~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ N E W S & I N F O ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Speaking of power supplies. It seems that Gadgets new SST might need a larger one... From George Richardson (Merlin Group) on Genie... ...Dave and I have been aware of the power supply problem since way back....Unfortunately, the only adequate solution to the internal supply problem looks like a custom made job. There's no way Gadgets could make back the money required to do this, now that the Mega has been discontinued. As a result, we're considering an external "brick" type supply that will be switched on by a relay board that plugs into the extra power connector in the Mega. The new supply will only power the SST board, the normal Mega power supply will handle the Mega itself and the expansion board, if any. I realize that this is less than ideal, but it's all I've been able to come up with that's affordable. Question by Mike Valent on Genie... How much power is this board going to require? Is the -030 that much of a power drain, or is it the load of a full set of RAM chips?...Remember that some of us will have the Moniterm board plugged into the extra power connector. Answer from George Richardson (Merlin Group) on Genie... ...the '030 is no problem at all, but four 1 meg x 8, 80ns SIMMs draw almost 3 amps when active. Since only one bank of SIMMs is being addressed at a time, the current draw on the board stays at about 3 amps maximum and quite a bit lower when Fastram is not being accessed. The relay board will have a pass through connector so that things like the Moniterm will still be able to plug in. The SST also has a power pass through connector. So does the Megatalk board, now that I think of it. ---------------- ATARI ENTERS MIDI TRAINING JOINT VENTURE - Press Release Director Neils Hartvig- Neilsen (ICA) and Murray Brown (Western Canada Sales Mng) announced an agreement has been reached and received approval by Geoff Earle (General Sales Manager Atari Canada Corp.) Under the agreement Atari Canada will provide B.C. dealers wishing to participate in the program with posters and promotional material which offer any purchaser of an Atari ST a five hundred dollar training allowance towards a course offered by the Institute of Communication Arts. ICA is one of the most respected digital arts learning institution in North America. They have a multitude of Atari equipment connected to the latest music equipment and specialize in teaching high-tech digital recording techniques. "We are very positive towards this move as it is the first training course Atari has offered to users and could be the start of other courses being offered", stated Murray Brown. HOTWIRE VERSION 3.0 - Press Release CodeHead Software Announces HotWire 3.0. CodeHead's HotWire now offers even more power than before! With a SINGLE keypress or mouse click you can start up to 74 Programs, Documents, Menus, ASSIGN.SYS files, MultiDesk Setup Files, or Work Files!! HotWire 3.0 is now fully compatible with the Atari TT as well as the Mega STe...all resolutions on all Atari computers including all large-screen monitors! The many auxiliary programs included in the HotWire package are also now TT- compatible. HotWire includes a special version of Charles Johnson's Button Fix accessory that communicates with HotWire to let you enable or disable BUTTNFIX automatically for each program. This solves the notorious "double button press" problem with TOS versions 1.4 and higher. Many other enhancements, bug fixes, and user interface tweaks make this new version of HotWire a MAJOR upgrade. Suggested retail price for HotWire 3.0 is $44.95, or you can get HotWire Plus -- HotWire packaged together with MaxiFile -- for $69.95, a savings of $15. CodeHead Products are available from your local Atari dealer, through mail-order houses, or directly from CodeHead Software: CodeHead Software, P.O. Box 74090, Los Angeles, CA 90004, Phone: (213) 386-5735, FAX: (213) 386-5789, BBS: (213) 461-2095. BORLAND SHIPS OBJECTVISION Borland announced it has begun shipping ObjectVision, a new visual programming tool that enables non-technical professionals and managers to easily create interactive business applications for Microsoft Windows 3.0. The new product combines popular features from spreadsheets, databases, forms products and front ends into an easy-to-use WYSIWYG application. ObjectVision's suggested retail price is $495 but will be offered in the United States and Canada at a special introductory price of $99.95 through May 31. ------------------ Question from R.Randall5 on Genie... I had received a copy of FATSPEED...so I decided to give it a try...My question is:...Are there potential conflicts? Could the performance obtained with FATSPEED be obtained with proper tuning of ICDHOST para- meters alone...This is by far the best disk performance that I've seen yet. Answer from Nevin Shalit (PageStream Sysop) on Genie... Fatspeed is great. I've used it for at least 2 years on both TOS 1.0 and TOS 1.2 machines, with Atari and ICD hard drives. You need Fatspeed as the ICD software does not duplicate its functions. Answer from Tom (ICD) on Genie... Fatspeed addresses a problem with TOS 1.0 and 1.2 versions. TOS 1.4 fixed it so fatspeed is not necessary. Since 1.4 was shipping when we came out with caching (at least to developers) and Fatspeed was already there, we didn't see it as necessary. By all means, use Fatspeed if you have TOS 1.0 or 1.2. ---===< * >===---