-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- PCM Online November 1994 COLUMNS Contents: [] Business as Usual: Accounting, General Business, and "Suite" Deals [] DOS Keys: The FORMAT Command, Parts I and II [] Riding the Internet: Finding Your "On Ramp" [] Silicon Warrior: The Warrior Takes on Five New Games [] Working in Windows: Updates to Windows and Word Entire contents copyright 1994 by Falsoft, Inc. PCM -- The Premier Personal Computer Magazine is intended for the private use and pleasure of its subscribers, and reproduction by any means is prohibited. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Business as Usual \|/ by Emmett Dulaney ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Contributing Editor "Looks at general and specific business software packages" ACCOUNTING, GENERAL BUSINESS, AND "SUITE" DEALS Business software is a catch-all phrase for any software that can be used in the business place. This includes databases, information managers and spreadsheets. When you get right down to it, there is not a great deal that it does not include. This month, we are going to take a break from the tidy categories, and look at some miscellaneous programs within two categories -- accounting and general business -- and at the "office" program bundles that are flooding into and out of retail stores. Accounting Microsoft Money for Windows serves a variety of financial functions. Originally intended for the home user, it is equally suitable for a small business that does not require a complex software package. It allows you to do loan amortization, check printing and bank reconciliation (primarily checking, but it could be used for savings, as well). Version 3.0 is now available; however, a quick perusal through many office supply stores should uncover version 2.0 still on the shelves. The list price is $34.99. (In the stores I visited, however, Version 2.0 was going for $14.99 and included a $10 rebate. This puts the out-of-pocket cash at five dollars, and represents too good of a deal for anyone to pass up.) It does require Windows. Peachtree Complete Accounting from Peachtree Software provides a solid accounting package for businesses needing more than Microsoft Money. It contains the necessary databases and forms for creating ledgers, performing order entry and designing custom reports. Running on DOS, Version 7.0 is the most recent edition. The Windows version, appropriately titled Peachtree Accounting for Windows, is currently up to Version 3.0. General Business MailWorks 3.0 from WindowWare, Inc. requires Windows and allows you to print labels and put bar codes directly on envelopes. In so doing, you can take advantage of bulk sort rates and save approximately 5 cents on every letter you mail. Policies Now! from Knowledge Point contains standard business forms that you can modify to suit your own small business application. Running on DOS and requiring only 512K RAM, it contains such diverse forms as those covering jury duty, bereavement, addiction, establishing a smoke- free workplace, etc. Suites If you were to go to the local Chevrolet dealership and tell the parts manager that you wanted to purchase the parts necessary to build a Corsica from scratch, he would look at you as if you were crazy. Not only would it be one of the most time-consuming tasks this side of raising kids, the individual parts would also cost you two to three times the amount of a car off the lot. Why? Because the rules of economics dictate that when you purchase items separately, profit is built into every item you buy. When you buy a bolt, someone is making a profit on that purchase. When you buy the car already assembled, however, there is only one profit because only one item is being sold. The same is true for any item sold in bulk. From that one profit you pay, the burden then falls upon the manufacturer to divvy it among associated parties. Purchasing a software suite is akin to buying a car, particularly since most of them cost more than my first car did. A suite is a bundle of multiple software packages (three, four or five), and buying one is significantly cheaper than purchasing each of the programs separately. The benefits of buying in suites is that more and more of the programs are becoming integrated. For example, with Microsoft Office, you install a printer once and all the applications in the suite know what type of printer is out there; if you purchased the programs individually, the printer would need to be installed for each. The downside of buying in a suite, however, is that you have to want all of the programs in the package to make it more attractive. Quite often, ABC has the best word-processing program on the market, but CBA has the best spreadsheet. Buying separately you would pick each vendor's best product. Buying bundled, you settle for ABC's less than spectacular spreadsheet because you use a word processor more than anything else. There are three notable suites these days: Microsoft Office, Borland Office and Lotus SmartSuite. Microsoft Office for Windows, now at Version 4.2, comes in two versions. The first is the Standard version, which contains Word 6.0, a word processor; Excel 5.0, a spreadsheet; Power Point 4.0 for presentation graphics; and Mail 3.2. The Professional version adds Access Version 1.1 (Microsoft's database program) to the package. To run, you need Windows 3.1, a good amount of RAM (specifications call for 4MB RAM, but I would recommend 8) and a large hard drive. MOM is the Microsoft Office Manager, always watching to see if you need help with what you are working on. During installation, it prompts you for what you want to install and removes any files left by uninstalled applications. The toolbar, which appears at the top of each application, is identical from one program to the other -- Excel's looks exactly like Word's, etc., with only one icon different. With this consistency throughout, it makes it extremely easy to learn another application after you have mastered one. It is also possible to open another application from inside one. For example, if you are composing a document in Word and need to incorporate a spreadsheet into the package, Excel can seamlessly come into play while you are working on the numbers. You then decide to represent the numbers graphically for better understanding, and Power Point clicks a graph directly into the document. Start typing again, and you are back in Word, having incorporated features from the other two packages without the need of having to go to any lengths to do so. This use of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is a far cry from the old method of copying things into a clipboard, then emptying the clipboard into the document. Dialog boxes and cue cards abound, as well as helpful "wizards" that help guide you through what you are working on. It is even possible for a Tip-of-the-Day to come up each time you start a session and give you a pointer that you may not have known. While Power Point and Excel are both fine applications, the heart of Office is Word. Over the years this word processor has evolved into one of the most intuitive document tools available. Whereas once a word processor was doing well to offer word-wrapping and the ability to spell check a document, those days are long gone -- and Word has been instrumental in seeing those days pass. Automatically, using IntelliSense, it can correct your spelling of a word the moment your cursor leaves it. If I spell Indiana as "indiana," the moment my thumb presses the space bar, the first letter is capitalized. My favorite feature, however, is a 100-level Undo command. Up to the last 100 changes you have made to a file can be pulled out. Borland Office Borland's entry is the lowest in price, as well as in number of applications included. It comes with WordPerfect 6.0, a word processor; Quattro Pro 5.0, a spreadsheet; and Paradox 4.5, a database. While a mail interface is missing, the real change is a swap of the presentation manager for a database. On the plus side, all three applications are award-winners. WordPerfect is Microsoft Word's serious competitor, always competing for features on a nose-to-nose level. In the days when DOS was the desktop operating system and Windows a pipe dream, Word-Perfect was the processing package of choice for most businesses. The market