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Page 2      Diablo Blue      September, 2001

Dragon's Lair was first released in the arcades back in 1983. (Not a typo!). Back then this game was nothing short of a sensation in that it used actual cartooning and animation instead of the blocky graphics that was the state of the art in those days. In fact, inside the arcade console the game existed on a laser disk player. I think this was the first game to use that technology but I am not sure. The game play consisted of directing your brave knight; Dirk the Daring, through a castle loaded with traps and monsters to save the princess from the clinches of an evil dragon. The game consumed many many quarters as I learned the correct sequence and timing to get our valiant hero through his mission. Incredibly, it was like watching a cartoon as we gyrated the joystick through all the obstacles. Dragon's Lair was eventually released on floppies (it came on about 20 as I recall), and even on a CD in recent years. So why are we talking about a game almost 20 years old? Dragon's Lair has just been released on DVD completely re-mastered with all the scenes and action of the original laser disk arcade game. So…?
It plays on your DVD player -- no PC required! You use your DVD remote for the 5 moves required in the game: up, down, left, right and use your sword. It works fine. You don't actually control Dirk's movement but rather you control his reactions to the events in the game as they unfold. In other words, it's all in the timing or your choice of move. You can Pause or Resume play using the Pause and Play buttons on your remote. If you leave your disk in the player it will resume where you left off but you cannot save your game. Like the resurgence of Pong and many other classics, it's fun to see this game again and makes for a great party game on a big screen TV. Dragon's Lair 2 is also out in this format but I have not played it. (I still haven't mastered the original!).
Check it out at www.digitalleisure.com.

Here's a follow up to my article Up-Up-&-Away in the August issue of Diablo Blue.
Adaptec has finally released the operational drivers for USB-2. These are the drivers that will make the USB-2 appliances operate. The original drivers that came with the PCI-card were of questionable use, and their main job was to make the new USB-2 card compatible with the original 1.1 version USB operation. Seems that Adaptec was for some reason was in a rush to get  a product out the door.
You can download the drivers by following this link: www.adaptec.com, selecting Products, then selecting USB. Or you can click here and go directly to the download page:
www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/suppbyproduct.html?cat=/Technology/USB&fromPage=driverindex (whew -- that's some link!).

If you have recently updated to Microsoft Office XP and used Intellisync Hot Sync to synchronize your Palm PDA with Outlook you may have a problem.
I discovered about a week after I updated to Office XP that my Palm was not being properly updated with Outlook changes and visa versa.  The next time I did a hot synch I discovered that no data was being transferred.
After considerable thrashing around I discovered that the only way to re-establish communication between Outlook and my Palm was to uninstall the Intellisync Hot Synch program and re-install it.
The next time I attempted a hot synch it took much longer than usual but when it was done my two programs were synchronized. [Editor's note: Once you've done this longer hot sync subsequent hot syncs will be much faster.]
It is too bad that Microsoft didn't include a warning in the Office XP update package.