. "TT' . VM.
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V
COMPUTER
ENTHUSIASTS
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Wellington Atari Computer Enthusiasts
JUNE, 1985
Dear member,
Herewith the newsletter for June: once again, its a little late,
but what is a week between friends?
NEXT MEETING
This will be held on 10 July. Once again, the venue will be the
"Loaves and Fishes" which is located behind the Anglican Cathedral in
Molesworth St. close to Parliament in Central Wellington. The
President’s page (attached) will contain a full list of what will
happen then. The last meeting was, perhaps, notable for the
demonstration of the power and versatility of "Speedscript 3.0", a
wordprocassing programme from "Compute!". Because of its origin,
"Speedscript" can not be made available on club tapes or disks (much
to my personal regret), but it will be placed in our programme
library. Members willing to certify that they have purchased the
relevant copy of Compute! can obtain a copy of "Speedscript 3.0" from
Dennis Dawson, our librarian.
THE NEW ATARI’S
The new Atari 130XE’s are in the shops, and very reasonable value
for money they,are: 128k of RAM for about *700 (in 19S5 dollars, my
16k 400 plus tape deck cost 1400 19S2 dollars!). I have yet to see the
new ST series but if it as good as it as the introductory articles
indicate, then Jack Tramiel has a winner on his hands. That should
mean that Atari will survive when the rest of the industry is falling
down around it. In the meantime, SOOXL’s and 1050 Disk Drives are to
be had for fabulous prices around town as Monaco and the retailers
attempt to quit them fast. Be in like robber’s dogs!
CLLB DISK 6
Contrary to rumour, there will be a new disk (#6) for members to
try out. Among its many features are:
The new Atari DOS 2.5. The beauty of this DCS is that, instead of 626
sectors being available after the disk is DOSed, about 930 sectors can
be used. In other words, it make significantly more efficient use of
the disk;
DISKIQ- Antic magazine’s batter, brighter DCS;
DEi-:EXL~ a cheap, but not nasty, XL "Translator" programme waiting to
be upgraded by some of our more clever members;
ARITHMETRIX- some sraar t ma t h t ric ka;
MATTEDIT;
FILLERUP- a version of the very good cartridge game called Qi& $
CREEF'YCAVERN- Shamus in another guise;
DRAGON— an adventure game;
plus other goodies too numerous to mention.
CLUB TAPE
Of course, there will be
TRIVIA- an educational game,
SCRAMBLE-
a
comput
er version
SN0WBIRD-
i s
it as
pretty as
See
you
on 10
July,
a club
deepite
of Eogl
it sqli n
tapeas well,
its name;
e; and .
da?
Contents include:
Yours sincerely,
Des Rowe(Secretary):
2 .
PRES I DENT " S F-^CBEI
NEXT MEETING
The new Ataris are here and the highlight of the next
meeting will tae an opportunity to hear them introduced by
Feli,, Eettelheim. He hopes to have at least one model present
so that the new computer can be tried hands on.We have a
busy program lined up -for next time.Among other things,there
will be demonstrations of commercial software;Karl Bettelheim
will talk about Atariwriter;Ragan Maxwell will, as well as
celling many' tapes, expl ain the plans we have for reparing
joysticks and constructing Paddles at our August meeting;
and, our Past President, Eddie Nickless, will run an Auction.
BUGBUSTERS
You want to know something related
Luinputi ng. Whom do you askP Before BugBu.s
to know. But now thereare no problems -
the white coat ,or him with the hat. "If
they'’11 tell you who does!"
to the Atari or to
ters,it was difficult
simply' ask the man in
they don’t know,then
thanks very much to those who volunteered(in one way or another) to
type in programs for the club library at the last meeting.As a result there
are a number of excellent programs coming forward: we all stand to benefit
from them, to keep you in touch with current work we are publishing our
transcription list,It records the names and file numbers of the programs,th
people who are typing them in,and where the programs are in the
transcription process.This process moves through the fallowing stages:
a) program identified as worth transcription
b) President calls for volunteer to type it up
c) if successful response,volunteer given program and types it in
d) volunteer passes program transcribed onto cassette/disk over
to President
f) President passes program to another volunteer for any debugging
etc. required
g.) program sent to our Program Library
The fallowing table shows who is typing in what and what stage in the
iP'tiprocess we are at. Incidental 1 y, the next time we print this
list we hope that we will be able to add the sources of the programs.
PROGRAM NAME
FILE NO.
TYPIST
STATUS
RECORD KEEPING
PROGRAM
5100/12
Tom Larkin
Bei ng
Typed
CHAMPIONSHIP
BOXING .
7500/23
Tom Larkin
Bei ng
Typed
NIGHT FIGHTER
7800/27
Tom Larkin
Bei ng
Typed
;'<*stass
*' -~gatj&u. r
■ £v •' _ '9 »
t •
¥
— - V
v .
-
WHAT IS IT?
?
Chris Richardson
Being Typed
SMALL TALKER
?
Chris Caudwell
Being Typed
VERSE WEAVING
O
Chris Caudwell
Being Typed
BIORYTHM
5700/1
Sandra Minshull
Being Typed
GRADEBOOK ATARI
2030/3
Mike Munro
Being Typed
AIR ATTACK
7800/25
Chris Richardson
Being Typed
TANK BATTLE
7800/26
Chris Macer
Being Typed
BARS
2230/1
Chris Richardson
Being Typed
GRAPH E’s
2125/15
Des Rowe
Being Typed
SAFE CRACKER
Chris Macer
Being Typed
DECISION MAKER
?
Sandra Minshull?
Being Typed
HUNT THE RAIDER
7800/21
Des Rowe
Being Typed
EXOCET
7300/29
Sandra Minshull
Being Typed
DRAUGHTS
7700/9
_,,_. Jason Coombe
Being Typed
SIEGE
7600/46
f Andrew Ward
Being Typed
NUMERIC KEYPAD
8610/1
Ray Lovel1
Being Typed
SPY PLANE
7800/24
Don Campbell
Being Typed
BARCHART S/R
2125/14
Ray Lovell
Being Typed
ROBOT CHASE
7600/68
Sylvia Maunder
Being Typed
JACKS
7700/11
□1 Wynne Thomas
Being Typed
SHOOTING STARS
7400/32
Richard Houston
Being Typed
CRIT PATH ANAL
2190/3
Ken May
* * *
Being Typed
PATTERNS
2100/12
Sartdra Minshull
F'rocessi ng
by Neil Upton
HOME -LOAN
4500/9
Jean Dodd
Processing
by Neil Upton
CURRENCY CHANGER
4500/8
Anne Minshull
Processing
. , v , _, ...
V
H-
CARD FILE
5100/11
Ray Lovel1
Processing
ASTEROID FIELD
01wynne Thomas
Processing
FERGIE FILE PRINTER
Alec Kerr
Processing
SOLID STATE
Processing
REVISTED
MERCURY MINE
7600/39
Anns Minshull
Processing
SON OF
SOLID STATE
6100/S
Processing
RIVER RAIDER
Eddie Warren
Processing
READING PROGRAM
/ 1
/ 4 .
Eddie Warren
Processing
PITCH MAKER
Eddie Warren
Processing
MEMORY
?
Eddie Warren
Processing
ORIGEN
Eddie Warren
Processing
CALC
2100/11
Chris Macer
Processing
HOT PURSUIT
7600/69
Anne Minshull
Processing
DOGFIGHT
7300/28
Anne Minshull
Processing
LIMITS TO GROWTH
Anne Minshull
Processing
TIE FIGHTER
7400/31
Anne Minshull
Processing
SOLID STATES
6100/6
Anne Minshull
Processing
attack death star
7400/S
Jean Dodd
Processing
MATT-EDIT
6450/IS
Des Rowe
In Library
DISK10
3400/36
Bernard Kerr
In 1ibrary
STRING SORT
9400/1
Bernard Kerr
In library
SELECTION GAME
01wynne Thomas
In library
* * :*
BUDGET WORKSHOP 2
4510/4
9
Any Offers?
ATARI FONTBYTER
6450/17
Any Offers?
SCISSOR ,PAPER
STONE
r>
Any Offers??
KEYSTROKE
O
Any Offers??
CENTRAL SUB¬
ROUTINES
Any Offers??
ALARM CLOCK
n
Any Offers??
G4-T-Y BOMB
7
Any Offers??
SCREEN-EDIT
*7
Any Offers??
ATARI DOS
r>
Any Offers??
BRICKLAYER’S
NIGHTMARE
7600/55
Any Offers??
BUDGET WORKSHEET
4510/5
Any Offers??
ATARI'FONTBYTER .
6450/17
Any Offers?
MAKING WAVES
2710/3
Any Offers?
TAKE 5
7600/72
i
Any Offers?
CREDIT REGISTER
4510/7
Any Offers?
MICRO-CALC
2130/2
Any Offers?
SPELL
2230/3
Any Offers?
FINDME
2190/9
Any Offers?
CREEPY
7600/54
Any Offers?
HOLIDAY EXPENSES
4510/6
Any Offers?
* # * * *
& .
MEMORY UPGRADES
Steve Swift is now ready to hear from People who would
like him to exPand the RAM in their Atari 408"s from 16k
to 48k. Steve is actually havin9 the expansion boards
made in Wei 1inSton and is buy ins the chiPs. These are
added to the existins 16k board. Indicated price for the
complete Job is "less than $159".
It would sPeed thinSs uP if Steve had a spare 16k
board which he could uPSra.de and then simply swap for the
board in the next computer.So if you have a board for sale
Sive him a rinS.
The Job itself doesn't take Ions so you should not be
without the machine for more than a few days.
It is anticipated that the system will work as
follows.
1. You rinS Steve.- < Phone 882-798> and arranSe to Set your
computer to him at a suitable time. He lives in Whitby but
you may be able to deliver it to him in town durinS the
week or at a club meetins.
2. You make the necessary financial arransements which we
Suess will be cash in advance. Please note that the club
is not SoinS to Set directly involved. The deal is between
you and Steve,
3. Steve does the work and you Pick up your machine. ASain
note that the committee has decided that we will not ask
for a commission on the deal and we don't make any
Guarantees for either the speed or duality of the
finished Job. I•can say from experience that Steve knows
what he is doin9. He quickly brouSht my machine back to
life after it died last year.
The uP Grade is for Atari 400's only.* 600 XL owners
can buy the expansion box from the usual retailers.
If you can afford the fee the uP Grade is well worth
doinS because an expanded 400 can do virtually anythin9
that the 800 or the 860 XL's can do. Even after the
recent Price drop on the Atari XL to around $440 an
expanded 400 is still the least expensive way to Get a 48k
machine.
Note that what I call a 48k machine actually has as
much memory as both the "ATARI XL 64k" and the Commodore
64. They all have about 48k of usuab1e memory. Frank1y by
current standards the ranSe of software that will run in
only 16k is very limited.
Chris Caudwel1
JOYSTIOK
%
l ■
S* PADDLE F~ I X^>
So your Joystick don't go proper, an ya don't own a Paddle.
Well next months meeting....AUGUST..we plan to have a
joystick diagnostic programme running. So if you bring your
crook stick we will tell you why it doesn't work and give you
the opportunity to fix it there and then. You pay only for
the bits you use. If you are not able to use a soldering iron
or a screwdriver now is your big chance to AVAGO. (Under a
watchful eye.)
