@database "ar234.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report Online Magazine #2.34 -- December 18, 1994" @{" Turn the Page " link "menu"} _ ____ ___ ______ _______ _ d# ####b g#00 `N##0" _agN#0P0N# d# d## jN## j##F J## _dN0" " d## .#]## _P ##L jN##F ### g#0" .#]## dE_j## # 0## jF ##F j##F j##' ______ dE_j## .0"""N## d" ##L0 ##F 0## 0## "9##F" .0"""5## .dF' ]## jF ##0 ##F ##F `##k d## .dF' j## .g#_ _j##___g#__ ]N _j##L_ _d##L_ `#Nh___g#N' .g#_ _j##__ """"" """"""""""" " """""" """""" """"""" """"" """""" ###### ###### ###### ###### ###### ######## TM ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ### ###### ## ###### ## ### ## International Online Magazine "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!" Copyright 1994 Skynet Publications All Rights Reserved // =====================================//==================================== == December 18, 1994 \\// Issue No. 2.34 == =========================================================================== @endnode @node "menu" "Amiga Report Main Menu" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Main Menu == =========================================================================== @{" Editorial and Opinion " link P1} @{" News and Features " link P2} @{" Reviews " link P3} @{" Reader Mail " link P4} @{" FTP and Product Announcements " link P2-2} ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @{" About AMIGA REPORT " link P5} @{" Dealer Directory " link P6-3} Contact Information and Copyrights Amiga Dealer Addresses and Numbers @{" Where to Get AR " link P5B} @{" Commercial Products " link P6} Mailing List & Distribution Sites Online Services, Dealers, Ordering ______________________________________________ // | | // ========//====| Amiga Report International Online Magazine |======//===== == \\// | Issue No. 2.34 December 18, 1994 | \\// == ==============| "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!" |============= |______________________________________________| c.s.a.editor.desk Amiga News Dealer Directory Distribution BBS's Product Announcements Reader Mail AR Reader Survey SPECIAL FEATURES Lots of WOA '94 Reports Conference with Soft-Logik on Portal IPISA '94 Report Notes on Workbench Wishlist REVIEWS Team 17's Alien Breed: Tower Assault @endnode =========================================================================== == The Amiga Report Staff == =========================================================================== @node P8-1 "Editor" @toc P5-1 =========================================================================== == EDITOR == =========================================================================== Jason Compton ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Internet Address -------- ------- jcompton@cup.portal.com 1838 Chicago Ave. #419 jcompton@bbs.xnet.com Evanston, IL 60201-3806 USA Fax Phone --- ----- 708/741-0689 708/289-7047 (This information will be valid until January. My apologies to those who have tried reaching me at other numbers...I'm afraid I wasn't able to retain the message system, and can't read the faxes. I'll get the faxes in a couple of weeks...) @endnode @node P8-2 "Senior Editor" @toc P5-1 =========================================================================== == SENIOR EDITOR == =========================================================================== Robert Niles ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Internet Address -------- ------- rniles@rniles.pnw.net 506 W. Orchard Selah, WA 98942 FidoNet Fax ------- --- 1:3407/103 509/697-5064 @endnode @node P8-3 "Assistant Editor" @toc P5-1 =========================================================================== == ASSISTANT EDITOR == =========================================================================== Katherine Nelson ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Internet -------- Kati@cup.portal.com @endnode @node P8-4 "European Editor" @toc P5-1 =========================================================================== == EUROPEAN EDITOR == =========================================================================== Michael Wolf ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Internet -------- MikeWolf@bonebag.tynet.sub.org @endnode @node P8-5 "Contributing Editor" @toc P5-1 =========================================================================== == CONTIBUTING EDITOR == =========================================================================== David Tiberio ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Internet -------- dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu @endnode @node P1-1 "compt.sys.editor.desk" @toc P1 =========================================================================== == compt.sys.editor.desk By: @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1} == =========================================================================== Well, we're not quite cooking with gas yet, but at least SOMETHING is happening. Actually, there was quite a lot of what seems, in retrospect, to be hot air flying around at the World of Amiga show in the UK a weekend ago. C= UK was confronted by several people on the subject of online conferences, and they claim that they are prohibited from speaking about the buyout publicly. This is interesting, since even into January '95 issues of UK Amiga magazines, Pleasance continues to write about just that... All sorts of people listened as David Pleasance informed them that he was pretty sure that CEI had lost their financial backing-at times, he seemed to blame the Amiga Report online conferences for scaring them off. He even got Utilities Unlimited's own Jim Drew to post to CompuServe that yes, CEI had indeed lost their financial backing. Good one, guys. CEI, at least, doesn't think so. They directly refute C= UK on a lot of points. First off, they claim that they are under no restrictions to talk about the buyout. (Good thing, too, now that they've held four conferences and have a fifth coming up.) They deny that they've lost any financial backing for any reason. And, just to prove a point, they've submitted an offer and a deposit for the Commodore assets. So, here we go again. Who do you believe, who do you trust? Had CEI not submitted the offer and deposit, it would merely be another case of "they said, we say" and around and around we go. But some money has been put on the table, along with an honest-to-God press release, so we'll see what happens now. (Incidentally, there's even a contradiction there...CEI says their cash deposit is the first, but Pleasance claimed that they had one before CEI submitted theirs.) The ball has, rather unfortunately, been cast back into the liquidator's court, and a formal presentation of the CEI bid is due Tuesday. When we'll hear what happens, I don't know yet. However, GEnie's Amiga *StarShip* has arranged (all on their own) to hold a CEI conference on the 22nd, so AR will be present to document and report... Unfortunately, none of the regular AR staff were able to make it to Wembley for the WOA, but we've compiled enough reports that, hopefully, we can make you feel like you were there, too. This might be the last issue of 1994 for Amiga Report...it'll depend largely on how much material we can collect before January 1st. Next issue will feature more reviews and HOPEFULLY some serious news on this damn liquidation. I'll even have an overview of the fabled Commodore 65 prototype I recently obtained thanks to the C= US liquidation... We'll also have a large reader survey launched in the next issue, be it 2.35 or 3.01. Until then, enjoy... Jason PS - I suppose Amiga Report should make an official statement on how we see the recent Pentium revelation. So, here goes... "It's one thing to make a mistake. Everybody does that. It's entirely another thing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars convincing people to buy that mistake." @endnode @node P1-2 "Zendrix's First Article" @toc P1 =========================================================================== == Zendrix's First Article == =========================================================================== Alas poor Amiga? ---------------- The Amiga is dead...Long live the Amiga. What are we supposed to make of it all. One article proclaims that there's no hope for our wonderful machine - might as well throw it out the window and buy a (uuurggh) PC. Then the next one you read sings the praises of RISC technology, DSP chips, Retarg graphics support, all coming your way in the guise of the best value machine for the price, everyone will buy it, etc... Personally, I agree with rbeekman@xs4all.nl - get real. However, let's not put too pessimistic a bias on the argument. Let's *try* to look at it in a semi-detached fashion - a hard one, I'm afraid, but... :( The Amiga as business machine? ------------------------------ The Amiga, as we all know is a great machine. Yes, I'm sure you're all sick of people saying this - so am I, but let's face it, it IS the best value package I can think of for the low cost you pay. Yes, obviously if you're a big professional organisation, and you're looking for the latest hi-spec all-singin'-all-dancin' system then maybe the Amiga isn't your best bet. But prepare in that case to get out a big fat wad of cash. The big companies can afford this, of course, and (often rightly) argue that the expensive systems they're investing in offer greater opportunities for customer support and future upgrading. Fair enough. The picture is also gloomy as far as the Amiga is concerned on the small business front. If you don't have a clue about computers, chances are that you'll wanna get some advice on the system that's right for your company - but who has really been informed of the merits of the Amiga? Mention the word to a salesperson and you generally get a strange look as if to say "we are talking about *computers* here, right?" Even for that enlightened minority of dealers who are Amiga-friendly, the struggle is an uphill one. The PC - the bile riseth as I type this :( - dominates the business market, along with the Mac in some areas. Both platforms have admittedly good software: personally, I have access to 386s and 486s and use Word6 in preference to FinalWriter2, simply because it's better - sorry Amigans. But the point is here that if I couldn't get access to PCs, I certainly wouldn't buy one. The technology to my mind is beaten hands-down by equivalent Amiga systems, and the software on the Amiga is better value. Compare the relatively inexpensive FinalWriter to the monstrous price-tag of Word6, PageStream3 to PageMaker6. The PC/Mac stuff may be slightly better, but not hugely so - the price differential is far from justified, particularly since PC/Mac developers are producing for a much wider mass-market than that constituted by the Amiga community. If you're not aiming at the highest-end machines and packages available - and you're probably not if you're in a small business - then the Amiga seems to make more sense. But now back to our enlightened dealer. How does he/she persuade the end user to make the right decision? Herein lies the problem. It doesn't take a computer whizz to figure out that PCs/Macs are saturating the computer market with their expensive advertising campaigns and the sheer number of these machines that are already being used in business. If you want compatibility, and upgradeability, you can only assume that the best computer for you is the one everybody else uses. And that, sadly, is the way things are going. Now CEI/C= UK - whoever wins the bid - can't hope to compete with the big boys on their own terms (as Alex Amor of CEI acknowledged on the recent IRC conference). They can't push the same funds into ads, and they won't be taken as seriously as will the other platforms, simply because the latter have established names in bigger markets. This is only to be expected. Most developers, particularly if they believe the Amiga is on the road to hell, will switch to a more lucrative source of income, where their prospects are more sure. If they put loads of development money into a good package, they'll also want a fat return. The Amiga isn't gonna sell itself as the ultimate business machine just at this time, I'm afraid. So what is its likely fate? The Amiga as Jumped-Up Console? ------------------------------- The Amiga has a well-established reputation as a great games machine - which of course is part of its problem in getting itself established in business circles. But is this a handicap? Much of the Amiga's established market lies, to my knowledge, in the home; and much home use - though far from all - is dedicated to gaming. Some will argue that the Amiga should stick to - and improve upon - what's it's good at. This argument does an injustice to the machine - it can be very good at a very wide range of things. But let's put that aside for a moment. So should the Amiga concentrate on its established market? Well, the fact is that here too - as Alex Amor again succinctly put it - the Amiga can't compete with "the big boys" - the Sega/Nintendo Corporations. SegTendo consoles are designed with one thing in mind - games (and of course making huge profits from the sale thereof). Make no mistake, these guys have MONEY, and they're not afraid to use it. They blast our TV screens with trendy commercials and sell games based on cute cartoon characters, fancy scrolling shoot-'em-ups or big bad beat-'em-ups with loadsa gore etc. Now these guys are releasing new consoles with mucho custom hardware designed just to produce the kinds of games that kiddies will knife their parents for ["gimme $100 pleasepleaseplease" - "die you little......" ;-) ] Now of course these games aren't generally the in-depth stuff that have mostly remained the preserve of `real' computers, so there are possibilities for the Amiga in this area - only if, however, it's able to compete with the PC/Mac platform in this area. Already we hear of great products like Sim City 2000 which will require an A1200 with 5 MEGS (!!!) of RAM to install on HD, and 4 to run from floppy. And even then the game will run slower than on a 486. This could easily be rectified by a well-placed accelerator and a couple of megs of RAM, and still for under the price of the PC/Mac. But the question is: are there enough people out there to make the continuation of such quality releases likely? The Mac/PC market can rely on businesspeople who take their machines home for a bit of relaxation, but the Amiga is dependent on a much smaller and much more diverse user-base. So what is to be done [as Lenin once wrote in a different context :-? ] Well, this all depends on what the Amiga's new owners have in store. They've already got some great technology to build on, and even if the user base is comparatively small, it is a loyal one. Amigans love `their' computer precisely because it's not some alien piece of plastic stuffed with Intel silicon or fronted by a very friendly Mac interface which finds it difficult to let the user burrow into the actual workings of the system with ease to see why this or that isn't working quite right. The Amiga has personality and its community will stick with it as long as they can. It can still be a credible games platform for those who are not turned on by the thought of over-priced carts and games that are often so slick that the alien concept of gameplay has been lost sight of somewhere along the line. The Amiga still has dedicated programmers, and if some software houses are moving their primary development platform to the PC, other coders are moving in from the PD/demo world and presenting us with great new titles (Team 17 are the most famous example, but there are other, more recent arrivals). The Amiga can have a future in entertainment software, because it is a *real* computer. People might not buy it primarily for games, but they will probably buy games in any case. The other computer platforms of course have the same advantage, but they don't have the custom chips - if we all spent the equivalent amount of money on an Amiga as on a 486 DX-2, we too could be enjoying Doom2 or whatever in all its accelerated glory - and maybe better. But the Amiga is not, and is not likely to develop into, a jumped-up console. Its real strength lies in the diversity of its uses, of which leisure software is simply one of the more widely- recognised aspects. A terminal disease? [excuse the pun] ------------------- It is surely quite clear to us all that the bidding process has dragged on for too long. Of course, we realise the legal technicalities that have to be sorted out, the negotiations and offers that have to be made, so it isn't necessarily the bidders' fault. I believe that both C= UK and CEI have the best interests of the Amiga at heart. Both seem willing to commit real resources to its future development, though it's a real shame that David Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot haven't been able to match Alex Amor in terms of PR - why, one asks exasperatedly, do they constantly ignore AR's pleas to become involved in an IRC conference, or at least to answer questions? Obviously they have their secrets to keep - for tactical reasons - but there's good business sense and then there's bad publicity. I've always been a big fan of C= UK, so come on guys, get your act together (if you're even reading this :( ). I'm being swiftly converted to CEI, who seem to have a better eye for the Amiga public as of late. However, gripes aside, if both companies are committed to winning the bid, then they must see a future for the Amiga. Even the worst businessperson does not put capital into a venture that doesn't look like it'll succeed - unless he/she has more money than sense. BUT, the more time that's lost in wrangling over the final deal, the further behind Amiga technology necessarily falls. As the Amiga is made to lag increasingly behind; as no new machines are produced; as no new R&D is undertaken; in short, as the Amiga's future continues to look uncertain, developers will, rationally enough, turn their attention elsewhere. Gone, or going, are the days when Amigans could say "You wanna do 3D rendering - get an Amiga" or "You're using a PC for that multimedia presentation??! - hahahaha..." And those days will continue to slip through our fingers unless we pull those fingers out (what an analogy - ow! sorry). Every day is precious from here on in. New stocks need to be produced, and rolled out to the fanfare of a fairly major ad campaign directed at the Amiga heartlands such as the UK and Germany to build on established bases of loyalty, as well as in existing markets where the machine is already extensively used in a particular sphere - eg Toasting in the US. The Amiga's very real advantages should be pushed for all they're worth - more genuine multitasking than PCs or Macs, better value hardware and software, a friendly but powerful GUI, easy expandability and potential cross-system compatibility - for all those people who have PCs or Macs in work but detest the thought of stooping to buy one for home use. R&D should restart immediately, but should not necessarily seek to emulate the competition, because this simply would mean that the Amiga will be one step behind. New machines should offer something genuinely different - a good reason for the sceptic to buy the machine instead of the competition. Of course, all us poor student-type low-to-mid-end users can't expect to be able to afford this WOW! technology just as soon as it comes on the market, but as rbeekman@xs4all.nl said, those who can afford it, if they're really convinced that it offers them something they need, will buy it in sufficient numbers for prices eventually to be lowered, particularly as the cost of the new technology drops as time goes on. Cut the Crap, What's the Verdict? --------------------------------- It's all too easy to romanticise the prospects for the machine that we all prefer; I should know, because I've already owned two computers of various kinds as each went through its death-throes. Of course, none of them died overnight - no sir, their end was a long-drawn out affair, with excellent titles still being released years after the official tombstones had been carved and the coffins lowered into the ground. So even in a worst-case armageddon-type scenario, where no-one ends up with the bid, the Amiga will live on - partially at least. Good titles will be released for years to come, particularly since the PD/Shareware scene is so vital. You need only login to one of the bigger Aminet sites to witness this fact. Yet it does seem likely that someone *will* end up holding the Amiga's fate in their hands, be it CEI or C= UK. Both have plans for the development of the range and the technology, but their task will, I suspect, be a difficult one. The old cliche that money talks is truer than ever in the computer world - witness Microsoft, Intel or Compaq in their domination of the market. PCs and Macs are not likely to allow the Amiga elbow-room, because they know that the computer could pose a real threat to them, if only the truth about its capabilities were more widely known. Because of this, the Amiga will have to rely, in the short term certainly, upon the loyalty both of its users and software developers. Only if it's given the breathing space it needs can further development take place and a real chance for the machine be generated. The task will be difficult - maybe impossible: the market dictates - the quality product does not always emerge the winner, as Betamax found to their cost in competition with VHS all those years ago. The Amiga is the last true home computer - it excels in so many areas that it can't be neatly pigeon-holed as a `business machine' or `games console'. It has a unique `community' of users who have a real affection for their computer. It has the technology on which to build, and it's not yet too late to salvage something good out of this whole mess. Our Amiga deserves a chance, but a chance, alas, is all that it appears to have. Time alone will tell its fate. Zendrix - the Writer of Wrongs - 11 December, 1994 Any comments, feedback, sarcastic remarks, anything at all in fact, can be mailed to me c/o Darkseid at his padded cell (yes him - there had to be some drawback ;-> ) He can be reached at ckb426@ujvax.ulster.ac.uk. Maybe someday I can get my own e-mail address to work - that's PCs for you... @endnode @node P1-3 "Darkseid's Padded Cell" @toc P1 =========================================================================== ==ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo== ==oo Darkseid's Padded Cell By: Roger Boal oo== ==ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo== =========================================================================== You've heard their side You've laughed at the Far Side You've fallen on your backside Now read the Darkseid Things to do in the computer lab Part II ---------------------------------------- 1) Give all your disks names, talk to them, treat them like people, when one gets a virus ask the technician for the name of a good doctor, draw faces on them all. 2) Keep a loaded mousetrap beside your mouse, explain that it keeps the mouse on its toes (You too I suppose) 3) Make a cut out for your monitor that looks like something else, for example a christmas face, or better yet one which makes your monitor look like a TV set complain loudly that you cant get Mtv... 4) When somebody isnt looking swipe the ball out of their mouse and watch the frustration as they track and track and the poor little cursor wont move about guranteed to produce another sort of cursor, if asked explain that sometimes the little man who lives in the mouse goes on strike/holiday.... 5) Take the magnetic disk out of a floppy, reseal th e case, now try to use the disk in a machine. Complain that the stupid machine wont read your disk repeat on several machines, when confronted with the truth deny everything and state that the first damn machine must've eaten it when you werent looking. 6) Ask someone which key is the 'any' key (press any key to continue) 7) When about to print shout incoming and run to thw far side of the room, works best if you have a fast or very loud printer 8) When starting up from a cold boot, keep pressing some keys, pretty soon the buffer fills up and you end up with a beeping tone, the more you press the more you beep, try and communicate with others using only these beeps, two or more people beeping will drive the whole lab nuts, trying playing a tune eg When the saints go marching in beep beep beep beep, beeep etc etc etc 9) Cackle loudly when the windows logo pops up, it makes people nervous When the hourglass icon pops up ask a technician for a key so you can wind the clockwork up agin.. 10) Every 2 minutes turn round and smile at the technician, itll make em paranoid 11) Verbally say CLICK as you click with the mouse, when dragging something make a noise like an areoplane Vrnnmmmmmmmmm 12) Everytime someone isnt looking move their keyboard an inch to the left or right 13) Bring a portable drill in with you, if anyone asks just smile.... 14) Turn the brightness & contrast way down when you leave a machine, the power is on and everythings connecte d but no picture, it'll drive them nuts, esp if you do it to someones machine whilst they're not looking / out of the room 15) Email someone famous and offer to tell them something scandalous about someone closely connected to them..... 16) Everytime the hourglass pops up time it in a loud voice, one second two seconds etc 17) Alter the windows screen resolution to its highest possible setting, the result is very small screens which you cant read that well esp with terminal packages 18) This needs an accomplace, set your email address as a forwarding mailshot, sending it to your partner, get them to set their email to forward mail to your address, result you can bring a server down in less than 3 minutes and a whole net in 10. Only snag is you'll probably get caught and lose all your priveleges..... 19) Everytime you press return mutter Hah ! 20) Learn to drum type, type in a rhythmic clattering pattern ie sound like Nine Inch Nails 21) Everytime you use a peice of Microsoft Software mutter about sheep chainsaws and Bill gates in an evil little voice. 22) Every time you logout and turn off say Hah, got you that time 23) Any time you get a supervisor request, demand they submit it in writing 24) Any time your supervisor is in the room, leave and as you walk past say, hah didnt catch me that time 25) Pretend to have amnesia, you cant remember how turn use a computer ask the nice supervisior to guide you through it and at the end ask them wh at happened to the little yellow guy in the maze. 26) Sneeze on your screen and leave it there 27) Remap the keyboard to russian or arabic, very confusing 28) Lock the default for windows into symbol, if anyone asks you why reply that its much easier to read and ask if they cant understand what it says on the screen.... 