@database "ar502.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report Online Magazine #5.02 -- February 21, 1997" =========================================================================== February 21, 1997 @{" Turn the Page " link MENU} Issue No. 5.02 =========================================================================== ,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 1997 FS Publications All Rights Reserved @endnode @node MENU "Amiga Report Main Menu" @toc MAIN Amiga Report 5.02 is sponsored in part by: @{" Intangible Assets Manufacturing " link AD1}. IAM is the purveyor of a fine line of Amiga products. @{" AmiTrix Development " link AD2}. AmiTrix is the worldwide publisher of the AWeb-II WWW browser. @{" Amiga Informer " link AD3}. The Amiga Informer is the fastest-growing Amiga print magazine in North America. =========================================================================== == 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. 5.02 February 21, 1997 | \\// == ==============| "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!" |============= |______________________________________________| @endnode @node JASON "Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== EDITOR =========================================================================== Jason Compton ============= Internet Address -------- ------- jcompton@xnet.com 1203 Alexander Ave jcompton@amigazone.com Streamwood, IL 60107-3003 USA Fax Phone --- ----- 847-741-0689 847-733-0248 @endnode @node KATIE "Assistant Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== == ASSISTANT EDITOR == =========================================================================== Katherine Nelson ================ Internet -------- kati@nwu.edu kati@amigazone.com @endnode @node KEN "Games Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== == GAMES EDITOR == =========================================================================== Ken Anderson ============ Internet Address -------- ------- kend@dhp.com 44 Scotland Drive ka@protec.demon.co.uk Dunfermline Fife KY12 7TD Scotland @endnode @node WILLIAM "Contributing Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== CONTRIBUTING EDITOR =========================================================================== William Near ============ Internet -------- wnear@epix.net @endnode @node BOHUS "Contributing Editor" @toc STAFF =========================================================================== CONTRIBUTING EDITOR =========================================================================== Bohus Blahut - Modern Filmmaker =============================== Internet -------- bohus@xnet.com @endnode @node EDITORIAL "compt.sys.editor.desk" @toc OPINION =========================================================================== compt.sys.editor.desk By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== February is lumbering its way to a conclusion that can come only too soon. Not only is the weather miserable, but the Amiga ownership question has been hanging in the air for some time now. The question is out of my hands, and out of yours as well, I'm afraid. It's in the hands of Mr. Hembach, Escom's trustee, his lawyer in the US by the name of David Robinson, and the parties bidding for the Amiga, only one of which (QuikPak) has actually stepped forward and publicly announced their intentions. I had a talk with Mr. Robinson a short while ago. He was willing to confirm QuikPak's bid but unwilling to speculate or reveal the identities of whatever bidders there might be. (I wasn't really expecting him to, but these things are worth trying once.) Various rumors abound, of course, and have been given shreds of credibility by various Amiga luminaries. But if I've learned anything, it's not to put any stock in these things until someone is willing to face the music and own up to their actions, it's not worth worrying about. Mr. Hembach has set a goal of a purchase resolution by the end of February, but he has made no promise to that effect. Meanwhile, the rest of Escom is being sold off. Notable in the outcome is the formation of "Commodore" in the Netherlands, by none other than our friend from the Commodore auction, Bernard "Ja, ja" van Tienen. Mr. van Tienen has formed a group which purchased Escom NL and a portion of Escom's properties, including the Commodore trade name for their PC clone line. Just a further indignity for the name which once stood for computing innovation. As I survey the Amiga landscape, I see quite a bit that makes me proud. That so many have stuck with each other through difficult times is truly encouraging. We've had a good deal of help along the way from companies who recognize the market waiting to be amazed. And while everyone has been told they need to wait "just a bit longer", that saying applies even today. Wait for what? That's the question, of course. The successor technologies seem to be moving along (PIOS, A/Box, etc.) and it seems reasonable to assume that the Amiga properties would likely only be valuable to someone who would make something productive out of them. (A reliable source indicated to me that a clearance warehouse put in a bid for the Amiga assets, but since their primary interest was the value of the merchandise, their bid was too low for Hembach and thus was rejected.) But unless you've got tens of millions of dollars, you will have to wait with the rest of us to see how this situation is resolved. Until that happens, relax and enjoy this, the second issue of AR's fifth year of publication. As ever, we'll keep you up to date, and immediately release a special issue when we have confirmation of the Amiga's latest ownership destination. -Jason PS: comp.sys.amiga.announce finally has a new moderator (Thanks to Stuart Tomlinson!) which has certainly caused a large flow of news to Amiga Report. Things should settle back to normal as he gets caught up. @endnode @node COMMERCIAL "Commercial Products" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Commercial Products =========================================================================== @{"Intangible Assets Manufacturing" link AD1} IAM and their fine line of products @{" AmiTrix Development " link AD2} AmiTrix, publisher of A-Web II @{" The Amiga Informer " link AD3} North America's new magazine @{" CalWeb " link ZONE} The new home of the Amiga Zone --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node AD1 "Intangible Assets Manufacturing: Amiga Sale!" @toc COMMERCIAL GREAT AMIGA STUFF FROM INTANGIBLE ASSETS MANUFACTURING Visit IAM on the Web: http://www.iam.com IAM publishes high quality products for the Amiga, with some of the best authors around, including former Commodore engineers Dale L. Larson and Dave Haynie. We recently reduced all our prices. Please help us spread the word about our products so that we can keep supporting the Amiga! What's more, we've expanded availability of Amiga Boing Logo collectible items for our customers! More Boing Logos are available, and special limited edition DevCon posters are free with any order of $100 or more. See you at the "Gateway Computer Show -- Amiga 97" in St. Louis on March 15 & 16, 1997. The best way to get more information about IAM is through the Web: http://www.iam.com. We also have an AmigaGuide format catalog of our Amiga products which can be FTP'd from file://ftp.iam.com/biz/iam/iam.lha, and you can get an automatic reply with current information on our products by emailing info@iam.com. * A book on Amiga networking and telecommunications: "Connect Your Amiga! A Guide to the Internet, LANs, BBSs and Online Services" revised second printing (1996) US$19 + s/h * DiskSalv4 -- the commercial release of Dave's disk utilities US$30 + s/h (upgrade from earlier registered versions for US$10+s/h) * MRBackup 2.5 US$45+s/h (upgrade from earlier registered versions for US$10+s/h) * SYA (Save Your Behind): DiskSalv4 and MRBackup together for only US$49! * The Amiga-only peer-to-peer networking software Amiga Envoy, US$39 + s/h (2-user) * MegaBall4, a tres cool system-friendly video game, US$29 + s/h with a Free XL MegaBalls T-shirt. * DICE 3.2 C Development Environment (full price $100+s/h, students and competitive upgrades only $75 +s/h) Upgrade from DICE 3.x at ftp://ftp.iam.com/biz/iam/dice/! * "Torn Shapes of Desire: Internet Erotica", book, US$14.95 IAM products can be ordered direct from IAM via the web, mail, fax or phone. We don't accept COD orders, but do accept checks in US dollars, as well as Visa and MC (no Amex or Discover). Our shipping and handling charges are flat-rate: you can order up to one of each of our products for the same charge. We ship via USPS or UPS at our option. In the US: $6 for ground, or $9 for air. Elsewhere: $9 for surface and $15 for air. Our Amiga products are also available through Amiga dealers world wide. Intangible Assets Manufacturing 828 Ormond Avenue Drexel Hill, PA 19026-2604 USA http://www.iam.com info@iam.com -- bot mails you current info on our products sales@iam.com -- to ask questions or to place an order. voice: +1 610 853 4406 (orders only, M-F 9-5 US Eastern time) fax: +1 610 853 3733 @endnode @node AD2 "AmiTrix -- Worldwide Publisher of A-Web II" @toc COMMERCIAL =========================================================================== AmiTrix Development, 5312 - 47 Street, Beaumont, Alberta, T4X 1H9 Canada Phone/Fax: 1-403-929-8459 Email: sales@amitrix.com HTTP://www.amitrix.com =========================================================================== Direct Mail Order Price List January - 1997 ============================ (Prices subject to change without notice.) Product Description CAN $ US $ ------------------- ------- ------- AWeb-II (AWeb-II v2.1/HTML-Heaven2.0 WWW Software) $ 60.00 $ 45.00 SCSI-TV HD controller for CDTV (with 2.5" Internal $190.00 $149.00 Drive Adapter) SCSI-TV for CDTV, with-out Adapter $180.00 $142.00 - the 2.5" adapter is not required for external drives. SCSI-TV570 HD controller for A570 (with 2.5" Adapter) $200.00 $157.00 SCSI-TV570 for A570, with-out Adapter $190.00 $149.00 Amiga-Link/Envoy Starter Kit (2-unit), $270.00 $210.00 - the peer-to-peer network for external floppy port. - (also available as expander kit with extra cable) Amiga-Link/Envoy Expander Kit (1-unit for odd # exp.) $175.00 $135.00 Amiga-Link Expansion Kit (1-unit for even # exp.) $135.00 $105.00 Amiga-Link Accessories: 2-way Floppy Port Splitter (for external drives $ 39.00 $ 31.00 with no pass-thru port) RG58 cable - 1m(3.5ft.) $ 10.00 $ 8.00 RG58 cable - 5m(16.5ft.) $ 13.00 $ 10.50 RG58 cable - 10m(33ft.) $ 17.50 $ 14.00 - (custom lengths available on request) Extra BNC-T connectors $ 4.50 $ 3.50 The P-Net Box, a ParNet Adapter $ 15.00 $ 12.00 AM33C93A-16PC SCSI controller for 3000/2091/HC+8 $ 26.00 $ 20.00 A3000 U202/U203 chip ram control PALs - each $ 15.00 $ 12.00 External Active SCSI Terminator - C50 male $ 29.75 $ 23.50 Internal Active SCSI Terminator - IDC50 male $ 19.00 $ 15.00 External Passive SCSI Terminator - C50 male/female $ 12.25 $ 9.75 DB23 solder-type connector - male, female, or chrome hood - each $ 1.65 $ 1.25 Shipping Costs: (most large boxed items) --------------- First Class Mail: within Canada $ 10.00 within USA $ 10.00 International $ 15.00 $ 12.00 Shipping: (for small bubble-packet items) $ 5.00 $ 5.00 Orders should include a Bank Draft/Money Order or Postal MO, payable to AmiTrix Development in CAN or US dollars. Cash COD's inside Canada only. Shipping costs may vary for quantity orders/alternative method of shipment. Canadian customers add 7% GST to all orders. @endnode @node AD3 "The Amiga Informer" @toc COMMERCIAL Visit The Informer on the Web: http://www1.mhv.net/~eldritch What's The Informer? The Amiga Informer (ISSN 1089-4616) is a B&W Amiga print Zine full of information and contacts that help readers stay connected with new developments and products. It features reviews, interviews, announcements, contacts and news. The Informer's staff are all committed and passionate Amiga users, and are proud to produce the entire newsletter using only Amiga computers. Issue 6, our latest issue, represents our first full year of production. During this year we have grown from an 8 page newsletter, to a 24 page mini magazine. The Informer offers readers concise, capsulated information that is easy to read and quickly digested. We fill every space of our Zine with content and don't run oversized screen shots or needless fluff. Where ever possible, we provide readers with Email addresses, BBS listings, Web Page URL's, and phone and FAX numbers to help you communicate with dealers, developers and Amiga services. The Amiga Informer currently has a circulation of 5000, distributed directly to active Amiga users bimonthly. We are growing, not shrinking, and plan to ad content rich article and columns as we grow. We want developers to be part of our publication and encourage them to send us review products, announcements, company profiles and interviews. In this way, The Amiga Informer can bring both users and developers together and fill the void of Amiga information. The Informer is printed 6 times a year and subscriptions costs are: US $14 to USA subscribers; US $16 to Canadian subscribers; and US $21 to all other subscribers. In addition to receiving The Informer, subscribers gain these special benefits: * You are automatically entered into our bimonthly prize drawings for cool Amiga prizes. Note: Prize drawings are of course open to anyone as detailed in every issue and on our web site. Just send your name, address, phone number, email address and the date to the below ad- dress and you will be entered. * You can advertise your used Amiga products for free in the Market place (seen by over 5000 readers). * As a subscriber, you gain a special 10% discount when you purchase any products from Liage International. * If you have an Email address, you will automatically be sent the latest news, courtesy of Amiga Update Newsletter. Visit our web site for more information on The Informer, or you can call us at 1-914-566-4665 to subscribe by credit card. You can also download a subscription form from our web site or you can email and request the same form. Our mission at The Informer is to provide an accurate and reliable resource of information pertaining to all things Amiga, and to connect readers with developers, their products and the Amiga community at large. We look forward to hearing from you, and hope you will give us a try. Stay connected--stay informed, Fletcher Haug, Editor The Amiga Informer Zine PO Box 21 Newburgh, NY 12551-0021 eldritch@mhv.net http://www1.mhv.net/~eldritch "We Aim To Inform" @endnode @node MAIL "Reader Mail" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Reader Mail =========================================================================== From: "Rick L. Henderson" Subject: Dec '96 Amiga Report Hi Jason, I am the president of the Interior Alaska User's Group and have been an Amigan since I excitedly bought my first A1000 right out of the delivery van in 1985. Since then I have owned almost evry model (mutant models not withstanding), and some of the side trips such as CD32. I have been an active member in user groups since my C64 days before the 1985 awakening. I have worked as an Amiga repair technician for an Amiga only store, and for the past 6 years had my own Amiga only home business helping other Amigans with repair troubles and just general assistance. I have personally sung the praises of the Amiga throughout the years and have introduced many current Amiga owners to the machine (including a large chunk of our current User's Group which was all 8-bit until I landed up here in the great white north). This information is given to you so that you have an idea that I'm not an Amiga virgin just bursting on the scene and then becoming disillusioned. I am an Amiga fanatic! I'm also the System Administrator for a large Novell 4.x network with a G6-200MHz machine on my desk and many "toys" to play with. To this day it amazes me how I can use all that power at work and still enjoy my Amiga at home (I do not own a Intel-based system at home). The Amiga is simply the most elegant OS of all time! It has so many benefits over the MS-Sloth machines that it frustrates me to rantings that the rest of the world is blind to this fact (just ask some folks I work with;)). Unfortunately the Amiga is starting to feel the ravages of time. I'm writing this on a damn flickering screen Amiga 1200. So many things about the Amiga are really starting to drive me away from it and this makes me more mad. The lack of closure to this bankruptcy thing has already cost the Amiga support of almost every major software company we had. Thank goodness for companies like Softwood, Oregon Research, etc... for sticking with us for so long. I'm genuinely afraid that if something doesn't get settled soon there may be no recovery. I applaud the new systems like A/Box for trying to fix the problem, but unless the Amiga community declares the Amiga dead, the A/Box may just serve to split an already weak support structure. At this point, if the A/Box becomes a reality fairly soon, I'm ready to make the jump minus a compatible Amiga OS, as long as the same things that made the Amiga great are somewhat recreated... Why did I write this? Just letting steam off I guess. I'm ready to move to a new system, but like others I don't want that new system to have a fruit on it, and an Unintel Inside system is not what I want either. I may have to work with them, but they can't make me own one! So where does this leave me? Still waiting... and waiting... and waiting... It seems as though the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Let's hope it's a train we can all get a ticket on, and not one that will drag us under as it goes by. - The issue of fragmentation of the Amiga market by machines such as the A/Box, PIOS One, etc. is a very difficult one. There are some in the Amiga community who feel these machines should be embraced as legitimate parts of the Amiga's journey, and others who think they should be utterly verboten subjects in an Amiga publication such as this. Right now, AR is taking a "watch and see" approach to these machines--it is clear that these machines are in need of a user base of the caliber of the Amiga's--but then again, the Amiga needs that user base as well. Personally, their very existence is a heartening thing for me if for no other reason than it means there are still new ventures unafraid to stand up to the WinTel hegemony. Alternative Computing Now! -Jason --- --- --- --- --- From: Fabrice MANSAT Subject: Capital Punishment Hi Jason! I wanted to purchase Capital Punishment, but I won't be able to do it legally because of the violence and because of Demonia character. I'm living in Vietnam and we shouldn't be more than 2 Amiga users here. So I must order everything by mail, and the customs check EVERYTHING! This country has a new policy to fight against the social evils that include sex and violence. I hope they can make other games that don't give so much trouble to be purchased. I know that this game won't be imported for nearly the same reason. Cheers, Fabrice - Hmmm. Not much that can be done for Fabrice, unless someone knows how to smuggle small packages into Vietnam. It's really a shame since on the grand scale of things, Capital Punishment isn't that bad. -Jason --- --- --- --- --- From: Jon Klooster Hi there all, Once again I am drawn to write to what seems to be the only magazine that captures the heart and soul of the Amiga spirit. Right down to the `Something in the way she moves..' (which is written somewhere when you buy an A2000 complete from the box, no screwdrivers required - first 2000 correct emails will get a smiley! ) Over and over I get subjected to pc's and their non-doorstop uses, and every so often I wonder if it would be worth my while to just get one instead of converting documents and spreadsheets to and from the formats `they' use for my use at home. But once I visualise setting `them' up, and trying to use them and `their' 100Mb help-systems which need online-help to use them, and not having a sub-15 second startup-sequence, and no more scripts to easily set up assigns for a game or complete programming environment, and the way `their' installer programs drop their sh*t everywhere, and to use a certain game you have to modify your startup then reboot, then do the same to get your sys back when you've finished playing,.. And did I mention real multitasking, which `they' almost manage to fake. Sure they may be a bit faster on certain stuff, but I have at least a one minute head start every time I switch on my machine. And that one minute for me is the bestest time in the whole world, because I know that there is not a single pc out there that can give me that minute, just the way my Amiga can.. - Well, other than liking to read a good compliment, I'll let this go without further comment. :) -Jason --- --- --- --- --- From: MAX HEADROOM Hello, I just read about AR making a slow change to HTML. I don't mind the WWW but I also don't really use it a lot. I prefer AmigaGuide style of reading. For a few reasons. AG is easier to pull up, doesn't require the memory that HTML does (load in the Browser, then read), & AG most people prefer. I'm a Top Uploader on a few AMIGA boards here...I get stuff from Aminet & send to them. Many of those people aren't on the Net yet & some don't want to get on it at all. So if AG format it "killed" then it won't continue to reach everyone. Just some thoughts from a dedicated reader. Thanks for AR, Jason, it's an excellent Mag. ;) - We'll likely keep making an AmigaGuide version available, but the prospect of running multiple mailing lists is pretty daunting. - Jason --- --- --- --- --- From: "Lau W.Nielsen" Hello Jason! First, thanks to you and the rest of the staff for making such a great mag! The first thing I would like everyone who reads this to do, is go pick up an old computer/electronics magazine. You know, the really old kind that you can bring to the toilet without having to buy a laptop. You should look for one that is dated somewhere around '85-'87. Found one? Good, now start searching the pages for words like 'amazing', 'new' or 'fantastic'. When you find one of these words start looking at what it is that is described by those words. On one of the pages you will most likely find a mention of a new computer system that everybody wants. Yes, chances are that you will find the word 'Amiga' mentioned in the article you just found. Now start reading. Read really careful. Read exactly what it is that is so incredible about this new thing. Finished reading? Great, now write down everything that the article mentions as being new, innovative or just plain fantastic. You should now have a list of some of the things that made me buy my computer. It was things that was impossible to do on any other computer at the time, things that were so new and innovative that today the others are still not completely up on the same level. Winslows 95 claims to be the worlds best operating system, and many people agree with that. Not because they are stupid, they just don't know any better. We know better. We can do things on our Amigas that they will never be able to do. Or so we thought. They, and all the competing systems are catching up, and they are getting closer each day. Still, they don't have things like ARexx, but that is maybe just because Bill Gates think that Winslows users are just to stupid to use such a great and useful system... or maybe he just haven't got the kind of vision that makes such things possible. We have. We still have. That's what makes us stand out from the others. We can actually think for ourselves. In the next century I want to be able to say the same thing, that I just said. I can think for myself. I can't say that, and then sit down and turn on my Intel-based machine, and wait 10 minutes for Windoze 2000 to boot. Instead I want to sit down and turn on a machine that represents my will to not be controlled by people who thinks they know what is best for me. I think many Amiga users feel the same way. The name of the machine i want to use isn't really important. I don't care if it says 'Amiga' on the front. But I do care about the ideas behind the machine. The Amiga is the best machine I know of, the represents this idea. We all know that it isn't doing too well these days, and if we want it to survive something has to happen soon. I know this has been said before, but it is getting more and more true each day. So where should it go? The most important thing is the question of custom chips or not. I want the computer to be able to do things the others can't do. Go back and look at the list you made earlier, that was what made it special. Standard chips will not be special, the others have them too. If we want a new computer (Amiga or not) as the successor of the current models, and we want it to be based on custom chips we have very few options. There is the AAA, the 3D-RISC and Phase5's A\BOX. AAA and 3D-RISC are not being worked on, not finished, and are already old. And I doubt if AAA would keep up with the new standard chips. So we have only one left: the A\BOX. If Phase5 can keep their promises about this computer, then it would instantly, the same day i is released, make everything else old, slow, expensive and obsolete, just like the A1000 did. It can do things the others simply can't do. And much cheaper. According to Phase5 they are working on this right now. Forget starting to develop a completely new chipset -we don't have the time. In the last couple of years we have not seen much serious, expensive, kill-the-others type of development in the Amiga hardware field. And now, finally, someone does it. I support this 100%, and hope that you will do the same. We need something new that will take the Amiga a giant step in front of the others. If the A\BOX is realised, then i wonder if we really need the 'old' Amiga anymore. The AT sale has already taken much too long, delaying the Amiga technology development for far too long, for it to make a serious comeback in it's present form. A new 68K Amiga will be the death. It's simply too small today. Noone, except amigians, will buy a computer that runs a 50 MHz '060, when they can go down to the local PC store and buy a 200 Pentium for less. I am not pessimistic, though it may sound like that. The Amiga can make a comeback, but only if the A\BOX hits the market this year. I don't see any point in wasting more time discussing how to bring the 'real' Amiga back, it ain't going to happen, it is too late. But if anybody feels like proving me wrong, please do so, but do it NOW! I wish all of you a good year, and I hope that this time next year we will all be using big powerfull PowerAmiga's. Lau W. Nielsen, somewhere in Denmark. @endnode @node OPINION1 "Just Use It!" @toc OPINION =========================================================================== Just Use It! David Prime djprime@vcn.bc.ca =========================================================================== Copyright 1997 David Prime During the past few years of turmoil, Amiga users and Amiga publications have become increasingly focused on the financial and technological status of the Amiga marketplace. What seems to be foremost in Amiga users' minds is concern over who will own the Amiga. Following closely behind is concern over software development and future technological improvements of the Amiga platform. Although I share an interest in these important issues, I feel that more attention needs to be paid to the reason people bought Amigas in the first place. To use them. My motivation for writing this arises from my own increased use of my Amiga. For the past few years time pressure from work and university allowed me only limited opportunity to use my Amiga for the things I bought it for. My computing activities have, for the most part been restricted to word processing and internet access. In 1996 this changed. During the past year I completed two projects for which my Amiga was not only well suited but actually had advantages over a Windows or Mac machine (although that's not the point - just an extra bonus). The first project was the creating of a computer based presentation and measuring system for my psychology honors project experiment. The second was the creation of a video project which my brother gave to his friends as a Christmas present. The success of these two projects has inspired me to start several new ones. The increased use of my Amiga has also led me to reflect on my long experience with computers and why they fascinate me. My first exposure to computers came in elementary school with a Commodore PET. I was attracted to it instantly, even though all you could do with the machine was play games and program (more games of course). I also desperately wanted to own one. I couple of years later my parents bought me a Commodore 64 and entered the world of personal computing. Over the years I have read about or encountered people who have used their computers in many interesting ways. A small example of these uses include educational uses, various artistic projects, desktop video, control of household electrical appliances, live multimedia presentations, video projects, model train control, computer aided design (CAD), scientific calculations, medical imaging and astonomical telescope control. This list could be extended and elaborated on to an almost infinite degree. The moral of this story is that the uses a computer can be put to is only limited by the creativity and skill of the person who uses the computer. The quality of a computer is a measure of its ability to allow users to achieve their goals. The best computer is the