Booting, Benchmarking, and Bob's Your Uncle

Jerry's ongoing exploration of Windows takes him to novel boot-up utilities and more benchmarking of video cards

Jerry Pournelle

There's so much to talk about this month that it's hard to choose a lead, but let's start with Bootcon 2.0, because it let us do more testing with less trouble. Bootcon offers you up to 26 different combinations of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT; choose any one at start-up. It's a godsend for anyone who regularly uses the same system in different ways: for example, running AutoCAD on a bare system to avoid the Windows performance penalties, different networks, or different memory managers.

It's even more important for testing hardware and software, because if you get your system into an unbootable configuration--an d that happens to us more often than I like--you don't have to fish out your panic boot-up floppy. Also, if new software crashes, you can easily boot up your system in bare bones with no memory-resident programs at all and see if it works that way. (There's a Clean Boot option for just this.)

You can choose among several incompatible memory management programs such as QEMM and HIMEM, enable CD-ROM or leave it out to have more memory, load different sound driv-ers, run different setup programs, come up in Windows or in DOS, and even switch over to Dual Boot OS/2, all without having to write (and maintain) a whole bunch of batch files.

I recommended the original Bootcon 1.0 a couple of years ago. The new version not only handles MS-DOS 6 and compressed drives, but it has a completely new interface, making it much easier to use. If you know how to edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files--and that's easy to learn if you don't--you can use Bootcon, and indeed, if you have Bootcon you can learn ho w to edit those files without having to worry about getting into an unrecoverable attitude: just leave your original start-up configuration as the Bootcon default.

It's not perfect, however. When we installed Federal Soapbox (which I'll discuss later) it wanted to change CONFIG.SYS by setting BUFFERS=20 rather than the 10 we had. We use Norton Speedcache, and that doesn't need so many buffers, but in the interest of getting on with it we let the Soapbox installation program change CONFIG.SYS.

Alas, it apparently changes every buffer statement it can find, which means that when Bootcon came up after reset it wanted a confirmation of that change in every configuration--and we have a lot of them on SuperCow, the Gateway 2000 we use as a test-bed system. Bootcon will show you the configuration it believes has changed, but it doesn't show what has changed; and it insists that you either accept the changes or put it back the way it was for each configuration it detects changes in.

I didn't quit e understand what was going on, and I really dislike programs that do things I don't expect; but there was no harm done, and on reflection I suppose a warning that you have changed your CONFIG.SYS is a good idea. (Gary Palmer insists that the next version will highlight changes for your approval.)

Bootcon does offer a nonmenu mode, which creates a "pure" CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, for just such ill-behaved programs as Federal Soapbox. It's also good for OPTIMIZE, and so forth.

Bootcon works quite well, and if you experiment with your system at all, you need it. Recommended, but do spend a few minutes with the manual.

We may seem obsessed with video speed, but there's a reason: multimedia is growing in importance. You may not care whether it takes an extra 2 seconds to repaint your word processor screen when you change fonts--although remember when that took nearly a minute?--but you will care if your full-motion video gets jerky. Like it or not, video speed and audio fidelity are importa nt, because you will soon see a lot of multimedia educational software and multimedia enhancements to many of our daily tasks.

Last month I reported some times with the Win Tachometer benchmark. We like Win Tachometer (freeware from Texas Instruments, available on BIX in "tojerry/listings") because it's based on a number of things that you actually do with small computers. The winner was the Cheetah 486DX2/33 with the ATI Mach 32 video board, followed by the Gateway 2000 486DX2/33 with the ATI VL-Bus card.

In short order we got two new winners: SuperCow, the Gateway 2000 486DX2/33 with a Number Nine #9GXE Professional Graphics Accelerator, with an overall score of 42.57; and Little Kat, the Cheetah 486DX2/25 with the #9GXE, with an overall score of 35.43. (The #9GXE was not run as a local-bus card, although SuperCow has that capability.) All were run at 1024 by 768 pixels at 65,536 colors (although Win Tachometer reports 32,767 colors); oddly, shifting to 256 colors slows things way down.

