Worm Breeder's Gazette 13(3): 16 (June 1, 1994)
These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.
As Horvitz Lab computer Czar, people from the Horvitz and other labs have been asking me for advice on setting up or buying equipment to run the Macintosh version of ACEDB, MacAce. I have answered the questions "How fast does ACEDB for the Macintosh run compared to the Unix version"?, "How well does MacAce work?" and "What kind of hardware do I need to run MacAce?" about four or five times. It appears that there is probably enough interest in MacAce to start a "MacAce User Group" so that people can compare notes on their experiences with MacAce. For instance, I suspect people considering running MacAce will be interested in knowing how fast MacAce runs on different machines (the new native code PowerMac version is supposed to be very fast), whether there any conflicts with Macintosh System Extensions (none that I know of so far), and what bugs and work arounds are known. Furthermore, people could also advertise information specific for MacAce. For example, MacAce can play QuickTime movies whereas, to my knowledge, there are not yet any facilities in Unix ACEDB for playing movies. Does anybody have QuickTime movies of developing embryos, pumping pharynxes, a demo of germline microinjection, or egg laying that they would be willing to share? Of course, the developers of MacAce and ACEDB would probably appreciate such clips, but until such clips get packaged into an official release, people can add clips to their own MacAce databases.
I am initially creating an email address where people can send questions, answers and comments that will be resent to anyone who wants to be on this list. If there is sufficient interest, I can create a full fledged bulletin board where people can post any information that they want distributed. I will also be happy to put people on a list, such as the one I used to maintain for the old VAX map, that will notify people whenever MacAce updates are available. Please contact me at BEITEL@MlT.EDU if you are interested in the information I have accumulated on MacAce or are interested in joining a MacAce User Group.