+++Plus Plus Plus Plus P1US+++
A construction opportunity to build yourself a Paddle
control. Aprox cost $15—00.
We WILL:-
Show you what is needed at the next meetinq. (July)
Bring pencil and the other stuff for notes!!!!
Accept orders for the 9 Pin Dee plug, with $11—00
cash payment. Bring de CASH!!!
Tell you 'how to' now... so if you are very clever
yours can be built before the rest start.
Parts list
1. 9 Pin Dee plug- Note most of those readily available
will not fit the ATARI port as the plastic covers are too
fat!
2. 500K Ohms pot.(volume control)
3. Knob of your choice to suit No.2
4. 1.5 to 2 meters of 4 core cable. (Multi stranded
flexible.)
5. 'Push—to—make' trigger button, miniature size.
6. Rubber grommet with hole size to suit cable.Qty.l.
7. The all important case to put it in. This could be a
small pipe tobacco tin, rectangular, or soap box or small
project box. Remember it should fit the palm of your hand.
NOTE! view from back of plug.
1 2 3 4 5
00000/
0000/
6 7 8 9
1. Joystk Forward Input (white)
2. " Back Input (blue)
3. " Left Input (green)
4. “ Right Input (brown)
5. "B" Potentiometer Input
6. Trigger Input (orange)
7. +5 volts
8. Ground (black)
9. "A" potentiometer Input
Connect the 500K volume control so that the center and right
pin,(from bottom) are wired to 7 & 9.
Connect the push button between 3 & 8.
That's it! If there is a stability problem, we have’nt seen
one yet, a 0.01 mfd capacitor between S & 9, will probably
fix it.
PS. Don*t forget to mount the Pot. in your tin, thread the
cabl-e through the grommet and hole in the tin before
soldering it all up.
CHECK all the wiring and make sure you have used the correct
pins on the plug!!!!!!!!! The plug pins you solder to should
look like the diagram.(From the back of the plug)
Suggested sources:— Dick Smith Electronics
David Reid Electronics
Wiseman Electrical
Eggley Electrical
Where—ever—you— 1 ike
Atari lakes Unusual step
By Michael W. Miller
Special to The Asian Wall Street Journal ■
Even for Atari Corp.. a company that |
breaks more rules than it obeys, hiring Sig j
Schreyer to run the computer company's ,
U.S. business is a surprise.
Ever since Jack Tramiel acquired close¬
ly held Atari last summer, he has been
zealously trimming the company’s opera¬
tions. keeping his executive ranks down to a
small crew of managers with multiple
responsibilities. Creating Mr. Schreyer’s
new top-level position of vice president and
general manager is an uncharacteristic
step.
Moreover, at a time when Atari has
abruptly decided to sell its forthcoming
personal computer through specialty stores.
Mr. Schreyer. 51 years old, isn’t an obvious
choice to oversee that task. His last job was
running the computer-printer division of
Silver-Reed America, a typewriter maker
owned by Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan.
Even Mr. Schreyer’s name is unusual for
an Atari executive. The rest of Mr.
WUiUlJ va **•* — —- w .
out of Tramiels,” laughs Mr. Schreyer, in
Chicago for the giant Consumer Electronics
^ ow * Long Association
Mr. Schreyer’s association with Mr.
Tramiel dates back to the 1960s, when the
two worked together at what is now Com¬
modore International Ltd., which Mr.
Tramiel founded. Mr. Schreyer was sales
manager for Commodore, which sold adding
machines and electronic calculators at die
Hmo
have fit in at Atari as well as he does.
"Most of those people can’t and don t sud-
scribe to Jack's philosophy of giving people
the most bang for their buck, and running a
simple business instead of a complex,
Stanford MBA business," he says.
Still, he adds, "It had become a little too
lean here." As the company prepares to
expand its distribution channels beyond
such mass merchandisers as Sears, Roe-
buck & Co. and K mart Corp., Atari espe¬
cially needs someone familiar with the peo¬
ple who buy for computer specialty stores,
Mr. Schreyer explains. “Those are waters
Jack has never been into," he says.
Track Record
Atari is still a relatively small company
that derives its revenue chiefly from the
inexpensive video games and home comput¬
ers Mr. Tramiel inherited when he bought
the concern from Warner Communications
Inc. in July. But Atari’s new plans have
been able to command attention in the
electronics Industry, largely because of the
track record of Mr. Tramiel, who turned
Commodore International into a home-
computer giant.
But convincing specialty computer stores
to carry Atari’s new $799 ST model, which
resembles Apple Computer Inc.’s Macmtosn
at about one-third the price, won’t be easy.
Computer retailers' shelf space is tighter
than ever, as many stores don’t want to
take the risk of stocking anything but the
most popular brands. . «
"I really don’t want to sell Atari even if
it does look like the Mac.” says Jack Bell,
chairman of the Computerease chain of six
stores in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Mr. Bell says too many people associate
Atari with cheap, mass-market home com¬
puters and video games. "Technology
doesn’t sell a product — marketing, a dealer
base, and public perception sell a product,
he says.
Lining Up Accounts
But Mr. Schreyer claims that in the past
month he has lined up a large group of
retailers for the ST, mostly independent
stores outside the big computer chains. He
won’t say how many accounts are in place,
but James Copland, Atari’s vice president
for marketing, brags that 500 outlets will be
carrying the ST when it arrives in U.S.
stores in July.
Not all retailers are skeptical about
Atari’s chances. “We haven’t been selling
Atari for years,” says Al Miller, manager
of the Computer Store in Toledo, Ohio,
which caters to business-computer
customers. “But if Jack gets it out in July,
we’ll become a dealer. This machine does
more than the others do at a lower price."
Mr. Schreyer, a plain-speaking man who
doesn’t share his boss's penchant for flashy
rhetoric, concedes that Atari has a long way
to go to get on retail shelves. “Our account
base is too thin,” he admits. He says he
pinns to expand Atari’s sales operations by
shifting more business to independent man¬
ufacturer’s representatives.
Meanwhile, Atari went out of its way to
hang on to Its base among mass merchan¬
disers, the main attendants at the trade
show here. Earlier this year the company
had promised to offer a scaled-down version
of the ST for big department stores, and
last week it displayed such a product for the
first time. The model is identical to the ST
except for its 256.000-character memory,
half the larger model’s capacity. Atari said.
The product, which can be plugged into a
television, will cost $399, or $499 with a disk
drive, the company said.
Mr. Tramiel has been known to show
prototypes of products that never
materialized in stores, and it wasn’t clear
how seriously Atari plans to market the
mass-merchandise ST model. Some indus¬
try professionals have suggested that the
product may be Atari’s way of offering
mass merchants some appeasement for
pulling the ST away from them and into
specialty stores. :
Mr. Schreyer insisted this wasn’t the
reason for offering a mass-market ST. "It’s
not that complicated,” he said. “There are
K mart shoppers and specialty store shop¬
pers, and we want them both,” he said. But
Mr. Copland says the smaller ST was the
result of “a decision not to alienate the
mass merchandisers.”
Mr. Schreyer is quick to admit that
Atari’s recent jumps back and forth from
the mass market to the specialty market
have been confusing. "That’s the condition
of the industry,” he argues. "Can you be
anything but flexible in an industry this
uncertain?
“How many dead horses do you see ini
Silicon Valley that didn’t know how to'
change on a dime?”
Gertrude’s Secrets involves children in
a variety of problem-solving activities,
such as analyzing patterns and deter¬
mining what number comes next in a
series. Publisher: The Learning Com¬
pany. Hardware: Apple It, Commodore
64, IBM PC, PCjr. Price: $44.95. Grade
level: Primarv-intermediate. '
Square Pairs presents a series of match¬
ing games designed to help learners
develop concentration and memory j
skills. Teachers and students can create i
their own matching games using words,
patterns or numbers. Publisher: Scho¬
lastic. Hardware: Apple II, Atari (32K
disk, 16K cassette). Commodore 64,
TI-99/4A, VIC 20. Price: S39.95. Grade
level: Intermediate-junior high.
Dragon’s Keep is a graphics/text ad¬
venture designed to teach youngsters
reading comprehension, map reading
and problem-solving skills. The program
comes with a poster-size map and
stickers to place on it as hidden animals
are found in the dragon's lair. Publisher
Sierra On-Line. Hardware: Apple II, Atari
(48K), Commodore 64. Price: $29.95.
Grade level: Primary and above.
Flight Simulator II converts the com¬
puter's keyboard and monitor into an
airplane cockpit. Students can chart
courses and- fly them by manipulating
controls on the plane’s instrument panel.
Publisher: SubLogic (Apple, Atari, Com¬
modore): Microsoft (IBM). Hardware:
Apple II, Atari (64K), Commodore 64
(disk or cassette), IBM PC. Price: Disk,
$49.95; cassette, $39.95. Grade level:
Intermediate and. above. c
Gertrude’s Puzzles is designed to
develop children’s reasoning and com¬
puter literacy skills as they wander
through Gertrude the Goose's house
and solve a variety of logic puzzles. Pub¬
lisher: The Learning Comoany. Hard¬
ware: Apple II, Atari (48K), Commo¬
dore 64, IBM PC. PCjr. Price: $44.95
(Commodore, $29.95). Grade level:
Intermediate-junior high
Picture Blocks presents two activities:
In Free Form, youngsters can select
shapes and create original pictures. In
Picture Blocks, children duplicate pic¬
tures or patterns drawn by the computer.
The program offers six pattern categories
and two levels of difficulty. Publisher:
Proaram Design. Hardware: Atari (24K),
Commodore 64 p^a- $24.95. Grade
level: Primary
John Cleese: warning on levy
Video levy
no joke
says John ,
Cleese tfs/ST,
By Raymond Snoddy I
HE GREEN PAPER propos- '
ing a levy on blank video
tapes is no laughing matter
for John Cleese, hero of
Fawlty Towers and co¬
founder and director of
Video Arts, a leading train¬
ing film company.
The levy is only totally ruin¬
ous-nothing to get worried
about." he says,
ohn Cleese believes the
Government proposals in the
Green Paper could destroy
the UK’s £8m a year training
film market.
r ideo Arts hires out single
copies of its 60 training films
at £85 for two days. The com¬
pany has been vigorous in
prosecuting illicit copying by
customers.
•'ideo Arts fears that in return
for paying a levy of about
25p on blank video tape the
domestic user will have the
right to copy Video Arts films
for their personal use.
f the proposal becomes law.
Video Arts believes it would
be impossible for the com¬
pany to tell the difference
between a legitimate personal
copy and an illicit one.
ohn Cleese believes the
change could cost the com¬
pany, whicfr~ has a annual
turnover of about £4m from
films such as The Disorgan¬
ised Manager, more than 80
per cent of its income,
iny benefit from redistributed
levy would be tiny by com¬
parison, John Cleese argues.
We can’t really believe this is
a situation that the Govern¬
ment wants to create," Mr
Cleese says. _
n its evidence to the Depart¬
ment of Trade and Industry
the company says, “It is the
unequivocal view of the
directors of Video Arts that
if the Green Paper is allowed
into the statute book in its
present form, the training
film industry will not
survive.”
At tne very least me company
wants training films to be
excluded from the effects of
new legislation.
In case the formal evidence is
not enough to change the
Government’s mind, John
Cleese is considering some
unorthodox lobbying of his
own.