began to crumble, however, when Windows grew to such acceptance and WordPerfect acted too slowly in releasing a compatible version of its product. Quattro Pro is an outstanding spreadsheet package. When first designed, it was a mirror image of Lotus 1-2-3. In the years following inception, however, it became like a child who has grown to striking manhood without resembling a parent. On-line, interactive tutors are available for almost every operation, and Object Help provides context-sensitive help screens from the manual with the click of a mouse. Paradox is a relational database that has been praised by users for years. Designed with ease of use in mind, that train of thought shows up in the layout of the toolbars, design of the icons, and throughout the program. There are a few minor problems I have with Borland Office. The first is that the applications act too much like stand-alones: they perform separately with little integration. The second is that Borland sells a large quantity of products each time it comes up with a new version. The way it does so is by selling exquisite programs at unheard-of prices (the latest release of Quattro Pro could be found for as little as $35). With the individual packages selling so cheaply, you lose the benefit to be gained by purchasing a suite. Lotus SmartSuite Offering more applications than the other two vendors, SmartSuite comes with five programs: a word processor, Ami Pro 3.01; a spreadsheet, Lotus 1-2-3 Version 4.01; presentation graphics, Freelance 2.01; a database, Approach 2.1; and a time manager, Organizer 1.1. As far as quantity goes, this is a hefty package. Additionally, the applications talk to each other, sharing a common interface, dictionary and Smart Icons. The trump in the hand is Lotus's namesake application. The 1-2-3 spreadsheet is virtually the model upon which all other vendors built their spreadsheets. Versatility is combined with functionality, allowing almost any number-crunching operation that can be dreamt to be performed. The numbers can be quickly converted to charts within the application for easier viewing. If I had to list the most popular word processors in use today, I would place Ami Pro third behind Word and WordPerfect. Being third in a category so large is certainly an enviable position. Freelance, on the other hand, is a presentation package tied for most awards with PowerPoint. There are 65 design sets you can choose from, as well as 11 pre-made page layouts. Novice users who have never before used software to create slides or graphics can be up and running with Freelance or Power-Point in little time. All three software suites provide applications that most business users need on their computers. Selecting which one of the three to purchase has to be based upon which trump card within the suite you will be most comfortable with. Microsoft is banking upon Word to be the word processor that guides you into the other packages, while Lotus hopes you will lean upon 1-2-3's ease of use to buy its integrated package. Borland, on the other hand, uses all three entries as its trump cards, and all three are award-winning stand-alone packages. No matter which you choose, plan on having lots of hard-drive space and the ability to upgrade RAM if things start bogging down a bit. Coming Attractions Rare is the business these days that has several computers not connected and communicating with each other in some fashion. As a company grows, and more importantly as the number of computers and users grows, so does the need to share and access information. Beginning next month, this column is going to take an in-depth look at networking. Next month, we'll begin with the basics of network types, how they work, what the benefits are, etc. Subsequent months will cover peer- to-peer networks, nondedi-cated as well as dedicated servers, and the whole gamut. Business Bits The heart of the Microsoft Office engine is its dependence on Word 6.0. Learning and mastering Word, you can easily work through the other applications in the suite. Even if you are just looking for a good word processor to use or upgrade to, Word can be purchased separately, and I would highly recommend learning how to use it, for it looks as if it will be setting standards for some time to come. There are two books presently on the market that segment functions of Word and guide you through its operations. Katherine Shelly Pfeiffer's Word For Windows Design Companion (Ventana Press, $21.95) is in its second edition and provides an excellent resource for understanding the graphics tools. Written in an easy-to-follow format, it walks you through sample operations step by step (with illustrations on virtually every other page). The manner in which the book is written allows readers to move to the topics pertinent to them at the moment, regardless of their existing Word experience level. Desktop Publishing with Word for Windows by Tom Lichty (Ventana Press, $21.95) is also in its second edition. Aimed more at the beginning user than the first book, it educates in an informative manner, without talking down to the reader. There are a substantial number of illustrations and screen shots, all of which accent the text and serve to make it more coherent. I have always been amazed at people who plunk down a substantial amount of cash to purchase computers or software, then do not make the minimal investment in learning how to use their purchase. Both of these books serve the purpose of teaching how to use Word, and anyone purchasing the word processor or the Office Suite should set one of these two on the register counter also. -=*=- Emmett Dulaney is the author of Voodoo NetWare, and a few other books. He can be reached at P.O. Box 353, Muncie, IN 47308; on America Online as username EDULANEY; or via the Intenet at edulaney@aol.com. -=*=- INTEROFFICE MEMO Microsoft Money For Windows: Microsoft Corp., One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399, (206) 635-7156; $39.95. REQUIRES: DOS 3.1+, Windows 3.0+, 1MB RAM and a hard drive. Peachtree Complete Accounting: Peachtree Software, Inc., 1505 Pavillion Place, Norcross, GA 30093, (800) 288-0068; $249.99 for DOS, $169 for Windows. MailWorks 3.0: WindowWare, Inc., 4103 Lake St., Minneapolis, MN 55406; $49.95. REQUIRES: Windows 3.0+, 2MB RAM and 2MB hard-drive space. Policies Now!: Knowledge Point, 1311 Clegg St., Petaluma, CA 94954, (707) 762-0333; $295. REQUIRES: 512K, DOS 2.1+. Microsoft Office 4.2: Microsoft Corp., One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399, (206) 635-7156; $750 for the Standard version and $995 for the Professional. REQUIRES: Windows 3.1, 4MB RAM, and a minimum of 25MB hard- drive space (full installation uses 62MB). Borland Office for Windows 2.0: Borland Intl., Inc., 1800 Green Hills Road, Scotts Valley, CA 95067, (800) 331-0877; $595. REQUIRES: Windows 3.0+, 4MB RAM and a minimum of 16MB hard-drive space (80MB for full installation). Lotus SmartSuite 2.1 for Windows: Lotus Development Corp., 55 Cambridge Parkway, Cambridge, MA 02142, (800) 343-5414; $795. REQUIRES: Windows 3.0+, 4MB RAM and a minimum of 27MB hard-drive space (62MB for a complete installation). -=-------------- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- --------------=- DOS Keys \|/ by Kari Jackson ~~~~~~~~ Contributing Editor "Digging into the intricacies of the DOS FORMAT command" (Part I originally published in June/July 1994 PCM) THE FORMAT COMMAND, PART I Since no disk can be used before it has been formatted, most computer users have some idea of what formatting is all about. But DOS's FORMAT command holds many secrets from even the most experienced user. Before a disk has been formatted, it's completely unusable. Just like a parking lot would be without lines painted on it if people were as helpless as DOS is. DOS can't "park" a file without being able to see the "lines" on the "parking lot." There are two different types of formatting. Low-level formatting means laying down magnetic patterns called tracks (concentric circles) and dividing those tracks into pieces called sectors. This is done by writing a sector header just before each area that should be regarded as a sector. A sector header is a chunk of data that sort of says "I am Sector 6 of Track 15 of Side 1 of this disk." Each sector gets its own header and when all the disk space is