@database "ar117.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report 1.17, July 16, 1993" @{" Open Magazine " 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 July 16, 1993 No. 1.17 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// From STR Publishing [S]ilicon [T]imes [R]eport @endnode @node P2-1 "Where to find Amiga Report" @toc "menu" WHERE TO FIND AMIGA REPORT -------------------------- Click on the button of the system nearest you for more information. FidoNet Systems --------------- @{" NOVA BBS " link P2-1-1} .................................Cleveland, Tennessee @{" IN THE MEANTIME BBS " link P2-1-2} ...................................Yakima, Washington @{" CLOUD'S CORNER BBS " link P2-1-3} ................................Bremerton, Washington @{" BIOSMATICA BBS " link P2-1-4} .............................................Portugal @{" AMIGA JUNCTION 9 " link P2-1-5} .......................................United Kingdom Non-FidoNet Systems ------------------- @{" FREELAND MAINFRAME " link P2-1-6} ....................................Olympia, Washington @{" LAHO BBS " link P2-1-7} .....................................Seinajoki, Finland @{" FALLING BBS " link P2-1-8} .................................................Norway @endnode See the end of the text file for numbers to each BBS. ___________________________________________________________________________ /// 07/16/93 Amiga Report 1.17 "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" -------------------------- · The Editor's Desk · CPU Report · New Products · Dealer Directory · AR Online · AR Confidential · Rendered Reality · Warez Out There · Directory Utilities · A.M.I.G.A. · ASMOne · Act Of War » More CD32 Ramblings! « » Amiga Report Internet Mailist List « » New VirusZ Kills F**k Virus! « =========================================================================== Amiga Report International Online Magazine "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" » FEATURING WEEKLY « Accurate UP-TO-DATE News and Information Current Events, Original Articles, Tips, Rumors, and Information Hardware · Software · Corporate · R & D · Imports =========================================================================== PORTAL · DELPHI · FIDO · INTERNET · BIX · NVN =========================================================================== @node P1-1 "From the Editor's Desk" @toc "menu" /// From the Editor's Desk "Saying it like it is!" ---------------------- Remember a few weeks ago when I lamented the lack of some serious business software for the Amiga? Well, much to my surprise, there are no fewer than FOUR point-of-sale systems for the Amiga! I received a letter from Mr. Joe Rothman, pointing out that The Accountant, Best Business Systems, Service Industry Accounting, and Retail Escort are all very good POS packages. In fact, I hope to print a review of Retail Escort in a future issue. Many thanks to Mr. Rothman for this information! Speaking of letters, I received a letter from a (what's the word?), um, less-than-pleased reader of Amiga Report. He had received the issue on one of Amiga Animation Magazine's cover disk, and thought we were res- ponsible for compiling those disks. We are not affiliated with any other Amiga publication, any online service, or any "company" other than STR Publishing. We are an independent, not-for-profit magazine run for the benefit of the Amiga Community. With that said, I would like to point out that in our Copyright Section, found at the end of each magazine, it strictly states that Amiga Report cannot be distributed by for-profit oranizations, which include magazine cover disks. We have not been contacted about permission to include our magazine on Amiga Animation Magazine's cover disks, and we do not authorize it. If you read Amiga Animation Magazine and find any issues after Amiga Report #1.16 on their cover disk, or any magazine cover disk, please send me Email with the name and date of the publication, and the phone number and address to the editorial office. The ONLY charge anyone should expect to pay to receive Amiga Report are charges from whatever online service they call to download the issue, and/or any long distance telephone charges. It's not that I don't want the magazine on their disks, just that I want their readers to know that we are not affiliated with that magazine. More good news -- we have just received the newest release of VirusZ, version 3.08. This program will now kill the dreaded F**K virus, that monster revlealed a few issues ago. Look for this program soon on a BBS near you! With that out of the way, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the hard work that my staff and various contributors have done for Amiga Report. We're now into the seventeenth issue, and without you guys, we wouldn't exist! You guys are doing a great job! Extra thanks go to one of our Technical Editors, Mr. Robert Niles, for the new AmigaGuide format. Thanks to him, I might even figure out how to setup documents in AmigaGuide! Rob @ Amiga Report @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P2-2 "AR Staff" @toc "menu" The Amiga Report Staff Dedicated to serving you! ====================== Editor in Chief =============== Robert Glover Portal: Rob-G Delphi: ROB_G FidoNet: 1:362/508.6 Internet: ROB_G@Delphi.COM Associate Editors ================= Technical Department -------------------- Micah Thompson Robert Niles Portal: Coming Soon! RNiles Delphi: RNILES FidoNet: 1:3407/104 Internet: BOOMER.T@genie.geis.com RNILES@Delphi.COM Graphics Department ------------------- Mike Troxell Portal: Coming Soon! FidoNet: 1:362/508 Contributing Department ----------------------- Tom Mulcahy Portal: Coming Soon! Delphi: 16BITTER BIX: HELMET FidoNet: 1:260/322 Internet: 16BITTER@Delphi.COM ________________________________________ Contributing Correspondents =========================== Marcus J. Albers Matt Brookes Chad Freeman Tomas Nilsson PC DIVISION ATARI DIVISION MAC DIVISION =========== ============== ============ Roger D. Stevens Ralph F. Mariano R. Albritton @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-2 "CPU Status Report" @toc "menu" /// CPU Status Report Late Breaking Industry-Wide News ----------------- SECOND ROUND APPLE PRICE CUTS ON QUADRA, SERVER, POWERBOOK CAMPBELL, CALIFORNIA -- Apple Computer is again announcing price cuts of 29 to 24 percent on its Macintosh Quadra, Apple Workgroup Server, and Powerbook notebook computer line. The company is also offering rebates of $100 to $200 on selected products in its Performa computer line. The Macintosh Quadra 950 systems have been reduced up to 29 percent, the Apple Workgroup Server 95 computers have been reduced up to 20 percent, and the Powerbooks have come down 7 percent to 34 percent. The company has set up toll-free lines to answer consumer questions about pricing and availability. This is the second round of price cuts Apple has announced in less than a month. In June, Apple announced price reductions selected Macintosh Centris 610 models, Macintosh IIvx models, Powerbook 180s, Apple Onescanners, and the Applecds compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM) drives. Turmoil at Apple has been in the headlines. The company lost its lawsuit against Microsoft over Windows, replaced its chief executive officer (CEO) John Sculley with chief operating officer (COO) Michael Spindler, who promptly announced lay offs of 2,500 employees, has frozen employee wages while cutting the pay of top management, and there have been hints Apple is for sale. Bob Puette, president of Apple USA said concerning the current round of price cuts: "The price reductions, and the Performa rebates, are part of our overall company strategy to take aggressive actions in order to increase our market share." Apple said it expects lower earnings for this half of the year and industry analysts say pricing pressures from the IBM and compatible personal computer (PC) market coupled with the success of Microsoft Windows are the cause. The company's earnings statement is on track for release the middle of this month, company officials added. ------------------------------ APPLE SALARY CUTS AND FREEZES, EARNINGS AWAITED CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA -- Apple Computer representatives have confirmed reports that the company has frozen all employees salaries, except top management, who will receive a five percent pay cut. This announcement was made to company employees on Monday when Apple announced a reorganization that included cutting of 2,500, or about 15 percent, of its workforce. The company has been in turmoil beginning early last month with hints that it was for sale from Chief Executive Officer (CEO) John Sculley. Sculley stepped down as CEO later in June to become the company's traveling search-light for new technology opportunities. But now there are hints Sculley will not return to Apple when his sabbatical ends in August. Analysts say intense pressure from the IBM and compatible personal computer industry, in the form of the graphical Microsoft Windows 3.1 and the PC price wars, is what is squeezing Apple. June was also the month Apple officially lost the suit it brought for $5.5 billion against Microsoft over the Windows user interface. Apple did say it plans to appeal, but no word of any further action has been forthcoming. In June, Apple said stockholders could expect lower earnings for the second half of its current fiscal year due to profit- cutting price wars. Apple's stock has dropped one-third in value overall since the beginning of the year. Many analysts, however, including those at California Technology Stock Letter, are seeing Apple's stock drop as an opportunity for investors. Confidence in the company is high, they say, and they are urging their readers to buy as much of the stock as they can. The wait now is for the company's second quarter earnings statement, which company officials say is on track for about the 15th of this month. ------------------------------ SANYO SUFFERS 12.5-BILLION YEN LOSS TOKYO, JAPAN -- Sanyo Electric recorded a major sales slump in May. The loss is estimated around 12.5 billion yen ($114 million), and is expected to grow to 20 billion yen ($180 million) by November. Sanyo Electric's mid-term 1993 sales were 500 billion yen ($4.5 billion), which was down 9 percent from the same term last year. Air conditioners, VCRs, and audio visual equipment did not sell well and sales of these products were 5 to 8 percent lower from the previous year. Another reason for Sanyo's sales loss was the rapid appreciation of the Japanese yen. The yen went up by about 20 yen (20 cents) over the previous year, causing Sanyo a sales loss overseas. Sanyo has sold equity to save 8 billion yen ($70 million) but the loss was bigger than expected. The firm has been trying to reduce expenses and labor costs in order to ride out this situation. It will cut 3,000 employees by the end of 1995 and has switched to cheaper overseas manufacturing. ------------------------------ LOW-VOLTAGE CMOS CHIP ALLIANCE WASHINGTON, DC -- National Semiconductor, Toshiba, and Motorola have jointly announced plans to form an alliance to produce the next generation of low voltage CMOS or complimentary metal oxide semiconductor microchips for laptop computers. The goal of the alliance is to jointly develop electrical and physical compatibility standards. The new three-volt microchips are intended for use in both high- performance "green" (environmentally friendly) desktop computers and workstations where heat generation is a constant problem, and in laptop, notebook, and palmtop computers which used to operate at the five-volt standard, but are rapidly moving to the lower power-consumption and lighter batteries possible when using three-volt components. The projected market for low voltage logic chips is $500 per year by 1997, according to information supplied by the companies. ------------------------------ FIRST COMDEX/CANADA OPENS IN TORONTO TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA -- The first COMDEX/Canada show and conference started its three-day run today at the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre. An edition of the huge COMDEX show whose fall version dominates the computer trade show calendar in the United States, COMDEX/Canada is already a major event on the Canadian scene. Its main competition will be the Canadian Computer Show, an established event that takes place each fall in Mississauga, Ontario, a Toronto suburb. Some in the industry speculate that the marketing might of the US-based Interface Group, which runs COMDEX, could threaten the venerable Canadian Computer Show. The Interface Group claimed more than 300 exhibitors and projected some 20,000 attendees at COMDEX/Canada this year. That is up significantly from last year's total of about 120 exhibitors and roughly 9,500 visitors at the PC Expo and LAN Expo shows that Interface Group combined to create COMDEX/Canada. It is still small, however, compared to the Las Vegas COMDEX, which attracts more than 100,000 exhibitors most years. In his introductory remarks, a pep talk that has become standard fare at COMDEX shows, Interface Group Chairman Sheldon Adelson said his company plans to launch further international COMDEX shows, in Europe and the Pacific Rim, quite soon. At present the only other COMDEX outside the United States is in Brazil. The company has previously run COMDEX shows in Europe and Japan, but dropped them. ------------------------------ BIGGEST EVER CARD CRIME IN TAIWAN CAUSES ALARM TAIPEI, TAIWAN -- Taiwan's biggest electronic financial crime ever has revealed a number of weaknesses within the island's financial industry and led to intensified calls for more secure financial facilities. Cheng Chin-lung, a 34-year-old programmer who developed computer programs for five financial institutions' ATM networks in Taiwan, is alleged to have used his inside knowledge to hack the networks to produce a total of 7,174 forged cards from 64 card issuers. The losses involved are unknown, but officials have frozen US$1.9 million "petty cash" in Chin-lung's current account, as well as a similar amount in his sister-in-law Hsiao Mei-yun's account. Cheng was a software programmer with Universal Electronics and Computer (UE&C) between 1989 and 1992. He was also in charge of the company's hardware maintenance operations during that period. According to officials with UE&C, Cheng is alleged to have acquired all the ATM card numbers and their associated PINs which were used during October of last year. Officials say that the fraud has brought a number of potential problem areas to light, primarily the contracting out of computer programming work to outside companies by local banks. The problem cannot be solved overnight. According to the Ministry of Finance, only about 30 percent of all local financial institutions have the expertise and resources required to design computer programs themselves; the rest entrust programming either partly or completely to external companies. On the Taiwanese ATM system, which is thought to be similar to systems used in the US and Europe, when a card is inserted into a cash machine and its PIN entered, the PIN is validated by decoding the PIN and account details recorded on the card's magnetic stripe. If the details are incorrect, the card is retained. Only if the PIN is validated are the details of the transaction, together with the PIN, transferred over a secure data line to the Taiwanese Financial Information System Centre (FISC). Data transferred between the ATM and FISC is scrambled. Experts are suggesting that Cheng intercepted the data streaming into the FISC, but after the data had been unscrambled. Banking officials claim that in the absence of a confession from Cheng, they cannot discover at what point he intercepted the card and PIN data, nor how he did it. As a result of the fraud, the Taiwanese Ministry of Finance has requested all card issuers in the country to re-issue new cards to their cardholders, and add special verification codes to the magnetic stripe on the cards. While this will prevent Cheng's information from being used again, it may not stop the fraud from happening again if the data stream is intercepted at the FISC. The Ministry of Finance has also taken the unusual step of requesting that card issuers revise their conditions of use to take account of a fraud occurring in their own operation and admit liability for any losses, as well as provide compensation in such cases. Experts suggest that this precedent could result in similar variations in agreements on a world-wide basis. Taiwanese card issuers have also stated they intend to greatly accelerate the speed with which they plan to transfer to smart card technology with their ATM cards. The card issuers are currently working with Bull Taiwan on developing a smart ATM and credit card for issue some time next year. ------------------------------ COMDEX/CANADA FEATURES MULTIMEDIA KEYNOTE TORONTO, ONTARIO -- Multimedia technology has real applications in areas such as desktop videoconferencing, news distribution, and various kinds of retailing, Robert Carberry, president of IBM's Fireworks Partners, told a large audience at the opening of the first COMDEX/Canada show and conference. "The applications of multimedia technology are not a Field of Dreams -- build it and they will come," Carberry said, referring to a widely quoted line from a popular American movie -- "but you can apply it to very real business problems today." Carberry illustrated his points with video clips, some of which were reminiscent of Apple Computer Chairman John Sculley's Knowledge Navigator video, a staple of trade show keynotes, and press conferences. He showed an executive using a personal computer to conduct a desktop videoconference with a colleague, sending and receiving electronic mail from a personal digital assistant in an airport, and checking news and travel information on a screen in an airplane seat back. The screen in the airplane seat back is a limited reality today, he said: IBM has already installed "flying local-area networks" in six commercial jets. Carberry also pointed out that with telecommunication networks now acquiring the ability to transmit data at 1.5 megabits per second -- the same speed at which data can be retrieved from a compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM) -- new openings for real-time information delivery are appearing. He cited as an example the creation of audio compact discs on demand, using writable CD technology. IBM is already involved in a pilot project with an audio retailer. This system would let a music store download any title a customer wanted from a central server, making available more titles than the store could keep in stock physically. Video on demand, making movies available to the home when you want to watch them, is another possibility, Carberry said. Fireworks Partners is investing in a variety of such areas, including multimedia content creation, distribution, implementation services, and retail applications, he said. Launched in January, Fireworks Partners took in IBM's multimedia systems and integration business, its Person-to-Person multimedia videoconferencing group, and its Atlanta-based Multimedia Publishing Studio. The company, a unit of IBM's Personal Systems business, is responsible for worldwide marketing of IBM multimedia products and services. It will also back promising multimedia development by entrepreneurs outside IBM, and form joint ventures with other companies, officials said. The previous stories are © 1993 NewsBytes. Reprinted with permission. @endnode __________________________________________________ @node P1-3 "Amigo Announcement" @toc "menu" AMIGO ANNOUNCES TWO PCMCIA PRODUCTS Amigo Business Computers of East Northport, New York has announced two PCMCIA products for the Amiga 1200 and 600 computers. The Amigo PCMCIA Ethernet Adapter is designed to provide ethernet local peer-to-peer net-working on the PCMCIA slots of the A600 and A1200. The adapter works with Amigo's network software and adapters from CBM (A2065) and ASDG. The Amigo PCMCIA Serial Communications Adapter is designed to add a serial port on the PCMCIA slots of the A600 and A1200. The package comes with software which provides additional serial ports for modems, credit card readers, motion detectors, printers, touch screens, etc. Amigo Business Computers, 192 Laurel Road, E. Northport, NY 11731. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P1-4 "AmiNet on CD-ROM" @toc "menu" AMINET LIBRARY NOW ON CD-ROM The Amiga Aminet archive is available now on CDROM. The disc contains the entire Aminet from amiga.physik.unizh.ch as of mid-May 1993. It also contains the old AB20 archive and most of comp.sources.amiga and comp.binaries.amiga. We had to leave off some of the older comp.binaries.amiga files because the disc was too full. There is a total of 650 meg of stuff on this disc. The disc is in Level-2 ISO-9660, which means that filenames are up to 32 characters, single case. We made sure the filenames are unique in the first 8 chars, so this disc will work okay MSDOS too. The disc has index files for several MSDOS BBS's. The disc contains thousands of programs, including utilities, games, development tools, graphics, business software, hardware documents, sound and music programs, and much more. If you want to check out what is on this disc, the readme and index files are available via anonymous ftp from cdrom.com in the directory /cdrom/cdroms/aminet. The price is $25. S&H is $5 (per order, not per disc) for US/Can/Mex, and $10 for overseas. If you live in California, please add sales tax. You can send a check or money order, or you can order with Visa/MC/AmEx. Bob Bruce Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite D-910 Concord CA, 94520 +1 800 786-9907, +1 510 674-0783, +1 510 674-0821 FAX orders@cdrom.com The disc is also available by subscription for $19.95 + S&H per quarter ($5 off the regular price). If you want to subscribe, your credit card will be charged as each new edition is shipped. New editions will come out every three or four months. We need to have at least 100 people subscribe in order to make the subscription service successful. This disc is *FREE* for any author whose work is included on the CDROM. If you want a free disc, please email me the name of the program you wrote and a complete postal address. Overseas addresses are okay. I would like to thank several people that helped make this disc a reality, including Urban Mueller, Brian Wright, Mike Stark, Chuck Woo, and all the authors and artists who contributed to Aminet. For a list of other CD ROMs, you can ftp the latest catalog from cdrom.com:/cdrom/catalog, or send email to info@cdrom.com. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-1 "AlertPatch 2.16" @toc "menu" ALERTPATCH V2.16 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE AlertPatch - replacement patch for exec.library/Alert() VERSION Distribution version 2.16 AUTHORS David Swasbrook E-mail address: dswa1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (expires 01-Jan-94) DESCRIPTION AlertPatch replaces the system exec.library/Alert() with two custom routines to give the user a choice of how the alert is to be displayed, either as an intuition window or a system alert with additional information. FEATURES 1. Alerts now displayable as windows. With options to Continue, Suspend or Reboot for all alert types. 2. Displays description of alert and name of the offending task. 3. Dumps contents of CPU data and address registers and displays a text representation. 4. Can list or get information on alert numbers from cli or listview. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS release 2.04 or newer is required. "matrix.library" version 23.390 required. (included in archive) Hypertext compatable document. (ie. MultiView/AmigaGuide) Distribution is archived with lha so program to un-archive them is needed. HOST NAME Software has been uploaded to the Aminet Site: ftp.luth.se 130.240.18.2 pub/aminet/ and will be readily available on other Aminet sites. NB: All attempts to connect to Wuarchive from my site failed, whereas luth had no problems :( DIRECTORY Uploaded to: /pub/aminet/new Hopefully will end up in: /pub/aminet/util/misc FILE NAMES AlertPatch216.lha - AlertPatch binaries and documentation PRICE Shareware. Contributions are gratefully accepted. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable as long as the contents of the archive are kept intact. AlertPatch is shareware, and may not be included in any other distribution or used for commercial use without my express permission. OTHER E-mail address for bug reports and fixes: dswa1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (expires 01-Jan-94) That's all folks :) Thanks Swaz. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-2 "ACE BASIC Compiler" @toc "menu" ACE BASIC COMPILER V1.1A AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE ACE - Amiga BASIC Compiler with Extras. VERSION v1.1a COMPANY Private developer. AUTHOR David Benn Usenet: dbenn@leven.appcomp.utas.edu.au DESCRIPTION ACE is a PD Amiga BASIC compiler which, in conjunction with A68K and Blink produces standalone executables. No special run-time shared libraries are required. The language is a large subset of AmigaBASIC but also has many extra features not found in the latter such as: turtle graphics, recursion, SUBs with return values, structures, arguments, include files, a better WAVE command which allows for large waveforms, external references, named constants and several extra functions. In total, ACE currently supports some 150 commands and functions. ACE is still under development, but is quite usable in its present form. NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES New features since v1.02 include CHDIR, FILES, SLEEP, SWAP and ALLOC. The latter is a hassle-free memory allocator. ACE automatically frees all memory allocated via ALLOC even if a program aborts due to an error or after a user break (ctrl-c). An ADDRESS data type has been added, ARG$(0) now returns the executable's name, string arrays can have element size specified and inline assembly code is now supported. The OPTION command allows compiler directives to be set/reset in a program. Bug fixes involved CLOSE, CLS, BIN$, OCT$ and some string functions. The latter were overwriting a shared buffer in some cases. See docs/history and readme.first in the ACE archive for details on these and other changes. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS ACE has been tested on machines ranging from an A1000 running Wb 1.3 with 512K of RAM to a 68030 machine running Wb 3.0 with 5M of RAM. For moderately large programs to compile however, 1M is required. I run ACE on an unaccelerated A500 with 3M of RAM and a 52M hard drive under Wb 2.04. HOST NAME nic.funet.fi DIRECTORY /pub/amiga/programming/basic (nic.funet.fi) FILE NAMES ACE-1.1a.lha ACE-1.1a.readme PRICE ACE is FreeWare. DISTRIBUTABILITY The ACE archive may be freely distributed, but no source code is currently included. Even when the sources are included, I will retain the copyright to them. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-3 "AniMan v5.2" @toc "menu" ANIMAN V5.2 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE AniMan Voice Recognition. VERSION Version 5.2 AUTHOR Richard Horne (RHorne@cup.portal.com). Comments or questions welcome. DESCRIPTION This is the final version (5.2) of AniMan, the voice recognition program that allows you to converse with an animated talking head to execute any ARexx or CLI command. AniMan appears as a full color animation in a miniature window on the 3.0 Workbench screen. AniMan will respond to your spoken voice commands or will bother you with witty quips if not satisfied with your performance. AniMan will also recite poetry if you ask nicely. AniMan is multitasking and runs in the foreground or background, listening for your voice commands even while other programs may be running. NEW FEATURES This final version of AniMan incorporates improvements requested by many users. Full advantage is taken of AGA animation capabilities. Menu operations have been improved. Documentation is provided in AmigaGuide format. Audio digitizers supported now include DSS 8, Perfect Sound 3, Sound Magic (Sound Master), and Generic audio digitizers. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS AniMan 5.2 requires AmigaDOS 3.0 or higher. An audio digitizer is also required (DSS 8, Perfect Sound 3, Sound Magic or a generic digitizer). HOST NAME AniMan 5.2 is available via FTP at all Aminet sites, such as ftp.uni-paderborn.de (131.234.2.32). DIRECTORY/FILE NAME AniMan 5.2 is located at pub/aminet/util/misc as AniMan52.lha. DISTRIBUTABILITY AniMan 5.2 is free public domain software. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P1-5 "New AREXX Book" @toc "menu" NEW AREXX BOOK BY JERE M. MARRS AVAILABLE Announcing the publication of ARexx: "Some Issues in Programming" by Jere M. Marrs A Text and Reference Book for the IPC Language of The Multitasking AMIGA Including: Functions Tracing and Debugging Command and Function Hosts Signals and Interrupts File I/O Reference Section .More.. Compound Variables Full Index Scope of variables Example Programs Handling Strings About the author . . . Dr. Marrs has been the author of monthly articles on ARexx in the Northwest Amiga Journal ("ARexx: REXX for the Amiga") for the last year and a half and has conducted classes on beginning and intermediate ARexx. It is from these that he began to shape the content of this book. In a research career in semiconductor materials and processes, he has used computers of all genera and many species. Starting with scientific programs written in FORTRAN on ancient mainframes, he has also programmed in BASIC, FORTH, C and Modula-2. Interested in programming languages in general, he became intrigued by ARexx when it was introduced by Bill Hawes around 1987. He began to weave the operation of everything on his Amiga together with ARexx and developed an appreciation for the programming environment it represents. In writing programs of increasing complexity, he discovered many of the subtle characteristics that the simple syntax of the REXX language belies. Developing the foundation of the language and enhancing it with attention to subtlety and detail, this book makes writing simple programs with some elegance more accessible. Published by: Technical Resources Northwest P.O. Box 25037 Portland OR 97225-0037 Phone: (503)246-3484 ISBN 0-9636575-0-X 170 pages, coil bound 8&1/2"X11" format $30 US; $39 CAN Plus shipping ($3.95 US) @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-4 "CShell 5.31" @toc "menu" C-SHELL AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE C-Shell (csh) VERSION 5.31 AUTHOR Andreas M. Kirchwitz (csh 5.20+), based on csh 5.19 by Urban D. Mueller E-Mail: csh-fan@zikzak.in-berlin.de DESCRIPTION C-Shell is a replacement for the AmigaDOS command line interface. Many builtin Unix-like commands, very fast script language, file- name completion, comfortable command line editing, AUX: mode, object oriented file classes. NEW FEATURES Changes since 5.19: ARP-free, bug fixes, better support for OS 2.0 (and higher), various enhancements to existing commands, some new features. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS AmigaOS 2.04 or higher HOST NAME FTP/Internet: AmiNet (ftp.luth.se) and mirrors UUCP/E-Mail : mail-server@cs.tu-berlin.de DIRECTORY pub/aminet/util/shell FILE NAMES csh531.lha (binary and documentation) csh531s.lha (source in C for SAS/C 6) csh531g.lha (german documentation, not yet available) DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable, Copyright by the individual authors. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-5 "FastCache v1.0" @toc "menu" FASTCACHE V1.0 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE FastCache VERSION 1.0 AUTHOR Philip D'Ath (pid@waikato.ac.nz) DESCRIPTION FastCache is a fully associative hard drive caching program. It increases the performance of hard drives. Following is an extract of the features from the manual. * Fully associative cache (one of the best algorithms) * LRU cache replacement policy (one of the best) * Can handle multiple drives * *Should* be able to handle removable media * All cache settings are determined at run time * Optional write retention * Does not require large continuous chunks of memory * Uses a hashing system to locate data (one of the best) * Performs both forward and reverse prefetching * Will utilize the blitter to move data, if possible I have spared little effort in writing FastCache. It uses some of the best algorithms (and more often than not, most complex algorithms) for nearly everything. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS KS2.0 preferred and supported, although appears to work under KS1.3. Minimum of 256K of memory required, but the cache will be strangled (and a fast processor will be required). 512K of memory or better is recommended. The more memory the better. Special versions are supplied for 68000 and 68030 processors. And of course, some form of drive that supports seeking is required. HOST NAME ftp.th-darmstadt.de and other AMINET sites DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/disk/cache FILE NAMES fcache10.lha PRICE $US20, $A20 or $NZ20. Payment will be accepted by cheque in one of the nominated currencies. The US and Australian prices may appear artificially inflated compared to the New Zealand price. This is to cover the exchange costs of converting it to $NZ, and possible communications. DISTRIBUTABILITY This software is distributed under the shareware concept. The prospective owner is granted a 3 month trial period to evaluate the software. FastCache is (c) 1992 by Philip D'Ath. OTHER Future versions are guaranteed NOT to support KS1.3. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-6 "FindFish v2.0" @toc "menu" FINDFISH V2.0 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE: FindFish2 VERSION: 2.0 AUTHOR: Alan Kramer Internet: akramer@dres.dnd.ca DESCRIPTION: FindFish2 is a CNET BBS V2.63+ C PFile program to search through the contents files from the Fred Fish library. Allows searching for text strings in the filename or body text. You can specify ranges of disks you want searched or just single disks. FindFish is both simple to setup and a snap to use. The program is well tested with the CNet BBS V2.63. Included are data files for FredFish disks 1 to 199. The complete database containing FredFish disks 200 to 870 can be found in the archive "FindFishData.lha" REQUIREMENTS: AmigaDos 2.04 or later (not tested with 1.3) and requires ~200K of ram. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: CNET Version 2.63+ must be running and FindFish must be launched as a C PFile. NEW FEATURES: Will now run with the latest versions of the CNET BBS. FTP LOCATIONS: File name: FindFish2.lha wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4): pub/aminet/comm/bbs PRICE: US$0.00 DISTRIBUTION: Freely Distributable. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-7 "Home Accountant v1.0" @toc "menu" HOME ACCOUNTANT V1.0 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE The Home Accountant VERSION v1.0 COMPANY Private developer. AUTHOR Vincent Platt Internet: platt@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu DESCRIPTION The Home Accountant allows one to keep track of any type of account one may use in the home. This includes checking, savings, mutual funds, and more. Along with it's record keeping features, one may use it to budget any revenue/expenses which flow through an account. One may also group accounts into what is called a transaction base to compute net worth and obtain batch printings. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS The Home Accountant was developed on an Amiga 500 (ECS) with 1 meg RAM. It requires the mathtrans.library included with AmigaDOS. It is unknown whether The Home Accountant will work with AGA machines. Feedback is appreciated in this area as I want to rectify this if it doesn't. HOST NAME Aminet (e.g. ftp.wustl.edu) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/biz/misc FILE NAMES HomeAccountant.lha HomeAccountant.readme PRICE The Home Accountant is FreeWare. DISTRIBUTABILITY The Home Accountant may be distributed on any BBS or network. There is to be no charge for the program except for media charges which may not exceed $1.00 (American). @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-8 "LCD Calc II v1.258" @toc "menu" LCD CALCULATOR II V1.258 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE LCD Calculator II VERSION 1.258 COMPANY Shareware AUTHOR Mike Haas 3867 La Colina Rd. El Sobrante, CA. 94803 mikeh@starnine.com Also author of JForth Professional and Textra. DESCRIPTION LCD Calculator II is the first upgrade to the original LCD Calculator released in 1990. The program was noted and/or pictured in AmigaWorld, .INFO and other magazines, and most recently included in the "Recommended Software" chapter of "Denny Atkin's Best Amiga Tips and Secrets" (1993, Compute Books). The program presents a graphically-gorgeous 4 function calculator with memory... the kind best suited for checkbook balancing and the like. A direct mapping of the Amiga keyboard-to-calculator functions is illustrated and animated. Both standard keyboards as well as the original Amiga 1000 keyboard are supported. NEW FEATURES LCD Calculator II adds the features most often requested from the original. Printing to file and/or PRT: (it will log to both at the same time; files are opened in "append" mode and date-stamped each time), color requester to permit customization of key calculator colors (preferences are saved across reboots), improved overflow handling, improved graphics, a few bug fixes. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS none PRICE $15.00 Shareware fee. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable. OTHER I initially released a version (1.251) that would crash on startup. I sent out this fixed version less than a week later. My apologies if you were bitten by this :-( Please delete any of those bogus versions you may run into. Thanks. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P1-5-1 "Oregon Research Announcement" OREGON RESEARCH ANNOUNCES SUPPORT OF AMIGA COMPUTERS Oregon Research, a major developer/distributor of Atari ST software for the last seven years, has just signed a long term agreement with HiSoft and AVR to provide distribution and product support for their entire line of Amiga products. We have partnered with HiSoft for several years now in distribution and support in the Atari market (they distribute our software in England and we distribute and support their software in North America), and this is the logical extension of our excellent business relationship. Initially we will be providing distribution and product support for: Devpac 3 Professional 680x0 Assembly Language Development System HighSpeed Pascal Professional Pascal Language Development System PowerBasic Entry level Structured BASIC HiSoft Basic 2 Professional BASIC Language Development System (avail 9/93) ProFlight Tornado Fighter Flight Simulator Clarity 16 Professional 16 bit stereo sound sampler, effects processor and sound editor AMAS 2 8 bit stereo sound sampler with integrated MIDI interface and sound processing/sequencing MegaLoSound 8 bit stereo sound sampler and effects processor with direct to hard disk recording ProMidi Amiga MIDI interface with MIDI cables VideoMaster Real time Video Digitizer In addition, we are developing two new exciting Amiga applications at Oregon Research for release in early 1994. The decision to support the Amiga platform is one we have wanted to make for a long time and we are very excited with the capabilities of the machine and for the opportunity to serve the Amiga community. If anyone has any questions regarding any of our Amiga products we provide free online technical support here as well as on Genie: ORA and on CompuServe: 71333,2655 or you can call us at (503) 620-4919 or FAX us at (503) 624-2940 Best regards, ____ ____ /\/\/\ Bob Luneski, President /\/\/\ \/\/\/ Oregon Research boblu@tekgen.bv.tek.com Genie: ORA \/\/\/ \/\/ 16200 S.W. Pacific Hwy., Suite 162 CompuServe 71333,2655 \/\/ \/ Tigard, OR 97224 Phone: (503) 620-4919 FAX: (503) 624-2940 \/ @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-9 "Textra v1.4" @toc "menu" TEXTRA V1.4 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE Textra, GUI-based Amiga Text Editor VERSION 1.14 COMPANY Shareware AUTHOR Mike Haas 3867 La Colina Rd. El Sobrante, CA. 94803 mikeh@starnine.com Also author of JForth Professional and LCD Calculator. DESCRIPTION Textra is the User-Friendly text editor for the Amiga. It contains a fully-Intuitionized GUI as well as an ARexx interface with 50+ commands. The package interfaces with the WB2.0+ asl font requester, supports multiple windows with cut, copy and paste between them. Undo and Drag-select with left mouse button, background printing and ARexx script exec- ution, user-settable preferences which can be saved, all supported. The editor displays fast text and continuous-movement vertical and horizontal scroll bars. The package contains full, detailed documentation, 30+ Arexx scripts (including an interactive tutorial) and a hard disk installer program. Scripts are provided to integrate Textra with JForth Professional 3.x, HSPascal and Paul Kienitz's Q-Blue Offline Mail Reader program. NEW FEATURES Textra 1.14 sports a status line indicating current cursor position or select range location. The ARexx requester is improved, allowing 10 strings, utilizes additional function keys for single-key launching. All alphabetic keys, as well as the HELP key, are now user-configurable; each may be bound to any Textra script or internal Textra command via the CTRL key. Double- clicking any ( ) < > [ ] { } character locates the balancing character (forward searches conducted for balancing double-quote characters). User-definable startup ARexx script is checked for at launch. Increased system fault checking. More menu key equivalents. New ARexx commands & scripts. Bug fixes. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS none PRICE $25.00 Shareware fee. DISTRIBUTABILITY Unregistered versions of TEXTRA are freely distributable. OTHER An earlier version (v1.11) is distributed with JForth Professional 3.x. This release of Textra is backward- compatible with that version. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-10 "VCLI v7.0" @toc "menu" VCLI V7.0 AVAILABLE FOR FTP TITLE Voice Command Line Interface (VCLI). VERSION Version 7.0 AUTHOR Richard Horne (RHorne@cup.portal.com). Comments or questions welcome. DESCRIPTION This is the final version (7.0) of Voice Command Line Interface (VCLI) which will execute CLI commands, ARexx commands, or ARexx scripts by voice command. VCLI allows you to launch multiple applications or control any program with an ARexx capability entirely by spoken voice command. VCLI is multitasking and will run in the background, listening for your voice command even while other programs may be running. NEW FEATURES Many improvements requested by users have now been incorporated. VCLI now has its own ARexx port so that its internal functions and options can be controlled by ARexx command. Menu operations have been improved. Documentation is provided in AmigaGuide format. This is the fastest version of VCLI yet, and it fully supports DSS 8, Perfect Sound 3, Sound Magic (Sound Master), and Generic audio digitizers. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS VCLI 7.0 requires AmigaDOS 2.0 or higher. An audio digitizer is also required (DSS 8, Perfect Sound 3, Sound Magic or a generic digitizer). HOST NAME VCLI 7.0 is available via FTP at all Aminet sites, such as ftp.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4). DIRECTORY/FILE NAME VCLI 7.0 is located at pub/aminet/util/misc as VCLI70.lha. DISTRIBUTABILITY VCLI 7.0 is free public domain software. @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-6 "Online Weekly" @toc "menu" /// ONLINE WEEKLY Amiga Report Online The lines are buzzing! --------------------------------- From Delphi's Amiga Forum ------------------------- 16511 10-JUL 02:17 General Information A4000, Bridgeboards, Etc. From: LINDQUIST To: ALL I am thinking about selling my A1200 and PC clones and integrating everything into a 4000/030 box. Needless, to say, I have quite a few questions... 1. How are the drive bays arranged in the 4000. If I ditch my 386-PC, I will be pulling my High Density 5.25" and 212 Meg Western Digital 4200 (FH 3.5") for use from a bridgeboard. Can I fit my FH 3.5 drive where the factory drive is normally, and put the factory drive in the second floppy spot? 2. How's my slot arrangement for Bridging? I plan to install a Diamond Stealth VRAM card in a bridge slot, as well as any controllers that I may need. 3. Is it true what I here that the Commodore 386 bridgeboard won't let you use the Amiga Serial/Par ports? 4. Will I have any problems mounting a stock Teac 5.25 High Density in a 4000 and running it through the standard Amiga floppy cable? Can I use this drive on the Amiga side too (CrossDos)? 5. If I hook my already formated and partitioned IDE hard drive to the 4000 IDE connector will it recognize my DOS partitions for the Bridgeboard intact, or will I have to put on a bridge-side (PC) IDE controller to do this? 6. How difficult is the Commodore 386 bridgeboard to install? I have heard some not too good comments about it installation wise. I build and repair generic clones as part of my job, are all of the jumpers associated with customizing PC-Oriented functions or making it coexist with the Amiga half of the box? If it's all just PC oriented stuff, no prob, otherwise.. 7. I understand that If I use any of my 3 Zorro Slots that I can't use one of the PC slots (March AW). Where does the bridge board plug into exactly? Somebody once told me that it took one of your Zorro and one of your ISA slots, is this true? If so, wouldn't using the Zorro slot invalidate one of your ISA slots, use one of them, and then leave with just one left? 8. I plan on adding an Emplant board eventually, does anyone know of any incompattibilities between this and a bridge card? 9. What type of Memory does the Commodore 386 card take? I have a whole boatload of 1x9 SIMM's in my pc (8 megs worth), can I transplant these on over? Thanx in advance. Erik Lindquist. A resonse to his questions... 16512 10-JUL 02:37 General Information RE: A4000, Bridgeboards, Etc. (Re: Msg 16511) From: SPKENNEDY To: LINDQUIST (NR) The 386 BB is really not that difficult to install, I hate hardware installation and it only took me about an hour to completely install. It is true that the 386 BB does not allow you to use the Amiga Ser/Par but a serial/par card is really inexpensive for the IBM. You can even get them with VGA and IDE controllers. The BB takes 256x4 or 1x4 Page Mode Zip rams -- so your 1x9 simms will not work. Basicly you have to buy BB ram from you C= dealer. The BB is a full card - It stretches from one Zorro Slot all the way over 1 AT slot. In the 3000 it does not block off any slots although my VGA card did. ------------------------------ From FidoNet's Amiga International Echo --------------------------------------- Area: AMIGA Date: 12 Jul 93 17:22:00 From: Gordon Gilbert (1:157/616.0) To : All Subj: Re: Terminus!!! I just recently tried Terminus 2.0 out and I must say while I like some the new features a lot, I STILL MUCH prefer Term 3.3 overall. And the really GREAT thing about Term is that it is updated practically every other month...not once in TWO YEARS. Ok, that wasn't really fair since Terminus is a complete rewrite but still that was a LONG wait for JrComm users. A FEW features that really makes Term shine that TERMINUS doesn't have: * Ability to use ANY Amiga Screen Resolution. * Unlimited # of numbers per entry for same system in Phone Book * Ability to assign 8svx sounds to many functions. * Ability to use Amiga Voice synthesis for important notices. * QuickDial menu * Ability to Remap translation tables. * FAST!Macros to use mouse on any system. * External Emulation libraries. * MUCH Better 'xfer window. * No $40 fee. These are just a few reasons I thought of off the top of my head for erasing Terminus the same day I tried it out. And it wasn't just because it costs $40 to register...Several of the features above I wouldn't want to do without, notably the screen resolutions (for better Retina compatibility among other things) and the sound and voice selections, which really make Term an interesting terminal program. This isn't to say Jack's program isn't a great terminal program...just that I would suggest for everyone to really compare the two before rushing in to register Terminus. I can see why 68000 users would prefer Terminus though, but other than that.... Area: AMIGA Date: 14 Jul 93 20:51:55 From: Shannon Cave (1:373/17.0) To : All Subj: Good News I just wanted to post some positive information; so many posts are doom and gloom. The Amiga reseller that I work at here in Huntsville is doing very well. We are selling significantly MORE Amigas this year than last year. MOST of them are Amiga 4000/040. We have sold many more A4000s than A1200s. Many of these A4000 purchases are by people/companies who have never owned an Amiga. They bought them for the Video Toaster 4000 or for other graphic applications. ------------------------------ From FidoNet's Amiga_Tech echo ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jul 93 19:35:29 From: Seth Stroh To: Tom Mulcahy Subj: Re: Performance of CISC proces ------------------- *In a message dated 7 Jul 93 13:52:51 Tom Mulcahy writes: TM> uh why would the fpu in the 040/25 be 3.5 times faster than the fpu TM> in a 486dx2/66 machine?? I don't know if it is actually 3.5 times faster but the floating point processor in the 68040 is significantly faster then that of the 80486. Here is a few entries from an extensive benchmarks list I got a copy of not to long ago...(the benchmark was for floating point transcendental functions) Computer O/S Compiler Result ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4.7 Mhz 8086 (IBM XT) MS DOS tcc 2.0 7300 7.1 Mhz 68000 (Amiga 500) AmigaDOS 2.0 Manx cc5.2a 2150 25.0 Mhz 68030 (Amiga 2000) AmigaDOS 2.0 SAS C 6.1 369 25.0 Mhz 80386 (Gateway 2000) MS DOS tcc 2.0 318 25.0 Mhz 80386+80387 (CompuAdd) MS DOS tcc 2.0 31 25.0 Mhz 68030+68882 (Amiga 3000) AmigaDOS 2.0 SAS C 6.0 10.3 33.0 Mhz 80486DX (Legatech) SVR4 UCB cc 6.5 66.0 Mhz 80486DX2 (Gateway) MS DOS tcc 2.0 5.5 25.0 Mhz 68040 (Amiga 4000) AmigaDOS 3.0 SAS C 6.2 5.4 MIPS with FPU accelerator (SGI) Unix cc 1.5 Cray Y-MP C90 Unicos cc 0.55 Just had to stick the SGI and Cray on there! Anyway, this is a partial listing from a larger post which (I believe) was originaly off the internet. As you can see, in this test which is makes heavy use of transcendental math (did something like 200,000 sine values and multiplied them together) the A4000 (a 25Mhz 68040) outpreformed a 66Mhz 80486DX2 but just barely. Thats impressive if you consider the difference in clock rate! The 486 was more than double the clock rate! In addition, as I understand it, the A4000 does not support burst to/from its memory which may or may not have slowed the 68040 in this test. Now if you were to compare a 33Mhz 68040 to the 66Mhz 80486DX2 you would see an even bigger gap! The reason for the difference in speed is simply that the FPU design in the 68040 is simply more efficient then that of the 486. As I understand, Intel had greatly improved the FPU preformance in the Pentium. I wonder if Motorola has made improvements to their FPU for the 68060??? At any rate, I have similar benchmarks from other sources that report similar findings... ------------------------------ From Usenet ----------- From: Gary@rusmv1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (Hannes Gnad) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.games Subject: Amiga CD 32 - facts by C= !!! Organization: user-helpdesk Lines: 262 Distribution: world Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: ruspool08.rus.uni-stuttgart.de Hey Amiga Users out there ! To stop all senseless dicussions about technical details or pricing of the new 'Amiga 32 CD console', here are pure, confirmed facts. They are truely from Dr. Peter Kittel, C= Germany. If you don't believe me, take a good look into 'de.comp.sys.amiga.misc'. This is where his posting is from. Now, for all who have major problems with German or who unfortunately don't have access to this newsgroup, I put his posting into these newsgroups, adding some translations. As I'm not a master of English (and as I don't have my dictionaries with me), the translation will be a bit free (and with mistakes), but I hope it will be good enough to get the point.Have fun. > From: peterk@cbmger.de.so.commodore.com (Dr Peter Kittel Germany) > Subject: Re: Die Amiga CD 32 Konsole > Date: 1 Jul 93 12:33:22 GMT > Gestern war nun in Muenchen eine Pressekonferenz zu dem Teil, und da hat > man uns erlaubt, endlich Laut zu geben :-). Yesterday, there was a press conference in Munich referring this machine, and we were allowed to say anything to it. :-) > Ja, das Teil ist Realitaet. Was im Otto-Katalog steht, stimmt natuer- > lich fast, lediglich zwei Details muessen da irgendwo falsch durchge- > rutscht sein (wir bitten um Verstaendnis, ich wasche mangels Beteili- > gung meine Haende in Unschuld): 1. Es gibt leider *keinen* RGB-Ausgang; > 2. eine Erweiterung um weitere 2 MB ist hoechstens in der fuer spaeter > angekuendeten Erweiterungsbox zum vollen Computer enthalten, nicht > jedoch im Grundgeraet. Yes, this machine is reality. What was printed in the 'Otto' catalogue, is certainly nearly right, only two details are somehow wrong (we are sorry about this, but I'm innocend because I had nothing to do with it). 1.Unfortunately, there's *no* RGB output. 2. A ram expansion with further 2MB will be only, if ever, included in the announced computer-expansion box, but not in the basic machine. > So, und hier der offizielle Pressetext, der auf der Pressekonferenz > vorgelegt wurde (Vorsicht: Umlaute!): Now, here's the official press text, which was given to the press at the conference (beware of special German letters!): > Commodore B|romaschinen GmbH > 60528 Frankfurt, Lyoner Strasse 38 German C= address. > F|r sofortige Vervffentlichung: For immediate publishing. > Ansprechpartner: Karola Bode > Leiterin Marketing/Kommunikation > Pressesprecherin > > Telefon: 069/6638-157 > Fax: 069/6638-139 Contact person, name, title, phone & fax number. > AMIGA CD32 > Die neue Generation: > Spielvergn|gen und Computertechnologie, > die ultimative Game-Maschine f|r alle Action-Fans! The new generation: 'Playing Fun' and computer technology, the ultimate game machine for all action-fans! > Mit der Einf|hrung des AMIGA CD32 bringt Commodore volle > 32-Bit-Leistung in die Spielewelt. Ein neues Zeitalter der > Unterhaltungselektronik ist angebrochen. Technologie und Spielfreude > werden perfekt in einem Gerdt kombiniert. Introducing the AMIGA CD32, Commodore gets full 32-bit-performance into the games' world. A new age of entertainment electronics has begun. Technology and 'Playing Fun' perfectly combined in one machine. > AMIGA CD32 bietet mit seinem 32-Bit-Prozessor und seinem > 32-Bit-Grafikbeschleuniger au_ergewvhnliche Grafikfdhigkeiten. > Die Farbbrillianz wird erzeugt durch 256.000 Farben gleichzeitig > aus einer Palette von 16,8 Millionen. Durch die neue Technologie > wird eine Geschwindigkeit und eine Reaktionszeit erreicht, die > den Spielspa_ zum echten Erlebnis werden ld_t. AMIGA CD32 with it's 32-bit-CPU and it's 32-bit-graphics-accelerators offers outstanding graphics abilities. The colour-brilliance is being done by 256.000 colours on the screen the same time, out of a palette of 16,8 Mio. By this new technology, a speed and a reaction time is being achieved, which will make 'Playing Fun' become a real experiance. > Das CD-ROM-Laufwerk mit Toplade-Mechanismus ld_t sich leicht > bedienen. Die CD wird eingelegt, und AMIGA CD32 startet automatisch. > 4 CD-Standards stehen zur Verf|gung: > Audio CD, CD+G (Grafik), CDTV und AMIGA CD32. Die CD-Technologie > bietet Musik in Konzertqualitdt mit digitalem Stereo-Sound bei > einer Samling-Rate von 44 kHz. The CD-ROM-drive with top-loading-mechanism is easy to operate. The CD is being inserted, and AMIGA CD32 starts automatically. 