computer which is best used. For these reasons I urge Amiga users to share their experiences with the Amiga community. Do you use your Amiga for an unusual application? Is there so project you are particularly proud of? If so share your experiences with the rest of us. Demonstrate your techniques. Show how you overcame obstacles. Do you have unsolved problems? Maybe someone can help. There are many ways you can contribute your ideas and experiences. You can submit articles to Amiga Report or other publications. You can give demonstrations at local user groups. You can contribute to Usenet discussions. You can upload resources to the Aminet. You can set up a web page. By communicating your knowledge and experience you will inspire others to attempt new things. You will educate Amiga users to get more out of there machines. This can only be good for the Amiga. People who use their machines are more likely to purchase software and expand their machines. As long as Amigas are being used the Amiga will survive. @endnode @node OPINION2 "Getting Back To Our Roots" @toc OPINION =========================================================================== Getting Back To Our Roots Kermit Woodall kermit@novadesign.com =========================================================================== Consider this a call to arms or at least a call back to our roots. When the Amiga first launched it was the user group and developer community that got it really moving. It's been the same ever since. Marketing was never Commodore's strength. The Amiga, to so many of us, is a cause and something worth being an evangelist about. The Macintosh has its evangelists, but that was part of a deliberate campaign by it's marketing people. Just read Guy Kawasaki's (the leader of Apples professional Mac evangelists) marketing books to learn about this. It's different with the Amiga - it's simply so cool that many users can't help but become evangelists for it. We're not part of that 90% Wintel crowd. It's hard for them to ally under a name. What can they say? Whee! We're Windows95Users!? We're Compac'ters!? (there's a nasty visual image) We're PC!? (sounds like they won't let their kids play Mortal Kombat) We've got the cool, friendly, name. We're Amigans! I'm going to make some recommendations in this article. I've been around, played and worked with many operating systems, and seen how the other half (or 90%) lives. I've studied Guy's statements on getting people to become evangelists, I've seen how Team OS/2 worked for acceptance of OS/2 over Windows 95, and I've even seen a bit of how the Linux crowd works. So I'm going to steal all their ideas and throw in a few of my own and propose we do something! The Show's the Thing! These first ideas can be snapped up by Team Amiga members and User Groups everywhere. When I was part of and (for six years) ran a user group we had a couple of goals. Help our members. Get more members. One of our tactics for getting more members was to take advantage of free/mostly free tables at every single local (or near local) computer event and show. Almost every show was really focused more on PCs and other computers - but we'd show up with our Amigas (generally at least four) and run music, graphics, and demos all day long for as long as the show lasted. Our focus was to show stuff that looked better on the Amiga. This should be happening now. Team OS/2 does this, at least around here, all the time. Combining what we used to do in our user group and what I see Team OS/2 doing, I'll make the following recommendations for what you can do. Get a table for every upcoming show. Get on the mailing lists so you know about these shows in advance. Publicize on the internet, local bbs systems and local computer papers that the Amiga will be shown at these shows. Organize who will staff your table(s) and who will bring equipment. Having a regular 'staff' within your group that handles these things helps make this easier for all. Try to bring the latest and greatest Amigas around. For historical purposes having an Amiga 1000 isn't a bad idea either. (show 'em the inside cover!) Collect the video demo tapes and run these on a large monitor. My company, Nova Design, Inc., has a demo tape (free to dealers and user groups!) showing off our software. Many other companies offer the same thing. You can even find various Amiga based animators have demo tapes as well! Keep a 'journal', or a looseleaf binder, with flyers and brochures from all vendors currently supporting the Amiga. Even companies that make things like printers and scanners that work on the Amiga should be included so people can see that connection to the Amiga. Call or write every Amiga supporting vendor regularly and get their latest literature. If your club has demo copies of software, (and they should!) bring anything that's currently available and show it. Don't bring old copies of GraphicCraft and the like. People can't buy it, so if you're showing it, it's going to reinforce the Amiga is Dead fallacy. If you have old, unavailable, software on your systems you're using at the show, put their icons away during the show. Feel free to show off Newicons, MUI, MagicWB and freeware/shareware things of that nature. Just be sure you point out that these packages are available on the internet or from your clubs software library. Bring stacks of your clubs newsletters. Hey! You're promoting yourself too! Be professional, be polite, let people visiting your table get some 'hands on' experience. You don't want to dress like IBM drones. No suits and ties here. Just don't dress like other job that day is to wash your car or dog! Do be prepared to tell people where they can buy the Amiga and its software for it. If you don't have a local dealer, give them a list of mail order houses people in your club use and recommend. Do this and you'll find yourself having fun and doing something effective to promote the Amiga! See What's Developing! It's been sometime since CATS (the old Commodore sponsored developers group) died. Many people forget that the first Amiga developers group was started by a grass roots effort by the developers directly! If my, occasionally faulty, memory has it right, Mike Halverson of Impulse, pushed the formation of the first Amiga developers group. We need someone in the developer community to do this again. Why do we need a developers group? Well, it's much better than having Company X inventing a 'standard' and hoping everyone likes it - but Company Y doesn't and goes their own way. With a developer's group we could coordinate things, propose and agree on things like extensions to the IFF and ANIM standards (which need, respectively, 32-bit support and CMYK, new compression methods, sound and video interleaving, high color ANIM support and more). A developers group could also function as a registry of active developers and show programmers where to go (prehaps via a specific web site and a mailing list) for publishing direction and advice. There are many other things the developer group could do, I can't guess at half of them, so the quicker we can get this going again, the better! If you're a developer and would like to jump in on this I've setup a mailing list you can join to chat with other developers. Email newdev-request@lists.best.com and put the word SUBSINGLE in the body of the message. The subject, if you use one, will be ignored. If you need to unsubscribe later, email the same address with UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. I'd recommend even trying to get this started formally at the Gateway Amiga'97 show in St. Louis. Email me, kermit@novadesign.com, if you're interested. If I get enough responses, the nice folks with Amiga '97will loan us some space and time. Mongering Malfeasance Muted! One goal we should all set for outselves is to reduce newsgroup rumormongering and negative chatter about the Amiga. Platform wars should be, and are, embarassing for everyone. If we can clean this sort of thing up, it will go a long way towards settling things down so we can do some serious business and have some fun too. It's not hard to identify a potential rumor, flamewar and the like. If someones news isn't prefaced by 'This was in the latest Magazine X', 'Quikpak announced this on their web site', or a similar authoritative, and verifiable source, then it's just a rumor. Respond by politely asking the poster to provide verification. In other words, 'Put up or shut up friend!'. It'll be easy to do and prehaps we can finally ignore the 'Amiga is dead' nonsense, ignore the attempts to invent news around who's buying the Amiga today, and just get back to enjoying ourselves. Now, flamewars and platform wars are different beasts, but usually if someone's posts use frequent casual profanity or freely refer to others as 'Stupid', 'Idiot' or other hot button words designed to touch off a fight, then the best way to deal with them is to politely ignore them and/or recommend ignoring them. At most, reponse politely in a manner that suggests the matter is closed and not worth continuing with. Sadly, you'll find that one of the worst sources for this is going to be former Amiga owners. They've sold their Amiga, and now they're using a soulless Wintel box, so they're out to make you feel as bad as they do. A classic sour grapes scenario. Who, What, Where, and When? Don Hicks and Amazing put out a fantastic hardware and software guide for the Amiga. I’d like to propose that either one of the user groups, or companies, with a large Amiga internet web presence put up a well indexed web version that focuses on companies that are no longer focusing on their Amiga product line, but still have a warehouse full of their old Amiga products to sell. It should have listings by category, title and company. Include address, telephone, email, web addresses and product information breakdowns. A perfect example of this is The Toaster tally light from Dynamic Realities (originally sold under a different company name). They still have 'em, but they don't advertise 'em. Grab some old magazines, track some companies down, and list them! This be a guaranteed draw to the web site that hosts it. Other Neat Ideas I will be writing again in the future about some other ideas, like how to coordinate and create wild, cool, new enhancements to AmigaDOS by approaching the task as a set of small, achievable, steps that can be done by as many people that would like to be involved. This project won't require a lot of management overhead and complements other AmigaDOS efforts nicely. It will need it's own web and ftp site, some feedback from the Amiga community, and any number of programmers interested in implementing interesting new ideas in software for themselves and others. The best thing about it is that so many artists and programmers have already done much of this - the real goal will be the establishment of the web and ftp site to organize these efforts under one, dedicated, 'roof'. One of my favorite new Amiga ideas is the Siamese system. Check it out at; http://www.hiq.co.uk Ideas II - Who am I? By way of closing let's play a game. You might remember, or have heard, of this old game referenced above. Let's play it... I'm a small, stylish, 68000 based computer that comes with an advanced multitasking operating system that uses a graphical user interface environment that requires less than 128k RAM to run it and can still load lots of applications. With no aggressive company advertising I've still managed to developed an evangelistic following that has left the Windows based competition looking bloated and sluggish. After release I've gathered a strong presence on the internet as well. What computer am I? The Pilot. A palm, ie: handheld, computer from US Robotics. A company mostly known for it's modems. It weighs about 5.5oz, yes 5.5 ounces!, that runs on a Motorola 'Dragonball' processor which is based on a 16mhz 68000 series processor. The whole thing fits in your shirt pocket, has 'handwriting' recognition to let you enter information with its pen, comes with software for itself and your PC or Mac computer that allows you to maintain records on both systems that are sychronized at the touch of a single button on the Pilots cradle. Recently one of the Pilot faithful created a Linux application to sync the Pilot under Linux. Could an Amiga port of this software be far behind? For more info on the Pilot start at; http://www.usr.com/palm or; http://the-tech.mit.edu/Pilot/ or prehaps; http://pilot.org/ as well. (FYI: the 'Windows based competition' referenced above are the Windows CE palmtops. They feature a keyboard that's impossibly tiny (it's palm sized with rubber buttons) and it uses a pen - but only as a mouse. Their OS is still bloated, slow, and IMHO it's unnecessary.) TTFN That's all for this article. Email me if you have any suggestions, directions, or comments on anything above. Watch for my next article in the near future! Ta ta for now! @endnode @node NEWS1 "Amiga Online Magazine" @toc NEWS Dear Sirs and Ladies, A new Online Magazine was born on the Internet in January 1997. This magazine is publicly available. Name: Amiga Online Magazine URL: http://www.adac-com.com/amiga/index.html Immediatly after the post of the edition of february (2), more than 3000 connections were logged. In a few days, some articles will be translated in different languages. Our readers come from France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, England, USA, Germany, Spain, Luxemburg and Brasil. Thanks for your visit. see you soon in an Email. You can spread information all around you... Editorial Team mail: ONLINE@mail.adac-com.com @endnode @node NEWS2 "PPaint 7 Overcomes Chip Ram" @toc NEWS CLOANTO'S PERSONAL PAINT 7 BREAKS AMIGA CHIP RAM BARRIER With the release of the new CPU blitting module just made available on Aminet (biz/cloan/PBlit_68K.lha), Personal Paint 7 becomes the first Amiga program to actively exploit the full functionality of both the Graphics library and the Amiga blitter applied to bitmaps stored in Fast RAM. Normally, two crucial parts of the Amiga system require bitmap data to be stored in Chip RAM: the original (Agnus) blitter chip, and the Graphics library. Personal Paint uses both, which until now meant that it had to store in Chip RAM at least the bitmaps currently being manipulated. Thanks to its modular design, Personal Paint 7 already implemented a "virtual blitter" which optionally used the CPU instead of the Agnus chip. The module just released extends this capability by implementing a faster 32-bit blitter (the Amiga blitter works in 16 bits). The complete detachment from Chip RAM became possible when the developers of the famous CyberGraphX system completed the replacement of 100% of the original Amiga graphics.library with corresponding functions that can work on Fast RAM. This code is implemented in CyberGraphX version 40.100 and higher, which has just been released. After many sleepless nights of Cloanto's programmers, in cooperation with the CyberGraphX team, Personal Paint 7 becomes the first Amiga software to automatically detect and exploit this condition. We would like to take this opportunity to praise the developers of CyberGraphX for achieving this difficult objective. CyberGraphX "clones", like earlier versions of the original CyberGraphX (and the original Amiga libraries), still require bitmaps to be in Chip RAM in order to be processed by certain functions of the Graphics library. (Personal Paint 7 is not "confused" by CyberGraphX clones that do not provide equivalent capabilities.) The efforts of the CyberGraphX and Cloanto programmers have finally made a dream come true for many Amiga users who had plenty of Fast RAM but never enough Chip RAM. For additional information please visit the Cloanto web site at . @endnode @node NEWS3 "Cloanto Software Support On Internet" @toc NEWS CLOANTO AMIGA SOFTWARE SUPPORT ON INTERNET AND AMINET Cloanto has completed new Amiga software support sections on its web site (http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/) and on Aminet (biz/cloan). The Cloanto Web Workbench, which continues to surprise many users with its familiar look and feel, contains software, documentation and other support material for popular Cloanto packages like Personal Paint. The Cloanto web site is hosted on a fully redundant server with multiple T3 and T1 links to the Internet. This, combined with the carefully thought-out graphics, ensures smooth and fast connections to the site. At the same time, Cloanto is proud to announce that Aminet, one of the world's largest and best-organized online archives of software, now hosts Cloanto software and support files in the "biz/cloan" directory. Through dozens of Aminet mirrors worldwide, and the Aminet CD-ROM editions, millions of users of Cloanto software will have better access to important and useful files such as: - Scripts and macros - Input/output modules - User interface language files - Fixes and enhancements to released versions - Demonstration versions of software - Artwork and sample screens - Developer documentation - User contributions For additional information please visit the Cloanto web site at . @endnode @node NEWS4 "Authored On Amiga" @toc NEWS Authored On Amiga jdleik@voyager.net has founded an "Authored on Amiga" site in the same vein as the "Made on Macintosh" websites, to catalog all of the sites on the net which were created entirely on Amigas. Check it out at http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/9636/authored.html. @endnode @node NEWS5 "Wildfire" @toc NEWS TITLE Wildfire AUTHOR WK-Artworks Andreas Maschke Zenkerstraße 5 06108 Halle/Saale Germany EMail: epgbc@cluster1.urz.Uni-Halle.DE DESCRIPTION Wildfire is not only another brandnew image-processing-program - it's a professional animation-processor with some really new concepts. It allows you for example the creation and processing of animations in several formats, the generation of time-dependant special-effects and the design of large projects containing several animations and frame-synchronized sound-effects. Because the common animation-formats on the Amiga have too many lacks or restrictions we have tried to create a better one: YAFA. This animation-format for example features many compression-methods and realtime-zooming. One of the outstanding features of Wildfire is the fact that it makes for you no difference if you apply changes to a whole animation or if you process only one image. A single image is only a very special case of an animation. In contrary to common image-processors you can use envelopes instead of plain numbers as effect-parameters. This makes the easy creation of time-dependant special-effects possible. So you haven't to fight against the "do"-loops in an ARexx-script to get an animation outside your image-processor anymore. All of the numerous effects can be arranged in any number and combination. Because the output of any of these effects can be one of the 8 tempory-buffers Wildfire allows you to PROGRAM IMAGES in an comfortable way! Main Features: -fast and comfortable Converter: input: YAFA, ANIM5/7/8, mpeg, image-sequences output: YAFA, ANIM5/7/8, image-sequences -Preview for almost any operation -Project-Editor which allows the creation of large and complicated projects easily using the mouse -Effect-Generator featuring time-dependant parameters via envelopes -a stunning library of effect-PlugIns -some really new effects, real 3D-effects -(un)loading of PlugIns at any time -Envelope-Editor -Timecodes-Editor -Transition-Maker for easy creation of transitions between two animations -easy-to-use Player-interface -Filmstrips to simplify the perfect timimg of huge projects -AnimInfo-function displaying size-profiles etc. -fontsensitive GUI without MUI -internal gadget-toolbox which handles mathematical expressions instead of only plain numbers -calculator which allows for example the export of user-defined symbols to the gadgets in the whole-program -Drag&Go (using drag.gadget 0.2 Copyright © 1996 Jörg Kollmann, see bonus drawer!) -ARexx-port with about 400 commands -macros, custom-windows, docks -import of images from other programs -Developer-Kit (with working example) which allows you to create your own effect-PlugIns -and many more Requirements: Hardware -MC68020 or higher -AGA chipset -2 MB Fast -recommended: FastRAM, HardDisk Software -AmigaOS V39 (3.0) or higher AVAILABILITY Available via FTP from Aminet sites. ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/gfx/edit/ PRICE The unregistered version is fully functional, but will eat some memory and so you can work only for a limited time. Registration fee is 50 DM or 40 US-$. DISTRIBUTABILITY ShareWare Unregistered copies are freely distributable. Wildfire (C) WK-Artworks 1995-1997 @endnode @node NEWS6 "Amiga Informer News" @toc NEWS Hello, Just a note to remind anyone interested that now is a good time to send in your product announcements, press releases and advertise- ment requests to The Amiga Informer. Our next issue (#7) will be available in early April. Space in The Informer is limited. If you have an announcement you would like printed, get it to us as soon as possible to assure it's inclusion. As always, we will include all submissions on a fist come, first served basis. All submissions should be submitted by Email if at all possible. In addition, those who are interested in advertising their product in The Informer should contact us with your commitment. You will need to reserve your ad space early because we sell out quickly and space availability is again limited. If you have any questions about advertising requirements, announcements or any other inquiries, please contact us. We will be glad to help. Thanks, Fletcher Haug, Editor PO Box 21 Newburgh, NY 12551-0021 eldritch@mhv.net 914-566-4665 www1.mhv.net/~eldritch "We Aim To Inform" @endnode @node NEWS7 "NewTekniques Subscriptions" @toc NEWS Date: January 24, 1997 From: Joe Tracy, NewTekniques Editor in Chief Concerning: NewTekniques Subscription Information Great news! The subscription information for NewTekniques magazine is here. You'll find the information below. There's more great news too! It has officially been confirmed that beginning in 1998 NewTekniques will be published every other month instead of quarterly! I was very pleased to hear that in my phone conversation with Advanstar this morning. And if that wasn't enough, there's still another bit of good news! A special NewTek limited edition item is going to be sent to every person who subscribes to NewTekniques magazine within the next six months. No, it's not a T-shirt, mug, poster or self-publicity item. It is something usable for you. Details on this item cannot be released until NAB (early April). Everyone who signs up now, however, will automatically receive it. Here's the information to get your subscription: Price: $32 (covers you through 1998) Issues: 9 total (3 in 1997 and 6 in 1998) Cover Price: $6.95 per issue Your Savings: 49% Phone Number: 1-800-346-0085 Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, American Express You can also mail a check or money order to NewTekniques Magazine, ATT: Subscription Department, 131 West First Street, Deuluth, MN 55802-2065. NewTekniques is an independent publication of Advanstar that is created in close association with NewTek to give users the best and most reliable information, news, and tutorials on NewTek products. From the Flyer to LightWave 3D, NewTekniques is filled with tutorials, tips, reviews and techniques to take your productions and animations to the next level. NewTekniques will also keep you posted on new NewTek product introductions, as they occur, which will also receive coverage in NewTekniques magazine. The $32 covers all of 1997 (3 issues) and all of 1998 (6 issues). It is a special charter subscription price and a 49% savings over what the newsstand price will be. For more information on NewTekniques magazine e-mail me via jtracy@main.rosenet.net with your questions or sign up to be included on the NewTekniques Information List by asking to be included. The NewTekniques Information List periodically receives special behind-the-scenes information on NewTekniques magazine. Sincerely, Joe Tracy, Editor in Chief NewTekniques former Video Toaster User Editor in Chief @endnode @node NEWS8 "Uropa˛ Goes Commercial" @toc NEWS Austex Software, the developers of Uropa˛ - "The Ulterior Colony", are pleased to announce that the game will now be published commercial. The game was originally released as a 'Shareware/Registration' onto Aminet at the end of 1996 as we thought this was the cheapest way to offer the game to Amiga game players and show our support of the Amiga community. After recent discussions with Vulcan Software Limited we have realised that having software commercially Published provides greater support to the Amiga community in general. In this manner we are providing support to other commercial enterprises such as Amiga Magazines, Amiga retailers and Amiga distributers. This of course helps keep the Amiga market alive. The game will be added to Vulcans MiniSeries range which delivers high quality commercial software at a lower price to the purchaser. Uropa˛ will undergo some slight modifications and enhancements and soon be available in Amiga retail stores around the world and via mail order from Vulcan Software Limited. As Uropa˛ is no longer available as a shareware product we ask those that have seen the game and intend to register to please now purchase the commercial product through Vulcan Software Limited when it is released. You can keep up to date with it's progress from the Vulcan Software Web page at http://www.vulcan.co.uk Austex Software would like to thank those people who have supported us so far by way of registrations and by the many email letters of compliments we have received. We remain committed to the Amiga computer while there are still people using it and advocating for it. Paul Goulding & Stephen Smith Austex Software. @endnode @node NEWS9 "Voyager-NG Prerelease" @toc NEWS "Today is V Day" Voyager-NG WWW browser prerelease ================================= *** The next generation of Amiga Web browser has arrived *** This is a preliminary release which brings this fantastic new Web browser to the Amiga community and allows Voyager-NG to benefit from the largest testing base possible. With your help Voyager-NG can be rendered faultless on the largest possible range of Amiga set-ups. Due to the above, Voyager is currently updated frequently. To obtain the archive via WWW: http://www.vapor.com/voyager/ via FTP: ftp.vapor.com, /pub/voyager/ ftp.uk.vapor.com, /pub/voyager/ *** via EMail: mail to put "SEND VOYAGER" in the mail body *** Please try this site, main Vapor site is under considerable load. The full archive in LZX is 612 kbytes in size. Updates will appear there regularly. Updates are also announced on the Voyager mailing list. If you are not on it yet, you are encouraged to subscribe. Mail to and put "ADD" in the body of the mail. Put "HELP" there to obtain a complete description on how to use the mail server. The mailing list is also a good place to discuss enhancement suggestions. Major changes to Voyager since Version 1.0: Supports Frames as introduced by Netscape 2.x Uses internal image decoding routines. Visually incremental on-the-fly image decoding, leaving the program operational during decode. No more hassle with datatypes related bugs. Optimized memory usage. The routines are optimized for speed and are very fast. Full support of CyberGFX HiColor/TrueColor screens and compatibles. Supports HTML tables. Many more HTML commands and Netscapism's are understood (including FONT SIZE and HR WIDTH). Improved general compatibility with broken and nonstandard HTML code. Supports versatile plugin interface for third-party extensions to the browser. Shipped with a handy split-screen web search engine plugin. Supports T/TCP "TCP for Transactions" requests, allowing for much faster establishment of HTTP links to servers. This is currently supported by Miami 1.9.x beta versions only. Specified in RFC 1644, as far as we know, Voyager is the first browser on any platform to support this! Totally reworked preference setting. The transfer anim is now configurable, too. New so-called 'local' menus which pop up over links and images offering options such as opening in new window, copying URL to clipboard, downloading to disk or adding URL to bookmarks. Local menus also function for Frames by offering full window viewing, saving Frame and viewing Frame source. Supports Shift & Click downloading of files even from servers with broken configuration which state that binary data is of type "text/plain". This happens frequently with .lha and .lzx files, because these suffixes are missing in many http server example mime.types files. Added internal SMTP (E-mail) send capability. Now also supports mailto: links and mailto: Forms. Improved news handling. 'LED' transfer status display additionally shows stalled transfers. (Well I thought it was neat) Many minor enhancements, and of course All The Popular Bugs were fixed, too. /***************************************** * Vaporware Announcement list * * WWW: http://www.vapor.com/support/ * * Listserver help: * *****************************************/ @endnode @node NEWS10 "fMSX Amiga 1.2" @toc NEWS TITLE fMSX Amiga 1.2 AUTHOR Hans Guijt DESCRIPTION fMSX Amiga emulates an MSX computer on an Amiga. Features include: - Full emulation of the MSX1 system. - Partial emulation of the MSX2 system (to be expanded in the future). - Support for reading/writing MSX disks and disk images. - Support for the PSG and SCC sound chips. - Support for MSX memory sizes of up to 4Mb. 