Info-Mac 3/Info_Mac_1994-01.iso/Periodical/General/The Underground Mac #4/underground-mac-v1-04.txt

Internet Message Format | 1993-12-30 | 19KB

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 01:54:16 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Michael Shannon)
Subject: Underground Mac Report#4

Issue #4 (11/14/93) of The Underground Mac Report is out now! Check the
"New files and Free Uploading" section in the Mac Hardware forum on AOL or
FTP from from Sumex.aim.stanford.edu. Enjoy!

Table of Contents:
Reviews of Virtus Walkthrough and Walkthrough Pro
Patch for the av Macs
A hack for Virtus Walkthrough
Mac TV
An Internet quick reference to the most commonly used commands
Apple rip-off?
Hot File: Quoter DA

And the usual columns: Rumor Mill, Questions and Answers, Misc. Thoughts,
Hot Files and more...

Coming Next Issue:
Reviews of HomeWorks Templates, and The Internet Tour Guide (Book)
Do-it-yourself clock-chipping
Winning the lottery with your Mac

BEGIN TEXT FILE:

The Underground Mac Report
"Information With An Edge!"

Volume 1 No.4 11/14/93
All contents and title C Michael P. Shannon 1993
A non-profit publication
Freely distributable via electronic means for non-profit purposes-Post it
everywhere!
For other uses please inquire. Thanks!
Send comments, criticisms and questions to:
AOL: Datamike
Internet: [e-mail]

While the information presented herein is true to the best of our
knowledge, please don't base any important decisions on what you read. We
make no guarantees.
Developers: While we don't accept any advertising or "sponsors", we're
happy to review any hardware or software you can provide. Consider it cheap
advertising. For the cost of a single unit, you get the best form of
advertising: the testimonial of an actual Mac user. If you would like to
have a product reviewed, please contact us at one of our E-mail addresses.
Thanks!

Table of Contents:
Reviews of Virtus Walkthrough and Walkthrough Pro
Patch for the av Macs
A hack for Virtus Walkthrough
An Internet quick reference of the most commonly used commands
Apple rip-off?
Hot File: Quoter DA

E-mail:

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: 66AV video

MB> Since you were correcting someone else, I thought I'd correct you...
MB>
MB> The 660AV CAN do 24-bit on a 14". There is an additional mode that
MB> drops the resolution to 640 by 400 (like a PowerBook), and in this
MB> mode, millions is selectable.
MB>
MB> I like UMR...
MB>
MB> Keep up the good work
MB>
MB> Try this... Go into the monitors control panel, click options, and you
MB> should see the 640*400 mode listed in the little window (if not, try
MB> holding down the option key as you click on the options button!).
MB> Select it, go back to the main control panel and you should be able to
MB> select millions for that resolution. I think you will need a restart
MB> before you can select millions actually, since the 660 does not do
MB> on-the-fly resolution switching (RadiusWare doesn't work on it
MB> either).

Well, technically you're right--the 660av can drive a 24-bit display. In
reality though, it's not something you would actually want to use. I just
tried it. It worked, but the size of the screen is reduced dramatically.
About 1 1/2 inches are cropped off the top and bottom of the screen. Not
very useful in my opinion, but thanks for alerting me to my error--Mike.

From: Vittorio Dell'Aiuto <[e-mail]>
Subject: Umr Comment

VD> Hi Michael, I just want to spend two words: "Excellent work". I was
VD> feeling like an orphan since Murph's column has gone, now I see that
VD> the spirit of "Vaporware" has survived.
VD>
VD> Please, consider to dedicate a small amount of time to the formatting
VD> of the text: setext (just as tidbits) isn't that bad. It should make
VD> your notes easier to read. IMHO, of course.
VD>
VD> Now, may I play the "error hunter" for a while? :-)
VD>
VD> (The Underground Mac Report Volume 1 No.2)
VD>
VD> LC II 16 mhz 040/0 NuBus slots Color Classic 16 mhz 040/optional FPU/0
VD> NuBus slots
VD>
VD> aren't they 16 MHz 68030?
VD>
VD> Probably it applies also to performas: Performa 460 33 mhz 040/no
VD> FPU/0 NuBus slots Performa 410 16 mhz 040/no FPU/0 NuBus slots should
VD> be 68030, isn't it?
VD>
VD> MacUser states that the maximum memory expansion on the Q610 is 64 MB.
VD> It's actually 68 MB. The article claims that maximum memory expansion
VD> on the Q650 is 132 MB. It's really 136 MB.
VD>
VD> MacUser is referring to maximum memory EXPANSION, not to TOTAL memory
VD> capabilities: if you add the 4Mb soldered on board you obtain the
VD> latter. Not a really clear statement of them, but definitely not a
VD> mistake.
VD>
VD> ciao vittorio

