@database "ar124.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report 1.25, September 17, 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 September 17, 1993 No. 1.25 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 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 --------------- @{" OMAHA AMIGANET " link P2-1-9} ......................................Omaha, Nebraska @{" NOVA BBS " link P2-1-1} .................................Cleveland, Tennessee @{" 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 @{" BITSTREAM BBS " link P2-1-6} ..................................Nelson, New Zealand @{" REALM OF TWILIGHT " link P2-1-7} ......................................Ontario, Canada @{" METNET TRIANGLE " link P2-1-8} ..........................Kingston Upon Hull, England @{" AMIGA-NIGHT-SYSTEM " link P2-1-10}.....................................Helsinki, Finland @{" RAMSES THE AMIGA FLYING " link P2-1-11}................................................France Non-FidoNet Systems ------------------- @{" IN THE MEANTIME " link P2-1-2} ...................................Yakima, Washington @{" FREELAND MAINFRAME " link P2-1-50} ..................................Olympia, Washington @{" LAHO BBS " link P2-1-51} ...................................Seinajoki, Finland @{" FALLING BBS " link P2-1-52} ...............................................Norway @{" COMMAND LINE BBS " link P2-1-53} ......................................Toronto, Canada @{" RENDEZVOUS BBS " link P2-1-54} ..........................................New Zealand @{" LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL " link P2-1-55} ..............................................Germany @{" DEAD FISH BBS " link P2-1-56} ............................................... @{" STINGRAY DATABASE " link P2-1-57} ...............................Muelheim/Ruhr, Germany @endnode Non-AmigaGuide Users: See the end of this document for numbers to each BBS. ___________________________________________________________________________ /// 09/17/93 Amiga Report 1.25 "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" -------------------------- · The Editor's Desk · CPU Status Report · New Products · Dealer Directory · AR Online · A1000 Reviewed??? · SHI News · Emulation Examiner · A.M.I.G.A. » SHI Virus Warning! « » Apple's Newton Revealed « » WOCA Show Reports « =========================================================================== 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 =========================================================================== DELPHI · PORTAL · FIDO · INTERNET · BIX · AMIGANET =========================================================================== @node P1-1 "From the Editor's Desk" @toc "menu" /// From the Editor's Desk "Saying it like it is!" ---------------------- Okay, so who HASN'T seen Seaquest DSV? What did you think? The special effects were great, at least as good as in Babylon 5, if not better. I'm not sure about the storyline though. The World of Commodore Show in Pasadena has come and gone, and it appears to have gone well. Some good announcements were made, but I won't go into that now. We have two complete show reports later in the issue that are quite informative! Chad Freeman's A.M.I.G.A. column and Jason Compton's Emulation Examiner have returned. Delphi has had some trouble with Internet Mail lately, and a lot of mail got lost. Which reminds me... Jason -- the reason you don't seem to be getting my mail is because everything I send to your current address gets bounced back. If you have an alternate Internet address, please drop me a note! That's it for this week. We have a big issue, so I'm not going to ramble any longer. Enjoy! Rob @ Amiga Report @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P2-2 "AR Staff" @toc "menu" The Amiga Report Staff Dedicated to serving you! ====================== Editor ====== Robert Glover Portal: Rob-G Delphi: ROB_G FidoNet: 1:285/11 Internet: ROB_G@Delphi.COM Associate Editor ================ Technical Department -------------------- Robert Niles Portal: RNiles Delphi: RNILES FidoNet: 1:3407/104 Internet: rniles@imtired.itm.com ________________________________________ Contributing Correspondents =========================== Jason Compton Chad Freeman Matt Guthrie Rob Morton Dan Zerkle PC DIVISION ATARI DIVISION MAC DIVISION =========== ============== ============ Roger D. Stevens Ralph F. Mariano R. Albritton @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 best plan is the 20/20 plan. It gives you 20 hours each month for the low price of only $19.95! Additional hours are only $1.50 each! This covers 1200, 2400 and even 9600 connections! For more information, and details on other plans, call DELPHI Member Services at 1-800-544-4005 DELPHI - It's getting better all the time! @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P1-2 "CPU Status Report" @toc "menu" /// CPU Status Report Late Breaking Industry-Wide News ----------------- QVC MAY BID FOR PARAMOUNT NEW YORK -- A group led by QVC Network Inc. emerged Thursday as the most likely to make a rival offer to Viacom Inc.'s $8 billion bid for Paramount Communications Inc. Speculation grew that the cable-shopping network and its chairman, former movie mogul Barry Diller, were seriously considering an offer that would top Viacom's proposal, based on a Wall Street Journal report that influential investment bankers Allen & Co. were advising QVC. Diller is widely believed to have approached Paramount about a merger earlier this summer, but he reportedly was turned down by Paramount Chairman Martin S. Davis, who fired Diller nine years ago from his post as head of Paramount's movie studio. QVC, of West Chester, Pa., called the reports "speculation" and refused to comment. QVC, currently trying to close a $1.16-billion acquisition of Home Shopping Network Inc., is believed to be able to raise as much as $6 billion. New York-based Allen & Co. was an adviser on the $4.8 billion sale of Columbia Pictures to Sony Corp. in 1989 and the $6 billion sale of MCA Inc. to Matsushita Industrial Electric Co. in 1991. Many analysts have indicated that they consider the $69.14 price Viacom is paying for Paramount to be high enough to prevent other bidders. They also have noted that such a bid, to be significantly better than Viacom's, would have to be all-cash, which would be difficult in the current environment. Still, Viacom's bid calls for payment of about $9.10 a share in cash and the rest in Viacom stock, so if Viacom stock continues to decline, holders of Paramount stock could develop objections to the deal. Additionally, the Viacom deal will need several months to close, giving QVC at least several weeks to assess the situation. If Diller were to make a bid, it would probably include cable giant Tele- Communications Inc., which controls QVC through its Liberty Media affiliate, and cable concern Comcast Corp., which also has a QVC stake. Davis and Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone have pledged they would oppose a rival bid, saying the synergies from the merger make it a unique one that cannot be matched by other companies. ------------------------------ APPLE, KODAK EXPECTED TO RELEASE 'FILMLESS' CAMERAS CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Apple Computer Inc. and Eastman Kodak Co. are expected to introduce two "filmless" digital cameras that can transfer photographs directly into personal computers. The first camera, code-named Venus, may be rolled out in November at the Comdex computer industry trade show in Las Vegas, Nev., and cost about $600. The second camera, code-named Mars, is expected to cost more than $2, 000, and may be unveiled at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in January. Apple, of Cupertino, Calif., and Kodak, of Rochester, N.Y., have declined to comment on the cameras and recent published reports about the devices in the Wall Street Journal and trade publication MacWeek. The cameras are expected to be sold to advertising agencies and desktop publishers, rather than to individual consumers. The Apple-Kodak cameras are expected to be able to produce photos that are of much higher quality than filmless cameras currently on the market. The Venus is believed to have been designed to take up to 25 pictures and capture the images on a computer chip, which would then be plugged into an Apple Macintosh personal computer. The pictures could then be edited on the computer and printed out through color printers or color laser copiers. The images from Venus are not expected to be detailed enough for reproduction in magazines, but the Mars camera may have the capability of generating pictures good enough for such use. MacWeek said Mars would store its images on mini compact disks made by Sony Corp. Apple, which moved recently into the consumer electronics area with the hand-held Newton MessagePad, is expected to market the cameras. Apple has reported strong early sales of the Newton MessagePad, which is designed to recognize handwriting better than previous computers and can link written commands to stored files of information such as addresses or telephone numbers. The barebones version of the device has been selling for about $700. __________________________________________________ AST TO INTRO HANDHELD PEN COMPUTER IRVINE, CALIFORNIA -- AST Research has been busy these days with its purchase of the manufacturing facilities of Tandy Corporation, price cuts on notebook computers, and its moves into the lucrative Chinese market. However, as it hinted in the announcement of the Tandy purchase, AST will demonstrate its first handheld, pen-based computer at the Mobile World Show in San Jose this month. AST is getting Grid, Tandy's pen-based computer technology company, along with the other Tandy manufacturing facilities in a $105 million purchase announced in May. Because AST is acquiring fewer assets and will assume more trade accounts payables than originally expected, the purchase price has been cut significantly from the original estimate of $175 million. Tandy/Grid France is also part of the agreement and AST says the French addition will cost it less than $10 million. Officials at the company hinted to Newsbytes AST would take advantage of its access to the pen-based technology offered by Grid. This new handheld computer to be demonstrated is the first of AST's new products aimed at the popular personal digital assistant (PDA) market. The company claims the new handheld computer it will introduce will offer integrated communications options and is also boasting the unit will add ruggedness and a format for utility applications that outshines any similar small form factor product yet announced or shipped. To increase its manufacturing capacity, AST is looking to China and announced the opening of a Tianjin facility, 60 miles southeast of Beijing, for the manufacture, repair, and distribution of personal computer (PC) systems. The new plant is expected to employ 400. Number one in the rapidly expanding $440 million Chinese computer market, AST claims it holds 25 percent of the pie -- a pie that is expected to grow at the break-neck rate of 22 percent annually through the year 2000, according to International Data Corporation. Price cuts on its award-winning notebook computers were also announced this week. The company said it cut retail prices nearly $900 on the 386 Grid Convertible and the pen-based Penexec Convertible from $2,495 to 1,599. The 486 Convertible was reduced to $1,999 from $2,699. The Grid Convertible was voted Best Pen Convertible computer at the recent Penexpo Show in Boston, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Irvine, California, AST has garnered praise for its products from World Trade, PC Magazine UK, PC World, Consumer's Digest, and Infoworld. Part of Fortune Magazine's top 500 US companies, AST has also gained the distinction of being ranked 15 on the World Trade's 1992 list of "Top 100" mid-size multinational corporations. AST reported foreign sales of $393 million in 1992 and $582 million in international sales in fiscal year 1993. ------------------------------ COMPANIES TEAM UP TO DEVELOP HAND-HELD MOBILE PCs HOUSTON, TEXAS -- Saying its no longer possible for a single vendor to offer the whole solution, Compaq Computer Corporation President Eckhard Pfeiffer announced this week Compaq will team up with two other companies to develop a class of hand-held mobile computers that will allow the user to tap into their personal computers and networks anytime, anywhere. Pfeiffer said the number-three PC maker has joined with software company Microsoft Corporation, chipmakers Intel Corporation, and VLSI Technology to develop what Compaq calls "a hand-held mobile companion device." Compaq said the devices, which could be available as early as next year, will be powered by VLSI's Polar chip set, which is based on designs by Intel. Microsoft will support the chip sets with its Microsoft At Work operating system. Compaq will integrate the chip set and the software into a machine. Pfeiffer said he sees the venture as a survival strategy in which computer firms and component suppliers must work together. "We must integrate. No vendor can offer the whole solution any more. Alliances, powerful alliances, are the answer." Pfieffer declined to provide details about the new device's content. ------------------------------ WESTERN DIGITAL'S ROCKETCHIP IN THINKPAD, 540 MB HD IRVINE, CALIFORNIA -- Western Digital has announced its Rocketchip video graphics liquid crystal display (LCD) controller has been designed into IBM's new Thinkpad 750 notebook computer. The company also said it is shipping a one-inch high, 540-megabyte (MB), 3.5-inch form factor hard disk drive and has passed the one million mark on shipments of its 340 MB Caviar AC2340 hard disk drive introduced a year ago. Western Digital boasts the Rocketchip WD24 is the first video accelerator for portable computers. The Rocketchip is designed to operate in the low power 3.3 volts necessary for portable computers. The company claims the video accelerator speeds up Windows from 5 to 6 times over competing products by offering hardware-integrated, commonly used functions such as bit block transfer, line drawing, area fill, color expansion, and hardware cursor. Western Digital pointed out its Rocketchip products have been previously selected by IBM for integration into the Thinkpad 500, 700, and 720 product lines. In the hard disk drive arena, Western Digital says its 540 MB (formatted capacity) Caviar AC2540 is aimed at the Pentium, Power PC, and 486-based personal computer market. Features of the drive include an average seek time of less than 11 milliseconds (ms) as well as an adaptive multisegmented read cache and write cache. In addition, the drive supports enhanced integrated drive electronics (IDE) features including support for high host transfer rates via input/output Channel Ready (IORDY) operation and Type B and Type F direct memory access (DMA). Western Digital says these enhanced IDE features make the drive very competitive with features available on the higher-cost small computer systems interface (SCSI) drives. Gateway 2000 is reportedly the first adopter of the new 540 MB drive. The company also said it has shipped nearly 3 million of its Caviar Architecture I-based drives in a year's time. Of the drives shipped, one third were the 340 MB Caviar AC2340, the first 340 MB two-platter, 3.5-inch hard disk drive. Western Digital is making nothing in a 3.5-inch form factor smaller than 170 MB and no 5.25-inch hard disk drives at all, company officials said. Consumers can expect to pay about a dollar a megabyte for hard disk storage. Smaller sizes with larger capacities will continue to be the trend, officials added. ------------------------------ IBM SHIPS PRODUCTION VOLUMES OF FIRST POWERPC CHIP SOMERS, NEW YORK -- IBM has started to ship production volumes of the PowerPC 601, the first of four microprocessors the company is producing out of the PowerPC alliance between IBM, Motorola, and Apple Computer. The PowerPC 601 is designed for use in low-end to midrange desktops, a company spokesperson told Newsbytes. IBM began sampling the microprocessor among OEMs in May, he added. Motorola is also developing PowerPC chips, but IBM's PowerPC 601 is being billed as the first edition of the part to be available to the "merchant market." Other microprocessors that will support the RISC-based crossplatform PowerPC environment include the PowerPC 603, for laptop, handheld and other portable systems; the PowerPC 604, for servers and high-end desktop systems; and the PowerPC 620, an ultra-high-performance 64-bit chip for workstations and servers. The PowerPC chips conform to a specification created by IBM, Motorola, Apple, Bull, Thomson-CSF, Harris, TadPole Technology and other members of the PowerOpen Association for a hardware and software interface that will allow binary-compatible Unix and Apple Computer Macintosh System 7 applications to run across compliant systems from multiple vendors. In related news, IBM plans to unveil its first PowerPC computer systems next week. The PowerPC systems will be part of a new series of RISC System/6000s models to be announced on Tuesday at Unix Expo in New York City. ------------------------------ PSION LAUNCHES $500 PDA WITH DIGITAL VOICE PROCESSING BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS -- Psion has launched the Series 3a, a new personal digital assistant (PDA) priced at under $500 and billed as the first in the category to offer on-board digital voice processing. Designed to fit comfortably into a jeans or jacket pocket, the 6.5- by-3.3-by-0.9-inch unit features a microphone, loudspeaker, and a record-and-playback application for making quick voice messages and for recording sounds to be used as personal alarms. The new PDA also incorporates a large, 480-by-160 pixel LCD screen, a windowed GUI, a page preview option, built-in database, time/agenda management, word processing, and spreadsheet applications, the ability to share documents with desktop PCs, and drivers for 16 popular printers. "The Series 3a heralds the beginning of real voice interface development. In the future, we expect to see combined computer and telephony products, and also a degree of voice recognition," said David Potter, chairman of Psion PLC, announcing this latest pocket computer in his company's long line of machines. Barry Balcourt, vice president of Psion Inc., told Newsbytes that the Series 3a uses a proprietary multitasking operating system running on an 8088 microprocessor. The 80 character-by-17-line screen is equivalent to that of a standard computer monitors, he added, in an interview with Newsbytes. A variety of fonts and font sizes are available. The PDA never switches off, and can run for months on two AA batteries without battery replacement, according to Balcourt. In the near future, Psion plans to support the Series 3a with gateways to specific e-mail systems, he told Newsbytes. The Series 3a will be sold in 5000 European retail outlets, as well as all in major chains and many independent stores in North America, Balcourt noted. The product is on the cover of this week's Sharper Image catalog, and will be available in all 75 stores operated by that North American chain. Other large North American outlets include Sears, CompUSA, Silo, Circuit Cities Impulse Stores, The Wiz, Lechmere, J&R Computer World, Best Buy, and Good Guys. The new PDA is priced at $495 for a 256K model and $595 for a 512K model, according to Balcourt. Shipment starts today. ------------------------------ NEC TO UNVEIL POWER SAVING MONITORS IN OCTOBER SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- While exact details are under embargo until October 5, Newsbytes has learned that Japanese electronics giant NEC has a new range of power saving monitors streaming off its production lines for an October 5 launch in the US and Australia, as well as October 15 in Europe. With the US government taking the lead in demanding drastic power cuts from new PCs -- especially those to be purchased for government use -- many manufacturers are readying their 'green' product lines. In the case of PCs, most will have progressive shut-down procedures that sense when the machine is not being used. They will have to consume less than 30 watts at rest, or around a quarter of the normal consumption. Many users already have a screen-saver program running on their computer, but rather than save power, this simply prevents an image from being burned into the screen. New monitors such as the NEC range are expected to reduce power at rest by turning off all drive to the picture tube, by shutting down some sections of the electronics, as well as reducing power to the picture tube heater. This means that the system will not re-start instantly, but will take a couple of seconds to come back to full intensity. As the monitor itself will not be able to detect when a machine is idle (an unchanging screen alone is not a guide as the user may simply be reading the screen) most will rely on a signal from the PC. And this really means a video driver card that is capable of indicating a power-down signal such as by suppressing one of the drive circuits going to the monitor. ------------------------------ IBM CUTTING FACILITIES WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK -- For Sale. For Lease. The signs are going up on former IBM facilities across the United States and around the world. The company plans to cut its office holdings in the US from 44 million to 26 million square feet by the end of this year, spokesman Jon Iwata confirmed for Newsbytes. That is part of a worldwide plan to reduce real-estate holdings by 15 percent from the present 172 million square feet over the next few years. IBM expects to save $500 million per year worldwide by making the cuts. While IBM will not leave any city where it currently has facilities, Iwata said, it will move out of some of its space in a number of locations. This will mean breaking leases in some cases and selling company-owned facilities in others. Among the sites IBM is leaving is a 425,000-square-foot facility in Purchase, New York, that formerly was home base for the company's North American sales force. The sales force