[Please note: this is a text only version of the on-line magazine, OS/2 e-Zine!.  OS/2 e-Zine! is a graphical, WWW OS/2 publication and, if possible, should be viewed in its HTML format available on-line at http://www.os2ezine.com/ or zipped for off-line reading.  Some graphically oriented articles have been removed from this document.]


OS/2 e-Zine!		September 1, 1998	volume 3, number 13
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Copyright 1998		Falcon Networking  	ISSN 1203-5696

         "Over Three Quarters of a Million Satisfied Visitors!"


OPINIONS:

  Chris' Rant
  Chris Wright


REVIEWS:
  
  GAMES IN OS/2

  Introduction - Chris Wenham
  Drilling Billy - Colin Hildinger
  Galactic Civilizations Gold - Lief Clennon
  Hopkins:FBI - Dr. Dirk Terrell

  First Looks: MAME for OS/2 - Lief Clennon

  First Looks and Nifty Gadgets

    CD2MP3 PM          SpellGuard


ARTICLES:

A Changing Of The Guard - Trevor Smith and Dr. Dirk Terrell
  The e-Zine! is under new management! Farewells from our 
  Editor-In-Spirit and a message from our new owner

What's In Store For OS/2 e-Zine! - Chris Wenham
  What this change in ownership means for the e-Zine! and
  what you can expect from us in the future


END NOTES:

  Top Software from BMT Micro


ADMINISTRIVIA:

* How to Subscribe to OS/2 e-Zine! for FREE.
* How YOU can Sponsor OS/2 e-Zine!
* The Sponsors that Make this Issue Possible


Copyright 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696

***********************************

A Changing Of The Guard	- by Trevor Smith and Dirk Terrell

Trevor Smith - Haligonian Media

By now many of you may have heard the news that OS/2 e-Zine! has been purchased by Falcon Networking, the company responsible for (http://www.os2ss.com/) the OS/2 Supersite and many other OS/2 resources. (The sale was first announced on the WarpCast News Service on (http://www.os2ss.com/warpcast/wc1986.html) August 21st.) 

As you can imagine, the decision to sell OS/2 e-Zine! was something that I took very seriously. It has been my job, my passion and my life for the past three years and saying goodbye to it will not be an easy thing. Still, it was the right decision for me and for the magazine. 

When I decided that it was time for a change, obviously the most important thing to me was finding the right owner for the OS/2 community's premier magazine. Fortunately, the company at the top of my list, Falcon Networking, was my first and last stop. I knew that Dirk Terrell -- Falcon's owner, long time contributor to OS/2 e-Zine! and dedicated OS/2 aficionado -- would be capable, enthusiastic and eager to move OS/2 e-Zine! forward in ways no one else could. 

Now that I am stepping down as Editor-in-Chief, Chris Wenham will also get the credit he deserves as the backbone of OS/2 e-Zine!. His promotion from Senior Editor to Editor-in-Chief is an overdue acknowledgment of the sometimes superhuman effort he expends every two weeks overseeing and putting together each issue. With Chris' and the rest of the staff's continued hard work, I am confident that the coming years will be even better than the previous ones. 

Since we announced the transfer of ownership many people have been asking what my future plans are. Some have worried that I am forsaking OS/2. Nothing could be further from the truth. My plans include some non-computer related endeavors (everyone needs a change now and then) but my computer use is still and will likely remain OS/2-based for the foreseeable future. I still have not found any platform that is as pleasant, stable and efficient to use as Warp and I doubt I will for a long time. While I won't be an official evangelist anymore, I will continue to carry the OS/2 torch and I'll be in Chicago this year for (http://www.warpstock.org/) Warpstock. I'd love to meet you there and finally put faces to the names I've been reading on the 'net for the past three years. (Have you <a href="https://secure.falcon-net.net/BMT/warpstock.html) registered yet?) 

Before I go, I'd like to thank all the readers of OS/2 e-Zine! -- especially <a href="sponsor3.htm) those of you who have been generous enough to help us out financially over the years. Your e-mails and support have made the whole existence of OS/2 e-Zine! worth the effort. Thank you. 

Sincerely, 
Trevor Smith 

President 
Haligonian Media 
(trevor@haligonian.com) trevor@haligonian.com

Dr. Dirk Terrell - Falcon Networking

We at Falcon Networking are very excited about taking the reins of OS/2 e-Zine! I have worked with Trevor on the magazine since nearly the very beginning because I have always believed that the OS/2 community needed a quality source of information on software, hardware, and the operating system itself. Under Trevor's leadership and tireless effort, OS/2 e-Zine! has grown to become a biweekly treasure chest of OS/2-related information. He and I worked together to create WarpCast, which delivers up-to-the-minute news to thousands of OS/2 users everyday. There is no doubt that we will miss Trevor's tireless enthusiasm for producing a topnotch product for the OS/2 community. But I am sure his input will continue to grace the pages of OS/2 e-Zine!

But where do we go from here? Bigger and better! Other OS/2 related e-zines have come and gone, but OS/2 e-Zine! has gotten better and better. And it will continue to do so. With the resources of Falcon Networking, we will be able to push OS/2 e-Zine! to the next level. Over the next few months you will see new features in the magazine. IBM's benign neglect of OS/2 in our market has caused a lot of uncertainty about the future of OS/2 for people who don't buy 10,000 licenses at a time. Any future that OS/2 has for us will be carved out by users like you and me. OS/2 e-Zine! is a big part of that future.

And under the editorial leadership of our longtime Senior Editor and now Editor in Chief, Chris Wenham, it will grow into a magazine without peer in the electronic world.

Of course, none of this will be possible without the people like yourself that read the magazine and the sponsors that give us the financial resources to produce OS/2 e-Zine! We are in a rather precarious position as a community. There are developers who produce quality OS/2 software and will do so as long as they can afford it. When they advertise in our magazine, please consider looking at what they have to offer. A healthy community requires developers who create quality products, information sources who provide a means for learning about those products, and people like yourself who purchase them. We at Falcon Networking, through OS/2 e-Zine!, the OS/2 Supersite, and WarpCast, will continue to provide quality sources of information. By working together, each doing our part, we can do what IBM seems incapable of doing- ensuring a healthy future for OS/2.

Dirk Terrell

OS/2 Supersite Administrator and President of Falcon Networking

***********************************

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***********************************

What's In Store for OS/2 e-Zine!	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: Closing down?! Never! Here's a sampling of what's to come in the e-Zine! for the next year.

As new Editor In Chief of OS/2 e-Zine! it was very interesting to hear rumors of our own demise shortly after the change in management was announced on WarpCast. My only disappointment was that the rumor wasn't posted in a public forum for me to properly rebut! The absolute truth is that we're not planning to go away for a very long time to come. In fact we've already scheduled issues and product reviews all the way into August of next year.