Thanks for your response. A few readers have mentioned that they would like
to see UMR in Setext format. For now though, UMR is going to stay in plain
text. The reason is that I don't feel that enough people would take
advantage of the formatted text. I also don't think that UMR contains the
type of information that has a long shelf life. Most people read it once
and trash it. Those that archive UMR or TidBits are definitely in the
minority. Why waste the disk space when you can obtain the issues from a
variety of online locations?
As you mention, TidBits offers Setext and the ratio of plain text downloads
to Setext downloads is about 10-1. You can check this by looking at the
download count on AOL.
I will consider it for the future, though,
You're right about the errors. A number of readers mentioned this in their
E-mail.
Thanks again!


Reviews:

Virtus Walkthrough, Walkthrough Pro
Virtus Corp.
[phone]
Street prices: Walkthrough $125, Walkthrough Pro $250

Walkthrough and Walkthrough Pro are essentially the same program. The only
difference being that Pro has an extra palette which is used to assign
"textures" to objects. Consider the following to apply to both programs
except where noted.
Walkthrough is a application designed to create 3D models and objects. What
really differentiates Walkthrough from the other 3D programs is the
interactive ability for the user to actually move around the objects. This
is a great attribute for someone designing buildings or decorating
interiors. Create a room and then walk around inside! According to Virtus,
one of the most common uses for Walkthrough is designing movie sets! It was
recently used on The Firm.
Creating objects is extremely simple even if you lack any artistic ability.
Creating a square room, for example, involves nothing more than drawing a
square. Walkthrough uses an expansion algorithm to create the required
depth. The depth can then be changed by using a slider control.
Many different shapes are offered as well as several different types of
expansion, such as round, square, or cone. This allows for virtually any
shape to be constructed.
Models are created in the design windows, and are displayed in wireframe.
The walk view is a separate window that displays the results and is used
for navigation.
To move around the walk view the mouse is used. Hold the mouse button down
and push the mouse forward and you appear to walk toward the model. Move
the mouse left, you move left. The option key is used to move up and down.
Walkthrough is an impressive piece of work. Really a very basic virtual
reality program, Walkthrough give us a taste of the future today.
While Walkthrough is a great program that I highly recommend, Walkthrough
Pro is not recommended.
Pro costs significantly more, and frankly the difference just isn't worth
it. The texture mapping feature, while great in theory, doesn't work as
well as it should. Any PICT or QuickTime movie can be used as a texture.
The textures are coarse in appearance and simply not worth the added
expense and hassle. In fact, a PICT file that appears attractive and
realistic in a graphics program, looks like smeared jelly when applied to a
Virtus model. Virtus maintains that the textures add extra realism. They
add something, but it certainly isn't realism. You can turn off shading to
improve the appearance slightly, but this defeats much of the 3D aspect and
still doesn't produce great results.
Don't misunderstand, the textures feature works well, it's just that the
results are less than adequate.
Pro also requires a ton of memory. 3000K is the minimum and 8000k is the
preferred size.
The walk through speed also suffers a severe speed penalty when viewing
models with textures, even on  a Quadra level machine.
If you're interested in creating 3D environments in which you can navigate
in real time, Walkthrough is the program to get. Pass on the Pro version
for now. Hopefully the upgrade will solve many of Pro's substantial
problems.