has moved "down the street" to a company-owned facility in neighboring White Plains, Iwata said. A 600,000-square-foot facility in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, is also being sold, and the company plans to lease out several more floors of its midtown Manhattan office building at 590 Madison Ave. Some space at the IBM Plaza in Chicago will also be leased out, Iwata confirmed. IBM announced a special $8.9-billion charge against earnings in the second quarter of this year to cover the cost of job cuts and capacity reductions. At that time IBM said it would cut an additional 35,000 jobs beyond the cuts already announced. The company's total staff has shrunk from more than 400,000 in the late 1980s to just under 300,000 now. In 1992, IBM lost $4.96 billion. Its second-quarter loss this year, after the special charge, was $8 billion. ------------------------------ RADIO SHACK INTROS "GREEN PC" WITH LOCAL BUS VIDEO FORT WORTH, TEXAS -- Radio Shack has introduced the Tandy 3100, the first Tandy personal computer to carry the Energy Star logo, and also the first in the line-up to come with local bus video. Aimed at small business and home office users, the new 33 megahertz (MHz) 80486SX-based "green PC" also provides a 212 megabyte (MB) hard drive, a built-in SoundBlaster audio card, and bundled software estimated at more than $380 in value. The computer's compliance with the Energy Star program will save users money on their electric bill, and the local bus video feature reduces the time needed to draw and process sophisticated graphics, officials stated. According to Tandy, the SoundBlaster card allows easy upgradeability to a "multimedia PC" with the addition of speakers, a CD-ROM (compact disc - read only memory) drive, and multimedia software, the company maintained. Applications software that comes pre-installed includes Microsoft Works for Windows, the America Online communications package, and productivity tools for managing family schedules, personal finances, and household inventories. The new PC also sports Windows 3.1, Super VGA graphics, 4 MB of memory (expandable to 64 MB), three expansion slots, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, an open device bay, a parallel port, two serial ports, a 101-key enhanced keyboard, and a two-button mouse. Priced at $1,299, the new PC is available at nearly 6,600 participating Radio Shack stores and dealers nationwide, according to the company. A one-year warranty is included in the purchase price. ------------------------------ SHARP TO INTRO DOS-COMPATIBLE PDA/NOTEBOOK HYBRID BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA -- Sharp is planning to introduce a new pen-based consumer electronic device which it describes as a mix between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a notebook computer. The PT-9000, expected to be officially announced in the fourth quarter of this year, has a new acronym -- personal information assistant (PIA). Sharp, which manufacturers the Newton Messagepad PDA for Apple Computer, has decided upon a DOS-compatible Geos graphical user interface (GUI) for the steno-pad sized PIA. Sharp announced its own version of the Messagepad, called the Expert Pad, that uses Apple's Newton operating system technology, but Geoworks boasts the power- saving Geos operating system won out for use in the PT-9000. The PT-9000 has not been officially announced, but Newsbytes has learned the unit will have a detachable keyboard, use 6 AA batteries for 25 hours of operation, weighs under two pounds, offers an "instant on" facility, and the entire top portion of the unit is a screen that can also accept pen-input via an included pen. The Geos operating system offers built-in software applications including the Geowrite word processor, forms-based database Geofile, and the spreadsheet Geocalc. Also included is the software for accessing the electronic information service American Online, as well as utilities for file management and games. The Geos operating system is also compatible with DOS- based personal computers (PCs) and a connection kit is being developed for desktop computers by Los Altos, California-based Palm Computing. Palm Computing and America Online will be familiar names for those who are awaiting the DOS-compatible competitor for the Messagepad, the Zoomer. Expected from Casio and Tandy toward the end of this month, the Zoomer is a direct competitor to the Newton Messagepad. Geoworks, the makers of the Geos operating system, claim Geos makes the Zoomer and PT-9000 more attractive to consumers because of its DOS compatibility and because of all the built-in applications that come with it. To encourage software development for the new Zoomer PDA and PT-9000 PIA, Geos is hosting a developer's conference, Monday and Tuesday, October 25-26, at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, California. Attendees of the two-day conference entitled, "Geos: The New Profit Platform," will each receive the Geos Software Development Kit (SDK) without charge. In addition, attendees will be treated to a preview of the prototype PT-9000 and three Zoomer PDA's will be raffled off. Conference attendees who sign up before October 6 can register for $445, a discounted price from the regular conference fee of $595, Geoworks representatives added. ------------------------------ TWO BIG TELECOM DEALS GO DOWN JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI -- Two major telecommunications deals were finalized. LDDS announced a mega- merger creating a new fourth long-distance network, while US West closed on its buy of part of Time-Warner's entertainment unit. The new number four long distance company, to be called LDDS Metromedia Communications, will be based in Jackson, Mississippi, the home base of President Bernard Ebbers. LDDS was formed by a series of mergers over the last year, absorbing the former Advanced Telecommunications Corp., of Atlanta, Resurgens Communications Group of Atlanta, and billionaire John Kluge's Metromedia Communications Corp., of New Jersey. The Advanced-LDDS deal closed last year. Kluge will chair the new company, and the entrepreneur, who's worth a reported $6 billion and holds 20 percent of the new combine, won praise from financial writers for putting the deal together. But it's clear that Ebbers, who put together LDDS over the last several years by acquiring many smaller long distance companies, is the key man. Shareholders of LDDS, after all, own 68.5 percent of the new company's equity. The deal also makes Jackson, which also holds the head offices of Mobile Telecommunications Corp., or MTel, and BellSouth's Mobilecomm paging unit, the South's unquestioned telecommunications headquarters city. The new company has annual revenues of $1.5 billion, which Press or croll?s still puts it way behind number three Sprint, and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker-symbol LDDS. The Time Warner-US West deal, announced in May, brings Time Warner Cable $2.5 billion with which to upgrade its systems so it can handle hundreds of channels and more two-way services. Time Warner Cable is the nation's second largest cable operator, with about 7.1 million subscribers, and the company plans to spend $5 billion on the upgrade over the next five years. The firm had to overcome an 18-month hurdle by the Justice Department giving the new company time to divest itself of small cable systems in US West's 14-state service area, although Bell Atlantic recently won a District Court challenge to the prohibition against Bell company competition in cable within their home territories. ------------------------------ REAL 14,400 BPS MODEM FOR LESS THAN $200 LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA -- A 14,400 bit/second data-fax modem, with software, for under $200? Yes, and that's just the retail price, according to Cardinal Technologies, which expects a $139 "street price" for its new MVP144DSP, part of its Cardinal Modem Value Pack series sold at computer "superstores" like Computer City and Comp USA. The new modem costs about $80 less than the current retail prices on Hayes Accura and US Robotics Sportster models. It's based on an Analog Devices digital signal processing chip, which means it can be upgraded through software to even faster speeds, or new protocols and other features. The new modem also bundles both Windows and DOS fax and data software, and features a limited lifetime warrantee. The new modem will ship this month, along with a companion 9,600 bps model at $169 retail. At the same time, Cardinal has cut prices across its line by up to 38 percent. The company makes 15 different modems now at its factory, and will increase that to 23 this fall. In a prepared statement, president Harold Krall chided US Robotics and Hayes as "recent converts" to the notion of affordable modems. He also said that, this fall, Cardinal will roll out new pocket modems, and 19,200 bps Vterbo modems developed with AT&T. One of Cardinal's biggest successes has been its MVP Series, co- marketed with Prodigy. The company said that the 2,400 bps MVP product now ranks Number four on Ingram Micro's Best Sellers List, and has been in the Top 10 for over 40 weeks. While fighting the modem price wars aggressively, Cardinal is also trying to branch out into other areas, spokesman Stacey Pierson told Newsbytes. "We also released a multimedia upgrade kit two weeks ago," she said, which will be going into the same channels. "We want to be known as more than just a modem company. You can go to Cardinal for many different products and upgrades." ------------------------------ ATI SHIPS 14,400-BPS MODEMS TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, -- ATI Technologies has announced shipment of two new 14,400-bit-per-second (bps) data and facsimile modems -- the 14400 ETC-I and ETC-E units. The 14400 ETC-I is an internal model and the 14400 ETC-E is external. Both support 14,400-bps data transfers using the V.32bis standard, and can also send and receive fax messages at speeds up to 14,400 bps, ATI officials said. The modems also support commonly used data compression and error control standards, including V.42bis, which ATI said can increase transmission speeds by as much as a factor of four. The fax component of the modems is EIA Class 1 compliant and is claimed to be compatible with Group 3 fax machines and fax cards. Both modems come with the full retail versions of the FaxWorks facsimile software and COMit communications software from SofNet, both of which are designed for use with Microsoft Windows. The internal modem comes with Multiple Interrupt Select (MIS) to allow serial ports to be assigned to alternate interrupts for compatibility with multiple expansion cards. The external version has an Easy-Set front panel meant to make it easy to set frequently used functions such as auto-answer and redial without using software. The 14400 ETC-I has a suggested retail price of US$249 or C$299. The 14400 ETC-E's list price is US$299 or C$369. Both are shipping now, company officials said. ------------------------------ INTEL, MCI TO INTEGRATE PHONES, PCs NEW YORK -- MCI announced it has signed a development deal with Intel to explore opportunities in integrating telephones and PCs. Applications include advanced PC-based data, audio, and videoconferencing. The idea is to marry Intel's expertise in computer hardware, video, and PCs with MCI's expertise as a provider of intelligent network services. Earlier this year, Intel made a number of related announcements , including support for the Microsoft Telephony Application Program Interface. It has also signed separate alliance agreements with regional Bell companies Ameritech, Bell Atlantic and Pacific Bell, and with European equipment makers Ericsson and Siemens. Until now, it has been best-known in the telecommunication business for its fax-data modems. Analysts speculate the new deal could put MCI's videophone technology, which comes from GEC and Marconi of the UK, onto Intel boards for insertion in Windows-based PCs. That could prove important to MCI, since videophone sales have been slow because the MCI and AT&T offerings are incompatible. Intel could also work with MCI on digital services used by videoconferencing equipment makers like PictureTel. No money changed hands in the deal. Separately, MCI signed CompuLink Ltd., as a value-added dealer, meaning its WorldLink gateway products could be cross-marketed with MCI services like MCI Mail and MCI Fax. The company's products are designed to integrate data and text-based services, which could provide powerful links between MCI Mail and MCI Fax. ------------------------------ AMERICA ONLINE SUBSCRIBER BASE EXPANDS VIENNA, VIRGINIA -- While Prodigy and Compuserve still have the lead in subscribers, America Online is now competing with GEnie for third place. America Online says it now has 350,000 subscribers. That would put it even with GEnie, based on recent market analyses by Jupiter Communications of New York. The company said the figure represents a gain of 100,000 subscribers in the last six months, and an 80 percent increase in the last year. Over that time the company has turned on local versions of its service in Chicago and elsewhere, created alliances with a number of publishers for special forums, and begun bundling its software with popular computers. The last move is thought to have been the greatest spur to growth, according to company officials. America Online has achieved success in part because it offers a graphical user interface. Apple Computer recently signed a deal to switch to America Online's GUI (graphical user interface) for its future online offerings. America Online originally created its interfaces, for both Macintosh and PC-compatible computers, when it was developing specialty services for computer manufacturers. The company also went public in March, 1992, the only online service to do that. America Online's chief financial officer, Lennert Leader, recently told analysts he's comfortable with earnings estimates of 75-85 cents per share for the fiscal year ending next June. He estimated the number of subscribers could grow to 500,000 by the end of the year, which would probably put it well ahead of GEnie, now in third place behind Prodigy and CompuServe, among US consumer online services. GEnie, which is a unit of General Electric, is highly profitable, according to Jupiter's Josh Harris. ------------------------------ ONEBBSCON - BBS's ARE KEY TO CLINTON'S DATA HIGHWAY COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO -- The more than 70,000 private and public bulletin board systems (BBS) are the key to President Bill Clinton's widely touted data highway of the future. That's what Jack Rickard, organizer of the second annual Online Networking Exposition Bulletin Board Systems Convention (ONE BBSCON) being held this week in Colorado Springs, Colorado, says. "That network already exists to some degree, but the national highway is a conceptual problem. What they are proposing to do all can center on an infrastructure for the data highway part," says Rickard. "Implicit in that is to bring K-12 education onto this data highway, but some of their concepts are a little naive. There are 16,000 school districts in this country, and about 80,000 schools. The infrastructure that is the Internet now, or even that could be built with a fairly large application of money, tends to be more technical than these people are going to adopt as an interface." He also cited the enormous cost of teaching educators to use the system. Rickard believes bulletin boards will wind up being the interface between the Internet and the actual data highway. BBS operation has become a big business, with thousands of boards, both public and private, now in operation worldwide. About 2,000 of those operators, called sysops (system operators), met this week to hear talks by industry experts and participate in discussions about subjects as diverse as legal issues, media relations, bulletin boards for government agencies, programming languages, copyright issues, and women online. They also got a chance to play some golf, see some Colorado scenery, take in a mountain barbecue, and rub shoulders with their counterparts as well as the big names in the industry. The subject matter found on the thousands of boards is as varied as the people that operate them, sometimes general in nature and sometimes very specific. Newsbytes talked to Julie Silverman, sysop for the National Process Servers BBS. Five years ago Silverman, a real estate agent, was calling boards to get information about properties for sale. She now owns a legal processing service company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and set up her board to provide a common ground for process servers and investigators in Minnesota and western Wisconsin to share information and exchange jobs. The monthly charge to access Silverman's board is $49.95. "That's to cover the cost of the equipment and phone lines," she told Newsbytes. While this year's show didn't have a specific theme attached to it, Rickard told Newsbytes there are several main issues being discussed. "There is an intense interest in, and we have a lot of sessions about, the Internet connection for bulletin boards systems. Another has to do with the legality of adult images, and the third, which is related to the second, is how to present images online as we move towards a more graphical user interface." The attendees are also getting a look at the latest technology in hardware and software. "They (the vendors) are coming in with all kinds of secret stuff, new products, new presentations, and special show discount deals," says Rickard. The preceding stories are © 1993 NewsBytes. Reprinted with permission. __________________________________________________ AMD DISCLOSES INCORPORATION OF INTEL IN CHIP Advanced Micro Devices has disclosed that its scientists may have incorporated parts of Intel's computer language in its new "built from scratch" microprocessor. An AMD spokesman said the development will not significantly delay release of the new chip, which could occur as early as this month or in October. AMD had previously pledged that it would release the AM486SX chip during the current quarter. The new chip was designed to be a non-cloned version of Intel's 486 with the circuitry largely reverse-engineered from Intel's. The chip will be "pin-compatible" - that is, like other AMD chips, it will be able to be plugged into sockets designed for Intel chips. ------------------------------ COMPUTER ORDERS RISE A government report on factory goods orders, released earlier this week shows that demand for computers is rising sharply. Overall, orders for all products made in U.S. factories and manufacturing shops is growing slowly, rising 3.7 percent from July 1992 to July 1993. But orders for computers and office equipment climbed 21.6 percent in that one-year span. Computer and office equipment orders each month this year: -up 8.1 percent, July; down 5.3 percent, June; up 6.1 percent, May; down 2.5 percent, April; down 4.8 percent, March; up 9.6 percent, February; down 0.8 percent, January. ------------------------------ HP ANNOUNCES TAKE BACK PROGRAM Hewlett Packard has announced a pilot program to collect used inkjet printer cartridges. The cartridges are used in HP's market-leading DeskJet brand printers, as well as in its inkjet plotters and fax machines. In the U.S. program, customers may return their used cartridges to any participating dealer. HP will provide dealers with cartridge collection bins and retrieve the cartridges periodically at no cost to the dealers. After the cartridges are collected, they will be sent to processing facilities where the precious metals (gold and copper) used in the cartridges will be reclaimed. Ore smelters will use the remaining plastic parts as an energy source. The plastic, which can be burned at extremely high temperatures, is a much cleaner source of energy than traditional fossil fuels. ------------------------------ ATARI REPORTS SECOND QUARTER RESULTS Atari recently reported its operations for the second quarter ended June 30, 1993. Net sales for the quarter were $5.7 million as compared to $23.3 million for the same quarter in 1992. During the quarter, Atari incurred an operating loss of $4.0 million as compared to an operating loss for the second quarter of 1992 of $45.0 million. In addition, during the quarter the company incurred loss on exchange of $3.1 million and had other income items totalling $0.5 million, which resulted in a net loss for the second quarter of 1993 of $6.6 million as compared to $39.7 million in 1992. Commenting on the results, Sam Tramiel, president of Atari, said, "The company has focused all of its efforts on the development and launch of its new multi-media video entertainment system called Jaguar, which will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year in the New York and San Francisco markets. We have approximately $35 million in cash." @endnode ------------------------------ @node P1-3 "Status Report - Amiga" @toc "menu" PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ellen Kazmaier (314) 894-8608 Director of Marketing (800) 829-8608 Soft-Logik Presents An In-Depth Preview Of PageStream 3.0! St. Louis, Missouri (September, 1993) Soft-Logik Publishing Corporation will present an in-depth preview of PageStream 3.0. PageStream 3 is a completely new version of the #1 desktop publishing program. Adding a comprehensive list of features that users have requested, PageStream 3 surpasses its competition. PageStream 3 is the ideal program for any desktop publishing project. It can be used to write letters, produce high-end color separations and publish complex books with multiple sections and chapters. The new trapping and plate control features makes PageStream 3.0 a leader in the emerging pre-press field. PageStream 3 breaks new ground with a dual paragraph and character style system that allows style override, style ripple and object styles. The new style system makes applying attributes to text and objects easier than ever before. PageStream s flexible toolbox allows users to choose between small, large, vertical and horizontal toolbox layouts. There are even floating panels for