complete. As you might begin to suspect, execution of any program statement without considering its dependence on a previous statement that has not yet executed can lead to disastrous results . You need a method of determining where potential timing prob- lems might arise. Detecting Concurrency You can decide whether a dependence relationship exists be- tween one or more items by examining a series of conditions known as Bernstein's conditions. The outcome of this analysis shows whether or not two statements— Si and Sj— can success- fully execute concurrently. Parallel execution will work if there is no dependence on the output results or the input requirements of any two statements. This holds true whether you test the relationship for variables or some I/O device where overlapping inputs would create a jum- ble of overlapping outputs. To make this process work, I'll use a little basic set theory to show what happens when you test two statements for the inter- section of input and output dependencies. Consider the two statements Si and Sj, which can execute in a program concurrently and still produce the same results as long as Sj is not dependent on the outcome of Si; that is, if there is no edge from Si to Sj in a precedence graph. The rules are as follows: (1) I(Si) 0 0(Sf) = [) for aiioy) (2) O(Si) 0 l(Sf) = {} where i * j (3) 0(Si) 0 0(Sj) = {} where [] indicates the empty set; I(Si) = [al,a2, .... ,amj is the input set for Si, the set of all variables that are referenced in statement Si during its execution; and O(Si) = [bl,b2, . . . ,bnj is the output set for Si, the set of all variables whose values change when statement Si executes. If the three rules of Bernstein's conditions all produce empty sets, then we can be assured that there is no dependency be- tween the statements. Consider the following code fragment: x := y + z; { SI } a := (b + 3) * c; { S2 } d := e * a; { S3 } w := d - x; { S4 } writeln (d, w) ; ( S5 } Using this fragment, could statements SI and S2 execute con- currently? First, calculate the input and output dependency rela- tionship sets: l(Sl) = l(x: = y + z;) = {y,z} 0(S1) = 0(x:=y + z;) = [x] I(S2) =I(a:=(fo + 3) X c;) = [b,c] 0(S2) = 0(a : = {b + 3) x c;) = [a] Now perform the set operations to test for dependencies: (1) I(S1) n 0(S2) = [y,z] n [a] = [} (2) 0(S1) n I(S2) = [x] n [b,c] = n (3) 0(S1) n 0(S2) = [x] n [a] = [j This meets Bernstein's conditions because all three tests pro- duced empty sets. Therefore, SI and S2 could execute concur- rently. However, SI and S4 could not because the input of S4 is dependent on the output of SI , as shown in the second test: (1) i(Si)no(S4) = b>,z)n[wj =[) (2) 0(S1) n I(S4) = [x] n [d,x] = [x] (3) 0(si) no(S4) = {x} n[w] = (] Figure 2 shows the precedence graph of the sequential pro- gram execution. As expected, statement SI is followed by S2 and by S3, and soon. But what if you wrote the program in a language that allowed the concurrent execution of the same five statements? The graph would then appear as in figure 3, which shows how the state- ments might execute to take advantage of concurrency based on statements that are not dependent on one another. SI and S2 proceed on concurrent paths, S4 executes after SI completes, S3 executes after S2 completes, and S5 executes after S3 and S4 complete. The Process Graph The precedence graph described above shows dependency rela- tionships of statements. The process graph, however, depicts both sequential and concurrent process creation and flow. Such a graph can be very useful when a you design a program; it is not always obvious which process will be created next or which pro- cesses must complete before another process can proceed. Also, this tool can help you debug code by showing graphically the source and destination of synchronizing abstractions, such as the semaphore. Pascal-S defines a special pair of concurrency constructs, co-begin and coend. The statement sequence cobegin PI; P2;...;Pn coend initiates processes PI, P2, . . . , Pn, all executing concurrently. A process graph is a directed rooted tree whose nodes corre- spond to individual processes. You can use a process graph to express the relationship of the executing processes. An edge from node Pi to node Pj means that Pi created Pj, forming a 316 BYTE* MAY 1988 JUGGLING MULTIPLE PROCESSES parent/child relationship between the two processes. Any child Pj can have no more than one parent process. Also, an edge from Pi to Pj does not necessarily imply that Pj can execute only after Pi. It indicates that P; created Pj, and that Pi and Pj may execute concurrently. The point at which concurrent processes are created is called a fork; the point where concurrent pro- cesses meet is called a join. Given the fact that some process can create or spawn other concurrent processes, what can a process graph express? There are several possibilities: • Execution. Either the parent continues to execute concurrently with its children, or the parent waits until all its children have completed execution. • Sharing. Either the parent and children share all common variables, or the children share only a subset of their parent's variables. Consider the program fragment below. {two sequential processes) begin PI; P2; cobegin begin P3; P4 end (two parallel processes, each with) begin P5; P6 end {a nested sequential process } coend; PI {process dependent on prior outcome) end; {cannot execute until P4 AND P6) {have completed ) The process graph would be like that in figure 4. For this exam- ple, assume that process P3 has a considerably shorter execu- tion time than process P5, and that process P4's execution time is considerably longer than that of process P6. The execution steps would be: 1 . Process PI executes, followed by process P2. 