4 CD-Stardards are available: Audio CD, CD+G (graphics), CDTV and AMIGA CD32. The CD technology offers music in concert quality with digital stereo-sound at a sampling rate of 44 khz. > Das mitgelieferte Spielpult ermvglicht dem Spieler eine prdzise > Steuerung |ber ergonomisch konstruierte Tasten. Der Game-Controller > reagiert prompt, sensibel und auergewvhnlich schnell. The included game pad allows the player a precise control by ergonomically designed buttons. The game controller reacts immediate, sensible and extraordinarily fast. > AMIGA CD32 setzt einen neuen Standard im Preis-/Leistungsverhdltnis > der Gamekonsolen. The AMIGA CD32 sets up a new price/perfomance standard in the game console market. > Als Zusatzoption wird ab Herbst '93 das MPEG Video-Modul f|r > |ber 70 Minuten Video zu einem au_ergewvhnlichen Preis verf|gbar sein. > AMIGA CD32-Full-Motion-Videomodul bietet bei 30 Bildern je Sekunde > 1:1 Fernsehqualitdt. In Fall '93, the MPEG Video-Module for more than 70 minutes of video will be available as an option for an outstanding price. AMIGA CD32-Full-Motion-Videomodule offers 1:1 TV quality at 30 frames per sec. > Das Produkt AMIGA CD32 wird ab August 1993 im Commodore Fachhandel > und |ber die 5 grv_ten Versender verf|gbar sein. Ausgeliefert wird > AMIGA CD32 mit einem Game-Controller, den notwendigen > Anschlu_mvglichkeiten an den Fernseher bzw. Monitor und einem auf > AMIGA CD32 zugeschnittenen neuen Spiel. Aus urheberrechtlichen > Gr|nden kann der Titel dieses Spieles noch nicht bekanntgegeben werden. The AMIGA CD32 product will be available in August 1993 via Commodore dealers and via the five biggest mail order companies. It will be delievered with a game controller, the necessary connection parts for a TV set or a monitor and an AMIGA CD32 adequate new game. Due to copyright reasons, the title of this game can't be announced yet. > Parallel zur Einf|hrung des Produktes werden 17 AMIGA CD32-Titel > verf|gbar sein. Bis Jahresende sind weitere 30 interessante > AMIGA CD32-Titel vorgesehen und zwar aus den Segmenten Jump and Run, > Simulation, Strategie und Action. Die entsprechenden Spiele sind ebenfalls > |ber den Commodore Fachhandel verf|gbar. Firmen wie Mindscape, Microprose, > System 3, Gremlin, US Gold Flashback, US Gold, Electronic Arts, Ocean, > Grandslam, Millennium u. a. haben entsprechende CD's angek|ndigt, die > |ber die jeweiligen deutschen Distributoren erhdltlich sind. At the point of release, 17 AMIGA CD32 titles will be available. Till the end of the year, further 30 interresting AMIGA CD32 titles are planned, from the categories jump&run, simulation, strategy and action. These games will be also available via Commodore dealers. Companies like (see list in German text) ... have announced fitting CDs, which will be available from their distributors. > Der empfohlene Verkaufspreis des Produktes wird mit 699,-- > DM angegeben. Recommended retail price is DM 699.--. (using current money exchange rates, that's US$ 415 or 280 Pounds.) > Technische Daten: (Specs:) > > CPU > Motorola 68EC020, > 32-Bit-Mikroprozessor, (CPU) > 14 MHz Takt (clock frequency) > > Speicher (memory) > 2 MB RAM, 32 Bit breit (32 bit wide) > 1 MB System-ROM, > enthdlt das komplette AmigaDos, ein Echtzeit-Multitasking- > Betriebssystem ..., containing the complete AmigaDos, a realtime-multitasking-OS. > Laufwerk (drive) > CD-ROM mit Top-Lader, (CD-Rom with top loading) > doppelte Geschwindigkeit (double speed) > > Grafik > AA-Chipsatz mit folgenden Modi: > - 256.000 darstellbare Farben aus einer Palette von > 16,8 Millionen mvglichen > - Auflvsungen bis 800 x 600 Punkte > - 2 Grafik-Koprozessoren zur Grafikbeschleunigung AGA-chipset, what else ? > Videoausgabe (video output) @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-7 "Amiga Report Mailing List" @toc "menu" /// Amiga Report Mailing List ------------------------- Are you tired of waiting for your local BBS or online service to get Amiga Report each week? Have you been spending more money that you want on long distance phone calls to download it from one of our Distribution Sites? If so, have we got a deal for you! If you have an internet mailing address, you can receive Amiga Report in UUENCODED form each week as soon as the issue is released. To be put on the list, send Email to Amiga-Report-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu. Your account must be able to handle mail of any size to ensure an intact copy. For example, GEnie has a limit of about 40K per message, and most of our issues are well over that limit. Please do not send general Email to Amiga-Report-Request, only requests for subscription additions or deletions (or if you are not receiving an intact copy). All other correspondence should be directed to the editor at ROB_G@Delphi.COM. Many thanks to Bob Caron for setting this service up for us! @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-8 "Emplant Update" @toc "menu" /// Emplant Update! --------------- A message received from Jim Drew... Updated June 26th, 1993 EMPLANT received class B FCC verification August 24th, 1992. Information reguarding the product "EMPLANT" from Utilities Unlimited, Inc. This information is freely re-distributable and may be used in any form as long as the contents are not altered. What is EMPLANT? ---------------- EMPLANT is a hardware/software product that is designed to allow the emulation of virtually any computer using the Amiga. A simple software driver and ROM(s) from the computer to emulated are all that is required. Features and software compatibility will depend on the software driver. About the hardware ------------------ The hardware holds the key to emulation speed. Every effort was made to make the hardware virsatile enough that we should never have to upgrade it to handle the emulation of forth comming computer systems. For this reason, we have included components that may never be used, however, this does insure the fact that we are prepared for the future. The MAC series of computers, although different from one another, share the same basic technology. We can replicate this technology by emulating the MAC's custom chips through a reliable hardware system. All timers, interrupts, and clocks are handled on a hardware level so that speed is identical (or even faster) than the real computer being emulated. Support for custom EPROMs, static RAM, and SIMM modules makes our hardware compatible with all existing methods of storing a computer's operating system. This versatility also allows us to create adapter boards if some new method of OS storage becomes available. The EMPLANT hardware has four empty 32 pin ROM/RAM sockets provided for use with operating systems that are stored in DIP format (such as 128K MAC+ ROMs are). These sockets can also be used to store your own utility software in EPROM format. We plan to release a utility package that will be literally "at your fingertips". Another option is to fill the four sockets with static RAMs, giving you up to 2 megs of extra RAM that you could write protect and make auto-booting, which would be handy for floppy-only customers. The hardware comes in two forms: a plug in card that occupies one of the Zoro II/III slots on your A2000/2500/3000, and a plug in card that fits on the expansion bus on your A500/1000. For the A500/1000 version, there is a pass-thru that allows you to plug in your existing equipment. The Apple Nu-Bus expansion ports are not emulated through hardware because they are now RAM-based device drivers which operate faster than a MAC's own hardware. We will be producing NuBus adapter sockets that allow the use of standard MAC NuBus products to work in a Zoro II/III slot. HIGH SPEED MAC SERIAL PORTS/APPLE TALK SUPPORT The MAC serial port is not emulated, it is duplicated - using the exact same standard dual high speed serial interface IC. Apple Talk is completely supported through this port like the MAC, via a 8 pin mini-din connector. This dual high speed serial port can be used on the Amiga side as well, allowing the connection of two serial devices operating independantly. Communication speed on these ports are a maximum of 230.4K baud, which is the speed at which Apple Talk runs. Maximum modem speed is generally limited to 57.6K baud. SCSI INTERFACE A simple, autobooting SCSI controller using NCR53C80 high speed controller IC. Capable of pseudo-DMA transfers up to 1.1 megs per second. Support for up to 7 SCSI devices including CD ROMs, tape backup units, and hand scanners. This SCSI interface can be used on both the Amiga side and the MAC side, independantly or simotaneously. About the MAC II emulation software ------------------------------------ FULL COLOR, MULTITASKING, MAC II EMULATION! Up to 16 colors can be displayed using the standard OCS/ECS Amiga video output, and up to 256 colors can be displayed when using an AGA capable machine. Full color can also be emulated with various 8bit and 24bit video boards. Support for the Retina video board allows up to 16 million colors to be displayed!! We are current working on other video drivers for boards such as: Merlin, Resolver, Domino, Rainbow and others! ALL emulation modules created for the EMPLANT system will share one very important feature...they will multitask with the Amiga's environment. That's right, just pull down the MAC screen, or flip to the back with LEFT-AMIGA-M/N and you still have complete access to your Amiga! ...and the MAC stays running at full speed! Speaking of speed, a 25Mhz A3000 runs the emulation at exactly twice the speed of a *real* MAC IIx computer! The MAC IIx emulator software is relatively simple since the majority of the emulation is done on a hardware level, giving both better compatibility and equally important, emulation speed. The software reads the MAC ROM SIMM module that is installed on the EMPLANT board, dumps the ROM image into a block of memory, and patches the image to run on your Amiga. One intelligent move on the part of Apple was to define "global" variables for their operating system. This makes it relatively simple to move the code around without a lot of hassles. Since the MAC IIx is a 68030 based machine, it has a AMU or PMMU to map memory into various locations. Using a 68020/30/40 with an MMU allows virtually 100% compatibility when running MAC software on the emulator. Another big advantage of having a MMU is the tremendous speed increase of the video display drivers. The MAC's video data is in 'CHUNKY' format, and the Amiga's video data is in 'PLANAR' format. These two formats are completely different, so the emulation converts the MAC's video data into data that the Amiga's display hardware can use....all in real time, thanks to the MMU. Support for virtually ANY SCSI device such as hand scanners, Ethernet cartridges, hard drives, SyQuest units, Magneto-Optical units, DATs, film recorders, CD-ROMs, etc. is provided via the EMPLANT's SCSI port. You can also use AmigaDOS formatted devices (which become MAC formatted by the emulation). Amiga devices such as hard drive partitions, recoverable RAM drives (RD0, RAD, VD0, etc.), and MS-DOS partitions can all be used under the emulation. Up to 14 different devices can be used at the same time. The MAC 400/800K disk format is emulated by using the already successful SYBIL hardware package. High density (1.44mb) floppys are supported via the CBM 1.76mb drives. Future emulation ---------------- Since the EMPLANT's hardware is so versatile, a completely new and different computer can be emulated by just changing the emulation software patch and the ROM(s). MAC QUADRA, Mega ST, and IBM AT (386/486) emulators are planned in the future. Price and availability ---------------------- Current retail price for the basic EMPLANT system is $279 + shipping. Basic EMPLANT system with High speed serial ports/Apple Talk support is $349.00 + shipping. Basic EMPLANT system with high speed SCSI interface is $349.00 + shipping. Deluxe EMPLANT system with both high speed serial ports/Apple Talk support AND high speed SCSI interface is $399 + shipping. All EMPLANT packages described above come with the MAC IIx emulation software and necessary device drivers. The EMPLANT systems are shipping now, however, we are in a back order situation with shipment priority based on the order date. To be placed on a mailing for more information, please contact Utilities Unlimited at: 1641 McCulloch Blvd. Suite #25-124 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403 (602) 680-9004 Orders Only (602) 453-6407 FAX (602) 680-9006 Technical Support (602) 453-9767 24 hr support BBS Usenet: j.drew@cryo.rain.com j.drew@nesbbx.rain.com @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-9 "Directory Utilities" @toc "menu" /// Directory Utilities Great and Small ----------------------------------- By Robert Niles Simply put, moving large amounts of files around a hard drive can be, well, a pain at times. Especially when you're doing it through the CLI. Even now with Commodore's 2.x (and higher) Workbench moving files (even those without icons) is certainly much easier. But sometimes even that isn't enough, you want to get the "big" picture. Directory Utilities can make managing a harddrive and your files much easier. You can see ALL (for the most part) the files at once, pick out a group of them, to copy, delete, move, add comments, whatever. These "DU"s work better "ergonomically". Not only for management of files, most of these let you do other things as well. Press a button to load your favorite word processor, paint program, or even a game. Archive or Unarchive files with a few mouse clicks. View a picture by dobule-clicking on it. Same thing with sound samples, MODs, and whatever else the authors of these programs place in your hands. Which brings us to the many directory utilities out there. Most of you are familiar with OPUS, and DiskMaster which are on the commercial side of the market place, but there is a nice lot of these "DU"s to choose from on the PD and ShareWare side. We'll take a peek at these, and hopefully give you an idea of which ones would suit your needs, or maybe just to give you an idea of "why" you might want to use one. I'll only be covering five of these programs here, but there are many more, with different features to comply with your tastes. The reviewed files below can be found on most @{"commercial online systems" link P4}, on many BBSes, or if you can't find them anywhere else they are available to download or to File REQuest on @{"In The MeanTime" link P2-1-2} (The names of the files as they appear on "In The MeanTime are in parenthesis). The first four can be used with OS 1.3 or higher. DirWork v1.3 (DIRWORK.LZH), by Chris Hames A very small DU at 42156 bytes. It features 56 buttons in which you can configure to do or run just about anything currently on your system. Has all the basic copy, delete, sound, show buttons, even does system and bootblock virus checking. The display gives you the WB2.0 feel, and has a screen blanker to boot. A very good program, especially considering its size. Click DOS II v1.10 (CLICKD2.LZH), by Gary Yates Another small DU but without the bells and whistles that you find in alot of these programs. This one sticks with the basics (display pics, reads ASCII files, move, delete, copy files, etc. Seems to be written for those with limited memory reserves. SID II (SID20.LHA), by Timm Martin This is one of my personal favorites, mostly known since SID 1.06 it has been completely rewritten and works well with OS1.3 and higher. Customizable from the palette to the buttons. All all the basic functions as buttons. Great 2.0 style and feel. Has a shrink gadget for those times in which you want it "there" but out of the way. One of the best features is the PARENT gadget being along the side, just move to either side and click, very quick, and you don't have to hunt for the PARENT button. DOS Manager v1.0 (DOSMANGR.LZH), by Joergen Stohr Nice clean look to this one...not cluttered with a wall of buttons. You have four buttons at the bottom in which you click on to reveal more options. The program has the basics (OK, they all do), and you have some buttons you can customize to your specific needs. DAN v1.2 (DAN.LHA), by Danny Y. Wong This DU can need OS2.x or higher. Sporting 45 user defined buttons, bytes, time, memory available, and the rest of the basics. Nice clean interface. As you see alot of these have the same features but take a look at them because they all vary differently and some might suit your tastes more than others. Directory Utilities are probably the most used of all the utilities out there! @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-10 "Send in The Clones" @toc "menu" /// Send in the Clones! ------------------- By Marcus J. Albers (malbers@ns.ccsn.edu) SEND IN THE CLONES PART 2: I THINK I'M A CLONE NOW! Last week, my article contained mini-reviews of some clones of arcade games that are currently somewhere on the Net. We looked at clones of Pac-Man and Space Invaders, two classic arcade hits. This week, let us look at classics that gained fame in the home computer realm. *** Boulder Dash *** Anyone who had a Commodore 64 knows what Boulder Dash is. For those of you who lead deprived childhoods (or owned a PC), Boulder Dash could very well be the Lemmings of the 1980's. You control a little bug named Rockford that is trapped in diamond mines. You dig around the screen, collecting the amount of diamonds needed to open the exit to the level, while trying to avoid falling boulders, butterflies, slime-molds, and other deadly characters. I am sad to say that I have yet to complete the entire game, but I keep on trying. Boulder Dash spawned two sequels: Boulder Dash II and Rockford, as well as a Boulder Dash Construction set. And now all you people who sold your old 64's (I've still got mine) can have the fun again on your Amiga. Cave