fonts, colors, styles, macros and pages to make editing easier. PageStream 3 offers an incredible array of document formatting features. Auto-kerning and auto-hyphenation have been added, and text styles are configurable, including changing the shadow type and offset, and the underline method. The tab feature allows left/center/right alignment on any character, and dot leaders (filled tabs) can be made with any character. PageStream 3.0 now supports the PANTONE Color System. PageStream 3.0 uses this industry standard to provide printed color accuracy with guaranteed results. In addition to PANTONE support, PageStream 3.0 offers support for spot and process color, and CMYK, HSV, and RGB color models. PageStream has always been the import format champion with numerous formats supported. Import a Word Perfect file and export a Final Copy document. Or import an IFF ILBM and export it as TIFF. Import an Adobe Illustrator 3.0 EPS file, interpret it into a structured drawing, and dissolve it into component shapes and paths. And the newly added format of translating Professional Page documents. Users of Gold Disk s Professional Page desktop publishing program can now make the transition to PageStream painlessly. Converting a Professional Page document for use in PageStream is a simple task. PageStream 3 adds the power of ARexx without adding the complexity. ARexx scripts can be written from scratch or recorded within the program. Scripts can then be played back, without knowledge of ARexx programming. PageStream 3 features are an extensive ARexx command set that will satisfy any power-user. The PageStream 3.0 publishing system comes with the PageLiner 2.0 text editor and the BME 2.0 bitmap editor. These programs are linked to PageStream with the included HotLinks 2.0, the Amiga data exchange standard. PageStream 3.0 will be available in early fall for $395. Customer who purchase a full copy of PageStream 2.2 after March 15, 1993, are eligible for a free upgrade to version 3.0 by mailing their registration card, proof of purchase and $5 for shipping and handling, to Soft-Logik. Previous purchasers can upgrade for $125 if they own PageStream 2.0 or higher, or for only $95 if they also own HotLinks Editions. Professional Page owners can upgrade to PageStream for $175. (limited time offer) PageStream 3.0 will change the way you think about publishing. Mark @ Soft-Logik Publishing ------------------------------ Introducing... The Elysian Archive A Collection of Freely-Distributable Amiga Files This collections has been painstakingly assembled over a period of 6 months. It includes over 600 Meg of Amiga Files, complete with full descriptions. The CD-ROM is in ISO-9660 format, for compatibility with both Amiga and PC BBS's. Features include: · Over 700 SoundTracker/NoiseTracker modules, painstakingly duplicate-checked. · Over 200 EuroDemos and MusicDisks - show off the Amiga's capabilities! · Over 80 animations representing the best work displayable on all Amigas · Low cost! Only $30... For more information, please send NetMail to 1:280/316.0, or call (816) 587-3352 (voice). Or, send Internet mail to: ricketts.je@shocker.ee.twsu.edu ------------------------------ TeleText V1.10 (c) 1993 Jan Leuverink Long Description: This project makes it possible to view Teletext (also known as Teletekst, Videotext, Ceefax, Skytext, Supertext etc.) on your Amiga. It is suitable for any PAL Amiga, because it uses the parallel port to interface with the hardware. An electronic switch is provided to easily switch between the TeleText decoder and a printer. The project consists of a small piece of hardware and some software. The software is Shareware. This means that if you use the program longer than 3 weeks, you have to register or stop using it. Some features will only be available to registered users. Some features: - fully localized languages currently supported: * nederlands * deutsch * dansk - needs KS2.04 or higher and a PAL Amiga to run - can hold up to 4 teletext-pages, each page can contain a maximum of 50 subpages - saves pages in IFF, ASCII and its own TT format - loads pages in TT format - uses reqtools.library (included in archive) for requesters - the hardware needs a CVBS-videosignal containing teletext-information (can be obtained from the SCART/AV connector of a TV/VCR) Future support : - AREXX support * This will allow you to write Arexx scripts, that can fetch specified pages, save them, etc. * It will also include the ability to request a specific sub-page instead of all sub-pages of a given page. - The ability to click on a number on a page, so that that page is being looked for. Handy for index-pages etc., just click on the pagenumber you want to read. - Special version for use with the gameports (instead of the parallel port). - Graphics-hardcopy of currently displayed page. - Improved docs: more technical details about how the teletext system works, how the I2C-bus works etc. - Support for the NTSC screen modes. Some of these features will only be available to registered users. =============================== Required DOS: WB 2.04 or higher Computer: Amiga (PAL) Ram: approx. 100 kb =============================== Files / Size: TT110.lha - 124.909 byte Released: 11-SEPT-93 The file is requestable at 'The Amiga Workbench', Fido-node: 2:283/410. 'The Amiga Workbench' +31-5430-24097 It will also be distributed via ADS/SAN. ------------------------------ Announcement For Gene 1.0 TITLE GeNe - a commercial invoicing and stock management program VERSION 1.0 (15 September 1993) AUTHOR Ivan Pintori mc8420@mclink.it COMPANY MangaZone Advanced Services Via Grandis 1 00185 Roma ITALY Tel: ++39-(0)6-7028955 Fax: ++39-(0)6-7028955 EMail: mc8420@mclink.it (Ivan Pintori) DESCRIPTION GENE is a complete invoicing and stock management package for those who need to clean their desktops from calculators, pens and info sheets on products. Providing a clear interface, compliant to the User Style Guide by Commodore, MangaZone Advanced Services has made the most powerful invoicing and stock management program available for the Amiga(tm). FEATURES Many features but the most important are: - Over 4 billion invoices per year can be made; - Over 4 billion clients can be tracked at any time; - Over 4 billion products can be tracked at any time (even out of productions!); - Over 4 billion producers; - Over 4 billion orders per year; - Complete stock management with loading of stock and automatic unload via invoicing; - 3 prices per product, that are automatically associated to each type of client; - Full importation ready; - 255 different currencies supported; - 255 categories of products; - 255 types of products per each category; - 255 VATs can be associated to any Category-Type; - Every product, client, producer is given a unique serial number to be used in bar codes; - Reads, stores and uses currently used barcodes; - A 228 characters description can be included per each client, product and producer; - E-mail address per each client; - Products can be goods (subjected to stock) or services; - Products can be marked out-of-production and later on retrived; - Client can be of 3 different types; - Invoice layout is totally customizable via intuition; - Invoices can be retrived for archive printing; - Prices can be calculated after user definable formulas; - All via an easy Intuition Interface; REQUIREMENTS Any Amiga Computer with OS 2.04 and 1Mb of RAM. Hard Disk and BarCode reader strongly raccomanded. DISTRIBUTABILITY This program is Commercial. MangaZone Advanced Services is looking for companies interested in taking care of distribution in thier own country. Italy: RRP Lire 89000 IVA inclusa International: RRP US$99.95 MangaZone Advanced Services Via Grandis 1, 00185 Rome, ITALY Tel/Fax:++39-(0)6-7028955 @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-1 "JIStoJi v1.3" @toc "menu" JIStoJi v1.3 Available for FTP TITLE JIStoJi VERSION 1.3 (first general release) AUTHOR Gerald B. Mathias Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu HI 96822 Internet: mathias@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu Compuserve: 72017,1005 DESCRIPTION JIStoJi reads (displays) Japanese text electronically encoded in Old/New JIS, EUC JIS, or Shift JIS formats. It also prints hardcopy in 16X16-dot characters (24X24-dots if the user has the public domain fonts). It runs under Kickstart 1.3 or 2.0. It can be run from a floppy, and has no great memory requirements (unless reading a huge text). The archive contains the program, the fonts, documentation, and short sample texts in each format. HOST NAME ftp.hawaii.edu (128.171.44.70) DIRECTORY pub/amiga/apps FILE NAME jistoji.lha (159860 bytes) PRICE Free DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable as archived, but copyright 1993 by author @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-2 "ReOrg v3.1" @toc "menu" ReOrg 3.1 Available for FTP TITLE ReOrg RELEASE 3.1 AUTHOR Holger Kruse (kruse@cs.ucf.edu) SHORT Disk optimizer with DC-FFS support DESCRIPTION ReOrg can be used to optimize (defragment) volumes in any floppy disk-like device, like trackdisk.device, ramdrive.device, hddisk.device and most third-party harddisks. This usually results in faster directories and can also result in faster file access, shorter boot times etc. In addition to optimizing a disk, ReOrg can also convert the filesystem of a disk during the optimization, e.g. from OFS to DC-FFS. Compared to most other disk optimizers ReOrg is quite fast and has many options to customize the optimization to your specific needs. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS ReOrg requires Kickstart 2.04 or higher and Workbench 2.04 or higher NEW FEATURES Major new features since V2.33: - support for directory-caching (DCFS: DOS\4, DOS\5). - support for blocksizes <> 512 bytes. - implemented filesystem conversion during optimization. - all windows and requesters are font-sensitive. - added option "Keep Locks" that allows you to continue your work after optimizing the boot partition without having to reboot the system. - improved directory optimization algorithm used under Kick2.0. Side effect: icons appear faster on Workbench. - localization (even when running under Workbench 2.04). - online help function using AmigaGuide. - numerous bug fixes and enhancements. HOST NAME Aminet (e.g. wuarchive.wustl.edu) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/disk/optim FILE NAME ReOrg3_1.lha (program, language files and online-help) ReOrg3_1dvi.lha (dvi-files for written documentation) PRICE ReOrg is shareware (US$ 10). DISTRIBUTABILITY The archives are freely distributable in original and unmodified form. See documentation for details. ReOrg is (C) Copyright 1992/93 by Holger Kruse. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-3 "Zodiac Point v3.2" @toc "menu" Zodiac's Point 3.2 available for FTP TITLE Zodiac's Point VERSION Release 3.2 Version 37.73 (3.9.93) AUTHOR Ralph Seichter Z-Netz: R.SEICHTER@DARKNESS.ZER Deutscher Ring 6 Usenet: rseichter@darkness.gun.de 50354 Huerth Federal Republic of Germany DESCRIPTION Zodiac's Point is designed for the Z-Netz, a computer network which already covers Germany and many locations in Switzerland and is spreading further in the European Community. The base for this network is the Z3.8 mail exchange format. As it is a Z-Netz "point" software package, Zodiac's Point 3.2 handles message transfer, import/export of data and all sorts of message processing you'll need. The GUI follows the Commodore style guides very closely, so even beginners will be able to use Zodiac's Point without problems with mouse and/or keyboard. An online help system is included and the program is completely localized. English catalog and documents are included, the built- in language is German. Compared to "TheAnswer II", another widely used point program, Zodiac's Point is significantly faster in operation and causes a far less hard disk fragmentation. NEW FEATURES This is the first release available for FTP, so I won't give a detailed list. Every user of previous versions should upgrade because most of the features requested by registered users have been implemented since the last release. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Zodiac's Point will run with any Amiga. AmigaOS 2.04 is required, localization naturally requires AmigaOS 2.1 or better. HOST NAME Any Aminet host, i.e. ftp.uni-kl.de (131.246.9.95). DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/comm/misc FILE NAMES ZPoint32.lha DISTRIBUTABILITY This program is shareware. Minimum fee is 10,- DM (US $8), but you are free to give whatever you believe Zodiac's Point is worth. OTHER Note that ZCONNECT(tm) is not yet supported as this standard is still under discussion. @endnode ------------------------------ @node P5-4 "ScreenManager v1.31" @toc "menu" Announcement for ScreenManager 1.31 TITLE ScreenManager - a utility to control public screens VERSION 1.31 (9 Sep 93) AUTHOR Bernhard Mvllemann EMail: zza@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Bernhard Moellemann) DESCRIPTION ScreenManager opens public screens supporting nearly all features of the AmigaOS. It can show the properties of screens and displaymodes, too. FEATURES ScreenManager opens public screens supporting all basics like size, colors, pens and displaymode. Additionally it features - Automagic closing of a screen when the last visitor disappears - Closegadget attached to a screen - Interleaved bitmaps with OS 3.0 - support of Parent/Child screens - Hotkeys via cx.lib to move screens to front or make them default Additionally ScreenManager can list all available screenmodes and can show all available information about these modes from the display database. This applies also to the new displaymodes of third party graphics boards. NEW FEATURES This is an update to ScreenManager 1.13c. ScreenManager now supports the OS 3.0 features interleaved bitmaps, parent/child screens and various other flags. REQUIREMENTS Any Amiga computer with at least OS 2.04 HOST NAME wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (134.106.1.9) DIRECTORY /pub/amiga-boing/incoming/utils/ on wuarchive /pub/amiga/incoming/utils/ on ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg It seems archives in this directories will not move. FILE NAME sm_1_31.lha DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable as long as the contents of the archive are kept intact. You must not make any profit by selling, distributing or copying this package. @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-4 "Online Weekly" @toc "menu" /// ONLINE WEEKLY Amiga Report Online The lines are buzzing! --------------------------------- From Portal's AmigaZone ----------------------- .../General Q&A, Announcements, and Help!/Portal "party" at WOCA/Pasadena 16026.3.584.15 The Party 9/14/93 10:40 35/1706 Harv We held a Portal party/eating fest at Burger Continental in Pasadena last Saturday night for WOCA attendees. I handed out about 200 invitations at the show (and gave some to some friends to hand out) and about 40 people showed up for the party. I had asked for a setup in the burger joint's outdoor patio area but instead they stuck us in a room next to the patio which had about the worst acoustics imaginable - it was VERY loud and echoey in there, which turned talking into shouting. The beer was flowing freely, and everyone chowed down from the ample menu and seemed to have a good time. I didn't keep a list of all those who attended but they ran the gamut from Portal "regulars" and wannabees, to a couple current and former CBM employees, Usenet devotees and such. Everyone in attendance received a free copy of the Nutshell UNIX guidebook, which Portal will send to any Portal user free of charge for the asking (so write to "cs" via email if you want one). It's a fairly basic bonehead guide to getting started using a UNIX shell account, giving the most basic commands for creating and moving around files and directories, sending email and such. It doesn't cover the more popular topics such as Internet (FTP, IRC, Telnet, etc.) but there are excellent guides here online for those things if you need them. At any rate, everyone at the party appeared to enjoy themselves... we hung out there for about two hours till people had their fill and started to drift away. I asked everyone there to shout out their name and affiliation so we all know who each other was, and hopefully some folks who had seen each other online but had never met got the chance to make some new pals :) Harv ------------------------------ 16026.3.598.1 ImageFX and the WOCA Pasedena 9/16/93 09:33 43/2164 Kermit For everyone who missed WOCA at Pasedena (and you missed a really great show!), here are a few of the highlights that related to our products ImageFX and CineMorph. On Saturday Rusty Mills, an Animation Director at Warner Bros, described the use of the Amiga and ImageFX at Warner Bros. for use in the new animated series "Animanics" to an overflow crowd in the auditorium. In short, Warner Bros. uses ImageFX to create the titles that open every segment of the shows. They also color correct and retouch backgrounds on occasion. Rusty also ran, later at the GVP seminar stage, a hysterically funny segment from the Animaniacs series called, "Hooked on a Ceiling". Hooked on a Ceiling continued to run throughout Saturday and Sunday to crowded aisles. The, ah, rather controversial product Lightrave came out and included support for ImageFX amongst support for many display cards. MacrosystemUS, makers of the Retina display card, were showing an early version of their exciting new product for video professionals. The product, known as MultiLayer, is a multiple layer compositing tool allowing WYSIWYG control through multiple Workbench windows over 100 layers of digital images over a visible timeline. There is absolutely nothing like this on any platform, except the Amiga now, and it requires ImageFX to perform it's amazing compositing work! At least two major vendors of 24bit imaging products tentatively committed to adding MAGIC (a system that allows applications to share images - the archive for it is here online GEnie) image sharing support to their product line. This will be a major boon for Amiga imaging professionals! On Sunday GVP and Nova Design gave a presentation on morphing that packed the auditorium again. Many tips and tricks for achieving production level morphs in short periods of time were demonstrated. A few more vendors are also promising ImageFX supporting software packages for some VERY interesting applications. I look forward to being able to talk more about these soon! We really enjoyed ourselves and look forward to the next WOCA show! Kermit Woodall Nova Design, Inc. ------------------------------ From FidoNet's Amiga International Echo --------------------------------------- Area: AMIGA Date: 8 Sep 93 16:48:00 From: Jon Peterson (1:3640/10.0) To : All And Sysops Subj: FF1000th ******************* A Proposal *********************** For years and years, the work of Fred Fish in the organization, culling and distribution of non-commercial programs to the Amiga community has been of great benefit to us all. Programmers have been able to present their best efforts and we, of course, would have had doubtful access to some of the most innovative programs written - for any computer platform. As the vast majority of us Amiga users are aware, Fred Fish is coming up on the 1000th disk issue of this outstanding collection. This, in my humble opinion, is a milestone that should not go unnoticed. His contribution to the Amiga community certainly ranks alongside those that created this outstanding machine. As such, participants on FidoNet have proposed the Amiga community show our appreciation at the issuance of the 1000th disk by sending in donations to gather sufficient funds to purchase an A4000T (if and when available) or comparable machine when the time comes. Now is the time to get this thing going. If estimates are correct, at the present rate of publication, the 1000th disk should be out in approximately three to four months. Donations are being sent to: Concho Valley Computer Users Group FFish 1000th Fund c/o Jon Peterson P.O. Box 2661 San Angelo, TX 76902 Your assistance in posting this message on the BBSs you use or run would be greatly appreciated (sysops, how about a bulletin on logon?). Also request everyone pass the word at any Users Group meetings you attend. This is a group effort on behalf of all the Amiga users throughout the world. Please donate whatever you can afford - or even better - what you honestly think ------------------------------ Area: AMIGA Date: 13 Sep 93 6:57:02 From: Jon Peterson (1:383/300.0) To : All Subj: FFish 1000th Aniversary Well, here is the list of donors for the second week. I suggest simply posting names and fund total. If everyone wants the names and donations it can be done. Jon Peterson Matthew L. Schultz Chris Nelson Asha DeVelder Marshall Freedland Jeremy Friesner Michael Phipps Total donations as of 9/12/93 are $100.00. Got a ways to go folks. Please talk this up with all concerned (Amiga users). Request everyone keep this thing going. Paying a shareware or sending in a donation is too easily forgotten. Try to get an envelope and a check out today and do your part for what we've all appreciated and utilized. ------------------------------ Area: AMIGA Date: 15 Sep 93 13:53:00 From: Manny Casao (1:208/202.0) To : All Subj: A1200 Tower Just got off the phone with Amibitious Technologies makers of the Toaster Oven for the A3000/4000. This expansion unit transfroms your 3000/4000 into a Tower Workstation that includes 2 video slots plus 5 Zorro 3 slots that are NOT blocked when using a Toaster 4000. The reason I called was to find out the status of their A1200 Tower version. I was suprised to find out that development has been halted because they were afraid that there would not me a market for this item. ( NOTE: This item would retail for about $650.00 ) The felt that if anyone wanted such expansion, they would simply purchase an A4000, Not a 399.00 A1200 unit. I then mentioned to him that there were many other A1200 users besides myself that would like the features of the A4000, but could not initially aford to shell out 2,000 for an A4000 unit. I was then told that they would need to sell atleast 100 unit to make the project worth while. Lemme give you a few details on the unit. Basically same specs as the A4000 Toaster Oven. 2 Video Slots * Opalvision compatible NOW! * Soon to be T4000 compatible. 