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_ ____ ___ ______ _______ _ 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##__ """"" """"""""""" " """""" """""" """"""" """"" """""" June 4, 1993 No. 1.12 ============================================================================= Amiga Report International Online Magazine ============================================================================= From STR Publishing [S]ilicon [T]imes [R]eport ----------------------------------------- * NOVA BBS * Amiga Report Headquarters * RUNNING STARNET BBS * Wayne Stonecipher, Sysop FidoNet 1:362/508 An Amiga Software Distribution Site (ADS) 615-472-9748 USR 14.4 HST 24hrs - 7 days Cleveland, Tennessee * NOTE: Nova's Supra modem will be down for a few days, so they are running the USRobotics HST in the meantime. ------------------------------------------ * IN THE MEANTIME BBS * Official Amiga Report Distribution Site * RUNNING STARNET BBS * Robert Niles, Sysop FidoNet 1:3407/104 509-453-7004 Supra V.32bis 24hrs - 7 days Yakima, Washington ------------------------------------------ Amiga Report can be FREQ'd from these two boards each week. Use the filename AR.LHA and you will always get the latest issue. ----------------------------------------- * THE BOUNTY BBS * Home of STR Publications * RUNNING TURBOBOARD BBS * 904-786-4176 USR DS 16.8 24hrs - 7 days ----------------------------------------- _____________________________________________________________________________ > 06/04/93 Amiga Report 1.12 "The Original * Independent * Online Magazine!" ========================== - The Editor's Desk - CPU Report - New Products - Dealer Directory - AR Online - AR Confidential - Usenet Reviews - JPEG Revealed - HoloNet - A.M.I.G.A. - QuickWrite - Emulators -* Commodore Posts Third Quarter Loss *- -* Microbotics Trade-Up Offer *- -* More Fish Disks! *- ============================================================================ Amiga Report International Online Magazine From STR Publications [S]ilicon [T]imes [R]eport The Original * Independent * Online Magazine -* FEATURING WEEKLY *- "Accurate UP-TO-DATE News and Information" Current Events, Original Articles, Tips, Rumors, and Information Hardware ~ Software ~ Corporate ~ R & D ~ Imports ============================================================================= GENIE ~ PORTAL ~ DELPHI ~ BIX ~ FIDO ~ INTERNET ~ NVN ============================================================================= IMPORTANT NOTICE! ================= Amiga Report International Online Magazine is available every week in the Amiga Forum on DELPHI. Amiga Report readers are invited to join DELPHI and become a part of the friendly community of computer enthusiasts there. SIGNING UP WITH DELPHI ====================== Using a personal computer and modem, members worldwide access DELPHI services via a local phone call JOIN -- DELPHI -------------- Via modem, dial up DELPHI at 1-800-695-4002 then... When connected, press RETURN once or twice and.... At Password: type STREPORT and press RETURN. DELPHI's Basic Plan offers access for only $6.00 per hour, for any baud rate. The $5.95 monthly fee includes your first hour online. For more information, call: DELPHI Member Services at 1-800-544-4005 DELPHI is a service of General Videotex Corporation of Cambridge, MA. Try DELPHI for $1 an hour! For a limited time, you can become a trial member of DELPHI, and receive 5 hours of evening and weekend access during this month for only $5. If you're not satisfied, simply cancel your account before the end of the calendar month with no further obligation. If you keep your account active, you will automatically be enrolled in DELPHI's 10/4 Basic Plan, where you can use up to 4 weekend and evening hours a month for a minimum $10 monthly charge, with additional hours available at $3.96. But hurry, this special trial offer will expire soon! To take advantage of this limited offer, use your modem to dial 1-800-365-4636. Press <RET> once or twice. When you get the Password: prompt, type IP26 and press <RET> again. Then, just answer the questions and within a day or two, you'll officially be a member of DELPHI! DELPHI - It's getting better all the time! ***************************************************************************** > From the Editor's Desk "Saying it like it is!" ====================== The first point of business this evening is to once again remind people that there will be NO issue next week. There WILL be one the following week, though -- June 18th. And two weeks after that, etc. If you don't like the fact that we're going ever other week, send me Email and tell me. If you DO like it, send me Email and tell me. I will weigh the number of responses for each side and make a determination. We may very well return to a weekly state once Summer is over, but that remains to be seen. Ever since GEnie announced its new pricing structure beginning July 1, there has been a LOT of fuss. People tell me they've been receiving unsolicited Email on GEnie from angry users with a petition to attempt to make GEnie change it's mind. RELAX. It won't work. GEnie made this decision because too many people were abusing the flat rate areas. I don't mean the people that necessarily read a lot of the GEnie*Basic bulletin boards, but rather the people that LIVE there. The people that make multiple passes each night. The people that hold conversations with dozens of people via Email, to avoid the charges of attending one of the Value Services areas. The people that use Email to exchange files through UUENCODING. These actions are what is causing GEnie to slow to a crawl, and causing so many people to complain. The elimination of the flat rate entirely and adopting a cheaper hourly rate will force this to stop. If you manage your time wisely, your bill should not change that much. You don't have to read the former GEnie*Basic BB's EVERY night. Alternate nights, do it two or three times a week. Remember that the original goal of GEnie was to create a place for users of similar computers to exchange information. It was only after it had grown that these new areas were opened. One of the Amiga RT sysops noted, "Something that gets me is how people over in the GEnius RT say, 'why should we be forced to subsidize the computer RT users??'" It's laughable. If you're still convinced that GEnie has stabbed you in the back, there are OTHER online services to consider: Delphi and Portal just to name two. I think GEnie will become a much better place come July 1st. Rob @ Amiga Report ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Amiga Report Staff DEDICATED TO SERVING YOU! ====================== Editor in Chief =============== Robert Glover GEnie: ROB-G Portal: Coming Soon! Delphi: ROB_G FidoNet: 1:362/508.6 Internet: ROB_G@Delphi.COM Associate Editors ================= Technical --------- Micah Thompson Robert Niles GEnie: BOOMER.T Delphi: RNILES FidoNet: 1:3407/104 Internet: BOOMER.T@GEnie.geis.com RNILES@Delphi.COM Graphics -------- Mike Troxell GEnie: M.TROXELL1 FidoNet: 1:362/508 Internet: M.TROXELL1@GEnie.geis.com Contributing ------------ Tom Mulcahy Delphi: 16BITTER BIX: HELMET FidoNet: 1:260/322 Internet: 16BITTER@Delphi.COM Contributing Correspondents =========================== John Deegan Chad Freeman Mike Meyer PC DIVISION ATARI DIVISION MAC DIVISION =========== ============== ============ Roger D. Stevens Ralph F. Mariano R. Albritton ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > CPU STATUS REPORT LATE BREAKING INDUSTRY-WIDE NEWS ================= Computer Products Update - CPU Report ------------------------ ---------- Weekly Happenings in the Computer World Issue #16 By: John Deegan Sunnyvale, CA ATARI LICENSES CINEPAK COMPRESSION TECHNOLOGY SuperMac Technology Inc. announced that Atari Corp. has licensed SuperMac's Cinepak advanced video compression technology. The agreement with Atari marks the fourth licensing pact for Cinepak. SuperMac's Cinepak technology serves both the electronic entertainment and computer markets. Cinepak is part of Apple Computer Inc.'s QuickTime standard. As well as Creative Labs Inc.'s digital-video developments in the PC arena. Cinepak is also available on The 3DO Co.'s upcoming Interactive Multiplayer multimedia system. Cinepak is a video compression-decompression (codec) scheme that allows each video frame to use less space than usual, while still retaining high quality colors and images. __________________________________________________ TWO HACKERS GET SIX MONTHS IN JAIL IN UK LONDON, ENGLAND -- Computer crime officers were quietly celebrating a guilty conviction against two self-confessed hackers late last week, as the pair were led down to the cells to begin their six month prison sentences. Neil Woods, 24, a computer science graduate and later computer salesman, as well as University researcher Karl Strickland, 22, had pleaded guilty to the charges and so became the first hackers to be jailed under the Computer Misuse Act, 1990, in the UK. Ironically, the pair were accused as part of the same investigation that netted Paul Bedworth a few years ago. Bedworth, who pleased innocent on the charges laid against him, went through a jury trial earlier this year that ended up acquitting him. Woods and Strickland, however, because they had pleaded guilty, were sentenced as a matter of course. During a brief trial, the court heard how the pair caused an estimated UKP123,000-worth of chaos while breaking into an estimated 10,000 on-line systems around the world. The list of hacked system reads like a who's who in the on-line world, ranging from NASA through to a European cancer research organization. No country was safe from the hackers' exploits. Systems in France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden were hacked in Europe, along with systems in the US and Canada, not to mention Russia, India, Singapore and Australia. The prosecution said in court that the list read like an atlas, rather than a list of offenses. Woods and Strickland, who corresponded with other hackers, never met until they were arrested. They were charged with conspiring to obtain telephone services dishonestly over a two-year period, as well as publishing that information on bulletin boards for other like-minded individuals to read. Presiding over the case, Judge Michael Harris said that, while he accepted their activities were not designed to cause damage, it was absolutely essential that computer systems, which he described as playing an essential role in 20th century life, be protected. "If your passion had been cars rather than computers we would have called your conduct delinquent, and I don't shrink from the analogy of describing what you were doing as intellectual joyriding," he said. "Computers now form a central role in our lives, containing personal details, financial details, confidential matters of companies and government departments and many business organizations. Some, providing emergency services, depend on their computers to deliver those services," he added. While Woods and Strickland pleaded guilty, Paul Bedworth, who was arrested two years ago, did not. After pleading innocent on the grounds of computer addiction, he was acquitted of the charges earlier this year. Woods and Strickland are known to be members of a gang of four computer hackers known as the "eight-legged groove machine." Two other people who comprise the team are still at large, their identity not having been discovered by Scotland Yard's computer crime division. During the course of their exploits, the pair are known to have accessed a variety of networks over BT's packet data networks, as well as the Joint Academic Network (JANET). In court, the prosecution accessed European Commission (EC) computers which led them into the accounts division of the EC. One particular session led to the disruption of the main switching computers on the Swedish telephone network in 1990. To assist them in their exploits, the pair harnessed the power of mainframe computers to make thousands of calls an hour on their behalf, repeatedly battering login programs on other computers with tens of thousands of passwords. This "blitz krieg" approach was necessary to gain access and destroy security files before the system operators got back in the morning. As a result of these efforts, the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer received a UKP9,000 phone bill for around 50,000 calls made by the scanner program. Other networks accessed by the pair included classified military networks, several banks, including Warburgs and Lloyds, as well as the Financial Times Profile on-line service. ------------------------------ COMDEX: DEC UNVEILS ALPHA AT LONG LAST ATLANTA, GEORGIA -- After months of extensive previews -- and broad hints on product pricing and positioning -- DEC finally announced here Tuesday details of its plan to take the PC world by storm with its new range of powerful personal computers based around the company's high-performance Alpha 64-bit processor. Pricing on the new range -- known as the DECpc AXP 150 -- starts at $6795 for a "base" level machine that includes Windows NT 3.1, 16 megabytes (MB) of RAM, a 14-inch SVGA color display, a 245 MB SCSI hard disk, the Alpha AXP processor running at 150 megahertz (MHz) -- as well as the usual collection of serial, mouse, parallel and keyboard interfaces. While this price is a little more expensive than some analysts had predicted, the machine looks to be far more compatible with PC standards than you would expect from a non-Intel platform. It comes, for example, with a six-slot, extended industry standard architecture (EISA) bus and a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive -- so that you might not even know there was an Alpha processor in the machine until after you switched it on. The bad news is that DEC will not start shipping this machine until a final, shrink-wrapped version of Windows NT is ready for the Alpha platform -- something that the industry should not expect until at least the end of August. In the meantime, those really keen to get started using a Alpha system with NT can buy the developer's configuration of the DECpc AXP 150, which includes everything offered in the base level system, but adds an extra 16 Mb of memory, almost 200 Mb of hard disk space, a CD-ROM drive, a 16-inch (rather than 14-inch) display, an Ethernet adaptor card and a copy of Windows NT Beta 2.0. This system is available immediately, sells for $9,995 and includes an automatic upgrade to the production version of Windows NT for Alpha when it is ready. ------------------------------ COMDEX: ALPHA'S UNUSUAL FEATURES ATLANTA, GEORGIA -- Digital Equipment Corporation's DECpc AXP/150, a personal computer using the company's 64-bit Alpha AXP microprocessor, and shipping to developers with a beta version of Windows NT as its operating system, is an interesting machine, owing to its unusual features. The Alpha AXP/150 is unusual in three particulars. The first is its microprocessor, a 64-bit Alpha AXP running at a screaming 150 megahertz (MHz). This is more than double the 66MHz top speed of competing microprocessors. The Alpha chip is not Intel-compatible. The second unusual aspect is the clock speed. The system bus runs at full speed, 150MHz. In fact, the system clock is 300MHz, which is cut in half to pro vide timing for the micro- processor and system bus. The fast bus speed should provide very fast access to memory. Other peripherals will be accessed through extended industry standard architecture (EISA) slots at 33MHz. The third major differentiator is the operating system. The AXP/150 ships with a beta version of Windows NT. It cannot run Windows or DOS directly, though 16-bit DOS and Windows applications run under NT through an emulator. The only 32-bit applications that will run are NT applications that have been recompiled specifically for Alpha. With these major exceptions, the AXP/150 is a regular high-end tower PC, greatly resembling Intel-based PCs sold by DEC. It can support 16 to 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM, sports 512K of secondary cache, has a built-in SCSI controller, and can support a hard drive up to 1G in size. Compaq QVision SVGA graphics are standard, and four open EISA slots and three unused storage bays are available. Two serial ports, one parallel port, a keyboard, and a mouse are included. A fully-configured developer version of the Alpha AXP running a beta version of Windows NT as its operating system is available immediately for $9,995. Purchasers will receive a free upgrade to the shipping version of NT when it becomes available. A non-developer configuration will ship with the upcoming release of Windows NT 3.1. This version will include 16M of RAM, a 14" SVGA color monitor, and a 245M SCSI disk drive, and the operating system. This version will cost $6,795 from DEC Direct. ------------------------------ JAPAN - MITSUBISHI DEVELOPS 4-MEGABIT FLASH MEMORY TOKYO, JAPAN, -- Mitsubishi Electric claims it has developed a powerful and efficient 4-megabit flash memory, that is not only faster, but consumes less electricity. The company is planning on applying this technology to 16-megabit flash memory. Mitsubishi's latest flash memory operates at three-volts, and reads out data at 50 nanoseconds. This is claimed to be considerably faster than existing flash memory. Mitsubishi's flash memory is called DI-NOR-type, which is the original chip of the firm. The device takes advantage of two existing types of flash memories: NAND (Not AND)-type and NOR (Not OR)-type. NAND-type consumes less electricity but it takes time to read out data. NOR-type can read out data faster but it consumes more electricity. Mitsubishi's DI-NOR-type consumes less electricity and can read out data quickly. The major reason for the improvements is that the device uses a tunnel effect to deliver electrons to the cell when it reads and writes data. Mitsubishi wants to test this 4-megabit flash memory further in order to establish a quantity production method. Also, the firm intends to apply the technology to 16-megabit and 64-megabit flash memory. Flash memories can keep data even when switch is turned off. The device is smaller than that of a DRAM. Also, it can read and write data, as well as store a large amount of data. As a result, some analysts expect the technology to replace hard disks in the future. ------------------------------ JAPAN - MATSUSHITA & HITACHI DEVELOP NEW CHIPS TOKYO, JAPAN, -- Matsushita Electric has developed a digital neuro LSI chip, which it claims will be able to handle text and pictorial data at very high speeds. Meanwhile, Hitachi has developed a TRON-based 32-bit microprocessor. TRON is considered by many as the national operating system in Japan. Matsushita Electric's digital neuro LSI is still a prototype, but it is claimed to be capable of recognizing text data and graphic data with high precision. This chip is based on Matsushita's original neuro model. It has a learning feature and neural network capabilities. The chip measures only 11 by 11 millimeters. According to Matsushita's tests, the device can recognize hand-written letters at a speed 10 time faster than existing chips. It can recognize figures - both Kanji and alphabets. As far as alphabetical letters are concerned, it is claimed that the system can recognize 1,600 letters per second - almost 20 times faster than current chips. Meanwhile, Hitachi has developed a TRON-based 32-bit microprocessor. It is the high-end version of the firm's G-MICRO family, called the G-MICRO H32/500. There two versions - one with a clock speed of 50 megahertz (MHz) and the other with a clock speed of 66 MHz. The 66-MHz version consumes only nine watts of electricity, but it can process data at 130 MIPS (million instructions per second). The release of the 50-MHz version is planned for this October, with the 66-MHz version planned for early 1994. The previous stories are (c) 1993 NewsBytes. Reprinted with permission. __________________________________________________ COMMODORE LOSES $177.6 MILLION IN THIRD QUARTER NEW YORK (MAY 28) PR NEWSWIRE - Commodore International Limited (NYSE: CBU) today reported a net loss of $177.6 million, or $5.37 per share on sales of $120.9 million for the third fiscal quarter ended March 31, 1993. This compares with earnings of $4.1 million, or $.12 per share on sales of $194.6 million in the year-ago quarter. For the nine months ended March 31, 1993 the net loss was $273.6 million, or $8.27 per share compared with net income of $49.5 million, or $1.47 per share in the same period of the prior year. Sales for the nine months were $517.2 million compared with $770.3 million in the year-ago period. Overall the sales decline of almost 40 percent for the quarter was primarily due to prevailing economic softness in all of the Company's major markets, especially Germany. There was also significant pricing erosion for the Company's older Amiga models and PC products. Unit volume of Amiga products declined 25 percent while Amiga revenues declined over 45 percent. PC unit volume increased 30 percent, but revenues increased only slightly from the prior year. C64 computer sales were nominal in the quarter. The unit sales decline and severe pricing erosion during the quarter, primarily in the month of March, had a substantial adverse effect on profitability for the March quarter. In light of this significantly changed business environment, the Company reevaluated projected inventory values and determined that writedowns of $65 million were required to reduce inventory, including the older Amiga products, to current estimated net realizable value. In addition, the Company made a provision of $70 million for special pricing and promotional allowances, additional restructuring costs, and asset writedowns. Irving Gould, chairman and chief executive officer, stated: "We are extremely disappointed with our results for the first nine months of this fiscal year. We believe that Commodore's technology, brand name and distribution network continue to have significant value and we are exerting all of our efforts to restructure the company to take advantage of these values during this period of severe difficulty." Commodore International Limited through its subsidiaries around the world is a manufacturer and marketer of computer-based products for professionals and consumers. The company's major product group is Amiga multimedia computers. In addition, the company has a range of PC compatible computers and the entry level Commodore 64. COMMODORE INTERNATIONAL LIMITED AND SUBSIDIARIES Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (Unaudited; $000's) Periods ended Three Months Nine Months March 31 1993 1992 1993 1992 Net Sales $ 120,900 $194,600 $ 517,200 $770,300 Cost of Sales 232,200 140,300 618,400 538,300 Gross Profit (Loss) (111,300) 54,300 (101,200) 232,000 Operating Expenses 55,800 49,100 146,100 168,600 Operating Income (Loss) (167,100) 5,200 (247,300) 63,400 Interest Expense, Net 5,000 2,800 13,900 11,200 Other Expense (Income) 5,500 (1,900) 11,700 (100) Income (Loss) Before Income Taxes (177,600) 4,300 (272,900) 52,300 Provision for Income Taxes --- 200 700 2,800 Net Income (Loss) $(177,600) $ 4,100 $(273,600) $ 49,500 Net Income (Loss) Per Share $(5.37) $ .12 $(8.27) $1.47 Average Shares Outstanding 33,086,000 34,137,000 33,068,000 33,782,000 Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Unaudited; $000's) March 31, March 31, 1993 1992 Cash and Investments $ 21,500 $ 60,800 Accounts Receivable, Net 152,100 255,400 Inventories 106,700 202,200 Other Current Assets 10,000 9,400 Total Current Assets 290,300 527,800 Other Assets 83,900 108,200 Total $374,200 $636,000 Current Debt (Notes A and B) $115,300 $ 71,800 Other Current Liabilities 191,800 165,800 Total Current Liabilities $307,100 $237,600 Long-Term Debt and Other 37,100 60,300 Shareholders' Equity 30,000 338,100 Total $374,200 $636,000 (A) Current debt includes $46 million of Senior Notes, $13 million of which were repaid on April 12, 1993 as required. As of March 31, 1993 the Company is in non-compliance with certain financial covenants under the Note Agreement with respect to the remaining $33 million. The lender has waived non- compliance through the end of July 1993 in order to allow the Company to pursue a debt restructuring. (B) Current debt at March 31, 1993 includes a $10 million 11.75% demand loan from a company controlled by the chairman of the Company. On April 12, 1993, an additional $7 million was borrowed, with $9.5 million being repaid May 24, 1993 through the sale of inventory. The remaining $7.5 million debt is collateralized. /delval/ -0- 5/28/93 CONTACT: Ronald B. Alexander, chief financial officer and secretary of Commodore International Limited, 215-431-9100 ------------------------------ ELECTRONIC ARTS ANNOUNCES DELUXE MUSIC SAN MATEO, CA -- Electronic Arts today announced the upcoming release of Deluxe Music, the much anticipated update to the best seller Deluxe Music Construction Set. With Deluxe Music, professional and novice musicians can create, publish and perform great music without a concerted effort. Deluxe Music now offers many new dictation features including multiple document support, hide and reveal project options for the easy management of open projects, macro support to automate repetitive tasks, and full AREXX support. Deluxe Music also provides new playback options such as a stand-alone Player module and the ability to attach any instrument sample or MIDI Channel to an instrument name. With over 20 instruments included with multiple play styles (like staccato or legato) for each instrument, dynamic range from ppp to fff, play back speed from 10 to 300 beats per minute and full four-voice sound, the Deluxe Music composer has a wide range of options to choose from. Deluxe Music also has full publishing capabilities and now supports 48 staves. Deluxe Music's full range of easy-to-use dictation, ovation and pagination features make it accessible to novice musicians and yet powerful enough for the most experienced musician. Electronic Arts is offering a $50 (including shipping and handling) upgrade to DeluxeMusic Construction Set owners. Details for ordering the Deluxe Music upgrade can be obtained by calling Electronic Arts at (800) 245-4525 Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific Time. ------------------------------ AGLET MODULA-2 AMIGADOS V2.04 INTERFACE VERSION 1.0-040693 The Aglet Modula-2 V2.04 Interface consists of over one hundred modules providing the Benchmark (TM) Modula-2 programmer with a calling interface to all of the Amiga system resident library functions distributed with AmigaDOS v2.04, as well as definitions of all system record structures and flags. Note: This product has no connection with Avant-Garde software or Leon Frenkel, the author of the Benchmark product. These M2 interface DEFINITION MODULEs follow closely the C language "includes" interface of ".h" file distributed by CATS. The supplied modules replace the Amiga-specific modules delivered (for AmigaDOS v1.2) with the original Benchmark compiler. Compatibility is maintained with the rest of the Benchmark system, with the exception of the "Simplified Amiga Library" add-on. Source for all the DEFINITION and IMPLEMENTATION modules of the interface is also included. Also included is a program, DoIFace, which can be used to create a similar interface for Benchmark programs to additional Amiga resident libraries. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS v2.04 AmigaDOS Benchmark Modula-2 Compiler PRICE The package is available from me for US$ 35.00. Shipping is included to destinations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. For other destinations, please add an additional US$ 3.00. Residents of Virginia must add an additional 4.5% state sales tax ($1.58). Please make your check or money order out to Thomas M. Breeden. DISTRIBUTABILITY Each distribution is copyrighted and licensed for a single computer. Commodore copyrighted commentary material is distributed under an "Includes Distribution License" from CATS. README A number of Test/Example programs are included, showing the usage of many of the new features of AmigaDOS 2.04, such as public screens, file notification, gadtools, asl, etc. (Otherwise, no specific documentation on using AmigaDOS v2.04 is included.) Two additional examples of interfacing to Amiga Resident Libraries are included: 1) the AmigaGuide library from Commodore 2) the ISAM library from RedShift Software. CONTACTS Thomas Breeden Aglet Software Box 3314 Charlottesville, VA 22903 804-973-7058 email : CompuServe 75210,2424 Internet 75210.2424@compuserve.com ------------------------------ MICROBOTICS ANNOUNCES TRADE-UP PROGRAM FOR MBX1200 OWNERS MicroBotics has announced a trade-up program for owners of its MBX1200 and MBX1200z memory expansion boards for the Amiga 1200. Under this program, users may trade in their memory expansion boards for a discount on the new 1230XA 68030 accelerator. Users are asked to call Darrin at MicroBotics if you have an MBX1200 that you want to trade in. You will get the registered user price PLUS an additional $50 credit towards the XA purchase. We'll take your board and install your existing math chip and RAM on the XA, thoroughly test it and ship the 1230XA to you. There will be a detailed mailing on this to all registered USA and Canadian owners. It is a little difficult to arrange to do this to Europe so at this time the offer is limited to North America mostly because of customs barriers and shipping costs. ------------------------------ MEMBLOCKER V1.1 AVAILABLE FOR FTP NAME MemBlocker Version 1.1 INTRODUCTION MemBlocker blocks memory. You are able to allocate memory blocks of a specified size and release them later. This may be done from Workbench or CLI, Kick 37.175 (OS2.04) or greater is needed anyway. WHY BLOCK MEMORY? Blocking memory is usefull for all those with different types of FAST-RAM, this is 32-bit and 16-bit ram. Many owners of accelerator cards and some other expansion memory have both of these types in their system. When you boot your system, the software or hardware of the accelerator assign the 32-bit ram to the highest memory-priority. So nearly all of this 'fastest' RAM is used before the 16-bit ram is touched. When there is no more 32-bit RAM left you suddenly see a significant slowdown after starting a program in 16-bit ram. So one would like to save as much as possible of the 32-bit RAM for those programs that need 'fastest' memory. One the other hand, there are many programs that don't need 'fastest' RAM. Comodities, other utilities, diskcaches, buffers and more. Many of these are started in the startup-sequence, user-startup or wbstartup-drawer. This is where MemBlocker comes in: You block your precious 'fastest' 32-bit ram before launching those applications and release it afterwards. So the applications are forced to use the slower 16-bit RAM. But be careful what programs you force into slower RAM: devices, handlers, simply everything where speed is needed should get 'fastest' RAM. Another usage might be to shrink your availible memory for test purposes. DISTRIBUTION MemBlocker may be freely distributed, as long as no charge is made other than to cover time and copying costs. The package must be distributed as the original archive. If you want to include MemBlocker as part of a commercial package, contact the author listed below. Fred Fish is specifically given permission to include MemBlocker in his fine disk library. It is also allowed to put MemBlocker on free accessible BBS's or Internet sites. AUTHOR Carsten Melberg Karlsbader Str. 3 D-8520 Erlangen (D-91058 Erlangen from 1. July '93) Germany cnmelber@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de HISTORY Version 1.00-1.02 internal releases Version 1.1 first public release WHERE TO FIND On everey aminet site, e.g. amiga.physik.unizh.ch pub/aminet/util/misc/memblocker.lha ------------------------------ MULTIPRINT V2.0 AVAILABLE FOR FTP [ I've been thinking of renaming this newsgroup to ] [ comp.sys.amiga.multiprint. -Dan ] TITLE MultiPrint VERSION 2.00 27-May-1993 This is an update to version 1.12 released on the 13th of May 1993. AUTHOR John Matthews 4 Wadham Grove, Tawa, 6203 Wellington New Zealand Phone 64 4 232-7805 Fax (by arrangement) email: Internet : tribble@gphs.vuw.ac.nz ( Irregular Monitoring ) DESCRIPTION MultiPrint is a program initially designed to print document files, and other text files, to as few sheets of paper as possible. It has since had other features such as bold/italic/font support, Compugraphic support, paragraph reformating and full justification added for improved flexability and readability. MultiPrint prints text files to multiple columns, on both sides of the sheet automatically, with no need to shuffle the pages. Pages are printed with a footer, with margins, page numbers, and with a gutter to allow easy stapling, or hole punching. NEW FEATURES Version 2.00 fixes a few bugs that were found in the last released version, and adds a few significant features. 2.00 May 27, 1993 Bugs Fixed : 1. Big bug fixed for those out there using most printers other than Hewlett Packard compatible printers. Now, shouldn't print blank lines where bits of text should be. 2. Fixed some small formatting problems. 3. Fixed some other things, but I've forgotten what they were. Had had no serious messages about them though :-) 4. Jumped version numbers, and changed to a trailing 0, to provide consistent numbering. Added Features : 1. Modified Centering, so \C - returns you to the previous mode of justification. It is no longer necessary to remember when adding the codes to the files. 2. Added 'This page intentionally left blank' :-) 3. Added command line switches to turn off in-file formatting commands. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS MultiPrint requires 2.04 or higher. MultiPrint works best with page oriented printers, such as lasers and HP deskjets. A fast printer helps. MultiPrint provides better output with the use of Scalable fonts, and better italics/bold if you have a complete family (or more) of Scalable fonts. HOST NAME This version can be found as MultiPrint18.lha on amiga.physik.unizh.ch (130.60.80.80), where I uploaded it in the new directory. You could also try wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4). In New Zealand, you can try kauri.vuw.ac.nz. DIRECTORY Should end up in /pub/aminet/text/print, where the last version was put. FILE NAMES MultiPrint200.lha, MultiPrint200.readme PRICE MultiPrint is shareware, basically. If you find the program useful, or need anything added, and want to encourage me, a donation is welcome, but not essential. I would like to make enough money from MultiPrint to replace the Ink Cartridge I used most of in testing MultiPrint. Suggestion, US$20 or equivalent, NZ$ if you can get them. Any amount is fine though. Hey, here's ambition ... maybe I could make enough to buy a laser printer! :-) DISTRIBUTABILITY Shareware. Distribute to whoever, but if you plan to include it in a magazine's cover disk, or anything like that - let me know first. No matter what, leave the documentation intact. ------------------------------ ARMYMINER V1.2 AVAILABLE FOR FTP [ On the other hand, comp.sys.amiga.armyminer wouldn't ] [ be bad, either.... ] [ -Dan ] Description: ArmyMiner is a logic board game where some of the squares do contain bombs. When clicked, the bomb-free squares display the number of bombs in their neighbourhood. The objective of the game is for the user to mark all the squares having bombs in a minimum of time. The game requires good concentration and offers a very interesting mental challenge. There are many instances of that game on different platforms (Minesweeper on IBM-compatible, XMines on XWindows, etc). ArmyMiner integrates all of the good aspects I've seen on all the versions of that game available on personal computers. Its options include: - Automatically mark or clean the neighbours of a square - Safe start (no explosion at first click) - Safe click (gadget-like behavior for squares) - Question marks (for configuration analysis) You can also specify your own custom board settings. The game has a very useful pause option, sound effects, high-score tables and a very nice interface. It works on either OS v1.3 or 2.0, under NTSC or PAL. ArmyMiner is freeware, binary only. You are free to use it as long as you leave my copyright notice intact. You can distribute that program as long as you don't ask any more money for it than a nominal fee for copying, and if you keep the "ArmyMiner.doc" file with it. If you want to include this program in a commercial package, you need my written permission. "Copyright 1993 Alain Laferriere, All rights reserved" About release 1.2: This version of ArmyMiner is not executable-compressed. This should please all the users that complained about it. A bug has also been fixed with system fonts different than "topaz 8". Also, you can now turn the pause on, by pressing the 'p' key on the keyboard. ArmyMiner is currently available on the following FTP sites: Switz. amiga.physik.unizh.ch (130.60.80.80) pub/aminet/game/think Scand. ftp.luth.se (130.240.18.3) pub/aminet/game/think USA ftp.etsu.edu (192.43.199.20) pub/aminet/game/think USA oes.orst.edu (128.193.124.2) pub/aminet/game/think The files you have to download are: - ArmyMiner_1.2.lzh - ArmyMiner_1.2.readme Have fun! ------------------------------ ANNOUNCING A MAILING LIST FOR The AmigaE Programming Language For the users of Wouter van Oortmerssen's AmigaE programming language, and for those interested in this language, a mailing list is forming. Topics of discussion will cover the full range of Amiga programming using E, such as graphics, file handling, compiler questions, and more. This is also the place to keep up on the latest AmigaE information, get news about AmigaE releases, and find others who share your enthusiasm for this wonderful new programming environment! And with Wouter van Oortmerssen as a member of this list, it's definitely the place to be if you use AmigaE! This list is managed by a person (me), not a listserv, so please keep that in mind when addressing list administration problems. Also, for now, I would like to ask all participants to resist the temptation to post large uuencoded binaries to this list. We really must be considerate of those down the line who may not have the disk space for such posts. To join the AmigaE mailing list, send an e-mail message to amigae-request@bkhouse.cts.com. Remember, this request is read by a person, so you may ask other questions about the list, or ask to be subscribed at an address differing from where you sent the message. I will read each of these, and I'll do my best to answer your questions and configure things the way you want them. You should generally send all administrative questions to the request address. I'm guaranteed to read this mail at least once a day, but it may take me a couple of days to address questions posted to the list at large. One thing you should indicate in your request is whether or not you want your own postings mailed back to you with the rest of the list traffic. By default you will receive your own posts. Bkhouse, home of ArgusNet, is an Amiga 3000/25 running list handling software that I wrote in AmigaE. We are uucp connected (every two hours) to a system that is full-time wired to the Internet. Mail turnaround is pretty fast, all things considered. Messages posted to the list should be processed and sent to the participants in a maximum of four hours. If list traffic becomes heavy, I may have to stretch that window out a bit. To post to the list, send your message in an e-mail to: amigae@bkhouse.cts.com. If you have other questions, or you have problems subscribing to the list, please let me know at nkraft@bkhouse.cts.com, nkraft@crash.cts.com or nkraft@ucsd.edu (whichever works best for you). The first address is, of course, preferred. