@database "ar210.guide" @Node MAIN "Amiga Report Online Magazine #2.10 -- March 18, 1994" @{" Turn the Page " link "menu"} _ ____ ___ ______ _______ _ d# ####b g#00 `N##0" _agN#0P0N# d# d## jN## j##F J## _dN0" " d## .#]## _P ##L jN##F ### g#0" .#]## dE_j## # 0## jF ##F j##F j##' ______ dE_j## .0"""N## d" ##L0 ##F 0## 0## "9##F" .0"""5## .dF' ]## jF ##0 ##F ##F `##k d## .dF' j## .g#_ _j##___g#__ ]N _j##L_ _d##L_ `#Nh___g#N' .g#_ _j##__ """"" """"""""""" " """""" """""" """"""" """"" """""" ###### ###### ###### ###### ###### ######## TM ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ### ###### ## ###### ## ### ## International Online Magazine "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information." Copyright 1994 Skynet Publications All Rights Reserved // %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%//%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% March 18, 1994 \\// Issue No. 2.10 %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @endnode @node "menu" "Amiga Report Main Menu" @toc "menu" @{" Columns and Features " link P1} News, Reviews, and More! @{" About AMIGA REPORT " link P2} Staff, Copyright information @{" Dealer Directory " link P3} Amiga Dealer Addresses and Numbers @{" Commercial Online Services " link P4} Sign-Up Information @{" FTP Announcements " link P5} New Files Available for FTP @{" AR Distribution Sites " link P2-1} Where to get AMIGA REPORT ____________________________________________ // | | // %%%%%%%%//%%%%%| Amiga Report International Online Magazine |%%%%%%%//%%%%% %% \\// | Issue No. 2.10 March 18, 1994 | \\// %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%| "Your Weekly Source for Amiga Information" |%%%%%%%%%%%%%% |____________________________________________| The Editor's Desk Amiga News Dealer Directory Distribution BBS's Product Announcements European Outlook SPECIAL FEATURES Is the AAA obsolete? .....................................Aric R. Caley Amiga Blues ....................................................Unknown The CD32 ........................................................RobMan Low Cost Emulation Fun .....................................Calun Tsang Crons and Crontabs .......................................David Tiberio Desktop Publishing ..........................................Tom Reamer Famous Amiga Uses ........................................David Tiberio Email Gateways .........................................Jonathan Guidry %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% @{" DELPHI " link P4-1} @{" PORTAL " link P4-2} @{" FIDO " link P2-1} @{" INTERNET " link P4-5} %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @endnode @node P1-1 "The Editor's Desk" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% The Editor's Desk By Robert Niles %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Hiya!!! Another week, another fantastic issue of Amiga Report!! This week we have had quite a few readers out there send in some very interesting articles. These articles, the articles that have been written for Amiga Report, and the articles that you send to AR in the future is what makes this magazine so great! We don't just talk about the Amiga, and the Amiga community. Amiga Report *IS* the Amiga ....and the Amiga community! I've been honored to receive newsletters from The Minnesota Commodore User's Association, and from Amiga Arizona. These newsletters are quite interesting to read. It's good to hear from those of you out there who are actively supporting the Amiga, and educating the public. If you are a member of an Amiga user's group, please send me a newsletter. And no matter where you are ....support your local Amiga user's group! OK ...enough! Let's get on with the show! @endnode @node P4-1 "Delphi" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Delphi Internet Services -- Your Connection to the World! %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Amiga Report International Online Magazine 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 AMIGAREPORT and press RETURN. DELPHI's best plan is the 20/20 plan. It gives you 20 hours each month for the low price of only $19.95! Additional hours are only $1.50 each! This covers 1200, 2400 and even 9600 connections! For more information, and details on other plans, call DELPHI Member Services at 1-800-695-4005 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. 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 P2-2 "AR Staff" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% The Amiga Report Staff %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Editor ====== Robert Niles Portal: RNiles FidoNet: 1:3407/103 Internet: rniles@hebron.connected.com Fax: 509-966-3828 US Mail: P.O. Box 8041 Yakima, Wa 98908 Emulation Editor ================ Jason Compton Internet: jcompton@tcity.com European Editor =============== Jesper Juul Internet: norjj@stud.hum.aau.dk @endnode @node P4-5 "Amiga Report Mailing List" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Amiga Report Maillist List, the WWW, and Aminet %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% AR Mailing List ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No Official Amiga Report Distribution Site in your local calling area? Are you tired of waiting for your local BBS or online service to get Amiga Report each week? If so, have we got a deal for you! If you have an internet mailing address, you can receive Amiga Report in UUENCODED form each week as soon as the issue is released. To be put on the list, send Email to rniles@hebron.connected.com. 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. Many thanks to PORTAL Communications for setting this service up for us! P.S.: Please be sure to include your Email address in the text of your request message, it makes adding it to the list much easier. Thanks! ** IMPORTANT NOTICE: PLEASE be certain your host can accept mail over ** 100K! We have had a lot of bouncebacks recently from systems with a ** 100K size limit for incoming mail. If we get a bounceback with your ** address in it, it will be removed from the list. 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. 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 text/mags. All the back issues are located there as well. @endnode @node P1-2 "Amiga News" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Amiga News %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Automated Voice Responce Helpline in the UK ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LONDON, ENGLAND, 1994 MAR 9 (NB) -- Commodore UK has revealed that its pilot project, of an automated voice response system for its helpline, has been a great success. The service, which has been operational since December, will now go fully live to all callers, Newsbytes has learned. "In December, 1993, we introduced an interactive voice response (IVR) helpline to help ease the pressure on human operators over the Christmas period. Since then, it's been a great success. By the end of January, it had handled 13,326 queries," explained Terry Maguire, customer services manager with Commodore UK. The IVR used was developed jointly by ICL and Legion Limited, the software house. The company claims that it is the industry's first fully automated diagnostics and advice line of its kind in the UK. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and runs in parallel at ICL's call reception center on Wakefield, Yorkshire. To date, the automated service has handled around a third of all Commodore Helpline calls. "We receive a variety of calls to the Helpline," Maguire said, "from dealers asking how to resolve a fault, to customers simply wanting to know how to operate a unit. Our aim in introducing this automated diagnostics service was to allow customers to resolve problems themselves, wherever possible, by listening to recorded information. This allows call receptionists to concentrate on getting engineers out to customers more quickly." According to Peter Horridge, operations manager for ICL customer service, which handles Commodore's support calls, the key to a successful automated service is not only its ability to handle a large step function increase in call volumes efficiently, but also its ability to mid-call divert to a live operator when needed. "The majority of users and problems exploit the facilities provided by the automated service. We should not lose sight, however, that the end user requires a balance between automated diagnosis and direct contact with a live operator whenever appropriate. The call rates to dare using both the diagnostic service and the mid-call divert facility prove that the IVR is an acceptable solution," he said. The Commodore UK helpline is on 0345-626090, a local rate "linkline" call that is charged at local rates wherever in the UK the caller is located. When callers are connected to the Helpline, after an introductory message, they are asked to dial "5," which ascertains whether the call is touch tone or rotary dialed. Touch tone calls are routed through the IVR system, while rotary dial calls are routed to a live operator. (Steve Gold/19940308/Press Contact: Peter Horridge, ICL, 44-21-456-1111) ============================= GVP EXTENDS IMAGEFX ARTS/SCIENCES CONTEST ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ March 3, 1994, King of Prussia, PA, USA -- Nova Design, Inc. and Great Valley Products have extended the deadline for submitted entries for the ImageFX Arts and Sciences contest to April 1, 1994. This contest seeks to find the best in art, animation, and programming utilizing the best selling image processing and painting package: ImageFX! The contest began on December 7, 1993 and was scheduled to close on March 1st 1994, but has now been extended to April 1, 1994. Judging will be completed during the month of April and the winners will be announced on May 1, 1994. Grand Prize winners and runners up will share in the fantastic prizes provided by GVP. The original list of prizes included the EGS-28/24 SPECTRUM - the top of the line 24-bit, high-resolution graphics display card, PhonePak VFX - the Amiga voice mail/fax system, and DSS-8+ - the premier Amiga sound digitizer and music editing system. The new list of prizes now adds six free upgrades to ImageFX 2.0! Complete details, rules, and regulations for the ImageFX contest are attached to this Press Release, and are also available on CompuServe in the Amiga Forums. A written copy of the rules may be obtained by request from GVP Customer Service at 610-354-9495. GVP is a privately held company that was founded in 1988. Today it is the world's largest developer of peripherals for the Commodore Amiga. Nova Design is a subcontractor of GVP and are the authors of ImageFX. The ImageFX Arts & Sciences Contest! Nova Design, Inc. and Great Valley Products (GVP) are pleased to announce the ImageFX Arts and Sciences contest. This contest seeks to find the best in art, animation, and programming utilizing the runaway best selling image processing/painting/everything package; ImageFX! Grand Prize winners and runners up will share in the fantastic prizes provided by GVP. These include the EGS Spectrum - the top of the line graphics display card, PhonePak VFX - the Amiga voice mail/fax system, DSS-8+ - the premier Amiga sound digitizer and music editing system, and free upgrades to ImageFX 2.0! The Categories: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As the contest name might imply, there will be two categories for judging: Arts: which will include still images, animation, and video sequences created via ImageFX and/or CineMorph. Grand Prize: EGS Spectrum Second Place: DSS 8+ Sciences: which includes any