divided into sectors, DOS is able to tell where to go to read or write data on the disk. Also, each of the 512 bytes of space in each sector is filled with FFh, F6h or OOh so that no spot on the disk is truly blank. Sector headers do use disk space. If you've seen a box of double density 3-1/2-inch disks labelled as 1MB when you think they should be 720K, that's why. The disks are prepared to hold one million bytes, which is close enough to 1MB (1,048,576 bytes) for practical purposes. Low-level formatting takes up 262,720 bytes of space, leaving 737,280 bytes (exactly 720K). So when someone calls it a 1MB disk, they're talking about the size before low-level formatting. Each disk size has a similar ratio of low- level format space to usable space. On a hard drive, DOS's FORMAT command doesn't do the low-level formatting at all. This is done by the manufacturer of the drive, or by a program in a ROM chip on the drive controller, which you can access via the DEBUG command or your CMOS setup. Don't ever low-level format an IDE drive unless you know exactly what you're doing, because some IDE drives can be physically ruined by low-level formatting them with the wrong program. The FORMAT command does do a low-level format on floppy disks. With MS- DOS 5.0 and later, you can make FORMAT skip low-level formatting. The FORMAT command in earlier DOS versions always did both the low-level format and the high-level format when used on floppy disks. (By the way, whenever I say DOS 5.0, I really mean DOS 5.0 and later unless I specifically say otherwise.) High-level formatting simply scans all of the sectors on the disk for readability (remember, even if the disk has never been used, the low-level format process has written FFh, F6h, or OOh characters all over it), followed by creation of the boot record, FAT and root directory. The Boot Record The first sector of any floppy disk or hard drive partition is the boot record. The boot record of any disk contains information that DOS needs to know before it can read the disk. Like how many bytes per sector (almost always 512), how many sectors per cluster (we'll get to that later), how many sectors on the disk, how large the FAT and root directory are, etc. The boot record also contains a little program that runs every time you attempt to boot the computer from that disk. Even if a disk has not been made bootable, it still has this program in its boot record. When the computer tries to boot and there's a disk in Drive A (unless the computer boots from ROM or the CMOS has been set to make the computer skip Drive A at bootup), it runs the program that's in the boot record. When you boot from your hard drive, the computer runs the hard drive's boot-record program. The boot-record program is kind of like this: "See if there's a file named IO.SYS and, if so, load it into memory and turn control over to it. If not, display the message 'Non-System disk or disk error. Replace and press any key when ready' on the screen, wait for a key press, then run the next disk's boot record program." Of course if the disk was formatted by PC-DOS or DR-DOS rather than MS- DOS, the boot record looks for IBMBIO.COM rather than IO.SYS. Each operating system has its own FORMAT command that knows what filename it should put into the boot record. If you let the computer attempt to boot from a disk that hasn't been made bootable, the boot-record program attempts to find IO.SYS, but IO.SYS isn't on the disk so the computer displays an error message and waits for you to insert another disk. If you attempt to boot from a bootable disk, the boot-record program causes the computer to load IO.SYS, and IO.SYS takes care of the rest of the boot process. The FAT The second thing that's created on a disk during a high-level format is the File Allocation Table, or FAT. The FAT is so important that there are actually two synchronized copies of it on every disk and hard-drive partition. The File Allocation Table tells DOS which parts of the disk belong to each file, and which parts are still available for use by new files. There's a FAT entry for each cluster of space on a disk, which is simply a group of sectors. Back when DOS was being designed, the FAT was kept in memory for fast access. Since precious memory is needed for everything else the computer is doing, the FAT needed to be small so it didn't use too much memory. If the FAT contained one entry for every sector on a disk, it would be huge compared to the tiny amount of memory that was included with the first DOS computers! So sectors are grouped together into clusters according to this table: Disk or Sectors Bytes Per Partition Size Per Cluster Cluster DD Floppy 2 1024 HD Floppy 1 512 0-16MB 8 4096 16-128MB 4 2048 128-256MB 8 4096 256-512MB 16 8192 512-1024MB 32 16384 Therefore, the FAT has one entry for each cluster rather than one entry for each sector. Since a FAT entry can't belong to more than one file, a cluster of disk space can have one (and only one) file in it. Even if a file is one byte long, it still uses an entire cluster because there's no way to let the rest of the cluster be used by another file. If a file is two bytes larger than eight clusters, it uses nine entire clusters. The wasted space between the last byte of a file and the last byte of its last cluster is known as slack space. There's a FAT entry for each cluster of disk space and each entry points to the next FAT entry for the file that owns the cluster represented by this entry. If a file is only one cluster long, its FAT entry contains a code that DOS recognizes as meaning "End of File." Let's say a file's directory entry (we'll get to that in a few minutes) says the file starts in Cluster 229. The 229th entry in the FAT represents the 229th cluster of disk space, so FAT Entry 229 belongs to this file. If FAT entry 229 has the code for "End of File," Cluster 229 is the only part of the disk that belongs to this file. If FAT Entry 229 says 278, Cluster 278 also belongs to this file. Now FAT Entry 278, which represents Cluster 278, might say "End of File" or it might contain another number pointing to another cluster of disk space. And on and on, until one of the FAT entries owned by this file contains the code for "End of File." A FAT entry can be any one of the following: [] Zero, meaning the cluster is not in use. [] A number that points to the next cluster used by the file. [] A code that means "End of File." [] A code that means "Bad sector; do not use this cluster." Note that the file described in the example owns clusters that are not contiguous. This means the file is fragmented. Pieces of the file are spread across different areas of the disk rather than next to each other. This doesn't mean the file is going to get damaged or that it's harder for DOS to find it or anything like that. The file is perfectly safe. The only thing wrong with it is that it takes the drive longer to get to all the parts of the file than it would if all the parts were together. So reading the file or writing to it takes a few dozen milliseconds longer than it should. The main thing that causes fragmentation of files is deletion of other files. When a disk is empty, each file gets put into contiguous clusters because all the free space is contiguous. When you delete one of the earlier files, a hole is left between sections of used space. The next file DOS saves to the disk may very well get put into that spot, even if the file is too big to fit there. This means the beginning of the file gets put into one area and the rest of the file is written somewhere else. The other cause of fragmentation is that many files do not remain constant in size. A contiguous file may get fragmented if you enlarge it. New files have most likely been added to the disk since this file was first put there, so there's no longer any blank space at the end of that file. If you add more data to the end of a file, DOS might have to put the additional data somewhere else. A program that rearranges the files on a disk so that all the parts of each file are next to each other, or in contiguous clusters, is called a disk optimizer or defrag-menter. MS-DOS 6.0 comes with the DEFRAG utility and there are lots of third-party utilities such as PC Tools and Norton Utilities that include disk optimizers. The Root Directory The third thing that is put onto a disk