Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

HiQ's revolutionary 

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\miga Buy-out • Amiga Java • CyberVision 3D • Draw Stu 

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| ^^ M E tU A | 

1

"Work! of A12OO" A "Top 1OO Games" or "Epic 

TOTAL MEMORY EXPANSIONS 

A1200 trapdoor fitting memory expansions feature a battery backed clock and a socket for an accelerator FPU. Unlike other memory 

isions that conflict with the PCMCIA port, our TOTAL memory expansions include unique software that will enable the maximum amount of mem 

ory to be used even with a PCMCIA fitting device. 

* NEARLY DOUBLES THE SPEED OF THE A1200 

MEMORY EXPANSION 

MEMORY EXPANSION £24. 

Anti Virus Professional is trie most powerful tool for detecting and removing viruses, i 

Anti Virus pro will check and device hard drives, floppy disks and even CD ROM dri- V; 

ves for viruses. Very straight forward to use, includes a full 50 page manual. 

ORDER NOW BEFORE A VIRUS DESTROYS 

STEM!!! 

ANTIVIRI 

Highly rated SCSI drive will store 100mb per cartridge. Comes 

Complete with power supply, SCSI cable, Instructions aid cartridge. 

ZIP DRIVES £159.99 OR 

£199.99 with Squirrel 

JAZ DRIVE £439.99 OR 

£479.99 with Squirrel 

Our highly rated, top quality feature packed modems are ideal for Amiga 

users. All modems include our FREE MODEM ACCESSORIES PACK (worth 

t;l-j,-jy) which includes a cable to connect the modem to the Amiga, 

NCOMM comms software, Amiga Guide to Comms and a list of Bulletin 

Boards from which you will be able to download vast amounts of free 

software as well as have access to E-MAIL facilities. 

• MNP 2-4 Error Correction • MNP 5 Data Compression 

• Fax Class I and II compatible, Group 3 • Hayes Compatible 

• Full 80 page manual • 12 Months guarantee y i 

14400 MODEM £69.99 

33600 MODEM 

NET AND WEB SOFTWARE 

ALSO AVAILABLE... 

EXTERNAL FLOPPY DRIVE 

A600/A1200 INTERNAL FLOPPY DRIVE 

A500 INTERNAL FLOPPY DRIVE 

MOUSE 

3.5' HARD DRIVE CABLE 

2.5' HARD DRIVE CABLE 

FRESH FONTS CD 

PHOTO CD-MANAGER 

£49.99 

£44.99 

£49.99 

£12.99 

£17.50 

£9.99 

£19.99 

£19.99 

12 FPU (PLCC) or only 

when purchased with above 

SCSI+ 

Now includes CD 

ROM drivers and 

instructions. -■-—. 

Dataflyer is i 

- 16 bif~—- 

'/A 

SCSI II controller card that 

converts the signals on the 

internal IDE interface to also run SCSI devices at 

the same time as the IDE hard drive. The Dataflyer 

SCSI+ will operate up to 5 SCSI devices such as 

CD-ROMS, hard drives, Syquest removable drives, 

tape back up drives etc. Unlike other SCSI inter 

faces, the Dataflyer SCSI+ is compatible with all 

known accelerators etc and it does not stop you 

from utilising any of the Important expansion ports 

on your A1200/A600. The Dataflyer SCSt+ easily 

installs into the A1200/A600 (simply pushes In, 

no need to remove the metal shield) and pro 

vides a 25 way D connector through the blank 

ing plate at the back of the A1200. Full instruc 

tions and software supplied. 

DATAFLYER ONLY 

) SCSI device 

tUIRREL ONLY 

a SCSI device 

SURF SQUIRREL 

a SCSI device 

when purchsed with 



CLOCK CARTRIDGE 

£19.9 

CACHE CDFS £44.9 

EPIC ENCYCLOPEDIA CD 

(full '97 version) £19.99 

50mhz FPU (for blizzard 1230) £44.99 

WORLD OF A1200 CD and TOP 100 A1200 GAMES CD 

£7. 

Freephone O5OO 34O548 tc

TOTAL SCSI CD-ROM DRIVE 

Fully featured SCSI CDflOM 

drive for use with the 

A1200 or A600. I 

Features include 

superb metal enclo 

sure with in-built mains 

power supply. Includes all - 

software, cables and 

instructions for immediate ~ 

use. Full CD32 emulation and Audio CD player software includ 

ed. No extras needed! Just plug in and go. Choose either PCM 

CIA fitting Squirrel interface or internally fitting Datafiyer SCSI 

Interface. 

TOTAL CD-ROM DRIVES 

2 speed £129.99 

4 speed £149.99 

6 speed £159.99 

8 speed £209.99 

Prices include Squirrel. 

Add £30.00 for Datafiyer or Surf Squirrel 

LTRA CD-ROM DRIVE 

uperb IDE CD-ROM drive system for the A1200. Fully featured, 

ip quality drives in a top quality enclosure with built in power 

jppiy. All cables, instructions, software including CD32 emulator 

and audio CD player etc., included for immediate use. Trie CO- 

ROM interface supply plugs inside the A1200 (exceptionally 

easy to fit by anybody) and provides a connector in the blanking 

plate at the rear of the A120O, next to the mouse socket. 

PLEASE PHONE FOR FURTHER 

ULTRA 4 SPEED 

HATION SH 

9.99 

ULTRA 8 SPEED 9.99 

ARD DRIVES 

.5" HARD DRIVES 

ur high speed 2.5' IDE hard drives for the Amiga A12O0 & 

600 computers come complete with fitting cable, screws, par- 

lioning software, full instructions and 12 months guarantee. 

II drives supplied by us are formatted, partitioned and nave 

/orkbench (WB2 for the A600 and WB3 for the A1200) 

nstalled for immediate use. Fitting is incredibly simple; if you 

an plug the mouse into the mouse socket, you can plug the 

rd drive socket. 

A5CKy+420mb Hard Drive 

340mb £109.99 

540mb £139.99 

1000mb £174.99 

1800mb £209.99 

FREE HOW TO FIT YOU 

IVF 

I Stakker disk to 

ie drive's cap; 

hard drive ordered 

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ACCELERATORS 

compauoie mi 

APOLLO 

230 LITE 

, ■ High quality low cost 

~~' 7"-.H:-38O3O accelerator 

! LJ and FPU all running 

.-.-.•ry backed clock. Easy 

izing performance for 

w a 4mb or 8mb SIMM. 

APOLLO 1230 PRO £149.99 

TWIN SIMM TECHNOLOGY 

All the features you asked for at an affordable price. 

formance 68030 with FPU and MMU running at 40mhz. Two 

72pin SIMM sockets can 

take upto 32mb each. /• 

Simms can be mixed (i.e. ... ;■"//>: i.v. 

a 4mb and 8mb will give . i: / "y-^,/* 

12mb) and can be sin- >"" /.;. , 

gle or double si" J 

Fully PCMCIA c 

patible regardless oi 

how much memory is ■ 

ted. Easy trapdoor fittii. 

battery backed clock 

APOLLO 1240/1260 

68040/68060+MMU based A1200 accelerator. Features 

battery backed clock and a 72 pin socket for a standard 72 

pin SIMM {up to 128mb). Fully featured, fan cooled trapdoor 

fitting accelerator. 

APOLLO 1240/25 £l99.9

Action news 

If you want the latest on Amiga games, 

we have three pages of the stuff 

Myst 

Talking of news, ClickBOOM have 

announced Myst will be making it onto 

the Amiga, we take a sneak preview 

aniani 

70 

FOOTY 72 

We probably spend more time watching foot 

ball than anything else, apart from drinking 

beer and watching football 

Space 74 

Being a very topical type of magazine and see 

ing StarWars has been re-released, lets have a 

big old space feature, sounds good to me- 

A-z tips 78 

Hugh 'don't call me Huggy' Poynton has always 

been of dubious sexual orientation. I have no 

idea what that has got to do with tips though 

Golf 80 

I think ! have lost the plot, but I'm 

pretty sure this is about a golf game, 

is that right? Yes that's right 

Competition 81 

Win tickets to the Royal Air Tattoo 

Fly*n high 82 

Epic's next release is going to be good, 

in a racing around circuits type of way 

EVIEWS 

Siamese rtg 

HiQ have updated there rather nice Siamese 

system and now you can do something rather 

special. Run Amiga programs on Windows 95 

Draw studio 

If you want a great structured drawing pro 

gram, image processor and a ton of pictures 

and clip art then the DrawStudio CD is for you 

EATURES 

Cyber vision 3d. 

It is meant to be the greatest Amiga graphics 

card in the world, or is it? Dan Winfield takes his 

life in his hands as he rips out his trusty old 

Picasso II card, just to tell you what's what 

Java 'C C PROGRAMMI! 

Put your feet up, get a big mug of coffee and 

plan your holiday. All from the comfort of your 

own home and using your faithful old Amiga 

Amiga Computing 

JUNE 1997 

]f you cannot do C programming by now there is no 

helping you, as Paul Overaa finishes with part six 

Public sector 

Dave Cusick has nothing better to do than look 

at the latest in PD, and this is what he found

HE COVERDISKS 

Miami 2.0j 

Amiga Computing presents 

the latest Miami update, get 

the best in Internet access 

with this great demo version 

Alien Formula I 

Screaming around a race track has 

never seemed so realistic or fun 

Includes: 

ExeCON It PowerWindows • 

Syslnspector • mFTP 

News 

EGULARS 

Big, big news, the Amiga has been bought by 

Gateway 2000. We have all the latest details 

Letters m 

if you keep on writing in, we will 

have to keep printing your letters 

Acas 

Free repair advice care of ACAS, but 

really we're a bunch of cowboys 

MICA GUIDE 

Neil Mohr prattles on 

Phil South can make 

your AMOS creations 

sing, in stereo to 

about DOS driver, again 

Tips from Paul Overaa on 

transferring Midi files to 

and from machines 

r 

Want to know about 

Internet advertising, Dave 

Cusick fills you in, ooh er 

I know you have always 

wondered about ARexx 

and ED, Paul Overaa does 

HTML for beginners, at 

least for the minute. Neil 

Mohr explains all 

What is a beta and why 

would you want to test 

one? Paul Overaa knows 


JUNE 1997 

OVER 

Absolute 

beginners. 

STORY 

If you have ever won 

dered how to get your 

creations onto print 


explains how it's done 

';. 

•aso 

Back issues 

Missed out on an issue 

of Amiga Computing? 

:l 

■■: 

■HBII 

Turn to page 42 

, \ 

i i ' ■)■»*««#-- 

Wide!

Of you are scratching your head 

and wondering what this pillock 

is going on about, don't worry, 

the sad Star Wars reference is 

that the liquidators have finally agreed to a 

bid and Amiga Technologies has been 

bought. 

Great news I'm sure you'll agree. The fact 

is, the sale took everyone in the Amiga 

community completely by surprise. It 

seemed everyone had resigned themselves 

to a long drawn out bankruptcy, as hap 

pened with Commodore, but then on the 

March 27 a bid was accepted. 

We had ail gone home and as the Friday 

was a bank holiday, the first I heard was 

when I was testing out an IRC client and 

everyone on the Amiga channel was talking 

about Gateway 2000 buying the Amiga. 

Did I forget to mention that? The odd 

thing is that the buyer is one of the largest 

PC manufacturers in the US, in fact 

Gateway is a fortune 500 company, with a 

turnover of $5 billion last year. The other 

great thing is they like cows - due to some 

kind of bovine fetish, all Gateway products 

come in cow coloured boxes, well we like 

them anyway. 

It seems the initial response from all of 

you has been very good, and who can 

blame you? Such a large company with so 

much financial backing can only be a good 

thing. The move has baffled some of the 

other PC companies - Dell says it thought 

the purchase was just a publicity stunt to 

heighten awareness of Gateway in Europe. 

The AC team 

EDITOR 

ART EDITOR 

PRODUCTION EDITOR 

NEWS EDITOR 

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS 

ADVERTISING MANAGER 

AD SALES 

AD PRODUCTION 

AD TYPESETTERS 

MARKETING MANAGER 

PRODUCTION MANAGER 

DATABASE MANAGER 

Neil Mohr 

Graham Parry, 

Stuart Cripps 

Justine Bowden, 

Hugh Poynton 

Dave Cusick 

(Catherine Nelson 

Paul Ovc r.i.i 

Phil South 

Elaine Preiwtt 

Sue Horsefield 

Claire Beard 

Barbara Newall 

Eddie Burke 

Malcolm Thorley 

Steve Tagger 

Alan Capper 

Victoria Quinn Harkin 

0171 831 9252 

a new hope 

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR DavidWren 

The continuing Amiga saga, well, 

continues. Neil Mohr wonders 

where this leaves the Amiga. 

Somehow, I don't think so. If all Gateway 

wanted was publicity, I'm sure there are 

much more effective and less expensive 

ways of going about it. 

Another rumour doing the rounds in the 

PC world is that the American IRS has been 

on Gateway's back, baying for blood. The 

rumour goes that the IRS thinks Gateway 

has not paid enough taxes and buying the 

Amiga will entitle Gateway to tax relief, let 

ting it off the hook. 

MANAGING DIRECTOR Ian Bioomfield 

I would like to think Gateway has bought 

the Amiga with the best possible intentions. 

I hope it sees a technology worth investing 

in and developing. I would imagine, in the 

short term, there are markets out there that 

the current range of Amigas can exploit 

thereby funding the Amiga company and in 

the long run, work on the new generation 

of PowerPC Amigas can finally begin. 

The few press releases and statements 

that have come from Gateway so far have 

all pointed to this being its motivation - 

DISTRIBUTION COMAG (01895) 444055 

SUBSCRIPTION 0ISI-35T 2961 

Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations 

22,051 

Jin-Jun 1996 

Published by IDG Media.Media House.Adlingtori Park, 

MacciesfeldSKIEMNP 

Tel:01625 B78888.Fax:0IU5B79964 

EMail contacts: 

Editoriihedit@3comp.demon.couk 

Advertising, jds@acomp.demon.co.uk 


JUNE 1997 

whatever the real reason, time will tell. The 

first thing I will be looking for is some sort 

of real investment at Amiga Technologies in 

staff. 

We regret Amiga Computing cannot offer 

technical help on a personal basis either by phone 

or in writing.All reader enquries should be 

submitted to the address in this panel. 

Amiga Computing is an independent pundcflton and 

Amigo Technologies is mil responsible for aty of the 

articles in this issue or for ory of the opinions expressed. 

©1997 IDG Media . No material may be 

reproduced in whole or in part without written per 

mission.While every care is taken, the publishers 

cannot be held legally reponsible for any errors in 

articles, listings or adverjsemems. 

All prices listed in the editorial content of this 

magazine are inclusive of VAT unless stated 

12 iaut luhcripiion £49.99 (UK), £19.99 (EECJ 

£14.99 tWuldj 

Ongoing quarterly direct debit1 £10.99 (UK only) 

Primed and bound by Apple Webb Offsei 

As usual when the Amiga gets involved, 

events have suddenly taken a further turn. 

The latest news is that Compaq has become 

very interested in purchasing Gateway, 

causing Gateway's share price to soar. 

Currently Compaq is sitting on S3.5 billion 

and a 'small' company would fit nicely in 

their back pocket. 

So even though Amiga has been bought, 

the situation is still not clear cut. Keep 

tuned to Amiga Computing and you will be 

assured of the latest news each and every 

month, dodgy Star Wars references and all. 

Neil Mohr 

Editor 

US Readers - Amiga Computing (ISSN 0959- 

9630) is "published monthly by IDG Media. 

England, a subsidiary of the IDG Corp. Periodical 

postage paid pending at Bouon. MA and iddi- 

tieral mailing offices. Send enquiries to: 

IDG Macclesfeld 

US yearly subscription rate: USA Gold $70. 

USA Standard $40 

For eight years Amiga Computing has 

been the leading magaiine for Amiga 

enthusiasts. Amiga Computing promises to 

inform, educate and entertain its readers 

each month with the most dedicated 

coverage of the Amiga available

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Gateway 2000 buys 

Amiga Technologies 

fter months of waiting, speculation and 

I rumour, Amiga Technologies has 

'finally been purchased. On 

March 27, Gateway 2000 

Inc, an American PC manufacturer, 

announced that it had applied 

to acquire the assets of Amiga 

Technologies GmbH. Four 

days later, Gateway's offer 

was accepted by a bank 

ruptcy court in Germany. 

The news was greeted 

with a mixture of sur 

prise, confusion and 

general approval by the 

industry and Amiga 

enthusiasts alike. 

Although Gateway 

has revealed little about 

its long term plans for 

the Amiga, a few facts are 

known. 

Amiga Technologies will 

be renamed Amiga 

International and operated as 

a separate business unit, devel 

oping new products for the Amiga 

market. 

Petro Tyschtschenko, the current 

President of Amiga Technologies, wil! stay 

on in his present position. According to 

Tyschtschenko, the company will initially aim to 

restart production of the A1200 and make it avail 

able through conventional retail outlets such as 

computer shops and department stores rather than 

r 

relying solely on mail order schemes. It appears that 

an A1200 could be available in the shops 

for about 698 DM (S400 Dollars or 

£250) or about £360 with hard 

drive. 

However, in the long 

term, the motive behind 

Gateway's bid remains 

something of a mystery. 

There is speculation 

that the purchase will 

be used to help Amiga 

bridge out into the 

US (where sales have 

traditionally been 

much lower than in 

Europe) and boost 

Gateway's position 

and reputation in 

Europe where it has 

yet to establish itself 

as a household name. 

Another more 

exciting possibility is the 

possibility that Gateway 

wants to use Amiga to help it 

develop and refine new tech 

nologies. Gateway has recently 

been experimenting in the multime 

dia market with its Destination big screen 

PC and looks interested in expanding its knowledge 

in this field. 

Amiga Technologies was one of the first pioneers 

of multimedia and would be an obvious choice for a 

company interested in developing new technolo 

GATEWAY20O0 

Although not too well known in Europe, Gateway 2000 is one of America's Fortune 500 companies 


JUNE 1997 

QUALITY 

QUICKLY 

UIKPAK 

QuikPak welcomed (he successful Gateway bid 

gies. Although Tyschtschenko has denied that 

Gateway plans to utilise Amiga technology for set 

top boxes, the traditional strength of the Amiga is 

that it allows for high performance on modest hard 

ware so the know-how and intellectual property of 

Amiga might be a very valuable investment for 

Gateway. It isn't too far fetched to suggest that 

Gateway could be interested in developing inexpen 

sive, low-end multimedia machines. 

Reaction on the Amiga newsgroups has been 

overwhelmingly positive. An Amiga Web Directory 

DejaNews search of current newsgroup messages 

has indicated that reaction to the announcement 

has been about 98 per cent positive. Even QuikPak, 

who made an unsuccessful bid for the company in 

February, welcomed Gateway's purchase. 

A press release posted onto the Internet shortly 

after Gateway's successful bid congratulated the 

company on the purchase and stated that, 'The 

Gateway purchase may represent an excellent 

opportunity to breath new life into the Amiga plat 

form. We've maintained all along that we believe in 

the future of the Amiga and we stand by our state- 

ments...We look forward to working with you, the 

user, and all our other partners in making the 

Amiga's future as bright as possible. We look for 

ward to working with the newest player in the 

Amiga field, Gateway 2000." 

Gateway is certainly in a very good position to 

revive the fortunes of the Amiga. Founded in 1985, 

Gateway 2000 Inc. is a Fortune 500 company (one 

of the top 500 companies on the DOW Jones 

index) and a global leader in the direct marketing 

of PCs. Employing over 9,700 people in the US, 

Ireland and Malaysia, the company last year 

shipped 1.9 million systems and reported a net 

income of S250 million.

□ miga Foundation Netwo 

In the March issue of Amiga Computing, we included an article about the Amiga Foundation 

lect as much information on the Amiga as possible. 

Since then, Jon has contacted Amiga Computing with further details of how the project is progressing. He has apparently received well over 200 e-mails and let- 

ters in response to the article and is ready to outline the immediate future for the Foundatk 

The Amiga Foundation Network should be finished soon with downloadable versions of C uake for the Amiga and Warcraft 2. Although much work remains to be 

done, a preliminary page is already up and running at http://home.sol.no/jonlb/index.html. In addition to this, AFN will be at The Gathering1 in Norway at Easter. 

Jon also informs us that there is no longer a registration fee to join the Foundation. 

Jon has polled members of AFN about the hardware set up of their Amigas and found th it the average set up appears to be: 

CPU 68030 + FPU +MMu / 50MHz. 

Ram 4Mb fast RAM , 6Mb in total. 

HD 450 Mb hard drive. 

CD-Rom: 50 per cent have them and 50 per cent are going to buy. 

Monitor: 1024 is still dominant. 

Gfxcard 10 per cent of AFN members have graphics cards, most of them being A4( 00 or A1200 with tower solutions. 

Virtual memory is apparently "...the biggest thing yet! They are all using Vmm wherever i ve go!." The survey doesn't take A500/600 users into account because 

these machines are not capable of upgrading to current standards. 

Anybody requiring further information should contact Jon at: jonlb@online.no 

Qstar Knowledge System 

Istar, a new Knowledge Based System for the Amiga, has just been released on Aminet. 

Knowledge Based Systems (KBS) are programmes designed to present information in a form 

that makes it easier to understand, process and collate. As Dr. Andrew Basden from the 

Information Technology Institute, University of Salford, explains: 

"Istar allows you to draw your knowledge base as a box and arrows diagram and then 

immediately run it as an inference net. This means you can encapsulate human expert knowl 

edge to create an intelligent advisory system. When the user presses the 'InferGoals' button it 

will ask a sequence of questions in order to arrive at a conclusion. Its backward chaining algo 

rithm ensures it will only ask the user relevant questions and suppress irrelevant ones dynam 

ically. Its forward chaining algorithm ensures any information entered will be propagated auto 

matically throughout the knowledge base." 

The Istar system is designed to clarify data that can often be complicated and difficult to 

assess, in decision support mode it will fulfil tasks such as calculating whether the shares of a 

company are worth buying. 

Star's creators claim that, because of its inference mechanism, Istar is faster on a standard 

A1200 than it would be on many Pentium systems. This is due to its careful internal design and 

the fact that the kernel routines are written in assembler. 

Istar is available from Aminet. Version 1.06 can be found in dev/misc/lstar.lha. Version 1.05 

can be found in bii/misc/lstar.lha. It is also available for downloading from the INCA Web page: 

http://www.salford.ac.yk/iti/projects/inca/. 

For more information mail lstar@basden.demon.co.uk. 

hat Do They 

Really Think? 

Reactions to new of the take over have been posi 

tive across the board among enthusiasts and users 

alike. 

Intangible Assets, the Amiga retailer established 

by former Commodore Software Engineer Dale L. 

Larson, has greeted the purchase of the Amiga with 

enthusiasm. Mr. Larson released the following state 

ment on March 27, the day the purchase was 

announced: 

"I'm thrilled Amiga Technologies has finally been 

purchased, more so that it has been bought by a 

company with such tremendous resources, visionary 

management and customer-service orientation. 

From its statement that it 'will work to develop new 

products for the Amiga market,' we conclude the 

Amiga has a bright future ahead of it. I trust that 

this will re-invigorate the Amiga community and 

renew interest in our markets. We're looking for 

ward to a surge in sales of our Amiga products in 

the coming months as a result of this announce 

ment." 

CUGUG and the Amiga Web Directory see the 

take-over in a similarly positive light: "CUCUC and 

The Amiga Web Directory are pleased to see the 

long wait to find out who the new owners will be is 

finally over. While it's a little early to judge just what 

Gateway's long-term plans are for the Amiga, there 

are a number of very positive things that can be 

said." 

"First, Gateway has financial resources and as far 

as we know, is financially stable. They enjoyed sales 

of S5.04 billion with a 5 per cent after-tax net 

income last year, a record for Gateway. Secondly 

this is a company - unlike Commodore - not afraid 

of marketing and advertising computers. Its volumi 

nous print ads that dominate the computer maga 

zines are clever and eye-catching. Its recent televi 

sion spots are also entertaining and display the 

company's products in a very positive light. 

Gateway just may spend a few dollars advertising 

the Amiga. This alone will be a strong, positive 

dynamic in the Amiga market." 

RK UP AND RUNNING 

Network, an ambitious project established by Jon Lennart Berg to col- 

n. 


JUNE 1997 

OPENHAGEN 

SHOW 

Danish computer buffs are organising a week 

long party in Copenhagen. Although not exclu 

sively Amigaphile, the Danish group, DGC, aims 

to attract a large body of Amiga fans to the show. 

The show will include a PC/Amiga network 

involving 600 cable links. The organisers plan to 

provide a Valhalla room for networked games, 

an adventure room where new technology is 

demonstrated and a non-alcoholic bar. 

A number of competitions will be held at the 

show including a sponsor demo, wild demo, 3D 

demo, 4 channel tracker demo, multichannel 

and GFX competitions on both the PC and 

Amiga. DGC plans to charge a fee of £35 for 

entrance and accommodation for the week, all 

you need to do is get there. 

For more details contact: 

DGC 

Munktoftevej 16, 

2610 Roedovre, Denmark 

Telephone: +45 44 92 93 77 

lmathera 

Closure 

Ironically, in such a positive upbeat month for 

the Amiga, Almathera Systems Ltd. has had 

to cease trading, due to cash flow problems 

caused by non-payment from VisCorp. 

The company had been battling to survive 

after the closure of Commodore three years 

ago, but was forced to announce its closure 

in March. Almethera had been contracted to 

work on VisCorp's set top boxes project. 

Although the company dedicated months to 

developing a core component for the set top 

box operating environment, VisCorp was 

unable to pay Almathera for the work com 

pleted and the company was unable to 

recover from the losses. 

In a statement released on the Amiga Web 

Directory, Almathera's management thanked 

the Amiga Community for its support saying: 

"In the six and a half years that Almathera 

has been trading we have made many 

friends among the Amiga community and 

wish everyone that dealt with Almathera at 

any time all the best for the future."

Web tv deal! 

Software giant Microsoft has purchased the 

privately held WebTV Networks Inc. in a deal 

estimated to be worth $450 million. 

WebTV, based in Palo Alto, California was 

founded in 1995 to develop technologies and 

guidelines for manufacturers to create set top 

boxes which would allow Internet access via 

television. WebTV networks licences its 

designs for set top boxes to Philips Consumer 

Electronics Co. and Sony Corp. 

Essentially, the acquisition will allow 

Microsoft an unrivalled ability to influence the 

development of the set top box. In a state 

ment, chairman and chief executive of 

Microsoft, Bill Gates said that, "This partner 

ship with WebTV underscores our strategy of 

delivering consumers the benefits of the 

Internet together with emerging forms of dig 

ital broadcasting." 

The acquisition coincides with Microsofts 

recent announcement that future versions of 

Windows and Windows NT would include 

sofhvare that allowed the computer used to 

view traditional television programmes, 

Internet broadcasts and revolutionary new 

services such as personalised news delivery 

on their computers. 

Page monster 1.0 

American developers CultureShock 

Multimedia have released Pagemonster 1.0, 

a user friendly web page generation tool for 

the Amiga. 

Pagemonster is designed so that people 

with no previous knowledge of HTML can cre 

ate pages using the tool. The point and click 

interface and digitized voice narration also 

cater to those might otherwise be intimidated 

by the prospect of creating web pages on the 

Amiga. 

Pagemonster will require a pretty good 

system setup. To run it you will need, Amiga 

OS 3.0 or greater, at least 6 Megs of Ram, 

AmigaVision Player and Runtime libraries, the 

Append command and 8 megs of Harddrive 

space 

CultureShock Multimedia are making 

Pagemonster 1.0 available for S49.95 if it is 

purchased before July 1997. After this time 

the price will be set at $69.95. If you are 

interested in Pagemonster contact 

CultureShock at: 

CultureShock Multimedia 

2319 North 45th street 

Suite 296 

Seattle, 

Washingtion 98103 

or cshock&serv.net. 


JUNE 1997 

QlOS 

This year's CeBIT show 

will seethe unveiling of 

the first PowerPC to 

meet the conditions of 

the Common Hardware 

Reference Platform 

{CHRP) standard. This 

is a standard that guar 

antees all CHRP com 

puters can use any 

other CHRP compatible 

operating systems or 

hardware. 

The PIOS Maxxtrem 

200 is powered by a 

200 MHz PPC 603 

processor and can be 

easily upgraded. The 

Maxxtrem is already 

prepared for new 

PowerPC generations 

so that the machine 

can grow with the 

demands of the user. 

In addition, PIOS 

states that, "...the 

Maxxtrem can be oper 

ated with several processors. Halfway through the year, PIOS will have finished the first mul 

tiprocessor cards with the two and four PowerPC CPUs. In view of the coming enormous 

development of RISC technology, a performance of4x 300 MHz or more will be possible!" 

The PIOS Maxxtrem will come as standard with E-IDE hard disk drive, CD-Rom drive, 1.44 

floppy drive, keyboard and mouse, as well as Mac OS and BeOS. For more details contact 

PIOS Computer AG on: (49) 5121 75 33 0 

asteiner World 

of Amiga 

More details have emerged about the Gasteiner World of Amiga Show. The biggest names in the 

Amiga world have signed up for the show including Active Software, Digita, Golden Image, Hi 

Soft ICPUG, PD Soft, Sadeness, Siren, Wizard Developments, Blittersoft, Epic, Guildhall, HiQ, Nova 

Design, Power Computing, Scala UK and SNAP Computer Supplies. 

A highlight of the show will be the appearance of the first new Amiga to be produced in sev 

eral years, the Power Amiga 7000 from Direct Software. It will be the most powerful Amiga ever 

and should beat any PC under £3,000. The Power Amiga will be demonstrated and Direct 

Software will be taking orders for the machine at the show. 

Not to be outdone, PIOS will be exhibiting the transAm and Maxxtrem. The transAm is 

described fay PIOS as "the home computer of the future, the Amiga of the next generation, faster 

than the Amiga world knew before." 

The show takes place at the Novotel Exhibition Centre, Hammersmith, London, on Saturday 

17 and Sunday 18 May. Tickets cost £8 for adults and £6 for children. For advance booking call 

the advance booking hotline on 01369 707766. 

Amiga Developer 

Network Luanched 

On the other side of the Atlantic, The North Alabama Society of Amiga Users has announced 

the launch of its new Amiga Developer Network Web site al http://www.amiga.org/developer. 

The site is dedicated to the further development of the Amiga platform and will include 

discussion bases, technical specifications and developer contact information. 

For more information on the North Alabama Society of Amiga Users contact: 

Wayne Hunt 

North Alabama Society of Amiga Users - 

http://www.amiga.org/nasau/about.html 

World-Wide Amiga Online ■ http://www.amiga.org 

Amiga Developer Network - http://www.amiga.org/developer

Amiga Mice 

Replacement Mice £6.95 

MegaMouse 400 £9.95 

MegaMouse Plus (3 Button) £10.95 

Optical Mouse £29.95 

New Golden Image 

TrackBall £19.95 

Pen Mouse £12.95 

(ideal for CAD) 

C 1 

RAM CARDS A1200 

A1200 with clock and 4Mb 

A1200 with clock and 8Mb 

A1200 with clock, 8Mb & 33Mhz FPU 

33Mhz FPU inc. crystal 

RAM CARDS A500/500+ & A600 

A500 512Kw/o clock 

A500+ 1Mb w/o clock 

A600 1Mb w/o clock 

.£49.00 

.£65.00 

.£80.00 

.£15.00 

.£20.00 

.£20.00 

.£20.00 

AftOO 1Mb with clock 

.£30.00 

c 1 

Al&Power Hard Drive controller A500 ...£99 

AT-Bus Hard Drive controller A2000 £99 

Oktagon 2008 SCSI controller £99 

Multifece III £79 

PCMCIA Controller for CDRom for A1200 £69 

NEW MULTI I/O CARD 

FOR AMIGA 1500/2000/4000 

Active N port high .speed serial card, 

Multibo.ird Support 57600 Hand rate on all 

channels simultaneously. -£299 

New AlfaQuatro Interface 

Specially made hardware and software. Allows 

4 ATAPI devices, ie, 2 IDE hard disk & 2 IDE 

CD Rom to Amiga 4000 internal IDE 

controller, through Alfepower on Amiga 

500/500+ and possibly Amiga 1200, comes 

with full IDE Fix software £59 

Joysticks & Joypads 

Amiga Joysticks -£9.95 

Amiga Joypads £9.95 

CD32 Joypad £14.00 

uj Punnnh 

Jjj 

Best pricing on CD ROM Drives & Hard Drives. 

jja Pufu&ii "J ~)~ 

We can supply CD ROM solutions for ALL Amigas from A500 to A4000. We 

will match any genuine advertised price and also give four top titles free: 

Nick Faldo's Championship Golf; Syndicate; Pinball Fantasies & The Chaos 

Engine on top where we have to price match any product 

All our External IDE CD ROM Drives have built in power supplies (they do not draw 

power from your Amiga) 

Three different options to connect CD ROM drives to A600 or 

A12D0 

a) Use PCMCIA port for total external solution without 

opening up your Amiga. You can Hot plug this device 

without harming your Amiga. 

b) Use Internal IDE port with AlfaDuo ifyou have 

2.5' Hard Drive (will be with iull IDERX software). 

ci Use Internal IDE port with AlfaQuatro interface ifyou 

have 3.5" Hard Drive (will be with full IDEFIX 

software). 

All CD ROM drives have play CD facility. Audio connection at 

front as well as at the back. Melai casing. 

Quad speed CD ROM for 

Six speed CD ROM for 

4x4 Disk Changer 

Eight speed CD ROM for 

External 

A6QQ/A1200 

£149.00 

£159.00 

£159.00 

£169.00 

Internal 

Al500/A2000 

£119.00 

£129.00 

£129.00 

£139.00 

External* 

A500/A500+ 

£129.00 

£139.00 

£139.00 

£149.00 

'(for A500/A500+Allapower hard drive controller and Hard Drive is required). A15D0/AZO00 supplied with 

IDE controller & software. AiOOO supplied with AlfaQuatro interface 8. Full IDE Fix software. 

External Floppy Drive 

for all Amigas.....-£39.95 

Internal Floppy Drive 

A500/500+ .' £35.00 

Internal Floppy Drive A600/1200+ 

A.-Grade Double Density box of 50 disks. 

including colourful labels 

IDE Hard Drives 

..£35.00 

..£13.00 

HARD DRIVES + AT-BUS CONTROLLER FOR 

AMIGA 500{+)/A1500/A20O0/A30OO/A4O00 

AT Bus hard drive controller £99.00 

Alfapowcr hard drive controller £99.00 

Alfapower-640 640Mb 

hard drive £199.001 

Alfapo\ver-1.2G 1.2Gig 

hard drive £259.001 

Other sizes please rinp 

IDE 2.5" Hard Drives 

IDE 2.5" Hard drives conic formatted and installed 

with Workbench. Cable, screws, software and 

instructions supplied, (please ringfor availability) 

80Mb £69.00 340Mb . ...£109.00 

Multi Media Speakers 

120Mb £70.00 420Mb £119.00 

100 watt (pmpo) 


£30.00-*- 170Mb £79.00* 540Mb £129.00 

240 watt (pmpo) £45.00 

IDE 3.5" Hard Drives 


300 watt (pmpo)* 

* 3D surround sound 

£59.95 

IDE 3.5" Hard drives come formatted and installed 

with Workbench. Cable, screws, software and 

instructions supplied, (please ring fbr availability) 

640Mb £99.00 L7GIG £179.00 

720Mb £110.00 2.1GIG £219.00 

840Mb £125.00 2.5GIG £239.00 

1.0GIG £149.00 3.2GIG £CaU 

1.2GIG £159.00* 3.8GIG £Call 

Internal 

A4000 

£109.00 

£119.00 

£119.00 

£129.00 

c_ m. 

4Mb Simms £20.00 16Mb Simms ...£75.00 

8Mb Simms £35.00 32Mb Simms...£1160.00 

800 dpi £69.00 

800 dpi with full OCR (last few so hurry) 

400dpi with Migraphs acclaimed 

...£79.00 

Touch-Up, Merge-it and full OCR 

Miscellaneous Products 

£99.00 

44pin 3 connector cable £10.00 

44pin 2 connector cable £5.00 

40pin .i connector cable 90cm £10.00 

AlfiDuo 44pin to 40pin Interface & IDE cables...£20.00 

Alf.iQu.um 3\40pin interface & IDE cables £39.95 

DD floppy disks (50) nn 

tndudum lauhicolouttd disk labels £13.00 

DD floppy disks (100) 

including THtrftinloimd diA fabdi 

.£25.00 

3.5" Hard Drive Kit for A600/1200 . „ 

. Install nfiwarr £1^.00 

Diskbox to hold iodises £2.00 

Animal Jungle design and Dinosaur design ...£5.00 

Optical Mouse Mat £5.00 

2 in 1 Scanner/Mouse Pad 

Can be taut as a mtnto pud £5.00 

Contoured Wrist Pad £3.00 

Plain Wristrest £2.00 

CD Cleaners - 1/2 price 

CD Rom Cleaner £3.00 

Automatic CD Rom Cleaner (hatttrjpovtnd) ...£10.00 

Laser Lens Cleaner £4.50 

1230 33Mhz + 4Mb £135.00 

1230 33Mhz + 8Mb £145.00 

1230 33Mhz + 16Mb £175.00 

1230 50Mhz + 4Mb £179.00 

1230 50Mhz + 8Mb £189.00 

L230 50Mhz+ 16Mb £219.00 

All prices include VAT. Please add £3.50 P&P for items under £30.00, £5.00 for items over £30.00, 

£8.00 P&P for Scanners, Speakers & Hard Drives, £10.00 courier for next day. Tax Free Export Orders Welcome. 