New and Thoughts:

Some users and developers have discovered that the new  drive controller
causes almost constant disk accessing on the new av Mac's.
Another frequent problem is incompatibilities between programs and the new
sound manager.
Two programmers from England have developed a fix for these two problems in
the form of a System extension.
Here's the note from the authors that accompanies the extension:

Dear All,

Since it seems Apple won't do anything about this problem for a while, we
decided to.

Enclosed is our first (releasable) version of an extension 'AV Speedup'
which works around the ChangedResource and AddResource slow downs on the
840 and 660 AVs.

Please give it a go with your development environments to see if it makes a
difference. We noticed our MPW resource merging stuff takes half the time
on an 840 with this installed than without it installed (although an 800
without it was twice as quick again.)

A bit of info.

The INIT patches ChangedResource and AddResource to prevent them calling
FlushFile (which is the main slow down culprit). We are currently
investigating other culprits so that we can further improve the code. If
you know of any then please contact us. Names are on in the code so in the
unlikely event of you running into any problems you can tell us about them.

Best wishes,
Matt Gough and Brian Stroud
MicroSpot Ltd.

I tried the patch and it does seem to alleviate the disk access problem. I
don't have many games, but the great freeware game, Arashi, is still
silent.

Virtus Walkthrough and Walkthrough Pro (see reviews above) are incompatible
with the new sound manager used in the av Mac's. The good news is that I've
discovered an elegant work-around.
The problem stems from the clicking sound made whenever a tool is selected.
To fix the problem, remove the sound resource.
Here's how:
Start ResEdit
Select the Virtus program
Click on the speaker icon to display a list of sound resources
You'll find two sounds: "Nil" and "Button"
Select them and then select "Clear" from the edit menu
Select "Save" from the file menu
That's it!

The program will now run as intended, sans the clicking sound.

Please don't send me E-mail asking if a E-mail subscription to UMR is
available--it isn't. I would very much like to set up an automated
subscription service, though. If anyone is familiar with creating a
listserv mailing list, please contact me at one of the above E-mail
addresses. Thanks!

If you're interested in contributing to UMR, please do so. It's very time
consuming to produce this newsletter every week and would appreciate the
help. Reviews, how-to's or feature articles will all be considered. You
don't have to write to get your idea approved. Just submit the finished
article, if I like it, I'll use it and give you full credit. Think of the
fame and  fortune that could be yours by simply writing an article....

Best Buy, the discount electronics store, is selling Mac TV. I saw one at a
store here, and it looks very cool. It appears to be a Performa 550, but
all black. I played with it for a few moments before the salesperson came
over, and it works like any other Mac. One notable feature was the ability
to grab screen shots of both the Mac display and a TV picture. A tiny
remote is included and you can switch between being a computer and being a
TV at the touch of a button. This still seems like a lame idea to me, but
my nephew pointed out that it may be popular with college students. Instead
of their parents popping for both a TV and a computer, they can buy one
unit. Perhaps the next version will have an integral vcr, which can record
and edit QuickTime movies, as well as play rental movies. Now that would be
worth buying!
Whether you think Mac TV is a lame idea or not, I think that we can all
agree that an 8 MB RAM limit is sheer lunacy. In my opinion 8 MB is the
minimum configuration for a Mac these days. Apple has made some stupid
decisions in its time, but this one really takes the prize.
In any event, the black case is totally cool. I hope that someone in
Apple's marketing department recognizes how appearance can influence a
computer buyer's decision. Anyone for a write-in campaign?

While I only had two people mention that they use publish and subscribe, I
had a virtual avalanche of mail from users proclaiming the virtues of the
label menu color coding scheme. Really. If I were to judge by my E-mail, it
would seem that I am the only one NOT using it. Go figure...

An Internet quick reference

If you're new to the Internet or thinking about obtaining access, you're
probably aware that most Internet hosts run on Unix. This means that if you
have a standard dial-up connection (as opposed to a SLIP or PPP connection)
you'll have to use Unix commands to do your bidding.
As many new users to the Internet are obtaining access by joining Delphi,
which uses standard Unix conventions, here's a short list of basic Unix
commands. Although there are many Unix commands, those presented below
should be all you need on a day-to-day basis. Some may differ depending on
the operating system the host is using.

ls              lists files in directory
dir             lists files in directory, displays more information than ls
cd              changes directory by moving down the hierarchy
cdup            changes directory by moving up in the hierarchy (some
systems use cd..)
mv              moves files or directories
cp              copy command
rm              removes files
sz              send file using the zmodem protocol (use this when downloading)
rz              receives a file using the zmodem protocol (use this when
uploading)
bye             logoff, exit can also be used
mkdir           creates a directory
rmdir           removes a directory

The Rumor Mill:

Apple has sold over 2500 Newton development kits!

