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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/21/88

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/21/88

Unofficial minutes/notes for the regular weekly BMUG meeting held Thursday, January 21, 1988. Noted by Raines Cohen, in real time. The opinions in here are not necessarily mine or BMUG’s, and all the mistakes aren’t my fault. So there. Call (415) 849-9114 for more information on BMUG meetings.

Announcements

Data Security (?)

MacWorld Expo / San Francisco

45,000 attendance at MacWorld Expo

Thursday (Industry day) – each booth got 10 tickets, but other people got in, too. Much less crowded. Herb Caen mentioned the gridlock caused by the computer show.

The BMUG “Newsletter”

Mailed Tuesday if you didn’t pick it up

“For a user group, you are the most organized…”

Getting there isn’t as easy as it looks…

Carolyn Sagami was the managing editor for this NL

RAM

Dove selling 120 ns RAM the last day of the show

A new company: – 100 ns SIMMS – “P.I.S.” in San Jose. $200. Call BMUG for the #

Ask for Toshiba or NEC 120 ns or better (less), surface-mount SIMMS.

Open Mac Systems (Concord, CA) – sold 150 ns RAM “guaranteed” to run in Mac II – didn’t. We’ve heard complaints about their GenLock system, too – some “experts” claim that their information is incorrect.

GenLock

GenLock is difficult to do and work well.

7 companies at the show, 2 were shipping.

Comtrex – stuff ordered, not shipped?

TrueVision – AT&T people who bought themselves out. $6000, 90 days at least.

“Butterfly” boards that use your present memory (RAM upgrades like Dove MacSnap [some models]) WILL get in the way of SOME expansion or accelerator cards.

Job Opportunities

Someone to network an office with Macs & eventually VAX – SFO

957-9175 Ronya Robbinson.

BMUG looking for office & helpline help

General Parametrics wants QuickDraw & driver programmers. 524-3950 Mike.

LightGate looking for Mac programmer to write ADB drivers for Felix. Oakland, CA.

Apple announced a strategic alliance with DEC.

Sculley was in Boston this week, working out details of DEC’s announcement.

DECNET connectivity & co-development seem to be the main areas of involvement.

University & corporations may “buy in” through this sort of connection

Animation

what do people think about the way they’ve lost certain capabilities with Apple’s upgrades – Color QuickDraw, no page flipping, etc.

Apple’s completely rewriting System from scratch.

Radius product (?): by Andy Hertzfeld: QuickerDraw

rewrote tight loops in the ROMs. Makes color QuickDraw(tm) almost as fast as B&W. Will Apple steal it after it’s released?

Examiner yesterday: “Cultural Clash at MacWorld Expo”. “Andy Hertzfeld meeting John Sculley”: does Apple want to distance itself from the Steve Jobs culture?

Apple to remove ROM code & system baggage to support microsoft products? Rumors on the nets say so.

Apple announced yesterday 1st quarter earnings of $1.042 billion. The stock dropped 3 points. 103% gain in quarterly profits. IBM dropped 9.

InterGraph

?

see Scott Kronick if you can program or if you think you can.

AMUG in Alaska had an editorial – listing all Apple trademarks

SE Silencer literature — where?

M.A.C. in Berkeley – 644-0516 has it.

MacWorld Expo

in Boston – in two places (August)

BaySide Expo & World Trade Center – 5 miles apart

in SFO – FOUR places – Moscone, Brooks, Civic Center, Galeria

HyperAge magazine

about HyperMedia

giving some out tonite

looking for writers & Stack & StackWare(tm) authors*

* StackWare is alleged to be a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., used to refer to stacks created by Apple.

While we’re at it, Macintosh Today(tm) and MacWorld(tm) are trademarks of Apple, too!

So how does Claris get away with it?

Words starting with “Full-” are claimed to be trademarks of Ann Arbor Software!!!!!

