@database "ar226.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report Online Magazine #2.26 -- August 31, 1994" @{" Turn the Page " link "menu"} _ ____ ___ ______ _______ _ d# ####b g#00 `N##0" _agN#0P0N# d# d## jN## j##F J## _dN0" " d## .#]## _P ##L jN##F ### g#0" .#]## dE_j## # 0## jF ##F j##F j##' ______ dE_j## .0"""N## d" ##L0 ##F 0## 0## "9##F" .0"""5## .dF' ]## jF ##0 ##F ##F `##k d## .dF' j## .g#_ _j##___g#__ ]N _j##L_ _d##L_ `#Nh___g#N' .g#_ _j##__ """"" """"""""""" " """""" """""" """"""" """"" """""" ###### ###### ###### ###### ###### ######## TM ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ### ###### ## ###### ## ### ## International Online Magazine "THE Online Source for Amiga Information." Copyright 1994 Skynet Publications All Rights Reserved // %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%//%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% August 31, 1994 \\// Issue No. 2.26 %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @endnode @node "menu" "Amiga Report Main Menu" @toc "menu" @{" Columns and Features " link P1} News, Reviews, and More! @{" About AMIGA REPORT " link P2} Contact information and copyrights @{" Dealer Directory " link P3} Amiga Dealer Addresses and Numbers @{" Commercial Online Services " link P4} Sign-Up Information @{" FTP Announcements " link P5} New Files and Announcements @{" AR Distribution Sites " link P2-1} Where to get AMIGA REPORT ______________________________________________ // | | // %%%%%%%%//%%%%%| Amiga Report International Online Magazine |%%%%%%//%%%% %% \\// | Issue No. 2.26 August 31, 1994 | \\// %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!" |%%%%%%%%%%%% |______________________________________________| c.s.a.editor.desk Amiga News Dealer Directory Distribution BBS's Product Announcements Reader Mail The Humor Department UK Crosstalk AR Wants You! SPECIAL FEATURES Review: G-Force 040 2000 ................................Maxwell Daymon Have Two Amigas? ParNET 'Em! ......................Philip A. Vedovatti Review: Desktop Magic V2.0 ................................William Near Review: Micro R+D CD-Rom Volume 2 ........................Jason Compton Review: Brian the Lion ....................................Katie Nelson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% @{" X-NET " link P4-6} @{" DELPHI " link P4-1} @{" PORTAL " link P4-2} @{" FIDO " link P2-1} @{" INTERNET " link P4-5} %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @endnode %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% compt.sys.editor.desk by @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1} %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% The Amiga Report Staff %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @node P8-1 "Editor" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% EDITOR %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Jason Compton Internet: jcompton@bbs.xnet.com FAX: 708-741-0689 @endnode endnode @node P8-2 "Assistant Editor" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% ASSISTANT EDITOR %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Robert Niles Portal: RNiles FidoNet: 1:3407/103 Internet: rniles@hebron.connected.com Fax: 509-248-5645 US Mail: P.O. Box 8041 Yakima, Wa 98908 @endnode @node P8-3 "European Editor" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% EUROPEAN EDITOR %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Michael Wolf Internet: MikeWolf@bonebag.tynet.sub.org @endnode @node P8-4 "Contributing Editor" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% CONTIBUTING EDITOR %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% David Tiberio Internet: dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu @endnode @node P4-5 "Amiga Report Mailing List" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Amiga Report Maillist List, the WWW, Aminet, and UUdecoding %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% AR Mailing List ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 listserv@bbs.xnet.com and in the body of the message put: ADD armag ie: ADD rniles@goofy.com armag Your account must be able to handle mail of any size to ensure an intact copy. For example, many systems have a 100K limit on incoming messages. Joining the Amiga Report Coverdisk list is just as easy, but REQUIRES that your mail site be able to handle messages in excess of 600k. Place the following in the body of a message to listserv@bbs.xnet.com: ADD ardisk ie: ADD rniles@goofy.com ardisk Many thanks to X-Net Information Systems for setting this service up for us! ** IMPORTANT NOTICE: PLEASE be certain your host can accept mail over ** 100K! We have had a lot of bouncebacks recently from systems with a ** 100K size limit for incoming mail. If we get a bounceback with your ** address in it, it will be removed from the list. Thanks! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ World Wide Web ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AR can also be read with Mosaic (in either AmigaGuide or html form). Reading AmigaReport with Mosaic removes the necessity to download it. It can also be read using programs found in UNIX sites such as LYNX. Simply tell Mosaic to open the following URL: http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/mjw/Computer/Amiga/AR/MainPage.html Mosaic for the Amiga can be found on Aminet in directory comm/net, or (using anonymous ftp) on max.physics.sunysb.edu Mosaic for X, Macintosh(tm) and Microsoft Windows(tm) can be found on ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Aminet ~~~~~~ To get Amiga Report from Aminet, simply FTP to any Aminet site, CD to docs/mags. All the back issues are located there as well. (ftp.cdrom.com or ftp.wustl.edu are two sites) UUEncoding/Decoding (thanks to Bob Tomasevich for the quick tutorial) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What is uuencoding and uudecoding? ---------------------------------- uuencoding is converting a binary file into text (ASCII) which can be sent through mail or Usenet. uudecoding is reversing the process (e.g. converting the file back to binary). Why would I want to do this? ---------------------------- You have to send a binary file to a user who does not have FTP access, or the user is too lazy to FTP the file. What is the normal procedure? ----------------------------- 1. Convert the binary file into ASCII, using uuencode. 2. Send the file, through email, to the user. 3. The person on the receiving end gets the email, which may be split into parts. If the email is split into parts, the parts must be combined, in the order received, into one file. 4. Receiving person converts the file back into binary, using uudecode. What does a uuencoded file look like? ------------------------------------- The start always has: begin 644 So, for the file happy-happy-joy-joy.txt, it would look like: begin 644 happy-happy-joy-joy.txt The encoded file begins right after: M1TE&.#=A@`+@`9<````$`*QB15=2.+&/@R(Y)XM8.=J]H+*%7BL6#8]F6EP_] M*$=E5"L?L-Z8A-:#60\@$,9P27-4-YB#;4HY)U!L9KZNE\O"O["#;8]82SDF> M&[%J4FI',.&:E`48#="4@SE41M61(`)N(`-^(`1.($5>($9N($=^($A.((E>((IN((M^((Q.(,U>(,YN(,]^(-!+ &V"\"`@`[& `` end <-- the end of the encoded file size 151341 <-- size of the original file So, how would I do this on the Amiga? ------------------------------------- There are many uuencode/decode variants out there, but most usually have kept the old UNIX command line, which can be confusing to novices, or, require you to remove all mail headers and other, non-uuencoded text. Luckily, Asher Feldman took the time to write UUxt. What is UUxT? ------------- It is a program which performs both the uuencode/decode operations in one executable, AND, can also pack/unpack LhA archives. Tell me more. ------------- The UUxT archive contains UUxT, the CLI version, and UUxtGUI, the Workbench interface. I will give a short summary of how to use both. Detailed instructions are included in the UUxT archive. CLI Version: ------------ Running UUxT without any options gives the following: UUxT Version 2.1a Copyright (c)1993 Asher Feldman USAGE: UUxT [option] [archive name] options: a - encode l - LhAencode x - decode u - LhAdecode showing the format of the command line and the valid options. Some example command lines: 1. Normal encoding - UUxt a filename.uue filename-to-archive 2. Normal decoding - UUxt x filename.uue 3. LhA archiving and encoding - UUxT l filename.uue filename.lha file1 file2 ... 4. Decoding and LhA unarchiving - UUxT u filename.uue For LhA encoding and decoding, you will need LhA by Stefan Boberg. Workbench (GUI) Version: ------------------------ Below is a ASCII rendition of the UUxT-GUI window (from UUxtGUI doc): ____________________________________________________________ |+| UUxT-GUI Frontend v1.0 (c)1993 Asher Feldman | +------------------------------------------------------------+ | ______________________ ______________________ | | |InFile | | |OutFile| | | | +-------+--------------+ +-------+--------------+ | | (1) (2) (3) (4) | | ____________ _____________ | | Operation |@| Decode | Lha Name | | | | +-+----------+ +-------------+ | | (5) (6) | | _________ | | | START | | | +---------+ | | (7) | +------------------------------------------------------------+ (1) Clicking on this brings up a requester to select the file you want to perform the operation shown in gadget (5). (2) You can manually type here the filename of the file affected by the operation indicated in gadget (5). (3) Used only for encoding, brings up a requester to select where the encoded file should go. Selecting an existing file will cause the existing file to be replaced by the encoded file. You can also use this requester to create directories. (4) You can manually type the filename of the file to be the encoded file. (5) The operation to perform on file shown in (2). The operations are the four provided by UUxT (uuencode/uudecode/LhAEncode/LhADecode). (6) The name of the archive created with the LhAEncode option. Ignored when any other operation is selected. (7) Does the encode/decode/LhAEncode/LhADecode and pops up a requester indicating if the operation was successful or not. I need this! Where can I get it? --------------------------------- If you use the Internet from a local BBS, you may find it there. If not you can FTP it from wuarchive.wustl.edu, in the directory pub/aminet/arc/UUxT.lha It should also be on the Aminet mirrors. Thanks for the explanation! How can I reach you if I have questions? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet: bob.tomasevich@nezuld.com bobt@ais.net @endnode @node P1-1 "compt.sys.amiga.editor.desk" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% compt.sys.amiga.editor.desk %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Response to the last issue's mini-survey has come in so quickly I've decided to act on what I see so far. So far, most readers seem capable of living with the biweekly format. Some feel that AR loses its edge, since the longer the wait, the older the news...others want a daily AR with a large Sunday edition, but that won't QUITE happen any time soon. But I WILL make a deal with you, readers. AR will continue to be released no LATER than biweekly. But this issue isn't quite two weeks after the last one. There's a reason for that. My "ar226" directory has 200k worth of material in it, and 200k is roughly the maximum size I can put in an issue and still get the archive mailed successfully to users with a 100k limit on E-Mail (long established as a safe range for readers) So, here's the offer. Fill my drive with articles, reviews, news, humor, anything printable. If my directory is at 200k, I'll do an issue as soon as possible and send it out. Otherwise, an issue two weeks after the last is guaranteed anyway. On the issue of selling selected hardware and software: almost all of the respondents were either indifferent or enthusiastic about the idea. A handful dissented, either on ideological grounds (which I fully understand) or with concerns about the "ads" taking up valuable magazine space (which I also fully understand.) So, I'll make yet another deal. Everything I sell will be reviewed in the magazine. As such, no final decisions on selling an item will be made until I get a chance to review it. This way, there will be no hype for an item, just a reference to an earlier AR for information. The prices will be low and the ads will be small. They will also be in their own secluded section: a new menu from the main, just like Columns and Features. I can't make a better offer than that. Thanks to everyone who responded...I realize I didn't reply to everyone. A major AR survey should be showing up in about a month. Incidentally, be sure to check out Maxwell Daymon's massive G-Force 040 review. It's even AmigaGuided for easy reading, which is, as far as I remember, the first such review in Amiga Report. If you like that format...write a couple of reviews in it. Enjoy the magazine. Jason P.S. The News section is rather large this time...quite a bit of info in there. @endnode @node P1-2 "Amiga News" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Amiga News %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% EUREKA's COMMUNICATOR II FOR CD32 DRAMATICALLY IMPROVED Eureka's Communicator II makes CD32 an intelligent 2 way computer with CD-rom controlled by the amiga. Maastricht, 1st September 1994 You can view PhotoCD's, Create Full motion video* or Audio presentations with the Communicator-, Scala, and Mediapoint- driver. Or you can just use it as a 2 way CD-rom with speeds of upto 210000 baud. One of its unique new features is the virtual CD disk concept which enables users to configure the Communicator II in order to automatically boot the program used most. Also new is CD-rom device support, the integrated menu /program system and added high speed modes. "The Communicator is a great success and has become the default add-on for CD32, now we've made it even better" according to Frank Hoen, general manager of Eureka. "The new Communicator II soft- and hardware doesn't just add a CD-Rom drive to your system(as many people think) but it adds a complete Amiga with 600Mb CDrom 2Mb of Ram and AA chipset to your existing machine. The additional digital video and audio make it nothing short of spectacular!" "CD32 still has the best price/performance of the interactive CD market with the Communicator being the logical add-on for every CD32" according to Frank Hoen. SOFTWARE IMPROVEMENTS SPEED The Communicator II speed is dramatically improved when compared against the original Communicator. Speed can be reached of upto 210000 baud! (on A4000). Transfer speed can be tuned and tested for optimal performance on every amiga. VIRTUAL DISKS This unique new feature of the Communicator II software will change the use of Interactive CD systems. By using the non-volatile ram of the CD32, the user can select which menu program he wants to boot with. The next time he inserts the Communicator II CD, the requested program start immediately making it appear that he is working with more than 1 disk. This prevents a lot of reboots of the CD32 and is perfect when using the CD32 as Multi-media player or CD-rom. USER INTERFACE The bootup Menu and Communicator program are integrated into 1 easy to use program. Also it is now possible to test the maximum speed you can reach with your machine. The baudrate can be reset to default preventing locking up of the CD32. VISUAL FEEDBACK Next to the totally redesigned user interface, visual feedback is given when the CD32 receives commands. This enables the user to check if the requested function is performed correctly. Examples of visual feedback are playing CDþs, setting the baudrate, showing when files are being transferred etc. FILE TRANSFER The Communicator II now has 3 ways of transferring files: Safety 1.The Communicator II Zmodem file transfer enables the user to securely transfer and start files from and to the CD32. CD-rom 2.A CD rom device driver offers an easy to use option of transferring files from and to the CD32. This works in the same way as accessing þnormalþ CD-roms except for the fact that you can also send data to the Cd32. High-speed CLI 3.A high speed CLI orientated program enables you to transfers files fast with speeds of upto 210000 baud ( A4000/030). The Communicator II file transfer capabilities have improved compatibility with ISO 9660 CDþs and are generally improved in terms of performance and reliability. PHOTOLITE CD32 This PhotoCD program included on every Communicator CD was not changed. PhotoLite can be started instantly using the virtual disk feature . CD32 AGA VIEWER (also for non aga machines) View pictures and animations from CD or amiga in 16.7 Million colours. The viewer functions as framebuffer for non-aga machines enabling you to view AGA pictures in 16.7 Million colours. The Viewer was upgraded and now can make use of datatypes. Pictures can be viewed on CD32 directly or first uploaded and then viewed.More advanced time control is now possible. WORKBENCH A newer version of Workbench is installed for increased compatibility and performance. Also Workbench can now be started from the Menu directly or instantly started using the virtual CD concept. Testing the Communicator II Testing the Communicator II is now even easier with the integrated test button which tests the quality of the connection between the CD32 and Amiga automatically. MEDIAPOINT For the popular Mediapoint program the Communicator is now supplied with the new Mediapoint Full motion video* (Mpeg) and Audio Xapp offering advanced audio and video control. A Scala driver is already included. NEW PD SOFTWARE Eureka includes several new PD programs for transferring data to and from CD32. Also a demo version of the animation viewer MainActor is included. HARDWARE IMPROVEMENTS The new Communicator II hardware case has an extra A2000/3000 keyboard plug next to itþs standard CD32/ A4000 keyboard plug. Also the serial cable to the amiga is now a DB25 serial to RJ10 jack (telephone) plug. The serial cable can be easily changed and has a cable guard. The Communicator to CD32 connector is strengthened even more and the Communicatorþs LEDþs are now on the front for even better visibility. This added to the steel plated case makes for a very robust design. The low cost Communicator Lite II has the same features as the full blown Communicator II except it doesn't have LED's, a MIDI, keyboard interface and the advanced power control of the Communicator. UPGRADES For Communicator users software upgrades can be obtained from their Communicator dealer or directly from Eureka at extra charge. Eureka company backgrounds Eureka, based in Beek(L) near Maastricht, the Netherlands was founded in 1989. In 1992 Eureka started developing hardware products for the Amiga. It's first product was the Eurocomp, a broadcast quality composite and Y/C video encoder. After some custom hardware projects for the Dutch government, Eureka decided to concentrate on designing products for the Amiga market. Eureka is currently also involved in custom interactive-TV hardware projects based on PC. Further products are the Afterburner 50mhz 68030 turbo for the A4000/A3000 and Photolite PhotoCD software for CD32. FOR MORE INFORMATION OR EVALUATION UNITS CONTACT EUREKA, MR. FRANK HOEN AT +3146370800 FAX +3146360188 The Communicator II program was written with the powerful Helm authoring system by Eagle Tree Software. Copies of this authoring system can be supplied for review. All trademarks are owned by their respective owners. * Needs Full Motion Video cartridge. [Expected price: US$69 for the lite version, and around US$110 for the full Communicator II package. -Jason] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A sampling of the equipment up for auction from Commodore's headquarters in West Chester, PA, USA, on September 8 starting at 10:00 AM: Electroglass 2001XA prober with pattern recognition Teradyne z 1860 board tester MCT 4600E PLCC handler with 68 PLCC kit Megatest prober Nikon V-12A profile projector with Quatra check 2000 digital micrometer An IBM AS400 9406-E45 System unit, with 16 megs memory, 1.28 GB storage Digital VAX models 8600 and 11/750 "Selection of high-speed printers" and "Computers, components, parts, monitors, modems, power supplies, computer chips, & much more!" It's worth mentioning that the picture complementing the latter is a pile of C-64/128 equipment, save for what looks like a 2000. Over 40 Herman Miller late model accoustical [sic] workstations Executive office furniture, several complete conference rooms, and various pieces of cafeteria equipment And, my favorite: Advance Machine 5000 BHM floor scrubber with 293 hrs. Someone tell me who gets the floor scrubber. Ross-Dove, liquidators, can be contacted at 617-983-7400 voice and 617-932-9290. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my neverending quest for an information source, I first contacted Doug MacGregor, head of Commodore Canada. He first confirmed that the Western Canadian office had been closed. He then told me that Lew Eggbrecht had left Commodore. (Lew was VP of Engineering) Besides that, he had little to offer me. Both he and Duncan Fraser are very embittered at being stranded with what they both consider to be well-supported and supportive dealers but nothing to sell. Of course, they both hide it well behind their Canadian accents. He did answer my question about Jim Dionne, though. (To bring those unfamiliar with rumors up to date: Jim Dionne was one of the last heads of Commodore US, who left shortly after WOCA Pasadena last year. He has been rumored to be involved with the Commodore buyout.) According to Mr. MacGregor, Jim was involved at one point but is no longer. I decided, just for kicks, to call up the Norristown, PA office of Commodore. I got Tom Matson, assistant to the liquidators. Before hanging up on me (roughly 90 seconds after answering my call), he told me that the equipment being auctioned in West Chester was stuff no longer being used by the R+D team. The rest of my questions were evaded. I then called Alex Amor of Creative Equipment, (CEI), one of the bidders for Commodore. Here's what I got: 1. CEI's bid should be finalized Monday, August 29th. They expect a decision 4-6 weeks after that. 2. CEI will have a rep at the West Chester auction, although Amor feels that the equipment "isn't worth $10,000." 