by the high-level format process is the root directory. If you type DIR at the C:\> prompt, what you see is a translated version of your hard drive's root directory. You probably know what a directory listing looks like, so let's take a look at a chunk of it in its natural form, before DIR has translated it (see Figure 1). Each directory entry is 32 bytes long. If you have an ASCII chart handy, you can see that the first eleven bytes spell the filename in Hex. The first eleven bytes of the first entry are "IOúúúúúúSYS" (the "ú" character is used to represent one space). Now you can see why it's not possible to have a filename longer than eight characters or an extension longer than three. Byte 12 of each directory entry is the attributes byte. The right-most six bits represent six possible attributes: archive, directory, volume label, system, hidden and read-only. To decode an attribute byte, convert it to binary. The value O7h (OOOOO111 in binary) shows IO.SYS has the system, hidden and read-only attributes. The last three bits of the attribute byte stand for system, hidden and read-only. As another example, a file that has 1Oh in its attribute byte is a directory because 1Oh is OOO1OOOO binary, which has a 1 in its fourth digit and the fourth bit is the directory attribute. (The left-most two bits of the attribute byte are unused and must always be zero.) The next ten bytes of every directory entry are reserved and are always filled with zeros by DOS. The 23rd and 24th bytes of each directory entry store the time of last modification to the file. For example, OO28h means 5:00 a.m. How? Well, like a lot of weird things computers do, these numbers are stored backwards (least-significant byte (OOh) then most- significant byte (28h)). Before you can make any sense out of these numbers, you have to turn them around (28OOh) then convert each digit to binary (OO1O 1OOO OOOO OOOOh). The first five bits of the result (OO1O1h) are the hour. The next six bits (OOOOOOh) are the minute. The last five bits (OOOOOh) multiplied by two is the number of seconds. The 25th and 26th bytes of the directory entry are the date of the last modification to the file. Again, change the order and convert each digit to binary. The first seven bits are the year and that needs to be added to 1980 since that's the year with which all DOS clocks begin. The next four bits are the month and the last five are the date. The next two bytes of a directory entry point to the first FAT entry that belongs to the file. Again, it's stored in reverse order so O2OOh actually means FAT Entry 2, which happens to be the first FAT entry that's available for use by files. (Entries zero and one are reserved.) This means IO.SYS begins in the second cluster of the data area of the disk. Of course, FAT Entry 2 tells us the next cluster used by the file. The last four bytes of a directory entry tell us the size of the file. For example, IO.SYS is 9682OOOOh (again, reverse the order of the bytes to OOOO8296h) and that's 33,430 bytes in decimal. The root directory is a chunk of disk space that's set aside to be used solely for the purpose of storing directory entries. The size of the root directory depends on the size of the disk and it can never be enlarged once the FORMAT command has created it. The root directory on a double- density floppy is big enough to hold 112 entries. On a high-density floppy, it's large enough to hold 224 entries. On a hard drive, the root directory is large enough to hold 512 entries. Directory entries are used by files, subdirectories and the disk's volume label if it has one. If you have a double-density floppy disk that has a volume label and seven subdirectories, you can write only 104 files into the root directory of that disk -- even if there's 100K of space left, it still can't hold more files unless you put them into the subdirectories. The FORMAT command performs a low-level format on floppy disks, and it creates a boot sector, FAT and root directory on both hard drives and floppy disks. Except for any FAT entries that need to be marked unusable due to bad spots found during the readability scan, the FAT and root directory are completely filled with zeros. Then FORMAT gives a summary of how much space is on the disk and asks whether you want to format another disk. However, there are ways to make FORMAT do other things or to make it skip certain steps that it normally performs. Making a Bootable Disk The most common "extra" thing people want the FORMAT command to do is make a disk bootable, which is done with the /S switch. This means FORMAT copies the IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS files from the disk you booted from to the disk that's just been formatted. Note that MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 also copy DBLSPACE.BIN to the disk. (You won't see those files in an ordinary directory listing since they have their hidden and system attributes turned on to avoid deletion.) Then FORMAT looks at the COMSPEC environment variable to find COMMAND.COM and copies it to the disk. Now the disk can be used to boot the computer. Before DOS 4.0, DOS couldn't boot unless IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS were in contiguous clusters; that is, not fragmented. These two files also had to be stored in the first and consecutive clusters on the disk (just after the boot record, FAT and root directory). In other words, you can't make a disk bootable with DOS 3.30 and earlier if the disk already has files on it. (Norton Utilities, PC Tools and some other packages can move files to make room for IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS.) An exception to this is if the disk has been formatted with the /B switch. The /B switch doesn't put IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS onto a disk like the /S switch does, but it pretends to. It makes entries in the FAT and root directory as if it were putting the files there. In the place where IO.SYS would go, it puts a little program that tells the computer to display "Non-System disk or disk error" on the screen, then fills the rest of the space with random garbage -- whatever happens to be in memory at the time. With recent DOS versions, there's very rarely any need for the /B switch since the DOS system files don't need to be in any particular part of the disk (though they do need to be in the first two directory entries in the root directory) and they don't need to be contiguous (unfragmented). The SYS command rearranges the root directory if necessary to put IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS in the first two directory entries. This means SYS is all you need to make a disk bootable -- even if the disk already has other files on it. If you want to put files on a disk and then be able to later make it bootable with an earlier DOS version, the /B switch is still necessary. -=*=- THE FORMAT COMMAND, PART II If FORMAT isn't told otherwise, it formats disks to the highest capacity it thinks your drive supports. Things that can affect what it thinks your drive supports are your BIOS and CMOS settings, the DRIVER.SYS device driver, DRIVPARM and the capacities your version of FORMAT supports. If your CMOS setup says Drive B is 720K, FORMAT will format disks in Drive B to a capacity of 720K no matter what capacity Drive B really is. Note that FORMAT didn't support 720K disks until DOS 3.2, 1.44MB disks until DOS 3.3, and 2.88MB until DOS 5.0. If your version of DOS is older than your type of floppy drive, FORMAT won't know what to do. If you upgrade DOS and find the new version of FORMAT thinks your 720K drive is 360K, even though the drive is still working fine in other respects, don't worry. That's easily fixed. Some Tandy computers have 720K drives without BIOS support for them, so they were sold with an altered version of DOS to provide that support. All you need to do is use the DRIVPARM command in the CONFIG.SYS file of every disk (including your hard drive) from which you boot. Use the line DRIVPARM=/I /D:O /F:2 for Drive A; use /D:1 instead of /D:O for Drive B. If you're trying to format a disk and get "Track 0 bad," you're probably trying to format a 720K disk to 1.44MB. Use the /F switch to tell FORMAT to format the disk to 720K instead and it should be fine. FORMAT won't format a disk to a higher capacity than it