So what's going to be in the next 22 information packed issues of OS/2 e-Zine? First you'll notice more of the subtle and evolutionary changes that have already been taking place, such as the introduction of the Hypernews forums for reader feedback and the summaries now found at the beginning of each article. Making a debut in this issue is a new product rating system that scores applications, games and hardware based on factors such as suitability to task, polish, durability, and OS/2 leverage. More changes to come will be geared towards helping you make a better decision, such as feature comparison tables and performance charts.

New regular columns and "miniseries" will be making an appearance too, such as Chris Wright's new advocacy column beginning  this week. Coming soon are more how-to series, such as: Rexx Newbies - a series that teaches the fundamentals of Rexx programming to beginners; Vanity In The Workplace Shell (Part II) - a guide to beautifying your desktop to win all those screenshot bragging contests with; Form And Function in the Workplace Shell - a guide to enhancing the usability of OS/2's shell; and Living Mouseless - all about reducing dependency on your mouse to a minimum, while still retaining the GUI's benefits.

Also to come are more hardware reviews. Thanks to so many requests from our readers, we've put more effort into this category. In the works are comparison reviews of Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPSs), Removable Media, Video Cards, and even scrolling mice!

Reader Feedback

But we're anxious to hear more from you, our readers. What have we left out? What do we still need to do? What remains to be changed? What should be left alone? We've never taken feedback lightly, even from those who don't read our publication. Because it's precisely because of the feedback we've received that we've been making the changes you've noticed and will come to notice soon. Write to me, (editor@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham, and tell me all that's on your mind. 

Here's to 22 more issues of our best!

***********************************

Chris' Rant	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: Have the various Internet "Market Research" campaigns actually been hurting OS/2's chances in the long run?

Death Of A Thousand Promises

To you and me it should be crystal clear right now that OS/2 is not surviving as a general-purpose operating system. That is, all the time it tries to be a Jack-of-all-trades, OS/2 is suffering from the effects of being spread too thin. For OS/2 to continue survival it must find a way to specialize. Now while IBM have their ideas for a niche, they are vague and constantly shifting. To me it seems that OS/2 has inherent talents that would make it perfect for a narrowly focused task. Under ideal circumstances the market would find the tasks to fit the talents easily -- sort of like tossing iron filings onto a table to see where the magnets have been hidden underneath. The problem is that the market hasn't been allowed to speak. Because some people are throwing paper confetti, and everybody is pretending to be a magnet. I'll explain. 

In past months, several companies have put out "feelers" to test the potential of the OS/2 market. They do this by asking anyone who's interested in buying a proposed piece of OS/2 software to send them a request, which the company naively considers to be a potential order waiting to be filled. What they get, inevitably, are thousands of requests from seemingly eager OS/2 users who promise they're truly interested in buying the program. From that response the company then works out what the pricing structure and marketing focus should be. 

Months and months go by, and then one day the company, having been charged up with such a positive response, releases the product that is everything it was promised to be. It sells a couple hundred copies in the first couple of months, after which the graph plunges to a miserable trickle of sales. What happened? 

The obvious; thousands of the people who promised support for the product were being less than sincere. 

"Well, Duh!" you say. But of course, it's unreasonable to expect everyone who promises to support a product to actually come through with the cash once the product ships. Maybe some of them lost their job or had unexpected expenses, maybe a competing product hit the market first, and maybe some just changed their minds. But for OS/2 the numbers are way out of proportion. Who wants to bet that Opera software will really see 10,000 orders as a result of Project Magic? In fact, does anyone really think they'll see more than three or four hundred at most? 

We've been guilty of believing our failing support is producing the illusion of a lively OS/2 market and vendors have been guilty of thinking that real market research can be conducted over the Internet. Both parties are wrong. When Opera conducted Project Magic, they turned their market research into a game, one where the objective for OS/2 users was no longer to show a realistic measure of interest, but instead to beat the Mac and Linux users' scores. Now what will happen when Opera/2 is a colossal flop? We'll see vicious testimony of an "unprofitable OS/2 market", the type that scares away other vendors. 

This is what I mean by confetti - software that just cannot manage in the OS/2 market anymore. When it's confused for the iron filings -- the software that can thrive -- people get the wrong idea when it won't stick to the magnets. Likewise, when everybody pretends they're a magnet -- be that a games player, a web surfer, a desktop publisher, a Java developer or whatever - just to make it seem as if there are a lot of magnets, then even the people throwing the iron filings cannot tell what is and is not working. 

Thousands of requests, but only a handful of orders. Those profit margin estimates had been driven way off by a vaporous response, so what could have been a modestly profitable venture turned into a disaster instead. You see, sales don't have to be in the tens of thousands to make a product successful - just sales to the right people at the right price. 

OS/2 users must resist the urge to sign up their support for any of these widely publicized "market research" dramas, because polling millions of self-selected web surfers is not the way you do basic market research. What's good for an opinion poll is not good for a profitable venture. 

Send an e-mail instead that explains why you think the method is wrong. This way the vendor won't think his poll has worked, but is merely registering zero interest.

                         - * -

Register your interest in this column by joining in with our (http://www.os2ezine.com/forums/get/forums/rant/Sept1-1998.html) Hypernews Forum. If I get at least 10 replies I promise to write one more.

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Editor In Chief of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Senior Editor which means he now takes all the blame.

***********************************

Chris Wright	

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing in a Den of Lions, Part 1
 
Jean-Louis Gassee, the president of Be, Inc., is crazy like a fox. 

For those of you not in the know, Be, Inc. makes the BeOS, a very interesting operating system that was designed from scratch to be optimized for multimedia. It has recently become cross-platform -- it now runs on both PowerPC and Intel machines. And it's a good operating system: blazing fast (it boots in 17 seconds!), stable, intelligently designed, and has already collected a small but loyal following of developers. All of which, of course, would seem to put it right in Microsoft's path. 

Microsoft doesn't like competitors, and how could BeOS not be in competition with the WinX platform? But if you ask Gassee, Be and Microsoft will never, ever be in competition. 

Microsoft makes the dominant operating system for the Intel PC platform, he says. Be is only interested in being a multimedia development platform. Use Windows for your day-to-day work, boot to BeOS when you need to work on some high-end media project and you need the advantages of an aggressive multitasking OS with a 64-bit filesystem. 

Does anyone else see how smart this is? 

Be is a small company funded on venture capital. They're not interested in dominating the market -- they're too small to do it effectively, even if they wanted to. What they want to do is survive. They've spent a lot of time creating an operating system that is really quite good, and they want a place for it in the grand scheme of things. Not the top place, mind you, just a place. 

They're carving a niche. 