Runner This is by far the most faithful translation of the classic. The levels even look suspiciously similar. The only real difference is the fact that the bug has been replaced with a Pac-Man type of character (no, he doesn't eat up the dirt and diamonds). I found this to be very entertaining because the levels are so similar. Most of my old strategies still work. It was very much like having the old game right there. One of the neat little things that I liked about the original Boulder Dash that doesn't appear in this version is that when ever you would leave Rockford sitting doing nothing, he would turn to you, cross his arms, and start stamping his foot in impatience. I have yet to see that kind of behavior from the character in Cave Runner, but it is a minor complaint, perhaps not even a complaint. It is a good game, none-the-less. Mr. Brownstone This has a general basis in the old Boulder Dash game. This game has even more of a puzzle element than the original, though. The main objective remains the same: collect the diamonds to open the exit. But in this version, the digging carefully to avoid falling boulders has been replaced for the most part by opening doorways. On the levels, there are switches that can be utilized by the level to operate a number of doors on the level depending on from which angle you touch the switch. You use the switches to open the doors on the level in the correct order to get to the diamonds on the levels. Careful for doors that are acting as "key-stones" keeping a pile of boulders at bay. This version is very addicting, and in some ways better than the original. By the way, both of these versions are in PAL mode. I have yet to find a Boulder Dash clone that is in NTSC Standard (sorry 1/2 meggers). And I have heard from the author that there may be a demo release onto the Net of a new version of Boulder Dash for the Amiga, sporting 32 colour screens, many, MANY levels, support for loading in levels from other Boulder Dash clones, and much, much more. I don't know when, if it will, be put on the Net, but I it materializes, you will hear about it here. *** Omega Race *** Although this classic appeared in the arcade, it gained fame as one of the best games written for the ancient VIC-20 home computer. I got to play it on a demo model set up in a store a long, LONG time ago. It compared quite admirably with the arcade version (which remains one of my favourite arcade games). The arcade version also was one of the first sit down style games, along with Star Wars and Turbo. Amega Race This is the one and only version that I have been able to find for the Amiga (although I have heard another version is rumoured to be on the Net somewhere). And an excellent one it is, too. The graphics are faithful to the original, with the elegant wire-framed ships and the appearing boundery markers. Game play is extremely smooth, but I found the keyboard controls to be backwards, at least in my mind. Once you get over this minor inconvenience, the game play is extremely rewarding. Unfortunately for people without PAL mode capabilities, Amega Race doesn't run on an OCS Agnus chip Amiga. The author states that he is not planning on releasing an NTSC Standard version, because is would call for a lot of redrawing of graphics so that it looked good. Guess its time to get an upgrade, eh? *** Tetris *** Who doesn't know about this game! One of the hottest games in the history of video games, it is also among the most cloned. I have at least seven different versions of the game, some very much like the original, others somewhat different. I'll give you a short rundown of the ones I have used. Tetron This is the best of the bunch. It has options galour, it has a very slick 2.0-looking interface, and is very smooth all over. It has an option that I have yet to see in any other Amiga Tetris clone-a two player mode. This seems to be one of those games that gets about 200 times better when you are competing against another person. It has options for next piece preview, fast or slow drop, and other things. It also appears to be multi- tasking friendly, although it seems to take up quite a chunk of my one megabyte of memory. The only draw back, again, is that this game only runs in PAL mode. It will run in NTSC mode, but all of the option gadgets are located on the bottom of the screen, and are completely invisible when not in PAL mode. Otherwise, an excellent conversion. Size-Tris This is a nice little Tetris game that can easily be played while your Amiga is doing something else (*only Amiga*). This game appears in a small window on the Workbench screen, and takes up very little memory. The screen size is completely arbitrary, and the game takes the shape of the screen, i.e. you can have the high and thin screen like the classic game, or you could size it to look like a fish tank. The game pauses when the screen is deactivated, and resumes upon reactivation of the window. It doesn't have many options, but is great for that night when you are down- loading that one megabyte file at 1200 bps. Columns This semi-popular game is a clone of a clone. The game Columns is based on the basic theme behind Tetris, and was made popular by Sega when they distributed it with they're Game Gear portable system. The idea is similar but the implementation is quite different. You are presented with the familiar empty well, but instead of different shaped pieces falling from the sky, there are straight, multi-coloured pieces to deal with. The straight pieces consist of three verticle, multi-coloured blocks. The colours are rotated up and down the piece with a press of the action button or key. The object is to get three or more similar colours touching in some way, whether it is vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The game is nearly as addictive as Tetris, if not a bit more challenging, especially on the faster levels. Oh, yes. This game is also quite multi-tasking friendly, and doesn't take up much memory. Next week, we wrap up this talk of clones with a look at clones of newer games, including Street Fighter II (yes, there is one out there), and Arkanoid. See ya next week. @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P4-1 "Delphi" @toc "menu" /// Delphi: It's Getting Better All The Time! ------------------------------------------ Amiga Report International Online Magazine is available every week in the Amiga Forum on DELPHI. Amiga Report readers are invited to join DELPHI and become a part of the friendly community of computer 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 Password: type STREPORT and press RETURN. DELPHI's Basic Plan offers access for only $6.00 per hour, for any baud rate. The $5.95 monthly fee includes your first hour online. For more information, call: DELPHI Member Services at 1-800-544-4005 DELPHI is a service of General Videotex Corporation of Cambridge, MA. Try DELPHI for $1 an hour! For a limited time, you can become a trial member of DELPHI, and receive 5 hours of evening and weekend access during this month for only $5. If you're not satisfied, simply cancel your account before the end of the calendar month with no further obligation. If you keep your account active, you will automatically be enrolled in DELPHI's 10/4 Basic Plan, where you can use up to 4 weekend and evening hours a month for a minimum $10 monthly charge, with additional hours available at $3.96. But hurry, this special trial offer will expire soon! To take advantage of this limited offer, use your modem to dial 1-800-365-4636. Press once or twice. When you get the Password: prompt, type IP26 and press again. Then, just answer the questions and within a day or two, you'll officially be a member of DELPHI! DELPHI - It's getting better all the time! @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P1-11 "Rendered Reality" @toc "menu" /// Rendered Reality I Render, Therefore I am ---------------- By Mike Troxell ESSENCE II In August of 1992, Essence I was released for Imagine. Essence I is a set of sixty-six algorithmic textures. These algorithmic textures add a new dimension to working with Imagine. They range from Counter, which lets you apply an image of an LCD display to an object, to Fractal Noise, a set of textures which can be animated (i.e. swirling cloud cover for a planet object). These algorithmic textures opened up a new realm of possibilities with Imagine. Now, nearly a year later, Apex has released Essence II. Actually, Essence II isn't in the stores yet. I talked with Steve Worley yesterday and he told me that right now Essence II is being offered to existing Essence I owners. Essence II will be in the stores in 2-3 weeks. Also, yes, Apex is looking at converting Essence II to Real 3-D format, and no, they are not planning a Lightwave version at the present time. This is because Lightwave does not support external textures. So, just what is Essence II and how does it differ from Essence I? I guess the best source of information is Apex itself. The lattest issue of the Apex newsletter is basically an announcement of Essence II along with a few other projects Apex is working on. I thought you might be interested in hearing about Essence from the person who developed it so I asked Steve if I could quote the Apex newsletter. "Many features in Essence Volume II are similar to Essence I. The textures work with Imagine .9 through 2.0, have built-in capabilities like fade control, the -1 color disabling feature, and built-in error messages....most of the textures now include a bump mapping ability... eighty percent of the textures have some sort of altitude effect built into them, as opposed to Essence I in which only about ten percent of the textures will bump-map. A second change was to decrease the use of obscure parameters like Amplitude ratio." "Included with Essence Volume II are well over 100 attribute files which can immediately be applied to your objects. There's also a library of on-disk pictures of many of these [attribute files] so you won't have to render them to get an idea of what they look like." "While many of the Essence I textures were based on "fractal noise", Essence II has many textures with a different type of appearance, best described as an organic, randomly-tiled surface. This type of texturing is literally, state 0f the art in 1993, with Apex being the first company to use this new type of texture basis. Nobody using an SGI or a PC or a Mac has these!... In a year you'll be seeing textures with this style being used by others, but right now Apex has the monopoly over these unique textures." According to the newsletter, Essence II has several groups of theme textures. Some of these are: Space Textures: "Gasplanet, Planetring, Cyclone ("It makes a great Red Spot for Jupitor..." Organic Textures: "A set of 'organic' surfaces with altitude mapping which will let you make everything from snak skin to parched, leather-like hide." I'm already trying to imagine (pun intended) what the CycleMan or Humanoid objects would look like with a lizard-skin texture applied to them! Bumpy Things: Stucco, Pitted, Crumpled, Burnished Water Effects: Waterdrop, Raindrops, Seawaves, Caustics "The animated light patterns seen on swimming pool walls" Other Textures: Radarscope, Fiber, Faceted, Bumparray, Clusterbump, Crust, Flagstones, Fleck, Julia, Plasma, Polkabump, Scales, Shingles, Vein, Woodgrain to name a few of the textures. Apex describes Essence II as "The most powerful texturing algorithms produced for any rendering platform" and from what I've seen I believe they are correct. Now if they will just convert Essence II to Real 3-D format... "Essence II requires Imagine and an Amiga with a FPU (such as a 68881 or a 68040 CPU)." @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-12 "UseNet Review" @toc "menu" /// Usenet Review: Act Of War -------------------------- By Marcus Albers (malbers@ns.ccsn.edu) PRODUCT NAME Act Of War, Version 1.1 BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is a game "in the tradition" of games like Laser Squad and Rebelstar, in which one player controls a squad of warriors and the other player (or the computer) tries to stop the first one from completing the selected mission. It can be found at all Aminet sites in the directory pub/aminet/game/misc. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Dave Smith Address: 4 Cleveland View South Bents Sunderland SR6 8AP England DISTRIBUTION METHOD/SUGGESTED DONATION This program is Shareware. If you wish to register it, you are asked to send a donation of 5 Pounds Sterling as a minimum donation. For it, you will receive "a nice letter", a mission editor (see below), and the latest update of the program, along with any new missions that have been developed. For a donation of 10 Pounds Sterling, you receive "a very nice letter", the above, as well as the 250K of AMOS source code on another diskette. For a donation of more than 10 Pounds Sterling, you will receive "an unspeakably nice letter", the above, as well as "Christmas cards for life." SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE One megabyte of memory in required to run Act Of War. It is fully compatible with OS 1.3 and 2.0. Runs in both NTSC Standard and PAL modes. Is compatible with faster processors. It is compatible with the A570 CD-ROM drive active. SOFTWARE None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 500 One megabyte memory Workbench/Kickstart 1.3 A570 CD-ROM drive REVIEW As af player of war simulations with figurines as well as the old SSI battle simulations on my Commodore 64, I have found a love for being able to control a squad of warriors completely. I can put them in situations that no sane person would do, and just see what happens. I can do more than just run and shoot. I can use a couple of warriors and put them in the heat of battle to act as decoys as the rest of my men go rushing into the complex and break the prisoners out. And there are usually a number of ways of accomplishing the given task. When I read the documentation for Act Of War, I knew that this was the game for me. Act Of War is a war simulation "in the tradition" of games like Laser Squad and Rebelstar. The player controls his/her squad of warriors, which are faced with a situation and an objective. In Act Of War, you are able to play against either a computer opponent or a human enemy. A lot of strategy goes into the execution of any scenario. It is not simply "fire and forget." Play for each character is split up into a number of actions or moves. Each separate character has a number of actions available such as movement, opening doors, or firing upon an enemy. The characters take turns making all of the moves. This simulates real-time action, and can be used to allow for things like injuries by decreasing the number of moves that the injured character has. Much realism can be figured into such a system, and it is a completely fair system. When firing takes place, both combatants get an equal chance to fire; i.e., if a character fires upon an enemy during his turn, the enemy gets to fire back, even though it is not technically his turn. Act Of War is a completely open-ended simulation. It could be said that the game is simply a play system, around which the actual simulation is built. When the game is registered, you are sent a mission designer that allows you to create graphics, types of characters, and types of weapons that are used. Everything can be changed. Another very nice thing about Act Of War is that all of the game functions can be accessed either either from menus or by keyboard. This is nice for people who do not have easy access to both the keyboard and the mouse do to their setup, or for people that have a bad mouse and would rather use the keyboard. Its also nice not to have to flip through menus to access a certain function quickly (like changing weapons). Graphics are excellent. The are very colourful and well drawn, even though there area lot of greys used with the science fiction basis of the included missions. The sound is also very well done. But this must be attributed to Team 17, for Dave got permission to uses the samples from Team 17's great arcade shoot'em up Alien Breed. The weapon reload sound is simply amazing. Because of total flexibility with sound, graphics, and character attributes, it is possible to make a scenario that utilizes tanks, planes, and even spaceships! Takes you back to the days of Wargames Construction Set for the C64. The artificial intelligence system that Dave designed is hard to beat, even on the "easy" level. The enemy characters don't just move randomly, nor do they simply follow and shoot (the smarter ones at least). Some even go so far as to set up barricades and wait for other characters. This allows for a fair amount of strategy to be used in taking care of the enemy. Will he stand and fight, or will he retreat when he gets too much damage? Of course, nothing is as challenging as playing against a good human opponent. The only thing that I dislike about this is that for two of the three scenarios included, it is very hard to have a two player game. The lack of the human factor is what makes these two scenarios possible. The third is very playable as a two player game, and of course there is the scenario designer. DOCUMENTATION The documentation is in the form of a soft-copy manual that may be printed. I haven't printed it out yet; but from the size of the documentation file, it looks fairly massive. It covers everything from basic play functions to explanations of each and every control mechanism. There are also separate files for each of the three scenarios, allowing the player to access the information on the current scenario quickly without having to page through the main document. LIKES AND DISLIKES What did I like: the graphics and sounds, the included scenarios, are very well done, the tried and true play system, and the AI system. What didn't I like: the fact that some scenarios cannot be well done by two players. On suggestion is the addition of a modem link for two player mode. CONCLUSIONS I give this game a 9.5 out of a possible 10. ------------------------------ Thomas Baetzler (s_walter@irav1.ira.uka.de) sent me some updated information about Act Of War, which was reviewed on 13 June 1993 by Marcus Albers. o The latest version is 1.4, whereas 1.1 was reviewed. Version 1.4 adds "fire and ignitable materials, new weapons, and two new missions." o There is a LaTeX format manual available on the Aminet ftp sites called aow14texman.lha. @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P4-2 "Portal" @toc "menu" /// Portal: A Great Place For