29) Everytime you press a key pretend to get a static shock, yelps are quite disconcerting 30) Paint all your fingernails a different colour, when asked, say it remi nds you which finger to type with on which day of the week, then add it also reminds you which finger to pick your nose with. Things to do in the real world, that freak people out ----------------------------------------------------- 1) Label all your socks with your name in big black biro 2) Hide some of you clothes in flat mates wardrobe/drawers, when they wear that article of clothing jump on them for it 3) This one takes time but.... Move all your flatmates furniture around start small, move a table a few inches to the left, move books from one side of the room to the other, gradually build up, move their bed, eventually rearrange all the furniture in their room, deny everything. 4) Rush into a bedroom, haul the matress off the bed, prop it up against the window and dive under the bed yelling duck and cover 5) Hide some snacks in a sealable plastic bag at the bottom of the bin when your flat/room mate is in the same room, announce your hungry then root around in the bin, palm some of the snacks, exclaim excitedly commence eating, guaranteed to gross out 6) Anytime your flat mate cuts some vegetables shout murderer and run crying from the room 7) Drink lots of cans of cola, something like 'Jolt' is best (it has 2 times more caffeine than anything else). Number all the cans and stack them in the middle of the room, when questioned yell thats its none of their business and youre we ll within youre constitutional rights 8) Mail a banana with your name and address written on it in pen, see what state its in when it gets back, if asked where it came from reply you have a cousin in Brazil who sends you them from time to time. Also try this with Eggs and Melons, dont wrap them and write your full address, on sticky label if need be, you may need to use glue to affix the stamp(s). Work up see whats the largest messily destructible thing you can send by post (hint Biscuits are cool ;) ) 9) E-mail Jason and ask about the new floor scrubber...... ;) 10) Buy a rubber duck and carry it around w ith you..... General weirdness is good for you look where the muppets got Jim Henson....... @endnode @node P4 "Reader Mail" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Reader Mail == =========================================================================== From the AR mailbag...(Yes! Real, live, printed mail!) Hello. I am just writing you this little letter to say that I really appreciate all your efforts in keeping Amiga users informed on the latest happenings of the liquidation proceedings. I am an avid Amiga user and the only Amiga user left in town. That is not an exaggeration, it is the truth. I have been reading the Amiga Report starting with the first issue that I saw, AR 2.26. I have enjoyed d/l'ing it via long distance every week from AfterDark. I just got finished reading AR 2.33 and enjoyed it also. Again thank you for all your work that you and the other members of your team have done in support of the Amiga platform and look forward to reading many more issues in the future. Thank you for your time and have a Merry Christmas. Forrest C. Brutort Well, thank you, Forrest, for being only the second AR reader to actually physically mail me. (Thank you to the first, the author of the Swedish royalty postcard I got a month or so ago!) At any rate...we do what we can, and it's good to hear that it's appreciated. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: "David C. Gorton" Subject: Intel Fraud Hurts Everybody: Investigation (Just. Dept. & SS&Tech Cmte) Dear Congressman Boehlert, I'm writing to you in your capacity as Ranking Republican on the Science, Space and Technology Committee. I'm VERY concerned about the government's lack of action against Intel, the maker of processors for the ubiquitous IBM PC compatible. I suspect that this lack of action is because the people in power don't understand how this "technology" affects every aspect of daily business and even medical care for individuals. It even affects Animals & the Environment. By now, I'm sure you've heard about the Intel Pentium division design flaws. The Pentium (aka the 80586) is the 3rd in a family of 32-bit processors from Intel; all of which have had design flaws! When the 80386 and 80486 were released, they both also had numerous design flaws. From logic and math errors, to heat and electrical spec problems. Now the Pentium is also part of the problem. I'm asking you, "Why wasn't Intel investigated back in the late 80's when the 80386 first was revealed to be flawed?" Maybe it's because big business could get away with bllody murder and fraud under the Reagan/Bush administrations? Will Intel/MicroSoft do it again under a Republican controlled congress? I'm sure part of the problem is that decision makers don't understand the significance of these problems and how it will trickle down to daily life. Fidelity's Magellan trust was jeopardized, with earnings incorrectly projected, reportedly due to calculations from spreadsheets running on Pentium based IBM compatibles. The IBM compatible has always been a poor design, from 1980. Despite the hype, the architecture hasn't changed much on 14 years. It succeeded due to marketing advantages, and people's insecurities about "this new technology", NOT because it was a good design. As a result these machines are everywhere. Macintoshes and Amigas are rare by comparison. WHAT THIS MEANS: since there are so many of these machines being used for CRITICAL TASKS, the public is placed in economic and mortal jeopardy, because these systems use Intel processors. Example: Scientific work relies on math greatly. In the case of medicine- measurements, calculations and theories are used to produce treatments. But if the math is wrong, life-saving research could be hindered, red herrings could be produced, cures could be missed, and worst of all... LIVES COULD BE LOST. What about all the money that will be wasted to re-do experiments that were flawed due to faulty Pentium calculations? In the US alone, Millions of animals are killed and treated cruelly each year in the name of progress. How many more will be vivisected because because previous experiments will come into question? Biological "research" depends heavily on math, due to the chemistry involved. I know you supported HR 2472, which aimed to use computer technology to reduce the number of animals suffering in labs in the US. Now, Intel's faulty, rushed-designs will condem more animals to torture and death, because scientists will want to recheck their data. As a self-proclaimed environmentalist, you should also know that Intel is on the Silicon Valley Toxics Campaign's "Dirty Dozen" list, as the most egregious of polluters. Let me ask you this, Mr. Boehlert: In your frequent airline trips to and from Washington and home, WOULD YOU FEEL SAFE ON YOUR PLANE RIDE IF YOU KNEW THE PLANE WAS DESIGNED ON A CAD SYSTEM THAT USED A PENTIUM PROCESSOR? Increasingly Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems are based on Intel IBM compatibles. If a car is designed using AutoCad on a Pentium system, how do we know the car lives up to it's projected specs? Also please note that Intel's Neptune chipset and PCI controllers have also have problems. Intel makes the motherboards for major "PC clone" vendors like Dell and Gateway. One digital flaw on top another...this is tragedy waiting to happen. And the sad part is, it may have already happened, we just don't know it- because these sorts of things are hard to track down. That's why I'm asking you to launch a full investigation, as Ranking Republican on the SS&T cmte. Also, I want your support in having the Justice Department investigate the actions of Intel. Be aware that IBM itself has said it won't be using Pentium chips, at least until Intel gets their act together and starts being honest. Industry journals have noted that Intel has lied repeatedly about when they first learned pf the flaws. Inside a week, they went from claiming they knew about it a full two MONTHS ago...to all the way back to July. The only reason they came clean at all, is because the Math professor who actually bothered to check the figures coming from his Pentium, got tired of waiting and went public. If not for his math skills and honesty, Intel would still be getting away with it. FACT: They still are getting away with it! Intel admits to KNOWINGLY shipping flawed chips, and are STILL doing it! Though they have corrected one of the problems (the other problem is a defective write-back cache) they CONTINUE TO SHIP DEFECTIVE CHIPS, along with corrected ones, with no distinction between them. INTEL PUBLICALLY ADMITS TO THIS. This is fraud. What will you do to halt Intel from shipping any more 80486 or Pentium/80586 chips, until there is a complete investigation? Sincerely, Dave Gorton Vernon NY [Jason's note: Just in case you missed it, this letter was originally directed to a Congressman, but the author also sent it to at least 50 other people who I guess he felt were "important". So, there you have it.] @endnode @node P2-1 "Press Releases" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == Press Releases == =========================================================================== CYBERVISION64 Pioneering a new generation in graphics performanceThe CYBERVISION64 graphics card is produced by phase 5 digital products, the developers and manufacturers of the Fastlane Z3 Controller, the Blizzard Turbo Card series and the Cyberstorm 68040/68060 Accelerator. The CYBERVISION64 satisfies the most demanding requirements on performance and system conformity because of its combination of an extremely fast 32 bit Zorro3 interface, a 64 bit wide graphics controller and exceptional software. Once again the phase 5 design team have proven their competence as one of the most innovative technological pioneers in the AMIGA market.Based on the highly integrated graphic chip Trio64 from the renowned manufacturers S3, which integrates an expensive graphics processor, a complex 64 bit wide Blitter as well as a highly efficient 24 bit converter for D/A conversion, the CYBERVISION64 can offer a video band width of 135 MHz. It will, therefore, support a variety of resolutions in True Color, High Color and 256 colours. The CYBERVISION64 32 Bit Zorro3 interface is highly optimised and allows transmission rates from the AMIGA main memory to the graphic memory of up to 16 MByte/sec (using fast CPU cards) - an exemplary rate that sets new standards. Data transfers within the CYBERVISION64 video memory are executed by the 64 Bit Blitter at speeds above 100 MByte/sec, practically in an imperceptible amount of time, resulting in extremely fast shifting operations, for example.Another special feature of the CYBERVISION64 is its hardware support of Planar-to-Chunky Conversion which, with AMIGA graphics cards, often takes up most of the time required for emulation and representation of the AMIGA modes. This hardware solution is some 6-8 times faster than typical software solutions which considerably accelerates the emulation and representation of AMIGA modes and especially the representation of 8 Bit graphics. Complementing this efficient hardware is excellent driver software which fully utilises the performance of the card for unusual system conformities. The CYBERVISION64 screen modes are installed via the CYBERVISION64 monitor files, are available via normal ASL-Requester (e.g. in screen mode in PREFS) as "normal" system resolutions, and for common applications operating under OS3.0 or 3.1 require no additional driver. Working with CYBERVISION64 becomes a real pleasure. By supporting many functions, such as draggable screens or virtual screens that can be considerably larger than the actual screen resolution and within which you can scroll much like within an AMIGA Superbitmap, the CYBERVISION64 achieves an extraordinary Look-and-Feel that is difficult to differentiate from the original AMIGA resolution. Naturally, the CYBERVISION64 has an expansion bus through which additional cards such as JPEG or MPEG cards can directly access the fast video memory making the CYBERVISION64 suitable for future developments. The combination of the attention that has been paid to necessary details, such as slipped through AMIGA video signal and integrated, loss-free electronic switching, default-monitor-timing on system start-up or simple expansion of the 2MB version to 4MB with common memory modules, with the usual high quality of phase 5 products will be able to satisfy even the most demanding user. CYBERVISION64Pioneering a new generation in graphics performance Cybervision64 Technical DataHigh speed graphics card with 64 bit graphics processor and Blitter as well as a 32 bit Zorro3 bus interface 2 MB or 4 MB video memory, configured by the user Resolution Noninterlaced: up to 1280x1024 pixels in 8 bit, up to 800x600 pixels in 24 bit; Interlaced: up to 1600x1200 pixels in 8 bit, up to 1024x768 pixels in 24 bit 135 MHz Video DAC Planar-to-chunky pixel conversion using special hardware (RoXXIer chip) Slip through AMIGA signal with loss-free, electronic switching Digital video bus for optimal expansion (shared memory bus) with access to the video memory System local software with Workbench emulation, Support Library, linking via monitor files CYBERVISION64 screen modes including standard AMIGA resolutions). * Basic Equipment and Technical Data of the CYBERSTORM System * Each CYBERSTORM system contains a Carrier Board, a CPU Module and a Memory Board. The I/O Module and the Cache Module are optional expansion modules. CYBERSTORM Carrier Board Interface board which inserts into the 200 pin AMIGA Fast-Slot Ports for the CYBERSTORM CPU Module, the CYBERSTORM Memory Board and the CYBERSTORM I/O Module Fully asynchronous interface between the modules Extremely fast programmable logic, selected A-Grade FCT circuit logic, high-class high density connector Slot for 68060 software Boot ROM (or Flash ROM) or Ethernet Boot ROM (used with the CYBERSTORM I/O Module) to boot up the computer from a network hard drive. CYBERSTORM CPU Module Optimally tuned to the processor used and its speed Prepared for processor clock speeds up to 80 MHz Active CPU cooling, uncoupled CPU voltage supply with 5 or 3.3 Volt Voltage control at 3.3 V for 68060 version Bi-directional high speed buffering with expensive A-Grade FCT switching logic 120 pin high density port for Second Level Cache Module or other expansions. CYBERSTORM Memory BoardMemory expansion card with slots for 4 SIMM modules in 32 bit technology standard 72 pin modules, such as AMIGA 4000 or PS/2 single sided or double sided Sizes: 4, 8, 16 and 32 MByte per module, freely mixable, maximum configuration 128 MByte Fully DMA capable memory, also supports Zorro3 DMA access Fast 2-1-1-1 Burst Mode access when reading and 3-1-1-1 when writing at 25 MHz RAM speed with 60 or 70 ns RAM) achieving data transmission greater than 50 MByte/sec measured or effective value) Independent of CPU clock speed. CYBERSTORM I/O Module Fast SCSI-II interface with internal and external 50 pin SCSI connector Data transmission in the full address area using its own 32 bit DMA channel, FIFO buffered, bandwidth >30 MB/s Asynchronous to 7 MB/s, synchronous to 10 MB/s data transmission on the SCSI bus Active SCSI bus termination Extensive software including CD-ROM Filesystem, dynamic caching software and various SCSI Tools 10 MBit/s Ethernet controller (10BaseT connector) SANA driver for transparent linking to various network systems High speed due to its FIFO buffered, 32 Bit DMA channel Coaxial (BNC) and Dsub15 ethernet connector (Thin Ethernet / Standard Ethernet) Serial interface RS232 with 115kbaud, FIFO buffered. CYBERSTORM Cache Module Information about the CYBERSTORM Cache Module was unfortunately not available at the time of printing this brochure. All CYBERSTORM components are manufactured in Germany to the highest industrial quality in modern Fine Pitch SMD technology and are subjected to a complete functionality test prior to delivery. The manufacturer provides a one year guarantee. Because of the three-dimensional use of the space available in the AMIGA 4000, the systems specified here cannot be installed in the AMIGA 3000 or the AMIGA 4000T. CYBERSTORM versions for the AMIGA 3000 and AMIGA 4000T are in development and should be available at the beginning of 1995 - if there is sufficient demand. However, these systems have limited modularity and expansion capabilities. Redefining Performance When the CYBERSTORM project began in December 1993, it was probably one of the most demanding and ambitious development proposals for the AMIGA. The objective was to move into the future of system performance, and to allow the AMIGA to catch up with the latest high-performance PC's and Workstations. The method of achieving this was to design a non-compromising accelerator card, based on the new Motorola 68060 high performance processors, that would set new standards in performance, expansion capabilities and price. This project underlines the fact that the phase 5 digital products development team (Official Motorola Beta Site Developer and Commodore Commercial Developer) is a leading technological developer in the AMIGA sector. This has already been demonstrated with products such as the Fastlane Z3 or the Blizzard Series. The CYBERSTORM System is basically designed as a High End 68060 System for the A4000. In the basic 50MHz configuration it achieves a processor performance of some 80 MIPS (*): a performance level that has been previously unknown in the AMIGA sector. Prepared for clock speeds of up to 80MHz, it also has more than adequate reserves for subsequent faster versions of the 68060 processor. The flexible design also allows the 68040 processor to be used at various speeds, with performance of between approx. 20 and 30 MIPS. This means that the CYBERSTORM System can be offered in different performance classes, which is an obvious advantage for the user who may want to start with minimal investment, but have the opportunity to install other expansion systems or to use a faster processor in the future. Performance is not defined by the processor's power alone, but also by the device's flexibility and expansion capabilities. As well as a selection of different processor versions and the greatest possible flexibility in memory configuration, the CYBERSTORM System also has a variety of expansion options that will be available from the end of 1994 as expansion modules. The rejection of any technical compromise in the development of the CYBERSTORM System has succeeded in bringing a technologically leading product onto the market with an excellent price/performance ratio that demonstrates just what can be achieved in modern user friendly product design. Modular Design The CYBERSTORM System for the AMIGA 4000 is designed as a fully modular system not only with the various expansion modules that can be fitted according to the user's requirements but also in the basic systems that are available. These basic systems consist of three components: the CYBERSTORM Carrier Board, which is installed in place of the original processor board in the AMIGA, the CYBERSTORM CPU Module and the CYBERSTORM Memory Board which are both slotted into the Carrier Board. The Carrier Board is a fully asynchronous internal (i.e. between the various CYBERSTORM components) and external (to the AMIGA system and Zorro Bus expansions) interface. It controls the data flow between the main memory, AMIGA System components and the CYBERSTORM I/O Module if it is installed. Extremely fast programmable logic components, as well as expensive, highly integrated synchronisation logic, provide optimal signal transit times which result in the highest possible data transmission rates. A further part of the synchronisation logic is integrated in the CYBERSTORM CPU Module and is optimally rated to the respective clock speed of the processor used. This ensures that the CPU module can be exchanged for another version at any time without having to change any of the other components. This concept guarantees optimal access speed and the greatest possible performance at each CPU speed. The CYBERSTORM Memory Board has slots for 4 single or double sided 32 Bit SIMM Modules. This allows memory to be configured in various levels and combinations up to 128 MByte. The asynchronous interface concept also applies to the memory: the bi-directional buffer logic allows the CYBERSTORM CPU asynchronous access to the memory which operates at the AMIGA system speed of 25MHz. This principle makes the memory transparent to other system components which access it by DMA, and avoids possible problems that can arise with so-called local memory designs which, for example, are directly linked with a CPU clock. There is no principle speed disadvantage over designs which operate the memory at higher clock speeds, as 25MHz is the upper limit for memory access without wait cycles (even for 60ns fast D-RAMs), which is performed on the CYBERSTORM in Burst Mode Access. In addition, existing memory can still be used after a CPU upgrade to a higher clock speed or another type of processor, and even without loss of performance. With a data throughput that is nearly independent of the processor frequency of up to 66.66 MB/s in Burst Mode Access, the CYBERSTORM memory achieves multiples of the AMIGA 4000 Fast RAM speed, whereby even a CYBERSTORM System clocked at 25 MHz demonstrates clear acceleration, especially when working with large amounts of data. The CYBERSTORM System is not linked to any particular type of processor. Processor modules with other than 680x0 processors can be installed at any time, as long as they are supported by the AMIGA operating system. Wherever the future of the AMIGA may lead, you can be assured that the CYBERSTORM will keep apace of technological advances. Expansion Options To do justice to the requirements of an absolute high-end solution, the CYBERSTORM project has always made provisions for considerable expansion options. This well thought-out expansion concept means that the CYBERSTORM System can support the widest range of user needs, even in professional fields.The CYBERSTORM I/O Module together with a Fast SCSI-II Controller, an Ethernet Controller and a serial High-Speed-Port, offers all the essential interfaces required for professional applications. The Fast SCSI-II Controller that naturally operates as a DMA Unit with 32 Bit FIFO Buffer, offers transmission rates up to 10 MByte/s with minimal CPU loading. Active termination and internal and external 50 pin SCSI connections guarantee the highest possible data security. The know-how gained from developing the Fastlane Z3 (the world's first 32 bit SCSI Controller for the AMIGA and twice product of the year in 1993) was used extensively in the design of the SCSI interface, which has mature driver and utility software amongst other features, and also includes a CD-ROM Filesystem and the efficient cache software, DynamiCache. A serial high-speed interface with its own FIFO buffer has also been integrated in the I/O Module to guarantee problem-free operation of fast serial devices without data loss. For users who do not need the networking option, an alternative to the full I/O Module is the CYBERSTORM Fast SCSI-II Module, which is also based on the same advanced technology found in the Fastlane Z3. Offering DMA transmission rates of 10 MByte/s with minimal CPU loading, active termination and internal and external 50 pin SCSI ports, this also includes the complete SCSI software package as supplied with the full I/O Module. The CYBERSTORM CPU Module also offers another High Speed Connector with direct processor connection through which, for example, cache memory and boards with second processors (e.g. DSPs) or other high speed expansions can be connected. The Quality CYBERSTORM sets standards even in its design and quality. It is produced to the highest industrial standard in expensive and precise Fine Pitch SMD technology. Digital components and high value mechanical components are selected to a high processing quality, which as a whole contributes to the high level of reliability. The three-dimensional mechanical design optimises the use of the space available in the A4000 and allows easy access for installing and refitting the CYBERSTORM system. Active CPU cooling eliminates heat problems even before they arise, demonstrating that even in this respect the CYBERSTORM System meets the highest requirements. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The voice from across the pond by Michael Wolf ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi there, it's been a long time since I wrote my last article. Things are looking good for me at the moment and I am quite busy producing my first rendered Intro for a PC Game (3 minutes of animation). It's great fun, hard work and finances my Cyberstorm :-) What else could one ask for ? Not much else is happening right now. All the new development has been shown at the WOCA. It looks like the majority of Amiga developers is waiting for the CBM takeover to be finalized, before they continue to pour money into Amiga developement. This decision I understand. Then, a few days ago, this mail appeared on the German part of FidoNet, here follows a rough translation: [Actually, this is the English press release from MacroSystem's US distributor, NoahJi's. -Jason] MacroSystem Announces DraCo Powerful Professional Graphics and Video Workstation Shipping this Spring December 5, 1994 - Boulder, Colorado. MacroSystem GmbH of Witten, Germany is pleased to announce the development of their own video and graphics workstation named DraCo. Based on the Motorola 68060, this incredibly powerful machine will ship in the Spring of 1995. For operating systems the Amiga OS will be standard and UNIX clone support is expected. The conception of this computer is based on the absence of the Amiga custom chips. Any software program that runs on Amiga graphic boards like the Retina and the Picasso will work in DraCo. This includes LightWave, AdPro, Image F/X, Imagine, Bars and Pipes Pro, and most every other professional software package. Hardware compatibility is the function of the five Zorro II slots. Thse slots allow use of the Toccata, Emplant, Ethernet, VLab Y/C and most other hardware boards. Hardware that requires the custom chip set won't run in DraCo. This includes 880K floppies, genlocks, and the Toaster. Development and production of DraCo are not dependent upon the current Commodore situation, as this computer is custom chipset independent. Graphic output is delivered using the Retina BLT over a direct bus with data rates of over 20MB/second. The second direct 32 bit bus is for the optional DraCo version of the real-time VLab Motion JPEG non-linear editor. With VLab Motion installed, data rates of up to 100% JPEG are standard. This allows 2:1 JPEG data rates, the highest possible. At these data rates the highest qualities of video can be edited and produced. The first release of DraCo will be a full size tower with a minimum of 4MB expandable to 128MB of on board 72 pin SIMM modules. The SCSI II controller is factory equipped and is based upon the NCR 53C720. This SCSI II device (used on the Warp Engine) guarantees the highest data rates with a maximum of free CPU time. This SCSI controller allows the connection of internal and external SCSI devices. A parallel port and triple speed CD-ROM drive will also be included in every model. Floppy drives are not included, but SCSI floppies can be used. Transfer of software from existing Amiga platforms is easily accomplished using the SCSI or over a parallel net. DraCo will be available in numerous memory and hard drive configurations. Pricing is not yet determined, but will be comparable to a similarly equipped Amiga 4000. Owners of the Retina and VLab Motion products will receive attractive upgrade prices directly from NoahJi's. --- End press release -- Interesting innit ? Will they really market the first Amiga clone ? I guess if they do and succeed (Also taking the software publishers with them), then this will be a clear sign for Amiga Inc. (whoever it may be by then), that you can very well have a certain break in compatibility and still sell a good product and get support form third party manufacturers. (Hey, Apple can do it...). Anyhow, enough for today. As I said, there isn't really much else to write about at the moment. P.S. A big hello to Kiko from Japan, I hope that everything works out and you get your Cyberstorm before Christmas. @endnode @node P2-4 "WOA '94 Report" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == WOA '94 Report By: Simon == =========================================================================== Hi ALL. What follows is my description of the World of Amiga Show in London. I went on Saturday 10th December and stayed for 5 1/2hrs. Anyone who doesn`t like long posts, please skip this. [Disclaimer: what follows is entirely my own thoughts and opinions] WORLD OF AMIGA SHOW - Wembley 9-11th December 1994 Big Thumbs up: Cybervision64, Cyberstorm060, Photogenics Thumbs up: PC emulation on emplant Thumbs down: PicolloSD64. Well, what a show. At first glance the show seemed to look a little bare but in actual fact there was quite a lot going on. My first question to be answered was "does the PC emplant exist". I made it to the Blittersoft stand and there was Jim Drew, a rather large CBM monitor and his emplant. EMPLANT: ------- Standing at the back of the crowd, I could just see the emplant up and running on Jim`s emplant+ warp 40/040+ picasso. At this time it was running rather nicely the MAC emulation - no big deal. After a patient wait, Jim shutdown the Mac emulation (interestingly enough he was running V5.0 of the emulation and when he shutdown it asked him to insert his hard drive.....). Then came the good part - the PC emulation. Jim clicked on a similar icon to the MAC startup icon and started up the PC emulation. The emulation went straight into the Ami-bios (which according to Jim is shipped with every version of PC-emplant). He showed that it recognised every bit of PC hardware. He then moved to the dos prompt and listed directories on the HD and then started showing bench marks and testing programs. He showed that all the hardware test came up ok. The speed tests varied. One said that the processor was running at 0mhz, another showed it was a 286 running at ~20mhz (this was probably closer to the truth). I was desperate to see Windows but alas, the version Jim had with him didn`t have any VGA support and therefore no Windows, or anything really good to show. I asked if he had dos apps to show but he said no and that most people wanted to see benchmark programs. All in all the emulation seemed to be running well and quite fast. It was on a native Amiga screen and the updates were instant, but then the PC uses planar in 4bit colour and his machine did have a 68040/40mhz. I would say everything seemed well. Jim pointed out that the emluation was runnning in interpreter mode and that the one that compiles will run a lot faster. He also said that when the PC emplant ships it will run DOOM. Now for the best bit, Jim gave an announcement on the realease date of the PC emplant: The PC emplant will start shipping, mid January (So Jim Drew says)! I asked Jim whether the PC emulation would run OS2/Warp and he said yes. I asked wether my OS2/Warp CDROM would install ok and he said yes! Oh, I asked whether the 586 emulation contained the fp bug from the pentium :-), "no" was the reply. I also asked whether the Cyberstorm 060 would work with the emplant and Jim said yes. Some other interesting bits. Jim also had an emulation called ACE (atari console emulation) which was a Atari 400/800 emulator. He had masses of software on his hard drive and showed of a Lucasfilm demo. I asked why this emulation wasn`t available yet as I love the Atari 800Xl and he said "the sprite collision isn`t working yet" and then he went on to say "oh, we have implented sprites at all", hmmm - pretty fundemental point I think. Anyway, it all looked good and I can`t wait to see that running on my machine. He also had an Apple ][ emulation which was running games, the one I saw was galaxians. Jim also announced that they are going to release the PC emulation for the PowerPC MACS at the same time as the Amigas one and that it would be shipped with all new PowerMacs instead of softwindows - time will tell. Jim seemed to impress lots of people with what his emulation could do and rightly so. I chuckled at one point though, when he was playing with photoshop and the MAC crashed, requiring a restart. I never saw more than one emulation running at a time but I`ve read another post where a guy saw the Pc and Mac running at the same time. Overall at the end of this I got a plus on the feelgood factor for owning an emplant. Picollo SD64: ------------ On the same stand they had the Picollo SD64 which was running on a Warped A4000. I don`t know why but they only had it displaying on a 14" monitor and I had a play. The Workbench was only running in 8 colours and an attempt to change that to 256 colours failed as there was something running which couldn`t be quit. I was then shown a 256 colour graphics program and had a play with that. I was very dissapointed. It was a small screen running in 256 colours and when I moved just a small window containg a picture it seemed very slow and I could see the redraw. I was then shown the viewer on an EGS default screen and things seemed a lot faster. Overall though things didn`t seem that impressive. Strangely enough Blittersoft weren`t making a big thing of the board. Maybe the software requires some tweaks, possibly the 256 colour screen was running in Planar mode? Next was on to the Gordon Harwood Stand where Phase5 were showing off two new products the Cybervison64 and the Cyberstorm 060. Cybervison64: ------------ Phase5 had the Cybervision running on a 040/40mhz machine with a 20" Apple trinitron display. They were showing a Workbench screen in 1024x768 256 colours but they had the workbench set to 1024x1536 so it would annonyingly scroll as you reached the bottom of the screen, however it scrolled with ease. The speed of this card was very nice. I moved windows around with ease and all in a 1024x768 - 256 colour environment. The screens were all dragable, and at one point I had 3 screen all at the same time. Unfortunately, the software still mucks up the palettes between screens. It would be nice if the software could alter the palettes of background screens to "best match" colours from the palette of the front screen. The demonstrator loaded up ProPage4 to show me the speed of the text in that environment. He set the screen to 256 colours, zoomed in on the text and you could move round the document with ease, in fact the text flied by. There was a big problem here, though. Half of the text didn`t get displayed for some reason. The German demonstrator said that they knew about this and it wasn`t just a problem with their boards but ProPage seems to much up a few of the RTG boards around. I don`t use ProPage but if you do, check out the problem before considering a purchase. The price of this 64 bit graphics card: 299 UK pounds ~=$450 US. Howeveri, if you ordered one at the show or asked to be sent details you could get the board for 285 UK Pounds. The board will be available in Febuary and ships with 2megs of ram, upgradeable to 4megs. It will do 1280x1024 in 8bit and 800x600 in 24bit all non interlaced. Comes with a pass through connector as well. I filled in a form for details of the board when it is available. Cyberstorm 060: -------------- The cyberstorm 060 was on display for everyone to see, there was one in the machine and one outside. The Cyberstorm 060 is just the same as the 040 Cyberstorm except for the CPU Module part (The basic Cyberstorm comes in 3 bits). They were just running animations which were running at high speed. I asked to play with the workbench and that I did. Not much to see here. They didn`t have any apps so I couldn`t really see the thing perform in real life but they did have AIBB running and that was flying through the tests such as the beach ball etc. Overall I think it showed the machine to be running about 3-4 times that of the A4000/040 but it could have been more. Obviously code written for the 060 would run a lot faster but then the Amiga`s OS isn`t written for 060 so we can stay with the basic speed. Overall though, the cyberstorm gave a very good impression. The machine seemed fast and the bench marks showed the machine running extremely fast. They have bench marking figures which show the A4000 at 15.4mips and the 060 at 82.19 mips. This is, however, for a 10million iteration program. If it is only using the same instruction then the speed will be a little false as this would only show the speed of execution inside the chips cache. Sysinfo showed the board running at 39.85 mips (A4000/040- 19.1 mips). Real world tests with AdPro, Imagine and lightwave all showed the board to run 3-4 times that of the A4000. Memory reads and writes are also about 4X the speed of a stock A4000/040. Considering that the Cyberstorm runs 040/40 runs about 2X the speed of a stock A4000/040 (except for memory access which is a lot faster) you can get an idea of the speed you will see. The literature pointed out that Bench mark programs do not run correctly on the 060. Everything seemed to be running ok on the Cyberstorm and there were no crashes. Now for the good part. The Cyberstorm will be released in Febuary (Motorolla willing) and will be intially released with a 50mhz part as shown at the show (a 80mhz version will follow). The cost of this little speed demon: 1000 UK pounds - ~=$1500 US. Now this is 200 pounds, ~=$300 less than the cost of the current Warp 040/40mhz although the board does lack scsi-2. I was told that the scsi-2 option (basically the same technology as the fastlane) will cost 200 UK pounds. For those ordering at the show, the price was 950 pounds for the card. Photogenics: ----------- Next was another piece of amazing software. Photogenics is a brand new image manipulation program from Alamthera in the UK. Primarily written by a guy called Paul Nolan (who I met) it basically takes images and you can apply various operations to them (such as blur, tint, etc). There are loads of operations that can be done. The program can loads a wide variety of formats including Jpeg & gif, it can also create Plasma and ripple images. The best part is that the program is designed to work with 2 images. You can load one as a primary and one as a secondary and then do all sorts of weird operations to merge the two together and rub through etc. The program primarily works in a superbly fast Ham-8 mode and all the pictures are kept in their own windows. The speed at which this program works is superb and the speed at which the windows dynamically resize is quite amazing. I went to a full demonstration by Joylon Ralph and I was so impressed with the demonstration and also when I got to play with the program that I bought a copy. It sells for 54.95 UK Pounds ~= $83 US. Although at the show it was available for 49.95 pounds with a free tee-shirt. See later for my impression of the program once I got it home. Theatre: ------- I went to two sessions at the Amiga Theatre. The first was for Photogenics and Joylon Ralph managed to impress all with this wonderful program. His A1200 did crash when he loaded photgenics :-) the first time. It`s never crashed for me however. The second session I went to was a "meet the developers" thing. Jim Drew, a guy who worked on an interesting gadget for the CD32, Joylon Ralph and a guy from Digita. The guy from Digita didn`t impress me much as he had more to say about the PC/Windows than he did the Amiga. He said the only software company out there was Microsoft and that we have to face reality. I like to think that photogenics was more reality although this will be ported to the MAC and PC. Joylon said that a professional version of Photogenics would be available next year. Jim was asked several questions about the PC emplant and gave some very good answers as he always does. He mentioned that they do have a multiprocessor accelerator board that they will resume work on but they need more employees and they can`t seem to get enough. He mentioned later that they only have 2 working 060 processors. The guy who had produced a widgit was a cheery sole. He was from Canada and his widget is used for interactive banking and other things. Apparently his company, TVI, has sold 1,000 CD32`s to a Canadian Bank for customer use. One of the news articles that I read said they were testing the project with 100 of the banks customers and if this went well then it would be offered to all 200 thousand of their customers -here`s hoping. They were asked an interesting question. What would you do with 12 million UK Pounds. I think Joylon wanted to spend some and retire. Jim Drew who claims he can retire a rich man now said that 12 million was a hell of a lot and that he could make good use of it. He said that these days you could turn hardware out in a day, make changes and have a new board out the next day. He also mentioned that 1000 square feet pre employee at West Chester was a waste. In fact, thinking back, Jim had a lot to say, in fact he never stopped talking the whole time I saw him. I think he likes the Amiga. On thing they all seemed united on was that the Amiga has a fantastic OS and that they love using it. The guy from TVI said that all his employees use Amigas. Jim said that the work for the Mac PC emplant was primarily done on the emplant MAC module. Other Stuff: ----------- One other thing Jim mentioned was that they asked Adobe if they (UU) could port Adobe Photoshop for free to which Adobe declined. UU then demaned that they port it and Adobe refused. Adobe said that they have loads of patents on their operations in the program and they don`t want the code ported. Keiron Summer? was showing an Indian guy the emplant and talking about the Indian Government. The guy was impressed with the emplant but then I think Jim could have done a good job at selling ZX81`s at the show. Ramiga were at the show with lots of Amiga equipment although there stand made it quite difficult to enter. I didn`t spend much time here. I did notice that they had rather a lot of Super Buster Chips Rev11 for 19.95 UK pounds. Villiage Tronic had a big stand but as the Cybervision was on display I didn`t spend much time looking at their products. They and many other stands were displaying an awful lot of OS3.1 kits. There were bargains to be had with CDROM`s. In fact there were a lot of CDROMS to be bought. For the CD32 you could buy Guardian for 10 pounds. Newtek were there, well sort of. There was 1 guy with a projector. One star of the show was a video of "The Wrong Trousers" playing direct from a hard drive with DPS and the personal animation recorder. Hisoft had a new version of Twist, Twist 2 which is a relational database. It looked quite good. I asked them about a C++ upgrade to SASC but they didn`t know much about it and asked me to phone the office on Monday. ICL were selling warranties. Paragon had the new CD32 Gamer out with a full game on the cover - Lamborghini Challenge - 10 UK Pounds. White Knight seemed to have a low key stand which suprised me. They sell a lot of products but were concentrating on the Digital Broadcaster. This may have been due to their recent move. Conclusion ---------- Well, as I said at the start, the show seemed a little bare but there was lots of new stuff to see and drool over. The show did seem a little unprofessional but then money is tight at the moment. From what I could see and hear, CBM were making sure that they spoke to all the right people e.g. Jim Drew and Phase5. They were also trying to impress what seemed some big customers. One thing I did pick up from the Americans at the show, that we would all be better off if CEI did not get the Amiga. I`ve heard this before actually from other sources and someone pointed out that we only ever hear from Alex and that he never says no. Joylon Ralph said that they haven`t returned any of their calls or faxes. Now I`m no fan of CBM UK but I came away from the show not knowing what to think. I do know that at the moment nothing is happening so whatever happens can`t be worse than nothing. Photogenics - what is it like: Well I got photogenics home and I couldn`t get it to run. The registration number given was wrong. As it turned out it required an extra digit. I must have spent about 1/2hr trying to figure it out. I tried several combinations and discovered that the requestor would take 1 more digit than the length of my number. I managed to get in my adding a 3 to the end of the registration number. I loaded the program and as I have an A4000/030/ 25mhz (the machine at the show was a 50mhz 030) and I was running a dblpal screen (my monitor doesn`t sync down to 15khz) the program was running quite a bit slower than the demostration at the show. However after a few hours I was starting to have some fun. It does appear however, that whatever resolution you goto the images still display in a low res ham8 format. The resolution of the real picture is kept though. It would be nice if you could display the pictures at their real resolutions. I had some great fun with the ascii saver although it seems to create pictures which are twice the height they should be so you have to reduce the height of your image before saving. Some of the run through effects are great and there are several different brushes such as spray can, pastel, felt tip pen and pencil. If you`re looking for a fun image manipulation program with lots of effects than this could be for you. The program stores all images in 24bit in memory and dispays in ham8. I did find that this seemed to degrade my Ham8 pictures when redisplaying them. The number of loaders is extensive, including jpeg, iff, gif, iff-deep, cdxl and also Photo CD pictures :-). If you have a stock A1200 this program will run slowly. I would start off with at least a 25mhz 030. At 55 pounds this program is a steal and a hell of a lot of good fun. If you want to add some effects to your pictures easily then this is a good tool. With the program being this good the proffessional version should be really good. This is Si (Simon) signing out. Please email me if you want to discuss any of the above. I have the product sheet on the Cyberstorm 060 and Cybervision64. Si. ___________________________________________________________________________ si@mailserver.aixssc.uk.ibm.com "I`m unique in the respect I`m not You" @endnode @node P2-7 "WOA '94 Report" @toc P2-7 =========================================================================== == WOA '94 Report By: Andy Dean == =========================================================================== The World of Amiga show is the first major Amiga show here in the UK since the demise of Commodore. We visited the show on the last day of the three (Sunday), and after walking around most of the Wembley complex we happened upon Exhibition Hall 1 and went in... The whole show took place within one large hall, with the centre being dominated by the large "Amiga" stand. Here lies the main difference between this show and those that have been held previously - there didn't really seem anyone in charge of the main exhibit. Previously Commodore owned the centre exhibit and had at least a small booth manned with people giving out Commodore literature. This time, nothing. The Amiga stand itself was home to many CD32s, a wall of TVs and a car but no "Amiga" employees. Needless to say, there wasn't any new Commodore hardware on show at this stand, although Workbench3.1 and some new A1200s could be found on nearby stands. The story gets stranger though, as upon walking in everyone was presented with a genuine Commodore bag (complete with Commodore chicken-head logo) and there was a stand selling "official Commodore merchandise". Even the less observant visitor couldn't help but notice that there was something a bit strange afoot in the Commodore household. Attendance seemed healthy, not so busy that you couldn't move and not deathly quiet; I don't know how this compared to the previous two days. Newtek were one of the first stalls you saw as you entered, and were showing a looping video of various industry graphics gurus extolling the virtues of Lightwave. No actual machines were to be found on the Newtek stand though, Amiga or otherwise. Next to Newtek were DPS, showing their Personal Animation Recorder as well as demonstrating some of the Video Toaster's realtime video effects, something which we don't see too much of in the UK. Lightwave itself was to be found amply demonstrated elsewhere though, none better that on the RAMIGA / ACE stand. Here John Allerdyce was showing off the Tower Assault intro and outro animation sequences (no need to play the game, now I've seen how it ends :)) while John's Raptor stood menacingly by. Staying with graphics, Almathera were demonstrating and selling their new "Photogenics" image manipulation package. This really does look like an excellent program and at a price of 49pounds (show price) it seemed to be selling like hot cakes. Photogenics allows the loading and saving of many common file formats, real media painting tools (Chalk, Felt tip, Crayon ...) and special effects (Emboss, Distort, Rub through ...). The image is shown in either HAM8, 256 colour or greyscale and the program seemed fairly fast even on a standard Amiga. The program is entirely modular with loaders, savers, effects and painting tools all loaded externally - it looks a little like a baby version Adobe's Photoshop. The downside to the program are its requirements - Workbench3.0 or later, an AGA Amiga (although third party graphics cards are supported) and a fair amount of memory (they suggest that it can be run in 2MBytes, but I'd say 4MBytes was a more sensible minimum). Coming somewhere between a paint package and an image processing program, this program is going to do very well. Incidentally, I saw Photogenics running on a A4000/040 equipped with a Cybervision64 graphics card - now that's really fast! Jim Drew was showing off the new EmplantPC software, proof that it really does exist and it really does work. The presentation of the setup software seemed very similar to the Mac emulator and Jim had it running some simple text based and CGA software. Apparently the VGA graphics drivers aren't finished yet so Windows was not shown running, which was a pity as it's difficult to judge the speed of the emulation with text based applications. The Mac emulator was also being shown, this now looks like a very polished product. Emplant boards were being sold by Blittersoft at the show (Emplant Deluxe, 299pounds) so with the cost of the PC emulator being 99pounds the possibility of having both usable Mac and PC emulations, SCSI port and AppleTalk for less than 400pounds this seems like good value. Jim also had strong views on which of the 2 main players in the Commodore buyout he supported - I'll give you a clue, it wasn't CEI. PC Task 3.0, Chris Hames's entirely software PC emulator, was also on display and I saw it running Windows on a A4000/030. A fine achievment, but to my mind it was running too slow to be usable for anything but the simplest of tasks. Digita had a large stand, where they were apparently showing their new database "Datastore". Unfortunately, I can't get excited about either (i) Digita products or (ii) databases, so a Digita database program had me heading straight away. Attendance by the UK Amiga magazines was good, with most of the major magazines being represented. It was also good to see some of the minority magazines like "JAM" also present; incidentally, the show programme was produced entirely on an Amiga by Jeff Walker of JAM magazine. I expected more PD houses to be present (I only counted two) - I can remember the PD houses being very popular previously. I can't really comment on the new games being shown, as I didn't really pay much attention; it was noticeable though that there were considerably less game-playing youngsters at the show than previous shows. Most of the software on sale was slightly cheaper than could be obtained normally (ArtDeptPro 115pounds, Lightwave 415pounds, PageStream3 175pounds, VistaPro3 22pounds) but there were some bargains on older software (DPaint4AGA 8pounds, Lemmings 1pound). Hardware could also be obtained slightly cheaper (IDE hard drives were about 10percent cheaper than normal) and again some bargains could be found (a hand scanner for A500 only was 30pounds). Well, you can't go the a show and not buy anything and so we came away with Photogenics and VistaPro3. All in all, a pleasant day and I hope that in next year's show the main stand will actually belong to someone. @endnode @node P2-8 "WOA '94 Report" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == WOA '94 Report By Mat Bettinson == =========================================================================== World of Amiga Show at Wembley London '94 The sysops entourage including yours truely, arrived at the show on the first day, early so we had some time to wander around before the crowds arrived. Still there was a considerable cue outside of die hard Amigans who'd travelled to Wembley from all over the Europe and beyond. Inside most of the exhibitors had set up early too and I was initially surprised at how many companies had turned out to exhibit their wares to the eager for re-assurance Amiga owners. Largely we weren't disappointed but later I heard of people who were. Each to his own. Eighty Eight exhibtors turned out but after the initial wonder around I saw it still wasn't enough to fill the Wembley Exhibition Hall leaving it look like the small show that it really was. Still it's quality, not quantity. Perhaps the first thing that surprised us was that the entrance fee was just a pound. Most welcome, I would guess, as many of the people turning out to the event would be prepared to pay extra for entrance and found they had a few more pounds to spend inside the show. Walking straight in, the first stand I saw held a few computers that the public could use demonstrating some software. YOWZA! It was DOPUS 5! Yep and the kindly fellow Australian demonstrating it was non other than Jonathan Potter himself. The system is now multi-window and you can run Dopus 5 as the default public screen. Displays your drives as icons; when first seeing this I thought it was on the workbench screen and I have to say, I wouldn't have thought much improvement COULD be done to Dopus but this is revolutionary! Needless to say I hit Jonathan up for for a review copy... With luck you'll see a full review in AReport early in the new year. Moving on, Ramiga International were displaying the Raptor Plus rendering at some ridiculous rate. Multiprocessor MIPS RISC RS4600/133 Mhz beast... Sigh. They'll soon have these on a Trapdoor card for the 1200. :-) Some more VERY interesting products are the Ramiga Tower Systems: The Z7 A4000 Tower features 7 Zorro III slots, 2 Video slots and 5 PC slots, 6 5.25" Drive bays and 4 3.5" bays. The Z5 A1200 Tower comes with 5 Zorro II slows and 3 5.25" bays and 5 3.5" bays. Power supply and cables provided. Not clear on extra details or prices. You can be sure I'll be find out ASAP! Ramiga were also displaying the Mongoose 50Mhz '030 1200 Trapdoor unit. Go-faster boards for the 1200 were in great proliferation around the show and getting cheaper. The Silicon Studio was also on display at Ramigas stand. Being a full workstation kit based around the A4000T it's puzzling to know what they're going to DO for A4000Ts since just a few were made. Still THEY had one and very nice it looked too! :-) Seriously though, it consists of a fully configured system being a 4000T with a Warp Engine, 16 MB of RAM, about 3GB of storage etc but the actual card is capable of 20bit audio, 120dB dynamic range and 128x oversampling. These sort of figures indicate the whole shebang is aimed at the professional studio being able to mix 16 channels at once. Nice to see yet more serious Amiga hardware. Looks like a winner. The front part of the show seemed to be dedicated to the serious aspect of the Amiga and it has to be said... There was a greater presence in this area than the low-end market that many are afraid C= UK will doom the market to. Opposite, Village-Tronic were shifting copies of OS 3.1 at a rapid rate of knots when I walked in... Reason? All the other show exhibitors were buying them to re-sell at the same show! I kid you not! The same was occuring with the Picasso II-RTG 24 bit graphics boards which are back with a vengeance after a disturbing dry spell in their production. Practically half the exhibitors had a stock of OS3.1 kits and Picassos so unfortunately there were NO deals to be had with the Picasso going for 300 UK Pounds. Most disturbing since they sold out of the entire first production run, selling more units than an equivalent PC manufacturer might sell VGA cards and yet the price is STILL nearly TEN TIMES the cost. I feel that if they had been 150 pounds or even 200 they would have shifted them ALL. I asked the director if they are considering making a Zorro III unit. 