ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER APRIL 1989 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ AVPC UPDATE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good Since I wrote my AVPC article for the March issue of our newsletter, I have received from various sources the following software, all of which gives an 80 column display on 99/4A systems equiped with an AVPC card. This software also probably works with a Geneve, although I havn't varified this. All the software described in this article bears no copyright notice and is apparently public domain. User groups can obtain copies by sending a disk and paid return mailer to the Lima User Group, Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894. MULTIPLAN IN 80 COLUMNS: This displays 7 columns and 18 rows on powerup. This is the same screen display as the Geneve's Multiplan and compares to the 4 columns and 18 rows seen with the normal 99/4A Multiplan. This soiftware was originally written for the Mechatronics 80 column peripheral and does NOT yield an increase in recalculation speed compared to the normal 99/4A Multiplan. Multiplan on the Geneve does have an increase in recalculation speed. There is a known bug. When you first load a Multiplan data file, you can print the results to a printer as usaual. However, if you do any manipulation of the data, you can't print it to a printer. What you do is save the manipulated data back to disk in the normal way. Then reboot Multiplan (either the 40 or 80 column versions), reload the data into Multiplan, and immediately print the data. DISK MANAGER - DISK FIXER 80 COLUMNS, v4.0 This combination disk manager and sector editor was written in Germany. All text displays and prompts have translated into English. However the required keypresses are keys that correspond to the first letter of the German language command, and this is confusing. The capabilities of this software are similar to Birdwell's DSKU, including a screen dump at any time. Help screens are always available to describe the current keypress options. In general I like DSKU better. Its operation is familiar to me and its keypress commands relate to English words. I do, however, like the EDIT SECTOR display of the 80 column software. The entire sector is displayed on the screen simultaneously in both ASCII and Hex. The sector editing keys are identical to those of DISKO, and changes made in one display (ASCII or Hex) are immediately displayed in both displays. Both AVPC and Geneve users might like this software. INFOCOM 80 COLUMN GAME LOADER: This boots as EA5 or Funnelweb 3 and immediately boots any Infocom game that is in DSK1. The game disk should already be in DSK1 when the loader is booted. Text is displayed properly in 80 columns with your score and game location displayed in a separate two color bar at the top. This loader has been tested on both the AVPC and the Geneve with no problems except that it has no clean exit. You must turn off the console in order to exit the loader. An important advantage of this loader, besides the 80 column display, is its speed. With AVPC equiped systems, Infocom games load about 3 times as fast with this loader compared to booting the Infocom game from extended basic as DSK1.LOAD. .PL 1