BYTE-1993-01

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1984

The Luggables

35 pounds 8088-class CPU 512KRAM Floppy drive No hard drive AC only

Monochrome display $4000 to $5000

1987

The Laptops

115 to 20 pounds 8088 or 80286-class CPU 640KRAM Floppy drive 10 or 20MB hard drive AC only or 1.5-hour battery CGA display $3500 to $4500

1990

The Notebooks

6 to 9 pounds

80286 or 80386SX-class CPU 640K RAM Floppy drive 20 to 40MB hard drive 2 to 3-hour battery ;'CGA or VGA display $2900 to $4500

■Sir

HANDBOOK'

Weight: 2.75 Lbs. Dimensions: 5.9" x 9.75" x 1.4"

: 4.5-Hr. NiMH 2.3Ah Battery and AC Adapter/Charger

■: Alkaline Battery Pack 286-Class Performance lMBRAM,Upgradeableto3MB 40MB Hard Drive Backlit 7.6" CGA Screen 1 Parallel and 1 Serial Port 78-Key Touch-Type Keyboard MS-DOS 5.0, LapLink® XL, MS Works"' for DOS, Central Point® Desktop & Serial Download Cable Carrying Case

$1295

'■"Ballery life was measured using PC Magazine's Battery Rundown Test with power management enabled. Results max vary.

NOMAD

Weight: 5.6 Lbs. Dimensions: 8.5" x 11" x 1.8" 6-Hr. NiCad 5.7Ah Battery and AC Adapter/Charger 4MB RAM 3.5" Diskette Drive Backlit 10" VGA Screen, 64 Grays Simultaneous Video 1 Parallel and 1 Serial Port 79-Key Keyboard & FieldMouse1" I MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 MS Works for Windows 2.0

NOMAD 325SXL $1795 25MHz 386SXL, 80MB Hard Drive

NOMAD 420SXL $1995 20MHz 486SXL, 80MB Hard Drive

NOMAD 425SXL $2295 25MHz486SXL, 120MB Hard Drive

NOMAD 425DXL $2695 25MHz 486DXL, 120MB Hard Drive

Into A

New

™

GATEWW2000

"You've i'j>t (i friend in ihc huwtvss."

8 0 0-523-2000

610 Gateway Drive • P.O.Box 2000 • North Sioux City, SD 57049-2000 605-232-2000 • Fax 605-232-2023

All prices ami configurations are subject 10 change without notice. Prices do not include shippiiiii. rl 992 Gateway 2000. Inc.

HaudBook and FteldMouse arc trademarks of Gateway 2000, Inc. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Today

The HandBook

2.8 pounds

C&TCPU,

286-cIass

performance

1MB RAM

40MB hard

drive

4.5-hour

battery

CGA display

$1295

You've been wrestling with over-sized, under-powered and over-priced portables for nine long years! Now Gateway 2000 emerges from the struggle and takes a giant step in the evolution of portable computing. With Gateway's line of portable PCs, there's a perfect combination of power, portability and price for all Homosapiens.

If you're a power user, a Nomad is the natural selection. Nomad notebooks give you 386SX, 486SX or 486DX desktop performance, yet they're smaller than most notebooks - 8.5 x 11 inches, 5.6 pounds - and run for over six hours on a single battery with power management enabled. The biggest advance recently is new, lower prices. Now you can buy a 486 Nomad for under $2,000 an unprecedented find!

If you're a traveler or executive looking for even more portability for writing, e-mail and appointments, the Gateway HandBook is for you. This new species in portable computing is a one-of-akind PC in miniature form. In fact, the HandBook was just named one of the year's "Best of What's New" products by Popular Science magazine. Measuring a mere 6x10 inches, the HandBook weighs only 2.75 pounds, yet it gives you 286-class performance, great battery life, a comfortable, touch-type keyboard and a bright, backlit screen. The HandBook now includes an alkaline battery pack, too, so you can use drug-store batteries if you don't want to carry your NiMH battery and AC adapter.

The Gateway Nomads and HandBook were designed specifically for you - today's on-the-move computer user. Struggle no more with a Neanderthal artifact. Call Gateway 2000 and let us take you into a new age of portable computing!

Today

The Nomads

5.6 pounds 80386SX, 80486SX or 80486DX CPU 4MB RAM Floppy drive or 120MB hard drive 6-hour battery VGA display $1795 to : $2695

So Powerful

It Can't Be A PC

Transform Your PC With The INTERACTIVE UNIX System.

Unleash the 32-bit power in your PC with the INTERACTIVE'" UNIX'" System from SunSoft. Charge through applications at record speeds. Use real-world multitasking and networking. Get on the path to a distributed computing future.

Just Say No To SCO.

Why? The INTERACTIVE UNIX System is easy to use, simple to administer, all at a great price.

Open Systems Today* says the INTERACTIVE UNIX "system management... is easier to use and more comprehensive" than SCO1 and "is simply a masterpiece of good design."

Looking Glass Professional" desktop manager makes the INTERACTIVE UNIX System easy enough for novices, yet powerful enough for experienced UNIX users. And the award winning Easy Windows makes setting up graphic environments infinitely simpler. You can't afford not to take advantage of the already low cost of the INTERACTIVE UNIX System.

And SCO UNIX/XENIX'9 users can save an additional 50% by switching to the INTERACTIVE UNIX System today. That's something to say yes to.

Everything You Like About YourPC-AndALotMore.

INTERACTIVE UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 supports hundreds of the most popular Intelbased platforms and peripherals. So getting started is fast, easy, and cost-effective.

Thousands of UNIX and XENIX applications are at your command. And our VP/ix package runs virtually all DOS software.

You get Lotus" WordPerfect, and Oracle. You get SCO applications.

You get it all.

See What Develops.

The INTERACTIVE UNIX System is the environment of choice for 80X86 application development. You get access to a full range of development tools including compilers, debuggers and libraries. And for graphical applications, the XI1 INTERACTIVE environment is a revelation.

Partner With Power.

The INTERACTIVE UNIX System is a powerful business partner for companies who know something about power. Companies like BMW, Goodyear, Leica, and Dunlop to name a few. That power can be yours, too. All from SunSoft, the leading supplier of 32-bit UNIX system software.

Call today and save 50% on UNIX power that's so cost-effective, it can't be anything bill a PC. 1-800-227-9227.

^SunSoft

w

A Sun Microsystems, Inc. Business

•Issue date: April 13,1992 ©1992 Sim Microsystems, Inc. Sun, .Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, SunSoft, the SunSoft Logo, VP/ix untl Easy Windows are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. INTERACTIVE is a trademark of INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. Looking (diss Professional is a trademark of Visis Software. Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective holders. The promotional discount is available to SCO UNLX/XENIX users and is subject to certain restrictions. Contact SunSoft for terms and conditions of promotion. SunSoft reserves the right to stop the promotion at anytime. SunSoft can be reached at 2550 Garcia Avenue, Mountain View, CA94M3, (510) 460-3267. B-1/93

Circle 201 on Inquiry Card.

BVTE

January 1993 Volume 18, Number I

COVER STORY

FEATURE

The 1992 BYTE Awards

PAGE 116

32

41

46

51

54

72

NEWS

MICROBYTES

Preliminary info on Motorola's 68060 is impressive, but the PowerPC 601 will probably ship first.

REPORT FROM HONG KONG

by Andrew Reinhardt

Hong Kong hopes to profit by its ties

to mainland China.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Two Toshiba Systems to Go

by Gene Smarte

The T4500 notebook and the Dynapad

T100X pen-based computer.

A HIGHER END FOR COMPAQ NOTEBOOKS by Ed Perratore

UnixWare:

New Hope for Unix?

by Tom Yager

The friendliest Unix around.

Turbo Pascal 7.0 and

Borland Pascal with Objects 7.0,

a new generation of Pascal

Epson Progression, a 486/33 with a graphics-acceleration Wingine

Flexscan F340iW, Graphite Card, and Paradise Accelerator,

working toward clearer Windows

WinFax Pro 3.0, fax software with OCR and a cool cover-page designer

Visio, a new approach to graphics

CoIorFrame, a portable color display for Macs

Datafax, a Windows fax program

WHAT'S NEW

The ScreenStar displays two full-size documents; the Digibot II "reads" multidimensional objects; and more.

FEATURES

116 The 1992 BYTE Awards

by Michael Nadeau

BYTE editors pick the best products of the past year.

145 Computing Without Clocks

by Dick Pounlain

Asynchronous processors turn computing on its head.

STATE OF THE ART

MACHINE TRANSLATION

152 Overview: Machine Translation

by Muriel Vasconcellos Machine translation is coming to your computer.

MT AT YOUR SERVICE

by Eduard Hovy

167 How MT Works

by Eduard Hovy There is more than one way to perform machine translation.

THE FIVE LAYERS OF AMBIGUITY

by Bernard E. Scott

177 Babelware for the Desktop

by L. Chris Miller

Many machine-translation systems are available on workstations and personal computers.

IS MT RIGHT FOR YOU?

by Muriel Vasconcellos

185 Resource Guide:

Machine-Translation Software

4 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

COVER IMAGE: PAUL AVIS ©1993

REVIEWS

OPINIONS

188

202

209

217

221

225

231 239 241

246

SOLUTIONS FOCUS

Putting Your Data on the Map by Ben Smith and Howard Eglowstein

Connecting maps with data helps visualize information. \j

Making Windows Rock and Roll

by Rick Grehan The BYTE Lab looks at 16 accelerators that speed up Windows operations (for as little as $139).

AST's PowerExec Goes Modular

by Rob Mitchell

Upgradability meets portability in

AST's new PowerExec.

Desktop CD-ROM Publishing

by Jon Udell

Philips' CDD521 ushers in the second CD-ROM revolution.

Neural Net Adds Smarts to Spreadsheets, Slowly

by Maureen Caudill If I only had a brain: Braincel aims to smarten spreadsheets with neural-network technology.

Next-Generation Code Generators for Windows by Steve Apiki Latest versions of Case:W and WindowsMaker Professional ease the task of generating Windows code.

Topas 4.0 Simplifies 3-D by Tom Yager

Topas 4.0 makes quick work of realistic 3-D graphics.

Commodore Gets Tough by Tom Yager Two new 68040-based Amigas.

Photography by the Numbers by Howard Eglowstein

Professional electronic cameras from Kodak and Sony deliver instant results

to your Mac or PC.

Reviewer's Notebook: How to Give Windows a Workout by Rick Grehan The BYTE Lab introduces new Windows benchmarks.

HANDS ON

97

248

334

12

20

USER'S COLUMN The Principle of Pursuit

by Jerry Pournelle Microsoft moves to dominate with Access and Windows for Workgroups.

BOOK AND CD-ROM REVIEWS

Goings-On at the Edge

by Hugh Kenner, Bob Ryan, Raymond GA Cote, and Tom Thompson The science of complexity.

STOP BIT

Cinema by Computer

by Roger Ebert

Movies no longer offer an escape

from reality.

EDITORIAL

1993

by Dennis Allen

LETTERS

Responses on BYTE's global perspective, the October editorial, and other topics.

251 UNDER THE HOOD Digitizer Renaissance

by Jean Renard Ward

and Debra Schultz

Pen computers are reinvigorating

digitizer tablet technologies.

261 SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

OS/2's System Object Model

b\ Barn' Nance

The OS/2 2.0 System Object

Model offers a language-neutral

approach to object-oriented

programming.

269 SOFTWARE CORNER Your Own Devices

by Barry Nance, Tom Thompson, and Ben Smith

DOS device drivers, hexadecimal editing in Unix, and monitoring System 7.0 memory partitions.

271 BEYOND DOS

Connecting Windows to Data with ODBC

by Jon Udell

Open Database Connectivity is an API for database-enabled Windows applications.

278 ASK BYTE

Internet access solutions, Procomm problems, and other issues.

READER SERVICE

333 Editorial Index by Company

326 Alphabetical Index to Advertisers

328 Index to Advertisers by Product Category

Direct Link Cards: 240A, 328A

PROGRAM LISTINGS

From BIX: Join "listings/frombyte93" and select the appropriate subarea (i.e., "jan93"). From the UUNET: ftp to ftp.uu.net, log on as ''anonymous," and enter your user ID as your password. Type "cd /published/byte" and type "DIR." Files appear in subdirectories arranged by month.

From the BYTE BBS at 1200-9600 bps: Dial (603) 924-9820 and follow the instructions at the prompt.

INSIDE BYTE

BYTE (ISSN 0360-5280) is published monthly with additional issues in April and October by McGraw-Hill, Inc. U.S. subscriber rate $29.95 per year. In Canada and Mexico, $34.95 per year. European surface mail subscriptions $50, airmail $70. Non-European subscriptions. $50 surface mail or S75 airmail. All foreign subscriptions are payable in U.S. funds that can be drawn on a U.S. bank. Single copies $3.50 in the U.S., $4.50 in Canada. Executive, Editorial, Circulation, and Advertising Offices: One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Second-class postage paid at Peterborough, NH. and additional mailing offices. Postage paid at Winnipeg, Manitoba. Registration number 9321. Registered for GST as McGraw-Hill, Inc., GST H123075673. Printed in the United States of America. Postmaster: Send address changes and fulfillment questions to BYTE Subscriptions, P.O. Box 552, Hightstown, NJ 08520.

COVER CORNER PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT PARKER / AVIS STUDIO ©1993

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 5

TYPE: 3.5" OPTICAL

CAPACITY: 1 28 MB

SIZE: 6.9" (H) X 2.7" (W) X 8.3" (D)

WEIGHT: 4.1 1 LBS

MOUNTING: VERTICAL OR HORIZONTAL

First you bought a 40MB hard Introducing the first line of optical drives that are lightning

drive, then an 80MB, stepped up to a 150MB, made the fast and have unlimited capacity. The PMO-130™ and

move to a 300MB, and took out a loan to buy a 600MB. It PMO-650™ are the world's fastest optical drives with

never ends - until today. performance that rockets past most magnetic hard drives.

Seagate*"' Fujitsu Maxtor'"

ST4766N 630MB , M2266SA 1.2GB i XT-8760SH 676MB

Drive Pinnacle

Tested PMO-650''

Xcopy 20MB Tree to

Optica! Drive

Moxoptix Hewlett-Packard; Ricoh Tahiti" II Corsair™ ; R0-5031E

Xcopy 50MB Tree lo Optical Drive

FIWARE TESTING LABORATORIES, Inc.

■nets: PMO-130, PMO-650. OHD, Optical Hard Drive, and Pinnacle Micro are Trademarks oi Pinnatle Micro, Inc. ©I 992. Trademarks and regislered marks to their respective owners. All test results performed by NSTL 8/92. Retail prices acquired from dealer survey 10/92.

19 Technology • Irvine, CA 92718 • Int'l (714) 727-3300 • Fax (714) 727-1913

tME Last dfuve You'll j Jlld,

pa

. liio PiMO-650 wis voritnhlo rockol."

Christonhor Stetson

KWook

fe. _

"riioPi\10-6.^ is liio first

rowrit<i')lo ojilkiil (Irivo

v/o'vo ovor tested thiit om jjoi

out iinil run iio<:!( ■: 111 ■: I

no<:!< v/illi iiiinl disks/'

wBem

mk

Type: 5.25" Optical capacity: 650/ 600 mb

SIZE: 7.3" (H) X 3.6" (W) X 10.0" (D)

weight: 7.4 lbs

Mounting: Vertical or Horizontal

Optical technology has many advantages- making Pinnacle the leader in performance and innovation, removability, reliability, infinite storage capacity, and a lower There is no higher source in the industry. The PMO-130™ and cost per megabyte over magnetic media. The PMO™ series are PM0-650™are the Twin Peaks. Pl.ug-n-play for PC and based on Pinnacle's own OHD™ (Optical Hard Drive) technology, compatibles, PS/2, MAC, SUN, HP, DEC, and Silicon Graphics.

It's more than a hard drive - It's optical!

(800) 553-7070

Pinnacle J^jcro

M

Circle 143 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 144).

THE OPTICAL STORAGE COMPANY*

BYTE Topic Index

This index helps you find articles that contain information on each of the listed topics. (The topic list changes each month.)

Combined with the table of contents (page 4) and the Editorial Index by Company (page 333),

you can identify articles by type, subject, title, author, or product discussed.

ACCELERATOR BOARDS 54, 202

AMIGA 239

ANIMATION 231,334

ASIA 41

ASYNCHRONOUS LOGIC 145

BYTE AWARDS 116

CAD 72

CASE 72

CD-ROM, RECORDABLE 217

CD-ROMS 217,248

CHINA 41

CISC 32

CODE GENERATORS 225

CONNECTIVITY 72

DATABASES 97,188,271

DIGITAL CAMERAS 97,241

DIGITIZERS 251

DOS 32,72,97,177,231

ELECTRONIC PHOTOGRAPHY 241

EUROPE 32

FAX SOFTWARE 54

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS 188

GRAPHICS 54,231

GRAPHICS BOARDS 54,202

GRAPHICS CHIPS 54,202

HONGKONG 41

JAPAN 32

LOW-POWER CHIPS 46,72,209

MACHINE TRANSLATION 152,177,185

MACINTOSH 54,72,177,188, 269

MAPPING SOFTWARE 72,188

MICROSOFT'S MESSAGING API

(MAPI) 32

MONITORS 54

MULTIMEDIA 54,217,241,334

NETWORKING 72,97

NEURAL NETWORKS 221

NOTEBOOK COMPUTERS 46, 72,209

OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

261

OCR 54

OPEN DATABASE CONNECTIVITY (ODBC) 271

OS/2 261

PASCAL 54

PCMCIA 46,209

PEN COMPUTERS 46

PORTABLE COMPUTERS 72

PRESENTATION GRAPHICS 231

PRINTERS 72

PROGRAMMING

54,72,225,261,269,271

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES 54

RISC 32

SHAREWARE/FREEWARE 54, 269

SPREADSHEETS 221

SQL 271

STORAGE 72

SYSTEM OBJECT MODEL (SOM) 261

TAIWAN 41

3-D MODELING 231

U.K. 32

UNIX 51,72,177,269

VENDOR-INDEPENDENT MESSAGING

(VIM) 32

WINDOWS 54,72,97,188,202, 221, 225, 246, 271

WORKGROUPS 97

X.400 32

X WINDOW SYSTEM 72

Your Choice of Keyboard Monitor Switches

Access multiple computers with a single keyboard and monitor to cut equipment costs, save valuable space, and end clutter

Simple pushbutton operation for quick selection Four, eight, or twelve ports per unit Daisy-chaining connects unlimited number of CPUs Compatible with EGA, VGA, Macintosh, Sun, and others Optional keyboard booting for 286,386, and 486 Optional RS232 or PS/2 mouse interface PCB construction for high reliability and low crosstalk Rack mount, matrix, and customized units available

Manually controlled unit

I Switch by keystroke, from front panel, or RS232port I Two or four ports per unit I Cascade units to support up to 255 CPUs I Supports monochrome, EGA, and VGA I Includes keyboard booting for 286,386, and 486 I Includes RS232 and PS/2 mouse interface LEDs display selected CPU and CPU power-on Scan function switches among CPUs automatically

Typical Application

CPUs/Servers

Keyboard controlled unit

Call toll-free now for your copy of our Switching and Sharing Solutions catalog.

Other Rose products: Print servers, printer sharing units, print butters, keyboard monitor extenders, video splitters. All Rose products are US-made and have a 1-year warranty.

Make the Rose Connection ^ESSI

10850 Wilcrest Drive • Houston, Texas 77099 • Phone (713)933-7673 • Fax (713)933-0044

ELECTRONICS

1-800-333-9343

8 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 156 on Inquiry Card.

WINDOWS DEBUGGERS DOC/C

Toggle Decimal/Hexadecimal Display of Variable Value

Find Next , !

Browse C++ Class Hierarchy

CommandBar

Restart Application

Open Source File (wild cards allowed)"

Find Function (wild cards allowed)

Find String

Browse Pointer to Struct as Array of Structs

Enable C++ Class Mame Display

Toggle Breakpoint

Set Clear all

Breakpoint Breakpoints

Step into Call

Step over Call

Find Variable (wild cards allowed) ■

Source Window

Application C++ Classes

Status: breakpoint

Application C++

Objects and

Data Structure

Window

Application Output

Debugging Log

n=HEip

Go until Breakpoint

W

>KDIChildWodProc

> Ro1easeCa pt ure PROCEDURE AT 0697 PROCEDURE AT 06qF

baseBaseVector::~bas Inline baseVector::angl 0 baseVector::testing 32 boseVector::x 0 baseVector::baseVect 0BBF:6706b baseVector::basaVect 0BBF:63CAh baseVector: .-baseVect 08BF:6632b baseVector::~baseVec Inline popop 999

MemoryContents

Memoiy Assembly

:ChildWndProc

/leasftCapture fOCEDURE AT D65F 10CEDURE AT 065F

aJCEBURE AT 065F *0CEOUR£ AT 069F WCEDURE AT 069F jleoseCapf reatelDEChildWin< reatePtWiDdow jHewWmdow as&Window

H*

0001 Q04F 0B96 0000

QlJOO

_ACTIVATEAPP

G84F 0000 0000

Lnn 0-, h-i m~

Help Breakpoint Wotdi Graphic Data

Assembly CPU/Coprocessor Application Debugger Decode Registers Functions Help

Stack Call Chain Window

Application Files Window

. C++ Class Hierarchy Browser

- Application Breakpoints

Window Message Spy

Graphical Representation of Data Structures and Objects

386/486 Watchpoints

Only MultiScope 2.0 has what it takes to nail the

bugs in your code, whether in Borland9 C++ 3.0 or

3.1; Microsoft? C/C++ 7.0; or Microsoft C 6.0.

When it comes to true C++ debugging, there's only one way to go — directly to MultiScope Debuggers Version 2.0. That's because only MultiScope can offer you real C++ debugging in a Windows environment today.

It's The Real C++ Thing — MultiScope.

As the only Windows-hosted debugger on the market today, MultiScope 2.0 delivers powerful features you won't find elsewhere.

PLUS, MultiScope C/C++ debugging features include the capability of browsing pointers to structures as arrays by

INCLUDING:

• A point-and-shoot C++ class hierarchy browser

• C++ object browsing

• Automatic C++ object mapping for alt C++ inheritance types

• An alternative C++ class information display for clarity of member scope

• Windows-hosted debugging of Windows applications on the same screen

• A CodeView compatible command line

• A fully integrated SPY utility for spying multiple windows at the same lime

• 386/486 hardware memory breakpoints for quickly finding memory overwrites

• Object-oriented breakpoints

simply double-clicking on the desired array index, and the ability to browse any variable as if it was declared in any other type by simply using the sticky type transfer command.

Real Power Is In Sight.

More importantly, it's all there at your fingertips. The MultiScope screen you see here tells the whole story; it's a powerful, feature-rich, integrated Windows environment, where the capabilities you need are just a mouse-click away.

A Real Value

In addition to real C++ debugging, the new MultiScope Debuggers 2.0 offer you real value. The MultiScope Debuggers for Windows provide the Windows Run-Time Debugger, MED, the Crash Analyzer System and more - all in one package.

Act now! To order direct, please call 1-800-2284122 x 8354. We even offer a 60-day moneyback guarantee. To get corporate pricing or additional technical product information, call 1-800999-8846 or 408-252-1652.

MULTISCOPE

MULTISCOPE DEBUGGERS

© 1992 Symantec Corporation. * Offer valid in U.S. and Canada only — price in U.S. dollars. International phone: Canada, 1-800-465-2266; Europe, 31-71-353111; Australia, 2-879-6577; others, 1-408-252-3570. All trademarks or registered trademarks are those of their respective holders.

Circle 191 on Inquiry Card.

SYMANTEC.

i™

A highly placed engineer reveals his technical assessment of the new $7,995,59 MIPS, accelerated graphics, eye-popping SPARCstation LX.

Compliant I SCD I

©1992 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, and PC-NFS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All SPARC trademarks, including the SCD Compliant logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. SPARCstation is licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. AH other products or service names mentioned herein arc trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

"Can I keep it?"

To more than 650,000 people around the world a Sun™ workstation on their desk has become a way of life, a must.

Let us present the latest addiction, SPARCstation™ LX. A graphics workstation -*■*«* that will take you screaming through your applications. Whether you work with CAD, AEC, CASE, design automation or document processing, imaging and office automation, SPARCstation LX is for you.

\bu can look at the LX in two different ways.

Just put on your numbers hat and you'll see 50 MHz, 59 MIPS, 64-bit memory bus, lOMb/sec I/O, and so forth.

Or just sit down, load your favorite application, and you might not want to leave your desk.

Because the 8-bit accelerated graphics will make you use the full extent of your software, like interactively manipulating 2-D and 3-D wireframe models.

j, And the built-in ISDN lets you share documents that combine text, graphics, images, audio, and video with anyone, anywhere. All with an intuitive graphical user "»■*■* interface called OPEN LOOK?

\bu can even create powerful workgroups of SPARCstation LXs and existing PCs with Sun's PC-NFS8 technology.

Any way you look at it, chances are this remarkable machine will end up staying on your desk.

Just call 1-800-426-5321, ext. 520 for more information or a demo. It's worth your time.

A

Sun

Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation

A Sun Microsystems, Inc. Business

Circle 169 on Inquiry Card.

EDITORIAL

DENNIS ALLEN

1993

1993's hot technologies will include local-bus adapters and credit-card size hard disks

While this issue of BYTE officially names the best products and technologies of 1992, I'd like to look ahead at what 1993 holds in store. Two hot technology areas in which we'll see a lot of activity are local-bus adapters and PCMCIA cards. By mid-1993, nearly all high-end systems will include fast local-bus video, and by the end of the year, non-local-bus video cards will virtually be things of the past. Soon afterward, we'll see a sizable number of local-bus adapters speeding up tasks other than fast video.

In the meantime, PCMCIA cards—those little credit-cardsize devices that you may have seen on notebook computers— will make their way to mainstream desktop systems. Already IBM has shown its Energy Desktop PC, which accepts four PCMCIA cards. Because of their convenient size, which makes them easy to insert into an external slot, PCMCIA cards may spell the beginning of the end of traditional internal expansion boards. For 1993, though, the biggest thing in PCMCIA cards will be tiny, removable hard disks. Expect to see several notebook computers with 60- to 120MB hard disks on removable PCMCIA cards by March. Another exciting area for hardware will be mobile computing. In 1993, a notebook computer with an active-matrix color display may actually become affordable. Or, if you're willing to forgo the color, you'll be able to buy an easy-to-carry 486-based subnotebook for $2000 (and maybe less). If you're into exotic systems, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) will make their debut. Apple may have raised expectations too high with the promise of its Newton, but check out the Personal Communicator from EO and AT&T—it's very clever. Moreover, the EO Personal Communicator raises the bar for other pen-input systems.

Also important will be the Intel Pentium microprocessor (previously known as the P5 or 586). You can expect to see some fast—and expensive—desktop systems using the Pentium in 1993, but that's not where it will have the greatest impact: Where this new CPU will really make its mark is in the file-server arena. For the desktop, expect to see more clock-doubling technology in the form of very high-speed 486 chips.

You'll hear more about non-Intel CPUs, too. The ongoing hardware price war is forcing several PC makers to look for alternative CPUs whose price/performance ratios

can beat those of Intel's chips. Cyrix, AMD, and other Intel rivals will take advantage of this window of opportunity, so you should see some new and interesting non-Intel CPU offerings that will compete directly with the Intel 486.

As the hardware price war rages, the applications software industry will join the battle. At the end of 1992, we witnessed Microsoft offering its Access database program at an introductory price of $99. Well, there'll be plenty more bargains like that one. As many software makers reach the limit of what they can add to existing products to justify high prices in a competitive market (consider the latest CorelDraw, for example), they will have no choice but to lower prices (as Corel did). Remember all that money you put into the budget for applications software this year? You'll be able to buy a lot more applications with it.

Operating systems, on the other hand, may be just as confusing as ever. Yes, you can expect to see Windows NT sometime in 1993, but once it's available we'll have to answer the bigger questions of where it fits and whether it was worth the wait. There will be a lot of talk and a lot of coverage of NT, Unix, OS/2, Mac OS, Windows, and Desqview, to name a few. By year's end, however, we will consider most of the debate as strategic planning for 1994. When 1993 is done, the only real change in operating systems will be in continued migration from plain DOS to Windows.

Finally, I see 1993 as the year of the document. With Adobe's recent introduction of Acrobat, a portable document-encoding format, we at last have a sensible way to exchange electronic documents. Adobe's Acrobat will have as profound an impact on documents as PostScript had on desktop publishing. If rumors hold true, though, Acrobat may have some stiff competition from as-yetundisclosed features of Xerox's Paperworks. Either way, add in low-cost CD-ROM drives and affordable (less than $8000) CD-ROM recorders, and you can see how in 1993 we may move pretty close to the ideal of the electronic office.

—Dennis Allen Editor in Chief

12 BYTE •JANUARY 1993

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Increased 386 Perform

AMD's 3-Volt 386 Microprocessors Deliver The Longest Battery Life For Portable Computing.

The power struggle continues. While you can get a 386 microprocessor that goes fast, you'll still burn through a battery charge in a hurry. Lowvoltage 386 CPUs from AMD are the answer—the Am386'"SXLV and Am386DXLV microprocessors.

Here are two CPUs made not only to go fast, but to go the distance with portable computer users. Unlike common power- ., ; ,,;i irj, hungry 386s, these low-voltage CPUs mmdriki*

run on 3 volts. And they automatically slip into a static "sleep" mode to save power whenever the processor is idle. So users depend less on recharge units—and get the longest operational battery life. Both Am386 CPUs were designed to fit as comfortably in your budget as they do your portable computers. But you won't compromise on performance because „ the Am386SXLV and Am386DXLV 3-volt

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BYTE

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Dennis Allen

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m

| Copyright © 1993 by McGraw-Hill, Inc. All rights reserved. BYTE and OTIC are registered trademarks of McGraw-Hill, Inc. Trademark registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

ft

Member Audit Bureau of Circulation

officers of mcgraw-hiu, inc.: Founder: James H. McGraw (1860-1948).

Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer: Joseph L. Dionne; Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary: Robert N. Landes; Executive Vice President Harold W. McGraw 111; Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer: Robert J. Bahash; Senior Vice President, Treasury Operations: Frank D. Penglase; Executive Vice President, Publication Services: Norbert Schumacher.

16 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

The ALR

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• 30 Day Money Back Guarantee only applies to purchases of ALR PowerFlex FLYER SC. ALR PoweiPie- FLYER SD and ALR PowerFle* FLYER 3/25s when purchased through ALRS Piimeline Direct only. Prices and c on figure lions subject to change wilhouf notice. Systems shown with optional equipment. Systems shown with optional monitors. Venty e*acl specifications with ALR. Prices based on U.S. Dollars ALR is a registered trademark ol Advanced Logic Research, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their lespective owners. Intel Inside is a trademark ot Intel corp. «>1992 by Advanced Lonic Research. Inc.

Circle 63 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 64).

No one else gives you so much upgradabiliJy in your computer.

Notice the extra row of pins in the CPU socket? Now you can upgrade from any i486 all the way to the 1993 super OverDrive processor based on Intel's Pentium" architecture. And the ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket makes it so easy!

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FREE software. In addition to DOS and Windows, you now get the Lotus Organizer- the Personal Information Manager highly recommended by PC Magazine. Plus yew get your choice of an additional popular Windows application from Lotus. With all the free software you get with your ZEOS, you save hundreds of dollars'.

ZBOSGksYou More.

Consider the Vertical Option. We can build your new upgradable system in our eight-bay vertical case. It comes complete with our highcapacity power supply and two cooling fans. Add only $95.

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ZEOS. THE UPGRADABILITY EXPERTS.

ZEOS was one of the first to offer truly high performance upgradable PCs. Now using the latest in high integration technology, we've made a good thing even better!

Start with the CPU of your choice. Select between the 486SX-25 or 33, the 486DX-33, the 486DX2-50 or 486DX2-66. Next year, if you choose, you can upgrade all the way to the new super OverDrive processor based on Intel's Pentium architecture. Maximum power today and tomorrow.

CPU UPGRADABILITY IS ONLY PART OF THE STORY.

In their haste to cut features, the others seem to have forgotten about your future. That's why ZEOS provides eight expansion slots, high-capacity power supplies with built-in surge suppression, and six drive

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THE MORE YOU LOOK, THE MORE OBVIOUS YOUR ZEOS ADVANTAGES BECOME.

With ZEOS, you get more than just a rosy future. You start out with more than anyone else. Today.

We've used the latest technology to incorporate more

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QUALITY. A ZEOS HALLMARK.

Such as the two cooling fans you'll find in every ZEOS system. While ZEOS systems run cooler than most with one fan, we still give you two whisper-quiet ones. The cooler your system runs the longer it will last. We also include a built-in surge suppressor in every system. Of course every ZEOS system carries the Underwriters Laboratories listing as well. These are extra features the others can't or won't offer you. But you deserve them, and from ZEOS they're yours. No additional charge.

FREE LOTUS SOFTWARE, TOO!

And now, when you purchase any new ZEOS Windows-based system, you get DOS, Windows, and the new Lotus Organizer—the Personal Information Manager highly recommended by PC Magazine. You also get your choice of either Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows, Ami Pro, or Freelance Graphics. You'd pay hundreds of dollars for this software alone. And we're giving it to you absolutely free. Now that's ZEOS value.

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Remember too, ZEOS provides you with our top-rated 24-Hour-A-Day Toll-Free Technical Support. Plus your new ZEOS system is covered by our 30-Day Absolute Satisfaction Money-Back Guarantee, One Full Year Limited Warranty, and our Express Parts Replacement Policy.

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Purchase orders from Fortune 1000 companies, governments and institutions subject to approval. Leasing programs are available. All prices and specifications are subject to change without notice. Please call to confirm pricing, specifications and warranty details. All products and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. ©1992, ZEOS International Ltd 530 5th Avenue N W. St. Paul, MN 55112 USA. ZEOS is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ symbol: ZEOS). UPGR-BYT-9301

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LETTERS

Mac OOP Explained

Parshall Credit

I found James Parshall's Some Assembly Required article ("Mac OOP Explained," October 1992) quite helpful. I have been using the Think C version of the Think Class Library for a few months, and I'm just starting to feel comfortable with it. I particularly liked the emphasis on data (instance variables) and how it is manipulated within a class.

John Kordybac Calgary, Canada

Presidential Brouhaha

I am disturbed by Dennis Allen's endorsement of George Bush in the October editorial titled "Open Markets, Better Computers." Allen's remarks can be faulted on a number of grounds. If he is so concerned about R&D budgets, why does he say nothing about the drastic decline in both private-sector and total R&D expenditures during the Bush administration?

But more important, this kind of politicking has no place in BYTE. Allen may believe sincerely that reelecting Bush will be the best thing for computer users and for the country and that one-sentence descriptions of the candidates' positions on world markets are all we need to know to decide how to vote. But I read BYTE for information about computers, not for Allen's political views, and I find their intrusion into the magazine offensive.

I will seek advice about how to cast my vote from other sources that take a broader and more informed view, and I will certainly cancel my subscription to BYTE if it continues to endorse political candidates.

George Avrunin Amherst, MA

Gee, nice timing...a little commercial message, "Vote for George Bush," appeared in the October editorial. By the time there can be any balancing response, say the printing of this letter, the election will be over.

Robert Lynch Berkeley, CA

It is ironic that I read Dennis Allen's October editorial on the day after hearing an announcement that the leaders of numerous high-technology companies, including John Sculley of Apple, support Governor Clinton for president. Would Allen have us believe that Sculley hopes to see the computer industry take a nosedive during the next five years? I think not.

Robert M. Luzenski Haslett, Ml

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. Address correspondence to Letters Editor, BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458 , send BlXmail c/o "editors, " or send Internet Mail to letters@bytepb.byte.com. Letters may be edited.

Land of the Double Byte

T:

R. Reid's observations on the Japanese computer environment in the Report from Tokyo ("In the Land of the Double Byte," October 1992) are basically correct, but the comment from his Japanese friend who said using a computer to write a story is too slow is unbelievable. His comment was valid when NEC's 8088-based PC-9801 appeared in 1982, but not today, when most Japanese PCs are equipped with a 386SX or faster processor.

It is true that most Japanese journalists don't use a laptop computer or even a Wah-Puro. (The name is an abbreviation of the phrase "wah-doe purosessah," the Japanese pronunciation of "word processor.") However, this is because a mental barrier prevents reporters from using a computer. Many friends of mine testify that writing by computer has accelerated their writing speed by two or three times.

Also, the most common operating system in Japan is not DOS/V, but NEC's MS-DOS, which runs on the PC-9801 series (and is incompatible with the IBM PC). American software houses don't bother to spend much money to analyze such closed architectures. The language barrier matters to some extent, but the difference in computer architecture is a far more serious obstacle for foreign software houses.

Enomoto Makoto Saitama, Japan

Internet Plug

Daniel Dern's "Plugging Into the Internet" (October 1992) is very timely, and I hope that you expand your coverage of the Internet. We can use all the Internet information we can get our hands on.

My compliments to Dern for his excellent article.

T. Pat Kelly Atlanta, GA

Hidden Requirement

o

thar Hansson's review of Microsoft C/C++ 7.0 (or C7) ("Microsoft's Lucky Number," September 1992) failed to mention a significant drawback: the requirement for a DPMI (DOS Protected Mode Interface) manager. This isn't mentioned in Microsoft's ads, nor in the company's upgrade information. Microsoft bundles 386Max with C7 as a partial remedy for those programmers who don't choose to run under Windows.

When I substituted 386Max for QEMM386, some of my Desqview windows stopped working, and some of Microsoft's own programs, such as Profile, wouldn't work either. It's bad for any product to require a total revamping of a user's system. It's worse for Microsoft to try to rope users into running Windows just to get C7 going. It's still worse for the company to provide a less-than-adequate product as a workaround.

Robert L. Wears Jacksonville, FL

20 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Here.

There.

STAYING PRODUCTIVE AWAY FROM THE OFFICE

ere.

The HP DeskJet Portable.

$599.

Hewlett-Packard presents the DeskJet for the jet set. The new HP DeskJet Portable printer lets frequent travelers create great-looking documents anywhere they go.

It's small enough to fit in a briefcase and weighs only 4.4 pounds. But the DeskJet Portable prints high-quality 300 dpi black and white text and graphics on plain paper, transparencies, or labels.

It's everything you expect from an office printer in a portable package. Compatibility with most major software. A fast print speed of up to three pages per minute. A wide variety of typefaces, sizes, and styles. And Hewlett-Packard inkjet technology, so you don't sacrifice print quality for portability.

The DeskJet Portable is built to take more than the usual amount of jostling. And, to offer your employees even more versatility, an optional rechargeable battery is available, along with a Worldwide Rapid Recharger, a 50-page cutsheet feeder, and a handy carrying case.

To top it off, the DeskJet Portable has a price tag befitting its small size. Just $599? Who says you can't take it with you? For the name of the authorized HP dealer nearest you, call 1-800-552-8500, Ext. 7108+ To receive information by fax, call 1-800-333-1917, choose HP FIRST, document #9606.

DeskJet Printers Make it happen.

0 1992 Hewlett-Packard Company PE12215

•Suggested U.S. list price. Optional cut-sheet feeder not included.

tin Canada call 1-80O-S87-3857, Ext. 7108.

ia

HEWLETT PACKARD

The drive and

determination to advance

canbe seen in many forms.

Here's a couple we think

you'll be excited about.

moMSS

Introducing the Microsoft database management systems.

Some people aspire to become famous athletes. Others to become great scholars. But for a group of us here at Microsoft, there's nothing more important than creating a new line of databases with the tools and technology you need to do your everyday tasks.

For example, some of you will need dBASE*5 compatibility and unequaled performance.That's why we have Microsoft" FoxPro8 2.5. Some of you need seamless access to data in multiple formats. For you we have the Microsoft Access" database for Windows:

But all the tools in the world won't do you much good if you can't get help when you need it. So we have a world-class product support organization to quickly answer all of your database questions.

In addition, we've created a special program for developers that will put you directly in touch with some of our senior product support people.

In the future, our technology will con

• »•>

tinue to evolve with you in mind. So what you create today will still work tomorrow. In short, there will be no dead ends.

We're also committed to supporting open standards and compatibility. Currently we are working with ANSI to develop a standard Xbase language.

Plus we fully support the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) technology, which will allow you to access files from even more of today's database management systems.

And to ensure there will always be a vast supply of industry-specific products and services to meet your database needs, we're forming strong business partnerships with many other companies.

So if you'd like additional information on Microsoft's database solutions, give us a call at (800) 882-2000, Dept. JF6. And find out just how motivated we are to become your database company.

Microsoft

Making it easier

MICROSOFT WINDOWS

Both Microsoft FoxPro 2.5 and Microsoft Access were created to take complete advantage of the

Windows operating system.

Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the USi\. In lite SO United Slates, call 1800) 882-2000. Dept. JF6. Customers in Canada, call 1800) 563-9048. Oidsidc the 50 United States and Canada, call (206) 936-8661. Microsoft a FoxPro are registered trademarks and Microsoft Access and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. dBASE is a registered trademark of Borland International, Inc.

Since the beginning of time,

people have been obsessed with

reaching ever increasing rates

of speed. So what else is new

with Microsoft FoxPro 2.5?

H 30.33

K. ..J

I m

MS I J 1.00 «mk m

Microsoft FoxPro

version 2.5 is the

fastest PC database

management system

available today.

Plenty. For starters, the newMicrosoft*FoxPrd'2.5 for Windows" has a rich and pro ductive environment with an intuitive graphical interface. Which means it's never been easier for you to use and develop powerful Xbase applications.

Plus there's avirtual hardware store of tools for both developers and users.

For developers, there are professional tools designed to help you create the most powerful applications possible.

like the Trace and Debug windows, Project Manager, Menu Builder, Screen Builder and Report Writer.

For users, there are handy tools that make it easy to do complex database tasks without programming. Like Relational Query By Example (RQBE), which allows you to build and see queries instantly. Or the graphical Browse tool, an intuitive way to view data. And finally, Quick Screen and Quick Report, two easy ways to create objects and see data.

And now with the arrival of FoxPro 2.5

s.

for both the Windows and MS-DOS'operating systems (and soon for the Macintosh8 and UNIX8), you can have the most powerful and most graphical Xbase applications across all major PC platforms. And if you are thinking about migrating to Windows in the future, have no fear. Because Microsoft FoxPro for Windows will easily run allyour FoxPro 2.0 files.

But no matter which platform you choose, you can count on Microsoft FoxPro to provide you with the fastest PC-based database management system.

For additional information, just zip on over to your nearest reseller, or call us at (800) 882-2000, Dept. JF7. We'll be more than happy to tell you all the ways Microsoft FoxPro 2.5 for Windows can get your adrenaline pumping.

Microsoft

Making it easier

FoxPro 2.5 takes advantage of Windows and allows you to create dazzling applications.

'Qiwry test pcrforrrwdl^MicroEntkamirsjnc.. an imk-^mlcntconsultingfmn

United Stales and Canada, call (206) 936-8601. Microsoft, MS DOS and Fa\l'r» arc registered trademarks and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Macintosh is a registered tradttnark of Apple Computer, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX Systems Laboratories.

People always seek the most

direct route to achieve their

goals. So you've probably

been looking for a database

like Microsoft Access.

If you're a database user or programmer, we'd like to show you a great shortcut. It's called Microsoft Access: It's a

wm Accesswuards, new database management toZkyoutZih system for Windows™ that can

comblex tasks •

om step at a time. give you something no other database can. Easy access to the powerful features you need to do your job.

To start with, Access takes complete advantage of the Microsoft8 Windows operating system. Which means it has never been easier to create greatlooking forms and reports. Plus you can store objects like pictures, graphs, sound, and video. Right in your database files.

And if you ever get stuck, there are ReportWizards, FormWizards and ChartWizards to come to your rescue. They'll ask you questions about format, content and style.Then they'll automatically create your report, form or chart.

There are also Cue Cards to walk you through the most difficult database tasks. Guiding you one step at a time.

In addition, it's easy to create complex

queries by using the graphical Query By Example, "feu just drag and drop tables, join fields, and plug in all of the specifics.

And you developers can write sophisticated database applications with Access Basic. A powerful, extensible programming language.

What's more, Microsoft Access

Create complex queries visually with our graphical Query By Example.

can easily read

and write all the

major database

formats directly,

including dBASE1,

Paradox* and Microsoft SQL Server. So

you and your coworkers can still use all

your old files, no matter what format they

are in. That means, your investment is

safe and everyone can easily migrate to

Microsoft Access at their own pace.

To receive additional information on Microsoft Access, call (800) 882-2000, Dept. JF8. We'll give it to you straight.

Microsoft

Making it easier

2 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. In the 50 United States, call (800) 882-2000. Dept. JF8. Customers in Canada, call (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, call (206) 936-8661. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Microsoft Access and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. dBASE and Paradox arc registered trademarks of Borland International, Inc.

LETTERS

Inmark Responds

The article "Code on the Move" (July 1992), which covered portable libraries, contained several significant errors regarding zApp. The most troubling was the general theme that zApp was designed to work only with the Windows API. Statements in the article position zApp as a nonportable user interface. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our current support of OS/2 clearly demonstrates zApp's portability beyond the Windows API.

The article also stated that zApp achieves its portability by distributing Magma Software Systems' Mewell interface for DOS. This is true for the DOS version, but not for the Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, or planned X/Motif versions, which all use native-mode calls. Also, although the screens from zApp were labeled as DOS and Windows screens, they were actually the same DOS screen.

The article classifies zApp as a shell-style library. While it is true that zApp encapsulates the breadth of the Windows API (and most GUIs, for that matter), it is not a shell library. zApp's advanced, portable design is not a wrapper of the Windows API as are Microsoft's Foundation Classes. In fact, zApp includes many advanced classes that have no analogy in the Windows API. Many of zApp's customers have moved away from real shell-style libraries (e.g., MFC and OWL) because they wanted the more powerful constructs that zApp provides.

Howard M. Love Jr.

President and Chairman of the Board

Inmark Development Corp.

Mountain View, CA

Lab View in Review

I have been using Lab View for years and disagree with some of Andy Reinhardt's comments regarding LabView programming ("Acquiring Data Through Windows," September 1992). In my experience, structuring and debugging a sophisticated application is far easier with LabView than with any of the conventional languages I've used. Some of Reinhardt's comments refer to LabView's layers of modules as a source of difficulty when creating and modifying LabView programs. I find this puzzling. I consider LabView's ability to encapsulate program details in discrete modules to be one of its strengths. I would hate to have to develop a sophisticated system using a language that does not support structured programming.

Jeffrey M. Parker Round Rock, TX

Andy Reinhardt's first impressions of LabView for Windows appear to be just that—impressions. His sentiments are favorable, but I can't help thinking that the purported difficulty of structuring and debugging LabView programs stems from only a superficial exposure to this excellent programming environment. LabView represents a new paradigm in programming. Reinhardt's comments indicate that he couldn't quite shake the dogma of procedural programming.

Had he spent more time with LabView, Reinhardt would have come to the same conclusion I did four years ago: I will never type another line of code again!

David A. Moschella Boston, MA

I agree that object-oriented software may boost programming productivity in data acquisition, and I don' t dispute that LabView's visual nature can aid application development. In fact, my article was quite favorable to LabView, which I found extremely powerful. The point I was trying to make in my critique was that for some users, especially those automating simple test procedures, the software may be overkill. Not all BYTE readers have made the paradigm shift from procedural to event-driven programming, and for them, I sought to highlight that LabView will open up new vistas only after a period of adjustment. After all, there are still a lot of users out there who prefer command-line interfaces to GUIs!—Andy Reinhardt

Iomega Pricing

In "The New Wave of Removable Mass Storage" (October 1992), the cost per megabyte for the Bernoulli device was miscalculated. The cost, given at $12.04/MB, should have read $2.54/MB. At today's street prices, the cost comes down to$1.50/MB.

Also, the interface adapter for the Bernoulli Transportable 90 Pro drive is a $239 option, but it is included with the Bernoulli PC Powered 90 Pro drive.

Iomega's drives are now price competitive with hard drives. And when you consider cost per megabyte over time, the Bernoulli is less expensive.

Mike Joseph

Vice President of Marketing

Iomega Corp.

Roy, UT

BYTE apologizes for this typographical error.—Eds.

FIXES

• In "BYTE's Guide to 128 Top Windows Products" (BYTE Special Issue: Essential Guide to Windows), the latest release date for Smalltalk/V 2.0 for Windows is incorrect. The current version was introduced in June 1992.

• The two photo captions in the text box "Putting VL-Bus to the Test" (October 1992, page 124) were inadvertently switched. Photo A is the UltraStor hard drive controller; photo B is the Micronics VL-Bus motherboard.

• In "FileMaker Pro 2.0 Unites the PC and Mac" (October 1992), we stated that both versions of FileMaker are network-ready out of the box and include a license for up to 25 users. In fact, the network licensing is an option.

• The CPU benchmark graph in "Compaq's Newest Notebooks" (October 1992) inaccurately shows a very low score for the Dell NL25 notebook computer. The NL25 fell between the slower Compaq LTE/Lite and the faster Compaq LTE/Lite 25 C.

• In "Operating-System Trends" (October 1992), an editing error resulted in our identifying Mike Nash as a product manager at Intel. Nash is Microsoft's product manager for Windows NT. The error carried into a subsequent passage which refers to "Intel's Windows NT." The idea stirs the imagination, but NT is still a Microsoft product. BYTE regrets these errors. ■

28 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

The Only Multidimensional Spreadsheet For Windows.

CA-Compete!

Up to 12

different

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CA-Compete! - ME.MDL

File Edit Formula Format Options Tools Window

Global

Units

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Help

Actual January 1991

|:»11 January |»[|Eait

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Sales

COGS

SGtA.

Total Cost

its

LPs

I Tapes [CDs I Total

235;

1251!

2541!

8.35!

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L. fcales

Plan for LP's

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January February March |Ap

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Plan

* East

350;

8 35]

392

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Ready

$1,483 $425

433

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Variance Report by Product

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LP's

Actual

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Units

Price

Sales Cost of Goods Sold Selling & Admin.

Total Cost

295

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12,611

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1261 SI .364

Profits

350

$8.85

S3,098

51,288

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$0.00 ($4871 ($165) ($111)

($276)

$1,227 $1,438

($211)

CD's

Actual

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Units 2541 2600 £9)

Price $13.00 $13.00 $0.00

Sales $33,033 $33,800 [$767)

Cost of Goods Sold $9,670 $9,569 $101

Selling & Admin. $3,303 $4,056 ($753)

"Total Cost $12,973 $13,625 ($651)

Profits $20,060 $20,175 ($116)

^"r"

Global

formulas you . can apply

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Presentationquality output withjonts, - borders and shades.

Looks like a spreadsheet with standard ■ commandsyou know, like cut, paste, copy and sum.

Chosen "Best of 1990" by PC Magazine.

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mouse. And ;.;;3t4-J CA-Compete! ■'»J^

„„„„1,„ MICROSOFT-.

speaks windows.

English too, so you can use C0MmilBl£ recognizable names you define, like Sales, Units, Costs and Profit, instead

Audit Irail... Qaal Seek... Data Table...

Audit (View 3)

*0.33 [812559 000000006] iperalinq Expense [2162300.00000002 (3000000 00000002] •Produoion [1687500.00000001 ] •Unitsl.5 p 406250 00000001 ]

'ls9z.0pcrnllng InHIa] Value: Current value:

Source CcH lo be Modeled

of cryptic column and row references.

For smarter decision making, there's a broad range of powerful tools, like Goal Seek, Allocate and Forecast, so you can perform extensive "what-is"

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You can also trace the origin of any value with a quick, graphical Audit Trail Tool.

CA-Compete! reads and writes

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s) Computer Associates International, Inc., One Computer Associates Plaza, Islandia, NY 11788-7000. All product names referenced herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

Circle 91 on Inquiry Card.

'In Canada, call 1 800 465-1234. "Prices are current as of 10/27/92. All prices listed are MSRP. Remarketer prices may vary. IBM, AIX and RISC System/6000 are registered trademarks and PowerPC, POWERstation and POWERserver are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other products are trademarks or registered trademarks"OUheir respective companies. ©1992 IBM Corp. ■

The POWERstation 220:

Here today.

When you're ready for raw power and performance at a low price, climb on a leader of the pack. The RISC System/6000e POWERstation™ 220.

Cruise with leading UNIX" desktop price/ performance today that has the kind of muscle and brains to keep pace with you tomorrow. And in the future when you're ready to rev up the performance, you'll be able to upgrade the 220 processor. It's even ready for the PowerPC'" 601 microprocessor model, which will offer up to two times the performance when available.

With AIX? IBM's commercial-strength UNIX, you'll have access to more than 6,000 leading solutions. What's more, the applications you develop today on the POW ERstation 220 will run full out on any of the RISC System/6000 family of POWERstations and POWERservers™

The POWERserver 220 is also the perfect vehicle for the open road, with seamless connectivity and network management for IBM and non-IBM networks alike.

More tomorrow.

And don't forget IBM's unequalled service and support. You can count on us to install machines, configure networks and integrate all your systems, IBM or non-IBM.

So isn't it time you took this bad boy for a test drive?

Call your IBM marketing representative or Business Partner. For literature, call 1 800 IBM-6676, cxt. 715.*

• Upgradable to PowerPC.

• Great value today, growth for tomorrow.

• AIX, IBM's commercial-strength UNIX.

• Unequalled service and support.

• Complete systems start at $5,950.**

:®

Circle 113 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

MICROBYTES

Motorola Skips a Generation with the 68060

Like Intel's Pentium (formerly known as the P5), Motorola's next-generation microprocessor will use superscalar architecture, parallel pipelines, branch prediction, and a common instruction pipe that the integer and FPUs share. It will also maintain full software compatibility with earlier members of its chip family. But by the time Motorola's 68060 begins to ship in production quantities, Intel's Pentium will likely have been in production for over a year: Motorola expects to begin manufacturing the 68060 in the First half of 1994.

At Michael Slater's Microprocessor Forum last October in Burlingame, California, Motorola (Austin, TX) said that the 68060 will run about 31/: times faster than a 25-MHz 68040, delivering about 77 MIPS at its initial clock rate of 50 MHz. That's not quite as fast as the Pentium, which Intel says will deliver about 100 MIPS at its initial frequency of 66 MHz. Motorola says it hopes to eventually drive the 68060 at 66 MHz; that version of the chip could achieve a performance of 100 MIPS.

However, the 68060 contains about 2 million transistors with a minimum transistor size of 0.5 micron, compared to the Pentium's 3 million transistors in 0.8-micron technology. Also, the 68060 is a static CMOS chip that operates at 3.3 V as well as at 5 V; the first Pentium is expected to be strictly a 5-V device.

Architecturally, both chips take advantage of similar techniques to wring more performance from their traditional CISC designs. In the 68060, a four-stage fetch unit dispatches integer instructions along a pair of four-stage execution pipelines. At the same time, the chip stores the instructions in a 256-entry cache and predicts upcoming branches based on past patterns.

When the chip correctly predicts a branch that is taken, it effectively jumps to the new address in 0 clock cycles. When the processor correctly predicts that a branch in a program will not be taken, it jumps to the correct address in 1 clock cycle.

How efficient are the parallel pipelines? Motorola says the 68060 executes 50 percent to 60 percent of the instructions in pairs. That's with integer code generated by existing compilers. Presumably, more instructions could be generated in parallel by generating code with an optimized compiler.

The 68060's FPU has three arithmetic units—an adder, a multiplier, and a divider—and it shares the execution stages of the primary integer pipeline. Floating-point instructions can be dispatched along this pipeline, while integer instructions flow through the secondary pipeline; both instructions' execution cycles can overlap. Floating-point loads and stores take 1 cycle, addition takes 3 cycles, multiplication takes 4 cycles, and division takes 24 cycles. Other features of the 68060 include a pair of 8-KB caches for instructions and data, as well as a 32-bit data/address bus similar to the 68040's.

If you're wondering why the new chip is called the 68060 instead of the 68050, Motorola has an explanation. Traditionally, odd-numbered chips in the 68000 family offer incremental improvements, while even-numbered chips are considered major leaps. Motorola says its customers wanted more than the small gain implied by the step from 68040 to 68050.

Competition was surely a factor as well. Intel's Pentium significantly raises the stakes for CISC processors. With the 68060 expected to ship about a year after the Pentium, it's no wonder that Apple, one of Motorola's biggest customers, is adopting a new family of RISC chips for its next-generation machines. Motorola and IBM are jointly developing those chips, the PowerPC series.

—Tom R. Hamuli

NANOBYTES

Intel says the official new name of its next-generation processor— previously known as the P5—will be the Pentium. Speaking to the New York PC Users Group, Intel president and CEO Andrew Grove said the forthcoming Pentium will have an FPU that will be five to 10 times faster than the FPU on a 486DX/33. Intel hopes to introduce the chip, which Grove said will have 3.2 million transistors and a 32-bit external bus, around the end of the first quarter of this year. Grove said that other suggested names for the chip included Memory Lane, Chip IQ, Suetable Chip, Quintel, Big New Chip, and Imitraitor. Grove applauded the semiconductor trade agreements, which he said have doubled the number of U.S. semiconductors sold in Japan—from 8 percent to 16 percent of the total Japanese market. □

The early word from Microsoft is that its new operating system, called MS-DOS 6.0, will include integrated compression, networking, and improved ease of use. Rich Freedman, Microsoft's product manager for MS-DOS, said that businesses still have a large number of vertical applications that for various reasons will not be ported to Windows. Microsoft wants to improve the usability of MS-DOS for these non-Windows users, he said. "Memory management was the key feature that sold and continues to sell MSDOS 5.0," Freedman said. So you can expect improvements in that area as well. D

32 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

I

I

PC-based Client/Server SQL Tools

Four Good Reasons to get your copy right away:

1. True Client/Server for reliability an

performance Your databases are protecte from corruption by features such as referentia and entity integrity, as well as true transactic processing. Client/server architecture and our 32-bit database server software help deliver increased performance for applications runnim on your PC LANs.

2. Royalty-free run-time

just $99 you get royalty-free run-tin support. It lets you distribute applicat for standalone PCs and include our si user run-time database server. It als< you distribute your applications on unlimited number of client machines „, network environments.

high-performance multi-user database server.

fFrom entry level PCs... You can use OS PCs with just 640K memory as database server machines for small networks. For f single-user standalone environments, the , SQL database server together with an

with a minimum of 640K memory.

_ high end servers. The watcom JL database server automatically adapts to utilize the available memory on your system for increased performance. The 32-bit version unleashes the power of 386/486 PC's to fficiently serve many clients in large networks.

3. Scalability Whether you implement applications using the ACME front-end or write them in C or C++, they can be designed to run without change in environments ranging from standalone 640K single-user PCs to large networks running our

a limited time it's yours for just $395

WATCOM SQL Developer's Edition has a suggested retail price of $795 but for a limited time you can get it at the introductory price of only $395. Even better, as a registered user of the Developer's Edition you'll be able to get a copy of the 6-user Network Server Edition for only $99 (Suggested retail price: $795).

Developer's Edition

Complete Client/Server Development Tools Package Including Standalone Single-user SQL Database Engine

The Developer's Edition allows you to develop and deploy single-user standalone applications, and to develop applications for use with the WATCOM SQL Network Server Edition. You get the ACME (Application Creation Made Easy) front-end application development system. It combines visual forms design with simple event-driven programming to allow rapid prototyping and development of client applications without C programming. The Developer's Edition also includes IBM SAA standard embedded SQL support for C/C + + application development with WATCOM, Microsoft and Borland compilers.

Package components include: Single-user standalone database server (both 16 and 32-bit versions) • Interactive SQL • ACME front-end application development system • Embedded SQL/C preprocessor • SQL libraries for use with WATCOM C, WATCOM C/386, Microsoft C/C+ +, and Borland C/C+ +.

System Requirements:

Hardware: IBM PC compatible with hard disk, 640K minimum memory Software: DOS, Windows DOS box, or OS/2 DOS box

Special Introductory Offer: $395 (Suggested retail price: $795)

Special offers available to registered users: (details inside package)

• Royalty-free run-time support: $99

• 6-user Network Server Edition: $99 (Suggested retail price: $795)

Network Server Edition

High-performance Multi-user SQL Database Server for PC LANs

The Network Server Edition provides client/server support for multiple concurrent users in a local area network environment. The WATCOM SQL database server supports ANSI standard SQL and provides advanced capabilities, including bi-directional scrollable updatable cursors, referential integrity, row-level locking and symmetric multiprocessing of requests. WATCOM SQL also gives you comprehensive security capabilities, data encryption and data compression. Compatible programming interfaces let you implement applications that run without change using either the standalone single-user database or the Network Server Edition.

Package components include: Multi-user network database server (both 16 and 32-bit versions) • Interactive SQL • Network requestor and request manager.

Client System Requirements:

Hardware: IBM PC compatibles, 640K minimum memory Software: DOS, Windows DOS box, or OS/2 DOS box

Database Server System Requirements:

Hardware: IBM PC compatible with hard disk, 640K minimum memory

Software: DOS

Network Requirements: NetBIOS or Novell Netware (IPX)

Suggested Retail Price: 6-user version: $795

Unlimited version: $1,595

WATCOM, 415 Phillip Street, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3X2 Telephone: (519) 886-3700, Fax: (519) 747-4971

Prices do not include freight and taxes where applicable. Authorized dealers may sell for less. WATCOM SQL, the Lightning Device, and Application Creation Made Easy are trademarks of WATCOM International Corporation. Other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners Copyright 1992 WATCOM International Corporation.

WAT

1-800-265-4555

The Leader in Development Tools

Circle 187 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

MICROBYTES

PowerPC 601: Ahead of Schedule

NANOBYTES

IBM and Motorola are ahead of schedule with the development of their PowerPC 601, the first in a series of RISC microprocessors on which IBM and Apple will base their next generation of personal computers. The first-pass silicon was ready last October, less than a year after a joint team began work in Austin, Texas.

If development continues apace, IBM and Apple expect to introduce their first PowerPC systems by late 1993. The 601based systems will be relatively inexpensive and will rival the performance of lowend workstations. As reported last month in Microbytes, future chips in the PowerPC family will include the 603, for portable systems; the 604, for mainstream desktop computers; and the 620, for high-end systems and servers.

The 601 is a streamlined derivative of the single-chip RISC engine found in IBM's RISC System/6000 Model 220 workstation. Evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the 601 combines the basic architecture of the RS/6000 with an enhanced version of the bus interface from Motorola's 88110 RISC processor.

Even though the 601 improves on the RS/6000's architecture, it's considerably less integrated than the single-chip RS/6000. Gone are on-chip controllers for DMA, interrupts, and memory, along with some automatic timers. IBM says it has scaled down the integration to keep the 601 from becoming too system-specific—an important design goal for a CPU that's intended to be used in machines from IBM, Apple, Groupe Bull, Thomson-CSF, and others.

The superscalar architecture of the 601

has three execution units that separately handle integer operations, floating-point operations, and branches. By routing these types of instructions to the appropriate pipelines, the chip can dispatch up to 3 instructions per cycle. The branch pipeline has two stages, and the integer pipeline has four. The six-stage floating-point pipeline is tuned for single-precision math, and double-precision operations are doublepumped through the pipeline's two execution stages.

Most integer instructions execute in only 1 cycle, thanks to hardware support for multiply, divide, and other special operations. The FPU achieves 1- or 2-cycle throughput, depending on the type of operation and the level of precision. The chip includes a 32-KB data/instruction cache, an MMU (memory management unit) with 52-bit virtual addressing, and support for symmetric multiprocessing. Using 0.6-micron static CMOS technology, it packs 2.8 million transistors into a 304-pin package less than 11 mm square. It operates at 3.6 V and consumes 9 W at 50 MHz.

Performance benchmarks aren't available, but IBM offers the following "conservative estimates based on simulations.": SPEC Integer '89 benchmark: 40 at 50 MHz, 50 at 66 MHz; SPEC Floating-Point '89 benchmark: 60 at 50 MHz, 80 at 66 MHz. That's more than twice as fast as the RS/6000 Model 220 chip, which runs at 33 MHz. IBM says the PowerPC 601 will be "aggressively priced." The chip could cost as little as $50. Systems could sell for $1000 to $2000.

—Tom R. Halfhill

Incompatible APIs Call for Mail Bonding

When it comes to sending electronic messages across different operating systems, LANs, and WANs, companies such as Microsoft, Lotus, and Apple want to make the act of sending E-mail as simple as dropping off a letter in an old-fashioned mailbox. An obstacle to this vision is the variety of competing—and sometimes incompatible—messaging APIs, including Microsoft's MAPI (Messaging API), Apple's OCE (Open Collaboration Environment), the VIM (Vendor-Independent Messaging) API, and the XAPIA (X.400 Applications Programming Interface Association) mail specification.

"We want to take the issue of competing messaging technologies off the table for

our customers," says Lotus chairman and CEO Jim Manzi. Manzi says Lotus will release a program this year that will allow mail-enabled applications written to the VIM API to work with Microsoft's MAPI. Tim Dempsey, manager of developer relations in Lotus's Communications Products division, says Lotus's software subsystem will reside between the application and the messaging system.

When Microsoft releases its full MAPI specification, Lotus says it will release the MAPI-VIM subsystem to public networks at no charge. Microsoft says that the full MAPI SDK (Software Development Kit), which will include Simple MAPI, extended MAPI, and service providers, will be

PC manufacturers, mindful of the challenges inherent in designing new motherboards for full-scaled Pentium-based systems, are taking an intermediate step by shipping computers with Overdrive sockets for a scaled-down version of Intel's next-generation Pentium processor. Manufacturers such as DEC, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, NCR, and Hyundai Electronics America are shipping systems with a 238-pin upgrade socket that lets users replace their current 486DX processors with a Pentium-variant Overdrive. □

EliteGroup Computer Systems,

a Taipei-based company with U.S. headquarters in Fremont, California, plans on releasing a motherboard with a 486 ZTE (zero-insertion-force) socket that will accept the P24T, Intel's code name for the unreleased Pentium Overdrive. EliteGroup Computer Systems' director of marketing Darwin Chang said, "A motherboard that can run a full-blown [Pentium] will be an extremely expensive motherboard." The cost differential between full Pentium-based and Pentium Overdrive-based boards will be about $400, he said. □

IBM Technology Products, an

IBM independent business unit, recently outlined its plans to begin selling chips on the open market. The main message: We're for real, we mean business, and you can trust us. Until 1992, IBM-TP was a nearly invisible cog in the world's largest computer company (IBM), and it sold virtually all its products to IBM. Now, under IBM's vast restructuring plan, IBM-TP is an autonomous company that must compete in the outside world and show a profit. IBM-TP is already providing 16-Mb DRAMs to Siemens Nixdorf and Toshiba, making IBM-TP one of the rare U.S. domestic suppliers of DRAMs. IBMTP is also pushing its Intel-compatible 386SLC and 486SLC microprocessors, as well as the upcoming PowerPC RISC chips. □

34 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Hie Sound Choice

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And that's only the beginning. There's a high-performance CDROM drive that surpasses MPC specifications. Plus a FREE library of CDs that will open your PC to all the possibilities of multimedia computing. Over $3,000 worth of the hottest CD titles for multimedia authoring and enhanced education, entertainment, and

productivity capabilities for your computer.

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The Sound Blaster Multimedia Upgrade Kit. At only $7991 To find out more, visit your computer retailer or call Creative Labs at 1-800-998-LABS.

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Other laser printers play leapfrog trying to catch up with the HP LaserJet

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More speed, more trays, more flexibility.

Thanks to a new RISC processor, tuned vector graphics and faster I/Os, the HP LaserJet 4 also sets new standards for speed. It even prints many 600 dpi graphics at a true 8 pages per minute. It's faster on networks, too.

With 2 MB of memory I built in and new internal memory compression algorithms, virtually all 300 dpi and many 600 dpi documents print from

standard memory. Two standard paper trays, with a total capacity of 350 sheets, and an optional 500-sheet tray let users keep printing without constantly reloading different sizes and types of paper. And the optional 75-capacity power envelope feeder saves them from manual feeding. Or dealing with jams.

HP's microfine tonet mekes 600 dpi output look even sharper — and cleerer.

45 built-in scalable typefaces let users produce 3 wide variety of docoments.

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r

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The LaserJet 4 is very much at ease with most languages and personal computing platforms. Automatic switching lets it switch between HP's PCL 5 printer language and optional PostScript Level 2 software from Adobe. Hot I/Os allow different hosts to be connected simultaneously.

Optional JetDirect cards provide LAN connections to Ethernet, TokenRing, TCP/IP and LocalTalk/EtherTalk. This makes it easy to plug into just about any network, including PC and Mac LANs. And to get really fast network performance.

To optimize the LaserJet 4 for Windows printing, we codeveloped some breakthroughs with Microsoft! Including Windows 3.1 TrueType fonts and rasterizer built in to make sure your users

get fast, WYSIWYG printing. The fast Wmdows driver with HP-GL/2 vector graphics also enhances printing speed.

Several popular software drivers are included: Wmdows, WordPerfect and Lotus. As well as the new HP Explorer PC utility software, which provides a printing tutorial to guide your users through set-up and operation of the printer's new features.

AH this makes the HP LaserJet 4 printer supremely simple to plug-and-play. As you'd expect, it also offers complete document and software compatibility with the HP LaserJet III printer.

Setting the standard in price, too.

With all these advances and more, you'd expect a big jump in price. Quite the opposite. Atjust $2,199,*

the HP LaserJet 4 printer lists for less than the printer it replaces. And, of course, it comes with pace-setting HP quality and reliability.

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NEWS

MICROBYTES

released in the first quarter. Full MAPI specification will eventually be integrated into Microsoft operating systems.

Simple MAPI, which supports common messaging calls (e.g., log-on and read), offers compatibility between Mac and Windows programs. When it is released, the full MAPI specification (which is a Windows-only API) will likely have more than 100 messaging calls to support complex workgroup functions. For a more robust multiplatform messaging API, Microsoft so far has eschewed VIM in favor of endorsing the XAPIA consortium efforts begun last summer to define a common multiplatform messaging API.

Lotus says it, too, will comply with messaging calls as they are defined by the XAPIA. But VIM proponents argue that XAPIA calls have been slow in coming, with the first XAPIA calls not expected to be released for industry comment until January or February. Dempsey says the XAPIA's first five calls—send, list, read, act, and directory lookup—probably won't be ready for developers until mid-1993. "If it took them this long to come out with the basic send call, you can figure how long it will take them to publish the other calls," Dempsey says. Lotus has already released a VIM developer's kit, and Dempsey says that more than 40 products are available that support VIM. He adds that Lotus Notes 3.0, expected to ship in the first half of 1993, will also support VIM.

Suzan Fine, MAPI product manager at

Microsoft, says that Microsoft's messaging strategy is that not everything can be done in a common, multiplatform API. "We don't necessarily believe that a lot of calls should be in the cross-platform [messaging] API," she says. "A lot of what people want in cross-platform development tools is being turned over to the cross-platform messaging API," Fine adds.

Fine says that Microsoft's position is to endorse a multiplatform API that offers full functionality and not to have developers invest resources in supporting calls that are multiplatform but offer minimal functionality. "That's why Microsoft is encouraging developers to exploit OCE on the Mac platform, MAPI on Windows, or with OS/2, its API," she says. What about DOS? Fine says that a combination of Simple MAPI and XAPIA common mail calls on top of DOS will provide the basis for an upcoming DOS mail client.

in another development, Phoenix Systems (Arlington, VA) is developing an electronic-messaging gateway between Microsoft Mail for PC Networks 3.0 and Lotus Notes. With the gateway, expected to ship in March or April, Microsoft Mail users can exchange messages with text, graphics, and sound with Lotus Notes through Windows' OLE. So, despite Microsoft's and Lotus's continuing disagreement about which common-messaging API to support, the E-mail bridges are slowly being built, one way or another.

—Dave Andrews

Pacific Bell Lets You Get There from Here

The refrain "I live in E-mail" is heard more and more in business these days. The problem is that not everyone lives in the same E-mail package, and several E-mail programs are incompatible with each other. For LAN administrators who can't wait for software vendors to resolve this E-mail incompatibility issue, Pacific Bell (San Francisco, CA, (510) 823-5880) has introduced a new service, called LANmail Connection.

LANmail Connection lets LAN-based users send and receive messages from within their familiar E-mail program with users on other dissimilar E-mail systems. LANmail Connection supports Lotus cc:Mail-, Microsoft Mail-, and MHS (message-handling-service)-compatible mail systems like Da Vinci eMail.

Other services include X.400 Interconnection for host-based systems and Mailbox Connection for stand-alone PCs and Macs. Also, Pacific Bell Connection pro

vides an E-mail directory to all connection subscribers. Companies send their E-mail directory to Pacific Bell, which places them in a centralized X.400 directory. The updated directories that you send to Pacific Bell are reflected in its systemwide database. You can then dial the service and send mail. Pacific Bell Connection identifies the recipient and forwards the message.

LANmail Connection also provides a link to X.400-compliant systems worldwide, public E-mail providers such as AT&T and Sprint, private mail systems such as DEC VMS Mail, and SoftSwitch and Retix Open servers. LANmail Connection includes a $25-per-LAN installation charge, a $10-per-LAN monthly service charge, a 15-cent charge for messages containing from 1000 to 2000 characters, and a 5-cent fee for an extra 1000 characters thereafter. International per-character charges are higher.

—Steve Apiki

NANOBYTES

IBM is showing the first signs of being as nimble as its competitors in the low-end PC battleground. Where actions like price reductions once required endless approval through several levels in the IBM hierarchy, the new IBM PC Co. operating unit responded in just one day when Compaq attempted to preempt Big Blue's ValuePoint announcement (see "New Systems ... New IBM?," November 1992 BYTE) by cutting prices on low-end Compaq systems. In turn, IBM reduced its prices on its PS/ValuePoint systems. IBM PC president Bob Corrigan told BYTE that one of the operating unit's goals is to prove to itself, as well as to the competition, that IBM can make it in today's market, which he described as "more analogous to clothes buying than PC buying." □

Things have changed in the computer industry in a big way, as evidenced by the recent Microsoft announcement of Windows for Workgroups last fall. Microsoft's cofounder, chairman, and CEO Bill Gates unveiled Windows for Workgroups to about 50,000 people assembled in New York's Gershwin Theatre and connected via satellite in 17 cities across the U.S. The extravaganza, called "How to Succeed in Business with Workgroup Computing," included seven scenes played by professional actors, singers, and dancers, along with three Microsoft people, including Gates playing himself. But following the debut, Microsoft officials acknowledged that some of the dazzling features, such as message routing, won't be ready until mid-1993. Simple MAPI, on which Windows for Workgroups is based, doesn't support routing. □

38 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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NEWS

MICROBYTES

IBM, Others Vie for Japanese PC Market

TOKYO—The battle of the PC prices is shifting to Japan, where U.S.-based vendors like IBM, Apple, and Compaq have pitted themselves against a myriad of Japanese operating standards that are incompatible with the ISA-bus standard— not to mention each other. Additionally, companies based here (e.g., Canon) are introducing low-cost (under 200,000 yen, or US$ 1650), Taiwan-built PCs based on Intel's 486 processor.

Five major bus standards compete in the Far East market. They are offered by NEC, Epson, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and AX, a consortium that includes Hitachi and Sony. But NEC, which commands more than half the Japanese market with unit sales of nearly 2 million a year, is the clear leader. NEC recently added new models (including several multimedia systems) to its popular 9800 series to fend off challenges from the ISA-bus and Apple community. One of the new models is a 486SX/20based color notebook that sells for about 498,000 yen (US$4000). It is prices like this, still high by U.S. standards but typical for Japan, that companies such as IBM and Compaq hope to exploit.

The NEC PC-H98T desktop PC sports a 12-inch color LCD that supports 1120- by 750-pixel resolutions in addition to NEC's sub-VGA 640- by 400-pixel standard. The PC-H98T costs 1.75 million yen (about US$ 14,000). "You can buy a good car for [the price of] this machine," said Asao Ishizuka, a senior writer for Nikkei Business Publications. "This is what they call a symbolic machine, to show NEC is a leader in this technology. It's symbolic—they don't have to sell it."

Last fall, IBM Japan announced desktops and notebooks that are in varying degrees based on the PS/ValuePoint (but come with XGA-2 instead of Super VGA graphics) and ThinkPad products. With the IBM systems, Japanese-speaking users can run U.S.-developed software on IBMstandard machines fitted with a kanji keyboard and DOS/V. The 3'/>-inch 1.44-MB floppy drives accept disks formatted for NEC's proprietary 1.2-MB standard. So far, however, IBM's machines are not priced sufficiently below those of NEC to make a big difference.

Of a bevy of invaders that include Apple, Dell, and DEC, Compaq may be the vendor most responsible for escalating the pitch of the Japanese price wars to that of the U.S. market's. The company recently began shipping its Deskpro/I and Prolinea lines here at prices barely above what they cost in the U.S. But Compaq did so months after introducing them in the U.S. "Low cost is perceived as poor quality in Japan," said Compaq spokeswoman Yvonne Donaldson. Compaq, to be safe, built a foundation of trust with a year of Systempro and Deskpro/M promotions before making its low-cost systems announcements.

What eventually may weigh against NEC is that Windows and OS/2 need more power than NEC's architecture can offer. "The NEC 9800 is not sufficient to run Windows," said Ishizuka. "The I/O bus structure is very inefficient." NEC technicians, he added, have said it themselves. "They have revealed to me that they think OS/2-J kanji will not run nicely on 9800 architecture."

—Ed Perratore

A Bad Exchange Causes U.K. Price Increases

LONDON—Fluctuations in European exchange rates are pushing PC prices up in Europe, particularly at the low end of the market. Many manufacturers are holding prices steady, and many more have already passed increases, halting the twoyear European price-reduction trend.

The hardest hit by the increases is the U.K. market, following a 25 percent devaluation of sterling against the U.S. dollar and even greater instability against the German deutsche mark. "If the pound keeps falling, then everyone will have to raise prices," said Steve McCall, U.K. managing director of Dutch company Tulip Computers. Most other European currencies have not suffered as badly.

U.K. supplier Dan Technology increased prices last November, and technical manager Chris Bakolas predicted unavoidable price hikes for future months as well. "Even if you can resist the pressure of the pound, there is a temporary shortage of 486s, which makes them more expensive. There is a shortage of chip sets from Taiwan, and there is an embargo on Korean memory within the EC [European Community]. It almost looks like a conspiracy to push prices up," he said.

CompuAdd's U.K. subsidiary is expected to raise prices by 10 percent, alongside price hikes from Viglen (7 percent) and Elonex in the U.K. ■

—Louise Cole

NANO BYTES

Last fall, at the NetWorld show in Dallas, Texas, Novell previewed NetWare 4.0 but downplayed its upcoming release. The company instead focused on SFT (System Fault Tolerant) Level III and existing NetWare 3.11 features. SFT III promises reliable fault-tolerant LAN operation, a feature designed to appeal to companies moving their mission-critical operations from mainframes to LANs. The NetWare 4.0 SDK (Software Development Kit) is available and the operating system itself is in solid beta, Novell says. One important feature of NetWare 4.0 is the NDS (NetWare Directory Services) component that replaces the file-server-based NetWare bindery with a single, networkwide, distributed database. □

With Borland's Paradox for Windows not expected to ship until sometime in the first quarter, Microsoft hopes to make inroads into the Windows database market by selling its Access database at just $99 until January 31, when the price will go up to $695. But at least one database developer believes that, in 1993, most of the PC database action will remain in DOS. "Our feeling is at least in the database market, [DOS database pro. grams] will acJ^ K count for 80

B ' I percent of the

^m ,<(►* ■ programs sold in 1993," said Richard Rabins, cochairman of PC database vendor Alpha Software (Burlington, MA). Rabins said products like Access and Paradox for Windows "show flashes of brilliance, but they are not products to run your business on yet." Still, Rabins said, "People will be evaluating Windows databases like crazy in 1993." Alpha is developing a Windows version of its Alpha database, said Rabins. ■

40 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

NEW BREED

486SX/33-H999

This Hyundai 486SX-33 can out-muscle those barnyard bovines of cow country. But you be the judge.

Our 32 Megapixel "Longhorn" Local Bus?... or a I Megapixel moo cow? Our "faster-than-a-blink" Windows accelerator video processing tied to the speed of your 486 CPU?... or an old-fashioned bottleneck? Our 1MB VRAM controller producing 1024 x 768 ultra-high, non-interlaced resolution?... or their tired cow VGA? Clearly, the prize goes to the Hyundai New Breed.

Compare our standard 128KB of zero-wait state cache with non-cached cows. And don't forget, the Hyundai 433S flexes its processing muscle up to 256KB of cache expansion. This system runs at the head of the stampede!

And we don't just drive the Hyundai stampede, we overdrive it! Double your speed by simply snapping in the Intel Overdrive"' Processor. And our advanced "warpspeed" L2 cache and "Longhorn" Local Bus graphics engine give your upgraded system the 32-bit video and fast SRAM you'll need for your higher-speed 486 CPU. Hyundai 433S

Want to talk add-ins? We test our 486 systems with literally hundreds of industry-standard cards and software applications. We test software compatibility on Novell (we're fully certified and a Novell Alliance Program member), Banyan Vines, OS/2 2.0, LAN Manager, and SCO UNIX, plus hundreds of programs running under Windows and MS DOS.

Trouble on the data frontier? Relax. The Hyundai 433S is loaded. A beefy 70MB superfast hard disk, two floppy drives, five external/two internal drive bays, and seven expansion slots mean you won't go hungry for performance. And dressed up with our 14" flickerfree, non-interlaced, color display, the New Breed 43 3S is the new king of PC country.

Hyundai 433S

• 33MHz 486SX w/ 8KB integrated cache

• 32-bit VESA local bus UVGA graphics w/IMB VRAM

• 128KB "warpspeed" write-back 20ns SRAM L2 cache (expandable to 256KB)

• Upgradable to 486DX power via Intel "Overdrive" socket

• 4MB system memory expandable to 64MB on system board

• 170MB 19ms IDE HDD, 32KB disk buffer

• 1.44MB 3-1/2" and 1.2MB 5-1/4" FDDs, (2.88MB-ready FDD interface)

• 14" non-interlaced, ultra-high resolution, .28 dot pitch, 72Hz refresh rate, flickerfree, color display w/1024 x 768 resolution, tilt and swivel base

• 2S/IP, integrated PS/2 mouse port

• 5 external drive bays, 2 internal

• 7 expansion slots, including I VESA local bus slot

• 200 watt power supply •101 keyboard, 2 button mouse

• Built-in virus protection, front keylock, 2 level password

• MS DOS 5.0 and MS Windows 3.1

HYUNDAI

PCs designed and built in America

FOR DIRECT SALES

I -800-933-3445

AND PUT

THE OLD

BREED

OUT TO

PASTURE.

Every cow has its day. But it's time to put that milker out to pasture and make way for the Hyundai 486 stampede. It's time to Do Something New Breed®.

Say goodbye to "cow-shed" engineering and mother-board-of-themonth manufacturing. At Hyundai, we're doing U.S.-based, end-to-end, value engineering and manufacturing. That means benchmark-blasting power from the new Hyundai family of 486 Systems.

And with up to 32 Winmarks of Windows processing power, Hyundai's bulletproof, 32-bit 486 Systems are designed and engineered for your highthroughput applications. For instance, Local Bus Graphics are standard on every system, from our entry-level computers up through our top-of-theline desktops. You'll tear through Windows with our razor-sharp, 32-bit processing. Plus, up to 32 Megapixels of mind-bending GUI acceleration is standard with every New Breed 486 from Hyundai. And here's more New Breed value engineering. Our expandable,"warpspeed" L2 cache architecture is standard on every Hyundai 486 system.

Made-in-America engineering excellence is coming through the gates with the backing of a global high-tech leader. Now Do Something New Breed. And turn the page....

•HYUNDAI

PCs designed and built in America

486 STAMPEDE

WIN MARKS

That thunder you hear on the PC prairie is the New Breed Hyundai 486 stampede. The hardestcharging, price-lean, MlPS-mean herd of computers you'll ever see. We're bringing everything from powerful 66MHz 486DX2 machines to Overdrive-Upgradable 486SX-25 computers. And with our 50MHz 486DX2 desktop PC and 486DX-33 blasters, you can handle today's demanding applications.

Do something "Longhorn" Local Bus.

That flash you see on the graphics horizon is the image of our Windows processing power triggering the Hyundai 486 stampede.

Your 486 processor was meant to run today's applications. So why rein in all that power? That out-to-pasture, 16-bit VGA card can only deliver 2 Megapixels at best. That's already dated technology. Let her rip with 32-no-blink-bits of "Longhorn" Local Bus video acceleration. And with up to 32 Megapixels standard, believe it, you'll see an incredible difference in Windows performance. Do something thunderbolt. m

Lightning-fast "warpspeed" L2

caching is another max-performance

feature that's designed into every

Hyundai 486. Thunderbolt writeback operations blast your DOS, Windows, or OS/2 data into a box canyon of ultra-fast SRAM. Start out with 128KB standard

(more than the cow computers), then expand to 256KB to ,

handle today's big applications. Cache hit for cache hit, the

Hyundai 486 Family, with 128KB standard caching, delivers twice the MIPS of non-cached cows.

Do something upgradable.

The Hyundai 486 New Breed Family is designed in Silicon Valley, U.S.A., to out-perform the herd.

All of our systems are CPU-upgradable through a single chip via a ZIF or Overdrive socket, so the New Breed lets you double your speed. We won't let tomorrow's 32-bit operating systems blast a hole in your productivity. Just upgrade your Hyundai 486 to any higher-speed Intel 486 CPU in the future.

40

30

20 10

Standard VGA

HYUNDAI Local Bus

32 BIT

VESA LOCAL BUS GRAPHICS

POWERFUL

$4700 Hyundai If 5KI 425S

25MHz Intel 486SX w/8KB integrated cache 32-bit VESA Local Bus UVGA graphics w/IMB VRAM 128KB "warpspeed" write-back 20ns SRAM L2 cache (expandable to 256KB) Upgradable to 486DX power via Intel Overdrive™ 4MB system memory expandable to 64MB on board 80MB 17ms IDE HDD, 32KB disk buffer 1.44MB 3-1/2" and 1.2MB 5-1/4" FDDs

14" non-interlaced, ultra-high resolution, .28 dot

pitch, 72Hz refresh rate, flicker-free, color display

w/1024 x 768 resolution, tilt-and-swivel base

2S/IP, integrated PS/2 mouse port

5 external drive bays, 2 internal

7 slots incl. I VESA Local Bus slot

200 watt power supply

101 keyboard, 2-button mouse

Built-in virus protection, front key lock,

2 level password

MS DOS 5.0 and MS Windows 3.1

Other hard drive, video, memory, and monitor

options available

$OOCCI Hyundai

433D

33MHz Intel 486DX w/8KB integrated cache

32-bit VESA Local Bus UVGA graphics w/IMB VRAM

128KB "warpspeed" write-back 20ns SRAM L2

cache (expandable to 256KB)

Processor upgradable via ZIF socket

4MB system memory expandable to 64MB on board

200MB 12ms IDE HDD, 256KB disk buffer

1.44MB 3-1/2" and 1.2MB 5-1/4" FDDs

14" non-interlaced, ultra-high resolution, .28 dot

pitch, 72Hz refresh rate, flicker-free, color display

w/1024 x 768 resolution, tilt-and-swivel base

2S/IP, integrated PS/2 mouse port

5 external drive bays, 2 internal

7 slots incl. I VESA Local Bus slot

200 watt power supply

101 keyboard, 2-button mouse

Built-in virus protection, front key lock, 2 level password

MS DOS 5.0 and MS Windows 3.1

Available in floor-standing server model as 433DT,

call for price

Other hard drive, video, memory, and monitor

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450D2

50MHz Intel 486DX2 w/8KB integrated cache 32-bit VESA Local Bus UVGA graphics w/IMB VRAM 128KB "warpspeed" write-baclc 20ns SRAM L2 cache (expandable to 256KB) Processor upgradable via ZIF socket 8MB system memory expandable to 64MB onboard 200MB 12ms IDE HDD, 256KB disk buffer 1.44MB 3-1/2" and 1.2MB 5-1/4" FDDs

14" non-interlaced, ultra-high resolution, .28 dot

pitch, 72Hz refresh rate, flicker-free, color display

w/1024 x 768 resolution, tilt-and-swivel base

2S/IP, integrated PS/2 mouse port

5 external dnve bays, 2 internal

7 slots incl. I VESA Local Bus slot

200 watt power supply

101 keyboard, 2-button mouse

Built-in virus protection, front key lock, 2 level password

MS DOS 5.0 and MS Windows 3.1

Other hard drive, video, memory, and

monitor options available

$OQQE Hyundai

466D2

66MHz Intel 486DX2 w/8KB integrated cache

32-bit VESA Local Bus UVGA graphics w/IMB VRAM

128KB "warpspeed" write-back 20ns SRAM L2 cache

(expandable to 256KB)

Processor upgradable via ZIF socket

8MB system memory expandable to 64MB on board

360MB 12ms IDE HDD, 256KB disk buffer

1.44MB 3-1/2" and 1.2MB 5-1/4" FDDs

14" non-interlaced, ultra-high resolution, .28 dot

pitch, 72Hz refresh rate, flicker-free, color display

w/1024 x 768 resolution, tilt-and-swivel base

2S/IP, integrated PS/2 mouse port

5 external drive bays, 2 internal

7 slots incl. I VESA Local Bus slot

200 watt power supply

101 keyboard, 2 button mouse

Built-in virus protection, front key lock, 2 level password

MS DOS 5.0 and MS Windows 3.1

Available in floor-standing model with ISA

architecture as 466D2T, call for price

Other hard drive, video, memory, and

monitor options available

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DO SOMETHING SMART. CALL HYUNDAI DIRECT SALES.

"HYUNDAI | -800-933-3445 BYT 2

PCs designed and built in America

166 Baypointe Pkwy, San Jose, CA 951 34 Hours: 6AM-5PM PST M-F

We accept MasterCard. Visa, money orders, certified checks (allow 10 days for processing), CODs, approved company and institutional purchase orders, and wire transfers.. All return items must be accompanied by a return merchandise authorization (RMA) number. Opened, defect-free software is non-refundabie. Prices and product descriptions are subject to change without notice. Hyundai is not liable for damage due to omissions or typographical errors. All trademarks are the property of their respective companies. The Do Something logo is a trademark and Do Something New Breed is a registered trademark of Hyundai. © 1992 Hyundai Electronics America. All rights reserved.

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We'll give you more than you bargained for. When you go with the 486 stampede, from our 425SP to our powerhouse 466D2TE, we give you exclusive low prices on software. Our size and reputation allow us to forge alliances with all the major players in the industry, which means we can bring you software specials from firms like Microsoft, Borland, Lotus, and Symantec. Do something safe.

The PC range war can shake everybody's confidence. Except ours. We're a $50 billion global company, which means we have the resources to guarantee outstanding service and support. When you buy New Breed technology, you get New Breed service from a worldwide leader.

In addition to our service and support, we have a TQC (Total Quality Care) program that makes us the double-safe buy. Our 18-month warranty on all systems is a soft ride in the saddle.

The bottom line is your satisfaction. Buy the Hyundai 486 stampede, and you get more than New Breed technology. You get New Breed Service that leaves that old breed behind.

_j _•_

NEW BREED SERVICE AND SUPPORT

• One-year, next-business-day, on-site service with all direct orders, followed by 6-month, ship-in warranty on parts and labor. • 30-day, no-risk, money-back guarantee on anything you buy direct from Hyundai.

• 48-hour turnaround on ship-in repairs.

• Beginners Help Line: 800-933-9917.

• Product spec fax: 800-723-4843.

• 7-days-a-week tech support: —24-hour lifetime tech support: 800-289-4986. —24-hour tech fax: 800-283-4986. —24-hour tech bulletin board: 800-955-5432. —Tech support through CompuServe access.

Great deals on optional software!

Hyundai 466D2TE

New Breed Power Server

• 66MHz 486DX2 CPU w/8KB integrated cache

• 128KB high-speed L2 cache

• 32-bit EISA architecture

• 8MB RAM standard (expandable to 32MB on system board and 96MB via memory expansion board)

32-bit caching SCSI host adapter 360MB 12ms SCSI HDD, 256KB disk buffer 1.44MB 3-1/2" and 1.2MB 5-1/4" FDDs SVGA graphics card

14" interlaced, ultra-high resolution, flickerfree, color display with 1024 x 768 resolution, .28 dot pitch, 72MHz refresh rate Seven 32-bit EISA slots, one ISA slot 5 external and 2 internal drive bays 300 watt power supply Built-in virus protection, front keylock, 2 level password 101 keyboard, 2 button mouse MS DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1

DAYS.

$

3995

FOR DIRECT

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PCs designed and built in America

sales | -800-933-3445

NOW

Hey, do something pronto! Fax your standard (or targeted) system configuration to one of our System Specialists. We'll spec it out and call you back with a system quote that beats the cows. Or anyone else!

Fax your specs to I -800-283-4986

Your Name_

Company

Address

City

Title

State

_Zip.

Phone( )

Number of PCs in your current site

Other brands you are considering

Number of PCs installed 486 386.

Tell us about your targeted system configuration

_FAX(

)

.Brands you have standardized on_

386SX

286

CPU Type Architecture Memory Floppies

□ 486

□ ISA

MB installed

□ 1.44MB 3-1/2" Hard Disks (IDE) □ 100MB (SCSI) 3.5" □ 360MB

5.25" □ 330MB

□ Tape MB

□ 486SX

□ EISA

Cache Memory □ 128 KB

□ 1.2MB 5-1/4"

□ 120MB □ 200MB

□ 540MB □ 1.2GB

□ 760MB □ 1.6GB

□ Sound Card □ Other

□ 386DX □ 386SX

□ Notebook

□ 256KB

□ 250MB

□ 2.0GB

□ Fax/Modem

□ 330MB □ 500MB

□ CD-ROM

Call for more options! Number of PCs you intend to order:. Other special needs:

Hyundai's recommendation and quote. Based on your input, here's what we recommend:.

And here's our price:.

If we don't beat your other quotes, call us.

Call Hyundai Direct at 1-800-933-3445

•HYUNDAI

For the dealer nearest you call I -800-288-4986

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ELECTRONICS

NOVELU

Novell Labs

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for File Server

Manufacturers

Headquarters: San 136-1, Ami-Ri, Bubal-Myun, Ichon-Kun, Kyungki-Do, Korea. Tel: (02) 741-0661/4. TLX : K23955/7. HDETN FAX: (02) 741-0737 Worldwide PC Operations: 166 Baypointe Parkway San Jose, CA 95134 (408) 473-9200

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REPORT FROM HONG KONG

ANDREW REINHARDT

The Guangdong Gateway

HONG KONG—When outsiders contemplate the Asian computer industry, they usually think first of Japan. Many also know about the huge success of Taiwan and Singapore, which have established themselves as electronics manufacturing powerhouses, and some are aware of Korea's struggle to capitalize on its success in semiconductors. But for most people, Hong Kong does not spring readily to mind.

The reason is simple: The computer industry here is relatively small and nearly invisible, especially to Americans. The bulk of the territory's computer industry consists of OEM manufacturers of motherboards, floppy drives, add-in cards, and clones. Most of the companies are small—some have 20 or fewer employees—and with the notable exception of an AST facility, there are few local manufacturing plants operated by foreign multinationals.

As personal computers become more commoditized and buyers more price-sensitive, however, Hong Kong's role could greatly expand. The territory's trump card is its close relationship with mainland China, which offers a nearly inexhaustible supply of inexpensive and reliable labor. (Economic prosperity has come so fast to Taiwan and Singapore that labor costs there are already too high for dime-a-dozen products like serial I/O or VGA boards.) Strong ties to China also promise another potential payoff: Hong Kong vendors look across the border and see a mouth-watering market of 1.2 billion consumers.

The Fastest Tiger

Ruled since 1898 by the British, Hong Kong has long been an international center for trade and commerce. It is one of the "Four Tigers"—four nations in east Asia (the others are Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea) that have experienced massive economic growth in the last two decades. Hong Kong leads the pack, with a per-capita GNP of more than $10,000 and sustained annual growth rates of more than 8 percent throughout the 1980s. Boosters credit the growth in pail to Hong Kong's laissezfaire economic policy, which has encouraged a business culture of entrepreneurship and opportunism.

It is hard to picture what will happen to Hong Kong when it returns to Chinese stewardship on July 1, 1997. Under an agreement signed in 1985 between the British and Chinese governments, Hong Kong will remain a "special administrative region" of China for at least 50 years, which means, in theory, that it will be allowed to maintain a capitalist economy with little Chinese inter

ILLUSTRATION: HONG KONG TOURIST ASSOCIATION (9 1993

As 1997 approaches, Hong Kong hopes to profit from China's huge labor ffoi ce—and its vast potential market

vention. Still, anxiety about 1997 led to a "brain drain" from Hong Kong in the late 1980s: An estimated 260,000 people and perhaps tens of billions of dollars fled the country to Canada, Australia, Singapore, and the U.S. The situation has stabilized since then, however, as many former residents—foreign passports safely secured— are now returning here to conduct business.

Aside from the worry about the long-term future of Hong Kong, the factor that has most affected the colony's role in the personal computer industry is government action, or lack thereof. With its policy of "positive nonintervention," the government eschewed the publicly sponsored industry parks and technology consortia that have propelled Taiwan and Singapore to prominence, preferring to let market forces run their course. This has meant that more start-ups were launched in Taiwan and more foreign businesses moved production to Singapore. Says one businessman, "Singapore really puts out the red carpet for people. They even have chauffeured limos pick up executives at the airport."

Hong Kong offers instead a rough-and-tumble brand of capitalism, backed by ready access to capital and excellent communications and transportation infrastructures. This recipe has attracted finance, marketing,

and distribution companies, and Hong Kong houses the regional offices of many Fortune 500 companies, including DEC, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. These tend to be front-office, not manufacturing, operations.

The trend now gathering steam here is to foster a frontend/back-end business model that combines Hong Kong's world-class connections, technical skills, and business savvy with low-cost Chinese labor. Businesspeople here believe this duality may someday allow Hong Kong to surpass other "tigers" in the computer business.

continued

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 41

REPORT FROM HONG KONG

The Ties That Bind

The front-end/back-end model isn't unique to Hong Kong. As labor costs have risen in Singapore, for example, manufacturers there have increasingly turned to poorer countries like Thailand and Malaysia for assembly and testing. What sets Hong Kong apart is that the division between it and China is only a political boundary, just one hour by train from downtown. The people on either side of the border speak the same dialect (Cantonese) and share a common heritage, and they are quickly moving toward economic integration, as well as eventual political union.

By comparison, when Singaporans go offshore to seek less expensive labor, they must contend with air travel, different languages, and shipping logistics. For the Taiwanese, the situation is even worse: Taiwan uses the Mandarin dialect and is several hours by air from southern China, and Taiwanese law prevents businesses from owning plants in China.

Thus, people here believe that their city could become the gateway to one of the world's great electronics manufacturing centers. To back up their beliefs, they are investing millions of dollars in Chinese plants in the neighboring province of Guangdong. Most of this investment is in the Shenzhen Economic Zone, just across the border from Hong Kong. Millions of Chinese workers are employed there in plants that have sprung up over the last 10 years.

One firm typifying the dual model is CIM Systems, founded in 1984 by its president, Peter Yim. CIM Systems has facilities in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Fremont, California. "The Hong Kong plant offers fast turnaround and responsiveness for high-margin products, while the Chinese facility does higher-volume, lowercost items," says Yim. Among the products manufactured in China are desktop and laptop motherboards, fax modems, power supplies, and video-game assemblies.

Yim says his goal is to "combine the best of both worlds." To an increasing degree, that includes shifting engineering tasks to China, where, he says, there are "very talented people lacking only in experience of doing the job." CIM Systems has opened a "software factory" in Shekou, China, to reduce software development costs. As with hardware projects, the work is split up: Engineers in Hong Kong design and specify projects, while programmers in Shekou write and test code. "The programming capabilities of Asia, especially China, should not be overlooked," Yim says.

Ergo System, a maker of floppy drives, motherboards, and clones, has embraced

a similar strategy. The company employs 500 manufacturing workers in China and is establishing an R&D center there. According to marketing manager Connie Ang, land costs in China are 10 to 100 times lower than in Hong Kong, and labor is easier to find. "We think manufacturing in China gives us a competitive edge," she says. "There is some loss of flexibility, some occasional problems in transportation, but the cost savings outweigh this by a long shot."

Ang and other Hong Kong managers argue that the stability of the Chinese work force is a strong draw. According to Dr. James Fok, a program director at the Hong Kong Productivity Council, "We pay them higher wages than they're used to, so we can obtain the best people and keep them

c

hina uses incentives to lure investment deeper into the mainland.

for a longer time." Nobody seems to dwell on the irony of laborers from a "worker's state" clambering for employment with capitalist enterprises, nor do they exhibit any concern about possibly exploiting Chinese labor. Says Wilson Chan, a marketing executive for Juko Electronics, a maker of motherboards and palmtops: "Getting a job with Juko makes them feel very lucky, and they will fight to stay."

The Glittering Prize

Under the complex rules established by the Chinese government, foreign companies can bring parts into the Shenzhen freetrade zone and ship out finished goods with no import or export duties. Products made there, however, cannot be sold into China except with tariffs of 100 percent to 200 percent. A second region, farther north in the Guangdong province, offers different rules: Some duties must be paid, but finished goods can be sold in China with no tariffs. Juko Electronics, for example, has an 800-employee plant in the Suwa Scientific Park 2 hours north of Hong Kong, from which it is allowed to sell 30 percent of its output to Chinese customers.

China can use incentives like this to lure investment deeper into the mainland, because every Hong Kong company's ultimate dream is to get a chunk of the virtually untapped Chinese market. Although China now lacks the means to purchase much computer technology, most people expect this situation to change dramatically. Peter Yim predicts that Shenzhen's economy will catch up to Hong Kong's in 10 years. Only 10 years after the Shenzhen Economic Zone was established, its economy is already half the size of Hong Kong's, according to Yim.

The opportunity to sell products in China is especially attractive to Hong Kong companies because their late entry into the computer business cost them the chance to compete in the U.S. market. Most Hong Kong manufacturers sell largely in Europe, where smaller, more fragmented markets and generally higher prices have allowed them to get a foot in the door. "We decided to concentrate on Europe a few years ago," says Connie Ang. "It was too hard to tackle the Taiwanese makers in the U.S."

The late start has also caused many Hong Kong companies to forfeit the established desktop sector in favor of emerging product areas. Thus, interest in imaging, multimedia, and hand-held systems is high. Perhaps the best-known Hong Kong brand name is Bondwell, a maker of laptops and notebooks. Another company, Ever-Success Computer, has developed a hybrid fax machine and 386SX computer that attaches to a TV set and sells for $1150. Others are aiming to deliver 1-pound systems based on Chips & Technologies' PC/Chip, which has been well received here. The focus on handheld systems meshes well with efforts to sell into China: Dr. Fok predicts that China may leapfrog over dated technologies such as wired telephones and desktop computers directly into cellular phones and portable systems.

The common thread in Hong Kong's computer business is relentless energy tempered with pragmatism. While some worry that China's takeover of Hong Kong will indelibly alter the territory's freewheeling economy, almost everyone is forging ahead with ambitious expansion plans. "We don't know what will happen politically, but we're sure we'll be able to manufacture and distribute our products the same as before," says William Yuen, a sales manager at Bondwell. "We see China as a great growth opportunity." ■

Andrew Reinhavdt is BYTE's West Coast bureau chief. You can reach him on BIX as "areinhardt."

42 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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To a software developer, this is what heaven looks like.

Most people wouldn't know what to make of a screen like this. But developers like you know a screen like this can help make all kinds of applications. With OS/2" 2.0, you can develop the DOS, Windows," OS/2 and host-based apps end users need. And you can do it faster and easier than ever before. Because OS/2 2.0 can make the most of your 386 or 486 processor.

Now you can edit in one window, compile in another, profile in a third and test in a fourth. Preemptive multitasking makes everything run smoothly and responsively. And OS/2 Crash Protection" helps shield running applications from each other, so if one goes down it won't affect the others. Instead of rebooting, you just restart the affected app and continue. And since OS/2 2.0 is a 32-bit operating system, programs are easier to write and run faster, too. Which all adds up to improved productivity and reduced development cycle time.

But maybe the best part is that for less than the cost of DOS and Windows, OS/2 gives you a whole lot more. And to keep your cycle rolling, a full range of services and support are available, like on-line help through OS/2 Support line, Bulletin Board and IBM Link. Or you can join the IBMOS2 and OS2DEV conferences on CompuServe* where you can meet IBMers, users and developers who can find fast answers to your questions. For an IBM authorized dealer near you, or to order OS/2 2.0 from IBM, call 1 800 3-IBM-OS2.*

OS/2 Crash Protection helps shield applications from each other. The integrating platform of choice for DOS, Windows and OS/2. Preemptive multitasking for responsive, reliable execution. ■ 32-bit flat address space for productive programming. A full range of IBM services and support.

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NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Two Toshiba Systems to Go

Toshiba stays on the cutting edge with a 3.3-V 486 notebook and a promising pen-based system

GENE SMARTE

Toshiba America Information Systems thinks that a lot of business users are in the market for a more powerful notebook. It also believes that a smaller group of computer users with specific applications needs a pen-based system. Based on a look at preproduction versions of the T4500 series notebooks and the Dynapad T100X, Toshiba should have hits in both categories.

T4500: Beefed Up for Business

According to Ron Smith, product marketing manager for Toshiba, the T4500 is targeted at business users. Considering what's included in the system, though, power users won't be disappointed, especially with the competitive pricing. Suggested retail prices are $2799 for the

Based on a 3.3-V 486SX processor, the T4500 notebook series comes with an active-matrix color or monochrome display. The Dynapad T100X (see inset) is a capable 3-pound pen-based system.

46 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

system with a monochrome display and $4399 for the system with an active-matrix color display.

While you'll pay a hefty price for the T4500C with its color display, its 6'/spound weight compares favorably to the monochrome version's 6 pounds, and its thickness increases only slightly from the 1 VA by 8M by 1% inches occupied by the monochrome version. The monochrome display is 9'A inches diagonally, with 640by 480-pixel resolution and 64 shades of gray. The color display is also 640 by 480 pixels, but it has 256 simultaneous colors. It measures 8^ inches diagonally.

Aside from the major display and minor weight and thickness differences, the two units are identical. Both use a new 3.3volt 20-MHz Intel 486SX processor. Keith Comer, senior product planner, said that Intel asked Toshiba if it wanted a 3.3-V 486SX. This processor fit in with Toshiba's future plans, and the company designed the T4500 with the new processor in mind, including use of 3.3-V RAM.

Smith says that while Toshiba believes it's the only company using the processor right now, Intel may make it available to others. The 486SX includes 8 KB of internal cache memory. According to Toshiba, the T4500's battery life will equal or surpass systems based on Intel's new 3.3V 486SL (see the text box "A Higher End for Compaq Notebooks" on page 47).

The T4500 includes a nifty LCD strip that replaces the usual set of LED status indicators. Icons show battery capacity remaining; power-saving modes; hard disk access; cursor, number, and Caps Lock modes; and other system operating conditions. This is a nice, well-executed touch.

Other standard system features are an 80- or 120-MB hard drive, 4 MB of RAM (user-expandable to 20 MB using Toshiba's memory cards), a 1.44-MB floppy drive, an 18-mm PCMCIA slot, and a snap-on (i.e., no-cord) Microsoft Ballpoint pointing device that clicks into a hot-shoe connector on the right side of the system. Smith acknowledges that this puts lefthanded users at a disadvantage, but Toshiba will exchange the Ballpoint for a traditional mouse.

Around back are connectors for simultaneous external video output (up to 1024 by 768 pixels), serial and parallel expansion, Toshiba's docking station, and an external keyboard and mouse. There is no coprocessor socket. A PCMCIA modem card that fits entirely inside the machine,

NEWS

RST IMPRESSIONS

A Higher End for Compaq Notebooks

Ed Perratore

Compaq understands that differentiation is the key to success in the burgeoning notebook market. But it's not ignoring another business axiom: Don't mess with success. Among features of its new LTE Lite 4/25C and 25E, the company managed to honor both rules while letting you choose between two options: lower power consumption and a brilliant monochrome display.

Compaq introduced the notebooks on November 9, the same day Intel announced the 3.3-volt 486SL microprocessor that nans the LTE Lite 4/25C, which ranks among the first notebooks available to use the low-power processor. The LTE Lite 4/25C, however, owes its rated 2- to 3-hour battery life more to advanced power management than to its 25-MHz 3.3-V CPU. In addition to existing LTE Lite features such as hibernation, advanced power management reduces the clock speed of the processor between keystrokes.

Other features of the LTE Lite 4/25C will be familiar: an 8M-inch, 256-color, active-matrix display (made by Sharp); 4 MB of RAM standard; and a 120MB hard drive. Besides the processor and advanced power management, other new items are a whopping 209-MB hard drive option, 32-bit memory cards, and an LTE Lite option called QuickConnect ($79), which plugs into the unit and replicates the ports for fast hookups to your desktop peripherals.

There's one more notable option. The SpeedPaq 144 Modem, expected to sell at $649, is an internal fax modem that can interface using an optional ca

The Compaq LTE Lite 4/25C (right) uses Intel's new lowpower 486SL processor. The LTE Lite/25E features an eyegrabbing active-matrix display.

ble to a Motorola or Nokia cellular phone for 9600-bps wireless transmission. (For some other phones, you'll need to add a cellular interface box as well.) Available for all LTE Lites using an enhanced option slot, the SpeedPaq will send data (other than faxes) at 14,400 bps.

The "black-and-white" description of the LTE Lite/25E's brilliant UltraView active-matrix, TFT (thin-film transistor), 9^-inch display is a misnomer. You get a light blue on black that is about as pleasing to the eye as you're likely to see in a monochrome display. Viewed under a magnifying glass, the pixels betray no fuzziness; you'll never see a hint of ghosting.

The VGA display supports 16 levels of gray—64 if you descend to 320by 200-pixel resolution. If you're running an external display, you can get

256 colors at VGA resolution or 16 colors at Super VGA. Extended text is also new: The screen will display slightly taller characters to fill the top and bottom of the screen. Other notable points of the 25-MHz 386SL-based unit are the same 64-KB cache found in existing LTE Lite/25C units (see "Compaq's Newest Notebooks," October 1992 BYTE). The model numbers 84 and 120 represent hard drive capacities (DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 are installed on both the LTE Lite/25E and 4/25C), RAM is 4 MB standard (with a maximum of 20 MB), and the typical duration of the nickel-metal-hydride battery is 3 hours. The product weighs 6'A pounds.

In BYTE's low-level benchmark tests, the preproduction LTE Lite/25E ranked more than a third faster than the Toshiba T2200SX on CPU performance. Keep in mind, however, differing factors such as Toshiba's slower 20-MHz 386SX processor and the 386SL's internal cache. The 4/25C beta version scored only 80 percent as fast as the 486SX-based Toshiba T4400SX in CPU tests, but video and disk tests pushed the Compaq well ahead.

Compaq is doing all it can to keep its products up to date. In this flurry of new products, the next best thing after price is distinctive features. Compaq hopes to catch your eye on both counts.

Ed Perratore is a BYTE news editor based in New York. He can be reached on BIX as "eperratore. "

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 47

Circle 77 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 78).

Making the best

better wasn't easy,

but we did it

Model 24SII DES

Printer sharing at it's best! ,

The New Model 24SII DES data

exchange system is printer sharing at its best. Now network workstations, file servers, graphic workstations, and PCs can off-load print jobs at the blazing rate of 60,000cps parallel or 46,000cps serial.

If you want to eliminate the need for multiple laser printers without losing productivity, off-load network print jobs faster, or increase your printing throughput, the Model 24SII DES is for you.

Contact a BayTech representative today for more information on the best printer sharing solutions available.

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NEWS

RST IMPRESSIONS

including the jacks, is in the works.

The monochrome system comes standard with a nickel-cadmium battery pack that will give you more than 3 hours of typical use. The color system includes nickel-metal-hydride batteries that also provide at least 3 hours of life.

Smith says that you can expect about 20 percent and 38 percent speed improvements, respectively, in Excel and Word compared with a 25-MHz 386SL. Going to 3.3 V also gets you about 40 minutes more operating time per charge. While I didn't have time to fully discharge the battery pack, the BYTE benchmarks showed that the T4500's performance ranks it about where you'd expect: between a 33-MHz 386 and a 25-MHz 486 desktop system.

Dynapad T100X: Pen Progress

Toshiba admits that pen-based computing is a vertical market. The technology, particularly the handwriting-recognition capability, just isn't ready for broad-based applications. There is, however, plenty of pen appeal for niche applications.

The Dynapad is built around a 3.3-V 25-MHz 386SLV from AMD. This sleek electronic tablet measures 10% by l'/m by VA inches and weighs just over 3 pounds. Kyp Walls, the senior brand manager for Toshiba, says research suggests that 3 pounds is the most a user wants to lug around all day.

The Dynapad has a 40-MB hard drive (with 18-millisecond access), 4 MB of RAM (user-expandable to 20 MB), a 9'Ainch VGA (i.e., 16 gray scales) transreflective display, two PCMCIA slots, and serial, parallel, PS/2 keyboard, and floppy drive connectors. Power comes via nickelmetal-hydride batteries, with a nominal operating time of 2'A hours. Walls said that the batteries may last up to 7 hours if the system remains in the lowest power-comsumption mode. Recharge time is 1 'A hours.

You can order the Dynapad configured with either Windows for Pen Computing or PenPoint. The pen fits into a slot on one end of the enclosure and remains visible. Toshiba reports that while some pen-based systems store their pens out of view, this can lead to trouble if you don't notice that the pen isn't in its storage compartment.

Walls says that many projected Dynapad owners will use the system outdoors. The backlit transreflective screen lets you turn on backlighting when needed. In sunlight, however, you can switch off the backlighting and still have a readable display. At night, you can use the backlight; during the day, save the batteries and let

the sun do some of the work.

While handling the Dynapad, I had some reservations about being able to hang on to the smooth, rounded-corner design. The rubberized-paint finish does provide a finish that can be gripped, though, and different cases (some water-resistant) should be available soon.

It's difficult to get too excited about pen-based systems unless you have a specific use in mind. Toshiba believes that medical personnel, salespeople, fleet workers, and nonoffice workers everywhere are eager to move from paper to pen. Meanwhile, the promise of pen-based computing continues to intrigue us all, and the Dynapad is a great example of technology in progress. ■

Gene Smarte is a BYTE senior news editor based in Los Angeles. He can be reached on BIX as "gsmarte."

THE FACTS

T4S00

with 80-MB hard drive, $2799 with 120-MB hard drive, $2999

T4500C

with 120-MB hard drive, $4399

Dynapad T100X

$3499

Toshiba America Information

Systems, Inc.

Computer Systems Division

9740 Irvine Blvd.

Irvine, CA 92718

(800) 334-3445

(714)583-3000

fax:(714)587-6034

Circle 1172 on Inquiry Card.

Compaq LTE Lite 4/25C Model 120, $4099 Model 209, $4399

Compaq LTE Lite/25E

Model 84, $2999 Model 120, $3199

Compaq Computer Corp.

20555 State Hwy. 249

Houston, TX 77070

(800)231-0900

(713)370-0670

fax:(713)374-1402

Circle 1173 on Inquiry Card.

48 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

Oar goal at NEC is the complete integration

of computers and communications. The Silentwriter Model 95fx is just one of many innovative products that help us to realize this goal. For example, we not only developed the first notebook computer with a built-in phone and fax, we make satellite dishes capable of sending data worldwide.

mi rt MODucn

I W I H H E R |

"...all ihc PostScript primer

you'll ever need"

PC/Computing. 'The Ideal ll'inatnvs PC."

June 1W1

for any printer/fax multifunction combination.

The Silentwriter Model 95fx Printer/Fax

Because t is the way you want to go.

To upgrade your existing Silentwriter Model 95 printer with fax capability (U.S. only), or for more information about the Silentwriter Model 95fx, call NEC at 1-800-325-5500.

Circle 128 on Inquiry Card.

an"

'box! Tl« ,i„g ? ,0RA* (l/

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Choose from dozens of preset templates or create your own. With over 14,000 clipart images available, you can add power to your message with exciting pictographs!

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Create exciting logos using CorelDRAW's special effects: 3-D, blending, extrusion, and more! You can choose from over 250 fonts.

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With CorelDRAW's import features, transition effects, hundreds of animation sequences, and professionally designed backgrounds, exciting presentations are at your fingertips!

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Circle 93 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

UnixWare: New Hope for Unix?

Is Univel's UnixWare enough to finally bring Unix to the PC user's desktop?

TOM YAGER

The coming together of Unix System Labs and Novell to form Univel resulted in what may be the PC Unix that can do real battle with the likes of Windows NT—UnixWare. Probably the biggest bombshell to hit the Unix market in years, UnixWare is Univel's hope for networked applications. I evaluated the beta release of the UnixWare Application Server Edition on a Uniq 486/50 with 8 MB of memory and an AMI EISA SCSI caching hard drive controller. The entire software set is contained on a single CD-ROM, easing installation considerably. It required an overnight installation, however, to bring in all the modules.

At least two potential audiences might be served by UnixWare: traditional Unix users who are looking for better application compatibility and support, and those with demanding applications who seek a standards-based way to distribute the applications through a network. For the first group, UnixWare will feel familiar. System V release 4.2 inherits many of its traits from previous System V releases. Of course,

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UnixWare's modular architecture provides growth for networked applications.

the unique benefits of release 4.2 distance this release from its predecessors. Some of these benefits are real-time processes, dynamically loadable kernel modules, nearly universal source code compatibility with other popular Unixes, and standardization of components.

The second audience—those who aren't "traditional" Unix users—is the one Univel seems most interested in reaching. In an effort to dispel the fears of those who view Unix as a user-hostile system, the installation of UnixWare results in a system that boots to a graphical log-in dialog box. Old-fashioned Unix types can make the graphics go away with a hot-key sequence, but that graphical touch symbolizes what Univel is pinning its hopes on.

The installation and the graphical interface make this the easiest PC Unix to get running. The installation is vastly improved by a collection of little things, such as the DOS FDISK-look-alike partition setup interface, the routine that reaches out and verifies the settings of your network card, and the mouse installation that indicates whether you've set it up right.

The default interface for UnixWare is the X Window System, running under a desktop manager that provides a Mac-like metaphor of folders and icons. You can choose whether you prefer your desktop to look like Open Look or Motif, thanks to an X toolkit (i.e., programming interface) called MOOLIT. Other applications built using the MOOLIT tools can also take on either interface's appearance and behavior. MOOLIT is not a Motif-compatible programming interface, so you must translate or rebuild existing Motif applications using third-party Motif libraries.

It's Your Serve

UnixWare's Application Server Edition includes the facilities required to set up a PC as an engine that shares files and runs programs remotely. DOS users running a NetWare shell can run nongraphical Unix applications across the network through a Novell Virtual Terminal session. Other UnixWare users, particularly Personal Edition users running the optional TCP/IP and NFS (Network File System) upgrade, will get the most benefit from UnixWare's distributed computing support. Through X, you can launch applications that run on the application server but present their interfaces on your own desk. Under the covers, client/server applications can converse via a variety of protocols.

continued JANUARY 1993 • B YTE 51

news

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Perhaps the most notable triumph over Unix's fabled unpleasantness is the wrapping of NFS in an application that allows UnixWare users running NFS to set up a controlled peer-to-peer LAN. The style of presentation is similar to that of the filesharing interface under the Macintosh's System 7.0. Even if you do not understand a thing about Unix or networking, you can attach to any NFS server and have the network link appear as a folder on your desktop.

One thing that made me a little nervous was the struggle I had with the drivers for the graphics system. UnixWare's implementation of X uses dynamically loadable libraries, so configurations can be changed on the fly. The beta release defaults to the only "safe" VGA setting: 640 by 480 pixels and 16 colors. I tried to get a more ambitious display mode going, but, despite going through a pile of cards that seemed compatible with UnixWare, only an old Orchid ProDesigner card let me fire up a

640- by 480-pixel, 256-color mode. This is a beta release, though, so driver problems are to be expected.

Yes, But Is It Unix?

Univel apparently chose to keep much of Unix's old feel. "Just users" can forget there's Unix under there, though. And on features alone, UnixWare is one hot number: networked file, mail, printer, and application sharing; NetWare client connectivity; DOS compatibility; high-performance multitasking and virtual memory; a network-capable windowing system with scalable Adobe Type Manager fonts; two levels of hypertext help—and these are just the highest of the high points.

As with most operating systems, the chance that UnixWare will succeed is governed less by its capabilities than by how effectively Univel can coax developers onto the UnixWare bandwagon. Unix System Labs was wise to bring Novell in. As a Unix fan and a user who expects every

thing from his network, I think UnixWare looks like just the ticket. ■

Tom Yager is director of BYTE's Multimedia Lab and author of Unix Program Development for the IBM PC (AddisonWesley, 1991). He can be reached on the Internet at tyager@bytepb.byte.com.

THE FACTS

UnixWare

Personal Edition, $495 Application Server Edition, $2495 Software Development Kit, $995

Univel

2180 Fortune Dr.

San Jose, CA 95131

(408) 473-8788

fax: (408) 473-8774

Circle 1174 on Inquiry Card.

DATA COMPRESSION LIBRARIES™

PKWARE's® Data Compression Libraries™ allow software developers to add data compression technology to software applications. The application program controls all the input and output of data allowing data to be compressed or extracted to or from any device or area of memory.

• All Purpose Data Compression Algorithm Compresses Ascii or Binary Data Quickly with similar compression achieved by the popular PKziP software, however the format used by the compression routine is completely generic and not specific to the PKZIP file format.

• Application Controlled I/O and memory allocation for extreme flexibility.

• Adjustable Dictionary Size allows software to be fine tuned for Maximum Size or Speed.

• Approximately 35K memory needed for Compression, 12K memory needed for Extraction.

• Compatible with most popular Languages: C, C+ +, Pascal, Assembly, Basic, Clipper, Etc.

• Works with any 80x86 family CPU in real or protected mode. $295.00

• No runtime royalties.

RUNNING OUT OF EXPENSIVE DISK SPACE?

PKzip can help! PKzip compresses your files to free up disk space and reduce modem transfer time. You can compress a single file or entire directory structures with a single command. Compressed files can be quickly returned to their normal size with PKunzip.

Software developers can reduce the number of diskettes needed to distribute their product by using PKziP . Call for Distribution License information.

I

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BY193

52 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 146 on Inquiry Card.

