GENIE KANSASFEST REPORT #1

[lunatic@genie.geis.com]

    THE FIRST OFFICIAL KANASFEST REPORT
 
 
    The 5th annual A2-Central Summer Conference ("KansasFest") is off to quite
a start!  On Tuesday night all the GEnie Apple II sysops arrived, plus Richard
Bennet and Linda Harding.  Along the way, A2Pro sysops Dave Miller (JUST.DAVE)
and Nathaniel Sloan (C.SLOAN, aka "Sloanie") were in a traffic accident,
totalling Dave's car.  Luckily they got away with only a few scrapes and
bruises, and a few of the other sysops went off and picked them up.
 
 
    On Wednesday during the day we had our GEnie sysop meetings, working on
ways to bring even more Apple II inforation to GEnie and make the Apple II
RoundTables an even better place for Apple II people to be.  Over the next few
months you'll be seeing some of the results of our efforts, in all areas of the
A2 RTs, and I think all the Apple II users here are really going to like what
we've got coming up.  Further details will be made available as we finalize
each plan.  Later on Wednesday the rest of the conference attendees showed up,
and we all spent a lot of time hanging out and chatting and hacking, etc. late
into the night (I got about three hours sleep, last night!  I'm not sure where
I fit it in, but it was there somewhere.  About an hour of it was me missing
breakfast.).  There are about 100 attendees here, this year.  I'm not about to
type in all their names, but rest assured that everyone who is anyone in the
Apple II world is here!  Some of the companies that have representatives
present are: Alltech Electronics, Big Red Computer Club, Bright Software, Byte
Works, Inc., DYA/DigiSoft Innovations, Econ, GEnie Apple II RoundTables, GS+
Magazine, JEM Software, Kitchen Sink Software, Parsons Engineering, Procyon,
Inc., Quality Computers, Resource Central, Roger Wagner Publishing, Sequential
Systems, Shareware Solutions II, and Softdisk Publishing.  There's also lots
and lots of individual developers and users here.
 
 
    Today, Thursday, was the start of KansasFest proper.  In the morning there
was an opening talk by Tom Weishaar, Uncle-DOS himself.  After welcoming
everyone to the conference and saying a few opening words, Tom presented a few
"awards" to the people who have been able to come to every single KansasFest
yet held.  Ken Kashmarek got a special award of recognition for being the only
person to have come to all KansasFests so far who actually paid full price for
all of them!  Next, Tom actually went out into the auditorium with the
microphone and went to each audience member in turn, asking them to introduce
themselves and say a few words about who they were and why they had come to
KansasFest.  This was the first time anything this had ever been done, and it
was quite fun.  Next we had the keynote address by Mike Westerfield, talking
about "Amateur Programming for Fun and Profit."  It was very informative,
giving advice and suggestions to all the programmers, developers, and would-be
programmers and developers in the audience.
 
 
    Following Mike Westerfield was Bill "Burger Bill" Heinemann, giving us all
an update on the status of the Avatar project.  Currently, the Avatar itself is
stalled for lack of funding, since their major financial backer pulled out.
Bill said that most of the design work has already been finished, especially on
the hardware, and they're mainly waiting on some capital to get the whole thing
rolling.  In the meantime, they've been working on an Apple IIgs clone computer
interface for Super Nintendo game systems!  This would be a $299 to $399 plug
in device for the Super Nintendo that would turn it into an Apple IIgs clone
computer.  A beta or prototype is already working, according to Bill.  It has
not been named yet.
 
 
    The device would come with 2 MB of RAM on board, an "IBM style" floppy disk
drive (720K and 1.44 MB only, no 800K support due to cost consideratons), and
an external interface port (it would be either a regular Apple II slot, or a
PCMCIA slot -- an optional card cage could be added to give more interfaces).
The keyboard would be a standard "IBM style" keyboard with Super Nintendo
connectors, plugged into the joypad/joystick port(s).  To use a mouse you would
have to purchase Super Mario Paint and use the mouse included with that (Bill
said there's no way he could include a mouse or sell his own and compete with
the price).  Alternately you could use the Super Nintendo's joypad, but he said
that it was very awkward.
 