Golden Image accepts Access, Visa, Cheques & Postal Orders. EScOE. Prices subject to change without notice. Goods subject to availability. Spedficadons subject to change widioui notice. 

Goldenlmage (UK) Ltd 

Unit 65, Hallmark Trading Estate' Fourth Way, Wembley, Middx HA9 0LB 

Sales Hotline No: 0181 900 9291 Fax: oisi 900 9281 

http://www.rcscrve.co.uk/gold Talking Pages: 0 8 0 0 600900 

Our siaml.iril urins .mil mudnii.ns apply - .ivailjhlc cm ri-i[iii.",t. Wi;

MIGA MONITOR 

In an attempt to monitor Amiga Web browser usage on the Internet, Amicrawler has released Amiga Browser 

Watch. This Web page displays the statistics of which types of Amiga browsers visit the amtcrawler.com Web 

site with what frequency. Only publicly available browsers which are running on Amiga computers (i.e. not 

Netscape running on Shapeshifter) are tallied. 

The first week of the analysis determined that the number one Web browser on the Amiga which vis 

ited the amicrawler.com Web site was iBrowse. it made up 68.5 per cent of the visitors, AWeb made up 

a further 16.1 per cent and AmigaVoyager 14.6 per cent. 

AmigaMosaic and other, older Web browsers together represented 4 per cent, while ALynx had a 3 per 

cent share of the users. The particular versions of the browsers which scored the highest were AmigaVoyager 

v2.10, IBrowse v1.02demo and Amiga-AWeb v2.l. Samples were taken from a total of 23,566 visitors to the 

amicrawler.com site. 

Future planned enhancements to Amiga Browser Watch include weekly or monthly ratings of browser usage, noti 

fication of new Web browser versions, as well as further information on the systems accessing the amicrawler site, such 

as operating system and version number. 

The Amiga Browser Watch Web page can be found at http://amicrawler.com/bwatch/. 

OMPTON ON TAPE ^ 

Amiga Report Online Magazine and The Vantage Point video production ^> 

company have joined forces to begin Amiga Legacy Magazine. Amiga Legacy is a 

visual Amiga magazine on 90 minute VHS tape and is hosted in part by Jason Compton. 

liegacy 

It covers general interest items as well as features tutorials, news and reviews. Amiga Legacy is produced entirely 

on Amiga and Draco computers and will be published five times a year, commencing June 1997. Currently, there are 

only plans for an NTSC version, but interest will determine whether or not a PAL version will be produced. 

It is S14.95US for a single issue, S12.95US per issue for a three issue 1997 subscription and SI 1.45US per issue 

for the eight issue 97/98 subscription. Prices do not include shipping, which is S2.05 per issue in the US. Contact 

Amiga Legacy for international orders. (Illinois residents will also be charged applicable sales tax). Cheques drawn 

on a US bank, as well as US money orders and cashiers cheques are currently being accepted. Cheques should be 

made out to Legacy Maker. Credit card orders (VISA/MasterCard) are also being taken. 

For more information, visit http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/legacy.html/, or contact Amiga Legacy at jcomp- 

ton@xnet.com or at the address below. 

C ISSUE 

Amiga Informer issue number six is now 

available. This issue marks the one-year 

anniversary of the publication, which first 

started as an eight page newsletter. Some 

of the featured stories in this issue include 

Carl Sassenrath's LAVA programming lan 

guage, an interview with the former 

employee of Utilities Unlimited and current 

employee of Microcode Solutions, Jim 

Drew, and a look at Expansion Systems and 

its product iine. Issues of the Informer 

remain priced at SI US domestically, and 

S2US internationally. 

Qearning FX 

Nova Design, Inc is now offering 

ImageFX seminars given by its staff to 

individual users, user groups, dealers 

and so on. These seminars are held 

only on weekends and booked on a 

first come, first serve basis. 

The cost for a seminar is S150US 

plus travel and hotel expenses. This 

price is the same for individuals and 

for groups. 

Seminars scheduled so far are listed 

on the Nova Design Web pages 

(http://www.novadesign.com/), as 

well as the dates available to be sched 

uled for future seminars. Nova Design, 

Inc. can be contacted by voice on 804- 

282-6528, or by fax on 804-282-3768. 

NFORCER 

REVAMPED 

The new version of Amiga Enforcer, the debugging tool for the 

Amiga, is available from Intangible Assets Manufacturing. Enforcer 

V37, which now supports the 68060, can be used to detect refer 

ences to invalid memory and stray pointers. It also includes the abil 

ity to track errors in most code written in C or assembly, including 

identifying the line at which the problem occurs. 

There are a large number of changes and improvements from the 

previous version of Enforcer, including new in-depth documenta 

tion and an MMU dump. The source code to Enforcer V37 can be 

purchased from IAM. 

Questions or comments about Enforcer can be directed to 

enforcer@iam.com. Letters addressed to the author of Enforcer, 

Michael Sinz, can be mailed to the IAM corporate address. Further 

information about Enforcer and the source code is available on 

http://www.iam.com/amiga/enforcer.html. 

EARCH AND FlND 

Dan Barrett (of BLAZEMONCER 

fame) has written a new book 

entitled 'NetResearch: Finding 

Information Online', published 

by O'Reilly & Associates. It is 

intended to be a research aid to 

anyone wishing to quickly find 

anything on the Web. Rather 

than just listing locations, it 

details methods for searching. 

This is in order to compensate 

for the ever-changing nature of 

the Web. NetResearch will retail 

at S24.95 US - ISBN: 1-56592- 

245-X. 

MKcscarch 

Information 

Online,,, 

ORBLLT ft«MJ. 


JUNE 1997 

news 

by Katherine Nelson 

TO GO 

Version 7A01 of Citadel 68K Freeware BBS 

Program has been released by Custom 

Services. This BBS program, which is also 

available for the Atari and IBM computers, is 

'room'-based, dividing the BBS up into areas 

according to subject. These rooms are config 

urable by the sysop. The full Citadel 68K pro 

gram can be downloaded from a local Aminet 

mirror from the comm/bbs directory. There is 

no shareware fee. 

Contact point 

Custom Services 

Email: apreston@k2nesoft.com 

The Amiga Informer 

PO Box 21 

Newburgh, NY 12551-0021 

Phone: 914-566-4665 

Email: eldrrtch@mhv.net 

Amiga Browser Watch 

David Tiberio 

Email: dtiberio@amicrawler.com 

Web: http://wwwjmicrawler.com/bwatch/ 

clickBOOM 

Email: clkboom@ican.net 

Web: http://home.ican.net/~clkboom/ 

Nova Design, Inc 

(Bob Fisher) 

Voice: 804-282-6528 

Fax: 804-282-3768 

Web: http://www.novadesign.com/ 

Michael Sinz 

Intangible Assets Manufacturing 

828 Ormond Avenue 

Drexel Hill, PA 19026-2604 

USA 

Orders: 610-853-4406 

Fax: 610-853-3733 

Email: enforcer@iam.com 

Web: 

http://www.iam.com/amiga/enforcer.html 

^NetResearch. 

O'Reilly & Associates 

Email: dbarrett@ora.com 

Web: http://www.ora.com 

Amiga Legacy Magazine 

c/o Legacy Maker 

PO Box 60711 

Chicago, IL 60626 

USA 

Phone: 773-465-5158 

Email: jcompton-Jxnet.com 

Web: http://www.xnet.com/-jcompton/ 

legacy.html

Paxtron AMIGA REPLACEMENT CHIPS AND SYSTEM UPGRADES 

REPLACEMENT & UPGRADE CHIPS 

(Factory New) PRICE 

1.3 ROM O/S S12.50 

2M ROM 0/S S19.95 

3.05 ROM (V37.350) (A500 & A2000) $19 95 

2.04 ROM A3000 (Sel of 2 Rom 0/1] S34.50 

2.1 Workbench (or floppy users (complete O'S 

without supper, fsle) $7,95 

3.1 ROM (A500/A2000] S39.95 

3.1 ROM (A3000/A4000) S54.95 

3.1 ROM [A120D) S54.95 

3.1 ROM(s) Software'Ma-wa! SI 24.00/S 137.50 

ROM Switch'Swileh-Itt writi speaker S17.50 

3.1 manual only S69.95 

3.1 Soltware S10.0O 

3.1 Workbench lor floppy users (complete 

O/S wilhout support lilej S7.95 

A2091 7.0 ROM Upgrade 519.95 

A2620/30 7,0 ROM Upgrade 519.95 

8520 CIA $11.95 

8372A/8375 Agnus wi!h diagnostic disk/guide....329.95 

8375-B (2MB) (A3000) 31B069-03 525.50 

8375-10 Agnus (316069-10) PAL S17.95 

8375-18 Agnus (318069-18) 2 meg PAL . , , $15 95 

Paula [8364) A500/A2000 S10.95 

Demse (8362) A500/A2000 S10.95 

Super Dense 8373 w/diagnoslic disk 319.95 

Gary 5719 A500/A200Q 310.95 

Buster 5721 (A2000) 516.95 

680OO-8MHZ CPU (DIP) S11.50 

6S0OO-15MH; CPU (DIPl 522.50 

6803O-RC5O PGA 384.50 

HC 68882HC25A PGA Hew (390434-01) 319.95 

WC 68882HC20A PGA 330.00 

MC 68882HC33A PGA 537.50 

XC 68882RC4QA PGA 569.95 

MC 68030FE25B QFP (390399-05) S19-95 

MC 63030RC50 PGA 569.95 

Western Digital SCSI chip rev. 8 524.95 

Video Hybrid - (A500 390229-03! 59.95 

GVP Upgrade Chip Series II 524.95 

SURFACE MOUNTED DEVICES 

(For A1200, A3GG0. A4000, CD32) 

8520 PLCC (391078-02) S19.50 

Amber (390533-031 S24.50 

DMAC 4 (390537-04) S34 50 

Lisa (391227-01) S24.50 

Ramsey (rev.4) 390544-04 519.95 

Ramsey (rev. 7) 3905*1-07 529 95 

Alice 3374 (391010-01) S19.95 

Gal (XU9) (390123-01)) S21.95 

Pa\lrOD is North America's largest wholesale supplier of Amiga replacement and upgrade chips 

Gay:e (315107-02) S19.95 

Budgie (391425-01) S33.95 

Super Denise (391554-01) S29.95 

Pauia 8364 (391077-01) S27.95 

Gary (390540-02] S32.95 

Super Buster Rev. 11 (390539-11! S29.95 

Bridgette (391380-01] S29.50 

Video DAC (391422-01) 519.95 

6a000CPU (390064-07) S13 95 

68020-16 (391506-01) S18 95 

MOTHERBOARDS {Factory New) 

CD32 (no RAM memory) NTSC S89.95 

CD32 complete with RAM/tested MTSC $109.95 

CD32 complete wuh RAM'tesied (PAL) $89.95 

CD32 replacemeril CD mechanism 339.95 

A500 (rev. 3) inc all chips 339.95 

A500 (Rev. 5/6) 389.50 

A600 S124.50 

A1200 (IJTSC; Limed (putty 3.0 O.S all rramcry Ns.vS300,00 

AI200 (PAL) Lmfed quanity 30 O/S all rracery New..5300.00 

A2000 LATE Rev. 8372*2.05 S399.95 

A3000 (16MHz) 5264.50 

A3000(25MH;) $294.50 

A3000T (Toaer) 25MHz S389.95 

C64 (refurbished, lesled all chips) S29.95 

C64 untested, all chips clearance £'525.00 

AMIGA FLOPPY DRIVES (Factory New) 

Amiga "Q-Dn/e" 1241 CO ROM Drive (or the A1200.S 149.95 

High Dens. External floppy (or all Am:gas 5114.95 

High Density Internal Flcppy Drive: 

A4000 S104.95 

A2000 S109.50 

A500 Internal 880k S38.95 

A600/1200 Internal S39.95 

A3000 Infernal 880k S39.95 



CD32 Replacement CO mechanism ..S39.95 

1541 (refurbished) S33.00 

1571 (limited quantity] S44.00 

POWER SUPPLIES (Factory New) 

A50O S38.95 

A50O/A6O0/AI20O Big Ft. (2W Warn Micro R/D S79.95 

A500 power supply (used) 220 volts Europe S19.95 

A590 519.95 

A1200 110 raits original factory $38.95 

CD32 Original / Factory (110 volts) S21.95 

CD32 Original / Factory (220 volts) 51^.95 

CD32 Big Foo! (200 Watt) Micro R'D S74.50 

A2OOO11O/220V inlsrnal original SS9.95 

Amiga A3000 Computer 

(unassembled) 

Includes: 

• A3000/1 6MHz (factory refurbished) motherboard with 2 megs of 

RAM (25MHz version, add $35.00). Includes 90 Day Warranty. 

New A3OOO Power Supply (110 or 220 volts). 

New A3OOO Floppy Drive 880k 

New Daughter Board. 

Amiga 3000 Mouse 

Full A3OOO Service Manual (valued at S39.95). 

User Manual. 

All Cabling. 

$439.50 (plus UPS) 

ADDITIONAL OPTIONS AVAILABLE 

» ^PACKAGE PRICE $79.95 

super Buster I I Upgrade •>* 

Western Digital SCSI 8A S23.95 

3.1 Operating System Upgrade ROM S49.95 

3.1 ROM Software (package of 7 discs) $7.50 

3.1 Books/Manual (without disks or ROM) CALL 

1 x 4 Static Column ZIP (8 zips - 4 megs) $7.00 

A3000 Keyboard S67.50 

Hard Drive CALL 

AmiFAST 3000 Adapter (ZIP to SIMM adapter) 574.50 

Rack Mounted A3000 Cabinet 554.00 

The above prices are special to those people who purchase the A3000 kit 

*** WANTED *** 

Top dollar paid for your A2000 computer 

Paxtron 

CORPORATION 

CALL FOR DETAILS 

A2000 Big Foot (300 Watt) Micro R/D S144.50 

A3000 internal (110/220 volls) S110.00 

A3000 Big Foo: (250 wafts] Micro R/D 5144.50 

A3000 Tower 5124.00 

A4000 internal (110 volts) 5119.00 

A4000 Int. 300 Watt Big Foot (exchange) S169.95 

1084S Phillips Flybac< Translormer only 529.95 

1084-Di Phillrps'Daeivoo Flyback only 538.50 

1034-D2 Daewoo Flyback Transformer only 338.50 

1084S new MoihemoaraVFIyback 559.95 

10B4S power supply board (refurbished) 529.95 

C64 nonrepayable S14.95 

C64 repairable S19.95 

C64 5.2 amp Heavy Duly (also 1750 REU| S39.95 

C65 110 Volt S21.95 

C128 external 5.2 amps S39.95 

1541 11/1581 S7.50 

KEYBOARDS (Factory New) 

A500 (limited quantity) S39.95 

A600... 526.50 

C128D (limited quantity) S24.95 

A1200 S34.95 

A2000 (Amiga Technologies) 574.50 

A3Q00 (Amiga TuehnoJogiesj S74.50 

A4000 (Amiga Technologies) 574,50 

A2000 keyboard adapter to A4000 S8.95 

A4000 keyboard adapter to A2OOOA/30OO S8.95 

KB1C0 adapter to use with IBM keyboards S34.95 

ADD ON BOARDS (Factory New) 

68020-030 (A4000) S57.95 

A2058 (OK) IA2000) Expansion board 8K S69.95 

A501 original Ram E*p. - 512K (A500) S17.95 

Microway Flickerta 5224.00 

Slingshoi Pro/pass thru (Micro R/D) S37.50 

A1050 RAM Expander (A1000] 256K 510.95 

APOLLO ACCELERATORS 

1230116 SMfe eaoaOW/HHUifPU ffi A12B confers S139.95 

1230/50MH; 68030 for A1200 computers S239.00 

1240/25MHz 68040 (or A1200 computers S369.95 

1240/40MH; 63040 lor A1200 computers S449.95 

126O.'5OMHz 68060 lot A1200 computers S729.95 

1200 SCSI Module tor ApoJo A1200 accelerators 129.00 

2030/25MHz68030-68882TSCSI-2lorA2000S299.95 

2030/50MHZ 68030*68882-SCSl-2 lor A2000S389.95 

2040'25MHz 68040-SCSI-2 for A2000 5449.00 

2G40/40MH7 68040*SCSI-2forA2000 S52S.00 

206D/50MHZ 68060-SCSI-2 for A2000 S849.95 

305O/5OMH? E8060+SCSI-2 !cr A3000 Desktop .5829.95 

3040'40MHz 68040+SCSI-2 lor A3000 Desktop .S559.95 

4040;40MH; 68040-SC3I-Z lor A3C00T & A4000(T} S559.95 

• ONLY AT PAXTRON • 

28 Grove Street, Spring Valley, NY 10977 

NEW FROM 

4060,50MHz 66OS0-SCS'-2 for A3COOT&A4000{T!S819.95 

Mini Meg 2Mb Chip RAM Board S185.00 

SX32.... S279.95 

PHASE 5 ACCELERATORS 

Btoard 1230-IV w'50MHz 68050 S254.95 

Blizzard 1260 Turbo Board w.'50MHz S8060....S749.95 

Blizzard 1230-IV Turbo Board w'SOMHz 68050 S254.95 

Optional Blizzard 1280 or 1230-IV SCSI Kli 5169.95 

Blizzard 2040 ERC w/40MHz 63040 S559.95 

Blizzard 2060Turbo Board w/50MHz ga060....S849.95 

Cyberstorm Mark II 040/40MHZ S559.95 

Cyberstorm Mark II 060750MHz S849.95 

Cyberstorm Fast SCSI-2 Module S179.95 

CyberVision 64/3D 4Mb S349.95 

CyberVision 64/3D MPEG Module audio/video Call 

CyberVision 64/3D Scan DoublerHomwr Switch..Si39.95 

MOUSE CONTROLLERS (Factory New) 

Amiga 1352 S22.50 

Wizard 3-buttcn (for all Amigas) S19.95 

A4000.... S26.35 

Amiga CDTV S15 95 

AmigaA1200 mouse port replacement kit S7.95 

CD32 controller $11.75 

DIAGNOSTICS 

Advanced Amiga Analyzer S59 95 

Final Tesl diagnostic disk by Amiga.. S7.95 

Amiga Troubleshooting Guide 37.95 

Commodore Diagnostician II S6 95 

Complete Service Manuals: A50O, A500+, 590, A1000, 

1230 printer, 1802. 1902. 1902A. 1934. 2002.2091. 

2300, 2630, CDTV. 1581, C65 S19.95 

A500 schematics, A£00.1064S. 1084S-D1.1084ST. 

1936A. 1960, A2000 S24.0C 

A1200. A3000. A3000T, A4000, CD32 539.95 

CLEARANCE SALE 

A500 Computer (NTSC) with P;S S119.95 

A520 Video Modulator Adapter Cable S12.50 

2.04/3.1 ROM Switch ■ (Switch Itt) with speaker...S17.50 

15-23 pin VGA adapter S19.95 

Moniior Cables- 30 Different types CALL 

Monitors: 10B4S, 1802,1950 etc CALL 

Laser punter memory board OK (All HP uniis)....S24.9; 

Sony QD6150 o'ala cartridge S7.50 

Joystick-Captain Grant (for all Amigas) 52.9= 

1x4S/CZIPforA3Q0O SS.OO 

Upgrade ywr A30OO-t6MHi PCB to 25MH; (plus UPS) S44.5G 

BLACK FOREST PRODUCTS GmbH 

JET FIRE 132 

FOR THE AMIGA Al 200 

Black Forest Products is pleased to announce a 68030-25MHz 

accelerator* that will speed up your Amiga A1200 computer more 

than 400 per cent. The Jet Fire 1 32 is priced substantially lower than 

any of its competition. 

Includes: 

• 68882 FPU running at 25MHz 

• Built-in MMU at 25MHz 

• Built-in real rime clock 

• Accepts standard 72-pin (PS/2) SIMM for 4 or 8 megs 

• Simple, easy plug in 

• 1 year warranty 

914-578-6522 - 800-815-3241 800-595-5534 ■ 888 PAXTRON > FAX 914-578-6550 

Hours: 9-5 pm ET Mon.-Frl. • Add S6.00 UPS Charges • MC/VISA • Prices subject to change 

E-Mail for orders & correspondence: paxtroncorp@rcknet.com WE SHIP WORLDWIDE! 

THIS 1$ AN UNBELIEVABLE ACCELERATOR 

AT AN UNBEATABLE PRICE! 

PRICED FOR EVERYBODY 

I 4*y 3 (plus shipping) 

Coming next month: 68030 in 33 MHz version 

'This product is also available from our U.K. dealer, Dart Computer 

Services (01 162 470059) in Leicester 

New enlarged 14-page Web site: www.paxtron.com 

Our web page is conlinually updated with latest products and price changes. Visit us and 

check it out, Enter your order there or by E-mailing us at paxtroncorp@rckne1.com. 

ATTENTION DEALERS: II you would like to receive our dealer catalog tax us your letterhead.

Extracting 

Cover Disk 

files 

Before putting the cover disks anywhere 

near your computer, write protect them 

by moving the black tab in the top corner 

of the disk, so you can see through the 

hole. Doing this makes sure you cannot 

damage your disks in any way. There is 

also no reason why the cover disks need 

to be written to, so even if the computer 

asks you to write enable the disks, don't 

doit 

To extract any single archive, simply 

double click its icon, and follow the on 

screen instructions. If you want to 

extract the program to Ram, select the 

NOVICE level on the welcome screen, 

and press proceed once on the current 

screen, and then again on the next The 

program can then be found in your Ram 

disk. Normally most programs need fur 

ther installing, so read the documents on 

how to do this. 

Hard Drive 

Users 

Hard drive users do not have to boot 

with the first disk, but you must make 

sure you have the Amiga's Installer pro 

gram in your C drawer. To make sure 

your hard drive has the correct files in 

place double click on the SetupHD icon. 

This will check if you have the Installer 

program and if not will copy it across. Do 

not worry as it will not write over any 

existing files. 

All you hard drive owners will find 

Multi Extract very useful. It is a separate 

method of extracting the cover disk files. 

It allows you to extract a number of files 

in one go, to your hard disk or Ram. 

When you run MultiExtract, you will be 

presented with a number of check boxes, 

each representing one of the programs 

on that cover disk. Just de-select all the 

programs you do not want extracting, 

and then press proceed. All the selected 

programs can now miraculously be 

found in the selected destination. 

staffing-

(986^68030 

SVS: ]-U 

C 

Classes 

Deva 

Foots 

L 

Lbs 

locale 

Profs 

Rexxc 

S 

Storage 

System 

Tools 

Utilities 

WEStartup 

.AmFTPHistory 

AmFTPProfiiej 

.AmFTPRC 

backdrop 

C.info 

Classes .info 

Devs.info 

Disk info 

Font a.Info 

LJnfo 

Libs info 

locale info 

Prefs.lnfo 

I 03 Apr 97 18 

I 13.Apr 97 IG 

I O6.Apr 97 11 

i28.Mar97 14 

iO3.Apr97 16 

I 13Apr 97 15 

i 13.Apr 97 16 

i 30 Dec 96 17 

i 13.Apr 97 IE 

i 03-Mar 97 08 

i 05.Apr 97 00 

iOS.Apr 97 12 

_j 13.Apr 97 15 

_JO6.Apr 97 12 

42 1l.Feb97 19 

1 7.676 11 f90 97 19 

240 1 1 Feb 97 1 9 

36 06.Apr 97 14 

1 .197 O6.Apr97 11 

1.197 OS.Apr 97 ti 

1.197 O6.Apr97 11 

5.309 06.Apr 97 12 

1 .197 O6.Apr 97 II 

1 .197 O6.Apr97 11 

I . 197 06 Apr 97 1 1 

1 .197 O6.Apr97 It 

1.053 OS.Apr 97 II 

pan 

refo 

mFTP 

Author: Michael Neuweiler • Requires Magic User Interface 

r I Connection 

Uame. 

AdClCBSS: 

Username; 

eassword: 

Account^ 

Direct ory: 

Anonymous: 

Netnet 

Hpneinetnet 

I : -: :■.. ■,- :■. 

pU3/ammet 

Connect Setup About 

FTP sites ■ Power Windows 

Aminet sites 

ftp.netnet.net 

ftp.grolier.fr 

ftp.wustle.com 

WWW sites 

http://www.omnipresence.com/ibrowse/ 

Support.html - iBrowse 

http://www.idg.co.uk/amigacomp/ - US 

http://www/cucug.org/amiga.html - Web 

Directory 

http://www.yahoo.com/ - Yahoo Search 

http://www.amiga.de/ - Amiga International 

SysInspector 

Author: Eric Sauvageau 

Requires ClassAct 

It is not very often that we put ClassAct 

based programs on the cover disk, but as 

this one was especially nice I could not 

resist. This, as you may have guessed, pro 

vides system information as does ARTM 

and Xopa, but all from the comfort of a 

ClassAct front end. Generally this means 

you have a much nicer interface than your 

usual Gadtools programs provide. 

Lssrn about all the deep dark secrets of 

your Amiga 

Author: Ceorg Steger 

Requires Workbench 2.04 

If you have ever used Windows, MacOS or X 

Windows you may have thought it would it 

be good if you could move windows off the 

side of the screen on your Amiga. Well now 

you can! 

This is a system patch and a little bit of a 

dodgy one, as Amiga windows and the oper 

ating system are not written with these sort 

of shenanigans in mind. Bung the 

PowerWindows program in your WBStartup 

drawer, or double click it, and you can try it 

out by dragging a window off to the bottom 

right of the screen. 

Before you go off and write you very 

important essay or document, check that 

power windows will not end up crashing 

your system. Try it out a bit before leaving it 

permanently on your machine. 

Now there's something you don't 

see very often on an Amiga 

■ 

Miami only provides the software that allows your Amiga 

to communicate across the Internet (send and receive 

TCP/IP messages) to actually do anything useful, you will 

need some internet software. 

The most basic and useful Internet program is an FTP 

client This allows you to log onto other computers 

around the world and transfer files between your own 

and other FTP servers. The main use of this is to get pro 

grams you can play with on your Amiga. You will mainly 

use Aminet as this is the main Amiga software site on the 

Internet Other sites worth visiting are Vaporware, who 

produce a bunch of great Internet tools including the 

Voyager Web browser. 

Once you are connected to the Internet you type in the 

FTP site address in the connect window, and then wait for 

the FTP client to connect After that you transfer files just 

like a normal file directory. 

Once you are on-tln* aelocf 

conned and type In the FTP 

address of the silo you want 

to go to and use mFTP like a 

directory manager 


JUNE 1997 

ExeCon 

Author: Dentil 

Requires Workbench 2.04 

.anjuiiiuj I rtiivfli 

A*:-flfiHr*-gQ*q j w..fr> 

' - .- - '■ ••'* I 3 1 L ' . V ,-i t." , DM j 

Launching programs has 

never been so easy 

Owai | 

la* | 

tM | 

*0M | 

tti^ | 

Workbench provides you with an execute 

command, press right Amiga and e and a lit 

tle text requester appears into which you can 

type a command. The thing is, don't you find 

that you only ever use the same few com 

mands and if you need to use a long file path, 

why do you have to type the whole damn 

thing out? Why can't you use a file requester, 

that is what the damn things are there for? 

ExeCon has a number of short cuts avail 

able, not only for running regularly used files 

and programs, but also for selecting files with 

long path names, using file requesters. The 

main program simply adds a new entry to the 

Tools menu and a preference program makes 

adding to the list of files simple. 

Faulty disks 

If you should find your Amiga 

Computing CoverDisk damaged 

or faulty, please return it to: 

TIB PIq TIB House, II Edward 

Street Bradford, Itf Yorks BD4 

7BH. 

Please allow 28 days for delivery

Alien Formula 1 

Author: Paolo Cattani • Requires Hard Drive 

For a long time, the age old Formula One Grand Prix has been the one and only rac 

ing game on the Amiga, even though it is ancient. Even the recent PC version did little to 

improve on the original, proving how good the gameplay was. 

!f you are thinking it is about time a challenger was on the scene 

(particularly as you may have dug out your old copy with the new 

Grand Prix season we!! under way. We can all have a good laugh at 

Damon - ed), wait no longer. 

Alien Formula One is a stunningly good-looking racer, and the even 

better news is that you won't need a 060 to get this running smooth 

ly. Amazingly, an A1200 with fast Ram provides enough oomph to 

make the game smooth to play, even with everything being texture 

mapped. 

It's not easy, however. Expect to spin off at the first corner on your 

first few attempts and even then, complet 

ing a single lap takes a good number 

of attempts, even going slow. But as 

the programmer says why do you 

think drivers get paid millions of 

pounds if it is easy? 

Control is via the mouse with 

the right button providing the 

throttle and the left braking, to 

change gears use the up and down 

cursor keys. Steering is a little odd, you 

have to look in the direction you want to go, 

though this can be turned off if you do not like it. This is stili an early- 

ish demo but I think you'll agree it shows a lot of promise, can't wait 

for the finished product. 


JUNE 1997 

Game Controls 

Loading Fl 

Before you can run Formula 1 you need 

to have loaded Workbench, for hard 

drive users this is no problem and to 

install Ft on your drive just drag 

the drawer to where you want 

the game and double click 

the Fl icon. 

Floppy users can 

run Alien Formula 1, but 

you need to run 

Workbench before as 

f Fl, as best as we can 

tell, is a little picky about 

the screen mode it runs 

on. So if Alien Formula 1 

^T seems not to be running 

check you have the PAL or NTSC 

monitor driver in the Devs:Monitor 

You control your car with the mouse to steer left and right the right mouse button is 

accelerate and the left mouse button is brake. To change gears, use the up and down 

arrow keys or a joystick in the joystick port. 

F10 - Cancel info 

This will disable the Virtu a Cockpit features. If you own a slow Amiga, this 

will probably speed up the game a bit 

Blocks the driver's head 

Frees the cockpit allowing for driver's head movement 

Activates the outside view mode 

In the Outside View mode, selects the car to follow 

Displays some race info (Laps, Lap-Times, Position, etc) 

Displays some more info 

ESC Enter car set up. From here (using a joystick) you can alter the setting of 

your car. In this demo you can only alter a few of the settings - tyres, shocks, 

spoilers and the gearbox 

HELP Enter Instant Replay mode. The screen will flash slowly in yellow to remind 

you are seeing the last 40 seconds of the race. Pressing the right cursor will 

fast forward the replay, while pressing the left cursor key will freeze the cur 

rent frame, as long as you keep the key pressed 

DEL Exit Instant Replay mode 

Restore the car. If you find yourself spinning on the grass, press this 

Quit the game 

UP/DOWN Select Gear 

I Enable multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is disabled for default to gain speed. If 

you want to re-enable it press this key 

Disable multi-tasking

Late Night Opening 

Wednesday & Thursday 

till 7.30pm 

Open Sunday 

I lam to 4pm 

COMPUTER CENTRE 

17" Monitor 

£399.99 Inc 

1st Starter Pack 

• AI200dustcover 

• 10 x DSDD disks + labels 

• Top quality joystick Only 

low cost DEUVERf Tel: 0113 231 -9444 Fax: 0113 231 -9191 

2-4 Week Days £3.99 

Next Week Day £5.99 

' •SaturdayDelivery £15.00 

Delivery subjectto ittxkavailabitity 

SHOWROOM ADDRESS:B 

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Hardware Memory CD ROM Drives/Squirrel I/face 

AMIGA 

Branded 

Monitors 

14" 

Monitor 

£259.99 

Includes 

Speakers 

• Deluxe mouse i 

» ] .AI200 BJnn £ 19.99 

Heavy Duty PSU 

200watt £69.99 

Amiga 

A11200 

MagicPack 

Includes. Wonh.«th V J SE, 

Dnlastorc. Organiser. 

Turbpcak IS, Pnoul PwK 

VM.Phocogmki USE. 

Pintail Mima IWHiri- 

£379.99 

Call for availability 

Software Specials 

• Vista Pro Lite full ver. £9.99 

• WordworthV3 £9.99 

• Deluxe Paint IV AGA £9.99 

• Blitz Basic 2.1 £19.99 

• Tech nosound Turbo II £29.99 

• Final Writer 5 £7-1.99 

• Photogenks 2 CD £59.99 

• Cinema4DV3 £159.99 

• Final Data 3 £29.99 

Hard Drives 

f3.5 Hard Disk Drives! 

IDE SCSI 

l.2Gig...£ I 59.99270Mb £99.99 

l.6Gig...£l66.99S40Mb £149.99 

2.0Gig...£202.99l.8Gig £249.99 

2.SGig...£220.99 2.1 Gig £397.99 

3.2Gig...q7 ,994.3Gifi 1861.99} 

Build Your Own 

SCSI Hard Drive 

• SCSI ease with built in PSU£69.99 

• SCSI Hard Drive.Select from above 

» SCSI Squirrel Interface £45.00 

• !2Month Warranty. 

2.5" Hard Drives for 

A600/AI200 with 

Installation kit 

m Seagate conker 

80Mb....£64.99 !30Mb....£80.99 

170Mb...£85.992S0Mb-£l 19.99 

420Mb.£ I 29.99 540Mb..£ 139.99 

S10 £ 149.99 1.0Gig..£219.99 

l.3Gig..£294.99 2.2Gig..£399.99 

3.5" H/Drive Install Kit £ 19.99 

Modems Software 

rwpf|V34+ Fax 

1 Modem 

Amazing Price/Perform a nee 

• 33.6 Baud Rate*Class I Fax 

• BABT & CE approved. 

Only..£89.99 

Complete with obles & Amiga N -tomm Software 

Bargains 

V32Bis 14.400 Fax Modem 

Only!> £49.99 

V22Bis 2400/9600 Modem 

Only!! £24.99 

Modem Accessories 

Phone Line Extension Cables... 

5M.£6.99 IOM.£B.99 ISM.£IO.99 

Dual Socket Adaptor £6.99 

F.Writer Lte . £39.99 

Wordworth6 £39.99 

W.orth Office £49.99 

Mini Office £46.99 

Final Calc £94.99 

Twist 2 £74.99 

Turbocalc 4 £49.99 

Dir. Opus 5.5 £45.99 

MIDI (/face £19.99 

MegaLoSound £24.99 

Aura 16 £74.99 

Net&Web £29.99 

Net&Web II £66.99 

GP Fax only £44.99 

I Browse £24.99 

New Budget Games 

Titles In Stock 

Road Rash £9.99 

Desert Strike £9.99 

Theme Park £14.99 

Special Forces £9.99 

Plus Many More !! 

LOWEST PRICES EVER! 

AI2004 MbRAM £70.99 

AI2008MbRAM £89.99 

33MhzCo Proadd£2S.OO 

PRIMAASOOSUkRAMnot □ck 

'RJMAA500- 1 Mb RAM 

PRlMAASOOIMhRAMnoc Otk 

£19.99 

(29.99 

[MASSIVE REDUCTIONS 

I Mb71PinSIMM 

2Mb7]Pln5IMM 

4 Mb 71 Pin SIMM 

8 Mb 71 Pin SIMM 

l4Mb71pinSIMM 

1Mb lOpinSIMM 

4 MblOphiSIMM 

254by4DRAM(DILs| 

OS.99 

£80.99 

£10.9? 

£19.9? 

(esch)£4.99 

2S6by4ZIPPS (eaeh)£S.9» 

I' ii i -■ vi Ji in•■ CMCIAadjptor£39-9» 

Power Scan v4. £89.99 

Power Scan Col. £ I 74.99 

Fusion/LolaL-1000 

Genlock 

ludes Scala HT-I00£89.99) 

UJtxa.CD ROM Drives 

New!! 

Ultra 6 Speed IDE £189.99 

Ultra Drive Kit £1 19.99 

Low 

Price 

SCSI CD/ROM 

4X Speed 

■ SCSI Controller required to 

run CD Drives.* 

Disk Drives 

So ft w.i re Suit! 

■. £16.99 

Amiga External drive£44.9^ 

Amitekl.76MbExt. £69.9< 

M 200/600Internaldrive£39. 

CkSOO/SOO+lrternaldriveL 

Squirrel scsilnterface*£45.00 

Surf Squirrel; 

SCSI-1! Interface 

•£79.99 

Octagon/GVPSCSICard £99.99 

Internal SCSI CD ROM 

Sanyo CRD254Vx 4 £89.99 

TencCD56Sx6 £121.99 

Panasonic S06Bx8 £ 129.99 

Toshiba570lxll £149.99 

|J;H'il SCSI Cases 

Case £69.99 

Dual Case £119.99. 

Peripherals 

egA Mon 

ega Moi ■100 dpi (3 button! 

I 

t 540dpi {3 button) £11.99 

uality Mouse mat (4mm) 

£3.9* 

,geAm(ST Trackball £1 7.99 

y F i-2 Speak en (B.« attsfthan n e I) £2i 

yFiProSp»kers{l6watts,'channel)f57 99 

oboshtft (Auto mouselj.stick switch£9 99 I 

icknan 1.04/2.05(forust-inA600) O* T>\ 

IA85I0A I/O controller 

nhlPLCC 

BB820iProl)mluPLCC 

kjoystlck 

Amiga Modulator £34.99 

Amiga Std. PSU £34.99 

Heavy Duty PSU £69.9S 

Delivery £1.50 per 

"1" CD ROM Software 

IQ7BWcir

A little over six months ago I took 

a look at the original Siamese 

system, and it worked well 

enough. If you regularly had to 

share files between your PC and Amiga, it 

was a handy way of getting around the 

problem. Not only did you get the rapid SCSI 

network, but by sharing the keyboard, 

mouse and monitor, you could also save on 

desk space. 

The basic system consists of a single ISA 

board into which the monitor outputs of the 

Amiga and PC are piped, and a third lead 

that goes to your monitor. Using software on 

the Amiga and PC side, the Siamese board 

passes information from the keyboards and 

mice to each computer, depending on which 

you are using. So from a single keyboard, 

mouse and monitor you can have access to 

two machines simultaneously and can 

switch between the two via hotkeys or an 

icon on the Amiga and PC desktops. All this 

makes for a very comfortable working envi 

ronment. 

When I got that first system, HiQ men 

tioned it was working on a RTG system that 

would allow your Amiga screens to be dis 

played in a Windows 95 window, right there 

on your PC's desktop. At the time it sound 

ed pretty amazing, particularly when I found 

out that the RTG works by only using the ser 

ial link to update the screen data. 

Now I have actually got the chance to try 

out this RTG, something that really sounds 

too good to be true, what do I think? 

The software is as straightforward to 

install as the original set. The PC side is 

transparent as before, with all the setting up 

done on the Amiga, all you see over the 

original software is an additional program. 

Once run (and it both sides are running cor 

rectly when you come to selecting a pro 

gram's screen mode) you will have a selec 

tion of new modes to choose from named 

SiameseRTG. Select one of these and hope 

fully you will see it appear in a Windows 95 

window. 

Unfortunately this is where the problems 

occur as the RTG software is at the mercy of 

how the Amiga programs write to the screen 

- this varies wildly from program to program. 

Take Opus 5.5, this was written specifically 

with graphic card users in mind and works 

flawlessly with the Siamese RTG. In fact, I 

Look, new screen modes! And guess what? They 

don't use any of (he Amiga's graphics memory 

whatsoever, 1280 x 1024 here we come 

r battles the forces of 

good and evil and manages to get 

Siamese RTG up and running 


JUNE 1997 

would suggest anyone buying Siamese RTG 

to also get Opus 5 and use it as a 

Workbench replacement as it will get rid of 

many potential problems. 

Next along the line are MUI programs. 

Again MUI has been written with RTG in 

mind and, on the whole, MUI programs will 

run on a Siamese RTG screen, usually with a 

few colour remapping problems, as you can 

see with iBrowse. 

Beyond this, running programs becomes a 

very hit and miss affair. ArtEffect runs fine but 

the picture window is not displayed correct 

ly, while other programs will simply crash the 

PC side of the Siamese system, forcing you to 

reset both machines. The biggest current 

problem is that Amiga menus are not cor 

rectly rendered, though by using MagicMenu 

you can get round this problem. 

Speed-wise you can see what it is good at 

- drawing MUI and Gadtool based windows, 

and what it is bad at - drawing bitmaps such 

as a Multiview displayed picture. This is all 

IRING IT UP 

If you missed the original review, setting up 

the Siamese is a little involved, most of the 

problems arising on the PC side. I don't want 

to be too off-putting as all this really involves 

is adding two cards to the PC (the Siamese 

and SCSI card). 

The main stumbling block is adding the 

Siamese card itself. This requires the internal 

serial connector of the PC to be re-routed to 

the Siamese card. For most generic PC boxes 

this should not be a problem as the sec 

ondary serial (or comm) port is on the moth 

erboard. So ail you do is connect the internal 

port to the Siamese board and then replace 

the original comm two port with the new 

one that comes from the Siamese board. 

iBrowse running of the Opus 5 screen, it 

worked but was a little too slow to use 

down to the use of the serial connection to 

update the Window 95 display. Bitmap 

graphics, such as the images used in a Web 

browser, have to be transmitted in full 

across the serial interface and even at 

115200 BPS, will take quite a while. 

Normally Amigas have a hard time run 

ning the serial port at 115200, even acceler- 

The other side to the Siamese system is 

the SCSI network and this, for me anyway, 

would be one of the main reasons for buying 

a Siamese system. By using two SCSI cards, 

one on the Amiga and the PC, you get a high 

speed network that allows you to share files 

between the two computers, via a shared PC 

formatted SCSI drive. 

Thanks to the inclusion of CrossDos 6, set 

ting up the shared drive is very simple, as 

long as you make sure none of the controller 

and drive SCSI ID's clash. Once all the cards 

and leads are in place you just format the 

drive from your PC and then, using CrossDOS 

on the Amiga, get it to create the Dos driver 

for you.

ated ones, but when using Siamese RTC the 

Amiga's DMA is turned off, greatly increasing 

the speed of serial transfer. Even un-acceler- 

ated machines should be able to use these 

top speeds. Surf squirrel users, I believe, 

should be able to use 230400 bps. 

Currently, due to the limitations of the 

RTG, I would imagine that you will only real 

ly be able to use it for file managing or none 

graphical programs. With the current ver 

sion, as long as you stick with Workbench 

(or better, Opus 5.5), most programs that 

will run off those screens should not cause 

any trouble. 

The software is also regularly updated by 

HiQ who are working hard adding to the 

Siamese system, so I'm sure the RTC will 

only get better. The latest news is that HiQ 

will supply a floppy with Siamese RTG that 

allows a bog standard floppy based A1200 

to run RTG and boot with the PC leaving 

around 1.3Mb of ram free on the Amiga 

side. As for being able to run Workbench on 

Windows 95, I just think of it as having a lit 

tle bit of heaven in an otherwise dark and 

desolate place. 

YSTEM SELECTION 

One thing you need to consider when buy 

ing a Siamese system is what sort of sys 

tem you want. It is more than likely that 

you will be using the SVGA monitor that 

came with the PC. In this case you will 

have to remember that any program not 

allowing you to choose the screen mode, 

or that will not mode promote, cannot be 

used on the Siamese system unless you 

buy yourself a low syncing multisync mon 

itor. 

You will also have to consider what sort 

of system you really need, as the basic 

Siamese will allow you to share the moni 

tor, keyboard, mouse and PC drives. The 

drive sharing only takes place over the ser 

ial link so is obviously slow. If you are 

going to be dealing with files of substantial 

size you will have to add a SCSI network 

on top, which consists of an Amiga and PC 

SCSI interface and a single SCSI drive. Even 

though the PC Adaptec 1505 SCSI card 

retails for about £40, by the time you add 

on an Amiga card and the price of the drive 

you will be looking at about £200 on top of 

the basic Siamese system. 


JUNE 1997 

Opus 5.5 worked without a hitch on my 

A1200 and, considering how slow it would 

have run on an AGA 1280 x 512 screen in 

256 colours, the Siamese RTC system was 

lightning fast 

Not much has changed with the preferences, 

you would have thought someone would 

have drawn some decent icons by now 

All of Digita's programs worked well with 

RTG, but due to the way Wordworth's 

display works, it was far too slow to use 

_J __-^ .^ _■ _l 

Jin e 

RED essential I BLACK recommended 

SCSI Network 

Product details 

Product 

Supplier 

Price 

Tel 

Ease of use 

Implementation 

Value For Money 

Overall 

Siamese System 

HiQ 

Basic £149.95 

Including RTG £199.95 

Scores 

RTG Upgrade £79.95 

01525 211327 

19% 

f9% 

80* 

85%

X-Port 

Software 

10am- - 4:30=" 

Monday - Friday 

POSTAG 

£1 per order 

Telephone orders 

Arcade Classics is 

a superb collection 

of the most 

memorable arcade 

games, including 

games like 5pace 

Invaders, Facm an, 

Galaxians and more.... 

Order. AKC5-2 UK-.E5 ■ AUST.-S10 

miga 

Beginners Guide is 

a comprehensive 5 

disk set of inter 

active Help and 

information from 

CLi/Shell commands 

techniques in graphics packages. 

Oritr. AB59-5 LJK.'ffl 

The official A1200 

-\hard drive Prep 

01793432176 

and installer. 

Compatible wit 

all IDE 2.5 and 

3.5" drives. Eas\ 

PGBox 637, 

Swindon, Wilts, UK 

tery 

E40H. All pictured titles are 

supplied on Happy disks. 

A'\ titles arc 5Jb;«t to cliangi 

wi:hout notice. 

Wiflt ordering sleas; sta^ order 

CMlS, SOd *t .->:- 1 I ■ 

Cheques payable to X-PORT. 

Five truly addictive 

tetris clones. Tetr 

is the World's most 

addictive arcade 

tie where you 

ve zo interlock 

falling blocks into a 

neat pile. Addictive rating: 10/10 

Order. TET9-5 IK:£3 

Classic board 

games includes: 

y Scrabble, 

Cieudc, 

Mastermind, 

Othelio, 

Backgammon and much 

more... Great fun for all the family. 

Orair. BOGIO-i UK;£10 

mrce greav 

Startrek games 

including: Startrek: 

The arcade game, 

Stratrek, RPG, 

and Startrek: 

Adventure. 

Around 60 colour 

"clip" fonts fî 

n Desktop V 

work or DTP, great 

for Paint pack 

ages like DPaint, 

Personal Paint etc. 

U- 

I Around 60 high 

\ quality colour 

^-'i images covering 

J\ \animals, plants, 

(Transport and 

Jlots more. 

5uitable for any Amiga 

Graphics or PTP package. 

\Oriir CCF3-5 Ut.:t9 

tCOL0UR CLNPART \'q\ One 

petails of over 6000 Amiga titles. | 

\Oritr. «TM UK:£1 

The Kid's 

Education 

;ID5 EDUCATION SWTE 

Suite 

Oritr EM/94 UK:(9 

Is a simpie to use collection of Children's games 

that cover ail areas of Maths, Spelling, Simple 

counting, Puzzles and much more.... Suitable for 

Children aged around 4-9 years. 

Home Finance 

Suite is Che OME FINANCE SUITE 

perfect choice Oritr. F1N7-3 UK:£7 

controlling your personal bank accounts. 

Managing Direct-Debits, Petrol, Gas, Electric 

bills and more. 

Professional 

Mono Clipart 

is a ten disk Orier. 6BH3-I0 M:£!3 

set of very high quality mono clipart images 

^suitable for use in any Amiga graphics of 

Desktop publishing package. Catagories include: 

Eye catchers. Animals. Fun. Holidays and more. 

3D Garden 

Designer is a 

powerfull yet Oritr. 5EN3-I UK:£3 

easy to use garden layout designer. So before you| 

go out and ruin your garden, sit down and design 

it first. Now the weather's nice you'll have to do 

the garden, this is a great excuse not to do it. 

Little Office is 

a simpie to 

LiTTLE 0FF:CE6UITE 

suite of 

\ Montana, Rummy 

and many more. 

\Onttr. CWQ-4 VK;W 

... ii \Crunch Mania ie a 

disk collection 

I of virtually every 

larchiver, Disk 

^cruncher and u- 

\Drier. 

fiver need. 

CKM5-2 UK:£5 

MANIA Vot One *&Bm. 

(The A1200 

[Degrader tools is 

of utilities 

[that allow you to 

[degrade your 

1A1200/A4000 

down to an A500 

1EG4-2 UK:iA 

:A1200 DEGRADED HSOO 

^The Red Sector 

I Demo maker colllection 

v2 is the 

mo5t advanced 

\demo maker 

available, It sup 

ports IFF graphics, 

J5crolly messages, 3D objects, 

and music modules. The set also I 

includes an on-disk user guide 

and tonnes of demo data. 

\0rdcr. K5M15-5 UK;£15 

ICopy that Floppy, 

IThis 2 disk comîilation 

of powerfull 

Idisk copiers 

should allow you 

ito backup virtual 

ly anything. 

CPY4-2 UK:£4 

IAMIGADI5KC0PY" 

\Disk Recovery Suite] 

a compilation of 

[the best salvage 

\tools available. So 

I if you have a cor- 

Irupted disk or 

file, this should fix it. 

I Order. PRT5-2 UK; £5 

PI5K RECOVERY SUITE *sa» 

Over WO printer 

for Canon, 

.Epson, HP. IBM, 

1 Citizen, 

[Commodore, and 

'dozens more. If 

not on here you 

Kvon'tfind it anyivHere. 

lOrder. 0Rk3-1 UK:£3 

PRINTER DRIVERS 

Easy Calc Plus is one of the 

Amiga's most powerful! and mo; 

I trusted Spreadsheet package. 

\ \0tier. ' UK:£5

Ot seemed for a while that the 

lovely eight speed CD in our 

A4000 was going to do no more 

than spend its life spinning the 

never ending flow of Aminet CDs that make 

it to our office. Thankfully a glimmer of light 

has entered its life, in the form of the CD ver 

sion of DrawStudio. 

If you missed our review of the disk ver 

sion then DrawStudio (written by the authors 

of ImageStudio - one of the most popular 

public domain programs written) is an excel 

lent structural drawing tool. All the experi 

ence gained from writing ImageStudio and 

TextureStudio has been poured into the 

development of DrawStudio, and I'm glad to 

say they haven't wasted their time - it's a 

most impressive program. 

At its heart DrawStudio is a powerful, 

structured drawing program. Unlike tradi 

tional bitmap based drawing programs, once 

a structured drawing has been finished it can 

be scaled to any size without loss of detail, 

whereas a bitmap would become blocky. The 

program can achieve this because it restricts 

you to using basic line and curve drawing 

tools. 

Normally this would be quite limiting, but 

thanks to some snazzy tools you can create 

some rather impressive results. As you would 

expect, straight forward colours can be 

applied to shapes created with DrawStudio. 

Things start to get a little more interesting 

when you try out the gradient tool. Using 

this, any type of colour gradient 

can be created and 

beyond this is 

D ra wStu d i o's 

bitmap capabili 

ty that allows 

you to import 

most types of 

image formats 

and use them 

within your 

DrawStudio creations. 

This is one of the best 

*AM 

designed programs to come out for the 

Amiga in a long while, and I would think the 

use of MU! goes a long way to explain some 

of the unique abilities of DrawStudio. The 

down side is that you need an 030 processor 

to make it comfortable to use, but then 

r thinks 

it's Christmas, no 

he's not stupid, he 

has just got the 

DrawStudio CD 

again, 

MUI demands 

more than a basic Al 200 machine in the first 

place. 

jJJJHAT'S ON IT? 

600Mb is quite a lot, just look at some of 

the atrocious shovelware CDs that are 

unceremoniously booted out onto the 

Amiga CD market. Personally, I would prefer 

a partially filled CD containing quality stuff 

rather than having to plough through piles 

of dross. 

So what do you get for your money? 

Along with DrawStudio you also get full reg 

istered versions of ImageStudio and 

TextureStudio- The use of TextureStudio may 

be limited, but the full version of 

ImageStudio will come in very handy, partic 

ularly if you only have access to a basic paint 

package. 

Apart from the lightning installation the 

CD version allows, you also get vast quanti 

ties of images, fonts and tutorial material on 

Along with the programs there is over 

500Mb of Jpegs, DrawStudio clipart and a 

load of Postscript fonts. Everything is niceiy 

organised and categorised along with 

thumbnail previews. The Jpegs mainly come 

in three different sizes - small, medium and 

large. So whatever your memory require 

ments are, there should be a picture to fit. 

There are also a number of DrawStudio 

projects on the CD including all the fonts 

and images used along with the DrawStudio 

file. For people just starting, or looking for 

some tips on creating designs with 

DrawStudio, these will be invaluable learn 

ing tools. 


JUNE 1997 

the CD. This gives it a definite advantage over 

the standard disk version, in fact you'd be 

very silly not to buy this. fT*f 

Lj D L L L) J J J 

line 

Requirements 

RED essential BLACK recommended 

Product details 

Product DrawStudio CD 

Supplier LH Publishing 

Price £74.95 

Tel 01908 370 230 

E-Mail: larryfgem.powernet.co.uk 

WWW:http://ivww.aidean.demon.co.uk/studio/ds.ri!rtil 

Scores 

Ease of use 95% 


90% 


92% 

Overall 92%

We stock over 65OO QUALITY PD & SHAREWARE 

How to order 

To order any disk just write the disk title and the disk 

code. EG U01 Against. Some lilies have a number in 

I). This means the title come on (t) number of disks. 

To order PACK just write down the pack TITLE name. 

ALL DISKS ARE COMPATIBLE 

WITH ALL AMIGAS UNLESS STATED 

AGA Disk means lor AT 2QtVAJO00 only 

PRICES 

SINGLE DISK OOP PEFI DISK 

LATEST CATALOGUE DISK 7Op 

PACK (PRICE AS STATED) 

PLLASL ADD 7fip TO TOTAL FOH UK POM FJUM 

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ver the years, desktop publishing 

• ■ has become more and more 

V popular. Whether you're into 

video, music or publishing itself, 

it would seem that most of you have a need 

at one time or another to publish something. 

I've been exploiting the Amiga's publishing 

prowess for many years and still do, publish 

ing not only a magazine, but most of my 

point of sale material as well. 

Desktop publishing covers many areas, 

and in this feature I want to walk you through 

a few of these, looking at both software and 

hardware that you can use with your Amiga. 

The art of publishing can be broken up into 

four main categories. There is the production 

of text, pictures and then the coming togeth 

er of both in a layout package and finally, 

there is the printing. 

You could say that desktop publishing started 

with the printed word and wordprocessors. 

Thanks to the personal computer though, 

words can now be mixed with pictures not 

only in dedicated page layout programs like 

PageStream but also in wordprocessors such 

as Wordworth and Final Writer. 

There are two ways you can look at the 

printed word in desktop publishing. One is 

where you create the text in a program suit 

ed for text creation and then use that text in 

a page layout program. This is what we do at 

LH Publishing where the words are created in 

Protext, saved as ASCII and then imported 

into either ProPage or PageStream. 

The advantage for us in doing it that way is 

that nothing gets in the way of the writing. 

You don't have to worry about what font it's 

in, where this picture goes and so on. You just 

get on with putting the words down that are 

required. This is why we use Protext, a text 

based word processor. 

We realise though that the 

way it's done by the majority 

of Amiga owners is rather 

different. Most create their 

text in either 

Wordworth or 

Final Writer. 

If that's 


JUNE 1997 

Larry Hickmott guides the absolute 

DTP beginner throught the mind 

field that is the publishing industry, 

find out what software, hardware 

and techniques you need to get 

your work puiblished 

you, and there's a strong chance it will be, 

and you intend using the text in another pro 

gram like PageStream or 

ProPage, the best 

way is to 

save the 

text as 

ASCII 

and import it into the page layout program of 

your choice. 

Some will ask why not do it in the page 

layout's wordprocessor and for me the 

answer is simple. Programs like Wordworth, 

Final Writer and Protext have more powerful 

text editing functions. Sure, the Article Editor 

in ProPage has a spell checker, but I prefer 

the one in Protext which has Auto correct 

to correct commonly misspelled 

words, a function also present 

in Wordworth and Final 

Writer. 

I couldn't do without 

the thesaurus either. 

For example, a little 

earlier I used the 

word proof twice 

in the one sen 

tence and did 

n't like the 

sound of it, so 

I used the the 

saurus to come 

up with the 

word 'evidence' 

to replace one 

occurrence of the 

word proof. 

Amiga wordprocessors 

can be used for more 

than just word creation 

though, page layout as well, for 

example. Cone are the days when 

you couldn't format your text or add

Most publishers will need to croate or 

edit graphics. One package that is 

getting better and better is &rt Effect 

from Haage S Partner 

images in a wordprocessor. Now you can do 

both almost as well as if you were using a 

DTP program. I personally prefer not to do my 

DTP in this way because I believe in using just 

one or two programs for all my page layout 

work. So whereas many will write letters in a 

wordprocessor, I normally do it a DTP pro 

gram because it's what I know best. 

There is no right or wrong way, just the one 

H Publishing 

- A Case Study 

If evidence that the Amiga can cut it 

when it comes to DTP was needed then 

my own business, LH Publishing, is liv 

ing proof that H can. I've been produc 

ing a magazine for nearly four years on 

an Amiga and have also produced a 

number of books and manuals. 

This is why I feel very strongly about 

supporting the Amiga and Amiga DTP. 

When Cold Disk stopped publishing 

Amiga products, I dipped my hand into 

my pocket to get them to sell me a 

licence to resell Professional Page 4.1, 

something we are still doing. 

The promotion of Amiga DTP prod 

ucts has increased, as I have come to 

see that no other company in the UK 

has the appetite or experience to do 

this. So much so, my business now 

Imports products from long time Amiga 

supporters, Soft-Logik, as well as 

important Hems like ImageFX, data CDs 

and TurboPrint 5. 

To produce our magazine we use 

both Professional Page and 

PageStream 3; the words are produced 

In Protext Many of the graphics are 

scanned using ImageFX 2.6 and an 

Desktop publishing is all about printing 

computer based documents and with the 

help of packages like TurboPrint S, the 

quality you'll get is nothing short of superb. 

that you fee! most comfortable with. I prefer 

a DTP application because I hate being dic 

tated to when it comes to how things are 

done. I have never liked being told what to do 

and there's no way I like my software to tell 

me I can't do something. I'll give you an 

example. Let's say you want to lay out a letter 

in columns. In a wordprocessor you can do it 

in columns, but producing uneven columns 

Epson CT-S500. Headings and Illustra 

tions are created in DrawStudio while 

the editing of bitmap images is taken 

care of in both Personal Paint and 

ImageFX 2.6. 

The films for the printer are done on 

Hewlett-Packard lasers while the 

proofs are normally output on one of 

the Epson Stylus inkjets we have here 

via TurboPrint 5. 

As far as hardware goes, all our work 

is now done on an 060 based 1200 

although this is soon to change. Not 

long ago we picked up a second-hand 

4000/030 and I feel now Is the right 

time to equip the 4000 with a graphics 

card. Although we have both Zip and 

km drives, I prefer the latter - the Zip 

drive fills up far to quickly. 

For those that feel we might change 

our minds If we had a Macintosh or PC, 

we also have these as well. The 

Macintosh hasn't been turned on for 

almost three months and the PC is 

Siamesed to the Amiga and only used 

for accounts and the database. The 

Amiga really does rule and for all the 

right reasons. 

and desktop publishing packages like 

Professional Page 4.1 have much more advanced 

features when it comes to PostScript output 

that are linked requires a lot of lateral think 

ing. In a DTP program, it's simplicity itself. 

A wordprocessor is a column based pro 

gram while DTP programs are page based. 

The difference is simple enough. A page in a 

wordprocessor already comes with the 

columns in place. You can choose to alter the 

number via requesters and so on, but you 

can't pick them up and move them willy nilly. 

We do now have text frames in wordproces- 

sors as well as tables, which enable us to 

have what I call free standing columns of text 

with printers now able to produce photo quality, there has 

never been a better time to get into publishing 


JUNE 1997

ut, as yet, they can't be linked together. 

For letters, reports and a lot of other things, 

this isn't important. In fact, with end notes, 

foot notes and more, the wordprocessor is 

well suited to technical notes and I would 

recommend it for such, especially with con 

tents generation and so on where I would 

draw the line is when creating booklets, have 

facing pages. Word processors were not 

designed for this and it is definitely easier to 

use a DTP program. I would also say that a 

DTP program is better suited for those who 

want to use PostScript. Most wordprocessors 

support it but only in a fairly minor way. 

You will also find a desktop publishing 

package is more flexible with graphics. Both 

WordwOrth and Final Writer are quite adept 

with graphics but nowhere near as good as 

either PageStream or ProPage. The DTP pack 

ages can handle more graphics formats for 

example, and the drawing tools are generally 

more powerful. 

Then we come to font handling. Amiga 

wordprocessors have made great strides in 

making sure they support many different for 

mats of fonts but still do not have the control 

necessary for controlling the kerning of fonts 

- the ability to set the kern 

ing for individual fonts and 

individual pairs, for exam 

ple. 

Many of these points may 

appear to be of minor 

importance, but to the seri 

ous publisher, they can be 

the difference between an 

eye catching layout and one 

that is plain and drab. 

The key to knowing 

which one to use is experi 

ence. If you've only just started 

with DTP, then experiment and 

find what's comfortable - 

what I like may be totally 

unsuitable for you. For years,! have advocat 

ed the use of Professional Page, because it's 

what I know, but recently have spent a lot of 

time using the latest version of PageStream 

and feel comfortable using it. I don't use a 

WYSIWYG wordprocessor for the bulk of my 

work because when it comes to page layout, 

I often find I'm restricted in what I can do. 

PageStream 2SE from LH Publishing is an 

ideal starting point for anyone wanting to 

jump onto the desktop publishing 

bandwagon 

/ really enjoy using photoquality 

pictures and it's 

because of this that I have 

been driven to push my Amiga 

to its limits so that I can 

reproduce pages almost as 

good as the ones you see here 


JUNE 1997 

Page Layout 

if you're happy using your word- 

processor for DTP, then so be it, 

but don't be afraid to experiment 

because in the long run it will 

make you better at what you do. 

Force yourself to learn new appli 

cations because you will generally 

find each program has a strong 

area which you can put to good 

use at some time. 

A STORY 

Text with no pictures is not something I 

find appealing. When faced with such a page, 

I will always try and find something to break 

A VINTAGE YEAR FOR DEWSBURY WINES 

1997 

0 pc. IPos 0 pc 

o a I m I 

w n M » « « » 

Creating calendars, letterheads and so on, 

is possible in programs like Final Writer and 

Wordworth, even though they were 

designed as wordprocessors 

;< =; :t tt 

MTB 

Getting your work 

on paper is a 

lengthy process, 

involving no less 

than tour seporato 

programs that 

represent the 

stages of creating 

a final print 

1 £ i 19/3/07

Desktop publfsfiing is something you can 

do even with a wordprocessor (ihe 

Wordworth 

it up to make it less intimidating, even if it's 

just white space. 

I really enjoy using photo-quality pictures 

and it's because of this that I have been dri 

ven to push my Amiga to its limits so that I 

can reproduce pages almost as good as the 

ones you see here, but printed from a desk 

top printer. In the beginning, before we had 

TurboPrint and Studio, that wasn't possible 

(except of course if you had a PostScript 

printer). Now it is, thanks no! only to print 

enhancement packages but also much better 

printers. 

The type of pictures you choose depends 

on many factors. There are two main cate 

gories - structured and bitmap. I prefer 

bitmaps. There is a misunderstanding that 

you only get good quality output from struc 

tured drawings but that is a lie. The reason for 

this is simple: Bitmaps are more compatible 

with whatever application you care to name 

and support anything a program is capable of 

producing. 

I'll give you an example. There are many 

different types of EPS and not all will work 

with applications that are supposedly EPS 

friendly. I also found that when testing some 

Jargon 

\ < 

A:O. - ffowrert NoformrMmg 

code other than perhaps labs. 

Usefd lot tatung tea from a: 

vwiprocessot ma a DIPpod- j 

age 

forma! iifaft enables you to 

rate few from an appkaan, 

retaining some of the format 

ting but not pictures and so on 

In conjunction with font transb- 

lion tables, RTF can be useful 

for may who awn a PC and an 

Amiga 

StpiHBon - When you print a 

page in full colour (or spot 

colour) far outpul on a printing 

press, you \v\ll need to separate 

the process or spot colours so 

eadi one s pnnted on a sepa- 

roe pece of film Only DTP pro-" 

grams tendle this sort of hotL 

PvzSc?. - A programming 

language popular for describing 

pages. Has mart/ advantages 

and is the industry standard lor 

publishing. In general, a 

PosScnpt page will print more 

qwzkty than one to o non 

Postscript printer. Only bitmap 

images slav down PostScript 

w HAT YOU NEED 

Hardware: 

• Any Amiga, but the better your 

machine, the more adventurous you can 

be in the work you take on. 

• Flatbed scanner. Now very affordable, 

flatbed scanners are the best way to 

get images into your Amiga. Other 

methods include hand scanners and 

digitisers. 

• Printer. DTPjust isn't the same without 

a printer! I recommend a modern inkjet 

because they can produce photo-realis 

tic colour and pin sharp black and 

white. If you have to produce lots of 

copies, I recommend a laser. 

• Large hard drive or removable drive. 

Each copy of my magazine takes up at 

least 30Mb of disk space, so having 

plenty is important A Zip drive is a 

good way to give you that extra space 

you need. 

• SCSI Port SCSI is much more useful 

than IDE in my experience, and with a 

SCSI port you can connect Zip and Jaz 

drives, plus CD-Roms and scanners. 

he Publishing Industry 

One of the most common questions I am asked is whether someone with an 

Amiga can make a living out of publishing. The answer is simple enough - yes. 

After all, I did it which is proof that anybody can. There is only one obstacle you 

will face and that is the industry that supports publishing. Don't be alarmed, 

you'd face the same problem if you owned a PC. That's because the printing 

industry is Macintosh based. 

Whenever you want some high resolution film produced, you'll have to be 

ready for rejection because many bureaus, more through incompetence than 

anything, won't accept it. Many are not happy unless they have a document file, 

and Amiga document files won't load into Macintosh applications of course. So 

you hand them a PostScript file but quite a few don't know want to do with this. 

Software: 

■ Word processor. One like Wordworth 

or Final Writer can be used for all your 

word creation and layout needs. I use 

Protext (sadly no longer available as far 

as I know) to create my words, even 

those for Amiga Computing! 

• Graphics programs. You'll need some 

thing to process images starting off 

with a program like Personal Paint (or 

DPaint) but for those working with pho 

tographic images, I recommend a pack 

age that works in 24-bit fidelity. 

Packages like ImageFX, Art Effect and 

DrawStudio. ImageFX also comes with 

scanner drivers. 

• Page Layout You have three 

options here. The cheapest Is 

PageStream 2SE, now available for 

only £25 in the UK. Next on the mon 

etary ladder is Professional Page 4.1 

at £49.95 with the best being 

PageStream 3 at £125. 

• Print Enhancement Package. To make 

sure your creations come out on paper 

as good as they look on screen, you 

need either Studio II Professional or 

TurboPrint 5. 

■ Font Editors, Outline fonts are the 

bedrock of DTP and with TypeSmith, 

you'll be able to edit and create your 

A flatbed scanner produces Ihe best quality, and with prices going 

downwards, more Amiga owner* can afford what was once a luxury item 

that's when the problems start. 

My advice is to get a PostScript printer, and if you do spot colour work, find a 

printer that works from positive film. That way, you can produce your own film 

on the PostScript laser. If however, you want to do full colour work, get a 

PostScript laser for proofing PostScript files and a colour inkjet for doing colour 

proofs, but take a PostScript file from your application to the bureau. Show them 

the proofs of the separations and the colour proof and tell them simply to send 

the PostScript files to the image setter. Some will, some won't. 

My advice is to get plenty of practise producing proofs which you can show 

your bureau, and iron out any possible problem areas before you get too far 

ahead of yourself. 


JUNE 1997

applications, EPS images can take a lot longer 

to print to non-PostScript printers. If you have 

a PostScript printer, and only a small number 

of Amiga owners do, then the opposite is true. 

Structured drawings will print more quickly. 

The big failing of a structured drawing is 

that, depending on what format you work 

with, you will be faced with various restric 

tions. Things like bitmap fills and transparent 

colours, which are now possible in a number 

of applications, are not possible in common 

ly used structured formats. Suffice to say, pro 

viding you stick to some simple guidelines, 

bitmaps will print every bit as well as struc 

tured objects. 

If creating an image, make it big and scale 

down and if the progiam supports anti-alias 

ing, use it. If creating line art, make sure it is 

created at the same resolution as your print 

er. On-screen, the image is at 75 dpi (approx), 

so if you know you have to create a diagram 

one inch in size and your printer is 300 dpi, it 

must be created on a screen four inches wide 

and then scaled down in the DTP program. 

The one exception to this is DrawStudio, 

where you can create your image any old size 

and just select the resolution you require 

when exporting the image. 

Taking words and mixing them with pictures 

can be done in a wordprocessor as already 

explained, but by far the best solution is to use 

a DTP program. These applications are page 

based. That means, the program gives you a 

clean white page and you are free to place 

whatever object you want, wherever you want, 

Jargo 

to be separated into four colours 

- Cyan Mogenta, Ydlor.- and 

BlacL Bitmap images .wit 

always be separated mio thh la 

tuScolouroutput. 

ku -. 

con be many thugs, n s gener 

ally fcnctvi for its spot cabur 

library nhereby you con stipu 

late o Pantone colour on screen 

(PageSveam J end 

Professiona! Page 4) and then 

have the printer use his Pmione 

catalogue to mix an ink the 

same cobur. 

I . - A unit ot measurement 

12 points to one ptca and six 

picas to an inch 

■>■■■- '-Imagine tm types of 

ones, block on a white back 

ground One is jus! black end 

when printed reAfe steps cm 

be

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ne of the best investments I have 

• ■ ever made for my Amiga has got 

m to be a graphics card. My first one, 

a Picasso II, brought life back into 

my A4000 with fast 256 colour Workbench 

and higher resolutions. The move from ACA to 

the Picasso was much more noticeable than 

when I moved from my ECS A1500 to AGA all 

those years ago. 

It wasn't long, however, before I wanted 

more. I found myself craving to view the Web 

in thousands of colours, use the new 

CyberGraphics screen modes in programs like 

Image FX and, most of all, keep up with the 

speed of graphics cards on the PC. 

As if in answer to my need, Phase5 

announced its new CyberVision 64/3D graph 

ics card with 4Mb video RAM. I had read the 

reviews of the CyberVision 64 card in the past 

and decided to order one. The card was due to 

arrive in a couple of months so I sat back and 

waited. Good job I had registered 

CyberGraphics for the Picasso I! while I was 

waiting, but 15bit screens were slow and I 

couldn't wait for a 64bit dream of a card. 

I lost track of how long it took to arrive. Like 

all good Amiga users I am used to waiting, and 

eventually the card was delivered (several 

months late) in the first week of January. The 

slim black sexy box containing the CV3D was 

in my hands and all was forgiven. 

In with the new 

The installation instructions seemed simple 

enough so I got into action. Here's a tip which 

may be useful; before you turn off your Amiga 

and start the install, make sure you set the 

Workbench screen back into an original mode 

that your monitor can see, or you will find you 

won't be able to see anything when you turn it 

back on with the CV3D. I had to put my 

Picasso back in and do this! 

Opening up your machine requires a bit of 

care, make sure you keep all the screws safe as 

you take them out and remember that static 

electricity will cause damage if you do not take 

precautions. Buy, borrow or pinch a static 

wristband, take out all the power leads from 

the back of your Amiga and don't be too force 

ful. 

Follow the instructions and you should soon 

have the card in place. The CV3D uses a new 

version of the popular CyberGraphics software 

which is up to v3 now. This was easy to install 

The CV3D demonstrations and the 

useful CyborPrefs 

Dan Winfield explains 

why he could not live 

without his CyberVision 3D 


JUNE 1997 

fCQ 

and I had no problem with setting the software 

to use the monitor file from the old Picasso 

CyberGraphics installation. Getting your moni 

tor working with the CyberGraphics software 

requires you to use a program called CVMode, 

further help on this is on the Internet at the 

official CyberGraphics support site (see Web 

references). 

One more reboot and I was ready for action. 

Booted fine, nice new boot logo, no error mes 

sages or anything unexpected. Start Image FX, 

crash. WHAT? Start Directory Opus, crash! Start 

ibrowse, crash! Doh! Start to panic. I read the 

manual and calmed down a little - some sys 

tems with accelerators need to have the latest 

Buster chip and mine was one of them (see 

box out). 

Impressions 

One week and one new buster later. OK, up 

and running and stable in 15bit 800*600, but 

what did I think? 

The CV3D was definitely much faster than 

the Picasso II. Opening, moving and resizing 

windows was snappy. A big test for me was 

always going to be swapping between screens. 

I usually have three screens going - 

Workbench, a MUl screen for ibrowse/Web 

development and XWindows so I can run 

Netscape and other UNIX applications from 

our server across the office. Yes, again, it was 

snappy and many times faster than with my 

Picasso II and what's more, there are still drag 

gable screens. 1 then proceeded to spend 

many hours trying out all my software, 3-D 

demos and getting the latest drivers from the 

CyberGraphics Web site. 