programs or Arexx macros created for use with or in ImageFX. These can be ImageFX demos, special effects "hooks" or any ImageFX-style modules, and Arexx macro scripts that recreate artwork onscreen as a combination of Arts and Sciences. Grand Prize: PhonePak VFX Second Place: DSS 8+ Additionally, six free copies of ImageFX 2.0 will be awarded as prizes to the runners up in either category! The Time and the Place: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The contest began in December, 1993 and will close on April 1st, 1994. Judging will be completed over the month of April and the winners will be announced on May 1st, 1994. How to Enter: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Entries should be submitted privately via regular mail carriers or electronic mail (Email). Entries must not be uploaded to any public forum or electronic network. Mailed entries should be sent to Nova Design, Inc., c/o Great Valley Products, 657 Clark Avenue, King of Prussia, PA 19603. Emailed entries should be sent, uuencoded, to one of the following email addresses: Internet: Kermit@cup.portal.com GEnie: K.WOODALL1 Compuserve: 71021,2753 GVP BBS: (215) 337-5815 / File Attach to the SysOp The Judges: ~~~~~~~~~~~ All entries will be judged by Nova Design, Inc. All decisions will be final. The Rules: ~~~~~~~~~~ All entries must be the sole creation of the submitter(s) with no rights being held against the entries by any other parties. Entries must be new and original works that have not appeared previously; either commercially or via any shareware or freeware distribution. Some exceptions can be made, but you will need to contact us in advance. You can submit as many entries as you like. Artwork must not be based off of any copywritten material (eg: video, television, film, print, or any other previously published material). Programs must work with, or in, ImageFX and not rely on any other shareware or commercial software in order to function once compiled or executed. All programs must also be accompanied by full source code. By entering this contest you are granting Nova Design, Inc. and GVP, their assigns or heirs, the unlimited right to use the submitted material for any commercial or non-commercial purposes. Submitters, by entering this contest, grant Nova Design, Inc. and GVP the right to use their names and/or likenesses for promotional purposes. Kermit Woodall Nova Design, Inc. Kermit@cup.portal.com ============================= CYNOSTIC TO DISTRIBUTE AMIGA REPORT! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ With the increased popularity of Amiga Report online, Cynostic Public Domain of Coventry, United Kingdom, will, in co-operation with the AR staff, be distributing collections of Amiga Report across the world. Each collection will contain issues of AR from the past five to six weeks, ensuring totally full disks, providing the very best in value for Amiga PD. This move was made in order to make Amiga Report more accessible by those poor unfortunates who do not have access to a modem. We don't want them to miss out on one of the best Amiga magazines around! If you have any enquiries about this or any other Cynostic issue, please get in touch with David Cassidy at the Cynostic address, telephone, fax or e-mail: Cynostic, Office O1, Little Heath Industrial Estate, Old Church Road, Coventry. CV6 7NB UNITED KINGDOM. Tel: +44 203 681687 Fax: +44 203 638508 E-mail: bsupa@csv.warwick.ac.uk Thanks for your attention! David Cassidy, Cynostic. ============================= CYNOSTIC: LOOKING FOR NEW AMIGA PROJECTS! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In our ongoing policy of enhancing the scope and public perception of the Amiga, Cynostic is now looking for new Amiga CD projects. We already distribute a whole range of audio compact discs and cassettes, but we are now looking for further exciting projects to broaden our range. The projects can be anything, such as: - Music compact discs - Music cassettes - Amiga CD-ROMs - Magazines - Videos - ANYTHING! The only stipulation is that they must be either produced or in some other way related to the Amiga home computer. As an example of what we already stock: "Montage" by Bjorn A Lynne (His latest music CD; the best yet!) "Hobbits & Spaceships" by Bjorn A Lynne and Seppo Hurme "Simplicity" by Minimal Arts, aka Volker Tripp (Jester/Sanity) If you think you can match or beat the quality of these excellent productions then get in touch with us at: David Cassidy, Cynostic, Office O1, Little Heath Industrial Estate, Coventry. CV6 7NB UNITED KINGDOM. Tel: +44 203 681687 Fax: +44 203 638508 E-mail: bsupa@csv.warwick.ac.uk We will be more than happy to hear from you! Also, if you have any enquiries about the products mentioned here or any other part of Cynostic's operations, do not hesitate to get in touch! All the best to everyone in Amigaland, David Cassidy, Cynostic. ============================= Commodore's CD32 communicates! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eureka delivers low-cost CD32 expansion interface. The Communicator enables CD32 to communicate with other Amiga's. With the Communicator, you can use CD32 as intelligent CDrom drive. Control your CD32 from Scala and start Audio or even Mpeg tracks.* Or View iff aga/pcx/gif and other CD's even on non-aga machines. * needs Mpeg cartridge. Uploading and starting programs on the CD32 is possible making CD32 a powerful stand alone Computer with communication and graphics capacities far better than CD-I! The Communicator plugs in the keyboard plug and doesn't occupy the expansion slot. Intelligent CDrom drive The CD32 is a state of the art dual speed, multi-session drive. With the Communicator up- and download files from amiga to CD32 is achieved with a speed of upto 115200 baud! Because of intelligent multi-tasking, both the CD32 and amiga can perform other tasks while exchanging data, the internal logic of the communicator takes care of error correction and insures error free data transfer. SCALA, CD32, the Communicator and how they work together. Scala specially wrote a new EX module for Eureka's Communicator. With this EX module and the communicator it is now possible to control both audio CD's and Full motion video CD's (when an MPEG cartridge is installed), starting audio and Mpeg tracks on CD32 from SCALA on the remote machine. This makes CD32 a full blown Mpeg player station for scala. At last full motion video can be played in SCALA by using the Communicator, the CD32 and the Mpeg cartridge. The MIDI interface This popular music interface MIDI is supported. The Communicator comes with high speed MIDI IN/OUT and TRU plug. MIDI can be used from the CD32- or the amiga-side. The Communicator can also be used as stand alone MIDI interface on the amiga or CD32. Popular programs such as Bars&Pipes, Helm, Scala and many more can use Midi to control anything from keyboards upto drum-computers. Connectivity and safety The Communicator connects to the CD32 keyboard plug, leaving the expansion port free for Mpeg cartridges or memory expansion boards and allowing still the keyboard plug being used (ported tru), all circuits are protected against wrong connection and static electricity so you can safely connect and disconnect two machines. Viewing CD disks Now you can view IFF (including AGA), PCX, GIF and other pictures on your CD32 by simply loading the picture CD in your CD32. You can also copy pictures to your Amiga. Viewing aga pictures can be very handy when the connected machine is non-aga such as the A500 and A2000. The Communicator supports also a unique Photo-mode which enables it to display PhotoCD disks. Control CD32's control pad emulates the mouse. The workbench , a terminal program and Scala backgrounds are available on the CD. Spare room of the CD is filled with spectacular PD software. The Communicator package contains: - Communicator hardware with MIDI/Serial/keyboard plug. - Communicator CD crowded with the Communicator program, utilities and PD software. - Amiga disk for installing the amiga side and manual in English/German and Dutch. Eureka's Communicator has 1 year warranty. Retail price will be around 250 DM including taxes. Available by the end of february 1994. 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 composiet and Y/C video encoder. After some custom hardware projects for the Dutch government, Eureka decided to concentrate fully on designing products for the Amiga market. Further products are the Afterburner 50mhz 68030 turbo for the A4000/A3000 and a Photoviewer for CD32. ================================================================== For more information or evaluation units contact Eureka, Mr. Frank Hoen at +3146370800 Fax +3146360188 EUREKA Adsteeg 10 6191 PX Beek(L) The Netherlands International: Tel. +31-46370800 Fax. +31-46360188 Commodore Distribution & Development. For more information: Eureka, Frank Hoen Adsteeg 10, 6191 PX Beek(L) The Netherlands tel. +3146370800 fax. +3146360188 ============================= AMIshare Shareware Distribution Announces: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ for Southern California Inland Empire Residents: ------------========= A N N O U N C I N G =========------------ AMIshare Shareware Distribution The NEWEST Amiga-Only Shareware Distributor! Appearing for the first time in Redlands Market Night, March 31 1994!! ------------========= A N N O U N C I N G =========------------ We are a group of three Amiga enthusiasts who live here in the Inland Empire (one in Highland, the other two in Redlands, to be precise) who are steamed about the lack of available software applications for our beloved computer. Being entrepeneuring citizens, we decided to tackle the problem head on: collecting and distributing Amiga Shareware... However, unlike other Shareware collections, we have decided to implement a few up-to-date features: 1) All shareware has been tested for Kickstart 2.0+ compatability! We want the Amiga community to catch up with the rest of the world, so we will also be offering 2) Kickstart Kickup! Upgrade your 500, 1000* or 2000 to 2.1!! Dont be stuck in a 1.3 world! We also realize that the Amigas ARE NOT just game machines, so we also 3) GAURENTEE ONE DATA APPLICATION ON EVERY DISK!!! Unlike other collections which are mostly utilities or games, our disks contain 4 programs (and one MOD), one of each of the following categories: Data Processing <----- One on EVERY DISK!! Educational Video Programming Utils Communications Audio Utilities Games Music <----- One MOD on EVERY DISK! So, if you want a little more variety in your software collection, come on down and visit our booth on March 14th in the Redlands Market Night! (from 6pm to 9pm on State Street) *A1000 users need Kickstart adaptor to install the roms into a 1000 Contact Raymond Collazo (rcollazo@blaze.csci.csusb.edu) for more information. @endnode @node P1-3 "Is the AAA obsolete?" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Is the AAA obsolete? by Aric R. Caley %% %% dances@qedbbs.com %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Is AAA already obsolete? ------------------------ Recent rumors of AAA being "too little, too late" have been making the rounds. Some rumors say that Commodore has canceled AAA because they A) can't afford to make it, and B) it's already obsolete. Well, I don't buy into that. According to Dave Haynie, one of the senior engineers at Commodore, and who is responsible for the system design of the next generation high end Amiga, and who seemed enthusiastic just three months ago, said some important things publicly. And I tend to believe him over other less reliable people. Here's some quotes from Dave's conference on Portal three months ago: "Everyone's heard about AAA, of course, and I did build a AAA prototype machine, which we have running in the labs of course." So, AAA *IS* real and *IS* up and RUNNING, even if only in a prototype machine. And that was three months ago. "There are things in AAA which will make a very impressive difference in many of the things we're doing with computers these days." "The AAA chip set is a radical departure from anything you have seen before. Everything in it was designed new, from the ground up." "I don't think AAA is coming out too late, though it's later than I (and all of you, of course) would have liked. There's still not a big move to 4MB floppies yet, everyone's still trying to work out just how to do multimedia, and I think AAA supports much of this in hardware, the right way." He seems confident that AAA isn't obsolete. "AAA will cost more [than AGA], though much less than we originally guessed, thanks to the downsizing of chips (AAA takes about a million transistors)." That's good news. Things are turning out, at least in some aspects, BETTER than they had planned. "I think you'll find this new system isn't lacking as a '94 machine. I can't get into too much detail, only to say that [a] I have been working on this architecture for two years, something that never happened at C= before (two weeks was more like it in the... old days), and [b] I'm doing things with system throughput no one else is doing, or at least talking about, now. No big surprise, really, though. There's little incentive to get too fancy in "standard" architecture. Apple doesn't build clever hardware, and they seem to be wanting out of the hardware business anyway." Sounds like a nice *system*, no? "C= "high-end" is $4k and below, generally. I think it should start at about $1.5K-$2K, less if possible." With a great price... "There's perhaps an aggregate bandwith of 400-600MB/s in a basic next generation machine." Yikes! The AGA chipset has a total bandwidth of just 14MB. The 32 bit ram in the A4000 has around 10MB bandwidth, as does the Zorro III and CPU slots. The "A5000" has 400-600MB total? WHOA! I will now detail why I think AAA and the next generation machine won't be obsolete, and in fact will be innovative, based on facts presented by Dave. . . . First of all, lets talk about the features of AAA and the next generation machine (hereafter refered to as the A5000, even though we don't know if that is what it will be called). AAA --- AAA consists of four custom CMOS chips, with a total of approximately one million transistors. It's a totaly new design, not an upgrade from AGA, thus it has none of the limitations of AGA. The four chips are called Andrea, Monica, Linda and Mary. They are all full 32 bit chips, with the "exception" of Linda and Monica which also have 64 bit modes. They are not limited by the 14Mhz clock of AGA, or the hardware-fixed DMA slots (see the hardware reference manual). DMA: the soul of AAA -------------------- There are 40 DMA channels, with dynamic allocation of bandwidth. That means that each channel can be as fast as it needs to be (up to the limit of total bandwidth in the system). DMA is used for everything, from the blitter and copper, to sprites, the audio voices, video display, floppy disk I/O and serial ports. These DMA channels are the heart of AAA and part of what sets the Amiga apart from other computers. It's part of what gives the Amiga its performance. The OS is fully capable of taking advantage of DMA and hardware coprocessing, due to it's multitasking nature. When one task is waiting for some DMA or other hardware processing to finish, another task can switch on and use the processor. This is something that other computers have a hard time with (for instance, the Mac, which doesn't have the pre-emptive multitasking required for this. The Mac IIfx had DMA channels that couldn't be used by the Mac's OS! Only UNIX on the Mac could use this hardware). The blitter and the copper -------------------------- The pride and joy of the Amiga. In AGA, the blitter and copper became very outdated. They are slow by modern standards, very slow, although there is still nothing that quite duplicates the functionality of the copper. In AAA, these two important components become greatly enhanced. The blitter is basicly just some DMA channels that feed data (graphics) into a processor and then write it back out to RAM. The blitter can easily do all the necessary bit shifting, modulo counting, and bit masking required to move 2D images around in a raster/bitmap; in addition to doing things like combining more than one image based on a logic operation. These calculations are quite a bit more time consuming when done by a general purpose CPU. The AAA blitter can blit 24 blit images "significantly faster" than AGA can blit 8 bit images (according to Dave Haynie, who built a prototype!). I've seen Mac's manipulating 24 bit graphics, and you can visualy see the windows "slosh" ("shear", "squish", etc) when they are moved (you can see the graphics get redrawn slowly from top to bottom). AAA will move such windows instantly (just like back in 1985, when comparing a colour Amiga to a B/W Mac -- the Mac windows moved very slowly). The Amiga's "Copper" is also a DMA channel. It feeds a stream of instructions into a very simple processor (one could almost call it a RISC CPU). It's capable of doing almost anything the CPU can do; loading chipset registers, jumping, looping and waiting. It can be used to control *everything* in the chipset, independant of the CPU. It lets the Amiga have dragable screens, giant scrolling screen bitmaps, and many other things characteristic and unique to the Amiga. With the high bandwidth and flexibility of AAA's DMA channels, you can see that the new blitter and copper are going to be quite powerfull indeed. Glorious sound -------------- Another hallmark trait of the Amiga is its built in sound ability. Most computers do not have good built in sound (the exceptions being the Apple IIgs and the Atari Falcon, both of which failed despite being decent machines), most even have none standard. The Amiga's old 4 voice, 8 bit sound has been quite sufficient for a number of years and remains better than average for a PC. But AAA takes this to new levels: it now has 8 independant voices, each with 16 bit accuracy, and 64Khz sampling rates (compared to 30Khz for AGA). That puts each channel well beyond a CD player in technical accuracy, and far beyond what the human ear can hear. It's also far beyond typical sound boards on other computers. Amiga sound samples are fed by DMA channels, thus relieving the CPU from 99% of the work normaly involved. Video! ------ Ah, here we get massive improvements over AGA! Utilizing 32/64 bit DRAM and VRAM, and high speed burst access, AAA increases bandwidth over AGA by 20 times! First of all, AAA just simply runs faster, due to its high speed CMOS chip design. Everything is at least 32 bits, further increasing bandwidth. Memory can now be accessed in "burst mode", which allows you to read four successive locations in memory very quickly. And finaly, VRAM! What's VRAM? It stands for "Video RAM". In order to get the high transfer rates (bandwidth) required for hi-res displays, VRAM was invented. It has two "ports" (and is hence also called "dual ported" RAM), one exclusively for video and one for accessing and changing the bitmaps. That effectively doubles the speed. With VRAM, there will be no more "video contention". Ever notice how slow your Amiga gets when you open up the largest, most colourfull screen (640 x 400 x 16c for ECS or 640 x 400 x 256c for AGA)? That's because those modes need so much bandwidth, that there is almost none left for the CPU and blitter to use. In the AAA chipset, using VRAM, this won't be a problem anymore! The video DMA only uses one of the ports on the VRAM (in fact, this port is designed specificaly for video, and the VRAM has a built in shift register for this purpose). You can open the largest most colourfull screen you can, and the blitter and copper etc won't slow down! Of course, they'll have more graphics to chew on.. You can also use normal everyday DRAM, which will be slower, but cheaper. VRAM costs about twice as much. Luckily, you can combine both! VRAM is good just for the display, DRAM is good for everything else. So as long as you have enough VRAM to open your screens, you're OK. This flexibility is a great advantage. You can have upto 16MB divided between DRAM and VRAM. So, what kind of resolutions are we talking about? The maximum resolution, NON-INTERLACED, should be around 1280 x 1024 (at 8 or 16 bits). That's quite a far cry from 640 x 480 x 8 in AGA. It should be able to do 1024 x 768 x 24 bits as well. And it'll be FAST in these modes. We'll also have our choice of chunky or bitplane modes. Chunky will be 2, 4, 8 or 16 bits. Bitplane mode will allow up to 16 planes. The types can be combined. For a 24 bit mode, for instance, you would have three bitplanes, each of which is an 8 bit chunky bitmap. There is also some kind of new compressed display mode (in addition to HAM which is also technicaly compressed). Of course, there's HAM and HAM8, which at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 will be very nice, and there is likely to be a HAM10 mode, giving 24 bit graphics with only 10 bits per pixel! Serial, floppies, mouses ------------------------ As if that weren't enough, AAA does still more. It has serial ports, floppy drive support, and input device ports. The two joystick/mouse ports can support a wide range of devices, including standard joysticks, mechanical and optical mice, analog joysticks, lightpens, and drawing tablets. AAA also has two, high speed buffered serial ports. The old single port on AGA can handle as much as 115.2K Baud, but requiring significant CPU overhead to prevent loosing characters. AAA uses a FIFO buffer and DMA to remove the overhead and danger of dropouts at high speeds. This will come as great news to those planning on keeping up with modem technology! Finaly, the floppy port. One of the most annoying things that has not been upgraded, until now. While AGA requires a special, half speed drive to support HD floppies, AAA is so fast they don't even make a floppy that can keep up! It easily supports the Quad Density drives that are still not commonplace (High Density being the standard now). And with AmigaOS formating, that means 3.52MB on a disk! The floppy support can handle the transfer rates of a CD-ROM or slow HD, which is far in excess of current floppy drives. So if they ever make an "Octa Density" floppy drive, AAA will be ready for it! It could also handle a 20MB floptical drive, if there was a non-SCSI version available. A little help from a DSP ------------------------ Though it's not part of the Amiga custom chip set, it fits right in. A DSP is a natural companion to the AAA chip set. A DSP isn't limited just to sound, although it can be of great use for creating music and sound effects. But it can also be used for things like high-speed modem emulation (indeed, high speed modems have DSP's in them), speech synthesis, JPEG/MPEG image compression/decompression, data aquisition and processing, speech recognition, graphics and image processing, and more. The Amiga DSP has a multitasking OS of it's own. This allows the DSP to do many things at once, so you are not limited to just doing sound or modem emulation. Commodore has selected the AT&T 3210 DSP. This is full 32 bit, floating point processor (unlike the limited 24 bit fixed point processor used in Atari's Falcon). It has an 8K on-chip memory cache and 33MFlops of