He believes Mr J. P. Britton
in the DTI’s Industrial Pro¬
perty and Copyright depart¬
ment might benefit from a
copy of his classic training
film Decisions, Decisions.
One of its lessons is the import¬
ance of consulting everyone
properly before decisions are
taken.
• Further opposition to the
Government’s plans to impose
a levy on blank audio and
video tapes came this week
from the National Consumer
Council, Consumers in the
European Community Group
and the Royal National
Institute for the Blind.
All three at a Press conference
said the levy would push up
tape prices for everyone who
likes to record television
programmes at home or use
audio cassettes and hit blind
people hardest of all.
Computers set to take
over professionals’ jobs j
BY THE TURN of the century,
I the jobs of many professionals
—accountants, lawyers, person¬
nel evaluators and even com¬
puter specialists—will be
replaced by the “ expert-in-a-
box,” a computer system able
to deliver advice based on
opinions from the leading
! authorities in their fields,
i The market in the UK alone
i for this kind of “ expert
r terns” will be worth £100m
1990 with the world market
worth £lbn, according to
Systems Dynamics, a Hertford¬
shire, UK, consultancy.
The company says: “Growth
in consultancy and support will
be equally dynamic as such sup¬
port services are essential for
the successful application of the
new technology.”
Systems Dynamics’ analysis of
I the expert systems market is
contained in a report. The De-
j •
vedopment of Artificial Intelli¬
gence in the UK. It warns that
while Britain is at the front
of the artificial intelligence
race, it is spending its money
badly: “We are distributing
money to the ‘fat cats’ of in¬
dustry in the hope of commer¬
cial benefit.
“ The academic nature of the
UK artificial intelligence devel¬
opment and our national reluc¬
tance to market products from
our research departments bodes
ill for British AI.”
The authors say, nevertheless,
that they were surprised by the
generally high level of aware¬
ness concerning artificial intelli¬
gence and expert systems and
were impressed by the quality
of basic expert system building
tools available at modest cost.
The report costs £360 from
the consultancy on 09278 4674.
AC
PT If/vi/es
Blank tapes levy on the
BY RAYMOND SNODDY
MINISTERS are believed to
have accepted in principle the
case for a levy on blank audio
and video tapes.
A Green Paper on copyright
law reform due to be published
in the next few weeks is
expected to reflect this.
It would reverse the stance
of a 1981 discussion paper which
opposed such a measure.
Serious consideration is likely
to be given to a levy on blank
tapes at the point when they
leave the shop rather than the
factory.
The aim would be to compen-
• sate copyright holders for their
j loss from unauthorised copying
rather than to use a levy to
boost the record or film indus¬
tries.
The British Phonographic
Industry believes the Green
Paper will concede part of the
case it has been arguing on be¬
half of the record industry for
10 years. The BPI would like to
sec a levy on tapes and re¬
corders and the money col¬
lected to be distributed to the
record industry including copy¬
right holders.
A levy system already oper¬
ates in countries such as West
Germany and Hungary and is
being introduced in France.
The BPI believes the Govern¬
ment will recommend a tax
on blank tapes and that the.
money should go solely to copy¬
right owners to compensate for
unauthorised listening or watch¬
ing.
Recent market research car¬
ried out for the BPI suggests
that more than half the popula¬
tion have used blank cassettes
to make their own recordings
from radio or from records and
tapes.
“ We know now that nine out
of every 10 blank tapes pro¬
duced are used for recording
music. More than three-quarters
of the adult population have
tape-recording equipment,” said
Mr John Deacon, director gen¬
eral of BPI.
The turnover of the British
record industry at retail prices
was £488m in 1983 and is esti¬
mated at £520m last year. But
the growth is coming from the
success of British music in the
U.S. rather than in the UK.
Industry estimates suggest
that .between 80m and 90m
blank cassettes are sold in the
UK each year and that 87 per
cent of the market is accounted
for by people who make home
music recordings.
Mr Deacon foresees further
copyright problems for the
record industry from a new
trend — record rental shops.
The problem of copying newly
released music could be made
worse by renting virtually in¬
destructible compact discs.
Run for the Money is a science-fiction
game that teaches about the economy-
laws of supply and demand, advertis¬
ing, production, pricing and so on.
Having crash-landed on a foreign planet,
players must earn money to repair their
spaceship by making products and
selling them to the planet’s inhabi-'
tants. Publisher: Scarborough. Hard¬
ware: Macintosh, Atari (48K), Commo¬
dore 64, IBM PC. PCjr, PC/XT. Price:
$39.95 (Macintosh, $49.95). Grade
level: Intermediate and above. See:
February 1985, p. 14.
Movie Maker encourages students to
create their own movies. Users can
create action scenes using supplied or in¬
vented characters and can zoom in,
change object size, record and play back
movies. Publisher: Reston. Hardware:
Apple II, Atari (48K). Commodore 64.
Price: $49.95. Grade level: Inter¬
mediate and above. See: October 1984,
p. 47.
I
COMPUTER FAIRE
(A look *t tbo mw ATARI CORP.)
by Kin E. StockwoH. put ptu
I attandtd tho Wait Cout Computer Fair* u a representative of
Microbits Peripheral Products, Inc., for whom I am the Director of
Technical Support. The MPP booth was quite active lea we had hoped).
The buaiest booths, however, were those of two ATARI user groups.
ATARI did not have a booth, but this did not stop them from enjoying
the largest exposure and the moat enthusiastic reactions of any
manufacturer ‘'represented" there Two groups, the San Leandro
Computer Clulx ISLCC) and the Atari Bey Area Computer Users Society
(ABACUS) managed to finagle booths aids-by side. Since these were WX
10* locations, this gave them a storefront of 20 feet exposure It wasn't
enoughll Every time I stopped by the booths, the crowd was S deep ALL
the way around the booths
It ia only faire (tee-hee) to mention that ATARI did have some official
representation at th show: Officials from ATARI frequently stopped by
the combined chib booths, and the Corporation donated S to 10 thousand
dollars worth of promotional materials to the dubs to be given away to
a very interested public ATARI also provided 2 ol the new 520ST
machines and several XE computers lot display and demonstration. In
addition, the SLCC rsolved an ST system to be raffled oil at the show.
(A digression hare: several other manufacturers also provided items to
be raffled off by the SLCC The income from the raffle was given entirely
to an organiiation that provides assistance to dis-advantaged child on.
Bravol, SLCC). By cooperating with and assisting the user groups. ATARI
CORP managed to turn about 10 thousand dollars worth of warehoused
promo materials, phis an ST and a little respect, into about s half million
dollars worth of publicity and enthusiasm.
The longer Jack Tramisl controls ATARI CORP.. the more respect I gain
for the men's intelligence and for his grasp of how to make limited dollars
do incredible amounts of work. Any of you who have read my blathermgs
before should know I am an advocate of user groups in a big way. Before
I became connected with MPP, I often said the USER GROUPS are a
multi-million dollar rescues the manufacturers of hardware and software
ignore to their own disadvantage. Since joining MPP. I have constantly
lobbied for more and better yaer group support, and have been able to
place some meaningful programs to benefit user groups. Of course, the
benefits flow both wayslll Tramisl. by taking the actions ha did at the
WCCF has gone a long way to legitimizing user groups in the eyes of
the rest of the industry.
Other corporations with industry influence have lately begun making
concerted, directed efforts at suppotmg the User Groups. ANTIC
magazine has sponsored the Worldwide User-group Network (WUN).
ATARI is working closely with ANTIC in this endeavor. This will provide
a single focused point of dispersal for timely ATARI information as well
as a single point to which ATARI can go for User Group opinions and
feedback. This program was snnounced at the show, and waa discussed
in detail at a reception at ANTIC corporata offices. The list of BIG names
at ATARI who attended the ANTIC/WUN reception includes practically
ail of the movers snd shakers at ATARI. Thera is no doubt now as to
whether ATARI is willing to support the user groups snd treat them as
worthwhile snd responsible citizens of the computer work).
ATARI has introduced a computer which can truly be called a
PERSONAL computer Ibased on price), yet wilt run rings around the two-,
industry biggies, the IBM PC and the MACINTOSH/LISA. The speed alone
is incredible. Couple this with COLOR, and the ability of using a high-res
color monitor, SUPER high-res monochrome monitor, or your TV set. and
you have a great system right oft the bat. In addition, the disk drives
are not only FAST, but have K meg and 1 meg (depending on which drive).
The S12K RAM is not eaten up with FONTS, OPERATING SVSTEMS and
junk. There is 192K of ROM in the ST. This is where the OS. GEM. and
the FONTS reside, as well as whichever '‘native" language will come with
the machine. This leaves your S12K virtually untouched and free for
application software.
The keyboard is the nicest I've felt since I test drove a DEC Professional
PC. In lact, if any computer has a nicer keyboard, I haven't seen it yet.
The case is beautiful, and the set-up is — well, the set-up is pure ATARI.
Detractors will make loud rude noises about the separate power supplies
and “ALL THOSE CABLES" that are. indeed, a part ol the system. Instead
ol a lengthy lecture on the design constraints ol a personal computer
system, let me say there really was no other alternative axcapt to build
another computer looking like the IBM PC and being considerably more
expensive. ATARI considered this to be unacceptable and decided if you
are after POWER (without the price) you could buy an ST. If you are after
STATUS or IMAGE, you have the IBM PC and the MACINTOSH family.
SOFTWARE: ATARI will gladly sell a development system to anybody
who is willing to plop down the cash up front at a minimum of FULL
RETAIL. In addition, developers will have to take seminars provided by
Digital Research, and will have to pay for the development system
software (I estimate that MPP has spent about $8,000.00 to acquire
Cave Girl Clair is ah adventure game
designed specifically for girls. A cave girl
is separated from her tribe and must use
her wits to find shelter, food, medicine
and clothing until she rejoins her tribe
at summer’s end. Publisher: Addison-
Wesley. Hardware: Apple II. Atari (48K),
Commodore 64. Price: S39.95. Grade
level: Primary-junior high. See: April/
May 1935. pp. 23-24.
. ~T '■■■ >'V > •
tha nsetsssry equipment, tools, and Information.) Usingthto
ATARI can realistically make plans based on WHO IS REALLY
DEVELOPING SOFTWARE FOR THE ST land there is no shortage of
software developers working on programs NOW).
Wi! I buy an ST? Vbu betl Not only will I buy one when they are
available, but I have already recommended them to several serious
seekers of computer power, and will continue to do so. Am I impressed
by the new machines? Not only am I impeesed by the new machines,
but also by the fact that ATARI is getting them out ON TIME.
While attending the WCCF. I had an opportunity to visit a general
meeting of the SLCC as a guest speaker. I was and am impressed by
tha caliber of the membership and leadership of that group. For a local
club they are top notch.
MEGAFOIMT 11 +
Megafont 11+ 1125. XLEnt Software. Box 5228. Springfield. VA 221501
is s new version of an old program, but it is more then that. It is an
updated version of a very good program so people with primers who
could not lake advantage of this program before can now do aa New
features are also added to allow tha user to do more things than ever.
Owners ol Epson and the various related printers can now have four
different size screen dumps. The left margin can be adjusted to allow
for logos or pictures to be used in letterheads or whatever you wish.
