Little Bits
By Andrew Roughan
Copyright (c) 1992 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
o WordPerfect Corporation has bought Beagle Bros Micro Software because they wanted a Macintosh product, BeagleWorks. Beagle Bros owner Mark Simonsen now has a position at WordPerfect. Beagle Bros' other remaining Apple II products, including Platinum Paint 2.0, will be distributed by Quality Computers as previously arranged. Beagle Bros gave Apple II owners of the '80s many hours of productive work with their revolutionary software tools and many hours of entertainment with their catalogues.
o GSTape is a full featured GS/OS desktop tape backup program that offers file oriented operation allowing incremental backups, multiple backups per tape, multiple tapes per backup, point and click file/ directory/ volume selection, scripting, timed backups etc, all of which are described in detail in a 30 page manual.
GSTape will work with either the Apple or RamFast (with Rev 3.0 rom) SCSI cards and common Apple II tape drives such as Apple, Teac and Archive. System Software 6.0 is required. GSTape is available directly from the author for US$35 cheque or money order:
Tim Grams
County Line Technology
P.O. Box 462283
Garland, TX 75046
o For those looking for power supplies which are able to boost the voltage to 5.5 volts for increased performance from accelerators, don't overlook the Pegasus internal hard drive case. It comes with cables, fan, and heavy duty power supply. It has a pot accessible from the outside of the case which you can adjust to increase the voltage.
o The "Visionary GS" digitiser, originally available from LRO Computer Sales, was a modified "Vision Plus" digitiser. After a contract dispute none have been sold for a while. Author of the ROMs, Scott Gentry, has written new ROMs which allow very impressive frame rates. The most notable of which is the ability to capture 30 80x50 pixel monochrome frames a second. This makes the digitiser a true frame grabber. The monochrome 320x200 rate is 15 frames per second and the Colour 320x200 rate is 5 frames per second.
Alltech Electronics have a batch of old "Vision Plus" digitisers which they are about to release with Scott's ROMs as the "Enhanced Vision Plus", EVP for short. Scott is currently waiting on a contract to write a new version of the digitising software, Allison.
Australian users of the digitiser will need a PAL to NTSC converter (unless you have an NTSC source handy). I managed to track one of these down locally for $250 from Law's Laser World. If anyone can find one cheaper, there are a few of us who'd love to hear from you.
Alltech Electronics
602 Garrison Street
Oceanside, CA 92054
(619) 721-7733 Voice
(619) 721-2823 Fax
Law's Laser World
Shop QG 19-20
8 Quay Street
Haymarket NSW 2000
(02) 281-7609 Voice
(02) 281-7610 Fax
Permission is hereby granted for non-profit user groups to republish this content. PLEASE CREDIT THE AUTHOR AND THE SOURCE: Applecations, publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia