ST New Products
By GREGG PEARLMAN, ANTIC JUNIOR EDITORTHREE FROM MICHTRON
Bone up on your knowledge of the Isles of Langerhans, frog-eating contests and toe exhibitions in the fast-paced, none-too-easy Trivia Challenge. Nearly 4,000 questions range from international sports to the arts to pop music science to general knowledge.
Backup! copies your hard disk files to floppies and back again, minimizing the risk of loss. The fast, specialized routines help the program orchestrate the entire backup procedure for you, so there's no reason not to make backups.
Enjoy hours of creative pleasure with the Pinball Factory as you design, build and edit your own screens. Choose from several bumpers, tabs and other devices, and place them anywhere you like, to get the action just right. Commands include Draw, Line, Ray, Frame, Box, Circle, Detail (to magnify small areas), Airbrush and Shadow Change any of the ST's 16 palette colors-even change the rules: alter gravity, bounce, scoring, bumper strength and tab bonuses.
$39.95 each. MichTron Inc., 576 S. Telegraph,
Pontiac, MI 48053. (313) 334-5700. PRESS.
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HISOFT BASIC COMPILER, DEVPAC ST AND SAVED!
The ST BASIC-compatible HiSoft BASIC Compiler (about $20 in English pounds) has a GEM-driven editor and executes compiled programs up to 30 times faster than when they're interpreted. Programs can be as big as your computer will allow, and you can call assembly language and C functions. Complete graphics support includes multiple windows, and strings can be 16Mb long.
DevpacST ($79.95) combines a full 68000 macroassembler that can assemble source code at 30,000 lines per minute, a full screen editor with a comprehensive range of search-and-replace commands, a powerful disassembler and debugger that uses its own screen memory and drivers so you can debug graphics programs easily, and a fast linker.
Saved! ($49) is mainly a desk accessory that lets you delete, rename and copy files, get information on a file or disk, or copy or format disks and print text files. You can set the path used to find executable programs, and Saved! can look for other drives and other directories.
HiSoft, The Old School, Greenfield, Bedford
MK45 5DE, England. +44 525 718181.
PRESS.
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ACCOUNTS, INVOICING, INVENTORY CONTROL
Execon's Accounts is a fully-integrated modular business system (about $250 in English pounds) consisting of Set-up, Accounts Receivable and Payable, General Ledger, Trial Balance and Forecasting. The menu-driven Invoicing/Order Processing system ($150) can stand alone or integrate fully with other modules and allows automatic transfer of data between modules. With the Inventory Control System ($150) you can use the two-bin system, wherein as soon as one bin is empty, supplies are taken from the second bin and an order is placed; the periodic review method, in which stock levels are reviewed at set periods or dates, allowing for all orders from one supplier to be made together; or the re-order level method, where a minimum stock level is set and stock is re-ordered as soon as that level is reached.
Maximum file size for all Execon programs is 32,000 units, and you can configure your hardware to your own requirements.
Execon Limited, 143-145 Uxbridge Road,
Ealing, London W13 9AV, England. 01 -567 6288. PRESS.
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ZOOMRACKS STARTER KITS
Quickview has released home and business starter kits with over 35 Zoomracks templates each for home and business. The Business Starter Kit's templates include invoicing, prospecting, calendar, names and addresses, checkbook and phone logs. The Home Starter Kit includes names and addresses, phone logs, gift lists and recipes.
$19.95 each. Quickview Systems, 146 Main Street, Suite 404,
Los Altos, CA 94022.
(415) 965-0327. PRESS.
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JOYSTICK/MOUSE
Plug your joystick into the box, plug the box into the computer, and abracadabra, your joystick is a mouse. This interface sends the appropriate pulses to the computer when you move the stick, moving the cursor as the mouse would. And you can adjust the speed of the cursor response. The trigger button on the joystick becomes the left button on the mouse, but where's the right button? On the box. Try this on a flight simulator, where you might rather use a joystick than a mouse.
$29.95. State of the Arts Electronics (SOTAE),
6150 Jessup Road, Cincinnati, OH 45247.
(513) 385-3312. PRESS.
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QUIZAM
You are the commander of a U.S. space shuttle flight, and your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to dispose of eight useless satellites. Malfunctions and automatic defense systems hinder your progress, and the satellites beam strange, obscure-even trivial-questions at you. Answer these to capture the saterntes in this newfangled trivia game, or provide your own questions and categories.
$54.95. Electronic Arts, 1820 Gateway Drive,
San Mateo, CA 94404. (415) 571-7171.
PRESS.
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DOLLARS AND SENSE
Monogram's best-selling personal finance package, Dollars and Sense, sets up five different types of record-keeping: assets, liabilities, expenses, income and checking. Recently ported over to the ST, the system supports unlimited transactions in each category. It can also produce a wide variety of reports and graphs for screen or printer. The non-copy-protected program supports hard disk drives and provides two levels of online help screens.
$99.95. Monogram, 8295 5. La Cienega Blvd.,
Inglewood, CA 90301. (213) 215-0355.
PRESS.