3. The AAA chipset "won't see the day of light." (I think he was just flustered and meant "light of day.") Instead, new Amiga models would be based around a new generation chip that had been in development for about a year. 4. According to Amour's information, Dionne had never been involved in the first place. 5. If CEI were to be successful, they would boost engineering to 110 and "rush the next generation machine to market." To announce their success, they have a PR firm on standby, ready to take out a full-page ad in "every major newspaper" in the US. 6. In the event that C= UK's coalition is successful, CEI would be willing to play a role as the next "Commodore US." On Tuesday the 30th, I contacted Amor again. The bid was finalized and he still expects, realistically, a 4-6 week wait on a decision. He also provided me with a bit of information about the "next generation" chip, 3D-RISC. Essentially, from the information he gave me, it is a high-power graphics chip in its own right, but not a CPU. Coupled with a Pentium or PowerPC, it would make for a formidable system. The engineers have been working on it for a year. I have not yet been able to contact C= engineers to confirm this. He also tells me that it is Samsung's main interest in the Commodore assets. CEI has also made arrangements with the subcontractors that formerly produced Commodore products and apparently would be set to go in the event that they are successful. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FARCAST, INC. BEGINS COMMERCIAL OPERATION OF ITS NATIONWIDE AGENT-BASED NEWS AND INFORMATION SERVICE FOR DESKTOP AND MOBILE E-MAIL USERS; THE ALL-DIGITAL DELIVERY OF DAILY NEWS TO END-USERS ACHIEVES BREAKTHROUGHS IN CONVENIENCE AND COST AS PERSONAL INFORMATION ROBOTS ENABLE ADVANCES IN CUSTOMIZED CLIPPING AND PERSONAL NEWS FILTERING FOR BUSINESS USERS MENLO PARK, CA, July 6, 1994 - Farcast, Inc., a privately-held company in the heart of Silicon Valley's information alley, announced today that its nation- wide, agent-based news and information service has begun commercial operation, serving business users and individuals with up-to-date, electronic delivery of headline news; company announcements; sports scores; weather, entertainment, science, and political news; financial reports; and free daily stock market quotes. Farcast(TM) is a first of a kind news and information service. Farcast subscribers receive access to the latest news and information from The Associated Press, United Press International, Businesswire, and PR Newswire, as well as a stock quote feed. Farcast's information robots, called "Droids"(TM), present these information sources to users by performing searches, retrieving articles, and broadcasting information. All interaction with the service occurs through e-mail messages sent to Droids. To search Farcast's "Newsstand," for example, a subscriber sends an e-mail message to the Newsstand Droid. The Droid processes the message, performs the search, and returns the results to the subscriber's e-mail inbox. Subscribers can even maintain their own set of "personal" Droids that monitor Farcast's information sources for articles of interest. Farcast's agent-based information service comes at a flat-rate cost of less than $1 per day, which includes unlimited search and full-text article retrieval. "Farcast is extraordinary. The news is delivered to me wherever I am via e-mail, and the power of their agent-based technology means that I have a customized clipping service to watch my clients' companies and the subjects of interest to me," said Dr. Marc Gerstein, Visiting Scholar, MIT, strategy and organizational change consultant, and author of "The Technology Connection and Organizational Architecture." "Delivery via e-mail means that there's nothing new to learn, nowhere else to look -- a fresh copy of my personalized newspaper is simply waiting in the mailbox 24 hours a day. I can't imagine living without it." With its unique combination of advanced features and low price, Farcast challenges conventional thinking about agent-based information services. "With Farcast, we set out to prove that you don't need to wait ten years for an 'intelligent network' or other unworkably-complex system to deliver the benefits of software agents to end users," said Jayson Adams, Farcast's chief scientist, president and co-founder. "We also set out to prove that a system of Farcast's sophistication doesn't require hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of minicomputers and modems. Our processing plant's low cost allows us to deliver all the benefits of software agents at an affordable price." Farcast's affordability also stems from the strategy to target the millions of e-mail accounts capable of sending messages through the Internet. "The brute force approach to building an information service includes constructing a dedicated communication network of modems, high-speed phone lines, etc. With the recent explosive growth of 'Internet-aware' e-mail accounts, however, we realized we could leverage the Internet as our communication network. The beauty of this strategy is that almost everyone with an e-mail account today can already access Farcast. No special service numbers to dial, no new software clients to install and learn, and no connect time charges to pay. Using Farcast is as easy and convenient as sending an e-mail message to a colleague or friend," said Scott Love, Farcast's CEO and co-founder. Today's announcement marks the first in a series of breakthrough personal information services from Farcast. Farcast is a privately-held start-up with headquarters located in Menlo Park, CA. Its mission is to deliver affordable information access through software agent technology to business users and individuals. To learn more about the Farcast news and information service, send an e-mail message to info@farcast.com, with the subject "hello." Direct subscription inquiries to subscriptions@farcast.com (e-mail) or (415) 327-5603 (fax). Copyright 1994 Farcast, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Farcast and Droids are trademarks of Farcast, Inc. @endnode @node P1-4 @title "A2000 G-Force 040 review by Maxwell Daymon - August, 1994" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Review: A2000 G-Force 040/33 Combo By: Maxwell Daymon %% %% A comprehensive review of the GVP accelerator mdaymon@rmii.com %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% The A2000 G-Force 040/33 combo (G-Force) is a multifunction accelerator board from GVP for the Amiga 2000 series of computers. It features: * 8-layer PCB design with surface mount technology * 33MHz 68040 microprocessor * Full 68040 Burst mode support * SCSI-2 hard disk controller (not FAST or WIDE) * High speed 9-pin RS-232 compatible serial port (up to 614,140 bps) * Centronics compatible parallel port (Amiga/IBM mode selectable) * RAM expansion (4, 8, 12, 16, 32, 48, and 64 Megabyte @{"configurations" LINK MAD_040RAMCONFIG}) * Custom 32-bit bus for speed intensive products (e.g., @{"EGS 110/24" LINK MAD_040EGS}) @{" COMPANY INFORMATION " LINK MAD_040GVPINFO} @{" HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS " LINK MAD_040REQ} @{" MACHINE/SOFTWARE USED FOR TESTING " LINK MAD_040USED} @{" INSTALLATION " LINK MAD_040INSTALL} @{" MC68040 " LINK MAD_040PROCESSOR} @{" SCSI HOST ADAPTER " LINK MAD_040SCSI} @{" I/O EXTENDER (SERIAL/PARALLEL PORT) " LINK MAD_040IO} @{" DOCUMENTATION " LINK MAD_040DOCS} @{" COMPARISON TO SIMILAR PRODUCTS " LINK MAD_040COMPARE} @{" BUGS " LINK MAD_040BUGS} @{" LIKES, DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS " LINK MAD_040LIKE} @{" VENDOR SUPPORT " LINK MAD_040VENDOR} @{" WARRANTY " LINK MAD_040WARRANTY} @{" CONCLUSIONS " LINK MAD_040CONCLUSIONS} @endnode @node MAD_040RAMCONFIG @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: RAM configurations" -------------------- RAM CONFIGURATIONS -------------------- The G-Force 040/33 can use either 4 or 16 megabyte 64-pin GVP 32-bit SIMMs. SIMMs may be installed in increments of one, but they cannot be mixed. There are two 16MB configurations. The first 16MB configuration, four 4MB SIMMs, allows you to use 68040 burst mode. The second, one 16MB SIMM, does not allow burst mode. If using 16MB SIMMs, you must buy four 16MB SIMMs to enable burst mode. All four RAM banks must be full to enable 68040 Burst mode. @endnode @node MAD_040EGS @title "GVP A2000 EGS 110/24 for the G-Force series of accelerators" The A2000 EGS 110/24 is a high performance graphics system specifically designed for the G-Force series of accelerators that offers: * Programmable pixel rates from 5 - 110 MHz * 24-bits per pixel color resolution (16,777,216 colors) * 4 and 8 MB configurations * Attaches to the 32-bit bus on GVP's A2000 combo boards * Uses the EGS system to retarget existing Amiga applications to the new modes provided by the 110/24 and provides a 24-bit application environment. @endnode @node MAD_040GVPINFO @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Information about Great Valley Products" --------------------- COMPANY INFORMATION --------------------- COMPANY: Great Valley Products, Inc. ADDRESS: 657 Clark Avenue King of Prussia, PA 19406 USA TELEPHONE: 215-354-9495 FAX: 215-337-9922 BBS: 215-337-5815 (14.4K, v.32bis, v.42) E-MAIL: 72662.51@COMPUSERVE.COM (fax preferred) @endnode @node MAD_040REQ @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Hardware and software requirements" ---------------------------------- HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS ---------------------------------- HARDWARE: Kickstart 2.04 (or higher) in ROM Open A2000 Processor Direct slot At least one SIMM (a 4MB SIMM is included) A mounting bracket (piggyback) board is recommended if you are also installing a 1" low-profile hard drive. SOFTWARE: OS 2.04 required. OS 2.1 or higher is recommended by the reviewer. @endnode @node MAD_040USED @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Hardware and software used for testing" -------------------------- MACHINE USED FOR TESTING -------------------------- COMPUTER: Amiga 2000 (6.2B motherboard) 1MB Chip RAM CARDS: Picasso II (2MB) GVP Series II HC8+6/xxx DRIVES: Quantum LP52S Quantum LP120S Quantum LP240S IBM 0663L12 (SCSI-2 only) Fujitsu M2616ESA Texel DM-3024 CD-ROM 1.11K KICKSTART: 2.04 (37.175) WORKBENCH: 2.1 (38.35) @endnode @node MAD_040INSTALL @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Installation" -------------- INSTALLATION -------------- ********************************************************************* ** IF YOU ARE GOING TO INSTALL THE BOARD YOURSELF, READ THE MANUAL ** ********************************************************************* HARD DRIVE There are a number of ways to install hard drives. You can install hard drive(s) in the 3.5" or 5.25" drive bays which is very straight-forward. I chose to purchase the optional hard drive "piggyback" board which allows you to install a hard drive on the G-Force itself. You can also install a hard drive on a separate host adapter if desired. In most cases, you will get the best performance from the on-board SCSI host adapter. However, you may want to use a controller such as the Oktagon 2008 that has even better performance, or a non-DMA adapter that doesn't interfere as much with the serial port. It is not necessary to install a hard drive and the SCSI host adapter can be disabled with a jumper in such cases. PIGGYBACK BOARD The G-Force piggyback board sells for about $40. It's a sheet of aluminum with metal bolted to the sides to hold a 1" hard drive in place. It sits very close to the G-Force and can act as a heat sink to the hard drive. I've never had any problems with it overheating the G-Force. There is about 0.5cm between it and the G-Force which seems to let enough air though to keep the G-Force from getting too hot. It mounts to the G-Force with a screw, two clips (part of the folded aluminum) and a piece of metal that hugs the G-Force on top. It works out to be a solid installation and I can't forsee any problems with it falling apart. I felt it was a very valuable addition to the G-Force and would recommend that it be purchased along with the accelerator if you have or are buying a 1" high hard drive to complement the G-Force. The price seems steep for such a product, but considering its functionality, it's worth it. RAM EXPANSION Soon after buying the standard model with 4MB of 32-bit RAM, I realized it wouldn't be enough for my needs. I purchased a 64-pin GVP 4MB SIMM for $210 at a local dealer. It came in an unusually large box (23 x 15 x 4.5cm) and was wrapped in a thick, pink anti-static plastic bag. It snapped into the SIMM socket and held firmly without any adjustments. The RAM was detected and used with no need for special "addmem" utilities in the Startup-Sequence. This allows more of the operating system to load into the faster 32-bit RAM than with an addmem utility. Unlike some SIMM sockets, it's very easy to remove these SIMMs without special extracting tools and they seem strong - unlike the sockets on some other products. G-FORCE 040/33 Before actually installing the card, you need to make some decisions. You need to tell the card what type of SIMM(s) are installed, whether you want the parallel port to be IBM or Amiga compatible (among other small changes, Amiga compatible mode puts 5V on pin 14, used by some sound samplers and video digitizers), and whether you want burst mode or not. Burst mode requires that all SIMM sockets be filled with 4 or 16MB SIMMs. Installing the card is somewhat difficult. The case of the A2000 interferes with the serial and parallel ports on the rear of the G-Force. A slip of paper that came with the G-Force suggests that you remove the plastic guide in the front of the A2000. If that isn't enough, remove remove the screws from the power supply to allow the case to bend slightly. The idea of having the most expensive card in my system not secured in the front did not please me. I chose to unscrew the power supply and all the cards in my system to allow the case to bend enough for the G-Force to fit. It worked and did not cause any damage to the case. You must be VERY careful not to allow the G-Force to bend. If you allow the case to "snap back" while installing the G-Force, you might break your accelerator! After installing the card itself and securing it by two screws, you must choose whether or not you want the Mac compatible DB25 external SCSI connector. If you decide to use it, you may install it in the second open position next to the CPU plate, or in an unused bracket (Zorro II) position. A plate and bracket are provided. I put it in the position next to the CPU plate (where a MIDI interface normally goes) and installation was next to effortless. Some of you may be the type to "shoot first and read the manual later." DO NOT DO THIS WITH THE G-FORCE. There are a number of points you should be aware of when installing this board including a number of "user-decisions" that must be made prior to installation. SOFTWARE Installing the software was painless. The installation took advantage of Commodore's "Installer" software and put hard disk prepping utilities, a patch to make using the internal serial port more reliable at high speeds, a "ShowConfig" type of utility, utilities for controlling the serial and parallel port, 68040.library 37.30, and setpatch 40.16. The installer automatically put a command to remap the Kickstart to 32-bit RAM in the Startup-Sequence. @endnode @node MAD_040PROCESSOR @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: The MC68040RC-33" ---------------- MOTOROLA 68040 ---------------- The primary feature of the G-Force is the Motorola MC68040RC-33 microprocessor. Some features of the 68040: * 6 stage pipeline, MC68030 compatible integer unit * MC68881/882 compatible FPU * Independant instruction and data MMUs * Simultaneously accessible, 4K instruction and data caches * Multimaster/multiprocessor support via bus snooping * Concurrent IU, FPU, MMU, and Bus Controller operation * 4 Gigabyte address space I am very impressed with the performance, and it is quite a step up from my 28MHz 68030/68882. The acceleration suffers a very noticable loss of speed without the 68040's special modes (cache, burst, @{"copyback" LINK MAD_COPYBACK}) but still stays leaps and bounds faster than a comparable 68030. The 68040 has a fan and heatsink mounted on the chip. As long as there is available 32-bit RAM, you can expect full speed from your system. If there is any 16-bit fast RAM, you can expect RAM access to be SLOWER (it will run at ~98% of the speed of an unaccelerated A2000) *when* you run out of 32-bit RAM. This is to be expected. 16-bit RAM is not a good idea in an accelerated system. If present, it should be clearly understood that the system will perform very poorly when the 16-bit RAM is used. I eventually got rid of all my 16-bit RAM. The RAM is placed outside the 24-bit address space of Zorro II, so using cards that need that space such as 24-bit video cards, bridgeboards, and RAM expansions are not affected. There is also a software selectable fallback mode which disables the 68040, but you lose both the SCSI host adapter and all RAM expansion. Before you view the "benchmarks" remember that benchmarks can be misleading. Ultimately, the only way to realize the value of any product you need to try using the system yourself. Note that the RAM seems somewhat slow compared to an A3000. This is due to the copyback cache and the fact than my particular G-Force is not in "burst" mode. AIBB reports that the RAM runs at 0.9 times the speed of an A3000 with copyback, 1.52 times faster without copyback. @{"View benchmark information" LINK MAD_040BENCH} @endnode @node MAD_COPYBACK @title "Copyback Cache" There are basically two types of caching used with the 680x0 series: write-through cache (68020, 68030) copyback cache (68040) Although you can use just a write-through cache with the 68040, most programs are significantly sped up by enabling the copyback mode. In simple terms, the write-though cache keeps frequently read data cached in the processor, while writes go straight "through" to RAM. The copyback mode caches both reads AND writes, only flushing written data in the cache to RAM when needed. Large reads and writes to/from RAM will be slower with a copyback cache, but most real-world applications will be significantly faster with copyback mode enabled. @endnode @node MAD_040BENCH @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33 Benchmarks, ratings, and comparisons" ------------ BENCHMARKS ------------ Results from KickSpeed 1.2 by Nic Wilson ======================================== 68000, 1MB Chip, 0MB Fast: 5.53 seconds to read Kickstart 10 times G-Force 040/33, 1MB Chip, 8MB Fast: 0.21 seconds to read Kickstart 10 times The G-Force offers a 2,633% performance increase over a stock machine when referencing the OS. This means that anything that calls the OS in any way is sped up considerably! Results from SysInfo 3.23 by Nic Wilson ======================================= 24.85 MIPs, 6.30 MFLOPs, 36.30 effective MHz. Memory access time results from AIBB 6.1 ======================================== AIBB 6.1: CPU/Memory access latency index: 4.2 For comparison - G-Force 040-A4000: 5.0 Warp Engine 4040: 4.1 Stock A4000: 8.1 BusSpeedTest 0.07 (mlelstv) Buffer: 16384 Bytes ================================================== -= 68000 =- -= 68040 =- loop overhead: 58.8ns loop overhead: 4.1ns register move: 590.4ns register move: 29.8ns memtype op cycle bandwidth cycle bandwidth fast readw 2007.8ns 1.0MByte/s 69.3ns 28.8MByte/s fast readl 3014.4ns 1.3MByte/s 129.0ns 31.0MByte/s fast readm 2387.6ns 1.7MByte/s 129.1ns 31.0MByte/s fast writew 1876.7ns 1.1MByte/s 197.3ns 10.1MByte/s fast writel 2767.9ns 1.4MByte/s 405.8ns 9.9MByte/s fast writem 2011.4ns 2.0MByte/s 412.3ns 9.7MByte/s chip readw 1176.1ns 1.7MByte/s 987.4ns 2.0MByte/s chip readl 1765.9ns 2.3MByte/s 1566.8ns 2.6MByte/s chip readm 1401.0ns 2.9MByte/s 1565.5ns 2.6MByte/s chip writew 1176.9ns 1.7MByte/s 689.3ns 2.9MByte/s chip writel 1765.0ns 2.3MByte/s 1282.9ns 3.1MByte/s chip writem 1325.1ns 3.0MByte/s 1283.3ns 3.1MByte/s rom readw 1176.0ns 1.7MByte/s 70.7ns 28.3MByte/s rom readl 1766.0ns 2.3MByte/s 128.2ns 31.2MByte/s rom readm 1395.8ns 2.9MByte/s 137.0ns 29.2MByte/s RAM TEST (MOVING 10,000,000 BYTES) ================================== 68000 68040 CHIP to CHIP Time to move: 18533 ms Time to move: 7817 ms Which is 539000 bytes/sec Which is 1279000 bytes/sec Which is 1855 ns/byte Which is 781 ns/byte Which is 7 color clock cycles/byte Which is 3 color clock cycles/byte Which is 23 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 10 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 45 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte Which is 19 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte FAST to FAST Time to move: 21567 ms Time to move: 1150 ms Which is 463000 bytes/sec Which is 8695000 bytes/sec Which is 2159 ns/byte Which is 115 ns/byte Which is 8 color clock cycles/byte Which is 1 color clock cycles/byte Which is 27 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 2 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 52 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte Which is 3 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte CHIP to FAST Time to move: 19967 ms Time to move: 4583 ms Which is 500000 bytes/sec Which is 2181000 bytes/sec Which is 2000 ns/byte Which is 458 ns/byte Which is 8 color clock cycles/byte Which is 2 color clock cycles/byte Which is 25 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 6 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 48 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte Which is 11 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte FAST to CHIP Time to move: 20450 ms Time to move: 4000 ms Which is 488000 bytes/sec Which is 2500000 bytes/sec Which is 2049 ns/byte Which is 400 ns/byte Which is 8 color clock cycles/byte Which is 2 color clock cycles/byte Which is 25 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 5 12Mhz 68020 cycles/byte Which is 49 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte Which is 10 25Mhz 68040 cycles/byte The G-Force gave my Picasso II quite a boost. This is a @{"comparison" LINK MAD_PICASSO} between a Picasso II in a 25MHz 68030 based system versus the G-Force 040. @endnode @node MAD_PICASSO @title "Picasso II performance. 