The best place to get your photos printed

You don't need a photo lab to get computer output like this. A Phaser™ Hsd color printer by Tektronix will do just fine. It's the only dye sublimation printer that gives you detailed, photorealistic images with crisp, clean text—that's TekColor Photofine technology. But you also get Adobe PostScript Level 2 and TekColor PS to match and adjust colors. Plus Pantone certification, networkability, a 24MHz RISC processor for speedy output, a $9995 price tag and a print cost of only $2 per page. All in one little machine. That's what we call picture perfect. Call the leader in color printers at 1-800-835-6100 Dept. 25A for a free output sample. Or call (503) 682-7450, ask for Document 1222 and we'll send information by fax.

Tektronix

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Phaser; TekColor and Photofine are trademarks of Tektronix, inc. PostScript is a trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Circle 175 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Borland Revamps Its Pascal Lineup

Turbo Pascal was the breakthrough product that established Borland International in 1983. Ever since, it has remained entrenched as the most popular midrange programming language on PCs—more powerful than BASIC, and surpassed only by C and C++ for professional development. With the recent release of Turbo Pascal 7.0 and Borland Pascal with Objects 7.0, Borland hopes to retain its position as programmers migrate from DOS to Windows.

These new releases add numerous enhancements and also update Borland's entire Pascal line. TP 7.0 is positioned as an entry-level language. It's for programmers who want to write DOS applications in real mode (i.e., 8086/8088 compatible) and learn object-oriented programming. Next up the ladder is Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5, a Windows-only package that remains unchanged.

BPO 7.0 is the high-end package for professionals who want to write objectoriented code for either DOS or Windows. It was created by combining all that comes with TP 7.0 and TPW 1.5 and adding some additional goodies as well. For example, BPO has a new DOS development environment for writing large 80x86 protectedmode applications using extended memory beyond 640 KB. Although TP has a command-line compiler that runs in protected mode, it targets real mode only.

Another major new feature is that BPO lets you write DOS programs that can call routines in Windows DLLs—something not found in any other programming language. On top of that, BPO makes it a snap to write your own DLLs. It takes only three more lines of code than declaring an internal function or procedure, and two of those lines are Begin and End.

Windows programmers will appreciate BPO's new printer objects, which reduce the amount of code you must write to print documents. The object browser is improved and can be accessed outside the debugger. A new utility, Turbo Profiler, helps you analyze and optimize your code. Another utility, WinSight, is an improved version of the Windows message viewer in TPW. And if your program crashes on a fatal error, a new postmortem debugging tool called WinSpector will find out why.

Other new features that are common to both TP and BPO will please DOS and Windows programmers. For example, the compiler's capacity has been quadrupled to more than 4 million lines of code in files as large as 25 MB. New optimizations produce faster-running code, especially on 386 machines, because the run-time library automatically uses the 386's 32-bit instructions for long-integer math.

According to Borland, all text-file I/O routines—including Read, Write, ReadLn, and WriteLn operations with all data types—are 30 percent to 100 percent faster. To informally test this, I used a beta version of BPO to recompile some programs written with the previous version of TP and noticed an improvement in speed.

New reserved words include Break and Continue, for ending or resuming execution in the middle of a loop; PChar, for declaring null-terminated strings; Inherited, for calling the method of an ancestor object without specifying the ancestor's type; and Public, for separating methods and fields that are public or private.

When calling functions and procedures, you can now pass constants as well as variables and values. You can also pass arrays or strings whose sizes aren't specified in the subprogram's declaration.

Almost the only thing missing in Borland's Pascal lineup is a visual programming interface, such as the one in Microsoft's Visual Basic. There's no doubt that Borland has greatly reduced the amount of code you must write to construct a Windows user interface, thus turning what could be days of tedious work in C into a few hours' of work in Pascal.

But with Visual Basic, even a nonprogrammer can build a user interface and event framework in minutes without any code at all.

Although BPO and TPW include Resource Workshop, a Macintosh-style resource editor, it's poorly integrated, and you still have to wire the resources into your code and manage your own event loop. To address this issue, Borland is offering a $49.95 add-on called ProtoGen, which lets you visually create a user interface and automatically generate Windows-ready Pascal source code. Also, I've heard hints of a better solution still to come. Until then, Borland's Pascal may not be the easiest route to Windows programming, but it's the easiest way to write high-performance Windows programs.

—Tom R. Half hill continued

THE FACTS

Turbo Pascal 7.0

$149

System requirements: DOS 3.3 or higher, 512 KB of RAM, and a hard drive or two floppy drives. Protected-mode compiler requires a 286 or higher, 2 MB of RAM, and a hard drive.

Borland Pascal with Objects 7.0

$495; $149 upgrade from any previous version of Turbo Pascal.

System requirements: A 286 or higher with 2 MB of RAM, a hard drive with 27 MB of free space, DOS 3.3 or higher, Windows 3.x, EGA or better graphics, and a mouse.

Borland International, Inc.

1800 Green Hills Rd.

P.O. Box 660001

Scotts Valley, CA 95067

(800)331-0877

(408) 438-8400

fax: (408) 439-9273

Circle T175 on Inquiry Card.

54 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

To anyone who has

ever dreamed that

personal computing

could be even easier

than it is today

MICROSOFT. WINDOWS.

The Microsoft Windows Family

Windows Woi&reu'ps Win*™""

3.1 3-1 3.1

Microsoft Windoies makes using computers easier for everyone.

To date, millions of people have already opened their eyes to the Microsoft' Windows"' operating system.

Why? Because Windows makes their computing easier. Faster. And more reliable.

This is your

But we weren't about to stop there.

After all, people need their computers to do more these days than increase their level of personal productivity.

They need PCs to help them work together. And they need affordable ways to run powerful new programs.

So we've added two new operating systems to the Windows family.

To help people work together, we have just introduced Microsoft Windows for

^w

Microsoft Windows 3.1

Microsoft Windows is the business standard in operating systems. It's the foundation for all systems in the Windows family.

IP

Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.1

Windows for Workgroups lets people work together through built-in electronic mail, file sharing, printer sharing and schedulhig.

'Ifyou're a developer, von can get a copy of the Win32 Preliminary SDK for Windows NT by calling Microsoft Developer Senium a! (800) 227-4679. © 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Inside the 50 United Stales, call

wake-up call.

ffl

Workgroups 3.1. It has built-in networking that gives you a whole new level of productivity.

And we'll soon be releasing the Microsoft Windows NT' 3.1 operating system.

As a server or a desktop, Windows NT makes powerful computing easier. And it's ideal for people who need to use the mostpowerful hardware and applications available.

. * * m

MICROSOFT I WINDOWS f

READV-TO-RUN \

There's one way to

make sure a new PC is

going to be easier to use.

Just look for this logo.

But here's the best part: They all share the intuitive Windows interface. And run the same applications. So you can preserve and build on all your investments in Windows.

If you'd like more information, call us at (800) 426-9400, Department HM4, for your free 8-page color brochure. It's time for you to get started on a new day.

Microsoft

Making it easier

Microsoft Windows NT 3.1

It's a fully 32-bit, scalable, multitasking Windows operating system with built-in networking capabilities and advanced security. It will be available to end users in early 1993*

(800) 426-9400, Dcpt. HM4. Outside the U.S. and Canada, cell (206) 936-8661. Customers in Canada, call (800) 563-9048. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows, Windows NT and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Introducing Wind

It's based on the idea th

require a generous a

All it takes is a few clicks of tlie mouse to share files and share information. No more long walks down the hall.

Now several people can share printers, so everyone can use tlie printer that best suits their needs, just by clicking a button.

f\

Microsoft

Windows for

Workgroups

Since we've included Microsoft Mail, you can instantly send electronic mail to individuals or everyone in your workgroup. You can even add sounds and pictures.

We've also included Microsoft Sehedule+, so you can manage calendars and schedule meetings with others. And you can spend more of your workday actually working.

ows for\\forkgroups. at business relationships mount of give and take.

As anyone in business would tell you, success often depends on how well you can work with others.

Not coincidentally this is the strength of the Microsoft1 Windows™ for Workgroups 3.1 operating system.

In fact, with its built-in networking, one could describe Windows for Workgroups as downright gregarious.

File Manager - [C:\WINDOWS\FILESr* - [KATARINA])

In other words, Windows for Workgroups lets you share something with your coworkers other than frustration.

But just because it has these advanced capabilities doesn't mean that you'll need an advanced degree to understand it.

Quite the contrary.

Microsoft Windows for Workgroups is based on the familiar interface that millions

of people have come to

File Disk Tree View Options Mail Window Help

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The file manager toolbar lets you use your network as fast as you can point and click. It gives you access to commonly used functions, such as sharing files and sending documents, at the touch of a button. How could sharing information be any easier?

For starters, you can say goodbye to the old "mind if I borrow your disk" routine. With Windows for Workgroups, you'll be able to share files and applications, even printers, faster than you can say "eject."

And then there's this handy little feature called Schedule-h

Say you want a meeting on Tuesday with Matt, who has a meeting with Duncan and Karen, who, wouldn't you know it, are meeting with Jim that same day.

No problem.

Just a couple of clicks and, zip, everyone's schedules are laid out right in front of you. So you can book a meeting without making a jillion phone calls.

Even things as basic as sending memos thing it can do, you'll want to are simplified with Microsoft Windows for share it with everyone. Workgroups. Now you can send electronic WLMm**m*± JLij

mail, including voice and graphics, to any- IwHCFOSOtl

one in your workgroup. Making it easier

love. Even if you've never used Windows, it's the ideal starter network.

And since it works with Windows-based and MS-DOS applications just like Windows 3.1, you can preserve and build on any investment you make in Windows.

Which brings up our final point.

Windows for Workgroups is great for creating workgroups on existing networks, like LAN Manager and NetWare; as well.

All in all, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups will give you an entirely new level of productivity.

To find out more, go to your local computer retailer. Or call us at (800) 426-9400, Dept.HM4, for the store nearest you.

Once you find out every

Jm

S

FORDRKGROUPS

© 1992 Microsoft Corp&tttH&n. All rights resemd. Printed in the USA. For more information inside the 50 United Slates, eall (800 126-9400, Dept. HM-1. Outside the U.S. and Canada, ail! (206) 936-8661. Customers in Canada, call (800) 563-9048 Microsoft and MS-DOS are registered trademarks and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. NetWare is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc.

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Epson Progression: Born to Run Windows

The Epson Progression is the first system to incorporate the Wingine 64200 graphics chip from Chips & Technologies, a hot new graphics engine with a unique memory architecture that promises snappy Windows performance—and a good price. C&T's Wingine is such an integral part of Epson "s system design, in fact, that the company initially introduced the machine as the Epson 486/Wingine PC.

C&T's Wingine 64200 graphics chip is not an accelerator, such as those from S3 and ATI Technologies; that is, it does not provide BitBit or line-drawing capabilities in hardware. Instead, the Wingine is a superfast frame-buffer controller. In a Wingine design, the CPU accesses video memory directly through the system-memory controller. The connection between the system-memory controller and VRAM (video RAM) is direct and thus does not run through the Wingine chip. To the processor, VRAM "looks" exactly like any other memory on the CPU's memory bus.

This architecture shines when moving big blocks of memory from system RAM to VRAM. C&T claims that its new chip achieves data transfer rates of up to 60 MBps when used with very fast CPUs. It's not as good for applications in which you need to make modifications to data that is already on-screen, however. Thus, you'll see the most benefit from the chip (versus accelerators) when you're working in bandwidth-hungry applications such as Microsoft Video for Windows and the least benefit in operations like scrolling or writing text.

The Wingine's other major selling point is its low cost. At the chip's introduction, C&T sold it for just $18 in OEM quantities. This pricing, along with an uncached memory design, helps Epson deliver the Progression at a very reasonable $2799 in a 486/33 configuration with a 240-MB hard drive.

Besides its graphics capabilities, the Progression offers a fast uncached memory architecture Epson calls VirtualCache. VirtualCache refers to a collection of memoryoptimization strategies, including familiar optimizations such as page-mode interleave and innovations such as page-prediction hardware and other patented techniques. Both reads and writes are buffered on a 64-bit path through the memory con

troller. Epson contends that this design, plus the 486's internal 8-KB cache, delivers high system performance without the considerable expense of a second-level cache.

The Progression's benchmark scores were a mixed bag of good and not-so-good results. I tested a Progression with a 486/33 processor module, running BYTE's Windows graphics tests and standard system benchmarks.

On BYTE's Windows benchmarks, the Wingine-based Progression places somewhat below such accelerators as Orchid Technology's Fahrenheit VA and ATI's Ultra Pro running in similarly configured machines. On basic graphics tests (e.g., drawing rectangles and polygons) the Progression excels. However, it was slower on text and line-drawing operations. What you'll notice in using the Progression is that the operations that normally "feel" slowest in Windows are those that are the most enhanced.

Outside Windows and running as a plain Super VGA engine, the Wingine still ran quite well. BYTE's System Video index puts the Progression just ahead of HewlettPackard's local-bus-based 486/33u and a little behind Compaq's 433i. However, the Progression's uncached memory system is clearly somewhat slower than the cached designs of the other two systems; BYTE's CPU benchmark measured a gap of about 13 percent between the Progression and HP's and Compaq's cached 486/33 systems. The difference in the benchmark is

primarily due to the better performance of the cached systems on 8-bit memory accesses. Epson maintains that 16- and 32-bit memory reads and writes, on which the Progression performed well, are much more commonly executed operations.

In addition to benchmarking, I used the Progression while working in Windows, which let me try out Epson's gorgeous 17-inch monitor. The monitor was somewhat hard to tweak for each frequency, but once I got that going, it looked great. The Wingine-based graphics system runs at resolutions of up to 1024 by 768 pixels and in 256 colors at high refresh rates. Together, the Wingine/ monitor pair created a nice Windows environment.

The Progression also delivers all the features we've come to expect from brand-name, midrange desktops: an expandable CPU module, IDE and peripheral support on the system board, easy access to drives and other components, and plenty of room (six slots) for expansion. It's a solidly built machine.

The Progression presents an unusual mix of high performance and low cost. Its Wingine accelerator is fast—and although it's not fastest at all applications, it provides a system that's considerably less expensive than a clone with an off-the-shelf ATI Ultra Pro. The system's VirtualCache doesn't quite deliver cached performance, but it saves the expense of SRAM (static RAM) and a more crowded and complex system board.

—Steve Apiki

THE FACTS

Epson Progression

with a 486DX/33 processor, 4 MB

of RAM, and a 240-MB hard drive,

$2799

17-inch Professional Series monitor,

$1099

Epson America, Inc.

20770 Madrona Ave.

P.O. Box 2842

Torrance, CA 90509

(310)782-0770

fax:(310)782-5220

Circle 1176 on Inquiry Card.

60 BYTE "JANUARY 1993

Don't send your words out naked into the world.

ifis; |

e g ' ..JHaif

§ I ■rfSft

Dress them up with Microsoft TrueType Font Packs for the Microsoft Windows" operating system version 3.1 and Windowsbased applications.

Because now, in addition to the original Microsoft TrueType Font Pack, you can have more ways than ever to make your point. Introducing TrueType Font Pack 2.

It has more headline fonts. More decorative fonts. More Wngdings." More great ways to express yourself in memos, letters and other documents.

'A FRIENDLY" REMINDER

Unfortunately, we have not received payment for the 12 Tahitian Swayback Guppies you ordered. It may have just slipped your mind. Or more likely, you've already sent in your payment, so just ignore this notice. We don't know what got into us. Sorry to bother you.

\>-<v y>*^v y* -<y s> -<y \p--<y y>~<y y>--<y y>-<i> s?~<y •#—<v s>«<y yj-'O* y>-<v \> ■*? *#- ■»& ■#- v<yv*>..<yy>«<y<!p.vp.

You 're spec/a/ Co us.

(By the way, Font Pack 2 also has a handy type organizer called Font Assistant. It's like an electronic chest of drawers for your fonts.)

We even have a font set to update your HP" printer called, you guessed it, Microsoft Hewlett-Packard" Font Set.

So your ideas can always be dressed to a T In feet, even yourT's can be dressed to aT

Which is important when your words are out there for all the world to see.

Microsoft

Making it easier

• >o n<e can pay our bills.

3rd and '

FINA1 NOTICE

Your account is now SeriOUSlM OelinUlieilt.

If you do not pay the total amount due by Friday midnight, yourjguppieswill be repossessed, your credit damaged and your fishing license revoked.

Remember, we know where your guppies live.

7fkm£you

We appreciate your prompt payment As always, we value your patronage and We look forward to seeing you soon

P.S. By now, you've discovered the phenomenal rate at which a Tahitian Swayback Guppy grows. Coincidental^, for a limited time, our 100-gaUon aquariums are now on sale.

Haves Qy rXAXX/ day \

© 1992 Mieeosoii Cufimdmn Alt itejiisii vim! Printed in tlw USA. For more information or to find the resetter nearest von. inside Hie 50 United States, eat! (sou) 420-0100. Dipt. //AW. Outside the U.S. & Canada, ealt (2061920-8661. In Canada, call (800) :e<:<-9018. Mieeosoft is a registered trademark and Window*, (lie Winding logo and Wiiigdings arc trademark* ol Microsoft Corporation. TrmType in a registered trademark of Apple Computer hie. llcielctt-l'aekard and HI'are registered trademarks of llenletl-l'iickard Company.

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

A Window to Windows

To do the things that make Windows powerful (e.g., running multiple applications, passing data between programs, and working with two or three open windows on the desktop), you need real estate. Standard VGA resolution just won't cut it anymore. The 15inch Nanao Flexscan F340iW strikes a nice compromise, being within the price range of a quality 13- or 14-inch monitor and much more usable at resolutions beyond standard VGA.

The Flexscan F340iW displays bright colors and crisp images, and the design addresses ergonomic and ecological concerns. Some impressive features at this price include a flat-screen CRT, fast refresh rates, support for multiple scanning frequencies, and VLF and ELF emissions.

Clearly, a lot of thought went into the design of this monitor. A row of push-button controls and a single analog knob are conveniently placed below the screen. You press a push button to activate an adjustment and use the knob for positioning. Once you've made all the adjustments, you can store up to three setting configurations. On different computers or in various display modes, the monitor automatically restores the optimal configuration

to match your hardware. The unit powers down if no video source is sensed. The Flexscan F340iW won't take the place of a larger screen if your applications include such things as desktop publishing or CAD, but I recommend it highly for mainstream Windows use.

The other side of the display equation, the graphics adapter, also deserves special consideration on a Windows platform. Hercules has introduced an accelerator,

the Graphite Card, with a new 32-bit GUI accelerator chip from IIT. The IIT chip is the crest of a new wave of 32bit accelerator chips from major players such as S3 and ATI Technologies. Although I had a preproduction ISA-bus board with beta drivers, preliminary benchmarks indicate that this new chip is a screamer. At 1024- by 768-pixel resolution with 256 colors, the Graphite Card's Wintach scores were significantly higher than those posted by boards based on currently available graphics chips. The 1 MB of VRAM (video RAM) enables 24-bit color and resolutions of up to 1280 by 1024 pixels (interlaced). Hercules plans to offer a VL-bus version of its card. Given the performance of the ISA-based Graphite Card, the VL-bus version should be a real speed demon.

Western Digital is also going the VLbus route with the new version of its Paradise Accelerator, which will be available soon. I ran the card in a preproduction VL-bus system using beta software drivers, so it was hard to make solid recommendations, but graphics speed on the VL bus itself is indisputable. From everything I've seen so far, the VL bus is the way to go. —Stanford Diehl

THE FACTS

Flexscan F340iW

Graphite Card

Paradise Accelerator

$899

$399

$300

Nanao Corp.

Hercules Computer Technology, Inc.

Western Digital Corp.

23535 Telo Ave.

3839 Spinnaker Court

8105 Irvine Center Dr.

Torrance, CA 90505

Fremont, CA 94538

Irvine, CA 92718

(310)325-5202

(510)623-6030

(714)932-5000

Circle 1177 on Inqui

ry Card.

Circle 1178 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1179 on Inquiry Card.

Delrina's New Fax Software Adds OCR

Fax boards and modems improved on the traditional fax machine by giving you a way to send faxes from within a word processing or spreadsheet application. But without OCR (optical character recognition), once you get the fax image in

your PC, you still have to rekey the faxed document so you can open the file in a word processor.

Delrina Technology's WinFax Pro 3.0 solves that problem through an OCR component with a spelling checker that can

automatically convert faxes into an editable format such as ASCII or RTF (Rich Text Format). The OCR component is potentially a big time-saver, as is the program's advanced phone book. With the phone book, you can sort fax recipients

62 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Sorry, you're

going to nave to plug

it myourself

By now, you really should know that the Microsoft Windows'" operating system makes computing easier.

Now Microsoft is working with personal computer manufacturers to make it even easier for you to get up and running.

We call it Microsoft Windows Ready-toRun. Quite simply, when you see the Readyto-Run logo, it means that a PC already has Microsoft Windows installed.

There is no need for installation disks. No set-up procedures. No additional steps.

What's more, it means the personal computer has already been optimized to run Windows-based applications.

Just flip a switch and you're ready to start working with Microsoft Windows.

Oh, there is one little technical matter concerning an electrical plug and a wall outlet. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Microsoft

Making it easier

:>1992 Microsoft Corporation. Ail rights n-scrvcd. Printed in the United States of America. For mom information inside the SO United Stales, coll (800)426-9400, Depl. HM4. Outside the US. and Canada, ail! (206) 936-8661. Customers in Canada

coll (800) 563-9048. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

THIS SIDE UP

#

III

I

MICROSOFT

WINDOWS

READY-TO-RUN

*%

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

i', [i'in-)

by name or company, organize them into groups, and within seconds send a fax with a customized cover page to multiple recipients.

While testing a beta version of WinFax Pro 3.0,1 found that the degree of recognition accuracy varies from fax to fax and even from sentence to sentence within the same fax. Character recognition of a fax document is no picnic. Not only does the program have to deal with the usual riddles of OCR (e.g., determining if a character is a 1 or an /), it also has to deal with compressed characters and sentences, streak marks, and other extraneous doodles.

WinFax Pro 3.0 incorporates Caere's AnyFax OCR engine, which is optimized to handle the anomalies of fax-to-text conversion. Delrina provides several options to maximize recognition accuracy. You can block out graphics portions of a fax so the program will not attempt to "OCR" it and tell WinFax to automatically recognize multiple-column articles. A Vacuum tool helps clean up faxes.

Even with all those tools, you can still get a few words or partial sentences of gibberish when recognizing poor-resolution faxes. For example, in one fax press release that I received, the words We see

File Edit View Page Bccognize Help

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provide wrHesS vereion 6rccTlv?aS ~ r

Business Editors/Computer Writers

SAN FRANC(SC0--(BUS1NESS WtKE)-Lonjs to develop links from cc:Mail to RAM wide-area wireless network

Louis Development Corp. todny announced at (he Electronic Messaging '92 conference

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developed wiil allow mobile cc:Mail users to send and receive electronic mail messages access phone jacks while traveling. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"We sec communications and messaging as the defining elements of tomorrow's widesp

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campaign lo make cc:Mail -- already the industry's leading LAN-basedclectroiiic mad s

ieveloped will allow mobile "W'mll users to send and receive electronic moll messages Instantrj access phone jacks while traveling. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

We see comrllurtications and massaging as the definlni i J Y tkfP dPPid_..t anti C11 C\ o T At ..0 nptpTnpnlpnt an' campaign to make cc:Mail - already the industry's leadli gateway and client drivers for the RAM network. To send ep,U rplpe pf mrTjrl mnAPrrtc rqPcionpAl in llnnnrt thP

communications and messaging as the defining elements were recognized as We see comrllunications and massaging as the defining elements. However, other sentences in the same press release were recognized perfectly. A split-screen Interactive Text Edit option lets you view the original fax as you fix the text version (see the screen).

With so many faxes floating around these days, you want to get your fax noticed. This is where WinFax's cover-page designer comes in. Using the designer, you can create a cover page with bit-map logos or an attention-getting cartoon to make your fax stand out. In about 10 minutes, I

was able to design a fax cover page with variable text fields. With variable text fields, WinFax can automatically insert a recipient's name, company, subject, or other variable into a cover page. If you're not feeling artistic, WinFax Pro comes with a selection of predrawn cover pages.

Features such as compression of fax send-and-receive logs, archived faxes, support for TWAIN-compliant scanners, and fax annotation make this a well-rounded program. If you're standing in line at the fax machine or retyping fax documents, you're wasting time. What are you waiting for?

—David Andrews

THE FACTS

WinFax Pro 3.0

$129

Delrina Technology, Inc.

6830 Via Del Oro, Suite 240

San Jose, CA 95119

(800) 268-6082

(408) 363-2345

Circle 1180 on Inquiry Card.

Shapeware's Visio Draws a New Path

If you cringe at the mere thought of drawing, Shapeware has the software you've been waiting for. A Seattlebased software firm started in 1990 by two founders of Aldus, Shapeware has introduced Visio, a Windows drawing tool that's meant for the rank-andfile business user rather than the sophisticated graphic arts community.

Visio is designed to create business forms in dozens of varieties. The $299 program lets graphics novices build business or technical drawings easily by using drag-and-drop drawing techniques with hundreds of objects included with the more than two dozen stencils (or templates) that are included with the package.

Although it is possible for you to draw fairly complex images with Visio, the pro

gram isn't designed to compete with two-dimensional drafting and CAD packages. Likewise, Visio isn't targeted at graphics stalwarts such as Aldus FreeHand or Adobe Illustrator; neither does it compete with presentation packages such as Harvard Graphics, Lotus Freelance, or Microsoft's PowerPoint.

Instead, Shapeware's founders are hoping to usher in a new drawing metaphor, one using precut shapes that can be dragged into an image and shaped, massaged, or manipulated into the exact form you need to convey your message. With Visio's 15 stencils, you have 300 objects, or master shapes, at your disposal. These master shapes allow you to

64 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

PICTURE WINDOWS.

Picture This...a real-time television monitor built right into your PC...Now, picture vising this monitor while running Windows™ 3 applications at the same time... And, picture taking that video image and resizing, (right down to crystalclear icon size!) or clicking and dragging it to any position on the screen as easily as moving any other Window...

Picture Perfect. With Win/TV's "frame grabber" you capture and save any "still" frame and save it to disk. Using Win/TV and Microsoft® Video for Windows™, you capture FULL MOTION VIDEO, saving synchronized video and audio clips to disk. You can then send those video and audio files across the network. Seamlessly integrate still and full motion video images into productive multimedia applications such as databases or training and marketing presentations... or give your E-mail a powerful new dimension!

Any Windows 3 user can access 122 channel television reception with the built-in tuner, PLUS two additional video sources, (such as VCR, video camera, laser disk, etc.,) all with stereo audio capability! Automatically fit real-time video images into any size Window while running your other Windows 3 programs. Hauppauge Computer Works introduces Win/TV™, the Windows television adapter

Picture Yourself owning your own "Windows on the World"! Maybe you want to work on your spreadsheets but don't want to miss an important news flash or a current stock market report. Win/TV \s perfect for you. Keep an eye on current events while keeping control of your inventory... No problem!

Get the new Win/TV and open a window on some fresh, new, and exciting possibilities.

Suggested Retail: $495.00

PC Connection

ZSfc.

Micro Warehouse, call:

1-800-367-7080 PC Zone: 1-800-258-0270 Please mention code 21244 when ordering.

PC Connection, call: 1-800-243-8088

Trademarks: Win/TV is a

trademark of Hauppauge

Computer Works, Inc., Windows $

is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.

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Resize or reposition your Win/TV Window anywhere on the screen—while running other Windows applications.

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Capture the perfect "still" with "Frame Grabber" feature —great for presentations with impact.

Hauppauge!

Hauppauge Computer Works, Inc. 91 Cabot Court • Hauppauge, N.Y. 11788

In N.Y: Tel: (5J6) 434-1600 • Fax (-516) 434-3198 Toll Free: 800-443-6284 • In Europe: (49)-2l6l-17063

Circle 107 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

create flowcharts, organization charts, network and logic diagrams, block diagrams, Gantt charts, office space plans, and even basic maps.

After a brief introduction, 1 found it easy to become acclimated to the Visio drawing metaphor, and I readily admit to being someone without innate drawing skills. With my beta copy of Visio, however, the ability to drag and drop shapes into a drawing quickly made building documents a breeze.

Visio's stencils appear on the left side of the screen after you select the type of drawing you wish to create. After pulling in several features of a flowchart, for example, you can size shapes, rotate or flip shapes horizontally or vertically, zoom in and out, and draw connecting shapes or

lines. The Visio drawing engine, which supports OLE, will let users or third parties build libraries of shapes, stencils, templates, and macros that they can add to the system.

In the short time I used Visio, I became comfortable with its basic drag-and-drop approach to building a drawing. For all its apparent simplicity, Visio offers several sophisticated features, including the ability to use ShapeSheets—a spreadsheetlike interface that defines the underlying geometry of each SmartShape—to finetune every aspect of a drawing's shapes. With that capability and its many other drawing features, Visio has a good chance to leave its mark on the business graphics market.

—Patrick Waurzyniak

THE FACTS j

Visio

$299

System requirements:

A 20-MHz 386SX or higher with

4 MB of RAM, VGA or higher

graphics, Windows 3.1, and a

Windows-compatible pointing device.

Shapeware Corp.

1601 Fifth Ave., Suite 800

Seattle, WA 98101

(206) 467-6723

fax: (206) 467-7227

Circle 1181 on Inquiry Card.

Bright Colors, Flat Panel

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Suppose you have a color business presentation loaded and ready to go in a Mac PowerBook 180, but the client doesn't have a color monitor; or suppose the space on your desktop is at such a premium that even a small color monitor won't fit. Envisio's ColorFrame, a compact flat-panel color display, provides a solution for both problems.

The ColorFrame weighs only 4 pounds (the external power supply adds an extra 2 pounds), which makes it easily transportable. Its svelte 9- by 12- by 2M-inch dimensions let you pack it into a briefcase or onto a cramped desktop. The tiltable lOVi-inch-diagonal active-matrix color LCD screen, made by Sharp, has a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. Although the screen can support 4096 colors, the Envisio driver limits the display to only 256

colors. This lets the ColorFrame function with Envisio's NoteBook Display Adapter 030 for 68030-based Mac notebooks or with the built-in video of the Mac Ilci, Ilsi, LC, PowerBook 160, PowerBook 180, and Quadras in the 8-bit display mode.

I tried a prototype ColorFrame on a PowerBook 170 equipped with an NDA030. When I left this arrangement outside my office, practically everyone who went by stopped to comment on the ColorFrame's rich colors. The unit's backlit screen was bright, sharp, and responsive. Screen updates were snappy, and the pointer didn't ghost while mousing among application menus or on the Desktop.

When the PowerBook went to sleep, the only effect on the ColorFrame was to turn the pointer into a stopwatch icon. That's because the ColorFrame has a built-in 300KB frame buffer that preserves the display's contents in this type of situation. I pressed a key on the PowerBook and the computer woke up, the stopwatch became a pointer, and I was back in business where I left off.

The ColorFrame's light weight let me easily tote it home, and the easy-to-tilt screen let me compensate for my desk's height and the room's lighting. I didn't have a chance to try the ColorFrame with a Mac Quadra 950 because the panel was

not yet calibrated for its video, nor was an adapter cable available designed to tell the Quadra what the ColorFrame's resolution was.

The only flaw I can find with the ColorFrame is its price: $5495. This is several hundred dollars more than the list price of a fully loaded PowerBook 180 (with 8 MB of RAM, a 120-MB hard drive, and the Express Modem Kit). If you spend your life on the road lugging a PowerBook and a bulky color monitor around to give presentations, however, you might want to seriously consider the ColorFrame on the merits of its transportable weight and size, as well as its sharp screen—and hang the price.

—Tom Thompson

THE FACTS

ColorFrame

$5495

System requirements: A color Mac or PowerBook with built-in video, or a PowerBook equipped with Envisio's NDA030.

Envisio, Inc.

510 First Ave. N, Suite 303

Minneapolis, MN 55403

(612)339-1008

fax:(612)339-1369

Circle 1182 on Inquiry Card.

66 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Cool, Quiet, Reliable Rjwen

ECONOMICAL UNITS

These UL/CSA. approved, fully-tested power supplies are the best basic units available.

STANDARD 200 XT $69

STANDARD 205 SLIM $89

STANDARD 220 BABY $89

STANDARD 220 AT/TOWER $89

ULTRA-QUIET UNITS

Unratde your nerves with a Silencer power supply. They're cooled by our ThermaSense SQ, a custom, variable-speed fan that automatically maintains the correct system temperature while reducing noise up to 95%. Virtually inaudible! Perfect for the executive suite or home office.

SILENCER 205 SLIM $119

SILENCER 220 ATATOWER $129

SILENCER 270 AT/TOWER $179

fflGH-PERFORMANCE UNITS

Upgrade your computer with one of our premium Turbo-Cool power supplies—the choice of PC professionals. You'll get 50% -100% more power, built-in line conditioning, a dual-stage EMI filter, super-right regulation, ultra-clean DC output, our high-capacity ThermaSense variable-speed fan (300W models), UL/CSA/TUV approvals, and a no-hassle 2-year warranty! Ideal for high-end workstations and network file servers.

TURBO-COOL 200 XT $159

TURBO-COOL 300 SLIM $169

TURBO-COOL 300 BABY $169

TURBO-COOL 300 ATTOWER $189

TURBO-COOL 450 ATTOWER $349

REDUNDANT POWER SYSTEM

Eliminate the risk of costly downtime or data loss due to power supply failure with the TwinPower 900 Redundant Power System. The TP900 consists of two Turbo-Cool 450 power supplies in parallel, utilizing a special power-management interface module. The system provides complete power redundancy with hot-swap capability.

486 CPU COOLER

PROBABILITY OF A POWER SYSTEM FAILOHE

■ Way More Power. With 50 amps of 12-volt power available for start-up, the TP900 easily runs up to 13 power-hungry drives. Perfect for the next generation of super network servers.

■ No Downtime, hi the unlikely event that one of its Turbo-Cool 450s ™ should fail, an alarm m sounds, and the server m is sustained by die TwinPower's other TC450, while the user simply swaps in a new unit.

The TwinPower 900 comes in a monster case diat holds two TC450 power supplies, the interface module, 6 fans, an 8-slot or 12-sIot motherboard, and up to 13 drives. So, not only do you get die ultimate in power and reliability, you also get die ultimate in system expandability! TWIN-POWER 900 W/CASE $1695

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PC POWER & COOLING, INC.

"THE LEADER OF THE PACK" 5995 AvenidaEncinas, Carlsbad, CA 92008 • (619) 931-5700 • (800) 722-6555 • Fax (619) 931-6988

Most orders shipped same day. We accept Visa, MC, COD, or PO on approved credit. Turbo-Cool and TwinPower models guaranteed for 2 years. All other products guaranteed for I year. Hours: 7 a.m. - 5 p.m. (PT) Mon. - Fri. 0W2 PC Power & Cooling, Inc. Silencer, Turbo-Cool, ThermaSense, TwinPower, CPU-Cool, and InnerSource are trademarks of PC Power & Cooling, Inc. All other brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Circle 138 on Inquiry Card.

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It doubles your performance.

It doubles your disk capacity.

■,;-. It's fast and easy to install.

SSI It's priced right

It's winSTORE,™ created for the Windows'1' user. The first product of its kind, winSTORE combines two award-winning technologies: high-speed diskcontrolfrom Perceptive Solutions and advanced Stacker ™ data compression from Stac," in a plug-and-play solution.

It'swinSTORE—think

of it as overdrive for

Windows!

m

Perceptive Solutions, Inc.

800-486-FAST

Main: 214-954-1774 • FAX: 214-953-1774

■ ©1992 by Perceptive Soiutions, Inc.-winSTORE and the Perceptive Solutions logoare trademarks of Perceptive Solutions, toe Windows is a trademark ol MicrosoftBCorp. Stacker is a trademark and Stac is a registered trademark of Stac Electronics, Inc.

Circle 139 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 140).

NEWS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Flexible Windows-Based Fax Facilities

I ONDON—Fax fcimachines became popular because they're so simple to use, and it's reasonable to expect PC fax software to be just as easy. Datafax from the Swedish firm Trio Information Systems comes as close to this ideal as any other product I've encountered.

Datafax is a suite of five Windows programs, two of which you leave

running as background tasks to receive and send faxes. Datafax works by installing its own printer driver and capturing printer output from any Windows application to send as a fax. When you print from inside an application such as Microsoft Word, the Datafax phone-book window pops up and you click on the recipient's name to put the output into the fax queue.

The main module of Datafax is Winserve, a fax-server program that controls your fax modem and monitors incoming and outgoing traffic. When Winserve is running, faxes are automatically sent in the background (either immediately or according to a schedule). When Winserve is not running, the faxes accumulate in the outbound queue, ready to be sent in chronological order the next time you run the program.

Running the Faxq program lets you inspect the four fax logs—outbound, inbound, successfully sent, and erroneous— at any time, and you can view any pending fax simply by clicking on its name. To receive incoming faxes, you run the Infax program. The Infax icon is designed to stay on top and to blink whenever a new fax arrives.

The other two modules are Faxoffice and Captive. Faxoffice is your general command post, where you set up your fax modem parameters, design cover sheets with a built-in drawing program, view the fax logs, and maintain your phone book. Datafax supports Class 1, Class 2, and SendFax-compatible modems, among others. An ingenious import dialog box in Datafax's phone book lets you convert data from most other database formats without any preprocessing. International

support is excellent. You can specify a national character set for each phone-book entry.

Faxoffice really comes into its own in a networked Datafax installation, where it allows you to relay faxes to other network users, reject junk faxes, and produce comprehensive statistics with bar charts of fax usage that are broken down by hour/day/ week/month and country. You can use a nondedicated 386 workstation as the fax server.

The Captive program enables you to clip material directly from the screen and send it as a fax. Even more convenient is the ability to dash off a cover-sheet-only fax note at any time simply by clicking on the Captive icon.

Datafax is generally good-looking and slick to use. It was completely robust during my test. I recommend Datafax without hesitation. ■

—Dick Pountain

THE FACTS

Datafax

single-user, $99 (about 600 krona); five-user network license, from $595 (from about 3570 krona)

Trio Information Systems

Odelbergsvag 17

134 40Gustavsberg

Sweden

+46 8570 30590

fax: +46 766 35292

Circle 1183 on Inquiry Card.

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WATCOM SQL Developer's Edition

by WATCOM

Complete client/server development tool allows you to develop and deploy single-user standalone applications, and to develop applications for use with the Network Server Edition (sold separately). Includes: Single-user database server (both 16 and 32-bit versions); ACME application development system; Embedded SQL C/C++ preprocessor; SQL libraries for WATCOM C. C/386, MS/C ++ and BC/C++. List: $795 Ours: $299

FAXc«era# 1683-0010

Essential Graphics Chart™ for Windows

by Lifeboat Software

Essential graphics chart for Windows lets you turn your data into charts and graphs that make an immediate visual impact. Features include: DLL-works with any Windows API compatible language, 2D bar, 3D bar, legends for all chart types, real-time charts, true perspective and rotational capability. No Royalties.

List: $399 Ours: $299

FAXcetera* 2089-0020

HUGE SELECTION AT THE RIGHT PRICE! CALL TODAY!

QOMPUTER riSSOOATES

Software superior by design.

CA-Clipper

by Computer Associates

Clipper is a comprehensive PC application development system for PCs offering network support, user extensibility,

a replaceable database driver and executable file generation. An open architecture system, Clipper includes a robust language, pre-processor, compiler, linker, virtual memory manager, editor and debugger, and permits development of applications that are larger than available memory.

List: $795 Ours: $499

FAXcetem # 5400-0001

386MAX $72

Baby Driver $239

Baler $399

BalerXE $695

Bar Code Library $350

Blinker $269

BlueMAX $91

Borland C++ $319

Brief CALL

C Communications Tlkt. $139

C Windows Tlkt. 386 $179

C++/Views $449

C-DOC $170

C-DOC Professional $269

C-scape $449

CAD/CAM Dev. Kit/2D $449

CAD/CAM Dev. Kit/3D $899

CAD/CAM Dev. Kit/DXF $525

CASE:W Corporate CALL

Clarion Personal $59

Clarion Professional $549

Clipper $499

DanBricklin'sDemoll $215

dANALYST Gold $99

DataBoss CALL

ilBASE IV $499

dBFast Windows $395

Designer QuickWindows $62

dGT $249

Unlimited Runtime $499

DiskBase $79

DR DOS 6.0 $59

Dr. Switch-ASE $159 Essential Communications $295

Essental Graphics GUI $135 Essential Graphics Kernel $179

FilePro+ $579

GFA-Basic for Windows $235

GFA-CAD $89

Graf/Drive Plus Dev. $269

Greenleaf Comm++ $169

GX Developer's Pak $626

GX Effects $179

GX Graphics $224

GXText $134

IBM OS/2 2.0 $149

Image Prep $89

INSTALIT $119

lustallSHIELD $349

JetForm Designer $99

Kansmen Products CALL

KPWin++ CALL

Label Master $429 Lahey EM/32 5.0 $1,015

Magic Fields CALL

Menuet $319

MKS Learning UNIX $99

MKSLEX&YACC $199

MKS Toolkit $205

MS C/C++ $309

Upgrade from MS C6.0 $134

Compet. Upgrade $189

MS FoxPro $499

MS Quick C for Windows $139

MS Test $275

MS VB DOS Prof. Edition $325

MS VB Windows CALL

MS Windows 3.1 $135

Multi-Edit $89

Multi-Edit Professional $139

Norton Anti-Virus $99

Norton Desktop/Win CALL

Norton Utilities $119

object-Menu $269

ObjectVision 2.1 $135

Opt-Tech Sort/Merge $119

Origin $449

Outside In for Windows $79

Paradox 4.0 $569

PC Lint $99

PCX Prog.Tlkt. Windows $219

Persona for Windows $109

PGL CALL

Phar Lap 286/DOS Ext. $435

Phar Lap 386/DOS Ext. $435

PLink86+ $335

PRO-C $99

ProBas 5.0 $169

Q+E Database/VB $179

QEMM 386 $68

QuickWindows Advanced $134

R&R Report Writer $179

Robolielp $399

RTLink/Plus $445

RTPatch $69

SlickEdit $149

Smalltalk/V Windows $395

SourceSafe $199

SQA:Replay $79

SQA:Robot $419

SVS Products CALL

TLIB $125

Tools h++ $269

Turbo C++ for Windows $112

Turbo Pascal for Windows CALL

Vitamin C $339

WATCOM C 9.0/386 $599

WATCOM FORTRAN 77/9.0 $449

WinGen Screen Designer $99

w/DBMS App Designer $419

Zinc 3.0 CALL

Zortech C++ Dev. 3.0 $445

B, ti

Phone ordf

Mon-Fri8:~~ MCVisa,, please add. shipping/ha fifteen poum at actual UP COD shipmei Rush service; Mail or FAX Im Orders/Domes. Orders Phone num

Returns Subject to $2 charge per produc*

GUARANTEED BEST PRICES!

(Call for details)

To order call: 800-445-7899

Corporate (CORSOFT): 800 422-6507

FAX: 908 389-9227

International: 908 389-9228

Customer Service: 908 389-9229

For more information on the products

featured on these pages call

FAXcefera®: 908 389-8173

• All prices are subject to change without notice.

I

Software that

WATCOM C 9.0/386

by WATCOM

Develop and Debug 32-bit applications for extended DOS. Windows, and OS/2 2.0 with the most complete 32-bit C development package available. Includes the royalty-free D0S/4GW DOS entender by Rational Systems, components from MS Windows SDK. compiler, linker, debugger, profiler, plus numerous development tools.

Supports other industry standard 32-bit DOS extenders. Create ADS Applications for AutoCAD or embedded systems development.

List: $895 Ours: $599

FAXcet«ra# 1683-0001

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miniED Tools for Text Processing

by Strategic Software

Easily add sophisticated text functions and spell-checking to your applications. Handle text windows, memo fields, formatted text display and more with a simple call to a_miniEd function. _miniED-RAM based, ToolkitRAM/File based editing engine, _miniSpell-spell checking engine. Compatible with all standard languages, the _miniEd family of tools are written in "C" and come with complete source. Ideal for cross-platform developers. CALL TODAY FOR PRICING!

FAXcetem # 0027-3001

.4

WindowsMAKER Professional 4.0

by Blue Sky

Next generation of industry standard C/C++ development tool for Windows. The easiest fastest way to create Windows apps, just point and click. New architecture uses Switch-It™ Code Generation Modules for generating ANSI C, MFC++. or OWL C++ code among others. Award-winning Visual Prololyper lets you test the look & feel and make changes on the fly. TrueCode technology ensures the user code is preserved during code regeneration. Generates Windows .EXE w/fully commented C or C++ source. CUA & SAA compliant

List: $995 Ours: $695

FAXcetera # 2602-0003

SVS C°/Fortran-77

by Silicon Valley Software

Version V 2.8.2

SVS C3/FORTRAN-77 runs in and creates 32-bit executables for use with MS Windows 3.x as DPMI executables. Compiler, development tools and applications are DMPI conforming and support most VCP1 requirements. Extensive graphics and Scientific function library is included. Executables are run-time royalty free.

List: $395 Ours: $356

Faxcetera* 2863-0001

ED- The Programmers Editor

by Lifeboat Software

At last! A full-featured windows based programmer's editor is here! ED is setting the standard with features like background compilation, automatic code indenting and completion, hypertext function/procedure lookups, "smart" language-specific editing, a fast "C" extension language. Windows Toolbar, unlimited undo and redo, keyboard macros and remapping, and emulation of popular DOS editors (BRIEF. Wordstar. Qedit, Norton). Discover the Windows editing tool for the 90s.

List: $269 Ours: $199

FAXcetem* 0233-0011

MediaDeveloper

by Lenel Systems

Create multimedia-enabled applications with MediaDeveloper and Object Vision. MediaDeveloper is the Multimedia Development Toolkit to integrate sound, images, animation and full-motion video (analog or digital) into Windows applications. Includes media and device control for multimedia peripherals including CD-ROMs, VCRs and laserdisc players; support for major animation, video, audio and graphics formats; a multimedia database; an OLE server; and a suite or DLLs.

List: $595 Ours: $499

FAXcetem # 1005-0302

Microsoft Visual Basic for DOS

by Microsoft Corporation

Award-Winning productivity-now available for DOS! Draw forms and controls.write event-procedures, use and create custom controls-in DOS! Create all-new apps or combine with existing C/C++ or Pascal code. Highly compatible with VB/Win for multi-platform development. Even run existing MS Quick Basic/Basic PDS code! Includes a native 80 x 86 compiler that creates 100% standalone .EXE files, 386 code generation. MOVE overlays, an integrated ISAM and much more!

Standard Edition List: $199 Ours: $139 Professional Edition List: $495 Ours: $325 FAXcetem* 1269-0039

Lahey F77L-EM/32

by Lahey Computer Systems

Industry leading 32-bit FORTRAN Language System includes Phar Lap's 386/DOS Extender. VCPI, XMS, and DPMI compliant extender enables users to access up to 4GB and operate in the OS/2 and MS Windows DOS box. The extender is royalty-free and includes virtual memory support. 5.1 includes Editor, profiler, make utility, library manager, video graphics and 486 optimizations. Support for popular VAX, IBM VS and 90 features.

List: $1390 Ours: $1015

FAXcefera# 1476-0004

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Multimedia Toolbook

by Asymetrix

Complete Multimedia Authoring.

Create your own multimedia applications for MS Windows. Simple interface and set of ready-to-use multimedia objects make it the fastest and easiest way to develop multimedia apps. This award-winning tool provides a complete package versatile enough to develop new applications or put a new face on existing ones, with no runtime fee. List: $695 Ours: $599

FAX«tera# 2776-0005

Bsupport for Novell's | —»' ' |.

Btrieve

by Information Architects

A set of utilities to create, edit and manipulate Btrieve data files. Other functions include data recovery, application debug- ■'*

ging, exporting, and BUTIL replacement Some products include Royalty-Free Distribution and C source. Versions for DOS text, Windows, and OS/2. An absolute MUST for any Btrieve developer. List: $309 Ours: $259

FAKceiera # 2390-0007

DocMaker

by Task Software

Create complete User Manuals four to five times faster! Manuals include Contents, Tutorials, Figures, Reference, Index, Appendices, and more! Flexible "Intelligent Text" writes up to 90% of the manual. Features 28 soft fonts, automated page layout, and global format control! Easy to use DOS system with pulldown menus, mouse support, and on-line help!

List: $199 Ours: $179

FAXatem # 1004-9001

DocMaker |

Aucomazeo Documentation System

I" nual I

lorator in 1.1

documentation,

C-Heap

by Library Technologies

Best-fit malloc() cuts fragmentation. Dole facility reduces per-block overhead and fragmentation. Three ways to use virtual memory -autoswap or blocks copy; optional disk I/O cache. Allocate heap and vmem blocks >64K. Access UMBs, page frame via malice (), D0S=UMB not reqd. Two near, two far heaps. All memory models supported. Hundreds of functions, thorough no royalty. Specify compiler.

List: $229 Ours:

FAXcetcra # 1003-1701

$209

RoboHELP

by Blue Sky Software

Cut your Development time by 95%. RoboHelp enables you to design, test and create a comprehensive on-line, context sensitive Help System for Windows applications using graphical objects, a tool palette. a mouse, and Word for Windows. Just till in the actual text when prompted and RoboHELP generates all the source code for the On-line Help System.

List: $495 Ours: >t^ NOW! $399

FAXcctero# 2602-0005

m

m Help Authoring System

C/apprentice

by SymbTech

New technology for maintaining and constnicting C source programs. C Functions can be mechanically evaluated, analyzed and changed based on your maintenance objectives. Every part ofaCsoureelile can be analyzed/changed, including comments, whitespace, preprocessor commands, as well as C code itself. Convert C source to equivalent C++ code, migrate C code to parallel vector machine architecture, or locate and change windowing function calls. DOS 386 List: $895 Ours: $759

FAXcetera # 2553-0002

PROTOGEN 3.0

by ProtoView Development

NEW VERSION! The industry standard for

code generation and prototyping Windows

applications. Develop the user interface of'

your application using Visual prototyping

methods. ProtoGen generates expert level,

commented code for ANSI C, Microsoft. NT Win32. All generators included! User

Code Is presewed from one generation to the next. It's easy and fast.

List: $199 Ours: $99

FAXcetera # 2553-0002

Circle 119 on Inquiry Card.

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GUARANTEED BEST PRICES!

Should you see one of these products listed at a lower price

in another ad in this magazine, CALL US! We'll match the

price, and still offer our same quality service and support!

TERMS OF OFFER

• Offer good through January 31, 1993*

plicable to pricing on current versions of software listed.

• January issue prices only.

r does not apply towards obvious errors in competitor's ads

* Subject to same terms and conditions.

HMjoM

• All prices are subject to change without notice.

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW

SYSTEMS

An Open Platform for Your Pocket

The 4.6-ounce Digital Book System-1 hand-held personal computer uses Western Digital's 16-bit CPU. An open-platform machine, the DBS-1 is designed as a mobile information tool that fits in a shirt pocket.

Capable of storing up to 90 MB of information in two removable interactive "digital books," the index-card-size unit has a QWERTY keyboard and eight function keys. The independent builtin notepad holds up to 60 lines of text, and the unit's search and spelling-checking capabilities are based on fuzzy logic. Four lithium button cells provide up to 60 hours of battery life. Digital books currently available include The Medical Letter Handbook of Adverse Drug Interactions and the MerriamWebster dictionary. Price: $199.

Contact: Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc., Mt. Holly, NJ, (609) 261-4800; fax (609)261-1631. Circle 1272 on Inquiry Card.

Large-Screen Portable 486

Bitwise Designs' ScreenStar Model 450S, built around a 50-MHz 486 CPU, has 16MBof60-nsRAM

Secaucus, NJ, (800) 7428086 or (817) 685-1213. Circle 1274 on Inquiry Card.

Digital books snap in and out at the base of the Digital Book System-1. You can cross-reference, highlight, and transfer text from one book to the other.

(expandable to 32 MB), 256 KB of cache RAM, and 500 MB of magnetic disk storage (expandable to 1 GB). The portable workstation is in a rugged suitcase shell.

The ScreenStar's 21-inch gas-plasma screen, which folds flat within the suitcase, displays at full size two 8'/>by 1 l-inch documents at a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. Two full-size ISA slots are available for application-specific adapter boards; a 5'A-inch bay can handle a second hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, or a read/ write optical drive. The unit ships with Windows 3.1. Price: $13,995.

Contact: Bitwise Designs, Inc., Schenectady, NY, (800) 367-5906 or (518) 356-9741; fax (518) 356-9749. Circle 1271 on Inquiry Card.

ScreenStar Model 450S.

Variable-Voltage Notebook

A 5-pound notebook that uses the Am386SXLV microprocessor, the CF-1000 from Panasonic has 4 MB of RAM (expandable to 12 MB). With Addstor's SuperStor disk compression utility installed, the 60-MB hard drive has a capacity of 110 MB.

VLSI Technology's VL82C315A Scamp II single-chip low-power system controller supports 3.3-V, 5V, and mixed-mode operation without external level shifters. The CF-1000's 9'/.-inch VGA LCD screen has 640by 480-pixel resolution. A detachable floppy drive lets you insert an optional second nickel-metal-hydride battery for 3 to 5'/2 more hours of use. The unit has serial, parallel, VGA, mouse, and dedicated AT bus ports, as well as two internal slots for RAM expansion and a modem. Price: With 60-MB drive, $2299; with 120-MB drive, $2699.

Contact: Panasonic Communications & Systems Co.,

Modular Choices

The modular Maxum 4150DE2 offers configurations with up to 16 GB of memory on the hard drive. Memory on the motherboard is expandable to 64 MB. Based on the 486DX2 chip, the 50-MHz system is available as a desktop, tower, and minitower.

A typical desktop model comes complete with 4 MB of RAM; 64 KB of memory cache; a 330-MB IDE hard drive; dual floppy drives; a three-button mouse; and a 14-inch, noninterlaced VGA color monitor with 1024- by 768-pixel resolution. DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 are pre installed. Price: $4759. Contact: Maxum Systems, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, (718) 643-3385. Circle 1273 on Inquiry Card.

Unstoppable PCs

The Unstoppable series of fault-tolerant 486-based PCs and servers uses RAID-5 disk arrays, ejectable hard drives, and a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) to allow the Astrix ArrayServer and ArrayPC to automatically recover data in the event of power or drive failures. Equipped with EISA or ISA buses, the ArrayServers have 1.1 GB of storage using four hot-swappable SCSI drives (380 MB or larger), a 500-W UPS, and a 486DX/50 with a 256-KB cache and 16 MB of RAM.

Price: Starts at $7991. Contact: Astrix Computer Corp., Milpitas, CA, (408) 946-2883; fax (408) 9461610. Circle 1275 on Inquiry Card.

72 BYTE • JANUARY ! 993

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW

PERIPHERALS

Smart Input

Not a robot but a 3-D laser digitizer, the Digibot II measures 44 by 28 by 30 inches. It "reads" multidimensional objects up to 18 inches in diameter and 18 inches tall and then produces a list of a', y, and z coordinates accepted by any CAD/ CAM/CAE software that reads 3-D points.

Designed to be fast and precise, the Digibot II scans at 1200 points per minute at an accuracy within 0.002 inch. Digibotics includes systematic and adaptive scanning software for even or uneven surfaces. Price: $49,000. Contact: Digibotics, Inc., Austin, TX, (512)832-6544; fax (512) 832-1163. Circle 1276 on Inquiry Card.

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Portable Printing

The 4.4-pound HewlettPackard DeskJet Portable printer can be easily toted on trips, offering HP's laserquality ink-jet printing to travelers. Using the same thermal ink-jet print technology as HP's DeskJet desktop printer line, the DeskJet Portable offers 300-dpi resolution and prints up to 3 ppm. You can manually feed in letter-, legal-, and A4-size paper as well as transparency film and labels. An optional sheet feeder that holds 50 sheets of paper or transparencies is available.

The printer offers several built-in fonts and can use TrueType fonts. The unit has an internal recharger as well as an optional rapid recharger; battery life averages 100 pages per charge. Price: HP DeskJet Portable, $599; cut-sheet feeder, $99; rapid recharger, $99. Contact: Hewlett-Packard Co.. Palo Alto, CA, (800) 752-0900; in Canada, (800) 387-3867. Circle 1277 on Inquiry Card.

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Adaptive screening software in the Digibot II automatically produces a greater number of points in an object that contains a sharp curve than in one that contains a gradual curve.

The WriteMove II, a portable printer for Mac PowerBooks, weighs 2'fc pounds (including a rechargeable battery) and tucks into your PowerBook carrying case. Supported fonts include 21 from Linotype, Adobe Type Manager, and TrueType. The WriteMove's print features include 360-dpi resolution, preview, print later, and print in the background. You can choose to use the multistroke or the singlestroke ribbon. The WriteMove II also prints on envelopes and transparencies. Price: $599.

Contact: GCC Technologies, Bedford, MA, (800) 4227777 or (617) 890-0880; fax (617) 890-0822. Circle 1278 on Inquiry Card.

operating systems.

A new technology in the system achieves data transfer ratesof300KBps(18MB per minute) and compressed data capacity of 4 GB per cartridge. The PowerTape complies with the QIC-2GB industry standard but costs only about half as much as previous QIC systems that use 4-mm helical scanning technology. Price: $1995.

Contact: Colorado Memory Systems, Inc., Loveland, CO, (800) 451-0897 or (303) 6698000; fax (303) 667-0921. Circle 1279 on Inquiry Card.

Power Backup

The PowerTape QIC (quarter-inch cartridge) backup system, available as internal SCSI 5'/i-inch drives or external devices, runs on AT, ISA, and EISA PCs. The PowerTape is also compatible with a variety of major network

Grabbing Eyes

Grab that image with the ComputerEyes/RT frame grabber. But why isn't this software? Because this SCSI device for Macs can capture 24-bit color images from any standard video source. The ComputerEyes/RT

connects easily to a wide range of Macs and can capture color or black-and-white images at'/» second. Video inputs include NTSC composite video and S-video. You may predefine capture size and number of frames while choosing among TIFF-. PICT-. PICT2-, MacPaint-, or Quicktime-compatible formats. You need a Mac with at least 2 MB of RAM running System 6.07 or higher. Price: $599.95. Contact: Digital Vision, Inc., Dedharn, MA, (617) 3295400; fax (617) 329-6286. Circle 1280 on Inquiry Card.

CD Fever

With either a Mac or a PC, you can watch movies on CD with Chinon's line of multimedia CD-ROM drives. Using nonproprietary SCSI drives, these models call on a 64-KB data buffer to average a 350-ms access time and a data transfer rate of 150 KBps. They support the full MPC and Quicktime specifications.

The top-of-the-line Model CDC-435 works with both the Mac and PC and includes a 12-function remote control; a headphone jack with volume control; and randomplay, intro-only, repeat-single-track, and repeat-all buttons. The other models, internal and external, represent a variety of features with a range of audio and multimedia capabilities. Price: $695 to $895. Contact: Chinon America, Inc., Torrance, CA, (310) 533-0274; fax (310) 5331727. Circle 1281 on Inquiry Card.

The PowerTape QIC comes with Colorado Backup for DOS software and a DT-4000 data cartridge.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 73

Duracell Introdu Nickel-Metal Hydride

A world of change is coming.

Portable products like computers and cellular phones are fast becoming a part of our everyday life. And as the market for these portable products grows and shifts to mass retail distribution, so will consumer demand for a readily available, long lasting rechargeable battery.

Introducing DURACELL Nickel-Metal Hydride Rechargeable Batteries, a limited number of standard sized packs that will soon be conveniently available in millions of retail outlets worldwide. Exactly where your portable products must be found if you hope to gain a larger share of the growing consumer market.

ces Standard Sized Rechargeable Batteries

Consider the advantages DURACELL Rechargeables offer you, the manufacturer. Up to 40% longer life than ordinary nickel-cadmium. Freedom from the burden of custom pack design and inventory. Reduced product costs and cycle time to market. Worldwide availability of replacement packs.

DURACELL Nickel-Metal Hydride Batteries can make your portable computers and cellular phones as convenient, affordable and consumer friendly as your changing market demands. Join Duracell in a power partnership today.

Circle 217 on Inquiry Card.

DURACELL

RECHARGEABLES

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW

A D D - I

Four-Channel Converter

B

i uilt to the Inmos TRAM 1 (transputer module) format, the adtl64 high-speed A/D converter provides four channels of simultaneously sampled data at 1 MHz per channel with a resolution of 12 bits. Sophisticated triggering lets you set the conversion rate via a software-programmable trigger level on an analog input signal, an external TTL-compatible signal, or a software command. The maximum conversion rate is 1 megasample per second.

The 4'/i- by 3:/i-inch module can store up to 4 MB of data in on-board memory and has an on-board 32-bit transputer. The adtl64 is built around a CMOS converter from Burr-Brown and uses a T400 or T805 processor. Price: About $3050 to $4240 (£1795 to £2495). Contact: Sunnyside Systems, Ltd., West Lothian, U.K., +44 5()6 460345; fax +44 506 460314. Circle 1282 on Inquiry Card.

Sentry in a Slot

The System Sentry PC monitoring system tracks DC voltages from the power supply and the battery and monitors the PC's internal temperature. The half-card signals readings that exceed whatever high and low limits you define, notifying the host PC via an interrupt or reporting to another PC over a direct connection via its serial port. The card fits in an 8-bit slot and has an LED built into its bracket. Price: $379.95. Contact: Berkshire Products, Inc.. Duluth, GA, (404)4181286; fax (404) 418-1289. Circle 1283 on Inquiry Card.

The adtl64 is built around Burr-Brown's new CMOS converter, which allows the module to reach high speed with low power consumption.

Control Your Cache

A caching controller that's compatible with the ISA bus, the MC-2068 connects two IDE hard drives as large as 2 GB each, two floppy drives, and a Colorado Memory Systems tape backup subsystem. The controller has a cache access time of less than 0.5 ms and a disk transfer rate of 24 Mbps. The 512-KB cache is expandable to 8 MB through the use of 256-KB or 1-MB SIMMs. Price: Without DRAM, $249.

Contact: Maple Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, (408) 456-0355: fax (408) 4560356. Circle 1284 on Inquiry Card.

640 by 480 pixels.

TV-Show software turns your TV into a presentation device while letting you watch and control the action on an Apple 12-inch monitor. The software also includes keyboard-selectable flicker filters to adjust the picture quality on the TV. Price: $349.

Contact: Lapis Technolo- . gies, Inc., Alameda, CA, (510)748-1600; fax (510) 748-1645. Circle 1285 on Inquiry Card.

TV on Your Mac

Lapis Technologies' L-TV NTSC interface card lets you connect your Mac LC, LCII, or Performa 400 to your TV and use the TV as a display device. The L-TV provides up to 16-bit-mode displays on your TV at a maximum resolution of

Double

the Resolution

An add-in card that fits in the optional I/O slot of the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Series II and III printers, the doubleRES IV raises the resolution from 300 dpi to 600 dpi. With its own Windows driver, the card can use all the features of Windows printing, such as embedded and downloaded TrueType fonts. Other characteristics in

clude proprietary data compression, which enhances printing speed, and enough self-contained memory that no additional memory is needed on the LaserJet for the increased resolution. Network and shared connections are supported. Price: $595.

Contact: Laser Printer Accessories Corp., San Diego, CA, (619) 485-8411; fax (619) 487-5809. Circle 1286 on Inquiry Card.

Two for Sound

The MPC-compatible BSR MediaMaster sound board has a built-in microprocessor, 384 KB of RAM, and 16-bit A/D and D/A converters. The result is the ability to record and play back sound at 44.1 kHz, the sampling rate used to record audio CDs. The board includes vector-based processing with 128 built-in digitized instruments and sound effects and ships with MPC Windows applications and audio recording, mixer, jukebox, and CD music launcher programs. Price: $199.90. Contact: DAK Industries, Inc., Canoga Park, CA, (800) 325-0800 or (818) 888-8220. Circle 1287 on Inquiry Card.

Advanced Gravis's UltraSound, a 16-bit playback, 32-voice sound card is equipped with wave-table synthesis and 256 KB of memory (expandable to 1 MB). The card is AdLib and SoundBlaster compatible and has a Windows 3.1 multimedia driver and a set of general MIDI patches. The UltraSound Studio 8 program lets you record and play back sampled music. Price: $199.

Contact: Advanced Gravis Computer Technology, Ltd.. Bumaby, BC, Canada, (800) 663-8558 or (604) 431-5020; fax (604)431-5155. Circle 1288 on Inquiry Card.

76 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Why do they call it a dongle?

He wasn't famous. He didn't drive a fancy car, but dressed in his favorite Comdex T-shirt and faded blue jeans, he set out to change the course of the computer software industry. Quite a task for a lonely software developer. Sitting in front of his

computer, ' drinking pots of coffee and smoking 'cartons of cigarettes, he'd write pages of code.

ft took time. Years in fact. But he did it. He wrote the most powerful computer program in the world. Now came the hard part. Selling it.

The Most Powerful Program in the World

Determined to make those long years pay off, he called on every distributor, VAR and dealer in the world. He drove from Beantown to San Diego. Flew from Dublin to Borneo. Everyone loved the program.

So he sold a few. Only a lew.

Back in Boston he waited. After a long year

with only 13 orders he set out to see what happened. As he drove across the

^^^^» country and flew around the world he discovered everyone knew about his program. Everyone had it too.

The Global Marketplace

From Paris to Prague, his program was everywhere in Europe. When he got off the plane in Hong Kong he found his program stacked to the ceiling in every computer store. Amazed in disbelief, he bought a hundred cartons of cigarettes and a hundred pounds of Indonesian coffee and flew back to Boston.

Beaten, battered and bruised he went back to the drawing board. This time he would really change the face of the software industry. He would develop a device that would prevent unauthorized distribution of software programs.

Call It What You Like

He developed a hardware key. His peers applauded his efforts. Finally, a solid solution for revenue protection.

But he didn't know what to call it. He thought of naming it after an exotic place he visited in his travels Madagascar was a bit too long, though.

"Name it after you, Don!", urged his peers. So he did. Soon everyone was calling the key a dongle, * after Don Gall— |* the lonely software developer who did what he had to do.

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

Today, dongles are different. Fact is, they've come a long way. Leading the industry with security solutions, Rainbow Technologies has changed the face of hardware keys. They work with multiple applications, are programmable and network versions control concurrent usage. And they're always transparent to the end-user.

Sentinel Family from Rainbow

Truth is, more and more developers are using keys. And the Sentinel Family is the most widely used in the world. In fact, over 6,000

IS"

developers use Sentinel from Rainbow. Why? They are simply the most effective, reliable and easy to implement keys on the market.

Learn more about securing 0$^ mr y your software ^f and how keys provide developers with extra value. Call for a free copy of "The Sentinel Guide to Securing Software." And see just how easy it is to install a hardware key into your application in just minutes. Try it with our low cost Sentinel Evaluation Kit. Order one for

your DOS, OS/2, Windows, Macintosh or UNIX based application.

And remember, when you need a dongle, you need Sentinel—the only dongle Don Gall would use.

CALL

800/852-8569

FOR YOUR FREE GUIDE TO SECURING SOFTWARE

SEIITinEL

Securing the future of software

Some call it a dongle. Those who know, call it Sentinel.

^RAINBOW

I E C II N 0 L 0 G I E S

9292 JERONIMO ROAD, IRVINE, CALIFORNIA 92718 ■ 714/ 454-2100 ■ fax 714/ 454-8557 International offices are located in the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Circle 154 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 155).

BEST

BUY

486DXI33

Laptop Issue,

September 1992

We are to notebooks what Griselda of Skyland was to Pomeranians; the lightest.

Compudyne. Latest Technology. Highest

>0 ompudyne is the PC manufacturing and direct marketing arm of i^/ CompUSA™, the Computer Superstore (MSDAQ symbol; CUSA)—, inventors of big volume, deep discounting PC retailing, and the largest chain of computer super stores in the country. Compudyne manufactures lop quality, fully-supported computers as available from only the largest PC manufacturers at prices typically found only at garage shop clone houses.

Result? We're already one of the largest direct PC companies in the country and guarantee that our prices are the lowest of any currently advertised.

486DX/33

"lli)nonible mention" August 1992

DIAL TO SAVE DOLLARS

CHJ^DTl

Feast your eyes on "one of the best notebook values around" (Mobile Office 7/92), snugly packed into a slim, trim, 5.5 lb package (including battery). All include these nifty features:

• n"x8.5"x 1.6"

(yes, only 1.6" thick!)

• Full 10", 64 grayscale brilliant VGA screen

■ Internal 31/2" 1.44 MB floppy drive

• Built-in trackball saves carrying a mouse

•MS/DOS 5.0and Microsoft® Windows 3.1 installed ready to run

• Polaris PackRat 4.1™ Personal Information Manager™

• External SVGA monitor and keyboard support

• Expansion Station

• User-installable FAX modem and other options

• Full keyboard—dedicated 'page up/down', 'home' and 'end' keys

■ Built-in serial (2) and parallel (1) ports

• FCC Class B certification

Battery Life (Hrs)

386SX/20

Intel 80386SX-20 MHz Optional 80387 SX^-——-^ Z standard, 16 max Last years'model, 6.5 lbs. ^tllfflllllilB1^

1.5+

386SXL/25

386 SXL- 25 MHz Optional 80387SX This years'model, 5.5 lbs.

2 standard, 4 S 6 options

-&

•999t

537/mo'

'1,399

S52/mo'

386SXL/25

386SXL-25MH2, Optional 80387SX

2 standard, 4 &6 options

80 *"*

3.5*

•1,599

S59/mo'

386SL/25

Intel 80386SL-25 MHz, 64 K CPU cache Advanced SL power mgm't, Optional 80387SX co-processor

as above

80

3.5*

•1,799

S67/mo'

486SX/25

Intel 80486SX-25 MHz, Built-in 8KCPU cache

4 standard, 8 & 20 options

80

2.5+

•1,999

S74/mo'

486DX/33

Intel 80486DX-33 MHz, Built-in 8K CPU cache

•2,899

S1D7/mo'

ORDERING

- 1-800-932-COMP(2667)

> International callers dial: 1-214-702-0055

► 24 hour fax: 1-214-702-0300

*■ Corporate credit and volume terms available.

HOURS OF OPERATION

- 7am-10pm (CST) Mon.-Fri. and 9am-5pm(CST) Sat.

WARRANTIES

► 30-day, no questions asked,

return policy.^ *• 1 year limited warranty.

SERVICE £ SUPPORT

*■ Toll-free technical support

► On-site service for desktopstt and

overnight replacement for portables. *■ Next-day shipping for most systems.

I-800-932-COMP (2667)

tt Within 100 miles of any Dow Jones Service Center. "Does not include Windows 3.1 or mouse. V Must be returned "as new" in original ILast years' model. Actual photo not shown. Actual weight 6.5 lbs. Trackball not included. Most specs different from current model.

Quality, lowest Prices. Guaranteed.

.pftVtt

4j^^^

Order one of our pre-configured sys tems or custom-configure your own; choosing from a myriad of options. All systems include... •Microsoft®Windows 3.1 and MS/DOS 5.0

• Microsoft compatible serial mouse

'200 watt power supply

• 101 AT-style keyboards ■ FCC Class B certification

• Built in serial (2), parallel (1) and gamed) ports

• Artisoft's LANtastic® LAN

• 8 i/o board slots •U/L listing

MICROSOFT® WINDOWS™

READY-TO-RUN

Get Horizontal.

.; I KllllOH / I gfflfcl

Mr LANtastic

in all systems!

Our standard desktop systems feature aesthetic yet rugged plastic-over-steel construction with "one screw"assembly

for quick easy upgrades. They support

3 externally accessible 5.25" drive bays and 2 internal 3.5" units.

Get Vertical...

For those who prefer the aesthetics and footprint of a desktop tower or need the added drive capacity for file server applications, our mini tower offers an astonishing 6 drive capacity;

4 external plus 1 internal 5.25" and 1 internal 3.5" unit in a mere 8"x 16" desktop footprint for only S100 more.

llptioo,s,flptions,Options..

If you can find a PC that meets or exceeds our equivalent specification, but is shipping at a lower advertised price, we'll match the price.

386DX/33

Intel 80386DX-33 MHz

1 standard 32 max

40

12or 1.44

16 bit SVGA card, 14" 640x480 VGA Color Monitor

449

S32/mo

386DX/33or 4S6SX/2S

Intel 80386DX-33 MHz or

Intel 80486SX-25 MHz, w/btlllt-in 8K CPU cache

2 standard 32 max

80

as above

as above

S37/mo

486SX/25

Intel S0486SX-25 MHz Built-in 8K CPU cache

as above

80

1.2 &

1.44

16 bit SVGA card, 14' 1024x768 SVGA Color Monitor

4,199

M4/mo'

3860X/33 CACHE

Intel 80386DX-33 MHz 64K CPU cache

4 standard 32 max

120

as

above

16 bit SVGA cards Hi-Color Support

14' 1024 x768 SVGA, .28 Interlaced Color Monitor

>1,399

S52/mo'

486SX/33

Intel 80486SX-33 MHz 8K CPU cache

as above

120

as above

as above

>1,499

JWrno'

486DX; 33 CACHE

Intel 80486DX-33 MHz

128K CPU cache

as above

120

as above

16 bit SVGA card, 1MB Video RAM S Hi-Color Support, 14" 1024x768 SVGA Non-interlaced Multisync Color Monitor

4,799

K7/mo'

486DX/50 CACHE

Intel 80486DX-50 MHz

128K CPU cache, True 50 MHz CPU

as above

120

as above

as above

=1,999

S74/mo'

m

486SXI2S

''Honorable mention" October 13, 1992

486DX2/66 CACHE

Intel 80486DX2-66 MHz, I28K CPU cache New Double Clock CPU

8 standard 32 max

16 bit SVGA, Superfast Windows, Accelerator s2 499

card, 1MB RAM, 14' 1024 x768 SVGA S93/m0

Non-interlaced Multisync Color Monitor

COMPUDYKE

THE LOWEST OF THE LOW PRICES. GUARANTEED.

Prices and specifications subject to change without notice. Compudyne Direct, 15167 Business Ave., Dallas TX 75244.

1 the Intel Inside logo are trademarks of Intel Corp. "■V® Trademarks belong to their registered owners. 'Leasing arranged through Leasing Group, Inc; payments based on 36 month open-end rate.

Circle 207 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW

CONNECTIVITY

Intranet working Hub

Integrating routing/switching, wiring-concentrator, and communications-server technologies, the Network 9000 intranetworking hub lets you hot-swap processor modules, I/O modules, power supplies, and even the cooling fans without powering down the chassis or disturbing users. In addition, when you swap any processor module, the hub automatically reloads the new module with software and reconfigures it.

The Network 9000 is available in five- or 14-slot chassis. Both chassis contain three Ethernet segments, four Token Ring segments, two FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) segments, and a dedicated management bus. Modules available for the Network 9000 include highdensity Ethernet concentrators, local and remote bridges/routers, high-density terminal servers, and integrated routers/concentrators. Price: Five-slot version, $2495 and up; 14-slot version, $4495. Contact: Xyplex, Inc., Boxborough, MA, (508) 2649900; fax (508) 264-9930. Circle 1289 on Inquiry Card.

600-MB Tape Backup

Designed for networks with storage capacities of up to 600 MB, the Master/ DC 5'A-inch half-height internal or external tape drive has a data transfer rate of 243 KBps uncompressed and comes with two levels of error correction: Read-AfterWrite and ECC (Error Correction Coding). With the drive, you get either GigaTrend's MasterSafe Lite, a workstation-based backup

Xyplex's Network 9000 improves network reliability and manageability.

and-restore solution that backs up from and restores to any file server on the network (as well as the host workstation), or its MasterSafe NLM (NetWare loadable module) advanced network backup software (for networks that have from one to four file servers).

Price: $2250 and up. Contact: GisiaTrend, Inc., Carlsbad, CA, (619)9319122; fax (619) 931-9959. Circle 1293 on Inquiry Card.

cc:Mail for Unix

An Open Look GUI implementation of cc:Mail, cc:Mail for Unix lets you create multimedia messages and file attachments in the Unix environment and share them with other cc:Mail users regardless of their computing platform. In addition, you can store cc:Mail message files on any file server that is accessible from your Sun Sparcstation through NFS (Network File System). The package provides graphical icons, pull-down menus, pop-up dialog boxes, pinnable windows, and builtin support for SMTP-based E-mail systems. You can drag and drop files, including

sound and graphics files, from the File Manager into any cc:Mail message; send and receive faxes within cc:Mail; ask for return receipts; and access the bulletin boards shared by all cc:Mail users. You can also communicate with users of most major mainframe and public E-mail systems, such as PROFS, X.400, and MCI Mail.

Price: Unix Platform Pack, $895.

Contact: Lotus Development Corp., Cambridge, MA, (617) 577-8500; fax (617) 2539150. Circle 1294 on Inquiry Card.

Token-Ring Adapter Cards

All three of Madge Networks' new token-ring products—the Straight Blue 16/4MC Adapter Card, the Straight Blue 16/4 ISA Plus Adapter Card, and the Straight Blue 16/4 ISA Adapter Card—can operate at 16 or 4 Mbps. Both the Straight Blue 16/4MC(a 16bit Micro Channel architecture bus card) and the Straight Blue 16/4 ISA Plus (a 16-bit ISA card) support shielded twisted-pair cabling, unshielded twisted-pair cabling, and remote booting via built-in support for remote program load. An 8-bit ISA

card, the Straight Blue 16/4 ISA supports remote booting but only STP cabling. Price: Straight Blue 16/4 MC and Straiaht Blue ISA Plus, $545; Straight Blue 16/4 ISA, $445.

Contact: Madse Networks. Inc., San Jose, CA, (800) 876-2343 or (408) 441-1300; fax (408)441-1335. Circle 1290 on Inquiry Card.

Receive and Answer E-Mail

Arewritten-from-scratch version of the original shareware program, Qmodem-Pro communications software for the PC lets you receive E-mail messages and, regardless of the source, send replies to BBSes, E-mail services, and fax machines.

New features include an enhanced off-line mail reader; mouse support; pull-down menus and resizable windows; a spelling checker; up to 4095 entries per telephone book, with an unlimited number of books; Class 1 and 2 send-only fax capability; group dialing; and MCI Mail and CompuServe E-mail gateway support. QmodemPro also supports 125 preconfigured modems; ZMODEM, Kermit, CompuServe B+, YMODEM, XMODEM, and ASCII internal protocols; up to 10 external protocols; and Wyse 50, VT220, VT320, and TVI 925 terminal emulations.

Price: $99.

Contact: Mustang Software, Inc., Bakersfield, CA, (805) 395-0223; fax (805) 3950713. Circle 1291 on Inquiry Card.

80 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Program Manager

lie Options Window Help

Yes, it's definitely time you expanded your view to the non-interlaced 15" ViewSonic 6FS monitor.

For one thing, you get 36-percent more viewing space than with a standard 14" monitor. And, since you can display more information on the screen with the larger 15" flat square screen, this is an ideal monitor for Windows, Graphical User Interface (GUI) and desktop publishing environments.

Thanks to the ultra high 72Hz refresh rate with resolution up to 1,024 x 768, the ViewSonic 6FS produces the most vivid and precise flicker-free image anywhere. In addition, the non-glare screen reduces irritating reflections.

The monitor, compatible with all standard resolutions, features 32 programmable modes with digital controls to store and customize

the display to fit your specific needs. It also is certified to meet strict MPR-II Swedish certifications for low emissions, which makes it environmentally safe. It's a fact- the ViewSonic 6FS offers special features normally available only on larger, more expensive monitors.

Expand your view, not your budget, with the affordable 15" ViewSonic 6FS monitor.

ViewSonic

®

20480 E. Business Parkway

Walnut, CA 91789

(714) 869-7976 (800) 888-8583 Fax: (714) 869-7958

For immediate faxed information, call the FaxSonic "hot line" at (714) 869-7318-ifs available 24 hours a day.

All products and brand names are registered trademarks of rJieir respective companies.

Circle 185 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 186).

As they say, it's all in the genes. Introducing the .ThinkPad" from IBM.The slickest, sleekest little number that ever crunched one. A mere seven-anda-half pounds of brains and beauty that begs you to take it anywhere. And once you own one, that's exactly what you'll do.

-All this in only 11.7."

Introducing

ThinkPad

The top-of-the-line ThinkPad 700C sports a screaming 486 SLC™ 25 MHz processor. But it's built for comfort too. There's a surprisingly roomy interior, with a full-size, ergonomically designed keyboard. And a screen that literally bends over backwards.

Strategically placed on the keyboard is a little red spot called the TrackPoint II!" It does what a mouse would do with a few million more years of evolution. Nothing dangles; it's part of the soul of the machine. You can operate it with one fingertip. And it lets you think on any terrain, even one without any Hat surfaces.

The ThinkPad's screen is a thing of almost aching beauty. Its 640 X 480 VGA resolution is sharper than that of many desktop computers. It displays 256 colors. And it's the biggest screen on any notebook. So it's very easy on the eyes.

The ThinkPad comes standard with things some other notebooks don't even offer as options. Like 4MB

"Depending on usage and configuration. "MSRP. Dealer prices may vary. tWarranty informalion available from the Personal Systems HelpCenter or an IBM authorized dealer. 700T warranty is available in USA and Canada only, ttln Canada, call 1 800 465-7999. IBM is a registered trademark andThinkPad, HelpWare, HelpCenter, SLC andTrackPoint II are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. PRODIGY is a registered trademark of Prodigy Services Company. © 1992 IBM Corp.

Its mother was Its father wa

of memory upgradable to 16MB. 120MB of hard disk space. Pre-installed DOS 5.0 and PRODIGY.' You can soup it up with a turbo-charged 486SLC2 50/25 MHz processor—just one of the upgrade products 1BM offers. And the hard disk is removable, so it's easy to upgrade and share your ThinkPad, not to mention the great security and virtually unlimited storage.

ThinkPad blows the doors off its competition in an even more surprising arena. Price. Any ThinkPad in the line will give you more for your money—and for your psyche—than any other notebook.

If you have questions along the way, ThinkPad Models 700C and 700 are supported by HelpWare™ an invaluable service package that includes a three-year international warranty?"

ThinkPad

Model 700C

Model 700

Processor

486SLC/25MHz

486 SLC/25 MHz

Display

10.4" Active Matrix 256-Color Screen

9.5" Monochrome Display 64 Grayscale Screen

Battery Life*

2-4 Hours

3.8-7.5 Hours

Weight

7.6 Lbs. with Battery

6.5 Lbs. with Battery

Warranty

3 Years (International)

3 Years (International)

Price**

$4,350

$2750

For more information or an IBM authorized dealer near you, call our Personal Systems HelpCenter" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1 800 772-2227.++

Then just park one in your lap and see what happens.

:®

a mainframe. s a Maserati.

Circle 112 on Inquiry Card.

WHAT'S NEW

NEWS

PROGRAMMING SOFTWARE

CLOS-Based Development

Based on CLOS (the Common Lisp Object System), Allegro CLNPC 1.0 is a full-featured OOP (objectoriented programming) solution for Windows that lets developers design, build, and maintain complex applications. The software's programmable and extensible development tools include an editor, a structure editor, an inspector, a debugger, a tracer, and a stepper and time profiler. Allegro ClAPC 1.0 also features Common Graphics, an object-oriented layer on top of the Windows API, and a DLL interface to code written in languages such as C and FORTRAN. Price: $595.

Contact: Franz, Inc., Berkeley. CA. (510) 548-3600; fax (510)548-8253. Circle 1296 on Inquiry Card.

UUCP for MKS Toolkit

New features of MKS Toolkit 4.1 include MKS UUCP, an awk compiler, MKS Make, and Windows icons that put frequently used utilities, such as sh, find, vi. grep, and awk, just a click away. The MKS UUCP facilities provide interactive mail composition and mail reading, a uucp command that prioritizes requests to transfer or receive files, a uux command that allows command execution from a remote machine running MKS UUCP, and the ability to create custom applications.

The new awk compiler creates freestanding DOS programs from a working MKS AWK program, so you can create and distribute applications without royalties. In addition, you can use these applications independently of MKS Toolkit and MKS

Allegro CIXPC's Garbage Collector automatically manages memory allocation, reducing the number of design errors, and the Runtime Generator creates compact, faster applications for royalty-free delivery.

AWK. The MKS Make feature minimizes file maintenance by letting you create a recipe for large or small software projects. Price: $299.

Contact: Mortice Kern Systems, Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, (519) 884-2251; fax (519)884-8861. Circle 1297 on Inquiry Card.

CASE Tools for Autocoding

SAGA, a CASE tool for acquiring and processing data in a real-time environment, provides synchronous data streams for safe and efficient application coding and presents graphics and text through block, gate, and logic diagrams. SAGA lets you capture, check, and implement your software designs.

You edit and display information at three levels: Hierarchy, which displays an overall view of the software architecture; Network, which displays data hierarchy and data communication between components; and Data-View,

which displays data types and definitions. SAGA coordinates information at each level so that changes are immediately propagated during the development process. SAGA also provides 70 ready-to-use components and the facility to add further components with C code or SAGA's own formal language. In addition, SAGA lets you verify completed system, subsystem, or component designs at any stage prior to final code generation. Price: About $188,080 (100,000 French francs). Contact: Verilog, Toulouse Cedex, France,+33 61 19 29 39; fax+33 61 40 84 52. Circle 1298 on Inquiry Card.

Prefabricated Software Tools

Now you can quickly create applications from prefabricated software components using Digitalk's open language-neutral technology called PARTS (Parts Assembly and Reuse Tool Set). The first product using this technology, PARTS Workbench for OS/2 2.0, consists of a catalog of prebuilt compo

nents, both visual and nonvisual, and a workbench window. You create applications by dragging parts from the catalog into the workbench and then "wiring" parts together by drawing lines between them. The PARTS technology lets you assemble and reuse software components written in languages such as Smalltalk/V or C. Price: $1995.

Contact: Diaitalk. Inc., Los Anaeles,CA, (310)6451082; fax (310) 645-1306. Circle 1299 on Inquiry Card.

Port Windows Applications

WNDX Portable Development Tools 2.0 combines WNDX run-time libraries and resource creation tools that let you create GUIs that transport in as little time as it takes to recompile and relink to other popular platforms. The company says the tools let you build Windows applications that are portable to popular graphical operating systems (i.e., Mac, OSF/Motif, Open Look, OS/2, and DOS) with no loss of performance.

The WNDX portable GUI run-time libraries provide a single consistent API of more than 1000 functions and attributes for any language with a C-style interface. The package's WNDX Opus, an objected-oriented GUI design tool, makes developing GUI resources (i.e., dialog boxes, menus, icons, cursors, patterns, color palettes, and strings) as easy as "pick and drop." Price: $695.

Contact: The WNDX Corp., Caleary. Alberta. Canada, (403) 244-0995; fax (403) 244-1039. Circle 1300 on Inquiry Card.

84 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Since when is Raima first in Co

I

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mejji

"-tSsB

I V:;

■Ml

r

^**^

Hra«

Listen to what some of our customers-say about our products:

"No other products matched Raima for'.the price,"

James Lisiak, developer, Chevron

"Raima provided us with speed, flexibility, and royalty-free distribution which allowed us to meet aniexceed our customers' needs" Dave Cooper, developer, Atlantic: Research'Corp, (subcontractor, Naval Electronic Systems Engmeeimg Ach^ry)

• PorfaW%:runs on DOS^ Windows, OS/2, UNIX, VMS,QNX "Database Manager'gaveus the edge weweMlO h^lelarge

• Roydltyrfree distribution: increase your, profits. amounts of data quickly and effieienttjrwitlm^osof^mdmsJ'

• Source-code availability: totai programming flexibility. . Kelly Patrick, developer, PHHFantus

• Affordable pricing: starting at just $395. If you're looking for an award-winning application deye-lopment

• Langudge support:ANSI C, C++, and Visual; Basic. tool, give us a call. And discover the Raima advantage;

Raima Database Manager rite high-performance dbms W5*?|T|]Mfl^^

Raima Database Manager was th? database of choice in the First Annual Windows World Open. The competition featured innovative/custom applications built with Windows development tools, three of the seven winners-, and two of the finalists, used Raima Database Manager to solve their critical application needs.

For professional developers like yourself, Raima products offer:

High performance: unmatched application speed.

Ra^a; Object Manager Tlte object storage class library

Raima Carpbratipn'; 1605:NW Sammamish Rdy Suite 200 Issaquah, WA. 98027 (206)557-0200 Fax: (206)557-5200

, Circle 153 on Inquiry Card.

DOS, OS/2, and UNIX

Cafttjrlghl<%7992Baf>

i] C^r/forutiou: Alt.righto reversed.

■BY13WA

Novell Labs Tested & Approved

i"

%

HP Vectra 486N Specifications

• 32-bit Intel SX, DX and DX2 processors at 25, 33, 50 and 66 MHz

• 4 MB RAM, expandable to 48 MB

• Local bus integrated Ultra VGA+ Video with graphics accelerators

• 85-430 MB hard drive

• 3.5" floppy drive

• Three 16-bit. expansion slots

• ROM-based internal diagnostic and system guide

• Integrated Flash BIOS and boot-ROM

• Multilevel hardware security

• Chip-upgradable

"Suggested U.S. list prices for HP486725N arid HP 480/33N Model 1 PCs. Monitor not included. Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Windows :i.l is a product of Microsoft Corporation. The Intel Inside logo is a U.S. trademark of Intel Corporation. € 1992 Hewlett-Packard Company PPG-658

Now we're calling the shots.

Those cheap PCs don't stand a chance. Hewlett-Packard has introduced 486 models starting at under $1,200.* With prices of our entire line of HP486 and 386 PCs down as much as 42% in the last 9 months.

But our low prices have not come at the expense of quality, performance or the features you want.

To scream through those highpowered Microsoft* Windows and CAD projects, our revolutionary local-bus technology and fast graphics accelerators really fly. And, with

true multivendor compatibility, HP PCs fit easily into your computer environment.

We've also made big advances on the networking front. Many models come with preinstalled network interface cards and boot-ROMs. And, of course, HP PCs are fully tested and certified with all the major NOSes.

Our security features are so convenient your people will actually use them. And our 486 desktop PCs are chipupgradable. So you can count on always having the latest and greatest.

All this for as little as $1,200! And for a few hundred dollars more, we'll throw in a hard drive with preinstalled DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1 and a mouse.

To be a winner in the price wars, call 1-800-752-0900, Ext. 7094 for your nearest HP PC dealer. Or call 1-800-964-1602 for immediate details. Then start calling the shots.

m

HEWLETT PACKARD

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW

BUSINESS SOFTWARE

PowerPoint 3.0 for the Mac

Microsoft PowerPoint 3.0 for the Mac integrates word processing, outlining, graphing, drawing, and presentation management tools. You can produce presentations that include 35 mm slides, overhead transparencies, speaker's notes, audience handouts, and electronic slide shows. Version 3.0 for the Mac also has menus, commands, and keyboard equivalents consistent with PowerPoint 3.0 for Windows, so you can share files between them and run crossplatform presentations.

Features include 160 templates; the Slide Master, which provides visual consistency and format control; 84 graphing styles; automatic build slides with flying bullets, transition effects, onscreen notation, sound, and video; 35 PostScript fonts; over 500 pieces of full-color clip art; graphics importing; and 5000 professionally designed color schemes. The Slide Sorter lets you view miniatures of all your slides, copy and paste between presentations, and rearrange your slides. Price: $495.

Contact: Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, (206) 8828080; fax (206) 936-7329. Circle 1302 on Inquiry Card.

Proposed Route to the Indies

Productivity for X Window System

GlobalView for X gives Unix workstation users in the X Window System environment the ability to create, manage, retrieve, share, and distribute documents. You can also share GlobalView documents via Sun's

A new route to the Indies will bring:

More trade Now land

- Increased revenue Westward route is:

- Safer

Microsoft PowerPoint 3.0for the Mac comes with a Freeform tool for combining polygons and freehand drawing in one object; drawing manipulation tools; a toolbar; and 24 adjustable shapes for creating diagrams.

NFS (Network File System) or distribute them via standard Unix mail.

You can create and integrate text, graphics, and tables into a single document using creation tools such as color, style sheets, redlining, a thesaurus, a spelling checker, equations, footnotes, and long-document options. GlobalView for X also includes file filters for importing and exporting 20 popular PC, Mac, and Unix workstation file formats. To extend the functions of GlobalView for X, XSoft offers six additional software modules. Price: Floating license with all file filters and one optional software module, $1495; additional software modules, $495 each.

Contact: XSoft, Palo Alto, CA, (415) 424-0111; fax (415)813-7162. Circle 1303 on Inquiry Card.

Manufacturing Control Software

Team One provides full control over manufacturing operations, customer orders, scheduling, inventory, vendors, and warehousing. It lets you control 100 million individual product structures, 2 billion customer records, 2

billion processes per product, and 100 million product levels, all on a DOS PC.

Eclipse Software also offers Team One Lite, a singleuser version that limits the maximum number of inventory items to 10,000 and the number of products and subassemblies to 250 items. Price: Team One, about $3000: Team One Lite, about $1200.

Contact: Eclipse Software, Lakewood, CO, (303) 2389431; fax (303) 238-9720. Circle 1304 on Inquiry Card.

A Pinboard on Your PC

A business planning tool for the PC, MapBase combines a simulated pinboard with databases, spreadsheets, and detailed maps. The software also includes tools for defining and managing territories, calculating drive-time zones and catchment areas, analyzing data, adding pictures and graphics, and producing graphs, charts, and maps for presentations, reports, and slide shows. A built-in dBase-compatible

database lets you edit, browse, calculate, replace, sort, and search.

MapBase uses a digital map of Great Britain that includes more than 67,000 road miles; 33,000 places; postcode sectors; telephone codes; national, county, and district administration boundaries; and population data. It is also available with maps of Germany, Benelux, France, Europe, and the U.S. Price: About $758 (£495). Contact: NextBase, Ltd., Farnham. Surrey, U.K., +44 784 421422; fax+44 784 420072. Circle 1305 on Inquiry Card.

Windows Contact Management

The Windows version of the Maximizer contact management package provides priority tasking; fourview schedulable calendars with conflict notification and alarms; data-entry tables; templates for creating letters, fax forms, invoices, and reports; fax transmission to one person or the entire database; database search and list-manipulation capabilities; and a separate editor for multitasking editing and printing. The software's to-do Hotlist lets you prioritize tasks and mark them as completed. You can sort the Hotlist by date, time, priority, client, task, or completion status.

Maximizer for Windows automatically logs call results in the client's notes as a file containing the name and phone number of the person called, the date/time, the subject, personal notes, appointments, and any changes in database categories. Price: $249.

Contact: Richmond Technologies & Software, Inc., Bumaby, BC, Canada, (604) 299-2121; fax (604) 2996743. Circle 1306 on Inquiry Card.

88 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Plug and Play Tape Backup.

The Plug.

That sit Go Play.

Now, tape backup is easier than ever. Unpack Trakker and plug it into your computer's parallel printer port. That's it. No assembly, no installation, no problem. Trakker goes anywhere. It's light and compact, the ideal solution for backing up notebooks and laptops. And Trakker can back up unattended, so you can go anywhere, too.

LOR\DO

SYSTEMS inc.

Trakker is available in two models. At $448, Trakker 120 (120 MB capacity, using data compression) is the price leader. And Trakker 250 (250 MB capacity using data compression) is the fastest in its class at up to 8 MB/minute. Both give you QIC Industry Standard Recording Format, as well as Novell' and LANtastic* certification.

For more information, please call 1-800-451-0897 ext. 1667 today.

Traldcer.

Backup so simple it's advanced?

Mini data cartridge sold separately. © 1992 Colorado Memory Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Jumbo, Trakker and Colorado are trademarks of Colorado Memory Systems, Im: All oilier trademarks are property of their respective companies.

Circle 84 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 85).

We have laurels at Toshiba, we just dont

PRESENTING THE T 4 4

REST ON THEM.

August 1992 Toshiba T4400SXC

The PC Magazine's Editors' Choice Award is just one of the many awards our highly acclaimed T4400SXC has captured.

The neu» T4400C is available with a blazing 25 MHz 486DX processor.

0 0 c

Immediately after capturing the "Editors' Choice" award from PC Magazine for our T4400SXC, we asked our engineers to better it.

They responded with the T4400C. A notebook that redefines what is possible in 486 color technology.

Take for example its TFTLCD active matrix color screen. We pioneered this technology and now we've advanced it even further by enlarging the screen to a full 9.5 inches. Amazingly, it provides an eyeball-popping 256 simultaneous colors at 640 x 480 resolution from a palette of 185,193 colors, making it the best TFT color display on the market.

If you think that's impressive, check what's under the hood. You'll find a choice of either a blistering new 25 MHz 486DX processor with a massive 200MB hard drive or the renowned 25 MHz 486SX with a 120MB hard drive. And both offer 4MB RAM expandable to 20MB.

Of course, if your needs are more modest, we offer a T4400SX with a large 9.5" monochrome LCD screen, a not-so-modest 25 MHz 486SX microprocessor and 120MB hard drive.

Our engineers even extended battery life. By offering such MaxTtme™ power management features as automatic display and hard drive shut down, AutoResume and AutoSave.

To test-drive the T4400C yourself, feel free to call the number below for the location of your nearest Toshiba dealer.

Our operators don't like resting either.

In Touch With Tomorrow.

TOSHIBA

1-800-457-7777

© 1992 Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. All products indicated by trademark symbols are trademarked and/or registered by their respective manufacturers.

With our T440OC, you have a choice of either a 200MB or 120MB hard drive.

Our T4400 series

features our MaxTime

power management

system that gets the

maximum out of every

battery charge.

Circle 178 on Inquiry Card.

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW • S C I E N C E / E N G I N E E R I N G SOFTWARE

BBN/Probe for Unix

The Unix version of BBN/Probe provides interactive data reduction and analysis capabilities on Sun Microsystems and DEC workstations. BBN/Probe 3.0 gives you direct access to complicated and nonstandard data sources without reformatting and provides an interactive environment that lets you perform sophisticated analysis and graphing. The interface also provides a means to create real-time displays of data streams for monitoring critical parameters of a test.

The software's high-level structured programming language lets you create procedures to perform repetitive analyses, produce quick-look reports, and automate entire applications. With BBN/ Probe's Flexible File Server, you can directly access the data in its original pulse-code modulation frame format without having to reformat data into standardized files. In addition, the Data Dictionary helps you unpack various standard and nonstandard data formats. Price: $13,000 and up. Contact: BBN Systems & Technologies, Cambridge, MA, (617) 873-2559; fax (617)873-3776. Circle 1307 on Inquiry Card.

CAD Software for Surveyors

Available for Windows and the Mac, Pythagoras 2.0 is a CAD program for professionals involved in road engineering and land measurement and management. The software integrates specialized calculating and

In a typical lime-series analysis session, a BBN/Probe graphics window can show spectral plots, real-time displays, color thresholding, and interactively labeled time plots.

drawing functions with the ability to read field memory data, generate nearly finalized drawings, and import and export various file formats.

The package includes selectable, multiuser, and fixedpage coordinates; dynamic calculation of intersections and elevations; parallel and perpendicular lines; arcs and circles; and snapping to tangential points of arcs and lines. Calculation functions include intersection, threepoint resection, traverse, and transformation.

A control panel shows you the current layer, coordinates, and coordinate system. Other features include a toolbox; undo and redo; and zoom in multiple levels. zoom out, actual size, and fit in window.

Price: Mac version, about $30,350 (98,000 Belgian francs); Windows version, about $36,544 (1 18,000 BF); optional modules for reading field memory data, about $34,067(1 10,000 BF). Contact: ADW Software B.V.B.A., Vosselaar. Belgium,+32 14 61 32 70; fax +32 14 61 82 15. Circle 1309 on Inquiry Card.

Visual Data Analysis on a PC

DADisp/Pro-32 is a 32-bit version of DSP Development's general-purpose productivity software for scientists and engineers. The package, for 386 and 486 PCs running under Windows 3.x, uses native 32-bit instructions to address up to 64 MB of onboard memory for processing large datasets.

This data analysis and display package also includes hundreds of data reduction, mathematical, statistical, Fourier transform, peak analysis, and graphical tools; mouse-controlled 3-D plot rotation; user-specified rotation angles; commands for adding, removing, and arranging windows; and new functions for saving and loading worksheets. Price: $1895 and up. Contact: DSP Development Corp., Cambridge, MA. (617) 577-1 133; fax (617) 5778211. Circle 1308 on Inquiry Card.

Predictive Modeling

ModelWare Professional is the professional version of TeraNet's predictive modeling software package for DOS. It features a new Drivers tool, which automatically selects the best group of predictor variables for a userspecified dependent variable, and a new Patch tool, which fills in missing values for a given data set.

The package also includes tools that normalize data, smooth data, randomly partilion data files, and provide descriptive statistics for a data file. In addition, the core modeling algorithm has been enhanced to handle extremely large training files. Price: $1495. Contact: TeraNet IA, Inc., Nanaimo, BC, Canada, (800) 663-8611 or (604) 754-4223; fax (604) 754-2388. Circle 1310 on Inquiry Card.

32-bit Schematic Design Tools

Schematic Design Tools 386+ is a set of tools for designing schematics for printed circuit boards, fieldprogrammable gate arrays, and programmable logic devices. It provides virtually unlimited design capacity, increased netlisting performance, and larger graphics part size on 386- and 486based platforms.

OrCAD has removed the 640-KB DOS memory barrier by using extended rather than expanded memory. Using extended memory also results in smooth memory management and lets you load more libraries in RAM without compromising design capacity. Price: $895.

Contact: OrCAD, Hillsboro. OR, (503) 690-9881; fax (503)690-9891. Circle 1311 on Inquiry Card.

92 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

sS

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i

d$>

<$

8P

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four different angles.

BallPoint* mouse raises your comfort level several degrees. JA And its easy-to-see cursor lowers your frustration level just as much. The point being, if you use the Windows "operating system on a laptop, BallPoint makes your work even easier. So call us at (800) 426-9400 to find out how UMirmHrvH to get one. Because next to this mwHtt%fZ}%JM[ mouse, others are hard to handle. Making it easier

© 1992 Microsoft Corporation. Alt righto reserved. Printed in the USA. In the 50 United States, call (800) 426-9400. Outside the 50 United States, call (206) 936-8661. Customers in Canada, call (80(!) 5h.'!-'J048. Microsoft and Ballpoint arc registered trademarks and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

\r>'

-9/ t

[J

Shift all of your soft

Introducing Intel doubling" technology, an OverDrive

OverDrive" Processors Processor gives you plenty of added

for your i486" DX PC. power—up to a 70% performance

Would you like to visibly increase boost systemwide. the speed of all your applications? And that power will benefit

Then it's time you shift your i486 every application you run on DOS,

DX or SX system into high gear. OS/2? Windows! or UNIX—from

Using Intel's ingenious "speed AutoCAD* to WordPerfect* and

©1992 Intel Corporation. *A1I products arc trademarks of their respective companies.

tin cases where there is no OverDrive Processor socket, Intel recommends installation by a qualified technician.

i486™ DX System

Performance

Word for 1 Windows* B

Lotus ■ 12-3- fE

Improvement H

H4J

j§67 ■ 25

BHH45

wfoOvwOrive AB

\uloCAD' 1

■103

.n„,„™3 J

■ >\:

1-12

'e»w.

<®

■*•?•

ware into high gear.

over 50,000 applications in between.

It's easy to install an OverDrive Processor. Just plug the single-chip upgrade into the vacant OverDrive Processor socket and you're ready to go. Faster.

So to rev up your i486 system and keep up to speed on all the latest software developments, you need the future of PC upgradability: Intel OverDrive Processors. To find out which OverDrive Processor is right for your system or

Circle 233 on Inquiry Card.

to locate your nearest dealer, call 1-800-538-3373, ext. 228. Because when it comes to running software, there's only one gear. High.

iny

NEWS

WHAT'S NEW

OTHER SOFTWARE

Unix-Based Image Management

The PixelFX 2.0 family of image management software products for Unix systems includes five packages: PixelScan, PixelView, PixelEdit, PixelOCR, and PixelPrint. Each features a common Motif-based user interface, which allows multiple windows to use different toolkits interactively and simultaneously; photo retouching and image manipulation; and support for major import and export file formats.

PixelScan interfaces to popular scanners and lets you capture line art, gray-scale, and true-color images. With PixelView, you can format and display image data and convert images from one format to another. PixelEdit includes PixelBrush for image editing and photo retouching and Pixellmage for manipulating images in multiple windows. With PixelPrint's Visual Printing interface, you get page preview and support for RGB to CYMK conversions. PixelOCR is an optional module that lets you convert scanned copy to text. Price: $1595. Contact: Mentalix. Inc.. Piano, TX, (214)423-9377; fax (214) 423-1145. Circle 1312 on Inquiry Card.

Antivirus Toolkits

S&S International offers Windows and OS/2 versions of Dr. Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit that feature a faster engine, more efficient memory usage, and a new user interface. The packages can detect, identify, and deal with 2200 viruses.

The user interface lets you select the right operational level for your requirements: The checksum facility provides four levels of security and a new memory-resident

PixelFX 2.0 Unix products let you scan, convert, manipulate, and print line art, gray-scale, and true-color images.

checksummer, Certify, that allows program checking on the fly. The memory-resident scanner, VirusGuard, now includes support for the Extended Memory Specification to improve operational speed on systems with more than 1 MB of RAM.

Price: Windows version with quarterly upgrade, about $192 (£125); with monthly upgrade, about $330 (£215); OS/2 version with quarterly upgrade, about $229 (£149); with monthly uparade, about $406 (£265).

Contact: S&S International, Ltd., Hertfordshire, U.K., +44 442 877877; fax+44 442 877882. Circle 1313 on Inquiry Card.

New Version of SuperPrint

Zenographics offers two new versions of its SuperPrint software utility that speeds and enhances Windows printing. SuperPrint 3.0

features Zenographics' new SuperRIP 32-bit Windows driver, and SuperPrint 3.0 with ZScript features the SuperRIP drivers and a 32-bit PostScript interpreter.

SuperPrint 3.0 offers SuperText, SuperPrint's type manager that scales typeface outlines from major type foundries to screen or printer, and SuperQueue, SuperPrint's fast replacement for the Windows Print Manager. ZScript translates PostScript into the GDI (Graphical Device Interface) environment and turns any SuperPrint-supported printer into an ultrafast PostScript printer. You can view your PostScript output in a window, copy it to the Clipboard via a scalable GDI Metafile, or print it via the 32-bit SuperRIP drivers. Price: $149; with ZScript, $295.

Contact: Zenographics, Irvine, CA, (908) 577-8303; fax (908) 303-9594. Circle 1314 on Inquiry Card.

Double Your Disk Capacity

SuperStor Pro 2 increases your PC's disk capacity and adds Windows-based utilities that improve usability. Version 2 includes JPEG image compression and also features password protection, an integral disk cache, extended memory support, and enhancements to Addstor's proprietary Universal Data Exchange technology.

SuperStor Pro 2 compresses data automatically as it is stored and decompresses it when you retrieve it. Compression and decompression occur in real time at the record level, eliminating the need to compress or decompress an entire file before you can retrieve or write data. Price: $99.95. Contact: Addstor, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, (800) 7323133 or (415) 688-0470; fax (415)688-0466. Circle 1315 on Inquiry Card.

Information Management

Recollect is a Windows desktop information management tool that gives you quick access to color and black-and-white photos. Its software-only image-compression features let you easily store and retrieve images. You store information in Recollect by scanning pages or by importing files. Recollect converts scanned pages that contain text sections into ASCII format and then automatically processes the text with its built-in autoindexing. Once the information is stored, you can search through documents using free-form search capability. Price: $795.

Contact: Rebus Technology, Inc., Auburn. CA, (916) 8886452; fax (916) 885-0388. Circle 1316 on Inquiry Card.

96 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

First SL notebook.

First Microsoft peer-to-peer notebook

First upgradable-to-color notebook

V

First notebook pre-loaded with network client shells.

We'd also be the first to

Iff we had any.

You may be surprised to learn Zenith Data Systems is one of the world's biggest names in SL notebooks. Equally surprising is that we're #1 in the U.S. in SL based portables P

Maybe we're first in sales because we're first in technology. Zenith Data Systems created the first SL notebook. We're the first peer to peer notebook, first upgradable to color notebook and first with pre-loaded network client shells. Now being # 1 doesn't mean diddily if we don't deliver. But we're

For the Ollly notebooks

with built-in networking

right out of the box,

call Z-DIRECT.

jajjijsy satisfying thousands by offering Z-NOTEs of uncompromising quality,

RANYAN®

vines witn ultra-low Z-DIRECT prices, with unstinting customer assistance and unrivaled Z-CARE service.

ILAN

So since you're shopping, we invite comparisons. Only Z-NOTE u^AfjFR

comes with built-in networking with Ethernet-compatible, high

_i

While

competitors

have been

busy yelling,

we've been busy

selling.

Guess who's #1

in SL portables?

The Z-NOTE

speed communication pipes for LAN connectivity. Only

r

ti i ~ i' a" a ' a" ti , -a' ti ".-ti " a : a "■ a n ~ n" tt" ti' ti" p" p w« ",ti V* 'ti' p 7~ ' <&' jj~ ti~ ti ti ti ti . ti ti »ti a m«M'

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■DIRECT.

o ups, no add-ons no extras.

JANUARY

1993

Z-NOTE is pre-installed with client software for all three leading network systems—Novell, Microsoft and Banyan. Only Z-NOTE could be the first to pre-install Microsoft

a

'•v*m

•-;:;!«! Windows for Workgroups. Only Z-NOTE

MICROSOFT®

WINDOWS™ i-i T *- t to^^t

read, to run exclusively uses Intel 386SL microprocessors. The Z-NOTE has an active matrix color display The Z-NOTE comes with MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows fully loaded and ready to run, right out of the box.

And only Z-NOTE has the low Z-DIRECT price without additional or hidden charges. Those other guys will charge up to $500 on extras to match Z-NOTE features, and you still won't

Sandy Blagojev, g;et networking. Z»DIRECT to **

Account Executive "You can spend up to $SOO

over quote will you buy?

and still

So, which

not get networking from those other guys."

A johnny-come lately notebook from one of them. With none of the above. Or an award-winning Z-NOTE from Z-DIRECT. With all of the above.

" Prices change rapidly.

Call for our latest and lowest."

48 hour delivery on all featured products. For product specifications via FAX, please call

1-800-582-8194.

Z-NOTE™ 325L

" Built-in networking"

• Intel' 25 MHz i386™SL upgradable to i486"

• 4MB RAM user expandable to 1 2MB

• 85MB hard disk drive with MS-DOS" 5.0, Microsoft1 Windows™ 3.1 and Microsoft Windows for Workgroups'" pre-installed

" Logitech" TrackMan" Portable mouse ' 9.5" black-on-white LCD, upgradable to active matrix color, 640 x 480 VGA with support for 64 grey shades; and simultaneous video support

• 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk drive

• 8.5" x 11,9" x 1-9," only 5.9 pounds

• Rapid-charge nickel metal-hydride battery for up to 4 hours* continuous use or up to 10 hours* under Rest/Resume condition

' Pre-installed network client software for Novell1 NetWare; Microsoft LAN Manager," Banyan VINES'

• Ethernet-compatible high-speed communication port for LAN connectivity

• 82-key keyboard with 1 2 full-size function keys

$2399

M

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:.:*■'

Z-NOTE 325Lc

"Incredible color and price"

» Intel 25 MHz i386SL upgradable to i486

• 4MB RAM, user expandable to 12MB

■ 1 20MB hard disk drive

• MS-DOS 5.0, Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Windows for Workgroups pre-installed

• Logitech TrackMan portable mouse

• 8.4" active matrix color VGA LCD, simultaneous video support

• 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk drive

■ 8.5" x 11.9" x 2.1 ," only 6.5 pounds

• Rapid-charge nickel metal-hydride battery for up to 2.5 hours* continuous use or up to 6.5 hours* under Rest/Resume condition

» Pre-installed network client software for Novell NetWare, Microsoft LAN Manager, Banyan VINES

• Ethernet-compatible high-speed communication port for LAN connectivity

• Optional READYDESK™ Port Replicator C$107)

New Lower Price

$3999

*BaMery life depends on application used, power management features selected and peripherals attached.

Network now with Z'DIRECT.

1-800-289-1273

Call Z-DIRECT

for the first

flyweight

heavyweight.

Chances are, what those new lightweight subnotebooks you're considering are light on are features and functionality. Especially if you use Microsoft Windows. So it's a good thing you've discovered new Z-LITE 320L. Because no lightweight does Microsoft Windows like Z"LITE. Z-LITE combines every heavyweight feature you need to run Microsoft Windows in an ultra-lightweight PC. Like the power of Intel 386SL technology—instead of the no-name chip others foist off on you.

The Z-LITE 320L includes our energyefficient 3.3V design. It's our newest technology breakthrough, rewarding you with extraordinary battery life and extraordinary features. We even include an "at-a-glance" battery fuel gauge.

Then there's our full

The first

subnolebook

with back lit

VGA.

The first

subnolebook

with two

PCMCIA

TYPE II SLOTS.

fl

size 8.4'/ backlit VGA

window^ display Rather than

HI [ADf-TO-RUN

the pint-size unreadable screen you find elsewhere. You'll enjoy handling our upfront and center, integrated LITEPOINT pointing device. Others offer a tiny control that seems designed for Lilliputians.

The first

3.3V

386SL

subnolebook.

in i

fe

JANUARY

1993

So what more can we do for you? Z"LITE 320L gives you flexibility and options. There's two PCMCIA card slots for accommodating high speed data/fax modems, wireless communications and more.

And to make your life easier, we've combined the external floppy disk drive and AC adapter/ charger in an all-in-one design.

Z-LITE 320L is the best of Zenith Data Systems technology with an unbeatable Z-DIRECT price. If lightweight is the way

New Z-LITE

"Z-LITE is light years

ahead of the „ „

competition/' y°u want to go, Z"LITE 320L IS

Margie Silha, Zenith Data Systems

the route to take.

Get Z LOW PRICE, call Z-DIRECT

1-800-289-12T3

Z-LITE™ 320L

"Full featured sub notebook"

• Intel 20 MHz I386SL (3.3V)

» 2MB RAM user expandable to 6MB « 60MB hard disk drive

• MS-DOS 5.0 pre-installed

» Optional 3.5" 1.44MB external floppy

disk drive « Optional LITEPOINT™ two-button detachable

pointing device ' 8.5" VGA backlit black-on-white display with

64 grey scales

> Two PCMCIA type II slots

► NiCad battery pack for up to 3-hours* continuous or up to 6-hours* charge

' 7.6" x 9.9" x 1.5" sloping to 1.1 " ' 3.9 lbs.

$1899

ZDS 620nl

"Entry level i386SL notebook"

' Intel 20 MHz 1386SL

' 2MB RAM user expandable to 8MB

' 60MB hard disk drive

■ 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk drive

' MS-DOS 5.0 pre-instolled

* 9.5"black-on--white VGA display

' 85-key full-travel keyboard

'Serial porl, enhanced parallel port, video

port, mouse/keyboard/keyboard port 1 One internal modem socket ' NiCad battery pack for up to 3 hours*

battery life ' 8.5"x 11," x 1.9,"6.5 lbs.

New Lower Price

$1449

Call Z-DIRECT for

the only PCs that

come with all these

big names:

Intel, Conner

and Jeffrey Crouch.

At Zenith Data Systems we believe you deserve nothing less than blue chip components. So for our PCs, we offer names like Intel for microprocessors and Conner™ for hard drives.

m

C "*»»«*

And for customer assistance, we offer names like Jeffrey Crouch. Now while Jeff may not be top of mind today one call and you'll never forget him. Because all our Z» DIRECT customer assistance reps are more than high tech trouble shooters, they're investment counselors.

They understand Z-NOTEs and Z-STATIONS are designed for integrated connectivity, with an unprecedented ease and breadth of upgradability It's what we call investment protection. With so many options for upgrading your investment available on the market today the good advice of our Customer Assistance Center can be a big help. Jeffrey Crouch,

Z-DIRECT Customer

Our Customer Assistance Center is ready to Ass,stance Center

* Representative.

answer your questions Mon.-Fri., 7 AM to just your helpful

hardware man."

11 PM (CST). Call 1-800-CARE-360.

All of which brings us to our renowned Z-CARE service. We think it's the best in the

i—I

9S°/o

95% off calls to the XDS

Customer

Assistance

Centers

enjoy one call

problem

resolution.

business. Because we offer over 400 authorized service centers in

North America and more than 2,000 service reps around the world.

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The Principle of Pursuit

JERRY POURNELLE

Every now and then, Microsoft holds a big meeting to trot out their latest stuff. It's attended by any number of journalists and financial analysts, there are receptions and cocktails and dinners, and a great time is had by all. It ends with Chairman Bill Gates telling where he thinks Microsoft is going.

This year it was called Strategy Day, and while there was a lot of talk about future products, the most significant remark was about the past. Gates said, "A few years ago I asked developers to write applications for Windows. They wouldn't do that, so I went to the Microsoft Applications Group, and they didn't have that option."

What he meant was that he bet a significant part of his company's future by investing in Windows application programs; and now that Windows has succeeded in a big way, Microsoft intends ruthlessly to exploit that decision. In military parlance, it's called the principle of pursuit. Microsoft doesn't intend to leave much when it comes to Windows applications.

The big announcement at Strategy Day was what I think should have been called Windows 4.0, but which Microsoft chooses to call Windows for Workgroups. Internally there's a great deal of 32-bit code, much of which I presume will go over seamlessly to Windows NT. WFWG is nor just an upgraded Windows 3.1, although it's compatible with all known 3.1 applications that don't do strange things—or so Microsoft says.

WFWG has built-in peer networking and works with most network adapters, as well as with the Intel network cards that Microsoft optionally bundles with their software. WFWG's peer LAN capabilities don't take the place of sophisticated dedicated file-server software like NetWare; instead, it works neatly as a supplement. One caution: as I write this, WFWG works just fine with ARCnet cards, but it will not coexist with NetWare running on ARCnet. That may be fixed by the time you read this.

The networking capability of WFWG is important because it is as simple to install and use as Windows itself. And yes, I know some don't think Windows is all that simple. Anyway, from the user's point of view, the network capabilities are just more Windows applications. Moreover, the networking integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft Windows applications, as well as with DLLs and the new and improved OLE. Two users working with WFWG can exchange objects—words, spreadsheets, code, drawings, video—with simple dragand-drop operations, and it goes surprisingly fast.

Naturally there's file sharing, and that has been done well. You can make some file directories public (any

one can get them without a password), others public but read only, yet others shared but only by those with the proper password, and so forth. Again, this is simple to set up and works right within Windows.

WFWG is aimed directly at NetWare Lite and LANtastic; and it has just enough ease-of-setup and ease-of-use features to be formidable competition.

The Microsoft juggernaut continues with new database and workgroup applications

Databases

Also shown at Strategy Day were Microsoft Access (a relational database that uses Visual Basic as its programming language) and a new version of FoxPro that uses and is compatible with Xbase languages such as dBase and Clipper. Microsoft didn't say their strategy would be to use FoxPro to beat dBase while providing a smooth path from FoxPro to Access; but it's pretty clear that is what they intend. Whether they can do it isn't as clear.

Access integrates seamlessly with WFWG, and it has the capability of getting data from a variety of formats—Paradox, dBase, Excel—while being exceedingly easy to use. Access incorporates a new concept in help files: Cue Cards, which remain on-screen and prompt you through whatever complex act you have requested help on. The ones that I saw were really useful.

You find data by constructing views. This sounds harder to do than it is. The whole point of Access is to let you use the database without programming.

During the presentation, Microsoft made a telling remark: "We believe that a relational database is the proper place to store everything: files and filenames, voice mail, videos, frame captures, mail, pointers to archived material, anything you keep on your computer." Assuming they meant it—and they usually do mean what they say at these dog and pony shows—the implication

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JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 97

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is that Microsoft intends to use Access to build something, much as Traveling Software did with their ViewLink program. ViewLink, which turned your computer into one giant relational database, was a great idea, but it was a bit before its time. Perhaps that time has come.

Microsoft clearly intends to market an integrated set of products built around WFWG; their goal is to have you do almost everything you do on a computer using a Microsoft product and store the rest in a Microsoft database.

We'll see. I don't recommend anything I don't have in use at Chaos Manor, and as I write this, the only part of the new Microsoft integrated family of products I have running is WFWG. That was easy to install, and it works well (a report next month). I have no reason to suppose the others won't also.

Think of this as an early warning. If all this stuff works as well as it demonstrates, and it all ships on time, the software development environment has changed significantly.

Support?

Microsoft has brought out a daring new product line—at a time when dealer and customer dissatisfaction with the cost and level of Microsoft support is at an all-time high. If they can't support what they have, how can they take on all these bold new products?

Microsoft is aware of the problem, of course. I was told that one out of four Microsoft employees now works in support services. (Cynics will say, "Yes, and they're all new employees who can barely look up things in a database.") There's also a bold new strategy: support costs are billed back against the product manager's profits. This gives product managers a strong incentive to make things work the first time.

Microsoft has made a bold strategic move, and I'd like to help them out. Here's a list of things I think they should do:

• Create a decent debugger for WIN.INI, a program that knows about the weird statements in that file. No one understands what's going on in WIN.INI, but at least they could give us a way to see that we're not doing something stupid.

• A deinstaller for all new software.

• Publicize the support group's fax number. Microsoft has fax-back support capability for end users, but many dealers say they have never seen the number. It's the main fax line: (206) 936-7329, and you can send in technical questions on any Microsoft product. If you haven't heard from them in a day or so, call (214) 714-6789, which is

the Letter Response Group. Tell them you sent the fax and when and where you can be reached, and things can happen.

• Have a few regional phone nodes outside area code 206. An 800 number would be belter. It's annoying to call long distance only to get someone who knows less about the product than you do.

• Make software smarter at determining why it won't run.

• End the Microsoft versus Microsoft interoperability problems. It was very annoying to find that Excel 3.0 didn't work properly with Windows. And MSCDEX is a hack and badly needs fixing.

• If Windows is truly an operating system, shouldn't it work with non-Microsoft products? When you call for support and are told you have to deinstall Norton Desktop, QEMM, 386Max, and just about every other third-party program, you're entitled to wonder just what's going on. If it's a proprietary operating system that supports only Microsoft applications, fine, tell us that; otherwise, test it thoroughly with some of the more common add-ons and stop having the support people tell us we have to deinstall everything before anyone will talk to us.

• Make Setup saner. Include in it a set of checksums so that once programs are decompressed, Setup can see that they're not corrupt. It's wearying in the extreme to discover that somehow there's a corrupt WIN.COM after spending half an hour installing everything.

• Provide us a suite of tests to check hardware compatibility. Let the software poll everything, and if something won't run with Windows, tell us before we spend hours installing with that lamebrained Setup program.