5 Zorro 3 Slots 2 PC AT slots 10 Drive bays 300 watt Power supply You can still use ANY A1200 expansion device that you have on you A1200 including trapdoor cpu devices. The unit is pretty close to completion but has been put on the back burner. If this expansion device interests you and you think that you would be wiling to purchase it if it were released give them a call and let them know or reply back to me with your name and # and I will foward all messages to them myself. They just want to know that a reasonable userbase is there. I am in no way connected with the company, I would just like to have one of the units. Toaster Oven The Ultimate Expansion A1200/A3000/A4000 AMIGA Workstation 9 SLOTS available at the same time 10 drive bays Install ANY card in your system. Always upgradable. Ambitious Technologies 1519 w. 134th Street Gardena,CA 90249 310-532-0787 310-532-0785 FAX Be sure to mention that you saw this on FidoNet. ------------------------------ From Delphi's Amiga SIG ----------------------- 18815 13-SEP 23:22 General Information RE: woca (Re: Msg 18808) From: 16BITTER To: PIPISTRELLO (NR) Here's a little stuff from UseNet: Xref: news.service.uci.edu comp.sys.amiga.graphics:18621 comp.sys.amiga.hardware:50533 Path: news.service.uci.edu!usc! howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!nnt p.ucsb.edu!mcl!uhenric From: uhenric@mcl.ucsb.edu (Henric Jungheim) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics,comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Some WoCA info / Re: Which Amiga to get? Date: 12 Sep 1993 18:41:08 GMT Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara Lines: 79 Message-ID: <26vqg4$bij@hub.ucsb.edu> References: <1993Sep12.084528.21729@csus.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: mcl.ucsb.edu In <1993Sep12.084528.21729@csus.edu> jwalkup@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Jeff Walkup) writes: > That's why the A2000 is actually a better choice if you need to add 2 > TBC's, a DPS PAR and/or VScope, etc etc. Or wait for the mythical > A4000T which may or may not ever see the light of day... It has been _done_ for some time now. The hangup is production capacity. Lou E. said it should be in production by the end of the year... perhaps by Nov. > (I actually heard that the 4000T is supposed to have TWO video slots....) It > does... I counted them myself. Oh... I was at WoCA on Sat. Neat show, but I got a sore throat just from walking from the show to the car. The smog was the worst I've ever experienced. Also... since I'm posting anyway. Some random thoughts about the show. The CD32 looks neat. CBM demoed the MPEG module w/ a couple of music videos. There were a few glitches if on really looked closely, but it seemed better than my VHS VCR. Really... it was pretty amazing. The MPEG option should be available in a couple of weeks. It will only be widely avail. in Europe at first. Don't look for it in the US for a while yet. CBM is churning out 20,000 units per week in their new factory, but it is apparently selling quiet well in Europe. The MPEG module will generate it's own video signal which will be genlocked to the CD32's normal video. This means that the CD32's chip ram won't be saturated w/ by the video stream (Lew E. said that the CD32 itself would not be doing very much while just decoding MPEG. The only thing the CD32 _would_ be doing is taking the 150k/sec data stream from the CD-ROM and feeding the audio stuff to the MPEG audio chip and the video stuff to the video chip [the MPEG chips are from C-Cubed]). The DPS PAR is pretty amazing. I have no experience in high-end video stuff, but the quality seemed as good as what I have seen on laser disc. They were playing a video of a couple of bimbos dancing around (I must point out that they were using a 12 or 13" monitor for that demo). The EGS-28/24 was there and looked real nice. It should be avail. "soon". The Piccolo (sp?) was there and would be shipping in the US as soon as the English docs were finished. The Picasso II was there, but unlike the ZIII boards, they were selling them at the show. Even the high resolution modes (I think the one they were using was the same as the NeXT had used) in 256 color seemed noticably faster than the 256 color AGA modes on my 4000/040. The DSP hardware is on _hold_. CBM is looking to continue the project after Jan 1 or so. The AAA chips should be in a prototype AAA machine by the Q1 94. If everything works out it may be avail. for sale Q3 94 (that's what Lew E. said...) The are expecting a performance boost of about 10-20x (I assume they meant over AGA. I didn't hear, but I think he said that...) RTG is set to be released with AAA (which will probably require it); it has been on hold with the DSP stuff. CBM was offering some stuff they did not have the resources to produce themselves to anybody who wanted to produce them (under a royalty free, but non-exclusive license). He (Lew E. or Jim D., I don't remember) named the Ethernet board and the multi- serial board as examples. The 4091 should be back in production "soon". Apparently the problem was (as w/ the 4000T) lack of resouces to produce the thing; especially when beginning the production of the CD32. RISC could be expected in the Amiga in '95. (Lew E. again) The CD module for the a1200 _will_ take the cpu slot. There may be room for extra FAST RAM on the card, tho. Oh... Lou E. == Lou Eggebrecht (VP of Eng.) and Jim D == Jim Dionne (Pres. of CBM USA) Henric Jungheim uhenric@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu Also I dunno if you heard there was a company showing LightRAVE.. it let's you run lightwave withOUT the toaster. It is a device that attaches to ANY Amiga.. they supposedly had it runnin on an A500. I don't know what NewTek had to say about this i'm waiting for more info on this one. Thing is You can't buy a stand along version of Lightwave but you can buy the UPgrade kit for $795 retail or used for about $500 and apparently anyone can purchase the upgrade kit. I guess the people who would be MOST intersted in this is people who already own the Toaster and want to run just lightwave on another machine perhaps. Interesting device nonetheless. It was going for $300 at the show. 16BiTTER @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P4-5 "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! P.S.: Please be sure to include your Email address in the text of your request message, it makes adding it to the list much easier. Thanks! ** IMPORTANT NOTICE: PLEASE be certain your host can accept mail over ** 100K! We have had a lot of bouncebacks recently from systems with a ** 100K size limit for incoming mail. If we get a bounceback with your ** address in it, it will be removed from the list immediately. @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-5 "SHI News" @toc "menu" /// SHI News: Virus Warning! Here we go again! ------------------------- ATTENTION: FROM MICHAEL ARENDS @ the SHI Regional Virus center P.O. Box 1531,- Lynnwood, WA 98046-1531 ----------------------------------------------- A ANNOUNCEMENT FROM ERIK LOVENDAHL SOERENSEN the founder of SHI SAFE HEX INTERNATIONAL VIRUS WARNING Please take care for the new blased "Descriptor 3.0" trojan bomb, which is being spread worldwide. Please spread this text file to your favorite BBS's. Please write a letter to all your users at your BBS to tell, that this text file is called: "Warn2793.lha", and ask them to read this warning. Please place this txt.file and all future in your virus killer area at your BBS. In the above mentioned way you can maybe help a lot of people to avoid to get a damaged harddisk or bulletin board. Thank you very much. * * * ATTENTION SYSOP's --------------- Please delete or change the following: 1. Concerning Virwarn-1.lha 6186 please delete this old file, if uploaded. 2. Only use the new updated version: Warn2693.lha length 9277 bytes. 3. If you have a text file 9277 byte called Virwarn-1b.lha or VirWarn2.lha please rename this file 9277 to Warn2693.lha. 4. The above is because I try to update you from time to time with the latest virus news. And I try to release it as Warnxxxx.lha, where the xxxx are the week (in the 2 first digits), and year (the next 2 digits). * * * HERE YOU HAVE SOME FACTS ABOUT THIS NEW VERY NASTY TROJAN BOMB: -------------------------------------------------------------- This virus is original spread as descr4.0.lha or -z-speed.lha = 3484 bytes, from some pirate BBS'es: descr4.0.lha 3484 bytes The new DescriptorV4.0 with new POWER Snap... Run without Snap in background and you will see the new Powersnap 120 % faster in copy Descriptions. -z-speed.lha 3484 bytes ZENITH MODEM SPEEDER When unpacked you got a file: descr4.0.exe 7016 bytes (When spread as descr4.0.lha file. I dont't know anything about the -z-speed.lha yet) HERE YOU HAVE SOME FACTS: ------------------------ 1. There is no docs with this file, but the program looks like a kind of scene-utility or like. 2. The unpacked "Descriptor 3.0" bomb is 7016 bytes. Please remark IT ISN'T ......the 4.0 version, but a 3.0 version! 3. The "Discriptor 3.0" needs a file named "descriptions.txt" placed in the S/Dir, if not the descriptor guru. 4. In this pack you can see how the Discriptor bomb looks, if you run the 2 files named: @{"DescriptorDump1.IFF" system "Ar_viewer DescriptorDump1.IFF"} and @{"DescriptorDump2.IFF" system "Ar_viewer DescriptorDump2.IFF"}. 5. If executed the "Discriptor bomb" will tell, that it need a file called "Snap" in memory or tries to load it from the C/Dir., Don't trust this... 6. Infact you Amiga will get the following command: Delete :#? all 7. And OH, NO...your whole harddisk or disk will be deleted! 8. This trojan can't infect and be spreaden. It can ONLY DAMAGE IF EXECUTED! * * * * * HERE YOU HAVE A LITTLE ASCII SHOT-CUT OF THE DESCRIPTOR BOMB: ------------------------------------------------------------ Descriptor V3.0 User Interface Search for Group Name Reload Descriptions About Quit List all Names View next Logo Pop Screen back Window backpop raw:0/11/640/102/Descriptor V3.0 by Colorboy of Submission on 29-JUN-1993/nosize raw:0/11/640/186/Descriptor V3.0 by Colorboy of Submission on 29-JUN-1993/nosize S:Descriptions.TXT Cannot find the Text file called 'S:Descriptions.TXT Press Return to Exit! Enter new Name! Descriptions displayed !! HI Cannot allocate Memory!Press Return to Exit! Sure that File format us correct Press Return to Exit! There is a further Description 4 diz Group END OF LIST Press any key to continue - Q or X to exit Error opening 'gadtools.library'. Error opening gadget. Error opening window. Hey yo lame bastard! What about kick 2.0? Either I couldn't open a reply port or find the 'clipboard.device'. HSnap is not in memory. I try to load it from C-Dir. Use underlined characters as hotkeys and follow the directions. COULDN'T COPY TO CLIPBOARD! Update by MCI Submission 93 topaz.font FORM FTXTCHRS ../\......./\....../\.................. Credits :/ ¯¯¯¯¯|/ ¯¯¯¯|/ ¯¯¯¯¯|SUBMISSION`: / |___| | _| |___|:..........: CODING BY COLORBOY \/\__ \ \/\__ \:THE:SIGN`:: DEZIGN &IDEA BY MCI / | / | / | /::..OF....:: \ _____/\______/\_____ /:::STYLE`:::: TYPE IN A GROUP NAME NOW! `\/  DESCRIPTOR  \/B-S::.....:(C)OPYRIGHT SUBMISSION 93 -÷!÷- Your HD is deleted ... Happy Birthday -MCI-/DCS AHHAHAHAHAHAHA -÷!÷- * * * SHI VIRUS KILLER UPDATES You can do a valuable help to send new viruses to Safe Hex International for update this new SnapShot killer (SnapShot20.lha), and a lot of other killers eg.: Virus Checker, BootX, VT and VirusZ. Did you for exampel know, that SHI have made the virus test programming in D-Copy 3.1 and in the commercial X-Copy program version april 93? NEW BULLETIN BOARD KILLER Look out for our new SHI special BBS Killer "Supervisor", which will be released within a few months and please help us to get more viruses for the update of this quite new kind of virus killer. Please ..help us with the later mentioned wanted viruses and of course help yourself and your Amiga friends too. Safe Hex International need your help to combat against all these nasty viruses. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! * * * * * SHI REWARD NOW $5000 - VIRUS PROGRAMMER WANTED! ---------------------------------------------- Do you know a virus programmer? You can get a reward of $1000 for his name and address. The fact is that the law punishes data crime very, very hard. Please note that your name will be confidential, known only to me. Several people have asked me about our reward $ 1000 for the name of a virus programmer, and a few have phoned to me or have written to me to get the reward. One of the askings was about if other than Amiga viruses was inclued the reward ?......Of cause we pay the reward for ALL different kinds of viruses both PC, MAC and like. To-day I don't have got a valid virus announcement. If you know a virus program -mer, therefore please state: 1. The virus name (must be wellknown). 2. The address and name of the virus pro- grammer. 3. The name and the address of other people, who maybe know that the virus programmer have spread this virus. 4. If you know, which way the virus was spread please state this, (spread e.g. by modem) I can ensure, that your name will be held 100 % confidential, when we contact the police, if you want that! Please contact me, and I will send you more info: SAFE HEX INTERNATIONAL Erik Loevendahl Soerensen Snaphanevej 10 4720 Praestoe Denmark Ph. + 45 55 99 25 12 Fax + 45 55 99 34 98 * * * * * N E W V I R U S U P D A T E S F O R M O D E M U S E R S: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: If you have modem. Send new viruses direct to the "Safe Hex International special restricted virus area J 7 at: BITS'N'CHIPS BBS: +45 31 31 87 42 Sysop: Henning Larsen (24 hours - HST 14.4) ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Or please use our new excellent SHI bulletin board: SAFE HEX INTERNATIONAL BBS: ISDN : + 45 87 25 00 03 Sysop: Benny Petersen 24 hours support DUAL/STD: + 45 86 62 72 16 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: GOOD VIRUS HUNTING * * * THANK YOU VERY, VERY.. MUCH FOR YOUR HELP * * * KIND REGARDS YOUR AMIGA FRIEND ERIK LØVENDAHL SØRENSEN SAFE HEX INTERNATIONAL @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-6 "WOCA Report" @toc "menu" /// 1993 World of Commodore Show Report ----------------------------------- By Dan Zerkle (zerkle@cs.ucdavis.edu) Part ONE This report details my trip to the World of Commodore Amiga show held in Pasadena, California on September 10th, 11th, and 12th. Through interviews and material, I have a pretty good idea what is going on with Amigas in the United States just now. I'll try to get most of that across to you. This section goes into the detail of my trip. The next section discusses the seminars I attended. The later sections detail the vendors' booths. There is going to be a lot of that, as I visited, collected materials, interviewed, and generally schmoozed at every single vendor booth. Addresses of companies will show up at the end of each of the sections in which they are mentioned. I drove in from the south by way of I-15. Those poor unfortunates who flew in had to deal with all the traffic between the airport and Pasadena. From listening to the reports on the radio, they were lucky to survive. They certainly didn't get there any faster than I did, and I drove from San Diego. The air was hot and visibly smoggy. My houseplant named "Jennifer" was in the car, so I parked in an underground garage to keep it from baking (don't ask). I picked up my all-important press badge, bought my tickets, and headed in. The guards at the door said I didn't need tickets with the badge! I got my money back, but I was still annoyed, as I was made to buy a ticket last year. I first cruised around getting a feel for the place. Notable by their absence were NewTek, Supra, and ASDG. Commodore had a big booth in the back, and Centaur had a very splashy booth at the front with audience chairs and big speakers. Sunrize had a very noisy booth near the back, and GVP had their usual monstrosity, complete with a projection monitor to show cartoons! There were at least four dealers there, selling stuff like crazy. There were also several user groups, three magazines, and even a BBS! The first face I recognized was that of Michael Todorovic, from our UCSB days together. He was hanging out with Brad Schenck in their Terra Nova booth. I promised him the first interview. I found Harv Laser next. This was important, since we were supposed to share a motel room that night. Then came a quick cruise through the Commodore booth, where I snagged a press kit. I had a feel for the show by this time. The big news was, as expected, in video and graphics. Lots of MPEG boards were out, plus scads of high-end video cards. For those who don't know, MPEG is a method of compressing video frames to digital form. With the proper hardware and software, these can be played back in real time. Because of the compression, much less disk space is required. More on this later. The other big news, of course, was the US introduction of CD32. Just behind that was OpalVision's video stuff. They have a lot of new product on the way. By then, it was time for the press conference. As I waited for it to start, I was shocked to find that a writer for CCN (a Northern California computer journal) knew who I was and with whom I was staying that night. News travels fast, I guess. Unfortunately, I lost the magazine and business card he gave me, so I can't tell you who he was. However, I'm sure he's reading this, so I guess you'll find out. I have to get the address of CCN into this report. As the press conference started, John Delulu introduced himself as Irving Gould, and explained that the soft drinks we were just served were $1, and the sandwiches were $2. Either he needed to boost the bottom line a bit, or the US operations don't approve of what's going on at the international level. I never did find out what Delulu's actual position in Commodore was. Gould (who did not attend the show) is, of course, president and major stockholder of Commodore International. After the press conference, I started interviewing. This meant taking lots of notes, collecting reams of publicity paper, and looking at wads of product demonstrations. About half the time, the interviewee would suddenly crane his/her neck strangely, look at my badge, and ask, "So, what magazine are you from?" The responses were everything from "Use-what?" to "Oh, so _you're_ Dan Zerkle." I had to explain the whole concept of Usenet and comp.sys.amiga.announce to several people. It seemed that the higher up in the company these people were, the harder it was to explain. If things went well, I recruited the company for electronic announcements. This involved swapping my home-brew business card with those of the other, and plugging Portal to anyone without e-mail access. Next time, I'm going to find some card stock. Hopefully, we'll be getting announcements from a few more commercially oriented companies in the near future. In particular, I think I'll be getting stuff from Commodore again. Axiom had a seminar that afternoon that, on a whim, I attended. The seminar was off on the other side of the building. I had to chase signs around through another convention to find it. After that was the big event: Commodore's keynote address. The audience seemed _much_ more hostile than they were at the press conference. One guy started mouthing off about how he couldn't get a high-density drive. Jim Dionne (President of Commodore US) didn't seem to be aware of the supply problem of stand-alone high density drives, and the guy in the back didn't know about the mail order firms that do have it. Some folks in the audience yelled various helpful comments at the loudmouth in the back, but he wouldn't shut up, and we wanted to hear the next question. I finally yelled at him to "buy one with a 4000 wrapped around it." The resulting chuckle from the audience finally clammed him up. When I checked into the motel that night, I discovered more Amigoids also checking in. Of course, I forgot their names (I was done taking notes), but they seemed to know who I was. I saw them later at the show. The three of them had press badges and a video camera. They seemed to be interviewing people at random. I never did figure out what they were doing. Maybe they'll tell me, so I can let you know in my next section. Harv had a friend by that night. Again, I wasn't taking notes, but he was from Sweden and his name was something like Pyotor or Pieter. Apparently, this guy is active on IRC (Internet Relay Chat, a multi-user electronic "talk" forum on the Internet), and is the author of an IRC robot called "Mama." He was there to check out OpalVision to see if his company could use it for video production. The next day was mostly more interviewing. I did get to the Opalvision seminar, though. It was pretty clear that they intend to compete directly with NewTek's video toaster. That night, though, was interesting. Harv and a bunch of Portal people got together with anyone they could invite at a nearby noisy restaurant and generally made it noisier. About 40 folks showed up, and most introduced themselves. I noticed some former Commodore employees. As Harv said, there seemed to be a lot of that going around. Michael Todorovic's sister (Natasha) managed to embarrass her brother pretty thoroughly. After that, several of us went back to the motel room for a little party. It was a different sort of party in that someone was on Portal and IRC through Harv's "portable" CDTV the whole time, commenting on the party. I refuse to confirm or deny any rumors about this party except to say that yes, I did unstop the toilet when it backed up. Anyone else at the party who wants his/her name mentioned can do it him/herself. Sunday was a lot quieter than Saturday. I attended a different version of the keynote address, interviewed the remaining vendors, and cleared out. Boy was I exhausted. I took a whole yellow legal pad full of notes (49 big pages). I had a stack of glossy publicity paper two inches thick. I had a sore back, throat, and feet. Hopefully, this report will be worth all that. If you attended the show and think I've missed some important point, feel free to contribute your own report of that vendor or event. Also, come to think of it, I missed one vendor: MegageM. Anyone with a report on their booth is welcome to ontribute it. Next section: A report on the seminars, addresses, and press conferences. ------------------------------ PART TWO: Commodore's Press Conference, Address, and Booth This is part 2 of my report from the World of Commodore Amiga show held in Pasadena, California, on September 10th, 11th, and 12th. This section details what I learned about Commodore from their press conference, keynote address seminar, and booth. I will continue to post sections each night until I finish. There should be at least four more sections. First, a couple of corrections from last night's report: The gentleman I met at the press conference was Robert Du Gaue, contributing writer/editor for California Computer News. The name of the mysterious business executive who pretended to be Irving Gould is spelled "John DiLullo," not the way I had it spelled. He's head of public relations. Gould's correct title is in fact "Chairman of the Board of Commodore International." It was in fact Jim Dionne who made the smart-alec comment at the press conference about paying for sandwiches. The friendly guy from Sweden is named Pjotr Sjostrom. Not only did he write the "mama" robot on IRC, he also runs the Aminet site, ftp.luth.se. Many thanks to Harv Laser for filling in the gaps here. I could have sworn that it said "Delulu" on that guy's badge, though. PRESS CONFERENCE The press conference was held at 11:00 on Friday the 10th. The crowd seemed remarkably subdued, probably because many of them were still a little worn out from the travel. Video and film cameras, laptops, tape recorders, and even ink pens were visible in the group of about 30 reporters. The reporters managed to be remarkably polite except for one from a competing electronic publication. Jim Dionne, president of Commodore's US operations, gave most of the address. He had a tremendous amount of trouble getting a microphone clip on his tie. He then started in with a status report of the main Commodore products. The CD32 (note: the "32" should be superscripted, but that won't work properly on Usenet) was introduced in the United Kingdom in July, and has been shipping for a few weeks. It is being introduced in the US now, and will shipping by the Christmas season in limited areas. The main launch will be at the January Consumer Electronics Show in January, after which it will be available in all areas of the United States. Dionne referred to the A4000 as a "remarkable success." Apparently, the main problem is one of manufacturing enough of them. Apparently, there have been complaints from dealers who would like to have them in stock. He said that the A1200 has "done well" in the United States, then moved on. Dionne stated that he hopes the CD32 will become the next Commodore 64. Considering that the C64 has sold more units than any other computer in history, I consider that unlikely, but Dionne clearly considers the CD32 to be the best hope for Commodore's future. "We really do feel we've hit a home run here," he stated. After Dionne was done, Lew Eggebrecht, Vice President of Engineering, took the stage to discuss the more technical details of the CD32. He took even longer to get the microphone clip properly attached. He then started into the technical specifications of the CD32, calling it a "32-bit game console / interactive multimedia player." He emphasised that it solves many of the problems apparent after developing CDTV. It has basically the same chip set as the Amiga 1200, with the same sound and AGA graphics. The 14mHz 68EC020 it uses is a 32- bit processor with a small cache that gives a performance of about four million instructions per second. It comes with two megabytes of RAM, all accessible by the graphics and sound systems. It also has one megabyte of ROM (opposed to half that in an A1200). This contains a special version of AmigaDOS (equivalent to version 3.1). It also contains support for the CD file system and the game controller. One kilobyte of non-volatile RAM (EEPROM, I believe) is used to store high scores and saved games. The CD-ROM drive is something very special. It is a custom double-speed, multi-session device. Commodore used a Sony mechanism and added their own magic, including custom microcode. Apparently, this allowed the machine to be manufactured for a low price. I never did get a good explanation of what "multi- session" means, other than that you need to in order to support Kodak's Photo CD standard. The sound output is either standard Amiga 8-bit, four-voice, or the CD's 16-bit sound. There is a mini-headphone jack with adjustable volume control. The video output is available as standard RF, composite, and S-Video mini-DIN. Apparently, the S-Video gives a noticably better picture. The game controllers are hard-wired, instead of the infrared controller of CDTV. They hook up to jacks that look like the standard Commodore 9-pin controller jacks. However, the controllers are something new. They are 11-button controllers with a circular game pad. Each controller port can daisy-chain up to four controllers, for a total of eight on one CD32! CD32 ships with just one controller. There is an auxiliary port which is a combination keyboard and serial connection. It is shaped just like the keyboard port on an A4000, so you can hook up a keyboard there for typing. It also can handle a serial connection, if it is set up right. A hidden port is the expansion bus. It provides all of the singnal lines from the CPU, the video, and the audio. You could basically hook up whatever you wanted here. A wide variety of formats is supported. Audio CDs work, of course. The Karaoke format is supported, but those in the US prefer to call it VideoCD. If you are still into CD+G, you can view it on CD32. Commodore went to great pains to make sure that the top 30 CDTV titles worked, although packages that only work under version 1.3 of the OS or that don't follow programming standards are likely to break. Of course, there is also a new CD32 format. Eggebrecht then described the strengths of CD32. First and formost, he emphasised the mature development environment available to developers. All the tools available to develop games and other applications for Amigas will work to develop for CD32. A lot of people have had a lot of practice programming for the Amiga. He then mentioned the enthusiastic developer support. Thirty different developers are actively producing software for CD32. These are not just companies that have registered as developers, but people actually writing things. Commodore expects 75 titles to be ready before Christmas. He did not make it clear if this included the old CDTV titles or not. Actually manufacturing software for CD32 is much less expensive than for the cartridge-based systems. It costs about one dollar to produce a CD in quantity, while a cartridge costs from ten to twenty dollars. Cartridges require a long order time (four to six weeks or more) as they are produced by some overseas company that also sells the console. Compact discs can be pressed by the thousands in a single day by a local company, thus making inventory much easier to manage. Each cartridge manufactured requires a large licensing fee. Commodore's licensing fee is small ($3 per disc) and need be paid only when the software is actually sold. Because of this, Eggebrecht stated that he expected CD32 software to sell for 40% to 50% of the price of cartridge-based software. After finishing with CD32, Eggebrecht detailed some other news from Commodore. Some of this was covered in more detail at the keynote address later in the day. CD peripherals will be released for the A1200 and A4000. These will allow the computers to function as a CD32. AmigaDOS 3.1 will be available soon. This will have CD support. RTG (Commodore's re-targetable graphics standard) is coming along more slowly than expected. Its release will be tied to the next- generation chip set. Commodore's networking will be available through third-party licensing. Engineering has conducted a six-month study on RISC (reduced instruction set computer) processors. They have not decided how to use them, but intend to eventually use RISC technology to provide higher performance. They will stick with Motorola's 68000-series chip series until Motorola stops improving it. The A4000T will be in production withing two months. Finally, Eggebrecht dropped a few jaws by stating that Commodore's new factory in the Phillipines is manufacturing 20,000 CD32's per week! Eggebrecht finished up and introduced John Campbell to give a demo of CD32. The demo was a fancy multi-media show put together to impress developers into producing software for the game console. It had dinosaurs, Porches, and jets zipping all over the place doing their thing. The jet launched a missile which a voice-over said was "blowing away" the competition. It was clearly poking fun at the other machines. The speed was quite good. This complicated demo loaded in a few seconds and continued with no glitches. Campbell also had a CDXL preview of a Jurassic Park video game. The film clips were pretty good, but the game demo looked terrible, as though it was ripped off from a Nintendo console. It probably was. I noticed that one part of the game looked a lot like Wolfenstein 3D. At this point, Campbell mentioned that CD32 was good for more than video games. The audio-visual capabilities, massive CD-ROM storage, and low price point makes it ideal for kiosk applications. Then, Campbell demonstrated the prototype MPEG module by playing a Bon Jovi video from CD. I was, quite frankly, startled. The picture quality was excellent--almost indistinguishable from cable broadcast. It was clearly better than VHS video. The sound was also excellent. It was very close to audio CD, and (again) spectacularly better than VHS audio. A single CD can hold up to 74 minutes of MPEG video, meaning that two of them can hold a movie, for much less space and price than a VHS tape. The CD32 can overlay graphics on top of the MPEG picture, so MPEG video could be used in many applications other than simple playback. As it was, the unit simply put a small logo in the corner of the screen. At this point, Eggebrecht and Dionne opened things up for questions. Here are some of the interesting answers: The CD32 hardware is perfectly capable of supporting Kodak's Photo-CD. However, Phillips and Kodak are partners in a competing product. Commodore has not been able to get a license for the technology. Commodore expects to reach an agreement soon. The MPEG add-on module uses chips from C-cubed. The price is not decided yet, but will be less than the Phillips module, which is expected to be about $250. The sound from the MPEG disks is standard compressed MPEG sound. It is like the mini-CD standard. The software bundle included with CD32 will depend on the country. It is expected to change with different promotions and seasons. All of the software needed to run MPEG disks is included on the MPEG hardware module. Nothing additional is required to play MPEG disks. The US packaging for CD32 will be in English, French, and Spanish. Apparently, this has nothing at all to do with the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement. The motherboard is ready for the A4000T. It should be available sometime near the end of the year. The MPEG module, on the other hand, will be available in late November. Advertising will be in the form of cable television spots and the usual magazine ads, including video game magazines. Commodore is thinking of running infomercials! The regions in which the CD32 will receive its limited launch in the US this year have not been decided. The expansion connecter will be able to accept expanded RAM, all of which will be FAST RAM. KEYNOTE ADDRESS James Dionne and Lew Eggebrecht held the keynote address Friday afternoon. The crowd held mostly users, so it was much larger then the press conference, and also noticably hostile! Dionne again had trouble attaching his microphone. He commented, "These things are as difficult to use as a DOS machine!" After that, he was considerably less upbeat than he appeared at the press conference. His presentation was quite serious. First, Dionne presented a twelve-month review of business activity since September of last year. It was not good. He proceeded to list all the problems that Commodore has had, partially blaming them on the general shakedown the the personal computer industry. He did say, though, that "a lot of this is history." Here is a list of the problems: * The economic slowdown in Europe. Commodore does 80% of its business in Europe, so that hurt sales. * The strengthening of the US dollar. Commodore's sales are reported in US dollars, so even if profits go up in a foreign currency, they may go down once converted to dollars. * Erosion of PC margins in Europe. A considerable amount of Commodore's business used to be in selling IBM PC compatible computers in Europe. The clone price wars reached Europe, and the prices and profitablity of the PC's dropped. * Write-downs in inventory of A2000's and A3000's. Once the A4000 and A1200's came out, the A500's, A2000's and A3000's were worth considerably less. Writing off this value resulted in a considerable loss. The results can be seen in the very low prices available now for new A3000's. That said, Dionne said that Commodore has "taken all the bad medicine," and outlined plans for the future. The strategy involves the following: * Major restructuring and inventory changes. This is a nice way of saying that they fired a whole lot of people. * Commodore intends to make a profit in the US this quarter. * More emphasis on the Amiga. This means that they will drop the low-margin European sales of PC clones and concentrate on the proprietary Amiga hardware. * All subsidiaries have reduced overhead to free up revenue for marketing. Again, they fired a lot of people. * New products. This is mainly the CD32, but more will be coming out in the next year. * New plant in the Philippines. Apparently, there were a lot of difficulties getting things started up, resulting in a shortage of A4000 machines. Now, the glitches have been cleared up, and it is producing large quantities of CD32's and A4000's. * A new emphasis on profitability. * All US sales are through five distributors. There are no direct dealers any more. This lets Commodore worry less about distribution work and results in less overhead in supporting the direct dealers. * After-sale service has been out-sourced to another company. * Warehousing and shipping has also been out-sourced, resulting in lower cost. * Commodore, a smaller company now, can now concentrate on its core business. That is, making and selling fancy multimedia computer like the A4000. * They intend to stress the markets of video, graphics, and kiosks. * They are now prepared to work harder on the low-end market. Dionne then gave some more information about the A4000T. It has two video slots instead of just one. It also has both IDE and SCSI-2 interfaces built onto the motherboard. Otherwise, it is mainly a bigger A4000. He then discussed the CD32. This was mostly a repeat of the press conference. Lew Eggebrecht gave a status report of ongoing engineering work. Work on the AAA chip set is proceeding well. Commodore has actually produced a silicon prototype and displayed 24-bit graphics. It has bugs, of course, but no fatal ones. Engineering intends to produce an updated prototype each month until it is done. They expect to sell hardware using the chip set by the middle of next year. The AAA chip set will feature much higher performance than the AGA set. See last year's report for a description of planned specs for the set. The 4091 SCSI-2 controller will be shipping within 6-8 weeks. There does not seem to be much interest in this product. The SCSI-2 controller will be included in the A4000T, and in later versions of the A4000. The DSP project has been suspended. This project could give a considerable amount of signal processing power to the Amiga, resulting (mainly) in vastly improved sound. It was suspended because the engineering department was smaller and most people were concentrating on CD32. Eggebrecht then explained that a smaller company can not handle all the engineering projects. Commodore intends to give away their developed technology for FREE to third-party developers on a non-exclusive license! That means that Commodore has already invented several products. If you have a company, you can sell those products under your own name. All you have to do is figure out how to manufacture, package, market, and ship them. You don't have to develop them. He then gave a list of projects that Commodore wishes to give to third-party developers: * scan converter board * networking software * DSP * 4091 * multi-port board * ethernet adapter He then moved on to a couple more projects. CD peripherals, which will allow an A1200 or A4000 to run CD32 games, will be available near the end of the year. RTG development has been slowed down, due to lack of staff. It will be released at the same time as the AAA chip set, although it will work on other chip sets. Networking is mostly done. Commodore is looking for a third party to take over. AmigaDOS 3.1 was completed last week. It includes a SCSI file system (I think he meant "CD file system"), support for CD32, a better PostScript driver, and many bug fixes. As time was running over, the question/answer period was very short. The only interesting point was that Commodore has no plans to produce a portable, and that they do not intend to license their chip set to anyone who might do it for them. COMMODORE'S BOOTH Commodore had a booth way in the back. It was very lively, full of CD32's, A4000's, and a few A1200's. They also were demoing the OpalVision and the Toaster 4000. The CD32's were mostly set up to play games. They also had one set up to play music videos from an MPEG disc. I particularly liked one video by Enya. The games looked pretty sharp. One machine was also showing Grolier's electronic encyclopedia. You could pull up some nice digitized pictures of various animals. Very impressive. I got a chance to grab a CD32 controller. It had a very nice, solid feel to it. The buttons were different colors and sizes, with start and pause buttons. Then some kid grabbed it back to play a game. They were having a good time. The adults seem to like the football and pinball games. A prototype of an A4000T was on display. The front panel looked very nice and professional. There was no side panel, so I stuck my head inside. It had room for up to five half-height 5-1/4 inch external devices so you can have two floppy drives, a CD-ROM reader, a tape drive, and a Syquest, if you like. There was also lots of space inside, but I didn't see any obvious place to mount internal devices. I found five Zorro 3 slots. Two of these lined up with video slots. The rest lined up with PC-AT style ISA slots. There was also an extra ISA slot on the side that didn't line up with anything else. ANALYSIS All of this gave me a few opinions about Commodore. The spectacular losses in revenue and share price have alerted management that something needs to be done. I heard executives say more than once that if they kept going as they had been, they would go out of business in the next six months, which wouldn't help anyone. Instead of letting that happen, they fired a lot of people to make sure that they had a smaller, less expensive company to run. Now, all they have to do is to sell a lot of machines. Commodore marketing still needs some work. They do not intend to run _any_ broadcast television ads. They are not clear where they are going to sell CD32. They have not ramped up for full distribution before the all-important Christmas sales season. Still, the infomercial idea is a good one. What's more, if they can get enough large stores to pick up the product at CES, it will do well. We'll have to see how they handle it. Commodore has bet the farm on CD32. They fired many engineers and put most of the rest on getting CD32 out the door. There are no other real new products coming any time soon. Commodore has put all its eggs in one basket now, so CD32 better sell or the cows are coming home to roost. Or something like that. It might work. CD32 is a really good product. The suggested price of $399 is much, much better than the original price of CDTV. Commodore is aggressively pursuing game developers, and it looks like there will quickly be more games for CD32 than for any other CD-ROM game console. Manufacturing is not a problem, and the things are selling like crazy in Europe. I noticed that the company really is smaller. Many of the people at other booths used to work for Commodore. Some of the folks at the Commodore booth itself were former Commodore employees hired just for the duration of this show. Still, they seemed dedicated and attentive. When I explained my problem with Sue West getting fired, Dionne directed me to someone who might be able to get me electronic versions of press releases. MPEG on CD has tremendous potential. The picture and sound is the best you could expect from most television sets. I did manage to find a couple glitches, but only because I was looking for them. A couple CD's would be much less expensive to produce than a standard video laser disc (typically $100). Since it is digital, it won't wear out like VHS tapes often do. The total $650 price tag is a bit steep for movie watching, though it might be worth it if you consider the games as well. Being able to select music videos from CD, or to skip around a movie without that bothersome rewinding has a lot of appeal as well. I know, given the choice, I would rather rent a movie on CD than on VHS. If you are the daring type, now would be a really good time to buy stock in Commodore. It is now around 3 1/2 dollars per share, where it used to be $12. If CD32 works out, the price will double in the next