Prizes and Surprises

Jerry visits Microsoft and finds time to wrestle with OSes, hard drives, and laser printers

Jerry Pournelle

I realize I promised more Orchids and Onions this month. However, I am in the midst of gathering information for my upcoming testimony before the House Science and Aeronautics Committee, an effort that has eaten much timeas well as my remaining Orchids and Onions. I apologize if this is a disappointment to anyone; perhaps the information I'll be able to bring back from the committee meetings will make up for it. Stay tuned.

I've just returned from a big shindig in Redmond, where Microsoft was evangelizing the multimedia capabilities of Windows 95. I came away favorably impressed.

It wasn't Windows 95 itself that impressed me. For sheer technical achievement, OS/2 wins over Windows 95. While I haven't done the tests yet--it was only after seeing Windows 95 in action on the Microsoft campus that I decided to fire up my beta-test version here--I have no doubt that on most straight performance benchmarks, OS/2 Warp will turn out to be faster.

What's impressive is Microsoft's determination that Windows 95 will be usable by nearly everyone who buys it for home or office use, and that it will run on just about all the systems customers try it on.

IBM is courting disaster by pushing OS/2 as a home OS. OS/2 can be a great home OS for those who get it running. Once set up, it's stable and reliable, and it can be customized to almost any degree of navete or sophistication. You can have buttons for individuals; do that, and they see all and only the programs they will be using. The problem is, even if the installation is simple, OS/2 needs a computer sophisticate to set things up for naive users.

Worse, though, the installation isn't likely to be simple. OS/2 is extremely pic ky about the hardware it works with. It also demands that you know a lot of the gory details about IRQs (interrupt requests), ports, I/O addresses, and the DMA channels of your sound boards, network cards, and CD-ROM drives.

In contrast, Microsoft is determined that Windows 95 will not only work with 90 percent of what they call "legacy hardware"--what's out there now--but that it will, when possible, recognize potential hardware conflicts and either resolve them or tell you what to do. They know they can't make this 100 percent Plug and Play, but they're trying.

Of course, determination isn't accomplishment. The shipping date for Windows 95 keeps slipping because they've set themselves a difficult goal. That hasn't lessened their determination; moreover, they're not just determined at some corporate executive level. The Windows 95 dog and pony show was put on by working troops--the people who make it happen--and their competence and enthusiasm were obvious.

The most common phrase during two days of demonstrations was "making Windows 95 do the right thing" in many situations, from installing a new hard drive to inserting a new CD-ROM to logging on to the Microsoft Network. The goal is for the OS to see what you are trying to accomplish and have a wizard program simplify the work. I don't know if they can bring it off, but I sure congratulate them for trying.

They've also paid a lot of attention to games; it's intended that Windows 95 will run just about every DOS game in existence. IBM wants OS/2 Warp to run DOS games, too, but they have a different approach. Some games hog the entire system, leaving no resources for multitasking. When that happens, OS/2 Warp simply gives up. You're not going to play that game under OS/2 Warp. Windows 95, on the other hand, warns you that you're about to dedicate all your resources to this one game and then lets you go ahead.

When I asked an IBM executive why OS/2 Warp can't work that way, I was told that IBM believes it would be irresp onsible to let you devote the entire machine to a single task. OS/2 Warp is a multitasking system. I was puzzled about that, but I needn't have been. It's clear that IBM is more concerned about computers in a corporate and probably networked environment than in a home context. Even at home, you may want to be connected to the Internet, and that wouldn't be possible if you let a DOS game take over your system's resources.

There's another contrast between Microsoft and IBM. As I said before, the Microsoft presentations were done by the people actually working on Windows 95. It's their product, and they're proud of it. The PR people were there, but in the background passing out press releases and briefing books. In an IBM show, it would probably have been the other way around, with the PR people doing the presentation and the technical people hidden in the back of the room--if they were there at all. Oh, well.

I now have OS/2 Warp running quite stably on a ValuePoint Pentium machine. I'll soon have Windows 95 running on a comparable machine. Of course, Windows 95 is still in beta testing, so there are limits to what I can and should report, but I'll try to keep you informed. Meanwhile, though, I'll say this: I'm not often impressed by demonstrations, but I left this one hoping what I'd seen was all true.