Competition One: WOSA

Microsoft bashers complain that Gates doesn't leave much for anyone else. It's true, in the sense that he's left little room for big companies to become giants or, for that matter, for medium-size companies to get really big. PC software developers will just have to learn how to live in a world that contains a 900-pound gorilla. Some principles apply.

Microsoft is a very large ship. It won't turn quickly. You can see where it's headed. You may be able to get there before Microsoft does.

They'll even help you. If you remotely compete with Microsoft, you should subscribe to their bimonthly newspaper on development works. Developer Network News. (To order it, contact Pat Bellamah, 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, fax (206) 936-7329, Attn.: Developer Network. To order by credit card, call (800)

98 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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227-4679 ext. 11771.) Also get their Developer network CD-ROM (Microsoft will even offer you a discount on a drive). It's a quarterly CD-ROM filled with code, comments, help files, and technical articles on the Microsoft programming environment—all indexed and accessible.

Microsoft insists that their new policy is WOSA (Windows Open Systems Architecture) and they'll make it easy to write applications for Windows. I also know that in the past, Microsoft hasn't been very

prompt in sharing interface secrets. They say that's changed, and it's early yet: not everyone in the company has got The Word.

OK, but hold their feet to the fire. If they say WOSA, make them mean WOSA, and if you can't get what you need at the product manager level, go higher. Keep the press informed. I'm not interested in random Microsoft bashing, but you have every right to know whether Microsoft is following their own policies.

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Competition Two: Goals

Microsoft doesn't deliberately leave much, but there's a lot they can't handle. Take LANs: WFWG provides many capabilities, but it doesn't understand backups well, it's far from optimized for sharing resources like CD-ROMs, and, while it does a neat job of connecting three or four people into a workgroup, it's not so hot on connecting several workgroups. The thing for competitors to do is add to what WFWG does, rather than going head-tohead with it.

On that score: the ability to network, share files, and arrange schedules is one thing. Using that capability to increase productivity is another. It's easy to misuse networks. If everyone has to see and sign off on every thought the president has, and every notion has to go through a committee because it's easy to do that, the company ought to buy an expert system on Chapter 11 proceedings. The goal isn't connectivity and communications, it's to get more product out the door.

Because they're big, Microsoft has to be general. They can't tailor applications to particular niches. Smaller companies can.

Competition Three: Usability

One lesson Microsoft has learned: talk to real users about what they do, not what they say they want. If you ask people what features they want, they'll never stop talking. If you look to see what features they use, and how they use them, you'll probably be surprised.

Microsoft was surprised. As a result, they have yet another competitive advantage: the usability group, which actually watches naive users face up to new software. Most companies aren't large enough to have a group like this, and it shows. For that matter, it's relatively new to Microsoft, and that shows, too; but Microsoft stuff is getting easier to understand.

They've developed Wizards—a sort of tamed-down expert help system—and Cue Cards; and they're working on systems that watch what you're doing wrong so they can pop up with suggestions on where you made a wrong turn. One day, all software will have intelligent help systems.

Microsoft is still feeling their way in this area; and once again, a company as large as that moves slowly. There are plenty of chances to get ahead of them.

Indeed, if I wanted to get rich in the computer business, I'd start a firm offering usability services to small developers.

Microsoft has made a bold move toward radical changes in the PC software environment. The company is big enough that you have to take them seriously; but that very bigness leaves them vulnerable to

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certain kinds of smarts. I foresee interesting times....

When, When, When Will I Learn?

My big Cheetah crashed again. One minute it was working fine, the next it locked up and wouldn't reboot. Memory parity error. I turned it off and let it rest a minute and then back on. Same thing. Start-up would run through standard memory tests and then stop in the middle of the extended memory tests.

OK, thought I, bad chip; and I did a foolish thing. My Cheetah has 16 MB of memory in SIMMs. I figured that if 1 wrote down the location of the memory error and swapped those SIMMs around, I'd soon enough locate which one was bad; after which I could easily live with only 12 or 14 MB of memory while 1 got a replacement. So, I started swapping.

The first thing wrong with that scheme is that SIMMs are held in by little plastic clips, and after a couple of years, these become very brittle. They break; and once broken, there is no way to fix them short of unsoldering the SIMM holder and replacing it. That is a major job.

Fortunately, there is a temporary fix: it's possible to hold the memory in place with rubber bands. You can also use a dot of Super Glue, but of course you aren"t going to do much memory swapping once the glue goes on. Duco Cement is belter. I'd imagine Model Airplane Cement would work. I am told you must not use Silicone Cement, which is acetic acid-based: the acetic acid will play merry hob with the traces on your boards.

Eventually I got the memory swapped and the machine put back together with rubber bands, and of course I got the exact same error message, for the same location. This made no sense, it was late, there were deadlines, and in panic I called my son Alex's beeper number. Alex is a partner in Workman and Associates, and they specialize in recovering data off crashed disks, as well as installing new systems that won't crash in the first place.

Alex came over and decided the sensible thing to do was swap hard drives in the two Cheetahs. That is: the Cheetah 486/25 sits out in the Great Hall to be used by Larry Niven when he works here. The other, a 486/33, sits under my desk as my main machine. Clearly, if I had my old hard drive in the 486/25, that would be good enough while Alex and Barry Workman looked into the 486/33.

Swapping went easily enough. Both of the machines have large (600-MB) SCSI hard drives with caching controllers: a Distributed Processing Technology controller on one, and a Perceptive Solutions

102 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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■ linear, quadratic, step, spline, polynomial, LOWESS, exponential, and log smoothing

A compatible family of products

Whichever you choose-SYSTAT for Windows, SYSTAT for DOS or both-you'll enjoy the most powerful statistics and scientific graphics software available for the PC.

For more information, special offers for current users, and demo disks, call:

708-864-5670

For Windows circle 173, For IBM/DOS circle 174.

SYSTAT

For more information call or write: SYSTAT, Inc., 1800 Sherman Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60201-3793. Tel: 708.864.5670, Fax: 708.492.3567

Australia: Hearne Marketing 61.3.8661766, BeNeLux Countries: Oasis 31.3402.66336, Denmark: Agrolab 45.64.406575, France: Deltasoft33.76.418508,

Germany: STATCON 49.55.4272075, Italy: PiSoft39.587.213640, Japan: HuLinks 81.33.5902311, Malaysia: Dagang Teknik 6.03.719.8299,

New Zealand: Hoare & Assoc. 64.78.562675, Spain: AddLink 34.3.4590722, Switzerland: Fritschy & Partner 41.31.215151, SYSTAT UK: 44.81.4620093

© 1982 SYSTAT®, Inc. Software Digest Ratings Report/8.5. May, 1991. Software Digest is a registered trademark of NSTL. Inc.

USER'S COLUMN

controller on the other. I confess I haven't the foggiest notion which is faster: they are both faster than lightning and work fine. Alex swapped the hard drives only; the controllers never noticed the difference. Apparently, SCSI is like that. Then we pushed the 486/25 under my desk.

I'd gone downstairs for coffee. When I got back up, I found Alex muttering evil curses: now the 486/25 was showing essentially the same symptoms the 486/33 had. Memory error on start-up. Since it

had worked fine not 5 minutes before, something was clearly screwy.

Then I remembered we'd been through this before, and it turned out to be the keyboard. Naturally when we put the 486/25 under my desk, we connected the keyboard that had been working with the 486/33. Just for luck, we swapped keyboards: and that worked just fine. Now both machines perform flawlessly, even if one is held together with rubber bands.

As to why a sour keyboard can bring

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And it's backed with free technical support and a 90-day no-risk guarantee. So if you're spending too much time drawing charts, call for a free demo and see for yourself what makes Flow Charting 3 the best-selling flowcharting software.

See your dealer today! Or for a free interactive demo disk,call 1-800-525-0082, ext. 112

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down your system: when IBM designed the PC, they didn't think anyone would need many megabytes of memory. Later, they found that programmers were doing memory tricks turning address line A20 on and off. There wasn't any way to do that in the XT, so they delegated the function to the controller chip in the keyboard. This is the A20 handler; and goofy as it sounds, even in these days of 486 computers, one vital part of what's going on is done by the rather obsolete keyboard controller chip. Interestingly, if you run Unix, the speed at which the A20 gate is turned on and off can be significant, so you can actually speed up your computer by getting a better keyboard! (For more on the A20 problem, see Mark J. Minasi's "Exorcising the A20 Poltergeist," August 1992 BYTE.!

The keyboard controller chip is rather sensitive to voltages; so if you drop something conductive into your keyboard, you can gel what amounts to a short that drags down the voltage as seen by the keyboard controller chip. The result will be that your machine won't boot and probably will report a memory error.

Recalling the broken SIMM clips, the moral of this story is, be sure what you're fixing is the part that's broke.

And Yet Another Instructive Tale...

Our youngest son, Richard, is now in Washington as an intern, and he wanted a portable computer for the job. Since he's been a Mac user in the past, he wanted something that would run Windows. After some thought, I let him take the NCR 3170 (formerly the AT&T Safari). This is the older model, with an integral floppy drive and no PCMCIA slot. He started using it before he left and loved it.

Then he let the batteries run down, so much so that it forgot all its Setup information. No problem, he thought. The Setup program offers an option of resetting to the default, so he chose that.

Alas, the machine didn't work right. Files had vanished. You could see the filenames and sizes, but attempts to access them failed. There were similar problems.

"I'll fix that," foolishly said I, and got out Norton Disk Doctor. NDD looked at the disk and reported all kinds of munged directories and screwiness with the FAT (file allocation table). I let it try to fix things, and after each pass I tried to delete the problem files. Many of them wouldn't delete. Finally, in despair, I had Richard take it over to Barry in Pasadena.

Barry opened the machine—not something I'd want to do with a laptop—and read off the hard disk type. "There's the problem," he said. The default disk type in Setup was for a 20-MB hard drive; but

104 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

Circle 137 on Inquiry Card.

Four reasons to buy aTI microLaser printer*

* x

■

aaaa

1

1

LETTER 1 •

i ain

"

hSG

•

.' 1

Now there's a way for you to put the power of Microsoft® Windows™ on paper — microLaser from Texas Instruments.

Designed to be Windows-compatible, there's a microLaser just right for your needs, whether you need a personal or shared printer. Here's why: MQr.i w~ 1. Compatibility With HP 2K5 LaserJet® emulation and "" Adobe® PostScript® software, microLaser easily supports your demanding applications. And with our Microsoft Windows driver, set it and forget it with all Windows applications.

Not only does PostScript give you scalable outline fonts and graphics, it also means that your microLaser works in computing

environments like Windows, DOS®, Apple® Macintosh®, OS/2® and UNLX®. 2 Performance rfm P0STSCRIPT.

When It COmeS to H Software From Adobe

printing high-quality documents fast, microLaser really makes you look good. At either nine or 16 pages-per-minute, microLaser printers speed you through documents in a hurry. Plus PostScript means what you see on your screen is what you get on paper. You can even turbocharge your microLaser with a RISC processor for blazing fast graphics. 3. Reliability When you buy a printer, you want it to print And print And print That s just what the microLaser does. Take our personal microLaser Plus for

example. With its high duty cycle of 10,(XX) pages-per-month* and a standard one-year limited warranty* * you can rely on your microLaser to work the first time, every time, for years.

4. Value Starting as low as $999f, there's a microLaser designed to fit any budget From the single user all the way up to a network. Consider this, too: microLaser's average cost per page is only 1.9 centst,while some laser printers average around 3.3 cents. The microLaser not only makes sense, it saves you money, too.

For details on the right microLaser for you and the name of the nearest dealer, call

1-800-527-3500.

The microLaser PS17 has earned the 1990 PC World Best Buy award; microLaser PS35 has earned the 1990 InfoWorid Excellent Value award and 4'/z mice from MacUser, October 1990.

yr Texas Instruments

'Based on estimated typical usage. * 'For more information on service upgrade options, call IS0O847-5757 in the U.S. and 1-300-26&6314 in Canada- tSuggested retail price - dealer prices may vary. tBased on suggested retail price of consumables and approximate page coverage rating for each consumable at 4% black (toner, developer and OPC). microLaser is a trademark of Texas Instruments Incorporated. Microsoft and DOS are registered trademarks, and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Adobe, PostScript and the PostScript logo are registered trademarks of Ado^Sysremslncoiporatwl which may Ix registered in certain jurisdictions. La^ Packard, Inc. Apple and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. OS/2 is a registered trademark oflnfcrnational Business Machines Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T. ©1992 Tl 76543

Circle 176 on Inquiry Card.

Features

microLaser Plus

microLaser Plus

microLaser

microLaser XL

Basic

PS17/PS35

Turbo

Turbo

PPM

9ppm

9 ppm

9 ppm

16 ppm

Emulation

HP LaserJet II

HPLJII/PostScript

HPLJII/PostScriptll

HPLJII/PostScriptll

1 Processor

68000

68000

RISC/8220

RISC/8220

Fonts

14 HP Fonts

17 or 3 5 Scalable

35 Scalable

35 Scalable

List Price

$999

$1,399/$1,499

$1,749

$3,649

USER'S COLUMN

what was really installed was a 40-MB drive. Changing that setting instantly fixed all the problems.

One moral of this story is, if you haven't written down all your Setup information, particularly your disk type, for all your machines, go do it now. You never know when you'll need that. The other moral is, before you have at a disk with NDD, you might give a few seconds thought to what else might be wrong.

Anyway, I'm pleased to report that Richard has the 3170 in Washington and it works just fine. He loves the built-in fax modem, and he finds the AT&T Mail program powerful and easy to use. The 3170 seems to have made a Windows convert out of a former Mac user.

A Retraction

A couple of months ago 1 wrote about surge protectors and said that I had two kinds that don't use MOVs (metal-oxide varistors). Apparently I misread the specifications on one of the brands; at any rate, I was wrong. The only surge protector I have that does not use MOVs is Zero Surge's ZS900.

This doesn't mean that the units that do

have MOVs are bad or won't protect you; they probably will. The problem is that each surge that goes through the MOV damages it, not much, but some; if there's enough damage, it won't do the job properly. There is no test available that can determine just how safe the MOVs in your protector might be; thus, some experts advise you to replace MOV protector units at regular intervals, say, every couple of years.

Zero Surge units don't have MOVs. As far as I can determine, they aren't damaged at all by any surge that doesn't actually destroy the unit. They cost more, but you don't have to replace them. Me, I like the peace of mind.

1 also have a suggestion to those making MOV-based surge protectors: ever thought of putting those in a removable cartridge? That way, a nervous user could replace them annually.

EDOS

If you like to play with Windows and you run a lot of DOS programs, you probably want this. It lets you allocate and deallocate Windows memory for DOS sessions; and it will create Really Big DOS Windows,

above 700 KB in size. There are other neat features, like the CLIPBOARD command that will tell you if there's any text in the Clipboard and if so how much, and lets you examine or print what's there. There are time-slice controls, status information, a way to tell how long a DOS session has been running, and what percentage of your computer's CPU that DOS window has eaten.

Fair warning: I've used this without problems, and so have others, but when I mentioned to a Microsoft Windows programmer/manager that EDOS let you have 700-KB DOS sessions under Windows, he shuddered. That hasn't caused me to take EDOS off my machine. It really is useful. However, understand that I save both programming and text work early and often; and be aware that EDOS does things Microsoft doesn't believe possible.

Mystat and Systat

Mystat comes with a foreword from Leland Wilkinson, the president of Systat, and is an introductory course and tutorial on statistics using Systat. The package is designed for use by educators. No statistics training program is all that easy for people

ZvlNDEX

vyt**e

\o° A N° with

- ^e**" ZylNDEX, you

^\ can find information

contained in any document collection on network or stand alone computers in just seconds. Quick, precise, fun; ZylNDEX can search word processing, database or graphics files in plain english. Many output features. Powerful search tools: Word or Phrase; Boolean; Proximity; Synonyms and more... Powerful InfoApps features: HyperLink; Notes; Cut & Paste; Print; Launch...put your information to work for you. ZylNDEX works with WordPerfect, Word for Windows, dBase, graphics and other file formats. Developers API Toolkit available.

Call 1-800-544-6339 for

free demo or update info

ZyLAB

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Information Dimensions, Inc. Phone: (708) 459-8000 • Fax (708) 459-8054

/ " r--r-~:

MULTIMEDIA

NoteBook

AVerKey (NTSC or PAL)

— VGA to VIDEO for Notebook f

— Flicker-Free filter

— Supports Windows 3.0 and 3.1

— Supports all IBM standard modes up to 640x480 with any colors (256, 32K, 64K,...)for NTSC or PAL. For PAL TV system, 800 x 600 is supported if Cirrus CL-GD64I0 VGA chip is used.

— Supports 640 x 480 mode without loading any A VerKey driver.

— Compatible with all VGA cards

— Simultaneous graphics display on both VGA and TV monitors.

AVerKey

VGA Monitor We also have following ilems:

— VGA to Video OVERLAY/GENLOCK card

— Live Video Window controller

— VGA to Video Converter card

— TARGA 16 compatible card

— JPEG compression card

— TUNER card

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All trade marks are the property of their respective holders.

106 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 192 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 193 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 194).

BEFORE PROTECTING YOUR SOFTWARE...

1 .Your Software

...against piracy and unauthorized use, make sure that your protection system has all the following qualities-.

A GOOD HARDWARE KEY

Hardware-based software protection systems are now the standard worldwide. However, not all keys are the same. A good key should have all the following features:

V Compatibility and transparency. The key should work without any problem on your s customers' computers. The user should be able to forget the key after connecting it.

V Unbreakable electronics. A customized ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) component should be integrated in the key. This prevents reverse engineering and makes cracking virtually impossible.

V A unique and inaccessible software developer's code burnt into the ASIC. (This code should not be held in the key's memory, where it can be read and altered.)

V A Read/Write Memory inside the key should be available on demand. The memory should be writable in the field, on any PC, without any special programming equipment.

V Very low power consumption, enabling the key to work even under the worst power conditions, on PCs and laptops, with or without a printer.

POWERFUL SOFTWARE

Since it's practically impossible to crack or duplicate a key having all the features mentioned above, a pirate will usually go for the software linking the protected program to the key. Therefore, check that your protection software has all of the following:

V A Linkable Protection Module with which calls can be made to the key from any point in the protected program.

V An "Envelope" installation program. Such programs enhance security while making it possible to protect a software even without its source code.

V Sophisticated antidebugging and encryption mechanisms.

HASP®, THE PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE PROTECTION SYSTEM, OFFERS YOU ALL THESE FEATURES AND MORE:

HASP was designed by a team of computer experts, professional cryptologists, and electrical engineers. As a result, HASP keys are supported by what is probably the best software in the market, and the HASP system has worked on every computer it has been tried on. In addition to all the features mentioned above, HASP provides:

V A Full Authorization System for protecting dozens of programs using only one key.

t/ A Pattern

Code Security

System (PCS)

enabling parallel processing of multiple calls

by the Linkable Protection Module.

V A Virus Detection option that can be incorporated in the protected program to check whether it has been infected by a virus or tampered with in any way.

V Several HASP keys can be daisy-chained.

NETHASP, SOFTWARE PROTECTION FOR NETWORKS

\/ Only one NetHASP key is needed to un a protected program from many stations in a network. NetHASP provides full support for protecting DOS and WINDOWS software under network environments, including Novell dedicated & non- dedicated servers, Lan Manager, Lantastic, Banyan, DLink, and NET-BIOS based LANs.

IN A TEST CARRIED OUT BY AN INDEPENDENT LAB, HASP WAS THE ONLY KEY WHICH WAS NOT BROKEN*.

OPERATING ENVIRONMENTS

l/ PC: DOS, WINDOWS, OS/2, SCO UNIX,

SCO XENIX, INTERACTIVE UNIX, AIX, AUTOCAD, DOS EXTENDERS

»/ MAC (ADB Port): System 6.0.5 and up

*/ NEC (Serial Port): DOS, WINDOWS

AND THE BOTTOM LINE:

We offer some of the most competitive prices in the market.

Since 1984, HASP has enabled thousands of software producers in more than 40 countries, including several Fortune 500 companies, to protect their software.

To learn more about why so many professionals have chosen HASP, call us for our low price evaluation package.

1ADD1N

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WARE T Y INC.

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ALADDIN

KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS LTD.

15 Beit Oved St., Tel-Aviv, Israel RO.Box:11141 Tel-Aviv 61110, Tel: 972-3-5375795 Fax: 972-3-5375796

■ Australia Conlab Pty. Ltd., Tel: 3 8985685

■ Belgium Akkermans bvba, Tel: 3 2338826

■ CSFR ATLAS Ltd., Tel+l-'ax: 2 766085

■ Chile Micrologic;! S.A., Tel: 562 222 1388

■ Denmark SC Metric a/s, Tel: 42 804200

■ France Logidata Intl., Tel: 50707375

■ Germany CSS GmbH, Tel: 201 749860

■ Greece Unibrain SA, Tel: 1 6856320

■ Holland Akkermans BV, Tel: n 241444

■ Italy Partner Data S.r.l., Tel: 2 33101709

■ Korea Dae-A Engineering, Tel: 2 848 4481

■ New Zealand Training Solutions, Tel: 4 5666014

■ Poland Systhenn Tel: 061 15065

■ Portugal Fulurmalica l.da., Tel: I 4116269

■ South Africa D Le Koux, Tel: 11 886 4704

■ Spain PC Hardware, Tel: 3 4493193

■ Switzerland Opag AG, Tel: 61 7112245

■ Taiwan Teco lad.. Tel: 2-555 9676

■ Turkey Mikrobela Ltd.. Tel: 4-4677504 ' CT Magazine, May 1990.

S Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. 1985-1992

Circle 65 on Inquiry Card.

USER'S COLUMN

who don't understand statistics, but Mystat is relatively painless. In my judgment, you can't really operate in the modern business world without understanding something about statistical inference. You may not need to know how to do statistical tests of advertising copy, or sales pitches, or to analyze masses of incomplete data, but you sure had better be aware of what's possible; and if you hire experts, you certainly will want to know enough to avoid being snowed.

Most college introductory statistics courses are absurd: they teach cookbook methods for calculating means and standard deviations and conduct "Student's T" tests; but they don't give you any real understanding of what statistics is about. I don't say working your way through this book/course will make you a statistician, but it's my judgment that it will teach you more than any of the statistics courses for education majors I've seen. Moreover, when you've finished, you'll have a good

HANDTOP Computer

100% Compatible 100% Touch screen 100% Pen based 100% Portable and self contained But, best of all the DIRECT INPUT mode, Imagine..

I would like : □ receive a documentation □ trading visitation

Name : Fonction : Society:

Address:

Postcode : City : Tel :

Reply coupon returned to : HANDTOP Computers International 23, ALLEE DES VENDANCES FRANCE-77325 CROISSY BEAUBOURG MAKNE-LA-VALLEE CEDEX 02 Phone : 33 (1)60.17.70.94 F.ix : 33 (I) 60.17.70.77

idea of what Systal can do. Mystat is recommended.

Info Select for Windows

Info Select for Windows is a free-form database program in which you can collect all those notes that pile up on your desk, and it really is neat. Moreover, the Windows version is an improvement over the DOS program without taking away the simplicity that made it easy to use.

Info Select organizes things the way I do, into small notes that I can stack into related piles. You can also use it to display information or do queries. A neat feature lets you find out what city and time zone correspond to a given area code, and looking at how they did that suggests similar things you could do.

There are other features (e.g., a phone dialer and calendar) that I don't use because those are built into FranklinQuest's Ascend time management system, but they work. Mostly, though, if you get into the habit of using Info Select, you may cure yourself of scribbling phone numbers on the backs of old envelopes and then finding they're lost when you need them, or making notes on Post-its and sticking them all over your monitor until you can't see the screen. Recommended.

Fotoman

Fotoman is a digital camera from Logitech. I've written about digital cameras before. They're a quick way to get monochrome images into your portable (or desktop) computer. Image formats include TIFF, PCX, and BMP. From there, you can paste them into documents for printing or sharing over a WFWG network, or you can use them in image-aware databases like Thinx. Alas, there's no way I know of to paste one into Info Select, which is a pity because that might be a good way to organize the photo images.

Fotoman works. The image quality isn't all that high, and even when fully charged, the camera takes several seconds to get ready to take the next picture. The resolution (256 gray levels, 376 by 240 pixels, meaning 75 dots per inch in a 3/<- by 5inch photo) isn't good enough to do what I would like, which is to take it to the library and use it as a kind of scanner to make notes from books, but the pictures aren't bad.

There are limits to what you can do with a single battery charge. If you take a full load of 32 pictures with flash on every picture, you'll have about 24 hours to either recharge the camera or get your pictures transferred to your computer.

If you need medium-quality monochrome images on-screen or in documents,

108 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 203 on Inquiry Card.

TheWbrld's Best Selling UNIX Clone Just Got Better.

Now with full 32-bit implementation!

If you want to ignite your 32-bit hard ware with the multi-user, multi-tasking power of UNIX, Coherent 4.0 has arrived. And if you're operating or selling small business network systems with dozens of users, that's really good news. Because Coherent 4.0 is what you want in UNIX at a price that's hard to believe.

Run UNIX applications today!

Coherent is now binary compatible with UNIX. Most UNIX PC applications port with a simple recompile and many now run right out of the box. The list is growing everyday, so call for details.

Yes, It's For Real!

How can it be? First of all, Coherent was independently developed by the Mark Williams Company, so you don't pay for UNIX licensing fees. You don't pay any mark-up or reseller costs either. Coherent is only sold directly to you

six disk installation is a breeze compared to their 25. You'll also learn it faster and increase overall performance. All because Coherent is smaller, faster... and better.

Small, But So Complete.

Make no mistake, Coherent is a wholly professional development system. You get a complete

"Coherent comes so fully qualified as a UNIX clone, you find yourself thinking, 7 can't believe it's not UNIXr-Sean Fulton, UNIX Today!

Coherent; Still $99.95.

".. (Coherent) may be the best thing that has happened to UNIX yet." -William Zachmann, PC Week

In fact, over 40,000 copies of Coherent have already been sold. And, like the ones we quote here, virtually every critic who's reviewed Coherent has raved about it.

So Much Less, Yet So Much More.

As a virtual clone of UNIX, Coherent embraces the original UNIX philosophy: Small is beautiful. Small price, yes. But there's more, much more, to Coherent than its amazing price.

Requiring only 10 megabytes of disk space, Coherent can reside with DOS. So you can keep all your DOS applications and move up to Coherent. And it runs with as little as 1 MB of memory versus 4 MB for other UNIX versions.

The World's Only Plug And Play UNIX Clone.

You'll have Coherent up and running with a fraction of the time and effort it takes for other UNIX versions. Our

MWC COHERENT

Version 4.0

SCO

UNIX/386

Version 3.2V2

No. of Manuals

1

14

No. of Disks

6

25

Kernel Size

100 K

375 K

Install Time

40 min.

3-4 hours

Suggested Disk

Space

10 meg

60 meg

Min. Memory Required 1 meg

2-4 meg

Performance*

85.7

31.3

Price

$99.95

$2590

*Byte C Compiler Benchmark: Compiles per minute on 25 MHZ 486.

C compiler, assembler and over 200 UNIX commands including full sets of functions for development, administration, maintenance and text processing.

Coherent also comes with UUCP capabilities that connect you to a world-wide network of free software, news and millions of UNIX users. And it's all clearly documented in Coherent's highly praised 1200 page manual.

Experienced, Supported, Guaranteed.

Mark Williams Company has been developing professional programming tools since 1976. Our commitment to our products and users is unsurpassed. Users applaud our popular BBS and the widely acclaimed telephone support they get free from Coherent developers.

Still, we're not asking you to take a chance on Coherent. We've made it foolproof to see for yourself-with a 60-day money-back, no hassles guarantee. So pick up that phone and order Coherent now. And the best way to UNIX will be on its way to you!

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60-DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE!

Mark Williams Company

60 Revere Drive, Northbrook, IL 60062

Coherent is a trademark of Mark Williams Company. UNIX is a trademark of USL

Distributors: Australia + 07-266-2270, Brazil + 011-883-2299, Czech. + 06-32-62877, Denmark + 42-887-249, England + 091-29-62219, Finland + 941-871-871,

France + 1-47414519,1-4672-8074, Germany + 0511-53-7295,030-313-7015, Holland + 023-386-599, Hungary + 153-0988, Malaysia + 03-756-4477,

Norway + 0-211-0950, South America/Caribbean + 1-809-723-5000, Sweden + 06-60-19290.

Circle 92 on Inquiry Card.

Images in your Computer

from Video or full page Scanners. Double your productivity in DeskTop Publishing, OCR and Multimedia applications.

ColorSnap FL

$599.00

Professional, REAL TIME, video image caplure in color (24-bit. 16.7 million colors) and gray scale. Capture from any NTSC/PAL video source, camcorder, live TV, still video etc. VGA, SVGA supported, files saved in standard formats. Superb image quality, Windows support.

PageReader 30( —-"^

Artiscan 24-bit true 600

or 800 dpi on both axes

Professional, desk-top, fast (SCSI interface included), 24bit color scanner. True 600 dpi $ 1199.00 on both axis. Superb picture quality in color and gray scale. Includes Image Processing software. Optional X-Ray, Transparency Scanner ($699.00). OCR software options available.Recognita (add $159.00). 800x800 dpi version $1545. Best magazine ratings.

USER'S COLUMN

Full Page. 300 dpi Scanner complete with OCR WordScan software & line-art Imager software!! HP-ScanJet compatible driver hence compatible with any OCR package. Fast! Reads avg. page in <10sec. Incredible introductory price $399.00 complete!!! With Recognita, add $159.00), with 9600 fax/modem send/rec. add $99.00. Ideal in any office for text, autoCad drawings, presentations etc.

Color 3000

Full Page, color (24-bit) scanner (16.7 million colors or 256 gray scale). Complete with Color Image Processing Software. Fully HP ScanJet emulation driver.

Color 3000 599.00

WordScan 99.00

Recognita 159.00

Call or write for info on Scanner or Video Based Image Transfer Systems

30-day return guarantee on all products. 1 year warranty. Major credit cards. Resellers Welcome.

Computer Friends, Inc. - 14250 NW Science Park Dr. - Portland OR 97229 Toll Free 1-800-547-3303 - tel. (503)626-2291 - fax (503)643-5379

this will do the job. Taking an image out of the camera and squirting it into the computer through a serial port is slow—about a minute per picture—but it's painless, and once the image is in the machine, you can manipulate it in various ways.

Fotoman is a pretty good deal for real estate companies and other outfits that use a lot of pictures and need speed and convenience rather than high resolution and detail. It can save a bundle on film.

Pascal Returns

Windows is written in C, and for a while it looked like the only way to write Windows applications was to learn C programming. Microsoft released Visual Basic, which in my judgment is far preferable to C, but there's a widespread belief thai real programmers don't write in BASIC.

Comes now two new Borland Pascals. Turbo Pascal 7.0 is the introductory level. The real news is Borland Pascal with Objects, a complete package that contains Object Vision, Turbo Assembler, Turbo Debugger, the new Pascal compiler, and DLLs that let you write code for DOS or Windows.

You can also do DOS DLLs for Windows. Not even Microsoft has a compiler that will do that. Borland Pascal uses the same DOS memory extensions that power Borland Paradox, meaning that it's a very proven engine, and you can write DOS programs as large as 16 MB if you like.

Recall what I said about competition with Microsoft. You probably don't want to write a 35,000-line program in any kind of BASIC; and writing something that big in C may take decades. Borland Pascal compiles fast, has tons of productivity tools, and makes efficient code. As an example. Generic CADD is written in Turbo Pascal; the new Borland Pascal is even more efficient and is backward-compatible with Turbo Pascal. My guess is that both Windows and DOS applications written in Borland Pascal will ship months before the same application written in C or C++. More next month after I have the final-release product, but I find it exciting that Pascal has come back in a big way.

Learn About Counting

Generally Roberta looks at educational software, much of which can only be described as bloody awful; but of Learn About Counting with the Berenstain Bears, she says: "This is worth putting under some little one's Christmas tree. It comes with sound and is for children as young as 4. It's a snap to install, unlike some educational software designed for kids with a rocket scientist in the family. The user gets to choose whether Brother or Sister

110 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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USER'S COLUMN

Bear will take the kiddies on a colorful trip. The program uses the integral speaker to prompt the user, and if there's an error, the designer walks the student through the why of the correct answer. It doesn't just give you the lame 'Try again' you see too often.

"They even throw in some finger puppets. Many kids will enjoy their mom or dad starting them on this package, and after a bit, the youngster can work independently to play the eight different games."

Winding Down

We have the new Kyocera Ecosys printer that doesn't use cartridges, and we like it. The learning tool of the month is Learn Programming Today with Turbo Pascal from Borland; this is a videotape, workbook, and compiler that starts at the beginning and moves rapidly to complex programs. If you're just beginning to learn programming, or if like me you got out of the habit of Pascal and want to get back in, this is an excellent tool.

Two computer books this month: Michael Young's Visual Basic: Game Programming in Windows (Microsoft

Press, 1992). This is intermediate level. Games use a lot of programming techniques, including sound and animation. It has plenty of examples. The second book is Peter Fink's PostScript Screening (Adobe Press, 1992). It's the best introduction to the whole subject of visual screening, halftones, and so forth, that I have yet seen; I sure learned a lot from it.

Another book I learned much from is Stephen Bigelow's Understanding Telephone Electronics (Sams, 1992). This will tell you as much—more, probably—as you want to know about telephones, from the handset to the central switchboard. It includes faxes and wireless phones.

The book of the month is Robert Heinlein's Take Back Your Government (Baen Books, 1992). I wrote the introduction and some notes, but I don't get royalties. This was written years ago, when the structure of U.S. politics was quite different; and, as I say in my introduction, a time when, in my judgment, citizens had more control of their government. We could do worse than go back to such times.

The game of the month is Darklands from MicroProse. The game was released

too early (although way behind schedule) and the first versions had serious bugs, but that ought to be fixed by the time you read this. It's a new twist on role-playing games, set in the Holy Roman Empire as it believed itself to be.

I am installing NetWare, as well as working with WFWG. I continue to look at operating systems: Windows, OS/2, and NextStep for the 486. Networks and operating systems, along with development languages, will be major themes during the next year. The computer revolution continues. ■

Jerry Pournelle holds a doctorate in psychology and is a science fiction writer who also earns a comfortable living writing about computers present and future. Jerry welcomes readers' comments and opinions. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Jerry Pournelle, c/o BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Please put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on BIX as "jerryp. "

ITEMS DISCUSSED ]

Borland Pascal with Objects

$495

Fotoman $799

Mystat

$18.95

Learn Programming Today

Logitech, Inc.

Course Technology

with Turbo Pascal

$59.95

6505 Kaiser Dr.

1 Main St.

Turbo Pascal 7.0

$149.95

Fremont, CA 94555

Cambridge, MA 02142 (800) 648-7450

Borland International, Inc.

(800)231-7717

1800 Green Hills Rd.

(510)795-8500

(617)225-2595

P.O. Box 660001

fax:(510)792-8901

fax:(617)225-7976

Scotts Valley, CA 95067

Circle 1164 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1167 on Inquiry Card.

(800)331-0877

(408) 438-8400

Info Select for Windows $ 149.95

NCR3170

$3999

fax: (408) 439-9344

Micro Logic Corp.

Safari Systems

Circle 1161 on Inquiry Card.

P.O. Box 70 Hackensack, NJ 07602

14K World's Fair Dr. Somerset, NJ 08873

Darklands

$69.95

(800) 342-5930

(908) 302-5800

MicroProse Software, Inc.

(201)342-6518

fax: (908) 469-4578

180LakefrontDr.

fax:(201)342-0370

Circle 1168 on Inquiry Card.

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Circle 1165 on Inquiry Card.

(800)879-7529

Systat

$895

(301)771-1151

Learn About Counting $24.95

Systat, Inc.

Circle 1162 on Inquiry Card.

Comptons New Media 2320 Camino Vida Roble

1800 Sherman Ave., Suite 801 Evanston, IL 60201

EDOS

$39.95

Carlsbad, CA 92009

(708) 864-5670

Firefly Software Systems Coip.

(800) 532-3766

fax: (708) 492-3567

32345 Southwest Arbor Lake Dr.

(619)929-2500

Circle 1169 on Inquiry Card.

Wilsonville, OR 97070

Circle 1166 on Inquiry Card.

(800) 248-0809

ZS900

$149

(503) 694-2282

Zero Surge, Inc.

Circle 1163 on Inquiry Card.

103ClaremontRd.

Bernardsville, NJ 07924

(908) 766-4220

fax:(908)766-4144

Circle 1170 on Inquiry Card.

112 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

If You Need PCs That CanTake It, Take This ToYour Mailbox.

For free information about Texas Micro PCs, send in this card; FAX this card to 1-713-933-1029; or for immediate attention, call 1-800-627-8700;

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TENTATIVE PURCHASE TIMEFRAME: □ One month

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1* European inquiries call 31-36-536-5595. Other international inquiries call 1-71 3-933-8050

Attention Resellers: Customize For Your Customers.

As a reseller, you know that you can't simply squeeze solutions to fit your customers' needs. At Texas Micro, we'll work with you to bring customized, rugged solutions to your customers. We've been doing it for years for some of America's biggest corporations. We offer:

• Custom and standard solutions for specialized markets such as factory automation, telecommunications, medical, maintenance and field sites, and harsh office environments.

• A regional network of field application engineers for design, integration and support.

• A complete, one-stop source for CPUs, option cards and peripherals.

• Custom BIOS development, which we file for quick reordering.

• Custom chassis designs with custom, screen-printed front panels.

Give us a chance to assess your needs. Mark the "Resale" box on the card above and we'll send you complete reseller information.

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IN REMOTE NORTHEASTERN U.S.A. STEEL MILL PLANTS, ruggedized rackmount Texas Micro PCs are mounted next to molten steel foundries to monitor and control various processes.

IN A HARSH ENVIRONMENT, AN ORDINARY PC IS A DEAD PC. A lol of PCs do well to survive a desktop. But on the production floor or in the field, the dust, heat, vibration and traffic can finish an ordinary

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PC-and your operation-in a hurry. Even if your PC has to withstand hell, your business doesn't have to. As long as you're using ruggedized PCs from Texas Micro.

OUR PCS TAKE A BEATING FROM THE FORTUNE 100. In fact, 70 of them put Texas Micro PCs through the wringer every day in everything from industrial applications to severe office environments.

And we don't spare our PCs, either. During factory

tests, we shake, bake and beat them like there's no tomorrow. Because with an ordinary PC, there may be none. OUR PCS ARE THE BEST BECAUSE THEY'RE BUILT FOR THE WORST. We design our 286, 386 and 486 systems using rugged design techniques that give them up to three times the life expectancy of other PCs.

Our passive backplane, for example, gives you instant access to plug-in CPU cards and components, reducing Mean Time To Repair to under 10 minutes.

We shock-mount the drives within our nickel-plated, all-steel chassis to withstand vibration. We implement VLSI and PAL technology to increase component reliability. And we use positive airflow filtration to reduce contamination and system heat.

STRONG SUPPORT IS OUR STRONG SUIT. We provide tollfree technical assistance and a regional network of field application engineers. We also customize PCs to meet your particular specifications.

FIND OUT WHAT OUR PCS ARE REALLY MADE OF. Call us for complete product information and specifications. Or send in the attached card.

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Ruggedized Rackmount

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FORWras

Add a new dimension of visual impact to all your business communications with Microsoft" Video for Windows™ It's the easy way to take your Windows-based word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and put them into action. In fact, you can incorporate digital video clips into any OLE-aware application for a more complete and engaging message.

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With Microsoft Video for Windows, editing is easy, too. Just call up the VidEdit tool. Click your selection on the toolbar. And you're well on your way to assembling video sequences that show off your unique directorial style.

lb run new Video for Windows, all you

© 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. 'Portions providedbyFirstLighl'. Inc."Plus applicablesales tax. Reseller prices max varv.Offcrgood until March 30.1993. Please allowZ-4 weeks for delivery upon receipt of this order by Microsoft. In the 50 United Slates, call (800) 882-2000. Ext. JA4. For information only, in Canada call (800)563-9048; outside the 50 United States and Canada, call (206)936-8661. Trial Pack system requirements: Personal computer with 3S6S.X or higher microprocessor running

ft Video for Windows.

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Media Player - SKIING.AVI [playing]

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Microsoft Windows operating system version 3.1, audio board compatible with Windows, VGA display (256 color or greater recommended). Microsoft mouse or compatible pointing device and a 3.5-inch high density (1.44 MB disk drive) are required. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation. Intel is a registered trademark and Indeo and the Indeo logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation. Video Blaster and the Video Blaster logo are trademarks of Creative Labs.

COVER STORY

BYTE Awarcls

The world's best for 1992 sets new standards for excellence

MICHAEL NADEAU

very fall, BYTE selects the best products, technologies, and standards of the past year for special recognition. Editors and BYTE licensees around the world nominate and vote for candidates that, in their judgment, represent the most significant developments in terms of innovation, performance, and price. (For a description of the selection process, see the text box "How BYTE Selected the Best" on page 122.)

1992

While the economy may have been in the dumpster in 1992, the computer industry still managed to turn out a record number of innovative products, standards, and technologies. The 109 BYTE Award winners—25 more than last year—are important not just for what they did in 1992, but also for the direction they will provide for 1993.

For example, users will crave yet more power in the coming year. As software products such as Award of Excellence winners Adobe Premiere 2.0, CorelDraw 3.0, FrameMaker for Windows, and Microsoft Windows for Workgroups establish themselves, users will discover that these programs work best on high-performance hardware. But not to worry—other Award of Excellence winners have this angle covered. Intel's 486DX/2, the Radius RocketShare, and the VL-Bus standard all provide significant performance boosts to their respective platforms.

The PC price war of 1992 has led users to expect to pay less for products, and many of the award winners were chosen in part because of their ability to deliver quality at a lower cost. Kyocera's Ecosys aSi laser printer, which won an Award of Excellence, is reasonably priced and features a low cost per copy. Artisoft continues to set the price standard for peer LANs with its Award of Distinction winner LANtastic 4.1.

116 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Another Award of Distinction winner, Compaq's ProLinea PC line, should remain both a price and volume leader through 1993.

A Big Year for Windows

The Windows juggernaut continues this year, as 30 Windows-specific products—nearly twice as many as last year—won awards, including three of the top five vote-getters. Of the three new versions of Windows that Microsoft launched in 1992, two—Windows for Workgroups and Windows 3.1 —placed second and third, respectively, in the overall voting. (The third, Windows NT, was not eligible because it was not expected to ship in 1992.) Software products accounted for 27 of the Windows winners, and several popular software packages made their Windows debut in 1992. They include Award of Excellence winner Quattro Pro for Windows and Award of Merit winners LANtastic for Windows, Mathcad 3.1 for Windows, Mathematica for Windows, Procomm Plus for Windows, and Quicken 2.0 for Windows.

Award of Distinction winner Approach for Windows 2.0 and Award of Merit winner FileMaker Pro 2.0 for Windows helped fill a significant need for Windows database managers. Two other Windows database managers announced in 1992,

AWARDS GRAPHIC: ROGER GOODE 1-1993

BYTE

Borland's Paradox for Windows and Microsoft Access, were not eligible for awards because of uncertainty over whether they would be commercially available in 1992.

Clearly, Windows' strong showing in this year's awards reflects the growing number of companies jumping on the Windows bandwagon. The decline in the number of winners among DOS, Macintosh, and Unix software is evidence that developers are devoting most of their efforts to the platform with the highest installed base. The number of DOS software winners dropped from 13 to nine, Mac software winners dropped from 12 to eight, and Unix software winners dropped from three to one (see the figure).

New Categories, New Uses

Some of the most exciting winners are products that represent new categories. The Philips CDD521 CD-ROM recorder, for instance, makes it possible for even small organizations to publish data on CD-ROM in-house. The Kodak DCS 200ci Digital Camera lets you take photographs digitally for fast, easy insertion into electronic documents.

The Mobidem from Ericsson GE Mobile Communications brings wireless mobile communications to a hand-held form factor using a packet-radio link. And although we are not quite sure what the most important practical application of the Gryphon Morph image-morphing software will be, it's a hoot to use.

Hewlett-Packard shrank the hard drive to 1.3 inches with the Kittyhawk. In the process, HP made the drive more energy efficient and less susceptible to shock. With hard drives this small, it is now feasible to use rotating media in devices such as handheld PCs and cellular phones.

Pens Are Getting Mightier

Last year, some pen PCs and Go Corp.'s PenPoint operating system won awards. This year, two pen-based applications made the cut. PenMagic's Numero, a spreadsheet-like math package, and PenSoft's Perspective, an innovative personal information

manager, both won Awards of Distinction. In addition, the Slate PenApps applications development tool was given an Award of Merit.

Fujitsu's PoqetPad and the Grid PalmPad won an Award of Merit and an Award of Distinction, respectively. Both are small, hand-held devices, unlike the larger tablet systems that won last year. Also, Pi Systems' Infolio pen tablet was an Award of Merit winner.

Predictions

The trends of this year's BYTE Awards give us a clue to what 1993 may hold. Windows will continue to dominate, as new versions of the operating system target specialized areas such as workgroups. With the investment that software and hardware developers have in Windows 3.0 and 3.1, it is safe to assume that many of these developers will support Windows in all its incarnations.

The drop in Mac software winners may be deceiving. Apple garnered four awards for its systems, ranging from the high-performance Quadra 950 to the popular PowerBook 180 to the lowcost Performa 600. With hardware of this caliber, Apple stands a good chance of gaining market share and, more important, the attention of developers. You could see more Mac winners next year.

Potential winners of next year's BYTE Awards are already starting to surface. Microsoft's Windows NT and Access database manager barely missed being eligible for awards in 1992. Borland's Paradox for Windows has received praise from beta testers. Intel's Pentium is slated to appear this spring. Apple will introduce a new crop of Macs. And a new generation of notebooks and subnotebooks will have been announced by the time you read this. We are entering another exciting year of new computer developments.

Michael Nadeau is a BYTE senior editor. You can reach him on BIX as "miken."

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JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 117

BYTE

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Adobe Premiere 2.0

Adobe Premiere 2.0, Adobe Systems

This electronic storyboard/video editor got even better with version 2.0. It now supports external device control, 16-bit 44-kHz sound, SMPTE time-coding, and edit-decision lists. Thus, a Premiere 2.0 storyboard made with clips from high-end videotapes can control the equipment you use to edit and create broadcastquality output.

Mac PowerBook 180

Cx486SLC

Borland C++3.1

Borland C++ 3.1, Borland International

Borland's Windows-hosted C++ compiler is simply a joy to use: user-friendly, capable, and blazing fast. Color syntax highlighting, an integrated resource compiler, new 386 and C++ optimizations, and support for the Windows 3.1 extensions top the list of new features that make what had already been the premier Windows compiler even better. The compiler's application frameworks—OWL (ObjectWindows Library) and TurboVision—continue to demonstrate Borland's excellent grasp of object-oriented principles.

CorelDraw 3.0 for Windows, Corel Systems

In one $595 package, CorelDraw 3.0 for Windows delivers nearly all the graphics applications you could ask for, including illustration, an image tracer, an image editor, charting, a slide-show feature, and a visual catalog. The program's ease of use, coupled with its power, has users singing its praises. At press time, Corel was expecting to release a 32bit version of CorelDraw for OS/2 2.0 and was developing a Mac version as well.

Cx486SLC and Cx486DLC, Cyrix

A lot of factors fed the PC price wars of 1992, and the 25-MHz SLC and 33-MHz DLC from Cyrix played important roles. Cyrix's new CPUs support the instruction set of the i486, but with different pin-outs, a smaller cache, and no built-in FPU. Their performance falls between that of the 386DX and that of the 486SX. Pricing for the Cx486SLC, which includes a separate math coprocessor, allowed vendors such as CompuAdd to market desktop systems for under $2000 and was a catalyst for other CPU vendors to lower prices.

DEC Alpha, DEC

Workstations keep getting faster and faster, and DEC's scalable Alpha RISC CPU will help ensure this rising performance curve for the foreseeable future. This 64-bit CPU is rated at 200 MHz, for which DEC claims a theoretical rating of 400 MIPS. At that speed, other RISC chip vendors will have to pedal faster to keep up.

Ecosys aSi, Kyocera Electronics

The Kyocera Ecosys printer is extremely cost-effective. It uses an amorphous silicon drum and microfine ceramics toner to produce copy at high speeds, with no necessary maintenance beyond toner replenishment and minor cleaning every 5000 copies. There are no cartridges to replace. Installation and maintenance, including memory expansion, are easy tasks for the average user.

Excel 4.0, Microsoft

The Windows spreadsheet that set the standard keeps getting even better with successive releases. Excel 4.0 aims to be smarter about how users work, automating common actions and making clever guesses about what users want to do. New "Wizards" walk you through the procedures for charting and report generation, greatly improving Excel's ease of use.

FrameMaker for Windows, Frame Technology

FrameMaker helps legitimize Windows 3.1 as a platform for serious high-end applications. Developed for Unix and previously ported to the Mac, FrameMaker boasts cross-platform capability at its best, allowing you to ship files directly from one platform to the next. Its main strength is in handling book-length documents and technical publications. With support for OLE and the Multiple Document Interface, FrameMaker is a true Windows application with the power to handle the biggest jobs.

118 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

i486DX/2, Intel

The cornerstone of Intel's aggressive product rollout strategy in 1992, this so-called clock doubler gives PC users a simple, inexpensive (about $600) performance upgrade, eliminating or postponing the need to purchase a whole new system. The 50- and 60-MHz DX/2s run on 25- and 33-MHz motherboards, respectively, so systems designers can deliver the benefits of the faster speeds without additional design costs. A sign that the faster CPUs did not require heavy reworking: Scores of vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, and Dell, had systems ready for shipment on the day of Intel's chip introduction.

i486SL, Intel

With the i486SL, Intel has performed a rare feat in CPU development: It has created a new generation that is more powerful and more highly integrated but requires much less energy to operate than its predecessors. The i486SL is a 3.3-volt device designed for use in notebook and subnotebook PCs. With its low-power operation and 486 power, it could make 386-based notebooks obsolete.

Kittyhawk, Hewlett-Packard

Only 1.3 inches wide, the 21MB Kittyhawk hard drive might be mistaken for a book of matches. It's also rugged, able to withstand a 100-g shock while operating, according to HP. AT&T Microelectronics worked with HP to develop the highly integrated drive circuitry, while Citizen uses its watch-making experience to manufacture the drive.

The Kittyhawk's size and durability make it an ideal candidate for use in hand-held PCs, cellular phones, laser printers, and pen PCs—applications where the use of rotating media has up to now been clumsy or impossible.

Kodak DCS 200ci Digital Camera, Eastman Kodak

The Kodak DCS 200ci shares a lineage with Kodak's original electronic camera, but some important advances distinguish it. Its price comes in at under $10,000, yet it provides the same resolution and quality as its $25,000 stablemate in a smaller, consumer-oriented package. Pictures are stored on an internal hard drive and downloaded directly to a PC or a Mac. Operating costs are virtually eliminated: There's no film to buy and no need for a high-quality scanner. Results are almost instantaneous, and in an ecology-conscious world, there's no film or chemical waste to worry about.

Mac PowerBook 180, Apple Computer

Like its predecessor, the Mac PowerBook 170, the Mac PowerBook 180 weighs just 6.8 pounds. But Apple has based the PowerBook 180 on a 33MHz 68030 instead of the 170's 25-MHz processor, with a 68882 FPU and 70-nanosecond pseudostatic RAM. The maximum RAM in the 180 has been extended to 14 MB (an increase of 6 MB over the 170), letting you tax System 7.1's multitasking capabilities even further. The 120-MB SCSI hard drive option lets you pack even more files onto your portable system. As long as Apple keeps churning out portables like this, office workers may never go back to the desktop.

Microsoft Windows 3.1, Microsoft

Version 3.1 makes Windows faster, stabler, and easier to use. It also brings a slew of new and improved technologies, including TrueType, OLE, multimedia and pen extensions, better file management, more robust DOS support, faster disk access, and smarter printing. Taken together, these improvements add up to much more than a simple point release. Version 3.1 shows that

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book's coverage toward any platform or espiuring any ore fclit't point of Quite the contrary a fail bit of what appears in this book goes against soprevailing wisdom. I'll tell you what I mean by that in the. next section. What You'll Learn

What atd how much you learn from this booh depends on how you read it

go through it cover-to-cover, you certainly won't retain it all. Y/hat will:

you are those things you find most applicable to your present condition. U

ever, you skip around based on research you've already done, or based on.

lions you'te mailing about where yourinteresis lie, you'll retain more ust

information

Either way, effective use of ttie material in itus book depends on narrov/i

The fi-htlitncsin Pvcs'ucc/'s h'an

your breadth oil iiiertji I'd like io i In tik t very chapter tia: *orii-: thing in itfot everyone, but I know that's not so The people who read the chapters on desktop video production very well might not #ve a hoot about computer-telephone interfacing. So in a way. this is a different book for every reader. Your interests will guide you to read or skip chapters accordingly. To help you in this, 1 have organised each cha /" "1

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FrameMaker for Windows

I486DX/2

Windows' modular DLL-based architecture supports the rapid evolution necessary to satisfy the escalating demands placed on it by applications and users. For developers, Windows 3.1 presents a more solid base on which to build applications.

continued

Kittyhawk

Kodak DCS 200ci

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 119

"FEW, COMFORT, POWER, AND

Actually, we'd say impossible to beat. And so will you.

Just compare Express notebooks to the competition — the way leading computer publications have been doing. And you'll see that we have the most features at the lowest prices.

You'll see why Computer Shopper (8/92) said the Express 325NXL was "...destined to be the power accessory of the future." Why Computer Buying World (8/92) praised its "small, light, attractive and reasonably priced package." Why PC Magazine (8/92) said the 325NXL is the notebook made for "those looking for a good value at the $2,000 price point."

And why there should be no question which notebook computer to buy.

"... will help you get your work done comfortably at the right price."

PC Magazine, August 1992

These are the notebooks you've been waiting for — whether you need a 25MHz 386SX like our 325NXL or a 25MHz 486 like our 425CXL. As Computer Buying World said, "CompuAdd Express' 325NXL has most of the extras every notebook should have." So does the 425CXL. And they've got performance, too. PC Magazine gave the 325NXL high marks on video and graphics benchmarks and on battery life tests — "the thirdhighest score of the 70 systems tested."

Our super-twist backlit liquid crystal display has 64 levels of gray scale and a .30mm dot pitch. It measures 9.4" diagonally.

We install a 9600 baud fax/ 2400 baud modem, both with send/receive capabilities. And we include Quick fink II fax/ modem software FREE.

Brightness and other display controls are on the keyboard surface.

Most notebook microprocessors run at only 16MHz or 20MHz. Ours run at 25MHz. 425CXt contains Cyrix CX486StC; 325NXL contains AMD 386SX.

Sleep button and built-in power management logic for over 2 hours battery lite on the 425CXt; 3 to 4 hours on the 325NXL.

High density 1.44MB internal floppy drive.

Two click buttons work with the trackball to select icons and commands.

See for Yourself, fxpress Has The Most features

'fV.iV'

VV'i

LL

bush

Express

Dell

Compudyne

Gateway

Austin

PC Brand

MSDOS/W1N

325nxl

325N

386SXL/25

325SXL

386SX/25

386SX/25

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

HDSIZE

80

60

80

60

60

WTw/ADAPTER

6.6 LBS

7.6LBS

7.6LBS

7.1 LBS

8.7LBS

8.8LBS

RAM

4MB

4MB

2MB

2MB

1MB

2MB

FAX/MODEM

Yes

Option

Option

Option

Option

Option

GRAY SCALE

64

32

64

64

32

32

ZDIGIT RUNDN

5hr 28min

5hr 12min

3hr 26min

5hr41min

4hr 48min

2hr45min

BLTNTKBALL

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

No

PRICE

$2,095

$2,698

$1,806

$2,095

$2,293

$1,944

True notebook size (8.5"xl 1 "x2") •

"T\ie clear winner... with its terrific balance of performance and exfras."

Computer Buying World, August 1992

Based on PC Magazine Survey. August 1992

PRIG-REM TOUGH TO BEAT

\

Weighs only 5.3 pounds, even including the battery. Add the AC adapter, and it still weighs only 6.6 pounds.

425CXL includes a math coprocessor; 325NXL contains socket for Cyrix FasMath™ 83S87 math coprocessor

One serial port, one parallel port. External 800x600 VGA video, PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors.

425CXL has a 120MB or an 80MB hard drive. The 325NXL has an 80MB or a 60MB hard drive. Both have 4MB of RAM — so big Windows programs run great!

101 -key function keyboard implemented with 84-key layout has an IBM "feel" because it's made by Lexmark, formerly IBM's keyboard division. Fullsize function keys, too!

Built-in trackball with 200dpi for accurate pointing.

Our FREE carrying case has a shoulder strap and pockets so you can pack adapters, diskettes and other supplies.

Inverted "T" arrow keys are in the lower right hand corner, where they belong.

FREE LotusWorks 3.0 integrated ^"'*Bl

business software pre-loaded. - ?!S£pl

FREE AC wall adapter FREE

MICROSOFT. WINDOWS

READY-TO-RUN

Computer Shopper, August 1992

TYnrOCC ^ 7 1MYI Everyb°dy l°ves our notebooks'

LApiC)) J LJV\M. features. Computer Shopper

wrote that "The built-in 2,400bps fax/modem is snazzy"

and called the keyboard, sliding

door covering ports and general

design "an admirable piece of

work." PC Magazine wrote: "The

Lexmark keyboard is comfortable

to use. Large and prominent

function keys are ranged along the

top, and the cursor keys are in an

inverted-T layout just left of the

trackball." Computer Buying World

also praised the keyboard, which it

said "is remarkably well laid out."

wem is snazzy

$1895

80MB Hard Drive

Lease for only $70/mo

51,695

60MB Hard Drive*

Lease for only $62/mo

425CXL

fynrpcc 4 7 S fYl The 425CXL has a11 ft^terrifk

LApi C» T L J\.M. features that made its 386 partner so popular. But it has extra speed, thanks to its Cyrix CX486SLC microprocessor. This processor is smaller than other 486 chips, so it fits easily into a portable computer. It uses less power than other 486 chips, so you're less likely to run out of juice in the middle of a big job. Yet it has a built-in cache. And the 425CXL contains a math coprocessor, so applications that use floating point instructions are swift indeed.

1, thanks to its

ft»5

120MB Hard Drive

Lease for only $88/mo

$2,245

80MB Hard Drive*

Lease for only $83/mo

"While supplies last

The Best Technical Support

CompuAdd Express has just introduced the best thing ever to happen to technical support — our Remote Rescue program. Using Close-Up 4.0, remote communication software, our support technicians now can use a modem to talk with your PC and solve hardware and setup problems online. We install Close-Up's Customer/Terminal program on every CompuAdd Express system. Our notebooks already have a built-in modem.

CompuQdd

Scf^U44

Windows 3.1 and MS DOS 5.0

To Order, Or For Information On Our Full Line of desktop systems, call

800-925-3525

12301 Technology Boulevard, Austin, Texas 78727 Hours 8am-6pm (CST) M-F 512-219-1800 Fax 512-219-2890

351

We .icccpr MasterCard, VISA, CompuAdd Express Charge, money orders, certified checks (please allow ten days for processing), CODs (minimum order {(50), company and institutional purchase orders (minimum initial purchase £250, thereafter #50 wrth approved credit) and wire transfers. Shipping charges are calculated according to weight and distance. Texas residents, please add appropriate local sales tax. CompuAdd Express will replace or repair defective hardwar softwarc and consumable items. A \5 percent restocking fee may he charged. All return items must he accompanied by a return merchandise authorization (RMA) number. 30-day money-back guarantee does not include return freight or shipping and handling. Opened software and other consumables are nonrefundable. CompuAdd Express sells and services equipment within the United States only and will pay no customs, duties or tariffs on returned merchandise. Prices and product descriptions are subject to change without notice. CompuAdd Express is not liable for damage due to omissions or typographical errors. A copy of our limited warranty is available prior to sale from your sale; Pre-installed MS DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1, LotusWorks 3.0 and Close-Up 4.0 are OEM versions.

representative.

Circle 86 on Inquiry Card.

BYTE

tsnssm

Excellence

How BYTE Selected the Best

As they have always been, the BYTE Award winners were selected this year through a democratic process. All BYTE editors participate, including the 42 staff editors, 13 consulting editors, and three contributing editors. BYTE has 14 licensees around the world who reprint BYTE editorial in the native language of their respective countries. This year, six licensees chose to participate: RAM in Greece, Nikkei BYTE in Japan, BYTE Brazil, 0-1 BYTE in Taiwan, Microsystemes in France, and BAJT in Czechoslovakia.

The process begins with nominations. To be eligible, a product or tech

nology must have been introduced since the previous year's award process ended (early October) and must be likely to ship to users by the end of the current calendar year. We judge the likelihood of a nominee's shipping based on the vendor's announced shipping date and the apparent maturity of the product or technology. Nominated products must have been covered previously or have planned coverage in BYTE or its licensees' publications.

A nominated product should be one that breaks new ground in terms of new technology, performance, price, or innovative use of existing technology. An editor can nominate only products

that he or she has had some hands-on experience with or those that BYTE editors are reasonably sure will perform as advertised.

After the nomination process, every editor and licensee receives a ballot listing all the eligible products and technologies. Each voter then selects what he or she believes to be the 10 most significant ones for the year; a voter may pick fewer than 10.

Awards of Excellence, Distinction, and Merit are assigned based on the number of votes received. Cutoff points for each award are determined according to how the votes are distributed along a curve.

Microsoft Windows for Workgroups, Microsoft

This long-rumored Windows peer LAN, with its bundled Email and group-scheduling applications, brings groupware into the mainstream. It also allows users to send documents back and forth via Windows for Workgroups' networked Clipboard function.

Innovative features such as automatic network card detection make installation about as painless as it can get. New protected-mode protocol stacks

save a great deal of precious real-mode RAM, enabling pockets of Windows for Workgroups stations to coexist painlessly and peacefully on NetWare LANs.

Paradox 4.0, Borland International

Borland has successfully revamped Paradox, giving it a new interface without sacrificing its compatibility with older versions. Paradox 4.0 is faster, and the enhanced PAL (Paradox Application Language) has

support for event-driven programming.

Philips CDD521, Philips Consumer Electronics

The $7995 Philips CDD521 CD-ROM recorder will help revolutionize CD-ROM publishing. For the first time, businesspeople can now create discs in-house for prototyping, demonstrations, and even small-scale distribution. Bundled software converts the assembled data from your hard disk to the CD's ISO 9660 for

mat. You can then ship the finished product directly to a mass-production facility for duplication. The double-speed CDD521 CD-ROM recorder can write 600 MB in a half hour. CD-ROM publishing on the desktop has arrived.

Quattro Pro for Windows, Borland International

The long-anticipated Windows spreadsheet from Borland is finally here, and it was worth the wait. Quattro Pro for Windows tackles the problem of

Excel 4.0

File Edit Formula

Microsoft Exce - EXAMPLE.XLS

Options Macro Window

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$404 $9,677 $9,497

7.532

$1,199 $6,805 $2,301 $6,-165 $5,078 $623 $6,470

OTALi $37,691

$28,940

STD

4752283914

Year total

$129,953

;

$7,349 $3,481 $3,530

$6 722 $6,621 $1,422 $6,191

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Visual Basic for DOS

File Etlil V

-Tools

Check Box Cbnbrj Bex Command Bin Dir lis! Drive List File List frame

HScrollBar Label List Box Op] ton Btii Picture Box Text Box Timer VScrollBar

tools Options Window

iiglllHIII'llllflllTCT

: -t-t—:—Common Dm

log

Help

m^amwrnm

File ame:

filOpenList

IdrvQpenList H

dirOpenList

122 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

IMAGINE BROWSING

THROUGH THE LIBRARY OF

CONGRESS AT 1500 MPH.

That's how quick the world's fastest CD-ROM drive moves you through volumes of information.

The new Pioneer DRM-604X Minichanger is TWICE AS FAST as any drive on the market. It has a data transfer rate FOUR TIMES the normal speed. And it holds SIX discs at once — more than any other drive.

High speed data transfer rate is an astounding 600 KBytes/sec. High speed access time averages 300 msec Change time between discs has been reduced from seven to five seconds.

If six discs are not enough, you can daisy

THE PIONEER HIGH SPEED CD-ROM MINICHANGER

chain up to seven Minichangers from a single

controller, giving access to 42 discs — more than

5 million pages of data.

The greatest amount of information at the

greatest speed. It makes so much sense, it's hard to imagine why anyone would even consider any other drive.

For more information, call 1-800-LASER-ON today.

Or write to Pioneer Communications of America, Inc., Optical Memory

Systems Division, 3255-1 Scott Blvd., Suite 103,

Santa Clara, * K

CA 95054. CiD PIONEER

Pioneer DRM-604.X is a trademark of Pioneer Communications of America, Inc.

Circle 145 on Inquiry Card.

EVTE

Excellence

multipage spreadsheets with an innovative "notebook" metaphor that tags each page with a tab. It also offers Borland's Menus on Demand, an elegant object-properties inspector.

RocketShare, Radius

What's better than one 33MHz 68040 Rocket accelerator board in your Mac? How about two or more Rockets, each working in tandem on your toughest jobs? RocketShare is software that implements point-and-click simplicity to Mac multiprocessing. You assign applications to one or more Rocket boards and let them operate separately or tackle shared data together.

Toshiba T4400SXC80, Toshiba America Information Systems

What sets the T4400SXC80 apart from other color notebooks is its fantastic video and 486SX CPU. Toshiba uses a

Philips CDD521

custom graphics chip set to provide color gradations that are smoother than those of its competitors, most of which use 386-class CPUs in their color systems. The T4400SXC80's excellent keyboard and full range of options are simply icing on the cake.

TWAIN scanner standard

Interfacing scanners, digital cameras, and other imaging equipment to PCs has never been a job for the faint of heart: Each device typically required its own driver and sometimes produced files in a unique format. In 1991, a group composed of Aldus, Caere, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, and Logitech agreed on a standard for imaging peripherals that lets compliant devices be addressed with a common driver. Just as emulation of popular Epson and HP printers helped standardize output formats, the TWAIN (which stands for

Toshiba T4400SXC80

"toolkit without an important name") API codifies input, letting you add images to documents by simply selecting an option from a menu.

VideoSpigot, SuperMac Technology

This is the board that launched a thousand video clips. Apple's QuickTime enabled Macs to handle time-variant data such as digital video, but it was the VideoSpigot that supplied the video data. VideoSpigot is a NuBus board that converts onthe-fly live video and audio signals into a QuickTime movie that's continuously saved onto a disk file. VideoSpigot supports both NTSC and PAL video, and 24-bit-deep frames can be captured up to 30 times per second, depending on the Mac used. A supplied application lets you view and edit the stored movies, and several compressor/decompressors let you compress and view the movie files.

Visual Basic for DOS, Microsoft

Marry the strong compiler and debugger technology in Microsoft's BASIC 7.0 Professional Development System with the wildly popular Visual Basic development system, and you've got a sure winner. Windows is hot, but there's a lot of

life yet in character mode. VB DOS handles many of the same widgets as does its Windows cousin, using the same event model. And its mature optimizing compiler churns out really fast programs. Portability between DOS and Windows and a radically simplified model for developing custom controls make VB DOS a very attractive tool.

VL-Bus,

Video Electronics

Standards Association

Before VL-Bus, no standard for local-bus slots existed. This meant that if you wanted the higher-performance video or storage that local-bus architecture provides, you had to accept an expensive, proprietary design. VL-Bus provides a common interface that will encourage third-party development of less expensive localbus video boards and hard drive controllers. Since it builds on the existing PC architecture and is relatively easy for PC vendors to implement, VL-Bus has met with early acceptance. Companies such as Gateway 2000, Micronics, and ATI Technologies have already announced VL-Bus products.

continued

VideoSpigot

Microsoft Windows for Workgroups

g File Edit Project Clip UUndoujs

124 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

"I couldn't find a powerful CASE tool that was affordable.

So I designed one."

JAN POPKIN, CHIEF SCIENTIST POPKIN SOFTWARE & SYSTEMS, INC.

"I'm an engineer. And I know what it's like to need a highperformance and easy-to-use CASE tool. One that I could afford to place on every project team members desk, not just a select few. That's why I devel- ! oped System Architect".'

As Chief Scientist at Popkin Software, my role is to bring the real-world experiences of our developers to bear on the design and implementation of the best CASE tool possible. System Architect is the result.

It's also the result of listening to our more than 10,000 users. We take your advice because we know it's real. Then we incorporate it and feed it back to you in real-world solutions and new product innovations."

Low Price. High Performance.

Since its introduction in 1988, System Architect (SA) has proven that many of the features offered by more expensive CASE tools are available for a fraction of the cost. There are now more than MICROSOFT 10,000 SA copies in use at WINDOWS. 2,500 installations worldwide.

Quick and Easy.

System Architect works on IBM® and IBM-compatible PCs running MS Windows'3 and OS/2 PM'S. It comes with an integrated data dictionary that users can customize to meet their needs. Project personnel can easily share information both on and off a network. It's so user-friendly

WCenerate schema from entity diagrams.

©1992 I'o|>kin Software & Svaems Inconvinued. The Smem Archkeei !c

that even from the first day you can sit down, get to work, and produce results.

Multiple Choice.

System Architect works with multiple methodologies: Yourdon/DeMarco, Gane & Sarson, Ward & Mellor (real-time), Booch, Shlaer/Mellor (OO), Coad/Yourdon, Information Engineering and SSADM. And diagram types and charts including: DFDs, Entity Relation diagrams, Decomposition diagrams, State Transition diagrams, Structure Charts, and Flow Charts.

The Power To Grow.

To respond to advances in technology such as Client/Server Architecture, SA continues to grow in functionality and productivity. A few optional modules now offered are:

SA Schema Generator: Translates entity models from the encyclopedia into schema for DB2, Oracle, Ingres, SQL Server, Rdb, PROGRESS, Paradox, SQL Base, AS400, (SQL & DDS), Interbase, OS/2 DBMS, dBASE III, XDB, SYBASE, and Informix. Generates Windows DLGs, and C type data definitions or COBOL data structures.

SA Screen Painter: Develops screens for GUI or characterbased applications, which are

a trademark of Popkin Sofnrarc & SjSttms, Int. All oilier brand names and produces arc trademarks or rcgim-red iraderr

Circle 147 on Inquiry Card.

0 data models. DFD. and structure charts simultaneously.

automatically populated from your SA Data Dictionary/Encyclopedia; generates MS Windows dialogs and Microsoft or Microfocus COBOL Screen Sections.

SA Object Oriented Analysis & Design (OOA/OOD): Supports Booch 91 and Coad/Yourdon.

SA Netiuork Version: Diagram and data dictionary record locking allows multiple project members to work concurrently on the same project.

Built for Engineers.

SA also has other advantageous features: automated documentation; extensible data dictionary; normalization, rules and balancing; requirements ttaceabiliry; import/export; custom reporting; and CRUD Matrices.

Call us toll-free today at 800-REAL-CASE, xl09.

To find our how to qualify for your free 30-day evaluation copy, simply call us today or fax us at 212-571-3436.

SYSTEM ARCHITECT

Popkin Software & Systems, Inc.,

11 Park Place, New York, NY 10007

England 44-926-881186; Benelux 31-3406-65530;

Germany 49-6151 -82077; Italy 39-®-8700366;

Australia 61-02-346499; Sweden 46-8-626-8100;

Switz. 41-61-6922666; Denmark 45-45-823200.

ksof mar itspccnvc holders. Spcdfcauonssubjea to change ai ilifsolediscreTionof[in.'a)mp.inv.

BYTE

EMM

Distinction

AcerPac 150, Acer America

Perhaps the first true "infotainment" appliance, the AcerPac 150 sets a standard for multimedia PCs. The MPCcompatible system comes complete with a 20-MHz 386SX; 4 MB of RAM; a 130-MB hard drive; a CD-ROM drive; Windows; and built-in audio, fax, and telephone hardware. An AM/FM radio is also part of the package. Acer sweetens the deal with bundled software that includes Microsoft Bookshelf, QuickBasic, Windows Entertainment Pack, and Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia.

Adobe Illustrator 4.0 for Windows, Adobe Systems

This is a much-needed upgrade for Adobe's object-based drawing package for the PC. Its new features include 24-bit graphics, direct entry of text, preview-mode editing, and selective magnification. With the ability to open and edit files made by versions of Illustrator on both the Next computer and the Mac, Illustrator 4.0 provides a cross-platform solution for quality graphics.

Adobe Multiple Master, Adobe Systems

Got the right typeface, but it just doesn't fit in your layout? Multiple Master fonts let you

tweak a typeface's weight, size, width, and style while preserving its visual fidelity.

Approach for Windows 2.0, Approach Software

Approach for Windows brings ease of use to Windows database management. The product shines brightest as a front end to dBase, Paradox, SQL Server, FoxPro, DB2, or Oracle SQL files. Designing your databases is a breeze with Approach, making it an ideal product for novices. Its PicturePlus fields allow you to store image files and sound as part of the database.

Canon CJ10, Canon USA

The CJ10 combines a 400-dotper-inch color ink-jet printer, a color copier, a fax machine, and a 24-bit color scanner into a single, compact unit. The CJ10 is noteworthy simply for its excellent color output. Its four-color BubbleJet technology produces vivid color prints. Add the other components, and you have a one-stop graphicsimaging solution.

Compaq ProLinea series, Compaq Computer

Compaq may not have started the PC price war of 1992, but it certainly fired the loudest shot with its ProLinea line of PCs. Starting at less than $1000 (without a monitor), the ProLineas do not sacrifice tradi

Adobe Illustrator 4.0 for Windows

"j File EdU Arrange View Paint Type Graph Window

PT

NOURISHMENT FOR THE MIND

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XT

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Mac Performa 600

tional Compaq quality. Compaq did sacrifice some expansion capability, but it used its engineering prowess to produce a powerful, cost-effective PC that meets the needs of most users.

Dell 320SLi, Dell Computer

The 3M-pound Dell 320SLi is a bold move to provide a lightweight machine without skimping on performance or usability. The keyboard is full size, the nonbacklit VGA LCD is easy to read and requires no metal frame, and the external floppy drive fits snugly into a jacket pocket.

Desqview/X, Quarterdeck Office Systems

DOS-to-Unix interoperability is a key advantage of Desqview/X, but what really sets it apart is its ability to make X Window System-style distributed computing happen on pure-DOS networks. Decoupling an application from its display makes for a powerful computing model. Implementing that model for DOS, over standard PC network protocols, is a major achievement.

Epson ES-300C, Epson America

The Epson ES-300C is a 300dot-per-inch scanner that reach

es 600-dpi quality via software. The Epson scanner collects its RGB color information in a single pass, unlike the threepass method common to most 24-bit color scanners. The ES300C earns its award by virtue of its outstanding color-scan quality alone.

Gateway 2000 HandBook, Gateway 2000

The $1295 HandBook is arguably the best subnotebook to date. It manages to cram most of the standard notebook amenities, including a 40-MB hard drive, a full complement of external ports, and a reasonably good keyboard, into a 2Mpound package. Despite its CGA video and 286-class CPU, the HandBook is a good choice for those who like to travel light without sacrificing capabilities.

Compaq ProLinea

',pIpi

126 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Grid PalmPad, Grid Systems

This ruggedly made pen PC straps on your wrist and weighs less than 3 pounds. The PalmPad is intended for use in environments where up to now computers have not been practical. The power-line repairperson, for example, can use the PalmPad while working in the field. The warehouse worker can keep track of inventory more conveniently. The PalmPad's durability and use of the established PenRight development system make it a reliable choice for custom pen applications in the field.

Gryphon Morph, Gryphon Software

Morph brings the ability to do Terminator 2—style effects (i.e., where an android smoothly metamorphoses from one person to another) from high-end workstations to the Mac. You simply pick starting and ending images, designate common reference points on both images, pick the number of iterations, and let Morph work its magic. The output quality is good, and the price ($149) is terrific.

HP Vectra 486u, Hewlett-Packard

The first PC to use Intel's 66MHz 486DX/2 CPU, the Vectra 486u is a well-engineered and very fast system. It gives you easy access to all the major components without using tools; upgrading is a cinch. A local bus provides speedy video to complement the system's performance.

Iris Indigo XS, Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics has taken the very successful Unix-based Indigo graphics workstation, improved its performance, and lowered the price to $13,000. Overall graphics speed gets a boost from a proprietary graphics processor, and the Indigo XS now supports true 24-bit graphics.

LANtastic 4.1, Artisoft

Artisoft has boosted the performance of its peer-LAN operating-system leader, LANtastic, without sacrificing ease of use or making it more expensive. New features include automatic log-in, improved print handling, and an improved System Manager.

Lotus Ami Pro 3.0, Lotus Development

Lotus Ami Pro 3.0 is a highend Windows word processing program. It's high-end because it has many of the features found in full-blown desktop publishing packages. Many of the new features added to version 3.0 are in response to the latest upgrade of its major competitor, Word for Windows. But most of the features, like its "fast format" ability, make Ami Pro 3.0 a leader in its field.

Lotus Organizer, Lotus Development

This well-conceived, $149 personal information manager makes consistent use of the notebook metaphor for all six of its modules: calendar, to-do list, planner, address book, notebook, and anniversary tracking. This consistency improves ease of use. The modules all work exceptionally well together.

Mac Performa 600, Apple Computer

The Mac Performas are Apple's line of home computers sold through mass-market channels. The line includes the low-end 200, the midrange 400, and the high-end 600. Priced at about $2500, the 600 is the only model that is totally new. Its 68030 processor is clocked at 31.33 MHz on a 32bit bus. It comes with 4 MB of RAM soldered to the main logic board, and it can be expanded to 68 MB.

Apple made the right move with the pricing of these systems, even if the Performa 200 and 400 are actually the Mac Classic II and LC II.

Gryphon Morph

Mac PowerBook Duo 230, Apple Computer

Apple's innovative docking unit/notebook computer combination weighs in at an impressive 4.2 pounds and sports a 33-MHz 68030 CPU. The intelligently designed docking units come in two varieties. The large Duo Dock houses the PowerBook with its two NuBus slots, additional hard drive slot, math coprocessor, and SIMM slots for extra video RAM. The MiniDock clips onto the back of the PowerBook and provides all the standard Mac external ports.

Mac Quadra 950, Apple Computer

Apple's high-end 68040-based Mac, the Quadra 900, has been

Dcsqview/X

revamped to run even faster as the new Quadra 950. The engineers ratcheted the 950's processor clock from 25 to 33 MHz and boosted the I/O bus clock from 16 to 25 MHz. The fast, built-in 24-bit video supports bigger monitors plus a new 16-bit-deep mode that's ideal for handling digital video.

Microsoft Sound System, Microsoft

Compared to Macs, PCs have always lacked good-quality audio and standards for sound output. With its enormous standard-setting capability, Microsoft may have cured that problem in a single stroke. The Microsoft Sound System not only offers exemplary Windows-compatible audio but also adds exciting speechrecognition features, overdue in the PC arena, for less than $300. continued

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 127

EVTE

ehee

Distinction

Microsoft Video for Windows, Microsoft

Video for Windows serves a purpose similar to that of Apple's QuickTime for the Mac. It is both an architecture and a set of tools for creating, editing, and playing back digital video images under Windows 3.1. It is important because it allows any Windows-capable system to play digital video files.

Microsoft Word for Macintosh 5.0, Microsoft

Word for the Mac is more than a word processor. It includes a spelling checker, a grammar checker, a thesaurus, and a graphics editor. But perhaps most important is that it is file compatible with Word for Windows and DOS, two of the most popular word processing packages.

Microsoft Word for Windows and Bookshelf, Multimedia Edition, Microsoft

Microsoft has packaged Word for Windows 2.00 and the 1992 edition of Bookshelf onto one CD-ROM disc, making it one of the best arguments yet to buy a CD-ROM drive. The two integrated applications render Bookshelf's reference works accessible through Word's toolbar.

Mobidem, Ericsson GE Mobile Communications

The Mobidem is one of the first entries in what promises to be a rush of wireless mobile communication devices. Used in conjunction with a hand-held PC, the Mobidem connects you to E-mail and other broadcast data services through a packet radio network.

MultiSync FG series, NEC Technologies

The FG line continues NEC's important role as a desktop monitor standard-maker. The

FGs introduced NEC's flatpanel display and its crisp images. The FG line ranges in size from 14 inches to 21 inches, and all but one model include an innovative color-calibration system that helps you fine-tune on-screen colors.

Numero, PenMagic Software

PenMagic calls Numero a "financial work processor," and the name fits. Loosely based on a spreadsheet model, Numero lets you do a wide range of financial calculations by taking advantage of the pen interface. This unique product runs under Go Corp.'s PenPoint operating system.

Olivetti Quaderno, Olivetti Advanced Tech

This 16-MHz NEC V30HLbased 214-pound subnotebook features a built-in digital signal processor, providing speech support. You can expect to get about 10 continuous hours of battery operation from the Quaderno. Its small size (8 inches by 5 inches by 1 inch), DOS 5.0 in ROM, and good performance make it an outstanding small system.

Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Electronic Publishing, Oxford University Press

This CD-ROM-based product is the ultimate guide to the English language. Its cross-referencing capabilities make it much more useful than the paper version, allowing you to, for example, quickly jump to related words. In addition, the CD-ROM version of the OED is less expensive and consumes less shelf space than its more primitive predecessor. It's also fun to use.

PaintJet XL 300, Hewlett-Packard

HP has fooled a color ink-jet printer into thinking it's a laser printer. The XL 300 produces 300-dot-per-inch output in bright, solid, 24-bit color, and it uses the color version of HP's PCL 5 printer-control language. The printer accepts the same memory and network interface cards as the HP LaserJet III.

Perspective, PenSoft

Pen-based computers may find acceptance among executive users as electronic substitutes for the traditional appointment book. Perspective is a personal information manager for PenPoint that harnesses computer power to simplify a chore faced by every busy manager. Its intuitive approach sets an example of how software can adapt to people instead of the other way around.

POET, BKS Software

Persistent object storage is a hot topic in OOP (object-oriented programming) circles these days. Expensive object database systems married to languages such as Smalltalk have been available for several years, but they haven't met the needs of developers at the low end. POET, which stands for Persistent Objects and Extended Database Technology, works with the Microsoft and Borland C++ compilers and is also available for several versions of Unix, including Next's.

In POET's integrated development environment, you specify and refine systems of C++ objects. A precompiler converts these descriptions into definitions of classes whose data members are persistent— that is, automatically and transparently swappable between memory and disk storage. POET tracks multiple versions of class definitions; code that uses a newer definition will adapt dynamically to data written under an older definition. POET has generated a lot of excitement in the OOP com

Mobidem

munity, and we look forward to a forthcoming multiuser version.

RangeLAN, Proxim

Wireless networking got a boost last year from the Proxim RangeLAN, a PC-based spread-spectrum-radio LAN that costs less than $500 per node. RangeLAN operates at speeds comparable to those of AppleTalk—more than fast enough for the small workgroups it's aimed at—and yet costs only half as much as some competing wireless solutions.

Rocket 33, Radius

Do you lust after the processing power of a 33-MHz Quadra 950. but you're stuck with an old Mac II? The Rocket 33 is a NuBus accelerator board with a 33-MHz 68040 processor that is sure to rejuvenate your old workhorse. Installation is plugand-play. with no scary yanking of chips or trace-cutting. For certain applications, the Rocket 33 delivers a 60 percent performance boost when installed in a Mac Quadra 900. continued

128 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

*, Don't Shoot It,

LANDMARK... the widest sek of PC diagnostic software, firmware, and hardware in the world!

PC WON'T BOOT? KICKSTART IT!

Don't replace your motherboard, use KickStart 2"'. When serious hardware problems occur, nothing gets you up and running as fast. KickStart 2 measures power within 2.5% on all four voltages, shows Power-On Self-Test (POST) failure codes, and features on-board ROM-based diagnostics allowing you to determine and remedy the problem quickly, easily, and inexpensively!

Built-in serial and parallel I/O allows for testing remote via modem, or simply logging results to a remote terminal, printer, or laptop. You can configure your own test routines and store them in KickStart 2's battery backed-up CMOS RAM for quick future use. On-board switches, LEDs, and digital displays allow complete control over testing in systems lacking video or disk.

KickStart 2 is the ultimate SECURITY CARD, too. With two levels of password protection and pre-O/S activation, you can confidently prevent unauthorized use of your PC.

Includes serial and parallel loopback plugs and the Landmark JumpStarr AT ROM BIOS for testing ATs that don't issue POST codes. KickStart 2 works independent of your operating system. You can use it on DOS or UNIX systems. CALL for current pricing.

THE 5 MINUTE SOLUTION TO FLOPPY DRIVE FAILURE

With Alignlt'you can clean, diagnose, and align your floppy drives in minutes without a scope. Patented technology requires only a screwdriver to pertorm ANSI-accurate alignments (.3 mils).

Alignlt is ideal for corporate users with multiple PCs. The GOLD STANDARD feature allows you to align all your PCs to the same in-house standard, guaranteeing that all your floppies are perfectly interchangeable between PCs! Available in 3.5" or 5.25" for both high and low densities CALL for current pricing.

"The number of lests KickStart 2 can perform is mindboggling. .. IF THE KICKSTART 2 CAN'T FIND THE PROBLEM, IT PROBABL Y EXISTS IN YOUR HEAD, not in the hardware."

Rich Santalesa. Computer Shopper

"KickStart 2 system diagnostics board helps users check out virtually every aspect of a PC's hardware system... THE BOARD IS A WORTHY INVESTMENT tor computer maintenance."

David Claiborne, PC Week

PROFESSIONAL LEVEL PC TROUBLESHOOTING

Landmark Service Diagnostics'" is ideal for professionals requiring the most exhaustive diagnostic test capabilities.

Service Diagnostics is not just a single product, but a complete LINE of products. It's comprised of software, hardware, and firmware so you can choose the best "tool" for the job.

Aiigusl 1990 Service Diagnostics: The Kit

Overall Service Diagnostics: The Kil was the best perloimer. you're miming a service department. SERVICE DIAGNOSTICS IS NOT AN OPTION, ITS A NECESSITY.

Bill O'Brien, PC Magazine

When your PC won't boot,

you'll need ROM POST

firmware, a plug-in chip that

virtually "jumpstarts" the

system to determine what's

wrong. And, when your

printer isn't working, you

won't know whether it's the LPT port, cable, or printer

without hardware, like our loopback plugs (which

together with our software completely test the COM

ports).

To provide you a complete troubleshooting resource, Service Diagnostics is offered in single modules or in "kits." Components include; CPU-specific software (PC, XT, AT, 386/486, PS/2), ROM POSTS (PC, XT, AT) and floppy alignment disks (3.5" and 5.25").

All the Service Diagnostics software modules are available in self-booting versions for use with nonDOS operating systems like UNIX.

Service Diagnostics is powerful and flexible. Hundreds of tests can be performed on your motherboard, memory, video, COM ports, floppy and hard drives, printer, and more. CALL for a customized quote on the kit that's right for you!

PC DIAGNOSTICS MADE EASY

You don't need to be technical to use PC Probe"".

With clear, intuitive, pull-down menus and 206 pages of on-line help, troubleshooting your PC is truly MADE EASY!

And, you don't have to be handy with a screwdriver to make PC Probe pay for itself. Just by providing a diagnostic report to your service and repair shop, you'll save money and receive quicker service.

PC Probe runs over 150 tests including; motherboard and CPU, memory, video card and display, keyboard, COM ports, floppy drive and controller, hard drive and controller, and more. Includes VirusCure, Landmark Speed Test, AT SetUp & loopback plugs. CALL for current pricing!

SLASH HARD DISK SET-UP TIME

If you install, upgrade, or maintain hard drives, then you need DiskBase It'll save you boat-loads of time and money by putting the exact hard disk information you need at your fingertips... whenever you need it.

DiskBase reveals 12 technical specs on over 2500 hard disk drive models and 8 technical specs on over 220 controllers. Once you've located the correct hard disk model, you can instantly bring up a listing of all compatible controllers. CALL for current pricing!

• Toll Free Tech Support

• 90 Day Money Back Guarantee

• Federal Express Shipping

CALL (800) 683-6696

FAX (813) 443-6603 • Int'l (813) 443-1331

niANDMARK

RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION 703 Grand Central Slreel • Clearwater, FL 34616

Circle 171 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 172).

Circle 99 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 100).

Space - Savers

Stand-Alone LCD Monitor $995.00

This 10" black on white monitor is easy-to-read, yet compact. Resolution is 640x480 for sharp, flicker-free image. Sharp's high refresh rate, triple supertwist nematic technology with back lighting provides a super bright, low radiation screen with a wide viewing angle. The adjustable monitor base is only 29x14 cm. It lets you mount the LCD monitor on vertical surfaces or fold for transport. Comes with 1.5 m cable and VGA adaptor card. No external power required. IBM AT compatible.

fsjoW'. MAC

Versi°n AvaNable

Popular Space-Saver Keyboard $98.00

First successful alternative to conventional keyboard saves 60% desk space with a foot print of 27.3 x 15.2 cm. Has full travel tactilly responsive keys with standard left-right spacing for easy touch typing. 100 keys, compatible with IBM XT/AT PS/2. Many language versions available.

9" VGA Monochrome Monitor $198.00

640 x 480 resolution black on white screen with a foot print to match the Space-Saver Keyboard of only 25.0 x 25.7 cm. Tilt and swivel stand. No adaptor card included.

To Order Call Toll Free

1-800-328-2589

1 year warranty on all products shown. Order direct from stock with 15 day full return privileges. Visa, MasterCard, AmEx charges and COD accepted.OEM and reseller volume discounts available.

Spec Sheets Sent

By Automatic 24 hr.

FAX Transmission

1-703-662-1675

f:.t : /

First Choice In Space-Saver Peripherals

2836 Cessna Drive • Winchester, VA 22601 Phone 703 662-1500 • Fax 703 662-1682

(MastejCardj

BYTE

EZHM

Distinction

Satisfaxtion 400E, Intel

More than a fax modem, Intel's Satisfaxtion 400E also directs calls when voice, modem, and fax populate a single line. Other innovations include a PCL 5 emulation (for converting output, fonts and all to fax) and downloadable firmware updates—plus the original Satisfaxtion's 16-MHz 80186 processor and 512-KB buffer.

S3 86C911

GUI accelerator, S3

By taking over the processing chores of key Windows graphics functions, this chip speeds up the overhead operations demanded by Microsoft's interface. Because of low chip prices, users can buy accelerator boards with 32,000-color RAMDACs and noninterlaced resolutions of up to 1024 by 768 pixels for the cost of standard VGA adapters.

Tek Phaser USD, Tektronix

Other vendors offer dye-sublimation printers for just under $10,000. At the same price, the Phaser USD comes to the party with 300-dot-per-inch resolution, a RISC-based PostScript Level 2 interpreter, 16 MB of RAM, and an edge-enhancing technology that makes this dyesublimation printer suitable for high-quality artwork as well as scanned images. Of the very few available 300-dpi dye-sublimation printers, the Phaser USD has the best feature set and the lowest initial and operating costs.

Tek Phaser USD

Video Machine, Fast Electronic U.S.

For $4000, the Video Machine multimedia expansion board turns your 386 PC or Mac II into a high-quality video editing and mixing system.

Worldport Palmtop Fax/Data Modem, USRobotics

USRobotics has built the first fax modem designed specifically for palmtops or personal organizers, which just don't have the CPU speed (or the RAM) to successfully run fax software on their own. The WorldPort Palmtop Fax/Data Modem uses the Hayes AT command set for data transmission and comes with extensions that support fax operation.

XVT Portability Toolkit 3.0, XVT Software

When we gave XVT an Award of Distinction in 1989, we said it was "clearly the right way to bring order to the chaos of competing GUI systems." Last July, we rated version 2.12 the best of its breed in a review of cross-platform development systems. Then in December we noted further improvements in version 3.0: better support for specific operating-system features (e.g., Apple events and common Windows dialog boxes), an optional C++ library, and an application prototyping tool. XVT was a good idea to start with, and it keeps getting better.

Z-Note 325L, Zenith Data Systems

If looks were everything, the Z-Note would have been the top vote-getter. It's not just a pretty face, though. The Z-Note has a built-in Ethernet LAN connector. Its edgelit monochrome triple-supertwist nematic LCD video is among the best we've seen, and you can expect over 4 continuous hours of battery operation from this 386SL-based notebook. An optional Port Replicator allows you to plug in all the cables you use for the desktop.

continued

130 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

NDP™ Fortran Drives Them All...

386/387 (1 Megaflop)

i487™#™

486/487

(5 Megaflops)

QuadPuter-860 (200 Megaflops)

Extended DOS • OS/2 • NT • UNIX V.3/4 • Solaris • Coherent

NDP Fortran has been the leading 32-bit PC Fortran since its introduction in 1987. It produces the highest quality numeric code and supports virtually all x86 operating systems, processors and numeric devices. These are just a few of the reasons it was used by hundreds of ISVs to port their 3090, VAX and Cray codes to the 386. NDP Fortran is required to run packages from IBM, Aspen Technologies and Fluid Dynamics. IBM chose it to port their Optimization Subroutine Library to DOS and more recently OS/2. Aspen Plus, the world's leading thermo/chemical-process control software package, is the standard employed by corporations like DuPont. Every copy of Aspen Plus for the PC ships with NDP Fortran-486!

One reason NDP Fortran is still the 32-bit leader is tools. It runs with native tools on UNIX, OS/2 and NT. For DOS, Microway created 32-bit tools that were tuned to the needs of our customers. These include efficient demand paged virtual memory for our Extender and a linker that could handle a 20-megabyte library without going to sleep. We are the only vendor that provides a variety of numeric runtime libraries that make it possible to tune speed against

Microway

precision and error recovery. The correct choice of a library vs inline intrinsics can result in a factor of three increase in speed for some applications. Then there is the issue of numeric code quality. NDP compilers are not only globally optimized, but take good advantage of the Intel 387/487 stack, use advanced numeric optimizations and schedule instructions - all of which favor fast numeric and RISC devices like the 860 and 586.

Finally, Microway customizes its compilers to the environment. Our DOS 386/486 product includes over 1,000 pages of documentation, 300 of which are devoted to our GREX™ graphics extensions. The 200 megaflops of our QuadPuter-860 are optimally harnessed using NDP Fortran-860, libraries from IMSL, NAG and KAP and the PSR Vectorizer. Microway can build you a gigaflop NFS computational server using five QuadPuters housed in our industrial grade 486-B3 for just $50K - massive power without massive price. If you plan to use a 386, 486, 586 or 860 and require portability, numeric speed, precision and technical support, then NDP Fortran, C I C++ or Pascal is the only solution.

Please call our UK office to register for

NDP '93 - Microway's i860 and Compiler Products

Seminar in London on Feb. 17, 1993.

Technology You Can Count On

Corporate Headquarters, Research Park, Box 79, Kingston, MA 02364 USA • TEL 508-746-7341 • FAX 508-746-4678 Kingston-Upon-Thames, U.K. 081-541-5466 • Germany 069-752023 • Greece 30 12915672 • Japan 047423 1322 • Poland22-410041

Circle 122 on Inquiry Card.

BYTE

Merit

Ascend, Franklin Quest

It organizes your busy schedule paperless!}* in Windows.

AST Bravo series, AST Research

A well-engineered, low-cost desktop line.

aSSBggg ■ria^.l~Hraj .—■, i

4STSrai>o

AutoCAD release 12, Autodesk

The latest version of the venerable market-leading CAD program.

ColorFrame, Envisio

A flat-panel LCD that brings vivid color to your portable or desktop Mac.

Compaq PageMarq 15 and PageMarq 20, Compaq Computer

Compaq enters the network printer market with two feature-rich offerings.

Connectix CPU PowerBook Utilities, Connectix

A grab bag of necessary utilities for your Mac PowerBook.

DE-809TP Hub, D-Link Systems

A compact network hub that supports eight nodes for about $450.

Describe Word Processor 3.0, Describe

A powerful WYSIWYG word processor for either Windows or OS/2.

Doc.lt, Okidata

A printer, scanner, fax machine, and copier all in one in a wellthought-out design for under $4000.

FileMaker Pro 2.0 for Windows, Claris

The Mac's most popular flat-file database manager comes to Windows.

GammaFax MLCP-4/AEB,

GammaLink

It allows you to create voice/fax response applications for multiple lines using a single PC slot.

HP LaserJet 4, Hewlett-Packard

A standard-setting 600-dot-perinch laser printer.

Image Pals, U-Lead Systems

First-rate image file conversion software for Windows.

Infolio, Pi Systems

A lightweight pen tablet for custom-designed applications.

Intel PCI bus standard, Intel

A local bus implemented on the motherboard that updates the aging PC architecture.

JetFax 8000-D, JefFax

A laser fax printer for the LAN that also allows PCs to send faxes.

LanRover/L, Shiva

A plug-in device for Mac PowerBooks that permits remote log-in to an AppleTalk network.

LANtastic for Windows, Artisoft

The most popular peer LAN for the best-selling GUI.

Lotus Freelance Graphics for Windows, torus Development

Freelance Graphics features SmartMaster templates that simplify the creation of presentations.

Mathcad 3.1 for Windows, MathSoft

Engineering software that features OLE, color surface plotting, and formula publishing.

Mathematica for Windows, Wolfram Research

The Windows version of the bestknown mathematics software gets faster and less RAM-hungry.

Micromaster 486/33, Aox

Breathe new life into your PC with this superfast upgrade board.

Microsoft C/C++ 7.0, Microsoft

The latest C and C++ compiler from Microsoft for both DOS and Windows software development.

NCR 3170, NCR

This good-looking notebook is loaded with features.

NetModem/E 1.1, Shiva

The best LAN modem for mixedLAN and AppleTalk support.

NewWave 4.0, Hewlett-Packard

Object-oriented desktop management for Windows.

Norton Desktop for DOS, Symantec

A file manager, disk manager, and utilities set rolled into one.

Now Utilities 4.0, Now Software

A greatly improved revision of the popular $149 utility package for the Macintosh.

Picture Publisher 3.1, Micrografx

A top-notch editor for color bit maps and scanned images under Windows.

PoqetPad,

Fujitsu Personal Systems

The PoqetPad proves that "low-cost pen system" is not an oxymoron.

PowerPort Gold,

Global Village Communications

High-speed data communications and faxing come to the Mac PowerBook.

Primax Colormobile SC-424A

Scanner,

Primax Electronics

A color hand scanner that drives itself over the image.

Procomm Plus for Windows, Datastorm Technologies

The popular DOS communications package gets the Windows interface.

Iris Crimson

QMS-PS 815MR, QMS

PostScript printing in a small, easy-to-use desktop unit.

QMS-PS 1700, QMS

High-quality 600-dot-per-inch PostScript printing at 17 pages per minute.

QuarkXPress 3.1, Quark

A Mac-based desktop publishing package that keeps getting better.

Quicken 2.0 for Windows, Intuit

Personal accounting at its best moves to Windows.

Silicon Graphics Iris Crimson, Silicon Graphics

The first Mips R4000-based workstation.

Slate PenApps, Slate

Easy applications development under Go Corp.'s PenPoint pen operating system.

Spectator Real-Time

Recorder,

Rock Ridge Enterprises

A Mac screen recorder that stores images as QuickTime movies.

ThinkPad Model 700C, IBM

IBM's first pen system hits the mark.

Toshiba Dynanote, Toshiba Japan

A powerful 3-pound pen tablet that supports both PenPoint and Windows.

Unix System V release 4.2, Unix System Laboratories

Unix slims down and rallies under one standard to remain competitive.

UserLand Frontier, UserLand Software

This scripting utility brings batch files to the Mac. with the ability to reach inside compliant applications and manipulate them. ■

continued

132 BYTE- JANUARY 1993

^Jhds Really The I^stest?

DRIVES COMPARED FOR 50Mb TRANSFER*(in seconds)

Quantum 105s hard drive

made PMO-650 "optical hard drive"

Sony®SMO-E501 optical drive

91.95 102.82

I

155.50

%u Make The Call: 1-800-&49-5807

As you can see, the INSPIRE II optical drive is far faster than the much-ballyhooed "optical hard drive" is comparable to your typical hard drive and is many times faster than previous optical drives. And the INSPIRE II is made with the superior quality and reliability that has made Alphatronix the acknowledged leader in high-end optical systems.

Call Hie Source Of Optical.

Our reputation for quality and innovation goes back to 1988, when we shipped die world's first rewritable optical system. In 1989 we were presented the national Distinguished Inventors award. In the years since, we've received even more national awards for quality and excellence. Alphatronix has become the hands-down choice of some of die world's toughest customers, including NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

The world's first

optical drive is now

the world's fastest.

Gain Significant Advantages.

Now that same level of quality, performance and support is available for your PC, PC-compatible, Mac, DEC or UNIX workstation at a lower cost per megabyte. You can have die speed of a hard drive with die added advantages of optical: greater reliability and more megabytes on a removable, portable media. Aside from having vastly more storage, your system will never know die difference. INSPIRE II lets you simply "plug and play'.'

Why Waste Time?

So what are you waiting for? You know who's got die fastest optical drive, and you know who's got the best. Stop waiting and call us today at 1-800-849-5807. We'll send you free comparative test results, specs and everything you need to order the INSPIRE II. Only you can make die call.

SEEK TIME

(in milliseconds)

Pinnacle PMO-650 39

Actual times recorded in identical tests for average time to seek any random sector on disk.

^

A L P H AT RO NIX ° Tloe Source Of An Industry.

P.O. Box 13687. Research Triangle Park NC'27709-3687 Phone (919) 544-0001; Fax(919) 544A079

'Read 50 Mb data stored in sequential sectors at 32 Kb read request. Complete details of benchmark environment and procedures available upon request, Alphatronix. the Alphatronix logo, and Inspire are U.S. registered trademarks of Alphatronix, Inc. Other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.

For Macintosh information circle 66; for IBM/Compatible information circle 67; for SUN information circle 68 on inquiry card.

BYTE

mnM.

1 COMPANY INFORMATION j

Acer America Corp.

Claris Corp.

Electronic Publishing

Global Village

(800)733-2237

(800) 544-8554

Oxford University Press

Communications

(408) 432-6200

(408) 727-8227

U.S.: (212) 679-7300

(415) 329-0700

fax:(408)432-6221

Circle 1071 on Inquiry Card.

fax:(212)725-2972

fax: (415) 329-0767

Circle 1060 on Inquiry Card.

U.K.: +44 865 267979

Circle 1372 on Inquiry Card.

Compaq Computer Corp.

fax: +44 865 56646

Adobe Systems, Inc.

(800)345-1518

Circle 1362 on Inquiry Card.

Grid Systems Corp.

(800) 922-3623

(713)370-0670

(510)656-4700

(415)961-4400

Circle 1072 on Inquiry Card.

Envisio, Inc.

Circle 1373 on Inquiry Card.

fax:(415)961-3769

(612)339-1008

Circle 1061 on Inquiry Card.

Connectix

fax:(612)339-1369

Gryphon Software Corp.

(415)324-0727

Circle 1363 on Inquiry Card.

(619)536-8815

Aox, Inc.

fax:(415)324-2958

fax:(619)536-8932

(617)890-4402

Circle 1073 on Inquiry Card.

Epson America, Inc.

Circle 1374 on Inquiry Card.

fax:(617)890-8445

(310)782-0770

Circle 1062 on Inquiry Card.

Corel Systems Corp.

fax:(310)782-5220

Hewlett-Packard Co.

(613)728-8200

Circle 1364 on Inquiry Card.

Personal Computer Group

Apple Computer, Inc.

fax:(613)761-9176

(408) 746-5000

(408)996-1010

Circle 1074 on Inquiry Card.

Ericsson GE Mobile

fax: (408) 746-5520

fax:(408)974-6412

Communications, Inc.

Circle 1375 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1063 on Inquiry Card.

Cyrix Corp.

(800) 223-6336

(214)234-8388

(201)265-6600

Hewlett-Packard Co.

Approach Software Corp.

fax:(214)234-8397

fax:(201)265-9115

(printers)

(415)306-7890

Circle 1356 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1365 on Inquiry Card.

Direct Marketing

fax:(415)368-5182

Organization

Circle 1064 on Inquiry Card.

Datastorm Technologies,

Fast Electronic U.S., Inc.

(800) 752-0900

Inc.

(508) 655-3278

fax: (208) 344-4809

Artisoft, Inc.

(314)443-3282

Circle 1366 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1376 on Inquiry Card.

(800) 846-9726

fax:(314)875-0595

(602) 293-4000

Circle 1357 on Inquiry Card.

Frame Technology Corp.

Hewlett-Packard Co.

fax: (602) 293-8065

(800)843-7263

(software)

Circle 1065 on Inquiry Card.

DEC

(408)433-3311

(800)525-9283

(800) 344-4825

fax:(408)433-1928

(415)857-1501

AST Research, Inc.

(508)897-5111

Circle 1367 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1377 on Inquiry Card.

(800) 876-4278

fax: (800) 234-2298

(714)727-4141

Circle 1360 on Inquiry Card.

Franklin Quest Co.

IBM Corp.

fax:(714)727-9355

(800)877-1814

(800) 426-9292

Circle 1066 on Inquiry Card.

Dell Computer Corp.

(801)975-9992

Circle 1378 on Inquiry Card.

(800)426-5150

fax:(801)975-9995

Autodesk, Inc.

(512)338-4400

Circle 1368 on Inquiry Card.

Intel Corp.

(800)445-5415

fax:(800)727-8320

Personal Computer

(415)332-2344

Circle 1358 on Inquiry Card.

Fujitsu Personal Systems,

Enhancement Division

fax:(415)331-8093

Inc.

(800) 538-3373

Circle 1067 on Inquiry Card.

DeScribe, Inc.

(408) 764-9300

(503) 629-7444

(916)646-1111

fax:(408)720-8221

fax:(800)525-3019

BKS Software

fax:(916)923-3447

Circle 1369 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1379 on Inquiry Card.

(617)621-7047

Circle 1359 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1068 on Inquiry Card.

GammaLink

Intuit, Inc.

D-Link Systems, Inc.

(408)744-1400

(800) 624-8742

Borland International

(714)455-1688

fax:(408)744-1900

(415)322-0573

(408) 438-8400

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fax: (408) 438-8696

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Circle 1070 on Inquiry Card.

continued

134 BYTE* JANUARY 1993

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Circle 218 on Inquiry Card.

BVTE

j COMPANY INFORMATION ]

Kyocera Electronics, Inc.

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Quarterdeck Office

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NCR Corp.

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S3, Inc.

/ a r\o\ r\ns~ 01 a a

Video Electronics

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Standards Association

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Primax Electronics, Inc.

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NEC Technologies, Inc.

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Proxim, Inc.

(415)960-1630 fax:(415)964-5181

SuperMac Technology

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fax: (408) 735-7250

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Wolfram Research, Inc.

(800)441-6284 (217)398-0700 fax:(217)398-0747

Now Software, Inc.

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QMS, Inc.

(800) 523-2696

Symantec Corp.

(408) 253-9600

fax: (408) 253-4092

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XVT Software, Inc.

(303) 443-4223

fax: (503) 274-0670

(205) 633-4300

fax: (303) 443-0969

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fax:(205)633-0013

Tektronix, Inc.

Graphics Printing & Imag

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Okidata

ing Division

Zenith Data Systems

(609)235-2600

Quark, Inc.

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(303)934-2211

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fax: (303) 377-6327

fax: (503) 682-3063

fax: (708) 808-4434

Olivetti Office USA

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(800) 527-2960 ext. 5538

fax: (908) 218-5527

Toshiba America

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Information Systems, Inc.

(800)334-3445

(714)583-3000

fax:(714)587-6034

Circle 1413 on Inquiry Card.

136 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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FEATURE

Computing Without Clocks

Asynchronous operation could signal a new era in portable, low-power computing

DICK POUNTAIN

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND—In recent years, clock speed has become the signifier of computing machismo, possibly because it's the only feature that distinguishes otherwise seemingly identical PC clones. In view of this symbolic importance, computing without a clock might seem inconceivable, but that is precisely what Steve Furber of Manchester University and his team are working toward. Their goal is the world's first asynchronous implementation of a commercial microprocessor.

Asynchronous logic is relatively unfamiliar in the computer industry, which for decades now has relied on clocked circuits. Most parts of your PC—CPU, memory, disk subsystem, even the serial port—work in lockstep with the master system clock, just as Roman galley slaves rowed to the beat of the overseer's drum. Asynchronous or self-timed logic runs at its own speed, governed by local timers and the availability of data to work on. It's hard even to imagine an asynchronous processor because there is no simple metaphor, such as slaves rowing or soldiers marching, that helps you grasp the way the different parts work together. This difficulty is just as real for VLSI designers; clocked logic has become so popular precisely because it is easier to design with than asynchronous logic.

The Power Factor

So why would anyone want to design an asynchronous processor? The main reason is to save power. Power consumption has suddenly become a hot issue, partly because of the new interest in battery-powered portable computing devices (see "The PC Gets More Personal," July 1992 BYTE) but also for less apparent reasons. As VLSI feature sizes shrink to the 0.5-micron level and below, you'll be able to buy chips that contain tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of transistors. Given that heat dissipation is a serious

ILLUSTRATION: DAVE LAFLEURB1993

problem with current generation technology, chips of these densities will aggravate the problem enormously.

There are many tricks designers can use to save power, the most popular being to employ a static CMOS fabrication process so that the system can slow or even stop the clock when the computer is idle. A static CMOS process can help, but the fact remains that clocked CPUs are intrinsically wasteful of power. Even when those "soldiers" aren't doing anything useful, the clock forces them to "run in place" and use energy.

The Clockless Advantage

An asynchronous CPU running under maximum load would use the same amount of energy as a standard CPU, but in PC

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 145

COMPUTING WITHOUT CLOCKS

Inside Micropipelines

Clocked computer components use two voltage levels (normally 5 and 0 volts DC) called "high" and "low" to distinguish logical true and false. Ivan Sutherland's micropipelines abandon this scheme in favor of transition signaling, where the absolute voltage levels are ignored and only the change between two voltages is recognized as a signaling "event." Response to transition signals is edgetriggered, with rising and falling edges considered to be identical events. (Some magnetic and optical recording schemes employ such an edge-triggered logic.) Transition signaling is potentially twice as fast as clocking—and more energy efficient—because it uses

both signal edges rather than just one. Only the control circuits of micropipelines employ transition signaling; the data is still represented using high and low voltage states for Boolean true and false.

Timing in the event-driven world of micropipelines is controlled by a simple handshaking protocol called the twophase bundled-data convention (see figure A). Two wires, called Request and Acknowledge, connect the sender and receiver, as do an arbitrary number of data lines. In phase 1, a sender places a value on its data lines and then (when the data is stable) produces an event on its request line.

In phase 2, the receiver accepts the

HANDSHAKING IN MICROPIPELINES

Request Req\ Req/ ',

i '. * ! New ', ; New '•

ne:V

', New

ZZXSBC

\ [4

:/ \ if

1 \ :

Ack/ Ack\;

AckV

Acknowledge

Cycle 1 Cycle 2

Cycle 3

Figure A: The first phase of the bundled-data convention (red arrows) is initiated by the sender. The second phase, initiated by the receiver, is in green. The convention is said to be "bundled" because the request, acknowledge, and data lines must be treated together when factoring in circuit delays.

data and then replies with an event on its acknowledge line. Request and acknowledge events can be either rising or falling transitions in different cycles, and the three actions—assert new data, request, and acknowledge—alternate in a strict cyclic order. This protocol is somewhat simpler than that used in the most popular two-phase clocked logic, which has five events per cycle. More significantly, this protocol permits its two phases to be of different and variable duration; in other words, it's an asynchronous protocol.

Unlike some purer asynchronous approaches, the bundled-data protocol is not entirely insensitive to delays: The delay in transmitting data from sender to receiver must be less than the delay in transmitting request events; otherwise, the request could arrive before data is valid. For this reason, VLSI designers must treat the control wires and the data wires as a single bundle for timing puiposes—hence the name twophase bundled-data convention.

It turns out that you can't process events using just the standard set of Boolean logic gates (conceptually, NOT, AND, OR, and XOR gates; in practice, NAND and NOR gates and inverters). The conventional XOR gate works for events, but it actually computes OR. To perform an AND on events, a device has to remember its previous inputs, which purely Boolean devices cannot do. Sutherland employs the Muller C-element (named after its inventor, David Muller), which contains a 1-bit memory cell. The C-element outputs an event only when both

applications the CPU is very rarely loaded to the maximum. An asynchronous CPU running under partial load expends only as much energy as it has to; any circuit on the chip (e.g., the adder or the multiplier) not used by the current instruction is quiescent and effectively consumes zero power. A quiescent circuit is not switched off, however, and is ready to begin processing with minimal delay as soon as data arrives.

The metaphor that I find useful to describe asynchronous operation is a taxi service, where cabs depart not at fixed times but only when they are carrying passengers. Trying to achieve this fine-grained level of economy in a clocked processor would involve such complex sensing and switching of circuits that the

exercise would be counterproductive.

Another advantage of asynchronous operation is that it avoids the problems of propagating ever-faster global clock signals around a system. Clock skew is a serious problem for the fastest CPUs; witness DEC's Alpha, where more than a quarter of the silicon is devoted to clock logic.

A more esoteric advantage of asynchronous logic is that it offers VLSI engineers the opportunity to design better circuits. For example, the operating speed of an adder circuit varies, depending on how many carries are needed to process different operands. In a clocked processor, the adder design must be a compromise that accommodates the worst (i.e., slowest) cases, because every

146 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

COMPUTING WITHOUT CLOCKS

its inputs enter the same logic state, after both have received an event. In logic diagrams, the Muller C-element is represented by an AND gate symbol with a C inside it.

The other element you need to make micropipelines is an event-driven storage device. You can make such an element using three latches and three inverters, the event-driven equivalent of a D flip-flop. This storage element has two event inputs called PASS (which renders it transparent) and CAPTURE (which latches a 1-bit data value). You can assemble these devices in parallel, just like flip-flops, to build byte- and word-wide storage registers. The simplest micropipelined FIFO would contain one such register per stage. Empty pipeline stages are completely transparent, with a direct path from input to output.

Figure B shows the control logic for a section of a simple micropipelined FIFO, built only from inverters, Muller C-elements, and latches; the data lines run through the latches in the middle. Each stage is a loop around which control events flow, obeying the following state rule:

IF predecessor and successor differ in

state

THEN copy predecessor's state

ELSE hold present state

This circuit is stable when all the stages are in the same state (an empty pipeline) or when alternate stages are in opposite states (a full pipeline). The state rule is actually equivalent to a dig

Figure B: Data moves through the pipeline in waves, depending on the state of the inputs at each stage. The bubbles on the acknowledge inputs of the Muller C-elements represent inverters.

ital description of wave motion; in unstable states, control events will propagate down the micropipeline like waves, and the data values will "surf" along with them.

It's often easier to think about event logic dynamically, in terms of event streams. From this viewpoint, the XOR gate performs the operation MERGE on two streams, while the Muller Celement performs RENDEZVOUS (i.e., don't proceed until all the events have arrived).

There are several other useful primitive-event-logic operations, all of which can be implemented by 10 to 100 transistors. TOGGLE steers events alternately to each of its two outputs; SELECT steers events according to the

value of a second Boolean input; CALL triggers another process and then returns a "done" event to its caller; and ARBITER decides which of two events arrived first. CALL and ARBITER connected together act like a semaphore, thus permitting two or more asynchronous processes to share a single resource.

You may be struck by the similarities between these elements and high-levellanguage constructs (e.g., SELECT behaves like IF.. .THEN.. .ELSE). Using these circuits as building blocks, digital designers can make micropipelines that fork and rejoin, insert or delete values from the middle of a pipeline, and even set up a counterflow of data back up the pipeline.

thing must keep in step with the clock. For an asynchronous processor, you design the fastest adder you know how, and the fact that it will run slower for the rarest operands doesn't matter.

Given these advantages, it's not surprising that asynchronous operation is beginning to command more than passing interest from VLSI designers. In fact, a team at Caltech (Pasadena, CA) has produced an experimental 16-bit asynchronous CPU (see reference 1). At Manchester University, the Amulet project, headed by Steve Furber, means to create a fully asynchronous implementation of a "real-life" commercial architecture—the ARM6 RISC architecture (see "A Call to ARM" in the November 1992 BYTE).

In the Pipeline

To understand how a clockless ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) might work, you must first understand the asynchronous logic framework that Furber has adopted, namely Ivan Sutherland's micropipelines (see the text box "Inside Micropipelines" above). A pipeline is a linear array of processing elements that work concurrently on a stream of data values passed from one to the next like a Detroit production line. Pipelines don't reduce the time required to process a single element (the latency of the process), but by overlapping operations in time, they process more elements per second, thereby increasing the throughput of the operation. Sutherland's micropipelines are elastic, event-driven

JANUARY 1993 • B Y T E 147

COMPUTING WITHOUT CLOCKS

pipelines that operate solely using locally generated timing signals (see reference 2).

In this context, elastic means that the number of elements in a pipeline can vary up to a maximum number, so a pipeline can be empty, full, or anything in between (a bit like strings in Turbo Pascal). Event-driven means that the micropipeline is triggered by the availability of data items rather than by global clock signals, and an individual pipeline element gets control information only from its immediate neighbors. Each element waits for new data to arrive at its inputs and passes it on only when the next element is ready to receive it. Therefore, every element works at its own pace. This requires a timing protocol

quite unlike that for clocked circuits. The simplest micropipeline is a FIFO (first-in/first-out) buffer, which, because it has no processing elements, passes data through unchanged.

A micropipelined FIFO can inherently tolerate different data rates at its input and output ends, an ability that requires very complex arbitration logic in a clocked FIFO. If the input arrives faster than the output for too long, the micropipeline becomes full and new data must wait. Conversely, if the output is faster than the input, the micropipeline empties and the output must wait. This "patient" behavior has important consequences when you design with micropipelines.

Designing for Tolerance

Because the timing of clocked circuits is highly context-dependent, chip designers almost always have to redesign the whole chip to make a change in even a minor part. Micropipelines, on the contrary, are timing-tolerant, so modules of widely differing speeds will work together, with throughput limited to that of the slowest module. This is Sutherland's strongest claim for micropipelines: They bring the concepts of modularity and composability so familiar to software engineers into hardware design. Micropipelines compose like procedures in high-level languages, whereas clocked circuits are more like machine code subroutines.

For example, if one day you discover how to make a micropipelined adder circuit twice as fast, you can pop it into the next iteration of your CPU with the assurance that the rest of the processor will still work as before and that operations that were limited by the speed of the adder will automatically speed up. Such a stepwise refinement process has the potential to revolutionize VLSI engineering.

THE ASYNCHRONOUS ARM

Prefetch unit

PC

f8

Address output

«pc

Data path

Address

out

-«—i

-*-i

Mew

Data

Data

out

Data

Data input

in

Instruction or data

Figure 1: The asynchronous ARM processor is a micropipeline made up of smaller micropipelines. It takes data and instruction inputs and spits out addresses and data. PC stands for the "program counter. "

should not be able to tell whether the chip in your system is clocked or not. But this first iteration of the design treats external memory as if it too were micropipelined—an improbability, because no one makes asynchronous RAM. To use the asynchronous ARM in real-life systems, you'd need an interface converter between the internal two-phase bundleddata convention and the external clocked RAM. The eventual goal is for the asynchronous ARM CPU to become a macrocell—a self-contained gate layout that a fabricator can drop into any chip—with a micropipelined memory manager and cache memory on the same chip to isolate it from the external RAM. Thus, it makes good sense to treat the asynchronous/clocked memory interface as a peripheral rather than part of the core design.

Considered at the highest level, the asynchronous ARM is one big micropipeline that takes in a stream of data and instructions and outputs a stream of addresses and processed results (see figure 1). Internally, many of the ARM's subunits also behave as micropipelines; for example, the whole cycle of address generation, instruction fetch, instruction decode, and execution is pipelined, just as in most modern RISC CPUs. The difference is that here the pipeline is elastic and the number of prefetched instructions varies from time to time. After a branch, some instructions in the micropipeline may become invalid, and these are discarded by comparing a 1-bit parity flag attached to each instruction with a similar flag in the ALU that gets toggled every time a branch is taken. (This is an entirely separate issue from the "conditional execution" property shared by all ARM instructions.)

The data path is itself a three-stage micropipeline containing the register bank, the shifter/multiplier, and the ALU. The register bank offers a nice illustration of the problems an asynchronous designer faces.

Banking on Registers

Executing a typical ARM instruction involves three registers: the two operands (A and B) and the result register (W). In an asynchronous implementation, a new instruction can start executing as soon as A and B have been read by the previous instruction. This raises the possibility that the instruction might try to read W before the result of the previous instruction has been written to it. This could happen with a pair of calculations such as the following:

The Asynchronous CPU

Using the basics of asynchronous logic, the Amulet team has designed a full simulation of the asynchronous ARM6 architecture and has successfully run an ARM validation suite that tests all the major instruction types used in the architecture. Silicon layout is under way.

Obviously, the asynchronous ARM has to be fully instruction-compatible with its clocked equivalents, and in principle you

Asynchronous Logic Advantages

• low-power operation

• no clock skew

• design flexibility

• fewer heat problems

Rl :=R2xR3 R4:=RI +R5

where the addition would be completed well before the slower multiplication has finished. To avoid such a disaster, all attempts to read registers have to be delayed until the correct value is available—a process called register locking.

The asynchronous ARM tackles this problem by incorporating a lock FIFO, a

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special micropipeline that stores the addresses of locked registers. In addition, this FIFO queue enforces the correct writing sequence. Before any instruction can read a register, it must first check the contents of the FIFO to see if the register is locked. If it is, the read operation is suspended until the lock is cleared. To make this lookup as efficient as possible, the FIFO holds register addresses as unary numbers (i.e., bit masks where 1 bit corresponds to each possible register). The ARM has 31 registers, but R15, the program counter, is addressed via wholly different circuits, so lock addresses need only be 30-bit words with exactly one bit set. In the above example, the FIFO would contain

000000000000000000000000010000(R4) 000000000000000000000000000010 (R1)

To check whether a particular register is locked, you perform an OR on all the bits in the column representing that register's number. In hardware terms, the FIFO has an output for each column that indicates if a bit is set anywhere in that column. Register write operations use the register address in the last stage of the FIFO directly to enable the next register to be written, which removes the need for a separate write-decode register. This lock FIFO mechanism will work correctly given three conditions:

• Bits must be copied from one stage to the next in such a way that the value appears in the second stage before it's removed from the first (otherwise a 1 bit could be missed if the FIFO were checked while it was "in transit"). This is an innate property of Sutherland micropipelines.