Amiga Users -------------------------------------- Portal Communications' Amiga Zone The AFFORDABLE alternative for online Amiga information ------------------------------------------------------- The Portal Online System is the home of acclaimed Amiga Zone, which was formerly on the People/Link System. Plink went out of business in May, 1991 and The Amiga Zone's staff moved to Portal the next day. The Zone has just celebrated its second anniversary on Portal. The Amiga press raves about The Amiga Zone, when compared to its competition. If you live in the San Jose, CA area, then you can dial Portal directly. If you live elsewhere, you can reach Portal through any SprintNet (formerly Telenet) indial anywhere in the USA or through Tymnet from anywhere in North America. If you have an account on another Internet-connected system, you can connect to Portal using the UNIX Telnet programs, from anywhere in the industrialized world. Delphi and BIX users can now Telnet into Portal for a flat $19.95 a month, with *unlimited* use. Some of Portal/Amiga Zone's amazing features include: - Over 1.5 GIGabytes of Amiga-specific files, online, 24 hours a day. Portal has dedicated a 2.5 GIGabyte disk drive to the Amiga Zone. We have virtually unlimited space for files and new uploads. - The *entire* Fred Fish collection of freely distributable software, online. All of it. Every disk. Well-organized so it's easy to find exactly what you're after. - 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, ASDG, Soft-Logik, Black Belt, Apex Publishing, Stylus, Prolific, NES, and many others including Compute's Amiga Resource with over 4 Megabytes of exclusive Compute magazine disk stuff you won't find elsewhere. - 35 "regular" Amiga libraries with thousands of files. Hot new stuff arrives daily. Since Portal has FTP connections we can get new freely-distributable software online within MINUTES of its being announced on Usenet. - No upload/download "ratios" EVER. Download as much as you want, as often as you want, and never feel pressued doing it. Start downloading files with your first session on Portal. - Live, interactive nightly chats with Amiga folks whose names you will recognize. Special conferences. Random chance prize contests. Famous Amiga folks aren't the exception on Portal, they're the norm. Instead of stumbling around in frustration you can talk to the people who design your hardware, who write your software. - 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, HyperAmi, Director and Landscapes are fed right into the Zone message bases. Read months worth of postings. They don't scroll off, ever! No need to clutter your mailbox with them. - FREE unlimited Internet Email. Your Portal account gets you a mailbox that's connected to the world. Send letters of any length to computer users in the entire industrialized world. No limits. No extra charges. No kidding! - Portal has the Usenet. Thousands of "newsgroups" in which you can read and post articles about virtually any subject you can possibly imagine. Usenet feeds into Portal many times each hour. There are 14 Amiga-specific Usenet newsgroups with hundreds of articles posted every day, including postings by Commodore personnel. Since Usenet is distributed worldwide, your questions and answers can be seen by literally hundreds of thousands of people the same day you post them. - Other Portal SIGs (Special Interest Groups) online for Mac, IBM, Sun, NeXT, UNIX, Science Fiction, Writers, amateur radio, and a graphics SIG with thousands of GIF files to name just a few. ALL Portal SIGs are accessible to ALL Portal customers with NO surcharges ever. - The entire UPI/Clarinet/Newsbytes news hierarchy ($4/month extra) An entire general interest newspaper and computer news magazine. - Portal featues an exciting package of Internet features: IRC, FTP, TELNET, MUDS, LIBS. Free to all Portal customers with your account. Internet Services is a menu driven version of the same kinds of utilities you can also use from your Portal UNIX shell account. - All the files you can FTP. All the chatting you can stand on the IRC. And on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) you can talk live, in real time with Amiga users in the U.K., Europe, Australia, the Far East, 24 hours a day. - 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) - And 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. How does all that sound? Probably too good to be true. Well, it IS true. Portal Signup or for more information: 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 1-408-973-8091 (modem 9600/14400) 24 hours every day or enter "C PORTAL" from any Sprintnet dial-in in the USA, or enter "portal" from any Tymnet "please log in:" prompt, USA & Canada or telnet to "portal.com" from anywhere. PORTAL'S CURRENT RATES: All prices shown are in U.S. Dollars Total Total Total Total Cost Cost Cost Cost Fee 1 hr. 5 hrs. 10 hrs.30 hrs. Startup Monthly Per Per per per per Fee Fee Hour month month month month $ $ $ $ $ $ $ Portal 19.95 19.95 2400/9600/14.4Kbps, *direct 24 hrs 0.00 19.95 19.95 19.95 19.95 2400/9600bps nonprime Sprint or Tymnet 2.50 22.95 32.45 44.95 94.95 2400/9600bps prime Sprint +% or Tymnet 5.50-10 29.95 69.95 119.95 varies 2400/9600bps non prime # PCPursuit 1.00 20.95 24.95 29.95 49.95 * plus cost of phone call if out of Portal's local dialing area Direct rates also apply to connections made to Portal using the UNIX "telnet" program from an account you may already have on an Internet-connected system. % 9600 bps Sprintnet and Tymnet available in over 300 cities areas + $10 rate prevails at smaller US Cities # PCPursuit is a service of US Sprint. Portal is a PCPursuit "Direct Access Facility" thus connection to Portal with a PCP account is simply a matter of entering C PORTAL,PCP-ID,PCP-PASSWORD at the SprintNet login prompt instead of C PORTAL. Note: Portal Direct 9600/14400 bps service is availble for both USR HST modems, and any V32/V32.bis modems. There are dozens of direct-dial high speed lines into Portal. No busy signals! SprintNet 9600bps service is V.32 modem protocol only. Tymnet 9600bps services is V.32 modem protocol only. Again, Portal does NOT surcharge high speed modem users! Portal subscribers who already have an account on an Internet-capable system elsewhere, can use that system's "telnet" program to connect to Portal for $0.00 an hour. That's right ZERO. From anywhere in the world. If you're in this category, be sure to ask the Portal reps, when you signup, how to login to Portal from your existing Internet account. 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!] That number again: 408-973-9111. Portal Communications accepts MasterCard, Visa, or you can pre-pay any amount by personal check or money order. The Portal Online System is a trademark of Portal Communications. @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P1-13 "A.M.I.G.A." @toc "menu" /// Another Moronic, Inane and Gratuitous Article --------------------------------------------- by Chad Freeman (cjfst4+@pitt.edu or cjfst4@cislabs.pitt.edu -- Internet) (cfreeman -- BIX) Greetings, fellow Amigoids! Well, your fearless leader (or rather his computer) was off to parts unknown last week (a word of advice: never buy a cheap surge protector from K-Mart), so your usual AMIGA was replaced by something even more inane, I'm sure. But have no fear, your jester is back with some more comic relief for your dull and dreary lives (who needs the comedy channel, right?). And this week we start off, as promised, with my hand-picked winner of the FAPLEAMIGAC (First and Probably Last Ever A.M.I.G.A. Contest, pronounced 'bleh!'). Coincidentally, our winner was also our only entrant. Oh well, that's why it was 'probably last ever,' of course! But anyway, let us set the stage for our fair author. After our fearless hero was shown the wonders of Amiga Park, the scene cut to Nerdy faxing the schematics for Amigas everywhere, and eventually being faxed himself. And so we begin, with: **************** * DAN LINDER'S * <- ( name in lights) **************** Amiga Park, the Final Chapter Suddenly, a call. The phone, connected through a GVP PhonePak 2000+ to an Amiga, answered. "Hello, you have reached Amiga Park. In the classic tradition of the Amiga community, we are late in opening. Please call ba..." Beebleflats tore the phone from the receiver. "Hello, who is this?" he asked. "This is that guy with the Arab name (I can't remember it, either...) and I'm being attacked!!!" "Hold on, start from the beginning..." "Well, you remember when Irving electrocuted himself?" "Yeah, that was pretty funny...." Beebleflats chuckled to himself. "Well, he didn't die! Somehow, using spare C64 and A500 parts, he constructed an exoskeleton for his demented mind and turned himself into... G O U L D Z I L L A !!!!" he shouted, with a tone of panic in his voice. "I knew he wouldn't just die or move to the Bahamas! All right, I'll bring my team of engineers at once. But, you must promise me something!" cried Beebleflats. "Anything! Do you hear me, ANYTHING!!!" "Alright, you must promise to give me back the net worth of Commodore at closing, you know, the $0.12?" "Do you know how much that is in post-Clinton, now Perot times? That's almost too much to spend on my life! But all right, I'll give it to you! Just hurry!" There was a click, and the Amiga enthusiasts were on the move. "Into the helicopter, NOW!" Beebleflats shouted. Once at the site of Gouldzilla's rampage, the Amigans quickly remembered that it is easy to destroy a Gould. Pulling out a $1.00 bill, they taunted him until he followed them, straight into the ocean, electrocuting himself all over again. Later, with a great deal of reservedness, that guy with the Arab-sounding name handed over the $0.12, which was found to be worth $0.1E100000000000000 in 1993 Clintonian money. Such was the rebirth of Amiga, and they spread all through the land, confirming that age-old suspicion... Amiga had found a way. /* The End */ Thanks Dan, for as wonderful an ending as I originally wrote (of course!), however unrelated to Jurassic Park it may have been. But alas and alack, the time has come to move on to other things... There was a hot new terminal program released last week, and your friend the Official Blue Level Commodore Beta Tester was able to preview in time for this article. No, I'm not talking about Terminus from Radigan, but rather Terminally Ill from the Foo Brothers. This terminal program is so outstanding, it will replace all terminal programs on any platform forever. I mean, even His Nerdness Bill Gates will buy an Amiga just to use this program! And why is that? Well, if you've tried Terminus, you know its a wonderfully flexible program, but BOY is it a pain in the arse to configure properly! Well, with TI configuration is no longer a problem. TI uses emissions from the joystick port of your lowly Amiga to actually read your neural emissions, and actually configure itself based on what it reads from your brain (WARNING: avoid this procedure if drunk, and don't even THINK about it if on hallucinogenic substances!). Yes, that's right folks, your entire directory will be inputted into the program, along with your passwords, choice of screen colors, and anything else you can THINK of (get it)! And operating the program is just as easy; you simply think about who you want to call, what you want to do, etc., and it does it ALL automagically! How's THAT for convenience (and you thought handles on toilet paper packages was going too far!). That's right folks, you'll never have to worry about ANY of those annoying things that go along with telecommunications again; typing endless password sequences, remembering complex menu structures, the program does it all. 'Well, how much memory does this take?' you ask. Well, using sophisticated memory management and compression techniques such as MPIG 3.2, TI actually takes NEGATIVE memory! That's right, TI actually ADDS anywhere from 50 to 100k to your memory pool while running! How's THAT for efficiency! 'So where's the hitch,' you wonder, and rightly so. Here it is: the shareware fee. Its rather steep at $7000 (seven thousand) dollars, and unfortunately if you DON'T register the program will give you steadily more violent bodily seizures until you turn into jell-o (lime, of course). I have seen it happen, its not pretty. But all in all, I'd say its WELL worth the money, especially since as a Blue Level beta tester I paid not one red cent for it! Ah well, the time has come again to be going. Of course we leave you with the Joke of the Week (now in capital letters!)... Guy 1: Why did you build a house without windows? Guy 2: Bill Gates threatened to sue if I did. Let me remind you all that if you have a submission for The Joke of the Week, write it in and, if I like it, I'll put it in and mention your name. And with that, adieu and adios, hasta la vista, bon voyage, and aloha! Tune in next week for another exciting episode of A.M.I.G.A., the only article that dares you to explain exactly why there's so many slow schools out there.... @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P4-3 "Holonet" @toc "menu" /// Holonet: Inexpensive Internet Access ------------------------------------- *** HOLONET *** HoloNet is an easy to use Internet Access BBS. HoloNet is based on custom BBS software which provides an easy to use menu driven interface. HoloNet is ideal for those looking for an easy way to use Internet services. HoloNet does not currently provide UNIX shell access. Services include: o Convenient Access A local call in 850+ cities nationwide. o Online Publications Include USA Today Decisionline, Newsbytes, Datanet Computer News, Eeeekbits, and Boardwatch Magazine. o USENET Averages over 30MB of USENET news per day. The following news readers are available: NN, TIN, and RN. o Internet E-Mail Members have an Internet E-mail address similar to: member@holonet.net o Internet Access Access to telnet, talk, finger, IRC, and FTP. (note: you must comply with the policies of any networks you use) o Single and Multi-player Games Board, card, fantasy, and puzzle games. o Support for Eudora Excellent off-line Macintosh e-mail reader. o UUCP E-mail and USENET feeds Link LAN E-mail systems and BBSes to the Internet. How to try HoloNet for FREE: Telnet: holonet.net Modem: 510-704-1058 (Berkeley, CA) at 1200, 2400, 9600, or 14400 bps. There are free demo numbers nationwide, for an automated response containg a list of access numbers, send e-mail to access@holonet.mailer.net How to get more information: E-mail: info@holonet.net Modem: 510-704-1058 at 1200, 2400, 9600, or 14400bps Voice: 510-704-0160 Fax: 510-704-8019 HoloNet is a service mark of Information Access Technologies, Inc. Copyright © 1992 Information Access Techologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P1-14 "Warez Out There" @toc "menu" /// Warez Out There --------------- By Tom Mulcahy TITLE TERMINUS VERSION 2.0 STATUS SHAREWARE AUTHOR DYNALOGIC PRODUCT SUPPORT BBS ---------------------------------- The support BBS is attached to the FidoNet BBS network and receives the international Amiga echomail conference, twenty-four hour crashmail is supported via the MS-DOS version of Binkley. A private support conference is provided for registered users, although the system is open to anyone who calls. The most recent evaluation version of Terminus will be available for download and for FidoNet file requesting via the "magic" name "TERMINUS". Dynalogic Product Support BBS - Fidonet: 1:266/61 (609) 398-7453 (24hrs/7days) 3/12/24/96/14.4/16.8kbps HST/V.32bis GENIE ---------- If you need to contact me via email, my ID is JRADIGAN. COMPUSERVE --------------- I try to access the AmigaUser conference two or three times a week to keep up on the Telecom area (5). My ID for Easyplex email is 76545,201. BIX -------- Same goes for BIX; my ID is also JRADIGAN here for email. I also monitor the amiga.user/telecomm conference on BIX. USENET/INTERNET -------------------- I currently maintain an account at jprad@faatcrl.gov for netmail and I also frequent the comp.sys.amiga.datacomm newsgroup. For those without smart mailer access, my bang path is: ...!rutgers!faatcrl!jprad I am unable to handle requests for uuencoded transfers via email, please do not ask for them. 35.6 US MAIL ------------ Dynalogic's current mailing address is: Dynalogic P.O. Box 444 Ocean City, NJ 08226 Please understand that I am unable to personally reply to every letter I receive. While the cost of postage is minimal, the time required to process written requests for support is not. If your request is a basic support problem that can be easily be found in the user manual or is common knowledge to experienced telecommunicators I will have no choice but to ignore your letter. If you cannot contact me via electronic means please try to seek local help via the user manual, a users group or from a BBS, most have plenty of users who are more than willing to lend help to a struggling novice. DESCRIPTION ******* * * * **** * *** **** *** * **** * * **** * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * ****** * * * * * * * * * **** * * * * * * * * * * * * * **** * * * * * * * **** **** Version 2.0 Copyright (C) 1992-93 by John P. Radigan A Shareware telecommunications tool for the Amiga computer. COPYRIGHT ------------------- All versions of the Terminus telecommunications package, executable, documentation and support files are protected by United States Copyright Law and related international treaty provisions. All Rights Reserved, Worldwide. You are entitled to use the program and related files in original form only. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or derive a work based on this work in whole or in part. SHAREWARE ------------- This program is made available through the concept of "Shareware" which is a form of distribution that gives you the opportunity to try a piece of software before you buy it. It is not now, nor will it ever be regarded as Public Domain or otherwise "free" software. LICENSE ------------------- You are granted a limited license to evaluate this software for a 30 day period on a private, non-commercial basis only. You must decide at the termination of this evaluation period to register this product if you plan to continue using it or to cease all use otherwise. Registration is not only required for your continued use, it is needed to keep the development of future enhancements to Terminus active. Without your support the product cannot continue to evolve. 