_______________________________________ ZMAGAZINE MARCH 1987 _______________________________________ ZMAGAZINE ISSUE 45 MARCH 30, 1987 NEW JERSEY EDITION _______________________________________ PUBLISHER: SYNDICATE SERVICES EDITOR IN CHIEF: RON KOVACS EDITOR: ALAN KLOZA SPECIAL FEATURES EDITOR: STEVE GODUN ASST PUBLISHER: KEN KIRCHNER ZMAG HEADQUARTERS: THE SYNDICATE BBS (201) 968-8148 300/1200 BAUD PO BOX 74 MIDDLESEX, NJ 08846-0074 _______________________________________ ////This week in Zmag//// <*> Special Sysop Survey Request <*> Computer Show Schedule <*> Updated 1088XE Documentaion <*> Zmag Newswire <*> Special Zmag/GEnie Sign-on <*> FCC All this and more in Issue 45 _______________________________________ ////Zmag and GEnie//// If you are interested in more info on siging up without a registration fee, then please read on. We have been givin passes with sign-up information and I pass these on to the readers who send me a letter with their address. You can now sign-up without charges. For free signup pass, send your name and address to: Zmagazine PO BOX 74 Middlesex, NJ 08846 GEnie provides no extra charges for 1200 baud service. You can call at 300/1200 for only $5.00/hr. Join the Atari Roundtable where you will discover dozens of files, Atari Live confrences, CB Simulator, Electronic Mail, multiplayer games and more. As stated above, as a Zmag reader, you are eligible to recieve a special limited offer from GEnie. If you sign up before December 31 1987, the normal registration fee of $18.00 will be waived. If you would like more information on GEnie services, call: 1 (800) 638-9636 Comparison Chart: 1)The Source: 2)CompuServe 3)GEnie REG.Fee Monthly Min 300 1200 ** --------------------------------------- 1)49.95 10.00 8.40 10.80 2)39.95 none 6.00 12.50 3)none none 5.00 5.00 Non Prime time hours are: Monday-Friday 6pm-8am, All day Saturday/Sunday and national holidays. Additional surcharge for 2400 baud. _______________________________________ ////XE1088 Documentation Update//// _______________________________________ Provided by the CHAOS BBS(517) 371-1106 The final step, the 1088XE. Version 2.0 (This one works!) By Scott Peterson, June 1986. Well, this is it for me, the last installment on the 130XE. I have not built this mother, but one has been built and tested by another person in Mass., and it works!! This doc assumes you have allready built and tested a 576K 130XE. to finish it you will need the following parts; Quanity part no. description. ------------------------------- 16 41256-15 256K DRAM'S 1 7432 quad OR gate 1 7404 quad invert buff. 2 33 omh resistors. Small piece of PC board. ------------------------------- Note: On the 74 series, you can sub them with 74LS series chips, they use less power... Tools; Nothing fancy, a fine tip soldering iron, screwdriver, needle nose pliers, and some fine wire, ect. Mount the 7404 and the 7432 on a small PC board(1in. X 2in.) connect together pin 14 on the 7432 and pin 14 on the 7404 with a length of fine wire. This is the +5v supply to the chips, connect it to pin 14 of any 14 pin chip in the 130XE or pin 16 of any 16 pin chip in the 130XE. Next connect a lenght of wire to pin 7 of the 7432 and pin 7 of the 7404, this is ground for the two chips, connect it to pin 7 of any 14 pin chip in the 130XE or pin 8 of and 16 pin chip. Next, take U23(U23) out of the socket and bend up pin 17, reinsert it in the socket. Solder a piece of wire to pin 17 U23, and connect it to the 7432 pins 2 and 5. Next connect a wire to pin 14 on U23(PIA) run it to pin 1 on the 7404 and pin 1 on the 7432. Now connect a wire from the 7432 pin 6 to pin 17 of the socket U23 is in. Find the 74LS138 you piggy backed to the mother board when doing the 576k mod, remove the jumper from pins 1 and 16. solder a wire from pin 3 of the 7432 on the PC board to pin 1 of the piggybacked 74LS138. Run a jumper from the 7404 pin 2 to the 7432 pin 4. Put some double backed tape on the PC board and stick it somewhere on the mother board of the 130XE. RAM-CHIP installation(lots of them!) Take the 16 new ram chips and cut pin 15 on all of them in half so only the 'fat' part is left. Now, you have to piggy back them on-top of the 64K rams the left-most row of chips). Solder in 8 of them, connecting all pins except pin 15, then connect a jumper to pin 15 of each new ram chip. Make sure you have about a foot left over. Solder in the next 8 doing the same thing (you might want to piggy back the 256K DRAM's prior to mounting them on-top of the 64K DRAM's). When you get done you should have 2 new rows of 256k DRAM's solder in on-top of the 64K DRAM's, with a 2 wires, one connected to all the pin 15's of the middle row and another connected to all the pin 15's of the top row. Take one wire and go out a few inches and install a 33 ohm resistor in-line, cover with heat shrink tubing and do the same to the other wire. Connect one wire to pin 15 of the 74LS138 and the other to pin 13 of the 74LS138. Last but not least, install a jumper to pin one of each of the left bank of ram-chips, just like you did in the 576k mod to the bank on the right. After doing this run the jumper to any pin one of the right bank, what you should wind up with is a common connection to every pin one of both banks of ram-chips. Your done!!! Sorry, as of right now I know of no software to run on this(maybe Mydos 4.2? or Top-Dos 1.5+). I will provide a table for the control numbers, ect. Good Luck Scott P.S. 