| Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-08-17
13:48:31
 |  A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Very interesting, I'm glad I had the chance to read it because I rather have proven facts than speculations.
Most here know my point of view about the so called flop (no site which calls the plus/4 a flop ever cites any numbers, they just repeat the same stuff over and over again). According to magazine articles, the plus/4 (and C16/C116) has been sold in some countries quite often (here in Germany probably equally well as the Atari 8bits and Spectrums, which nobody would dare to call a flop). Sure, when it first came out, it flopped. But being available at many discounters caused a mild success. It's not a C64 but it's not a Tatung Einstein either. With far more than 1000 published software productions it's far from being a flop.
Keep in mind, most ppl here are die hard plus/4 freaks. We know and love our machine, we don't care about what others think about the plus/4. And we are fully aware of shortcomings of our machines (we all wished for hardware sprites sometimes  ). Nevertheless, we are still honestly judging software. Just because something was made for our machine it's not an instant hit.
In Germany (my home country - I can only speak about the situation here), the plus/4 wasn't aimed at small businesses. Maybe it was planned that way but later on it was marketed (quite well) as a home computer starter kit. Many ppl who wanted to get into home computing got it. Furthermore, many ppl who couldn't afford a C64 bought a plus/4 instead. (Some even bought a plus/4 on purpose. That includes me ).
About the 3-PLUS-1 software... Almost nobody in Germany used that for a very simple reason: It doesn't support umlauts. Those are essential to German speaking/writing users and even though they can be replaced by e.g. "ae" instead of "รค" that is not really an option. Later on, there has been at least one patch which added umlauts support but almost nobody knew of this and unless you had an eprom burner it was not a good solution.
I guess the very same reason applies to Hungary and France and all other countries whose languages uses accents or diacritics.
As a matter of fact, I have been using the "3-PLUS-1" wordprocesor quite a bit. I tried to add umlauts by using the ASC command (however, this didn't work very well because sometimes additional spaces were added when printed, might be another bug? I should try to reproduce this but I clearly remember that it annoyed me.) I even tried to use it as an editor for programming (started writing a parser) but the 99 lines limit was in fact to limiting 
The whole concept of the "3-PLUS-1" software is very "American". Some things are just different in Europe (not only the language, also the business world is/was very different at least back in the 80s, the typical American SoHo market just didn't exist here). Sure, we all use office suites nowadays. But "home computers" have been used for many different reasons back then. Compare the European "demo scene" to the US one... it's a huge difference. I'm not saying nobody used "home computers" for "serious" work here. But users were generally more into "entertainment" and learning how to program. For office work other platforms were used (in the early days, often CP/M based machines).
I do respect the work that has been put into the "3-PLUS-1" software. I know enough about programming to be able to appreciate the efforts. And getting to know that the whole suite had to be put into 32kb in just one months makes the shortcomings understandable.
However, I have seen many programs that are capable of more in equally restricted memory. Take a look at Botticelli. Also other word processors (to stay in the same category) have a better user interface and more useful options. "3-PLUS-1" doesn't even have word wrap on screen. One might argue "Do you need that?" but many other word processors from that time offered that.
A big plus of the "3-PLUS-1" suite is how the programs can "interact". However, I'm not aware that many ppl used that here in Germany. In fact, most ppl who were interested in doing office work with the plus/4 bought SCRIPT/+ which had quite a big user base here. Many ppl replaced the "3-PLUS-1" ROM with an eprom including SCRIPT/+. The classified ads in "Compute mit" (the major plus/4 related publication here) had lots of offers for "3-PLUS-1" ROMs. There must be a reason for that.
I'm not doubting that -in the US- many ppl were happy with "3-PLUS-1". There wasn't much else around anyway (most European productions never made it to the US) and I'm sure you can get the work done with "3-PLUS-1". It would be interesting to find out what "3-PLUS-1" could have been like in 64kb. I'm also curious if the developer was involved with the software in the Commodore LCD computer.
The idea of having a complete office suite coming with the computer proved successful, I guess
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Posted By
SVS
on 2009-08-17
15:36:15
 | Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
As I've written more times, I consider the 3+1 a good piece of SW.
I've studied it a bit, and more the 3+1 EXTRA, when I've fixed the Error Color bug, and put some new commands (hello JamesC !).
