European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 02, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes computers tuesday August 2,1994 naval buffs get a Tui in cockpit enthusiasts of modern naval aviation until now forced to Fly air Force simulations  suddenly have two earner based planes to Pilot. Spectrum hol byte which appears to have a lock on the Ultra realistic combat flight simulator has Given us the Navy s equivalent of the f-16 the multipurposef/a-18 Hornet As an add on to its Falcon 3 simulator. The version of the Horne served up Here is the single officer one a look Back shows you a empty seat. This was a Wise decision considering the problems of its competitor. The Hornet seems quite twitchy you have to have a very steady hand on the stick and handling becomes even More unpredictable at Low Speed and Low Altitude. Landing this simulation on Carrier deck in this Case that of the Roo Sevelt is so far beyond my skills it s pathetic. In fact it is sometimes too much for the autopilot which is supposed to make perfect landings every time Hornet of course has All the Good stuff we have come to love in Falcon 3 head to head or cooperative flying with friends via Modem and the wonderful flight recorder that serves As an outstanding Tutor. Micro prose models the venerable f-14 tomcat in Fleet defender which must be considered a Noble failure. I attempts in its authentic modes an amazing amount of realism and in doing so demonstrates Why this is a two seat fighter. The learning curve in authentic Mode is going to be too much for All but the most dedicated. I found it simply impossible to Fly the plane and pursue targets while bouncing Back to the radio intercept officer s seat to select anew track of the big picture. Your computerized Back seater can be set to handle some of this but the computer Rio s performance i attuned Only to the closest threat not Lecce warily the most important one and will happily lock onto Neutral targets. Fleet defender is the first simulation other than spectrum hol byte s to feature Active Ingmen. Graphics Are excellent and the flight Model seems realistic. Carrier Landing is so closely simulated that the Pilot must even Call the Ball a procedure too complicated to explain Here but familiar to Navy pilots and those who watch to cruise in top gun at least once a week. However even had Micro prose successfully resolved the two seat problem it would have fallen Shortin several major areas. There is no flight recorder from which the player can learn by his mistakes _ there is no provision for head to head matchup via Modem or network. The manual fails to locate adequately a number of the cockpit instruments and lights and the designers Choice of key presses to operate the plane s controls make the use of thrust master controls  cumbersome. Jack Warner hooking into naval action Harpoon ii offers variety of scenarios Battle possibilities by Jack Warner ,. Cox news service no Arm of the modern military lends. Itself so completely to computer Simula Tion As the Navy. After All War at sea is now conducted not by men on glassed in Bridges but by people studying video displays in dark ened combat information centers. But you won t have to turn off the lights to enjoy Harpoon ii the successor to the most Complex accurate and popu Lar simulation of modern naval tactics. Harpoon ii is a wonder of complexity. There Are half a dozen tutorial scenarios to explain the use of its windowing inter face. The windows for the most part Are user created maps enlarged portions of the Basic scenario map. There Are also transitory windows containing information messages and the like. The 272-Page manual is both an exhaustive reference for the game and a de cent treatise on modern naval tactics. There is a huge data base of ships air Craft and weapons but it is unreasonably difficult to use. For instance the Only useful information in initial plotting of an unidentified Contact is often the Type of sensors it uses. You cannot search the data base for sensors or anything else. You have to Call up every Likely Contact and Check it sensors. A game this Complex is bound to have bugs. The initial release of Harpoon was plagued with them but three sixty Pacific the publisher worked diligently to fix them. I experienced Only one real glitch with Harpoon ii when the loss of a single ship unaccountably wiped All my surface units off the map. The command interface while necessarily Complex is not difficult and the game provides a distinct sense of realism. The major problem i have is with the scenarios. All but one Are Forward looking the world after the collapse of the Eastern bloc. A Good Many Are conflicts of Small interest Between unlikely combatants. Worse still even the More interesting scenarios seem unrealistic. It seems unlikely for instance that North Korea would invade South Korea while Able to put up virtually no opposition to a . Marine expeditionary Force headed for the beaches near Inchon. I playing this scenario at its hardest level i encountered opposition