Except for the video boards, we made no other changes in these systems.

We had one inexplicable compatibility problem: with the #9GXE in the 25-MHz Cheetah, but only in that Cheetah, there are some weird problems with Video for Windows and every sound card we have in the house. That Cheetah was one of the earliest 486 machines, and we think it's a BIOS problem. We had no such problems with the #9GXE or any sound card in SuperCow.

There is just a lot to like about that #9GXE board. Installation is exceptionally easy, there are lots of drivers, and it understands a whole slew of monitors, including the big 21-inch Hitachi HM-4319-D that has sat on Little Kat for four years. It knows about Nanao monitors, including the newest models with Energy Star power-saving features. It has beaucoup monitor-adjustment features, including resizing and moving the display image around on the screen right from within the control panel. Indeed, that "Hawkeye" control panel is about the best we've ever seen. (A min or nit: the control panel is "unkillable''; even pressing Alt-F4 doesn't really make it go away.) Images on the Hitachi are steady, Berkeley Systems' Flying Toasters just zoom across the screen, and everything looks crisp and sharp. As a matter of fact, we didn't know how much better a monitor could look until we installed the #9GXE. Video from a CD-ROM looks great, and Classic Clips (Starlite Software, SG 11900 Grant Place, Des Peres, MO 63131, (314) 965-5630) movie previews are now watchable. See Alfred Hitchcock give you a guided tour of the Bates Motel, and Steve McQueen trying to convince people The Blob is coming....

Number Nine advertises their board as the best Windows accelerator you can buy, and we sure can't argue with that on performance grounds, provided you're not talking about the local bus; and you'll note that for CAD it wins even there.

Nits: the #9GXE uses more Windows resources than the ATI Mach 32 card. The #9GXE card that we have does not have a VGA feature connector, meani ng that you cannot use it to run Creative Labs' Video Spigot, or the WatchIt TV input board, which in turn means the VideoLabs little Flexcam video camera is right out. (The feature connector is the 26-pin edge connector on the top of your VGA card. Interestingly, the AST Bravo has a feature connector, even though the ATI video system is built onto the motherboard.)

Feature connectors are important: there is still a lot you can do in analog that's too fast for the digital bus. When you read this, most versions of the #9GXE will have a feature connector: look before you buy. Their VL-Bus and PCI cards already come with one. They're also developing control-panel software that will work in DOS.

All told, the #9GXE is very fast and looks great. We like the colors. Recommended. More next month.

While we're on the subject of Win Tachometer benchmark scores, I tried to get one for the PS/2 Model 77, which runs OS/2. Alas, it doesn't work: the usual result of running Win Tachometer is a message pr oclaiming a protection fault error. The message also says that Win Tachometer will shut down.

Actually, it doesn't quite shut down: it leaves a ghost image on the screen. Invisible under that image is the Windows Program Manager, and if you know where things are in Program Manager you can still click on them to make something happen; and for that matter, if you have Program Manager at less than full-screen size, the OS/2 desktop is under there somewhere as well.

Oddly enough, when I applied the OS/2 Migrate utility to Win Tachometer, OS/2 found the program in its database, making me think I might be able to run Win Tachometer directly in Win-OS/2 without Presentation Manager. It started up just fine, but I got the same protection fault error, only this time it really did shut down on acknowledgment.

Win Tachometer almost runs, and you can see enough of it to get a notion of how fast Win-OS/2 is; and a couple of times I was actually able to get it to run to completion, although I don't qui te know how I did it. The result was about 11 seconds for word processing and similar scores for the other components. This squares with my subjective judgment that performance of Win-OS/2 on the PS/2 Model 77 is very similar to what we got on the Cheetah 486/33 with the older ATI board and 8514 video drivers--which, you'll recall, was slower than the 486/25 with ATI accelerator drivers.

While we're on bugs: there is a limit to the number of groups you can have in Windows. That's probably documented somewhere, but I don't know anyone who has read the entire collection of Windows documents. I sure haven't.