• Empty FIFO stages must present all 0s so as not to mess up the bitwise OR. This is achieved just by holding the FIFO's data inputs at 0 whenever addresses are not being inserted; the transparent property of empty micropipeline stages does the rest.

• Nothing should be inserted into the FIFO while it is being checked. This condition is met by forcing all instructions to read their operand registers before locking their destination register so that the FIFO cannot be updated during register reads.

You can see how the properties of micropipelines help to achieve a simple and elegant solution to the register-locking problem, and the ARM contains several other examples that I don't have space to describe.

Off the Drawing Board

A commercial asynchronous processor would be a boon to designers of portable, low-power systems. Although one is not yet in silicon, Steve Furber is confident not only that the asynchronous ARM will work, but that it will offer significantly higher performance than the clocked version for lower power-consumption benefits that Apple's Newton project may one day reap.

The Amulet project is keen to demonstrate that asynchronous logic is sufficiently mature to move out of the laboratory into real-world systems. If successful, it will pave the way toward a new era of portable computing. ■

REFERENCES

1. Martin, A. J., S. Burns, T. K. Lee, D. Borkovie, and P. J. Hazewindus. "The Design of an Asynchronous Microprocessor." In Advanced Research in VLSI: Proceedings of the 1989 Decennial Caltech Conference. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.

2. Sutherland, Ivan. "Micropipelines." Communications of the ACM, vol. 32, no. 6, June 1989.

Dick Pounlain is a BYTE consulting editor based in London. You can reach him on BIX as "dickp. "

150 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

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152 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

ILLUSTRATION: GREG RAGLAND o 1993

STATE OF THE ART

MACHINE TRANSLATION

Translating the languages of the world on a desktop computer comes of age

MURIEL VASCONCELLOS

The process of converting information from one language to another with a computer, MT (machine translation), is an increasingly important technology. International economic and political stability and well-being are dependent on shared information. Never before in history has there been a more urgent need to topple the linguistic barriers that divide the people of the world. New common markets and stepped-up trade throughout the world have created overwhelming demands for linguistic support. Just communicating in the nine official languages of the European Community means translating in 72 different directions.

A thorough translation meticulously captures all the nuances of the original text. Sometimes, though, a rough translation is all that is needed. Most translations are still performed by people, but computers are shouldering part of the burden (see the text box "An International Network" on page 156).

Interpreters—translators who deal only with spoken language—don't have to worry about problems with input and output. But translators who must produce written output need a way of transferring their results to hard copy. Whether they use a dictating machine, a typewriter, or a word processing program, the process is slow and costly. Computers can take on much of the drudgery of this process and free the human translator for the more creative aspects of the task.

MT: What Is It?

MT comes under the generic heading of NLP (natural-language processing). At the same time, because the technology involves many complex tasks, it's often seen as a category unto itself. MT's special status may also stem from the fact that it was the earliest kind of NLP. The first translation machines were designed in the early 1930s, and serious efforts to develop MT were under way soon after the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) made its debut in 1946.

Unlike software that merely looks up words, MT analyzes the text in the original language (the source language) and

automatically generates sentences in the target language in which you want the translation. Input to a computer for translation is machine-readable text written in the source language. Output consists of text in the target language, which may be displayed on-screen or printed. Hard copy often shows the source and target texts side by side (see "How MT Works" on page 167).

MT can involve human assistance, but it shouldn't be confused with MAT (machine-assisted translation), a related but different mode. In MAT, a human translator prepares the target version using a word processing program and musters the aid of automatic terminology managers, on-line multilingual term banks, text-critiquing software, repetitions processing, and other computer-based tools that help to boost productivity.

The difference between MT and MAT is becoming less clear. Innovative systems in the research stage are blurring the distinction between the two by providing pieces of text that can serve as translation building blocks. Computer-based tools have become standard components of the translator's workstation, which may include full MT as well.

What Does It Do?

The dream is to build the equivalent of the babblefish of Douglas Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—a wearable device

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 153

Machine Translation

BY MURIEL VASCONCELLOS 152

How MT Works

BYEDUARDHOVY 167

Babelware for the Desktop

BY L. CHRIS MILLER 177

Resource Guide:

MACHINE-TRANSLATION

SOFTWARE

185

MACHINE TRANSLATION

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Photo 1: The first known trial oj'MT took place in January 1954. Shown here are a card punched with a sentence in Russian and a printout of the translation in English.

that simultaneously interprets from and into any language of the world. This concept sounds like science fiction, but in reality, speech-to-speech technology, in limited forms, is already in the wings. In the meantime, MT of written text is proving its mettle in a respectable range of settings.

MT works best if the subject matter is specific or restricted (e.g., maintenance manuals). The results are even better when the original text is straightforward and devoid of ambiguities.

Car manuals, for example, are consistent in style and vocabulary. Peter Wheeler of Antler Translation Services (Sparta, NJ) uses MT to translate automobile manuals from English to French for General Motors. "Automobile manuals are ideal MT texts—very dry, very objective, very factual, extremely repetitive, and very boring. That's not the sort of stuff a human translator works with well. With MT, I've achieved a threefold increase in throughput."

Progress in MT is measured by a system's ability to gradually handle more dif

ficult text types and language combinations, with as little human assistance as possible. Another key goal is to be able to translate between European languages and languages that have non-Roman alphabets and structures (e.g., Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic). Finally, progress in the field is also gauged by how flexibly the system fits into the user's operation.

Key Features

• fills a huge and growing need for its technology

• is moving to desktop systems

• can double human output

• is cost-efficient

• offers dial-up services

Future Enhancements

• provide better-quality systems

• add more applications

Two key factors have come together to make MT easier to use. For a long time, the primary obstacle to more widespread use of MT was the cost and difficulty of getting text into the computer (see photo 1). Now there are large volumes of text in electronic files ready to serve as fodder for MT.

But the most dramatic difference is that personal computers and workstations now offer enough processing power to take on the MT functions that have been mainframe-dependent for nearly 40 years. Downsizing from the Goliaths to the Davids of computing has produced a new generation of devices that will soon be able to perform MT applications on the fly.

MT systems spend a lot of time looking at the various ways in which a sentence can be parsed and considering the roles and meanings that each word can have. Most of this time is spent mulling over possible choices. For example, the mainframe-based Systran system from Systran Translation Systems (La Jolla, CA) processes about 10,000 rules per second. If

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MACHINE TRANSLATION

you are performing MT on a desktop system and your document has many pages, the process may tie up your computer for quite a while.

Junior Babel-Busters

As the technology gravitates to smaller and more personalized computers, MT is becoming accessible to a larger public. The first personal computer-based system— the MicroCAT (which is no longer produced)—appeared in 1983. Today, the Sun Microsystem Sparcstation and other midrange Unix workstations are host to many commercial MT systems, as are virtually all the laboratory prototypes (see "Babelware for the Desktop" on page 177). Unix workstations, 386 and 486 PCs, and high-end Macs all provide sufficient power on the desktop to run the biggest MT systems. The challenge is to adapt the software to the new environments.

A recent example of a system designed for the capabilities of the 386 is the Engspan, which was developed by the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, D.C. In late 1992, this system, which translates from English to Spanish, was ported from a mainframe computer and runs efficiently on a 33-MHz 386 with DOS, 2 MB of RAM, and an 80-MB hard disk.

MT on Your Desktop

Being able to tap into MT from your desktop has several advantages. For example, you can use OCR (optical character recognition), CD-ROM, and internal modems and faxes to capture text and graphics, download databases, and exchange electronic files with clients anywhere in the world. Many databases offer information in languages other than English. For example, you might search other countries' patents or a body of legal decisions or update your client on the latest Japanese advances in superconductivity.

With database management tools for retrieving terminology and previously translated text, style checkers, and desktop publishing software, you have everything you need to set up your own multilingual operation. Executive Communication Systems (Provo, UT) makes MT ToolK.it, which enables you to create your own dictionaries, write your own linguistic rules, and customize the basic architecture of an MT system. It has been used to develop systems for Korean and Norwegian translation.

LANs offer large groups of users the potential to centralize some of the more time-consuming tasks. You can farm out a CPU-intensive translation to a less-used machine and receive the results back as a

An International Network

MT users and would-be users, as well as researchers and commercial developers, have recently joined in a common endeavor to improve and promote the technology as well as share information about MT. They have formed the IAMT (International Association for Machine Translation) and, within its overall framework, the AMTA (Association for Machine Translation in the Americas).

IAMT and AMTA publish MTNews International every four months and the MT Yellow Pages once a year. In November 1992, IAMT/AMTA held a workshop that evaluated MT technologies and provided a showcase of MT systems.

For further information, write to the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, 655 15th St. NW, Suite 310, Washington, D.C. 20005.

file on a server. You can store the large main lexicon and specialized glossaries in one location and make them available to all. Use of a centralized dictionary makes it possible for managers and terminologists to control the introduction of updates.

You can also incorporate MT into the desktop publishing process. By the time it reaches the MT phase, input text will have already been tagged with the publisher's markup codes. Here MT can offer considerable savings, because the reintroduction of markup codes can double the cost of translating a text.

Graphics and tables, which are expensive and painstaking to translate by hand, can be reproduced exactly as they appear in the original. MT can not only speed up the task but also prevent errors that could slip in if the data were rekeyed. These savings, of course, are multiplied by the number of target versions generated.

An alternative way of bringing MT to the average personal computer user is through a dial-up service. From your computer, you can send a file by modem to a mainframe host. In the U.S., you can call up Systran and access a smorgasbord of languages. In France, you can get Systran translations through the nationwide network Minitel. And in Japan, you have a choice of Fujitsu's Atlas-II on NiftyServe or NEC's Pivot on PC-VAN, another large network. CompuServe will soon be offering similar services.

How MT Works

The philosopher I. A. Richards once wrote that translation is "probably the most com

plex type of event yet produced in the evolution of the cosmos." It's no wonder, then, that the architectures of MT systems vary in seemingly infinite ways. Certain elements, however, are common to the process.

In any MT system, the computer uses three sets of data: the input text, the translation program (including I/O routines), and the permanent resident knowledge sources. The most essential of the knowledge sources is the dictionary—a file of records containing the words and phrases of the source language against which the input text must be matched. Knowledge sources also include the sets of rules that are fired at various points in the translation process. Finally, many systems store a bank of information about the concepts invoked by the dictionary.

The largest MT systems work with dictionaries containing several hundred thousand words. For each word, a record holds formalized representations of information about how the word functions. Even when condensed, the record for each word can be as much as 100 bytes long. With a heavyduty system, the dictionary is measured in tens of megabytes.

The first task of any MT system is to match the words of the input text against those stored in the dictionary. It can use either a binary or hash search strategy. When it needs to look up a word, it first goes to the index residing in memory and locates the appropriate page of memory. For each word that it matches, it retrieves a complete record that includes information about the possible functions of the word

156 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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MACHINE TRANSLATION

MT at Your Service

EDUARD HOVY

Perhaps within a decade, MT (machine translation) will appear in your life in several ways—translating telephones, multilingual E-mail, and machines that scan and translate letters and articles written in foreign languages. You may be buying toys over the phone from a sales agent in Japan with the telephone doing the translating. And when you travel to a foreign country, you'll be able to get the same bargain rates that the natives do with your trusty PET (Portable Electronic Translator).

Several technologies will make such scenarios possible: automated speech recognition, speech generation, OCR (optical character recognition), and machine translation. Although PETs are years away, intermediate tools are already available, either as research prototypes or as commercial products.

From "Mushi-Mushi" to "Hello"

One of the most complex component technologies is speech recognition. Alter about 30 years of research, systems can recognize limited amounts of speech without first having been trained on specific voice patterns. Systems have error rates of only a few percent when the domain (i.e., a vocabulary specific to a certain environment or discipline) is limited to a few thousand words.

Most speech-translation efforts are taking place in Japan. Researchers at the ATR Laboratories (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan) have been working on a translating-telephone project for about six years. Working in English and Japanese, the prototype system, SL-TRANS, will translate inquiries about conference registrations. The company's goal is for the system, using a vocabulary of 1500 words, to be able to translate anyone's speech without the system being tailored to specific voice patterns.

Speech-recognition systems combine hardware (e.g., microphones) with statistically based software to match incoming phonemes (i.e., sounds) against

Photo A: The Passport combines digital photography and characterrecognition technologies with bilingual dictionaries on chips. Using this hand-held device, you can capture an image of something you'd like translated and see the translation of the words or symbols. (Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University)

stored phoneme patterns and to produce strings of text. The best experimental systems using standard workstations operate at well over 90 percent accuracy on domains of a few thousand words. An NEC system can recognize a 5000word vocabulary of isolated words or a 1500-word vocabulary of fluid speech. A consortium of 10 universities and companies in Germany is planning an ambitious speech-translation project. Personnel associated with the Verbmobil project will build a portable device to help translate languages for business discussions. Because it's easier to understand a foreign language than to speak one, the project personnel say, the system will use English as a kind of interlingua.

The Bibliotheque Nationale

Multilingual information-retrieval systems are closer to becoming commercially available than speech-recogni

tion systems are. With retrieval systems, you'll be able to get information on your favorite topic by giving a collection of keywords or a few relevant paragraphs.

Researchers at Fujitsu Laboratories (Tokyo, Japan) have built a multilingual information-retrieval system that translates query words in German or English into Japanese. It retrieves relevant articles; translates their titles into German or English; and, on request, translates the article as well.

E-Mail from A to Z

Computing environments are becoming increasingly dependent on networks. Communications are more electronic and less paper-based than they were in the past. Thus, people have a greater need for inexpensive technology that offers browsing-quality translation assistance of E-mail messages. Although most of the technology for this application already exists, no products are on the market yet. Fujitsu has demonstrated a prototype, and Dragon Systems (Boston, MA) is developing a PC-based product that will handle Japanese, Spanish, and English translations.

Future Applications

In a competition sponsored by Apple's Advanced Technologies Group, students at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design offered several innovative ideas. One prizewinner was the Illumina, an MT machine that stands in an office or library next to the printer and photocopy machine. Combining optical-scanning and OCR technology with personal computer—based MT, the Illumina translates whatever text you place on its faceplate. Given the high character-recognition rate available in commercial systems, this type of system may start appearing as soon as more general-domain MT systems develop out of the prototype stage—perhaps by the end of the decade.

Carnegie Mellon students have also

160 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

MACHINE TRANSLATION

and its relationship to words that may occur with it.

developed the Passport, a hand-held word-translation device that uses photography to input text (see photo A). For example, on your travels, you spot graffiti on a wall. After photographing the slogan onto the Passport's display, you circle the words you're interested in, and the Passport's bilingual dictionary chip provides a translation on an LCD. Granted, for a few hundred dollars you can buy systems that will translate the foreign words that you type in, with a separate chip for each language pair, but try typing in a few Chinese characters.

A third Carnegie Mellon project addresses the needs of hearing-impaired people. The Signspeak System is intended to translate American Sign Language and spoken English (see photo B). Its design calls for a glove with sensors and an attachment to track arm position and hand motion. These sensors feed their signals to a personal computer, which converts them into English words and uses voice-synthesis software to convert the reply to text, which is displayed on the computer's screen.

Several neural-network and connectionist project developers are also working toward future MT applications. Carnegie Mellon and the University of Karlsrule in Germany are jointly developing the C-Star System. In this system, trained connectionist networks recognize English text, create internal data structure patterns, and generate Chinese text as output. A set of neural-network programs called ANN (Architecture for Neural Networks), developed at the Huntsville Achievement School (Huntsville, AL), follows a similar approach with English and Russian.

These applications are but the vanguard of the MT revolution. More have yet to come. Over the past few years, fax machines have quietly changed our lives. In a few decades, automated MT systems will be doing the same. Thanks to the innovative use of MT and related technology, speech and writing in a multitude of languages will become easier to find, read, and understand.

Photo B: To help hearing-impaired people communicate with those who don't use American Sign Language, students at Carnegie Mellon developed this prototype translator. The design uses gloves with sensors to send hand- and arm-movement information to a personal computer. Software converts the signals into English words, which are synthesized and output over a loudspeaker. (Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University)

Eduard Hovy is a project leader at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is the author and coeditor of two hooks on automated language generation. You can reach him on BIX c/o "editors" or on the Internet at hovy@isi.edu.

Translation Quality

Translation quality generally improves as the systems acquire more rules and larger and more detailed lexicons. But there is a trade-off.

In the long run, systems that have robust dictionaries and rule bases demand less human intervention, but they are more costly to develop or tailor to a particular environment. On the other hand, systems that do not have these resources require more human labor to turn out a finished product.

Other factors of consideration are the structural proximity of the two languages, the domain, and the type of text. Most important, the quality required of the translation depends on how it will be used. Can the raw output be delivered without further polishing? How much human intervention is needed to make it acceptable to the client?

The quality of MT is also closely tied to the amount of human assistance the user is willing and able to provide. The raw MT product—direct from the machine—may be usable for certain purposes, but some human participation is usually involved.

You can intervene at any point along the way: before, during, or after the automatic translation process. People's time costs more than that of computers. The idea is to keep the number of human steps to a minimum by choosing the form of intervention that offers the best mileage for the application.

When to Edit

If the operator intervenes before a source text is translated, the step is called preediting. The idea is to eliminate lexical and structural ambiguities before a translation program takes over.

Preediting comes in two flavors. In the first instance, you revise a text that already exists. Sometimes, there is easy-to-use interactive software to help you with the task. For instance, The Smart Expert Editor by Smart Communications (New York, NY) is designed to serve as MT preprocessing software.

In the second kind of preediting, you prepare the text for the machine. It may be a new version of an existing text, or it may be a text that was drafted for the purpose, according to preestablished rules and vocabulary.

Although preediting makes the job easier for the machine, you often have to edit the output. Preediting is worthwhile when you are translating from one language to many, because it reduces the need for

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 161

MACHINE TRANSLATION

human assistance downstream. This step can also be justified when the source language poses major linguistic problems at the input level.

When an operator responds to questions posed by the computer during the translation, the mode is called interactive editing. The operator is asked to resolve ambiguities that the program has identified. The computer offers various alternatives, and the operator clicks on the most appropriate choices.

By making these decisions before the target-generation phase, interactive editing reduces the manual editing required after the translation. An early product that offered interactive editing was Transactive by Alpnet (Provo, UT). And making its debut is the Augmentor, developed at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA). Carnegie Mellon hopes that the combination of a rich interlingua, a domainspecific application, and an interactive interrogation component will eliminate

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manual preediting or postediting.

The most common form of human assistance is postediting. In this mode, you add the finishing touches to the machinetranslated output after the computer has finished its job. Postediting is more laborintensive than the other forms of editing, but it gives you control over the quality of the text. You can rarely avoid this stage when the translation is intended for a large number of readers.

In most situations, the posteditor, who is ordinarily a professional translator, thoroughly reviews the output and makes any necessary changes. The standards and purposes of the user will affect how long the process takes.

Typically the posteditor works at the computer, using an off-the-shelf word processing package. Macros designed for MT can speed up the process. Depending on the text, posteditors can double the output of traditional human translation, turning out between 3000 and 10,000 words in an 8-hour day.

Gathering vs. Disseminating Data

How you use MT depends on whether you want to gather or disseminate information. When gathering information, you translate text from a foreign language into your own. When you disseminate information, you translate it from your language into another.

Often, the usefulness of the information you gather is time-dependent (e.g., weather reports, job listings, and patent information). And at times, only a few people will see an information-only translation. For this reason, the quality doesn't have to be perfect. Because you can rarely predict what the style and subject matter of source text will be like, you need an MT system that is robust enough to deal with whatever it encounters. This is known as a general-purpose system.

The demands of general-purpose MT place a heavy burden on the system's analysis component: The grammar must cover a broad range of situations, and the dictionaries and knowledge sources must be large and detailed. Even with the best linguistic preparation, however, the quality of the output will not be as smooth as that produced by a system tailored to a specific domain.

In information-gathering operations, the input documents usually come from a wide range of sources and are available only in hard copy. The cost of converting the input into an electronic file may be prohibitive. And the use of OCR in combination with automatic postprocessing and human monitoring might not make enough of a difference to warrant the introduction

162 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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MACHINE TRANSLATION

of MT. However, what is making MT more feasible for information-gathering purposes is the widespread availability of text in digital form.

General-purpose MT systems can speed up the work of in-house translators who have to produce publication-quality copy in various subject areas. For example, the Logos system, developed by Logos (Mt. Arlington, NJ), supports translators that perform this kind of work in the Canadian Department of the Secretary of State and in

a number of translation service bureaus. Similarly, the translation team at the Union Bank of Switzerland uses Metal, marketed in the Americas by SieTech of Siemens Nixdorf (Munich, Germany).

The most widespread use of MT is in the translation of texts in limited domains (e.g., customer support manuals). This application allows companies to launch their products in several countries simultaneously. Here the users call the shots: They reduce input ambiguity by having a sin

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gle domain, and they can predict, and even control, the style of the source text (see the text box "Is MT Right for You?" on page 180). In these applications, MT also helps to keep the terminology consistent throughout a firm's branches—an important feature in large projects, where product manuals can be thousands of pages long.

Now What?

The written-text MT systems of today will give way to the voice-based systems of tomorrow. Soon special-purpose, speaker-dependent applications will begin to emerge (see the text box "MT at Your Service" on page 160). Progress in this area will depend not only on advances in the MT environment but also on breakthroughs in speech-recognition technology.

On a broader scale, the research that has gone into developing knowledge sources and internal representations for MT is useful in other areas. Progress in MT foreshadows a bigger step toward the general availability of NLP applications. Naturallanguage analyzers and text generators— key components of MT systems—will be standard software.

The results of MT research are also being used to explore better ways of capturing, representing, and storing knowledge. The basic step that must taken before anyone can use text is to parse it. As generalpurpose parsers become available, it will be possible for computers to parse the entire body of knowledge that is stored in the world's libraries. The establishment of an archive holding parsed information available to all would be a boon to scientists who build large knowledge bases— and ultimately to you.

MT has never enjoyed greater public awareness or a more favorable climate of opinion than it does today. If you can't conquer Babel, at least, thanks to MT, you can have a better idea of the knowledge that's available in the world and how you can tap into it. ■

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

CrisA. Fitch, vice president of engineering

for Systran Translation Systems; Marjorie Leon, of the Pan American Health Organization; and Mark Clarkson, a freelance science writer from Wichita, Kansas, contributed to this article.

Muriel Vasconcellos is president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas and is a Washington, D.C.~ based consultant in translation and machine translation. You can reach her on BIX c/o "editors" or on CompuServe at 71024,123.

164 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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STATE OF THE ART/Machine Translation

HOW MT WORKS

MT systems tackle translation in several wayseach has its own benefits and trade-offs

Languages are complicated, and this makes translation a formidable challenge. Each language is unique, with elements that make it colorful and special. But that's precisely what makes languages difficult to translate, whether a human or a machine does the job.

For example, the Dani people of New Guinea have only two words to describe color: mill for dark cool and mold for light warm. How would you tell a Dani store owner, "I prefer the strawberry-red shirt over the pink one"? Fortunately, automated translation is feasible, because some applications (e.g., technical documents) are straightforward. As MT (machine translation) systems evolve, they will take on the challenge of general translation.

MT systems become more complex as you move from the simplest direct systems to transfer systems to the most complex interlingual systems. You can also categorize MT systems another way: those whose knowledge bases are built by humans and those that collect their rules statistically.

Direct-Translation Systems

Software that translates languages by replacing source-language words with target-language words is called a direct-translation system. Such a translation system is appropriate for applications where you translate text that has a limited vocabulary and a defined style. Direct MT systems contain correspondence lexicons, or lists of typical patterns of words and phrases in a source language and the corresponding target-language words and phrases. Depending on the size of the system's correspondence lexicon and on how cleverly the replacement patterns are defined, the

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JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 167

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HOW MT WORKS

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE PRODUCED BY A PARSER

noun phrase proper noun Washington

I sentence

verb phrase —

verb adverb

i i

announced yesterday

^^^ complement

complementizer"" sentence

that nojjn phrase verb phrase

quantifier noun verb etc.

i i / \

each home auxiliary have

will

Figure 1: Part of the syntactic structure produced by the parser for the sample sentence. In the tree, all nonleaf nodes are syntactic categories.

resulting text is more or less readable in the target language.

Let's say you want to translate the following sentence into German: Washington announced yesterday that each home will contain an MT system by the end of the decade. Assume that the system builder hasn't defined Washington, home, or MT system in the lexicon. When the MT system translates this sentence, it places these words unaltered into the target-language sentence. The lexicon produces the German equivalent for the words and phrases that have been defined, substituting ankiindigte for announced, gestem for yesterday, and bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts for by the end of the decade. Untranslated words are bracketed by the system.

The result looks like this: /Washington] ankiindigte gestem dass jeder [home] wird haben ein [MTsystem] bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts. Although the result is horrible German, the sentence is understandable. Most German-speaking people would not have a problem rearranging the words and changing the inflection to come up with a better version: Washington kiindigte gestern an, class bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts jeder Haushalt ein MU-System haben wurde.

Direct MT systems handle substitution from English to German relatively well, but they have a problem handling other languages. For instance, Japanese requires the addition of several preposition-like

Four MT Approaches

direct translations syntactic transfer statistical interlingual

particles that indicate the role of each part of the sentence (e.g., subject, object, and cause). The Australian aboriginals combine all the parts of their sentences, including separate markers for tense and number, to form one long sentence-word.

Another problem with direct MT systems is the need for massive lexicons of specific words and phrases. As the systems grow, the lexicons become more cumbersome. It's redundant, for example, to store separate entries for announced, announces, and announce. This problem plagued early direct MT systems, such as Georgetown University's system in the 1950s and the first versions of the Systran from Systran Translation Systems (La Jolla,CA)inthe 1960s.

Usually, system builders try to factor out commonalities by creating a root form and rules for variations, but then they must create additional routines to handle the inflection. Most direct MT systems include some analysis of word form and structure. By doing so, they take the first step toward the more sophisticated technology of transfer systems.

Syntactic Transfer Systems

Transfer systems use software to analyze the input sentence and then apply linguistic and lexical rules, called transfer rules, to map grammatical information from one language to another. The simplest transfer rules specify only the syntactic structure of the sentence (i.e., how it's constructed of nouns, verbs, and other grammatical objects). To identify the structure of the input sentence, transfer systems use software called parsers. Although there are hundreds of different parsers and dozens of theories regarding syntax, most parsers would come up with the type of sentence analysis that you see in figure 1.

After creating a parsing tree, the system

168 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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HOW MT WORKS

uses its transfer rules to rewrite the tree so that it obeys the syntax of the target language. In figure 1, this mapping is straightforward (it's often more complex), and it produces the output that you see in figure 2. Once the target-language tree has been built, the system's sentence generator builds the sentence, making sure the words are the appropriate tense and number.

It's difficult to delineate where direct MT systems end and where transfer systems begin. Systran, one of the most successful systems produced, began as a direct system and evolved into a syntactic transfer system. Most commercial systems and many prototype systems use transfer MT of varying depths of analysis (e.g., IBM Japan's Shalt [Japanese and English] and Mitsubishi's Meltran [Japanese and English]).

Shallow Semantic Transfer

Although syntactic transfer works well in simple cases, you usually need deeper analysis for better translation. Shallow semantic transfer systems analyze sentences for their meaning.

Researchers in computational linguistics and AI are adept at building software representations called shallow semantic frames, which capture the main aspects of the sentence's meaning without going into too much detail. By using representation terms that are tied closely to the words of the source and target languages, system builders construct lexicons of shallow semantic frames.

In the example, after semantic analysis of the English sentence is complete, the system applies its transfer rules to rewrite the resulting frame into one suitable for German. The rules specify appropriate substitutions, operating on frame items instead of grammatical classes. Even though the resulting German-oriented frame looks similar to the English one, in general, shallow semantic frames differ between languages.

System developers also build programs called analyzers, which identify the appropriate representation terms for each word or phrase and assemble the terms into a coherent structure. The analyzer often contains a parser, and sometimes it uses the parser as a front end.

Next the system must generate the natural language from the computer's internal data. Semantics require more generator sophistication: The generator has to find appropriate target-language words for the semantic frames it encounters.

In simple systems, each frame has just one lexical item, but in more complex systems, a semantic primitive may be linked to several alternative lexical items. For example, announce-act may be expressed

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with the word state, proclaim, or say. To make a decision in such cases, the generator requires more information on the formality of the text, the relationship between the author and audience, and the style.

Many recent systems perform semantic transfer and are implemented on single or multiple workstations, although the goal in many cases is to eventually shift them to personal computers. These systems include Logos (Logos, Mt. Arlington, NJ), Metal (Siemens Nixdorf, Munich, Germany), and Astransac (Toshiba, Kawasaki, Japan). Astransac operates on Toshiba's personal workstations, and Met

al operates on multiuser workstations, using a Lisp environment server in the background.

In recent years, groups at the University of Kyoto (Japan) and the University of Manchester (U.K.) have started developing example-based MT systems. This software blends the two approaches, using the direct approach for stereotypical phrases (e.g., greetings) and a variant of the transfer approach in other cases.

Semantic Representation

Constructing valid representations of meaning is difficult—terms can't be combined

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE PRODUCED BY TRANSFER RULES

noun phrase proper noun Washington

sentence

verb

i

kundigte

verb phrase

\ x

adverb particle

gestern an

complementizer

complement s sentence.

dass noun phrase verb phrase

quantifier noun etc.

i i

jeder Haushalt

verb haben wiirde

Figure 2: Part of the syntactic structure produced by the transfer rules from the tree in figure 1. Notice the movement of the embedded verb to the end of the sentence.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 171

HOW MT WORKS

DEPTH OF ANALYSIS OF MT APPROACHES

^> Interlingual (deep semantics)

Shallow semantic transfer

% Syntactic transfer

~^> Direct

0

Source text

Figure 3: The approach taken in an MT system is correlated with the amount of analysis performed on the input sentences before they are translated. Direct systems perform little analysis, while interlingual systems construct complex interned representations of the meaning of the input.

willy-nilly. Each term must be chosen with care, because it limits what other terms can be used. A wrong choice can mean that an aspect of the sentence can't be represented. In this case, the sentence would have to be analyzed again.

Consider the clause "each home will have an MT system." In what sense will each home have an MT system—the way one has an arm, a child, an idea, or a car? Languages such as Hungarian, which make more delicate distinctions than English and have different words for these senses of have, need more precise information.

In a simplified shallow semantic notation, the sentence of the earlier sample would be as follows:

announce-act

actor: Washington act-time: yesterday announcement: possess-state actor: home

quant-determination: every object: MT system

quant-determination: single state-time: decade

meas-determination: end

Notice how the verb have in the sample sentence is represented as possessstate. The semantic lexicon entry for have contains a pointer to several possible meanings, including possess-state, think-act (i.e., the act of having an idea), and parentstate (i.e., the act of having a child). Each of these meanings is a frame with empty slots labeled actor, object, and time.

Each slot contains information that specifies the kinds of frames that can fill the

slot. For example, the object of a possessstate must be a nonhuman physical object. Thus, neither an idea, which is defined as a nonphysical object, nor a child, which is a human, can be objects of possess-state. Conversely, the verb have must be represented as possess-state when it is applied to a physical object. Although the matter is not as simple as I have described it here (see the text box "The Five Layers of Ambiguity" on page 174), most analysis programs work along these lines.

As analysis of the source language goes deeper, it becomes more semantic, but generation back to the surface becomes more difficult. Fortunately, at least one function becomes easier for the system to perforin: The amount of transfer required by the transfer rules decreases—the end point of analysis approximates the starting point of generation. This diminishing distance is illustrated in figure 3, which shows an arrangement of MT approaches along a gradient of increasing depth of analysis. More and more, the internal representations approach the ultimate goal: deep semantics, or language neutrality.

Interlingual Systems

Interlingual systems are software programs that translate text using a central data-representation notation called an interlingua. These systems have been experimental prototypes, usually written in Lisp and run on workstations. The East Asian consortium CICC (Center of the International Cooperation for Computerization) has been building an interlingual system since 1987, working with groups in Japan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

In the U.S., recently developed interlingual systems include KBMT at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), Ultra at New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM), and Pangloss, which is being jointly developed by the aforementioned universities and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (Marina Del Rey, CA). CICC and Pangloss systems run on multiple chained workstations. Systems like these should be available on personal computers by the end of this decade.

Constructing a set of transfer rules is tedious, but constructing an interlingua powerful enough to represent all the information every language may require, with the appropriate analysis and generation rules, is much more difficult. Consider the sample sentence again. Humans immediately realize that the word Washington is shorthand for "an announcer for the U.S. government" (this type of shorthand is called metonymy). A deep semantic representation must explicitly reflect this fact, because some languages may use different verbs for announce, depending on whether the announcer is a person or an official notice or bulletin.

Interlinguas must handle many phenomena similar to metonymy. In the example, the past tense reflected in the word announced means that the announcement took place before the author wrote the text. In general, in an interlingua, what is expressed by verb tense in English becomes a complex theory of temporal relationships involving the event, the text production, and the perspective the author takes on the event. Similarly, the meanings of words such as this, that, all, evety, the, and a become a theory of how definite, unique, and near the object is to the author.

The meanings of these microtheories must be worked out and represented, and the values for the meanings must be associated with the words of the languages that express them. Although no analyzer has yet incorporated many microtheories of phenomena, most semantic analyzers contain rudimentary versions of them for common phenomena (e.g., time and focus).

The same increased complexity carries over to the generator. Given the semantic nature of an interlingual representation, a sufficiently powerful generator can usually produce several paraphrases of the input sentence.

Interlingual vs. Transfer

A debate is raging over which is the better approach—interlingual systems or transfer systems. Interlingual systems are criticized because they require more detailed analysis than is necessary for any language

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HOW MT WORKS

The Five Layers of Ambiguity

BERNARD E. SCOTT

Computers stand up well to a grand master when it comes to the logic of chess, but they can't match the skills of a 7-year-old when it comes to language.

The reason for the glacial pace of progress in MT (machine translation) over the past four decades can be found in one factor: the intractable ambiguities of natural language. An MT system must peel away at least five layers of ambiguity before it is able to map sentences from one language to another with any degree of accuracy (see figure A). If you understand how MT copes with these difficulties, you will have a clear idea of just how these systems work and why they do not work better.

Step Inside the Beasty

Step inside an MT system and see how it handles the following simple sentence: The heavy-duty truck turned into a driveway. As you follow this sentence through the system, notice how nearly every other word poses a challenge—and an opportunity for error.

When the system looks in the dictionary for the word truck, it immediately encounters ambiguity: The word is encoded in the dictionary as both a noun and a verb. The system's dictionary can tell you only that truck can take the form of two parts of speech. It can't tell you which form it takes in this sentence.

To make that determination, you must move further into the system and view the word in the context of the sentence. At this point, the system still has no idea what the sentence means and sees it only as a syntactic string containing elements that have more than one interpretation.

To operate at the sentence level of the syntactic stage, you must have some kind of grammar—typically stored as a set of rules. One of these rules will determine that, in the given sentence, without violating grammatical rules, truck cannot be anything but a noun. So far, so good—although it is not al

ways going to be that easy.

Now that you know that heavy-duty truck is a noun phrase, a second layer of ambiguity comes to light. The system still sees your noun phrase purely syntactically, as the string Adj Nl N2. It has no idea, for example, whether the adjective heavy modifies duty or truck. The system has to resolve this ambiguity if it's to get the agreement right. Therefore, you have to go beyond syntax into lexical semantics.

The Next Stage

At this deeper stage, more intelligent rules come into play and use the semantic properties that were retrieved for the words earlier in your sentence during the dictionary lookup stage. These semantic-property codes are designed to resolve ambiguities such as that posed by heavy-duty truck. Now you're going to run into some rough going.

The majority of low-end MT systems don't get into semantics—or they do so only in trivial ways. These systems generally are weak, but even highend systems will have trouble trying to figure out which noun heavy modifies. The issues are subtle. At this point, most developers will resort to brute force by storing the phrase as a unit in the dictionary.

Slightly more tractable examples of this kind of ambiguity would be old people and children and smart girls and boys. If a smart rule uses a test for semantic symmetry (or lack thereof) among the noun pairs, it could figure out that the adjective old modifies only people and that smart modifies both boys and girls. Clearly, getting a machine to cope with this challenge isn't easy.

Processing at the lexical semantic stage introduces its own kind of confusion—the third layer—having to do with multiple meanings of words. For example, the verb turn into has at least two lexical meanings: One is the sense of motion, and the other is the sense of becoming. To decide which meaning

applies in your sentence, you have to move to sentence-level semantics, where the verb turn into can be examined in its semantic context.

A semantic rule associated with the words turn into would know that the meaning of this verb is going to be a function of the verb's direct object. So, in this sentence, the rule has to test only the semantic-property code for driveway to determine the verb's meaning: If driveway were given a semantic-property code signifying a path, the rule would know to select the verb's motional sense. Such a rule would work with Cinderella, too, if her carriage turned into a driveway rather than a pumpkin.

Going for the Gold

A fourth layer of difficulty has to do with ambiguities introduced at the sentence level of the semantic stage. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the sample sentence doesn't illustrate this kind of complexity. But to get the idea, consider the meaning of the preposition for in the following sentences: Check the newspapers for errors. Check the newspapers for dates.

In the first sentence, the preposition for signifies for the presence of, and in the second sentence, it means for information about. As used in this example, in a language like Vietnamese, the preposition/or would be expressed differently in each case.

Thus, the system has to determine which case applies if it's to translate the meaning correctly. You can see that the meanings of the word for are a function of the sentence as a whole; you won't find them in any dictionary. Also, notice how the sentence as a whole affects the meaning of the verb check. In the first sentence, check means to examine. In the second, check means to consult.

A fifth layer of ambiguity concerns more technical issues, such as ellipses and anaphora (e.g., antecedents of pronouns). This level of translation sophistication calls for processing at a

174 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

HOW MT WORKS

A STRATIFIED VIEW OF LANGUAGE AND AMBIGUITY

"The nurses keep clean sheets and blankets in them."

Lexical

syntactic

level:

Ambiguity

Sentential

syntactic

level:

Ambiguity

Lexical

semantic

level:

Ambiguity

Sentential

semantic

level:

Ambiguity

nurses

Noun or Verb

The + nurses

(Determiner)

clean sheets and blankets

(Adjective) (Noun) (Conjunction) (Noun)

I

Noun (plural)

or Verb (plural)

Noun (plural)

(clean sheets) clean sheets

and or and

blankets clean blankets

keep

(Verb)

to store

or to retain

clean cloth and cloth

(sheets) (blankets)

clean sheets and clean blankets

keep + in =

(Preposition)

to store

them

(Pronoun)

animate

or inanimate

Extrasentential level:

The room has two cabinets. The nurses keep.

Figure A: MT systems are composed of one or more levels of parsing sophistication (going from syntactic to semantic). A simulated, advanced, multilevel system such as this one might determine the meaning of each word or phrase in the sentence (i.e., parse the sentence) by posing and/or resolving questions, eliminating ambiguity as the words or phrases move through the various levels in the system.

discourse level—something few systems can do.

But don't worry. MT systems are steadily becoming more robust. The key is semantics. As the semantics of these systems improve, so will the power of the systems to dispel ambiguity and, in the final analysis, to translate.

Bernard E. Scott is the head of his own consulting agency, Parse International (Ledgewood, NJ). Previously, he founded Logos (Dedham, MA) and was the principal architect of the Logos MT system. You can reach him on BIX c/o "editors."

pair. Why bother resolving the "Washington" metonymy when English, German, and French all say it the same way? Depending on the flexibility of the interlingua itself, however, this complaint is not always valid. In most systems, the analyzer is free to fill in less detail, and as long as the generator doesn't fail, the translation proceeds satisfactorily.

A major advantage that interlingual systems have over transfer systems lies in the number of rules used. A three-language transfer system, for example, requires transfer rules between languages A and B, A and C, and B and C in both directions — six sets of rules altogether. Adding another language involves creating rules to and from the new language to each of the first three languages, bringing the total to 12 sets of rules. In general, for n languages, you need n x (n-1) sets of atles. That number can grow prohibitively large, because modern commercial MT systems have lexicons of over 150,000 words and grammars of several hundred rules.

Interlingual systems deal with this challenge by creating one representation midway between all the languages. Analyzers and generators have to work harder to reach this interlingual representation, but less human effort is required to construct the transfer rules.

Adding a new language to an interlingual system involves just two sets of rules: the analyzer's rules for going from sentences in the new language to interlingual representations and the generator's rules for going from interlingual representations to sentences in the new language. Because of the language neutrality of the interlingua, the analyzer does not require information about what the target language will be, nor does the generator have to have information about what the source language was.

Statistical Systems

Whether the MT system is interlingual or transfer, it requires large lexicons and rule sets to ensure that it will be robust when handling new text. In direct MT, you can encode information in dictionaries, phrases, and words; in transfer systems, you can place the data in grammars, lexicons, and transfer rules; in interlingual systems, you can locate the information in representation ontologies and lexicons.

The work required to create these resources by hand is daunting. As a result, in the past few years, there has been a resurgence of attempts to acquire the requisite information automatically.

What makes statistical systems different isn't so much how they perform translation but how their correspondence lexicons are

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HOW MT WORKS

constructed—automatically, not by humans. For a computer to create a correspondence lexicon, there must be two duplicate sets of a large amount of text—one set in each language. One such body of parallel text is the parliamentary record of the Canadian government. It contains several years' worth of representatives' debates in both English and French. Approximately 3 million sentences of this text are on-line.

Given such a mass of information, you can build programs to line up, as accurately as possible, each word in each sentence with its foreign counterpart. Recent alignment algorithms achieve over 90 percent accuracy. The result of such an alignment can be thought of as a bilingual correspondence lexicon of words and phrases.

Once the alignment algorithm has constructed the correspondence lexicon for the system, translation is effected by direct substitution, followed by a process of reordering the words to achieve good grammar. The reordering is performed using statistically derived rules regarding the probable order of words in given contexts.

Breeding Hybrids for Strength

The various approaches to MT theory have crystallized into a smooth continuum from direct systems to interlingual systems. The strengths and shortcomings of each approach are well understood. It's unlikely that new developments will uncover a magic formula that will make MT easy.

Recent developments in the Candide system from IBM (Hawthorne, NY) show that it's possible to create hybrid statistically based transfer systems. In such hybrid systems, the correspondence lexicon contains not only words and phrases but syntactic terms that represent time, number, and part of speech.

Statistically based systems require several mainframes to build and store their correspondence lexicons. They also need millions of sentences of parallel text containing the words to be translated. Given their capabilities and resources, however, hybrid systems are one way to minimize the human effort required in lexicon, grammar, and rule construction.

In the future, all major MT systems will be hybrids of one kind or another. Statistical lexicons and rule acquisition will provide the raw material that will be incorporated into MT systems, using increasingly powerful interlingual theories of meaning, pragmatics, and style. ■

Eduard Hovy is a project leader at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. You can reach him on BIX c/o "editors " or on the Internet at hovv@isi.edu.

176 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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STATE OF THE MT/Machine Translation

BABELWARE

FOR THE DESKTOP

Personal computer and workstation translation software offers you the most affordable access to MT

L. CHRIS MILLER

Now that personal computers and workstations are powerful enough to run MT (machine translation) software, many MT products are becoming available for the desktop. Some applications have migrated from the mainframe; others are new and are designed for desktop use.

MT software for personal computers translates language sentence by sentence, using AI or linguistic rules to deal with syntax and grammar. Sets of rules or algorithms enable verb conjugation, syntax adjustment, gender and number agreement, and word reordering.

MT software will process your document in either a batch mode or an interactive mode. The interactive mode might ask you to choose among multiple translations of a word or allow you to choose from a list of synonyms, or it may translate one sentence at a time and pause to let you postedit the output on-line (see screen 1).

Retail prices for these packages range from $79 to $ 1200. The languages that are available include Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Translation software for Portuguese, Chinese, and Norwegian is being developed. The software is generally sold in language pairs (e.g., Spanish to English or English to Spanish). The Language Assistant Series 5.0 from MicroTac Software (San Diego, CA) and GTS-Basic 1.0 and GTS-Professional 3.0 from Globalink (Fairfax, VA) are sold in bidirectional units (e.g., Spanish to English and English to Spanish).

Toltran (Barrington, IL) uses a patented modular-language-translation concept for its Professional Translation System 2.0.

continued

ILLUSTRATION: GRES RAGLAND (3 1993

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 177

BABELWARE FOR THE DESKTOP

==—= Original

Cuando tenia 30 alios* tenia tres meses en California y todavia no habia visto la playa.

=^=== Translation

When I was 30 years oldj 1 had been in California for three months and still had not seen the beach.

Sentence 1/ 11

T - Translate Sentence M - Modify Translation

P - Previous Sentence E - Edit Original Document C - Control Commands 0 - Output Translatio

Spanish Assistant Copyright (c) 1992 Micro

Disk:3.B0 Meg Memory: 149K

Screen 1: This sample of an on-line translation using MicroTac Software's Spanish Assistant shows the original Spanish sentence in the upper left box and the English translation in the upper right box.

=

= Original =i

tener

Verb

311

have; hold; own

Uerb

31)

get: possess

Fhr.

bO

que: have to

Phr.

50

gusto en: be glad to

Fhr.

36

" <Ad j><Noun*Time> en <Moun>.haue "been" in <5> for <2 Adj> <3>

Fhr.

id

" <Adj»Quantifier> <Noun*Time>: be <Adj> <Houn*Time> old

Add EElQHBi Search Browse Next Preu

MICROTAC.SE Copyright (c) 1992 MicroTac Software, Inc.

Disk:3.80 Meg Memoru: 152K

Screen 2: The dictionary coding for the verb tener (which is Spanish for to have) includes the part of speech (verb); the morphological rule code (3B), which determines conjugated forms of the verb; and the translations of the verb. Rules for advanced pattern matching (e.g., noun + time) are encoded to enable the computer to correctly translate the verb in various phrases.

In this approach, a language is sold as either a source-language module or a targetlanguage module. Any source-language module can be translated into any targetlanguage module.

MT software for personal computers typically runs under MS-DOS and requires 640 KB of RAM and from 1.5 to 15 MB of space on your hard disk. You must have a VGA card and a VGA monitor to translate languages with graphical characters (e.g., Russian and Japanese). For example, E J Bilingual (Torrance, CA) requires one expansion slot for the KanjiBoard included with EZ JapaneseWriter 1.09.

Mac owners have limited options. The Translator 2.0 by Catena (Tokyo, Japan)

runs on a Mac using a Japanese operating system called KanjiTalk. Unfortunately, the only way to run many MT software packages on a Mac is by using a DOS environment emulator, such as Insignia Solutions' (Mountain View, CA) SoftPC. Under these conditions, the software will run much slower than in a true DOS environment.

The translation speed varies from 10,000 to 30,000 words per hour on a 16-MHz 386 computer. The smaller programs can easily be placed in RAM to increase the speed. The translation process may become faster if the software is temporarily storing previously found words in a buffer or in RAM.

MT Possibilities for Your Desktop

All MT products for personal computers allow you to send ASCII text files to be read and translated. Some systems link directly to your word processing programs via a menu to simplify the conversion of text to and from ASCII files. A few systems can process WordPerfect and other leading word processor files. And several companies offer products that retain the formatting codes of the original document. This is an important timesaving feature, because attributes such as boldfaced type, underlining, and chart and table formats are restored in the output.

The quality of your output is dependent on the dictionaries (sometimes called lexicons) that are included in the software. A core, or general, single-word dictionary (i.e., one with 20,000 to 80,000 canonical terms) is standard. Most programs also include a multiple-word dictionary that stores phrases and idiomatic expressions.

A Different Kind of Dictionary

MT dictionaries provide grammatical information regarding the use of words and phrases. The computer uses the information to enact the rules or algorithms necessary to convert the text in the source language into intelligible output in the target language (see screen 2). Subject-specific dictionaries are available for technical areas, such as finance or law.

If you regularly translate documents from more than one technical area, you'll find it useful to have a feature in your system that allows you to stack dictionaries. This enables you to define the search order according to the text you are translating. PC-Translator by Linguistic Products (The Woodlands, TX) allows you to stack up to 10 single-word dictionaries and 10 phrase dictionaries.

Creating your own dictionary or customizing the one included in your software

Key Features of Desktop MT

• available for PC, Mac, and Unix platforms

• applications have migrated from mainframes

• works in batch mode or interactive mode

• provides good dictionaries

Future Enhancements

• more variety of products

• more sophisticated technology

• additional language pairs

178 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

t The new PacificPage9 PE/XL. Switching to PostScript has never been easier.

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LANGUAGE SENSING AND SWITCHING.

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PacificPage PE/XL is easy to use, but it's also fast. The accelerator board utilizes an Intel i960 processor for output up to 8 times faster than any other cartridge. And our new automatic interface switching feature allows users to simultaneously use all interface ports.

PacificPage PE/XL includes 35 fully scalable typestyles and is compatible with all Windows and DOS software programs that support PostScript. All you need to do is slip the cartridge and accelerator board into the printer, select the standard PostScript driver, and you're ready to print!

Pacific Data Products offers a full lifetime warranty, free technical support, convenient upgrade programs, and of course, our 60 day money-back guarantee of satisfaction.

Getting all the benefits of PostScript

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Typestyles:

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Each typestyle comes in normal, bold, italic and bold italic treatments except lor Chancery. Zapf Dingbats, and Symbol.

PACIFIC DATA

PRODUCTS

PadfJcTageis a reg&Wted trademark of Pacific Data Prixlucis, Inc. PostScript is a registered trademark nl Adobe Systems, Inc. Userjct Is a registered trademark of Hewlett-ftJdaid Co. I960 is a lr.idum.irk of Intel Corpor.ition. Phoenixl'iijjc is j registered trademark of Phoenix Technologies ltd. 6 1987, 1988 Phoenix 'ftchnologtes Ltd. All other trade manes referenced are the trademarks oi registered trademarks of the respective manufacturer. Pacific Data Products, Inc., 9125 Rehco lioad.San Diego, CA 92121. USA. European Offices: EnglatldTel 080051 55U, Tax (44i 442 Z36540; France Tel OS 'X) as IP. fax (33) 1 39 63 20 41; Germany .

Tel0130-81 36B5;toelandTell353)61 475609.1 ax i353m>1 475608;Switzerland

Tel (41122 341 26 SO, Fax (411 22 341 06 R2; Belgium Tel 078 1112<>2; Netherlands .^.^ Tel Of. 02220(.fi. *:> 1992 Pacific Data Products, Inc. r >,,:,!■

BABELWARE FOR THE DESKTOP

Is MT Right for You?

MURIEL VASCONCELLOS

You need to keep several points in mind when deciding if MT is right for you. First, you must determine if you have an application for which MT is appropriate. It's important to pick your application and then decide on your system rather than vice versa.

Costs soar when the input isn't in machine-readable form, and an OCR (optical character recognition) device, while helpful, isn't a panacea. If your documents aren't in electronic form, you may want to think twice about using MT. In addition, there should be a large volume of material (e.g., 100,000 words per month) to be translated, with the expectation that more will be coming from the same source. In the beginning, there should be only one domain (i.e., subject matter); you can branch out later as you become more familiar with all the ins and outs.

Your decision to use MT will hinge, in large part, on the format, volume, and linguistic characteristics of the source-language text. The text should contain no ambiguities.

Hardware and Human Factors

You need a hardware platform that an MT system will run on. In a multiuser setting, you must be sure that there is

good word processing support and that all the users have strong word processing skills. Multitasking workstations designed for translators are helpful.

Be sure to recruit people who have a positive attitude about using MT. This is especially important during the first few months while you are getting your system up and running. This stage involves customizing the dictionaries and gaining proficiency in postediting.

Your choice of a system will depend on the characteristics of your application, so it's important to identify criteria that are specific to your needs. And don't be tempted to buy software just because it's inexpensive. As with a house pet, the price you pay up front is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the care and feeding for the rest of your mutual lives. For example, a less expensive system might cost more in terms of support personnel and customer support (some MT companies charge you for it). Also, if your time frame for translations is tight and if your budget for human intervention is limited, it's crucial that you test the system's performance on randomly selected texts.

Despite decades of scientific study, the evaluation of translations is an uncertain exercise. The definition of an

error will vary, depending on the purpose of the translation and the values of the end users. Errors in raw output are important mainly to the analyst, who knows the inner workings of MT systems and can classify the error types according to their causes. Such an analysis can tell something about the system's potential and the effort that will be required to fix and to maintain it. You should make sure that you compare outputs from different systems produced under the same conditions.

The value of a system depends on its potential to grow and to improve its performance, as well as how easy it is to use and to maintain. It's important to know the language combinations that have been developed for the system, the size of the dictionaries or knowledge bases, the ease with which you can add to the dictionaries, and the possibilities of extending the system to include the domain that you are interested in.

Muriel Vasconcellos is president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas and is a Washington, D.C-based consultant in translation and machine translation. You can reach her on BIX c/o "editors" or on CompuServe at 71024,123.

is essential with any MT product for personal computers, because it lets you add your own terminology to the program. PCTranslator simplifies the creation of your own dictionaries by importing lists of terms in ASCII format directly into the software. In addition, MT software generates lists of words not found in a given text to help you customize your software. You decide which words and phrases to add to the dictionaries. The ability to add, delete, or modify dictionary entries dramatically improves the quality of a translation and reduces the time spent postediting an output. You'll find that it can take from two to four weeks to customize a system.

All these systems ask you to insert the part of speech of the word you are adding and to provide its translation. With exten

180 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

sive dictionary coding, the system can deal with ambiguities that arise from the use of words that can take the form of multiple parts of speech. For example, the program will recognize the different translations of a homograph (i.e., a word that is spelled like another but has a different meaning or pronunciation) used as a verb and as a noun in the same sentence (e.g., "The can can explode"). Because Globalink's GTSProfessional can classify can as both a verb and a noun, it's better able to translate the sentence than a product that requires less dictionary coding.

Workstation-Based MT Products

MT workstation products are designed to handle heavy volume—when you have to translate 2000 or more pages of text per

year. Translation speeds range from 20,000 to 1 million words per hour.

A workstation MT system is a large investment. Software prices start at $10,000. A system can cost several hundred thousand dollars, and pricing structures are as diverse as the possible configurations.

Socatra (Quebec, Canada) spent over 12 years preparing its XLT computer-assisted translation system for the commercial market. Access to XLT is uniquely controlled by the company. Socatra rents software for a specific number of words. After you pay an initial subscription, Socatra provides you with the software and an access card, which resembles a credit card. The card contains a microprocessor that counts the words translated and acts as a security device. You can obtain an XLT

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—Personal Computing

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I66ClDclCK... —Which Computer?

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Now We'd LikeTo Give Y)u A Quote On Price.

The "industry's best keyboard" is now for sale. If you're putting together systems or need keyboards customized for your OEM operation, we make the best, in 35 languages. Call (33) 38 83 4308 in Europe, or 1-800-777-4886 in the U.S.A. Our quotes will impress you as much as those above.

Lexmark International, Inc., a former division of IBM® is an independent, worldwide company that

Circle 197 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 198).

develops, manufactures, and markets IBM personal printers, IBM typewriters, related supplies and keyboards.

EDITORS'

(HOICK

February 25. 1992 Lexmark Enhanced 101 Key Keyboard

Lexmark

Fax (33) 38 83 4048 in Europe, (606) 232-7241 in U. S. A. IBM is a registered trademark ol International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries, and used onder license. PC Magazine Editors' Choice Ic <S 1985 Zltl Communications Company, PC Magazine and PC Magazine Editors' Choice are registered trademarks ot Zilt Communications Company, Quotes above reprinted with the permission ot Personal Computing, March 1989; Which Computer?, July 1989, PC Magazine, January 17,1980; and PC Worfrf.'The Hardware Shell", Michael Goodwin, February, 1988. Lexmark is a trademark ol Lexmark International, Inc. © Lexmark International, 1992.

BABELWARE FOR THE DESKTOP

LANGUAGE PAIRS

Shown here is a sampling of MTsoftware packages and the language pairs that are available or are in development. Source languages (left) can be translated into all the target languages (right) in the same row. (• = available; O = in development.)

Source languages

Company Product

A

c

Da

Du

E

Fr

Ge

Gr

1

J

K

P

R

Sp

Sw

Globalink GTS-Basic/GTS-Professional

•

o

•

•

O

o

•

•

Intergraph DP/Translator

•

•

•

•

Linguistic Products PC-Translator

•

•

•

•

•

o

•

•

O

o

O

O

Logos Logos

•

•

MicroTac Software Language Assistant Series

•

•

•

•

•

Siemens Nixdorf Metal

•

O

•

o

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Socatra XLT

•

•

O

•

o

•

Systran Translation Systems Systran

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

'-•

•

•

•

•

Toltran Professional Translation System

o

•

o

o

o

•

Tovna Machines Tovna MTS

•

O

•

o

o

•

o

•

Source and target languages key

A == Arabic Da = Danish

E = English

Fr = French

Gr = Greek

J = Japanese

N = Norwegian

R = Russian

Sw =

Swedish

C = Chinese Du - Dutch

Fi = Finnish

Ge = German

1 = Italian

K = Korean

P = Portuguese

Sp = Spanish

card for word amounts that range from 100,000 to I million.

Tovna Machines (Washington, DC) gives you a perpetual license for Tovna MTS 1.0. Other MT workstation companies offer host, site, or floating licenses. You can obtain Systran from Systran Translation Systems (La Jolla, CA) with monthly or yearly leases.

MT workstation products support various operating environments, including Unix, Xenix, and MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage). Smart Translators by Smart Communications (New York) runs under Windows 3.1. The OEM Personal/370/ Adapter/A (P/370), which was scheduled to ship in December, will make it possible for Systran to run on stand-alone PS/2s.

And Multilingual Document Translation Software 7.0 from Logos (Mt. Arlington, NJ) supports MS-DOS and Mac users via LANs or WANs (wide-area networks).

The assortment of language pairs for MT workstation products is impressive (see the table). Systran offers 27 language pairs and 20 technical glossaries. Most operational language pairs have about 100,000 entries in their dictionary. A Russian-to-English dictionary typically contains 500,000 entries. With Smart Translators, you can choose between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish or between European French and Canadian French. Many systems offer non-English language pairs.

MT workstation products are generally well integrated into the document-produc

tion process. Converters preserve the formatting codes from many software packages. Unix-based converters can preserve codes for Interleaf and FrameMaker, and DOS-based converters preserve codes for WordPerfect, Word, and Ventura Publisher. DP/Translator by Intergraph (Huntsville, AL), for example, supports ASCII, tagged ASCII, SGML (Standardized Generalized Markup Language), Microsoft Word RTF (Rich Text Format), QuarkXPress tagged, FrameMaker MIF (Maker Interchange Formal), and Troff (Unix-based text format). Formatting codes for such things as headings, footnotes, and columns remain intact in the translated output. Documents ready to be translated can be queued or batch-processed during off-peak hours.

182 BYTE' JANUARY 1993

BABELWARE FOR THE DESKTOP

LANGUAGE PAIRS

Target languages

A

C

Da

Du

E

Fi

Fr

Ge

Gr

1

J

K

N

P

R

Sp

Sw

o

•

•

0

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

_

•

•

O

•

O

•

•

•

•

•

O

o

O

O

•

•

•

•

\

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

o

•

•

•

|

•

•

;2

•

•

o

• '

o

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

1

o

•

O

O

0

•

•

•

•

•

Circle 167 on Inquiry Card.

UPGR \l)i: TO vG.L $19.95— l-8()0-:i44-4:*2;*

Hard Drive Installation

and Diagnostics

Tovna MTS's developers say that you can teach this software to learn by examples and rules. As the system processes translations, the computer watches what changes you make to the document. If Tovna MTS encounters changes, it remembers them and uses the new information.

The dictionaries supplied with MT workstation products allow deep coding for each term, so they can work with words with multiple definitions. You can add descriptors to help the computer distinguish among the many possibilities. Descriptors are attributes used in coding a dictionary entry and include terms such as animate! inanimate, human (machine, place, or time.

Coding a lexicon this sophisticated requires an understanding of linguistics and

fluency in the source and target languages. MT system companies will help you design an efficient system for your needs, and training is often included in the system's price.

MT has proved that it can reduce the time and money spent on bulk translation of highly repetitive technical text. Commercial MT products for personal computers and woi'kstations offer you the most affordable access to the power of MT. ■

L. Chris Miller is a computer consultant based in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. She has been involved in MT development for the past four years. You can reach her on BIX do "editors" and on CompuServe at 70303,314.

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Available at Best Buy, Egghead Software, Computer City Supercenter, CompUSA, ElekTek and Software Etc. Order today, call 1-800-344-4323.

H STORAGE DIMENSIONS

JANUARY 1993 'BYTE 183

Your dBase IV Compiler

Has Arrived

i

CA-Clipper7Compiler Kit

j. FordBASEIV

Finally.

Four years after AshtonTate promised it to you, CA is /i^jsx proud to deliver the CA-Clipper/ Compiler Kit you've been waiting for.

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A dvisar a i vardt ■itjiist

place to CA Clipper 5.01 for

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S3SS3S&. most dBASE IV applica

Now you can compile ensure it performs to specifications.

Then use the DPREP program to compile Extend System it and produce an executable, .EXE file and the RDDs. that gives you all the speed and efficiency CA-Clipper® is famous for.

The CA-Clipper/Compiler Kit For

dBASE IV provides compatibility and database interoperability with most dBASE IV applications. And it's implemented using the open architecture of CA-Clipper, including the preprocessor, the

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Circle 89 on Inquiry Card.

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Step3. TheCOMPILEcommandinvokes the

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RESOURCE GUIDE

Machine-Translation Software

A surprisingly wide range of machine-translation products are available for both personal computer and workstation platforms. The products listed below are merely a sampling of what is for sale now and what is under development. (This resource guide was compiled by L Chris Miller.)

PC SOURCES

EZ JapaneseWriter 1.09

English into Japanese Price: $1200 with KanjiBoard Requirements: AT/XT compatible or a PS/2 Model 25, 30, 35, or 45 with a VGA card/monitor, an expansion slot for KanjiBoard, and 3 MB of available hard disk space.

E,I Bilingual, Inc.

2483 Torrance Blvd., Suite 1

Torrance, CA 90501 .

(310)320-8139

fax:(310)320-3228

Circle 1146 on Inquiry Card.

GTS-Professional 3.0

Bidirectional English/Spanish, English/French, and English/German, $998; Russian into English, $1495 Requirements: PC compatible with 640 KB of RAM, DOS 3.1 or higher, and 11 to 13 MB of available hard disk space; a VGA card and monitor for Russian.

GTS-Basic

Bidirectional English/Spanish, English/French, and English/German, $495; Russian into English, $750 Requirements: PC compatible with 640 KB of RAM, DOS 3.1 or higher, and 10 to 12 MB of available hard disk space; a VGA card and monitor for Russian. Under development: English into Russian, Chinese into English, Italian into English, and Portuguese into English.

Globalink, Inc.

9302 Lee Hwy., 12th Floor

Fairfax. VA 22031

(800) 255-5660

(703)273-5600

fax: (703) 273-3866

Circle 1147 on Inquiry Card.

PC-Translator 3.3

English into Spanish, French, Danish, Swedish, or Italian; or Spanish, French, Danish, Swedish, Italian, or German into English, $985 each

Requirements: PC compatible with 640 KB of RAM, DOS 3.1 or higher, and 2.5 MB of available hard disk space. Under development: English into German, Portuguese, and Italian; Portuguese and Italian into English; French into Spanish; and Spanish into French.

Linguistic Products

P.O. Box 8263

The Woodlands, TX 77387

(713)298-2565

fax:(713)298-1911

Circle 1148 on Inquiry Card.

Spanish Assistant 5.0, French Assistant 5.0, Italian Assistant 5.0, and German Assistant 5.0

Bidirectional English-Spanish, English-French, EnglishItalian, and English-German, $99.95 each

Requirements: PC compatible with 640 KB of RAM, DOS 2.1 or higher, and 3 MB of available hard disk space.

MicroTac Software

4655 Cass St., Suite 214

San Diego, CA 92109

(800)366-4170

(619)272-5700

fax:(619)272-9734

Circle 1149 on Inquiry Card.

Toltran Professional Translation System 2.0

English source, English destination, Spanish source, and Spanish destination, $249 per module Requirements: PC compatible with 286 or higher, 512 KB of RAM, DOS 3.0 or higher, and 1 MB of available hard disk space per module.

Toltran Foreign Correspondent

English into Spanish, Spanish into English, and English into French, $149 Requirements: PC, XT, or PS/2 compatible with 512 KB of RAM, DOS 3.0 or higher, and 2 MB of available hard disk space.

Under development: English into German, and German

into English; Russian, Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese modules.

Toltran, Ltd.

119-D Shoreline Rd.

Barrington, IL 60010

(800)872-6752

(708) 382-4998

fax: (708) 382-2078

Circle 1150 on Inquiry Card.

Translate V.l.l

Price: $169

Requirements: PC compatible or Mac under SoftPC with 640 KB of RAM, DOS 3.0 or higher, and 9 MB of available hard disk space.

FinalSoft Corp.

3900 Northwest 79th Ave.,

Suite 230

Miami, FL 33166

(800)232-8228

(305)477-2703

fax: (305) 477-0680

Circle 1151 on Inquiry Card.

The Translator 2.0

English into Japanese Price: $1195 Requirements: Mac with KanjiTalk 6.0.7 or higher, 4 MB of RAM, and 20 MB of available hard disk space.

The Translator Mini

English into Japanese Price: $595

Requirements: Mac with KanjiTalk 6.0.7 or higher, 2 MB of RAM, and 5 MB of available hard disk space.

Catena Corp.

c/o Qualitas Trading Co.

2029 Durant Ave.

Berkeley, CA 94704

(510)848-8080

fax:(510)848-8009

Circle 1152 on Inquiry Card.

Winger 92

English into Danish, and Danish into English Requirements: PC compatible with 640 KB of RAM and 40 MB of available hard disk space.

Under development: English into Spanish, and Spanish into English.

Winger A/S

Skodsborgvej 48 Fl

DK-2830 Virum, Denmark

+45 4583 1166

fax: +45 4583 0244

Circle 1153 on Inquiry Card.

WORKSTATION SOURCES

DP/Translator

English into French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese; German into English; French into English; and Spanish into English Platforms: Unix-based Intergraph RISC workstations. Price: $10,000 and up.

Intergraph Corp.

1 Madison Industrial Park

Huntsville, AL 35894

(800)826-3515

(205)730-2700

Circle 1154 on Inquiry Card.

Logos Multilingual Document Translation Software 7.0

English source into French, Spanish, German, and Italian; German source into English, French, and Italian Platforms: Sun Sparcstations and IBM RISC System/6000. Price: Host licenses start at $25,000.

Logos Corp.

1 Dedham Place

Dedham, MA 02026

(617)326-7600

fax:(617)326-9341

Circle 1155 on Inquiry Card.

Metal 3.0

German into English and Spanish, English into German, French into Dutch, and Dutch into French Platforms: Sun Sparcstations. Price: Software starts at $28,000.

Under development: English into Spanish, Spanish into English, and French into English.

continued

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 185

Circle 237 on Inquiry Card.

RESOURCE GUIDE

■..■:'■■'.:■"'■

High Performance Multimegabyte Disk Emulators

NEW MODELS / LOWER PRICES

• Floppy Drive and multimegabyte emulators for ISA bus computers

• 180K to 14 MB capacities

• EPROM, Flash or SRAM technologies

• Autobooting, Single or Dual disk emulation under PC or MS DOS

• List prices from $195

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/Desktop Mapping Software

PUTTING YOUR DATA ON THE MAP

The best desktop mapping software to meet your needs

N

BEN SMITH AND HOWARD EGLOWSTEIN

ot too many years ago, the ability to browse databases by pointing on a computerized map was out of reach for all but dedicated systems. Now with the proliferation of desktop computers with high-resolution graphics, mapping software is not only common but also the preferred way to look at geographic data. This month, the BYTE Lab evaluates five important mapping products. Three of them—Arc/Info 3.4D from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Atlas GIS 2.0 from Strategic Mapping, and Maplnfo 2.0 for Windows from Maplnfo Corp.—are market leaders in the category. We also looked at two other packages: Tactician 2.0 from Tactics International, for its cross-platform and networking orientation, and GeoQuery 3.0 from GeoQuery Corp., for its clean Macintosh interface and System 7.0 features.

Mapping Applications

Desktop mapping penetrates many different markets. The design and management of sales territories is one common application. A marketing department could simplify a direct-mail campaign by automatically selecting all potential customers within a 50-mile radius of an upcoming seminar. You can plan business trips more efficiently by displaying clients that reside along a given route. Demographic analysis can target potential customers, help plan advertising campaigns, and streamline distribution channels.

Mapping-software products are also used extensively for city planning and for routing of cables and pipelines. Education and research markets call on mapping software to teach geography and to assist in environmental-impact studies. Banks can use them to determine the best location for a new branch office or an automatic teller machine. Other possible applications are numerous and diverse (e.g., real estate, insurance, traffic management, and prospecting).

If you look at the information in your databases, you'll probably find that more than half of the data is, in some way, tied to location information (e.g., street addresses, ZIP codes, building numbers, or territory numbers). In fact, if you consider

188 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

—• -^ \.^f/^irVJca^kVvTW*T

PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHEL TCHEREVKOFF © 1993

BVTE

ACTION SUMMARY

WHAT MAPPING SOFTWARE IS

Mapping software lets you connect database information to maps for the visual display of information.

LIKES

Enhances demographic analysis, site location, territory planning, and many other geographic applications.

DISLIKES

There's often a steep learning curve, and the data is expensive.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Maplnfo 2.0 for Windows strikes the best balance between price and features. For creating your own maps, Atlas GIS 2.0 is the best choice.

how you organize your data, you will find that the location information is often the logical key for sorting and grouping the data. When this is the case, mapping software allows you to picture the physical relationships between the groups and elements of your data. Numbers (e.g., in addresses, ZIP codes, and longitude and latitude) don't naturally form the pictures that you need. With mapping software, you can let the numbers be the keys to your maps and let the maps position and display the data.

Some mapping products have a narrow focus. For example, TTG's StarManager is designed for territory allotment and reporting. Other narrow-focus products include Tru-Chart 2.11 from Maptech, which focuses on nautical navigation, and electronic road atlases from Automap, DeLorme Mapping, and Softkey Software Products. Instead of these narrow-focus mapping products, we've selected generalpurpose ones. With most of the generalpurpose products, you can build a system for vertical applications. More important, you can use one or more of these products to solve your own problems and build your own interface to your data.

Before you select your mapping software, you should evaluate your needs. Each of these programs has a different focus and a variety of strengths and weaknesses. It makes no sense to use a mapping package designed for scientific research when you just want to build attractive presentations from a combination of ZIP code maps and your sales data. So, look at what your priorities are—accessing multiple databases running on remote machines; generating new geographic maps

JANUARY 1993- BYTE 189

DESKTOP MAPPING SOFTWARE

Mapping-Software Terms

buffer zone A zone with boundaries that are generated as a result of their proximity to another object. For example, a buffer of 50 feet from a road would be the area that includes 50 feet on either side of the road.

digitizing The process of entering a sequence of scaled locations for generating objects in a map. Both the source map (or photo) must include reference coordinates for orientation and scale.

geocode The key by which you can quickly retrieve a geographic object. A simple example is a ZIP code, but you may also have your own keys that are generated from the longitude, latitude, and map layer, or any method that you want. All geocodes within a map must be unique.

GIS (geographic information system)

A specific class of mapping products, usually on a scale needed for scientificand academic-level research. Only a few mapping-software systems can be considered full-blown GISes.

projection Because the surface of the Earth is an ellipsoid (i.e., it's somewhat spherical), any flat-surface representation of lines and positions must include some sort of distortion. A projection is a depiction of a map that accounts for the earth's curvature in a graphical way. The different kinds of projections maintain the accuracy of some information at the expense of other information.

query language A database query and reporting language for specifying

the data that you want to look at. The two most common examples are SQL and Xbase.

resolution The level of detail available as you zoom into specific areas of a map. The finer the resolution, the greater the level of detail as you zoom in.

scripting language A language with which you can automate repetitive operations or build your own user interface for a special mapping-software application. An example is Maplnfo's MapBasic.

thematic map A map that displays different quantitative ranges of data by varying colors, textures, symbols, or embedded charts.

by digitizing the areas, lines, and points that make up the map and then merging the map with a database or spreadsheet; SQL (Structured Query Language) database queries; market research; retail management; or statistical analysis. Given the diversity of mapping software, you must know, up front, what you expect the software to do for you and then find the program with the power and flexibility to accommodate your application. The most popular product may not always be the best for your needs.

When evaluating the price of mapping software, you should consider not only the basic package but also the optional data files. For example, from one vendor, four CDs of U.S. street data and geographic details sell for more than $40,000. Most of this information is in the publicly available U.S. geographic and street data from the Census Bureau, although the format is different and the data has been enhanced by third-party resellers. Each vendor requires proprietary file formats for geographic data.

The field of desktop mapping software includes some complex products, especially when you consider full-fledged GISes (geographic information systems). For definitions of commonly used mapping terms, see the text box "MappingSoftware Terms" above.

190 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Arc/Info 3.4D

ESRI's Arc/Info 3.4D is a large, allencompassing package that touches on all aspects of desktop mapping. Its price ($5995 for all the modules; $1495 for the starter kit) reflects this complexity and depth. The central theme of Arc/Info is a

Screen 1:

Although Arc/Info 3.4D is largely commandlanguage-based, you can drive it through Arcshell, a menu system written in Arc/Info's scripting language, SML. Under Arcshell, the graphics display updates after each command. Shown here is a buffered region that encloses a 10-mile radius around a network of roads.

geographical database that defines map elements and their relationship to other elements and binds data to each element. The primary user interface of Arc/Info is command-line driven. In the DOS implementation, system components are a series of modules; the individual commands are stored as separate DOS executables.

continued

Mathematica

The Complete Solution For Technical Computing

B

D Algebra and Calculus

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2 x Log[l + —] PolyLogU,

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I Graphics

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BSymbolic Programming

loff[x_ y_I :» log[x] + loo[y]

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DESKTOP MAPPING SOFTWARE

Arc/Info Features

• command-line interface

• rich command set

• application programming language (SML)

• screen, digitizer, and printer/ plotter support

• fully relational database analysis

• MS-DOS platform

• price: $5995 for all modules; $1495 for starter kit

Arcedit is the main data-entry and editing module. You must go through Arcedit to change existing map features or to add new ones. The Arcplot module handles the graphics display and any printer or plotter you have installed. The Overlay module controls the interaction among multiple pieces of data. For example, you would use the Overlay module to calculate the overlap of one map feature onto another. If you have one map of all the major interstates and highways and another of all the retail magazine outlets, the Overlay module could show you the places within 5 miles of an interstate or a highway where you could buy the latest copy of BYTE. Finally, the Network module handles geocoding, routing, and address management. Arc/Info incorporates a customcommand processor to turn these modules into one cohesive unit.

Arcshell serves as an interface menu to save you from memorizing and typing all the commands (see screen 1). You still have to know what the commands mean, but Arcshell has them grouped by logical function and can prompt you for arguments. The standard Arcshell interface is the/orw? handler, an on-screen graphics box with one line for each command argument. You simply Fill in the blanks and press the OK button. If you need more help, the form handler gives you a scrolling list of possibilities to choose from. This combination of forms entry and Arcshell is easier than using the raw command line, but it's not the same as using a true graphical interface; even with Arcshell running, Arc/Info still feels like a command-line package with the shell doing the typing for you.

The last component of the Arc/Info package, and perhaps the most important, is its SML (Simple Macro Language). SML is a cross between a programming language and an extension of DOS batch

Fdes. It offers many of the features you'd expect to find in a programming language: variables, macros, I/O functions, and flow control (e.g., IF...THEN, WHILE, and GOTO). SML lets you automate the procedures you would otherwise input from Arc/Info's command line or the shell. Arcshell itself is written in SML, as are other Arc/Info functions. If you use Arc/Info to write a vertical-market application, you'll use SML to handle the flow between modules and provide the interface. SML's compiler makes your finished programs run quicker and take up less space, and it prevents end users from making changes to your program or reading your code.

A variety of attributes make Arc/Info stand out among the packages in this review. First, Arc/Info is a big package: It took over 12 MB of disk space to install, and the installation itself was delicate. Our

graphics tablet (a Summagraphics SummaSketch II Plus) wasn't directly supported, and it took a call to ESRI's technical support to get the right patch to the driver table. Once we got past that, parts of the package still wouldn't work until we reinstalled them a second or third time. At least we discovered ESRI's technical support to be knowledgeable and patient.

Another attribute is Arc/Info's learning curve. We worked with the package for a few weeks and felt rather frustrated. The tutorial itself takes the better part of a week to get through, and after a reasonable amount of time, we still didn't have much to show for it. After talking with ESRI, we found out that the company expects a new user to spend six months or longer getting comfortable with the package. We weren't able to become proficient with Arc/Info during the course of this review.

Uieu Select Edit Operate Thematic Display Prin File: Geographic Attribute Datapoint Hapfile Run System Quit

fit las GIS Rel: 2.001 G:FLAMINGO ft: DftTfl D: POINTS M:FLAMINGO P: LI

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Screen 2: Atlas GIS 2.0 uses drop-down menus that require only a series of single keystrokes or point-and-click operations from the mouse or digitizer. You can remap any of the commands (or your own combinations of commands) to any of the function keys, Alt keys, mouse buttons, or tablet buttons.

Atlas GIS 2.0

If your mapping-software requirements go beyond a mapping front end to database queries and instead focus on generating maps for your output, then Atlas GIS 2.0 from Strategic Mapping should fit your needs. Atlas GIS focuses more on producing maps than on interfacing to external databases. All the geographic information is stored in a proprietary file

format. The data information is stored in the same file format (the .DBF file) that dBase and FoxBase use. To use data from other databases, you must import it. There are translation utilities for dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, and various ASCII-based delimited and column-format files. As is typical with many of the Atlas GIS configuration screens, you specify the mapping of source fields to internal fields by filling out specification tables. An Atlas GIS map project

192 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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DESKTOP MAPPING SOFTWARE

consists of a dozen different files, some specifying configuration information and others containing the data.

Atlas GIS has borrowed more than configuration screens from the spreadsheet paradigm; you access commands through a hierarchical menu system that requires only a series of keystrokes or point-andclick operations from the mouse or digitizer (see screen 2). You can remap any of the commands (or your own combinations of commands) to any of the function keys, Alt keys, mouse buttons, or tablet buttons. You can also define your own tablet template and submenus. Other than the macros that you can create for keys and buttons, Atlas GIS has no underlying programming language.

The concept of map layers is integral to the Atlas GIS design. The key to geographic information is based on longitude and latitude, but you can create free-floating maps, using your own values for scale and your own grid system. The simplest are the x, y coordinates of your digitizer. Atlas GIS can easily convert a map between any of the standard map-projection and coordinate systems, so you can combine information from many different sources.

We found Atlas GIS the easiest package to use for digitizing new maps or adding detail to existing ones. You can access all the commands from a menu bar, which is fully functional, from the digitizer, a mouse, and the keyboard at the same time.

You draw maps in Atlas GIS using three kinds of map objects: regions, lines, and points. You can define a region by its boundaries or by its proximity to another object (as a buffer zone). Regions are rendered using solid colors and overlay textures. You can control the rendering of a line's color, width, and style (including a railroad style with left- or right-ticked lines, which are appropriate for rendering elevation lines). There are over 100 different symbols that you can use to display points.

You are limited to two themes for dis

Atlas GIS Features

• single keystrokes drive menus

• extensive tools for developing thematic maps

• keystroke macros

• digitizer, plotter, and printer support

• dBase-oriented

• MS-DOS platform

• price: $2595

playing any single thematic map. but you can construct the themes from complex expressions that pull their data from any number of quantitative data fields. You can use expressions not only to calculate the appropriate display for thematic maps but also to define the fields within a layer. Expressions can be as simple as the name of a field or complex enough to include a subset of the dBase operators and func

tions. By the time you read this, there will be a Windows version of Atlas GIS.

Atlas GIS is a true GIS product m that it lets you build your own applications, maps, and databases. It gives you substantial control over the format of your maps. Unlike most of the vertical-application mapping software, the emphasis of Atlas GIS is on the map as output, not as an interface for querying databases.

File Edit Select Map Data Analysis Format

rja m

Screen 3: GeoQuery 3.0 uses a standard Mac interface to access the package's search and display features. Although the toolbox has some unfamiliar icons, they are easy enough to use after a bit of practice. Curiously. GeoQuery doesn 't have a real zoom feature—to zoom on a piece of a map. you have to delete the other regions first and then set the scale.

GeoQuery 3.0

GeoQuery 3.0 is a Macintosh application that is primarily designed to examine preexisting databases and maps for details. For example, you might issue each of your salespeople a Mac PowerBook, a copy of GeoQuery, and a database of your current customers. With a minimum of training, your sales force can find out the location of each customer and their proximity to major landmarks and plan out an appropriate route. While GeoQuery lets you create new maps, you're mostly limited to assembling them from pieces of larger ones. The package we reviewed has exclusively U.S. coverage.

The metaphor in GeoQuery is the pushpin. The home office loads in the customer database (which is imported from formatted ASCII files, Apple's DAL (Data Ac

cess Language), or some other mainframe link) and geocode each data point as a pushpin. The basic GeoQuery package has the five-digit ZIP codes for all 50 states. Other coverage is available from the vendor. Using the pushpin metaphor makes it easy to balance sales territories, find customer sites, analyze market saturation, or generate reports on individual customers in a given area.

GeoQuery's other data-analysis modes are centered around shaded maps. Unlike the pushpin approach, the shaded map treats each data point as one of many and performs data collection based on a large group of customers. Using editorial-survey information, a magazine could produce a map showing the areas of the country with the most active OS/2 use, or a national moving company could find the cities that produce the most business.

continued

194 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

ArcView for Windows.

Geographic User Interface:

State-of-the-art hitman

interface concepts bring

advanced CIS functionality to

your desktop hi an intuitive,

easij-to-Ieani environment.

Database Queries:

Create sophisticated query

expressions instantly. Features

from the database that meet the

criteria are highlighted in the

tabular view and map displays.

File Windows Help

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A True Network Product:

Run ArcView on PCs, Macintoshes®, UNIX® workstations, and access and integrate databases across networks.

Output Options:

Save graphics and tabular listings to industry standard graphics files, or share data with other Windows-based applications.

"ArcView for Windows provides a major breakthrough in the usability of GIS, making

it easy and fun for users to visualize, analyze, and explore geographic information."

-Jack Dangermond, ESRI President

ArcView for Windows is a powerful, new software tool that brings geographic information to your desktop. ArcView gives you the power to quickly visualize your data together with existing geographic databases and explore it in a different way. The world's first geographic user interface to spatial data, ArcView gets you up and running quickly with its unique approach to visualizing geographic phenomena.

ArcView is highly integrated with other Windows-based applications, creating a more comprehensive environment for analysis and desktop publishing, spreadsheet, database, word processing, publication graphics, and other Windows-based software applications to extend ArcView's power in the Windows environment.

ArcView displays and querys ARC /INFO databases, and displays a wide variety of image data. Thousands of cities, counties, states, national agencies, and private businesses maintain large inventories of map and tabular data in ArcView-compatible formats. And with ESRI's ArcData" Publishing Program, you have direct access to hundreds of off-the-shelf data products from the world's leading providers of digital data.

ArcView opens up the world of geographic information to everyone. Experience for yourself why ArcView is changing the way we look at the world. To order your copy of ArcView for Windows or for more information, call ESRI at (909) 793-2853, ext. 1375.

ESRI ■ 380 New York Street ■ Redlands, CA 92373

Exploring your world has never been easier.

Copyright' ■ 1992 Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc ah rights reserved ESRI and arc-info are registered trademarks ot Environmental Systems Research Institute, Ine AreVie» and the ESRI logo are trademarks of

EnvironnKDi.it Systems Research institute, Inc ArcData is a service- mark ot Environmental Systems Research Institute. Inc. Other companies and products herein are trademarks ol their respective companies.

Circle 211 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 212).

DESKTOP MAPPING SOFTWARE

GeoQuery is also System 7.0-savvy. Besides supporting Apple's DAL for data entry, it also supports Publish/Subscribe for sharing completed map images with other applications. For example, the newsletter you send out to your regional sales staff might have a map of the last month's activity, using Publish/Subscribe to link the map to your desktop publishing package. If you have a spreadsheet or database application that can publish data, GeoQuery can subscribe to it and, as the data changes, automatically update the document. Using both capabilities, you can establish a link from a remote mainframe database right through to the final newsletter layout; as the mainframe data changes, a few mouse-clicks will update the printed document with minimal intervention.

If you need to incorporate a mapping capability into your custom application, GeoQuery supports Apple events for loading and manipulating map data from within other applications. The current release is supported by Acius's 4th Dimension database package; the Apple event documentation is available from GeoQuery if you want to drive it from your company's custom software.

Simply being a Macintosh application suggests ease of use, and GeoQuery is consistent with other Mac applications. The toolbox has selection tools, a text tool, and drawing tools, as well as some map-specific tools, such as query tools and special selection tools. An information tool lets you click on anything on the map and find out the name of a region, road, or landmark. A snooper tool (a magnifying glass) lets you bring up the data record for any pushpin object on the map. The package was very easy to learn and use.

GeoQuery has a couple of unusual features. You can zoom in and out of a map by setting the map scale, but you cannot zoom in close enough to exclude any visible states (see screen 3). To zoom in on a

GeoQuery Features

• standard Mac interface

• strong market-analysis and reporting focus

• no programming language

• System 7.0 support, including Publish/Subscribe

• fully relational database analysis

• Macintosh platform

• price: $395

particular area of the country, you have to delete the rest of the country from the map. That seems odd and a bit contrary to the standard Mac interface. We suspect that GeoQuery does this to speed up redrawing

it's still disconcerting. It's also unfortunate that there's no macro language or other way of automating a mapping sequence. As easy as GeoQuery is to use, some functions and tools will be unfamil

of the increased detail as you zoom in, but iar to a novice Mac user.

Maplnfo 2.0

File Edit Analyze Table Style Window Browse

Maplnfo 2.0 for Windows

Maplnfo 2.0 for Windows from MapInfo Corp. is a map-drawing and map-querying package, although the company is targeting it primarily as a query package for sales management. Like GeoQuery, Maplnfo attaches data records to map features and lets you query them through the user interface or access them through MapBasic, Maplnfo's programming language.

When most manufacturers port a product to several platforms, they try to keep the interface consistent across the different platforms. That approach is both good and bad: It makes it easier for users in a mixedcomputing environment to switch between machines, but it makes it difficult for a user of a given platform to learn the package. Maplnfo takes on the look and feel of a standard Windows application.

You build a Maplnfo image as a series of layers. One layer might be state or country outlines, the next layer could be lakes and rivers, and the next might be roads followed by cities. You can choose to display or hide any layer at will, and you can edit data on any layer at any time. To

Screen 4: Maplnfo 2.0 for Windows lets you merge multiple databases and maps together into one display, including multiple views of the same map. The Info tool (selected here) displays information on any map feature, and the Browser window displays the map's underlying data. Maplnfo has a full data-analysis capability that uses both an interactive data-entry form and a programmable language interface (MapBasic). The inset shows a map of the U.S., shaded to show the number of customers located in each state. The legend is automatically created to reflect the current shading.

196 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Jr.

r r

JMhM ?M&tj&M&M&'i£\ SKfS/

Developers Say...

"Hardlock is Networking! Now everyone on the Network can access my application without having the Hardlock on their PC. NET Hardlock's interface allows me to easily limit the number of simultaneous users without having to build this up myself. Since NET Hardlock contains an algorithmic response ASIC, I'm assured of the highest level of protection. And Clenco's software interface choices couldn't have been easier to use!"

Accountants Say...

"NET Hardlock is a welcome addition to the Hardlock family of revenue protection products. Now limiting and expanding the simultaneous user portion of the license agreement is the easy part! Our costs are lowered and the end user benefits - it's a perfect solution!"

End Users Say...

"NET Hardlock is the easiest protection system I've ever used! Once the NET Hardlock is plugged in, I don't even know it's there. Now the application can find the NET Hardlock regardless of which PC I'm using. We can easily add more users to the license without shipping Hardlocks back and forth. Just knowing the software developer is paid for their efforts makes me feel confident that the next upgrade is coming and my investment is secure!"

Other products in the Hardlock Family:

Hardlock & Hardlock with Memory (Single User)

Hardlock DES (Data Security)

Hardlock SE (Workstations)

Call for your 30-Day No Risk Evaluation Kit!

Supporting Windows, DOS, OS/2, Unix

Shown actual size.

'Ifth only product thai Eoinb'mm a mtmor/ option wjiii pfogtiiiriinabJi;, ul^uniiiin'ic rnopunab — all in unt cjinpii^i unit. ■.

rAud* in iiii USA

MJ0O562^43

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270 Lexington Drive Buffalo Grove, Illinois 60089-6930 708/808-0300 Fax: 708/808-0313

For a distributor in Europe contact Fast Electronic GmbH, Tel: 49-89-539-800-20 Fax: 49-89-539-800-40 In Korea contact Finecom, Tel: 82-2-690-5811 Fax: 82-2-605-5729 In Brazil contact HT-MACH, Tel: 21-257-0314 Fax: 21-235-6808

In Chile contact Datasoft S.A., Tel: 562-246-7443 Fax: 562-208-0591 In Peru contact V.C.H.I., Tel: 51-14-440537 Fax: 51-14-475984

For International information circle 103, For Domestic information circle 104 on Inquiry Card.

DESKTOP MAPPING SOFTWARE

Maplnfo Features

• standard Windows interface

• full-featured map drawing and a query application programming language (MapBasic)

• screen, printer/plotter, and Windows-device support

• point-and-click and SQL database query

• fully relational database analysis

• MS-DOS, Windows, and Macintosh platforms

• price: $995 ($795 for MapBasic)

access data beneath the layers, Maplnfo offers a rich set of selection tools and access methods (see screen 4). For example, you can select a point on the map and then select any city within 500 miles of that point that has a population of over 100,000, or you can show all petroleum storage sites that sit within a half mile of a watershed area.

If you don't like any of the existing maps, Maplnfo lets you digitize your own maps or import maps in other formats. Specific data for cities and other map features can come in from formatted ASCII-, dBase-, Lotus 1-2-3-, and Microsoft Excel-formatted files. The first step is defining the correlation between the incoming data and your map's field layout. As the data is drawn into the map database, geocodes are assigned to each element of data, and the data becomes associated with a location on the map.

During the geocoding process, MapInfo compares the incoming data to known features that already have map coordinates assigned to them. In most cases, postal codes will provide a good match; street addresses can provide an even closer match if the information is available. If Maplnfo can't find an exact match during the process, it stops and displays the data and lets you manually assign geocodes. That process can be tedious for large databases, so you also have the option of ignoring any uncodable data and assigning geocodes to it later with a different database.

Analyzing map data is Maplnfo's forte. Each map layer has its own database, and all the analytical functions are relational; therefore, you can analyze data on any one layer as a function of the data on another layer. For example, if your company is a wholesale manufacturer of recycled containers, you might want to see which cities in a given area need more resellers. You

would probably put the cities on one layer and your existing reseller base on another. By relating the two layers, you could highlight those cities where the resellers' inventory is insufficient to cover the population in those cities.

Maplnfo handles dozens of projection types and has a primitive page-layout capability for combining multiple maps onto

a single printed page, a sophisticated SQL implementation (for complex queries), and MapBasic, a full programming language for creating turnkey applications. Compared to the other packages we reviewed, Maplnfo for Windows is full-featured, fast, and easy to use. While we can't know if Maplnfo will solve your mapping problem, it's hard to imagine one it can't handle.

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Screen 5: Tactician 2.0 runs on the Macintosh and under Windows, but it doesn't look or behave like your typical Macintosh or Windows program, because it migrated from the DEC VAX I VMS world.

Tactician 2.0

If the data you want to display resides on several different hosts within different database systems, then you should look at Tactics International's Tactician 2.0. Tactician runs on the Macintosh and under Windows. (The Macintosh version has more functionality; therefore, we evaluated Tactician on a Mac Quadra 950.) But it doesn't quite look or behave like your typical Macintosh or Windows program, because it migrated from the DEC VAX/ VMS world (see screen 5).

Even though the focus of Tactician is on market analysis, you can use it for other projects. It doesn't qualify as a full-blown GIS (you must get your geographic information from some other system—AutoCAD or a GIS program), but it has more data-analysis and display options than some GIS programs. If you plan to use Tactician for general-purpose mapping, there are several missing elements; for ex

ample, there is no provision for creating buffer zones (although Tactician lets you create a similar feature using a territory), and the map-format generation is not as flexible and full-featured as that of most of the other products we reviewed.

The emphasis of Tactician is on the data. The map is a consequence of the data. This isn't to say that the mapping capabilities of Tactician are lacking; in fact, there are more ways to map data with Tactician than with any other package that we looked at. Not only can you generate thematic maps using color and dot density, but you can also call out data using several different types of charts that are displayed right on the map. By putting the emphasis on the data underlaying the map, Tactician ends up displaying more data windows than windows with maps.

Most of the data windows look like spreadsheets, but they are actually tableformatted representations of the data Tactician is looking at. You still need to import

198 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

ATLAS SOFTWARE

A NEW DIMENSION IN DATA MANAGEMENT

Site Evaluation -- Supreme Burger Franchise

lost business and government professionals view and analyze data with spreadsheets, databases and occasionally in business graphics packages. While these types of software work well when displaying statistical data, they are blind to important geographical information — such as market potential by sales territory, distribution coverage by product, or customer locations by ZIP codi or street address.

Atlas Software"" is changing that. By linking data from spreadsheets, databases and even other applications — on your PC or Macintosh" - you can now add the important geographical dimension to your information system.

And when we say important, we mean mission critical. For example, Atlas Software can help business professionals answer "what il" and "show me where" questions for optimizing sales territories, targeting customers, and selecting ideal site locations. Government professionals can use Atlas Software for everything from political redisIricling to land-use planning and public safety analysis. Without Atlas Software decision makers often overlook important geographic information and allocate resources ineffectively.

Atlas Software programs come equipped with built-in data management capabilities, map file importing and a generous

base map and data sampler from our comprehensive library containing over 75 gigabytes of geographic files, business statistics and demographicdata.

Atlas Software comes in a variety of "flavors" to suit your specific needs and supports MS DOS", MS Windows" and Macintosh operating systems.

So if you're ready to add a dynamic new dimension to die way you use information, like 25,000 other Strategic Mapping customers, call us lor a free Desktop Mapping Guidebook and demo disk. We'd be happy to map out a plan for you.

Phone: (408) 970-9600

\&t

o

INC.

FAX: (408)

970-9999

7™

In Canada, ..ill +16-693 +166 In ill.- UK. all 44-S1 99+-2780 In Germany, call +9-228-62-73-82 In Australia, ..ill 61-3-866-1766

In II.Ijmiiiii/I UX, call J2-2 771 25 75

In il„. N.tli.rl.in.K. call M 140 In ft-ance, call ill +5-27 20 6 In D.inn.nl. call 45+225 17 7 In Spate, ..ill S+-1-S6+-I lib In Brazil, ..ill 5 52 1 2h2 'M5l>

Circle 168 on Inquiry Card.

DESKTOP MAPPING SOFTWARE

Tactician Features

• menu-driven

• strong market-analysis and reporting focus

• fast access to data

• flexible filtering for external data querying and importing

• spreadsheet-oriented

• Macintosh and Windows platforms

• price: $2495

the data from other systems. You can click on samples of your data to specify what goes where. Unfortunately, you must do this for all external data. There is no builtin way to get this information out. But once you have determined how to do it, you can automate the information using Tactician's scripting language.

Unfortunately, Tactician suffers from many of the user-interface problems typical of an application brought to the Macintosh from a miniframe or mainframe environment. For example, the typical Macintosh user is not accustomed to listing all the files that are associated with a project and having to reopen them, one by one, until the full set of necessary files is

available on the desktop.

There are other problems: The icons on the map window don't have the same look and feel as other Macintosh programs, there are too many layers to each of the operations, and, worst of all, the code is not foolproof—a novice user will crash the operating system by trying to do operations that are not appropriate.

The Macintosh is known for the intuitive and consistent interface of the applications on it. Tactician is far from being intuitive. Even though Tactician excels in data manipulation and retrieval, it is a complex program that is beyond the capabilities of a nontechnical person. Nonetheless, the package can be of great value to those who will take the time to climb the learning curve. Its most impressive feature is speed. It is far faster at data retrieval and recompilation than any of the other products.

Mapping Your Options

Each of the five mapping-software products reviewed here has unique strengths and weaknesses. You will need to match your needs to the attributes of the software. For example, if you are dealing with vast amounts of data from a database and the speed of data access is the most important criterion, then Tactician shines above all the rest. But don't pick Tactician if you are looking for a complete GIS for your research project; it is designed

for marketing analysis and reporting only.

Arc/Info is complete and extensible, but you shouldn't pick it if you want to get your data up and running as soon as possible. It is the most difficult package to install, configure, and learn.

The easiest package to learn is also the most feature-limited one: GeoQuery. It is best implemented on the Macintosh, since it uses many of the capabilities that are specific to the Macintosh. However, it lacks a programming language and is not designed for repetitive tasks.

The most balanced mapping-software packages are Atlas GIS and Maplnfo. Both are designed for creating maps, as well as querying them. Even though they are complex, the average technical user can get a good grasp of their design and functionality in a week or less. The discriminating factor is one of focus. If you need to produce your own maps, Atlas GIS is your best choice. But for managing, analyzing, and visually displaying your data, Maplnfo is the best product. Take your pick. ■

Ben Smith and Howard Eglowstein are testing editors for the BYTE Lab. Ben is the author of UNIX Step-by-Step (Howard W. Sams, 1990); you can contact him on BIX as "bensmith " and on the Internet at ben@bytepb.byte.com. Howard holds an S.B. from MIT. You can contact him on BIX as "heglow stein."

1

COMPANY

INFORMATION

1

Environmental Systems

Strategic Mapping, Inc.

Automap, Inc.

Softkey Software Products

Research Institute, Inc.

(Atlas GIS 2.0)

(Automap—The Intelligent

Florida, Inc.

(Arc/Info 3.4D)

3135KiferRd.

Road Atlas)

(Keymap 2.02)

380 New York St.

Santa Clara, CA 95051

9830 South 51st St.

4800 North Federal Hwy.

Redlands, CA 92373

(408)970-9600

Building A-l 31

Third Floor, Suite 300D

(714)793-2853

fax: (408) 970-9999

Phoenix, AZ 85044

Boca Raton, FL 33431

fax:(714)793-5953

Circle 979 on Inquiry Card.

(800) 545-6626

(407) 367-0005

Circle 976 on Inquiry Card.

(602)893-2400

fax:(407)367-1611

Tactics International, Ltd.

fax: (602) 893-2042

Circle 985 on Inquiry Card.

GeoQuery Corp.

(Tactician 2.0)

Circle 982 on Inquiry

Card.

(GeoQuery 3.0)

16 Haverhill St.

Summagraphics Corp.

475 Alexis R. Shuman Blvd.,

Andover, MA 01810

DeLorme Mapping

(SummaSketch II Plus)

Suite 385E

(800)927-7666

(Street Atlas USA)

60 Silvermine Rd.

Naperville, IL 60563

(508) 475-4475

P.O. Box 298

Seymour, CT 06483

(800)541-0181

fax:(508)475-2136

Lower Main St.

(800)729-7866

(708)357-0535

Circle 980 on Inquiry Card.

Freeport, ME 04032

(203)881-5400

fax:(708)717-4254

(800)227-1656

fax:(203)881-5367

Circle 977 on Inquiry Card.

OTHER COMPANIES MENTIONED c Lmo«MO

fax: (207) 865-9628

Circle 986 on Inquiry Card.

Maplnfo Corp.

A ■'

Circle 983 on Inquiry

Card.

TTG, Inc.

(Maplnfo 2.0 for Windows) 200 Broadway

(4th Dimension)

10351 BubbRd.

Cupertino, CA 95014

(408) 252-4444

fax:(408)252-0831

Circle 981 on Inquiry Card.

Maptcch

(StarManager) 10 State St.

Troy, NY 12180

(Tru-Chart 2.11)

Woburn, MA 01801

(518)274-6000 fax:(518)274-6066

225 Sperry Ave., Suite 1000 Ventura, CA 93003

(617)932-6500 fax:(617)932-6238

Circle 978 on Inquiry Card.

(805)654-8006 fax:(805)654-8147

Circle 987 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 984 on Inquiry

Card.

200 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Afford lo Buy

>-%c

At $149, any budget can afford ViewRx, the Windows Business Applications Accelerator

Kingston knows that staring

at an hourglass isn't the best

use of your time. We know

that people who run Windows spreadsheets WI and word

processors don't like to wait

for text scrolls, reformats,

cuts and pastes. We know

that your time is valuable. But we also know that

budgets are tight, and when

faced with the choice of just

muddling along with slow

business applications or spending hundreds of

dollars on a Windows accelerator, you may reluctantly

choose to just muddle along.

The affordable Windows Accelerator.

That's why we created ViewRx, the cure for slow

running Windows business applications. Windows

spreadsheet tests show that ViewRx makes your applications run three times faster.

ViewRx is based on the Weitek 5186 chip that has

Windows BitBLT and line draw functions built in.

That means that these often used Windows functions are handled by ViewRx, not by the CPU. And that means better performance for you. ViewRx supports up to 1024 x 768 screen resolution to fit even the largest spreadsheets on the screen. For the least possible screen flicker, ViewRx offers a 72Hz refresh rate and supports noninterlaced mode. ViewRx comes complete with trouble free drivers for Windows 3-1 and popular CAD packages.

Kingston Reliability.

Every ViewRx is thoroughly tested and warranted

for five years. You can always

count on Kingston's free technical support if you have even

i

the slightest problem. For more information on the remedy for slow Windows or a reseller near you, call Kingston at (800) 835-6575.

Identical Excel spreadsheet tested on 3S6SX-20 PC with ET-4O00 VGA and ViewRx cards. All Trademarks and Registered Trademarks are of their respective holders. Kingston and Kingston 'Technology are Registered Trademarks of Kingston Technology Corporation.

n Kingston

l"! JUtechnolocy corporation

The Inside Name in Upgrades 17600 Newhope Street, Fountain Valley, California 92708 (714) 435-2600 Fax (714) 435-2699

Circle 117 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 118).

HARDWARE

Making Windows Rock and Roll

RICK GREHAN

If you're running Windows, your PC's central processor is working overtime. It has to take all those window frames and dialog boxes and put them on the screen. Quickly. Meanwhile, the recalc or redraw command you sent it has to sit in the pipeline while the CPU does its Windows-related chores. Everything slows down, and you spend valuable time waiting for your screen to refresh.

The solution: Pass those Windows chores off to a Windows accelerator board. AH a Windows accelerator does is graphics; it takes the graphics load off the host CPU, which is then free to work on the computing task at hand.

Windows is rife with repeated graphical elements and operations. Just look at your typical Windows display and see how many rectangles there are: window frames, title bars, dialog boxes, tool palettes, scroll bars, check boxes, and on and on. Chances are that a single Windows low-level routine drew all those rectangles. If you want to speed up a piece of software, then optimize those operations that the software performs most frequently.

Hardware designers have taken those operations and moved them into silicon. The results are chips like the S3 86C911 and 86C801, the Weitek W5186, the Western Digital WD90C31, and the Texas Instruments 34020. A graphics board containing one of these chips looks like a standard VGA card when you boot your system up. But with the right display driver (i.e., software that knows there's a graphics accelerator hiding on that card), graphics operations that used to require the host CPU's total involvement now become a handful of instructions that amount to no more than storing a few parameters in some on-chip registers.

In this review, I look at 16 PC boards that speed up Windows. Some are fixedfunction accelerators; they take over common Windows operations from the CPU. Others are built around a programmable

processor, TI's 34020; they rev up applications, such as CAD programs, written to take advantage of them. Windows accelerators now range in price from less than $200 to more than $2000. While the high-price boards have definite advantages, such as rapid drawing of ellipses, you don't have to spend a fortune to significantly boost the speed of Windows.

What They Do

No matter what chip they're based on, Windows accelerators typically boost a few fundamental operations:

• Line drawing. Next to text, lines are probably the graphics elements that most frequently appear on a screen. All those rectangles on your Windows screen require horizontal and vertical lines. Because rectangles appear so frequently, and because of the simplicity of an algorithm to draw one, some accelerators include special routines just to draw rectangles.

• BitBlts. In its simplest form, this is the act of copying a rectangle of the display— pixel by pixel—from one location on the screen to another (or from some location in nonvideo memory to the screen). When you grab a window's title bar and drag thai window to another spot on-screen, the system moves that window's display contents with a BitBlt operation.

• Rectangle fills. Whenever you open a window in Windows, the system has to draw a rectangle and fill it with some specified background color. Some accelerators can do the filling for the host CPU; all the driver need do is specify the rectangle's location, size, and fill color—the accelerator does the rest.

Many Modes and Drivers

The most striking feature of all these cards (beyond their graphics prowess) is the number of display modes they support. They are all at least compatible with VGA, which makes them backward-compatible

with the IBM PC MDA, CGA, and EGA modes; most can also mimic a Hercules HGC adapter. The boards all support a big array of graphics modes; see the features table on page 204 for more information.

Except for the ViewRx from Kingston Technology, every board reviewed here supports at least 256 simultaneous colors in resolutions of 640 by 480, 800 by 600, and 1024 by 768 pixels. The ViewRx can deliver 256 colors only in 640- by 480-pixel mode—it supports 16 colors in the other modes. This is because the ViewRx comes with only 512 KB of on-board RAM. The Weitek W5186 graphics accelerator used by the ViewRx is capable of 65,536 colors in 640 by 480 and 800 by 600 modes, and 256 colors in 1024 by 768 mode, but it requires 1 MB of video-board RAM to produce the additional colors.

Although I focus on the cards as accelerators of Windows 3.1, all the boards I cover are supplied with drivers for specific applications. The most popular drivers

202 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT PARKER/AVIS STUDIO©1993

BYTE

ACTION SUMMARY

are for DOS versions of AutoCAD. Lotus 1 -2-3, Microsoft Word, and WordPerfect. See the table for which drivers are included. Board suppliers are adding new drivers all the time, so it's likely that the driver list provided by a particular board will be different by the time you read this.

Two of the 34020-based boards—The Texan, from Omnicomp Graphics, and WinSprint, from Artist Graphics—also support TIGA (Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture). From the user standpoint, TIGA is a collection of graphics routines. TIGA-compatible applications can communicate with graphics boards based on TI's 340x0 chips. A TIGA board has to support a minimal set of graphics operations. (For a more thorough discussion of TIGA, see "The Brains Behind the Graphics," November 1989 BYTE.)

Some Unique Traits

Although the boards are similar in function, some of them have interesting side

lines. The Truevision 1024-32, for example, features pan and zoom. Press the Alt+ key combination and the screen is magnified two times; press it again and the screen is magnified four times. You don't have to be in any particular application to use this magnifier, which would be especially useful inside drawing software or helpful to people with poor vision who have to read small text.

Orchid Technology's Fahrenheit VA has two extra connectors on the back: one for a microphone, the other for an external speaker. The board supports a Voice Notes utility. Plug a microphone and speaker (or use the PC's internal speaker) into the Fahrenheit and you're ready to attach a voice note (an audible sticky note) to any application that supports OLE.

ATI Technologies' Graphics Ultra Pro, based on the company's own Much 32 graphics controller, distinguishes itself with a multimedia hook: The video-RAMbased board can play back Microsoft

WHAT WINDOWS ACCELERATORS ARE

Graphics cards that speed up graphical operations.

LIKES

Eliminate time wasted waiting

for windows to redraw;

lots of drivers; easy to set up.

DISLIKES

The 34020-based boards are not worth the price for generalpurpose Windows operations.

RECOMMENDATIONS

For all-around Windows performance, the Actix Systems GraphicsEngine 32 is the best of the bunch. If you're looking for a big boost in speed without spending more than $300, the top choice is National Design's Volante Warp 10. If speeding up your drawing and design work is more important than speeding up regular Windows operations, a board based on TI's 34020 processor, like Truevision's 102432 or Omnicomp's The Texan, is worth the higher cost.

Video for Windows (formerly AVI) "movies" in windows of up to 1024 by 768 pixels and at speeds of 30 frames per second. Besides being a Windows accelerator, the $799 Graphics Ultra Pro is a cost-effective means of playing full-motion video.

The WinSprint includes a handy Windows application, called Command Center, that lets you access menu-bar commands from a small pop-up window that you activate by clicking the right mouse button. So, for example, if you're inside your word processor and want to save a file, instead of having to move the mouse up to the top of the screen and pulling down a menu, you just click the right mouse button. The pop-up appears under your pointer. (You can tailor the pop-up for your favorite applications.)

Testing with New Benchmarks

I tested the accelerator cards using a modified version of BYTE's low-level Windows benchmarks. Specifically, the unmodified benchmarks time themselves

JANUARY 1993

YTE 203

MAKING WINDOWS ROCK AND ROLL

PERFORMANCE

AND FEATURES OF WINDOWS

ACCELERATORS

We used the new BYTE Windows benchmarks to measure how fast each board is in three categories. If your work involves applications such as CAD and illustration, results in the basic-graphics category are most important; these tests time the drawing of ellipses, lines, rectangles, and polygons. If you're more interested in speeding up general Windows operations, the speeds ofBitBlts and text display are most relevant. The numbers represent how many times the board performed a particular operation in 1 second. The results were normalized agcdnst a standard VGA card (Orchid's Pro Designer II). Performance leaders are in red.

Basic- BitBIt Text Chip type Maximum Maximum graphics index index RAM refresh index

Actix Systems GraphicsEngine

4.60

11.32

2.33

86C924

1 MB

72 Hz

Actix Systems GraphicsEngine 32

4.93

20.51

3.18

86C801

2MB

72 Hz

Artist Graphics WinSprint

:

5.30

Hill 2.60

1.08

34020

20 MB1

75 Hz

ATI Technologies Graphics Ultra Pro

4.50

19.36

2.88

Proprietary

2MB

76 Hz

Cardinal Technologies VGA90G

4.53

HHfe0.96

2.29

86C911

1MB

72 Hz

Celerite Graphics Galaxy 2000

1.82

5.51

1.14

Primus P2000A

2MB

72 Hz

DFI VG-8000W

1.88

7.93

1.14

WD90C31

1 MB

72 Hz

Diamond Computer Systems SpeedStar

24X

3.21

9.84

1.37

WD90C31

1 MB

72 Hz

Kingston Technology ViewRx

1.27

5.61

,1:52

W5186

512KB

72 Hz

mm

National Design Volante Warp 10

4.90

12.60

2.53

86C801

1 MB

70 Hz

Omnicomp Graphics The Texan

5.85

10.00

1.64

34020

10 MB2

72 Hz

Orchid Technology Fahrenheit VA

4.75

15.78

2.81

86C801

1 MB

72 Hz

Sigma Designs Legend GX

4,11

10.95

2.26

86C924

1 MB

76 Hz

HH

Truevision 1024-32

3.54

2.58

1.91

34020

20 MB'

120 Hz

Video Seven WIN.VGA

1.69

3.23

0.98

HT216/F

1 MB

76 Hz

Western Digital Paradise

1.86

6.66

1.18

WD90C31

1 MB

72 Hz

NOTES OTHER DRIVERS

' 3 MB of video RAM plus 17 MB of DRAM. A = AutoCAD/ADI C = GEM E = Lotus 1 -2-3

2 2 MB of VRAM plus 8 MB of DRAM. B = Cadvance D = Generic CADD F = Microsoft Word

G = TIGA

H = Ventura Publisher

I = WordPerfect

Chips That Accelerate

S3 86C911

S3's 86C911 GUI accelerator, used in the Cardinal VGA900, enhances graphics performance by executing a number of primitive graphics operations in hardware. S3 has aimed the 86C911 straight at windowing environments such as Microsoft Windows, OS/2 Presentation Manager, and even the X Window System. You can see this if you examine the graphics primitives that the 86C911 supports in hardware. These include line drawing, BitBlts, rectangle fills, hardware clipping, and hardware cursor.

A software driver running on the host "talks" to the 86C911 by loading specified registers on the chip with command parameters and then storing a command in the chip's command register. These commands and command

parameters are actually placed into an eight-command-deep FIFO (firstin/first-out) queue, which serves as a buffer between the host and the 86C911. Consequently, the 86C911 can be processing one command while the host is busy sending it another.

S3 86C924

The 86C924 (used by the Actix Systems GraphicsEngine and Sigma Designs Legend GX) is basically an 86C911 with minor enhancements and corrections. Apparently, there is a bug in the hardware clipping that the 86C911 performs in modes that support 1280 pixels across the screen. This means that drivers have to handle clipping in software for 1280- by 960-pixel modes when run on the 86C911. The 86C924 hardware fixes this problem.

S3 86C801

S3's 86C801 can handle up to 16 million colors in its 640- by 480-pixel mode. Where the 86C911 allows only up to 16 colors in 1280 by 1024 mode, the 86C801 can deliver 256.

For added performance, the 86C801 contains a read-ahead cache, so when the host CPU requests data directly from video memory, the 86C801 can actually prefetch additional bytes in anticipation of upcoming requests.

The 86C801's outstanding performance can be easily seen in Actix's GraphicsEngine 32 and National Design's Warp 10. Not only did the GraphicsEngine 32 turn in first-place individual scores for rectangle drawing and BitBIt operations, it also placed first in the aggregate text-output index. The Warp 10—though not placing

204 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

MAKING WINDOWS ROCK AND ROLL

Color modes*

Price

640 x480

800 x600

1024 x768

1024 x1024

1280 x960

1280 x1024

A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I

y

a

a

D

a

$299

A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I

■

a

a

□

a

$199 with 1 MB

G

■

■

■

$1995

A,C,E,F,H,I

■

■

a

a

$799

A,E,F,I

m

a

a

□

□

$349 with 1 MB

A,C,E,F,H,I

H

H

a

a

□

$139

A,B,D,E,F,I

H

H

a

□

a

$179

A,B,D,E,F,I

■

H

a

□

a

a

$249

A,E,F,H,I

□

a

u

$149

A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I

■

a

a

a

$299

A,G

a

a

a

$1450

A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I

■

a

a

i i

a

$299 with 1 MB

A,C,E,F,H,I

a

a

a

a

D

$329

A,E,H,I

■

m

■

$2295

A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I

a

a

a

$129

A,B,D,E,F,I

H

a

□

a

a

$249

COLOR MODES

D 16 colors □ 256 colors

H 32,000 colors J 65,536 colors

■ 16 million colors

' Blank spaces mean color modes not supported.

internally—timing consists of a "software stopwatch" turned on and off before and after the Windows GDI (Graphical Device Interface) routine under test. Ordinarily, this would be fine, since the stopwatch would time how long it took the host CPU to carry out the graphics operations. With an accelerator in place, however, such a scheme would time only how long it took the host to pass the request to the graphics coprocessor. (As an example, the 86C911 has an eight-entry command queue; it can be carrying out one graphics command while the host CPU is simultaneously loading the next command.)

I therefore modified the benchmarks to display a white rectangle at the bottom of the screen while a particular test was under way. The rectangle would turn black when the test was completed. Thumper, the BYTE Lab's automated testing device (see Reviewer's Notebook on page 246), was watching the screen. One of Thumper's light sensors was placed near the screen over that rectangle, and Thumper simply timed how long the light sensor saw white. In this way, I could time how long it actually took graphics commands to be processed.

Each accelerator card was plugged into a Tangent Model 433i. a 33-MHz 486 PC (with 7 MB of RAM and a 100-MB hard drive), connected to a Nanao FlexScan

first—turned in scores that consistently put it in the top four.

Weitek W5186

The Weitek W5186 Windows accelerator, found on the Kingston ViewRx, focuses solely on boosting line drawing and BitBlt operations. (Weitek says 50 percent to 85 percent of the overhead in a typical unaccelerated Windows system is consumed in line-drawing and BitBlt operations.)

The host communicates with the W5186 in a style reminiscent of SCSI transfers. Specifically, the host processor initiates an operation on the W5186 by sending a 16-byte command packet to the graphics processor. Since the W5186 supports a 4-KB command queue, up to 256 commands can be queued up at one time (i.e., as long as there's room in the queue for a command, the host doesn't have to wait for the graphics coprocessor to finish one command before sending the next).

Primus P2000A

The Primus P2000A chip, used on the Celerite Galaxy 2000 board, was designed by Primus Technology. The P2000A is a graphics engine plus memory-control circuitry, host interface, video FIFO, and font-control circuitry on one chip. This hardware boosts such Windows activities as rectangle filling, screen-to-screen BitBlt operations, line drawing, and displaying of bit-mapped fonts.

Western Digital WD90C31

Western Digital's WD90C31 rides in the Paradise board. This graphics accelerator includes a hardware cursor and hardware BitBlt operations. Like other accelerators, it is VGA-, EGA-, CGA-, MDA-, and Hercules-compatible. The WD90C3 l's BitBlt hardware can speed the filling of rectangles. And, like the Primus P2000, the chip does color expansion, a means of accelerating the display of bit-mapped fonts.

TI 34020

Texas Instruments' 34020 is the offspring of the 34010, the original silicon heart of the TIGA (Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture) interface; it's faster than the 34010 and has a 512-byte instruction cache (compared to its predecessor's 256-byte cache).

Inside the 34020 you'll find a host bus interface and registers, circuitry to support local memory, and 31 32-bit registers. Most of the 34020's general-purpose instructions execute in a single cycle, although the 34020 also supports multicycle graphics instructions. (For example, the FILL instruction fills a 2-D pixel array with a color specified by one of the 34020's color registers.)

Some of the fastest benchmark times came from a 34020-based board. Take ellipse drawing, for example; The Texan whipped out ellipses more than 17 times faster than an unaccelerated board. Most accelerators were lucky to get them out 1.5 times faster.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 205

MAKING WINDOWS ROCK AND ROLL

T660i multisync monitor. I ran only the graphics and text portion of BYTE's lowlevel Windows benchmarks, dividing the results into three groups: basic graphics (which includes drawing lines, rectangles, polygons, and ellipses), BitBlts, and text display. I loaded each card's driver and set the resolution to 1024 by 768 pixels and 256 colors where possible. The test results were normalized against an Orchid ProDesigner II VGA card, used in the same Tangent computer. To see how each card did in terms of speed, see the table.

I couldn't run some of the cards in the chosen color mode. As mentioned, the Kingston ViewRx allowed only 16 colors at 1024- by 768-pixel resolution. On the other hand, the 34020-based Truevision 1024-32 and WinSprint handled 16 million colors regardless of the pixel dimensions. You should keep these facts in mind as you examine the results—particularly for the Truevision and the WinSprint; these cards are moving 32 bits around for each pixel, whereas the others are moving just 8 bits per pixel.

Pick of the Pack

Omnicomp's The Texan and Artist Graphics' WinSprint scored in first and second

place, respectively, under the basic-graphics category. They owe their high marks to the rapid ellipse-drawing capability of their 34020s.

However, unless your application specifically demands lots of circles, ellipses, or elliptical arcs, it's likely that you'll see no real benefit from high-speed ellipses. It's more likely that a typical Windows application will draw heavily on the accelerator's rectangle drawing and BitBit operations. Consequently, I'd pick the GraphicsEngine 32 from Actix Systems as the best of the bunch for all-around Windows performance. If you were to drop The Texan's and WinSprint's ellipse-drawing scores out of the equations, the GraphicsEngine 32 would have scored first in all categories—basic graphics, BitBlts, and text display. The GraphicsEngine 32 does 16 million colors in 640- by 480pixel mode and 65,536 colors in 800- by 600-pixel mode, and it comes with plenty of drivers.

I've got to hang an honorable mention on the Volante Warp 10 from National Design. The Warp 10 scored in the top four for all our tests, making it one of the speed leaders. It, too, comes with plenty of additional drivers, and the $299 price tag

looks very attractive when you recognize that the Warp 10's 640- by 480-pixel mode can pump out 16 million colors. In terms of price/performance, the Warp 10 is an excellent buy. Likewise, Orchid's Fahrenheit VA did very well in the BitBlt and text tests and, at $299, is a great buy.

If you do decide you want to upgrade to a Windows accelerator, you've got to base your decision on what you need it for instead of simply checking raw benchmark results. Do you want to speed up screen redrawing under Windows, or are you more concerned with running AutoCAD faster? Be sure to check the list of supported drivers to see if your favorite applications are there. Does your work demand lots of colors or involve drawing lots of fine lines'? Also, consider your monitor; some of the low-end cards don't support wide screens. And, of course, the price is always a consideration. But with prices starting at $ 139, that part's becoming less of an issue. ■

Rick Grehan is technical director of the BYTE Lab. He holds a B.S. in physics and applied mathematics and an M.S. in mathematics/computer science. You can reach him on BIX as "rick_g. "

[ COMPANY INFORMATION

Actix Systems, Inc.

Cardinal Technologies

, Inc.

Kingston Technology Corp.

Sigma Designs, Inc.

(GraphicsEngine,

(VGA900)

(ViewRx)

(Legend GX)

GraphicsEngine 32)

1827 Freedom Rd.

l7600NewhopeSt.

479 Bayside Pkwy.

3060 Tasman Dr.

Lancaster, PA 17601

Fountain Valley, CA 92708

Fremont, CA 94538

Santa Clara, CA 95054

(717)293-3000

(714)435-2677

(510)770-0100

(408)986-1625

fax:(717)293-3055

fax:(714)435-2699

fax:(510)770-2640

fax:(408)986-1646

Circle 1231 on Inquiry

Card.

Circle 1235 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1239 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1228 on Inquiry Card.

Celerite Graphics, Inc.

National Design, Inc.

Truevision, Inc.

Artist Graphics Co.

(Galaxy 2000)

(Volante Warp 10)

(1024-32)

(WinSprint)

46560 Fremont Blvd., Suite 113

1515 Capital of Texas Hwy. S

7340 Shadeland Station

2675 Patton Rd.

Fremont, CA 94538

Austin, TX 78746

Indianapolis, IN 46256

St. Paul, MN 55113

(510)226-6390

(512)329-5055

(317)841-0332

(612)631-7800

fax:(510)226-6393

fax:(512)329-6326

fax:(317)576-7700

fax: (612)631-7802

Circle 1232 on Inquiry

Card.

Circle 1236 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1240 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1229 on Inquiry Card.

DFI, Inc.

Omnicomp Graphics Corp.

Video Seven

ATI Technologies, Inc.