'Maybe... We are seeing what happens to the Amiga.' which is fair comment, I guess, but then the other manufacturers aren't holding back. Still they DID have 'Ariadne' a new Ethernet card which will be greeted with whoops for joy. Sana-II compatible and complete with Commodores Envoy, it's sure to be a seller... Again I couldn't get a price out of them at the time. ? Am-Power were demonstrating Aladdin 4D compiled with the Inmos Parallel C compiler running on a mini-tower of Warp-III Inmos units. Mr Ambigabathy (!), the director, claimed that it was possible to reach 12,000 MIPS with enough boards. The rendering times with 6 CPUs were in the order of 10 times quicker than an A4000/040. He said deals were being made with NewTek to port Lightwave to the Warp-III platform. Looks very promising and cost effective. TVI Interactive systems showed the teleview home-banking product that uses a custom 2400 baud Modem and remote and a CD32 to provide a plug and go solution... Rumours were that words were being said to UK companies to bring the unit to Europe. Hi-Soft had a very pleasant surprise for the A1200 owning public. They demonstated a prototype of 'The Squirrel' a SCSI-2 Interface for the A1200 that fits into the PCMCIA slot and is capable of hitting 3MB/s with an '030 accelerated unit. It's a normal PCMCIA card with a cable flowing out the side sporting a 50W SCSI connector on the end. Not sure exactly where this unit will fit in the market as for the 69 UK pound asking price, SCSI interfaces for the leading accelerator boards can be purchased and not tie up the PCMCIA slot. Still it's a nice unit based on the nippy 5380 controller chip and should be available early in the new year. Power Computing, one of the largest Amiga hardware companies in the UK, were selling their entire range including The Warp Engine, the 28 or 40Mhz '040 accelerator for the A4000. The price for this unit was astronomical and at twelve hundred UK pounds it's a JOKE compared to the Phase 5 Cyberstorm I'll cover a little later. The Tandem IDE/CD interface card for Zorro equipped machines was shifting with many Amiga users opting to buy el-cheapo PC CD-Roms rather than SCSI units. They were also showing the Power Super XL drive which can store 3.5MB of data on a a High density floppy disk. At 100 UK Pounds it's not cheap but making backups on such a drive could work out quite cheap. I expect it'll use the same Power buffering technology since the Amiga can't handle the data rate the stock mechanisms produce. The full Viper range were shown but in my opinion, they should be keenly avoided having a very bodgy logic interface leading to disappointing performace. One stand I spent some time at was the Phase 5 stand. Phase 5 are an innovative German company responsible for the Blizzard range. They've been known to offer good value for money and their recent products are NO exception. The item that drew me to the stand quicker than Saddam to a Scud was an an obtrusive logo on a large PGA chip. *060* Yep... It was THERE and I *TOUCHED* it. If I die tommorow I can rest at ease knowing I forfilled my fantasy. :-) Yep the Cyberstorm '060 is ONE HELL OF A BEAST. Currently fitting only in an A4000, I hassled the Phase 5 blokes (who were real cool guys) wether if I hacked apart my A3000, it would work. They said 'probably' so ... Now to find the 950 quid to grab one quick smart! 82 MIPS You read correct. The Cyberstorm '060 is CHEAPER than ANY 40Mhz '040 based board so I don't think a great deal of Warp Engines were purchased that day! The units are to be availble in February and the CPU can be quickly and easily changed from the 50Mhz to a 66Mhz when it becomes availble. It can be run now with an '040 at any rate. Impressive. Apparently Motorolla are to manufacture a *90* MHz unit before too long. Ouch! However, the bad news is that the CPU is missing 64 bit multiplication and some other key instructions so a new exception library is needed but Phase 5 have come to the rescue with some brilliant code patching software. First time that the CPU hits some unsupported instructions they are patched to ones the '060 DOES support. This was demonstrated on the AIBB beach ball render test. First time it ran there was a noticable pause in the middle of the render but subsequent executions blistered by without the pause. Neat. Fast? Hell this thing was rendering the beach ball before my machine would have STARTED. I WANT ONE NOW! Sigh. Also due in February is the Cybervision 64. A Zorro III 64-bit graphics card available in 2 or 4MB of RAM. Hardware Planr-to-Chunky pixel conversion using RoXXler chip, proper electronic switching of Amiga video output. Digital shared memory/video bus so that MPEG and JPEG cards can be added later. Seemless Monitor installing into the OS display database etc. This card looks NICE and the best bit? It's the SAME PRICE AS THE PICASSO! Phase 5 are doing the card for 285 UK Pounds NOW if you'll wait for delivery until February... Sheesh. Is the Pope Catholic? I could really get to like these Phase 5 blokes! BlitterSoft and Utilities Unlimited were demonstrating their latest pride: Infact Jim Drew himself was demonstration the e586DX Emulation module for the famous Emplant card. It was shown running Windoze software which seemed a bit odd... Surely they want someone to BUY the thing? :-) Seriously, it's claimed that you can run DOS, OS/2, NT, Windoze and even Chicago on the board but it wasn't possible for me to tell if the demonstration was working at a useable speed. :-( Almathera ia another sucessful and diligent UK based company that specialises in CD compilations of PD, CD32 projects and ripping my ideas off. (oops!) released Photogenics at the show. This looked VERY impressive indeed and a couple of friends walked off with copies. It's a very good 24-bit paint program and image processor that's very impressive in it's speed of operation and ease of use. Something I'm going to look at more closely though it's aimed more at users of HAM8 rather than 24 bit board users. Has a potentially massive market with it's real time HAM8 paint modes. It cause quite a stir and it wasn't the only Almathera stir. They were selling Nakamitchi 7 CD changers for 350 UK pounds and sold the lot very quickly. Instantaneously would be more accurate... Interesting. Naturally NewTek were there, pushing stand-alone Lightwave 3D. Difference is the pamphlets are saying 'MUTLI-PLATFORM' with words like PC and SGI written on it. Ouch. I guess it had to happen. NewTek moving into the real world. Brings a tear to your eye doesn't it? Still luckily there's the usual group of pamphlet pushing VERY lovely girls to comfort me. :-) Digital Processing Systems were showing the PAR DPS doing amazing things like playing live video off HD. Their stall was packed all day which is no surprise considering the fantasic animations they were displaying... The Studio 16 was also present but not being on demo as far as I could see. Of couse all the UK Amiga magazines turned out in force for stands being CU Amiga, Amiga Format and the bevvy of Pargon publications but Internet and Comms Today was conspicuously missing. JAM, the amateur Amiga produced Amiga fanzine was there and attracting some attention amongst the Amigaphiles who didn't know it existed. It SHOULD be ON the shelf in my most humble of opinions. It was noticed by some aquaintances that they weren't approached by a single UK magazine during the duration of the show. Dave Collins of the Multi-media machine stand said, 'Sales were fairly slow on Friday but on the Saturday the French arrived and promptly bought everything we had'. The Multi-Media Machine provides a CD authoring service entirely for the Amiga market and also makes custom Multi-media presentations in stand-up cabinets plus pub games machines. A young company that's thriving on the Amiga scene primarily because they've diversified using Amiga technology to the full. Seemed that it took some time for everyone to realise they were flogging CDs loaded with Amiga games for a fiver each. When they DID... Not one English magazine approached us but many of the French magazines came to see us and the other exhibitors' said Dave. This seemed indicitive of the attitude of the English Magazines. Aimed squarly at the low-end of the market showing no interest in the higher end. The large turn-out of professionals investigating the high end hardware explains why the American Amiga World magazine is regarded as the best choice in such circles. ICPUG, the Commodore user club, stashed right next to the door; displayed a linear progression of Commodore models with the PET taking the most prominent position with many people peering closely at the ancient item of Commodore history. I was surprised how many people didn't KNOW what it was. Maybe I'm getting old? :-) The show Theatre held a variety of public demonstrations and seminars by various companies throughout the day though I didn't have time to see them. Finally the central Amiga stage held a variety of performaces throughout the day but just as they were firing up, the sysops retired to the bar and began to drink themselves senseless before embarrasing themselves at the Developers Conference... Which is another matter entirely. All in all, I feel it was a good show. Good turn out of exhibitors with new products dispite the uncertain future of the platform. There was certainly no lack of confidence to be seen. These companies wouldn't bother if they didn't think that everything wasn't going to come though. @endnode @node P2-9 "WOA '94 Report" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == WOA '94 Report By: Kim F Ong == =========================================================================== Hi there! Alright, since there are many of you wanting to know... I went to the show and saw David Pleasance ;) Anyway, more of the man later... The best NEW thing out there that you can really buy has to be the new software by Almathera. Photogenics -- "The ultimate 24bit graphic and manipulation package". I must really say that this is the works as compared to PhotoShop on the Macs! It features: natural paint tools- airbrush, pencil, etc; multiple images editing - each in a resizable HAM8 window; Undo/Redo; previews; multiple file formats - IFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PCX, ASCII, PBM, QRT, RAW, RGB8, RGBN, Opalvision, Picasso 2, Vlab; runs on AGA 1200/4000, alpha-channel, open architecture, drag & drop; lots of effects - Adddust, noise, alterhue, balance, blur, cloner, deinterlace, displacemap, emboss, false colour, flip XY, gradient, greyscaale, highlights, huemap, line art, masking paint, matrix, mono, motion blur, negative, paint, pixelise, randomise, rub thru, rubmix, saturation, sharpen, shifthue, shiftRGB, sloarise, Tile & Tint. etc. I got myself a copy too...but.... (see below) It requires KS3.0 with 2MB RAM, those A2000 & A3000 owners who upgraded and own a graphics card should be alright. No EGS though, maybe that will come later?? Now we reach the slot for BEST NEW hardware which you can see but can't buy. That awards go to the Cyberstorm System developed by Phase 5 Digital products. They are only demoing in the show so no chance of carrying it back with you. Even when it is out, only A4000 owners will be in luck because they are waiting and see iff the response is good before they bring out the A3000 and A4000T. The basic system is actually 3 boards: the interface card, cpu card and the memory card. The interface will include a socket for a Ethernet Boot Rom or Flash Rom. The CPU is prepared for speeds up to 80MHz ( the present 68060 is only 50MHz ) and will have an expansion port for future DSP boards. The Memory card uses 4 32bit 72pins slots for a maximum of 128MB with Z3 DMA access and data transmission rate of 50MB/s is possible with standard 60ns DRAMS. Further expansions include a I/O card and a SCSI card. The SCSI planned will be a SCSI 2 Fast interface with full DMA channel amd FIFO buffered. Software will include CD-ROM FS and Cache prog. The I/O card includes all these plus ethernet connection and a RS232 serial. Phase 5 is also developing the Cybervision64 card using S3 Trio64 chip with a RoXXIer chip for hardware Planar2Chuncky conversion. The expected resolution is 800x600 24bit Noninterlaced and 1024x768 24bit interlaced. Software include WB emulation and support libraries. No PCMIA Emplant..... the E586 module for emplant is only taking orders as it hasn't shipped here yet. They were demoing it, but when I was there, the damned machine wasn't doing anything and lots of people are crowding around asking questions about the PCMIA emplant....so I can't see if there is a valid claim in "Pentiumable" performance ;) Blittersoft are showing off the Micronik 3000T/4000T cases. They go at RRP 400 ukp each. I was more interested in the 1200T but they told me that they can get it for me within a week if I wanted one. The biggest obstacle I can see in that offer is the price, approx 600 ukp! They will only do it on per order basis. Village Tronics are there too, selling stuff like Picasso-II (very popular), Ariadne, OS3.1, etc. I also saw PC Task 3.0, Termite among numerous other softwares. And of course the other stuff that invariably makes up a Amiga show, Lightwave, PAR, Broadcast systems, Rombo products, Magazines, bouncing castles, one arm jacks, PDs, games, and more games, etc. Tuck in one corner is a booth selling out what I believe to be liquidation stock! Single sync VGA 14' monitors going for 40 ukp a throw! CDTVs, 5 1/4 external FDD, keyboards, etc. All Commodore manufactured!! I was then when I saw DP. People weren't exactly rushing to ask him questions, so that is why I got the chance later! Anyway, from most of his replies to another guy who was into the high-end of the Amiga macines, it was depressing. The main thing that he said, other than constanly repeating the phrase "It is very positive", was that he will be concentrating on the consumer home market. He said things like the A1200 and CD32 was what kept the Commodore going and Amiga is basically a consumer home computer who happens to have some special high-end machines (I paraphrase, not his exact words!). But he did reassured that guy that A4000 will still be continued to be developed. He further says that he is expecting the Hombre chip to be ready in 2 years time, and until then, the lower-end will be his focus. OK, now my time!!! Knowing how anxious you people are, I asked the all important question. (Don't kill me if it isn't, nobody told me what was anyway!) I asked him whether if he is going to host an IRC conference on the Internet cause his main rival, Alex Amor of CEI has done it twice already. Know what did he said??? He said, and I quote, "he has done himself a disservice" and that he should not have discussed with everybody as the creditors do not want it. And then he says, "in fact, he (Alex) has his fund withdrawn" because of this. [Note - CEI reports that they did not indeed lose their financial backing. -- Ed.]] Now, I really don't know what the hell all that was about as I really don't what to say after that. I thanked him for my question and walked away. I think I feel a strong defensiveness in his last few sentences, like you would if you had done something wrong. Maybe I am wrong on this, but it certainly isn't all good. Even the latest edition of the Amiga Format Jan95 has an article that seems to be having a laugh at DP. I quote: "CEI are said to have made a cash bid, including a non-refundable deposit in the order of $1 million which guarantees Commodore creditors against reneging on the proposed buy-out.............. ...However, this claim has been denounced by David Pleasance as "horseshit". "We are in pole position," he continued, " the receiver has been in touch with me to let me know that nothing has been agreed." At the end of the article, the writer asked, "so will the real owners of the Amiga please stand up?" ;) The show was rather empty, maybe because it was Friday, I might go again tomorrow just to see if there is any more bargains. Yep, some of the stuff are flogged off at such low prices that it is unbelievable! I got a copy of Real 3D classic for just 20quid! I thought it has a rather neat freeform feature which was missing in my Lightwave. So I just bought it for the price of a game! The day would be absolutely for an Amigoid like me if not for the same old problems. No Quality Control!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Photogenics program I bought could not be used because the program registration when you first use it doesn't accept the serial number given on the disk!!! This is S***! Can't they make sure they have everything right!! Now I will have to go back again and ask for an exchange or something!!! S*** again! The other game I bought, Abandoned Places 2 won't run on my machine too!!! S***! It crash after the Character generation, so I can't even play at all!!! (sorry for the number of expletives like S***..oops, there goes one more) Arrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!! When will we finally find a whole set of user-friendly (machine- friendly) software and hardware for the Amiga???????? Maybe see some of you there tomorrow on Saturday? @endnode @node P2-10 "IPISA '94 Conference Report" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == IPISA '94 Conference Report By: Wouter van Oortmerssen == =========================================================================== INTRODUCTION This is a review of the IPISA '94 Conference held in Milan, Italy, on Saturday, 19 November 1994. 'IPISA' stands for "Incontro dei Programmatori Italiani per lo Sviluppo Amiga," which means 'Italian Programmers' Meeting for Amiga Development.' It was organised to bring Amiga developers from all of Italy together to meet people, exchange ideas, and hear talks on new products/developments. As I was the only non-Italian (and invited speaker) at the conference, it seemed right that I write the review. so here it is. PREPARATIONS I arrived at the Milan Airport Thursday, two days early, to meet with members of the organisation (some of whom have been friends of mine for quite a while), and to rehearse my talk a bit. :-) The two evenings before the event, we all met at Sebastiano Vigna's cosy little apartment, trying to arrange everything. At times, this was quite hectic: hundreds of disks to be organized, badges to be checked, and generally making sure everything would be in the right place on Saturday. At times I was even forced to help out.. ;-) This might seem disorganised, but in retrospect, all was very well organised and everything fell into place on Saturday. The organisation did a marvelous job on this, even in the face of such last-minute obstacles as Pagestream 3 almost refusing to print an important printout. THE CONFERENCE We arrived a little late because we could not find the conference hall at first ("I'm sure it was around THAT corner..."), but still in time to set up some equipment. The conference hall was quite a large hall with seats for 500 people, and a stage (a bit like a cross between a lecture hall and a theatre). On stage various Amiga's (A4000, A3000 and a CD32) were set up for use during the talks, and one at a time could be connected to a large (4x4 meter) screen hanging behind it. By using large fonts, the whole audience could enjoy whatever was demonstrated. At 10 o'clock, visitors were allowed to enter. They all received a badge with their name on it, and upon leaving the conference they would receive the professionally printed IPISA proceedings (with articles by the speakers and also a selection of others, among which Daniel J. Barrett, Andy Finkel and Urban Mueller), and a 10-disk set containing software discussed by the speakers and a variety of other useful PD software. First there was an introduction by the head of the organisation, Sergio Ruocco. The start of the talks was delayed a bit as the first speakers had yet to arrive. There were quite a number of talks scheduled, and I won't be discussing them all in full detail, but here's an impression: There were various hardware related talks such as the very interesting talk by Paolo Canali on new hardware architectures for graphics/multimedia. It was quite technical but supported by various clear diagrams on the big screen, and thus very comprehensible. Another was the DSP system by Castellani and Sartor, which is currently very much in development. 'OperBlitting' was about using the blitter's logical operations to perform math on large amounts of numbers 'at once'. Other talks: 'WT', a show-all program in the spirit of VT, 'AnimCommander', an animation program; 'KnapDisk', a program with a clever algorithm to fit a number of files optimally on disks; 'OLE', a system inspired by the Windows system by the same name; mathematically inspired talks on systems for integrals and statistics; 'Amiga Expert Team', a presentation of a new service for Amiga users; 'Music by numbers', a quite unusual but very interesting talk on algorithmically produced music (with demonstrations!); and a demonstration of the MPEG module for the CD32, which isn't all that new, but entertaining anyway. And of course there was my own talk, on the E language and compiler. I practiced quite a bit, since I can make myself understandable in Italian, but such a large audience is something different (there were approximately 200 people). I finished the talk with a flashy demonstration of the new source-level debugger for E. After each talk the audience could ask questions, and at the end of all the talks there was time for all people to speak their heart out on what bothers them most. Somewhere in the middle of the talks a meal was organised at the local self-service restaurant, and at the end of the conference we all (well, at least 100 of us) gathered at a well know pizzeria in Milan. It took hours for everybody got get served eventually, but that didn't matter much as everybody was amusing themselves pretty well anyway. In general, IPISA succeeded very much as a social event also. everybody was able to meet with new people and exchange ideas. I certainly met more people than I can remember and had a great time with them. THE PROCEEDINGS In the conference proceedings were articles by most of the speakers on their respective subjects, and also quite a few other articles. Daniel Barrett reveals the latest in Fred Fish's CDROM series: "Fish Styx", where Fred shows off his singing talents. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This was a humor article. - Dan] Andy Finkel wrote "The Amiga: how to survive in a PC world", which gives us a profound economics lesson from the perspective of the Amiga, and its future. Very interesting: food for thought. Urban Mueller talks about yet another milestone: the 10000th file on AmiNet, and the statistics that come with it. Further articles are in Italian. From the humorously intended "Waiting for the Powermacintosh" by Giovanni Gentile about a person that keeps missing the boat on various Macintosh models, tempted by the Amiga, to worthwhile reading material such as the article by Sebastiano Vigna and Sergio Ruocco which deals with Amiga survival hints and tips on a variety of subjects such as software, networks, programming, etc. CONCLUSIONS Personally, I think the IPISA was a great success. If you are Italian, this certainly is a an event absolutely worth attending. If you don't speak Italian the current edition wouldn't have been as interesting, as it was in Italian, and most Italians are notorious for their bad command of the English language ;-) (though rumours have it that future editions might be more internationally oriented). It scores at least 4.5 pizza's out of 5. The organisation was very professional, and the organisers (all 15 of them) worked very hard to make it all happen. I'd like to thank them here for what they did. @endnode @node P2-11 "AR Reader Poll" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == AR Reader Poll By: @{"Katherine Nelson" link P8-3} == =========================================================================== Well, so far I've gotten about 40 letters from readers telling me what they would like to see in a new version of WorkBench. I know there are a lot more of you out there, so start typing! Just let me know what programs you'd like to see bundled with the new Amigas, and what cosmetic and functional improvements to the OS that you would like to see. Also, if you can let me know what PD utilities you currently use (if any) to enhance the look or performance of your 'bench, I'd appreciate it. ;) Secondly, since the most popular idea for improvement is to either use MagicWB or NewIcons, I would like to see which is preferred. Please send me mail letting me know if you have seen both NewIcons and MagicWB, and which you prefer. (It is very important that I know if you've seen them both, to get a fair comparison.) Katherine Nelson 35 W 852 Highland Ave kati@cup.portal.com Elgin, IL 60123-5043 USA Fax: (708) 741-0689 @endnode @node P2-5 "Soft-Logik Conference" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == Soft-Logik Conference on Portal == =========================================================================== To announce some PageStream 3.0 news, an agreement with Digita, and their move to Windows and Mac support, Soft-Logik held a conference recently on Portal. It was attended by roughly 35 people, listed below... John D Short (John D Short) soft-logik (soft-logik) Harv (Harv) Izzy (Izzy) HOWARD L GAZES (TheDuck) Jcompton (jcompton) lbperez (Luis & Maria) devasoft (devasoft) PKB (PKB) Voltar (Voltar) Waylander (Waylander) Milestone (Milestone) JeffH (JeffH) Amiga2 (Mike-SLslave) DonM (DonM) Drakon (Drakon) ScottJ (ScottJ) Michael A Radanovich amiga1 (Deron-SLPREZ) JeffW (FPW) CliffG (CliffG) Jumpdisk (Jumpdisk) KyleW (KyleW) grog (grog) AmiGadget (AmiGadget) HAWK (HAWK) jraGRAPHICS (jraGRAPHICS) RickB (RickB) SubDriver (SubDriver) Amiga2 (Mike-SLslave) gsarff (gsarff) DrTed (DrTed) SBurroughs (SBurroughs) sjn (sjn) Lyonking (Lyonking) This conference transcript is Copyright 1994, The Amiga Zone, all rights reserved. Amiga Report magazine is hereby granted exclusive non-commercial distribution rights. Commercial reprinting or redistribution of this transcript is expressly forbidden without permission. Write to "harv@cup.portal.com" if you are a commercial magazine who wishes to publish any or all of this transcript. Do not perform any further editing on this transcript without first obtaining written permission. Harv: SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO... PLEASE SIT BACK, RELAX, DON'T TYPE, AND LET ME NOW INTRODUCE KEVIN DAVIDSON, OUR WUNNERFUL SOFT-LOGIK ONLINE SUPPORT GUY HERE WHO WILL INTRODUCE TONITE'S WUNNERFUL GUESTS... KEVIN? soft-logik: Thank you. I'm very pleased to have our two guests here tonight. First wearing the Deron SLPREZ trunks, is Deron Kazmaier (hope I pronounced that right) Deron is the President of Soft-Logik Publishing and the principal designer and author of PageStream and his slave, Michael Loader publisher of Radical Type Magazine and author of the PageStream 3 manual and other soft-logik documents Michael is the real brains behind the support we offer here on Portal Gentlemen, would you like to make any opening remarks? Mike-SLslave: Sure. I'm going to post some stuff for Deron. "Thank you for coming to tonight's conference. I'm glad to have this opportunity to speak with you in person. We don't have anything new to announce tonight, but we have made a number of announcements in the last month that I'm sure you will want to discuss. I know you all have a lot of questions, and I'll answer them in a minute. First, I would like to summarize our latest news. PAGESTREAM3 AMIGA. Our main priority at this time is PageStream3 for the Amiga. We are committed to finishing the unimplemented features and fixing any problems remaining in the program. We want to make it the best desktop publisher possible. Version 3.0d is being released tonight and will greatly improve the usability of the program." PAGESTREAM FOR MACINTOSH AND WINDOWS. I hope that those of you who are thinking about changing computers will stick with your present computer until we release PageStream for Macintosh and Windows. I can't tell you when they will be available, but we have already begun work on them. We will have a very affordable upgrade path from the Amiga and Atari versions but pricing has not been announced. Subsequent versions will add support for other machine specific features. There will also be a Windows version of TypeSmith, our font editor. WORDWORTH AND DATASTORE. We recently signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Digita International. Soft-Logik is now selling and supporting Wordworth and Datastore in the United States and Canada. Wordworth 3.1 is the latest version of Digita's award-winning word processor, while Datastore is a new personal database manager. We think that these programs are the best in their class and will be of great interest to all Amiga users. A document filter for PageStream3 will be available early next year to load an entire Wordworth document into PageStream to preserve the document layout. MOVING. We're moving to a new building at the end of this coming week. Here's our new address and phone numbers: OLD STREET ADDRESS NEW STREET ADDRESS 11131F South Towne Sq. 315 Consort Drive St. Louis, MO 63123 St. Louis, MO 63011 OLD POST OFFICE BOX NEW POST OFFICE BOX P.O. Box 510589 not yet available St. Louis, MO 63151 St. Louis, MO 63011 OLD PHONE NUMBERS NEW PHONE NUMBERS SALES 1-800-829-8608 1-800-829-8608 314-894-8608 314-256-9595 TECHNICAL SUPPORT 1-800-829-5816* 1-800-829-5816* 314-894-0431 314-256-9333 FAX 314-894-3280 314-256-7773 BBS (2 lines now!) 314-894-0057 314-256-8971 * for paid technical support only That's all the latest news. I'll let Kevin take over again now. soft-logik: Thanks Michael... Before I turn the conference over for questions, I'd like to take a point of priviledge and ask one opening question... Could you summarize the highlights of tonight's PageStream 3.0d release? Deron-SLPREZ: Faster text, gradient fill onscreen, and more bug fixes than you can shake a stick at :) jcompton: Even though the Amiga situation isn't solved yet the Amiga will need more going for it than ever before when it comes back out. Packed-in DTP certainly couldn't hurt. How seriously would you consider striking a deal to pack PageStream in with a model or line of Amigas? Deron-SLPREZ: Well, we have been bundles in England on the Atari in the past (long time ago). We have always been interested, but DTP has never been C='s target market. I can only offer, I cant lead the horse to water even in this case! CliffG: Does Wordsworth support tables and does it have end/footnotes? If not will it? Deron-SLPREZ: Wordworth supports tables and endnotes, but no footnotes. Its on the wishlist, but who knows when. soft-logik: [Note, I'll have a Wordworth and Datastore preview pack in the Soft - Logik vendor area here by tomorrow] ScottJ: Deron, given the unfinished state of PageStream 3.0, why didnt Soft- Logik wait another quarter before releasing it? Deron-SLPREZ: Not many more reasons other than the one in the readme when you install...The program has almost ever feature that 2.2 does, and so many more, that to call it "unfinished" is only a half truth anyway. Yes it doesn't do everything the manual says it should, but it still does a whole lot... That 1 meg program is 1 meg for a reason :) Luis & Maria: how real will be the pantone supportga Deron-SLPREZ: The pantone support is finished, so I'm not sure what your asking. Could you elabrate? Luis & Maria: yes will the display will be close to the color or it will be like now that you see a different shade of blue when yuo ask for process blu or yellow when yousk for orange Deron-SLPREZ: We ask the system for the proper color. If your running a 4 color screen, you not going to get an accurate on screen rep. Even at 256 colors it may not be 100%. The amiga is behind the times when it comes to hardware calibration of colors. Not much I can do about that. TheDuck: more of a suggestion than a question, the font.spec template from old version 2.2 doesnt load properlly, i guess because of tags... will this file ever be updated? it is the most usefull of files soft-logik: Howard, that should be fixed (3.0d?) Deron-SLPREZ: The 2.2 document loader has been fixed so that the tag problem is no longer a problem. Harv: FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR GUESTS, HOW MANY OF YOU CURRENTLY OWN PAGESTREAM (ANY VERSION)? JUST SAY "YES" OR "NO" NOW PLEASE soft-logik: yes CliffG: yes TheDuck: yes Jumpdisk: yes jraGRAPHICS: yes Michael A Radanovich: yup Luis & Maria: yes grog: no JeffH: yes RickB: YES Voltar: no KyleW: yes SubDriver: yes jcompton: Yes FPW: nope HAWK: yes KyleW: whenever I up versions I seem to loose the color palete as in I cant type anytrhing that will show on screen.. is there an easy way to keep this from hapening and fix it ?? Mike-SLslave: We're not sure what you mean. Color palettes with regard to text not showing??? KyleW: yes text will not show up using the default after the instalation of 30b Mike-SLslave: Compugraphic Intellifonts? Ensure you have the 1.0b CG.font engine for PageStream3.0c and then choose Settings/Fonts. Select the Intellifonts path. Click on Update. CLick on Save. soft-logik: [The FONT ENGINE update is here for downloading] DonM: I'm a long time ProPage user that converted (trying to?) with PS 4. Almost none of my PP and ProDraw files have converted successfully. Is that being worked on, or is there something I didn't understand? ga Deron-SLPREZ: About prodraw, we just found and fixed a problem with objects coming in with no fill on and the line weights are ok now. It should be close. About propage, we ask that simple files that demonstrate the problem be sent in. We can only do so much without the file format. jcompton: Follow-up to my question...you said something like "C= never made DTP a priority". You won't be dealing with Commodore. Are you willing to give a new company a new chance? Deron-SLPREZ: My point was that we have worked with everyone who has wanted to work with us. Why wouldn't we? Harv: Here's a non tech question: you guys pretty much own the Amiga DTP market now, and you now sell a word processor. what kind of competitive upgrade prices do you offer? If it's too complicated to type in, please give the details to Kevin so he can post it here. i.e. for owners of ppage, saxon, word perfect, prowrite, etc. etc. Deron-SLPREZ: PageStream3 can be had for $250 direct, or $225 for "competitive" upgrades.. Wordworth is $135 direct, $120 for softlogik owners. Harv: are you going to sell some kind of "super bundle" and maybe put it on cd-rom? Deron-SLPREZ: cd-rom? Not likely. Bundle, probably. soft-logik: A POLL: HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE CD-ROM DRIVES ON YOUR AMIGA? JUST TYPE "YES" OR "NO" Harv: yes Luis & Maria: yes soft-logik: yes Drakon: yes CliffG: YES Jumpdisk: yes DonM: no JeffH: yes ScottJ: Soon. Michael A Radanovich: no, not yet TheDuck: as of monday :> SBurroughs: yes sjn: no grog: no RickB: OF COURSE SBurroughs: a fast yes SubDriver: Yes Michael A Radanovich: I bought a copy of Page stream 2.2 form a friend (books, disks and all, even most of his hardware), but not a registration card, because he had sent that in will PageStream 3.0 be available to me as an upgrade, adn if so how much $? Deron-SLPREZ: You just need to send in a photocopy of the disks with the reg numbers on them, and your name and address along with the previous owners and they will swithc registrations and you can upgrade. Just call sales at 800-829-8608 tomorrow for more details. DrTed: How does the PS 3.0 unimplemented feature count and bug count compare to released DTP progs on other platforms... Deron-SLPREZ: No doubt that the average release is not full of so many unimplemented features, however, with the death of C= our user base was beginning to believe that we would never ship the program. We had to show everyone that we were still here and still working on it. No doubt in anyones mind now what a great program we are working on, and like I said before, it still does so much more than anything else on the amiga. Luis & Maria: will you disguise art epression to bring it to PS... or you will make a nue progra...m please dont abandon art expressionga Deron-SLPREZ: Since PageStream3 does so much already that would go into a new version of ArtExpression (like Pantone support, Arexx Macros, import/export, etc. etc) We won't be doing a v2 of AE, but we will be coming out with an AE extension for PageStream that adds the 3 features that AE has. Such as text on a path, text/objects in a shape, and blends. It will be cheaper for us to make, and cheaper for you to buy :) ScottJ: Any chance of PGS 3.0 supporting OS/2? If not, why not? Deron-SLPREZ: Well, you can always run Windows programs under OS/2 (better windows than windows, as IBM says :), and OS/2 is third on our list, but we can only do so much at once. RickB: I have been a loyal Pagestream user since 1.0 and have not been able to use 3.0 because it is toooooooooo slow... I also am anoyed that the only way I can get the patches is thru an online service. Why aren't you sending out patches to 3.0 users as a regular service? Deron-SLPREZ: Well, about the only thing slower than PageStream2 in version 3 is text and non-ps printing. In case you havn't noticed, every version of pgs3 since version a has been at least twice as fast as the previous for text. We even sped up graphics in 3.0d! About the other part...as we have said, once everything is finished, we will update all of your users. But to mail disks to everyone every 3 weeks would cost way to much. Mike, care to upload the notice on updates by mail? Harv: comment: if you knew there was a new patch online, wouldn't you rather just d/l it in a couple minutes right now than wait 3 weeks for a disk to show up? I thought most people with modems preferred online program patches. shrug. Mike-SLslave: NEW PAGESTREAM3 UPDATE OPTION ---- Nov 15, 1994 A few people without modems have asked if they could buy a subscription to all the minor PageStream 3.0 updates rather than having to pay $10 for each update by mail (we always offer the most recent minor update on disk to customers for $10). Some people with modems have asked for a similar option since their cost to download the updates is rather high. For $30 ($40 outside of Canada and the United States), we will mail you each of the updates (3.0d, 3.0e...) up to and including 3.1 (which will be mailed to all registered owners of 3.0 automatically). We will send you the current version immediately, and then each of the updates as they become available. These update disks will be identical to the update patches offered here online. Most online users will find it more cost-effective to continue to download each update, but for users who have to call long-distance to get them, this update subscription may be more affordable. Getting the updates online is more timely, since those subscribing to this plan won't get them until a week after the patches are posted online. Note: We're not doing this to make a profit. We're offering the update subscription for those who are without modems and for those who have to call long-distance to download the patches. HAWK: why is there no overwrite mode ? Deron-SLPREZ: Not much real use for it in a DTP program. If you wish to replace 3 letters with 4, overwrite doesn't buy you much. Just hilight, and type over. Simple. SubDriver: I just received a (second) mailing for upgrading to 3.0 saying it was my "last chance".. and that the upgrade offer "wouldn't last long" (or implying that) I'm a 2.2 owner. How long will the upgrade offer last? ($125 , I think?) Mike-SLslave: The $125 upgrade offer is not expiring. The expiration thing was supposed to refer to the powerup upgrade offer expiring. It wasn't clear, my fault. Mike-SLslave: That mailing was sent to people who hadn't upgraded from 2.x, and those who owned other SL programs but not pgs. sike-SLslave: Let me post our current pricing... Retail SLprice CompUp Direct PageStream3: $395 $210 $225 $250 TypeSmith2.5: $200 $110 $125 $125 Wordworth3.1: $225 $120 $135 $135 Datastore1.0: $160 $ 85 $ 95 $ 95 Retail: suggested retail price SLprice: for owners of other Soft-Logik programs CompUp: competitive upgrades from qualifying programs Direct: direct price to anybody To order direct, call 1-800-829-8608. Shipping is $6 US, $7 Canada, $20 Europe, $30 Other. jraGRAPHICS: what direction will you be taking pagestream (and the company) in these new markets (i.e., audience, features, etc.)? Deron-SLPREZ: As far as audience goes, PgS3 has a very clean interface to app.library, which is our Amiga specific library of functions. So pgs3 really doesn't know anything about screens, arexx, files, modules, etc. That is handled in app.library. Same for the modules. So we just (like thats an easy task :)) have to port app.library to new platforms, and the core codes remains unchanged. So we can support many platforms with less than normal effort. About features, I can't really say right now. Why spoil the fun :) soft-logik: Now that you're distributing WordWorth and soon Datastore, are there any changes anticipated in these products, or PageStream to make them work together better? Deron-SLPREZ: We don't develop Wordworth or Datastore. We just import, sell, and support them. We are going to be releasing a document loader for wordworth that supports things like graphics, but more than that is just a pure fancy at this time. BTW, that is a pagestream document loader for loading wordworth docs into pagestream. Luis & Maria: are you going to make a filter for .cdr file Deron-SLPREZ: Its on the wishlist, but until 3.1 its nothing more than that. Thats our first and only priority right now. DrTed: A year ago in VTU, you direct sold a Publishing Pack and a Power Users Pack. I bought the Power Users pack thinking I was told there would be a cheap upgrade to 3.0, even though not with the Pub. Pack. Was I wrong?? Deron-SLPREZ: My memory is less than perfect. Let me look up the ad.. The ad says on the bottom "Upgrade to PageStream3 (when available) is $125. DrTed: That was for both packages??? Deron-SLPREZ: I can't see how anyone might believe otherwise when looking at the ad. What are you driving at? DrTed: Just wanted to be sure... .. HAWK: Is there any way to turn OFF!! that BLINKING CURSER ??? ! Deron-SLPREZ: Nope, and I might find a way to make it more annoying :) HAWK: why! you can in Page LINER? Deron-SLPREZ: Are you asking "might we be able to turn it off in the future"? You know us programmers! (maybe is the answer). soft-logik: A phone-in Question from Mike Williams: How about True Type font support for PageStream 3? Deron-SLPREZ: Well, since PageStream uses a modular font approach (heck, delete iffdoc.dfilter and you can forget about loading/saving documents)... Adding support for truetype "only" requires writting a truetype module, but no one here has the time. Like I said, 3.1 is our only mission right now. Can't start promissing new features yet. However, we have asked Relog (the authors of TypeSMITH) if they might be intereste d. We shall all have to wait and see. Until then, typesmith works just fine :) Luis & Maria: what about the 2pt. problem when you draw a line they aalways come out broken in pices Deron-SLPREZ: I'm not familiar with that problem. I can try it out later. When is the 2pt line "broken"? Luis & Maria: every time a draw a line no matter if it is in PS or AE... it prints in seg and if I cut the object i segments is worst, always with HP 4M and HP 2P Deron-SLPREZ: I'm afraid I can't reproduce your problem with PageStream to ps or non-ps. Plese send in a printout and exact steps. DrTed: Have you been surprised at the number of people who insist on doing direct text entry in PS rather than using pageliner or other text editor??? Deron-SLPREZ: DrTed, not really. Mike uses pagestream exclusivly. Mike-SLslave: I wrote the whole 3.0 manual in 2.2 without any text editor. HAWK: As I ask why not a overwrite mode in pgs. ? PGS2.22 did and its was very usefull for me! I thought that PGS3.0 was to have all the pgs2.0 stuff and new things? I find that there is a lot of things that is not in 3.0 that was very useful Deron-SLPREZ: OK hawk. I'll take it under advisement. GA. RickB: So what is the target date for 3.1?? Deron-SLPREZ: RickB: Well, 3.0e should be out by christmas (probably christmas eve). Our present to you. 3.1? You want to know this from the man who guessed August 93 for pagestream3? I really don't know. However, I see very little left to do in PageStream3 to make it better than 2.x in every way. People get to hung up on a version, and forget they have what we consider the best software written for the Amiga already. Luis & Maria: are you going to release a driver for the Epson Color Stylus, and mi wife wnats to tell you how sorry she was for being slow tyoing...and for her spelling errors ;) wooops...I am sleepy ;) Deron-SLPREZ: We support the Epson Color Stylus up to 360x360 already, and soon as we get the docs from epson (soon?) we will support that as well. No problem on the spelling and speed! (oops, we will support 720x720 as well I should have said). TheDuck: re: pageliner i am working on a rather large document, and i would like to insert italics and bold into the document via pageliner rather than in pgs, is there a way to do this? iv been waiting on the updates to place my text into pgs soft-logik: I can help you with that. Mike-SLslave: Refer to appendix B for a complete list of text codes to use in PL's function keys. Deron-SLPREZ: We have macros already for normal and bold (choose settings/function keys to see them), and you can easily add italics. TheDuck: must have missed it, ok, thank you Harv: END OF FORMAL Q&A SESSION. I'D LIKE TO THANK DERON & MIKE FROM SOFT LOGIK FOR JOINING US HERE TONITE. [APPLAUSE SIGN] CliffG: Thanks Soft-Logik guys - good chat Harv and Jason and SL! soft-logik: [applause!] @endnode @node P2-3 "December '94 MODCHARTS" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == MODCHARTS: December 1994 == =========================================================================== [This list is compiled by oliver@uni-muenster.de, and is available on Aminet. If you wish to vote for a particular mod, please download the full archive for instructions.] Hello friends! Welcome to the MODCHARTS, edition December 1994. December's Top100: place last title filename filesize month 1) 2 Defloration (deflorat.mod) 408.043 Bytes 2) 1 Guitar Slinger (gslinger.mod) 406.354 " 3) 3 Space Debris (spdebris.mod) 347.582 " 4) 4 Beyond music (beyond.mod) 402.166 " 5) 5 Boom! And she cums (boom.mod) 284.004 " 6) 6 Digital Innovation 2 (digital2.mod) 137.124 " 7) 7 What's up (whats-up.mod) 604.676 " 8) 9 Don't you want me (dontuwan.mod) 99.768 " 9) 8 What is love (whatislo.mod) 723.886 " 10) 10 Free from guitar (freeguit.mod) 190.698 " 11) 12 The key, the secret (the-key.mod) 416.300 " 12) 11 U got 2 let the music(ugot2let.mod) 359.690 " 13) 13 Somebody dance... (dj-bobo.mod) 376.253 " 14) 15 1989 - a number (1989.mod) 210.304 " 15) 14 Tribal dance (tribalda.mod) 734.224 " 16) 17 Let the beat... (let_the_.mod) 873.366 " 17) 16 No Limit (nolimit.mod) 268.222 " 18) 18 Das Boot (dasboot.mod) 351.546 " 19) 19 Enigma (enigma.mod) 187.012 " 20) 20 Ethnomagic (ethnomag.mod) 414.864 " 21) 22 In love with you (ilwu.s3m) 437.100 " S3M 22) 21 Bombastic Jazz (bjazz.mod) 158.478 " 23) 23 Exterminate (xtermin8.mod) 329.648 " 24) 24 Power of American N. (power_of.mod) 580.062 " 25) 26 All that she wants (a-t-s-w.mod) 359.182 " 26) 25 Klisje paa klisje (klisje.mod) 224.288 " 27) 27 I feel much better (ifeelmuc.mod) 346.174 " 28) 29 Poseidon (poseidon.mod) 140.650 " 29) 28 Rhythm is a dancer (rhythm.mod) 417.010 " 30) 34 Bigtime sensuality (bigtime.mod) 736.408 " 31) 30 Harleymusic (harleymu.mod) 85.834 " 32) 0 Chariots of fire (chariots.s3m) 455.702 " S3M NEW ENTRY 33) 31 I wanna c u dance (iwannacu.mod) 201.908 " 34) 32 Mama (mama.mod) 171.738 " 35) 33 Open Sesame (opensesa.mod) 392.490 " 36) 37 Jammin' in the night (jamminin.mod) 352.796 " 37) 35 Tranzseven (tranzsev.mod) 218.388 " 38) 36 Sad Song (sadsong.mod) 141.289 " 39) 38 Trance machine (trance.mod) 300.004 " 40) 40 Through the time (through.mod) 199.970 " 41) 39 Sundance (sundance.mod) 309.020 " 42) 41 Beatbox online (beatbox.mod) 386.200 " 43) 44 Feel the rhythm (feelrhyt.mod)1187.238 " 44) 0 I'm in U4ia (iminu4ia.mod) 334.768 " NEW ENTRY 45) 42 Technomedley (techno.mod) 138.658 " 46) 43 Cold (cold.mod) 200.556 " 47) 45 Now what 3 (nowwhat3.mod) 199.998 " 48) 47 Smoke on the water (smoke.mod) 91.034 " 49) 46 Megabass Megamix (megabass.mod) 364.450 " 50) 49 Boesendorfer p.s.s. (boesendo.mod) 216.890 " 51) 48 Move on baby (move_on.mod) 705.988 " 52) 51 Macrocosmos (macrocos.mod) 166.682 " 53) 50 Chinese dream (chinese.mod) 97.010 " 54) 52 12th warrior (12warrio.mod) 143.030 " 55) 54 Distant call (distant.mod) 147.920 " 56) 53 Heaven & Hell (heavhell.mod) 164.020 " 57) 55 That old magic (oldmagic.mod) 210.516 " 58) 59 That's what friends..(twfr4.s3m) 440.376 " S3M 59) 56 Turrican (turrican.mod) 151.084 " 60) 58 Love you right (loveyou.mod) 401.982 " 61) 57 Appeareances (appearea.mod) 128.078 " 62) 60 Azied revolution (aziedrev.mod) 222.058 " 63) 61 Coloris (coloris.mod) 139.144 " 64) 64 X-mas pudding (xmas-pud.mod) 270.530 " 65) 62 Lioth's theme (lioths.mod) 68.266 " 66) 63 Dr. Snuggles (drsnuggl.mod) 99.566 " 67) 65 Salomix (salomix.mod) 619.034 " 68) 66 Enjoy the silence (enjoysil.mod) 171.482 " 69) 0 Lizardking's theme (lizardki.mod) 153.862 " NEW ENTRY 70) 67 Towards immortality (towards.mod) 209.236 " 71) 68 A320 (a320.mod) 103.798 " 72) 69 Lightning (light.mod) 252.282 " 73) 70 Wir happy hippos (hippos.mod) 189.738 " 74) 72 2nd reality (2nd_pm.s3m) 600.860 " S3M 75) 71 Bag rasta (bagrasta.mod) 234.578 " 76) 74 Nypon soppa (nyponsop.mod) 454.116 " 77) 73 Houseout (houseout.mod) 302.974 " 78) 79 Go west (gowest.mod) 368.204 " 8CH 79) 75 Mystified (mystifie.mod) 148.764 " 80) 78 Posessed by a track (possesed.mod) 423.044 " 81) 77 The banana song (banana.mod) 814.032 " 82) 76 Daisy chain I (daisy.mod) 210.714 " 83) 81 Beach tune (beachtun.mod) 317.816 " 84) 80 It's my life (itsmylif.mod) 190.342 " 85) 82 Don't you want 2 (dontuw2.mod) 280.004 " 86) 83 Let your soul go (letysg.mod) 249.972 " 87) 87 Elysium (elysium.mod) 130.006 " 88) 84 Aardcore (aardcore.mod) 340.392 " 89) 85 Give it up (giveitup.mod) 107.464 " 90) 86 Forever young (evryoung.mod) 274.334 " 8CH 91) 89 X-medley (xmedley.mod) 782.630 " 92) 88 Crazy men (crazymen.mod) 283.396 " 93) 90 Gummisnoppis (gummisno.mod) 144.030 " 94) 91 Acess high (acesshig.mod) 290.780 " 95) 93 Atmosphere (atmosph.mod) 228.442 " 96) 92 Show'em da bass (show-em.mod) 381.510 " 97) 94 Pandemonion (pandemon.mod) 167.758 " 98) 95 Never see me again (me-again.mod) 229.806 " 99) 98 Planets (planets.mod) 127.648 " 100) 96 Mr. Vain (mr-vain.mod) 377.540 " Seeya on the boards, Oliver (oliver@uni-muenster.de, a.k.a. HITMAN on IRC, #modcharts) @endnode @node P3-1 "Alien Breed: Tower Assault" @toc P3 =========================================================================== == Alien Breed: Tower Assult review By: @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1} == =========================================================================== The Alien Breed have a habit of always popping back up just when you thought you'd seen the last of them...always on some desolate planet, with a lone fighter all alone (or with a buddy, if you're lucky) fighting off hordes of nasty things. Alien Breed games sort of work the same way...just when you think they've had enough, they nail you again. ABTA won't be the last, either...Team17 is working on a Doomish Alien Breed. So, what's ABTA got that's so important? More Alien Breed, for one. If you like the sort of thing Alien Breed does so well-put you on a large, scrolling, often mazelike landscape, watching top-down as you blast through endless swarms of alien creatures who like to kill you, and AB and AB II weren't enough for you, ABTA is your thing. It certainly doesn't miss a beat from its predecessors, and the gameplay is so similar to AB II that you can drop right in and start. Except for the long-needed retreat mode. Basically, retreat mode, if you have a second joystick button or a dextrous big toe to hit the keyboard with, allows you to move in the OPPOSITE direction you're shooting. Nice, isn't it, considering that the Alien Breed find it so easy to kill you. It's not quite as good as the Robotron/Smash TV 8-directional-independent shooting and movement, but it's a nice addition. Also nice to see is the hard drive installability. It still requires you to use floppy as a passkey, but it's better than nothing. ALSO nice to see is the inclusion of an AGA and ECS version in one package. The ECS version is, as you'd expect, the same game with fewer colors. Gameplay doesn't suffer, but a lot of things look rather brown. The AGA version gives you wonderfully pretty (or wonderfully desolate) views of the world around you. Still present is the time-honored Alien Breed tradition of blowing up levels and completely, irrevocably ending your game unless you make it out of the level VERY quickly. I've always found that terribly annoying. Oh, sure, it's exciting and all, up until the level blows up and you're facing "Game Over". So, good for Team17. Short of retreat and built-in HD installability, you're not looking at anything TOO much removed from the Alien Breed formula, but you ARE looking at a fun, fast-paced game. [End note: I DID have some trouble getting the ECS version to work on a 3000/25, but it worked correctly on other ECS machines. 