68030 @ 25MHz vs. 68040 @ 33MHz" Computer : Amiga 3000-030 @ 25 MHz vs. A2000-040 @ 33 MHz Graphic Board : Picasso II Rev 1.2, with 2 MByte RAM Software : OS2.1, Kick 37.175, Picasso Release 1.9 (All tests are measured in actions per second. A higher number means better performance.) --------------------------------------------------------------- PICASSO:640x480x4 68030 @ 25MHz 68040 @ 33MHz % Gain Write Pixel 9409 21862 132.4% Line Draw 231 586 153.7% Filled Rectangle 204 331 62.3% Scroll Vertical 39 135 246.2% Scroll Horizontal 10 18 80.0% Draw Circle 61 178 191.8% Text w/o Scroll 225 308 36.9% Draw Rectangle 309 436 41.1% Window Layer 3 5 66.7% Size Window 11 16 45.5% Move Window 27 45 66.7% Line Pattern 228 591 159.2% --------------------------------------------------------------- PICASSO:640x480x3 68030 @ 25MHz 68040 @ 33MHz % Gain Write Pixel 10397 24016 131.0% Line Draw 305 770 152.5% Filled Rectangle 263 428 62.7% Scroll Vertical 56 177 216.1% Scroll Horizontal 13 23 76.9% Draw Circle 71 215 202.8% Text w/o Scroll 256 353 37.9% Draw Rectangle 389 561 44.2% Window Layer 4 6 50.0% Size Window 10 17 70.0% Move Window 35 47 34.3% Line Pattern 301 777 158.1% --------------------------------------------------------------- PICASSO:640x480x2 68030 @ 25MHz 68040 @ 33MHz % Gain Write Pixel 11597 26814 131.2% Line Draw 448 1129 152.0% Filled Rectangle 371 599 61.5% Scroll Vertical 75 224 198.7% Scroll Horizontal 20 37 85.0% Draw Circle 81 273 237.0% Text w/o Scroll 297 416 40.1% Draw Rectangle 526 791 50.4% Window Layer 5 8 60.0% Size Window 15 25 66.7% Move Window 46 62 34.8% Line Pattern 443 1142 157.8% --------------------------------------------------------------- PICASSO:640x480x1 68030 @ 25MHz 68040 @ 33MHz % Gain Write Pixel 12777 29848 133.6% Line Draw 835 2120 153.9% Filled Rectangle 624 1007 61.4% Scroll Vertical 188 225 19.7% Scroll Horizontal 44 74 68.2% Draw Circle 95 375 294.7% Text w/o Scroll 354 506 42.9% Draw Rectangle 813 1342 65.1% Window Layer 7 13 85.7% Size Window 16 25 56.3% Move Window 56 81 44.6% Line Pattern 826 2139 159.0% @endnode @node MAD_040SCSI @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: SCSI Host Adapter" --------------------------------- GVP SERIES II SCSI HOST ADAPTER --------------------------------- SCSI HARDWARE The SCSI controller on the G-Force is very fast compared to SCSI-1 adapters. Out of all the drives I tested, the Quantum LP240S was the fastest at over 1.8MB/sec (32K buffer). Although the A3000 SCSI controller was consistently 5 - 10% faster for all the drives, the G-Force is capable of using a SCSI-2 drive that the A3000 cannot. If you plan on using a hard drive at all while using the Amiga's built-in serial port, you may have problems. Anything above 4,800 bps is subject to hardware @{"overruns" LINK MAD_HARDOVER}. This is common to all DMA host adaptors, although it seems particularly bad with the G-Force when coupled with a fast drive. GVPpatch (included) helps a bit by breaking down large data requests into smaller ones while the serial port is in use. You can apply this patch to virtually any device that might have a conflict, you merely have to specify the device name (e.g., gameport.device, gvpser.device, empser.device, etc.) You may run GVPpatch as many times as needed for as many devices as necessary. SCSI SOFTWARE FASTPREP & EXPERTPREP These programs look nice, but they don't conform to the Amiga style guidelines and they open on a custom 640x200 screen. Although they promote, they would look much nicer with a font-sensitive OS2.x compliant Workbench interface. A major complaint I had with the programs is that newer versions don't seem to write @{"Rigid Disk Blocks" LINK MAD_RDB} that are compatible with each other. If you write a RDB with version 2.0 of Expert Prep, and then get a new version such as 2.5, read the data, and re-write the RDB you can loose your partitions! Upon loading, FastPrep will read the drive information and suggest splitting it into a number of partitions (usually two). In the case of a 1GB hard drive I tried, it wanted to split it into three partitions. It allows you to define up to eight partitions per drive, and you simply choose the number of partitions and enter how many megabytes per partition you want. It's possible to lose a little space when using FastPrep if you type in specific amounts, because the program will just leave the last bit of space unused. You can lose up to 999K of space this way. ExpertPrep is similar to FastPrep, but with some additional options. You can specify OFS, FFS, or N/A (none) for your filesystem. You can also set buffer memory type, DMA mask, MaxTransfer, and Boot, Mount, Nomount, Disconnect, Last Disk, Last LUN, and Synchronous flags. ExpertPrep does not let you define many things that an "expert" prepping program should such as: DriveInit code, BytesPerBlock, BlockPerTrack, Heads, Cylinders, TotalBlocks, CylinderBlocks, Interleave, RDBLow, RDBHigh, MinCylinder, and MaxCylinder. It also doesn't allow altering (per partition or globally) of BlockSize, Surfaces, BlocksPerTrack, Reserved Blocks, PreAlloc, and DOS Interleave. I can understand the lack of these options in FastPrep, but it's inexcusable in ExpertPrep. "Maintenence Mode" only allows for two additional options: Low level format and Bad block remap. Neither program allows management or addition of alternate file systems such as MuFS or CrossDOSFileSystem, and they do not let you know whether a hard drive is loading FastFileSystem from the RDB or ROM by default. They also impose an artificial limitation of one boot partition per drive. This is very unfortunate for developers and users wanting to test programs in a "clean" environment. I keep a small partition with a virgin installation of OS 2.1 available for testing programs and select it from the Boot Menu of Kickstart 2.04 when I want to use it. This does not mean that the G-Force is a dead-end street for those needing more flexibility. You can set partitions destined for alternate filesystems as "N/A" and write a mountlist entry for it, to be mounted after boot time. Unfortunately, this solution does not allow for different filesystems on the boot partition, so it won't work for some people. Also, you must boot from a disk with the mountlist definitions and filesystems on it or you can't get to your partitions. If you need an advanced drive prepping utility that's compatible with the G-Force, look for RDPrep from Microbotics. It is freely distributable and has all the options I listed above, and more. It's more user friendly in laying out partitions, and supports alternate filesystems at the Rigid Disk Block level. RDPrep also integrates an "easy" mode and a "complex" mode in the same program very effectively. RDPrep can generally do a non-destructive read and rewrite of a FastPrep or ExpertPrep RDB, but do not try to go the other way. ALWAYS back-up your hard drive for safety. Changing the RDB is a risky operation that should not be taken lightly. It's always a good idea to start and stay with one prepping utility, so choose before you put hundreds of megabytes worth of data on your drives. @endnode @node MAD_HARDOVER @title "Hardware Overruns" A hardware overrun occurs when the data in the serial port buffer is not moved in time to another location before new data "overruns" it. Hence, a "hardware overrun." The Amiga's built-in serial port is very poorly buffered and any system activity can "steal" the window of opportuinity when the data from the serial port would nomally be shifted out. The GVP SCSI host adapter makes this problem especially bad since large transfers from a fast device can saturate the bus for long periods of time. (See the @{"I/O Extender" LINK MAD_040IO} or the @{"SCSI" LINK MAD_040SCSI} section for more details.) @endnode @node MAD_RDB @title "Rigid Disk Blocks" A Rigid Disk Block (RDB) contains all the information needed to mount and boot partition(s) on a hard drive. They contain vital information such as how many logical heads and cylinders your drive is divided into, and the start and end cylinders of all your partitions. Although it is possible to change RDB's without damaging your partitioning information, it is a risky operation that you do "at your own risk." Changing a partition from being bootable to non-bootable won't usually damage the information on the partitions, while changing the starting and ending cylinders of a partition always will. @endnode @node MAD_040IO @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33 I/O Extender" -------------- I/O EXTENDER -------------- SERIAL PORT There are a lot of problems when using the hard drive host adaptor with the Amiga's serial port (see: @{"SCSI HOST ADAPTER" LINK MAD_040SCSI} for more information), so GVP put a 16-byte FIFO buffered serial port directly on the G-Force. Normally this would be very exciting, but I couldn't get it to work properly. When using the G-Force serial port, my computer eventually locks up (it doesn't crash - it just freezes right after it spews garbage through the serial port.) Any rate above 38,400 doesn't seem to "sync" up with some devices. These problems make the port virtually unusable for high speed transfers while multitasking. This brings up another point. I got many errors when I tried formatting three floppies simultaneously while on-line at 38,400 with the G-Force port, but hard drive activity didn't cause any problems. I did a number of things in an attempt to fix the problem including changing the various buffer sizes, using different cables, and trying different devices. GVP informed me that increasing the buffers isn't necessarily the correct thing to do, as it could cause more problems than it fixes. Indeed, this proved to be true. Keeping the buffers between 4,096 and 16,384 bytes seemed to yield the best results, keeping the machine from locking up for a longer period of time. There was even a program on AmiNet called "GVPIOPatch" (not related to GvpPatch) whose description claims that the current serial drivers (1.7/1.8) use only 2 bytes of the 16-byte buffer on the port! The patch claimed to fix that and some other small bugs. Using the patch did seem to free up some CPU time during high speed transfers, but I can't say for sure whether GVP really doesn't use the extra buffers or not. PARALLEL PORT The parallel port worked with the four printers I was able to test it with Panasonic KX-P 1091i, Panasonic KX-P 2123, Epson LX-80 Spectrum, and Brother HL-10H Laser Printer). I had no problems sending data. The problem I encountered was getting programs to redirect their output to the new port. Some programs (especially ones with PostScript® support) will allow you to specify a port to print to, most programs will not. GVP's solution, GVPIOcontrol, will forcefully redirect output at the expense of simultaneously using your internal parallel port. ALL references to your internal parallel port, not just the PRT: device, will be redirected to the port chosen in the IOControl preferences. There is a program available on AmiNet called "ParPrefs" which is a much better solution. ParPrefs will allow you to redirect output to ANY device (not just gvppar.device) meaning that it's compatible with other cards, too. Another solution involves AmigaOS 3.x and a release called "prt4248.lha", which is an updated Printer Preferences program and printer.device. Since I do not have OS 3.x, I was not able to install the new Printer Preferences. However, I have read that it will allow you to select the printer device and unit number and includes support for up to 25 printers running simultaneously. The final solution I have to offer requires a seperate program to watch one of your directories (similar to "watch" folders on the Macintosh). Art Department Professional comes with just such a utility (File Sentry). In this case, you would create a spool directory and set up the watch daemon to check for files written in it. If you want to print a file through the GVP port, you will then run the "CMD" utility that came with your OS and make sure you redirect the output to the watch folder. By default, CMD redirects output to the RAM disk. @endnode @node MAD_040DOCS @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33 Documentation" --------------- DOCUMENTATION --------------- The G-Force comes with a 72 page wire-bound manual and miscellaneous supplemental files on disk. The quality of the manual (printing, binding) is above average compared to other hardware products I've seen and sits open nicely for reference. There are a number of tables and illustrations which make things easier to understand. The disk is a bit more polished than previous GVP software and includes two hard disk prepping programs. FastPrep for novice users and ExpertPrep for (obviously) Expert users. The manual tells you a lot about basics and what you need to know to get the board working; beyond that, details are sparse. It lists MANY jumpers simply as "reserved" and tells you to how they should be set. This is very bad. I tried two different cards and both of them were shipped with the same jumper in the opposite position as listed in the manual. Since both boards were shipped this way, I am unsure of which way is correct. It would be nice if I could call them and ask which way it should be. As it is I have to prepare a fax and hope that it gets someone who knows what's going on. If the function was listed, it might not be any trouble at all. The documentation is written for beginners and spends a good deal of time explaining what a jumper block looks like, how to find pin one on a jumper block, what "open" and "closed" means, etc. If you are not familiar with the insides of a computer, I would suggest reading it even if you are going to have someone else install the board for you. It's interesting to read. Sadly, the manual leaves out details about more advanced issues that you must pursue elsewhere, and does not contain any developer information that is necessary for development of Amiga versions of UNIX. Also, I could find no reference to setting tooltypes in the various programs even though a number of features are accessable by those means. @endnode @node MAD_040COMPARE @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Comparison to similar products" ------------ COMPARISON ------------ I have not tried any other 68040 boards in my Amiga 2000, but I have seen other boards in other systems. The fact that the G-Force uses custom (64-pin) SIMMs is a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse. The primary complaint about GVP custom SIMMs is price. However, you are guaranteed a certain part with a certain quality, precision, and warranty. One 68040 I tried for the A3000 had very loose, low quality SIMM sockets and the posts of the sockets had to be "whittled" with a knife to get the "industry standard" SIMMs to snap on correctly. There are no such problems with the G-Force. In all, I would have preferred industry standard SIMMs, but it wasn't enough to keep me away from this beautiful accelerator. There are three competing boards that I know of: * Zeus '040 from Progressive Peripherals & Software (discontinued) * Fusion Forty from RCS Management * Magnum 40/4 from CSA The Zeus is an overclocked board (28 instead of 25, and 35 instead of 33). The problem with overclocking is that it shortens the life of components and can cause problems not immediately obvious, but with disasterous results later. Since PP&S is out of business there is no easy way to get the board repaired when the board does break down. I don't know very much about the Fusion Forty except that it uses some sort of custom boot ROMs that must be upgraded to use various operating systems. I have never seen the CSA Magnum 40/4 and was not aware of its existence until just recently. I guess that says something about advertising. ;-) @endnode @node MAD_040BUGS @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Bugs" ------ BUGS ------ The serial port in itself seems to be a bug. It is very picky about almost everything. I have never gotten it to work reliably with any device, and rates above 38,400 are almost always trouble. GVP sent a replacement board, but nothing much changed. It seems almost as if the software driver and support utilities for the serial port were about 90% done and never "polished up." The preferences "GVPSerial" and "GVPIOcontrol" seem to crash depending on phases of the moon and although they have a 3D look, they do not look like OS2.x/3.x gadgets. GVPSerial's gadgets all have double thick borders and the text is topaz 8, while GVPIOControl has gadgets that don't invert properly with more than four colors and the cycle gadgets don't look like standard gadgets. I expect more out of a high end product. I expect more consistency and more stability. Since OS 2.04 or higher is required anyway, I don't see the point in using custom routines and gadgets. The 68040 has the potential to be very incompatible with older software, even moreso than the 68030. This is not a bug, but a side effect of the features of the 68040. If the 68000 fallback mode is unacceptable and you want to run software that is having problems, try disabling the caches, copyback, bursts, VBR and SSP relocation, and FastROM (relocation of kickstart in 32-bit memory for enhanced speed). This will make it as much like a 68000 as possible without falling back. @endnode @node MAD_040LIKE @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33 Likes, Dislikes, and Suggestions" ------------------------------ LIKES, DISLIKES, SUGGESTIONS ------------------------------ This product really gave my Amiga 2000 a new lease on life. I find myself waiting when using a stock A4000. With coupled with a third party 24-bit graphics board, the G-Force turns the A2000 into a very serious performer. The speed up when compared to a 28MHz 68030 is astounding and the fast hard drive controller is like a breath of fresh air. I was disappointed with the lack of consistency in the look and feel of the software, the serial port problems (which may be a factor of the software), and the inability to use much less expensive 16MB SIMMs. I'd like to see GVP abandon their "custom" 64-pin SIMMs. I'd also like to see them improve the quality, reliability and consistency of their software and read the Amiga User Interface Style Guidelines. These points take a lot away from an otherwise fine product. @endnode @node MAD_040VENDOR @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Vendor Support" ---------------- VENDOR SUPPORT ---------------- I have contacted GVP on a number of occasions for support on this and other products. When I was experiencing problems with the old 68040.library, I was sent a new installation disk with the latest version at no charge. GVP has been responsive to the problems they are able to solve, but they have not been able to help with the serial port problems. I would like to see a major maintenence release of the support software. Some have complained that GVP no longer offers "live" tech support via telephone. I have never been all that fond of day-time long distance rates and invariably being put on hold during such times. Being able to fax during low-rate hours is not so bad. Although it's annoying to not be able to just pick up the phone and call, it's not something that's completely unacceptable. Support is still free, unlike support for most products in the clone world. There have been times that it would have been very convenient to call, but I have saved money on long distance and I'm sure when I did send my board in for repair it wouldn't have been turned around so quickly if they were answering "@{"SysInfo says I don't have an MMU" LINK MAD_040NOMMU}" complaints all day. GVP also has a support BBS with a large file base to download upgrades from. I called after I got my G-Force and discovered a new version of ExpertPrep which I downloaded right away. @endnode @node MAD_040NOMMU @title "Where's my MMU!? You said I have an MMU! Liars! I'll kill you all!" For a time after SysInfo and some other system diagnostic utilities came out there was a rash of callers to the various accelerator manufacturers from concerned customers suspecting that they got a "low-quality" 68EC030 or 68EC040 chip. The problem started with misinformation and assumption. Back when Motorola first released the 68EC030 (EC stands for Embedded Controller) it was described as a full 68030 with the MMU portion disabled. This made the chip less expensive to produce and brought the price of accelerators down substantially. The MMU was "disabled" from the production standpoint, meaning that it wasn't even put into the die. Motorola did not make a bunch of 68030s and then cripple them after the fact. The 68EC030 is intentionally designed without the MMU. It is not a full 68030 that failed the MMU portion of testing, as some have wrongly inferred. The MMU is a component of the full 68030 and 68040 that is not necessarily used, and the AmigaOS is an example of software that does not automatically use it. System information software accurately reported the MMU as "DISABLED" (as opposed to "ENABLED"). Well, a lot of people took this to mean that it was REMOVED from the chip and hence they decided that the various accelerator companies must have slipped in an EC style chip thinking the world wouldn't notice. Many of the companies took upwards of hundreds of phone calls per day with irate customers demanding full processor upgrades. They spent a lot of time and money telling people the same thing over and over, "You have a full chip, you're not running anything that "enables" the MMU, and once you do SysInfo will say so." Nic Wilson, the author of SysInfo decided that he would change the wording to something a little less confusing to the average user: "IN USE" and "NOT IN USE". Thanks Nic. This is probably one of the many items that led up to the discontinuance of live tech support from GVP. When a company pays technicians to answer questions like this all day, they lose money. @endnode @node MAD_040WARRANTY @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Warranty" ---------- WARRANTY ---------- GVP accelerator products have a 2 year warranty. GVP has never hassled me about a warranty repair. I did send in the G-Force for warranty service regarding the serial port. They replaced the G-Force, but it didn't solve the problem. I suspect the board was never really "broken" to begin with, rather that the I/O driver is simply lacking refinement. @endnode @node MAD_040CONCLUSIONS @title "A2000 G-Force 040/33: Conclusions" ------------- CONCLUSIONS ------------- This product is somewhat of a Pandora's Box. Part of the reason I purchased the product was for the serial port which doesn't operate reliably in my A2000. The G-Force certainly does give an old A2000 workhorse some kick. If you are interested in processing power for general-pupose use, and Zorro 3 is not a concern, it's a fine product. If you are interested in anything that might demand more than 16MB of RAM, consider going into a different machine (like a used A3000, 3000T, or 4000) along with an accelerator. The reason for this recommendation is based on the fact that the other products use industry standard SIMMs. There is really no excuse for GVP to continue using proprietary 64-pin SIMM memory. High density 16MB GVP SIMMs can run you $1,200 per unit, as opposed to ~$750 for "standard" SIMMs, and they aren't mixable with 4MB SIMMs. Other systems offer much more RAM configuration flexibility. If you aren't going to go over the 16MB mark (at which point 16MB SIMMs will be needed), then the 4MB SIMMs are reasonable enough that it's not much of a problem. I give this product 3 of 5 stars. If they released a RAM module for the virtually wasted custom 32-bit bus that took 128 or 256MB of RAM via industry standard 72-pin SIMMs, fixed the serial port, and released a rewrite of the support software, I'd give it 5 of 5 stars. @endnode @node P1-5 "Have Two Amigas? ParNET 'Em!" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Have Two Amigas? ParNET 'Em! Philip A. Vedovatti %% %% vedovatt@u.washington.edu %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Like many Amiga users, last year I upgraded my system from an Amiga 500 to an AGA machine, the A4000. Having put a fair amount of money into my old system (an '030 accelerator, hard drive and so on), I decided to keep it so I could run old demos and play games on it. As most A500 owners know, even today it's quite a functional machine. However, the 500 somehow ended up packed in its original box, under my bed. Maybe it was lack of desk space at the time, or just my excitement of using the A4000, but the 500 just wasn't getting any use. I started to miss some of the old programs that would only run on my 500, so I pulled out the old machine and set it up. I had moved to a new city and had a little more desk space, so the A4000's little brother got its place next to the other machine. The A500's hard drive had lots of music files, IFF images and other useful programs. I thought there must be a way I can hook these two machines together so I can access all the goodies on the 500 from my 4000. I didn't really want to spend a lot of cash for networking hardware, and I didn't want a null modem setup since you can only access the other machine through a terminal program. Enter ParNET. Back in 1988, Doug Walker and John Toebes of the Software Distillery developed a software package to allow one to connect two Amigas together using a modified cable that connects the two parallel ports. Matt Dillon, of DNet fame, wrote the original parallel device for Parnet. Since that time there have been several other programs developed to utilize the Parnet connection, and I will talk about them later in this article. I decided to set up a ParNET network between my two Amigas a few weeks ago. THE CABLE -- MAKING THE CONNECTION ---------------------------------- To develop any kind of network, you need, of course, some kind of hardware piece to connect the two machines together. The ParNET cable is fairly easy to make from a standard DB-25 printer cable if you have a little knowlege in electronics, and a tester to make sure your connections are correct. I opted to do it the easy way and buy a cable. There are several sources for ParNET cables; I ordered mine from Redmond Cable, a reputable computer cable company. The cost was $24 U.S., plus $3 for shipping. Just ask for a ParNET cable, they'll know what you're talking about. The parallel port of the Amiga 1000 is different from the other Amigas in that its port has a male connector, whereas the other Amigas use a female connector. A1000 owners will need either a different cable, or an adaptor to make the cable fit. Once you have your cable, just connect each end of the cable to the parallel ports of the two machines. You will, obviously, have to disconnect any printers connected to the machines if they use the parallel ports. One word of warning: Do NOT connect a standard parallel printer cable between your Amigas. You need to use a modified ParNET cable, or you may damage your parallel port hardware. Also make sure your machines are OFF before disconnecting or connecting cables. THE SOFTWARE -- Setting up the NET: ----------------------------------- Obtaining the ParNET software is relatively easy. The original ParNET package is available on Fred Fish Library Disk number 400. If you get it from there, you will have to install all the files by hand. There is a better solution, however. Vernon Graner, formerly of Commodore, put together an excellent installation package called "ParBENCH", which uses the Commodore installer utility to put all the files where they need to go, and set up the scripts for a point- and-click network setup. I highly recommend this package; it is available on Aminet for Internet users, and several PD houses carry it as well. You will have to edit a script file called "ParNET-DriveList" on each machine. This file is used to tell the other machine what devices are available, i.e. hard drive partitions and floppy drives. Once you've installed everything, you're ready to go. You should be able to connect machines with different operating systems. My A4000 is running Kickstart 3.0 while the A500 is running 2.04. Lastly, if you want icons to appear for the devices that you access on the network, copy the file Node.rinfo to each partition. If you want an icon for the ramdisk you will have to copy it each time you power up. You can edit the network startup script to copy it automatically when you start the network. USING THE NETWORK -- Couldn't be easier! ---------------------------------------- To run the sofware after installing with ParBENCH, all you have to do is click on the "Boot.Host" icon on one machine, and click on the "Boot.Client" icon on the other machine. It doesn't matter which is the client or host, since the network is peer-to-peer; that is, each machine can access files on the other without restriction. Once you have done that, a disk icon will appear on each machine with the volume name of "Network". If you know how to access drawers on the Workbench (duh!) with the mouse, then you already know how to use the network. Just double click on the Network icon, and you will see icons for each of the devices on the other machine (if you have copied the Node.rinfo file to each device). You can delete, copy, transfer files, and run programs just as if they were on the machine in front of you. You can easily access the network from the shell as well. The device name for the network is NET: so if you want to access the ram disk on the other machine, you type cd Net:ram (notice there is no trailing colon. ParNET accesses devices as if they were drawers). To access the Utilities drawer on the other machine, you would type: cd Net:sys/utilities If you are using OS 2.04 or higher, there are a few caveats. When using the shell, some commands do not work properly. Most seriously are the dir, list, and copy commands. Never fear, there are several fixes for this. First, you can use some of the PD "list" or "ls" commands instead, such as Nico Francois' "llist" which works quite well. An even better solution is getting a program called "NetPatch" by Matthias Scheler which patches the system to allow you to use the dir, list and copy commands normally. I used NetPatch version 1.1 and it worked on both my 2.04 and 3.0 machines. I have since added a line in my Boot.Client and Boot.Host scripts to run this patch when the network starts up. There is another, newer ParNET filesystem written by Olaf "Rhialto" Siebert floating around the nets, which is supposed to fix the above problems as well. It's called ParNFS. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the setup script to make a valid connection between the two machines. Olaf, if you read this and you have any solutions or updates, please e-mail me and I will pass the information on to the readers. OTHER GOODIES -- Adding further functionality to your network ------------------------------------------------------------- Several authors have contributed useful utilities to enhance the power of ParNET. One of my favorites is MShell by Massimo Brogioni. Essentially what this does is allow you to type `rlogin' from your native shell, and this starts up a remote shell. Thus, anything you type in the window is as if you were typing it FROM the other computer. That means you can run programs remotely on the other computer. This has some very interesting uses. I like to use it to run a slideshow program on the other machine, which works as a nice screenblanker as well when I don't need to look at the monitor of the other machine. Another useful, but unfortunately buggy program is called PNetKeys, which is included in the ParBENCH package. This utility does something very cool. When running, if you press `Left-Amiga P', the mouse pointer in front of you will freeze, but if you look over at the other monitor, you will be controlling the mouse and keyboard on the other machine! The mouse response is quite snappy, and typing across the net is real time. To revert control back to machine #1, press the key combination again. This could be extremely useful for CDTV or CD-32/SFX users that don't have a detachable keyboard. Unfortunately, I don't think this program likes OS 3.0. After using it a while it tends to lock up the network. Again, if anyone knows of an update, please let myself or the editors know, and we'll pass the information along. For more advanced networking, S.A. Pechler, has written "Spar", a SANA-II compatible device driver for ParNET. It allows you to make ParNET connections using several network protocols, such as AmiTCP, Envoy, or AS225. I have not tested this out, but it looks very useful, especially if you are using a SLIP connection to connect one of your machines to the Internet. There is a similar package by Timo Rossi, called NetFS, which looks equally promising. LIMITATIONS -- What you can't do with ParNET -------------------------------------------- First off, ParNET ties up your parallel ports. That means you can't run any parallel printer while running the network. As far as I know, if you have a multi-parallel port card, you cannot use it either while ParNet is running, presumably because it ties up your parallel.device access. A parallel port switch box would be handy for when you need to use the printer (and are not using the network at the same time). The ParNET cable documentation mentions possible interference with the serial port. So far I have not had any problem with it, and I've made many modem connections with the network running. The second limitation is that ParNET only limits you to a two machine network. There was a lot of discussion on the nets about this last year. I know some people have tried to connect 3 or more machines together, but I haven't heard of any successes. It appears that ParNFS may allow this to work however, as it describes it in the documentation. In terms of performance speed, I have found ParNET to be relatively quick. Certainly, it's not as fast as accessing a hard drive directly, but it's quite a bit faster than floppy drives. I'm getting transfer rates between 40-60 KB/sec. That's about 3 seconds for a 150,000 byte file. I'm using an '030 optimized version of the parnet.device on both machines, which was included in the ParBENCH distribution. CONCLUSIONS -- Is it right for you? ----------------------------------- Were it not for third party programs like AmiTCP, Envoy, and ParNET, The words `Commodore' and `Networking' could rarely be used in the same sentence. If you are looking for a low cost, very functional network to connect a couple of Amigas together, ParNET is a dandy solution. It's uses are really limitless. If you are into 3D, with a little ingenuity, you can create your own mini render farm. CDTV and A590 CD-ROM drive owners can use these machines as inexpensive CD-ROM servers for BBS setups. I'd be interested in what some of you are using your ParNETworks for. If Jason is interested, I'd be happy to gather up the ParNET related files I have for the AR Disk. If you have any ParNET related materials that are NOT on Aminet, feel free to send them to me in uuencoded form to my e-mail address above and I will add them to the compilation. [Yes, I'm interested...looks like a Coverdisk #4 release. -Ed] If you have a second Amiga that's gathering dust somewhere, get a ParNET cable and try it -- you'll be pleasantly surprised. Happy Networking! COMPANIES MENTIONED ------------------- Redmond Cable 17371 - A1 NE 67th Ct. Redmond, WA 98052 (206) 882-2009 The Software Distillery 405 B3 Gooseneck Drive Cary, NC 27513 Intangible Assets Manufacturing (Envoy) 828 Ormond Avenue Drexel Hill, PA 19026 (610) 853-3733 @endnode @node P1-6 "Review: Desktop Magic" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% REVIEW: DesktopMagic v2.0 By: William Near %% %% More than just a screen blanker... W.NEAR@genie.geis.com %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Program: DesktopMagic v2.0 Publisher: Mediadesk 1875 S. Bascom Ave. Bldg. 116, Suite 204 Campbell, CA 95008-2359 1-800-30-MDESK * Order & Product Info (510) 548-7117 * Order Fax (408) 374-7595 * Tech Support Hotline (408) 374-7596 * Tech Support Fax mdesk@netcom.com * Tech Support Internet 73211,660 * Tech Support CompuServe Description: DesktopMagic is advertised and described in the user's manual as a complete system enhancement. It consists of a screen saver, mouse speedup utility, and sound enhancements for the Workbench. Suggested Retail Price: $39.95 + $5.00 S&H (direct from Mediadesk) I paid 29.95 + $5.00 S&H from Creative Computers System Requirements: 1MB RAM, Workbench 1.3 or higher, hard drive or second floppy drive. Claims to support all major graphics boards for the Amiga. System tested on: Amiga 2000, Workbench 3.1, GForce '030 accelerator @ 50MHz., 1MB CHIP + 6MB FAST memory. PACKAGING DesktopMagic came with a colorful, 44 page manual, three disks, a registration card and an order card for a friend, all shrink wrapped together. If you can get a friend to purchase their own copy of Desktop- Magic directly from Mediadesk then you will receive two Sound and Artwork disks for free. INSTALLATION DesktopMagic (DM) uses the standard Commodore Installer program which makes the program easy to set up on either your hard drive or on floppy disks. I installed DM on my hard drive which used approximately 2.1 MB of storage space. DM does not create its own drawer, so make sure that you create one either before you run the Installer program or from within the Installer; otherwise, you'll have the DM files scattered all over your hard drive partition. During the installation process you will be prompted for which effects you want to be installed. The choices are: OCS/ECS/AA - if you have the following: A500, 600, 1000, 1200, 2000, 2500, 3000 or 4000 Graphic Card - if you have a graphics card installed in your system All Effects - if you would like to have every effect installed (it is noted in the manual that all effects may not run properly if the correct hardware is not installed on your system i.e. some effects will only run correctly on a graphics card equipped Amiga or on a WB 2.x+ system) At the end of the installation process you are asked whether or not you want DM to automatically run upon booting up your system. If you answer yes the Installer will add a line to your S:User-Startup file. I chose not to have the Installer add the line to my User-Startup and instead placed the DM icon in my WBStartup drawer. NOTE: If you have an A1200 or 4000 and a multisync monitor, you must be certain that your monitor supports a 15kHz scan rate for some of the effects to run properly. Also, if you have a graphics board you must be certain that it offers Workbench emulation. INTERFACE DM has a nice user interface which opens a small window on the Workbench screen. To access the interface you can select the DesktopMagic menu choice from your Tools pulldown menu on the Workbench or press + . On pre-2.x systems you can use the + option only. The interface consists of: an effects window with scroll bar, About, Demo, Global, Hotkey, Effect, OK, Save, Audio, Quit and Cancel buttons, and finally Audio and Effects check boxes. * Effects window - This window lists all of the installed screen blanker effects and uses a scroll bar to access them. * About - This opens a small window with information about Mediadesk. * Demo - When you press this button the highlighted effect will open its own screen and run. Clicking the mouse button will return to the user interface. While some effects are running a gadget box will open on their window for user-defined settings. * Global - When this button is selected the following choices appear on the interface window: Timer - This sets the amount of time to wait until the screen blanker takes effect. The allowed range is between 10 seconds and 10 minutes. Volume - This controls the tunes and sound effects volume. The setting range is between 0 and 64. Pri - DM's priority can be manually set from here. The range is between -30 and 0 with the default set to -20. Mouse - This is a mouse speedup setting. The available range is from .25 to 4.0. I found 2.0 to be about right for my taste (this is somewhat faster than the highest mouse movement speed under WB preferences.) CPU Idle - This controls the amount of idle time that the CPU has available before the blanker will activate. If the CPU does not have at least this amount of idle time then the blanker will not be executed. The range of this setting is between 0% and 99% This is a very nice feature, especially if you've ever used the C= Blanker and had it freeze on the screen while printing or doing some other CPU intensive activity. * Hotkey - The Hotkey button allows the user to define two key combinations, one to open the DM interface and one to instantly activate the chosen screen blanker. * Effect - When this buttons is selected the screen information displays two input fields. One field is for entering a sound file to be executed and the other field is for selecting the tune that will be executed whenever the chosen blanker is activated. Also, any parameters specific to the chosen blanker will be shown at this time i.e. number of objects on the screen, speed, etc. * OK - Selecting the OK button after making adjustments to DM's operation will save any new changes to DM's operation and close the user interface. * Save - Saves the user's changes to DM's operation and leaves the interface window open. * Audio - The audio section allows the user to assign sound files to be triggered when certain system events occur. The user can assign sounds to: Events, Keys, Program, Text and Time. The Events include: Alert - Visual warning message similar to system crashes. ASLReq - A program opens a requester window. AutoReq - The OS opens a message window. Open screen - A screen is opened. Open window - A window is opened. Close screen - A screen is closed. Close window - A window is closed. Disk - A disk or removable cartridge is inserted or removed from the drive. DisplayBeep - A warning message given by an application. Left Button - Pressing the left mouse button. Right Button - Pressing the right mouse button. Start DM - Starting the DM program. User Timeout - After a user-specified amount of inactive time the sound will be triggered. The Keys include: ALT, Left Amiga, Right Amiga, CTRL, ESC, F1-F10, Numbers 0-9, RETURN, SHIFT, SPACE, DEL, HELP, etc. The Program selection will assign a sound file to be played each time the specified program is loaded. The Text choice allows the user to assign a sound to a text string. The Time choice allows the user to assign a sound to clock functions including: full hour, Midnight, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 