At the same tune Megatont II + allows you to pause the printer so you
won't overheat it when dumping a picture etc.
Another of the features added is tha Fast Print option. This is added
to speed up the time it takes to list out programs. I like this feature since
printing out the program listings is one of the things I do on the newsletter
and it takes a long time to print out the listings for some programs.
Another new festura ia called the Font Splicer which allows you to
combine two fonts together. With certain word processors. Atariwriter,
Bank Street Writer, text Wizard, ate. you can taka out the control codes
and print your files in any font which Megafont 11+ supporta using
Megafont's controls to give you a new type of printing of your files.
There are many things one can do with this program, including
dumping mode 7+ and 8 graphics. Koalspsd and Atari Artist screens
can be printed with Megafont II+.
I've started using this program and find it not only does what I want,
but it gives me the flexibility to change things around the way I want
them and in turn enhance my printing to make a better looking page of
whatever I am doing. I can only say the people at XLEnt Software took
a good program and mads it better than ever. The inatructions are clear /JL. g*.
and concise and not too long. It is a menu driven program so one should ’v7Lt&-
be able to use Megatont 11+ within a matter of minutes. , [a
— Larry Gold
Will Computers Ever
Really Think?
..." ‘The way people are misled about arti¬
ficial intelligence,’ [says Hubert Dreyfus
(U. California, Berkeley)], ‘is by scientists
who say, “Pretty soon computers will be
smarter than we are, and then we’ll have
to worry about how to control them.’’ ’ For
two decades now, the feisty, impassioned
Dreyfus...has been in the forefront of the
controversy over artificial intelligence....
He maintains that computers will never be
able to think because scientists will never
come up with a suitably rigorous set of
rules to describe how we think. To many
computer scientists, this is like saying the
Earth is flat. But so far, none of them
have been able to prove him wrong. Even
most artificial intelligence researchers
now admit that before they can make
computers any smarter, they’ll have to
come up with an explanation of how intel¬
ligence works in people.... At issue are the
merits of two descriptions of reality—one
experiential and intuitive, the other theo¬
retical and mathematical. During the sci¬
entific revolution of the 17th century, phi¬
losophy gave rise to physics as a way of
understanding the natural world through
w, formal laws; now it is witnessing the birth
of a new science that seeks to understand
the mind through formal rules. Will the
workings of the mind prove amenable to
format description? That turns out to be
\ the real question. Dreyfus says they will
■ not.”
j 6(2):-6-'' Var h.\
Pff
' - 1* ~
.**«> OFFICE
20 SSL ■■■■'■■
! f‘mntc Beg Tetephon* 73C 0£9 Tdearcnhfc^Addrer • SECir-^17
Ttlex Mo. 31213 ' J e5 ‘" SECIJS '0:.1S
For enquiries p!e?:s ring ° VAL/301
The Colled, of c uste '•
VALUATIONCcOMPUTER SOFTWARE ^
jt presen^ra^ USA to GATT the CCC is
Software viz tapes, discs etc! * C loras Nation of Computer
■ ?his T s^ud^7s C |o^ple?ad n 5 a ?CatTSn"oV^ y -Mn- th i^? atter and until
continued on ttfsa^^su^f end hopples™ nTtf*"
. set out on CM 1979/iiosV iS
* Lg_,re.at-d pioqrams and update an d correction programs
FOB value (Method 1)
jjse L-Application Pron^m?
^ Of costs,Correctors nay to , P roduco satisfactory
the media (tape, disc,' card etc) Diu-'fL ♦ f ° duty cn the Price of
on,the media with the total S? the P™»«-
is resolytii u "'" lS Sh °“ !d be made on Previous shipments until this matter
V i i
^ it is strss'ipr' +n- „• _ .
the transitional'’arrangements'^? Sure on ^ in keeping.with
further instructions ^ ^
tk
C M Coutts
for Comptroller of Customs
Fresh challenges in disk memory e
■ 0NE 0F . <*» Important criteria
rr upon companies choose
--.microcomputers is that of
- Z- memory capacity. Clearly the
- • bigger the memory, the greater
• -; tiie potential application for the
y* equipment
Microcomputer memories
Z:. 001,16 m more tiian one variety.
Z' The com P uter needs a certain
- amount of memory just to carry
T: out its calculations, according
• :* to the particular program which
... has been loaded Into its work¬
ing memory. This type of store
is normally based on semicon¬
ductor circuits
Without other forms of data
storage, the result of each cal-
culabon would be lost each time
the computer was switched off
To counter this, makers have’
- resorted to magnetic types of
- storage. The most popular form
.. of long-term storage Is the
:: floppy-disk—for personal com-
puters the SJ In floppy disk
;; predominates today. Informs-
r. tion is stored magnetically on
« closely-spaced tracks end road
r-wtth * magnetic head, rather !
—- HIm the way that the stylus of ,
—? *n audio rocord runs over i
;r grooves. Shugart, is 1978, was .
i one of the first companies to
> introduce equipment based on
c these disks.
i The market for floppy disks
■ is a volatile one, with an in-
i creasing number of competitors.
Companies such as Kodak, bet-
: ter known for its photographic
products, have entered the field.
Other major competitors in¬
clude 3M, Verbatim and
Wabash.
Early . in March, Rhone-
Poulenc Systems, one of the
world's leading computer media
companies, which produces
materials for magnetic storage,
bought a major interest 'in
Erown Disk, the floppy disk
manufacturing subsidiary of
Dysan Corporation in the' U S.
RPS is a leading manufac¬
turer of computer tapes in
Europe. Brown Disk, based in
Colorado Springs, was set up
only four years ago and has
projected sales for this year of
about $4m,
RPS has risen quickly In Its
home market la Prance. It now
has an estimated 20 per cent
of the French market and hopes
that the acquisition of the
American company will give it
Variety of
-memory systems
ELAINE WILLIAMS
- ic/yfer
* strong foothold In the U.S.
where Brown Disk is reckoned
to have 60 per cent of the mar¬
ket for the new generation of
high density floppy disks.
The agreement with Dvsan—•
which is merging with Xidex,
*lS?°K H h^ GED STODENTS - Mos, moderns
Cleanj don t have enough time to use computers, accord¬
ing to Ken Brumbaugh, executive director. Minnesota
Educational Computing Corp. (MECC). To prove his
point, he cited results of a recent survey of MECC clients
It found that 24% of the secondary schools said the
a ' cra ^ time their students worked with comput¬
ers was 0-10 minutes. "This is worthless." Brumbaugh
Average Weekly Computer Time tor Students
elementary
SCHOOLS
O-IO MINUTES
10-30 MINUTES
fcyii we
-•'“Vs
30-60 MINUTES
-Mi’
, r y-. ..
MORE THAN
60 MINUTES
■ .
SECONDARY
SCHOOLS
i : , JTA - - JL
» < 'Cl Ycy.5? »/.%.-
a n' d J", r y -fo e 0 ven percem said the average time was 10-
8/(1 re P. orted 30-60 minutes: and 31% re-
ported the average time is more than 60 minutes ner
week. How much time should thev have? “Sixtv or more
f ? r j“ nior high and high schools^!
dents. Brumbaugh answ-ered. “Thev could use 15 min-
tiin S school? mW? for H doin § homework." In elemen-
schoofs sa ri f0Und SOme dlfferenc es: 18% of the
rnnnS-H In nn h ? v ? ra S e time was 0-10 minutes: 51%
mS?e fhan°6n 0 m,nutes: 25% - 30-60 minutes; and 6%.
MECC dienK ^ mute f Since the survey included onlv
mvnlvedwith results re P resem schools that are more
Brumbaugh said PMerS ' ha " ma " V °' her schools -
frte th- t ^ 8000 News “
. r° W,,h a CofW
MS-OOS-CP/M i Jz" " ANSI dma '- communications patches
«» SWP snew address 1000 w"?' n‘ C ft w Y ° l “ 0 " 9,nal d,sk P ,us 9 25
•1*0 have 3 n.,hii. H' 1000 W Fu 9r FT Wor th. TX 76115-3301 Thev
• «*ndi.k pro9tam°rMS-DOS. 0 ' *'° ' 1 inC ' ud " M£M8RAIN -
challenged by under 4 In ver¬
sions for the compact, portable
and small desk-top machines.
Sony, the developers of a 3} in
floppy disk which is protected
in a rigid shell, claims that it
has about 90 per, cent of the
market for under 4 in disks.
Sales are growing at a rate of
about 50 per cent a year.
Sony, which, introduced its
disk about two years ago, hoped
then that its version would
become the de facto standard
against three proposed disk
types from Maxell, IBM and
Dysan. The advantage of such
another U.S. corporation—also ?- y f an ', The advantage of such
covers the purchase of another J? isks f ? r portable and small
Dysan subsidiary, DYPY a Phonal computers is in their
• — —' »»• OIIUU 1 C 4
Dysan subsidiary, DYPY, a
specialist European floppy and
rigid disk-maker.
RPS is planning to double its
annul I nvn/liinft—— _ _ r . __ -
<-- vvuiyuLViv IX Am U1V14
small size which have the ability
to store a s much information as
the larger types.
Sony now dominates this em-
annual production capacity for n ° w dominates this em-
the next few years, in linewith Skeb lt?L
forecasts of an increase in the 75 Jlr
SetTmoro th?nTn ab,M " 6 *a ^ un?er I to dSi
cent^bi the Alread y Hewlett Packard, Apple
Whether ornntn,.~f. / , and ACT to the UK are com-
ingin personal m,tted to the Sony disk while
there wUl still thre * ““J 00 - bu t so far unnamed
demand for disk memo™ “* manu facturer S are forecast to
K In . ^ V . ad °Pt the disk later this year
.The 5i in disks are b eing f or forthcoming portable busi-
1 nes computer ■—-
I .? on ^ s d i®lts are already cap-
1 w storing up to 1 mega-
b ytfs of information and this
could be doubled in-.the near
future, says the company.
m f° r . less portable personal
machines where greater infor-
j storage is needed, fixed
i or Winchester disks are being
increasingly adopted. These
memory systems are based on a
thin layer of magnetic material
usually Feric oxide, laid on a’
circular rotating disk.
d T lvor “"it can contain
t?ore than one disk: informa¬
tion, in the form of binary
digits is stored on concentric
tracks, recording onto the mag¬
netic medium—just like floppy
disks, each track is subdivided
into a fixed number of sectors.
But even these devices can
suffer problems, so companies
have -developed back-up systems
based on reel, cartridge and
cassette tape units to ensure
that long-term storage of data
can be guaranteed even when
the main disk unit has failed.
i These systems automatically
jeopy information stored on the
hard disk.
Moptown Hotel is designed to develop
: prcbiem-sclving skills as students identify
trai-s, select and control variables, sort
and make inferences. Publisher: The
Learning Company. Hardware: Apple II,
Atari (43K), Commcaore 64, IBM PC,
PCjr. PC/XT, TRS-80 Color Computer.
Price: S39.95. Grade level: Intermediate-
junior high. See: September 1983, p. 36-
January 1984, p. 54.
computers, in most ocnuois,
Have Brought No Revolution
-—-- ^r^n-fv
By EDWARD B. FISKE
After investing heavily in microcom-
uters, public schools in the New York
aetropolitan area are finding that they
re still far from achieving the aca-
emic revolution expected from the
ew technology.