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SPACE QUEST
In this science fiction parody (with 3-D graphics), you control the main character, Roger Wilco, as he works his way from sanitation engineer to space-age swashbuckler and lone space hero. Direct Roger through more than 60 animated scenes of spaceship interiors, alien landscapes and deep space.
$49.95. Sierra On-Line Inc., P.O. Box 485,
Coarsegold, CA 93614. (209) 683-6858.
PRESS.
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LASERTYPE
Softlab's LaserType takes full advantage of the Hewlett Packard LaserJet + printer and gives smooth graphics and full typesetting capabilities. Select from 20 different screens and tones for column headings, backgrounds or graphic designing, and control 16 type styles and sizes.
$279. Softlab, P.O. Box 879, St. George,
UT 84770. (801) 628-5400. PRESS.
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FORE*STAR AND PAYDAY
Fore*Star integrates General Ledger, the Financial Modeler spreadsheet, a word processor and Portfolio, a financial report print sequencer, all for less than $100. General Ledger account balances and historical balances are directly available for use within spreadsheets, and the General Ledger module features up to 32 independent journals and 512 accounts. The word processor has insert/delete, cut & paste and search-and-replace features. The Portfolio module links desired spreadsheet templates and word processor text documents in virtually any order.
PayDay ($69.95), is designed for small to medium-sized businesses, handling an annual payroll of $21 million for up to 255 employees. A built-in user configuration utility lets PayDay adapt to almost any payroll situation in any state. Two time card entry modes and context-sensitive online help are available.
Crystal Software. P.O. Box 803, Merlin, OR
97532. (503) 479-9516. PRESS.
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QMS PRINTERS
Keep It Smart and Simple with the QMS KISS ($1,995), which produces crisp, near-typeset characters at nearly 400 characters per second (cps)-six pages a minute. Mix 64 fonts on a single page, and combine graphics with portrait and landscape text on the same page.
The Big KISS and Big KISS II (both $2,995) are quiet and fast, also allowing 64 different fonts on a page, with 17 built in. The Big KISS has a standard parallel interface, and the Big KISS II has a dual serial/parallel interface. Print eight pages per minute, and 256K can be used to print graphics with single, double, triple and quadruple Epson densities.
The QMS Smartwriter 80 + gives you 19 resident fonts, 75, 150 or 300 dots per inch (dpi), and 2.5Mb of dynamic RAM, allowing you to produce a full legal page of bit-mapped graphics. Also, you can use most software packages that work with your dot-matrix or daisywheel printers.
QMS, P.O. Box 81250, Mobile, AL 36689.
(205) 633-4300. PRESS.
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DRAFIX 1
This inexpensive, full-featured CAD program features automatic dimensioning, snap modes, layering, and transform/copy commands. Drafix 1 offers a second-generation user interface that has all menus visible all the time-you don't need to memorize menu hierarchies.
$149.95. Foresight Resources Corp.,
932 Massachusetts, Lawrence, KS 66044.
(913) 841-1121. PRESS.
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DESIGNER COVERS
They're water-repellant but they let your ST "breathe." Choose from 12 colors and three types of material. These machine-washable covers protect your equipment from dust, liquid or other foreign matter that could disable it. Ventilation allows condensation to evaporate from heated parts. Prices range from $9.99 to $100.
Designer Products Inc., 6585 S. Yale,
Suite 1050, Tulsa, OK 74136. (800) 223-2687.
PRESS.
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FASTCOM
Turn your ST into a terminal for databases, sending and receiving telexes and electronic mail and computer-to-computer communication. Fastcom lets you communicate with such ASCII/text systems as Easylink, MCI Mail and bulletin boards, and includes a full implementation of VT100/VT52. Files and software can be transferred between computers-and so can binary files. The GEM implementation includes pull-down menus, scroll boxes, foreground/multiple screen operation and multitasking.
$69. Atari Corp., 1196 Borregas Avenue,
P.O. Box 3427, Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3427.
(408) 745-2000. PRESS.
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DESKTOP PLUS
Organize your ST desktop with label-indexed daily memos, an address/phone book, a special alarm system, flexible date and interval calculator, and a calendar with a range of 200 years. Inagem Agenda + has them all, along with a unique phone entry display that allows zooming in for more detailed information.
$49.95. Inagem Technologies Inc.,
6117 Gerard Morisset, Montreal, Quebec H1M 3J8; Canada.
(514) 256-9942. PRESS
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CLOCK/CALENDAR
Because the Micro-Time ST is an internal clock/calendar, it frees the cartridge port for other uses. Battery-backed and able to keep the time and date for 90 days when the system is off, the hard disk-compatible Micro-Time ST uses the ST's built-in clock chip, and its nickel-cadmium batteries recharge while you're using the system. Installation is quick and solderless, and the clock works with or without CONTROL.ACC.
$49.95. Micro-Time Electronics, P.O. Box 125
Merlin, OR 97532. (503) 476-9509. PRESS
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New ST product notices are compiled from information provided by
the products' manufacturers. Antic assumes no responsibility for
the accuracy of these notices or the performance of the product. Each mention
is followed by a code word indicating that, at press time, Antic
had seen a FINAL marketable version, near-final BETA, earlier ALPHA, incomplete
DEMO, or PRESS release.