@database "ar323.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report Online Magazine #3.23 -- December 31, 1995" =========================================================================== December 31, 1995 @{" Turn the Page " link MENU} Issue No. 3.23 =========================================================================== ,a c4%&; 1%%%b 9%=~ " m; mmmm; nmm mmmmm .,pmq,. m; j#6 ##6 j### ### ,#'~ ~`g, j#6 ##&; ##&; #### ### ,#f `# ##&; jP##6 ###6 jP### ### .##' " jP##6 #'$#&; #$#&; #'### ### i## #'$#&; jP l##6 #l##6 jP ### ### &## jP l##6 #' $#&; # $#&;#' ### ### &## #' $#&; j#mmmd##6 # l##6P ### ### ?## mmmw j#mmmd##6 #' $#&; # $##' ### ### ##; $#$ #' $#&; jP l##6 # l#P ### ### `#l ,&#'jP l##6 #' ###mm # $' mm###mm mm###mm `#q,.,p#' #' ###mm (R) "~^~" &&&&q, , ,P `b d' tm d' ,P d&&&P ;P .,d' ,c&&q, &&&&q, ,c&&q, q&,e&q ;P' d&&&P ;P' `& d' `b ;P' `b dP~ `P d' ;P'`&; dB&&&&P ;P ,P d' P ;P ;P d' `&; &, , d' .,d' &, .,d' d' d' , &&& &&'`&&&P' ;B&&&P' `&&&P' &&& `&P' d' ;P &&& "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!" Copyright 1995 FS Publications All Rights Reserved @endnode @node MENU "Amiga Report Main Menu" @toc MAIN =========================================================================== == Main Menu == =========================================================================== @{" Editorial and Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Featured Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" News & Press Releases " link NEWS} @{" Aminet Charts " link FTP} @{" Reader Mail " link MAIL} --------------------------------- @{" About AMIGA REPORT " link ABOUT} @{" Dealer Directory " link DEALER} Contact Information and Copyrights Amiga Dealer Addresses and Numbers @{" Where to Get AR " link WHERE} @{" Advertisements " link COMMERCIAL} Mailing List & Distribution Sites Online Services, Dealers, Ordering ______________________________________________ // | | // ========//====| Amiga Report International Online Magazine |======//===== == \\// | Issue No. 3.23 December 31, 1995 | \\// == ==============| "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!" |============= |______________________________________________| @endnode @node JASON "Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== EDITOR =========================================================================== Jason Compton ============= Internet Address -------- ------- jcompton@shell.portal.com 1203 Alexander Ave jcompton@xnet.com Streamwood, IL 60107-3003 USA Fax Phone --- ----- 708/741-0689 708/289-7047 @endnode @node KATIE "Assistant Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== == ASSISTANT EDITOR == =========================================================================== Katherine Nelson ================ Internet -------- Kati@cup.portal.com @endnode @node ROBERT "Senior Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== SENIOR EDITOR =========================================================================== Robert Niles ============ Internet Address -------- ------- rniles@Wolfe.NET 506 W. Orchard Selah, WA 98942 FidoNet Fax ------- --- 1:3407/103 509/697-5064 @endnode @node WILLIAM "Contributing Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== CONTRIBUTING EDITOR =========================================================================== William Near ============ Internet -------- wnear@epix.net @endnode @node ADDISON "Contributing Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== CONTRIBUTING EDITOR =========================================================================== Addison Laurent =============== Internet -------- addison@jobe.shell.portal.com @endnode @node EDITORIAL "compt.sys.editor.desk" @toc OPINION =========================================================================== compt.sys.editor.desk By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== What a year, eh? Where are we after all 365 days of 1995, which will be remembered by us as the Great Buyout but will sadly probably not receive the same treatment in the next Microsoft Encarta CD? 12 months ago I was hoping that someone would buy the Amiga before it was too late. 6 months ago, I was hoping Amiga Technologies would build some machines before it was too late. Now, I'm hoping Amiga Tech gets some serious R&D done before it's too late. It's been nothing but deadlines and time pressure, it seems, and the worst part is there hasn't even been anything I can do about it. But hey, we've made it this far with less to go on. The Amiga isn't quite out of the pit of obscurity in North America, but showings in Europe have been strong. Amiga Technologies didn't miss Christmas, but the 4000T sure seems slow to surface, as do A1200s in Australia, North America, and let's face it, any country other than one in Europe. So, taking stock--yeah, things certainly could have been better. We could be waiting for the millionth Amiga Tech machine, rather than the 100,000th. We could be placing down-payments on PowerPC machines rather than waiting another year for their unveiling. But it could be a hell of a lot worse, too. It's been a tough year, keeping up with the dizzying months leading up to the auction, then anxiously awaiting the plans of Amiga Technologies, who we still hope will lead us to new heights for the platform. It's also been a tiring year, for users, developers, and Amiga Tech staffers alike. Right now, I'm paying for it with a big headache that's keeping me from finishing the big stack of reviews here. Sorry, but the likes of Aminet 9, Meeting Pearls III, TurboCalc 3.5 vs. Final Calc, Distant Suns 5.0 vs. Digital Universe, and a slew of miscellaneous software and hardware reviews are going to have to wait for year 4. As the Amiga heads into its second decade, it's certainly doing a lot better than most computer platforms its age. At the same time, Amiga Report heads into its fourth year of publication, a lot better off than the number of print magazines which have sadly folded over the past few years. How can you celebrate something like that? Well, the obvious but somewhat unexciting thing to do is say "Happy 4, AR" and re-dedicate ourselves to putting together one of the world's most read online publications. We're kicking around a lot of ideas for new features and possibilities for the magazine, some of which will show up as soon as the rather intimidating-sounding AR 4.01 surfaces next month. A lot of legends have been written in the past 20 months since the collapse of Commodore. And at this rate, many more are to come. Jason @endnode @node COMMERCIAL "Commercial Products" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Commercial Products =========================================================================== @{" Editor's Choice " link EDITORCHOICE} Jason's picks @{" Portal Information Systems " link PORTAL} A great place for Amiga users. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @endnode @node MAIL "Reader Mail" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Reader Mail =========================================================================== From: mmansour@silas.cc.monash.edu.au Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 11:09:31 +1100 To: jcompton@shell.portal.com Subject: Thank-you Just a brief message of thanks for your tireless effort throughout the year. You have certainly encouraged me to remain with the Amiga despite the uncertainly within the community. I would also like to commend you and your staff for the very high quality of news that you have presented. It remains one of my most valuable sources of information about what is happening in the U.S. and Europe, and living in Australia, that is very needed. That's about all, but please, keep AR going - it is fantastic... Mark Mansour --- --- --- --- --- --- --- From: Peter Eriksson Subject: AR Reader Mail To: jcompton@xnet.com Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 21:16:48 +0100 (MET) Since most of us consider Amiga Report to be a reliable and quite outstanding source of Amiga related information, I have a question for the staff: What has happend to Alex "Mr. CEI" Amor? After the ESCOM purchase of CBM, rumors said CEI would develop Amiga clones, CEI engineers would cooperate with AT developers and a zillion other cool things that would take the Amiga into the next century. Right now, the R & D boys at AT seem to do fine on their own (With eg. the PowerAmiga in mind) but I'm just curious what Alex is up to now? What is the current status of CEI? Uhm, guess that's it for now. Oh yeah - I would like to take the opportunity to wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new '96 - especially Jason for doing an excellent job with Amiga Report, the Aminet staff (which we all owe big time) and the AT executives for believing in the Amiga. Thanks guys! Take care kids -- Peter Eriksson, Sweden -- Funny you should ask. When SMG was selected as North American distributor, Alex specifically told me he wouldn't be buying any machines from them. However, CEI recently surfaced on the SMG Dealer List and Alex now tells me they will, indeed, buy Amiga product through SMG and sell it both directly and through their dealer network. --Jason @endnode @node OPINION1 "The Amiga Internet Terminal" @toc OPINION =========================================================================== The Amiga Internet Terminal Tim M. Fries fries@injersey.com =========================================================================== Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, IBM's Lou Gerstner, and folks from Sun Microsystems have all been making speeches about the future of computing. Their collective vision: $500 "Internet terminals" replacing today's PCs. They each share a network-centric view of the future, noting the explosive growth of the internet in business and home use. The vision is focused on networking with a deemphasis on storage and computing muscle at the user end. Software applications will be dealt from remote servers, rather than local harddrives. User operating systems will be graphically rich, yet small and efficient. They each conclude that the building block to tomorrow's computing model will be an inexpensive and easy to use Internet delivery platform. Earlier this month, Ellison detailed the hardware requirements for his $500 Internet appliance: an inexpensive ($50) microprocessor, 4MB of RAM, video output to TV and RGB monitor, printer port, multimedia capabilities, PCMCIA for modem option, network interface, and flash memory or low-cost hard disk storage option. He decribes the OS as needing to be small and efficient, while graphical and easy to use. Oracle, while still hunting for an OS for the device, has been in talks with Apple Computer over licensing the Newton OS. No agreements have yet been reached. IBM and Sun have been less forthcoming in detailing their own Internet terminal specifications, but both have suggested being in the planning stage. Reviewing Ellison's requirements, it is clear to me that the internet terminal already exists. It is the Amiga 1200. The A1200's proven hardware design and mature, robust OS make it the ideal candidate. Ironically, as the industry heavy-weights preach the need for such a machine, Amiga Technologies (AT) president, Petro Tyschtschenko, sees no market for the A1200 in the United States. AT should realize the advantage of the A1200 as an internet tool and quickly release it with an internet software bundle to the US. This package should be marketed towards business and home users alike. AT needs to reestablish the Amiga brand name in the US computer marketplace. Being the first with an internet terminal would certainly put them back in the game. If they lack the resources to do it alone, they need to foster business partnerships to make it happen. In today's climate, finding a business partner to help launch the Amiga Internet Terminal should be easy. They need look no further than Oracle, IBM, and Sun. I would appreciate any feedback. Tim Fries fries@injersey.com (908)234-0493 @endnode @node NEWS1 "Macro68, v3.175" @toc NEWS TITLE Macro68, version 3.175 UPDATE NOTICE Apparently, lots of people have moved without informing The Puzzle Factory -- when update notices were mailed out recently, many of them were returned by the post office. Users of Macro68 who have not received an update notice and who want to get the updated version should get in touch with The Puzzle Factory at the address below. COMPANY The Puzzle Factory, Inc. Voice: (800) 828-9952 Orders P.O. Box 986 (541) 935-3709 Questions/support Veneta, OR 97487 BBS: (541) 935-7883 =>new area code<= USA Internet: jlavin@efn.org NEW FEATURES 68060 support added. Many bugs fixed, most of them minor. DESCRIPTION Macro68 is an assembler that supports the entire Motorola family including the MC68060, MC68882/030/040 FPU, and MC68851/030/040 MMU. Additional capability includes the Amiga Copper. The new Motorola syntax for 030 or later CPUs is supported, and Macro68 includes a utility to convert old-style syntax painlessly. Old syntax is also supported. A unique feature of Macro68 is the use of a shared library, which is always resident, and allows the use of preassembled resident include files for incredibly fast assemblies. These may be standard Amiga files, or any header files may be used. Additionally, a configuration file may be defined that will set up a particular environment, or insert specific code in all assemblies. Most features limited only by available memory. Directives include Structure Offset for compatibility with the Amiga's interface conventions, and Frame Offset for easy stack frames. Full listing control and cross-referencing. Ability to customize directives and run-time messages. Macro68 is fully re-entrant, and may be made resident. An AREXX(tm) interface provides "real-time" communication with the editor of your choice. A number of directives enable Macro68 to communicate with AmigaDos(tm). External programs may be invoked on either pass, and the results interpreted. Macro68 is compatible with the directives used by most popular assemblers. Output file formats include executable object, linkable object, binary image, pre-assembled symbol tables, and Motorola S records. REVIEWS There's a review of Macro68 v 3.165 on Aminet, for example: ftp://ftp.netnet.net/pub/aminet/docs/rview/Macro68.txt (10707) SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS 2 Megs RAM, V1.3 OS or later PRICE US$150 + shipping. Ground shipping is included in the U.S. and Canada. Others please call. Upgrade price: $25 (from any version 3.xxx). DISTRIBUTABILITY Commercial software. Copyright 1994-95 The Puzzle Factory, Inc. Macro68 is a trademark of The Puzzle Factory, Inc. Amiga is a registered trademark of Escom AG. @endnode @node NEWS2 "Introducing A.N.G.L.E." @toc NEWS INTRODUCING A.N.G.L.E. (Amiga Net Games for Light Entertainment) A.N.G.L.E. is a brand new, non-profit team comprised by a bunch of Amiga devotees that don't expect to make money out of this venture. Our focus is more on providing games for an area that has not been explored very well on the Amiga and our intention is to provide the first few efforts as a "gift" to game players. A.N.G.L.E.'s MAIN GOAL Produce multi-player games to be played over the Internet rather than across a serial link. To proceed at a reasonable pace, we need more programmers, gfx artists, muscians and designers -- any takers? A.N.G.L.E.'s RELATED GOALS Help other individuals and teams writing their own TCP/IP based software, whether games or "serious" applications. Help end-users struggling with AmiTCP/IP, SLIP/CSLIP/PPP and the likes to get on-line *properly* with the minimum of fuss. A.N.G.L.E.'s WEB SITE Detailed info, including a little questionnaire to help us shaping up our first game, are available at: http://www.iper.net/angle ...and before you ask, it's actually "iper", not "hyper"! :) A.N.G.L.E.'s EMAIL CONTACT Plain e-mail works as well: ANGLE-admin@karunko.nervous.com Thank you for your time and patience! Sincerely, Werther 