Interviews with students, teachers,
irincipals and others disclose that
nost schools are using computers pri-
narily to teach computer literacy —
caching about the computers them-
elves.
Relatively little is being done, they
ay, to exploit the potential to teach
nher subjects in a more efficient, in-
eresting or effective manner.
“Everybody is talking about where
ve should be,” said John V. O’Farrell,
principal of Walt Whitman High School
In Huntington, L.I. “But the reality is
that no one is there.”
Education officials say the shortcom-
ngs of computers as learning tools in
lew York City and its suburbs are
rimiiar to the problems teachers are
laving across the country. A recent na-
ional study found that computers in
dgh schools are used two-thirds of the
ime for computer literacy.
Teachers say the biggest problem is
he dearth of quality software — the
omputer instructions that make up
be teaching materials.. Moreover, they
ay, most districts lack the means to
lentify the better software that does
Ttaf, and in most schools only a hand-
in which students create a factory. Three
activities give students the opportunity to
fit objects together, rotate them, take
them apart, change them and observe
the results. Publisher: Sunburst. Hard¬
ware: Apple II. Atari, Commodore 64.
IBM PC. PCjr, TRS-80 Color Computer.
Price: $55. Grade level: Primar y and
above. '
Computers j
In the Classroom |
First of three articles.
Pul of teachers have the training, or
sven the inclination, to make effective!
use of computers;
Teachers report, and research con¬
firms, that most of the instruction that
does take place on computers is routine
drill, and many educators are begin¬
ning to question whether this “elec¬
tronic workbook” approach is effective
once the novelty of computers wears
off.
“The idea was that kids would learn
more if they could shoot down air¬
planes by multiplying numbers,” said
George Miller, head of the computer
program at Weston High School in Con¬
necticut. “But drill and practice didn’t
work. Students don’t like to practice
their numbers on a computer any more
than they like to do it on paper.”
Drill and computer literacy pro¬
grams are also criticized for failing to
utilize the full power of computers.
SDecialists in the field point out that
computers are able to construct
models, simulate complex problems
and perform other tasks that cannot be
done with other technologies.
Pressure From Parents
There are some instances where
educators believe the computers are
hoing used well. Word-processing is
Droving to be an effective way to teach
writing. and special education teachers
are making ingenious use of computers
to provide individual instruction for
handicapped students. Some teachers
in science, social studies and other
fields have begun to use computers to
simulate experiments that would
otherwise be impossible.
Although many schools have had
computers for well over a decade, the
big push came three or four years ago,
when a consensus emerged among par¬
ents, school board members ami others
that computers were the wave of the fu¬
ture. Some educators believe that the
rapid growth was a response as much
to pressure from parents and political
leaders as to a perception of educa¬
tional needs.
“They feel ‘I must have it because
the next school has it,’ ” said Charlotte
Frank, executive director of the divi¬
sion of curriculum and instruction for
the New York City Board of Education.
To some school officials, there was
no doubt that students had to be ex-
posed to computers.
Controlling the Technology
“Students have to learn about com¬
puters if they are going to control their
destiny,” said Richard McNamara,
coordinator of computer instruction at
the Wait Whitman school, which has 48
machines. “If you don’t give students
some awareness of how to use com¬
puter technology, they are going to be
controlled by it.”
Virtually every public school now of¬
fers students some form of computer
literacy. In Stamford, Conn., for exam¬
ple, all fifth graders take an eight-week
course that introduces them to the his¬
tory of computers, the mechanics of
the hardware, elementary program¬
ming and how computers are affecting
modem society.
High schools in Yonkers now require
every senior to take a one-semester
course, half of it devoted to keyboard
skills and the other to computer litera
cy.
Th* New York Tin*!/Dec.», 1*4
At the Senator Robert F. Wagner
Junior High School on East 76th Street
in Manhattan, the workbenches in what
was once a woodworking shop now hold
12 TRS-80 microcomputers. Paul
Booth, the computer instructor,
teaches seventh graders typing and
basic programming, and has them do
exercises such as converting Fahren¬
heit temperatures to centigrade.
"We’re trying to expose the child just
to the mechanics of computers at this
point, to what the computer can do and
why,’’ Mr. Booth said.
Drill and Practice
The pattern is the same across the
country. Using a sample of 1,082 ele¬
mentary and secondary schools, the
. Center for the Social Organization of
Schools at Johns Hopkins University
concluded that nearly two-thirds of stu¬
dent computer time in high schools two
years ago was devoted to computer lit¬
eracy. Eighteen percent was spent on
drill and 6 percent each on electronic
games, word-processing data retrieval
and other uses.
At the elementary school level, the
study found that drill consumed 40 per¬
cent of student time on computers, with
computer literacy accounting for 36
percent and games for 24 percent.
It is a pattern that some educators
are beginning to question. At the West
Elementary School in New Canaan,
eight Commodore computers, half of
them purchased by parents with pro¬
ceeds from a school fair. Throughout
the school day small groups of second
to sixth graders come for lessons in
computer literacy.
Leonard Tomasello, the principal, is
proud of the care that went into organ¬
izing the computer program, but he
wonders whether it is worth diverting
students from math or other subjects.
“I’m not even sure that progra mming
is something that students will need to
know in the future,” he said.
ster,” the computer projects math
problems on the screen; what the stu¬
dent types in the correct answer, a man
runs across the screen, away from a
monster that is chasing him. When too
many wrong answers are given, the
man is chewed up by the monster. If
enough right answers are given, the
man takes a hammer and kills the
monster.
Jeffrey Williams, a reading instruc¬
tor at Stratford High School, uses com¬
puter exercises as a reward for com¬
pleting regular assignments on paper.
“They love it,” he said. “They’ve
had it with the workbook approach and
will stick with the computer.”
Some teachers have used computers
to address special academic needs of
students at both ends of the academic
spectrum. At Bayonne High School one
day recently, Gail Rusin, a 17-year-old
senior, used a program called “Chem¬
istry 1” to review material in an honors
science seminar. In one exercise, she
calculated how many liters of oxygen
could be combined with 128 grams of
sulfur dioxide.
“This is a godsend,” said the teach¬
er, Thomas J. Russo. “It lets students
who are ahead of the class get extra
help working by themselves.” T
Computers are proving effective in
the management of instruction for stu¬
dents with varying educational needs. 1
At the Lakeview Elementary School
in Mahopac, N.Y., the computer labo¬
ratory is linked to a regional educa¬
tional center that maintains records of
each child. Whenever children punch in
their code, the computer recognizes
them, greets them on the screen by
name and produces the program that
has been selected by the teacher. The
computer then provides a printout for
each student that points out weak and
strong areas.
Writing and Rewriting
Teachers also praise the “infinite pa¬
tience” of computers in dealing with
slow learners or handicapped students.
Austine Olson, an English teacher at
Weston High School, uses computers to
teach writing to students with learning
disabilities.
“They have a lot of trouble with
handwriting," she said. “It’s much
easier for them to correct and rewrite,
on a screen.”
Some teachers refuse to allow the
computers to be used only for drill. At
Shoreham-Wading River Middle
School on Long Island, for example,
Edward Gaias, the computer coordina¬
tor, said, “You won’t find any drill and
practice here with the exception of spe¬
cial ed.’
Anthony Messina, the school’s music
teacher, has students use a computer to
compose their own music even though
they are unfamiliar with musical nota¬
tion. They sit at a piano keyboard, one
at a time, and play a musical phrase,
which is then fed into a computer
linked to the piano.
He then shows them how to create a
"loop” so that the computer repeats
the musical phrase while the student
improvises over it. The computer will
also print out a composition in musical
notation.
"We underestimate the creative abil¬
ity of kids,” Mr. Messina said. "There
potentially could be closet composers
all over the world.”
many elementary scuutna ua»c uiouc
‘ extensive use of Logo, a computer lan¬
guage that teaches students elemen¬
tary programming skills but also per¬
mits them to learn principles of geome¬
try in an inductive rather than an ab¬
stract maimer.
Simulations at the high school level
include a biology program in which stu¬
dents can dissect a frog on the screen
and then, in what surely constitutes an
educational innovation, go through the
even more complex task of reassem¬
bling it. When the frog is put back to¬
gether, it jumps off the screen.
Such uses of computers are rare,
however, and educators report numer¬
ous obstacles to exploiting the full
range of possibilities of computers,
be ginning with the inadequacy of cur¬
rent software. Software is the set of in¬
structions that tell the machine — the
hardware— what to do.
“It’s very difficult to find quality
software,” said Beth Maass, acting
coordinator of media for the Stamford
school system. “Most of what is avail¬
able is little more than electronic
pages. They aren’t embedding graph -1
ics in the programs, and there seems to i
be little quality control. I find errors in'
the programs all the time.”
Mary Schneckenburger, a home eco¬
nomics teacher at Stratford Hig h
School, said that most of the software
she has encountered “turns out to be
; something you could do with an over¬
head projector.”
National researchers confirm that
there are problems. Since December
1982, the Educational Products Infor
wcrxnwnne skiu, Dut that it is cot im¬
portant enough to take time from aca¬
demic subjects.
Lynne P. Rigg, a computer science
teacher and researcher in Garland,
Tex., said teaching programming be¬
fore students were in the sixth or sev -1
enth grade was a waste of time because i
their psychological development was i
usually not sufficient.
“Programming is a very abstract or
formal process,” she said. “You can
teach a 5-year-old to program his ini¬
tials, but he cannot transfer what he
learns to solving other problems.”
Most educators familiar with com¬
puters believe that, while the machines
I are interesting in themselves, their
I real significance for schools is as a tool
.for teaching regular subjects.
“The computer should not be the
focus or the end result,” said Nancy
Cetorelli, the math coordinator at
Stratford High School in Connecticut.
As a result, teachers are moving to
explore what has come to be known as
“computer-assisted instruction." The
Orchard Hill Elementary School in Mil- j
ford. Conn.', for example, began'using,
computers last year in the fourth, fifth,
and sixth grades as a means of moti-j
vating students in mathematics, spell-’
ing and grammar.
J Many local scnooi systems, ana some
entire states, have begun to subscribe
to such services, and some have their
own central screening systems. In
Stamford, for example, Mrs. Maass’s
office screens software and purchases
what it deems to be useful. Teachers
and principals in each school can then
borrow what the district selects and, if,
they choose, purchase their own copies, j
Afkaw tioifa Mian —»■-- I
bucjr uiuwc, puiuiddc utcrir uwa copies.
mation Exchange Institute < n .. Others have even tried involving stu-
ampton, L.I., hl52 m 22? de ? ts °? e *g ecti «-
of edimaftnnai -«*.- pieces | in practice, however, most purchas-1
ing decisions are still made by teachers |i
and supervisors on t he basis of revie ws |
The basic problem is the sheer vol¬
ume of software. Mr. Komoski esti¬
mates that there are 7,000 pieces of
educational software on the mai-w*
with 125 added each month.
"In a way, the industry is approach¬
ing software the way it has always ap¬
proached textbooks,” he said. “Pub¬
lishers want to have a book on every¬
thing. They will produce a few good
things and then get caught up in quanti-,
ty-
Another screening service is Micro-
aft, which is supported by the federally
/financed Northwest Regional La bora- !
Itory.
matter how creative a piece of soft¬
ware may be, it has little practical
value if the skills it requires do not
coincide with what a particular group
. of students has learned and is ready to
believe I ieam.