Gassee wants the multimedia niche in the Intel PC world. If BeOS gets accepted as "the multimedia operating system" in the same way that Apple was accepted as "the desktop publishing operating system", it has a reason to continue existing. It won't need to constantly be compared to Microsoft WinX platforms, you won't need to speculate on whether or not it can survive. Multimedia development is a smaller market than the market for a general use operating system, but it's a market of professionals. It's a market vendors will want to cater to. More importantly, it's a market with a lot of possibilities that haven't been tapped yet, meaning that to developers, the field is wide open. 

And although it's a niche market, it's a market you can grow from. Multimedia developers don't usually sit in front of a computer doing just one thing. Multimedia developers want office suites with spreadsheets and word processors and databases, they want financial applications to balance their checkbooks, they want games to play when they're not creating dazzling cavalcades of sight and sound for our amusement and edification. And after a while, they'll get tired of booting from one partition to another. 

The demand for BeOS to be more of a general purpose OS will, in time, grow. Vendors will meet that demand. As BeOS becomes more entrenched in the multimedia niche, the more comfortably it will be able to develop into a multipurpose operating system. It's a good, solid plan. It's brilliant. I might even say, it's inspired. Start small, go for a market no one is really concentrating on, and stake out your claim aggressively. Don't threaten anyone. Hang out with the carnivores, but dress like a herbivore. Watch what they do. Figure out what mistakes they've made. And don't make them yourself. 

Hindsight being 20-20, IBM should have done this with OS/2 when it released OS/2 Warp 3. Instead of promising to be everything to everybody, it should have focused on one thing and worked on building that niche. These days, IBM has decided on a niche for OS/2, and it seems as if they're going to leave the rest of us behind. 

But we can play this game just as well as IBM can. In my honest opinion, we can play it better because IBM can't seem to focus when it comes to marketing their products. OS/2 users have an amazing amount of focus (some would say it's due to willpower, others would claim it's due to dementia) when it comes to wanting our operating system to succeed. So I propose that we, as OS/2 users, must focus our efforts on creating a niche for OS/2. And I propose that the niche we need to create be the World Wide Web. 

"OS/2: your turnkey solution for the World Wide Web." OS/2 Warp Server to host the web sites (or Warp client and Apache, for smaller sites), OS/2 Warp Client to develop them. In terms of the software available for web development, we already have all the tools you need to host and maintain a web site: graphics programs, html editors, html preprocessors, web servers, and most of the little tools that fill in the gaps in between. Web development could be our niche. If we pursued it aggressively enough, if we were able to get OS/2 vendors, developers, and end users in sync, we could even do it without IBM's help. OS/2 could be the SOHO dream turnkey solution for hosting a small business on the web. 

But in order to it, we need to actually do it. Not just sit around talking about how it would be a great idea, but actually roll up our collective sleeves, get dirty, and take on IBM, Microsoft, the mainstream press and everybody else who thinks OS/2 is dead and that we have no future. If OS/2 is to survive as a client, it will require that we work hard to make it happen, because nobody else cares. 

Don't get too depressed; we have a lot of things going for us already. More on that next week. 

                         - * -

(wrightc@dtcweb.com) Christopher B. Wright is a technical writer in the Richmond, VA area, and has been using OS/2 Warp since January 95.  He is also a member of Team OS/2.

***********************************

Games for OS/2 - Introduction	- by Chris Wenham

Like an exercise in Ying and Yang, we decided that if our last issue's focus was about something boring and necessary like command line shells, then this week's issue should balance it out by focusing on something exciting and completely unnecessary: Video games.

OS/2 is not known for its active games market, in fact the release of new titles for Warp has dropped off considerably as the ranks of OS/2 users metamorph into business users, technicians and the more practical minded set. But even they can't all be stuffy and left-brained all the time, there has to be some room to flex the trigger finger...

In this issue we cover three of the newest OS/2 game releases, each appealing to a progressively more mature age group. Starting with Drilling Billy, an arcade game suitable for pre-schoolers but curiously appealing to grown-ups too. Colin Hildinger comes back briefly to write for us again and talk about the game with spit-polished graphics and sound, but a slightly shaky OS/2 port.

Next comes Galactic Civilizations Gold, a strategy game that concludes the three-part saga of Galactic Civilizations which established itself is the classic OS/2 game, and took Stardock with it to fame as one of the leading OS/2 software vendors.  Lief Clennon explores the uncharted sectors again and discusses what's new in this sequel.

Lastly is Hopkins:FBI, a highly anticipated role playing game from PolyEx - a company which has also brought us Vigilance on Talos IV and the Wordup Graphics Toolkit. Hopkins:FBI is clearly for the more mature audience, as it features a high degree of blood, gore and violent animation. Dr. Dirk Terrell took the tranquilizers this time and explains what makes Hopkins:FBI so compelling.

Games Rating System

Making a debut in this issue of OS/2 e-Zine! is our new product rating system, which separately scores games, applications and hardware on four different factors. Scores range from 1 to 5, with 1 being worst and 5 being the best. For games, these factors and some examples of what the scores mean are:

Playability - How fun and addictive was it to play the game? 1: A dismally boring game. 5: A real killer experience.

Polish - How well finished was the game? 1: Buggy, unfinished, and my cat could draw better graphics. 5: Seamless perfection.

Multimedia - How much video and sound was used? 1: This is a character-mode game with no graphics. 5: Is this a game or an interactive movie?

OS/2 Leverage - Does the game take advantage of OS/2 technologies like DIVE/DART and multithreading etc.? 1: It's a DOS port that doesn't even use long filenames. 5: It was born on OS/2, you couldn't port it to another operating system if you tried.

These scores are then averaged to give an Overall Rating.

***********************************

Drilling Billy	- by Colin Hildinger

Summary:  Suitable for all ages, Drilling Billy plays a lot like Lode Runner and features great graphics and sound, but the OS/2 port is a bit rough around the edges.

You may recall from previous issues' "Gaming News" columns (sadly, they have been discontinued) a little game being developed in Denmark called "Drilling Billy." I likened the game to Load Runner (still one of my favorites, Sierra-On-Line remade it for Windows a few years ago). Well, Drilling Billy is available now and its gameplay is not a disappointment.

Installation

In order to play the OS/2 version of Billy, you are required to first install the DOS version which has all the level information. The DOS installation looks similar to other installations gamers have seen for years and was very straight forward. After that, you have to install EMX .9 (.9c with latest fixes recommended) and unzip the Billy OS/2 upgrade that you download from their web page, not the beta version that's on the CD. There's some documentation that most OS/2 users will be able to get through, but all in all it's a pretty frustrating process -- but more on this later...

Game Play

While I compared Billy to Lode Runner, Billy is actually more complex in many ways and should also share comparisons with Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers games. Sure, you dig holes and trick the bad guys into dropping into them, but there are a number of things you can pick up that help you. For instance, the tennis ball can be thrown at the bad guys and will kill some of them and bounce others across the screen. Of course, you have to chase the ball down after you use it. Bombs let you dig holes instantly, but you can use them up. There's also a magic wand that lets you create stairs and a jackhammer for digging holes faster, not to mention shoes that let you run faster, and, well, you get the idea. Oh, don't die, because then it's just you and your pickax again.

