               TOM'S COMPUTER NOTES FOR MARCH 1991

                          Public Domain

STILL USING THE MONO VGA monitor. $105 from COMP-USA. Better
control of shades and nicer text fonts via Personic's ULTRA
VISION. The program was originally designed to enhance EGA
displays but now it does a good job with VGA too. It costs 19K of
RAM when installed.

THE LATEST version of MAXI Disk (Ver. 3.1, just out) formats the
new 2.8 meg 3.5 inch floppies. Not only does it format them at
the standard 2.8 megs but also at 3.2 megs.

I HAD A 2.8 meg floppy drive once. It cost too much memory (it
needed a TSR driver) and the disks were very hard to find. When
you could find them they were about $18 each.

WHAT A DEAL! From JB Technologies: Trade your dead 40 Megabyte
hard drive in and get a brand new one for only $215. Without a
trade it's $225. The same drive from DC DRIVES is $185 (without a
trade.) Or, JB will repair your sick/dead drive for $174 (you pay
shipping costs one way, ie., to them.) Repair does not include
data recovery.

PLUS HARD CARD, mentioned here recently as a possible buy (by
me.) I was impressed with the 9ms access time. I now read in PC
SOURCES that the way they came up with the 9ms figure for their
ads makes the figure "meaningless." Also, ( as I think about how
often I do some stupid thing [causing complete HD crashes]
testing all kinds of strange hardware/software combinations) you
can't low level format a PLUS hard drive. Only the factory can do
it as some cylinders have different sector counts than other
cylinders. (Closer to the hub have fewer sectors.) Guess I better
stick with a drive I don't have to send back to the factory when
disaster strikes..... Hmmm, how about two PTI 40 meg drives under
DOS 4.x (C:=40 megs and D:= 40 megs) for $370?

WHAT IS IT that John Dovorok sez? Hot stuff! Must have! I finally
found it. Right here on this board. Download TIGGSCLK.ZIP. It
makes my purchase of a VGA monitor worthwhile! ----- After I
PKLITEed TIGGSCLK it shrank from 43k to 14k.

BEST RESULTS WITH PKLITE? I looked at the code for DCOMPRES.COM
(from PC Magazine) and it looked like it had a lot of "air" in
it. PKLITE changed it from 28k to 2.6k.

DOS GETS BIGGER & BIGGER but it does seem to get better. DOS 5.0
will give you more room to work via a bag of various tricks. You
need extended memory. I gained 25K or so of work space. My old
CHKDSK was 10K in length. The new version is 18K. But, it isn't
memory resident so who cares? It does just a little more than the
earlier versions as there is an INFO module. Do a CHKDSK/? and
get the info. Heck, you can even do that with CLS. Not real
great, ie., CLS/? = "Clears the screen." A new version of QUICK
BASIC comes in the package and there is a WINDOWS like file
manager. The task switcher is like a slow CAROUSEL. Slow but
solid. MANIFEST doesn't work under 5.0 and CAROUSEL. "Kill" (from
the options menu) kills a running (or hung) program alright, also
locks up the computer up tighter than Jack Benny's wallet. There
is a work-around for that. Instead of using "Kill a Program" from
CAROUSEL's Options Menu use the "Quit. Exit Software Carousel"
selection. Then, at the C:> prompt, (which is all that will be on
the screen), restart CAROUSEL. That's a lot quicker than
rebooting....  No other strange things noted.

HAD HOPED TO run a review of various commercial CACHE programs
plus a number of shareware ones too. Have been testing and
testing and not finding anything I'd care to recommend. Most do a
good job in all respects but one or two. Still, it's aggravating 
to find (for example) that 1.44meg disks won't format when a
particular cache program is running. Or, Word Perfect's spell
checker crashes after 12 words are spelled with another tested
program.

MY PRINTER BUFFER died with a message saying "Memory Failure." I
pulled the two memory chips (64k x 4) and put in some
replacements from ELECTRONIC CITY. That fixed it. The chips are
KM41464's. On my EMS board 64k chips can be replaced with 256k
chips. Can I do the same thing with my print buffer? Is there
such a thing as a 414256 chip? 

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: "An EISA bus in a 386 running at 25MHz or
slower doesn't yield any benefits." ... "3.5 inch floppy drives
use 5 watts of power."

MAGAZINE ADS: 496 COMPUTERS now seen at under $2,000.

IS MICROSOFT MULTIPLAN dead? A review of 30 or so spreadsheets in
the Feb issue of PC SOURCES never even mentioned it.

BUY OF THE MONTH? A 10MHz 640k 8088 PC in an AT Jr case with a
single 360K drive for $250. SI Computers in Calif.

I SAW A MINI tower case at ELECTRONIC CITY for $199 (includes
power supply). Nice looking for you home computer builders. But,
a bit high priced I thought. A few days later I saw a similar
looking item pictured in a magazine at $299. What do you get for
the extra $100? A keyboard, a 1.44 floppy and a 12MHz 286
motherboard. In other words, a complete (though stripped down)
computer.

DANMARK REFUNDED ME 100% for the 8086 computer recently returned
to them. I got the original price & shipping plus all my U.P.S.
costs to return it.

WORD PERFECT FOR WINDOWS upgrades are $125 [soon]. Print Preview
is gone, no longer needed. There is a horizontal macro "button
bar" a la QUATTRO PRO's vertical button bar. Unlike QUATTRO, WP
can save/use many different custom button bars.

LATEST WP 5.1 upgrade disks are dated 12/31/90.

LOOK & FEEL UPDATE: U.S. District Court Judge Terry Hatter in
Ashton-Tate vs. Fox Software has ruled that Ashton-Tate failed to
disclose (in patent applications) that its dBase was derived from
a Jet Propulsion Labs program called JPLDIS. The code is
different but 33 of dBase's original 58 commands are the same.
So, the judge dismissed AT's suit against Fox after invalidating
AT's copyrights.... Possible problems with this ruling: The JPL
program was public domain. And, Hatter's order may have
misapplied a patent-law doctrine (inequitable conduct) to a
copyright case. It's not clear if the copyright registration or
the underlying patent was invalidated by the order.

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