“You can’t rework a whole year’s
curriculum just to fit in a particular
piece of software, no matter how good
it is,” Mr. Komoski said.
Still another problem is tr ainin g
teachers in the use of computers. New
York City has trained 8,000 of its 56,600
teachers. Last year 400 of the 1,200
teachers in the Stamford school system
took seminars in the use of computers,
on their own time. Nevertheless, prin¬
cipals say, teacher insistence is a
major problem.
“Many teachers feel uncomfortable
with computers,” said Marge Schneid¬
er, principal of the Cloonan Middle
School in Stamford. “They know that
computers are here and that they ought
to be interested. But staff tr aining is
still the biggest problem.”
Even small things can sometimes
contribute to teacher concern about the
effects of computers. Joanne Scolaro,
the librarian at the Bell Middle School
in Chappaqua, N.Y., has been working
of
cooperation with the Consumes Uiion 1
The institute - —
a s s<sr er nrti0,1 ;
Accommodating Software j
standards,” said Kenneth i£rr mt0 curriculum. t
director - “ife
simpie P to^ 0 P^ , ®~ pedestr ian >
Schools
could have gotten in a 55 workbook.
Some educators, however, beL
that the situation is beginning to
change. “We’re not hearing as many
complaints about the software,” said
Carol Scelza, manager of the erf oca -
tional technology unit of the New Jer¬
sey State Department of Education. “It
seems to be improving.”
Even when good software is avail¬
able, teachers say, schools rarely have
the procedures for getting it into the
hands of teachers. “We have no means
to review what’s on the market,” said
Joseph Ehrard, a physics teacher at
Weston. We re buying in thedark.”
‘Caught Up in Quantity’
with students on word processors. She
has them file what they write in what
she calls their “electronic notebook.” 1
“We hear different excuses now,
|she said. “Instead of ‘the dog ate my
homework’ they say ‘the computer
erased my disk.’ ”
HOMEPAK ($50. Batteries Included) give* the user the most value per
ilotter tor env home application* package I've seen. Il's three program*
integrated into ocv» menu system. HomeText. HomeFind and HomeTerm
may alhahare the .am* data toe*. AB three program* ua* a euatom
character lont lor displaying text which ia pleasingly different from the
usual Atari Ml. and yet easy to read. Multiple drivea are supported, and
files can be road and written on double denatty.
HomeText is an amazingly powerful word processor offering many
features found on more expensive packages. The screen in th* editing
mode defaults to a pleasant green, but the screen color can be changed.
In addition to the Atari cursor arrow controls, you can quickly move to
top or bottom of the text fils Two key strokes cen move the cursor to
the top. bottom end middle left of a screen, es well e* to the beginning
or end of a line.
The Alan key toggles th* insert mode so inverse characters don t seem
to be available Blocks can be moved, copied and deleted. Search and
replace functions are implemented. A print preview option enables th*
user to see how the text will appear on a printed page - sort of. Th*
screen shows dots and colors to show the location of lines of text and
whether they are bold, extended or underlined.
Th* text buffer is less than 7k. so there’s not a lot of space in which
to work. But an "include'' function can link together more than one file
for printing. There's an elegant way to ua* unsupported primers with
this program. A menu window pops on the screen into which you type
the decimal ASCII cod* for feature desired. The program will print
multiple line headers and footers, with page numbers.
This program is excellent lor th* occasional user of a word processor
who might forget, from time to lime, the commands to us*. Well, you
don’t have to go back to th* documentation for another course in word
processing. The program is menu driven at every step of the way. For
someone using the program every day. these menus might be
bothersome. The documentation explains how to short-circuit some of
th* menus, so the authors recognize the problem.
HomeFind is a filing program which doesn't require the user to study
a manual to learn how to sat up databaM fields. Data is entered in a
common-sense manner upon what looks like an editing screen in a word
processor. Each entry can contain up to four elements which total less
than 144 characters. No element may contain more than 80. This is
generous enough lor most small filing jobs such as mailing lists. Th* only
concession to "fields" one must make is the um of ’* after two of the
elements, and a “bar” to denote a comment field. An apostrophe may
be used to replace an entire string ending in's to repeat a previously
used string’
Oats may be.recalled merely by typing a string (less th* ’s) equal to
any of th* first three elements in an entry. Multiple criteria may also be
uMd. Data files to and from HomeText may be merged. HomeFind data
disks may not contain any other tiles.
HomeTerm is th* star of this package. This communications program
is as good’s* any on th* market lor th* Atari. It supporst 1200 baud.
In addition to th* usual communications modes (ASCII. ATASCII and
XModeml. It also supports th* Vidax mode used on CompuServe Th*
default green screen color mey be changed. Text and screen brightness
may also be controlled.
When text is displayed on th* screen, a word-wrap function mey be
toggled on end off. Word-wrap make* th* text easier to read since lines
won't break words up in the middle An editing window can be displayed
during communication. This window will hold up to 120 characters which
wiU not be sent to the other computer until you press RETURN. This is
handy when in a chat mode or when using th* CB simulator or
conference functions on CompuServe Without it. sometimes you'll miss
what others are saying while you're typing a response
Ibu can open a “capture" buffer with the OPTION key while on the
screen displaying the data you want to capture You don’t need to escape
to some menu to open the buffer. Handy DOS functions are accessible
from within HomeTerm to read directories, delate rename lock & unlock
files, copy, and format disks. A 24 hour real-time clock can be set to
keep track of on-line time “Macros" can be written and even linked
together to automate dialing and logging sequences. Configuration files
can be saved to disk which contain the current list of macros, as well
as choices of baud rate, screen color and brightness, key click, duplex
mode and translation type
The documentation describes how to use the Ateri 835/1030 and MPP
modems. There is also an 8-page article by Ron Luks of CompuServe
describing how to use CompuServe's SIG’Atari. HomeTerm alone makes
HomePak worth the purchase price, in my opinion.
— Jim Bumpas, Co-Editor
L T
Rocky’s Boots encourages students to
develop reasoning skills as they design
“logic machines” with simulated com¬
puter circuits. -Students can choose the
level of difficulty and ask for directions
and examples at any time. Publisher:
The Learning Company. Hardware: Ap¬
ple II Atari (48K). Commodore 64. IBM
1 PC. PCjr. Price: S49.95 (Commodore.
$34 95). Grade level: Intermediate and
above. See: September 1983, p. 36;
January 1984, p. 55.
t
iWfo v6 a. fruii-j
vo iX CuvtuJbdtL.
ft, life ftOui?- iMV
I0SW CU,
rVm.
nfy.
* V.'b
l>5>-
\ d' 0 ^. < 532 ^:.
1983
59.
Apple Logo Programming Primer by
Donald Martin, Stephen Prata and
Marijane Axtel Paulsen. Published by
Howard H. Sams and Co. 1984.
pp453. Reviewed by Gordon Findlay.
Logo has been designed for teaching,
with the expressed aim of helping pupils,
of whatever age, learn thinking skills. It
has been universally acclaimed as the
most successful attempt so far to link
education and computers. Something
akin to a cult has grown up among some
afficionados of the language, em¬
phasising an entirety exploratory,
experimental approach to the most
widely known aspect of the Logo
system, Turtlegraphics.
! Few books go beyond Turtlegraphics
and the use of recursion to draw designs
and spirals. But there is rather more to
Logo than that: it is one of very few
languages specifically incorporating list
and language processing. This book
introduces Logo through Turtlegraphics,
but continues past this to cover lists,
words, inputs and outputs, interactive or
humanised programrrfing, property lists
and a wide range of examples of their
I uses.
1 The book starts from the very
beginning of Apple Logo, with very
\
Oct°
Ahwo id
viuovyauifjd 0iiu uie rutmu
of Educational Software
-."To glimpse the possibilities of educational
software, consider the effect of videogames
on a typical ‘problem student.’ The teacher
may complain that in the classroom this stu¬
dent has an attention span of 30 seconds.
Why is it, then, that in the video arcade he
has absolutely no problem intensely focusing
his attention for hours at a time? He teams
every move in Defender, grasps every symme¬
try and strategy in Pac-Man, and memorizes
every branch point in Dragon's Lair. It should
be obvious that videogames have stumbled
onto a key for unlocking major reservoirs of
mental energy and concentration. There’s
something about their interactivity that
strongly assists the learning process, and
this should be exploited to develop new
forms of intrinsically motivating educational
programs. But there are limits to what can be
taught by action-type videogames. The phys¬
iological responses they evoke—hand/eye co¬
ordination and pattern recognition—are
useful mostly for learning how to play video-
games better... The techniques of video-
games are in fact useful for teaching manual
. skills such as typing or piano playing. But
other forms of stimulation are needed to
teach intellectual skills. Educational soft¬
ware has not progressed very far beyond the
level of videogames, however, because so
few people really understand education—in¬
cluding educators themselves.... Only when
software authors and educators have gained
a more sophisticated understanding of each
other's skills and challenges will they be
I able to work together to build a framework
| lor educational software.”
I Moses T.L. Me (Assn, of Videogame
I Designers) in High Technology
f 5 < 3 ):10, Mar 85 [pd i 903 j] *
explicit instructions at first, very suitab
for the beginner. Great emphasis
placed on planning the approach i
a programming problem and
diagrammatic representation of eac
program is given. Frequent use is mac
of a written explanation of a program -
well written explanation at that - i
explain the techniques used and th
details of procedures used.
Use is made of utility or to
procedures which, once written ar
checked, are incorporated in program
These are intended to be general enouc
to be useful in a wide variety of othi
situations.
Appendices include a good summa
of all Logo commands, an ASC
character table, notes on managing tl
work space and start-up, a list of err
messages (with some advice about the
interpretation) and a summary of Logo
features. A tear-out card lists the ma
commands and editor keystrokes.
This is a readable and, as far as I ha\
seen, reliable book. It is very readab
indeed, is very well presented with cle
diagrams, clear print and good quali
paper. Each chapter includes questior
and programming exercises. It isn
cheap, but is a substantial volume anc
do recommend it highly.
i eiTS & BYTES - May 1985 - 53
computers
ATARI AND COMMODORE
WANT TO GET ON YOUR GIFT LIST
Ms warned on how the new model will
be sold. In January, it was to be purely
through mass merchandisers; in April it
was to be through computer stores.
Now, says Atari marketing manager
Bryan A. Kerr, “Atari is not restricting
the ST to a particular channel.” This
makes retailers wary. “I won’t answer
Atari’s phone call,” says Edward J. Ra¬
mos, president of the New York-based
Future Information Systems chain. “The
way those people [operated] in the past
has left a bad taste.”
MKk nalysts are calling it the most se-
JIMm vere slumD ever to hit the home
America Group. Commodore’s strategy
is to go back to that same market with a
JFm computer business. The indus¬
try’s first outright decline in unit sales is
causing huge headaches at Apple Com¬
puter Inc. (page 50) and International
Business Machines Corp. But for Com¬
modore International Ltd. and Atari
Corp., which depend solely on home com¬
puters for their U. S. sales, a prolonged
slump could prove lethal. To make sure
it doesn’t, these archrivals are scram¬
bling to come up with products that will
lure the increasingly sophisticated buy¬
ers who have shunned their machines.