My comments on OS/2 Warp don't, or shouldn't, apply to systems on which it's preloaded. Warp remains a better DOS than DOS and, for that matter, mostly a better Windows than Windows once you get everything working properly. On the other hand, we still don't have the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro working properly in Windows under Warp, although it works fine in OS/2 itself, in DOS under OS/2, in DOS when the system is dual-booted to DOS, and in Windows under DOS.

One of these days, I'll take the trouble to figure out what's wrong; but right now, if I want wave-table sounds, I won't get them in Warp/Windows. So it goes. My point is, if you're buying a machine with OS/2 Warp installed, make sure you buy it with all the hardware you want. Let the dealer worry about making it all work together.

I tend to be pretty cautious about changing OSes, and when MS-DOS 6 first came out, I didn't change over from version 5.0. From reports I've heard, that was just as well.

Recently, Gateway 2000 sent me a new system with MS-DOS 6.22 installed. I studied up on its new features and decided I liked them, and it seems stable enough, so I'm now upgrading my other machines. So far, the process has been entirely painless, and I can recommend that if you haven't upgraded from version 5.0 yet, it's probably time to do so. I particularly like the F5 feature: hold down the F5 key on boot-up, and you get a clean boot with no CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. There are other nifty little tricks.

I expect I am way behind the times on this. The rumor is that IBM's latest PC-DOS is DOS died and gone to Heaven. We'll see.

I've had several people, with v arying degrees of politeness, tell me that when Microsoft's installation program demands space on the C drive to install something on the D drive, it's not a bug. Windows must write things into the Windows\System directory. One reader got quite indignant that I hadn't figured that out.

I suppose she was right. In my defense, though, I point out that the reason I was installing an upgrade to Microsoft Word 6.0 was that it managed to crash when inputting a file it had created, and I was quite disgusted. Moreover, when there are already 6 MB of free disk space and the installer doesn't tell me how much more it wants, technically that may not be a bug, but it's a pretty odd feature.

The Infocom Memorial Weird Box Award goes to Interplay Productions for Star Reach. The game is an unsuccessful attempt to come up with something as playable as Master of Orion; it's not a bad game, but I'd rather play MOO. However, the Star Reach box is gorgeous. It looks like a spaceship, and it 's guaranteed to annoy anyone who tries to display more than one--and drive mad anyone building a pyramid of them.

While we're on the subject of games, Gazillionaire from Spectrum Holobyte isn't a very interesting game. Or it shouldn't be, although I spent more time with it than I'd expected to. Mostly, though, it's important because it was written in Visual Basic and is played from a CD-ROM. The result is a number of interesting visual and sound effects along with table-driven play choices. In theory, it's a game of galactic trade in a rather small--only seven planets--galaxy. Each planet is weird in a different way, and each has an absurd history that isn't meant to be taken seriously.

What is fascinating is just how much they were able to do with Visual Basic and some truly weird artwork that's interesting enough to keep you playing long after you realize you're fighting a random-number generator. There's some kind of pixel replication, because it plays at full-screen no matter what your scre en resolution. That's neat, and it sure beats having a tiny little window in the middle of your screen. I suspect it would be a better game against human opponents. Mostly, though, the same techniques can be used to make games in which most of the effort goes into game design rather than programming.

Years ago, I said that small computers would really come into their own when anyone with a good idea could get it running, when knowing how to program wouldn't be as important as thinking of something new and exciting for the machine to do. We're not there yet, but Visual Basic is taking us in that direction.

The Bribe of the Month is a Tyco Hijacker remote-control car from Traveling Software, which they sent to advertise the remote-control capabilities of LapLink for Windows 6.0. I've always had mixed emotions about the value of remote control. The usual procedure at Chaos Manor is to have a parallel cable--one of the yellow ones provided by Traveling Software--on one of the machine s in the Windows for Workgroups network. We connect the portable to that. All versions of LapLink--from LapLink 4 on--can access any drive on the network through that connection.