Maybe one doesn't like the WP being limited (the saved files are a seq of screen codes), but as Chiken said, it had to be reduced. The 99 lines max is a problem of memory size, not of SW. Browse a look at the complete version: you'll find even a WYSIWYG feature!
(P.S. The very good SCRIPT+ is 32K long).
But the best part is the spreadsheet. It, for example, offers some features that even Excel has not (I'm thinking to the command able to set a cell with result of a condition formula residing in another cell).
At time I worked "seriously" with the 3+1 spreadsheet. I never had a crash or a calcolus error. Only the memory limit of the Plus4 (memory full) forced me to pass to a PC spreadsheet.
Then my respect to the authors 
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-08-17
16:07:46
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Re-reading the author's letter, it sounds a bit like there have been French and German versions, doesn't it?
There have been rumours (and even adds) for "genuine" German keyboard plus/4s but all I ever saw were modified ones, usually featuring the "Deutscher Zeichensatz" by Kingsoft.
Up to date, not a single plus/4 with a German keyboard has shown up.
It would be nice if the author could confirm if there have been different language versions.
About the spreadsheet...
Back when I first got my plus/4 I didn't really know what to make of it. Honestly, a spreadsheet isn't exactly a teenage boy's favorite app The German translation "Tabellenkalkulation" would scare off any kid :D Most of my plus/4 friends back then didn't even know how to get there.
However, in the US I had to use "Claris Works" (another legendary office suite) on an Apple II quite often and found out what spreadsheets are all about. Later on, I started tinkering with the 3-PLUS-1 spreadsheet and the only thing I didn't like was the somewhat fixed layout.
Otherwise, I agree with SVS, it's stable as can be and I got all my play time calculations for mix tapes right 
It's also interesting that there might have been different versions of "3-PLUS-1" (all my plus/4s have the same one, though, V052084). The Turbo Plus cartridge fixes the bug in the database, that was mentioned by the author. Does anyone have a different version?
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Posted By
MikeZ
on 2009-08-17
20:41:15
 | Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Chicken: The thing missing from this thread is the fact that most of us in the USA who bought Plus 4s in the 1985 time frame were as old then as you are now. We bought it as an adult toy and after a while we let our kids play with it. We started using the integrated software because we could - not because we bought the machine for that reason.
I have to agree with SVS. Some of it was quite useful. I actually used the spreadsheet over a period of five years to track my financial progress toward retirement and I finally made a retirement decision based on that spreadsheet. But, again - I did it because I could. If I didn't have the 3-plus-1, I would have used Lotus 1-2-3 at work.
I never met someone who abandoned their C64 for a Plus4. It was usually those of us whose friends had C64s. That got us interested and we started with the very inexpensive
(1986 - $99) Plus 4s.
In those days we were all trying to communicate via BBS and a 300 baud modem on dial up with a long distance phone call required. Yet we still communicated.
I guess the main thing we did was write and exchange utilities. I can tell you I never saw any Demo files.
I spoke with Dave Johnson by phone a couple of times. He talked about writing the 3-plus-1 stuff and he told me he assembled it on a C64! I also had several conversations with Fred Bowen at Commodore and we briefly explored the idea of hooking two Plus4s back to back via the 6529 parallel ports. Yes - it worked!
I guess you could say that back then there was a lot of hardware experimentation and utility writing.
Maybe this will put things a little more in perspective - Cheers- MikeZ
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Posted By
register
on 2009-08-18
03:54:32
| What is David W. Johnson doing now?
I am a computer professional and I make my living in the software industry as David was doing in his youger days. Commodore played a big role in my profession since my passion for programming started during my teen years with my first computer: a Commodore 16. Since then the software industry has changed a lot and I would be very curious about hearing David's opinions about it. Anyone knows what David has been doing / is doing right now?
Greets,
Luca
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Posted By
indi
on 2009-08-18
07:02:52
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
I'm going to forward the link to this discussion to him, so he can respond if he likes. I have to say I tend to agree with him, you get some real nob heads that do nothing but complain about your hard work yet would never manage anything close to that themselves.
Anyway... I'll let him know tonight and with luck, he'll post some answers for you guys.
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-08-18
08:27:13
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
MikeZ...