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > ONLINE WEEKLY Amiga Report Online People... Are Talking! ================================= From GEnie's Amiga RoundTable ----------------------------- From Denny Atkin (DENNYA) on PC upgradability... JRS, You only have one choice for a processor upgrade in most 486 machines: the P24T "Pentium Jr.," which will (1) only have a 32-bit data path, compared to the 64-bit path on the real Pentium, and (2) run at half-speed externally so that it can function on a 33MHz motherboard. Compare this to the Amiga's brilliant processor slot scheme (available on ALL slotted Amigas, and retrofittable to all other Amigas except the A600), which lets you use ANY processor. You can upgrade your video, but not your video bus, in a PC. Big difference. Current owners will be hosed as ISA-only owners are now once PCI takes over from VESA as the standard late this year. As for upgrading your Amiga video, you can purchase a number of high-res graphics cards such as the Retina. You need drivers for higher resolutions, but you do on the PC too. ------------------------------ A reply to Denny from C.FRANCESCHI... DENNYA >P24T "Pentium Jr For the 486 Pentium upgrade whats the price??? The Compaq's Pentium is only $9000.00 list and has a 64bit motherboard kicks out around 20mflops and 120 mips, sporting a "State of the Art Windows based 32bit OS (NExT Step) which can run MS Windows or DOS in a window with its PCSoft." NOT VAPORWARE NEC's Pentium uses a tandem cpu setup with 128-bit data paths showing around 220 mips of muscle and 40-something MFlops. And can use the same 32-bit OS. NOT VAPORWARE. The new Mac supposedly better than twice the power of the Quadra 950 may possibly be called the "Cyclone" is due mid July. I've got a 3000T with an PP&S 35mhz Mercury and a ProRam3000 sporting 66 megs of RAM. A Firecracker24, ImageMaster9.52 and ADPro2.3. I'm having a hard time keeping up with my competition in commercial image processing. (ie.Quadra 950s with hardware cache and SGI indigo) I've just returned my A4000 due to no significant improvement over my existing setup. I'm having a dificult time deciding whether to spend $5000.00 on a Visiona 135mhz graphics card, or a just couple thousand more for a Compaq Pentium. Anyone that not living soley off thier computer, make at least $50,000.00 a year from thier Image Processing skills, drive a decent car, and own thier home need not reply. An Amiga Die Hard... ...By A String. ...CJ-) ------------------------------ More from Ty Liotta (T.LIOTTA) about the Toaster 4000... Ok I have some more Toaster 4000 news. I have been running some speed tests on the new Lightwave and there is something very wrong going on. Either the Amiga 4000's 68040 is very slow, or something is going on with the new Lightwave software. I am using as my benchmark, the "texture examples" scene which comes with Lightwave. I am not saving the frame to disk, and am rendering it in hi-res mode. On my system at home, I am running a beta version of the new lightwave which is optimized for the 68040 and contains some of the features as lightwave on the Toaster 4000. My home system is an amiga 2000 w/ a progressive zeus 68040 going 28mhz. Here's the deal. My home system renders the image in 4 minutes 10 seconds. The A4000 with the 4000 Toaster renders it in about 12 minutes!!!! Like I said there is something very wrong going on. We are talking 3 times slower here! I don't know what this is due to, but would really like to find out. Any ideas? To other matters... I don't think the 3.0 software running in an Amiga 2000 will be able to do everything the 4000 Toaster is capable of doing in an A4000. It is technically impossible. The new effects take heavy advantage of the higher amount of colors on the A4000 to do much nicer wipes with 256 levels of transparency. The CG might be able to run the same on the A2000, but this is debatable. You will certainly not be able to play back any Lightwave animations in real time either because of no AGA chipset. These are all very nice features, but it depends on how you use your Toaster to determine if they are worthwile to plunk down a large chunk of change to completly redo your system. ------------------------------ From Robin Evans (R.EVANS6) about typical PC upgrade problems... A company I used to work for bought hundreds of AST 286 machines at about the same time I bought the accelerated 2000 that's humming beside me right now. I talked to a tech who still works there the other day. He told me that they are giving away those 286's right now because they've found they are worthless for what they are planning to do with the new network at the firm. Those machines will not run the current operating system standard, which -- for better or worse -- is Windows. They can't replace the mother board -- not for a reasonable cost at least. And they can't upgrade the machines with new processors. AST came out with a machine which had a 'replaceable processor' slot, but did it just after all those machines up there were installed. AST isn't offering them any sort of discount or 'upgrade path' for buying newer machines. This 2000 that I have is a much better computer today than those 286's which were the standard back when I bought it. I could upgrade and tweak this thing in ways that are unheard of for 286 owners. Compared to Apple and the clone-makers, Commodore has done a better job of making computers which have a long and useful life. ------------------------------ From FidoNet's Amiga_Tech echo ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 93 11:08:52 From: Tom Jones To: Scott Marlowe Subj: 4000/EC30 rumors Hello Scott, You opined : SM> 1) Slow Expansion BUSSitus. A programmed I/O 16 bit bus can only do so much, and provides the CPU with a high load when running a lot of data. Makes for poor performance on things like video from a HD. 2) There are faster and slower busses, not all equal, but in general yes. SM> No Co-Processor to make a list of things to do, freeing the CPU to just do its job. The Amiga, and most main-frames and minis have this feature. It makes multi-tasking a much more reasonable job. 3) A Processor that needs an AS instruction for every register it wants to save, and uses about 5 times the number of cycles as a 68030/040 to task switch cannot hope to do pre-emptive multi-tasking at any reasonable rate. Again I agree in general terms. I am a computer field engineer for the last 23 years and have been ML programmning main/mini and PC chips for most of it so I am aware of the shortcomings of the Intel architectures. I hated the 80XX on first exposure and still do. The register based I/O, the need to transfer blocks of data "in you pockets" from high memory, the constant pushing of all the registers onto the stack and popping them off to task switch....a bummer for DEC or RCA1802 or 68000 users who are used to memory mapped I/O and table pointers and MMU's. It never fails to astonish me when I reflect on the success of this Model-T architecture. SM> My point is that no matter how good NT gets, the PC architecture is too limiting right now to allow faster operation of the important things, like I/O. Even MC or EISA machines are no match for Zorro II or III, and that makes a big difference when running 4 or 5 serial ports, or a fast hard drive controller, or just playing a tune in the background. NT will be a Pentium counterpart. Also, MicroSoft wants to make versions of NT for even palmtop and laptops, obviously then they plan to make very cut-down versions for slow machines as well as the topend version that runs 16mb mem and 100mb harddisk. Never underestimate your enemy if you want to win the war. SM> TJ> The day of the proprietary O/S and proprietary hardware are SM> TJ> coming to a close in the near future, and whether we love it or SM> TJ> not the Amiga is both. SM> SM> I think that proprietary OSes will soon be as insiginfigant as different layouts for remote controls on VCRs. As long as two machines can talk to each other, and read each others DATA FORMATs, no one will care too much whether it runs the same OS. But they do care, a lot. That is the reason Open Systems Foundation and many other such groups keep getting formed. Unless they command so big a share of their market that their proprietary O/S is a defacto standard (a feat even Big Blue is having trouble pulling off more and more these days) most companys are giving at least lip service to open systems architectures and Unix. They hate it in their hearts because they make less money and can't lock the user into paying for their software, but they have to laugh when the boss laughs anyway and the boss is their customers. I don't think data interchange is the only answer either. We already have lots of cross-platform translation programs to let Amigas read PC or MAC data files and some programs that can sort of read 1-2-3 files and DBIII files and WordPerfect files. Most of them are always at least one revision behind the current standard rev on the PC or MAC and require a lot of work to reinsert the formating that got left behind etc. I don't think there are *any* programs on the other two that will read any format created by Amiga specific programs however, with the exception of IFF to GIF. It will always be that way, a one way street, unless you run the same O/S. Who says NT has to be Intel based only, by the way? Why can't you believe that Commodore would pay Microsoft to run an optimized 68060 version for Amiga users? I guess that is pretty hard to believe actually. ;-) Anyway that is how I see it. ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 93 22:26:08 From: John Kamchen To: All Subj: A1200 Hack The Amiga A1200: Inside & Out Part 6 More Drive Stuff May 21st 1993 (C)1993 Silicon Synapse Electronics & John Kamchen Stalker's Guild BBS (204)257-3751 23hrs DHST Wpg, Canada Fido 1:348/706 Insert 'Not My Fault If It Goes KaBOOM' clause here. --------- Another one SO SOON? Ok, here's the scoop. Finally got rid of that Toshiba 2.5" drive.. for $350, and got myself a 212mb Western Digital Caviar (fish eggs?). Man, is it FAST! SysInfo reports 1,490,000 bytes a second (compared to my 650,000 with the 2.5"). When doing this hack, there are some real problems to consider. I came across these ones: 1. The mounting holes on the HD didn't QUITE line up with the holes in the computer. If I put the drive in like it should be (with the LED towards the floppy slot) it sat about 4mm to far to the side (the fancy molding of the drive slot got in the way). By using the next mounting possibility (the drive faced the same way, but was an inch or so closer to the middle of the computer) and that seemed OK, but is wasn't sitting at the correct angle. Best thing is to drill new holes in the plastic OR tape the sucker in place. 2. What to do with the floppy. Best I can suggest is to buy a defective A1010 (the Amiga external floppy). Take the dead drive out, put your new one in. Assign DF0: to DF1: and hope for the best. Can it be done? maybe. Another way to do this is remove the round cable from the external floppy case, and run DF0:'s ribbon cable inside. Run the cable out of the rear hatch. The (gulp) CABLE! I won't say its the worst soldering job I've had , but thank god I'm used to this sort of thing. I had a standard 'single' IDE cable, and 44pin 2.5" IDE cable. Adding them together took a while. You will need: A fine tip soldering iron (NOT A WELLER 140W PIPE WELDER!) Solder (duhh) 1 & 1/2 feet of small diameter heat shrink tubing, cut into 40 1cm lengths. On each cable, take off one end (watch pin 1 on that 2.5" cable). On the 40 pin cable, pull a wire down one inch. Take off 1/4in insulation. On the 44 pin cable, pull a wire down 3/4 inch. Strip the last 1/4in. Place one tube of heat shrink on the 40 pin cable. Twist the two wires together (make sure not to twist the insulation). Place joint in the 'helping hands'. Make sure shink tube isn't near joint. Apply a small amount of solder to the twist. Cut tip off twist joint, and fold back into 44pin cable side. Slide shrink tubing over joint. Friction should hold it there. Procceed to next wire. REPEAT 39 MORE TIMES Once your done, solder in the required power cable for your HD onto the floppy's power cable. (I made a whole new cable. Remember, don't destroy any original parts. When your done soldering, take a hair dryer to all your shink tubing untill she be shrunked. You have an option at this point. You can take those connectors you pulled off before, and re-attach them to the morphed cable. I don't see much use adding the 2.5" connector, but the 3.5" might come in handy for a Slave drive in the future. Yer call. One thing to remember, that 90-ish degree angle bracket that was on the floppy must be put back in place.. at the right angle. If I can borrow some kinda video sampler in the next while, I'll add some pictures of this hack in the next installment. NEXT TIME: Who knows? Adding a high density drive? (if I can afford one) ------------------------------ Date: 28 May 93 17:15:04 From: Joey McDonald To: All Subj: 1,638,400 color ECS? I recently left a message asking about the possibilty of NEW display modes (MEGA-MODES) on ALL amigas. Example: There's a program available for the Atari ST/STE that offers 6 new modes including 48 colors per scan line out of 4096 and even 19,200 colors out of 32,768! All on a stock Atari. Remember the ST/STE are limited to 4096 colors just like the Amiga. So How was this 32,768 color pallette achieved? Shouldn't it be possible to have the following modes on ANY AMIGA in 320x400 low-resolution? Mega-32 - 32 "different" colors per scan line - simulating 12,800 Mega-64 - 64 "different" colors per scan line - simulating 24,600 Mega-HAM - 4096 "different" colors per scan line - simulating 1,638,400 With dyna-hires, the copper displays 16 different colors per scan line. It's similar to having 400 16 color hi-res pics opened on a single screen and each only occupying a single scan line. I really don't know why this can't be done with 32 or 64 colors in Low-Res, perhaps EXTENDING the pallette beyond 4096! What about Mega-Ham? What about a seperate HAM pallette per scan line? As an example, Imagine 400 different ham screens, each existing on a single scan line. Wouldn't this give you a simulated 1,638,400 colors? I may not be correct, But If A stock ST/STE's pallette can be extended to 32,768 with software only, the Amiga should be able to do better! Any responses to this or my other message would be appreciated! ALL YOU TECH-WIZ's....... RESPOND!!!! ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 93 09:04:27 From: Charles Farrington To: Tom Jones Subj: Amiga laptops Supposedly Commodore wants eventually to manufacture their own laptops eventually. But they have a couple of problems. One is the current expense of active matrix screens. That is expected to improve over the next year or so. The second is the chip set which draws a lot of power, and does not do well with current battery technology. They apparently will have to redesign the chips to improve the current usage, before they can manufacture a laptop. Anyone have any other info on this? I am not sure what happened to the third party laptop that was being advertised a year ago, but apparently C= pulled the rug out from under them. And as far as Commodore and it's technology and trademarks - well we used to have a store here in San Antonio called Amiga Video Plus. It was a computer store that sold only Amiga products, and specialized in video work, Toaster products, etc. Commodore informed them that Amiga was C='s trademark, and that they could not use it in their name. They changed the name to Amigo Video Plus. But that is like a local car retailer not being able to call itself Ancira Chevrolet, or something. The store eventually closed down - a loss to San Antonio. Why does Commodore shoot itself in the foot (and it's supporters through the heart)? ------------------------------ Date: 28 May 93 11:00:08 From: Larry Baum To: Joey McDonald Subj: Re: 198,400 color ECS! First off, low-res has only 320 pixels so you can't get 4096 colors per line, second you couldn't do it anyway. Next you can't get a 198,000 mdoe eother as the ECS has only 4096 shades! At best you could continuously reload colors throught the screen. The copper can only reset the color by every 4 pixels within the line and about 32 before each line begins in lores. HAM would most likely look better. Espc. dynamic HAM at 320x400. On the AGA, an interesring thing might be to reload all 256 color registers each line and then display 256x400 pictures, if the copper can handle reloading 256 per line (which it might since the higher # colrrs wouldn't be needed until aater along the scanline, you could get a true 24bit mode at 256x400. I'm not sure if AGA is fast enough and heard some odd thing about the 16.8 mil palette not setting in until the end of the line after a copper command though ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 93 20:07:00 From: Luis B. Perez To: John Fraser Subj: Re: Digital Equipment's ALPHA chip In article dated (27 May 93) John Fraser wrote to Malvin Velez : JF> If Apple decides to stop using the 680x0 series chips in their computers JF> (and it's quite possible considering how much they've got wrapped up in JF> this new chip), then will Motorola actually produce the JF> 68060? I mean, Apple is the biggest purchaser of the 680x0 line and if According to Apple, they are going to keep buying the Motorola 68xxx series for a while...how long that "while" is going to be???...well I am taking bets... I read somewhere that Motorola is planning to keep the 68xxx series as long as the year 2000 or so...I believe I read that in a Amiga electronic news...not sure if it was Amiga Report, Genie...will look for it and will let you know...if you are interested. ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 93 20:07:00 From: Luis B. Perez To: John Fraser Subj: Re: Digital Equipment's ALPHA chip In article dated (27 May 93) John Fraser wrote to Malvin Velez : JF> If Apple decides to stop using the 680x0 series chips in their computers JF> (and it's quite possible considering how much they've got wrapped up in JF> this new chip), then will Motorola actually produce the JF> 68060? I mean, Apple is the biggest purchaser of the 680x0 line and if According to Apple, they are going to keep buying the Motorola 68xxx series for a while...how long that "while" is going to be???...well I am taking bets... I read somewhere that Motorola is planning to keep the 68xxx series as long as the year 2000 or so...I believe I read that in a Amiga electronic news...not sure if it was Amiga Report, Genie...will look for it and will let you know...if you are interested... JF> they drop out, I doubt Motorola will produce it just for us and Atari JF> (Ha Ha). On the other hand, the Alpha chip can emulate other chips JF> through modified MICROCODE (this is how Microsoft is running WinDOZE JF> NT JF> on the Alpha- by actually imitating a x86 processor!). So if it can be JF> done for the x86 it can be done for the various 030-060 processors. JF> It should be interesting to see what develops in the next 3-5 years.... I agree...lots of rumors in Usenet about Digital and Commodore...lets wait and see...B^) ------------------------------ Date: 31 May 93 15:32:27 From: Seth Stroh To: John Fraser Subj: Re: Digital Equipment's ALPHA JF> over-inflating their chip-speed claims.). But the big question is: JF> will Motorola actually produce the 68060? (I've heard that it's JF> possible that they won't - I mean, where's the 40 and 50mhz 040's JF> that were supposed to be out now?) And if Apple is basing JF> (baseing?) their new JF> systems on the PowerPC, who will be buying the 68060 anyway? ( I'm JF> not sure if Apple is going to continue to produce 680x0-based JF> machines or not. 1> If they are, then the 060 machines will be JF> faster than their JF> PowerPC machines. 2> If they don't, then I can't see Motorola Well, dont be too conserned about Motorola droping the 680x0 line. Those chips are used in a LOT more than Mac's and Amiga's. And yea, it would be damn stupid for Apple to stop making 680x0 macs cuz not only is the Power PC chips slower than a 68060. It also has to EMULATE a 680x0 to run Mac software which will present an even biger slow down. Anyway, from what I have read, Motorola plans to keep building on the 680x0 line for a long time. Now then, on to Alphas. Welll, I saw an Alpha workstation not to long ago and it was decently impressive but I was FAR more impressed with the SGI Crimson + Reality Engine. Thats a bit of an unfair comparison tho cuz the Reality Engine has 18 Intel I860's on it and the Alpha work station was runing a single Alpha chip. Official word from C= is that they do have someone (it was either 1 or 2 hard ware engineers out of their 200 total) that is working on RISC based Amigas. But for the moment I think they are going to use the 68060 in the high end 3rd generation machines. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > The Most Sincere Form Of Flattery: Emulators of All Types ========================================================== By Robert Niles The Amiga is quite a fantastic computer. Great graphics, stereo sound, multitasking capabilites and such. But one thing that it can do and that most people don't give a lot of thought to, is that it can emulate other operating systems reasonably well. As most of you know, Commodore sells various MS-DOS bridge boards. But I wanted to take a look and see what other systems the Amiga is capable of emulating, and what is required to do so. Here is a listing of all of the platforms that I have found the Amiga capable of emulating and the name of the hardware and or software needed to do so....from MS-DOS systems to the GameBoy. The common names of all archive that are freely distributable are given within parenthesis, and are located at most ftp sites catering to the Amiga, Delphi, and my BBS. **NOTICE** Niether Amiga Report, nor myself endorse in ANY way piracy of ANY kind. In other words, if it is not in the Public Domain, purchase it! Some of these programs listed here may require all or part of a operating system (like ROM codes) which may be copyrighted and need to be purchased in order to be used. ********** MS-DOS: -Commodore Business Machines, commercial. -A2088 XT Bridge Board -A2286 AT Bridge Board -A2386SX AT Bridge Board -ATonce, by Vortex GMbH. 286 AT emulator, hardware/software combination, need MS-DOS, commercial. Both 7MHz and 14MHz versions available. -PCTask (v2.02) by Chris Hames. Powerful 286 emulator, need MS-DOS, Sharware. (PCTASK202.LHA) -IBeM (V1.20), by Mark Tomlinson. A MS-DOS 8088 XT emulator. (IBEM120.LHA) Macintosh: -AMax II (and PLUS model), by ReadySoft. Hardware, commercial. -Emplant, by Utilities Unlimited, Inc. Hardware/software comination, commercial. Apple: -AppleII+ emulator by Greg Dunlap. Need file that holds image of the AppleII ROM. (APPLEII.LZH) Atari: -Atari emulator, by Stefan Haubenthal. Needs TOS 1.02a. (ATARIEM.LZH) C64: -The A64 Package (V2.0d), by QuesTronix. A shareware C64 emulator. Purchased version contains complete set of files and hardware. (A64V2D1.LHA and A64V2D2.LHA) Other: -Sinclair ZX Spectrum Emulator (V1.6), by Peter McGavin. Needs Spectrum ROM code. (SPCTRM16.LHA) -QDOS, by Rainer Kowallik. The author claims that this is the most emulated operating system other than MS-DOS. Simply an alternative operating system for smaller 68000 machines. QDOS is an operating system emulated by other computers like the Atari-ST, Sinclair, Thor, Futura and others. (QDOS.LHA) -MINIX 1.5 by Prentice Hall, Inc. A UNIX system 7 type operating system. Commercial, working demo disk available. (AMINIX.DMS) -UNIX by Commodore Business machines. Available on the A3000UX. -CP/M emulator by Ulf Nordquist. (CPM.LZH) -Z80 emulator (V1.03), by Phil Brown. (Z80EMU.LHA) -GameBoy ...ok, not exactly an emulator, but the concept is kinda strange. The file I've found is called GAMEBOY.LHA and it looks like the GameBoy made by NinTenDo, except this has an interface to load games. Tetris comes with it. And the source to Tetris is available. Possibly giving one the chance to make more games. While this listing is no where complete (especially in the MS-DOS section) it should give you an idea of other systems in which you may be compatable with. If you know of an operating system not listed here, let me know, I will most certainly add it to a future edition of Amiga Report. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Usenet Review: QuickWrite v1.1 =============================== By Mike Meyer (mvm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us) PRODUCT NAME QuickWrite version 1.1 BRIEF DESCRIPTION QuickWrite is an entry-level word processor. It uses the Preferences printer as an output device, limiting itself to the capabilities of that output device. COMPANY INFORMATION Name: New Horizons Software Address: 206 Wild Basin Road, Suite 109 Austin, TX 78747 USA Telephone: (512) 328-6650 LIST PRICE $75.00 (US). Street price should be around $50. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE While a printer isn't required, the program has little use without it; one is "recommended". Other than that, you need an Amiga with 512K of ram. A second disk drive is recommended. The software should work fine with all CPUs and graphics chip sets. SOFTWARE You must be running at least AmigaDOS 1.2, and it works fine with AmigaDOS through 3.0. COPY PROTECTION None. Installs on a hard disk. The provided program disk is bootable as a Workbench disk. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING I used QuickWrite regularly on an Amiga 3000 with 2 meg of Chip RAM and 8 or 16 meg of Fast RAM, running various versions of AmigaDOS. REVIEW If you have a printer that does acceptable character printing with multiple type styles and lousy graphics -- or even no graphics -- you have only a limited number of options to take advantage of that printer. If you have some graphics, you can use a DTP package, and get results that are probably unacceptable. You can use an editor that lets you insert binary text, and put in the Preferences (or your printers) control codes to switch type styles by hand. This requires estimating formatting, and can make using other tools difficult. Finally, you can use QuickWrite. QuickWrite ("QW") is a "word processor" in the original sense of the phrase. It does not have desktop publishing functionality, multiple font support, nor even proportional font support. What it provides is convenient access to many of the character features of the Preferences printer. For people who have a printer that has a number of such features, but doesn't have the graphics support required for a true DTP package (this describes pretty much any dot-matrix printer), QuickWrite is an excellent investment. You can start QW from either the CLI or the WorkBench, and it can run on either the Workbench screen or a custom screen of the user's choosing. After being started, QW opens a window that will be familiar to the users of most Amiga DTP or word processing packages. Inside the standard Intuition window borders you find a ruler with movable triangles that control text wrapping, a tool bar for setting various options, and a couple of scroll bars and arrows for moving around the document. The ruler gadgets control the left margin for the first line of a paragraph, the left margin for the other lines in a paragraph, and the right margin. You also click on the ruler gadget to set tab stops. The tool bar has controls for setting the tab type (left, centered, right or decimal-aligned), paragraph justification (left, center, right or fully justified), line spacing (single or double), and optionally setting paragraph spacing to include a line before or after each paragraph, or both. In addition, double-clicking on the ruler makes the tool bar vanish or appear, and clicking on the tool bar outside the gadgets causes it to vanish. In addition, there are three gadgets to the left of the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the window. Two are arrows that scroll through the document page by page. The third is a text button displaying the current page. Selecting it brings up the "Go To Page" requester. The Project menu is much as one would expect from an Amiga word processing package, with commands to Save project, Save As, Open projects, create a New project, Page Setup, Printing with and without a Merge, and saving settings. The entries that open file requesters open either a custom requester that may include extra buttons, or under 2.0 or later, an ASL requester that won't have the extra buttons. A handy shortcut in the Print options is Print One, which prints a single copy of the current document using the current page setup. The Edit menu has the usual set of options ones expects in an Amiga editor -- Cut, Copy, Paste and Erase. After that comes a submenu allowing a selection to be changed to UPPER, lower or Mixed case. Another submenu allows the insertion of non-text items of various kinds -- the Date or Time, a Page Break or Page Number, or a non-breaking Space. The Date or Time can be either the current date or time, or the date or time when you print the document. You control the format of these items with the requester brought up by the next entry. There is also an entry for selecting all text in the document, and entries that bring up requesters for editing preferences and screen colors. The Search menu is fairly standard -- Find, Find Next, Change, Goto Page, and a useful entry that takes you back to the current selection or entry point. The Format menu provides an alternative access to the paragraph options available from the tool bar, the ability to set text style (Plain, Underline, Bold, and combinations) and color. The Document menu controls some of what you see and edit. You can use it to edit the header and footer of the current document, or to show the header and footer in the Document window. The Layout entry brings up a requester that allows you to specify the margins, for all pages or for the title page. This menu also holds the entry for manipulating the spelling checker and gathering the usual document statistics: counts of various things, average lengths of words and sentences, and a readability level. The View menu holds, for some reason, the About entry. It also allows you toggle the entire Ruler into and out of existence, and control what units of measurement it uses. You can also enable or disable the showing of page guides and "invisible" characters. Enabling this last option causes whitespace characters to have unique non-character glyphs displayed for each type of whitespace: a feature I found very useful and miss in other word processing packages. At the bottom there is a selection list of all open documents, allowing you to choose the active one from that list. Since there is a limit of 10 open documents, this menu will always fit on the screen. Finally, there is the Macro menu, used for invoking REXX macros. There are spaces for 10 macros, a requester that allows you to select ones that are not on the menu, and an entry for customizing the entries. It's as flexible as most Amiga programs, and more so than some. QW takes better advantage of 2.0 features than other programs do. For instance, it opens a public screen, making it easy to start other applications on that screen. KeyShow is a favorite of mine for accessing characters via the ALT key. Heavy WorkBench users may find the Application Icon even more useful, as it lets you open projects by dropping their icons onto it. The user interface is largely Amiga User Interface Style Guide compliant. Not completely -- some menu entries are in strange places, and some shortcuts are rather odd. For the most part, I found the interface comfortable and easy to use. The one problem is that redrawing the windows -- especially on an 8-color screen -- was slow even on an A3000. Turning on the ruler and tool bar made it awful. The rest of the program seems reasonably snappy, though. As a word processor, QuickWrite does what it claims to do. It lets you format documents using a set of constant-width type styles as supported by the Preferences printer driver. It doesn't let you mix type sizes -- going from condensed to elite, for instance -- in a single document. It is an entry-level package. It gives you WYSIWYG control of text, but you have to set it all yourself. You can't define a text style, nor change attributes of all text of one "style" with a single command. As such, it's perfectly adequate for letters or short papers, but I'd hate to try doing anything very long with it. It's probably perfect for undergraduate use, but people doing a thesis or dissertation will want something more powerful. If you decide you've outgrown this package, you can buy an inexpensive upgrade to New Horizon's ProWrite DTP package. DOCUMENTATION QuickWrite comes with a softbound, 76-page User's Manual. It also includes a 12-page pamphlet covering the differences between 1.0 and 1.1. The documentation is for beginners and follows the process of creating and printing a document, with the more esoteric features (ARexx, AmigaDOS 2.0 features) left for last. It includes an acceptable index, and appendices cover error messages and trouble shooting. It's adequate, which is better than much of the documentation one sees. LIKES AND DISLIKES The ability to put meaningful names in the Rexx Macro menu is nice. It would be nicer if that text weren't the name of the macro you're running. Date and time stamps that are the time of printing are very nice; other packages should include this feature. The time spent redrawing a window -- even for an activation -- is inordinately long. Support for changing between the Preferences fonts in a single document would be nice, but I can understand that this is a non-trivial undertaking. Adding more real DTP functionality -- style sheets, etc. -- would also be nice, but is also probably beyond the scope of this product. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS As far as I can tell, there really aren't any similar products available. There are some "text editors" that include part of this functionality, and at least one module of a modular DTP package might be considered similar. Entry level DTP packages such as FinalCopy are sometimes billed as word processors, but they include more functionality, and require a better printer. What QuickWrite reminds me of more than anything else is the word processors -- WordStar, Magic Wand, etc. -- that were available a decade ago. There is now a GUI, and it really is WYSIWYG, but it provides much the same functionality. BUGS While I found no bugs, I had a number of problems with third-party printer drivers. QuickWrite expects a lot from a printer driver; many printer drivers don't deliver. SuperDJC2, a PD Brother HR printer driver, and the GPFax printer driver all failed in one way or another. Also, the product doesn't work with SoftWood's Proper Grammar, neither I nor II. VENDOR SUPPORT In chasing down the problems with the printer driver, I talked with the tech support group. They were knowledgeable, courteous, and provided quick and accurate responses to my questions. CONCLUSIONS I'd say the product is excellent for what it is intended to do. It isn't a DTP package; it's a small word processor for use with character printers. I'd recommend it without qualms to anyone looking for a program for doing short documents on a printer with poor or non-existent graphics capabilities. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1993 Mike W. Meyer. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. ***************************************************************************** :HOW TO GET YOUR OWN GENIE ACCOUNT: _________________________________ Set your communications software to Half Duplex (or Local Echo) Call: (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt. Type: XTX99587,CPUREPT then, hit RETURN. Rates Effective July 1, 1993 GEnie costs only $8.95 a month, and includes four hours of free online time, good for almost anywhere on the system. Additional hours are only $3 each. Choose from more than 100 services, including electronic mail (with optional Internet mail at no extra charge), online encyclopedia, shopping, news, entertainment, online games, and bulletin boards on leisure and professional subjects. The Amiga RoundTable has over 1 GIGABYTE of Amiga files online and ready for downloading. The Amiga RT staff is very knowledgeable and is more than willing to help with problems. Help Desks are held every night at 9 pm Eastern Time. 9600 BPS access is available ($6 surcharge) through many local nodes, or via GEnie's own 800 Watts line. GEnie Information copyright (C) 1991 by General Electric Information Services/GEnie, reprinted with permission ***************************************************************************** > What is JPEG Compression? AR InfoFile ====================================== EVERYTHING YOU NEVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT JPEG AND THEREFORE DIDN'T ASK Who are those JPEG stands for the "Joint Photographic Experts Group." JPEG guys? This is a group of experts who defined a standard compression scheme for still images, commonly called JPEG Compression. Overview JPEG Compression consists of a series of reasonably complex mathematical operations. These include: color space con- version, discrete cosine transforms, quantization, and entropy coding. After these steps you end up with an image which takes fewer bits to store than you started out with. However, when you decompress a JPEG compressed image, you end up with an image that is not quite the same as the original (which is why JPEG Compression is referred to as "lossy"). Is lossy You might well ask why anyone would want to compress an compression bad? image using a lossy technique. Compression ratios for lossy compression are much better than for lossless com- ression and the loss is generally very small. And, in fact, every operation of converting an image is lossy (the original photographic or electronic process which captured the image was lossy, scanning or digitizing the image was lossy, displaying the image on a monitor is lossy, and printing the image is lossy). Details JPEG compression involves the following steps: Step 1 The image is converted to a color space with separate lum- inance and chrominance channels. This is done because the human eye is far more sensitive to the luminance in- formation (Y) than it is to the chrominance information (Cb and Cr); by separating them, it's possible to compress the chrominance information more than the luminance before the perceived image quality suffers. This step isn't specified in the JPEG draft (it doesn't discuss color space at all), but is standard practice. Step 2 The luminance and chrominance information are separately transformed to the frequency domain using a discrete cosine transform acting on 8x8 pixel blocks. To reduce the amount of data which needs to be compressed the chrominance information may be sub-sampled first. Step 3 The transformed data is quantized (so some information is thrown away). The samples representing higher frequencies are generally quantized using larger steps than those rep- esenting low frequencies. The quality level you specify is used to scale a set of quantization values which have been found to cause the quantized data to all have approximately equal importance visually. A lower quality number will cause larger quan- tization steps to be used, and hence increase the com- pression ratio and decrease the image quality. Step 4 The quantized data is compressed using an entropy coder. Huffman and Arithmetic coding are allowed by the draft JPEG standard; only Huffman coding is allowed by the JFIF standard. Huffman coding can either be done with a set of fixed tables or custom tables can be generated for an image. JPEG Interchange This data corresponds to the JPEG Interchange Format and is Format ready to be stored in a file. Unfortunately the JPEG Interchange Format does not include enough information to actually be able to convert the file back to an image. Specifically, the color space used and the aspect ratio or resolution of the image are not included. Until recently there was no standard way of putting this information in a JPEG file. JFIF On March 1, 1991 representatives of several JPEG hardware and software developers (including C-Cube, Radius, NeXT, Storm Tech, the PD JPEG group, and Sun) met at C-Cube and established the JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Another Moronic, Inane and Gratuitous Article ============================================= by Chad Freeman (cjfst4+@pitt.edu or cjfst4@cislabs.pitt.edu -- Internet) (cfreeman -- BIX) First off this week I'd like to let everyone know about an exciting new product coming in the next few months for the Amiga. Its the Hair Toaster 4000 by BubbaDrec. Just look at these exciting features! o Have a haircut just like the Prez! o Tie up airport runways for hours on end! o Have YOUR personal life exploited, distorted and yes, even extorted by the media! o Have political wanna-be's who look like that guy from Tyson Chicken talk about how much less they paid for their haircut (and doesn't he have about $190 less hair, anyway)! o All this for only $200! (Styling unit extra) I have been beta-testing this unit for a few weeks now, and it's amazing! While the first few versions did some pretty strange things to my hair (one version shaved 'Limbaugh for Chief of Sanitation' in my head), I'm now sporting a du like the prez (well, maybe not; well, maybe; well, maybe not). Watch for it and for BubbaDrec's next amazing project, the Bikini Line Juicer (BubbaDrec wants you to know they're looking for alpha-testers, and a special arrangement with LLoyds of London for certain delicate parts is included). But on to other things. I've heard through the rumor mill that Mr. Dionne (currently in the revolving president's chair at Commodore, for those of you who haven't checked in the past couple of days) is actually attempting to take his job seriously. He even suggested hocking that gold C-64 they have up there in West Chester for some spending capital in the advertising budget. And speaking of advertising (for those of you who missed it, a subtle segue has just occured), I'd like to share with you, my adoring public, my own personal (and really nifty, if you ask me)... TOP 5 IDEAS FOR COMMODORE'S AMIGA AD CAMPAIGNS (hey, this ain't no big-budget show, y'know) # 5: Buy an Amiga now, and you get to squish that annoying Amigaman with your foot! # 4: Amiga: We can make it look like it fills your minority quotas! # 3: Now a free toy suprise inside of every Amiga box! # 2: Amiga, cause who wants a computer that nerdy Bill Gates guy likes? And my number one idea is... # 1: Amiga, our ads suck because we're too busy making great computers! 'Well well,' you might be saying to yourself, 'aren't we being a little Barrett-like in these columns, Mr. Freeman?' Well, you're quite right, although I can be quite sarcastic, sardonic, and somewhat supercilious sometimes. I hereby devote the next paragraph of this article to praising Commodore for what I think is the best piece of equipment they ever came out with. When I first saw the Commodore joystick, I thought 'this sure don't look like an Atari joystick!' And indeed it doesn't! It was white and black (to match the VIC-20 color scheme, I suppose), shaped like a rectangle held longwise with a downward slope at the top, that sloped bit containing a big red cheap plastic oval of a button, right in the middle so it could be used lefty and righty (I always thought it was too bad I had grown up using an Atari stick and thus doomed myself forever to righty sticking, even though I've had now two things (joystick and Lynx) that are ambidextrous). The stick itself wasn't a circular cylinder like Atari's, but a triangular one, and it had that black rubber stuff that was just soft enough you couldn't resist chewing on the top while playing great games like Gateway to Apshai. It had a 'short throw,' and it once you hooked that baby in the crook of your thumb, you just didn't let go. These things lasted forever; certainly much longer than any Atari stick I knew of. I have to give my highest rating, 5 feet above sea level, to this mechanical marvel (no longer in production) from Commodore Business Machines International Incorporated Limited TM BM SM M&M, partners in law. Well, lets see, we've done two lists, two reviews, got in some barbs at Jim Dionne and Commodore, and at least five jabs at various political figures. Well, I'm all tuckered out, how about you folks? But before we go, the joke of the week! Q. How many Commodore advertising people does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A. None; they sit in the dark until someone from engineering does it! So, adieu and adios (the author says, trying to inject class into a very tacky article), and I'll see you next biweek with another exciting installment of A.M.I.G.A: The second most widely read column in my house (the horoscope won again!). ***************************************************************************** > New Internet BBS/Online Service AR InfoFile ============================================ *** HOLONET *** HoloNet is an easy to use Internet Access BBS. HoloNet is based on custom BBS software which provides an easy to use menu driven interface. HoloNet is ideal for those looking for an easy way to use Internet services. HoloNet does not currently provide UNIX shell access. Services include: o Convenient Access A local call in 850+ cities nationwide. o Online Publications Include USA Today Decisionline, Newsbytes, Datanet Computer News, Eeeekbits, and Boardwatch Magazine. o USENET Averages over 30MB of USENET news per day. The following news readers are available: NN, TIN, and RN. o Internet E-Mail Members have an Internet E-mail address similar to: member@holonet.net o Internet Access Access to telnet, talk, finger, IRC, and FTP. (note: you must comply with the policies of any networks you use) o Single and Multi-player Games Board, card, fantasy, and puzzle games. o Support for Eudora Excellent off-line Macintosh e-mail reader. o UUCP E-mail and USENET feeds Link LAN E-mail systems and BBSes to the Internet. How to try HoloNet for FREE: Telnet: holonet.net Modem: 510-704-1058 (Berkeley, CA) at 1200, 2400, 9600, or 14400bps There are free demo numbers nationwide, for an automated response containg a list of access numbers, send e-mail to access@holonet.mailer.net How to get more information: E-mail: info@holonet.net Modem: 510-704-1058 at 1200, 2400, 9600, or 14400bps Voice: 510-704-0160 Fax: 510-704-8019 HoloNet is a service mark of Information Access Technologies, Inc. Copyright (c) 1992 Information Access Techologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************************** > About the Internet ================== By Robert Niles As everyone is reading about, or learning about the InterNet, getting access to it sometimes is difficult, or at times kind of expensive. While there are quite a few places where you can log onto the internet, these places are quite busy, or hard to manuever in. Especially when all you want to do is send an Email message through the InterNet. More and more people are on the InterNet nowadays, and email addresses are listed in magazines, documents for ShareWare and Public Domain programs, and personal InterNet addresses are often displayed in the FidoNet echos. Not so well known is the fact that if you have access to a BBS that is connected to FidoNet and makes available to their users NetMail, you also have the ability to send and receive InterNet email. The ability to send NetMail messages is the most important point here. Many SysOps don't give their users this capability, some may charge a small fee for it, as a NetMail message MOST of the time costs the SysOp of that BBS a little extra money. But for those who do, sending and receiving InterNet mail through FidoNet is quite easy. First of all you need to know the address in which to send the message to. NetMail needs a FidoNet address in which to send the message to. And to send a message from FidoNet to someone on the InterNet you must know of a place in which acts as a "gateway" between the two networks. FidoNet has a listing of all the BBSs within a file called the NODELIST, and each BBS has certain "flags" that describe what that system can do. A FidoNet/InterNet "gateway" is marked by the flag of "GUUCP" (Ask your SysOp for more information on which systems carry a "GUUCP" flag). All you have to do is send your NetMail message there using a little different format than usual. One such system that acts as a "gateway" is 'Bink of an Eye'. His FidoNet address being 1:105/42. Now with sending a message to someone on the InterNet. Say for example you know the address of a programmer, and his address is "nuthead@gorki.com" (this is just an example, do not try to send anything there). Send a message to him by doing the following (all prompts displayed by a BBS will be in brackets, these will not always look the same for every BBS, but will be quite similar): [Address:] 1:105/42 [To:] UUCP [Subject:] Anything you want here. ------------------- To: nuthead@gorki.com The message you want to enter goes here...type whatever you want. ------------------- When the BBS asks you for the FidoNet address, just enter 1:105/42 (or whatever address you prefer and carries the "GUUCP" flag). Where it asks you who you want the message to go to type "UUCP" this lets the system know that the message is to be sent out to the InterNet. On the subject line, just type whatever you want, just like you normally would with any message. Now this is important...one the first line where you would normally start typing in your message you need to tell them to whom and where the message is going to. Just enter "To:", a space and then the name/address combination (ie: nuthead@gorki.com). Make sure there is at least ONE blank line between the InterNet address and the message that you are actually sending. Anyone who can receive NetMail, can also receive messages from anyone on the InterNet. Your InterNet address is based on the name you are using on the BBS receiving the message, and the receiving BBS's FidoNet address. My FidoNet address is 1:3407/104 and my name I use on my BBS is "Robert Niles". The "1" in the FidoNet address is the zone in which the BBS is in. The "3407" is the net that the BBS is in, and the "104" is the node. Your InterNet is just a combination of the two added together and a postfix so that the InterNet sends this to a FidoNet "gateway". For example: firstname.lastname@F[node].N[net].Z[zone].fidonet.org This is all case insensitive. The "node", "net", and "zone" that are in brackets are to be replaced by your FidoNet address. My InterNet address would be based on the FidoNet address of "1:3407/104" and come out as: robert.niles@f104.n3407.z1.fidonet.org Notice, the zone, net, node is backwards in the InterNet address as opposed to the FidoNet address, and remember, your name listed in your Internet address MUST be the same as what the BBS you plan on receiving this message on has you listed. OK...now you're ready to send and receive messages through the InterNet. Talk with your SysOp if you don't have NetMail access, I'm sure he'll work something out with you somehow. This system is a bit slower than having true InterNet mail access, but for those who, for some reason or another, don't have InterNet access, this should give you another alternative to getting your message out. ***************************************************************************** > NVN WANTS YOU! AR InfoFile Another Network Supports Amiga! ========================== National Videotext Network (NVN) National Videotext Network (NVN) has recently added an Amiga Forum to it's growing lists of available services. The Amiga Forum is ready and waiting for you! Order an extended NVN Membership of 6 or 12 months, pay for it in advance and receive a bonus in connect time at no additional charge. Choose from two subscription plans: 6-Month Membership ------------------ Pay just $30 for a 6-month Membership and receive a usage credit that entitles you to $15 of connect-time in the Premium services of your choice. Your total savings using this plan would be over $20!* 12 Month Membership ------------------- Pay $50 for a full year's Membership and get even more free time online. We'll give you a $25 usage credit to use in your favorite Premium services or try out new ones. You could save as much as $45.* For more information about either of these plans, give us a call at 1-800-336-9096. -=* 9600 BAUD USERS *=- $6/hour non-prime time - $9/hour prime time You can join NVN one of two ways. By voice phone 1-800-336-9096 (Client Services) or via modem phone 1-800-336-9092. ***************************************************************************** > Fred Fish Announces More Disks! AR InfoFile ============================================ (Reprinted from Comp.Sys.Amiga.Announce) Disks 841-860 have been available for some time, but I was lazy and never got around to posting the announcement. :-) Disks 861-870 are now available. Shipping to all those who have preordered disks should be complete by 24-May-93. Note that you can get a copy of the catalog (2 disks) of the complete library contents by sending $3 for disks, postage, and mailer to: Fred Fish Catalog Disk Requests 1835 East Belmont Drive Tempe, Arizona 85284 USA Thanks to all who submitted new and interesting material. If you submitted something in the past and it has not yet appeared in the library, please feel free to resubmit it, particularly if it was several months ago. I sometimes hesitate to include material submitted more than about six months ago because of some vague feeling that as soon as I include version 1.01 submitted many months ago, I'll see version 5.23 posted on usenet. For those wishing to submit material for possible inclusion in the library, here are a few simple guidelines that will make my job of organizing the material MUCH easier and GREATLY increase your chances of having the material accepted for inclusion: 1. Don't submit bootable disks or disks with any other sort of proprietary material included, since I then have to go examine each file to decide if it is distributable or not, and if not, what effect removing it might have. Unless the material is particularly interesting, I frequently just toss such disks into the recycling bin. 2. Organize the distribution in a manner similar to my disks. I.E, place all files related to a particular submission under a single directory on the disk. If there is more than one submission per disk, place each submission in its own directory. 3. Try to write a simple entry for my "Contents" listing that summarizes your submission. It should be about 3-10 lines, and include the current version number, the version and disk number of the most recent version (if any) that was last included in the library, whether or not source is included, and an "Author" list. 4. Ensure that your submission will run correctly from its sub- directory and if necessary, supply a script runnable from workbench (via :c/xicon or c:iconx) that makes all necessary assigns, copies fonts and libraries, etc. 5. Send your submission in a sturdy envelope with sufficient padding. Thanks!!! CONTENTS OF DISK 841 -------------------- AniMan AniMan combines Amiga animation, speech synthesis, and voice recognition, to provide you with an animated talking head that will run any Amiga program by voice command. Ask for an Amiga program by name, and AniMan will oblige. If AniMan becomes impatient, you may be insulted. AniMan will also recite poetry if you ask nicely. It is designed to work with the Perfect Sound 3, Audio Master (Audio Magic), or generic audio digitizers. Also requires 1MB of fast memory. This is Version 5.0 of AniMan, an update to version 3.2 disk 723. New features include support for AGA and improved performance. Binary only. Author: Richard Horne GifInfo A small program that gives information about GIF files, such as size, number of colors, etc. Includes documentation in English and French. Version 1.12, binary only. Author: Christophe Passuello PowerData Patches AmigaDOS, enabling all programs to read and write files packed with PowerPacker in way that is completely transparent to themselves and the system. Programs will read powerpacked datafiles directly, and will also magically start compressing their own datafiles, as they create or update them. This is version 38.115, an update to version 38.105 on disk 801. Partially localized for use with Workbench 2.1. Workbench 2.04+ only. Shareware, binary only. Author: Michael Berg CONTENTS OF DISK 842 -------------------- AntiCicloVir A link virus detector that detects 30 different such viruses. Checks your disk and memory for known link viruses, and can also detect known bootblock viruses in memory. Version 1.8, an update to version 1.7 on disk 815. Shareware, binary only. Author: Matthias Gutt GadToolsBox A program that lets you draw/edit GadTools gadgets and menus and then generates the corresponding C or assembly code for you. This is version 2.0, an update to version 1.4 on disk 731. Includes source. Author: Jan van den Baard CONTENTS OF DISK 843 -------------------- BrowserII A "Programmer's Workbench". Allows you to easily and con- veniently move, copy, rename, and delete files & directories using the mouse. Also provides a method to execute either Workbench or CLI programs by double-clicking them or by selecting them from a ParM like Menu with lots of arguments. Uses whatis.library to detect file types and executes commands based on these. Version 2.13 for AmigaDOS 1.3 and 2.31 for AmigaDOS 2.0 (localized). Update to