1 INTRODUCTION -------------- Welcome to Terminus 2.0, a highly capable and flexible, if not seasoned telecommunications tool for the Amiga personal computer system. Terminus is a completely rewritten replacement for JR-Comm 1.02a. It is not an update. Initially, JR-Comm was going to be updated as scheduled to include XPR and ARexx support. But, quite frankly, JR-Comm's major limitation was that it lacked the proper design to add new features easily. With the release of AmigaDOS 2.04 it became apparent that a complete rewrite was the only solution. As a result, Terminus is essentially a second generation product, hence the 2.0 version number. Terminus also conforms, where possible, to the recommendations outlined in the "Commodore Amiga Style Guide" for Release 2 of the Amiga operating system while still retaining compatibility with the 1.3 release. However, all future releases of Terminus will be compatible with the 2.0 (or later) operating system release only. 1.1 FEATURES OVERVIEW --------------------- The following are the major features present in Terminus 2.0. - Reentrant program design for multiple sessions using one copy of program code in ram. - All internal functions multitask. - Can be iconified. - The entire program is keyboard navigable. - Comprehensive script language implemented as a small BASIC interpreter. - Automated script record feature to create login scripts. - ARexx and XPR support. - Display system uses custom scroll routines for fast scroll rates and interleaved bitmaps to eliminate flicker during scrolling without the need for a 68020 or higher cpu. - TTY, AMIGA, IBM COLOR/MONO, VT52, VT102 AND VT220 terminal emulations. All emulations are as complete and as accurate as possible. - Console definition files to easily change Terminus between different terminal configurations. - XMODEM, XMODEM-CRC, XMODEM-1k, YMODEM, YMODEM-1k, YMODEM-g and ZMODEM file transfer protocols included internally for fast throughput rates. XPR support for other less used protocols. - Windowed review buffer that uses the Boyer-Moore search algorithm for fast location of text within the buffer space. Can also load files directly into the buffer with dynamic buffer resizing as required. - Clipboard support for snipping text from the review buffer or main terminal display. Options to send either raw or quoted text from the clipboard out the serial port. - Multiline chat area with configurable height and history buffer. - Superb XON/XOFF flow control with status line indicator and immediate text display stop/start via keyboard control. - Support for DMA and programmed I/O hard disk controllers that have problems with downloads using high speed modems. - ChipMiser option for systems with limited chip ram space. - Dynamically buffered printer support so that the terminal is never I/O bound due to slow printer output. - Hexadecimal display mode with output that is compatible with both the review buffer and capture files. _ Integral remote CLI/Shell feature. - Phonebook entry support for multiple number systems with up to 4 numbers per entry. - All defaults, phonebook, console definition and script files are ASCII compatible for editing with your favorite text editor. - Full support for OwnDevUnit.library is also included. REQUIREMENTS OS 1.3 or higher FAST ram highly recommended FILENAME trms20.lzh - 519,317k LOCATION BIX CI$ GENIE AMINET ------------------------------ TITLE StarShip VERSION 2.0 STATUS Shareware AUTHOR Russ Grasso DESCRIPTION Starship2.0 is a 3D starflight simulator. It employs scenery based on actual star names,. coordinates, and distances. Course speed, direction,. position, viewpoint, visibility and sound can be . manipulated by the user. Starship 2.0 tested ok on. A1000, A3000, A4000 and under OS 1.3, 2.04, 2.1 and 3.0. It works on any chip set and min. 512K chip RAM. Non-flickering 640 x 400 lace NTSC (or DblNTSC) and 1M Chip RAM recommended. Black Belt Systems' Notebook Viewer and required fonts are enclosed for reading the manual. REQUIREMENTS OS 1.3 or higher 1MB Chip for non-flickering for 640x400 or DblNTSC on 3.0 FILENAME starship2.lha - 451,295k LOCATION BIX ------------------------------ TITLE Print Manager VERSION 2.0 STATUS Shareware AUTHOR Nicola Salmoria Via Piemonte 11 53100 Siena ITALY E-Mail: MC6489@mclink.it DESCRIPTION PrintManager 2.0 The files in this archive were written by Nicola Salmoria and are freely distributable as long as the archive remains intact, and only a nominal fee is charged for its distribution. This software is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. By using it, you agree to accept the entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program. This program is SHAREWARE. If you use it, send $20 (or Lit. 25.000) to the author. If possible, send cash, no cheques: otherwise I lose half of the money cashing them. Please note that the software in this archive is not 'crippled' in any way: I'm not trying to force you to send money by removing important features. Don't make me regret this choice. Comments, suggestions and bug reports are welcome. Overview -------- One of the things Workbench 2.0 (and 3.0) is still missing is a printer spooler. PrintManager is just that. There are some other programs that try to implement a spooler on the Amiga, but: · PrintManager is a system wedge, so it will work with every program, not just ones explicitly written to take advantage of it; · The wedge is installed at parallel or serial device level, so PrintManager will really work with EVERY program: no matter if it uses PRT: or directly the printer device, no matter if it's printing text or graphics. Even programs that use directly PAR: or SER: can be cached using the DEVICE ToolType. · Only printer device calls are cached, so modem and net users will not experiment performance loss. · PrintManager has a nice, font sensitive graphic user interface (GUI) and supports localization under Workbench 2.1 or later. · You can print files directly from PrintManager, using either the AppIcon, or the AppWindow, or a menu command. Under Kickstart 2.x only text files may be printed; under Kickstart 3.x datatypes.library is used so you can print anything which is recognized by MultiView. · The printer-specific raw data can be saved to a file. That file may be printed at a later time via PrintManager itself, or brought to another computer (since it contains raw data, you just have to send it unchanged to the printer). For example, you may prepare an article at home and use the expensive laser printer at office to print it. · After a system crash or reset, unfinished printings are automatically recovered. This feature may also be used to prepare raw data and print it at a later time. · A Form Feed may be automatically inserted between printings. REQUIREMENTS · OS 2.04 or later · Hard disk is not required but strongly recommended · Printer ;-) FILENAME prtman20.lha - 23,910k LOCATION BIX ------------------------------ TITLE RunLame VERSION 1.25 STATUS Copyright 1992-1993 by Bilbo the First AUTHOR 'Bilbo' of Hypenosis IRC Channel: #amiga #amiga! #amigager DESCRIPTION RunLame V 1.25 documentation (© by Bilbo the first of Hypenosis on 20.06.93) RunLame ======= Copyright 1992-1993 by Bilbo the first The aim of the game: ------------------- Do you run your system under another screenmode than PAL or NTSC, for example EURO72 or an AGA specific screenmode? Have you ever tried to start a game or demo from within this screenmode? Have you ever been angry about those programmers who do not stick to the system friendly way of programming thus producing programs which are not aware of the screenmode they were started out of? Do you have an Amiga with 68010, 68020, 68030 or 68040 processor? Did you ever curse those socalled coders whose programs crash your computer when you didn't disable the processor's caches and forgot to move the vector base register to $0.l? Lame programming is the desease, RunLame is the cure! RunLame is a Kick2.04+ tool, it will NOT work under Kick1.0/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4! RunLame is 100% reentrant Assembler code, so you can set the pure flag and make it resident. RunLame is startable from Workbench. RunLame takes some options and a commandline as argument and executes the given commandline, just after having opened an optional little PAL screen in the front, having moved the VBR to $0.l and having disabled all caches (also external ones), burst modes, copyback mode on 68040 processors. When the commandline has been executed the screen is closed and the processor's caches (burst, copyback, VBR) state is reset to the same as before starting RunLame. When all parameters and options are omitted, RunLame opens a graphical user interface on the default public screen. Summerizing we can say RunLame is a multitasking friendly temporary system degrader which may let some bad behaving programs run in your system environment (but can't give any guarantee). If some of those `lame' programs don't run though RunLame has been used, they are on a higher lameness-level, which can't be fixed by RunLame (this is definitely not a bug of RunLame). I do write demos myself and you can believe, I DO KNOW how to write a proper startup code. Nothing more is RunLame, just an external startup code. FILENAME runlame.lha - 42,439 LOCATION DELPHI @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-15 "AsmOne v1.02" @toc "menu" /// Usenet Review: AsmOne v1.02 ---------------------------- By Tomas Nilsson (No Email address available) PRODUCT NAME AsmOne version 1.02 AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Rune Gram-Madsen Address: DMV - Verlag (the distributor) Postfach 250 D-3440 Eschwege Germany BRIEF DESCRIPTION A fast assembler/disassembler and debugger for 68000 code. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE A half meg of memory is enough to start with, but larger programs require more memory. It works fine with any Amiga CPU available today (60000 through 68040). SOFTWARE It runs under any Kickstart version (tested under 1.2 through 3.1). The freely distributable req.library makes your life easier but is not required. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING All available Amiga models with various Kickstart versions. Memory on these machines varied from a machine with 0.5 MB Chip RAM to a machine with 2 MB Chip RAM and 6 MB Fast RAM. REVIEW AsmOne looks very similar to the old K-Seka, but don't be fooled. Under the surface of the program there is a very powerful assembler with lots of options. To start with, it asks you to specify your "work memory." This is a fixed value in kilobytes. Within this workspace, your source is placed together with the assembled program. All external files such as include files will not be placed here. * Writing a source file There is no need for some kind of external editor. It's built in and it's _FAST_! It supports the basic cursor movements together with some extra commands (such as jump 100 lines up/down). There is block mark/copy/save to disk/lowercase/.../... options. Search/search+replace, mark place/jump to marked place... etc. * Assembling speed Assembling is astonishing fast. (Speed results for a 500 KB disassembled file originally written in C took 10.5 seconds to assemble. In comparison, Devpac takes 38.2 seconds.) If you are using include files, that's no problem. AsmOne does not read the files again if you don't ask it to. This speeds up assembling a lot on a floppy disk system. On a fast hard disk, it doesn't matter that much; but anyway, it's almost twice the speed if you assemble a file with lots of include files on a standard Amiga 3000. * Bug killing There are some different type of error tracing methods, but the one I usually run is to stop assembling at an error. If an error occurs, the line that it occurred on is displayed together with an appropriate message. The assembled file can be written as an object file or be run in memory. The link file is somewhat broken. If you choose to run the file from memory (it's the normal way to do it), you can either just run it as if it were run from disk, or run it in the debugger. * The Debugger Running your program from the debugger is the real strength of AsmOne. In debug mode, you can see your source (as it was written in the editor). At the rightmost part of the screen in debugging mode are the normal registers (D0-D7/A0-A7/SSP/USP/SR/PL/PC). Now you can choose several options. The most normal is to set some kind of breakpoint somewhere within the code. This can be done by either setting a address or a label, or just marking a position using the cursor. Now, run the program. It will stop at the marked position. From here is it maybe now interesting to check the failing part of the code. Now, you might want to know what some of registers are pointing to. Well, you simply add a watch(er). Some examples of watches are A0; A0+4; D0; $60000; (D0*3)+D1 and so on. The watches can be interpreted in several ways such as pointer to binary. Now you can step N instruction(s). By tracing the source down like this, you can find any error in a quite simple way. Since there is a built-in-debugger, it handles all faults your program might come up to (such as TRAP-F) without a Guru. A fun side effect of this is that if the AsmOne code itself somehow gets destroyed, its own debugger breaks in. * Programming AsmOne is not system friendly in the same way as Devpac. You can freely walk around in the memory poking around to see what you might find. This can be done either in hex+ASCII, plain ASCII, or as disassembled memory. You might feel, as I do, that you are on top of everything. It's just to peek'n'poke around just as you like and sooner or later you will (hopefully) find your annoying bug. AsmOne itself is programmed this way to be fast, but unfortunately it's sometimes too fast using some rude memory access methods. If you're running the Enforcer together with AsmOne's debug mode you will, each time you step an instruction, get an Enforcer hit on address $8 to $48. * The Program Itself Unlike any other assemblers (except K-Seka), you can either work with the menus or work in a command-line mode. All commands are short and simple to use. Examples are "A" (Assemble), "AO" (Assemble with Optimize) and "h.l $60000" (look at memory address $60000 in hex mode and display it in longwords!). Most of these commands can be found in the menus. One of the commands that can't be found in the menus is the built-in calculator. It can calculate most of the normal programming operations such as AND, OR, NOT, and the normal "+-/*" operations. Results are displayed in hex, decimal, ASCII and binary. LIKES AND DISLIKES The parts that I really like are the speed of the editor/assembling and the great debugger. The parts that I dislike are that it can not run at any screen wider than 80 bytes, it can't edit more than one source at a time, and that it can't run batchfiles upon assembling (like linking a source automatically after assembling). BUGS Well, there are no major bugs, but there's a LOT of minor bugs. For example, if you want to look at memory in longwords you can use "h.l $50000". But if you're using "h.l a0" the memory will be shown in byte format. I can live with this though. CONCLUSIONS The product is great, especially for its speed (as I've told you before :)). I'll give it a 4 out of 5. It would be a 5 if the bugs were removed! My final word is: yes you should buy it. (If you can: it's not sold in all countries.) I've been using it for a long time now and I have never regretted that I tried out this program. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1993 Tomas Nilsson. All rights reserved. This text can be spread freely, but with no profit. If your purpose is in ANY kind to make money on this then contact me first. @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-16 "Reader Mail" @toc "menu" /// Reader Mail Our Readers Speak! ----------- From: IN%"mbrookes@dublin.cerf.fred.org" To: IN%"rob_g@delphi.com" CC: Subj: Amiga CD32 Hi Rob. Just a quick note to say "thanks!" for Amiga Report, and for all the work that goes in to producing it. Must say I _love_ the new AmigaGuide format. Makes skimming before a thourough read a breeze! The following appeared recently in comp.sys.amiga.misc, and purports to be the translation of a message from C= Germanys Dr Peter Kittel, who in turn was reporting the announcement there of the `Amiga 32 CD console'. Make of it what you wish! ;) (Call it rumour for now though...) Oh, before I add the text file, a couple of other things. First, the story about hidden modem taxes is _completely bogus!_. This same story was thrashed out in the online journal, "Telecom Digest" a few weeks ago, and all those "in the know" agreed that it's cleverly fabricated hocus-pocus. As I remember, neither "The San Jose Herald", nor "Congressional spokesperson Bonnie Houck", nor even "Clinton Administration spokesperson J. R. Dobbs" exist! Other parts of the story were also proved to be fake, but I don't remember all the details. (Sorry). Secondly, in an earlier mag. someone mentioned the fact that the A5000 rumour had been published in the UK magazine "Amiga Mart". Amiga Mart is a complete rag, containing mostly classified ads for pirated software, and greetings from cracking groups, and is barely worth the inferior quality "toilet paper" it's printed on. The fact that they picked up on the ancient Internet A5000 april fools joke gives it no more weight. The photo they published was of a PC motherboard!, with a bit of paper stuck on the cpu, poorly labled 68060. In the same issue they published a story about a mail order company selling the A600 for a record breaking low price of 185UKP. Wrong! Checking with the company, it is the HD upgrade pack for the A600 which is 185UKP, the A600 is the same old price. Most of the rest of their copy is taken straight from "Amiga Report" word for word! (I hope they have your permission!) Cheers! Matt. ------------------ 53.15.00, 06.30.00 Matt Brookes. Dublin, Ireland. From: Gary@rusmv1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (Hannes Gnad) Organization: user-helpdesk Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1993 13:37:33 GMT Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.game Subject: Amiga CD 32 - facts by C= !!! Hey Amiga Users out there! To stop all senseless dicussions about technical datails or pricing of the new `Amiga 32 CD console', here are pure, confirmed facts. They are truly from Dr Peter Kittel, C= Germany. If you don't believe me, take a good look into 'de.comp.sys.amiga.misc'. This is where his posting is from. Now, for all who have major problems with German or who unfortunately don't have access to this newsgroup, I put his posting into these newsgroups, adding some translations. As I'm not a master of English (and as I don't have my dictionaries with me), the translation will be a bit free (and with mistakes), but I hope it will be good enough to get the point. Have fun. Yesterday, there was a press conference in Munich referring this machine, and we were allowed to talk about it. :-) Yes, this machine is reality. What was printed in the 'Otto' catalogue, is certainly nearly right, only two details are somehow wrong (we are sorry about this, but I'm innocent because I had nothing to do with it). 