I was very happy with the CV3D, especially 

as I use my Amiga at work and the speed 

increase alone makes the card worthwhile. But 

this speed has been available in the past with 

the Cybervision64, so what about the new 3-D 

side of the card? 

The CV3D is powered by the Virge graphics 

chip from S3 (if you want to delve into more 

detailed specifications, everything you need is 

on the CyberGraphics Web site). The 3-D 

demos that come with the board demonstrate 

the potential of the Virge chip. 

They are simple texture mapped shapes 

that you can rotate using the key pad. If you 

play with your keyboard delay settings you can 

get them to spin more quickly and smoothly. I 

managed to get them to produce a suitably 

hypnotic effect as I stared at the screen rotat 

ing the objects round and then back again. I 

was impressed with this early demonstration 

and hope that software developers use it, par 

ticularly in 3-D rendering packages, in the 

future. 

I have been using the card for nearly three 

months, five days a week and have found it 

very stable and a definite welcome addition to 

my set up. If you have a CyberStorm 060, as I 

do, then you will have pretty much reached 

the limit of what an Amiga can do at the 

moment, but don't sit back and feel all smug 

just yet. 

The Picasso IV has recently been released 

and although I haven't tried it myself, it seems

to have very good specifications and repre 

sents extremely good competition for the 

CV3D. For a start it has its own 3-D module 

promised and a video pass-through as stan 

dard - wait a minute, this is a CV3D review not 

a Picasso IV advert. 

There are a couple of expansion options 

worth mentioning that can be added to a 

CV3D. The first is a Scan doubler module, this 

will be essential if you rely on the old Amiga 

screen modes. The CV3D doesn't come with a 

pass-through as standard, and so it is impossi 

ble to see some Amiga screen modes, some 

thing I had been used to on my old Picasso II. 

This is just not a standard option and not a 

problem because it is possible to buy one if 

you need it. i don't think I will, but I do want to 

get the Mpeg module. This option was 

promised for the original CV64 card but was 

never built due to S3 dropping support for the 

old Trio64 data bus. This module allows real 

time Mpeg audio and video decoding without 

processor usage. You can even open the video 

into a window on Workbench in 15 or 16bit 

colour. 

This is all very well, but I just read this on the 

Phase5 Web site because, as it stands, the 

module hasn't been released. I hope it is, but 

then again 1 am still waiting for the CyberStorm 

Ethernet module. 

I did try out some speed tests using a pro 

gram called SysSpeed, but really this is only 

useful if there is something to compare it to. I 

did not have a Picasso IV to hand, but when 

we review it I will make sure a statistical com 

parison is made. So you will have to wait for 

USTED BUSTER 

When I installed my CV3D I soon discov 

ered that I had to upgrade my Buster chip. 

There are bugs in some of the Buster chips 

on older Amiga 4000's, usually Revision 9 

ones, which makes using Zorro III slots 

unstable with accelerators that operate at 

anything but the original 25MHz. Have a 

check and see what version you have. 

My revision 9 was taken out and 

replaced with a revision 11, which I 

ordered from Dart Computer Services 

(0116 2470059). The installation was sim 

ple and everything worked a treat from 

then on. Again, more information about the 

Buster bug can be found on the 

CyberGraphics Web site. 

The incredibly useful 

CyberGraphics Web site 


JUNE 1997 

the heated head to head that will surely ensue. 

Remember, if you want to use the latest dri 

vers after you have bought your CV3D, they are 

on the CyberGraphics Web site. You will then 

benefit from extra options such as SUPERLAY- 

ERS which greatly speeds up all window mov 

ing. 

All in all, I am completely happy with the 

CV3D's performance. I know there are some 

faster cards for the PC, but then who knows 

what the future holds now Gateway 2000 has 

bought the Amiga and with the pending 

release of the Power Up card with optimised 

RISC drivers from Phase5? If you want speedy 

graphics now, then the CV3D represents excel 

lent value at £179.95. 

EB SITE 

REFERENCE 

Phase 5 http://www.phase5.de 

CyberGraphics http://www.vgr.com/cybergfx 

Virge http://wwwj3.com/products 

Files 

Amrnet util/moni/SSpeed22.lha 

All the information you could ever need on 

the CV3D can be found an the 

CyberGraphics Web sfte. If you are not on 

the internet yet, you are definitely missing 

out Updates to drivers, utilities and help for 

the CV3D is immediately at hand. 

Product 

Product 

Supplier 

Price 

Tel 

Ease of use 



Overall 

Scores 

line 

DETAILS 

CyberVision 3D 

Cordon Harwoods 

£219.95 

01773 836781 

90% 

83% 

90% 

88%

The sun is shining, 

the birds are singing 

and it looks like we 

are in for a long hot 

summer. Best of all, 

the Amiga has been 

bought, hurrah 

EJONEY, MONEY MONEY 

Amiga Computing is my favourite magazine 

of all the Amiga magazines out there. Why 

don't you allow a section where your read 

ers put their interviews, games and opin 

ions without an AC expert answering them? 

Why not have an art page where people 

draw pictures by hand or by computer that 

have to do with AC or anything else with 

the Amiga, and the best drawings of the 

month will win a prize? 

Getting down to some real business. 

Why doesn't the Amiga Company publicise 

the Amiga with commercials on TV? Why 

do we pay so much for Amiga parts when 

we can buy parts for PCs at a cheaper price, 

and we can use it on the Amiga? 

What I'm getting at is that the Amiga has 

a lot of potential and is the greatest com 

puter in the world, but without any adver 

tisements how will anyone know what the 

Amiga is? People may see an Amiga maga 

zine on a news stand, but why are they 

gonna buy it if they don't have a clue of 

what type of computer it is? 

Another thing -upgrades. The PC, for 

instance, has an MMX chip now, but what 

about the Amiga? PCs can be upgraded 

without too much work. How come the 

Amiga doesn't have special America Online 

and CompuServe disks like the PC? 

I do not want to make it seem as if the 

Amiga is a bad computer, it is my favourite 

computer and games system, but if you 

don't let others know what it can do, then 

what's the point? 

Joey Di Perla, j_diperla_l2@juno.com 

Mimnm, so it would be like a letters page 

without me answering? Nah, my ego's 

too big for that sort of thing, and if I 

SO NASTY 

Write in! 

If you have something you need to get off your chest 

then put pen to paper and write to ESP, 

Amiga Computing, Media House, Adlington 

Park, Macclesfield, SK1O 4NP. You can also 

Email us at ESP@acomp. demon.co.uk We 

have various software bundles to give 

away for the best letters (please indicate 

whether you'd prefer serious software or 

games). We do try to reply to all Emails and letters, but at busy 

periods this is sometimes not possible so please bear with us 

started letting you lot write games 

reviews we would have to fire Hugh and 

Amiga Computing Towers just wouldn't 

seem the same with the clomping of his 

size 12s. 

If you know what you are doing, what 

is stopping you buying parts from a PC 

shop? Generally you will find that most 

Amiga shops deal with a much smaller 

number of customers but can provide 

dedicated Amiga help, and you know 

what you are buying is guaranteed to 

work with your Amiga. For example, if 

you ring up a PC shop and ask for mem 

ory, you could mean SIMMs, DRAM, 

SRAM, VRAM or WRAM. Whereas in an 

Amiga shop you would have no such 

problem. 

1 think you should start running a "Spot The Amiga" column. It's good fun 

and it heightens awareness. For example 1 saw an A1200 on the Working 

Lunch programme, BBC2, 20 Feb. It was reporting on a Welsh animation 

company, Serial, and was running an animation of a line a drawing of a car 

toon that had been digitised. What do you think? 

Michael Barkhordar, mikebarkhordar@enterprise.nst 

A few years ago there was a spate of Amigas appearing on TV - largely 


JUNE 1997 

I can tell you why there are no Amiga 

adverts on the TV - money. It is a fact 

that adverts are the single most expen 

sive form of media and, at the moment, 

Amiga International has better things to 

spend its money on. Perhaps when a 

new machine sees the light of day we 

will see an advertising push. 

As for MMX, you will never see that 

appearing for the Amiga as it is part of 

the Pentium processor and I think it's 

just a crafty ploy by Intel to force people 

to upgrade their processors to at least 

166MHz. But as for Amiga's not being 

upgradable, that is just not true. With an 

A1200 you can upgrade the processor, 

memory, hard drive, add SCSI drives, CD- 

Roms, video grabbers, sound samplers 

and for the A4000, the sky's the limit. 

What you seem to forget is that the 

Amiga is a minority computer platform, 

you might not like it but it is a fact. 

Companies such as CompuServe and 

AOL will never have Amiga support, 

unless someone practically gives them 

the necessary software. 

due to a number of video companies using Amigas to produce comput 

er screens that have to be seen on TV, and so avoid the flickering you 

would get from a normal PC screen display. 

Sure, if you spot an Amiga you can write in. However, I'm not promis 

ing we will do anything with the letters. That's the sort of caring sharing 

attitude you have come to expect from Amiga Computing.

HuikPak, shmishpak 

I found this on your Web page, and feel 

that I have to comment on it. 

QuikPak does not, however, seem to 

agree with the numerous companies that 

said it should concentrate on cheap, entry 

level machines instead of the Video 

Professional market. 

"The Video market is currently providing 

the only purchasers of A4000Ts - that is 

why we devote so much development to 

them," said Robinson. "Bringing back the 

A1200 was a huge mistake by Escom. 1992 

systems re-introduced at ridiculous 

prices...hey, I'm a fanatic and even I would 

n't pay a thousand Canadian dollars for a 

computer I purchased for 599 dollars in 

the spring of 1994." 

"The Video market people are the only 

ones that need an A4000T, as for the 

A1200 I agree, and furthermore I think that 

its all in one approach is butt ugly. I want 

separate keyboard from system, and front 

mounted drives", 

"We do have an entry level system ready 

to go, but the big question is, will anyone 

buy one?" I will buy it if the price is right, 

and it has an Akiko chip, real NVRAM, RF, 

AV, SVHS, ARCB, video output, and a 

power PC604 100KHz CPU. 

The demands for all-powerful Amigas at 

ever cheaper prices do not impress 

Robinson either. "Cheap, cheap, cheap...to 

these people who whine about cheap PC 

IBM clones, I say so buy one and shut the 

f**k up.". He continued: "The Amiga in my 

opinion has value. An A4000t at S1997.00 

US with 16 Mb of Ram, a CD-Rom drive, 

SCSI II HD, a software bundle and all the 

wonderful capabilities it delivers, is good 

value. This is a true pre-emptive multitask 

ing computer with unmatched video 

potential" 

That's nice, but it still can't play Doom! I 

didn't buy an Amiga CD32, 5X1, 2.5" 

340mb HD, 4Mb Fast Ram to do rendering, 

I bought it to play computer games on my 

35" SVHS TV using a multi-firing button 

Joypad and in NTSC. I take great pleasure 

in playing Frontier Elite II from my bed 

using only the CD32 Joypad, and feel sorry 

for other Amiga users who have to play it 

with a joy stick mouse and key board star 

ing at a 14" monitor they will probably get 

haemorrhoids and spend their declining 

years glowing in the dark, sitting on those 

little round air filled doughnut things. 

1 also feel that it is necessary to give the 

people who created Guardian for the CD32 

some praise for figuring out that NTSC 

players can play their PAL game if they let 

them move the game to the top of the 

overscan screen, too bad the morons at 

Sensible software didn't figure this out 

before they released Cannon Fodder 

CD32! 

QuikPak hopes to have good news for 

the Amiga by the time this issue hits the 

shelves. Rest assured, we'll keep you up to 

date with the latest developments. 

Looking forward to it! 

Eric Hyland, aOO7193t@bc.seflin.org 

I'm sure you're glad you got that off your 

chest. I suppose now, pretty much every 

thing that QuikPak, and VlScorp for that 

matter, have said will have to be 

redressed. I would imagine QuikPak will 

keep its current relationship with Amiga 

Technology/International and so produce 

its rather expensive A4000 systems, 

something you have pointed out your 

self. 

Somehow I don't think QuikPak was 

talking about an entry level PowerPC sys 

tem - one thing 1 am looking for Gateway 

to allow is the Amiga's operating system 

to be ported to the PowerPC. This is 

something that will have to be done 

before we see any hardware coming 

from Amiga International, I would guess. 

The PAL, NTSC screen display differ 

ence has always caused problems. I 

know there are a lot of people in Europe 

that would have liked to get their hands 

on a PAL Toaster system, but then 

NewTEK totally missed out on that mar 

ket. Sorry, I was forgetting you are not 

mica "Take-over 

Reading Tom Broekmans letter from The 

Netherlands in issue 110, I couldn't help but com 

ment. He asks "Why is the take-over taking so long ?" 

it is an unfortunate fact that it is in the liquidator's 

interests to drag the process out as long as possible 

because that is how they make their money. 

On a more positive note, it would only take some 

sensible marketing and clever pricing, clearly aimed 

at the many families who still haven't got a PC only 

because they can't afford one, for the Amiga (1200 

with a big hard drive and 8Mb of Ram - no need for 

acceleration) to gain a good hold again in the home 

computing marketplace. 

That is definitely what should be done. Working as 

I do ■ on PCs for families that can afford them, don't 

really need them and can't use them - 1 go back 

home to my Amiga and wonder why they aren't 

using one of these! 

We (as Amiga users) know what even the most 

basic machine is capable of, and it is time someone 

out there in the computer industry realised it and did 

something about it. There is a real need for an alter 

native to the PC, and we need it fast. 

Kim Fyson, Kim@draught.demon.co.uk 

I am very, very happy to be able to say the watt is 

finally over and the Amiga has been bought, as I 

am sure you all should be aware of by now. You 

are correct in saying that it is the job of the liq 

uidator to get the best possible deal, as they are 

working on behalf of the creditors who want their 

interested in that sort of thing. 

The problem you are facing is that the 

games market in the US is so small and 

as most Amiga game developers are 

European, they will simply ignore NTSC 

users. In reality, if programmers used the 

operating system this would not be a 

problem as you could choose the screen 

mode. The AmigaQuake port does this, 

along with multitasking and supporting 

graphics cards. 

What you have to remember is that 

you and QuikPak are talking about two 

almost completely different machines. 

You want a PlayStation, MMX beating, 

Amiga games machine. Whereas 

QuikPak simply wants to sell machines 

based on current Amiga technology, for 

which the only current market in 

America is high-end Toaster/Raytracing 

systems. 

You almost point out the problem 

yourself, you want a PowerPC system, 

and this is something I doubt QuikPak 

would ever have been able to produce. It 

would require a large cash investment, 

not only to employee the programmers 

to port the OS but also the engineers to 

design the hardware, even using off the 

shelf parts. Gateway however, has the 

financial muscle to make things happen. 

money back, but in doing so they may have actu 

ally done the Amiga some good. A large company 

such as Gateway 2000 has substantial financial 

backing that could get some serious development 

underway, but that is something we can look for 

ward to sometime in the future. 

On your main point, I could not agree more, 

there is clearly a gap in the computer market that 

PCs do not currently fill, and perhaps never will. 

Due to the continuing growing hardware specifi 

cations of software and games, second hand PCs 

may always be under specced. 

Thanks to the low hardware overheads of the 

Amiga's operating system, systems ranging from 

set top boxes, low cost home computers, all the 

way up to full blown file servers could be based 

and developed around the Amiga's operating sys 

tem. 

When it comes to the A1200, I think the hard 

ware is woefully out of date - the display hard 

ware being the main problem. On the whole, I do 

agree that an A1200 with hard drive, 8Mb Ram 

and an 030 would make a perfect home comput 

er. Particularly if the bundle could be sold for 

£400.1 still think the major stumbling block is the 

display, as 256 colours on-screen is the absolute 

minimum people expect and, lets face it, AGA 

can't cut the graphical display mustard (whatever 

that means). 


JUNE 1997

Your first 

Windows 

Ithough I've only been able to cover 

a very small part of the C language 

during the last few months, it 

should have been enough to con 

vince you that learning about the basic syntax 

requirements of C is not particularly difficult. 

This changes dramatically however as you 

move into Amiga specific areas of C coding. The 

reason? Ifs not C itself thafs to blame - it's 

because there is a whole new set of Amiga sys 

tem conventions to come to terms with. 

One area that you will need to learn about 

straightaway is how to use the Amiga's 

libraries. With the exception of the exec library 

(which is always available), these have to be 

'opened' using the exec OpenLibraryO function 

and if this returns a library pointer that is not 

zero, then the library is open and ready for use. 

What does the code look like? Well, to open 

the Intuition library for example we'd use a 

statement like this... 

IrtuitionBaseits:ruc: IntuitionBase *) 

OpenlibrgryCintuition. library",0); 

IntuitionBase is a variable that we define else 

where in the program. The (Struct IntuitionBase 

*) item is known as a 'casf and in this case 

allows us to tell the compiler that it should view 

the value returned by OpenLibraryO as a pointer 

to a system structure called IntuitionBase. Casts 

do not alter the return values - they're essential 

ly used just to keep the compiler happy. 

After use, the program must close the library 

by using an exec CloseLibraryQ function but of 

course neither this operation, nor any preced 

ing use of any library functions, must be done 

unless the library opened successfully in the 

first place. 

This is where the C language's 'not equal to' 

conditional test statement, !=, comes in handy. 

By testing the value of IntuitionBase after mak 

ing the OpenLibraryO call we can guard against 

ever using a library that isn't open with code 

like this: 

d That's It 

Well at least as far as this C introduction 

goes. But don't panic, there'll be plenty of 

other C tutorials popping up from time to 

time (plus a little extra C coding help on our 

Web pages). Needless to say you'll find on 

the cover disk both the example code I've 

if [Intui!ionBis(!=C) 

{ 

/* here ue could do southing */ 

CloseLibraryUstruct Library 

♦UntuitionBass); 

} 

The CloseLibraryO call, and any other state 

ments written between these braces, will then 

only be executed if the returned library pointer 

is non zero (which in C terms is taken to indi 

cate a 'true' condition). 

Windows 

Listing 1 puts all these ideas together in a small 

program that opens the intuition library and 

then makes a call to a function called 

OpenWindowTagsQ which creates a window 

for us. The initial 'include' statements are refer 

ences to header files that, amongst other 

things, contain prototypes which tell the com 

piler how various Amiga library functions are 

used. Parameters like WA_Left in the window 

opening call are known as tags and, coupled 

discussed and a slightly extended version 

that makes use of an intuition function called 

PrintlText() to display some text in the win 

dow. You'll also find a few extra notes that 

should help put a number of other Intuition- 

related issues into perspective! 

a I C_COVERDISK_CODE ! ED I 

U indnwi . c 

wtndoul 

u indow2,c 

uindou2 

Not much to look at but with Intuition it's 

definitely best to start with something simple! 

ExtraNotes 

Just sons test text! 


JUNE 1997 

Paul Overaa rounds up 

his introduction to the 

C language with intuition 

(include 

(include 

(include 

struct IntuitionBise 

struct Window 

■tint) 

with the values supplied are the standard way 

of passing information to many Amiga library 

functions. The tags I've used set the position 

and size of the window, give it a title and indi 

cate that the window should be given a drag 

bar (many more standard tags are defined in 

the Amiga system header files). 

Intuition quite simply reads these tag values 

and then creates a suitable window. Normally 

an Intuition program would then monitor 

things like menu or gadget activity by request 

ing messages to be sent and it would termi 

nate only when the user selected say a window 

close gadget or the 'quit' option of a menu. 

This 'event handling' approach, however, is far 

too involved for our example and so instead 

I've made use of the DOS library's Delay() func 

tion to provide a delay of about four seconds 

(this simply ensures that the window exists for 

long enough to be visible)! 

Most startup code that compilers attach to 

Workbench runabie programs, incidentally, 

opens the DOS library as a matter of course 

and this is why we did not need to explicitly 

open this library in our example code. At the 

risk of adding to the confusion here it's per 

haps also worth pointing out that a number of 

Amiga compilers, including Dice C and Storm 

C, do in fact provide automatic library opening 

schemes which allow you to make library calls 

without explicitly opening the libraries in the 

way I've described. 

MntuitionBase; 

( 

IntuitionBase=(struct IntuitionBase *)OpenLihrary("intuit ion.library",Q); 

if {IntuitionBasf!=0) 

{ 

uindoujisOpenUinclouTagstNu'LL, 

MA_Left,2G, UAJop.ZO, 

yAJidth,200, UAJeight,100, 

HA_DragBar,TRUE, 

U Title,"Ply First Window",TASJNB 

DeliyUOO); 

CloseifindoMtwindowj)1; 

CloseLibraryUstruct Library MlntuitionBase); 

J 

Listing 1: This has got to be about the sim 

plest Intuition program that can be written!

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pring 1995 saw the launch of Sun 

Microsystems' new portable pro 

gramming language, Java. It took 

some time before multi-platform 

support became available, and it established 

itself as a technology that could bring interac 

tivity to the WWW. Two years later, Java is still 

a buzzword in computing magazines and 

people are starting to realise that it has 

potential to do a lot more than just run 

applets on Web pages. 

There is an incredible amount of hype sur 

rounding Java. Once you wade through all 

this dross, however, you realise that while 

Java has great potential, it is really nothing 

more than a programming language. 

Java overview 

There are a number of features which make it 

stand out from all the other languages out 

there, but probably the most important 

aspect of the language is Sun's push to make 

Java code as portable as possible. The idea is 

that Java code can be written and compiled 

on any machine {that has a Java compiler) 

and the resulting executable can be run on 

any machine that has a Java runtime engine. 

Sun call this 'write once, run anywhere'. 

This is achieved by not compiling Java code 

moss 

into a native binary executable for a particular 

CPU architecture e.g. Intel x86 or Motorola 

680x0, but into a bytecode for a Virtual 

machine'. This machine can be thought of as 

a machine which has a lava CPU instead of 

an Intel or Motorola processor. 

Because the world is not full of machines 

with Java CPUs, we need a piece of native 

£ !_ _■ ■ I '■-' '■_ ( 

public clan F irstflppiet eMends flppte! 

PuOlic void patnKGraphies i) ( 

software on our computers to emulate this 

imaginary Java CPU. This piece of software is 

called a Java runtime engine or Java Virtual 

Machine (JVM). 

The JVM's job is to emulate a virtual 

machine running a Java CPU. When Java was 

launched there was obviously no such thing 

A basic Java applet 

running under the 

KOFflE JVM 

Karl Jeacle takes a look at the 

future of Java and the Amiga 


JUNE 1997 

D 

HE FUTURE 

It looks as though Java is here to stay, for 

the foreseeable future at least. Sun wants 

the language to be ubiquitous. Its range of 

Java chips allow everything from toasters to 

workstations to support or make use of 

Java in one form or another. 

If Java continues the way it's going right 

now, the advent of native Amiga Java sup 

port could breath new life into the machine. 

The number of applications available to 

Amiga users could literally double overnight. 

Leading software companies such as 

Corel are releasing Java based versions of 

top applications. Java's portability means 

reduced development costs for maintaining 

separate PC and Macintosh ports. The 

advantage to Amiga owners is that this 

increased ease of portability could lead to 

many big name applications suddenly run 

ning on the Amiga. 

Java is still a buzzword in the computing 

industry. All the major platforms now have 

Java ports. Given the recent state of affairs in 

the Amiga world, it's no surprise that an 

Amiga port isn't quite there yet, but at least 

a number of initiatives are underway. 

If nothing else, the Amiga is a survivor. I'm 

optimistic that in the not too distant future 

Amiga users will be actively developing and 

running Java applets and applications 

natively, no matter what kind of Amiga they 

own.

The building Iava Resources 

freedom 

am 

Sun claim their line of Java 

chips will free users from being 

tied to conventional CPUs 

as a Java computer. However, Sun is now 

shipping real Java CPUs, so before long, many 

machines may have Java co-processors on 

board, to handle Java code natively, in addi 

tion to a conventional CPU for existing appli 

cations. 

So in theory it shouldn't matter what kind 

of computer you have to run the latest great 

est applications - as long as they are written 

in Java. Application developers should be free 

to develop code on any platform which can 

generate Java bytecodes, and this code 

should, in turn, run on any machine that has 

a Java runtime engine. 

Compilers 

At present, the only Java compiier available 

for the Amiga has come from Fred Fish's ADE 

{Amiga Development Environment) initiative. 

It's a port of the Unix GNU program, guavac. 

As with many Unix programs, there is no 

fancy front end. You just run it from a CLI 

prompt and tell it what Java files to compile. 

As far as programming is concerned, Java 

is very similar to C++. If you have already pro 

grammed in C++ or have C experience with a 

knowledge of object oriented principles, you 

should be able to pick up Java quite quickly. 

Runtime engines 

P'Jami was the first attempt at porting Java to 

the Amiga, but unfortunately this project 

seems to have fallen by the wayside. In recent 

months, however, a number of new projects 

have appeared that are all working indepen 

dently to create a fully functional Amiga JVM. 

Kaffe is another ADE Unix port, and is 

already an established JVM on many other 

piatforms. It attempts to implement the JVM 

by using a JusMn-Time (JIT) compiler. The 

idea here is to do some smart pre-compila- 

tion and convert Java bytecodes into native 

machine code on the fly so as to increase the 

speed of the interpretation process. A normal 

JVM will simply convert each bytecode 

It's no surprise to discover that the best place to 

look for more information on Java is on the 

Internet, so below are some useful URLs which 

should tell you more about everything discussed 

in this article. 

Finale Development MOca 

http://www.finale-dev.com/ 

KOFFIE 

http://www.IAEhv.nl/users/weertj/KOFFIE/KOFF! 

E.html 

Amiga Java Page (P'Jami} 

http://www.sss.co.uk/~nt/hotjava.html 

Fred Fish's ADE 

http://www.ninemoons.com/products/ade.html 

Guavac 

http://hrtp.cs.berkeley.edu/~engberg/guavac/ 

Kaffe 

http://www.kaffe.org/ 

For more information on Java in general, check 

out Sun's own Javasoft site. It has all the specifi 

cations, white papers and latest information on 

what's hot in the Java world. If you're looking for 

Java applications, or libraries of code to help you 

write Java applets, Camelan is for you. 

Javasoft 

http://www.javasoft.com/ 

Camelan 

instruction it 

receives on an indi 

vidual basis, and is 

thus a rather slow 

process. 

Finale Develop 

ment is an up and 

coming Amiga 

developer that has 

announced MOca, a 

http://www.gamelan.com/ 

There are many books on Java now available, 

although most are aimed at programmers. If you 

want more general information on Java, by all 

means go to your local bookstore, but you'd be far 

better surfing the Web for articles, press releases 

and product reviews. If you're thinking of buying a 

Java book, an invaluable guide to some of the 

native Amiga JVM which also uses the JIT 

technique. MOca is scheduled for launch this 

summer and will use ClassAct as its GUI for 

running Java programs. 

KOFFIE is a Freeware Amiga JVM written by 

Jacco van Weert. Beta versions are available 

on Jacco's Web site. KOFFIE is based on a sys 

tem called BEAST which offers programmers 

an environment for developing object orient 

ed programs using any language. For the 00 

literate amongst you, KOFFIE implements 

INfiLE 

books available is at: 

http://sunsite.unc.edu/javafaq/books.html 

If you are buying a book, make sure it covers 

the recently released version 1.1 Java language 

specification and not the older, more common 

1.0.2 release. 

Despite the flexibility of Java as a general pur 

pose programming language, its Internet popular 

ity means that Web browsers are most likely to be 

the first Amiga applications to make use of Java. 

Because of the amount of work involved in cre 

ating a JVM, Amiga Web browsers will probably 

provide Java support by using one of the existing 

Amiga JVM ports. Yvon Rozijn, author of AWeb, 

has indicated that this will be the path he will fol 

low, and as soon as a suitable JVM is available, he 

will incorporate it into AWeb. No doubt other 

browsers such as iBrowse and Voyager will follow 

suit. 


JUNE 1997 

Finale Development's Web Cruiser (which 

should be available by the time you read this) is 

the latest Web browser on the block. In addition 

to the usual array of features, such as HTML 3.2 

and Frames, Finale claims that Web Cruiser will 

support inline Java applets as soon as its MOca 

JVM is available (2nd quarter 1997). 

"""Any where 

JAVA 

vii I1, ■ acceptance of Java on thm Internet 

guarantees Java a solid future as a language 

Java classes as 

BEAST classes, 

which means 

you could devel 

op code in C or 

C++ with BEAST, 

but still make 

use of the func 

tionality provid 

ed by the Java APIs. 

Right now, the only full 

Java solution available on 

the Amiga is via a 

Macintosh emulator such 

as ShapeShifter. You don't have to use the 

Mac exclusively though, it's possible to com 

pile applets on the Amiga with guavac and 

then flick screens to the Mac where you can 

use either the Sun or Apple Java 

Development Kit (JDK) to run the 

applet.

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Making Movies - your guide to Amiga desk-top 

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Issue 103 - September 1996 

Secure your system from viruses and hard drive 

meltdown, monitor round-up, Photogenits 2, 

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On the Disks: IBrowse/Tool Time 

Issue 99 - May 1996 

Beginners Guide to whafs on the Net, Hard Drive 

Round-Up, Modeller 4,0 

On the Disks: MUI 3.3, Tooled Up! 

Issue 105 - November 1996 

Future Designs • the main player's plans for the 

Amiga, IBrowse, Storm C, Image FX 2.6, DKB 

Wildfire 060 

On the Disks: Doopsi/ToolTastic 

Issue 100-June 1996 

Build your own Amiga sound studio, 100 Issue 

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On the Disks: Storm C 

Issue 106 - December 1996 

The Amiga's role in theatre, DOpus 5.5, Squirell 

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On the Disks: Photoegnics - full program

Issue 107 - Christmas 1996 

The best Christmas presents for Amigaphiles every 

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Issue 110-Marchl997 

Exclusive - global Amiga community surveyed 

Art Effect Update, Cet into Sampling, Pagestream 3.2 

On the Disks: Tiny TroopsAool-ey Unbelievable! 

Issue 108-Januaryl997 

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Issue 109 - February 1997 

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J Issue 97-March 1996 

j Issue 98-April 1996 

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Address 

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100-June 1996 

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Issue 105 - November 1996 £4 .50 

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Post code 

Issue 



110 -March 1997 

111 -April 1997 

112 -May 1997 

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Don't know who to vote for in the elections? 

Vote ACAS for a trouble free Amiga life 

PEG DATATYPE PROBLEMS 

. am in trouble! I have an AI200 with 68030 

and 68882 plus 16Mb Simm memory. I want 

to run Mpeg animations in a Workbench win 

dow. The easiest way of doing this is find an 

Mpeg data type I could use with MultiView. This 

I did, getting the Mpeg data type from Aminet. After 

reading the documentation I now find that I need the 

following: 

Animation.datatype 

ReaUiBt.library 

Tapcdeck.gadget 

I believe that all these files are part of the Workbench 

3.1 release. I only have Workbench 3.0, so where can 

I get these files from? 

Jim McHugh, jamesm@apricot.mee.com 

• It seems you have diagnosed your 

\^*>/ own problem. As the Mpeg data type 

' ~ 'S a subset of the animation data 

type class, you need this before you 

can use the Mpeg player. The tape 

deck library handles drawing the control tool bar 

that it uses and the real time library, I think, han 

dles the spooling of animation data from the hard 

drive. 

Unfortunately, the only legal way to get hold of 

these files is to buy the Workbench 3.1 upgrade kits 

n Print 

. I'm interested in buying an Epson Stylus 500 

or possibly the new 600. I know there are a 

number of software packages available to 

allow the top 720dpi or 1440dpi printing res 

olutions, but I'm not sure exactly what is best 

suited to a 2.04 Amiga. 

I believe EnPrint is a much cheaper option than 

Studio II, and then there is also TurboPrint. Any advice 

regarding this and where I can obtain EnPrint would be 

very welcome. 

So/, bodymelt@bbs.paralex.co.uk 


JUNE 1997 

as they were never released separately. The bad 

news is that these kits are not cheap, the even 

worse news is that current stocks are very low. 

Seeing however, that Gateway has now taken 

over Amiga Technologies, perhaps we could see a 

Workbench 3.1 upgrade kit for current 3.0 users, and 

perhaps the bugs in the original version can be 

taken out too. Otherwise the only other way is if you 

had a friend who had the 3.1 disks, and they were to 

perhaps loose those disks for a while... 

AMINET15:Ammet/p] 

There is a Mpeg player out 

there, and very good it is too 

EnPrint was reviewed back in issue 105, 

(along with the Epson Stylus 500. At the 

time it got 84 per cent as it was produc 

ing print results comparable to 

- TurboPrint What you have to remember is 

that Studio II and TurboPrint are generalised print 

managers, so will work with any printer that you have 

a print driver for. EnPrint however, only works with 

the Stylus range of Epson printers, so is a little cheap 

er. EnPrint is an American product but is available in 

the UK through EyeTech, ring 01642 713185. 

Rexx 

Hi folks, tiny problem really and I 

feel stupid asking. When I run 

J OctaMED SoundStudio, a 

requester comes up and says it 

can't find the ARexx port. The only 

option is "Proceed" which when 

clicked still allows the program to continue. 

What am I doing wrong or what can I do to 

get rid of this annoying little requester. 

Stuart Smith, 106413,2IO4@Compuserve.com 

The only thing I can think of is 

1 perhaps you have not run 

_( | RexxMast, which is the serv 

er program that runs ARexx 

1 scripts. Even so this should 

not stop SoundStudio running, 

but it is worth a try. RexxMast is found in 

the system drawer on your Workbench 

drawer, just drag it over to your 

WBStartup or you can add it to your user 

startup. 

MIGA 

PROBLEMS 

I have an Amiga A500 with a CVP 

Series II 40Mb HD, two external disk 

' drives, one being a high density drive, 

and 5Mb of ram (1Mb being chip). 

The problem is that my Amiga crash 

es in a major way. After the computer has 

been on for a period of time, only half an hour 

in some cases, the internal disk drive starts 

searching for a disk. This is then followed, after 

another five minutes or so, by the screen colours 

playing up. Large patches of red, green, blue and 

sometimes yellow appear. This is followed by 

the picture disappearing altogether, almost as if 

it weren't tuned into the TV set {the Amiga is 

connected to a TV via a modulator). 

When the picture finally disappears the sound 

starts to play up, until nothing can be heard. 

What I find strange is that if I connect the com 

puter up to a TV through the B/W video output, 

the picture is fine! However, the other problems 

persist Could it be one of the controller chips 

that is causing all these problems? Could you 

also tell me why the Amiga is so slow at printing, 

compared to a PG 

Paul Ellis, P.H.Ellis@Sheffield.ac.uk 

\\ y Sounds like your Amiga is broken 

j . to me! However, the B/W output 

^j\ you '■efe'1 to is actually called the 

composite colour output If you 

have a television that has a composite 

input they look like normal audio plugs, you 

could get away with using this. I think the 

composite output works separately from the 

main RGB output. The other possibility is 

that the modulator is broken, in which case 

this could be fixed with a £35 bit of kit, in the 

form of a replacement modulator. 

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to test if 

the modulator is working correctly except for 

trying it on another Amiga. 

Unless you compare your A500 against a 

7MHz 286, a PC is always going to be faster, 

even a crappy 486 is going to be 40 times 

faster than your A500, and is the main reason 

why they print so much faster.

500 HELP NEEDED 

Hi there, I currently have an Amiga 500, that doesn't go. I'm not completely certain 

at this stage, but I assume the power supply has gone. 

Could you let me know an address on the Net for both, diagrams for the power 

supply, and diagrams for the Amiga? Or possibly any good Amiga sites that might 

help me to get this A500 going? The Amiga 500 is a 1990 model, with a fat Agnus. 

Dave, orchisda@ee2.ee.cit.ac.nz 

I never like it when people talk about power supplies, wiring and diagrams. I always 

get a vision of the person's skeleton lighting up like they do in cartoons. 

To be honest, I do not know of any sites that have exactly what 

_ \ - you are looking for. Amiga Computing's own site has a good selection 

ton. 

of Amiga, general computing and other interest sites, just point your 

browser at http://www.idg.co.uk/amigacomp/ and follow the links but 

Of course, if you are searching for specific Amiga links, you can't go wrong by using 

either the Web Directory http://www.cucug.org/amiga.html or AmiCrawier 

http://www.amicrawler.com/. 

The one place that I have come across that may be of use is the Hardware book at 

http://www.blackdown.org/~hwb/hwb.html that keeps a list of all sort of computer 

diagrams and cable pin outs. 

One more place worth a look is Aminet, in the hard directory you will find all sorts 

of documents describing projects and upgrades you can perform on your Amiga. It may 

be you will be able to track something down of use. The best way to find something in 

Aminet is to either download the complete index file from the root of the Aminet direc 

tory, or get the specific index from which directory you are interested in. One final way 

would be to use the Aminet search page at http://harvest.tu-clausthal.de/AmiNET/. 