3000 owners might want to double-check the game first. If the gameplay looks horribly choppy, something's wrong.] @endnode @node P2-2-1 "PC-Task 3" @toc P2-2 TITLE PC-Task 3 VERSION 3.0 AUTHOR Chris Hames PUBLISHER Published exclusively by: Quasar Distribution P.O. Box 188 Southland Victoria 3192 Australia Phone +61 3 583 8806 Fax +61 3 585 1074 BBS +61 3 584 8590 E-Mail pctask@quasar.dialix.oz.au DESCRIPTION PC-Task 3 is the only software 80286 emulator for the Amiga range of computers. The following features are included in this release: - Switchable 8086/80286 emulation - Support for up to 16MB RAM (15MB extended) - Up to 2 floppy drives and 2 hard drives supported - Supports hard disk files and hard disk partitions - High density floppies and CD-ROM support - Select from MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA and SVGA (512K-2MB) video modes - Support for up to 256 colours on AGA machines - Compatible with graphic boards (eg. EGS Spectrum, Picasso) - Parallel, Serial and PC speaker emulation - Mouse support, including Serial Mouse emulation - Run multiple PC-Task processes on the same machine - Run MS-DOS applications in a window on a public screen (eg. Workbench) - Transfer files between your Amiga and MS-DOS - Support for David Salamon's GoldenGate bridge cards - Compatible with MS Windows 3.0 - 3.11 * * Windows 3.1 requires 1.5 MB contiguous RAM and sufficient hard disk space NOTE: MS-DOS is NOT included. AVAILABILITY PC-Task 3 is scheduled for release December 1st 1994 PC-Task 3 DEU (German version) scheduled for December 7th 1994 PC-Task 3 VF (French version) scheduled for January '95 AUTHORISED DISTRIBUTORS (Current as of November 17th 1994) Australia & New Zealand (and anywhere else not listed) Quasar Distribution P.O. Box 188 Southland Victoria 3192 Australia Phone +61 (0)3 583 8806 Fax +61 (0)3 585 1074 BBS +61 (0)3 584 8590 U.K. Meridian Software Distribution East House East Road Industrial Estate East Road London SW19 1AR U.K. Phone +44 (0)81 543 3500 Fax +44 (0)81 543 2255 Germany Casablanca Multimedia Wiemelhauser Stra_e 247a 44799 Bochum 1 Germany Phone +49 (0)234 7 20 35 Fax +49 (0)234 7 20 60 France France-Festival-Distribution 3 Rue Anatole France FR 13220 Chateauneuf-Les-Martigues France Phone +33 42-76-18-70 Fax +33 42-76-18-70 U.S.A. & Cananda Wonder Computers Inc. 1301 Richmond Road Ottawa, Ontario Canada K2B 7Y4 Phone +1 613 596 2542 Fax +1 613 596 9349 All distribution enquiries should be directed to Quasar Distribution. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS An Amiga computer with AmigaOS 1.2 or greater and 512 K of RAM or greater Some functions are only available under KS2.x or KS3.x. PRICE Please contact your local distributor for pricing and availability. UPGRADES * All users of PC-Task registered with Chris Hames or Quasar Distribution * * are currently being notified by mail of this impending upgrade. Users * * who have already paid Chris Hames to receive further upgrades will not * * receive a letter. Instead an upgrade will be sent to these users when * * PC-Task 3 starts shipping. With this release ALL support and upgrades * * for PC-Task 3 will now be handled by Quasar Distribution. * Users of the commercial package who have not returned their product registration card, should contact Quasar Distribution, or their local authorised distributor for upgrade pricing and availability. Purchasers of the DevWare package in North America should contact Quasar Distribution for upgrade policy and pricing. Upgrades from the DevWare package will only be available until February 1st 1995. DISTRIBUTABILITY PC-Task 3 is a commercial product. It is an update to PC-Task 2 which was demoware. Chris Hames will not be selling PC-Task 3. PC-task 3 is available only through Quasar Distribution or its authorised distributors. A demonstration version of PC-Task 3 will be released shortly after the product starts shipping. This will be announced in the same place that you are reading this. -- # PC-Task Tech Support # Mail: pctask@quasar.dialix.oz.au -- @endnode @node P2-2-2 "LK V1.06" @toc P2-2 TITLE lk VERSION 1.06 (update to v1.05) AUTHOR Written by Alexis WILKE (c) 1993-1994 DESCRIPTION lk is a linker which will create executable files from any valid Amiga object files and libraries. The following assemblers and compilers create compatible Amiga object files (note that this list is far from being complete): GenIm2 Basm SAS/C Dice (Upto V2.x at least) Oberon The C compiler from Aztec and gcc create their own file formats and are not supported by lk. lk has a large amount of features (over 100 keywords) and is compatible with most of the existing linkers: SLINK 6.x (SAS) BLINK 7.x (The Software Distillery/SAS) ALINK (Commodore) DLINK (Dice) lk is quicker that those linkers and has no major bugs. NEW FEATURES Each new upload includes a file named lk.history which describes new features. V1.06 all bugs known for compatibility with SLINK have been corrected. lk now supports archived libraries SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS There should be no special requirements. However a system with less than 1Mb of memory will probably fail frequently. lk has been programmed to be compatible with OS versions 1.2 and 1.3. However it has been developed under V2.0 and V3.1, so there is no guarantee of compatibility. The use of lk also requires an assembler or a compiler which Amiga standard object files. To test if your program does, you can use this demo of lk and it will notify you if an invalid file is found. HOST NAME Any Aminet mirror, for example ftp.luth.se (130.240.18.2) or ftp.cdrom.com (192.216.191.11). DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/dev/misc FILE NAMES LK_V1.06.lha LK_V1.06.readme PRICE Those two files are free. However there is a registration fee payable to the author to have the full version of lk tool. This fee is of 15 US dollars or 90 French Francs. DISTRIBUTABILITY This _distribution_ is a freeware. It contains only a limited version of the linker. A registered version is available separately, that one is a shareware. @endnode @node P2-2-3 "Mand2000 2.0" @toc P2-2 TITLE: Mand2000D - fractal exploration program. VERSION 2.01 COMPANY Cygnus Software 33 University Square, #199 Madison, WI, 53713 USA (608) 277-0413, 12:00 to 8:00 PM, Central Time or CygnusSoft@cup.portal.com AUTHOR: Bruce Dawson, Cygnus Software Helen Dawson, Cygnus Software DESCRIPTION: Mand2000D is the demo version of Mand2000, a fractal exploration program. Fractals are strangely beautiful mathematical objects which have started appearing everywhere from book covers to rock videos. The Mandelbrot set is probably the most popular of these fractals. Its unique beauty and infinite complexity, derived from a simple mathematical formula, have drawn thousands of people to explore the Mandelbrot set on their computers. Do note however, that no mathematical ability is required to explore and appreciate fractals with Mand2000. Mand2000 draws pictures of the Mandelbrot set and other fractals on your Amiga and allows you to explore them by doing animated zooms towards interesting areas. In Mand2000 we have attempted to combine speed, power and simplicity with a few unique features, all designed to make it easy for you to discover uncharted regions of the Mandelbrot set, Julia set and other fractals. Mand2000D is a full version of Mand2000, except that saving and printing have been crippled. Some of the key features of Mand2000 are: Point and click animated zooming is the most intuitive way of exploring the Mandelbrot and Julia sets that we could think of. Just point and double click. Mand2000 allows you to pan across fractal images using your keyboard, mouse, or joystick. Plug in your joystick to scroll and zoom your way around the most complex object ever seen. Mand2000's multi-pass drawing lets you see an approximation of the final picture in a fraction of the total calc time. Even for pictures that will take several minutes to complete, you can get a good idea of what your picture will look like almost immediately. This allows you to quickly decide whether to keep zooming, or wait for the completed picture. Mand2000 has a multi-window, multi-requester design. You can adjust parameters and see the changes in real time as Mand2000 continues calculating while you use the requesters. Leave as many requesters and fractal windows open as you want. Mand2000 lets you calculate fractal zoom movies quickly, by calculating key frames and letting Mand2000's TweenPlayer create the intermediate frames at playback. Just a few of the other features include: full AGA support, compatibility with the Picasso II and other third party graphics boards in up to 256 colour mode, literally dozens of different assembly language math routines for accuracies ranging from 16 bits to 1000+ bits, on-line help, printing, multi-level undo, built in locations to start you searching, full featured ARexx support, several ARexx scripts supplied, graphical displaying of your location, etc. These are just some of the more significant and innovative features in Mand2000. Also available on Aminet are two screen shots from Mand2000 2.0, demonstrating the HAM rendering, and an iteration animation made with one of the supplied ARexx scripts, also demonstrating the new HAM rendering. NEW FEATURES: Since version 1.x there have been two main changes made to Mand2000: 1) Mand2000 now supports rendering fractals in HAM, HAM8, and dithered 256 colour. This allows you to display your fractals in thousands of different colours - on ANY Amiga. The entire user interface will now, optionally, run in these modes, allowing a separate palette for each fractal window, each palette consisting of thousands of colours. 2) Mand2000 now creates anim files directly. Iteration movies, Julia seed movies, morph movies, and whatever animation types you feel like adding. All of these are written out in the standard anim format, for immediate playback with any animation player. BUG FIXES: The original 2.00 demo had a bug in the low precision 68000 fractal calculation code that caused a large black square to appear on screen. This does not affect those with '020 processors or higher. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: Requires version2.04 of the OS. Three fractal equations are always available. Four more fractal equations are available with a 68881, 68882 or 68040. An animation player and ARexx are both recommended. HOST NAME: Aminet - ftp.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) or other sites DIRECTORY: Only the file Mand2000demo.lha is required. Incoming directory: /pub/aminet/new/Mand2000demo.lha /pub/aminet/new/Mand2000screen1.lha /pub/aminet/new/Mand2000screen2.lha Expected final directory: /pub/aminet/gfx/fract/Mand2000demo.lha /pub/aminet/gfx/fract/Mand2000screen1.lha /pub/aminet/gfx/fract/Mand2000screen2.lha PRICE: $44.95 US for the release version with full working save - sorry, we cannot take credit cards. Owners of previous versions of Mand2000 can upgrade for $15.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. All users who purchased Mand2000 through Cygnus Software or ICP Verlag are registered, so no proof of purchase is required. DISTRIBUTABILITY: Mand2000D is Copyright (c) 1993-1994 Cygnus Software The demo version, Mand2000D, may be freely distributed in original and unmodified form as long as no more than a nominal copying fee is charged. The release version of Mand2000 may not be distributed. If you wish to put the demo version on a cover disk or any other sort of for-profit distribution, please contact us for permission. @endnode @node P2-2-4 "iffed_v1.01" @toc P2-2 TITLE iffed VERSION 1.01 (update to v1.00) AUTHOR Written by Alexis WILKE (c) 1993-1994 DESCRIPTION iffed is an IFF editor. As IFF means Interchange File Format, this editor works for any file type, even your own. With an handy user interface you can click on the desired chunk to modify its size and contents. iffed supports a text file for chunk describtions, with structures written like in C. It enables anyone to add their own structures and other necessary things. NEW FEATURES The next version may have a better support of array definitions. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS There should be not special requirement, except enough memory (about three times more than the IFF file size plus iffed size.) However this tool has been developed on a 2.x/3.x system. HOST NAME Any Aminet mirror, for example ftp.luth.se (130.240.18.2) or ftp.cdrom.com (192.216.191.11). DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/edit FILE NAMES iffed_v1.01.lha iffed_v1.01.readme DISTRIBUTABILITY This program is a FreeWare. It can be copied by anyone for FREE and as long as the original archive has not been modified. Alexis WILKE is and will remain the Author of iffed. @endnode @node P2-2-5 "Termite: Rumor Control" @toc P2-2 A rumor was just brought to my attention that Termite, the new terminal program from Oregon Research, is actually a revamped Terminus, bought from Jack Radigan, and that we are now supporting Terminus users. THIS RUMOR IS COMPLETELY FALSE. Termite was developed from the ground up by Oregon Research programmers. No plans were ever made to purchase rights or code to Terminus, and we have never been in contact with Jack Radigan. Terminus registration fees are NOT applicable to the purchase of Termite, as the original rumor message suggests. Please contact DynaLogic if you need Terminus support. The original message also states that Termite includes a conversion utility for Terminus scripts and console definition files. Such a utility does NOT exist at this time. For facts on Termite, contact Oregon Research at orres@teleport.com, or 503-620-4919. -- Steven Frank Oregon Research @endnode @node P2-2-6 "PPack 2.2" @toc P2-2 [ This is a repost. The moderator made an error on the first ] [ attempt. -Dan ] TITLE PPack VERSION 2.2 (6.7.94) PROXITY SOFTWORKS A cooperation of Amiga developers. Their intention is to release high quality software under one label. Members are: Boris Folgmann, Ulrich Sibiller and Christian Hechelmann. PETS Proxity Engineering and Technical Support Usenet: pets@amiuni.tynet.sub.org Fidonet: 2:246/1416.0 (pets) AUTHOR Boris Folgmann Address: Friedrichstrasse 7 71546 Aspach Germany Usenet: boris@prox.tynet.sub.org Fidonet: 2:246/1416.41 (boris) PGP Fingerprint: 82 84 70 38 26 5E 50 5A 9C DB CA CA 62 0A 31 52 Phone: ++49-(0)7191-23439 Fax: ++49-(0)7191-2604 V.32bis 14.4 or HST 16.8 with ASL/V.42bis DESCRIPTION PPack is a shell command interface to the powerpacker.library by Nico Frangois. It may be used to crunch and decrunch PowerPacker data files. PPack offers more features than the original shell commands. FEATURES o PPack is a fast PowerPacker data cruncher and decruncher. o The size of the speedup buffer is chosen depending on the available memory. o Multiple files and wildcards are supported. o Supports crypting/decrypting of files. o Perfect to use in tools like Directory Opus. o As an option PPack handles renaming files with '.pp' suffix for packed files. o Filenotes may be added to distinguish between packed and not packed files. o Recrunching packed files with a different efficiency is supported. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Kickstart 2.04 Workbench 2.0 Workbench 2.1 for localized AmigaDOS error messages. HOST NAME Any AmiNet site, e.g. ftp.uni-kl.de 131.246.9.95 DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/pack FILENAME PPack22.lha PRICE Free DISTRIBUTABILITY Freeware (c) 1992-1994 by Proxity Softworks @endnode @node P2-2-7 "ClipBook 1.2" @toc P2-2 TITLE ClipBook - Store multiple text & graphic clips for later use VERSION 1.2 AUTHOR Nick Portalski nick@ripple.demon.co.uk DESCRIPTION I spent a couple of summers working on Macs writing documentation. One of the most useful tools was the Mac Scrapbook, which allows you to store any number of 'clips' (text and graphics) and then copy any one to the clipboard so you can paste it into applications. Items were placed in the scrapbook via the normal cut'n'paste keys. In fact, I liked it so much that I wrote this - The Amiga Clipbook commodity. The Clipbook allows you to store text and graphics clips, scan through them and copy any of them to the standard Amiga clipboard. They can then be pasted into applications. To put something into the Clipbook you simply have to copy it from an application and paste it into the Clipbook. Each clip in the Clipbook is displayed if possible. At the moment only FTXT and ILBM clips are shown. Others can be stored but not displayed. This is useful for logos, 'standard' blocks of text, graphics you use often etc etc. If you use a particular graphics brush often then instead of having to load it (and remember the path!) each time you can simply store it in the clipboard and copy it out each time you need it. FEATURES Clipbook opens on publicscreens. Can be forced to open on *any* screen. (Useful as you don't have to keep flicking between screens.) Displays ILBM clips. Each clip can be named, so even clips it can't display can be identified. Can use any viewer to view the whole clip. (Such as Multiview) Can use different viewers for different types of clips Can be controlled completely from the keyboard (and mouse of course!) Can load clips into the Clipbook from any IFF file. Can be told to automatically paste anything that's cut/copied directly into the Clipbook. It's a commodity, so has hotkey and other normal Commodity goodies SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS Version 2.04+ iff.library (included in archive) Will work from floppies, but has been designed with hard drive users in mind HOST NAME Any Aminet ftp site, such as ftp.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4). DIRECTORY /pub/amiga/util/cdity/ FILE NAMES clipbook1_2.lha (25K) PRICE This version (1.2) is free! DISTRIBUTABILITY All code is Copyright 1994 Nick Portalski. It may be copied and distributed so long as no commercial profit is made out of it. It may not be modified, sold, or included in any commercial distribution without my written permission. Public Domain vendors are not allowed to sell this program for more than the price of a regular disk, which should be no more than the equivalent of 5 Dollars (excluding CD-ROMS). The author takes no responsibility for any loss or damage resulting from the use of this program. @endnode @node P2-2-8 "amiCheck v1.31 for WB2.x" @toc P2-2 TITLE AmiCheck v1.31 - checkbook/account manager os2.04+ VERSION 1.31 The demo version is fully functional except there is a limitation of 30 transactions. COMPANY Shareware, registered version available from the author: Douglas M. Dyer 5124 Observation Way Alexandria, VA 22312 USA Attn: AmiCheck Registration includes a free upgrade to v2.0, which will include check printing. Questions/comments: dyer@alx.sticomet.com AUTHOR Douglas M. Dyer DESCRIPTION AmiCheck is an easy yet very powerful checkbook/ Account package for OS2.04+ systems. It has extensive automation capabilities and can be driven almost entirely by keyboard if desired. The interface is font-sensitive and on the workbench so graphics board compatibility is high. The main reason for this announcement is the support for amigas with os2.04+ (rather than just os3.x). Below list some additions since the last post here (which was v1.11): * Interface + floating palette window of templates. + various GUI improvements * Preference menu + Two register styles (toggle showing memo) + configure double-click action on transactions * Summarize multiple accounts + view total current or statement balances, tax deductions + make project files with account lists * Filtering + use AmigaDOS pattern matching on payee and memo fields ... etc. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS AmigaOS 2.04 and better HOST NAME A full demo is available on AMINET. One such site is wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/biz/misc FILE NAMES amicheck1_31.lha 176923 bytes PRICE The registered version is $25.00 in the US exchange rate (EURO checks accepted). Add $3.00 for outside US shipping and handling. US personal checks accepted. DISTRIBUTABILITY The demo on aminet is freely distributable, the registered version is not. amiCheck is Copyright (C) 1994 Douglas M. Dyer @endnode @node P2-2-9 "Soft-Logik Publishing Moving" @toc P2-2 MOVING ====== Soft-Logik Publishing is moving to a new building. The change is effective December 12, 1994. Mail sent to the old street address or post office box will be forwarded. Calls to the old phone numbers will result in a "this number has been changed" message. OLD STREET ADDRESS NEW STREET ADDRESS 11131F South Towne Sq. 315 Consort Drive St. Louis, MO 63123 St. Louis, MO 63011 OLD POST OFFICE BOX NEW POST OFFICE BOX P.O. Box 510589 not yet available St. Louis, MO 63151 St. Louis, MO 63011 OLD PHONE NUMBERS NEW PHONE NUMBERS SALES 1-800-829-8608 1-800-829-8608 314-894-8608 314-256-9595 TECHNICAL SUPPORT 1-800-829-5816* 1-800-829-5816* 314-894-0431 314-256-9333 FAX 314-894-3280 314-256-7773 BBS (2 lines now!) 314-894-0057 314-256-8971 * for paid technical support only We hope the phones will be changed over by Dec 12th, but if you can't get through for some reason around that date, please be patient while we get our new phone system installed. Our new phone system will help us to serve you better. A second line will be added to the BBS so that if the first line is busy it will automatically use the second line. This should help you get through to the BBS more easily. Kevin Davidson (soft-logik@cup.portal.com) @endnode @node P5B-1 "Amiga Report Mailing List" @toc P5B =========================================================================== == Amiga Report Mailing List == =========================================================================== If you have an internet mailing address, you can receive Amiga Report in @{"UUENCODED" link P5B-1-1} form each week as soon as the issue is released. To be put on the list, send Email to jcompton@bbs.xnet.com and in the body of the message ask nicely and briefly to be added to the list. ie: Please add me to the mailing list for Amiga Report magazine. My addresss is . 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 P5B-1-1 @toc P5B UUEncoding/Decoding ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (thanks to Bob Tomasevich for the quick tutorial) What is uuencoding and uudecoding? ---------------------------------- uuencoding is converting a binary file into text (ASCII) which can be sent through mail or Usenet. uudecoding is reversing the process (e.g. converting the file back to binary). Why would I want to do this? ---------------------------- You have to send a binary file to a user who does not have FTP access, or the user is too lazy to FTP the file. What is the normal procedure? ----------------------------- 1. Convert the binary file into ASCII, using uuencode. 2. Send the file, through email, to the user. 3. The person on the receiving end gets the email, which may be split into parts. If the email is split into parts, the parts must be combined, in the order received, into one file. 4. Receiving person converts the file back into binary, using uudecode. What does a uuencoded file look like? ------------------------------------- The start always has: begin 644 So, for the file happy-happy-joy-joy.txt, it would look like: begin 644 happy-happy-joy-joy.txt The encoded file begins right after: M1TE&.#=A@`+@`9<````$`*QB15=2.+&/@R(Y)XM8.=J]H+*%7BL6#8]F6EP_] M*$=E5"L?L-Z8A-:#60\@$,9P27-4-YB#;4HY)U!L9KZNE\O"O["#;8]82SDF> M&[%J4FI',.&:E`48#="4@SE41M61(`)N(`-^(`1.($5>($9N($=^($A.((E>((IN((M^((Q.(,U>(,YN(,]^(-!+ &V"\"`@`[& `` end <-- the end of the encoded file size 151341 <-- size of the original file So, how would I do this on the Amiga? ------------------------------------- There are many uuencode/decode variants out there, but most usually have kept the old UNIX command line, which can be confusing to novices, or, require you to remove all mail headers and other, non-uuencoded text. Luckily, Asher Feldman took the time to write UUxt. What is UUxT? ------------- It is a program which performs both the uuencode/decode operations in one executable, AND, can also pack/unpack LhA archives. Tell me more. ------------- The UUxT archive contains UUxT, the CLI version, and UUxtGUI, the Workbench interface. I will give a short summary of how to use both. Detailed instructions are included in the UUxT archive. CLI Version: ------------ Running UUxT without any options gives the following: UUxT Version 2.1a Copyright (c)1993 Asher Feldman USAGE: UUxT [option] [archive name] options: a - encode l - LhAencode x - decode u - LhAdecode showing the format of the command line and the valid options. Some example command lines: 1. Normal encoding - UUxt a filename.uue filename-to-archive 2. Normal decoding - UUxt x filename.uue 3. LhA archiving and encoding - UUxT l filename.uue filename.lha file1 file2 ... 4. Decoding and LhA unarchiving - UUxT u filename.uue For LhA encoding and decoding, you will need LhA by Stefan Boberg. Workbench (GUI) Version: ------------------------ Below is a ASCII rendition of the UUxT-GUI window (from UUxtGUI doc): ____________________________________________________________ |+| UUxT-GUI Frontend v1.0 (c)1993 Asher Feldman | +------------------------------------------------------------+ | ______________________ ______________________ | | |InFile | | |OutFile| | | | +-------+--------------+ +-------+--------------+ | | (1) (2) (3) (4) | | ____________ _____________ | | Operation |@| Decode | Lha Name | | | | +-+----------+ +-------------+ | | (5) (6) | | _________ | | | START | | | +---------+ | | (7) | +------------------------------------------------------------+ (1) Clicking on this brings up a requester to select the file you want to perform the operation shown in gadget (5). (2) You can manually type here the filename of the file affected by the operation indicated in gadget (5). (3) Used only for encoding, brings up a requester to select where the encoded file should go. Selecting an existing file will cause the existing file to be replaced by the encoded file. You can also use this requester to create directories. (4) You can manually type the filename of the file to be the encoded file. (5) The operation to perform on file shown in (2). The operations are the four provided by UUxT (uuencode/uudecode/LhAEncode/LhADecode). (6) The name of the archive created with the LhAEncode option. Ignored when any other operation is selected. (7) Does the encode/decode/LhAEncode/LhADecode and pops up a requester indicating if the operation was successful or not. I need this! Where can I get it? --------------------------------- If you use the Internet from a local BBS, you may find it there. If not you can FTP it from wuarchive.wustl.edu, in the directory pub/aminet/arc/UUxT.lha It should also be on the Aminet mirrors. Thanks for the explanation! How can I reach you if I have questions? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet -------- bob.tomasevich@nezuld.com bobt@ais.net @endnode @node P5-4 "Copyright Information" @toc P5 =========================================================================== == _ _ __ ___ _ == == /\\ |\\ /| || // \ /\\ == == / \\ | \\ /|| ||(< __ / \\ == == /--- \\| \/ || || \\_||/--- \\ == == /______________________________\\ == == / \\ == == Amiga Report International Online Magazine == == December 18, 1994 Issue No. 2.34 == == Copyright 1994 SkyNet 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 STR Publications. Permission to reprint articles is hereby granted, unless otherwise noted. Reprints must, without exception, include the name of the publication, date, issue number and the author's name. 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 acceptble, provided 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 Portal. 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). Distribution on for-profit magazine cover disks requires written permission from the editor or publisher. 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 Commodore-Amiga, Inc., Commodore Business Machines, Ltd., or any other Amiga publication in any way. 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 P6-1 "Editor's Choice" @toc P6 =========================================================================== == Editor's Choice == =========================================================================== These are selected products, reviewed by myself, that I've liked. So, I've landed them and decided to sell them at the lowest price I'm authorized. All prices are in $US. | Issue | Approximate | Amiga Report | Product | Reviewed | Retail Price | Reader Price | ---------------------------------|----------|--------------|--------------| | | | | | |Swifty 3-button mouse | 2.28 | $39.95 | $22.75 | | | | | | |GPFax Amiga Fax Software | 2.30 | $100.00 | $60.00 | | (Class 1 and 2) | | | | | | | | | |Micro R+D CD-ROM Volume 1 | 2.25 | $79.00 | $53.95 | | (Includes Transition graphic| | | | | converter and loads of | | | | | artwork) | | | | | | | | | |Micro R+D CD-ROM Volume 2 | 2.26 | $99.00 | $59.95 | | (Includes entire Nature's | | | | | Backdrop series) | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Orders may be placed via check, money order, or postal cheque, made out to Micro R+D. Visa/Mastercard accepted via post or E-Mail. No CODs. Mail all orders to @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1}. Orders will be processed by Amiga Report and drop-shipped from Micro R+D. In the US, add $5/$10/$20 for UPS shipping, ground/blue/red label, respectively. Overseas: It is recommended that you consider $20 to be the minimum cost for shipping. If you plan to order more than one item, E-mail for shipping cost. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sidewinder's Future Shock II CD is now available through Amiga Report. Featuring 15 Amiga-generated tunes totalling 71 minutes, Eric Gieseke's work is captured on an Amiga-independent media. Available for US$12.00. Please add $5 for shipping. Make check or money order payable to @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1}. Orders will be drop-shipped from Sidewinder Productions. For overseas orders, please contact through E-Mail before ordering. @endnode @node P6-4-1 "Delphi" @toc P6-4 =========================================================================== == Delphi Internet Services -- Your Connection to the World! == =========================================================================== Amiga Report International Online Magazine and the Amiga Report Coverdisk are available in the Amiga SIG on DELPHI. Amiga Report readers are invited to join DELPHI and become a part of the friendly community of Amiga enthusiasts there. SIGNING UP WITH DELPHI ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Using a personal computer and modem, members worldwide access DELPHI services via a local phone call JOIN -- DELPHI -------------- Via modem, dial up DELPHI at 1-800-695-4002 then... When connected, press RETURN once or twice and.. At Username: type JOINDELPHI and press RETURN, At Password: type AMIGAUSER and press RETURN. For more information, call DELPHI Member Services at 1-800-695-4005 SPECIAL FEATURES ---------------- * Complete Internet connection -- Telnet, FTP, IRC, Gopher, E-Mail and more! (Internet option is $3/month extra) * SIGs for all types of computers -- Amiga, IBM, Macintosh, Atari, etc. * An active Amiga SIG hosting conferances, Usenet, Latest wares, and FTP Gopher coming soon * Large file databases! * SIGs for hobbies, video games, graphics, and more! * Business and world news, stock reports, etc. * Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia! DELPHI - It's getting better all the time! @endnode @node P6-4-2 "Portal" @toc P6-4 =========================================================================== == Portal: A Great Place For Amiga Users == =========================================================================== The Portal Information Network's Amiga Zone The AFFORDABLE alternative for online Amiga information ------------------------------------------------------- The Portal Online System is the home of acclaimed Amiga Zone, a full- service online SIG (Special Interest Group) for Amiga owners and users. You can dial into Portal to access the Amiga Zone in various ways: direct dial to our San Jose, CA area banks of high-speed modems (you pay for the phone call if it's not local), or though any SprintNet indial anywhere in the USA, (with a small hourly fee) or via the World-wide Internet "telnet" program to portal.com (no hourly fee). Even Delphi and BIX users can Telnet into Portal for a flat $19.95 a month, with *unlimited* use. Portal is NOT just another shell account. Its Online system is fully menu-driven with on-screen commands and help and you can easily customize it for your terminal program and screen size. Some of Portal/Amiga Zone's amazing features include: * 2.5 GIGabytes of Amiga-specific file space - we have so much Amiga Stuff online, we've lost count! * The *entire* Fred Fish collection of freely distributable software, online. ALL 1000 disks! * Fast, Batch Zmodem file transfer protocol. Download up to 100 files at once, of any size, with one command. * Twenty Amiga vendor areas with participants like AmigaWorld, Elastic Reality (ASDG), Soft-Logik, Apex Publishing, and others. * 38 "regular" Amiga libraries with over 10,000 files. Hot new stuff arrives daily. * No upload/download "ratios" EVER. Download as much as you want, as often as you want, and never feel pressured doing it. * Live, interactive nightly chats with Amiga folks whose names you will recognize. Special conferences. Random chance prize contests. We have given away thousands of bucks worth of Amiga prizes - more than any other online service. * Vast Message bases where you can ask questions about *anything* Amiga related and get quick replies from the experts. * Amiga Internet mailing lists for Imagine, DCTV, LightWave, EGS, Picasso, OpalVision & others feed right into the Zone message bases. Read months worth of postings. No need to clutter your mailbox with them. * FREE unlimited Internet Email with 5 meg of free storage. * A FREE UNIX Shell account with another 5 meg of free storage. * Portal has the Usenet. Thousands of "newsgroups" in which you can read and post articles about virtually any subject you can possibly imagine. * Other Portal SIGs (Special Interest Groups) online for Mac, IBM, Sun, UNIX, Science Fiction, Disney, and dozens more. ALL Portal SIGs are accessible to ALL Portal customers with NO surcharges ever. You never worry "Ooops... Am I paying for this area?" again! * The entire UPI/Clarinet/Newsbytes news hierarchy ($4/month extra) An entire general interest newspaper and computer news magazine. * Portal was THE FIRST online service to offer a full package of Internet features: IRC, FTP, TELNET, MUDS, LIBS. And you get FREE unlimited usage of all of them. * Our exclusive PortalX by Steve Tibbett, the graphical "front end" for Portal which will let you automatically click'n'download your waiting email, messages, Usenet groups and binary files! Reply to mail and messages offline using your favorite editor and your replies are sent automatically the next time you log into Portal. (PortalX requires Workbench 2.04 or higher) * Portal does NOT stick it to high speed modem users. Whether you log in at 1200 or 2400 or 9600 or 14.4K you pay the same low price. To join Portal or for more information call: 1-800-433-6444 (voice) 9a.m.-5p.m. Mon-Fri, Pacific Time 1-408-973-9111 (voice) 9a.m.-5p.m. Mon-Fri, Pacific Time 1-408-725-0561 (modem 3/12/2400) 24 hours every day 1-408-725-0560 (modem 96/14400) 24 hours every day or enter "C PORTAL" from any Sprintnet dial-in in the USA, or telnet to "portal.com" from anywhere. Call and join today. Tell the friendly Portal Customer Service representative, "The Amiga Zone and Amiga Report sent me!" [Editor's Note: Be sure to tell them that you are an Amiga user, so they can notify the AmigaZone sysops to send their Welcome Letter and other information!] The Portal Information Network accepts MasterCard, Visa, or you can pre-pay any amount by personal check or money order. The Portal Online System is a trademark of The Portal Information Network. SLIP, UUCP and custom domain accounts are also available. @endnode @node P6-4-3 "GEnie" @toc P6-4 =========================================================================== == GEnie: Internet access, online games, more == =========================================================================== * What is GEnie? GEnie is a commercial on-line service that offers many services at a reasonable monthly rate. Some of the general services are: - Over 150,000 software files to download - Uploads to GEnie are free of any connect charges, so upload those Public Domain programs to add to the Starship Amiga Roundtable's vast selection of programs for free! - Real-time chat - Dozens of special-interest discussion areas - Challenging multi-player games with graphics (yes, there are Amiga front-ends) - Worldwide news, weather and sports - Electronic mail to and from the Internet - FTP Service which provides users with interactive access to any of the millions of files available for public access on the Internet - Usenet Newsgroups Service which allow users to participate in the global discussion areas collectively known as USENET - Outbound Telnet Service which enables users to connect to other host computers through the Internet - GEnie Mall with nearly 40 different vendors - Starship Amiga Roundtable which contains gigabytes of Amiga-only files - Commodore Roundtable for VIC-20, C-64, C-128 and other Commodore computers - Other Amiga software companies have their own Roundtables for customer support such as Soft-Logik where all the latest program patches and support files are available for their products - AmiAladdin Support Roundtable for getting the latest updates to the GEnie Aladdin software which is used to make maneuvering the GEnie menu system much easier and faster. This is a specific area for the Amiga version of this software which is free of charge - Hundreds of other areas and services available * How do I sigh up for GEnie? You may sign up for GEnie service by one of two methods: (1) Using your modem (8N1 half duplex 300/1200/2400 baud) dial 1-800-638-8369. Upon connection immediately enter HHH (Return), don't wait for any on-screen prompt. At the U#= prompt type SIGNUP (Return). You may use a major credit card account or your checking account (US only.) (2) Call GEnie client services via voice at 1-800-638-9636 or 1-301-251-6475 from outside the US and Canada. @endnode @node P5B-2 "Aminet" @toc P5B 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. (ftp.cdrom.com or ftp.wustl.edu are two sites) @endnode @node P5B-3 "World Wide Web" @toc P5B World Wide Web ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AR can also be read with Mosaic (in either AmigaGuide or html form). Reading AmigaReport with Mosaic removes the necessity to download it. It can also be read using programs found in UNIX sites such as LYNX. Simply tell Mosaic to open the following URL: http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/mjw/Computer/Amiga/News/AR/index.html Or, for those in Europe, the Polish site is: http://sun1000.ci.pwr.wroc.pl/AMIGA/AR/ Mosaic for the Amiga can be found on Aminet in directory comm/net, or (using anonymous ftp) on max.physics.sunysb.edu Mosaic for X, Macintosh(tm) and Microsoft Windows(tm) can be found on ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu @endnode @node P9-A1 "Omaha Amiganet" @toc P5B-4A * OMAHA AMIGANET * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running DLG Professional * Andy Wasserman, Sysop 24 hrs - 7 days FidoNet: 1:285/11 AmigaNet: 40:200/10 Line 1: 402-333-5110 V.32bis Line 2: 402-691-0104 USR DS Omaha, Nebraska @endnode @node P9-A2 "NOVA" @toc P5B-4A * NOVA BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site Support BBS of The Chattanooga Amiga Users Group * Running MEBBSNet BBS * Wayne Stonecipher, Sysop AmigaNet 40:210/10.0 40:210/1.0 40:210/0.0 FidoNet 1:362/508.0 An Amiga Software Distribution Site (ADS) 615-472-9748 USR DS 16.8 24hrs - 7 days Cleveland, Tennessee All AR back issues are kept online. All new users receive access to the AR on the first call. Any AR issue may be file requested with proper name. To obtain the current issue you may FReq Proper name, AR.LHA or simply AR @endnode @node P9-A3 "PIONEERS BBS" @toc P5B-4A * PIONEERS BBS * ** A PREMIER GENEALOGY BBS ** ** WEST COAST - Amiga Virus Busters Support BBS ** ** CD32 REVIEW Support BBS ** AND NOW Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running EXCELSIOR! BBS * Michael & Marthe Arends, Sysops FidoNet: 1:343/54.0 206-775-7983 Supra 14.4k v32.bis 24hrs - 7 days EDMONDS, Washington New users can call and get ANY copy of Amiga Report. Just call using the Name "Long Distance" and the password "Longdistance"(without the quotes of course). Users using this account will have full access to ALL past and present issues of AMIGA REPORT starting with the premier issue. The latest issue of Amiga Report can be Freq'ed (FileREQusted) from here as "AR.LHA", Freq's are valid at ANY time. @endnode @node P9-A4 "CIUA BBS" @toc P5B-4A * CIUA BBS* Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Portugal * Running Excelsior/Trapdoor/AmigaUUCP/AmiTCP * Celso Martinho, Sysop FidoNet 2:361/9 Internet: denise.ci.ua.pt +351-34-382080/382081 (V32bis soon V34) 24hrs - 7 days. @endnode @node P9-A5 "Amiga Junction 9" @toc P5B-4A * AMIGA JUNCTION 9 * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- United Kingdom * Running DLG Professional * Stephen Anderson, Sysop Sysop Email: sysadmin@junct9.demon.co.uk Line 1 +44 (0)372 271000 14400 V.32bis/HST FidoNet 2:440/20 Line 2 +44 (0)372 278000 14400 V.32bis only FidoNet 2:440/21 Line 3 +44 (0)372 279000 2400 V.42bis/MNP Voice: +44 (0)956 348405 (24hrs) Direct Sysop Voice Line Internet: user_name@junct9.royle.org Special Interest Areas: - Bjork / Sugarcubes Fan Club - Research of Lucid Dreaming @endnode @node P9-A6 "BitStream BBS" @toc P5B-4A * BITSTREAM BBS * The BBS of the Nelson (NZ) Amiga Users Group Official Amiga Report Distribution Site BITSTREAM BBS is running on an Amiga 2000/030 with 7MB RAM 800MB of Hard Drive Space and a 650MB CD-ROM Drive Line 1 : 24 hours, +64-(0)3-548-5321, SupraFaxModem 28k8 VFast Class Modem Supplied by Supra. Hard Drive Controller Supplied by Micro World We use the XENOLINK Professional BBS Software v1.91 Sysop: Glen Roberts Co-Sysop: Peter Lowish FidoNET 3:771/850.0 MaxNET 90:301/150.0 AmigaNET 41:644/850.0 @endnode @node P9-A7 "Realm of Twilight" @toc P5B-4A * REALM OF TWILIGHT BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Canada * Running Excelsior! BBS * Thorsten Schiller, Sysop Usenet: realm.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca UUCP: ...!uunet.ca!tdkcs!realm FIDO: 1:221/302 Fish: 33:33/8 24hrs - 7 days 519-748-9365 (2400 baud) 519-748-9026 (v.32bis) Ontario, Canada Hardware: Amiga 3000, 105 Meg Quantum, 213 Meg Maxtor, 5 megs RAM @endnode @node P9-A8 "Metnet Triangle" @toc P5B-4A METNET TRIANGLE SYSTEM Official Amiga Report Distribution Site UK Support for Mebbsnet * Running Mebbsnet and Starnet 1.02a * Jon Witty, Sysop FIDO: 2:252/129.0 24 hrs - 7 days Line 1: 44-482-473871 16.8 DS HST Lines 2-7: 44-482-442251 2400 (6 lines) Line 8: 44-482-491744 2400 Line 9: 44-482-449028 2400 Voice helpline 44-482-491752 (anytime) Fully animated menus + normal menu sets. 500 megs HD - Usual software/messages Most doors online - Many Sigs - AMIGA AND PC SUPPORT Very active userbase and busy conference Precious days and MUD online. AMUL support site. @endnode @node P9-A9 "Amiga-Night-System" @toc P5B-4A * AMIGA-NIGHT-SYSTEM * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site - Finland * Running DLG Professional * Janne Saarme, Sysop 24 hrs - 7 days InterNet: luumu@fenix.fipnet.fi FidoNet: 2:220/550.0 +358-0-675840 V.32bis Helsinki, Finland @endnode @node P9-A10 "Ramses Amiga Flying" @toc P5B-4A * RAMSES THE AMIGA FLYING * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- France * Running DLG Professional * Eric Delord, Sysop Philippe Brand, Co-Sysop Stephane Legrand, Co-Sysop Internet: user.name@ramses.gna.org Fidonet: 2:320/104 +33-1-60037015 USR DS 16.8 +33-1-60037713 V.32bis +33-1-60037716 1200-2400 Ramses The Amiga Flying BBS is an Amiga-dedicated BBS running DLG-Pro on a Amiga 3000, 16MB RAM, 2GB Disk space, 3 lines. We keep a dayly Aminet site mirroring, NetBSD-Amiga complete mirror site from ftp.eunet.ch (main site), Amiga Report, GNU Amiga, Ramses is the SAN/ADS/Amiganet French coordinator. @endnode @node P9-A11 "Gateway BBS" @toc P5B-4A * THE GATEWAY BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior! BBS * Stace Cunningham, Sysop Dan Butler, CoSysop 24 hrs - 7 days InterNet: stace@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil FidoNet: 1:3604/60.0 601-374-2697 Hayes Optina 28.8 V.FC Biloxi, Mississippi @endnode @node P9-A12 "EMERALD KEEP BBS" @toc P5B-4A * Emerald Keep BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribation Site * Running DLG Professional * Michael mac Nessa, Sysop 24 hrs - 7 days FidoNet: 1:2250/2 AmigaNet: 40:206/1 618-394-0065 USR 16.8k DS Fairview Heights, IL @endnode @node P9-A13 "Amiga BBS" @toc P5B-4A * Amiga BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior! BBS * Alejandro Kurczyn, Sysop FidoNet 4:975/7 First Amiga BBS in Mexico (5) 887-3080 9600 V32,MNP Estado de Mexico, Mexico @endnode @node P9-A14 "The Stygian Abyss" @toc P5B-4A * THE STYGIAN ABYSS BBS * 312-384-0616 14.4 USR Courier HST 312-384-6250 14.4 Supra V.32 bis (FREQ line) 312-384-0716 2400 USR Courier FIDONet-1:115/384.0 CLink-911:6200/2.0 NWNet-206:310/0.0--206:310/1.0 PhantomNet Central States Cooridinator-11:2115/0.0--11:2115/1.0 FaithNet Central States Cooridinator-700:6000/0.0--700:6000/1.0 AMINet Chicagoland HUB-559:2/5.0 Chicago, Illinois Over 4 GIGS of files I Over 3700 MODS I Over 120 On-Line Games Tons of digitized sounds I Over 15,000 GIFS Supporting: Amiga I IBM I Macintosh I C=64/128 SIR SAMMY-SysOp Enter.......If you dare!! @endnode @node P9-A15 "Amiga Do PC BBS" @toc P5B-4A * AMIGA DO PC BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribuition Site - Brazil * Running Excelsior! v 1.18 * +55-192-33-2260 Weekdays: 19-07 (-3 GMT) Weekends: 24 hours Fidonet: 4:801/44 RBT: 12:1212/1 Virinet: 70:101/17 Internet: fimoraes@dcc.unicamp.br Francisco Moraes, sysop Campinas, SP Freq AREPORT for the newest issue avaiable. @endnode @node P9-A16 "Comm-Link BBS" @toc P5B-4A * COMM-LINK BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior Pro * 604-945-6192 USR DS 16.8 24 hrs - 7 days Fido: 1:153/210.0 AmigaNet 40:800/9100.0 InterSports: 102:540/305.0 PussNet: 169:1000/305.0 InterNet: steve_hooper@comm.tfbbs.wimsey.com Steve Hooper, Sysop Port Coquitlam, B.C. Canada @endnode @node P9-A17 "Phantom's Lair" @toc P5B-4A * PHANTOM'S LAIR * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running CNET 3.0 * FidoNet: 1:115/469.0 Phantom Net Cooridinator: 11:1115/0.0-11:1115/1.0 708-469-9510 708-469-9520 CD ROMS, Over 15511 Files Online @ 2586 meg Peter Gawron, Sysop Glendale Heights, Illinois @endnode @node P9-A18 "Tierra-Miga BBS" @toc P5B-4A Tierra-Miga BBS Software: CNet Gib Gilbertson 24 hours - 7 days FidoNet: 1:202/638.0 AmigaNet: 40:406/3.0 Internet: torment.cts.com Line #1: 619.292.0754 V32.bis City: San Diego, CA. @endnode @node P9-A19 "Moonlight Sonata DLG" @toc P5B-4A M O O N L I G H T S O N A T A D L G * Amiga Report Official Distribution Site * * DAS ModPlayer Support * 2 Nodes *FREE PUBLIC* Amiga BBS MIDI-tunes, MIDI-utils, Modules, Amiga-files Messages, Door-games, MUD... Also patches for several synths! (About 100MB of ProTracker Modules!) Node #1 - +358-18-161763 - ZyXEL V32b 19200 Node #2 - +358-18-161862 - HST DS V32 14400 Fidonet: 2:221/112.0 Keyboards: Erno Tuomainen Amiga3000 25MHz - 1.3Gigs HD BBS Software: Dialog Pro BB/OS @endnode @node P9-A20 "Continental Drift" @toc P5B-4A *=====================================================================* /\ C O N T I N E N T A L D R I F T B B S / \ (+61) 2 949 4256 / \______ Murray Chaffer * Andre Lackmann * Dale Cohen / / \ / / \ Amiga * IBM * Macintosh / / \ : : : :\ \ /\ \ : : :800Mb+ Online - USENET News - Internet Mail :\ \ / \ \ : : Local Mail - FIDOnet Mail - Shareware Regos : :\ \/ \ \ : :Online Games - Aminet, FISH, Euro CD-ROMs : :\ / /: : : : :\ / /: : :Amiga Report * CD-32 View * Frontier Consoles \ / / * Computer underground Digest * \ /\ / \ / \ / **Online shareware registrations** \/ \/ Files daily from Aminet * ADS/SAN *=====================================================================* @endnode @node P9-A21 "Amiga Online Bs Heemstede" @toc P5B-4A Amiga Online Bs Heemstede * HeadQuarters of Online Products * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- The Netherlands * Running Xenolink 1.90 * Your SysOp is Michiel Willems 24 hours a day - 7 days a week Fidonet : 2:280/464.0 DAN Host HQ : 55:100/1.0 Amynet Host : 39:151/1.0 NLA : 14:102/203.0 BOSnet Hub : 99:999/2.0 e-mail SysOp : michiel@aobh.xs4all.nl Line 1 +31-23-282002 14400 v32bis Supra Line 2 +31-23-470739 14400 v32bis Supra Heemstede, The Netherlands, Europe, The Earth Very nice menu's 660 Megs HD online - ALOT of software ALOT of messages - VERY fast BBS program Point support - Lot's of doors online Just freq AR of AR.LHA for the latest issue available The system is running on an Amiga 2000 with a HARMS-Prof-3000 030 turboboard at 29Mhz and a copro at 50Mhz, 7MB RAM, 660 Meg HD space and soon 1 Gigabyte HD space. Every issue from Amiga Report Magazine online as far as the first issue. @endnode @node P9-A22 "The Kobayashi Alternative BBS" @toc P5B-4A T H E K O B A Y A S H I A L T E R N A T I V E B B S ----- ----------------- --------------------- ----- Supporting the Central Maine since 1985! 7 In-Dial lines (All 14.4 Compatable) Support for IBM/Windows, Amiga, MAC and CNet BBS Support On-Line Games (over 100) Internet Newsgroups and Usenet Mail FidoNet Echo Areas FidoNet: 1:326/404.0 (207)/784-2130 \ TKA (207)/946-5665 \ Local (207)/353-7224 / Access (207)/377-3214 / Lines @endnode @node P9-A23 "Highway to Hell BBS" @toc P5B-4A * Highway to Hell BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site Sysop: Iain Black (iblack@dit.ie) Cosysop: Damien Ryan (djryan@dit.ie) Online from 22:00 - 08:00 GMT Fidonet Node: 2:263/154 +353-1-847 5217 @endnode @node P9-A24 "CUGI BBS" @toc P5B-4A * CUGI BBS * The BBS of the Commodore Users Group of Ireland Fidonet: 2:263/155 Phone: + 353 1 837 0204 Sysop: Matt Brookes. V32bis/24 hours a day. @endnode @node P9-A25 "The Hell BBS" @toc P5B-4A -=-= T h e H e l l B B S =-=- -* Official Amiga Report Distribution Site *- Running Xenolink BBS software Line #1 : +31-(0)70-3468783 (v32bis Supra) 24 hrs - 7 days Sysop : Robin Vermaat Co-sysop : Tony Verschoor GFX-sysop : Richard Willkomm Fido-Net : 2:281/418.0 NL Amiga-Net : 14:101/101.0 e-mail : root@hell.xs4all.nl Amiga-Net : 39:153/101.0 @endnode @node P9-B2 "Freeland Mainframe" @toc P5B-4B * FREELAND MAINFRAME * Offical Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running DLG Progessional * John Freeland, SysOp 206-438-1670 Supra 2400zi 206-438-2273 Telebit WorldBlazer(v.32bis) 206-456-6013 Supra v.