||||||||| ||||||||| ST*ZMAGAZINE ISSUE #: 34 |||||||| |||||||| --------------------------------------------- ||||||| ||||||| August 18, 1989 |||||| |||||| --------------------------------------------- ||||| ||||| Publisher/Editor: Ron Kovacs |||| |||| PD\Reviews Editor: Alice Amore ||| ||| --------------------------------------------- || || CompuServe: 71777,2140 GEnie: ZMAGAZINE | ZMAGAZINE | --------------------------------------------- || || Reprinted permission granted as long as ||| ||| ST*ZMAG and the original author is credited. |||| |||| --------------------------------------------- ||||| ||||| Copyright ½1989, Rovac Industries, Inc. |||||| |||||| Post Office Box 59 ||||||| ||||||| Middlesex, New Jersey 08846-0059 |||||||| |||||||| (201) 968-8148 ||||||||| ||||||||| --------------------------------------------- Volume 1 Number 34 ISSUE #34 CONTENTS --------------------------------------------------------------- Editors Desk ZNet Newswire Public Domain Shelf Ron Kovacs * HOT ATARI NEWS * Alice Amore --------------------------------------------------------------- Hardware Review Statistically Accurate Baseball Mark A. Quinn Stan Swanson --------------------------------------------------------------- Bubble Bobble Reviewed User Group Coord Easy Drives Bo Schreurs John Nagy Nick Berry --------------------------------------------------------------- THE EDITMRS DESK ---------------- by Ron Kovacs This weekend the Dallas World of Atari show takes place at the Holidome Hoilday Inn in Irving Texas. If you are in the area, make an effort to attend. Next week we will have an exclusive report. At the show, we were told that Sig Hartmann will announce the appointment of Robert Brodie to the User Group Coordinator job formeRly held by Chris Roberts. As we previously reported, Chris Roberts was terminated by Atari a few weeks ago. Details included in this issue! Atari 2nd quarter report is a real shock!!! Off 94 percent!! Read the newswire for more details! Last week in this spot I mentioned two BBS systems, however I failed to list their phone numbers: Blank Page BBS (201) 805-3967 and Ace's High BBS (201) 290-1133. Sorry for the inconvience! ZNET NEWSWIRE ------------- ~ Atari's second quarter earnings have dropped a surprising 94 percent compared to the same quarter in 1988. In a statement released by Sam Tramiel, he states that Nintendo and "it's alleged unfair monopolistic paractices" assisted in the depressed video game sales and it's anti- competitive practices. Atari's net income fell to $327,000, or a penny a shk , from $5.6 million, or 10 cents a shkre, in the second quarter of 1988, while revenue dropped to $82.7 million from $102.5 million in the year-earlier quarter. The first six months of the year, Atari's earnings fell 67.9 percent to $3.6 million, or 6 cents a share, from $11.2 million, or 19 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Revenue fell to $171.5 million from $200.8 million in the same period of 1988. ~ Atari has shipped several thousand units of the Portfolio, the new portable MSDOS compatible computer. Production of the unit in continuing to grow and should reach target production levels toward the end of this year. ~ Incase you haven't heard, the new hand held LCD game system has been called the LYNX. This product was announced earlier this year and should begin shipping later this year. ~ At SIGGRAPH, the ATW made an appearance. According to a message on GEnie this week, Atari UK attended the user group show and at the last minute decided to debut the machine. Stay tuned for more details! A story of the entire show is said to appear in the next edition of the Soth Shore Atari Group Newsletter. ~ William Shockley, Nobel Prize winner for inventing the transistor, died at 79 of prostate cancer at his home on the campus of California's Stanford UniversitY. Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories, was instrumental in the birth of Silicon Valley and the electronics industry. His employees later invented the integrated circuit and the microprocessor. Later throughout the 60's and 70's, Shockley's racial racial theories claimed that blacks were genetically inferior intellectually and were producing children faster than what he termed mentally superior whites, which brought about the seperation of his colleagues and statements that he was acting irresponsiblY. NEW USER GROUP COMRDINATMR -------------------------- by John Nagy ST*ZMag received word late this week that Atari has hired a new User Group Coordinator to replace Chris Roberts. After interviews with a number of candidates, Atari chose BOB BRODIE, president of the Atari Computer Owners of Orange CountY, California. ST*ZMAG and Z*Net readers know Bob's writing well, as he has been a contributer and associate staff member of our publications for some time. He most recently co-authored the introductory article on Chris Roberts, his predecessor in the position. Bob is well known to Southern California user groups, as he has been instrumental in a number of shows and projects there. He took a week off work at his own expense in order to coordinate Atari's appearance at the hugely successful NAMM show last winter. He also worked a lot at the Anaheim World