Black Hole Alert

    As most of you know, Marinchip has been negotiating with Lifeboat for many months about selling MSL's 9900 software to Pertec for use on a 9900-based machine they make called the PC1000. This deal has been off and on so many times I can't even begin to recount the story. Now Pertec has officially announced the machine, including the ``SB-99 CP/M Compatible Operating System from Lifeboat Associates''. This is presumably Marinchip's software (unless we've been spectacularly double crossed). Nonetheless, there's no signed agreement between anybody to do the work, nor have we heard anything about this other than what we read in InfoWorld. The reason I'm bringing this up is that if this does go through, I (John Walker) will probably disappear for a month or so into doing this conversion project for Pertec, and Dan Drake will probably be sucked in to some extent. This means that we want to get as many AI things running smoothly without our involvement as we can in case this happens. As a result, if there's something I should be doing or which you need me to do, please let me know as soon as possible so I can schedule it around this potential time sponge.