I found this fact out while installing several of the Microsoft Multimedia library programs. I did that ostensibly to test the new Creative Labs Multimedia Kit we installed in Big Kat. This comes with a fast two-speed CD-ROM drive, a set of powered speakers, the Sound Blaster Pro sound board, and a whole bunch of CD-ROMs.

Installation was simple, or it would have been except that I had a bad cable: I spent a couple of days finding that out. I have said it many times: if you have mysterious problems, check your cables as the first step. In our case it was the wide ribbon cable from the Sound Blaster Pro board to the CD-ROM drive: as soon as that was replaced, all was well.

The Creative Labs Multimedia Kit works just fine, and I like the speakers. The powered speakers make a big difference. Later we installed the Media Vision Pro 16 Multimedia System upgrade kit, with its much better speakers, and even I could hear the difference in sound quality. This was especially true on good music recordings, like the Microsoft Multimedia Stravinsky (one of my favorites); more on that next month, too, when we'll have a sound board shoot-out.

Anyway, we installed Microsoft's Mozart multimedia CD-ROM and discovered that Windows lets you have only a limited number of groups. What actually happened was that once the Mozart program was installed, I got the message "Cannot display Microsoft Multime dia Group,'' together with the ubiquitous "OK'' prompt. I rather resent it when the computer tells me I can't do something, won't tell me why, and then makes me say that that's OK.

I determined that there was no such thing as the "Microsoft Multimedia Group'' and attempted to create one in Program Manager: this time I got the message that I had too many groups and would have to delete some. That wasn't a difficult task: about half of the Windows programs create a group that I don't need, since I tend to organize programs by functions; so it was no great trick to delete a dozen groups.

Having got past that annoyance, I installed several other Microsoft Multimedia CD-ROMs, and I have to say I like every darned one of them. Their Encarta is one heck of a history encyclopedia CD-ROM, the kind of thing that I would have sold my soul for when I was in eighth grade (or fifth grade, or high school for that matter). Their music collections, from the Instruments of the World, to Beethoven, to Stravinsky, to Mozart, are wonderful. Multimedia is coming of age, and if your system doesn't do multimedia, you're missing something.

The BYTE editorial staff selects the winners of the Shelly Awards, which are given for the best products being shown for the first time at Comdex. It's a very hectic experience trying to look at all the new stuff and deciding what's best in half a dozen categories, but we get the job done, and our final editorial meeting to decide on the winners is about the best meeting I get to all year. You'll find the awards described elsewhere in BYTE, so I won't list them here.

We really do attempt to look at everything, but there were 2200 exhibits at Comdex this year. We have about 20 editors at the show. Most of them have an assigned floor area, but I'm senior enough that in theory I should look at the whole show. Of course, if I spent 1 minute at each exhibit, and another to get to the next, it would still add up to more 12-hour days than Comdex runs. It's clear I have to be selecti ve.

Before the show I go through press releases to list interesting new stuff. I also read the show daily. All that helps, but when it comes down to it, we still have to rely on what we see: if a new product is hidden away in a booth, we may find it, but it's more likely we won't. However, if we do see something we like, we tell other editors so they can look, too. The process actually works pretty well.

IBM introduced a product at Comdex called OS/2 for Windows. That's a misnomer: it's actually OS/2 for Windows Users. You install this on a system that's already running Windows, and it makes your Windows, complete with your desktop and applications, run under OS/2; there is no Win-OS/2 in the package. However, IBM has figured out a way to enable you to launch Windows programs without Program Manager, exactly as you do with Win-OS/2. Now if they can make this work with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, IBM will have a real winner.

Roberta has been developing the latest Macintosh version of her reading-instruction program on the Quadra 700, and it's coming along nicely. The present version needs an instructor: at one local private school, that's a 10-year-old student who loves using the software to give reading lessons to first-graders. Roberta's goal is to use text-to-speech software to read the instructions so that the program can operate without an instructor.

That was proceeding on schedule when the Quadra's hard disk got flaky. Things quickly went from bad to worse, until the machine was barely running at all. Sometimes it would endlessly reboot itself. Other times it would restart when you attempted to access certain files. It was one sick puppy.

