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Amiga Computing Issue 023 Vol 02 11 1990 Apr
CHILDREN with learning difficultés in Birmingham are using Amiga 500 s to help with their problems. Seity Oaks School has imported 40 of the Com modore machines for music, business studies. word processing. spreadsheets, databases, graphies, art, design and drama. They have proved so pop-uiar that pupils are given free access to them during break times and staff also use them to préparé course-work and keep chiidrens' records. "This year we pian to use the machine to teach French and German. There s no end to its capabilities", said teacher Maicoim Pomray. A NEW look Amiga Computing is on the way with the signing of a dea! between its pubiishers Database Publications and computer magazine house Goüner Publishing. This wiü bring Gollner's rovoiutionary cotour print-ingprocess into play with more cotour. more screen shots and even brighter page design. tt wii! also bring new ideas to the éditorial con tent, further extending the magazines scope. "Tho most immédiate changes our readers will notice wiü be visual". said commercia! director of Database Publications David Hirst. "Our merger with Goliner Publishing gives us access to better production techniques with — less restrictions on design. "Amiga Computing has taken great strides since it was munched two years ago and the input of new édito rial ideas promises to take it even further în future months to cover ali aspects of computing with the Amiga". Following their alliance, Database and Goüner have setup Interactive Publishing, a new company which takes over Amiga Action, S7' tVord and ST Action from Goliner and Amiga Computing and Atari S7* Cser from Database. Other Database tities — PC.
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WtJ-gsxrrr* c»cheyo pcrt»l* certain O L I N E L OVERIt PRESENTS State of the art? Decide for yourself... * 32 action-packed levels ' 48 colours on screen • 300 different aliens • 10 different scenarios • 50 frames per second ... the answer must be YES I L I N E L 24A WHITE PIT LANi ELACKWELL HEAT NR HIGH WYCOMB BUCKINGHAMSHIRE HP10 9R TEL. 06285 31 24 FAX. 06285 30 87 All ml 360 f Amstrad 8266.LQ3500 £3.90 NEC P2200 £4.50 Amstrad DMP 2000 3160 £2.75 Panasonic KXP 1081 £4.50 Amstrad DMP 4000 £4.50 Panasonic KXP 1124 £7.90 Canon PW 1080 £4.25 Shinwa CP 80 £4.50 Citiren 1200 £4.25 Star NL10 £3.90
Ecson LQ 800 £3.90 Star LC10 £3.90 Epson LX 80 86 £2.90 Star LCI0 Colour £7.90 Epson MX FX(RX80.'
Star LC24-10 £4.50 FX LX800 £2.90 BUY 10 GET 1 FREE MANY OTHERS AVAILABLE - PLEASE CALL H COMPUTER LABELS
• SELF ADHESIVE • TRACTOR FED Packed 2000 3K'x1' m* £11.90
I. 2 o 3 across 4'xl£12.90 LC10 £169.00 LC10 COLOUR £219.00
*" .
£23.80 £5 HOW TO ORDER ¦ CREDIT CARD Telephone us on (0533) 877733 (24 hrs) to place an order CHEQUE Please make your cheques payable to: Overseas Media Distributors Ltd.
All orders received by noon are despatched same day.
If you require goods urgently they can be despatched for next day delivery for E7.50 .
Managing Editor Derek Mealln Editor Siam Kockman Assistant Editor led Walker ShngWriUn NkVeilcb lohn kenneds Production Editor Peter Glorer AH Editors Mark Nolan Dona Steele Adrertisemenl Manoger |ohn Snowden Admitting Sola Wendt Colburn Published be: Interactive Publishing Ltd.
Enropa House. Adluwlno Pari.
Adlingloo. Macclesfield SH0 4NP.
1 HARDWARE BUSINESS GRAPHICS SOUND 7 U BLASTER ISSN 0952-504B Edilonil 0277 234434 0623 176886 0623 878866 031-337 2081 062S 870966 Admmihlnliun Adrertiung Subiaiptiofli F« AMIGA SCENE 11 LATEST NEWS Inside secrets and the latosl buz* from Commodore here and abroad, plus details of the products which will be shaping your Amiga.
21 EZRA SURF'S POSTBOX Got a grief? Then here's the brief: Ezra Surf's your man. Put pen to page and share your rage, 'cos he'll do all he can.
SOUND BLASTER John Kennedy is seduced by a siren gizmo which makes the evil meanies sound sweet and amplifies the subtle nuances of alien death.
fcaL CHAOS - A
X. HITCH IN TIME Explore the universe with your computer. Find
oul where e»1on went wrong wilh the first of Alaslair Stoll's
three- part series. HYPERWARE WITH ULTRACARD Once the sole
domain of the Mac, Hypermedia is now appearing on an Amiga
near you. )ohn Kennodv checks lo see if il's all hype.
I I ICONS THE J EASY WAY Jeff Walker explains everything you ever wanted lo know aboul our cule little friends. Icon see this will bo a good one (groan).
AMIGA ARCADE DndWa PROGRAMMING THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN HOTTEST ACTION
* lyMd a printed, and preferabW double-ipaced.
No should be at listings shoi ise (ariose a stamped.
90 STAR XB24 DOTMATRIX caveiope, crtberwue (be return af material cannot be guaranteed Contribution* can only be accepted for publication bv Interactive Publishing Ltd on an all-nght* bui* C1990 InMractive Publishing Lid No material may be reproduced in whole or in pat without written peraiuran While eren cart is Uken the publishers cannot be held legally responsible far any mat a atide*. Listing* Amiga Computing welcome* articles lor publication. Material ibould be typed or coraputer- ileipaced.
Oipanied by News trade distribution: Comag Magazine Marketing. Teviatock Road Weet Drevton.
Middlercs IJB7 7QE. Tel Well ilnrtwl I0S9SI «a«s lion and Commodore Sorroeu Mochiaet fUI.1 Ud a net tetpontdhk tor an of the omelet to thn tune re toe an ot Ite opmota disc. Please There is no let up as new releases roll in. What will you be playing this summer? The Bitmaps have a lot to offer. Plus: Green saves Universe.
36 vl PACESETTER II J THE SEQUEL Nic Veitch slicks a pillow up his jumper and does his Orson Wells impersonation. "Probably the bosl DTP package in Ihe world".
A simple solitaire proggv for you lo play on your own. Well, you mool a better class of people. Michael O'Riley offers the Basic code.
85 ¦ CONTENTS ¦ PROGRAMMING 93 PUT SOME POWER INTO YOUR BASIC Fast graphics from Basic with minimal hassle, what more could you want? What? You want it to tell the time too? Well, OK then... Cl ARTISTS' SHOWCASE The Amiga has the best graphics, and now AMIGA Computing has the best of the artwork. This month we display the work of Jonathan Read.
Machine: codi:
• Pipemania scores: The most addictive game ever
• Dare you enter the Vortex? You have no choice
• Dr Plummet's House of Flux, Asteroids to you
• The Untouchables: Bullets fly, gangsters die
• Napoleon meets his Water... er... Austerlitz
• Operation Thunderbolt for the bloodthirsty
• Supercars emulates exotic Italian motoring
• Undersea fun in X-Out. Great for 20 squid
• Explore the secrets of the Demon's Tomb
• Space Acer at an out of this world price
• Lose your heart to a Starflight trooper
• Hewson's 5th Gear will drive you mad
• Kick Off Extra Time. Anco's home win
• Track down the Hound of Shadow I I I I I TRACK
- X. DISPLAY Oliver Prill presents a neat bit of code to help you
keep an eye on the goings on within your floppy drive and to
exercise your assembler.
GAME KII.I.KK MAXTHE XU HACKS Revealed the morse code which gives infinite lives in Rainbird's super strange Weird Dreams. Plus bugs which will help you prosper.
E K I Super Cars - Page 60 114 CLOSE GADGET Who were those masked men? Why did they visit US Gold all dressed as Batman? Plus almost nothing else.
Serious? Nah, not this month.
X 10O% machine code software for X realtime functions. " HIRes sample editing.
Realtime frequency display, y Realtime level meters y riles saved la IFF format.
Adjustable manual automatic X V record trig level.
ONLY £79.99 please state A500 i000 2000 MIDIMASTER X Pull Midi Interface for A500 1000 JL 2000 (please state model), w Compatible with most lending Midi _ packages (Including D Mualc).
X Midi in Midi Out x3 - Midi Thru.
8 Fully Opto isolated NLY £34.99 ¦ MICRO MIDI Cl VIDEO DIGITISER m r I Special effects, reverse. Negative, mirror, compreea. Etc. Increase the width of the display to 320 z 256 automatically or manually.
Plugs Into the parallel port of your Amiga 1000 500 2000 UNBEATABLE VALUE PACK - THE YAMAHA SHS 10 FM MIDI COMPATIBLE QUITAR-STYLE SYNTHESISER, THE ACTIVISION MUSIC STUDIO SOFTWARE PLUS THE MICR CONNECT TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM ACTIVISION MUSIC STUDIO »A foil fcuturo MIDI Recording Studio X A multi channel aoguonccr with leeltlme Input and full editing fadUtlea.
Completely menu driven - full Mouae control $ Very .Imple to uro INTERFACE YAMAHA SHS 10 FM SYNTHESISER KEYBOARD X Superbly styled guitar type keyboard with shoulder strap Top quality brand name 2.5 octave keyboard.
£99.99 X 25 built-in Instrument and rhythm v choices.
X Usee FM synthesis.
HH 0 s nci o I Y SYNCRO EXPRESS IS A HIGH SPEED DISK DUPLICATION SYSTEM THAT WILL PRODUCE COPIES OF YOUR DISK IN AROUND 30 SECONDS!!