2 meg is very, very possible. You just need wwuunnn more control line. This would have to be bit 0 of the PIA, but you would lose the switch-able O.S. Its up to you guys from here, thats funny, the 1040 ST only has 1,024,000 bytes of ram. _______________________________________ ////Computer Show's//// _______________________________________ Ken Gordon Shows April-June 1987 April 5-- Long Island, NY Show 250 Tables, Grand Royal Hotel Hempstead-Clinton Street Sunday 10-4pm May 9-- Boston Area Show 350 Tables, NE Trade Center Woburn Exit #35 I-95 - 128 Saturday 10-4pm May 16-- South Jersey Show 300 Tables, Betsy Ross Inn Pennsauken, NJ RT 130 Saturday 10-4pm June 6-- North Jersey Show 400 Tables, Meadowlands Hilton Secaucus, New Jersey RT 3 Saturday 9-4pm June 13-- Maryland/DC/VA Show Sheraton Hotel New Carroliton, MD Exit 20-B, I-95 Saturday 10-4pm June 20-- Philadelphia Area Show George Washington Confrence Center Wollow Grove, PA TPKE Exit 27 _______________________________________ April 11-12 The 12th Annual Trenton Computer Fest Trenton State College Recreation Center For information: Trenton State COllege Hillwood Lakes, CN4700, Trenton, NJ 08650-4700 (609)771-2487 _______________________________________ May 3 Delaware Computer Fair Ramada Inn, New Castle, Delaware I-295,RT13 10-4pm Admission is $3.00 For more information: (201) 553-1991 _______________________________________ June 14 Computer Central Multi-Vendor PC Show Holiday Inn Itasca 860 Irving Park Road Itasca, Il 9:30-4pm Apple,Atari,IBM(clones),Commodork,Tandy For more information: (312) 940-7547 _______________________________________ ////Zmag Newswire//// _______________________________________ The Department of Defense Proposes Limitations on -Electronic Press- Easy electronic access to public information, the stock in trade of such on-line providers as Dow Jones News Retrieval, Mead, Newsnet, CompuServe, and The Source, will be curtailed if the Department Of Defense has it's way. DOD's concerns focus on the computerized ease with which an agent of an unfriendly power might access large amounts of unclassified information, massage it electronically, and discover patterns in national behavior of great significance to national security. The Pentagon is an important source of such information, regularly releasing unclassified information to the news media which electronic information exchange services then repackage in an easily accessible form. To prevent potential adversaries from accessing this convenient source of information, DOD has proposed a new security designation termed -unclassified but sensitive-. Such information, although unclassified, would be restricted from on-line databases. The information industry sees this move as a threat to First Amendment freedoms. The Information Industry Association (IIA), a trade group representing vendors of online data services, issued a policy statement in January that acknowledged the government's legitimate concern for national defense, but opposed efforts by DOD and the National Security Council to restrict public access to unclassified information. Carl Valenti, chairman of the IIA board of directors and vice president of information services for Dow, Jones ompany, stated strong opposition to -controlling access to information that has always been available- information that you can find in your public library-. DOD is not the only government agency attempting to restrict access to publicly released information. The Commerce Department recently requested private information companies to identify subscribers who access the Department of Energy's RECON database (the request was later withdrawn after pressure from IIA); NASA has established a list of companies, including American companies, that may not subscribe to unclassified NASA information; and the CIA and FBI have visited Mead Data Central, providers of the LEXIS legal research database and the NEXIS news research database, to discuss how Mead could limit access to those unclassified databases and to determine whether suspect foreigners were subscribing. According to a spokesman for CompuServe, a major electronic information exchange service, the -unclassified but sensitive- designation is poorly defined and thus gives agencies arbitrary powers of censorship. In response to government requests that information providers restrict data access voluntarily, he said, -Compu$erve is not equipped to provide these protections, and not equipped to make these judgements- as to who should have access and who should not. In addition to concerns over First Amendment freedoms, many U.S. companies fear that limited access to public databases could take away a critical competitive advantage. These corporations have joined forces with the information exchange companies, the print media, and the American Civil Liberties Union to monitor government actions and prevent any restrictions on the free flow of unclassified information. In a more general effort, the Media Institute, a Washington D.C. based non-profit research foundation, has established the First Amendment Center for New Media to protect the freedoms of a range of electronic information sources such as on-line databases, videotext, teletext, cable television, and satellite news gathering. _______________________________________ ////Zmag Special Report//// _______________________________________ [ed.] Since I feel there are many SysOps reading this publication on a