MailBITS/08-Jul-91

For those of you struggling with MaxAppleZoom’s recent demise, yet more hope exists. Bob Boonstra came up with a patch that he’s found to work with both version 1.3 and 1.3.1 of MaxAppleZoom. It requires a disk editor and a little technical knowledge, but is cleaner than the other solutions. He writes,

After further investigation, the following appears to be a more complete fix for the bug (time bomb) in MaxAppleZoom. The patch does not require an INIT and does not require changing the date. At least, it works for me, on version 1.3 and 1.31, with dates out as far as I checked (1999).

 For MAZ 1.3:
  INIT 1 offset 572:     change 02EA 3000 002C 65AE 43FA 0352
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 43FA 0352
  INIT 1 offset 5CE:     change 02EA 3000 002C 65AE 43FA 02DA
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 43FA 02DA
  cdev -4064 offset C48: change 02EA 3000 002C 65AE 1428 0004
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 1428 0004
  cdev -4064 offset CD0: change 02EA 3000 002C 65B0 5213
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 5213

 For MAZ 1.31:
  INIT 1 offset 570:     change 02EA 3000 002C 65AE 43FA 0340
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 43FA 0340
  INIT 1 offset 5CC:     change 02EA 3000 002C 65AE 43FA 02C8
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 43FA 02C8
  cdev -4064 offset C46: change 02EA 3000 002C 65AE 1428 0004
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 1428 0004
  cdev -4064 offset CCE: change 02EA 3000 002C 65B0 5213
                             to 02EA 3000 002C 4E71 5213

The patch substitutes a NOP for a conditional branch that follows each of three CMP2 range checks. The value being checked, and the range checked against, are computed by code so obscure (clever?) that I don’t know exactly what is being bypassed, or why it was there, but it works for me. In each case, the patches to the INIT prevents MAZ from not loading, while the patch to the cdev prevents the Control Panel device from being disabled. Thanks to Nobu Toge for pointing out the problem with the cdev, and to Scott E. Lasley for sending me version 1.31.

TidBITS is available in many places online, but until recently has not appeared on Delphi. Luckily for all of us, Mike Martin has graciously volunteered to upload each week’s issue to Delphi for me (there’ s a limit to how much I can do online personally). So for those of you on Delphi who haven’t seen TidBITS before, welcome, and I hope you enjoy it. I’m sure Mike will forward limited mail back to me via America Online, so if you have comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them along (just don’t swamp him with mail – I’m sure he’s got better things to do than play mailman). Thanks for all your help, Mike! Now are we missing any other online services? How about BIX, the BYTE Information Exchange? Does anyone out there use BIX?

Although TidBITS is available in many electronic hideaways, it is no longer available in ForumLink on America Online, simply because ForumLink is no longer there. It was dissolved recently, and although I don’t know exactly why yet, I suspect it simply wasn’t getting enough traffic. Unlike most everything on the Internet, AOL has to turn a profit, and if an area is unpopular, then it’s not helping make money. We’re trying to find a new place for TidBITS on America Online, but in the meantime, you can find new issues in the HyperCard library there. If you want to help our search for a new spot on AOL, send mail to me at Adam Engst and to Tim Barwick (AFP TimB). He’s the person who decided to drop ForumLink. Ideally we could get a specific TidBITS section where everything would be available and where each issue would appear quickly.

Shawn Barnhart writes, "In TidBITS-069/01-Jul-91 you go on at length about using Macs for video conferencing, lamenting the current state of A/V compression and decompression. There has been considerable discussion in rec.video.satellite over the past six months or so of a new satellite TV service called SkyPix that is supposed to provide 50 or so channels off of one satellite transponder via some pretty tricky video compression. Supposedly it’s high-quality digital video, but evidently fast motion scenes give the compression hardware a bit of headache, resulting in jittery video. But it would seem like the ideal technology for video conferencing, where as you said in TidBITS, most of what you see is a talking head. With this kind of technology you could use just one satellite transponder and get 25 or so simultaneous video conferences."

John Norstad writes, "Disinfectant 2.5.1 is a new release of our free Macintosh anti-viral utility. Version 2.5.1 corrects an error in the version 2.5 INIT which caused some programs (e.g., CompuServe Navigator) to crash on Macs using the Motorola 68000 processor (the 512KE, Plus, SE, Classic, and Portable.) Version 2.5.1 also corrects an error in the 2.5 program which could, at least in theory, cause crashes or hangs during program startup or when you try to do a scan. We apologize to everybody for the inconvenience caused by these errors in the 2.5 release. The errors are serious, and we strongly urge all Disinfectant users to obtain the new version 2.5.1."

Information from:
Bob Boonstra — [email protected]
Mike Martin — CWSoldier at AOL
Shawn Barnhart — [email protected]
John Norstad — [email protected]