year. If it doesn't, Commodore will probably go bankrupt and the stock will be nearly worthless. It will certainly make life exciting.... Tomorrow: Chapter 3, Seminars by Axiom and Opalvision, with the first few booth interviews. Addresses: CCN (California Computer News) 9719 Lincoln Village Drive, Ste. 500 Sacramento, California, 95827 Commodore Business Machines 1200 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 (215) 431-9100 @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-7 "Woca report - Matt Guthrie" @toc "menu" /// Usenet Repost: WOCA Report --------------------------- By Matt Guthrie (mguthrie@plum.az05.bull.com) First off, let me state that I thought long and hard about which newsgroup to post this in. Not all of it is directly hardware-related, but I wanted a big audience, and I refuse to subscribe to .advocacy, so I chose .hardware. I thought about .announce, but I couldn't find Dan Zerkle's email address, and all the articles have expired at our site, so I couldn't look it up. If he wants to post this, or if Dan Barrett wants to post this to comp.sys.amiga.reviews, it's not a problem. I only attended Saturday, and only attended the two seminars by CBM: one about Commodore's plans, and the second about the FMV card for the CD32. I took detailed notes at the first one, but left my notebook in the car when we went for lunch, and didn't have it for the second one. The first seminar was by Jim Dionne, president of C= US, and Lew Eggebrecht, VP Engineering for C=. Jim started out by recapping C='s performance over the last year. Obviously it wasn't good, but he gave some good reasons. First of all, 80% of C='s business is in Europe, and the worldwide recession hit Europe hard last year, as it did the US in 90-91. The dollar rose against the British pound and the Deutsche mark, so that meant less money for C= (because most of their business is in non-US currencies). European PC margins finally began eroding as they did in the US a couple of years ago. Due to this, C= had large inventory writedowns and other accounting losses. Jim stressed that most of the loss was not an operating loss, and intimated that the company is still healthy operating-wise. He then explained the company's re-org plan. C= will de-emphasize PC's and concentrate on Amigas, since that's their area of expertise. Like most companies, they are reducing staff, consolidating, and streamlining their operations to reduce costs. A few major changes will be: 1) changing the current policy of a distribution center in each country to having 2 or 3 major distribution centers for all of Europe, 2) Consolidating manufacturing to their new plant in the Phillippines, 3) their new and exciting products. Specific to the US, Jim said: 1) C= will no longer sell direct to dealers -- they'll sell to a few regional distributors only. This will allow them to streamline paperwork, accounting, etc. 2) They've out-sourced their service program. Jim admitted that C='s service has had problems, and out-sourcing it to a company that only focuses on service will improve it. 3) C= will emphasize the 4000 in the video and animation markets. The 1200 is a tough sell against 386/486 systems, and while not abandoning the line, they're not going to put much behind it. Some other notes: 1) C= will *really* stress the CD32, not just as a game machine, but for kiosk and corporate training/presentation systems. 2) The 4000T will be out before year-end. Features include 2 video slots, SCSI on the motherboard, 5 Z3 slots, and 5 drive bays. 3) The CD32 will be introduced on a limited scale in the US in Nov. (One of the main reasons is C= can't build enough to satisfy the projected demand -- the Phillipines plant is producing 20,000 each week.) The full-scale media blitz will begin with the January CES show in Las Vegas. MSRP will be under $400 for the base unit. 4) The CD32 will be sold "everywhere Sega is sold." That means Wal-Mart and similar stores. Jim said they were considering some new advertising ideas, and specifically mentioned 30-minute info-mercials as a distinct possibility. 5) The CD32-compatible add-on CD drives for AGA Amigas will be available after the introduction of the FMV card for the CD32 in November. 6) The cost of a CD32 + FMV card will be less than a 3DO system. ------------------------------ Lew Eggebrecht's talk was composed of two parts: the CD32, and the status of development projects at C=. The CD32 project began at the same time as the 1200. C= learned a lot from CDTV, one of the most important of which was if you advertise it as being able to do all this stuff (as CDTV was), consumers get confused. So, with CD32, they designed another highly-expandable system, but aren't going to tell consumers about it. It will be advertised as a game machine, period. (Until more software/hardware comes out, then they can tell consumers, "By the way, your CD32 can do that and that and that, too.") Also, C= spent a lot of time asking customers, developers, etc., what they wanted, and Lew thinks they've done it. Since it's being billed as a games machine, it has to be competitive with Sega. At it's intro price of #299UK, it's less than the Sega CD unit, and approximately 15X more performant. Here are some technical specs: -- AGA chipset, Motorola 68EC020, 2MB RAM (Chip), 1MB ROM (ADOS 3.1). -- Sony CD mechanism with C= microcode (2X multisession-capable) (that means it can read PhotoCD's, but no Kodak license yet :( ) -- 1KB EEPROM for hiscore tables, bookmarks, etc. -- 4 voice Amiga stereo, 16-bit CD stereo, stereo line out, headphone jack w/volume control -- RF out (built-in modulator), composite out, S-Video out (Lew said that S-Video out gives dramatic video improvement) -- with the AGA chipset, every pixel can be a different color at standard TV resolutions. (I suppose that's not the case if you're using S-Video.) -- Aux. port with 2 serial ports, compatible with the Amiga keyboard. Possible add-ons include infrared boxes, virtual reality periphs. -- Expansion bus in back for 1 card. Contains full CPU bus, full video bus, full audio bus. (The MPEG card needs all of those.) -- 2 controller ports, with the capability to daisy-chain 8 controllers per port. That's right. You could have a 16-player game. BTW, the unit comes with 1 controller. Additional ones will be sold separately. Let's talk software. The CD32 will play audio CD's, CD+G CD's, some CDTV CD's, and Karaoke (aka VideoCD) CD's, in addition to CD32 titles. One thing he mentioned is that a company is currently putting all of the classic Star Trek titles on VideoCD for sale next year. (heh heh, cool, heh heh.) Regarding the CDTV titles, Lew stated that 130 titles were made for CDTV. C= researched the 30 most popular titles, and bent over backward to make sure that those 30 work on CD32. I requested a list from a C= person; I'll post it when it gets here. For a change, C= didn't have to pay developers to develop for CD32. People were so excited about the new platform, they developed on their own. Lew said that there *will* be 50 titles available by Christmas, and the actual number will probably be closer to 75. One reason C= is excited about their prospects for CD32 is production costs. Cartridge cases cost about $10-$20 each, and since they're burned-in PROMs, they require a 6-8 week lead time. CD's on the other hand, cost about $1 each, and need no lead time -- mastering houses can pump out 20,000 CD's every day. In the final analysis, producing CD-games costs about 1/2 what producing cartridge games does. OK. I lied in the first post. There will be 3 parts to this article. The next part will be the status of other projects at C=, and my impressions of the FMV card. ------------------------------ Lew finished his talk by discussing some of the ongoing projects at C=. AAA chipset: First pass of silicon has been completed, and they had the OS up and running, "blitting around 24-bit objects" and such. Second silicon pass is scheduled for this month. C= expects to have a full-functioning AAA Amiga system by 1Q94. Systems could be shipped by 3Q94, unless multiple more silicon passes are required. 4000 Tower: Production of this system has been delayed by the rampup of CD32. There was a system (open to view) at the Commodore booth with a big sticker saying something like, "This product has not yet received FCC approval -- Not for Sale." As I stated in part 1, they expect it to ship by year-end. 4091 SCSI-2 card: My notes get sketchy. Something about "negotiations with 3rd parties not yet completed". C= is restarting production and the 4091 should be available in 6-8 weeks. DSP board: Project put on hold by CD32. Will be restarted after Jan 1. CD add-on for AGA Amigas: Will ship before year end, maybe slightly after Christmas. RTG: Will be coupled with new AAA system, mid-late next year. Networking: This was a little distressing. C= is willing to give their networking technology away to a 3rd party, basically for free. Seems like they have no networking expertise left in-house and are counting on someone else to take up the slack. If I only had a few hundred thousand to start my own company.... AmigaDOS 3.1: Available 6-8 weeks. First release will be for A4000, later for older machines, but it will have a different nomenclature (i.e., it won't be called AmigaDOS 3.1). RISC: First, Lew rhetorically asked, "Why RISC?" He answered himself by saying that it would add graphics accelleration, i.e., realtime 3D rendering, and multiple OS support like Windows NT and UNIX. He said that C= has not made a final decision yet, and listed some of the choices, with pros and cons. He did say that the Alpha was probably beyond C='s desired price point, and hinted that PA-RISC (by Hewlett-Packard) looks attractive due to their good multimedia support. (My bet is this is the one C= picks.) He stressed that C= will continue to support the Motorola line and AmigaDOS, and that anything for RISC would be in addition to AmigaDOS. Target for an Amiga RISC system is 1995. Regarding the Motorola line, Lew said he met with execs at Motorola last week, and support of the 68060 is assured, and Motorola even said they will continue to provide stuff beyond the 68060. [end of Dionne/Eggebrecht seminar] Well, this article is getting a little long, but rather than break it into four parts, I'll just forge ahead and talk about the FMV card. The second seminar I attended was by Jeff Porter and ??? (whoops, I forgot his name) from C= International. Let me first say that Jeff Porter is absolutely hilarious and I'd really enjoy working for him (yeah, right, like that's ever gonna happen). As I said in part one, I didn't take notes at this, so there's a lot I've forgotten. What I do remember are the demos of the board. I can sum up my impressions in 3 words: Absolutely Freakin' Amazing. They had a demo CD with 3 music videos on it: Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory", one by Enya, and Seal's "Killer". They had a projection-TV setup, and I'm serious -- you could not tell it wasn't broadcast. Full-screen, full-motion video. The presenters pointed out artifacts like the sun reflecting off Jon Bon Jovi's guitar, but it was *really* nit-picky. You have to know what you're looking for, and probably have the original next to it to differentiate. The interface for the VideoCD is very similar to the CDTV audio CD interface. It's a little cleaner, though, and the "compact disc digital audio" logo is a nice touch. They spent some time talking about MPEG and VideoCD technology, which bored most everyone. The demos were the thing, and they were mind- blowing. Some final thoughts. There have been a lot of threads about C= is doomed, C= can't do anything right, etc. (and I don't mean just on .advocacy, because I don't read that one). Well, from what I saw at WOCA, C= is doing some things right. It seemed very clear to me that they're betting the farm on CD32 (Jim Dionne said they expect it to be the next C64, which sold 17 million units). If you guys want to save C=, buy a CD32 and tell your friends (not just your Amiga friends, but your Sega/Nintendo-playing friends) to buy one, as well. Stop whining about, "will it plug into my 1200/4000/3000?" Buy it to replace your Nintendo. Invite your friends over after you get one so they can see all the cool games you have, then tell them it's less than the Sega CD system, and *way* less than 3DO. Try doing something constructive to help, rather than whining all the time. Matt @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-8 "Newton MessagePad" @toc "menu" /// The Newton MessagePad: A First Look ------------------------------------ By Robert Glover Apple has broken new ground with the introduction of its Newton MessagePad, a neat little computer with handwriting recognition and the ability to be a veritable office for the briefcase, or the ideal accessory for the student! The following text is taken from Apple's own spec sheet: "The Newton MessagePad is the first in a family of communications assistants from Apple. By combining Newton Intelligence technology with sophisticated communications capabilities, the Newton MessagePad helps you stay in touch with friends and colleagues, organize your life, and keep track of your ideas. You can take notes. Make a quick sketch. Format and print letters. Share and synchronize information with your personal computer. Send a fax. Receive pages and messages. Tap into online services or electronic mail. Even exchange business cards with a colleague via built-in infrared tech- nology. And wherever you go, the powrful, under-one-pound personal digital assistant goes too, tucked in your pocket or briefcase. "As easy to use as pencil and paper, the Newton MessagePad lets you leave your notes handwritten or reads your handwriting and transforms it into typed text. If you prefer, you can type words using an on-screen keyboard. It even cleans up your rough sketches. And as time goes by, it learns about you, your handwriting, and the way you work. "Because the Newton MessagePad is designed to know how you work, it can help you work smarter. For example, the Newton MessagePad can find a phone number and dial the phone for you, fax a note, format a letter, and even setup a lunch appointment. "The Newton MessagePad comes with built-in applications that include a note- pad, to-do list, datebook, and name file to get you started. When you're ready, you can customize your Newton MessagePad to include Apple and third- party software and hardware additions as well." Features -------- Built-in applications: · Let you capture, organize, and communicate all kinds of information. · Allow free-form notetakeing -- mixing ink handwriting, printed text, and graphics all on the same page. · Turn printed or cursive handwriting into typed text or leave it as ink. · Track tasks via a to-do list that helps you assign priorities, lets you check off completed tasks, and then updates the next day's list for you. · Let you create name files with a familiar, business-card look and feel that help you store information on hundreds of colleagues and friends. · Help you plan monthly, weekly, and daily calendars. · Include and assortment of information and productivity tools (such as time-zone maps, calculator, and currency-exchange formulas). Communications capabilities: · Send notes or messages, schedule appointments, or exchange business cards with other nearby Newton users via built-in infrared beaming technology. · Print formatted letters and notes to serial and parallel printers. · Send faxes anywhere with an optional compact fax modem. · Receive and store wireless paging messages with the optional Newton Messaging Card. · Share information and keeps files synchronized and updated with personal computers running Microsoft Windows or with Macintosh computers (requires Newton Connection Kit). · Tap into electronic mail and online services with an optional compact fax modem. Intelligent assistance: · Knows how you work and actively assists you in completing tasks. · Assists you in making phone calls, faxing, finding information, sending electronic mail, printing, scheduling meetings, and completing to-do lists. Technical Specifications ------------------------ Newton Intelligence: · Newton Recognition Architecture - Recognizes handwriting: printed, cursive or mixed word recognition - Recognizes graphics and the inherent symmetry in objects · Newton Information Architecture - Object-oriented data storage optimized for storing, finding, and linking small pieces of information - Easy creation of custom forms applications via the flexible graphical view toolbox - Easy data sharing using standard tags - Object-oriented database provides flexible view of data · Newton Communications Architecture - Provides single interface for all communications services - Integrated to support easy communications services - Designed in modules to suppoort new communications abilities · Intelligent Assistance Architecture - Assists users in completing repetitive tasks done in multiple categories, including communications, scheduling, finding, and reminding fuctions - Contains smart defaults to reduce complexity - Functions across applications transparently - Allows extensions by third-part developers · Newton Hardware Architecture - ARM 610 processor at 20 MHz - Apple custom system ASIC - Low-power, reflective LCD display (336 x 240 pixels) - Transparent tablet with passive pen - 4 MB of ROM - 640K of RAM - One PCMCIA type 2 card slot - LocalTalk compatible serial port - Low-power, half-duplex, infrared transceiver (9600 baud at 1 meter) Communications Capabilities: · Print to Apple LaserWriters and StyleWriters with serial cable and to popular parallel printers using Newton Print Pack. · Fax with optional fax modem (9600 baud fax send, automatic cover-page generation, post-formatting). · "Beam" via infrared technology (send notes, name cards, appointments at 9600 baud with 1-meter range) · Handle telephony needs with assistance for intelligent auto dialing (DTMF or modem dialing). · Receive and store wireless messages using optional Messaging Card · Send and receive NewtonMail to other Newtons, PC's and Macintosh computers with optional modem. Size and Weight: · 7.25" H x 4.5" W x 0.75" D · Weight: 0.9 lb. (0.4 kg) Operating Environment: · Temperature: 0° to +40° C · Storage temperature: -20° to +60° C · Humidity range: 20% to 95% RH noncondensing Power Requirements: · Power adapter: - Universal, 100 to 240 VAC, 50/60 Hz - Four plug configurations: US, UK, Europe and Australia · Battery type: Alkaline or nickel-cadmium - Alkaline output: 6.0V DC, 1.1 WH (nominal) - Nickel-Cadmium output: 4.8V DC, 200 mAh (nominal) · Lithium Cell: CR2032 - Operating range: 3V (nominal) · Power source: AC adapter (included) or four AAA batteries (included) and optional Rechargable Battery Pack System Requirements: · Works with personal computers running Microsoft Windows; requires connector cable and version 3.0 or later. · Works with Macintosh personal computers; requires connector cable and System 7.01 or later. Printer Support: · Built-in printer support for the Apple StyleWriter and StyleWriter II. · All Apple PostScript laser printers from the LaserWriter Plus and up. · The Apple Personal LaserWriter printer. · Works with most popular PC printers, including the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet, DeskJet, Cannon BubbleJet, and Epson LQ and FX using the Print Pack option. Fax Machine Support: · Supports Group 3 fax machines. For more information, contact: Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 408-996-1010 TLX 171-576 ------------------------------ Those of you that are still with me probably agree that this is one neat little item! I was able to play with one for about fifteen minutes. That wasn't nearly enough to really get acquainted with it, but I did learn a lot about it. The handwriting recognition is amazing! There are preference settings that allow the primary user (and several guest users) to prepare it for individual styles of handwriting. The speed at which the conversion is performed can be adjusted from slowly and accurately, to quickly and less-accurately. I had it set fairly close to slowly and accurately. It understood what I was writing about 95% of the time, and took about four seconds to convert a word. The settings can be tailored to printing, cursive, or a mixture thereof. Since my writing is chicken scratch at best, I chose the latter, which worked well. Each user can go through and choose which way he or she draws each letter, to allow Newton to more quickly and efficiently recognize their style. For example, some people print a capital A as "A", whereas some may print it in its cursive form. Newton has built-in sound, though hardly modern. The user can select from Beep, Chime, Trill and Chord beep sounds, and set the volume level on-screen. Same for the contrast. The screen is very easily readable. I think it's an active-matrix screen, though I wouldn't swear to it. The resolution is very nice, but I'm sure future versions will have even better modes, and eventually, Color. My only real beef with the Newton is that it has only one PCMCIA slot. There are so many cool things coming out on PCMCIA cards that one slot is very limiting. My main use of a Newton would be as a portable modem machine. But that would wipe out my only PCMCIA slot. Once the system matures, it'd be nice to be able to pop in a PCMCIA hard drive, or a Flash-RAM card to save extra data. Or a network card. I bet future versions of Newton will incorporate similar features. Also, while I'm at it, I don't like all of the extras that must be purchased. The Print Pack, the Messaging Card (there goes the slot again), and so forth bring an already expensive machine ($929 was what my local dealer wanted) to an even higher price. Heaven forbid you should drop it! And insure it WELL. I don't want to sound too hard on it. I'm not. I'm in love with the thing, but at nearly $1000, I can have a nice 386SX notebook, which, for my purposes, is a much better choice. @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 P1-9 "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) A.M.I.G.A. presents an AMTL (Amiga Mis-Testing Labs) review of: IMPLANT by Jim Drieux GENERAL INFO IMPLANT is a general-purpose