Untitled - TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

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TelecomputingArlan R. LevitanTodayNew Products And Improved ServicesLife in the fast lane for telecomputersno longer requires a Ferrarilevelmachine. At last November'sCOMDEX show in Las Vegas, U.S.Robotics introduced the $995 Courier HST, an external 9600-bps modem, designed for use on standarddial-up telephone lines. In highspeed mode, the HST actually usestwo communications channels, onea 9600-bps and the other a 300-bpsdata channel. The high-speed channel direction is automatically assigned according to data-flowdemand. The 9600-bps channel isdesigned for fast downloading anduploading of files, and the lowspeedchannel is suitable for manualdata entry and error-control coding.Confusing? Not really. Consider what the "typical" user of a BBSor information service usually does.Downloading or uploading files isusually a lopsided affair, with mostof the data moving in one direction.The only data traffic sent to a BBSwhile a user is downloading a file ischecksum or other error-detectioninformation, often only one or twobytes of data per received block.Depending on the protocol beingused, the ratio of received to sentdata is somewhere in the range of100:1 to 1000:1. Dividing the limited bandwidth of the phone line intoa high- and low-speed channelmakes perfect sense.Dynamically assigning the9600-bps channel should also workwell for reading and responding tomessages on BBS message basesand information service SIGs. Thehigh-speed channel will end up being assigned to the slew of messages that most users peruse. If theuser wishes to reply to a message orreply to a prompted response, the300-bps channel's maximum rate of300 words per minute can still outrun even the speediest typists.The HST also supports standard 300-, 1200-, and 2400-bps operation. It is equipped withnonvolatile memory for storing settings and phone numbers, and usesa superset of the Hayes "AT" command set. At 9600 bps, the modemuses a proprietary error and flowcontrolprotocol that's an enhancedversion of MNP (Microcom Networking Protocol).In all fairness, don't expect thecommercial information services tojump on the HST bandwagon. Atthis point, most of the interestseems to be coming from the sysopsof privately operated BBSs. As ithas in the past, U.S. Robotics isoffering special purchase terms forsystem operators of popular bulletin board systems.For more information, contactU.S. Robotics, 8100 North McCormickBlvd., Skokie, IL 60076, (312)982-5010.PC Pursuit ExpandsSpeaking of other high-speed surprises, CompuServe raised morethan a few eyebrows last November when it removed connect-timepremiums for 2400-bps service.Subscribers now pay the same ratefor both 1200- and 2400-bps connections ($12.50 an hour, nonprimetime).GTE Telenet has announced amajor expansion of its PC PursuitService. The addition of 11 newservice areas by the end of 1986will almost double PCP's coverage.Modem mavens can add access toremote systems in Portland (areacode 503), San Jose (408), Glendale(818), Phoenix (602), Milwaukee(414), Minneapolis (612), Tampa(813), Miami (305), Cleveland(216), Salt Lake City (801), andNorth Carolina's Research TrianglePark (919).Pursuit has also started offering direct access to selected publicmulti-user BBSs on a trial basis. Thesystems involved charge a yearlysubscription fee (usually $25) forunlimited access and offer extensive download libraries. If the trialis successful we may see publicBBSs on the PC Pursuit networkputting even more pressure on thecommercial services.Pursuit has also announceddelayed implementation of their2400-bps service to March of '87.Implementation was originally announced for this past fall, but insiders at PCP say it may take well intothe summer to work out noise andthroughput problems that are beingencountered in developing the higher speed service. For more information on PC Pursuit, call the PCPbulletin board at 1-800-835-3001.Trintex In Trouble?CBS has ended its involvement inthe Trintex videotex project. Announced in 1984, Trintex was ajoint venture of CBS, Sears Roebuck, and IBM. Earlier this yearTrintex officials announced that itwould forgo a text-based information system in favor of a graphics-based system using theNAPLPS (North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax) standard. Two other graphics-basedsystems, Knight-Ridder's Viewtronand Times Mirror's Gateway, folded early in 1986.IBM maintains that it has madesignificant enhancements toNAPLPS that will make it moreacceptable to the consumer market.Although the new service is supposed to debut in 1988, Sears is saidto be getting cold feet as well andmay soon pull out. ©82 COMPUTE! February 1987