New PowerBooks released in March will have PCMCIA slots similar to the
Newton Message Pad.

The first PowerPC (601) will be in a Quadra 610 case. Upgrades for 610/660
owners will cost about $950.

The LCIII will leave the product line shortly after the holidays and the
Color Classic II will be introduced. It is basically the same as the Color
Classic, except it runs at 25 mhz and has a 32 bit bus.

Does anyone actually use Balloon Help on a regular basis?

Look for Apple to release a Color Stylewriter within six months. If you
want to know the specifics, look at the Star Micronics color inkjet, which
is basically the same. Both are manufactured by Canon.

Apple is working on a joint venture with Kodak and they will produce a
digital Imaging camera that includes a Photoshop plug in for around $800.
Pictures are stored in RAM.

Nokia is set to release a portable cellular phone with an integral cellular
modem which can connect to any device with a PMCIA slot, such as a Newton.
Now if we can just get some software for the thing...

Questions and Answers:

Q: I just bought a Centris 610 about three weeks ago. I am having a major
case of buyers remorse. I think Apple is really declining. I used to be a
100% Mac fan, and now I am almost ready to buy a Windows machine. Do you
think I was ripped off?

A: I certainly can sympathize with the buyer's remorse feeling. It can
occur after making virtually any major purchase.
As to whether Apple ripped you off, that's another matter altogether. Apple
is a corporation whose entire reason for being is to make money. One way to
do this is to frequently release faster computers with more features.
Unfortunately, this causes some frustration on the part of the buyer.
Since Sculley is gone, expect to see the number of new Macs released to
dwindle to a few per year. The new boss, Spindler, has indicated that he
wants to simplify the product line and only introduce new models that are
significant updates.
It's interesting to note that the computer market is really the only market
where customers become angry when new models are released. Have you ever
heard a car owner become furious because the new '93 model comes with
standard anti-lock brakes and his '92 didn't? Perhaps he should call the
manufacturer and demand an low cost update.
When someone buys a computer, they do so because it fills a need. Just
because a faster, more feature laden model is introduced, doesn't mean the
old model isn't capable of doing what it was purchased to do.
Remember, computers are just tools. Let's not get too hung up with having
the latest and greatest. Buy a computer that does what you need it to, when
you need it to. Then start saving for the next one.

Hot Files:

Quoter DA
Freeware
Pete Johnson

Quoter DA is a small program that comes in very handy during any telecom
session. Essentially, Quoter does one basic task; it formats text so that a
pair of initials and a quote symbol appear before each line.

For example:

MS> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps
MS> over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The
MS> quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps
MS> over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

This is useful when replying to notes and E-mail. As the note you're
replying to may be expired or otherwise missing, it's a good idea to remind
other readers of what you're replying to. Some E-mail programs and
newsreaders offer this feature, but Quoter is the best stand alone quoting
utility available.
As an added bonus, Quoter also has a basic encryption feature. Both the
sender and the receiver have to agree on the password beforehand, and
although admittedly the encryption is primitive at best, it does work.

Coming Soon

Reviews of:
The Internet Tour Guide (Book)
Ready, Set, Go! 6.0
Infini-D 2.6
Quicken 4.0
Now Fun
Virtus VR
Nisus 3.4L
Hi! Finance
And more...

Coming Next Issue:
Reviews of HomeWorks Templates, and The Internet Tour Guide (Book)
Do-it-yourself clock-chipping
Winning the lottery with your Mac

And the usual columns: Rumor Mill, Questions and Answers, Misc. Thoughts,
Hot Files and more...

END TEXT FILE
A incredibly hilarious and witty signature is currently under construction.