Al's Place (www.pobox.com/~alsplace)

August 22nd, 2001 - I've decided to give these old pages a new home. The content is old, but perhaps it is still useful.

The NEW Sub-Etha SoftWEAR!

The 1998 Chicago and Pennsylvania CoCoFests saw the return of Sub-Etha, but not as a software vendor. This time, offerings include a new book, buttons, and t-shirts! Most items are created just for sale at the Fest, but mail orders are also available. Custom t-shirt and buttons also designed by request.

What happened to Sub-Etha Software?

Sub-Etha Software is no longer in my hands. I began working for Microware Systems Corp. (creators of OS-9) in 1995, and having my own OS-9 software development company would have been a conflict of interests. So, for the time being, I'm out of the software business.

For those curious, Terry Todd (co-founder) currently co-owns and runs a bookshop called A First Edition which is really neat. His phone number there is (409) 639-1187. His home page (listed above) has not been touched in ages (and may not even be there anymore), but the bookstore itself does have an e-mail address (where Terry could be reached, possibly) with a website of their own coming in the future. Joel Hegberg, of our former OSK Midwest Division, currently works for Motorola near Chicago.

Product History:

This isn't complete, and isn't likely to be anytime soon, but for those curious...

1990

Shadow BBS by Terry Todd. RS-DOS bulletin board system promoted as having "power, speed, and flair." Worked on as little as one disk drive and the bitbanger port (at 2400 baud with full typeahead buffer). (Sadly, never fully completed but it was one of the classiest BBS packages I've ever seen on the CoCo.)
MiniBanners by Allen Huffman- RS-DOS banner printing utility which output single and multiple line, multi-font banners on any printer. Our all time best selling product.
MultiBasic by Terry - split RS-DOS into multiple banks with variable sharing, disk chaining, etc. Very easy to use. It's a wonder this didn't revolutionize BASIC programming. Even came with a public domain runtime version to give out with programs written under it.

1991

CheckBook+ by Joel Mathew Hegberg - RS-DOS graphical checkbook program which generated pie, bar, and line graphs of your account. Fully menu and mouse driven. Often called the "CoCoMax" of checkbook programs (from the look of the GUI interface).
MiniBanners09 - ported to OS-9 with improved speed. This version quickly outsold the original RS-DOS version.

1992

CheckBook+09 - ported to OS-9 using a new text screen interface designed by Joel.

1993

InfoPatch by Terry Todd - patched old CoCo 1/2 Infocom(tm) games to run on a CoCo 3 in double speed, 80 columns, etc.
CheckBook+OSK - ported (by Joel) to MM/1 computer under OS-9/68000.
MiniBannersOSK - ported to MM/1 by Joel Hegberg.
EthaGUI by Joel - Graphical user interface for the MM/1, offering file utilities, icons, and other goodies, such as a trash can.
WriteRight by Joel - Graphics based MM/1 word processor. Released at the 1993 Mid America Fest (Des Moines, IA) making that show our single most profitable ever.
CoCoFest92 by Allen - Graphics adventure based on the 1992 Atlanta CoCoFest. A special edition 1-disk version of this game was also made for the Atlanta Computer Society. Featured dozens of digitized (using a DS-69B) pictures of folks at the show, including Paul Ward, Kevin Darling, and many others.
CoCoFest92/MM1 - ported (by Joel) to MM/1, and actually slower than the CoCo version due to the on-the-fly graphics conversion.
MultiBoot by Terry and Allen - allowed multiple OS9boot files on same startup disk. Probably the most useful thing we ever created.
Invaders09 by Allen (with assistance from Robert Gault) - Game for CoCo OS-9.
Towel by Allen - Disk utility for CoCo OS-9.

1995

TowelMM1 by Allen - Updated for the MM/1.
MegaBanners by Allen - Deluxe banner program for MM/1 featuring Joel's MFonts.
Wormhole by Joel - Arcade game with digital sound for the MM/1. (This item was never officially released, but completed far enough to even have manuals made.)

1996 - Freeware Releases!

Chi94adv.lzh by Allen - ChicagoFest 94 graphical adventure, never completed but still playable (no room pictures).
Alstuff.lzh by Allen - Full source code to various utilities and whatzits I've done over the year, including the 3D maze demo, StG BBS extras, deluxe prompt/file listers, etc.
RGB-DOS Stuff by Allen - A dozen or so NEW utilities for RGB-DOS users, featured in a related article in "the world of '68 micros" magazine. Specifically written for use with a SyQuest EZ135 removeable SCSI drive, but applicable to any supported hard drive.

1997

No released products, but an article was printed on using pipes under OS-9 Level 2 for the world of 68' micros.

1998

Buttons and T-Shirts - many new, interesting, and funny designs such as CoCo 2000: Proudly Taking Obsolesence Into the Next Century and many other designs. (Offered at CoCoFests under the name of Sub-Etha SoftWEAR.)
CoCoFest Chronicles by Allen - A 192 page book compilation of all my Fest reports from the 1990 AtlantaFest on up to the 1997 Pennsylvania CoCo Fest. ORDER IT ONLINE WITH A CREDIT CARD or check my CoCo InfoPage for more details.

Other items distributed through the years:

N*Johnson Software: 4-D Checkers, Util Disk, etc. (We met Nick back at one of the original Atlanta Fests, then he appeared the next year with N*Banners, his version of a CoCo banner program. Nick still remains one of the more unique individuals I ran into at shows.) Nick Johnson has his own domain at www.spatula.net and can be reached as spatula@myplace.org. He has now gone to Unix stuff.
Carl England Software: Super Boot, 512K Copy, Super Backup, Booklet Printer, The DEFEATER (1995, copies _ANY_ disk), etc. Also, a deluxe "DIR" boot utility (boot by typing DIR, not just DOS!) which was released as Pyramid-Ware at the 1997 Pennsylnvania CoCoFEST. Neat concept!
Mike Shell's speech/sound pak upgrades and drivers, and his BLOB-stop OS-9 patches which were incorporated into NitrOS9 at some point I believe.
JWT Enterprises software: Optimize Util Set.
Strong*Ware: Soviet Bloc, GEMS, HFE Font Editor, OSK Tools, etc.
Animajik: Represented them at the 1992 ChicagoFest introducing the OS-9 Underground magazine. Alan Sheltra is married with a child, and uses a Mac.

Some of this stuff is still available -- Just Ask! If you are interested in any of the products described here, drop me a note and we'll see what can be worked out.

Mailing Information:

Allen C. Huffman
P.O. Box 22031
Des Moines, IA 50325