'Mircko' Pirani -- e-mail: werther@karunko.nervous.com A.N.G.L.E. Amiga Net Games for Light Entertainment http://www.iper.net/angle @endnode @node NEWS3 "ReMaP -- Resource Manager Project" @toc NEWS ReMaP -- Resource Manager Project The Project Proposal 0. Prologue ----------- With the advent of graphical-based user interfaces (GUI), almost each computer niche created it's own way of handling the user interface. For personal computers, one of the first system to appear was the Macintosh's. Most of its concepts were result of pioneer work at Xerox. This system is considered the paradigm of user interfaces. The 'resource' idea used in the Mac will serve as main inspiration for this project. Another breakthrough in GUI was the X-windows system. This system was developed in MIT and is extremely flexible. X-windows is one of the few (if not the only one) to provide full-transparency over network. If the client (main application) and the server (low-level GUI handler) are running on the same machine, this is purely coincidental. Interfaces can be spread over different machines, from different architectures and even from different operating systems. This client-server paradigm will also be used is this project. The Amiga GUI system is quite lighter in complexity than the two previously mentioned, although it is consensual that is fast, flexible, intuitive and has (hardware based) features (like screens) that allow small systems to have a high-performance graphical interface. At last, Microsoft Windows bring about almost nothing new in GUI (just old Mac ideas) balanced with a heavy-weight marketing operation. This feature associated with the low-price and very abundant PC's, allowed Windows to obtain virtually the monopoly of the computer market. However there are some resistant survivors (like me) to this mainstream. What is the problem with Amiga ? Quite simple : it has just stopped. There are two major releases of the Amiga OS : 1.3 and 2.0. The Release 3.0 is almost just a refinement of 2.0, with very little new. Comparing the advance of the Amiga GUI with Windows, there is an enormous difference. In addition to this fact, the Mac technology uses resources from a long time, while there is nothing (to my knowledge) done in that area in the Amiga. NOTE: Do not make confusion between the 'resource's I'm talking about with the low-level resources on Amiga, used for low-level hardware arbitration. 1. Objectives --------------- The Resource Manager Project (ReMaP for short) has the purpose to implement high-level software layer over an existing GUI system (MUI, BOOPSI or even plain intuition). The main objectives of this project are : a) To reduce the development effort on GUI to the minimum. A couple of lines would be enough to trigger an arbitrary complex interface. b) To make user interfaces as robust as possible. With X-windows, you can just 'kill' a process, and the whole interface vanishes. No hang-up windows, no dead memory, just simple and clean. c) To allow the interface to be spread over a network. The client-server paradigm is desired here. No pointer, no shared memory, again simple and clean. I think that the implementation of these three ideas could both offer robustness to the user and flexibility to the developer. I propose the creation of a group of Amiga developers and enthusiasts to achieve the mentioned goals by implementing it in a freeware basis software. Finally I'd like to stress that the most appropriated approach would the object oriented one and that the base system should be as language independent as possible. (Base system means ReMaP plus the lower layers until the hardware). 1.1. The developer's viewpoint ------------------------------ The main idea is to turn the building of user interfaces as easy as possible. To achieve this goal I propose that the interface creation and function should be as automatic as possible. The great majority of programs _use_ a GUI as a tool, not as an objective. This concept justifies that the internal working of the GUI should not be of the concern of the developer. It doesn't make much sense to spend hours building and fine-tuning an interface (in that usual, tedious and slow loop: edit-compile-run) if there are ways of performing this job aside from compilation/linkage issues. To achieve this goal I propose the use of the 'resource' paradigm. A (very simple) language must be designed in order to be interpreted in real-time, building this way the whole interface. Obviously, the more high-level this language is, more slower the system will be. There could be a set of language levels, where a developer can step to lower ones by the use of mini-compilers or cpp-like programs. This way the interface structure and the object's parameters are embedded in these 'scripts'. Note that this feature is totally language independent. I think that this is the first time that I refer to 'objects'. In order to have flexibility and data abstraction, it seems to me that every interface element should be abstracted as an object. This approach virtually eliminates all concerns that a developer could have concerning data structures (or objects) related with interface. The application itself must have the most abstract view of the interface. 1.2. The user's viewpoint ------------------------- The kind of abstraction involved here that was outlined in the previous section allows the system to be quite robust. All that coding involving error-checking and handling of the unexpected can be moved from the application to the base system. When a user wants to kill an application, the system must assure that (at least) the interface vanishes, just like xkill (from X-windows). With this approach, the system has total control over the details of the interface allowing it to delete the interface as easily as it was created. There is nothing more frustrating than a buggy interface. The end user should have bug free interface. Let the bugs stay with the main application. Anytime the core code of an application crashes, the system should be robust enough to free the user from a 'dead interface'. 1.3. The system's viewpoint --------------------------- It was said before that ReMaP should use client-server paradigm. This architecture insulates the client from the server in terms of 'dangerous' things like pointers, shared memory, etc. The cost to pay is a loss in speed. However I believe that high level of communication between the client and the server, lightens the communication overhead. The benefits justify the approach. The server is just a program running in an arbitrary machine. Unlike X-windows, the appearance of the interface will be dependent of the way the server is related to the rest of the underneath system. Since the server's connection to the client is pipe-like, all memory management is up to the server, avoiding this way memory allocation problems and increasing the robustness of the system. All application desiring to use ReMaP must establish a connection (either local or remote, over a network) with a server. The resources handling (script interpretation) are handled by the client. The client has references (ID integers) to every object allocated by the client. The server has knowledge of which object were allocated by each client. (The word 'allocated' is used in a broad meaning, like NewObject(), OpenWindow(), AllocMem(), etc.). This way, it is possible to flush a whole interface tree without fearing for dead memory accesses (mungwall hits). 2. Project organization ----------------------- I'd like to contact everyone interested in working or contributing to this project. I'd like to discuss extensively the points outlined above. I think that the project must be designed top-bottom, starting with way resources are specified, followed by the server, continuing to the server design and ending with server's contact to the underneath system. Many parts of the project may be implemented in parallel. I'll try to create a mailing list for the exclusive use of the project, in order to maintain a close contact with everyone involved in the project. Finally I'd like to stress that this project seems quite new in Amiga development area. I have no knowledge of a similar project to the moment of this writing. I hope that this project contributes anyway to the development of Amiga software technology. Even in these troublesome days of Amiga history, I still hope that Amiga will have a relevant role in computer scene. A. History ---------- Start date ...... 29 Nov 1995 Revision date ... 7 Dec 1995 B. Author's contact ------------------- Address: Rodrigo Ventura Rua Jose Leilote, 26 1900 Lisboa Portugal Tel: 035-01-8681965 (WARN: English is not my native language) Email: l36612@alfa.ist.utl.pt WWW: http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~l36612 @endnode @node NEWS4 "UMS RFC v0.11" @toc NEWS TITLE UMS RFC VERSION 0.11 AUTHOR Stefan Becker E-Mail: stefanb@yello.ping.de Address: Verkehrsstrasse 11 D-44809 Bochum GERMANY DESCRIPTION UMS (Universal Message System) is a database system specialized in the handling of mail and news messages. UMS RFC is a package for UMS which allows you to receive and send mail and news messages with the following protocols: - UUCP (Unix to Unix CoPy) - NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) - POP3 (Post Office Protocol V3) - SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) NEW FEATURES Changes since UMS RFC 0.10: - POP3 server daemon umspop3d. - Support for UMS' binary field. - Implemented UUCP grades. - Implemented CTRL-C handling for umsnntpget. - Command logging for NNTP and SMTP server daemons. - Switch for Daylight Saving Time. - Several bug fixes and new command switches. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS - AmigaOS 2.04 (V37) or better - UMS V11 or better - AmiTCP 3.0 or better (if you want to use NNTP, POP3 or SMTP) AVAILABILITY UMS RFC 0.11 is available on Aminet, e.g. ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/comm/ums/umsrfc0_11.lha (315445) PRICE Free DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable, (c) 1992-95 Stefan Becker @endnode @node NEWS5 "Apollo 620 Accelerator" @toc NEWS Apollo 620 ---------- - World's First Accelerator For The Amiga 600! ACT Electronics, Europe's leading manufacturer of accelerators for Amiga, is proud to present a new accelerator card for Amiga 600 which makes this machine 10 times as fast! This makes it possible to use A600 for professional applications like word processing, databases, spreadsheets, multimedia presentations (e.g. Scala) and so on. Specifications for the Apollo 620: ---------------------------------- * 10 times speed increase, or more on math intensive applications! * Mounted internally on top of the 68000 * 68020 CPU running on 25 MHz! * 68882 math co-processor running on 25 MHz included! * Approximately as fast as the Amiga 4000! (030 version) * Up to 8 MB of 32-bit RAM! (One SIMM socket of 1, 2, 4 or 8 MB) * Uses cheap and easily available standard 72-pin SIMM without parity * PCMCIA friendly - PCMCIA port available up to 4 MB * Autoconfiguring memory Retail price per 23/11 1995: NOK 1380,- (Norwegian Krones. USD 1 ~= NOK 6.2) The Apollo range covers a complete series of 68020, 68030, 68040 and 68060 accelerators for all Amiga computers. Contact your local distributor, or DataKompaniet directly, for more information about the other Apollo products. E.g.: World's Fastest Amiga 1200 with Apollo 1240! 33 Mhz 68040 with FPU and MMU! DataKompaniet ans in Trondheim, Norway, is the Scandinavian distributor of the complete Apollo range. We ship world-wide. Check out our WWW server for more information. ***************************************************************** DataKompaniet ans Trondheim Innovation Centre Prof. Brochs gt. 6 N-7030 Trondheim Norway Phone: +47 7354 0375 Fax: +47 7394 3861 World Wide Web: http://www.interlink.no/datakompaniet E-mail: datakompaniet@interlink.no @endnode @node NEWS6 "AmigaNCP v1.8" @toc NEWS TITLE AmigaNCP - Amiga to Psion S3/S3a link package VERSION 1.8 AUTHOR Oliver Wagner e-mail: owagner@lsd.wupper.de DESCRIPTION Psion's fine palmtop computer series, namely the S3 and S3a, contain an even finer operating system, whose neat features cover a full fledged peer-to-peer networking software using a protocol called NCP. Using NCP, you can link together two Psion computers or a Psion and a different, perhaps stationary machine and happily exchange data on your behalf. NCP services include, but are not limited to, accessing files on the remote machines as if they were on yours, in both directions. AmigaNCP features a full NCP implementation including a remote file server to access Amiga files from your Psion and a file system to access Psion files from your Amiga. The package also offers an API to allow custom applications to directly access network services at the NCP level. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Requires AmigaOS 2.04 and the PC version of the S3-Link serial connector. The optional development toolkit has been designed for SAS/C 6.x, but might be usable with different compilers. AVAILABILITY http://wade1.ab.umd.edu/support/AmigaNCP/ ftp://wade1.ab.umd.edu/support/AmigaNCP/AmigaNCP1_8.lha People without Internet access can receive an uuencoded version via mail by sending a short request to owagner@lsd.wupper.de PRICE Shareware, DM 50,-- DISTRIBUTABILITY The freely distributable demo version is not limited besides having a startup requester. @endnode @node NEWS7 "Aminet CD 9" @toc NEWS TITLE Aminet CD 9 AUTHOR Urban D. Mueller (umueller@aminet.org) CONTENTS Aminet CD 9 contains, as usual, over 1 gig of freely distributable software. The newest archive included is from November 4th. Apart from the new software, the CD concentrates on games from various sources. The space is used as follows (after decompression): 500M of software newer than CD 8 (280M newer than Set 2) 330M of games 100M of electronic books 100M of top downloads These consist of: 930 games (directly startable) 640 mods 300 docs 140 pictures 90 demos ... plus 2400 utilities of all kinds. The games are from various sources, including the better ones from older Aminet CDs. ACCESS SOFTWARE Still the well known Amigaguide based user interface with extensive search facilities. PRICES The CD can be ordered from the following addresses: (credit cards OK) Germany: Stefan Ossowski (English spoken) Tel: +49-201-788778 Fax: +49-201-798447 Email: stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de Price: DM 25 USA: Fred Fish Tel: +1-602-491-0442 Email: orders@amigalib.com Price: $19.95 Prices exclude shipping. Subscriptions are available. A complete index is found in docs/lists/Aminet-CD-9.lha Authors of software on the CD are entitled to one free CD. Send HELP FREEBIES to aminet-server@wuarchive.wustl.edu for more info. Aminet Set 1 and Aminet Set 2 are still available and give you, together with this CD, a complete snapshot of Aminet. @endnode @node NEWS8 "Mesa-Amiwin v1.2.5" @toc NEWS TITLE Mesa-Amiwin VERSION 1.2.5 AUTHOR Original Author: Brian Paul, brianp@ssec.wisc.edu Amiga Port: Victor Ng-Thow-Hing, victorng@dgp.toronto.edu DESCRIPTION Mesa is a software emulation of the popular OpenGL application programmer's interface for 3D computer graphics. It can handle gouraud shading, NURBS, polygons, Z-buffer, and other graphic goodies. I have included the original Mesa distribution, with special instructions for the Amiwin (X11R6 on the Amiga) version. There is also a quick port of MesaGLUT.lib, the GLUT toolkit (windows and events), provided (but it is still very buggy). SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS I have provided static link libraries for a 68040/68882 and 68000/nofpu equipped Amiga. However, if you have SAS/C, you can edit the Smakefile and recompile to whatever cpu configuration you have. You will need the REGISTERED version of Amiwin to link in the X libraries (another reason to register!). Get the development kit for Amiwin at your local aminet site. Some examples will require unix-ish type header files such as in , and function calls like sleep(). This will require an emulation library like net.lib provided in the software development kit for AmiTCP4.0. AVAILABILITY Available at all Aminet sites. ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/gfx/x11/Mesa-Amiwin.lha (1590573) PRICE Free DISTRIBUTABILITY Gnu Public License @endnode @node NEWS9 "Next v1.8" @toc NEWS TITLE Next VERSION 1.8 AUTHOR Juergen Klawitter Address: Marschnerstrasse 22 D-12203 Berlin GERMANY Because Juergen has no access to the net, this announcement was uploaded for him by Andreas Neumann. e-Mail : neumanna@stud-mailer.uni-marburg.de DESCRIPTION NEXT is a fairly compact textreader, written in assembly. Displays ASCII - text in an own window on your WB. Reads also binary files, XPK- und powerpacked files. AmigaGuide files can be converted to a readable plain ASCII equivalent. Extended functions exist for loading, analysing and printing texts, e.g. scanning of directories with wildcards, print with page title and page number, a 'smart_print' mode, word statistics and count of strings/chars. Search routines are very fast and display all occurrences at once on screen. Patterns can be used. Search can also be started by klicking on a string. NEXT has been tested under OS 1.2 and 3.0. Other features: o can be made resident o decrunches powerpacked files without powerpacker.library o wordwrap o block marking with mouse o saving/printing of blocks o when saving to an existing file, text can be appended o reload function o multiple windows o window sizing by simple key press SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS AmigaOS 1.2 and better AVAILABILITY Aminet : ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/text/show/Next1.8.lha (50414) PRICE Free. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable, (c) 1995 Juergen Klawitter @endnode @node NEWS10 "DiskProtection V1.1" @toc NEWS TITLE DiskProtection V1.1 AUTHOR Patrick Ohly Weechstr. 1, WG E0/1 76131 Karlsruhe Germany Tel.: +49 721 615662 eMail: patrick.ohly@stud.uni-karlsruhe.de IRC: Irish DESCRIPTION DiskProtection encrypts data totally invisible for the user while writing to disk. All blocks are encrypted, so the directories are protected, too. DiskProtection supports all exec devices, i.e. harddrive partititions, floppy disks, but not the RAM-disk. Any filesystem can be used. It features: - encryption with IDEA, FEAL, DES - (XPK-)interface for additional algorithms - configurable with easy to use preferences program - encryption can be changed anytime - resident passwords (for use with mailboxes) - access protection - builtin screenblanker - GUI driven, localized - German and English documentation (ASCII, DVI, AmigaGuide) - context sensitive online help - ... CHANGES Bug fixes, e.g.: - Works with more devices, e.g. A2091, Oktagon. - Conversion is reliable now. - AFS works. New features: - FFS patch for HD/DD recognition. - Slightly faster encryption (read 'History' for more details!) - Reqtools screenmode requester for OS < 3.0 - Internal screenblanker SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS DiskProtection requires OS2.0 and Triton-Library 1.4 A minimum distribution is included in this archive, but you should better look out for the complete archive "util/libs/tri14usr.lha" on AmiNet: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/libs/tri14usr.lha (217107) AVAILABILITY NOT available on AmiNet due to USA export restrictions for cryptographic software. Look at the AmiNet site in Paderborn for the file "/pub/aminet/util/crypt/DiskProt11.lha": ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/aminet/util/crypt/DiskProt11.lha (340258) You will always find the most current version on my WWW home page: http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~un60 PRICE 20,- DM shareware fee DISTRIBUTABILITY DiskProtection (C) 1994,95 Patrick Ohly It's freely distributable as long as all files are distributed unchanged. DiskProtection is shareware, however the public version is not crippled in any way! @endnode @node NEWS11 "Blue Ribbon SoundWorks" @toc NEWS [To a great deal of public horror, Microsoft recently purchased Blue Ribbon Soundworks, one of the first companies to pledge continuing support to the Amiga when Commodore collapsed. This letter has been making the rounds and explains the "so long, see you on Windows95" policy implemented for Amiga products. -Jason] 20-Dec-95 16:17:43 Sb: #Blue Ribbon Amiga News! Fm: Dominick J. Fontana 74766,2154 To: ALL *** TO ALL AMIGA USERS *** I have spoken to Melissa Jordan Grey, Todor Fay, and Brian Thomas from Blue Ribbon. They all asked me to send their regards and to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. In case you were unaware, Blue Ribbon was purchased by Microsoft. As such, Microsoft is now technically in charge of all Blue Ribbon products and makes all decisions concerning future software support. Microsoft has indicated that they will provide tech support for the Blue Ribbon Windows products and they will continue to make such products. I believe that the Windows tech support may eventually be moved to the Microsoft Forum. However, they are not providing tech support for the Amiga products, nor will they continue to make Amiga products. But, the Blue Ribbon section in the MIDI C Vendor Forum (GO MIDICVEN) will remain open so that both Amiga users and Windows users can congregate and support one another. In order to thank all the Amiga users for their past support, and as a parting good will gesture to the Amiga community, Blue Ribbon/Microsoft have decided to make most of Blue Ribbon's Amiga software available to all CompuServe members FREE OF CHARGE! Following is a message directly from Brian Thomas, which he asked me to post for him. Brian was the online tech support representative in MIDI C VENDOR Forum for Blue Ribbon for the last year and a half. ===================== Dear Amigans, Hi. My name is Brian Thomas, the person that has answered many of your technical and product questions over the last year. It has been fun working with all of you. As many of you may know, Microsoft has purchased Blue Ribbon in hopes of letting us bring interactive music to the masses of the world. All of the Blue Ribbonites are very excited about being given this opportunity. As a result of the change, I am not able to monitor this CompuServe forum, and that is one of the reasons recent questions to me have not been answered. It is my fault that I did not find a way to check on this, or at least find someone else to answer the questions in my absence. The current plans do not include producing any new products for the Amiga, but something unexpected (and good) happened. Microsoft decided to allow us to upload most of the Blue Ribbon Amiga products to be available for free to CompuServe members. This will occur soon: Early 1996 (by mid-January, most likely), these products will be uploaded to CompuServe in the Microsoft forum. There will be a message [in MIDI C VENDOR] that lets you know exactly where to go to get the products. However, there are some important things to keep in mind. Not all our Amiga products are going to be uploaded, and none of the Windows, OS/2, or Indigo products will be uploaded. This is not a mistake, and you are not allowed to upload these products. Also, you will not be allowed to repost the products to other on-line services, or Internet sites. This benefit of free products is initially going to be allowed only to CompuServe customers. Finally, none of the programs are shareware or public domain. You will have to agree to an end user license agreement to be allowed to download the products from CompuServe. The products that will initially be uploaded will be Bars&Pipes Professional v2.5, SuperJAM! Amiga v1.1, Pro Studio Tools Kit, Creativity Tools Kit, Internal Sounds Kit, and Rules for Tools. These products are not crippled in any way! They are FULL products. Soon to follow will be PatchMeister. Accompanying these programs will be an official statement from Melissa Jordan Grey. In addition, you'll be given the opportunity to purchase a manual for SuperJAM! or Bars&Pipes, and details on how to do that will be posted at the same time the products are uploaded. It is highly encouraged that you provide support for each other either on CompuServe, or other on-line services. Since the products are going to be available free, Microsoft won't be able to provide any tech support for the Amiga products. That's the best update I can give right now. If more news arrives, I will provide it for you. Feel free to repost this message to other online forums, whether they be CompuServe or otherwise, as long as you keep the body of this message intact. Again, thank you for your support, and enjoy the products! Brian Thomas The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks @endnode @node NEWS12 "easyrexx.library v3.0" @toc NEWS TITLE easyrexx.library VERSION 3.0 (03.Dec.95) AUTHOR Ketil Hunn Nabbetorpveien 35B N-1632 Gamle Fredrikstad Norway E-Mail: Ketil.Hunn@hiMolde.no http://www.himolde.no/~ketil/ DESCRIPTION A small and very fast shared runtime library that allows you to add an AREXX port and AREXX commands to your application without the need of programming. o Define your ARexx interface using the included GUI-based ARexx Interface Designer. The Designer can generate code directly. o Makes the parsing of AREXX messages easier than parsing DOS prompt arguments! Uses standard DOS templates for arguments. o Easy to use tag-based functions. o Send AREXX messages to any named port. o Autodoc describing all functions in the library. o Amigaguide documentation describing programming techniques and how to use the library. o Complete with example sources. NEW FEATURES o The library now includes functions which makes it very easy to add ARexx macro ability to your application. Macros can be created, recorded and executed directly using functions in the library. o A new function which makes it easy to create ARexx stems. o Completely new ARexx Interface Designer: - Font adaptable windows - Resizable windows - Localization. Translations for English, Deutsch, Nederlands and Norsk are included. - Asynchronous on-line help - Recordable macros - User defined graphic interface - More ARexx commands. o The ARexx Interface Designer can now generate code for these languages: - C/C++ - E - Modula-2 - Oberon o EasyRexx header files for C/C++, E, Modula-2 and Oberon are included. o Various bug-fixes. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS 2.04 or higher. AVAILABILITY ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/dev/misc/EasyRexxV30.lha (260420) PRICE Free, as long as you follow the two guidelines below: The license is the same for all software, regardless of what type of software the library is used in, be it commercial, freeware, shareware or whatever as long as you: 1) Note in the program and documentation that easyrexx.library is copyrighted 1994, 1995 Ketil Hunn. 2) You give me a copy of each version of the software which uses the library. There should be no cost to me. DISTRIBUTABILITY The files may be distributed as needed. That means that for products that use the easyrexx.library, only that file needs to be distributed. For development purposes, the library and its documentation should be all distributed together. @endnode @node NEWS13 "Amiga Surfer" @toc NEWS Press information for immediate release December 1995 The Amiga Surfer: Amiga goes Internet Amiga Technologies will release The new Amiga 1200 bundle "Amiga Surfer" in February. The package includes an Amiga 1200 with 2MB RAM, a 260 MB harddrive and a 14.400 Baud modem as well as a complete Internet bundle that will enable the user to access to all popular Internet services. Web-Surfing, FTP file transfer (new drivers, updates, patches, shareware and freeware), IRC electronic teleconferencing with unlimited amount of participants and email with graphic, sound and animation support. To make the start-up as easy as possible, a country specific telephone cable is provided with the modem. Before accessing to the Internet, the user can register himself at IBM and will receive, if he registers before 31st of March, a credit of 100 free access hours. For any question, the customer can access our homepage anytime and consult most actual information. The package also contains the popular "Amiga Magic" bundle of productivity software, featuring a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, an organizer and a graphic program. The complete system, including the Amiga 1200, the productivity and Internet software, the modem and connection with free credits will be available from retail at a price of DM 1198.- incl. 15% VAT. Contact : Gilles Bourdin Tel +49 6252 709 195 Amiga Technologies Fax +49 6252 709 520 Berliner Ring 89 email: gbo@amiga.de D-64625 Bensheim HTTP://www.amiga.de @endnode @node NEWS14 "X Patch Preview" @toc NEWS X Patch preview ------------------------------- "Intuition windows with X look" Author: Kenneth C. Nilsen / kenneth@norconnect.no This patch is written to give all the intuition windows a X-window look. It does not emulate a X11 terminal or similar. There is already great software on the AmiNet which will do that. This patch will draw new borders, titlebar, depth-, close- and zip-gadgets to all windows so it will look like a "Motive X" window. The patch offer options which enable you to configure it to look as your taste require. --------- "OPTIONS" --------- Active - enables the patch Pop front when activated - make window the frontmost when activated Jump back when inactive - when inactive, jump to back Inner frame - draws a inner frame along the borders Pre-set window - preplace window before it opens Option menu in window - make a project menu in the window Minimize gadget - for future use (emulates the ->AppIcon) Bone mark in broder - makes a little bonemark in the borders Title left - align text to left (default in the middle) Title right - align text from right Force clean up - This special function will parse the task list when hitting the "Cleanup" button. The task name for the window is stored in an internal structure and if the task is not found the window will be closed. This can be ignored with special treatment. Colors - select colors for borders, fill, title etc. Sizes - width/height of borders, size gadgets etc. Font - font for title Cleanup - check for leftover windows Test - tests your current options Special treatment: This listview contain windows that shall be treated with special options. A window can be ignored by the patch if the window refuse to get patched, or you can set private options for each window. Some windows will may crash when using the patch. If so, add it to the list and set ignore. Most window will work though if they follow the guidelines. The patch will add a few pixels in width and height and force the drawing plane to be inside the borders (which the intuition doesn't). The border width and height fields are set so the host programs can easily adjust their gadgets and graphics to fit within the window borders. Note: Some programs will handle their own windows in their own way, add gadgets etc. like the MUI windows. These windows can be ignored by this patch if wanted. ------------ "THE SERVER" ------------ The "brain" is a server which controls window moving, activation and the gadgets. To graphically patch a window causes many difficult tasks. It have to "emulate" the intuiton gadgets and the active/inactive modes to update the borders correctly and to let the programs know when the eg. closegadget is hit. The patch will not use any BOOPSI class, so the server will send input events to the active window port by the input.device. When you move a window the server has to emulate the move too. This can have advantages such as eg. moving the whole contents of a window, or to make a nicer grid when moving it. These functions are not yet implemented, but the possibilities are there (opaque window). Sizing the