Before a trip, we copy the Franklin Ascend directory to the portable. LapLink is smart enough to copy only the files that have been updated since the last time we did that, so it doesn't waste time recopying the program and help files. Similarly, I mark and copy a whole mess of subdirectories in the Q&A Write and Microsoft Word directories; once again, LapLink copies only what has changed since my last trip. When I get back from a trip, I do the same thing in reverse.

Traveling Software's radio-link system, LapLink Wireless, will do all that automatically and without connecting the parallel cable. I suppose for some people that's a good idea. It's a bit more convenient, and it works. I've just never felt the need. More valuable, to me anyway, is LapLink for Windows, which will let me run programs across the network and, for that matter, through a modem. LapLink for Windows 6.0 is good stuff.

I recently got a new Gateway Color HandBook, a notebook I'm calling SuperCalf. It has two PCMCIA slots but no floppy drive; the only way to install software in it is through the ports. (Actually, there is a neat external 31/2-inch floppy drive that attaches, power and all, through the high-speed parallel port. That came in a separate package, so for the first couple of days, the only way to get anything onto SuperCalf was through ports.) It has several ports, including an IR port, and probably came with some kind of communications software; but I'm so used to LapLink that I wanted that. I connected up the blue serial cable and attempted to send LapLink across to SuperCalf. It didn't work.

I called Traveling Software and got technical support, but in fact, I shouldn't have. SuperCalf comes with MS-DOS 6.22, so all I had to do was the F5 trick. With that clean configuration, it was simple to send LapLink across from Pentaflu ge to SuperCalf. Moreover, once the full LapLink was running on SuperCalf, I could connect the yellow parallel cable to get things moving faster.

LapLink is seriously good stuff, with or without bribes. Incidentally, I'm astonished that Traveling Software didn't provide an RS-232 interface to the car's control box so I can run it from a laptop.

I've written about Forminco's computer furniture before, most recently last August. I have used Forminco's workstation furniture for over a year, and I have yet to find anything better. It's attractive in a modern sort of way. It's also sturdy--ours survived the big earthquake last year in January--and comfortable. Forminco gets a Chaos Manor User's Choice Award for ergonomic furniture.

Clearing up some confusion: Quarterdeck QEMM 7.5 works, and when QuickBoot works, it works very well indeed; the problem is that it will lock up some machines. Apparently I had a string of bad luck. The first three I used QuickBoot on locked up tight. I've now got it working on others.

QuickBoot is a minor part of QEMM, and I continue to recommend QEMM for those who need memory managers, which is to say everyone who is still using DOS, with or without Windows. The EMM386.SYS that comes with MS-DOS 6.22 is good, but not as efficient as Quarterdeck's QEMM and Optimize. Another alternative is OS/2 Warp or Windows 95, which get rid of the need for memory managers. I've had mixed experiences with OS/2 Warp. Now I'm experimenting with Windows 95. Stay tuned.

Having said that, let me caution you: if you have QEMM working and upgrade to version 7.5, keep copies of the old version. I recently attempted to convert Pentafluge, our fire-eating Pentium system, to QEMM 7.5. It worked fine with some configurations, but on others, it was simply impossible to run Optimize to completion. I got stuck in what amounted to an endless loop of reboots. The system would bring up the Quarterdeck Identification messages, announce how much memory was a vailable to QEMM--and die. Turning it off would start Optimize over again. Eventually I solved the problem by ditching QEMM 7.5 and going back to version 7.03, which optimizes fine under both MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22.

By sheer coincidence, the day after that happened, I had a visit from Michael Stout, technical director of Clary. He'd had a Pentium hang up on QEMM 7.5 in just the same way.

The best way to tell a story is to start at the beginning, but I won't go back quite that far, and besides, there are several threads to this.

First thread: we've had at least one Mac since Apple started shipping them. The Mac Plus, about the third revision of the once-unrevisable 128-KB Mac, added on-board SCSI. Shortly after that, Priam brought out the MacDisk, which had an awesome 330 MB of storage at a time when Macs were shipping with 10-MB external drives. We got one of the first of those, and every time we have updated our Mac setup, that Priam drive has come along. It's now on the Qua dra, and by gollies, it still works just fine.