1. Unfortunately, there's *no* RGB output. 2. A RAM expansion with further 2MB will be only, if ever, included in the announced computer expansion box, but not in the basic machine. Now, here's the official press text, which was given to the press at the conference: Commodore B|romaschinen GmbH 60528 Frankfurt, Lyoner Stra_e 38 F|r sofortige Vervffentlichung [For immediate release] Ansprechpartner: Karola Bode Leiterin Marketing/Kommunikation/Pressesprecherin Telefon: 069/6638-157 Fax: 069/6638-139 [Contact person, name, title, phone & fax number.] Introducing the Amiga CD32, Commodore brings full 32-bit performance to the games world. A new age of entertainment electronics has begun. Technology and 'playing fun' perfectly combined in one machine. Amiga CD32 with it's 32-bit CPU and it's 32-bit accelerated graphics offers outstanding graphics capabilities. The brilliant colour is created by having 256,000 colours on screen the same time, out of a palette of 16.8 Milion. With this new technology, a speed and a reaction time is being achieved, which will make 'playing fun' become a real experiance. The CD-ROM drive with top-loading mechanism is easy to operate. When CD is being inserted, the Amiga CD32 starts automatically. Four CD stardards are available: audio CD, CD+G, CDTV and Amiga CD32. The CD technology offers concert quality music, with digital stereo sound at a sampling rate of 44 khz. The included game pad allows the player a precise control using ergonomically designed buttons. The sensitive game controller reacts immediately. The Amiga CD32 defines a new price/perfomance standard in the game console market. In Autumn '93, the MPEG video-module for more than 70 minutes of video will be available as an option for an outstanding price.AMIGA CD32-Full-Motion-Videomodule offers 1:1 TV quality at 30 frames per sec. The Amiga CD32 product will be available in August 1993 via Commodore dealers and via the five biggest mail order companies. It will be delievered with a game controller, the necessary connection parts for a TV set or a monitor and an Amiga CD32-aware new game. Due to copyright reasons, the title of this game can't be announced yet. At the date of release, 17 Amiga CD32 titles will be available. Till the end of the year, further 30 interresting AMIGA CD32 titles are planned, from the categories jump&run, simulation, strategy and action. These games will be also available via Commodore dealers. Companies have announced comatatble CDs, which will be available from their distributors. Recommended retail price is DM 699. [IR#288 at current exchange rates] Technical Data: CPU: Motorola 68EC020, 32-bit microprocessor Clock speed: 14 MHz Memory: 2 MB RAM, 32 bit wide, 1 MB system ROM, contains the full AmigaDOS, a real-time, multitasking OS. Drive: Top-loading CD-ROM (double speed) Graphics: AA chipset - 256,000 colours from 16.8 million, resolutions to 800x600, 2 graphics co-processors. Video Outputs: PAL, NTSC and SECAM RF modulator, composite video Audio: 4 channel stereo sound with 8 bit DAC, 16-bit audio CD, stereo at 44 kHz Connectors: 11-button control pad. 2 game pad/joystick/mouse connectors, high sp eed 'Aux' connector for keyboards/virtual reality gloves etc. Expansion connector for full-motion video card (MPEG) and an expansion device to convert the Amiga CD32 into a full Amiga computer Supported CD formats: Amiga CD32, audio CD, CD+G, CDTV. Dimensions: 212 mm deep x 311 mm wide x 81 mm high Weight: 1.53 kg PSU: External, 22 watt Frankfurt, 28.06.93 Best regards, Dr Peter Kittel Commodore Frankfurt, Germany peterk@cbmger.de.so.commodore.com Ahh, what a work. Hope you will like this new thing and that we will see full reviews in the magazines soon. An that it will hit the shops soon. I think I gonna buy one. ------------------------------ Thanks for the kind words, and for the translation, Matt! When you mentioned Amiga Mart printing stuff from Amiga Report, no, they did not have permission. However, the A5000 rumors in that case don't really matter. I actually don't remember where they came from (the Internet I think), so it's not a problem. Though it would have been nice if Amiga Mart had at least mentioned where they got it. ;) The info on the CD32 is most welcome! I sure hope Commodore USA will confirm this information soon. A lot of people are waiting with baited breath (what IS baited breath anyway???) for some reliable information. Rob @ Amiga Report @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P4-4 "NVN" @toc "menu" /// NVN WANTS YOU! Another Network Supports Amiga! -------------- National Videotext Network (NVN) National Videotext Network (NVN) has recently added an Amiga Forum to it's growing lists of available services. The Amiga Forum is ready and waiting for you! Order an extended NVN Membership of 6 or 12 months, pay for it in advance and receive a bonus in connect time at no additional charge. Choose from two subscription plans: 6-Month Membership ------------------ Pay just $30 for a 6-month Membership and receive a usage credit that entitles you to $15 of connect-time in the Premium services of your choice. Your total savings using this plan would be over $20!* 12 Month Membership ------------------- Pay $50 for a full year's Membership and get even more free time online. We'll give you a $25 usage credit to use in your favorite Premium services or try out new ones. You could save as much as $45.* For more information about either of these plans, give us a call at 1-800-336-9096. -=* 9600 BAUD USERS *=- $6/hour non-prime time - $9/hour prime time You can join NVN one of two ways. By voice phone 1-800-336-9096 (Client Services) or via modem phone 1-800-336-9092. @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P1-17 "SHI" @toc "menu" /// How to contact SHI ------------------ As always, if you are interested in contacting SAFE HEX INTERNATIONAL for ANY REASON, especially for virus information or ordering help.you can contact any of our worldwide Anti-virus centers. the address's to ALL our worldwide centers have been listed in "AMIGA REPORT #1.14" or you can just write us at the address below.. ------------------------------------------------- Michael Arends PIONEERS BBS: SHI RVC/West P.O. Box 1531 (206) 775-7983 Lynnwood, WA. 98046-1531 USA ------------------------------------------------- @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-18 "AR Confidential" @toc "menu" /// AR Confidential We heard it through the grapevine! --------------- Orlando, FL -- A new disk-based magazine for the Atari ST/TT/Falcon computers was announced last week. "Atari United" is said to be a technical journal as well as an all-around magazine. The publication will ship each month on a floppy disk with custom front-end software. Subscription prices have not yet been determined. Washington, DC -- The Clinton Whitehouse goes online. Well, sort of. You may now send Electronic Mail to the President on most of the major online services... ClintonPZ on America Online, 75300,3115 on CI$, WHITEHOUSE on GEnie, Whitehouse at Fidonet Node 1:2613/333, clinton-hq@campaign92.org on the Internet and White House on MCI Mail (MCI ID: 589-5485). Prodigy expects to have a White House Email address sometime this summer. You are not, however, guaranteed a response from the White House -- and certainly not online. At this point, all Email is sent on floppy disks by a representative of each online service, arriving at the White House on foot, as it were, courtesy of the US Post Office. Messages with valid postal addresses then receive a hard-copy reply from a White House worker or volunteer. "Our goal is to have messages responded on online by the fist of the year," said Jock Gill, White House liaison to online services. @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P3 "Dealer Directory" @toc "menu" /// Dealer Directory Serving our readers! ---------------- Almathera Systems Ltd Challenge House 618 Mitcham Rd Croydon, Surrey CR9 3AU England Voice (UK) 081 683 6418 Internet: (Sales) almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk (Technical) jralph@cix.compulink.co.uk 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 GEnie: B.GRAY Computers International, Inc. 5415 Hixson Pike Chattanooga, TN 37343 VOICE: 615-843-0630 Digital Arts 122 West 6th Street Bloomington, IN 47404 Phone: (812)330-0124 Fax: (812)330-0126 BIX: msears Finetastic Computers 721 Washington Street Norwood, MA 02062 VOICE: 617-762-4166 Portal: FinetasticComputers Internet: FinetasticComputers@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 PSI Animations 17924 SW Pilkington Road Lake Oswego, OR 97035 VOICE: 503-624-8185 Internet: PSIANIM@agora.rain.com Software Plus Chicago 3100 W Peterson Avenue Chicago, Illinois VOICE: 312-338-6100 (Dealers: To have your name added, please send Email!) @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-19 "Humor Department" @toc "menu" /// The Humor Department Jokes, Quotes, Insults, Shameless Plugs -------------------- Found on Usenet (author unknown) -------------------------------- A BILL (to Regulate the Hunting and Harvesting of ATTORNEYS) Any person with a valid New Mexico State Rodent or Snake hunting license may also hunt and harvest attorneys for recreational and sport \ non-commercial\ purposes. 370.02 Taking of attorneys with traps or deadfalls is permitted. The use of United States currency as bait, however, is prohibited. 370.03 The willful killing of attorneys with a motor vehicle is prohibited, unless such vehicle is an ambulance being driven in reverse. If an attorney is accidentally struck by a motor vehicle, the dead attorney should be removed to the roadside, and the vehicle should proceed to the nearest car wash. 370.04 It is unlawful to chase, herd or harvest attorneys from a power boat, helicopter or aircraft. 370.05 It is unlawful to shout, "WHIPLASH," "AMBULANCE," or "FREE SCOTCH" for the purpose of trapping attorneys. 370.06 It is unlawful to hunt attorneys within 100 yards of BMW, Mercedes or Porsche dealerships, except on Wednesday afternoons. 370.07 It is unlawful to hunt attorneys within 200 yards of courtrooms, law libraries, health clubs, country clubs, hospitals or brothels. 370.08 If an attorney gains elective office, it is not necessary to have a license to hunt, trap or possess the same . 370.09 It is unlawful for a hunter to wear a disguise as a reporter, accident victim, physician, chiropractor or tax accountant for the purpose of hunting attorneys . 370.10 Bag Limits per day: Yellow-Bellied Sidewinders 2 Two-Faced Tortfeasors 1 Back-Stabbing Divorce Litigators 3 Horn-Rimmed Cut-throats 2 Minutiae-Advocating Chickensh!ts 4 Honest Attorneys -- Protected \ Endangered Species\ @endnode @node P2-3 "In Closing" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== Amiga Report International Online Magazine July 16, 1993 * YOUR INDEPENDENT NEWS SOURCE * No. 1.17 Copyright © 1993 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 per- mission. However, translation into a language other than English is accept- ble, provided the original meaning is not altered. Amiga Report may be dis- tributed 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 pub- ication, is believed reasonably accurate. Amiga Report, its staff and con- ributors 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. =========================================================================== Only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * _ _ __ ___ _ * * /\\ |\\ /| || // \ /\\ * * / \\ | \\ /|| ||(< __ / \\ * * /--- \\| \X || || \\_||/--- \\ * * /______________________________\\ * * / \\ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Makes it possible!! @endnode @node "menu" "Amiga Report 1.17 Main Menu" @toc "menu" @{" Columns and Features " link P1} News, Reviews, and More! @{" About AMIGA REPORT " link P2} Staff, Copyright information @{" Dealer Directory " link P3} Dealer Addresses and Numbers @{" Commercial Online Services " link P4} Sign-up information @{" FTP Announcements " link P5} Files available for FTP /// 07/16/93 Amiga Report 1.17 "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" -------------------------- · The Editor's Desk · CPU Report · New Products · Dealer Directory · AR Online · AR Confidential · Rendered Reality · Warez Out There · Directory Utilities · A.M.I.G.A. · ASMOne · Act Of War » More CD32 Ramblings! « » Amiga Report Internet Mailist List « » New VirusZ Kills F**k Virus! « =========================================================================== Amiga Report International Online Magazine "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" » FEATURING WEEKLY « Accurate UP-TO-DATE News and Information Current Events, Original Articles, Tips, Rumors, and Information Hardware · Software · Corporate · R & D · Imports =========================================================================== PORTAL · DELPHI · FIDO · INTERNET · BIX · NVN =========================================================================== @endnode @node P1 "Columns and Features" @toc "menu" @{" From the Editor's Desk " link P1-1} Saying it like it is! @{" CPU Status Report " link P1-2} Apple in trouble?? Also COMDEX @{" AMIGO Announcement " link P1-3} PCMCIA products available @{" AMINET on CD-ROM " link P1-4} Get amiga.physik.unizh.ch on a CD-ROM! @{" New AREXX Book " link P1-5} AREXX: Some Issues in Programming @{" Oregon Research Supports Amiga " link P1-5-1} Atari developer/distributer joins the Amiga arena @{" Online Weekly " link P1-6} CD32, Terminus, and more! @{" Amiga Report Mailing List " link P1-7} Receive AR through InterNet Email @{" Emplant Update " link P1-8} More info on Emplant @{" Directory Utilites " link P1-9} A look at "DU"s @{" Send In The Clones " link P1-10} Part II of a look at arcade clones @{" Rendered Reality " link P1-11} Essence II @{" UseNet Review - Act of War " link P1-12} Wonderfull battle simulation! @{" A.M.I.G.A. - He's Back! " link P1-13} Announcing the winner! @{" Warez Out There " link P1-14} Terminus and more! @{" UseNet Review - AsmOne v1.02 " link P1-15} Assembler, Disassembler, Debugger for 68000 @{" Reader Mail " link P1-16} Bogus Modem tax, CD32 @{" Safe Hex International " link P1-17} How to contact SHI @{" AR Confidential " link P1-18} Send it to the President! @{" The Humor Department " link P1-19} *@%^# Attorneys! @endnode @node P2 "About Amiga Report" @toc "menu" @{" For Starters " link P2-1} Where to get AMIGA REPORT @{" AR Staff " link P2-2} The Editors, and Contributers @{" In Closing " link P2-3} Copyright Information @endnode @node P4 "Commercial Online Services" @toc "menu" @{" Delphi " link P4-1} It's getting better all the time! @{" Portal " link P4-2} A great place for Amiga users... @{" Holonet " link P4-3} Inexpensive Internet Access @{" NVN " link P4-4} National Videotex Network @endnode @node P5 "FTP Announcements" @toc "menu" @{" AlertPatch v2.16 " link P5-1} Replacement for exec.library/ALERT() @{" ACE BASIC Compiler " link P5-2} Nice BASIC compiler @{" AniMan v5.2 " link P5-3} Animated voice recognition syste, @{" C-Shell v5.31 " link P5-4} Shell replacement for the CLI @{" FastCache v1.0 " link P5-5} HD caching program @{" FindFish v2.0 " link P5-6} FF files finder FUW CNET @{" Home Accountant v1.0 " link P5-7} For your home accounting needs @{" LCD Calculator II v1.258 " link P5-8} Fantastic calculator program @{" Textra v1.4 " link P5-9} GUI based text editor @{" VCLI v7.0 " link P5-10} Voice activated CLI program @endnode ----------------------------------------- @node P2-1-1 "NOVA" @toc "menu" * NOVA BBS * Amiga Report Headquarters * Running Starnet BBS * Wayne Stonecipher, Sysop FidoNet 1:362/508 An Amiga Software Distribution Site (ADS) 615-472-9748 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Cleveland, Tennessee @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-2 "In The MeanTime" @toc "menu" * IN THE MEANTIME BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Starnet BBS * Robert Niles, Sysop FidoNet 1:3407/104 509-966-3828 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Yakima, Washington @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-3 "Cloud's Corner" @toc "menu" * CLOUD'S CORNER BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site Starnet/MebbsNet Support Site West Coast USA * Running Starnet BBS * Larry Cloud, Sysop FidoNet 1:350/30 206-377-4290 USR HST DS 24hrs - 7 days Bremerton, Washington @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-4 "Biosmatica" @toc "menu" * BIOSMATICA BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Portugal * Running Excelsior/Trapdoor/UUCP * Celso Martinho, Sysop FidoNet 2:361/9 +351-34-382320 V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-5 "Amiga Junction 9" @toc "menu" * AMIGA JUNCTION 9 * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- United Kingdom * Running DLG Professional * Stephen Anderson, Sysop Internet: username@junct9.royle.org Line 1 +44 0372 271000 14400 HST/V.32bis Fido 2:253/510 Line 2 +44 0372 278000 14400 V.32bis only Fido 2:253/520 Line 3 +44 0372 279000 2400 V.42bis/MNP5 Fido 2:253/530 Sysop Email: sysadmin@junct9.royle.org @endnode ------------------------------------------ Amiga Report can be FREQ'd each week from the systems listed above. Use the filename AR.LHA and you will always get the latest issue. ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-6 "Freeland Mainframe" @toc "menu" * 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 P2-1-7 "LAHO" @toc "menu" * LAHO BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Finland * Running MBBS * Juha Makinen, Sysop +358-64-414 1516, V.32/HST V.42bis/MNP 414 0400, V.32 MNP 414 6800, V.32 MNP 423 1300, V.32 MNP Seinajoki, Finland @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-8 "Falling BBS" @toc "menu" * FALLING BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Norway * Running ABBS * Christopher Naas, Sysop +47 69 256117 Rockwell V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days EMail: naasc@cnaas.adsp.sub.org @endnode ------------------------------------------