window will be a pleasure. You can size it from any corner as long as the size option is enabled by the host program. As I mentioned, you can pre-place the window. This means you'll get a frame of the window in its actual size as it will be when opened. You can now move the frame anywhere and press the left mouse button, and the window will appear at this place. This will of course override the tag settings. If the tags will not allow a dragbar, this option will be ignored. ---------- "RELEASES" ---------- Currently you can only get a demo version of the patch on AmiNet in util/wb/XwinDemo.lha. This demo only opens a window with the x-window look. The only gadget which is working is the close gadget. If you have the XSize commodity installed you can resize it too. I will try to get finished a beta release in February next year (1996). At the moment I have a lot to do so I have not much time to work on the patch, but I will try to get it done as soon as possible. If you have suggestions, ideas, comments or critism, just e-mail me: Note that things previewed here are subjects to change. kenneth@norconnect.no The Amiga is still alive! @endnode @node NEWS15 "Canadian History" @toc NEWS [A quick pointer from reader Bill Dunn... -Jason] For any of your readers who wishes to see a major CD-ROM done all with an Amiga network. This is a demo of a Canadian History disc of 500 megs of data. Includes 54min. of QT movies and 56M word electronic textbook. It is sold across Canada by Compucentre (200 stores) and Sam the Interactive MAN. (120 stores). @endnode @node NEWS16 "SMG North American Dealer List" @toc NEWS SMG North American Dealer List [We don't plan to make a habit of this, as it's a rather large list. However, running the SMG North American dealer list from time to time may at least encourage other distributors to do the same. It's also interesting to see the appearance of CEI as well as the apparent expansion of SMG into Japan. -Jason] From: SMG / InTouch Systems Date: December 29, 1995 To: All - Please Distribute Widely Subject: Authorized Dealers as of December 29, 1995 From: Service Management Group This is the latest list of Authorized Dealers for Amiga products. We are signing up dealers and processing orders daily. Please check frequently for new dealers. Dealer Name City State/Prov Phone New Computer Shop of Calgary, Ltd. Calgary AB CAN 403-243-4356 Wonder Computers, Inc. Calgary AB CAN 403-253-0009 * A 1 Computers Edmonton AB CAN 403-448-0632 Software Supermart Edmonton AB CAN 403-425-0691 Desktop Computing Red Deer AB CAN 403-342-4444 VFX Video, Inc. Richmond BC CAN 604-244-3000 Wonder Computers, Inc. Richmond BC CAN 604-279-4240 * J.L. Fotovideo Camera Ctrs. Winnipeg MB CAN 204-475-8730 Corey's Computing Winnipeg MB CAN 204-654-3194 Young Monkey Studio Fredericton NB CAN 506-459-7088 Animax Multimedia, Inc. Dartmouth NB CAN 902-468-2629 * Atlantis Kobetek, Inc. Halifax NS CAN 902-422-6556 Legendary Design Technologies Brantford ON CAN 919-753-6120 The Computer & You Etobicoke ON CAN 416-231-0205 Forest Diskasaurus Forest ON CAN 519-786-2454 J.L. Fotovideo Camera Ctrs. Hamilton ON CAN 905-575-3000 Altair Electronics, Ltd. Kingston ON CAN 613-384-3876 D.F. Technologies London ON CAN 519-439-3181 Wonder Computers, Inc. London ON CAN 519-681-0004 * Cancom Audio Visual Inc. Markham ON CAN 905-470-0466 APIX Systems North York ON CAN 416-750-9909 National Amiga Canada Oakville ON CAN 905-845-1949 Media Direct Orillia ON CAN 705-327-7583 Wonder Computers, Inc. Ottawa ON CAN 613-596-2542 * Valley Soft Pembroke ON CAN 613-732-7700 Wonder Computers, Inc. Scarborough ON CAN 416-286-0001 * Atlas Computers & Consulting Sudbury ON CAN 705-522-1923 OBY's Amigo Computing Shop Sudbury ON CAN 705-524-5826 Electronics 2000 Thunder Bay ON CAN 807-577-1759 Comspec Communications Toronto ON CAN 416-785-3553 Randomize Computers Tottenham ON CAN 905-939-8391 Centre Maxi-Mini Amos QU CAN 819-732-6464 Informatique Richard Lamond Lac Des 16 Iles QU CAN 514-226-7506 Gfx Base Electronics LaSalle QU CAN 514-367-2575 Wonder Computers, Inc. Montreal QU CAN 514-279-0002 * Electromike, Inc. Quebec QU CAN 418-681-4138 Info Plus Trois-Rivieres QU CAN 819-373-0894 System Compbac, Inc. Tokyo JPN 81-33837-868 SoftWood, Inc. Phoenix AZ USA 800-247-8314 Troxell Communications, Inc. Phoenix AZ USA 602-437-7240 Wentek Scottsdale AZ USA 602-483-7200 Transdata Systems Co., Ltd. Anaheim CA USA 714-630-8711 Visionsoft Carmel CA USA 408-626-2633 * The Lively Computer La Mesa CA USA 619-589-9455 IHD Global Computer Center National City CA USA 619-477-0402 Applied Computer Systems North Highlands CA USA 916-338-2000 * TS Computers North Hollywood CA USA 818-760-4445 Alex Electronics Paradise CA USA 916-872-0896 La Bine Productions Rialto CA USA 909-355-9756 Wave Systems San Diego CA USA 619-495-9238 Megagem Santa Maria CA USA 805-349-1104 Anti Gravity Products Santa Monica CA USA 310-393-9747 Compuhelp Computers Van Nuys CA USA 818-901-0280 The Computer Room Aurora CO USA 303-696-8973 Davis Audio-Visual, Inc. Denver CO USA 303-455-1122 Softown, Inc. Danbury CT USA 203-797-8080 Derrick Electronics Hamden CT USA 203-248-7227 Videology Newtown CT USA 203-270-9000 * Infotronics Woodbury CT USA 203-263-5350 DeVine Computer Sales Newark DE USA 302-738-9046 Eagle Computers & Video Melbourne FL USA 407-951-9732 Harddrivers Co. Merrit Island FL USA 407-453-5805 Centennial Video Systems Miami FL USA 305-633-2200 * Creative Equipment, Intl. Miami FL USA 305-266-2800 Miami Picture & Sound company Miami FL USA 305-666-4055 * Computer Video Associates Pinellas Park FL USA 813-576-5242 Showcase Video Atlanta GA USA 404-325-7676 * ACS Computer & Video Norcross GA USA 404-263-9190 Hawkeye Communications Coralville IA USA 319-354-3354 Computer Advantage Des Moines IA USA 515-252-6167 Commodore Computer Center Boise ID USA 208-342-3401 Maxximum Video Creations Boise ID USA 208-322-3091 Blackrock Computers Plus Pocatello ID USA 208-323-0012 Trend Port U.S. Algonquin IL USA 708-854-9671 MicroTech Solutions Aurora IL USA 708-851-3033 * Micro-PACE, Inc. Champaign IL USA 217-356-1884 Select Solutions Champaign IL USA 800-322-1261 Ring Video Systems Riverside IL USA 708-442-0009 Digital Arts Bloomington IN USA 812-330-0124 R.C. Instruments Cicero IN USA 317-984-9400 Desktop Video Systems Lenexa KS USA 913-782-8888 Mission Electronics, Inc. Lenexa KS USA 913-894-8480 Video Lab Shawnee KS USA 913-631-0045 Smith Audio Visual, Inc. Topeka KS USA 913-235-3481 Icon Computers & Software Bridgewater MA USA 508-697-6060 Crimson Tech Cambridge MA USA 617-868-5150 The Camera Company Norwood MA USA 617-769-7810 Kipp Visual Systems Gaithersburg MD USA 301-670-7906 EMH Systems Auburn ME USA 207-784-2048 Amiga Crossing Cumberland ME USA 207-829-3959 Thalner Electronic Labs Ann Arbor MI USA 313-761-4506 Slipped Disk Madison Heights MI USA 810-546-3475 Spectrum Computer Product Prudenville MI USA 517-366-8569 Alpha Video Edina MN USA 800-388-0008 A/V Solutions St. Paul MN USA 612-698-1175 Data Grafix Sprintfield MO USA 417-882-1899 * VIP Systems, Inc. Chapel Hill NC USA 919-968-9477 Magic Page Products Winston-Salem NC USA 910-785-3695 Amicom Computer Technology Omaha NE USA 402-556-6160 Sir Render A/V Mays Landing NJ USA 609-625-0472 KBI Systems Mountainside NJ USA 908-654-3600 Electro-Tech Las Vegas NV USA 702-435-3201 The Microworks Buffalo NY USA 716-873-1856 Mr. Hardware Central Islip NY USA 516-234-8110 Area 52, Inc. Coram NY USA 516-476-1615 Amigo Business Computers East Northport NY USA 516-757-7334 Better Concepts, Inc. Garnerville NY USA 914-786-1711 Armato's Pro Video Glendale NY USA 718-628-6800 Revels-Bey Music Hempstead NY USA 516-565-9404 CTL Electronics New York NY USA 212-233-0754 Tri-State Camera, Inc. New York NY USA 212-633-2290 Seismic Business Systems Poughkeepsie NY USA 914-462-4518 T.J.'s Unlimited Rochester NY USA 716-225-5810 Copperhead Technologies Schenectady NY USA 518-346-3894 Tronix Micro Systems Sloan NY USA 716-668-8176 Paxtron Corporation Spring Valley NY USA 914-578-6522 Software Link, Inc. White Plains NY USA 914-683-2512 Compuquick Media Center Columbus OH USA 614-235-1180 Neather Realm Software Cuyahoga Falls OH USA 216-928-1738 Industrial Video, Inc. Lorain OH USA 216-233-4000 Penguin Music Store #3 Toledo OH USA 419-882-0961 * Clackamas Computers Clackamas OR USA 503-650-0379 Magic Box, Inc. Corvallis OR USA 541-752-5654 Computer Users Springfield OR USA 541-726-8500 Computer Discount Center Erie PA USA 814-899-6437 British Magazine Dist., Inc. Hermitage PA USA 412-962-1218 The Lerro Corporation Norristown PA USA 610-650-4100 CDR Systems Pittsburgh PA USA 412-351-1700 Mega Bytes Pittsburgh PA USA 412-653-9050 J&C Repair Rockton PA USA 814-583-5838 Electronic Connection West Reading PA USA 610-372-1010 Kasara Microsystems Hilton Head SC USA 803-842-5058 Via Video Interaction Knoxville TN USA 423-687-4328 * Computer Ease Corpus Christi TX USA 512-882-2275 * Metropolitan Computer Products Dallas TX USA 214-702-9119 Microsearch Houston TX USA 713-988-2818 Computer Wise, Inc. Logan UT USA 801-752-2500 Dewberry's Computers & Supplies Danville VA USA 804-799-0502 Whitlock Group, The Richmond VA USA 804-273-9100 Spectral Multimedia, Inc. Bellevue WA USA 206-451-4075 Amiga Northwest Studio Bothell WA USA 206-488-5664 MS Digital Edmonds WA USA 206-742-7051 Envision PC Consulting Lynnwood WA USA 206-469-6775 Omni International Trading Seattle WA USA 206-217-0607 Zipperware Seattle WA USA 206-223-1107 Camera Corner, Inc. Green Bay WI USA 414-435-5353 Images in Motion, Inc. Waukesha WI USA 414-798-9400 * Safe Harbor Waukesha WI USA 800-544-6599 Taylor Pro Audio / Video Wauwatosa WI USA 414-778-0944 Any of these dealers can process your Amiga order. If your local dealer does not appear on the list, encourage them to sign up. Dealer Sign-up: Dealers can request an application by faxing their request to the SMG at (410) 992-9979 or (410) 715-6859. Make your request on company letterhead. Be sure to include your name, address, telephone and fax numbers. Dealers can contact us via phone at (410) 715-6850, via Fax at (410) 992-9979 or (410) 715-6850, via Internet email at pbielski@interramp.com, or via CompuServe mail at 72060,3271. @endnode @node NEWS17 "Xoper 2.6" @toc NEWS TITLE Xoper 2.6 VERSION Xoper 2.6 (17.11.95) by Werner Guenther and Gunther Nikl AUTHOR Copyright (c) 1988-92 by Werner Guenther Copyright (c) 1993-95 by Gunther Nikl, Ziegendorfer Chaussee 96, D-19370 Parchim, Germany. gnikl@informatik.uni-rostock.de DESCRIPTION Xoper is a system monitor to display various system lists. For example, it can show all running tasks with their cpu usage. Xoper not only displays a list of all tasks but it can show other system lists from Exec, DOS or Intuition as well. Some examples are the port list, available windows and screens, and DOS-devices. NEW FEATURES This release is mainly to fix bugs (for a complete list consult the guide). One important change affects the CLI start. Xoper now uses a new technique to detach itself from the CLI that is officially supported by the system. For those who do not like detaching, Xoper offers a new option `KEEPIO' to disable that feature. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS The program requires at least version 1.2 (V33) of the operating system. AVAILABILITY Aminet, eg. ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/moni/Xoper26.lha PRICE Xoper 2.6 is FREEWARE DISTRIBUTABILITY It is illegal to distribute this program on disks which cost more than US $5 per floppy disk, or more than US $20 per CD. OTHER This software is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. In no event will the author be liable for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages or data loss resulting from the use or application of this software. The entire risk as to the results and performance of this software is assumed by the user. @endnode @node NEWS18 "SetMouse v2.0" @toc NEWS TITLE SetMouse VERSION 2.0 (07.12.95) AUTHOR Ketil Hunn Nabbetorpveien 35B N-1632 Gamle Fredrikstad Norway E-Mail: Ketil.Hunn@hiMolde.no http://www.himolde.no/~ketil/ DESCRIPTION Small utility to centre mousepointer on screen upon startup as in MS-Windows. Nice if you have many programs in your WBStart-drawer (the wait-pointer will be centered and well visible). May also position/move mousepointer to any coordinates on a screen. NEW FEATURES o SetMouse V2.0 can also generate a left, middle, right mouse button press (or any combination of these). SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS 2.04 or higher. AVAILABILITY ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/Shell/SetMouseV20.lha () PRICE Free. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freeware. Do with it as you please. @endnode @node NEWS19 "RO v1.20" @toc NEWS TITLE RO VERSION 1.20 COMPANY none AUTHOR Oliver Rummeyer Hochbergstrasse 49/1 D-88213 Ravensburg Germany/Europe DESCRIPTION RO is a new Intuition-controlled, fully user-configurable file manager for OS 2.04 and newer. You can use RO to copy, move, rename or delete files, and you can perform a filetype sensitive action command (e.g. show pictures or texts, play sounds, etc with one single command button) on files via GUI. RO's mighty features will assist and help you on your daily work with your Amiga. With RO there is no need to learn those cryptic shell commands, because you have the complete power of your Amiga in one hand. Some features are: o uses MUI o very small executable o highly configurable o user configurable filetypes o supports datatypes o supports XPK, PP and ARCHandler o path name completer o more than 50 internal commands o user menu support o hotkey & hotdir support o powerful arexx port o very fast directory and file operations o appicon launches progs for defined filetypes o english, french and german documentation & catalog o supports middle mouse button o nice preference program o dynamic listviews o drag & drop NEW FEATURES - Version 1.20 (3.12.95) o requires MUI 3.1 or better. o Made some changes for MUI3+ compatibily. o Fixed some minor bugs. o Catalog files changed. o Removed some useless menu entries. o New menu entry MUI... o New menu entry RO... o Improved RO prefs handling. o Implemented resizeable listviews. o Implemented drag&drop mechanism. REQUIRENTS RO requires Magic User Interface (MUI) version 3.1 or later. AVAILABILITY RO 1.20 is available on Aminet, e.g. ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/dir/RO_V120.lha PRICE Shareware fee US$ 20 or 30,- DM DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware, RO 1.20 is (c) 1994,1995 by Oliver Rummeyer @endnode @node NEWS20 "Oberon System V4" @toc NEWS TITLE Oberon System V4 for Amiga VERSION 1.0 AUTHOR Stefan Ludwig, Claudio Nieder, Ralf Degner E-Mail: ludwig@inf.ethz.ch, degner@pallas.amp.uni-hannover.de S-Mail: Stefan Ludwig Institut fuer Computersysteme ETH-Zentrum CH-8092 Zuerich DESCRIPTION Oberon System V4 for Amiga (O4A) is a full implementation of ETH Zurich's Oberon System V4. Oberon is both a programming language and an operating system developed by Prof. N. Wirth and Prof. J. Gutknecht. The Oberon System in key words: - Single-process multitasking - Garbage collector - memory will be released automatically if not needed anymore - Commandos: procedures that can be called like programs - Dynamic loading: modules are loaded and linked to the system during run-time (if necessary) - Text as a built-in abstract data type (for example a Minesweeper game as a letter (like OLE and OpenDOC)) - Graphical user interface A special advantage is the very high compatibility of the systems between implementations on different computers. System V4 implementations exist for Amiga, Mac, Power Mac, Windows (NT), Linux, IBM-RS6000, Sun-Sparc, HP-Workstations, NeXt, ... You can use a program written on one implementation on any other without change. O4A is a full implementation of the Oberon System V4 with all usual programs. The system runs in its own task and therefore you can use O4A and the Amiga OS at the same time. Specific features of the Amiga implementation are its incremental heap allocation, support of the Amiga clipboard and the capability of accessing IFF files. The O4A package contains: - A full Oberon-2 compiler - Development tools (Browser, Analyzer, Disassembler) - XE, a comfortable 'editor' with layout functions - Kepler, an object-oriented 2D vector drawing program - Paint, a simple pixel-oriented paint program - A lot of additional tools (Draw, RX, AsciiCoder, ...) - Various text elements - Games: Tetris and Minesweeper (with source) - Example sources and online documentation To get more information about the programming language and operating system Oberon have a look at the "Oberon and Amiga" WWW page: http://sun1.