DTACK Grounded. - Whole Earth Software Catalog - Version 1.3 - periodical reviews

ALAN KALKER: Microcomputer drag racers hang out here. Over a six-pack of Heineken's dark they swap tales, dreams, and news of the latest high speed gear: math chip turbochanrgers and 68000 hot rods with the DaTa ACKnowledged pin grounded (like welding the throttle full open). Your genial host makes even novices fell welcome with plainspeak explanations and a spicy fricassee of computer industry bloopers and quaint customs. Quite palatable if you have a strong stomach for droll parable and irreverent parody.

The setting is the back of a Santa Ana speed shop. Off in the corner, the mighty ONE MEGAFLOP is beginning to take shape. You can eavesdrop as an old pro (a relic of the days of bamboo slide rules) debates options for his newest creations with a peanut gallery of top university and industry hackers. Hang in there when the talk turns technical. Even if you have to skip parts requiring assembly language, you'll learn lots of fascinating stuff that will shape the future of micros and gain you an appreciation of true engineering elegance.

Elegance is part of the reason the micro racing crowd seems so willing to help the old pro improve his creations. Another is small business square dealing. Low overhead prices hunkered down real close to production cost, cash flow eased by Procrustean policies:"...we don't care WHAT inviolable rules your company has, if you don't send us a 10 percent down payment [balance COD], you don't have an order...." No discount games, everybody pays exactly the same price. Even-handed dealing works. And it's refreshingly honest, as is this newsletter.

If there is any doubt in your mind, one way or the other, about whether you and UNIX are destined to make beautiful music together as soon as hardware prices drop just a bit more, you should make an effort to locate and read the Dec. issue of Unix Review. While most of the authors in that issue are under the impression that they are outlining the changes which have to occur in the UNIX world to accommodate the mass market, they are in fact presenting detailed proof that UNIX ain't gonna make it in that market.

T.I. is boasting that its briefcase-size protable is the first with an 8087 [math coprocessor chip for faster calculations]. This will prove of great interest to GRID, whose briefcase-size COMPASS portable has featured an 8087 as standard equipment for over two years now.

Some publications are now talking up as a very good thing the inability of typical hackers (vs. well-financed corporations) to write commercial programs for MACK. By keeping out the riff-raff, the reasoning goes, the available software will be of better qulity on average (and $250 on average for each program). We wonder if Apple remembers that Dan Briklin, VISICALC's originator, was once counted among the riff-raff? And that Apple made an enormous amount of money off the folks who bought Apples so they could run VISICALC?

COPYRIGHT 1985 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group