version 2.04 on disk 649. Binary only. Author: Sylvain Rougier and Pierre Carrette MeMeter A WB 2.0 only version of MeMeter (only 2000 bytes). Update for original MeMeter, which didn't work under 2.0. Includes source in C. Author: Pierre Carrette ParM Parametrable Menu. ParM allows you to build menus to run any program in either in WorkBench or CLI mode. This is an alternative to MyMenu which can run only when WorkBench is loaded. ParM can have it's own little window, can attach menus to the CLI window you are running it from, or to the WB menus, just like MyMenu. Versions 3.6 & 4.3, an update to version 3.6 on disk 649. Binary only. Author: Sylvain Rougier and Pierre Carrette WBRun A RunBack style program which use parm.library. Runs programs in WorkBench mode from any CLI. Programs are fully detached. The program you run must support WorkBench startup. Includes source in C. Versions 1.3 and 2.0. Author: Sylvain Rougier and Pierre Carrette WhatIs WhatIs.library can detect file types and is fully parametrable by an ascii file. You can describe file types and they will be recognized by the library. A few tools are also included. Author: Sylvain Rougier and Pierre Carrette CONTENTS OF DISK 844 -------------------- DBB Digital Breadboard is a full GUI digital logic circuit simu- lator. Digital Breadboard currently supports 2 and 3 input AND, OR, NAND, and NOR gates, NOT and XOR gates, D, JK, and SR edge-triggered flip-flops, multiple independant clocks, switched and pulsed inputs, outputs, Vcc, GND, independant 4-channel oscilloscope, event counters, variable speed timer, preferences printing, and more. Requires AmigaDOS 2.x. This is version 1.1, freeware, binary only. Author: Dan Griffin DiskPrint A label database which prints and stores disk labels for 3.5" and 5.25" disks. Primarily created as a combined database and print utility for FD disks, it includes easy-to-use label lib- rary functions (like printing labels for a whole FD series in one turn or multiple print of one label) and labels for most FD disks which are available within a few mouse clicks. Fea- tures include a fast search routine, user-definable label lay- out, different label sizes, intuition-based disk directory read-in and a lot more. Very configurable. Works fine with every printer connected to the parallel port and AmigaOS 1.2, 1.3, and 2.x. This version now includes DESKJET support for single label sheets. Includes both English (PAL & NTSC) and German versions. This is version 3.59, an update to version 3.51 on disk 685. Shareware, binary only. Author: Jan Geissler CONTENTS OF DISK 845 -------------------- ISL Imagine Staging Language, a decompiler and compiler which allow the user to create and modify Imagine staging files in a manner much more powerful than that provided by Imagine itself. Imagine is the 3d rendering and animation program published by Impulse. ISL does not require any particular version of AmigaDos, but it only works with version 2.0 of Imagine. Version 1.4, binary only. Author: John T. Grieggs Sz'kwa Sz'kwa, a children's game from Northern China, as described by Clifford A. Pickover in his book `MAZES for the MIND, computers and the unexpected'. Requires Workbench 2.04 or higher. This is version 1.1, binary only. Author: A.R.Mohowitsch TextPlus A TeX frontend word processor that provides facilities for tables, lists, mailmerge, footnotes, inclusion of IFF graph- ics, an ARexx-Port (111 commands) and full OS2.0/3.0 compat- ibility. Makes use of PasTeX, Georg Hessmann's Amiga imple- mentation of TeX. New features are support for LaTeX, Make- Index (automatic index generation) and printing via PRT: (TeX is not needed for the latter). This is the German ver- sion 4.10, an update to version 4.00 on disk 700. Disk 846 contains the English version. Shareware, binary only. Author: Martin Steppler CONTENTS OF DISK 846 -------------------- FileCache This package is for compiler and assembler writers. It im- plements a cache for include files with a file cache server. Can greatly speed up compilation and assembling. Binary only. Author: Christophe Passuello IObject A linker library that emulates some gadgets of the gadtools library (CheckBox, Cycle, Button, Scroller, Integer, String) and an area of text with scrolling. Works with all versions of WorkBench. Includes examples and documentation in English and French. Binary only. Author: Christophe Passuello TextPlus A TeX frontend word processor that provides facilities for tables, lists, mailmerge, footnotes, inclusion of IFF graph- ics, an ARexx-Port (111 commands) and full OS2.0/3.0 compat- ibility. Makes use of PasTeX, Georg Hessmann's Amiga imple- mentation of TeX. New features are support for LaTeX, Make- Index (automatic index generation) and printing via PRT: (TeX is not needed for the latter). This is the English ver- sion 4.10, an update to version 4.00 on disk 700. Disk 845 contains the German version. Shareware, binary only. Author: Martin Steppler CONTENTS OF DISK 847 -------------------- ADM A comfortable and flexible address database with font sensi- tive windows, commodity support, application window support, an ARexx-port, public screen support, and fully controllable from the keyboard. It includes user flags (grouping), email support, and freely configurable label printing. It can fill out letter forms and call your word processor, print remit- tance orders, dial the modem, and has online help. Requires AmigaDOS version 2.04 or later. Version 1.01, German version only. Shareware, binary only. Author: Jan Geissler MidiChords A program which replaces and extends the chord-key-play- function, as may be found on several low priced keyboards. To make full use of this code a MIDI interface and a keyboard capable of MIDI reception is required, however, a limited audio output is available too. Some special harmonic routines are: Chord Finding, Sequencing and Random Play. Chords and sequences are played by simple mouse clicks and recorded Seqfiles can be saved (and loaded). On-line information may be switched on/off. Version 3.2, binary only. Author: Theo Brugman CONTENTS OF DISK 848 -------------------- Amiga_E An Amiga specific E compiler. E is a powerful and flexible procedural programming language and Amiga E a very fast com- piler for it, with features such as compilation speed of 20000 lines/minute on a 7 Mhz amiga, inline assembler and linker integrated into compiler, large set of integrated functions, module concept with 2.04 includes as modules, flexible type-system, quoted expressions, immediate and typed lists, low level polymorphism, exception handling and much, much more. Written in Assembly and E. Version 2.1b, an update to version 2.1 on disk 810. Public domain. Includes partial sources. Author: Wouter van Oortmerssen CWeb A programming tool that allows you to program top down, by splitting your program into many small, and understandable modules which `ctangle' tangles into a compiler understandable file. By applying `cweave' to the program you can produce a pretty-printed listing for processing with `TeX'. This is version 2.7, an update to version 2.0 on disk 551, now with full ANSI and C++ support. Includes source. Author: Donald Knuth, Silvio Levy, port by Andreas Scherer Poker A "fair" version of a casino video poker machine in which a deck is dealt randomly. Regular casino rules apply. This is a variation of the version that appeared in the October 1992 of JUMPDISK, the Original Disk Magazine for the Amiga. Author: Richard Ramella CONTENTS OF DISK 849 -------------------- AmigaPascal This is a mini PASCAL compiler, which may be used for smaller projects. It is not yet quite complete and can only be run from the CLI. Works on all Amigas, and OS versions from 1.2 to 3.1. Version 1.0, freeware, binary only. Author: Daniel Amor BackGammon The computer version of the game. This is a tiny little game which runs on Workbench. Works on all Amigas, and OS versions from 1.2 to 3.1. Version 0.9, freeware, binary only. Author: Igor Druzovic and Daniel Amor CDTV-Player A utility for all those people, who'd like to play Audio CD's while multitasking on WorkBench. It's an emulation of CDTV's remote control, but is a little more sophisticated. Allows access to the archive even without a CDROM drive (i.e. AMIGA 500-4000), although you can't play a CD. Program and KARAOKE (live on-screen) included. Recognizes CDs automatically. Version 1.8, an update to version 1.5 on disk 805. Freeware, binary only. Author: Daniel Amor MathPlot A function plotter with lin/log plot, a complete KS 2.0 inter- face, and ARexx support. Needs Kickstart/WorkBench 2.0 and mtool.library (included). Version 2.01, an update to version 1.04 on disk 573. Shareware, source available from author. Author: Ruediger Dreier RRT Demo of a real time mapping of a reflection of a graphic onto a sphere. Is system friendly, multitasks, and uses an Intui- tion screen. Written in C with small assembler assist. In- cludes source. Author: Adisak Pochanayon CONTENTS OF DISK 850 -------------------- 4-Get-It A fully playable version of an arcade quality puzzle game with 10 levels. The full version has almost 300 levels and 700K+ additional graphics. Impressive sound and graphics. Requires 1 MB. Binary only. Author: Adisak Pochanayon FastGIF A very fast GIF viewer with a graphical user interface, file requester, support for AGA chips set, support for viewing in a WorkBench window, IFF saving (registered version only), and GIF89a compability. Includes English and French versions. Version II (1.01), an update to version 1.00 on disk 690. Shareware, binary only. Author: Christophe Passuello MineField Another MineField program. This one has nice graphics, sound, adjustable parameters, and a 3D look interface. Author: Adisak Pochanayon CONTENTS OF DISK 851 -------------------- AmigaWorld A database program that contains information about every country on Earth. It enables you to have a look at the data of one country, or to compare several countries. It is easy to handle, and you can use it with your favourite colors, font, and even language (at the moment there are English, German, Swedish and Dutch data files). Requires 1MB of memory. This is freeware version 1.1, an update to version 1.0 on Disk 804, New features include information about currencies. Modula-2 source is available from the author. Author: Wolfgang Lug ArmyMiner An utimate "XMines-type" game that integrates all of the best aspects of the previous Amiga versions of the game. Options include: Automatically mark or clean the neighbours of a square; Safe start (no explosion at first click); Safe click (gadget-like behavior for squares); Question marks (for con- figuration analysis). You can also specify your own custom board settings. The game has a very useful pause option, sound effects, high-score tables and a very nice interface. It works under OS v1.3 or 2.0, NTSC or PAL. Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Alain Laferriere GraphPaper Creates graph paper. You specify the size and number of cycles in both the X and Y directions. Each major cycle may be divided into minor cycles and may be linear, logarithmic, or log/log. It will print the graph paper on any preferences supported graphics-capable printer. Version 1.2, includes source. Author: Bill Ames HyperANSI An ANSI editing program. Allows you to edit up to 999 pages at a time, with a unique 'transparency' mode which allows you to 'see through' the pages ( and save as a single page ). Other features include; Copy, Move, Fill, Replace, Flood fill, Text alignment & justification, line drawing, character paint- ing (colors and/or text), half character painting, and keyboard remapping for all 255 IBM characters ...Plus more. Version 1.6, an update to version 1.02 on disk 803. Shareware, binary only. Author: Mike D. Nelson SingleFile A small utility that can be used to determine if there are duplicate files or directories on a given volume. It can be used to help save hard disk space and reduce backp times. CLI usage only, version 1.0, binary only, shareware Author: Phil Dobranski CONTENTS OF DISK 852 -------------------- CPUClr A small hack, inspired by CPUBlit, that replaces the BitClear routine of the graphics library with a highly optimized 68020 (or higher) routine. This results in about a 60% speed up on a 68020 and should be even more on a 68030/68040. This is version 3.20, an update to version 2.0 on disk number 709, includes source. Author: Peter Simons OriginsDemo Demo version of a commercial genealogy program. The number of records is limited in practice only by available memory and storage. You may track attributes of people, such as date and place of birth, death, burial, and marriages, and parent/child relationships. Details such as baptism, immigration, and occupation are also allowed for. Reports: individual, family group, pedigree, Ahnentafel, descendants, Tiny-Tafel, alphabetical lists. Free-form text for sources and notes; display of IFF pictures; ARexx functions. The demo version allows a limited number of records, has printing of some reports disabled, and has GEDCOM utilities removed. Requires minimum 1 MB of ram, OS V1.3 or greater, and arp.library. Version 1.06, binary only. Author: Jeff Lavin ReSourceDemo Demo version of the commercial disassembler. Very fast, intelligent, interactive. Over 900 menu functions. Most of the Amiga structure names are available at the touch of a key (user-defined structures also supported). Base-relative addressing, using any address register, is supported for disassembling C programs. Choice of traditional 68K syntax or the new M68000 Family syntax. Online hypertext help. Requires minimum 1 MB of ram, OS V1.3 or greater, and arp.library. Version 5.12, an update to version 3.06 on disk number 232, binary only. Author: Glen McDiarmid CONTENTS OF DISK 853 -------------------- ADtoHT A program to convert AutoDoc-files to AmigaGuide-format. Creates links to functions and include-files. Requires OS2.0+. Version 1.01, includes source, freeware. Author: Christian Stieber AppISizer An AppIcon utility to get the size of disks, directories or files. Gives the size in bytes, blocks and the actual size occupied. Now supports 5 tooltypes and command line options for the positioning and replacement of the internal AppIcon, and for the positioning of the output window. Requires KickStart 37.175 or higher. Version 0.61, an update to version 0.41 on disk number 802. Binary only. Author: Gerard Cornu Hyper Will lead you through documents that are written to be used with the legendary `Am*gaGu*de' from Commodore. An ARexx port gives access to it from other applications. Requires OS 2.x. Version 1.17e, an update to version 1.15a on disk number 786. Shareware, binary only. Author: Bernd (Koessi) Koesling IconAuthorDemo A replacement for IconEdit2.0. It can transform IFF images or brushes into resized 2-BitPlane brushes or icon files that match the WorkBench2.0 colors. Online help is available via `Hyper'. Demo version limited to processing provided demo image only. Requires OS 2.x. Version 1.08, an update to version 1.06 on disk number 786. Shareware, binary only. Author: Bernd (Koessi) Koesling MapTrix A texture map/backdrop generator featuring a large number of fractal effects, including mountains and clouds, wave synthesis, and "static" generators. Also has some image processing tools, including emboss, ruffian, convolutions, resizing and smooth. Supports DCTV if available. Requires AmigaDOS 2.04+. Version 1.0, shareware, binary only. Author: Alexander D. DeBurie PhxAss PhxAss is a complete macro assembler, which supports the instruction-set and addressing modes of all important Motorola processors (MC68000,68010,68020,68030,68040,6888x and 68851). It understands all common assembler-directives and can generate not only linkable object-files but also absolute code, which can be written to memory, to a file or directly to disk using the 'trackdisk.device'. In all cases the user has the oppor- tunity to choose between the large and small code/data-model. Version V3.00, an update to version V2.11 on disk 749. Binary only. Author: Frank Wille PhxLnk Linker for Amiga-DOS object-files, which also supports the small-code/data model. Version V1.35, an update to version V1.27 on disk 749. Binary only. Author: Frank Wille QDisk A Workbench 2.x or better program to display the space usage of your Amiga DOS devices. (A WorkBench type "Info" command) Also shows other information relating to drives. Supports tool types to position windows and set a warning flag when space usage becomes high. Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Norman Baccari CONTENTS OF DISK 854 -------------------- DiskMate A disk utility with multidrive disk copier (either DOS or non- DOS disks), disk formatter, disk eraser, disk installer, and floppy disk checker. Version 4.1, an update to version 3.0 on disk number 804. Binary only. Author: Malcolm Harvey DRAFU "Draw a function". Display any mathematical function by itself or overlay on top of a previously displayed function. Can also calculate integrals over those functions. Save the result in an IFF or ACBM file (disabled in this demo version). Many screen mode/display options. Includes an AREXX interface and its own scripting language. Version 0.82, compatible with WorkBench 1.2/1.3/2.0. Binary only. Author: Andreas Kleinert & Ulrich Degens Upcat Disk catalog program. Read file information from disks, store it in a catalog in memory. Save/load catalogs to/from disk, display catalog in several ways, select files to be displayed, print (selection of) catalog, 32 user definable categories, add comment to files in catalog. Version 1.0, freeware, binary only. Author: Frans Zuydwijk CONTENTS OF DISK 855 -------------------- Banner A tiny utility to create - surprise, surprise - banners. By default BANNER uses an internal font that is ideal for title pages or sources headers. You may also render your banner from any amiga font with (nearly) unlimited font size and variable aspect. Version 1.4, binary only. Author: Tobias Ferber HWGRCS Part 1 of a complete RCS 5.6 port to the Amiga currently at patch level 2. It is not related to the old RCS on Disks 281, 282 & 451, but all new and shiny. The Revision Control System (RCS) manages multiple revisions of text files. RCS automates the storing, retrieval, logging, identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is useful for text that is revised frequently. For example: programs; documentation; graphics; papers; form letters; etc. Included are RCS 5.6, GNU DIFF 1.15 and LP as a neat V37 line print utility. Complete sources are contained in part 2 of the distribution on disk number 856. Author: Many, Amiga port by Heinz Wrobel, docs prepared by Hans-Joachim Widmaier KeyCall Provides up to 10 hotkeys using F1-F10 and your choice of qualifier. The advantage of using hotkeys as opposed to menu or docking programs etc, is of course, that the keyboard is always available regardless of the screen you are currently working in. Compatible with both 1.3 and 2.x systems. Version 1.3.2, binary only. Author: Mick Seymour LP A very powerful tool to prepare text files for printer output. Offers a great variety of options including indention, page headers, page numbering, multi-columns and WITH files. Includes TI and FILES, two utilities to check your printer output and create WITH files for LP. Version 1.18, includes source in C. Author: Tobias Ferber CONTENTS OF DISK 856 -------------------- ButlerJames A database program designed primarily for address management, but can be used for other purposes as well. Hotkey activated, allows you