of Atari show. Bob worked for BRINKS in a number of capacities, including developing a number of internal projects, that generally occupied 60 or more hours effort every week. The much-touted "overwork" that Atari expects from its employees should be a snap next to what Bob has accustomed himself to. While Atari President Sam Tramiel had asked for someone with a specific marketing background for the position, when Bob Brodie's name was brought up as a candidate, it seems a number of Atari officials piped up. We heard that Frank Foster in particular was backing Bob, after witnessing his work at the NAMM shows. In the end, hands-on experience and user group know-how were the deciding factors that won the position for Bob over the other candidates. Bob's level-headed approach to problem solving and communicating have already impressed the Atari brass. He will work for Augie Ligori but be supervised in most matters by Sig Hartmann. Starting Monday at 1 PM Pacific time, Bob will be available for user- group contact at (408) 745- 2052. He will be moving his wifeo children up from their Orange County home sometime in the next few months, and will commute on weekends til then. While his club will be sorry to lose him as President, and we at the ZMAGs will miss him as a regular staff member, Bob will undoubtedly remain active in a user group in the Sunnyvale area, and will continue to write articles for use in user group newsletters and online magazine, although with a different perspective. We congratulate Bob Brodie on getting the User Group Coordinator position at Atari. We are confident that THIS TIME, Atari chose someone that has been highly reccommended by users, publishers, and Atari executives alike. We predict that satisfaction all around will keep Bob in Atari for a long time. Unfortunatly, we have not been able to contact Bob to confirm this story, . hope to by next week. HARDWARE REVIEW --------------- by Mark A. Quinn Product: CBM1 ST/Mega Compatible Mouse Manufacturer: Best Electronics Price: $49.95 Has your battle-weary ST mouse become more of a "rat" lately? Is using it such a "drag" that you've been tempted to resort to moving the pointer with Alternate-Arrow key combinations? Have you found yourself incessantly clicking to get your 'point' across? Best Electronics has introduced a replacement mouse for the Atari ST/ Mega computers. Its features are as follows: - Opto-Mechanical design - Ergonomical design - High resolution photo tracking of 200 pulses per inch - Replaceable Teflon wear pads (feet) - ABS rollers on the steel photo optic interrupter shkfts - Replacement parts available - Compatible with 8-bit GEM operating systems The CBM1 has a rounded, U-shkped case which appears to be a shade or two lighter in both color and weight than the Atari model. It features two almost pyramidical-shaped buttons. Turning the removable, flat plastic ring which surrounds the ball clockwise facilitates opening the unit for cleaning. The CBM1's buttons have a solid feel to them. The mouse fits comfortablY in the hand, a bit like a bar of a certain brand of soap. Its operation is smooth, as advertised. When I took my own, highly subjective measurements, I found that the CBM1 required roughly twenty percent more area to do its thing than the stock mouse did. This posed no problem for me, .ut my work area could hardly be described as "cramped". There are mouse optimization programs available for those who often find themselves running out of desk space (with either mouse). When I purchased the unit I was informed that it operates best on a faiRly hard surface. It worked well enough on my rubber mat. Clean-up of the CBM1 is a snap, especially with a mouse cleaning kit. If you don't have the benefit of the latter, you're still likely to experience few problems from "pit stops" caused by fouled rollers. I found that dirt can be easily removed from the rollers with a fingernail. If you've been getting the dubious benefits of too much "Mousercise" lately, the CBM1 may be for you. Best Electronics dd21 The Alameda Suite 290 San Jose, CA 95126 (408) 243-6950 USER GROUP UPDATE ----------------- CHAOS of Michigan still has WoRld of Atari hats available for sale for $5.00 plus $1.00 for total order for shipping. The hat is a white baseball hat with three color logo. (The same logo done by our own John Nagy.) If you are interested in purchasing one of the fine hats, send to: CHAOS Box 16132 Lansing, Michigan 48901 Substantial discounts are available for orders over 24. PUBLIC DOMAIN SHELF ------------------- by Alice Amore NEODEMO ~~~~~~~ For those of you who don't own NeoDesk, this file will give you the opportunity to work with a working demo of one of the best utilities available for the Atari ST. NeoDesk is "The Desktop Alternative", and contains a sizable list of features. This is a demo of versions 2.04/ 2.05. Missing from it are the icon editor, control panel, printer queue, run/execute a program or batch file, save/load desktops, and disk formatter. Nevertheless, this demo conveys the look and feel of NeoDesk quite well. NeoDesk is from Gribnif Software. TURBODEM ~~~~~~~~ Want a 15-minute demo of TURBO ST? This file is it. An .ACC file, TURBODEM will enable