Thread two: we got one of the first LaserWriter II printers Apple shipped. Over the years, it was updated until it became a LaserWriter IIg, which was about the last revision Apple made. That was about three years ago, and that printer served us so well that we bought it rather than send it back. However, when we first got Aldus PageMaker 5.0, we had some real problems getting it to work with that old printer, largely because we used the version 8.0 printer driver. Thus, we reverted to PageMaker 4.2, which worked just fine for what we were doing.

A couple of months ago, Apple sent us the new LaserWriter 16/600 PS. It's a 600-dot-per-inch printer (twice the 300 dpi of the LaserWriter IIg). It comes with built-in Ethernet, Windows drivers, a new version of PostScript, and a fax board (although, due to sloth, we haven't installed it). In other words, it's just faster and better and more flexible, and we eagerly installed it and carried the IIg downstai rs to use with the Mac in the guest room.

Although the LaserWriter 16/600 PS will work with version 8.0, it really wants the version 8.2 printer driver. Unfortunately, the 8.2 installation program wouldn't work. That might have been because we had a lot of old junk on the Quadra--remember the Priam MacDisk--but we concluded that it wanted System 7.5, which was all right because we'd intended to install System 7.5 anyway.

System 7.5, and then the new printer driver, installed without problems. Then Roberta tried to print some labels that she'd made under PageMaker 4.2. She came down cursing the Ethernet. "It's taking 8 minutes to print one page of labels," she said.

"But we didn't connect it to the Ethernet," I said. When we set up the LaserWriter 16/600 PS, we'd connected it by LocalTalk (the low-speed network that's built into every Mac), and we'd never gotten around to reconnecting it to the Ethernet.

"Well, there's something wrong," Roberta protested, and indeed she was right. L ocalTalk is slow and her labels were somewhat complicated, but there was no reason for it to take 8 minutes to print. The problem was we'd changed three things: the printer, the driver, and the OS.

The easiest thing to change back was the printer. We brought up the IIg. It took 8 minutes to print to that, too. Clearly the problem wasn't the new printer.

At this point, we did what we should have done in the first place: we tried printing a couple of test jobs. Those worked just fine, which meant that the real problem was those labels. We looked at them. We also looked at a few other files she had created. One of those couldn't be printed at all. We couldn't even remember the last time a Mac had told us that it couldn't print a particular file.

You've probably figured it out by now. It took us a few more minutes, but then we remembered the Priam hard drive and how we kept transferring files over the years. Some of those files were fonts. Some of those fonts were old and ugly. In particular, Roberta had used some ancient fonts, which required recalculations for changes in size and style. Indeed, the Quadra was doing so much rescaling calculation that it's a wonder it got it all done in only 8 minutes. Changing over to new TrueType fonts took care of the problem entirely. Now the labels print in less than a minute, and on the new 600-dpi printer, they're really pretty. The LaserWriter 16/600 PS is a winner, with enough new features and increased speed to make the upgrade well worthwhile.

We also changed over to PageMaker 5.0. That in itself would have speeded things up considerably, because unlike PageMaker 4.2, version 5.0 does font substitutions, so your computer doesn't have to work so hard at rescaling.

That Priam MacDisk originally came with its own software, but FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit has taken over to make the MacDisk fully compatible with System 7.5 and SCSI Manager 4.3. The latter is the most recent and fastest I/O software for the Mac, and you want to be s ure everything you have is compatible with it. Mac software is designed to run with Apple hard drives, and it really doesn't want to be involved with "foreign" drives at all. Fortunately, Hard Disk Toolkit does that job nicely. FWB also makes good caching software for hard drives and CD-ROM drives. If you're contemplating a Mac, you'll want to know about FWB.

You'll also want Connectix's RAM Doubler software. This uses a variety of techniques to create more usable memory on your Mac. One technique is to make virtual memory on your hard disk, but that's not all RAM Doubler does. RAM Doubler is cheap compared to adding silicon to your system, and we haven't seen anything it doesn't work with. It's easy to install, and if you worry about it, it's not hard to disable. Recommended.