weekly basis, I decided to publish this article. If you are not a SysOp, dont respond to the requests listed, as they are for SysOps only. Please take the time and reply if you can. Sysops Questionnaire for Shooshan ackson ONA Study Introduction: You have an opportunity to help improve the services the telephone company provides to sysops like you and to the people who use your BBS. In particular, we want your opinion on the ONA BSEs. What's a BSE? Who cares? What do BSEs and ONAs have to do with me? Please read on a couple paragraphs and I will try to make it all clear. Background: Last June, (June 1986) the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in its Computer Inquiry III proceeding, ordered the telephone companies to develop -Open Network Architecture- (ONA) plans which would allow for the improved delivery of -Enhanced Services- over the telephone network. Telephone companies have to file these ONA plans by February 1988. The FCC's order developed out of a long history which is too complex and detailed to recount here. One way to restate what they said in June is that the telephone companies should take any reasonable steps to make their networks better able to support information vendors on the network. By enhanced service providers or information service vendors the FCC means timesharing companies such as GEnie, CompuServe or the Source, value added networks (VANs) such as Telenet and Tymnet, and a host of non-computer services such as telephone answering services or burglar alarm services. The FCC's order didn't refer to sysops, RBBSs, or FIDO nodes -- but clearly these all fall into the category of enhanced service providers -- even if most of them don't charge for the service. Our firm was hired by a regional bell holding company to study enhanced service providers' needs for basic service elements (BSEs) in an open network architecture (ONA) environment. We have been meeting with all the major corporate enhanced service providers to understand their needs for improved network services. However, we feel that sysops have a tremendous store of knowledge based upon their experience with the provision of data base services and electronic mail over the telephone network. We would like to tap into that resource. Hence, this questionnaire. Sysops and the personal computer communications world will benefit from this questionnaire since they will have an opportunity for input into the BSE definition process (at one regional company). If you could just edit this document -- inserting your answers -- and send a plain ASCII version or a printout to me at one of the addresses below I would appreciate it. Background on Respondent (optional -- anonymous is okay -- but I can't get back to you for clarification if your response is anonymous) Name: Address: Phone number (data): Phone number (voice): For how long have you been a sysop (years and months)? What BBS system do you operate? Computer Software How many calls a month are made to your BBS? Calls: Hours of activity: The building blocks of the ONA environment are basic service elements (BSEs). I would like to ask you some questions about possible BSEs. These have not been fully investigated for feasibility -- so please don't regard my questions about their value as a statement about the technical or economic feasibility of such BSEs. One possible BSE is the provision of calling number identification (CLI) to the called party. With CLI, the telephone company would signal to your BBS the telephone number of the calling party before connecting the calling party to your machine. Would you use CLI? Without regard to cost, on what fraction of the calls to your BBS would you use CLI? Would you be willing to pay two cents per call to get CLI? How would you prefer CLI be transmitted to your PC? A second possible BSE is suppressed ringing (though it may be technically difficult, impossible or horribly expensive on many older switches). This would allow a BBS to dial-up another PC and to open the connection without sending a ringing signal. Thus, you could call another system at 2 a.m. and download to that system without waking anyone up. Would you use suppressed ringing? How many calls a month would you make using suppressed ringing? A third possible BSE is -single number access- which would provide firms like CompuServe and Telenet with a single seven digit number which would be valid over a wide area (area code region, state, etc.). Would single number access to such firms be useful to you? How would it help you? A fourth possible BSE is suppression of call waiting. In this option, call waiting could be turned off by dialing a specific code before dialing a call. Would this be useful to you? About how many calls a month would you use this feature on? Would you be willing to pay $3.00 per month for this feature? Now for the fun questions. The preceding questions have given you the basic concept of a BSE. What BSEs do you think the telephone companies SHOULD offer? How much would you pay for them? Do you need them on every telephone line in your city, state, the nation or could you use them if only a few telephone lines had these features? What else can telephone companies do to facilitate BBS operation and the growth and health of PC communications? Please feel free to add any other comments you have on the Computer InquiryIII/ONA/BSE definition issues. Please send completed questionnaire to me at: (US Mail) Chuck Jackson Shooshan