Re: METAL (forget about ACOS)

["Terry Olsen" <tolsen64@hotmail.com>]

The reason METAL didn't use the same compression that ACOS did was because 
TC didn't want to get sued.  The way ACOS handled the message bases was 
proprietary and TC caught a lot of grief from MACOS that he didn't want to 
in any way infringe upon Lance's product.  However, in METAL, using SMF 
(Single Message Files) was not hard at all.  It's kinda like the file access 
methods used in Visual Basic today.

I had a copy of the preliminary MetalGS at one point.  It was just a demo 
that included a small program (segment) to show you what had been completed 
so far, just basic stuff.  It had a GS splash screen and a regular window 
(with a menu bar) when you started it up.  As soon as you ran a segment, it 
would go into text mode, and back out again when the segment ended.  I'm 
sure more than just me saw it, and maybe it's still hidden away somewhere in 
some archive somewhere. I know that work on it died when TC got married and 
quit the Apple scene alltogether.  The source code for Metal-8 was given to 
Shane Zatezalo and Joshua Thompson, which made it's way to Tony Diaz, and 
then me.  My main job was to add support for faster modems when they came 
out, all the way up to 28.8k.  Since METAL had a fixed modem speed table, I 
had to remove the obscure speeds like 300, 1200, & 4800.  The next to go was 
2400 when the next modem speed increase came out.  Unfortunately, I ended up 
in a nasty divorce, my wife got a restraining order to keep me away from the 
house, and she sold all my computer stuff in a yard sale.  In the GS was my 
vulcan hard drive (with all the METAL & other source code of all the 
programs I had written over the years), a ZipGS 12Mhz card, GS RamPlus with 
6MB memory, The AE sound card (i forget what it was called), Quickie 
scanner, FingerPrintGS, a Prototype Apple II Ethernet card (though I never 
got to actually hook it up and play with it), and a PC Transporter.  Other 
stuff to go in the yard sale was all my Apple IIgs programming manuals (had 
all the Addison Wesley books), the Apple IIe Platinum case with GS upgrade 
(that was the computer my BBS was running on), and a really expensive 
Multi-Game Hunter (Sega Genesis / SNES Game Copier).  I heard that got 
traded to her lawyer for part of the divorce fees.  Building my system back 
up has been hard.  Stuff is hard to come by anymore, I got lucky on a ZipGS 
8Mhz a couple years ago.  A guy sold it to me for $85.00 because he needed 
some new speakers for his car.  I got a RamFAST Rev D from a guy before he 
went overseas a while back also.  And I got the GS Programmers Toolbox (1&2) 
off ebay.  I still need Vol 3 of the Toolbox Reference and the Hardware & 
Firmware Reference Manuals.

About TC, nobody has heard a peep from him since he got married.  It think 
that was back in 1990 (or thereabouts).  I know i'm rambling but sometimes I 
like to think back to the "glory days", before internet, when we had a 
tight-knit group of people.  Anybody remember Appleholics Anonymous BBS out 
of Gardena (???), CA?  I remember having a few get togethers over at the 
Sysop's house to do some BBS programming.  There was a small group of GBBS 
boards running a locally written network called TEAM Net.  TEAM was an 
acronym for the bbs's that started the network.  I forget what they were, 
but "T" was for "The Tavern BBS" (formerly "Mike & Matts Tavern"), and the 
"A" was for "Appleholics Anonymous BBS".  Anyway, we were able to write some 
code in METAL & ACOS to act as a gateway between TEAM Net and FutureNet. 
Appleholics was the TEAM Net side of the gateway, and my BBS was the 
FutureNet side.  It worked out really well.

There came a point when the "politics" and "elitism" became such a pain that 
Darrin (Appleholics Sysop) pulled out, shut his bbs down, and quit.  There 
was a problem user known as "Fether" who started a whole "war".  A few of us 
banned him from our BBS's, but he had an ally in The Tavern's Sysop (Mike / 
The Bartender).  He pulled out of TEAM net, Appleholics shut down (which cut 
the bridge to FutureNet), and everything kinda went haywire after that. 
That was all around 91-92, somewhere in there.

Anyone from the SOCAL area remember Appleholics Anonymous, Game Central, The 
Tavern (Mike & Matts Tavern), Sculley's Hatred, The Space Bar, or any 
others?  Or how about some of the users?  Unseen Entity, Backman, Spacebar, 
Xenon Knight, ???

<art@unknownrealm.org> wrote in message 
QqSdnXze1-FoMiHcRVn-hQ@giganews.com">news:QqSdnXze1-FoMiHcRVn-hQ@giganews.com...
>I know that there was talk at one point in time about a GS version of 
>metal, and apparently there was some preliminary work done on it.  Did 
>anyone here actually ever get a chance to play with it / see it?  I loved 
>Metal, but IMHO its biggest drawback was the fact that it didn't support 
>msg bases the same way ACOS did.  Dealing with message bases in ACOS was 
>easy as pie --  while Metal wasn't that much more difficult, porting 
>message base code from ACOS toMETAL sucked a lot of ass.
>
> Whats TC up to these days?  Wasn't he also the one responsilble for MACOS 
> on the Apple II?
>
> "Terry Olsen" <tolsen64@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
> 32285jF3he8i3U1@individual.net">news:32285jF3he8i3U1@individual.net...
>> Yup, I bought it also...but I didn't get a disk.  I emailed TC for the 
>> address to send the $95.00, he called me up and gave me a password that 
>> would allow me to download it from TCQ.  I'm looking for anyone that 
>> still has the source code to it (Joshua, Tony, anyone else?).  I 
>> contacted Shane and he doesn't have it anymore.
>>
>>
>> <art@unknownrealm.org> wrote in message 
>> TYWdne5l1dx9VybcRVn-pg@giganews.com">news:TYWdne5l1dx9VybcRVn-pg@giganews.com...
>>> heh.. I actually *bought* a copy of Metal way back when it was not free 
>>> in its *very* early days.  I still have the disk, it was a hand labeled 
>>> and numbered disk.  Can't say if the data on the disk is still good, but 
>>> its a cool keepsake I guess.
>>>
>>> Here's what I don't understand about the whole ACOS thing.  What is with 
>>> these GBBS people?  All anyone ever wanted to do was improve upon their 
>>> product, even way back when the 'hacked' MACOS version was released. 
>>> They have been SOOOOOO against it, the whole thing is entertaining --  
>>> especially in this day and age when your typical pocket calculator has 
>>> more advanced software running on it than.
>>>
>>> "Terry Olsen" <tolsen64@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
>>> 321rvgF3h8o6vU1@individual.net">news:321rvgF3h8o6vU1@individual.net...
>>>> Use METAL, it's free (and better IMHO)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <art@unknownrealm.org> wrote in message 
>>>> C5WdndELM-TfMCbcRVn-tg@giganews.com">news:C5WdndELM-TfMCbcRVn-tg@giganews.com...
>>>>>> There is no real money to be made with it and I only
>>>>>> bought the copywrite to save it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Read: I will hoard my copyright till the day I die.  No one will ever 
>>>>> be able to do anything with my product.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
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