 
    The beta/prototype of this device uses the ROM code for GS emulation that
Bill is developing for the Avatar.  He has gotten some assistance from Laser
Computer (like a sheet of arond 50 memory entry locations), so this device will
be at least as compatible in 8-bit Apple II mode with a real Apple II as Laser
computers are.  Bill said that he has been able to get HyperStudio to run on
the beta/prototype just fine, but ran into problems with Teach from System 6.0,
and again even more problems with Teach from System 6.0.1.  One problem with
this device is that the Super Nintendo screen mode resolutions are different
from those of the Apple IIgs.  It has four screen modes:  256x224, 256x448,
512x224, and 512x448.  Emulating a IIgs, you either lose some screen real
estate, or you use a "squeezed" mode with looks "really ugly," according to
Bill.  The speed of the device was reported to be about twice the speed of a
stock unaccelerated Apple IIgs.  The only Super Nintendo hardware features Bill
reported using for the IIgs emulation were some DMA memory moving routines and
sprite animation for the cursor.
 
 
    In it's original design, Bill reports the device would easily be able to
copy Super Nintendo cartridges onto a floppy disk (in fact he said it already
can).  He is seeking approval from Nintendo for the device, though, which would
necessitate disabling that feature in hardware, for copyright reasons.  (Bill's
written plenty of Super Nintendo games himself, so people could even be
pirating his own works! :)
 
 
    No beta/prototype hardware or photos of such were available to actually be
shown.
 
 
    There were no special activities at lunch on Thursday, but there is
entertainment scheduled for lunch on Friday.
 
 
    After lunch the normal sessions began.  This year, there are only two
tracks of sessions, instead of the three or four of the past few years.
Sessions on Thursday were generally organized into an "8-bit" track and a
"16-bit" track.  The sessions in one were: "System II: The Complete Graphical
Interface for the Apple II (8-bit)," "Programming with System II from Applesoft
and Assembler," "Integrating Applesoft and Assembly," and "The Apple II &
Eduction: The HyperStudio Approach."  The other track's sessions were: "A
Dieter's Guide to Hi-Speed Data Compression," "The Latest & Greatest Advanced
Sound Techniques with the Ensoniq 5503," "Fun & Easy: Writing Twilight II
Modules," and "Intermediate Desktop Programming."  On Friday the sessions are
much less easily divisable.
 
 
    Thursday night in the cafeteria was the Creative Black Tie Celebration and
Celebrity Roast.  Part of the "celebration" was inspired by Roger Wagner's
traditional unique ties -- a contest was held to see if anyone could match or
beat Roger's taste in ties (I won the "Most Colorful" prize, for my black
leather bow tie :).  The "roastee" of honor after that was Tom Weishaar, head
of Resource Central and all-around swell guy.  The "roasters" were Dennis Doms,
Dean Esmay, HangTime, Roger Wagner, and Matt Deatherage (with help from Tara
Dillinger).  Any description I could write here would simply not do the roast
justice, so I'm not even going to try!  I'm sure videotapes will be made
available by the various groups taping the event, such as GS+ Magazine,
Resource Central, and others, so you can just get the tape and see it all for
yourself.
 
 
    Late Thursday night there were some rather amusing antics being performed
in one of the dorm lounges, as a group of Apple II developers, including Roger
Wagner, played a game were each person in turn had to grab and pick up a paper
grocery bag in their teeth, while only touching the ground in one place.  After
everyone had made an attepmt, the bag was shortened a few inches and they went
around again.  At the end it got down to just a single flat piece of paper with
a few frayed edges sticking up.  It was quite a sight.  Around the time that
was ending up, a couple of people pulled out Aerobee(tm) flying rings and
started sailing them back and forth to each other down the tic tac toe
board-like halls (the lounge is in the middle).  One was making a clockwise
circuit and the other was making a counter-clockwise circuit.  Everyone not
involved dodged and ducked their heads as they went from room to room.  (:
 
 
                                               -= Lunatic E'Sex     (:
                                                  Copyright 1993
                                                  LUNATIC@GEnie.GEIS.Com
 
(This message was originally posted to the Apple II RoundTables on GEnie.  It
may be reposted and reprinted anywhere as long as the entire message including
this notice and the copyright notice remain intact.)