'MSX' is an 8-bit computer system with surprisingly good graphics and sound capabilities. In fact, some MSX games are on par with Amiga games when it comes to graphics and playability! Several MSX pictures have been uploaded to Aminet (pix/illu/msx_pictures.lha). Software is not included with the package, but many packages (mostly games) can be found on FTP sites: ftp://ftp.saitama-u.ac.jp/pub/msx/ ftp://altair.komkon.com/pub/MSX/ ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/msx/ ftp://riaph.irkutsk.su/pub/ Hundreds of games are available from these sites, and some form a worthy addition to the Amiga software collection. Of course fMSX Amiga is fully multitasking, runs in an intuition screen, and has a font-sensitive user interface. NEW FEATURES In this version yet another screenmode is added to fMSX'es growing arsenal: screen 8, the 256-color screen. It is emulated using EHB on ECS machines. Support was added for using diskimages without the help of an external device such as fmsdisk.device. These diskimages can be changed on the fly, allowing easy access to MSX disks stored on the Amiga harddisk. Finally, the MSX screen can be forced to remain at a specific depth. This is achieved using `childscreens', an OS 3.0 feature. This should alleviate the problem of the MSX screen popping to the front whenever some screen attribute changes. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Required are: - AmigaOS 2.0 - 68020 processor - 350 kilobytes chip ram - 1000 kilobytes other ram Recommended: - AmigaOS 3.0 - 68030 processor, at least 25MHz - Those 1000 kilobytes of 'other' ram had better be fast ram! Note that fMSX Amiga does *not* require the AGA chipset. In fact it runs on any chipset upto and including graphics cards! AVAILABILITY fMSX Amiga 1.2 is available from any Aminet site, such as: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/misc/emu/fmsx_1.2.lha PRICE It's free. DISTRIBUTABILITY fMSX Amiga 1.2 is publically supported freeware. If you are interested in the source, and you're not afraid of function pointers and huge amounts of assembly intermixed with C, you can request it from me. If someone wants to do a special version (and I can think of several possibilities, such as a version that uses the MMU for optimized Z80 emulation, or a version that has been optimized for the CyberGfx system), contact me. @endnode @node NEWS11 "Nova Design Demo Tape" @toc NEWS ImageFX and Aladdin 4D Demo Tape Now Shipping! For Immediate Release Contact: Bob Fisher Nova Design, Inc. 1910 Byrd Ave, Suite 204 Richmond, VA 23230 USA 804-282-5868 Richmond, VA - Tuesday, January 28, 1997. Nova Design, Inc. announced that it's video demo tape for it's ImageFX and Aladdin 4D products is now shipping. This tape features exciting footage from videos and films using ImageFX and Aladdin 4D and shows the power and the possibilities in these two packages. Other segments of the tape feature specially commissioned sequences showing off all the newest features of ImageFX. You'll see animated fires, blue screen composites, lightning, distorts, morphs, liquid effects and much more! This demo tape is excellent for user group meetings, store demos, shows and much more! Dealers and User Groups The video tape is free to all Amiga dealers, Video Toaster/Flyer dealers, or stores carrying Amiga software. All Amiga user groups are also welcome to a free ImageFX video tape. The tape may be freely copied and given away to anyone. Dealers should call to order a copy of the tape. User groups may get a copy of the demo tape by contacting Nova Design, Inc. and then putting Nova on their subscriber list for their newsletter. We also have full color product sales sheets and full color reprints of ImageFX reviews freely available in quantity for dealers and stores as well. Did You Say Free?! Yes! This tape is being made available for free to all Amiga dealers and User Groups. Dealers may also request additional promotional literature. User groups must supply Nova with their newsletter. All dealers and user groups must call our dealer sales line at (804) 282-5868 Monday through Friday between 1pm and 5pm eastern time. Others wishing a copy can get one for $10, $5 more if shipping outside the continental US, that covers our manufacturing costs and shipping charges. Those interested in ordering their own copy MUST call 1-800-IMAGE-69, or (804) 282-1157, Monday through Friday between 1pm and 4pm eastern time, to place their order. ImageFX, and Aladdin 4D are trademarks of Nova Design, Inc. All other trademarks are held by their respective owners. [The Nova Design demo tape was created entirely using Amiga technology, by The Vantage Point video production firm. TVP can be found at http://www.xnet.com/~bohus. -Jason] @endnode @node NEWS12 "Nova Design New Address" @toc NEWS Nova Design, Inc.'s New Address (small change) For Immediate Release Contact: Nova Design, Inc. 1910 Byrd Avenue, Suite 204 Richmond, VA 23230 USA 804-282-5868 Richmond, VA - January 28, 1997. As part of an acquisition of new office space, Nova Design, Inc.'s primary mailing and shipping address has changed suite numbers. Please alert your personnel of this change and be sure that all your databases reflect the new address. All telephone numbers, internet and email addresses, remain the same. The new number is Suite 204, the complete new address is: Nova Design, Inc. 1910 Byrd Avenue, Suite 204 Richmond, VA 23230 USA Our World Wide Web (WWW) site can still be reached at the following URL (Universal Resource Locator): http://www.novadesign.com Our File Transfer (FTP) site can still be reached at the following URL (Universal Resource Locator): ftp://ftp.novadesign.com Email Addresses If you have additional questions or information you may use the following email addresses to reach Nova Design, Inc. personnel if you desire. Bob Fisher: bob@novadesign.com Kermit Woodall: kermit@novadesign.com Thomas Krehbiel: tom@novadesign.com @endnode @node NEWS13 "Frodo v4.0" @toc NEWS TITLE Frodo VERSION 4.0 AUTHOR Christian Bauer DESCRIPTION Frodo V4.0 is a free, portable C64 emulator for BeOS, Unix, MacOS and AmigaOS systems. This emulator focuses on the exact reproduction of special graphical effects possible on the C64, and has therefore relatively high system requirements. It should only be run on systems with at least a PowerPC/Pentium/68060. Frodo is capable of running most games and demos correctly, even those with FLI, FLD, DYCP, open borders, multiplexed sprites, timing dependent decoders, fast loaders etc. Some small demo programs and the full source code in C++ are included in the archive. Some of the emulation's features: - 6510 emulation: All undocumented opcodes, 100% correct decimal mode, instruction/cycle exact emulation. - VIC emulation: Line-/cycle-based emulation, all display modes, sprites with collisions/priorities, DMA cycles, open borders, all $d011/$d016 effects. - SID emulation: Real-time digital emulation (16 bit, 44.1kHz), including filters (only under BeOS, Linux, HP-UX, MacOS and AmigaOS). - 1541 emulation: Drive simulation in directories, .d64/x64 or .t64/LYNX files, or processor-level 1541 emulation that works with about 95% of all fast loaders and even some copy protection schemes. - Other peripherals: Keyboard and joystick (real joysticks (only under BeOS, Linux and AmigaOS) or keyboard emulation). - Frodo is freeware. Why pay >$40 for a C64 emulator? The most important changes from V3.1: - C64 ROMs included (with extended Kernal ROM) - Frodo SC, the single-cycle emulation - Compatibility of processor-level 1541 emulation greatly improved - SID emulation can play sampled sounds - New keyboard shortcuts for toggling the speed limiter and the full 1541 emulation - Full-screen mode (BeOS) - Autoconf script (Unix) - Ported to MacOS and AmigaOS HARDWARE SUPPORTED - BeBox or PowerMac with BeOS DR8 - Unix systems with X11R6 or Linux/SVGAlib (Tcl/Tk 4.1 recommended) - 68k or PPC Macintosh with System 7.5 - Amiga/DraCo with 68040/68060, AmigaOS 3.0 and a graphics card AVAILABILITY Source distribution: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/FrodoV4_0.Src.tar.gz Binary distribution for BeOS: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/FrodoV4_0.Be.tar.gz Binary distribution for AmigaOS: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/FrodoV4_0.Amiga.lha Alternative site: http://www.funet.fi/pub/cbm/crossplatform/emulators/Frodo/ HOMEPAGE http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/FRMain.html STATUS Freeware DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable @endnode @node NEWS14 "WormsDC News" @toc NEWS Worms Director's Cut News from Andy Davidson WormsDC missed xmas because of a few things - problems with the game on 2meg 1200s being one of them, the game was just too tight on memory for some set-ups. It should now be out at the beginning of March. The finished demo will be on T17/Aminet soon as well =) There are no coloured names in WormsDC because I didn't want to limit the palette for the foreground, and the sprites are being used for other things. But there is now an option in the game to add the Team number or initial to the front of the worm names to help with identifying them - thanks to JamesBart on #amiga for that idea, simple but works =) And as for the bloody zoom!! ;) Because Amiga Worms uses hardware scrolling and copper tricks all over the place, it would be a lot of hassle to implemement a zoom, and it just isn't worth it. Anyway, you've now got an extra layer of mountains, quarter-pixel scrolling (even in the parallax), 325 colours on screen and old women that explode!! ... what more could you want!! :D ;) Andy Davidson theworm@team17.com @endnode @node NEWS15 "amiSpider Search Engine" @toc NEWS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: dtiberio@amicrawler.com http://www.amicrawler.com amiCrawler Announces Amiga Search Engine February 10, 1997 - amicrawler.com announced today new features in its full text, multilingual search engine. amiSpider allows Amiga users to search every word on over 3,000 Amiga web pages. According to David Tiberio, amiCrawler's programmer and webmaster, the main features of amiSpider are the ease of submitting a site, and its numerous multilingual capabilities, besides being able to index and find words on any page submitted. Using an advanced scoring system, amiSpider displays results based upon relevency. Here are many of the new features added to amiSpider this February, as well as its previous features: - Multilingual interface, choosing the default language for the user by detecting which country he is in. For example, a visitor from Sweden will see an interface in Swedish, including graphics tailored for Swedish visitors. Web sites from Sweden will have higher relevency, so searching for "user group" will show Swedish user groups before groups in other countries. - Search for more than 3,000 Amiga web sites. With amiSpider you will be searching every word on every Amiga page in the database. - Intelligent queries allow more than simplistic "and/or" searches. amiSpider permits queries such as "format my hard drive", "lemmings cheats", and "browser plugins". Searching for "newtek" will bring up newtek.com first, and searching for "scala" will bring up "scala.com" first. - Results are displayed in a logical, easy to use page, with a maximum of 10 matches per page, including descriptions. Support is available for tag descriptions. - View the most popularly searched sites from our Top 20 list, and view the sites which have breaking news. We search the web every day using our spiders, and display which news sites have updated information, so that you can find them all in one convenient place. - Easy site submission; just provide us with your url and your page will be indexed immediately. You can view how your page will appear and even check its progress in the queue. Also, we have very liberal submission policies. Any page that has Amiga specific information is accepted, including personal home pages of Amiga users. Pages are queued and can be viewed by visitors instantly. - Free banner advertising for any Amiga web site, simply by joining the Amiga Web Network, our cooperative advertising network. You can have your banner appear on sites such as omnipresence.com and amicrawler.com! - Targetted banner advertising, based on user's browser type, operating system type, and geographic location, allowing advertisers to make sure that the people who want to see the ads are seeing them. There is no reason for a small dealer to advertise to another continent when he could be reaching people within his own country, or to display banner ads to people who can't read them. - Free reciprical link exchange program, by joining our new amiCrawler Partners Program. We are now compensating Amiga webmasters for promoting our site by providing reciprical links on our "COOL SITES" page. This allows you to receive free promotion for your site simply by linking to the Partners Program page. David Tiberio http://www.amicrawler.com @endnode @node NEWS16 "Fairy Point/M 2.0-#103" @toc NEWS TITLE Fairy Point/M 2.0-#103 AUTHOR Stefan Eggers Max-Slevogt-Str. 1 51109 Koeln Federal Republic of Germany seggers@semyam.dinoco.de DESCRIPTION (A point program handles the transfer, reading and writing of email and news. Janus is one way to transfer email and news and is very popular in Germany.) Another Janus point program for the Amiga. It was designed to be easy to use by not overloading it with thousands of features that hardly anybody uses. The concept is a bit different from that found in other Janus point programs as it shows the newsgroups list, the contents of the current newsgroup and the text of the current message at once (each of them in a separate window) and not one after the other. At present the program is only available in a German version! Please keep in mind that this is one of the first Janus versions of this program. ARexx integration into the GUI and a killfile were omitted for now in favor of more debugging and a better GUI. They will be available later. If you have more questions send them to: fp-info@semyam.dinoco.de NEW FEATURES Since 2.0-#100: - ARexx command set. - Command line parameters PUBSCREEN and STARTUP. - Important bug fixes. - Improved implementation of ANTWORT-AN and DISKUSSION-IN. From older versions to 2.0-#100: - Significant changes to the GUI. - Tree display for the messages. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS - a Harddisk is highly recommended - a Modem with AT command set - about 1.5 MByte of free RAM - AmigaOS 2.04 or newer - AmigaGuide is highly recommended for reading the documentation - xprzmodem.libary 2.10 or newer AVAILABILITY Available on Aminet servers; for example: ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/aminet/comm/misc/FPointM.lha (173613) For information how to get it from a German BBS ask the author. PRICE For details read FPointM.REG contained in the archive. DISTRIBUTABILITY This Program is Copyright (C) 1991-1996 by Stefan Eggers. The unmodified archive may be freely distributed provided that there are no surcharges for downloading it from a BBS, not more than DM 5,- gets charged for a copy on disk and that this version does not get on a CD-ROM. @endnode @node NEWS17 "Mail Manager v1.21" @toc NEWS TITLE Mail Manager VERSION Version 1.21 (10-Aug-96) AUTHOR Pino Aliberti E-Mail: aliberti@mbox.vol.it Fidonet: 2:335/602.2@fidonet Amiganet: 39:102/10.0@amiganet DESCRIPTION Mail Manager is a Full Integrated Tosser/Scanner/Editor/Tick Processor for Fidonet Technology compatible networks. It perfectly supports Internet's E-Mails, Mailing Lists and Newsgroups (with the addition of a Gate program). Mail Manager... ... is able to manage both a Point or a Node in Fidonet Technology. ... is able to manage Tick Files. ... is able to manage Echo File Attached. ... is able to automatically create new Echo Areas. ... is able to manage 4 different types of message bases. ... is able to manage 3 different types of Mail Packets. ... is able to use full 5 dimensional addressing. ... has a powerful ARexx interface. ... has a powerful OnLine Help. ... has a powerful Threads management. ... has a powerful NetMail Routing management. ... has a powerful support for UUCP gates. ... has incredibly powerful Search/Sort/Show functions. ... has powerful Quoting routines. ... supports multiple character sets. ... supports the Nodelist and the Userlist. ... uses fast Memory Pools functions. ... uses fast asynchronous I/O functions. ... is a MUI Application !!!! ... is fully localized ( Kickstart 2.1 or higher). ... is Faaaaaaaast. ... is easy to configure. ... has many many other features ! NEW FEATURES - Improved the support for E-Mails, Mailing Lists and Newsgoups. - Several minor bug fixes. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Mail Manager has only a few requirements to work properly: - Kickstart 2.04 or higher - MUI 2.0 or higher - a 68020 processor or faster is recommended AVAILABILITY Any Aminet site, such as ftp.wustl.edu or ftp.luth.se in the pub/aminet/comm/mmgr directory: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/comm/mmgr/mmgr.lha (712491) mmgr-030.lha (711609) PRICE Shareware: The registration fee for Mail Manager is: Point Only Full Node ----------------- ------------------ Itl Lire 50000 (35000) 100000 (85000) DM 50 (35) 100 (85) US $ 35 (25) 70 (60) UK Ł 23 (15) 46 (38) The registration fee for Mail Manager together with MUI is: Point Only Full Node ----------------- ------------------ Itl Lire 78000 (63000) 128000 (113000) DM 73 (58) 123 (108) US $ 52 (42) 87 (77) UK Ł 34 (26) 57 (49) The fee between brackets is reserved only to Registered Users of Point Manager (the "predecessor" of Mail Manager) v3.10 and higher. DISTRIBUTION Freely distributable via CD, disk, FTP, or any other form (if NO charge is asked for, except for the media) when the original distribution archive(s) are kept intact. ------------------------------------------------------------- Mail Manager Development Internet: aliberti@mbox.vol.it Via delle Fontanelle, snc Fidonet : 2:335/602.2@fidonet 67016 Paganica (AQ) ITALY Amiganet: 39:102/10.0@amiganet ------------------------------------------------------------- @endnode @node NEWS18 "AmiWeb2c 2.0" @toc NEWS TITLE AmiWeb2c 2.0 AUTHOR AmiWeb2c 2.0 was created by Andreas Scherer on the basis of Karl Berry's Web2c 7.0 who collected stuff from Donald E. Knuth, Oren Patashnik, Tomas G. Rokicki, John D. Hobby, and others. Please report bugs to the maintainer of AmiWeb2c and not to these other people, who can't be of any help with the Amiga (well, except for Tomas Rokicki of course, who started the whole thing in the first place :-) Andreas Scherer Rochusstra=DFe 22-24 52062 Aachen, Germany DESCRIPTION AmiWeb2c 2.0 is the native Amiga port of the complete Web2c 7.0 system of UNIX-TeX (except for the xdvi previewer). Detailed information is provided in the archive and from common TeX resources like the CTAN (see below). As a starter you may want to check out http://www.tug.org. NEW FEATURES AmiWeb2c 2.0 is the successor of my AmiWeb2C (note the capital C) released in May 1995. Virtually everything is new and reworked. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS I made no attempt in changing the internal settings of any programs of Web2c 7.0, so you'll need quite a lot of system resources to run AmiWeb2c 2.0. Although the binaries can be run on any processor starting with the 68000, use of an accelerator board is highly recommended. At least 4 MB of RAM are required for the large programs to run. I never tried any part of AmiWeb2c 2.0 on version 1.3 of the operating system. AVAILABILITY The major resource for TeXnical material is the so-called CTAN. For me this is ftp://ftp.dante.de (Germany). More information about this service is available there. AmiWeb2c 2.0 will be located in the directory ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/amiga/amiweb2c The same distribution is available on the Aminet in the text/tex/ directory. PRICE It's free of charge. In fact, the Web2c 7.0 system is provided under the GNU General Public License and this should be assumed for AmiWeb2c 2.0 as well. DISTRIBUTABILITY There are no restrictions for distributing AmiWeb2c 2.0 in whole or in parts. In fact, work is under way to include this Amiga TeX system on the "TeX Live CD" provided by the "TeX Users Group" (see http://www.tug.org/texlive.html). Of course, the Aminet CD will contain this package as well. @endnode @node NEWS19 "WormGame v1.10" @toc NEWS TITLE WormGame VERSION 1.10 AUTHOR Chris Corr - chriscorr@zetnet.co.uk http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/ccorr DESCRIPTION It has many features not found in other Workbench games, and will easily while away the boredom while you copy files etc. These features include: - Runs in a window on the workbench screen, in any screen mode. - Automatic window scaling depending on current screen mode/resolution. - Plays Protracker modules while playing the game. - Three different speeds. - Three highscore tables - One for each speed. - Iconify mode. - Automatic pausing when you deselect the window. - Fuel guage score bar. And many more...... SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS The game will run on any Amiga running Workbench 2.x or better. DISTRIBUTABILITY It is freeware, and therefore free to download and give to anyone. AVAILABILITY To download the game, or read the online documentation, go to http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/ccorr/wormgame.htm or it is available from any Aminet site. e.g. ftp://ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk/aminet/game/wb/WormGame.lha @endnode @node NEWS20 "GTI Sales Charts" @toc NEWS Grenville Trading Inc. (GTI) Distributor to Dealer Sales Charts January, 1997 These charts reflect GTI's sales to their worldwide dealer network. The GTI charts are a service of GTI's website at http://www.grentrade.com/ Jan Dec TITLE 1 NEW Aminet Set 4 (includes Dir Opus 5.11) 2 ( 1) Aminet 16 3 NEW Amiga Magazin CD 1-2/97 4 ( 2) Meeting Pearls 4 5 ( 4) Aminet Set 3 6 ( 3) Aminet 15 7 NEW Amiga Format CD 10 - Feb 1997 8 (17) Aminet Set 2 (4 CD) 9 (13) Aminet Set 1 (4 CD) 10 (11) Amiga Developer CD v1.1 11 (20) Fun Clips 2 12 ( 8) Tele-Info Vol 1 (GERMAN) 13 ( 5) Amiga Format CD 9 - Jan 1997 14 ( 9) Maxon Atlas (GERMAN) 15 NEW Scala Plug-In 16 ( -) Demos are Forever 17 NEW Amiga Desktop Video 2 18 (10) Geek Gadgets (ADE) 19 (15) Mods Anthology (4 CD) 20 (12) Aminet 14 21 ( 6) Amiga Format CD 8 - Xmas 1996 22 ( -) Animatic 23 ( 7) Amiga Format CD 7 - Dec 1996 24 (31) Magic Publisher (4 CD) 25 (45) Megahits 6 26 (22) Magic Workbench Enhancer 27 (26) Print Studio Pro 28 (14) Directory Opus v5.5 GERMAN 29 (19) System Booster 30 (23) Personal Paint v7.0 31 (29) Workbench Designer 32 (50) Fun Clips 1 33 (24) Aminet 13 34 (34) Amiga Repair Kit 35 (28) Light Rom 4 36 (16) Retro Gold 37 (38) Octamed Sound Studio 38 NEW Texture CD Volume 1 39 ( -) Megahits 4 40 (25) Personal Suite 41 (49) Wordworth 6.0 Office 42 (21) C64 Sensations 2 43 ( -) Do It ! Vol. 1 44 (43) Eric Schwartz CD 45 (54) Amiga Tools 5 46 ( -) Amiga Golden 20 (GERMAN) 47 ( -) APC & TCP CD Vol. 1 48 NEW Amiga Tools 6 49 ( -) Light Rom Gold 50 (47) Xi-Paint 4.0 51 ( -) APC & TCP CD Vol. 2 52 (57) Maxon Cinema Xtensions CD 53 (36) Meeting Pearls 3 54 ( -) RHS Erotic Collection 55 (60) Aminet 12 56 (32) Streckenplaner 97 (GERMAN) 57 (37) Workbench Add-On Vol. 1 58 (44) Kara Collection 59 (33) RHS Colour Collection 60 (58) Textikon (GERMAN) CD Games TOP 10 Jan TITLE 1 Golden Games 2 Nemac IV 3 Wendetta 2175 4 Trapped 5 Cedric 6 Oldtimer 7 Card Games 8 Gamers Delight 2 9 Legends 10 Roadkill Disk Games TOP 15 Jan Dec TITLE 1 ( 3) Capital Punishment 2 ( 2) Sensible World of Soccer 96/97 3 ( -) Hattrick (Ikarion) GERMAN 4 NEW Chaos Engine 2 AGA 5 ( -) Caribbean Disaster GERMAN 6 ( -) Mad News GERMAN 7 ( 1) Hugo 8 ( 9) Jet Pilot 9 ( 7) Killing Grounds AGA 10 ( 5) Worms 11 ( 6) Trapped 12 (15) Gloom Deluxe 13 NEW Burnout 14 (10) Sensible World of Soccer 96/97 UPGRADE 15 (14) Formula 1 Masters Productivity TOP 10 Jan Dec TITLE 1 ( 1) Turbo Print Prof 5.0 GERMAN 2 NEW Turbo Print Prof 5.0 ENGLISH 3 ( 2) Asim CDFS v3.7x 4 ( -) I-Browse ENGLISH 5 ( 3) I-Browse GERMAN 6 ( -) Kick & WB 3.1 A500/2000 7 ( 7) Picture Manager 4 Professional GERMAN 8 ( -) Final Copy 2 GERMAN 9 ( 9) Blitz Basic v2.1 ENGLISH 10 (10) Directory Opus v5.5 ENGLISH @endnode @node NEWS21 "NetHack 3.2.1" @toc NEWS TITLE NetHack 3.2.1, second Official Amiga Binary Release ABOUT THIS RELEASE This release replaces NH32P1.lha, which will crash if the O command is used in 32-color mode. No other changes have been made. CONTACT nethack-bugs@linc.cis.upenn.edu Please state that you are using the second official Amiga binary release. DESCRIPTION NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration game in the tradition of Rogue. REQUIREMENTS AmigaDOS 1.3, 2.04(or better), 3.1 2M RAM (more is better) 5M Hard disk space (yes, it still can be played on one floppy but this is highly discouraged!) AVAILABILITY Main repository: ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/games/nethack/binaries/amiga/NH32P1v2.lha Source is available from the same site. DISTRIBUTABILITY NetHack is copyrighted and freely redistributable - please see the license for details. MORE INFORMATION FROM THE MAIN RELEASE We have now put the official 3.2.1 version up on our primary ftp site, ftp.uu.net:/pub/games/nethack. I expect that our mirrors will catch up shortly. Below, please find a summary of the updates made to the game: Weapons skills processing is made smarter and centralized in #enhance (and documented, now that we're mildly happy with it). Setting options from within the game has changed drastically, precipitated by a patch from Per Liboriussen. Default object class characters can be used as menu shortcuts. Menu commands can be mapped on some window-ports. See the guidebooks for full details. Core bugs fixed include crashes due to Medusa's moving after being killed, weird messages for applying bullwhips after leaving traps, missiles and tridents not being properly accounted for in weapon skills, and a DLB bug that caused very slow file access from DJGPP-compiled binaries, along with many more minor things. Linux text colors, X11 help files, Amiga tiles outside the main dungeon, MS-DOS game re-entry after shelling and changing directories, and endgame entry with MFLOPPY enabled all now work. We have a suggested workaround for the HPUX/DGUX + gcc situation that caused the game to hang trying to create nearly infinite monsters. 68K Macs may now have a chance, now that we've found that the previous compiler options produced buggy structure copies for that platform. Dragging the scrollbar on Macs should work now, but the other window flakiness inherited from 3.1.3 is still there and probably will continue to be unless someone who both understands Mac windowing and has time appears out of the woodwork. Earlier save and bones files are not compatible with 3.2.1, although the code should now reject them instead of crashing. Happy Hacking! For the NetHack DevTeam... Mike Stephenson For the Amiga NetHack Team... Ken Lorber @endnode @node NEWS22 "BattleDuel V1.5.42" @toc NEWS TITLE BattleDuel V1.5.42 AUTHOR Jochen Terstiege Michael David Marco Seine DESCRIPTION BattleDuel is a game like 'Artillery Duel' on the C-64: Two players fight against each other with cannons placed in a windy mountainous landscape. To hit the other they change the power and angle of the cannons. A duel is finished if one of the cannons is totally damaged. Some features: - up to 4 players - computer opponents - normal duel mode, 2 tournament modes, practice mode - ECS/AGA/GraphicBoard support (only one program) - network support: nullmodem, modem and TCP/IP - nice graphics and sound effects - full multitasking - OS friendly NEW FEATURES - background animations: balloon, rabbit, soldiers - variable screen height - support for publicscreens: BattleDuel in a window - new game mode: conquer mode - support for AS225 - improved network protocol - keyboard control for cannons SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Kickstart2.0, Harddisk, Flickerfixer recommended, at least 1 MB memory AVAILABILITY Any Aminet site, e.g.: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/game/2play/BattleDuel.lha (898506) PRICE Shareware fee of $15 US / DM 20 DISTRIBUTABILITY BattleDuel is Shareware! Copyright (C) 1996 Jochen Terstiege, Michael David, Marco Seine @endnode @node NEWS23 "Time.mcc" @toc NEWS TITLE Time.mcc VERSION 12.1 RELEASE DATE 10.02.1997 AUTHOR Kai Hofmann (i07m@zfn.uni-bremen.de) (http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~i07m/) DESCRIPTION Time is an abstract Custom Class of the Magic User Interface by Stefan Stuntz. It's a subclass of notify-class and only usable for developers who want to build subclasses of Time.mcc! The idea of this class was born during developing my Gregor application. Time.mcc allows an easy handling of time. It lets the developer specify a range within which the time must fall and it handles different time zones. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS MUI 3.1+ date.library 33.225+ AVAILABILITY http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~i07m/amiga/Time.html ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/dev/mui/MCC_Time.lha And all other Aminet sites. PRICE This is Freeware! DISTRIBUTION Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to copy and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that the copyright notice and the following paragraphs appear in all copies of this software, to: - All who will distribute this software for free! - All free accessible Internet servers! - All Aminet sites - Fred Fish for his great Amiga-Software Library - The German SAAR AG PD-Library - Angela Schmidt's Meeting Pearls series - All Simtel sites and CD-ROMs - All others who do NOT take more than US$ 5.