Loadstar 128 #33/q33side1.d64/t.diskovery 33

Text File | 1992-01-01 | 3.7 KB | 71 lines

                    DISKOVERY: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

                              by Fender Tucker


    Once again the yoyo of LOADSTAR 128 is on an upswing. All of the
programs on this issue are useful or entertaining, only one (well, maybe
two) is a re-run, and there's even a contest where you can win ten back
issues of LOADSTAR 128 or LOADSTAR 64. As for its going out on schedule,
who knows? I've learned to stop worrying about schedules. Good programs are
more important.

    The three Helpware programs, MEMBERSHIP MANAGER, FOOD CALC II and
POSTAL BARCODER, will help you keep track of a group's members and their
families, lose weight and stay healthy, and cut a day or two off your snail
mail's delivery time. The entertainment programs include six solitaire
games (with mouse, joystick or keyboard control) and a puzzle game with 25
diabolical levels to solve.

    So is this where the C-128 world is heading? Usefulness and
entertainment? Yes and no. Most programs by home programmers like David
Presley, Bob Markland and myself are probably always going to fit into
these categories, but there's something new on the horizon -- Creative
Micro Design's Super Accelerator for the 128. The 64 SuperCPU has been out
for months now and it has added a lot of potential to the 64 mode. Power ML
programmers are designing slideshows, animations and even games that will
take advantage of the 20 MHz speed. I've had my SuperCPU for a couple of
months now and it is truly amazing how it enhances visual displays and
programs that require a lot of computation.

    The 128 version, which will probably be out in early 1997, ought to be
even more inspiring. The 80-column screen, which in my opinion is the #1
advantage of the 128 over the 64, will truly be fun to program at 20 MHz.
Big programs will also be more fun to work on since the agonizing slowness
of the BASIC 7.0 editor will be gone. Try changing a line in a large BASIC
program like MEMBERSHIP MANAGER. It takes 10 seconds. That's so long it
makes me not want to change lines, even when they're wrong. But with the
Super CPU...

    There's another aspect of the future you should be aware of -- the
superiority of the 1581 disk format. Don't panic, but I think you're going
to HAVE to get a 3.5 inch drive before long. It's getting hard to find 5.25
inch disks (the ones you buy downtown won't work anymore) and more and more
programs are going to require more than 664 blocks or 144 files.

    LOADSTAR will continue to support the 1541 format for years to come but
each year it will be more difficult. There's a lot of excitement in the
Commodore 8-bit world and if you get LOADSTAR 128 in the 1581 format you
can read about it on this issue. Jim Brain's C-HACKING #14 magazine is on
the disk. It's got so much fascinating information about "the state of the
8-bit art" that I had to take drastic measures to make our LS 128 Presenter
handle a dozen extra files. Since I plan to publish C-HACKING on every 1581
issue from now on, I may have to revise the Presenter.

    So if you subscribe to the 1541 version of LOADSTAR 128 you're getting
all of the programs that the 1581 subscribers get, but you're missing out
on the truly exciting news from Jim Brain and the 8-bit folks from the
Internet and demo groups. There's an interview with Jim Butterfield, super-
technical articles, even Jeff Jones' latest MENU TOOLBOX. For now, most of
the excitement and news is about the 64 mode but I have a feeling that when
the SuperCPU 128 comes out, the 128 mode will get its rightful share of
coverage.

    Where do we go from here? I can't say for sure, but I bet it'll be at
20 Mhz on a disk that holds 3160 blocks. Stay tuned.

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