Thanks for the input on the situation in the US. As I expected it was different from here. Also, many plus/4 users here bought their equipment in a later time frame (when discounters started selling those starter kits for a lower price). Of course "older" ppl bought the plus/4 here, too. But the missing umlauts kept them from using the wordprocessor (many letters to the editor of "Compute mit" dealt with this). So I really wonder, if there was a localized version planned. Especially to "older" ppl who already had type writer experience the different keyboard layout seemed to be "problematic", too. Younger ppl never really bothered because it's just a few things that are changed and we learned typing on the plus/4 keyboard.
You pointed out another big difference between the US and Germany (probably Europe): BBS was something for a very limited audience here. For two reasons... Expensive phone calls and the state monopoly for telecommunications back then. You couldn't just buy any modem but it had to be certified by the "Deutsche Post". Those were overpriced and often technically not up to date. It was a violation of several telecommunication laws to use an uncertified modem.
The magazines back then always had stories about illegal BBSs and raids on hackers. With a little distance you can only look back and smile about that because things have changed so much (btw, this was WEST Germany, you might not believe this... the "Deutsche Post" was pretty strict in those days).
Of course we all knew about BBSs but to most of us it was some digital wonderland we could never go to. Mail trading/swapping was the way to get new software.
Back to "3-PLUS-1"...
I browsed through some magazines yesterday which tested the plus/4 back then and they all had something to say about the integrated software. All of them read "It's not really useable for serious work". I doubt that those editors even tried to do some serious work with it. My guess is they just took a look at the word processor and that's it.
The test results list some pros and cons...
"Negative: - integrated software"
That's something I never understood. How can something you get as an extra be negative? Sure, if you had to pay lots of money for something you don't really need/want it's not ok. However, the plus/4 was cheap already.
Something else I noticed... Over the years I bought a couple of second hand plus/4s and all the "3-PLUS-1" manuals are in very good condition whereas the plus/4 manuals have torn pages etc. Obviously, ppl didn't even look at it. Which is sad because the German "3-PLUS-1" manual is well written (unlike many other Commodore manuals).
Another reason for the "unpopularity" of the "3-PLUS-1" is that many starter kits came with a datasette - most plus/4 software came on tapes anyway. Unless you had the pricey Turbo Plus cartridge you couldn't use the integrated software.
Here in Germany quite a few plus/4 users just didn't have a floppy drive (Usually those who later on got a C64.), leave alone a printer (quite expensive back then, too). Those who really wanted to do some "serious work" and got floppy drives and printers used some software that supported umlauts.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2009-08-20
05:51:54
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
We all are honoured to read the mr. David' Johnson' letter.
It would be interesting to know other "secrets" of this piece of SW, of course if David is so kind. For example I've seen on 3+1 EXTRA some commands' extensions of WP (and the SPELL that is a spell-checker for it); are there other news or increases?
I think its's a good idea to ask him too, for possible unreleased versions, new software, or other documentation regarding the 3+1 world. Indi please talk with him regarding this, thank you.
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-08-20
07:41:47
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Btw, everybody should have a look at http://www.commodore.ca/products/264/Commodore_264_family.htm. This is the article David Johnson is refering to. Reading this, one might understand his anger and why he emphasizes so much on stability.
The mentioned article is a bit contradictory. First it says "I have played with it [the integrated software] extensively and thought it was pretty damn cool for its time." and then goes on "The word processor would only handle an embarrassingly small 99 lines of text! The Graphing program was quite limited and really only useful as an extension of the Spread Sheet. The database or "File Manager" as Commodore promoted it, was slow and not useful for much more than recipes. But most problematic was the overall quality of the software code; it was terribly unstable and just not 'ready for prime time'."
Being the only program I used very frequently (until I got "Textmeister" -still missing- by Solder), I can only tell about the wordprocessor. Despite all its limitations (or even because of them) it is definitely NOT unstable. It didn't crash a single time, which I can't say about Pages/Word.
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-09-17
01:19:25
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Hey! Maybe I am a bit late. However I could read this thread only today. I used only 3+1 WP. I wrote and printed some documents with it. I had no disk drive and saved/loaded pages of text as datasette files. These were texts in Russian+English... I used a standard centronics printer via user port and hand-made cable. There were no any problems. I am slightly surprized that ppl in Germany didn't write simple "germanizer" similar to my "russifier". BTW I saw ROM cartridge from Germany which russified 3+1 at 1987 or 1988!