Disk First Aid said there was a problem, but it had no idea what to do about it. Version 2 of Norton Utilities for Macintosh couldn't find any problems to fix. Things got worse, and Alex decided the only remedy would be to save what we could and then reformat the hard disk. My primary backup system (for DOS and Windows) is Palindrome's T he Network Archivist; that uses a SCSI DAT (digital audiotape) drive. It's small and portable, so all we needed was a cable to connect the DAT drive to the Quadra, and software to transfer the files to tape.

The cable was standard. One of the major advantages of a Mac is that all you have to do is hang something like the DAT onto the SCSI chain and address it, and the Mac will see it on reboot. The SCSI Probe freeware program immediately saw it and knew that it was an Archive (now Conner) Python 2500 DAT.

We then installed Retrospect 2.0, which will back up Mac data to just about any conceivable SCSI device, including almost all tape drives. It automatically uses the best compression hardware or software available, and Retrospect Remote will back up remote Macintosh systems over a network. It will also back up to floppies, for that matter, but I strongly recommend that anyone serious about computers should get a better backup storage system: floppies are so much trouble that you'll put off doing backups until it's too late.

Alas, the Quadra was so flaky that we couldn't get Retrospect to install on its hard drive. There's a lesson here: don't wait until your drive dies to install your backup software. Fortunately, the internal drive is not the only hard disk on that Quadra: we also have an ancient Priam Emm330 MacDisk, which longtime readers will remember was originally installed on a Fat Mac about six years ago. It has been on every Mac we've had since, and like that ubiquitous bunny, it just keeps going and going.

Alex got Retrospect installed on that, after which it was a snap to transfer everything from the Quadra's drive to a new DAT cartridge. Retrospect formats the tape as it copies, and it's pretty fast: with verify, it backed up 5715 files, comprising 266.8 MB, in 39 minutes, for an average of 3.7 MB per minute (6.8 copy, 8.4 compare).

We then reformatted the Quadra's hard disk. The disk's problem appeared to be with the Mac's HFS, and we did lose one unimportant direct ory, but all's properly restored now.

DAT drives aren't cheap--you'll pay between $1500 and $2000 for a new one; refurbished drives are less--but they're about half the price they were two years ago. A good DAT drive will work equally well with DOS and Mac systems: when we were through backing up the Mac, I put the DAT back on Big Cheetah where it belongs. DAT and 8-mm drives are considerably (like 2 to 4 times) faster than their quarter-inch-cartridge cousins, and they can move between more systems.

DAT tapes are available everywhere. We get ours at Tower Records for maybe $15 a pop retail. Each holds 2 GB, which means that data-storage media costs are lost in the noise. If you're serious about the computer work you do, a DAT with good backup software is one of the better investments you can make.

Alex found an interesting problem with memory addressing the other day. He had an old clone with no memory expansion on the motherboard, so he used an old Cheetah memory board with it. Alas, he addressed the board wrong, so it overlapped with already-installed memory. The machine would come up, but whenever he ran a program that accessed that memory area, everything would go weird. He got out various test programs, with interesting results: Checkit couldn't find a problem. Checkit Pro died. QEMM and its Manifest acted as if there were no problem at all. The new HIMEM.SYS that comes with W4WG 3.11 announced the problem at start-up, and it was the only diagnostic he tried that did find it.

There are other interesting features to W4WG 3.11, including 32-bit file access ("Taken forward from Chicago," according to the beta documentation) and a greatly improved file manager. W4WG 3.11 isn't just an improved W4WG; it's an improved Windows, and we'll see many of those in upgrade releases to Windows itself from time to time.

Meanwhile, Alex has found the secret to getting W4WG 3.11 to work with Novell NetWare. The secret, which cost him many hours of fooling around to discover, is that Novell drivers are not Microsoft installable. You must install W4WG and then use the Novell installer. You also must have a LASTDRIVE=Z statement, or you won't be able to access all the NetWare drives. Get all that done, and Bob's your uncle.

