1994 by GEnie ========================================================================== This file is brought to you by The Commodore 64/128 RoundTable on GEnie This file may be published or excerpted in User Group newsletters providing credit is given in this manner: "Copyright 1994 by GEnie From the Commodore 64/128 RoundTable File#:#####" This file maybe be distributed, if distributed whole and unaltered, on , croll, uit ? non-profit BBSs or non-profit networks. For more information on GEnie call by modem: 1-800-638-8369 (8-N-1 300/1200/2400) Enter: HHH Then reply: xtx99018,commrt Then enter: Commodore And enjoy! ========================================================================== 3-28-95 Join GEOS-TIM and Doug Cotton from CMD for another informative evening. Tonight Tim takes a different aproach and lets the audience ask all questions! A great evening to be sure! =========================================================================== Tonight We have Doug Cotton from CMD Showtime? Er... I'm watching HBO! We are happy to see you here, Doug. Should be watching GEnie Ah! And I thought that was a banana in your pocket! ;) Glad I could space a few thousand seconds to make it, though. ;) Well, I guess everyone knows who I am.. (or they wouldn't have brought all those tomatoes to throw...) So we can get right into it. ;) Doug, The first topic is CMD......What's new? Quite a few things, actually... Let's start with some of the minor things at CMD: We've noticed a real shortage of monitor cables lately... So we've just begun manufacturing of just about any monitor cable a Commodore user could possibly need. These should all be in stock in the next couple of weeks or so. ;) Prices vary, depending on what cable, but we can supply 'em all. Next item... We've sold out on HD-20's... The re-release at $299 was a real success, and we sold dozens of them over the last couple of months. Unfortunately, this depleted the supply and we can't get them anymore (sigh). But for every bad thing that happens, we look for something good... So we've just structured a deal for some 40 MB drives, and we'll immediately begin offering HD-40's at $329 instead of $375. ;) Not quite as inexpensive as the HD-20's were, but a great bargain just the same. Next item... We recently signed a distribution agreement with Electric Boys software in England. Electric Boys produces a wide variety of games, and continues to produce new titles regularly. We're pretty much ready to roll out two new game titles from EB here in the U.S.! Yay! great! The first of these is HEAVENBOUND, which is a fun 'platformer' game, where you climb up to heaven... The sound and graphics are really superb on this one, but it's a tough game. ;) The second release is a shoot-em-up...titled Lions of the Universe. If you like those blast until you die games, this one is tops. Again, very good graphics and sound... the things we'd expect from modern commercial games for the 64. ;) Next item... For those who don't know, our magazine (Commodore World) is running a subscription sweepstakes... Anyone who subscribes or renews prior to June 1 is automatically entered in the sweeps. We've just extended this deadline, btw... it was May 1, but we moved it up to June 1 to make sure all the ads got out about it. There are several prizes being offered... Grand Prize is your choice of a CMD HD-20 (we saved one for this) or an FD-4000. There are 6 second prizes of JiffyDOS systems (your choice 64 or 128)... and a bunch of $10 discount coupons from your next CMD purchase for a dozen 3rd place winners. Finally... (and this isn't really CMD news, per se) The liquidators of Commodore's assets have set a final auction date for April 20. ;) And that, as they say, is the news. ;) Back to you Don Pardo... ;) Well, Thats a lot of news. Lots of things to think about.....The rest of this evening will be open to questions from the audience....type /rai if you have a question and we will get to you in the order recieved Brenda has a question I have a couple qs on the magazine... Shoot! when did someone have to subscribe to be able to be in the contest? I got a subscription for Christmas.. If your subscription started with issue 6 or later, you're in. ;) That brings up my other q... I did not get a #5... my expiration says 12. Was I supposed to get #5? Hmmm... sounds like you should have. There were some definate problems with messed up subs for issue 5... something like the last 150 or so had a problem. Call the 800 line and ask them to shift your start to 6. ;) You could just ask for them to send you a 5, but you might sneak into the sweeps if they just shift you one issue. ok thanks. I can get #5 as a back issue then. and maybe sneak into the sweeps ;) Snogpitch has a question. Does Electric Boys have plans to do anything for the 128 or are they doing solely for the 64? The 128's aren't very common in England... OK, just curious about it. However, Russ Michaels at EB has asked us a lot about the 128, and we recently sent him a 128 PRG. He also picked a couple of 128's up to play around... So while I can't say if they'll definately do anything, it seems they're interested. Could be some hope, then. One thing to bear in mind, though.. The 128 is a terrible machine for game programming (in 128 mode). Let me illustrate why - The 128 can run at two speeds... 