Claris

announced several products at Expo

uses transparent disks

lots of “former” Apple people who used to work in software.

new MacDraw, Paint, Write, Project, forms program (FastForms)

Great party at the Gift Center!

Slick booth

Dark blue suits predominant at booth

Mac II clones

anybody thinking about it?

benefit / detriment to public?

not in this country – who wants to fight Apple’s lawyers?

Read the BMUG NL for info on the patents on “Regions” in QuickDraw.

Get a Magic SAC+ from various stores in Berkeley, “find” Mac 128K ROMs somewhere, and run on an Atari ST.

There are benefits to one-company control of the OS for compatibility, consistency.

Rumors: Tandy, Phoenix working on Mac OS cloning for a while.

If someone could clone a hybrid of the II/SE ROMs…

lots of new HyperCard-related publications

Scott Kronick is writing ABOUT them

We’re working on putting BMUG minutes, disk indices, and BBS stuff in HyperCard stacks – but we need your help to make it happen. Call 549-BMUG.

FullWrite Pro

giving away 2 demo disks

when you print, it says “FullWrite Pro demo version” on each page. No SpellChecker or Thesaurus.

Walking Shadow Press

HyperCard Scripting book for sale tonite

$15.25

by Jeff Stoddard

tutorial

“more detailed than Danny Goodman’s book”

I Don’t recommend “HyperCard Quickly Summarized” (not the exact title)

Next month: UniForum, DEXPO

Sculley is keynote speaker at UniForum

will announce A/UX shipping

will demo Mac-type applications running under UNIX.

AT&T & SUN, IBM & ROLM, DEC & Apple, etc.

“Sort of a triad”

conflicts already – different paths & unstable competition ahead.

Display PostScript(R) – NEXT, DEC, NeWS(tm)…

Show news

yeah. (all but 3 people out of the 300 at tonight’s meeting were AT the show!)

WINGZ(tm)

Excel gone Hyper.

The booth really didn’t show much about it

lots of neat color graphs, even 3-D.

“HyperScripts” is the language – like HT.

LaserWriters

Written on the board last week

Black is black.

Black is $.

$3000 for a non-PostScript low-end machine, all the way up to the IINTX.

Grappler – Orange Micro – Parallel interface

any experience?

for old parallel Dot-Matrix printers.

lets you connect the HP laser, whatnot.

24-pin version not ’til March?

make sure the printer can do reverse line feeds – the ImageWriter sometimes is sent the codes to do that.

Won MacUser’s “parallel printer interface of the year” award

Word and Excel support 3rd-party printers best.

Teaching alternatives besides manuals

videotapes for training –

BMUG’s beginners group – every tuesday, 5-7 PM

Enhanced Beginners group – tues, 7-9 PM

local laser parlors & some colleges & extension programs and computer stores offer for-$ courses

HyperTalk from SAMS – 350 pp., sold by APDA cheap

by Dan Shafer

looks pretty good, more useful than “the bible” for reference and programming

HyperCard 1.1 was announced

it is shipping now

free upgrades will be available at dealers

free upgrades WILL be available at USER GROUPS that license the system software – stay tuned for details.

the upgrades will be available ONLY if you have proof of HyperCard 1.0 ownership – master disk or receipt, probably.

CAD/CAM for digital logic design

Douglas Electronics in San Leandro

see Chad, 4 seats to your left.

analog simulation not yet available

Presentations

FastBack

RasterOps color video

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/14/88

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/14/88

Announcements

Visiting MUG Reps

Australia

Japan

various domestic locations

Venezuela

MacWorld Expo news

BMUG party tomorrow night, 7 PM, Green Room, Veteran’s Hall on Van Ness (at McAllister), San Francisco (behind City Hall).

The Newsletter is out! Pick yours up today. Thanks to Carolyn Sagami, the ed-in-chief, and all the authors, illustrators, and volunteers.

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/7/88

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/7/88

Announcements

“Buy your memory upgrades now, they’re only going to get more expensive.”

