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                          THE v.FAST LANE

                      January 1994 (Issue#3)

                         by Steve Meirowsky

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DISCLAIMER

Copyright 1994 by Steve Meirowsky and New World Designs.  All rights
(known and unknown) are reserved worldwide.  You may copy or print
this file only if it remains intact and unedited!  If you would like
to use any part of this newsletter in your newsletter, please contact
me for permission.

You can upload this newsletter into message conferences on most BBS's
since it's not wider than 72 columns!

Also, don't hold me liable for any advice that I give you!  Remember
how much this cost, nothing!  If you do have any problems, I will
reimburse the cost of this newsletter <grin>.

I don't claim to be perfect so there may be mistakes or typos in this
newsletter.  See the end of this newsletter for my BBS phone number.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 - When is the next issue?
 - What is the best way to get the next issue?
 - Internet Email on NWIS BBS.
 - Paving information highway in Wichita.
 - ZOOM 24000/28800 bps v.Fast Modem.
 - New AT&T V.FAST Chipset.
 - The Email mess.
 - New fax standard.
 - New VESA sound card standard.
 - New FireWire standard.
 - New fast IDE standard.
 - More about DSP's.
 - Windows For WorkGroups 3.11 Shipped.
 - Borland C++ ticks off developers.
 - Visual C++ 2.0 supports other processors!
 - Remember the MacIntosh commercial?
 - So you think you have a big hard drive.
 - New game machines.
 - The Nintendo Edge.
 - Kansas BBS List.
 - How to contact the Author.

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WHEN IS THE NEXT ISSUE?

Many people have been asking when to expect the next issue of this
newsletter and the Kansas BBS List.  The answer is every other month!
Expect the next issue toward the end of March 1994.  I am very busy
so I can't make this a monthly thing...  Sorry!

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WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO GET THE NEXT ISSUE?

The best way to get the next issue of this newsletter is to call NWIS
BBS, 316-262-1829, with a QWK mail reader and always get the "NWD
UUEncoded Files" conference.  I am uuencoding all NWD and NWIS files
into messages into that conference.  All you need to convert the
uuencoded messages is a file called UUEXE521.ZIP.  If you have any
more questions, please read that conference for related messages!

This newsletter will exist as a file called VFASTymm.ZIP, where
'y' is last digit of the year and 'mm' is month of the year.

The files VFAST???.ZIP, KSBBS???.ZIP, CCITT???.ZIP, and PATHTL??.ZIP
will be available in the UUEncode conference!

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INTERNET EMAIL ON NWIS BBS

This month, we finally got connected to the great Internet.  Email is
currently online as well as a few newsgroups.  Please call NWIS BBS
at 316-262-1829 for more information.  Leave the sysop a message if
you are interested!

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PAVING INFORMATION HIGHWAY IN WICHITA

Multimedia Cablevision plans to nudge Wichita area residents onto the
information highway within 3 years!  They announced on December 20th
plans to construct a $30 million fiber-optic cable network to link
subscribers in Wichita and unincorporated areas of Sedgwick County
with new sources of programming and information.

The construction project will begin in January 1994 and will put 200
people to work installing the new line. Most of the cost will involve
the cost of the cable to replace the copper wires that fan out from
Cablevisions headquarters to way stations in 120 neighborhoods.  The
company will continue to use copper wires to link individual
subscribers to the way stations.

Subscribers who own personal computers can receive data (Internet).
Children would be able to select and play video games. Shoppers could
review catalogs and place orders online.  Most videos could be called
on demand to replay shows that you missed.  Rumors of telephone over
cable TV is even being considered.

If you work for Cablevision, please verify this information and tell
me if any of this information has changed!

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ZOOM 24000/28800 BPS V.FAST MODEM

Last issue, I talked about the new ZOOM 24000 bps modems. I installed
an internal version on NWIS BBS before Christmas.  It seems to work
fine.  I have connected to several modems and transfered files over
2000 bytes/sec. There aren't many BBS's using the new v.Fast protocol
but that will change!  ZOOM is not shipping their external versions
yet so that is holding up most sysops.

The ZOOM modem can connect with any of the new v.Fast modems using
the Rockwell chipset.  I'm not sure what modems are shipping that
are not using that chipset.  The Hayes 288 modem uses the upper end
Rockwell chipset and will connect with the ZOOM at 24K bps.

Late breaking news: ZOOM plans to ship a 28.8K modem in March!