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-09-21
04:20:14
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Litwr,
there was such a patch (published in RUN magazine if I remember correctly) but as far I can tell, that patch wasn't well known or widely used (it's not even available here on plus/4 world I think).
As I said, most ppl at that time used Script/Plus for which there are well known patches.
That cartridge probably came from the GDR (East Germany), where Russian was the first foreign langauge taught in schools.
I saw your Russifier +4 on your web page before. It's interesting and maybe we should compile a list with all the programs that add functionality to 3-plus-1.
How did you print out your 3-plus-1 files? Have you included some kind of printer driver for your user port-to-centronics-cable?
Edit:
Maybe your Epson driver is compatible with 3-plus-1? Though, from the screen shot, it seems more like a hardcopy program.
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-09-23
02:58:06
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Thank you very much for these hard & interesting questions. I had to rembember many of 20 years old things. These things exactly are the real +4 hardware, the mentioned programs without sources (all assembler code was written directly in TEDMON), and the author himself. I've tried this stuff again. However I can't test Centronics connection (all emulators missed this) so I can only conjecture some things. I assume that "3+1 russifier" contains Epson driver -- it is possible to see user port code at $6aa. The Epson driver simply redirects all output to device #4 (this number may be changed by POKE in BASIC version of this driver) to the user port.
I could be erroneus about identificaton of German cartridge with Russian language support. I saw it only one time during 10 minutes. It could be other Word Processor with possible GDR origin.
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-09-23
08:29:31
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Thanks for digging in the past It's still interesting to see how it was done. I never had a Centronics printer, just my trusty old Seikosha SP-180VC which came with a Commodore serial port.
Off topic:
Where did you get your plus/4 back then? You are the only Russian plus/4 user I know of. Did you have contacts in the Soviet Union who had a plus/4 as well? Obviously, you had some contacts in Poland because you mention turbo tapes which were available in Poland in your copy program. Was it hard to get software for a machine which probably wasn't very common?
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-09-24
05:00:34
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
So you have to make your own cable and to attach Centronics printer through it. Then you may print BASIC/TEDMON data & programs, hi-res images, and 3+1 data via my driver! BTW I had the experience of usage MPS-801. The paper with holes was terrific!
Do you want the history of +4 in SU and Poland? It's possible but I had limited knowledge about whole Polish picture -- I was ordinal user with limited contacts there. Is this forum the correct place for the story? I may write the whole story in the direct letter after your request. BTW the story of +4 in other part of the world is still also missed our emucamp. It is interesting to know approximate number of users, magazines, 16/116/+4 themselves, fields of usage, etc. Will our great computer be ever in history?
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-09-24
05:35:33
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Well, I can't solder stuff so I can't make my own cable But I keep this in mind so whenever I get a cable I might try this
Yes, this forum is definitely the right place for the history of plus/4 in every country Maybe just in another thread, though. You could also add that to your member page here. Just start writing and I'm sure we'll find a good place for the story.
Some software from Poland made it to Germany (especially the creations of Bohdan R. Rau and the drawing program Young Picasso). But otherwise I don't know much.
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Posted By
YERZMYEY
on 2009-09-25
03:51:29
 | Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
"A flop"? Haha, and what criterion is that?
Sam Coupe also wasn't sold in so many issues like ZX Spectrum 128K but Sam is still much more powerful computer than ZX128. No "flop" can change THIS.
Potatoes are still beeing sold in many shops. For hundreds of years. Does it mean they're more powerful than C64? And the same goes to socks.
>we all wished for hardware sprites sometimes
---------
Well, I don't. There are no sprites on Spectrum and there are thousands of games for it. Many good games're among them.
People write their own sprite engines and that's not only normal to me but even better.
Proof: last times Atari XL/XE sceners were making a conversion of "Bomb Jack" game. They also have hardware sprites so they tried to implement this feature to the game.
And what would You say - they abandon hardware sprites in the end, because they were too crap for the game. Having hardware sprites they wrote custom sprite-engine for the game and it stayed this way, because it appeared better solution.
It was my "5 cents" to the disscussion.
Sorry for interrupt.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2009-09-25
03:59:36
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
>>Potatoes are still beeing sold in many shops. For hundreds of years. Does it mean they're more powerful than C64?