computing power, and shares the system bus with the Amiga's CPU, giving it access to all memory and resources. Finaly, there's a high speed serial I/O port with DMA, capable of 24Mbit/sec transfers. Last, but not least, the OS --------------------------- One needs an OS to orchestrate the use of the hardware. AmigaOS has been maturing for almost 9 years now. It now has most of the basic tools needed for multimedia out of the box. * Pre-emptive multitasking. A great help, especialy in a hardware-oriented machine like the Amiga. * Advanced interprocess communication. Adopting ARexx was a great move. Any application can communicate with another, control it, or offer services to other apps. This communication can even exist accross a network (see "Envoy", Commodore's networking software). * Object oriented GUI. While not yet being fully taken advantage of, this is great thing for the future. An important offspring of this, Datatypes, play an important role in multimedia. * Datatypes :). Datatypes allow applications to support multiple file formats without any extra work. Since Datatypes are objects, they can be embeded into windows, or even each other. The full power of Datatypes have yet to be realized. Currently, Datatypes cover the basic multimedia data forms: Pictures, Sounds, Animation, Hypertext. Support for specific file formats include the standard IFF formats, including ILBM (images), ANIM and CDXL (animation), 8SVX (sound); Amigaguide (hypertext), ASCII text. Third party (public domain) datatypes cover GIF's, JPEG and other forms. * Multitasking GUI. The AmigaOS GUI is designed with multitasking in mind. It does not have such unfreindly things like "modal dialogs" and other "features". * Fully 32 bit from the begining. All Amiga apps are 32 bit. There is no baggage from 8 bit OS's. * Extendable design. Anyone can add new function libraries, or devices. * Shared code libraries/devices. * DSP support library(ies). * This list goes on.. :) Amiga, The Next Generation -------------------------- What good would AAA be, if it doesn't have a nice computer around it? The "A5000" is going to be a perfect match for AAA. Like AAA, it will be a totaly new design. * Processor independant, high speed 64 bit local bus. So you aren't locked into the 040 or 060. When you are ready, go RISC, with no bottlenecks. This is probably one of the most important aspects of the new system. With this as the backbone of the system, everything else will fly. It gives massive bandwidth to the entire system, and a high degree of modularity. * PCI slots. A future industry standard. Why go with this? Isn't this "anti Amiga"? Well, why not. PCI is good. It's fast, it's standard, it's perfect. The Amiga will still have Zorro III slots, too. * 64 bit memory. While the 68040 and 68060 are only 32 bit processors, having 64 bit memory actualy will speed things up. It's also handy for when you can add a 64 bit RISC processor. * Motorola '040 and '060 CPU's. The 40Mhz 040, and the upcoming 60Mhz 060 are still formidable processors. They can hold their own against the Pentium (PowerPC doesn't count, yet). * High speed SCSI-II on the motherboard, connected to the 64 bit local bus. * DSP. As if the AAA chipset isn't powerfull enough, you'll have a DSP to play with too! Why the A5000 is still a good idea ---------------------------------- And now, the point to this article. The primary feature of the A5000 will be the level of integration of the *system*. All the parts will cooperate smoothly, complementing each other, and giving the system an overall feel and power that is greater than the sum of its parts. Look at the A5000 and look at what the competition will have then. Sure, there may be individual areas where other machines will beat it. Particularly, IBM clones will still be cheaper. But as an overall system, the A5000 will win for many applications. The A5000 will have very respectable graphics. How many people will have 1280 x 1024 graphics? Such monitors are very expensive. How many will have 8 voice 16 bit sound? Cards that do that alone are expensive. Will QuadDensity floppies be standard by then? Probably not. Will there be a system that has all these things, and more, in a perfectly balanced system? Will there be an OS for it that uses all these features, and lets applications take full advantage of them? The A5000 system is built right, from the ground up. With a high speed 64 bit local bus at its core, a fast 32 bit CPU, a fast 32/64 bit custom highly integrated multipurpose chip set, SCSI-II, DSP, and PCI slots, its a formidable system. And running on this hardware, you have an OS that already knows how to use all this power. A very fast, multitasking kernel. All the basic multimedia extensions, built in. The Amiga, and especialy the A5000 (or whatever they call it), is a perfect multimedia system. It can go full blast doing sound, graphics, communications, number crunching, multitasking, disk I/O, networking, etc all at once with ease. I've heard altogether too many stories about Macs that just barf when trying to multitask with serial or network transfers going on, slow animation, mega expensive video hardware and software, and just plain being slow no matter what you're doing. I don't think the A5000 or AAA is too little, too late. Sure, I think Commodore could have created this machine two years ago (which would have been mind blowing), but that's the way it goes. Lets take a look at what you'd need to approximate the AAA chipset and the A5000, if you have an IBM clone: * Modern motherboard. 64 bit local bus (CPU to DRAM). Full PCI slots. EISA or ISA or something for backwards compatibility. Sockets for plenty of 64 bit SIMM's (well, pairs of 32 bit SIMMs). * SVGA card PCI based, or built into motherboard. 64 bit high speed bus interface. 32 bit fast blitter. co-processor (completely independant instruction list, can control ALL aspects of the system -- sound, video, blitter, sprites, etc). Sprites Bitplane (1 - 16), chunky (2, 4, 8, 16) and hybrid modes (8 x 8 x 8). VRAM, DRAM, in varying combinations. Upto 16MB VRAM/DRAM. Compressed video modes. * Sound card. 8 voices, 16 bits each, 64Khz sampling. Separate volume and balance registers. DMA fed. * Serial port card. 2 high speed serial ports. FIFO buffers and DMA. * Game port/mouse port/floppy/CD-ROM card Two ports, which support mice, joystick, lightpen, drawing tablets. Floppy port: Supports Quad Density disks. Is fast enough to support CD-ROMs or other devices in this speed range (flopticals, etc). * SCSI-II card PCI card or on motherboard. High speed SCSI-II FAST (10MB/sec). DMA driven. * Powerfull OS Pre-emptive multitasking. Object oriented GUI. Datatypes. Interprocess communication. System script language (Rexx?). Etc. (this narrows it down to OS/2). * DSP card PCI card or on motherboard. 32 bit floating point DSP. 33MFlops computing power. 8K cache. Access to system memory. I don't think you could set up such a system today, and the closest setup would be very expensive. @endnode @node P1-4 "Amiga Blues" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Amiga Blues %% %% %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% [ED's NOTE: Unfortunately I cannot give credit to the author of this] [ article, as I don't have his name or address. I was hoping that ] [ the author would have sent me a message about it since it wasn't ] [ in AR209. If the author contacts me, I would be more than happy to] [ give him the proper credit. Sorry. ] So you say you own the 'Rodney Dangerfield of PC's' "It don't get no respect." And you say the Executives who are running the company are doing their best imatation of the Three Stooges. And they really do have names like Larry, Moe and Curly Joe. You think every great game ever invented runs on H.A.L. eh.. I.B.M. And the people and companies who were supporting Your PC have vaporized, dissapeared, dried up and blown away. And your wife still ain't come home from the movies yet. Is that what's got you down boobie? Well I'd say from where your sitting your probably right, but everythings relative chum. From where I'm sittin it don't look like that at all. Maybe a change of perspctive will help. Certainly one more Mac vs Amiga won't. What a dump idea, let's take two really super PC's and bash them together continuously. For what good reason? When I sit down in front of my Amiga I strap on my seatbelt cause I know I'm taking the fastest ride in the business. I've got an old A500 sitting in the cornner that's a more sophisticated computer than any PC sold today straight out of the box. " A yeah right, but what has it done for me lately" you say. I say the only thing sophisticated about IBM and compatibles is the support. All the magazines, all the third party developement all the Compatible machines sitting on everyone's work desk, all the networking , Makes for a very sophisticated environment. But does it make for a sophisticated Machine? You figure it out. If you live in Britian you can laugh in the face of any other PC owner. Why? Because in Britian Amiga has the Numbers to back up the gloating. In Germany too Amiga owners walk down the street with pride. This is the same PC that people in America wringing there hands over. Well I've got some news for you, right now today in the cities and towns of America their are more Amiga's being sold than ever before. Its a fact, you can look it up. Those kind of things are important. Their important to know, because the life of your PC is important. But I could say what comes tomorrow is Pie in the Sky. What about the PC sitting on your desk right now. There are not enough ideas in your head to tire out this machine. There are more software packages sittimg on the shelves today to keep you entertained for the rest of your life. "Yeah but what about the next big thing " you say. I say the next big things already here it's called a "personal computer", and if your's is an Amiga then your a very lucky guy (gal,droid,hamster) If you want to argue with me your welcome to but I won't argue with you. I haven't got time, I've got some Star gazing to do , some landscapes to render, some music to blast, some animations to think up, some images to distort. some other universes to visit, and some ... . @endnode @node P1-5 "CD32 - A long term perspective" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% CD32 A Long Term Perspective by RobMan %% %% %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% I've now been the proud owner of a CD32 for about four months, so I thought I'd write and let you know how it performs. The first thing I did (essential) was to buy the great serial port adaptor ( A329 from Brian Fowler Computers) which allowed me to connect the CD32 to my '020 A500+ with a nullmodem cable. Using the Almathera CDPD3 disk, which has the Terminus comms package on it, I am able to download AGA images and utils to the CD32s RAMdisk and display/use them in all of their AGA glory, which is amazing to behold having been used to OCS and ECS for the past six years!! The CD32 also includes Workbench 3.0, so I'm having an interesting time exploring its potential. The next important step was to improve the quality of the display that I was getting from my 1084S. When I purchased the CD32, I was told that I had to connect it to my 1084S via the composite video sockets. This works fine, but as soon as you try to display any fairly small text on the screen it becomes very blurred and unreadable (this also happens in some of the games). Not to fear, S-VHS is here! After a quick call to CBM, I had a fax of the S-VHS port pin-outs and a cable was constructed from an old Apple Mac keyboard cable and an old