- for one disk that includes this software! IMPORTANT NOTE This package may not be included on any further Aminet CD-ROMs unless authors contributing their software to the CD-ROM, (without mentioning distribution "NoCD") are granted a copy of the CD completely free of charge. @endnode @node NEWS24 "Virus Checker" @toc NEWS From: Dave Dustin Virus Checker Up For Grabs Again First off, I would like to apologise to all those who have been waiting for information about the continuation of the VirusChecker project, especially those registered users who contacted me over the past 8 months. The development of VirusChecker by myself has been basically been stopped. When I first decided to purchase VirusChecker off John Veldthuis, I had every intention of continuing with the work he had started. I jumped in, redesigned the interface; rewrote the file checker in C so that it might be used by Aminet; I asked the users what they wanted in a new version, implementing many of their suggestions; while also beginning work in lots of other areas of the program. Since then, many things have happened in my life, which has basically left me not using my computers as much as I used to. In fact, I spend at most 15 minutes every couple of days checking EMail and news. My PC sits idle unless my brother is playing games on it. The main reason for dropping all my computer work is due to the fact that my girlfriend and I wanted to spend more time together. Although we both like and use computers, it's not really a big part of our lives anymore. I would like to hear from those parties that might be interested in picking up the development. I am looking for one person or group that could continue with the program. I am not seeking any payment for the source due to the fact that I never released a new version, but I will give the same warning John gave me: "There's a lot of work involved!" I am sorry for the bad news, but that's just the way life is I suppose. @endnode @node NEWS25 "MagiC64 1.5" @toc NEWS TITLE MagiC64 VERSION 1.5 AUTHOR Michael Kramer Im Hirschfeld 28 52222 Stolberg Germany Fax: +49 (0)2402 909115 E-mail: michael_kramer@ac-copy.com DESCRIPTION New features in MagiC64 V1.5: - Powerful 6510 monitor - CyberGfx support - Smart Refresh for faster screen updates - Borders are displayed now - MagiC64 Homepage: http://www.ac-copy.com/~magic64 MagiC64 is a C64 emulator for the Amiga, which tries to emulate a real C64 in an exact manner. The emulator has the following properties: - Complete emulation of the 6510-CPU (including illegal opcodes) - Line-by-line VIC emulation - All graphics modes - Horizontal and vertical scrolling - Complete sprite emulation - Sprite-sprite collisions - Sprite-background collisions - Sound emulation with 6581sid.library or playsid.library - ROM emulation, you can also use the original ROMs - Keyboard and joystick input - Floppy 1541 emulation - Fastload and fastsave for all programs - Nearly all 1541 commands are supported - Support for the following formats: D64, T64, P00 and plain C64 - Conversion between all formats possible - Bitplane optimized graphics functions, on fast Amigas original C64 speed is possible. - The emulator is programmed OS-friendly, it runs in a fully multitasking environment - AmigaGuide Docs in English and German MagiC64 was rated 90% in CU Amiga. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS - 68020 or higher (fast 68030 or 68040 recommended) - Kickstart 2.04 or higher - 1.8 MB free memory AVAILABILTY Any Aminet site e.g. ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/misc/emu/MagiC64.lha PRICE Shareware fee: $20 US (or 30 DM) DISTRIBUTABILITY MagiC64 is a shareware product. The unregistered version may be distributed freely. Registering means all features will be enabled and there is no time restriction. @endnode @node NEWS26 "Sort v1.60" @toc NEWS TITLE Sort VERSION 1.60 AUTHOR Ruediger Werner E-Mail: wernerr@iee1.et.tu-dresden.de URL: http://home.pages.de/~wernerr S-Mail: Ruediger Werner Stresemannplatz 2 01309 Dresden GERMANY DESCRIPTION The basic function of sort is to sort ASCII-files in alphabetical order. But its functions are not restricted to sorting. I implemented many options which allow to manipulate file(s) in different ways. The sort program is started from Shell. NEW FEATURES (registered version) * numeric sorting facility added * keywords from system sort command can be used now FEATURES (unregistered version) * sorting files alphabetically (ascending, descending) * distinguishing and no distinguishing of capitals and small letters * erasing of empty lines with sorting * erasing of empty lines without sorting * replacing the old file (registered version) * sorting files alphabetically (ascending, descending) * sorting with columns, variable length of sort string * removing and replacing of characters * picking out lines * throwing out lines * joining files * removing oh a given number of header lines * ignoring of specified strings at the beginning of a line * two pass sorting for ignoring strings in lines * all functions are operating in a given range, if desired * selectable distinguishing of capitals and small letters * erasing of empty lines * improved erasing of double lines * dividing a file into two, according to the given pattern, which is specified with the -q|Q option. * reversing of the file (without sorting) * verbose function SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS None AVAILABILITY This program is available for the following systems: - AMIGA - MS-DOS - Ultrix 4.4 - Solaris 2.4 - SUN OS 4.1.3 - AIX 3.2.5 - Linux It can be found on Aminet: ftp://ftp.netnet.net/pub/aminet/util/sys/sort1_60e.lha or from my homepage: http://eeetw0.et.tu-dresden.de:8080/~wernerr/amiga.html the latest version will be available from my page, for all the above mentioned systems. PRICE 5 US$ for registration (binaries) & sending by e-mail 8 US$ for registration (binaries) & sending by post or equivalents in DM registration see doc-file DISTRIBUTABILITY The unregistered version is freely distributable if it is done in a noncommercial way and the contents of the archive is kept intact. The registered version is not freely distributable. @endnode @node NEWS27 "TimeString.mcc v12.2" @toc NEWS TITLE TimeString.mcc VERSION 12.2 RELEASE DATE 10.02.1997 AUTHOR Kai Hofmann (i07m@zfn.uni-bremen.de) (http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~i07m/) DESCRIPTION TimeString is a Custom Class of the Magic User Interface by Stefan Stuntz. It's a subclass of string-class. The idea of this class was born during developing my Gregor application. TimeString.mcc allows an easy handling of time strings. It parses the time string and is able to define the display format of the time string. NEW FEATURES - Now based on Time.mcc - Improved demo - Adding great icons from Eric Gerard - Improved formatter - Improved parser - Fixed Assembler interface - Fixed Modula interface - Fixed Amiga-E interface - Fixed Oberon interface - Now needs date.library 33.230 SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS MUI 3.2+ date.library 33.230+ (included) locale.library AVAILABILITY http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~i07m/amiga/TimeString.html ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/dev/mui/MCC_TimeString.lha And all other Aminet sites. PRICE For NON-COMMERCIAL USE this is Giftware! (Non-commercial includes Giftware and Shareware) Permission for COMMERCIAL USE is only given by an extra available commercial license that must be validated. Contact me directly for this license, because it will be individually handed out per your needs. Please send me a full version of your product at no cost including free updates. DISTRIBUTION Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to copy and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that the copyright notice and the following paragraphs appear in all copies of this software, to: - All who will distribute this software for free! - All free accessible Internet servers! - All Aminet sites - Fred Fish for his great Amiga-Software Library - The German SAAR AG PD-Library - Angela Schmidt's Meeting Pearls series - All Simtel sites and CD-ROMs - All others who do NOT take more than US$ 5.- for one disk that includes this software! IMPORTANT NOTE This package may not be included on any further Aminet CD-ROMs unless authors contributing their software to the CD-ROM, (without mentioning distribution "NoCD") are granted a copy of the CD completely free of charge. @endnode @node NEWS28 "Gui4Cli v2.0" @toc NEWS TITLE Gui4Cli VERSION 2.0 AUTHOR Dimitris C. Keletsekis Email: dck@hol.gr DESCRIPTION Gui4Cli is a program with which *anyone* can very easily create GUIs. No deep programming knowledge, compilers, libraries etc are needed. With it, you can make GUIs for : - Customizing your Workbench, launching programs etc. - Giving a GUI to CLI based programs - Making GUIs for programs with an AREXX port. It is a simple interpreted script language (about as simple as AmigaDOS) which enables you to construct GUIs and with them form command lines which you can send to AmigaDOS or to AREXX ports of other programs, for execution. You can think of it as "Visual-DOS". It features : - Multiple, resizable, font-sensitive windows - GadTools Gadgets and Menus - The ability to dynamically change the GUIs - Icons that can be used as buttons, or in menus - Keyboard shortcuts for gadgets & menus - Graphics and font commands - Common window shortcuts - Colored window backgrounds (pattern or icons) - Create & use other screens and much more... Gui4Cli will stay in memory and load, interpret and run the GUIs you make. You can run as many GUIs as your memory allows, all from the same instance of the program. The program is not disabled in any way and there are full manuals included. The demos provided (to give you an idea of what you can do), include : - A caclulator (with memories etc) based on the c:eval command - A "MultiMedia" GUI, which combines GUIs for the "ppshow", "sfx" and "proplay" programs into a common GUI allowing you play sounds & graphics together. - A "display" script which will show you files according to their type. - A replacement for the WB "Execute Command" GUI, which also allows you to send AREXX commands and change directory. - A ToolBar (made with icons) providing common shortcuts (cut/paste etc) for the "CygnusEd" editor. AVAILABILITY At any Aminet site, e.g.: ftp://ftp.netnet.net/pub/aminet/dev/gui/Gui4Cli.lha (125k) SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS 2.04+ DISTRIBUTION Freely distributable via CD, Disk, FTP etc. A shareware fee of either $10, or a really good GUI is suggested. @endnode @node NEWS29 "Config v1.01" @toc NEWS TITLE Config VERSION Version 1.01 (Released 28th June, 96) AUTHOR Adam Dawes E-Mail: Adam@beachyhd.demon.co.uk ad32@brighton.ac.uk Fidonet: 2:441/93.5 DESCRIPTION Config is a piece of C sourcecode designed to make access to configuration files as easy as possible. All the hard work is taken away, and replaced with just 4 functions: WriteConfig() WriteConfigNumber() ReadConfig() ReadConfigNumber() The config files are in a standard format: they are divided into "sections" (each of which has a unique name). In each section is any number of keywords, each of which has an associated data item. To write data to a config file, a single call to WriteConfig() is required, telling it the name of the config file, the section and keyword the data is to be added with, and the data itself. Config will then create the config file (if necessary), create the section (if necessary) and add or modify (as appropriate) the entry in the config file. Reading from the config file is just as easy. You specify the filename, section and keyword and Config returns you the data. However, when calling the ReadConfig() function, you also supply a default value. If the data cannot be returned for any reason (config file doesn't exist, section or keyword doesn't exist), you will be returned your default value. This means that absolutely no extra handling is necessary for new config files, etc. WriteConfigNumber() and ReadConfigNumber() work in exactly the same way, but with numbers instead of strings. Full documentation and examples are included within the archive. NEW FEATURES Fixed a nasty memory allocation bug. Any programs compiled with Config v1.0 should be recompiled with v1.01 (which *is* stable). TO DO I would ideally like to make Config in to a shared library. This would mean it could be accessed from any language, not just C. I currently have no idea how to do this, though, so that may not happen just yet. I also have plans to add full caching to Config to speed things up a little, aswell as adding a few more functions. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Any Amiga running a C compiler (tested with DICE and SAS/C). Whilst the code is potentially ANSI-compliant, it currently uses several functions from exec.library for linked-list manipulation. I will consider making the code fully ANSI compatible if there is any demand for it. AVAILABILITY From Aminet, for example: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/dev/c/Config101.lha (9k) PRICE Free. DISTRIBUTION Config is freely distributable as long as it is not modified in any way. You are perfectly welcome to use it in your own programs (that's why I've written it, after all) without any permission; I won't complain if you feel like giving me a mention in the documentation, but that's by no means compulsory. @endnode @node NEWS30 "Conk v0.90" @toc NEWS TITLE Conk - A game construction set. VERSION 0.90 (Beta test version) AUTHOR 42 South (Ben Campbell, Grant Young, Paul Atkin) EMail: ben@ns.planet.gen.nz DESCRIPTION Conk is a standalone game creation package. It is very versatile and can be used to make up 2D games in many styles - Horizontal scrolly shootemups, maze games, Defender-style blasters, Asteroids-style games, Robotron-style games, Platform games and many others. - Paint program and background map editor included - Editor programs are very system-friendly - Games take over the display hardware, but otherwise leave the operating system intact (ie multitasking still goes) - Fully hard drive installable - Multiplayer game support - Game files are cached - no unnecessary reloading of levels - Play between-level IFF Anims - Tracker music modules supported - Support for IFF 8SVX and raw sound data - Games can have virtually unlimited horizontal scrolling, limited vertical scrolling or may get rid of scrolling altogether and use an IFF picture (ILBM) as a backdrop. - Any Amiga system can be targeted (Kickstart 2.0+ is required in this beta release, later versions will run on 1.3). You can make up games for standard 68000 machines, or go for a _serious_ game needing lots of memory, disk space and processor grunt. You are not limited by artificial constraints. - Produced games are stand-alone, and no restrictions are placed upon their distribution. - AGA supported (but not required) SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Amiga OS 2.0 (or higher) required. "asl.library" from Amiga OS 2.1 (or higher) required. This will not be needed in the next release. For making up games, the preferred system would have a hard drive, at least two megs of memory and a faster processor. A standard Amiga 1200 or accelerated 500 is nice. AVAILABILITY Conk is available either by FTP: ftp://ftp.acid.nz.com/Acid/Conk/ConkA.lha ftp://ftp.acid.nz.com/Acid/Conk/ConkB.lha or by the WWW at: http://www.acid.nz.com/Acid/Conk/ConkA.lha http://www.acid.nz.com/Acid/Conk/ConkB.lha ConkA.lha - Conk editor programs (319 Kb) ConkB.lha - Demo games (274 Kb) PRICE Beta version: Free! Final release: To be announced. DISTRIBUTABILITY Version 0.90 (Beta) is NOT for redistribution. Copyright 1996 by 42 South. @endnode @node NEWS31 "AmigaGadget 25" @toc NEWS TITLE AmigaGadget 25 - Freely Distributable German Magazine VERSION Issue 25 AUTHOR various Publisher : Andreas Neumann Email: DESCRIPTION The AmigaGadget is a freely distributable magazine. Most articles are in German, only a few are written in English. The subjects covered range from news about the Amiga to jokes and stories : - "Aktuell" (= News) - "Forum" (= Discussion, interviews, letters to the editor, ...) - "Tests" (= Reviews of hardware, software, CDs, ...) - "Grundlagen" (= Basic informations of a certain topic) - "Programmieren" (= News, Hints and Workshops for programmers) - "Politik" (= Politics) - "Lifestyle" (= Reviews of new CDs, books, movies, etc.) - "Jokes & Stories" Most articles are written especially for the AmigaGadget, but there are also a few texts which were taken out of the net - representing some sort of "Best of the Net". Issue 25 of the AmigaGadget contains e.g. interviews with Wouter van Oortmerssen ("E") and Bernd Schmidt ("UAE"), informations about new hardware for the VIC 20 (sic!) and an improved CPC-emulator for MS-DOS, a report from the "meeting" in Guetersloh, an introduction to the new law about electromagnetical compatibility and a lot of other stuff.... Back to the commercials ;-) FEATURES Over 700 pages of text. Installation is done simply by unpacking the archive to the harddrive. REQUIREMENTS LIBS : reqtools.library, iff.library, powerpacker.library, diskfont.library, medplayer.library, xpkmaster.library, compressors/xpknuke.library C: IconX, Run, Assign Harddrive strongly recommended for an easy installation. AVAILABILITY AmigaGadget is freely distributable as long as it is kept intact and spread noncommercially. It is available from the Aminet : ftp://ftp.netnet.net/pub/aminet/docs/mags/gadget25.lha or via my WWW-homepage : http://stud-www.uni-marburg.de/~Neumanna/gadget.html or contact me via e-mail for snail-mail-availability. PRICE It is FREE. (Snail-Mail : empty disc and stamps) DISTRIBUTABILITY It is freely distributable. Articles are (C) Copyrighted by the authors, the compilation is (C) Copyrighted 1996 by Andreas Neumann (whatever that means). @endnode @node NEWS32 "Insert104" @toc NEWS National Amiga 111 Waterloo St. #101 London, Ontario N6B2M4 P: (519) 858-8760 F: (519) 858-8762 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact: gscott@nationalamiga.com National Amiga and MicroBit Research have come up with a new and innovative solution that will allow you to use a 104-key PC keyboard with an Amiga 2000/3000 or 4000! This adapter is small, simple and inexpensive! We have mapped a PC104 key keyboard to an Amiga keymap by using the Windoze keys as Amiga keys. We have also created some extra special keyboard functions to make using your Amiga easier. These new features include: Left Amiga-m to switch between screens. Left Amiga-n to take you back to WorkBench. Left Amiga-v for OK Left Amiga-b for CANCEL At a suggested retail price of only $39CAD, it's easy to upgrade your keyboard today! For more information on the Insert104, hit our website at http://www.nationalamiga.com to place your order. @endnode @node NEWS33 "Oberon System V4" @toc NEWS TITLE Oberon System V4 for Amiga VERSION 1.4 AUTHOR Stefan Ludwig, Claudio Nieder, Oliver Joos, 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 - VT100 terminal emulation - 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. NEW FEATURES - All interface modules rewritten - Amiga font support - Many small bugs fixed 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/V1.4/ Oberon.lha (1.1 MB) - main archive Oberon-NonFPU.lha (100 KB) - to use O4A without FPU Oberon-Src.lha (700 KB) - the full source of O4A Oberon-Fonts.lha (390 KB) - additional fonts Dialogs.lha (250kB) - advanced GUI Expressions.lha (130kB) - math expressions within text documents CoCo.lha (130kB) - compiler generator It is available in the Aminet directory dev/obero, too. PRICE It's free, but not PD. Please note the ReadMe file in every archive. DISTRIBUTABILITY Oberon System V4 for Amiga is (C)opyright 1990-97 by Claudio Nieder, Stefan Ludwig, Ralf Degner and the Institute for Computer Systems ETH Zurich. Some files in the archives are (C)opyright by other persons (fo example Dialogs and Expressions). 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 NEWS34 "Sagittarius Software" @toc NEWS 15-FEB-97 Sagittarius Software - New Amiga software dealer in the United States Specializing in affordable and enjoyable Amiga programming, Sagittarius Software has brought the complete line of Vulcan and 5th Dimension software to the U.S. market. There is no longer the need to send money overseas to obtain these titles; our retail prices are cheaper than direct order, and our delivery rates are faster and cheaper because of our location in the U.S. All of the following titles are available now. Artistix $ 8.99 Belle's Paint $10.79 BlobZ (AGA) $24.99 Bograts (AGA) $24.99 Burnout (AGA + 6MB RAM) $35.99 Hillsea Lido $24.99 Illusions $ 8.99 JETPilot $31.50 Morton Strikes Back $ 9.50 Morton Strikes Back AGA $12.50 Timekeepers $24.99 Timekeepers Expansion Disk $13.99 Tiny Troops $32.99 Valhalla III $32.99 World Golf $24.99 We also carry the full line of 5th Dimension Licenceware with prices: 1 disk title - $ 6.50 2 disk title - $ 8.00 3 disk title - $ 9.00 Our products can be ordered online, by mail, by FAX, or by telephone callback. (Mail orders, please add $2.50 to total bill for shipping) Checks, Money Orders, MC, VISA, and Discover are accepted methods of payment. Sagittarius Software 1706 Canton Road Akron, OH 44312 USA http://www2.ald.net/~pottery/Sagittarius.html E-Mail: sro@UAkron.edu FAX : +1 330 794 2170 (10am - 6pm EST Mon-Sat) @endnode @node NEWS35 "RealAudio Attempt" RealAudio: Try And Convince Them From perjac@inet.uni-c.dk Tue Jan 28 00:15 CST 1997 Hello, During a discussion on the IBrowse mailinglist, the topic of RealAudio came up, as you probably know this is not available for the Amiga. I mentioned that RealAudio has a 'bulletinboard' where web surfers can write comments and I suggested that perhaps we should write a note there. This has already started, several amigans have written mails, explaining a bit about who they are and why they would like to *buy* a version for the Amiga. It may be a waste of time, on the other hand who knows :) The rather longwinded URL is: http://204.71.154.55/scripts/dbml.exe?template=cfo/confer/threads.dbm&CID=8 @endnode @node NEWS36 "UltraAccounts 3.5" @toc NEWS TITLE UltraAccounts 3.5 AUTHOR Richard Smedley PO Box 59 Sutton-In-Ashfield Nottinghamshire NG17 3HP England rsmedley@cix.compulink.co.uk DESCRIPTION An intuitive & easy-to-use accounts program, specially designed to be suitable for non-computer-users as well as experts. Features include: - Multiple accounts & transaction tags. - Compatible with UltraPayAdvice, for taking care of all your payslips. (Aminet: biz/misc/ultrapay.lha) - Debit & credit standing orders, and timed transfers. The transactions entered by these timed events can be edited or erased *without* duplicate entries being created. - Budgeting facilities. - Common transactions & transfers: These let you predefine the details of commonly-used transactions and transfers (eg. doing the weekly shopping) to save you from having to keep typing in exactly the same details each time you enter that transaction. - Reminders: Make sure that you don't miss any important events like birthdays/anniversaries, or bills that need paying. - Pie, bar and line graphs, with optional future projections. - Encrypted files, optionally password protected. - Multiple data export configurations. NEW FEATURES - Numerous further improvements to the GUI. Among other things, all the windows now use consistent OK/Erase/Cancel buttons. - Added a "balances" option to the bar & line graphs. - Added a search option to the Show/Transactions window. - Export formats & wage categories can now be erased! - Unsaved data is now flagged properly. - Various bug fixes & enhancements. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS - Requires: AmigaOS 2.0, 2 meg ram, reqtools.library (supplied) - Recommended: AmigaOS 3.0, hard drive, additional memory AVAILABILITY Available via FTP from Aminet sites. ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/biz/misc/ultraacc.lha (155415 bytes) PRICE The unregistered version is fully functional, but will display shareware reminders from time to time. Standard registration fee is 10 Pounds Sterling (or equivalent) DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware, unregistered copies are freely distributable. UltraAccounts is (C) Richard Smedley 1997 @endnode @node NEWS37 "IARS WWW Form" @toc NEWS Hi there! I am now happy to inform you that the form based survey part of IARS is running. Is it ready? Well, it will surely be updated as time goes, with more descriptive links etc., but the survey itself has at last found its shape. Please visit and submit your views at: http://www.skip.adb.gu.se/~gunnar/iars/ You may be glad to know that Phase5 Digital Products have given IARS an official recognition, and they really wan't everyone to visit it, since they believe the results may be very interesting and useful for them. I also got a mail from Carl Sassenrath saying that he was really interested in the results of the survey. It seems that at last there's someone who'll listen to the Amiga Community. Visit the survey! Sincerely Gunnar Liljas @endnode @node NEWS38 "Speculator 97" @toc NEWS Awesome new ZX emulator: SPECULATOR 97 There are lots of Amiga Spectrum emulators, but this is a really good one especially if you're a former Spectrum user or programmer. Apologies to some US readers who may not know what a Spectrum is. I guess it's a European thing (mainly). Actually it's a few million Euro things, and a few hundred thousand Timex variants sold in the States, back in the 1980s. There are still about twenty Spectrum publishers in the UK, and many more across Europe. But what of this emulator? William James's Speculator 97 is on the Aminet now, in the misc/emu directory. Earlier versions appeared on several UK magazine cover disks last year, but this (1.04) is the first release to Aminet, and considerably tidier and more complete than the earlier ones. The following details are taken from the Aminet readme file. The full archive is a 378K packed LHA which expands to about 860K. SPECULATOR 97 FEATURES Speculator 97 is the 1997 version of a fast Spectrum emulator written in the UK, updating the version originally released on Amiga Format and Amiga User International cover-disks late last year. It has many advantages over earlier Amiga Spectrum emulators. It is shareware but has no operational restrictions. o Speculator is Amiga O/S friendly and runs on all versions of the 680X0. o Over 100K documentation in AmigaGuide format, plus extra pictures/documents. o The Workbench 2.0/3.0 environment and AGA mode promotion is well supported. o Snapshot files in six different formats are supported transparently. o Support for ALL the standard Amiga keys as well as the main 40 Spectrum ones. o Spectrum ROM routines rewritten in 68K code for increased system speed. o ROM extensions - CAT command and full BASIC file handling implemented. o High Resolution display of menus and requesters, with mode promotion. o Integrated utilities such as labelling Z80 Disassembler and screen to IFF saver. o High speed, efficient Z80 emulation engine and optimised screen handling. o ZA80 cross-assembler included for developing Z80 assembler programs. o Speculator can be used transparently through project icons for snapshot programs. o LPRINT, LLIST and output to stream #3 is re-directed to any Amiga device or file. o Spectrum disk handler supplied for using MGT disks just like real Amiga disks. o Optional built in 'Easy Keys' feature to overcome keyword entry problems. o Lots of *legal* example programs including BetaBASIC3, AstroBall and Smashout. o Cassette loading supported with a very simple cable for all Amigas. o Supports serial transfers to and from real Spectrums. o Automated Hard disk installation for both emulator and ZX disk handler. o Startup icon allows easy use direct from a CD or any sub-directory. o Supplied with an Amiga-compatible Spectrum-style ZX8 font. o Compatible with ZX_Datatype 39.1 by Edward Vermuelen. Please send comments and suggestions to the author William James: w.james@philinet.demon.co.uk @endnode @node NEWS39 "PowerCon Info Pack" @toc NEWS [PowerCon is the successor to the Montreal Amiga Convention of recent years. The venue is the same as AC '96. -Jason] The Official Info Pack on the PowerCon'97 Release 1.1 Please feel free to spread this file around wherver you can, as long as it is not altered. We don't want people to show up at the wrong city or during the wrong month! If you are a magazine, please feel free to put this in your magazine.All that we ask in return is that you e-mail or call us to tell us that you have put the information into the magazine. Also, if you would like to have an article written for your magazine after the convention about what happened at PowerCon'97 Please e-mail * NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS * - PIOS maker of a new PowerPC box (PIOS-ONE) will be there to demonstrate their new products (http://www.pios.de) - ProDAD are developing a new OS called pOS, it look similar to AmigaOS. It is currently port to the PowerPC, a 68k version is already available (http://www.prodad.de) In July, in Montreal, the first annual PowerPC Convention will take place! This convention will gather the PowerPC community together from all across the world to show its support for the PowerPC platforms! (BeBox, PIOS-ONE, A/Box, Amiga(PowerUP), PowerMac(& clones), IBM, Motorola) We hope to make this show an event that will demonstrate