Well said!
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-09-29
03:55:54
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
The story is short. So I place it here. I'd just visited computer minimarkets in Polish big cities (Wroclaw, Warsaw) for Sundays during 86-89. My +4 (and then Amiga 500) and almost all software was bought there. These mini-markets were club buildings rented for one-two days. This link provided me the best bank of +4 programs in SU. So I was "a main SU distributor" of +4 software! I knew almost all ppl with +4. One of them was a professor who wrote a book about Basic programming based on his +4 work experience. One was gene scientist. One had +4 with two 1551, printer, commodore color monitor, cartridges --- it was great luxury for these days. There were several +4 parties in Moscow. There were also big plans for +4 in SU and software development for it. However the total number of +4 users to the end of 80s was below 100. I sold my "iron friend" at 1991 (Amiga left me earlier, at 1990). I knew ppl who tried to use 3+1 in their work/study. They all were very disappointed by slow speed of spreadsheet and small Word processor's documents size. I knew several Polish magazines (Komputer, Bajtek) which published +4 related materials. I saw also several (2-3) articles about +4 in Russian. SU was very isolated (I had special official permission to be owner of $15 at 1988!!!) so many things reached it too late. For example the mass Spektrum clones production made them very popular only at the first and even second part of 90s.
I should also add several words about my printer MC-6312. It was the really unique thing. It was the first USSR made ink jet printer.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%9C%D0%A1_6312
If you want more details I am ready to provide it.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2019-12-18
08:45:30
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)" - update
Hi everyone,
I reopen this post, after years. I suppose in these last years new users and site-members came in.
So, I ask to you, old and new, if you have an answer to my question:
Was existing (do you know) the single program Spreadsheet, I mean the non-reduced version of 3+1 one? This because the Plus4-extra has original non-reduced versions of the WordProcessor and FileManager, while PlusGraph is the original version of Graphics.
But, IMO the spreadsheet was the best code of 3+1 and I wish to rescue it.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-12-19
07:34:17
 | Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
Ehm, hard to belive it would come close to SVS-Calc
Actually, anyone can tell, why the Word editor was so limited?
As the 3-PLUS-1 run from ROM (despite it is 32KB), the text could be (should be) much much more in the available RAM.
99 lines, and 80 characters per line is only 8KB, even if you have a formatting (one extra byte per character) you are still only at 16KB.
At least 50KB RAM should have been available next to the ROM!
Several ppl highlights it was a fantastic idea to have it in the ROM and start it at a button press (it was), I feel some huge limitations built into the SW, like this 99 lines.
This is not the limitation of the machine, it is the limitation of the SW and the concept, and NOT because it had to fit into 32KB ROM.
Actually in the ROM the SW takes no spece from the data/test/cells, like a SW need to be loaded
It you could write small novels in the built-in machine (300-400 lines) noone would complain.
I am not a great programmer, but BASIC continuously DOES RAM/ROM switching, so provides 60KB free RAM. It could have been done by the built in SW too.
(the previously mentioned Botticelli is a great example. It runs in GFX mode (-10KB), has a second GFX screen (-10KB), has a nice GUI, software sprite, a lot of built in textures and tools.
EasyScript for C64 (1982!) should have been loaded into the memory (RAM), and still offered more area of editing, full of features, even can link files.
It should have been known in 1983 or 1984, that this level should be reached.
Yes, it cost 75USD back in the time, but such a packagake in the ROM (32KB should have been enough, Easyscript was 13KB only on C64) would not make anyone complain. ("Easy Script is one of the most powerful word processors available for any microcomputer.")
BTW Update: If you check out Cool News 4, it uses a soft-80 column mode. Very well readible even with CRT emulation and resterlines (sorry, no chance to check it out on real CRT TV), and the speed is really correct. I saw on C64 there were several hardware 80 column cards, some of them are really hard to read. This Cool News 4 soft 80 column looks neat...
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Posted By
SVS
on 2019-12-19
03:33:49
| Re: A reply to "The Letter (3-PLUS-1)"
A reason of the 99 lines limit could be the ability to have *in the same time* the wordprocessor and the spreadsheet working. This was a great feature IMO.
Maybe the number of line was stored as BCD, then 99 it the maximum value available in a single BCD byte.
Maybe Indi could ask Johnson for all these questions?
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