The moral of this story is that being miserly doesn't pay. That Priam MacDisk made it so easy to keep all our fonts that we never threw any away; and that's not really a good idea.

On the other hand, there's no simple way to determine which fonts are good and which ought to be discarded; or if there is, I certainly don't know of it. There are a few Windows font managers, but I've had reason to distrust every one of them I've tried so far; and I don't know of any at all for the Mac.

However, there is a shareware program for the Mac (there's also a commercial version) called theTypeBook, which will print a partial or complete set of all your fonts. It prints one font per page; on that page will be lines in each style and size available for that font. Given that page, you can determine at a glance if a font is worth keeping; if some sizes print really ugly, it's probably because the computer is having problems scaling it to that size. If you hang around while all this printing is going on, you'll also get a good idea of how long it takes for the computer to do the rescaling of that font. You can then discard all the slow ones unless there's some strong reason for keeping them.

Sorting through all your fonts is a tedious job, but it's well worth doing once every few years. Certainly, if we had done so earlier, this problem wouldn't have occurred for us.

There are a lot of reasons to install System 7.5 on your Mac. The built-in File Find is now every bit as good as the Norton file finder. There are "recent applications" and "recent documents" features that let you remember where you were when you shut down the system last. System 7.5 seems to use less memory than its predecessors.

So far, we haven't seen any reason not to switch to System 7.5.

Do you want to feel the bass deep in your bones? Feel that rush when you chain-saw a monster in Doom? Do you like to listen to good music with your PC?

If so, get Altec-Lansing's ACS300.1 multimedia computer speaker system. The system has three units: two midrange/tweeter speakers, which you place on either side of your monitor, and a large floor-unit woofer. The floor unit also contains the power sup ply for the system and plugs directly into a wall socket.

The result sounds about as good to me as the Lancer speakers connected to my Technics stereo. When Beavis and Butt-head say something over the Altec-Lansing speakers, it sounds like they're in the room with me. More to the point, the Microsoft Home music CD-ROMs--Strauss, Stravinsky, Schumann, Beethoven, all excellent--are able to give their music-appreciation lessons with true fidelity.

Of course, once you get speakers that good, you'll want to look into better sound boards. More on that another time; some good ones are coming out.

About five years ago, a drunk rammed a utility pole and dropped a 16-kilovolt-ampere line across the power feeder lines to my house. The resulting power spike caused light bulbs to explode, destroyed a television set, and killed a computer not connected to a power filter unit. When it was all done, the only light in Chaos Manor was the screen of a Cheetah, which was powered by a Clary On Guard UPS (uninterruptible power supply).

That UPS continued in use until today. It should have been retired at least a year ago; well, maybe not retired, because the electronics were still good, but one ought to replace the batteries in a UPS every four to five years. We finally did that today.

The UPS business is pretty tough. Most of the competition is on price, because it's pretty hard to compare performance. These things either work or they don't, so what you're after is the lowest-cost unit that's good enough. The problem is that what's good enough under one condition may not be under another. Consequently, I can't pretend to know which UPSes are "best." I can say that the critical machines at Chaos Manor have been protected by Clary's OnGuard units for several years, and I have not regretted it.

A UPS isn't very glamorous. With luck, it will serve out its entire life without ever being needed. Not everyone needs a UPS, although people who run computers without power-spike filters a re taking foolish chances. On the other hand, a UPS doesn't cost much. Not only did we survive the Great Power Spike (see my August 1989 column), but I've more than once worked on deadline right through heavy lightning storms that caused the lights to blink and would certainly have caused my system to reset if the Clary OnGuard UPS hadn't been in the loop.

If your work is worth anything, the first thing you need is a good backup system; by "good," I mean one you'll use. Unless you have a lot different temperament from me, those backup programs that require you to sit there and feed in floppy disks aren't worth a thing, because you won't use them. Better is a good optical drive.

I used to be a WORM enthusiast, and if I were doing a lot of programming, I still would be. A WORM preserves all the different editions of what you're working on, and it has been my experience that you will need a subroutine out of an old source program about 10 minutes after you erase the last copy of that version. The o nly real problem with WORM is the cost of the storage medium.