2. Process P2 executes, followed by the creation of two concur- rently executing processes, P3 and P5 (a fork). 3. Process P3 terminates, followed by process P4, but it is still concurrent with process P5 . 4. Process P5 terminates, followed by process P6, but it is still concurrent with process P4. 5. Assume that process P6 terminates, before P4. However, pro- cess P7 cannot begin until process P4 also terminates. 6. Process P4 then terminates, and process P7 is released (a join) to execute to the program end. You can see possible conflicts involving shared resources more easily by using a graphic approach than by slugging it out by inserting tracing information into a program. This becomes es- pecially important if other executing processes act upon the in- formation, resulting in misleading and confusing trace outputs. Critical-Section Problem Because several processes can run asynchronous to one another in a concurrent environment, data or shared resources that are common to two or more processes must be protected. These segments of code in the program that reference such shared items are called critical sections. Consider a program with n concurrent processes. Each pro- cess has some segment of code that is a critical section contain- ing a single global variable A: process Pi code A := B * 3; {SI) writeln(A); {S2} process Pj code A : = D : = C - (A- B; i) / {S3) {S4) The important feature of this program segment is that when the process Pi is executing in its critical section (consisting of state- ments SI and S2; I'll call it Ci), you cannot allow any other process— such as Pj— to execute in its critical section (Cj, con- sisting of S3 and S4) if A would be affected. Otherwise, Pi could continued Figure 2: Precedence graph for a code fragment (see text) whose statements execute sequentially. © (P3) © © i) Figure 3: Precedence graph for the same code as in figure 2. This time, concurrent execution is permitted. Figure 4: Process graph for a code fragment (see text), showing sequential and concurrent processes. MAY 1988 -BYTE 317 JUGGLING MULTIPLE PROCESSES Listing 1: A program to demonstrate the use of semaphores. **************************************** Producer bakes an inventory of up to 8 loaves, one loaf at a time, and signals consumer that it is OK to buy. If inventory is full, then producer is blocked until consumer depletes at least one loaf. Producer may then pro- ceed. If consumer wants to buy bread but is blocked from doing so, it must wait until the producer bakes at least one loaf for inventory. When a loaf is taken, inventory is depleted, thus allowing the producer to continue baking new loaves for inventory. MAIN initiates the two processes and passes an identifier along with them to allow easy tracing of progress of the program. The order in which the processes are created does not matter. **************************************** program producer/consumer; var {declare and init semaphores) ok_to_buy : semaphore [ 0] ; {init as nothing to buy} ok_to_bake : semaphore [ 8] ; {init to produce 8 loaves} proceed : boolean; {pseudo "run forever" command} procedure producer (pid : char) ; {producer is process id of '1'} begin repeat wait (ok_to_bake) ; {bake in inventory not full} writeln ( 'process #',pid, ' baked a loaf and put it on sale) ; signal (ok_to_buy) ; { signal consumer produce available) until (proceed = false) ; {do it forever) end; /***************************************) procedure consumer (pid : char) ; {consumer is process id of '2'} begin repeat wait (ok_to_buy) ; {wait until a loaf is available) writeln ( 'process #',id, 1 has purchased a loaf of bread'), signal (ok_to_bake) ; until (proceed = false) ; {do it forever) end; /***************************************} begin {MAIN} proceed := true; cobegin {release two concurrent processes} consumer ( ' 1 ' ) ; { create consumer process } producer ( 1 2 1 ) {create producer process } coend end. modify A in SI, but then Pj could modify S3 before Pi has a chance to print A in S2. To ensure that this never happens, you must establish some abstract mechanism to prevent process Pj from entering Cj if process Pi is currently executing in Ci. As soon as Pi has com- pleted execution of Ci, you can allow Pj to enter Cj: process Pi code {entry section) A := B * 3; {SI} writeln (A); {S2} {exit section) process Pj code {entry section) A := C - B; (S3) D := (A - 8) /9; {S4) {exit section) A process requests permission to enter