thinks the drive supports, but it will go lower if you tell it to. If you have DOS 4.0 or later, use the /F switch. Using /F:72O with the FORMAT command makes it format disks to a capacity of 720K. Use the /F:36O switch for 360K disks. If you have DOS 3.30 or earlier, there is no /F switch. To format a 360K in a 1.2MB drive, use the /4 switch. To format a 720K disk in a 1.44MB drive, use /N:9 /T:8O, which means nine sectors per track and 80 tracks per side, which is the layout of a 720K disk. You should never format a disk to a capacity other than that for which it was created. In order to get the data packed more tightly, high- capacity drives use a weaker signal so data won't be affected by overlap from the data next to it. Likewise, it uses a stronger signal when writing to double-density disks. Each type of disk has a coating that works with the signal strength it is supposed to be used with. The coating doesn't reliably hold data when written to by the other strength signal. Also, 5-1/4-inch drives have a problem that 3-1/2-inch drives don't. Instead of just doubling the number of sectors per track, as in 720K versus 1.44MB disks, another difference between 360K and 1.2MB disks is that the number of tracks is doubled. In order to fit twice as many tracks into the same space, 1.2MB drives write tracks that are half as wide as tracks written by a 360K drive. Even when a 1.2MB drive is writing to a 360K disk, it still writes the same narrow track. This causes huge problems when you try to use the same disk in both types of drives. If you format a disk in a 360K drive, each sector is filled with F6h characters. If you then write to that disk with a 1.2MB drive, its tracks will have a narrow band of data (F6h characters) on each side left over from the 360K drive's heads. The 1.2MB drive will be able to read it just fine because it only reads the same narrow track as it writes. But the 360K drive reads the whole track and gets really confused as to what it's seeing. If you need to share a disk between a 360K drive and a 1.2MB drive, use a disk that's been formatted by the 1.2MB drive without ever having been formatted by a 360K drive. If it's possible to avoid writing to the disk with the 360K drive, do that too. If you have to write to it with the 360K drive, that's OK as long as you don't ever write over the top of the same area with the 1.2MB drive. The 360K drive should be able to read it because there will be no wide tracks overlapping the narrow tracks written by the 1.2MB drive. Bad Sectors Part of the high-level format process is the scan for readability. Unless DOS 5.0's /Q switch is used, FORMAT reads every sector to make sure they are readable. If there are any sectors it can't read, even after retrying a couple of times, it marks those sectors as bad at the end of the high-level format. In this way DOS knows not to put any data there. That's what you're seeing when CHKDSK tells you "xxxxx bytes in bad sectors." What would be dangerous is bad sectors that are not marked. DOS would eventually put data there and not be able to read it later. Other ways to get bad sectors marked in the FAT, besides using FORMAT, is to use RECOVER (a very dangerous command when not used exactly the way it's supposed to be), DOS 6.2's SCANDISK and third-party utilities like PC Tools and Norton Utilities. Any time you format a disk (unless you use DOS 5.0's /Q switch), DOS ignores the FAT and just rescans the whole disk. A disk that has bad sectors might end up without bad sectors if you format it again. This may be because the low-level format needs to be rewritten (all magnetic media fades over the years), or it may be because there was a piece of dust on the disk the first time it was formatted. The sector may not have really been bad, but was unreadable with the dust sitting there, so FORMAT just thought it was a bad sector. On the other hand, some third-party utilities are more thorough in their search for bad sectors than the FORMAT command is. If some other utility marks a sector as bad, then you use DOS' FORMAT command on that disk later, the "bad" sector might get marked as good again. You might not want that if you trust your other utility more than you trust FORMAT. Apparently a lot of people complained about it because DOS 6.2 doesn't do it anymore. If you use the /C switch with FORMAT, it will. By default, what happens with DOS 6.2 is this: Before formatting begins, FORMAT reads the disk's FAT and remembers which sectors were marked as bad. When the new FAT is being written, it marks those same sectors as bad again, even if they passed the test this time. Besides using the /C switch, another way to get DOS 6.2's FORMAT to act like earlier DOS versions is to use the /F switch. But the /F switch should have nothing to do with that, you say? That's right, but it does anyway. If you format a disk to a smaller capacity than the drive can hold, you have to use the /F switch. When you do, FORMAT acts as if you had also used the /C switch. No, you can't get around this by using the /N and /T switches either, because they also cause this misbehavior. The only way to get DOS 6.2's FORMAT command to save old bad sector markings when formatting a disk to a smaller capacity is to use the /Q switch to make FORMAT skip the bad sector scan. Volume Labels If you have DOS 3.3 or earlier and you want to assign a volume label to the disk, you can tell FORMAT so with the /V switch. After formatting, it asks you to enter the volume label. If you have DOS 4.0 or later, FORMAT always asks that question so the only reason to use the /V switch is to supply the volume label in advance. If you use /V:THISNAME with FORMAT, it adds the label THISNAME to the disk. If your DOS version is between 3.2 and 4.01, it's a very good idea to make sure your hard drive has a volume label because FORMAT in these versions has a nice safeguard built in. When you attempt to format a hard drive that has a volume label, it makes you enter the current volume label before it formats the drive. So it's really impossible to accidentally format a hard drive as long as it has a label. (You can add a volume label without formatting it by using the LABEL command.) This safeguard was removed from DOS 5.0's FORMAT command, probably because DOS 5.0's FORMAT is non-destructive so it doesn't need safeguards as badly as earlier versions. The Safe Format Before DOS 5.0, formatting a floppy disk meant the data on it would be almost completely unrecoverable because it would be overwritten with F6h characters as part of the low-level format process. (You could pay a fortune to a data-recovery company to attempt to get it back.) Formatting a hard drive would not overwrite the data with anything but would completely erase the FAT and root directory, so the data would still be very, very hard to recover even though it's still intact on the disk. DOS 5.0's FORMAT command is different, thanks to some technology licensed by Microsoft from Central Point Software, the makers of PC Tools. The first thing DOS 5.0's FORMAT command does is run MIRROR. MIRROR is a program from PC Tools that is included in the FORMAT.COM file in DOS 5.0 and later, and also as a separate program in DOS 5.0. What MIRROR does is this: It creates a file named MIRROR.FIL on the disk, which contains snapshots of the disk's boot record, FAT and root directory. Then it creates a file named MIRORSAV.FIL in the last cluster of the disk, even if it has to move other files out of the way in order to put it there. The MIRORSAV.FIL file's first two bytes hold the number of the sector where MIRROR.FIL can be found. The next thing DOS 5.0's FORMAT does is a high- level format. It doesn't do a low-level format by default, even on floppy disks, so it doesn't overwrite any data on the disk. If you realize a few minutes later that you didn't mean to format the disk, you can run DOS 5.0's UNFORMAT command on it to perfectly restore every speck of data on the disk. UNFORMAT looks at the last cluster of the disk, expecting to find the string LIFVASRORIM (MIRORSAVFIL backwards). The MIRROR.FIL file's first few characters are A:\MIRROR.FIL or C:\MIRROR.FIL so UNFORMAT can be sure it's looking at the right part of the disk. UNFORMAT takes the data in the MIRROR.FIL file and puts it back into the boot record, FAT and root directory. Voil…! Your disk is back to