European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 16, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes computers tuesday August 16,1994 avoiding a jolting experience electrical surges among Frany things that can Hurt a unit 1 by Bill Husted Cox news service there is. More than one Way to Kilt a. know. The Nice fellow at the computer store told you not to worry. Nothing you can do will Hurt it he said. Lean close and listen. There Are All sorts of things you can do to Hurt s Start with lightning bolts and electrical surges. Both Are Quick ways to end up with a Large beige paperweight. And that $29.95 surge protector you bought is just an expensive Extension Cord. It won t help a bit. To get Protection against surges you la need to spend $80 to $100. Look for one with this underwriter s Laboratory rating ul1449, so volts. If that Nice computer store clerk tells you he has one just As Good but without the us rating step on his foot As you stalk out of the store. Have you Ever wondered by the Way Why these gadgets Aren t called lightning protectors the answer is because they Aren t. They Only protect against surges of Power. A direct lightning hit on the electrical wires coming into your Home will turn any surge protector into a Lump of melted plastic. So when you hear loud Thunder or see lightning unplug the computer your Modem and your Printer. We still have a lot of computers to kill lightning bolts can be quite shocking to a computer s electrical system. So let s move on. You be Felt the shocking proof of the next computer killer if you be Ever shuffled across a thick carpet on a cold Winter Day. Remember what happened when you reached for the Doorknob a Bolt of electricity you could see and feel it shot from your fingertip. Not All Static buildup is As dramatic. Charges too Small for you to feel can scramble the brains of your computer and destroy its memory chips. So next time you open your computer to add memory chips or a cd drive touch the Bare unpainted Metal at the Back of the Case before unplugging the pc. That la discharge any Static. Avoid working on a pc in a carpeted area. Let s kill another pc. This time let s Burn one to death. Take a look at the Back of your computer and you la see a Small fan behind a mesh screen. Well you probably can t see the mesh screen of your computer. I la bet it s clogged wit dust and lint this probably will not come As a big Surprise but the purpose of that fan isto air Cool your computer. All the gadgetry inside generates heat. And enough heat will destroy your computer. So clean the mesh screen. But Don t. Use a vacuum cleaner on it. That creates Static dangers of its own. Instead use a stiff Brush or get a can of compressed air you la find one at an electronic Supply store or camera shop and blow the dust away. While you re standing there compressed air can in hand blow away the dust on the circuit Board called a Motherboard. This dust can kill too. But in a different Way. It can Short out the circuit Board. A thick enough layer of dust and dirt can conduct electricity causing a Short circuit. / by this time you May be tired. Let s taper off gradually by killing a compute Monitor. Here s How. Put a newspaper or Magazine either will work Fine on top of the Monitor and leave it on. Take a look at the top of your Monitor and you la see air vents. Covering them lets the heat build up inside the Monitor. Of that s enough senseless computer killing. Consider yourself deputized in the techno buddy pc posse go out and save a computer today. Players really can get lost in the myst by Stephen Williams news Darget lost. That s the Gist of myst the summer s most popular Island destination for armchair travellers. Myst is More than a chunk of computer software sprung from the Fertile minds of two Brothers in Spokane Wash. In less than a year myst has become one of the Best Selling cd rom computer programs of All time All time in this Case defined As the past year or so and a Staple on most top 10 software fists. Strategies Are discussed at cocktail parties notes Are compared up and Down the internet. Cd rooms stands for compact disc read Only Mem Ory have taken computer games to the next plateau because the discs can store massive amounts of data information that blooms in the computer As fancy graphics digital Quality sound and even animation. As the prices of cd rom drives have dropped in the past year to less than $200, the popularity of the software has soared. Myst shares the cd rom entertainment whirl wit return to Zork the 7th guest and the High tech hard porn virtual Valerie. But it is the game that has caught the mood and captured the Buzz with More than a Quarter of a million Silver discs shipped since september myst Marks a new sensibility a nonviolent slightly surreal graphically sophisticated cunningly simple labyrinth. Or so it seems. Like the Best games