hours. This is a nice feature for making your clock chime with different sounds at several time intervals. NOTE: DM does not use standard digitized sound samples or have support for the use of standard MOD formats. You must purchase a program called Face the Music from Mediadesk in order to compose your own songs to be used with DM. All of the sound samples are in the .HSN format, the samples are created with a program called CrazySounds by, you guessed it, Mediadesk. CrazySounds is NOT available for the Amiga, only for the Atari and Windows platforms. I think that this is not a very good idea considering the vast number of MODs that are available to the Amiga community and IFF sound samples. Could Mediadesk just be trying to get a few extra bucks out of the end-user? There is a RAM/DISK cycle gadget which enables the user to decide if the sound files should be preloaded into RAM or loaded from disk as needed. Loading from disk can slow things a tiny bit, but it will save on the use of CHIP memory. A sound priority cycle gadget is included which allows the user to prioritize the execution of triggered sounds. These priority options are mainly useful if you have sounds assigned to the keys and the mouse buttons. When you press a mouse button and then you instantly hit a key you can decide in which order the sounds should be played. * Quit - Exits from the DM interface without saving any changes made. * Cancel - Closes the DM window and saves any changes made but does not activate those changes. EFFECTS DM comes with 29 effects for blanking the screen. The effects include: Aquarium - See the fish swimming in the tank. This is a nice effect. Blackscreen - Just as the name implies, it turns the screen black. A boring effect for a screen blanker, but it doesn't require as much CHIP memory as the other choices. Blanctris - This one is a Tetris game which is played by the computer. It comes in two versions, one for ECS machines and one for graphics board equipped machines. A nice blanker. Checkered Race - A checkerboard pattern scrolling towards the horizon. Sort of a nice effect, but the horizon is gradually shaded and doesn't seem to ever change. I thought the idea of a screen blanker was NOT to leave the same image on the screen for a long period of time. Clock - The current system time can be displayed either digitally or in analog mode on the screen. You can have the clock move around the screen or stay stationary. Cockroaches - Cockroaches crawl around the Workbench screen and smear things up with their little feet. CrazyWorms - Worms move across a copy of your Workbench screen and eat it up as they go. I tried this blanker and it didn't seem to eat a copy of my Workbench, instead it put up its own screen to use (disappointing.) Curtain - A little creature pulls a curtain down over your Workbench screen. This effect just turns your Workbench a solid color. Very boring. Eyes - Opens pairs of eyes on the screen that blink periodically. Nice blanker. Fireworks - Rockets fire up onto you Workbench screen and explode in several different colors. This one has options to change how the fireworks look. You can make the explosions glimmer or fade. This is a very nice blanker. Flying Breakfast - Cups of coffee, eggs, egg cups, jars of jelly and alarm clocks fly across the screen. Fractal - This one comes in two versions, one calculates the fractals with normal accuracy while the other calculates the fractals with double accuracy. The double accuracy calculations run at half the display speed of the normal version, but they look nicer. LFigures - Animated curves and lines randomly drawn using Lissajous' formula. Nice! Life - Graphic interpretation of the Life Algorithm. I found this one especially boring. Lightning - Lightning flashes across the screen with a variable number of branches on each bolt. Very nice effect, especially in a darkened room. Lines - A takeoff on the standard Workbench blanker. A nice effect. Meltdown - Watch your Workbench screen melt before your very eyes. Another nice effect, but this one should have some user defined parameters such as: the speed of the melting and the size of the chunks that melt etc. Messages - Places a scrap of paper on the screen with a user defined message written on it. Nice for an office environment. Mountain - Uses fractal algorithms to calculate a 3D mountain in either wire frame or solid modes. This one requires a high amount of CPU usage, but is one of the best blankers avail- able in this package. Mower - A small man with a lawn mower appears to mow your Workbench screen and turn it into a field of grass. This one has poten- tial, but the man and mower are crude renditions and it never did mow my Workbench screen, instead it used its own screen. Disappointing at best. MyAnimation - Allows the user to place one of his own IFF-ANIM format animations in the program to be used as a blanker. A nice addition if you're handy with DPaint's animation creator. MyPicture - Another nice addition that allows the user to load one of his images (IFF) and use it as a blanker. The picture then moves randomly around the screen. Password - Lock the system from unauthorized use. After this blanker kicks in, with a black screen (yawn), whenever the mouse is moved or a key is pressed the user is prompted for the correct password. This would have been better implemented in the user interface as a separate option which would coexist with another selected blanker. As it stands, you have to choose between system security and a neat blanker. Plasma - Colorful wavelengths of color scroll across the screen. Another one of the better effects available in DM. You can adjust the wavelength for varying effects - nice. Puzzle - Breaks up your Workbench screen into little blocks and shuffles them around the screen. This is another blanker with great potential, but the user has no control over the speed at which the blocks are moving around the screen. If you've ever used the Tiles effect in BlitzBlank (PD) you'll see the pieces fly around your Workbench screen at lightning speeds (depending on your CPU), but they just pathetically crawl under DM's control. What could be more impressive to users of other platforms than seeing your Ami move graphics around at top speed? This used to be one of my favorite effects, but not DM's version of Puzzle. Rain - Raindrops fall from different directions across a darkened Workbench screen. Boring. Spotlights - This one is supposed to move spotlights around a darkened Workbench screen, but I could never get this one to work! The documentation states that a four color Workbench is required. I certainly don't want to limit myself to four colors on my Workbench just so I can use this effect. BlitzBlanker had a very nice version of this one which was another of my old favorites. Stars - This blanker comes in two versions, one for ECS machines and one for graphics board equipped machines. This one scrolls stars forward or sideways (sidewards as the manual states!) on a black screen. The stars can be made to spin left or right, or you can just leave them going straight ahead. This is another one of the better effects in DM. Tunnel - This one moves rectangular shapes in a night sky. Sort of like flying through a tunnel made up of shapes. Nice. All of the aforementioned effects require varying amounts of CPU usage ranging from Very Low to High. If you want to use some of the nicer effects then you'd better have an accelerated machine. Also, most of the effects require a lot of CHIP memory. LIKES: I liked the easy installation of DM using the standard Commodore installer program. I had the program up and running in a matter of minutes. The user interface is well thought out and easy to use. Most of the screen blanking effects are nice, but most of them require large amounts of CHIP memory and don't offer much user configurability. The addition of the pulldown menu choice under the Tools menu on Workbench makes it easy to access DM's user interface. The sheer number of features included with the package make it worth the cost for the most part. Even though the program was written in Germany, the manual and interface lack the presence of misspelled words, grammatical errors, and punctuation errors so often found in imported software. Bravo! DISLIKES: The lack of a built-in mouse blanker. Some of the screen blankers also blank the mouse, but others leave the pointer on the screen - not a good feature of a screen blanker. The user should be able to select which screen mode the blankers will run in i.e. Hi-Res Lace, Euro36, etc. As the program is written you have no control over the screen resolutions used or the number of colors. DM lacks a random feature that would allow the user to specify which blankers should be active and then have the program randomly select a blanker from that list. Now, you must select only one blanker and stick with it. If you want to switch blan- kers you must manually enter the DM interface and select a new blanker to use. There should also be an option that would randomly select a blanker from the active list and run the first one for a user specified amount of time and then switch to the next blanker in the active list etc. This feature alone would add much more flexibility to DM and cut down on the boredom factor when seeing the same old blanker time and time again. The blankers should have the option of being loaded from disk, as needed, like the sound files can. The Password feature MUST be implemented separately from the blankers. Why can't we have system security and a neat blanker at the same time? Some of the blankers need more user control settings and some of them have no control at all when they really should. DM should support standard MOD formats for the tunes and IFF digitized sound samples. The user has to either buy the tunes creation program for his Amiga or suffer with the limited tunes supplied by Mediadesk. Also, the sound samples are in a weird format which is supported by a single program that isn't even available for the Amiga. I've saved the BIGGEST fault of DesktopMagic for last. When DM is loaded directly from its Workbench icon or from the WBStartup drawer upon booting ALL associated files are loaded into your CHIP memory! What this means is that on a 1 meg CHIP machine you can end up with as little as 250k of CHIP memory left. I usually start out with 800k of chip on my Amiga 2000 after all the other Workbench launched programs are executed and all devices are mounted. I've watched as DM eats as much as 500k of CHIP memory from my 1 meg (CHIP) system. This forces the user to choose between using DM and using ANY other application due to the shortage of precious CHIP memory. I turned off all sound file loading and this saved about 100k, but I was still down to about 350-400k of CHIP memory. This doesn't lend itself to running more than one small application, let alone ANY multitasking. SUMMARY: I would recommend DesktopMagic to any user who has 2 megs of CHIP memory in their machine. If you have two megs of CHIP memory to spare then you won't really miss the memory that DM eats and you could enjoy all of the benefits that this program has to offer. On the other hand, if you have a 1 meg CHIP machine then I would say avoid DM until this major problem is resolved in a future update. With only 1 meg of CHIP memory you will be limited in the number of other small applications you can safely run. With a 512k CHIP and 512k FAST memory (total 1 meg) machine I believe that you'd only be able to run DM and nothing else - that's if DM didn't GURU your system trying to use all of your CHIP memory! I contacted Mediadesk's tech support by phone and by Internet mail. The representative acknowledged the CHIP memory problem (yes, he called it a problem too!) and said that the programmers will be working on it for the next release. As it stands, I have chosen not to run DM on my system after spending $34.95 for it because I can't do any serious work on my system without the extra 500k of CHIP memory used by DM. I've gone back to my old Commodore Blanker and will await the update to DesktopMagic, which I WILL purchase. @endnode @node P1-7 "UK Crosstalk" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% UK Crosstalk By: Alan Buxey %% %% Our UK Correspondent starts a massive survey kcci1@uk.ac.susx.solx1 %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Welcome, Amiga owner/user, to my first 'Amiga Report' column (though not the first time that my words have appeared in this magazine - some of my CD32 mini-reviews got here first.. I hope that you do own or use an Amiga - otherwise this weeks column will be of no use to you at all! Let me explain.... It seems that the first task for me here at AR is set for me already - to find out exactly WHO I am corresponding to. What do I mean by this then? Well, let me pose the simple question "What Amiga do you own?". In the beginning, this would have been easy to answer and forecast - as all Amigas were the same: A1000 , 68000 , 256K, OCS, 880K floppy... But not now....oh dear me no.. . Arguements are continually brought up on the internet as to what the current "average" owner has: Is it 1MB or 2MB (and is that Fast or Chip RAM ECS or AGA? Harddrive present or not? But no longer!! For, coming soon, is "The 1994 Amiga Internet Survey" The mother of all Amiga surveys! (and i Mean it! :) ) lets see exactly why this problem has to be answered.. Scenario -------- A developer has a game. it may be an original Amiga title, it may be a PC port (and theres nothing wrong with that!). Whatever, its a game and it's to be released on the Amiga format. But the game has to be good, the developer doesnt want the game to suffer from bad reviews - hence bad sales. The game _really_ needs a harddrive (it could fit onto 3 or so floppies and have swapping - but some of the graphics and sound would have to go. And the graphics have already been cut down from 256 colours to allow the game to fit onto few floppy disks). Should the developer just go for it - releasing a hardisk only AGA game - or maybe 2 versions, one a cut down version on floppy. But are there enough 020+ powered OCS/ECS machines out there to cope with the polygons? Now that you have a handle on the dilema, you can see the obvious solution. tell the developer all the info he needs about the Amiga platform / user base. ....and that's where I come in.... Solution -------- The survey will be extensive and water tight (well.... ;) ) The data-capture form is currently being designed - it leaves no stone unturned ...or rather... it will do when finished - because this is where YOU step in. I want you to E-Mail me with questions that _YOU_ would like to know about fellow Amiga users/owners. It could be such technical stuff as what size harddisk they have (though THAT has already been put on the form ;) ), it could be their favourite sport -> ideal question for developers wanting to do a sport game... ....and talking of developers; many MAJOR Amiga developers have been contacted about this survey and they too have put forward questions to be asked about you!! 8-) Developers such as Team-17, 21st Century, Almathera, Decandence, Mindscape .... who all want to develop good titles that make the most of the Amiga. What about CD32? ---------------- CD32 too? Of course!! It _is_ an Amiga. And the survey is definately going to be searching deeply into CDROM details -> an important step in the Amiga life. The End ------- Well, for you it is...all you have to do is E-Mail me some nice, searching questions(which I hope you will do..) As for me, I've got to finish the design of the form to make is as simple and easy to complete as possible - post it out - and await all the replies. I then have to analyse all the data. And, as the form has been designed to allow for any question to be answered (within any permutation hopefully) - THATS a lot of analysing! %-) And there's the corresponding to do too!! Its not an easy life here on the InterNet ;) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CD32 Charts and Release Dates ----------------------------- The latest 'list'/'Gallup' chart for the CD32 places the top games as.. 1. Gunship 2000 Microprose 2. Heimdall 2 Core design 3. Liberation Mindscape 4. Ultimate Body Blows Team 17 5. Impossible Mission 2025 Microprose 6. Global Effect Millenium 7. Wembly Soccer Audiogenic 8. Zool Gremlin Graphics 9. James Pond 3 Millenium 10. Morph Millenium Hot products to look out for in the next chart (and predicted entries) are; Simon The Sorceror (1) Banshee (2) Litil Devil (4) Will we see no end to Milleniums domination of the top 10???? Will Microproses success with the CD32 be enough for them to finally release F1GP to the maddening crowd? Only time will tell..... alan Hi, Just some quick, rough'n'ready release dates for your CD32... This month coming ----------------- Marvin's marvellous adventure 21st century (who said that they were dropping the Amiga??) Scavenger 4 Psygnosis (yeh, right - sure you dont mean next year THIS time lads? :) ) World Class cricket Audiogenic (whey hey!! a cricket simulator - try THAT on another console! ;) ) Arcade pool Team 17 (great game! and this time, you'll feel like your IN a pub -> soundtrack) Alien Breed Tower Assault Team 17 (comes with FREE Alien Breed 2 and demos of other games!!) Superfrog Team 17 (the wierd and wacky platformer goes onto the silver disc - about time too!) October ------- Jungle Strike Ocean (follow up to desert strike - liscence from EA only just agreed) MegaRace Mindscape (this game might make the 3DO owners wish that Road rash was even better!) Pinball Illusions 21st Century (ANOTHER release from that hard working team! ;) ) Undated ------- The educational foreign language package - "Micro French" is to be released for the CD32. This marks the first real steps for educational packages on the platform -> and will be followed by their other language courses. @endnode @node P1-8 "Review: Micro R+D CD-ROM Volume 2" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Review: Micro R+D CD-ROM Volume 2 By: @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1} %% %% Nature's Backdrop and NASA pics in a big pile... %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Micro R+D's second foray into the CD-ROM market is all about pictures. Specifically, the Nature's Backdrop series of 72 attractive, crisp, professional-looking files. To cap it all off, a large collection of NASA pics is on here as well. That's just about it, and it takes up a lot of space. Admittedly, a lot of the space is taken up by the fact that each Backdrop picture is stored in framestore, IFF, TIFF, GIF, and JPEG formats. Essentially, just about ANYBODY can get at these, making it a viable multi-platform CD-ROM. To make it cater a bit more to Amiga users, demos of Montage and Broadcast Titler are included. What do I think? The pictures are pretty. There's no questioning that. For artists or video production personnel, this CD is a great place to pull material from: the backdrops really look natural as they're very well done. The NASA pictures are of varying quality and usefulness (there are quite a few of those "Crewman in EVA gear flyby" pictures) If this is the sort of thing you need, go for it. Be wary of the price, however...I've seen this disc sell at a dealer for over US$70, quite a bit more than the Volume 1 that was sitting opposite it on the shelf. If you want Nature's Backdrop with some space pictures thrown in and value it highly, grab this. If you're just in the mood to see some pretty pictures, I can always send you one of my fiancee. @endnode @node P1-9 "Review: Brian the Lion" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Review: Brian the Lion By: Katie Nelson %% %% By Psygnosis knelson@bbs.xnet.com %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Brian The Lion -- Psygnosis Brian the Lion, although pretty much the standard (well-done) platformer in play-style, is set apart from other games by its spectacular graphics. This is one of the best games an ECS (and a good one for an AGA) Amiga owner could have. If you're sick of your Sega or SNES (you're STILL friends with them? :) ) talking about how arcade-like and wonderful their games are, show them this game. The backgrounds especially are amazing. Brian himself boasts wonderful animation, and unlike most platformers, not just in his head and feet. His entire body is animated, and the expressiveness of the character increases the entertainment. Even the small characters that show your status are animated, with the punching-glove "hit" point character grimacing every time you get hit, and looking as if it is screaming when you fall down a bottomless pit. Unfortunately, the "enemy" characters are not so well taken care of, but you don't see them for very long anyway as you race by trying to beat the clock. Oh, and one of the neatest-looking parts (it makes me dizzy, in fact) is in one of the bonus rounds. In order to get there, you have to beat the clock as you complete a level, which is somewhat difficult, actually. One of the better places to do this is the first secret "place" off of the very beginning level. When you are presented with your choice of bonus levels (there are three, if I remember correctly), choose the cloud one. But don't stand still, clouds aren't very sturdy. To add to the great graphics is wonderful sound. Many game soundtracks become tiresome after about 3 run-throughs, and you end up shutting off the sound and blasting your stereo. Fortunately, Brian shows a great variety of music, which happily is becoming more common in the newer platforms. The plot: It has one. To me, at least, the plot isn't important (in this type of game). You're supposed to save your friend. Standard-type-thing. To do this, you need to get through all the levels. Standard-type-thing. On the way, you can pick up crystals