the exact state it was in before you formatted it, and that's why DOS 5.0's FORMAT is called a "safe" format. If FORMAT ever tells you Drive A error. Insufficient space for the MIRROR image file. There was an error creating the format recovery file. This disk cannot be unformatted. Proceed with Format (Y/N)? the DOS manual says you're supposed to delete some files from the disk and try again. As far as I'm concerned, that's pure nonsense. If you're going to look on the disk to see what files it has on it and decide which ones to delete, why don't you just make sure you don't want any of the files? Then you won't have any reason to need FORMAT to do a "safe" format on that disk! Actually, though, you should have already done that before you ever entered the FORMAT command in the first place. Just because FORMAT is safer than it used to be is no reason for carelessness. Anyway, if you do already know you don't want to keep any of the files on the disk, press Y to the question and FORMAT pretends you used the /U switch. Skipping the Safe Format The /U switch makes FORMAT skip the MIRROR process and do a low-level format. The /U stands for unconditional, but to me it would make more sense if it stood for unsafe. FORMAT /U in DOS 5.0 does the same thing as FORMAT with no switches in previous DOS versions. Also, whenever you try to format a disk to a capacity other than that at which it had originally been formatted, FORMAT always acts like you used the /U switch even if you didn't. If you format a 720K disk and then later try to format it to 1.44MB, for example, you're going to get an "unsafe" unconditional format whether you want it or not. Have you ever noticed how long it takes for DOS to come back with the "Abort, Retry, Fail, Ignore?" error message when you accidentally try to read a disk that's never been formatted? That's also how much time you waste if you neglect to use the /U switch when formatting a disk that's never been formatted. Without the /U switch, DOS 5.0's FORMAT tries to read the disk to make a snapshot of the FAT and stuff. Not only is there no reason to do that on a blank disk, it also wastes up to 45 seconds because the drive can take that long before it gives up and tells FORMAT it can't read the disk. So on unformatted disks, always remember to use the /U switch if you have DOS 5.0 or later. If you have DOS 6.2, be sure to use the /C switch also for the same reason. Without the /C switch, FORMAT tries to read the disk's FAT to see if any sectors are marked as bad. Quick Formatting If you want DOS 5.0's FORMAT to hurry up and get done, at the expense of the scan for bad sectors, use the /Q switch. That stands for quick. If a disk hasn't been formatted in the past year or so, you shouldn't do that. A low-level format that old should be refreshed, so you should really use the /U switch. Even if you refuse to do that, at least skip the use of /Q so FORMAT will make sure there are no unmarked bad sectors. Use /Q only on disks that have been formatted without /Q recently. If you want FORMAT to skip the bad sector scan, the low-level format and the MIRROR process, use /Q and /U together. Don't use /C with /Q since it will have no effect; you can't scan for bad sectors while you're skipping the bad sector scan. Avoiding the Prompts The FORMAT command has two undocumented switches that make it skip some or all of its questions. The /AUTOTEST switch makes it skip all of the prompts -- even the one that asks for confirmation when you're about to format a hard disk! Be careful with it! The /BACKUP switch is what DOS 3.3's BACKUP command uses when it calls the FORMAT command to format floppy disks during the backup process. It causes FORMAT to skip all the prompts except the one about the volume label. Since the BACKUP command also uses the /V switch when it calls the FORMAT command, it doesn't need to skip this prompt. Since /AUTOTEST makes FORMAT ignore the /V switch, you need to use /BACKUP instead if you want to give the disk a volume label. Besides danger, another problem with /AUTOTEST and /BACKUP is that you can't use DOS 5.0's /Q switch with them. When to Format So when do you format a disk? Lots of times: [] Before you use it for the first time, unless you bought preformatted disks. [] Whenever you want an easy way to remove all files, subdirectories and the volume label from a disk all in one step. [] Before you use it as the target of a DISKCOPY command. Yes, it's true that DISKCOPY copies an image of the disk from the source to the target, which means the target disk doesn't have to be formatted. Taking this at face value is foolish -- especially if the target disk has a bad sector. [] Whenever it's been a long time since the disk was last low-level formatted. The closer the disk is stored to any sort of magnetic field (telephone, electric cords, stereo speakers, wires or anything with an electric motor and especially your monitor), the more likely that its magnetic charge is fading. If the sector headers haven't been written in so long that they're fading, it doesn't matter if the data was put onto the disk two weeks ago; it still might be unreadable. The data may be fine, but you can't get to it unless the sector headers are fresh enough to be readable. There are third-party utilities that can read data from a disk, low-level format it, and write the data to the disk again. Such utilities (like PC Tools PCFORMAT with the /R switch for floppy disks and Gibson Research's SpinRite for certain types of hard drives) easily take care of the problem of fading sector headers. -=*=- Kari Jackson, author of the online manual *DOS, Simply Said, Simply Done, Simply Easy!*, spends most of the day managing Delphi's OS/2 forum, writing REXX programs, consulting, and discus- sing computing on several online services. You can find her at karijackson@delphi.com on Inter- net, but please understand that she can't answer every question she receives. -=-------------- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- --------------=- Riding the Internet \|/ by Greg Law ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Internet access: standard login vs. SLIP accounts" FINDING YOUR "ON RAMP" Although the Clinton administration likes to call it the "Information Superhighway," the Internet is not quite like an interstate highway in that there are no well-placed signs instructing you which off-ramps to take to reach specific destinations. There are vast resources of information available if you know where to look, but it can be like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. This is where you'll find The Internet Yellow Pages (Osborne/McGraw Hill, ISBN 0-07-882023-5) an invaluable reference. Another invaluable reference for wading through the Internet is The Internet Complete Reference (Osborne/McGraw Hill, ISBN 0- 07881980-6). Of course knowing where to find information and how to use the Internet isn't of much use unless you have an account on a system that provides Internet services. The system I primarily use is Delphi, although I have recently obtained a direct-access account with a local Internet service provider. There are differences between the two accounts that you may want to take into consideration when deciding which route you want to take. A standard login account is by far the easiest to configure and is the type of setup I generally recommend to new Internet users. With this type of account all you need is a computer, a modem, a phone line and communications software that supports DEC VT100 or VT102 terminal emulation. Popular packages such as Procomm Plus and Crosstalk work very well. The other type of account requires you to install and configure network software that supports TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) and either SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) or PPP (Point- to-Point Protocol). The advantage with the login account is that all you have to do is call your Internet service provider via modem and either select items from a menu or enter commands at a prompt to navigate your way through the Internet. A disadvantage is that everything you do is on the host computer. For example, if you want to transfer a file from an Internet host, you must first use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to transfer the file from the host to your Internet service