(VG-8000W)

(The Texan)

(WIN.VGA)

(Graphics Ultra Pro)

135 Main Ave.

1734 West Sam Houston Pkwy. N

46221 Landing Pkwy.

3761 Victoria Park Ave.

Sacramento, CA 95838

Houston, TX 77043

Fremont, CA 94538

Scarborough, Ontario,

(916)568-1234

(713)464-2990

(510)683-6223

Canada m!w 3S2

fax:(916)568-1233

fax:(713)827-7540

Circle 1241 on Inquiry Card.

(416)756-0718

Circle 1233 on Inquiry

Card.

Circle 1237 on Inquiry Card.

fax: (416) 756-0720

Western Digital

Circle 1230 on Inquiry Card.

Diamond Computer Systems,

Orchid Technology, Inc.

(Paradise)

Inc.

(Fahrenheit VA)

8105 Irvine Center Dr.

(SpeedStar 24X)

45365 Northport Loop W

Irvine, CA 92718

532 Mercury Dr.

Fremont, CA 94538

(714)932-5000

Sunnyvale, CA 94086

(510)683-0300

fax:(714)660-4909

(408)736-2000

fax:(510)490-9312 ■

Circle 1242 on Inquiry Card.

fax: (408) 730-5750

Circle 1238 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 1234 on Inquiry

Card.

206 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Hercules Windows Accelerator

• Blazing Speed

• Ultra-High Resolution

• Ultra-High Refresh

• 24-bit True Color

• Software Compatibility

Amazing new 32-bit graphics coprocessor with fast VRAM

Up to 1280 x 1024 for more real estate and less scrolling

Upto90Hz SuperStable" refresh rates

Switch to 16.7 million or 65,536 colors from within Windows

From VGA and VESA to accelerated Windows and CAD

Faster Than ATI's Mach 32 Boards!

800-532-0600

Copyright © 1992 Heicules Computer Technology, Inc., 3839 Spinnaker Court, Fremont, CA 94538. Hercules is a registered trademark and Hercules Graphite Card, and SuperStahle are trademarks of Hercules Computer Technology. Inc. Mach 32 is a registered trademark ol ATI. All other product names are trademarks uf their respective holders who are not associated with Hercules. Her-HG2I8SS Ver. 1.111/92

Circle 108 on Inquiry Card. JANUARY 1993 • B Y T E 207

I

I

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Doivii fo Fnffff.

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REVIEWS

SYSTEM

AST's PowerExec Goes Modular

ROB MITCHELL

A processor-upgrade option has become a checklist item for many PC buyers. Now the modular, upgradable PC architecture has found its way into the notebook computer market.

AST's PowerExec, built around Intel's power-saving 386SL processor, simplifies system upgrades by allowing quick replacement of the processor board, display, and hard drive. The PowerExec also enhances expandability by including two PCMCIA 2.0 slots. The slots accommodate a wide variety of industry-standard expansion cards, including AST's optional SCSI adapter, data/fax modems, and network adapter cards.

Sticker Price

The PowerExec comes well equipped (see the photo). For $2395, the base system includes a 25-MHz 386SL CPU with a 64KB cache; 4 MB of RAM; a monochrome sidelit triple-supertwisl LCD; a 60-MB hard drive; a high-density 3'A-inch floppy drive; serial, parallel, video, and expansion connector ports; and DOS 5.0. AST padded my unit with a 2400-bps PCMCIA modem card ($279), a security cable lock ($79), and its SmartPoint Cableless Trackball ($69). The system weighed in at 5.9 pounds (7.3 with power supply and cord) and measured 11.5 by 8.5 by 1.8 inches.

The trackball assembly clips to the case just below the space bar and plugs into a small interface that AST calls a "hotshoe." It works adequately (you'll still want to use your mouse at your desk) but is rather clumsy to install or remove. That's unfortunate, since it completely blocks the bay for the removable hard drive.

AST offers a long laundry list of options. You can upgrade to an 80-, a 120-, or a 160-MB hard drive, or you can add a desktop drive-bay adapter ($99) and share the drive with your desktop machine. If you're using the PowerExec as your desktop computer, AST's docking station includes two 16-bit expansion slots and two 57j-inch drive bays for $499. The PowerExec supports up to 20 MB of RAM using proprietary, user-installable memory modules. An access panel above the keyboard pops off easily to expose the memory slots and math coprocessor socket.

continued

AST's new PowerExec notebook features PCMCIA support, a clip-on trackball, an upgradable screen, and (inset) a removable hard drive and an upgradable CPU.

BYTE

ACTION SUMMARY

WHAT THE AST POWEREXEC IS

A modular, 386SL notebook computer with upgradable components (including hard drive, display, and processor) and two PCMCIA 2.0 slots.

LIKES

Good performance; very good battery life; convenient removable hard drive; two PCMCIA slots and modular architecture make upgrades easy; processor architecture supports upgrade to 3-volt 486SL CPU; and screen and power management control buttons and lights are easily accessible.

DISLIKES

Unresponsive keyboard and poor key layout; PCMCIA card didn't eject easily in test unit; optional trackball is awkward to remove.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Ideal for users who want maximum expandability as well as good performance.

PRICE

$2822

; tested)

FOR MORE INFORMATION

AST Research, Inc.

1621 5 Alton Pkwy.

P.O. Box 19658

Irvine, CA 92713

(800) 876-4278

(714)727-9292

Circle 1226 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 209

AST'S POWEREXEC GOES MODULAR

BYTE NOTEBOOK BENCHMARKS

AST PowerExec

Zenith Z-Note

Dell NL25

Compaq LTE Lite/25C

AST PowerExec

Zenith Z-Note

Dell NL25

Compaq LTE Lite/25C

BENCHMARK SUMMAFT

AST

Zenith

Dell

Compaq

PowerExec

Z-Note

NL25

LTE Lite/25C

Low-level benchmarks

CPU index

1.35

1.43

1.23

1.35

Disk index

1.27

1.41

0.95

2.41

Video index

1.57

0.83

1.15

1.24

DOS applications

Word processing index

1.64

1.46

1.43

1.40

Spreadsheet index

1.80

1.83

1.74

1.83

Database index

1.57

1.42

1.27

1.44

Overall DOS applications index

1.67

1.57

1.48

1.56

Windows applications

Word processing index

1.63

1.80

1.57

1.62

Spreadsheet index

1.59

1.58

1.47

1.57

Database index

1.20

1.19

1.18

1.10

Overall Windows applications i

idex 1.47

1.52

1.41

1.43

Battery-life tests

(Hours:minutes)

4:09

4:28

3:19

3:04

Except for the battery-life tests, all results are indexed, and higher numbers indicate better performance. For each index in the DOS and Windows tests, a Toshiba T22O0SX running DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0=1.

The BYTE low-level benchmark suite identifies relative performance at the hardware level, breaking down performance by system component. The results of these tests can help you identify the relative performance of a given subsystem and determine where performance bottlenecks may lie. For a complete description of these tests, see "BYTE's New Benchmarks: New Looks, New Numbers," August 1990 BYTE. The BYTE low-level benchmarks, version 2.2, are available in the byte.bmarks conference on BIX, or you can contact BYTE directly.

BYTE's application performance suite measures the performance you can expect to see running a given application category under a given operating environment. We test under two environments: DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0. We test three application categories for each environment, running test scripts using the following programs: Word Processing: WordPerfect 5.1 and Lotus Ami Pro 2.0; Spreadsheet: Lotus 1-2-3 release 2.3 and Microsoft Excel 3.0a; and Database: Software Publishing Superbase 4 version 1.3 and Borland dBase IV. The data files and test scripts are available from BYTE.

BYTE benchmark results show that the computing performance of the PowerExec ranks even with fast 386SL machines. The PowerExec's battery-life test results were outstanding.

The processor and display upgrades require dealer installation. AST hadn't released pricing for a 3-volt 486SL processor upgrade at press time. The two color displays are expensive; for the price difference, I recommend the active-matrix display ($2000) over the lesser-quality passive-matrix model ($1499).

Ergonomics

The PowerExec is a solid, well-built machine that's about as sturdy as other models we've tested. The 83-key keyboard has a poor feel and an awkward layout that features half-size PageUp, PageDown, Home, and End keys along the top row and a small right Shift key that's easy to

miss. Two tiny support legs under the machine extend to create a better typing angle. A keyboard-based mouse emulator is awkward, but it's usable in a pinch.

The PowerExec's 9-inch VGA display, with 64 shades of gray, offers plenty of contrast. The external port will simultaneously drive an external color monitor at

210 BYTE* JANUARY 1993

486/860 Speed... Microway Quality.

Microway has engineered four distinctive black tower systems. The 486-B2T is designed for high-end users. It comes standard with American 486 motherboards and power supplies, yet has a reasonable starting price of $2,195. A broad range of options can be installed including high speed and capacity hard disks, intelligent serial controllers, tape back-up units, high end graphics adapters and our Number Smasher-860. These systems are ideal for configuring Novell or UNIX file servers, multiuser systems, and workstations for graphics, CAD and scientific uses. The 486-B2T comes with dual fans, Across the Board™ Cooling and American industrial grade power supplies. All systems are thoroughly tested, burned in and include the best technical support in the industry, which we've provided since 1982.

O

Number Smasher-860

The key to attaining workstation performance is Microway's 40MHz Number Smasher-860. It features a four-way interleaved 64-bit memory system that runs at 160 megabytes/sec. The Number Smasher's i860 has been clocked at 80 megaflops doing matrix multiplies, 67 megaflops doing FFTs and 11.8 Double Precision Unpack Megaflops on large arrays—ten times the speed of a 486 and twice the speed of a Cray 1F! One happy user recently reported that his "Baby Cray" was happily humming away saving him thousands of dollars per month in 3090 rentals. The Number Smasher comes with the finest i860 compilers on the market, your choice of Microway's NDP™ FORTRAN, C|C++ or Pascal.

Call or write today for more information on Microway's new black tower systems.

; $

The Intel Inside Logo is a trademark of Intel Corporation

Technology You Can Count On

Corporate Headquarters, Box 79, Kingston, MA 02364 USA • TEL 508-746-7341 • FAX 508-746-4678 • UK/Europe 081-541-5466 France 01 43 2 69593 • Germany 069-75-2023 • Holland40 836455 • Italy 02-74.90.749 • Japan 0474 23 1322 • Norway 6-892020

Circle 123 on Inquiry Card.

AST'S POWEREXEC GOES MODULAR

800 by 600 pixels with 256 simultaneous colors.

Easily accessible control buttons located above the display turn on power, adjust contrast and brightness, turn the display on and off, and put the computer in suspend mode, which shuts clown everything except system and video memory. Other features include a removable hard drive, which slides out easily. The sidemounted floppy drive and PCMCIA slots worked fine, although the modem card I tested didn't eject properly.

One note of caution on PCMCIA cards: The ink was still drying on the software specifications as we went to press. While the cards complied with PCMCIA 2.0 hardware specifications, the driver software (designed by the BIOS manufacturer) did not. As a result, a card that works in the PowerExec requires a different driver to work in another machine. When version 2.0 drivers are available (they should be when you read this), differences between software implementations may still hamper compatibility between two machines that use different BlOSes.

Written documentation consists of a single pocket user's guide. There's no tech

nical reference manual; the more complete documentation is on-line, but that doesn't help much when you're troubleshooting.

Power and Performance

The PowerExec uses one nickel-metal-hydride battery and offers just two power management options: "maximum performance" and "maximum battery life." It has no individual time-out settings for the display, processor, and hard drive. The PowerExec performs these functions automatically, based on your usage patterns. The SmartSleep option mirrors the current memory state to the hard drive and completely shuts the system down.

The PowerExec did well in BYTE's battery-life tests, running for just over 4 hours (see the figure). When the battery is depleted, the PowerExec drops into suspend mode and preserves the machine's current state while you drop in a second battery or hook up external power. The machine also accepts 12 AA alkaline batteries, which AST estimates will last 1 'h hours. Recharging takes 90 minutes.

On BYTE's performance benchmarks, the PowerExec scored about as well as the fastest 386SL machines BYTE has tested

(see "Eight Notebooks Keep a Tight Grip on Power," September 1992 BYTE). Despite relatively slow hard disk results in the low-level tests, fast video helped the PowerExec post strong results in the DOS and Windows application suites.

Beyond Upgradability

The PowerExec'$ processor and display upgrade options are appealing as a hedge against obsolescence, but as experience with desktop PCs has shown, few users of modular PCs ever upgrade. Planning ahead and buying what you need up front is usually a better solution.

Beyond upgradability, the PowerExec offers unprecedented flexibility, strong performance, and long battery life. The removable hard drive and dual PCMCIA slots are especially attractive if you want to use a notebook computer as your primary machine. The one disappointment is the keyboard's feel and poor layout—a problem common to many other notebook computers. ■

Rob Mitchell is a senior technical editor at BYTE. You can reach him on BIX as "rob mitehett" or on MCI as "rmitchell. "

THE FAX SERVER IS TROUBLE-FREE.

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THE TRIAL OFFER IS ABSOLUTELY FREE.

i Now you can try out the network fax server that has everything, for nothing. Just

;j call toll-free for an evaluation unit of Castelle's FaxPress 3.0. And see for yourself how P easy it is to add fax capabilities to your network. Free. Unlike most fax servers which require a PC to work, FaxPress 3.0 is fully self-contained. It's easy to install, easy to use, and easy to manage.

No other fax server is so trouble-free. And no other fax server offers such a range of features: Auto routing of faxes. Full HP III font support, which ensures fax quality. And, integration with Novell's Print System, so each user can define where to receive personal faxes.

And whatever you work with, FaxPress works with, too. Novell, LAN Manager/LAN Server networks on Ethernet or Token Ring. DOS, Windows 3.1, API. You name it. Plus its enhanced (MHS-based) e-mail faxing lets you fax as easily as you e-mail, without learning a new user interface. FaxPress even serves as a two-port Novell print server.

Best of all, you're free to try the FaxPress 3.0 for 30 days; absolutely free.

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Askfordept.421

Casfelle, Inc. 3255-3 Scott Blvd., Santa Clara, CA 45054. (-108) 496-0474.1:AX (408) 496-0502. FaxPress is a trademark of Caslelle. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Iheir respective holders. ©1993 Castelle. *The evaluation unit is available within the U.S. to qualified companies for up to 30 days.

212 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 200 on Inquiry Card.

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Keyboards

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Floppy Disk Drives

Toshiba 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Disk Drive Part no.: 1B40774 Product no.: 356KU $99.95

Memory

Part no.: 1B41769 Product no.: 421000A9B-80 SIMM Module Function: 1MB 80ns

$54.95

Part no.: 1B42251 Product no.: 511000P-80 18-pin DIP Function: 1MB 80ns $5.99

Cables, Gender ^ < Changers, and Adapters

6-foot parallel DB25-pin male to Centronics male printer cable

Part no.: 1B28716 Product no.: PPC6

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Hard Drives (IDE)

Part no.: 1B14074 Product no.: CP30104 Capacity: 120MB Speed: 19ms

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4.5 digit w/frequency & capacitance & data hold switch Part no.: 1B27158 Product no.: M4650 $69.95

t

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150 watt 8088 Part no.: 1B19465 % Product no.: JE1030 M $99.95

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GET A FREE JAMECO CATALOG CALL 1 • 800 • 637 • 8471 m*

© 1*93 Jameco Electronic Components Computer Products.

All trademarks are registered trademarks of their respective companies. Terms: Prices are subject to change without notice. Items subject to availability and prior sale. Complete list of terms/ warranties is available upon request.

JAMECO

^^ ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS

COMPUTER PRODUCTS

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Sales: 1-80O831-4242

Jameco ServiceLine™: 1-800-831-8020

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Circle 115 on Inquiry Card.

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WATCOM SQL Developer's Edition

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Distinct TCP/IP for Windows SDK extends the TCP/IP and RPC/XDR networking capabilities to Microsoft Windows. Includes the smallest and fastest DLLs today available for Berkeley Sockets, RPC, Telnet, and FTP. Coexists on the same board with Lan Manager, Novell and Banyan. Supports Packets, NDIS and ODI drivers. Only 5KB of DOS memory required. (SDK) LIST: $495 PS Price: $439

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SVS C3 ANSI C, Pascal, or FORTRAN-77

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ANSI C $325 $315

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FORTRAN $395 $375 FastFaxts 1958-048: (C), 1958-050: (Pascal), 1958-049: (FOKTOAN)

SLATE with Graphics

by Symmetry Group

SLATE with Graphics is a universal primer driver library, It supports dot matrix, laser, and PostScript printers. It includes over 250 lext and graphic printing functions to select fonts, print texl, prim images from the screen, PCX, and TIFF files, and much more. It allows royalty-free distribution of your application, the 750 printer database, and the setup and testing programs.

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Visual Basic for DOS

Microsoft Corporation

Draw forms, controls; write event-procedures; create custom controls—in DOS! Create new apps or combine with existing C/C++ or Pascal code. Highly compatible with Visual Basic for Windows. Run existing Quick Basic/Basic PDS code! 80x86 compiler creates 100% standalone .EXE files; 386 code generation; MOVE overlays; an integrated ISAM and much more!

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PRO $495 $339

Standard $199 $139

FastFaxts 502-408: (PRO), 502-407: (Stand.)

ResourceSHIELD

by The Stirling Group

ResourceSHIELD integrates the process of creating, editing, translating, compiling and managing resources for graphical applications. A visual resource development tool with seven resources editors will edit resources in binary or text resource files. Pre-designed resource templates for dialogs, menus and icons are included.

LIST

PS Price

Windows

$149

$149

OS/2 2.0

$295

$289

Windows NT

$295

$279

FastFaxts 2929-019: (Win.& OS/2)

WindowsMAKER Professional

by Blue Sky Software'"

Considered the easiest and fastest way to create MS-Windows applications in C/C++. Generate die Windows .EXE w/complete source & production files (no royalties). Just Point & Click to define the Windows user interface. Lets you animate your design to instandy test look & feel and make changes on the fly without needing to compile. Custom code is preserved during code regeneration. The leading development tool for Microsoft Windows. Highly Recommended.

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Visual Basic for Windows 2.0

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When you need to create a Windows application quickly, nothing offers the sheer productivity of Microsoft Visual Basic 2.0, Standard Edition. A visual development environment, flexible programming language, and fast runtime execution make this the shortest route to full-featured Windows applications. The Professional Edition includes messaging and data access capabilities, a wide variety of add-on tools, and more.

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PRO $495 $399

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FastFaxts 502-443: (PRO), 502-431; (Stand.)

ProtoGen 3.0

by Protoview

NEW VERSION! The industry standard for code generation and prototyping Windows applications. Develop the user interface of your application using Visual prototyping methods. ProtoGen generates expert level, commented code for ANSI C, Microsoft MFC C++, Borland OWL C++, Turbo Pascal, and Microsoft NT Win32. All generators included! User Code is preserved from one generation to the next. It's easy and fast.

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Q+E Database Library

by Pioneer Software

Q+E Database Library provides complete database connectivity to Windows and OS/2 applications using Dynamic Link Libraries. QELIB can read, insert, update, create or delete database records for the following database formats: Btrieve, (BASE, DB2, Excel files, INGRES, NetWare SQL, Oracle, OS/2 DBM, Paradox, SQL/400, SQLBase, SQI7DS, SQL Server, Sybase, Tandem NonStop SQL, text files, andXDB.

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CTX Professional Monitors

^ «st to Youi' Vi'iado

Built with ergonomic ingenuity and"trend-setting technology, CTX Professional Monitors (available in 14", 15" & 17") are perfect for WINDOWS users:

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Dynamic screeen sizing and positioning are achieved through Programmable Control in Professional Series (CPS) or Manual Control in Multiscan Series (CMS); Flat-Square Screen (15" & 17") increases display clarity while reducing distortion and screen glare. Low Radiation (MPR1I) models are available for an additional protection against electromagnetic radiation. To rediscover 'what is coming through your bright WINDOWS, CPS1460/CMS1461 CPS1760/CMS1761 CPS1560/CMS1561 look mto a brilliant

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©Copyright 1992. CTX International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Circle 94 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 95).

REVIEWS

HARDWARE

Desktop CD-ROM Publishing

JON UDELL

As the multimedia juggernaut rolls along, PC buyers have—at last—begun to view CD-ROM drives as standard equipment. Meanwhile, affordable CD-Recordable drives beckon to a legion of newly empowered desktop CD-ROM publishers. The $7995 Philips CDD521 was a star attraction at the revitalized CDROM Expo in Boston last September, and I rate it (along with similar products from Sony and JVC) as one of the two or three most important developments I've seen during my career at BYTE.

Six years ago I worked for one of the first companies to commercialize CDROM for the delivery of large quantities of data to the desktop. Dropping a half-gigabyte silver platter into a PC peripheral and rummaging through seemingly inexhaustible databases was a thrill I'll never forget. Producing those platters, though, was a formidable challenge. ISO 9660 (the now-standard CD-ROM file system) and MSCDEX.EXE (Microsoft's CD-ROM redirector for DOS) hadn't arrived yet, so our engineers had to invent a proprietary file system. To test our PC retrieval software against large data sets on a VAXbased premastering system required another clever hack: a CD-ROM emulator. By 1988, the advent of MSCDEX, ISO 9660, and commercial emulators had taken a lot of the black magic out of CD-ROM publishing but hadn't eliminated the expense, delay, and uncertainty of the discmastering process. As a result, the growth of the CD-ROM industry has been a long, slow burn—until now.

Hardware and Software

At 16 by 13 inches, the CDD521's footprint is only slightly larger than my old Hitachi 1503S CD-ROM drive. Its 5-inch height, however, is twice that of the Hitachi drive. Into the extra space Philips jams the additional parts needed to not only detect but also create pits on the surface of a CD: a high-powered laser, a polarizing beam splitter, lenses, and control circuitry. Externally, the package is Spartan. On the back panel, you have access to a pair of SCSI-2 connectors, a SCSI DIP switch, a voltage selector, and the power switch. The front (see the photo) sports an open/close button and LEDs for power, read, write, and error status.

The Philips CDD521 doublespeed CD recorder writes 600 MB in a half hour.

Philips bundles the drive with an Adaptec 1542 SCSI-2 adapter and ASPI (advanced SCSI programming interface) driver, a SCSI cable, MSCDEX.EXE, and a set of DOS utilities called CD-Write. Why ship the Adaptec controller with the drive? CD recording depends critically on an uninterrupted stream of data, particularly when—as with the CDD521—the drive runs at twice the normal CD play speed, requiring a sustained transfer rate of better than 300 KBps. (The drive's meager 256-KB write buffer doesn't help matters, and some resellers of the drive offer software that adds extra buffering.) To ensure best results, Philips chose to control CDWrite's environment by optimizing for the Adaptec. The company also specifies that your data source must be a hard disk with a sub-20-millisecond access time.

That hard disk, by the way, is the workspace where you assemble the material you'll write to the CD. CD-Write converts on the fly from the hard disk's DOS file system to the CD's ISO 9660 file system. It can also redirect the ISO 9660 image that it creates to a hard disk and can write such a preformatted image to the CD. You're unlikely to need the image-to-hard disk feature, since the recorded CD itself is ideal for archiving the image, testing it, and conveying it to a disc-mastering house. The image-to-CD feature could be handy if your authoring system can produce only

ISO 9660 outputs.

Although CD-Write records only "mode 1" discs, the drive is also capable of "mode 2" formats such as CD-ROM XA (Extended Architecture) and CD-I (Compact Disc Interactive). To create such discs, you need an authoring system that can interleave streams of audio, video, and data, along with a formatter that can lay out sectors according to the XA and CD-I standards. Dataware Technologies is one reseller of the CDD521 that can use the drive this way.

Anatomy of a Writable Disc

The spiral track of conventional read-only CDs consists of a series of pits etched into a polycarbonate substrate that's covered by a reflective layer. Intensity of reflected laser light varies due to diffraction caused by the pits. In the case of writable CDs, the substrate has a (7-shaped groove (600 nanometers wide and 100 nm deep) covered by a sensitive layer of organic dye and a reflective layer (usually gold). Using the groove to control rotational speed and radial tracking, the laser fuses the dye to the substrate to create impressions that ordinary CD-ROM readers can detect.

The price of a writable disc was initially $40, but it's coming down fast. Kodak recently announced a single-disc price of $25 and predicted $10 discs in three years. Why Kodak? The company's Photo CD

JANUARY 1993

BYTE 217

DESKTOP CD-ROM PUBLISHING

technology creates economies of scale for makers of writable discs and CD recorders alike. (The CD recorder that writes Photo CD discs is, in fact, the Philips CDD521.) That's great news for the nascent CDrecordable industry.

The writable disc's layout reserves two regions for control information. Innermost is the power calibration area. Here the drive performs a series of test recordings to find the optimal laser power for each particular disc. (Once this has been determined, the drive remembers the setting and retrieves it from memory when it sees the same disc again.) Next comes the program memory area. Since the drive can record up to 99 incremental sessions and does not store a permanent directory in the lead-in area until you finalize the disc, this area serves as a temporary directory.

Each session written by CD-Write is an ISO 9660 image. You can select and read any of these sessions with the CDD521. Only the first one, however, is visible when you load the disc into a standard CD-ROM

reader. While Kodak's Photo CD player will read multiple sessions, CD-ROM drives available today—including those bundled with MPC upgrade kits—will not.

BYTE

ACTION SUMMARY

WHAT THE PHILIPS CDD521 DESKTOP RECORDABLE CD IS

A CD recorder and ISO 9660 formatter that writes discs readable in standard CD-ROM players.

LIKES

A revolutionary technology that heralds the dawn of personal CD-ROM publishing.

DISLIKES

Its immature, quirky software.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Invaluable for testing CD-ROM discs prior to mass replication, or for low-volume production of discs. Also useful for archiving and transporting large quantities of data.

PRICE

$7995

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Philips Consumer Electronics Co.

1 Philips Dr.

P.O. Box 14810

Knoxville, TN 37914

(615)521-4316

fax:(615)521-4406

Circle 1221 on Inquiry Card.

P.

reducing the CD-ROM disc was an amazing experience.

Do-It-Yourself CD-ROM Publishing

I've always wanted to put the indexed full text of BYTE onto a CD-ROM, and the CDD521 gave me the opportunity. Preparing the data, pumping it through the two authoring systems that I chose for the experiment, and running a series of smallscale tests on the CD took several days. Writing 265 MB to the final CD was anticlimactic—it took just 20 minutes.

I started with a collection of 4000-odd files representing the textual content of the last six years of BYTE—about 60 MB of data. First I ran a series of filters to clean up and reformat the text. Next I married die text to the contents of a database of BYTE articles, embedding headers at the top of each file to enable fielded as well as freetext search.

Then I unpacked two text-retrieval systems I'd been wanting to try out: Retrieval Technologies' re:Search for DOS (see "Searching for Common Threads," June 1992 BYTE) and Personal Library Software's Windows Personal Librarian (see the Reviewer's Notebook in the September 1992 BYTE). I used both to index portions of the data set and then eventually all of it. Duplicating the 60-MB data set to accommodate field codes specific to each retrieval system, along with adding the indexes, brought my image size up to 265 MB—still less than half the space available on the CD.

The drive's multisession capability allowed me to test small samples of data directly on the CD. Little problems (e.g., absolute rather than relative path names) become big problems when multiplied by 4000 files, so the ability to test incrementally is incredibly useful. CD-Write has one very annoying quirk. It can write one or more source trees to the CD, but it lops off the top level of each tree. This con

fused both retrieval systems. Indexes referring to files of the form \ARCHIVE\ 1991\fil ename broke when those files showed up on the CD as \1991\f ilename. To work around this oversight, I had to use a fake root that I alternately hid and revealed using the DOS SUBST command. Philips acknowledges the glitch and agrees it should be fixed.

Some valid DOS file and directory names aren't legal in ISO 9660. Filenames with hyphens and directory names with extensions are the notable examples. CDWrite alerts you when it spots an incompatible name and aborts. After a few false starts, I wished the program would scan the entire input name space and produce a comprehensive list of problem names. Some resellers of this drive offer software that wiO write non-9660-compliant names to the CD or that can map such names to legal 9660 equivalents on the fly.

At issue here is the ability to use a CD recorder not only as a publishing tool but as an archiver. Obviously, if you're publishing a disc, you'll want to comply with 9660. It's a different matter, though, if you simply want to dump the contents of your hard drive to long-term storage on a CD. In that case, you'll want to keep hyphenated names (which MSCDEX can, in fact, read) or else correct them automatically.

Opinions differ as to how useful CD recorders are for archiving. Sustaining 300 KBps for the duration of the write session is a stringent requirement, and if there's a break in the flow of data, you've wasted an expensive disc. It's impractical, therefore, to feed the recorder from a network drive. Even a heavily fragmented local DOS volume could pose a problem. While the ability to archive to CD is limited, however, it can still be useful in some circumstances. Philips agrees that a future version of CDWrite should deal with names in a way that better supports archiving.

Quirks aside, producing the CD-ROM disc was an amazing experience. For mass production of discs, you'll still need the services of a disc-mastering house, but the money you'll save by producing and distributing your own beta discs could pay for the drive in short order. Limited production you can simply do yourself, writing CDs on demand. The OSF/1 distribution discs, for example, are published this way using Young Minds' CD-mastering software for Unix and the Philips drive. If you think Quark, Frame, and PageMaker are the be-all and end-all of desktop publishing, you ain't seen nothing yet. ■

Jon Udell is a BYTE senior technical editor at large. You can reach him on BIX as "judell."

218 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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Circle 88 on Inquiry Card.

REVIEWS

APPLICATION

Neural Net Adds Smarts to Spreadsheets, Slowly

MAUREEN CAUDILL

Wouldn't it be nice to have an expert inside your favorite spreadsheet program? One who could learn to make decisions just the way you want them to be made? One who could, like a neural network, mimic the learning processes of the human brain?

This enticing scenario is the premise behind Braincel, a $249 neural-network expert shell from Promised Land Technologies. The program is an add-in tool for Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows and Microsoft Excel. The company claims more than a thousand users in science and industry. According to Promised Land, the target audience includes business analysts who understand things like multiple regression and scientific analysts using the product as a modeling tool.

The developers at Promised Land have given a lot of thought to making neuralnetwork simulators easy to use, and their notion of placing one within spreadsheet packages is wonderful. Unfortunately, Braincel's performance doesn't yet measure up to its promise.

Spreadsheets, with their sophisticated

BVTE

ACTION SUMMARY

WHAT BRAINCEL IS

A neural network that works with Lotus 1 -2-3 for Windows and Microsoft Excel.

LIKES

Spreadsheet connection; good user interface.

I DISLIKES Too slow for large-scale problems; poor documentation.

PRICE

$249

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Promised Land Technologies, Inc.

900 Chapel St., Suite 300

New Haven, CT 06510

(203) 562-7335

fax: (203) 624-0655

Circle 1227 on Inquiry Card.

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The charts demonstrate the Excel Braincel expert's performance in testing. The desired output values are displayed as open black boxes, and the expert's actual outputs as solid red boxes, hi the left chart, the expert's responses matched the desired answers for the training data fairly well. (Perfect responses would have the red boxes lining up directly on the diagonal line.) The right chart shows that the expert did not yet generalize well with unknown inputs.

number-crunching capability, provide the easiest method of preprocessing data for neural networks. But it's awkward moving the data between the spreadsheet and the neural-network simulator. In most neuralnetwork shells, you must use the spreadsheet to process and format the data, write it out to a file, switch to the simulator program, convert the file to the format the simulator prefers, and then create and train the neural network. Once the network is trained, you convert the network's output back to a spreadsheet file, reenter the spreadsheet, and analyze the results. The process is tedious and prone to error.

Promised Land has placed the neuralnetwork simulator within the spreadsheet program itself and has provided programming macros to access the functions of the simulator. This makes the user interface uncommonly clean and simple to use. Braincel appeals as an option at the bottom of the spreadsheet's Data menu.

Braincel uses a variation of back propagation—called back percolation—as its network model. In simple terms, a backpropagation neural network learns to perform a task through an iterative, supervised learning procedure. The network typically consists of three or four layers of individual processing elements, or neurodes. Each neurode in a layer receives input signals from each neurode in the previous layer and transmits its single non

linear output to all the neurodes in the following layer. The connections between the neurodes are individually weighted (both positively and negatively).

You train the network by presenting the input layer with a data pattern. The activity in the input-layer neurodes transmits to the middle layer and then to the output layer, where the network's answer is recorded. This answer is compared to the true answer for that input pattern. The resulting error first propagates backward to the middle layer and then generates changes to the weight values between the layers. This process repeats for each pattern in the training set. Training a back-propagation network can take from a few dozen passes through the entire training set to hundreds of thousands of passes for very complex problems.

Building an Expert Easy as 1-2-3

Within Lotus 1-2-3, you first format the data you want the expert to learn. For example, in Braincel's easy-to-follow tutorial, the program learns to assess the likelihood of a loan applicant's repaying a loan. In this example, input values include such things as the applicant's monthly income and expenses and number of dependents in the family. You enter the training samples into a spreadsheet, one sample per row.

Each of these data items has its own

JANUARY 1993

YTE 221

NEURAL NET ADDS SMARTS

TRAINING TAKES TIME

The test network is a three-layer back-propagation (or back-percolation) network with 11 inputs, 25 middle-layer elements, and six outputs. The network's output consists of a single estimated prediction (the analog value) and five category nodes, which should have binary outputs (actually -0.5 or +0.5). A pattern is considered categorized if a single category node has a positive output while all of the other four category outputs have a negative output. The analog error is the average difference (magnitude) between the estimated prediction value and the true value for each pattern. The categorization error indicates, for those patterns in which the network generates a category, how closely the network's category matches the true category of the pattern.

Braincel Lotus 1-2-3

Braincel Excel

Neural-network simulator*

Training data results

Network model

Training time

Number of training

passes through data

"Error" as listed in

simulator's status

information

Average analog error

(smaller is better)

Average categorization error

(smaller is better)

Number categorized

(larger is better)

Percent categorized

(larger is better)

Number categorized correctly

(larger is better)

Percent categorized correctly

(larger is better)

Back percolation

18hrs., 6 mins.

5300

10.3% average error per record

5.4%

Back percolation

15 hrs., 24 mins.

5300

14.5% average error per record

4.8%

Back propagation

2 hrs., 35 mins.

5300

20% true rim error**

7.9%

0.18

62 of 75

82.7

55 of 75

73

0.23

56 of 75

74.7

49 of 75

65

0.08

62 of 75

82.7

60 of 75

80

Testing data results

Average analog error

(smaller is better)

Average categorization error

(smaller is better)

Number categorized

(larger is better)

Percent categorized

(larger is better)

Number categorized correctly

(larger is better)

Percent categorized correctly

(larger is better)

20.3%

24.2%

18.5%

1.50

1.60

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41 of 75

47 of 75

48 of 75

54.7

62.7

64.0

9 of 75

10 of 75

11 of 75

12

13.3

14.7

" SAIC's Ansim. " Braincel returns "average" error rates, whereas Ansim uses rms error rates. The rms is a more accurate reflection

of how well a neural network has learned a problem; therefore, a slightly higher rms error rate does not mean the

Ansim network is less well trained.

reasonable range of values: Monthly income may vary from $0 to $10,000, for example. You decide on reasonable minimum and maximum values and specify these values in the two spreadsheet rows just below the data examples. Braincel uses these minimum and maximum values to scale all data items from 0 to 1. In other

columns, you place the desired output for your expert. In the tutorial, for example, the output is a loan quality rating of 1 (excellent) to 5 (poor).

To train the expert, you indicate which open worksheet contains the training data and specify the named ranges containing the input and output examples. The net

work trains either until the error is reduced to a certain level, or for a specified period of time, whichever comes first. Once the expeit has been trained, you query the network using the Ask Expert selection from the menu.

Documentation Needs Revision

Braincel provides some nice chart functions, including two that track the discrepancies between the actual outputs and the desired outputs in either bar-graph or scattergram form (see the screen). Unfortunately, the manual gives no details on how to produce these charts. After I called the helpful Braincel support people, I was able to get the charts to work fine.

If you know what you're doing with neural networks, you can ignore the manual and produce useful results with the simulator. If you're a beginner, chances are the manual will lead you astray.

Is Back Percolation Better?

Braincel has one serious problem: its performance on real-world problems. Braincel sounded like a godsend for one who is using a spreadsheet in conjunction with a neural network, because it would eliminate the awkward conversion process mentioned earlier. I tried Braincel on a scaleddown version of an existing problem to see how it compares with the neural-network simulator I've been using, Ansim from SAIC. I worked with both the Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows and the Excel (4.0) versions on a 33-MHz 386 PC with a 387 coprocessor under Windows 3.1.

The data set I used includes 1 1 input variables and six output variables. The output consists of a single analog value and five binary categories. A correct output provides an analog estimate, plus a single category determination that should coincide with the analog value. The two thus provide a confidence factor for each other. My actual data has thousands of samples, but for this test I restricted training to 75 randomly chosen patterns. I used a separate set of 75 patterns for testing.

Because of the complexity of the problem, I had little expectation that any of the networks would do well when trained on such a small amount of data. I just wanted to compare Braincel's performance with that of a network trained for the same number of passes on my commercial simulator, Ansim.

Braincel's automatic selection of both network size and learning parameter uses flawed heuristics. The middle-layer size it would have selected—nine—is far too small for a problem of this complexity, and the learning parameter was far too high. When I initially allowed Braincel to

222 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

IF LOGIC ALONE DOESN'T

CONVINCE YOU TO USE

PROGRESS,THEN HOW ABOUT

A LITTLE PEER PRESSURE?

1991 DATAPRO

DBMS USER SURVEY

PROGRESS

SOFTWARE SYBASE INFORMIX INGRES FOCUS ORACLE

Reliability

■

8.7

8.9

8.1

77

7.9

Ease of Use

S.I

8.2

8.2

8.2

7.9

7.6

EaBe of Install/Upgrade

8.9

8.0

8.8

7.8

8.1

6.3

Price/Perform Return

5.1

8.3

8.5

7.9

8.1

7.4

FUNCTIONALITY

Flexibility

8.8

8.6

8.4

8.4

7.6

interface Capabilities

0.9

8.9

8.4

6 1

8.7

7.4

Comprehensiveness

8.8

8.8

8.3

8.7

7.6

User Friendliness

8.9

7.7

8.3

8.1

7.5

7.0

OS Compatibility

9.6

8.4

8.9

9.0

8.8

7.5

PRODUCT SUPPORT

Documentation

9.0

8.2

8.6

7.4

6.2

6.8

Vendor Training

7.9

8.0

7.9

7.6

6.7

Problem Response

Time

8,8

7.5

7.2

6.8

6.4

6.2

Quality ol Vendor Support

9.0

7.8

75

7.4

6.9

7,2

Frequency of Releases

8.5

7.5

6.7

6.9

7.7

7.2

ResppnsetoUser Request

8.8

7.5

7.8

7.6

7.0

6.5

OVERALL SATISFACTION

8.7

8.5

8.3

8.0

7.6

I

Compiled from the latest Datapro reports on DBMS/Computer System Series Software available tor each product listed ((or Informix, see Informix/SQL). All results are those of actual users ol the product as surveyed by Datapro.

■1 1991 VARBUSINESS

1992 VARBUSINESS

DBMS REPORT CARD

PROGRESS

SOFTWARE BORLAND INFORMIX INGRES PRODUCT FEATURES

Ease of use

■ .

6.87

6.80

600

Memory requirement

6.30

6.14

5,1

Ease of programming

6.74

679

6.37

Ability to manipulate data

873

7.24

7,14

7.07

Sorting capabilities

8,59

7.24

7.21

7.58

Provision for software security

6.23

7.00

6.70

Report writing capabilities

7.64

6.54

6.59

6.50

Ease of use of interface

8.13

6.89

6.85

650

Software integration capabilities

S.09

6.92

720

6.15

Ease of data retrieval

8.89

7.26

7.65

7,04

Satisfaction witb product profitability

7.98

6.61

679

5.19

Overall quality of product

8.87

6.97

7.35

6.71

PRODUCT FEATURES AVERAGE

6.82

6.96

6.41

SUPPORT FEATURES

Provision for customer support

8.20

6.73

6.10

5.44

Charges for training time

6.91

5.79

5.56

4.71

Provision tor technical support

7 57

6.14

600

515

Provision tor marketing support

5.97

5.33

4.04

Documentalion & product information

8.62

7.03

6.57

6 00

Frequency of updates & revisions

7.75

6.26

6.05

5.74

SUPPORT FEATURES AVERAGE

7.68

6.32

5.93

5.18

OVERALL AVERAGE

8.11

6.65

6.62

6.00

©1992 VARBUSINESS Software Report Card reprinted with permission.

For the second consecutive year, PROGRESS merit system that gives you the flexibility to resoundingly swept all 1 8 categories of the build and implement high performance Varbusiness Report Card. And for the fourth applications independent of platforms and year in a row, Progress came database systems. It even

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Progress lets you process information in other databases, including as/4oo,c-isam,™ ct-isam,™ oracle, Rdb, and rms.

Circle 148 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 149).

NEURAL NET ADDS SMARTS

use its automatic heuristics, the network never dropped below 45 percent error after extensive testing, producing near-random outputs.

For my comparison, I specified a backpercolation network the same size as in my regular simulator, which uses a fully connected back-propagation architecture. 1 also set the learning parameters with similar values in each case.

I trained the three networks—Lotus and Excel versions of Braincel, plus my regular simulator—with this data for 5300 training passes and then tested each version on both the original training data and on the unseen test data. The results are shown in the table.

Braincel's back-percolation network performed marginally well in both tests. While the error reported by Braincel was half the rms (root mean square) error reported by Ansim, all three of the networks achieved similar levels of competence.

I found no indication that the Braincel back-percolation networks learned the problem any faster than an ordinary backpropagation network—if anything, their performance was a bit worse. According to Promised Land vice president Murray

Ruggiero, back-percolation networks train "much faster than back-propagation and give better answers." He claimed an improvement of as much as tenfold in learning speed using back percolation; my results dispute this claim.

When I described the problem and my training results to Mr. Ruggiero, he said the problem should be recast to a single output (the analog value), thus eliminating the confidence-level categories, and suggested that when any network takes more than 1000 passes to train, the preprocessing has been done incorrectly. Such advice is totally misleading for many realworld problems. Difficult problems do lake longer to learn.

His suggestion does imply, however, that back percolation may have difficulty with problems that have more than a single output response or with binary/analog mappings. Since Promised Land does not provide details of this algorithm, there is no way to judge its effectiveness except through side-by-side tests such as the one 1 used.

To make matters worse, what took 2 hours and 35 minutes in my regular Windows-based simulator took over 18 hours

in Braincel's Lotus package to achieve. (The Excel simulator was somewhat faster, training in only 15 hours and 24 minutes.) 1 suspect that part of the performance problem is due to the overhead from the graphical Excel and Lotus environments.

The Bottom Line

While I love the notion of a spreadsheetbased simulator and had hoped that this product would rescue me from extensive drudgework, I have to give Braincel a thumbs-down for my purposes. Despite its nice charting functions and easy-to-use interface, its performance is too slow.

With a rewritten manual and better selection heuristics, Braincel might suffice for relatively small and simple applications, but performance considerations make it inappropriate for large-scale or difficult problems. ■

Maureen Caudill is author of In Our Own Image: Building an Artificial Person (Oxford University Press, 1992) and has written extensively on neural networks and AI. She is a consultant based in San Diego, California. She can be reached on BIX c/o "editors."

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224 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Aitech International, World Headquarters, 830 Hillview Court, Suite 145, Milpitas, CA 95035 Tel 408-946-3291 • 1-800-882-8184 • Fax 408-946-3597

Circle 234 on Inquiry Card.

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REVIEWS

SOFTWARE

Next-Generation Code Generators for Windows

STEVE APIKI

Windows programming is a complicated process. Class libraries like Borland's Object Windows Library (OWL) and Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and environments like Visual Basic have gone a long way toward addressing the complexity. But there are still limitations: Visual Basic is too restrictive for some projects, and the class libraries just aren't suitable for quick prototyping.

Caseworks' Case:W and Blue Sky Software's WindowsMaker Professional are Windows development tools that remove these limitations. Each helps you build a user interface with remarkable ease, while letting you work with languages and libraries that can handle the most complex Windows programming job.

The latest versions of these applications generators add snap-in code-generation support for class libraries and other programming environments, as well as some ease-of-use enhancements. And while they present stylistic differences that may make you favor one or the other, one of them should be in every Windows developer's bag of tricks.

Plug and Play

Case:W 4.02 and WindowsMaker Pro 4.0 generate source code from visually specified user-interface designs. Each package consists of a visual design environment, a code-generation module, and a rules database for translating the visual design into program source (usually C and the Windows API). These new releases let you plug in new rules databases for different source targets, like the Windows NT API, OWL, MFC, and XVT's portable library package.

To use both packages, you fire up a Windows application in which you visually design user-interface elements such as menus and dialog boxes. Next, you let the code generator build source code from your design. The code carries all the functionality of the user interface that you've built. To this interface you add whatever additional code is necessary to complete your application.

Both systems supply a complete development environment, incorporating internal and external resource-design and editing tools. They also build a make file, which allows you to compile and link your

Screen 1:

Case :W 4.02 builds help systems automatically, includes strong support for MDI, and generates code for Object Windows.

new interface from within the designer. You can complete an entire project from stall to finish without ever completely leaving WindowsMaker or Case:W.

To evaluate these packages, I designed and built the interface for two small applications. The first, Bitmap Sampler, is an MDI (Multiple Document Interface) application that shows Windows .bmp files in MDI child windows and lets you zoom and adjust contrast on each image. The second is a simple table editor that uses buttons and other controls inside the main application window.

Case:W 4.02

Case:W 4.02 includes a rules database for generating C code for the Windows API (Caseworks calls these databases knowledge bases). For the moment, you can also purchase additional knowledge bases for OWL and MFC; Caseworks plans to roll these knowledge bases into the base product (and maintain the price) in version 4.1.

Creating and changing menus is somewhat tedious in Case:W because you must constantly switch between the menu bar in your prototype and an "update" menu selection in Case:W's menu bar. Once you've defined a menu, you can link it to another menu, user-defined code, another window, or a dialog box.

One of Case:W's best features is its extended code support for dialogs, which lets you link program variables or functions directly to dialog-box controls. Extended code support can also include data-entry validation. Case:W's other unique features are automatic help-system generation and CUA (Common User Access) monitoring.

Checking the Help system menu item makes Case:W automatically build help resource files (which you can edit with a Rich Text editor) and add a working Help pull-down menu to your application. CUA monitoring makes Case:W flag CUA violations in your design and offer suggestions (or automatically make changes) for adhering to CUA guidelines.

Building MDI applications is simple with Case:W (see screen 1). First, you tell Case:W that you want your main window to be an MDI frame; then, you generate another complete window prototype and link that in as an MDI child. Case:W builds the code necessary to initialize child Windows and adds the MDI-required Window menu to your menu bar.

Case:W built Bitmap Sampler into a .CPP source file, an .HPP header, and miscellaneous resource files. Case:W lets you make any additions to generated source you'd like (you just can't change Case:W code within a line), and it will preserve your code through subsequent generations. I found the added code preservation good enough that I didn't even bother to back up sources after a few design iterations.

The code quality was very good, but generation is a little slow; it took Case:W almost a minute to complete Bitmap Sampler (WindowsMaker only required about 4 seconds). I also had a minor problem when choosing the Help building option in the middle of a design, which left an ID definition out of the header file.

WindowsMaker Professional 4.0

WindowsMaker is very similar to Case:W in capabilities and architecture, but it has

JANUARY 1993 'BYTE 225

A Message

To Our Subscribers

FROM TIME TO TIME WE make the BYTE subscriber list available to other companies who wish to send our subscribers material about their products. We take great care to screen these companies, choosing only those who are reputable, and whose products, services or information we feel would be of interest to you. Direct mail is an efficient medium for presenting the latest personal computer goods and services to our subscribers.

Many BYTE subscribers appreciate this controlled use of our mailing list, and look forward to finding information of interest to them in the mail. Used are our subscribers' names and addresses only (no other information we may have is ever given).

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WINDOWS CODE GENERATORS

> '..' ! '.'.-■::..':,'

Screen 2:

WindowsMaker Professional 4.0 features a toolbar-based interface and a built-in dialog editor as well as support for snapin code-generation modules.

some significant stylistic differences. Like Case:W, WindowsMaker supports plugin code-generation databases (called Switch-It modules) for MFC, OS/2 Presentation Manager, OWL, the Windows NT API, and other environments.

Besides support for Switch-It modules, WindowsMaker's most notable new feature is its tool-bar interface. The tool bar lets you get to all the design, generation, and configuration utilities.

Menu-making is easier in WindowsMaker than in Case:W. You just point and click on menu elements to choose menu names, accelerators, and linkages. Win

fcdtt;Redraw!

BVTE

ACTION SUMMARY

WHAT WINDOWS CODE GENERATORS ARE

Prototyping and development tools that generate user-interface code from a visual designer.

LIKES

They cut development time dramatically, even for applications frameworks; plug-in code-generation modules contribute to portability.

DISUKES

Lack of synchronization with integrated compiler environments.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Choose between them based on personal preference, but every Windows developer should have one or the other.

dowsMaker also supports multiple menu sets, so you can build menus that need to change dynamically.

WindowsMaker also has a more comprehensive set of design tools than does Case:W. It has a sophisticated built-in dialog editor (see screen 2), which is easy to use and better than the editor provided by the SDK (Software Development Kit). Blue Sky's dialog editor can also pull in custom controls (e.g., Borland's 3-D style controls) from external DLLs.

In general, WindowsMaker has the better visual designer interface. However, it lacks much on-line help and some of the

PRICE

Case:W Corporate Edition 4.02,

$995

WindowsMaker Professional 4.0,

$995

WindowsMaker Switch-It

modules, $495

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Caseworks, Inc.

1 Dunwoody Park, Suite 1 30

Atlanta, GA 30338

(800)635-1577

(404) 399-6236

fax:(404)399-9516

Circle 1222 on Inquiry Card.

Blue Sky Software Corp.

7486 La Jolla Blvd., Suite 3

La Jolla, CA 92037

(800) 677-4946

(619)459-6365

fax:(619)459-6366

Circle 1223 on Inquiry Card.

226 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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Circle 131 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 132).

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WINDOWS CODE GENERATORS

nicer automated features of Case:W, such as the automatic help system.

WindowsMaker and Case:W diverge most sharply in the design of generated code modules and user modules. While Case:W builds a simple collection of files and relies on its code-regeneration algorithm to protect user additions, WindowsMaker builds a hierarchical system of protected and user-modifiable sources. There are three principal kinds of files: main source module, protected .WMC files, and user modules. Most user modifications go into the user modules, and you're not allowed to touch the .WMC files. WindowsMaker doesn't need to preserve user code, because it has full access to .WMC files and only declares user functions that you define in the user code modules.

This makes for a better-protected system but imposes some restrictions. The file structure closely parallels the structure of applications written to the Windows API, but I found it hard to get used to with MFC. When building MFC applications, you don't define window class member functions; you define global functions, which are called by member functions in protected modules. Blue Sky is working on changes in the MFC module structure that should make things more straightforward.

WindowsMaker supports controls in the client area (by modifying a dialog box to act as the client window) and MDI applications. However, its MDI support is more limited than Case:W's.

Final Thoughts

There are some difficulties common to both packages. The most significant is the conflict between integrated environments if you use a compiler with its own IDE. CaserW and WindowsMaker want to be your primary working environment, and getting them in sync with a compiler IDE is difficult. However, if you usually edit/ compile/debug using command-line tools, you won't find this much of a problem. Also, I tested these products with small applications. Coordinating interface development with large sections of back-end code could prove more difficult. Finally, as a minor complaint, neither directly supports Windows 3.1 common dialogs.

But that's the bad news. Overall, I got hooked quickly on both these packages. They cut a huge chunk out of up-front development time, and they make especially nice additions to OWL and MFC. ■

Steve Apiki is a technical editor for the BYTE Lab. You can reach him on BIX as "apiki" or on the Internet at apiki@hytepb .byte.com.

228 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

AWte^Portable Code That Really CranEs ,^

On Seven Different

XVT's Portability Toolkit" is a powerful C development environment that allows you to build a single application, then re-compile to ever major GUI without rewriting code. XYT solutions also include an interactive design tool and a class library for C++ developers.

•Supports Macintosh. Microsoft Windows. Windows NT. OS/2 Presentation Manager. OPEN LOOK. OSF/Motif, and Character Systems

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•Minimal size and performance overhead

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Circle 188 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 189).

Now m its third generation, XYT is recognized as the industry leader in portable GUI development solutions and is the base document for the emerging IEEE standard. It is used by world-class software developers like •Novell •HP -AT&T 'Digital •Lockheed • Kodak •Grammatik/Relerence Software, because it allows them to take their applications to the widest market, quickly and cost effectively

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REVIEWS

APPLICATION

Topas 4.0 Simplifies 3-D

TOM YAGER

Topas, the 3-D modeling, rendering, and animation software from AT&T Graphics Software Labs, has long been a mainstay of graphics professionals. Now the audience is greater, with nongraphics types becoming interested in creating their own realistic 3-D images for logos, virtual prototypes, architectural previews, commercial animation, and business presentations.

The latest version of Topas continues to serve this audience with some enhanced features. But its commonsense interface also gives business people who are new to 3-D the tools to produce dynamic 3-D images and animations for presentations and other projects.

The Nickel Tour

Topas 4.0 is a complete 3-D graphics system designed for 386- and 486-based computers. It combines three vital components that all professional 3-D systems should address. First, it is its own modeler. With Topas, you can create 3-D objects from scratch or import and modify objects created elsewhere. Second, Topas has a builtin renderer, which uses the PC to calculate surfaces, the part of every object (real or simulated) that reflects light and shows the object's color, texture, and other visual attributes. The Tenderer then converts those calculations into graphics for your monitor or printer. It is the effectiveness of the renderer that determines how close your 3-D images come to reality.

And finally, Topas animates 3-D graphics. Topas can make objects move along a path you specify, make the objects change shape and surface characteristics, alter the point of view (or camera), adjust lighting, and control other elements that define a scene. A low-quality version of an animation can be created and played back directly by your computer. You can record one frame at a time to videotape or recordable laserdisc (or film, for that matter) to create high-resolution smooth motion.

Topas runs under DOS and manages its own extended and virtual memory. You'll need 8 MB of RAM, a compatible mouse or tablet, and a graphics display. Topas runs on many kinds of displays, including VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association-compatible VGA controllers. I was disappointed to find there was no

Among the new features of Topas 4.0 are bump and procedural maps, which give greater control over lighting and surfaces.

support for so-called "hi-color" VGAs. While Topas will run in any resolution supported by your VESA VGA, it will support a maximum of only 256 colors. In its defense, Topas does more with a 256-color palette than any graphics package I've seen. For more colors, you'll need more expensive Truevision Targa, Targa+, ATVista, or compatible boards. Drivers for the display-board component of Matrox Studio (see "Style Meets Substance in Matrox Studio," November BYTE) were not ready in time for this review, but they are on the way.

Topas operates with either one or two monitors. By making changes to an editable configuration file, you can direct the program's menus, wireframe object display and creation, and full-color rendering to either monitor in a two-monitor system. In the BYTE Multimedia Lab, I ran Topas with both a Diamond Stealth VRAM VGA and a Truevision ATVista with 4 MB of display memory.

One aspect of Topas that catches some people off guard is its security block. Topas will not run on any system that does not have the block plugged into its parallel port. This is the least intrusive of the copyprotection schemes I've seen; it actually controls not how many copies you make

but how many you use at once (one). I sometimes find myself juggling around the many blocks I have because every block wants to be first in line. I wish security blocks weren't necessary, but I understand the need for them.

Getting to First Base

The previous version of Topas was short on packaging and documentation. The new manuals are c big improvement, and they include a well-done tutorial booklet that teaches you 3-D fundamentals and walks you through a few sample scenes. The reference manual, however, is laid out in the same structure as the program's pull-down menus. The manual should have been split between guide and reference sections, since material is needlessly duplicated.

Topas needs the most work in its online help. This version is the first with help, but it's not terribly useful. The help system is also linked to the menu structure, and it gives you a few scant words of explanation for any menu item you click on— but there are no keyword searches, no main index, and none of the structure you expect from a help system. Still, the documentation, particularly the tutorial, will get you up to speed fast, and Topas's commonsense interface makes trips back to

JANUARY 1993 •BYTE 231

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the manual unnecessary after a while.

In a one-display system, all your drawing, menu selections, rendering, and animation take place on the same screen. Most functions are spread across the top of the screen in the ever-present menu bar; the rest are in the materials palette, activated by sweeping the mouse or tablet pointer off the bottom of the screen. That latter gesture may sound odd, but it becomes quite natural after a few uses. Topas is dominated by an "action-selection" paradigm: You choose first the action you wish to carry out, then the object or objects you wish to affect. This takes some getting used to, since most graphics programs use the "selection-action" model.

The lines between the modeler, Tenderer, and animator in Topas are blurry, because all functions are always available through a single menu hierarchy. Consequently, there's no abrupt shift from one module to another as your work pro

BITE

ACTION SUMMARY

WHAT TOPAS 4.0 IS

A professional 3-D modeling, rendering, and animation program for 386- and 486-based PCs. It is designed to be used both by experts and those new to 3-D.

LIKES

Simple, commonsense interface; performance; multilayer object maps; and rotoscoping.

DISLIKES

No surface preview; poor object map-positioning tools; and poor on-line help.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The best PC 3-D system for the money, Topas is easy to learn and use, it's adaptable to varying hardware configurations, ana it produces stunning results.

PRICE

Desktop version, $1 995 Professional version, $4995

FOR MORE INFORMATION

AT&T Graphics Software Labs

3520 Commerce Crossing, Suite 300

Indianapolis, IN 46240

(317)844-4364

fax:(317)845-6917

Circle 1131 on Inquiry Card.

gresses. Topas's modeler is impressive; it is easier to build new 3-D objects from scratch here than in any other PC package I've worked with. Right from the start, every object is 3-D—even the "flat" ones. As soon as you stretch out a rectangle or close a polygon, it gets assigned default color and surface properties, and you can render it immediately.

Topas offers both polygon and splinebased object-building tools. The menus offer an assortment of simple shapes, which you can combine to create more complex objects, and Topas includes a selection of scalable fonts. Release 4.0 adds the ability to read and make 3-D shapes from Adobe Type 1 fonts, including those used with Adobe Type Manager. I think that new users would get a lot of mileage out of the 3-D text and basic shapes alone—they're all that's needed to create most kinds of business graphics.

Topas's modeler can help you create more complicated drawings than the standard objects can provide. Its 2-D polygon and spline shapes are the basic building blocks of custom objects, and you can hand-draw them, import them, or trace bitmap graphics. They can be given depth in a remarkable number of ways, from simple extrusion (like pushing Play-Doh through a cutout in the shape of your 2-D object) to lathing (i.e., rotating a 2-D shape around an axis to create a cylindrical object such as a vase, a flashlight, or a bowling pin) to cross-section modeling (i.e., wrapping a skin around a shaped frame). Objects are brought together through grouping, and any operation that can be carried out on an object can be applied to the whole group. When you need more precision, an operation can be restricted to a single polygon within an object.

The modeler also offers you plenty of ways to modify the objects you create. One of the more interesting and useful functions is Drill, which cuts a hole through an object in the shape of a polygon you draw. Topas 4.0 adds the ability to drill to a certain depth—a powerful function that can be used to make an object appear engraved, for example.

Render Me This

Your model exists as a wireframe drawing until you kick in the renderer, which offers you a wide selection of shading methods, including flat, metallic, Gouraud, and Phong. Each object or polygon within an object can have its own surface properties, which include not only the shading method, but also the color, transparency, highlights, and other elements. Most surface properties are set through the materials palette, which also controls the color of

232 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

FUNCTION FOPADDR PARAMETERS NAME RMMI ADDRESS, ZIPCODE.OTY

ADDRESS --SPACE (3o)

ZIP CODE- 0

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END FUNCTION ACCEPT/

STOP flc

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234 BYTE* JANUARY 1993

TOPAS 4.0 SIMPLIFIES 3-D

the background and ambient lighting.

The materials palette can create surfaces that have only a single color; that's obviously not enough. For better than that, you must turn to Topas's object-mapping capability. An object map applies an image, usually taken from a graphic on disk, to an object's surface. You'd use object mapping, for instance, to put the text on the label of a champagne bottle. The new Topas adds procedural maps, images computed on the fly that look much like wood, clouds, marble, and other patterns occuring in nature (and some that occur only in your mind). Release 4.0 also adds bump, luminance, shininess, and other kinds of special object-mapping techniques that use a mapped image to change the way light reflects from an object.

A single object can now have up to 255 maps. Topas lets you create any combination of maps you like, which gives you the ability to create everything from decals to topographical effects. Maps are positioned on objects by sliding around a scaled version of the map inside a rectangle that roughly approximates a flattened version of the object you're mapping.

One of my key gripes about Topas is that it lacks a surface preview facility (except with procedural maps). Most 3-D packages let you see the surface you're working with mapped to a small shape— usually a sphere. With Topas, you must render an object to see the effects of the surface properties and maps you've applied. However, it's easier now than in previous releases, because the renderer will render a selected object, group, or rectangular window. I'm also not a fan of the map-positioning tools, which are too primitive for irregularly shaped objects.

Lights play an important role in 3-D, and Topas has a lot going for it here. In addition to the ambient light that washes over a whole scene, you can add spot, distant, and omnidirectional lights to your scene. These appear as objects, and you can move and color them as you would any object. One extremely helpful feature is the Light View, which puts a camera inside a light (usually a spot) so you can see exactly what it's pointed at. Another unique lighting method is animated sunlight, which lets you place your scene at a specified position on the earth and have a sun (i.e., a distant light) animated accurately according to the time of day, date, and weather conditions.

Topas's renderer creates realistic-looking shading (see the screen). A special type of map, the environment map, lets objects reflect the background and the objects around them. This usually requires ray tracing, a time-consuming operation for a

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TOPAS 4.0 SIMPLIFIES 3-D

PC. Topas does it by placing a camera inside the object that's being environmentmapped and spinning it around to create a panoramic map that reflects the object's surroundings. The effect is impressive and faster to create than ray tracing.

Move That Thing

Topas can create killer static images, but its forte is animation—created, as is everything else, on the main interface display. Most animations are created through keyframes: You drag objects from one spot to another and tell Topas how long you want it to take for the objects to move from here to there; then, Topas generates the in-between frames to create smooth motion. A new addition to Topas is path-based animation. Now you can draw paths, tracks that the objects follow as they move through your animation. The path and keyframe animation methods are interchangeable—you can view the movement you generate in paths or keyframes through Topas's animation-editing interface.

One good reason to make VGA a part of your setup is Topas's ability to generate disk-based animation. You can generate Autodesk Animator-compatible FLI or

FLC files or Topas's own MVY movie file format. FLI and FLC files are widely supported, with playback utilities for various platforms available both commercially and in the public domain. Topas includes PLAYMVY, a DOS program that plays all of Topas's supported disk-animation formats. While disk-based animation is rarely the final destination for a 3-D package the caliber of Topas, it provides a valuable check and gives you an inexpensive way to share your work.

A far more interesting destination for Topas animation is video. The BYTE Multimedia Lab has a Panasonic AG-7750 professional Super-VHS VCR. Topas supports built-in VCR control through several VCR controllers, including the Videomedia V-LAN external controller and the Diaquest DQ-422 internal card. Topas's video device control is impressive. You can find specific locations on tape, do timecode striping, and capture video frames from within Topas and use them as maps.

But most interesting by far is Topas's rotoscoping. With this, you can use moving video as an object map. Topas automatically captures one frame at a time from a video source you specify (you can also use

VGA movie files) while the animation is being recorded. When you play it back, the result is smooth animation of the objects you moved and perfect reproduction of your moving-video source in the surface of the object you selected.

Putting It All Together

Topas is a rich, complex program, and much of its worth lies in its unique usability. I appreciate this because I'm no 3-D expert; for me, 3-D is simply a means to an end. Topas has become an extension of my imagination, because its interface places few obstacles in the road between an image in my mind and a rendered scene. There are some changes I'd like to see made, but Topas 4.0's enhancements place it comfortably at the top of 3-D systems in its class. In fact, the power Topas delivers for the price, combined with its ease of use, places it in a class by itself. ■

Tom Yager is director of the BYTE Multimedia Lab, a multimedia consultant, and author of Multimedia Producer's Handbook (Academic Press, forthcoming). He can be reached on BIX as "tyager" and on the Internet at tyager@bytepb.byte.com.

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236 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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REVIEWS

SYSTEM

Commodore Gets Tough

TOM YAGER

Backed by 68040 processors and a more powerful operating system, Commodore Business Machines' two newest Amigas provide fresh ammunition to compete against today's multimediacapable Macs and PCs. For Commodore, the new 3000T-040/200 and 4000-040/120 are important products in the Amiga's evolution.

The original Amiga 1000 was ahead of its time, with world-class graphics and animation, four-channel digital audio, and a multitasking operating system. But Commodore has been rightly criticized for failing to update the Amiga. Small advances, such as internal expansion and faster CPUs, seemed overshadowed by the awkwardness of the Amiga's user interface, the low-resolution graphics, and the sluggishness with which Commodore brought out new products.

Things have changed. Ever since the introduction of the Amiga 3000 in 1990, Commodore has been working diligently to update its hardware and software offerings. And even though display performance for 256-color video modes continues to be slow on the latest 68040-based models, these systems should do a lot to dispel the Amiga's reputation for being underpowered.

Family Portrait

Both systems use the 25-MHz 68040, the same chip and speed used in Mac Quadras and Nextstation machines. Commodore packaged this power into two shapes. For those who crave space, the 3000T-040 (see the photo) has the expansion slots, the three half-height drive bays, and the 280-watt power supply for demanding configurations. The 4000-040 crams the same performance into a compact desktop case and also features some key architectural differences.

I tested both systems in BYTE's Multimedia Lab, where I ran LightWave 3D, ARexx, and a public-domain Mandelbrot generator to measure the systems' performance. The systems came installed with the newest version, 2.1, of AmigaDOS and with version 3 of the Workbench graphical environment. I created my own 3000T040 by adding the 68040 CPU module to the lab's existing 3000T. That machine also has a Video Toaster installed in it, as

Both of these new Amigas feature modular 25-MHz 68040 processors. The 3000T-040 tower system is more expandable, with five Zorro (Amiga) slots and two dedicated ISA slots. The 4000040 desktop machine is somewhat less expandable but boasts a new video controller, an IDE hard drive controller, and a high-density floppy drive.

well as Commodore's new 386SX Bridgeboard PC emulator.

The 68040 CPU (and associated components) is mounted on a daughtercard that plugs into a 200-pin expansion bus on the systems' motherboards. This is a smart design—it took me approximately 10 minutes to upgrade a 3000T from its standard 25-MHz 68030 to the more powerful 68040.

The 4000-040 is in many ways a departure for Commodore. First, the on-board hard drive controller has been changed from the Amiga-standard SCSI to IDE. SCSI has always been my preference, but IDE drives are sometimes easier to come by. The standard 3'/>-inch floppy drive is now a 1.76-MB device, a welcome step up from the long-standing 880 KB. Another plus in the 4000-040 is that Commodore finally brought the Amiga's video up to modern standards. In most video modes, the Amiga 4000-040's on-board video controller puts out 256 colors from a palette of 16.7 million (as do most Macs and some VGA-equipped PCs).

Like other recent Amigas (including the

■^F*g«.JHfiAi4nMi^£

3000T), you can use an ordinary VGA monitor with the new models. The new video controller still supports optional genlock (video overlay) and all the old Amiga video modes. If your applications software gets confused, however, the 4000-040 can emulate an older graphics chip set.

To accommodate the 68040, existing 3000Ts require a new set of boot ROMs. In addition to updating the system software to get it working with the 68040, the new ROMs give you greater control at boot time. If you hold down both mouse buttons as you power up or reboot, a graphical menu appears that invites you to select your boot device from the drives attached to your system.

This is expanded in the 4000-040's ROMs, which not only let you choose your boot device, but also allow you to alter your configuration by enabling and disabling drives as you require. In addition, you can choose to boot without executing the Startup-Sequence script (which is the equivalent of DOS's AUTOEXEC.BAT), make minor changes to your display

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 239

COMMODORE GETS TOUGH

configuration, and check the status of expansion boards.

The Expanding Universe

Amigas have had internal expansion capability since the 2000, and these new systems are carrying on the tradition. Both machines have four types of expansion connectors inside: 100-pin Zorro II/III Amiga board slots, 16-bit ISA bus slots, 200-pin CPU module sockets, and video expansion slots. The 3000T-040 has five Zorro expansion slots for Amiga-specific peripherals, two of which are in line with ISA slots to conserve space. There are also two ISA slots off by themselves, giving you enough room for a total of five Amiga and two PC boards. The 4000-040 has a total of four Zorro slots. Three of these slots double as ISA slots; the fourth is in line with the video slot.

BYTE

ACTION SUMMARY

I WHAT THE AMIGA 3000T-040/200 AND 4000-040/120 ARE

Amigas with 25-MHz 68040 processors in tower and desktop cases, respectively.

I LIKES

Excellent integer and floatingpoint performance; smarter boot ROMs; significant operatingsystem enhancements; highdensity floppy drive on the 4000-040.

DISLIKES

Commodore forbids expansion by owners; 256-color video modes on the 4000-040 are slow.

RECOMMENDATIONS

These are fast, stable, and affordable systems for 3-D, video, and multimedia, as well as for general applications.

PRICE

Amiga 3000T-040: $5998 Amiga 4000-040: $3699

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Commodore Business Machines, Inc.

1200 Wilson Dr.

West Chester, PA 19380

(215)431-9100

fax:(215)431-9465

Circle T 132 on Inquiry Card.

The Amiga isn't designed to run ISA boards. The ISA slots are intended for use with one of Commodore's Bridgeboards, self-contained PCs that run DOS applications asynchronously, sharing resources with the Amiga. The Bridgeboards plug into a Zorro/ISA in-line slot, driving the ISA bus and giving the Amiga a split personality. Running a PC inside your Amiga might seem an odd thing to do, but Commodore has engineered it so well that I cannot imagine running an Amiga without it. I use the Bridgeboard to hook my 3000T into the DOS networks in the Multimedia Lab. Software included with the Bridgeboard copies files between DOS and Amiga file systems. The PC on the Bridgeboard can use Amiga hard and floppy drives, and you can connect drives meant just for DOS.

Expansion Concerns

All this expansion capability is great, but whether you actually can expand your own Amiga is another question entirely. To insert an expansion board, add a hard drive, or change your system's jumpers (things that are all clearly documented in the Amiga manuals), you must break a warranty seal. Commodore's policy stipulates that only authorized Amiga service centers can open the case, and only they can reseal it. While I understand Commodore's wish to protect itself from any damage that might be done by botched expansion attempts, the way Amigas are sold makes the policy unrealistic. In the U.S., Amiga dealerships aren't always just around the corner; the notion of shipping my Amiga to a service center to get an expansion board installed doesn't thrill me. Of course, not every dealer will charge you to open your case, and most current Amiga owners simply disregard Commodore's edict that users stay out of their own machines. But in this age of the power user—the very audience Commodore is targeting with these high-performance systems—it's a pity Commodore is sticking with a restrictive policy that Apple and most PC manufacturers parted with long ago.

The Amiga's New Clothes

AmigaDOS 2.1 (and some of the releases that preceded it) goes a long way toward addressing the issues that have kept the Amiga down all these years. Some of the changes are obvious: Workbench's Windows-like 3-D shading of window borders and graphical interface elements, for example. Other changes are less obvious, with the expansion of the Amiga's standard software set being foremost among them.

One of Commodore's strengths is the

loyalty of its customers and software developers. The latest AmigaDOS/Workbench setup includes two key packages that were once sold separately by third parties: ARexx and CrossDOS. ARexx has been an Amiga mainstay for years. It is to the Amiga what GWBASIC once was to DOS, except that ARexx is, in some ways, more powerful. Rexx, the IBM-born programming language now seen in OS/2, has been adapted and given some Amiga-specific twists. It plugs into AmigaDOS's interapplication communication mechanism (port- and message-oriented) and can drive applications remotely.

Virtually every Amiga program written or updated in the last few years can be driven by ARexx, with one stand-out example being the Video Toaster. The entire switcher interface can be manipulated with simple ARexx commands, and even ToasterPaint has an ARexx port. It's ARexx that allows the Toaster to be driven remotely by video editors and other devices. This is possible because ARexx listens to the Amiga's serial port and the Toaster listens to ARexx.

CrossDOS is a nifty driver that lets you access DOS disks from an unmodified Amiga. After the driver is installed, any DOS disk you insert into the Amiga's floppy drive gets mounted and masquerades as an Amiga file system. No operation is blocked—you can even DOS-format blank disks. The Bridgeboard provides the ultimate PC connection, but CrossDOS is a comfortable compromise.

Video Entrenchment

My tests showed applications performance to be two to three times better for the new machines than for the 68030-based Amigas. The new operating-system software looks better, is more stable, and has more standard features than any previous release, and Commodore's hardware design is solid and sensible.

Amigas are now firmly entrenched in video, 3-D, and multimedia production markets. World-class applications like the Video Toaster, Scala, Deluxe Paint, and AmigaVision (included with every Amiga) show the value and viability of the Amiga in the markets it dominates. The performance boost, coupled with other software and hardware enhancements, brings the Amiga into the 1990s. ■

Tom Yager is director of the BYTE Multimedia Lab, a multimedia consultant, and author of The Multimedia Producer's Handbook (Academic Press, forthcoming). He can be reached on BIX as "tyager" and on the Internet at tyager®bytepb .byte.com.

240 BYTE- JANUARY 1993

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B YTE m

REVIEWS

HARDWARE

Photography by the Numbers

HOWARD EGLOWSTEIN

You never have to buy another roll of film again. Or do you? Electronic photography has made terrific progress in the last few years. Take away the film, and cameras produce instant results, cost nothing to operate, and use no ecologically damaging film and chemical waste to be concerned about. Sounds idyllic—what's the catch?

Until a short time ago, the prices of electronic cameras would have made anybody shudder. Top-rated models like Kodak's DCS sold for $25,000—well out of range for most potential users. Low-end models such as Canon's Xapshot and Logitech's Fotoman sold for less than $1000, but they took pictures that looked more like still frames from an inexpensive camcorder. As the market continues to mature, manufacturers are building more mainstream models.

For several weeks, I've been shooting with two cameras in the $10,000 price range: Kodak's DCS 200ci and Sony's ProMavica MVC-7000 Still Video camera. These two cameras are nothing short of amazing. I've used a few of the $1000 electronic cameras before, and I wasn't impressed. But the DCS 200ci and the MVC-7000 are professional cameras, and, by any metric, they take high-quality pictures.

Kodak's DCS 200ci

The DCS 200ci is the little cousin of Kodak's larger DCS 100 digital camera. Both models use a high-resolution CCD (chargecoupled device) array to capture color images digitally. The $25,000 DCS 100, which is built around a Nikon F3 camera body, is intended for full-time photojournalists and press photographers. The downsized DCS 200 is built around the smaller Nikon 8008s camera, and using it is like using the 8008s as a film camera. If you set the camera to auto-focus and auto-exposure, it's no harder to use than an Instamatic.

There are four models of the DCS 200: color or monochrome, with or without the internal hard drive. Any model can use external hard drives for extended shooting. Prices start at $8495 for the black-andwhite model with single-image storage. I tested the $9995 DCS 200ci, the color model with the internal hard drive.

The Sony MVC-7000 (left) and the Kodak DCS 200ci (right) take pictures without film. Images are stored digitally on magnetic media.

Kodak's contribution to the DCS 200 was in crafting a camera back that looks like a roll of film to the Nikon 8008s body. A 1524- by 1012-pixel-resolution CCD array mounts where the film would be, and the image memory, hard drive, batteries, and processing unit make up the rest of the back. There's a small LCD to show you how much space you have left on the disk and a 25-pin SCSI connection for attaching the DCS 200 to your Macintosh or PC. The integration to the Nikon body is incredibly well thought out. The back snaps onto the body and attaches securely with one screw.

The fact that the Nikon doesn't know about the digital back presents a few tradeoffs. The Kodak CCD array is physically smaller than a 35mm frame, so you can't use the entire viewfinder. To help you compensate for this, Kodak replaces the standard viewfinder with a custom one that grays out the edges of the frame. Consequently, you can't use the 8008s's famous "matrix metering" mode. Matrix metering is a sophisticated technique that sets

the optimal exposure level for each photograph.

The hard drive takes between 3 and 6 seconds to transfer the captured image from the CCD array to the hard drive, so you can't set the Nikon to shoot at multiple frames per second. On the plus side, because of the small CCD array, any lens will behave as if it had a focal length 2.6 times its size. The standard 28-mm Nikkor AF lens gives you the same field of view as a standard 70-mm lens. For this review, I borrowed a 70- to 210-mm auto-focus zoom lens, which worked like a 200- to 500-mm zoom.

After you take a picture, there's a brief lag as the camera back hums to life, and a soft purr as the image transfers to the hard drive. To see your pictures, you have to connect the camera to a computer. The DCS 200 connects through a SCSI cable to either a Mac or a PC (equipped with a Future Domain 1660 SCSI adapter). I didn't have the required adapter handy, so I didn't have a chance to try out the PC software. The DCS software comes as a Photoshop

JANUARY 1993

:YTE 241

PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE NUMBERS

Photo 1: The resolution of the Kodak DCS 200 results in sharp, clear images at 1524 by 1012 pixels. The single-chip arrangement yields colors that are slightly softer than those you get from Sony's three-chip setup, and large neutral areas often have a subtle mottling effect. If you print the full image at 300 dots per inch, it measures about 3'A by 5 inches.

plug-in (or on the PC as a PhotoStyler driver). On either platform the interface is the same: The camera sends the computer a series of thumbnail images. You select one and acquire it into a new document, like using a scanner.

Inside the camera, color images are stored in a compressed format. The pixels in the CCD array are covered with an RGB filter. When you transfer the image to

Photo 2: The Sony MVC-7000's resolution is lower than that of the Kodak camera, but its three CCD chips yield more accurate colors. Notice the slight pixelation in the doll's eyes. If you look closely at the blue button, you '11 also see a bit of video bleed of the blue onto the gray background. The 768- by 493-pixel image printed at 300 dpi would be about 1.75 by 2.5 inches.

the computer, an interpolation routine in the Photoshop or PhotoStyler module figures out the 24-bit color of a pixel by looking at adjacent pixels. You tell the interpolation routine what color light you shot with by selecting one of the standard setlings or by clicking on a white area and letting the software do a dynamic white balance. The result is a crystal-clear, 1524by 1012-pixel image (4.5 MB in size) with

II il'J 1 3 ACTION SUMMARY

■ WHAT ELECTRONIC CAMERAS ARE

■ PRICE

These cameras capture images

Kodak DCS 200, $9995

electronically without film.

(as tested)

Sony MVC-7000, $8900

■ LIKES

(as tested)

No film is required, results can be

previewed quickly, and output is

■ FOR MORE INFORMATION

exceptional.

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very good, albeit slightly mottled, color (see photo I).

Sony's ProMavica MVC-7000

In the strictest sense, the Sony MVC-7000 ($7500 for the body; about $8900 as tested) isn't really a digital camera but rather an electronic camera. It captures your images on CCD elements, but instead of storing them digitally, it stores them as analog video still images onto removable floppy disks. Each disk can hold 25 complete video frames, or 50 images when stored as fields.

The entire Mavica line uses this stillvideo technique to capture and store data. What sets the 7000 apart from its lesser (and less expensive) brethren is that it uses three separate CCD elements to capture the red, green, and blue information for each pixel. The difference between images from the 7000 and the single-chip cameras is much like the difference between your home camcorder and those used by professional news crews.

What we normally think of as resolution limitations in video isn't due to the format as much as it is to the monitors we see it on and the fact that TVs and monitors usually use low-bandwidth cabling (RF or composite video). In either case, your home camcorder playing through your TV set typically provides about 200 lines of information. The MVC-7000 will record and play back images with over 500 lines of resolution. To capture the images at 768- by 493-pixel resolution, you have to connect to a high-quality video-capture device through RGB connections. In the field, you can use the camera's playback capability to preview your shots on a portable monitor.

The MVC-7000 doesn't have the look and feel of a conventional camera. It's an odd cross between a video camera and a large 35mm camera. The controls have video camera markings on them but were placed as they might be on a 35mm camera. Like a 35mm, the 7000 has automatic exposure, a self-timer, and a connection for a flash. A while balance control tells the camera how to compensate for odd lighting. My test camera came with an 8- to 48-mm lOx zoom lens. As with the DCS 200, the CCD elements in the 7000 are smaller than the equivalent 35mm film: the zoom worked more like a 40- to 250mm lens.

The 7000 camera uses standard interchangeable Sony battery packs. The floppy disks are special Mavipak Hi-band disks, and you will want to take plenty of them along with you. I had only four of them, and I often had to use the preview monitor to pick out and delete some

242 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

h

The 486 notebook that lets you shift to another gear.

The power you need from your computer today may not be enough for tomorrow. But now, thanks to the new Altima 400 Series, you can rev the processor from a speedy 20 or 25 to a screaming 33 MHz 486DX with math coprocessor. So instead of buying a new computer later, you simply buy more speed and power when you want it.

Upgradeable and affordable, the Altima 5.7 pound, 486 notebook runs about the same price as most 386's.

The 400 Series is up to 4-times faster than a typical 386SX, plus it features 64 level gray scaling (not 32); a large 10" diagonal screen; simultaneous display on LCD and external monitor; hard disks with up to 120 megabytes; and a keyboard arrangement that makes sense, not sacrifices. For even greater flexibility, Altima offers options to put you in the express lane. Like an integrated

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE NUMBERS

images to make room for new ones. One distinct advantage of the video format is that the camera can record images very quickly. The 7000 can shoot a continuous 2.5 frames per second.

The camera body costs $7500, but accessories are not cheap. The tested model included the 8- to 48-mm zoom lens and sells for $8900. Other optional lenses include a 5-mm wide-angle lens ($2305), a 9.5- to 123.5-mm zoom lens ($3200), and a 7.8- to 78-mm zoom lens ($4180). A 10pack of still-video floppy disks is priced at $105.

Like the DCS 200, the MVC-7000 is easy to use and takes gorgeous pictures. The three-chip arrangement eliminates the color mottling that the DCS 200 has and that you often see on cheaper still-video cameras. I captured my test shots on Truevision's ATVista board in a PC. Sony recommends the Macintosh or PC Truevision boards or its stand-alone video digitizer. You can use lower-quality digitizers, with a corresponding loss in quality. The MVC7000 image in photo 2 has more accurate color than the DCS 200 image, but, at the same size, the image shows more pixelation and a bit of video bleed.

A Digital Future?

I do a fair amount of work with images in newsletters and other desktop-published documents. Either one of these cameras would be wonderful for shooting pictures for catalogs and product sheets. The resolution of both models makes them perfect for small images or newspaper-type pictures printed with coarse halftone screens, but not good enough for shooting full-page glossy magazine images. There's no film costs with electronic photography, and there's no film waste or processing chemicals. That fact alone should give electronic photography a clear advantage in a world with ever-increasing concern for the environment.

Kodak is targeting the DCS 200 at professionals who use images but don't make their living in photojournalism. The company suggests that the DCS 200 will be popular with scientists, real estate salespeople, and others who need high resolution but not the extreme ruggedness of the DCS 100, the DCS 100's preview monitor, or the fast shooting times. In a pinch, you could probably use your F3-based DCS 100 to drive tent pegs into the ground; the lighter-weight 8008s-based DCS 200 isn't

going to take that kind of abuse.

Instant video preview, quick-change batteries and disks, and dazzling color distinguish the Sony MVC-7000. The 7000 is selling well to photojoumalists, sports photographers, and others who might otherwise shoot with Kodak's more expensive DCS 100. If you lean toward the still-video solution, you'll need a high-quality videocapture board for your computer.

If $10,000 is too rich for your blood, the still-video option has several lowercost solutions. Sony's ProMavica line also includes the lower-resolution, single-chip MVC-2000 for under $4000. Canon's stillvideo line starts with the RC-250 (also known as the Xapshot) and goes up to the new RC-570, similar in capability and price to Sony's MVC-2000. Right now, people using electronic cameras may be members of a small clique, but that will change as the costs continue to drop and cameras and computers continue to converge. ■

Howard Eglowstein is a BYTE Lab testing editor who holds an S.B. from MIT. You can reach him on BIX as "heglowstein. "

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244 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK

How to Give Windows a Workout

RICK GREHAN

This month's roundup of Windows accelerators (see "Making Windows Rock and Roll," page 202) introduces the BYTE Lab's newest set of low-level Windows benchmarks. These tests complement the Windows application benchmarks that have helped us evaluate Windows products throughout the last year.

In addition to augmenting BYTE Lab evaluations, the latest tests allow us to easily put a Windows benchmarking tool into the hands of readers: As with our other benchmarks, we will freely distribute the low-level tests to anyone who requests them. The new tests also create a better balance in the testing the BYTE Lab does for Intel-based systems. We now have lowlevel and applications-level benchmarks for MS-DOS and Windows.

BYTE's new Windows low-levels are a comprehensive collection of tests that exercise Windows' GDI (Graphical Device Interface), memory management, and file I/O routines. We wrote the benchmarks in Borland's Turbo Pascal for Windows. In this issue's roundup, we relied heavily on the graphics portion of the new benchmarks. This component ascertains how rapidly the system can execute some of the basic graphics calls within Windows—namely, those that display pixels, lines, rectangles, polygons (filled and unfilled), and ellipses. The graphics section of the benchmarks also exercises text display and BitBlt operations.

As we geared up for the accelerators roundup, we spent some extra time testing the benchmarks' graphics routines to get some preliminary data and to seek out any bugs left in the software. It was during this testing that we discovered something that might cause the benchmarks—as they were then constructed—to yield erroneous results.

At the heart of each test is a tight loop surrounding the Windows call under scaitiny. For example, the portion of code to test the SET_PIXEL () function might be

FOR I:=l TO

NUM_OF_ITERATIONS DO

SET_PIXEL(hDC,xloc [ i] , yloc[i],color[i])

As you can see, the loop is simply "stepping through" an array of screen coordi

BYTE's low-level Windows benchmarks exercise GDI, memory

management, and file I/O routines

nates and corresponding colors. (The coordinates and colors are generated by a random-number generator beforehand.) This loop is preceded by a routine that turns a software "stopwatch" on, followed by another routine that turns that stopwatch off. The idea, of course, is to focus on timing the SET_PIXEL () routine and as little else as possible. Since we would test all the accelerators on the same platform, the fixed overhead of the loop would become a negligibly small constant.

However, many of the Windows accelerators we tested are designed to be coprocessors. That is, when the benchmark software issues a Windows GDI call, the accelerator card's software driver takes over to pass the command and its arguments to the board; then it returns immediately to the benchmark program without waiting for the board to service the request. Consequently, the software stopwatch records the time it took the driver to transfer the request to the board, not the time it actually took the board to service that request. The benchmarks may conclude that the GDI call is running faster than what the user actually experiences.

Therefore, the customized version of the benchmarks enables us to time how long the tests actually ran on-screen. To do this, we solicited the help of Thumper, the BYTE Lab's computer-controlled testing station for laptop battery life (see Reviewer's Notebook in the December 1992 BYTE). Thumper has electronic fingers and electronic eyes. With its fingers, Thumper simulates a user actually work

ing with a laptop; with its eyes, Thumper watches to see when a laptop's screen blanks off.

We created an "on-off' light—a small rectangle at the bottom of the display that we could turn on (i.e., fill with white) just before the FOR loop in the code above and turn off (i.e., fill with black) just after the FOR loop. With one of its electronic eyes trained on that bar, Thumper acted like an ideal lab technician with a stopwatch. Thumper simply timed how long the rectangle was white, and that told us how long it took the FOR loop to execute. Knowing the number of iterations of each loop, we tracked how many GDI calls per second the benchmarks were making. (Again, the small constant overhead of the loop itself would factor out, since we ran the tests on the same hardware and only changed the accelerator cards.)

The "Thumper-ready" version of the benchmarks worked quite well and gave consistent results. The adventure also yielded some information that we'll be able to feed back into BYTE's "regular" Windows benchmarks, as well as producing ideas for other testing chores we could assign to Thumper. It's likely you'll see Thumper again in the future, keeping watch in ways we never dreamed of when we designed it. ■

Rick Grehtin is technical director of the BYTE Lab. He has a B.S. in physics and applied mathematics and an M.S. in mathematics/computer science. You can reach him on BIX as "rick °. "

246

YTE • JANUARY 1993

The Evolution of CAD

From the beginning of time, we have tried to express ourselves through graphics.

In the beginning of time people had to use primitive design tools for creating any type of graphics.

In the 15th

Century

design tools

were quill

ink pens and

crude styles

of paper.

/and*? se'ttvan*

id to

By the 18th Century we had advanced to the drafting table with T-squares, and the dreaded eraser.

In the 20th Century the first CAD programs were very slow and extremely difficult to use, not to mention the expense of buying them.

Now step into the 21st Century...

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• DesignCAD 2D has all the tools and power necessary to produce professional architectural or mechanical blueprints. With DesignCAD 2D you will become extremely productive!

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HUGH KENNER

The growth of any plant from a tiny seed, the unfolding of a program from a few lines of code, "the selforganized flocking of simpleminded birds"—well, any of those, the messy as much as the lively, can be generated by "incredibly simple, even elegant theory." So an economist named Brian Arthur assures us.

Arthur means three things at least: (1) That a general theory underlies this array of examples and many more; (2) That a computer program to emulate, say, the flocking of those birds can be very simple; and (3) That the decisions made by live birds likely resemble those in the program, which has just three rules: (a) Maintain a minimum distance from anything else, including other birds; (b) Try to match velocities within the neighborhood; and (c) Move toward what you see as the neighborhood's center of mass.

It seems a reasonable guess that simpleminded birds in the real world are making decisions like those. Certainly, they swoop as though possessed by a corporate mind: much like an economy, which can languish, swell, panic, triumph, and never seem to be following a checklist. An economy is also like the birds in not needing to settle down to a stable state. True, classical econ had always assumed that not settling down, as portrayed in every day's headlines, was something theory shouldn't so much as mention. Classical econ had nothing to do with swoops. It preferred systems nested near the median of stability: systems from Adam Smith's preindustrial world. Small perturbations would diminish till they vanished: negative feedback in action. And the optimum product would emerge, at the optimum price.

But an industrial economy seems never to settle down. Its elements seem to be patterns and possibilities. It lacks a stable state—one symptom of positive feedback. And examples abound of something suboptimal grabbing the market seemingly for keeps: the QWERTY keyboard, the gasoline engine, the VHS video format.

GOINGS-ON AT THE EDGE

Complexity:

The Emerging Science

at the Edge of Order

and Chaos

M. Mitchell Waldrop

Simon & Schuster, $23,

ISBN 0-671-76789-5

After 1982, when he'd grown pretty well convinced that he knew how an economy worked, Arthur began to encounter difficulty getting colleagues to stay orderly till he'd finished a lecture, let alone publish his papers. Between 1982 and 1987, "My hair turned gray." In 1987, in New Mexico, everything changed.

Arthur is a focal figure in M. Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity, an engrossing story of the mavericks who have been gathering at a queer outfit called the Santa Fe Institute. Nobel physicist Murray GellMann was a founding father; members have included computer scientist John Holland, whose simulations of neural networks started 40 years ago, and ex-hippie Chris Langton, who got a glimpse of some principles of artificial life while recovering from a near-fatal hang-glider crash.

The Institute's theme is "flux, change, and the forming and dissolving of patterns": a metascience, "just as 'hard' as physics ever was," of which our curricular sciences are special cases. Waldrop was especially cunning in starting his narrative with the "Aha!" insights of a maverick economist; any reader with a credit card feels touched by the economy. As he shifts focus to figure after figure, Waldrop shows the resources of a competent novelist. We hover at kaffeeklatsches, sit in on lectures, draw benefit from summaries, while gradually a Science of Complexity grows glimpsible. Readers of James Gleick's Chaos will remember critical zones where a change in the tenth digit will make all the difference between overt pattern and mess. For Waldrop's Santa Fe gang, what's interesting isn't periodic mess but the periodic onset of Pattern right near Mess to the Max.

If they're right, we draw close to a general statement about suddenly emergent patterns, such as amoebas, alphabets, animals, and our ancestor Adam. ■

Hugh Kenner is Franklin and Callaway Professor of English at the University of Georgia. His recent books include Mazes and Historical Fictions. You can contact him on BIX as "hkenner."

MODERN COMPUTER DESIGN

A Guide to RISC Microprocessors, Michael Slater, ed., Academic Press, $49.95, ISBN 0-12-649140-2.

A Guide to RISC Microprocessors assembles 35 articles on the subject of RISC chips from the pages of Michael Slater's newsletter, the Microprocessor Report. Some articles contain added material that brings them up to date. The three articles in the first section form the best introduction to RISC I have ever read. Some terms and concepts may be fuzzy if you haven't done any reading on computer architectures before, but if you're interested in learning about RISC and microprocessors in general, this is the place to begin.

The rest of the book examines seven popular RISC ar

chitectures in six sections (why Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC doesn't merit its own section is never explained). Here, the going is rougher for interested laypeople, but much of the material remains understandable.

One glaring omission is the absence of material about IBM's RISC System/6000 architecture, especially given the fact that IBM and Motorola are jointly developing the RISC System/6000-based PowerPC. Understandably, more recent developments in the RISC arena (e.g., the Texas Instruments Viking SuperSparc and DEC's Alpha) are also not represented.

A Guide to RISC Microprocessors has taken its place on my bookshelf next to Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach as an indispensable reference to modern computer design. It doesn't disappoint.

—Bob Ryan

248 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

ILLUSTRATION: JOSEF GASTIB1993

WRAPTURES & REELS

Wraptures One, $129, and Wrapture Reels One, $199, from Form and Function, 1595 17th Ave., San Francisco, CA 94122, (619) 536-9999; fax (415) 664-4030.

One of the best CD-ROM collections of 24-bit clip art and QuickTime video clips I've seen comes from Form and Function. Wraptures One contains clip-art images, and Wrapture Reels One includes QuickTime videos, masks, and sounds.

Wraptures features a variety of high-quality 24-bit PICT images of surfaces such as crinkled paper, marble, brick, wood, metal, and star fields. Many of these images come in several bit depths and sizes. The small-size images are carefully designed so they can be repeatedly "tiled" as either a backdrop or a texture that you can wrap around 3-D objects. Other images include sunsets, clouds, and

mountains. A Browser application, written in MacroMedia Director, provides a good tutorial on how to use the material, navigates you through the files, and copies a selection to your hard disk.

Wrapture Reel contains several 24-bit, broadcast-quality QuickTime clips, including sunsets, clouds, waterfalls, a flock of birds flying overhead, and over a dozen highquality sounds. The package includes Apple's QuickTime Extension and Aladdin Systems' freeware Popcorn QuickTime player. Also included is HyperCard 2.1, for operating a Browser stack. Some clips are interesting (especially the storm over Easter Isle), but I wonder how useful they are.

You're free to distribute the material as part of a finished presentation or product as long as it's not part of a source library for other multimedia tools.

—Tom Thompson

MIND-BOGGLER

Mazes for the Mind: Computers and the Unexpected, Clifford A. Pickover, St. Martin's Press, $32.95, ISBN 0-312081-650.

First, forget this review. Run, leap, rush, scurry, and scoot to your nearest bookstore and get this book. Now, be prepared to have your mind taken apart, rearranged, and handed back to you.

Every now and then, a book comes along that reminds us what computers are all about—not spreadsheets and databases, but the expansion of mind and soul. Clifford Pickover's Mazes for the Mind: Computers and the Unexpected reminds us with a sustained, mind-twisting clash of logic, beauty, and pattern that requires whole-brain thinking. You cannot simply read this book, nor can you hope to devour it in one or two sessions. Sustained, deep-level thinking is simply too difficult. This is a book for grazing ideas, covering reams of paper with patterns and thoughts, rushing to the computer exclaiming, "Aha! I understand!," and creating short programs that generate beautiful designs.

Pickover's chapter titles are hoaxes to entrance you into a world of knowledge. Who would expect that chapter titles like "How to Stuff an Elephant Into a 24-Dimensional Sphere" and "Fractal Spiders" would ensnare you in a world of practical 4-D geometry, genetic music, and fractal applications?

By the time you finish this book, you will have practical experience on the worldwide spread of Cro-Magnon man, enjoyed a wild game of computer esophagus where you attempt to take over your body's internal organs, heard the music of your genes, constructed aesthetically pleasing mazes, designed fractal feathers, used time machines, and played bizarre chess games.

Who could suspect that computing the length of a roll of toilet paper would make interesting reading? Then again, how about "Squashed Archimedean Model of a HyperToilet Paper" for an interesting topic?

If you were asked to pick 10 mathematical formulas that changed the world, what would you select? Would you recognize the 10 formulas that were issued on Nicaraguan

postage stamps? As if all this wasn't enough, there's also a section titled "Strange Technology," where...well, maybe you should explore that one for yourself.

If you haven't done much creative thinking recently— the type of thinking where you feel your entire body has been hard at work—it's time for Pickover's book.

—Raymond GA Cote

MUDDLE OF EXCELLENCE

Obfuscated C and Other Mysteries, Don Libes, John Wiley & Sons, $39.95 (book/disk set), ISBN 0-471-57805-3.

Don Libes has assembled a collection of C programming examples that stake their reputation on being impenetrable, obtuse, and bewildering. Here is assembled a collection of code so bizarre as to be entertaining.

Obfuscated C presents the winners of a yearly Obfuscated C competition that started in 1984. This contest prides itself on driving C compilers to their limits with tricks, conjuring, and imagination. The clear champion of obfuscation bundles four eminently useful functions. Compiled one way, the source code produces a program to solve differential equations. Set a few flags, and it recompiles to a program that reverses the order of lines in a text file. Run this program on its own source code, and it sorts lines. Run the sort algorithm on the original source code, and you produce a program that generates Fibonacci numbers.

Of course, you would never use any of these tricks in your own programs. To help maintain your professional equilibrium, Libes intermixes chapters of obfuscation with chapters dedicated to pure elegance—truly writing better, cleaner, faster code. He covers topics such as a proper use of longjump and pointers to functions, undefined compiler behaviors to avoid, and creating faster memory allocation algorithms.

In short, Libes presents C at its best and worst. You'll have hours of fun trying to decode the contest winners. And best of all, you'll also acquire a diverse set of useful software tools.

—Raymond GA Cote

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 249

Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors

m,m*Mnm*t4m.*~«,*<*w-<m*t<« .

II."" ,IVi 1 ■ ■--•■• "■ — ,.1-.V.,, „■,,.V-.fi

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But QNX Can Take the Heat.

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A Recipe to Save Time

QNX saves you time up front, because your development system and target system are one and the same. Which means no cross-compiling or debugging on a separate test platform. You get one integrated environment, with transparent faulttolerant networking and distributed processing already built in.

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The Right Ingredients for Real Time

QNX delivers the speed of a fast, realtime executive (16 usee per context switch on a 33 MHz 80486). And its priority-driven, preemptive scheduling will help you build So if you're looking for an operating system that gives you

responsive solutions that won't melt under real realtime conditions. more than the standard fare, try QNX. You're in for a real treat.

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Q Quantum Software Systems Ltd. 1992 QNX is a registered trademark and Rundos Is .1 trademark of Quantum Software Systems Ltd. UNIX and OfEN LOOK are registered trademarks of UNIX System Laboratories. Inc. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows is a tradematk of Microsoft Corporation.

UNDER THE HOOD

JEAN RENARD WARD

AND

DEBRA SCHULTZ

Digitizer Renaissance

M

ost computer users today use a mouse as their pointing device, but it wasn't always that way. Before personal computers, most people used a digitizing tablet with either a puck or a stylus as their drawing and pointing device. In the early 1980s, thousands of copies of AutoCAD, VersaCAD, and other electronic drafting and design programs came bundled with a digitizing tablet. Then users became accustomed to the mouse as the Macintosh, Windows, and other GUIs became popular. Now pen-based computers, which integrate digitizers into their displays, may change preferences back again.

Pen vs. Touch

Digitizing tablets differ from touchscreens, although some designs use similar technologies. Touchscreens are just what their name implies: a touch-sensitive display, used to read the position of a fingertip (see "Keyboards Without Keys," July 1992 BYTE). Fingertips are large and slow. As input devices, they're good for picking out items and perhaps dragging them around, but they're not very good for writing.

While touchscreens use a finger for input, digitizing tablets use a pen to capture gesture commands, written characters, electronic ink sketches, and annotations. If a tablet responds to finger and hand touches, resting your hand on the tablet while writing can create errors.

Digitizers offer higher accuracy than do touchscreens, and this makes them better suited for pen systems. The ac

The pen computer is reviving interest in digitizing-tablet technologies

curacy required for electronic ink is high. The human eye can discern printed line widths of less than 0.001 inch. An ink line on paper measures about 0.003 inch with smooth edges, while a pixel on a typical highresolution LCD is much larger—about 0.01 inch with square edges. A character needs to be drawn at least 20 to 25 LCD pixels (0.20 to 0.25 inch) high on a pen computer display to look good. Contrast that with handwritten characters, which are usually only 0.10 to 0.20 inch tall.

Until recently, most digitizing tablets were opaque and sat on the top of a desk completely separate from the display. With the advent of pen computers, the emphasis has moved to transparent tablets integrated with a flat-panel LCD. Indeed, the defining hardware element of pen-based computers is the combined digitizing tablet and LCD. For the primary person-machine interface, good reliability, accuracy, look and feel, and responsiveness are critical. If users do not feel comfortable with the hardware input device, they will reject pen computing technology.

Digitizer Background

A digitizing tablet has three major components: a tablet, a pen (or stylus), and a controller. The tablet consists of a sensing area that detects the pen position. This surface

ILLUSTRATION-. ROBERT FORSBACH © 1993

JANUARY 1993

YTE 251

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Decider, decider, decider.

Down-sizing, upgrading, multi-platform environments. Today's computer hardware issues are more numerous, more difficult, more critical than ever. So how do companies make decisions?

According to a new IntelliQuest study, they turn to the only person qualified to decide. Someone like Bob Barrett. A person with 18 years in computers. Who oversees a technical staff of 75. And whose buying decisions and approvals affect nearly 3,000 users worldwide.

In other words, they turn to the BYTE reader. A full 92% of whom control the products and brands their companies buy.

If you want to reach an audience as influential as this, then yours is an easy decision—advertise in BYTE.

BYTE reader Robert N. Barrett, Vice President Management Information Systems, M/A-COM, Inc.

It doesn't g

© 1992 BYTE, a McGraw-Hill publication. For a presentation of the Ma

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UNDER THE HOOD

ELECTROMAGNETIC-GRID DIGITIZER

Tablet processor

CPU

Video circuitry

Printed

circuit

board

Figure 1: In an electromagnetic-grid digitizer, a continuous electromagnetic wire grid acts as an antenna on the tablet surface. When the pen approaches the surface, a wire coil inside the pen generates a low-intensity magnetic signal that induces a small voltage in some of the grid wires. The tablet processor then detects the voltage and translates it into x,y coordinates.

sits on top of or underneath the display. The pen is the pointing device. It can have an active element (i.e., the transmitter) that sends a signal to the tablet (i.e., the receiver), or it can receive signals from the tablet. The tablet controller consists of an IC or other electronics that scan the tablet's active area, detect the position of the pen, and translate the changing position into a series of x,y coordinate pairs.

Many input-device designs match this broad definition of a digitizing tablet. Designs have been based on practically every physical effect described in a college physics textbook, including electromagnetic fields, electrostatic signals, surface acoustic waves, sonar, resistive films, pressure-sensitive sheets, strain gauges, and magnetostrictive pulses. There are technologies based on evenly spaced grids, phased-spacing grids, solid sheets, transparent films, linear transducers, microphones, delay lines, and AC and DC signals.

The first digitizing tablet, the 1956 Rand tablet, consisted of a grid of conductive wires covered by a rectangular frame, with a special electronic writing pen. A small electromagnetic coil in the tip of the pen received an AC signal by way of a connecting cable and transmitted it to the grid. As the user wrote on the tablet, the coil in the pen passed over the tablet grid, and the controller read which x and y wires

picked up the strongest signal. The controller measured the position of the pen 60 times per second. Many current tablet designs work the same way.

In all designs, the controller sends a stream of x,y position coordinates to the main computer at between 60 and 400 points per second. A rate of 120 pps is considered the minimum for good character' recognition. A note-taking application without handwriting translation needs the same high performance to display accurate, smooth electronic ink.

With so many digitizer designs available, selecting the right digitizer for a penbased computer is an exercise in tradeoffs. Decision factors include the precision required in sensing the pen's position, the speed at which the user is likely to move the pen across the tablet, the weight and durability of the materials used, the power drain on a battery-powered system, and electromagnetic interference.

Only four of the above-mentioned technologies are currently used in pen-based systems: electromagnetic grids, electrostatic grids, resistive films, and capacitive/electrostatic films.

Electromagnetic Grids

Today's electromagnetic-grid digitizers are modern variations on the original Rand design. The active area in an electromagnetic tablet contains a grid of fine con

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 253

Circle 271 on Inquiry Card.

Just Add Code.

F77L

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If you are moving a 500,000 line mainframe program or have a program that requires a DOS extender, EM/32 is the PC Fortran language system for you.

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When writing new code, you can't beat our compilation speed, unmatched error messages and new 32-bit debugger/profiler. Tools include an editor, make utility, library manager, and graphics library. If you should have any difficulties, we provide free unlimited technical support.

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UNDER THE HOOD

ELECTROSTATIC-GRID DIGITIZER

Tablet

processor

r

Glass or

CPU

plastic substrate

'

Transparent

conductive

surface

_ '

Video circuitry

Pen^

Tablet

^

z::z:

X5LZZZIZ

Flat-panel LCD

Figure 2: The tablet controller in an electrostatic-grid digitizer generates electrostatic signals across a wire grid on the tablet surface. A capacitive probe in the pen tip couples with the tablet and transmits received signals through a tether to the tablet controller, which calculates the pen's position.

ductors—wires, or conductive traces on a printed circuit board—wired as loops to generate an electromagnetic field (see figure 1). The grid is usually on the bottom surface of the LCD in a pen system; otherwise, the digitizer's wires would create dark lines over the display.

As the pen approaches the grid edges (within an inch or so), the electromagnetic field becomes distorted and less accurate. The dimensions of the grid and the size of this low-accuracy area near the edges of the grid define the tablet's active area (the grid area that reports coordinatepair data accurately). The spacing of the conductors on the grid affects accuracy. Closer spacing allows more exact positioning.

In the traditional implementation, the grid is either drawn on a printed circuit board with a rigid epoxy substrate or manufactured on a transparent Mylar film base. The epoxy board is more expensive and more complex to manufacture than the Mylar film. It also is heavier and has a larger footprint, because space is required around the edge for the tablet circuitry. A grid made with flexible conductors on Mylar film can be folded around a shielding spacer so that the sense wire returns are under the grid. This helps to reduce size.

In most electromagnetic tablets, the grid detects a signal from the pen. The pen contains a small wire coil that generates a low

intensity magnetic field. When the pen is close enough to the surface of the digitizing area (within its proximity), the magnetic field induces a slight electric current in the grid that's inversely proportional to the distance between the conductors and the pen coil. The tablet processor samples the grid periodically and detects the current. These data samples are then translated into the x,y coordinates that indicate the pen's contact point.

Most grid-based tablets use the strongest signal wires in the x,y grid lines to get a coarse pen position and then compute a fine position by interpolating the signal readings from the two or three strongest pickups on the grid. A variation on this approach is to use a. phased grid with two sets of x wires at different spacing. The controller computes the position from the relative signal strength in the two sets of wires, rather than by checking individual wires for the strongest signal. It then uses the same method to find the v position.

Many electromagnetic tablets show a velocity error when the pen is moving diagonally at a fast speed. The error results from the delta time between the position readings. It may not be not\ceab\e if the user is writing only small characters, but it can be very large for fast sketch drawing, flourishes on signatures, and tracing of straight lines. Unfortunately, many vendors demonstrate their designs only with

254 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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UNDER THE HOOD

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MID MOST OF ALL ... BUSY]

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RESISTIVE-FILM DIGITIZER

Figure 3: In the resistive-film design, an insulating glass surface is coated with a transparent, slightly resistive conductive coating. The tablet processor applies a O-V AC current to one edge of the tablet and +5 V to the opposing side. Voltage ranges from OV to 5 V as the pen moves across the surface. The tablet controller calculates the pen's x position and then applies voltage to the top and bottom edges to determine the y value.

demonstrations of handwriting recognition, where the writing is small and the electronic ink is removed immediately and replaced with font characters: You don't get a chance to see the ink. While many current designs have this problem, it is easy to correct.

The pen's electromagnetic-coil design can also result in tilt errors. The coil, located inside the body of the pen, sits an inch higher than the pen tip when the user is holding the pen in a normal writing position. This means that if the user tilts the pen too much while writing, inaccuracies can result.

Interference is another disadvantage of electromagnetic grids. The electromagnetic fields that these tablets use are seriously disturbed by metal frames, ground planes, and harmonics from internal digital electronics. (These tablets typically use a frequency of around 120 kHz for the signals between the tablet and the pen.) As a result, the tablets must be custom-designed for each pen computer. Even changing the type of LCD in the same product (e.g., to a color or high-resolution LCD) would probably require reengineering the digitizer.

Still another design problem is that the grid can't be put in front of the LCD without putting dark lines across the display. The common solution is to put the grid

underneath the LCD, but this adds to the problem of electromagnetic disturbance. Some vendors have experimented with transparent materials for putting an invisible grid in front of the LCD, but the results don't yet work reliably and aren't completely transparent.

Manufacturers using this type of technology include Calcomp, Hitachi, Kurta, Logitech, Summagraphics, and Wacom. Wacom uses a unique electromagnetic approach to making a cordless, passive pen, called electromagnetic resonance. The tablet giid alternates between a transmit mode, during which it sends a 20-microsecond radio frequency pulse, and a receive mode, during which it listens for 20 p;s for a reflected signal from the pen. The pen contains a small coil-and-capacitor resonant circuit. The pulse from the tablet produces electromagnetic resonance in the pen circuit; the energy is briefly stored in the pen circuit and then reemitted at a slightly different frequency. The tablet controller samples the grid and detects the reemitted signal.

This technique has the unique advantage of providing a passive, unpowered pen—one that does not require batteries. However, the grid generates a strong, continuously transmitted signal that consumes more power than a digitizer with a tethered pen. The Wacom digitizer is used in

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UNDER THE HOOD

NCR's System 3125 and Samsung's PenMaster computers.

Electrostatic Grids

Electrostatic grids work very much like electromagnetic grids, with two main differences (see figure 2). First, the grid wires are connected at only one end, not in a loop, since the controller uses them to generate electrostatic, rather than electromagnetic, signals. Second, the pen has a capacitive probe at its tip, rather than a coil inside the pen body. The probe, a simple metal tip with a rounded end, might look like an empty ballpoint cartridge. As the pen tip approaches the tablet surface, capacitance between the two couples the energy between the objects. The pen then transmits a signal through a connecting cable to the tablet processor, which calculates the current position. Using a tip probe avoids tilt problems associated with electromagnetic coil designs.

Electrostatic grids come in two designs: a straightforward x,y grid and a chargeratio approach that uses a single grid of specially contoured etches. Both are easily built using a standard printed circuit board. Summagraphics uses the chargeratio design in some of its opaque tablets.

Electrostatic-grid tablets usually sit on top of the LCD, which shields the grid from computer interference. Unfortunately, the grid lines are visible and interfere with viewing. Manufacturers are working to make the grid lines less visible.

Resistive Film

The active area of a resistive-film sensing tablet consists of a substrate of dielectric (insulating) material, usually glass, coated on the top surface with a transparent, slightly resistive conductor such as indium tin oxide (see figure 3). Electrodes on the edges put a 5-volt signal (usually AC) on one edge of the tablet, and 0 V on the opposite edge. The pen is a metal probe that touches the film. The controller reads the voltage that the pen picks up: 1 V near one edge, gradually increasing to 5 V as the user moves the pen to the other edge. It applies the voltage first on the left and right sides of the tablet to calculate the x axis, and then to the top and bottom edges for the y value.

Another design, in which the pen provides the 5-V signal, has four electrodes at the four corners of the film. These electrodes measure the different currents that are picked up from the pen when the user drags it across the tablet surface.

After the controller measures the voltage (or current, depending on the design), the sensors notify the tablet controller, which converts the sensors' data into dig

ital values. The controller microprocessor then calculates the x,y coordinates of the pen's contact point. One potential advantage of many of these designs is that they can accept linger input as well as pen input. Due to their low cost, resistive-film designs are also popular for touchscreens. Because the design consists basically of a film on a piece of glass, resistive film is easy to adapt to the displays of existing notebook computers.

D.

ue to their low cost, resistive-film designs are popular for touchscreens.

Some manufacturers put a second conductive coating on the bottom surface of the substrate to shield out RF noise, or put a second, hard coating over the resistive film to protect it against scratches. Some designs also use various linearization patterns with the electrodes to simplify the controller's calculations.

Resistive-film digitizers have several disadvantages, including their inability to sense pen proximity. Unlike with other designs, the pen must touch the screen before the digitizer can record its position, so it is impossible to put up a status cursor when the user is moving the pen above the display. (Go Corp. claims that its PenPoint operating system's user interface dispenses with status cursors completely, but they are very common in current pen applications.)

Another problem is image clarity. Depending on the thickness of the film and hard coating, the optical transmissivity of some digitizers can be as low as 70 percent. This low transparency reduces the contrast of the LCD image, making it harder to read.

Still another disadvantage is that microscopic cracks in the film can cause large position errors. These cracks can develop from simple thermal stresses from transitions from a warm room to cold outside air, and small scratches in the film can occur from normal everyday use. The errors they cause look like small black holes on the display. You can draw around these spots, but not on them. MicroTouch adapt

ed a touchscreen product to the pen computing market by using soft pencil lead in the pen tip to prevent scratches. Some vendors of resistive digitizers, such as Graphics Technology, use harder film materials. If the electrical contact between the pen and the film is poor, the digitizer can produce erratic data. The cause of the poor contact might be oil or grease on the surface, high contact resistance if the pen touches down lightly, or a soft landing (i.e., when the user touches down at the start of a stroke). For this reason, the tablet electronics are often adjusted to require the user to press down hard on the tablet. That can be tiring if the user works with the pen for long periods. Nevertheless, resistive-film digitizers have been used successfully in the original Grid Systems GridPad, NEC's UltraLite SL/20P, and other early pen computers.

Capacitive/Electrostatic Film

Capacitive-/electrostatic-film technology combines many of the advantages of electrostatic and electromagnetic grid designs with the low cost and easy manufacturing aspects of resistive film.

The active area is a transparent substrate of glass or plastic that has been coated on its underside with a sheet of a transparent conducting material such as indium tin oxide (see figure 4). The film is not on the exposed front surface of the glass (where it could be scratched or damaged), and it needs to be only moderately conductive, so it can be quite thin. Some films offer well over 90 percent transmissivity: That is about as transparent as the LCD glass itself.

The 0-V and 5-V AC voltages applied on the edges of the tablet create an electrostatic field over the glass, and a capacitive probe tip in the pen picks up this signal through the glass. The pen measures an electrostatic field from the whole tablet, rather than a direct voltage at a single point of contact. For this reason, the small defects in the film that hurt resistive-film tablets have no effect here. Scriptel exploited that attribute in its capacitive-/electrostatic-film digitizers by intentionally placing a pattern of quarter-inch holes in the film to reduce power use.

Like the grid-based electrostatic designs, this technology is not as affected as other digitizer technologies are by the metal and electronics in the rest of the pen computer. Proximity sensing is also very good; capacitive-/electrostatic-film digitizers can sense the pen even when it is held several inches above the surface; however, the further the probe moves from the surface, the lower the accuracy. Power use can easily be as low as 15 milliwatts while active,

258 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Powerful New Tools for OS/2 Programming

The WorkFrame/2 product ... because the best environment for application development is the one you create yourself.

With WorkFrame/2, you can integrate your choice of development tools - including those for DOS and Windows. It's open, configurable and language independent. And it's easy to customize the WorkFrame/2 interface to create your own development environment.

The concept is simple. WorkFrame/2 organizes files into logical units called projects. By associating each project with your personal choice of compiler/debugger/linker/editor you can get the greatest productivity possible from all your development tools.

The C Set/2 product ... because application development should be fast - and simple!

C Set/2 delivers a one-two punch to help you create some of the fastest-performing OS/2-based applications possible.

First, the 32-bit C compiler enables your applications to exploit the speed and power of 386- and 486-based computers. It's the best high-performance code optimizer in the business. With the C Set/2 compiler, unsafe optimizations simply don't exist.

Second, C Set/2 comes with a fully interactive, lull-function, source-level 32-bit Presentation Manager debugger. Just point your mouse and shoot, using the graphical PM user interface - or use the keyboard.

Either way it's easy. And you'll get instant feedback on the screen to verify what you're doing. Debugging has never been so simple!

And there's more. The C Set/2 compiler conforms to industry standards - including ANSI C and IS0/1EC - and offers Microsoft C compatibility. With features like a full suite of runtime libraries and 32-16 bit hnkage, you can be sure C Set/2 will provide the function and flexibility you need to make application development fast and simple - the way it should be.

OS/2 2.0 Developer's Toolkit ... because it takes the right set of tools to build powerful applications.

OS/2 2.0 Developer's Toolkit is the perfect companion to use with C Set/2. It contains a variety of language-independent application build and productivity tools. For the C Set/2 compiler, Toolkit provides the system linker and system header files. It also contains the import libraries and the NMAKE utility you need to dramatically increase the capabilities of C Set/2 to build powerful applications.

To order or get more information on how IBM application development tools can work in your OS/2 environment,

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Circle 274 on Inquiry Card.

UNDER THE HOOD

CAPACITIVE/ELECTROSTATIC SENSING DIGITIZER

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and much less when the pen is idle. That is about equal to the best power consumption of any of the other current technologies.

Scriptel has announced agreements with several pen computer manufacturers to use its technology in their pen computing products. Currently, Arthur Dent Associates uses Scriptel's digitizer technology in its WriteAway digitizer add-on for offthe-shelf portable notebook computers. Dauphin uses it in the D5000 pen computer.

Other Options

Several other digitizer technologies could also be used in pen computers, although the four main technologies discussed above are the most acceptable. Science Accessories has been selling different designs of sonar-based digitizers for several years. In one design, the pen contains a clicking sound source that makes a distinct sound pulse 60 times per second. Two small microphones in front of the user pick up the pulses and, measuring the time delay for the sound to reach the microphones, compute the position of the pen by triangulation. This should not be confused with the surface acoustic wave technologies used in some touchscreens. There, the sound wave propagates through the glass; here, it moves through the air. This technology doesn't lend itself very

well to the portable aspect of pen computers because it has some problems when objects (e.g., an elbow) come between the pen and the microphones. However, for a low cost, you can have a large-area digitizer that works on a regular desk, and by adding a third microphone, you can even digitize objects and gestures in three dimensions.

Other devices, such as light pens, mice, and pure touchscreens, have been used as pen-input devices but are far from ideal. Light pens aren't as common as they were 20 years ago, and they have the disadvantage of working only with CRT displays, not with the LCDs that have become synonymous with pen systems. A light pen consists of an optical sensor in the tip of a pen: As the electron beam of the CRT scans the display, the sensor picks up the exact moment it passes under the pen. The control electronics compute the position of the electron beam from timing circuitry connected to the display.

Since light pens depend on the scanning of the CRT, their accuracy is that of one CRT pixel: 640 by 480 pixels, or a bit better than 0.02 inch on a typical display. Depending on whether the display is interlaced, a light pen can read only 30 or 60 pps—far short of the rate needed for good character recognition. Nonetheless, light pens have been making a small comeback with the new interest in pen computing.

The mouse became popular for personal computing less than 10 years ago. Unlike a tablet, which reports absolute physical position, a mouse reports relative motion; thus, mice are unacceptable for use in pen computing. Even a small penshaped mouse requires that the user never lift it—the device doesn't work when it's lifted. The effect is very clear if you ask a user to write several sentences using a mouse and then using a pen. Steve Levine, designer of Wang's Freestyle product (another 1989-vintage pen computing system), called this "writing with a fat potato." Current digitizers involve many difficult and limiting trade-offs in hardware design—trade-offs that can have a direct impact on the usability of pen computing hardware and software. In spite of 35 years of evolution, many current digitizer designs have substantial limitations when ■ installed in pen computers. Tomorrow's designs must improve performance, and the underlying manufacturing technology must better integrate the display and the digitizer, before this technology can fully meet the requirements of pen computer

FOR FURTHER READING

Foley, J. D., V. L. Wallace, and P. Chan. "The Human Factors of Computer Graphics Interaction Techniques." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, November 1984.

Phoenix PenBIOS Technical News Bulletin, versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Phoenix Technologies, Ltd., 40 Airport Pkwy., San Jose, CA 95110, (408) 4526500.

Slate Position Paper on Pencentricity. Slate Corp., 15035 North 73rd St., Scottsdale, AZ 85260, Order Number 146.

"Slate Teaches BCS Some History." The Boston Computer Society PC Report, May 1992.

Ward, Jean Renard, and Barry Blesser. "Interactive Recognition of Handprinted Characters for Computer Input." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, September 1985.

Ward, Jean Renard, and Mark J. Phillips. "Digitizer Technology: Performance Characteristics and the Effects on the User Interface." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, April 1987.

Jean Renard Ward is a software developer at Slate Corp. (Newton, MA). Debra Schultz is a product marketing manager at Phoenix Technologies, Ltd. (Norwood, MA). You can contact them on BIX c/o "editors, " or contact Jean on MCI Mail at 488-7364.

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OS/2'S

System Object Model

IBM offers an object-oriented programming tool to developers who write code for the OS/2 2.0 environment. Interestingly, the tool isn't a C++ compiler (IBM says that it will release a C++ compiler sometime in the future). It's a language-neutral object-classification system embedded in the operating system itself. Known as the System Object Model, it's the foundation on which the Workplace Shell is built. You can use SOM to extend the Workplace Shell or to build your own extensible object systems.

SOM is helpful when you develop a large project or when you distribute a set of library routines in DLL form. The library routines might be ones you sell in the shrinkwrapped marketplace or ones you provide to other programmers in your organization. SOM is less useful for small projects; in fact, it takes a bit of extra work to use. In this article, I'll help you understand SOM so you can decide when it is the right tool for the job.

What Is SOM?

You use SOM's object orientation to develop and maintain your library functions and application code. Through this tool, you define and update class and method descriptions. By defining your classes and methods in SOM form, you impose organization on your code. You also take advantage of object-oriented features such as encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. When you install OS/2, you get a DLL containing the SOM methods and classes that define the behavior of Workplace Shell

SOM's language-neutral approach to objectoriented programming is a key innovation

objects such as folders, print destinations, and live objects.