itself at bootup time, then poop out after 15 minutes. TURBO ST, a commercial program, is a "software blitter". It speeds up the ST's CPU. If you'd like to see your ST fly, try out this demo. From Softrek. (A similar program, Darek Mihocka's QUICK ST, is available as shareware. Take a look at both programs before deciding which best suits your needs). OPUS and SHEET ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This week gave us major upgrades to the best (the only?) two shareware spreadsheets for the ST: OPUS and SHEET. Learning to use a spreadsheet is hardly a casual activity, so you'd do well to invest a lot of time looking at both of these programs. I won't attempt to give a recommendation here, since space doesn't permit it. But if you have need for a spreadsheet, take a look at both of these before you make any decisions about which to use. When you decide, please register your copy. The programmeRs have put an enormous amount of work into these programs. OPUS 2.2 by Doug Harrison SHEET 2.5 by Chor-ming Lung LHARC040 ~~~~~~~~ Here is the latest version of LHARC, the archiver utilitY that claims to have an advantage over ARC.TTP. Originally developed for MS-DOS machines by Haruyasu Yoshizaki in Japan, this ST version was written by Jon Webb and Bart van Herk. They used Turbo-C/ST, and compiled the data with the new GFA 3.0 compiler. LHARCed files can be recognized by the extension "LZH". We will have to see if LHARC overtakes ARC.TTP as the archiver of preference. Mnly time will tell. STENODEM ~~~~~~~~ STENO is a commercial program to be packaged with the newest version of STALKER. STALKER and STENO are two desk accessories... one a terminal program, and the other a text editor. The two programs are meant to work together, although each will run separately. This demo of STENO looks very promising. The ST could certainly use an accessory for quick text editing and programming. (STENO can be run as a .PRG file as well.). Although not a full-fledged word processor by any means, STENO does have such features as search and replace, word-wrap, indent, cut and paste, three on-screen fonts, and the loading, saving, and printing of files. All features except "Save" and "Save as ..." are functional in this demo version. Programmed by Eric Rosenquist of Strata Software. TAB142 ~~~~~~ TAB142 is "The Address Book Desk Accessory". An address book (the kind with a sliding alphabetical bar on the side) stores names, addresses (one or two per entry), and phone numbers. If your modem is online, you can use TAB142 for dialing the phone, too. This program is handy to use with any GEM-based word processor. When writing letters, you can locate someone's address simply by pulling down the accessory menu and clicking open the address book. TAB142 is shareware from Robert M. Balay. CASLABST ~~~~~~~~ This is CASSETTE LABEL MAKER, version 0.50, from Rick Duff of Archie Software. It is necessary to use store-bought cassette labels. Configured for Epson compatibles, the program does a nice job of printing out the contents for each side of a cassette tape. Up to 8 songs can be specified per side. Labels can be saved and edited. DIRTY1, DIRTY2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These are two .SEQ files of digitized scenes from "Dirty Dancing". Both files are well worth the download time. You will need more that a meg of memory for DIRTY2. TETRIST ~~~~~~~ TetriST is the second TETRIS clone I've seen. (The other one is called PILE_UP). More! More! This game is addictive no matter who programs it. While the first was programmed using STOS, this newer one was programmed in Laser C. Game play is much smoother, although the playing screen doesn't seem to hold as many shapes, and there is only one playing screen. Joystick action is a little awkward towards the top of the screen, .ut if you're aware of that fact, you can take extra care not to let the shkpes pile up too high. One novel feature of TetriST is the abilitY to display the "next shkpe" in a window. This gives the player a little extra time for strategy. Also, the shapes' rotation direction can be specified. TetriST is by Steven Lee. Source code is available for a fee. STATISTICALLY ACCURATE BASEBALL ------------------------------- by Stan Swanson (reprinted from The Shareware Connection) I recently took it upon myself to take a look at and judge Statistically Accurate Baseball (v400) from ST programmeR Joe Damore. The verdict? Simple... It's one of those shareware programs which easily approaches commeRcial quality level. If you%re a baseball fan, it is (without qualification) a must-buY. If you're really not a fan of the game, it's still worth every penny of the requested $14 shkreware registration fee and you'll soon find yourself lost in a myriad of hits, runs, double steals and squeeze bunts. Not really knowing what to expect, I booted up Statistically Accurate Baseball (S.A.B.) early one morning to review it for this issue. I soon forgot all about reviewing it and found myself lost in the depth of the game. To put it simply, Joe Damore knows his baseball and it shows. Game play is very realistic and S.A.B. could easily be used in "fantasy" type baseball leagues. Of course, it's also just lots