600 EXPANSION 

I would like to know if it is possible to upgrade an A600 by putting more than 1 Mb on 

the trapdoor edge connector? i have a board which claims to take standard Simms so 

what is stopping me putting 4x2Mb in instead of 4x256K? I have been told that the 

computer can only address 1Mb via this connector, but vaguely recall 1.5Meg 

upgrades being available for the A500, am I mistaken? 

Also, I recently bought a second hand hard disk, encountering the under-publicised 

Kickstart bug with Rom versions 37.299 and under, in that my computer failed to notice that it 

had an IDE interface. Virtually no-one is aware of this fault, and people in computer shops were 

telling me it was because I didn't have the right software etc. etc. A new ROM (admittedly at £20) 

was all that was needed. Let this be known. 

PJ.Moore, P.J.Moore@uea.ac.uk 

I do remember that there were memory upgrades for the A600 that let you go 

v | / beyond the 2Mb limit, but as to whether they required you to modify the 

X A600 at all, I couldn't say. If you do try fitting the other Simms, at best, you 

S_f\ will probably be wasting your money and at worst, could damage your A600. 

Another option, and a way to increase your memory is to buy one of 

the A500 accelerator boards that have appeared over the last year. One was pro 

duced by Apollo and the other by a German company called M-Tec and, to be honest, the 

German version was better, due to the fact it fitted over the original A600 processor much 

more securely. 

Going for the accelerator will not only give you a much faster A600 (I think the M-Tec was 

a 40MHz 030} but also, as they take normal memory Simms, up to 8Mb can added. If you 

want to contact M-Tec you will have to call them in Germany on +49 (0)2041 4656. 

As for the A600 hard drive problem, I did know about that, you have to get up pretty early 

in the morning to get one over on us, well about eight o'clock should do. You were pretty 

unfortunate, as apparently only the first batch of A600s where shipped with the ROM that 

did not support the internal IDE interface. Blame Commodore that's what I say. 

Do you have a problem? Do you sometimes find yourself poised over your Amiga with axe 

in hand, spouting profanity at the stubborn refusal of your software or hardware to behave 

in the correct manner? 

Well, calm down and swap the axe for pen and paper, jot down your problems, along 

with a description of your Amiga setup, and send it off to Amiga Computing Advice Service, 

IDG Media, Media House, Adlington Park. Macclesfield SKI0 4NP. Alternatively you 

can e-mail us at ACAS@acomp.demon.co.uk 

ma* jot vail :*>u iwi iwa out wtb 

petes, sal >cn cm ie< to'u fjrili on ttot 

t muri v*cicr. iron 

There is a Mpag player out there, and very good it i* too 

IJISK CONVERSION 

have an old Amiga 2000 and wish to convert some 

Amiga word perfect files to files I can run on my 

Pentium. I now have Microsoft Word and Windows 95. 

While I know there are programs like CrossDos, the 

Amiga will not write to high density disks - the only type 

my PC will take. Do you know of any solutions to this problem or 

commercial companies who can make conversions of this type? 

Sharon Levinsky, kiwi@ns.net 

True enough, the Amiga cannot read HD disks, but 

the PC should still be able to read normal double 

density PC formatted disks, and with CrossDos, 

\ your Amiga can as well. In Windows 95 when you 

format a floppy disk there is a pull down menu 

that allows you to select how the disk should be formatted, 

using this just select 720k. Now with CrossDos you can copy 

files on the Amiga side. 

Another solution would be to transfer the files using a seri 

al cable and the appropriate comms software. Using a null 

modem cable connected to your Amiga and PC. On the Amiga 

side, a program such as Term or NComm would do the trick and 

you would need a similar terminal program on the PC 

Using ZModem transfer you will be able to move files from 

one computer to the other over the serial cable. The option if 

you need to regularly use your Amiga and PC together is the 

Siamese system reviewed this issue. 

VP Ram! 

In your reply to T. Broekmans in the March issue, you 

limply that he needs the special GVP ram from Power 

'or M-Tec. Well he doesn't, the CVP HD8 uses bog stan- 

'dard 30 pin Simms available from any supplier (I know 

as I have one in my 2000). The special CVP Simms are only for the 

GVP Accelerators! 

Steve Whalley, stevew-Zd@insight-media.co.uk 

Thanks Steve, I'm not completely infallible and my 


JUNE 1997 

apologies to Mr Broekmans.

eo Editin ryone 

A Unique Video Editing Product 

No Computer Required 

Amazing Picture Quality 

CD Quality Stereo Sound 

Professional Effects & Titles 

Fast, Affordable and Compact 

Optional MiniDV / FireWire Module 

\AfHstf /< Thf* 

Casablanca is a device which allows anyone to edit 

video, simply, and in a non-linear fashion, It works by 

recording video scenes from a camcorder, on to an 

internal storage module. The scenes can then be 

trimmed, split into shots, and re-arranged at will. You 

can also add transitions between scenes, and 

professional image processing effects, plus new 

soundtracks, slow, quick or reverse sequences. 

So, How Does It Work? 

Casablanca connects between your camcorder and 

video recorder. You don't need any special monitor, 

as you can use your existing television. Using a 

Casablanca requires no computer experience. The 

controls and displays are clear, simple, and easy to 

understand. All video and sound information, plus 

effects and transitions are held on the storage module. 

What Models Are Available ? 

Casablanca is available with a choice of three storage 

modules. Module 2 can hold 31 mins of VHS, 16 mins 

of SVHS, or 10 mins of DV quality video. Module 4 

offers double those storage times. Module 9 can hold 

140 mins of VHS, 72 mins of SVHS, or 47 mins of DV 

quality video. The storage module is removable, and 

additional ones are available. This allows you to work 

on multiple projects simultaneously. 

• Technical Specifications 

Full Motion JPEG Compression, CC1R601 Resolution (720x576 Pixels) 

at 50 Fields/sec. Internal capacity from 10 minutes to 4.7 hours, 

external storage expansion will give between 2.2 and 15 hours, 

depending on quality. Composite & Y/C Video in and out, on front and 

rear. RGB out via SCART on rear. Optional FireWire (P1394) module 

for connection to MiniDV camcorders with digital output (eg. Sony). 

3 Tracks of Stereo audio, 16-Bit resolution at upto 44KHz sample rate. 

Where Can I Get More Details ? 

Casablanca is available from a number of specialist 

video retailers around the UK, and is also available by 

mail-order from Britains favourite AMIGA supplier :- 

If you would like a Casablanca brochure, please call. 

Tel: 01920 822 321 or Fax: 01920 822 302 

Casablanca is distributed by DraCo Systems UK Limited 

A sister company to White Knight Technology 

White Knight 

T 

BOX 38, WARE, HERTS 

All Prices Include VAT @ 17.5% 

A4000/T Accelerators 

CYBERSTORM MK2 

68060, 50MHz £ 509 

68040,40MHz £319 

SCSI Controller £ 89 

A1500/2000 Accelerators 

BLIZZARD 2060 & 2040 

68060, 50MHz + SCSI £ 525 

AmigaOS3.1 for 2060 £ 89 

68040, 40MHz + SCSI £ 309 

A1200 Accelerators 

BLIZZARD 1260 & 1240 

68060, 50MHz £ 429 

68040, 40MHz, n^ £245 

SCSI Controller £ 85 

24-Bit Graphics Cards 

CYBERVISION 64/3D £ 205 

CV 64/3D Scandoubler £ 75 

CV 64/3D MPEG Decoder £ 155 

PICASSO IV + F/Fixer £ 299 

Monitors 

17" Microvitec 1701 £479 

14" Microvitec 1402 £259 

14" Microvitec 1438S £289 

17" Hi-Res SVGA £529 



Genlocks 

LOLA 2000 £ 349 

LOLA 1500 £ 175 

RENDALE9402 £295 

RENDALE 8802-FMC £ 145 

Video Digitisers 

VLab Y/C Int. Last Few at £199 

VIDI 24 RT PRO Ext. £ 249 

VIDI24RTExt. £ 149 

Networking 

AMIGANET Ethernet 

ARIADNE Ethernet 

AmiTCP/IP Software 

LIANA Parallel 2m 

£ 179 

£ 179 

£ Call 

£ Call 

Hard Drives (3.5") Bare 

2.1Gb SCSI-2 

4.2Gb SCSI-2 

9.1Gb SCSI-2 

1.2GbE-IDE 

1.6GbE-IDE 

2.1Gb E-IDE 

2.5Gb E-IDE 

3.1Gb E-IDE 

£329 

£749 

£1299 

£179 

£195 

£215 

£249 

£285 

r Phone 

01920 

322 321 

9.30 - 5.30 

Mon - Fn 

White_.Knight_Tech 

©CompuServe.Com 

Memory SIMMS 

4Mb, 72 pin, 70ns 

8Mb, 72 pin, 70ns 

16Mb, 72 pin, 60ns 

32Mb, 72 pin, 60ns 

WE ACCEPT 

Mastercard 

Visa. Delta 

and Switch 

Fax 01920 

822 302 

£ 25 

£ 45 

£ 89 

£159 

Cartridge Drives (SCSI) 

ZIP 1 OOMb Bet - Cable & Term £ 1 55 

ZIP Disks (x 5) £ 79 

JAZ 1 Gb Ext + Cable & Term £ 465 

JAZ Disks {x 3) £ 255 

CDROM Drives (Bare) 

|4x Speed SCSI-2 

£ 99 

6 x Speed SCSI-2 

£ Call 

18 x Speed SCSI-2 

£ 159 

6 x Speed ATAPI / IDE £ Call 

8xSpeedATAPI/IDE £ 95 

CD Writers {Bare, No SAW) 

Philips CDD2600, SCSI £ 349 

HP 6020i, SCSI £ 399 

Master ISO cd-r software £ Call 

Software 

SCALAMM400 £ 199 

SCALA 400 +ECHO £ 299 

TV Pain! 3.6 (needs CybergraphX) £ 749 

ART EFFECT 

£149 

MAINACTOR BROADCAST £ 165 

DIAVOLO BACKUP PRO £ 69 

AMIBACK 2 Backup S/W £ 39 

CLARISSA Professional V3 £179 

ADORAGEV2.5 

£109 

MONUMENT DESIGNER V3 £225 

MONUMENT CREATIVE CD £ 59 

ANIMAGE V1 £ 99 

AMIGA OS 3.1 A500/1500/2000 £ 89 

AMIGAOS3.1 A30003XOT/4000 £ 99 

Miscellaneous H/W 

OKTAGON SCSI card £ 89 

AT-BUS 2008 IDE card £ 89 

Specifications ? 

or Advice ? 

If you need technical details on 

any of our products, or advice 

on the most suitable items for 

your AMIGA, then call us on 

01920 822 321 

White Knight Technology 

only deal with Amiga's, and are 

reknown for excellent product 

knowledge, service & honesty. 

If You Still Need Us, 

Then We're Still Here A 

Always Call First To Verify Price 

& Availability Before Placing An Order 

E&OE- 11/03/97

ormal service is resumed: Public Sector is back to its 

usual four page format this month, stuffed to the 

gills with the best in public domain and share 

ware software. 

As usual, if you see a program in these pages which is 

listed as available from Aminet but you don't have the 

luxury of an Internet connection, don't worry. Several PD 

libraries offer a downloading service - for instance, OnLine 

PD will supply 830k of downloaded archives on a disk for a very 

reasonable £1.50. 

If you do have an Internet connection, don't forget that the Public 

Sector Web page contains details all the programs reviewed in these 

pages since issue 79. To take a look, point your browser at 

http://www.dcus.demon.co.uk/sector/sector.html or follow the Software 

link from the Amiga Computing homepage. 

itness Remix it win* 

Produced by: David Serafim 

Available from: Classic Amiga Software 

Disk No: CA69 

This is the sort of game that makes PD 

reviewing worthwhile. A horizontally scrolling, 

graphically excellent blasting frenzy, Witness 

Remix is slick, exciting and absorbing in equal 

measures. 

Witness is actually a tragically poor 

acronym, standing for War In The New Era 

Solar System. There is a fittingly daft scenario 

involving the alien conquest of every planet in 

the solar system apart from Earth, but essen 

tially this is just an excuse for a polished 

game in the mould of Defender and Project- 

X. 

The eight planets of the solar system are 

rated according to the difficulty of the chal 

lenge they present, but from the start of the 

game it is possible to choose to tackle any of 

the planets. Once the father unimpressive 

introductory screens have been navigated, 

the graphics are crisp and dear and the 

In Witness each planet has a distinct graphical theme 

it's Witness. Or js it Project-X? 

movement of the sprites is extremely smooth. 

The space age action is accompanied by 

some suitably upbeat music, and overall the 

game has a very professional feel. 

Admittedly Witness is nothing more than 

an enhanced Defender rehash, but few could 

suggest it lacks the essential elements of a 

truly great game. Perhaps not since 

Cybernetix has there been such an impressive 

clone of the classic Williams coin-op available 

at such a reasonable price. 

Dave Cusick has hair on 

his big toes. Is that a sign of 

intelligence or what? 


JUNE 1997 

LASTED 

Programmed by: M Burnett and 8 Parker 

Available from: Classic Amiga Software 

Disk No: G465 

Whilst AMOS was never really the language of 

choice for anyone planning on producing cut 

ting edge software, it has, in its time, allowed 

a great number of capable Basic programmers 

to produce playable efforts with the minimum 

of fuss. Blasted, whilst it aspires to be nothing 

more than an addictive shoot 'em-up, is an 

AMOS creation mote than capable of holding 

the attention for more than a few minutes. 

The objective is to blast your way through 

several levels of increasingly frenzied action. 

Using the mouse you control a gun emplace 

ment and you must shoot down a variety of 

duck-like flying beasties. On each level you 

have to blast a specified percentage of air 

borne enemies within a strict time limit before 

you can progress. Unfortunately these crea 

tures seem to like depositing the contents of 

their birdular bowels in the barrel of your 

boomstick, clogging it up for precious sec 

onds. 

There are a few bonuses which can be col 

lected to enhance the destructive potential of 

your wacky weapon, which starts out bounc 

ing bullets off your winged foes. These include 

more powerful missiles and a powerful laser 

beam, which simply destroys anything its path 

during the few seconds which it lasts. 

Although Blasted will not test your mental 

.capacities any more than an edition of 

Supermarket Sweep, it is far more engaging 

and entertaining than any programme involv 

ing Dale Winton could ever be. It may well be 

a trifle limited, but Blasted is possessed of a 

certain addictive charm. 

Blasted: Mindless fun for all the family

ally The Worm AGA 

Programmed by: Electronic Minds 

Available from: OnLine PD 

Disk No: OX 371 A&B 

It was with a sigh of resignation that I double 

clicked on the Waily The Worm icon - a resig 

nation born, no doubt, of years of enduring 

similar worm games, few of which offered 

anything innovative or awe inspiring to a 

game style which has now been realised per 

haps a couple of thousand times too many. It 

is definitely to Wally The Worm's credit that 

after five minutes I had stilf not sprawled my 

hands across the keyboard to perform a 

reset. 

As with all worms games, the basic objec 

tive is to guide the titular invertebrate around 

the screen consuming food. Food causes 

Wally to grow, making him harder to control. 

When he becomes too long for his own 

leueh 

speed: 

control 

mode: 

y ei 

h ghscores. 

Mmmm... options 

uoodoo 

normal 

joystick 

[eiiii] 

Wally The Worm: It has been done plenty of 

times before, but rarely has it looked this nice 

good, he will invariably collide with a wall or 

with his own body. It serves him right for 

being a fat bloater, you might think - but ours 

is not to reason why. 

Anyway, my metaphorical mental jury is 

still out on this colourful offering. Certainly 

there have been few worms clones which 

were as pleasing to the eye as this, but in an 

attempt to add a subtle twist to a tired 

theme, the attractive backdrops have been 

incorporated into the gameplay - and I am 

not entirely sure this is a good thing. 

The problem is that whilst Wally can pass 

through or under certain elements of the 

scenery on each of the three levels, other 

objects can kill him. Unfortunately the 

designers of the game decided that it would 

be more fun to allow players to find out for 

themselves exactly which objects they could 

safely pass through, and some objects which 

one would think it possible to pass through 

actually cause Wa!iy to die if he should col 

lide with them. This can be tremendously 

frustrating. 

Ultimately Wally The Worm should appeal 

to fans of the genre, although one would 

have to suspect that in this day and age that 

would be a tiny proportion of the population. 

It isn't at all bad, but does the Amiga really 

need yet another worms clone? 

PECULATOR Vl .0 3/S PECTRU M GAMES #136 

Programmed by: William James/Various 


Disk No: OU 403/OG 429 

Speculator is not, as one might be forgiven 

for thinking, an action-packed simulation of 

share dealership, but yet another Spectrum 

emulator. Given the number of PD and share 

ware Speccy emulators which are now avail 

able, either a large proportion of Amiga own- 

Uou are standing in front of a 

huge castEe. A gate leads into 

it to the north, while a path 

huge nenacing B( eal< nxght stands 

before the castie gate. 

Uhac nou? 

ftpORTH 

The Bt eak night watches as you 

sna^h into tne iron gate 

bC ocking the way north. 

Uhat now? 

*TftLK TO KniGWT 

There' s no speech routine i*t 

this sane! 

Uhat: now? 

4* 

In the old days, adventure games 

weren't quite as advanced... 


JUNE 1997 

ers used to own and adore one of those black 

plastic doorstops or else the Amiga games 

scene is in a worse state than people think. I 

would favour the former explanation. 

To be fair, Speculator is certainly one of the 

fastest emulators around. Ordinarily every sin 

gle Spectrum instruction is converted on the 

fly into Amiga code, whereas the author of 

Speculator has rewritten some key routines 

from the Spectrum 16k ROM in 680x0 code. 

However, a fast processor is still essential if 

you want to play your old Spectrum favourites 

at anything approaching full speed - the doc 

umentation recommends a 25MHi 030 for 

100 per cent performance. Fast RAM and AGA 

are also strongly recommended, with at least 

Kickstart 2.0 being a requirement. 

Speculator supports six different formats of 

Spectrum snapshot file, and it does so trans 

parently so it is not necessary to tell the pro 

gram which format a given file is - you can 

simply load it straight into memory. 

Speculator is also a great deal more system 

friendly than some of its rivals and the screen 

Kolumns, running on a Spectrum, 

running on your Amiga. How quaint 

display is crisp and clear (especially on ACA 

machines, since the program will happily pro 

mote the screen mode). 

Spectrum Games #136 contains 16 

Mirage-format snapshots with names begin 

ning with Y and Z, OnLine PD's rather enor 

mous collection of Spectrum hits being 

organised alphabetically. One of the snap 

shots included on this particular disk is 

Zaxxon, a game I was bad enough at the first 

time around and over a decade later, I'm still 

abysmal. Such is life.

Qearn the Klingon Language vi.1 Demo 

Programmed by: Daniel Sutdiffe 


I am not and I have never been, a Star Trek fan 

- personally I regard it as unadulterated rubbish. 

If the original series had a certain naive charm 

with its recycled sets and hopelessly corny sto 

ryline (usually infused with a moral conscience 

suitable for 60s America), the current stream of 

Trek spin-offs offer little more than fancy com 

Contents 1: Ifltfe 1 

ENGLISH 

Yes 

Ho 

Hw did this hapwn? 

Hat's going on? 

I don't uiderstsnd 

Do you speak Klingon? 

Hwrt is tl# bathrooi? 

Kill it hurt? 

B*a k aboard 

-■-.\i : : 

KLIHGW 

Hlja' or HISIiH 

ghobs' 

ehav' 

jlyajbe' 

tlhlnjanHol Dajatlh'o' 

nuqDoq 'oH pu*pa"e' 

'oy"a' 

Hlojl 

Learning Klingon? What a bizarre idea... 

Qpeed Racer 

Programmed by: David J Cruickshank 


Some programmers are so good at producing 

top quality software that several of their cre 

ations have featured in these pages over the 

years. Long-time readers of Public Sector 

might remember that Mr Cruickshank was 

responsible for the excellent Tron light cycles 

game Wired Chaos, which came out a couple 

of years ago. Speed Racer is his latest bril 

liantly simple, yet worryingly addictive, game. 

Speed Racer is loosely based on an earlier 

game by the same author called Hydrozone. 

Competing against a friend (or against the 

computer, if there isn't a friend handy), you 

must race down a narrow tunnel dodging pro 

truding walls whilst some thumping techno- 

type music bangs away in the background. It 

might sound horrifically basic, and indeed a 

glance at the screenshots might suggest that 

...and whilst static screenshots do not look so 

impressive, the action is smooth and frenetic 

puter generated starships and people wander 

ing around in ridiculous costumes. 

Frighteningly though, there some people 

who live simply to watch these sad productions, 

and to collect all manner of tacky Trek mer 

chandise. These unfortunate individuals are 

branded Trekkies by the rest of the cult TV 

cognoscenti, and they indulge in bizarre prac 

tices, such as periodically massing at Trek con 

ventions dressed as their favourite Trekular crea 

tures. 

1 :■: =r 1 

roues Hmicwnm 

khi-JR or Hiish-LttH 

IHBrte 

TLlngan kiwi da-jatl-fl 

rfiOK-dat okh pooch-Pfi-e 

oy-fl 

HtHGL 

I 

- 

1 

I 

1 

5PEED fiflCEft rx 

DFWibt cMcKSHfflK 

Speed Racer is absolutely 

bursting with options... 

Ej B 

this would be a game worth avoiding, but the 

truth is that Speed Racer offers fast, fluid 

action and some extremely generous helpings 

of addiction. A minimum of an 020 machine is 

recommended in the documentation if you 

are to enjoy the game at its speedy best. 

Speed Racer's option-laden menus offer a 

wealth of gaming possibilities. Not only can 

you compete against several human and com 

puter controlled opponents using the pseudo- 

tournament mode, but you can set speed lim 

its, choose to play multiple round competi 

tions, and change the preset race track for one 

of over 20 others supplied on the disk. Should 

you feel especially creative, you can even 

design your own level using the editor which 

is also included on the disk. 

This is one of those games that really 

comes into its own when you have friends on 

hand to pit your skill and wits against. In sum 

mary, it's fast, it's fun and it's freeware and you 

would be foolish to miss it. 


JUNE 1997 

So strong is the Trekkie movement that 

some American institutions of higher education 

have even seen fit to introduce degree courses 

in Trekuiar languages, most notably Klingon. If 

devoting three or more years of your life to 

studying a course with no practical applications 

whatsoever doesn't really appeal, then congrat 

ulations, you are sane and you will happily 

never be a true Trekkie. 

On the other hand, if the only reason you are 

not already applying to the institutions in ques 

tion is your lack of the necessary cash, then 

wriggle your arms out of your straight jacket, 

give OnLine PD a ring and get hold of this disk. 

It might just be the answer to your prayers, you 

pathetic individual. 

This computerised phrase book is presented 

in Amigaguide format, and there are even a few 

sound samples thrown in - presumably for the 

benefit of your Klingon pronunciation, since 

they could not conceivably have been included 

for your aural pleasure. 

Learn The Klingon Language will probably 

not give you a good enough grasp of this alien 

tongue to talk fluently with a Klingon, or even 

to write a postcard to your pen friend about 

your family and your hobbies (since that is 

what all foreign languages are for, if I remem 

ber correctly from my schooldays). But that 

probably won't really matter, because the likeli 

hood of you actually encountering a Klingon on 

your way to the local public house is not I 

would venture, very great 

The Air That 

Each m 

you the 

sharewa. 

I Breathe 

Sector tries to bring 

■* *e latest PD and 

uently 1 want 

ich you consider 

_r it will be freely 

atn, Shareware or 

Lkenceware, if you feel it is of sufficient 

""■ rto merit coveraj then cram it onto 

i", slap it into a padded envelope with 

a covering letter and wang ft with all haste 

in my general direction. Some days later 

when said envelope tumbles gently 

through my letterbox, I'ii tear open the 

envelope, shove it in my drive and don my 

evaluating cap, with the creme de la sub 

missions earning reviews in these pages. 

If you've written the software yourself, 

you could even win yourself a prize if it 

earns a review. Reader Submissions of this 

kind should, surprisingly enough, be dear 

ly labelled "Reader Submission", and they 

should be sent to the usual Public Sector 

address. So don't delay - get those sub 

missions in the post Jfore Neil changes 

Dave Cusick 

PD submissions 


Media House Adli 

MacclesfieldSK10 4NP

Qremier Sixes 

Programmed by: Robbie Mappin 

Available from: Robbie Mappin 

At the time of writing, Manchester United has 

just secured a place in the European Cup 

semi-finals and has its sights firmly set on a 

fourth Premiership title in five years. (Arguably 

it should have been six titles in six years, but 

that's another story). This is excellent news, 

not just for this lifelong Red (whose father and 

indeed grandfather before him followed 

United), but aiso for the English game - espe 

cially since Liverpool have booked a place in 

the Cup Winner's Cup semi final too. 

All this might seem like irrelevant waffle, 

but I assure you it isn't (at least, no more than 

the usual waffle you would expect in this col 

umn). The fact is, that by being an incredibly 

successful manager, Alex Ferguson is doing for 

real what a great number football fans dream 

about doing. This is proved by the success of 

footy management games such as 

Championship Manager and Premier 

Manager. 

Rather than attempting to challenge 

Championship Manager in the realism stakes - 

If I was as bad as him, I'd be 

glad to be in the team too 

Just One 

Look 

IH1MI1 

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■ ..■:. Mamma 

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hlmtfer 

liffulirr 

tllnlrr 

nwirlfei 

ntatar 

Premier Sixes offers you the 

ultimate challenge: Can you lead 

a team of clodhoppers like the 

Spurs to some sort of success? 

!.-f I !•'? 

Htni*r# 

which would be an extremely difficult thing to 

do - Premier Sixes places the player in charge 

of one of ^0 top Premiership sides involved in 

a six-a-side football tournament. The author 

has however elected to include real players, 

al! of whom have been assigned realistic rat 

ings. 

The exciting Championship Manager-style 

match sequences complement the numbers- 

based managerial side of the game nicely, 

and there are sufficient tactical options avail 

able to make the player feel as though his 

input has a genuine effect on the outcome of 

matches. 

Versions of Premier Sixes are available fea 

turing top English, French and italian league 

teams, each costing £2.50 from the author. As 

an extra incentive to purchase and play the 

game, Mr Mappin is offering a free copy of his 

next release to the first person who can send 

him a copy of the message which is displayed 

on successful completion of Premier Sixes - a 

task which he charmingly describes as being 

"dead hard." 

BJCSE Physics Tutor 

Programmed by: Chris O'Connor 

Available from: Online PD 

Disk No: OX 363 

At GCSE level I used to quite enjoy physics lessons - obvi 

ously not as much as chemistry lessons, because opportu 

nities to catch unsuspecting innocents out by heating up 

their tripod and gauze with a Bunsen burner whilst they 

were not looking tended to be rather scarcer, but 1 enjoyed 

them nevertheless. Slinky springs might well have been 

one of the few pieces of equipment pupils were allowed to 

play with, but our physics teacher provided us with a more 

than adequate source of amusement - albeit unknowingly. 

However, physics exams were not easy and I certainly 

would not have looked forward to them had we been 

blessed with a less amusing tutor, or had I not developed a 

perverse liking for what was after all an utterly pointless 

subject (because, in my experience at least, A-level physics 

generally involves un-learning most of the simplified stuff 

pupils are fed at GCSE level). 

Of course, in my day, the only computers found in 

schools tended to be BBC model B machines, and so aid 

ing my studies through the use of computer software never 

really crossed my mind. Time has, of course, marched 

onwards and stressed students can these days draw upon 

a reasonably wide range of educational programs at all lev 

els of their academic careers. 

GCSE Physics Tutor is a beautifully presented attempt to 

summarise three core areas of the syllabus, namely Light 


JUNE 1997 

I'm Alive 

rved by Public Sector 

were upaateo or enhanced versions of 

already popular PD and shareware prod 

ucts. Amongst the notables this month... 

conquering GUI kit^ff^boasts the usual 

round of sp< 

fixes, and 

in bed and 

afternoon. 

CarstenM 

in ACH 

tial update. L.,. 

of the same purile action, but with a new 

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4096 colours on screen,-and a wealth of 

extra options."* ^ncnstration version is 

would miss out.. 

Dave Cusick 's Home Page 

Magic User Interlace... 

and Sound, Forces and Energy and Electricity and 

Magnetism. Each topic is covered using a combination of 

text and diagrams which should serve to jog the memory 

nicely, making GCSE Physics Tutor ideal as a revision aid if 

not actually as a substitute teacher. There are also plenty of 

practice questions which can be used to prepare for those 

dreaded exams. 

Whilst the PD release is merely a demo of the full 

licenceware release (which costs £3.95), and as such con 

tains enough gaps to severely limit its usefulness in its own 

right, as an advertisement for the full program it certainly 

impresses. 

igi tl'Ot 

Ck" cnejre': tdebi 

Can help students get the grades 

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More 

The bot 

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The multi-talented Neil Mohr turns his 

dainty hands to HTML, look what he learnt 

i up he talks about beta testing 

A 

I

Phil South makes 

a noise with the 

AMOS sound 

commands 

Using sampled sounds in AMOS is 

really easy. This being the Amiga 

we're talking about, it is of course a 

I similar process to the use of IFF pic 

ture files. The IFF standard means that sounds 

and pictures share a common file format with 

the exception of the headers which tell you 

what kind of a file they are, Like pictures, you 

can load ihem in directly from the disk as they 

are, or use them from a bank. 

ll's a for more elegant solution to store them 

in a bank as it means they are ready to access 

at any time during your program and they are 

loaded with your program, saving a lot of fuss. 

Once the samples are in a bank, you can play 

them back at any speed ■ which naturally alters 

the time it takes to play and so aiso changes 

the pilch. You can have samples of speech, 

snatches of music or even single notes of a sam 

pled instrument at different pilches. 

Playing samples in AMOS is a matter of 

using the SAM PLAY command: 

Sai Play VOICE,SAMPLE,FREQUENCY 

The Amiga has four voices and these are 

paired to play in either left or right stereo chan 

nel. Voices 0 ond 3 play through the left speak 

er, whereas 1 and 2 piay through the right. 

It's easy to use ihis stereo capability and 

make stereo sounds. And I mean stereo sounds 

- those which have a siereo image between 

your ears and not just double mono, which is 

what most programs pass off as stereo. 

!f you want to pan a sound around in the 

siereo spectrum you have to alter the volume 

across the two stereo channels of the same 

sound. This is called 'mixing' or 'panning' in 

the trade [the trade in this case being sound 

design . 

That is to say, a sound appears in a certain 


JUNE 1997 

Sounds 

Fantastic 

position in the stereo 'picture' ■ on imaginary 3- 

D space with a left, right, close and far, 

depending on how quiet or loud it is in each 

ear. A noise that is soft in the left ear ond loud 

in the right will seem to be coming from right of 

centre of the picture. 

In order to simulate stereo panning in on 

Amiga sound, therefore, all you have to do 

(all?] is put the same sound in both speakers 

and alter the volume of one or the other to 

move the sound around in the stereo picture. 

Lei's try it: 

it* *** Sound Him One *** 

Screen Open 0,4t0,Z56,14,Hires 

Hide : Curs Off : Paper 0 : Cls 0 

Load ">:.r: ,i- .-.:• 

Obviously you hove to moke a sample bank con 

taining your samples, which you can do with the 

Sample Bank Maker in Amos Pro. After making 

your samples you save them as a bank called 

"MySamples.abk" (or whatever) and the state 

ment in the program reads them in. Okay, next 

we set the volume for the left and right channels: 

San Loop On 

YoLuie 110,0 : Voluie 31,50 

We turn SAM LOOP ON to moke the sound 

continuous, which makes it easier to hear the 

stereo panning. Next we set up the initial vol 

umes of the two voices we'll be using, in this 

case voices 1 ond 2, indicated by the Binary 

codes %OO1O ond %OO01. (We omit any lead 

ing zeros making if %10 and %].) This sets the 

volume so that the right channel is silent and 

the left is set at 50. 

1=1 

Locate ,5 : Pen 1 : Centre "The Aios Coluin 

brings you * Stereo 

>" 

Panning 

Locate ,1 ■ Cent rt 'Notice how the sound 

■oves slowly fro* Left to right 

Next we have the main program loop. The 

PANiT procedure increments the right and 

decrements the left at half second intervals until 

the sound has travelled fully from left to right. 

[f you were reolly smart, you could have anoth 

er sound panning the other way too. This is 

called a cross-fade or, more precisely, a crosspan. 

You could even move the sound in stereo 

according to movements from the joystick, 

which could also move o sprite that the sound 

relates to, left ond right or even larger and 

smaller, to give a real stereo visuol experience 

(I like the idea of o buzzing sample and a 

sprite of a buzzing bee for this one.) This rou 

tine gives you an idea of what I'm talking 

about: 

Bei ♦** Joystick Stereo Hiier Tho *•• 

Screen 

Hide : 

Open 0,410,256,16,Hires 

Curs Off : Paper 0 : CLs D 

Load ■ buzzysaiples.abk" 

VoLuie 110,25 : Voluie 11,25 

P1=25 

Oo 

: ?l~25 

Sai PUy 111,3 

If Jleftd) Then Inc PI : Dec P2 

If Jrightd) Then Inc P2 : Dec P1 

If P1 

If ?2, 

Voluse I1O,P1 : Voluae i1,P2 

Wait 25 

Locate 0,0 : Print P1,P2 

Loop 

Once again it uses somples from a bank, but 

this time the sound pans in siereo depending on 

whether you move the stick left or right. The 

location of the sound is shown at the top of the 

screen. Try out these routines and see if you can 

to make them even faster still (using AMAL per 

haps to handle the animation lo save clock 

cycles from the sound?], and I'll print some 

good ones next time if you send ihem in. 

Write 

Stuff 

If you have any other AMOS programs or 

queries about AMOS, please wrile lo the 

usual address, which is: Phil South, Amos 

Column, Amiga Computing, Media House, 

Adlington Park, Mocclesfield, SK1O 4NP. 

Please send routines on an Amiga disk wilh 

notes an how ihe program works on paper, 

not as lext files on the disk. Make the rou 

tines short enough to appear in print (i.e. 

no more than aboul 3040 lines of code) 

and if possible, no external graphics. That 

is, any graphics which have to be loaded. 

If you want to send the graphics too, pro 

vide them on the disk in IFF format, the 

same goes for sound files.

Once song libraries 

have been built 

up, all sorts of 

portability snags 

can arise 

OK, you've got a sequencer, a 

sound module and perhaps a few 

other pieces of Midi gear and 

^^^^H things are great. No snags, no 

problems to speak of - that's the way it 

should be. But whether it be tomorrow, next 

week or next year, chances are you will at 

some time add to (or change) parts of your 

existing Midi set up and this is where difficul 

ties can crop up. 

In the last few years I've moved hundreds 

of songs across to various sequencers and 

have used these arrangements with a wide 

range of Midi synthesizers, expanders, drum 

machines and effects units. The one thing that 

has really been driven home to me is that the 

key issue in any such transfers and equipment 

changes is to find out how to avoid having to 

undertake any major editing of your existing 

data. 

When would you need to have to worry 

about making changes to your sequencer 

data? Well, buying an additional second hand 

drum machine is a typical case in point. Many 

older units had fixed drum/note-number units 

(Yamaha's RX21 and RX21L for example) and 

whilst these can certainly be a cheap way of 

adding extra percussion facilities, the danger 

is that some of the drum note correspon 

dences will clash with assignments you've 

already adopted. Before opting for drum units 

like these check the Midi Implementation 

chart to see that the extra unit's drum note 

values do not clash with anything you are 

using already. 

The latest generation of drum machines of 

course support General Midi and most also 

have user-assignable drum/note-number cor 

respondences. These types of machines can 

easily be set up to match the existing drum 

note relationships of your stored sequence 

data, so even if cash is tight a few extra quid 

spent to gain this sort of flexibility is almost 

certainly going to prove a wise investment. 

Synths and expanders 

This is another area where the difficulties 

stem mainly from using or buying older, sec 

ond hand Midi equipment that does not con 

form to General Midi. In these cases you 

should first identify or create voices on the 

new synth that correspond to the voices avail 

able on the previous unit. After that it's just 

down to making sure these voices can be 

used when needed. 

Voice selection is done via Midi program 

change commands and these will be embed 

ded in your sequences, if, for example, a pro 

gram change 23 had selected a cello voice on 

portability 

HUSIC-X File; Untitled.Filter FILTERS 

Channel: O®®tDQQ® 15 16 

Event Type 

Note 

Channel Aftertouch 

Poly After touch 

Progran Change 

Control Change 

Pitch Bend 

SET ALL 

12 

12 34567891 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 18 U 12 13 14 15 16 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 18 11 12 13 14 15 16 ENABLE 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 18 It 12 13 14 15 16 ENABLE 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3 i 

Having built up your own collection of song arrangements over several 

years, the last thing you want is fa find out you've got to edit the whole 

lot because of a bad choice when buying an extra piece of Midi gear 


JUNE 1997 

your Roland HS10, you need to be able to 

make any new unit select an equivalent voice 

when it receives a program change 23 com 

mand - otherwise it will again be down to 

editing much of your existing song library! 