In the course of trying to make NetWare and W4WG work together, Alex found that you can get great help from Microsoft if you are a beta tester (he had his own beta copy of W4WG 3.11). However, the diagnostic tools are pretty awful: MSD (Microsoft System Diagnostic), the program that supposedly takes a complete snapshot of your system to enable the Microsoft help-line people to see what's going on, is quite an old program and doesn't understand a number of new features.

He also found that you really must go to CompuServe if you want Microsoft to hear your bug reports. Sending them in by fax or mail, or leaving a report on voice mail, produced no discernible result, but reports posted in the Microsoft area on CompuServe seem to get quick attention.

If you wan t or need Windows and you have any networking requirement whatsoever, I strongly recommend you get W4WG 3.11--not just for the networking, but because, as I noted above, it's a better Windows. On the other hand, while MS-DOS 6.x gives you quite a lot for the money, there are superior alternatives to each of its parts.

MS-DOS 5 works fine as DOS; it's very stable and reliable, and if MS-DOS 6.x has any speed improvements, I can't find them. Bootcon takes care of alternate configurations. Stacker is a better compression utility than what you get with MS-DOS 6 and works with PCMCIA cards (Doublespace will not); and while the HIGHMEM.SYS with W4WG 3.11 is much improved over previous models, QEMM from Quarterdeck is still the superior memory manager. Finally, although MS-DOS 6.x gives an improved Smartdrive over the one in MS-DOS 5, Norton Speedcache is better still--and it handles CD-ROMs.

I drove to Comdex this year, so I was able to carry a whole bunch of machines to experiment with. Alas, things c onspired to keep me from doing that. The first three days were eaten by running around looking at candidates for the Shelly Awards, Tuesday night was literally eaten by my being the chef for BYTE's entry into the Micrografx Chili Cook-Off--we didn't win the formal vote, but there seemed to be a general agreement that mine was the best there--and then things happened at home to cause me to come back early instead of staying the whole week. Consequently, I wasn't able to do much laptop testing.

I carried, in addition to Old Reliable (the ancient Zenith Mastersport), the new Hewlett-Packard OmniBook 425. This is the smallest and lightest full-size laptop I've ever seen. It has a 486, it runs Windows, there's an ingenious little device that becomes a mouse, and there are four PCMCIA slots. The screen is not backlit but is readable in most normal light. When you turn it off, it remembers where it was, so when you turn it back on it's right there in Microsoft Word for Windows or wherever you left it.

That's the good news. The bad news is that there's no hard drive; that plus the lack of backlighting is how they manage both light weight and long battery life.

Instead of a hard drive, you use the four PCMCIA slots. Two of these contain system software, applications (Word for Windows and Excel are bundled in), and working space. The other two slots will accept standard PCMCIA cards--I plugged in a Seiko Epson IC memory card that I've had here for a couple of years, and while the OmniBook told me the memory card had a low battery that ought to be replaced, it formatted it and wrote a Microsoft Word file onto it.

Incidentally, I couldn't format the card in drive A with File Manager in Windows: I had to open a DOS prompt and do it from the command line. Interestingly, the system prompt told me to insert a blank "card" rather than a disk. On the other hand, the File Manager help file doesn't know what "cards" are, and it tells you that you can format "floppy disks" from the Disk menu in File Manage r; only you can't. The Format Disk option in the Disk drop-down menu is grayed out.

Roberta managed to break a leg--that's what got me home early from Comdex--so we've spent a few hours out at Kaiser, giving me some opportunity to experiment with the OmniBook 425. Mostly I used Microsoft Word, but I also played with Excel. There's no floppy disk: the OmniBook comes with a new file transfer program from Traveling Software called LapLink Remote Access.

Once installed, this program automatically moves stuff back and forth between the OmniBook and whatever it's connected to, but fair warning: it does that by continually polling the port you've specified. In my case, I installed the other half of that program on the Zenith, and I about went nuts trying to figure out why I couldn't attach a modem to the Zenith's serial port. The answer was to remark out the stuff in CONFIG.SYS that Traveling Software put there; otherwise you get continuous polling, which makes the modem soggy and hard to light.