¦K Syncro Express require* a aecond drive A works by controlling " It aa a slave device A Ignoring the AMIGA disk drive controller THE ANSWER TO YOUR DISK DUPLICATION PROBLEMS ON BOARD CUSTOM LSI CHIP MAKES THIS UNIT EXTREMELY SMALL 8t EFFICIENT.
W Menu driven selection for Start Track End Track - up to 80 tracka. 1 aide, 2 sides.
Very simple to use. Requires no user knowledge.
Also duplicates other formats such as IBM, MAC etc. Ideal for clubs, user groups or Just for your own disks.
No more waiting around for your disks to copy.
Probably the only duplication system you will ever need!
ONLY £34.99 COMPLETE HARDWARE SOFTWARE If you don't have a second drive we can supply SYNCRO EXPRESS together with a drive for WARNING IW88 COI'YIOOIH ACT WARNING DulH Elerlranli-a neither (undone* nr authorfm I hr uw nl II * produris lor (he rrprodurll.in ol copyrtahl material The I tack up lardlim nl I his product .irr lr*lenr«l III rrprodurr only nollwdir such n» pubiK domain mUnHI.
Ihr own. Own pcocium* or willwuir whrir permission lu nuikr j back-up ha* brrn i lrurlv given H i» illciL.il 10 nidkr mpM-s. Rvrn lor your own use. U rapyrffihi material without ihr permission of I hr __i opvnghi ¦Nlirr. Or Ihcu llrnrrc.
Y Y Y Y black A white model Cornea complete with superb software to Very comprehensive software allows for Capture. Writing. Cut Paate. Printing.
Load A Save of Imagea.
Save to your favourite graphlca DTP package • very eaay to use.
Easy to Install - connects to the Printer Port • ready to acan In minutes.
PRINTER 200 UNBEATABLE A 7i*Uc 200 Dpi FLATBED S-CAppE* PbipTETl Up to IS grey scales a Images.
Complete - no more U giving you superb scanned BUT THAT'S NOT ALL... Not only does the SPI1 scan at 200 Dpi - It la also a superb Image printer PLUS - Its a Photocopier!! Yes. Just press start and It will deliver a superb giving high definition output prints of scanned Images, screen dumps etc. photocopy of your original in aeconda!
AMG 5b I f 1 ON ADD BUT THAT'S NOT ALL... MV Complete hardware software.
ONLY £99.99 COMPLETE y Genlock la the latest "buzzword* on the Amiga - It a a device that allowa you to mlz computer teit graphics with lire video pictures from either a camera or VCR. -Doak Top Video* as It'a become la probably the faateet growing productivity application for the Amiga.
X With the Datel Pro Oenlock. You can do all the thinga previously only possible with units costing hundreds of pounds! 11 Perfect for video titling, captions or your own animation productions.
X Plugs Into RGB port of AflOO 1000 2000. Provides composite video output to monitor VCR aultable TV etc. X Switch selectable to view video Input overlay graphic or both (combined signal).
M Top quality unit features VLSI Motorola chip as used on commercial devices.
Slimline extra low profile unit.
Y Top quality fully compatible drive mechanlam.
Y Through port allows dalay-chaining _ other drives.
NEW LOW PRICE ONLY £74.99 SINGLE DRIVE C A superbly styled case finished in Amiga colours.
1 meg unformatted capacity.
V Good length cable for positioning on your desk etc. * _ ONLY £129.99 twin drive ADD £5 FOR COURIER DELIVERY IF REQUIRED EXTERNAL DRIVE SWITCH Dfl ft DF2 controlled.
Ft driverie).
GENISCAN GS4500 AMIGA 512K MEMORY EXPANSION X Now with this superb 512K expansion unit you can simply plug In more " memory. Bring your Amiga up to Imeg Ram In seconds!!
Featuring the latest 1 Meg fast Ram chips.
X Comes complete with dlsaable switch (not offered by some others. Including r AftOl unit).
X Available wlth without clock calendar feature. Clock version has high capacity NICad battery - never needs replacing.
Low chip count means extra low consumption.
Facilities simply not offered by other scanners at this unbeatat price.
High grade PCB with quality connector.
Buy direct from the manufacturer and savel S Simply plugs Into Internal Ram extension slot - no knowledge at all required.
NLY £84.99 COMPLETE ONLY £99.99 FOR VERSION WITH CLOCK CALENOAR COMPLETE ALL ORDERS NORMALLY DESPATCHED WITHIN 48 HRS HOW TO ORDER BY PHONE $ 0782 744707 24hr Credit Card Line FAX 0782 744292 X If you can obtain your own Ram T chips, we can supply the card.
Accepts 18 x 41256 Drams X Available wlth wlthout clock V option.
Switch dlsaable feature.
X Simply plugs Into Ram expansion
* slot.
X Fitted In only minutes • no user X High quality direct replacement for mouse on the Amiga.
X Teflon glides for smoother movement.
Rubber coated ball for minimum slip.
X Optical system counting • 500 mm.
UNLT for SALES ONLY 0782 744707 TECHNICAL ONLY 0782 744324 VERSION WITH CLOCK CALENDAR NB. THESE PRICES DO NOT INCLUDE RAM CHIPS HH OXFORD SOFTWORKS HH S CHESS PLAYER 2150 Chess Player 2150 is the strongest and most versatile chess program yet, with the most advanced graphics and widest range of features available, many of which have never before been implemented on a personal computer.
Chess Player 2150 has just defeated all opposition to win outright the British Open Chess Championship.
Every possible feature is included: stunning 2D 3D display, take-back move, massive openings library, ¦, simple mouse driven input, full menu control, save load games, many classic games on disc, speech, learning, total on-screen information, special modes for beginners, actually rates your play on the international ELO scale, and much, much more. CHESS PLAYER 2150 £24.95 v' The London School of Bridge's NEW BRIDGE PLAYER 2150 GALACTICA with Integrated Tutor INTEGRATED BRIDGE PLAYER AND TUTOR. WITH POWERFUL CARD PLAY AND A WEALTH OF SUPERB FEATURES, OFFERS YOU HOURS OF ENJOYMENT IN THIS
NEW BACKGAMMON PROFESSIONAL Backgammon, one of the most ancienf games, has been played for thousands of years in all parts of the world.
BACKGAMMON PROFESSIONAL is fully featured, including the doubling cube, input your own or random dice, variable playing speed and, full scoring.
Easy to use. Menu driven and great graphics.
The BRIDGE PLAYER, designed for players of all standards, gives literally millions of possible hands, simulating the game with full realism. Bidding uses the ACOL system with Stayman, Blackwood, Gerber, Grand Slam Force and Unusual No-Trump conventions.
PRODUCT Chess Player 2150 Bridge Player 2150 Galactica Bridge Player 2000 Backgammon Professional Postage to Europe per item Air postage ex Europe per item UK post and packing included card no Please debit by Access Visa card The BRIDGE TUTOR contains 100 tutor hands, selected by coauthor, Nicola Gardener, World Bridge Champion and Olympic medalist, ranging from fairly straightforward hands lo endplays and squeezes.
+ bidding and play with full information displays
* post-mortem facility + scoring of hands to rubber + input own
hands, save load hands to disc + solves double dummy problems
after trick eight
* special cheat options: bias the deal, peep at cards
* comprehensive manual with detailed advice on play + and much,
much more We think you'll be truly amazed at the power of this
world beating Bridge.
BRIDGE PLAYER 2150 GALACTICA_£29.95 OXFORD SOFTWORKS is a division of: CP SOFTWARE, Stonefield House 198 The Hill, Burford, Oxfordshire OX8 4HX Credit Card Hotline 0993 823463 AMIGA SCENE CBM fury at CAA leak NEWSPAPER stories which revealed that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is using Amigas to train pilots have raised Commodore's ire. Partly because Commodore has wanted to release the information for some time and were asked not to by the CAA but mainly because Computer Weekly, a trade magazine for data processing managers, described the Amiga 2000 with the headline "Flight
Controllers to train on games kit".
The lucrative contract, which was won in the face of stiff opposition from seven rivals, including simulation experts Redifusion, uses a Hi-Tension graphics board which has a pixel resolution of 1,280 by 1.024 with 256 colours capable of 32 million pixols per second.
Touch screens from Forefront technology are used in a design put together and written by the CAA's Air Traffic Evaluation Team.
The CAA is reported to want 24 training systems initially, with plans to install more at airports around the country.
The first units are going into the Air Traffic Controllers College at Hum near Bournemouth with more systems at Manchester and London City Airports.
While the CAA system is an exciting use of the Amiga, and allows for great cost savings in air traffic controller training it is not a flight simulator.
For that you'd have to go to Israel where the Air Force is using A2000s as the instructor's console with the pilot sitting behind an expensive Silicon Graphics workstation.
It is a credit to the Amiga that porhaps the most suc- cesful air force in the world should choose the Commodore machine.
Commodore launches education initiative CBM has launched Creative Education for the 90s, a new initiative designed to reinforce its commitment to education and incorporating two national competitions for schools and colleges.
The first is a joint effort by Commodore and a national young adult paper The Indy. Aimed at pupils from 13 to 16, it offers £15,000 worth of computer equipment as prizes.
Entrants are asked to render an abstract idea into a visual graphic form to promote conceptual thinking. It is split into sections for schools with Amigas and those without.
Amiga 3000 rumours fly First prize for each of the sections is worth £4,500 and includes four complete Class of the 90s bundles with monitor and disc drive. Two further packages worth £2,500 are offered as second prizes.
At the third prize level, schools with Amigas can win two sets of "Class of the 90s" software upgrade and those without get one Class of the 90s bundle.
