M /A f l °f
The following articles are reprinted solely as items of interest for the independent evaluation by members of The Association of Time-Sharing Users and The
Association of Small Computer Users. The opinions , statements of fact, and conclusions expressed herein are not those of either Association.
Service to Offer At-Home
T/S for $2. 75/Hour
By Jake Kirchner
CW Washington Bureau
McLEAN, Va. — Digital Broadcasting
Corp. (DBC) next month will begin offering
what it said is the first low-cost time-sharing
network for home use.
The service, called Compucom, will be
provided by the Washington, D.C.-area
company for $2.75 per hour. DBC Chair¬
man William von Meister said his company
expects to have 10,000 customers locally by
the end of the year and reach a financial
break-even point within six months after
start-up.
The low rate for computer time is possible,
von Meister said, because the service will
make use of existing computer systems and
be available only from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. and
on weekends and holidays.
The idea behind Compucom, he explained
is to answer the question, "What do you do
with your computer network after 6 o'clock
at night when business doesn't use it any¬
more?"
"Sell it to home users" was the answer ar¬
rived at by DBC, a privately held company
spun off one year ago from TDX Systems,
' "That's the problem we've
licked . . . how somebody in Se¬
attle can use a computer in
Washington , D.C., for $2.75 an
hour" when long-distance
phone calls cost $15 to $20 an
hour.'
Inc. of Vienna, Va. DBC's primary business
service, Infocast, transmits data over the ra¬
dio frequencies of 56 FM stations around
the country.
What makes Compucom practical, von
Meister said, is that the $2.75 per hour
charge includes the cost of the telephone call
to access the firm's computers, located here
and in Silver Spring, Md. "That's the prob¬
lem we've licked," he said, "how somebody
in Seattle can use a computer in Washing¬
ton, D.C., for $2.75 an hour" when long¬
distance phone calls cost $15 to $20 an hour.
DBC solved that problem by "some very
interesting network configurations." Not
only does the firm have an extensive net¬
work of its own, but it has contracted with
large companies to use their excess private
telephone lines during nonbusiness hours.
The system DBC has put together has
ports in 200 U.S. cities, so every Compucom
user will be able to access the system
through a local, toll-free phone call. The
system is being tested in the Washington,
D.C., area now. It will be gradually extended
to those 200 cities as DBC's marketing and
management capabilities are developed, ac¬
cording to von Meister.
Access to 2,000 Programs
Using an existing home computer or termi¬
nal or a terminal available from DBC, a user
can access at 600 word/min approximately
2,000 programs offering complete business
packages, computer games and news and in¬
formation services. The system already of¬
fers stock market quotations, professional
sports information, classified advertising
and movie guides, and additional programs
are being developed.
DBC is currently negotiating with individ¬
uals to produce periodic "columns" on dif¬
ferent consumer subjects — such as "Gour¬
met Recipe of the Week" — to fill the "homes
in on programs that were typically written
for the commercial market," von Meister
said. The 2,000 currently available programs
are indexed in a "very, very simple tree"
which contains 24 "master libraries," each
having 10 to 200 subheadings (programs).
Compucom is based on an undisclosed
number of Prime Computer, Inc. Model
500, Honeywell, Inc. 1648 and Tandem
Computers, Inc. minicomputers.The system
presently offers about 4,000 ports, which
von Meister reckons as capable of serving
50,000 customers. The system can be ex¬
panded almost infinitely, he said, by adding
more computer power.
Terminals Available
crements. When a user opens his account
with Compucom, he provides his Visa, Mas¬
ter Charge or American Express card num¬
ber. At the end of each month DBC will
compute the user's bill and enter it on a mas¬
ter billing tape, which will be taken to a
bank; the billing will be processed through
the credit card companies.
By not having to handle the billing directly,
von Meister said, DBC can operate with a
low overhead. Estimating an average 20
hours per month per user, he projected reve¬
nues of about $275,000/mo once the system
has 10,000 users.
DBC is also offering a range of equipment
for the user of the system. The Source 1, an
alphanumeric keypad manufactured by Ha-
zeltine Corp., is available from DBC for
$595. On a lease-purchase plan, the Source
1, which comes with an acoustic coupler and
a hook-up for the users television, costs $90
down and about $13/mo on a five-year ba¬
sis.
Another terminal, the Source 2, described
by von Meister as a "full-blown CRT of
high commercial quality," costs $950. DBC
will also provide a selection of two printers
manufactured by Centronics Data .Com¬
puter Corp. and Anadex, Inc. The printers
will operate at 30 char./sec.
If a customer has his own terminat or home
'When a user opens his ac¬
count with Compucom , he pro¬
vides his Visa , Master Charge or
American Express card number .
At the end of each month DBC
will compute the user's bill and
enter it on a master billing tape ,
which will be taken to a bank;
the billing will be processed
through the credit card compa¬
nies/
computer, he can access Compucom for a
$100 installation charge which does not in¬
clude an acoustic coupler. Couplers can be
purchased from DBC, von Meister added.