its critical section by using a segment of code called the entry section. The entry sec- tion of Pj acts as a gate to block a process from entering its criti- cal section Q' if Pi has already passed through its entry section and into its own critical section Ci. If Pi is not currently in Ci, then process P/"s entry section allows Pj to proceed into Cj. Once a process completes execution in a critical section, it passes through another segment of code called the exit section. At that time, if another process is waiting at its entry section, it may proceed into its critical section. (In the example, when Pi enters its exit section, it signals the entry section of Pj, allowing Pj to proceed into its critical section Cj.) Any solution to the mutual exclusion requirement must sat- isfy the following conditions: • While a process Pi is executing in its critical section Ci, no other process may execute in its associated critical section. • If no process is executing in its critical section and some pro- cess Pj attempts to enter its critical section Cj, Pj succeeds. Once a process enters a critical section, you can assume that it will eventually leave the section and allow another process to enter its own critical section. No process may be held indefi- nitely from entering its critical section. This prevents the condi- tion of "deadlock" (i.e. , two or more processes waiting for each other to proceed, but neither can) from occurring. If two pro- cesses are waiting for each other to provide a signal to enter a critical section, one or the other must enter and exit; otherwise, neither will ever progress through its code. • There must be a limit to the amount of time a process can spend in a critical section after some other process has made a request to enter its own critical section. Also, a given process cannot hog its own critical section, entering and exiting indefi- continued 318 BYTE* MAY 1988 TIMELINE INC. Continental U.S.A. ORDER DESK ONLY Inside California (800) 872-8878 (800) 223-9977 L.A. & Technical Info (213) 217-8912 OEM INQUIRIES WELCOME AST ADVANTAGES $70 MULTIFUNCTION CARD * ^ FOR YOUR IBM PC/AT AN INCREDIBLE DEAL! You get one serial port and one parallel port. Can be expanded to 1 .5 Mb. This card has EXTENDED MEMORY. (This is not EMS or EEMS.) We bought these from an OEM — BULK PACK. So, no AST™ box or manual. We supply our own manual. 1 Year Warranty. 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This package will run all of the following modes: 800 x 560 x 256 colors 640 x 480 x 256 colors 800 x 560 x 16 colors 320 x 200 x 256 colors 640 x 350 x 1 6 colors 640 x 200 x 1 6 colors 640 x 200 black and white 320 x 200 x 4 colors 40 and 80 column character mode Hercules Graphics Call for quantity discounts THE RETURN OF THE SPY IN THE SKY NEC UPD791D — (CHARGE COUPLED DEVICE) 4096 ELEMENT — LINEAR IMAGE SENSOR The charge coupled device is soldered to a pre-amplifier board. (We sold out of the A/D board that accompanied the unit . . . They went fasti) Since this is an analog device, the circuitry to provide timing signals and con- vert analog outputs to digital MUST BE SUPPLIED BY THE PURCHASER to interface to a microprocessor based system. Timing requirements could be determined from a NEC manual on the 791 D or from the schematic on the AID board. PLEASE NOTE: We have the AID board schematic, but unfortunately, we do NOT have the NEC manual. $CQ QC «* Zr . 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The motor unit spins at approx. 26,000 rpm. 5. There are 5 special surface mirrors, 2 beam split- ters, and 3 special lenses all attached by optical mounts. The kit price is $499.00. The only items that can be purchased separately are the laser tube ($150.00) and/or the A-0 modulator and driver ($398.00). A 24 Volt Lambda™ power supply is available for $49.95 to power the polygon and A-0 driver units. — Shipping charges are UPS Ground — $20.00; UPS Blue Label (two day service) $40.00. CALL FOR FREE INFORMATION 1490 W. ARTESIA BLVD. GARDENA, CA 90247 Continental U.S.A. (800) 872-8878 Inside California I (800) 223-9977 _^ ^ L.A. Area & Technical Info. ivDT l^gj (213) 217-8912 15% Restocking fee for returned orders. Minimum Order: $25.00. Shipping & handling charges via UPS Ground: $.50/lb. UPS Air: $1.00/lb. Minimum Charge: $4.00. We accept cashiers checks, MC or VISA. No personal check COD's. Items reflect 5% cash or check discount. Califor- nia residents add 6 1 /2% sales tax. We are not responsible for typographical errors. All merchandise subject to prior sale. Phone orders welcome. Foreign Orders require special handling. Prices subject to change without notice. Circle 324 on Reader Service Card MAY 1988 -BYTE 319 JUGGLING MULTIPLE PROCESSES nitely without allowing other processes into their own critical sections. These fairness requirements prevent "starvation" of a process— indefinitely excluding it from entering into any critical section. Consider a disk drive with an access queue that sets read re- quests at a higher priority that write requests. If a process re- quests permission to perform a write operation, it cannot