Ideas to be put into graphic form cover all areas in the national curriculum including communication, health education, citizenship, economic understanding, environment, industrial under- M Steve Franklin...launched new compaign standing, personal education, social and moral education, numeracy and information retrieval.
The second Commodore competition is a business education challenge to encourage students to use WHILE Commodore is keeping mum about the truth behind the Amiga 3 000 (See Amiga Computing August 1989), the rumourmongers are having a field day. A bit of honest advice to anyone watching the future of the Amiga is not to believe all you read.
It is much safer to look at what Commodore has already released and announced:
• The 32 bit 16 Mhz 68030 card is shipping in the US.
• Commodore showed Unix V.4 for this card in computers and relate
them to a real life project. It invites teams to prepare and
execute a marketing communications program for their school
or college.
Open to teams of students on business or information technology courses, the project is to be carried out during the autumn term with written submissions to be in by December 15.
Original applications for entry must be made by June
30. Short-listed finalists will each receive a Commodore
Professional Series computer and software with which to
prepare their final presentation for judging in Spring 1991.
"Education is more than simply the acquisition of knowledge, it is about the development of skills Now York last January.
• The now ECS. Which is shipping in A2000s, has a meg of chip
• The original Agnus chip design allowed for 2 meg of chip ram.
© X-Window's is available for the Amiga.
• Unix requires a lot of ram and hard disc space.
• Workbench 1.4 will be a major upgrade.
The Amiga 3000 is bound to be a substantial improvement on what we have seen before. The truth will be revealed at the Hanover Show'.
Required to earn a living", said CBM's managing director, Steve Franklin, launching the new initiative.
"CBM believes the future of this country rests in educating its young to meet the demands of this decade, in which the use of computers and creative thinking will walk hand in hand".
Schools wanting further information can contact Commodore on 0628 770088.
Diagnosis by Dr Amiga BY the end of 1990 the Amiga 2000 will revolutionise medical ultra-sound scanning diagnosis if a project at Imperial College, London is successful.
Researchers Dr.Chris Burrell and Harald Wilson are working on a system which will use the Amiga to produce stable 3D images on a high resolution colour graphics workstation. An improvement on the current 2D systems, it will enable images to be rotated on.
Screen, cut in half and scrutinised in portions, opening up new diagnostic horizons and dramatically cutting costs.
The Imperial team has developed its own ultra sound probe which disperses electrical pulses before sending them to the computer.
Still in its infancy, the ?
System will be easy to use and will produce images which are easy to understand. Its cost will be minimal when compared with present systems.
In the long term, it is hoped the Amiga will help diagnose major health problems such as heart disease and also be used as a useful training aid to clinic biology. Anatomy and the effects of drugs on the human body.
The research team is using a 2000 with an AT bridgeboard. 20meg autoboot hard disc and 14in multisync monitor.
Expansion cards for all THE increased power and versatility offered to Amiga 2000 owners by the Hard Frame 2000 expansion card is soon to be available to users of 500 and 1000 machines.
Oasis (01-298 0060), UK distributor of MicroBotics cards with Quantum drives, is to launch new Hard Frame 500 and Hard Frame 1000 products and may even combine them into one card called Eight Star for common use on both machines.
"Our best technology so far has been on the 2000 and we have now decided to make this available to owners of 500 and 1000 machines", said Simon Coombes of Oasis. "By reengineering the 2000 versions, we also hope that we may be able to bring down the prices".
The SCSI hard disc cards from Oasis are fitted with higher capacity, faster 3.5in drives from Quantum, Present prices are £599 for 42Mb. £869 for 84Mb and £999 for 105Mb. They were on show at the recent 16 Bit Computer Fair at London's Horticultural Halls.
Late arrivals SOME of the items on Commodore's latest dealer price list were announced so long ago they don't seem new any more. But they are.
The new hard drive controller, the A2091, is available with 20 or 40 meg drives and the long awaited A2024 high resolution with a 1024 by 1008 display have at last made it to the list. No prices are included and you will have to contact your local dealer for availability.
School goes for the 500 CHILDREN with learning difficulties in Birmingham are using Amiga 500s to help with their problems.
Selly Oaks School has Due to an unprecedented demand from readers, the Amiga Computing cover disc is back next month - and it's better than ever, with a massive megabyte of super software for your Amiga.
Don't miss next month's issue!
Break times and staff also use them to prepare course- work and keep childrens' records.
"This year we plan to use the machine to teach French and German. There's no end to its capabilities", said teacher Malcolm Pomray.
Imported 40 of the Commodore machines for music, business studies, word processing. Spreadsheets, databases, graphics, art, design and drama.
They have proved so popular that pupils are given free access to them during A NEW look Amiga Computing is on the way with the signing of a deal between its publishers Database Publications and computer magazine house Gollner Publishing.
This will bring Gollner's revolutionary colour printing process into play with more colour, more screen shots and even brighter page design.
It will also bring new ideas to the editorial content, further extending the magazine's scope.
"The most immediate changes our readers will notice will be visual", said commercial director of Database Publications David Hirst. "Our merger with Gollner Publishing gives us access to better [ifoduction techniques with ess restrictions on design.
"Amiga Computing has taken great strides since it was launched two years ago and the input of new editorial ideas promises to take it even further in future months to cover all aspects of computing with the Amiga".
Following their alliance.
Database and Gollner have set up Interactive Publishing, a new company which takes over Amiga Action. ST World and ST Action from Gollner and Amiga Computing and Atari ST User from Database. Other Database titles - PC. The Micro User and Electron User - are not involved.
Chairman of the new company is Derek Meakin who is also chairman of Database Publications and the controlling Europress Group.
"For several years, we have admired the understanding of the computer entertainment market shown by the enthusiastic Gollner team, together with its highly innovative and technologically advanced approach to magazine production", he said, "interactive Publishing is in an ideal position to capitalise on the pioneering work of Hugh Gollner and his colleagues. The five magazines that form the nucleus of the new company already have a well established position in the leisure computing marketplace and new titles are being planned that will exploit the latest technical achievements to the
Amiga Computing breezes into the 1990s Managing director Hugh Gollner said: "For a long time now, the team at Gollner Publishing has felt the need for more strength in terms of both finance and management to fully exploit the commercial possibilities of the skills that have built up our existing magazine titles. Database, with ten years experience in computer publishing has that strength".
Existing production centres at Macclesfield and Chichester are being retained, as are all present employees.
A ATARI ST and C* AMIGA Sixteen Bit Superdeals from the Sixteen Bit Specialists!
CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE! When comparing prices remember ours include feet delivery by courier.
520 STE Power Pack £359.00 ry' * ' Inc. VA T and Next Day Delivery Power Pack includes:
* 520 STE 512K Keyboard with Built-in i Megabyte disk drive and
TV Modulator
* 4096 Colour Palette
* 6 channel digital stereo sound
* 4 joystick ports
* Over C550 worth of games software, mdudmg OutRun. Gauntlet 2. R
Type. Space Hamer. Super HangOn and 16 more Top Games
* Organiser Business Software including WORDPROCESSOR. SPREAD
SHEET and DATABASE
* First BASIC and First Music Utility Software.
* All leads, manuals PLUS MOUSE and free mains plug!
REMEMBER! Many ST s do not come with BASIC - ours come with ST BASIC REV D by Metacomco Amiga A500 BAT Games Pack £399.00 Inc. VA T and Next Day Delivery BAT Games Pack includes:
* Amiga A500 Si2K Keyboard with Built-m t Megabyte disk dnve r
Free TV modulator worth £24 99 allowing you to use the Amiga
with a normal TV
* DELUXE PAINT II Graphic Packages
* PHOTON PANT II graphcs with ammaoon worth £70 A FREE,
only-just-released BATMAN THE MOVIE games software A NEW
ZEALAND STORY arcado games software A F 16-INTERCEPTOR -
amazing 3D flight simulator software A A further £230 worth of
Games Software, induding BUGGY BOY.
MERCENARY. BARBARIAN. WIZBALL & six more games A FREE MOUSE MAT JOYSTICKS and BLANK DISKS A Amiga BASIC. Amiga EXTRAS 1.3. Workbench 1.3 PLUS the Amiga Step by Step Tutorial A All leads, manuals PLUS MOUSE and mams plug!
520 STE Explorer Pack £279.00 AMIGA A500 CLASS OF THE 1990'S BUSINESS + EDUCATIONAL £549.00
* Explorer Pack includes 520 STE 512K Keyboard with built-in t
Megabyte Disk Drive and TV modulator
* 1 FREE Game, ST Tutorial and METACOMCO Basic worth £25.00
* All Leads. Manuals PLUS MOUSE and FREE Mains Plugl
* Free mouse mat worth £4.95 1040 STE Super Pack £479.00
* Includes the new 1 megabyte 1040STE keyboard PLUS £450 worth of
Software. Comprising 2t games and Organiser Business Software.
Also mdudes Metacomco BASIC. Mouse Pad. All Leads. Manuals and
* 1040 STE keyboard without software £439 A Amiga A500 ? TV
Modulator A Midi Interface * Software A Kind Words II word
processor A Page Setter DTP A Super Base Personal Database A
Maxiptan 500 spreadsheet A Amiga Logo. BBC Emulator.