Commodore and Atari are angling for
the kind of upscale consumers who last
Christmas spent $1,000 for an IBM or an
more powerful basic computer and add a
flashy color display. A hardware option
is expected to give Amiga the ability to
run IBM PC software. Rattigan, a former
marketing executive at PepsiCo Inc.,
says: “We have more of an opportunity
in this market than Apple or IBM. We’ve
never been in this part of the market
before and can do more coming up from |
the low end than they can coming down
from above.”
To reach new upscale customers, Com¬
modore and Atari are forgoing mass
merchandisers such as Kmart Corp.
that have traditionally sold most of then-
cheap home computers. Instead, the
1 DOH-T CARE.* Even if Commodore and
Atari can get computer store distribu-
tion, the competition with IBM and Apple
will be fierce. IBM has once again cut
prices to move its unsold PCjr inventory,
estimated at around 200,000 units. That
could start a round of industrywide price
cuts. And Apple, under mounting pres¬
sure to reverse an earnings decline,
could repackage a version of the Macin¬
tosh for the home market. Any of these
moves could abort Commodore’s plan.
Commodore’s Rattigan maintains that
by selling the Amiga through specialty
stores and the 128, a Commodore 64 re- ,
placement, through mass merchandisers,
the company has “both doors covered.”
His boss, President and Chief Executive
Marshall F. Smith, has promised share¬
holders a return to profitability in the
Christmas quarter. The company lost :
$21 million after taxes in the first three \
months of 1985 and faces a further $20 j
million loss this quarter. Privately held j
Atari insists it is operating profitably. i
The collapse in demand for home com- j
puters has raised the question of wheth¬
er there really is much demand for the
machines. Commodore’s Smith isn't wor¬
ried. “I don’t care what you've heard.
There is a home computer market,” he
says. All Commodore and Atari have to
do is make sure they’re in on it
By Geoff Lewis in New York, with bu¬
reau reports
COMMODORE’S SMITH AMD RATTIOAN: NEW HOME COMPUTERS AMD PROFITS BY CHRISTMAS
Apple. To attract those “serious” home
computer buyers, they are packing their
new models with features borrowed
| from Apple’s business-oriented Macin¬
tosh. They are also offering buyers
;j more for their money. The $800 Atari
; 520ST, scheduled for shipment in July, is
• roughly comparable to a Macintosh that
j now retails for about $1,800.
better chance? Commodore’s new en¬
try, the Amiga, is expected to sell for
$1,000 to $1,500 and includes what is be¬
ing billed as the best color-graphics dis¬
play available. It is positioned to exploit
the market of demanding home comput¬
er buyers that IBM and Apple started to
, tap last fall. “They proved that for the
i right price and performance there is con-
j sumer demand,” says Thomas J. Ratti-
* gan, president of the Commodore North
companies are trying to persuade the
retailers who sell IBM and Apple to cairy
their new products. And that is proving
difficult “We are not going to carry the
Amiga or the Atari,” says Michael R.
Shabazian, president of ComputerLand
Corp.’s U. S. division, the largest U.S.
computer retail chain. “Commodore, for
one, has an image problem.” That stig¬
ma with retailers can be traced to Atari
Chairman Jack Tramiel, who, as presi¬
dent of Commodore two years ago, shift¬
ed from computer stores to mass mer¬
chandisers without warning.
Neither Atari nor Commodore has
signed up any major chains or indepen¬
dent dealers to date, but Commodore’s
Rattigan claims he will have the compa- ■
ny’s products in 1,200 computer stores in
time for Christmas. Atari’s prospects for j
Jenny of the Prairie is an adventure
game—designed especially for girls—
that challenges users to help an aban¬
doned pioneer girl survive in the wilder¬
ness. The program offers three levels
of difficulty and presents a variety of
obstacles. Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
Hardware: Apple II, Atari (48K), Com¬
modore 64. Price: $39.95. Grade level:
Primary-junior high. See: February
1984, p. 63; April/May 1985. pp. 23-24.
BUSINESS WEEK/JUNE 10. 1985 21
Y ounger and lower achieving stu¬
dents learn more using educa¬
tional computing than older or high
ability students.
That’s the conclusion of two new
studies of the “best” research avail¬
able on the effectiveness of comput¬
er assisted instruction.
In addition, they agree that com¬
puters can improve learning.
They disagree, however, about the
value of drill programs. One says
they’re the most effective type of
computer program, and the other
says they’re the least effective.
The findings of one of the studies,
conducted by M. D. Roblyer, Flor¬
ida A & M University and ICON
Enterprises, were released at the re¬
cent Minnesota Educational Com¬
puting Corp. (MECC) annual confer-
\ ence.
) Roblyer’s analysis of 11 reviews of
research findings found that com¬
puter based instruction is more ef¬
fective:
• In elementary schools than in*
high schools and more effective in
high schools than in college.
• In math than in reading and
language.
• As a supplement in traditional
instruction than as a replacement for
traditional instruction.
• When used in modes other than
drill, i.e., tutorial and simulation.
• For improving attitudes toward
instruction, subject matter, and
computers.
Most research studies, she said,
also find that computers reduce the
time it takes students to learn some¬
thing.
“In spite of the great potential of
computers in education.” Roblyer
added, “evidence of success is not
overwhelming.”
The second analysis of 48 different
research efforts, conducted by Rich¬
ard Niemiec and Herbert Waiberg of
the U. of Illinois at Chicago, con-
^ eluded that:
• Students using computer assist¬
ed instruction (CAI) perform a sub¬
stantial 16 percentile points better
than similar students not using CAI.
• Boys using computers achieve
more than girls.
• Of the different forms of CAI,
drill and practice is the most effec¬
tive, the opposite conclusion from
that reached by Roblyer.
Niemiec and Waiberg pointed out
that although CAI now includes the
promising development of allowing
students to converse with the com¬
puter in natural language, large scale
investigations of its effectiveness are
unavailable.
Roblyer told her MECC audience
that other interventions may be
more effective in improving learning
than using computers. Examples:
peer and adult tutoring and teacher
training.
E nthusiasm and learning of high
school students working on pro¬
gramming is greatest where students
work at the computer individually
and without disturbance.
And “enthusiasm is least im¬
proved” when they work in pairs.
These conclusions were released
in a federally supported study con¬
ducted by Henry Jay Becker, Center
for Social Organization of Schools,
Johns Hopkins U.
In the last of 6 repons on data
from 1,600 microcomputer-using
elementary and secondary schools.
What are the implications of her
findings? Because of lower gains for
adults/college students and in read¬
ing and language arts, Roblyer said,
decision makers might reconsider
large computer investments in these
areas.
“We need more specific research
results to guide development and
implementation of educational com¬
puting,” she said. “Unless we get
these results and start pinpointing
uses of computers where they’re
really effective, instead of shotgun¬
ning it, the public is going to get
disgusted when it discovers comput¬
ers don’t achieve gains in all areas.
“It’s already beginning to happen.
“The current situation is like a
good news/bad news joke,” she ex¬
plained. “The good news is that
computers seem to contribute to
learning. The bad news is that they
may not have a great effect, and
other, cheaper methods may be
more effective.
“This is still very much a fad-
driven movement,” she concluded.
For more information, contact
Roblyer (ICON Enterprises, PO Box
13176, Tallahassee, Fla. 32308); and
Niemiec (2330 W. Palmer St., Chi¬
cago, Ill. 60647).
Becker said elementary teachers re¬
ported different conclusions:
• Enthusiasm of their students
was superior when they worked at
computers cooperatively rather than
individually.
• Learning was greatest for drill/
practice activity when done in pairs
or groups.
The 6 reports — School Uses of
Microcomputers — are available for
$3 from the Center for Social Orga¬
nization of Schools. Johns Hopkins
U.. Baltimore. Md. 21218.
The Incredible Laboratory lets stu¬
dents create monsters and then encour¬
ages them to determine which chemical
creates each body part. Through these
trial-and-error explorations, students must
organize, record and synthesize data.
The game allows for team or individual
play. Publisher: Sunburst. Hardware:
Apple II, Atari (48K), Commodore 64,
TRS-80 Color Computer. Price: $55.
Grade level: Intermediate and above.
D-Bug is a problem-solving game, c
computer literacy tutorial and an elec
tronics simulation. In the game portion
players "capture" on-screen objects
The other part of the program challenge;
students to debug a computer by testing
and replacing simulated parts. Pub'
Usher: Electronic Arts. Hardware: Atar
(48K), Commodore 64. Price: $35
Grade level: Intermediate and above,
omputers from Atari promise to be easy to use and inexpensive.
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Jan. 21, 1985
Study Shows How Pupils Learn Best
FORCED ENTRY MODE RE-VISITED
By Ross Palmer
Forced entry mode (or FEM...who says computers are male!!) is
one of my favourite party tricks for showing off Atari BASIC. For
those of you who haven't come across it yet, try this example:
10 REM FEM EXAMPLE
80 ? CHR$(125):POSITION 2,4
90 ? "200 REM THIS LINE HAS BEEN ADDED"
100 ? "CONT"
110 POSITION 2,0
120 POKE 842,13:STOP
130 POKE 842,12
RUN the program, then LIST it - hey presto!, line 200 has been
added to the program. The critical statement in the program is line
120. This causes the BASIC program to stop running and to start
entering instructions from the screen without waiting for the user
to press RETURN. This is what is meant by forced entry mode. In our
example, when the BASIC encounters the line printed by statement 90
it interprets it as a line to be added to the program. Note that
while in FEM your BASIC program is NOT running (it was stopped by
line 129). The purpose of the cont on line 100 is to stop the FEM
and return control to your BASIC program.
Typical uses of FEM are:
deleting unwanted program lines (say, after
initialisation in order to release space for arrays &
graphics).
- conversion of machine language programs into DATA
statements.
- storing program data in DATA ststements (Bernard Kerr's
Diskfile program on WACE Disk 4 does this).
The technical reasoning behind FEM is rather obscure; those
interested should consult the article by Frank Jones in COMPUTE!'s
Second Book of Atari. One feature of all uses of FEM is that it
generates a lot of on-screen activity. In the cases of home grown
programs, it can be fun to sit back and watch the frenetic activity
by our busy computer. However, in the case of professional software
products, many programmers would feel that this sort of activity
should be decently hidden from the user. The standard ploy for doing
this is to blank out the screen by making the text and the
background the same colour (POKE 709,PEEK(710)) or, more
drastically, disabling the screen altogether (POKE 559,0). In either
case this leaves the (puzzled) user staring at a blank screen while
all the fun goes on behind the scenes.
There is, however, a third option which I haven't seen mentioned
elsewhere. This involves the use of alternate screen memories. To
demonstrate the effect, modify the program given above to the
following:
10 REM FEM USING ALTERNATE SCREENS
20 POKE 106,PEEK(740)-4
30 GRAPHICS 0
40 MLO=PEEK(88):MHI=PEEK(89)
50 QLO=0:QHI=sPEEK (106)
60 PRINT "HERE IS SOME TEXT"
70 POKE 88,QLO:POKE 89,QHI
80 ? CHR$ (125):POSITION 2,4
90 ? "200 REM THIS LINE HAS BEEN ADDED"
100 ? "CONT"
110 POSITION 2,0
120 POKE 842,13:STOP
130 POKE 842,12
140 POKE 88,MLO:POKE 89,MHI
Now RUN and LIST the program - you again see that line 200 has
been added to the program (by FEM), but this time without disturbing
the screen display.