the "POWER" behind PowerPC's and their operating systems (BeOS, pOS, MacOS, Linux, Solaris, AIX). WHY: We are putting on the PowerCon'97 to support our favorite computers. We feel that there is a place for the PowerPC platform within the "WINTEL" monopoly. WHERE: The Howard Johnson Hotel in Montreal, ADDRESS: Howard Johnson (514)-842-3961 475 Sherbrooke West Street Montreal (Quebec) Canada H3A 2L9 WHEN : 19 & 20 of July 1997 TIME : 10:00 - 20:00 (8:00 PM) Saturday 9:00 - 18:00 (6:00 PM) Sunday ENTRANCE COST: 7 Canadian dollars COMPETITION: Software Coding --------------- 1st place : $800 2nd place : $300 3rd place : $100 COST FOR RENTING TABLES : $150 - 1 day, $250 - 2 days, for one table of 6' by 3' and chairs. These tables are aimed towards dealers and developers. FREE TABLES: We will also have free tables, for anyone who wishes to BRING THEIR own PPC system, whether to show off something cool, or just to help someone else who might need one at the time. However, at the free tables you get less space than the pay tables, it is first-come first- serve, and you cannot sell products at the tables! That is strictly for the rented tables. ACCESABILITY: The show is easily accessible by bus and subway, as well as having lots of parking space in the vicinity for cars. WHY DEALERS SHOULD COME: We offer tables at an incredibly low rate, a price which includes electrical outlets and electricity. You also get the chance to show and sell your wares to a crowd of PPC owners, all of whom have money to spend and are influenced by how big a prescence you have at the show. WHY PEOPLE SHOULD COME: We will have stands from many major dealers and developers. We will also have a lot of friendly PPC owners there, plus a booming sound system and TV setup that will show crazy demos and products. It will be a wild good time for all! BRING YOUR PPC AND HAVE A BALL ~~~ * Just 5 minutes walking distance from the Metro Station McGill. * We will have Audio/visual equipment setup for presentations of demos, programs, hardware, new products, etc. * The Howard Johnson has a Restaurant, a Bar, and more. * Special room rates for the first 20 reservations. Please contact the hotel and specify that you are coming for the PowerCon'97. CONTACT: To get the latest info about the PowerCon'97 and get more details about it please check out our WWW sites at; [Coming soon.....] If you want to reserve a table, get more information on the show, or just talk to the organizers, e-mail us at: (514)-649-9756 (in Canada) and ask for Frederic (514)-933-8095 (in Canada) and ask for Jeremie. regarding the PowerCon'97. You can also mail the organizers at: Frederic Tessier 922 Deschamps Sainte-Julie (Quebec) J3E 1N9 Canada @endnode @node NEWS40 "AmiTech '97" @toc NEWS PRESS RELEASE - AMIGA Show in Scandinavia Stockholm, Sweden 97.01.27 - AmiTech '97 is the name of this year's largest Amiga convention in Scandinavia. The show is designed to be a fresh kick-back and inspiration to the users and dealers of our favorite computer, the Amiga! The show is organised by AUGS (Amiga User Group of Sweden) and SUGA (Swedish User Group of Amiga) with our main sponsor; Distribution 4, the new but already leading Amiga computer and perhiperals distributor of Scandinavia. Working with the group is the two Swedish Amiga magazines, SAM and Amigainfo. Date and hours: Friday 25th of April 1997 10:00-18:00 Saturday 26th of April 1997 10:00-18:00 Sunday 27th of April 1997 10:00-17:00 Admittance: 50 kr (~7 usd) The show will take place in Wasahallarna, at the Royal Djurgarden in central Stockholm. The space for is devided on two floors and produce a total of 1500 square meters (ca 5000 sqfeet). A Website us up and running with current information, seminare schedules, competitions and maps to the show. Please visit: http://www.canit.se/amitech More information on attending companies and persons will be available. Companies and developers interested in exhibiting and/or seminares may contact Distribution 4 at the below address or email. Welcome to the show! /The team working on AmiTech -97. General email and questions to: amitech@sam.canit.se Business, companies and developers: info@tricom.se Distribution 4 Att: Riku Bergkvist Svartbacksgatan 41 753 32 Uppsala Sweden Tel: +46-(0)18-12 40 09 Fax: +46-(0)18-10 06 50 @endnode @node NEWS41 "ClickBOOM News" @toc NEWS ClickBOOM Web Page Moves, CP Upgrade Available ClickBOOM and Capital Punishment's web page has moved to: http://home.ican.net/~clkboom/ On the site is a Capital Punishment 1.1 upgrade. This upgrade fixes some of the loading problems, as well as Apollo board compatibility. Also, there is no need for 040 or 060.libraries. @endnode @node FEATURE1 "CDTV Retrospective II" @toc FEATURE =========================================================================== The Definitive CDTV Retrospective: Part II Peter Olafson peteroo@aol.com =========================================================================== Many of the unreleased CDTV games in the full list didn't get beyond the twinkle-in-the-eye stage. But a handful did make it well down the road toward publication. Here's a rough accounting of the fate of some of the canceled games on which work is known to have been done. CDTV Sports Football (CDTV Publishing): Long delayed, this offshoot of Cinemaware's unreleased TV Sports: Football 2 finally surfaced in early 1994 as Amiga CD32 Sports: Football. (No, it's not backward compatible with CDTV.) Impressive for its graphic beauty and wide range of plays, obnoxious in its use of CDXL, it had pitifully little AI and omitted certain key TV Sports functions. You'd think something in the cooker so long would be *done*, y'know? Dungeon Master (FTL): FTL president Wayne Holder reports the developer largely completed the CDTV conversion of this seminal dungeon crawl, only to be stymied by the inability to obtain reliable info from CBM on saving games to memory cards. This was to be a moderately enhanced version with improved music and animation and a special animation player. It was never formally canceled; it just never surfaced. Some of the technology has surfaced in subsequent Amiga products (like Chaos Strikes Back), and for some time afterward, FTL continued to hold out hope it could complete the port. "But things never came together at Commodore," Holder indicated. "So, I suppose, it ended with a whimper rather than a bang." Herewith the Clues (Domark): Domark twice went back and forth on an Amiga CD version of this 1930s murder mystery, first on a CDTV version and more recently on one for CD32. Neither would surface. Happily, Herewith the Clues was released on disk by On-Line a few years back, so we can get a sense of what we missed. Er ... make that unhappily. In format, it's much like The Hound of the Baskervilles in that you're presented with a range of evidence, photos, and exhibits, and expected to digest these clues and come back with a solution. There's a lot of info to take in without too much in the way of niceties, and it's fair to expect that the CD version would have been cleaned up and the hard info abetted with voices. The Lawnmower Man (The Sales Curve): Wound up as an IBM game, but started out as a CDTV project. It's a series of linked arcade, flying and puzzle games based around the rather silly movie. The game was well along (I saw a muddy 16-color demo of the CDTV version at the European Computer Trade Show in 1993), but SCI dropped the project in favor of the 3-CD Cyberwar, a game similar in structure, improved only cosmetically. (No where-is-it letters, please; it was completed, but has long since been killed.) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom, and Secret of Monkey Island (CDTV Publishing): LucasArts did the CDTV conversions of these delightful animated adventures, which were projected for release by CBM in 1991 and 1992. Their fate is something of a mystery. A LucasArts spokeswoman reported that all three cleared in-house testing, were approved, and then were turned over to CBM for release. However, a former CBM employee who worked on the CDTV project through 1992 indicates that nothing from LucasArts crossed his desk. At any rate, the games never did surface. Conventional wisdom suggests that Indy and SOMI were straight ports of the disk-based games. Loom may or may not have been a "talkie." (The PC CD-ROM version that preceded it did have voices.) Lunar Rescue: The Colossus Incident (Odyssey): Odyssey was one of a handful of U.S.-based labels to take a real interest in CDTV. Lunar Rescue, slated to appear on CDTV in the fall of 1992, would have been Odyssey's third and most original and substantial undertaking - about 50 megabytes of game-cum-space database built around the rescue of a crashed Apollo spacecraft. Unfortunately, CDTV crashed first. For a time, Odyssey pursued Lunar Rescue as a PC CD-ROM project, but that appears to have fallen by the wayside as well. (I was unable to reach the publisher for an update.) Microcosm (Psygnosis): "It will redefine computer entertainment," read the blurb. Yes, Psygnosis' graphically dazzling, gameplay-poor 3D arcader for the CD32 was initially a CDTV project. In fact, a short, non- interactive demo of this early version - along with a longer version of the Planetside demo - can be found on the Psygnosis demo CD -- intercut with intros from many of Psygnosis' other Amiga games. (And yes, the disc works on CD32.) The CDTV version appears to have been much like the CD32 release in concept. The main differences are that the graphics are largely in shades of gray and that you're in the *President's* bloodstream, rather than that of some off-world corporate suit. Wounded by the platform's famous non-performance, the final nail in Microcosm CDTV's coffin must have been the arrival of the CD32. Mind Run II (Crealude): Mind Run author Pierre Berloquin reports that he completed a Mind Run II. This one focused on machines, logic, space and numbers, and was designed along much the same lines as the original. CBM wasn't interested, however, and the project died. Planetside (Psygnosis): Ah, yes. Planetside. If CDTV's salvation could have been linked to any particular product, this might have been it. This is the game that should have sold the machine that came from the house that Jack built. Planetside has its roots back in the days when Psygnosis was one of "The Great Amiga Publishers." Demoed on the Lemmings CDTV disk, this shoot-em-up had you racing over a fractal landscape in pursuit of a raging missile. The killer: The demo was said to be drawn, not from the introduction, but from the game proper. It was to take up about 400 megabytes and was originally set to appear in early 1992. But it was delayed until summer, then until fall, then until spring 1993. And as it turned out, Planetside had been cannibalized for parts. The technology has since surfaced in Microcosm and NovaStorm (which was started for CD32, but left incomplete). Psycho Killer II (On-Line): In which you, as a psychic investigator, track down the nut who got away in the original. This followup, projected for spring 1992, was extensively filmed (but not coded) and was canceled when it became apparent CBM was no longer supporting CDTV. On-Line's Michael Hodges reports that it would have involved a lot more artwork and would have been significantly more interactive. (It was also going to include nudity and some rough language.) Sensible Soccer (Renegade): *The* Amiga soccer game was slated for a CDTV version in 1992. That straight port of the disk version was largely done, but Renegade wound up turning it into a CD32 version instead. Treasure Quest (Almathera): Almathera canned this half-complete project - an animated board game built around a random monster maze - when it became clear CBM wasn't going to support the CDTV. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Evidently, there was no worse fate that could befall a CDTV game than being heralded by Commodore as "coming soon." Of 38 games so hyped in the two CDTV catalogues, exactly two surfaced. Here's a run-down on other games that were planned for CBM's black beauty, but never released. Air Traffic Controller (Logic Plus) Angel of the City (Tiger Media) Aquaventura (Psygnosis) B.A.T. (UBI Soft) Battletoads (Mindscape) Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (Capstone) Blockbusters (Domark) The Cardinal of the Kremlin (Capstone) Challenge Golf (On-Line) The Classics Collection (School Software) Composer Quest (Dr. T's Music Software) Dominion (Dominion Software & Design, Inc) Drakkhen (Infogrames) Epic (Ocean) Espana: The Games (Ocean) Garfield: Winter's Tail (The Edge Interactive) Grand Prix (MicroProse) Horse Racing (Context Systems) Indoor Sports (Context Systems) International Karate Plus (System 3) Jack Nicklaus Golf (Accolade) James Pond 2: Codename Robocod (Millenium) KIM (Lascelles Productions) The Legend of Kyrandia (Virgin) Mad TV (Softgold) Many Roads to Murder (CDTV Publishing) MiG-29 Fulcrum (Domark) Murder, Anyone? (CDTV Publishing) Murder Off Miami (Domark) 'Nam: 1965-1975 (Domark) Pacmania (Domark) Pinball Dreams (21st Century) Pinocchio (Giunti Multimedia) Plan 9 from Outer Space (Gremlin) Pool (Virgin) Private and Confidential: KGB (Virgin) Pro Tennis Tour II (Ubisoft) Putty (System 3) Rainbow Collection Platform Arcade (Ocean) Reach for the Skies (Virgin) Sign of Four (On-Line) Sim Earth Planet Simulator (Ocean) Space Quest III (Sierra) Spy vs. Spy (CDTV Publishing) The Terminator (Bethesda Softworks) Thexder (Sierra) Trump Castle (Capstone) Turrican (Rainbow Arts) Universal Monsters (Ocean) Unreal (UBI Soft) Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2 (Bethesda Softworks) Wing Commander (Mindscape) --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Did they or didn't they? Only Commodore knows for sure on these three games. All were slated for CDTV release, but lack of hard info in one case and inability to find the publisher in the others conspire to leave these games in no-man's land. Cubulus/Magic Serpent (Software 2000): Like Shiftrix/Lettrix (see below), this duo was slated for release only in Germany. Hard words for the Amiga game archivist: Germany's a whole separate world where the Amiga is concerned, and the language barrier sometimes prevents games from escaping the continent. However, since they did surface on disk, we have an inkling of what they must be like on CD. Both appear to be commercial products, but, as with Lettrix, that distinction seems to have blurred, and they've found their way into various PD libraries. Cubulus (which actually appeared as a cover disk on a European Amiga mag) is the work of Tobias Richter, celebrated for his Star Trek animations and game. It's a colorful turn on Rubik's Cube games. Magic Serpent's a bright, colorful snake game with a twist: You don't have full control over the snake... and it's very fast. Future Wars: Adventures in Time (Interplay): I never could nail down to my satisfaction whether or not this first Cinemathique adventure surfaced on CDTV. Interplay does indeed list the game -- equally enjoyed and howled-over in the disk-based version for its dust-speck sized objects -- as one of its two CDTV releases. CBM did include it in the company's two CDTV catalogs. And CDTV retailers in the UK suggest it may have surfaced in Germany. But I've never seen it, and, as in so many cases with CDTV, seeing is believing. If it did come out, Future Wars CDTV was to have had a full musical soundtrack (an element notably missing from the disk game). Shiftrix/Lettrix (Software 2000): Like Cubulus/Magic Serpent (see above), this two-pack of Tetris variants was planned as a Germany-only release. And, again, I can't absolutely vouch for its existence. I can't even describe Shiftrix. However, Lettrix turned up under the PD/shareware banner in Europe in 1990 - with one of those "released by" intro text scrollers which suggests it was a pirated commercial property instead. It's not Tetris with letters; it's much closer in concept to games like Shapes. (You plug Tetris-like pieces into letter-shaped frameworks.) @endnode @node FEATURE3 "IPISA 96 -- Sixth Edition" @toc FEATURE =========================================================================== IPISA 96 -- Sixth Edition Vincenzo Gervasi gervasi@di.unipi.it =========================================================================== Yes, in Italy it has become a kind of Christmas tradition: turkey, gifts and IPISA. This year, the biggest Amiga developer-oriented conference in Italy was held on November, 30 in the familiar ISU Auditorium that, despite all the doom and gloom that can be found in the c.s.a.* newsgroups, was filled with over 430 developers, dealers, journalists and power-users. This means that attendance has grown steadily for the fifth consecutive edition! The Proceedings and some gifts All participants received a 60-pages booklet with the conference proceedings (entirely produced with LaTeX on the Amiga) and *three* CD-ROMs. The first of them, produced by the IPISA committee, contained stuff related to the presentations made at the conference in the current and previous editions, several recent large distributions (Fred Fish's ADE, Linux and NetBSD for the Amiga) and many other files, documents, and archives useful to developers (mainly definitions of standards, FAQs etc.). The other two CDs were generously donated by Cloanto Italia of Personal Paint fame: no less than the complete Personal Suite 6.4 CD and the famous Kara Font Collection! Also, participants received Sun Microsystem's "Java" white papers (100 pages of interesting half-marketing/half-development ramblings), free copies of the leading Amiga magazines in Italy, special offers and discounts from several dealers and so on. Starting Talks After long pilgrimages to the conference's bar (due to the abundant snowfall of the morning), the crowded hall could assist to the first presentations. After a brief introduction by Sergio Ruocco, chairman of the organizing committee, Vittorio Calzolari delighted the attendance reporting his experiences with the "Plug'n'pray" feature of a well known operating system. Given the nature of the subject, Vittorio had no problem at reinforcing the idea of everyone in the hall that other computing environment aren't as shiny as the marketing folks would like us to believe. Games, CD-ROMs and the Amiga Software Industry Immediately after Vittorio, Francesco Leonardi and Giuliano Pochini presented VoXel, a new graphic rendering engine tailored to draw fast 3D landscapes. The voxel technique, albeit less precise than the more common fractal-based and polygon-based ones, is many times faster, and proves particularly useful in interactive games. The authors are planning to release a spaceship-flight simulator in the first months of 1997. Another game-centered presentation was the one by Vittorio Ferrari, showing his own VEGA: an engine for "Lucas' Arts"-style adventures. Vittorio showed off a prototype of an adventure built with VEGA, which proved indeed quite nice (a demo should be released in a few months). Luca Danelon and Matteo Forniz gave a talk on their experience in Amiga CD production (they are the people behind the nice "Amy Resource" series), while Andrea Galimberti and Fabio Rotondo presented another adventure construction system called DOOPSI. While VEGA is script-based and geared to internal use, DOOPSI offers a number of GUI-based editors, thus allowing everybody to produce his own adventure. On the other hand, VEGA offers a few more features, so the competition is open. The last speaker of the morning was Michele Battilana, head and soul of Cloanto Italia, that presented some data on the evolution of the Amiga market. Michele shocked many people among the attendance when he revealed with a malicious double-click that the (Amiga) program he used to project the slide on the overhead screen, was indeed running on a Win-NT laptop thanks to UAE! The sudden appearance of the NT desktop, however, did not ruin the appetite of the crowd, and access to the refectory required several minutes in the queue (the lunch was included in the admission price of the conference: around US$38, DM60). The Future of IPISA After the lavish meal, Sergio Ruocco talked about the future of IPISA. In the opinion of the organizing committee, IPISA should open its doors to other "alternative" systems (Linux, BeOS, NetBSD, Java machines and so on) starting from the next edition. The proposal, that gained a less-than-universal consensus, aims at making IPISA a unique forum for "rebels" that don't want to accept Micro$oft's "I'll rule the world" attitude. Other goals announced for the next edition were a more significant international presence, both in attendance and in talks, and the extension of the conference to cover two days instead of one. Java, BeOS and Linux Marco Zandonadi followed with a short note on Java and its strong influence in reshaping the computer industry, a subject already familiar to many AR readers. The next presentation was one of the more interesting ones: the first Italian show of the Be-Box and its BeOS. Jean Calmon and Christophe Droulers, both from Be Europe, demoed this very nice system that really amazed the attendants. Seeing four Quicktime movies, two midi streams, two Mandelbrot programs, a 3D rendering manipulated in real time and several other applets all running flawlessly together in the bi-processor Be-Box led several people into unconfessable theft temptations. Looking at BeOS today reminded me of the thrill under my spine that I felt some ten years ago, when I touched for the first time an Amiga. We are lucky, that old spirit was not lost: even in the case of the worst outcome for our beloved Amiga, there will be an heaven for us digital romantics. After BeOS, Linux took the scene, with a presentation by Carlo Daffara of the latest Amiga release distributed on the IPISA CD. Speedy Trends: Hardware, PowerPC and 3D Packages Paolo Canali, undisputed hardware guru, followed with an overview on the advances in digital technology: digital-analog integration, parallel systems, advanced memory subsystems and complex custom chips -- on this latter point, Phase V's announced dates on their dream-chip Caipirinha were judged by Paolo as "optimistic, but not unrealistic". Unfortunately, Phase V was absent from the conference: Wolf Dietrich was already scheduled for the Amiga Fest in Toronto, and Gerald Carda (Phase V's Technical Director), who was appointed to participate, had grown very sick. So, Jurgen Haage and Michael Rock (from Haage & Partner) took upon them the task of showing off the PowerUp board from Phase V. They demoed a Mandelbrot program, compiled with H&P's StormC 2.0, running on the PowerPC; the gain in speed over the 68060 version was quite evident, even on the Prototype (and slower) PowerUp card. With the new StormC, porting a program to PowerPC is just a matter of selecting an option in a requester: "PowerPC" is listed alongside with "68060", "68040", and so on! The last presentation was held by Massimiliano Marras, with his Tornado 3D. Tornado is not just yet another raytracer and modeler: its code was finely tuned for the 68040 and 68060, resulting in an impressive speed of the software: what other programs render in 10 seconds, Tornado can in a fraction of a second. The net result, almost miraculous, is that the user can manipulate the previews in real time with the mouse; and we are talking about colour previews (full colour or dithered), with flat or Gouraud shading, transparencies, textures and many other features! Beyond its speed, Tornado 3D has other advantages, but a full review is better left to some more experienced 3D artist. Tornado should be available in a short time, at a price defined by its author as "competitive". Final Remarks So ended IPISA 96. It was very heart-warming to see so many Amiga enthusiasts gathered together, as well as seeing the fruits of ongoing development and knowing that we are not left alone in the dark, struggling against monopolists... It appeared clear from the conference that many routes are opened to the evolution of the Amiga. IPISA 97 will tell us which of them was to be the winning one. @endnode @node FEATURE2 "Java And The Amiga's Future" @toc FEATURE =========================================================================== Java: What Role Will it Play in the Amiga's Future? David Prime djprime@vcn.be.ca =========================================================================== Copyright 1997, David Prime For years the Amiga has struggled to establish itself in the world of personal computing. Now a new operating system independent software platform has arisen to challenge Microsoft Windows for dominance of the desktop. This new software platform is Sun Microsystems' Java. Java is not a competing operating system, it is a development platform that allows Java software to run on any operating system that supports a Java run-time environment. If Java is a success it could have a powerful effect on the future of the Amiga. The nature of this effect is not yet clear. The heart of Java is a powerful object oriented language that is very similar to C++. What makes Java more than just a programming language is the Java Virtual Machine (VM) run time environment. The Java VM simulates a computer in software. A Java VM can be written for current operating systems but the VM environment remains independent of both the host OS and the underlying hardware. Compilers for ordinary computer languages generate executable binary code that is specific to a particular microprocessor and operating system. To make such code portable requires that all platform specific code be rewritten and that the code be recompiled for the new platform. Java compilers, on the other hand, convert source code into Java byte code that can be executed without modification on any machine that has an implementation of the Java Virtual Machine. The Java VM run-time environment manages all interaction between Java programs and the underlying operating system and hardware. This allows developers to master only one programming environment (the Java VM) and produce code that will run on any Java capable platform. There are two types of Java programs, internet applets and stand alone applications. Internet applets are small programs that are embedded in web pages and are run on the viewers machine in a secured manner (limited access to system resources i.e. the hard disk) by Java capable browsers. These applets are increasing in popularity and are used to enhance the appearance and/or functioning of a web site. This type of internet use is a natural for Java because the web page author generally has no control over the type of operating system that the viewer is using. For the applet to function only requires that the viewer be using a Java capable browser. The second type of Java program, stand alone applications, is much more interesting. The Java language and run time environment are sophisticated enough to allow for the creation of any software application that does not require low level operating system or hardware access. This includes most off the usual desktop applications such as word processors or spreadsheets. Stand alone Java applications could be distributed on standard ISO 9660 format CD-ROMs and installed on any Java capable machine, be it Unix, Windows, Mac or Amiga based. Java does have its down sides and limitations, however. Java is still very new and its development tools are immature compared to those of other languages and platforms. Also programmers have less experience with developing software for Java. These two facts are likely to change rapidly. Developers are adopting Java at an unprecedented rate and Java's similarity to C++ reduces the learning curve. A second limitation of Java stems from the same source as its greatest strength. Java's portability results from the VM isolating the program from the underlying OS and hardware. This means that Java programs can not fully utilized specific OS or hardware features without sacrificing cross platform portability. Also portability is not perfect because Java run time environments on different platforms do not implement all features in an identical manner. The third significant limitation of Java is that Java code is not as fast as native code. Java byte code is interpreted and converted into machine code on the fly during program execution by the Java run time environment. For this reason C and C++ code can execute an order of magnitude faster than Java code. One method to speed up Java code that has been introduced is Just in Time (JIT) compilers. JIT compiler interprets byte code during execution like a regular interpreter but the resulting machine code is cached in memory during program executing. If a piece of code is needed a second time the cached machine code is executed. JIT compilers can execute Java code at approximately 50% the speed of native code. The future may also see static Java compilers for specific platforms. This would allow Java applications to achieve almost C or C++ speed. In my opinion the best option would be a compile on install option. Java byte code could be distributed in a platform independent manner and the individual Java implementations could compile the byte code into native machine code during installation to the hard drive. This method would retain portability and provide good performance. I know of no Java implementation that supports this feature. Also as computers continue to improve in speed, the importance of highly efficient code will decrease for most application. C and C++ have already supplanted assembly code for most application development. Even high level languages and authoring systems, such as Visual Basic and AmigaVision, are being used for some professional application development. Despite its current limitations Java is receiving tremendous support and is being heavily promoted by Sun. Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Silicon Graphics, Sun and others are all integrating Java run time environments into their OSes. Because of this Java could become the worlds largest software platform. The number of Java capable machines could out number any of the platforms that support it, even Windows. Developers have largely been drawn to DOS and Windows because these two environments were the most wide spread. If in the near future Java becomes dominant will developers switch to give it primary support? This remains to be seen. The first general purpose business applications for Java are already being developed by Corel. Corel Office for Java includes a WordPerfect based word processor, a Quattro Pro based spreadsheet and other applications. The performance, portability and commercial success of this product maybe a critical test of Java. The uncertain future of both Java and the Amiga make it hard to make any predictions as to how Java will impact on the Amiga. Because the Amiga OS is currently in financial limbo there is no official development of Java for the Amiga. However, an independent project named P' Jami is porting Sun's Java Development Kit and the HotJava web browser. Another group is porting Kaffe a freely distributable Java VM that includes JIT compilation. If mainstream software applications become available for the Amiga by way of Java it could strengthen the platform by retaining and attracting users. Unfortunately, the speed issue is especially problematic for Amigas because of the relatively slow 68K series processors they use. However, a native PowerPC implementation of a Java run time environment could give excellent performance on a PowerUp card even if the OS has not been completely ported. The wide spread availability of Java applications could also hurt the native Amiga developers who know the machine best and can get the most out of it. If these developers lose their market to Java applications then the Amiga will die as any but a Java host. I doubt the platform would last long on that basis. If Java succeeds to the extent that some people predict the only applications not written in Java will be speed critical or specialized applications which require specific OS or hardware resources. If this comes to pass, OSes of the future may be judged by their ability to effectively run a Java VM. For more information: The Java Web Site: http://java.sun.com/ The P'Jami Site: http://www.sss.co.uk/~nt/hotjava.html [Please note that Kaffe is now available through the ADE project. Check Aminet in ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/dev/ade/kaffe.lha to experience it for yourself. Also, Finale Development at http://www.finale-dev.com promises a Java implementation and Java-aware browser for the Amiga in the near future. -Jason] @endnode @node REVIEW1 "Review: Aminet 17" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: Aminet 17 By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== I'm now fully convinced it's a battle of wills. Aminet CDs will continue to come out in direct defiance of magazine reviewers who have already surrendered the battle to try to come up with new, interesting ways to say good things about them. Urban Mueller is rubbing it in, that's all. :) Actually, Aminet 17 has a merciful enough amount of difference from Aminet 16 to allow me to make at least a few comments. The commercial "coverdisk" package is back in the form of Personal Write. This text editor/word processor was showing its age when it appeared on Cloanto's Personal Suite CD (the only lowlight of that otherwise excellent CD). Now it can only be called an anachronism. Perhaps its most important role on the CD is that you'll click on the "commercial" link in the typically excellent Amigaguide interface and see ads for Cloanto's software line, highlighted by Personal Paint 7 and the Personal Suite CD. Aminet has received a large influx of mods and picture submissions over the past months, and the bulk of the files are indeed mods, pictures, and demos. As ever, the latest Amiga Reports have been included, and the CD is rounded out with what I can only keep referring to as the collective wisdom of the Amiga community. Perhaps it's been too long since the Amiga community has been reminded of this, so I'll spell it out explicitly. We are incredibly lucky to have Aminet. Not only is it a huge and reliable resource, but it has organization which is completely alien to the large FTP archives of other platforms. Nowhere else have I seen anything that comes close--not in the huge PC archives, not in the more special interest archives like those for Psion users. The system Aminet is organized on is nothing special: two levels of directory hierarchy, required mini-descriptions, and a catalog of recent files. But it's amazing how nobody else seems to be able to pull this off. Anyway, enough of that. A new Aminet Set 4 is out, we'll have coverage of that next month. At least those are infrequent enough that I can catch my breath inbetween their issuances...but as Aminet grows, their frequency is becoming more noticable...soon, I'll be at a loss for words on yet another product... Published by Schatztruhe Schatztruhe Veronikastr. 33 45131 Essen Germany +49 201 788778 voice +49 201 798447 fax http://www.schatztruhe.de/ stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de @endnode @node REVIEW2 "Review: FG24" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: FG24 By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== I drew all sorts of parallels between Elsat and Newtek in the first draft of this review. Newtek started their rise to stardom with the Digi-View slow-scan greyscale video digitizer, and look where they are now. However, then I lost the review in another fine example of why sometimes you want to double-check your filenames before you save... ...so I'll be quicker about it this time. Times have changed and the Digi-View, while still charming to some, has had its run. A new breed of video digitizer is here from Elsat of Poland. The FG24 (or Pro-Grab RT as it is known in some markets, but we'll call it the FG24 here) offers realtime 24-bit video snapshotting from a composite or S-Video/SCART (depending on your locale) input. The FG24 is an unassuming grey box with a parallel interface port, one or two video input ports (S-Video/SCART is an option), and a couple of LEDs. It draws power from a separate power supply, which you'll have to provide your own of if you're outside Europe. It's a fairly common spec: 9 V, at least 700 mA of current. (Elsat reports that one of their users told them they got by with 500 mA, but it's not recommended.) I used a full 1 A adapter, so no problems here. Hooking up the FG24 is very simple. A parallel cable is included, or if you're using the A1200 PCMCIA option, you simply plug that in. Connect your video source and power supply, and that's it. The software is easy to install off the single floppy, and contains online documentation only, which is decently written and adequate but not extravagant. (AmigaGuide format only.) There are two ways to drive the FG24--through the custom software included on disk, and through the "ProGrab RT" GIO driver included with Photogenics 1.2 and up. Personally, I find the Photogenics interface to be superior, because PGX is a full-featured image processing program and you'll be likely to want to tweak your image once it's grabbed. In case you're not a Photogenics user, though, you'll have to get familiar with the FG24 software. I did, using the CD32 "no disc in drive" animation through the S-Video port to get acclimated to the way the FG24 software operates. The basic process is this: You pre-select the video type and resolution you'll be grabbing, then go to the preview/grab screen (which uses overlayed screens so is not very graphic-board compatible, another good argument for using the Photogenics grabber). You hold down the mouse button to start viewing the small greyscale previews of the video being fed to the FG24. When you see what you like, just let go and the grab is made. You can then save off the 24-bit buffer for later manipulation in an image processor, or make some rudimentary adjustments from the FG24 software. I recommend the former, since the options are not as well documented as they might be. I noticed that most grabs came out needing a slight color correction from the actual video signal, easily done in an image processor. The grabs themselves were of impeccable quality most of the time, although there was the occasional line static on some grabs. The PCMCIA option allows you to digitize, at a low rate of speed, live video. It even allows synching with a digitizer for included sound. Neat, but it's rather RAM hungry. The FG24 is a high-class device. Using the Photogenics loader is the way to really get the most out of it, but if you can't just be sure you save off the FG24 image as a 24-bit buffer and load it into your image processor of choice. If you're looking for a step up from a Digiview or the like, or simply are looking to get high-quality video scans on your Amiga, professionally or as a hobby, give the FG24 serious consideration. Elsat S.C. Czerniakowska 28b 00-714 Warszawa +48 22 6512506 voice +48 22 6512507 fax sales@elsat.com.pl http://www.elsat.com.pl/english/ @endnode @node REVIEW3 "Review: Personal Paint 7" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: Personal Paint 7 By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== For the past few years, Personal Paint has been surreptitiously establishing itself as the premier Amiga paint package for non-truecolor (24-bit) applications. With the release of PPaint 7, they've sealed it. Cloanto's Personal Paint is not just distinguished by the fact that it has outlasted the former crown princes of paint on the Amiga, DPaint and Brilliance, although it certainly has. It's carved out a special place by offering a very complete set of features, putting it at a reasonable price, and wrapping all of that in true-to-form great Cloanto packaging. :) It's a bit of an inside joke now that any Cloanto product has to have eye-catching packaging. Earlier PPaints shipped in full-color binder/manual combinations with full-color disk labels. But PPaint 7 is a CD-ROM, and not just any regular CD-ROM but a Mini-CD, a format usually reserved for promotional CD audio singles. It's a perfectly valid data format, however, and was perfect for the space needs of PPaint 7 (just under 60 megs, the maximum of the mini-CD format). This, I believe, makes it the smallest piece of Amiga software ever shipped, since a Mini-CD takes up less area than even a single floppy disk. The small folding holder it comes in is quite nice, and was given out on bright red ribbons at the Computer '96 show in Cologne. Most CD-ROM drives have grooves in their trays to allow for mini-CDs, if yours doesn't or you use a CD caddy system, you can get an adapter from Cloanto or elsewhere. But the painting's the important part. Cloanto's PPaint 7 is fully RTG capable, and most particularly is CyberGraphX aware and can exploit it to the fullest, including taking advantage of CyberGraphX to make PPaint 7 totally chip-RAM free, if desired. PPaint 7, like its predecessors, does more than just basic image conversion, allowing you to load and save in a variety of formats, but it provides for some image processing as well. And PPaint 7 allows the creation of the Latest Big Thing in Internet graphics, namely GIF Animations. Getting PPaint 7 installed is a snap. Actually, you don't have to even bother if you prefer, since PPaint 7 will load directly from CD. If not, there's a standard Installer program (strangely holed away in a subdirectory on the CD) which will throw the program onto a hard drive for you. The documentation, as should be no surprise by now, is entirely online in AmigaGuide format. You can almost always pull up an index of links in the document, making it easier to find what you're looking for. The manual does show some vestiges of older versions (including references to backing up disks, etc.) but has been updated to reflect the new version's features. PPaint's drawing interface reflects the generally accepted ways to work in a modern paint program, so there is not a high learning curve if you are unfamiliar with PPaint. Some of the menu options could be more logically laid out, but my suspicion is that they've been placed where they are to more closely resemble DPaint than anything else. My major complaint is that the screenmode is not set under "Graphics", but instead in the image's characteristics. What impresses me most about PPaint is the its breadth. Typically, DPaint and Brilliance advocates expounded on one or two characteristics that they excelled at, but without which they'd be happy to leave their program. PPaint offers the features of image converter and processor as well as painter and animator. PPaint 7 has integrated ARexx support with a number of built-in scripts. Among other things, this means that PPaint can be used in tandem with, say, ImageFX to create some absolutely stunning images and animations. IFX's strong point is image processing, not drawing, although in a pinch it can be used as such. Adding PPaint to the equation opens things up much wider. Nobody's perfect, of course. PPaint does not have the same "power at your fingertips" feel of Brilliance's custom GUI, which seemed to make everything an icon click or two away. The features are there in PPaint, they're just t If you're a TrueBrilliance user, you may have to stick to your guns, or investigate XiPaint 4, since PPaint will not indulge a desire to paint in HAM modes. Most new Amiga owners should at least have a passing familiarity with PPaint, as it was part of AT's bundle program. Others may have first encountered PPaint in the Personal Suite CD-ROM. For these users, PPaint is worth the upgrade for the added RTG capabilities and the added animation capabilities. PPaint is fully 060 compatible, and the chip RAM independence means it will work properly on Dracos. If you've not yet used PPaint, it would be worth your while to investigate your options. PPaint is actively and aggressively supported by Cloanto, not a product at the end of its lifecycle, unsupported by a disinterested company. For the US$75 or so it will run you, you'll gain a lot in power, capabilities, and peace of mind. Cloanto Italia srl PO Box 118 33100 Udine Italy +39 432 545902 voice +39 432 545905 fax http://www.cloanto.com info@cloanto.com e-mail @endnode @node REVIEW4 "Review: System Booster" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: System Booster from Schatztruhe By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== It seems like there's no shortage of freely available utilities and tools to enhance your Amiga experience. To prove the point, Schatztruhe compiled System Booster, a CD with around 600 megs of programs to do everything from hard drive salvage to kill viruses. Much of the software is unarchived on the CD, ready to run. System Booster was actually intended to be the third "issue" in Schatztruhe's "Amiga CD-Sensation" series, which consisted of CDs in plastic sleeves attached to magazine-sized sheets of cardboard. The first, Demos are Forever and Golden Games, were actually sold through conventional magazine distribution channels as an experiment. Unfortunately, the experiment did not go all that well, so after System Booster returned from CD duplication, the CD-Sensation line was scrapped. System Booster is sold in a typical jewel case through the regular Amiga channels. The documentation for the CD itself is provided in both English and German, and an AmigaGuide interface catalogues the CD's contents, and more importantly, has links to all of the documentation for all of the unarchived software, which is a very useful feature if you're trying to decide which tool you want to install on your machine next. As general-interest Amiga software CD compilations go, this one is pretty good by all accounts. The variety of software is thorough, there is a nice amount of good quality fonts, who all have previews directly loadable through the AmigaGuide interface, and the installation is easy--you're advised to use the "assigns" icon so that most everything can directly run from CD, but using the "colors" is optional. The most notable omission would have to be a search utility. This is not an unforgivable problem, but it's an oversight. The collection of software is, on the whole, recent enough to make owning the CD valuable, although you may want to check Aminet for updates to programs you find you like. Of course, it's not exactly going to be shocking when I point out that this software's origin was, by and large, Aminet itself, so if you're an Aminet completist and are comfortable navigating through the Aminet Sets and the Aminet itself, System Booster may not be necessary to have. Schatztruhe Veronikastr. 33 45131 Essen Germany +49 201 788778 voice +49 201 798447 fax http://www.schatztruhe.de/ stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de @endnode @node REVIEW5 "Review: Wordworth Office CD" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: Wordworth Office CD By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== Finally, somebody's done the blatantly obvious. For years now, ever since it became very clear that Amiga software on CD was a very reasonable, inexpensive, and easily distributable method of getting quality products to customers, both members of the Final Writer and Wordworth camps have tried to convince Softwood and Digita, respectively, that what would REALLY make good sense would be for the companies to release "Office" CD-ROMs, in the same vein as Microsoft Office, full of their entire business software libraries. The closest I've seen for Softwood's titles have been dealers who sold Final Writer, Final Data, and Final Calc as bundles at a package discount. Digita, however, has done the obvious thing, and stuffed Wordworth 6, Datastore 2, Organiser 2, and Money Matters 4 onto a CD-ROM. Reviews of these titles as independent entities have been done elsewhere, and it is true enough that the "upgrade" element to Wordworth 6 from 5 is fairly limited. However, the bundle is what's on trial here, so to speak. Digita will sell you Wordworth 6 separately for UKP40 (Or roughly US$65, make allowances for small distribution markups and such.) However, for an extra UKP 10 (US$16 or so), you can have the Office CD. Not too shabby... Wordworth, as Digita claims, is the world's most popular Amiga word processor. This is not entirely surprising since Digita was able to close a deal with AT to put Wordworth on all of its Amigas, and have been selling their product for years now. In version 6, users are treated to new drawing tools, expanded RTF support (to link Wordworth documents to the rest of the world, so to speak), and an expanded base of ARexx commands. The functional engine of Wordworth is still the rather solid foundation of Wordworth 5. Wordworth supports integration with TurboCalc for importing tables directly from the spreadsheet program, and offers more than a basic set of word processor features. For a long-time member of the Final Writer camp, WW is not all that much of a departure. The interfaces are different, but not so far as to cause panic. Both have been closely competitive for some time, and each has their individual advantages over the other. But for text layout and creation, you'll hardly notice the difference--drag and drop, auto correct, they're all there. For my purposes, I notice that WW 6 has what Final Writer dropped: a simple Statistics calculator. (Final Writer now sports a very complex document statistics option, which calculates the grade level you're writing at by a variety of methods. This is actually nice to know, but changes the process of just counting lines and paragraphs into something that takes a measurable amount of time, rather than a more or less instantaneous answer.) FW does have the notable advantage of a grammar checker. Wordworth goes out of its way to help you find a suitable printer, and comes with presets for a large number. The online documentation is supplied in text and AmigaGuide format at the press of a button, and is broken down into digestible pieces, including lists of new features in the last few versions. If you've got an AT-era Amiga, you should have at least a passing familiarity with Datastore and Organiser. Organiser is just that: a personal "keep your appointments, dates, and phone numbers" straight utility, in the tradition of On the Ball and countless others. Organiser is very attractive and easy to navigate, but I prefer my Psion. Datastore is a simple (non-relational) database program. A number of very attractive (For database files, anyway) examples are included to give you the general idea. Datastore hasn't seen much significant improvement since 1994, but it's a solid application. Money Matters 4. This program is heavily aimed at British consumers, so I don't think my insight will be too valuable. There are good tips for anybody who has bills to pay, and you might actually be able to get acceptable results by pretending that you're really talking about your local unit of currency, but it'll be an adventure. The good news is that all of the applications except MM 4 appear stable in an 060/CyberGraphX environment, and typically will run with anywhere from 1 to 3 megs of RAM at full capacity. Money Matters seems unable to remember its RTG screenmode setting, and when exiting likes to crash. The bad news is that the installer program is not quite as respectful of the "Expert" option as one might hope. Specifically, if you have multiple SYS: assigns, it will pick the first one, and if that partition is full, the installation aborts. It would have been far better to respect "Expert" and prompt for drawers for system files such as the fonts the programs like to install. The Wordworth Office is available in both German and English. The price makes it almost silly not to pick up the Office CD over the regular WW 6 if you have the choice. Upgrades are offered from earlier versions of Wordworth. Digita International Black Horse House Exmouth EX8 1JL England +44 1395 270 273 voice +44 1395 268 893 fax sales@digita.demon.co.uk http://www.digita.com @endnode @node REVIEW6 "Review: Chaos Engine 2" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: Chaos Engine 2 By: @{" Ken Anderson " link KEN} =========================================================================== There was a time when eagerly-awaited games were nothing special. Every couple of weeks, the games community would hold its collective breath as the release of another blockbuster title loomed, only to forget it moments after it actually arrived, in favour of the next Big Thing. Sadly, Big Things aren't that common these days, but there's always the odd glimmer of hope, and this time it*s in the shape of The Chaos Engine 2 (TCE2). The Bitmap Brothers were the original "pop star" programmers, regularly pictured looking moody and wearing shades. For a while, they more or less dominated the 16-bit games market with classics such as Xenon, Gods and Cadaver. Classy graphics, stomping music by some of the industries best, and gameplay at a tangent to the norm added the Bitmaps to the Amiga Hall of Fame. The Chaos Engine was their last hit; an odd combination of puzzles and killing, with most people either loved or loathed. TCE2, like its older brother, is inherently a two-player game. When playing solo, the computer takes over as the other character, reacting intelligently to your actions. However, whereas the original game had the computer helping you out, TCE2 sets you against the Amiga player. You have a choice of 4 characters for yourself and your opponent; all with the expected strengths and weaknesses in terms of speed, weapon and intellegence. Then it's off into the arenas, in a straight contest for points. Every level has set challenges and puzzles - kill this, pick up that, push the other and so on; nothing so taxing you'll be there for hours trying to work out what to do. Of course, there are the usual array of creatures in your path to stop you, but they can soon be dispatched with a blast or two from your weapon. Every monster killed, lock opened or puzzle solved earns the player points, and it's the one with the most points at the end of the level that wins. Lose, and it's minus one life and back for another try. Win, and it's onto the next level, with a possible weapon upgrade or an extra life if you earned enough points. The levels themselves are roughly similar in design and appearance to the first game, although not nearly as complicated. As you would expect from the Bitmaps, the graphics are absolutely superb, with a fine eye for detail and imagination. The music is strange atmospheric stuff, which changes depending on the current state of play, but never actually gets in the way of the sound effects. If it were just running around, picking up keys and opening locks to gain points, TCE2 would come off worse in comparison with its prequel. It doesn't have the same puzzle-solving element, and is lacking in atmosphere - and originality - by comparison. The big difference is in the computer player. By pitting you against the computer, you now have a much deadlier enemy; one who doesn*t want to kill you, just to beat you. Stand around doing nothing, and your opponent will quiet happily complete the level by himself, scooping all the points and losing you lives. It learns by mistakes. Employ the tactic of waiting for him to pick up all the required items before beating him up and stealing them all might end up in him doing the same to you next level. All of this greatly extends the games lifetime - each game is rarely the same, because the computer might try something different this time. You might even end up shouting "I saw that key first you #?