The important facility here is the existence 

of a user definable program change table that 

lets you assign any voice to any program 

change number. In short, you create or find 

the required voices on the new unit and then 

set up the program change table so that pro 

gram numbers which are already embedded 

in your existing sequencer select equivalent 

voices in the new expander or synthesizer. 

Talking of synths and sound modules, Midi 

sysex control has always been a potential 

nasty. Even with relatively old expander units 

(such as the Yamaha TX81Z), quite sophisti 

cated sets of Sysex control messages are avail 

able. It's often possible to transmit and set up 

new voices, modify the program change table 

and so on (so that an alternative set of voices 

are made available), just prior to the actual 

start of the music sequence (e.g. during the 

count in time). 

Such facilities are brilliant - until the time 

comes when you change expanders and 

realise that all your clever sysex stuff is going 

to have to be completely re-written. My 

advice? Certainly experiment and learn about 

sysex control, but as far as possible try to min 

imise the use of such messages in sequences. 

Before buying new gear incidentally, it's 

also worth taking a look at the Midi imple 

mentation sheet and checking that none of 

the controller messages already present in 

your sequences will cause problems with the 

new equipment. Most sequencers will let you 

re-assign embedded controller numbers and 

so on, but ideally you should aim to avoid 

placing yourself in a position where it 

becomes necessary to edit controller numbers 

in all of your existing sequences. 

Last words 

The moral is simple. Before you buy any new 

Midi equipment check the implementation 

sheets, look very carefully for potential areas 

of incompatibility with the information you've 

built up during your Midi lifetime. Look for 

flexibility in the areas of program change 

tables and Midi controller assignability and 

identify controller number conflicts before 

you commit yourself to a new Midi unit. 

Above all, avoid too much dependence on 

control applications of sysex messages - they 

are, in the main, equipment specific and so 

are almost guaranteed to cause serious 

portability problems when embedded in song 

data libraries.

Explore the murky 

depth of DOS 

drivers with 

Neil Mohr 

Last month I took a quick peek at the 

Amiga's DOS drivers, but did not 

delve into how to set them up. 

■^■^H Guess what we are going to do this 

month? No that's not right, and where do you 

expect me to get a rabbi and a chicken at this 

time of night? 

So you should know where to find your DOS 

drivers and that they are just text files with a 

DOS driver icon attached, but how do you set 

them up yourself? For this example we are 

going to look at setting up a RAD drive. If you 

do not know, a RAD drive is a permanent RAM 

disk, so if you reset your machine anything 

stored in the RAD drive will remain. The down 

side is that they have to be of a fixed size so 

you do lose part of your computer's memory. 

To start, you are best off making a copy of an 

existing DOS driver, the pipe one will do, this 

makes sure you have the icon, tool types and 

other bits set correctly, it also means you do not 

have to do everything yourself. Rename the 

pipe copy to RAD, this name could actually be 

anything. 

Next up, load the driver file into your 

favourite text editor and get rid of all the text 

that is there. You are now ready to start enter 

ing the driver details. 

Device = raidrivs.device 

Unit = 0 

Flags - 0 

Surfaces = 2 

SectoPiPerTracfc = 11 

SectorSize = 512 

Reserved = 2 

Interleave = 0 

Buffers = 5 

BufHeaType • 1 

Drowning 

in DOS 

AutoDOS 

You know, like, when you turn your Amiga on and it automatically recognises al! the drives connected to iL If you 

think about it, that is quite nice. The computer is interrogating (not in the Marathon Man sense) each drive and finds 

out how many heads, cylinders, tracks and other things each drive has and automatically mounts them. Basically all 

the information you have to enter into a DOS driver can actually be obtained from the hard drives and CD-ROMs 

connected. 

So why do you have to mess around with DOS drivers? Well, it is to do with software - the Amiga's operating sys 

tem only supports standard Amiga devices. Even the CD support added to 3.1 has to manually adjusted. Recently I 

came across a piece of software called MountDOS. This little program will automatically mount any PC drive you tell 

it to. It is not perfect and you still have to point it at the right device and drive unit, but once that is set up it will do 

all the other donkey work involved with creating DOS drivers. Recently I used this program to mount a second DOS 

IDE drive. If you want to get your hands on MountDOS it is on Aminet in the disk/misc section MountDoslOO.Iha. 


JUNE 1997 

Almost there now, with the new version of 

the mount command tool types can be used. 

For this example you only need to add, LowCyl 

= 0 and HighCyl = 79, as tool types. It is possi 

ble to enter all the settings as tool types, but 

normally you should only use values you change 

frequently as tool types. The unit number of a 

SCSI device would be one example. 

Most DOS drivers are used to add new drives 

to a machine, most importantly you have to 

specify what device the drive is connected to. 

This will usually be a SCSI interface, so you need 

to add the SCSI device name - such as squir- 

relscsi.device - and the unit number of the 

device. The other information describes the 

physical attributes of the drive and can usually 

found by either using Sysinfo or HDTooIBox. 

Generally the details set for the RAD are all 

you normally need for any type of drive. 

StactSiie 

Priority 

Bloc Its PerTrack 

You can also supply which filesystem you 

want to use, in conjunction with CrossDOS this 

allows you to mount PC formatted drives. To do 

this you add: 

FiteSystei = UCrossDosf UeSystea 

DosTvpe = 0*tD534fS00 

This tells the operating system to use 

CrossDOS to read the drive and so allow your 

Amiga to read PC drives. If you look at the PCO 

driver, this sets up the floppy drive to read PC 

disks again using CrossDOS. If this seems com 

plicated that is because it is, and I don't expect 

you to even try anything mentioned in the arti 

cle as DOS drivers should be set for you, but at 

the very least just by knowing about them, if 

you do have problems you should be better 

equipped to sort them out. 

Generally I find people tend to run into prob 

lems when installing CD drive son their 

machines, as this is the first time they comes 

across DOS drivers and it usually baffles them. 

Hopefully if you get a CD drive you should also 

get installation software that is supposed to set 

up a driver for you. If it has not then you will 

have to make your own and it should look 

something like this: 

Device = vhatever.devi ce 

Unit = 0 

FiUSystei = L:CDFileSystei 

Flags = 0 

BLocksPerTrack • II 

Reserved = 0 

LowCyL = 0 

-■ 20(8 

HighCyl = 11000 

Surfaces = 1 

Buffers = fit 

BuffBenTfpe = 1 

Kask = Orffffffff 

GlobVec - -1 

Priority = 10 

BosTypt = 0it!4U653 

StaekSue = 600 

Hount = 

Hopefully however you will have software as 

in the above driver the DosType value may be 

different on your system and may not work. 

Really the only thing you may have to change 

are the device and unit entries, that are proba 

bly better off as too! types for easy access via 

Workbench. 

If anything goes wrong you will have to 

make sure that you have the correct device 

name (which is case sensitive) and unit num 

ber. This will normally be something like gvpscsi.device, 

oktagon.device, squirrelscsi.device or 

even atapi.device. You also need to check the 

unit number of your CD drive, if you are using 

an Atapi device this will normally be one. The 

final thing is the CD file system this should also 

be set for you, but if not then put it in the 

FileSystem entry.

Dave Cusick 

investigates the 

much over 

world of Internet 

advertising 

For many people, such as myself, main 

taining a homepage is nothing more 

than a hobby. Those of you who have 

■■■ visited my site will know that, whilst 1 

have tried to make it reasonably readable and 

professional, it really only amounts to a few 

pages of moderately useful information about 

things of interest lo me. 

To the homepage hobbyist, the urge to adver 

tise his homepage is principally driven by a desire 

to demonstrate his HTML handiwork to those 

who share his interests. Advertising need there 

fore only be a matter of joining the Internet Link 

Exchange (http://www.linkexchange.com) of a 

similar banner exchange service, registering with 

some of the more famous search engines, and 

offering to trade links with Webmasters of sites 

covering the same subject matter. 

On the other hand, since the explosion in pop 

ularity of the World Wide Web, some dedicated 

Webmasters have managed to produce pages 

which have proved so popular that thousands of 

Surfers visit them daily; witness, for instance, Jerry 

Yang and David Filo, the two college boys whose 

collection of well-indexed links called Yahoo! 

became more popular than they could probably 

have dreamed. When a site becomes famous on 

that sort of scale, there is no longer such a need 

to advertise the site. Its creators can become full 

time Webmasters, and they can even begin sell 

ing advertising space on the site so as to cover 

costs and hopefully make a profit. 

Of course, few sites are popular enough to be 

self-financing at this relatively early stage in the 

development of the Internet. Nevertheless the 

advertising machine looks set to play an increas 

ingly large part in that process over the coming 

years, to the extent that every Webmaster may 

need to consider its implications. 

The situation is confusing enough for the com- 

» I - ., ,,1 I . ,■ .! ' • .: . ,. ■ .1 . I ; -I. .- ' 

■nmunaatta- fcob tut Ims SB araso- 

..'■' "•'-'-!-- _ !_ "'• 

Vahoo.' is an example of just how popular homepages 

which start out as hobbies can eventually become 


DECEMBER 1996 

Super 

Hypeway 

Like many other popular sites, tin Amiga Web Directory is 

supported by advertising revenue trom its banner sponsors 

puter hobbyist, but consider for a moment the 

dilemma facing a computer-illiterate business 

person. These days there are numerous adverts 

in the traditional media telling companies that 

they simply cannot afford to ignore the enor 

mous advertising potential of the Internet, and 

specifically the World Wide Web. Before they 

even get onto the Internet they must answer two 

important questions: What is the most effective 

way of establishing a Web presence, and is the 

investment really worthwhile? Assuming these 

issues are overcome and a company sets up a 

site, they must then negotiate the same advertis 

ing minefield as everybody else - but without the 

benefit old Internet hands have of having 

watched the situation develop in the first place. 

In an informative article on his Web site (at 

http://www.pawluk.com/pages/robbery.htm), 

Hal Pawluk reckons that around S300m (approx 

imately £200m) was spent on Internet advertis 

ing in 1996. It is not yet really clear whether that 

huge sum was simply money down the drain - 

not least because, as Pawluk points out, charging 

a sum for displaying a banner advert a certain 

number of times differs in important ways to 

charging a sum for an advert in a magazine. 

There are other potential problems too. 

Unfortunately, the sad fact is that wherever there 

is an opportunity such as that presented by the 

Internet, there will also be unscrupulous individ 

uals or companies hankering after a quick killing. 

The Web these days is littered with advertise 

ments for companies who say that they can list 

your Web site on numerous search engines, or 

display your banner on hundreds of popular 

sites, or earn you huge amounts of money by 

selling advertising space on your site to other 

people. 

Some of these companies are totally above 

board, run by decent, genuine people in a pro 

fessional manner. However a sjgnificant propor 

tion of them are not. One of the most famously 

unreliable companies is The Commonwealth 

Network, whose exploits over the last few 

months have left plenty of hard-working 

Webmasters fuming. They are not the only villain 

out there and anyone thinking of paying for pub 

licity would do well to check out Mark J Walsh's 

excellent site at http://www.ca- 

probate.com/comm_net.htm, which contains 

detailed information about numerous compa 

nies and their performances before parting with 

any money. 

The bottom line is that there are still enough 

free advertising services around for the 

Webmasters of smaller sites to market their 

creations perfectly adequately. Remember, a 

prominent link from a popular site to your relat 

ed homepage will bring in far more visitors than 

any banner. 

Contact 

If you wish to contact me, my e-mail 

address is dave@dcus.demon.co.uk. 

Questions, suggestions and feedback 

are all more than welcome. I also have 

a homepage, which can be found at 

http://www.dcus.demon.co.uk/.

Paul Overaa outlines 

a way of getting 

ARexx script 

variables transferred 

into text files 

OFrom the description of ED's text 

insertion ARexx commands given in 

the manuals, it's easy to come to the 

■^■1 conclusion that they only allow fixed 

text strings to be used. In actual fact you can use 

the contents of variables just as easily. The syntax 

of ED's 'insert after' command for example looks 

like this: 

k! I 

In other words, the command thai ED expects to 

see starts with the letter A followed by a slash 

sign and after that comes the text string that ED 

inserts into the file currently being edited. The 

terminal slash character is there simply to tell ED 

that the end of the string, and the end of the 

insert command, has been reached. 

So far so good, but the important point now is 

this: Providing the resulting command that gets 

transmitted to ED is consistent with this format 

ED will neither care, nor in fact know, how the 

ARexx script actually created the command string. 

In other words instead of: 

1 A/Just a test/1 

equally we could have sent the command to ED 

using: 

tm = 'Just 3 test' 

'*/' text '/' 

One way then of writing a name and address 

insertion macro, for example, would be to use 

statements like these to insert the relevant pieces 

of text. If you did however, you'd find that each 

line would start with a blank space. The reason 

this happens is that when ARexx sees a number 

of static text strings (like 'A/'), or variables written 

together it effectively creates a new string by join 

ing the various items together, separating them 

with spaces. In the case of the ED insert com 

mand ARexx therefore puts a space between the 

first slash character and the variable being used - 

and ED then assumes this space is the first char 

acter of the string to be inserted. 

Luckily you can force ARexx to join text strings 

together without introducing additional blanks by 

using something called the ARexx concatenation 

/* na»e_address1.ren */ 

nitt-'Hy na«e' 

roatb'Soie Road1 

toun='Sone Where' 

'I1 

■t/'UnaaellV1 

■i/'jjroadli1/1 

■A/'jjtoirnJI1/1 

Listing 1: This script eliminates 

initial blanks that would otherwise 

appear in the name and address lines 


JUNE 1997 

Insertion 

D Ld 2iBB E 

The best thing to do 

is create nacros that 

contain text which is 

useful to YOU! 

*rx/yourtest,rexx/ 

ED ■ undoubtedly archaic as editors go, but it's free 

and the ARexx links do add to its usefulness 

operator ||. So, if we write the commands in the 

form... 

'hl'\\nnt\\'f 

the inserted text line will correspond exactly to 

the contents of the variable being used (see list 

ing I for an example script). 

Polished paul 

I'm a great believer in dean looking scripts and 

one thing that can help is packaging up the awk 

ward 'A/','/' and |] symbols so that we don't have 

to have the main part of the script cluttered with 

them. What's more, it's dead easy to do - take a 

look at this example for instance 

insertText: Procedure 

parse arg tent 

return "A/'i[teitt||V 

This definition simply declares InsertTextO as a 

function that accepts a text string and returns a 

string that represents a properly formatted ED 

insert command. Notice that, in this case, we 

didn't even have to provide any real ARexx state 

ments in the body of the function - the result we 

wanted was easy enough to write down directly 

as part of the return statement. So, with the 

InsertTextO function now available the main part 

of our hypothetical name and address script can 

now be written in this form... 

'I' 

Inserflext(naie) 

insertTeit(road) 

InseriTejtttoun) 

where all awkward ED-oriented command strings 

have been eliminated. If we now combine these 

statements, the variable initialisations, and the 

Junction definition, we end up with the script 

shown in listing 2. Slightly larger than the first ver 

sion admittedly but nevertheless (to my mind at 

least) easier to read! 

The real advantage to using variables in these 

types of insertion macros however is not for sim 

ple text insertion scripts but for generating things 

such as the results of calculations (listing 3, for 

instance, shows a script that will insert a lbs to 

ounces conversion table into a text file). Best of 

all, once you appreciate the general way this sort 

of code is written, you shouldn't find it too diffi 

cult to incorporate the same sort of ideas in your 

own ED macros. 

/* naac_address2.rexx */ 

naie='Ny nane' 

road=lSane Road1 

■■."-'!■:-; Hhere' 

■r1 

InsertText(naie) 

InsertText(road) 

exit 

InsertText: Procedure 

parse arg text 

return 'A/||textj\'l' 

Listing 2; In this version of the macro, all 

awkward command and string formatting 

details are hidden inside the InsertText 

/* table.rexx - lbs to ounces table 

insertion V 

do lbs = 2 to 12 

result=lbs*16 

InsertTexttlbs 

'ounces) 

end 

exit 

'pounds =' result 

InsertText: Procedure 

parse arg text 

return '*/']|text||V 

Listing 3: This, more complicated, 

example uses a loop to insert a 

conversion table into a text file.

People have 

requested if, so 

Neil Mohr 

introduces HTML 

E 

very man and their dog is doing it, 

so why shouldn't you have a go? 

What am I talking about? Creating 

a Web page, of course or, to use 

that incessantly displayed word, homepage. 

It may seem strange putting a guide to pro 

ducing Web pages under the publishing ban 

ner, but that is exactly what you are doing; 

making you pages publicly available. Once 

on-line your pages are available to anyone 

with an Internet connection, which could be 

anywhere in the World. If they had a portable 

phone, they could even be in a hot air bal 

loon 

You may be now thinking: "What's the 

point for me, I'm not even on-line?" but you 

do not have to be on-line to use HTML 

(Hypertext Markup Language). All browsers 

are just at home navigating pages from a hard 

drive, as they are over the Internet. Just to 

prove the point there have been a number of 

recent programs and CDs that use HTML for 

their documentation. So as long as you have a 

browser you can join in. 

The second bit of good news is, apart from 

a browser, the only other piece of software 

you need to create Web pages is a text editor. 

This is because all Web pages are simply plain 

text files and is why HTML has been accepted 

so quickly by the entire computing world. 

Basic HTML is not fancy at all, in fact it is 

quite restrictive and many designers do not 

like it. The reason behind this is that HTML 

lets you describe what a page should look 

like, but in general and not explicit terms. 

This is done by using tags which mark a 

section of the document as a specific style, 

format or type of object, such as a picture or 

link (which we will look at later). Probably 

the best way to explain is to look at a basic 

page. 

 

First Web Pagc 

 

first Web page 

This is the first thing I have (ver dors, 

and 1 soon hippy 

 

If you type this in your text editor, save it 

off and load it into a Web browser, you will 

have a none too impressive sight, but then 

this is about as minimal a page as you can 

get. 

The results are not really important, what 

is, is that you understand why the page looks 


JUNE 1997 

r| 

wise Web 

My first Web page 

Hey thto b my first evw Web page 

I'm sooo happy 

r| teM-htlrt Fiffi-OT-W 20,6,13 

By firsf paw

Paul Overaa 

prepares the 

ground for some 

beta testing 

With so much ground covered in 

recent instalments it may have 

seemed like quite a hard slog at 

B^M^Bi times. Nevertheless, by last month 

we'd got to the point where a directory can be 

selected using the asl requester and the names 

and datestamps of the files present both stored 

and displayed. 

Luckily this month's alterations, which bring us 

to the point where those all important date stamp 

files are produced, are straightforward. We just 

need to modify each filename and produce the 

corresponding set of new files holding the con 

tents of the associated datestamps that we've 

identified. 

The first step in this scenario involves building 

a new file name and I've chosen to add '.ds.' 

extensions to each original name. A file called 

somename.txt would therefore end up having the 

date on which its contents were last changed 

being held in a file called somenarne.txtds. 

Filename alteration can in fact be carried out from 

within the DispiayDates loop that we've been 

using to print the directory filename entries on 

the screen. 

You'll know from earlier code that this loop- 

based routine uses register aO to identify the start 

of each name present in the filename buffer. Ifs 

easy enough therefore to copy this pointer and, 

by increasing it within a second loop, scan 

through a filename looking for its terminal null 

character. Once found we then replace it with a 

period, add the additional characters 'd' and 's', 

and insert a new terminal null to complete the 

name alteration (see listing 1). 

With the amended filename available it's then 

necessary to add device/drawer details to pro 

duce a valid filepath. The approach I've adopted is 

to set up a separate buffer (called fulLfilename), 

copy the currently selected directory to it and then 

use the DOS library's AddPartO function to pro 

duce the target name. When the device/drawer 

details are first collected, I've chosen to store the 

location of the terminal null character. By replac 

ing this character after any given filepath/name 

has been used, I'm able to reinstate the 

device/drawer part of the name without recopy- 

ing the original entry held in the asl requester. 

Listing 2 shows the completed WriteFileO rou 

tine that prepares a target filename, opens the file 

■ove.l aO,a2 copy naie pointer 

.Loop3 cap.b JNULL,(a2)+ 

bne.s .loop! 

suba 1)1,aZ 

iiove.b r.',(aZ)+ add .ds extension 

nove.b f'd',(a2)+ 

love.b #'s',(a2)+ 

itm.b #NULL,(aZ) 

Listing 1; A simple loop like this is all that is 

required to produce the modified filenames 

needed tor date stamp file creation. 


JUNE 1997 

StampOnlf! 

Part 4 

The completed utility being used to datestamp the set of files I 

use for my corner of the Amiga Computing Web site pages. 

using the DOS library's Open function, writes the 

associated date characters held in the datestamp 

buffer by making a call to the DOS WriteO routine 

and then doses the file. 

Testing time 

And thafs it. With the two additional routines in 

place, the utility is complete. You'll notice from 

the latest coverdisk source that one or two other 

minor changes have been made since last month. 

I have, for instance, added extra IntuiText struc 

tures for labelling the selected directory, file, and 

datestamp info. The position of the displayed text 

has also been altered a little but all these details 

are going to be easily visible from the source itself. 

What is perhaps less obvious however, is that, 

although the utility is now essentially complete, 

something else is needed. 

Although a relatively small utility, StampOnlt 

has still involved an assembler source of over 20K 

and, with low-level coding being error prone at 

the best of times, StampOnlt now needs a few 

Convert Dates 

Lea 

Lea 

Lea 

tove.y 

subq 

.Loop* iove.1 

IOtft.1 

jsr 

add a, I 

adda.l 

jsr 

dbre 

rt! 

ConvertDate 

lea fUenaies,aG 

djtestaips,i1 

itext3,i3 

1text4,ri 

filename count,dO 

11,(10 

aO,it_IText(a3) 

itMt.ITtxtbti 

PnntFileNasi print details 

$11, aQ 

lds_SKE0f,i1 

ConvertDate 

dO,.loop4 

rts 

Listing 2: Once the filename and date stamp details have been 

collected this loop code processes the individual entries 

months of testing before it can be considered as 

safe for general use. You should therefore regard 

the completed utility as now being in it's 'beta 

test' phase. Usable but with care! 

My advice is to make a copy of any drawer you 

wish to work on and datestamp that rather than 

selecting your original files. That way if anything 

untoward does happen, your original files will still 

be intact. What sort of things could go wrong? 

Well, suppose for example there was a fault in the 

loop that added the filename extensions so that, 

under some circumstances, filenames did not get 

altered before the new datestamp files were pro 

duced. In this case the contents of all original files 

would be overwritten as the routine creating the 

datestamp files used those original filenames. 

Needless to say I've checked for, and hopefully 

avoided, any such catastrophic errors but with so 

much 680x0 code involved you can never initially 

be 100 per cent sure that silly coding slips have 

not got through. Hence the need for suitable ini 

tial usage caution on your part

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grenades, shoot bazookas, drive tanks, fly choppers, 

split up and do your own thing. But please don't 

leave the screaming wounded to die. Bite the bullet, 

so lo speak and do the decent thing; finish them off. 


SYNDICATE 

Platinum Edition 

One of the best games ever to appear on the Amiga. 

An instant classic. Top-grade entertainment of the 

highest order. In the dark and twisted cities of 

tomorrow, corporate syndicates compete for global 

dominance. Compete with y other Syndicates for 

control of over 50 territories. 

LIAGE PRICE $18.99 

ARCADE CLASSICS PLUS CD 

Arcade Classics Plus contains hundreds of 

variations of all your favourite games. Includes: 

Pacman, Asteroids, Invaders, Galaxians, Donkey 

Kong, Pengo, Tclris, Defender, Frogger, Missile 

Command, Baltle/.one,Tempest,Combat)'Iron, 

Space War, Thrust, Q-Bert, I.ode Runner, 1 (unchback 

Moon Patrol, Trail Blazer, Breakout and loads more. 

SPECIAL AT $20.95 

AMINET 16 or 17 $17.95 

THE EPIC INTERACTIVE 

ENCYCLOPEDIA CD 

This New CD is an Exciting new Multi-Media 

CDROM. It features a superb 256 color interface, 

hundreds of film clips, sound samples and subject 

information. Features include: True Multi-Media 

Interface unlike anything ever seen. The very latest 

information from around the world. Thousands of 

subjects covered from Aachen to Zurich. Hotlist 

editor so you can create lists of particular subjects. 

Fully spoken Media Show, hundreds of images, 

import new subjects from the Internet or form 

floppy disk. Export data to printer or file and use it 

in your own projects. Search and deep search facility. 

Create and add your own subject matter. 

LIAGE SPECIAL $45.95 

DUNE II BATTLE FOR ARRAKIS 

The best strategy game ever. Awesome graphics, 

incredible music & sound effects. Frantic & 

exciting. Fight for control of Dune. 3 Armies, but 

only one can survive. Your battle begins NOW! 


NEW1! 

IN-TO-THENETCD 

PLUS FREE OUT OF THE NET CD 

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO GET 

online SPECIAL$18.95 

SPACE HULK 

The graphics are fantastic. Plenty of action and 

gripping play. Addictively challenging. A derelict 

spaceship is infested with Genestealers. 

Immensely fast, immeasurably strong, these 

insectoid beasts from hell breed by plaining their 

genes in living humans. Bolt on your power 

armour and awesome weaponry. You're going in. 

Terrifying real-time combat. Lightning last freeze 

time Strategy. Over 51) deadly missions including 

Death Wing Campaign. 12 weapons including 

Lightning Claws and Assault Cannon. 5 man 

squads or multiple troops. 

LUGE SPECIAL PRICE $18.99 

VALHALLA & THE LORD OF 

INFINITY 

The first ever speech adventure. Four long years 

have passed since infinity murdered Garamond, 

the King of Valhalla and claimed the crown, yet 

Caramonds young son and heir to the throne 

escaped the slaughter. Now come of age, the 

Prince is returning to enact vengeance for his 

father's death and claim his birthright... 

You are the Princes mentor on his quest, inching 

your way through four vast lovels in the chilling 

castle of Valhalla. You encounter a world 

crammed with logical puzzles and richly 

interactive characters. The cinematic graphics are 

dazzling, the spine tingling sound track 

mesmerizing, in this magical world of words that 

redefines the adventure game. 96'Hi Rating. 

LIAGE SPECIAL PRICE $ 

VALHALLA BEFORE THE WAR 

The second ever speech adventure. In this sequel 

to the blockbuster, Valhalla I, you play Infinity's 

mentor on his quest of hatred in which murder is 

the ultimate goal. Infinity has been jealous of his 

brother, the good King Garamond for as long as 

he can remember, and all for a twist of fate. 

Infinity had been born to late to be King. Set in 

the Mystical castle of Valhalla, you encounter ,i 

horder of brain melting puzzles through four vast 

levels of dazzling graphics and exceptional game 

play in which the art of communications is the 

name of the game. 

LIAGE SPECIAL PRICE $ 18.95 

CHILDRENS' CORNER 

All Floppy Titles 

Bully's Sporting Darts 

Dinos Detective Agency 

High Steel 

Huckleberry Hound 

Playdays Paint 

Postman Pat 3 

Operation Hormuz 

Snapperazzi 

Sooty's Fun with Number 

Sooty & Sweep 

WOW! 

Thomas The Tank Engine $6.99 

Thomas's Fun with Words $6.99 

NOTE 

Add S5.5O Minimum (or shipping I UPS Service) 

Within the USA. Internjtion.il orders must use Credit 

Card, or International Money Order. 

All prices subject to change, subject to slock on hand. 

NT residents subject to stale tax. 

VISA/MO DISC/AM. EXPRESS

A 

ook at the size of that thing!" 

^^^K^^ ^^^^^^^^ ... ♦• 

\ • * ■ * '..."••.■..' 

\ ' > 'A fntog. fonEK long, long timtf iiqn, \n fi . „ 

55a 'da/rf*y far. far." far, far away... *. " " • . '. 

\ , /t/s a period of cuftf war.* Amiga •ftjA.tahj 

\- spaceship staking *from a* hidden. ' . - 

\ • • ' . , • • 

V base, hayp won Jjheir first 'VictovjLj # 

V against the'avil Balactic Empire. . i 

\puring fch'& battle-, -ftmiga Act\wTsp\^* \ ■ i \\ 

managed tp ^teal, secret "plans to the 

v • EfnpiiB'B. ultimate weapon, »the Ue«tt\ 

. . .. 

enough Vile power {o pottute an eOlvre 

/» Empire's sirrlster events, 

•. jiatship,thB He is 

'fl^lte ifoten plans that Con 

peopliMf^tore freedom

news 

The Amiga is bought and a host of excellent new games are 

on the horizon Hugh Poynton's explores the exciting, all 

new world of Amiga... 

Vulcan's management 

in Zombie shocker 

"Darling, it's Valentine's Day, the birds are singing and the 

flowers smell sweet. I want us to immortalise our 

love for one another by dressing up as zom 

bies and appearing on the front of a com 

puter game box" he cooed. 

"Oh Paul, you're so, so romantic" she 

replied. Are these the sweet nothings 

to be heard over the breakfast table 

of chez Cunningham a few months 

ago? Long hours and the pressure 

and strain of churning out loads of 

games for the Amiga has obvious 

ly been too much for Vulcan boss 

es Lisa Tunnah and Paul 

Carrington. 

The hypnotic trance inducing 

glare from their PAL monitors has 

turned their eyes green and induced 

them to go on a violent rampage on 

the front of the box of forthcoming 

Vulcan title, Strangers AGA. Study our 

damning photographic evidence. 

Delvelopers Database 

Philip Crosby, the man behind the Amiga Flame Web site, has announced he is to establish a database of computer programmers and devel 

opers. "/ have seen many companies trying to get new members of staff to help them develop games for the Amiga. It isn't easy to do this 

with developers consisting of only a few friends who want to make a game but need the help of someone in a peculiar field" Philip com 

mented. 

He went on to say, "Many of them still develop their games but you can see areas where the game is lacking. 1 have had enough of seeing a game 

that could be so much better if only they had that programmer or musician. I have decided to offer the services of the Amiga Flame Web site to help 

new games developers and companies get the people they need to develop the games they want to make." 

Hopefully the database will enable programmers and developers to contact one another so the right people can be found for the projects that 

suit them the most. In addition to this, Philip and Paul Carrington from Vulcan Software have collaborated to produce a Web page entitled 'How to 

AMIGA ACTION MEWS

More OnEscapee 

news 

More details have emerged about the OnEscapee 

action/adventure game being devel 

oped by Hungarian developers, 

Invictus. OnEscapee includes an- 

enhanced mixture of Another 

World and Flashback. The Invictus 

Team is looking for a publisher 

for this excellent game and judg 

ing by the screenshots, I don't 

think it will be too much of a 

problem. 

Nemac IV Finds Publisher 

Zentek, the German software team behind Nemac IV, has found a 

publisher in the shape of Pxl Computers Inc. Nemak IV - The 

Director's Cut is a 3-D Doomalikewith excellent graphics, 40 levels 

and 15 minutes of beautiful intro animations. Although only avail 

able on CD-Rom, Nemac IV will run on any Amiga with a hard drive 

and 020 processor (or faster) and is about the only game I can think 

of that presently supports i-0 glasses. Slightly more practically, the 

game supports OCS, ECS, AGA, CybergraphX and Graphitti and will 

run on any Amiga screen mode. 

The game is CD-Rom only as it con- 

tains plenty of detailed graphics, anima 

tions and digitised music. The intro of OnEscapee is currently 9Mb in size and 

the preview of three levels is 50Mb, so you can see it is going to be big. 

The storyline is, as yet, unclear but I have heard that the main character has 

600 frames of animation, more then 50 types of movement and the ability to 

walk, swim and possibly rock-climb. Special effects such as rain, reflecting pud 

dles, waving lights that filter through the surface of the ocean, enemies with dif 

ferent levels of intelligence and many more will be included. 

NEWS AMIGA ACTION

Swedish Amiga software developers, Shadow Elks, is currently produc 

ing a new point 'n click adventure game called In the Shadow of Time. 

Reminiscent of the great Monkey Island series, the game revolves 

around the adventures of a kid called Tadpole who accidentally 

destroys the world. Feeling slightly guilty about bringing about the end 

of humanity, Tadpole sets off on a jaunt through history to put right his 

mistake. 

As you can see from the screenshot it looks to be a pretty impressive 

debut. The only technical specifications currently available for the game 

indicate that it will need a 68020 processor or higher, ACA 3.0 and 1 to 

1.5Mb. For more details check out Shadow Elks' Web site at: 

http://homel.swipnet.se/~w-1O724/IST.html 

In the Shadow of Time 

Foundation 

Medieval Settlers/Civilisation type real-time strategy game Foundation is nearing com 

pletion. The latest screenshots suggest it is going to be a thoroughly impressive prod 

uct. Some technical specifications have also emerged from the developers; the game 

will apparently require an AGA chip Amiga with at least 4 Mb of FastRam. It will include 

sampled speech and sound effects as well as an option to play against a human or 

computer controlled opponent. 

Final Oddessy 

Vulcan continues to dominate the Amiga games market with the announcement 

that Peter Spinaze's Final Oddessy will be developed and released as soon as pos 

sible. Peter was apparently looking for a developer for the game until it was 

snapped up by Vulcan. 

Details are still rather sketchy but it appears that it is a puzzling action adven 

ture and, from the graphics, looks as if it is going to be a real gem. 

AMIGA ACTION NEWS 

Myst 

The Myst saga is now drawing to a dose with the announcement that 

ClickBOOM has acquired the rights to the best-selling adventure game, Myst. 

The game, originally produced by Cyan/Broderbund, proved to be a huge 

hit when released for the PC and Mac An Amiga port of the game was post 

ed on the Internet last year which, despite being totally unofficial, raised con 

siderable support for a release of the game on the Amiga platform. 

Myst will require a pretty high spec machine to run it but the quality of the 

game promises to be superior to the PC and Mac version. ClickBOOM, also 

responsible for the excellent Capital Punishment, promises to bring more big 

titles to the Amiga community if, as expected, Myst proves to be a success. 

Wasted Dreams 

Another Vulcan title is ripe for release: Wasted Dreams, an action adventure 

game, is in a similar vein to HellPigs. Available on a monstrous 12-14 disks, 

the game mixes arcade action with over 300 animations. 

Each of the characters have their own distinct personality and the 10 huge 

playing areas can be explored using the game's eight-direction scrolling. A 

further feature allows two players to either work together or compete in a 

death match. Check out the Vulcan Software slideshow on its Web site.

POSTAGF & PACKING 

UK -INCLUDED 

EUROPE -£2.00 

TEL: 01268 571157 

FAX: 01268 733731 

r of wori n" f tw Please Send Cheques/POs Made out to Premier Mail Order or EHA|L 100307.1544@comPuser 

EMAIL: 100307.1544@compuserve.com 

[OFWOKLU-lj.&ui Visa/Mastercard/(Switch + Issue No) & Expiry Date to: ' ——-— 

Dept: AC113, 14 ORWELL COURT, HURRICANE WAY, WICKFORD, ESSEX, SS11 8YJ 

Mon-Fri 9.30am-6pm Sat 10am-4pm. Please note: Some titles may not be released at the time of going to press. 

Most titles are despatched same day, but can take up to 28 days. VAT is included on all titles 

4D Sports Boning . . . 9.99 

A32D APPROACH TRAINER. 9.99 

Acid Attack Compilation - Gloom Guardian, 

Skidmarks. . 14 99 — 

Amencan Gladiators 9.99 

Arcade Compilation - Woria Snooker, Naughty 

Ones. MJliplaycr Soccer Managor Or Plummets 

House olFlw. Jigsaw Pu/ilcmama 14.99 

\ssassins Games 19 99 

\tomino , B99 

Bl 7 FLYING FORTRESS 12.99 

lards PelB . . ... 4 99 

Banshee 7 99 12 99 

Barbarian 2 16.99 

tiet Island 14 99 — 

Baitletoads —— 999 

tof 12 99 ,,, . 