PersonalComputingDonald B. irivetteThe CD-ROMs Are ComingSix years ago, when I bought anIBM PC, it came with two state-ofthe-artfloppy disk drives. A floppyback then was single-sided andheld 180,000 characters of information—a lot, I thought. Two yearslater 180,000 bytes didn't seem likeso much and I replaced one of thesingle-sided drives with two halfheightfloppy drives—each capableof reading and writing double-sideddisks. At that point, the three driveshad a total capacity of 900,000 bytes.Last year I replaced the old singlesidedfloppy drive with a half-heighthard disk. Capacity: 20 million bytes.In November I upgradedagain. To my six-year-old computerI added a storage device that wasn'teven dreamed of in 1981. The Compact Disc-Read Only Memory, better known as a CD-ROM, has acapacity of half a billion characters.The CD-ROM player is smallerthan its musical counterpart, although the electronics are almostidentical. The unit I connected tomy PC is a free-standing SonyCDU-100, about the size of a telephone-answering machine. Sonyalso makes a reader that slips rightinto one of the PC's disk cavities.The computer compact disc isidentical to the 4.7-inch audio variety that records 60 minutes of music and has become the salvation ofthe record industry. Both record adigital "message" of zeros andones, called lands and pits, on oneside of the shiny aluminum platter.But unlike a floppy disk which hasdata recorded in concentric tracks,the CD records information on acontinuous spiral track similar to aconventional phonograph record.Unrolled it would cover more thanthree miles; on the disc it packs to adensity of 16,000 tracks per inch.Bacterium-SizedBitsThe high density is possible because the CD-ROM is an opticaldevice, not magnetic. The disc isrecorded at the factory with a laserby burning pits about the size of abacterium into the disc's surface.CD-ROM disc advantages include its low production cost—Sony says less than $1 per hundred—and its staggering capacity.The 550 million bytes available ona disc make the equivalent of 1500double-sided floppies or approximately 275,000 manuscript pages.One disc can store the equivalent of1000 books. And one disc could,and will, contain the telephone directories for an entire region of thecountry. Someday we may have anational telephone book recordedon three or four CD-ROMs. Onceyou understand the capacity of aCD-ROM, you begin to appreciatethe complexity of converting musicto a digital format: It takes theequivalent of 152,000 characters toproduce one second of music; anhour of music uses the entire halfbillioncharacters of a disc.One of the first home applications of CD-ROM technology is theAcademic American Encyclopediapublished by Grolier. This 20-volume reference set takes morethan two feet of shelf space in paperform, but fits nicely on a CD. Infact, the entire encyclopedia alongwith a huge index to speed upsearches uses less than 20 percentof the disc's capacity—four moreencyclopedia sets could be placedon this same CD.In order to use the encyclopedia, you first load the informationretrievalsoftware from a floppydisk into the PC. This works justlike loading any computer software. Once the retrieval program isrunning, you can use a variety ofsearch terms to find one, or dozensof articles on a topic. In less thanten seconds you can examine everyword in the entire encyclopedia.It's a delight to use. I enteredSURFING as a search word and infour seconds found there were 20occurrences in six articles: 1 each inthe Beach Boys, Hawaii, periodical,rock music, and skateboarding articles, and 15 in the article on surfing.By moving the cursor to one ofthese topics and pressing a functionkey—the program operates frommenus and function keys—I canhave the article displayed on myscreen. And by pressing anotherfunction key, I can have the articleprinted. I can even press a key andlook at an outline of the article—aby-product of the extensive indexingsystem.Special SearchesSearches that would be impossiblewith a conventional encyclopediatake only a few seconds. By modifying the search conditions to selectonly articles where the word BORNappears within five words of JAN 31,I looked for people with whom Ishare a common birthday. Thirtyseconds later the computer found 34notables, ranging from Andre Antoine,a French theater director bomin 1858, to James G. Watt, secretaryof the interior from 1981 to 1983.The Grolier Academic AmericanEncyclopedia sells for $199 and theSony CD-ROM player is about$900 (but as low as $600 in quantity.) Volume and competition aresure to bring these prices down.About 18,000 CD-ROM discs wereproduced in 1986; industry sourcesestimate that more than 12 millionwill be produced in 1990.And even now, it's technicallypractical to mix still-video, sound,and text on the same disk. Imaginean unabridged dictionary on a CD-ROM. Look up Beethoven, press akey, and hear a passage from hisFifth Symphony. Look up respiratory, press a key, and hear the correct pronunciation. Press anotherkey, and hear the word spoken inFrench. In German. In Chinese.
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