How is this done? In essence the program uses two screen
memories - a primary screen for storing the text displayed on your
TV or Monitor, and an alternate screen from which FEM reads its
input data. To try and clarify this a little, I will describe in
more detail how the program works.
Line 20 : location 740 contains the number of pages (1 page =
256 bytes) of RAM present in your computer. Location 106 (called
RAMTOp) contains the number of RAM pages available to BASIC.
Normally these two locations contain the same number (e.g 160
for 48K or 64K systems). Line 20 lowers RAMTOP by 4 pages = 1024
bytes. The area above RAMTOP is used to hold the alternate
GRAPHICS 0 screen memory.
Line 30 : having altered RAMTOP, we must immediately issue a
GRAPHICS command so that a new primary screen memory and its
associated display list are constructed in the area just below
RAMTOP.
Line 40 : MLO and MHI are the low and high order bytes of the
screen memory address.
Line 50 : QLO and QHI are ditto for the alternate screen.
Line 60 : puts some text on the primary screen.
Line 70 : locations 88 and 89 (called SAVMSC) contain the
address of the screen memory used by BASIC and the Operating
System. Line 70 points them to the alternate screen.
Lines 80 to 130 : standard FEM coding.
Line 140 : points BASIC and the OS back to the primary screen.
Why does this example work? I'm open to correction here, but I
think the explanation is roughly as follows. BASIC and the OS do
screen input and output (and in particular FEM) using the address
stored in SAVMSC. However, the screen display is actually generated
by the ANTIC chip, using the screen address stored in bytes 5 and 6
of the display list. Normally this address is the same as in
SAVMSC. The "trick" in the above program is that it alters SAVMSC
without forcing a corresponding change in the display list.
Thus during lines 80 to 130 of the program, ANTIC is using the
primary screen address stored in the display list to generate the TV
display while BASIC is using the secondary address in SAVMSC to do
its output and FEM. This is why the (primary) screen display is not
affected by the PRINT statements on lines 90 and 100. You will
notice, however, that the cursor position is affected by activity on
the secondary screen. With a little more effort, we could get around
this by saving and restoring locations 84,85 and 86. Alternate
screens are a modification which can easily be incorporated in any
program using FEM. The only disadvantage of this technique is that
it uses an extra IK of RAM and so won't be suitable if memory is
tight.
PATCH FOR TINY-TEXT
By Ross Palmer
XL owners who bought WACE Disk #4 will now know that the new 80
column Tinytext does not work on their machines. This is because
the 80 column display software makes three calls to addresses in the
operating system ROM which have changed in the XL series. A quick
fix (For XL owners only!) is to add the following lines to your
version of TINYTEXT.BAS:
20 POKE 9133,142:POKE 9144,239
22 POKE 9246,253:POKE 9247,242
24 POKE 9431,73.-POKE 9432,251
- then SAVE the new version. More experienced users could
incorporate the changes directly into the AUTORUN.SYS file which
contains the Video 80 program.
Dear Mr. Cauldwell
Frices for ..the home computer/word processing paper are:
$16.50 for a box of 500 sheets - less 7^ for 5 or more
or less iCfi for 10 or mors.
^ 30.00 for a box of 1,000 sheets
v5S.CC for a box of 2,000 sheets.
21 Kay, 1565
If you would like to see how the 500 sheets are neatly boxed I can brine one down
tc sno*^ yoUf
Also if anyone requires the above paper to have a letterhead orinted on it I
can obtain a guowSj if an a sampls of .^hat is r*£<juii*sd. #
r
CHERRYL GREEN
PHONE 792-73?
Many thanks.
1_0(30
Just as I was preparing to write a note suggesting that members
who were going to borrow my Logo manuals to photocopy might as well
buy their Logo from me, the new price list arrived: and behold, any
day now you should be able to buy the complete pack for $139. I'd
better keep one in stock!
Who would have guessed a month ago that hardware prices would
come diving down so soon, or the 130 XE actually arrive? Let alone
that software prices would start to look almost reasonable after so
long: like AtariWriter and Visicalc each at $149.
Books, however, have risen in price rather nastily. If the
dozen Cat least) club members who have Logo already think there
should be a reference copy of Abelson's Apple Logo in the library
while it's still only $45 after discounting, you'd better let the
committee know, because goodness knows what the next consignment will
cost. Yes, it is an LCSI Logo like Atari Logo, and this is the book
that covers a reasonable amount of list-processing as well as
graphics etc.
BUT
I have my doubts about this 1029 dot matrix printer at $545.
From the brief description it does not sound as if it has half the
features of the Ritemans and Logitecs. I had been considering
importing some Seikosha AXIOM GP—550ATs, which would probably resell
at $900-950, or a little less for club members. They have the
versatility that we have come to expect in a printer, and plug
straight into your Atari system. It would be helpful to know if such
a deal would interest any members: please phone if you have any
comments to make — I'm not looking for firm orders.
meanwh i 1 e-
I intend to keep at least one Logitec ribbon cartridge in stock,
at $35 for club members.
Jenny
729866
^ Vva- iJav'rt irt\o*'
{Yk^jkCVW ic/b
,v'->: - V-:^. .-ur. v;-
uture
hangs in the balance
WHEN an executive with
whom you’ve had a friend¬
ly relationship -for seven
years suddenly ducks your
phone calls, you -know
something is yrrong.- . 'vl ..
That executive is Irv-
ing "Gould, chairmanand.
largest stockholder of
Commodore International,
the kingpin of the home.
computer business. '/%§;«;
Andsomething is Clear¬
ly wrong. Mr Gould was
readily available when the
company’s business, was
boomlng.^bupnot any
■One] of Hhe. great
growth companies of the
past” five years. Com¬
modore has gone into a
nosedive. So, too, has its
stock, from' a'mid-1983
high of 60.6 to a recent
price of around 10. '
. As a result Mr Gould
who has steadfastly held
on to his 6 million Com¬
modore shares (20 per
cent of the company), has
suffered a huge paper loss
— up to $US300 million in
less than two years.
Who knows? With that
kind of trouble, maybe I
wouldn’t want to talk to
anybody, either. 2 i?
The company’s latest
fiasco — a reported fiscal
third-quarter loss of near¬
ly 5US21 million, which
followed a 93 per cent
profit decline in the sec-
ond quarter — has
sparked talk on Wall
Street that the company is
headed for financial trou-
ble, perhaps, even
bankruptcy.
Such speculation is
labelled by the company
as ridiculous. A company
official cited strong bank
lines, good potential for
new models and declining
inventories of aging prod¬
ucts — notably the Com¬
modore 64 model com-
Front DAN DORFMAN
of New York Magazine
puter, which retails for
around $US150 and has
been the best, selling home
computer in the world.
? however,, several Wall
Street watchers of the mi¬
crocomputer business tell
me bankruptcy at some
'point is a possibility^espe^
dally If Commodore’s
much heralded Amiga
computer turns out . to be a
dud. . '
The Amiga, ? a higher
priced' model (around
3US1500) with ’advanced
colour graphics, is sup¬
posed to be out later this
year. . rr'■
Its big competitor is
Apple’s Macintosh, which
is sold by some dealers at
a discount price of be¬
tween 3US1700 and
3US1800. •
Commodore’s rapid de¬
cline tracks the overall
drop in home computer
sales.
The company, which
accounts for about 60 per
cent of the home com¬
puter market and topped
$US1 billion in sales in
1984, started as a family-
owned typewriter repair
shop in the Bronx, funded
by Jack Tramiel, a Polish-
born survivor of Aus¬
chwitz. ' ~ V:
Mr Gould, a Canadian
businessman, bought a
piece of the company in
1966. Ten years later.
Commodore acquired a
semiconductor firm that
was the springboard into
lower priced home com¬
puters.
Mr Tramiel, regarded
as the operating brains of
the company, left Com¬
modore in January 1984 to
take control of Atari.
Today, in addition to
COMMODORE , possibility of bankruptcy
Commodore’s other prob¬
lems, a company sub¬
sidiary is being questioned
by the Internal Revenue
Service about certain tax
savings the subsidiary
claimed.
“There’s a possibility
of bankruptcy,” said Doug
Cayne, an analyst at the
Gartner group, a technolo¬
gy research outfit in
Stamford, Connecticut.
His views sum up the
thinking of several
analysts. “If Amiga makes
it, the company will do a
lot better. If it doesn’t, the
company’s problems will
intensify.”
But if you listen to
Clive Smith, Commodore’s
vice-president of corpo¬
rate planning, you get the
idea a return to profit¬
ability over the short fun
is anything but likely.
“We’re introducing
four new products — two
in the United States and
several in Europe. And
there’s going to be a lot of
start-up costs.”
Obviously those high
costs are expected to eat
heavily into potential
earnings.
In any case, Mr Gould’s
expectation of a short¬
term return to the black is
greeted with scepticism
by several Wall Street
analysts. : , .-r
One is Charles W’olf
from First Boston. Com¬
modore has already in¬
dicated it will have a
fourth-quarter loss, and
Mr Wolf thinks the loss
will be a whopper —
about $US25 million after
taxes.
That would mean a to¬
tal loss in fiscal 1986 (end¬
ing June 30) of $US15 mil¬
lion, or 50 cents a share.
What’s more, Mr Wolf
sees a loss of similar mag¬
nitude in fiscal 1986.
Mr Wolf, who recom¬
mended sale of Com¬
modore shares in mid-De¬
cember when they were
selling at about $US20,
now thinks they should be
sold at even half that
price.
Short-term, he says, the
company is sitting on an
inflated inventory —
around $US400 million —
the bulk of it related to the
Commodore 64.
“It’s just like the video-
game episode of two years
ago,” Mr Wolf said. “In¬
terest in video games died
overnight, and interest in
lower priced, limited func¬
tion computers also ap¬
pears to have died.”
Commodore has
vehemently denied it
plans any huge markdown
of its existing Commodore
64 inventory, but Mr Wolf,
along with several other
analysts, said this was a
distinct possibility..
“And if they mark
down the price of the 64
even more (in February
its price was cut 25 per
cent from the $US183 to
5US199. level), you could
see Commodore lose as
much as $US2 a share this
. year,” Mr Wolf said.
. His doubts about Com¬
modore also extended to
. the two big new products
the company has been
:touting — the 128 com¬
puter and the Amiga.
The 128 model, a more
powerful version of the
Commodore 64 that is due
out shortly and is ex¬
pected to retail in the
$US269 to 5US299 range,
was described by Mr Woif
as little more than “an
enhanced 64 with bells and
whistles” — a view shared
by other analysts.
“I know it ain’t going to
save the company.” Mr
Wolf said.
As for the Amiga, Mr
Wolf said: “Unless it’s dra¬
matically better than any¬
thing in* the market, it’s
going to have only modest
sales. So you’re talking
about a big if.”
Commodore’s Mr
. Smith told me most dealer
inventories are light on
the Commodore 64, sug¬
gesting it continues to be a
good seller at its dis¬
counted price of ?US150.
In fact, he suggested I
talk to some of the com¬
pany’s customers.
I did. And one large
Commodore customer told
me his 64 inventories were
indeed light. But that’s be-
• cause the chain has re¬
fused to order any more,
an official told me.
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