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NEW AT&T V.FAST CHIPSET

AT&T announced last month that they will be making a v.Fast (v.34)
modem chipset.  It is rumored that this new chip will also have some
simultaneous video/data (SVD) capabilities.

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THE EMAIL MESS

What is it with Email?  It could be the best thing since sliced bread
but too many vendors have come up with their own damn standards.
Each is a standard but is not compatible with any others.  Hopefully
things will get cleaned up soon.  It is predicted that by 1996 there
will be 57 Million Email boxes.

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NEW FAX STANDARD

Sending and receiving text files via fax will soon become
easier and less expensive as fax vendors begin to implement binary
file transfer (BFT) in their products.  Thus you will no longer be
required to use an OCR to convert the fax bit image into useable
ASCII that can be used by a program.  Also it will finally
allow data to be sent as easy as faxing a sheet of paper is today.

Some of the types of info exchanged will be: editable text, voice,
multimedia.  Some of the possible applications are: Financial data
sent in usable form (e.g. loan rates as spreadsheets), forms entry,
workflow, software updates and distribution.

Microsoft has already announced support for this standard on its
"At Work" software and rumors are floating around about support in
future windows operating systems.

The standard is officially known as the ITU-TSS T.434.

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NEW VESA SOUND CARD STANDARD

Expect to hear more about the VESA BIOS Extension /Audio Interface
(VBE/AI).  It is designed to support digitial audio, MIDI, wave
synthesis, FM and other audio technologies.  This will allow faster
development of new sound cards and allow more software to take
advantage of a universal standard.

There are a few shortcomings with this new standard.  It seems that
it doesn't provide any backward compatibility with existing products.

The most important issue agreed upon by all sound card makers is
that to attempt to do something is better than doing nothing at all!

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NEW FIREWIRE (P1394) STANDARD

This new interface (based on the soon-to-be-approved) P1394 serial
standard, provides a simple, multi-wire, high-speed serial connection
that allows disk drives, scanners, printers, and multimedia devices
to communicate at 100, 200, and eventually 400 Mbits/s.  This new
standard employs a six-wire cable consisting of three individually
shielded twisted pairs.  Two of the pairs carry data and control
information, while the third pair serves as power and ground lines.
This simple cabling has attracted many supporters since SCSI cables
are quite expensive.

The P1394 draft standard can be ordered from the IEEE Computer
Society in Washington, D.C. at (202)-371-0101.

Apple and IBM have already announced support of the new standard.
I'm not sure when it will catch on BUT it will probably happen.
Expect new products next Christmas and volume quantity during 1995.

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MORE ABOUT DSP'S

Expect to see more about the use of DSP in IBM PC's soon, especially
in Windows 4.0.  Initial designs include support for Analog Devices
ADSP 2100, Texas Instruments TMS320C30 TMS320C40 TMS320C50, and
Motorola's DSP56000 chips.  The interface rules will be published by
Microsoft.  They will distribute the API called Resource Manager
Interface as a driver development kit which includes the API, SPOX,
DSP resource manager, and device drivers.  Windows applications will
be able to use API's for WAVE, TAPI for telephony, and MIDI.  Also
applications will be able to make calls directly to the SPOX resource
manager interface for concepts that don't have API support (ie voice)

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NEW FAST IDE STANDARD

Many people have already heard about the new IDE standard that will
be coming in 1994.  Current IDE hard drives are limited in their
transfer rate, maximum drive size, and maximum number of drives per
system.  The following table shows the difference.

                      IDE           Enhanced IDE
Transfer Rate      2-3 Mbytes/Sec   9-13 Mbytes/Sec
Max Drive Size     528 Mbytes        8.4 Gbytes
Max Drives           2 Devices         4 Devices
Other Devices       HD Only         CDROM & Tape

More than likely this new standard will catch on.  The big question
is the compatibility issue with existing IDE and AT BIOS.

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WINDOWS FOR WORKGROUPS 3.11 SHIPPED

Following up on the WFWG from last issue, I received a present from
"Uncle" Bill Gates on Christmas Eve.  It was the new version of WFWG
3.11.  I earned it through the Microsoft Beta testing program.

I still consider it Windows 3.5 but that is another story...

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BORLAND C++ TICKS OFF DEVELOPERS

Borland dropped the ball big time when it shipped its new C++ 4.0.
They restricted developers to 10,000 copies of an application without
royalties. They would have to pay for every copy of their application
above 10,000.  Also it restricted them from making any applications
that competed with Borland.  Also there was a question of how it
would affect shareware authors since there are jillions of copies of
shareware floating around.