provider. Finally, you use a protocol such as Xmodem, Ymodem or Zmodem to transfer the file to your computer. By the same token any mail you receive is stored on your Internet service provider's computer, so you must log in to send or receive mail. The advantage with a SLIP account is that you get direct access to the Internet from your local computer. If you use FTP to transfer a file from an Internet host, it is transferred directly to your computer. You can also send and receive mail on your own computer. A disadvantage with the SLIP account is that it can be difficult to install and to configure. Some Internet service providers include a preconfigured package so you can easily be up and running with a SLIP account via high-speed modem (14.4Kbps modems are highly recommended for SLIP accounts). The package I received from the local Internet service provider includes Trumpet WinSock, PC Eudora (electronic mail), Finger, FTP, Hampson's Gopher, Internet Relay Chat, NCSA Mosaic, Net News Transfer Protocol, and Telnet. All of these are shareware applications available from various FTP sites on the Internet. If you are considering a SLIP account, you might also consider getting The Windows Internet Tour Guide (Ventana Press, ISBN 1-56604-081-7), which includes a trial version of NetManage's Chameleon. Next month we'll start a tour of the Internet and discuss in-depth some of the terms I mentioned this month. -=*=- Computers are Greg Law's hobby as well as his vocation, and he enjoys programming on all types. In addition to his duties on PC-Link (username PC GREG), he can be contacted on Delphi, username GREGL, or via the Internet at gregl @delphi.com. -=-------------- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- --------------=- Silicon Warrior \|/ by Wayne Kawamoto ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Contributing Editor FROM RUSSIA TO SERF CITY | Wayne's Rating System | | | Our valiant warrior takes on five games: | ***** Outstanding | | **** Excellent | Cartoon Maker | *** Good | Castles II: Siege and Conquest | ** Fair | Dennis Miller: That's News to Me | * Poor | Jeopardy!: Sports Edition | :-( The "Last Action Hero"| Russian Six Pak | of Software | Have you ever wanted to draw comics for the newspaper's funny pages? If you're chock full of ideas but have trouble putting ink to paper (a nice way of saying "little artistic talent"), IntraCorp's Cartoon Maker is the artistic equalizer that draws the comics for you. With the artsy right-brained stuff taken care of, you only have to use your left brain to come up with humorous situations. This month we'll draw with Cartoon Maker, look at Russian arcade games with Interplay's Russian Six Pak, laugh with Sanctuary Wood's Dennis Miller: That's News to Me, ask the questions in GameTek's Jeopardy Sports Edition, and build walls in Interplay's Castles II: Siege and Conquest CD- ROM. From Russia With Love The term "Russian games" conjures images of huge weight lifters, petite gymnasts and falling puzzle pieces. Although Spectrum HoloByte controls the PC Tetris business, there are other worthy games that originated in Russia. Interplay collects six Windows arcade games in Russian Six Pak. This package is much like the Windows Entertainment Packs by Microsoft and Microprose -- both offer a series of games that run in Windows. The games are similar in that they're easy to learn and quick to play -- you can usually play an entire session during an average coffee break. Following in their footsteps, Russian Six Pak succeeds, but it's no standout. "Master of Bombs" is a Tetris-like arcade game. Grenades with connectors on different sides cascade down the screen. By lining up these connectors, you can "blow up" groups of them with a periodic dropping pin. As in Tetris, the idea is to keep the screen clear. This one can make you sweat -- it's the best of the bunch. "LineMan" looks like LucasArt's Pipe Dream, but it's different in play. Make enclosed shapes by simply rotating the pipes in place as fast as the program lays them down. This is also an entertaining diversion. In "Flying Pictures," you control a character and try to clear screens of objects by "throwing" identical objects. In "Shadows," you blast fields of asteroids and find the invisible ones by tracking their traces. "Fast Ring" asks you to connect a series of markers against the clock, and "Crete" has you manipulate tiles to create paths through mazes. Of these last four, "Fast Ring" is the easiest one to get into and the most compelling. I didn't enjoy "Flying Pictures," "Shadows" or "Crete." In all there's nothing groundbreaking here, but the games are fairly solid. So how does Russian Six Pak fare against entertainment packs before it? Its graphics are clean and well-done, and the sound effects and music augment the game experience. But in general, I prefer the games in Microprose's Entertainment Pack (Dr. Floyd), and those in Microsoft's Entertainment Pack 2. Against these, Russian Six Pak is just all right. *** (3 stars) Take My CD-ROM, Please After making a mark on TV's Saturday Night Live and performing on the comedy circuit, what's a comic to do? How about going interactive on CD- ROM? Such is the case with comedian Dennis Miller in Sanctuary Wood's Dennis Miller: That's News to Me -- the first in Sanctuary Wood's I-Laugh series on CD-ROM. It is something of a historical (hysterical) retrospective of last year. Pick a month and a topic, and Miller, appearing in full video, speaks his mind and offers his perspective. You essentially pick and choose, then sit back and listen. The program delivers on its premise. The dialogue is clever, biting and entertaining, and the graphics and use of video are first-rate. This product is an innovative idea from Sanctuary Woods -- it's essentially interactive comedy. The down side is that the program is limited. After watching it a few times, you've heard all of the lines. Also, Miller's brand of cynical humor isn't for everyone. Personally I don't see what's so funny about some of the topics -- last year's Malibu fire in Southern California, for one. But the pokes at politicians are a scream. If you're a Miller fan, you'll especially enjoy this one. *** (3 stars) A Day in the Life of Charles Schultz If you've always dreamt of publishing your own brand of humor in the Sunday comics, IntraCorp's Cartoon Maker may be for you. It lets you create single-panel cartoons, just like those that dress the newspaper's funny pages. The program comes with all the tools to create comics, including clip- art that consists of backgrounds, figures, adjustable talking balloons and objects. You can adjust the position of the characters, along with their sizes, poses and facial expressions. With characters and objects in place, use the program's paint-like tools to color the comics. But unlike bit-map paint programs, once you color an object, you're free to move it around -- objects retain their colors and moving them won't change the background. Cartoon Maker also offers cartoon conventions to enhance your slides -- for example, smoke to indicate smoldering anger, pain "stars," blur lines to indicate motion and, of course, talking "balloons." After creating your comics, you can print them -- the program supports various black-and-white and color printers. You can also save your cartoons to PCX, TIF, and BMP files so you can use them in other applications. Cartoon Maker is something of a Print Shop for cartoons and, like Print Shop, it's very easy to use. Cartoon Maker is novel, and you can get some pretty good results. The only problem is, the program is just a starting point and makes you desire more. I want more comprehensive clip-art and more varied characters (the enclosed ones are rather stilted and average looking). Cartoon Maker is well done, but it can be so much more. *** (3 stars) Take Computer Games for $100, Alex Jeopardy continues to play on television, and on the PC it's been around in several incarnations over the years. GameTek currently owns the PC license, and its versions (including this sports edition) feature Alex Trebek's digitized voice and images of the actual Jeopardy sets. As on TV, the game lets you play head-to-head against two opponents (computer or friends), and Alex himself moderates the contest. Choose categories and dollar amounts and, as you'd expect, be on