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/~nhbidegn/oa-e.html There you will find links to other Oberon information resources. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS - Amiga with OS2.0 or higher - at least an MC68020 - a minimum of 1.5 MB free memory (2.5 MB recommended) - about 3 MB disk space - FPU for floating point calculations (without FPU Oberon-NonFPU.lha is required) AVAILABILITY The Home of Oberon is the ETH Zurich. There you can find many Oberon System implementations, especially the Amiga version: ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/Oberon/Amiga/V1.0/ Oberon.lha (1.1 MB) - main archive Oberon-NonFPU.lha (100 KB) - to use O4A without FPU Oberon-Src.lha (600 KB) - the full source of O4A It is available in the Aminet directory dev/obero, too. PRICE It's free, but not PD. DISTRIBUTABILITY Oberon System V4 for Amiga is (C)opyright 1990-95 by Claudio Nieder, Stefan Ludwig, Ralf Degner and the Institute for Computer Systems ETH Zurich. All files in the archives are freeware. You can use it in any way you like but you must not include part of it in a commercial product. @endnode @node NEWS21 "KingFisher v2.20" @toc NEWS NAME KingFisher VERSION 2.20 SYNOPSIS A major update to the PREMIER "Fish Disk" & CD-ROM software catalog maintenance and search tool available to all Amigas w/ KS2.04 or later. See PURPOSE section below for more details. NEW FEATURES ----- KingFisher 2.20 ----------------------------------------- Hotlinked Product-Info - View live Product-Info while you edit Product-Info files - More robust, flexible, compatible Paint your own buttons - Replace any of 28 gadgets (KS39+) Default Database - If missing, KingFisher won't panic Improved documentation - *Major* rework, better organization Keyfile - No more huge, ugly patches(*) Numerous minor improvments in various areas. --------------------------------------------------------------- Adding Fish - Major bug fixed (froze) Numerous misfeatures and minor bugs fixed. --------------------------------------------------------------- (*)Registered users may receive their keyfiles by email or via upgrades as described in the documentation. PURPOSE KingFisher is a tool specifically designed to maintain and search one or more databases for software. The program permits manual browsing, but offers a powerful expression parser through which you can explain to KingFisher exactly what you are looking for. The layout of database records for display is programmable, as is the format used for printing and that for writing records to a file. This permits complete customization, separately for each database. Allowing you to view a "live" Product-Info file now enables you to have KingFisher instantly demonstrate the effect of an edit. Produce Product-Info files for your software more easily than ever! KingFisher uses a resizable GadTools window on the default public screen or on a custom screen, offers the choice of both smart and simple refresh windows, and supports proportional fonts (including scalable fonts) of nearly any size. KingFisher supports more than one database, and databases that are larger than a single disk volume, which are spread over any number of disks to be mounted on request. Using advanced Client-Server Technology, KingFisher supports multiple simultaneous users with a minimum of memory overhead (as little as 35K) for each user (an ARexx-based interface named RexxFisher provides a BBS with the means to serve many databases to many users!) KingFisher's multi-user support in NO WAY hinders its value in a single-user environment! KingFisher is localized. Catalogs are supplied for Dansk, Deutsch, Espanol, Nederlands, Suomi, and Svenska. More are expected as translators are found (hint, hint!) Fully integrated AmigaGuide help provides context sensitive assistance and information on menu items and gadgets under the mouse pointer. Hundreds of links cross-reference over 200K of redesigned documentation. KingFisher comes with a complete, read-to-use database of descriptions for Fred's "Fish Disks" 1-1000! The command "Install database..." helps adding existing databases from CD-ROM. REQUIREMENTS With Fish Disk Database (1.5MB), approximately 2.2MB of harddisk space is needed. The program requires about 300K of memory to run, depending on the size of the database index files and some other factors. Kickstart V37 (2.04) is required; V38 (2.1) is required for localization. COMPATIBILITY O/S: Minimum KS V37 (2.04); V38 recommended; V39/V40 best! CPU: 68000 through 68040. Untested on 68060. Display: Picasso II, EGS Spectrum, CyberGraphics. Enforcer and Mungwall used during testing. PRICE Shareware registration fee is $20(US) or DM30. A registration site in Germany is available for European users. --------------------------------------------------------------- USERS GROUPS and their members are eligible for a 20% discount! You must provide name and mailing address for your users group to be eligible for the discount price: $16(US) or DM24. --------------------------------------------------------------- RESTRICTIONS The freely distributable, unregistered (EVALUATION) version is limited to a maximum of two simultaneous users. Register for the full version and show your support! AUTHOR & AUTHOR'S ADDRESS (inquiries, registration, technical support) Udo Schuermann (The address 7022 Hanover Parkway, Apt. C2 changed in Greenbelt, MD 20770-2049 July 95) USA email: walrus@wam.umd.edu www: http://www.wam.umd.edu/~walrus/ http://www.wam.umd.edu/~walrus/KingFisher.html LOCATION ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/biz/dbase/KingFisher220.lha (881631) http://www.uga.umd.edu/cgi-bin/KingFisher2.lha (881631) @endnode @node NEWS22 "BBMouseServDoc" @toc NEWS TITLE BBMouseServDoc - documentation for the BridgeBoard Mouse Server VERSION Release 1.0. AUTHOR Remi Lenoir Email: DESCRIPTION BBMouseServDoc describes the operation of MouseServ, the BridgeBoard mouse server, with the goal of helping the writing of mouse drivers for other OSes than DOS/Windows. Along with the documentation comes a demo program called MyMouse which demonstrates the use of MouseServ as explained in the doc. FEATURES A documentation and a demo program including full source code. REQUIREMENTS - A Commodore BridgeBoard. AVAILABILITY BBMouseServDoc is FREEWARE and is available from Aminet. ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/misc/emu/BBMouseServDoc.lha PRICE It is FREE. DISTRIBUTABILITY It is FREEWARE, not public domain. BBMouseServDoc is (C) Copyrighted 1995 Remi Lenoir. @endnode @node NEWS23 "International Amiga Society" @toc NEWS Announcement : The International Amiga Society Fun, Fame & Furious =================== Tired of the usuall dull and boring technical information found on most Amiga webpages? Tired of pages that never updates or get refreshed? Looking for something to waste some time on? Well then, read on! This is the annoncement of the first 'infotainment' webpage dedicated to the Amiga only. You might have read about it back in AmigaReport 3.19, but until now, I have been busy figuring out how to organize, design and set up the service. The object of the webpage is to create a place that everyone can stop for a few minutes and enjoy themselves. All (or most) text is dedicated directly to the computer we all love - the Amiga. Anecdotes, stories, tricks, how someone has used his or her Amiga in a specially clever or different way, people on other platforms stupidity, amazing hardware and software, records of computerkind, etc., etc. To simply put it: as long as it either fun or interesting, and involves the Amiga in some way, it qualifies for the page! Currently only a few articles have been added, but already the page is shaping up. However, it's now we are coming to the main point: how much I ever want, I can't collect and supply information in the amount needed! I need help to make this happen! This is not my page! This is OUR page! If you like it, and want it to survive, YOU must contribute! If you don't like the appearance, atleast tell me! If I get many diffrent suggestions, I'll arrange a voting! But without feedback it's impossible to know what to do. So, how is this page maintained? Well, the main reason why most homepages never or seldom gets updated, is that the person responsible for it either works in an alien and/or unfriendly environment, ie. Unix and PC, or that the process for uploading the information to the www directory (usually the homedirectory) involves so many cumbersome steps that only the thought of doing it, discourages even the most determinded writer. I soon realised this and developed an arexx script that automatically checks if there is files to upload or directories to make, and simultaenously maintaines the files, inserts datestrings etc. In the development is also a routine that creates and maintaince a history index, which contains links to each article that have been uploaded. This makes it easier (not to say possible!) to resume reading from the previous location. Ok, if you have a giant setting for your global history file in your web browser, you may maybe succed in remembering which articles you have read but I doubt it. The history index file will contain links in historical order (hence the name :) and an user can jump in reading from the date of the latest visit. What is now the name of this amazing page? Well, actually it has no real name sofar, only a work name: 'Funny Stories', which I after long discussions have determinded to discard. If you have a suggestion, please tell me. Check out the page at: http://artworks.apana.org.au/~johan/iasf Although this URL is subject to change, it will be valid for the predictable future. Contributions, questions, suggestions, etc. can be sent to: IAS-Funny@artworks.apana.org.au and mail of private nature should be sent to: johan@artworks.apana.org.au Once again: I need YOUR contribution! NOW! (Sounds like Uncle Sam :) * Johan Torin - Halmstad, Sweden - johan@artworks.apana.org.au * @endnode @node NEWS24 "MagicCX v1.2" @toc NEWS TITLE MagicCX VERSION 1.2 AUTHOR Kai Iske Brucknerstrasse 18 63452 Hanau Germany Tel.: +49-(0)6181-850181 email: iske@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de DESCRIPTION MagicCX is the definite commodity/system enhancer for any Amiga running OS 2.x or better. It is a very powerful and flexible system. MagicCX is a multifunctional commodity/tool collection which is somehow unique as it does not contain all the functions offered, but has the main functions/features built into external modules, so that users may configure MagicCX to their needs. MagicCX is the successor of KCommodity, which was a multifunctional commodity/tool, too. The program offers a lot more functions than KCommodity. All of the functions known from KCommodity were put into MagicCX and were enhanced, of course. Some of the main features the program offers are: CycleToMenu, PhoneBill (Modem conntect monitoring with cost calculation), Screen/Window Grabber, AnalogClock, Calendar, Window manipulation functions of all sort (like cycling, activating, hunting for windows), Screen Blanker with Blanker/Dimmer and several external blanker modules, Mouse blanker, Screen Selector type facilities, ToolAlias, ARexx control, Titlebar clock, Function keys, Exploding Windows, Keystroke clicker, WBGauge, system wide String gadget enhancements, and much, much more. *** MagicCX is an SASG product *** - It incorporates many, many features known from other commodities/tools, while offering new, unseen features - External preferences program allows full control over MagicCX and all the functions. - It offers a special module design, known from Workbench. You may install/use modules/functions by simply dragging them to a Modules directory, if not used, move them to a storage directory. - Localized under OS 2.1 and up. English, German, French, Danish, and Swedish translations available - Compact system installation. Only a few files will be spread around your system. All others are kept in a single directory (Configurable) - Only basic functions (window activation and such) are built into the main program. The remaining features were put into external modules - MagicCX comes with 28 (for now) different modules you may choose from. - Flexible blanker system with two internal blankers and 25 (for now) external blanker modules - Utilizes powerful gadget layout library (gtlayout.library) - ...and much, much more NEW FEATURES - 7 new powerful modules - 5 new blanker modules - plenty of fixes, enhancements, improvements - Actually too much to mention here, take a look at the history file, which is approximately 27KB in size, just mentioning changes from 1.1 to 1.2 SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS 2.x and up (Harddisk recommended but not needed) LOCATION Any AmiNet site, for example: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/cdity/MagicCX12.lha (637444 Bytes) PRICE Shareware according to SASG prices SASG is the Standardized Amiga Shareware Group, formed by several Shareware authors, who whish to supply powerful software to the Amiga Community at standard prices. More information about SASG and it`s goals may be found within the archive. - DM 30.- - FF 120.- - SFr 30.- - # 15.- - US$ 20.- - Aus$ 30.- DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware (Keyfile protected, all features available for evaluation) @endnode @node FEATURE1 "WORMS Tips" @toc FEATURE [Funny how we haven't had a chance to review it yet, but hey, here's an article of tips on the game Worms by the author himself. -Jason] =========================================================================== EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT WORMS, BUT WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK BY ANDY "WORMS" DAVIDSON =========================================================================== First of all, thanks to everyone who has bought the game - here's all the hidden stuff I put in Amiga WORMS, and a lot more besides ... * ONE MAN AND HIS SHEEP Need more sheep? Get depressed when you pick up every weapon crate, only to end up with 9 teleports and 7 cluster bombs? Type in TOTAL WORMAGE (with the space) on the title screen for "SHEEP MODE". If you're using a joypad press GREEN, UP, PAUSE, PAUSE, YELLOW (which spells GUPPY - a tribute to the late Bananafish) This gives you 3 sheep, 1 banana bomb and a minigun straight away (go into Weapon Options if you need an UNLIMITED SUPPLY of sheep) For all those who were offended at the thought of sheep being kept in small wooden crates, sheep mode lets you shoot ANY weapon crate to FREE THE SHEEP! Killing your opponent with a liberated sheep is a very satisfying way to win and well worth activating smug mode for. * A FAMOUS LEGEND The "legendary prod move" is a not available in any shops, you can only buy by doing this combination of moves (in the best Mortal Kombat tradition) ... Get next to your victim and press AWAY, AWAY, TOWARDS, TOWARDS (in other words, if your worm is facing right press left, left, right, right) * CUSTOMISING THAT WORM BUT MORE SO The custom level option is EVEN MORE EXCITING than you thought - you can set the gravity, friction, sky and water colours for your levels ... Instead of saving your level as FISHCAKE.WRM, save it as FISHCAKE.????.WRM the 4 question marks being 4 numbers ... The first number is gravity and can be between 1 and 5 (1=very low, 3=normal 5=very high). Mars and alien levels have a gravity of 2. The second number is friction and can be between 1 and 5 (1=very low, 3=normal, 5=very high). Arctic and alien levels have a friction of 2. The third and forth numbers are the sky and water colours and can be between and 9 - fans of green water can now have a matching green sky. You can also make your own message appear, when your level is chosen, by giving your level file a comment. Do this by clicking on the level icon and choosing "Information" from the Workbench menus (the icon menu on 2.0+) If you want to share your level with the rest of the world, then upload it to ftp.team17.com in the directory /pub/incoming * MAKING IT OFFICIAL When playing with 4 people it is normal either for 3 people to gang up on 1 (fox and rabbit type thing) or for 2 to join forces to get rid of the other 2 who have resorted to the EVIL use of the blow torch (star wars type thing) You can now recreate the Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker thing (and shout "you're not my father" alot) with the OFFICAL TWO AGAINST TWO MODE! At team select after you have clicked on 4 teams, click on 2 again - the stars will change to circles (a symbolic type thing). * LOTS OF WORMS IN A LIST The Wormlist lets you keep a record of loads of people's worms. You just have to type their name at Team Entry, click on List and all their worms will be listed. However, before this is possible you will have to get rid of all the default ownerless worms. These were put in for those people who panic when asked to name their worms and resort to the EVIL 1,2,3+4 team. To kill a load of innocent worms, go to records and choose View Wormlist. Highlight a worm that isn't one of yours or the computers and press the right mouse button. After you have assasinated all the unwanted worms, click on ok and go to Save Wormlist. * EVEN MORE KEYS If you don't know people well enough to keep reaching across them, you have another set of keys to control your worm on the left of the keyboard ... z=left, c=right, x=down, d=up, ctrl=jump, tab=toggle names, '=centre on worm You can use two mouses as well by selecting two controllers in Options. * WHAT THE ....? If you feel a word is missing from this sample then change it to something more appropriate for a highly dangerous explosive device landing next to a small pink invertebrate (?!) All the samples on disks 2+3 in the TWEnglish/TWFrench/TWGerman drawers are IFF - just replace them with your own but don't exceed the size of the original samples or WORMS will crash violently at Game Start. Also, don't change the names of the samples. BUT USE BACKUPS! =) Don't forget, if you make a good sample set then upload it to ftp.team17.com in the directory /pub/incoming. * FOUR BILLION? BUT WHICH ONES? If you find a particularly good level in Amiga WORMS make sure you tell everyone, especially if you find one of the weird levels (you'll know them when you see them!), or a level that looks like an animal! These are the best levels I've found so far ... 1803921718 - weirdful scrapyard level (best level so far) 3549908729 - jungle level with crashed helicopter on island 252101829 - another one of the weird levels, a perfectly curved island 345076839 - bridge over troubled island 1706205299 - arctic caves THORAHIRD - explore her hidden depths And from the animal collection (only some people can see them!) ... 954338916 - sneezing alien elephant 2810298544 - horse sticking head out of water 3376459905 - a bit of a triceratops * A LONG TIME AGO ... WORMS started life 4 years ago as a simple tank game called ARTILLERY. It's aim was to keep us conscious during A-Level Art. But tanks weren't interest enough, and they were soon replaced with soldiers in ARTILLERY 2. As A-Level Art got more boring, more stuff such as teams of soldiers and dynamite was added resulting in ***ARTILLERY. Having survived A-Level Art, it eventually became clear that soldiers weren't interesting enough either - a replacement had to be found for "the things that walk and jump". Worms were decided on, as back in August '93, none of them had ever been called Jim. A complete rewrite started under the name Total Wormage, or TW as everyone playtesting it had to call it. Alot of sleepless nights later, September '94, I took it to the ECTS and showed Martyn Brown at Team 17. After 5 minutes he said "Do you want it published?" Total Wormage became WORMS and came out in November '95. So the moral of this tale is if you want to get a game published, take A-Level Art. ARTILLERY - 1991 ARTILLERY 2 - 1991 ***ARTILLERY - 1991-1993 TOTAL WORMAGE - 1993-1994 WORMS - 1994-1995 * ABOUT THAT CONCRETE DONKEY The garden should be a happy place, but if there is a large concrete donkey standing in it, it puts a bit of a downer on things. As a child I was very disturbed by it - I was convinced that my parents had concreted over a real donkey and just left it there (what happened to Bananafish also got me suspicious). I can remember chipping away at its tail with a stone, to see if there was fur under there. Today, the donkey has taken on a religious significance resulting in the "Cult of the Concrete Donkey". Sacrifical gifts are regularly laid between its ears, the most recent being a small can of Heinz Baked Beans (unopened). This practice of concreting over donkeys may be more widespread as there have recently been sightings of other concrete donkeys - most disturbing of all was that one of them was a baby donkey. * DONKEY WATCH "Donkey Watch" was started to see exactly how many donkeys have ended up as nothing more than garden "ornaments". If you see one, make sure you report it. * ABOUT BANANAFISH Bananafish was a white and yellow goldfish, and was pretty clever as goldfish go - he could play dead, and roll over on command. Sadly, Bananafish came to a nasty end when the pond was filled with concrete. There have been various sightings of Bananafish over the years, but none of them have been confirmed * AN APOLOGY ... I promised a load of people on IRC channel #Amiga their own worms in Amiga WORMS, and then proceeded to lose the piece of paper I wrote them down on! to all the people I discussed Concrete Donkeys with - StoneD, RMerlin, MrDaniel and everyone else - sorry =( * WORMS -> ? I was adding stuff to Amiga Worms right up until its release, and I'm doing a patch disk at the moment to fix any bugs in it. This disk will also add all the things that I didn't have time for. If there's anything you want to say about WORMS - I'd like to know. Keep on worming ... ANDY "WORMS" DAVIDSON MAD? POSSIBLY @endnode @node FEATURE2 "The Commodore Postscript Project" @toc FEATURE =========================================================================== The Commodore Postscript Project Laurence Vanhelsuwé Laurence.Vanhelsuwe@ping.be =========================================================================== December 1995 (C) Laurence Vanhelsuwé --- Hello all you Commodore watchers... here's a real story you didn't know or read about so far. It's about 3 Commodore software engineers, a Postscript laser printer, and Life's ups and downs. For myself, one of the engineers (Laurence Vanhelsuwé), it all began one cold day in January 1991. A small, insignificant job ad peered back at me from the pages of "Computing", a British weekly I.T. industry journal which devotes half its pages to job advertisements. The ad mentioned our beloved Amiga, a rare thing to mention in these types of "serious" magazines. As if my years of Amiga experience weren't enough inducement to immediately launch an enticing CV printed on highest quality paper, the ad also mentioned Postscript, a language I knew and liked a lot. Clearly the ad had potential and, sure enough, I didn't have to twiddle my thumbs for too long before I was invited for an interview... My eyes expanded to cover half my face when I learned that this mystery progressive company (who dared using Amigas !) was in fact... Commodore itself. Commodore ?! But I thought Commodore's only U.K. presence was in the south of England (with their Maidenhead box-shifting centre). And this interview would be in Hull: the antithesis of an attractive city; a city without an ounce of enviable cultural or architectural heritage. But Hull it was. Life's so strange sometimes :-) (My apologies to any inhabitants of Hull I've offended, but hey: it's a real dump isn't it ?!) More surprises were to follow though. My interview was to be held at the premises of the recruiting company that originally advertised the position. That company had offices - of sorts - in a bland, old, half-deserted terraced house in a plain old residential area. Commodore officials would interview me there, the recruitment company had told me. As I approached the front door I fully expected an ugly housewife in slippers to open the door and tell me to go sell my vacuum cleaners somewhere else (she would have had to be quite drunk since my black attaché case didn't look anything like a vacuum cleaner). But no, as the buzzing lock opened the door, I was simply greeted by a simplistic arrow sign pointing to the first floor. I had played adventure games before, but this was ridiculous... On the first floor I was finally greeted with the recruiting lady I had exchanged letters and messages with (but no bodily fluids - shame). She simply welcomed me and told me she would inform the Commodore interviewer of my arrival. Minutes later he materialized out of nowhere and took me into a small interviewing room. The usual interviewing exchanges took place: he asked me to summarize my life - something which had already become embarrassingly complex by that time - and then proceeded to explain what the job would consist of. In this case nothing less than the full implementation of a Postscript interpreter, from scratch, and for the Amiga. Other tasty carrots were dangled in front of my (starving) face; the most interesting one being the programming of the next generation graphics.library with added support for the AA graphics chipset. I must have radiated a lot of enthusiasm as the interviewer, Steve Beats, wanted to show me the actual premises. I was about to see Commodore's secretive R&D inner sanctum. I prepared myself for a short trip in a car, or something along those lines... instead all that happened was a short walk down the stairs to the ground floor level and going through another door ! What ?! Commodore was located on the floor beneath the recruiting company? If the "offices" of the recruiting company above our heads were sparse, to say the least, then "Commodore's" offices were proportionately primitive, chaotic and dirty to boot. Yes, the thoroughly uncelebrated "Hull branch" of Commodore International was in fact one single large room in an old, half-empty terraced house. Glitter and glamour. Not a hint. I was disappointed. No secretaries, no managers, no testing department, no hardware people, no cleaning ladies, no bosses. Nothing ! When we walked through the door, one young programmer got up and greeted me. Yep, "they" were TWO, an Apple- or Microsoft-crushing TWO. Most amputees from the world's timber industries could count them: one... TWO! ..and I was supposed to become number three. Of course, without a job at the time, and with this very exciting software project on the table (Postscript from scratch), I effortlessly managed to blot out the surrealist working environment and eagerly accepted the job. I moved from Leicester to Hull, and for the first week or so stayed in a hotel close by, while I sorted out some more permanent accommodation. Work, on the other hand, was quicker in coming. The goal was simple: Postscript on the Amiga. We had a real Postscript laser printer in the room and all the official Addison-Wesley Adobe manuals (the red, green and blue books). Enough reference material to get going immediately. Steve Beats, who will go down the Amiga Hall of Fame for his involvement with the Fast File System and the scsi.device, charged me with leading the project due to Commodore West Chester's incessant calls on him. The new filing system and SCSI code needed bugs ironing out, plus there were at that time also some difficult decisions to be made regarding (the by now infamous) Retargetable Graphics (RTG) issue. After some 6 years of relying on the quickly obsolete becoming Amiga graphics architecture, everyone agreed that the OS itself had to somehow pull itself free from this damaging embrace with its underlying hardware that had once put it so much in the spotlights. Postscript was put forward by some people (but none of us three) as the solution. After all, didn't Steve Jobs' Next's reliance on Postscript give it some tremendous advantages over lesser machines ? True, but we weren't convinced for the Amiga. My personal view was that we needed to design a graphics hardware-independent API (an E.G.S. or a CyberGraphX) so that third-party graphics cards could be supported, as was standard in the PC world. Graphics cards were extremely expensive for the Amiga at that time, and official software support could bring those prices down, benefitting everyone involved. Bill Gates' Windows kludge was gaining popularity at a fierce pace and even that lowly piece of spaghetti code had card-independence. For the Amiga to loose a battle on graphics, its forte for years, was unacceptable ! While the knot (Postscript vs. an RTG API) hadn't yet been fully cut, we had to keep ourselves busy with researching Postscript-technology in preparation for the full, bright, green light, whatever direction it would launch us in. About a month after I started. Steve even went to the States to take part in an important graphics meeting. RTG Would be discussed, and Postscript. But Postscript won over an in-house designed API. All brakes were released and from then on we were eating, breathing and dreaming about Postscript. Steve's FFS and SCSI problems meant he only got involved from time to time during the initial stages of the project. The junior team member, Paul Jones, who had joined Steve about a month before me joining, and I, started the ball rolling. Paul custom-wrote the syntactical scanner module. No use of lex/yacc technology was made... no doubt because none of us were raised on UNIX (none of us had any engineering diplomas either, but that didn't stop us). In retrospect this was just as well, as the performance hit incurred due to using such generic tools would have slowed down the interpreter even more. After Paul and I were confident enough about our own understanding of Postscript (gained through simple self-inflicted crash-courses!) I tasked myself to categorize all Postscript language operators (analogous to commands in other languages) so we could draw up an implementing schedule for each. Building block operators would have to be implemented first, easy or not. Then as many easy operators as possible, since they would give our subconscious minds some time to chew on the much more complex issues to tackle later on in the project. Postscript isn't a collection of operators, of course. The operators are the flesh that hangs from a very well designed skeleton of core systems and data structures. Anyone who's had a look at Postscript knows it's a stack-based language. Postscript in fact uses several programmer-visible stacks: one for operands, one for "dictionaries", one as the "execution stack" and another for the graphic contexts. The way any Postscript interpreter aspiring to be fully Adobe compatible has to be designed is to rely on these user-visible stacks internally too. And heavily so. All three of us combined minds and quickly figured out the non-trivial inter-relationships between Postscript's memory management, string and file handling, stack architecture and a host of other features. Lots of detective work on the laser printer gave us the invaluable insights necessary to start picturing