For developers, the IBM C Set/2 package provides a SOM compiler, C header files, an IMPLIB library describing the functions in SOM.DLL, and the definitions of the classes and

methods of OS/2's desktop objects. The supplied .SC files enumerate the methods and classes associated with each standard OS/2 object. As a developer, you use the SOM compiler, header files, DLLs, library files, and (optionally) definitions of the classes and methods of OS/2's standard objects to create your own classes and subclasses. You can also interact with Workplace Shell objects through their SOM interfaces.

The SOM compiler translates text files of SOM control statements (written in Object Interface Definition Language, or OIDL) into language bindings that you incorporate into your programs. The SOM control statements look like C but are really language-neutral descriptions of your classes, methods, and public/private data items. The SOM compiler emits its language bindings into .C and .H files; you then build on the files to create your software.

At present, the SOM compiler emits only source code files for C. IBM says that it is working with other language vendors (as well as within IBM) to bring SOM support to Pascal, COBOL, FORTRAN, C++, and SmallTalk programmers. I hope Borland, MicroFocus,

ILLUSTRATION: RAFAEL LOPEZ") 1993

JANUARY 1993 'BYTE 261

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

Computer Associates (Realia), and Digitalk—to name but a few vendors—soon begin to provide support for SOM in their products. For now. though, you can use SOM effectively (for both client and library code) only if you have IBM's C Set/2. You can use SOM to help manage the development of DLLs that other languages will access, but it's certainly more elegant and reliable if the programmer using your DLL can do so through SOM classes and methods.

Application modules that interface with SOM-based objects do not need recompiling if changes to the object definition only add new methods; add, change, or delete private instance variables; insert new classes above existing classes in your inheritance hierarchy; or relocate methods upward in the class hierarchy.

You can define parent classes and child classes (subclasses) within SOM. Child classes inherit the attributes of their parents, and a child class can have unique attributes and new behaviors implemented in methods particular to that child. All SOM classes derive from the operating-systemsupplied SOMClass class, which is the only class that is its own meta-class. A meta-class defines class methods, not object methods. While a parent of a class is another class from which instance methods and state descriptions can be inherited, a meta-class provides Oat factory methods (sometimes called constructors) that you use to manufacture objects.

SOM and the Workplace Shell

Suppose you want to add application-specific code to an OS/2 printer object. You might, for instance, need a printer object that notifies your application when the user chooses to change the hold/release status of the printer object. You would override the printer object methods whose SOM definitions are the following:

BOOL wpHoldPrinter (); BOOL wpReleasePrinter();

Including an override keyword in your method definition indicates that you want to add to one or more of an object's methods. In the overriding method, you can invoke the ancestral method (and all its processing) that you've overridden by calling parent_wpHoldPrinter or parentwpReleasePrinter. In your child method, you just add the specific new behavior—in this case, notifying the user.

You can use the same technique to add a new page to an object's settings notebook, modify a folder object's behavior, or implement some other change to a Workplace object. You can also override a meta

class. You might want to do this to track object instances, perform automatic garbage collection, interface to a persistent object store, or hold information common to a set of object instances.

Using SOM can be fun, but now is a good time to tell you that you don't have to use SOM if you don't want to. OS/2 provides a Workplace API that you can use to change the desktop or objects on the desktop. The API includes such functions as WinCreateObject, WinDeregisterObjectClass, WinDestroyObject, WinEnumObjectClasses, WinQueryObject, WinRegisterObjectClass, WinReplaceObjectClass,and WinSetObjectData.

The WPObject Class

WPObject is the basis for all Workplace objects. It provides groups of methods for managing settings notebooks, saving and restoring states, storing object usage information, managing pop-up menus, setting and querying object information (e.g., views, style, and title), handling errors, managing memory (for object resources), initializing and terminating objects, and performing direct manipulation (e.g., drag and drop).

Each Workplace object inherits a set of standard pop-up menu items from the WPObject class. You add or delete menu items by overriding the wpFilterPopupMenu method. The WPObject class defines flag values for the standard pop-up menu items. These flag values are manifest constants in the toolkit header files and are prefixed by CTXT_. The wpFilterPopupMenu method responds with the flags that correspond to the pop-up menu items for an object. If you want to delete a standard menu item, you override wpFilterPopupMenu with a child method that invokes the parent but turns off the flag for that menu item. After invoking the parent method from within your code, you need only perform an AND on the parental flags with the complement of the value for the menu item you want deleted. For example, if you don't want the "Create Shadow... " menu item in your pop-up menu, you might code something like this:

Flags = parent_wpFilterPopupMenu(

somSelf, ulFlags, hwndCnr,

fMultiSelect); Flags = Flags S ~CTXT_SHADOW; return Flags;

Before I began exploring SOM, I figured that you had to program in Presentation Manager to use it. Wrong. SOM programming techniques can apply to any

OS/2 programs or libraries you develop. Moreover, the SOM run-time environment is completely reentrant, so it permits concurrent execution by multiple threads. Within this environment, SOM automatically serializes updates to global resources. You can use OS/2 semaphores to control access to your own shared objects and instance data, if your design requires. And you can develop interactions between objects across process boundaries by using OS/2 interprocess communications facilities (e.g., shared memory).

I don't have room in this article to show you a complete SOM-aware PM program example, so instead I created a simple DLL containing methods for managing Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet files (with a .WK1 extension). The sample code doesn't use PM, but you can invoke the methods I supply from within a PM program.

The 1-2-3 Worksheet Object

The first step in using SOM—after poring through the IBM Technical Library manuals, of course—is to create an OIDL text file that defines your classes and methods. Here's mine:

#include <somobj.sc>

class: WkSheet; parent: SOMObject; data:

integer4 DefaultColumnWidth,public;

FILE *Wkl; methods: int NameWorkSheet(

char *Name); void SetLabel(

int Row, int Column,

char *String); void SetNumber(

int Row, int Column,

double Number); void CloseWorkSheet();

Before you run the SOM compiler (SC.EXE), make sure you set the compiler's environment variables. SC.EXE uses these variables to find include files and to know what output files you want. By default (i.e., with no environment variables set), SC.EXE checks the syntax of your statements but produces no output.

What do these methods do? NameWorksheet creates a .WK1 file and writes basic 1-2-3 information to it, such as the beginning-of-file record. SetLabel and Set-Number insert labels and numbers into worksheet cells. Both take row, column, and value parameters. CloseWorksheet writes the 1 -2-3 end-of-file record

and closes the spreadsheet file.

continued

262

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SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

Listing 1: Anatomy of a SOM object. I wrote the code shown in boldface; the SOM compiler generated the rest.

/* FileName: wksheet.c.

* Generated using:

* SOM Precompiler spc: 1.22

* SOM Emitter emitc: 1.24 */

^define WkSheet_Class_Source #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h>

iinclude "wksheet.h"

void WriteLabel (FILE *Wkl, int Row, int Column, char *String){ static char buffer[200]; static char f; static short int t, 1, c, r; f = 0x7F; c = Column; r = Row; t = OxOOOF;

1 = strlen(String) + 7; buffer[0] = 39; strcpy(sbuffer[1] , String);

fwrite(St, 2, fwrite(Sl, 2,

Wkl) Wkl)

fwrite(Sf, 1, 1, Wkl)

fwrite(Sc, 2, 1, wkl)

fwrite(Sr, 2, 1, Wkl);

fwrite(buffer, strlen(String) + 2, 1, Wkl);)

void WriteNumber (FILE *Wkl, double Number){ static double n; static char f; static short int t, 1,

f = 0x02;

c = Column;

r = Row;

t = OxOOOE;

1 = 13;

n = Number;

fwrite(St, 2, 1, Wkl)

fwrite(Sl, 2, 1, Wkl)

fwrite(Sf, 1, 1, Wkl)

fwrite(Sc, 2, 1, Wkl)

fwrite(Sr, 2, 1, Wkl)

fwrite(Sn, 8, 1, Wkl)

int Row, int Column,

FILE *CreateLotusFile(char *FileName)( static FILE *Wkl; static char String[101];

static short int BOFRec[3] =

(0, 2, /* record type s length */ 0x0406}; /* file format revision number */ static short int WinRec[18]=

(7, 32, /* record type S length */ 0, 0, /* cursor column and row */ 0x0071, /* format (unprotected general) */ 11, /* default column width */ 6, 20, /* columns S rows on screen */ 0, 0, /* left column, top row */ 0, 0, /* number of title columns, rows */ 0, 0, /* left title column, top title row */ 4, 4, /* top left coordinate, column S row */ 72, /* number of columns in window */ 0}; /* unused */ static char HidCol[36]= {0x64, 0, 0x20, 0,

0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);

) = NOLL)

strcpy(String, FileName);

if (strchr(String, (int) '.' strcat(String, ".WK1"); Wkl = fopen(String, "wb"); if (Wkl = NULL)

return NULL; fwrite(BOFRec, 6, 1, Wkl) fwrite(WinRec, 36, 1, Wkl) fwrite(HidCol, 36, 1, Wkl)

return Wkl;)

int CloseLotusFile(FILE *Wkl){

static char EOFRec[4] = fl, 0, 0, 0); fwrite(EOFRec, 4, 1, Wkl); fclose(Wkl); return 0;}

/* .

SOM_Scope int SOMLINK NameWorkSheet( WkSheet *somSelf,char *Name) ( WkSheetData *somThis = WkSheetGetData(somSelf); WkSheetMethodDebug("WkSheet","NameWorkSheet"); _Wkl = CreateLotusFile(Name); if (_Wkl = NULL)

return (int) -1; return (int) 0; ]

SOM_Scope void SOMLINK SetLabel(WkSheet *somSelf, int Row, int Column, Char *String)( WkSheetData *soraThis = WkSheetGetData(somSelf); WkSheetMethodDebug("WkSheet","SetLabel"); WriteLabel (_Wkl, Row, Column, String);)

SOM_Scope void SOMLINK SetNumber(WkSheet *somSelf, Int Row, int Column, double Number)( WkSheetData *sornThis = WkSheetGetData (somSelf) ,WkSheetMethodDebug("WkSheet","SetNumber"); WriteNumber(_Wkl, Row, Column, Number);)

SOM_Scope void SOMLINK CloseWorkSheet( WkSheet *somSelf)( WkSheetData *somThis = WkSheetGetData(somSelf); WkSheetMethodDebug("WkSheet","CloseWorkSheet"); CloseLotusFile(_Wkl) ; )

Listing 2: Using a SOM object. You'

re not required to

write a PM application

in order to use SOM objects.

Any OS/2 program can call them.

tinclude <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#include "wksheet.h"

WkSheet *WK1;

void mainfint argc, char *argv[]){

printf("Creating a

worksheet object (TESTl)\n">;

WK1 = WkSheetNewO ;

if ( NameWorkSheet(WK1, "TEST1

) = -Dl

printf("Could not

name worksheet object.\n");

return;)

SetLabel(WK1, 0, 0,

"Column 1"),

SetLabel(WK1, 0, 1,

"Column 2"),

SetLabel(WK1, 0, 2,

"Column 3"),

SetNumber(WK1, 2, 0,

2.0);

SetNumber(WK1, 2, 1,

4.0);

SetNumber(WK1, 2, 2,

8.0) ;

SetNumber(WK1, 3, 0,

12.0);

SetNumber(WK1, 3, 1,

14.0);

SetNumber(WK1, 3, 2,

16.0);

_CloseWorkSheet(WK1);

)

264

YTE • JANUARY 1993

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My WkSheet class has two instance variables, one private and one public. The private variable is a FILE* pointer I use to hold the return value from the fopen call. Notice that I could switch to the lower-level open, or even to DosOpen, within the method without changing its published interface. The other instance variable is DefaultColumnWidth. I don't actually use this variable in my sample code, but I inserted the item into the OIDL statements to show how to declare a public variable that users of the DLL code can access.

The SOM compiler used my WkSheet class declaration to generate a class data structure in the .H file:

SOMEXTERN struct WkSheetClassDataStructure{

SOMAny *classObject;

somDToken DefaultColumnWidth;

somMToken NameWorkSheet;

somMToken SetLabel;

somMToken SetNumber;

somMToken CloseWorkSheet; } WkSheetClassData;

The SOM compiler reads the OIDL and writes a series of output files. When you include the generated .H file (WKSHEET.H) in your source code, you get C prototypes for my methods, as well as access to my public variables.

The generated WKSHEET.C file (see listing 1) is more interesting. All that I wrote was the implementation code for the methods I defined. The SOM compiler provided a useful skeleton for the entire DLL creation process. I compiled WKSHEET.C with the C SET/2 compiler, as follows:

ice /Ge- wksheet.c som.lib wksheet.def

The /Ge- option tells the compiler and linker to produce a DLL file. I didn't have to modify the generated .DEF file at all; it correctly called out all the options necessary to turn my compiled methods into a DLL.

I ran IMPLIB to create an export library that you can link your client program with. Copying the DLL file into a LIBPATH directory completed the development process and made the library available to (in this case) the imaginary programming team.

Listing 2 shows what a sample client program might look like. CLIENT.C declares a pointer (WK1) to a WkSheet object and creates the object by calling WkSheetNew. CLIENT.C then uses SOMgenerated macros from the .H file to put

information into the cells of the spreadsheet file. You might compile and link CLIENT.C with the command

ice /Gd- /Se /ss+ /Ms /Gm+ client.c wksheet.lib som.lib

to produce CLIENT.EXE. /Gd- specifies static linking of run-time libraries. /Se allows both ANSI and SAA (Systems Application Architecture) C language constructs in the source program. /ss + permits the use of // to indicate comments in your code. /Msz specifies system (rather than what's called optlink) calling conventions. And /Gm+ links your program with the multithreaded versions of the compiler-supplied run-time libraries.

SOM Appeal

It's the language-neutral aspects of SOM that appeal most to me. I write library routines for a team of nearly 40 people at my company. I can't yet effectively use object-oriented techniques in my work; not every programmer is skilled in C (or C++ or SmallTalk). When SOM capability comes to other languages (e.g., COBOL), I'll be able to use SOM to package my routines for public consumption by the team. In C++ or SmallTalk, for example, you and all the other programmers must work in the same language environment. But when other languages begin supporting SOM, the pressure for every programmer to code in the same language— if the team wants to take advantage of object-oriented features—goes away.

It's clear that SOM does a good job of helping programmers hide the implementation details of their code. The example I've provided shows that I can add new methods quite easily. I might add new methods to the WkSheet class to write other types of worksheet cells besides labels and numbers. However, if I sold you the DLL file (without source code) in the shrink-wrapped marketplace, and if I refused to add new features to the DLL, you could bypass my rudeness and use SOM to create child methods of the WkSheet class yourself. Your child methods could write the additional cell types into the worksheet file. If you wished, you could even create subclasses of the WkSheet class that would inherit the properties and methods of the parent class.

The Drawbacks

You now probably think that SOM is the next best thing to sliced bread, or that I believe SOM is the answer to all my programming problems. Not so. The fact that SOM supports only C at the present time is a big drawback. I've got my fingers

crossed, hoping other language vendors evaluate SOM and conclude that it's a useful tool. There just aren't enough C programmers on all the large-scale PC-based development projects to make C the only language choice.

But no matter what languages eventually support SOM, SOM is firmly rooted in OS/2. You won't be able to use it to help you develop DOS or Windows applications. I'm not sure this is a terrible disadvantage, though. A lot of organizations are doing in-house, large-scale, PC-based development projects within the framework of OS/2 2.0. Shrink-wrapped software products are the ones that will feel left out, because they can't use SOM in all the different operating environments.

Here's a nit: When you create an object with the SOM-generated <classname> New macro, you can't pass additional parameters to the object creation process. Thus, you can't set instance variables for the new object to values that have particular meaning for that instance of the object. I couldn't, for example, do an fopen call to create the worksheet file inside the WkSheetNew call—I didn't yet know the name of the file. I had to implement a separate method—NameWorkSheet—that would accept a filename parameter.

SOM can help you manage your development efforts so that you produce betterquality software that's more reliable and easier to maintain. However, you have to spend some up-front design time thinking about your code from an object-oriented viewpoint. During later coding and testing, you'll reap some rewards from that up-front design.

It's during the maintenance of your software that you will realize the most gains from using SOM. You and the other programmers on the development team will break existing code less often. People on the team will get fewer bug reports. And the team will be able to update the software more easily, without having to wade through reams of code that by rights should not need to come under public scrutiny to determine whether it's affected by a maintenance change. ■

Editor's note: The source code for listings in this article is available electronically. See page 5 for details.

Barry Nance, a programmer for the past 20 years and a BYTE contributing editor, is the author of Using OS/2 2 (Que, 1992), Network Programming in C (Que, 1990), and Introduction to Networking (Que, 1992). He is the Exchange Editor for the IBM Exchange on BIX, where you can reach him as "barryn."

266 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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Your Own Devices

The DOS Technical Reference offers detailed help for writing device drivers. Unfortunately, it's all detail; there's no overview of where to start or what to do first. If you could look at a simple example, the fog would slip away and you'd be able to clearly see what's going on.

Here's a simple—yet useful—example. Only 6 KB of assembly language source code, PRDEV is a character-mode device driver that supplements the DOS-supplied LPT1 and PRN drivers. When you copy a text file to the device name PRN1, the PRDEV device driver gets control. Thetext prints with extra margins at the top and bottom of each page, and PRDEV inserts a formfeed at the end of the printout to eject the page. PRDEV helps make your printouts look better, and it keeps you from having to reach for the formfeed button on your printer after each printout.

PRDEV's device name, PRN1, could

just as easily be PRN. DOS would then

replace its own driver with the one in

PRDEV.

Every device driver has two entry

Writing DOS device

drivers is easy—

if you have a model

to follow

points. The first, the strategy routine, simply saves a pointer to an area of memory containing a request header. The second, the interrupt routine, actually does the work. In PRDEV, the work consists of transferring characters from the device request to the printer via INT 17h. As they go by, PRDEV analyzes the bytes it prints. PRDEV counts characters, automatically sending a CR/LF pair if more than 80 pass by between CR/LF sequences. PRDEV also counts lines per page, inserting formfeeds if it sees more than 59 lines on one page. If you have MASM (Microsoft Macro Assembler) or TASM (Turbo Assembler), you can easily change these thresholds to suit your preferences.

How does PRDEV recognize the end of a printout if it "sees" the output char

acters only one by one? In the same way that a network operating system separates printouts from different workstations— PRDEV looks for periods of silence between characters. A period of 5 seconds triggers PRDEV to send a formfeed character to the printer.

For each call, PRDEV switches to its own private stack. It never has to worry about DOS not providing enough stack space. After processing a request, PRDEV sets the DONE bit in the request header to make DOS happy.

Besides initializing on the INIT request, PRDEV has to handle only one type of device operation, the OUTPUT command. However, PRDEV contains stubs for all the device-driver routines that a blockmode (or more complicated charactermode) driver would need. PRDEV doesn't respond to IOCTL, Media Check, Input Status, Input Flush, or other such driver requests, but the stubs are there to make PRDEV a better template. You can expand on the code to add functions, or you can use PRDEV as the basis for a new device driver. ■

MAC/Tom Thompson

ZoneRanger Rides Again

Here's a freeware gem for all us MacFolk laboring away on application code. ZoneRanger, written by Joshua Golub, scans and displays the composition of an application's zone (i.e., the memory partition set up for it by System 7.0's Process Manager). ZoneRanger displays all active application zones (including the hidden MultiFinder and File Sharing applications) and the System heap. You select your application's zone and get a graphical display of its handles, pointers, and free blocks. Handles are marked locked, purgeable, and whether or not they belong to a resource.

Pressing the mouse on a block in the display pops up a hexadecimal dump of the block's header information and contents. Pressing the Option key summons Balloon Help on the fly. There's a "side door" into your debugger, and you can force the zone's heap to be compacted and purged. These features help you flush out subtle memory management problems in your code.

UNIX/Ben Smith

Hexpert

Simple and useful: Those are the words that come to mind when using Hexpert. Hexpert is a program for visually editing binary files such as core dumps and data files.

Hexpert is like the binary editor you find with the MS-DOS Norton Utilities. You can search for character strings and hexadecimal strings. You can view bytes as hexadecimal or ASCII characters. You cannot insert or delete characters, however. (This is usually a dangerous thing to do in binary files.)

The program was written by Dominic Alston. It has been around for a few years and isn't written to ANSI C, but it compiles and links well enough if your compiler doesn't strictly enforce ANSI standards.

Hexpert uses the Unix curses library for handling terminal screen-specific operations. It doesn't recognize screen sizes greater than 23 rows. However, when you need a Unix binaryfile editor, you'll be happy to find anything that works. Hexpert works well.

Editor's note: Software Corner highlights public domain, freeware, and shareware programs. The programs are available electronically. See "Program Listings " cm page 5 for details. We solicit your contributions. We pay $50 for any program we use. Write to: Software Comer, BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458.

JANUARY 1993 • B YTE 269

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BEYOND DOS

Connecting Windows to Data with ODBC

JON UDELL

Every time you turn around, it seems Windows has sprouted a new modular extension, complete with an acronym, a DLL, an API, and an SDK (Software Development Kit). I've been exploring two of the latest: Open Database Connectivity and the Messaging Applications Programming Interface. Twin pillars of the Windows Open Services Architecture, ODBC and MAPI provide standard ways for Windows applications to converse with databases and to send and receive mail. These technologies promise to make "information at your fingertips" a practical reality. I'll focus on ODBC here and delve into MAPI in another column.

You can build and distribute ODBC applications today—the SDK will have shipped by the time you read this. Sometime next year, Microsoft will likely bundle ODBC with a future version of Windows, just as MAPI now comes with Windows for Workgroups.

Exploring ODBC

Microsoft's new Windows database, Access, is the first commercial product I've seen that uses ODBC. Access can speak natively to a variety of ISAM (indexed sequential-access method) files, but it connects to server-based SQL (Structured Query Language) data sources through ODBC.

The core component of ODBC (i.e., ODBC.DLL) is a generic "driver manager" that rides herd over one or more drivers for the specific data sources to which ODBC gives access. A Windows program called the ODBC Administrator registers and configures data sources. I used it, for example, to install the SQL Server driver. To complete the job, I had to feed SQL Server a file of stored procedures that tailors it for ODBC client requests. Then I attached a SQL Server table to an Access database and was able to query and update the foreign data through ODBC as though it were native to Access.

ILLUSTRATION: JOHN NELSON © 1993

That's nifty but not really earthshaking. Products like Software Publishing's InfoAlliance and Gupta Technologies' Quest have been doing this kind of thing for quite a while. Clearly, these sorts of products can speak to diverse data sources, but what about ordinary Windows applications?

To get the full story, I asked Microsoft for the ODBC SDK. It provided me with a second driver—one that talks to dBase files—and the tools and information that I needed to write my own ODBC-aware applications. (The kit also comes with the source code for a sample driver and a testing tool that exercises all the functions of an ODBC driver.)

The Open Database Connectivity model

is a profoundly enabling technology

I won't pretend it was a piece of cake, but before long I was filling WordBasic listboxes with data drawn interchangeably from dBase and SQL Server sources. That really grabbed my attention. Part of my job is to figure out how to deliver enterprise data to editors who live almost exclusively in their word processors and are reluctant to switch to a separate database program. If I can put the data right into their documents, I will make them very happy.

I'm also looking for a solution that will migrate cleanly from the Xbase files we share today to the SQL repository (as yet unspecified) we expect to be using in the future. My Word for Windows listbox experiment proved both concepts. ODBC does indeed enable a document-centered, database-neutral approach to data management.

SAG Specifications

ODBC follows closely the recommendations of the SAG (SQL Access Group). That consortium has specified both a standard SQL grammar and an API (or calllevel interface) that clients use to connect to and interact with servers. ODBC drivers can and do differ in their degree of support for the SAG specifications. In terms of SQL grammar, for example, the ODBC specification defines three conformity levels: minimum, core, and extended. With respect to the API, the specification defines core, level 1, and level 2 conformity. In both cases, the term core denotes SAG compliance.

The dBase and SQL Server drivers I've used, for example, conform only to minimum SQL grammar. That meant that I could create and drop tables but not alter them, could not create indexes or views, and could work only with character data. The core grammar plugs these gaps and adds positioned update/delete, functions such as SUM, subqueries, and a full complement of standard data types. To the core grammar, the extended grammar—

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 271

HANDS ON/BEYOND DOS

which surpasses the SAG specification— adds binary data types, outer joins, and procedures.

While these drivers fall short of the SAG core in terms of SQL grammar, they exceed it with respect to the API—both conform to level 1. The core API provides only basic connection, query, and commit/rollback semantics. Level 1 adds datadictionary APIs, options for controlling connections and statements, and driverspecific connection dialog boxes. (This

last feature enabled my test application to greatly simplify its connection logic by relying on dialog boxes embedded in each of the drivers I used.) Level 2 enhancements include support for arrays of parameters and a sophisticated scrollable cursor model.

Driver Classes

ODBC drivers belong to two general classes. Single-tier drivers (e.g., the dBase driver) process API calls and implement SQL

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directly. Multitier drivers (e.g., the SQL Server driver) process API calls but pass SQL statements to a server. To programs and users, though, the data sources these drivers present look and act just the same.

When my WinWord macro (actually, the DLL I wrote to support that macro) issues the ODBC SQLDriverConnect call, the driver manager puts up a standard dialog box that lists "dBase" and "SQL Server" (the names I assigned using the ODBC Administrator). Based on my choice, the macro retrieves values from either a local dBase file or a remote SQL Server table. But none of my code—the macro, the supporting DLL, or the SQL statements embedded in that DLL—refers explicitly to either data source.

The dBase driver is, literally, a dBase engine driven by a SQL syntax. You can do some very interesting things with it. An instance of the driver points to a (local or network) directory that contains one or more dBase files. These files appear as SQL tables that you can join and update. That gives ODBC programs more control over dBase data than some full-blown Xbase products offer.

While ODBC is being billed primarily as a means of connecting to enterprise data, its flat-file support will also greatly benefit applications that create and manage private data. It's a trivial matter to create an Xbase table, insert values into it, and run queries against it.

A communications program that might otherwise implement its own proprietary database of modems or phone numbers can now use what will be, in effect, a Windows API for persistent storage. If the program later needs to migrate that storage to a different flat-file format or to a server, it's no problem.

Multitier drivers connect ODBC clients to servers directly or indirectly through gateways. The driver might involve itself in low-level client-to-server communication, but it's not required to do so. The SQL Server driver, for example, leans on the same named-pipes driver and underlying NetBEUI or IPX transports that other Windows-to-SQL Server agents use. You can toss dblib (i.e., the proprietary SQL Server API), though, since the ODBC API replaces it. That's a wash if you care only about SQL Server, but a huge win if you plan to switch someday to Oracle, NetWare SQL, or some other server.

How does ODBC handle features that are specific to individual servers? First, there's a notation for standard SQL extensions such as date-time literals and outer joins. Most servers offer these features using a proprietary syntax; ODBC's "escape clauses" enable programs to use them

272 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

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HANDS ON/BEYOND DOS

portably. Second, ODBC will pass statements that don't conform to its notion of SQL grammar straight through to the server. Use of such grammar is then no longer portable, but applications can exploit vendor-specific extensions through ODBC.

Key ODBC Objects

From a programmer's perspective, the key ODBC handle-based objects are environments, connections, and statements. There is one environment per application in

stance. The environment maintains state for one or more connections, so your program can talk to dBase on connection handle 1 while it talks to SQL Server on connection handle 2. (You can't mix connections, though; there's no way to join a dBase table to a SQL Server table.) With a level 1 driver, you can control options such as the auto-commit mode and the transaction isolation level on a per-connection basis. Given a valid connection, you allocate a statement handle that you then use to

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274 BYTE- JANUARY 1993

submit SQL text and retrieve results. Options you can control at the statement level include asynchronous processing, query time-out, and size (in rows) of the maximum result set.

As you negotiate connections and submit statements, the driver manager tracks state transitions. It will report an appropriate error if, for example, you try to call SQLFetch before executing a query. (Because the driver manager handles this chore, specific ODBC drivers don't have to—a nice benefit of the layered driver architecture.) You can execute a one-off query directly, or you can prepare a query for deferred (possibly repetitive, possibly parameterized) use. You can also choose to bind application storage to result columns in advance of a query or to transfer data after the fact. With a level 2 driver, you can use a scrollable cursor and can control its sensitivity to change in the underlying tables.

Most flexible is a keyset-driven cursor. In this case, the driver stores keys for an entire result set and uses the cached keys to detect deleted or changed rows. A mixed cursor extends this treatment to huge result sets by maintaining a virtual keyset.

The Floodgate Opens

There's nothing fundamentally new about ODBC. Pioneer Software's Q+E tool set attacks the same issues in much the same manner. "We were doing ODBC before ODBC was cool," a Pioneer representative told me. Macintosh System 7.0's Data Access Manager and Data Access Language—which are finally picking up steam after two years—offer another variation on the same theme. Despite the availability of these and other technologies, I haven't yet noticed a flood of databaseenabled software.

ODBC, riding the Windows juggernaut, seems poised to open the floodgate. Both Pioneer and Apple, by the way, will offer ODBC-compliant products. No one loses in this deal. Pioneer's database tools will find a wider audience once they can leverage ODBC's momentum, and Apple's DAL figures to be one of the more powerful and versatile drivers in the ODBC suite. From my own selfish perspective, I see ODBC as a profoundly enabling technology that I can't wait to apply. ■

Jon Udell is a BYTE senior technical editor at large. You can reach him on BIX as "judell" or on the Internet at judell@ bytepb.byte.com.

Your questions and comments are welcome. Write to: Editor. BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458.

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The European Connection

I need to be connected to the Internet for commercial communications. I've checked UUNET, PSINet, and other local Internet.com service providers, but the prices are outrageous—between $200 and $2000 per month. Therefore, I hope to set up my own node on a DOS computer. Could you recommend a source of information to complete such a project?

Frederick Campion Mahno, Sweden

The idea of accessing the Internet from a PC is not as farfetched as one might at first assume. Yon can set up modem-based connections for E-mail and Usenet news, even from a DOS-based machine. One way is to use the public domain program uucp. The newest version of MRS Toolkit (available for $249 from Mortice Kern Systems, 35 King St. N. Waterloo, Ontario. Canada N2J 2W9, (800) 2652797 or (519) 884-2251; fax (519) 884-8861) includes an easy-to-instaU-and-manage uucp that does all its scheduled communications in the background (as a TSR program).

The difficulty starts when you try to access the Internet using TCP/IP so that you can browse and grab files from any accessible system. This is what is meant by really being "on the net. " There are plenty of TCP/IP packages for DOS. The problem lies in making that physical connection. At that point, you 're talking about big-time networking, and that 's where services like UUNET come into play. If you're part of an organization that already has direct access to the Internet, all you have to do is convince your network administrator to let you tap in.

I suggest that you use a more appropriate operating system, such as one of the many inexpensive versions of Unix that run on PCs. (See "Coherent Grows Up" in the August 1992 BYTE, and "Unixfor Nothing, " Letters, November 1992 BYTE.)

Another important resource is a new book. The Whole Internet, by Ed Krol (O'Reilly & Associates, $24.95, ISBN 1-56592-025-2). This text explains not only how the Internet works, but also how to get around and find the information that vou need.—Ben Smith

Assembly Language Plus C

I wish to link an assembly language object module with a C object module in such a way that the assembly language module is the host module. In other words, my main program will be written in assembly language. All I need is to call a C subroutine from this host module.

I use MASM (Microsoft Macro Assembler) 4.0 and Microsoft C 6.0. There are no problems when I use the C module as a host. The process of calling an assembly language subroutine is described thoroughly in most books on the subject, but I can't find a description of how to make the process work the other way around. Can it be done?

Gerd Ehlert Schirner Copenhagen, Denmark

The primary difficult}' with calling C functions from a main assembly language program is that when a C program starts operation, it initializes a set of variables that library routines such as malloc and fopen require and then calls the function main. If these variables are not properly initialized, the library routines may function initially but will eventually fail. Other library functions (e.g., string manipulation) can be used without difficulty. One solution to this problem is to link in and execute the normal C-libraiy start-up routines and then call your assembly language program. The accompanying listings show a sample assembly language/C linkage. Listing I is a simple assembly language program with the distinguishing feature of having a main routine that calls the routine in listing 2.

When built using the commands shown in listing 3, the program runs through the start-up code and calls the assembly language version of main, which then calls the subsidiary C functions. When your program is linked this way, you don't need to be concerned about which functions you call.

The Microsoft C installation disks include the source code for the start-up code. If the start-up causes problems with your main assembly language routine, be sure to look through this code and make the necessary changes. The start-up code is rather small and fairly well documented.

The examples were written using MASM 5.10 and C 6.00a. This version of the assembler supplies some

Listing

1: A simple assen

.8086

.MODEL SMALL, C

. CODE

bly language program.

PUBLIC

main

EXTRN

hello:NEAR

EXTRN

exit :NEAR

main PROC

call hello

; call the C module

call exit

; bye-bye and clean up

main ENDP

END

Listing 2: A C function to call from assembly language.

void hello( void

{

write( 0, return;

} /* hello */

'Hello World\n'

11 ).

Listing 3: Building

the

example.

cl /c

sample.c

masm

core ;

link

sample core

>

278 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

This Application Uses Over 100 Gigabytes of Memory!

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macros to simplify communication with C (and other) functions. Since you are using an earlier version, you will need to set up your code and data segments differently and declare the main, hello, and exit functions as _main,_hello, and_exit.

—Raymond GA Cote

Swappy Floppies

Do any commercial programs let you format, read, and write Macintosh disks using a PC-compatible machine? I'm interested in exchanging data from my PC with my colleague's Mac.

Magarita Ruiz del Viso Caracas, Venezuela

Depending on the model, you may not need any new software. Any Mac built since the introduction of the Mac Hx (in late 1988) has a high-density floppy drive, known in Mac circles as the FDHD. If your coworker's Mac has one of those, the AFE (Apple File Exchange) utility that came with the machine will read and write IBM-format 3'A-inch disks.

Going the other way, the good news is that high-density PC drives can read raw data from a high-density Macdisk. The bad news is that the GCR (group coded recording) format used in the Macintosh low-density format is completely incompatible with the PC drive controller. You do have some options, though. Mac-In-DOS (DOS version for $199 and Windows version for $249 from Pacific Microelectronics, 201 San Antonio Cir., Suite C250, Mountain View, CA 94040, (800) 628-3475 or (415) 948-6200; fax (415) 948-6296) can read, write, and format highdensity Mac disks on your PC. It's software only, so it should work on just about any PC with a 1.44-MB floppy drive.

To handle the low-density 400- or 800-KB Mac disks, you need hardware. MatchMaker ($149 from Micro Solutions Computer Products, 132 West Lincoln Hwy., DeKalb, 1L 60115, (815) 756-3411; fax (815) 756-2928) is a half-length ISA board that lets your PC control a standard Mac external floppy drive.

—Howard Eglowstein

Fortysomething Eyesight

Does anyone make a DOS word processor for portable computers that presents or at least supports a 40-column screen, with its correspondingly larger letters, for over-40 eyes straining to read 10-inch monitors'?

Richard Willis Palma cle Mallorca, Spain

There comes a time in life when reading that 10-point type becomes difficult. I myself have reached this golden age, and T ve cranked up the text size to 12 or 14 points in Word for Windows. The domain of word processing programs with adjustable point sizes for screen text is pretty much dominated by Windows-based programs, but DOS programs are available.

Two DOS-based, WYSIWYG word processing packages I recommend are Signature (available for $495 from Xyquest, 44 Manning Rd., Billerica, MA 01821,(508)

671-0888; fax (508) 671-0858) and Eye Relief for Low Vision Users (available for $295 from SkiSoft Publishing Corp., 1644 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 79, Lexington, MA 02173, (800) 662-3622 or (617) 863-1876; fax (617) 861-0086). Eye Relief for Low Vision Users is designed for people with impaired vision, and it can increase text and menus to very large point sizes, with contrasting colors.—Stan Wszola

Ultimate Printer Driver

I write programs in BASIC, compile them using QuickBasic, and distribute them to my friends. I wrote the programs to support an Epson dot-matrix or compatible printer, but recently some people have tried to use my programs with laser printers.

What printer codes do I use for a laser printer and, for that matter, for other dot-matrix printers? I've been told that I should write to the manufacturer of each make of printer requesting the printer codes to use in BASIC that will make them work. Are there general printer codes that make all these printers output condensed or normal? Surely there is a better way than writing to every manufacturer.

Robert Gordon Grass Valley, CA

You are facing the same problem encountered by every professional programmer: how to make your programs compatible with many different peripherals. Many programming shops don't waste time. They just buy a printer-driver package, such as the Slate Universal Printer Driver from The Symmetry Group (P.O. Box 26195, Columbus, OH43226, (800) 346-3938 or (614) 431-2667; fax (614) 431-5734).

The Slate Universal Printer Driver sells for either $299 (DOS text) or $448 (DOS graphics) and supports over 750 printers. The Slate driver, like some other packages I've found, comes in C and BASIC versions. You could write a BASIC routine to access the code and use it with your program.

Many other QttickBasic printer-driver libraries are available that support a smaller range of printers (e.g., LaserJet printers and compatibles). Catalogs listing these packages and other programming utilities are available from The Programmer's Shop (90 Industrial Park Rd., Hingham, MA 02043, (800) 421-8006; fax (617) 7492018) and Progammer's Paradise (1163 Shrewsbury Ave., Shrewsbury, N.107702, (800) 445-7899 or (908) 389-8950; fax (908) 389-9227).

Other options that are available to you include switching to Microsoft's Visual Basic for Windows and letting Windows handle printer problems or stripping out the Epson-specific CHR$ code and using standard PRINT statements.—Stan Wszola ■

The BYTE Lab welcomes your questions. Address correspondence to Ask BYTE, BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 0345S. You can also send BIX mail do "editors."

We read every letter, but due to the volume of mail received, we cannot guarantee a response. We edit all letters for clarity and brevity.

280 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

File Edit Options Page lype Element Window Help

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OPTIQUEST4000D17

HII

■ ■:■ ■ ■•■ ■■■■■'■: ■

Tools

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[ examining me -Ma. brilliant, sharp image of our 17" Optiquest 4000D • With it's ' Invar Shadow Mask, you can display color intensive images that are razor sharp and 20% brighter than conventional monitors • Its flat, square screen offers a consistent overall, edge-to-edge image with reduced distortion at the corners • Higher refresh rates permit a flicker-free picture, and microprocessor controls allow 28 preset modes while adhering to strict Swedish MPR II low radiation standards • Your eyes will appreciate 36% more viewing area than 16" displays along with a non-glare screen and 1280 x 1024 resolution • And all this at a sensible price • So, if image quality at .28 dot pitch and 76Hz refresh rate meets your standards, stop looking and start dialing (800) 843-6784 • Ask about our award winning 2000D 15" flat, square screen, too.

OPTI

uruc

Circle 129 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 130).

If your board doesn't say Quatech Inc., you may be missing something...

INTERNATIONAL

POWEH DEVICES

■kliii ■»'!■>

«mr r

*'

£j

Ask a Quatech sales Engineer to show you the value of quality, service and support.

•Quatech manufactures a complete line of data acquisition, communication, and Micro Channel boards for the PC AT/XT, PS/2 and compatible computers.

•Quatech's user friendly software drivers enable our full featured adapters to support most popular operating systems. •Quatech's adapters are backed by our free on-line technical support.

Made

in U.S.A.

For a free catalog call: 800-553" 11 70

International: Australia/lnterworld Electronics03-563-7066, Canada(Western)/lnterworld VCR 604-984-4171 (Toronto office 416-513-7027), England/Diamond Point International 634-722390, Finland/Lab Hitech OY358-0-804-2522, France/Elexo 33-1 -69302880, Germany/Jupiter Electronic Systems 06181/75041, Israel/RCM Ltd. 972-03-5447885, Italy/N.C.S. Computer Italia 0331/770-016, Netherlands/ACAL Auriema 040-816565, Korea/Sam Boo Enterprise Co. 82-2-538-4001, Spain SANTA Barbara SA 34-3-203-9916, Singapore Bliss Services Pte Ltd (65) 338-1300. IBM PC-XT, AT, PS/2 and MicroChannel are registered trademarks of IBM Corp.

CI QUATECH

662 Wolf Ledges Parkway

Akron, Ohio 44311 U.S.A.

216-434-3154

282 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 152 on Inquiry Card.

Mail Order Hardware/Software Showcase

The latest offerings from This categorized four-color display

vendors supplying section makes it easy to find

products of all leading Hardware and Software products from

manufacturers at extremely a wide variety of manufacturers

competitive prices. and suppliers.

284

311

Buyer's Mart

From Accessories to Laptops

to Word Processors, you can

easily find the dealers you are

looking for in this directory of

products and services.

320

The Cost of 486 Power is Falling Fast.

AND LODESTAR'S VALUE KEEPS GOING UP:

CONSIDER THESE EISA FEATURES: We've carefully designed a 32-bit processing solution that breaks through the ISA bottleneck while maintaining downward compatibility with a 16-bit Bus for a peak data transfer rate of 33 MB/sec, Six, true, fully blown EISA Bus Mastering slots plus two EISA slave slots so you can be assured your EISA mastering add-on cards will work for you (typical 8 slave slots won't).

LODESTAR'S bus mastering, intelligent expansion cards with their own I/O processors operating in parallel with the main CPU, frees up your load on the CPU. Bus throughput is improved by implementing direct memory access (DMA) and bus masters.

Its speedy performance capability provides you with an ideal solution for a wide range of demanding applications, like CAD/CAM/CAE, formidable database management, image processing, artificial intelligence, desktop publishing and in the environments of network and multiuser systems.

—19k l*Mu

486-SX Workstation 486-SX/20

■4MB fast EAM expandable to 32MB

■ 85MB 15ms IDE hard drive w/cache

■1:1 interleave 2H/2F IDE controller

• 1.2MB 5.25' & 1.44MB 3 5" floppy drives

■16-bit 1024x768 SVGA card w/lMBRAM

■ 14" 1024x768 0.28mm dot pitch SVGA color monitor

■ 2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 game port ■MS DOS 5.0 8c MS Windows 3.1 ■Enhanced 101-key keyboard ■High resolution serial mouse ■Mini-vertical case

486-SX/25 $1389

ftjn63&

486 ISA Dataquest 486/33

■64K ultrafast write-back cache SRAM ■4MB fast RAM expandable to 32MB

■ 130MB 15ms IDE hard drive w/64K cache

■Teac 1.2MB 5.25" & 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drives

■ 16-bit 1024x768 SVGA card w/IMB RAM

■ 14" SVGA 1024 non-interlaced 0.28mm dot pitch color monitor, VESA 72Hz flicker-free display

■2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 game port

■MS DOS 5.0 & MS Windows 31

■Enhanced 101-key keyboard

■High resolution serial mouse

■Desktop case

^$2ora

486LB WINstation 486-DX/33

■2 32-bit Local Bus expansion slots for 32-bit power expandability

■64K ultrafast write-back cache SRAM

■Built-in 487 math coprocessor 8< 8K cache in the CPU

■4MB fast RAM expandable to 32MB

■ 130MB 15ms IDE drive W/64K cache ■High throughput Super IDE Caching

Controller. Reduces average disk seek time to 0.2ms ■Teac 1.2MB 5.25" & 1.44MB 3.5" drives

■ 32-bit Local Bus S3 Graphics Engine w/IMB VRAM. Up to 1280x1024 resolution & 32,768 colors

■ 14" 1024x768 non-interlaced 0.28mm dot pitch SVGA monitor. VESA 72Hz flicker-iree display

■ 2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 game port ■MS DOS 5,0, Windows 3.1 & mouse ■Enhanced 101-key keyboard ■Mid-vertical case

486-DX2/50 $2219 486-DX/50 $2319 486-DX2/66 $CALL

-Euk UWfcw

486 EISA CADstation 486-DX/33

■256K utTafast write-back cache SRAM. Provides better hit-rate,

■Built-in 487 math coprocessor & 8K cache in CPU

■8MB fast RAM

■ 213MB 13ms IDE drive w/64K cache ■High throughput Super IDE Caching

Controller. Reduces average disk seek

time to 0.2ms ■Teac 1.2MB 5 25" & 1.44MB 3.5" drives ■32-bit SVGA card w/IMB RAM. Up to

1280x1024 resolution & 65.674 colors

■ 17" Award Winning ViewSonic 7 SVGA monitor, flat screen up to 1280 x 1024 resolution & 76Hz ultra high refresh rate

■2 serial. 1 parallel & 1 game port ■MS DOS 5.0. Windows 3.1 & mouse ■Enhanced 101-key keyboard ■Desktop or mid-vertical case

486-DX2/50 $3469 486-DX/50 $3579 486-DX2/66 $CALL

Some of our most astute customers are buying today, upgrading tomorrow.

To maximize the useful life of their systems, our customers depend on us, No need for them to unplug an obsolete system. They're using the power they need today and, with their LODESTAR StarFlex Series, they'll be upgrading simply, painlessly. LODESTAR'S unique StarFlex CPU sockets are built right into the system. Upgradable all the way from 386DX to 486SX or 486DX, at any clock speed.

They keep coming to us because most other "upgradable" systems require purchase of a special CPU module board. This causes some performance loss due to speed adjustment. And they couldn't rely on those vendors being there when they needed to upgrade. Nor could they rely on sky-rocketing prices. So they've been calling LODESTAR.

Now Our Customers Are Getting It All Value, Features and Price.

mifflSJjfflte

How thousands of our customers are

BUYING DIRECT

When they buy from us, they're buying directly from the factory. So they get more value with each purchase, and are always assured their system is backed directly by the people who assembled it.

^iraa

386-SX Workstation 386-SX/25

■2MB RAM expandable to 32MB

■85MB IDE hard drive w/cache

■1:1 interleave 2H/2F IDE controller

■1 2MB 5.25' & 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drives

■ 16-bit 1024x768 SVGA card w/lMBRAM

■ 14" 1024x768 0.28mm dot pitch SVGA color monitor

■2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 game port

■MS DOS 5.0 & MS Windows 3.1

■Enhanced 101-key keyboard

■High resolution serial mouse

■Mmi-verticai case

386-SX/33 $1139

Bw 1333

386-DX Workstation 386-DX/25

•4MB RAM expandable to 32MB

■ 130MB 15ms IDE hard drive W/64K cache

■ 1:1 interleave 2H/2F IDE controller

■ 1.2MB 5.25" & 1 44MB 3.5" floppy drives

■16-bit 1024x768 SVGA card w/lMBRAM

■ 14" 1024x768 non-interlaced 0.28mm dot pitch SVGA monitor

■ 2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 game port ■MS DOS 5.0 & MS Windows 3.1 ■Enhanced 101-key keyboard ■High resolution serial mouse ■Desktop or mini-vertical case

386-DX/33 $1399 386-DX/40 $1439

THESE PRICES

GUARANTEED

THROUGH

JAN.31, 1993

-fffwk. I*f33

StarFlex 3/486C

386-DX/25

■CPU upgradable to 386DX. 486SX.

486DX, 486DX2. Up to 66MHz ■64K ultrafast write-back cache SRAM

expandable to 256K ■4MB last RAM expandable to 32MB

■ 130MB 15ms IDE drive w/64K cache ■1.2MB 5.25" 8t 1.44MB 3.5" drives

■ 1MB SVGA non-interlaced color card

■ 14" 1024x768 non-interlaced 0.28mm dot pitch SVGA monitor. VESA 72Hz flicker-free display

■ 2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 game port ■MS DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1 & mouse ■Enhanced 101-key keyboard ■Desktop or mini-vertical case

386-DX/33

$1489

386-DX/40

$1519

486-DX/33

$1739

486-DX2/50

$1939

486-DX/50

$2049

486-DX2/66 $CALL

Your Assurance of Complete Satisfaction

OUR RISK-FREE GUARANTEE

Look for your comprehensive, written guarantee when you take delivery of any LODESTAR system. This industry-acclaimed, FIVE WAY Personal Warranty proves our willingness to stand behind everything you buy from LODESTAR.

CALL FOR YOUR FREE COPY; we'll fax or mail it immediately. Use the LODESTAR FIVE-WAY GUARANTEE as your shopping guide; compare and question the others before ordering.

WSW Q^ j H,

J

GOVERNMENT, SCHOOL AND CORPORATE ORDERS WELCOME, TO RECEIVE YOUR FREE COPY OF OUR PRODUCT CATALOG, JUST CALL.

1-800-875-3818

All specifications subject to change without notice. 2-Year Parts Warranty applies to adveiusea lodeS'ca systems only Money Back Guarantee does not include shipping & handling, and ail returns must be shipped pre-paid & in reasonable condition. Please call to confirm all warranty details. Photography is for illustration only. No surcharge on VISA. MasteiCard & Discover. Purchase orders are accepted on approved credit, California orders add 8,25% sales tax. All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective companies. © 1992 LodeStar Computet Corp.

Circle 257 on Inquiry Card.

We Won Again. And you enjoy the benefits.

In their latest survey of QUALITY

CONTROL, proven by this

nationwide provider ol warranty

services, LODESTAR again has

earned their rating EXCELLENT.

Every system is individually pretested and burned-in for 72 hours prior to shipment.

We have the right system for you. If it's not already configured, we'll customize it.

Systems can be upgraded to include optional cache, RAM, more hard disk capacity, larger monitor and a host of other enhancements.

LodeStar

COMPUTER

"YOU MADE US A LEADER."

18539 East Gale Avenue

City of Industry, California 91748

Telephone: 1-818-810-3818

Tech Support: 1-800-875-7569

Fax: 1-818-810-5928

Open Hours:

Mon-Fri: 7am-7pm (PST)

Sat: 9am-4pm (PST)

Rack Mount Computers - Motherboard or Passive Backplane

Use external monitor Up to 6 drives

Mono or color monitor Up to 5 drives

[I

EL:!

8.75" high

[/

14" color monitor

Up to 3 drives

Mm '

i IT'1 Hi i

HR/

12.25" high

^ack Mount Monitors

10" mono or color monitor

8.75" high

14" mono or color monitor

Enclosure for most

desk top monitors '

14.0" high

i'■■■■he,™' — tT'S

m*M

12.25" high

Rack Mount Keyboards

Drawer mounted keyboard

1.75" high

Drawer for desk top keyboards

3.5" high

Vertical-mount, sealed membrane keyboard

5.25" high

Rack Mount Printer

Dot matrix printer with industrial rating

12.25" high

Call for our other Rack Mount computer and "enclosure only" product offerings.

RECDRTEC, INC.

1 290 Lawrence Station Road, Sunnyvale CA 94089 Tel. [408] 734-1290 Fax: [408] 734-2140

1-800-729-7654

286 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 255 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 256).

BUFFALO

Complete Network"

£te

All the Hardware.

Industry Standard Hardware

Complete Network has Intel"" EtherExpressI 6™ LAN Adapters for your network connections. Installation is easy because the cards are totally software configurable and automatically adjust for 8 or 16 BIT card slots. These Plug W Forget™ cards from Intel set the standards for Ethernet LAN adapters.

High Performance Software

Complete Network features the WEB" 3.0 Network Operating System, winner of the LAN Times 1992 Best ol Times award. WEB 3.0 is a fast and flexible system which is simple to learn and easy to use. It supports DOS and Windows™ and is Novell" compatible. WEB 3.0 provides the first peer-to-peer network to equal or exceed the performance of most dedicated server based systems.

l^U TECHNOLOGY

Everything Else You Need

Complete Network has everything else you need to set up your network: cable, connectors, terminators, and even a cable stripping tool.

Complete Network is a trademark 01 Bullalo Products, Inc Bultalo is a registered trademark of MELCO. Inc WEB is a registered trademark o! WESCORP WEBCORP is a trademark ol WEBCORP. INTEL is a registered Iradercart al INTEL top Cite Brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks ol their respective owners

All the Software. All from One Soure

'"•"

M ^FpALO

Sfe

Toll-Free Complete Technical Support

Buffalo provides technical support for all the hardware and software of your Complete Network. You only need to make one contact for support for any part of your network system.

Circle 239 on Inquiry Card.

Easy Installation

An easy installation guide helps you quickly and easily set up your Complete Network

Just the Nodes You Need

With the Complete Network you can start with any number of nodes and add any number of nodes to your network at any time. Combine any of these packages, up to 255 nodes, to fit your needs. CN-2 2 Node Package $495.00

CN-5 5 Node Package $1,275.00

CN-10 10 Node Package $2,475.00 CN-15 15 Node Package $3,675.00 CN-30 30 Node Package $6,450.00 CN-A Add-A-Node Package $285.00

45 Day Money-Back Guarantee US and Canada Toil-Free

1-800-345-2356

FAX (503) 585-4505

Buffalo Products, Inc.

2805 19th St. SE, Salem, OR 97302-1520

Response Code: 13CN3

France - 014827-6736: Germany - 08152-7912-(0)-50. 02241-66071; Italy - 02-261 -0051; Belgium -016-400416: Denmark - 42-95-3888, 38-89-0909:

Finland-0-351-5055, 0-803-6033: Netherlands 073-440700; Norway - 2-214-050; Hong Kong - 861 -2112; Korea - 02-783-5344; Israel - 3-560-3837: International-81-45-681-5401

TWO COMPUTERS

CAN SHARE ONE

BACKPACK.

With Backpack, several computers can share a single tape drive. Backpack connects quickly and easily to the parallel printer port of any PC compatible or portable — without interface cards or tools! The Backpack tape drive is also easy to transport, making it ideal for trans

ferring data from one computer to another. QIC 40 (40/120MB) and QIC 80 (80/250) tape, diskette and hard drive models are available. So share and share alike! Call today for more information.

backpack

MicroSolutions

Computer Products

jm

132 W. Lincoln Hwy., DeKalb, IL 60115 815-756-3411 Fax 815-756-2928

288 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 254 on Inquiry Card.

CONTROL UP TO 96 PC

FILE SERVERS WITH 1 KEYBOARD

AND MONITOR USING...

COMMANDER

by cybex

• Select via Keyboard

• Dual access up to 250 feet away (optional)

• No external power

• Mix PC, PC/XT, PC/AT

and PS/2

• "AutoBoot™" Feature boots attached computers without operator intervention

• Shows PC power status

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• PS/2 Mouse support available

• Each unit accommodates from 2 to 8 PCs

• up to 12 units can be cascaded

• Mounting kit available for 19" and 24 "rack installation

Dealer Program Available

Cybex Corporation

2800-H Bob Wallace Ave.

Huntsville, Alabama 35805

(205) 534-0011

_. Fax (205) 534-0010

PC, PC/XT, PC/AT and PS/2 are trademarks of international Business Machines Corp.

Circle 242 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 243).

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 289

ACES GIVES yCU CNEY

1 he goas must be on ARES side...Running tne ARES was a pleasure.... -Rebecca Rohan

mm

...the ARES 386-40 Offers one of rhe best combinations of price, power and support on the marKet today.

-S. J. vaughan Nichols

m

mem

Ares' 4B6 PC features several unexpected and pleasant surprises.maKIng It one of the strongest contenders tor your attention.

-Braa Thompson

..Ares has put together a good computer, perhaps the best of the lot.

-Steve Glllliana

mm

Add up all (the) little extras, and ARES' 386-40 becomes one whopping gooo deal...ARES is getting a reputation for meticulous detail

As soon as you open the ARES box. you'll be impressed by the care and thoroughness witn which ARES has packaged this machine.

-Steve Sagman

mm

1 've seen G ate way s

version of the 386SX...am

l glad IfinailychoseARES.

■Rick Siemmer

Grumman Aerospace

I firmly beielve that you can't find a better company than ares and you can compare them on a M fronts. Service. Parts. Quality. Tech Support, and the friendliest damned people you'll ever talk to. -Joseph Rondlni

I am one who is Known in various places as a hard man to deal with because i demand excellence In value and service as a principal of business. I find however that l don't need to demand it with yourcompany. Itisgiven as a matter of course.

-Ronaia o. Koskl Adrian. Michigan

any will follow a familiar path, others feel compelled to set their own distinct course.

hose who choose ARES place themselves firmly in the second category. he new ARES

VL-Bus motherboard represents a new beginning in PC performance by incorporating the

compatibility of the VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) Local Bus along with

the unprecedented power of the Intel 80486 line of processors. ur steadfast goal is to

make you an ARES customer for life by offering you guarantees and support policies that our competitors dare not match. RES takes the time to do things right...recognized through

out the Industry for our many design accomplishments, such as:

RES 250-watt power supply Is standard In desktop as well as tower systems.

RES technicians neatly fold and silicone all cables to their sockets, and braid all wires, tie them and seal them onto their fasteners. o ares

systems have better case airflow, increasing component life by keeping them cooler - often Just 2-3 degrees above ambient room temperaturel

72 hour burn-In, followed Dy a rigorous 4-hour 100-polnt quality certification test, documented by a personalized 4-5 page printed report signed by a skilled ARES Tecnnlclan.

RES unpacks and tests ALL pi ugand-play components like keyboards and monitors. o other company does that!

II systems are custom-packed In sturdy cartons surrounded by 360degree solid foam packing. his

protects your unit from even the most brutal pounding during shipment.

RES cabinets are i . 5 m m steel: thicker than anyone else's. his. along

with an FCC-approved reflective finish, reduces Interference to a minimum.

RES seals all component screws in place for maximum security.

Innovative Motherboards, Award Winning Video Cards, Superior Hard Drives... Uniquely Combined To Carry On The ARES Trademark Of Excellence.

It's The Of ARES

ARES New Ouanturn Hard Drlvi

W Ith greatness of heart comes strength of body. And our strength lies In the multitude of ARES systems owners who express their enthusiasm and appreciation to us every day in

ARES New Quantum Hard Drive: More Speed More Space. Same Price, Compare...

MAXTOR WESTERN DIGITAL SEAGATE

ill

j±

customer satisfaction letters, follow-up calls, and on PRODIGY.

A personal computer company should do many things.,. It should inspire confidence and a sense of freedom. It should have a reputation that earns respect, it should, from day one. provide exactly what you need - both hardware and applications solutions. And do so without costly "free" software that you'll never use. It should offer a boundless horizon with the flexibility to grow and expand in limitless directions. This /SARES! If you're looking for everything a personal computer should be.

there Is only one choice.

Olamond Speed Star2<IX

.

1

Olamond

Stealth VRAM

" '■"

ATI

Ultra

'.*"'*

Tseng

Local Bus

;.""

S3

Local Bus

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Honeywell * U.S. Air Force * Eveready Battery • U.S. Navy

* U.S.D.A. * TWA

* NASA * P.P.G.

llCUODEVElOPMENI INC

..AND ARES WAS THE CHOICE OF: • Dunn a Bradstreet

* Ziff-Davis Publishing * J.D. Power

' U.S. Dept. of Defense

Come Experience The Exhilaration Of Excellence, Join The Growing Family Of Satisfied Customers...

It's The BODY Of ARES

23660 Research Drive, Farmington Hills, MI 48335 Local (313) 473-0808, FAX (313) 473-4450

290 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

THREE SMALL EEATEEES.

he soul of an ARES Is found in the people that stand behind It. Our standards are the same as yours: quality first. C I u r technology may be envied and emulated throughout the Industry, but our people, proud and dedicated, are our greatest asset.

Our objective is customer satisfaction. e begin with the highest

quality product, and couple it with unparalleled service. ' e build

a reliable product with dependable and responsive people to back it up. : rom the

onset of design to the final process of packaging and delivery, quality is paramount.

— RES was the first to offer a two-year warranty . ne I Erst with a 60-aay no questions asKea return policy. 1 he first with IDE. Quantum, and Diamond speedstar. Among the first to provide 24 hour per day, 7 oay-a-week technical support and to apply no surcharge on credit caro purchases, ^A RES was the first - and virtually the only - firm that aoes not charge until shipment. And now ARES Is the first to offer a fully upgraaeame motnerooaro supporting 64MB of RAM and lightning fast 32blt Local Bus architecture ' he very first. Ask our competitors If they can match ARESI

COMPARE... *R&S zeos.^y

.-;..-■ .'-D,l.-.'■;■;'.■■ . 1 ,-,-/.. .

L.'eume L'«>i«: Wi'lriy

'•OS's'W> S.iu Sen,**

. ■;■ . '.'■■■■ . . ..■■:

•ZSK E.frr-a, Cteft

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/A free Flxup Disk enables you to restore lost files ana connect to ARES' bulletin board system via your modem to download free software. ne disk also

facilitates your modem link to oapius Remote Diagnostics, a system whlcn lets ARES technicians support you remotely with diagnostic and repair services.

A RES operates a 2 4 Hour. 7 day-a-week BBS system for your shareware and support needs,

A two-year on-site TRW service (i year free) Includes air express parts replacements via Federal Express.

Two-year warranty on all components anc

warranty on laoor,

,-,,'y; :■,..:: A 60-day no questions asked return policy

restocking fee.

■-'• RES technical support lines open 2 4 nours per day,

days-a-week Z~> hould you need our expert help your

valt will usually be measured In minutes, not days,

■ '•■ Two-year warranty on components from ARES - and from he component manufacturers. --_-' uallty through and through1

ARES486-33EISA

Intel 80486-33DX Processor Intel 80487 Math co-processor 256K External Cache 8MB RAM expandable to 64MB Quantum 240MB SCSI Hard Drive SCSI Hard Drive controller Teac 1.44 and 1.2 MB Floppy Drives Vlewsonlc 6e SVGA Non-interlaced Monitor w/,28 Dot Pitch

Diamond Speedstar 24X Graphics Accelerator Video Card

Your choice of ares Platinum Series Keyboards

2 Serial and l Parallel port DOS 5.0. Windows 3. l pre-lnstai led w/documentatlon ARES Flxup Program v. 3.0 Authentic Microsoft Mouse

$2,995 00 4tS>

A Same configuration as above.

$3,249 00

Q ua I ity Product,

ARES486-25SX

Intel 80486-25SX Processor

4MB ram expandable to 64MB on board

Quantum 127MB IDE Hard Drive - 64 Read AND

Write Cache

Teac 1.44 and 1.2 MB Floppy Drives

Vlewsonlc 6e SVGA Non-interlaced Monitor w/

.28 Dot Pitch

Diamond Speedstar 24X Graphics Accelerator

Video Card

Your choice of ARES Platinum Series Keyboards

2 Serial and 1 Parallel port

DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1 pre-lnstalled

w/documentatlon

ARES FIxUp Disk

Authentic Microsoft Mouse

$1,74900

Same configuration as above.

$1,475 00

ARES486-33DX

Intel 80486-33DX Processor

Intel 80487 Math Co-processor

64K External Read AND Write Cache

4MB RAM expandable to 64MB on board

Quantum 170MB IDE Hard Driveor Maxtor 213MB

IDE Hard Drive

Teac 144 and 1.2 MB Floppy Drives

vlewsonlc 6e SVGA Non-interlaced Monitor w/

.28Dot Pitch

Diamond Speedstar 24X Graphics Accelerator

Video Card

Yourcholce of A RES Platinum Series Keyboards

2 Serial and i Parallel port

DOS 5.0. Windows 3,1 pre-lnstalled

w/documentatlon

ARES FIxUp Program v. 3 0

Authentic Microsoft Mouse

$2,329 00

same configuration for., )l

$2,449 00 $2,549 00

Same configuration as above

Quality Software,

Quality People It'S The ARES: HEART, BODY and SOU I Can The Co

$2,695 00

"\ I l

Of ARES.

mpetitlon Measure Up??

r roDiems? r~ orget ft.

I rie ARES 336 Mini Tower gave relentless quality performance.

-Rebecca Rohan

mm?

I called l 1 different companies to research my purchase. T neARESsaies rep. was by far the most knowledgeable and courteous. H e got my order. -Douglas A. Glfford U.S. Embassy. Madrid

Ares sold me the first time on system quality and performance; but more Importantly, i was soldtne second time on customer support

-John M. Messineo Tampa Florida

1 purchased an ares because they are truly a people company. They made me feel that l was tne most Important customer to them.

-Carol Green New York, New York

Inshort. ARESjustreekeo of quality tnrougnout, from the sales rep. to tne follow up letters, to the system Itself and tne documentation. I am very pleased With ARES.

-Prof. Jim Wade Germantown. Pennsylvania

The 486-33 Sonic Is an outstanding buy - and more so because of the company that stands behind it.

-Russ Lockwooa

You can return the unit within 60 days if you are still not satisfied, but with service this good. It's not iikeiy that you win need to do this.

ry^Tl -William Benin/

Ares has assembled an organization to be proud of and equipment that compares most favorably with any that l have been exposed to (i have worked with both Dell and IBM). -S. Marvlh Freeman Syosset, New York

Y our Package is a class act. 1 nave 8 computers, and this one's packaging, sales, and attention to detail are by far the best of them an.

-Susan Stevens Memphis, Tennessee

CALL TODAY... We'll Ship Today....800-322-3200

MiCRODEVELOPMfNT NC

Circle 265 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 291

N45SL-120 meg, notebook 1995

N51SX-80 meg, notebook CALL

ThinkPad 700-120 2750

ThinkPad 700C-120 4050

PS/2 9 57-160 meg 2370

Manager's Special

"IBM ValuePoint 486 DX2/66, 212 MB 2450

BRAND NAMES

LOW PRICES LEADER

SINCE 1983 We export to Europe, Asia

MEGACUBE EISA BUS

486-33 MHz System

8 meg, 128K Cache, SCSI CALL

Carrier 386sx/25 Mhz Notebook

4 meg, 120 meg Hard Drive, VGA CALL

Happy New Year!

TOSHIBA NOTEBOOKS

Toshiba 1800, 80 meg CALL

Toshiba 4400c, 120 meg CALL

Toshiba 6400sxc, 120 meg CALL

Toshiba 3300sl, 80 meg CALL

Call for pricing on other brand name models

Notebook Memory

Compaq Contura 4/8MB $215/430

Toshiba T4400 4/8MB $235/460

AST Exec. 4MB $290

Texas Instruments TM4000 4MB $225

comma

ProLinea 3/25zs, 84 MB 909

ProLinea 4/25s, 240 MB 1595

Prolinea 4/50, 240 MB 2275

DESKPRO 3/25I, 120 MB 1695

DESKPR0 4/25IS, 120 MB 1810

DESKPRO 4/66I, 210 MB 2675

DESKPRO 386/33M, 120 MB 2335

DESKPRO 486/33M, 340 MB 3520

DESKPRO 50M, 340 MB 3995

DESKPRO 66M. 510 MB 4730

Portable 486, 210 MB CALL

Portable 486c (color), 210 MB CALL

Contura 386SL/25,120 MB CALL

LTE Lite/25,120 MB CALL

LTE Lite/25c, (color), 120 MB CALL

LTE Lite 4/25 CALL

SYSTEMPRG7LT

486/33, 1020 MB 7552

486DX2/50,1020 MB 9350

'Call for other models - Monitor Extra *

CD ROM/Multi Media

NEC CD ROM 36M Gallery 570

NEC CD ROM 74M Gallery 680

Sound Blaster Pro 205

AST

Power Exec 386SL/25, 60 meg

Power Exec 386SL/25,120 meg

Power Exec 386SL/25C, 80 meg

2185

2555

...3195

Power Exec 386SL/25C, 120 meg

Power Premium 4/50

Power Premium 4/33

(HARD DISK & MONITOR EXTRA)

3575

2290 1995

P N 0 V E L L SPECIALS Netware 386 V.3.11

Authorized Dealer

5 users 695

10 users 1395

20 users 1895

100 users 3795

250 users CALL

WE STOCK

TOSHIBA

CITIZEN

0K1DATA

EPSON

HITACHI

TALLGRASS

ARCHIVE

NEC

ALR

WYSE

HOUSTON INSTRUMENTS INTEL

MICROSOFT PC MOUSE

SUMMAGRAPHIC CALCOMP

ACS,

Computers

9 All systems include

Made

in USA

• Intel CPU with 4 meg RAM

• Desktop or tower case

• 2 serial, 1 parallel, 1 game (joystick) ports

• 101 AT enhanced keyboard

• 1.2 (5.25") & 1.44 (3.5") TEAC floppy drives

• SVGA card w/1 meg & SVGA 0.28mm monitor

• MS DOS 5.0 (complete w/manuals)

• MS Windows 3.1 (complete w/manuals) & mouse

486/50 with 200 meg HD 2150

486/33 with 120 meg HD 1860

386/40 with 120 meg HD 1390

386SX/25 with 40 meg HD 950

One year limited warranty

LAN BOARDS

8 bit Arcnet

75

16 bit Arcnet

ifin

Novell NE 1000

.160

Novell NE 2000

175

8 port Active Hub ..

.325

Token Ring Card ...

399

Tokenhub 4-port ...

355

Call for other

LAN Accessories

PRINTERS

Panasonic 2180

?81

Panasonic 2624

.390

OKIDATAML320

315

OKIDATAML390

.460

HP DeskJet500 & 550

.399

HP DeskJet 550c

.699

HP PaintJet

705

Epson, Citizen

CALL

HARD DISKS

CONNER

CP30104 120 meg....CALL

CP3204F 220 meg....CALL

QUANTUM

Pro Drive 120 meg ...CALL

Pro Drive 240 meg ...CALL

MAXTOR, SEAGATE MICROPOLIS, MICR0NET CALL FOR ALL MODELS

SVGA Monitors

NEC3FGX, 14" 665

NEC4FG, 16" 825

Viewsonic 4E, 14" 365

Viewsonic 8,17" 1785

Aamazing, 14" 335

LASER PRINTERS

HP LaserJet NISI 3595

HP LaserJet HID CALL

HP LaserJet IV 1495

HP LaserJet HIP CALL

HP LaserJet IIP Plus....CALL

OKI 0L 400, 800 CALL

OKIOL840P.S 1720

Panasonic 4450 1295

NEC Model 95 1395

Compaq Pagemarq 20...4095

Corporate Accounts Welcome

Computerlane

inc.

caii for Discounts Outside California: 1-800-526-3482

on Volume Inside California: 818-884-8644 • FAX: 818-884-8253

A n r\

Consultant Orders 7500 Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Canoga Park CA 91303

Hours: Monday - Friday 9 -6, Saturday 10-6

Compaq is a Registered Trademark ot Compaq. IBM is a Registrered Trademark of International Business Machines.

ALL QUOTED

PRICES REFLECT

A 5% CASH

DISCOUNT

Visa, MasterCard

and

American Express

also accepted

Prices subject to change

without notice. 'Quantities are limited

292 BYTE* JANUARY 1993

Circle 241 on Inquiry Card.

HIGH

SCORING

TEAMS

HEWLETT-PACKARD & MANCHESTER

INTRODUCING THE PRINTER

YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

THE

HEWLETT-PACKARD

LASERJET 4

PRINTER

BETTER RESOLUTION

FASTER THROUGHPUT

IMPROVED PAPER HANDLING

MORE FONTS

INCREASED FLEXIBILITY

True 600 x 600 dpi Resolution

Improved Resolution Enhancement Technology

Microfine Toner Engineered Specifically for 600 dpi Printing ! Standard 250 Sheet Input Paper Tray, Plus Multi-Purpose Tray

(For 100 Sheets or 10 Envelopes) 1 250 Sheet Output Tray 1 More Built-in Typefaces: 45 Internal Scalable Typefaces

Fast RISC Processor and I/O for Faster Printing of Complex Graphics

"Hot" l/Os Enabling the Printer to Automatically Switch Between All

Ports, and Send Messages Back to the Host

Improved Printer Drivers

1 Built-in TrueType for Optimum Performance in Windows Applications 1 2MB Standard, Expandable to 34MB ' Many Options to Allow Improved Flexibility

SYSTEMS INTEGRATION NETWORKING ^ CONNECTIVITY CAD/CAM /xx RISC/UNIX

18*

HEWLETT

PACKARD

Authorized Dealer

MANCHESTER EQUIPMENT COMPANY INC.

"The Computer Supply and Equipment Experts" 50 MARCUS BLVD. ■ HAUPPAUGE, NY 11788 ■ (516) 435-1199 ■ (212) 629-6677

New York City: (212)629-6969 ■ Boca Raton: (407)241-7900 ■ Tampa: (813)962-8088 ■ Boston: (617)455-8300

Circle 557 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 292NE-1

Circle 554 on Inquiry Card.

MopUAC D ^e Professi°nal Software 1V1 d LI I /\01 Protection for the Macintosh

MacHASP is the most advanced hardware based software protection system for Macintosh computers.

Each MacHASP key contains a unique code, recognized by the protected software. During runtime, the protected program checks whether a MacHASP key with the appropriate code is connected to the computer. If the key's code is confirmed, the software can be executed. If not, the software will not run. The HASP system is based on advanced ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) components and sophisticated encryption algorithms. State-of-the-art engineering ensures full protection of your software with no hassles for your clients.

THESE ARE SOME OF MacHASP'S OUTSTANDING FEATURES:

■ MacHASP keys are totally transparent to the operation of the computer and any peripheral equipment.

■ The user can create backup copies freely and can run your software directly from a hard-disk or a backup diskette (the original diskette is not required).

■ The protection system is

easy to incorporate in your software. All necessaiy software, examples and documentation are provided.

■ MacHASP keys contain a memory which can be read and written on any computer.

IT IS POSSIBLE TO PROTECT PROGRAMS WITHOUT THE SOURCE CODE

For further information, please see our full-page ad in this issue for the nearest HASP distributor.

LADD1N

SOFTWARE SECURITY

200 Broadhollow Rd., Suite #207, Melville. NY 11747, USA Tel: 800-223 4277 516-424 5100 Fax: 516-424 8300

292NE-2 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 559 on Inquiry Card.

"The CAD Ex RM/E, Now I know

Jim Scalise finds FastCAD®'s speed and ease of use gives more than an increase in quality production time... "We found other systems difficult to learn, but FastCAD enabled us to get up and running in short order. Architects that need the fastest CAD system have to see this to believe it. FastCAD really lives up to its name. Without FastCAD it would be tough to compete and we wouldn't have time for the extensive detailed work we consider standard on all construction documents.

C/ Jim Scalise

Nickels + Scalise Architects

Plus, paper storage would be overwhelming' and: we'd still have 'draftsman's cramp' in our fingers and graphite on our forearms. After winning two National CAD Drawing Contests and elating our clients with FastCAD, it's as easy for me to endorse as it is to use."

If you want to be more competitive, but find yourself short on time, don't delay! Call Evolution Computing today for a free demo at 1-800-874-4028. Free technical support for registered users.

ONS LAYERS

I I

i

*

3£

\L

■ ■■"■■:. ' '

i ■■

IiMU!!i!Ii].

■pPs

3WEEK

tteOnetto

Stauws

GC3|

:0M

1W1

ds-On Demo, Call 1-800-874-4

EasyCAD and FastCAD are registered trademarks of EvolutionlCoflbuting © 1992 Evolution Computing;

Circle 555 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 556)

Your Source For Industrial PC Systems

New Rackmount Computers with Built-in Monitors!

■ )

tmml IP

1 * , ,',;,'.,

Pffn

Systems w/9" or 10" Built-in Monitor

3-Front Half Height & 1 Internal Full Height drive bays. 9" Mono or 10" VGA Built-in Monitor Space for 8 full length cards. Enclosure alone also available.

Systems w/14" Built-in SVGA Monitor

1-Front Half Height & 2 Internal Full Height drive bays. Space for 4 full length cards. Enclosure alone also available.

Complete 286, 386 and 486 systems

408-732-6091

Do You Need More Slots In Your Computer ?>?

Now you can expand your PC-AT system without timing or noise problems and without time-consuming system reconfiguration with the new ETRC-AT active Expansion Kit from APPRO Inteniationsl.

COMPUTER

Single Board Computers

• 286,386 & 486 ISA/EISA • Backplane Board Up to 20 slot

19" Rackmount Enclosures

i 20 Models • Up to 20 Slots • Up to 8 Drive Bays

SCSI Expansion Enclosure

■ Up to 4 Full or 8 Half Height Drive • Up to 600 W PS

Monitor Enclosure

i Enclosure for most 12" or 14" Dest Top Monitor

• Hardware and Software

No need to add drivers or modify software

• No Address Restrictions Put disk drive, video controllers and other computer resources into open slots in your expansion chassis

• No Initializing Software Just plug in the cards and you're all set to go

ETRC-AT KIT W/4FT. CABLE 8 SLOT BACKPLANE EXPANSION CHASSIS W/200W PS

ONLY S490.00

APPRO International, Inc. 3687 Enochs St., Santa Clara, CA 95051 FAX: 408-732-6095

292NE-4 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 560 on Inquiry Card.

pCsour**

Says... Kenosha Computer' Center offers some of the Best Buys in Mail Order!

EPSON

LX810

....$179

LQ860 LQ870

$549 $429

FX850

....$289

FX1050....

....$359

LQ1070...

$369

LQ570

....$259

LQ1170...

$579

EPL8000 ...

..$1289

LQ2550...

$849

Action 3250

$199

150 Action Fonts

$59

DFX 5000

533 cps,

160 niq

....$1269

DFX 8000

1066 cps

, 160 niq

....$2139

Call For Options

Join the thousands of

satisfied customers who

enjoy our combination of

price, service, and speed

of delivery.

KENOSHA COMPUTER CENTER

SALES LINE OUTSIDE WISCONSIN

1-800-255-2989

Shipping, customer service & technical assistance call

414-697-9595 - FfiX 414-697-0620

VISA, MASTERCARD, AMERICAN EXPRESS ACCEPTED

No Surcharge on MasterCard or Visa!

1 Kenosha Computer Center is now in its 6th year!

ty Texas Instruments

T.I. Travelmate 3000-WIIMSX $1749

T.I. TM 4000 SX-80mg $2199

T.I. TM 4000 WINSX 25-120 $2349

T.I. TM 4000 WINDX 120mg $2879

Laser PS17 $1179

Laser PS 35 $1299

Laser PS35 Turbo $1499

Laser 1MB Upgrade $129

Call For Accessories

OKIDATA

ML320/ML321 S309/S425

ML380/ML590 S219/S425

ML591/ML393 S579/S909

OL 400 Laser/OL 810 $589/51029

OL 820 Laser/OL 830 S1219/S1279

Okilaser 400 2MG upgrade $119

Panasonic,

Office Automation/?=Wj\

Xjri

1123/1124i $195/$275

2180/2123 $179/S229

1624/1654 S339/S519

2124/2624 S299/S359

4410/4430 $609/S859

4450i $1059

2mg. Upgrade for 4420 & 4450I S139

cc Computers

KCC 386 SX-33 W/1.2MB floppy. 2 MG RAM, 40 MG Hard Drive, SVGA Card & Monitor,

DOS 5.0, Windows & Mouse S1249

KCC 386-DX-40 W/64K Cache 1.2 MG floppy, 4 MG RAM 106 MG Hard Drive, SVGA Card and Monitor, DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1

and Mouse S1499

KCC 486-DX-33 W/64K Cache, 1.2 MG floppy, 4 MG RAM, 211 MG Hard Drive, SVGA Card and Monitor, DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1

and Mouse $1999

All KCC systems come with Tall-tree technical suppoi

HEWLETT-PACKARD

Laserjet IV w/toner $1449 Deskjet 500 $399

Laserjet IV M w/toner Call Deskjet 500C $739

Laserjet 111 P w/toner $979 Deskjet Portable Call

Laserjet II P+ w/toner $809 Laserjet III si $3299

1 MB Upgrade $69 4 MB Upgrade $159

2 MB Upgrade $99 Options Call

Canon

BJ10EX $289

360 DPI, 37K Buffer, 142 CPS, 6 fonts, IBM & Epson Emulation BJ20 $369

Detachable cutsheet feeder, 188 CPS, 360 DPI

BJ300 $339

600 CPS, 30K Buffer, 3 Fonts, Epson IBM Emulation

BJ330 $559

Wide carriage. Version of BJ 300

BJC800 $1799

Color Bubblejet, 360 DPI, 7K Buffer, Epson Emulation LQ2550, 600 CPS, Built-in auto cut sheet feeder

BJ200 $335

248 CPS, 360 DPI, cut sheet feed, Epson & IBM Emulation

MEMORY PRODUCTS

2 MB IBM 30-286 $99

2 MB IBM 55SX $89

1 & 4 MB SIMM9 Call

BOCA RAM AT 2 MB $179

4 MB Tl 4000 $229

COMPAQ LTE 386 4 MB $219

Toshiba, Nee, Zenith, AST, IBM, Compac, Other Manufacturers & Products Call

LASER PRINTERS

2 MB EPSON ALII $139

2 & 4 MB H-P III $99/$159

2 MB OKI 400 $119

2 MB OKI 830/840 Call

2 MB PANA 4450i $129

2 MB PANA 4410/4430 $129

Other Models & Manufacturers Call

HOUSTON INSTRUMENTS PLOTTERS & SUMMAGRAPHICS DIGITIZERS

Image Maker A&B 11x17 $699

DMP-52 C81D 1 Pen $1979

DMP-161 A to D 8 Pen $2749

DMP/162 A to E 8 Pen $3475

DMP-162RAtoE8Pen

Roll Feed $4749

Summasketch II 12x12 $279

Summasketch II 12x18 $479

HARD DRIVES & TAPES

SEAGATE, CONNER & MAXTOR

89 MB 3096 S249

120 MB 3144A S279

211 MB 1239A $469

245 MB 3283 $499

MAXTOR 200 MB 7213A $425

MAXTOR 340 MB 340A $649

CONNER 120 MB $279

CONNER 200 $459

MICROSOLUTIONS

40 MB or 100 MB $399/5489

External Parallel port hard drive. Perfect for Laptops, PS It's & XT's.

HARD CARDS

Plus Hard card 50XL $239

Plus Hard card 105 MG $339

TAPE BACK UP

Colorado Jumbo 120 S199

Colorado Jumbo 250 $249

Colorado Parallel 120 Portable $339

Colorado Parallel 250 Portable $399

Mountain, Maynard, others CALL

MONITORS

Mitsubishi EGA $239

Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 17" $1149

Mitsubishi HL 6945 20" $1779

NEC Multisync III FGX $629

NEC Multisync IV FGX $739

NEC Multisync VFGX S1259

NEC 5D $1549

NEC 6FG $2275

Panasonic 1991 1280x1024 $1559

Magitronix VGA 1024 x 768 $289

Magitronix VGA 1024 x 768 Nl $319

SOFTWARE

D Base IV $469

Calendar Creator + $55

Lotus 2.2/3.1 $329/S389

Microsoft Word for Windows $299

Microsoft Windows 3.1 $79

Microsoft DOS 5.0 $69

PC Tools 7.1 $79

Quicken for Windows $49

Stacker $89

Word Perfect 5.1 $269

Word Perfect 5.1 for Windows $269

Qemm 386 Ver. 6.0 $65

BATTERY BACKUP & UPS

AMERICAN

250/400 $109/$165

450/600 $199/$259

900/1200VX $375/$729

SMART UPS 400 $309

TRIPPLITE

BC 250 $105

BC 400 $159

BC 500 LAN $195

BC 600 LAN $259

BC 900 LAN $359

GRAPHICS CARDS

ATI VGA Wonder XL 24 1MB $149

ATI Graphics Ultra 1MB $299

ATI Graphics Ultra Pro 1MB $439

ATI Graphics Ultra + 1MB $295

Diamond Speedstar 24X W/1MB .$175

Diamond Stealth w/1MB $245

Orchid Fahrenheit1280 $269

Trident SVGA 1MB $79

Monochrome Boards $35

No charge (or MasterCard or Visa. Wa will ship COO on o cash or casher's check basis only. Shipping & handling

3% - S6 minimum: AK and Hi slightly higher. 15%

restocking charge on returned items. Purchase orders

accepted from Fortune 1000, Government institutions,

schools and universities. 2% shipping discount available

on orders over S2OC0 il prepaid by check.

Prices and availability subject to change.

KEN

Circle 561 on Inq

KENOSHA COMPUTER CENTER

2133 91st Street Kenosha, Wisconsin 53140

A COMPUTE!

1-800-255-2989

MODEMS & FAX MODEMS

PRACTICAL PERIPHERALS

PRACTICAL PER 2400 INT/EXT

...$79/$119

PRACTICAL PER 9600 INT/EXT

,$259/$265

PRACTICAL PER 14.4 INT/EXT .

$329/$359

HAYES

HAYES OPTIMA 9600

$339

HAYES OPTIMA 9600 W/FAX ...

$369

HAYES OPTIMA 14.4 W/FAX ....

$449

HAYES ULTRA 14.4

$619

U.S. ROBOTICS

USR 9600 V.32 bis

$539

HST16.9lnt/Ext

..$499/S549

USR SPORTSTER 14.4 Int/Ext..

..$309/$319

USR SPORTSTER 14.4 W/FAX.

$339

USR DUAL STD EXT

$749

World Port 96/96 Fax Modem..

$439

Intel Satisfaxtions Below

iny

Satisfaxtion Fax Modems

100 2400/9600 Fax $99

200 2400 V.42/9600 Fax $275

400 14.4/14.4 Fax $375

400 ext 14.4/14.4 Fax $419

Faxability Plus $59

80387-SX co-processor $75

80387-DX co-processor $85

Overdrive Processor Upgrade Call

MULTIMEDIA & CD ROMS

Magnavoc 461 RS EXT w/software S389

Soundblaster Pro S189

Videoblaster S339

Imports video & audio from VCRs, cameras and video discs into VGA graphics Soundblaster Pro

Multimedia Upgrade kit S539

With Soundblaster Pro, midi kit, CD Rom drive & software

NEC CDR 74 w/gallery S629

NEC CD Express S419

NETWORKING

NETWARE 2.2 5 USER S499

NETWARE 2.2 10 USER S1099

NETWARE 2.2 50 USER S2099

NETWARE 3.11 5 USER S589

NETWARE 3.11 10 USER S1359

NETWARE 3.11 50 USER S2699

NE 2000 S139

LANTASTIC 10MPS STARTER KIT S449

LANTASTIC 10MPS ADAPTER S199

LANTASTIC FOR WINDOWS S165

3 COM ETHERLINK II S185

3 COM ETHERCARD S279

INTEL ETHER 16 $119

INTEL ETHER 16 20 PAK $1975

SMC ETHER + ELITE 16 S145

SMC ETHERNET 8 BIT COAX $95

XIRCOM POCKET ADAP COAX $299

XIRCOM POCKET ADAP 10 BASE T $299

CENTER

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 292NE-5

IBM said it, so did Computer Associates, Inc., Dataram Corp., Network General Corp., Software Partners/32, Inc. and Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc. Everyday more and more exhibitors are saying yes to DEXPO, The Event Of The DEC Open Market. They're saying yes, because DEXPO offers the best opportunity for exhibitors to meet thousands of qualified buyers, 70% of whom attend no other event.

They're saying yes to DEXPO because DEXPO is building a total event, an exhibition that features DEC and DEC compatible products and solutions. An open systems conference produced by IDG's World Expo Corporation will provide attendees with immediate answers to immediate questions.

They're saying yes to an industry intensive advertising promotion and public relations campaign that provides compelling benefits to attendees to attend DEXPO. They're saying yes because DEXPO is the DEC market meeting place which is important to exhibitors because their business depends on sales to DEC installations.

As DEC focuses on open systems, as its Alpha technology spreads throughout the world, DEXPO will become even more important to exhibitors and attendees because no one, no one serves the DEC market better, no one can. Say yes, to DEXPO.

To obtain registration information for DEXPO Spring '93 fill out the form and return either by mail or fax: 214/385-9003.

DEXPO Spring '93

Exhibition & Open Systems Conference

June 8 -10,1993

Inforum

Atlanta, GA

: % % % & U M ^ ® i ® : t i:f; n : ¥ * ft h :■{: :

Mail to: Registrar

DEXPO Spring '93

13760 Noel Road, Suite 500

Dallas, TX 75240

Yes, I'm interested. Please send more information on:

() Attending () Conference () Exhibiting

Company

Cily/Slaie/Zip

DEXPO

No one serves the DEC market better, no one can.

292NE-6 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

'roduced by Miller Freeman, Inc., A member of (lie United Newspaper Group ©1992 Miller Freeman, Inc.

Circle 576 on Inquiry Card.

fwrr

•-.-. V.V5-

f, -^ '-. ' • -; <.<•

-w :#.-v

f V - • J

- yr

;- v -••*

>-- ^fe^ifrv*?1.

■ "i. ■ „ .4

CTSnifi

Higher]

f

ance:

SmartCache Plus is the SCSI-controller that delivers higher performance without a higher price!

Windows, Netware, Unix and other high-end applications need a SCSI controller that delivers top disk I/O performance and a growth path. Only SmartCache Plus delivers both — and costs no more than less advanced controllers!

As the industry's fastest SCSI controller, SmartCache Plus is the easy choice. It's the smart choice, too — because if your system needs a performance boost, you can transform it from a non-caching host adapter into the world's fastest caching controller! Expandability is so simple: plug-on modules add caching, up to a total of 16MB of cache memory, and disk mirroring!

SmartCache Plus is supported by all major operating systems and applications, and provides connectivity to hundreds of SCSI devices. Reliable, scalable and simple to install, SmartCache Plus breaks your system's disk I/O bottleneck without breaking your budget!

Distributed Processing Technology All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 140 Candace Drive, Maitland, FL 32751

Circle 246 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 247).

This free comprehensive Performance Report details the SmartCache Plus advantage over its leading competitor in nine different benchmarks for DOS 5.0, Netware 3.11 and Unix applications. For your copy, contact DPT Channel Marketing today...

TEL.

FAX

60-53

:ptfcft^

g^Bagtt^

Super Selection, uper Service. Super Direct 7

Insight

Buy the Super Direct™ .way!

Insight 486 ISA

486sx-25mhz

Fully Upgradable Intel 80486 CPU 4MB RAM - 256K Cache 210MB 12ms Hard Drive w/cachc 420MB with Stacker®

Non-interlaced 14" SuperVGA

Color Monitor 24 Bit 1MB Graphics Accelerator

Super VGA Video Card

Up to 16 Million Colors

1.2MB 5.25" Floppy Drive

1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive

2 Serial Ports, 1 Parallel, 1 Game Port

Enhanced 101 Key Keyboard

MS-DOS 5.0

Mouse

Desktop Case, Full Vertical Available

Stacker and Dr. Solomon's

Anti-Virus™ Software

$1,599

486-33mhz

$1,899

486dx2-50mhz

■0—

$1,999

486-50mhz

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet!

Notimetowaitforafullyloaded, value-packed '486? No problem! We've specially configured and pre-built our hottest selling systems and they're ready to ship!

$2,099

486dx2-66mhz

$2,299

w

fe

CD-ROM

Talon

TA-100

Internal, 380ms access time, 32KB buffer, fast transfer rate. $279

Sony

S-535

Free with any CD-ROM drive ■ ■1992 Multimedia Encyclopedia ■Stereo Headphones ■Reference Library ■GamePacIc

CDSoftware-Pickany5for$99*

Internal, 340ms access time, 8KB buffer, 150KB/second transfer rate.

$399

Talon High Performance TA-200

Internal, 280ms access time, 64KB buffer, 300KB/second transfer rate.

$599

1992 Toolworks Multimedia Encyclopedia - complete 21 volume sel. Over 33,000 articles with 3,000 pictures, 250 maps, 35 minutes of video, 35 minutes of sound recordings and 55 video sequences.

Aircraft Encyclopedia

Nat'l Parks

Bibie Library

Plant Doctor

Career Opportunities

Reference Library

CIA Factbook

Sound Works

Civil War

Space-Apollo

European Monarchs

Timetable of Arts

Game Pack II

Timetable of Sci.

Guinness Disc

USA State Fact

Great Cities (MM)

Book

Interactive Storytime

US Atlas

KGB Factbook

US Civics

Korea

US Presidents

MM Mavis Beacon

Vietnam

Teaches Typing

World Atlas

N.American Indians

World War II

*with purchase of a CD-ROM Drive

»0^j,

@E»@§1

120MB tO 2100MB Hani Drives

1000's of Products. Call Now!

120MB

IDE 170mb

IDE 210mb

Talon TA3020A, 16ms, 3.5' 1"H Bare $279 8 Bit Kit $319

16 Bit Kit $299

Western Digital WD2170A. I2ms35' 1"H Bare $349 16 Bit Kit $369

M 'DE

Western Digital WD220OA, I2ms3.5" 1"H Bare $399 16 Bit Kit $419

520mb

IDE/SCSI 660mb

SCSI 1080mb

Btf<

SCSI

Fujitsu FJ2624S. 12ms 3.5" HH Bare $999 16 Bit Kit (IDE) $1,019 16 Bit Kit (SCSI) $1,149

Micropolis MC1624, 15ms 5.25" HH Fujitsu FJ2266S, 14.5ms 5.25" FH

Bare SI.199 16 Bit Kit $1,349 Bare$1,499 16 Bit Kit $1,649

1350MB

SCSI 1752mb

SCSI 2100mb

SCSI

Micropolis MC1528-15,14ms 5.25" FH Bare $1,799 16 Bit Kit $1,949

Fujitsu FJ2652S, llms 5.25" FH Micropolis MC1924, I lms 5.25" FH Bare $2,749 16 Bit Kit $2,899 Bare $3,199 16 Bit Kit $3,349

Tape Backups Bernoullift.

Standard QIC 80 attaches to existing floppy controller or dedicated unit, w/ data compression. 2-3MB/min.

Talon

120MB includes one tape $189

250MB includes one tape $249

Colorado

WangDAT A Tape Backup^

120MB 250MB

$199 $259

Printers

Canon

2GB 3100 Internal Kit 4GB 3200 Internal Kit 4GB 3200 External Kit

Monitors

TVM

$1,199 $1,399 $1,499

BJ-lOex Bubble Jet BJ-20 Bubble Jet BJ-200 Bubble Jet BJ-300 Bubble Jet BJ-330 Bubble Jet BJC-800 Color Bubble Jet BJC-820 (SCSI) Color

Bubble Jet LBP-4sx LPB-8sx

NEC

$289 $379 $389 $419 $579 51,899

i 1.999 $419 $579

MediaScan4A+14" $319

Low Radiation 5A+ 15" $459

MediaScan SA17" $1,039

NSA/Hitachi

SuperScan™ 15(CMI584) $579

SuperScan™ 17 (CM 1785) $ 1,099

SuperScan™ 20 (CM2085) $ 1,499

NEC

P3200-8K, upto216CPS $229

P6200 - 80K, up to 300 CPS $409

P3300-8K,upto216CPS $329

P6300 - 80K, up to 300 CPS $629

P9300 - 80K, up to 400 CPS $829

Model 95 Laser Printer $1,399

MultiSync 3FGx 15" MultiSync 4FG 15" MultiSync 5FG 17" MultiSync 6FG 21"

$639

$749

$1,349

$2,359

Removable media, offers a 90 Pro internal drive. SCSI adapter by Rancho Technology, 360MB of storage, 2 90MB cartridges and Stacker1" disk compression software.

Internal 360MB Kit $499

Extra Cartridges $149

3 Pack of Cartridges $419

Software

Automap $49

Lotus SmartSuite for Windows $419

Microsoft Excel 4.0 $295

Microsoft Word 2.0 $295

Paradox 4.0 $499

Networking

tfMlSOFT

Revolutionizing Connectivity LANtastic® AE-2™ Ethernet Starter Kit (ISA) LANtastic AE-3™ Ethernet Starter Kit (ISA) Other Networking Products Available.

All versions and upgrades available at the lowest prices.

S479

$549

9, 9.

fm%

Insight

Prices mill ;tv:iil:il)i1ilv siilijccl in dinn^c without runict

Guarantee and l-Yew Replacement Policy may hovesi tit' Inlcl Corporaiion. Ix-jstng available lor businesses.

All items ace NEW. POsa.

ne reariclions. Shipping is

epled from qualified buyer on- refundable. All tradem

t3(). Ai*0/1-Kl iirdcrs iidd SI6 I'i

ire [lit; properties, ol ilii/ir iv.spixii

1 Buy the Super Direct

[way!

it [impress Mail. POs, 30-Day

Hard Drives International and Insight have joined

TOrCeS lo bring you a superstore in your mailbox. We offer the ultimate selection of today's most popular hardware and software, with the most affordable prices. Get Insight's superior service and support, plus 1000's of products to choose from. It's the Super Direct™ way to have it all direct to your door faster than a speeding bullet.

Super selection.

You'll find everything you need at Insight. From high-capacity, high- performance storage products to computer systems, peripherals, software and more. If you don't see the product you need, call us. We have 1000's of products in stock.

Super service.

" 30-Day "Worry-Free" Money Back Guarantee

■ Federal Express Delivery "Toll-FreeTechnical Support

7 Days a Week • Payment Options Galore

BJnPH

■Order24hrsaDay

■ One Year Parts & Labor Warranty/

Replacement Policy

■ Special National Accounts

Department for Larger Customers

Super Direct"

Order 24 Hours a Day 800-998-8040

National Accounts - P.O.'s

800-998-8014

APO/FPO/Intemational

602-350-1145

FAX 602-350-1188

Insight Distribution Network Inc. 1912 W. Fourth St. iempcAZ 85281 PH.602/350-1128 FAX 602/350-1150 .

Source Code HAA

Easy Affordable Upgrades.

Get More Performance From Your PC System For a Lot Less Than You Think.

MOTHERBOARDS

Buy Smart...Buy RMB Upgradable Motherboards

Model No Memory 2Mb 4 Mb 8 Mb 16 Mb 32 Mb

386 SX-33

'159

* 386 DX-33 Upgradable '249

* 386 DX-40 Upgradable '269

* 486 SX-25 Upgradable '329

* 486 SX-33 Upgradable call

* 486 DX-33 Upgradable '675

* 486 DX-2/50 Upgradable '735 ** 486DX-50 Upgradable '955 "486DX-2/66 '1049 ** 486 DX-2/66 EISA Upgradable '1299 *128k Cache Memory **256k Cache Memory

'239 NA

NA.

NA NA NA NA

NA

NA NA

'319 '409 '429 '489 call '835 '895 '1135 '1229 '1479

'479 '569 '589 '649 call '995 '1055 '1315 '1409 '1659

'859 '949 '969 '1029 call '1375 '1435 '1655 '1749 '1999

NA '1649 '1669 '1729

call '2075 '2135 '2355 '2449 •2699

486DX-2/66 MHz EISA only s1299

Overdrive socket for easy 486DX-2 100 MHz upgrade.

Local Bus Slot

• SIS ATQ chipset • AMI Bios • Intel CPU

(W

Local Bus

All RMB 386DX-33 and faster Motherboards are Local Bus Ready. Local Bus Video Card s167 •ET-4000 chipset

The RMB Advantage

MIS managers from across the country are discovering the advantages of upgrading with RMB Motherboards:

■ Save hundreds or even thousands of dollars by avoiding replacement costs with upgrades.

■ Every RMB Motherboard with SIMM memory comes with the memory completely installed, burned-in and fully tested to assure quality performance.

■ Take the RMB challenge! If you

have an entire department to upgrade, try one RMB Motherboard for 30 days. If you're not completely satisfied, return it for a full refund.*

*Ralin will refund full product price. Price will reflect purchase price or current market price, whichever is lower.

M

ODEM UPGRADES

Zoom Telephonies

Zoom modems rate at the top of their class for

compatibility and performance. The recipient

of numerous Editors' Choice awards, Zoom

modems offer the quality and dependability

that you require at a price that makes them a true value.

All Zoom modems are backed by a 7 year warranty and are made in the USA.

Printers

EPSON®

AP-3250 $18995

V

9-Pin Printers

AP-2250 240/48 cps

V

2400 bps w/ v.42bis and MNP 2-5

(AMC) (AMX)

internal external

$ 49.00 $ 65.00

2400 bps w/ v.42bis and MNP 2-5 9600 send & 4800 receive Fax

(AFC) (AFX)

internal external

$ 59.95 $ 79.95

2400 bps w/ 9600 bps send/receive Fax

(FC 9624) (FX 9624)

internal external

$ 79.95 $ 95.00

9600 bps modem w/ v.32, v.42bis, MNP2-5

(VP-V32) (VX-V32)

internal external

$ 199.00 $ 199.00

14,400 bps modem w/ v.32bis, v.32, v.42bis, MNP 2-5 and 9600 bps send/receive Fax

(VFP-V32bis*) (VFX-V32bis*)

internal external

$ 229.00 $ 269.00

2400 bps modem w/.42 bis and MNP 2-5, 9600 bps send and 4800 bps receive Fax

PKT Pocket/Fax Modem

$ 99.00

LX-810

FX-870

FX-1050

DFX-5000

DFX-8000

240/48 cps 380/68 cps 380/68 cps 533 cps 1066 cps

24-Pin Printers

LQ-570

LQ-870

LQ-1070

LQ-1170

LQ-2550

252/84 cps 330/110 cps 252/84 cps 330/110 cps 400/133 cps

Star Micronics®

•WINFAX software option available for $15 if purchased with VFP-V32bis or VFX-V32bis modem.

RALIN also offers MPC Products, Hard Drives, Monitors, Cases, CD-Rom's, Simm Memory, Keyboards & Input devices.

CALL 1-800-752-9512

NX-1001

NX-1020R

NX-2430

NX-2420R

SJ-48

180/45 cps 9-pin color printer 24-pin printer 24-pin color printer Inkjet

$132.00 $165.00 $289.00 $382.00 $1265.00 $2145.00

$258.00 $434.00 $369.00 $575.00 $849.00

$129.00 $172.00 $239.00 $279.00 $289.00

Ralin Policies

• Prices and availability subject to change.

• Purchase orders are accepted, subject to approval.

• We do not charge your card until order is processed.

• Incomplete returns arc subject to a service charge.

• Ail returns other than exchanged items incur a 10% re-stocking fee.

To insure your shipment arrives when you need it, Ralin uses only the most reputable modes of transportation available:

WORLDWIDE £JfPff£IS

^oty, '%tco*

WE ACCEPT:

L0UC33

296 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

WHOLESALERS, INC.

P.O. Box 450

Orchard Park, New York 14127 Hours: 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Mon-Fri Customer Service: 716-674-6267 Fax: 716-674-2108

Circle 264 on Inquiry Card.

MEMORY...

YOU JUST CAN'T DO WITHOUT IT.

Picture this:

You bought a new software package. You try it out on your computer and soon find yourself working for hours on a sophisticated graphic design. While scrolling through your worksheet, it feels like you are moving through pudding, Your hard disk has a tough time trying to catch up. You then try to print, but the laser printer's buffer is full. You reset it, try again, and find that it spits out only part of your beautiful graphic...

No problem!

We'll take it from here. With our JetRam™ line that supports the leading brands of laser printers and PcRam™ line that upgrades your Notebook, Laptop or Desktop computers. Transcend can help solve your memory problems.

What you get from our memory upgrades

■ Life time warranty on all our products

■ Full memory lines support a variety of brand names of laser printers and PCs

■ High quality at a reasonable price

■ Easy-to-install

Office hours: 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Mon. to Fri. "You order in the morning, we will ship in the afternoon."

K81 SSS52 IBM epson TOSHIBA OKID4IA • Apple

Panasonic

QMS

NEC J*

O^KynCBRa brothec iNSTRLnwIms

' All brand names are registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Emsaa

Your Supplier, Your Partner, Your Friend.

Circle 272 on Inquiry Card.

Transcend Information Inc.

104 Exchange Place, 3FI., No. 465, Chung Hsiao East Road,

Pomona, CA 91768 U.S.A. Sec. 6, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

TEL: (714) 598-5500 TEL: (886) 2-7881000

FAX: (714) 598-5050, (714) 598-6050 FAX: (886) 2-7881919, 7889191

JANUARY 1993 • B YTE 297

lifetime*! warranty!

100%

HARD

DRIVE

SUPER

PRICES

CALL

WE WILL BEAT ANY ADVERTISED PRICE

LASER

CALL FOR LATEST SIMM PRICES

PRINTER MEMORY

HLMSU R> ;ti 2MB

■MtumiiB

■rocEu fcs Fiiw

Mill I IIJ;M»i4.-W.]:M

INTEL CYRIX IIT

8067 5HHZ INTEL B067-? SMHZ INTEL B067-1 10MHZ IWTEl 90287-6 6MHZ INTEL BO?87-e 8MHZ INTEL BDZS7-IC 10MKZ INTEL 80JBM? 12 MHZ INTEL B0287XL 10MHZ INTEL 80M7XLT 12MHZ INTEL 8C387SX-I6 16MHZ IWTEL B0387SX-JO 20 HZ INTEL B0387DX-16 16MKZ INTEL 8O3a7DX-?0 ZOMKZ INTEL ■^:V> ■"V.IHZ INTEL 6O3370X-33 J3MHZ INTEL 80487SX-20 INTEL RAPID WD OVERDRIVE SX25 OVERDRIVE SX20

CYRIX

S3087DX-I6 I6MH7 CYRIX B3O37DX-20 20MH7 CYRIX 83087DX-25 2SMKZ CYRIX 3087DX-J3 i3MH7 CYRIX 83087DX-W 4CWHZ CYRIX 83SB7SX16 I6MHZ CYRIX 83S87SX20 20MHZ CYRIX S3S87SX25 25MHZ CYRIX 82S87XL CYRIX

WEITEK

3167-20MHZ WEITEK 31&7-35MHZ WEITEK 3167-33MHZ WEITEK J167-25MHZ WEITEK ■116733MHZ WEITEK

2CS7-8 8MHZ in 2087-10 I0MHZ IIT 2C87-t2 12MHZ IIT 2C87-20 20MHZ IIT 3C87-16 16MHZ IIT X87-20 ZOMHZ IIT 3C87-25 25MHZ IIT 3C87-33 33MHZ IIT X87-40 40MHZ IIT 3S37SX-I6 T6MHZ IIT 3S87SX-20 20MKZ 111 3387SX-25 ?5WH2 IIT 3S87SX-23 33MHZ in AMD 80C2S7-10 AMD B0C287-12 AM

59.D0 MOO 65 00 &9.G0 63.00 89 00 89.00 89 00 119.00 75.00 75.00

m

MEE&mn

4MB X 9-80NS SIMM-PC 4MB X 9-70NS SIMM 4MB X 9-60NSSIMM 1MBX9-100NS 9 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-80NS 3 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-80NS 9 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-70NS 3 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-70NS 9 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-60NS 3 CHIP SIMM 1MB X9-60NS9 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-53NS 3 CHIP SIMM 1MB X 9-53NS 9 CHIP SIMM 16MB X 9 70NSSIMM 16MB X 9-60NS SIMM

EACH 12 +

CALL CALL

CALL CALL

CALL CALL

CALL CALL

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CALL CALL

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CALL CALL

256KX9 256K X 9 256K X 9 256K X 91MB X B1MB X a 4MB X B< 4MBX8 1MB X 9 1MB X 9 1MBX9 1MBX9

10ONSSIMM ■SONS SIMM 70NS SIMM -BONS SIMM BONS SIMM 70NS SIMM BONS SIMM 70NS SIMM 1O0NS SIPP 80NS SIPP 70NS SIPP 60MS SIPP

CALL 256K X 9-IOONS SIPP CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

CALL

256K X 9-80NS SIPP

CALL

256K X 9-70NS SIPP

CALL

256K X 9-60NS SIPP

CALL

256X36- 1MB

CALL

512 X 36 - 2MB

CULL

1 X 36 - 4MB

CALL

2 X 36 - 8MB

CALL

4 X 36 - 16MB

CALL

8 X 36 - 32M8

CALL

1MBX40-80NS-4MBSIMM

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2MaX40-80NS-8MBS!MN'

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21.00 ZIPP

256K X l Z56K X 1 256K X 256K X 256KX 256K X A

64K X 4-100MS 6<)K X 4-80NS 64K X 1-150NS 64K X 1-120NS 64KX l-IOONS

2.1(1 2.25 1.50 1.75 1.95

2MK X 1 -STTATIC HAH

AM2B00P-08 1256x1) 2.65 AAA2800P-07 256x1 2.B5 AAA2B0OP-O6 (256x1) 3.05

I ■■■■■ FOR MEMORY PRODUCTS NOT LISTED, CALL FOR PRICES AND AVAILABILITY

.f-ccdj vba PURCHASE ORDERS FROM GOVERNMENT AGENCIES - UNIVERSITIES - FORTUNE 2000 FIRMS - CALL 1-215-922-4650

NEVER A SURCHARGE ON CREDIT CARDS OPEN SATURDAY 10-6

TECHNICAL SUPPORT ORDERS ONLY TOLL FREE FAX

-215-922-4640 1 -800-457-6937 1 -215-922-0116

^ Q

ALL CREDIT CARDS ARE VERIFIED FOR FRAUDULENT USE. ORDER TOLL-FREE FROM ANYWHERE IN THE USA OR CANADA. CALL FOR CURRENT PRICES AND VOLUME DISCOUNTS. PRICES AND AVAILABILITY SUBJECT TO CHANGE. ORDER LINES OPEN 6 DAYS

MINIMUM ORDER 50 OO-USA SHIPPING & HANDLING AIR S12.00-AIR OVERNIGHT S18.00-COD ADO $4 00*PA RESIDENTS ADD 7% SALES TAX»PREPAID ORDERS CALL FOR CONFIRMATION»ALL RETURNS REQUIRE RMA# AND ORIGINAL INVOICE CANCELLED ORDERS AND RETURNS FOR CREOIT SUBJECT TO 25% RESTOCKING CHARGE«RETURNEO MERCHANDISE MUST BE IN NEW CONDITION AND RECEIVED WITHIN 14 DAYS FROM INVOICE DATE SORRY NO REFUNDS AFTER 14 DAYS SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES NOT REFUNDABLE«INTERNATIONAL ORDERS WELCOME-APO-FPO ORDERS WELCOME POS ACCEPTED FROM GOVERMENT AGENCIES-'UNIVERSITIES/FORTUNE 2000 COMPANIES-SUBJECT TO APPROVAL* ALL MEMORY PRODUCTS ARE THIRD PARTY ALL TRADEMARKS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE RESPECTIVE OWNERS * ALL WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS ARE 100% GUARANTEED AND COME WITH LIFETIME WARRANTY EXCEPT

30 DAY WARRANTY ON CPU CHIPS AND 1 YEAR WARRANTY ON MOTHER BOARDS *

WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGIES

437 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 Customer Service 215-922-4640

298 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 258 on Inquiry Card.

It makes J-8s cry and MiGs fighting mad.

No jet fighter frustrates enemy planes more easily than the incredible Harrier Jump Jet.

That's because the Harrier can

baffle opponents with sudden mid-air stops. It takes off and lands vertically. It hovers. It even

flies in reverse.

Take full control of the world's

most unique strike fighter and tear through ultra-realistic battle theaters in Hong Kong

or the Falklands. Face ruthless

opponents along front lines.

Land in secret hides. Perform

wild ski jump-assisted take-offs. And fly action-packed missions with a friend as wingman

via modem.

Jump Jet from MicroProse.

Your enemies will hate you

for it.

To order, visit your favorite

retailer or call 1-800-879-PLAY.

Actual screens may vary.

wm

The Harrier Strike Fighter In Explosive Front Line Action1

Actual screen shown.

To get our free catalog, call 1-800-879-PLAY Mon

Fri., 8:30 am-5:00 pm EST or fill out the coupon and mail it to: MicroProse Software, Inc. 180 Lakefront Drive ■ Dept. DIO • Hunt Valley, MD 21030-2245

NAD

1992 MicroProse Software. Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ENTERTAINMENT • SOFTWARE

Seriously Fun Software

Circle 251 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 299

Pffll

Real IBM PS2 1200 baud

Modem for Micro Channel: List $149.00 Your Price $7.75

Seagate ST4766N

SCSI 660MB, ISMS, 5<A" FH. Only $999.00 while supplies last

4MEGX9 Simm Module

guaranteed lowest price. Call with your best quote!

SOFTWARE LIQUIDATION

WOEDSTML

Wordstar 6.0 or Wordstar 2000 Rel. 3.S

e the exact same ones selling

□ misprint! Hies

for over $300.00 fror,

We have thou

FOR SALE BELOW DISTRIBUTOR COST! |

LIST $495.00 ea

DEALERS WELCOME

RETAIL BOXED & FACTORY SEALED A ft A

7.0 Upgrade $89 ?VV

W1

Version 3.1

M) we are offering Lotus 123 version 3 jal, 3 5" dish in sealed hags with ords. NO CATCH! THE REAL THING!

only $199

HARD DRIVE

SALE

Hard Drives

SPEED

TYPE

COST

65MS

MFM5.25"

SU9

28MB

MFM Full HT

$349

28MS

RU5.25"

$289

28MS

MFM 5.25"

$239

28MS

IDE 3.5n

$179

I8MS

IDE 3.5"

$269

16MS

IDE 3.5"

S299

I9MS

IDE 3.5"

S498

12MS

IDE 3.5"

S577

14MS

SCSI 3.5"

$999

15MS

5CSI/FH

$1499

^Seagate

MODEL SIZE

ST225 20MB

ST4096 80MB

ST277R-1 65M8

ST251-1 42MB

ST351A 42MB

5T3120A 105MB

ST3144A 130MB

5T1239A 210MB

ST3283A 240MB

ST1480N .. . . 426MB ST41200N 1037MB

Hard Drives

MODEL SIZE SPEED TYPE COST

CP3000I P^gM 40MB 19MS IDE $189

CP3G084E.. . 80MB 19MS IDE $249

CP30104H 120MB 19MS IDE $299

CP30204 209MB 15MS IDE $459

CP3544A 525MB 15MS IDE $1045

CP301005 120MB 19MS SCSI 3349

CP3540 540MB 15MS SCSI $1090

Mapejor Hard Drives

MODEL SIZE SPEED TYPE COST

72l3A(l"high] 213MB 15MS IDE $389

2585 {Vi nhg"h) 80MB 17MS IDE S249

7120A(rh.gh) . ... 120MB I5M5 IDE S319

LXT340A 340MB 15MS IDE $799

LXJ3405 340MB 16MS SCSI S899

7213S[Phgh| . 213MB 15MS SCSI $499

More Popular Hard Drives

MODEL 5IZE SPEED TYPE COST

TANDON 10MB BOMS MFM5.25" 569

M1NISCRIBE 20MB 65MS MFM $99

QUAN LPS42S 42MB 17MS SCSI $227

QUANLPS52A 52MB 17MS IDE $209

QUANLPS84A 80MB 17MS IDE $289

WD AC28C 80MB 17MS IDE $239

QUANLP5l05s 105MB I7MS SCSI 5319

GUAN1PS105A 105MB 17MS IDE $3!9

WDAC2120 120MB 17MS IDE $309

QUAN LPS240A 240MB 1 6mS IDE 5579

MIC 1664D 344MB 15MS ESDI $995

FUJM2624S1 5"3MB 14MS IDE $1095

FUJ26245SA . 525M8 12MS SCSI $1095

MIC1624D.... 668M8 15MS SCSI $1299

DECD5P3105 12GB 10MS SCSI $1895

MIC 1598D 1034MB 14MS SCSI 51799

MIC 1528 1334MB 14MS SCSI $2099

360K 720K 1.2MB 1.44MB

Floppy Drives

5.25" VjHT 529 M *—■■■!

3.5" 53.1 ^^=—pjJs^J

5.25" '/iHT $58 ■■■■ ■■

3.5" WHT S58

5.25" MOUNTING S5

Drive Controllers

4 Floppy 59

4 Floppy H:ah Denufy . .. ... . S49

2 Hord Drives MFM S49

2Hord Drives RLL $59

Hord Drive only $24

Hord and Floppy 1.1 Interface ... $34

DTC-3280(S.pp^rti7d'iv«s| $139

Adaptec 1542B S239

DTC6282-24 SU9

Hard and Floppy 529

Hard and F oppy w/O $39

HardDrive $9

Hard and Floppy $14

Modems CompvterPeripheraisjnc

2400 Internal,'/i Card brIBM PC, XT, AT and compatibles. COTT V.22bis, V.22 and Bell 212A Aulo diol/Aulo answer. Supports Comm 1 -4/IRQ 2-5, Software included. 539 2400 External same as above plus 8 LED status lights, requires serial port, S69

HIGH SPEID FAX MODEM

14.4Kbps, V32bis, Internal $239 [ BOCA 2400 Internal

V.42bisw/MNP5,only$89

FAX MODEM 9600bpi F

2400bps modem, Dala Fax Auto Sensing, COM 1 -4 IRQ 3,4,5 oi

Hayes "AT Commands'1, Mirror Software, Full or half Duplex, Pulsi

Tone $68

BDCg

FONT CARTIDGES FOR HP & COMPATIBLES

ComputerPeripheralsjnc.

Action Set 102 fonts, some as HP's Pro Collection, compatible with HP, Epson ect. Same os Pacific Data 589 Super Sel+ 425 fonts, HP's Pro Collection & HP's Microsoft. 5199 Deik Snl- 118 fonts for HP 500, 500C, 5 Io30pi. $114 Jet Page- postscript for HP 5199

SPECIAL SALE!

CD ROM, 600MB/300MS Headphone Jock and Volume Control, RCA Jacks for Slereo Audio Output, Daisychain Connoclion of up to Seven Drives. System Includes drive unit with power supply, CDCaddy, CD Audio Ploy So rhvare.SampleDisk, Documentation, SCSI interface Cord and Coble, and Microsoft Extensions.

CDS431PI Internal $399 CDX431X External $549

Took

ated Encyclopodia Nautilus, Selecfware, and fr&

irence Libra^ World Alias ring disk! Add $S9

iny CPU's

4B6DX/SX

80486 DX/25 5345

80486 DX/33 5449

80486 DX/50 5549

80486 DX-2/50... $499

386SX

803865X/I6... S29 386DX

80386 SX/20 S39 80386 DX/2Q $49 80486 DX-2/66... S799

80386 SX/25.. $49 803B6 DX/25 571 80486 SX/25 5149

80386SX/33 S59 80386 DX/33 581 80466 SX/20 5124

CPU UPGRADES

Kfnrtfrm

. r rfECHNOL^JVCOFiFOHATHiHi

your 286 into a 3861 True tasking, background operation r^NO^^OrlPStAT^J for Windows 3.0, OS/2 and 386 software. SX/NOW improves system performance by up to 350%. Available for; HP ES286/12 & ES 8, EPSON EQUITY He & II+, IBM ORIGINAL AT & XT/286, AGI I800A, 1800B & 1800C, AST PREMIUM 286; BRAVO 286, COMPAQ PORTABLE III, DESKPRO 286, NEC POWERMATE 286+ & PORTABLE*. IBM PS/2, 25/286, 30/286, 50, 50Z, 60.

IMlhl SX/NOW $349

33Mhx SX/NOW $399

ini^l coprocessors

m WW MACHJNES: ffiHi BASH) AU0K5: SOm WW MMMi:

K87-3SWHz $49 90287'iVHi 529 803S7-I6MH1 $49

9337-2 BMHi $69 802878MHz $39 80387-20MH2 ... $$9

8037-1 IQWfe S89 B02S7- lOWfc . . Sir 6038/-25MH/ Jo9

80287X1 $84 -e03B7.33MHi $79

Overdrives sow-xii $99 saw-sxu $79

60*86 SX16/SW0 U99 60337-SX20 $89

B01B6SX2S«FJX2S u» 80487-5X20 $399

SOIBi SX33 or DX33 J7J9

Cyrix

COPROCESSORS / CPU's

Plug compatible with Intel, three times fasterl 5 year warranty.

CYRIX 83D87-33Mhz $88

CYRIX 83DB7-40Mhi $99

CYRIX 83D87-SX25Mi-i/SX33 $88

CYRIX 804B6DLC-25 $148

CYRIX B0486DLC-33 S195

CYRIX 80486SLC25 $119

Largest selection of Memory! We won't be undersold!

wSk Packard Veetra Memory

MODEL MEMORY PARTS COST

486 PC; 486/25T; 33T (mslaal in poirs)

486S/20PC 1MB D2150A 568

4B6PC; 486/257, 33T (install in pairs)

386/25 PC; 486/20PC 2MB D2381A 598

486 PC; 486/25T; 33T(instoll in pairs)

486S/20PC 4MB D2151A S168

486S/20; 486PC; 25T; 33T|instoll in pairs)

3B6/25PC 8MB D2152A $298

IBM PS/2 Memory S&SSS

MODELS MEMORY PARTS COST

PS/1 ond386/SX 2MB 92F9935 $68

4MB 92F9694 5138

PS/2L40SX;N33SXLop'op 2MB 79F0999 $79

PS/2 L40SX; N33SX Lop-op 4MB 79F1000 $149

PS/2 L40SX; N335X Lop-op 8MB 79F1001 $289

PS/2 30/286; AdptBrd 1497259 512K 30F5348 535

PS/2 30/286,25/286. AdpiB-a 1497259. 2MB 30F5360 589 PS/2 35SX, LS, 40SX.70 E61. 061, 121 Adpl Brd 6450609; 34F301 1; 34F3077

X5tation 120 & 130 1MB 6450603 549

PS2 50, 50Z, 55SX, 60, 65SX 2-8MB 1497259 $259

6450609 PS/2 35SX, LS, 40SX, 50Z; 55SX; L5; 655X;LS; P70;70-E61;061; 121 Adpt Brd 6450609;

34F3011;34F3077XStaiian 120& 130 2MB 6450604 $74

PS/2 70-A21; A6I; B21; B61 2MB 6450608 $89

PS/2 35SX, LS, 405X, 55SX; 55SL; 65LS; 65SX Adpl Brd 6450609; 34F30I1; 34F3077

XStation 120 & 130 4MB 34F2933 $138

PS2/2 35SX; LS; 40SX 8MB 6450! 29 $298

PS2 70'sand80's 2-8MB 6450605 $249

2-14MB 34F3077 S289

4-16MB 34F30II S388

PS/2B0-A21;A3I;A61 4MB 6451060 S198

PS/280-041 1MB 6450375 $68

PS/2 80-1 11, 311; 121; 321,081; 161 2MB 6450379 $104

PS/2 90; 95 (Install in pairs] P75; 56; 57

(all models) PS/1 Pro 386SXM2123 2MB 6450902 590

4MB 6450128 $138 PS/2 90; 95, P75; 56, 57 (all models) RS/6000 Poworstalion/Pawcrserver 220

seriesPS/1 Pro 386SX M2123 8MB 6450130 $298

PS2 CL57SX 4MB $239

8MB $399

N51 Nolebook 2MB $169

4MB $239

8MB $399

Sun Micro Systems

MODEL MEMORY PARTS COST

Sparcstotion ELC 4MB MOD X104O $169

ELC; IPX; 3/60,80, 4/40,40,65 .16MB MOD XI16Q & U $489

Sparcl 4MBKIT X104C,G,H,Y 5159

SporcSLC4/20 4MBS1M X105Z $198

Sparserver 630 S670MP, 690 64MB KIT XI68A 52495

4/110 16MB KIT X116D $599

Sparc 11;4/40;60, 65

4/75; 4/330;4/370, 4/390 16MBKIT X116H,Y;WD 5599

4/330, 4/370;, 4/390 8MB KIT X108E $399

4/330; 4/370;, 4/390 32MB KIT N/A 51195

EZS Memory

486/33FT 4MB ZA-4200M2 $198

486/33ET 16MB ZA-4200-M8 $598

Z-386/20.25.33; 33E . . 1MB ZA-3600-ME $49 ZA-3800-ME

Z-386/20, 25; 33; 33E; 486/25E 4MB ZA-380O-MK $148

Z-24B;Z286LP,Z386SX 2MB Z-605-1 $93

ZNOTE 2MB PC-47-21 $149

4MB PC-49-21 $499

D-Ram Chips

DESCRIPTION 150NS 120NS 100NS 80NS 70NS 60NS

64X4 51.95 $2.25 52.45 $2.95

256X1 STATIC $1.95 $2.25

256X1 S.95 $1.05 $1.10 $1.15 51.45 52.20

256X4 $3,95 $4.45 $4.95 55.45 $5.95

1MEGX1 $2.95 $3.45 $3.95 54.45 54.75

IMEGXI STATIC $4.95 $5.25

IMEGX4 $17.00

Newer Technology

O-SMB 16Blf for 286and386, up to 24Mhz, Limm4.0ond Extended. Uses Dip chips.