Wanted: an accountant who uses the Mac?

A: Call Margaret at MacOrchard – she has someone’s business card

A: Karl Edwards 893-8400 if you can help.

Kinko’s wants help. 643-7459, 848-2068.

Wanted: programmer to control heavy machinery through the serial port. Call the office for info.

Wanted: ImageWriter I (person leaving the country shortly). Call the office for info.

Wanted: People with experience writing custom programs in compiled languages also familiar with scientific instrument control. 2 weeks of programming or part-time permanent position. Talk to Linda for info.

Q: FileMaker+: MIN() function?

A: LightGate, makers of Felix device, looking for programmer to do DA development for device control. 596-2350, ask for Mike.

FullWrite Professional: WILL be FOR SALE at MacWorld Expo. Going to shrinkwrap next week. The CEO of the company let the beta testers talk a few days ago. incredible reviews, bugs are few, they know they gotta ship by expo. They HAVE fixed the MultiFinder problems between December 29 and January 4. They had very few paid testers for a long time, and increased their beta force only recently. They’ve told Apple it will be shipping two days before Expo.

If you buy it now, your first upgrade will be free.

Will the clock be there? It repaginates on the fly.

Q: Accelerator card for Mac+?

A: Check at MW Expo next week.

A: Next week, MacWorld Expo in SF, Friday-Sunday (industry day Thursday). all of Moscone Center and then some.

WordPerfect: February 15th?? They’ll have a booth at Expo.

Q: Camera?

A: DA – 1.4. NOT Mac II-compatible.”Screen.2” (on Paris-1 at Expo) does work.

Q: Hierarchical project-oriented outliners?

A: Think-n-Time from Mainstay DA

A: “It’s rather bizarre”

A: Look at MORE.

AT&T committed to purchase 20% of SUN today.

They’re working on parallel projects

Mostly capital infusion.

Similar to IBM investing in Intel years ago.

Includes promise of non-takeover, unless someone else does.

Q: MacWrite 4.6 – won’t full-justify?

A: Do you have returns on every line?

A: Have you tried a fresh copy?

A: Put the same size font in the system to get it to justify properly, EVEN ON THE LASERWRITERâ„¢.

Q: I DO have that in my system…

A:

The Obligatory Printer Question

Q: “Best” quality working well on ImageWriter II with version 2.6 of driver?

A: Works OK on ImageWriter I

A: Various bugs in printing are experienced.

A: On IW I, would not work on “normal” quality for one person.

A: Differing printer drivers should be compatible with various systems.

Q: Printing HyperCard Scripts, running out of paper, it just keeps going…

Q: Word 3.01 gives “draft” option when running with spooler, but prints out regular.

A: Trick in MS-Word, hold down (option?) key to get to the “normal” print dialog boxes, instead of Word’s.

Q: FreeHand?

A: Expo. It is a graphics program from Aldus.

A: Mac Today mentioned Apple announcing better MIDI interface. They now have a Sound evangelist and Sound group.

A: SE fan fixes:

A: (Chuck @ M.A.C.) PeripheralLand device is temperature-sensitive variable-speed soon. $39.95.

A: Go to your dealer, listen to new SE’s – perpendicular-mounted vent blade-type fan. THEY WILL be upgrading old SE’s, for $91!!!!! And NOT FOR A WHILE — JUNE OR JULY!!!!!! Theya re an ordinary 12vDC brushless fan. Puts out more CFM than Apple’s Squirrel-cage fan, $15 at Dick Smith electronics or SeaBreeze from ComputerWare.

A: They now changed to noisier (Quantum) drives from Rodime drives.

A: Get a WalkMan

Q: Why Mac+ vs SE?

A: Mac+ may be discontinued sooner.

A: SE = “Slightly Enhanced”

A: Keyboard, Expansion, SCSI port faster, ROM.

A: Get the SE for two floppies and get an external HD, unless you’re with the University.