A500 tv modulator cable (I'm posting the details on Aminet under Hard/Hack/SVHSCD32.lha). To make this cable from scratch components should cost less than 33UK. So, connecting this to the luminance andchrominance sockets of the 1084S gives SUPERB quality images from the CD32. I only wish I'd made the cable sooner! What about the machine itself? Looks tacky, performs excellently. CD audioquality is great, particularly when hooked up to a hi-fi. A4000 keyboard works a treat too, as does any Amiga mouse/joystick (including my now TEN YEAR OLD (wow!) Competition Pro 5000). FMV is out over here, but the currently available movies and music videos are a bit lacking in both quantity and quality (from a movie- lover's pointof view, not the quality of MPEG!). It costs 199UK and is bundled with a disc, but don't ask me which one. More importantly, the Microbotics SXI expansion unit (serial, parallel, floppy, RGB, SIMM, FMV thru' and IDE) will be shipping over hereon March 17th and will cost A3139. I believe this also includes Parnetsoftware/hardware, although that maybe only from Indi Direct Mail Order. At last, access to my A500+'s hard disks!And what of the software? As you probably know, Liberation is rather cool (although not exactly Doom in the graphics department) and there are a multitude of other excellent games waiting in the wings (TFX, Rise Of The Robots - where are you!). Shovelware is available in abundance (see the full software list for details). However, by far the most used disks in my collection are Almathera's CDPD3 and Demo2 cd's. These autobooting extraveganzas contain so much software, its just amazing! Most of it is fairly recent, and it has to be worth it just to experience Workbench 3 for the first time! Both cost approx. 20UK and are guaranteed to be the best 40UK you spent since you bought that 1/2 meg expansion in 1989. When the Microbotics expansion is released, the CD32 can be booted from floppy and then you can access those CDs that don't autoboot, or are limited when they do, such as the Multimedia Toolkit (hundreds of images,icons, fonts, samples, tunes, clip art), 17Bit collections (thousands of Pounds worth of PD disks for about 50UK for 3 CDs), the early Fred Fish collection and the Aminet CD. I really can't wait - I had a taste of this when I hooked a borrowed Apple CD300 up to the A500+! The CD32 is an excellent machine with a realistic price tag, and the power to run some great games. I'm sure in a few months we're gonna be jumping with glee at the quality of the software we're getting. BUY ONE! Robman Contact : Internet - robin@bodyshop.demon.co.ukps - After writing this, Pinball Fantasies arrived - it is amazing!! One of the most 'more-ish' games I have ever played! @endnode @node P1-6 "Low Cost Emulation Fun" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Low Cost Emulation Fun by Calum Tsang %% %% tsangc@io.org %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Low Cost Emulation Fun with the Commodore Amiga 2088 XT Bridgeboard A Long Time Ago ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just thought I'd write in and tell you of my experiences with emulation on the Amiga. When I was younger and naive to the Amiga world (still am in a way), I read the literature on the Amiga 2000, and told myself I'd get a A2000 with the XT Bridgeboard. While crossborder shopping in Buffalo from my hometown of Toronto, Canada, a dealer gave me some words of advice: "Don't waste your money. Get a hard disk instead." I ended up buying an Amiga 2000HD without an XT Bridgeboard. Most of you are laughing at me, since I actually thought a one floppy XT compatible A2000 would be useful, but I was almost dead set on getting one. Lucky me that the dealer in Buffalo straightened me out. Further Along ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Along my bumpy road, I tried everything on my new Amiga, and I bought a SupraRAM memory expander, an extra hard disk, a genlock, a CDRom, a doormat, a little stuffed animal, a new bicycle... ...and four years later, I had a piece of trash that I called my Amiga. Everyone else had A3000's, and A4000's, with SCSI hard disks, big multisync monitors and VideoToasters. It was nearing Christmas, 1993. I was starting to hate my boring old 68000 Amiga 2000. What possibly could make my Amiga interesting again? The Deal ~~~~~~~ Reading my local BBS ads, I found a guy trying to sell his Bridgeboard for $30. I gave the guy a call and offered him $20 for it. The rendezvous was set and we met on a Friday night at the Royal York subway station in West Toronto to do the big exchange. It was like those spy movies. Ooooh. Scary. I had twenty bucks on me. I needed to make a phone call. The guy showed up. I told him I needed a quarter. I ended up paying him $19.75. I made my phone call. I had my Bridgeboard. Now the fun began. Getting the Darn Thing Home ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For $19.75, Canadian dollars, exact change, I got myself one used A2088D board, a 5 1/4 drive, cables, a serial and memory expansion board for the PC side and three boxes of disks. I installed it into my A2000, with 3MB of of RAM, A2300 Genlock and 60MB HD. I was ready to have fun. Lots of fun, when I was informed that my Janus software wouldn't work with Workbench version 2.1. Revisions later, I got my cards installed, twisting and turning cables, and placing drives where drives shouldn't be. Like having a Rodime 40MB HD and a 3.5" floppy on the top two bays, the Bridgecard 5.25" on the bottom bay, and a Miniscribe 21MB HD wedged between the drive cage and the power supply, vertically, blocking almost all ventilation. But hell, this was fun. Space: The Final Frontier ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unlike other reviewers, who have megabytes and gigabytes of space to review their products, I have about zilch HD space. Out went the Xapshot pictures of my friends, old publishing files, fonts I didn't like, PD archives which were boring, the free copy of MediaShow I won at World of Commodore Amiga last year... ...and I had ten MB free! Okay! We're having fun now! Install the software. Put the virtual drive in. Yes!!!! We have.....boot! Yeah! uh oh. No boot disk. Honk. Getting the Boot Disk ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I can handle this. I own three PC compatibles, a 386DX, and two 386SX's. This is not beyond me. Just get the disks from the old boxes...and...shoot...where's the boxes? Ah. Let's take a short trip. Visit my aunt. Proud owners of a PS/1. Borrow their DOS boot disks. Return home. Yes!!! We have.....boot! Yeah! Drat. Wrong size disks. Steal the Drive ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I visit my old friend Andrew Rowat. Borrow his external A1010 drive and hook it into my A2088D's back port. Try booting. It doesn't recognize the the A1010 as drive A. Back to square one. Ripped open the Amiga. Detached the 5.25" drive. Swiped a clone 3.5" drive to the bridgeboard as device 0. And it works. Fun with Manuals: Installing DOS 5.0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IBM DOS Installation software comes up. Format. Prep. Copy. Wham-bang, floppy-copy. And we have an XT. Yes, fun on a Zorro II card. Okay, Software! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Conversation with PC expert friend, around December: Me: Hey, what's new in the PC world (never use my PCs) Friend: Uh, OS/2, Doom, AutoDesk 3D Studio... Me: Great! Where can I get these? Friend: Your local clone store. Me: I just got an emulation board! I've having fun. Friend: What do you have on it? Me: 8088 at 4.77 MHz, 640K of RAM. Can I run them? End of Conversation. Friend leaves, laughing. Digging Out Old Stuff ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finding old software that runs on my A2088 was difficult. An old copy of Microsoft Works v1.0. My Logitech Kidz Mouse and it's drivers. A few old CGA shareware games. Microsoft Works runs great. Now I can write letters with no fonts and nonproportional spacing. Yeah! Fun! I was beginning to be depressed. Emulation wasn't as fun as it was all made out to be. Maybe it was because they all had Emplants and Golden Gate 486's. I didn't touch my Bridgeboard for a long time. I was starting to regret my $19.75 investment in fun. (cue violins) I See the Light ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just when things were getting worse, I noticed that my NEC UltraLite notebook had a copy of LapLink on it. I read the instructions, and lo and behold, all you needed was a serial cable. I had one of those. And a copy of LapLink on a PC XT. I have one of those. The fun was starting again. Connected my Bridgeboard to my notebook. Started whipping files back and forth at 115K. Wow. Printed my notes and reports on my Amiga after sending them back and forth. The Bridgeboard was beginning to have some use! But this was only the beginning... ...when a boatload of five inch disks from friends started coming in. I could collect submissions and articles from them and convert them for publishing on the Amiga through the Bridgeboard... ...and I found a QWK mail reader for the PC, which I could read mail with on my PC side while my Amiga downloaded files... ...and a ZIP archiver to let my PC side batchprocess archives while I used my Amiga at full speed for other stuff, without dedicating any of my processing time on the 68000... ...and I found out that InterLego AG makes a really niftycool Lego robot controller only on the PC, and not on the Amiga... ...and that the extra serial port was like having two terms running at once... The Moral of This Story: Brush Your Teeth Everyday! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I finally found some good uses for the XT Bridgeboard. I was having fun again with my Amiga. It's like having an extra computer around to muck with when your Amiga is bogged down with tasks. So, wholeheartedly, I can recommend, for a parking lot of fun, getting an old used XT Bridgeboard, for $19.75. @endnode @node P1-7 "European Outlook" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% European Outlook by Jesper Juul %% %% norjj@stud.hum.aau.dk %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Full-motion video, revisited ---------------------------- A few issues bag, I wrote a quick and negative article about the FMV-module for the CD32. Here's more: A Philips employee told me that it's true that there are a lot of "knobs" to turn when recording a digital video CD. This to the extent that the quality of the finished product depends a lot on the money and work spent to perform the conversion. And the poor quality on some of the early titles is a reflection of that: They were rushed to the market, more or less. If you recall, the first sound CD titles sounded quite awful - it took some time for the engineers to learn to do it right. It seems likely that the quality will improve. There is apparently no quality difference between Philips' CD-I digital video format and the VideoCD format Commodore's sub- scribed to. Both follow the MPEG-1 whitebook. The difference is in the way the data's been put on the disc. Having spent a few hours in a quiet room with Ridley Scott's "Black Rain" on CD, I'll elaborate my initial feelings about FMV a bit: Half of the time, I think it's absolutely great. The colors are nice and steady. The sound is _great_, wonderful stereo. It's just that sometimes a face freezes, sometimes it seems that the children walking up a stair jump a few frames. The almost unmoving scenes are OK, the freezing faces I'll learn to live with. The action scenes are OK as well, perhaps there's too much happening for the eye to notice