OK 2MB 4MB 8MB

$19 $89 5159 5299

O- 1 6MB Lim/EMS 4.0, Expanded and Extended. True EMS 4.0 far any 286, 386 and 486 «/ up to 33Mh* CPU speed. Uses Simmi OK 2MB 4MB 8MB 16MB

549 5139 5204 $334 $549

TOSHIBA Laptop & Notebook Memory Laser Printer Memory

MODEL MEMORY PART# COST

T2000SX/T1000SE/LE/XE IMBCARD PA8311U 568 BrotherHL

T2000SX/T1000SE/IF/XE 2MBCARD PA83I2U 589 Canon LBP

T2000SX/T1000LE 4MBCARD PA8314U

T2000SX/11000LE 8MB CARD PA8315U

T1200XE 2MBBRD PA8306U

TlfiOO 2MB BRD PA8302U

T200OSXF/12IOCSX 2MB CARD PA2000U

T22O0SXE/T23OOSX 4MB CARD PA2001U

T22O0SXE/T22OOSX 8MBCARD PA2002U 5328 HPLaserJe!4 S199

T3100E 2MB MOD PA8341U $88 IBM Lose-4019 40I9EI3 5MBI $139

T3100SX 2MB BRD PA8308U $88 IBM Laser 4029 $129

T3100SX ... 4MBBRD PA8310U $138 KonicoLP3l 10/3115 598. $159

1MEG 2MEG 3MEG 4MEG 5MEG

$99.... $149 $249

$128 5'7B

S'68 Epson Actior- Loser II.. $95 $163 $229

5298 Epson 600C. Action LSR $109 $178

$92 Fujitsu 7100 & 7200 $199 .... $299

S7B HPDeskjei500.500C $64(256K)

$89 HP2, 2D. 3, 3D. 3P, 2P, 2P* 599 $159

5168 HPII1SI $49 $139

T3200SX 2MB MOD PA8307U

T3200 SX 4MB MOD PA8309U

T3200SXC 2MB MOD PA83I8U

T32O0SXC 4MBMOD PA8319U

T3200 3MB BRD PA7137U

T3300 SI 2MB CRD PA2006U

T3300SL 4MBCRD PA2007U

T3300 SI 6MB CRD PA200BU

T3300SL 16MB CRD PA2009U 5895 QMS 410 $109

T4400SX|5XC)(T6400SXCDXC] 2MB CRD PA2O03U SU5 StarLS04 $129

NEC90.290 $

S138 NEC95 $128

588 OKI400 $105

SUB Pockord Bell PB9500 $125

$148 POnoson.c44l0/4430 . . $119

$118 Panasonic 4420/44501 $89

$148 Panasonic 4450 $105

S235 Panasonic 4455

T4400 SX |SXC) (T6400 SXC DXC] 4MB CRD PA2004U $214 SlarScripi

T4400 SX [SXC) (T6400 SXC DXC] 8MB CRD PA2005U S375 Tosiba Pope Lose

T4400 SX (SXC) (T6400 SXf DXC] 16MB CRD PA2010U $745 fl

T5100 2MB BRD PA8301U $78 Tl XL/P51//PS35

T52OO/T5200C/T85OC 2MB MOD PA8304U $98

T520O/T5200C/T85OC 8MB MOD PA8313U $298

$'.28

$125

$168

$118

$198

$139

$149

$249

$179

$269

$178

,. $258

$109

... $168

$149

.. . $299

Call for more memory... This is just a sample of what we have in stock!

PARTS C05T

107331-001 538

107808-001 599

107811-001 5249

107332-001 $98

107651-001 5119

107653-001 $449

107654-001 $449

10B069-001 $248

108069W7! 5348

108071-001 $98

108070-001 $469

108072001 $249

113131-001 $59

113132 001 $158

113634 001 $218

112534001 $159

113645001 $208

115144-001 $102

116561-001 $289 116568-001S1498

fr.'hiklJi\ Memory

MODEL MEMORY

Portable III 512K

Portable III INTK

Portablolll FXPBD

Portable III 2MB

Portable386 1MB

Portable 386 . 4M3 EXP

Portable386 4M8DAGHT

Doskpro 386/16 1-2M8'

Doskpro386/16 2MB

Doskpro386/16 1MB

Deskpro386/l6 4 8M8

Deskpro386/16 4MB

Deskpro286E 386 20. 20L. 25. 25E 1MB

Deskpro 286E. 386 20, 20E. 25. 25E 4MB

Deskpro386S 4MB Board

4MB Module

Deskpro386-20E;25E 4MB

Deskpro 3B6/33; 386/331; 4B6/25;

33L,50L; Systempro 2MB

8MB 32MB

Doskpro 286N; 386N; 386SX/20; 20N, Portable 486c, Deskpro M , Syslempro LT

Series 129160001 1MB 1 186B8-001 $49

- 2MB 118689-001 384

LapiOp ■-■J.J./IJ 4MB 118690-001 $148

Memory ' ^ BMD '^^-t^1 S298

MODEL U MEMORY PARTS COST

Conturo Loplop 3/20 & 3/25 4MB 139498-001 $169

8MB 139499-001 $319

Conturo Notebook 2MB 139497 001 $88

Centura Notebook 4MB 139498-001 $148

Centura Notebook BMB 139499-00! $298

Compaq SLT/286 lMEGMOD 110235001 599

Compaq SLT/286 . ... 4MEG MOD 110237-001 $198

Compaq SLT/386 lMEGMOD 118303001 S89

Compoq SLT/386 .... 2MEGMOD 118304-001 $129

Compaq SLT/386 4MEGMOD 118305001 $165

CompaqLfe286 lMEGBRD 117081-001 $69

CompaqLta286 2MEG BRD 117081002 $99

Compaq Lto 286 4MEG BRD 117081-003 $148

Compaq Lto 386/20 ... lMEGMOD 121)25-001 $78

Compoq Lte 386/20 ..4MEGM0D 121125-002 $219

Compaq LteLite/70 25 .. 2MEGMOD 129769-001 $148

Compaq Lte Lite/20 25 4MEG MOD 129769-002

Compaq Lie Lite/2C, 25 8MEG MOD 129769003

IHSB Memory Boards

Baca AT Plui (Brat 90 uses 1MEG Simms) OK-BMEG Board, 4.0 LIM compalible. Conventional, Expanded & Extended Memory, Supports D05, OS/2, UM/EMS & EEMS OK-S94,2MEG-S159,4MEGS249, BMEG-S369 Brat 80 (uses Dip Chips) S79

BralAT + l/OParSerO-4MEG5H8 OKSII8 2MEG5184 4MEGS250 Bocaram/2Plu* for PS/2 IdBilMemoryforolllBMMCA Systems, DOS & OS/2 UM EMS 4.0 Support. 2-8MB (uses 1MB Simms). 2MB-5179 4MB-5279 8MB-S399

More Laptop Memory

MODEL MEMORY PARTS

ALR Ventura 16&20 1MB 12407980

ALRVen-urc 16&20 4MB 12407970

AT&T Safari 2MB 37650

AT&T Safari 4MB 37651

BondweNB 310 1MB 23050-09100

Commodore 2MB 390850-01

Dell 3)6, 320LT 2MB

Dell NL20 & NL25 2MB 310-3213

Dell212N&320N 2MB N/A

Everex Tomoo LX, LX20 . . 2MB 00160

EverexCorrier 2MB 00263-00

EpsonN33 4MB A8085U

Grid 1500 4MB 525B7

Gridl450SX 2MB 6200203

Goldstar GS570.386SX 16 . 1MB N/A

Goldstar GS520.3B6SX16 ...,4MB N/A

Packard Boll. Mognovox. M.isubo 1 MB N/A

Packard Bell, Mognovox. M.lsubo 2MB N/A

Packard Bell. Mognovox. M.lsubo 4MB N/A

Panosor-cCF170 1MB

Samsung Notemode' 386S . . 2MB SNM002

Samsung Noiomostur 386S 4MB SNM004

Sanyo 17NB. 18NB 2MB MBC-NBMEM2

Sharp 6220 1MB CE-621B

Sharp6640 2MB N/A

Sharp 470CMZ-200 1MB CE-471

Sharp 8501 Cobrslor 2MB N/A

Tandon NBE 386SX . .. 1MB N/A

Tandon N8E 386SX 4MB N/A

Tl Travelmate 2000, 3000 1MB N/A

Tl Travelmole 3000 2MB N/A

$10!

Simm Modules (Call for current prices)

DESCRIPTION 100N5 SONS 70NS 60NS

256X9 $9 $10 $11 $15

1MEGX3 $32 $35 $41

1MEGX9 $29 $35 $37 S44

4MEGX9 $139 $149 $159

16MEG X 9 $984

256X36 lMEG|72P,n]... . $50

512X362MFGI72Pin] $85 $95

1X36 4MEG(72P.n) $139 $149 $159

2X36 8MEG(72Pin| $289 .. $298 $329

4X36 16MEG{72Pin].. .. $549 $579... $619

COHPWERPERlPllERALS.tSC Memory Boards Far 286 and 386'*, 16 Bit, 2MB Expandable to 4MB. (Uses 1MB x 1 Dips) Works with IBM AT, 386 and compatibles. Expanded, Extended, 4.0 Lim compatible

2MEG J69

4MIO 119

Call today!

ORDERS ONLY

800-982-2925

TECHNICAL/CUSTOMER SERVICE/ORDER STATUS:

(702)294-0204 FAX (702) 204-1168

FAX ORDERS WELCOME

WE PURCHASE EXCESS INVENTORY! CALL OR FAX LIST

THMS: NO SURCHABGf FOB MC/V1SA/AE S.'llir 11:. n|-,(v .iro r*>n .ofurvlahl,,. NET 30 Actopld. Pu.choa od,,, l,om t Go^rnmcnl Agonc^Po.wnal Owll. CCO odd IS 00 |Ca>h!m, ,

hmw4* *m *m we accem int^rnationai orders

684 Wells Road

Boulder City, NV

89005

NEVADA

mm

300 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 250 on Inquiry Card.

BUSINESS REPLY MAIL

FIRST CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 42 HIGHTSTOWN. NJ

POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE:

EVTE

Subscription Department

P.O. Box 558

Hightstown, N.J. 08520-9409

NO POSTAGE

NECESSARY

IF MAILED

IN THE

UNITED STATES

...I..I,.1,1...1.111,.,1.1...In III,,, 1,1,,, .11,

ytfZ&fi.

:;;>;:.

;,."■;;;, " ■■■■

„OT1

f Enter my one-year (12 issues) sub' scription to BYTE for only $24.95.*

I'll save 40% off the single copy price. Plus, I'll also receive

BYTE's Annual Special Issue FREE with my paid subscription.

If at any time I'm not satisfied with BYTE, I may cancel for a

full refund on all unmailed copies.

□ Payment enclosed □ Bill me later

name

COMPANY

I ADDRESS..

CITY.

..STATE ZIP..

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Basic subscription rate is $29.95. (Mexico, $29.95 payable in U.S. funds). Above rates are for U.S. delivery only. Please see table of contents for international subscription rates.

•Plus applicable state and local tax, if any.

IB3101C

If it were any faster, it'd be a flight simulator.

Hit the accelerator in World Circuit and you'll really fly.

Scorching through all 16 demanding Grand Prix racetracks at speeds of up to 200 mph, you'll race your Formula One against 25 independent computercontrolled drivers.

You'll fend off challengers in the Phoenix Grand Prix. Overtake rivals on the streets of Monaco. Or negotiate savage hairpin turns on the Suzuka Circuit. And you'll do it all with a slick line-up of features.

Features like realistic Formula One handling and performance. Authentic cockpit instruments. Three racing options. Joystickcontrollable driving functions for superior control. And customizing options to design your own Formula One racer.

All of which will have you graciously accepting the Grand Prix World Champion trophy in no time.

World Circuit from MicroProse. Catch it if you can.

MCRD PROSE

ENTERTAINMENT . SOFTWARE

Seriously Fun Software

r

~~ i

To get our free catalog, call 1 -800-879-PLAY Mon.-Fri„ 8:30 am-5:00 pm EST

or fill out the coupon and mail it to: MicroProse Software, Inc.

180 Lakefront Drive • Dept. D10 • Hunt Valley, MD 21030-2245

Name:

~l

L

Address: City:

State:

.Zip:_

_NAE |

S 1992 MicroProse Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Circle 252 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 301

Micro-International Inc.

since 1984, world-wide distribution of quality computer systems and components

486DX2, 66 MHz,

486DX2, 50 MHz,

$2970

$2640

486DX, 33 MHz,

386DX, 33 MHz,

$2440

$2060

Don't settle for 386SX performance. With 386DX and 486DX power, external keyboard and VGA ports, it is the only computer you will ever need.

HCP Power Notebook Standard Features

VGA graphics with 32 gray-scale supertwist back-lit LCD screen

4 MB RAM installed, total memory capacity is 16 MB

120 MB hard disk, 1 5 ms access time ■ Licensed DR-DOS 6.0

1.44 MB floppy drive ■ Two serial, one parallel port

Three-hour battery ■ External numeric keypad included

Carrying case ■ External VGA and keyboard connections

Optional Features

Docking station with 2 x 16 bit slots $ 160

Auto cigarette adapter $ 40

Memory upgrade to 16 MB $380

Memory upgrade to 8 MB $ 160

Hard drive upgrade to 21 0 MB Additional battery set Additional battery charger Additional AC power adapter

$200 $ 90 $ 30 $ 50

Micro-International, Inc.

iAH^ifiS^S

10850 Seaboard Loop

Houston, Texas 77099

National Sales 800/967-5667 Houston 7 1 3/495-9096

Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. M-r; 1 1:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sat. (Central Time)

All systems and components include a one-year warranty; 30-day money-back guarantee.

Price reflects cash or credit card payment. Major corporation purchase orders accepted.

302 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 260 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 261).

Celebrate 10 Years l Seriously Fun Software With MicroProse.

■

>^»fc.

■

M

^-^m^

MicroProse is proud to celebrate 10 years of computer gaming excitement. And we' re giving you hundreds of reasons to join in the celebration.

For the next several months, you'll find hundreds of 10th Anniversary coupons inside specially-marked MicroProse games.

Every time you purchase hot new MicroProse titles like F-15 Strike Eagle® III, The Ancient Art of War in the Skies™, or Rex Nebular And The Cosmic Gender Bender™, these money-saving coupons will bring you big savings on products and services from a wide variety of manufacturers. They'll even let you receive special discounts on select gift items from MicroProse.

Circle 253 on Inquiry Card.

So look for the 10th Anniversary savings sticker on the outside of your next MicroProse game. It's our Way of saying "thanks" for helping make our first 10 years a decade of serious fun.

MCRO PROSE

ENTERIA.INME N T • SO F T W A RE

Seriously Fun s

180 Lakefront Drive • Hunt Valley, Maryland 21030-2245 © 1992 MicroProse Software. Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

JANUARY 1993 "BYTE 303

mmm

IDE. IDE IDE.

IDE.

IDE IDE. IDE.

Call Call Call Call

Hard Drives

Western

High performance

"Caviar" series with 1

height, Cache Flow™ and 32K buffer.

AC280 80Mb F 3.5- 14ms

AC2120 125Mb r 3.S- 14ms

AC2200200Mb I' 3.5" 14ms

Maxtor

7080A 80Mb 1" 3.5" 15ms 7120A 120Mb 1" 3.5" 15ms DCT213A213Mb 1" 3.5" 15ms MX1240I.2Gb V3.5" 15ms Panther 1.2Gb SCall Panther 1.7Gb Call

Conner Peripherals

30104 120Mb 3.5-19ms IDE....Call 3204 200Mb 3.5" 16ms IDE....Call Call for Quantum, Micropolis, Seagate. Controllers from Ultrastor, Always, WD etc.

Backups

Colorado

DJ10 120Mb Tape Drive internal.. 199 DJ20 250Mb Tape Drive internal.. 268 QFA700 700Mb Tape Drive internal.. 779

Syquest (with cartridge)

44Mb kit SQ555, SQ400, SS01(16brt) .419

44Mb external 499

88Mb kit SQ5110, SQ800, SQ0K16 bit) 529 88Mb external 629

GrassRoots Floptical

Floptical 21 Mb (external) Call

Floptical 21 Mb (internal) Call

Floppy Disk Drives

Toshiba

ND04DG 360K 5.25" HH PC/XT 59

ND08DEG 1.2Mb 5.25" HH PC/AT ....72 ND3561GR 1.44Mb 3.5" HH w/AT Kit . 72

ACP

1.2 Mb 5.25". 66 2.88Mb 3.5' Call

1.44Mb 3.5" ....67 All in One 3.5/5.25 149 Compaq 1/3 ht. Floppy Call

MultiMedia

Sony

7205 CD Laser Library w/six CD's 499

Creative Labs

Complete all-in-one MPC compatible upgrade kit includes: Panasonic CD Drive, Sound Blaster Pro, five CD's. Microsoft

MultiMedia Kit Int/Ext 539/599

Sound Blaster Reg/Pro 109/199

MediaVision

CDPC Subsystem (external) 1079

Pro 16 Multimedia System 968

Pro Audio Spectrum 16 199

NEW! MediaVision Fusion CD ext. CD ROM with Sound, Speaker and 4 CDs: Compton's Carmen, Ultima, Wing Comm 429

Compton's Encyclopedia CD

Standard version

Interactive version, NEW!

-The Superstate with Super Deals!

.169 .249

Procom cd rom ant) 299

Input Devices

ACP 3-button Mouse (limited supply) 14.95

CH Products Flightsfick 49

Mouseman Combo/Cordless 75/88

Logitech Trackman serial/bus 69/72

Logitech Trackman 2 (combo) 84

Logitech Trackman Portable 99

Logitech Scanman 256 267

Microspeed PC-Trac ser/bus 79/89

Video Graphics Cards

ATI

Graphics Ultra w/l Mb 298

Graphics Vantage w/1Mb 225

VGA Wonder XL24 w/l Mb 148

VGA Stereo FX/512K 214

Diamond

SpeedSTAR Stealth w/l Mb 239

Speedstar 24X 24-Bit Color w/l Mb 169

Orchid Fahrenheit 1280w/lMb ...275

Paradise

Windows Accelerator w/l Mb 245

$269

BELOW COST!

286/12

80286/12 CPU • 3.5" Floppy • 1 Mb 101 Keyboard • Monitor Extra

4> Cardinal,. $0©95 Modem Bundle »*

2400 Baud, FREE Prodigy Software

Free software gets you on-line fast

Chips and SIMM's

RAM Chips I 25

41256-100 256K 100ns DIP 1.49.. 1.35

41256-80 256K 80ns DIP 1.59.. 1.49

414256-80 256Kx4 80ns DIP 4.79 ..4.59

1Mb-100 IMbxl 100ns DIP 4.05 ..3.95

lMb-80 1Mb x I 80ns DIP 4.49 ..4.39

Call for VIDEO RAMS & CACHE RAMS Over 20,000,000 IC's in-stock including We Specialize in 486DX/25 & 33 Upgrades

New Low Prices!

SIMM Modules i J2

4210O0A9B-80 IMbx9 80ns Call ....Call

421000A9B-70 IMbxv 70ns Call ....Coll

424000A9B-80 4Mbx9 80ns Coll ....Call

424000A9B-70 4Mbx9 70ns Call ....Call

41256A9B-80 256Kx9 80ns Call

42100OA8B-80 IMbxB 80ns Call ....Call

4240O0A8B-80 4Mbx8 80ns Call ....Call

Math Coprocessors

AMD 80C287...increase your 286 PC

performance, 80C287-10 $59.95

IBM 8087 Genuine w/manual.... $ 29.95 Intel "OverDrive"-/?educea7 Call

80287'S 80387SXS

80287-10 89 80387SX-16 69

80287-20 79 80387SX-20 78

80287XL 88 80387SX-25 78

80387's 80387SX-33 88

80387DX-16 79 80487SX's

80387DX-20/25/33 84 80487SX-20 469

80387DX-40 119 80487SX-25 489

80387SL 99 RapidCod 269

Memory Upgrades

Notebooks

Compaq Contura, 4MbS 19B|

Compaq Lite, 4Mb 239 \

HP95LX Palmtop. 2Mb .. Call I

IBM CL57SX, 4Mb 345

Everex Carrier, 2Mb .

Toshiba T4400, 4Mb 218

Toshiba T6400, 4Mb 21."

Zenith 2-Note, 2Mb 168 I

Laser Printers-"0"K Boards

HP III/IIID/IIIP/IIP/IIP+/II/IID 49.95

Panasonic 44 ] 0/30 or 4420/10.. 69.95/49.95

Oki400 49.95 Oki 800/20 59.95

Oki 830/40 79.95 IBM 4019/29 49.95

NEC 69.95 QMS 410 69.95

Computer Upgrades

AST Bravo 3/2557SMb

Compaq Proliner 3/255, ZS„

Compaq Proliner 4/33, 2Mb 98

IBM PS/2 90.95, 2Mb 89

Dell 420/25/33/50SE, 4Mb 208

Call tor NEC, HP, Zenith, Leading Edge.

Apple Powetbook

140/170-6Mb

s275

.$318

with Modem

WINbest fax 96

Windows for FAX and MODEM. DOS modem software, FAXography, COMit for Windows... 2400 MODEM and 9600 FAX (int.)

WINbest tax96 89

fax96 w/l-liner 159

Advanced®!?

Motherboards E»

Advanced® Boards Nl^

286 -12MHz S 69 95

386SX -25MHz 119 95

386DX -40MHz 199.95

486SX -20MHz 199.95

486DX2-50M-I/ 699 95

486DX2-66MHz 999.95

486DX-50MHz Call

PC6781 SHA

RP»

386SL/20 |

Ol

NoteBook

• Only 4.9 LBS.! ■

• 2Mb RAM

. 80Mb IHD am

$1699 HI

Advanced • with AMDHigh Performance CPU's Computers 'plus SEIKO Trinitron Monitors

• OPTI or ACC Chipsets • 1 Year Warranty

■ AMI BIOS . Enhanced 101 Keyboard • IDE Interface |

• Free Accounting Software

...all Advanced Systems include:

Advanced Computers S*A

486/33 Complete Color System 0%^

Includes

• 486DX/33 w/256k Cache

• 4 Mb RAM

• 512K VGA Card

1.44 Mb Floppy Disk IDE Controller 101 Keyboard 14" SVGA .28 Color Monitor

ACP's Sale Price

$1499

photo may vary

•105MbHardDrive

Call for additional configurations... Local Bus,. 386SX, 486DX/50 and Seiko Trinitron Monitors

Call for hard drive, Tower, Mini-Tower and other configurations.

386SX/16 Desktop System

1 Mb RAM • 40 Mb Hard Drive I 3.5" 1.44Mb FDD • VGA Card ' Includes Keyboard ' and more!

$499

Call ACP for Notebooks...

COMPAQ

TOSHIBA

386SX/20 Notebook

40 Mb Hard Drive | 1 Mb RAM • VGA LCD

$999

Software Sale...up to90% Off! 35,000 Packages in stock

CompuServe 12.95 Coinbase 9.95

Life & Death 9.95 Computer Comic 9.95

DesertStorm 9.95 Complete Craps 9.95

Personal Biz Base .... 12.95 Pro Football Analyst . 9.95

Stickbear 9.95 Hdc Window Apps .12.95

Dvorak on Typing 9.95 30 Min. Negotiator.. 12.95

Bible Trivia 12.95 Retirement Planner. 12.95

Call for a complete list..

IBM OS/2

Special Purchase

04G1049 OS/2 Extended, w/server. List 1995 ACP 1159 04G1051 OS/2 LanServer

List 795 ACP 429

04G1091 OS/2 Ext. Admin.

kit. List 165 ACP 97

10G 5999 OS/2 2.0 Upgrade List 149 ACP 79

All 4 for only $499!

ummii

$77

77

Symantec

Norton Antivirus v2.0

Cure infected systems plus on-going preventative care. Includes Norton's 24-hour Virus FAX-Line for new virusupdates.

Symantec Q&A . Database v4.0 S J /Q

ACP Price only I I M

Norton Desktop for DOS 99

(Quantities Limited)

H WinPrinter

tn 800

(J! WWW . postscript

f*n * 800 dpi • GDI Direct -iis • 50 fonts • HP PCL

"3 printers in 1"

M295

^ [Lm I LaserMaster

b I

Windows Accelerator

Increases

Performanci

flDiamon

Computer Systems, Inc. ^^

Speed Star 24X

...make your 386 perform like a 486

• Windows Accelerator

■ 15X faster than SVGA ACP

•1Mb RAM onlv

• WD90C31 Chip - ' !

• 5 Year Warranty ■24 bit color for

16 .7 million colors

w>i ny

$169

ors " ^* M

New! OPTIMA® 24+FAX 96

Now you can get a 2400bps V.24bis data modem plus a 9600 bps FAX with Hayes superior performance and compatibility- Ail at a great price. Also includes SmartCom EZ and SmartCom FAX software.

OPTIMA® 24+ FAX 96 $ 158

OPTIMA* 96 +FAX 96 call

OPTIMAL44 + FAX 144 475

SII#"

Seiko CM 1450

New low price on an incredibly sharp SVGA flicker-free, non-interlaced multi-scanning monitor. Features finest quality Trinitron high-contrast black tube. .25mm aperature grille and 1024x768 resolution.

CM 1450 14" $ 449

CM 1760 17" (,25mm) 1149

or try Seiko's new 20"

CM 2070 LR 20" 2299

ACP is now a Canon® Authorized Reseller...

NEW LOW PRICES!

BJ10E Portable ...$29995

BJ10EX $30995

BJ 300 BubbleJet $44995

Advanced Computer Products, inclSB

1310 F. Edinger, Santa Ana, CA 92705 • FAX 714-558-8849 • Toll-Free 1-800-FONE ACP • Sales 714-558-8813 MMC

Prices subject to change without notice. No surcharge on credit card. Credit cards not charged until we ship. 100% risk Iree return guarantee! II you are not 100% satisfied just relurn insured within 15 days complete with all materials in new resaleable condition with original invoice. ACP will immediately exchange produc! or issue ACP credit less shipping for luture purchase. No Returns on software Special Purchase

Circle 238 on Inquiry Card.

IBM ▼

PS/1 286, 386SX

2MB 92F9935 S99

PS/2 SO/286, (mansion board 1097259

2MB Kit J0F5560 S8S

PS/2 35SX; IS, 00SX, 5DZ, 55SX; IS, 6SSX; IS, 70 « XStatlon

1MB 6450605 $09 2MB 6450601 $79

PS/2 70-A21; A61; B21; B61

2MB 6450608 $79

PS/2 !5SX; IS, 40SX, S5SX; IS, 65SX; IS, 59FS0XX £ XStatlon

1MB S0F293J or 87F9977 S1S5

PS/2 35SX; IS, MSX

8MB 6950129 S2S9

PS/2 90, 95, and P75 (Install In pans)

1MB 6150128 S135 8MB 6150130 $289

Expansion boards for SO, soz, 55SX, BO, 65SX

2-BMB Wltll 2MB 1197259 $269

2-16MB Willi 2MB 6150609 $309

Expansion boards for all models 70 and 80

2-11MB witll 2MB 31F3077 $329

zenith

zenith z-586/20; 2$; $3 and 33E

1MB Z13800ME $19 1MB ZA3800MK $119

Zenith Z-S8BSX, 286PL+, Z-LS

2MB Kit 2-605-1 $99

Zenith 186/33ET; 25E

1MB ZIU200M2 $189 16MB ZA1200M8 .... $S99

Hewlett-Packard

Vectra 0S/16S; 20PC, RS/20PC; 25PC, 20C

1MB Kit 01512101016121 S1E9

Vecta 386/16N, 386/20N

2MB 02106A $99 8MB 021011 $319

vectra 186 PC (install In pairs!

1MB D215U $169 8MB D2152A ... $319

vectra 386/25,186/25T, 33T (install In pairs!

2MB 023811 $99

Compaq

Prollnea 3/25; !/25;s 2MB 111738-001 ....$90 8MB ' 111712-001... $285

DeslPro 386-20, 20E aod 25

1MB Module 115132-001 $159

1MB Bnard 113615-001 $219

DesiPro 3B6S/16

1MB Module 112S31-0O1 $159

1MB Board 11S631-0O1 $229

DestPro 286H, 58611; I Series; 3B6SX/20,20N; Portable 186c; M series expansion boards; SystemPro IT series

1MB 118608-001 .... $19 2MB 118689-001 .... $79 1MB 118690-001... $135 8MB 112877-001... $299

DestPro 386-35,186-33, and SfstemPro

2MB 115111-001 .... $99 8MB 116561-001... $289

DestPro 3S6M, 186M, sistempro IT (52-Bit Exp. hoard)

2-61MB K/2M 129160-001 $359

PoiKtmate 286/12; SX/16 and sx/20

2MB Kit OP-110-8103

Powermate 386/20; 25

2MB 1PC-H655 $329 8MB APC-HB56

Powermate 386/33E and 16E/25E 2MB 0P-110-51O1 $199

AST

Bravo 36E-SX, WS/286, 386

2MB 500510-002 ... $89 1MB 500510-008 .. $179 Premium 386/25; 33; 331, Premium II386SX/16; 20

1MB W/WPB 500780-003; 002 $59

Bravo 1/33; 186/25; Premium II; TE; Server SE1/33

2MB W/WPB 500718-001; 780-005 $119

Premium II (All), Premium 386/551 and 386SXV16

1MB W/WPB 500780-001 $145

All Premium 386/3ST, 9S6/33T, server SE 1/33, Bravo 186 8MB W/WPB 500780-001 $289

Please call for any upgrade not listed.

sfdngston

ISh'lAwVTECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

Turn your 286 into a 3S6 with the SX/Nowf!

For windows enhanced mode, true multitasking, background operation for windows 3.1, OS/2, and 586 software. SkVNowl Includes a Math coprocessor socket, 8Kb cache and Improves system performance by up to 350%.

sx/Novu! is now available for: HP ES286/12 & ES/8

Epson Equity lie and Epson Equity IIPIus </ IBM Original AT and XT/286 i/ AGI1800A, B, C • AST Premium 286 and Bravo 286 V Compaq Portable and DeskPro 286 NEC PowerMate 286+; Portable-. IBM PS/2 25/286, 30286, 50, 50Z, & 60 • Zenith Z-2I8

"Kingston Technology Corp.'s SX-Nom! is

the undisputed performance champ."

■PC Magazine, Oct 29,1991

25MHZ SX/Now! _. $299

3JMHZ SX/NOW! jdgf $529

Add a Math-co for ?$L. $70

Laptop & Notebook Memory I

AST

Texas Instruments

Premium Exec Notebook 1MB

$69

TravelMate 2000 1MB

...$S9

1MB

.... $129

TravelMate 3000, IfflnSX 2MB

....$79

Compaq

contura 3/20 anil 3/25 J~4(V ™

.... $199

TravelMate 1OO0 1MB

Toshiba

$219

.... $129

T1000SE; IE; XE; 2000; 2000SX; SXe 2MB

...$B5

LTE286HoteuO0ll *V^ 2MB

$99

and T1800 satellite Series 1MB

.. $169

1MB

.... $199

8MB

.. $319

lte 386S/20 notebook 1MB

$99

T1200XE, 1600, and 3100E 2MB

... $B9

1MB

.... $199

T3100SX, 3200SX, and sxc Portables 2MB

... $89

HE lite 20; 25 notebook 2MB

.... $139

1MB

.. $119

1MB

.... $229

T3200 3MB

.. $119

SIT 386 Notebook 1MB

$B9

T3300SL Notebook 2MB

.. $139

1MB

.... $199

1MB

.. $189

Dell

tuoo and teioo, sx, sxc Notebook 2MB

1MB

$159 .. $1B9

NL20 and NL25 Notebook j^M, 218

$179

212N anil 320N laptop -^Ntf*-- 1MB

$89

....$95

212N and 320N; N+ *y^ 2MB

.... $129

T5200; T5200C and TB500 2MB

.... $92

Everex

8MB

.. $299

Tempo IX Notebook 2MB

$89

Zenith

Tempo Carrier Notebook 2MB

$119

2-Note Notebook jFt$g 2B!

.. $169

IBM

.. $199

PS/2 CLS7SX color Notebook J^&V 1MB

j&R? 8MB

.... $319

MastersPort 386SL, SIC, SLe H*1^ 2MB

.. $109

.... $669

MastersPort 386SX 2MB

... $119

N51 Notebook Mill ^^ 2MB

$179

SupersPort SX; 286e; SHmsPort 2MB

... $139

1MB

.... $219

SupersPort 2S6; 2S6e 1MB

.... $99

U0SX and N33SX Laptop 1MB

$135

SupersPort 286e; silmsport IMS

..$279

.... $285

TurbosPort 386; 386e 1MB

.... $89

NEC

Other Upgrades

llltrallte III, SI725C 2MB

$119

Grid 1150SX 2MB

... $119

1MB

$219

Grid 1500 Series 1MB

llltrallte SI/20, Sl/20? 2MB

$119

Panasonic CF170, CF270, CF370 1MB

....$59

6MB

$299

Sanyo and zeos Notebook Memory 2MB

.... $99

ProSpeed 286, 3865X-16 1MB

$109

Magnavox and Packard Bell Notebook 1MB

.... $89

1MB

$209

1MB

... $199

Prospeed386 2MB

$119

sharp 6220 Notebook 1MB

... $109

8MB

$119

we now carry batteries (or most notebook and laptop systems.

Laser Printer Memory 1

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet IIP, III, IMP, mid

Brother lll-s, SE, 80, SV

2MB 33175B $99 1MB 33177B

... $159

1MB MB-B10 $129 2MB MB-820

.$169

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II and IID

Panasonic mo and 1130

2MB 331UB $102 1MB 33115B ....

... $160

2MB KX-P111 $119 1MB PN N/A

.$189

Hewlett Packard LaserJet nisi, IV, and XI300

Panasonic U50I and 1120

1MB C2063A $19 1MB C2065A ....

... $119

2MB KH-P111 $119 1MB PN N/A

.$1B9

Hewlett Packard DeskJet 500, sooc

Okllaser 100

$59

1MB 70011701 $79 2MB OKI PN N/A.

Texas Instruments MicroLaser and XL

$99

IBM Laser 1029 All Models

2MB 1183331 $109 1MB 1183335 ...

Canon LBP-1

$129

...$19

Epson EPL 6000

1MB S65-2230 $119 2MB PN N/A ....

... $169

2MB IBS101 $99 1MB PN N/A

.$169

Canon LBP-III and 8III Plus

Epson ActJonlaser II, epl-booo

2MB 563-2350 $219 3MB SB3-2360.

... $299

2MB PNN/A $169 1MB PN N/A

.$259

$569

Mfe Megahertz

-'corporation

Internal FAX/Modems for

AST, Compaq, IBM, Sharp, Tl, Toshiba, and Zenith laptops. 114 FAX/"ia.4 Modem

v.32 Modem with V.i2/v.l2bls send/Ret Fax as low as

Megahertz modems include:

• Easy Installation with illustrated user's guide

• software included • Free technical support

• Full 5-year warranty • Hayes compatible

Internal Modems

2100bps w/v.Ubls mnp-5 as low as $169

Internal FAX/Modems with Send & Receive

2179600bps W/V.12bis mnp-5 as low as $219

96/9G00bpS W/V.120IS MNP-5 as low as $169

For all laptop and Notebook computers Pocket FAX/Modem with Send & Receive

2!/9600bps w/V.42bls s/R Fax as low as $249

9679600bps w/V.12bis S/R Fax as low as $469

Expansion Boards

BDCH

illlfllll

Baalim XT 512X-2MB lor XT and PS/2 25/286 and 30/286 machines. Provides iim 4.0 expanded memory only.

W/512X $129 W/1.5MB $1B1

W/1MB $162 W/2MB $199

BocaRam AT Plus 2-8MB memory board for 80286 & 80386 IBM compatible machines running up to 33MHz. Get conventional, expanded (KM EMS 1.0) and/or extended memory, supports OS/2.

W/2MB $169 W/6MB $299

W/1MB $229 W/BMB $369

Oocanam at l/o plus 2-1MB memory board, same as AT Plus with 1 serial and 1 parallel port, uses IM x I dram chips.

W/2MB $199 W/1MB $279

Video Cards

Boca Research

Basic VGA I256KI 610 X ISO 16 color $65

Super VCA I512K11821X 76816 color $119

Super X VGA 1MB 10211768 256 COlOt $159

Diamond Computer

stealth 21 21 bit, 16.7 million colors $209

speedSTAR 21X True color card $169

lack Guarantee

Buy with confidence!

First Source International

'The Only Source for Computer Upgrades"

• 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

• 100% compatible in form, fit, and function

• User installable products

• Installation instructions included

• Toll-free technical support

• Thousands of items in stock

• Manufacturer's warranties

• Corporate PO's, APO/FPO's

• Government & Educational pricing

• International orders welcome

• Special volume pricing • 2il-hour fax line

• Same day shipping ■ Overnight delivery available

• Visa, MC, AMEX, and Discover accepted

• No surcharge on credit cards

• Call for any items not listed

• We'll meet or beat any advertised price

Toll free from anywhere in the united states or Canada

800/535-5892

International

714/588-9866

Facsimile

714/588-9872

Business Hours Monday-Friday, 8AM-5PIYI Saturday, 10AM-3PM, P.S.T.

'V'H-V**

Mail orders to: First Source international, Inc.

36 Argonaut, Suite 140

Aliso Viejo, California 92656 USA

Terms and Conditions

Memory products are third party, manufacturers' part numbers arefor your convenience. Freight charges are non-refundable. A ZO% restocking fee will be charged on all non-defective returns, unopened, and refused or cancelled orders. Items must be returned nfthin 15 days rritfi original documentation and packaging. A Returned Merchandise. Authorization number Is required. Prices and availability are subject to change without notice. Purchase prices at the time of order are final. first Source international cannot be responsible for errors in typography or photography. We will beat any advertised price valid only on Identical brands, offer not good for SIMMs or DRAM. Trademarks and registered trademarks are of their respective companies.

CALL THE UPGRADE EXPERTS TOLL FREE 800/535-5892

Circle 248 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 249).

Network

3COM

3C503 Elherlink 11/ 5-pack 189/799

3C503TP 10 Base T 229

3C505B Ethernet Plus 579

3C507 Etherllnk 16 279

3C523 MCA Ethernet 299

ARTISOFT

Starter Kit 2mbps/AE2 325/459

Starter KUAE3 539

Lan Cards 2mbps/AE2 129/199

Lan Card AE3 229

Central Station 419

INTEL

Ether Express 16TP/EISA 125/539

Token Express 16/4 ISA/MCA 499

Token Express 16/4 EISA 649

NOVELL

Novell Lite 1.0/starter kit 69/409

Netware 2.2 5/10 User 519/1099

Netware V.2.2-50 user 1989

Netware 3.11 20/100 User 1899/3648

Netware 3.11-10 User 1375

NE1000/NE2000 129/155

NE 3200 669

Access Server 1595

SMC

PC130/PC130E 75/99

PC600WS/PC600FS 129/209

Ethercard 8 bit/16 bit 129/149

Token Card 8 bit/16 bit 349/399

10 Base-T Card 8 bit/16 bit. .. 185/205

3608TP 10BT concentrator 409

3512TP Ether.10BT cone.12 port 709

THOMAS CONRAD

Network Software

Borland D Base IV LAN-1 user 249

Borland Qualro Pro V.4.0 ntwkable.. 319

Close-Up Lan 2user/8 user 249/479

Foxpro Lan 6 user 559

Lotus 2.4 server/node 559/339

Lotus 3.1 server/node 625/409

Norton PC Anywhere V.4.5 Lan 325

Peachtree Network Accounting 489

Procomm Plus Network 5 pack 325

Untouchable Network 429

Word Perfect Office- 5 user 289

Wordstar 2000 LAN-3 pack 259

X Tree Virus Safe Lan 379

X Tree Net/ for Unix 319/189

Aldus Pagemaker 499

Carbon Copy/Close Up 129/109

Clarion ProDeveloper 449

Clipper 5.0 489

Corel Draw 365

Dbase IV 1.5 419

Foxbase/FoxPro 259/499

Framemaker 549

Freelance Plus 309

Harvard Graphics 369

Lotus 2.4/3.1 Plus 345/389

Lotus Symphony 469

Lotus for Windows 415

Smart Suite Bundle 449

Microsoft Windows 3.1/Word 89/219

Microsoft Word for Windows 299

Microsoft Excel for Windows 319

Norton Desktop for Windows 115

Norton Utilities 6.0 115

Norton Antivirus 85

Peachtree III Complete DQ 189

Paradox call

Q&A4.0 219

Quattro Pro 299

Ventura Desktop Publishing 479

WordPerfect 5.1 255

Word Perfect for Windows 259

Wordstar 7.0/2000+ 259/225

After 9 Years, We're Still Doggedly

Determined to Give the Best Doggone

Service and Prices to PC Users!

1-800-438-6039

Notebooks

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS

3000-60/80/120 2025/2195/2589

3000 Win SX-60/80 1750/2339

3000 Win SX/120 2699

TM4000 Win- 4MB

SX/16 W/80MB HD 2179

SX/25 w/ 120MB HD 2399

DX/25W/ 120MB HD 2899

AST 3SSSX-20

43V • w/ 40MB -2MB 1995

63V • w/ 60MB • 2MB 2299

NEC

Ultrallte SX20 w/ 60 2539

Ultrallte SX20 w/ 80 2599

Ultrallte SX25 color w/ 80 4999

EPSON

NBSL-20/25 1525/1775

W/60/80/120 MB HD 389/542/756

Monitors

NEC MULTISYNC

3FGX/4FG 689/769

PANASONIC

1381/1395 329/439

1991-20"1280x1024 1559

SAMSUNG

Flat White ML4571 119

CVB 4995 Syncmaster 2E 269

CVM 4967 Syncmaster 3E 299

CTX

5468/5468NI 289/329

3436 Multiscan .28 399

1760 17" VQA.28 815

5439/5432 229/275

NANAO

907OU/9080I 869/1025

550i/560l 1149/1899

VIEWSONIC

7/6/6FS 1069/369/629

Video Cards

ATI

VGA Integra 512K 69

Graphics Vantage 1mb 229

Graphics Ultra w/ 1MB 459

8514 Ultra Plus w/ 1MB 389

VGA Wonder XL24 w/1 mb 149

BOCA

Basic VGA/Super VGA 63/129

CARDINAL

VGA 700/732 w/1 MB 119/139

900 w/ 1mb/765 225/169

ORCHID

Prodesigner II w/1 mb 185

Fahrenheit 1280 degree with 1MB...289

VIDEO SEVEN 1024i Plus w/512 79

VRAM II 1 mb 269

Win. VGA w/1 mb 139

CARDINAL

2400 INT/EXT 62/84

2400 INT/EXT w/MNP 89/99

9600 INT/EXT 249/279

96/24 Fax modem INT 89

HAYES

Ultra 1.44 V.32 679

Ultra 9600 ext 599

Optima 9600 V.32 339

HEWLET-PACKARD

Plain Paper Fax 200/310 ....999/1339 INTEL

Satisfaction Modem 200/400.309/409 PRACTICAL PERIPHERALS

9600 V.42 Int/Ext 269/279

1.44FX tax/modem Int/Exl ....350/389 US ROBOTICS

Dual 16.8 HST ext w/ lax 799

Printers

Modems & Fax

CANON

LPB4+/LBP8+ 919/1499

BJ20/200 399/369

BJ 300/330 469/599

DICONIX

180si/701 299/439

EPSON

FX870/FX1170 289/379

LQ570/LQ870 269/435

LQ1070/LQ1170 375/579

LQ2550 849

EPL8000 1295

DFX5000/8000 1269/2139

HEWLETT-PACKARD

Laser Series IV/IIID 1479/2599

Laser IIP/IMP 869/1069

DeskJet 500/500C 399/669

Desk Jet 550c 729

IBM Laser

6/6P 1479/1825

10/1 OP 1749/2899

NEC

Silentwriter 95 1469

OKIDATA

184/380 229/219

320+/321+ 314/435

590/591 439/595

393W393C+ 919/999

400/810 LASER 599/1064

830/840 LASER 1269/1589

3410 1299

PANASONIC

1123/11241 199/275

1624/1654 339/539

2180/2123 175/255

1695/2624 369/379

4410/44501 649/1079

4430/4455 909/1719

OMS

PS 410/815 1529/2949

Color Script 100 model 10p 4999

LASER ACCESSORIES

Upgrade lor HP III 1 mb 79

Upgrade- HP III 2mb/4mb.. 109/179

Pacilic Data 25-N-1 249

Pacilic Page PE/PEXL 269/649

Pacilic Connect XI call

Complete Font Library 249

Font Bank Cartridge 1.5 Mb 269

Microsoft Mouse w/Windows 3.1 ... 149

Microsoft Ball Point Mouse 118

Logitech Fotoman 525

Logitech Scan Man 256 269

TRIPPUTE

BC 250/400 119/169

BC600Lan/900 Lan 269/369

BC 1250 Lan 499

Bulldog Systems

Bulldog's Standard Configuration

Dual Floppy Drives • Super VGA Card

with 1 Mb RAM • 14" Color VGA

Monitor (1024 x 768) • DOS 5.0 •

Windows 3.1 • Mouse • 1 year

warranty!

386-SX/25 W/2MBW/80MBHD..1199

386-40 (64K CACHE) 4MB . 120HD

S1369 486-33 (256K CACHE)4MB. 210MB HD

S2059

486-50 (256K CACHEJ4MB, 210MB HD

$2269

Call for other configurations

Drives

Tape Drives

CONNER

120 IDE 3.5/200IDE 3.5 329/499

IOMEGA

90 MB Insider/Transportable 579/689

Dual 90 ext 1495

MAGNAVOX

461RSEXTCDw/soltware 369

MAXTOR

7120A 130 mg 369

7213 A 210 meg 589

MICRO SOLUTIONS

Backpack Ext. Floppy 1.2/1.44 ... 189 QUANTUM PASSPORT XL removable

120MB/240MB 699/869

SEAGATE

ST3096A/3144A 249/329

SYSGEN-Moblle Disk

40/80/120 399/569/649

FLOPPY DRIVES

360K/1 2MB/1 44MB 59/59/59

IRWIN Accutrak 120/250 189/239

COLORADO MEMORY SYSTEMS

DJ10120 Meg Int Jumbo 199

DJ20250MeglntJumbo 259

Trakker 120/250 319/439

QFA 700 Meg Int 719

MICRO SOLUTIONS 80/250 Backpack .429

AST

Six Pack+W/384K XT 129

SixPack286w/0KAT 95

Rampage PC w/1 mb 285

ORCHID

Ramquestl 6/32 wOK PS/2 199

Ramquest8/16w/0KXT/AT 129

ACCELERATOR BOARDS Orchid Tiny Turbo Xtra 179

INTEL

SX or DX 89

CyR/XSX16/20/25 77

DX33/40 95/125

Memory Boards

Chips

610 Industrial Park Drive

Evans, Georgia 30809

PO Box 211043, Martinez, GA 30907

OPEN weekdays: 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

(706) 860-7364 • FAX (706) 860-73S8

BULLDOG

COMPUTER PRODUCTS

i cauw-eeo-nc* io

'.Baling las rj^cMnJ KTwirs 'l

E3 B3 E3 EI

306 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

Circle 240 on Inquiry Card.

MEMO

ACER 486SX - 16MB SIMM m x 36)

32MB SIMM(8MX36> AMI EZ-FLEX - 64MB KIT<4 simms) AMIGA 2000 - 16MB SIMM AST BRAVO 486LC - 16MB SIMM COMPAQ SystemPro - 32MB MODULE DELL 486's - 16MB KIT <2 simms> 32MB KIT (2 simms) MAC llfx - 16MB SIMM MAC QUADRA 950 - 16MB SIMM MAC llci,llcx,llsi,QUADRA 900 - 16MB SIMM MAC QUADRA 700 & SE/30 - 16MB SIMM NeXT TURBO - 16MB SIMM SUN IPX,ELC - 16MB SIMM

$ 529.00 $ 1,599.00 $ 2,799.00

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

P/\M€^

T

469.00 469.00

1,199.00 538.00

1,088.00 479.00 469.00 469.00 529.00 469.00 499.00 CALL

©7

HER MEMORIES AVAILABLE

]

IBM

COMPAQ

HP

LAPTOPS

PS/1 - 2MB

$ 68

DP 386/20.20E.25 - 1MB

$

66

Vectra QS-16 - 2MB KIT

$ 129

AST EXEC. NB - 4MB

$ 119

4MB

S 149

4MB

s

159

4MB KIT

S 229

COMPAQ LTE386 - 4MB

$ 209

M30 - 2MB

$ 79

DP 386S/16 - 1MB

$

66

Vectra 486 - 2MB

$ 79

SLT386 - 4MB

$ 168

M50Z.55sx.65sx. 70 - 1MB

S 45

4MB

s

159

4MB

$ 135

DELL 316,320 LT - 2MB

$ 99

2MB

$ 79

DP 286N.386N.S/20 - 4MB

$

135

8MB

$ 269

EVEREX TEMPO - 2MB

$ 78

M55sx.65sx.70 - 4MB

$ 135

M-SYSTEMS - 2MB

s

79

X-Statlon 700 Ser. - 2MB

S 89

IBM L40SX - 4MB

$ 135 j

M70-A21A61.121 - 2MB

$ 79

4MB

$

13b

4MB

S 149

MAC POWERBOOK - 2MB

$ 104

M40sx35sx - 8MB

$ 269

8MB

$

299

8MB

$ 299

NEC P.S. 286,386sx - 4MB

$ 200

M57sx,90,95 - 4MB

S 135

DP 386/33,486/25 - 2MB

$

96

9000/400t425t - 8MB KIT

S 495

P.S. 386 - 8MB

$ 429

8MB

$ 269

SystemPro - 8MB

$

269

16MB KIT

$ 999

P.S. SX/20 - 4MB

$ 200

M80-041 - 1MB

$ 65

OK Exp Brd DP 386S/16 1MB Exp Brd

$

335

32MB KIT

$1869

PANASONIC CF170 - 1MB

$ 55

M80-111,121,311 - 2MB

$ 99

s

105

9000/425e - 8MB KIT

$ 428

T.I. TRVL-MT 3000 - 2MB

$ 80

M80-A21A31 - 4MB

$ 180

DP 386/20.20E,25,25E

16MB KIT

$ 828

TOSHIBA 1000 - 2MB

$ 108

16-BiT OK Exp Board

S 128

1MB Exp. Board

$

105

2000SXE - 8MB

$ 388

32-Bu" OK Exp Board

$ 128

APPLE

3200SXC - 4MB

$ 160

AST

DELL

ll,SE,SE/30 - 1MB

$ 32

5200 - 8MB

S 315

325D,P;333D,P - 1MB

s

41

Classic - 1MB Exp. Board

S 54

PRINTERS

PREM. 386/20C - 1MB KIT

$ 65

4MB

$

135

SE/30,llcl,llcx,llsl,LC &.

PREM. 386/25 - 1MB

$ 45

420/425/433 - 2MB KIT

s

82

Quad. 700,900 - 4MB

$ 115

EPSON 6000 - 4MB

$ 229

PREM. 486/25 - 1MB

S 45

4MB KIT

g

168

Quad. 700,900 - 32MB KIT

$1120

HP IIP.III.IIID.P - 2MB

S 108

PREM. II 486 - 1MB

$ 41

8MB KIT

$

2/0

llfx ■ 16MB KIT

$ 499

lllsi - 4MB

$ 135

4MB

$ 139

450DE450SE - 2MB KIT

$

82

llfx - 32MB KIT

$1156

IBM 4019,40296 - 3.5MB

$ 129

8MB KIT

$ 278

4MB KIT

$

158

Quadra 256K V-RAM

$ 27

4029 - 4MB

$ 135

PREM. II 1MB Exp Board

$ 469

8MB KIT

$

270

LC 512K V-RAM

$ 44

OKIDATA 400 - 2MB

$ 129

PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE

OTHER MEMORIES FOR:

ACER, ALTIMA, APPLE, AST, CHAPLET, COMPAQ, DELL, EPSON, EVEREX, HP, LEADING EDGE, IBM, NEC, NCR, OKIDATA, PACKARD-BELL, PANASONIC, PHIUP, SAMPO, SHARP, SILICON GRAPHICS, SUN MICROSYSTEMS, TANDON, Tl, TOSHIBA, TULIP AND ZENITH.

tMJL F« « COMIPUEM CAYALO^

TERMS: COD, CASH, VISA OR MASTERCARD.

COMPANY AND UNIVERSITY P.O.'S ACCEPTED UPON CREDIT APPROVAL.

414 CLOVERLEAF DR., UNIT

B, BALDWIN PARK, CA 91706

FAX (818)855-5687

Circle 259 on Inquiry Card.

ALL PRODUCT NAMES, TRADEMARKS AND REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THEIR REPSECTWE COMPANIES.

Most Bang For The Buck

PC Magazine Rates Comtrade 2nd out of 63 Systems Reviewed.

486 EISA WinStatinn

■ 64K Fast Cache SRAM & Expandable to 256K

■ 4 MB RAM & Expandable to 128MB

■ 1.2 MB 5.25" & 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drives

■ 130 MB 15ms IDE 64K Cache Drive

■ 32-Bit EISA Hard Disk Controller (4X faster DTR)

■ Orchid/Diamond VIPER S3 Graphics Accelerator ■ !4" Non-interlaced .28mm Super VGA Monitor

(Bigger edge to edge 72Hz flicker-free display)

■ 2 Serial, I Parallel & I Game Ports

■ Enhanced 101-key Keyboard

■ Hi-Resolution 400DPI Serial Mouse

■ Free Microsoft DOS 5.0 & Windows 3.1

48B/33DX $1975

486/50DX2 $2125

486/50 DX $2225

486/66 DX2 $2525

■ 8MB RAM & 210MB 12ms Drive Add $280

■ 32-Bit VL-Bus VIPER S3-805 Accelerator Add $50

VESA Local Bus WinStalion

■ 64K Fast Cache SRAM & Expandable to 256K " 4 MB RAM & Built-in 487 Math Coprocessor

■ 1.2 MB 5.25" & 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drives

■ 130 MB 15ms IDE 64K Cache Drive

■ 32-Bit VL-Bus VIPER S3-805 Graphics Accelerator w. I MB RAM (Up to 1280x 1024 & 16.7M Colors)

(Up to 50X faster than standard SVGA)

■ 14" Non-interlaced ,28mm Super VGA Monitor

(VESA Standard for 72Hz Flicker-Free)

■ 2 Serial, I Parallel & I Game Ports

■ Enhanced 101 -key Keyboard

■ Hi-Resolution 400DPI Serial Mouse

■ Free Microsoft DOS 5.0 & Windows 3.1

486/55 DX $1795 486/50 DX $2045 486/66 DX2 $2145

■ 8MB RAM & 210MB 12ms Drive Add $280

VESA Local Bus CAD Station

■ 64K Fast Cache SRAM & Expandable to 256K

■ 8 MB RAM & Built-in 487 Math Coprocessor • 1.2 MB 5.25" & 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drives

■ 210 MB Ultra Fast 12ms IDE 64K Cache Drive

■ 32-Bit VL-Bus VIPER S3-805 Graphics Accelerator (2.5 times faster than ATI Ultra Pro in CAD test)

■ 17" Flat Screen Non-interlaced Color Monitor

(Up to 1280x1024 with Digital Control)

■ AutoCAD Display List Driver

■ 2 Serial, I Parallel & I Game Ports

■ Enhanced 101-key Keyboard

■ Hi-Resolution 400DPI Serial Mouse

■ Free Microsoft DOS 5.0 & Windows 3.1

486/53 DX $2595 486/66 DX2 $2945

■ 32-Bit VL-Bus IDE Controller (2X faster) $50

: *

VESA Standard Local Bus low.

Unce again "THE COMTRADE PC"

has the competition running for cover. In review after review, critic's applaud Comtrade shocking speed and extraordinary value. According to the latest PC Magazine, Comtrade's 486 "Has The Performance Issue Licked." So much so that PC Magazine ranked Comtrade's 486 EISA WinStation number 2 out of 63 systems in their 486 review "Most Bang For The Buck" analysis (September 1992). "It's A Very Swift Graphics Machine," says Computer Shopper (May 1992). "That Deserves Serious Consideration from Anyone Who Wants to Juice up Windows." And now faster than ever, Comtrade's latest VESA standard Local Bus VIPER S3-805 is even 3 to 5 times faster than any of our previous reviewed systems.

Ciimtiiade Kicks Their Bus!

In Comparison With Gateway 2000's VESA Local Bus ATI Ultra Pro.

IIead the benchmarks and weep. Comtrade's latest VESA Standard Local Bus passes the others like their standing still. Not only does our VL-Bus VIPER S3-805 beat ATI VL-Bus Ultra Pro hands down in overall Windows performance test, it is also up to 2.5 Times faster in the LandMark DOS text mode and CAD/CAM WinTach test. Combine this unprecedented performance with a solid reputation for quality and service, and a very competitive price - and it's no wonder Computer Shopper (November 1992) called the Comtrade 486 "A Splendid System Backed by First Rate Support."

'Wi'Slonillli'liiiiillliirPi'iiiliii'ls

Two Year Parts & Labor Warranty

One Year On-Site Service

30-Day Money Back Guarantee

VESA LB VESA LB

Viper ATI

S3-805 Ultra Pro

Based on Win/Marks 2.5 as of NOV 1992

**Mffion Pixels Per Second (486166 DX2)

Standard SVGA has only I.4M WinMarks

VL-Bus TSENG ET-4000 has only S.3M WinMarks

486 EISA Dream Machine

■ 256K Ultra Fast Write Back Cache SRAM ■ 4 MB RAM & Expandable to 128 MB

■ 1.2 MB 5.25" & 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drive

■ 210 MB Ultra Fast 12ms IDE 64K Cache Drive

■ 32-Bit EISA Hard Disk Controller (4X faster DTR)

■ Orchid/Diamond VIPER S3 Graphics Accelerator

1 15" Flat Screen Non-interlaced .28mm SVGA Monitor (Up to 1280x1024 with Processor Control)

■ 2 Serial, I Parallel & I Game Ports

■ Enhanced 101-key Keyboard

■ Hi-Resolution 400DPI Serial Mouse

■ Free Microsoft DOS 5.0 & Windows 3.1

486/53 DX $2325 486/50 DX2 $2475 486/50 DX $2575

1 17" Flat Screen Non-interlaced Monitor Add $400 ■ 32-Bit VL-Bus VIPER S3-805 Accelerator Add $50

VESA Local Bus SVGA

■ 64K Fast Cache SRAM & Expandable to 256K

■ 4 MB RAM & Built-in 487 Math Coprocessor ■ 1.2 MB 5.25" & 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drives

■ 130 MB 15ms IDE 64K Cache Drive

■ 32-Bit VL-Bus Accelerated Super VGA with 1MB RAM (Up to 1280x1024 & I6.7M Colors)

(Up to 7X faster than standard SVGA)

■ 14" Non-interlaced .28mm SuperVGA Monitor

(Bigger edge to edge 72Hz flicker-free display)

■ 2 Serial, I Parallel & I Game Ports

■ Enhanced 101-key Keyboard

« Hi-Resolution 400DPI Serial Mouse

■ Free Microsoft DOS 5.0 & Windows 3.1

486/33 DX $1695 486/50 DX $1945 486/66 DX2 $2045

■ 8MB RAM & 210MB 12ms Drive Add $280

1.800.969.2123

"The Intel Inside Logo is a trademark of Intel Corporation

Circle 280 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 281)

COMTRADE

"Where Performance is Everything"

International 818.961.6688

Fax 818.369.1479

Tech Support 800.899.4508

24-Hour BBS Service 818.961.6098

Hours: 7:00-7:00 Pacific Mon-Sat

15314 East Valley Boulevard City of Industry, California 91746

t979

BUY WITH CONFIDENCE FROM JDR!

2233 Samaritan Drive, San Jose, CA 95124

30-DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE • 1 YEAR WARRANTY

TOLL-FREE TECH SUPPORT

$99

UPRIGHT CASE

Mounts 3 floppy and 4 hard drives Accommodates std. & mini motherboards . 2 digit LED display

CASE-100A $99.95

CASE-200A Super Deluxe Upright $349.95

PS-250TW 250W p. supply $129.95

PS-300TW 300W p. supply $149.95

CASE-130 Mid-upright case $99.95

CA5E-120 $199.95

Mini-upright case w/200W power supply

95

POWER SUPPLIES

U/L approved

110/220VAC, 50/60H2

PS-ISO 8088 150wott TTT -.$69.95

PS-200X 8088 200 watt $89.95

PS-200 286/386/486 200 watt $89.95

PS-300 286/386/486 300 watt $149.95

MM

ENHANCED KEYBOARD

$4995

BTC-5339 101/102-key enhanced layout $49.95

NON-INTERLACED 1024x768 MONITOR

VGA-M0H-1024N .28 dot pitch .... $389.95

I VGA-MON-1024 1024x768 int. monitor, .28mm. $349.95 VGA-PKG-1024N Non-interlaced Super VGA pkg $499.95 VGA-PKG-1024+ 1024x768 interlaced VGA pkg . $469.95

LvGA-PKG 640x480 .39mm dot pitch VGA pkg. .. $349.95^

2400 BAUD MODEM

Internal data modem Hayes compatible Config. as COM1-COM2 I MCI-241 $49.95

19600 BAUD EXTERNAL $ 299

CaTTV.42bis/V.32/V.22bis/Bell 212A & Hayes AT command-set compatible MNP5 error correction & data compression

I VIVA-96E $299.95

VIVA-144IF 14.4K internal w/fax $ 269.95

| FAX/MODEM/PHONE SWITCH

Save phone line charges!

Supports fax, modem, phone and ■, "*•>

answering machine from 1 phone line *■->.._.

I FAXM-SWITCH $89.95

1 FAX-SWITCH Without modem connection $59.95

[PORTABLE IC TESTER ^

Tests the following 14 to 20-pin ^H • fl;^\

devices: 74 series TTL, 40 & 45 series ^^B I"vv\ CMOS & 41/44 series DRAM up to 1Mb ^H'. ^k Identifies unknown pare numbers ^^pPP^^

IMOD-HIC $149.95

WIRE-WRAP PROTOTYPE CARDS

JDR-PR2 8-bit with I/O decode layout $29.95

JDR-PR10 1 6-bit with I/O decode layout $34.95

SOLDERLESS PROTOTYPE CARDS

PDS-601 8-bit bteadboatd-on-a-card w/IO decode $79.95 lPDS-611 16-bit version $89.95

MOTHERBOARDS

25MHZ 386SX

$19995

• 25MHz Intel 80386SX CPU • Expandable to 16Mb on-board • Uses 256K, 1M or 4M x 9 80ns SIMMs (0K installed) • Six 16-bit and two 8-bit slots

MCTM386SX-25 $199.95

MCT-H486-50E 50MHz EISA w/cache $ 1395.00

MCT-M486-50 50MHz cache 486 $1195.00

MCT-M486-33 33MHz cache 486 $895.00

MCT-M486SX-25 25MHz cache 486SX $399.95

MCT-C386-40 40MHz cache 386 $379.95

MCT-C386-33 33MHz cache 386 $349.95

MCT-M286-16 16MHz286 $149.95

MCT-M286-12 1 2MHz 286 $129.95

MCT-TURBO-10 10/4.77MHz 8088 $99.95

16-BIT VGA CARD $AQ95

8/16-bit 8088 and 286/386/486 compatible

• 640x480 in 16 colors 320 x 200 in 256 colors

• 256Kb video RAM MCT-VGA-1000 ... $49.95

MCT-VGA-4000 1024x768, 1Mb DRAM $129.95

MCT-VGA-5000 Windows Accelerator $149.95

SPEEDSTAR-24X 24-bit colot, 1280x1024 $199.95

STEALTH-VRAM Windows occelet., 1 280x1024 $249.95

3-BUTT0N MOUSE

Accuracy 290-1450 DPI Opto-mechanical design Windows 3.1 compatible

JDR-M0USE-3 $14.95

MOUSE-PAD $4.95

1951

POST CODE DISPLAY CARD

286/386/486 compatibleDisplays power on self-test code Wotks when software won't even boot ' PCODE $49.95

EPROM PROGRAMMER $19995

• Programs devices up to 512K bits, plus 27C100, 27C101, 27C301, 27C1000, 27C1001, 27C2001, 27C4001 and more

• Includes dedicated 8-bit 8088 and | 286/386/486 PC compatible catd

• ZIF socket accepts 0.6"W DIP IC's to 32 pins

M0D-MEP-1A $199.95

M0D-MEP-4A As above with 4 ZIF sockets $269.95

MOD-EMUP Univetsal programmer/tester $699.00

EPROM ERASER $3995 %4&*

• Quickly and simultaneously erases *^K up co 4 standard EPROMs

DATARA5E II $39.95

84Mb DRIVE PACKAGE

• CP-30084 S4Mb, 19ms IDE hard drive, 16-bir floppy/ hard disk controller, cables and instructions

HDKIT80 $259.00

IDE HARD DRIVES

$259

PART*

BRAND

CAP.

SPD.

TYPE

PRICE 1

CP-3000

Conner

42Mb

28ms

3.5" IDE

$189

ST-351A

Seagate

42Mb

28ms

3.5" IDE

$199

CP-30084

Conner

84Mb

19ms

3.5" IDE

$239

ST-3096A

Seagate

88Mb

16ms

3.5" IDE

$259

CP-30104

Conner

120Mb

19ms

3.5" IDE

$319

ST-3144A

Seagate

131Mb

16ms

3.5" IDE

$319

CP-30204

Conner

212Mb

12ms

3.5" IDE

$479

FLOPPY DRIVES

FDD-1.44A 1.44Mb, 3.5", Beige . $79.95 9 FDD-1.44X 1.44Mb, 3.5", Black . $79.95

FDD-1.2 1.2Mb, 5.25", Beige $89.95

FDD-360 360Kb, 5.25", Black $89.95

FDD-2.88A 2.88Mb 3.5" drive, Beige $149.95

FD-505 5.25" & 3.5" combo drive, Beige $149.95 ,

MULTI1/0 CARD WITH IDE J AQ95 FLOPPY/HARD CONTROL

• 16-bit 286/386/486 compatible

• Supports 2 IDE hard drives & 2 floppy drives (360Kb-l .44Mb)

• 2 serial, 1 parallel & 1 siame porr

MCT-IDEIO $69.95

MCT-IDEI0+ As above w/16550 compatabilify ... $99.95

MCMDEFH 16-bit IDE hard/floppy conttollet $29.95

MCT-CIDEFH 1 6-bit IDE CACHE controller $169.95

MCMDE-8 8-bit IDE controller $79.95

MCT-FDC-HD 1.44Mb floppy conttollet $49.95

MCT-FDC-HD4 1.44Mb floppy conttoller (4 drives) $59.95 MCT-FDC-ED 2.88Mb intelligent floppy controller $79.95

MCT-AIO Serial/parallel/game port card $49.95

MCT-AIO-t- Two NS16550 serial/par/game port . $89.95

GATEKEEPER PC security card $49.95

RAMPAT-t- 8/16-bit 16Mb RAM card (w/OKb). $139.95 S0UNDBLASTPR0 8-bit MIDI sound board $199.95

DYNAMIC RAM

PART*

SIZE

SPEED

TYPE

PRICE |

41256-80

256K x 1

80ns

DIP

1.69

414256-80

256Kx4

80ns

DIP

5.49

1MB-80

IMxl

80ns

DIP

4.99

1MB-60

IMxl

60ns

DIP

5.49

41256A9B-80

256K x 9

80ns

SIMM

14.95

41256A9B-60

256Kx9

60ns

SIMM

16.95

421000A9B-10

1Mx9

100ns

SIMM

39.95

421000A9B-80

1Mx9

80ns

SIMM

39.95

421000A9B-60

IMx9

60ns

SIMM

45.95

424000A9B-80

4Mx9

80ns

SIMM

149.95

424000A9B-60

4«U9

60ns

SIMM

159.95

MATH C(

)-PR0<

".ESS0

RSJI

rrteT

PART#

SPEED

PRICE

PART*

SPEED

PRICE

8087-2

8087

80287-XL

8MHz 5MHz 12MHi

129.95 89.95 89.95

80387-SXP 80387-DXP 80487-SX

<25MHz <33MHz <25MHz

79.95 89.95 389.95

CALL FOR YOUR FREE JDR CATALOG TODAY!

FOR PC'S, SOFTWARE, MONITORS, DISK DRIVES, KEYBOARDS, MODEMS, \ CABLES, CONNECTORS, ICS, COMPONENTS, PROGRAMMERS, . TEST EQUIPMENT, TOOLS & MORE!

J" 's^wsf*®*

NOW ORDER 24 HOURS

a DAY!

TERMS: For shipping & hat amount. CA residents must in and lo substitute manufacturer. All merchandise l„ , and the MCT logo ore registered

800-538-5000

Tolll-fitter Fax: Ordering

loco/ 408-559-1200 BBS 408-559-0253

for air. Orders

to change without notice. We are not responsible for typographical i f our terms is . Inc. Modular Circuit 1

—contact our Sales Dept. for the

mmmmmmmmm

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 309

EXTRAORDINARY

,ocal Bus

VESA MONITOR

2.88MB DRIVE

0.3MS HARD DISK ACCESS

Buy Today - Upgrade Tomorrow.

Basic Systems Features:

Upgradable Local Bus MB

Intel CPU / 64K Cache / 4MB Memory

32 Bit Local Bus SVGA Card / 1MB

1.2 & 1.44MB F/D, 120MB IDE H/D

2 Serial /1 Parallel /1 Game Port

14" SVGA Monitor, .28 dp

101 Enhanced KB w/Serial Mouse

Minitower w/Display

486DX2/66 & 50 LOCAL BUS

■ Basic •

$2049 / $1699

Advanced ♦

$2299 / $1949

486DX/50 & 33 LOCAL BUS

Basic •

$1779 / $1679

Advanced ♦

$2029 / $1929

cfc°

&

\

386DX/40 & 33 LOCAL BUS

Basic •

$1239 / $1229

Advanced ♦*♦

$1489 / $1479

SUSk

■r M ;j '{'{''■ '\ '/ ;i

^Hr \xoif "if" • ■ '., ','"

K - * -3l*fr.

/ 7/ 1

'/ay

H

L±- 1

Systems Highlights:

♦ 14" VESA Monitor, 1280 x 1024

♦ IDE Cache H/D Controller / 512k (0.3ms)

♦ 2.88MB F/D w/Controller

Buy "One" gets "All" Free

■ Novell DR Dos 6.0

■ Super Stor - Disk Compression

■ Super Pak - Disk Cache

■ File Link - File Transfer Utility

■ EMM 386 - Memory Manager

■ GEM - Window Manager

LANKMARK SPEED V2.0 BENCHMARK TEST

CHARACTERS PER SECOND

BDI LOCAL BUS |

| 13.100

DIAMOND SPEED

STAR

| 4.593

ATI-XL WONDER 1

1 3.223

P.C MAGAZINE BENCHMARK

BDI LOCAL BUS

DIAMOND STEALTH

S3 CHIPSET

PIXELS PER SECOND

"I 25958.4

| 6067.2

| 4584.96

Prices subject to change without notice.

-w—^ ~« ^_- ■■■ » — niec.i Miu|eei 10 ciitinge wnnnut nonce.

DH1 Associates, Inc.

17411-B East Gale Ave., City of Industry, CA 91748 • Tel: (818) 810-0552 • FAX-^818 WEST COAST REGION —Tel: (714) 483-5351 • FAX: (714) 989-1488 /^r

EAST COAST REGION —Tel: (713) 789-4775 • FAX: (713) 789-9146

Circle 284 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 285).

Accessories/Supplies • Add-In Boards

Polaroid

Polaroid's Circular Polarizing Filters for computer monitors combine circular polarizer technology with optical quality materials and coatings to provide the ultimate in glare reduction and contrast enhancement technology. Polaroid CP-Filters suppress up to 99% of reflected light and are more effective than any other filter for improving contrast. Also, most CP-Filter models have a transparent electrically conductive coating which reduces up to 98% of the electromagnetic radiation and eliminates static.

Polaroid produces a full range of optical quality anti-glare filters In glass and triacetate to fit most 9"-21" monitors.

Polaroid Corporation, Polarizer Division, N2,1 Upland Road, Norwood, MA 02062 1 -800-225-2770 Fax 617-446-4600

Circle 347 on Inquiry Card.

SSD-2HD Intelligent Solid-State Disk

1.44MB max. FLASH/EPROM Disk w/auto-boot

I.44MB max. SRAM Disk w/battery backup

Auto-sense installed FLASH/EPROM /SRAM memory types

Auto-configure Solid State Disk Drive

Software protection key(PARAKEY) designed to protect a specified software application from unauthorized use.

ACI

1-800-886-ACI-3

U.S.A. International

TEL:6l7-938-8020 TEL:S86-2-758257l(Taiwan)

FAX:6I7-938-8037 FAX:886-2-7589615

Circle 371 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 372).

Experience the Power

Parallel Processing

For the professional, student or hobbyist who wants to come up to speed with parallel processing. All kits include one or more 20-MHz 32-bit transputer processors, each with 1MB of DRAM • Occam2, C, and assembler • examples and demos • complete set of manuals • schematics. Requires IBM-compatible PC.

4 Processors: $1,284 1 Processor: $396

The Transputer Education Kit is outstanding. You would be hard pressed to find as valuable and inexpensive a tool.

R. Eckhouse, IEEE Computer. Sept. 92, page 97

Computer System Architects

15N.100E., #100 Provo, Utah 84606

^J 800-753-4CSA or 801-374-2300 FAX 801-374-2306

VISA • MasterCard American Express

mm*

Circle 332 on Inquiry Card.

Add-In Boards • Communications/Networking

„

PC/

AT F/Mir

Port Com. Coprocessor

GMM Sync4/CCP™

« High Performance 16 MHZ 16 bit CPU.

* 80X86 code compatible. e 4 Sync/Async Ports

(2 Serial Ports with Full Duplex DAM). . Uses Zilog 85C30, 85230 SCC chip.

* 512K Dual Ported Ram (STD) (1, 2, or 4 MEG Dual Port Ram - optional).

» 8k, 16k, 32k, 64k Window Size (Programmable). GMM f^^^ Are All Made in USA.

° 8 Software Selectable and Shareable t '

Interrupts. PC/AT Dual Port Com.Coprocessor

' RS232/RS422/RS485 GMM Sync2/CCP™

* Source Code Debugger Kit Available. >.^^m^^^^m^^^^^

Gmm^

GMM Research Corporation

Other PC/AT & PS/2 8530 based products available. Extremely competitive pricing. (714)752-9447 Fax (714)752-7335

18092 Sky Park South - Unit E, Irvine CA 92714

* 5

1

UN

Circle 336 on Inquiry Card.

B Solutions For DOSs, OS/2 And With TaprAccelerator

[.Support 2.88MB/1.44M/720K/1.2M/360K

floppy disk drives. 2.Compalible with DOS 3.x/4.x/5.0, OS/2

2.0 3.Supporl 4FDD, 4FDD & 2HDD , 2FDD &

2HDD&2S/1P. 4.Can diskcopy 5 t/4" diskettes to 3 1/2"

diskettes, 5.Can boot from any floppy drives. 6.Can swap any two floppy drives. 7.Supports !M bps data transfer rate to

accelerate (double speed) QIC floppy

interface tape drive. 8.Can connect tape drive to 1st or 2nd

connector. ==

OEM and Distributor Welcome

TEKLINK

CHIA SHIN TECHNOLOGY CORP

IF NO. 24, ALLEY 2, LANE 76, SEC. 6.SHIN YI RD.TAIPE1.R.0.C

FAX: 886-2-7270804

TEL: 886-2-7263859 • 7271861

Circle 375 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 376).

r

tttitm*

Call us for

Unsurpassed

Choices...

MULTIPORT SERIAL I/O CONTROLLERS

Multiple Benefits:

•2 to 128 serial ports on a single PC •Standard or high performance communications •Support for a broad spectrum of interfaces

and operating systems •Ideal for office automation, factory automation

or P.O.S. applications

• Benefit from Star Gate's total value: a synergy of Product-Price-Service-Support

• Compatibility: ISA, EISA, MCA; RJ-12, DB-25, DB-9; RS-232, RS-422, RS-485; speeds up to 115.2 Kbaud; Unix, Xenix, DOS, OS/2 and Windows.

Call now: 1-800-782-7428

^

People and products you can depend on.

Star Gate Technologies, Inc. 29300 Aurora Rd., Solon, OH, 44139-(216} 349-1860 FAX: 216-349-2056

J

Circle 369 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 370).

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE

311

■

Communications/Networking

• 1 Megabyte/Sec transfer speed.

• No load on Host Processor.

• I/O mapped • No host memory used.

• 8 ports per card.

• RS-232/RS-485/ RS-422. Mi

Ultra High Speed Serial Coprocessor

er ■> Toil-Free 800-282-4835

GTEK, Inc., Hardware & Software Development • P.O. Box 2310

Ba» SI. Louis. MS 39521-2310 USA • Mississippi« Technical Support 601-467-8048

Fax: 601-467-0935 • OEM 4 Dealer Inquiries Welcomed! ■■

Circle 338 on Inquiry Card.

RECYCLE Your PC

INFINISTOR restores your old or obsolete PC. Microprocessor driven, this NEW interconnect system enables you to use disk drives in your old PC as if they were mounted within your current PC. Your old PC can also access all of your new PC storage devices if it is initialized as the host. The applications of this connectivity medium are limited to your imagination!

Drives:

A,B,C,D,

E,F

HOST |

Drives A,B,C in host

SI AVE I | 1

Drives D,E,F in slave

Basic INFINISTOR Configuration

• 200K Bytes per second throughput

• Use Hard Disk, Floppies, RAM Cache on slave

• Simple installation of a half card on each end

• Up to three slaves can be connected to each host

• 5 Year Warranty

• $299.00 list price - special introductory price of

$159.95 for host and one slave

INFINICON 9©

101 Library Plaza '• 15 North 100 East • Provo.UT 84606

SOON TO BE RELEASED!

INFIN/ACCESS Providing total

access of storage devices in your laptop when connected to your desktop. A low cost alternative to docking stations and pocket LAN adaptors.

For Details and Order: CALL (800)374-3880 (801) 374-8880

FAX (801) 370-3880 VISA • MasterCard • AMEX

Circle 384 on Inquiry Card.

BLAST

YOUR MESSAGE j3 THRU! il •telemarketing • Call Processing

6*

Transform your PC/XT/AT/386 into a multi-line processing command centertgpelligently process your sales, inquires, and messages. » Complete package.

jP (Developer/OEM packages available)

VISA—MC—AMEX—COO

Multi-Lineivoicesoiuta) $795

SINGLE LINE (BigmOuth)... $295

For Sales or Information:

Call 1-800-685-4884

CALL: (510) 522-3300 • FAX: (510) 522-5556

TALKING TECHNOLOGY, INC. =fr=1

1125 ATLANTIC AVE. • ALAMEDA. CA 94501 ///

312 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 349 on Inquiry Card.

Computer Systems • Data Acquisition

AT Systems in ROM

□ Single Board Computers

□ Run DOS code from ROM

□ PC Code compatible

□ Large Memory space Ij Backplane systems

□ Develop code on a PC. Run on our CPU cards with DOS and code in ROM. Use off-the-shelf expansion cards,

□ KS6: NEC V53 CPU (286eq), 5 serial. 2 Par, Clock, AT bus, Max4M Ram, 2M Rom, 512K NV Sram. $349 (ql-oem ver),

G KS3: V40 CPU, 3 Serial, 2 Par, Clock, Flop. Kbd. $249 (ql).

303-444-7737 Fax 303-786-9983

655 Hawthorn Ave., Boulder CO 80304 U.S.A.

KILA

Circle 340 on Inquiry Card.

Rackmount Solutions

RACKMOUNT COMPONENTS - QTY 25 PRICING Rackmount Chassis 19"x7"x17" S183

Rackmount VGA Monitors $531

Rackmount Monitor Shell S113

Rackmount Keyboard Shelf $88

RACKMOUNT PLATFORMS-0ty1 Pricing RMS48B-33EISAS1799 RMS386-40 $814

RMS486-33 $1443 RMS386SX-25 S693

System Platforms include 7" Rackmount Chassis, 200W Power Supply. Motherboard, 1.0MB Memory, IDE, FDC, 2-Ser, Par, 1.2MB or 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive, 1 Year Warranty

RACKMOUNT CHASSIS -15 Models up to 20 Board Slots SLOT CPU BOARDS - 486, 386. 386SX RACKMOUNT MONITORS - Super VGA and Monochrome RACKMOUNT CABINET - Modular trom 2V to 96' high

mr vniiEr

TECHHOlOCr INC.

2468 Armstrong Street, Livermore CA 94550 (510)447-2030 FAX: (510) 447-4559

Circle 361 on Inquiry Card.

EMBEDDED COMPUTERS

Everything you want....

□ Powerful Hitachi H8/532 16-bit processing

□ Drives graphics LCDs and keyboard

□ Collects 10-bit analog data from 8 channels

□ Stores information on PCMCIA Cards

□ I6K Forth and ready-made solution library

□ High level interrupts and multitasker

□ $325 qty 10+ S249 qty 100+

, to make life easier

For more information contact: The Saelig Company Tel (716) 425-3753 Fax (716) 425-3835

Outside USA & Canada: Triangle Digital Services Limited 223 Lea Bridge Road, London Tel 081-539 0285 Fax 081-558 8110

Circle 353 on Inquiry Card.

>A/D Boards

•Signal Conditioning •Communication •PC Instruments •Scientific Software

KEITH LEY

METRABYTE

SEND TODAY FOR YOUR FREE CATALOG OR CALL 1-800-348-0033, FAX: 508-880-0179

Circle 342 on Inquiry Card.

Data Acquisition • Disk & Optical Drives

The Intelligent Solution For Data Acquisition

DAP2400c''" Data Acquisition Processor'

ANALOG I/O

DIGITAL I/O

•Inputs Li) 312K samples per second

•Outputs to 312K samples per second

•Simultaneous fast input/output

FFTandFIR-filtering

Digital Signal Processing at 16 MIPS 20 MHz CPU with DRAM to 1024K 32 MHz DSP with SRAM lo 96K DAPL"' Operating System

• 100+ standard commands "MlPROSTAR

• Custom commands in C ■^^^^^■■■^^^^^^•'

Laboratories:*

Send for FREE catalog and demo diskette. Bellevue WA '18004

Or call us at (206) 453-2345. fax (206) 453-3199

Circle 343 on Inquiry Card.

PS/2 50 50z 55sx 60 70 80 P70

INTERNAL DRIVES - May be used as a high performance replacement or to co-exist with original IBM drive. Compatible with DOS 3.3. 4.01. 5.0. OS/2 2.0 and Novell. Includes IDE or SCSI-2 tnicrochannel controller, hard drive, mounting kit. ribbon & power cable, manual, and hardware.

85mb, 17ms, Internal Western Digital IDE Drive Kit 125mb, 15ms, Internal Maxtor IDE / SCSI Drive Kit 200mb, 15ms, Internal WD IDE/Maxtor SCSI Drive Kit 340mb, 13ms, Internal Maxtor IDE / SCSI Drive Kit 512mb, 12ms Internal Fujitsu IDE / SCSI Drive Kit 1.05gb, 10ms Internal Microplus SCSI Drive Kit

S459

S5S3/S589

$689/$779

S969/S979

JI,3I3/$1,369

52,184

PS/2 Model 25, 30, 30-286 1 externa SCSI doves sviilMe Iran 125 mi lot 73 gti'.Includes 32mb/42mb Hard Drive Kit $217/5257 SCSI-2 controller. extern.il else '.'.'till dies insulted end configured 85mb/i25mb Hard Drive Kit S339/S433 | 6'SCSI cubic. Free drivers loiCD-Rom doves or Novell 286 & 385

Jyq^i&IlHti.

Tel: (516) 981-9473 38 R?yn;r *™. Open tan lo ip Fax:(516)981-5038 ',' '

Circle 380 on Inquiry Card.

MiniSCSI^^—

HIGH PERFORMANCE PARALLEL-TO-SCSI ADAPTER

^ Transform Your 4 Parallel Port

Connect up to 7 SCSI devices to your

parallel port and still

use your printer! Up to twice as fast as out original MiniSCSItheMiniSCSI Plus lets you run a CD-ROM, tape drive, SCSI hard disk, SyQuest, Bernoulli or other SCSI device from almost any parallel port. For most notebook users, it's the only way to use SCSI CD-ROMs and tape drives. Plus, its integrated cable makes it a snap to move and share SCSI devices between desktops and notebooks.

Call For Details! 800-872-6867 (800-TRANTOR)

Tranlor Systems, Ltd.

5415 Randall Place

Fremont, CA 94538-3151

TEL: (5101 770-1400 • FAX: (510) 770-9910

<£> 1992 tientoi Systems Ltd MiniSCSI end MeiSCSl Phis m InKk'iien*:'oi IniiSnr Systems Ltd. Mullieiiiroduclnames eie ttademerks entice respective eoinminies

Circle 360 on Inquiry Card.

Disk & Optical Drives • Diskettes/Duplicators • Memory/Chips/Upgrades

Connect with the Parallel Universe SIGEN 250MB PORTABLE PARALLEL PORT TAPE BACKUP

No controller card required. Connects to parallel

port. Installs in less than 3 minutes. Great lor

Laptops. To 9.5 MB/min transfer rate.

Capacily

20 MB Parallel Fori Floppy

80/250 MB 1/4" cartridge 4.5 MB/min

Ml/200 MB 1/4" cartridge 9.5 MB/min

250/500 MB 1/4" cartridge 9.5 MB/min

1.3 GB 1/4" cartridge SCSI 18 MB/min

1.2 / 2 GB 4mm DAT SCSI 10MB/min

Supports x ,.

DOS, OS/2 K^NS

Novell 286, 386 !SSSXV

UNIX, XENIX N0VELl

Industry standard SYTOS PLUS, or CENTRAL

POINT BACKUP software and lor file server

based NLM and VAP TAPEWARE.

^^S^kr

PHONE (408) 737

FAX (408) 737-3910

i

5l

Circle 352 on Inquiry Card.

STAND ALONE

DISKETTE DUPLICATOR

OVER 300 DISKS PER HOUR

5.25" and 3.50" Models

SIMPLE AND FAST FROM $1799 US

FAX: (416) 602-9279

Circle 330 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 331).

IBM • TATUNG • PANASONIC • Z£OS • SHARP • NORTHGAT6 • HYUNDAI • AST •

ROM BIOS UPGRADES

Solve Your Compatability Problems!

8 Years of experience, unmatched in the industry

WE STOCK THE LARGEST VARIETY OF ROM BIOS 0PGRADES IN THE WORLD.

AMI

PHOENIX MR BIOS AWARD

FEATURES OF A NEW BIOS

•Siippoi; 12f.iB. i ■!.:!.![>. f. 2 itf"B i!c;ip, ..l;i-.--~;■ Slippy: CD ROM-Faster 1/0 Speed 'OR DOS Support *Corin:-!-.:re •:;!.:!> 1:1 i-0'.' ■ V.'m.lov.j 3 1 support 'Novell

support ■ DOS 5 0 Support ■ IDE drive support • OS/2 support • Support tor -17 vi.i;i-1 M •!..■; ?:u::- ■-.:■ j-.i■■-:.'• ,.n • -. r ':•■• '■ n« jr.] nivj-i

• MEMORY UPGRADES

■ MOTHERBOARDS

> BIOS Reference Manuals

^^ ■-■ HZ~..~~. • DIAGNOSTIC PRODUCTS

MlCm ^ (8Q0) 266-1576

TECHNOLOGIES, /A/C. fax(805)3710012

• FREE Cataloj'FBEE Chip Dttl ■'- Mie-San

F Circle 368 on Inquiry Card

TEL (805) 371-0055

e

lor Distributor

visa •Univ.&Corp. POs Welcome special pricing, free bios resellers

143 TRIUNFO CANYON RD, SUITE 103 • WESTLAKE VILLAGE CA 91361

D • GATEWAY • GPSON • TANDY -DeLL • NCR •GV6F(eX • COMPAQ -NSC • WYSE

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 313

■I

Laptops & Notebooks

Universal Keypad for

Portable Computers

Available in Ivory ■of Black

Boost data entry speed, accuracy and convenience with Genovation's Micropad,™ the innovative numeric keypad for portable computers.

TO COMPUTER

T TO PRINTER

(800) 822-4333

17741 Mitchell. North Irvine, CA 92714 USA TEL (714) 8.13-3355 FAX (714) 833-0322

Is the unhandy numeric section of your portable computer's keyboard dragging you down?....Give your productivity a boost by using our Micropad. The economically designed Micropad is ideal for spreadsheet and accounting applications that require fast and accurate entry of numeric data.

The Micropad attaches to the parallel port of any MS-DOS computer while providing a clean pass through connection to the printer. Power usage is negligible. Lightweight and compact, the Micropad is fully programmable and is also available with connectors to fit keyboard and serial ports.

genoVation

u

Circle 335 on Inquiry Card.

" we 're the notebook company..."

From 386-mono 10 486-color,

We have a Notebook for Everyone.

AT MANUFACTURER-DIRECT PRICES.

All Inquiries Welcome. Moil to Fit SAM - 6PM Sat. 10AM - 3PM PST.

1-800-333-8144

For more Information about our complete line of notebook products, plcasn contact: TOP PC International. Inc., 638 N. EekhoffSt., Orange. CA 92668 Tel: 1714) 939-1416 Fas: (714) 933-0103

Circle 382 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 383).

314 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

Memory/Chips/Upgrades • Programmable Hardware • Multimedia

MEMORY UPGRADES

CALL FOR BEST PRICE ON MEMORY GRADES FOR:

Laptops'Notebooks'Palmbooks'Memory Cards'Laser Printers'Brand Computers

ACER ALR £ Apple /15T AT&T BONDWELL

comma datagenkral DEC leading edge EPSON =h*verex

GATEWAY NEC SILICON GRAPHICS MAGNAVOX MtTZUB/\

NCR vm Fists; Packard bells DELL Panasonic Canon IBM SUN MICRO TANDY TOSHIBA ^m» ZEOS

(math co-processors)C (simms & sipps modules) |

lEO RAM • ZIPSj

(STATIC.

DYNAMIC RAM

BIOS UPGRADES XT SYSTEMS $24.75

286 SYSTEMS $49.75

386 SYSTEMS $78.75

IIQA ELECTRONICS, INC. 1-800-332-8434

V Vn 9090 N.STEMMONS FWY. • DALLAS. TX 75247 We acltnowletlcje all trademarks.

Circle 378 on Inquiry Card.

EEE 488/Serial

onverters & Controllers

Connect IEEE 488 (HP-IB/GPIB) and serial (RS-232 or RS-422) computers, plotters, and instruments

Dtec

* g # LV ? v_ I I the smart approach to instrumentation

lOtech, Inc. • 25971 Cannon Road • Cleveland, Ohio 44146

(216) 439-4091 • Fax (216) 439-4093

Circle 339 on Inquiry Card.

Make Your Image Fy ...with our

i Solutions.

=ri?.=Vlr Video Master - Video & Audio In/Out Board

'Full Motion Video with Image Capture and Presentation 'VGA to Flick Free Video & Stereo Sound Mixing 'User Developer Kit Available

fS^iT^J Video Blaster - Image Capture Board

"Live Video, True Color, Windowing Video Capture & Sound Controller 'User Developer Kit Available

SOUND BLASTER PRO

*OPL-3 stereo FM Music Synthesizer 'Digital-Analog Mixer

VGA /TV CONVERTER

TOUCH SCREEN PANEL

14-'. 1 7" and 19" VGA Monitor

PICTURE PACKER

JPEG Compression Soft/Hardware

pisS inJet 800 /1200

1 " T BOO/ I 200 DPI for HP LaserJets

CD-ROM MultiMedia Upgrade Kits

S40 MByte CD-ROM with MultiMedia Interface

OPTICAL DISK DRIVES

-650 Mbyte/1 9ms & 256 Mbyte/35ms Magneto-Optical. Re-Writable Drives

VIDEO PHONE by VidCalf Software

'Transmit Live Video via VideoBlaster. Camera & Modem 'Receive Live Video via Modem

Call Us Now I For Free Consulation & Catalogs

MtWilJlMhlM EMPIRE COMPUTECH

H •l'1'^B Li' M ■ J ■ F JK 9668 Hermosa Ave.

|-: ■-■■:■■ ..■.;-:-:-.-:--:-;,::-:. -:-: ■'■=. ■ ■ V ' ■■ ■ .-..:-■ ■-^ ,v.^> Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91 730 ^^fl^rTTTTTTT!^^ Tel : 909-466-1400 Fax : 909-466-1409

Circle 374 on Inquiry Card.

Printers/Plotters • Programmable Hardware

PRINTER BUFFER

Nobody waits!

Allows automatic sharing of printer(s) by several computers.

•simultaneous input on all ports

• compatible with all printers, Lasers and CAD plotters

• Pop-up Menus

• Free Technical Support

• 30 day money-back guarantee & full-year limited warranty

STANDARD 1 MB memory • memory sizes thru 8 MB

• Fast - data rates to 100 KB/S • multiple copies • multiple outputs

1 MB 6-Port Parallel 95

$199

9-Port Parallel S249.95

12-Port Parallel $299.95

8-Port Serial + 3-Port Parallel $269.95

16-Port Serial + 3-Port Parallel $399.95

Single User Parallel

$99

95

512 KBytes - unit is expandable to 4 M

Serial or Converting buffers available

Other Models also available - Call!

Made in USA

Extra Memory: $50 per Megabyte

Y

rvi

513-644-2230 S

FAX 644-2232

204 EAST FOURTH STREET, MARYSVILLE, OHIO 43040

Circle 350 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 351).

Ut Moid

Only $851 for iceMASTER-PE

The world's most innovative emulator for members of the 8051 family is amazingly affordable. The Hew AET (patent pending) emulator architecture delivers incredible volue!

Up to 40 MHz Operation 64K Emulation Code Memory 64K External Data Memory 28K Hardware Breakpoints 6K Trace Memory

# Transparent Trace (View Trace While Executing) Real Time & Nonintiusive Call today for

4- SUPPORTS 8031/8032'S <w SUPPORTS BXC751/8XC752'S

<<« Symbolic & Source-Level Debug

* Built-in Self-Test

"* Windowed User Interface

ft Serial Link to Any PC

« Macro Cross Assembler

HSoln (800) 638-2423

Metolink Corporation PO. Box 1329 Chunk, Az 85244-1329 Phone:(602)926-0797 FAX: (602) 926-1198

Circle 367 on Inquiry Card.

UNIVERSAL PROGRAMMER, EMULATOR, & TESTER TUP-400 $745.00 NEW

TUP-300 $575.00

■ New Improved hardware and software.

■ The most complete PC-based Universal Programmer, Programs PLD (PAL, GAL, FPL, EPLD, PEEL, MAX, MACH.J, E(E)PROM, (up to 16Mbit), Flash EPROM, FJPROM, Special PROM, MPU (87XX, 68XX, Z8, PSD301, PIC16XX, TMS320EXX, UPD75PXXX, HD637XXX...).

■ Covers DIP, PLCC, QFP, SOP, and PGA with 8 to 84 pins. Gang Progamming adapters available also.

■ EPROM EMULATION capability.

■ Tests digital Ids and DRAMs (SIMM/SIP adapter available).

■ Free software updates and new device added upon request.

■ !C Manufacturers' approval.

■ 1-year warranty, 30-day money-back guarantee.

CALL TODAY FOR MORE INFORMATION. Distributors are welcome!

,«$P

w

Supports: 6SHCXXX MAX; PIC16XX DSP; PSD3XX; MACH.

Tribal Microsystems Inc. Tel (510) 623-8859

I 44388 S. GRIMMER BLVD., FREMONT, CA 94538 FAX (510) 623-9925

Circle 354 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 355).

Programmable Hardware • Tape Drives

SUPERPRO

now $599 (US only)

Over 2,000 devices, desktop programmer for your IBM PC with high speed & reliability

• Easy to use menu driven Software.

• Universal programming for E(E)PROM, Flash E(E)PROM, Bipolar PROM, PAL, FPL, PEEL, GAL, E(E)PLD. 8, Microcontroller, etc.

• Test TTL7CMOS logic ICs, & memory (DRAM7SRAM).

• Life time free Software updates on BBS S technical support.

• 1 year Hardware warranty & 30 day money back guarantee.

• Developed & made in U.S.A.

• Call for demo disk. Distributors are welcome!!

E(E)PROM programmer to 4-Mbit

• ROM MASTER: $149 E(E)PROM programmer 4 gang version

• ROM MASTER/4: $239

757 N. Pastoria Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94086

(408)524-1929

FAX (408) 245-7084 BBS (408) 245-7082

XELTEK

Circle 357 on Inquiry Card.

N^!

Little PLC™ Program It In C

S*9a

Our new Little PLC™ measures only 4.33 x 2.85 inches! This miniature controller costs only S195, including 8 optically isolated inputs and 8 reiay driver outputs. Low cost expansion cards allow you to add more I/O: digital and analog. It has dual RS-485 serial I/O, battery backed memory and time/date clock, programmable timers, watchdog and can mount on a standard DIN rail. Our easy to use Dynamic C™ integrated development system also costs $195. You can write simple programs in an hour, or develop major applications with 20,000 lines of C language.

Z-World Engineering

1724 Picasso Ave., Davis, CA 95616 USA • (916) 757-3737 Fax: (916) 753-5141 -24 hr. Automatic Fax: (916) 753-0618 (For automatic fax call from your fax, request catalog #18)

Circle 359 on Inquiry Card.

9 Track/3480 Tape Subsystems

1/4" DAT 8mm Optical

New Windows Software Available

• Best Quality

• Lowest Prices

800/1600/3200/6250 BPI

CALL 1-800-859-8856

Laguna Data Systems

23151 Alcalde Drive, Suite B-3, Laguna Hills, CA 92653 Tel: 714-586-3010, Fax: 714-586-5538

Circle 341 on Inquiry Card.

FOR ALL YOUR TAPE NEEDS

3480 M 9-Track■ 1/4" ■ 4mm ■ 8mm

Tape to Tape Copy

Tape Backup/Restore

Conversion

Data interchange

NovaStor Corp.

30961 Agoura Rd., Suite 109 Westlake Village, CA 91361

Phone (602) 396-3616

or 818-707-9900 • Fax: 818-707-9902

Circle 363 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 315

Tape Drives • Security • Business

9-Track for PCs

Mainframe to PC data interchange

Rock solid solutions, rock bottom prices,

Direct from the manufacturer. 1600 & 6250 bpi. Subsystems includJF drives and software.

800-729-8725

OVERLRMD DRTR®

Since 1980

CAD/CAM • Communications/Networking • Books/Publications

Tel: 619-571-5555 • FAX: 619-571-0982 I Europe: Tel: (+49) 6172-35027 • FAX: (+49) 6172-35028

3480 Now with IDRC!

Ask about 3480 tape drives too

Circle 345 on Inquiry Card.

Desktop 9-Track Tape Subsystem

H-selling 9-track system on desktop.

Qualstar's low cost 1/2-inch 9-track Streaming tape systems bring full ANSI data interchange to IBM AT, PS/2 or Macintosh, giving your micro the freedom to exchange data files with nearly any mainframe or minicomputer in the world.

Systems include DOS or Xenix compatible software, coupler card and cables. High reliability 1600 or 6250 BPI capability may be used for disk backup as well as data interchange.

Call us today! For details and to order: Fax (818) 882-4081 #• Phone (818) 882-5822

9621 Irondale Ave., Chatsworth CA91311

©1989 Qualstar Corp.

All product and company names and trademarks are the exclusive property of their respective owners.

HURLSTRR

Circle 348 on Inquiry Card.

COMPUTER PROTECT

Innovative device to protect your computer system

IrVFNreK Technology Int.

12921 Ramono Blvd. # I, lcwindale,CA 91706

Tel: 1818) 960-8808 Fax: 18181 9601256

. MS [Basis]

Circle 379 on Inquiry Card.

BVTE

Breaks the 4-Color Price Barrier with the Hardware/Software Showcase

See how affordable it is to advertise to BYTE's 500,000 computer professionals in this section!

■ Call for more advertising information:

(603) 924-2695 or (603) 924-2598

(800)

Wintek Corporation

1801 South Street

Lafayette. IN 47904

-6809

HiWIRE II Schematic and PCB Software

With support for expanded and extended memory, HiWIRE II can handle your most demanding schematic and PCB designs. Theunique HiWIRE II editor allows you to display and edit schematics and PCBs simultaneously, using the same commands for each. HiWIRE II is$995, and is guaranteed. Call (800) 742-6809 or (317) 448-1903

Circle 356 on Inquiry Card.

WHOZZ CALLING?

Maximize the Potential of Caller ID...

• Take control of your phone!

• $99 unll intercepts call info and sends il to your IBM compatible

• Caller Info pops-up on your screen name, company, address, notes, etc.

• Full reporting on incoming call activity

• Track sales leads, build mailing lists, save time taking customer orders

• Interfaces with your existing customer database easily

• FREE software tools & C source code make custom applications a snap

• WINDOWS compatible

• Distributors welcome

ZEUS Phonstuff I

Call (404) 587-1541

FAX 404-587-1609

Circle 358 on Inquiry Card.

Lost for the write word?

French, German, Italian & Spanish bilingual dictionaries for your PC. Over 40,000 references, 70,000 translations drawn from contemporary use

FEATURES INCLUDE:

□ TSR - memory resident so it can be used with most word processors for MS-DOS. D Look-up - enables you to find words in the dictionary, choose the appropriate

translations and pasLe them into your document quickly and easily. D Screen-read - reads words in your document automatically for quick and accurate translation.

□ Annotate - allows you to create your own specialized glossaries for use with Collins' world renowned bilingual dictionaries.

English version

(ic with menu item:

in English)

[ lnrpL'rCollins/'ffMv/ii'n

14 Sleep Line

riiidnn. Worthing

West Sussex BN14 0UF

UK

Tel: +44 903 873 555

Fax: +44 903 87.1 (.3.1

For further information

LincuaTech Int'l trie lil.lSouth OremBlvd. Orcm.Utah 841)58 USA Tel:+1800 336 6312 (In the US) Tel:+1801 226 2525 Fax: +1801226 7720

MiemBusiness Italians Sri

Via Aurclio Saffi 16

2012.1 Milano Ml

Italy

Tel:+3") 2 4390421

Fax:+39248193003

French version

(ie with menu items

in French)

Softisshno

129 boulevard tie Sevastopol

75002 Paris

France

Tel:+3314233 7710

Fan: +33 I 42 36 62 63

Circle 377 on Inquiry Card.

316 BYTE- JANUARY 1993

Data Acquisition • Database

Engineering/Scientific • Mathematical/Statistical • Misc. Software

IEEE 488 and

VXJbus Control, Data Acquisition, and Analysis

1993

mm

■ ■■ '—■ • ■■'■■'■

Lb2j1

Data Acquisition and Instrument Control

Free 1993 catalog of measurement and instrumentation products for PCs, workstations, and more. Features new LabVIEW software for Windows and Sun, and LabWindows. Describes IEEE 488.2 interfaces, plug-in data acquisition boards, VXIbus controllers, DSP hardware and software, and signal conditioning accessories. Training classes also detailed. Includes tutorials and glossary.

National Instruments

6504 Bridge Point Parkway, Austin, TX 78730

(512) 794-0100

(800) 433-3488 (U.S. and Canada)

Fax (51 2) 794-8411

Circle 344 on Inquiry Card.

dBASE Data Entry

8

9

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F2

7

4

5

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The TransTerm 5 is a work station data entry/display terminal for on-line shop floor data collection into PC/AT/PS-2 systems. The unit is one of a family of such terminals which feature LC displays for operator prompting and data entry via sealed touch keys or an optional barcode scanner or badge reader (Code39,UPC+). A multi-terminal network controller (up to 250 stations) and a dBASE IV compatible software package are also available. System costs start below $300 per station. Options include display backlighting, barcode scanning, counter inputs, control output.

computerwise:

302 N. Winchester • Olathe, KS 66062 913-829-0600 • 800-255-3739 • FAX 913-829-0810

Circle 333 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 365 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 366).

PCTfcX

Typesetting Software

/"

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xy-zdt

£

(**-*)*

*-ty trV\/^+^

This complete typesetting system makes

your books, manuals, articles, & math formulas

look their best!

For a FREE CATALOG & DEMO DISK, call 415/388-8853

Personal TjX, Inc. 12 Madrona Street Mill Valley, CA 94941 Fax: 415/388-8865

Circle 346 on Inquiry Card.

Recover data from physically damaged disks!

RESC

The (.my software

program that can bypass

DOS to recover your data.

Save hundreds, even thousands

of dollars by doing your own data recovery.

RESCUE™ can perform miracles!

' I w a s

horrified when I thought I would be unable to recover 3 years worth of re search work,.. I've never seen anything like RESCUE™! 11 did exactly what you said it would. It's priceless!"

Call Your

Local Dealer

Today!

AIIMicro, Inc. 1-800-653-4933

Circle 364 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 317

Programming Languages/Tools

Utilities • Windows

BASIC Compiler 8051/52 & Derivatives BXC Version 4.0 New Release!

• 100% BASIC-52 compatible & in line assembly

• Full floating point, integer, byte and bit variables

• Compatible with any RAM or ROM memory mapping

• Compile BXC program into CALLable subroutine

• Compile program to coexist with BASIC-52 interpreter

• DS/5000 chip support and extensions

• Dynamic length variables and many string functions

• Advanced run-time error trapping & buffered serial I/O BXC51 $295

Call now! 508-369-9556 or FAX 508-369-9549

a

Binary Technology, Inc.

P.O. Box 541 • Carlisle, MA 01741 B

J^ P J^ Complete APL system $60.

J Ken's new APL for teaching and research. Shareware and documentation $24. Source $90.

NEW! True Windows 3.1 versions. GUI programming for APL and J

Iverson Software Inc.

33 Major St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2K9 Phone (416) 925-6096 Fax (416) 488-7559

y

Circle 373 on Inquiry Card.

Windows, OS/2, DOS Communications

Powerful C++ class library for asynchronous communications

1 Greenleaf Comm++

GreenleafComm++ $199

^ Call today for information, demo, or to order. MasterCard, VISA, AmEx, approved purchase orders.

1-800-523-9830

214-248-2561 FAX 214-248-7830

Greenleaf Software, Inc.

16479 Dallas Parkway, Ste 570 Dallas, TX 75248

-J FREE unshrouded source

□ FREE unlimited support a No royalties

□ Money-back guarantee

m%

GREENLEAF Mr**9

P Interrupt driven communications

Q Supports Zortech, Microsoft, JPI and Borland C++.

□ IBM PC and compatibles.

□ COM1..8(DOS),and DigiBoard.

□ Baud rates to 115,200.

□ XON/XOFF, RTS/CTS controls.

□ XMODEM, Kermit file transfers.

□ VT52,VT100,ANSI & TTY emulations for DOS.

Q Hayes modem

control classes. Q Line and link level

controls & status.

PC Diagnostics and System Information

QAPIUS™ Over 3 Million users

□ New Version 4.7 now includes Read rout'' Host remote control software and Novi" Scan virus detection software

Q Both novices and expert PC users can quickly solve common computer problems

□ Reports hardware configuration, interrupts, performance benchmarks and more

□ Indudes LAN features for networked PC support and management

For More information call: 1-800-DIAGSOFT

Also from DiagSoft: QAPlus/WIN' for tuning and troubleshooting Windows' and QAPIus/FE"' for power-users and service/support paifessionals.

Available fmm egghead Discount Software, Comp USA, Biz Mart. Frv's l-.kv-trv.nksand other fine resellers.

=, DiagSoft, Inc., 5615 Scotts Valley Drive, Suite 140, Scotts Valley, *tyf California 95066 • 1-408-438-8247-FAX 1-408-438-7113 ^5 Suggested Retail: $159.95

Circle 334 on Inquiry Card.

New Origin™ Version 2.0

Scientific Graphics and Data Analysis in Windows

\\ JL ,S„.

t — "ll II

V

I jlffF

T'

"1 have used SigmaPlot. EasyPlot. and several others. I would rate Origin at the very top...This is the best scientific software f have found...I love this product!"

Dr. Dipcn N. Sinha

Physicist

Los Alamos National Lahoralon

FEATURES INCLUDE:

• Many chart types, including line, scatter, column, bar, area, error bars.

hi-lo-close, spline, step, box, QC charts, polar and waterfall plots. •Create charts in multiple WYSIWYG windows with zooming,

scrolling, and easy double-click editing of all graphic elements. •Sophisticated "layer" system makes it easy to put multiple graphs

on a page. •Function plotting, statistics, t-Test, histogram, regression, curve fitting

to user-defined models, and much more. •Superior publication-quality output. Makes beautiful color slides. •A powerful scripting language lets you create custom applications.

Also supports DDE and DLL. onlv $495.00

$600 overseas 60 day money back Guarantee

- Call 1-800-969-7720

FREE demonstration disk available.

MicroCal, Inc.. 22 Industrial Dr. E., Northampton. MA 01060 TEL (413) 586-2013 FAX (413) 586-0149

'Ideal for OEM Applications.

318 B YTE • JANUARY 1993

Circle 337 on Inquiry Card.

Circle 362 on Inquiry Card.

^ ^ j 4 ^iiiL^^

^

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For Matchless Coverage of Turbo Pascal 7, Choose Computer Books from Osborne

Turbo Pascal 7 Handbook

by Werner Feibel

$29.95

ISBN: 0-07-881799-4

Turbo Pascal 7:

The Complete Reference

by Stephen K. O'Brien

and Steve Nameroff

$29.95

ISBN: 0-07-881793-5

Borland International's hot new Turbo Pascal 7 compiler is more versatile and powerful than ever. This entry level programming system for DOS developers who want the fastest way to learn objectoriented programming has many new enhancements to the compiler, environment, and libraries. Now find out how to make your programs sizzle with Osborne's outstanding new books.

For a practical, hands-on treatment of programming techniques, from beginning to more advanced topics, see the Turbo Pascal 7 Handbook. As a one-stop resource for all your programming questions, Turbo Pascal 7: The Complete Reference is ideal. Check out these RED HOT computer books and other fine Osborne titles today.

AVAILABLE NOW AT YOUR LOCAL BOOK or COMPUTER STORES, INCLUDING

Barnes fcNoble

Booksellers

Since 1873

^BOOKSTAR

4^^ The Complete Discount Bookstore

Wdlden Waldenbooks

Osborne Sffi

Copyright© 1993 McGraw-Hill. Inc.

I WMTTI

BOOKSTOP

The Complete Discount Bookstore

If you paid full price, you didn 't buy it at

CROWNS BOOKS SUPERtt&CROWN

Three limes more books. Same great Crcwi prices.

Circle 134 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 'BYTE 319

THE BUYER'S MART

A DIRECTORY OF PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

THE BUYER'S MART is a unique classified section organized by product category to help readers locate suppliers. Each ad has Inquiry numbers to aid readers requesting information from advertisers. AD FORMAT: Each ad will be designed and typeset by BYTE. Do NOT send logos or camera-ready artwork. Advertisers should furnish typewritten copy. 2"x1Vs" ads can include headline (23 characters maximum), descriptive text (300 characters is the maximum recommended) plus company name, address, tele

phone and fax number. 2"x25/e" ad has more space for descriptive text (850 characters is the maximum recommended).

DEADLINE: Ad copy is due approximately 2 months prior to issue date. For example: November issue closes on September 8. Send your copy and payment to: THE BUYER'S MART, BYTE Magazine, 1 Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. For more information call: Margot Gnade at 603-924-2656. FAX: 603-924-2683.

RATES (Jan. 1993)

3-5 6-11 12

issues issues issues

2"x1'A"

1 ad

2 ads/issue

3 ads/issue 2"x2sA"

1 ad

2 ads/issue

3 ads/issue

$663 $636

$557 530 504

13 issues

$1,326 $1,272 $1,114

- 1,060

- 1,008

$530 504 477

$1,060

1,008

954

ACCESSORIES

BAR CODE

BAR CODE

RADIOACTIVE?

Plot it on your PC with The RM-60 RADIATION MONITOR Serial or printer port. Delects: ALPHA • BETA • GAMMA ■ X-RAY.

MicroR, 1000 limes the resolution of standard geiger counters.

Excellent (or tracking RADON GAS. Find sources. New: Version 2.9

+ WINDOWS, Piol: • Background • Cosmic Rays • Clouds ■ Foods

Call/Write tor PC MAGAZINE review. • TSR * GM Tube ■

VISA/MC/EURO Phone orders. Not satisfied? Full refund.

800-729-5397 or Tel/Fax: (302) 655-3800 Aware Electronics Corp.

P.O.Box 4299, Wilmington. DE 19807 $149.50

PORTABLE READER

Battery-operated, handheld reader with 64K static RAM, 2x16 LCD display, 32-key keyboard, RealTime-Clock. Wand or laser scanner. Program prompts and data checking through its own keyboard. Easy data transfer by RS-232 port or PC, PS/2 keyboard. Doubles as On-Line Reader. 30-day $$ back.

Worthington Data Solutions

417-A Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (408) 458-9938 (800) 345-4220

BAR CODE "SPECIALS"

Wedges/Portables/Multi On-Line readers with HP wands Spectra-Physics lasers S899. PSC & Symbol in stock 3" CCDs $468. Mag stripe encoders/readers $1485 Software: print bar codes $99 & read bar codes $159 P.O.S. - cash drawers $199/receipt printers $399... 30-day $$ Back /1 Year Warranty 'Spanish Dept. available OEM/VAR/Dealer discounts BARCODE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS 9190 Palm Canyon Drive, Corona, CA 91719 (714) 277-1917 • (800) 653-4252 • FAX: (714) 277-1005

Inquiry 704.

KEYBOARD, VIDEO, MOUSE, AUDIO

Extend signals from PC with EXTENDER Split signals with COMPANION/PC EXPANDER Switch signals among PCs with COMMANDER

Boosts signals up to 600 feet. Control up to 96 PCs

with one keyboard, monitor and mouse.

CYBEX CORPORATION

2800H Bob Wallace Ave., Huntsville, AL 35805 Phone: 205-534-0011 Fax: 205-534-0010

PRINT BAR CODES/BIG TEXT FROM YOUR PROGRAM

Add bar codes and big graphics characters to your program. Print from ANY MS-DOS language. Bar codes: UPC, EAN, 2 of 5, MSI, Code 39. Epson, Oki, IBM dot matrix text up to %". LaserJet up to 2". Font cartridges not required. $179-$239. 30-day $$ back.

Worthington Data Solutions

417-A Ingalls St.. Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (408) 458-9938 (800) 345-4220

READ BAR CODES!

The Standard Edition of KNOW-WEDGE for CODE 39

Complete with Hewlett-Packard Wand.

ONLY $149.00.

For alternative hardware or software solutions

CALL

COMPUTER RESOURCES GROUP

629 Silverdale Drive, Claremont, CA 91711

VOICE: (714) 624-8734 BBS: (714) 626-1054

Inquiry 702.

Inquiry 705.

CUSTOM KEYBOARDS AND TERMINALS

Engineering, Development and Production

• Point-of-Sale • Special purpose • Harsh environment

• Access control • Data collection • Operator input

■ Unique * Industrial • Any interface, key style or size

• No minimum quantity required

GENOVATION, Inc.

17741 Mitchell North, Irvine, CA 92714 (800) 822-4333 (714) 833-3355 FAX (714) 833-0322

Inquiry 703.

BAR CODE READERS

Keyboard emulation for PC/XT/AT & PS/2s, all clones and any RS-232 Terminal. Transparent to your operating system. Available with Steel wands, Lasers, Slot & Magstripe Readers. Same day shipping. 30-day money-back guarantee. One-year warranty. Reseller discounts available.

AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS

2190 A Regal Parkway, Euless, TX 76040 (800)648-4452 (817)571-9015 FAX (817) 685-6232

I. T. S. Bar Code Solutions

Bar codes are easy using our FULL line of readers & printers. They plug and play with your existing CPU/printerAerminals/ software systems in your office, store, truck, factory or warehouse. ITS' bar code DOS programs print on matrix or laser printers. 30 day refund. 1 year warranty. OEM/VAR7 Dealer discounts.

International Technologies & Systems Corp.

655-K North Berry St., Brea, CA 92621 - Western USA 13 Welwyn Court, Richmond, VA 23229 - Eastern USA (800)228-9487 (714)990-1880 (804)741-6725 (FAX) 990-2503

Inquiry 706.

BAR CODE

LABELING SOFTWARE

On EPSON, IBM, OKI dot matrix or LaserJet. Flexible design on one easy screen. Any format/size. Up to 120 fields/label. 18 text sizes to 3"-readable at 100'. AIAG, MIL-STD, 2 of 5, 128, UPC/EAN, Code 39. File Input & Scanned logos/symbols (PCX)—S279. Other programs from S49.30-day $S back.

Worthington Data Solutions

417-A Ingalls St.. Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (408) 458-9938 (800) 345-4220

PORTABLE BAR CODE READER

Battery operated, handheld reader with 64K RAM, 54 key keyboard, real-time clock, 2X16 LCD display, and built-in calculator. Supports WAND, CCD, and LASER. Built-in program generator supports multiple programs and data files. Interlaces to PC & PS/2 keyboards. RS-232 terminals, and HAYES compatible modems. 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE.

AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS

2190 A Regal Parkway. Euless, TX 76040 (800)648-4452 (817)571-9015 FAX (817) 685-6232

PC BAR CODE SPECIALISTS

Bar code readers designed for fast, reliable, costeffective data entry. They emulate your keyboard, so data looks just like it was typed in! Choose from stainless steel wand, laser gun, CCD, and magnetic stripe scanners. Also, powerful label printing software. Great warranty. Generous reseller discounts. 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE.

Seagull Scientific Systems

15127 N.E. 24th, Suite 333, Redmond, WA 93052

1-800-758-2001 206-451-8966

BAR CODE READERS

For PC, XT, AT, & PS/2, Macintosh, and any RS232 terminal. Acts like 2nd keyboard, bar codes read as keyed data. With steel wand-$399. Top rated in independent reviews. Works with DOS, Xenix, Novell, Alloy, -ALL software. Lasers, magstripe, & slot badge readers. 30-day $$ back.

Worthington Data Solutions

417-A Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (408) 458-9938 (800) 345-4220

BAR CODE PRINTING SOFTWARE

• MS/PC DOS Systems • Import/Export ASCII files • 9 & 24 pin dot matrix • H-P LaserJet/Plus/Series II

• Menu-driven or Memory Resident • Most Label Sizes

• Multiple Densities • Variable Graphic Heights • Code 39, I 2/5, UPC A/E, EAN 8/13, 128, 93,11, MS1/PLESSEY, POSTNET(ZIP+4).

AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS

2190 Regal Parkway, Euless, TX 76040 (800)648-4452 (817)571-9015 FAX (817) 685-6232

DATA INPUT DEVICES

Bar Code, Magnetic Stripe Readers & SmartCard Encoder/ Reader for microcomputers & terminals, including IBM PS/2 & others, DEC, Macintosh, AT&T, CT, Wyse, Wang. All readers connect on the keyboard cable & are transparent to all software. UPC & 39 print programs, magnetic encoders, & portable readers are also available.

TPS Electronics

4047 Transport, Palo Alto, CA 94303

415-856-6833 Telex 371 -9097 TPS PLA 1-800-526-5920 FAX: 415-856-3843

Inquiry 707.

320 BYTE -JANUARY 1993

BAR CODE

CD-ROM

COMPUTER BOOKS

VARIANT MICROSYSTEMS

BAR CODE READERS DELIVER

WAND/LASER/MAGNETIC CARD CONNECTIVITY

• Keyboard wedges (Internal/External) for IBM PC/XT/AT, PS/2, and portables

• RS232 wedges for WYSE, Link, Kimtron terminals

• Bar code and label printing software

• Full two-year warranty

■ 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

• Extensive VAR/Dealer Discounts

46560 Freemonl Blvd., Suite 206/Freemont, CA 94538/(510) 440-2870 800-666-4BAR FAX: (510) 440-2873

Inquiry 708.

BUYER'S MART

High Performance Self Contained Portable CD-ROM Computing

Uncompromising Portable CD-ROM Computer Systems

4-64 MB RAM /120-540MB HDD / Internal CD-ROM

FCC Class B Certified

386DX-33 - $4095 / 486DX-33 - $4595

ACCESS INFORMATION INC.

The information retrieval experts 1-800-847-3830

Inquiry 713.

COMPUTER BOOKS at a discount

We specialize in ADVANCED books for developers, programmers, computer professionals, and academics. 15% discount. Latest books from over 50 publishers. Free catalog. UPS & international shipping. Personal service. MC/VISA/AMEX. CompuServe' 70007,1333. GO CBK Windows, C++, O/S 2 2.0, UNIX, Mac, OOP

CompuBooks

Rt. 1, Box 271-D, Cedar Creek, TX 78612 USA 800-880-6818, 512-321-9652 voice 8, FAX

Inquiry 718.

COMPUTER INSURANCE

CHECK THIS OUT!

Introducing our new Super

Buyer's Mart

This new ad size gives your sales message great visibility to over 500,000 technically sophisticated proven buyers.

CALLMargotfor

advertising details

603-924-2656

(FAX 603-924-2683)

Inquiry 709.