Deluxe Pamt I A Mouse Mat. 10 Blank disks, and disk wallet MEGA 1 Business Pack £529.00 Features:
* Separate Keyboard and System Unit
* £385 worth of Busmess Software mdudmg MICROSOFT WRITE word
processor (£150). SUPERBASE PERSONAL database (£60) and VIP
PROFESSIONAL Lotus 123 spreadsheet clone (£150) METACOMCO Basic
* Bitter chip installed for faster graphics Inc SM124 Mono
Monitor .£628.00 AMIGA 1 MEG BAT GAME PACK £529.00
1 Meg Bat Games Pack mdudes A Fined i Megabyte Memory Expansion
. Real Time Clock Card A Everything listed for the A500 Bat
Game Pack A DRAGON S LAIR 1 MEG MEGAGAME I Qutcushot li Turbo
Joystick £ 9.95 ACCESSORIES Competition Pro 5000 Joystick £13
95 Competition Pro with Autoflrt £14.95 Komx Spec dicing
Joystick £11.95 Red Mouse Mat with Amiga logo.. £5 95 Plain
blue Mouse Mat ...£4.95 Contriver Amiga and ST Mouse
with FREE Holder and Mouse Pad £20.95 Branded Memo rex 3.5' OS
DO Disks Box of 10___________£13.95 Memorex Disk Box For 40
3.5'Disks _____________ £8.95 Amiga 1 2 Meg
Expansion ..£119.95 " • )l Centre Alan or Amiga £39.95
EXTERNAL DISK DRIVES Atan SF3i 4 1 Megabyte £139 00 Amiga
A10101 Megabyte
00 Cumana 1 Megabyte Atan or Amiga
.. NEC 1 Megabyte
Atan or
Amiga ..
_______ £89.95 ..£79 95 Atari Megafile 30 Hard
Disk ..
New I Commodore A590 20 meg hard
disk ... A590 Hard Disk & Memory
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59.00 SEIKOSHA 80 COLUMN PRINTERS - AMAZING PRICES Seikosha 9
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«ffnwhO(Cr« in* GUIS W Digital htegration I'm primed for action
as my F-16 leaves the runway. This time my mission is to
destroy a battalion of tanks. Suddenly, threat warning -
interceptors closing fast! I quickly select dogfight mode and
arm a Sidewinder. We both fire at the same time - chaff and a
high-g turn out manoeuvres his missile. A loud explosion tells
me he's not so lucky.
FIG COMBAT PILOT Fiymg fast and low. I turn my F-16 towards my target time to smtch on. The groyne -acar ana am the aser-guicec Mavencks. I I fire six missiles in quick succession, Lantirn automatically locking on to each tank. With fiak bursting around me I dive for I cover and head for home. Approaching base, i contact tne tower I and request a talkdown for my night landing, Another successful mission in Operation Conquest - the ultimate test for any pilot... gjgn Friends of the environment AMIGA software house Digits Interntiona! (0395 268893) has gone green and director Jeremv Rihll hopes
that others in the software business will be kind to the environment and follow suit.
"Packaging, manuals, brochures and box inserts for every Digita product are now* printed on environment friendly paper", he told AMIGA Computing.
"Although this costs 20 per cent more, it is a small sacrifice and I would encourage those manufacturers who require high quality paper beyond the standards of fully recycled paper to seriously consider the environment friendly alternative".
Enhanced Beeb emulator Jeremy has toyed with taking the green path for some time but could not find a re-cycled paper of the right quality. He then discovered the Environment Friendly Paper range which is made of 40 per cent straw and is free from chlorine.
Because of its higher quality, it still contains some wood pulp but in much smaller quantities than normal paper.
"Most of us have had our cars converted and use bio- degradeable products so 1 thought it was time I used the same ideas with my business", he added.
"This alternative is better for the environment but still provides the right quality so there is no reason why other companies should not use it".
No Unix for Europe HIGH level discussions at Commodore US may mean long delays or the possible non-introduction of Amiga Unix systems in Europe.
This would appear to be a response to the transatlantic image gulf between America and Europe.
While the general image of the Amiga over here is that it is the hottest games computer, with sales of nearly 100.000 Batman packs to support this conclusion. The US experience is very different.
There is a much larger proportion of Amiga 1000 and 2000s with the computer seen as a powerful multi-tasking system.
The infrastructure of the dealer base is very different, while in the UK more Amigas arc sold through high street multiples, these shops are the province of games consoles in the'US with Amigas being sold by specialist dealers.
Commodore US is in a much better position to support a complicated system VERSION -.1 of the BBC Emulator should cure many of the problems users have experienced with the first version. While there have not been many bugs to Ex. A lot of features which were outside the original specification have now been implemented.
The emulator will now load a saved screen image.
Like Unix. It could well cost Commodore more to train enough European staff to handle users and developers inquiries than the company could earn by selling the new A3000 and A3500 machines. This is despite Unix being the most exciting area of expansion in the business market.
The European Unix community is much less institutionalised than that in the US.
This means that Commodore's trail blazing with a System V version 4 has to compete with similar systems from local companies.
Even the usually slow to react British giant ICL has a
V. 4 machine. And as the workstation market hots up even a 25MHz
'030 machine with 700 by 500 graphics has to struggle to keep
While no decision has yet been taken, all these factors may combine to keep Unix in die US.
Midi gets its own show MIDI music is a growth market and devotees will have a feast in store on April 7 and 8 when the Midi Music Show makes an appearance at the Novote!
Exhibition centre in Hammersmith.
Organisers Westminster Exhibitions (01-549 3444] claim the event will give visitors a view of "tomorrow's music technology - today" and say there wifi be more than 60 companies exhibiting state of the art computer music technology-.
The first show to recognise Midi technology in its but cannot use direct screen writes.
All the GCOL modes which the BBC Micro supports are now available, as is the envelope command.
Most important is the ability to address other programs as sideways roms which leaves the way open for a program to read 3BC discs on the Amiga.
Own right, it will include keyboards, soft and hardware. Peripherals and consumables from America.
Europe and the UK aimed at both professional and home users.
During the show there will be seminars, demonstrations and conferences covering subjects such as sampling, creative editing and sequencing.
Thinking ahead TWO Birmingham teachers have produced a new software package which allows most Amiga programs to be run with a Concept Keyboard.
To initially target the education market, it will bring the simplicity of the keyboard to Amiga applications as diverse as word processing. Painting, video titling and special effects.
Trading as Think Ltd.. they are the developers of Commodore's Class of the 90's education resource pack, and CBM has already shown great interest in this latest product which is due for launch in the next few weeks.
The software comes with the necessary leads and is designed for use with the standard Star Micro- Terminals Concept Keyboards. Which were primarily for children with special needs but are now widely used in primary schools.
The easy to use program allows entry by mouse and Concept Keyboard and has the ability to search through data and operate the overlays within the program.
It includes a parser which recognises the name of the keys and supports keyboard. Menu and mouse operations. Initial versions work with serial devices, but a version for people who already have parallel devices will follow.
Easy overlay can be activated by double clicking on its associated icon. These can be changed at any time while other programs and even other overlays are running.
There is no need to change startup files or buy software specially written for the Concept Keyboard.
Think Ltd. Is currently- preparing special keyboard overlays in French. German.
English. Welsh and Braille.
Some examples will be sold with the software and more extensive packages will be sold separately.
In addition to Commodore's interest. Think's latest product has attracted attention from many other countries including Sweden. Australia and Canada.
Think can be contacted at Prudential Buildings. 46C High Street. Erdington.
Birmingham. B23 6RH.
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BYTEBACK Cheque, postal orders or credit card facilities are available DEPT AC. 6 MUMBY CLOSE, NEWARK. NOTTS NG24 1JE YOU can read this all right, can you? Good: since this article was written on a Z88. And then piped across to Pretext on my Amiga using The Music Suite's Z88-Amiga Link software, it shows that the Link actually works.
You might be wondering why an Amiga user would want a Z88: for all its myriad wonderfulness, the Amiga does not fare too well in the portability department.
Amigans need no longer be deskbound Stewart C. Russell's Z88 has formed an alliance with his Amiga The Z88. At just under a kilo and the same size as an A4 pad. Has just the right balance between size and ease of use for situations where you don't have a desk or a power socket handy. And as both the Z88 and the Amiga hare an RS- 232 port. The Music Suite's software acts as a filter and storage buffer for the transmitted data.
Data can be exported from the Z88 to work with a good selection of Amiga applications. Text from the Z88's integrated system Pipedream can be made into a properly formatted Pretext or Scribble document (complete with underlines and other control codes), a Superbase data file (as long as the text is well-behaved) or a plain Ascii file.
That last option will allow most applications to derive some sense from the data. You can also send Amiga text back to the Z88 if the urge takes you.
The way that Z88-Amiga Link handles the transfers is by fooling the Z88 into thinking that the Amiga is actually a printer: text is "printed out" from Pipedream into a buffer, which can then be saved out or sent to the screen or printer.
It's possible to cut out the buffering altogether and use the Amiga to spool Z88 printer output to a parallel printer: this saves you spending £25 on a Z88 SPEED counts. And Dataphone's new Profour is fast. In the fledgling days of modem use. 300 baud was the norm. For those of us who spent far too long on-line using dodgey accounts to play multi- user games. 110 baud seemed adequate.
Today 1200 bps is pretty common, and it is about the fastest speed BT's cranky old phone lines can cope with. There are plenty of 2400 bps modems, but you need a good line to use one.
The solution is error correction - use a noisy line but encode the data so that the system you are talking to knows of any errors and keeps sending until both ends are convinced that only the intended information got through.
Assuming that the doubling of line speed is enough to cope with all this re-transraission. Things should run Easter and cleaner.
Such a system is MNP. In its simplest form this provides error correction.
Parallel printer interface.
The sparse documentation fails to tell you to set your baud rate to 9600. And you really have to use the Z88's default Epson printer driver. The program's only screen is decorated with plain gadgets and windows, which sometimes flicker at you for no adequately explained reason.
I was a teenage hacker Simon Rockman looks at a new modem as you move up in price and performance MNP includes compression which gets more bytes down the line.
