4.0724 DAK CD-ROMs and others (2/170)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 20 Nov 90 22:10:44 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0724. Tuesday, 20 Nov 1990.


(1) Date: 15 November 1990, 09:08:21 EST (26 lines)
From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB
Subject: DAK collection vs. other CD-ROM offers

(2) Date: Thu, 15 Nov 90 11:47:15 CST (144 lines)
From: "Michael S. Hart" <HART@UIUCVMD>
Subject: DAK CDROM SALE

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 November 1990, 09:08:21 EST
From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB
Subject: DAK collection vs. other CD-ROM offers

No sooner had DAK's CD-ROM offer of a player plus various
"library" disks been received than in comes CompuAdd with
a similar offer, "CompuAdd CD ROM Knowledge Bank I,"
which includes either an internal or external player of
unexplained origin, plus Toolworks Illustrated
Encyclopedia, business software including Sprint word
processor, Grammatic IV and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing,
plus a world atlas and a U.S. atlas, plus Toolworks
Reference Library and a collection of games. The price for
an internal drive plus the disks (they don't say how many)
is $695, and for the external drive plus disks $795. I just called
CompuAdd and was told the drive was made by Chinon and was
warranted for one year parts and labor. Academic discounts
may be available. The 800 no. is 477-4717. I have no
affiliation either with CompuAdd or DAK, incidentally.
One other thing: I found out that Bill Hustwit is the CEO
of World Library Inc., which produces the "Library of the
Future." The source for the texts on that disk *may* be
a Great Books series. Each title within each grouping on
the disk is counted among the 450 offered titles, whether it
is one Conan Doyle story or Augustine's Confessions. Any
more information? Roy Flannagan

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------155---
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 90 11:47:15 CST
From: "Michael S. Hart" <HART@UIUCVMD>
Subject: DAK CDROM SALE

*Apologies to those of you who are on more than one of the above lists.*

First at disclaimer: I have not yet spoken with Drew Kaplan since he is
at ComDex, and even though I have been assured he will want to speak and
work with me concerning this, there is no guarantee that this will occur
nor that the sun will come up tomorrow. I post this due to an extremely
fervent hassle I have received at the hands of one of our promienent and
original Gutenberg list members because I did not manage to get question
and answer to and from Mr. Kaplan yesterday, but did manage to get a few
questions asked and answered in his absence.

Most importantly, this kit is not designed for use on a Mac, though, for
reasons which will become apparent, I am going to try to get the SCSI CD
ROM drive to work on a Mac. However, the software is certainly going to
be DOS oriented as are the CDROMs. Nevertheless, some of you might want
to buy the kit, keep the drive or disks, and pass on the disks or drive.
If this is the case please let me know and I will see if an intermediary
will be wiling to handle this for us for a small charge.

The drive is a Sony CDU 6201-10 and comes with a SCSI interface card and
2-3 foot cable (round, not flat). I will let you know what brand a card
is included in mine when it gets here (must I disclaim and say "if"?)

I have used this type of drive before with a Western Digital WD 7000 ASC
SCSI card with great results. This drive is also said to play audio CDs
through your hi-fi or with headphone (I am beginning to disclaim it all,
aren't I). I was also told you have to have your computer on to run the
drive through the hi-fi, I will check that out, also.

Now for the bad news, these are being ordered quite quickly, I am making
a call right now to confirm this again, but the line is busy. (Autodial
sounds in the background - got a ring - an answer - I am told they don't
have that information, but have asked for a supervisor since I received,
supposedly, that type of information twice earlier. Well, supervisor in
charge says they weren't supposed to give me that info, and I didn't say
who give it to me before, but she told me another department might tell,
so I am ringing them now. (Sound effect, please) I will write below and
come back to this if I get any response - Don't forget applause for live
typing with justified right margins while talking on phone, eating candy
bar, etc!)

About the 6 CDROM disks which (are supposed) to come with the system. I
have determined through two separate pieces of information that the disk
encyclopedia is the one originally released out in Monterey, CA, back in
1985 or so. They changed the name a few time, but I recall that Grolier
and Gary Kildall were involved, I don't know if this is the 1985 version
or if it has been upgraded. I did find out that the paper version has a
1988 edition out. This is a 9 million word encyclopedia, not as large a
file as some of the others. It has some 2,000 graphics, and at least an
assortment of them are VGA, but I don't think all of them could be full-
screen VGA due to space limitations. (640 x 480 x 256 GIF files take an
estimated 1/4 M, so 2,000 of them would take up just about the whole CD)
I think some are limited in color and in resolution and even in size.

The next disk is the Library of the Future (TM) containing 450 volumes -
the ad says ". . . you can instantly access a passage, section . . . ."
and ". . . you can copy any information you need and insert it directly
into your reports, proposals, letters and any document you write."

I am going to give a very loose approximation of what is in the Library
of the Future, since I don't want to type in 450 titles of 50? authors.

Author - approximate number of titles

Aeschylus - 7
Aristophanes - 11
Aristotle - 30
Saint Augustine - Confessions
Francis Bacon - Essays
Baccaccio - Decameron
Burton - Arabian Nights
Butler - Way of all Flesh
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales (each tale is a title, I think)
Coleridge - Ancient Mariner
Conan-Doyle - Complete cases of Sherlock Holmes (each a title)
Confucius - Analects, Doctrine of the Mean, Great Learning
Dana - Two Years Before the Mast
Darwin - Origin of Species
Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens - Tale of Two Cities (It was the best/worst of times)
Epictetus - Discourses
Fielding - Tom Jones
Galen - On the Natural Faculties
Hippocrates - 17
Historical Documents - from Beowulf and the Magna Carta to 1900?
Included Declaration, Consitution etc of USA.
Homer - Iliad, Oddysey
Hubbard - Message to Garcia
Ibsen - Peer Gynt
James - Portrait of a Lady
Kant - 8
Khayyam - Rubaiyat
Lincoln - 1st Inaugural, Gettysburg
Lucretius - Nature of Things
Marx/Engles - Communist Manifesto
Melville - Moby Dick
Milton - 30+
Paine - Common Sense, Rights of Man
Plato - 25
Poe - Too many to count
Religios Docs - Egyptian Book of the Dead, Bhagavad Gita, Buddha,
King James Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon
Shakespeare - Looks like the compete works
Sophocles - 7 (Looks like all major works)
Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Tolstoy - War and Peace
Twain/Clemens - Huck Finn
Verne - Center of the Earth, 80 Days
Virgil - Aeneid, Ecologues, Geogics
Voltaire - Candide
Wallace - New Species
Whitman - Leaves of Grass
(Titles are subject to change)

DAK phones are 1-800-325-0800 to order
1-800-888-9818 tech info
1-800-888-7808 cust service
1-800-395-8976 computer software

Well, I got a ring, but no one is answering, and I am tired so . . .

Thank you for your interest,

Michael S. Hart, Director, Project Gutenberg


INTERNET: hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
BITNET: hart@uiucvmd.bitnet

The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect
the views of any person or institution. Neither Prof
Hart nor Project Gutenberg have any official contacts
with the University of Illinois.

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I disclaim everything, it is all a pack of foma.