There are also a variety of different bad guys to deal with. Some are easy and can be killed any number of ways. Some are trickier, requiring you to plan ahead more to deal with them so that you can drop them through multiple holes or knock them off a high ledge with the tennis ball. And of course, some of them seem smarter than others or are really quick to get out of the holes you've dug if you don't come pound them through with your mallet immediately. The bad guys change from level to level and learning about the newest one adds to the fun of getting further into the game.

I played the game with my trusty Gravis Gamepad and wasn't disappointed. I actually had to go back and check before writing this review because I couldn't recall if the game used more than 2 of the buttons, but sure enough it did, so I recommend a joystick, preferable a 4 button kind when playing the game. Of course, since IBM didn't include installing the standard joystick driver as part of Warp 4, you'll need to download and install it. Actually, I think it's even on the device driver CD with Warp 4, but it should have been part of the base install.

Sound and Graphics

The sound and graphics are well done. The CD contains original music in redbook audio format that goes along with the game, so you have to have the CD in to play the game and hear the music. The other little touches throughout the game are also well thought out, like the deep gasp Billy takes when he steps off a high ledge. There is an intro cartoon that didn't play particularly well on my sadly outdated 3X CD-ROM drive, but it, like all the graphics in the game, were animated with a 3D rendering package. The graphical text throughout the game is also done in an unbelievable variety of languages. The web page lists: Bosnian, Catalanian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Faeroese, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Serbic, Sorabic, Spanish and Swedish.

Sadly, while Northwind has done a great job with the game, the OS/2 version is not quite what I'd call a finished product, and frankly, I don't blame Northwind. For instance, to play the DIVE version of the game, you have to use a 256 color mode. For many, this is normal, for me, it meant a reboot to play. There's also a PM version, but it was too slow to be enjoyable and the full screen version didn't work at all on my system. In order to specify a resolution beyond 800x600, it required the use of a command line switch and it didn't actually scale to my 1280x1024 screen, but ran in the middle of it, looking somewhat tiny even on my 17" monitor. Even after I got it up and running, the game would occasionally crash, and I had better luck with the 1.27 code than the newer 1.29 version now available on their web site. I ended up playing the DOS version in a full screen VDM more than anything, and it worked without a hitch here (except for one problem, but I'm convinced that my aging CD-ROM caused those troubles).

So why don't I blame Northwind? Well, frankly, they've done a fairly good job of porting their game to OS/2, and I'm sure they've put quite a bit of effort into it, but IBM just hasn't provided the tools. Sure, Northwind could do a better job and create an OS/2 based install, and I wouldn't really call the current OS/2 version 100% ready for the prime time, but darn it, it wouldn't be that hard for IBM to include some better graphics tools. DIVE/EnDIVE was a WONDERFUL start when it was first released in 1994-95, but when IBM made their switch from strategy of the month to one really bad strategy that they've decided to stick with until the end of time, they chunked all that development down the tubes. So instead of a nice tool for authors to use, we have a limited tool and people like Northwind choose something hacked together that requires EMX and doesn't work on everyone's system. Could Northwind have used straight DIVE? Yes, and I wish they had, because as much promise as I saw in the EMX-VESA routines from Johannes Martin a year or so ago, the progress just hasn't come and now Drilling Billy is crippled by the fact that it doesn't run in full screen mode on all video cards.

Also of note, and while I'm already on a bit of a tear at IBM for failing miserably to keep OS/2's multimedia subsystem up to par, since OS/2 doesn't have a good mixer board type of applet, in order to hear the CD audio I had to open OS/2's CD player and turn up the volume. And before anyone tells me about a shareware mixer that's out there, I admit to being lazy and not searching Hobbes on this one recently, but frankly, it's something much lacking in the OS/2 base install. Again, maybe Northwind could have tied straight into this with their volume controls and made this a non-issue, but I'm not a serious programmer so I'll withhold judgment on this one.

The Verdict

Drilling Billy is a pretty cool game and I'd give it a shot. At the very least, give the demo version on the web site a try and see what you think. I don't think that Northwind will quit working on getting a version together that will work on every OS/2 system, but until then, I would make sure you're able to get it up and running by running the demo version. If you have trouble, drop them an email and see if they can help, or at least let them know what hardware is still having problems.
                         - * -

Playability:	3
Polish:		3
Multimedia:	4
OS/2 Leverage:	2

Overall:	3

Drilling Billy
by (http://www.esperanto.dk/billy/) Northwind Software
MSRP: US$30

Colin Hildinger is a mechanical engineer working for a small company in Oklahoma which makes environmental systems for aircraft. He also maintains (http://www.os2games.com) The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the (http://www.ionet.net/~colin/awe32.html) AWE32 and OS/2 page in his spare time.

***********************************

Galactic Civilizations Gold	- by Lief Clennon

Summary: The Classic gets another update in this conclusion to the Galactic Civilizations saga. Combining features that were previously only available separately, GalCiv Gold also improves upon the gameplay.

Galactic Civilizations, OS/2's own competition to such strategic challenges as Civilizations and Master Of Orion, is an undeniably clunky game. The interface is rough and unpolished, the graphics are simplistic (with exceptions), the sound effects seem tacked on as an afterthought. And yet this game has won multiple accolades, including high praise from PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World (two publications which rarely even acknowledge OS/2's existence), and two of our own Readers' Choice Awards. Why?

The Play's The Thing

The introduction is quite simple: a group of colonists from Earth set out in the first experimental interstellar ship, to take mankind to the stars. But something went wrong (as things always must, or there wouldn't be much of a plot), and the ship's engine opens a gateway to another galaxy. And so the game begins: you must find habitable planets to colonize, develop your modest technologies, and deal with the other races who live in this galaxy, whether that be by defending yourself, annihilating them mercilessly, or learning to coexist. As an aside, the illustrations of the alien races are exquisite, without a doubt the best graphical feature of the game.

While the implementation leaves a lot to be desired, the basic concepts of the game are sound and well-thought-out. If you can learn its quirks and work around them, the game is fun to play. But that alone only makes it passably okay: the thing that writes this game into the history books as an enduring classic is its AI.

Where most games fudge the rules in their favor if you raise the difficulty, GalCiv simply thinks harder. Like a chess simulator, it adamantly follows the same rules you do. Unlike a chess simulator, it has to do this for an extremely large and highly complex playing board, and this is where OS/2 shines through: using multithreading, Galactic Civilizations is still thinking while you're taking your turn.

The Good, The Bad-- you know.