Such a method of compression and correction is MNP 5. At £458.85 the cheapest modem with this is the Dataphone Profour.
Designed and built by a small British company it doesn't have the finish of a modem built by one of the multi-nationals like Hayes.
Pace and Dowty. But then it doesn't have that kind of £700 price tag either.
Modems are like little girls. When they are good they are very, very good.
When they are bad they are horrid. The magic of error The disc boots into the CLI (yeuch!) And no icons are given to imported files, even although the Link can run from the Workbench.
Presentation is hardly super-slick.
Z88-Amiga Link functions faultlessly, and most of the presentation problems should be solved in the now-complete version 1.3. At £19.95 for the software and £12.95 for the lead it's inexpensive enough for ever)' Z88 and Amiga owner to have it. Yet handy enough to merit the travelling Amigan splashing out on a Z88.
For more details contact the Music Suite on (0239) 711343 correction amplifies this.
Using the Profour ¦with a variety of different services produced very different results. MicroLink's Istel node steadfastly refused to communicate with the device. Cix was a bit iffy, not always working but direct dial to Bix in America was wonderful. Good fast connections and 300 cps downloads.
While on test the modem had a few problems. It is a bit slow to react to things like resets which confused JRComm. Changing baud rates didn't always work, which meant that the dialing directory didn't Some of these problems seemed related to heat - cooling off reduced idiosyncrasies.
Supplier. SEG Communications, which is Dataphone's agent, traced this to dirt which got into the unit at manufacture.
The Profour is not all SEG would have you believe.
It is not as good as rivals at half the price, but it is still very good value for money.
For more details contact Spalter Electronics Group on 01-959 3377.
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the man I WOULD like to buy a scanner.
Not a handy scanner, an A4 flat bed scanner. Datel Electronics has advorlised a scanner, printer and photocopier in your mag, but I have phoned them up to ask a couple of questions about it and they said that they don't sell it any more.
Hi. I'm the new mail man. Man. Il's my job lo sort your scribbins and spill Ihe beans un the problems we all have when DEO: starts to whirr. So if you've got some- to say. Say il to me.
The best lelters will he sent prizes of up lo £100, so get a copy of Prolevl inlu your drive pronto. Drop me a line al Ezra Surf's Poslhox IESP). Amiga Computing. Second f loor. North House. 7H-H4 Ongar Koatl.
V Brentwood. Essex. CMI3 tIBfi.
Does anyone make one? Can I print with it using a completely different package and use the photocopier without having to switch on the computer?
The unit scans at 200 DPI (dots per inch). Is that good? What sort of quality would 1 get for scanning iS- Is there be any way I can scan in colour? I know it sounds stupid as it's a black and white scanner, but what I mean is, is there anything like filters that can produce different coloured pictures and place them together to form one colour picture?
Can I scan in any software package (of course, that scans pix) instead of just the scanning software you get with it? Thanks for answering my questions.
Neil Mansell, Canvev Island, Essex.
Gee, I hate tricky questions like this. Most letters editors would trash them, but that's uncool so I'll try my best. Scanners are available from Cold Disk in Canada. ASDG and Digipro. The Gold Disk one costs SI.095 IUSI. By the time you have paid carriage, Vat and duty you are looking at the wrong side of £900.
This is based on the Canon IX12. And at 300 dpi is laser printer quality. It won't print. It won't do colour. The IXI2 sucks the page through so you can't Scan stuff out of books.
The IXI2F is a flatbed version which sells for around £800 in the UK without the Amiga software and cable. Because the bundling deal Gold Disk has with Canon is restricted to North America, HB Marketing - the usual Gold Disk importers - cannot sell the package in the UK. Bummer. Call Gold Disk in Canada on 0101 416 828 0913.
The ASDG system is seriously expensive. Super high resolution, it'll do colour to better than TV quality. Designed for professional colour work il needs an Amiga 2000 with at least 5 megs and a big hard disc. You'll need to give the bank manager more than a box of choccies and some sweet talk.
Compared to the half a million quid Crossfield would charge you for the kind of scanning machine which wos used in the production of this magazine, it's cheap. You can get a whole system on the Amiga for less than 10 grand. Call ASDG IUKI on 0923 818079.
Most hopeful sounding is the system from DigiPro. 256 grey scales. 450 dpi. £1.000. Not a printer or photocopier. It won't do colour yet. But the boffins ore looking into it. Digipro is on 01-905
CONGRATULATIONS on produc- ins Ihi* finest Amiga magazine ever ivilh Ihe best subscription oiler I've ever seen (thank you for Kalman). I would like lo comment on the ridii ulous decision to give Xenon 1 100 per cent as it puts you in Ihe unfortunate position of not being able lo give a higher rating lo a belter game.
When such a game comes along, do you intend giving il 101"..?
Daniel Vine.
Surrev Tup.
Amiga angst PERHAPS you could help a mere Amiga 500 owner by explaining to me (or pointing me to any literature, like your back issues! About directories, libraries and files.
I haven't a clue what you're talking about when you say things about copying directories and programs such as MouseZoom. Also how do you include programs in the start-up sequence?
Richard Myer, Pinner, Middlesex The best introduction to the AMIGA's CLI is AmigaDos: A Dabhand guide from Dabs Press.
You 'll find an order form in the special offers pages of this mag. It's there because we like il.
Power to the people PLEASE could you tell me whether the following is correct: The Amiga 500 can theoretically support up to four disc drives, but the PSU can only sufficiently power two.
If this is so. Why is it not mentioned in advertisements such as Datel Electronics and bv shops when I inquire about purchasing an external twin disc drive?
Perhaps you could give me the address or telephone number of a company offering PSU upgrades.
Thank you very much for your time and keep up the excellent work you're doing.
Michael Harris, Taunton, Somerset.
To misquote: "Not enough power corrupts", it can also cause your system to send an imitation to the guru.
The guys at See Bee Emm are playing safe with the one external drive per system limit. For two reasons. First their mega-naff 1010 drive draws only slightly less power than Don Henley's stage system and so the A500 won't stomach two of the things, secondly not all Amiga's are created equal and some PSUs have more umpfthan others.
While plenty of Amigas will cope with two add-on drives not all will, and CBM guidelines have to cater for the puny ones.
If you wont to risk it for a biscuit you can add a Dfl: and a DF2: if they are low power units.
If you are the cautious type the kind who avoids the cracks in the sidewalk you should get a drive with its own PSU. Tou won'f need to replace the Amiga one Killer doctor THE machine has killed some of my game discs: A game decides not to load, putting up "Not a DOS disc" requester and then tolling you to use ''Diskdoctor", When you finally decide to use Diskdoctor (because you've nothing to lose, anyway) it returns hard errors on all tracks, reformats the root track and retitles the disc Lazarus.
What actually happens is that this virus or whatever, actually unformats the disc and I've been informed by someone who knows about as much as me that all unfor- COME TO THE PROFESSIONALS!!!!
NOW TAKEN 2 William Clowes Street Burslem Stoke on Trent i ST63AP Tel: 0782 575043 AMIGA EDUCATIONAL 1 AMIGA CLEARANCE AMIGA CLEARANCE AMIGA TOP TITLES Postman Pat ......799 Fun School 2 6-8 .....13.50 Fund School 2 Under 6 ......13 50 Fun School 2 Over 8___________13.50 Star Right_____________ Ninja Warriors .... X Out Keel the Thiel ...... Sim City .. Future Wars . Prince ...... Xenon 2 ... War in Middle Earth... Aguanoughl ..... Blood
wych ... Battle Squadron .. Continental Circus..... Chambers ol Shaoiin Chase H Q Cabal ...... Dragon Ninja Drakkhen . F16 Combat Pilot Falcon ________.
Ghouls and Ghosls.... Ghostbusters 2 ... Iron Lord ...... Kick Ofl___________________ Kick Oil Extra Time....
16. 95 1395
13. 95
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17. 95
15. 95 ......17.95
- ..15.95 1295
15. 95
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16. 95 1695
19. 95 ..15.95 1595
15. 95 13 95
16. 95 ......12.95
7. 99 f V reliat " as ex Bards
Tale 7.99 Bards Tale
Bureaucracy________________________ 699
Corruplion ...."....7 99 Faery Tale
Advenlure ...11.99
Fish ...7.99 Gold
Rush _____________ 9 99 Hollywood Hijmx________________7 99
Indy Jones the Adventure 16 99
legend . 6.99 Lords ol the
Rising Sun 12.99 Leisure Suit Larry 2________________2195
Maniac Mansion ......17.95
Manhunter ...9.99 Murder in
Venice 7.99 President is Missing
_______9 99 Plundered Hearts__________________6 99 Police
Quest 1 ..1099 Quest lor Time
Bird ...7.99 Romantic
Encounters 6.99 Space Quest 1 .... 9 99
Space Quest 2__________________ 999 Space Quest
3 ..1999
Thexder ....299 Tanglewood
....4.99 Ultima
4__________________________19 99 Warlocks
Quest____________________4 99 Hound ol
Shadow ....17.99 AMIGA STRATEGY SIM
Ausleriitz__________________ Armegeddon Man .
......16.99 .2.99 Bauie Hawks lyfl*
Borrodeno .. ......17 99
Bomber ..... ......1999 Conflict
Europe . ____1199 Cartier
Command .7 99 Dragons ol Flame ..
......17 99 Armarda .. ......17 99
Destroyer_______________________ .8.95 7 QS Flight Path
737 .4.99
Waterloo ... 11.99 1799 Power
Struggle . 499 Honda
RVF ......15.99 Slunl Car Racer
... ......1595 Sorcerer Lord ..
