¢FUTURA FEEDBACK¢March/April 1994¢¢ Welcome to an all-new Futura Feedback. Although the column has not been on the disk for a while I have been keeping a note of all your questions.¢¢ Without further delay, let the questions commence...¢¢¢I'D LIKE TO DRAW AND PRINT PICTURES WITH MY CHILDREN. CAN YOU HELP?¢¢- For printing pictures I would suggest NOSAUG PD disks U07 and U05. The NOSAUG Palette (U07) has NINE art programs. With these you will be able to draw the pictures. For printing, I would recommend Superb Dump V3.0 on disk U05. As the title suggests - it is superb! You can change the shades, dump size, etc. I use it to dump the Futura title screens for the printed copy version.¢¢¢¢IS IT POSSIBLE TO FIT A 3.5" DRIVE TO MY ATARI 8-BIT?¢¢- It is possible to fit a 3.5" drive to your Atari 8-Bit. There are currently two ways to do it - unfortunately, both are expensive!¢¢(1) THE BLACK BOX & FLOPPY BOARD¢¢ This is an add-on device for the Atari 8-Bit which plugs into the PBI port of the 800XL or the ECI and cartridge ports of the 130XE. It provides an RS-232 modem port, a parallel printer port, a hard drive port and an Operating System enhancement! PHEW! Something else, eh? The price is anyway! It retails at $199.95 in the USA.¢¢ The Black Box also allows the connection of IBM 5.25 or 3.5" drives. However, you need The Floppy Board which retails at an extra $149.95!¢¢ Both the Black Box and The Floppy Board are sold by CSS in the USA. I think they offer a $20 discount if you buy both at the same time (which will still set you back over #200!).¢¢(2) THE XF UPGRADES¢¢ CSS also sell an upgrade for the XF551 disk drive which allows you to either turn it into a 3.5" drive or a 5.25"/3.5" 'double decker' drive. Prices range from $59.95 for a single drive conversion minus drive to $139.95 for a dual drive conversion with drive. Again, quite expensive but nowhere near as much as the Black Box (although you don't get the sexy hard drive interface!).¢¢Contact: CSS,¢ PO BOX 17660,¢ ROCHESTER,¢ NY 14617,¢ USA.¢¢ As far as I know, the hardware add-ons above will work on a standard 800XL or 130XE. No memory upgrade is required. The good thing about owning a 3.5" IBM drive is that you'll be able to store much more data and load it at upto ten times the speed!¢¢ A future third possibility is Micro Discount's long-promised 3rd-party disk drive interface. Keep an eye on Derek's ads in Page 6 for news of this exciting development. Hopefully, we'll see it released this year at a reasonable price.¢¢¢¢WITH A 3.5" DRIVE, WILL I BE ABLE TO USE ATARI ST PROGRAMS?¢¢ You won't be able to use programs designed for the ST - these will be written in ST languages which your Atari 8-bit will not understand.¢¢¢¢That's all for now - keep 'em coming!¢