Perhaps the greatest feature of Galactic Civilizations Gold is the range of challenges it can give you. You can select the size of the galaxy, from "Tiny" to "ENORMOUS!!" (each of which lives up to its name quite well). You can select the number of opponents you will be facing, and the intelligence level and general disposition of each. You can decide whether you want to deal with the Ominorians -- a highly advanced race devoted to the casual annihilation of everything that isn't them. You can activate the Shipyards, which allow you to create your own uses for the technologies you've acquired, rather than just using the prepackaged ship types -- and allow your enemies to do the same.

And last but not least, perhaps the most interesting new addition GalCiv Gold has over GalCiv II, is the option to play World Civilizations. The rules of the game all stay the same, with a couple of minor exceptions, but the setting changes completely: instead of a futuristic colony of mankind struggling for survival in a foreign universe, you get to found an empire at the dawn of humanity. Instead of Cold Fusion and Controlled Gravity, you strive for the secrets of Irrigation and Bronze Working. Of course, it still uses the GalCiv game engine, so your warriors and cities are referred to as star systems and spaceships; regardless, I've had as much fun playing in this mode as in the normal game.

I mentioned that the interface is clunky. Well, it's the plain truth. Often you're not notified of things it would be nice to know of -- population increases, for instance. Also, while GalCiv makes excellent use of the PM's graphical tools to make its interface look good at any screen resolution and color depth, I do wish it wouldn't insist on using you entire screen, no matter what. You can re-size the actual GalCiv window, but you can't re-size some of the parts inside it, which means it's full-screen or scrollbars. This is probably okay at 800x600, but some of us use four times that. Admirably, though, the interface is designed so that it doesn't need to have the focus for most operations: this means that if you stick to using the mouse, you can have other programs running in front of GalCiv and still be able to play the game.

Perhaps the worst difficulty, though, comes for those who prefer to use the keyboard. GalCiv supports this completely -- and very badly. Very often it not only doesn't do what you'd expect, it does something you most definitely do not want. A couple of good examples: in the select-a-technology screen, where you decide what to research, the up and down arrow keys scroll through the list but at the same time will also move whatever spaceship happens to be first in line. Plus, when certain alert windows pop up with a button that will take you to the planet where something happened that you should react to, pressing enter won't select that button. It will select the Turn button (the last one you clicked!), and you lose one turn's activity completely. And the alert window stays there. Worse, this doesn't happen with every alert. Usually they just go away, so it's easy to build a habit of just hitting enter.

Endgame

Galactic Civilizations is not a game that will appeal to everyone, but I think it will appeal to most. And while I doubt anyone will play it obsessively for weeks on end, I also doubt anyone will leave it on the shelf forever. It's the kind of game that's only good in small doses, but in those doses it's very good. I recommend it to every OS/2 enthusiast on principle, as it is the classic OS/2 game; but I also recommend it to any serious gamers looking for a real and fair challenge that doesn't wear out over time.

                         - * -

Playability:	3
Polish:		3
Multimedia:	3
OS/2 Leverage:	5

Overall:	3.5


Galactic Civilizations Gold
by (http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems
MSRP: US$49.95

(liefc@os2ezine.com) Lief Clennon is a computer hobbyist and Team OS/2 member currently residing in Albuquerque, NM. He can usually be found badgering his friends on IRC.

***********************************

Hopkins: FBI	- by Dr. Dirk Terrell

Summary: The stunning artwork, but sometimes gory scenes will make this strategy game appeal to a more mature audience.

Hopkins: FBI is the latest game from PolyEx software who previously brought us Vigilance on Talos V (see (http://www.os2ezine.com/v2n4/talosv.htm) the review in OS/2 e-Zine!). Hopkins: FBI is a strategy game where you are an FBI agent gathering clues in an effort to capture a notorious criminal. The game has a very polished look with professionally done graphics and if you like these strategy games, it will definitely have you staying up past your normal bedtime to catch the bad guys. Be warned, though, Hopkins: FBI is not a game for children. There is some extremely graphic animation in this game.

Installation and Requirements

I was a little surprised to discover that the game has no installation routine. Instead, you install the game by opening the drive object for your CD-ROM and dragging the Hopkins folder to your hard drive or Desktop, although I wouldn't recommend the latter. Now, that is certainly very simple but it means that you will have create a program object yourself unless you want to start the game by double-clicking on the HOPKINS.EXE file or typing it a command prompt.
Hopkins requires Warp 4 with functioning DIVE and DART systems for the video and sound.

Gameplay

The story behind the game is that a terrorist organization had stolen nuclear devices and detonated them, killing thousands. Later, the leader of the organization, Bernie Berckson, was captured and sentenced to death. But due to a malfunction in the equipment, Berckson survived the execution and escaped. Your job is to find him and his cronies and bring them to justice.
To find Berckson, you will have to gather clues and items to solve problems. At the start of the game, you find yourself in your apartment. As you move the mouse around over different items you can perform various actions on them such as "Look" and "Search." Searching will sometimes reveal items that have no immediate use, but are required at later points in the game. For example, in the beginning you need to drive to the central bank where hostages are being held, but you have to find your keys first. You will also encounter various characters during the game that you can talk to and gather information that will help you in your quest to find Bernie Berckson.

Polish and Performance

The artwork and music in Hopkins: FBI are very good. I would venture to guess that the majority of the development expenses went into the artwork. You can tell, though, that the animation during the game, such as when characters are walking around, is done as sequences of bitmaps rather than real-time rendering like you see in some other games. But that doesn't detract from the game at all. Hopkins is a strategy game, not a first-person shoot-em up game.

The game ran well and never crashed. However, I did notice one instance where it looked like Hopkins was walking through the air. Perhaps Agent Hopkins has an alter ego like Clark Kent.

Unfortunately, this game contains some very graphic animation that seems totally unnecessary. During the bank robbery at the beginning of the game, for example, you see people have large fractions of their heads blown off by shotgun blasts in graphic detail. Sure, it makes the bad guys look really bad, but I think they took it just a bit too far.

Because of its nature as a strategy game, Hopkins: FBI doesn't require the latest 450 MHz Pentium II with a gigabyte of RAM to play. I couldn't tell any performance difference between a 200 MHz Pentium Pro and a Cyrix P150+ machine.

Conclusion

Hopkins: FBI is a game that will keep you occupied for quite a while. I've had it for several weeks and I still have quite a ways to go to get the bad guys. PolyEx has given us another well-done piece of OS/2 software in a category that has very little activity these days. If you like strategy games and you don't mind the sight of blood being splattered all over the place in the occasional animation during the game, you will want to get Hopkins: FBI.

                         - * -

Playability: 	3
Polish: 	4
Multimedia: 	4
OS/2 Leverage: 	3

Overall:	3.5

Hopkins:FBI
by (http://www.polyex.com/) PolyEx
MSRP: US$49.95

(http://www.gnv.com/HTMLWizard/) Dr. Dirk Terrell is an astronomer at the University of Florida specializing in interacting binary stars.  His hobbies include cave diving, martial arts, painting and writing OS/2 software such as HTML Wizard.