.7.95 Volley Ball Sim .. ..... 799 Gunship
......" . .....1599 AMIGA ADVENTURES Advanced Ski
Sim .... 4 99
Archepeligos 7.99
Arture .5.99 Alien
Legion ......7 99 Alien
Backlash ..599 Buggy
Boy ...7.99 Bulcher
Hill ..5 99 Balman the
Movie ......8.99 Bomb
Jack____________________________7.99 Blasteroids
......7.99 Craps
Academy ...4.99 Custodian
....._ ......599 Captain Blood__________________4
99 Cogan's Run.._...__________________4 99 Cybernoid
....6 99 Deflector
.....5 99 Death Con
5 ...8 99 Dominator 6 99 Ebon
Star _ ...2 99 Eagles
Nest ..4.99 Foundations
Waste ....4 99 Football Manager
2___________________6.99 Fire Povwr______________________6.99
Fernder Must Die 599 Fortress
Underground 4 99 Flinlstones-------------------------------5
99 Grid Start_________________________3.99 Real Ghostbusters
...7.99 Gold Runner 1 ...4.99
Gold Runner 2 ....5.99 Galaxy Forece
Hyperdome___________________________4 99 Hollywood
Poker ......4 99 Hollywood Poker
Pro .7.99
Interceptor ...8.99 Ikan
Warriors ......7.99
Irridon 2.99
Jug .....5.99 Joe
Blade .4.99 Joe Blade
2_______________ 4.99 Leathernecks .....699
Led Storm 7.99
Manix .3.99 New
Zealand Story .. 8 99
Nebulas ....5.99 Nord and
Bert .....5.99
Netherworld ......5.99 Outrun
7 99 Prisoner ol
War ..9 99
Pacland ....6.99 Passing
Shot ......699
Preditor 699
Phobia .....4.99 Phantom
Fighter 5.99
Phantasim 3 99 Pioneer
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7. 99 I ¦nterohase ...... ......15 95
Robbeary ...
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Rabbit .... .7.99
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Wats ...... ...4.99
Switchblade . ......14.95 Sky Fox
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Hammer ..
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4. 99 Time Scanner_________________
Tracers .. .7.99 Icon
Paint___________________________ .2.99 Virus
Killer___________________ .....1299 699
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Cup . Teenage
Queen ..5.99 Ten x 3.5' DD DD Disks
.7.99 A501 Exoansion
6. 99 .....79.95 Targhan .7.99 I Dragons Lair
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Wicked .. World Tour
Golf ...... 499 ...7.99 I JOYSTICKS World
Class leaderboard .. .7.99 I Dheetah 125.
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Diny .. .4 99 Quickjoy 2 Turbo____(__________
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Mated discs are called "Lazarus".
Try this: Put up Workbench; place a blank unformaled disc in DF1: and you should get the usual DF1:BAD icon. Get to CLI and "Diskdoctor Dfl:" on the blank, unformated disc in Dfl: it will return hard errors on every track.
Go and make a cup of tea (two sugars please). Eventually, when it reaches track 79 it will format the root. When that's all stopped, go back to Workbench and the blank disc will have been renamed to Lazarus. Explain that then.
Will Green, Lichfield, Staffs.
Lazarus was a dude in the Bible who was dead, then the big 1C made him less dead. Diskdoctor does a similar artificial respiration job on dead AmigaDos discs. So Diskdoctor renames cured discs as Lazarus.
Games are very rarely on AmigaDos discs, they use a special format which AmigaDos barfs at.
So if you boot from the game, before AmigaDos gets a look in, all will be tickerty-boo. If you use Workbench first you'll get the warning.
There was nothing wrong with the disc and if there was it could only be cured by sending the game back to the software house.
Diskdoctor's magic sponge won't work on games. It'll only make things worse.
Error correction NOW to the serious stuff. In the February issue you said use Install DFO: lo install the boot sequence on your disc, this is inaccurate and ambiguous.
First of all il asks for the Workbench (unless it is all ready in DFO:) disc and installs that instead of asking for you to put in disc to be installed.
It is okay for all those lucky enough lo have a second lor morel disc drive. You cannot even do Install discname because it only accepts drives (DFO:. DF1: etc).
The solution: Type Makedir ram:c. Next type copy Workbcnchx install lo ramx. I rename Workbenchl.3 to Workbench because it makos life easier.
Now type copy Work- benchx assign lo ramx. After this type Assign c: ramx. This will make CLI look in Ihe c directory in ram instead of Workbench's.
Now place the disc to be installed in DFO: and type INSTALL DFO:. To gel back to the commands in Workbench's c directory just type Assign c: Workbench.
Note you could set other commands in the ram: using the above process.
Hopefully this will be fixed in versions 1.4 so you do not have to do al) this messing around.
Keeping a lab on copies Daniel Schostak, Norwich, Norfolk.
OK, so we carried the office motto of "Less is more" a mite too far. But the end result ivas the same. If we explained everything in minute detail each article would begin "First switch on your Amiga". But your explaination was a good 'un.
No luck PAL I'VE a Philips 8833 monitor on my new Amiga 500 and have found that most games on it leave part of Ihe bottom of the screen blank, but Workbench is OK.
Also some utilities need the horizontal centering adjusted and have wavy lines in Ihe window titles. Is this normal, or do I have a faulty monitor or lead?
Dave Sheridan, Potters Bar, Herts.
There is a strange and alien land called America. There is a strange and alien computer called the Ess Tee. Between them they conspire lo mb Eumpean Amiga owners of 56 lines of screen display.
You see, over there the NTSC telly format means they can only squeeze 200 lines. The Atari similarly can only show 200 lines. As o result software houses who hove to cater for the world market on both machines don't think it worth their while to do a special 256 line version for you and me.
The ivovy lines are the result of faults in the monitor. Most screens do this, and unless you want to spend many hundreds of pounds on a screen you'll have lo live with
il. I know I do.
Comunicating computers BETWEEN my two systems - Amstrad 1512, Logitech ScanMan (hand held scanner), Paintshow Plus, and Commodore Amiga 500.
Deluxe Paint II, Photon Paint - it should be possible to scan on the Amstrad and print on the Amiga?
I have a Hewlett Packard Paint- (iAMKS priurs wall) set me liai k. I knon nothing almul computers, hiil when I «|h*ii»mI my new Amiga I find lliat you have lu make i npies ul vniir master disc s (which I think should already In1 in).
I was amazed how easy il is In gel no In piracy when you can move I lie lalis over In c opy Ihe games you buy. You would Ihink Ihey would make Ihe lulls solid for their own protection.
II I was ool an honest person I would copy oil friends. Iml I must jet colour printer. My problem is that I would like to scan then paint in colour. Is there any way I can transfer IFF files between Ihe PC and Amiga? I know the easiest thing to do is to buy a scanner compatible with the Amiga, but i am hoping there is a cheaper way.
Brian Kidd, Marlborough Building, Bath.
My hugely impressive analytical brain has divided your problem into one of two formats. File format and disc format.
First the interesting one. Getting PC format pics into IFF. Being brain-dead sheep, IBM users are quite content to put up with a host of file formats.
There are two ways to get these into IFF. The first is a program called Hifaak by Inset Systems. It runs on the PC and costs £99 fmm AP Computer Products Ion 0483 7228371.
Equally good for this job is Deluxe Painl II on the IBM. This Costly conversion YOUR reply to Tom Davidson regarding converting IBM files to Amiga suggestted Dos-to-Dos costing £39.95. Your other readers may be interested to know that there is a PD program available called MSDOS which will convert both IBM format and Atari format files to Amiga format.
However, due to the fact that the program requires a recoverable ramdisc, WB 1.3 or an equivalent utility is needed. The program is German in origin and is available on FF158.
Bemie Stafford, Wind, Merseyside.
Lie one of Ihe few left. Anyway thanks for Ihe artic le on piracy i and keep op Ihe good work in your magazine.
David Windsor.
Ilvuil. Lie ill. Wong, bang. I Iw lulls stop i mi i riling Jo o (list. Mil rending il. Damns arc protected against programs like Diskrapy using roc es an Ihr disc, usl sliding Ihr lulls unn't make things magically go envoi .
Can load and save in most PC formats as well as IFF. PCX is most likely to be the format you need, and both packages will cope with it.
Your next problem is disc size.
You can either put a 3.5 n drive on the Amstmd or a 5.25m drive on the Amiga. To read the information you 'I! Need a transfer program.
Flavour of the month is CrossDos,
o program which treats Amiga.
Atari and IBM discs as equals in DFO: You 'II gel both the hardware and the software from Power Computing on 0234 273000. A
5. 25 drive will cost about £150 and CrossDoss £30. Since the
whole sheebang will come to nigh on £300 it might be better lo
buy an AMIGA handheld scanner.
Little Acorns WE are considering setting up a software development company to produce games for the Amiga and Alari ST. We desperately need to locate artists and programmers who would be interested in working with us.
If there is anybody out there who lives in Cornwall(ish), and is looking io make a career for themselves in the software industry, then please waste no time in writing to us.
We have several great game ideas, but have been unable to commence work on them due to the lack of graphic artists. We just hope that there arc some talented people who will be prepared lo help us out.
Thanks in advance to AMIGA Computing for taking the trouble to print this letter, as at the ages of 16 and 17 we are unable io afford a ?
Norma! Advertisement!
Please note, we may be young, but we have been coding for two years and consider the prospect of creating careers for ourselves in the software industry very seriously - so not time wasters.
Peter lver and Stephen Warden Meadow Lodge. Highertown.
Thiro, Cornwall TR1 3QF.
I will waste no time in writing to you. But that's 'cos I can't program.
Good luck guys.