I haven't made up my mind about the OmniBook 425. On one hand, it's one heck of a lot of machine in a small and light package. The keyboard is a little bit cramped, but it can be used in awkward positions as well as when it's sitting on a table, and it does the job. Similarly, the little mouse thingy that pops out on a hinged arm seems a little squirrelly, but it does work, and while it takes some getting used to, you can use it. There's no floppy drive (I am told a third-party floppy drive is available, but I have not seen it), but I'm putting a PCMCIA drive into one of my networked desktop machines, and for that matter, the LapLink Remote Access communications package works. The lack of a hard disk is compensated for by the convenience of the PCMCIA slots: just carry a pocket full of PCMCIA cards, and you'll never lose your work to a dying hard disk.

Laptops tend to be personal: you like them or you don't. I am certainly fond enough of the HP OmniBook 425 to recommend that you have a look at it. You may like it a lot.

At the other extreme from the HP OmniBook 425 is the Zenith Z-Note 325Lc active-matrix color laptop. Marilyn Niven, my partner's wife, is very fond of her Z-Note 325Lc. It's not very light, and the battery life is under 4 hours; but it's certainly portable, the screen is bright and clear, and it's a powerful Windows machine.

The hard disk died one day after the warranty expired, but Conner was kind enough to replace it free anyway, although the symptoms are that it looks like someone dropped it. That's about the only problem the Nivens have had with the machine. I've had enough experience with Zenith portables to know they are reliable and rugged; after all, I've been carrying them since they invented the clamshell portable. You might even be tempted to make the Z-Note 325Lc your one and only machine, forgoing a desktop system entirely.

When the Niven laptop's hard disk died just before Marilyn was scheduled to use it to run the art show at a science fiction convention, we loaned them a BSE Flashdrive. For those who don't remember, this is a portable battery-powered hard drive that's smaller than a cigar box. Used with Norton Speedcache, it even made Windows tolerable, which is quite a feat for a parallel-port hard drive.

You can't boot from a Flashdrive, but you can do everything else. They're also great for storing critical files and are a convenient way to sneakernet files from one place to another. Early versions of MS-DOS 6 had a bug that wouldn't let you have Flashdrive partitions larger than 33 MB, but MS-DOS 6.2 has fixed that (and yet it was a bug in DOS, not in the BSE software).

A BSE Flashdrive is a good combination to use with an HP OmniBook: put the Flashdrive in your checked luggage, and it's available in your hotel room while you use the OmniBook as a notebook. I also use one that way with the Gateway Handbook. If you don't know about Flashdrives, you should.

I know how to solve power and cooling problems with Pentium machines: get PC Powe r & Cooling power supplies. Longtime readers will recall that I have been recommending PC Power & Cooling power supplies ever since my first Cheetah machines were assembled with them. In the years since, I have had one wear out, and it failed quite gracefully, harming nothing else, and it was easy to replace.

Several industry sources report that Pentium systems have had cooling problems, which isn't surprising: you cannot merely fry, but boil an egg on top of a Pentium chip. At Comdex, PC Power & Cooling had exhibits of cooled and uncooled Pentium systems. They also sell a temperature sensor that screams bloody murder if the internal temperature in your computer goes over 110ûF. It's worth getting one of those, whatever else you do.

If your systems are getting flaky and you suspect either a power problem or a dying cooling fan, replace your power supply with one from PC Power & Cooling; I think you will be glad you did. Recommended.

It's short-shrift time: there are a bunch of things, each worth a lot more space, but which I simply won't have time to say much about.

I'll start with Federal Soapbox: this is a program that impressed my policy-wonk son Richard. If you have an interest in legislation or regulations, this tells you precisely which officials or congresspersons are relevant. It gives their addresses, and it will make mailing labels, send MCI Mail, or generate faxes as you choose. Specialized, but extremely useful if you need it. Recommended.

I wouldn't have thought that you could make an indestructible keyboard, but one appeared in my mail from Everswitch USA. The top is like a solid block of aluminum with a keyboard painted on it. You might hurt it with a sledgehammer, but you'd have to work at it. I would hate to do rapid typing on it--no sense of feel at all--but if you need to expose a keyboard to the public or to guys in work gloves, this is the thing to use.

