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Graphic Interpretation - To CMD or not to CMD
by Bruce Thomas

A short time ago there was a thread in the comp.sys.cbm newsgroup on the Internet that slammed CMD and this very magazine. At first I found these comments a little hard to swallow but then realized that the person had a point, albeit a misguided one in my mind.

The person thought Commodore World Magazine was nothing more than a thinly veiled advertisement for CMD products. In an effort to show that writers do listen to their readers I shall try to get through this column without mentioning CMD or any of their terrific products - oops, too late.

Now, at this stage in the life of Commodore computers, when there aren't many manufacturers or developers around anymore, we should be grateful that CMD is still in this market supporting us. Hell, they don't just support us, they have given us more life than Commodore ever did. By creating such wonderful enhancements to our computing environment as RAMLink, HD-series Hard Drives and FD-series Floppy Drives, SmartMouse, 20 MHz SuperCPU Accelerators and JiffyDOS, CMD has greatly extended the useful lives of our computers.

On top of their originality they have also saved, and in some cases improved upon, products that otherwise would have disappeared totally from the market. These items include such things as the SID Symphony cartridge, SwiftLink (now Turbo232), RAM Expansion units (with original Commodore REC chip), geoCable (now geoCable II) plus many software titles including the entire GEOS family of products. Ads for all of these items appear in this magazine.

Looking at things from this perspective it is easy to see how the person could think that this publication is a self-serving product for CMD. Tough not to promote yourself when there are no competitors for the majority of the products that one produces. Nevertheless, there are ads between the covers for a variety of other Commodore-related businesses - support them or they may disappear.

Impartiality

OK Bruce, get down off your soapbox. This column is supposed to be about GEOS. Of course, since CMD is the supplier of GEOS, and almost every major commercial add-on product, I felt I had a tough job trying to fill space without promoting CMD and their products.

So what am I going to do about this situation? I thought about the problem, looked through the CMD product catalog, and realized that there is still a lot of GEOS software that CMD doesn't carry. I went back to old GeoWorld magazine issues and found addresses. After my searching I wrote letters. When some of these came back I searched the Internet for updated snail- and e-mail addresses.

What I found out is that some of the authors of some great GEOS programs still offer their products for sale. Some of the authors replied that they no longer had any Commodore equipment and released their software to the Public Domain. Some didn't reply at all but did offer products at one time that would still prove very useful - maybe they need to hear it from more than just one writer from Canada.

Sources

Tom Adams (tom.adams*sysnet.net), President of Meeting 64/128 Users Through the Mail Users Group (a great resource if you don't have a local group), has offered to make copies of Spike Dethman's GEOS Disk 1 for the reasonable price of U.S. $2, postage included. Spike no longer supports the Commodore but don't let that stop you from sending him the $10 shareware fee he asked for. Two programs on this disk that I find indispensable are geoPack (great for transferring GEOS files) and Paint Rotate (excellent geoPaint utility) plus there are input drivers and many other useful programs. Read more about it in C.W. Issue 8 (oops).

What makes GEOS so great is the integration of the system. A graphic made in geoPaint can be inserted into a geoPublish document. A geoFile database entry can be printed on a label by geoLabel. Text from geoWrite can be added to a geoCalc spreadsheet and on and on. To be able to have more than one text or photo scrap you must use albums. Of course, an album set up for one project might not be good for the next. To move scraps from one album to another you need a utility. Rick Coleman wrote Photo Mover and Text Mover to handle just such jobs. The disk (U.S. $15) comes with a number of photo albums and versions of both programs for 40 and 80 column screens. Read the review in C.W. #5 (oops).

The Software Guild is a company run by Roger Lawhorn. Roger wrote such great GEOS programs as geoLabel (the BEST GEOS label-making program), geoPrint (cards, banners, signs, etc.), SuperBOX (64/128 versions to see more than 15 files in DB), plus many other programs. All of the programs, plus some previously unreleased software, are available for $30 which includes 2 1581 disks and all of the source code in case you want to learn some GEOS programming. For more info visit the web site - http://members.iglou.com/luckykds/tsg.c64

Jean Major no longer owns a Commodore and released his work into the Public Domain. Jean's DBGETFILES was a popular GEOS fix for the 15 file limit in dialog boxes. Other programs he wrote include EggTimer (count down hours and minutes), patches for several applications, a 1581 bootmaker, a screen shot D.A. and an Icon Grabber to name a few. A number of geoPacked files (get Spike's disk) containing Jean's work can be found on the CMD web site (oops).

At one time Paul Murdaugh offered patches for GEOS applications so they would work with 4 drives. While I had no use for this service at the time the arrival of Wheels has changed that. I have not received any response from my letter to Paul so doubt he still offers this service. Markus Kanet, author of the forthcoming MP3 GEOS upgrade told me of a patch in the works for four drive support in German GEOS applications. Once the German patch is done an attempt to create patches for American versions will be made - watch for this to fill the void Paul has left (unless you can find Paul).

Joe Buckley recently gave Dale Sidebottom permission to include his Wrong Is Write (WiW) on the Laser Lover's Disk. At the time, Joe told Dale that his Storm Disk 1 is still available for $20 but Joe hasn't answered my mail. In addition to WiW the Storm Disk contains REU ZAP II (makes loading an REU quick'n'easy), Graphic Storm II (convert many graphics formats into GEOS), Album Reverter (in case you only have photo manager V1.0), some fonts and font utilities, various boot disk maker programs and two versions of the GEOS game CIRCE (see C.W. #18 - oops). The 1541 disk is packed on both sides.

Randy Winchester was a strong presence in the Commodore community years ago writing the AntiGrav Toolkit column in GeoWorld, creating the KeyDOS ROM and pioneering PostScript printing. Randy also wrote a lot of good GEOS utilities and some fun programs on two disks - Randy's GeoDisk 1 (64) and Randy's GeoDisk II (64 and 128). The files are all on his web site as are his geoWorld articles.

http://web.mit.edu/randy/www/antigrav/antigrav.html

Anyhow, there you have it. A column that, hopefully, isn't just more promotion for all of the great products that CMD offers. Until next time, enGEOy your Commodore.

Sidebar

Ordering Info:

Spike Dethman Disk
c/o Tom Adams
4427-39 St.
Brentwood MD 20722-1022

Photo Mover V3.0
Rick Coleman
P.O. Box 44
Sheridan WY 82801

Roger Lawhorn
The Software Guild
1723 Greentree Blvd, Apt #25
Clarksville IN 47129

Joe Buckley
C/o Storm Systems
464 Beale Street
W. Quincy, MA
02169