problems. But freeze frames in action scenes sometimes look absolutely horrible; some still pictures of a fast-moving Michael Douglas are completely unrecognizable. It's like a low, low, low quality JPEG picture, the picture is even split into little (I think) 8 x 8 pixel (and very visible) squares. It becomes extremely blocky, and Michael Douglas looks as much like Godzilla in a dim room as a human. Also, I watched Seal's "Killer" video on the current dealer- demo CD. (Commodore continually produces new dealer CDs, featuring demos of different games, the CD32 "Creation" ad in both MPEG and CDXL (for the basic machine) video.) The video looked very good, but I found that the sound had occasional cracks. And try looking closely at the suit Seal's wearing, it looks distinctly like Mandelbrot graphics on an Amiga, color- cycling! I'm sure it is. The currently avaliable video CDs are: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Black Rain, Bon Jovi: Keep the faith, Hanna Barbera's Cartoon Festival, Patriot Games, Star Trek VI, Top Gun. A lot more are coming soon, including: Apocalypse Now (yes!), Billy Ray Cyrus Live, Bryan Adams: Waking up the Neighbours, Eric Clapton: The Cream of Clapton, The Firm, The Hunt for Red October, Sliver, and ...... Fatal Attraction Director's Cut. I thought Director's cut was strictly for good movies? What'll it be? 30-minute sex scenes? Glenn Close refusing to die for 45 additional minutes? I don't get it? But I think I'm getting to like this digital video thing. SeaQuest -------- Commodore has put some effort into promoting the Steven Spiel- berg/Amiga-Produced series. The pilot episode was in Germany watched by some 17 million viewers, this included the "Commo- dore - Amiga praesentiert"-trailer. (You figure out what it means.) Commodore and RTL (the station showing SeaQuest) has staged an animation-competition. Prize is 5000DM (around US$2500) and a few hours backstage at RTL. Animations must be 10-15 seconds, produced on Amiga, Mac, or PC, and put on VHS, SVHS, Video8, or Hi8. Only "amateurs" can participate, whatever it means. I do suppose they want PAL. Closing date is April 15th, 1994. The animation is supposed to be shown just before every show, so it seems a good idea to make it relate to SeaQuest in some way. This is the address: RTL Television Tillmann Fichs Aachener Strasse 1036 D-50858 Koeln Germany Expanding the CD32 ------------------ P&K Computer has announced a CD32 expansion box for around the time I write this. (March 17th.) The box brings you a 3.5 inch floppy, serial, parallel, floppy, and RGB ports, and room for a 3.5 inch Harddrive. No word of keyboard or additional power-supply. Price is DM495 (around US$ 250). This is their address: P&K Computer An der Kirche 1 D-38304 WolfenBuettel Phone: (0 53 31) 6 00 66 Fax: (0 53 31) 6 90 06 CeBit ----- >From the 16th to the 20th of March, Europes biggest computer fair takes place in Hannover, Germany. If you were there, please email me so I can write a bit about it. That's all for now. Sometime soon I'll be looking at a PowerPC, and I'll compare a Sillicon Graphics Indigo machine to an A4000/040. Stay netted. @endnode @node P1-8 "Using Crons and Crontabs" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Using Crons and Crontabs by David Tiberio %% %% dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Using Crons and Crontabs - by David Tiberio There may be a large number of you out there who, like me, either leave your computer on all the time or use it at a regular time on a daily basis. When this is the case, it is nice to have a crontab to perform tasks throughout any given day. For example, I have a terrible time getting ready for school. My clocks all tell different times, and sometimes when trying to turn them off in the morning I accidentally set the time a few minutes ahead. And I have 4 alarms! One is about 10 minutes ahead, my watch is 10 minutes ahead, another clock is 30 minutes ahead, and another is 40 minutes ahead. Although after this morning I think there may be a new record... Another problem I have is that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I have to go to class at 8:20am, which on Tuesday and Thursday, I go to class at 8:30am. As luck would have it, I arrive early twice a week and barely make it three times a week. Now here is where my crontab comes in. My computer is on all night. Overnight, it performs operations that I feel are needed. For example, when I ran a BBS it used to backup my files, or download UUCP news from another BBS. But now it wakes me up in the morning. Every ten minutes it announces the time using the narrator.device. But on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I set it to announce the time ten minutes early, so at 8:00am it will announce that it is 8:10am, time to be at class. :) Another use is for it to remind me which books to take to class, or on weekends, to remind me that there are no classes. Same when classes are canceled. Since my loft is above my computer, I don't even have to get out of bed. At 2pm it reminds me that the bank closes in one hour. At 4pm it reminds me that the post office closes soon. Although I do not go to each every day, I do go at least once a week, which makes it very useful. On Thursday nights at 7:55pm, time to put the TV on channel 5. Then at 8:55pm, time for channel 4. Once 11pm comes around, I am reminded to finish my homework. And at midnight, it reminds me to go to sleep. Also for the sake of security, I get reminded a few more times after that just so the point gets across. But there are other uses. Every morning at 6:01am, my PhonePak Lineman is executed. This program must be running at all times in case someone calls, making it capable of answering the phone or accepting a FAX. If Lineman is not running (I may accidentally close the window, which I do often), it will be executed. If it is already running, it will not execute another copy. Here is a sample s:crontab file. Comments are followed by a # symbol. # [] 00 6 * * 2,4 say six ay em. time to wake up. 01 6 * * * run sys:wbstartup/lineman 02 6 * * 1,2,3,4,5 execute s:wakeup-sequence 45 6 * * 0,6 c:hear -b 15000 xdh1:iff.8svx/goodvibrations.8svx At 00 minutes 6 hours, every day, every month, on the second and fourth days of the week, the system announces the current time. One minute later, my PhonePak is put online in the event that it was closed the day before. At 6:02am, a wakeup-sequence script is executed which ensures that I will wake up. And later at 6:45am, on weekends, it plays a few minutes of an audio sample off of my hard drive (nice song to wake to). The format for the crontab is simple: minutes hours date months weekdays commands MINUTES ranges from 00 to 59 HOURS ranges from 0 to 23, 24 hour time DATE ranges from 1 to 31 (day of the month) MONTHS ranges from 1 to 12 (January to December) WEEKDAYS ranges from 0 to 6 (Sunday to Saturday) COMMANDS includes any standard CLI/Shell command and arguments Here are some more samples: * * * * * #every second 00 * * * * #beginning of every hour 00 0,12 * * * #beginning of hour at midnight and noon 00 1 3 7 * #July 4th at 1:00am Good luck in using crontabs. In order to use them with your Amiga, you will need a cron reader, such as CyberCron, DCron, or TPTCron. Of the ones I have tested, I found Cybercron to be the most stable under Workbench 2.04. Check Fred Fish disks or look for these two files on Aminet. CyberCron15.lha os20/cli 78K+Schedule jobs at specific times. TPTCron.lha util/cli 32K*Executes jobs repeatedly at given times David Tiberio dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu @endnode @node P1-9 "Famous Amiga Uses" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Famous Amiga Uses by David Tiberio %% %% dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% List of Famous Amiga Uses compiled by David Tiberio. Compilation Copyright 1994 Area52. All Rights Reserved. Originally published in the Amiga/Toaster Online Reference Manual. Send all updates to dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu. Area52, 6 Lodge Lane, East Setauket NY 11733 USA. (516) 476-1615 VOICE & FAX Changes for March 13 1994. This compilation may be distributed and published freely, in whole or in part, so long as you give credit to the author, David Tiberio. AJAX, soccer tem. Sponsored by Commodore. Paris-St. Germain soccer, France. Sponsored by Commodore. Seraing soccer team, Belgium. Sponsored by Commodore. Advanced Audio Visual Systems, Paris, France. 20 Amiga equipped broadcasting studios and mobile vans. Scandanavian Micro Systems A/S, Norway. Cafe in Act, Australia. Two virtual reality games for arcade. Thorpe Park, amusement park in London. Amiga controlled biplane dogfight virtual reality game. Cruiseships, passenger information systems. M/S Statendam, Holland American Line. M/S Maasdam, Holland American Line. M/S Ryendam, Holland American Line. M/S Crystak Harmony, Crystal Cruises. Cynostic, PD library, England. Distributes CD's, tapes, and videos, all Amiga produced. CD's produced by Bjorn A Lynne, Volker Tripp, etc. "Radio Balans", pirate radio station, The Hague, Holland. Amiga 500 used for jingles, tunes, and music. Filmsmith International and The Loft, Florida. Video Toaster used in productions for The Rolling Stones, Cher, Huey Lewis and the News, Meat Loaf, Cyndi Lauper, and Billy Joel. Loyalist College, Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Amiga and Video Toaster used for television broadcasting courses. Nicholson Catholic College, Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Amiga and Video Toaster used for school videos, drama, media courses. Amiga 2000 with HP PaintJet used in art lab for graphics work. University of North Texas, Denton, Texas. NTTV channel 22, university sponsored programming. Amiga 4000 and Scala Infochannel used to display bullitens. Amiga 2500 used for video titling by editing department. University of Wisconsin Hospital, Wisconsin. Amiga used for medical research. Amiga 500 mouse pointer controlled by eye movements. "Babylon 5", Emmy Award Winning Movie, Warner Bros., 1993. All computer graphics generated on Amiga computers. Lightwave 3D generated scenes of space ships. System Alert messages used in an episode. "Kung Fu - The Legend Continues", police/martial arts. Amiga 3000 used to access personal records. Amiga programs used by "Kermit", police officer. Amiga Workbench 3.0 shown running on an IBM clone. Directory Opus 4.0 screens shown. GPFax screen shown, modified graphically. Deluxe Paint screen showing MYOB, "security" key. Telefrance, on-air graphics, Phnom Penh. TF1, French TV Network. Amiga used in Paris HQ. UNTV, United Nations Television, New York City, New York. A4000 with Harlequin and IV24 used for mobile TV studio. Multilingual character generator, graphics, framestores. Originally used for 1993 Cambodian elections. A1200 with Scala used for UN billboard on Liberty Cable. WCVB 5, ABC, in Boston, Massachusetts (use unknown). Donald Duck, periodical magazine. CD32 awarded as prize for the crossword competition. dtiberio@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu @endnode @node P1-10 "Desktop Publishing--Amiga Style" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Desktop Publishing--Amiga Style By Tom Reamer %% %% treamer@osp.chi.il.us %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Desktop Publishing is one of the most exciting computer aided forms of art that one can partake in. You are probably saying to yourself, "WHAT? DTP, an art form?". It sure is, anything that you design is considered an art and as you go along you will find yourself at the edge of your seat either