1 MHz and 2 MHz... Only the 80 -column screen works in 2 MHz mode. Problem is, the VDC chip (video chip) for 80 column mode has a very awkward means of being accessed. You have to get to the screen RAM through a sort-of I/O port. Also, there are no sprites in his mode, and there isn't enough video RAM in the stock 'flat' 128 to do a full bit-mapped color screen. In 40 column mode, you get better video access and sprites... However, you're back to 1 MHz, and due to the 128's architecture, it actually runs slower than the equivalent program would in 64 mode. The only advantage is extra memory in this case. So game writers tend to write for 64 not only because there's more 64's out there, but also because the 128 modes aren't all that great for games. More than you expected? You bet! ;) Poboy has a question Does the 1750 need any modifications to work with Ramlink.. and what is the latest version of RLDOS ? No. RAMLink was designed to work with the 1750... has a RAM port just for it. Latest RL-DOS is 2.01 so far as I know. Thanks :) Esther Olson has a question. Is there any chance on user groups being able to share those great programs that we typed in from mags like AHOY who have vanished? That's a tough one. From a legal standpoint, those are copyrighted, and the only way you could legally distribute them is with permission of the copyright owner. Wish there were a better answer to that, but that's the legal system. ;( But how do you get permission from a company that no longer exists? Well, even though the company is gone, those copyrights either fall to principal owner(s) or to a bank or creditors if they defaulted or went bankrupt. Copyrights don't die until they expire. Tracking down the owner can indeed be a tough task, but it can be done. The wise thing to do is to track things down when the trail is warm. For example.. NOW would be a good time to talk to the owners of Gazette about their software. The company is still out there, at the same phone number. They just stopped publishing that. Ahoy could probably be tracked down through someone like Richard Curcio, who used to work for them I believe. I haven't heard from him lately, but someone probably has. He had an article or two published in TC 128 a couple of years ago. You might start there, with Parsec, to see if they can help track Richard... then follow the trail. As I said, it isn't easy, but it can be done with perseverance. Brenda has a comment to add concerning Esther's question about Ahoy. About Ahoy!, I think that they only kept the (c) for 1 year. Then it went back to the author. This is different than other mags. Transactor allowed copying of their disks in part but not in full. If that's the case, then you have to track down the authors. A lot tougher! Gunter has a question Can you order the Commodore magazine through Genie? No, not through GEnie. But there IS a toll-free number to order from... That number is 1-800-638-3263. Wizardry has a question. I have a 4 meg RL with a 1750 plugged in, as well as being configured as a 1581 GEOS partition with the largest DACC allowable. Question: Can I use the 1750 in a normal fashion by putting RL in DIRECT, or will I corrupt something that RL has stored in it? As long as your DACC is 2048 blocks or larger, you can switch to DIRECT and use the REU without disturbing any of the partition contents of the RAMLink. ;) Note: You WILL wipe the DACC partly or completely doing that, but as long as you boot GEOS from scratch, that won't matter. ;) Brenda has a question. How is the supply of FD 4000s and disks for them? Will we need to worry about where to find blank disks in the future? The FD-4000's... we have probably about 3 to 4 months of drives allocated, maybe a little longer. As for the disks, we haven't seen any sign of them disappearing yet, but that can sometimes happen suddenly. I'd suggest anyone with an FD-4000 stock up a little over the next few months on disks, to be safe. Brenda had another question I read in the BB that there had once been plans for a chip for the empty socket in the 128 Will this ever be considered again? Actually, there were two plans. One was for a chip that did absolutely nothing, but it was VERY CUTE. Fuzzy top with eyes and antennae... ;) That one was scratched pretty quickly. ;) :D someone else already did that first ;) The other was to do something like a JiffyDOS PRO... some extended utilities and such. That got shelved due more to other things being more important. Whether it will ever pop back off the shelf is doubtful at this point... We've got another two years or so of projects planned already. But then, never say never. And we don't get to know about those, do we? ;D That'd be my guess. ;) Howie has a question.... Two years of projects? Can you tell us a bit about them? We learned a long time ago that it isn't wise to get ahead of ourselves on announcing things. Until some of those things become PRODUCTS versus PROJECTS, I really can't, no. Sorry. Lot's of great things, though. ;) ok I trust ya on that!! Go ahead Snog. Will the RamLink ever be changed to accept 72 pin simms? I doubt that it will. There aren't many folks with maxed out RL's now, and it would required a very major redesign. Again, I never say never, but it's doubtful at this point. Seems like just a ram card redesign? No... The addressing on the RAMLink itself only goes up to 16 MB Oh yes, I forgot about that. So we'd need to redesign the entire unit, then rewrite the DOS to handle more addressing as well. New product. Start the drooling now. If we ever did that, I think I'd rather make an accelerator/RL combo. Brenda, our Whiz at games person, has a question.... I read in the BB about a deal with 64er mag. What is this all about? :D Thanks Tim... just my lucky night I guess Better go out and buy a lottery ticket just got won here, at 19 mil!! We signed an agreement with 64'er magazin in Germany to swap articles. They've been running our SCSI Magic series over there, and we're still analyzing what we want of theirs in exchange.... But the bottom line is that at some point, we'll carry some of their articles in English. What type of stuff do they have? It's a nice deal, because we really don't compete. Since they only print in German, and we only print in English. They run a lot of stuff... they're up around 80 pages/issue (monthly). Germans tend to be hackers, so they have a lot of 'hacking' stuff... but they do the full gamut of stuff... games, reviews, etc. Lots of tips, btw... we're looking into those. Howie, our other"Whiz at games"person, has a question. Doug, any chance that I'll ever be able to boot Pocket Writer 3 from my RAMLink? Is that 64? 