which let you buy stuff that helps you on your way. Pretty much a standard-type thing. Oh, but in order to get to some of the secret levels, you'll need high jumping ability, which you need to buy. And each "cloud" shop (yes, look, for the small cloud, and run into it.) has different prices from the others, and some shopkeepers are more friendly than the others. Which is amusing and a nice touch. One of the very few problems with Brian the Lion is that it's HARD. I mean, maybe not a great deal more than average, but in order to get a password you have to get pretty far in the game. After the first, they become a bit more regular. Of course, if you stop off to the semi-secret levels (where you still can get killed), it makes the path that much longer. Still, an earlier password would have been a big help. The second quibble I have with the game is the fact that since the backgrounds are so wonderful, they had to use a great many colors for them. Therefore, colors are re-used for Brian and all other characters. While I understand that this is conservation in order to give the appearance of an even greater number of colors, sometimes characters (especially the frogs at the beginning) seem to blend into the background, making it a bit more difficult to get past them. The final criticism I have is: Put something at the bottom of the pits that characters fall down. Bottomless pits, bah! As if somewhere in the jungle there's a hole that you can fall down that takes you through the center of the earth and right off the planet. Would you see people falling in the other direction? Is this mighty hole situated anywhere near West Chester, PA? All (minor) faults aside, unless you hate platform games, Get This One. Even if you don't like the play, it'll look good when you show it off to friends. @endnode @node P1-11 "The Humor Department" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% The Humor Department %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% David Pleasance annonunced the new Amiga bundle for the coming Christmas. New Amigas will now come with the Spanish Inquisition bundled. Market analysts commented, "We knew that Pleasance had to come up with a new shocking bundle, or else the Amiga will not survive, but we didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!" Several men dressed in nice red uniforms, and lately seen with Mr. Pleasance, replied: "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!" P.S. Rumours have it that the new slogan in Amiga adverts will be "buy it or else...". P.P.S. It's a vicious lie that Amigas sold with this bundle will receive free "support" from BLAZEMONGER's "Customer Service". - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In an earth shattering announcement, Intel said it will stop producing computer chips as of this September. It will instead start producing a new line of computer fries. A company spokesman said "Intel has always been an innovator, as our x86 CPU line clearly demonstrates. Now we have leapfrogged the entire industry by introducing what may well be the most important invention of the century." Computers incorporating the new line of fries will now be marked by a "Filet Inside" logo. Indeed all such computers will come with a slice of cooked fish inside. "People have said in the past that some of our processor chips are hot enough to cook on. This is indeed a feature, and our new fries line will take full advantage of this," said Intel's spokesman. The first in the series of fries will be the Aquarium. This replacement to the Pentium has the advantage of having enough space to put a fish on it. In addition all new Intel fries will have a built-in FPU, or Food Processing Unit. "In the past there were always cases when the CPU wasn't fast enough for the application, and people had to go and make a cup of coffee while waiting for the computer. With our new fries this will no longer be necessary. Now, when the CPU is busy working, the user will be able to open the machine, and a hot cup of coffee will already be waiting for him." More information on this new "Filet and Fries" initiative will be posted as soon as it becomes available. [Thanks to Eyal Teler for a good laugh. -Ed] @endnode @node P1-12 "AR Wants You!" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% AR Wants You! %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% In case you missed the editorial, the mission this time is simple. If you want a weekly magazine, write and fill my current AR drawer with articles. When I get 200k worth of a magazine, I'll put one out. @endnode @node P5-1 "InfraRexx 1.3" @toc "menu" TITLE InfraRexx (and InfraJoy hardware design) VERSION 1.3 (InfraJoy version 3) RELEASE DATE 19-Aug-94 AUTHORS Leon Woestenberg (leon@stack.urc.tue.nl) Jeroen Steenblik (jeroens@stack.urc.tue.nl) DESCRIPTION The InfraRexx software along with the InfraJoy hardware serve as an ARexx-Infrared interface, that adds the function of an infrared remote controller to your Amiga, and more. With this software and hardware you can: o Control external audio/video devices via ARexx commands. o Control Amiga programs via a common remote control unit. o Learn and edit new remote control infrared commands. For example you can control a moduleplayer via your compact disc player remote control unit. Or, control your video tape recorder via a graphic user interface or an ARexx script. The main features are: o Seperate editor (with learner) and ARexx host commodity. o Multitasking-friendly infrared sampling monitor, with very low system overhead during monitoring, can also be disabled. o Font-sensitive, style-compliant graphic user interface. o Localization for Workbench 2.1 users, and newlook menus for Kickstart 3.x users. o Lowcost hardware for joystickport, with optional throughput. o Uses the Amiga Installer Utility to install onto (hard)disk. CHANGES o Removed major bug that caused learning and sending to only work once on certain machines. o Minor bugfixes/corrections and additions in programs and documentation. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS InfraRexx needs at least AmigaOS version 2.04, and the commodity needs ARexx Master to be running in order to be useful. The software is useless without the small InfraJoy hardware add-on, off which the design and full building instructions are included. The hardware can also be ordered from one of the authors. HOST NAME Aminet FTP servers, like ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.2.1) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/rexx FILE NAME InfraRexx1.3.lha (100536 bytes) PRICE Free. The optional registration fee is US$10. The minimal required hardware costs about US$8 if self-built, but can also be ordered for the amount of US$16, which provides free registration. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freeware; freely distributable software and hardware design. InfraRexx Copyrights 1994 by Leon Woestenberg. InfraJoy hardware design Copyrights 1994 by Jeroen Steenblik and Leon Woestenberg. @endnode @node P5-2 "MCalc 1.4" @toc "menu" TITLE MUIProCalc (MCalc) MUI'Programmer'Calc VERSION 1.4 COMPANY None working for AUTHOR Kai Iske Brucknerstrasse 18 63452 Hanau Germany Tel.: +49-(0)6181-850181 email: kai@iske.adsp.sub.org iske@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de DESCRIPTION MUIProCalc is a MUI-based calculator much like Jimmy Yang`s Calc 3.0. It still lacks the plotter, but it offers a quite flexible history facility for inserting previously entered expressions. Different output formats offered and plenty of functions the user may choose from. Furthermore the look of the calculator may be customized. ARexx Port for ease of calculating from within an editor. Some functions are able to return TeX compatible output. Results or inputs may be copied to the Clipboard. MUIProCalc comes with a fancy GUI you may configure to your needs. Function gadgets may be flipped through using pages so that they don`t eat up too much of space. MUIProCalc supports an input/output history you may configure so that you may re-insert previously entered expressions/results. History entries may be copied to a userdefiniable clipboard unit. It features various display/output bases such as decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary and of course calculation sizes ranging from 8 Bit to 32 Bit width. Angles may be displayed as radians or degrees. MUIProCalc offers an ARexx port you may use to calc expressions externally. These commands are able to return TeX compatible output such as "1\cdot 10^{-5}". It comes with two example scripts for use with CED Pro. NEW FEATURES - This version fixes some bugs, which are : - MCalc didn`t even care about Percent calculations - atan() wasn`t definied for some ranges (somehow) - The InputString will be default object now - Recompiled with Scanner generated by flex 2.4.6 SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Only OS 2.x and MUI (MagicUserInterface by Stefan Stuntz) HOST NAME wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/os20/util/ FILE NAMES MCalc14.lha PRICE GiftWare, i.e. anything you like ;) DISTRIBUTABILITY GiftWare @endnode @node P5-3 "ForceIcon 1.6" @toc "menu" TITLE ForceIcon VERSION 1.6 COMPANY None working for AUTHOR Kai Iske Brucknerstrasse 18 63452 Hanau Germany Tel.: +49-(0)6181-850181 email: kai@iske.adsp.sub.org iske@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de DESCRIPTION ForceIcon is an utility mainly for users of CDRom drives or users of networking software capable of sharing devices and icons. Since one can not snapshot the position of a volume`s icon (on read only media), nor replace it by a user-defined one, I wrote this utility. ForceIcon allows you to set the position of a disk`s icon and/or replace it by a different image/icon which doesn`t have to be a disk.info file. All types of ".info" files may be selected. Special features include inheritance of device specific settings, specifying the root drawer`s size/position and display flags/modes. NEW FEATURES - Using ForceIcon you may even "SnapShot" Disk icons now. Use SnapShot and then select SAVE from the Prefs program - No more quit requesters will be shown (Requested by : Bernhard Moellemann) - You may now even enter relative coordinates (relative to Workbench Screen`s width/height) for the icon`s position. This is accomplished through negative values for IconX/IconY (Requested by : Bernhard Moellemann) - IconPosition window is smaller now (Requested by : Bernhard Moellemann) - Sort routine could create enforcer hits! SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Only OS 2.x and up MUI (MagicUserInterface) version 7 (MUI 2.0) HOST NAME wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/wb/ FILE NAMES ForceIcon16.lha PRICE GiftWare, i.e. anything you like ;) DISTRIBUTABILITY GiftWare @endnode @node P5-4 "MagicA2024 1.0" @toc "menu" TITLE MagicA2024 RELEASE 1.0 AUTHOR Klaus Melchior (kmel@eifel.oche.de) SHORT Patch to remap MagicWB icons for A2024 DESCRIPTION MagicA2024 is a commodity and patches the private routines of the icon.library to recolor MagicWB icons to the four A2024 colors. The bitmap is adjusted on the fly, extra chip memory is needed for the new image, the blitter is used. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS MagicA2024 requires AmigaDOS 2.04 or higher. HOST NAME Aminet (e.g. wuarchive.wustl.edu) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/wb FILE NAME MagicA2024_1_0.lha DISTRIBUTABILITY The archives are freely distributable in original and unmodified form. See documentation for details. MagicA2024 is Giftware, (c) Copyright 1994 by Klaus Melchior. @endnode @node P5-5 "Spot 1.3" @toc "menu" TITLE Spot RELEASE 1.3 AUTHOR Nico Francois nico@augfl.be nico.francois@scala.com SHORT Spot 1.3 - FidoNet point tosser/editor DESCRIPTION Spot is a FidoNet tosser/editor for points. It features a userfriendly font-sensitive GadTools interface that is fully localized. Spot uses a custom message base format for fast importing and exporting. Some of Spot's main features: o Supports new 3.0 features (newlook menus, memory pools,...) o Automatically creates new areas for you, no tedious work o Optional - fully transparent - message base crunching o Message list with powerful functions (e.g. search body text) o Excellent support for multiple character sets (LATIN-1, IBM,...) o Built-in, fully asynchronous, Fido file request o Multi-bossing and multi-domain capable o Userlist editor o ARexx port (100+ commands) NEW FEATURES o Twitlist! Automatically get rid of messages written by or to certain persons or with a specific subject. o Sound! Add an optional sound to several events (message to you, message deleted,...). o Improved layout and look of several settings windows. o Skip thread function added. o Automatic readdressing of netmail. o Improved FSC-0035 support. o New ARexx commands: `messageadvance', `getkludge' and `getusername'. o Several ARexx commands have been improved. o Includes updated catalogs. o Several other smaller enhancements to make your life easier. o All known bugs and quirks have been fixed. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS AmigaOS Release 2.04 (V37+) or higher. HOST NAME wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) [AmiNet] DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/comm/fido FILENAME Spot13.lha Spot13pch.lha (patch for Kickstart 2.0 users) PRICE Shareware fee, US$30 DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware, Copyright (c) 1991-1994 Nico Fran=E7ois @endnode @node P5-6 "ReqTools 2.2c" @toc "menu" TITLE ReqTools RELEASE 2.2c (38.1266) AUTHOR Nico Francois nico@augfl.be SHORT ReqTools 2.2c - the requester toolkit library DESCRIPTION reqtools.library is a standard Amiga shared, runtime library. The purpose of ReqTools is to make it a lot quicker and easier to build standard requesters into your programs. ReqTools is designed with Commodore's style guidelines in mind, all requesters have the look-and-feel of AmigaDOS Release 2. ReqTools features the following requesters: a query requester, a string requester, a number requester, a file requester, a font requester, a palette requester, a volume requester and a screenmode requester. Also included are RTPatch (1.3) and RexxReqTools (1.2e): RTPatch is a small program that will re-route functions from most popular requester libraries to ReqTools. Libraries currently supported are Arp, Req and Asl. RTPatch will also patch some functions in Intuition to give you improved system requesters. RexxReqTools gives ARexx users easy access to a large family of requesters. All requesters are easy to use; they require one or no arguments. But the requesters also have a lot of power through several optional arguments and through tagstrings. RexxReqTools itself doesn't implement any of these requesters, it is a link between ARexx and ReqTools. NEW FEATURES o Since using VideoControl() to get the visible display clip only seems to work when the screen in question is the frontmost screen the rtGetVScreenSize() function now falls back to using QueryOverscan() for screens that are in the back (thanks to Dietmar Eilert for reporting this). o Changed method of filtering DOS devices that are shown in the file and volume requesters again. o Window size and gadget layout is now calculated in a sysihack compatible way. o Polish translation included. o Some small bug fixes... HOST NAME wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) [AmiNet] DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/libs FILENAME ReqTools22c.lha ReqTools22c_user.lha (user archive, no includes/libs/etc...) PRICE Shareware fee, US$25 DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware, Copyright (c) 1991-1994 Nico Fran=E7ois @endnode @node P5-7 "MagicCX 1.0" @toc "menu" TITLE MagicCX VERSION 1.0 COMPANY None working for AUTHOR Kai Iske Brucknerstrasse 18 63452 Hanau Germany Tel.: +49-(0)6181-850181 email: iske@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de kai@iske.adsp.sub.org DESCRIPTION MagicCX is the definite commodity/system enhancer for any Amiga running OS 2.x or better. It is a very powerful and flexible system. - It incorporates many, many features known from other commodities, while offering new, unseen features - External preferences program allows full control over MagicCX - It offers a special module design, known from Workbench. You may install/use modules/functions by simply dragging them to a Modules directory, if not used, move them to a storage directory. - Offers ModulesManager program for Users of OS 3.x and up - Comes with manuals in English and German - Localized under OS 2.1 and up. English, German translations available - Utilizes Installer for installing MagicCX to your system - Compact system installation. Only a few files will be spread around your system. All others are kept in a single directory - Only basic functions (window activation and such) are built into the main program. The remaining features were put into external modules - MagicCX comes with 18 (for now) different modules you may choose from. - Flexible blanker system with two internal blankers and 8 (for now) external blanker modules - Utilizes powerful gadget layout library - Plenty of features, take a look. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS OS 2.x and up (Harddisk recommended but not needed) HOST NAME wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/cdity/ FILE NAMES MagicCX10.lha ; program, AmigaGuide docs PRICE Shareware according to SASG prices - DM 30.- - FF 120.- - SFr 30.- - # 15.- - US$ 20.- - Aus$ 30.- DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware (Keyfile protected, all features available) @endnode @node P5-8 "Oberon-A 1.4" @toc "menu" TITLE Oberon-A VERSION Release 1.4 AUTHOR Frank Copeland -- fjc@wossname.apana.org.au DESCRIPTION Oberon-A is a freely-distributable Oberon-2 compiler. Oberon-2 is a modern object-oriented language designed by Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal and Modula-2, and Hanspeter Mvssenbvck. Oberon-A is an implementation of the language for the Amiga computer, ported from a compiler written by Niklaus Wirth. The archive contains the compiler, an error lister, a pre-link utility, a linker (BLink), a programmer's environment and other utilities. A complete interface to the Amiga operating system (Release 3.1) and a collection of library modules in source code form is provided. Documentation is in AmigaGuide and plain ASCII formats. The full source code for the compiler and utilities is available in a seperate archive. Release 1.4 is a preliminary release with a limited module library and requires testing. FEATURES - The compiler directly generates MC68000 machine code in standard AmigaDOS format object files. - Both ALink and BLink can be used to link object modules and support for other linkers will be progressively added. - A garbage collector for memory (with some limitations) is built in to the run-time support code. - Language extensions include: - Escaped characters in strings (big deal :-)). - Support for BCPL and C pointers. - Inline calls to Amiga system libraries. - Vararg parameters to pass tag lists to Amiga library calls. - The compiler is currently CLI-only, but a programmer's environment utility provides Workbench access. - Interactive and batch compilation is supported. NEW FEATURES - Amiga interfaces upgraded to Release 3.1. - An error listing utility. - A module definition utility. - Compiler options to generate stack checks and NIL pointer checks. - Simple foreign code interface (to be improved). SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Oberon-A requires 1MB of memory and a hard disk is strongly recommended. A text editor is required and must be obtained seperately. Oberon-A now officially requires AmigaOS 2.04 or greater. Most of the package will still run under AmigaOS 1.3, but this will not last. HOST NAME Oberon-A has been uploaded to AmiNet. It is available from ftp.wustl.edu, archie.au and other AmiNet sites. DIRECTORY ftp.wustl.edu:/pub/aminet/dev/obero archie.au:/pub/micros/amiga/aminet/dev/obero FILE NAMES Oberon-A_1.x_bin.lha -- Binaries and documentation. Oberon-A_1.x_lib.lha -- Library source and examples. Oberon-A_1.x_src.lha -- Source for compiler and utilities. x is the update number, currently 4. The bin and lib archives are required, the src archive is optional. PRICE Kind words to the author :-) DISTRIBUTABILITY Freeware, distributed under the GNU General Public License and the GNU Library General Public License. @endnode @node P5-9 "FGP 2.03" @toc "menu" TITLE FGP2 VERSION 2.03 AUTHOR Simon Austin (austins@sol2.uel.ac.uk) DESCRIPTION At the start of this Formula One season Autosport magazine started running a Fantasy Grand Prix competition. FGP2 is a program which allows you to avoid at the tedious working out how many places your driver gained on his grid position and just how many points did Rubens Barrichello score by coming third. FGP2 has a simple command line and takes most of its input in the form of human-readable ascii files which can be created on any text editor. FGP2 comes with all the current driver/team data files required and can handle up to 50 different teams. Example files are also included for the files you have to create yourself. UPDATE Version 2.03 is an update to version 2.02a. It contains some minor bug-fixes and a slight rule change. This distribution also contains the results for the German Grand Prix. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS None. HOST NAME Any aminet site e.g. ftp.luth.se (130.240.16.3) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/game/misc FILE NAMES fgp203.lha 24278 bytes fgp203.readme 1923 bytes PRICE free, gratis, nada, nuthin', nowt. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely distributable. Program Copyright 1994 Simon Austin. @endnode @node P5-10 "EyeCandy02" @toc "menu" TITLE EyeCandy02 - Generates various designs: Spirograph(tm?) simulator of the spiral-drawing toy, "YarnBall", "CircleStar", "RotoBoxes", "RotoAngle" and "PolyGen". Simple, fun and addictive! VERSION This is version 02 which replaces EyeCandy01. See "NEW FEATURES" below for enhancements. COMPANY No company, just an AMINET upload by "yours truly". AUTHOR EyeCandy02 was written by me, Chuck Kenney. My particulars (address, etc.) are included in the user document in the archive. DESCRIPTION EyeCandy02 generates various "eye candy" designs. Currently these are: "SpiroDraw", "YarnBall", "CircleStar", "RotoBoxes", "RotoAngle" and "PolyGen". Future releases of EyeCandy will likely have more designs programmed in. "SpiroDraw" simulates the Wheels-and-Rings- and-Pens SPIROGRAPH drawing toy. "YarnBall" ... well generates designs that look like balls of yarn. "CircleStar" generates designs that look like 3D checkerboard stars. "RotoBoxes" generates "spirally, tunnelly" designs by rotating squares about a central axis, "RotoAngle" is a bit like "RotoBoxes" but uses lines and angles instead of squares. "PolyGen" generates "tunnelly" designs using concentric polygons. "EyeCandy" Allows the user to specify different values for many of the parameters which dictate the sizes and shapes of the designs - "Drawing Wheels, Drawing Rings", number of "YarnBall" spokes, sizes and angles of change, etc. There is also a "Random" function for each design. The use of a computer to generate the various SpiroDraw and other designs actually enhances some of the capabilities! "EyeCandy02" is all mouse-driven (MENUs, GADGETs, etc.). It is a fun _and_ addictive program! .. but I'm biased, of course! EyeCandy02.lha also contains a very nice little freely distributable "screen-to-IFF" saver utility by Preben Nielsen (thanks, Preben) so that "EyeCandy" designs can be imported into and animated with "paint" programs. "EyeCandy" is shareware but does not nag the user in any way (except if the user selects the "About" MENU item) and all features are fully functional. NEW FEATURES Three new design generator functions were added to EyeCandy02: "RotoBoxes", "RotoAngle" and "PolyGen". Many improvements have also been made to the user interface. EyeCandy02 has also been compiled under a new version of the compiler, "ACE" by David Benn, which enabled further enhancement and enjoyment of the user- interface in terms of look, feel and functionality. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS There are no special requirements that I know of. EyeCandy02 has been tested on an Amiga 2000HD (OS 2.1) and an Amiga 1000 (OS 1.3). HOST NAME EyeCandy02.lha has been uploaded to the AMINET site, ftp.etsu.edu (192.43.199.20) and is also available on all other AMINET sites. DIRECTORY EyeCandy02.lha and EyeCandy02.readme reside in the "aminet/gfx/misc" directory. FILE NAMES EyeCandy02.lha is 80,331 bytes long. PRICE The asking shareware price is the amount sent to me by my first shareware contributor to SpiroDraw, EyeCandy's predecessor. This requested shareware fee is $5.00 (US), in the hope that many little sharewares will add up to more than a few bigger ones! DISTRIBUTABILITY This program is freely distributable as long as the documentation accompanies the program but is a copyrighted (1994) shareware program by me, Chuck Kenney. If this program is included in any CD-ROM collection, I ask that a copy of the CD-ROM be sent to me. OTHER EyeCandy02, and other programs in progress are coming out of my basement as a result of the availability of a truly wonderful "BASIC-but-much-more!" compiler, "ACE" by David Benn. I would like to sincerely thank Mr. Benn for renewing my enthusiasm in programming and for making it possible for me to make my programs available to more than just my friends and immediately family! @endnode @node P5-11 "GhostRider 1.0" @toc "menu" PRODUCT NAME GhostRider V1.0 BRIEF DESCRIPTION GhostRider (GR) is a new program for debugging and viewing/changing memory contents in hex, ascii and (dis)assembly form, independant of system resources, which "normal" debuggers rely on. This is in general known as a (hardware) monitor. GR features most "standard" functions, but also many things not normally found in this type of software. AUTHOR Name: Jesper Skov Address: (Check ghostrider.guide for snail address) EMail: jskov@iesd.auc.dk DESCRIPTION GhostRider (GR) is a new hardware monitor written in pure assembler. The most important difference between GR and other monitors of this kind is that GR is build up from scratch - not a (simple) modification of some old CON-based monitor. Before starting this project I tried to figure out what single feature of a monitor is more important. Since a monitor is to be used by many different people, I decided that the most important feature would be the ability of configuration according to the user's needs. Therefore GR comes with a preference editor which will allow you, the user, to configure the "feel" of GR... See below for a list of some of the features in GhostRider: - Works on all (well, most :) Amigas; AGA, ECS, NTSC, PAL, MC68000-MC68040/MMU/FPU. - Does _NOT_ rely on the system to be around. - Fast screen handling. - Powerfull input parser, support use of symbols. - Copper-list locater. - System, NMI, reset (also GURU) & BreakPoint entry modes. - Text snapping/pasting with the mouse. - Full dis/assembler support for the M68k family (well, not the 'o6o). - "Standard" block dump as well as editor environments for disassembling, HEX-viewing, ASCII-viewing and Memory-Peeking (bitmap). - Memory hunt featuring; long strings, jokers (wildcards), NOT-data, case(in)-sensitive text hunt, branch hunt and PC-relative hunt. - Memory fill featuring; long strings and jokers. - Breakpoint support. - Full control of CustomRegister contents at exit. - Results from hunt/compare operations are kept in a buffer for fast and easy access. - Capable of resuming (some) interrupted commands. - Disk system with UN*X like parsing of path. - Includes system interface (ghostrider.library) which allow usage in your own programs (for easy debugging). - Full documentation in AmigaGuide format. NEW FEATURES GhostRider V1.0 contains following updates from version V0.32E: - GhostRider is now shareware - this release is fully functional. - Full configuration of screen mode (PAL/NTSC/MULTISYNC). - The disk routines using DOS (save/load/del/dir/cd) now use a UN*X like path parser. - GhostRider now run on _all_ tested Amigas (also the A4000/o4o). - Track display. - Disassembly speed improved. - It is now possible to change CPU register contents (d0-a7). - It is now possible to edit the code in the disassemble editor. - The (memory) size of GR has been reduced. - Many bug fixes and extra prefs. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS GhostRider should run on all systems, but the DeckRunner and Preference Editor require Kickstart 2.04+ (V37+). HOST NAME ftp.luth.se (All AmiNet sites) DIRECTORY dev/moni FILENAME GhostRiderV10.lha PRICE The shareware fee is 100DKr/20$US/30DM. If you use this program I ask you to register. DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware, Copyright ) 1992-1994 Jesper Skov. @endnode @node P5-12 "MultiTool II 2.0d" @toc "menu" TITLE MultiTool II VERSION V2.0d AUTHOR Boris Jakubaschk (Boris@alice.tynet.sub.org) DESCRIPTION MTool provides all standard features of a directory utility: You can use it to copy, move and delete files, analyze a file type and perform an action on it (i.e. show pictures or ani- mations, play mods, edit texts...). MTool handles LHA-archives like ordinary directories. You can doubleclick the name of a LHA-archive and its contents will be displayed in the filelist. Files can be deleted or copied to and from the archive. The layout of MTool resembles the good old DiskMaster (V1.4). MTool has been developed using the look and feel of OS2.04 and WB2.1. It works with WB2.0 (not localized, no screen mode requester); KS1.3 is not supported any more. It can be run on an own screen, a public screen or on the Workbench (resizable, position and size can be configured). Docs and/or catalogs are included in English, German, Swedish, French, Norwegian, Danish and Italian. NEW FEATURES V2.0d: - Some bugfixes (crash on ESC-Hide, garbled devicelist) - French manual - improved French catalogs DISTRIBUTABILITY MTool is shareware. It is freely distributable, as long as you distribute all files! Feel free to include it in public domain collections (i.e. fishdisks). REQUIREMENTS Workbench 2.04 or higher To use the archive support of MTool, you need any version of the LHA archiver (not included) To view pictures or animations, to play mods etc you need programs that can be included in the configuration of MTool. (i.e. VT, Player...) To install MTool with its installation script, you need the commodore installer (not included) RELEASE DATE August 24th, 1994. HOST NAME Any Aminet server i.e. wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) DIRECTORY /pub/aminet/util/dir FILE NAME MTool20d.lha PRICE Shareware fee of $15 US / DM25 (MTool is slightly crippled in the unregistered version: One requester at startup and some less important features are disabled) @endnode @node P5-13 "FreeForm3D 1.7" @toc "menu" TITLE: FreeForm3D Bspline Modeler VERSION: 1.7 AUTHOR: Fori Owurowa 1873-75 Cropsey Ave Brooklyn, NY 11214 718-996-1842 12 noon to 7pm Eastern enigma@dorsai.dorsai.org DESCRIPTION: FreeForm 3D Bspline modeler brings truly affordable, superfast Bspline modeling to your current 3D program rivaling that of high end workstations. FreeForm can output to Lightwave, Aladdin4D, Real3D2, Imagine and Caligari. (POV and Rayshade are currently being added) FreeForm has realtime object and point editing in all views; and a real-time, 3D space, through the camera perspective view. In addition to the standard 3D tools, FreeForm has tension adjustment to Bsplines(giving NURB like control), deformations, rail extrusion, morph extrusion, cross sectional skinning, automatic Bones creation, real-time Bones manipulation and on-line help. FreeForm even gives Real3D2 users a faster, easier to use Bspline environment. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS 1. 68020 or higher. 2. Math co-processor. 3. 1.2 Megs of RAM minimum. 4. OS 2.04 or higher. HOST NAME Usable demo of version 1.7 on 1. Aminet i.e. ftp.wustl.edu(128.252.135.4) in pub/aminet/gfx/3D 2. Lightwave ftp tomahawk.welch.jhu.edu (128.220.59.75) in pub/LW/utils 3. Check for the file names on your local on-line service or BBS, they maybe there too. FILE NAMES FreeForm3D1.7.lha Size 290k FreeForm3Dpic.lha Size 380k PRICE Cash, check or money order for $70 DISTRIBUTABILITY Copyrighted by Fori Owurowa 1993,94 @endnode @node P4-1 "Delphi" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Delphi Internet Services -- Your Connection to the World! %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Amiga Report International Online Magazine and the Amiga Report Coverdisk is available every week in the Amiga SIG on DELPHI. Amiga Report readers are invited to join DELPHI and become a part of the friendly community of Amiga enthusiasts there. SIGNING UP WITH DELPHI ====================== Using a personal computer and modem, members worldwide access DELPHI services via a local phone call JOIN -- DELPHI -------------- Via modem, dial up DELPHI at 1-800-695-4002 then... When connected, press RETURN once or twice and.... At Username: type JOINDELPHI and press RETURN, At Password: type AMIGAUSER and press RETURN. For more information, call DELPHI Member Services at 1-800-695-4005 SPECIAL FEATURES ---------------- Complete Internet connection -- Telnet, FTP, IRC, Gopher, E-Mail and more! (Internet option is $3/month extra) SIGs for all types of computers -- Amiga, IBM, Macintosh, Atari, etc. An active Amiga SIG hosting conferances, Usenet, Latest wares, and FTP Gopher coming soon Large file databases! SIGs for hobbies, video games, graphics, and more! Business and world news, stock reports, etc. Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia! DELPHI - It's getting better all the time! @endnode @node P4-2 "Portal" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Portal: A Great Place For Amiga Users %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% The Portal Information Network's Amiga Zone The AFFORDABLE alternative for online Amiga information ------------------------------------------------------- The Portal Online System is the home of acclaimed Amiga Zone, a full- service online SIG (Special Interest Group) for Amiga owners and users. You can dial into Portal to access the Amiga Zone in various ways: direct dial to our San Jose, CA area banks of high-speed modems (you pay for the phone call if it's not local), or though any SprintNet indial anywhere in the USA, (with a small hourly fee) or via the World-wide Internet "telnet" program to portal.com (no hourly fee). Even Delphi and BIX users can Telnet into Portal for a flat $19.95 a month, with *unlimited* use. Portal is NOT just another shell account. Its Online system is fully menu-driven with on-screen commands and help and you can easily customize it for your terminal program and screen size. Some of Portal/Amiga Zone's amazing features include: 2.5 GIGabytes of Amiga-specific file space - we have so much Amiga Stuff online, we've lost count! The *entire* Fred Fish collection of freely distributable software, online. ALL 1000 disks! Fast, Batch Zmodem file transfer protocol. Download up to 100 files at once, of any size, with one command. Twenty Amiga vendor areas with participants like AmigaWorld, Elastic Reality (ASDG), Soft-Logik, Apex Publishing, and others. 38 "regular" Amiga libraries with over 10,000 files. Hot new stuff arrives daily. No upload/download "ratios" EVER. Download as much as you want, as often as you want, and never feel pressued doing it. Live, interactive nightly chats with Amiga folks whose names you will recognize. Special conferences. Random chance prize contests. We've given away thousands of bucks worth of Amiga prizes - more than any other online service. Vast Message bases where you can ask questions about *anything* Amiga related and get quick replies from the experts. Amiga Internet mailing lists for Imagine, DCTV, LightWave, EGS, Picasso, OpalVision & others feed right into the Zone message bases. Read months worth of postings. No need to clutter your mailbox with them. FREE unlimited Internet Email with 5 meg of free storage. A FREE UNIX Shell account with another 5 meg of free storage. Portal has the Usenet. Thousands of "newsgroups" in which you can read and post articles about virtually any subject you can possibly imagine. Other Portal SIGs (Special Interest Groups) online for Mac, IBM, Sun, UNIX, Science Fiction, Disney, and dozens more. ALL Portal SIGs are accessible to ALL Portal customers with NO surcharges ever. You never worry "Ooops.. Am I paying for this area?" again! The entire UPI/Clarinet/Newsbytes news hierarchy ($4/month extra) An entire general interest newspaper and computer news magazine. Portal was THE FIRST online service to offer a full package of Internet features: IRC, FTP, TELNET, MUDS, LIBS. And you get FREE unlimited usage of all of them. Our exclusive PortalX by Steve Tibbett, the graphical "front end" for Portal which will let you automatically click'n'download your waiting email, messages, Usenet groups and binary files! Reply to mail and messages offline using your favorite editor and your replies are sent automatically the next time you log into Portal. (PortalX requires Workbench 2.04 or higher) Portal does NOT stick it to high speed modem users. Whether you log in at 1200 or 2400 or 9600 or 14.4K you pay the same low price. To join Portal or for more information call: 1-800-433-6444 (voice) 9a.m.-5p.m. Mon-Fri, Pacific Time or 1-408-973-9111. 1-408-725-0561 (modem 3/12/2400) 24 hours every day 1-408-725-0560 (modem 96/14400) 24 hours every day or enter "C PORTAL" from any Sprintnet dial-in in the USA, or telnet to "portal.com" from anywhere. Call and join today. Tell the friendly Portal Customer Service representative, "The Amiga Zone and Amiga Report sent me!" [Editor's Note: Be sure to tell them that you are an Amiga user, so they can notify the AmigaZone sysops to send their Welcome Letter and other information!] The Portal Information Network accepts MasterCard, Visa, or you can pre-pay any amount by personal check or money order. The Portal Online System is a trademark of The Portal Information Network. SLIP, UUCP and custom domain accounts are also available. @endnode @node P3 "Dealer Directory" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Dealer Directory %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Almathera Systems Ltd Southerton House Boundary Business Court 92-94 Church Road Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3TD England VOICE: (UK) 081 687 0040 FAX: (UK) 081 687 0490 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 Internet: B.GRAY@genie.geis.com Atlantis Kobetek Inc. 1496 Lower Water St. Halifax, NS, Canada, B3J 1R9 Phone: (902)-422-6556 Fax: (902)-423-9339 BBS: (902)-492-1544 Internet: aperusse@fox.nstn.ns.ca Brian Fowler Computers Ltd 11 North St Exeter Devon EX4 3QS United Kingdom Voice: (0392) 499 755 Fax: (0392) 423 480 Internet: brian_fowler@cix.compulink.co.uk CLICK! Amiga Specialists N.V. 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 Comspec Communications Inc Serving your computing needs since 1976 74 Wingold Ave Toronto, Ontario Canada M6B 1P5 Computer Centre: (416) 785-8348 Service, Corporate & Educational Sales: (416) 785-3553 Fax: 416-785-3668 Internet: bryanf@comcorp.comspec.com bryanf@accesspt.north.net Computers International, Inc. 5415 Hixson Pike Chattanooga, TN 37343 VOICE: 615-843-0630 DataKompaniet ANS Pb 3187 Munkvoll N-7002 Trondheim Norway - Europe VOICE/FAX: 72 555 149 Internet: torrunes@idt.unit.no 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 Industrial Video, Inc. 1601 North Ridge Rd. Lorain, OH 44055 VOICE: 800-362-6150 216-233-4000 Internet: af741@cleveland.freenet.edu Contact: John Gray MicroSearch 9000 US 59 South, Suite 330 Houston, Texas VOICE: 713-988-2818 FAX: 713-995-4994 Mr. Hardware Computers P.O. Box 148 59 Storey Ave. Central Islip, NY 11722 VOICE: 516-234-8110 FAX: 516-234-8110 A.M.U.G. BBS: 516-234-6046 MusicMart: Media Sound & Vision 71 Wellington Road London, Ontario, Canada VOICE: 519-434-4162 FAX: 519-663-8074 BBS: 519-645-2144 FIDO: 1:2401/200 AmigaNet: 40:550/1 MaxNet: 90:204/1 InterNet: koops@gaul.csd.uwo.ca PSI Animations 17924 SW Pilkington Road Lake Oswego, OR 97035 VOICE: 503-624-8185 Internet: PSIANIM@agora.rain.com Software Plus Chicago 3100 W Peterson Avenue Chicago, Illinois VOICE: 312-338-6100 Wonder Computers Inc. 1315 Richmond Rd. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 8J7 Voice: 613-596-2542 Fax: 613-596-9349 BBS: 613-829-0909 CYNOSTIC Office O1, Little Heath Industrial Estate, Old Church Road, Coventry. CV6 7NB UNITED KINGDOM Tel: +44 (0)203 681687 Fax: +44 (0)203 638508 David Cassidy email: bsupa@csv.warwick.ac.uk DataService Oy P.O. Box 50 Kuurinniityntie 30 02771 ESPOO Findland, Europe Voice: +358 (9) 400 438 301 Fax: +358 (9) 0505 0037 Grey Matter Ltd. Amiga RuleZ! 1-22-3,Minami Magome HillTop House 2F suite 201 Ota-ku,Tokyo 143 Japan Tel:+81 (0)3 5709-5549 Fax:+81 (0)3 5709-1907 and of course the BEST Amiga BBS in Japan BBS:Grey Matter BBS +81 (0)3 5709-1907 (8N1 V32bis 24H ) Email: nighty@gmatter.japan-online.or.jp Amiga Video Solutions 1568 Randolph Avenue St. Paul, MN 55105 Voice: 612-698-1175 BBS: 612-698-1918 Fax: 612-224-3823 Net: wohno001@maroon.tc.umn.edu Magic Page 3043 Luther Street Winston-Salem, NC 27127 910-785-3695 voice/fax Spiff@cup.portal.com Keizer Tech 3881 River Rd N Keizer, OR 97303 USA Voice: 393-5472 Computer Link Your Amiga/PC connection. 6573 middlebelt Garden City MI 48135 USA 313-522-6005 Voice 313-522-3119 Fax clink@m-net.arbornet.org VISAGE COMPUTERS 18 Station Road Ilkeston Derbyshire DE7 8TD UNITED KINGDOM Tel/Fax: +44 (0)602 444501 Internet: floyd@demon.co.uk Suppliers of Amiga Hardware, Software and Public Domain. HIGHLAND GREY CONSULTING, INC. Customer Service Centre Head Office 4704E - 49 Ave. R.R. 1 Camrose, Alberta Ohaton, Alberta Canada Canada T4V-3K9 T0B-3P0 VOICE: (403) 679-2242 FAX: (403) 672-0303 Sales and Service; Same Phone #'s! Apple, Amiga, IBM/Clone and Macintosh Systems (Dealers: To have your name added, please send Email!) @endnode @node P4-6 "X-NET" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% X-Net Information Systems %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% --==> Public Internet Connectivity Today <==-- - LIVE Internet - Over 6,000 Newsgroups - Telnet/FTP - Worldwide E-Mail - Gopher/Archie - Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - SLIP/PPP - NCSA Mosaic A system dedicated to the Amiga, IBM and Unix user. System Admins ------------- Naperville : (708) 983-6435 V.32bis Brian Vargyas NEW Hoffman Estates : (708) 882-1101 V.32bis Brian Clark Voice / Fax : (708) 983-6064 Arthur Zards Internet : net.xnet.com @endnode @node P2-3 "In Closing" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% _ _ __ ___ _ %% %% /\\ |\\ /| || // \ /\\ %% %% / \\ | \\ /|| ||(< __ / \\ %% %% /--- \\| \/ || || \\_||/--- \\ %% %% /______________________________\\ %% %% / \\ %% %% Amiga Report International Online Magazine %% %% August 22, 1994 ~ Issue No. 2.25 %% %% Copyright 1994 SkyNet Publications %% %% All Rights Reserved %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Views, Opinions and Articles presented herein are not necessarily those of the editors and staff of Amiga Report International Online Magazine or of STR Publications. Permission to reprint articles is hereby granted, unless otherwise noted. Reprints must, without exception, include the name of the publication, date, issue number and the author's name. Amiga Report and/or portions therein may not be edited in any way without prior written 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. All items quoted in whole or in part are done so under the Fair Use Provision of the Copy- right Laws of the United States Penal Code. Any Electronic Mail sent to the editors may be reprinted, in whole or in part, without any previous permission of the author, unless said electronic mail specifically requests not to be reprinted. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @endnode @node P1 "Columns and Features" @toc "menu" @{" compt.sys.editor.desk " link P1-1} Mini-Survey result and response... @{" Amiga News " link P1-2} News and Announcements-lots of them. @{" Review: G-Force 040 " link P1-4} A huge review of GVP's accelerator @{" ParNET 'Em! " link P1-5} An inexpensive solution for dual Amigas @{" Review: Desktop Magic " link P1-6} More than just a screen blanker... @{" UK Crosstalk " link P1-7} CD32 news and a massive survey project @{"Review: Micro R+D Vol. 2" link P1-8} Nature's Backdrop and NASA pictures @{" Review: Brian the Lion " link P1-9} The Lion King-Of Platform Games @{" The Humor Department " link P1-11} A press release. Really. @{" AR Wants You! " link P1-12} More requests. @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 @{" In Closing " link P2-3} Copyright Information @endnode @node P2-2 "The Editors" Feel free to contact any of the editors! @{" Jason Compton " link P8-1} The Editor-in-chief @{" Robert Niles " link P8-2} The Assistant Editor @{" Michael Wolf " link P8-3} The European Editor @{" David Tiberio " link P8-4} Contributing Editor @endnode @node P4 "Commercial Online Services" @toc "menu" @{" Delphi " link P4-1} Getting better all the time! @{" Portal " link P4-2} A great place for Amiga users... @{" InterNet " link P4-5} Subscribe to the AR Mailing List @{" X-NET " link P4-6} An Internet site for everyone! @endnode @node P5 "FTP and product announcements" @toc "menu" @{" InfraRexx V1.3 " link P5-1} An external infrared ARexx interface @{" MCalc V1.4 " link P5-2} A powerful, MUI-based calculator @{" ForceIcon V1.6 " link P5-3} Force icon locations for non-snapshottables @{" MagicA2024 V1.0 " link P5-4} Allow MagicWB to look nice on 2024s. @{" Spot 1.3 " link P5-5} FidoNet point tosser/editor by Nico. @{" ReqTools V2.2c " link P5-6} A new version of the famous requester library @{" MagicCX V1.0 " link P5-7} A "lots-in-one" commodity. Modular. @{" Oberon-A V1.4 " link P5-8} An Oberon-2 compiler. @{" FGP V2.03 " link P5-9} Fantasy Grand Prix: updated @{" EyeCandy02 " link P5-10} Like old drawing toys, but electronic. @{" GhostRider V1.0 " link P5-11} Debug/View memory contents @{" MultiTool II 2.0d " link P5-12} A directory-managing utility @{" FreeForm3D 1.7 " link P5-13} A flexible Bspline modeler | The 10 most downloaded files from Aminet during the week until 28-Aug-94 | Updated weekly. Most popular file on top. | |File Dir Size Description |------------------- --- ---- ----------- Incinerator.lha game/shoot 236K+Awesome 3D missile attack/defend game. CAttack.lha game/shoot 78K+A wonderful helicopter dogfight game. ar225.lha docs/mags 74K+Amiga Report 2.25, 22-Aug-94 bsp1.0.lha gfx/misc 65K+Doom.wad walkthrough demo (ECS | AGA) Arq1_83.lha util/cdity 43K+The requester improver MagicCX10.lha util/cdity 574K+Great modular commodity system uuxt30.lha util/arc 110K+The Best UUcoder with full WB support TauIcons17.lha pix/icon 104K+MagicWB style icons, v1.7 Checkers.lha game/think 146K+Checkers board game, fully featured. The Top 20 modules of August. place last title filesize month 1 2 Guitar Slinger (gslinger.mod) 406.354 Bytes 2 1 Defloration (deflorat.mod) 408.043 " 3 3 Space Debris (spdebris.mod) 347.582 " 4 5 Digital Innovation 2 (digital2.mod) 137.124 " 5 4 Beyond music (beyond.mod) 402.166 " 6 6 Free from guitar (freeguit.mod) 190.698 " 7 8 Boom! And she cums (boom.mod) 284.004 " 8 7 Somebody dance... (dj-bobo.mod) 376.253 " 9 10 What's up (whats-up.mod) 604.676 " 10 9 Don't you want me (dontuwan.mod) 99.768 " 11 11 Tribal dance (tribalda.mod) 734.224 " 12 12 U got 2 let the music(ugot2let.mod) 359.690 " 13 13 Let the beat... (let_the_.mod) 873.366 " 14 15 What is love (whatislo.mod) 723.886 " 15 14 1989 - a number (1989.mod) 210.304 " 16 16 Ethnomagic (ethnomag.mod) 414.864 " 17 18 Enigma (enigma.mod) 187.012 " 18 17 Das Boot (dasboot.mod) 351.546 " 19 19 Exterminate (xtermin8.mod) 329.648 " 20 20 No Limit (nolimit.mod) 268.222 " @endnode ----------------------------------------- @node P2-1-1 "NOVA" @toc "menu" * NOVA BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site Support BBS of The Chattanooga Amiga Users Group * Running MEBBSNet BBS * Wayne Stonecipher, Sysop AmigaNet 40:210/10.0 40:210/1.0 40:210/0.0 FidoNet 1:362/508.0 An Amiga Software Distribution Site (ADS) 615-472-9748 USR DS 16.8 24hrs - 7 days Cleveland, Tennessee All AR back issues are kept online. All new users receive access to the AR on the first call. Any AR issue may be file requested with proper name. To obtain the current issue you may FReq Proper name, AR.LHA or simply AR @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-2 "In The MeanTime" @toc "menu" *** System down temporarily -- Don't call except for FAX *** * IN THE MEANTIME BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running AXShell * Robert Niles, Sysop rniles@imtired.itm.com 509-248-5645 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Yakima, Washington ******* Notice ******* Those who call for the latest edition of Amiga Report, and who do not with to establish an account, at the first login: prompt type "bbs", at the second login: prompt type "guest". Once in type "ARMAG" (without the quotes) at any prompt. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-3 "PIONEERS BBS" @toc "menu" * PIONEERS BBS * ** A PREMIER GENEALOGY BBS ** ** WEST COAST - Amiga Virus Busters Support BBS ** ** CD32 REVIEW Support BBS ** AND NOW Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running EXCELSIOR! BBS * Michael & Marthe Arends, Sysops FidoNet: 1:343/54.0 206-775-7983 Supra 14.4k v32.bis 24hrs - 7 days EDMONDS, Washington New users can call and get ANY copy of Amiga Report. Just call using the Name "Long Distance" and the password "Longdistance"(without the quotes of course). Users using this account will have full access to ALL past and present issues of AMIGA REPORT starting with the premier issue. The latest issue of Amiga Report can be Freq'ed (FileREQusted) from here as "AR.LHA", Freq's are valid at ANY time. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-4 "CIUA BBS" @toc "menu" * CIUA BBS* Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Portugal * Running Excelsior/Trapdoor/AmigaUUCP/AmiTCP * Celso Martinho, Sysop FidoNet 2:361/9 Internet: denise.ci.ua.pt +351-34-382080/382081 (V32bis soon V34) 24hrs - 7 days. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-5 "Amiga Junction 9" @toc "menu" * AMIGA JUNCTION 9 * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- United Kingdom * Running DLG Professional * Stephen Anderson, Sysop Sysop Email: sysadmin@junct9.demon.co.uk Line 1 +44 (0)372 271000 14400 V.32bis/HST FidoNet 2:440/20 Line 2 +44 (0)372 278000 14400 V.32bis only FidoNet 2:440/21 Line 3 +44 (0)372 279000 2400 V.42bis/MNP Voice: +44 (0)956 348405 (24hrs) Direct Sysop Voice Line Internet: user_name@junct9.royle.org Special Interest Areas: - Bjork / Sugarcubes Fan Club - Research of Lucid Dreaming @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-6 "BitStream BBS" @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: 1:221/302 Fish: 33:33/8 24hrs - 7 days 519-748-9365 (2400 baud) 519-748-9026 (v.32bis) Ontario, Canada Hardware: Amiga 3000, 105 Meg Quantum, 213 Meg Maxtor, 5 megs RAM @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node 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.fipnet.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 P2-1-12 "Gateway BBS" @toc "menu" * THE GATEWAY BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior! BBS * Stace Cunningham, Sysop Dan Butler, CoSysop 24 hrs - 7 days InterNet: stace@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil FidoNet: 1:3604/60.0 601-374-2697 Hayes Optina 28.8 V.FC Biloxi, Mississippi @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-13 "EMERALD KEEP BBS" @toc "menu" * Emerald Keep BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribation Site * Running DLG Professional * Michael mac Nessa, Sysop 24 hrs - 7 days FidoNet: 1:2250/2 AmigaNet: 40:206/1 618-394-0065 USR 16.8k DS Fairview Heights, IL @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-14 "Amiga BBS" @toc "menu" * Amiga BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior! BBS * Alejandro Kurczyn, Sysop FidoNet 4:975/7 First Amiga BBS in Mexico (5) 887-3080 9600 V32,MNP Estado de Mexico, Mexico @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-15 "The Stygian Abyss" @toc "menu" * THE STYGIAN ABYSS BBS * 312-384-0616 14.4 USR Courier HST 312-384-6250 14.4 Supra V.32 bis (FREQ line) 312-384-0716 2400 USR Courier FIDONet-1:115/384.0 CLink-911:6200/2.0 NWNet-206:310/0.0--206:310/1.0 PhantomNet Central States Cooridinator-11:2115/0.0--11:2115/1.0 FaithNet Central States Cooridinator-700:6000/0.0--700:6000/1.0 AMINet Chicagoland HUB-559:2/5.0 Chicago, Illinois Over 4 GIGS of files I Over 3700 MODS I Over 120 On-Line Games Tons of digitized sounds I Over 15,000 GIFS Supporting: Amiga I IBM I Macintosh I C=64/128 SIR SAMMY-SysOp Enter.......If you dare!! @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-16 "Amiga Do PC BBS" @toc "menu" * AMIGA DO PC BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribuition Site - Brazil * Running Excelsior! v 1.18 * +55-192-33-2260 Weekdays: 19-07 (-3 GMT) Weekends: 24 hours Fidonet: 4:801/44 RBT: 12:1212/1 Virinet: 70:101/17 Internet: fimoraes@dcc.unicamp.br Francisco Moraes, sysop Campinas, SP Freq AREPORT for the newest issue avaiable. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-17 "Comm-Link BBS" @toc "menu" * COMM-LINK BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Excelsior Pro * 604-945-6192 USR DS 16.8 24 hrs - 7 days Fido: 1:153/210.0 AmigaNet 40:800/9100.0 InterSports: 102:540/305.0 PussNet: 169:1000/305.0 InterNet: steve_hooper@comm.tfbbs.wimsey.com Steve Hooper, Sysop Port Coquitlam, B.C. Canada @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-18 "Phantom's Lair" @toc "menu" * PHANTOM'S LAIR * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running CNET 3.0 * FidoNet: 1:115/469.0 Phantom Net Cooridinator: 11:1115/0.0-11:1115/1.0 708-469-9510 708-469-9520 CD ROMS, Over 15511 Files Online @ 2586 meg Peter Gawron, Sysop Glendale Heights, Illinois @endnode @node P2-1-19 "Tierra-Miga BBS" @toc "menu" Tierra-Miga BBS Software: CNet Gib Gilbertson 24 hours - 7 days FidoNet: 1:202/638.0 AmigaNet: 40:406/3.0 Internet: torment.cts.com Line #1: 619.292.0754 V32.bis City: San Diego, CA. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node 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 * Lenni Uitti, SysOp Juha Mkinen, SysOp (Amiga-areas) Tero Manninen, SysOp (PC-areas) +358-64-414 1516, V.32bis/HST +358-64-414 0400, V.32bis/HST +358-64-414 6800, V.32/HST +358-64-423 1300, V.32bis Seinjoki, Finland Our host machine is a 386/33 with 20MB of memory, 1GB harddisk and a CD-ROM drive running in a Novell network. The BBS software is a Norwegian origin MBBS running in a DesqView windows. We have now (26th March 1994) over 10000 files online (mostly for the Commodore Amiga line of the personal computers.) Every user has an access to download filelist (LAHOFIL.ZIP), list of the Finnish 24-hour BBS's (BBSLIST.ZIP or BBSLIST.LHA) and every issue of the Amiga Report Magazine (AR101.LHA-AR???.LHA) even on their first call. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-52 "Falling BBS" @toc "menu" * FALLING BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Norway * Running ABBS * Christopher Naas, Sysop +47 69 256117 28.8k 24hrs - 7 days EMail: christon@powertech.no @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node 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 P2-1-55 "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 "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 -------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-57 "T.B.P. Video Slate" @toc "menu" _________________________________ / / /_ /\ * T.B.P. VIDEO SLATE * / / //// / Official Amiga Report / / AR Coverdisk / / / CoverDisk Distribution Site / / / / / An Amiga dedicated BBS for All / / / / / * Running Skyline 1.3.2 * / / / / / Mark E Davidson, Sysop / /__________________________/ / / 24 hrs - 7 days / _______________________ / / 201-586-3623 USR 14.4 HST / / ___ / / / / Rockaway, New Jersey / / / / / / / / / / /__/ / / / / Full Skypix menus + normal and /______/_______________/______/__/ / ansi menu sets. \______\________________\______\_\/ Download on the first call. Hardware: Amiga 500 Tower custom at 14 MHz, 350 Meg maxtor, 125 Meg SCSI Maxtor, 345 Meg IDE Maxtor, 2 Double Speed CD rom, 9 meg RAM @endnode -------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-58 "Amiga Central" @toc "menu" * AMIGA CENTRAL! * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site CNet Amiga Support Site * Running CNet Amiga BBS * Carl Tashian, Sysop Internet mail: root@amicent.raider.net 615-383-9679 1200-14.4Kbps V.32bis 24 hours - 7 days Nashville, Tennessee Hardware: Amiga 3000 Tower 68030+882@25MHz, 105 meg Quantum, 225 meg Seagate, Zoom 14.4k modem @endnode -------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-21 "Continental Drift" @toc "menu" *=====================================================================* /\ C O N T I N E N T A L D R I F T B B S / \ (+61) 2 949 4256 / \______ Murray Chaffer * Andre Lackmann * Dale Cohen / / \ / / \ Amiga * IBM * Macintosh / / \ : : : :\ \ /\ \ : : :800Mb+ Online - USENET News - Internet Mail :\ \ / \ \ : : Local Mail - FIDOnet Mail - Shareware Regos : :\ \/ \ \ : :Online Games - Aminet, FISH, Euro CD-ROMs : :\ / /: : : : :\ / /: : :Amiga Report * CD-32 View * Frontier Consoles \ / / * Computer underground Digest * \ /\ / \ / \ / **Online shareware registrations** \/ \/ Files daily from Aminet * ADS/SAN *=====================================================================* @endnode @node P2-1-22 "Amiga Online Bs Heemstede" @toc "menu" Amiga Online Bs Heemstede * HeadQuarters of Online Products * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- The Netherlands * Running Xenolink 1.90 * Your SysOp is Michiel Willems 24 hours a day - 7 days a week Fidonet : 2:280/464.0 DAN Host HQ : 55:100/1.0 Amynet Host : 39:151/1.0 NLA : 14:102/203.0 BOSnet Hub : 99:999/2.0 e-mail SysOp : michiel@aobh.xs4all.nl Line 1 +31-23-282002 14400 v32bis Supra Line 2 +31-23-470739 14400 v32bis Supra Heemstede, The Netherlands, Europe, The Earth Very nice menu's 660 Megs HD online - ALOT of software ALOT of messages - VERY fast BBS program Point support - Lot's of doors online Just freq AR of AR.LHA for the latest issue available The system is running on an Amiga 2000 with a HARMS-Prof-3000 030 turboboard at 29Mhz and a copro at 50Mhz, 7MB RAM, 660 Meg HD space and soon 1 Gigabyte HD space. Every issue from Amiga Report Magazine online as far as the first issue. @endnode @node P2-1-60 "Guru Meditation" @toc "menu" * GURU MEDITATION * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Spain * Running Remote Access * Javier Frias, SysOp +34-1-383-1317 V.32bis 24 hours - 7days Spain @endnode @node P2-1-20 "Moonlight Sonata DLG" @toc "menu" M O O N L I G H T S O N A T A D L G * Amiga Report Official Distribution Site * * DAS ModPlayer Support * 2 Nodes *FREE PUBLIC* Amiga BBS MIDI-tunes, MIDI-utils, Modules, Amiga-files Messages, Door-games, MUD... Also patches for several synths! (About 100MB of ProTracker Modules!) Node #1 - +358-18-161763 - ZyXEL V32b 19200 Node #2 - +358-18-161862 - HST DS V32 14400 Fidonet: 2:221/112.0 Keyboards: Erno Tuomainen Amiga3000 25MHz - 1.3Gigs HD BBS Software: Dialog Pro BB/OS @endnode @node P2-1-61 "LINKSystem LINK-CH1" @toc "menu" LINKSystem LINK-CH1 Official Amiga Report Distribution Site - Switzerland in local newsgroup link-ch1.ml.amiga-report Mails and News from/to UseNet contact: rleemann@link-ch1.aworld.de +41 61 3215643 V32bis/Zyx16800 +41 61 3832007 ISDN X75/V110 +41 61 3832008 ISDN X75/V110 @endnode @node P2-1-62 "Doom of Darkness" @toc "menu" * Doom of Darkness * * Home of AmBoS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Germany Marc Doerre (Marc_Doerre), Sysop (BBS-Owner/AmBoS-Support) Bernd Petersen (TGM), Sysop (Amiga-Software-Support) Gerhard Luehning (Klaro), Co-Sysop (Aminet-Support) Kai Szymanski (Kai), Co-Sysop (AR-Support/AmBoS-Support) Usenet: user_name@doom.ping.de Line 1 +49 (0)4223 8355 19200 V.42bis/Zyx Line 2 +49 (0)4223 3256 16800 V.42bis/Zyx Line 3 +49 (0)4223 3313 16800 V.42bis/Zyx Sysop Email: marc_doerre@doom.ping.de AR-Infoservice : kai@doom.ping.de @endnode @node P2-1-63 "RedEye BBS" @toc "menu" REDEYE BBS * Running EXCELSIOR/UUCP/AFAX * "Official Amiga Report Distribution Site Germany/Europe" Sysop: Thorsten Meyer Internet: sysop@redeye.greenie.muc.de Line 1: +49-89-5460535 (V.32b, Zyxel EG +) Line 2: +49-89-5460071 (USR Courier V32b terbo) 24hrs - 7 days Munich, Germany Areas for Amiga, PCs, Lotus Notes Group, Amiga Report, Game Byte, Graphic Stuff, 3D-Exchange, 3D-tools, 3D-objects, McAffee, GUS, PAS, DOOM, WINDOWS-NT, OS/2 Online CD, Online Games, USENET, INTERNET, FIDO ECHOS, Developer @endnode @node P2-1-64 "Virtual Palace BBS" @toc "menu" * Virtual Palace BBS * * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * * Official Amiga Report Disk Distribution Site * 916-343-7420 300-14400 Baud V.42bis AmiExpress 2.40 700 Mbytes P.O. Box 5518 Chico, California 95927 Tibor G. Balogh (Tibor), Sysop Sysop Email: tibor@ecst.csuchico.edu Leland Whitlock (Leland), Co-Sysop @endnode @node P2-1-65 "X-TReMe BBS" @toc "menu" -*+*/+ X-TReMe BBS +/*+*- Pygor & The Doctor +31-167064414 (24h) Internet: u055231@vm.uci.kun.nl _______ .__ _____ /_ .__//_/ //.___/ Bitnet: u055231 at HNYKUN11 ./ //.__ .//.___/ Internet: u055231@vm1.uci.kun.nl /_//_/ /_//____/. BBS: +31-1670-64414 (24h) . ___ .____ ______________ _____ . . . / .\/ . // _ /_. __/ . //.__ .\ . / / / / // /_. / /./ / // __ \ / . /___//___//___/./_/ /___//_/. \_/ @endnode @node P2-1-23 "The Kobayashi Alternative BBS" @toc "menu" T H E K O B A Y A S H I A L T E R N A T I V E B B S ----- ----------------- --------------------- ----- Supporting the Central Maine since 1985! 7 In-Dial lines (All 14.4 Compatable) Support for IBM/Windows, Amiga, MAC and CNet BBS Support On-Line Games (over 100) Internet Newsgroups and Usenet Mail FidoNet Echo Areas FidoNet: 1:326/404.0 (207)/784-2130 \ TKA (207)/946-5665 \ Local (207)/353-7224 / Access (207)/377-3214 / Lines @endnode @node P2-1 "Where to find Amiga Report" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Where to find Amiga Report %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Click on the button of the BBS nearest you for information on that system. FidoNet Systems --------------- FREQ the filename "AR.LHA" for the most current issue of Amiga Report! @{" OMAHA AMIGANET " link P2-1-9} ..................................Omaha, Nebraska @{" NOVA " link P2-1-1} .............................Cleveland, Tennessee @{" PIONEER'S BBS " link P2-1-3} ..............................Edmonds, Washington @{" CIUA 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 @{" GATEWAY BBS " link P2-1-12} ..............................Biloxi, Mississippi @{" EMERALD KEEP BBS " link P2-1-13} .........................................Illinois @{" AMIGA BBS " link P2-1-14} .........................Estado de Mexico, Mexico @{" THE STYGIAN ABYSS " link P2-1-15} ................................Chicago, Illinois @{" AMIGA DO PC BSS " link P2-1-16} .................................Campinas, Brazil @{" COMM-LINK BBS " link P2-1-17} .......................Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada @{" PHANTOM'S LAIR " link P2-1-18} .......................Glendale Heights, Illinois @{" Tierra-Miga BBS " link P2-1-19} .....................................SanDeigo, Ca @{" MOONLIGHT SONATA DLG " link P2-1-20} ..........................................Finland @{" CONTINENTAL DRIFT " link P2-1-21} ................................Sydney, Australia @{" Amiga Online Bs H'stede " link P2-1-22} ..................................The Netherlands @{"Kobayashi Alternative BBS" link P2-1-23} ............................................Maine Non-FidoNet Systems ------------------- @{" IN THE MEANTIME " link P2-1-2} ...............................Yakima, Washington @{" FREELAND MAINFRAME " link P2-1-50} ..............................Olympia, Washington @{" LAHO " link P2-1-51} ...............................Seinajoki, Finland @{" FALLING " link P2-1-52} ...........................................Norway @{" COMMAND LINE " link P2-1-53} ..................................Toronto, Canada @{" LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL " link P2-1-55} ..........................................Germany @{" STINGRAY DATABASE " link P2-1-56} ...........................Muelheim/Ruhr, Germany @{" T.B.P. VIDEO SLATE " link P2-1-57} .............................Rockaway, New Jersey @{" AMIGA CENTRAL " link P2-1-58} .............................Nashville, Tennessee @{" GURU MEDITATION " link P2-1-60} ............................................Spain @{" LINKSystem LINK-CH1 " link P2-1-61} ...............................Basel, Switzerland @{" DOOM OF DARKNESS " link P2-1-62} ..................................Bremen, Germany @{" REDEYE BBS " link P2-1-63} ..................................Munich, Germany @{" Virtual Palace BBS " link P2-1-64} ........................................Chico, Ca @{" X-TReMe BBS " link P2-1-65} ..................................Holland/Belgium @endnode