Only from a Cou pie of submarines and a few woefully out Moded aircraft. Air defences were virtually nonexistent. Coastal batteries overlooking the invasion beaches were easily eliminated. However As with the original har Poon More Battle sets should be Forth coming. Perhaps they will offer More in Terest and greater Challenge. Getting plugged into the fact that computers use batteries by Michael j. Himowitz Baltimore Sun in almost every ism compatible com Puter there s a ticking time bomb that can turn an expensive machine into inexpensive paperweight. It struck my Friend Sid last week. The computer does t work he told me Over the phone. Can you give me a Little More detail i asked. J when i turn it on it says cmos a sum error or something like that. Then it just sits  sounds like your Battery ran out told him. Battery what Battery the Daggon machine s been plugged into the Wall for two years now. That May Well be i told him but the Nasty Little Cret is that every computer with an 80286, 80386 and 80486 processor depends on a Small Battery plugged into the Motherboard or main circuit Board. The Battery Powers a Chip that contains the computer s clock and a Small package of memory made from a complementary Metal oxide semiconductor known in the Trade As cmos. R this cmos ram contains your com Puter s setup or configuration data. When you turn your computer on i looks to the cmos to find out what kind of disk drives and video Board you have the amount of conventional and extended memory and a lot of other arcane information about your Motherboard that it needs to get running when that Battery Dies As it inevitably will the setup information Dies with it. Your computer won t work and you Wil get the kind of cryptic message that Sid saw along with a message telling you to run the computer s setup Utility program. Many computers sold three to five years ago Are at the end of their Batter life new resulting in a lot of terrified owners. There s hardly a Day goes by that we ddn t get erne in the shop said Richard Cohen technical director of Micro re pair services in Towson my. Fortunately a dead cmos Batter does not qualify As a real disaster. You have riot lost any data on your hard  computer just does not know How to find it. By replacing the Battery and running the setup program to restore the configuration data in cmos ram Youcan get your computer working again. Unfortunately this is not a Job for the faint of heart or the technically challenged. _. If you re not interested in opening you computer or fooling around with strange setup menus take your machine to you dealer s service department or a repair shop. L. R Micro repair services charges $18 for the Battery and $45 for the installation and setup which is about average. In fact Given the hassles i have gone through when cmos problems have cropped up $45 is downright cheap. If you Are trying to do it yourself or Yar a helping someone else the mos difficult part of the Job is figuring out what kind of hard drive you have so that you can enter the information in the setup program. It does not do any Good to Tell the com Puter you have a 120-megabyte"drive"it"needs much Mafre specific information when ism developed the setup pro Gram for us original at computer it Al Lowed for 46.different types of drive which seemed like plenty in the Early i9o0s. F j the drives were classified by the num Ber of Heads cylinders and sectors if you Are getting Glassy eyed Here remember that a service department is not faraway. Those 46 drive types remain enshrined in almost every pc today although few new drives fit into any of those categories i. _ _ _ if you have an older computer the instruction manual that came with it May �11 you what drive Type to use 1 through46. On newer machines the manual May Tell you to use a Type 47, or user define drive which Means you will have to manually enter the number of Heads cylinders and sectors the drive contains. If you do not have this information you will have to find it. The manufacturer s technical support department can provide it if you can get through. On line services such As Compuserve often have listings of drive specifications i their hardware forums that is where i found Sid s information. A repair shop May also be Able to help if it is Well stocked with technical manuals. All of this sounds like a lot of trouble and it is. You can minimize the hassle by running your setup program before you Battery Dies and writing Down everything you see on the screen even if you do no understand what it Means. Do not make any changes. Just run the program an restart your computer. The information will make it much easier for you or whoever else tries to restore the machine it the Battery Dies or even if you decide to place the Battery before it drop dead. Or the Job is easier if you have Dos ver Sion 6. A Utility program called mid usually m your Dos directory will scan your entire system and provide All the setup information you Are Likely to need. Fruit out the results and keep the report. In a Safe place