***********************************

First Looks: MAME for OS/2	- by Lief Clennon

Summary: The Multi Arcade Machine Emulator lets you re-live old memories of the Coin-Op Golden Age classics, even though this beta version of the port has a little way to go before being finished.

Have you ever thought fondly back to the early '80s, and endless hours spent in an arcade attempting to flip the score on Defender, or perfecting the patterns of Pac-Man? Or alternately, are you too young to even really remember those games? Well, in either case, a solution is now available. 

Canned nostalgia

MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, is truly an impressive piece of work. It is exactly what its name describes: a set of emulators for the processors and mainboard chipsets commonly used in arcade machines, mostly the older ones. The rest of the game's guts -- the graphics and programming -- are contained in separate ROM images, which the emulator loads. There can often be numerous files in a single ROM image (each represents a single chip's worth of data), but the emulator can read them directly out of .zip files, so there's no clutter involved. 

The emulator can't run every game, of course; many have custom chips. But with each new version, special-case code is added and more games are supported. The latest version for DOS has even included support for far more recent games, with the popular Neo-Geo system; the OS/2 port is a few versions behind, but hopefully we can look forward to continued development on that front. 

Native features

Well, first a native non-feature: there are no sound effects in this version, nor can it run in full-screen mode. Both issues are planned to be resolved in a future release. Another minor issue is Matrox cards: you need to both have at least version 2.21 of the driver (available from Hobbes), and the emulator will not work with EnDIVE enabled. 


MAME for OS/2 uses DIVE for quick screen draws. It may use EnDIVE for hardware scaling, but I've got a Matrox card so I couldn't test that. The keyboard can be used to control most games, and for the adventurous, so can the mouse; however, should you happen to own a joystick, MAME not only supports it, but also includes an OS/2 joystick driver. 

Dig Dug at 5fps

Perhaps the biggest problem with MAME for OS/2 is that it is incredibly sluggish. On my 200MHz P6, some newer games wouldn't run faster than 1/4 speed. Even the oldest, simplest games would only go full speed if I left them at "actual size", the size of the screenshots displayed here. With hardware scaling this might be less of an issue, but I sincerely hope some development time will go into code optimization. 

While in many ways little more than an interesting curiosity, MAME is small enough and fun enough that it's worth having around just for the heck of it. Hopefully, development will continue: this is definitely beta software, but it's a very good start. Hats off to the folks at OS/2 Netlabs, and the same to MAME's own designers. 

                         - * -

MAME for OS/2 0.31.3
     by (http://www.netlabs.org/) The OS/2 Netlabs
     download from the (http://www.os2ss.com/archives/hobbes/os2/apps/emulator/mameos2.zip) OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 973K)
     Registration: Free


(liefc@os2ezine.com) Lief Clennon is a computer hobbyist and Team OS/2 member currently residing in Albuquerque, NM. He can usually be found badgering his friends on IRC.

***********************************

Using EHLLAPI in REXX	- by Gary Pool

Summary: Use Communications Manager/2 or Personal Communications for OS/2? Learn how to control both with Rexx by using the Emulator High Level Language Programming Interface that they both come with.

If you are using Communications Manager/2 (CM/2) or Personal Communications for OS/2 (PCOM/2) for 3270 or 5250 connectivity, read this article! These emulators come with a file called SAAHLAPI.DLL that provides access to the Emulator High Level Language Programming Interface (EHLLAPI).  Using REXX to call these APIs, you can programmatically read host screens, send keystrokes, send and receive files, and make changes to the PM presentation space.

We have recently been testing PCOMM version 4.2 and Object REXX for Windows 95/NT and have found that most programs developed under OS/2 will also work in those environments.

Why Use EHLLAPI?

CM/2 and PCOM/2 allow keyboard redefinitions which can certainly help to automate repetitive tasks, but keyboard redefinition has none of the flexibility that a REXX EHLLAPI program can offer. Tasks that would ordinarily take many keystrokes over many screens can be reduced to a few keystrokes or automated completely. For example, resetting a user's password could require checking permissions in one application, resetting the password in another, and filling out a problem report in a third.  Those steps could be reduced to entering the userid. Or perhaps there is data that is stored on the PC which needs to be entered at the host, such as a list of userids for a Distribution list. Any repetitive tasks can be easily automated with REXX and EHLLAPI.

How do I program with REXX and EHLLAPI?

I thought you'd never ask.  As an example, I will step through a program that I use to sign on to OfficeVision MVS.  Then, just for fun, we'll report how many files are in the inbasket.  It uses most of the EHLLAPI calls that you would ever need to use.

Load the DLL

If you look at lines 1 and 2 of figure 1, you will see how to query and load SAAHLAPI.DLL.  Its directory must be found in the LIBPATH statement of CONFIG.SYS.  All EHLLAPI function calls are invoked from the one function, HLLAPISRV.  By custom, it's usually registered as "HLLAPI", but it's not required.

Check for problems

Sometimes (believe it or not) I make mistakes when programming!  If the program bombs or I want to interrupt the process for some reason, I like to make sure that I have a procedure to disconnect my host session.  Lines 3 through 5 check for problems or interruptions.  If processing is interrupted, it sends control to "CLEANUP", which cleanly disconnects from the host session.

Get Input from the user

Since this particular program is for my personal use, I have hard-coded my userid into the program.  For security reasons, I don't want to have my password hard-coded into the program, so I run a little procedure that prompts me for my password.  Lines 7-8 and 35-73 deal with getting the user input.  Almost half the lines in the program are used to get the password!

Set session parameters

Line 9 of figure 1 is optional.  It's possible to change the default behavior of many of the HLLAPI calls by using "Set_session_parms". In this instance, the "CONPHYS" parameter forces the session to come to the foreground when a successful "Connect" occurs.  Without this statement, the session would stay in the background.  For a complete list of session parameters that can be set, refer to IBM Communications Manager/2 Version 1.0 EHLLAPI Programming Reference.

Connect to the host session

Line 10 of figure 1 illustrates how to connect to a host session. There are actually two ways to connect to the host:  CONNECT, which is illustrated, and CONNECT_PM, which allows Presentation Manager window manipulation.  Lines 11-14 ensure that I was able to successfully connect to the host screen.

Read the host screen

Before I send any keystrokes, I have to make sure I'm on the right screen! I use Search_PS in line 15 of figure 1. See <a href="hllapi4.gif) figure 4 (.GIF, 4K) to see the screen being searched. If I want to manipulate the data, I have a number of options: 

o data=hllapi("Copy_PS") would copy the entire screen to a string.
o data=hllapi("Copy_PS_To_Str",pos,length) would copy just a portion of the screen.
o data=hllapi("Copy_OIA") would copy the Operator Information Area to a string.
o data=hllapi("Copy_Field_To_String",pos,length) would copy characters from a host-defined field to a string.