A better primary backup system is DAT (digital audiotape) run by a good archive library system like Palindrome's Network Archivist. The advantage of DAT is that you can store all the versions of programs and books that you want, because the tapes cost only about $12 for 2 GB of storage capacity. You can buy new tapes at a good record store--our local Tower Records stays open until midnight.

Once you have installed a backup system, you should think about a UPS. It won't save your bacon as often as a good backup system, but it's pretty cheap insurance. I got started with little computers in CP/M days, and I learned to save early and often; even now, I tend to save after every paragraph or so. My partner Larry Niven, on the other hand, gets so wrapped up in what he's doing that he can write several pages before he remembers to save, which is why I have the machine he uses connected to a Clary OnGuard UPS.

Two kinds of UPS units ar e available, switching and on-line. The on-line units tend to cost a bit more. I think they're more reliable, and that's the kind I use.

I suppose there are well over a thousand multimedia CD-ROMs coming out this year; the total is certainly enough that no one can review them all. Of the hundred this month, two stand out.

The first is called Firenze, which is the Italian name for the city we call Florence. This is something between a goshwow and a tourist guide. It has both still and Video for Windows pictures of the sights of Florence, with narration in English, Italian, German, or Dutch. The sights are keyed to a good map of the city. The photography is excellent, and the narration is well written and easy to hear. There's musical accompaniment well integrated into the tour.

It's not complete; at least I haven't been able to find any mention of my favorite Florentine idiosyncrasy. During the Renaissance, Florence was threatened by a rival city and appealed to Sir John Ha wkwood, the English mercenary who figures in Conan Doyle's The White Company . Hawkwood offered to save the city; his fee was a larger-than-life equestrian statue of himself in the Cathedral. Hawkwood saved the city.

The Florentines then got thrifty. Instead of a statue, they had a good artist do a larger-than-life painting of a statue on the Cathedral wall. It's very realistic, and from a distance, you'd think it was a big bronze statue mounted on a large granite base. Hawkwood wasn't happy at the time, but he probably gets more notice now than he would if he were just another statue in a city filled with works by Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, and the other great ones. Most of those statues are shown on this CD-ROM.

You get all this for $19.95, which is less than you'd pay for a good picture book. Of course, seeing Florentine scenes may get you wanting to go over there, and that will cost a lot more than $20, even if you stay at the Annalena. It's also slow. Even on SuperCow, a 486DX 2/66 with a double-speed CD-ROM drive, changing scenes can take nearly a full minute, but that's the nature of Video for Windows.

We're now using the Firenze CD-ROM with the Corel screen saver that comes with CorelDraw 5.0. It's very fast, so we get a new (randomly chosen) art marvel every few seconds. There are some flaws in the Corel screen saver--it kicks in sometimes when you don't want it to--but when the machine is standing idle, you can use any CD-ROM with BMP files. The Firenze CD-ROM is good under its own software and one of the best as a source of eye candy with the Corel screen saver. Recommended.

The second one doesn't stand out because of the CD-ROM so much as the promotion. Quanta Press, the madmen in Minneapolis who bring us, among other things, the Cow Ouroboros, have put together a very traditional database CD-ROM on Angels, Saints, and Icons. There's a tiny concession to multimedia in that it sometimes plays music while you look at an index or a still picture, and sometimes the re's narration, but mostly this is just a text database with illustrations. It's done straight, but because the text is from a time when there was more universal belief in the powers of angels and saints, the effect of the dead-serious narration is just at the edge of high camp.

It provides a good collection of very brief (usually no more than one paragraph) identifications of most major and many obscure saints, and all the known angels. Illustration is spotty: there are paintings of some minor saints, but nothing of a major saint like St. Martin of Tours. There's also a scholarly work (by a Jesuit) on arcana angelicae, with discourses on the various orders (e.g., Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Powers, and Archangels).

Promotion for the press edition of this consisted of a box containing the CD-ROM and about 20 items from the children's section of a religious bookstore. Those who went to Catholic schools 50 years ago will remember most of the pictures of guardian angels and suchlike. There are also badges, buttons, and pins. Very nostalgic.