a model of the software structure of any Postscript engine. Our initial goal was to have a skeleton system produce, without any kludges, the answer "4" to the simple input PS> 2 2 add = And sure enough, that goal was quickly reached, within 2 months of starting the project. By that time most of the underlying structure was already in place and this allowed me to start implementing the main language operators at a furious pace, following my schedule planned weeks earlier. Paul concentrated on string and file handling since this had some complex interactions with his syntax scanning module. In parallel I implemented almost all the attribute, array, control, boolean, math and operand stack operators. At this time Steve Beats still hadn't been able to join us full-time due to his ongoing maintenance jobs. His presence was again needed in the States. As he flew off (business class of course) Paul and I could only dream of the "real" Commodore across the pond, the place where all the real action was going on... Maybe we would, in time, also become famous Amiga engineers with our Postscript, we thought. Instead, next on my menu were dictionaries: a major feature of Postscript and a performance critical one. Since we allocated ourselves on a first-come-first-serve basis (for subtasks with non-specific needs), I began work on this since Paul was still busy doing the file operators. Soon dictionaries too were part of our Amiga Postscript. Things were falling into place like perfectly matched jigsaw pieces. Around that time Steve was finally relieved of all further work on FFS and his SCSI driver. He started work on the all-important graphics aspects of Postscript. Up till then we had been -quite rightly- concentrating on the non-graphical aspects of Postscript. The language core if you wish, since all the graphics-related stuff builds on and uses the more primitive operators to achieve its power. Paul attacked Bezier curves, since he wasn't afraid of some math, and also took it upon himself to design and implement the 'image' family of operators. Since the Postscript fonts rely very heavily on Postscript dictionaries, I was the logical choice to tackle that can of worms. Soon enough all three would have to start synchronizing our work since to have one single character rendered "a la Postscript", you need line and curve segments, rendered using true polygon fills and all this supervised and managed by a system relying on dictionaries and Postscript procedures. If by that time we could still have been unsure as to whether Postscript was the answer for the Amiga's graphics architecture or not, our first rendered characters gave us the resounding answer: "NO". Not only was the whole system infinitely too slow (compared to the average native speed of Text() ), but the characters exhibited graphical inconsistencies due to the nature of the device independent calculation pipeline inside Postscript. In Postscript, graphical entities (curves, paths, images, fonts) are manipulated in mathematical space until the very last moment when they are mapped to device coordinates and rendered. Therefore, interactions between a device's grid coordinates and the user's floating point world coordinates often create visually spoiling artifacts. Adobe Postscript invests a large amount of computing resources to eliminate these glitches in fonts through the use of "character hints" and other increasingly obscure and secret technologies (that's how they make a fortune selling Postscript licenses, which Commodore wanted to avoid paying). Of course not every character on a Postscript-rendered page is drawn the hard way. The font sub-system has a font cache which stores recently drawn characters for subsequent recall, if needed. But even with this cache, it was clear that Text() would never, in its deepest self, use a Postscript engine to put characters on Amiga screens. Still, we proceeded as demanded from us. With the end in sight for our Level 1 Postscript system, and in the middle of writing a dot matrix driver (instead of a screen driver), which would have given all Amiga owners true Postscript-quality output on plain old matrix printers, Steve relayed us rumours that our project was going to be cancelled. Only Steve had full access to internal R&D E-Mail. This immediately forced a rift down the middle of our 3-man team: Steve Beats, who had previously been based in West Chester, USA, for a number of years had always and meticulously maintained his contacts and links with his U.S. colleagues. Ever since day one he had promised Paul and I that he would arrange for us to have our own E-Mail accounts, like any other Commodore engineer. This way, we too could have first-hand access to the life and energy of Commodore R&D head quarters in West Chester. And fully participate in the creative processes which made the Amiga what it is. As the months went past it slowly became clear that Steve was skillfully managing to avoid this promise and in so doing, completely and deliberately isolate us from West Chester HQ. We were never allowed to phone across the Atlantic to talk directly with management or senior engineers there. Yet he spent thousands of dollars on daytime cross-Atlantic direct dial-ins to the Commodore VAX mainframe to read his private E-Mail. Slowly, he would start to use this planned isolation to his selfish advantage. No one seemed to know Paul or I even existed except for a handful of managers who had authorized our hiring. When the rumours of a project abort persisted, Steve initially tried to convince Commodore that we should all at least complete the project, as we were so close to finishing. Ned McCook, a West Chester manager flew over and had a meeting with Steve in London. Steve refused to have us present at that meeting, going flat against my explicit request. Yet again he was blocking us from any say or, at least as importantly, any first-hand information. I knew what I would have tried to convince Ned of (the need for all team members to retain their jobs and even relocation to the States), but was afraid Steve would have a very different agenda. On Steve's return from London I knew I had been right: the "surprise" outcome of the meeting being that Steve would be keeping his job as engineer while Paul and I would lose ours. There was something seriously rotten in the Commodore Postscript "team". What had previously been a genuinely friendly and open gang of 3, turned into one hypocritical cast of 2 against 1. Steve Beats was screwing his two junior team-members, big time, and we knew it. Yet we couldn't vent any anger or opinions. We were three in a room, 5 days a week, with our backs towards each other - luckily. Morale in the project plummeted. Even Steve's. Officially we were to simply "clean up the code", and close down the shop. The last 2 months were pretty sad. We didn't do any work, and I took all my entitled holidays to go to Nepal for 3 weeks. Going to the office to do nothing wasn't my idea of a productive human life. Months earlier engineers in West Chester had received raises. They were fairly liberally distributed and didn't seem very performance related, so Paul and I were eager to get ours too, before we would be kicked out of the company. If anyone was entitled to a raise, we had to be at the head of the queue: up to the point where the rumours had started, we were doing a first-class job. As ever before, we had to try and get these things sorted out _via_ Steve Beats. We had no direct contact with any departments in the U.S. or with Commodore U.K. in Maidenhead; the people who, ironically, did pay us our salaries. At this point maybe I should paste one of the letters I managed to find on Steve's computer all those years ago... here it is for all you to see: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hi Ned, I figured it would be best to give you this list of things via EMail rather than trying to do it all over the phone since I'd probably forget things. I've spoken with Lipstone's lawyers (the people we I lease the office from) and they are not at all interested in trading office furniture for early lease termination. The best I've been able to do is get them down to one years rent. They initially wanted the remainder of the lease but I don't believe they really expected to get it. Anyway, one year of rent works out to 2860 pounds. Since I have just paid this quarters rent which starts on December 1st I can probably get that included as part of the one year payment (providing I'm out before the next quarter is due in March). Is this OK? I guess we could sic the CBM Maidenhead lawyers on them and try to get the amount down some more but a friend of mine who's a commercial lawyer says that I've got "a pretty good deal" as it is. This now means I've got the furniture, phone/fax etc to deal with too. I got the impression when we met in Heathrow that you really didn't want to deal with it or care about it. The fact that all expenses had gone down as "stamps" implied that everything had already been depreciated down to zero value. Maybe I read you wrong on this. What should I do ? I can sell the furniture to a second hand dealer (though you won't get much money from them) or I can get the Maidenhead folks to pick it up along with all the computers and stuff. I'm going to steal a couple of hard drives and tapes etc. for my own Amiga system but there is going to be a hell of a lot of 240 volt equipment laying around here. Shall I just call someone in Maidenhead and tell them to send a truck and pick it all up? They are likely to bill you for this of course. Alternatively, I can sell the computers through a local computer store (second hand stuff) and let you guys have the cash. The folks at the local store would be willing to take everything and sell it for a "nominal" commision. This would certainly be the easiest solution. Can Laurence and Paul keep the systems they have at home ? They each have an A3000 and monitor. My pay raise came through OK and I should be getting it in my Christmas paycheck, thanks. However, I remember that you said Paul and Larry would still be getting thier pay raises (also backdated to August) and you would be sending me the forms to do thier reviews. I suspect it's a bit late to do this now since they are both going to be leaving next month. I did tell them they would be getting thier raises but have started to back-pedal on that. I think this will be OK providing they are paid the month-in-hand that they worked when they started here. I spoke with Geraldine Meyer regarding this (and whether it would be paid) and she indicated that payment of this month in hand is discretionary !?!? I was really surprised but it appears that she is told by TPTB whether it should be paid or not. Anyway, Geraldine will require instructions from you to terminate Paul and Larrys employment and I guess you also dictate the terms of termination. Larry is taking all of his vacation starting on December 20th (he booked this several months ago) but Paul is saving his vacation and wants to be paid for it when he leaves instead. Is this possible? I'm afraid the PostScript project isn't going very well at all. It's mostly a motivation thing but we are having to fix up some mistakes and alter some code. I'm just trying to make sure we have a maintainable system at the moment (ensuring I can maintain Paul and Larry's stuff that is) and I keep finding bad bits. I'll be giving a detailed report on this to Allen, he can fill you in on this. --stuff snipped-- That's all I can think of for now. Looking forward to your reply. Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Apart from the snipped text, which contained things irrelevant to this article, this is a byte-perfect copy of his letter he E-Mailed to Ned McCook, the manager he convinced to let him keep his job but ditch mine and Paul's. The datestamp on this file is : Ned 5818 ----rwed 12-Dec-91 16:43:04 The letter clearly shows Steve Beats LIED to everyone under the sun: a) his team (Paul and I) b) his own manager He lied to us about the raises we were promised, but never got in the end (unlike his, our Christmas was a very bitter one). He lied to us about some worthless equipment Paul and I had hoped to share among all (if Commodore would have agreed): a dusty CDTV, dirty 3000s, loose hard disks, a tape streamer, that kind of stuff. Instead he grabbed it for himself. He dirtied our names and lied about our first-rate work we had done. There were no problems with the code. ("fix up some mistakes", "ensuring I can maintain Paul and Larry's stuff that is" - all lies). The letter also highlights some other interesting things... like the funding for the project under the heading of "stamps". It would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact it's probably the truth. Regarding equipment, it was standard practice within Commodore that software engineers received a (top of the range) Amiga "just like that", very soon after starting. The Amiga 3000 I'm writing this article on is that same machine... (the only Amiga I ever bought is the first A1000 to enter Belgium in 1986). Well, as Steve mentioned in the letter, he asked Ned whether Paul and I "could keep" our machines and monitors. I never managed to spy the answer to this letter but anyway: nearly a week before the final day "at work", Steve told Paul and I to return our home machines because Commodore was "recalling" them. By that time Paul and I knew that Steve (and Commodore) were completely untrustworthy, so we just acted upset but as if we were going to comply. Instead, that evening we put a plan into action that was going to reverse the tables on Steve. Late at night we entered the office and removed all expensive machines: the laser printer, the network server and our two working Amigas. We stored everything in the basement, so that if things got out of hand and the police was called in, we could not be accused of actually stealing anything since nothing was removed from the premises.... The next day Steve came in and we confronted him with his months of secret back-stabbing. Now, anyone who knows Steve Beats knows he's a muscular guy, short but very muscular. Since the pecking order between Paul and I meant I had lead the accusations, Steve suddenly and violently knocked me against a wall and demanded the equipment back or threatened to knock me out. I had to be careful how I would phrase my next sentence. I didn't want to end up in hospital. Afraid but not feeling defeated I demanded in return that he guarantees that we could keep our home machines. Furiously he backed off and reluctantly agreed. Only then did we tell him, with a sense of victory, where the equipment was hidden. Paul and I left the room while Steve Beats went down to the basement to find all the stuff packed and hidden. We never heard anything more from him, from Commodore, or ..Postscript on the Amiga. Paul and I are still good friends, despite subsequently having gone different ways. @endnode @node FEATURE3 "Break the ZIP Barrier" =========================================================================== Break the ZIP Barrier Frank Zündorff F.Zuendorff@ernie.mi.uni-koeln.de =========================================================================== It's no mystery anymore, the SCSI version of iomegas ZIP-Drive is running fine with Amiga computers equiped with a SCSI-hostadapter. But a new aspect for a ZIP-Drive is the feature to exchange Data on PC-formatted medias. What advantages brings it for you? Now you can swap a large amount of data (like mods, pics, 3d-objects etc.) without carrying a large container of floppy disks or moving your baby to the next PC. How does it works? Quite simple. You habe to create a working mountfile using Cross-Dos. This mountfile is listed below and the only thing you have to do, is to fix it for your hostadapter. Okay here comes the file: ----- 8< ------------------------------------------------------------------ /* Mountfile for MS-DOS formatted ZIP-Media * * Creation-Date: 21-Nov-95 22:52:21 */ /* Device driver parameters.