Jackson Inc. Suite 450, 1990 M Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 or MCI Mail CLJ or (CompuServe) Chuck Jackson [70220,271] on CompuServe or(GEnie Email) CLJ BIX AMcDonald Please forward this questionnaire to other sysops. I would prefer not to see it distributed to non-sysops because they lack the experience of sysops and their responses could dilute the responses from sysops. Note: I will prepare a summary of the responses to this questionnaire and will post that summary back into the sysop world. It should be in circulation by mid-April. Regards Chuck _______________________________________ ////FCC Update//// _______________________________________ ACTION ALERT -- FCC'S COMPUTER III Many of you have recently asked about the FCC's pending -Computer Inquiry III- ruling and its implications. In a nutshell, the FCC is considering taking action which would subject the competitive packet switching market to government regulation, dramatically increase the costs of local dial access to packet networks, and threaten the very existence of innovative new services such as PC Pursuit. The FCC currently plans to decide this issue on March 26, so it is of great importance to let the Commission know your views immediately. Letters should be sent to: The Honorable Mark Fowler, Chairman Federal Communications Commission Washington, DC 20554 202/632-6600 with copies to the other Commissioners: Commissioner James H. Quello 202/632-7557 Commissioner Mimi Weyforth Dawson 202/632-6446 Commissioner Dennis R. Patrick 202/632-7117 Commissioner Patricia Diaz Dennis 202/632-6996 The following provides some background on this subject. Additional information on Computer III can be found in the general file section of the NetExchange BBS. Computer III is a proceeding in which the FCC is considering whether to -re-regulate- public packet switching networks such as Telenet, that were deregulated in 1980. As a result of the FCC's 1980 decision, the packet market has flourished; many new competitors have entered the market, and new services such as PC Pursuit have been introduced. ATand the Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) are now also entering the packet market, and prefer to offer their services on a regulated, tariffed basis rather than in a nonregulated mode. They would also like to see the existing packet networks, such as Telenet, regulated as well. There are three principal reasons for this ATBOC attitude. First, these carriers would like to subsidize their packet services with revenues from their basic telephone service. This would enable them to price their packet services below cost, at least long enough to drive out competition in this market. Second, the BOCs would like to be able to charge competing packet networks -carrier access charges- for the use of local dial access lines, which would add more than $7.00 per hour to the cost of providing a service such as PC Pursuit. This would provide additional revenue for the BOCs and greatly increase the prices which packet competitors would have to charge for their services, undermining their ability to price their services at attractive levels. Third, re-regulation of packet services is likely to reduce the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs to enter this market and provide additional competition to the ATBOC services. Many companies simply do not wish to operate in a regulated industry, with all the restrictions and red tape that regulation may imply. In order to achieve these three objectives, ATand the BOCs have pressured the FCC to reverse its 1980 decision and re-regulate all packet networks. In an address on Computer III, Paolo Guidi, President of Telenet Communications Corp., explained what would result for the consumer if the full extent of the proposal is voted into being: -With the competitors driven out of the market, prospects for success of their own (ATs and the RBOCS) packet services would improve. Of course, the user would be deprived of the benefits of competition, and would be left with no choice but a carrier-provided packet service which fails to offer many of the innovative features that have been introduced by the Value Added Networks. Continued rapid advancement of the remote computer industry would be dealt a serious blow, and the consumer would be the ultimate loser.- The potential consequences of the FCC's Computer III proposal for the value -added services you know and enjoy are quite serious. There is no need to take such action, and it would be contrary to the entire deregulatory thrust of the Reagan Administration and the FCC in recent years. The proposal should be stopped. Again, time is extremely short on this issue. Any letters or phone calls to the FCC must be received no later than March 23 in order to be effective. If this change occurs, the cost of using all online services via networks (Tymnet, Telenet, GEISCO, etc.) will increase substantially! Last I heard, the FCC had received just 60 letters objecting to the changes. So...write to the FCC now...or pay later! [ED] Although this article is a bit late. I think the news of the pending decision is of interest to us all. I will try to persue this story and report my findings in the weeks ahead. _______________________________________ ////Zmagazine New Jersey//// _______________________________________ (C) Copyright 1987 Syndicate Services Reprinting permission granted. _______________________________________