A: An External HD is more flexible and portable and indpendent in times of crashes.

A: External (third-parties) usually have 1-yr warranties.

A: Mac Plusses are quieter.

OlduVai announced a converter to allow attachment of DeskTop bus devices (keyboards, etc.) to Mac plusses and the like.

A: There are lots of alternatives to Mac+ keyboards.

MacToday: speculates a machine between SE and II, by summer.

A: Sculley says no new CPU’s this year. However, Jean-Louis Gassée said that last year.

A: “3-piece SE”? 16 MHz? 68020?

Q: Consider integration and market catch-up when buying new word processors. For instance, File formats, etc. The existing word processors may do the simple jobs better.

A: The new PageMaker has a feature “StyleSheets” that you can name and automatically format when importing from ANY text editor.

A: MiniWriter is good. It has Smart Quotes built in. (BMUG DA-1.4)

A: It takes a lot of effort to learn a WP. Why not learn one that’s feature-full?

A: There are limits to that…

A: Make sure that the features you NEED are fully supported.

A: “Buy above your needs”? Consider learning cost, time.

Q: Does anybody use MicroSoft Write?

A: It’s somewhere between MacWrite and WriteNow.

A: Word 3.01 is a very solid program, WriteNow is buggy. (except the equation editor)

A: How can you say that? The vice-versa is true!

A: There are lots of formatting glitches in Word

A: No there aren’t!

A: Some people always have problems

Q: How can you better get WYSIWYG from ImageWriter and on-screen to LaserWriter?

A: While composing your document, use “Chooser” on the Apple menu and choose the LaserWriter, then choose Page Setup. The screen will better show the printer arrangement.

Q: Anyone use MS-Works for WP?

A: Yes.

Q: Cheap Laser printers?

A: Lots of rumors.

A: Don’t buy anything this week.

Q: What’s the fuzzy stuff on the ceiling?

A: It’s not asbestos.

Q: Is it true that Apple is going to remove support for the LaserWriter, as compare to the LaserWriter Plus?

A: Apple people often work on the latest stuff, neglecting the older, more commonly used equipment. Software testing often catches these things, but they don’t know as much as the original developers.

A: Rumor: LW+ AND LW will shortly be discontinued. Makes sense, since Canon no longer makes the insides.

A: There are a # of new LW’s expected. Canon will have their own LaserWriter. PostScript® clones will abound. Technologies like LED’s and the like will be seen. Wait 2 weeks or 6 months.

Q: What are the latest PostScript® clones.

A: Phoenix is committed to making one.

A: Adobe can make rapid changes and obsolete the clones quickly. Adobe fonts may not work.

A: GCC Personal Laser Printer has its own font family emulating the original ones.

A: Adobe charges $150 to license PostScript® per printer. Everyone’s trying to be compatible.

Q: Is anyone taking a CamCorder to Expo?

A: nope.

Q: Any source of triple-size fonts for ImageWriter LQ?

A: A disk comes with the machine.

A: Neshota font on a BMUG disk comes in lots of sizes.

Q: Do Adobe screen fonts make your screen better approximate the LaserWriter?

A: This is versus the “Apple” versions.

A: The DL-able fonts look better than the built-in fonts.

A: They are sold separately.

A: Fonts like “Palatino Italic” is often more accurate than “Palatino” in Italic style.

A: CHECK YOUR PAGINATION when you go to Laser print. USE your own system.

Q: Does Adobe sell at Times-Italic screen font?

A: It exists. If you pay $180 for the Times family from Adobe, you probably get it.

Q: PageMaker remembers Fonts.

A: It’s a FEATURE, not a bug. It will remember all fonts in the System folder when that doc was created. It does have bugs: if you work with many fonts ( > 100), it gets confused. SuitCase and PageMaker don’t co-exist well, although a patch is available to fix that.

Q: 1.6 meg floppy drives?