of fun to sit down and either play the computer or compete against friends or family members. How accurate is S.A.B.? Joe tells us that if you play a regular 162- game season with the program, each player and team will come close to actual historical stats. If you're a better than average manager, you should be able to actually improve your chosen team's overall record by about 10 games over the course of a season. A 9-inning game can easily be played in 10 or 15 minutes which makes things quick and enjoyable at the same time. Of course, the more you get ine the managerial side of things, the longer a game will take. With the computer managing both teams, a game can be played in less than 2 minutes. Actual game play is simple and although Joe includes complete documentation with S.A.B., you can boot up and begin playing immediately with no problem. After S.A.B. boots up, you first pick your visiting and home teams and are then given the option of who controls which team. Either team can be controlled by tmiactual players or the computer. Your next option is to pick your starting line-ups. You can either go with the line-up presented by the computer (which is generally the one you want unless you're playing with teams you've drafted) or make line-up changes at this point. Once you've decided on your line-ups, you then move to the Main Action screen. This is where all the action takes place. The top half of the action screen includes the scoreboard, the inning, the number of outs and your "runners-on-base" situation. This is constantly updated as game play progresses. The lower half of the action screen is where all offensive and defensive strategies are decided as well as the actual play-by-plaY. At the end of each game you will be asked if you want to print the results and stats to the screen or to the printer, and whether or not you want to add the stats to your 'stats' disk (available only to registered users). You can then play a new game (with the same or new teams) or quit to desktop. Both the defensive and offensive coaches are able to make strategic decisions at any point during the game. The defensive coach can use such options as Play Normal, Hold Runners, Intentional Walk, Play Infield In, Play Corners In, Make a Player Change and View Stats. The Offensive Coach also has the last two options plus Swing Away, Bunt, Steal, Hit and Run and Squeeze Bunt. Once again, if you're not familiar with all of these baseball terms and strategies, Joe's documentation will quickly solve that problem for you. The documentation also provides a list of most of the terms used during the game and how they affect the game as it progresses, play by plaY. Statistically Accurate Baseball works on both color and monochrome systems and all game play is controlled via the mouse and the keyboard. As was previously mentioned, S.A.B. is a shareware program and well- worth the very reasonable $14 registration fee, especially when you consider everything registered users receive. Joe not only ships out the most current version of S.A.B., .ut registered users receive a database with the complete 1987 set of professional teams PLUS 41 great teams from the past. They also receive Joe's drafting program (which lets you draft your own super teams) plus a stats compiler program which compiles team and player stats and lets you view or print them at any time. Now, how's all that for a bargain? Joe tells us that he spent three years creating this program and the effort and time definitely shows. He is constantly updating the game and adding new teams to the package. (In fact, the teams for the 1988 baseball season should be available by the time this issue is out). He has also started work on Statistically Accurate Football. I'm a football fan from way back and am anxiously awaiting this one. If it even approaches the depth and qualitY of Statistically Accurate Baseball, Joe will have another sure winner on his hands. It's a home run in anyone's league! The Shareware Connection is a monthly publication dedicated to bringing its readers up-to-date news and information of public domain and shareware software. Subscriptions are currently $12 for 12 issues. Information can be obtained from Computer Publications, Unltd., P.O. Box 2224, Arvada, Colorado 80001. Their phone number is (303) 423-6805. BUBBLE BOBBLE REVIEWED ---------------------- by Bo Schreurs, S*P*A*C*E The object of this game is to complete 100 frames. You go from one frame to the other by eliminating all the creatures within that frame (ghosts, energizers, you name it). You are a dragon (sort of) and when you open your mouth a small bubble comes out of it, it floats through the air, and when it encounters one of your enemies, it gobbles it up. At this point you must run to that bubble (with the enclosed enemy) and pop it, using your head or tail. Sometimes other bubbles appear containing letters, you can n ep them as well, with those letters, you must try to make the word EXTEND. If you're able to do that, you get an extra life.. And the round you're playing in, at that moment, is immediately completed. Of course the frames early in the game are easy, but they steadily get more and more difficult. You start out with 5 