Search_PS scans the entire presentation space an returns the cursor position where the string is found or a 0 if it is not found. In an 80 column screen, Search_PS would return row 10, column 11 as 731 ((9*80)+11).

Lines 16-18 cause the program to exit if I am not at the screen necessary to logon.

Send keystrokes to the host

Lines 20-30 and 74-83 are concerned with sending keystrokes to the host session. Text can be sent as well as special control keys such as PF keys and the Enter key. Figure 3 shows many of the keyboard mnemonics for the special control keys.

The HLLAPI call Sendkey is used to send keystrokes to the host session.  The most difficult aspect of HLLAPI programming is determining if the host is available for input.  I use one of the safest ways.  In lines 78-82 of figure 1, I first use the HLLAPI call "Wait" to wait for the keyboard lock to be free.  Unfortunately, sometimes the keyboard can be unlocked, but the screen may not be refreshed.  Therefore I look for a particular string that should be on the screen I am expecting.  This has its weaknesses, but is generally the safest for the projects I undertake.  In the IBM Redbook, REXX: From Bark to Byte, the chapter on EHLLAPI programming offers several ways of checking for host availability.

Note that on line 80 of figure 1, I do a SysSleep for one second.  I do this to increase performance.  When the host session is in the background looping, looking for a string, the loop eats up so many strokes that the host screen cannot refresh in a timely manner.  In this example it's not necessary for the call to SysSleep because I'm bringing the session to the foreground, but I wanted to point out the potential problem before you encountered it.

Retrieve any information from host

Just for fun, I'll pull off how many inbasket items I have.  In line 30 of figure 1, I use the HLLAPI call, Copy_PS_To_Str, giving it the cursor position to start from (76), and the length of the string to return (5).  That returns the last 5 positions of row 1 in figure 5.

How did I know to start at 76?  I could have counted the characters on the screen, but whenever I'm writing a HLLAPI program, I use the GETCUR.CMD to help me figure out screen locations of information. I position the cursor in the session I am testing, then run GETCUR.CMD to report the cursor position.

I also added another way to get the information using the "Word" command.  I have encountered some screens where the number of words on a line are always the same, but the position on the screen varies.

Disconnect from the host

Line 33 of figure 1 is one way of disconnecting from the host. The Reset_System function reinitializes the session parameters (set by the Set_Session_Parms function) to their defaults and disconnects from all connected resources.  Because I regularly change the session parameters, this is my preferred way of disconnecting.  It is also possible to Disconnect using a HLLAPI call to "Disconnect" or "Disconnect_PM".

Where do I go from here?

This sample contains almost all of the HLLAPI calls that I ever use and can be used for a starting point for your own applications.  If you would like more information, REXX: From Bark to Byte (GG24-4199-00) is a good starting place, but the most complete information can be found in IBM Communications Manager/2 Version 1.0 EHLLAPI Programming Reference.


Figure 1

/* OV.CMD REXX program to logon to OfficeVision MVS. */

Call RxFuncAdd 'SysLoadFuncs', 'RexxUtil', 'SysLoadFuncs'
Call SysLoadFuncs                                        

if rxfuncquery('hllapi') then                   /* 001 */
call rxfuncadd 'hllapi','saahlapi','hllapisrv'  /* 002 */

signal on failure name CLEANUP                  /* 003 */
signal on halt name CLEANUP                     /* 004 */
signal on syntax name CLEANUP                   /* 005 */

UserId = 'POOLMWV'                              /* 006 */

parse upper arg PW                              /* 007 */
if PW='' then call GetPass                      /* 008 */

rc = hllapi('Set_session_parms', 'CONPHYS')     /* 009 */
rc = hllapi("Connect", "A")                     /* 010 */

if (rc <> 0) then do                            /* 011 */
   say 'Did not connect to Host.  RC = 'rc      /* 012 */
   signal CLEANUP                               /* 013 */
end                                             /* 014 */

rc=hllapi("Search_ps", "/Starpro", 1)           /* 015 */
if rc = 0 then DO                               /* 016 */
   say "You are not at the correct screen"      /* 017 */
   signal CLEANUP                               /* 018 */
end                                             /* 019 */

call sendwait "wpx@E","WELCOME"                 /* 020 */
rc=hllapi("sendkey","@C")                       /* 021 */
rc=hllapi("wait")                               /* 022 */
rc=hllapi("sendkey","cesn@E")                   /* 023 */
*/rc=hllapi("wait")                             /* 024 */
rc=hllapi("sendkey", UserId"@T")                /* 025 */
rc=hllapi("sendkey", PW"@E")                    /* 026 */
rc=hllapi("wait")                               /* 027 */
call sendwait "TALK@E","SOSMMAIN"               /* 028 */
call sendwait "wib@E","DMDBIB10"                /* 029 */
numinbas=strip(hllapi(Copy_PS_To_Str,76,5))     /* 030 */
/* 
Here's another way to get the information
numinbas=word(hllapi(Copy_PS_To_Str,1,80),9)    /* 030 */
*/
Say numinbas "inbasket items found."            /* 031 */

CLEANUP:                                        /* 032 */
call hllapi("reset_system")                     /* 033 */

exit                                            /* 034 */

GetPass:                                        /* 035 */

Valid='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890#$@' /* 036 */
Maxlength=8                                     /* 037 */
PW=''                                           /* 038 */

ETK=d2c(13)                                     /* 039 */
BS=d2c(8)                                       /* 040 */
X1=d2c(0)                                       /* 041 */
X2=d2c(224)                                     /* 042 */

say 'Enter Your Password:'                      /* 043 */
do forever                                      /* 044 */
   Ch = translate(SysGetKey('NOECHO'))          /* 045 */
   select                                       /* 046 */
      when Ch=ETK                               /* 047 */
         then do                                /* 048 */
            say ''                              /* 049 */
            leave                               /* 050 */
         end                                    /* 051 */
      when Ch=BS                                /* 052 */
         then if PW=''                          /* 053 */
            then call Beep 262, 200             /* 054 */
            else do                             /* 055 */
               call charout ,BS BS              /* 056 */
               PW = left(PW, length(PW)-1)      /* 057 */
            end                                 /* 058 */
      when pos(Ch, Valid) > 0                   /* 059 */
         then if length(PW) = MaxLength         /* 060 */
            then call Beep 262, 200             /* 061 */
            else do                             /* 062 */
               call charout , '*'               /* 063 */
               PW= PW||Ch                       /* 064 */
            end                                 /* 065 */
      otherwise do                              /* 066 */
         if Ch = X1 | Ch = X2                   /* 067 */
            then call SysGetKey('NOECHO')       /* 068 */
         call beep 262, 200                     /* 069 */
      end                                       /* 070 */
   end                                          /* 071 */
end                                             /* 072 */
return                                          /* 073 */