*/ Device = Unit = <5 or 6 - changeable via switch on the backside of the drive> Flags = 0x00000000 /* Disk size parameters.*/ Surfaces = 1 BlocksPerTrack = 1 Lowcyl = 0 Highcyl = 196607 BufMemType = 0 Blocksize = 512 /* File system parameters.*/ Mask = 0x7FFFFFFC Maxtransfer = 0x0001FE00 Reserved = 6 Filesystem = L:CrossDOSFileSystem Stacksize = 2000 Priority = 5 Bootpri = -20 Globvec = -1 Buffers = 128 Dostype = 0x4d534800 Mount = 1 # --------------------------------------------------------------------- >8 -- A copy of this file can be found in the ZIP-directory included with this report. The only thing you have to do, is to drag the "PCZIP"-icon and put it into the "storage/dosdrivers" directory of your boot-partition. Now load your favourite editor and perform the fixes I'm discribing now. First move the cursor into the line starting with "device =". Exchange the following text with the name of your hostadapters device-driver name. It you don't know exactly the name, please check it out in the hostadapters manual. For example a A2091-user has to change the line in "device = scsi.device". The second step is to choose the right unit-number. Please move the cursor one line down starting with "unit =". You can find the unit-switch on the back-side of the drive. If the switch is pointing to number five for example, you have to put in the following line "unit = 5". Now save the mountfile. That's all. After mounting the file, you can put in a PC-formatted media und handle it like any other device. @endnode @node REVIEW1 "Super Skidmarks Review Correction" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Super Skidmarks Review Correction =========================================================================== [Looks like we made a mistake on the Super Skidmarks review. Steven Pearson (Steven.Pearson@p12.f563.n250.z2.fidonet.org) writes:] Hi Jason, I've just been reading your review of Super Skidmarks in AR3.22 You mentioned that the Hard Drive Installer never surfaced. I registered SkidMarks2 with Acid, and in August I recieved the first ssue of Skidmarks racer magazine. On the disk Were some files for making cars in Imagine. Some new tracks they wanted colouring in and a New HD aware version of the Game Plus Track Disk Installer. It does exist! [So, I should clarify. There IS a hard-drive installer, but it's not shipped with the software. -Jason] @endnode @node REVIEW2 "The Search for Storage" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== The Search For Storage Paul Idol 76375.1776@compuserve.com =========================================================================== I'm sick and tired of floppies. I have a couple hundred of them, probably not as many as plenty of other people, but enough to drive me nuts. They're always developing read-write errors, getting crushed by steam-rollers, or accidentally being used by well-meaning fools as cold drink coasters. I have no idea how much data I've lost over the years to floppy disks, but it's a lot. So the desire was growing in me to buy a removable hard drive, or maybe an optical drive, or something, anyway. (It's always something, isn't it?) But they were always too expensive and too slow for me to justify buying one to myself. Until recently. Iomega, and then shortly thereafter, Syquest, both released cheap new removable drives this year--and I mean cheap! They're less than twice as expensive as floppy drives! It seemed that salvation was at hand. However, trying to find hard information on which to base a purchasing decision proved to be difficult. Mac people apparently almost overwhelmingly prefer the Zip, but they weren't much help at explaining why. (Maybe that's reason enough to stay away from the Zip... ) Even Amigans seemed to prefer the Zip, though by a more slender margin. And the magazines were rather ambiguous, praising both drives, though they too favored the Zip. I, on the other hand, fusty curmudgeon that I am, was rather skeptical. On paper, it seems that the EZ135 wins in most categories: it's about twice as fast (in fact, at almost 2MB/sec, it's the fastest removable media hard drive ever), its cartridges offer 32MB more formatted space each, the drive can be set to any SCSI ID (unlike the Zip, which can only be set to 5 or 6), and it has standard centronics connectors on the back instead of db25 connectors that require hard-to-find adaptor cables and make it a PITA to add or remove devices from your SCSI chain. So what, if anything, is better about the Zip? Well, it looks cooler, it has a nicer load/eject mechanism, and the media are a little smaller--and a little more durable, or so I'm told. The other oft-cited advantage of the Zip, that it's lighter, is of dubious value in my opinion. The Zip, at about 1 pound, just feels flimsy to me, like I could accidentally crush it with my hand while picking it up. The EZ135, at about 2 pounds, isn't all that earth-shakingly heavy, and it feels much more solid. It's not anything like twice as big as the Zip, either--more like 20% larger, at a guess. But don't take my word on durability. I just made some totally unscientific palm-of-the-hand tests. In my opinion, the one really annoying thing about the EZ135 is its brain-dead archaic load/eject mechanism. In that respect, the Zip works just like a floppy drive: you push in a disk, it appears in a few seconds; you hit the eject button, it pops out. To load an EZ135, you have to push the cartridge all the way in, then slide a lever all the way over to the right and wait up to 10 seconds while the drive spins up. Not as nice as the Zip, but hardly the end of the world. To eject, however, you have to hit a button on the front of the drive, wait for the cartridge to spin down and the lever to pop back a bit, and then move the lever back to the left. There is no mechanical assistance, so the last quarter of the lever's travel is quite difficult, and I was initially afraid that I was going to break something. But finally, reluctantly, the cartridge slides out just far enough to grab and pull out the rest of the way. So, which to choose... To make a long story short, I bought the EZ135, as you may have guessed. :) So far, I'm quite happy with it. I transferred my collection of archives onto a cartridge--or rather that part of the collection which hadn't been lost to read/write errors and the like. I made an emergency boot/recovery cartridge with Diavolo all set up and ready to go. And I'm slowly copying all my original program disks over to another cartridge. After all, how much point is there really to making floppy copies of those disks when the copies are probably more likely to fail than the originals!? PROBLEMS I've noticed one vaguely annoying quirk about the drive. Periodically, for no apparent reason, it churns for a couple seconds as though something is accessing it. I ran VirusChecker... no viruses. I guess it's just some SCSI thing. And I've had one genuine problem. I can't seem to get AFS to work with the drive. I can't prepare an AFS cartridge from scratch, and any AFS cartridge that I make with ffs2afs disappears after I reboot. I don't know where the problem lies. If anyone has any ideas, please email me! FLD, perhaps because of the holidays, hasn't gotten back to me. :( HARDWARE AND INSTALLATION Well, down to the nitty-gritty. My system is as follows: an A3000 desktop with OS3.1 in ROM, a WarpEngine 3040, 16MB of fast RAM, a RetinaZ3 running CyberGraphX, and AFS Pro 2.2. I installed the EZ135 simply by attaching it to my external tape drive, which is hooked up to the A3000's native SCSI controller, with a standard centronics-centronics SCSI cable. Then I used HDToolBox to prepare and format a cartridge, SCSIMounter to mount it, and I was off! CONCLUSION The EZ135 is available for about $229 versus the Zip's $199 (both models appear to be coming out in cheaper internal versions, but you lose drive portability) but I think the extra $30 is worth it. And prices are always falling. Cartridges, just like Zip disks, cost $20 singly. In the end, I guess the best argument in favor of the Zip is that more people have it. It came out sooner and looks cooler, so you'll be able to swap disks with more people. But to that argument I say, "Come on, you're using an Amiga!" In conclusion, all I can really say is that my 525MB tape drive is starting to look mighty small... @endnode @node CHARTS1 "Aminet Charts: 25-Dec-95" @toc FTP | The most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 25-Dec-95 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Age Description |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- ar322.lha docs/mags 111K 0+Amiga Report 3.22, December 18, 1995 AmiFTP.lha comm/tcp 207K 1+AmiTCP/AS225 FTP-client v1.0 (ClassA VMM_V3_3.lha util/misc 267K 0+Virtual memory for Amigas with MMU AmiPhone0.9B.lha comm/net 86K 0+AmiTCP based voice chat program CyberStorm060.txt docs/rview 13K 1 REVIEW: Cyberstorm 060 accelerator ArcsPack-15.lha pix/icon 2.8M 1+F*@#?'ing *BEAUTIFUL* Workbench/MUI SCSIdevs.lha disk/misc 24K 0+Scans SCSI bus, reports devices, and amiconnect.lha comm/tcp 199K 1+V3 of Combined PPP/SLIP Dialler & Co thor222_inet.lha comm/mail 81K 0+Internet archive for THOR 2.22 (TCP/ mn_ansitest.lha comm/mebbs 3K 26+ANSI Test Door for MEBBSNet Zeewolf2demo.dms game/demo 369K 1+Demo of Zeewolf 2 ar321.lha docs/mags 89K 3+Amiga Report 3.21, November 30, 1995 thor222_main.lha comm/mail 780K 0+Offline reader, main archive (requir Gloom_Deluxe.dms game/demo 575K 0+One level demo of Gloom Deluxe. SmoothGuide13b.lha text/hyper 76K 0+Smooth AmigaGuide Reader for all Ami flickfix.lha hard/hack 5K 1+A1200 Screen flicker fix V1.0 WinPlay.lha gfx/show 42K 0+Workbench window anim viewer: Versio mui31usr.lha dev/gui 771K 4+MagicUserInterface V3.1, user files MagicBGs6.lha pix/mwb 762K 0+New breathtaking patterns for MagicW GfxLab24-172.lha gfx/conv 604K 0+GfxLab24 v1.7.2. Image Processing pr | The highest rated programs during the week until 25-Dec-95 | Updated weekly. Best program on top. Please rate all the programs you | download. To do so, send to aminet-server@wuarchive.wustl.edu : | RATE | where is the file you want to judge and is a mark from 0..10 | with 10 being the best. You can rate several programs in one mail, but | don't rate your own programs. Example: RATE dev/gui/mui23usr.lha 8 | |File Dir Size Age Description |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- IPDialv19.lha comm/tcp 93K 3+SLIP dialer; stdin/out terminal prog ZXAM20b.lha misc/emu 494K 20+ZXAM Spectrum Emulator v2.0b bs131.lha util/boot 49K 4+Try it now! No BootScreens, but sele mui31usr.lha dev/gui 771K 4+MagicUserInterface V3.1, user files ar322.lha docs/mags 111K 0+Amiga Report 3.22, December 18, 1995 nemac4d1.lha game/demo 441K 2+3D T-mapped game demo 1/3. Read .rea nemac4d2.lha game/demo 695K 2+3D T-mapped game demo 2/3. Read .rea nemac4d3.lha game/demo 698K 2+3D T-mapped game demo 3/3. Read .rea Child_Murd_AGA.lha game/role 2.3M 37+Text/graphics adventure in horror ge spice3f5r2_020.lzh misc/sci 929K 25+R1.2 of Analog Ckt. Simulator (020/F Typeface11.lha text/misc 153K 7+Bitmap font editor Executive.lha util/misc 527K 4+UNIX-like task scheduler (V1.30) pip_v22.lha util/misc 35K 3+View any screen in a window on anoth snoopdos30.lha util/moni 128K 66+System monitor, many new features ad tin130gamma.lha comm/news 182K 20+TIN 1.3 PL0 Beta 950726. UUCP/NNTP N SlateGames.lha comm/tcp 13K 0+Backgammon and Reversi for AmiSlate fruitkitchen.lha demo/aga 566K 18+A new demo of the asm95 in helsinki melchior.lha demo/aga 1.4M 9+Melchior 1/1 *AGA* VK_DEMO.lha game/demo 765K 7+Virtual Karting playable demo AmigaAGA-EVD12.lha misc/emu 8K 4+15bit & faster 4/8bit driver for Sha AlgoMusic1_4.lha mus/misc 103K 8+Creates and plays great algorithmic atw-gre1.lha demo/aga 1.3M 15+Greenday (Winner Demo) 1/2 *AGA* atw-gre2.lha demo/aga 271K 15+Greenday (Winner Demo) 2/2 *AGA* control1.dms demo/aga 817K 15+Control (Winning Demo From GASP `95) control2.dms demo/aga 552K 15+Control (Winning Demo From GASP `95) fear.lha demo/aga 1.4M 13+Fear 1/1 *AGA* @endnode @node MAILLIST "Amiga Report Mailing List" @toc WHERE =========================================================================== Amiga Report Mailing List =========================================================================== If you have an internet mailing address, you can receive Amiga Report in @{"UUENCODED" link UUENCODE} form each week as soon as the issue is released. To be put on the list, send Email to listserv@itesmvf1.rzs.itesm.mx. Your subject header will be ignored. In the body of the message, enter subscribe areport ie: subscribe areport A. R. Reader The system will automatically pull your e-mail address from the message header. Your account must be able to handle mail of any size to ensure an intact copy. For example, many systems have a 100K limit on incoming messages. ** IMPORTANT NOTICE: PLEASE be certain your host can accept mail over ** ** 100K! We have had a lot of bouncebacks recently from systems with a ** ** 100K size limit for incoming mail. If we get a bounceback with your ** ** address in it, it will be removed from the list. Thanks! ** *** The following is only for Australian readers! *** To circumvent the new pay-per-megabyte system for Australian Internet communication, Paul Reece has been kind enough to set up an AUSTRALIAN-ONLY mailing list, to save his fellow countrymen some money. You can join the list by sending mail to: majordomo@info.tas.gov.au with the single line (in body of message): subscribe ar Amiga Report will then be bounced to you. @endnode @node UUENCODE @toc MAILLIST =========================================================================== UUDecoding Amiga Report =========================================================================== If you receive Amiga Report from the direct mailing list, it will arrive in UUEncoded format. This format allows programs and archive files to be sent through mail by converting the binary into combinations of ASCII characters. In the message, it will basically look like a lot of trash surrounded by begin and end, followed by the size of the file. To UUDecode Amiga Report, you first need to get a UUDecoding program, such as UUxT by Asher Feldman. This program is available on Aminet in pub/aminet/arc/ Then you must download the message that it is contained in. Don't worry about message headers, the UUDecoding program will ignore them. There is a GUI interface for UUxT, which should be explained in the docs. However, the quickest method for UUDecoding the magazine is to type uuxt x ar.uu at the command prompt. You will then have to decompress the archive with lha, and you will then have Amiga Report in all of its AmigaGuide glory. If you have any questions, you can write to @{"Jason Compton" link JASON} @endnode @node AMINET "Aminet" @toc WHERE Aminet ====== To get Amiga Report from Aminet, simply FTP to any Aminet site, CD to docs/mags. All the back issues are located there as well. Sites: ftp.netnet.net, ftp.wustl.edu, ftp.tas.gov.au, ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk @endnode @node WWW "World Wide Web" @toc WHERE World Wide Web ============== AR can also be read with Mosaic (in either AmigaGuide or html form). Reading AmigaReport with Mosaic removes the necessity to download it. It can also be read using programs found in UNIX sites such as LYNX. Simply tell Mosaic to open one of the following URLs: http://www.omnipresence.com/Amiga/News/AR/ http://www.pwr.wroc.pl/AMIGA/AR/ http://mm.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/Data/AR http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/amiga/ar/ http://ramiga.rnet.cgi.com/~AR http://www.sci.muni.cz/ar/ http://metro.turnpike.net/P/panther/main.html http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/ar/ http://ArtWorks.apana.org.au/AmigaReport.html http://www.vol.it/MIRROR2/EN/AMIGA/ The following AR sites also have a mailto form, allowing you to mail to Amiga Report from the web site.