BLOBZ 12.99 

BLITZ BASIC 2.1 1B.99 

Bograls 12 99 

" ibetBob 399 — 

Bravo Romeo Delta ... 8 99 ■ 

BREATHLESS —22.99 

Brutal FoolOall 8.99 

BubbanSni 4.99 — 

Bubble & Squeak 7.99 7.99 7.99 

ump W Bum — — 14 99 

urnout 19.99 

CannonFodOsr . .. 12 99 

Centrefold Squares 399 — 

CHAMP MANAGER 2 19.99 —~ 

Clamp Manager 94 D/Disk. ... '99 

CHAOS ENGINE 2 19,99 

Championship Cnallongn Woitd of Snooker, 

Test Matcti CnckcS Challenge. Trablo Champ 

2. International 1 Day Cricket 14 99 

CIVILISATION 12.99 — — 

ClockWiser 9.99 9.99 9.99 

Club Football THe Manage' 7.99 7 99 

Club & Country 7 99 

COLONISATION 12.99 

Cosmic Spacehead 10 99 

COVERGIRL POKER 7.99 

Crall for AMOS 17.99 — -— 

Cricket Captain 3 99 — ■ 

Footbai Directar2 3.99 —— 

Football Glory B.99 8.99 

FORMULA ONE GRAND PRIX 12.99 — 

Galaiy Force 5 99 

Gearwcrks 3 99 

Genesis 3.99 

Global EHed 4 99 

GLOOM _ T.99 7.99 

GLOOM DELUXE 7.99 

G Gooch- WC Tesl Match . 7 9B 

G Goocti-W Class Cricket . 7 99 

GGooch -Balllo for Ashes. 4 99 — 

Guardian 799 7.99 

Gun Fury 14.99 — 

Gunship2000 5299 — 

Heimflall 4.99-— — 

Heim0all2 — 799 9.99 

Heller SkeltW 13.99 

Hillsea Jdo 12.99 

Humans 3 10 99 

IMPOSSIBLE MISSION 20Z5. 8.99 B.99 

INTER BASE 7.99 — 

INTEROFFICE 12.99 

INTER SPREAD .7.39 

INTERTALK 7.99 — 

INTERWORLO 7.99 — 

Internal ion,-11 Arcade Aclion 3.99 —- - 

Inl One Day Cricket OEM ... .4,99 

International Sports Challenge 12.99 - - 

InlOS-AMOS 16.99 

J Nicklaus Greatest 18 Holes. 6.99 

J Nicklaus Designer Clip Art .. 7.99 

Jel Pilot 16.99 

Jetslnke 9-99 

Jigsaw Puiitemania 3 99 

Jimmy White's Snooker 12.99 

KGB 12.99 

KickOft3 9.99 — 

K«t Pn 10.99 

Leeds United 3.99 — 

Legends ,. 8.99 8 99 

Line of Fire 4.99 

Lion Kino 19 99 

Loop* ..17.99 

Many* Maynem Compilation - Legends. 

Fears «0«tW ... . 14 99 — 

M 1 ■■ '.' I".I ! .. ■ A0, , I .-.■ ■ ■■ 

MEDIEVAL WARRIORS 3.99 

M,nskies!heAbduct.on 1499 — 

Morph 7 99 8 99 

MULTI MEDIA EXPERIENCE 24.99 —— 

Napofeamcs 7.99 

NaughlyOnas 3.99 12.99 

NINE LIVES 3.99 

Odyssey 999 

One Day Cricket B.99 

On The Ball League Edition . 8 99 

Opural on ComDm 2 ... .499 —— 

Pegasus 12.99 

PGA European Touf 12.99 

PGA Golf 8.99 — 

PGA Golf Plus Courses 12 99— 

Pmbal I Fantasies. . —129912.99 

Pmball Illusions 12.99 12-99 

PinballMania —12.99 

Pmball Prelude 169916 99 16.99 

Pitfighler G99 

Player Manager 2 7 99 

PLAYER MAN 2 EXTRA 7.99 

Popeye2 7 99—— 

po^r 7 og __ 

PcwerBase v3 5 . (Da!abase)1299 

Powerflnve 9.99 9.99 

Pomergamcss -—1299 

P.omie'0 4 99 12 99 

Pro-Tennis Tour 6 99 

Railroad Tycoon. .. .. 12 99 

Reach lor the Skies 12.99 

Roadkill 7 99 7.99 

RoadRash 7.99 

Ruffian 10.99 

Rugby Leaguo Coach 3.09 —— 

SECAL -24.99 

Sens World of Soccer 96'97 .1S99 — 

SWOS 96(97 DATA DISK 7.99 —- 

Shadow Warriors 6.99 

EilentServrce 8.99 

S'lert Service 2 12 99 

SIMON THE SORCEROR 1 ...12.9912.99 12.99 

SkeieionKrew 7 99 

SKIDMARKS 7.99 

SLAMTILT 19.99 

Soccer Team Manager .. 10 99 

SPACE HULK 12.99 

SPECIAL FORCES 8.99 

SpeedbaH2 1299 

Speris Legacy 19.99 -— 

Sporting Spectacular FooICaH Director 2. F1 

GP Circuits. Rugby Coach, Daily Double Horse 

Racing. Euro Superleague .. 14 99 

STARLORD B.99 — 

Streetfghter 2 12.99 — 

Strider B.99 

Stndec2 8.99 

StripPot 799 7.99 

Subversion 4.99 

Super League Manager 7 93 7.99 7.99 

Super Skidmarks 7.99 7 99 

Super Slreetlighter 2 Turbo . —- - 14 99 

Internal 8B0K Floppy Drive AS0D 47 59 

Internal 8B0K Floppy Drive A6OCWA12O0 .. 49.99 

JUPITERJOYSTICK T.99 

Mouse 300 dpi 2 Button 10.99 

Mouse 400 dpi 2 Button 14 99 

Mouse 400 o> 3 Button 16 99 

Mousemat 1.99 

JoysvekMoose Extension Cable B.99 

Joystick Y Splitter 4.99 

Log.c3DeltaRayAutofirejyi5fl 10.99 

Logic 3 Alpha Ray ■ Autofire 10 99 

Logic 3 Sigma Ray ■ Autofire 12 99 

POWER SUPPLY UNIT 39,99 

Quic/joy Pedals SV129 9 99 

ScreenBeal 3 Speakers SBZ03 12.99 

Screenbeal 4 Speakers S8204 1199 

ScreenBeal 5 Speakers SB205 11.99 

Scresnbeat 25 Speakers SB 225 21.99 

Screenbeal Pro 50 Speakers SB25O .. 32 99 

Screanbaal RCA Adapter Cable 1 99 

Screen Beat Power Supply 7.99 

Thrustmaster XL Joystick (AAR) 27 98 

Zipstick Super Pro Autoliro Joystick 10.99 

AMIGA CDROM 

So Ho CDROM 

AGA E.penenco II 9.99 

Amiga Tools 3 24 99 

Arnica Utilities 2 19 99 

AminstSet 1,2,3.4,5.6,7.8,9,10,11.12 Of 13 14.99 

Ammet 14.15,16 or 17 14.99 

Ammet 94-02 9.99 

Amos Library 16.99 

Animations 19 99 

Arcade Classics Plus 12.99 

Anwar* Colour 9.99 

Ass£sin5 Gamas 12 99 

Assasins Games II 16.99 

C-64 Sensatrons 2 9.99 

Card Games.. 9 99 

CD Boot [Run CD32 games on your A1200] 32 99 

CD Write 32.99 

Clip Art Professional IFF & PCX Library 2. 9 99 

Epic Collection II 16.99 

Epic Encyclopedia 97 28.99 

Flash Rom .. 16.99 

Fonts 9.99 

FreshFonlsi or 2 19.99 

Gateway 9 99 

Gif Sensations : 16 99 

Gifs Galore 9 99 

G.ga Graphics 24 99 

Gold Fish 1 or 2 24 99 

Graphics Sensation ., 14 99 

Holtest4 9.99 

Hottest 6 14 99 

Illusions in 3D 4.99 

IntoJOut of the Net 16.99 

Uaj.c Workbench Enhancement 9.99 

Meeting Pearls 3 9.99 

Multimedia Toolkit 2 24.99 

Network CD2 11.99 

Ocamed 6... 24.99 

Prcfessional Fonts & Clipart 9.99 

Professional Utilities 1-1500 9 99 

Scene Storms 16.99 

Sci F. Sensatkins II 16.99 

BC3S Litils OfKo d.Dasa'wo/spreaOjIioet 

BC37 Home Businass Journal ... database 

BC3B Bon Appetrt Database .... manyrecep>ei 

BC'39 Home Account account program 

BC40 Armcasri. regaroec as oest a/cs program 

BH1 Journal full fealjre accnuni prooiatr- 

BC42 Loran Note Book ...dataDase & world map 

BC-13 Data Base Compilation besl sell 10 oate 

BC44 Mortgage Calc calc repayment rate etc 

6W5 Money Progiam accounts program 

B046 Account MastorVS.a.. accounts program 

BC47 House Inventory ideal far insurance 

B048 Address Pnntv2.i..5ta/pnnl addresses 

BM9 Tent PJus V4.0 ..pro reswros tid & 2megs 

B050 Toil Engines V4.1 word spellchek 

B051 Inventory 2 rionie 

B052 EQword Professiona 

BC53 Easycal - 

HD54 Pny Advice Anali2er 

S055 A(idross printing .. 

B056 Pay Advice V3 

B057 Label Mak 

B058 The Money Progra 

B059 Loans Account 

nlents f 

besl word processor 

assive spread sheet 

.. money proyram 

. pnnlonlpbals 

account program 

pnnt loBlos, elc 

B06O OnfDrm . one of Ihe Best invoice makers 

B061 Account Master V22-.. latest prog'am 

EDUCATIONAL 

E019 Kid Painla. ...superb paint special for Vids 

E020 Colour It onl'bant compjter cotounng 000* 

E021 Treasure Sea-cri .Sne tne hidden treasure 

E022 Learn SP!av1(notA12:») mans 5 gamcsi 25 

E023 Learn S Play? education program 

E024 Spanish Translator . .. spanisn'eng!n 

E025 MrMen(WB1.3only) . .. story advwtu 

E026 Astromy . tutonal on SDlaWsBr ect sysle 

& Spac* Mslha mathsgames i; 

E02S Dinosaurs.. .leach you all about dinosaur 125 

E029World Database require(2*meg) 1.25 

E030 Story Lnnd2 .. Interact puzzle games rec 125 

E031 Language Tutor ..teach you 4 languages 126 

£032 Talking Colouring Book talking doaml Brill 1.25 

E033 EasySpell2 Improve your kid spelling 1.25 

E034 Scrabble regupe 2-1 player bnlliant "" 

E035 Words . can help you solve the crossword 

E037 Evolution treed your own hyBnd 

EO38 In Tesl - Iq games pack 1 Excellent 

E039 Typing Tutor very good typing tutor 

E135 Wed Puzzle Pro . create or solve puzzle 

E136 Kid Disk 7 education program 

E137 Earry leamerlage3-5). .teacti rio* to reafl 

E139 UK Country 

E140 Basic EiodronicVi 5 ...fwêHroacfan 

E141 Massive Guide to Irtemel.... vcrscnZ 3 

El42 Animal Land kJeal for kids 

EU3 Piciuro Mathj naths prooram for kids 

E1*4BogrntrGuid«loVVB3 . . AM1200only 

£145 Glo!» Fact . 'act about planet eanh 

E146 Kk) Only. 6 encelleni games to play with 

EWSarta . help unta collect present games 

EUSBirthdaytintory V2 2 

EMSBar Tendor lOOOdnnt'cocktail 

GAMES 

GMOMega 21 Games amazing 21 games 

G061 Dragon Cave . bmfant 3D puzzle games 

G064 Take Them Out .. l*e to operaoon wolf 

G065 Destine Moon Base, arcade conversion 

G066Tank Baltlfl .. piavertank balliegame 

G067 Arcadia Ihe bnsl arkr.oid clone 

G06aO-Boid cross tetrra and invaders 

G069 Dimension X 2 ... .player light cycle game 

G070NbouIs' . . o.cellent shoot em up 

GD7I Ghi.iic oicdlonlS levels arcade 

G072 Hypor-Ball sjood Ball • level editor 

G073 Ghost Shlo . ...von/ good 3d adventure 

G0T4 Biiltlomenl . hunch backolnotcha 

G07S Moga Game Coiiedlons ill.. 3 lop game 

Q076 Madonna Muds Puizlos (or is- only 

GO77 Grnvily massive space exploring game 

G07a Cyber-NsUc .. . briiianl 8 way Dlasler 

G079 Donkoy Kong ...A1200 

GO80 Crify Sue II besl plalfor to date 

GOBI Super Skoda Ctia-lenge . (& Badt eartor) 

GDB2StarTrek .. simlar 10raio2outnarde' 

GOB3 DoMv . .very cute & entremely aodid 

G0B4 Wonoer Land amajing graphic 

GOBS Dc'uiePacman best ever release 

G086 Card Games Cdlecuon 

GOS7 Wuirt Domains . dungeon type games 

GO8B Ka'aiiu (not A1200I .arcade tetris cionn 

G0B9 A.* Aces II very playstfe shoot them up 

G09D Othsllo . Best pa version 

G091 M01 

G092 Telrsn . .. most polish over rclea 

G0S3 Sinkaball brilliant Easo ball clo 

G094 Trail bluer (not A1200) bnllianl 1.25 

G095 Fqhung Warner . . liko strnnl fighler 

G0fi6 Dominoes only one of il kind or pd 

GO97 Total Wars st'alcgy like cnoss in spaco 

G098 Battle Car 2 3Dcer rsaung 

G099 Hester Card Gams hours of fun lor a Quit 

G101 Trailb1azer2 C6J cbnvursion 

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. . . 

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■ 

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. . 

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. , 

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. 

G102c-Type2 very good asteroid 

E04D Chess Helper . help'leach how to play 

GiOSOIompiad .. .. Olympic sports events 

EOJ1 Basic Tutor leam about amiga basic prog 

GiOi OescenderGame. . tank.search 

EO42Amga Tutorial 7 pantutonal 

G105 Oblido. encpllenl arcado^puzzio game 

E0J3 Computer Gate how to care for arnga 

GlOBParacnulo Joust auiteplayable 

EW4 Guide To Lower Sack Pam 

G107 Cj^tic of Ooom vg graphic adventure 

E 0« Kid Atph abet distla y »lr »lph abet letter 

GiOSWobin World Giddy large platform game 

EW6 Fraction & Sikiuest malhs S games 

G109CashFruil good fruit machine 

£047 Math Mailer. toacMos! you on mains 

G110AmosCrickot .. cickelgames 

EM6 Sioam Engine v2 . .graphic i lulonai 

Gilt Eitream Violence. 2 player batte cut 

£049 Pel'Ol Engine tutorial & animate graphic 

G112 Enioma Machine very challenging puzzle 

E050 Gas Turfcine Engine ... tutonal & graphic 

G113MegaBail2 . . . Break out clone 

E051 Stirling Engine lutonai & ankn graphic 

G114 Bounce* Blast bnllianl platform 10(10 

E052 Dream for Angel ... .meanug of dream 

Gii5ZomD.es a De'erOsr 2 fantasuc games 

E053 lnvis.-ble Won) .. William recomrrended 

G116 Mercanenes S.m.ljicr 30 wars games 

E054 Fish Tank turn your arniga into a fish tank 

G117Lfe .. .simulation very interesting 1.25 

E055 Demolition Mission simple game for kid 

G116 Transplant . .dozen ol level East arcade ' 25 

E0S6 World Power . sctve crossword puzzle 

G119 KlawzltieKal . great platform games • .25 

E057 Worm Hole simple game ideal for children 

G120 Highway Hell lido spy hunter on Uiec64 1.25 

SUPER TENNIS CHAMP 7.99 

Super Tennis Champ 2 D/D. 5.99— 

Test Hatch Cnckol 

4.99 

The Games.... 

10.99 

Thea'je o! Death 

9.99 

THEME PARK ...12.9912.99 

Sound Library S GRX Library 

Sound Studio,. 

Sound Terrific I 

Sound Terrific II 

Speccy 97 

Toilure Portfolio 

The Beauty f Chaos. 

The Colour Library .. 

The Learning Curve. 

The Light Rom .. 

The Light Rom 2 

£058 Apple Catcher .catch falling app'e bnlliant 

29 99 

E059 Cross Maze & CryplokingZ ...kidgames 

t-in.ii Verb Quiz rind the word 4 it related bnil 

9 99 

EU61 King James Bible ,. complete bibles e> eel 

16 99 

E0S2 Tarrul clairvoyant rn a instance 

16.99 

E063 Gnllow . . fancy a game of hang man? 

.32 99 

E0S4 Maths Drill leach all Basic math skill 

. 9 99 

E0B5 Error Into. . In lo why your am iga crash 

9 39 

E060 Worlo-War2 ... graphics lute-rial on WW2 

. 16.99 

EQS7 Science excellent collection of science 

.32 99 E0S8 Kidpn* great chi'cren paint programme 

32.99 E069 Astromy Pack _ 

G121 Opcratikn Firestorms Brilliant -.25 

G122Castlo Kumqunt. similar IQ nlion brood 1 25 

G123 Back Dawn .bnllianl graphic adverlure '25 

G124Monn5.4 the Utest dungeon 4 dragon '.25 

G125Brrdgo good version ol bridges 1 25 

G12BOrkAltnek tiioodyadvonturo 1.25 

t>i:*' !"■!• . playur futurlstie break out 1.25 

G12B Road to Hell bnlliant car racing 1.25 

G129 Supertom Cm new vortical shoot em up 1.25 

G130KungluChniiios ira vjiIIi pliitlorm orll'iant 1.25 

G131 Raid 4 latest vertical scroll ehoo! am up 1 25 

G132 Quizmaster .very good quiz program 1 25 

12 99 

The Light Works 24.99 E070 Picture 7 Letter taatn lo read fiRl step 

G133 Elevalion games base on lilt 7? 1.25 

7 rns'espere Data Disk 

Tinv Troops 

5.99 

17 99 

The Sound Library 1 

The Sound Library 2 

9.99 =071 Amiga Beginner Guide lutorial on amigas 

9.99 =072 Noddy Playtime ... demo > very good 

G134 Imperial Walker base on star wars games 1.25 

G135 Starbasa 13 like monkey island 2.50 

TOTAL FOOTBALL .',.'. 12.99 

UPD Gold 

UPD Set 1 

24.99 £073 Kid Pi* morn e*ce'lont paint programmes 

16.99 E0M D T P For Kid . easy to use. excellent 

G136 Amos Loadsa Money Bosl fruit machines 125 

G137 Mr Men Olympic many event to complete 2.50 

D Thompsons Olympic Chall 6.99 - 

Tourng Car Challenge 12 99 

Weird Sconce Animations 9.99 £075 Sing A Rhymes sing a song i 25 G138 4 L C D Dream 4 small hand hold games 125 

Dangerous Streets 

- 9 99 TreBia Champions 2 . .4 99 

Weird Science Clipait 9.99 E076 Highway Code Tutor 1.25 G139 Neighbour Games bate on the tv senes 2.50 

Oeluie Smp Poker 3 99—— 

Troddlers 16.9B 

Weird Science Color Art 9.99 E077 Road & Learn(23) . three Mile pig siory 1 25 G140 Time Runner (WB2/3). Bryant graphic 1 25 

Desert Strike 7.99 

TurBoPai*3 

UFO 

3.99 

12.99 

Weird Sc-ence Fonts 

WorldofClioari 

9.99 E078BackToSkoolvoll 

9.99 EOSO Back To Skool voK 

1.25 G141 Golf ono of ihe first «ro descent ooif 2.50 

1 25 G142 Amos CricVel 2 . amos cricket simulator 1 25 

DOGFIGHT B.99 

Ult Soccer Manager D'DiBk B.99 

World olClipari Pkis 16.99 EOai Back ToScfBol Vol3 1.25 G143 MugsyRovonga gangster graphic adv 125 

Dunei Of 2 12 99 — — Valhalla 1 Lorfl of Infinity .1499 

WorldolGames 9.99 E0B2 Litte Travelor mfcrmatjon on wold wide 1 25 CM Jsasaw veryplayatucjigsawgames 250 

DylonDog B.99 —~ —- Valhalla 2 Betore tne War ..14 99 —- World of GIF 9.99 E083 World Geography wend with maps & leil 1 25 G1«BobByGarden-D^gor Bnaiarrt 1.25 

E0W DiscoveryOfThe Atom 2.50 

Euroleajue Manager —14.99 —- Valhalla 3 Fortress of Eve ...17.99 ~~- World of Photo 9.99 

G1-46 High Oclano fin car reacrng (nolwBI 3) 1 25 

European Suparleague . ... 3 99— 

Virtual Karting 12.99 ■ 

World of Sound 9.99 

EOBS Desk Top Guide To Uusic guide & tutorial 3.75 GH7Tir " 

EOBS Trumply Firework Alahabel.. . a^nabet 1.25 G148 Space Invasion 2 fantastic galsman 125 

Enle 7.99 7.99 

Voyager 6.B9 —— World of Video 9.99 

E0B6 How To Oc'ovooe Photo t enceUenU 2.50 GH9 Automobiles ... pd version or skidma-ks I 25 

Exile Dala Disk 5 99 

Wa:en Tower 12.99 

Zoom II - 9.99 

EOB7 Mr Men Olympics .— 2.50 GISOBanditMania brtlianl rrurtr 

Ei!rerre Racing . —— 5.99 

Wembley International Soccer 4 99 7 99 Glamour TiBes - Over 18 Only Amiga CDROM 

E0B8 Cull TV Database... into on early tv series 2.53 G151 Project Buii Bar . bwuanr asteroid t 25 

EXTREME RACING DrfDISK 4.99—— 

Wembley RugOyLeague. . . 7.99 —— Adult 4 Animations 22 99 

E089 How To Dovolope Photos 2 2.50 G152GunFight(notA5uO) 125 

F1 GRAND PRIX CIRCUITS .. 3.99 

White Death 4.99 — 

Adult Sensations 19.99 

E090 Electronic Worlds k James bUtes 3.75 G153TlieRoalPopeyefrJ s500 1 3 only 125 

F15 STRIKE EAGLE 2 12.99 

Wing Comma nrjer 9.99 

Adult Sensations 2 _ 19.99 E091 How The Earth Began, .ineoryonb-g-bang 125 G154 System Defend brdlailn dolonoer sysloi 

F19 STEALTH FIGHTER 12.99 

Wizkd 10.99 

Adult Sensations in 3D 19.99 EO92 Workbench 2... tutorial on work bench 2 125 G155 Amiga Boy game Boy emulator -letn5 125 

F117A S 99 ■■■■■■ ...i.. Wolfcfiild 4.99 

Asan Ladies 1 9.99 E093DmoWar quiz on dinosaurs 1 25 G156 Detholl In Space recommanded 1 25 

FanidsyMa'nageV'95/96"!-' I a'gg — — Wonderdog 4.99 —— — Asian Pleasures 2 or 3 or 4 29.99 E094 Junior Malhs grca: Burning a d Icr malhs 125 G157 Overlander .... BrWianl arendo moon alert 125 

Fantasy World Dizzy .5,99 

World Class Rugby [OEM| 4.99 ~~- Blonde Babes 10.B9 E095 Picture Puzzlo. oriinm jigsiiv. lypogame 1 25 G158Sorious Backgammon Ihabosl In pd Bg 1.25 

Fears 7.99 

WORLD GOLF 12.99 

Digital Dreams II 12.99 E090 Word Factory BriMr.l. loach kids words 1 25 G159 Star Woid bnllianl Itirusi 2 50 

FIELDS OF GLORY 12.99 ■ 8.99 WorldolGoll 899 

Digital Dreams III 16 99 E097 Kid Disk bnliant education prick 1 25 G1f>0Uri-Sorniiji.iSo(.ser similar 10 sonsi 1.25 

FIFA Soccer 12.99 - 

World ol Soccer 4 99 - Eufopean Dieam Girls 1 or 2 or 3 14.99 E098KldDisk2 more education programs 125 G161Frui1Man' 

ilMl machine 1 25 

Fly Harder 

B.99 WorldsatWar 4 99 

Fantasy Girls lor 2 9.99 EOa'JKidD.sk 3 . .drawing program for kids 1.25 G162 Trickle Treal 

like doom on iho pc 1 

Fools Errand 3.93 — 

WORMS 9.99 — 

Girls of Pleasure 9.99 E100KidDisk5S6. . . .. brillanl games 1 25 G163 Football Managor 

new version 1.25 

WORMS:DIRECTOnSCUT. 14.99 

Girls Who Like Girls 9.99 E101 Jurassic Parh6 lo's of info on dinosaurs 

G161EoloAssaull3D I ke wing commander 1.25 

Wreckers 3.99 - HctPie 9.99 E102Chi1drensSongs2 . . 5 excellent songs 

G165 Sceo of Darkness 

graphic Gdvenlure 1 25 

X P fl 

ZEE WOLfY- WILD FIRE 

16 99 

22.99 

Hct Spot Women 1 or2or3 

Just 18 

15.99 E103 Ming Shu (ASOO only).. .Chinese astrology 

9.99 E1W Astro 22 Pro V3 astrology program 

G166 Warm Fly 1 uperb explore game 1.25 

G167 The GreaiGoid Raid . . . vary addicted 1.25 

Zool 8 99 Lusty Lesbians 1 or 2 

Onental Fantasies lor 2 

EDUCATIONAL 

Photo Studk) 

Pi.els of Desire 

10/10 Dinosaurs 1299 — 

Seiy Sensations 

10/10 Earty Essentials (3-7) .12 99— — The Page Three Collection 

10/10 English [6-16} 12.99 - The World of Lana Fo< 

10/10 Essenlial Maths (5-12). 1299 — 

The World of Teresa May 

10/10 Essential Science 5-12 .12.99 

Unverse of Adult GIFS 1 or2«3 

10/10 Frencn (6-16) 12.99 

Worlds Best Breasts 

10/10 German (B-16) 12 99 

Wbrld Of Pinups Voi 1 

10/10JuniofEssentials(5-ii)i299 

World Of Pinups Vol 2 

9.99 E105 French Veru Tester 

15.99 E106 World Hrsloiy Book need help vvitti history 

E107 LitllB Traveler 2 inlormation on the world 

15.99 

9.99 E108 X-FUes Guide to tne tv series 

E109 Chess Tutor teach you how lo play 

1999 

El 10 Internal .... guide to the miemet 

9 99 

E111 Cli A Sn._. Tutor idea' 'ci C-3ginnf.-s 

9.99 

El 12 Ddu.o Paint Grapho Tutorv3*4 . .. 

9.99 

E113 Japane&en! Grapnacs teach rapanese 

9.99 

EIUPaiiilltr,no!A5O0l coiounngbook 

9 99 EIISKuy Board Trainer ... an e.celienl tutor 

9.99 E116 Word Power crossword solver, teach 

12 99 E117 Crossword Creator . ..design crosswords 

G16S AntWarV1.9 

not! 3 1 25 

G16B2onoMoTJh. . greet graphic 125 

G17OTaskForcB mind shadow done 125 

G171 GreenFlve smazmg 3d graphic iiko 125 

G172 Professional Bingo Caier. . 125 

G173 Martidi SjiM .. like street fighter 2 123 

G1746Eiceiien1CinlG>mH .. collection 125 

G175BliU2 .. '«•! Ktion inoolma games 1 25 

G176 Em 13 Bnllunt puzzle 1 25 

G177 TBmpodlMisplacement .. grapKicadv 125 

G17S A Day at the Races hese racing games. 1 25 

G179BoulderOncinil .. .with B0 levels 1.25 

GiBOBouiderdash cave level cansirucfccn kit 125 

10/10MatnsAlgeoral6-16) 1299-—■ — 

10/10 Mams Geometry (6-16) 12 99 

RECYCLED BLANK 3.5" DISKS 

£118 Chois 2 & Tutor Dnllant etiess 2 games 

E119 History Of Aviation Vol 1 eiedlent disk 

G181 BouldorCollection2/3 160l»vets 2.50 

G182 Boulder Pack with 870 levels on B discs 7.99 

10/10 Maths Numbers (E-16j 12 99— — 

El20 Child Favounte education program 

G1B3 Alien Net Work new spacing invader 1 25 

10/10MaHisSta;is!ic5i6-16, .12.99 

10 @ 3.99 20@6.50 50312.50 100@ 22.50 E121 Animal Land tear about animals 

G184 Battle Force... encellenlle*tadventure 125 

10/10 Spelling Puncuation 12 39 

E122 Frantic Guide To Ccmputer 

G185 Gnu Chess, the Besl cnesi with 10 levels 1 25 

10/IOStrucluredSpellmg. 12 99 -— 

PD & Shareware 

E123 Cyner Punk 3 tar cyber punk freaks only' 

G186 Sward Of Vigg graphic advenlure 125 

Kid Pis 10 99 

E124 

G187 PowHr Telns 'or 1 or 2 playor 1 25 

BUSINESS 

El25 Sigmfuro Creator coustmise your o'Ar 

G18B Super Smashing Tetris 125 

JOYSTICKS & 

BO18 Teit Plu 

E126 Virus Workshoo VJ comprehensive guide 

GIS9ChossllSChoMer 1,25 

ACCESSORIES 

aak AMAi or, ADAPT EX REQUIRED 

BO19 Banking 

B020 Label Di 

S021C. 12. 

1... descn youi 

beta 

1 base progrn 

E127 Imagines Video ... could you use it •> 

E12BWorkbondi2/3GuidB - ,- .on line help 

E129Loarn&Pley3 education S games 

G190 Gravity Force 2. I or 2 playor thrust clono 1.25 

G19t SchnobiU puzzioganios 1.25 

G192 Doio«o Gala v2.3 2ptnyor 1 !5 

4PlayerjDy5tickAdapl«r 499 B022 Dosklop PuBlialng bos! pd dtp 

E13QBnmuy Buiir Goes Camping 

G193The Krilllan Incindent l*oolito2/opic 1.25 

An alogu e J oysti ck Ad a ptor 5.99 B0J3 Business Caro Maker -notAM120O 

Automatic Joystick/Mouse Splitter 14 99 BO24 600 Business Letters 

B0Z5 Business Card Maker can onnt in colour 

Compeiilion Pro Xlra Clear Joystick 10.99 

B026 Dala Base Wortistxjp bnlliant pack 

CH Flightstick [Analogue! (AAR)29 99 

BC27 SpreeO sheet... easy !o use spreadsheet 

Cruiser Joystick T.99 

BC29 Quick Base very powerful database 

Analog Joystick (AAR) 19 99 

BC29 Rim Dataoase powerful database 

E131 Comms Guide VI 1 .beginner modem user 

E132 Giiloo To Wealher guido to Ihe woainer 

E133 Mmris Allack maths relate games for kiQs 

EI34 Beginning Typing Tutor 

□ 194 Quantum maze collect & escape, typo 1.25 

G195 Rag 10 Riches likomonopoly V. 

GiseWipsOut mindless blasting games 125 

G197 GoOIiila. . anolhor shool am up 1 25 

G198 Super Mcgn Frut . .all new fruit machine 1 25 

G1S9 Driving Maniac 50 car racing very fast 1.25 

G200 Planet Fall luner lander Bone 1.25 

BCWAmiSase. ...orofessiorani best database 

G201 Buck Tooth Adventure 1.25 

BC31 Texlia can edil several cocs at once 

G2O2 Pengo 2 maze lype games 1 25 

EC32 Flen Base . .. easy to operate database 

G203 Suiier Obliteration similar to pang 2 1 25 

BC33 Penny Wise very powerful database 

G204 Super Invasion II . new spacing invade' 1 25 

BCWVijjcalc great database lots ol functions 

G2D5 The Sheperd bnl lant dopjIdus ckjsne 125 

BC35Teit Engine V3 t wonJproceHor 

G206 Aiion Genocide shoot uliera 1 

G2O7 Pudunan pacman 125 

G20aSupor Baltic Zone 3D . ..notwb1.3 1.25 

G209 M'A-E-H suniiar lo lemming and worms 1 25 

G210LnslSo'dier .. muiUevol platform garnet 2 50 

. . 

. 

G211 CBoertecti 

?ic«Lienl alien breed clon 

G;i2Hangman 

anyone Tor a gane? 1 25 

G213AceSoace .. 

Bice platform game 125 

G214 Colourmania 

puzzle game 125 

G215 Harry Haddock tri .tnt plalfoim games 1.25 

G216 Mangle g Fender. ... smash upcarJtank etc 1 25 

G217 Arcade Games Classic V1S2 2.50 

G21S Helicopler play like desert strike 1.25 

G219Cov,Wats..verydooiclod2playergames 1.25 

G220 Island plsy like monopoly 125 

15 G222 Loltery Professional .. Ihis version use " 

15 G223Monopoly. board gnmos-tno besl version 

25 G224 Jet Willy3 .. OBCOllonl plutform games 

25 G225 Flsmmmg Engino superb car racing 

25 G22B Paw Machines grnplncniy bri'lsin) shoot 

2i G227 SiiirnlD Mncturt ... ojiuMiion wolf stylo 

25 G22B ZoiJOn 3D suport cW 30 blaster games 

25 G229Bomgv3 groat pi alto rmer 

25 G230 Punier anmalom 

25 G231 Arcade JujSBW 

25 G232WheelChairGlediator. 

. Include lion king 2 SO 

very fun to play 

25 G233 Nimble bnillant r 

25 G23J Black Dawn 3 super 3d adventu 

25 G235 R.3 Rocket very gooo rockets games 1 25 

25 G236 Battle Ship Ihe fmoslpd version 1.25 

25 G237 Usi Up last car racing 115 

25 G238Quadni 1.25 

G239 Ll,timal« Tour T«nnis tennis games 2 50 

G240 Dark Angol (not wb 1 3) arcade adv 1 25 

G241 RaisoThn Tltnne . gooO 3d advonlura 1.25 

G242 Phantom Ihool games (defender %| 125

ACTION REVIEW 

SYSTEM PREVIEW 

This month ClickBOQ I has finally 

that it will be bringiffl* out Myst, tl 

selling PC CD-Rom g? 

Hugh Poynton takes a look at th< 

convoluted tale that is the story of 

After months of uncertainty, the Canadian based 

Amiga games company ClickBOOM has announced 

it will be developing and selling Myst for the Amiga. 

Coinciding as it does with the release of the 

AmigaQuake patch on the Internet, this announce 

ment represents a huge boost for the Amiga gaming 

world. However, the story of Myst goes back much 

further than ClickBOOM's announcement last week. 

LLLLU.LUl.eXrU. 

The story of Myst's conversidfco the Amiga has been 

shrouded in uncertainty andfbntroversy for months. 

During the summer of 1956 a team of non-profit 

making Polish developers released onto the Internet 

a demo of an extremely accurate but totally unoffi 

cial version of Myst, a game which had proven to be 

one of the best selling CD-Rom games on the PC 

and Mac Amazed that an Amiga specific demo was 

EZ*1 AMIGA ACTION PREVIEW 

ne of the many beautiful screens 

)le for the platform at a time when things were 

■tig pretty bad for the machine, thousands of 

Annga owners downloaded the demo from Aminet 

Impressed with the demo and under the impression 

it was genuine, many people tried contacting 

Cyan/Broderbund to get hold of a full version of the 

game, onty to find that the demo was a fake. 

Upon learning of the illegal port, Cyan/Broderbund 

fill!! 

r Mill iff ll|

moved J 

quickly to 

stop Aminet 

' various mags 

distributing the demo on 

rdisks. However, so many people bad seen and 

;ed the demo that a genuine demand for an 

Amiga version was apparent. To try and assure Cyan 

of the support for the project to officially port the 

game to the Amiga, the Amiga community inundat 

ed the company with e-mails and letters. 

Viscorp learned of the port and the huge support 

for an Amiga specific version of the game and 

released a statement The matter quickly turned into 

a debate as to the financial and practical viability of 

bringing out major new releases on the 

Amiga. Jason Compton, ^s* 

Communications Manager at ,/ 

Viscorp went on record as 

saying: 

"At Cyan's public / 

request, / contacted the / 

company about the .' 

ibility of doing a 

Mysf timiga port. As 

most.of you know by \ 

rtow, the issue came • 

accurate,' but fake, 

demo was placed on \ 

Aminet". 

"Cyan's"Concern is not the N. 

development of the game - if it 

winds up doing it, it'll get Amiga- 

knowledgeable programmers to do the 

development. It is concerned with how many units it 

can sell. Cyan also wanted to know where the plat 

form was going - were we still going to sell 

machines? Were we going to develop new technolo 

gy? Both answers were yes. 

"So now it needs to think about it for a while. I'll 

be in contact next week to see if there's anything 

else it needs in order to make the decision, (note: 

Please don't suggest we Finance it. Cyan's sold HOW 

many million copies? Now, a bundle, that's another 

story...)" 

According to Cyan/Broderbund, the main obstacle 

to the development of Amiga Myst was technical, 

rather than financial. Upset that Viscorp's statement 

made it look like Cyarl 

was just out to- make a fast buck, 

Cyan/Broderbund retorted with a statement placed 

on the newsgroups. 

"...The last thing you need is another company's 

product that cannot run properly on your machine - 

new or old. And what about the sequel to Myst? If we 

convert Myst will your current machines run it given 

the hardware/software requirements of Cyan? Or, 

will it only run on the rumoured 'new' 

machine? Will it require you to do a 

major upgrade to your current 

• \. hardware? If so, is it worth it for 

. one program? We are look 

ing for answers from those 

who have worked with the 

■ Amiga for years. I have 

\ spoken to many and am 

slowly receiving serious, 

co-ordinated, organised 

! information from cur- 

■ ■> j rent developers. 

Honestly, we have not 

./' kept up with Amiga." 

"I'm simply j 

>r looking for 

answers, not dol 

lars, as suggested by 

Mr. Compton. Cyan's primary 

interest with all our products has 

been, and will continue to remain, 

product quality and customer satis 

faction. A cliche perhaps to some, 

but when your product doesn't 

work, we have always been there 

to support, replace or exchange it 

or refund your money if you don't 

like it That's myjob. It's Cyan's job". 