Quanta was one of the very early CD-ROM publishers and produced a number of specialized database CD-ROMs. Some are still useful, and some very much so. The interface to those databases remains plain vanilla. It's worth being on Quanta's mailing list, but don't look to them for the latest multimedia CD-ROMs.

The computer book of the month is by Gene K. Landy, The Software Developer's and Marketer's Legal Companion: Protect Your Software and Your Business book of the month is by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (Viking, 1994). Jack Cohen is a professor of biology in England. He was a principal consultant to Larry Niven, Steve Barnes, and me for Legacy of Heorot and our upcoming sequel, Beowulf's Children . The book is an investigation into how you can evolve simplicity from a complex world. This book isn't easy reading, but I bet you like it.

The game of the month is the Windows version of Sim City 2000 from Maxis. When I play Sim City, I cheat: I've figured out where they store the amount of money you have, and I use the Norton Utilities disk editor to go in there and give myself a lot more. It's fun to be bountiful to my simulations.

Next month, with luck, I'll have something on Windows 95, and meanwhile, the software keeps rolling in.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

If you like to listen to good music with your PC, get the ACS300.1 ($300) multimedia computer speaker system. Contact Altec-Lansing Multimedia, Milford, PA, (800) 648-6663 or (717) 296-2818; fax (717) 296-1222.

Angels, Saints, and Icons ($49.95) provides a good collection of very brief identifications of most major and many obscure saint s, and all the known angels. Contact Quanta Press, Inc., Minneapolis, MN, (612) 379-3956; fax (612) 623-4570.

The Firenze CD-ROM (US$19.95 or 29,000 lire) is good under its own software and one of the best as a source of eye candy with the Corel screen saver. Contact C D Hardware, LaSpezia, Italy, +39 187 515604; fax +39 187 513828.

Gazillionaire ($32.95) is an important game because it was written in Visual Basic and is played from a CD-ROM. Contact Spectrum Holobyte, Inc., Alameda, CA, (800) 695-4263 or (510) 522-3584; fax (510) 522-3587.

If you're contemplating a Mac, you'll want Hard Disk Toolkit ($199) or Hard Disk Toolkit*Personal Edition ($79). Contact FWB, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, (415) 325-4392; fax (415) 833-4653.

LapLink for Windows 6.0 ($199.95) is seriously good stuff. LapLink Wireless ($299.95) is the company's radio-link system, and it certainly works. Contact Traveling Software, Inc., Bothell, WA, (800) 34 3-8080 or (206) 483-8088; fax (206) 487-1284.

The LaserWriter 16/600 PS ($2429) is a winner, with enough new features and increased speed to make the upgrade well worthwhile. Contact Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA, (800) 776-2333 or (408) 996-1010; fax (904) 584-7481.

The critical machines at Chaos Manor have been protected by OnGuard UPSes ($477 to $2690) for several years, and I have not regretted it. Contact Clary Corp., Monrovia, CA, (800) 442-5279 or (818) 359-4486; fax (818) 305-0254.

RAM Doubler 1.5.1 ($99) is cheap compared to adding silicon to your system, and we haven't seen anything it doesn't work with. Contact Connectix Corp., San Mateo, CA (800) 950-5880 or (415) 571-5100; (415) 571-5195.

The game of the month is the Windows version of Sim City 2000 (floppy disk version, $54.95; CD-ROM version, $69.95). Contact Maxis, Orinda, CA, (800) 336-2947 or (510) 254-9700; fax (510) 253-3736.

The Star Reach ($49.95) box is gorgeous--it looks like a spaceship. Contact Interplay Productions, Inc., Irvine, CA (800) 969-4263 or (714) 553-6655; fax (714) 252-2820.

With theTypeBook ($49.95), you can print a partial or complete set of all your fonts. Contact Rascal Software, Santa Clarita, CA, (805) 255-6823; fax (805) 255-9691.

I have used Forminco's workstation furniture (call for prices) for over a year, and I have yet to find anything better. Contact Forminco, Brossard, Quebec, Canada, (800) 663-6764 or (514) 444-9488; fax (514) 444-9378.

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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 th e high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at jerryp@bix.com .