emulator board that is supposed to emulate everything at some nebulous point in the future. As of this writing however, the only emulation availible is for the timex Sinclair 1000. The version of IMPLANT used for this review is the IMPLANT 1200 (beta version) with IMPLANT software version 9993.456 rumdinger. AMTL received this card after several letter-bombs and phone threats to Jim Drieux's personal residence. We thank Jim very much for his prompt response (and yes, we will release your daughter). Since this is a beta version of the IMPLANT 1200, none of the following information will even be remotely accurate, but its this kind of rumor-mongering that sells magazines, as we all know, so on with it! INSTALLATION The IMPLANT 1200 measures .34 hogsheads by 16 rod-acres by -9.2 bushel-feet. This makes it very awkward for anyone who has the Cray II board already installed in the PCMCIA slot of the Amiga. However, we found that taking a hack-saw to the IMPLANT board and using the transporter to metamorph the Cray II board into the shape of an ostrich not only allows both to be used in the 1200, but also improves the MIPS on the Cray II board by a factor of 10. Unfortunately the droppings from the Cray II board are quite smelly, but this is a small price to pay for the power of both boards. After the above modifications, the IMPLANT board easily fit into the PCMCIA slot. Unfortunately the documentation does not mention that once installed, the IMPLANT 1200 fuses itself into the slot, and can only be removed by E.T. with his little light-up finger doodad. Jim has been contacted about this problem and assures us that the final version will be removable not only by E.T. but by simply buying a new 1200. Once the actual board is installed, one must go through an extensive 2 month software installation process. AMTL recommends a rigorous cross- raining course before this process, as it can be quite draining. The software also reconfigures your computer in such a way that, when turned on, a small electric shock is generated in Bill Gates' office chair. If enough people buy this product, A.M.I.G.A. has promised to sponser a "simultaneous turn-on event," which will hopefully provide enough voltage for Mr. Gate's teeth to fall out. Anyway, once the installation is complete, the product is almost ready to boot up. First, however, one needs to acquire a working Timex Sinclair 1000 (or Casio data-bank watch, which uses the same technology), rip the ROMs out, and plug them into the IMPLANT. After checking several states, AMTL finally found a Sinclair 1000 being used as a paperweight in a garbage disposal company, and installed the ROMs. We were ready to boot up. RUNNING IMPLANT IMPLANT fully multitasks with the A-MAX cartridge, but unfortunately not with the Amiga operating system, except on the third Tuesday of every month with an A in it. This is an inconvenience AMTL would like removed, but we understand the extensive technology involved and are more than happy to settle with this restriction. After practising the voodoo rituals described in the manual, AMTL booted up the IMPLANT. Several days and a few million killowatt-hours later, we were presented with the completely unfamiliar Timex-Sinclair startup screen. Unfortunately, the text of the screen was in Hebrew. Upon contacting Jim, AMTL learned this is an unfortunate side- effect caused by our Timex' ROMs not being spin-cycle clean. Running the SPINDRI program rectified the problem, and left our computer smelling April-Fresh. After rebooting and once again seeing the unfamiliar Timex screen, but in English, AMTL sat around aimlessly for hours, wondering exactly what could be done with the emulation. Fortunately at that moment Jim called to see how things were doing, and informed AMTL that the main reason for running a Timex-Sinclair emulation was for the use of its sophisticated Moose Cataloging software, Quirk MoosePress. Having heard this, AMTL realized what a complete waste of time this whole project was and went out for a couple of beers. FINAL THOUGHTS For those who wish to run Quirk MoosePress, the IMPLANT will be a valuable addition to their system. For those dumb enough to buy a card based on claims it will eventually emulate every pocket calculator on the planet, it keeps the company in business. For those who think they're a pink elephant with 5 legs and a cancerous pimple on their butt, get some help! For AMTL, its another week's pay goofing off with cool hardware. Until next time, this is AMTL signing off! END REVIEW Thank you, AMTL, for yet another moronic, inane and gratuitous review. It's good to know they serve their purpose as a front to get me neat hardware. And I guess that about wraps things up for A.M.I.G.A. as well, since its now 24 hours past my deadline, and I still have to run Jim's kid back home. Stay tuned next week for another exciting AMIGA, the only article that dares to eat that little fat cube in the can of pork n beans! Oh, but first... QUOTES FROM THE MICROSLOTH QUOTE FILE: "Hey, why does my chair keep shocking me?" -Bill Gaits, last week @endnode @node P1-10 "The Emulation Examiner" @toc "menu" /// The Emulation Examiner ---------------------- By Jason Compton (Jcompton@mlinknet.uucp) I can't stress enough how much I'd like to hear from somebody. Anybody at all, about these articles. Whether or not you're ready, here's more emulation ramblings... The elusive, over-hyped, and rather expensive PowerPC notwithstanding, there's really only one major emulation option available to the public which does NOT utilize an Amiga for anything, and that's SoftPC. I've been able to work, briefly, with SoftPC and noticed the following: You need an awfully fast Mac to run the thing at all. The box seemed to say you needed an '040, but I saw it run on an '030. It emulates a 286, but from what I have seen of it (admittedly little, but...) it needs. It supports the internal Mac floppy and seems to handle hard drive access reasonably well. It uses the Mac II's graphic capabilities to emulate VGA graphics. I'm also fairly certain that it provides parallel and serial port emulation. So...what's the snag? Well, I have my doubts about how genuine the emulation really is. The IBM screen is generated on the Mac desktop (meaning it multitasks with the Mac, as well as anything is going to, although I believe it is quite a memory hog), but when Windows is run (one of the deluxe packages comes with Windows in it...of course! Why would a Mac user want a command-oriented operating system?), the Mac closes the old screen and opens a new one, with a new title. Before I get ahead of myself, I will point out that I realize that Janus' IBM display emulation does something similar, opening up new screens in different resolutions as the IBM requests them. But I wonder if the title change is just for effect, or if the SoftPC emulation is actually changing the way it is handling programs. I'm not sure. I also would presume, for lack of evidence available to me, that SoftPC would fall prey to the limitation of not having a true BIOS. Then there are little details to tackle, like-IBM mice are at LEAST 2 buttons, yet the Mac still plods along with a single-all-purpose clicker. The IBM XT keyboard, let alone the AT, is more expansive than the keyboard on, say, the Mac IIsi. (Come on, Amiga even printed the standard IBM keypad indicators on!). I have heard rumors that SoftPC would be developed for the Amiga, if the project was seen as profitable enough. SoftPC wouldn't replace a nice Vortex Golden Gate 386, but on a 4000 or accelerated 1200 might be a reasonable buy. For an ECS owner, though, you'd probably be better off going with a true bridgeboard. Which brings me to my next point. Now that the Amiga's operating and graphics system has evolved several times, I am seeing interesting trends in inter-Amiga emulation. By that, I mean this. First, I am seeing 24-bit video boards for the 2000 and 3000 being touted as AGA emulators, with framegrabbers and the like thrown in to offset the cost. This is interesting, not to mention logical, since to my knowledge C= decided not to work on upgrading old machines, and an upgrade is only available from a third party company for the 500. A nice 3000 with an AGA emulator...er, 24-bit video board might just be able to provide a workable alternative to the 4000. (While I'd like to say that it would be feasible with the 2000, since I own one, the lack of Zorro III capability is going to catch up with the 2000 sooner or later, and has done so with some of the new 24-bit/AGA boards). Retraction: Before I end this column, I would like to retract a statement I made in my last article. I said that the Emplant supported Mac color boards. I lied. It supports Amiga 24-bit boards. I apologize to Utilities Unlimited for misunderstanding and misreporting. With any luck, I won't have to do that much more. Until the next time... and remember, the author does not challenge the copyright status of any of the above products. He is simply not in the mood to clutter his article with (tm)s, but if anyone complains he will jump at the chance to do so. @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-11 "WordPerfect 6.0" @toc "menu" /// WORDPERFECT 6.0 WINDOWS! STR FOCUS! Word Perfect for Windows Announced! ----------------------------------- Reprinted from STReport WORDPERFECT CORPORATION ANNOUNCES WORDPERFECT 6.0 FOR WINDOWS ============================================================= New product is completely customizable and makes the most of the Windows environment WordPerfect Corporation announced WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows, the next release of its best-selling Windows word processor. WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows offers everything needed to create professional-looking documents including: powerful word processing, drawing, charting, spreadsheet functionality within tables, and direct integration with other Windows applications. The product is scheduled to ship fourth quarter 1993. "WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows has been completely rewritten to give users the best in Windows word processing," said Alan Ashton, president and CEO of WordPerfect Corporation. "Virtually every feature in the product has been improved or enhanced in some way. These improvements are the result of thousands of user requests, feedback from focus groups, and extensive usability testing." WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows is designed to give users complete customization, the easiest transition to Windows, and a product that makes the most of the Windows environment. COMPLETE CUSTOMIZATION Interface. WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows is fully customizable so users can personalize their word processor for any environment or task. Virtually all aspects of the interface can be customized: Button Bar, Power Bar, Ruler Bar, status bar, keyboards and menus. Users can also select Hide Bars for a clean screen, but still have access to the main menus when placing the mouse pointer at the top of the screen. Button Bar. The Button Bar is the most versatile interface tool, giving users access to any WordPerfect feature or macro with a click of a button. The Button Bar can be placed anywhere on the screen or as a floating palette. Users can display buttons with icons, text, or both, and can create their own icons and text. Users can create as many Button Bars as they like and display up to three rows of buttons. The product ships with sample Button Bars for specific tasks such as graphics, tables, outlines and page layout, as well as context-sensitive bars that will change according to task. Power Bar. The Power Bar contains icons for quick access to the most common formatting tasks. The Power Bar remains at the top of the screen and users can customize the bar by selecting from 81 options. When placing the mouse pointer over any Power Bar icon, help prompts appear at the top of the screen to explain the icon's function. Templates. Templates revolutionize word processing by giving users a quick and easy way to create professional-looking documents. WordPerfect 6.0 will ship with ExpressDocs, more than 45 predefined templates for fax forms, memos, newsletters, and more. ExpressDocs are more than customized documents they are interactive and can prompt users for information such as the name and fax number on a fax cover sheet. Users can edit these templates, or create their own with customized menus, styles, Button Bars, keyboards, abbreviations and macros. "Customization of the interface and templates gives users enormous control of their working environment, letting them personalize WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows to work the way they want to work," said Todd Titensor, product marketing director of WordPerfect for Windows. "Corporate users will benefit by being able to create standard interfaces and documents to automate company tasks and maintain consistency." EASIEST TRANSITION TO WINDOWS Easiest Transition for WordPerfect DOS users. WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows gives WordPerfect DOS users the easiest transition to Windows with feature and file compatibility, as well as macro conversions. Users can write macros that will work in both WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS and WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows. WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows also includes a WPDOS keyboard layout. "No other word processor makes it easier for WordPerfect DOS users to make the move to Windows," said Titensor. "No other product offers better compatibility with existing WordPerfect files and macros, or better cross-platform compatibility." Coaches. Like a personal instructor, a Coach prompts a user through a variety of common tasks with step-by-step instructions. Because Coaches are written with WordPerfect's macro language, users can write their own to add to the Help menu. QuickMenus. Working in Windows is easier with context-sensitive QuickMenus that are accessed by clicking the right mouse button virtually anywhere in WordPerfect. For example, clicking the right mouse button anywhere in a document presents a QuickMenu to change fonts, spell check, or center text, while clicking the left margin presents a menu to select text, change margins, or add comments to a document. Preview Windows. Preview windows in dialog boxes let users see how changes in a document--such as columns, margins and line spacing--will look before making them. MAKING THE MOST OF WINDOWS Program Launching. Any Windows program or file can be placed on a Button Bar for quick access from within WordPerfect. For example, a user could drag the program file for Quattro Pro from the Windows File Manager to a Button Bar and then be able to launch Quattro Pro while working in WordPerfect. Or a user could place a Microsoft Excel file on a Button Bar and with a click of a button launch Excel and load the file. Direct Spreadsheet and Database Import. Spreadsheet and database information can be linked via Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) or Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), and can also be directly imported into WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows. All leading spreadsheet formats and a variety of database formats such as Paradox, dBase, Oracle, and popular SQL servers are supported. Users can perform queries on database files to extract only the needed information. File Management. The powerful functionality of the WordPerfect File Manager is now included in the Open File dialog box. With the File Options button, users can copy, move, rename, delete, print, and change file attributes, as well as create and rename directories. Files can be displayed and sorted by filename, extension, size, date/time, and descriptive name and type. WordPerfect Draw. WordPerfect Draw contains the sophisticated drawing and charting tools from WordPerfect Presentations including Bezier curves and the ability to contour text on a curve. The charting module lets users turn tables and spreadsheet data into a variety of charts: 3-D, bar, line, area, hi-lo, pie, and exploded pie charts. WordPerfect Draw works through OLE and is easily accessed by double-clicking any chart or graphic image. WordPerfect Draw also supports the TWAIN standard for direct access to scanners. OTHER NEW FEATURES Spreadsheet in Tables. WordPerfect is the only Windows word processor to include advanced spreadsheet capabilities. The Tables feature contains nearly 100 built-in formulas, numerical cell formatting, automatic calculation, data fills, and named ranges. QuickFormat. QuickFormat lets users extract formatting or styles from text and quickly apply it to other text in a document. The mouse pointer changes to a paint roller and lets users "paint" the formatting to selected text. Bullets and Numbering. From the new Insert menu, users can select from predefined bullets and numbering styles or create their own. Numbered items are automatically renumbered if moved. Abbreviations. The Abbreviations features will replace an abbreviation in a document with a longer piece of information that can include text, graphics, formatting--anything that can be placed in a document. Borders. A wide variety of borders and fill patterns can be used for paragraphs, pages, columns, tables, table cells, and graphic images. IMPROVED FEATURES Simplified Mail Merge. WordPerfect's powerful Merge feature has been enhanced with an easy-to-use interface. The introductory Merge dialog box includes the three elements of a merge--data file, form file, and merge--with corresponding preview windows. Creating and editing data files is easy using the Quick Data Entry dialog box. WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows can directly use data files in other formats such as spreadsheets, database, SQL, or ASCII text files. Users can also select specific records to merge using a query by example interface. Corresponding envelopes can automatically be created and appended to a merge file. Document Management. The QuickFinder rivals standalone packages with some of the fastest indexing and text retrieval in the industry. Users can index directories or groups of files and perform nearly instantaneous searches. The QuickFinder dialog box has been improved to include access to Boolean operators, document components (such as first page only), case sensitivity and word proximity. Document Summary has been improved to include more than 50 document summary fields such as author, subject, date and abstract. QuickFinder can be used to search any of these summary fields. Document Comments can now include name, initials, date stamps and time stamps, and be represented by a colored icon in the left margin. Users can have specific colors so the document can be circulated for editing. Document Compare has been improved to compare by word, as well as by phrase, sentence and paragraph. Graphics Editing. An Image Tools palette offers in-place graphics manipulation to move, rotate, crop and size a graphic image. Users can wrap text on both sides of a graphic image or contour text around irregularly shaped objects. STYLES. In addition to character and document styles, version 6.0 will include paragraph styles so users can click anywhere in a paragraph and select a style to affect the entire paragraph. Users can also create styles by clicking anywhere in formatted text, then clicking the Styles field on the Power Bar to give it a name. PRICING AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS The suggested retail price of WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows will be $495. Upgrades from any DOS, Windows or OS/2 version of WordPerfect will be available for $129. A competitive upgrade will also be available for $149 from any word processor with a suggested retail price of at least $395. WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows will require a 386 machine or higher, at least 4M (preferably 6M) RAM and Microsoft Windows 3.1. @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 P1-12 "Amiga 1000 for a Second Computer" @toc "menu" /// Usenet Review: Amiga 1000 as a Second Computer ---------------------------------------------- By Rob Morton (morton@wam.umd.edu) PRODUCT NAME Commodore Amiga 1000 computer [MODERATOR'S NOTE: I am sure that some of you are shaking your heads in disbelief that someone is reviewing an ancient Amiga 1000 over 8 years after its release! However, this review has an interesting perspective that might be helpful to some of you: it views the A1000 as a cheap choice for a second computer. With used A1000's available very inexpensively now, some readers may find this information useful. - Dan] BRIEF DESCRIPTION Can you think of a cheaper second computer?? The Amiga 1000 is able to use most of your current software, and will not take up much room. That is what I wanted in a second computer, and that is what I got. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Commodore Business Machines Address: 1200 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 USA (Varies for other countries) Telephone: (800) 66-AMIGA (USA/Canada only) (215) 431-9100 LIST PRICE This product has been discontinued; however, you can get one used quite cheaply: less than $100 (US). REVIEW Well, I got this computer because I had never seen one before. Since I am trying to save enough money to go to college, I weighed the choices: A1000 or college education. So now that I own it and know what it looks like, I figured others may want to know my impressions. The case of this computer is probably the best designed that I have seen. Being able to store the keyboard underneath the computer is a real plus when working with no space (I just put it where I was thinking of putting my books for college). I may be dreaming, but imagine an AGA machine in an A1000 case. It would be grand. The only design problem I see with this computer is the poor keyboard layout. It feels great, but I keep hitting the wrong keys. Luckily, Commodore corrected the keyboard problem with the rest of the Amiga line, and you can use an A2000 keyboard on the A1000 with an adapter. Doing this robs you of the ability to store the keyboard underneath the computer though. As for running software, I have found nothing that does not work on this machine. Shadow of the Beast 3 worked flawlessly, as did Archon (this can not be said for any other of the Amiga machines). I do not have anything that is AmigaDOS 2.0 specific, but I am sure with the proper hardware, anything will run on it except AGA stuff. I ran some old demos and basically got to take a trip through history. All of this for the price of a used C64, monitor, disk drive, and (if you are lucky) a printer. There are ways to install ROM's, hard drives, and accelerators. Many of these can be acquired used as well. Even as an unexpanded system, this makes for a nice new toy. (I use the word "toy" not like a small child's toy, but more like an overgrown child's toy.) DOCUMENTATION Well I got the complete manuals for using the A1000. I got Kickstart disks for 1.2 and 1.1, and I have pretty much figured them all out (real tough job there). The documentation seems quite well written, and comes in a three ring binder. The pages for 1.2 were also added to this folder. LIKES AND DISLIKES Well I really like having a second computer, and the price cannot be beaten. The keyboard garage is great. You will never have the keyboard getting in the way of the disk drive, or for that matter the keyboard cord getting tangled with the mouse and joy stick cord. I also like looking at a computer that is 8 years old, and still working perfectly. I did not like the keyboard layout, or using Kickstart disks, but like I said both of these can be corrected if they really irritate you. This computer cannot be improved, because it is not being made anymore. If Commodore were to come out with a new Amiga in a similar case, I would like it. With a 68030 CPU, hard drive, and AGA chips for less than less than 1000 US dollars, and this would be the perfect Amiga. These are more redesigns than improvements though. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I have an A2000, which the only real difference is the Kickstart ROM, more memory, better keyboard, and better Agnus chip. As for software, while running the software I could not tell the difference in these machines. Comparing it to an A500 with Workbench 2.04 is the only other comparison I can do. Saying Workbench 2.04 is better than 1.2 is like saying an F40 is better than a Yugo. But as far as the design of the case, I would much rather have an A1000 than an A500. If you do any typing, then a detachable keyboard is great. If you only want to play games, then go with whatever is cheapest. Actually for any game that uses the keyboard, a detachable keyboard is still great. BUGS This is just a guess on my part, but Commodore probably had fewer bugs in this computer than any since. It also runs Amiga software better than some other Amiga models. I can run Archon, and I bet there are not too many people who can say that. :) VENDOR SUPPORT I have never had a problem with the support that Commodore has given me. Of course I have never had a reason to call them either, so I guess I am an easy person to support. I like their equipment, and it seems to be made well enough to stand the test of time. WARRANTY I doubt you will get any warranty unless you get a factory refurbished A1000, but you can probably find better deals on the net. CONCLUSIONS If you are looking for a cheap second computer, a cheap game system, a hardware hacker's dream, or just a piece of history, I would say you can not go wrong with the A1000. It is old but still alive. A1000's are capable of doing almost anything that an A500 can do, if you want to expand. Basically if you have a spare $100 (US) and want to get some enjoyment experimenting, then an A1000 is a good choice. Rob Morton @endnode *************************************************************************** @node P4-6 "BIX" @toc "menu" /// BIX - Byte Information Exchange Lots of information! ------------------------------- BIX is the premier online service for computing professionals and enthusiasts. While other online services cater to computer novices, BIX is the place for knowledgeable people to go for answers to tough questions. You're likely to find many others in similar situations who can offer advice, give technical assistance, or point you in the right direction. BIX is divided into areas called conferences, each devoted to a particular area of interest. They range from algorithms to windows, from writers to amiga. Conferences are categorized into groups, usually referred to as exchanges, so that you can browse through whatever groups interest you and see a list of the conferences it contains. These are some of the exchanges on BIX: amiga.exchange - the place for Amiga developers and enthusiasts byte - the full text of each issue of BYTE magazine; source code too e.and.l - Entertainment and Leisure; music, pets, games, more ibm.exchange - everything from OS/2 to PC clones mac.exchange - Mac news, support, software, advice professionals - consultants, engineers, financiers gather here programmers - some of the best brains in the business! wix - the Information Exchange for Windows; Windows Magazine online writers.ex - the professional and amateur writer's exchange ************FULL INTERNET ACCESS!************ BIX also features access to the Internet - you can use FTP to transfer files from sites all over the world, telnet to log on to other online services, schools, and research sites, and send Internet mail to millions of people at services like DELPHI, CompuServe, America Online, MCI Mail, and other sites and services. Services like "WHOIS" and "Finger" are also available, with more features on the way (like USENET newsgroups; our newsreader is currently being tested and should be available very soon!) There are no usage fees or special charges for Internet access - it's all part of your BIX subscription. ================================ Rates and Connect Information: ================================ BIX membership costs $13 per month, plus connect time. There are several different ways to connect: SprintNet* $3/hour evenings/weekends $9/hour weekdays Tymnet:** $3/hour evenings/weekends $9/hour weekdays (SprintNet and Tyment rates shown are for 48 contiguous US states only.) Tymnet Canada: $4/hr eves/wkends $9/hour weekdays Tymnet Hawaii: $10/hr eves/wkends $20/hour weekdays Telnet(via Internet): $1/hour, round the clock Direct dial (Boston): $2/hour, round the clock (up to 9600 bps) * SprintNet daytime hours are from 6am to 7pm, M-F, ET. ** Tymnet daytime hours are from 7am to 6pm, M-F, ET. To find your local SprintNet number, call SprintNet at (800) 877-5045, ext. 5. Internationally, call (404) 859-7700. To find a local Tymnet number, call Tymnet at (800) 937-2862. Internationally, call (703) 442-0145. ================ There is no surcharge for 9600 bps access via either telecom carrier. There is no surcharge for up to 10mb of Internet mail per month (sent and received). There will be a charge of $1 per 100,000 bytes thereafter. ================ 20/20 PLAN OPTION (for USA-48 users only): Volume users can choose the 20/20 Advantage Plan, which is $20 per month and includes the first 20 hours of access by any combination of methods from the contiguous United States. Additional use is $1.80 per hour (additional use for telnet access is $1 an hour). The 20/20 Plan's cost is in addition to the $13 monthly fee. INTERNATIONAL USERS: If you wish to connect internationally through Tymnet or SprintNet, please contact your local PTT. BIX accepts prepaid international calls, direct dial, or telnet connections. In order to make a "collect" (not prepaid) call to BIX, your account must be verified before the charges are accepted. When you complete the registration, we'll mail you a BIX Membership Agreement by regular US Mail. Whe you receive it, sign it and return it to us by mail. When we receive it here, we'll authorize your account to make reverse charged calls. If you want to access BIX right away, contact your local PTT to set up a prepaid account. You'll pay your local carrier for your calls to BIX in advance, so there's no waiting period or verfication needed. Or, connect at BIX via telnet to x25.bix.com. SprintNet international calls from most locations are $24 an hour. Tymnet international charges vary, but are generally between $20-$30 an hour. ========================= Billing Information: ========================= You can charge your monthly BIX membership fees to your Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express card. You may have your company invoiced for one or more BIX memberships with a BIX Corporate Account. To do so, send by US Mail or fax a Purchase Order including a Purchase Order number, invoice address, contact person, a phone number where we can reach the contact person, and the company's fax number. Please direct it to the attention of Connie Lopes, who handles corporate accounts. Our fax number is 617-491-6642. Your corporate account will generally be set up within 24 hours. ======================== To Sign Up For BIX: ======================== Dial by modem 1-800-695-4882 or 617-491-5410 * (use 8 data bits, no parity, full duplex) Press a few carriage returns until you see the Login:(enter "bix") prompt, then type bix At the Name? prompt, type bix.amrpt * Users already on the internet can telnet to x25.bix.com instead. At the USERNAME: prompt enter bix, then bix.net at the Name? prompt. Once your account is registered, you can connect the same way, except at the Name? prompt you'll enter your BIXname and then your password. Using the above procedure will allow users in the 48 contiguous United States to take advantage of our special "5 for $5" offer. This offer lets you use up to 5 hours of evening/weekend time on BIX during the current calender month (whatever month you sign up in), for $5. Additional time is $1.80 per hour ($1 per hour for telnet). At the end of the calender month, you will be placed into our standard rate plan, at $13 monthly plus connect charges. You may also join the 20/20 Plan at this time. If you have other questions, please contact BIX Member Services at (800) 695-4775; send a fax to BIX at (617) 491-6642; or send Internet mail to info@bix.com. BIX Member Services hours are 12pm - 11pm, Monday through Friday, ET. @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 Amigability Computers P.O. Box 572 Plantsville, CT 06479 VOICE: 203-276-8175 Internet: amiga@phantm.UUCP BIX: jbasile (Send E-mail to subscribe to our mailing list) 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 CLICK! Microcomputer Applications B.V.B.A. Boomsesteenweg 468 B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen Belgium - Europe VOICE: 03 / 828.18.15 FAX: 03 / 828.67.36 USENET: vanhoutv@click.augfl.be FIDO: 2:292/603.9 AmigaNet: 39:120/102.9 Computers International, Inc. 5415 Hixson Pike Chattanooga, TN 37343 VOICE: 615-843-0630 Digital Arts 122 West 6th Street Bloomington, IN 47404 VOICE: (812)330-0124 FAX: (812)330-0126 BIX: msears Finetastic Computers 721 Washington Street Norwood, MA 02062 VOICE: 617-762-4166 BBS: 617-769-3172 Fido: 1:101/322 Portal: FinetasticComputers Internet: FinetasticComputers@cup.portal.com HT Electronics 275 North Mathilda Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94086 VOICE: 408-737-0900 FAX: 408-245-3109 Portal: HT Electronics Internet: HT Electronics@cup.portal.com MicroSearch 9000 US 59 South, Suite 330 Houston, Texas VOICE: 713-988-2818 FAX: 713-995-4994 Mr. Hardware Computers P.O. Box 148 59 Storey Ave. Central Islip, NY 11722 VOICE: 516-234-8110 FAX: 516-234-8110 A.M.U.G. BBS: 516-234-6046 MusicMart: Media Sound & Vision 71 Wellington Road London, Ontario, Canada VOICE: 519-434-4162 FAX: 519-663-8074 BBS: 519-457-2986 FIDO: 1:221/125 AmigaNet: 40:550/1 MaxNet: 90:204/1 iNET: koops@gaul.csd.uwo.ca 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 P1-18 "AR Confidential" @toc "menu" /// AR Confidential We heard it through the grapevine! --------------- @endnode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @node P1-13 "Humor Department" @toc "menu" /// The Humor Department Jokes, Quotes, Insults, Shameless Plugs -------------------- From a reader, regarding the pathetic Insider's Conference on GEnie: "Personally, I think DEEPMODEM and DEEPTHOUGHT are John Scully and Bill Gates, respectively." @endnode @node P2-3 "In Closing" @toc "menu" =========================================================================== Amiga Report International Online Magazine September 17, 1993 * YOUR INDEPENDENT NEWS SOURCE * No. 1.25 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 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 @{" AR Distribution Sites " link P2-1} Where to get AMIGA REPORT /// 09/17/93 Amiga Report 1.25 "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" -------------------------- · The Editor's Desk · CPU Status Report · New Products · Dealer Directory · AR Online · A1000 Reviewed??? · SHI News · Emulation Examiner · A.M.I.G.A. » SHI Virus Warning! « » Apple's Newton Revealed « » WOCA Show Reports « =========================================================================== 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 =========================================================================== @{" DELPHI " link P4-1} · @{" PORTAL " link P4-2} · @{" FIDO " link P2-1} · @{" INTERNET " link P4-5} · @{" BIX " link P4-6} =========================================================================== @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} Computer Products Update @{" Status Report - Amiga " link P1-3} Updates and information on the Amiga @{" Online Weekly " link P1-4} The lines are buzzing! @{" SHI News - Virus Alert " link P1-5} Information on new virus, rewards, etc. @{" WOCA Report " link P1-6} Inside WOCA '93 with Dan Zerkle @{" WOCA Report " link P1-7} Another view by Matt Guthrie @{" The Newton MessagePad " link P1-8} A first look @{" A.M.I.G.A. " link P1-9} Geezzz....another review on IMPLANT @{" The Emulation Examiner " link P1-10} MS-DOS emulation ...on a Mac @{" STR Focus " link P1-11} WordPerfect 6.0 @{" UseNet Review " link P1-12} Using the A1000 as a second computer @{" The Humor Department " link P1-13} Who were those INSIDER guys anyway?!? @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 @{" InterNet " link P4-5} Subscribe to the AR Mailing List @{" BIX " link P4-6} For Serious Programmers and Developers @endnode @node P5 "FTP Announcements" @toc "menu" @{" JIStoJi v1.3 " link P5-1} Displays Japanese text @{" ReOrg v3.1 " link P5-2} Optimize floppies, HDs, etc. @{" Zodiac's Point " link P5-3} Point software for Z-Netz @{" Screen Manager v1.31 " link P5-4} Utility to control public screens @endnode ----------------------------------------- @node P2-1-1 "NOVA" @toc "menu" * NOVA BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Starnet BBS * Wayne Stonecipher, Sysop FidoNet 1:362/508 An Amiga Software Distribution Site (ADS) 615-472-9748 USR DS 16.8 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 AXShell * Robert Niles, Sysop rniles@imtired.itm.com FidoNet 1:3407/104 (Private - Disabled) 509-966-3828 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Yakima, Washington ******* Notice ******* After 13 September 1993, In The MeanTime will no longer be on FidoNet, thus we will no longer be accepting File REQuests (FREQs). We WILL be still accepting calls and will have the latest edition of Amiga Report online. Downloads to first time callers are still accepted. For the west coast call @{"Cloud's Corner" link P2-1-3} to FREQ the latest edition of Amiga Report. @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: user_name@junct9.royle.org Line 1 +44 (0)372 271000 14400 V.32bis/HST Fido 2:253/510 Line 2 +44 (0)372 278000 14400 V.32bis only Fido 2:253/520 Line 3 +44 (0)372 279000 2400 V.42bis/MNP Fido 2:253/530 Sysop Email: sysadmin@junct9.royle.org @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-6 @toc "menu: * BITSTREAM BBS * The BBS of the Nelson (NZ) Amiga Users Group Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Xenolink 1.0 Z.3 * Glen Roberts, Sysop FidoNet 3:771/850 +64 3 5485321 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Nelson, New Zealand @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-7 "Realm of Twilight" @toc "menu" * REALM OF TWILIGHT BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Canada * Running Excelsior! BBS * Thorsten Schiller, Sysop Usenet: realm.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca UUCP: ...!uunet.ca!tdkcs!realm FIDO: 1:221/202 Fish: 33:33/8 24hrs - 7 days 519-748-9365 (2400 baud) 519-748-9026 (v.32bis) Ontario, Canada Hardware: Amiga 3000, 105 Meg Quantum, 213 Meg Maxtor, 5 megs RAM @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-8 "Metnet Triangle" @toc "menu" METNET TRIANGLE SYSTEM Official Amiga Report Distribution Site UK Support for Mebbsnet * Running Mebbsnet and Starnet 1.02a * Jon Witty, Sysop FIDO: 2:252/129.0 24 hrs - 7 days Line 1: 44-482-473871 16.8 DS HST Lines 2-7: 44-482-442251 2400 (6 lines) Line 8: 44-482-491744 2400 Line 9: 44-482-449028 2400 Voice helpline 44-482-491752 (anytime) Fully animated menus + normal menu sets. 500 megs HD - Usual software/messages Most doors online - Many Sigs - AMIGA AND PC SUPPORT Very active userbase and busy conference Precious days and MUD online. AMUL support site. @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-9 "Omaha Amiganet" @toc "menu" * OMAHA AMIGANET * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running DLG Professional * Andy Wasserman, Sysop 24 hrs - 7 days FidoNet: 1:285/11 AmigaNet: 40:200/10 Line 1: 402-333-5110 V.32bis Line 2: 402-691-0104 USR DS Omaha, Nebraska @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-10 "Amiga-Night-System" @toc "menu" * AMIGA-NIGHT-SYSTEM * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site - Finland * Running DLG Professional * Janne Saarme, Sysop 24 hrs - 7 days InterNet: luumu@fenix.pp.fi FidoNet: 2:220/550.0 +358-0-675840 V.32bis Helsinki, Finland @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-11 "Ramses Amiga Flying" @toc "menu" * RAMSES THE AMIGA FLYING * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- France * Running DLG Professional * Eric Delord, Sysop Philippe Brand, Co-Sysop Stephane Legrand, Co-Sysop Internet: user.name@ramses.gna.org Fidonet: 2:320/104 +33-1-60037015 USR DS 16.8 +33-1-60037713 V.32bis +33-1-60037716 1200-2400 Ramses The Amiga Flying BBS is an Amiga-dedicated BBS running DLG-Pro on a Amiga 3000, 16MB RAM, 2GB Disk space, 3 lines. We keep a dayly Aminet site mirroring, NetBSD-Amiga complete mirror site from ftp.eunet.ch (main site), Amiga Report, GNU Amiga, Ramses is the SAN/ADS/Amiganet French coordinator. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-50 "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 P2-1-51 "LAHO" @toc "menu" * LAHO BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Finland * Running MBBS * Juha Makinen, Sysop +358-64-414 1516, V.32/HST +358-64-414 0400, V.32/HST +358-64-414 6800, V.32/HST +358-64-423 1300, V.32 MNP Seinajoki, Finland Our machine is a 386/33 with 20MB of memory, 1GB harddisk and upcoming CD-ROM drive. The BBS software is a Norwegian origin MBBS running in a DesqView window. We have over 6000 files online (no CD-ROM yet) containing titles for PC and Amiga or both like GIF-pictures, music-modules and text-files. The upload/download ratio is a very lousy 1:100. (i.e. you upload a 20k file and may download 2MB). Messages are mainly written in Finnish, but English is widely used by Swedish-speaking and international callers. Download-access will be granted when asked. Also Amiga-areas are available for those who will need them to avoid 'wars' between PC and Amiga users. Access to sex pictures and stories are only for persons over 18 years and given when requested. Every user has an access to download filelist (LAHOFIL.ZIP), list of Finnish 24-hour BBS's (BBSLIST.ZIP or BBSLIST.LHA) and every issue of the Amiga Report Magazine (AR101.LHA-AR1??.LHA) on their first call. The system is 4.5 years old and sponsored by the local telephone company, Vaasan Laanin Puhelin Oy. SysOps: Lenni Uitti (Main SysOp) Juha Makinen (SysOp of the Amiga-areas) Tero Manninen (SysOp of the PC-areas) @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-52 "Falling BBS" @toc "menu" * FALLING BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Norway * Running ABBS * Christopher Naas, Sysop +47 69 256117 V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days EMail: naasc@cnaas.adsp.sub.org @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-53 "Command Line BBS" @toc "menu" * COMMAND LINE BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Canada Canada's Amiga Graphics & Animation Source * Running AmiExpress BBS * Nick Poliwko, Sysop 416-533-8321 V.32 24hrs - 7 days Toronto, Canada @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-54 "Rendezvous BBS" @toc "menu" * RENDEZVOUS BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site - New Zealand New Zealand Excelsior! BBS Support Site * Running Excelsior! Professional BBS * David Dustin, Sysop Internet: postmaster@eclipse.acme.gen.nz +64 6 3566375 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Palmerston North, New Zealand @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-55 "Leguans Byte Channel" @toc "menu" * LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Germany * Running EazyBBS V2.11 * Andreas Geist, Sysop Usenet: andreas@lbcmbx.in-berlin.de 24 hrs - 7 days Line 1: 49-30-8110060 USR DS 16.8 Line 2: 49-30-8122442 USR DS 16.8 Login as User: "amiga", Passwd: "report" @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-56 "Dead Fish BBS" @toc "menu" * THE DEAD FISH BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior * Aaron Wald, Sysop (914) 425-6015 V.32bis Supra 24 Hrs 7 Days Internet: dfbbs.linet.org Amiganet 40:714/14.0 @endnode -------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-57 "Stingray Database BBS" @toc "menu" * STINGRAY DATABASE * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Germany * Running FastCall * Bernd Mienert, Sysop EMail: sysop@sting-db.zer.sub.org.dbp.de +49 208 496807 HST-Dual 24hrs - 7 days Muelheim/Ruhr, Germany @endnode --------------------------------------------