From: feedback@macquisition.gsfc.nasa.gov
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 07:44:32 -0400
Subject: Macquisition 1.0.1 freeware released 6/16/95

After the 0.X versions survived
...almost a year in worldwide distribution and use
...more than a year of [ab]use by NASA


Macquisition 1.0.1 was released as freeware to the world on Friday, June
16, 1995.

Based on feedback over the past year from users around the world, version 1.0
* has a faster MultiBASIC interpreter
   run your existing programs even faster
* runs on any Macintosh
   from the greatest PowerMacs to the wimpiest Mac Plus
* is easier to program
   customize it for your new experiments
* is completely dynamic
   add new capabilities on-the-fly, write self-modifying programs, and more
* has multi-voice sound and speech capabilities
   a system can literally tell you its status
* has improved on-line help and demos
   via World-Wide-Web at http://macquisition.gsfc.nasa.gov

The award-winning Macquisition and its documentation will be distributed
exclusively over the world-wide-web, accessable via Mosaic, Netscape, etc.
from:

  http://macquisition.gsfc.nasa.gov/       ( AKA  http://128.183.28.241/ )

e-mail should be sent to:

  feedback@macquisition.gsfc.nasa.gov      ( AKA  feedback@128.183.28.241 )


What is Macquisition?

Macquisition is:

    1. the easiest way to collect data on a Macintosh
    2. free
    3. endless fun for your whole laboratory
    4. a multi-user data acquisition system
    5. a toolkit for building monolithic systems from components
    6. a rapid dynamic programming environment
    7. as simple to program as those old hp computers were
    8. a "toy" multitasking operating system
    9. all of the above

What if you somehow started out with 95% of a data acquisition system
built-in... What if you could simply tell the computer "read that
instrument and save the data" and you didn't have to worry about how to
manage multiple data types in a file - it just happened... What if all data
was automagically displayable as numbers and/or strip charts... What if you
could treat the separate parts of a complex and growing system as distinct
parts, yet they somehow could all interact with each other as a complete
system... What if you could add features without breaking something else -
even install them while running, without having to stop the rest of the
system... What if you could watch the entire system, graphics and all, from
an unlimited number of places around the world, in real-time, without
slowing down the computer taking the data... What if the whole system could
run on those eight-year-old computers that are headed for the junkyard...

Macquisition is a data acquisition run-time engine, designed to allow the
quick creation of custom systems which communicate with laboratory
equipment connected to IEEE-488 interface(s). Macquisition can
simultaneously run (using its built-in multitasking "MultiBASIC" language
interpreter) any number of user-written programs. These programs are
controlled via any number of user-defined windows, and data collected by
each window can be displayed as text and/or time-based graphs. The entire
system is viewable and/or controllable in real-time from many simultaneous
remote network connections, with little or no performance degradation to
the host machine. All data that is stored can be easily converted to other
file formats (TEXT, spreadsheets, etc.) for further analysis.

Macquisition can also be used as a simple general-purpose parallel
processing simulation or development environment, although some of its data
acquisition oriented features may limit its usefulness in this area.

Important: this program is still under construction. What this means is
that there are a few well-documented bugs, it is larger and slower than it
will be in the future, the MultiBASIC language syntax is still under
construction, and the interface is kind of cheesy.