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Internet - freemf.eskimo.com Olympia, Washington @endnode @node P9-B3 "LAHO" @toc P5B-4B * LAHO BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Finland * Running MBBS * Lenni Uitti, SysOp Juha Mkinen, SysOp (Amiga-areas) Tero Manninen, SysOp (PC-areas) +358-64-414 1516, V.32bis/HST +358-64-414 0400, V.32bis/HST +358-64-414 6800, V.32/HST +358-64-423 1300, V.32bis Seinjoki, Finland Our host machine is a 386/33 with 20MB of memory, 1GB harddisk and a CD-ROM drive running in a Novell network. The BBS software is a Norwegian origin MBBS running in a DesqView windows. We have now (26th March 1994) over 10000 files online (mostly for the Commodore Amiga line of the personal computers.) Every user has an access to download filelist (LAHOFIL.ZIP), list of the Finnish 24-hour BBS's (BBSLIST.ZIP or BBSLIST.LHA) and every issue of the Amiga Report Magazine (AR101.LHA-AR???.LHA) even on their first call. @endnode @node P9-B4 "Falling BBS" @toc P5B-4B * FALLING BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Norway * Running ABBS * Christopher Naas, Sysop +47 69 256117 28.8k 24hrs - 7 days EMail: christon@powertech.no @endnode @node P9-B5 "Command Line BBS" @toc P5B-4B * COMMAND LINE BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Canada Canada's Amiga Graphics & Animation Source * Running AmiExpress BBS * Nick Poliwko, Sysop 416-533-8321 V.32 24hrs - 7 days Toronto, Canada @endnode @node P9-B6 "Leguans Byte Channel" @toc P5B-4B * LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Germany * Running EazyBBS V2.11 * Andreas Geist, Sysop Usenet: andreas@lbcmbx.in-berlin.de 24 hrs - 7 days Line 1: 49-30-8110060 USR DS 16.8 Line 2: 49-30-8122442 USR DS 16.8 Login as User: "amiga", Passwd: "report" @endnode @node P9-B7 "Stingray Database BBS" @toc P5B-4B * STINGRAY DATABASE * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Germany * Running FastCall * Bernd Mienert, Sysop EMail: sysop@sting-db.zer.sub.org.dbp.de +49 208 496807 HST-Dual 24hrs - 7 days Muelheim/Ruhr, Germany @endnode @node P9-B8 "T.B.P. Video Slate" @toc P5B-4B _________________________________ / / /_ /\ * T.B.P. VIDEO SLATE * / / //// / Official Amiga Report / / AR Coverdisk / / / CoverDisk Distribution Site / / / / / An Amiga dedicated BBS for All / / / / / * Running Skyline 1.3.2 * / / / / / Mark E Davidson, Sysop / /__________________________/ / / 24 hrs - 7 days / _______________________ / / 201-586-3623 USR 14.4 HST / / ___ / / / / Rockaway, New Jersey / / / / / / / / / / /__/ / / / / Full Skypix menus + normal and /______/_______________/______/__/ / ansi menu sets. \______\________________\______\_\/ Download on the first call. Hardware: Amiga 500 Tower custom at 14 MHz, 350 Meg maxtor, 125 Meg SCSI Maxtor, 345 Meg IDE Maxtor, 2 Double Speed CD rom, 9 meg RAM @endnode @node P9-B9 "Amiga Central" @toc P5B-4B * AMIGA CENTRAL! * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site CNet Amiga Support Site * Running CNet Amiga BBS * Carl Tashian, Sysop Internet mail: root@amicent.raider.net 615-383-9679 1200-14.4Kbps V.32bis 24 hours - 7 days Nashville, Tennessee Hardware: Amiga 3000 Tower 68030+882@25MHz, 105 meg Quantum, 225 meg Seagate, Zoom 14.4k modem @endnode @node P9-B10 "Guru Meditation" @toc P5B-4B * GURU MEDITATION * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Spain * Running Remote Access * Javier Frias, SysOp +34-1-383-1317 V.32bis 24 hours - 7days Spain @endnode @node P9-B11 "LINKSystem LINK-CH1" @toc P5B-4B LINKSystem LINK-CH1 Official Amiga Report Distribution Site - Switzerland in local newsgroup link-ch1.ml.amiga-report Mails and News from/to UseNet contact: rleemann@link-ch1.aworld.de +41 61 3215643 V32bis/Zyx16800 +41 61 3832007 ISDN X75/V110 +41 61 3832008 ISDN X75/V110 @endnode @node P9-B12 "Doom of Darkness" @toc P5B-4B * Doom of Darkness * * Home of AmBoS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Germany Marc Doerre (Marc_Doerre), Sysop (BBS-Owner/AmBoS-Support) Bernd Petersen (TGM), Sysop (Amiga-Software-Support) Gerhard Luehning (Klaro), Co-Sysop (Aminet-Support) Kai Szymanski (Kai), Co-Sysop (AR-Support/AmBoS-Support) Usenet: user_name@doom.ping.de Line 1 +49 (0)4223 8355 19200 V.42bis/Zyx Line 2 +49 (0)4223 3256 16800 V.42bis/Zyx Line 3 +49 (0)4223 3313 16800 V.42bis/Zyx Sysop Email: marc_doerre@doom.ping.de AR-Infoservice : kai@doom.ping.de @endnode @node P9-B13 "RedEye BBS" @toc P5B-4B REDEYE BBS * Running EXCELSIOR/UUCP/AFAX * "Official Amiga Report Distribution Site Germany/Europe" Sysop: Thorsten Meyer Internet: sysop@redeye.muc.de Line 1: +49-89-5460535 (V.32b, Zyxel EG + / USR V.34) 24hrs - 7 days Munich, Germany Areas for Amiga, PCs, Amiga Report, WAU Main Coordinator for Germany, Game Byte, Graphic Stuff, 3D-Exchange, 3D-tools, 3D-objects, GUS, PAS, DOOM, Online CD, Online Games, USENET, INTERNET, FIDO ECHOS, Developer @endnode @node P9-B14 "Virtual Palace BBS" @toc P5B-4B * Virtual Palace BBS * * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * * Official Amiga Report Disk Distribution Site * 916-343-7420 300-14400 Baud V.42bis AmiExpress 2.40 700 Mbytes P.O. Box 5518 Chico, California 95927 Tibor G. Balogh (Tibor), Sysop Sysop Email: tibor@ecst.csuchico.edu Leland Whitlock (Leland), Co-Sysop @endnode @node P9-B15 "X-TReMe BBS" @toc P5B-4B -*+*/+ X-TReMe BBS +/*+*- Pygor & The Doctor +31-167064414 (24h) Internet: u055231@vm.uci.kun.nl _______ .__ _____ /_ .__//_/ //.___/ Bitnet: u055231 at HNYKUN11 ./ //.__ .//.___/ Internet: u055231@vm1.uci.kun.nl /_//_/ /_//____/. BBS: +31-1670-64414 (24h) . ___ .____ ______________ _____ . . . / .\/ . // _ /_. __/ . //.__ .\ . / / / / // /_. / /./ / // __ \ / . /___//___//___/./_/ /___//_/. \_/ @endnode @node P9-B16 "Vision Thing BBS" @toc P5B-4B Vision Thing Infect East German HQ, Keks ASCII Design World HQ Running CNET 3.xx about 800 MB HD Space The Amiga Report downloader connects with Handle: Amiga PW: Report ++49(0)345 663914 Speed up to 19200. @endnode @node P9-B17 "Amiga Professional BBS" @toc P5B-4B AMIGA PROFESSIONAL BBS +(39)-49-604488 24h - 365 days ZyXEL V42/42bis MNP5, 16.8K Hardware Amiga 3000T 1GByte SCSI-HD Software AmiExpress BBS SysOp Claudio Zanella, 35133 PADOVA - ITALY Official board of Amy Professional Club Official WAU point North East Italy Official Italian Amos Club Official Amiga Report Distribution Site AMIGA ONLY, development, gfx, musix, no piracy @endnode @node P9-B18 "The Belfry(!)" @toc P5B-4B * The Belfry(!) * Sysop: Jesse Erlbaum (stiggy@dorsai.dorsai.org An East Coast distributor of Amiga Report Amiga-run BBS since August 1989 718.793.4796 718.793.4905 @endnode @node P9-B19 "OdySSEY BBS" @toc P5B-4B <-+- OdySSEY BBS -+-> . Official AMIGA REPORT Distribution Site --- GREECE . Supporting Amiga Message/File Areas ONLY . Supporting the A-net ! (Amiga only NET!) . The 1st Amiga BBS in Greece *** SysOp : Konstantiniadis Manos *** -->email: konem@hol.ath.forthnet.gr 2:410/128.17@fidonet *** CoSysOp : Aggelos Poulakis *** -->email: poumas@hol.ath.forthnet.gr Line 1: +++ 301-412-3502 (MNP5,v42bis) (*ONLY* after 23:00 local time,due to technical problems) @endnode @node P9-B20 "Amiga Server BBS" * Amiga Server BBS * Largest Amiga BBS in Mexico. Sysop: Jose Estrada Number: 5158736 Now with 17 cd's available Soon: Link with the soon to come 3D BBS @endnode @node P6-3 "Dealer Directory" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Dealer Directory == =========================================================================== Arranged by Continent: @{" Asia ", link P6-3-1} @{" Europe ", link P6-3-2} @{" North America ", link P6-3-3} (Dealers: To have your name added, please send @{"Email", link P8-1}!) @endnode @node P6-3-1 "Dealers - Asia" @toc P6-3 =========================================================================== == Dealers - Asia == =========================================================================== Grey Matter Ltd. Amiga RuleZ! 1-22-3,Minami Magome HillTop House 2F suite 201 Ota-ku,Tokyo 143 Japan Tel:+81 (0)3 5709-5549 Fax:+81 (0)3 5709-1907 and of course the BEST Amiga BBS in Japan BBS:Grey Matter BBS +81 (0)3 5709-1907 (8N1 V32bis 24H ) Email: nighty@gmatter.japan-online.or.jp @endnode @node P6-3-2 "Dealers - Europe" @toc P6-3 =========================================================================== == Dealers - Europe == =========================================================================== Almathera Systems Ltd Southerton House Boundary Business Court 92-94 Church Road Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3TD England VOICE: (UK) 081 687 0040 FAX: (UK) 081 687 0490 Sales: almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk Tech: jralph@cix.compulink.co.uk Amiga Center Alicante Segura, 27 03004 Alicante Spain Tel: (96) 514 37 34 Amiga Center Argullós, 127 08016 Barcelona Spain Tel: (93) 276 38 06 Fax: (93) 276 30 80 Brian Fowler Computers Ltd 11 North St Exeter Devon EX4 3QS United Kingdom Voice: (0392) 499 755 Fax: (0392) 423 480 Internet: brian_fowler@cix.compulink.co.uk Centro Informático Boadilla Convento, 6 28660 Boadilla del Monte (Madrid) Spain Tel: (91) 632 27 65 Fax: (91) 632 10 99 Centro Mail Spain Tel: (91) 380 28 92 CLICK! N.V. Boomsesteenweg 468 B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen Belgium - Europe VOICE: +32 (0)3 828.18.15 FAX: +32 (0)3 828.67.36 INTERNET: vanhoutv@nbre.nfe.be FIDO: 2:292/603.9 C.R.E. San Francisco, 85 48003 Bilbao (Vizcaya) Spain Tel: (94) 444 98 84 Fax: (94) 444 98 84 CYNOSTIC Office O1, Little Heath Industrial Estate, Old Church Road, Coventry. CV6 7NB UNITED KINGDOM Tel: +44 (0)203 681687 Fax: +44 (0)203 638508 David Cassidy email: bsupa@csv.warwick.ac.uk DataKompaniet ANS Pb 3187 Munkvoll N-7002 Trondheim Norway - Europe VOICE/FAX: 72 555 149 Internet: torrunes@idt.unit.no DataService Oy P.O. Box 50 Kuurinniityntie 30 02771 ESPOO Finland, Europe Voice: +358 (9) 400 438 301 Fax: +358 (9) 0505 0037 Donosti Frame Avda. de Madrid, 15 20011 San Sebastián (Guipuzcoa) Spain Tel: (943) 42 07 45 Fax: (943) 42 45 88 GaliFrame Galerías Príncipe, 22 Vigo (Pontevedra) Spain Tel: (986) 22 89 94 Fax: (986) 22 89 94 Invision San Isidro, 12-18 28850 Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) Spain Tel: (91) 676 20 56/59 Fax: (91) 656 10 04 Invision Salamanca, 53 46005 Valencia Spain Tel: (96) 395 02 43/44 Fax: (96) 395 02 44 Norsoft Bedoya, 4-6 32003 Orense Spain Tel: (988) 24 90 46 Fax: (988) 23 42 07 PiXeLSOFT Felipe II, 3bis 34004 Palencia Spain Tel: (979) 71 27 00 Fax: (979) 71 28 28 Tu Amiga Plaza Pedro IV, 3 08120 La LLagosta (Barcelona) Spain Tel: (93) 560 76 12 Fax: (93) 560 76 12 vb soft Provenza, 436 08025 Barcelona Spain Tel: (93) 456 15 45 Fax: (93) 456 15 45 VISAGE COMPUTERS 18 Station Road Ilkeston Derbyshire DE7 8TD UNITED KINGDOM Tel/Fax: +44 (0)602 444501 Internet: floyd@demon.co.uk Suppliers of Amiga Hardware, Software and Public Domain. @endnode @node P6-3-3 "Dealers - North America" @toc P6-3 =========================================================================== == Dealers - North America == =========================================================================== AmegaByte! 5001 Garrett Ave. Beltsville, MD 20705 INTERNET: amega@globe.net VOICE: (800) 834-7153 VOICE: (301) 937-1640 FAX: (301) 937-1658 A Computer Services Company Amigability Computers P.O. Box 572 Plantsville, CT 06479 VOICE: 203-276-8175 Internet: amiga@phantm.UUCP BIX: jbasile (E-mail to sub. to our mailing list) Amiga Video Solutions 1568 Randolph Avenue St. Paul, MN 55105 Voice: 612-698-1175 Fax: 612-224-3823 BBS: 612-698-1918 Net: wohno001@maroon.tc.umn.edu Apogee Technologies 1851 University Parkway Sarasota, FL 34243 VOICE: 813-355-6121 Portal: Apogee Internet: Apogee@cup.portal.com Armadillo Brothers 753 East 3300 South Salt Lake City, Utah VOICE: 801-484-2791 Internet: B.GRAY@genie.geis.com Atlantis Kobetek Inc. 1496 Lower Water St. Halifax, NS, Canada, B3J 1R9 Phone: (902)-422-6556 Fax: (902)-423-9339 BBS: (902)-492-1544 Internet: aperusse@fox.nstn.ns.ca Computer Link Your Amiga/PC connection. 6573 middlebelt Garden City MI 48135 Voice: 313-522-6005 Fax: 313-522-3119 clink@m-net.arbornet.org Computerology Direct Powell River, BC Canada V8A-4Z3 Authorized Commodore, AT&T/NCR Systems Dealer Call 24 hrs. orders/inquiries: 604/483-3679 Amiga users ask for HEAD SALES REP for quicker response! Computers International, Inc. 5415 Hixson Pike Chattanooga, TN 37343 VOICE: 615-843-0630 Comspec Communications Inc Serving your computing needs since 1976 74 Wingold Ave Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6B 1P5 Computer Centre: (416) 785-8348 Sales: (416) 785-3553 Fax: 416-785-3668 Internet: bryanf@comcorp.comspec.com, bryanf@accesspt.north.net Digital Arts 122 West 6th Street Bloomington, IN 47404 VOICE: (812)330-0124 FAX: (812)330-0126 BIX: msears Finetastic Computers 721 Washington Street Norwood, MA 02062 VOICE: 617-762-4166 BBS: 617-769-3172 Fido: 1:101/322 Portal: FinetasticComputers Internet: FinetasticComputers@cup.portal.com HIGHLAND GREY CONSULTING, INC. Customer Service Centre Head Office 4704E - 49 Ave. R.R. 1 Camrose, Alberta, Ohaton, Alberta Canada Canada T4V-3K9 T0B-3P0 VOICE: (403) 679-2242 FAX: (403) 672-0303 Sales and Service; Same Phone #'s! Apple, Amiga, IBM/Clone and Macintosh Systems HT Electronics 275 North Mathilda Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94086 VOICE: 408-737-0900 FAX: 408-245-3109 Portal: HT Electronics Internet: HT Electronics@cup.portal.com Industrial Video, Inc. 1601 North Ridge Rd. Lorain, OH 44055 VOICE: 800-362-6150, 216-233-4000 Internet: af741@cleveland.freenet.edu Contact: John Gray Keizer Tech 3881 River Rd N Keizer, OR 97303 USA Voice: 393-5472 Magic Page 3043 Luther Street Winston-Salem, NC 27127 910-785-3695 voice/fax Spiff@cup.portal.com MicroSearch 9000 US 59 South, Suite 330 Houston, Texas VOICE: 713-988-2818 FAX: 713-995-4994 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 MusicMart: Media Sound & Vision 71 Wellington Road London, Ontario, Canada VOICE: 519-434-4162 FAX: 519-663-8074 BBS: 519-645-2144 FIDO: 1:2401/200 AmigaNet: 40:550/1 MaxNet: 90:204/1 InterNet: koops@gaul.csd.uwo.ca PSI Animations 17924 SW Pilkington Road Lake Oswego, OR 97035 VOICE: 503-624-8185 Internet: PSIANIM@agora.rain.com Raymond Commodore Amiga 898 Raymond Avenue St. Paul, MN 55114-1521 VOICE: 612.642.9890 FAX: 612.642.9891 Software Plus Chicago 2945 W Peterson Suite 209 Chicago, Illinois VOICE: 312-878-7800 Software and Service in Chicago - Will ship. Wonder Computers Inc. 1315 Richmond Rd. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 8J7 Voice: 613-596-2542 Fax: 613-596-9349 BBS: 613-829-0909 Zipperware 626 S. Washington Seattle, WA 98104 VOICE: 206-223-1107 FAX: 206-223-9395 E-Mail: Jon.Funfar@p0.f203.n138.z1.fidonet.org "Seattle's Last (great) Amiga Store!" @endnode @node P1 "Editorial and Opinion" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Editorial and Opinion == =========================================================================== @{" compt.sys.editor.desk " link P1-1} My take on what's up... @{" Darkseid's Padded Cell " link P1-3} We still don't understand him. @{" Zendrix's First Article " link P1-2} Start looking for padded cell #2? @endnode @node P2 "News and Features" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == News and Features == =========================================================================== @{" Press Releases " link P2-1} Stuff people want you to know @{" Soft-Logik Conference " link P2-5} PageStream3 chat on Portal @{" The Humor Department " link P2-6} Just a couple of snicks @{" WOA '94 Report " link P2-4} By Simon - 1st of the UK reports @{" WOA '94 Report " link P2-7} By Andy Dean @{" WOA '94 Report " link P2-8} By Mat Bettinson @{" WOA '94 Report " link P2-9} By Kim F Ong (Yes, the LAST ONE!) @{" IPISA '94 Conference Report " link P2-10} This one's in Italy @{" AR Reader Poll " link P2-11} More on the Workbench Wish Lists @{" December '94 MODCHARTS " link P2-3} Groovin' to the electric tunes @endnode @node P3 "Reviews" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Reviews == =========================================================================== @{" Alien Breed: Tower Assault " link P3-1} It's not getting too old just yet... Sorry for the rather low amount of reviews this time around...between the WOA reports and the press releases and all of that good stuff, the magazine was getting really, really huge. But Matt Costanza, AR Games Editor-in-waiting promises me he's got some coming up, and I have some up my sleeve as well-notably, the CEI4065 Ethernet card and AmiCheck. But don't worry, we haven't forgotten about reviews... @endnode @node P2-2 "FTP and Product Announcements" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == FTP and Product Announcements == =========================================================================== @{" PC-Task 3 " link P2-2-1} 286 emulation, no hardware required. @{" LK V1.06 " link P2-2-2} Well, it's a linker. @{" Mand2000 2.0 " link P2-2-3} A demo of a fractal-type program. @{" iffed_v1.01 " link P2-2-4} A multipurpose IFF editor. @{" Termite: Rumor Control " link P2-2-5} Clearing the air @{" PPack 2.2 " link P2-2-6} Good old PowerPacker. @{" ClipBook 1.2 " link P2-2-7} Sort of a Mac Scrapbook substitute. @{"amiCheck v1.31 for WB2.x" link P2-2-8} Now 2.x people can have checks, too. @{" Soft-Logik Moving " link P2-2-9} Just letting you know... | The 10 most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 4-Dec-94 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Description |----------------- --- ---- ----------- vchck645.lha util/virus 130K+VirusChecker 6.45 Released 3/12/94. MagicIconSort.lha util/wb 284K+Sorting and positioning of WB-icons Navigator.lha gfx/misc 104K+A Virtual Reality presentation system MacSND_dt.lha util/wb 17K+DataType for Mac "snd" resource data. V1.2 XAnim2.lha gfx/show 170K+XAnim - animimation viewer, AGA needed. v1 CreaTV-Icons.lha pix/icon 329K+Icons for MagicWB-styled Workbenches. V1.0 xpkHFMN_128.lha util/pack 5K+Huffman V1.28,improved comp&decomp speed CBE38.lha util/cdity 58K+ClipBoard Enhancer. Add history to ClipBoard AIFF_dt.lha util/wb 15K+DataType for AIFF/AIFC sound files. V1.5 SystemGuide.lha docs/hyper 58K+Guide to Amiga software system files. V1.0 | The 10 most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 11-Dec-94 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Description |----------------- --- ---- ----------- term42-030.lha comm/term 533K+The MC68020/030/040/060 version vchck645.lha util/virus 130K+VirusChecker 6.45 Released 3/12/94. ar233.lha docs/mags 94K+Amiga Report 2.33, December 4, 1994 term42-Libs.lha comm/term 126K+XPR and XEM libs term42-Doc.lha comm/term 181K+AmigaGuide format and library documentation term42-Extras.lha comm/term 203K+HydraCom, ARexx scripts, sound files, tran vchckbrain110.lha util/virus 2K+Brainfile 1.10 for Virus_Checker term42-Main.lha comm/term 534K+Distribution for all Amigas term42-Roadmap.txt comm/term 27K+Introduction to the distribution (what to Gui-FTP.lha comm/tcp 39K+V1.0.0 FTP with GUI for AmiTCP 3.0b2+ @endnode @node P2-6 "The Humor Department" @toc P2 =========================================================================== == The Humor Department == =========================================================================== A Piece by Eyal Teler --------------------- Star Trek - The Amiga Generation [ This episode deals mainly with Picard's attempts to come to terms with the revelation that Q is his true, long lost, mother, adopted by the Continuum when he was but a child, and still had hair. However, to prove that this is not just a space soap opera, but actually a highly technical futuristic series, the crew will also have to deal with a world on the verge of disaster. When we join this episode, the Enterprise is hovering above a solid yellow planet which is similar in looks to many other planets. ] Sitting down with a cup of Earl Jones tea, for that deep voice effect, captain Gen-Lock Picard listened to the summary La-Forge has prepared. "...planet Commodore is therefore completely dry. The ecological disaster brought by president Ali could cause the death of the entire Amigan population. Natural reproduction has stopped completely, and there isn't even enough water for a floor scrubber to work." Shock registered on the faces of all scrubber loving crew members. "Are there any large underground water deposits? We could then use the phasers to solve the problem, as we did in the past." "I'm sorry, but we just can't use the same solution in two episodes. We'll look as if we learn from experience. "On the other hand, work had already started more than half a year ago to produce water using a concept similar to the one used by our replicator. By using the Liquidators, as they are called, the Amigans have hoped to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the process is taking longer than anticipated." "Ohhhhh," cried Deanna suddenly, clutching her head. "Deanna, are you okay?" "I just felt a fluctuation in the Force, Lock, as if millions of people have suddenly lost the will to be creative individuals, and decided to join the great unwashed masses." "With this lack of water, it is no wonder they cannot get bathed, captain." "Oh, shut up, Data. This is a serious matter. What does it mean, Deanna?" "Oh no, the voices, the voices, oh, what a world, what a world!" "I know what's happening." "Guinan, what are you doing here?" "I felt that disturbance in the Force, too. It's the Borg." "What have they done this time? Destroyed another couple of worlds?" "It's worse. They are life long enemies of the Amigans. The Amigans' slogan was 'have an Amiga, have a friend', while the Borg's one was 'assimilate or die'. This battle of the slogans has gone on for ages. "Now with the weakening of the Amigans, the Borg manage to assimilate people much more easily, with the use of their new slogan 'join the Incredible Borg Monopoly world, and get built-in networking'." "That's terrible. Perhaps my mother will be able to do something." [ The episode continues with Picard trying to find out whether the records about his mother confirm what the Q had so convincingly claimed, and talking to his step mother, simulated by the holo-deck. Eventually, his love-hate relationship with the Q convinces him that the Q is really his mother. At the end of the episode we find out that the whole episode was staged by the Q, including falsifying records, and simulating Picard's mother simulation. Commodore's problems were just added by the Q so that he doesn't get completely bored. Not much of a conclusion, is it? But then, what do you expect from Star Trek - The Boring Generation? ] @endnode @node P5 "About AMIGA REPORT" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == About AMIGA REPORT == =========================================================================== @{" AR Staff " link P5-1} The Editors and writers @{" Copyright Information " link P5-4} The legal stuff @endnode @node P5-1 "The Staff" @toc P5 =========================================================================== == The Staff == =========================================================================== Editor: @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1} Senior Editor: @{" Robert Niles " link P8-2} Assistant Editor: @{" Katherine Nelson " link P8-3} European Editor: @{" Michael Wolf " link P8-4} Contributing Editor: @{" David Tiberio " link P8-5} Contributing Writers: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _Roger Boal_ ckb426@ujvax.ulst.ac.uk _Zendrix_ ckb426@ujvax.ulst.ac.uk _Simon_ si@mailserver.aixssc.uk.ibm.com _Eyal Teler_ teler@bagel.cs.huji.ac.il _Andy Dean_ adean@eleceng.ucl.ac.uk _Mat Bettinson_ _Kim F ONg_ kimong@delphi.com _Wouter van Oortmerssen_ wouter@alf.let.uva.nl @endnode @node P5B "Where to Get AR" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Where to Get AR == =========================================================================== @{" The AR Mailing List " link P5B-1} @{" Aminet " link P5B-2} @{" World Wide Web " link P5B-3} @{" Distribution Sites " link P5B-4} @{" Commercial Services " link P6-4} @endnode @node P5B-4 "Distribution Sites" @toc P5B =========================================================================== == Where to find Amiga Report == =========================================================================== @{" FidoNet Systems " link P5B-4A} @{" Non-FidoNet Systems " link P5B-4B} @endnode @node P5B-4A "FidoNet Distribution Sites" @toc P5B-4 FidoNet Systems ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Click on the button of the BBS nearest you for information on that system. FREQ the filename "AR.LHA" for the most current issue of Amiga Report! @{" OMAHA AMIGANET " link P9-A1} .................................Omaha, Nebraska @{" NOVA " link P9-A2} ............................Cleveland, Tennessee @{" PIONEER'S BBS " link P9-A3} .............................Edmonds, Washington @{" CIUA BBS " link P9-A4} ........................................Portugal @{" AMIGA JUNCTION 9 " link P9-A5} ..................................United Kingdom @{" BITSTREAM BBS " link P9-A6} .............................Nelson, New Zealand @{" REALM OF TWILIGHT " link P9-A7} .................................Ontario, Canada @{" METNET TRIANGLE " link P9-A8} .....................Kingston Upon Hull, England @{" AMIGA-NIGHT-SYSTEM " link P9-A9} ...............................Helsinki, Finland @{" RAMSES THE AMIGA FLYING " link P9-A10} ..........................................France @{" GATEWAY BBS " link P9-A11} .............................Biloxi, Mississippi @{" EMERALD KEEP BBS " link P9-A12} ........................................Illinois @{" AMIGA BBS " link P9-A13} ........................Estado de Mexico, Mexico @{" THE STYGIAN ABYSS " link P9-A14} ...............................Chicago, Illinois @{" AMIGA DO PC BSS " link P9-A15} ................................Campinas, Brazil @{" COMM-LINK BBS " link P9-A16} ......................Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada @{" PHANTOM'S LAIR " link P9-A17} ......................Glendale Heights, Illinois @{" Tierra-Miga BBS " link P9-A18} ....................................SanDeigo, Ca @{" MOONLIGHT SONATA DLG " link P9-A19} .........................................Finland @{" CONTINENTAL DRIFT " link P9-A20} ...............................Sydney, Australia @{" Amiga Online Bs H'stede " link P9-A21} .................................The Netherlands @{"Kobayashi Alternative BBS" link P9-A22} ...........................................Maine @{" Highway to Hell BBS " link P9-A23} .................................Dublin, Ireland @{" CUGI BBS " link P9-A24} .........................................Ireland @{" The Hell BBS " link P9-A25} ..........................The Hague, Netherlands @endnode @node P5B-4B "Non-FidoNet Distribution Sites" @toc P5B-4 Non-FidoNet Systems ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Click on the button of the BBS nearest you for information on that system. @{" FREELAND MAINFRAME " link P9-B2} .............................Olympia, Washington @{" LAHO " link P9-B3} ..............................Seinajoki, Finland @{" FALLING " link P9-B4} ..........................................Norway @{" COMMAND LINE " link P9-B5} .................................Toronto, Canada @{" LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL " link P9-B6} .........................................Germany @{" STINGRAY DATABASE " link P9-B7} ..........................Muelheim/Ruhr, Germany @{" T.B.P. VIDEO SLATE " link P9-B8} ............................Rockaway, New Jersey @{" AMIGA CENTRAL " link P9-B9} ............................Nashville, Tennessee @{" GURU MEDITATION " link P9-B10} ...........................................Spain @{" LINKSystem LINK-CH1 " link P9-B11} ..............................Basel, Switzerland @{" DOOM OF DARKNESS " link P9-B12} .................................Bremen, Germany @{" REDEYE BBS " link P9-B13} .................................Munich, Germany @{" Virtual Palace BBS " link P9-B14} .......................................Chico, Ca @{" X-TReMe BBS " link P9-B15} .................................Holland/Belgium @{" Vision Thing BBS " link P9-B16} .........................................Germany @{" Amiga Professional BBS " link P9-B17} ...........................................Italy @{" The Belfry(!) " link P9-B18} ....................................New York, NY @{" OdySSEY BBS " link P9-B19} ..........................................Greece @{" Amiga Server BBS " link P9-B20} ..........................................Mexico @endnode @node P6 "Commercial Products" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== == Commercial Products == =========================================================================== @{" Editor's Choice " link P6-1} Jason's picks @{" Commercial Online Services " link P6-4} Sign-Up Information @endnode @node P6-4 "Commercial Online Services" @toc P6 =========================================================================== == Commercial Online Services == =========================================================================== @{" Delphi " link P6-4-1} Getting better all the time. @{" Portal " link P6-4-2} A great place for Amiga users. @{" GEnie " link P6-4-3} Internet access, online games, more. @endnode