User access to the system is established
through a unique identification number and
a password supplied by the firm. The user is
billed for computer time in one-minute in¬
Such projections are not at all unrealistic in
the face of the demand for Compucom that
has developed since the service was first
publicized last month, according to von
Meister. "We're being bugged to death" by
people wanting to sign up, he said. "The
problem is we don't have enough equipment
yet.
"The problem is that the lo¬
gistics of the marketing of
something of this size are sub¬
stantial. So we're going to go
city by city, and Washington
is the first market, which is
natural because we're head¬
quartered here," von Meister
pointed out.
"Compucom will then be of¬
fered in one other city, per¬
haps Detroit, before being
made available in New York
City, which von Meister
described as "the next logical
place to go."
The service is now being
used on an "experimental" ba¬
sis in Washington, where
"we've got about 50 people
who are fiddling with it and
helping us debug" the man¬
uals and literature, he added.
Besides the low cost of the
service, one of its big attrac¬
tions is that it is completely in¬
teractive, according to von
Meister. It offers an "elec¬
tronic mail box" through
which users can leave mes¬
sages for each other.
In addition, a program called
Chat offers "direct interac¬
tion." After calling up Chat on
his terminal, a user can punch
in the code number of another
user and communicate directly.
In this regard, Compucom is
much more advanced and at¬
tractive than the videotext
and teletext systems being
tested in Europe, von Meister
claimed. "You're not just look¬
ing up information" as with
those systems.
In addition, von Meister
contended Compucom will be
superior to any commercially
available personal computer.
"We have Cobol, Basic, For¬
tran, PL/I, RPG, Teach and
several other languages, and
they are much easier to use
than micro assembly language
and micro levels of the higher
level compilers such as For¬
tran and Basic," he said.
Reprinted with permission from Computerworld , January 1!
User Learns Cost Isn't Everything
By Ann Dooley
CW Staff
DUNDEE, Ill. — For a microcomputer
user here, trying to buy micro equipment
as cheaply as possible was the most ex¬
pensive decision he ever made.
Kenneth Sibrava, president of Syner-
systems, bought equipment from a
wholesaler instead of the manufacturer
and received more than he bargained for
in malfunctioning equipment, misleading
promises and costly time delays.
A year ago Sibrava and his associate,
Dennis Pikarski, decided to form a con¬
sulting firm and service bureau to provide
accounting and business functions to
doctors, lawyers and other small or
medium-size businesses in this Chicago
suburb. Sibrava planned to use a series of
microcomputers linked together to main¬
tain a low overhead.
Although Sibrava and Pikarski had
some DP background, they had difficulty
selecting the microcomputer equipment
needed to set up their business. "The mi-
cro industry is like a jungle," Sibrava
said.
After looking at equipment from a
number of companies, including Texas
Instruments, Inc., Intel Corp. and Imsai
Manufacturing Corp., as well as talking
to both manufacturers and dealers, Si¬
brava decided to use Cromemco, Inc.
equipment. "It came down to a price com¬
parison. The Cromemco equipment does
as much as most others and costs a lot
less," Sibrava said.
Right Choice, Wrong Source
The choice itself was the right one, ac¬
cording to Sibrava: "Pm still amazed I got
equipment that does what it does for the
price. The mistake we made, however,
was trying to get by even cheaper."
At the time, the company needed a cer¬
tain amount of equipment but had only a
limited amount of money. "We decided to
go strictly by price and to purchase most
of the equipment from a Syracuse, N.Y.
wholesaler," he said, but declined to name
the wholesaler because he is considering
suing the organization.
Sibrava agreed to buy two Cromemco
computers — a Z-2"fully assembled fac¬
tory unit and a Z-2D kit. The fully as¬
sembled unit malfunctioned as soon as it
arrived; it was later found to have been
assembled in the wholesaler's shop and
not in the factory at all, according to Si¬
brava.
The kit's seals had been broken, work¬
ing parts had been replaced with defec¬
tive ones and the wholesaler had sold
memory that wasn't even compatible
with the equipment, he charged.
It took more than two months to get all
the parts and then everything malfunc¬
tioned at least once, including all the
memory boards, controller boards, disk
drives and CPUs, Sibrava said.
Manufacturer to the Rescue
Since the wholesaler was completely un¬
cooperative and refused to do anything
about the equipment, "in des¬
peration I called Cromemco,
not knowing what to expect
since it really wasn't the
manufacturer's problem," Sib¬
rava recalled.
Cromemco's people in
Mountain View, Calif., were
hesitant at first, but after Si¬
brava talked to Cromemco's
customer support engineer,
Allen O'Neill, help began ar¬
riving. Cromemco replaced
the defective parts, many at no
cost.
"The people there kept tell¬
ing me they couldn't believe
the poor job that had been
done just in assembling the
Z-2," Sibrava said.
Once most of the parts had
been replaced, O'Neill spent
several days working with the
system and looking for bugs.