The solution came in the shape 

of Canadian based Amiga games 

company ClickBOOM. With an envi 

able reputation gained from the 

release of its excellent debut game, 

PREVIEW 

many to be the best game produced for the Amiga), 

the company is in a perfect position to bring the 

game to the Amiga community. 

Penned for a late spring/early summer release, 

Amiga Myst promises to match if not actually surpass 

PC and Mac versions. It will require a machine with 

an absolute minimum of 4Mb of FastRam and an 

030 processor, the game will include full video board 

enabling it to run in 16 million colours on a high spec 

Amiga, as opposed to 256 on a PC or Mac 

If Myst is as successful as expected on the Amiga, 

ClickBOOM has announced it will bring out more big 

games titles. They also believe that if Myst does well, 

there is a good chance some of the software compa 

nies that abandoned the platform in recent times will 

be lured back. All in all, the release of Myst for the 

Amiga could be more than just a new title for the 

format, it could herald the revrtalisation of the Amiga 

games industry. 

Graphics should be better 

than the PC or Mac

ACTION REVIEW 

SYSTEM REVIEW 

Tired of getting beaten up by Portuguese police and 

locked In Turkish Jails? Worry not, enjoy the thrills 

and spills of the world of football from your armchair. 

Guildhall Is bringing out a couple of excellent footy 

games to cater for all tastes - the brand spanking new 

Euro League Manager and the classic FIFA International 

Soccer. Hugh Poynton Investigates 

Euro League Manager 

To complement its range of excellent 

Electronic Arts and Microprose rereieases, 

Guildhall Software has bought up a few 

new titles from smaller companies such as 

Binary Emotions and Manyk. Euro League 

Manager is the latest of these brand new 

Amiga titles. With Championship Manager 2 

seemingly festering away in some dank dun 

geon of Eidos Interactive, Euro League 

Manager has found itself without much 

competition. Which is pretty fortunate as 

Manyk's management sim is something of a 

curates egg. 

Euro League Manager does have its 

good points; as the name suggests it focuses 

on the football teams of three European 

countries rather than the usual one. In addi 

tion to this you can play in a fantasy league 

and use scouts to find cheap but talented 

players. The fact that each league is differ 

ent does add some variety to the game. 

Those well versed in the ways of football 

will know thai each league in which you 

manage a team varies greatly from the oth 

BOPA DEL RE 

no caption written for Ihi* 

your linger out and write t 

721 AMIGA ACTION 

ers. Your opponents are different and the 

strategies and tactics that you might have 

relied on in one league will no longer be 

quite as successful. 

Another strength of the game are the lit 

tle innovations that Manyk has thrown in. 

As far as I know there aren'l that many 

other games that allow you to use a talent 

scout to find new players. Transfer deals are 

made more interesting as the game includes 

a feature thai allows players to be trans 

ferred using part exchange deals so your 

wheeling and dealing can be made that bit 

more efficient and hard nosed. 

However, despite these pleasing louch- 

thiiirc are a few things that let Euro 

League Manager down. Unfortunately, 

Manyk had a tough time trying to get per 

mission to use the names of players and cup 

competitions for the game. This means that 

it you manage your favourite team, the prop 

er players will not be present. Although on 

the surface this may be a trivial problem, it 

does detract from the realism of the game. 

Manyk has included an editor so you can 

change the names of players in the various 

leagues, but to do this for every player in 

your chosen league would take quite a 

while. 

Another let down is the graphics. 

Although bright and cheerful, the game just 

seems to lack the crisp, pleasing graphics of 

Championship Manager and the preview 

versions I have seen of Championship 

Manager 2. Call me a nit picker but the 

main screen, the inside the manager's office, 

isn't drawn properly - the perspective is 

wrong and it looks, well, wonky. 

To be fair, Euro League Manager looks 

like the sort of game that will appeal to footy 

sim fans and will be a useful addition to any 

management buff's game collection, especial 

ly as you aren't limited to managing an 

English Premier League club. If you are less of 

a pedant than me and can ignore the annoy 

ing little drawbacks, you could do worse than 

THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Guildall Leisure 

DEVELOPER Microprose 

HD INSTALLABLE Yes 

PRICE £14.99 

SUPPORTS All Amiga 

GRAPHICS 74% 

SOUND 70% 

PLAYABILITY 74% 

DIFFICULTY Trick 

OVERALL SCORE

FIFA International Soccer 

FIFA International Soccer was released nigh 

on three years ago and graphically it surpass 

es anything that has been released since. Tl 

action is viewed from an isometric point oi 

view that suits the game well and it looks 

like the console adaptation that it is. 

However, be warned it's like trying to 

watch any major sporting event on American 

television. After every goal you are bombard 

ed with bloody adverts. Boomf, a goal goes 

in and for the next few seconds it's, flash, 

flash, flash, buy Adidas Predators (the footy 

boots that allowed rich kids to cheat at foot 

ball by having half a car tyre glued to the 

front). _- 

This aside, I really like the 

game. The sprite size is 

prelty large meaning lhat S 

you can see the little / 

men weaving their / 

magic in good 

detail. I've played 

soccer games 

before where the 

players are so 

diddy that you can 

hardly even tell \ 

which way they are \ 

facing. Another \ 

attractive \ 

feature about the game \^ 

is the fact that the players \ 

don't run about like a 

cocaine fuelled Paul Merson. 

When you get quite practised at 

the game you can actually control it well, 

chipping and passing the ball from player to 

player. 

FIFA is blessed with tonnes of options 

and features. There are options to change the 

weather and pitch type, you can play in 

league, tournament and exhibition matches 

and you have (he option lo play the game in 

an action or simulation mode. 

As in most footy games, you can dictate 

the tactics that the team use; long or short 

ball or with an emphasis of altack or 

defence. The amount of moves available is 

also pretty impressive - back passes, headers 

Hello Tom Stone 

Resume Game 

trol Setup 

Formatio 

Substitut ions 

O:4O 

and overhead 

v kicks can all be 

\ attempted. 

\ The only 

\ problem 

\ really worth men- 

1 tioning is that some- 

I times the action can 

I be a little slow and it 

/ doesn't reallv malch 

/ Goal! orSensi for 

/ adrenaline thrills. If 

/ you're a footy fan 

/ though, take a look, for 

the price you will not be 

disappoinled. 

Up/Dourn-Seieot 

It's the all star team, ha, ha 

Defence 

Mmmm, pretty. 

Midfield 

Up/Down-Select 

Attack 

Where is the f ****** ball? 

England vs U* 

THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Guildall Leisure 

DEVELOPER Guildhall 


PRICE £14.99 

SUPPORTS All Amigas 

GRAPHICS 

SOUND 

PLAYABILITY 

DIFFICULTY 

84% 

80% 

78% 

Easy 

OV ERALL SCORE 

AMIGA ACTION 173

In case you've been living on Endor for the last month, you will be aware that the 

C*-., I SI *_.'l !_ L_* I I «!_•_ *. _ - . _ -rl . I ' I ■ . ■ . , . 

regression among almost the entire population. Adults are cueing to see it, 

booking weeks in advance and fathers are dragging their kids to see the him they 

were blown away by back in 1977. 

I went to Hamleys in London last weekend and the place was packed out with 

adults playing with Darth Vader voice masks and remote control ATAT walker and 

then went on to a party where the conversation turned to a debate on whether 

Star Wars was more spiritual than Star Trek. Strange. I personally think sci fi is 

very closet. Like homosexuality decades ago, people are a little coy about showing 

their true colours. 

proud' sentiment. To celebrate the re-release of Lucas' masterpiece, I'm going to 

round up the creme de la creme of space games, both old and new and (fittingly) 

from the future... 

Wing Commander 

First up is ihe venerable Wing Commander, 

the first in a run of tour Wing Commander 

games thai have become a refuge for hasbeen 

actors - the games now star Mark 

Hamii and Indy's fat bearded friend from 

Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Guildhall Leisure has jus! released the 

first in the series. Though lacking iri FMV 

and gburade shading, the game retains the 

placability of the later releases and sets the 

scene for the entire epic story. The year is 

2664 and for Ihe past 25 years earth has 

been facing an Alien menace called the 

Kilralhi. These alien brutes look something 

like lions and communicate using 

pheromones (they sniff each others 

bottoms?)- You are a starfighter pilot aboard 

Earth's last hope, the Terran carrier, Tiger's 

Claw. 

Accompanying you is the usual 

complement of amusing hotshot characters; 

the maverick type loose cannon on deck 

whose casual disregard for regulations often 

lands him in trouble; the hard-as-naiis but 

fair leader; the cool, faultless and slightly 

anally retentive Iceman character and so on. 

Your commandinq officer seems intent 

Your my beshtest mate...BURP!! 

on pairing you up with insane wingmen and 

women. In the early missions you fly with a 

Japanese bimbo who asks questions such as 

what should we do if we meet the enemy? 

(erm, shoot them perhaps?). Then you are 

Many of the characters in Wing Commander seem to enjoy stating the painfully obvious. 

REVIEW 

, 

lumbered with a sexually frustrated 

Scotsman who insists the enemy 'keep 

catching me wilh ma kilt doon'. Still it adds 

to the fun. These wingmen aren't just for 

show, through a communication system you 

can get them to carry oul certain orders. 

This is an invaluable lool 

because it adds an element of 

tactical play into the game. If 

you're up against heavy enemy 

lighters with good shields, 

order your wingman to attack 

the same targe! and you'll 

wear him down faster. If there 

are swarms of light fighters, gel 

him to attack other targets. 

These decisions can make the 

difference between being 

blown up and surviving. 

Your job is to undertake a 

series of missions against the 

furry foe including patrols, 

escort duties and raids against 

their capital ships. Although 

the graphics are a little ropey 

and the bitmap representations 

of the ships look pretty dated, 

you find yourself ignoring the

All apart from the fact I'm upside down, this is a perfect landing... 

Star Wars is on general release and the force is flowing. To celebrate, 

Hugh Poynton looks at the brightest stars in the space game world 

Moving in for the kill. 

shortcomings and getting involved in the 

game. The Kilrathi fighters are tricky buggers 

to shoot down and you've really gol to 

concentrate when aogfighting. 

Navigating between points is also 

pretty tricky as asteroids keep getting in the 

way. These all spin off in different directions 

so picking your way through can be 

Your Scottish wingman fortified with special brew. 

something of a headache, it's difficult to 

work out whether this adds to the game or 

just makes il totally infuriating when you 

manage to shoot down loads of baddies 

only to gel swatted by an asteroid. 

However, if you do actually 

manage to complete a mission, more 

missions and ships will become available to 

you. The structuring of the game is excellent 

and as you play a story seems to unfold. 

You climb the rank and squadrons and fight 

the good fight as the cat people get more 

and more lairy. Your progress in the game 

actually reflects on the course of the 

intergalactic war. If you win a couple of 

major battles, the Kilrathi may be pushed 

out of a star system. 

This game shows its age and the 

graphics leave something to be desired but 

it is still a damn good game which involves 

the player to such a degree it is damn near 

impossible to stop playing. In my humble 

opinion, Wing Commander grows on you 

REVIEW 

The very cosy sleeping quarters. 

faster than acne after washing your face 

with lard. 

THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Guildhall 

DISKS 3 floppies 


PRICE £9.99 


GRAPHICS 

SOUND 

GAMEPLAV 

DIFFICULTY 

70% 

80% 

95% 

Average 


i __

Elite Frontier I! 

If you w-int a slightly more cerebral game, 

why not try the classic Elite Frontier. When 

the original Elite came out tor the BBC in its 

full wire frame glory hack in the mid SOs, it 

captured Ihe first true generation of 

computer gamers - people who probably 

now spend a fortune on PlayStations and 

N64s. 

The graphics were prctly good (for a 

BBC) and you could get engaged in some 

excellent space battles. However, the true 

glory of Flitf was its sheer depth of play. The 

game offered almost unlimited freedom and 

could be adapted to suit the player. You 

could be a mercenary, a warrior or a no 

good smuggler shipping tonnes of hash and 

contraband guns about the solar system. 

In the original Elite there were eight 

galaxies and a less than a thousand planets. 

In Dave Brj-bens sequel there was admittedly 

ClANG, CRASH,... Captain Poynton reverses in to a space station. 

only one galaxy, but i! contained 2 hundred 

million stars with thirty thousand inhabitable 

planets. This huge play arena is divided 

between two monster polilic.il entities - the 

-■ - 

Look nt the detail on this screen shot - numbers on space stations, 

weapons siting under the ship... 

1TI AMIGA ACTION REVIEW 

Federation and the Empire. Your task is to 

make as much money as possible cither 

through your own dupliciious skulduggery or 

in the employ of these super powers. 

The detailed planet surfaces are a real bonus 

- specially as there are about 30,000 of them. 

As you can see the graphics were 

absolulely stunning - at ihe time possibly the 

most detailed polygon models ever seen on 

an Amiga game. Weapons are visible on 

pylons underneath the ships wings, buildings 

are visible beneath (he bio-dome of cities 

with names like Birmingham Cily and the 

space stations look amazing. 

Unlike Wing Commander, you are not 

fighting the good fighl, you're just out to 

make as much cash as possible. You can 

adapt the game to fit your mood, be a shifty 

drugs smuggler and give the interplanetary 

coppers the run around or be a stalwart 

citizen of whichever political entity you 

choose. Whatever, the freedom of gameplay 

and excellent graphics will impress, 

especially when you consider the game is 

four years old.

Can you be smug enough to play Captain Kirk? 

Star Trek: 

The 25th 

Anniversary 

OK, so not the most original of 

titles but a pretty decent game 

nevertheless. I am of (hg^rtHM| 

considered opinion that Star Trek 

i^, actually alright when they blow 

things up. The poncey arsed Pr 

Directive serves only to make ( 

per cent of the episodes borin 

unwau liable - with tedious su 

plots involving Data or Spock 

searching for their emotit)ns/s> 

of humour/libido. W 

ass though things pic 

game lets you tear,ihrou, 

universe, blowhf" 

and telling those 

colonies in the fa 

solar system not to , 

Star Trek: 251h Ann i versa r 

takes you back to th6 halcyon „. 

when William ShatnerWiatr real 

hair and Scotty wasn't\ lard ball. 

You control the characters via a 

point and click system which is 

thankfully very easy to pick up. 

Each character has a number of 

roles, each of which is highlighted 

when the mouse passes over them. 

Kirk gives the orders and leads the 

parties, Sulu manoeuvres the ship 

into orbit, Chekov fires the phasers 

and Scotty keeps you informed of 

your impending doom. 

The strength of the game is its 

balance of story line and 

scrapping. The Monkey Island 

Style point'n'click system really 

lets you get immersed in the game, 

and with all the excellent, slightly 

cheesy pioooyng sound effects you 

will find the game good fun. but 

rather embarrassing to play in 

public. You can use diplomacy and 

tact to charm planets inhabitants 

into giving you information and 

help or you can be totally 

offensive to them just like you 

always wished they were on the TV 

programme. 

For me, the scrapping scenes 

^re the highlight. Using the mouse 

|o steer the ship, and with a choice 

" phasers and photon torpedoes, 

j can attempt lo blast the crap 

t of your foe. You can watch the 

lion from the bridge or the 

'; screen and some of the 

s can be epic, with volley 

after volley needed to defeat the * 

enemy ship whether it "be a 

RomliIan warship or a space pirate. 

All in all, good, unadulterated 

spodcly fun. 

Where the game particularly wins '■ 

out is the fact that it does combine 

intelligence and fun quite effectively. 

You have to use your grey matter to 

complete mosl of the missions but they 

don't become tedious or boring. 

Unfortunately, Star Trek, 25th 

Anniversary is quite difficult to get hold 

of nowadays but, getting in contact 

with mail order companies can often 

yeild good results. 

All in all, good, unadulterated 

kitsch and spoddy fun. 

Extra bloke in the red jersey - watch out - you 

normally get captured/eaten/vaporised. 

THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Interplay 

DISKS 8 floppies 


PRICE £TBA 


GRAPHICS 

GAMEPLAY 

DIFFICULTY 


REVIEW AMIGA ACTION

ACTION REVIEW 

A-Train 

A - Z TIPS 

Any time you're strapped tor cash, type 

"CHEATERCHEATERWIMP" for an instant 

$50,000,000. 

Action Fiflhter 

When asked to enter your name, type 

"ZBACKDOOR". You will now have infinite 

lives and energy. 

Addams Family 

Secret Rooms 

Get yourself an extra four lives whenever 

your game is finished by walking past the 

continue door to the left. Here you'll find a 

secret room where you can collect your extra 

lives. 

Passwords 

First Power-up 

Extra Energy 

Second Power-up 

Rescue Pugsley 

*&!#!#" I "L1191" 

'?1S1M" I "61H1C" 

Helllllo. Slot another Dunhill in your cigarette holder, mix another gin and 

tonic and settle back with a sly grin on your face. Being a bounder and a 

cad I never do anything honestly, I have a different dolly bird every week 

and I cheat at computer games. Take advantage of my worldly knowledge 

if you like. I think you'll find that no other magazine has quite so many 

hints and tips, or such a handsome rogue with pencil thin moustache. This 

month, A to D... 

Third Power-up 

Rescue Granny 

Pugsley 

Rescue Fester 

Wednesday 

Rescue Wednesday 

Granny 

Game Ending 

Fester 

Starling Locations 

"&1Y1M" 

"H91D" 

"B919D" 

"VI SI 4" 

"V919B" 

"BG9K&" 

*BLJK#" 

AMIGA ACTION CHEATS 

"BLSRS" 1"B&198" 

"V121B" 1 "B?KKV 

"VD2RL" 1 "BLS1T" 

"V&YKW" 1 "#Z6D?" 

"VL#R4" 

three hearts 

(after the big tree) 

Hearts 

(after fridge in kitchen) 

5 hearts 

(after conservatory) 

Pugsley (games room) 

Fester (picture gallery) 

Wednesday (crypt) 

Granny (kitchen) 

Alien Breed 

Soup up the game using the cheats Ihose 

cheeky Team 17 chappies wrote into the 

game. Log onto the Intex computer on deck 

two and type any of the following: 

• "I CANT BE ARSED TO PLAY THE 

FIRST LEVELS" will take you to level 

three 

• "MANCHESTER UNITED CANT FLY 

AIRPLANES" will take you to level six 

• "SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND" 

shows the ending 

• "OH GIMME SOME KEYS IVE GOT A 

HARD ON" will give you infinite keys 

• "I AM IMMORTAL OR SUMMAT LIKE 

THAT" will make you invincible 

• "IS IT TRUE THAT THE ALIENS 

SUPPORT MAN UTD" makes aliens 

weaker 

• "PISSED AS A FART" will, rather 

pointlessly, reverse the joystick 

controls 

• "THE IRAQIS MADE THE WEAPONS" 

results in the players weapons being 

duff 

• "SALMAN RUSHDIE PLAYS ALIEN 

BREED" makes the player invisible 

• "BEWARE ALIENS SPADGE HAS 

DROPPED ONE" scares aliens off 

• "PITBULLS ON THE LOOSE" turns the 

aliens psycho 

• "ALIENS ARE FAGGOTS" will give you 

infinite health 

• "PUFFNUTS MODE" makes aliens slow 

and easy to shoot 

• "BEN JOHNSON TRAINED THESE

ALIENS" makes aliens super fast 

• "STEVIE WONDER" turns the screen 

purple 

• "GURU TIME" will reset the computer 

• "ST EMULATOR" makes the graphics duff 

• "PC EMULATOR" disables ihe Intex 

Computer 

You should hear a crunch sound when 

you've entered in the last letter of your cheat. 

There were some more, bul they were just 

too rude to print - there may be ladies 

present... 

Alien Breed II (ECS & AGA 

Passwords 

"378829 "Fifty keys 

"736353"credits 

"098654"Ten lives 

"243433"Activates level skip 

(Use 'N' during play to skip levels) 

Level Codes 

02 

"353828" 

03 

"108383" 

04 

"370101" 

05 

"982822" 

06 

"847464" 

07 

"737373" 

08 

"928112" 

09 

"267364" 

10 

"193831" 

11 

"090921" 

12 

"309383" 

13 

"101221" 

14 

"103992" 

15 

"998112" 

16 

"125332" 

17 

"091233" 

Archer M's Pool 

To reveal the ability of the players you are 

up against type "VF12" while in trickshot 

mode, then go to tlemo mode to find the 

new menu. Select two players to make the 

computer play itself, then wait. Hey presto - 

test the metal of your opponents. 

'Alio 'Allo 

A simple cheat io access any of the first five 

levels is to type "BASH STREET KIDS" on the 

title screen. Whilst playing you will be able !o 

press keys T-'5' to skip to levels one to five. 

Breathless (v1.1) 

1.1 N/A 

1.2 "181CEICWL13PGOQW" 

1.3 "181C8VWCMQ3PGOQV 

1.4 "181CUBW2NN3PGOQQ" 

1.5 "181A59KMOMVPGOQP" 

2.1 "181A59NMH5RPGOPD" 

2.2 "181A59JSIURPCOPG" 

2.3 "181A59KCKPNPGOPF" 

2.4 "181A59M6TSFPGOPA" 

2.5 "181A59M8TSFPGOP9" 

3.1 "181A59KMV63PGOPT" 

3.2 "181A59KOV63PGOPW" 

3.3 "181A59M2W6RPGOPV" 

3.4 "181A59OWPFBPGOPQ" 

3.5 "181A59IW5CBPGOPP" 

4.1 "181A59I21TDPGOSD" 

4.2 "181A59L44U9PGOSG" 

4.3 "181A59NAF5DPGOSF" 

4.4 "181A59NCF5DPGOSA" 

4.5 "181A59H6G85PGOS9" 

Bubble & Squeak (AGA) 

"HEFSBEER" 

"MAX I BABY" 

"BUTTHEAD" 

"WHOCARES" 

for nine guys and nine hearts 

for a new difficulty setting 

for infinite hearts and lives 

for a message from the 

programmer 

Civilization (ECS & AGA) 

Pressing 'ALT-R' will randomly change the 

personality of the computer leader. 

To get the denizens of your settlement to 

speed up their activities, give a settler a 

command such as Y to build a road and 

select the settler again with a mouse. Repeat 

this until the road is compleie. This will also 

work with all settler commands like 'p' to 

clean pollution, 'm' to build a mine so that 

you can build things in a single turn. 

If you own an early ECS version you can 

have find a complete world map by pressing 

'SHIFT'and'1234567890T'. 

Colonization 

A simple cheat is to name your settlement 

"Charlotte". This will allow you to see all 

maps instantly, see other European ports, 

check other county's statistics and gives you 

$50,000. When you access other European 

ports you can spend all their money. 

Championship Manager 93/94 

Select New Game, Tranmere and Arrogant. 

Call yourself "Mr Bulgaria" and you will 

suddenly have 34 million quid to spend. 

Cannon Fodder II 

Go to the save game option and when the 

game requests a name, type "JOOLS". Cheat 

mode active will flash at the bottom of the 

screen and the ranks and abilities of your 

men will have increased. 

Desert Strike 

By typing "HARDCASE" you can gel yourself 

unlimited weapons, bul low armour. 

Level 

2 

3 

4 

END 

Codes 

"BQQQAEB 

"KLILTOE" 

"WEIVVJT" 

"ONKKQKF 

"BQQQAEZ" will automatically put 10 

rescued guys in you helicopter thus beefing 

your health points. When you run low on 

ammo press 'F10' or '0' to call up the map 

and press either again to go back to the 

game and you will find all ammo is 

restocked. 

Defender of the Crown 

By holding down the 'K' key whilst the game 

is loading, you will start with 2048 knights. 

Defender of the Crown 2 

When the game asks for passcodes, type: 

"GOATY 

for invincibility 

"INCAS" 

to replace inviso with smart 

laser in slargate 

"ANDES 

to restore power when the 

laser is fired. 

"RAVEN 

to activate the three 

following keys: 

"1" 

"N" 

"D" 

Level Codes 

01 

START" 

05 FLOYD" 

09 FURRY- 

13 

BEAST" 

17 LEMAC" 

21 

ZIPPO" 

25 

LASER" 

29 DAFAD" 

33 MAGOG" 

37 FUNKY" 

41 DONKY" 

49 

KAN)I" 

53 

IRATA" 

57 NEURO" 

61 

STOAT" 

Invincibility on/off 

Next level 

Fly auto pilot 23 levels 

CHEATS AMIGA ACTION

MuUigBtfixpe 5 Hugh 

Poynton takes a look at **** 

Guildhall's golfing re-release, 

PGA Tour Golf Seven over par, not a brilliant start 

Perfect, a 250 yard drive up the course 

They're strange things, golf 

sims. To me. golf is a sport 

not unlike cricket, in that 

rt is very bonny and 

requires hitting a ball a 

long way with a stick. 

As well as being 

boring, it also 

requires those 

participating in it lo 

dress in red tartan 

trousers and lemon 

V-neck pullovers. 

(So what's the 

problem Hugh? - ED) 

Mind you, after 

slagging golf for looking 

about as interesting as a 

Sunday afternoon at a 

garden centre, I have to admit, 

every time I've played on a golf 

game on the computer it's had a weird 

Zen like quality. I played Links Golf about 

five years ago on a lowly 286 PC and it 

was massively relaxing. You could oiiop 

your ball into the wide blue yondef:and if 

you hit any sort of obstacle, it wouldn't be 

Good shot sir! 

AMIGA ACTION 

a problem. 'Looks like 

you've hit a tree, )im' the slighlly 

stoned commentator would 

mutter. The perfect way to 

clear your mind for half an 

hour. Maybe that's the 

attraction of real golf. 

A stressful Friday 

morning seemed like the 

best lime lo iry out 

Guildhall's re-release of 

EA'solcl PGA Golf Tour. 

I wasn't disappointed, the 

game was a totally stress 

free environment. I 

didn't even need to 

read (he manual, 

everything was pretty 

much self explanatory - 

from the power bar to 

control the strength of 

your shot, to the par 

table to show your 

pitiful results. 

This was a 

damn sight more 

pSayabie than many 

go 11' games and tactics 

f do matter. Get the 

swing wrong and you 

chop the ball off lo the 

left or the right, fail to take 

into account the direction 

and speed of the wind and the 

ball wii! go way off course. 

However, at the risk of offending 

anybody by maligning such a popular 

game, PGA Tour does have its drawbacks. 

The game is seven years old and looks it. 

The sky is rendered in a purple/blue shade, 

the colour you'd expect just as a rather bad 

thunder storm was about to turn the course 

Miles of beautifutty tended turf a 

my ball in the shrubbery. Typical 

into mud, and the grass looks it has 

been liberally coated in 

radioactive isotopes. 

PGA Tour is a game you 

will either love to bits or not 

care for at all really. As golf 

games go it's one of the 

best - despite the ropey 

graphics, it does have a 

certain laid back 

playability to it. I could 

almost imagine it being the 

sort of game you wouldn't 

sit down to play, it'd be on 

while you were doing 

something else and you'd delve 

into it, take a couple of shots and 

return back to what you were doing. To do 

well in the game actually takes quite a lot 

of skill, so it is challenging enough to retain 

your interest for some time. If you're after a 

relaxing but engaging game, you could do 

worse than to pick up a copy of PGA Tour. 

THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Guildhall 

DEVELOPER Electronic Arts 


PRICE £9.99 


GRAPHICS 

o SOUND 

PLAYABILITY 

DIFFICULTY 

70% 

75% 

78% 

Average 

OVERALL SCORE 

1 land It's your job to save this quaint provincial 

little land from the powers of evil

I 

4 

ACTION REVIEW 

COMPETITION 

On July 19th, the 1997 Royal International Air Tattoo 

will open its doors to the public. RIAT is the largest 

and most significant military air show in the world, 

attracting well in excess of 200,000 visitors and 

aircraft from inore than 35 nations. 

The Royal International Air Tattoo is staged each 

year to help raise funds for the Royal Air Force 

Benevolent Fund. Over the years the show has 

helped to raise over £3 million for the Benevolent 

Fund's charitable works. 

RIAT 97 will include a 50th Anniversary tribute 

to the United States Airforce, an aerial display 

celebrating 50 years of supersonic flight and the 

1997 Breitling Fighter Challenge. This pits top pilots 

from across the globe against each other using high 

tech helmet mounted simulation systems. 

We have 15 pairs of RIAT 97 adult tickets to give 

away. To win, simply match the aircraft names to the 

silhouettes below. J 

I am agec: 

Aircraft 1 is 

Aircraft 2 is 

18-30 □ 

Aircraft 3 is Aircraft 5 is 

Aircraft 4 is Aircraft b is 

Tickets to the Royal 

International Air Tattoo 

Aircraft 7 is 

I Send entries to RIAT 026 Royal International Air Tattoo Competition 

RAF Benevolent Fund Ents, PO Box 1940, Fairford, Glos GL7 4NA. 

Entries to arrive no later than June 27. 

I Data Proteclion Act 1984 From lime lo lime the Royal Airforce Benevolent Fund may wish to send you 

details or' other events and services which (hey reel may lie of interest lo you. 

. □ Please lick the box If you do not wish to receive this information 

Planes to choose from 

F22, F-86 Sabre, Su 27, F16, 

The Royal 

International 

Air Tattoo 1997 

RAF FAIRFORD ULUS I 

19-20 JULY

ACTION FEATU 

WORK IN PROGESS 

We sneak a look at Epic's 

forthcoming combat racer, 

Flyin' High 

The desert stage 

In ilic last few months I pit Inter,\t live has 

l.iLiru hed a concerted effort to re-establish 

iiself as a major player in the Aniiji.i gaming 

world. By releasing tried ami tested quality 

games sue h as Testamenl and Kargon from 

Gorman manufacturers, Epic has been able 

to bring new titles to ihe UK safe in the 

knowledge thai the games lilies ii is selling 

have already been sue cessful on the 

continent. I lowever, Epic is also talcing .5 few 

chances on some brand new gomes. One of 

these games currently under development is 

the l-D racing game, Flyin' High. 

Flyin' High is a fairly straight forward 

Claustrophobic action in one 

of the game's many tunnels 

AMIGA ACTION FEATURE 

arcade racing game. Hie aim is to must le 

your way to pole position using your, driving 

skills and a lew well aimed heal seeking 

missiles. Rather than Ihe usu.il inning il.ii 

tin nil, t Ivin' 1 ligh offers you (our < nurses 

chock full of jumps, dips, bridges and 

tunnels. She .k lion t.ikes plai e, not on a flat 

t ircuil luti on convohiled iiaf ks wilh 

tunnels, buildings hills and 

dips and oihei obstacles lu 

hinder your iask. AM iim 

lends I Kin' I Ugh a j ' 

very fast moving 

an ,ide fed. 

At this e 

stage the g.i 

looks very 

promising, (.'he 

le\ilire m 

feature I partk ularly 

like is Ihe way the larmai 

h textured lu give Ihe 

impression of speed. The only ~ 

criticism I could make aboul the game at the 

moment is the Kiel that the-' steering is still 

Some of the Flyin' High Tracks are stunning - look 

at the shadows on the snowman in this grab 

Why do you think they 

call it Flyin' High? 

c|iiile sensitive. Although update patches 

have eased this problem to a large degree, 

pulling the car into a spin or a skid is still 

annoyingly easy. 

Mony of the game's functions aren't 

available quite yet, but Flyin' High is under 

i ontinuous development ami patches are 

available from Flyin' I ligb's support Web 

site, the finished version should 

boast one and two player modes, 

loads of powerups, 

^ customisation for the car 

,um\ a wide variety of 

tracks. 

Like many new 

V releases for the Amiga, 

the system 

requirements for the 

-,' ' game are relatively 

high. You will need 

an A1200/4000 with 

hard disk, Amiga 

OS3.0, 68020, 68030, 

68040 or (>«0f>0 

processor, AA-Chipsel 

and 4Mb FastRam. 

Keep your eyes peeled 

for Flyin' High, the game 

looks like being a worthy 

addition to Epic's new range of 

Amiga specific lilies and .i showcase 

as to how goorl games can look on an 

Amiga.

IT'S BACK! 

even bigger and better this year 

So On With The Show 

ALL the exciting new releases 

from the leading Amiga developers 

Save £100's On Special Offers 

ICPUG Free Advice Centre 

Internet Village 

High End Applications 

Presentation Theatre 

uy "J/iJ-j I Lteiru - -j;jj/j and Eiu/jdsjy, J^Jky "Jyixj 

Avoid the queues by booking in advance Credit Card Hotline 01369 707766 

Cheques and Postal Orders made payable to The World of Amiga at PO BOX 9, Dunoon, Argyll. PA23 8QQ 

Admission: Adults £8 Children £6 

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BPEED (Mffi 

CD-ROM DRIVES 

X2 AND X4 SPEEDS ALSO AVAILABLE AT GREAT PRICES. CALL NOW! 

UrfStguirrel 

The powerful Surf Squirrel 

interface is at the cutting edge of 

technology for easy A1200 expan 

sion. It provides both a high performance 

SCSI-2 interface and a fully buffered, high 

speed serial port that is capable of performing 

up to 400% faster than the A1200's serial port. 

High performance SCSI-2 hardware. 

Compatible with any SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 

peripherals. 

CD-ROM and hard disk drivers included. 

Includes a full CD32 emulator. - 

Low CPU usage. 

Supports synchronous modes. 

Autobooting. 

Automouriting. 

Serial port compatible with 

all modems and serial 

hardware. 

Multitasking drivers 

compatible with all modern 

comms and networking software. 

iBrowse 

Try as they might, the competition 

simply cannot keep pace with the 

power and popularity of what Amiga 

Computing says is "still the premier 

Amiga browser" (Issue 112, May 97). 

Everyone agrees that IBrowse always 

has been the most advanced Amiga 

web browser, and with regular 

updates we aim to keep it that way! 

Megaiosound 

This sophisticated 8-bit f 

sampler connects to 

your printer port and allows you to sample 

directly to disk, thus enabling whole songs to be 

recorded with ease at a sampling rate of up to 

21kHz stereo on an A1200. When sampling to 

ibl 

Phenomenal sound quality at a great price! 

IN A HIGH QUALITY 

EXTERNAL CASE 

studio u 

NEW PHOTOREALISM WITH CANONS 

If you want to get the best possible output 

from your printer—better even than on other 

platforms—then you need the phenomenal 

printing power of Studio II. The package 

includes powerful Workbench drivers for use 

with your applications, plus special software 

that includes a professional Colour Manage 

ment System and allows you to print images 

directly from disk in 8-bit or 24-bit precision. 

All popular graphics formats supported 

IS 

95 

INCLUDING SQUIRREL SCSI ANI 

THREE CD-ROMS WORTH £112 

Squirrel 

Fully tested with a wide range of SCSI-1 and 

SCSI-2 peripherals, the original "Classic" 

Squirrel interface supports data transfer 

speeds of up to 1.2Mb per second on a 

standard A1200 and an astounding 3Mb per 

second with a 68030-accelerated A1200. 

The Classic Squirrel plugs into your PCMCIA 

port and allows you to connect up to seven 

SCSI peripherals to your A1200 or A600. 

j NEW LOW PRICE 

w 9i°iAf Twist is the world's most 

successful Amiga database. Its 

Twist 2 range of powerful features 

couplqd with its 

. uncluttered interface 

makes light of all 

manner of tasks 

ranging from building 

mi"% a simple card file 

for your CD 

■ collection to 

I m ^? implementing a full* 

relational business 

database for 

stock control 

and invoicing. 

Cinemaao 

NEW V3 £199 Si 

Cinema 4D is the award winning, 

fsy to use raytracing and 

Imation system for your Amiga. 

quipped with a user interface tha 

complies with the Amiga Style 

Guide, Cinema 4D is replete with 

every conceivable option, 

including: 

'5 

sound. With the SMD-100 you can play any 

video CD or CD-i Movie through your • Object and texture lists. 

Amiga monitor or through your home TV " Definable object hierarchies. 

The secret to a successful web page is graphics—stylish, 

set. Comes complete with multi-function ' And much, much, more! 

interest-grabbing screen gems that download quickly and 

keep your visitors coming back for more. Web Explosion is by 

far the largest collection of professional quality web graphics 

remote control unit. . 

that you'll find anywhere—20,000 GIF and JPEG images 

packed onto two CDs. Buttons, bullets, backgrounds, banners, 

dividers, clip art, photos, textures... they're all here in a 

collection that caused CU Amiga to exclaim: "fantastic ... get 

this now!" Comes complete with HTML catalogues and a 120 

page manual that makes finding the right 

graphic a piece of cake. 

NOW With THREE FREE UldeO COS • Window-based, realtime 

The Squirrel MPEG Decoder (SMD-100) is interactive modelliing. 

a brilliant new concept for home * Direct modelling in 30. 

entertainment. Using your existing SCSI A^jy * Basic and complex primitives 

CD-ROM drive you can now access the Ôla witn infini*e variations. 

world of Digital Video—superb 24-bit #' ' Visible light. 

quality video with crystal clear 16-bit 

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Top Amiga Books 

Experienced Amiga reviewers waxed lyrical over SurfirVand 

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