The Random House Book and CD-ROM Random House Unabridged Dictionary is precisely that: the whole thi ng in both book and CD-ROM form--all the retrieval software you want, plus the hard copy--30 pounds of English. Next to the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM, this is as good as you can get. There are a couple of minor glitches: for instance, you can't find the word mother except as mothbr. That's small beer, though. This is the real thing, and if you like words you'll love this.

Books of the month: John Keegan's A History of Warfare (Knopf, 1993) is one of the few books I'll call important: it's an examination of why men--and that's not sexism, but the subject of the book--fight, and whether we still need war. Agree or not, you're in for a heck of a ride. And so you are with John Podhoretz's A Hell Of A Ride (Simon & Schuster, 1993), an insider's story of just what happened to send George Bush from an unbeatable 91 percent popularity to defeat by an Arkansas governor. Not quite as funny as O'Rourke, and perhaps a bit more serious.

The computer book of the month is Francis Hamit's Virtual Reali ty and the Exploration of Cyberspace (Sams, 1993). I wrote the preface for this because I think it's a realistic cut through the hype to look at virtual reality. It's also a key to access David Mitchell's DIASPAR Virtual Reality Network, and anyone who is really interested in virtual reality cannot afford not to know about that.

One of the games of the month is MicroProse's Master of Orion, a game of stellar conquest with diplomacy: it keeps growing on you; be sure to get on-line and download the latest upgrades, since the original was a bit buggy. The other is Dynamix's Betrayal at Krondor, about the best fantasy role-playing game I have come across. It's based on Ray Feist's Magician series, and it plays like reading a novel. Warning: both of these are time eaters.

Critical Path from Media Vision is a chase game of a kind that I'm not terribly fond of, but it's a darned good illustration of just what you can do with multimedia now: the action was filmed with Hollywood actors in Chroma-Key with compressed real-time (albeit rather small) video. It also features my friend Min Yee, Media Vision vice president and formerly the publisher of Microsoft Books; it's just about worth the price of the game just to hear his maniacal laugh.

Next month, more multimedia, including ReelMagic from Sigma: full-screen real-time video from a CD-ROM. The first time you see it, you'll be amazed. Also next month: a multimedia shoot-out, and some words about the DTR Dauphin, a small, pen-based 486 Windows machine that's getting closer to the pocket computers I wrote about 20 years ago in The Mote in God's Eye. There's just a lot going on out there in Microland....

For More Information

Next to the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM, the Random House Book and CD-ROM Random House Unabridged Dictionary ($159; book only, $100; CD-ROM only, $79) is as good as you can get. Contact Random House Reference and Electronic Publishing, 201 East 50th St., New York, NY 10022, (800) 733-3000 or (212) 751-2600; fax (80 0) 659-2436.

The smallest and lightest full-size laptop I've ever seen, I'm fond of the Hewlett-Packard OmniBook 425 (with 40-MB hard drive, $2125; with 10-MB flash disk, $2375). Contact Hewlett-Packard Co., 1000 Northeast Circle Blvd., Corvallis, OR 97330, (800) 433-1254 or (503) 757-2004; fax (800) 333-1917.

The #9GXE Professional Graphics Accelerator ($345 to $1095) is very fast and looks great. Contact Number Nine Computer Corp., 18 Hartwell Ave., Lexington, MA 02137, (800) 438-6463 or (617) 674-0009; fax (617) 674-2919.

If you experiment with your system at all, you need Bootcon 2.0 ($79). Contact Modular Software Systems, 25825 104th Ave. SE, Suite 208, Kent, WA 98031, (800) 438-3930 or (206) 631-5781; fax (206) 631-5779.

Retrospect 2.0 ($249) will back up Mac data to just about any conceivable SCSI device. Retrospect Remote ($449) will back up remote Macintosh systems over a network. Contact Dantz Development Corp., 4 Orinda Way, Building C, Orinda, CA 94563, (510) 253-3000; fax (510) 253-9099.