lives. But after losing your last life, if you keep the fire button pressed, you can receive another 5 lives! This trick can be repeated up to seven times. To do this, however, you must be able to get beyond frame #50. Of course the creatures get more dangerous when the game progresses. The ghosts are able to shoot killing bubbles at you as well. There are some nice features in this game! Sometimes strange objects appear on the screen (bottles, umbrella's and other goodies). If you touch them strange things will happen... Sometimes you'll: immediately skip multiple frames, enter a bonus round, freeze the creatures, or ... who knows? A nice thing about this game is that you can play it with two persons as well if you want to. By the way, I recently saw this game in a arcade game hall. And, the ST version is a rather accurate reproduction of the game hall version - only the 'intro's' (which aren't that important) were left out. The game is joystick controlled. For it: Good graphics, two player option (simultaneously), almost the same as the arcade hall version, unknown features (bottles, etc.). Against it: You can't put it on hard disk. EASY DRIVES ----------- by Nick Berry, S*P*A*C*E Putting together your own hard drive system for your ST is an absolutely insurmountable task. Even those people with Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering shudder at the thought of having to assemble such a complicated and sophisticated piece of electronics gear. You are certainly better off buying a factory made unit or one assembled by experts. This is the way I viewed the thought of obtaining a hard drive for my ST. Yet, I started reading and hearing about many brave souls who managed to assemble their own units. Some had trouble doing it and some didn't. Well, if there are others who have been successful at it, why not me? So I started in reading everything I could get my hands on concerning hard drives in an effort to understand just how these beasties really work. Magazines, newsletter articles and scanning the message bases on GEnie and local BBS's provided me with a decent working knowledge of what I needed to know. Finally, I talked to as many people as possible in the area clubs who already have or are in the process of assembling a hard drive unit. The payoff was well worth it. By obtaining as much knowledge as I could and learning where others have succeeded or failed, I made a molehill out of a mountain. Armed with the necessary information and a fistful of cash, I was able to assemble myself an 'Easy Drive'. No fuss, no muss. Simply insert tab A into slot B and turn on the power. Well, almost that simple. What I now have is a 64 meg hard drive in an IBM XT style case with 150 watt power supply all for about $630. I have since added a 3.5" DS floppy in the case as Drive B: which has bumped my investment up to about $710. Let me start at the beginning. I purchased an IBM XT clone case and 150w power supply at Micro-Line Systems in Seattle for $79. They are willing to sell more at this price, .ut you must ask for it. The case is a Turbo XT style with a keylock, Turbo and Reset buttons and a row of 3 LEDs. Ask to make sure you're getting the Button & LED panel, as it is packaged separately. Next, I purchased the ICD Host Adaptor card from Butler' Computer Service in Federal Way. Being a S*P*A*C*E member, I was able to purchase it for only $121. Normal retail is $139 and I've heard of people paying as much as $165 for it elsewhere. While at Butler's, I had them make me up a set of ribbon cables to hook everything together. This consists of a 50 pin, 34 pin and 20 pin cables. Total price, $25. If you wanted to, you could make these yourself for about $15. Then the Adaptec 4070 RLL coneleller was obtained via mail order from Computer Surplus in California for $98. This is CHEAP, as the normal price anywhere else is $130 on up. Finally, the hard drive mechanism itself is a Miniscribe 3650 which I purchased through mail order from Hard Drives International in Arizona. Price for the 3650 is $299. All mail order sources and price information were gleaned from the pages of Computer Shopper. Once all the parts were at hand, I was ready to start assembling. I slid off the cover to the case and screwed the power supply in place. I powered it up briefly to make sure it was working properly. Next I had to decide how to place my 4070 Controller card and ICD Host adaptor card in the case. I ended up stacking them one on top of the other, separated by packing foam scavanged from the box the drive came in. I then secured them to the frame of the case with nylon zip-ties... Everything being non-conductive, effective and most importantly, inexpensive. Please note however, that not all clone cases are created equal, so other cases may or may not have the needed room to mount the boards as I did. Typically, the 4070 RLL controller should be shielded from the hard drive. But in this instance, since these components are mounted at opposite ends of the case and separated by two metal mounting dividers, I felt there was sufficient RF protection between them. Next I mounted the hard drive in the lower right drive slot of the case in the normal fashion. The 50 pin ribbon