Starter help AFTER reading Anne Si.nlnet letter pleading liir help for beginners I had an idea. With the help nl niir excellent magazine I would like to start up a sort id Pen Pal club where people who know little or nothing about their Amigas could swap hints and tips and sell w ritten programs.
Here is my full address: Andy klven. 77 llarlhani Road.
Isleworlh. Middlesex 'l'W'7 5EY. I have an unexpanded Aatltl with only the internal drive. Thanks for the brilliant Explore your Amiga - it's helped me enormously.
Andy Klven, Isleivorlh.
Middlesex Poor taste MY enjoyment of your normally excellent magazine was marred in the December issue by the unbelievable bad taste, not to say possible hurt, of your caption to the top lefthand illustration on page 25. I hope that editorial vigilance will reverse this lowering of your usual standards.
M A Loll us, South Croydon, Surrey.
We've had a number of complaints about this, and yes wrists have been slapped. In defence I'd say that the person who wrote it uses the London Underground every day and the place is still hazardous.
Crashypoos PLEASE help me. I own a nice little 1 meg Amiga which is giving me mega problems. First off is the meg. Ever since I got the meg my computer has been crashing on me several times in a row and when I press the mouse button to reset, the power light just sits there flashing away pretending it's a mobile disco.
I turn the machine off for about 30 secs but it's still the same.
Normally I have to leave it for about 15 mins before it works again. Is my meg naff? Oh better rush, I feel a Guru coming.
Daniel Cockrill, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
Sounds like the heat is on. Your ram doesn't like getting hot and goes funny when the machine has been switched on for a while. Take it back to the dealer and give him some lip.
MJ fan I AM writing to thank you for my Michael |ackson T shirt, it is very good value because it is so big I can wear it as a dress for the next two years.
I had an Acorn Electron computer but Santa broght me an Amiga 500 for Christmas. I am writing this with Protext on my Mum's IBM type PC, My Dad has an IBM type PC at work and he says that's why we had an Amiga for Christmas. He won't tell me what he means, but I think it's a joke.
Clare Pemberton, Werrington, Peterborough.
Looking for a language I AM considering buying an Amiga 500 but cannot seem to find any Pascal packages advertised for it anywhere.
Is it possible to buy Pascal for the unexpanded A500 and if so which is the best type?
I am also a bit confused about the difference between the PAL and NTSC Amigas. Is one better than the other?
Will one eventually become standard, and if so, will il be possible to change one type lo another?
Thanks for a great magazine.
Peter Hewlett, Chaldon, Surrey.
Hisoft on 0525 7)8181 can sort out your Pascal problem. All British Amigas are PAL, all American ones are NTSC generalisation . When the Enhanced Chip Set comes out - it should make 1990 IsarcasmI - the modes will be interchangeable.
If you have a PAL Amiga you should have no problems.
New BBS WOULD it be possible to let your readers know that I have just set up an Amiga-orientated bulletin board. It is called Runway A500 and is purely for Amiga users.
It can be accessed at 3007300, 1200 1200 or 2400 2400 baud, and is online 22.00 - 08:00 weekdays and 22:00 - 09:00 weekends.
.It is running on a PC with a 20mb hard disc, Quadcomm modem, and Wildcat! Software.
Runway A500 can be contacted on 0293 884117 at the hours above. It offers PD and Shareware software to members, technical support for any software hardware problems and has several message areas.
1 find some of the letters and answers in your column of great interest - in a few cases you've tackled problems just as I've hit that particular problem myself.
Please keep up the good work and the qualify of editorial that you have.
Steve Sheldon, Crawley, Sussex.
Piracy aid HAS anyone else spotted Mirrorsoft's mistake on Falcon?
Browsing through the key disc I found details of the copy protecAdding icons I BOUGHT the spreadsheet G Calc from Digita soon after buying the Amiga. The files il produces do not have a corresponding info file and therefore no icon on tho Workbench. How can I produce such an icon or even info file to enable me to move the files around, copy or delete them more easily?
I know I can do all these operations from CL1 but that involves a lot of disc swapping at my stage of understanding of AmigaDos. I am sure that 1 can't be the only one who would value such a program. 1 would even send S10 to Augustus Gloop, Sweetnes and Light Blvd.
Ca. ( or whoever), if the program is available as shareware.
I think the magazine is great on tion routines, source code and link routines. Plus examples of all of them.
I'm no hacker, cracker or anything else, but it wouldn't take an idiot to figure this one out. Try looking at block 0883 and you'll see what I mean.
They've even left the telephone number of the guy who wrote the protection stuff. Bit silly if you don't want your game cracked.
I recently had a problem with my power supply unit. The Amiga booted perfectly but the keyboard was dead, it just sat there flashing the caps lock LED.
I tried to reset the psu but to no avail. In the end I unpluged it from the mains, waited a minute, then shorted each output pin to the outer shield on the plug.
Bingo, it now works again. 1 can only suspect the keyboard supply voltage tripped for some reason and held itself off.
Dave Harrison, Milton Keynes, Bucks.
Shorting out pins on a PSU sounds a very, very silly thing to do.
Mirrorsoft? Yeah, they did it with Xenon II too.
Erm, well... WHY did the Amiga Computing with F-29 on the cover have February 1989 on it? Now that no coverdisc is included, will there be a partial refund for people (like me] who have already paid £5 too much?
Why is it illegal to copy games the basis of the two issues 1 have bought. Do you give away a different file viewer every month?
(...only joking!)
Now back to the books and the low end of the learning curve.
Colin Mercer, Bradshaw, Bolton.
Gluing an icon to a file is simple if you don't want to run the program.
You can steal the .info file from another program, say shell.info. Using CLI copy shell.info to data.info to put an icon which looks like the shell on a file called data.
Augustus Gloop eh? Yup. I used to be a fan of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, but I'm grown up now.
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FasT'.ire____ Franse 'en P u»v.re war* .---- PERIPHERALS
Replacement mouse • mouse holder, mouse mat ....£29.95 Four
Player Adaptor £S,95 Mouse Mat ......£495
Joystick Extender .£595 Oust
Cover £4 95
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13. 99 1599 Quarter Back ..... Quasi lor
T»mB Bird ..... Red
Heat ..
Renegade ...-...... Rick Dangerous
.. ...13.99 ...19.99 ...13.99 .
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Hangar ... Run the
R. V.F. Honda .... Rad Storm
Rising ...... Risk________Z_________________
Raly Croat .. Roadwars . 16.99
....13.99 .-15.99
- 15.99 ._. 13.99 12-99 1399 Hinfar-- HudOrMna- HAT£------ Heavy
Mattl__ Mound « Shadow--------------- Hoi
Shot ....-.....
- --1699
- .13.99 Roc* and RoP_______
S. E-U.CJC------------------- Scramble
Sp*mts ...... Space Hanrer (Nree)- SK?"*"-1-
13. 99 .12 99
- .13.99 ....1X99 Indiana Jonaa (Lucaa Firm) Indiana Jonaa (US
QoW)_ invan hoa ..
- --16 99 ______13.99 1X99 Sp*« Ace---- Space Savage-- .29
99 ...1X99 Iron Lord____ Iron
Tracker .._ .... Waallon____________________
Newheee . ____19.99
- ---12.99
- ---16.99 ___15.99 Stnder_____ St ah .. ....
Space Quest III______________-
SpeedbaH---------------------------- ...13.99 .... 13.99
19. 99 ... 16.99 24 99 ...12.99
19. 99 .12.99 Jack Boor .. JackTha
Ripper .... Jumping Jackson
. _____16.99 .12.99 .12.99
Steve Davis Snooker .
S. T.O.S ..... Story So Far 1
(Compilation) Story So Far 3 (Compilation) Stunt
Car ..
ShnoW . Street Fighting
Man .... Scroll ... ______
________________________ Kanny Dalgiah Soccer Match .
Ku« I ...... Kick 0« Kick Off Extra Tima ... Kiysia . Killing Gama Show . Krypton X KNOMOfOd----------------------- Laaar Squad .._ ... legend of Dial laaura Suft Larry II_______________ Lgntlorce (Compaaton) ... .13.99 ______15.99
- ------12.99 ...9.99 .19.99
12. 99 15 99 13.99 .13 99 ...12.99
- -----15 99 ______12.99 _____16.99 ___19.99 _____16 99 Starwars
Compilation .. Shufflepuc*
Cafe . Super Scramble Smelalor
... Sveer Wonderboy__________________ Spheed-----------
Swapng Gods lie---------------- 16.99 ...13 99 .13 99 . .1X99
...19.99 .15.99 Law Nadi ¦_ loat Patrol
- 16.99
- -16.99 .1399 Slayer....-----
Stomajrd____________________ Shade* of me Beast 1X99 1X99 24
99 Lvwpool- Lancaster ___15.99 1299 Star Ba a_ Super Quirt* 13
15. 99 laat Stuntman--- ManUW __12.99
13. 99 Super Can_____ Sm Cay ...... .13
99 19 99 Mane M«««n___ Meroprose Soccar . __16.99
......15.99 Samt and GrvavWa ... Sevan Gataa of
Jampala .. ...13 99 .... 12.99
MxJwmtar____________________ Max .or*aor Moonwafkar ____15.99
- -»299 1399 Star Command...... Super Laag..e Socrer
Survivor ...
1999 .... 16.99
- 15 99 u* 1 Mscny- « Correlate* V*va 8pi*T4 n h,a wirnot Zea e-4
S*o Non* and Sovm N ve*mind Onega ------ -------. 1- -11,
Oowwcn Thv'OarbO* Onareaf 1699 1999 1399
* 399 1390 . '599
• 399 24 99
* 399
• 599 TV Sports Football .... Trivial Pursur
(Family Edition) Take Em Out ......