A: 1.44 megs working with current disks. Sony has had production problems with the big ones. The “ISM” (Integrated Sanders Machine) chip, which can be replaced on the SE and II. (The IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) is socketed).

Q: What’s difference between IBM drives and Mac drives?

A: Different controllers.

Q: ROM upgrades on the Mac II?

A: They’re giving ‘em out to developers IF you’re doing things like 24-bit color.

Q: How do you do it?

A: Almost everything in the industry trade mags about that is wrong. MacTutor is right. The only thing the changes so far will do is allow the slot manager to run in 32-bit mode in bootup, which only affects BIG RAM cards.

Q: Is there a fix for the Mac OS to work with large contiguous RAM cards?

A: Not currently.

Q: Connect Mac to VCR?

A: Aim a camera at it.

A: Get a GenLock card: Beck-Tech or Computer Friends or ProViz or a bunch of folks.

Q: What system do we use here?

A: Hughes projector (big bucks), simple hi-res video out connector.

A: Anything that is decent costs > $20,000.

Q: What about the LCD ones?

A: You put those on overhead projectors. Some of those are getting good – but still have poor contrast.

A: The other projector here is a BarCo, $8500 for the Mac version, and is not as bright. Color, not NTSC.

Q: Any word on new versions of HyperCard?

A: Rumors are soon.

Q: SIMMs $199?

A: It’s a lie.

Q: Anyone gotten any 1 meg chips from APple lately?

A: No.

A: Sizer and Adjacency are desk accessories that work with MacDraw and actually let you set fraction-of-a-pixel sizes and print EXTREMELY accurately on the LaserWriter. Johnson & Johnson, Newton, MA. Rumors are it may be included in a MacDraw upgrade. Now works with Mac II, comes with Installer.

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BMUG Meeting minutes 12/17/87

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BMUG Meeting 12/17/87

Schedule

Discussion & Announcements 6:30 – 7:00

St. Silicon

Beck-Tech

WordPerfect

Raffle

Discussion/Announcements

All products not yet shipping will be out at Expo.

What is NEXT up to?

Mac+: memory upgrade?

What won’t invalidate the warranty?

Buy 4 120-ns SIMMs: $210/meg

up to 2 megs or 4?

Talk to ComputerWare or M.A.C. or CJS or MacOrchard.

Dove MacSnap will piggyback for Mac+.

2.5 megs is good for HyperCard & MultiFinder & some stuff

Get a Hard Disk first.

Mac II with expanded video

30% slower in 2-bit mode than accelerated SE.

Get an SE unless you need gray levels.

Big screen is useful if you use spreadsheets or WP.

Hard Disks: recommended? reliable?

Insides: MiniScribe, Quantum…

Noise: inside & outside affect it

Outsides: Jasmine, LaCie, DataFrame, CMS, MacBottom

CMS: $585 for 20 megs

Apple used MiniScribe/Rodime in SE; Quantum in II.

M.A.C.: 60 meg CMS (Mac II internal) stopped shipping – reliability problems in software.

Consider: Software, Portability.

Jasmine BackPack 40 is finally shipping.

Jasmine just dropped their credit card surcharge.

Mac the Knife in MacWeek: FullWrite manuals were NOT hijacked on that truck in LA. Manifest.

Equipment for sale: SE & stuff: $4,000 or best offer.

300 copies of Goodman’s book: $30. 849-9477.

CostCo has book for $17 – Central Ave. in Richmond

other HyperCard books: at least 5 others.

BMUG BBS: 4 lines

CompuServe: MACFUN, MACPRO replace MACUS.

Q: New plotter drivers? HP GraphMaster II? All the existing ones don’t work well.

A: Try HP. They’re working on it.

Q: Cricket Draw doesn’t work well?

A: Try various plotting programs.

Q: RSG: pasting stuff into MacDraw 1.9.5: strange error msg.

A: It needs room in a particular segment.

HyperCard; the usual questions.

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