"If it hadn't been for the fac¬
tory, I would have jumped off
a bridge," Sibrava admitted.
Behind Schedule
So many things had gone
wrong at the beginning that it
took a lot of extra testing and
debugging to get the system
going. As a result, Sibrava and
Pikarski have fallen far be¬
hind schedule.
"There are customers wait¬
ing for the service, but even
now that the system is up and
running Pm hesitant to open
for business because I want to
be sure nothing more will go
wrong," Sibrava said.
The complete system con¬
sists of seven micros hooked
together. Each is assigned an
individual task. One micro
supports one software func¬
tion and then turns the data
over to the next micro for fur¬
ther processing. The system
can handle quite a bit of data
at a lower cost, he noted.
On looking back at his
money-saving idea, Sibrava
said, "I've learned a lot from
this whole thing — the hard
way."
One lesson he learned is that
cost isn't everything; al¬
though there was a $5,000 dif¬
ference between buying from
the wholesaler and buying
from the factory, the time and
aggravation added up to a lot
more, he said.
"I've also learned to check
for references. We had done a
little checking on the whole¬
saler, but he refused to give us
any references, saying it
wasn't worth his time to fool
around with them. From now
on we'll know better," Sibrava
said.
ry 15, 1979, ©Copyright 1979, CW Communications, Inc
Another RCS Vendor Plans
To Introduce Minicomputer
By Don Leavitt
CW Staff
GREAT NECK, N.Y. - The trend
continues. Another remote computing
service (RCS) vendor has announced
plans to sell or lease an IBM
370-compatible minicomputer, com¬
plete with software and support, for a
cost "well below alternatives."
To handle this side of its business,
Time Sharing Resources, Inc. (TSR)
has organized a subsidiary called Mega
Systems Associates. The hardware
Mega will offer is the same
370/138-class machine developed by
Two Pi Co. and already available from
National CSS, Inc. as its System 3200.
Installed at a user site, Mega's system
is "the first sensible alternative to the
high costs of outside APL time¬
sharing," a vendor spokesman as¬
serted, adding "it provides at least 5:1
price/performance breakthrough, with
no conversion delays or costs."
The difference between the Mega
system and those offered by other RCS
vendors will be in the software and
services provided users, Mega said.
TSR is an APL-oriented RCS vendor
and the Mega system will be delivered
complete with all the system software
and application programs in the TSR
public library.
The spokesman claimed TSR's APL
system is the most comprehensive in
the industry, adding, "it is fully com¬
patible" with major APL time-sharing
vendors such as Scientific Time
Sharing Corp. (STSC). An official at
STSC noted, however, thatTSR's APL
does not include STSC's Automatic
Control of Execution (ACE) functions
[CW, Aug. 28].
As part of its product, Mega said it is
prepared to convert any user program
to run in APL on the Two Pi hardware
at no cost to the user. Although that
support is generally expected to be
used in connection with programs al¬
ready in APL, the vendor claimed the
support — still free — will be provided
no matter what the source language of
the original program.
Along with the APL compiler and its
support system, the TSR software in¬
cludes a keyed file system and pro¬
gram products for financial, econome¬
tric and data base management appli¬
cations, the spokesman said. The di¬
rectory published by the Association
of Time-Sharing Users lists items such
as a portfolio analysis and evaluation
program, support for Box-Jenkins
time series analysis, and a text and let¬
ter writing system.
The various data bases that can be ac¬
cessed through TSRs communications
facilities presumably will not be part
of the package offering, since they
would effectively be impossible to
maintain and update as they must to
be remain useful.
Sixth to Enter Arena
TSR's entry — through Mega —
brings to a full half dozen the number
of RCS vendors now in or almost in
the hardware arena. In addition to Na¬
tional CSS, others include Keydata
Corp., General Electric's Information
Services Division, Automatic Data
Processing, Inc. (ADP) and STSC.
Most of the equipment being offered
by those vendors is in the IBM 370 138
and 148 classes, although GE moved in
a different direction with hardware
comparable to IBM's 8100 minicom¬
puter.
Mega expects to deliver its first sys¬
tem in june. When STSC announced
its APL-oriented Quad 100 minicom¬
puter, [CW, Dec. 4], it said deliveries
would start in the first quarter of 1979,
but a spokesman last week admitted
his firm has yet to select a hardware
supplier.
Mega is offering its hardware/soft-
ware/support package under a six-
month lease plan for $15,000/mo. It
can also be purchased for $100,000 or
leased, under a facilities management-
type plan in which Mega would oper¬
ate the system (at a Mega site), for
$20,000/mo.
Under any of these plans, the system
should be an attractive offering to the
"heavy" time-sharing user who cur¬
rently spends $100,000 or more each
month for RCS support from an out¬
side vendor, Mega said from 777
Northern Blvd., Great Neck, N.Y.
11022.
Reprinted with permission from Computerworld, January 22, 1979, ©Copyright 1979, CW Communications, Inc.