A portable battery-powered hard drive that's smaller than a cigar box, the BSE Flashdrive (210 MB, $749; 340 MB, $849; 500 MB, $1099; smaller sizes are also available) is great for storing critical files. Contact The BSE Co., Inc., 2114 North Fourth St., Flagstaff, AZ 86004, (602) 527-8843; fax (602) 527-1540.

If your systems are getting flaky and you suspect either a power problem or a dying cooling fan, replace your power supply with one from PC Power & Cooling, Inc. ($89 to $349), 5995 Avenida Encinas, Carlsbad, CA 92008, (800) 722-6555 or (619) 931-5700; fax (619) 931-6988. I think you'll be glad you did. Recommended.

Federal Soapbox ($129) tells you precisely which officials or congresspersons are relevant to certain legislation or regulations, gives their addresses, and will make mailing labels, send MCI Mail, or generate faxes as you choose. Contact Soapbox Software, 10 Golden Gate Dr., San Rafael, CA 94901, (800) 989-7627 or (415) 258-0292; fax (415) 258-0294.

The Creative Labs Multimedia Kit ($549.95 to $999.95) works just fine, and I like the speakers. Contact Creative Labs, 1901 McCarthy Blvd., Milpitas, CA 95035, (800) 998-5227 or (408) 428-6600; fax (408) 428-6611.

I could hear the difference in sound quality from the speakers in the Media Vision Pro 16 Multimedia System upgrade kit (System 1, $1049; System 2, $1195). The action in Critical Path ($79.95) is a darned good illustration of just what you can do with multimedia now. Contact Media Vision, 47300 Bayside Pkwy., Fremont, CA 94538, (800) 348-7116 or (510) 770-8600; fax (510) 770-9146.

Microsoft Encarta ($395) is one heck of a history encyclopedia CD-ROM. I have to say I like every darned one of Microsoft's Multimedia CD-ROM music collections ($79.95 each). Contact Microsoft Corp., 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, (800) 426-9400 or (206) 882-8080; fax (206) 883-8101.

You install OS/2 for Windows ($49) on a system already running Windows, and it makes your Windows, complete with your desktop and applications, run under OS/2. Contact IBM Corp., 1 Old Orchard Dr., Armonk, NY 10504, (800) 342-6672 or (914) 765-1900; fax (313) 225-4020.

The LapLink Remote Access file transfer program is available from Traveling Software, 18702 North Creek Pkwy., Bothell, WA 98011, (800) 343-8080 or (206) 483-8088; fax (206) 487-1284.

Master of Orion ($59.95), a game of stellar conquest with diplomacy, keeps growing on me. Contact MicroProse, 180 Lakefront Dr., Hunt Valley, MD 21030, (410) 771-1151; fax (410) 771-1174.

Betrayal at Krondor ($69.95) is based on Ray Feist's Magician series, and it plays like reading a novel. Contact Dynamix, 1600 Millrace Dr., Eugene, OR 97403, (503) 343-0772; fax (503) 344-1754.

You might hurt the Everswitch indestructible keyboard ($795) with a sledgehammer, but you'd have to work at it. Contact Everswitch USA, 12079 Tech Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20904, (800) 794-8243 or (310) 680-3100; fax (301) 680-9425.

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Scores Relative To 48 6SX/20 With Win Tachometer

Win Tachometer on Jerry's machines. Higher numbers are better.


                                WORD
                                PROCESSING  CAD    SPREADSHEET  PAINT   OVERALL
Cheetah 486/33 (Mach 32)        20.37       32.76     38.60     44.37   34.02
Cheetah 486/25 (Mach 32)        14.28        9.16     30.60     16.48   17.65
Cheetah 486DX2/25 (#9GXE)       28.16       52.73     33.28     27.03   35.43
Gateway 2000 486DX2/33 (#9GXE)  31.12       66.76     38.19     34.20   42.57

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Jerry Pournelle holds a doctorate in psychology and is a science fiction writer who also earns a comfortable living writing about computers present and future. Jerry welcomes readers' comments and opinions. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Jerry Pournelle, c/o BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Please put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a p ersonal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at Jerryp@bix.com .