@%!" at your poor Amiga, which may cause distress to close relatives. TCE2 doesn't install on a hard drive, which is surely just laziness on the coders' part. Apart from this, TCE2 is a triumph; a perfect arcade game that combines action with intellegence. If you liked the original, you'll already have bought the sequel. Even if you didn't enjoy the original Engine, TCE2 offers an insight of what the Amiga does best - a playable, addictive game with just a little bit of thought required. Pros: Clever and well-drawn graphics, and thoughtfully created levels result in a game you enjoy competing against. The computer opponents are truly intelligent, but never unfair. A rare two-player that works just as well with only one human. Cons: No HD install. Sometimes just a bit difficult to work out what is required to complete a level. May cause you to shout at inanimate objects. The Chaos Engine II is published by Renegade software. The Bitmap Brothers/Renegade @endnode @node REVIEW7 "Review: CD32 ProModule" @toc REVIEW =========================================================================== Review: CD32 ProModule from Elsat By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} =========================================================================== About two and a half years ago, I conducted a lengthy review of the CD32's first commercial expansion unit, the SX-1. Produced by Paravision after the company acquired MicroBotics, the SX-1 brought a number of features to the CD32 that were just waiting to be exploited in its Amiga architecture--a serial port, parallel port, IDE controller, external floppy port, RGB out, PC keyboard port, and SIMM slot, to name the most important features. It made it to market, sold quite a few units, and allowed such Amiga based devices as the MagicBox to be born. The SX-1 was not without its problems, however. It increased the CD32's footprint by about 50%, an unwieldy L shaped monster. The RGB port was positioned in such a way that if you used a silver box VGA adapter, the power cable was a tight fit into the CD32. If you hooked up a hard drive, you were pretty sure to have power problems if you had a SIMM or external floppy as well, requiring you replace your CD32 power supply. And worst of all, the SX-1's physical connection to the CD32 was VERY precarious, so that the slightest nudge could be enough to crash the machine and require you jostle around with the SX-1 to get the connection solid again. Of all the complaints filed against the SX-1, this last was the most severe. People wondered why the SX-1 wasn't built to sit UNDER the CD32, which seemed to make a lot more sense. Paravision, and then their absorbing creditor, Hi-Tech Components, made vague promises of a future 030-based CD32 expansion which would fix all these problems. But this has never happened. Somebody--Elsat of Poland, to be specific--did something about it. The CD32 ProModule is a black metal enclosure, with the footprint of the CD32 and about half the height. Some units come with a front-facing built-in floppy drive (double density, much like the modified PC drives used by AT in A1200s and A4000Ts). On the back of the unit is the physical connector for the unit, a power socket for an external power supply (if necessary, Elsat only recommends it if you fully load the unit with peripherals), the RGB port, and the external floppy port. There is also a memory-disable switch to kill the installed SIMM for picky games. Along the left edge (underneath the CD32's joystick/AUX ports) are the 25-pin serial and parallel ports, as well as a 5-pin AT Keyboard port. So far, so good. If you remove the top of the ProModule's case, you're treated to the underside of the Promodule's PCB, where there is the barest minimum of user-servicable components--a SIMM slot, where you can install a SIMM up to 8 megs (but a 1 meg SIMM is not allowed--odd, but true), the floppy drive and connector, the IDE port and a standard 4-pin power plug, and a few jumpers. The IDE port, mounting space, and power all presume a 3.5 inch IDE drive, which sets the ProModule apart from its counterpart SX-1 and SX32 expansion units which expect more expensive 2.5 inch drives. The ProModule has the real estate for a 3.5 inch drive, so why not use it? The last option is the FPU socket and crystal port. This is the most curious feature of the ProModule, although it is not inconceivable that someone dabbling with rendering or image processing could make use of a ProModule-equipped CD32 for some basic work. Installation of your options is fairly easy, as the ProModule is held together by a few small screws and the top lifts off without problems. Getting the unit itself mated to the CD32 was actually more challenging than I anticipated, but nowhere NEAR the headaches of the SX-1 or SX32 (the former's problems are outlined above, and the latter requires you open the CD32's case, a scary experience since it's not the most solidly built Amiga on record and parts are scarce). Once connected, it's far more stable than the SX-1, but doesn't have the "solidly bolted in" aspect of the SX32. It's worth noting here that if you're one of the lucky people who has a Commodore FMV module, the ProModule provides a passthrough for the unit. We don't have one so we were unable to test this particular feature. The ProModule is as transparent or as visible as you make it. The memory disable switch is a nice feature, making it the only CD32 expansion with one. (The SX32 lacks a disable switch of any kind, and the "disable" switch of the SX-1 disables just about everything BUT the memory, which was a strange choice since the memory is the #1 cause of CD32 game incompatibilities.) The floppy drive performed adequately, and while Elsat warns of some compatibility problems with trackloaders, Sensible Soccer behaved itself. My Dell HD floppy also spun up and functioned just find off of the external port. The AT keyboard performs adequately, but be ready for yet another variation of keyboard layout. The SX-1 mapped the Amiga keys to F11 and F12. Elsat instead maps the Amiga keys to the PC control keys (meaning they're roughly in the "right place" and relegates Control to F11 and F12. It's not a terrible idea, but feels about as clumsy. Fortunately, Elsat tells me they have a 104-key support upgrade chip which presumably is shipping in their newest models. The documentation of the unit is sufficient, but poorly edited--some text is lost between pages 1 and 2 of the manual, and text is lost between pages 3 and 4 as well. Stacking the Promodule up against the competition: It's pretty clear that the ProModule supercedes the SX-1. It provides the same functionality, but better, in a more stable fashion with extra features. Compared to the original SX32, they are close to being in the same league-- ProModule Advantages: 3.5 inch IDE HD, built-in floppy, memory disable, FMV passthrough SX32 Advantages: Built-in VGA (15 pin) output, entire unit contained inside the CD32 for transportability and aesthetic value. Of course, you can put a silver box on a ProModule, just as you can any regular Amiga 23 pin port, but the SX32's built in adapter is a good idea. It's not quite fair to compare the ProModule to the new SX32 Pro, which boasts an 030/50 accelerator, since we have not yet actually reviewed the SX32 Pro. Clearly, that sets it a breed apart. If you're a SX32 user, then, you may want to think twice about making the switch to the ProModule. However, if you're a disgruntled SX-1 user or have not yet realized the full potential of your CD32, the ProModule is worth some very serious consideration. Elsat's current pricing: ProModule, with built-in double density floppy, is $229.00 to the US, including international shipping. Prices elsewhere in the world may vary, contact your distributor or Elsat for details. Elsat S.C. Czerniakowska 28b 00-714 Warszawa +48 22 6512506 voice +48 22 6512507 fax sales@elsat.com.pl http://www.elsat.com.pl/english/ @endnode @node CHARTS1 "Aminet Charts: 26-Jan-97" @toc FTP | The most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 26-Jan-97 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Age Description |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- akJFIF43x.lha util/dtype 220K 0+AkJFIF-dt V43.22 (JPEG, 68000-060) mNews1.2b_rel2.lha comm/news 107K 1+MUI news group reader for TCP/IP. V1 akPNG43x.lha util/dtype 196K 0+AkPNG-dt V43.12 (PNG, 68000-060) STFax.lha comm/misc 149K 0+STFax 1.133 - Powerful and user-frie akSVG43x.lha util/dtype 82K 0+AkSVG-dt V43.12 (SVG, 68000-060) ar501.lha docs/mags 107K 0+Amiga Report Magazine 5.01, January animdtc015.lha util/dtype 20K 1+IFF ANIM DataType V1.5, now with sou MiamiMonitor10.lha comm/tcp 10K 0+Packet monitor for Miami 1.9.3 (regg FastExec25.lha util/boot 28K 0+Moves exec.library to fast memory MUI-IControl.lha util/wb 45K 0+IControl prefeditor with extra featu akGIF-Note.lha util/dtype 1K 0+AkGIF-dt *INFORMATION* (GIF, 68000-0 filmdtc014.lha util/dtype 50K 1+IFF FILM DataType V1.4 mwm212.lha comm/www 204K 1+Magic Web Maker v2.12. (3.x OS only) SCSInfo11.lha util/wb 106K 1+Getting informations about SCSI-Peri PNG-Box.lha gfx/conv 48K 0+Converts graphics to PNG for WWW use newsBrowse.txt comm/news 1K 1+Read and post to newsgroups from any boards29.lha util/libs 19K 1+Boards.library V 2.9 - 314 Expansion VersionWB.lha util/sys 24K 1+V2.2 AmigaDos Version replacement. TRSIVW64.lha util/virus 609K 1 V6.4 of the AMIGA viruskiller by M.S IB_pic.lha comm/www 5K 0+Navigation/Picture button replacemen | The highest rated programs during the week until 26-Jan-97 | 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 |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- YAM13_4.lha comm/mail 512K 5+MUI Internet mailer V1.3.4 akPNG43x.lha util/dtype 196K 0+AkPNG-dt V43.12 (PNG, 68000-060) akSVG43x.lha util/dtype 82K 0+AkSVG-dt V43.12 (SVG, 68000-060) ManiacBall.lha game/misc 448K 0+A multiplayer Breakout game V1.4 Graal2a.lha game/role 341K 14+Graphic Adventure Authoring Language SoundBox.lha mods/funk 124K 16+Jazz mod by Accord+Deelite **** RabbitIcons1.lha pix/mwb 1.6M 54+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection FlashFind1.2.lha util/cli 12K 53+Faaast text search tool (2.5MB in 10 ReqToolsUsr.lha util/libs 167K 1+ReqTools 2.8 - the requester toolkit Hydrocis19.lha game/think 194K 53+V1.9, with real time water simulatio PPaint7_Demo.lha biz/cloan 540K 5+Cloanto Personal Paint 7 Demo Softwa amis_html.lha comm/www 17K 3+WYSIWYG HTML editor for AMIS. BlobzHD.lha game/demo 657K 11+`Blobz` Playable demo (AGA+Hard disk PacMan96.lha game/misc 571K 5+Superb PacMan-Clone, systemfriendly aplay221.lha mus/play 659K 3+APlayer - An allround Amiga music pl Flyin-Pics.lha pix/illu 387K 1+Screenshots of a 3D-racing game RabbitIcons10.lha pix/mwb 48K 51+MagicRabbits ICON collection 10 RabbitIcons11.lha pix/mwb 38K 43+MagicRabbits ICON collection 11 RabbitIcons12.lha pix/mwb 88K 36+MagicRabbits ICON collection 12 RabbitIcons13.lha pix/mwb 63K 35+MagicRabbits ICON collection 13 RabbitIcons14.lha pix/mwb 68K 32+MagicRabbits ICON collection 14 RabbitIcons15.lha pix/mwb 138K 4+MagicRabbits ICON collection 15 (For RabbitIcons16.lha pix/mwb 187K 23+MagicRabbits ICON collection 16 RabbitIcons17.lha pix/mwb 281K 14+MagicRabbits ICON collection 17 RabbitIcons18.lha pix/mwb 253K 4+MagicRabbits ICON collection 18 RabbitIcons2.lha pix/mwb 1.2M 53+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons3.lha pix/mwb 1.1M 54+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons4.lha pix/mwb 273K 54+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons5.lha pix/mwb 711K 54+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons6.lha pix/mwb 248K 53+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection @endnode @node CHARTS2 "Aminet Charts: 02-Feb-97" @toc FTP | The most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 2-Feb-97 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Age Description |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- mui37tu1.lha util/libs 22K 0+MagicUserInterface 3.7, 1st tune up mui37usr.lha util/libs 992K 0+MagicUserInterface 3.7, user files MiamiMonitor12.lha comm/tcp 13K 0+Packet monitor for Miami 2.0 (regged CGraphX221u.lha gfx/board 370K 0+CyberGraphX Extension Update V2.21 AmNet12b.lha comm/misc 86K 0+MAJOR FIXES! Unrestricted Internet O v2600.lha misc/emu 115K 0+Atari 2600 emulator for fast AGA Ami tiny3d.lha game/shoot 77K 0+Tiny 3D Tankshooter V0.1 (ECS/AGA/GF ifcheck.lha comm/tcp 8K 0+Check status of SANA-II interface un htmless.lha text/hyper 15K 0+V2.4 Converts HTML files to ASCII te tgz10se.lha util/arc 64K 0+TGZ - Tar Archiver and GZIP in one S CyberAVI18.lha gfx/show 72K 0+AVI animation player for CyberGraphX SpodRacer.lha game/2play 1.1M 0+A fun MultiPlayer Racing Smash-um-up ttviewer.lha gfx/board 238K 0+Viewer for Picasso2 & CyberGraphX v. MemFo.lha util/sys 9K 0+A replacement for the Avail command. muu.lha util/rexx 20K 0+Decodes a dir of UU/base64 coded fil SView.lha gfx/show 922K 0+SuperView V5.72 + Library 15.12 (30. Kewl_WB.jpg pix/wb 371K 0+A snaphot of my Workbench running Wi PicConvert.lha gfx/conv 834K 0+MultiGfx Converter V2.0. Uses NetPBM BancaBase13.lha biz/misc 547K 0+THE Family Budget Management. MyFormat1.18.lha disk/misc 24K 0+Format replacement. OS2.04+ require | The highest rated programs during the week until 2-Feb-97 | 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 |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- akPNG43x.lha util/dtype 196K 1+AkPNG-dt V43.12 (PNG, 68000-060) akSVG43x.lha util/dtype 82K 1+AkSVG-dt V43.12 (SVG, 68000-060) Graal2a.lha game/role 341K 15+Graphic Adventure Authoring Language SoundBox.lha mods/funk 124K 17+Jazz mod by Accord+Deelite **** RabbitIcons1.lha pix/mwb 1.6M 55+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection FlashFind1.2.lha util/cli 12K 54+Faaast text search tool (2.5MB in 10 YAM13_4.lha comm/mail 512K 6+MUI Internet mailer V1.3.4 Hydrocis19.lha game/think 194K 54+V1.9, with real time water simulatio amis_html.lha comm/www 17K 4+WYSIWYG HTML editor for AMIS. aplay221.lha mus/play 659K 4+APlayer - An allround Amiga music pl Flyin-Pics.lha pix/illu 387K 2+Screenshots of a 3D-racing game RabbitIcons10.lha pix/mwb 48K 52+MagicRabbits ICON collection 10 RabbitIcons11.lha pix/mwb 38K 44+MagicRabbits ICON collection 11 RabbitIcons12.lha pix/mwb 88K 37+MagicRabbits ICON collection 12 RabbitIcons13.lha pix/mwb 63K 36+MagicRabbits ICON collection 13 RabbitIcons14.lha pix/mwb 68K 33+MagicRabbits ICON collection 14 RabbitIcons15.lha pix/mwb 138K 5+MagicRabbits ICON collection 15 (For RabbitIcons16.lha pix/mwb 187K 24+MagicRabbits ICON collection 16 RabbitIcons17.lha pix/mwb 281K 15+MagicRabbits ICON collection 17 RabbitIcons18.lha pix/mwb 253K 5+MagicRabbits ICON collection 18 RabbitIcons2.lha pix/mwb 1.2M 54+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons3.lha pix/mwb 1.1M 55+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons4.lha pix/mwb 273K 55+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons5.lha pix/mwb 711K 55+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons6.lha pix/mwb 248K 54+MagicRabbits ICON/Pattern collection RabbitIcons7.lha pix/mwb 1.1M 54+MagicRabbits ICON collection 7 RabbitIcons8.lha pix/mwb 50K 54+MagicRabbits ICON collection 8 RabbitIcons9.lha pix/mwb 45K 54+MagicRabbits ICON collection 9 RabbitPattern1.lha pix/mwb 1.0M 53+MagicRabbits Pattern collection 1 RabbitPattern2.lha pix/mwb 618K 53+MagicRabbits Pattern collection 2 @endnode @node CHARTS3 "Aminet Charts: 16-Feb-97" @toc FTP | The most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 16-Feb-97 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Age Description |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- mui38usr.lha util/libs 1.0M 0+MagicUserInterface 3.8, user files Miami20e.lha comm/tcp 689K 1+TCP/IP stack for easy Internet acces akPNG43x.lha util/dtype 191K 0+AkPNG-dt V43.26 (PNG, 68000-060) mpvdtc017.lha util/dtype 183K 0+MPEG video datatype V1.7 akJFIF43x.lha util/dtype 203K 0+AkJFIF-dt V43.26 (JPEG, 68000-060) aMiPEG_0.7.lha gfx/show 150K 1+MPEG player with support for CyberGr animdtc017.lha util/dtype 20K 0+IFF ANIM DataType V1.7, now with sou SSpeed22.lha util/moni 353K 1+SysSpeed V 2.2 - THE Speedtester ! PBlit_68K.lha biz/cloan 25K 0+Personal 68K Blit Libraries v. 2.1 qt13.lha gfx/show 251K 0+QuickTime player for AGA/CyberGFX. V CA34.lha util/wb 260K 1+ClassAction 3.4 (MUI && GT) akSVG43x.lha util/dtype 70K 0+AkSVG-dt V43.26 (SVG, 68000-060) twilight.lha util/wb 380K 0+The supreme WB enhancement system. AROS-m68k-bin.lha misc/emu 141K 0+AROS 1.10b - Amiga Replacement OS (A New8n1.lha comm/misc 72K 0+Replaces serial.device. V37.30 MPEGAPlayer.lha mus/play 65K 1+MPEG audio DeliTracker player V1.4 6 WebDesign13j.lha comm/www 208K 0+Web Design1.3j html/frames authoring mcx263.lha util/cdity 78K 0+Multi Function Commodity PortDiag.lha hard/hack 10K 1+CIA & other hardware diagnostics SysProt97d.lha util/boot 96K 1+The BEST System Protection Manager V | The highest rated programs during the week until 16-Feb-97 | 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 |----------------- --- ---- --- ----------- akPNG43x.lha util/dtype 191K 0+AkPNG-dt V43.26 (PNG, 68000-060) akSVG43x.lha util/dtype 70K 0+AkSVG-dt V43.26 (SVG, 68000-060) Hydrocis19.lha game/think 194K 56+V1.9, with real time water simulatio GfxLab24-181.lha gfx/conv 619K 17+GfxLab24 v1.8.1. Image Processing pr AlgoMusic1_8.lha mus/misc 1.2M 2+Creates algor. techno tunes. A must- mui37usr.lha util/libs 992K 2+MagicUserInterface 3.7, user files Patch2AmiTCP43.lha biz/patch 514K 44+Patch AmiTCP/IP 4.1/4.2 to AmiTCP/IP Miami20e.lha comm/tcp 689K 1+TCP/IP stack for easy Internet acces Creepy.lha game/shoot 314K 0+Arcade game with brilliant graphics Collector25.lha gfx/misc 263K 1+A powerful picture catalogger. Many Flyin-Pics.lha pix/illu 387K 4+Screenshots of a 3D-racing game MCXP325.lha util/cdity 108K 0+MUI Preferences for MultiCX mcx263.lha util/cdity 78K 0+Multi Function Commodity mui38usr.lha util/libs 1.0M 0+MagicUserInterface 3.8, user files bsii10_1.lha game/2play 657K 4+BattleShipsII v1.0 [1/3] airTaxi.lha game/2play 334K 74+AirTaxi demo v1.4 (25mhz, 1m req). F soliton110.lha game/think 112K 0+Solitaire card game, V1.10 (MUI) NewAvail_1.07.lha util/sys 4K 3+Commodore's avail replacement. V1.07 YAM13_4.lha comm/mail 512K 8+MUI Internet mailer V1.3.4 ar501.lha docs/mags 107K 3+Amiga Report Magazine 5.01, January StormC_Demo1_1.lha biz/demo 1.2M 26+StormC (Demo): ANSI C & C++ Developm RushHour13.lha game/misc 237K 0+Switch traffic lights, Version 1.3 Mines-mgsw.lha game/think 58K 3+The Minesweeper game V2_00 !!!! ML11.lha gfx/misc 12K 88+MagicLayers- moves/sizes windows rea mv_os2_x.lha util/sys 75K 0+OS 2.x MultiView replacement - now w AmTelnet11.lha comm/tcp 137K 1+AmTelnet - Telnet Client (ANSI/VT100 bsii10_2.lha game/2play 670K 4+BattleShipsII v1.0 [2/3] bsii10_3.lha game/2play 452K 4+BattleShipsII v1.0 [3/3] YTZP.lha game/board 275K 1+Yahtzee taken to the next level! @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 majordomo@ninemoons.com Your subject header will be ignored. In the body of the message, enter subscribe areport 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! ** @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.luth.se, ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk @endnode @node WWW "World Wide Web" @toc WHERE World Wide Web ============== AR is also available on the WWW! Some of the mirror sites include a mail form, allowing you to mail to Amiga Report from the web site and some also include a search engine allowing you to search recent issues for specific topics and keywords (if your browser has forms capability). Simply tell your browser to open one of the following URLs (pick a location nearest you for the best performance): Australia http://ArtWorks.apana.org.au/AmigaReport.html http://www.deepwoods.saccii.net.au/ar/menu.html http://www.livewire.com.au/amiga/cucug/ar/ar.html (w/search and mail) http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~pec/amiga.html Germany http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/amiga/ar/ Greece http://www.acropolis.net/clubs/amiga/amigareport/ Hungary http://mm.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/Data/AR Italy http://www.vol.it/mirror/amiga/ar/ar.html Poland http://www.pwr.wroc.pl/AMIGA/AR/ Sweden http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/ar/ United Kingdom http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~gowdy/Amiga/AmigaReport/ http://www.iprom.com/amigaweb/amiga.html/ar/ar.html (w/search and mail) http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/kcci1 USA http://www.cucug.org/ar/ar.html (w/search and mail) http://www.omnipresence.com/Amiga/News/AR/ Additional Amiga information can also be accessed at this URL: http://www.cucug.org/amiga.html Mosaic for the Amiga can be found on Aminet in directory comm/net, or (using anonymous ftp) on max.physics.sunysb.edu @endnode @node COPYRIGHT "Copyright Information" @toc ABOUT =========================================================================== Amiga Report International Online Magazine February 21, 1997 Issue No. 5.02 Copyright 1997 FS Publications All Rights Reserved =========================================================================== Views, Opinions and Articles presented herein are not necessarily those of the editors and staff of Amiga Report International Online Magazine or of FS Publications. Permission to reprint articles is hereby denied, unless otherwise noted. All reprint requests should be directed to the editor. Amiga Report and/or portions therein may not be edited in any way without prior written permission. However, translation into a language other than English is acceptible, provided the editor is notified beforehand and the original meaning is not altered. Amiga Report may be distributed on privately owned not-for-profit bulletin board systems (fees to cover cost of operation are acceptable), and major online services such as (but not limited to) Delphi and Amiga Zone. Distribution on public domain disks is acceptable provided proceeds are only to cover the cost of the disk (e.g. no more than $5 US). CD-ROM compilers should contact the editor. Distribution on for-profit magazine cover disks requires written permission from the editor. Amiga Report is a not-for-profit publication. Amiga Report, at the time of publication, is believed reasonably accurate. Amiga Report, its staff and contributors are not and cannot be held responsible for the use or misuse of information contained herein or the results obtained there from. Amiga Report is not affiliated with Escom AG. All items quoted in whole or in part are done so under the Fair Use Provision of the Copyright Laws of the United States Penal Code. Any Electronic Mail sent to the editors may be reprinted, in whole or in part, without any previous permission of the author, unless said electronic mail is specifically requested not to be reprinted. =========================================================================== @endnode @node GUIDELINE "Amiga Report Writing Guidelines" @toc ABOUT =========================================================================== Amiga Report Writing Guidelines =========================================================================== The three most important requirements for submissions to Amiga Report are: 1. Please use English. 2. Please use paragraphs. It's hard on the eyes to have solid screens of text. If you don't know where to make a paragraph break, guess. 3. Please put a blank line in between paragraphs. It makes formatting the magazine much much easier. 4. Please send us your article in ASCII format. Note: If you want to check ahead of time to make sure we'll print your article, please write to the @{"Editor" link JASON}. Please stipulate as well if you wish to retain copyright or hand it over to the editor. @endnode @node ZONE "CalWeb" @toc ONLINE =========================================================================== CalWeb: The Home of the Amiga Zone! =========================================================================== AMIGA ZONE MOVES TO CALWEB! THE AMIGA ZONE MOVES FROM PORTAL TO CALWEB INTERNET SERVICES For over ten years the Amiga Zone has been an online resource, home, community, oasis, for Amiga owners. For over ten years I've made my living running the Zone and supporting Amiga users all over the USA, Canada, and the world. Five years ago when American People/Link pulled their own plug, we had to find the Zone a new home and we found a good one on the Portal Online System. Well, it's happened again.. Portal has informed all of its customers that its ten year history as an online service and Internet provider is coming to an end on Sept. 30, 1996. This is very sad, it's short-notice, and the decision is completely out of my control, but it's also irreversible. Portal is changing its entire business plan from being an ISP to selling an accounting system to other online services. So be it. It's sad, but like I said, the Zone went through this before and now we'll go through it again, and come out the other side better and wiser. THE AMIGA ZONE IS MOVING TO CALWEB INTERNET SERVICES. CalWeb (http://www.calweb.com) is a two year old Internet provider located in Sacramento, CA. It has a good sized customer base, and very knowledgeable support staff. It's also run by a long time Amiga owner who has been a friend of mine for many years. The world of modeming has changed much in the last ten years. In 1985 you had very few choices and you had 1200 baud. These days, everyone and his dog has an ISP running and a web page But the vast majority of those providers don't know an Amiga from a hole in the ground, and could care less about Amiga owners. Say "AWeb" or "IBrowse" to them and they'll say "Omega? Amoeba? What? Huh? They still make those things?" CalWeb is different because it's the new home of the Amiga Zone. In October 1996, a new custom front-end menued system will be added to CalWeb to host the Zone. It'll have features for Zone users that neither Plink nor Portal ever had nor were they willing to add. The tradition of a friendly online Amiga community, run by long time Amiga owners, users and lovers will continue. Message bases, huge file libraries (we plan to move over the 20,000+ files we have on the Zone on Portal to CalWeb, MANY of which you'll never see on Aminet or anywhere else), live nightly chats, vendor support and our famous prize contests will continue. We've given away tens of thousands of dollars worth of Amiga prizes in the last ten years. No one else even comes close. I urge any and all of you who were on Plink, or who are now on Portal or who may have left Portal.. or even if you were never on either but used or still use another online service to join CalWeb for the Amiga Zone. I personally promise you the best online Amiga community we can possibly build. You will not be disappointed. CalWeb has arranged a special signup offer for you! Call: 1-800-509-9322 or 1-916-641-9320 or telnet to calweb.com, login as "guest", and follow the prompts. You can join CalWeb for US$19.95 flat, a month. CalWeb takes major credit cards or you can establish a monthly invoiced account if you don't have plastic. The signup is FREE. To get this deal you must say "THE AMIGA ZONE SENT ME" when you call or signup online. I hope to see lots of you join CalWeb. You can telnet into it from anywhere for no hourly charges at all. Your $19.95/mo fee covers everything and also gets you ten meg of storage which includes hosting your own personal web page. Naturally, when the Zone opens there, you'll have unlimited use of all of its features and areas. Never a "money meter" clock to worry about. Your personal or business CalWeb Web pages are maintained by you via FTP. It's pretty slick. You can make a net connection to the server with any Amiga FTP client, put your files onto it, the permissions are automatically set (no "chmod-ing" required!) and flip to your running browser and see the changes instantly. The Amiga Zone's new home is already up at: http://www.amigazone.com running on CalWeb's server. Ckeck it out! Please feel free to write to me at harv@amigazone.com or harv@cup.portal.com if you want more information. Remember to say "THE AMIGA ZONE SENT ME!" when you join. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. Please plan to join us in the Amiga Zone on CalWeb! @endnode @node BBS_ASIA "Distribution BBSes - Asia" @toc BBS =========================================================================== Distribution BBSes - Asia =========================================================================== -= IRAN =- * MAVARA BBS * 0098 21 8740815 -=JAPAN=- * GIGA SONIC FACTOR * Email: kfr01002@niftyserve.or.jp +81-(0)564-55-4864 @endnode @node BBS_AUSTRALASIA "Distribution BBSes - Australasia" @toc BBS =========================================================================== Distribution BBSes - Australasia =========================================================================== -=NEW ZEALAND=- * BITSTREAM BBS * FidoNET 3:771/850.0 AmigaNET 41:644/850.0 +64-(0)3-548-5321 -=VICTORIA=- * NORTH WEST AMIGA BBS * mozza@nwamiga.apana.org.au Fido: 3:633/265.0 BBS Phone/Fax: +61 3 9331 2831 @endnode @node BBS_EUROPE "Distribution BBSes - Europe" @toc BBS =========================================================================== Distribution BBSes - Europe =========================================================================== -= BELGUIM =- * VIRTUAL VORTEX BBS * vzpirit@hotmail.com +32-2-3873391 -=DENMARK=- * NEMESIS AMY BBS * boersting@hoa.ping.dk Fido: 2:238/43 +45 75-353726 -=FINLAND=- * HANG UP BBS * (telnettable) helpdesk@hangup.dystopia.fi +358 - 09 - 278 8054 * LAHO BBS * +358-64-414 1516 +358-64-414 0400 +358-64-414 6800 +358-64-423 1300 * KINDERGARTEN * matthias.bartosik@hut.fi +358-0-881 32 36 -=FRANCE=- * DYNAMIX BBS * erlsoft@mcom.mcom.fr +33.1.48.89.96.66 Minitel to Modem * RAMSES THE AMIGA FLYING * Fidonet: 2/320/104-105-106 +33-1-45845623 +33-1-53791200 -=GERMANY=- * DOOM OF DARKNESS * marc_doerre@doom.ping.de +49 (0)4223 8355 19200 AR-Infoservice, kai@doom.gun.de * IMAGINE BBS * Sysop@imagine.commo.mcnet.de +49-69-4304948 Login: GAST (Download area: "Amiga-Report") * LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL * andreas@lbcmbx.in-berlin.de 49-30-8110060 49-30-8122442 Login as User: "amiga", Passwd: "report" * REDEYE BBS * sysop@coolsurf.de Modem/ISDN: +49-89.54662690 Modem only:+49.89.54662680 * STINGRAY DATABASE * sysop@sting-db.zer.sub.org.dbp.de +49 208 496807 * VISION THING BBS * ++49(0)345 663914 System Password: Amiga -=GREECE=- * HELLAS ON LINE * cocos@prometheus.hol.gr Telnet: hellas.hol.gr ++301/ 620-6001, 620-6604, 620-9500 * LOGIC SYSTEMS BBS * Paddy@hol.gr (301) 983-4645 * ODYSSEY BBS * odyssey@acropolis.net Amiganet: 39:250/1.0 ++301-4123502 23.00-09.00 Local Time WWW: www.acropolis.net/~konem/odygb.html -=IRELAND=- * FWIBBLE! * E-Mail: 9517693@ul.ie Fidonet: 2:263/900.0 Phone: +353-902-36124 Midnight to 8am (GMT) Freq "Readme.txt" for details -=ITALY=- * AMIGA PROFESSIONAL BBS * +(39)-49-604488 * AMIPRO BBS* +39-49604488 * DB-LINE SRL * amiga@dbline.it WWW: www.dbline.it +39-332-767383 * FRANZ BBS * mc3510@mclink.it +39/6/6627667 * IDCMP * Fidonet 2:322/405 +39-542-25983 * SPEED OF LIFE * FidoNet 2:335/533 AmigaNet 39:102/12 +39-931-833773 -=NETHERLANDS=- * AMIGA ONLINE BS HEEMSTEDE * Email: sysop@aobh.xs4all.nl Fidonet: 2:280/464.0, 2:280/412.0 +31-23-5471111 +31-23-5470739 * THE HELL BBS * Email : root@hell.xs4all.nl FidoNet: 2:281/418.0 +31-(0)70-3468783 * MACRON BBS HEILOO * Email: macron@cybercomm.nl FidoNet: 2:280/134.0 +31-(0)72-5340903 * TRACE BBS GRONINGEN * Martin@trace.idn.nl FidoNET 2:282/529.0 +31-(0)-50-410143 * WILD PALMS * radavi@xs4all.nl WWW: www.xs4all.nl/~radavi/wildpalms/wildpalm.html +31-(0)30-6037959 * X-TREME BBS * u055231@vm.uci.kun.nl +31-167064414 -=POLAND=- * SILVER DREAM!'S BBS * +48 91 540431 -=PORTUGAL=- * CIUA BBS * denise.ci.ua.pt FidoNet 2:361/9 +351-34-382080/382081 -=RUSSIA=- * NEW ORDER BBS * norder@norder.spb.su FidoNet: 2:5030/221.0 +7-812-2909561 -=SPAIN=- * GURU MEDITATION * +34-1-383-1317 * LA MITAD OSCURA * jovergon@offcampus.es Fido: 2:341/35.19 +34-1-3524613 * MAZAGON - BBS - SYSTEMS * jgomez@maze.mazanet.es FTP: ftp-mail@ftp.mazanet.es +34 59 536267 Login: a-report -=SWEDEN=- * CICERON * a1009@itv.se +46 612 22011 -=SWITZERLAND=- * USE COMMUNICATIONS POP ZUG * wenk@use.ch +41 41 763 17 41 -=TURKIYE=- * NEEDFUL THINGS * Erdinc.Corbaci@beygir.bbs.tr 90-216-3629417 -=UKRAINE=- * AMIGA HOME BBZ * Oleg.Khimich@bbs.te.net.ua FidoNet: 2:467/88.0 +380-482-325043 -=UNITED KINGDOM=- * AMIGA JUNCTION 9 * sysadmin@junct9.demon.co.uk FidoNet: 2:440/20 +44 (0)372 271000 * CREATIONS BBS * mat@darkside.demon.co.uk 2:254/524@Fidonet +44-0181-665-9887 * DRAUGHTFLOW BBS * Ian_Cooper@draught.demon.co.uk +44 (01707) 328484 * METNET CCS * metnet@demon.co.uk FidoNet: 2:2502/129.0 2:2502/130.0 +44-1482-442251 +44-1482-444910 * OCTAMED USER BBS * rbfsoft@cix.compulink.co.uk +44 (01703) 703446 * SCRATCH BBS * kcci1@solx1.susx.ac.uk +44-1273-389267 -=YUGOSLAVIA=- * UNIVERSE BBS * sule@universe.bc.co.ui +381-(0)21-741084 @endnode @node BBS_NAMERICA "Distribution BBSes - North America" @toc BBS =========================================================================== Distribution BBSes - North America =========================================================================== -=ARIZONA=- * MESSENGER OF THE GODS BBS * mercury@primenet.com 602-326-1095 -=BRITISH COLUMBIA=- * COMM-LINK BBS * steve_hooper@comm.tfbbs.wimsey.com Fido: 1:153/210.0 604-945-6192 -=CALIFORNIA=- * TIERRA-MIGA BBS * torment.cts.com FidoNet: 1:202/638.0 619.292.0754 * VIRTUAL PALACE BBS * tibor@ecst.csuchico.edu 916-343-7420 * AMIGA AND IBM ONLY BBS * vonmolk@crash.cts.com AmigaNET: 40:406/7.0 (619)428-4887 -=FLORIDA=- * LAST! AMIGA BBS * (305) 456-0126 -=ILLINOIS=- * PHANTOM'S LAIR * FidoNet: 1:115/469.0 Phantom Net Coordinator: 11:1115/0.0-11:1115/1.0 708-469-9510 708-469-9520 * THE SAGE'S TOWER * johnh@ezl.com FidoNet: 1:2250/7 618-259-1844 * STARSHIP CUCUG * khisel@prairienet.org (217)356-8056 * THE STYGIAN ABYSS BBS * FIDONet-1:115/384.0 312-384-0616 312-384-6250 (FREQ line) -=LOUISIANA=- * The Catacomb * Geoff148@delphi.com 504-882-6576 -=MAINE=- * THE KOBAYASHI ALTERNATIVE BBS * FidoNet: 1:326/404.0 FTP: ftp.tka.com (207)/784-2130 (207)/946-5665 -=MEXICO=- * AMIGA BBS * FidoNet 4:975/7 (5) 887-3080 * AMIGA SERVER BBS * 5158736 * TERCER PLANETA BBS * FX Network 800:525/1 [525]-606-2162 -=MISSISSIPPI=- * THE GATEWAY BBS * stace@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil FidoNet: 1:3604/60.0 601-374-2697 -=MICHIGAN=- * DC PRODUCTIONS * dcpro!chetw@heifetz.msen.com 616-373-0287 -=NEVADA=- * PUP-TEK BBS * darkwolf@accessnv.com 702-553-2403 -=NEW JERSEY=- * T.B.P. VIDEO SLATE * 201-586-3623 * DLTACOM AMIGA BBS * dltacom.camphq.fidonet.org Fidonet: 1:2606/216.0 (201) 398-8559 -=NEW YORK=- * THE BELFRY(!) * stiggy@belfry.org WWW: www.belfry.org 718.793.4796 718.793.4905 -=ONTARIO=- * COMMAND LINE BBS * 416-533-8321 * CYBERSPACE * joehick@ophielia.waterloo.net (519) 579-0072 (519) 579-0173 * EDGE OF REALITY BBS * murray.smith@er.gryn.org Fido: 1:244/320.0 (905)578-5048 -=QUEBEC=- * CLUB AMIGA DE QUEBEC * Internet: snaclaq@megatoon.com Voice: (418) 666-5969 (418) 666-4146 (418) 666-6960 Nom d'usager: AMREPORT Mot de passe: AMIGA * GfxBase BBS* E-mail: ai257@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu Fidonet: 1:167/192 514-769-0565 -=TENNESSEE=- * AMIGA CENTRAL! * root@amicent.raider.net 615-383-9679 * NOVA BBS * FidoNet 1:362/508.0 615-472-9748 -=VIRGINIA=- * NETWORK XXIII DATA SYSTEM * gottfrie@acca.nmsu.edu 804-266-1763 Login: anon Password: nopass -=WASHINGTON=- * FREELAND MAINFRAME * freemf.wa.com (360)412-0228 * PIONEERS BBS * FidoNet: 1:343/54.0 206-775-7983 Login: Long Distance Password: longdistance Or FREQ: AR.lha @endnode @node BBS_SAMERICA "Distribution BBSes - South America" @toc BBS =========================================================================== Distribution BBSes - South America =========================================================================== -=BRAZIL=- * 68000 BBS * vaclav@centroin.com.br AmigaNET-BR: 120:5521/1 +55-21-393-4390 [16-06h (-3GMT)] * LITHIUM SYSTEMS BBS * pa100137@datacontrol.com.br 051-632-2805 (00:00 - 08:30) * STUFF OVERLOAD BBS * dan_cab@lepus.celepar.br AmigaNET-BR: 120:120/0 +55-41-252-9389 @endnode @node DEAL_ASIA "Dealers - Asia" @toc DEALER =========================================================================== Dealers - Asia =========================================================================== -=JAPAN=- Grey Matter Ltd. 1-22-3,Minami Magome HillTop House 2F suite 201 Ota-ku,Tokyo 143 Tel:+81 (0)3 5709-5549 Fax:+81 (0)3 5709-1907 BBS: +81 (0)3 5709-1907 nighty@gmatter.japan-online.or.jp -= MAYLAYSIA =- Innovations Lights & Magic (M) Sdn Bhd, A1106, University Towers, 28, Jalan Universiti, 46200, Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan Tel: +6 03 7544544 Fax: +6 03 7544588 skchiew@pc.jaring.my @endnode @node DEAL_AUSTRALASIA "Dealers - Australasia" @toc DEALER =========================================================================== Dealers - Australasia =========================================================================== -=AUSTRALIA=- Amadeus Computers 1/534 Old Northern Rd Round Corner, NSW 2158 Voice: 02 9651 1711 Fax: 02 9651 1710 WWW: www.amadeus.com.au amadeus@ca.com/au Amiga Genius 826 Hunter St. Newcastle West, NSW 2302 Ph: +61 49 623-222 Fax: +61 49 623-583 cdgtb@hunterlink.net.au Amiga 'n PC Centre Pty Ltd 644 South Road Glandore Adelaide, SA 5037 Phone: (08) 8293 8752 Fax: (08) 8293 8814 melbice@cobweb.com.au Amiga Technologies (Not ESCOM related) 17 Thompson Circuit Mill Park, VIC 3082 Phone: (03) 9436 5555 Fax: (03) 9436 9935 WWW: http://lion.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~laburacj/amitech.html laburacj@lion.cs.latrobe.edu.au Amilight Pty Ltd 47A Tate Street South Perth, Western Australia, 6151 Phone: (09) 367 4422 Fax: (09) 3674482 WWW: www.vianet.net.au/~dwark dwark@vianet.net.au Amitar Home Computer Systems Unit 1, 25 Gillim Drive Kelmscott, WA 6111 Phone: (09) 495 4905 Fax: (09) 495 4905 WWW: http://crystal.com.au/~amitar/ amitar@crystal.com.au Byte One 24 Silverton Drive Ferntree Gully, VIC 3156 Phone: (03) 9752 3991 gordon@ozramp.net.au Computa Magic Pty Ltd 44 Pascoe Vale Road Moonee Ponds, VIC 3039 Phone: (03) 9326 0133 Fax: (03) 9370 8352 Computer Affair 337 Penshurst Street Willoughby, NSW 2068 Phone: (02) 9417 5155 Fax: (02) 9417 5542 WWW: www.computeraffair.com.au sales@computeraffair.com.au Computer Man 611 Beaufort Street Mt. Lawley, WA 6050 Phone: (09) 328 9062 Fax: (09) 275 1010 WWW: www.iinet.net.au/~cman cman@iinet.net.au Desktop Utilities PO BOX 3053 Manuka, ACT 2603 Phone: (06) 239 6658 Fax: (06) 239 6619 WWW: ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/~dtu 100026.1706@compuserve.com Don Quixote Software PO BOX 786 Toowoomba, QLD 4350 Phone: (076) 391 578 Fax: (076) 320 145 donq@tmba.design.net.au Exclusive Computer Systems Street: 34 Weston Street Weston, N.S.W. 2326 Postal: P.O. Box 68, Weston, N.S.W. 2326 Phone: (049) 361213 Fax: (049) 36 1213 Email: peter.archer@fastlink.com.au Fonhoff Computer Supplies Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153 Phone: (02) 9639 7718 Fax: (02) 9639 5995 WWW: http://godzilla.zeta.org.au/~jfonhof jfonhof@zeta.org.au GSoft Shop 4, 2 Anderson Walk Smithfield, SA 5114 Phone: (08) 8284 1266 Fax: (08) 8284 0922 gsoft@cobweb.com.au Image Domain 92 Bridge St Fortitude Valley, Brisbane Queensland Voice: 617-3216-1240 Fax: 617-3852-2720 imagedomain@msn.com Motherboard Computers Suite 19, 9-11 Abel Street Penrith, NSW 2750 Phone: (047) 222 803 Fax: (047) 215 277 WWW: www.pnc.com.au/~mother mother@pnc.com.au MVB 506-508 Dorset Road Croydon, VIC 3136 Phone: (03) 9725 6255 Fax: (03) 9725 6766 Sigmacom Suite 16, 20-24 Gibbs Street Miranda, NSW 2228 Phone: (02) 9524 9846 Fax: (02) 9549 4554 WWW: www.sigma.com.au Software Buyers Service PO BOX 734 Belmont, VIC 3216 Phone/Fax: (052) 431 445 arne@euphoria.bay.net.au Software Circus 27 Darling Street Kensington, NSW 2033 Phone: (02) 9313 8484 Synapse Computers 190 Riding Road Hawthorne, Brisbane Queensland 4171 Voice/Fax: +61 7-3899-0980 WWW: www.powerup.com.au/~synapse/ synapse@powerup.com.au Unitech Electronics Pty. Ltd. / Maverick Amiga 8B Tummul Place St. Andrews, Sydney 2566 Voice: +61 2 9820 3555 Fax: +61 2 9603 8685 Valhalla: Games and Hobbies 493 Wellington Street Perth, 6000 Phone: (09) 321 2909 Westcomp 96 Bentinck Street Bathurst, NSW 2795 Phone: (063) 322 611 Fax: (063) 322 623 -=NEW ZEALAND=- CompKarori LG/F Karori Shopping Mall Karori, Wellington Tel: +64 4 476-0212 Fax: +64 4 476-9088 WWW: www.compkarori.co.nz Email: sales@compkarori.co.nz @endnode @node DEAL_EUROPE "Dealers - Europe" @toc DEALER =========================================================================== Dealers - Europe =========================================================================== -=AUSTRIA=- A.R.T. Computeranimation Ges.m.b.H. Feldstrasse 13 3300 Amstetten Tel: +43 7472/63566-0 Fax: +43 7472/63566-6 Solaris Computec Ges.m.b.H. Mariahilfpark 1 A-6020 Innsbruck Tel: ++43-512/272724 Fax: ++43-512/272724-2 solaris@computec.co.at -=BELGIUM=- AVM Technology Rue de Rotheux, 279 B-4100 Seraing Voice: +32 (0)41 38.16.06 Fax: +32 (0)41 38.15.69 defraj@mail.interpac.be CLICK! N.V. Boomsesteenweg 468 B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen Voice: +32 (0)3 828.18.15 Fax: +32 (0)3 828.67.36 vanhoutv@nbre.nfe.be Generation Amiga Rue Hotel des Monnaies, 120-122 B-1060 Bruxelles Voice: +32-2-538.93.60 Fax: +32-2-538.91.35 WWW: www.genamiga.arc.be/genamiga/ Email: genamiga@arcadia.be -=BULGARIA=- KlubVerband ITA Gmbh 1309 Sofia P.F.13, KukushStr. 1-2 Contact: Dr. ING B. Pavlov Tel: +359-2-221471 Fax: +359-2-230062 KVITA@VIRBUS.BG -=DENMARK=- Data Service Att. Soren Petersen Kaerhaven2a 2th 6400 Sonderborg Phone/Fax: +45 74 43 17 36 sorpe-95@sdbg.ih.dk -=FINLAND=- Gentle Eye ky PL 8 33841 Tampere Phone: 358-3-363-0048 Fax: 358-3-363-0058 WWW: www.ge.vip.fi ge@vip.fi Lincware Computers Ltd Lovkullankuja 3 10300 KARJAA Voice: +358-50-5573696 Fax: +358-11-231511 linctech@freenet.hut.fi -=FRANCE=- ASCII Informatique 10 Rue de Lepante 06000 NICE Tel: (33) 93 13 08 66 Fax: (33) 93 13 90 95 Quartz Infomatique 2 bis, avenue de Brogny F-74000 ANNECY Tel./Fax: +33 50.52.83.31 tcp@imaginet.fr -=GERMANY=- AMItech Systems GmbH Ludwigstrasse 4 D-95028 Hof/Saale Voice: +49 9281 142812 Fax: +49 9281 142712 WWW: www.hof.baynet.de/~mediatech mediatech@hof.baynet.de dcp, desing+commercial partner GmbH Alfredstr. 1 D-22087 Hamburg Tel.: + 49 40 251176 Fax: +49 40 2518567 WWW: www.dcp.de info@dcp.de Hartmann & Riedel GdbR Hertzstr. 33 D-76287 Rheinstetten Voice: +49 (7242) 2021 Fax: +49 (7242) 2167 rick@p22.aop.schiele-ct.de Please call before visiting Hirsch & Wolf OHG Mittelstra_e 33 D-56564 Neuwied Voice: +49 (2631) 8399-0 Fax: +49 (2631) 8399-31 Pro Video Elektronik Roßmarkt 38 D-63739 Aschaffenburg Tel: (49) 6021 15713 Fax: (49) 6021 15713 -=ITALY=- C.A.T.M.U. snc Casella Postale 63 10023 Chieri (TO) Tel/Fax: +39 11 9415237 fer@inrete.it (Ferruccio Zamuner) Cloanto Italia srl Via G. B. Bison 24 33100 Udine Tel: +39 432 545902 Fax: +39 432 609051 WWW: www.cloanto.com info@cloanto.com -=NETHERLANDS=- Chaos Systems Watermolen 18 NL-1622 LG Hoorn (NH) Voice: +31-(0)229-233922 Fax/Data: +31-(0)229-TBA WWW: gene.fwi.uva.nl/~marioh/ marioh@fwi.uva.nl -=NORWAY=- Applause Data AS Storgaten 31 Postboks 143 2830 Raufoss Voice: +47 61 19 03 80 Fax: +47 61 19 05 80 WWW: www.applause.no post@applause.no -=SPAIN=- Amiga Center Argullós, 127 08016 Barcelona Tel: (93) 276 38 06 Fax: (93) 276 30 80 Amiga Center Alicante Segura, 27 03004 Alicante Tel: (96) 514 37 34 Audio Vision San Jose, 53 Gijon (Asturias) Tel: (98) 535 24 79 Centro Informático Boadilla Convento, 6 28660 Boadilla del Monte (Madrid) Tel: (91) 632 27 65 Fax: (91) 632 10 99 Centro Mail Tel: (91) 380 28 92 C.R.E. San Francisco, 85 48003 Bilbao (Vizcaya) Tel: (94) 444 98 84 Fax: (94) 444 98 84 Donosti Frame Avda. de Madrid, 15 20011 San Sebastián (Guipuzcoa) Tel: (943) 42 07 45 Fax: (943) 42 45 88 Eurobit Informatica C/. Gral. Garcia de la Herran, 4 11100 - San Fernando Cadiz Tel/Fax: (956) 896375 GaliFrame Galerías Príncipe, 22 Vigo (Pontevedra) Tel: (986) 22 89 94 Fax: (986) 22 89 94 Invision San Isidro, 12-18 28850 Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) Tel: (91) 676 20 56/59 Fax: (91) 656 10 04 Invision Salamanca, 53 46005 Valencia Tel: (96) 395 02 43/44 Fax: (96) 395 02 44 Norsoft Bedoya, 4-6 32003 Orense Tel: (988) 24 90 46 Fax: (988) 23 42 07 PiXeLSOFT Felipe II, 3bis 34004 Palencia Tel: (979) 71 27 00 Fax: (979) 71 28 28 Tu Amiga Ordinadors C/ Progreso, 6 08120 La LLagosta (Barcelona) Tel: +34-3-5603604 Fax: +34-3-5603607 vb soft Provenza, 436 08025 Barcelona Tel: (93) 456 15 45 Fax: (93) 456 15 45 -=NORWAY=- DataKompaniet ANS Trondheim Innovation Centre Prof. Brochs gt. 6 N-7030 Trondheim Tel: +47 7354 0375 Fax: +47 7394 3861 WWW: www.datakompaniet.no post@datakompaniet.no Sezam Software Ulsmĺgveien 11a N-5o5o Nesttun Tel/Fax: +47 55100070 (9-20) ABBS: +47 55101730 (24t) Email: oleksy@telepost.no -=SWEDEN=- DataVision Box 1305 753 11 Uppsala Street Address: Sysslomansgatan 9 Orders: +46 (0)18-123400 Shop: +46 (0)18-124009 Fax: +46 (0)18-100650 Orebro Videoreklam Slottsgatan 12 703 61 OREBRO Tel/Fax: +46 (0)19-123807 WWW: www.flevel.co.uk/videoking videoking@mbox200.swipnet.se -=SWITZERLAND=- RELEC Software & Hardware AMIGA Village du Levant 2B CH 1530 PAYERNE Tel: +26 660 02 82 Fax: +26 660 0283 Relec@com.mcnet.ch Studio 4D Deinikonerstrasse 14 6340 Baar Voice: +41 41 763 17 47 Fax: +41 41 763 17 48 studio4d@zug.use.ch -=UNITED KINGDOM=- 5DLicenceware 1 Lower Mill Close Goldthorpe Rotherham South Yorkshire S63 9BY Tel/Fax: 01709 888127 WWW: www.ware5d.demon.co.uk phil@ware5d.demon.co.uk Almathera Systems Ltd Southerton House Boundary Business Court 92-94 Church Road Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3TD Voice: 081 687 0040 Fax: 081 687 0490 Sales: almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk Tech: jralph@cix.compulink.co.uk Brian Fowler Computers Ltd 90 South Street Exeter, Devon EX1 1EN Voice: (01392) 499 755 Fax: (01392) 493 393 brian_fowler@cix.compulink.co.uk Computer Magic Unit 8 Freemans Yard Doncaster Road, Barnsley S71 1QH Tel: 01226 218255 / 0378 425281 Visage Computers 27 Watnall Road Hucknall, Nottingham Tel: +44 (0)115 9642828 Tel/Fax: +44 (0)115 9642898 visage@innotts.co.uk @endnode @node DEAL_NAMERICA "Dealers - North America" @toc DEALER =========================================================================== Dealers - North America =========================================================================== -=CANADA=- Animax Multimedia, Inc. Willow Tree Tower 6009 Quinpool Road, Suite 802 Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 5J7 Ph: (902) 429-1921 Fax: (902) 429-1923 WWW: www.animax.com/ info@animax.com APC Computer Services 402-5 Tangreen Crt Willowdale, Ont. M2M 3Z1 Voice/Fax: (416) 733-1434 WWW: www.interlog.com/~shadow/apccomp.html shadow@interlog.com Atlantis Kobetek Inc. 1496 Lower Water St. Halifax, NS / B3J 1R9 Phone: (902)-422-6556 Fax: (902)-423-9339 atkobetek@ra.isisnet.com Atlas Computers & Consulting - Derek Davlut 400 Telstar Avenue Suite 701 Sudbury, ON / P3E 5V7 Phone: (705) 522-1923 Fax: (705) 522-1923 s2200147@nickel.laurentian.ca CineReal Pro-Video 272 Avondale Avenue Ottawa, Ontario K1Z 7G8 Phone/Fax: (613) 798-8150 (Call first to fax) cinereal@proton.com Computer Shop of Calgary, Ltd. 3515 - 18th Street S.W. Calgary, Alberta T2T 4T9 Ph. 1-403-243-4358 Fx: 1-403-243-2684 WWW: www.canuck.com/cshop austin@canuck.com Computerology Direct Powell River, BC V8A-4Z3 Orders/inquiries: 604/483-3679 (24h) Ask for HEAD SALES REP for quicker response! Comspec Communications Inc 74 Wingold Ave Toronto, Ontario M6B 1P5 Computer Centre: (416) 785-8348 Sales: (416) 785-3553 Fax: 416-785-3668 bryanf@comcorp.comspec.com, bryanf@accesspt.north.net ElectroMike Inc. 1375 Boul. Charest Ouest Quebec, Quebec G1N2E7 Tel: (418) 681-4138, (800) 463-1501 Fax: (418) 681-5880 Forest Diskasaurus 35 Albert St., P.O.Box 84 Forest, Ontario N0N 1J0 Tel/Fax: 519-786-2454 saurus@xcelco.on.ca FranTek 5-353 McArthur Avenue Vanier, Ontario K1L 6N5 Phone: (613) 746-7854 ext 3 Fax/Modem: (613) 746-7854 WWW: www.travel-net.com/~frantek frantek@travel-net.com GfxBase Electronique, Inc 1727 Shevchenko Montreal, Quebec Voice: 514-367-2575 Fax: 514-367-5265 BBS: 514-769-0565 Le Groupe PowerLand 630 Champagne Rosemere, Quebec J7A 4K9 Voice: 514-893-6296 Fax/BBS: 514-965-7295 mchabot@nationalnet.com National Amiga Oakville, Ontario Fax: 905-845-3295 WWW: www.interlog.com/~gscott/NationalAmiga.html gscott@interlog.com Oby's Amigo Computing Shop 765 Barrydowne Rd Sudbury, Ontario P3A 3T6 Voice/Fax: (705)524-5826 WWW: icewall.vianet.on.ca/pages/obys obys@vianet.on.ca Oshawa Amiga Oshawa, ON L1J 5J8 Phone: (905) 728-7048 mjacula@idirect.com Randomize Computers R.R. #2 Tottenham, Ont. L0G 1W0 vox: 905-939-8371 fax: 905-939-8745 WWW: www.interlog.com/~randomize/ randomize@interlog.com Software Supermart 11010 - 101 Street Edmonton, Alberta T5H-2T1 Voice: (403) 425-0691 Fax: (403) 426-1701 ssmart@planet.eon.net SpectrumTech Electronics Contact: Derek Clarke 412-1205 Fennell Avenue East Hamilton, ON L8T 1T1 Voice: (905) 388-9575 BBS: (905) 388-2542 ste@spectrum.gryn.org Valley Soft P.O. Box 864 Pembroke, Ontario K8A 7M5 Phone: (613) 732-7700 Fax: (613) 732-8477 WWW: www.renc.igs.net/~valsoft Wonder Computers Ottawa Retail Store 1315 Richmond Road Ottawa, Ontario K2B 8J7 Voice: (613) 721-1800 Fax: 613-721-6992 WWW: www.wonder.ca Wonder Computers Vancouver Sales Office 2229 Edinburgh St. New Westminster, BC W3M 2Y2 Voice: (604) 524-2151 young monkey studios 797 Mitchell Street Fredericton, NB E3B 3S8 Phone: (506) 459-7088 Fax: (506) 459-7099 sales@youngmonkey.ca -=UNITED STATES=- A&D Computer 211 South St. Milford, NH 03055-3743 Voice/Fax: 603-672-4700 BBS: 603-673-2788 amiga@mv.mv.com Alex Electronics 597 Circlewood Dr. Paradise, CA 95969 Voice/Fax: 916-872-3722 BBS: 915-872-3711 WWW: www.wordbench.com/ alex@wordbench.com Amigability Computers P.O. Box 572 Plantsville, CT 06479 Voice: 203-276-8175 caldi@pcnet.com Amiga-Crossing PO Box 12A Cumberland Center, ME 04021 Voice: (800) 498-3959 (Maine only Voice: (207) 829-3959 Fax: (207) 829-3522 amiga-x@tka.com Amiga Library Services 610 Alma School Rd, #18 Chandler, Az 85224-3687 Voice: (800) 804-0833 Fax: (602) 491-0048 orders@ninemoons.com Amiga Video Solutions 1568 Randolph Avenue St. Paul, MN 55105 Voice: 612-698-1175 Fax: 612-224-3823 BBS: 612-698-1918 wohno001@maroon.tc.umn.edu Applied Multimedia Inc. 89 Northill St. Stamford, CT 06907 Voice: (203) 348-0108 Apogee Technologies 1851 University Parkway Sarasota, FL 34243 Voice: 813-355-6121 Apogee@cup.portal.com Armadillo Brothers 753 East 3300 South Salt Lake City, Utah Voice: 801-484-2791 B.GRAY@genie.geis.com Computer Advantage 7370 Hickman Road Des Moines, IA 50322 Voice/Fax: 515-252-6167 Number1@netins.net Computer Concepts 18001 Bothell-Everett Hwy, Suite "0" Bothell, WA 98012 Voice: (206) 481-3666 Computer Link 6573 middlebelt Garden City MI 48135 Voice: 313-522-6005 Fax: 313-522-3119 clink@m-net.arbornet.org The Computer Room 2760 South Havana Street Aurora, Colorado 80014 Voice: 303-696-8973 WWW: www.computerroom.com Email: sales@computerroom.com The Computer Source 515 Kings Highway East Fairfield, CT 06432 Voice: (203) 336-3100 Fax: (203) 335-3259 Computers International, Inc. 5415 Hixson Pike Chattanooga, TN 37343 Voice: 615-843-0630 Computerwise Computers 3006 North Main Logan, UT 84322 Concord Computer Solutions 2745 Concord Blvd. Suite 5 Concord, CA 94519 Orders: 1-888-80-AMIGA Info/Tech: 510-680-0143 BBS/Fax: 510-680-4987 WWW: www.ccompsol.com/ moxley@value.net CPU Inc. 5168 East 65th St. Indianapolis, IN 46220 Voice: 317-577-3677 Fax: 317-577-1500 cpuken@indy.net CyberTech Labs PO Box 56941 North Pole, Alaska 99705 Vox: (907) 451-3285 BBS1: (907) 488-2547 BBS2 & Fax: (907) 488-2647 71516.600@CompuServe.com DC Productions 218 Stockbridge Avenue Kalamazoo, MI 49001 Phone: (616)373-1985 (800)9DC-PROD dcpro!chetw@heifetz.msen.com Digital Arts 1321 North Walnut P.O. Box 5206 Bloomington, IN 47807-5206 Voice: (812)330-0124 Fax: (812)330-0126 BIX: msears Digital Castle 4046 Hubbell Ave. Suite 155 Des Moines, IA 50317-4434 Voice: (515) 266-5098 Sheep@netins.net Digital F/X, Inc. 1930 Maple, Suite 7 North Bend, OR 97459 Voice: (800) 202-3285 / (541) 756-6693 WWW: www.digital-fx.com DFX@Mail.coos.or.us Discount Computer Sales 1100 Sunset Strip #5 Sunrise, FL 33313 Voice: 954-797-9402 Fax: 954-797-2999 DCS@aii.net, DCS@interpoint.net Electronic Connection 635 Penn Ave West Reading, PA 19611 Phone: 610-372-1010 Fax: 610-378-0996 Hawkeye Communication 1324 Fifth Street Coralville, Iowa 52241 Voice: 319-354-3354 Hawkcom@inav.net HHH Enterprises Contact: Tom Harmon PO Box 10 Hartwood, VA 22471 Voice: (540) 752-2100 ko4ox@erols.com HT Electronics 211 Lathrop Way, Ste. A. Sacramento, CA 95815 V: (916) 925-0900 F: (916) 925-2829 BIX: msears HT Electronics 422 S. Hillview Dr. Milipitas, CA 95035 V: (408) 934-7700 F: (408) 934-7717 BIX: msears Industrial Video, Inc. Contact: John Gray 1601 North Ridge Rd. Lorain, OH 44055 Voice: 800-362-6150, 216-233-4000 af741@cleveland.freenet.edu Kipp Visual Systems 360-C Christopher Ave. Gaithersburg Md, 20878 Voice: 301-670-7906 kipp@rasputin.umd.edu Krulewich Enterprises 554 Vega Dr Corpus Christi, TX 78418 Voice: (512) 937-4624 1040.3444@compuserve.com The Lively Computer - Tom Lively 8314 Parkway Dr. La Mesa, CA 91942 Voice: 619-589-9455 Fax: 619-589-5230 tlively@connectnet.com Magic Page Contact: Patrick Smith 3043 Luther Street Winston-Salem, NC 27127 Voice/Fax: 910-785-3695 spiff@ix.netcom.com MicroSearch 9000 US 59 South, Suite 330 Houston, Texas Voice: 713-988-2818 Fax: 713-995-4994 MicroTech Solutions, Inc. 17W745 Butterfield Road, Suite F Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181 Phone: 630-495-4069 Fax: 630-495-4245 WWW: www.mt-inc.com info@mt-inc.com Mr. Hardware Computers P.O. Box 148 / 59 Storey Ave. Central Islip, NY 11722 Voice: 516-234-8110 Fax: 516-234-8110 A.M.U.G. BBS: 516-234-6046 Paxtron Corporation 28 Grove Street Spring Valley, NY 10977 Voice: 914-576-6522 Orders: 800-815-3241 Fax: 914-624-3239 PSI Animations 17924 SW Pilkington Road Lake Oswego, OR 97035 Voice: 503-624-8185 PSIANIM@agora.rain.com Raymond Commodore Amiga 795 Raymond Avenue St. Paul, MN 55114-1521 Voice: 612-642-9890 Fax: 612-642-9891 BBS: 612-874-8342 WWW: www.visi.com/~raycomp raycomp@visi.com Safe Harbor Computers W226 N900 Eastmound Dr Waukesha, WI 53186 Orders: 800-544-6599 Fax: 414-548-8130 WWW: www.sharbor.com Slipped Disk 170 E 12 Mile Rd Madison Heights, Michigan 48071 Voice: (810) 546-DISK BBS: (810) 399-1292 Software Plus Chicago 2945 W Peterson Suite 209 Chicago, Illinois Voice: 312-878-7800 System Eyes Computer Store 730M Milford Rd Ste 345 Merrimack, NH 03054-4642 Voice: (603) 4244-1188 Fax: (603) 424-3939 j_sauter@systemeye.ultranet.com TJ's Unlimited P.O. Box #354 North Greece, NY 14515-0354 Voice: 716-225-5810 BBS: 716-225-8631 neil@rochgte.fidonet.org Zipperware 76 South Main St. Seattle, WA 98104 Voice: 206-223-1107 Fax: 206-223-9395 WWW: www.speakeasy.org/zipperware zipware@nwlink.com @endnode @node OPINION "Editorial and Opinion" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Editorial and Opinion =========================================================================== @{" compt.sys.editor.desk " link EDITORIAL} February 21 and all's well @{" Getting Back To Our Roots " link OPINION2} Grassroots suggestions from a veteran @{" Just Use It! " link OPINION1} Yeah! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node NEWS "News & Press Releases" @toc MENU =========================================================================== News & Press Releases =========================================================================== @{" PPaint 7 Overcomes Chip RAM " link NEWS2} Take full advantage of CyberGraphX @{" Cloanto Support On Internet " link NEWS3} Cloanto's realm of product support @{" Amiga Online Magazine " link NEWS1} The French/English online resource @{" Amiga Informer News " link NEWS6} The Informer, looking for material @{" NewTekniques Subscriptions " link NEWS7} The "VTU Successor" mag is launched @{" Nova Design Demo Tape " link NEWS11} See IFX and Aladdin in action! @{" Nova Design New Address " link NEWS12} They moved. One office or so. @{" Authored On Amiga " link NEWS4} Show your Web colors! @{" AmiTech '97 " link NEWS40} April Amiga conference in Sweden @{" Wildfire " link NEWS5} A new image processor @{" Uropa˛ Goes Commercial " link NEWS8} Vulcan's upcoming title @{" Voyager-NG Prerelease " link NEWS9} Amiga browsers, meet frames... @{" fMSX Amiga 1.2 " link NEWS10} The latest MSX emulation @{" Frodo v4.0 " link NEWS13} The extensive C64 emulator @{" WormsDC News " link NEWS14} Straight from the Worm's, um, mouth. @{" PowerCon Info Pack " link NEWS39} The Montreal computer expo @{" amiSpider Search Engine " link NEWS15} Find what you want on the Web @{" Fairy Point/M 2.0-#103 " link NEWS16} Janus mail handling for the Amiga @{" Mail Manager v1.21 " link NEWS17} Fidonet mail handling for the Amiga @{" AmiWeb2c 2.0 " link NEWS18} Amiga port of UNIX-TeX @{" WormGame v1.10 " link NEWS19} A classic, right on your WB @{" NetHack 3.2.1 " link NEWS21} Even more classic than Worm. @{" BattleDuel V1.5.42 " link NEWS22} Artillery Duel for the 90's @{" Virus Checker " link NEWS24} Once again, up for grabs. @{" MagiC64 v1.5 " link NEWS25} The other extensive C64 emulator @{" Sort v1.60 " link NEWS26} Sort your files in A-Z order @{" Gui4Cli v2.0 " link NEWS28} GUI builder for the masses @{" Config v1.01 " link NEWS29} Easy access to configuration files @{" Conk v0.90 " link NEWS30} The game development system @{" AmigaGadget 25 " link NEWS31} The latest of the online magazine @{" Insert104 " link NEWS32} National Amiga's PC keyboard device @{" Oberon System V4 " link NEWS33} The latest Oberon implementation @{" Sagittarius Software " link NEWS34} Importer of Vulcan and 5D in the US @{" Time.mcc v12.1 " link NEWS23} A new MUI class @{" TimeString.mcc v12.2 " link NEWS27} A new MUI class @{" RealAudio Attempt " link NEWS35} An attempt to grab some attention @{" UltraAccounts 3.5 " link NEWS36} Track personal accounting info @{" IARS WWW Form " link NEWS37} Another Amiga survey... @{" Speculator 97 " link NEWS38} Another in the Spectrum emulation fray @{" ClickBOOM News " link NEWS41} CP 1.1 patch and new web site @{" GTI Sales Charts " link NEWS20} Distributor sales charts --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node FEATURE "Featured Articles" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Featured Articles =========================================================================== @{" CDTV Retrospective II " link FEATURE1} More from the vaults @{" Java And The Amiga " link FEATURE2} A look ahead... @{" IPISA 96 " link FEATURE3} The famous conference revealed --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node REVIEW "Reviews" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Reviews =========================================================================== @{" FG24 " link REVIEW2} 24-bit realtime frame grabber @{" CD32 ProModule " link REVIEW7} SX-1, meet your better. @{" Personal Paint 7 " link REVIEW3} GIF Anims, CPU blitting, oh my! @{" Chaos Engine 2 " link REVIEW6} Ken blasts through the madness @{" Aminet 17 " link REVIEW1} The saga continues! @{" System Booster " link REVIEW4} The CD for Amiga tweaks @{" Wordworth Office CD " link REVIEW5} A full productivity suite on a CD --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node FTP "Aminet Charts" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Aminet Charts =========================================================================== @{" 26-Jan-97 " link CHARTS1} @{" 02-Feb-97 " link CHARTS2} @{" 16-Feb-97 " link CHARTS3} --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node ABOUT "About AMIGA REPORT" @toc MENU =========================================================================== About AMIGA REPORT =========================================================================== @{" AR Staff " link STAFF} The Editors and writers @{" Writing Guidelines " link GUIDELINE} What you need to do to write for us @{" Copyright Information " link COPYRIGHT} The legal stuff --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node STAFF "The Staff" @toc ABOUT =========================================================================== The Staff =========================================================================== Editor: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON} Assistant Editor: @{" Katherine Nelson " link KATIE} Games Editor: @{" Ken Anderson " link KEN} Contributing Editor: @{" William Near " link WILLIAM} Contributing Editor: @{" Bohus Blahut " link BOHUS} --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node WHERE "Where to Get AR" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Where to Get AR =========================================================================== @{" The AR Mailing List " link MAILLIST} @{" Aminet " link AMINET} @{" World Wide Web " link WWW} @{" Distribution Sites " link BBS} @{" Commercial Services " link ZONE} --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node BBS "Distribution Sites" @toc WHERE =========================================================================== Distribution BBSes =========================================================================== Arranged by Continent: @{" Asia " link BBS_ASIA} @{" Australasia " link BBS_AUSTRALASIA} @{" Europe " link BBS_EUROPE} @{" North America " link BBS_NAMERICA} @{" South America " link BBS_SAMERICA} Sysops: To have your name added, please send @{"Email", link JASON} with the BBS name, its location (Country, province/state) your name, any internet/fidonet addresses, and the phone number of your BBS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adv @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode @node DEALER "Dealer Directory" @toc MENU =========================================================================== Dealer Directory =========================================================================== Arranged by Continent: @{" Asia " link DEAL_ASIA} @{" Australasia " link DEAL_AUSTRALASIA} @{" Europe " link DEAL_EUROPE} @{" North America " link DEAL_NAMERICA} Dealers: To have your name added, please send @{"Email", link JASON} with the BBS name, its location (Country, province/state) your name, any internet/fidonet addresses, and the phone number of your dealership --------------------------------------------------------------------------- @{" News " link NEWS} @{" Opinion " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{" Reviews " link REVIEW} @{" Charts " link FTP} @{" Adverts " link COMMERCIAL} @endnode