send selected groups of data directly to the keyboard input stream or printer. Very useful to avoid having to continuously enter an often used address into your favorite word processor for example. Compatible with OS 1.2/1.3/2.0 Binary only. Author: Christoph Zens DockImages An ILBM Dock-Images-Picture with a collection of Dock-Images for AmiDock (Gary Knight) or the ToolManager (Stefan Becker) or a similar program. Author: Various, collected and submitted by Wolf-Peter Dehnick HWGRCS Part 2 of a complete RCS 5.6 port to the Amiga currently at patch level 2. It is not related to the old RCS on Disks 281, 282 & 451, but all new and shiny. The Revision Control System (RCS) manages multiple revisions of text files. RCS automates the storing, retrieval, logging, identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is useful for text that is revised frequently. For example: programs; documentation; graphics; papers; form letters; etc. Included are RCS 5.6, GNU DIFF 1.15 and LP as a neat V37 line print utility. Binaries and documentation are contained in part 1 of the distribution on disk number 855. Author: Many, Amiga port by Heinz Wrobel, docs prepared by Hans-Joachim Widmaier CONTENTS OF DISK 857 -------------------- AnimBrushes Eight AnimBrushes for use with ToolManager 2.0 (Copyright (C) 1990-92 Stefan Becker). They have been designed for a four color non-interlaced hi-res screen. Author: Gerard Cornu Eval A full-featured floating point expression evaluator that can assign variables, has many built-in functions and constants, allows input and output in any number base, and uses a C-like syntax for expression evaluation. Full ANSI C source is included and easily portable to other platforms. Version 1.12, includes source. Author: Will Menninger MakePatch Scans a file for changed, inserted or removed bytes and saves these changes to a small patchfile. This file contains all the information for the supplied "Patch'Em" program to patch an old version into the new one. Very useful and time-saving for sending updates to Beta testers for example. Not just limited to programs, you can use MakePatch/Patch'Em with all kinds of data; graphics, sound, lharc archives, etc. Version v0.017, includes assembly source. Requires OS 2.04 minimum. Author: Peter Simons SolitaireSamp Sampler package of an integrated collection of five Solitaire card games. Included are: Carlton, Martha, Pas Seul, Slider and Poker Squares. Nicely done, with online help and instruc- tions. Binary only. Author: Richard Brown & Tower Software UDraw A drafting tool that is bitmap oriented rather than object oriented. The original intent with UDraw was to provide a mechanism for the rapid drawing of schematic diagrams. However, UDraw has applications beyond this original intent. Makes heavy use of "clip boards", files which contain clips of various items that are displayed simultaneously but behind the work area, parts of which can be lifted off and pasted to the working screen. Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Ron Stefkovich. CONTENTS OF DISK 858 -------------------- DocDumpDrv More printer drivers for DocDumpV3.6 (FF800). Included are drivers for the HP-Deskjet+, HP-Deskjet500 and HP-Laserjet SeriesII. The Laserjet version uses a softfont, which is included. Author: Robert Grob EPU A program like Stacker or XPK that allows applications to access compressed data from AmigaDOS devices without knowing that the data is compressed, and automatically compresses new data. The file size is not limited by memory and the settings of the handler can be changed at any time. Version 1.4, an update to version 1.0 on disk number 809. Shareware, binary only. Author: Jaroslav Mechacek SuperDark A screen blanker with some special features. It is similar to the AfterDark screen blanker in the PC and Mac worlds. Features include a lot of different screen effects, a screen locker, and more. Version 1.5, an update to version 1.2 on disk number 835. Includes source. Author: Thomas Landspurg CONTENTS OF DISK 859 -------------------- DCmp A utility that allows you to compare two disks block by block. Written in order to check the reliability of the Video-Backup- System, (VBS), DCmp can create a file containing a list of differing sectors which can be used in conjunction with a disk-editor to correct the defects. Version 1.51, an experi- mental release. Works with all Amigas using Kickstart 1.3 or higher and supports req[tools].library. Also comes with FCmp, a file compare utilility. Includes C-source. Author: Tobias Ferber DirKing A very powerful replacement for the AmigaDOS 'List' and 'Dir' commands. It gives full control on the format of the directory listing and what information should be printed. The directory can be sorted on any field, or on several fields in the order you want. Supports many filters, such as name and date, and the filters can be made effective on files only, directories only or on both. You can also define a pattern for each level of the directory tree. Has an LFORMAT option which is useful for generating scripts. A unique feature is the ability to monitor the scanning process. English version supplied, German, French and Dutch versions available from the author. Version 2.12e, an update to version 2.11e on disk number 784. Binary only, shareware. Author: Chris Vandierendonck NewDate A replacement for the AmigaDOS 'Date' command. Besides the usual date options, NewDate enables date output in your own defined format. NewDate also supports English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish and Polish datenames. Version 1.10, binary only, freeware. Author: Chris Vandierendonck PARex Replace strings in any file, whether plain text files or pure binary files. By using scripts you can define any number of search and replace strings to be used for processing a file. You can use all ASCII codes when defining these strings, so non-printable characters are no problem. PARex makes patching files very easy. Version 2.12, binary only, shareware. Author: Chris Vandierendonck PPMC The Powerpacker Mini Clone. PPMC is powerpacker.library meeting gadtools.library. It's a OS2.0+ utility, useful for packing and unpacking text and data files. It has a complete CLI interface and is localized under OS2.1 and higher. This is version 1.2c, an update to version 1.2b on disk 812. Some new enhancements as the multiple file packing and/or unpacking under Shell and many code optimizations. Includes Danish, Dutch and French catalogs, a 68030 version, hypertext docu- mentation and source for SAS/C. Author: Reza Elghazi CONTENTS OF DISK 860 -------------------- AzMake A work environment for Aztec C. You can compile, assemble, link, print, etc your programs by clicking a gadget. Typing in the Shell is out. Version 2.3, an update to version 1.1 on disk number 586. Binary only, shareware. Author: Christian Friedel bBaseIII An easy to use, versatile, yet full featured database program. Search or sort on any field, (un)delete records, print mailing labels or envelopes, get printouts in many formats, scramble files, flag records, and more. Fields are user-configurable, so bBase can be used to keep track of addresses, tape or video collections, recipe files, or anything else you can think of - one program does it all! bBaseIII is a greatly enhanced successor to bBaseII. Version 1.1, an upgrade to bBaseII, version V5.5 on disk 710. Binary only, shareware. Author: Robert Bromley CConvert A utility to convert IFF files to raw bitplane data. It features options to create sprite data lists or interleaved bitmaps. It can generate RAW files as well as linkable object files. Version 1.82. Includes source in assembler. Author: Klaus Wissmann LazyBench LazyBench is a utility for lazy people with a hard disk cram- med full of goodies which are difficult to reach because they are buried away in drawers inside drawers inside drawers in- side drawers... Supports tools and projects and both OS 1.3 and OS 2.xx versions are supplied with this distribution. LazyBench for the OS 1.3 opens a little window on the Work- bench screen and delivers a fully configurable menu which brings up to 30 applications at your fingertips. LazyBench for the OS 2.xx adds an item under the Workbench "Tools" menu, installs itself as a Commodity and waits in the background. Use its hot key combination to pop its window and then select an application from a list of up to 100 applications. Versions 1.01 (OS 1.3) and 1.04 (OS 2.xx), an update to the version 1.00 on disk number 839. Binary only. Author: Werther 'Mircko' Pirani Minterm Minimizes boolean algebra formulas. Minterm can minimize formulas with up to 15 variables. Version 2.0 for AmigaOS 2.04 an higher. An old version (1.1) is included for users still requiring OS 1.2/1.3 compatibility. Binary only Author: Achim Pankalla SysInfo A brand new release of this popular program. It reports interesting information about the configuration of your Amiga, including some speed comparisons with other configurations, versions of the OS software, and much more. Version 3.18, an update to version 3.11 on disk 820. Binary only. Author: Nic Wilson CONTENTS OF DISK 861 -------------------- AskReq Yet another batchfile requester, similar but unrelated to the program of the same name on disk number 827. Opens up a window, displays a message and solicits a Yes/No type answer from the user. Requires OS2.x, version 1.00, both English and German versions and includes source in C++. Author: Harald Pehl KingFisher A specialized database tool providing maintenance and search capabilities for the descriptions of disks in the format used by this library. KingFisher's database can span multiple (floppy) disk volumes, can be edited by text editors that support long text lines, can add disks directly from unedited email or usenet announcements, can remove disks, rebuild a damaged index, find next or previous software versions, print or export (parts of) the database, and more. Includes a data- base of disks 1-850. This is version 1.30, an update to ver- sion 1.15 on disk 808. Binary only. Author: Udo Schuermann CONTENTS OF DISK 862 -------------------- BEAV "Binary Editor And Viewer", is a full featured binary file editor. Just about any operation that you could want to do to a binary file is possible with BEAV. You can: Insert or delete in the middle of a file thereby changing it's size; Edit multiple files in multiple windows and cut and paste between them; Display and edit data in hex, octal, decimal, binary, ascii, or ebcdic formats; Display data in byte, word, or long word formats in either Intel or Motorola byte ordering; Send the formatted display mode to a file or printer. The display and keyboard handling functions for BEAV are based on microemacs. Version 1.40, portable, and includes source and makefiles for several other systems. Author: Peter Reilley, Amiga port by Simon J Raybould BioRhythm An intuition based easy-to-use program that shows your 3 basic BioRhythms plus the average-"rhythm". Take a look, dump it to your printer and make your plans for "when to do what". This is version 2.2, an update to version 1.0 on disk 759. This version has some new features and is 400% faster. Binary only, PAL version. C-Source available from author on request. Author: Thomas Arnfeldt GlobeAnim An animation which displays a smoothly rotating earth. Includes separate versions for both PAL and NTSC systems. Author: Hannu Mikkola PhoneList Simple phone list database, unique in the fact that it allows easy usage from either the WorkBench or CLI. Allows you to add, delete, search and create an alpha-sorted list. Author: Michael Hoffmann ScopePrint Simple program for displaying/printing Oscilloscope simulations of sine and square waves. Presents you with a two-channel o-scope and allows you to input the frequency, phase, and amplitude of the signal(s). Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Wim Van den Broeck CONTENTS OF DISK 863 -------------------- GuiArc A graphical user interface for cli-based archivers like lha, arc, ape, zoo, etc. It has the 'look & feel' of a directory tool and can perform all basic actions on archives, such as Add, Extract, List, Test, Delete, etc. You can enter archives as though they were directories. You don't have to know any- thing about archivers. Fully configurable (Archivers not included). Version 1.10, requires AmigaDOS 2.0+, freeware, binary only. Author: Patrick van Beem. Luffar The game of Noughts and Crosses, the object is to get exactly five "Noughts" (six doesn't count!) in a row up/down/across or diagonally, before your opponent gets five "Crosses" in a similiar fashion. 0, 1 or 2 human players, rewind and ahead buttons. Version 1.0, freeware, binary only. (Source available from author). Author: Magnus Enarsson Lyr-O-Mat A simple, fun program designed to generate sentences out of a word list and a sentence pattern database. German and English database included. Version 1.0. Binary only. Author: Karlheinz Klingbeil of CEKASOFT MPE A compiler tool for users of the M2amiga programming environ- ment. MPE does the same job better than your batch file. You can do everything with the mouse or the right amiga key. With this Modula-2 Programming Environment you can compile, link, and run your program. When there is an error, the editor is started automatically. You can set all switches for M2C, M2L M2Make, M2Project, and M2LibLink. This is version 1.60, an update to version 1.38 on disk 766. Binary only. Author: Marcel Timmermans NetMount A tiny application that simplifies the ParNet mount procedure. You need ParNet (see dis 400) from The Software Distillery to use NetMount. Binary only. Author: Tobias Ferber Noisome A commodity that allows you to play sound samples when a key or mousebutton is pressed, or a disk is inserted or removed You can have different samples for the space and return keys as opposed to other keys, special samples for the mousekeys, a sample to be played instead of the visual display-"beep" and more... The samples are played in mono or stereo, and two can be played simultaneously. The audio allocation priority can also be set. Includes several sound samples. Version 1.0, binary only. Author: David Larsson PowerPlayer A very powerful, user friendly and system friendly module player. It can handle nearly all module-formats, can read powerpacked & xpk-packed modules and comes along with its own powerful cruncher that uses the lh.library. Has a simple to use interface and an ARexx port. Version 3.9, a major update to version 3.4 on disk 769, binary only, now shareware. (Previous versions were freeware.) Author: Stephan Fuhrmann CONTENTS OF DISK 864 -------------------- Change Small CLI-only program to translate numbers from one numbering system to another. Binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal numbers are supported. Version 1.00, includes source in C++. Author: Harald Pehl MouseAccel Yet another mouse accelerator, this one implemented as a commodity. If you find the built-in accelerator too slow, try this one. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.07, an update to version 1.01 on disk 497. Includes german version and source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht SCAN8800 A specialized database program to store frequencies and sta- tion names for shortwave transmitters. It can also control a receiver for scanning frequency ranges. Version 2.33, an update to version 2.28 on disk 812. Binary only. Author: Rainer Redweik CONTENTS OF DISK 865 -------------------- AntiCicloVir A link virus detector and exterminator. Also detects other types of viri. This version can detect: 126 Bootblock; 12 Link; 23 File; 5 Disk-Validator; 5 Trojans; and 3 Bombs; Automatically checks each inserted disk for bootblock and disk-validator viruses. Can scan all files of a specified directory for known link viruses, and constantly monitors memory and system vectors. Version 2.0, an update to version 1.8 on disk 842. Shareware, binary only. Author: Matthias Gutt Back&Front Sends a window to the back or bring it to the front with defined actions. For example, bring a window in front by double-clicking in it and send it back with the middle mouse button. Any keyboard or mouse event can be trapped. Number of required actions can be changed (double-click vs triple- click). Implemented as a commodity. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.09, an update to version 1.03 on disk number 497. Includes german version and source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht Genealogist ArJay Genealogist is a specialized database for keeping track of genealogical information. It features a full, easy to use Intuition interface. The program is totally non-sexist and secular in nature, and correctly handles multiple marriages, "unconventional" marriages, adopted children, and unmarried parents. The printed reports include descendant and pedigree charts, personal details reports, family group sheets, and index lists of people and families. Free-form note files can be created using any editor, and IFF pictures can be viewed using any IFF viewer, from within the program. Other features include dynamic on-screen ancestor and descendant charts, extensive online context-sensitive help, flexible "regular expression" searching, and multiple ARexx ports with an exten- sive command set. Up to 1000 people per database, with data- bases held in RAM for maximum speed and responsiveness. PAL or NTSC, AmigaDOS 2.04+ required. 1 Meg RAM recommended. Version 3.04, binary only. Author: Robbie J Akins CONTENTS OF DISK 866 -------------------- CFX Crunched File eXaminer allows the user to examine and find files using several different search criteria. CFX knows a huge amount of the current Amiga filetypes, including a vast number of "cruncher" types. CFX can also give in-depth dis- assemblies of crunched files, including most address crunched files, relocator crunched files, and some major archive crun- ched types. This version requires kick 1.3 or 2.0. Version 5.275, an update to version 5.242 on disk number 750. Binary only, freeware. Author: Bob Rye and Marcus Mroczkowski Degrader Degrades your machine to try and get badly written programs to work. Allows you to block memory, add non-autoconfig memory at reset, turn audio filter on or off, intercept privilege violation errors, switch off cache/burst modes and can slow down a fast machine. Also can swap the boot drive and force 50Hz or 60Hz. Will do things straight away, after one reset or after every reset. Version 1.30, an update to version 1.00 on disk number 562. Binary only. Author: Chris Hames DRED The Disk REDucer. This program allows the user to arrange data on a set of disks using a best fit algorithm. If you have ever found it difficult to figure just which files should go onto which floppy, then DRED is for you! Most of the time (there are exceptions!) you can achieve 99% fullness of floppies/media. Requires kick 1.3 or 2.0. Version 2.003.007, binary only, freeware. Author: Bob Rye, Marcus Mroczkowski and Brett O'Callaghan Floozy Disassembles the Foozle FidoNet mail management system logfile into readable, human understandable statistics. Floozy's out- put is clear and concise and fully covers all aspects of Floozy use. All message base names, number of messages, and in/out packets/bytesizes are noted and further stats are calculated on these figures. Requires kick 1.3 or 2.0. Version 1.0204, binary only, freeware. Author: Bob Rye Oscillograph An emulation of an oscillograph, with five internal signal generators. The internal signals can be freely edited, even mathematical functions can be used. External signals can be used when a digitizer is connected to the Amiga. This program can be used for learning, demonstration, and even simple technical applications. The german original and the english translation are included, as well as a set of oscillations. Version 2.0, binary only. Author: Michael Gentner PC-TaskDemo PC-Task is a software IBM-PC emulator. It allows you to run the majority of IBM-PC software on your amiga with no additional hardware. Runs just like a normal application allowing multitasking to continue. The program has a graphical user interface and no additional filesystem/device mounting is required. A few clicks with the mouse and it is operational. VGA, EGA, CGA, MDA, Serial, Parallel, Mouse, 2 Floppy drives and 2 Hard drives are emulated. The hard drives can be partitions or hard drive files like the bridgeboard can use. This is the demonstration version 2.01 full version is available from the author. Binary only. Author: Chris Hames Xerox4045 A printer driver for printers supporting the Xerox 2700 command set. The 4045 (a hulking 8 PPM laser unit), is probably the most popular member of this family, so it got the name. The focus of this version was to get the dot graphic functions working. This appears to be working correctly as printing from Professional Page V2.1 and Tax Break have been successful in 300X300 graphics mode. Version 1.0. Author: Bob Schulien CONTENTS OF DISK 867 -------------------- CenterScreen A commodity which centers the frontmost screen horizontally on hotkey. Useful if you normally operate with overscan screens and an old program opens a normal size screen. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.07, an update to version 1.03 on disk 497. Includes german version and source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht ComplexPlot Allows the transformation of a drawing by a complex function. The drawing can be edited with the mouse (line, circle and fill modes included), and generators for cartesic and polar nets can be used. The freely editable complex function then changes the drawing in many interesting ways. Both english and german versions are included (and some demo drawings). Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Michael Gentner DeluxePacMan A pacman type game. Commercial quality, with excellent graphics and responsiveness. Automatically adjusts to either PAL or NTSC. Can be controlled with a joystick, mouse, or keyboard. Written in assembly. Version 1.4, an upgrade to 'PacMan' on disk 717. Shareware, binary only. Author: Edgar M. Vigdal GetDate A small program that allows users with an A500 or A1000 with- out a Battery backed-up clock to set the date and time from the startup-sequence. The user is prompted for the current date and time. The last date/time entered becomes the default for the next boot. Binary only. Author: James Weir LeftyMouse Yet another LeftyMouse, this one implemented as a commodity. Swaps the left and right mousebutton for lefties. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.06, an update to version 1.04 on disk 497. Includes german version and source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht CONTENTS OF DISK 868 -------------------- CDTV-Player A utility for all those people, who'd like to play Audio-CD's, while multitasking on workbench. It's an emulation of CDTV's remote control, but is a little more sophisticated. Access to the archive even without a CD-ROM-Drive (i.e. AMIGA 500- 4000), although you can't play a CD. PROGRAM & KARAOKE (live on-screen) included. Recognizes CDs automatically. AREXX-Port for usage in other programs. Version 2.0, an update to version 1.8 on disk number 849. FISH-WARE, binary only. Author: Daniel Amor MouseBlanker Blanks the mouse pointer after a defined timeout or if you press any key. Implemented as a commodity. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.21, an update to version 1.13 on disk 497. Includes german version and source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht Request Opens the OS 2.0 autorequester from script files. Title, text, gadgets and publicscreen of the requester can be changed by commandline options. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.04, an update to version 1.00 on disk 497. Includes source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht RussianFont Three Russian Vector Fonts, with a special Russian keymap that matches the Russian typewriter. These fonts are compatible with Russian Fonts found under WINDOWS (=> easy exchange). Version 3.0, update to version on disk number 805. Designed with FontDesigner. Binary only, shareware. Author: Daniel Amor SMaus A highly configurable "SUN-mouse" utility, implemented as a commodity with a graphical user interface. It activates the window under the mouse pointer if you move or after you have moved the mouse or if you press a key. You can specify titles of windows which shall not be deactivated using wildcards. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04, uses locale.library if avail- able. Includes english and german docs, german catalog file. Version 1.17. Shareware, binary only. Author: Stefan Sticht CONTENTS OF DISK 869 -------------------- Clock A simple Clock program but with the handy feature that you can "snapshot" the clock to stay with any screen or it can be free to pop to the frontmost screen automatically. Up to 4 alarm times can be set, which can simply put up a requester or cause some program to run in background. Hourly chimes can also be made to run a program (I.E. a sound sample player). Uses locale.library with OS2.1+ Version 2.00, binary only. Author: Bernd Grunwald CL_SEP92 This is the September 1992 release of CheatList for the Amiga. Cheatlist is a collection of various forms of help (cheats, hints, codes, etc.) for Amiga games. Included in the package is PokeList, a similar file which details pokes usable with the Action Replay cartridge. The September release covers 500 games, and on average, another forty games are added each release. Shareware. Author: Various, compiled by Peter Monk Uhr A small configurable digital clock (Uhr is german for "clock"), that makes use of the FormatDate() function in WorkBench 2.1's locale.library. Requires at least Kickstart 2.04 and WorkBench 2.1. Version 1.03, an update to the version on disk 757. Includes source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht CONTENTS OF DISK 870 -------------------- AmigaGuide Archive distribution of the AmigaGuide hypertext utility direct from Commodore. Contains developer examples and tools for AmigaGuide under V34/V37 and V39, plus a new free print/sign/ send-in distribution license for AmigaGuide, amigaguide.lib- rary, WDisplay, and their icons. Author: Commodore Business Machines FollowMouse A pair of small blinking eyes following the mouse movements on the screen. Runs from both the WorkBench and CLI. Version 1.2, an update to the version on disk number 757. Includes source in PASCAL. Author: Kamran Karimi Installer Archive distribution of the Amiga Installer utility direct from Commodore. Contains V1.24 of the Installer, documentation and examples for developers to use when developing their software. Also contains various enhancements and fixes detailed in the documentation enclosed. The documentation has also been enhanced and brought up to date. Author: Commodore Business Machines SoftProtect A software disk write-protection. With the permission of the user, disables floppy writes even on write-enabled disks. Switches to enable/disable states with a gadget. Runs from both WorkBench and CLI. An update to 'AskFirst' on disk number 753. Includes source in assembly. Author: Kamran Karimi StackCheck A program that determines the maximum stack usage of another program. It uses a completely different method than all the other stack-watching programs like WatchStack or Xoper and is very reliable. In most cases it does not require any CPU time to do its work. Version 1.0, includes source for Aztec C and GNU C. Author: Gunther Rohrich SWAP Memory management may be considered as one of the weak points of Amiga OS. SWAP was written as a trial to provide swapping for Amigas without any special hardware. The main intention is to let the user choose a task, swap it to disk so that its occupied memory is released, and do other things. Later on, he could swap the program back to main memory and let it continue from the point it was interrupted. Includes source in C and assembly. Author: Kamran Karimi WindowShuffle Activates and brings to front next or previous window with hotkeys. Hotkeys can be changed. Implemented as a commodity. Requires at least AmigaOS 2.04. Version 1.07, an update to version 1.05 on disk 497. Includes german version and source in C. Author: Stefan Sticht ***************************************************************************** > Portal: A Great Place For Amiga Users ====================================== Portal Communications' Amiga Zone The AFFORDABLE alternative for online Amiga information ------------------------------------------------------- The Portal Online System is the home of acclaimed Amiga Zone, which was formerly on the People/Link System. Plink went out of business in May, 1991 and The Amiga Zone's staff moved to Portal the next day. The Zone has just celebrated its second anniversary on Portal. The Amiga press raves about The Amiga Zone, when compared to its competition. If you live in the San Jose, CA area, then you can dial Portal directly. If you live elsewhere, you can reach Portal through any SprintNet (formerly Telenet) indial anywhere in the USA or through Tymnet from anywhere in North America. If you have an account on another Internet-connected system, you can connect to Portal using the UNIX Telnet programs, from anywhere in the industrialized world. Delphi and BIX users can now Telnet into Portal for a flat $19.95 a month, with *unlimited* use. Some of Portal/Amiga Zone's amazing features include: - Over 1.5 GIGabytes of Amiga-specific files, online, 24 hours a day. Portal has dedicated a 2.5 GIGabyte disk drive to the Amiga Zone. We have virtually unlimited space for files and new uploads. - The *entire* Fred Fish collection of freely distributable software, online. All of it. Every disk. Well-organized so it's easy to find exactly what you're after. - Fast, Batch Zmodem file transfer protocol. Download up to 100 files at once, of any size, with one command. - Twenty Amiga vendor areas with participants like AmigaWorld, ASDG, Soft-Logik, Black Belt, Apex Publishing, Stylus, Prolific, NES, and many others including Compute's Amiga Resource with over 4 Megabytes of exclusive Compute magazine disk stuff you won't find elsewhere. - 35 "regular" Amiga libraries with thousands of files. Hot new stuff arrives daily. Since Portal has FTP connections we can get new freely-distributable software online within MINUTES of its being announced on Usenet. - No upload/download "ratios" EVER. Download as much as you want, as often as you want, and never feel pressued doing it. Start downloading files with your first session on Portal. - Live, interactive nightly chats with Amiga folks whose names you will recognize. Special conferences. Random chance prize contests. Famous Amiga folks aren't the exception on Portal, they're the norm. Instead of stumbling around in frustration you can talk to the people who design your hardware, who write your software. - Vast Message bases where you can ask questions about *anything* Amiga related and get quick replies from the experts. - Amiga Internet mailing lists for Imagine, DCTV, LightWave, HyperAmi, Director and Landscapes are fed right into the Zone message bases. Read months worth of postings. They don't scroll off, ever! No need to clutter your mailbox with them. - FREE unlimited Internet Email. Your Portal account gets you a mailbox that's connected to the world. Send letters of any length to computer users in the entire industrialized world. No limits. No extra charges. No kidding! - Portal has the Usenet. Tthousands of "newsgroups" in which you can read and post articles about virtually any subject you can possibly imagine. Usenet feeds into Portal many times each hour. There are 14 Amiga-specific Usenet newsgroups with hundreds of articles posted every day, including postings by Commodore personnel. Since Usenet is distributed worldwide, your questions and answers can be seen by literally hundreds of thousands of people the same day you post them. - Other Portal SIGs (Special Interest Groups) online for Mac, IBM, Sun, NeXT, UNIX, Science Fiction, Writers, amateur radio, and a graphics SIG with thousands of GIF files to name just a few. ALL Portal SIGs are accessible to ALL Portal customers with NO surcharges ever. - The entire UPI/Clarinet/Newsbytes news hierarchy ($4/month extra) An entire general interest newspaper and computer news magazine. - Portal featues an exciting package of Internet features: IRC, FTP, TELNET, MUDS, LIBS. Free to all Portal customers with your account. Internet Services is a menu driven version of the same kinds of utilities you can also use from your Portal UNIX shell account. - All the files you can FTP. All the chatting you can stand on the IRC. And on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) you can talk live, in real time with Amiga users in the U.K., Europe, Australia, the Far East, 24 hours a day. - Our exclusive PortalX by Steve Tibbett, the graphical "front end" for Portal which will let you automatically click'n'download your waiting email, messages, Usenet groups and binary files! Reply to mail and messages offline using your favorite editor and your replies are sent automatically the next time you log into Portal. (PortalX requires Workbench 2.04 or higher) - And Portal does NOT stick it to high speed modem users. Whether you log in at 1200 or 2400 or 9600 or 14.4K you pay the same low price. How does all that sound? Probably too good to be true. Well.. it's true. Portal Signup or for more information: 1-408-973-9111 (voice) 9a.m.-5p.m. Mon-Fri, Pacific Time 1-408-725-0561 (modem 3/12/2400) 24 hours every day 1-408-973-8091 (modem 9600/14400) 24 hours every day or enter "C PORTAL" from any Sprintnet dial-in in the USA, or enter "portal" from any Tymnet "please log in:" prompt, USA & Canada or telnet to "portal.com" from anywhere. PORTAL'S CURRENT RATES: All prices shown are in U.S. Dollars Total Total Total Total Cost Cost Cost Cost Fee 1 hr. 5 hrs. 10 hrs.30 hrs. Startup Monthly Per Per per per per Fee Fee Hour month month month month $ $ $ $ $ $ $ Portal 19.95 19.95 2400/9600/14.4Kbps, *direct 24 hrs 0.00 19.95 19.95 19.95 19.95 2400/9600bps nonprime Sprint or Tymnet 2.50 22.95 32.45 44.95 94.95 2400/9600bps prime Sprint +% or Tymnet 5.50-10 29.95 69.95 119.95 varies 2400/9600bps non prime # PCPursuit 1.00 20.95 24.95 29.95 49.95 * plus cost of phone call if out of Portal's local dialing area Direct rates also apply to connections made to Portal using the UNIX "telnet" program from an account you may already have on an Internet-connected system. % 9600 bps Sprintnet and Tymnet available in over 300 cities areas + $10 rate prevails at smaller US Cities # PCPursuit is a service of US Sprint. Portal is a PCPursuit "Direct Access Facility" thus connection to Portal with a PCP account is simply a matter of entering C PORTAL,PCP-ID,PCP-PASSWORD at the SprintNet login prompt instead of C PORTAL. Note: Portal Direct 9600/14400 bps service is availble for both USR HST modems, and any V32/V32.bis modems. There are dozens of direct-dial high speed lines into Portal. No busy signals! SprintNet 9600bps service is V.32 modem protocol only. Tymnet 9600bps services is V.32 modem protocol only. Again, Portal does NOT surcharge high speed modem users! Portal subscribers who already have an account on an Internet-capable system elsewhere, can use that system's "telnet" program to connect to Portal for $0.00 an hour. That's right ZERO. From anywhere in the world. If you're in this category, be sure to ask the Portal reps, when you signup, how to login to Portal from your existing Internet account. Call and join today. Tell the friendly Portal Customer Service representative, "The Amiga Zone sent me!" 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. ***************************************************************************** > Amiga Report CONFIDENTIAL "Rumors Tidbits Predictions Observations Tips" ========================= SUNNYVALE, CA -- Atari Corp. reported a TWO MILLION DOLLAR loss as first quarter sales of the company's computers and video games slumped. The loss of three cents per share in the three months ended March 31 came on sales of $10.1 Million, down sharply from $44.1 million for the same period in 1992, when Atari lost $13.8 million, or 24 cents per share. ORLANDO, FL -- What is said to be the first consumer-available Falcons in Florida, if not the Southeast, have arrived at John Morrison Computers in Orlando, Florida. The first shipment of three machines arrived Wednesday afternoon, with 84 meg Conner hard drives, as opposed to the 65 meg Seagate units originally expected. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > AR Dealer Directory These are not ads -- just a reader service! =================== Armadillo Brothers 753 East 3300 South Salt Lake City, Utah VOICE: 801-484-2791 GEnie: B.GRAY Computers International, Inc. 5415 Hixson Pike Chattanooga, TN 37343 VOICE: 615-843-0630 Finetastic Computers 721 Washington St Norwood, MA 02062 VOICE: 617-762-4166 Portal: FinetasticComputers Internet: FinetasticComputers@cup.portal.com MicroSearch 9000 US 59 South, Suite 330 Houston, Texas VOICE: 713-988-2818 FAX: 713-995-4994 PSI Animations 17924 SW Pilkington Road Lake Oswego, OR 97035 VOICE: 503-624-8185 Internet: PSIANIM@agora.rain.com Software Plus Chicago 3100 W Peterson Avenue Chicago, Illinois VOICE: 312-338-6100 (Dealers: To have your name added, please send Email!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Amiga Report's "EDITORIAL CARTOON" ================================== "Don't blame me, I voted for Bush!" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Amiga Report International Online Magazine ~ STR Publications -* [S]ilicon [T]imes [R]eport *- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Amiga Report ~YOUR INDEPENDENT NEWS SOURCE~ June 5, 1993 Online Magazine Copyright (c) 1993 All Rights Reserved No. 1.12 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 other- wise noted. Reprints must, without exception, include the name of the pub- lication, date, issue number and the author's name. Amiga Report and/or por- tions therein may not be edited in any way without prior written permission. However, translation into another language is acceptable, provided the original meaning is not altered. Amiga Report may be distributed on privately owned not-for-profit bulletin board systems (fees to cover cost of operation are acceptable), and major online services such as (but not limited to) Delphi, GEnie, and Portal. Distribution on public domain disks is acceptable provided proceeds are only to cover the cost of the disk (e.g. no more than $5 US). Distribution on for-profit magazine cover disks requires written permission from the editor or publisher. Amiga Report is a not-for-profit publication. Amiga Report, at the time of publication, is believed reasonably accurate. Amiga Report, its staff and contributors are not and cannot be held responsible for the use or misuse of information contained herein or the results obtained there from. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~