your toes to question the answers and take advantage of those daily doubles. Since the program can't recognize your voice and your answers, you have to type them. The program accepts similar answers in many cases, but don't make any spelling mistakes. The program will penalize you for bad spelling (something Alex would never do). The game offers several improvements over older versions. If you're intimidated by the caliber of players on the show, you can select three different skill levels. Beginner's is a cakewalk and the hardest mode is quite challenging. The game also has graphics that are a quantum leap ahead of the old CGA versions. Last, although you don't get any real cash for winning in virtual Jeopardy, at least you don't get a year's supply of Lee's Press-On Nails. One thing that bothered me in earlier PC Jeopardy versions -- and it's the same in this version -- is that you can't see your opponent's scores as you wager in Final Jeopardy. The $64,000 question is, why not? This is a major oversight. Other than that, it's fun to play and well done. *** (3 stars) Serf's Up Castles conjure images of chivalry, romance and adventure, and no program brings this to the PC better than Interplay's Castles II: Siege & Conquest. The original game is a sequel that's about a year old, and offers excellent strategy and political intrigue with real-time battles. And now it's back in an enhanced CD-ROM version. There are a lot of games resurrected on CD-ROM and, for the most part, they're recycled games -- shovelware. Most publishers use CD-ROM as a means to milk a little more out of their cash cows. But Castles II is not medieval replay. It's an entire new multimedia experience on CD-ROM. The excellent Castles game, which is intact, stands on its own. You become the lord of your castle, and you gain power and influence over the country through a combination of war and politics. Throughout, you choose how to use your resources. In the end, it's a matter of building your armies and negotiating allies, all while making sure there's enough food to feed your people and resources to work with. The CD-ROM version features BBC videos that explain different aspects of castle construction, along with diagrams of famous castles. Also, the game offers enhanced sound effects that add to the game experience. Castles II is almost an interactive multimedia title on castles, although it doesn't offer the hypertext usually associated with these kinds of programs. I wasn't planning to review this one, but after taking a brief look I was impressed and wanted to make a mention. If you liked Castles II and are interested in castles, this one is worth a look. ***** (5 stars) Last, if you're hooked on Doom, make sure you check out the registered copy. It's well worth it. There are new levels, transporters, weapons, and hideous monsters, and it's also more challenging. This one is worth some late nights and coffee-filled days. Talk to you later, I've got some monsters to blow away. -=*=- Wayne Kawamoto works as a market analyst in Los Angeles. When he's not writing about games, Wayne says, he's playing them. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for columns (addressed to him in care of PCM, on CompuServe as 71O53,3O1O, or via the Internet at 71O53.3O1O @compuserve.com), but he regrets that he cannot respond individually to letters. -=*=- TOURNAMENT CHAMPIONS Cartoon Maker: IntraCorp, 7200 Corporate Center Drive, Suite 500, Miami, FL 33126, (800) 468-7226. REQUIRES: 286+ CPU, 640K, DOS 3.3+, EGA or VGA. Epson dot-matrix, HP LaserJet, DeskJet and PaintJet printers are supported. Castles II: Seige and Conquest: Interplay Productions, 17922 Fitch Ave., Irvine, CA 92714, (714) 553-6678; $49.95 for CD-ROM version, $19.95 for floppy-disk version. REQUIRES: 2MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive and a sound card. Dennis Miller: That's News to Me: Sanctuary Woods, 1875 S. Grant St., Suite 260, San Mateo, CA 94402, (415) 578-6340; $29.95. REQUIRES: 386SX+ CPU, 4MB of RAM, Windows 3.1, a CD-ROM drive, SVGA (256-color) graphics, and a sound card. Jeopardy! Sports Edition: GameTek, 2999 NE 191st St., Suite 500, North Miami Beach, FL 33180, (305) 935-3995; $39.95. REQUIRES: 640K, MCGA or VGA graphics and a sound card. Russian Six Pak: Interplay Productions, 17922 Fitch Ave., Irvine, CA 92714, (714) 553-6678; $15.95 for DOS version, $19.95 for Windows version. REQUIRES: 286+ CPU, DOS 3.1+. -=-------------- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- --------------=- Working in Windows \|/ by Greg Law ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Microsoft updates free to download" UPDATES TO WINDOWS AND WORD Microsoft recently released two new updates for Windows 3.10 and Word for Windows 6.0. The updates are freely available on the Microsoft Download Service (206-936-6735), CompuServe and via the Internet at ftp.microsoft.com. The Windows 3.11 update is distributed in the form of a self-extracting file (WWO981.EXE in Section 10, Windows 3.1 Appnotes). It consists of a new 386-enhanced mode kernel (KRLN386.EXE), graphics-device interface (GDI.EXE) and user interface (USER.EXE). It also includes updated dynamic- link libraries for common dialogs (COMMDLG.DLL), an updated universal printer driver (UNIDRV.DLL), and an updated PostScript driver (PSCRIPT. DRV). No information is included explaining what's new in the update of what problems, if any, the update is supposed to resolve. Once the update is installed, the only noticeable difference is that the About dialog box in Program Manager and File Manager now report Windows Version 3.11. The Word for Windows 6.0a update is also distributed in a self- extracting file (WORD6OA.EXE) and includes no details about what has been fixed or improved. One noticeable difference is that the update includes VSHARE.386, a 386-enhanced mode version of SHARE.EXE, that seems to resolve a lot of the file-sharing problems I've been having. As you are probably aware, Word for Windows 6.0 requires SHARE.EXE be loaded in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file or it refuses to run. The problem here is that SHARE.EXE implements file locking by default, so you can't have two copies of the same file open even if neither application can write to the file. For example, I use the SAM Amateur Callsign Database with three applications -- none of which write to the database files. The first application is JNOS, a full-service packet-radio BBS based on TCP/IP, that allows users to look up the name and address of an FCC-issued callsign. The second application is HyperLog, which I use to log all stations I contact by radio. When I enter a callsign into HyperLog, it enters the name and address from the database and lets me know if I've worked that station previously. The third application is the software included with the SAM Amateur Callsign Database, which allows me to browse the database by callsign or by name, or to generate reports listing all amateurs in a particular city or state. This is often useful if I don't know the exact callsign or know only the person's name or location -- for example if I want to look up an old friend that I haven't seen in years. The problem is that SHARE.EXE won't let me use the database with more than one application at a time, which isn't acceptable. On the other hand, I can run all three applications simultaneously with VSHARE.386 installed in the SYSTEM.INI file (device=vshare.386 in the [386Enh] section). If you install SHARE.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, be absolutely certain it is loaded before any other memory-resident utilities -- an exception is that it can (and perhaps should) be loaded after your disk cache. I mistakenly loaded SHARE after Norton's SmartCan and got some spectacular results. The system was working fine when suddenly Norton SmartCan reported the unerase database was locked, Word for Windows 6.0 reported the document I was working on was locked, and Norton Commander reported a sharing violation when I tried to delete a file. -=*=- Computers are Greg Law's hobby as well as his vocation, and he enjoys programming on all types. In addition to his duties on PC-Link (username PC GREG), he can be contacted on Delphi, username GREGL, or via the Internet at gregl@delphi.com. -=------------=- T-H-E E-N-D F-O-R N-O-W -=-------------=-