be in- definitely held off in deference to any number of disk read requests. The write operation might contain an entry of infor- mation needed to satisfy some of the queue's read requests. These read requests would never be satisfied if the write opera- tion were not allowed to take place, and the disk might cease to function. The issues of mutual exclusion, progress, and bounded wait- ing are the keys to running successful concurrent programs. It is essential that you consider them as part of the "up-front" por- tion of any design. Interprocess Communication Dijkstra introduced the semaphore as an abstract software ob- ject that provides a mechanism for blocking processes condi- tionally. The semaphore blocks processes based on its state. It provides a simple but elegant method of interprocess communi- cation. In general, a semaphore s is an integer variable that, apart from initialization, can be accessed only through standard atomic operations: signal(s) and wait(s) (the original nota- (jj) sSn (Pi) Entry section WaitlsfT s>0 1 i Gate open (p\ Critical i | \Jsection| i ' 4..4L Signal(s) I Exit section Critical section ' Wait(s) s = 0 Gate closed Signal(s) Exit section Figure 5: Using a semaphore (s) for controlling critical sections of code. Here, as Pi passes through its entry section, it "closes the gate "for Pj. When Pi exits its critical section, the signal(s) operation will reopen the gate for Pj. [Main) Begin Cobegin Consumer I P1 Signal , OK to buy Signal OK to bake. P2 ) Producer Figure 6: Process graph for the "producer /consumer" program shown in listing 1. tions for these operations were P ( s ) and V ( s ) ) . This implemen- tation of Pascal-S treats the semaphore s as a special integer data type. The semaphore operates as follows: 1. If a process P encounters a wait (s) where s > 0, the sema- phore counter decrements by 1 (s : = s - 1) and the process passes; otherwise, the process is suspended (blocked). 2 . If some process P encounters a s ignal ( s ) , then s : = s + 1 . 3. If some process Pj is blocked at a wait(s) where s = 0, and some process Pi encounters a signal(s) , s increments by 1, as in operation 2. Pj resumes activity causing s to decrement by 1 , as described in operation 1 . If the semaphore s assumes only the values of 0 or 1 , it is a binary semaphore. In contrast, a semaphore that takes any arbi- trary nonnegative integer value is a general semaphore. Mait( ) and s ignal ( ) are the only operations allowed on a semaphore. Because of this blocking and releasing mechanism, semaphores provide both mutual exclusion and process synchronization. Pictorially, you can view a semaphore as a process passing through a gate where the value of s determines whether the gate is open or closed. In figure 5, the process Pi proceeds into its entry section where s > 0 and the gate is open. Consequently, Pi passes into its critical section. At the same time, Pj proceeds into its entry section. However, its gate is closed because s = 0, so Pj is blocked (suspended) from passing into its critical section. Once Pi completes its criti- cal section and proceeds into its exit section, it passes through a "turnstile," causing s to increment to a positive number. Pj's gate will now open, allowing Pj to pass into its critical section. At the same time, s decrements and Pi cannot enter its critical section until Pj reaches its own exit section. I've provided a simple program demonstrating the use of semaphores in listing 1 , written in Pascal-S. It is an example of a classic situation known as the "producer/consumer" problem. The problem centers around two processes, a baker (producer) and a customer (consumer). Two semaphores create a bounded buffer limit on how much bread (in this case, eight loaves) the producer can make and inventory ahead of the consumer's con- sumption rate. The consumer is blocked from buying bread when there is none available. Note that the program requires no separate variables to keep track of how many loaves of bread are in inventory or have been consumed. It is the act of signaling and waiting, and not the contents of the semaphore signals, that prevents either process from acting in an uncontrolled manner. This particular program will run until interrupted. You could impose a limit on the total number of loaves baked, say, in one day, but you must take care to cleanly terminate the two process or a deadlock will occur. A sample output looks something like this: Process #2 has baked a loaf and put it on sale. Process #1 has purchased a loaf of bread. Process #2 has baked a loaf and put it on sale. Process #2 has baked a loaf and put it on sale. Process #1 has purchased a loaf of bread. The process graph for this program is shown in figure 6. I've shown the two semaphore signal lines, OK to bake and OK to buy, to give an indication of which process is the source of the signal for a given semaphore. In this example, when the consumer (PI) purchases a loaf from inventory, this signals the baker that the inventory of loaves is not full and he may proceed to bake. 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