Simtel MSDOS Shareware CDROM, 640 Meg, Sepl 92 $24.95

GIFs Galore CDROM, 6000 images, 650 Meg $24.95

CICA MS Windows Shareware CDROM, Oct 92 $24.95

OS/2 Shareware CDROM, Oct 92 $24.95

Source Code CDROM, 600 Meg, Mar 92 $39.95

INFO-MAC Macintosh SW, 4000+ files, Aug 92 $39.95

CDROM Caddies $4.95

WALNUT CREEK CDROM

1547 Palos Verdes Mall, Ste 260, Walnut Creek, CA 94596 (BOD) 7SB 99D7 (510)947 5996 FAX: (510) 9471644

Inquiry 714.

MORE FONTS MEAN MORE FUN!

Font Fun House on CD-ROM tor the IBM and the Macintosh

Hundreds of completely useable fonts for your computer. This disc contains shareware and freeware fonts in TrueType and TypeOne Postscripl (ATMS) formats and also includes fhe Macintosh screen font libraries of both Adobe and AGFA. Over 1/3 ol the fonts on this CD-ROM are FREEWARE! Suggested retail is $49.00-order now tor only $39,001 Orders within U.S., add $3.00 for UPS shipping and orders outside U.S., add $8.00 for airmail delivery. Minnesota residents add 6.5% sales tax.

Wayzata Technology Inc.

Post Office Box 807, GrandRapids, Minnesota 55744 Tel: 800-735-7321 (218)326-0597 Fax:(218)326-0598

Inquiry 715.

INSURES YOUR COMPUTER

SAFEWARE Computerowner's coverage provides replacement of hardware, media and purchased software. As little as $49 a year covers accidents, theft, power surges and more. One call does it all.

TOLL FREE 1-800-848-3469

SAFEWARE, The Insurance Agency Inc.

PO Box 02211, 2929 N. High St., Columbus, OH 43202

Inquiry 719.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS

LOW- LOW- LOW

Computer Systems/Notebooks/Network Solutions

IBM- Apple-Compaq- AST-ALR- Evere x-&others SURAH 386/486 ISA/EISA-AMI/Mylex Motherboards

• CD ROMS • Tape Backup • Pocket FAX Modem LAN Cards " Hard Drives/Floppy Drives • Memory/upgrades

• DRAMS, SIMM Modules • Laser Printers/Scanners

• Plotters S Digitizers • Software

CIIDAU inn 44912 Osgood Road, Fremont CA 94539 t/M OUnMrl IMC. Phone:(510)651-5101 Fax:(510)651-5241

1-800-543-1001 Nationwide Orders

Inquiry 720.

COMMUNICATIONS

CROSS ASSEMBLERS

PCB & SCHEMATIC CAD-$195

"EASY-PC" for single-sided and multilayer boards to 17"x17" with up to 1500 ICs including surface mount. Phenomenally fast and easy to use. Over 13,000 copies sold. Needs PC/XT/286/386 HERC/CGA/ EGAA/GA. Output to laserjet/inkjet/dot matrix printer, pen-plotter, photo-plotter and NC Drill. Not copy protected. VISA/MC/AMEX welcome. For full info circle inquiry # or contact us directly.

NUMBER ONE SYSTEMS LTD.

Harding Way, St. Ives, Huntingdon, Cambs, England, PE17 4WR

Tel: 011-44-480-61778 Fax: 011-44-480-494042

Inquiry 710.

SCHEMATIX

• Integrated schematic environment

• Unlimited levels of design heirarchy

• 10,000+ components/user expandable

• Dot matrix, postscript, inkjet printers

• Board layout/router software available

• Dos, Sparc, Unix

VAIL Price: $195

silicon Tools 305/570-5580

Inquiry 711.

X.25, HDLC, SDLC, BSC

SDLA card and software provides 'plug-in' synchronous link support for PCs which is inexpensive, easy to use and robust.

♦ Up to 180kbps under any PC operating system

♦ Extensive utilities plus third party support under DOS, Unix, Windows

♦ Protocol analyser, test software included

♦ Full function SNA emulation packages also available

Sangoma Technologies Inc.

Tel. (416) 474-1990 1 -800-388-2475 FAX (416) 474-9223

Inquiry 716.

Cross Assemblers $50

Simulators $100

Disassemblers $100

PseudoCorp

716 Thimble Shoals Blvd. Newport News, VA 23606 (804) 873-1947 Fax (804) 873-2154

Inquiry 721.

DATA CONVERSION

TAPE CONVERSION & DUPLICATION

• DC2000 • 1/4" Cartridge (AS/400)

• TEAC • 4mm DAT

• 8mm EXABYTE • DEC TKxx media

• 1/2" Tape • 3480 8 3490

Mainframe, Mini or Micro - popular or obscure.

Fixed price quote by return. Standard turnaround 24 Hours.

TEL 1 800-392-5373 FAX: 405-321-2741

TEL 44+ (0) 734-890042 FAX: 44+ (0) 734-890040

Vogon Enterprises Ltd.

Unit 5, Forrest Court, Oaklands Park, Fishponds Road,

Wokingham, Berks., RG11 2FD, England

Inquiry 722.

CAD/CAM

COMPUTER BOOKS

DATA RECOVERY

CONTOURING MOTION CONTROL

FROM A PRINTER PORT! ^

Indexer LPT" software $249

NEW VERSION 3 visa/mc

. Controls up to six step motors simultaneously. . Linear and Circular Interpolation.

• New features to accommodate machine control.

• Easy-to-use DOS device driver. Super Manual. . CAD-CAM interface available.

..... ^ Corporation, 1422 Arnold Ave.

Ability Systems Rosiyn,pa 19001 (215)657-4338

* ' FAX: (215) 657-7815

Inquiry 712.

Multimedia Production Handbook

for the PC, Macintosh®, and Amiga

Tom Yager

Paperback: $39.95 (tentative)

January 1993, c. 400 pp., ISBN: 0-12-768030-6 ACADEMIC PRESS

HBJ Order Fulfillment Dept. #17915, Orlando. FL 32887 CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-321-5068 or FAX 1-800-336-7377

Inquiry 717.

Ontrack

DATA RECOVERY

• Unsurpassed success rate • Fast turn around

• Priority service available • Clean room

• Expertise in DOS, OS/2, Novell, Macintosh,

Unix, Xenix, Sun, DEC, Wang,

Banyan Vines and more!

MN:1-800-872-2599 • CA: 1-800-752-7557

6321 Bury Drive, Eden Prairie MN S5346 ■ 2400 Main Street. Suite 200, Irvine CA 92714

Inquiry 723.

JANUARY 1993 • B Y T E 321

THE BUYER'S MART

DATA RECOVERY

DATABASE

ENTERTAINMENT

Now we're ONTRACK in London Too.

ONTRACK DATA RECOVERY EUROPE, LTD.

Surrey House, 3-1 Eden St., Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 1ER U.K.

0800-24-39-96 • 44-81-974 5522

Inquiry 724.

^ FOR Q

** SUPERBASE 2 **

800-448-NERD

Inquiry 729.

53 EGA/VGA GAMES

Buy this super collection of best-selling

games for only $9.95, including shipping

and handling. (Please add $5.00 for

foreign orders.) Credit Cards Only.

SMC SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (619)931-8111 ext. 511

DIAGNOSTIC

Inquiry 732.

FINANCIAL SOFTWARE

TAPE DATA RECOVERY

DC2000 • 1/4-' Cartridge (AS/400)

TEAC • 4mm DAT

8mm EXABYTE • DEC TKxx media

1/2" Tape ■ 3480 8.3490

Whatever the Hardware, Software & Problem...

if there is data on a tape we will recover it.

TEL 1 800-392-5373 FAX: 405-321-2741

TEL 44+ (0) 734-890042 FAX: 44+ (0) 734-890040

Vogon Enterprises Ltd.

Unit 5. Forrest Court, Oaklands Park, Fishponds Road,

Wokingham, Berks., RG11 2FD, England

Inquiry 725.

DATA/DISK CONVERSION

"..PINPOINT ANY PC FAILURE."

John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine 6/30/92

Top-rated PocketPOST Power On Self-Test card with diagnostic software for ISA/EISA/MicroChannel. 180-page book. Hones your trouble shooting skills. CALL NOW.

DATA DEPOT, Inc.

1710 Drew Street #5, Clearwater, FL 34615

1-800-275-1913

813-446-3402

FAX 813-443-4377

Inquiry 730.

DISASSEMBLERS

BrainMaker:

"The most fascinating computer software I've ever seen.. .learn about this stuff." John Dvorak, PC Mag. Predicts stocks, bonds, sales, inventories. Comprehensive manual. Menus. 12,000 sold. PC or Mac. Still only S195!

Free Flyer: 800/284-8112,916/477-7481 California Scientific Software

Inquiry 733.

FLOW CHARTS

CONVERTING YOUR DISKETTES? ENTRUST THEM TO US!

2500 Word Processor & Computer formats,

3J4", 5%", 8" Disks, Mag Tapes, Mag Cards, Cartridges,

Cassettes & 8 MM Custom Conversions, Programming

& Applications Development

DISK DUPLICATION

OCR SCANNING SERVICES

Call us for Quality, Best Prices and Quickest Turnaround Time.

COMPANY COMPENDIA, INC., 55 E. Washington St„«237 Chicago, IL 60602 TEL: 1-S00-374-DISK FAX: 312-419-1390

Inquiry 726.

THE#1 CHOICE in disk & tape conversion

for many leading corporations, government agencies, law firms, and companies in every industry-world-wide.

Free test • Satisfaction guaranteed

Graphics Unlimited Inc.

3000 Second St. North, Minneapolis, MN 55411

(612) 588-7571 FAX: (612) 588-8783

1-800-745-7571

Inquiry 727.

IBM PC-^TO -f HP FILE COPY

/ New Interface / BDAT2ASCII

Allows IBM PCs, PS/2, compatibles to interchange files with Hewlett-Packard Series 70, 80, 200, 300, 1000, (LIF media). Oswego Software

Box 310 708/554-3567

Oswego, IL 60543 FAX 708/554-3573

CALL FOR A FREE DEMO!

Inquiry 728.

DISnDATa 80x86.exe/.com/.sys-.asm!

• New! Fu//y-automatic mode. (Wo Prompts!)

• AccuRATE-uses compiler-proven flow analysis.

• Fully-labeled output 100% Masm compatible.

• Prog, size limited only by available memory! DISnDATa 4.6-3'A" or 5V«" disk+manual $165

Pro/Am Software Ph: (513) 435-4480

220 Cardigan Road Dayton, OH 45459

Inquiry 731.

EDUCATION

B.S. & M.S. In

COMPUTER SCIENCE

The American Institute for Computer Sciences offers an in-depth correspondence program to earn your Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science at home. B.S. subjects covered are: MS/DOS, BASIC, PASCAL, C, Data File Processing, Data Structures & Operating systems. M.S. program includes subjects in Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence.

AMERICAN INSTITUTE for COMPUTER SCIENCES

2101-BY Magnolia Ave. South, Ste. 200 Birmingham, AL 35205

800-767-2427 205-323-6191

FLOW CHARTING 3

• High resolution print outs... -■—s.

-X^v

• Multi-page charts... L S250 J

<%AsO>

portrait or landscape \^_^x

j^i^r

• Import/export capabilities

^FLEXIBLE^)

• 35 shapes, 10 fonts, 4 line styles

Call for free demo disk!

PATT0N & PATT0N 800-525-0082 ex.. 1317

Software Co

r p o r a t i 0 n -185 Cochrane Cr.. Morgan Hill, CA 95037

See our ad on page 104

Inquiry 734.

WINDOWS FLOWCHARTER $129

RFFlow 2.0 is a professional drawing tool for flowcharts & org. charts. Requires Microsoft Windows. 100 shapes auto adjust in size. Diagonal lines and curves. Auto line routing and re-routing. Click on a shape to bring up a sub-chart. Move charts to other apps. via the Clipboard. Call for free trial disk.

RFF ELECTRONICS

1053 Banyan Court, Loveland, CO 80538 Phone: (303) 663-5767 FAX: (303) 669-4889

FRAMEWORK/FRED

The Framework Magazine

Framework enhancement programs, 12 issues $29.90 Unlimited Framework and FRED support. Access undocumented powers of Framework & FRED,

fBase for Framework $190.90

The fastest disk database access in existence. dBase file Index optimization and compression.

Selections & Functions, Inc.

(617)826-1553

25 Washington Street. Hanover, MA 02339

ELECTRONIC MAIL

CONVERSION SERVICES

Convert any 9-track magnetic tape to or from over 5000 formats including 3'A", 5%", 8" disk formats & word processors. Disk-to-disk conversions also available. Introducing CD-ROM conversions. Call for more info.

Pivar Computing Services, Inc.

165 Arlington Hgts. Rd., Dept. #B Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 (800) Convert

ELECTRONIC MAIL-Novell MHS

• Stand alone computers, Laptops, Netware, Lantastic

• Set up your own hub

• International network

■ Workgroups, privacy, use your regular phone line

• S100.00 per computer station - unlimited phone support and design assistance.

Selections & Functions, Inc.

Call for a brochure (617)826-1553

25 Washington Street, Hanover, MA 02339

Digital Quad Maps

Local Street Maps, State Maps, and World

Maps in DXF, PCX, PICT, PIC or TIF Formats. Gigabytes of Map data available.

M icre Mop & CAP™ (303) 988-4940

Inquiry 735.

322 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

GRAPHICS

JAPAN MARKET

LAPTOP PERIPHERALS

^tRD

AC F°R Sa HARVARD GRAPHICS

800-448-NERD

Seek Software Developers

We are looking for companies developing competitive software products for PCs and aggressively wishing to enter Japan market. Enormous Japanese PC software market attracts worldwide attention. Do not worry about even though you are unfamiliar with Japan market or do not have well organized sales network in Japan. Our technical engineer is pleased to help you by modifications for Japanese PCs. If your company deserves our considering, please feel free to fax us today for details. Product catalogs and company profile are highly welcome.

Giken Shoji Co., Ltd.

Fax: 81-052-972-6577 Phone: 81-052-972-6544 6F Soar Bldg. 2-3,1-chome, Izuml, Hinashi-ku, Nagoya 461, Japan

Auto Adapters

■ 12V battery systems

• Small package with high efficiency

■ Plugs between computer and lighter receptacle

• $99 to $129 « Designed and made in USA!! In stock for Apple PowerBook (10-30V input), Canon BJ printer, Commodore, Everex Tempo LX, IBM, Kodak Diconix printer, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, Zeos

Custom adapters designed for OEMs. Serial interface cards for Toshiba and Sanyo.

EMPIRE ENGINEERING

California USA

tel 805/543-2816 fax 805/543-2820

nquiry 736.

nquiry 742.

nquiry 746.

HACKING/SECURITY

LANS

OPTICAL STORAGE

BLACK BOOK ON HACKING AND SECURITY

»► All new 1993 edition

»► Includes many expert tricks and techniques you can try

»> The "How to" do it and prevent it book

** You will be surprised to see how vulnerable systems are!

Fast delivery!

Send only $25 U.S. check or money order to:

NYTEK INNOVATIVE COMMUNICATIONS

P.O. Box 2753, Station C Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) K1P 5W8

The $25 Network

Try the 1st truly low-cost LAN

• Connect 2 or 3 XTs, ATs,386s, 486s

• Uses serial ports and null modem cable

• Runs at 115K baud - approx 8500 bytes/sec

• Runs in background, totally transparent

• Share disks and printers, etc.

• Needs only 15Kof RAM

Little Big LAN

The most flexible network

• Peer to Peer LAN to 250 nodes

• $75 total software cost, not per node!

• Link via serial, parallel, or Arcnet

• Link via Ethernet or Modems soon

• Mixed mode routing

• Typically only 35K of RAM

Skeptical? We make believers!

Information Modes

P.O. Drawer F, Dentan, TX 76202

Tech 817-387-3339 Orders 800-628-7992

Hours 1-5 Mon/Wed, 9-5 Tue/Thu/Fri CST

Optical Disks

WE STOCK ALL BRANDS OF OPTICAL MEDIA

We Also Carry Optical Drives,

DAT & 8mm Products

• • CORPORATE DISCOUNTS * *

CITY COMPUTER & SUPPLIES

271 Schrop Avenue, Akron, Ohio 44312

1(800)759-6868 (216)784-4464

FAST NEXT DAY UPS

nquiry 737.

nquiry 747.

HARDWARE

PROGRAMMERS TOOLS

Pre-Owned Electronics, Inc™

THE Independent Provider, serving the Dealer,

Professional, Corporate, Government, and

Educational Buyer since 1985

REDUCE DEVELOPMENT TIME

OPTLINK™, OPTLIB™, and OPTASM™ are highly optimized development tools with virtually unlimited capacities for DOS, Windows, and OS/2. Supports MS C/C++ v.7 too!

SLR Systems, Inc.

1622 N. Main St., Butler, PA 16001 call (412) 282-0864 or fax (412) 282 7965

APPLE II & MACINTOSH'

SYSTEMS • PARTS • EXCHANGE REPAIRS

Callfora Catalog 800-274"5343 INT'L: 617-275-4600 • FAX: 617-275-4848

205 BURLINGTON ROAD • BEDFORD, MA 01730

Inquiry 738.

nquiry 743.

nquiry 748.

LAPTOP COMPUTERS

HEWLETT PACKARD

Buy - Sell - Trade

LaserJet ColorPro DeskJet DraftPro RuggedWriter DrattMaster Electrostatic Plotters

• Monochrome and Color HP 9000 Workstations and Vectras also available.

T. E. Dasher & Associates

4t 17 Second Ave., S. Birmingham, AL 35222

Phone: (205) 591-4747 Fax: (205) 591-1108

(800) 638-4833

USED COMPUTERS

MAJOR BRANDS - WIDE SELECTION IBM - COMPAQ & OTHERS

Computers from S99 Color Printers $239

Mono Monitors from S25 CGA Color Monitors S129

IBM 5140 LAPTOP S349

IBM PCjr & CONVERTIBLE PARTS & ACCESSORIES

HAR0-T0-FIN0 ITEMS FOR OLDER PC'S

FREE CATALOa COMPUTER RESET

P.O. Box 461782, Garland, TX 75046

Phone (214) 276-8072 & FAX BBS (214) 272-7920

C and C++ DOCUMENTATION TOOLS

• C-CALL ($69) Graphic-tree of caller/called hierarchy.

• C-CMT ($69) Generate, insert, update comment-blocks.

• C-METRIC ($59) Path complexity, lines/stmts/comments.

• C-LIST (S69) List, action-diagram, reformat programs.

• C-REF ($59) Local/global/parameter cross-reference.

• C-DOC ($199) All 5 as 1 DOS program, <=15,000 lines.

• Professional ($299) <=150,000 lines, DOS, OS/2, Windows.

SOFTWARE BLACKSMITHS INC.

6064 St. Ives Way, Mississauga, ONT, Canada L5N-4M1

Voice/Fax; (416) 858-4466 Demos/BBS: (416) 858-1916

Inquiry 739.

Inquiry 744.

Inquiry 749.

HARDWARE/COMPUTERS

LOCALIZATION

SC/FOX™ EMBEDDED COMPUTERS

PC Parallel Coprocessor Plug-in Boards: 15 MIPS avg 50 MIPS burst,

using the SC32 32-bit CPU or the 16-bit Harris RTX 2000™.

VME Master/Slave System Controller SBC; 18 MIPS avg 70 MIPS burst,

uses RTX 2000 cpu, SCSI, 2 ser, 1 plr ports, to 640K bytes.

Stand-Alone Single Board Computers: 18 MIPS avg 60 MIPS burst, 3U

or 100x100mm Eurocard-size using either SC32 or RTX 2000.

Ideal for embedded real-lime control, data acquisilion, robotics, and signal

processing. OEM software development system included.

SILICON COMPOSERS INC im 322-8703

208 California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94306

Software Developers! Localization Managers!

Now you can manage software

translation more efficiently and simply

with IDOC's new software

XLS™

• Lower translation cost

• Faster time to market

• Consistency across releases

• Localize on any platform

Call for a FREE demo disk 1-800-336-9898, ext XL8

IDOC, An International Documentation Company

Boost Your BASIC with ProBas!

us- ProBas5 adds 938 new commands to QB/PDS US' Written in assembly for speed ea? Gives your programs a professional look is* Easy to use, money back guarantee, $195 ■a- Other add-ons for BASIC, C & Visual Basic avail. FREE DEMO Disk AND BOOKLET

TeraTech (800) 447-9120 X1002

Dept 1002, 100 Park Ave., Suite 360, Rockville, MD 20850 Int'l +1(301) 424-3903 Fax (301) 762-8185 BBS (301) 762-8184

Inquiry 740.

Inquiry 750.

INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE

Industrial Automation Products

We produce TRUE industrial products such as: PCs, acquisition add-on cards, embedded controllers and software. Call for our FREE full-line catalog.

ELSIST

Electronic Systems

Via Brodolini, 15, 15033 Casale MTO, ITALY Ph. 142/451987 FAX 142/451988 BBS 142/453165

Structograms

Software Documentation made quick and easy with PANORAMA

■ Structograms (Nassi-Shneidermann) automatically from the source code in a flash

■ Hierarchie-trees of modules, procedures

■ Headers of modules, procedures

■ Software-Metrics: McCabe complexity, LOC and more Available for: Turbo Pascal, C, Modula-2, Foriran-77, PL/M, dBase PANORAMA Standard (Pascal, C. Modula-2): $495

panorama Lite $295 Wuest Informatik AG

Schuetzenstrasse 11: CH-8245 Feuerthalen; Switzerland Int'l (+41 53) 29 31 32 FAX: (+41 53) 29 31 43

Call or Fax for information and free demo.

Inquiry 741.

Inquiry 745.

Inquiry 751.

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 323

THE BUYER'S MART

PROJECT BILLING

SECURITY

SOFTWARE/ENGINEERING

CLIENT PROJECT

A Time and Billing System that accounts for charges to an unlimited number of projects (or matters). Price with limited time discount, $129. Demo available.

Micro Billing Systems, Inc.

117 W. Harrison, Ste# 624M, Chicago IL 60605 Tel: (312) 939-1869 Fax: (312) 939-1351

Inquiry 752.

BIT-LOCK" SECURITY

Piracy SURVIVAL 10 YEARS proves effectiveness of powerful multilayered securily. Rapid decryption algorithms. PARALLEL or SERIAL port-transparent security device. Complemented by economical KEYLOK™ and multifeatured COMPU-LOCK™ including countdown, timeout, data encryption, and multiproduct protection. (Dos/Unix/Mac). Also, access control.

MICROCOMPUTER APPLICATIONS

3167 E. Otero Circle, Littleton, CO 80122 (303)770-1917

Inquiry 757.

SAUNA: 3D THERMAL ANALYSIS

• Models: PCBs, plates, heatsinks, enclosures, multiboard enclosures. • All heat transfer modes: convection, radiation, conduction • Interactive menudriven • Thermal parameters library • Fast "what if": dimension, mat'l, finish, analyses • Easy to learn & use • IBM PC & Macintosh II

Call for free evaluation program

Tatum Labs, Inc.

1287 N. Silo Ridge Drive, Ann Arbor, Ml 48108 313-663-8810

REPAIR SERVICES

SHAREWARE

Inquiry 762.

SOFTWARE/GRAPHICS

♦ VIDEOS ♦

• Laser printer maint/repair for the layman (2 hrs.) S39.95

• Dot matrix printer maint/repair for the layman (30 min.) S39.95

• Fax machine maint/repair lor the layman (30 min.) $39.95

STOP UNNECESSARY SERVICE CALLS!

SPECIAL! BUY 2, GET ONE FREE! All credit cards accepted. S3.60 lor SSH 1-80D-537-D589

Viejo Publications, Inc.

4470-107 Sunset Blvd. Sle 600. Los Angeles, CA 90027

Inquiry 753.

SECURITY

NEW NEW NEW

Rocket "93" HQ CD ROM

600 megs of High Q. Shareware $39.95+ Latest Shareware on floppies $1.98 ea.-tLowest Prices - Highest Quality Catalog Available

ROCKET SHAREWARE 1-800-727-9724

Inquiry 758.

SOFTWARE WANTED

TIFF, PCX, TARGA, GIF, DIB, BMP, DCX, EPS, WMF, WPG, PICT, JPEG

AccuSoft Image Format Library 3.0

"The most comprehensive raster support library on the market" Import, export, convert, display, and print all above formats! DOS & Windows versions included in one package. No royalties. Includes several sample programs with source code. Supports all languages. Format compatibility guaranteed! G3, G4, TIFF-F, multi-page images etc. Rotate, scale, color reduction, sharpen etc. 30 day satisfaction guarantee. $495

AccuSoft Corporation

160 E. Main St., P.O. Box 1261, Westboro, MA 01581 (800) 525-3577 (508) 898-2770 FAX (508) 898-9662

Inquiry 763.

FIGHT PIRACY!

• EVERLOCK3.0 •

SOFTWARE COPY PROTECTION

New Option Board Sale-New Remote Registration

New CPU LOCK-CD ROM LOCK and more

* EVERKEY HARDWARE LOCKS •

Az-Tech Software, Inc.

Call for a 201 East Franklin, Richmond. MO 64085

FREE (816)776-2700

Demo (800) 227-0644 fax (816) 776-8398

Inquiry 754.

THE ULTIMATE COPY PROTECTION

• Completely menu driven Quite Simply

• Defeats all Hardware/Software Copiers The Best

• No Source Code Changes Ways To

• Mulltiple Layering Protect Your Valuable

• No Damaged Media Software Investment

• Fulll Hard Disk & LAN Support

• Unlimited Metering, FREE Demo Disk

STOPVIEW" STOPCOPY PLUS'" (800) 879-2224

BBI COMPUTER SYSTEMS, INC. MffMOM

14105 Heritage Lane, Silver Spring, MD 20906 FAX: (301) 460-7545

Inquiry 755

Cop's CopyLock II

The professional software protection with TRUE Machine Install. Option Board safe. OS/2, Networks, Windows, and Trace 1020.

LINK Computer

Int'l: + 45 31232350 Fax: + 45 31238448

US/CAN: 800-344-2545 FAX: 408-923-7061

Publish Your Program!

Young, enthusiastic and successful software publishing company looking for PC productivity and utility software to acquire or publish. For a confidential review of your software product, send information to Software Adv., 2210 Wilshire Blvd., #836, Santa Monica, CA 90403 or circle our number on the Direct Link Card in the back of this issue. We will contact you promptly.

Inquiry 759.

SOFTWARE/ACCOUNTING

dBASE BUSINESS TOOLS

•GENERAL LEDGER

PURCH ORD/INVNTORY

•ORDER ENTRY

ACCOUNTS RECVABLE

•JOB COSTING

JOB ESTIMATING

•BILLOFMATLS

SALES ANALYSIS

• PAYROLL

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

$99/S198ea. + S&H

dATAMAR SYSTEMS

Creel. Card-Check-COD

6969-D Corte Santa Fe. San Diego, CA 92121

(619)452-0044

(800) 223-9963

Inquiry 760.

SOFTWARE/BUSINESS

DATA ENTRY SOFTWARE

Full featured, heads-down data entry

with two-pass verification, edit language,

operator stats, much more! Designed for

the PS/2"", PC, XT, AT or compatibles.

PCs from $395 LAN version available

FREE 30 day trial

Computer Keyes

21929 MakahRd., Woodway. WA 98020

Tel Fax:

USA:

206/776/6443 206/776-7210 800/356-0203

SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

Graphics library for VGA and ET4000 Super VGA. Up to 1024x768 resolution. Supports HiColor and 24-bit true color. 2-D & 3-D w/perspective. Gouraud shaded polygons. Z-buffer hidden surface removal. Animation. Mouse & joystick support. Scale and rotate text. Store/retrieve in PCX format. For MS FORTRAN. C version available soon. S250. Call for free demo disk.

AEROSOFT CORPORATION

5562 Bells Ferry Rd., Suite 233, Acworth, GA 30102 Tel/FAX (404) 917-1309

Develop CAD/CAM, GIS, A/E/C Products

ON TIME and UNDER BUDGET with the "CAD/CAM Developer's Kit" Series

The CCDKs are libraries of C functions which support routines for DXF input/output, graphical display, line/ arc/ellipse/NURB spline construction/editing, and much more than can be described here.

Building Block Software, Inc.

371 Moody Street, Waltham, MA 02154

Voice (617) 899-4350 Fax (617) 899-4399

"The Ultimate CAD/CAM/CAE Programming Engine"

Slash your development time, with your CAD programming companion, TG-Professional v.4.0, Ihe most complete C/C++ toolbox of 2D & 3D geometric routines available today! Over 800 routines including NURBS. DXF, Graphics, Surfacing, Hidden Line, Transforms, Perspectives. Polygon (Inl/Union/Diff), Clipping, Tangents and more. Routines for drawing using BGl or MSC Graphics. Full source & 30 day guarantee. USA $500.00. Use MSC. Borland C/C++, WATCOM C/386 or Metaware High C/C++. Call 1-800-635-7760 or Fax/Phone 214423-7288 for free 30 page technical paper.

Disk Software Inc.

109 S. Murphy Rd., Piano. TX USA 75094

Inquiry 764.

SOFTWARE/ENGINEERING

YOUR SALES MESSAGE

about the special computer product or service that you provide belongs in print

THE BUYER'S MART

can help you reach computer professionals and produce valuable inquiries for your company!

Call MargOt Gnade for more information

603-924-2656

or

Fax: 603-924-2656

Inquiry 756.

324 BYTE- JANUARY 1993

Mixed Mode Simulation

• NEW IsSpiceS Willi • Schematic Enlry Analog/Digilal simulation • Extensive Model Libraries

• Draws waveforms as the • Waveform Analysis simulation runs • Full SPICE programs starling

• PC and Macintosh Versions at S95. Complete systems

• Filter Design tram $990.

Call for your Free Demo and Information kit. P.O. Box 710, San Pedro, CA 90733-0710 /«.*, ,,-ij,

310-833-0710, FAX: 310-333-9656

Inquiry 761.

RAINDROP

TM

FAST, compact PrtScrn Utility for end users AND developers. Hardcopy as fast as 10 sees. Average binary size - 6 kbyte. 14 video graphic standards. Scale, rotate, coiorize and more. 'CALL' from user-written programs. Complete 9- & 24-pin dot-matrix, inkjet, and laserjet library S44.95 + S3 s/h.

ECLECTIC SYSTEMS

8106 St. David Ct., Springfield, VA 22153 (703) 440-0064 Fax (703) 455-8965

Inquiry 765.

SOFTWARE/GUI

SOFTWARE/SCIENTIFIC

STATISTICS

GUI TOOLKIT ONLY $249

Full source code included

TEGL Windows Toolkit lets you create DOS based GUI apps that are completely standalone. Over 500 functions. Menus, mouse & keyboard support, dialogues, and more. Includes TEGL graphics interface which has drivers for most popular video modes. Supports most C and Pascal compilers. Protected mode version is only $499. No royalties.

TEGL Systems Corporation

P.O. Box 580, Stn. A, Vancouver B.C. V6C 2N2 (604) 669-2577 FAX (604) 688-9530

Inquiry 766.

SOFTWARE/INSTRUCTIONAL

COOK EXCEL SPREADSHEETS

XSolver optimizes spreadsheet models using simulated annealing. It can find global minima of functions of many variables even when multiple local minima exist. Requires Windows 3.x and Microsoft Excel 4.0 for Windows. Only $150.

Exatech Software

6547 N. Academy Blvd. Suite 527, Colorado Springs, CO 80907 (719)599-8727

Inquiry 772.

WinSTAT™ Statistics for Windows

All the statistical methods you need, with all the convenience of Windows! Up to 65,000 variables and cases. Import/export Lotus, dBASE, etc. files. Copy & paste tables and graphs to word processor. Call for brochure and/or $10 demo. V/MC/PO.

Kalmia Co. Inc.

Dept. 63, 71 Dudley St., Cambridge, MA 02140 Phone/FAX: (617) 864-5567

Inquiry 777.

KNOWLEDGE is POWER

Computer software shows you how to Speed Read and Speed Learn. Read up to 3000 words per minute and beyond. Train on your home computer 25 minutes a day. Within 30 days you too can be a speed reader. Amazing results from first lesson reveal speed reading secrets! Specify MAC or PC. Send the introductory price of $34.95 to:

KP-WARE

P.O. Box 2042, Kingston, R.I. 02881 FAX V/MC 401-782-2511

Inquiry 767.

SOFTWARE/MATHEMATICS

VTrfX Scientific Desktop Publishing

• Equations • Tables • Graphics • Scalable Fonts • Supports most printers • WYSIWYG previewer • Foreign Languages • Special Symbols • Font Effects • Indices • Only $299 'TrsX of Tomorrow-Notices of AMS, March 1991. CaJI now for a FREE DEMO DISK

MicroPress, Inc.

68-30 Harrow Street, Forest Hills, NY Tel (718) 575-1816 Fax (718) 575-8038

Inquiry 773.

NCSS 5.x Series - $125

Easy-to-use menus & spread sheet. Multiple regression. T-tests. ANOVA (up to 10 factors, rep. measures, covariance). Forecasting. Factor, cluster, & discriminant analysis. Nonparametrics. Cross Tabulation. Graphics: histograms, box, scatter, etc. Reads ASCII/Lotus. Many new add-on modules.

NCSS

329 North 1000 East. Kaysville. UT 84037

Phone: 801-546-0445 Fax: 801-546-3907

Inquiry 778.

UTILITIES

OPERATIONS RESEARCH @ $149 for your IBM or Compatible

LP88-Linear Programs up to 3000 by 15000. BLPBB-Linear Programs with Bounded Variables. MILP88-Mixed-lnteger Linear Programs. MXLP88-Large Model Mixed-Integer LP. TSA88-Transportation/Ttansship ment Problems. NLP88-Nonlinear Objective Programs. Student/Demo-Reduced capacity versions for students. Turbo Pascal Units-Object modules tor developers.

Eastern Software Products, Inc.

P.O. Box 15328, Alexandria, VA 22309 (703) 360-7600. Fax (703} 360-7654

FREE CATALOG

A great selection of scientific software products for plotting, non-linear curve fitting, chemical equilibrium, simulation, statistics, symbolic algebra, and more. Prices from $150. Call:

1-801-943-0290

MicroMath, Salt Lake City, UT 84121 -0550

FastTrax the best disk optimizer

• Speeds disk access, reclaims wasted space

• Defragments any size DOS disk incl. >1 Gb

• No limits on directories, files or clusters

• Unique in-cylinder method reduces seeks

• MakeTrax (incl.) for custom file placement

• Batch operation, power failure protection

FastTrax International

880 Ensenada Avenue, Berkeley CA 94707 24-hr Sales and Tech support (510) 525-3510

Inquiry 768.

Inquiry 774.

Inquiry 779.

GEOMETRYn"RIGONOMETRY CALCULATOR

Apollonius - Sketch-based geometry/ trigonometry solver. State-of-the-art variational geometry system lets you sketch your geometry or frig problem and automatically solves for distances, angles and areas. Integrated equation calculator, graphs and tables plus DDE and clipboard support. Ideal for surveyors, engineers, machine shops, students, architects, or anyone who uses trig. Runs under MS Windows 3.0 598

Saltire Software 1 -800-659-1874

Inquiry 769.

SOFTWARE/PACKAGING

OVER 300 PROGRAMS AVAILABLE! FREE CATALOG!

• COGO Routines • Log Plotting & Analysis

• Surface Modeling • Petroleum Databases

• Gridding & Contouring • Oil & Gas Economics

• Groundwater Modeling * USGS Digital Elevation Quads

• Molecular Modeling • Data Conversion

• Astronomy • Statistical Analysis & Plotting

• Geophysics • Geo & Hydro Chemical Analysis

• Base Mapping • Hydrodynamic Modeling

W> — mtr\Af*mmA 4251 KiP|in9 SL Ste' 585

nOCK rrUfC Wheat Ridge, CO 80033

(303) 423-5645 • Fax (303) 423-6171 • RockFAX* (303) 423-7112 '24-hr. tax on-demand product information service

Inquiry 775.

PEN PLOTTER EMULATOR

FPLOT turns your printer into an HP pen plotter. Fast hi-res, no jagged lines. Vary line width, color. Screen preview - zoom, pan. Works with most CAD programs. Supports most printers. Requires DOS 2.1 or higher. S119+$3 S&H. VISA/MC/Chk/MO.

FPLOT Corporation

24-16 Steinway St., Suite 60S. Astoria, NY 11103 71 8-545-3505

Inquiry 780.

SOFTWARE/SORT

WINDOWS

FREE SOFTWARE PACKAGING CATALOG

Everything you will need to Package, Distribute, and Ship Your Software!! From manuals and binders to mailers and shippers

LABELS • LABELS • LABELS

For your diskettes, plain or custom printed

dot matrix or laser printer... free samples

•••FREE CATALOG-"

Hice & Associates

8586 Monticello Dr.. West Chester. OH 45069

Phone/Fax: 513-777-8586

Inquiry 770.

OPT-TECH SORT/MERGE

Extremely last Sort/Merge/Select utility. Run as an MSDOS command or CALL as a subroutine. Supports most languages and file types including Btrieve and dBASE. Unlimited file sizes, multiple keys and much more! MS-DOS S149. OS/2. XENIX, UNIX $249.

(702) 588-3737 Opt-Tech Data Processing

P.O. Box 678 - Zephyr Cove, NV 89448

Inquiry 776.

SOFTWARE/VOICE/FAX

HyperPhoto_db - A Hyperlmage/document management system under MS-Windows™ 3.x

Displays multiple windows ol images and documents in true color or with cnlnr matching. Associates text into, images or symbols to any pixel inside an image. Easily switches from image to image through successive levels of detail. Finds a point inside an image by entering its name e.g. address. Organize images and files in a network/relational database. Users can design their own information templates and search with multiple keys. Include a powerful editor. File security & Treesearch. Link to clipboard. Pan and zoom within images. Work with PCX, BMP. TIF, GIF, Postscript file Formats. Network Vers. Avail. _ Introductory offer - $185.

Friendly Information Systems, Inc.

34 Bow Avenue, Dedham, MA 02026 (508) 486-0003 or (617) 329-1620

Inquiry 781.

STOCK PACKAGING

to help you

market your software

ask for catalog 92 S

call 708 390-7744

or fax 708 390-9886

PolyQuick Co.

1243 Rand Road, Des Plaines, IL 60016

Inquiry 771.

MULTI-VOICE TOOLS

Multi-Voice Tools is a complete development Toolkit for Pascal or "C" to access all the features for most speech processing boards available today. I! helps you write MULTI-LINE VOICE APPLICATION systems in minutes. A number of programming examples are provided. All programs and libraries are delivered with source code. Dialogic, Rhetorex, Pika, VBX: S599. Watson (Single Line): S99. ALSO AVAILABLE: Fax Programmer's Toolkit ($199). Based on CAS specifications. Visa/MC accepled,

ITI Logiciel

4263 Crislophe-Colomb, Montreal, Quebec. Can. H2J 3G2 TEL (514) 597-1692 FAX (514)526-2362

88 WINDOWS PROGRAMS

Buy this fantastic collection tor only $9.95. Features games, business, utilities, education, home and graphics programs for use in Windows'. Price includes shipping and handling. (Please add $5.00 for foreign orders.) Credit Cards Only.

SMC SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (619)931-8111 ext.511

Inquiry 782.

JANUARY 1993 • B Y T E 325

YOUR DIRECT LINK

ADVERTISER CONTACT INFORMATION

To order products or request FREE information, call advertisers directly or send in the Direct Link Card by mail or fax! Let them know you saw it in BYTE!

Inquiry No.

Page No. Phone No.

266-267 AT&T PARADYNE (N.A.)

166

61-62

371-372

193-194

238

63-64

70

218

234

65

401

554

364

66-68

69

71-72

73

74-75

560 568 265

79-80

450

81-82

403-404

239

240

402

235-236 200

405

375-376 259 84-85 406-407

ABACUS SOFTWARE 187

ACI/ ACQUIRE 311

ADDA 106 ADVANCED COMPUTER PROD 304

ADVANCED LOGIC RESEARCH 17

ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES 14-15

AER ENERGY 135

AITECH 224

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYS 107

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYS 176IS-1

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYS 292NE-2

ALLMICRO 318

ALPHATRONIX 133

ALTIMA SYSTEMS, INC 243

AMERICAN MEGATRENDS 101 AMERICAN SMALL BUSI COMP 247

AOX 163

APPLE COMPUTER INC 176A-D

APPRO INTERNATIONAL INC 292NE-4 APPRO INTERNATIONAL INC 292MW-4

ARES MICRO DEVELOPMENT 290-291

ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC 235

AXIOMATIC 313

800-544-4996

exl 96

800-451-4319

886-2-758-9615"

886-2-248-4276"

714-558-8813

714-581-6770

800-222-9323

800-POWER-20

800-882-8184

800-223-4277

800-223-4277

800-223-4277

800-653-4933

800-849-5807

800-356-9990

800-828-9264

918-825-4844

617-890-4402

408-732-6091 408-732-6091 800-322-3200 416-756-0718 416-602-9270

B

BAY TECHNICAL ASSOC BINARY TECHNOLOGY INC BITWISE DESIGNS INC BIX

BORLAND INTL BORLAND INTL (INTL) BUFFALO PRODUCTS BULLDOG COMPUTER PROD BSC MICROSYSTEMS

318 164 279 13 CIV 287 306 224IS-2

800-523 508-369800-367 617-491 800-331

800-345 800-438408-730

2702 9556 5906 3342 0877

2356

■6039 5511

CASE DESIGN INTERNATIONAL CASTELLE CORP CHERRY MIKROSCHALTER

GMBH (INTL) 25

CHIASHIN CITITRONICS COLORADO MEMORY SYSTEMS

87 91

92

409

332

241

333

280-281

410-411

93

442

443

196

94-95

237

441

242-243

412

216

97-98

99-100

COMPEX INC (INTL) COMPUADD EXPRESS (N.A.) COMPUDYNE COMPUSAVE INTI (INTL) COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUTER ASSOCIATES COMPUTER ASSOCIATES COMPUTER ASSOCIATES COMPUTER ASSOCIATES COMPUTER BOOK CLUB, THE (N.A.) COMPUTER FRIENDS COMPUTER QUICK COMPUTER SYSTEM ARCHITECT COMPUTERLANE UNLIMITED COMPUTERWISE COMTRADE CORE INTERNATIONAL COREL SOFTWARE CPS COMPUTER DIST GMBH CPS COMPUTER DIST GMBH CREATIVE UBS INC CTX INTERNATIONAL INC CURTIS INC CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS CYBEX CORP CYBEX CORP (INT'L)

D

DALLAS SEMICONDUCTOR DATA ACCESS CORP DATALUX CORP

307

89

111

120-121

78-79

166

192A-B

193

260A-B

110

96IS-2

311

292

317

308

96IS-3

50

176IS-2

240IS-3

35

216

186

240IS-3

289

cm

800-880-1100 800-359-7654

49-964-318-262" 886-2-7270804" 818-855-5688 800-346-9881 714-630-7302 800-925-3525 800-932-COMP 602-437-8208 800-848-8199 800-848-8199 800-CALL-CAI 800-CALL-CAI 800-CALL-CAI 800-CALL-CAI

717-794-2191

800-547-3303

415-861-8330

800-753-4CSA

800-526-3482

800-255-3739

800-969-2123

407-997-6044

800-836-SCSI

49-40-656-7969"

49-40-656-7969"

800-998-LABS

714-595-6146

612-631-9512

49 241607383"

205-534-0010"

205-534-0010"

150 238 130

800-258-5061 800-451-FLEX 800-DATALUX

Inquiry No.

Page No. Phone No.

413-414

206 440 575

576

284-285

334

101

246-247

415

217

DATATRONICS TECHNOLOGY 176IS-4 886-2-782-0305"

DELL COMPUTER CORP (N.A.) CHI 800-626-8260

DELL COMPUTER CORP (N.A.) CIV 800-626-8260

DELL COMPUTER CORP (N.A.) 149 800-626-8260

DELORME MAPPING 186 800-452-5931

DEXDYNE 224IS-2 44-285-655644" DEXPO/

MILLER FREEMAN. INC 292MW-3 800-87-DEXPO DEXPO/

MILLER FREEMAN, INC 292NE-6 800-87-DEXPO

DHT 310 818-810-0552

DIAGSOFTINC 318 800-DIAGSOFT

DIGITAL VISION 98 800-346-0900

DPT 293 407-830-5522

DR HUGGLE 8, PARTNER GMBH 176IS-2 49-0241-403117"

DURACELL 74-75 800-422-9001

exl. 436

E

433 ECG

• ELONEX (INTL)

374 EMPIRE COMPUTECH

202 ENVISIO

211-212 ESRI

555-556 EVOLUTION COMPUTING

562-563 EVOLUTION COMPUTING

240IS-4 31-4937-96808"

120-121 44-81-452-6422"

314 800-446-1967

272 612-339-1008

195 909-793-2853

292NE-3 800-874-4028

292PC-1 800-874-4028

416 FAST ELECTRONIC GMBH (INTL) 149 49-089-533-401"

429-430 FIRST INTL COMPUTER 176IS-3 88-62-717-4500

248-249 FIRST SOURCE INTL 305 714-588-9866

209-210 FUNK SOFTWARE 275 617-497-6339

417-418 FUTURESOFT ENGINEERING 176IS-1 713-496-9400

380

335

419

103-104

105-106

336

337

420

219-220

221-222

338

GATEWAY 2000 GATEWAY 2000 GENERAL TECHNICS GENOVATION, INC GFK HAMBURG GLENCO ENGINEERING GLOBALINK INC GMM RESEARCH CORP GREENLEAF SOFTWARE GREY MATTER LTD GRID SYSTEMS CORP GRID SYSTEMS CORP GTEKINC

CII.1

137-144

313

314

224IS-4

197

176

311

318

96IS-4

157

158-159

312

800-523-2000 800-523-2000 800-487-2538 800-882-4333 49-040-231-789" 800-562-2543 800-255-5660 714-752-9447 800-523-9830 44-0364-53071" 800-532-GRID 800-532-GRID 800-282-4835

H

203 HANDTOP COMPUTERS LTD

572-573 HARDLOGIC TECH, INC 292SO-2

377 HARPER COLLINS 316

107 HAUPPAUGE COMPUTER WORKS 65

108 HERCULES COMPUTER TECH 207 * HEWLETT PACKARD 21

HEWLETT PACKARD HEWLETT PACKARD

36-37 86-87

109-110 HORIZONS TECHNOLOGY (N.A.) 224A-B HYUNDAI ELECT AMERICA 40A-H

33-1-60-17-70-77"

800-258-8345

[-0903-873633"

800-443-6284

800-532-0600

800-552-8500

exl. 7108

800-LASERJET

ext. 7133

800-752-0900

exl. 7094

800-828-3808

800-933-3445

113

IBM

- WORKSTATIONS 30-31 800-IBM-6676

111 IBM-OS/2 44-45

112 IBM-THINK PAD 82-63

274 IBM - CSET/2 259

275 IBM - PS/VALUE POINT DIRECT 276-277 800-IBM-2YOU 384 INFINICON 312 800-374-3880 • INSIGHT DIST NETWORK 294-295 800114 INTEGRAND RESEARCH 232 209 233 INTEL CORP 94-95 800 435-436 INT'L NETWORK CONSULTANTS 240IS-2 339 IOTECH 314 216578 ISLAND SYSTEMS (INT'L) 292SO-3 617 434 ITALIAN SOFTWARE AGENCY 224IS-3 39-323373 IVERSON SOFTWARE. INC 318 416

■755-3874 651-1203 •538-3373 215-388-7489" ■439-4091 ■273-0421 ■925208" -925-6096

Inquiry No.

Page No. Phone No.

JAMECO ELECTRONICS

JDR MICRODEVICES

JNL OF OBJ ORIENT PROG 176IORC1-2

116 342 553 561 567 574 340 117-118

271

171-172 197-198 270

257 421

558 557

120

422-423

367

254

362

121

260-261

251

252

253

343

276-277 570-571 122

123 428 136 124

125-126

127

344

128 250 353

565 444 431

129-130

131-132

134

133

135

345

424

213

800-831-4242

309

800-538-5000

610RC1-2

212-274-0640

100

800-663-8702

312

508

880

3000

292MW-1

600

255

2989

292NE-5

800

255

2989

292PC-6

800

255

2989

292SO-1

800

255

2989

312

303

-444

7737

201

714

435

2600

KEA SYSTEMS LTD KEITHLEY METRABYTE KENOSHA COMPUTER CTR KENOSHA COMPUTER CTR KENOSHA COMPUTER CTR KENOSHA COMPUTER CTR KILA KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY

LAGUNA DATA SYSTEMS 315 800-859-8856

LAHEY COMPUTER SYSTEMS 254 800-548-4778

LANDMARK RESEARCH INTL CORP129 800-683-6696

LEXMARK INTERNATIONAL 181 606-232-6814

LINGUISTIC PRODUCTS 168 713-298-2563

LODE STAR COMPUTER 284-285 800-875-7568

LOGIC PROGRAMMING ASSOC 96IS-2 44-81-874-0449"

M

MANCHESTER EQUIPMENT CO 292A-B

MANCHESTER EQUIPMENT C0292NE-1

MARK WILLIAMS CO 109

MATHSOFTINC 219

MEGADATA 176IS-1

METALINKCORP 315

MICRO SOLUTIONS COMP PROD 288

MICROCALINC 318

MICROGRAFX

MICRO-INTERNATIONAL, INC

MICROPROSE SOFTWARE

MICROPROSE SOFTWARE

MICROPROSE SOFTWARE

MICROSOFT CORP

MICROSOFT CORP

MICROSOFT CORP

MICROSOFT CORP

MICROSOFT PRESS INC

MICROSTAR LABORATORIES

MICROTAC SOFTWARE

MICROTECH COMPUTER

MICROWAY

MICROWAY

MINICOM LTD

MINUTEMAN

MKS / MORTICE KERN SYSTEMS

255

302

299

301

303

22-27

55-59,61,63

93

114-115

43

313

265

292SO-4

131

211

176IS-4

N

NANAO USA CORP (N.A.) NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS NEC - PRINTERS NEVADA COMPUTER NOVASTOR CORP

267

111 263 317 176IDRC1-2 49 300 315

O-C-T SYSTEMS

OLIVETTI

ONTIMEMKT/

KARSTEN PETERSEN OPTIQUEST ORCHID TECHNOLOGY OSBORNE MCGRAW-HILL OSBORNE MCGRAW-HILL OUTBOUND SYSTEMS INC OVERLAND DATA INC OXFORD ELECTRONIC PUBL

138 566

PACIFIC DATA PRODUCTS PATTON & PATTON

PC POWER 8 COOLING PEMCO/ UNIFORM SHOW

292PC2-3 40IS2-3

281 227 319 330-332 102 316 96IS-1

179

104

516-435-1199 516-435-1199 800-627-5967 800-628-4223

516-589-6858" 800-638-2423 615-756-3411 413-586-7720 800-998-0153 800-967-5667 800-879-PLAY 800-879-PLAY 800-879-PLAY 800-426-9400 800-426-9400 800-426-9400 800-426-9400

800-MSPRESS 206-453-2345 800-366-4170 800-342-6508 508-746-7341 508-746-7341

972-2-637576" 214-446-7363 519-884-2251

310

800800 512800

800602

-5202 i-3488 -3488 -0100 -5500 -7762 -3616

49-40-435-196" 800-843-6784 800-7-ORCHID

800-444-4607

800-729-8725

44-865-56646"

619-625-3583 800-525-0082 ext. 112 800-722-6555 800-323-5155

326 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

YOUR DIRECT LINK

im

M

ADVERTISER CONTACT INFORMATION

Inquiry No. Page No.

Phone No.

Inquiry No. Pago No.

Phone No.

Inquiry No. Page No.

Phone No.

139-140

PERCEPTIVE SOLUTIONS

68

800-486-3278

158

SIGMA DATA

171

800-446-4525

354-355

TRIBAL MICROSYSTEMS

315

510-623-8859

141

PERSOFTINC

162

800-368-5283

36B

SMARTMICRO TECHNOLOGIES

313

800-266-1576

426

TRITON TECHNOLOGIES

240IS-1

908-855-9440

346

PERSONAL TEX

317

415-388-8853

159

S'NW ELECTRONICS

110

800-874-1235

1B1-182

TRUEVISION INC

151

800-344-8783

142

PHAR LAP SOFTWARE INC

155

617-661-1510

SOFTLINE CORP

40IS-4

718-438-6057

u

143-144

PINNACLE MICRO

6-7

714-727-3300

160-161

SOFTWARE SECURITY INC

274

203-329-8870

145

PIONEER COMMUNICATIONS

123

800-LASER-ON

162

SONY CPPC

240A-H

800-352-7669

*

UNIXWORLD

206

800-257-9402

146

PKWARE INC

52

414-354-8699

163

SONY(NA)

173

UNIXWORLD

208A-B

800-257-9402

347

POLAROID CORP

311

800-225-2770

164

SPSS INC

245

800-543-5835

378

USA ELECTRONICS, INC

314

800-332-8434

559

POLYWELL COMPUTERS, INC

292NE-2

800-999-1278

369-370

STARGATE TECHNOLOGIES

311

800-782-7428

V

577

POLYWELL COMPUTERS. INC

292SO-2

800-999-1278

165-166

STATSOFT

273

918-583-4149

183-184

VENTURA SOFTWARE INC

170

800-822-8221

147

POPKIN SAW & SYSTEMS INC

125

212-571-3434

167

STORAGE DIMENSIONS

183

800-344-4323

439

VIDEO MAKER /VITEC

40IS-1 33-146-29-03-04"

POWERCORE 176IDRC1-2

815-468-3737

168

STRATEGIC MAPPING

199

408-970-9600

185-186

VIEWSONIC

81

714-869-7976

119

PROGRAMMER'S PARADISE

69-71

800-445-7899

169

SUN MICROSYSTEMS

10-11

800-426-5321

569

VORTEX COMPUTERS

292MW-2

800-548-7839

PROGRAMMER'S SHOP

214-215

800-421-8006

ext 520

564

VORTEX COMPUTERS

292PC-5

800-548-7839

148-149

PROGRESS SOFTWARE

223

800-4PROGRESS

201

SUNSOFT

2-3

800-227-9227

w

Q

ext 123

170

SUPERMAC TECHNOLOGY

169

800-334-3005

427

WALKER. RICHER & QUINN

224IS-1

206-324-0407

150

QNX/ QUANTUM SOFTWARE SYS 250

800-363-9001

199

SUPRA CORP

230

800-727-8647

187

WATCOM PRODUCTS INC

33

800-265-4555

ex! 101

191

SYMANTEC

9

800-228-4122

379

WENTEK TECHNOLOGY, INC

316

818-960-8808

152

QUA TECH INC

282

800-553-1170

173-174

SYSTAT INC

103

708-864-5670

356

WINTEK CORP

316

800-742-6809

348

QUALSTAR CORP

316

818-882-5822

425

SZKI RECOGNITA CORP

173

361-201-7607"

WOLFRAM RESEARCH

191

800-441-6284

445-446

QUANTUM CORP (INT'L)

256

41-38-337722

T

258

WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGIES

298

800-457-6937

437-438

QUANTUM CORP (INT'L)

257

41-38-337722

151

QUARTERDECK OFFICE SYS

R

165

310-392-9851

349 350-351

TALKING TECHNOLOGY INC TECHNOLOGIC SYSTEMS

312 315

800-685 513-644

4884 2230

357

X

XELTEK

315

408-524-1929

175

TEKTRONIX

53

800-835

6100

188-189

XVT SOFTWARE INC

229

800-678-7988

153

RAIMA CORP

85

800-327-2462

176

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS

105

800-527

3500

154-155

RAINBOW TECHNOLOGIES

77

800-852-8569

TEXAS MICROSYSTEMS

112A-B

800-627

8700

z

264

RALIN WHOLESALERS

296

800-752-9512

177

TEXAS MICROSYSTEMS

113

800-627

8700

ZENITH DATA SYSTEMS

96A-H

800-523-9393

255-256

RECORTEC INC

286

800-729-7654

382-383

TOP PC

314

800-333

8144

190

ZEOS INTERNATIONAL

18-19

800-423-5891

156

ROSE ELECTRONICS

8

800-333-9343

178

TOSHIBA AMERICA INC

90-91

800-457

7777

358

ZEUSPHONSTUFF

316

404-587-1541

s

179-180

TOUCHSTONE SOFTWARE

236

714-969

7746

359

Z-WORLD ENGINEERING

315

916-757-3737

272

TRANSCEND INFORMATION INC 297

714-598

5500

192

ZYLA8 / DIVISION OF IDI

106

800-544-6339

365-366

SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMMING

317

517-339-9859

360

TRANTOR SYSTEMS LTD

313

800-872

6867

204-205

ZYXEL USA

237

714-693-0808

157

SEQUITER SOFTWARE INC

270

403-437-2410

361

TRI VALLEY TECHNOLOGY INC

312

510-447-2030

• Correspond directlv

with companv

352

SIGEN

313

408-737-3904

353

TRIANGLE DIGITAL SERVICES

312

44-81-558-8

110"

" Indicates FAX Numbe

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SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES

Zena Coupe

A-2 International Sales Ltd.

70 Chalk Farm Road

London NW1 BAN

England

Tel:+44 71 2843171

FAX:+44 71 2843174

UNITED KINGDOM, BENELUX

Christina Barion (44 81 545 6270) McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Wimbledon Bridge House One Hartfield Road Wimbledon. London SW19 3RU England

FAX: +44 81 5456294 TELEX: 892191

FRANCE, ITALY

Zena Coupe, Amanda Blaskett

A-Z International Sales Ltd.

70 Chalk Farm Road

London NW1 SAN

England

Tel:+44 71 2843171

FAX:+44 71 2843174

ISRAEL

Dan Ehrlich

Ehrlich Communication Int'l.

P.O. Box 99

Herzliya 46101. Israel

Tel: +972 52 586245

Tel: +972 52 586246

FAX: +972 52 585685

AUSTRALIA

Rod Tremain

Rod Tremain Media

45 Pymble Ave.

Pymble 2073, Sydney

Australia

Tel: +61 2 9983339

FAX: +61 2 9883424

JAPAN

Masaki Mori Transworld Media Inc. 4th Floor, 1-26-6 Kamimeguro Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153, Japan Tel:+81 3 57210761 FAX:+81 3 57210762

KOREA

Young-Seoh Chinn

JES MEDIA INT'L

5th Floor, Banpo Bidg.

40-7, Chamwon-Dong, Seocho-Gu

Seoul 137-030. Korea

Tel: +82 2 5458001

Tel: +82 2 5458002

FAX: +82 2 5498861

SINGAPORE

Dorek Ng

Stephen Tay

Third Wave Publishing Corp.

1123 Serangoon Road, #03-01

Singapore 1232

Tel:+65 296 6166

FAX: +65 298 7551

HONG KONG

Candice Lo

Third Wave Publishing Corp. Unit 2, 6F Hing Wah Center 82-84 To Kwa Wan Road Kowloon, Hong Kong Tel: +852 764 3830 FAX: +852 764 3857

MALAYSIA

Servex (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.

H.K. Lin

5th Floor. Bena Tower

160, Jalan Ampang

50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tel: +60 3 2624592

FAX: +60 3 2624591

THAILAND .

Jack Hu

Sahaviriya OA Group

28/1 Prapawit Bidg., Surasak Rd.

Silom, Bangkok 10500

Thailand

Tel: +66 2 2360295

FAX: +66 2 2365960

TAIWAN

Liwen Lee

Third Wave Publishing Corp.

2nd Fl., No. 19-1, Lane 231

Fu Hsing North Road

Taipei 10445, Taiwan

R.O.C.

Tel:+886 2 7136959

FAX:+886 2 7151950

INDIA, INDONESIA, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, OTHER ASIAN AND PACIFIC COUNTRIES

K.T. Wu

Third Wave Publishing Corp.

2nd Fl., No. 19-1, Lane 231

Fu Hsing North Road

Taipei 10445, Taiwan

R.O.C.

Tel:+886 2 7136959

FAX:+886 2 7151950

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 327

YOUR DIRECT LINK

PRODUCT CATEGORY INDEX

For FREE product information from individual advertisers, circle the corresponding inquiry numbers on Your Direct Link Card!

To receive information for an entire product category, circle the category number on Your Direct Link Card!

Category No. Inquiry No.

Page No.

HARDWARE

ACCESSORIES/SUPPLIES

AER ENERGY 135

DURACELL 74-75

POLAROID CORP 311

ADD-IN BOARDS

ACI/ACQUIRE 311

AMERICAN MEGATRENDS 101

APPRO INTERNATIONAL INC 292NE-4

ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC 235 CHERRY MIKROSCHALTER

GMBH (INT'L) 252-253

CHIASHIN 311

COMPEX INC (INT'L) 111

COMPUTER SYSTEM ARCHITECT 311

CURTIS INC 186

DEXDYNE 224IS-2

DPT 293

GFK HAMBURG 224IS-4

HERCULES COMPUTER TECH 207

JAMECO ELECTRONICS 213

JDR MICRODEVICES 309

ORCHID TECHNOLOGY 227

PERCEPTIVE SOLUTIONS 68

QUA TECH INC 282

SIGMA DATA 171

STARGATE TECHNOLOGIES 311

SUPERMAC TECHNOLOGY 169

TALKING TECHNOLOGY INC 312

TRUEVISION INC 151

WINTER CORP 316

COMMUNICA TIONS/NETWORKING

BAY TECHNICAL ASSOC 48 BULLDOG COMPUTER PRODUCTS 306

CORE INTERNATIONAL 96IS-3

ELONEX (INT'L) 120-12-1

GTEK INC 312

INFINICON 312

MICROTECH COMPUTER 292SO-4

MINICOM LTD 176IS-4

STARGATE TECHNOLOGIES 311

TALKING TECHNOLOGY INC 312

TECHNOLOGIC SYSTEMS 315

ZEUS PHONSTUFF 316

218 217 347

2

371-372 71-72 560

76 405

375-376

406-407

332

237

440

246-247

419

108

115

131-132

139-140

152

158

369-370

170

349

181-182

356

4

77-78

240

410-411

338

384

570-571

428

369-370

349

350-351

358

5 568

265 405

86

207

280-281

441

99-100

284-285 415

433

203

572-573

377

275 113

435-436

340

558

557

260-261

COMPUTER SYSTEMS

APPRO INTERNATIONAL INC 292MW-4

ARES MICRO DEVELOPMENT 290-291 CHERRY MIKROSCHALTER

GMBH (INT'L) 252-253

COMPUADD EXPRESS (N.A.) 120-121

COMPUDYNE 78-79

COMTRADE 308

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS 240IS-3

DATALUXCORP 130

DELL COMPUTER CORP (N.A.) CMI

DELL COMPUTER CORP (N.A.) CIV

DELL COMPUTER CORP (N.A.) 149

DHT 310

DRHUGGLE&PARTNERGMBH 176IS-2

ECG 240IS4

ELONEX (INT'L) 120-121

GATEWAY 2000 CI1.1

GATEWAY 2000 137-144

HANDTOP COMPUTERS LTD 108 HARDLOGIC TECHNOLOGIES, INC 292SO-2

HARPERCOLLINS 316

HEWLETT PACKARD 86-87 HEWLETT PACKARD BELLYBAND HYUNDAI ELECTRONICS AMERICA 40A-H

IBM - PS/VALUE POINT DIRECT 276-277

IBM - WORKSTATIONS 30-31 INSIGHT DISTRIBUTION NETWORK 294-295

INT'L NETWORK CONSULTANTS 240IS2

KILA 312

MANCHESTER EQUIPT CO 292A-B

MANCHESTER EQUIPT CO 292NE-1

MICRO-INTERNATIONAL, INC 302

Category No. Inquiry No.

Page No.

570-571

122

123

565

138

264

255-256

169

177 361

6

342 343 344

292SO-4

131

211

292PC2-3

67

296

286

10-11

112A-B

113

312

96A-H

18-19

8

330-331

10

101

11

405

99-100 197-198

12

77-78 410-411 242-243 412

428 138 156

MICROTECH COMPUTER

MICROWAY

MICROWAY

O-C-T SYSTEMS

PC POWER &COOLING

RALIN WHOLESALERS

RECORTEC INC

SUN MICROSYSTEMS

TEXAS MICROSYSTEMS

TEXAS MICROSYSTEMS

TRI VALLEY TECHNOLOGY INC

ZENITH DATA SYSTEMS

ZEOS INTERNATIONAL

DATA ACQUISITION

KEITHLEY METRABYTE 312

MICROSTAR LABORATORIES 313

NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS 317

NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS 176IDRC1-2

QUA TECH INC 282

DISK & OPTICAL DRIVES

133 101 96IS-3 186 313 288 6-7 123 256 257 313 240A-H 173 313

DISKETTES/DUPUCA TORS

AXIOMATIC 313

GRAPHICS TABLETS/MICE/PEN INPUT

DIGITAL VISION 98

KEYBOARDS

CHERRY MIKROSCHALTER GMBH (INT'L)

66-68

ALPHATRONIX

71-72

AMERICAN MEGATRENDS

410-411

CORE INTERNATIONAL

237

CURTIS INC

380

GENERAL TECHNICS

254

MICRO SOLUTIONS COMP PROD

143-144

PINNACLE MICRO

145

PIONEER COMMUNICATIONS

445-446

QUANTUM CORP (INT'L)

437-438

QUANTUM CORP (INT'L)

352

SIGEN

162

SONY CPPC

163

SONY (N.A.)

360

TRANTOR SYSTEMS LTD

13

63-64

218

69

79-80

441

429-430

335

219-220

221-222

112

260-261

444

135

577

559

382-383

178

569

564

190

14

238

265

259

86

207

241

435-436

115

252-253

DATALUXCORP ' 130

LEXMARK INTERNATIONAL 181

LAN HARDWARE

BAY TECHNICAL ASSOC 48

CORE INTERNATIONAL 96IS-3

CYBEXCORP 289

CYBEX CORP (INT'L) Clll

MINICOM LTD 176IS-4

PC POWER & COOLING 67

ROSE ELECTRONICS 8

LAPTOPS & NOTEBOOKS

ADVANCED LOGIC RESEARCH 17

AER ENERGY 135

ALTIMA SYSTEMS, INC 243

BITWISE DESIGNS INC 164

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS 240IS-3

FIRST INT'L COMPUTER 176IS-3

GENOVATION, INC 314

GRID SYSTEMS CORP 157

GRID SYSTEMS CORP 158-159

IBM-THINK PAD 82-83

MICRO-INTERNATIONAL, INC 302

OLIVETTI 40IS2-3

OUTBOUND SYSTEMS INC 102

POLYWELL COMPUTERS, INC 292SO-2

POLYWELL COMPUTERS, INC 292NE-2

TOP PC 314

TOSHIBA AMERICA INC 90-91

VORTEX COMPUTERS 292MW-2

VORTEX COMPUTERS 292PC-5

ZENITH DATA SYSTEMS 96A-H

ZEOS INTERNATIONAL 18-19

MAIL ORDER

ADVANCED COMPUTER PRODUCTS

ARES MICRO DEVELOPMENT

CITITRONICS

COMPUADD EXPRESS (N.A.)

COMPUDYNE

COMPUTERLANE UNLIMITED

INT'L NETWORK CONSULTANTS

JAMECO ELECTRONICS

304 290-291

307

120-121

78-79

292 240IS-2

213

Category No. Inquiry No.

Page No.

574

KENOSHA COMPUTER CENTER

292SO-1

553

KENOSHA COMPUTER CENTER

292MW-1

567

KENOSHA COMPUTER CENTER

292PC-6

561

KENOSHA COMPUTER CENTER

292NE-5

257

LODE STAR COMPUTER

284-285

250

NEVADA COMPUTER

300

15

MEMORY/CHIPS/UPGRADES

70

ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES

14-15

74-75

AOX

163

259

CITITRONICS

307

248-249

FIRST SOURCE INT'L

305

419

GFKHAMBURG

224IS-4

107

HAUPPAUGE COMP WORKS

65

233

INTEL CORP

94-95

115

JAMECO ELECTRONICS

213

117-118

KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY

201

158

SIGMA DATA

171

368

SMARTMICRO TECHNOLOGIES

313

272

TRANSCEND INFORMATION INC

297

378

USA ELECTRONICS, INC

314

258

WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGIES

298

16

MISCELLANEOUS HARDWARE

402

B & C MICROSYSTEMS

224IS-2

440

DEXDYNE

224IS-2

433

ECG

240IS-4

114

INTEGRAND RESEARCH

232

162

SONY CPPC

240A-H

n

MODEMS/MULTIPLEXORS

266-267

AT&T PARADYNE (N.A.)

166

92

COMPUTER FRIENDS

110

413-414

DATATRONICS TECHNOLOGY

176IS-4

*

JDR MICRODEVICES

309

422-423

MEGADATA

176IS-1

264

RALIN WHOLESALERS

296

199

SUPRA CORP

230

204-205

ZYXEL USA

237

18

MONITORS & TERMINALS

94-95

CTX INTERNATIONAL INC

216

*

ELONEX (INT'L)

120-121

202

ENVISIO

272

125-126

NANAO USA CORP (N.A.)

111

129-130

OPTIQUEST

281

162

SONY CPPC

240A-H

185-186

VIEWSONIC

81

19

MULTIMEDIA

193-194

ADDA

106

234

AITECH

224

442

CPS COMPUTER DISTRIB GMBH

176IS-2

443

CPS COMPUTER DISTRIB GMBH

240IS-3

196

CREATIVE LABS INC

35

94-95

CTX INTERNATIONAL INC

216

374

EMPIRE COMPUTECH

314

271

LAHEY COMPUTER SYSTEMS

254

*

MICROSOFT CORP

114-115

175

TEKTRONIX

53

439

VIDEO MAKER/VITEC

40IS-1

20

PRINTERS/PLOTTERS

77-78

BAY TECHNICAL ASSOC

48

239

BUFFALO PRODUCTS

287

240

BULLDOG COMPUTER PRODUCTS

306

200

CASTELLE CORP

212

*

HEWLETT PACKARD

21

*

HEWLETT PACKARD

36-37

128

NEC - PRINTERS

49

*

PACIFIC DATA PRODUCTS

179

264

RALIN WHOLESALERS

296

350-351

TECHNOLOGIC SYSTEMS

315

175

TEKTRONIX

53

176

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS

105

21

PROGRAMMABLE HARDWARE

402

B & C MICROSYSTEMS

224IS-2

440

DEXDYNE

224IS-2

339

10 TECH

314

*

JDR MICRODEVICES

309

367

METALINK CORP

315

353

TRIANGLE DIGITAL SERVICES

312

328 BYTE- JANUARY 1993

YOUR DIRECT LINK CARD

For free product information, mail your completed card today. For quicker response, fax to 1-413-637-4343!

1. Circle the Numbers on Your Direct Link Card

Circle the numbers which are found on ads and articles in this issue or circle the product category number and receive information on all advertisers listed in that category.

2. Print Your Name and Address

Answer questions "A" through "E" and mail or fax card to 1-413-637-4343.

3. Product information will be rushed to you from the selected companies!

oducts!

BVTE

m

Fill out this

couDon carefully. Please Print.

A. What is your primary job

D. What operating systems are you

function/principal area of

currently using? (Check all that apply)

responsibility? (Check one)

12 Q PC/MS-DOS 15 3 Unix

13 □ DOS* Windows 16 3 MacOS

Name

1 Q MIS/DIP

2 3 Programmer/Syslems Analyst

14 Q OS/2 17 3 VAX/VMS

3 3 Adminslralion/Management

E. For how many people do you

line

4 3 Sales/Marketing

5 3 Engineer/Scientist

intluence the purchase of hardware or software?

Company

6 II Olher

18 □ 1-25 20 3 51-99

B. What is your level of manageme responsibility?

7 LI Senior-level 9 Q Professional

nt 19 G 26-50 21 Utooormore

Address

□ Please send me one year ot

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C. Are you a reseller (VAR, VAD, Dealer, Consultant)?

bill me. Offer valid in U.S. and possessions only.

Phone

Fax

10 -1 Yes 11 J No

JANUARY 1993 \ 86 96 99 \

Product

Category

Disks & Optical Drives 7 Multimedia 19 Educational

30 Shareware 42

Information

Diskettes/Duplicators 8 Printers/Plotters 20 Engineering/Scientific 31 Software Duplication 43

Circle the numbers below for

Fax Boards/Machines 9 Programmable Hardware 21 Entertainment

32 Spreadsheets 44

informatior

on the entire category

Graphics Tablets/Mice/ Scanners/OCR/Digitizers 22 Graphics

33 Unix 45

of products you're interested

n.

Pen input 10 Tape Drives 23 Macintosh

34 Utilities 46

Hardware

Keyboards 11 UPS

24 Mail Order

35 Windows 47

Accessories/Supnlips

1

LAN Hardware 12 software

Mathematical/Statistical 36 Word Processing 48

Add-in Boards

2

Laptops & Notebooks 13 Business

oc Miscellaneous Software 37 General

Bar Coding Communications

3

Mailorder 14 CAD/CAM 26 On-Line Services

38 Books/Publications 49

/Netw

irking

4

Memory/Chips/Upgrades 15 communicalions/Networking 27 Operating Systems

39 Recruitment 50

Computer Systems

5

Miscellaneous Hardware 16 Da,a Acquisitjon 28 Programming Languages/ Miscellaneous 51

Data Acquisifion

6

Modems/Multiplexors 17 Database

29 Tools

40

Monitors & Terminals 18

Security

41

Inquiry Numbers 52-233

1 inquiry Numbers 409-590 1

1 Inquiry Numbers 766-947 |

1 Inquiry Numbers 1123-1304

52 78

104

130

156

182

208

409 435 461 487 513

539

565

766 792 818 844 870 896

922

1123 1149 1175 1201 1227 1253 127S

i 53 79

105

131

157

183

209

410 436 462 488 514

540

566

767 793 819 845 871 897

923

1124 1150 1176 1202 1228 1254 1280

i 54 80

106

132

158

184

210

411 437 463 489 515

541

567

768 794 820 846 872 898

924

1125 1151 1177 1203 1229 1255 1281

■ 55 81

107

133

159

185

211

412 438 464 490 516

542

568

769 795 821 847 873 899

925

1126 1152 1178 1204 1230 1256 1282

i 56 82

108

134

160

186

212

413 439 465 491 517

543

569

770 796 822 848 874 900

926

1127 1153 1179 1205 1231 1257 1283

i 57 83

109

135

161

187

213

414 440 466 492 518

544

570

771 797 823 849 875 901

927

1128 1154 1180 1206 1232 1258 1284

| 58 84

110

136

162

188

214

415 441 467 493 519

545

571

772 798 824 850 876 902

928

1129 1155 1181 1207 1233 1259 1285

i 59 85

111

137

163

189

215

416 442 468 494 520

546

572

773 799 825 851 877 903

929

1130 1156 1182 1208 1234 1260 1286

■ 60 86

112

138

164

190

216

417 443 469 495 521

547

573

774 800 826 852 878 904

930

1131 1157 1183 1209 1235 1261 1287

i 61 87

113

139

165

191

217

418 444 470 496 522

548

574

775 801 827 853 879 905

931

1132 1158 1184 1210 1236 1262 1268

i 62 88

114

140

166

192

218

419 445 471 497 523

549

575

776 802 828 854 880 906

932

1133 1159 1185 1211 1237 1263 1289

1 63 89

115

141

167

193

219

420 446 472 498 524

550

576

777 803 829 855 881 907

933

1134 1160 1186 1212 1238 1264 1290

i 64 90

116

142

168

194

220

421 447 473 499 525

551

577

778 804 830 856 882 908

934

1135 1161 1187 1213 1239 1265 1291

I 65 91

117

143

169

195

221

422 448 474 500 526

552

578

779 805 831 857 883 909

935

1136 1162 1188 1214 1240 1266 1292

i 66 92

118

144

170

196

222

423 449 475 501 527

553

579

780 806 832 858 884 910

936

1137 1163 1189 1215 1241 1267 1293

i 67 93

119

145

171

197

223

424 450 476 502 528

554

580

781 807 833 859 885 911

937

1138 1164 1190 1216 1242 1268 1294

i 68 94

120

146

172

198

224

425 451 477 503 529

555

581

782 808 834 860 886 912

938

1139 1165 1191 1217 1243 1269 1295

i 69 95

121

147

173

199

225

426 452 478 504 530

556

582

783 809 835 861 887 913

939

1140 1166 1192 1218 1244 1270 1296

! 70 96

122

148

174

200

226

427 453 479 505 531

557

583

784 810 836 862 888 914

940

1141 1167 1193 1219 1245 1271 1297

1 71 97

123

149

175

201

227

428 454 480 506 532

558

584

785 811 837 863 889 915

941

1142 1168 1194 1220 1246 1272 1298

i 72 98

124

150

176

202

228

429 455 481 507 533

559

585

786 812 838 864 890 916

942

1143 1169 1195 1221 1247 1273 1299

| 73 99

125

151

177

203

229

430 456 482 508 534

560

586

787 813 839 865 891 917

943

1144 1170 1196 1222 1248 1274 1300

i 74 100

126

152

178

204

230

431 457 483 509 535

561

587

788 814 840 866 892 918

944

1145 1171 1197 1223 1249 1275 1301

i 75 101

127

153

179

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231

432 458 484 510 536

562

588

789 815 841 867 893 919

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1146 1172 1198 1224 1250 1276 1302

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128

154

180

206

232

433 459 485 511 537

563

589

790 816 842 868 894 920

946

1147 1173 1199 1225 1251 1277 1303

77 103

129

155

181

207

233

434 460 486 512 538

564

590

791 817 843 869 895 921

947

1148 1174 1200 1226 1252 1278 1304

1 Inquiry Numbers 591-765 1

1 Inquiry Numbers 946-1122 1

1 Inquiry Numbers 1305-1479

234 259

284

309

334

359

384

591 616 641 666 691

716

741

948 973 998 1023 1048 1073

1098

1305 1330 1355 1380 1405 1430 145

5

I 235 260

285

310

335

360

385

592 617 642 667 692

717

742

949 974 999 1024 1049 1074

1099

1306 1331 1356 1381 1406 1431 1456

• 236 261

286

311

336

361

386

593 618 643 668 693

718

743

950 975 1000 1025 1050 1075

1100

1307 1332 1357 1382 1407 1432 1457

I 237 262

287

312

337

362

387

594 619 644 669 694

719

744

951 976 1001 1026 1051 1076

1101

1308 1333 1358 1383 1408 1433 1458

: 238 263

288

313

338

363

388

595 620 645 670 695

720

745

952 977 1002 1027 1052 1077

1102

1309 1334 1359 1384 1409 1434 1459

: 239 264

289

314

339

364

389

596 621 646 671 696

721

746

953 978 1003 1028 1053 1078

1103

1310 1335 1360 1385 1410 1435 1460

! 240 265

290

315

340

365

390

597 622 647 672 697

722

747

954 979 1004 1029 1054 1079

1104

1311 1336 1361 1386 1411 1436 1461

! 241 266

291

316

341

366

391

598 623 648 673 698

723

748

955 980 1005 10X 1055 1080

1105

1312 1337 1362 1387 1412 1437 1462

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292

317

342

367

392

599 624 649 674 699

724

749

956 981 1006 1031 1056 1081

1106

1313 1338 1363 1388 1413 1438 1463

I 243 268

293

318

343

368

393

600 625 650 675 700

725

750

957 982 1007 1032 1057 1082

1107

1314 1339 1364 1389 1414 1439 1464

| 244 269

294

319

344

369

394

601 626 651 676 701

726

751

958 983 1008 1033 1058 1083

1108

1315 1340 1365 1390 1415 1440 1465

i 245 270

295

320

345

370

395

602 627 652 677 702

727

752

959 984 1009 1034 1059 1084

1109

1316 1341 1366 1391 1416 1441 1466

! 246 271

296

321

346

371

396

603 628 653 678 703

728

753

960 985 1010 1035 1060 10B5

1110

1317 1342 1367 1392 1417 1442 1467

i 247 272

297

322

347

372

397

604 629 654 679 704

729

754

961 986 1011 1036 1061 1086

1111

1318 1343 1368 1393 1418 1443 1468

; 248 273

298

323

348

373

398

605 630 655 680 705

730

755

962 987 1012 1037 1062 1087

1112

1319 1344 1369 1394 1419 1444 1469

| 249 274

299

324

349

374

399

606 631 656 681 706

731

756

963 988 1013 1038 1063 1088

1113

1320 1345 1370 1395 1420 1445 1470

i 250 275

300

325

350

375

400

607 632 657 682 707

732

757

964 989 1014 1039 1064 1089

1114

1321 1346 1371 1396 1421 1446 1471

■ 251 276

301

326

351

376

401

608 633 658 683 708

733

758

965 990 1015 1040 1065 1090

1115

1322 1347 1372 1397 1422 1447 1472

: 252 277

302

327

352

377

402

609 634 659 684 709

734

759

966 991 1016 1041 1066 1091

1116

1323 1348 1373 1398 1423 1448 1473

1 253 278

303

328

353

378

403

610 635 660 685 710

735

760

967 992 1017 1042 1067 1092

1117

1324 1349 1374 1399 1424 1449 1474

: 254 279

304

329

354

379

404

611 636 661 686 711

736

761

968 993 1018 1043 1068 1093

1118

1325 1350 1375 1400 1425 1450 1475

i 255 280

305

330

355

380

405

612 637 662 687 712

737

762

969 994 1019 1044 1069 1094

1119

1326 1351 1376 1401 1426 1451 1476

1 256 281

306

331

356

381

406

613 638 663 688 713

738

763

970 995 1020 1045 1070 1095

1120

1327 1352 1377 1402 1427 1452 1477

: 257 282

307

332

357

382

407

614 639 664 689 714

739

764

971 996 1021 1046 1071 1096

1121

1328 1353 1378 1403 1428 1453 147B

258 283

308

333

358

383

408

615 640 665 690 715

740

765

972 997 1022 1047 1072 1097

1122

1329 1354 1379 1404 1429 1454 147S

YOUR DIRECT LINK CARD

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YOUR DIRECT LINK

PRODUCT CATEGORY INDEX

For FREE product information from individual advertisers, circle the corresponding inquiry numbers on your Direct Link Card!

To receive information for an entire product category, circle the category number on your Direct Link Card!

Category

No.

Category No.

Category No.

Inquiry No.

Page No.

Inquiry No.

Page No.

Inquiry No.

Page No.

354-355

TRIBAL MICROSYSTEMS

315

32

ENTERTAINMENT

401

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

176IS-1

357

XELTEK

315

442

CPS COMP DISTRIBUTION GMBH

176IS-2

554

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

292NE-2

359

Z-WORLD ENGINEERING

315

443

CPS COMP DISTRIBUTION GMBH

240IS-3

216

DALLAS SEMICONDUCTOR

150

22

SCANNERS/OCR/DIGITIZERS

251

MICROPROSE SOFTWARE

299

416

FAST ELECTRONIC GMBH (INT'L)

149

252

MICROPROSE SOFTWARE

301

103-104

GLENCO ENGINEERING

197

570-571

MICROTECH COMPUTER

292SO-4

253

MICROPROSE SOFTWARE

303

154-155

RAINBOW TECHNOLOGIES

77

379

WENTEK TECHNOLOGY, INC

316

33

GRAPHICS

160-161

SOFTWARE SECURITY INC

274

23

TAPE DRIVES

93

COREL SOFTWARE

SO

43

SOFTWARE DUPLICATION

71-72

AMERICAN MEGATRENDS

101

94-95

CTX INTERNATIONAL INC

216

330-331

AXIOMATIC

313

240

BULLDOG COMPUTER PRODUCTS 306

211-212

ESRI

195

416

FAST ELECTRONIC GMBH (INT'L)

149

84-85

COLORADO MEMORY SYSTEMS

89

109-110

HORIZONS TECHNOLOGY

224A-B

336

GMM RESEARCH CORP

311

121

MICROGRAFX

255

44

SPREADSHEETS

341

LAGUNA DATA SYSTEMS

315

125-126

NANAO USA CORP (N.A.)

111

91

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES

29

363

NOVASTOR CORP

315

175

TEKTRONIX

53

345

OVERLAND DATA INC

316

45

UNIX

348

QUALSTAR CORP

316

34

MACINTOSH

*

MARK WILLIAMS CO

109

*

APPLE COMPUTER INC

176A-D

124

MKS / MORTICE KERN SYSTEMS

267

24

UPS

201

SUNSOFT

2-3

136

MINUTEMAN

99

35

MAIL ORDER

•

WOLFRAM RESEARCH

191

138

PC POWER COOLING

67

408

COMPUSAVE INT'L (INT'L)

166

409

COMPUTER QUICK

96IS-2

46

UTILITIES

SOF1"1

420

GREY MATTER LTD

96IS-4

65

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYS

107

119

PROGRAMMER'S PARADISE

69-71

401

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYS

176IS-1

*

PROGRAMMER'S SHOP

214-215

554

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYS

292NE-2

25

BUSINESS

159

S'NW ELECTRONICS

110

334

DIAGSOFT INC

318

206

DELORME MAPPING

186

*

SOFTLINE CORP

40IS4

105-106

GLOBALINK INC

176

415 209-210

DR HUGGLE & PARTNER GMBH FUNK SOFTWARE

176IS-2 275

36

MATHEMATICAL/STATISTICAL

171-172 146

LANDMARK RESEARCH INT'L CORP 129 PKWARE INC 52

377

HARPER COLLINS

316

346 164

165-166 173-174

PERSONAL TEX SPSS INC STATSOFT SYSTAT INC WOLFRAM RESEARCH

317 245 273

*

POWERCORE 176IDRC1-2

109-110

HORIZONS TECHNOLOGY (N.A.)

224A-B

167

STORAGE DIMENSIONS

183

434

424 137

ITALIAN SOFTWARE AGENCY 224IS-3 OXFORD ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING 96IS-1 PATTON & PATTON 104

103 191

179-180 47

TOUCHSTONE SOFTWARE WINDOWS

236

425

SZKI RECOGNITA CORP

173

37

MISCELLANEOUS SOFTWARE

61-62

ABACUS SOFTWARE

187

353

TRIANGLE DIGITAL SERVICES

312

364

ALLMICRO

318

442

CPS COMP DISTRIB GMBH

176IS-2

443

CPS COMP DISTRIB GMBH

240IS-3

26

CAD/CAM

109-110

HORIZONS TECHNOLOGY (N.A.)

224A-B

211-212

ESRI

195

73 211-212

562-563

AMER SMALL BUSINESS COMP

ESRI

EVOLUTION COMPUTING

247

195

292PC-1

270 431 168

LINGUISTIC PRODUCTS 168 ON TIME MKT / KARSTEN PETERSEN 96IS-2 STRATEGIC MAPPING 199

420 116 362

GREY MATTER LTD KEA SYSTEMS LTD MICROCAL INC

96IS-4 100 318

555-556

EVOLUTION COMPUTING

292NE-3

38

ON-LINE SERVICES

*

MICROSOFT CORP

22-27

*

MICROSOFT CORP 55-59,6 I ,63

27

417-418 428

COMMUNICATIONS/NETWORKING

FUTURESOFT ENGINEERING 176IS-1 MINICOM LTD 176IS-4

450 87

BIX

COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE

279

192A-B

193

125-126

424

141

NANAO USA CORP (N.A.) OXFORD ELECTRONIC PUBL PERSOFT INC

111

96IS-1

162

141

PERSOFT INC

162

39

OPERATING SYSTEMS

191 183-184

SYMANTEC

VENTURA SOFTWARE INC

9 170

426

TRITON TECHNOLOGIES

240IS-1

111

IBM - OS/2

44-45

439

VIDEO MAKER / VITEC

40IS-1

427

WALKER, RICHER & QUINN

224IS1

421

LOGIC PROGRAMMING ASSOC

96IS-2

188-189

XVT SOFTWARE INC

229

358

ZEUS PHONSTUFF

316

150

MARK WILLIAMS CO

QNX / QUANTUM SOFTWARE SYS

109 250

192

ZYLAB/ DIVISION OF IDI

106

28

DATA ACQUISITION

151

QUARTERDECK OFFICE SYSTEMS

165

48

WORD PROCESSING/DTP

127

NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

263

425

SZKI RECOGNITA CORP

173

•

MICROSOFT CORP

93

344

NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS 317 NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS 176IDRC1-2

40

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES/TOOLS

424 183-184

OXFORD ELECTRONIC PUB VENTURA SOFTWARE INC

96IS-1 170

29

DATABASE

81-82

BINARY TECHNOLOGY INC BORLAND INTERNATIONAL

318 13

192

ZYLAB/DIVISION OF IDI

106

88

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES

220

403-404

BORLAND INTERNATIONAL (INT'L)

CIV

89

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES

184

235-236

CASE DESIGN INTERNATIONAL

233

333

COMPUTERWISE

317

90

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES

39

GENE

206

DELORME MAPPING

186

97-98

DATA ACCESS CORP

238

434

ITALIAN SOFTWARE AGENCY

224IS-3

416

FAST ELECTRONIC GMBH (INT'L)

149

153

RAIMA CORP

85

337

GREENLEAF SOFTWARE

318

49

BOOKS/PUBLICATIONS

157

SEQUITER SOFTWARE INC

270

420

GREY MATTER LTD

96IS-4

61-62

ABACUS SOFTWARE

187

168 183-184

STRATEGIC MAPPING VENTURA SOFTWARE INC

199

170

274

578

IBM - CSET/2

ISLAND SYSTEMS (INT'L)

259 292SO-3

377

COMPUTER BOOK CLUB.THE (N.A.) 260A-B HARPERCOLLINS 316

30

61-62

EDUCATIONAL

ABACUS SOFTWARE

187

373 421 123

IVERSON SOFTWARE, INC LOGIC PROGRAMMING ASSOC MICROWAY

318

96IS-2

211

JNL OF OBJ ORIENT PROG 176IDRC1-2 MICROSOFT PRESS INC 43

276-277

MICROTAC SOFTWARE

265

431

ON TIME MKT / KARSTEN PETERSEN 96IS-2

133

OSBORNE MCGRAW-HILL

330-33Z

431

ON TIME MKT/ KARSTEN PETERSEN WIS-?

142

PHAR LAP SOFTWARE INC

155

134

OSBORNE MCGRAW-HILL

319

147

POPKIN SAV & SYSTEMS INC

125

*

UNIXWORLD

208

31

ENGINEERING/SCIENTIFIC

PROGRAMMER'S SHOP

214-215

*

UNIXWORLD

208A-B

415

DR HUGGLE & PARTNER GMBH

176IS-2

148-149

PROGRESS SOFTWARE

223

51

MISCELLANEOUS

171-172

LANDMARK RESEARCH INT'L CORP 129

425

SZKI RECOGNITA CORP

173

120

MATHSOFT INC

219

187

WATCOM PRODUCTS INC

33

BYTE SUB MESSAGE

226

365-366

SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMMING

317

575

DEXPO/ MILLER FREEMAN, INC

292MW-3

168

STRATEGIC MAPPING

199

41

SECURITY

576

DEXPO / MILLER FREEMAN, INC

292NE-6

WOLFRAM RESEARCH

191

65

ALADDIN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

107

566

PEMCO / UNIFORM SHOW

292PC-4

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 329

Osborne/McGraw-Hill Computer Books Are Available At These Fine Stores

ALABAMA

Birmingham, AL Jonathan Benton Bookseller

PH: 205-967-8840 FAX: 205-967-9812

Smith & Hardwick Bookstore PH: 205-591-9970

Huntsville, AL University Bookstore

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Madison, AL Madison Books & Computers

PH: 205-772-9250 FAX: 205-461-8076

Tuscaloosa, AL University Supply Store

PH: 205-348-6126

CALIFORNIA

Berkeley, CA Cody's Books

PH: 510-845-7852

Whole Earth Access

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Capitola, CA Capitola Book Cafe

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Chino, CA Mr. B's Computer Books

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Citrus Heights, CA Tower Books PH: 916-961-7202

Concord, CA Whole Earth Access

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Cupertino, CA A Clean Well Lighted Place

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Computer Literacy Bookshops

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Stacey's Bookstore

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Davis, CA UCD Bookstore

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Irvine, CA Irvine Sci-Tech Books

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Long Beach, CA Forty-Niner Shops

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Los Angeles, CA OPAMP Technical Books, Inc.

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Technical Book Company

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UCLA Students Store

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Mountain View, CA Printer's Inc.

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Palo Alto, CA Printer's Inc.

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Stacey's Bookstore

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Stanford Bookstore

PH: 415-327-3680

Sacramento, CA Whole Earth Electronics

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San Diego, CA San Diego Technical Books, Inc.

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San Francisco, CA Stacey's Bookstore

PH: 415-421-4687

Whole Earth Access

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San Jose, CA Computer Literacy Bookshops

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Santa Barbara, CA Chaucer's Bookstore

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UCSB Bookstore

PH: 805-893-2082

Stanford, CA Stanford Bookstore

PH: 415-329-1217

Sunnyvale, CA Computer Literacy Bookshops

PH: 408-730-9955

COLORADO

Boulder, CO' United Techbook Co.

PH: 303-443-7037

University Book Center

PH: 303-492-6411

Denver, CO Auraria Book Center

PH: 303-556-3230

The Tattered Cover

PH: 303-322-7727

United Techbook Co.

PH: 303-534-3460

Englewood, CO SoftPro Books

PH: 303-740-7751 FAX: 303-740-8152

Longmont, CO United Techbook Co.

PH: 303-651-3184

CONNECTICUT

New Haven, CT Yale Co-Op PH: 203-772-2200 FAX: 800-354-9253

Stoors, CT U-Conn Co-Op

PH: 203-486-3537

DELAWARE

Newark, DE McMahon Books PH: 302-366-7575

University of Delaware Book Store

PH: 302-831-2637

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Washington, DC Micro Center

PH: 703-204-8409 FAX: 703-204-8408

Olsson's Books

PH: 202-338-9544

Reiter's Scientific & Professional Books

PH: 202-223-3327 FAX: 202-296-9103

Reprint Book Shop

PH: 202-554-5070

FLORIDA

Coral Gables, FL Softhouse

PH: 305-446-7638

University of Miami Bookstore

PH: 305-284-4101

Gainesville, FL University Book & Supply

PH: 904-377-1788

University of Florida Bookstores

PH: 904-392-0194

Miami, FL Downtown Book Center

PH: 305-377-9939

Orlando, FL It's Academic

PH: 407-658-4612

Sarasota, FL Paperback Booksmith

PH: 813-922-5000

Tampa, FL The Monocle Bookshop

PH: 813-879-5728

GEORGIA

Atlanta, GA Engineers Bookstore

PH: 800-635-5919 FAX: 404-892-5838

Georgia Tech Bookstore

PH: 404-894-2515

Oxford Bookstore

PH: 404-262-3333

Marietta, GA Micro Center

PH: 404-859-1545 FAX: 404-859-1559

HAWAII

Honolulu, HI Honolulu Book Shops

Ala Moana Shopping Center PH: 808-941-2274

Honolulu Book Shops

Bishop & Hotel Street PH: 808-537-6224

University of Hawaii Bookstore

PH: 808-956-4338 FAX: 808-956-4338

ILLINOIS

Chicago, IL Kroch's & Brentano's

PH: 800-833-BOOK FAX: 312-332-6074

KENTUCKY

Bowling Green, KY College Heights Bookstore

PH: 502-745-5799

Lexington, KY Joseph Beth Booksellers

PH: 606-271-5330 FAX: 606-272-6948

Kennedy Bookstore

PH: 606-252-0331

Louisville, KY University of Louisville Bookstore

PH: 502-588-6679

Morehead, KY Morehead State University Bookstore

PH: 606-783-2081

MAINE

Orono, ME University of Maine Bookstore

PH: 207-581-1700 FAX: 207-866-2836

MARYLAND

College Park, MD Maryland Book Exchange

PH: 301-927-2510 FAX: 301-209-7118

College Park, MD (cont.) University Book Center

PH: 301-454-3222

MASSACHUSETTS

Boston, MA Boston University

PH: 617-267-8484 FAX: 800-353-5531

Northeastern University Bookstore

PH: 617-437-2286

Waterstone's Booksellers

PH: 617-859-8030 FAX: 617-859-8038

Burlington, MA Soft Pro

PH: 617-273-2919 FAX: 617-273-2499

Cambridge, MA Harvard Coop

PH: 617-499-2000

MIT Coop

PH: 617-499-3230 FAX: 617-621-0856

Quantum Books

PH: 617-494-5042 FAX: 617-577-7282

WordsWorth at Harvard Sguare

PH: 617-354-5201

Westborough, MA Open Book

PH: 617-366-8448

Worcester, MA Tatnuck Bookseller

PH: 508-756-7644 FAX: 508-756-9425

MICHIGAN

Ann Arbor, Ml Ulrich's Bookstore

PH: 313-662-3201

East Lansing, Ml Jocundry's Books

PH: 517-332-0856

Michigan State University Bookstore

PH: 517-355-3454

Student Book Store

PH: 517-351-4210

Flint, Ml Young & Welshan's

PH: 313-732-0620

MINNESOTA

Minneapolis, MN Baxter's Books

PH: 612-339-4922 FAX: 612-339-4922

MISSISSIPPI

Mississippi State, MS MSU Bookstore PH: 601-325-2247

Circle 133 on Inquiry Card.

(continued after advertisement on next page) «■

%" ^ ^ ^ ^HL^

f t^

...Topics of Conversation

For Today's Hottest Authors on the Hottest Topics, Choose Osborne Computer Books

Dvorak's Guide to PC Telecommunications. Second Edition

by John C. Dvorak and Nick Anis

Hot Links: A Guide to Linking Computers

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$29.95 Book/Disk ISBN: 0-07-881020-5

Dvorak's Inside Track to DOS & PC Performance

by John C. Dvorak and Nick Anis

$39.95 Book/Disk ISBN: 0-07-881759-5

File & Disk Management: From Chaos to Control

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Copyright © 1993 McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Circle 133 on Inquiry Card.

JANUARY 1993 • BYTE 331

°©i (see advertisement on previous page)

MISSOURI

St. Louis, MO Software Plus

PH: 314-434-3311 FAX: 314-434-0524

Washington University Bookstore

PH: 314-935-5696

NEBRASKA

Lincoln, NE Nebraska Bookstore

PH: 402-476-0111 FAX: 402-476-0111

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Hanover, NH Dartmouth Bookstore

PH: 800-462-9009 (NH only) 800-624-8800 (USA)

NEW JERSEY

Hightstown, NJ McGraw-Hill Book Store

PH: 609-426-5750 FAX: 212-512-4105

Newark, NJ Newark Book Center

PH: 201-642-7956

New Brunswick, NJ Rutgers University Book Store

PH: 908-246-8448

Princeton, NJ Princeton University Store

PH: 609-921-8500 FAX: 609-924-9651

NEW MEXICO

Albuquerque, NM Page One PH: 505-294-2026

NEW YORK

Buffalo, NY SUNY Buffalo

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Ithaca, NY Cornell Campus Store

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Triangle Book Store

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New York, NY Classic Book Store

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Coliseum Book Store

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McGraw-Hill Book Store

PH: 212-512-4100 FAX: 212-512-4105

New York University Book Center

PH: 212-998-4666

Papyrus Books

PH: 212-222-3350

Rockwell Computer & Software

PH: 212-949-6935 FAX: 212-949-1252

Niagara Falls, NY Book Corner PH: 716-285-2928

Rochester, NY Campus Connections Bookstore

PH: 716-475-2501

Maplewood Books

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World Wide News

PH: 716-546-7140

NORTH CAROLINA

Chapel Hill, NC Bull's Head Bookshop

PH: 919-962-2420

Intimate Bookshop

PH: 919-929-0414 FAX: 919-967-2107

Charlotte, NC Intimate Bookshop, Southpark Mall

PH: 704-366-6400 FAX: 704-362-1200

Intimate Bookshop, University Place

PH: 704-547-7400 FAX: 704-547-1107

Little Professor Book Center

PH: 704-527-0706

Durham, NC Duke University — Gothic Bookshop

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Greenville, NC East Carolina University Student Stores

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Raleigh, NC North Carolina State Univ. Bookstores

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Winston-Salem, NC Intimate Bookshop

PH: 919-768-6400 FAX: 919-768-3127

OHIO

Beachwood, OH Booksellers

PH: 216-831-5035

Chagrin Falls, OH The Inside Story Book Shop

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Cincinnati. OH Univ. of Cincinnati Bookstore

PH: 513-556-1700

Cleveland, OH Case Western Reserve Univ. Bookstore

PH: 216-368-2650

Columbus, OH Long's College Bookstore

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Micro Center

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The Ohio State University Bookstore

PH: 614-292-2991 FAX: 614-292-8983

Dayton, OH Books 8 Co.

PH: 513-297-6358 800-777-4881 FAX: 513-298-7895

Wilkies

PH: 513-223-2541

Wilkies South

PH: 513-434-8821

Fairborn, OH Wilkies PH: 513-429-1677

Wright State University Bookstore

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Holland, OH Little Professor Bookstore

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Kent, OH Kent State Univ. Bookstore

PH: 216-672-2762

Mayfield Heights, OH Micro Center

PH: 216-449-7009 FAX: 216-449-7008

Rocky River, OH Booksellers PH: 216-333-7828

Sharonville, OH Micro Center

PH: 513-782-8509 FAX: 513-782-8508

Toledo, OH Leo's Bookstore

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OREGON

Portland, OR Powell's Technical Books

PH: 503-222-3906

PENNSYLVANIA

Altoona, PA The Bookstore, Inc.

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Burnham, PA The Bookstore, Inc.

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Chambersburg, PA README.DOC

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Everette, PA The Bookstore, Inc.

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Huntingdon, PA The Bookstore, Inc.

PH: 814-643-0924

King of Prussia, PA Gene's Books PH: 215-265-6210

Philadelphia, PA Drexel University Bookstore

PH: 215-895-2861

How-To-Do-lt Bookshop

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Quantum Books

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Pittsburgh, PA Univ. of Pittsburgh Bookstore

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West Chester, PA Chester County Book Co.

PH: 215-696-1661

RHODE ISLAND

Providence, Rl Brown University Bookstore

PH: 401-863-3168

SOUTH CAROLINA

Columbia, SC South Carolina Book Store, Inc.

PH: 803-799-7188 FAX: 803-799-5521

TENNESSEE

Knoxville, TN Campus Bookstore

PH: 615-525-7336

University Book & Supply Store

PH: 615-974-3361

Nashville, TN Tower Books

PH: 615-327-8085

VIRGINIA

Blacksburg, VA Virginia Tech Campus Bookstore

PH: 703-231-5991 FAX: 703-231-7786

Richmond, VA Book Gallery

PH: 804-673-9613

WASHINGTON

Bellevue, WA Tower Books

PH: 206-451-1110

Seattle, WA University Bookstore

PH: 206-634-3400

WISCONSIN

Milwaukee, Wl Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop

PH: 800-236-7323 FAX: 414-274-6408

Circle 133 on Inquiry Card.

For more information on any of the companies covered in articles, columns, or news stories in this issue, circle the appropriate inquiry number on Your Direct Link Card. Each page number refers to the first page of the article or section in which the company name appears.

Inquiry No. Page No.

Inquiry No. Page No.

Inquiry No. Page No.

Inquiry No. Page No.

A

Dragon Systems 152

M

s

1060

Acer America

116

1308

DSP Development 92

1290

Madge Networks

80

1313

S&S International

96

981

Acius

188

E

Magma Software Systems

20

1168

Safari Systems

97

1228

Actix Systems

202

978

Maplnfo

188

Samsung

251

1315

Addstor

96

1224,

Eastman Kodak 116,241

1284

Maple Systems

76

Science Accessories

251

1061

Adobe Systems

116

1361

984

Maptech

188

Sciptel

251

1288

Advanced Gravis Computer

76

1304

Eclipse Software 88

1385

MathSoft

116

1181

Shapeware

60

Technology

1146

EJ Bilingual 177,185

Matrox Electronic Systems

231

Sharp

60

1309

ADW Software B.V.B.A.

92

1362

Electronic Publishing 116

Mavipak

241

1406

Shiva

116

Aladdin Systems

248

EliteGroup Computer Systems 32

1273

Maxum Systems

72

1156

Siemens Nixdorf Internationa

152,

Alpha Software

32

976

Environmental Systems 188

1312

Mentalix

96

Systems

167,185

Alpnet

152

Research Institute

MicroFocus

261

1239

Sigma Designs

202

AMD

12

1182,

Envisio 60,116

1386

Micrografx

116

1407

Silicon Graphics

116

AMTA

152

1363

1165

Micro Logic

97

SkiSoft Publishing

278

Antler Translation Services

152

EO 12

1162

MicroProse Software

97

1408

Slate

116

1062

Aox

116

1176,

Epson America 60,116

1302,

Microsoft 12,32,41,46,

1157

Smart Communications 152

177,185

1063

Apple Computer 12,20

32, 116,

1364

1387

88,97,116,

271,278

1160

Socatra

177,185

145,152,188,

248, 271

Ergo Systems 41

Micro Solutions Computer

278

985

Softkey Software Products

188

1064

Approach Software

116

1365

Ericsson GE Mobile 116

Products

Florida

Arthur Dent Associates

251

Communications

1149

MicroTac Software

177, 185

Software Publishing

271

1065

Artisoft

116

Ever-Success Computer 41

MicroTouch

251

1225

Sony Corp. of America

241

1229

Artist Graphics

202

Executive Communication 152

Mitsubishi

167

1409

S3

116

1066

AST Research

97,116

Systems

1297

Mortice Kern Systems

84, 278

979

Strategic Mapping

188

1275

Astrix Computer

72

F

Motorola

32, 248

986

Summagraphics

188,251

AT&T

12,97

1291

Mustang Software

80

Sun Microsystems

152

1131

AT&T Graphics Software Labs 231

1366

Fast Electronic U.S. 116

1282

Sunnyside Systems

76

1230

ATI Technologies

60, 202

1151

FinalSoft 185

N

1410

SuperMac Technology

116

ATR Laboratories

152

1163

Firefly Software Systems 97

1177

Nanao

60

1411

Symantec

116

1067

Autodesk

116,231

1367

Frame Technology 116

1236

National Design

202

The Symmetry Group

278

982

Automap

188

1272

Franklin Electronic Publishers 72

1388

NCR

116,251

1169

Systat

97

1368

Franklin Quest 116

NEC 32,

152,251

1158

Systran Translation Systems

152,

B

1296

Franz 84

1389

NEC Technologies

116

167

177,185

1307

BBN Systems & Technologies 92

Fujitsu Laboratories 152

1305

NextBase

88

1283

Berkshire Products

76

1369

Fujitsu Personal Systems 116

Nikkei Business Publications

32

T

1271

Bitwise Designs

72

G

1390

Now Software

116

980

Tactics International

188

1068

BKS Software

116

1412

Tektronix

116

1223

Blue Sky Software

225

1370

GammaLink 116

0

1310

TeraNet IA

92

Bondwell

41

1371

Gateway 2000 116

1391

Okidata

116

Texas Instruments

202, 248

1069,

Borland International

54, 97,

1278

GCC Technologies 73

1392

Olivetti Advanced Technology

116

1150

Toltran

177,185

1161,

116,

225, 261

General Motors 152

1393

Olivetti Italy

116

1172,

Toshiba America Information

46,

1175

977

GeoQuery 188

1237

Omnicomp Graphics

202

1413

Systems

116,167

1293

GigaTrend 80

1311

OrCAD

92

1353

Toshiba Japan

116

c

1147

Globalink 177,185

1238

Orchid Technology

60, 202

1159

Tovna Machines

177,185

Caere

60

1372

Global Village 116

Traveling Software

97

Calcomp

251

Go Corp. 251

P

1183

Trio Information Systems

60

1070

Canon USA

116,241

Graphics Technology 251

Pacific Bell

32

1240

Truevision

202, 241

1231

Cardinal Technologies

202

1373

Grid Systems 116,251

Pacific Microelectronics

278

987

TTG

188

1222

Caseworks

225

1374

Gryphon Software 116

Pan American Health

152

Tulip Computers

32

1152

Catena

177, 185

Gupta Technologies 271

Organization

1414

TWAIN

116

1232

Celerite Graphics

202

H

1274

Panasonic Communications & 72

1281

Chinon America

73

Systems

u

Chips & Technologies

41,60

1178

Hercules Computer Technology 60

1394

Pen Magic Software

116

1415

U-Lead Systems

116

CIM Systems

41

1277,

Hewlett-Packard 41,60,73,

1395

Pen Soft

116

1174

Univel

51

1071

Claris

116

1375,

116,248

Personal Library Software

217

1416

Unix Systems Laboratories

116

1279

Colorado Memory Systems

73

1376

1221,

Philips Consumer

116,217

1354

UserLand Software

116

1132

Commodore Business Machines 239

Hitachi 251

1397

Electronics

1417

USRobotics

116

1072,

Compaq Computer 32, 46, 60,116

1

Phoenix Systems

32

1173

1396

Pi Systems

116

V

1166

Comptons New Media

97

IAMT 152

Pioneer Software

271

1298

Verilog

84

CompuServe

152

1378

IBM 12,32,97,116,

1398,

Primax Electronics

116

1418

Video Electronics Standards

116

Computer Associates

261

167,248,261

1399

Association

1073

Connectix

116

Insignia Solutions 177

Primus Technology

202

1241

Video Seven

202

1074

Corel Systems

116

1379

Intel 12,32,46,116

Programmers' Paradise

278

1167

Course Technology

97

1154

Intergraph 177,185

The Programmer's Shop

278

w

1356

Cyrix

12,116

1380

Intuit 116

1227

Promised Land Technologies

221

Wacom

251

D

J

1400

Proxim

116

Wang

251

Weitek

202

1287

DAK Industries

76

1381

JetFax 116

Q

1179,

Western Digital

60, 202

Dan Technology

32

Juko Electronics 41

1401

QMX

116

1242

1357

Datastorm Technologies

116

K

1402

Quark

116

1153

Winger A/S

185

Dataware Technologies

217

1403

Quarterdeck Office Systems

116

1300

The WNDX

84

Dauphin

251

1235

Kingston Technology 202

1355

Wolfram Research

116

1360

DEC 41,116

145,248

Kurta 251

R

1358

Dell Computer

116

1382

Kyocera Electronics 97,116

1404

Radius

116

X

983

DeLorme Mapping

188

1316

Rebus Technology

96

Xerox

12

1180

Delrina Technology

60

L

Retrieval Technologies

217

1303

XSoft

88

1359

DeScribe

116

1285

Lapis Technologies 76

1306

Richmond Technologies &

88

1419

XVT Software

116

1233

DFI

202

1286

Laser Printer Accessories 76

Software

1289

Xyplex

80

1234

Diamond Computer Systems

202

1148

Linguistic Products 177,185

1405

Rock Ridge Enterprises

116

Xyquest

278

1276

Digibotics

73

1164

Logitech 97,241,251

1299

Digitalk

84, 261

1155

Logos 152,167,177,185

z

1280

Digital Vision

73

1294,

Lotus Development 32,80,116

1420

Zenith Data Systems

116

1352

D-Link Systems

116

1383, 1384

1314 1170

Zenographics Zero Surge

96 97

JANUARY 1993 -BYTE 333

ROGER E B E R T

STOP BIT

Cinema by Computer

Computerized special effects have taken over and have taken something away from today's movies

They included a TV commercial in the Telluride Film Festival this year. It showed a jogger in his name-brand sports shoes jogging on a steel beam at the top of a high-rise skeleton. He ran full tilt toward one of the corners. There was a vertiginous drop beneath him. He pivoted and jogged along another beam. He ducked under a cable and leaped from one beam to another. There wasn't any net.

The festival intended this commercial as a harbinger of things to come. The entire spot was created through computer animation—runner, building, shoes, the sky above, the ground below. The eerie thing was, you couldn't tell that it was created on a disk. The visuals looked completely authentic. When we were told the truth, I felt a little like Harrison Ford when he discovers that Rachel Ward is a fabricant.

The day is not far away when entire theatrical films can be created with computers. It's already possible to generate people, rooms, and landscapes out of reality-based visuals, so that the casual eye thinks it's looking at an event in the real world. I'm sure the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic are already far along the road toward fabricating a "live-action" movie out of thin air.

You've probably seen that TV commercial where Humphrey Bogart, the real Bogart, mixes with modern actors. What can be done for 30 seconds can be done for 90 minutes. All the attributes of Bogart—how he looks, how he moves—could be fed into a program that could then costar "Bogart" in a new movie. The other actors would relate to him much as Bob Hoskins related to Jessica Rabbit, or as Arnold Schwarzenegger related to the liquid-metal villain in Terminator II. Maybe there wouldn't be any real actors at all; it might be easier to make everything up—all the actors and all the locations. Is this a good idea? Is there such a thing as special effects becoming too realistic? Steven Spielberg's new Jurassic Park will no doubt present us with prehistoric creatures that look completely real. They'll move through three dimensions, fit comfortably into the landscape, and be, to all purposes, real dinosaurs.

But the other night I was looking at the Lumivision laserdisc of a silent classic named The Lost World, based on the Conan Doyle novel. Miniatures, models, and stopaction animation are used to create the prehistoric crea

tures, and the effects are obviously artificial. As a viewer, I was looking at special effects, not living creatures, and I knew it; that was the fun, as it is in a Ray Harryhausen movie when a winged horse takes flight. The entertainment resides in the artifice itself.

Seeing King Kong for the first time as a kid, I sensed instinctively that trickery was being used. The big gorilla was real enough to scare me, and yet there was something in the jerkiness of his movements, the way that the camera was obviously choosing to see one thing and not another, that created a special reality having nothing to do with real gorillas.

These days, I'm sure, computers could create a Kong and a Fay Wray, make them equally convincing, view them in three dimensions and from any angle with a moving camera, and place them in a real jungle. Would the result be a better movie? I don't know. If the audience is visually convinced that a real woman is being threatened by a real three-story-high monster, does that diminish the movie's dream level? King Kong is about fantasies and nightmares, not about things that can really happen. If the movies make them really happen, do they become more compelling—or less?

There is an imperfection in real life that is part of its nature. There are hesitations and subtle clues in human behavior and speech that probably cannot be duplicated by computers, no matter how closely they mimic Bogart's lisp or Kong's roar. There is a chemistry in Cary Grant kissing Ingrid Bergman in Notorious that transcends the simple visual representation of the act. And when the lovers part, there is something in their eyes that it would be difficult to program.

If computers take over special effects—replacing models, miniatures, back-projection, optical printers, double exposures, split screens, matte drawings, and all the other tricks of the trade—I have no doubt the effects will look more real. But will I enjoy them more? I'm not sure. Something subtle and wonderful—the willing suspension of disbelief—will have been lost. The director will no longer ask us to pretend. He or she will expect us to believe. But when there is nothing to disbelieve, there is nothing to believe. Simply cold perfection. ■

Roger Ebert is a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, cohost of the Siskel & Ebert TV program, and author of the 1993 Movie Home Companion (Andrews & McMeel), available in print or electronic formats. His reviews are on-line on CompuSer\>e (GO EBERT), and you can reach him in his section of CIS's ShowBiz Forum.

334 BYTE • JANUARY 1993

ILLUSTRATION: ROGER BOEHMS1993

NOW THAT WE'RE

SO FAR AHEAD OF THE

COMPETITION,

WE CAN AFFORD TO

RELAX A BIT.

i*

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2. APPLE 8>«»

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Survey iwis mjepencfemfy concli(cr^l by Reliability Ratings, Inc., a subscriber-based research jinn that does business with most of the FORTUNE 500.

D0LL

800-3654240

WHEN CALLING, PLEASE REFERENCE #11E88.

HOURS: 7AM-9PM CT MON-FRI, 8AM-4PM CT SAT, 10AM-3PM CT SUN.

IN CANADA, CALL 800-668-3021. IN MEXICO CITY, 228-7811.

THE NEW DELL 425s/L i486 SX 25 MHz SYSTEM $1,749

• LEASE: $65/MO.

• 4 MB RAM

• 120 MB (17 ms) HARD DRIVE

• 3 ISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• UPGRADEABLE PROCESSOR

• ACCELERATED LOCAL BUS VIDEO WITH 1 MB VIDEO RAM (UP TO 15 MILLION WINMARKSI

• VGA 10241 MONITOR (14; 1024X768, .28mm|

Up to 65% quicker maintenance.

It's easy to get into this

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Up to 2.6 times the video performance.

With our new accelerated local bus video revving up your screen, who needs a VCR?

Guaranteed compatibility.

We get along with anyone.

Our computers are networkcompatible with Novell,

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THE NEW DELL 433/M i486 DX 33 MHz SYSTEM $2,499

• LEASE: $92/MO. ■ 4 MB RAM

• 170 MB (17 ms) HARD DRIVE

• 128 KB EXTERNAL CACHE

• 6 ISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• UPGRADEABLE PROCESSOR

• ACCELERATED LOCAL BUS VIDEO WITH 1 MB VIDEO RAM (UP TO 20 MILLION WINMARKS)

• VGA 10241 MONITOR (14;'1024X768, ,28mm]

Up to 178% faster video. Faster PageMaker redraws and

lightning-quick Windows™ repaints. Speed freaks, rejoice.

Greater upgradeability.

You can upgrade all the way to

the top 486, the 66 MHz DX2.

You'll even be able to add

the Pentium microprocessor

from Intel.

Up to 29% more system performance.

With our new optimized cache as an option, you can

give your system a boost whenever you want.

THE NEW DELL 450/ME i486 DX2 50 MHz SYSTEM $2,999

• LEASE: $1 11/MO.

• 4 MB RAM

• 170 MB (17 ms) HARD DRIVE

• 4 EISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• 2 ISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• UPGRADEABLE PROCESSOR

• ACCELERATED LOCAL BUS VIDEO WITH 1 MB VIDEO RAM (UP TO 25 MILLION WINMARKS)

• ULTRASCAN 1 4C MONITOR (14; 1024X768, .28mm, Nl)

Up to four times faster

data transfer than ISA.

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expansion bus that transfers data

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To understand what it does

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More upgradeability.

It's easy to upgrade all the way to

the top 486, die 66 MHz DX2.

If you're still power hungry,

you'll even be able to add the

next generation from Intel —

the Pentium microprocessor.

THE NEW DELL 466/T i486 DX2 66 MHz SYSTEM $3,399

• LEASE: $126/MO.

• 4 MB RAM

• 230 MB (16 ms) HARD DRIVE

• 128 KB EXTERNAL CACHE

• 8 ISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• UPGRADEABLE PROCESSOR

• ACCELERATED LOCAL BUS VIDEO WITH 1 MB VIDEO RAM (UP TO 29 MILLION WINMARKS)

• ULTRASCAN 15FS MONITOR (15; 1024X768, .28mm, Nl)

V

Up to 50% faster system performance.

Good thing you don't have to worry abotit the highway patrol.

Up to 86% more disk capacity.

Our floor-standing model has a

disk capacity of up to three

gigabytes. Makes the Astrodome

seem positively cramped.

$3,399

The low prices

we're famous for.

The more things change, the

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Even with tons of extra features,

our new systems still give you the

great value you expect from Dell.

All of the above systems include one floppy drive ( 3.5" or 5.25"), MS-DOS 5.0 and one-year on-site service/

Each system is custom-built With 18 different models in our new i486 line —- covering 25 MHz, 33 MHz, 50 MHz, and 66 Ml I: — you am configure just the system you need. In fact, with our complete line ot storage, memory, graphics and connectivity products, we can build over 15,000 different configurations.

1A. The ihtui is quoted from a 40-£«ge report available for purchase through Reliability Ratings (fiJ 7) 444-5755. Reliability Ratings, the research company, is not affiliated with Dell Computer

mat Scries systems purchased after 7/1/92. For u complete copy, please cull our TeehFax"' line at 1-800-950-1 329 or write Dell USA L.P., 9505 Arboretum Blvd., Austin TX 78759-7299.

vice provided by BancTec Service Ctffptmukm. On-site service may not he available in certain remote areas. WINMARKS mm results ohmmed hy miming WINBENCH vet. 2.5 ai 1024x768. i486, Pentium and i trademark and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of I !NIX System Labtrratories, Inc. in the (. bated Suites and other countries. FORTUNE 5CC is a registered •st m the marks and names of others. ©1992 Dell Computer Corporation. All rights reserved.

AW HELL,

LET'S

RUN UP THE

SCORE.

Survey was independently conducted by Reliability Ratings, Ncedham, ' Carlmratian unti does nut endorse its products.

^guarantees available in USA only for registered owner* of Dell Perfortj Attention Qitamntees. OLeasing eirranjjud by Leasing C Enrnp. Inc. &£ hi-sm s [/w Ink'/ frisitk f»#J -nv tttidtfiWts of hud Otrjurraium, WS-1K IS r's b t^*silmidcmarJi of "Hit1 Time fnc. Ma^ayju'Comjiajn. f^trW disclaims pm|wt«n rah

WITH SO MUCH

ADDED POWER,

IT'S LIKE A

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£\SASV^

D0LL

800-3654460

WHEN CALLING, PLEASE REFERENCE #11EA3.

HOURS: 7AM-9PM CT MON-FRI, 8AM-4PM CT SAT, 10AM-3PM CT SUN.

IN CANADA, CALL 800-668-3021. IN MEXICO CITY, 228-781 1,

Guaranteed accountability on Performance Series systems. We're the only company in the industry to guarantee—in writingcompatibility, fast response to your questions, and quick service? It's a big reason why hundreds of thousands of customers already rely on us. And why we became a FORTUNE 500" company in just seven short years.

Up to 115% faster video.

Our new computer

comes with accelerated

local bus video, and

performs at

up to 33 million

WINMARKS

on the 66 MHz

system. Good

news for speed

freaks.

THE NEW DELL

450/ME i486" DX2 50 MHz SYSTEM

$2,999

I"

ltd

in

5*>

• LEASE8: $111/MO.

• 4 MB RAM

• 170 MB [17ms] HARD DRIVE

• UPGRADEABLE PROCESSOR

• 4 EISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• 2 ISA EXPANSION SLOTS

• ACCELERATED LOCAL BUS VIDEO WITH 1 MB VIDEO RAM [UP TO 25 MILLION WINMARKS]

• ULTRASCAN" 14C MONITOR [14", 1024X768,.28mm, Nl)

• ONE FLOPPY DRIVE [3.5" OR 5.25"]

• MS-DOS' 5.0

ALSO AVAILABLE IN 25 MHz AND 33 MHz i486 SX, 33 MHz i486 DX AND 66 MHz i486 DX2 AND THOUSANDS OF OTHER CONFIGURAllONS.

Up to four times faster data

transfer than ISA.

You get a 32-bit EISA expansion bus that

transfers data at up to 33 megabytes a second.

It's kind of like a high-tech jalapefto.

Greater upgradeability

You can upgrade all rhe way to tht top 486, the 66 MHz DX2. After that you'll be able to add rhe Pentium" microprocessor — rhe next generation from Intel. That ought to satisfy even the most power hungry.

L^^T^L