myst is intuitive a nonlinear my thic journey through fantastic worlds and alternate Reali ties. The explorations Are accomplished just by clicking a mouse on an object on screen Click it on a Book Click it on a door Click it on a spigot Click it on a tree. It s what i like to Call the easy chair1 computer ame said Rand Miller who designed the game with is brother Robyn. Where you can sit Back and readmit like a Good a the inhabitants of myst Island located in the Middle of a forgotten sea Are missing. There Are no instructions no dialogue boxes to help interpret the actions no clocks to beat. The Story begins with a tattered Book. Players read it with a mouse Click and suddenly there s myst Island the creation of atrus who has a Knack for transporting his readers to fantastic realms. The Island is deserted his is a step closer to the kind of animation you d see in a Disney Taiho Steven Levy although there Are objects a spaceship an ancient Schooner caves mazes craters. Your Job is deduction use the hints to find out what happened to the people. Open the Correct doors and new universes come to graphic life. The player is swept deeper and deeper into the thickening plot. This is a step closer to the kind of animation you d see in a Disney movie said Steven Levy,1 author of a sanely great which traces the history of Apple s macintosh and curator of the macintosh game Hall of Fame for Mac world Magazine. The creators have managed to Bury the illusion that you re following some Programmer s flow Chart. At this Point i d say it s the nicest implementation of the cd rom the program published by Broder bund software and available for both ism and macintosh computers for about $50 at discount incorporates textured 3-d graphics constructed from 200 computer rendered scenes rendered animation in the form of full motion video and a 40-minute original music soundtrack punctuated with dynamic sound effects. The package took two years to produce. Because myst is different from what came before it s created a cult of fanatics myst junkies some of whom have gone slightly overboard. From a cover Story about the Miller Brothers in the August Issue of wired mag Azine myst was Beautiful complicated emotional dark intelligent absorbing like others before them Dante Milton Bla Kethe Millers encountered their dark sides even while searching for the from other precincts the evaluations Are less Subtle. Cannot Tell you the amount of office time that s been lost to myst " said Shaun Assael who is helping to develop a Magazine for the Hearst corp. In new York. Assael and some co workers encountered myst while surfing through a Batch of cd rooms sent to the office. In the first two weeks we were All Happy to make the random connections he said. We were impressed with our cerebral flexibility. Invariably though you hit Walls of course Are part of the fun and few Candi dates can report Brief encounters with myst either it grabs you or it does t. It is a finite game 40 hours is the average time to solve myst. There Are a lot of peo ple who never finish said Rand Miller. Seven years ago Rand and Robyn Miller aligned their respective abilities Robyn 27, painted and played guitar Rand 35, was a computer Programmer for a Texas Bank to create acclaimed children s pro Grams such As the manhole and cosmic Osmo. The manhole won a software publishers association award in 1988 for Best new use of a computer. While the Millers May have played god with myst they be lately taken a More direct Cue marketing Wise from Steven Spielberg. Not Only is there a myst sequel in the works a sequel becomes obvious to those who finish the game so we re told but scuttlebutt of a novel. We outlined All of the history of myst with a Back Story which ended up like a Book said Rand Miller. It s linear rather than nonlinear like the game is. And Are you ready for myst the movie an Agentis shopping the idea in Hollywood. Arnie Katz probably won t be at the head of the ticket Lue Katz 1s editor of electronic games Magazine and he s got some reservations about it s got excellent artwork and it probably makes the most effective use of quicklime a form of computer animation of any entertainment program so far Katz said from Las vegas. But one problem it s a taste thing is that you Are moving through an unpopulated world in which there is no real human interaction. Adventures that emphasize character conversation and interaction Are More entertaining Katz is also bothered that the complexity of myst s puzzles could turn off Novice gamers. It s certainly a game for the expert that should be on the Box the Millers though Aren t Likely to mess with Suc Cess. Rand Miller in t giving away the myst sequel which is at least a year away except to say we re going to keep the same feel. And raise the bar again everybody s Gonna try to out myst myst and we be got to do our Best to compete with