After a lot of people griping on Compuserve, Borland decided to
rescind some of the licensing policy.  There are still some issues
that have not been ironed out...

My solution was to use Microsoft Visual C++ <grin>.

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VISUAL C++ 2.0 SUPPORTS OTHER PROCESSORS

The next major upgrade of Microsoft Visual C++ will let users create
32-bit OLE automated applications with a click of a mouse button
without writing thousands of lines of code!

Cross platform development will allow programmers to develop for
Windows NT and Chicago plus generate code for: MIPS, DEC Alpha,
Motorola 680x0, PowerPC, and of course Intel 386/486/Pentium family.

Expect to see it in the second half of 1994.

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REMEMBER THE MACINTOSH COMMERCIAL?

Does it seem like 10 years already?  How many of you remember the
revolutionary MacIntosh commercial shown during the 1984 super bowl?
I clearly remember seeing it <wow, that shows my age>...  I wish I
had a copy of it.  Does anyone know where I could get a copy?

All I can say is: Apple screwed up!  They could have been #1 but they
didn't want to license their operating system.  I'm sure most of us
would not be using IBM clones if they would have done it right!
The Mac was about 100 times better than the IBM PC back then.

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SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE A BIG HARD DRIVE

Many Cable-TV operators say that hard drives will offer the highest
versatility for movies on demand in the future.  Hard drive vendors
are designing new drives to meet the high bandwidth requirements
of compressed video data.

They estimate a need for 1 to 2 Terabytes of hard drive storage and
13 to 60 Terabytes of tape archival storage.  Remember your numbers?
1 Terabyte is 1024 Gigabytes!

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NEW GAME MACHINES

If you are into Game Machines, you should take a look at some of the
new ones coming out, especially the American ones!

Atari Jaguar - Very impressive since it uses a 64-bit RISC processor.
I've seen it do live 3D type graphics, wow!  CDROM and MPEG modules
will be coming soon.  $250 base price.  Only a few games available.

Commodore Amiga CD32 - Based on the Amiga 1200 and includes a double
speed CDROM drive for $399 list.  MPEG module will be coming in 1994
for $249 list.  Over 100 titles will initially be available.  It is
also compatible with Audio CD and CD+G.  The major reason this will
be a good system is the 9 years of Amiga 3rd party game development.
Software will be running out of our ears!

3DO - Many big company backers are pushing this one into success. But
its high price of $699 might halt the success because of the large
number of new game systems.  It definitely has some incredible marks
such as 64 million pixel per second drawing capability, a double
speed CDROM drive, and 3 meg of RAM.

Why didn't I mention other Japanese game machines?  The number one
reason is because they already have a marketing edge.  They are MEGA
BIG companies, not necessarily with the best products.  I am
especially against Nintendo (Non-mind-o).  See the next topic...

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THE NINTENDO EDGE

Nintendo has completely controlled their software distribution by
controlling what can be sold and who can sell the games for their
machines.  For example, if I wanted to make a game to run on a
Nintendo, I would have to first get permission, then send them my
ROM image. Then they would produce a cartridge and sell the cartridge
back to me.  They also would restrict how many I could sell by only
shipping me the quantity they think I need, even if I want more.
And the kicker is that I could not manufacture my own cartridges.
In the USA, this is called monopoly!

Prevent this from happening...don't buy Nintendo!!!

Keep your game machine money in the USA!

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KANSAS BBS LIST

I have been assimilating all of the Kansas BBS's into this list since
1991.  The 316 area code seems to be fairly accurate but the 913 area
code needs more work since I don't live in that portion of Kansas.

The most important information is the BBS name and phone number!
It it extremely important for me to know when a BBS has changed its
phone number or has "gone out of business".  I've had a few BBS phone
numbers re-issued to unsuspecting people who installed a new phone.

All BBS's must meet the following criteria:
 - Must have a dedicated BBS phone line for public use.
 - Must run the BBS 24 hours/day.
 - Must NOT be an adult-only BBS.
 - Must NOT allow distribution of pirated software.

If you know of any BBS that does not meet the above criteria, please
tell me so I can remove them from the list!  I really don't want any
first time callers giving BBS's (in general) a bad name because of a
few pirate or x-rated boards.  The x-rated issue is very important
to parents so they can prevent their children from coming in contact
with it! This list is specifically created for the first time caller.

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HOW TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR

Steve Meirowsky

New World Designs
PO Box 12217
Wichita, KS 67277-2217

New World Information Service (NWIS) BBS
Modem: (316) 262-1829, 24hrs/day.

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