cable connects the host adaptor to the Controller card. The 34 pin and the 20 pin cables connect the controller card and the drive unit. The driveo Controller card use standard IBM style power connectors, so they were a simple plug-in to the power supplY. The ICD Host card has a smaller style power connection, . they supply an adaptor to make it a simple plug in procedure as well. Finally the connection to the ST is made from the Host card to the DMA port on the ST using the cable included with the ICD unit. Everything just fell together with a minimum of fuss. The only thing I had to mess with was the 20 pin ribbon cable between the Controller card and the drive. It was about 2 inches too shorT, so I quickly ran up to Radio Shack (only 6 blocks away) and bought a length of ribbon cable. I carefully removed the connectors from the too short cable and made a longer one with the neand partition the drive. No scratching my head trying to figure out cryptic commands (tYpical of formatting hard drives in the MS-DOS world), I just followed the simple instructions presented to me. Let me explain something about my drive and the way it was formatted. The Miniscribe 3650 I used is meant to be formatted to 42 meg with an MFM Controller board. I used an RLL Controller board to format it to 64 meg. This is something akin to formatting a single sided floppy disk as double sided. You may never have any problems with it, .ut then again.. For myself, nothing I do on my ST is totally irreplaceable. I'm willing to take a chance for the saving of some moneY. If your data is particulaRly critical or you are itning a business with your ST, you would be better off settling for less storage space using MFM or spending the extra money for for a drive which is rated for the RLL controller. Once I had everything up and running and had begun organizing and transferring all my programs and files from my floppies, I was ready to install a second 3.5" floppy as drive B:. Now why would I need another floppy drive now that I had so much hard drive space available to me? Well, why do people climb mountains??? Because its there, because its a challenge, .ecause I was able to pick up a brand new NEC 3.5" drive for only $59. This is something of a Hacker's Special from Computer Surplus (same place I got the 4070 Controller). It was a brand new drive, . there were no cables, no mounting hardware, no manual and no warrantY. Just a bare drive, .ut at a price I couldn't refuse. The only items I needed to make it work were a data cable (an ST floppy to 34 pin plug), a 3.5 to 5.25 drive mounting bracket and a mini power plug like the one used on the ICD Host card. I contacted Butler's and they were able to scrounge up a drive bracket and power plug from their spare parts bin and charged me a modest $10. The data cable I made using a cable and connector from the S*P*A*C*E stock of hardware i11s (another $10) and properly wired together with information obtained from S*P*A*C*E hardware SIG leader Rich Gratzer (Thanks Rich!). The drive has proved to be quiet and reliable, although noticablY slower than my 1040's internal drive (tYpical of external drives). So what does this all mean? It means that assembling a hard drive system for your ST (or even an 8-bit) is not an exercise in Black Magic. It's a road which is being travelled by more and more people every daY. The basics have been established and the problem areas have been worked out. To be faiR, though, there is still the possibilitY of screwing something up, especially if you're not too technically inclined. And one good screw-up on a project like this could toss several hundred dollars out the windoW. So for some people, the factory made or professionally assembled unit would be worth the peace of mind. The parts I used are not the only ones available, however. There are other brands of hard drives, other host adaptors and all manner of cases and power supplies. I used those which I knew, from the experience of others, would fill my needs and would give me the least trouble at a minimum of cost. Every company I dealt with provided me with prompt, courteous service. Even the mail order houses had the parts to my door in 7-10 days. I was careful to deal only with mail order outfits which others had recommended and I always got the name of the person who took my order in case there was a problem. For someone with a little do-it- yourself know how and a pocket full of cash (or at least a good piece of plastic) it's not at all hard to assemble an 'Easy Drive'. Sources Mentioned: Butler's Computer Service, 28717 Pacific HwY. S., Federal Way, WA. (206)941-9096 Computer Shopper Magazine, Available at many computer stores. Computer Surplus, 715 Sycamore Drive, Milpitas, CA. 95035 (408)434-1060 Hard Drives International, 1208 E. Broadway Rd. #110, Tempe, Arizona 85282 (800)234-DISK Micro-Line Systems, 2920 SW Avalon Way, Seattle, WA. 98126 (206)935-2958 ======================================================================= Copyright (c)1989 Rovac Industries, Inc STZMAGAZINE ======================================================================= t tab A into slot B and turn on the power. Well, almost that simple. What I now have is a 64 meg har