pulling your hair out or begging for more. DTP can be expensive depending on how you use your available tools. In this first edition of Desktop Publishing made easy, I am going to give some hints and tips that you will find extremely helpful. Many people who already use their Amiga's for desktop publishing quickly found out that the Amiga is an incredibly powerful machine that surpasses the others even in this field. Our resources are not as large as the IBM and MAC base but we have the tools to do the job well. I am going to focus on the most widely used program for layout design; Pagestream 2.2 (PS) Pagestream has some awesome features that even the faint of heart could learn. For those of us who do not wish to read manuals and like to jump right in and play, Pagestream is there for the taking, making it somewhat easy to get what you want off the screen and onto the paper. There are some basic guidelines that you must follow in order to make your "document" exciting enough for the viewer to keep reading. Eye catching enough for the viewer to be pulled into the message that you are trying to convey. This is where TYPE comes in. Many people will concentrate on graphics and layout and will overlook the message conveying type. There are a number of different ways to use type to add impact. You can change the look and feel of an entire sentence by simply changing the type. Avoid over used typefaces such as Avant Garde, Times, Zapf Chancery, Bookman etc. They look good but they are plainly used by everyone else. Although your HD space is probably limited, get a hold of as many fonts as you can. You will be surprised how many of them you can and will use. Make that type BIG! Why not? You have the space and nothing is more eye-catching than a fantastic looking huge font. Literally make a point! 50, 60, 70, make that point size over 100! Before I forget to mention..Stay AWAY from BITMAP FONTS! They are the worst and if made any bigger all you will see is jaggies. Stick to scalable fonts for the cleanest reproduction of your type onto paper and on the screen. When type is large,they become more of a graphic element than a letter. You can also do the opposite be surrounding small text with a large amount of white space. Now back to what we were trying to get to. The HEADLINE! Many people who glance at your layout will often read one thing. You guessed it! The headline. They should be at least twice the size of your text but can happily be larger than that. Don't forget to add a subhead. Subheads help the reader to find what they are looking for, they also add 'visual' interest to the page. Don't make it tiny. Make it stand out but not to the point where it over powers your headline. I like to add subheads to help the readers eyes follow the page down. Psychology my friend. Why not use a drop cap? I need not explain how interesting it is to read a line starting with a wonderful first letter font dropped to perfection. Drop caps can easily be any size without break ing any rules; even a 100 point size will show off your type. The drop cap will look its best when it fits it's allowed space exactly. Be sure to align the bottom of the drop cap with the line of text it is next to. Don't over do it. To many drop caps will defeat your purpose. They will attract the readers eye to them and not your message. I love to use type known as "display typefaces". These fonts have beautiful attributes to them. You know the ones, the type that you just have to use. The Chancery type fonts with leaves, curves, the ornamental fonts! Again, do not over do it, if it seems fit use it. Now that you know the basics of what to do, how about the basics of how to do it? Before I go into that remember one thing, this may not always be true with Photography, but I feel it is extremely important in DTP. CENTER IT. If your page is off center it certainly will not help you out one bit. You will soon find yourself centering everything. Every page you see done by someone else will stand out on the edges and in between. You will not read the document right away, you will first look for the centering! Trust me, I am obsessed with it. Specially when the layout is done on an IBM or MAC. Glad I put that past us both. But DON'T FORGET IT! The biggest strength Pagestream has over other design software is the ability to put anything on the page without having to use boxes. With your mouse click on the large A in the tools bar on the right. This is your FONT tool. Click anywhere you would like to place text on the page. Pick a font from your fonts directory up in the menu bar--click/click. Also pick the point size--click/click. Select OK. Now you can freely type away. When you are finished use your mouse to select the arrow on the tools bar. Click on the text; you will notice that there is now a light box around it. You can do as you wish with the font now... Resize it, move it, right Amiga-X it (to cut) all by placing your pointer on the edges of the box. You can also change the color as you see fit. This is done by simply selecting Fill Style in the object menu. I would like to go on some more with this, but I have probably went to fast as it is. I am sure you have noticed that I mentioned mostly fonts used on Macs and IBM's. I did this on purpose; reason being is that we are surrounded by these machines and those are the fonts you see the most. With the simple document guidelines above and the quick tutorial, this should give you a basic idea on how to make a great looking layout. Nothing comes without practice so load up that program and get to work. The Amiga is a very strong contender in the DTP world. With people unaware of the Amiga's potential as a DTP device, that just leaves less great computers to compete with. Enjoy! @endnode @node P1-11 "Email Gateways" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Your friendly E-mail Gateways by Jonathan Guidry %% %% Fido-net: 1:3803/6.1 %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Ever wanted to send an electronic mail item to a person on a totally different network than which you are a member? If you have access to Internet E-mail (FIDOnet users, see note at bottom), you can send mail to other networks. The networks that I currently know of that you can send E-mail to somebody (through Internet mail) are: GEnie, Compuserve, Delphi, BIX, and FIDOnet, and of course, Internet. :) * Bix * Format: Username@bix.com Example: JBLEAUX@bix.com * Compuserve * Format: number.address@compuserve.com Example: 73113.3141@compuserve.com Note: Make sure to use a period and not a comma in the address * GEnie * Format: Username@Genie.geis.com Example: J.BLEAUX@Genie.geis.com * Delphi * Format: Username@delphi.com Example: JBLEAUX@delphi.com * Portal * Format: Username@cup.portal.com Example: JBLEAUX@cup.portal.com * Fidonet * Format: FirstName.Lastname@pX.fX.nXXXX.zX.fidonet.org Example: Jonathan.Guidry@p6.f1.n3803.z1.fidonet.org Key: p = the POINT of the system f = the NODE of the system n = the NET of the system z = the ZONE of the system For example, if I'm 1:3803/3.4 in FIDOnet, my ZONE is 1, my NET is 3803, my NODE is 3, and my POINT is 4. If the person doesn't have a POINT in his addrrss, you can omit the "pX" from the address, thus making the format: FirstName.Lastname@fX.nXXXX.zX.fidonet.org FIDO NOTE: If you are a FIDOnet user, and have access to "NETMAIL", then you can send Internet mail. Follow these instructions: Address the message to "Uucp" at 1:1/31. The subject can be anything. In the FIRST line of your message, type "To: username@machine.domain", leave a blank line, then start your message. It will be routed to a FIDOnet to Internet "Gateway" and your message will get out. By using this, you can send Internet E-Mail, and thus, you can use the address formats mentioned above to send mail to GEnie, ect.. Just, please don't annoy the "Gateway" sysop and send Internet gated FIDOnet netmail to yourself. If you have any questions, complaints, suggestions, or need clarification on something, mail me at 1:3803/6.1 on FIDONET, or use Jonathan.Guidry@p1.f6.n3803.z1.fidonet.org. @endnode %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Emulation Rambler By Jason Compton %% %% (jcompton@tcity.com) %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @node P4-2 "Portal" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Portal: A Great Place For Amiga Users %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Portal Communications' Amiga Zone The AFFORDABLE alternative for online Amiga information ------------------------------------------------------- The Portal Online System is the home of acclaimed Amiga Zone, which was formerly on the People/Link System. Plink went out of business in May, 1991 and The Amiga Zone's staff moved to Portal the next day. The Zone has just celebrated its second anniversary on Portal. The Amiga press raves about The Amiga Zone, when compared to its competition. If you live in the San Jose, CA area, then you can dial Portal directly. If you live elsewhere, you can reach Portal through any SprintNet (formerly Telenet) indial anywhere in the USA. If you have an account on another Internet-connected system, you can connect to Portal using the UNIX Telnet programs, from anywhere in the industrialized world. Delphi and BIX users can now Telnet into Portal for a flat $19.95 a month, with *unlimited* use. Some of Portal/Amiga Zone's amazing features include: Over 1.5 GIGabytes of Amiga-specific files The *entire* Fred Fish collection of freely distributable software, online. Fast, Batch Zmodem file transfer protocol. Download up to 100 files at once, of any size, with one command. Twenty Amiga vendor areas with participants like AmigaWorld, ASDG, Soft-Logik, Black Belt, Apex Publishing, Stylus, Prolific, NES. 35 "regular" Amiga libraries with thousands of 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. Famous Amiga folks aren't the exception on Portal, they're the norm. Vast Message bases where you can ask questions about *anything* Amiga related and get quick replies from the experts. Amiga Internet mailing lists for Imagine, DCTV, LightWave, HyperAmi, Director and Landscapes are fed right into the Zone message bases. Read months worth of postings. They don't scroll off, ever! No need to clutter your mailbox with them. FREE unlimited Internet Email. Your Portal account gets you a mailbox that's connected to the world. Send letters of any length to computer users in the entire industrialized world. No limits. No extra charges. No kidding! Portal has the Usenet. Thousands of "newsgroups" in which you can read and post articles about virtually any subject you can possibly imagine. Other Portal SIGs (Special Interest Groups) online for Mac, IBM, Sun, NeXT, UNIX, Science Fiction, Writers, amateur radio, and a graphics SIG with thousands of GIF files to name just a few. ALL Portal SIGs are accessible to ALL Portal customers with NO surcharges ever. The entire UPI/Clarinet/Newsbytes news hierarchy ($4/month extra) An entire general interest newspaper and computer news magazine. Portal featues an exciting package of Internet features: IRC, FTP, TELNET, MUDS, LIBS. Free to all Portal customers with your account. Internet Services is a menu driven version of the same kinds of utilities you can also use from your Portal UNIX shell account. All the files you can FTP. All the chatting you can stand on the IRC. And on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) you can talk live, in real time with Amiga users in the U.K., Europe, Australia, the Far East, 24 hours a day. Our exclusive PortalX by Steve Tibbett, the graphical "front end" for Portal which will let you automatically click'n'download your waiting email, messages, Usenet groups and binary files! Reply to mail and messages offline using your favorite editor and your replies are sent automatically the next time you log into Portal. (PortalX requires Workbench 2.04 or higher) And Portal does NOT stick it to high speed modem users. Whether you log in at 1200 or 2400 or 9600 or 14.4K you pay the same low price. How does all that sound? Probably too good to be true. Well, it IS true. Portal Signup or for more information: 408-973-9111 (voice) 9a.m.