SendWait:                                       /* 074 */
keys=arg(1)                                     /* 075 */
lookfor=arg(2)                                  /* 076 */
rc = hllapi('sendkey', keys)                    /* 077 */
rc = hllapi('wait')                             /* 078 */
do until rc > 0                                 /* 079 */
   rc=SysSleep(1)                               /* 080 */
   rc=hllapi("Search_ps", lookfor, 1)           /* 081 */
end                                             /* 082 */
return                                          /* 083 */


Figure 3

ASCII
Mnemonic      Meaning
--------      -------
@B            Left Tab
@C            Clear
@D            Delete
@E            Enter
@F            Erase EOF
@H            Help
@I            Insert
@J            Jump
@L            Cursor Left
@N            New Line
@O            Space
@P            Print
@R            Reset
@T            Right Tab
@U            Cursor Up
@V            Cursor Down
@X            DBCS (Reserved)
@Y            Caps Lock (No action)
@Z            Cursor Right
@0            Home
@1            PF1/F1
@2            PF2/F2
@3            PF3/F3
@4            PF4/F4
@5            PF5/F5
@6            PF6/F6
@7            PF7/F7
@8            PF8/F8
@9            PF9/F9
@a            PF10/F10
@b            PF11/F11
@c            PF12/F12
@d            PF13
@e            PF14
@f            PF15
@g            PF16
@h            PF17
@i            PF18
@j            PF19
@k            PF20
@l            PF21
@m            PF22
@n            PF23
@o            PF24
@p            Plus Key
@q            End
@s            Scrlk (No action)
@t            Num Lock (No action)
@u            Page Up
@v            Page Down
@x            PA1
@y            PA2
@z            PA3


GETCUR.CMD

/*-----------------------------------------------------*/
/* GETCUR.CMD   - REXX HLLAPI to check cursor position */
/*-----------------------------------------------------*/

parse upper arg session                         /* 001 */
if session = '' then call ERRORMESSAGE          /* 002 */
if length(session) > 1 then call ERRORMESSAGE   /* 003 */

if rxfuncquery('hllapi') then                   /* 004 */
call rxfuncadd 'hllapi','saahlapi','hllapisrv'  /* 005 */

signal on failure name CLEANUP                  /* 006 */
signal on halt name CLEANUP                     /* 007 */
signal on syntax name CLEANUP                   /* 008 */

rc = hllapi('Connect',session)                  /* 009 */
if (rc <> 0) then do                            /* 010 */
   say 'Did not connect to Host.  RC = 'rc      /* 011 */
   signal CLEANUP                               /* 012 */
end                                             /* 013 */

cp = hllapi( 'query_cursor_pos')                /* 014 */
say cp                                          /* 015 */

CLEANUP:                                        /* 016 */
call hllapi("reset_system")                     /* 017 */

ERRORMESSAGE:                                   /* 018 */
say "SYNTAX is GETCUR host_session_letter"      /* 019 */


                         - * -

(gpool01@mail.state.mo.us) Gary Pool is a Certified OS/2 Engineer employed by the Missouri Department of Social Services.

***********************************

September's Top Selling Apps from BMT Micro

ThisMonth	LastMonth	Product		Developer
1	 	1		PMView		Peter Nielsen
2	 	3		InJoyF/X 	Communications
3	 	--		PM123		Taneli Lepp&auml; / Samuel Audet
4	 	4		PMMail		SouthSide Software
5	 	--		Dialog Enhancer	Richard Castle
6	 	--		Xit		CodeSmith Software
7	 	--		FM/2		Barebones Software
8	 	--		SIO		Ray Gwinn
9	 	9		OpenChat/2	Max Mikhanosha
10	 	6		X-File		CodeSmith Software


                         - * -

This list is compiled by (http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro -- Your Source for Over 100 Quality Shareware Applications.

***********************************

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o your address (city, state/province & country)
o your e-mail address
o your web URL if applicable.</ul>

Alternatively, you may choose to sponsor OS/2 e-Zine! by credit card through (http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/ezine/) BMT Micro, Inc.  BMT Micro accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Diner's Club, and many other credit cards.  Just call:

o (800) 414-4268 (Voice) 9:00am - 7:00pm EST
o (910) 791-7052 (Voice) 9:00am - 7:00pm EST
o (910) 350-2937 (Fax) 24 hours a day
o (910) 350-8061 (Modem) 10 lines, all 14.4K, or
o (910) 799-0923 (Modem) Direct 28.8K line

Or, use BMT's <a href="https://secure.falcon-net.net/BMT/order0261.html) Secure Order Form.  It's safe, fast and simple!

Remember, any amount is appreciated and whether you choose to sponsor or not, you will still be able to enjoy every issue of OS/2 e-Zine! on the WWW!

For more information or any other questions please (feedback@os2ezine.com) see our contact information.

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Corporate Sponsors

[(http://www.blueskyinnovations.com/) BlueSky Innovations]
[(http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro]
[(http://www.ChipChat.com/os2ezine/) ChipChat]
[(http://www.indelible-blue.com/) Indelible Blue]
[(http://www.prominic.com/) Prominic Technologies]
[(http://www.rsj.de/) RSJ Software]
[(http://www.prioritymaster.com/) ScheduPerformance]


(http://www.blueskyinnovations.com/) BlueSky Innovations
Whether you want to boot multiple Operating Systems or from an Iomega Zip disk, we have a solution for you.

(http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro
Your complete source for over 175 of the best OS/2 shareware applications available.  Drop by today and check out our WWW catalog or download the .INF version.

(http://www.ChipChat.com/os2ezine/) ChipChat Technology Group
ChipChat produces excellent 32-bit OS/2 software for wireless text paging and state-of-the-art multimedia Sound Cards for Micro Channel PS/2 computers.

(http://www.indelible-blue.com/) Indelible Blue
Indelible Blue, a mail order company, provides OS/2 software and hardware solutions to customers worldwide.

(http://www.prominic.com/) Prominic Technologies, Inc.
On-line sales & solutions for VisualAge, DB2, OS/2 Warp, Workspace on Demand, Notes/Domino, AIX Firewall, and Net.Commerce (design/hosting).  The best deals on IBM and Lotus software and hardware (PCs, Servers, and RS/6000s) -- with OS/2 preloads!

(http://www.rsj.de/) RSJ Software
The successful software CD-Writer for OS/2 by RSJ. CD-Writer is suitable for backup, data filing, creating Audio CDs etc. and is compatible with most CD-Recorders.

(http://www.prioritymaster.com/) ScheduPerformance, Inc.
Dramatically improve performance on your OS/2 system now with the patented priority scanning logic and visual priority identification of Priority Master II.


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Copyright 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696