128 mode Probably not... we talked to the owners about it, but they didn't want to put any work into it. ::sniff:: okay thanks! Time to get out GeoWrite. :D If somebody had the solution, we might be able to convince them to let us do something... But otherwise, I doubt they will, and we haven't the time to look into that ourselves, unfortunately. Time seems to be our biggest enemy anymore, btw. Sam Artino has a question. Is it possibile to get more than a 16 meg partition on the HD? Or is that limited proccessors ability to recognize it? 16 MB is the limit on a DOS partition... There's a good reason for that btw... To maintain compatibility, we have to use Commodore-style track and sector links. These can only be one byte each, giving a max value of track 255 sector 255... That comes out to 16 MB. With custom programming, you can have a FOREIGN partition as large as you want up to the system limit of 4.5 GB... But that would require doing your own low-level DOS work. Brenda has another great question. I have an Action Replay v5. Any chance for an upgrade, and what is changed? (some of the utilities list v4, the manual is labeled v4. They were just switching to v5 when I ordered it) An upgrade is doubtful, I'm afraid. We only took on the current version, and any kind of upgrades would have to come from Datel in England. As to what has changed, I haven't a clue to be honest... I'm not familiar with the old versions. I do know the new ones use a special masked ROM instead of an EPROM, so they couldn't upgrade an older one to the new one without an exchange. I seem to remember that mine will not file copy SEQ files If you send me a copy of your manual sometime, I could probably figure out the differences. But offhand, I'm not sure what they all are. We only sell v5.2, btw... V6 had some capabilities removed due to new copyright laws in England. So they send us the 5.2, which wasn't crippled. I don't use it much. Sure I'll send in the manual. Oh, that is supposedly the version I have. Then it probably isn't different! ;) Howie has a question..... Doug, do you think that a Mosaic for Usenet is possible on the 64? 128? I curently run Lynx Well, yes and no... yes and no? There's actually some work being done in this area that I'm aware of. The problem is, we really don't have the screen resolution to do all that the PC's and Mac's do in Mosaic... So if it should come about, it will probably be dithered down for graphics. that's okey. we do that with some GIF's now Does that cover it? Oh, and SLIP is coming... ;) yup! :) Brenda has a question. 8 more minutes of questions and we will wrap up. My famous (?) q... is there a chance of CMD putting out a removable HD and/or selling the controller separately? I would like to get a 230? meg Iomega We're looking now at maybe doing something with the new Iomega ZIP drive. Not sure if that will be something we go ahead with or not, but we're examining it. I don't think we'll ever attempt to sell the controller separately again, no. Ohhhh! What is the ZIP drive? Why, did something bad happen? The ZIP drive is a new low-cost Bournoulli drive from Iomega... 100 MB... the external drive costs about $200, and disks are down to about $15.00 (in 10 qty.). $15????? As for the controllers, yes. We sold a few that way, but the support was a nightmare. C= users really aren't up to making something like that work on their own for the most part. Yeah, $15. Not bad, eh? When will it be decided on whether to do the ZIP thing? I'm having to restrain myself from hitting the ceiling at the moment! :D Couldn't say. They JUST came out, so we started looking into it about a week ago. That cover it for you well enough for now? I'll be first in line to buy one... that is why I am always asking about a controller etc. Uh, no, but I will have to live with it, won't I? Well, to use one as the main drive would reqire some rewriting of our DOS. HD-DOS really isn't designed for removable media. It can work as an add-on, but for more on that, see my SCSI Magic article in CW #7 (coming soon). ;) oh, does that mean we would already have to have an HD to add it to? That can be done now, so far as we know. But we're looking into the stand-alone aspect of it. I would like to take this time to thank Doug for coming in tonight. It has been a great evening. We are about ready to go into open forum.... Thanks Doug! Very informative, as usual Thank you Doug! Thanks. Glad to have a chance to make it. ;) Thanks to everyone for joining us tonight as well :) The transcripts should be available in a few days if not sooner.....Cam is editing them.. and he is super quick Night all! ditto THANKS Doug and Sysops for arranging this informative conference!! Bye Doug! Thanks, Doug Doug!!!! Wow, I even got to ask all my qs! I did have a comment on the ZIP drive, Doug Lots of good news for us Commie users What was that Brenda... (foot in the door) I heard that the way to use removable drives with different disks was to save the partition table with HD tools, and re-write it when a new disk was put in (different disks with different partitions that is) I assume would be looking for an easier way to do it, or would you put it out like that? That can be done, though when I've used them, I just keep the same partition arrange ment. But would that be part of the consideration whether or not to have it as a product? I think we'd be looking for something better, yes... but we could make changes for a dedicated drive like that so that it reads the table when a new disk is inserted. Tim, Doug always has good news for us! :) True, Howie Okay. I'm out... and good Q's they were all, Brenda!! Really! Night again all. ;) Bye :) Night Doug....thanks for the conf Niters doug Nite!! bye Doug Nite Doug Nighty, night, Doug ** has left.