-5p.m. Mon-Fri, Pacific Time 408-725-0561 (modem 3/12/2400) 24 hours every day 408-973-8091 (modem 9600/14400) 24 hours every day or enter "C PORTAL" from any Sprintnet dial-in in the USA, or telnet to "portal.com" from anywhere. PORTAL'S CURRENT RATES: All prices shown are in U.S. Dollars Total Total Total Total Cost Cost Cost Cost Fee 1 hr. 5 hrs. 10 hrs.30 hrs. Startup Monthly Per Per per per per Fee Fee Hour month month month month $ $ $ $ $ $ $ Portal 19.95 19.95 2400/9600/14.4Kbps, *direct 24 hrs 0.00 19.95 19.95 19.95 19.95 2400/9600bps nonprime Sprint 2.50 22.95 32.45 44.95 94.95 2400/9600bps prime Sprint +% 5.50-10 29.95 69.95 119.95 varies 2400/9600bps non prime # PCPursuit 1.00 20.95 24.95 29.95 49.95 * plus cost of phone call if out of Portal's local dialing area Direct rates also apply to connections made to Portal using the UNIX "telnet" program from an account you may already have on an Internet-connected system. % 9600 bps Sprintnet in over 300 cities areas + $10 rate prevails at smaller US Cities # PCPursuit is a service of US Sprint. Portal is a PCPursuit "Direct Access Facility" thus connection to Portal with a PCP account is simply a matter of entering C PORTAL,PCP-ID,PCP-PASSWORD at the SprintNet login prompt instead of C PORTAL. Note: Portal Direct 9600/14400 bps service is availble for both USR HST modems, and any V32/V32.bis modems. There are dozens of direct-dial high speed lines into Portal. No busy signals! SprintNet 9600bps service is V.32 modem protocol only. Again, Portal does NOT surcharge high speed modem users! Portal subscribers who already have an account on an Internet-capable system elsewhere, can use that system's "telnet" program to connect to Portal for $0.00 an hour. That's right ZERO. From anywhere in the world. If you're in this category, be sure to ask the Portal reps, when you signup, how to login to Portal from your existing Internet account. Call and join today. Tell the friendly Portal Customer Service representative, "The Amiga Zone and Amiga Report sent me!" [Editor's Note: Be sure to tell them that you are an Amiga user, so they can notify the AmigaZone sysops to send their Welcome Letter and other information!] That number again: 408-973-9111. Portal Communications accepts MasterCard, Visa, or you can pre-pay any amount by personal check or money order. The Portal Online System is a trademark of Portal Communications. @endnode @node P3 "Dealer Directory" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Dealer Directory %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Almathera Systems Ltd Challenge House 618 Mitcham Rd Croydon, Surrey CR9 3AU England VOICE: (UK) 081 683 6418 Internet: (Sales) almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk (Technical) jralph@cix.compulink.co.uk Amigability Computers P.O. Box 572 Plantsville, CT 06479 VOICE: 203-276-8175 Internet: amiga@phantm.UUCP BIX: jbasile (Send E-mail to subscribe to our mailing list) Apogee Technologies 1851 University Parkway Sarasota, FL 34243 VOICE: 813-355-6121 Portal: Apogee Internet: Apogee@cup.portal.com Armadillo Brothers 753 East 3300 South Salt Lake City, Utah VOICE: 801-484-2791 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: 519-457-2986 FIDO: 1:221/125 AmigaNet: 40:550/1 MaxNet: 90:204/1 iNET: koops@gaul.csd.uwo.ca PSI Animations 17924 SW Pilkington Road Lake Oswego, OR 97035 VOICE: 503-624-8185 Internet: PSIANIM@agora.rain.com Software Plus Chicago 3100 W Peterson Avenue Chicago, Illinois VOICE: 312-338-6100 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 (Dealers: To have your name added, please send Email!) @endnode @node P2-3 "In Closing" @toc "menu" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% _ _ __ ___ _ %% %% /\\ |\\ /| || // \ /\\ %% %% / \\ | \\ /|| ||(< __ / \\ %% %% /--- \\| \/ || || \\_||/--- \\ %% %% /______________________________\\ %% %% / \\ %% %% Amiga Report International Online Magazine %% %% March 18, 1994 ~ Issue No. 2.10 %% %% 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" @{" From the Editor's Desk " link P1-1} Saying it like it is! @{" Amiga News " link P1-2} News and Announcements @{" Is the AAA Obsolete? " link P1-3} Well, let's look at it! @{" Amiga Blues " link P1-4} I don't get no respect! @{" The CD32 " link P1-5} A long term perspective @{" Low Cost Emulation Fun " link P1-6} The CBM 2088XT BridgeBoard @{" European Outlook " link P1-7} He's back, and with a closer look at FMV @{" Crons and Crontabs " link P1-8} Make your Amiga work for YOU! @{" Famous Amiga Uses " link P1-9} Getting attention ..and getting used! @{" Desktop Publishing " link P1-10} Amiga Style! @{" Email Gateways " link P1-11} Expanding your Email horizons @endnode @node P2 "About Amiga Report" @toc "menu" @{" For Starters " link P2-1} Where to get AMIGA REPORT @{" AR Staff " link P2-2} The Editors, and Contributers @{" In Closing " link P2-3} Copyright Information @endnode @node P4 "Commercial Online Services" @toc "menu" @{" Delphi " link P4-1} 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 @{" BIX " link P4-6} For Serious Programmers and Developers @endnode @node P5 "Files Available for FTP" @toc "menu" No new FTP Announcements. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The most downloaded files from wustl.edu during the week until 14-Mar-94 File Dir Size Description ------------------- --- ---- ----------- scorch175.lha game/shoot 487K+Scorched Tanks V1.75, tank battle game DGalaga15.lha game/shoot 188K+Deluxe Galaga v1.5 - Works on all machines ar208.lha text/mags 74K+Amiga Report 2.08, 04-Mar-94 BootScreen22.lha util/wb 75K+BootScreen V2.2 *ALL USERS PLS DOWNLOAD* enigma.lha mods/chart 125K Enigma ar209.lha text/mags 104K+Amiga Report #2.09 - 3/11/94 hajimecards.lha game/think 552K+Ultracool erotic cards for Klondike-AGA! octane.lha game/shoot 686K+Overhead battle car game. 1meg or more. FastJPEG_1.10.lha gfx/show 43K+JPEG viewer with dithering for ECS/AGA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @endnode ----------------------------------------- @node P2-1-1 "NOVA" @toc "menu" * NOVA BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running Starnet BBS * Wayne Stonecipher, Sysop FidoNet 1:362/508 An Amiga Software Distribution Site (ADS) 615-472-9748 USR DS 16.8 24hrs - 7 days Cleveland, Tennessee @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-2 "In The MeanTime" @toc "menu" * IN THE MEANTIME BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running AXShell * Robert Niles, Sysop rniles@imtired.itm.com 509-966-3828 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Yakima, Washington ******* Notice ******* After 13 September 1993, In The MeanTime will no longer be on FidoNet, thus we will no longer be accepting File REQuests (FREQs). We WILL be still accepting calls and will have the latest edition of Amiga Report online. Downloads to first time callers are still accepted. 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 "Biosmatica" @toc "menu" * BIOSMATICA BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Portugal * Running Excelsior/Trapdoor/UUCP * Celso Martinho, Sysop FidoNet 2:361/9 +351-34-382320 V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-5 "Amiga Junction 9" @toc "menu" * AMIGA JUNCTION 9 * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- United Kingdom * Running DLG Professional * Stephen Anderson, Sysop Sysop Email: sysadmin@junct9.royle.org 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 Internet: user_name@junct9.royle.org @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 "Talk City" @toc "menu" * TALK CITY * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site 708-372-0190 - 2400bps 708-372-0268 - V32 14.4K 708-372-0283 USR DS 14.4K Fido Net 1:115/372,0 Phantom Net 11:2115/2.0 Clink Net 911:6080/4.0 UUCP tcity.com Over 3 Gig of Files Online | More and More things everyday. With Three IBM CD-ROMs online, 10 lines, support for all platforms, and a REALLY dedicated sysop (The Mayor). @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 Tero Manninen, SysOp (PC-areas) Juha Makinen, SysOp (Amiga-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.32 MNP Seinajoki, Finland Our machine is a 386/33 with 20MB of memory, 1GB harddisk and a CD-ROM drive. The BBS software is a Norwegian origin MBBS running in a DesqView windows. We have over 7000 files online (both for the Amiga and PC) + 650MB stuff on the Aminet CD-ROM disk. Every user has an access to download filelist (LAHOFIL.ZIP), list of Finnish 24-hour BBS's (BBSLIST.ZIP or BBSLIST.LHA) and every issue of the Amiga Report Magazine (AR101.LHA-AR1??.LHA) even on their first call. The system has been running since 1989 and is sponsored by the local telephone company, Vaasan Ladnin Puhelin Oy. @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-52 "Falling BBS" @toc "menu" * FALLING BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Norway * Running ABBS * Christopher Naas, Sysop +47 69 256117 V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days EMail: naasc@cnaas.adsp.sub.org @endnode ------------------------------------------ @node P2-1-53 "Command Line BBS" @toc "menu" * COMMAND LINE BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site -- Canada Canada's Amiga Graphics & Animation Source * Running AmiExpress BBS * Nick Poliwko, Sysop 416-533-8321 V.32 24hrs - 7 days Toronto, Canada @endnode ------------------------------------------- @node P2-1-55 "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 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. Instant Access to all. Download on the first call. Hardware: Amiga 500 Tower custom at 14 MHz, 350 Meg maxtor, 125 Meg SCSI Maxtor, 125 Meg IDE Maxtor, 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 P2-1-59 "Continental Drift" @toc "menu" * CONTINENTAL DRIFT BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * Running DLG Pro software * Murray Chaffer & Andre Lackmann, Sysops +612 949-4256 24 hours - 7 days Sydney, Australia @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 P2-1-61 "Moonlight Sonata DLG" @toc "menu" M O O N L I G H T S O N A T A D L G 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 Keyboards: Erno Tuomainen BBS Software: Dialog Pro BB/OS @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.platinum.werries.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.platinum.werries.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 "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 @{" BIOSMATICA " 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 @{" TALK CITY " link P2-1-13} ...............................Waukegan, 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 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 @{" CONTINENTAL DRIFT " link P2-1-59} ................................Sydney, Australia @{" GURU MEDITATION " link P2-1-60} ............................................Spain @{" MOONLIGHT SONATA DLG " link P2-1-61} .........................................Findland @{" DOOM OF DARKNESS " link P2-1-62} ..................................Bremen, Germany @{" REDEYE BBS " link P2-1-63} ..................................Munich, Germany @endnode