Theme Park .. Turbo
Buggies ..... TV Sports Basketball
TlnUn ..... The
Gala* Thnll time Platinum
(Compilation) Tower of Babel..-
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TITLE COMP COST TOTAL COST £ Name____ Address.. Tel No------------------------- Have you ordered from us before Yes ?
AMC April y----- Ladbroke Computing (C .....JK International v
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Phone us for best prices. We will try to match any price.
V* «re vuctl Bc« Dwfcr by tic reukre of ST Vfald Mudc ac I"* cur tudomrre the bet »v.iW* Knit fium, bo* tut *m (""* * M OrmAWi rud mi ihn»*h cur Mail onfcr dqurunoii u the AND HUCBS, SHOP WITH US. All Sofi»«re aid lUidwur (¦ fully Ktcd prior m puaftuc. All hirtnit a *1 « *• crginecri » tia *)-*» lum amund ret all reptin it guuaitcd There
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TOR TUP. BEST SHKVKT hddcn curaa All pran n.lmfc VAT.
(rifiardadrit, «c are alwayt h py 10 he v Vi Peripherals Monitors Amiga Drives 40 80 track £ 129.99 £ 2.99 y iH A2000 PC-XT bridgeboard £ 558.99 A2000 PC-AT bridgeboard £ 792.99 Master sound sampler £ 34.99 2Mb RAM expansion for A500 £ 539.99 Midi Master 1 in, 1 thru, 3 out £ 32.99 AMAX Mac emulator £ 124.99 AMAX with I28K Mac ROM's £ 229.99 AMAS Sound sampler £ 91.99 Digi-view gold V3.0 £ 137.99 Semi-Professional quality genlock £ 275.99 Studio quality genlock £ 793.99 Philips 8833 colour, stereo monitor. A bestselling monitor which exploits the excellent sound quality of the Amiga. £249.99
Philips 8802 colour, mono monitor £239.99 Philips 15" FST Remote, Scart input. Teletext Tv with 60 tuner presets. £ 259.99 Vortex 40Mb £ 499.99 Supra 30 Mb £ 674.99 Thinl Coast 65 Mb £ 659.99 Cumana I Mb floppy, disable switch and through port (New slimline low noise model CAX 354) £ 74.99 Cumana 1Mb 5 1 4" floppy drive, disable switch and through switch(CAX lOOOS).
pisk drive dustcover r Commodore 1084 phone port.
An Amiga to scart cable is included with monitors only.
Price Beaters A4 Flat Bed Scanner Joysticks from £4.99 Trak ball converted to work as mouse on Amiga £19.99 Mouse mats from £5.99 A500 Dustcover £3.99 Printer Dustcover £7.99 Monitor Dustcover £4.99
3. 5" disk care kit £5.99 80 100 disk box £9.99 This high quality
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and come complete with Amiga cable (0772) 203166 Fax 561071
IadinAc ompuirg Intcrr.dicnsl t a tradm name of Wallm
Mulcting limned. Cop d* 12 02 40 for one's own use - after
all the games are dear enough in the first place, and my
Amiga has destroyed two or three already.
If 1 am not allowed to back programs up, I just won't buy them in the first plaice. I hasten to add that 1 have never copied anything that I am not allowed to, and will not in the future. Thanks for a great magazine anyway. Good booklet on the Feb cover as well.
Pete Sparkes, Langport, Somerset.
The lame excuses department, otherwise kno-wn as Simon, claims that it was deliberate to make up for the magazine always being on sale the month before the cover date, and this was an attempt to regain the lost months.
Ife know better than that, don't we boys and girls. Vie know a cock- up when we see one.
Subscribers will gel extra copies lo make up for the lack oja disc.
Why is il illegal to grow cannabis if it is only jor horticultural satisfaction and not for smoking? It's because you alight he honest enough not to give any copied discs away, and I might be just a humble gardener but there are far too many dishonest people around, and so it is the act which must he legislated against and not the intent.
Moving up, moving in 1 AM going to upgrade to a B2000 and internal hard drive very soon, depending on what your answers to my questions are. 1 have looked through many magazines and 1 think I have found where 1 will get them from.
The 1.3 rev 6 82000 is being sold by Third Coast Technologies at £099. They say the one being sold by Compost at £799 is imported. If so. Will it be a PAL machine? The hard drive I have found is being sold by Club 68000.
It is a 40 meg 24 msec auto boot NEC file card at £479. Do you know if I will need a controller for this or will it be on the card already? Will it be faster than the A590? If you don't know about this drive can you recommend a good internal hard drive for around the same price?
Stuart Bridges.
British laws mean that price fixing is illegal, so anyone can sell an Disc death FIRSTLY let me congratulate you on ditching the cover disr Sound move, if I want PD Til spend £2.50 on a disc Right, down to basics. As more people venture into the world of the Amiga there are going to be more cries for help like that from Pcnnie Jones, (letters Jan 1990).
Let me take you back to early 1988 when men were men.
Women were women and I discovered a mouse had two buttons. I knew nothing about our cream coloured friend.
Thanks solely to your magx-Ane running basic tutorials on CL1, Basic and even Workbench. I now write my own demos.
The point is, why don't you. For a minimal charge, offer photocopies, reprints or even, gasp, a Hivr witfi rhaaa basic tutorials On it?
I'm sure a now amigan would want, for example, a CU tutorial Hi.j- Especially as the only other Amiga for whatever price they like.
This annoys computer manufacturers. Who would rather keep prices the same and allow dealers enough profit to support the machine.
You might be better ofj buying from a more expensive dealer in case things go wrong.
Commodore cannot stop companies buying machines in one country and selling them in another. It could have a standard worldwide price, but this is far loo sensible.
I'm not sure that Compost machines are imported. Even if they were, most Amiga 2000s are made in Germany and you'd be getting pretty much the same deal.
Watch out for funny keyboards and a German manual. All European machines are PAL The Club 68000 drive gets a transfer rate of up to 500k per second and Paul Share at the Club says it is DMA so at that price it is a pretty good deal. It includes a controller.
The controller with the best reputation is the Microbiotics Hardjrame. Sold here by Oasis (01- 859 99361. It costs £219 and doesn't include the hard drive.
With a decent 40 meg unit it will work out a bit dearer. Everything is faster than the .4590. which comes as standard with a slow XT drive.
OK so you can change it for a SCSI, but what do you do with the old one?
You could wait for the way is spend £13.00 on a book.
Plus, this also solves your problem of getting rid of all those surplus coverdiscs you're trying to flog.
While on the subject of discs. 1 have over 200 and the only ones to go down have been branded (Nashua or Vorbatim). True, you can get the disc replaced, but you've lost data.
I currently buy the cheapest I can get my hands on (60p a disc] and have had no complaints in over a year.
Anyway Tm going to stop here and start on another letter. If Eayal Teler can so can L N A1 don't use Protext.
Dave Harrison, Milton Keynes, Bucks.
Billion Keynes eh? Explains a lot.
You are rare in your approval of our dropping the disc. But then people only usually write to complain.
Commodore 2091 but you might go grey in the meantime.
Oh. Watch out for revision 6 boards, they have timing problems.
The latest release is 6.2. which is fine.
Tale of woe MY son is doing a BTEC course on computer studies. Just over a year ago we bought him an Amiga A500. The machine expired just after the guarantee. The internal drive broke. That was the beginning of our problems. We have spent a fortune on telephone bills to various companies to obtain a new internal disc drive.
We have spoken to one of the companies advertising in your magazine and asked them whether they do a new internal disc drive.
They sent an external disc drive.
This we sent back and asked to have our money refunded.
We rang Commodore in Maidenhead and were told that ihe Amiga A500 was manufactured and produced in Germany. They gave us the telephone number of a company in Birmingham who we were told were the main UK distributors for Commodore spares.
On phoning them, they did not seem to want to know and gave us some telephone numbers in the London area to contact. To date we have had no joy.
We have telephoned numerous places advertising in your magazine, but all they seem to have for sale are external drives. My son requires his computer for when he starts again at college.
If this is a typical example of what buying Commodore is like, never again will we purchase such a machine. Having bought your magazine since we purchased the computer, I would appreciate if you would convey my views on the service we have not received through your magazine.
Perhaps some of your readers could suggest ideas for improvement of such pathetic service as we have received to date from Commodore and the indifference of others concerning just the replacement of a spare part for a computer.
A. V. Brilus, Cheshunt, Herts.
Death of a process I Wol 1.1) like lo run ulilily pro* grants from my startup sequence such as dock, hul jfler running lhe startup sequence CI.Is window remains open. How could 1 relurn control to Ihe remaining startup sequence commands and loading Workbench and sending (XI output lo ML while the utility program is running?
Ko a Molnvi Isfahan.
Shahin. Iran.
The l.'.i Version of Hun Ids you close windows. Pul Ihe command run clock into your startup sequence. If you want lo keep using 1.2 you need a program called Hunback. .1 popular PI).
Prog il is usualh used with Mrusx. Xul all programs work with his. .1 good PD library should hai e u copy.
Hidden power WHEN my family first bought an Amiga 500 in the last days of 1988 1 had already done some research.
It was with surprise that when the Amiga was powered up it showed the hand picture and strangely 1.3. I knew that somehow we had stumbled across an Amiga with Kickstart version 1.3. but sadly Workbench version 1.2. It was only during the summer that Kickstart version 1.3 became AMIGA SOUNDBLASTER S* u' Everyone knows lhal the Amiga has excellent sound capabilities. Televisions and monitors do not produce hi-li sound output, so until now it has been impossible to connect your Amiga to an amplifier to appreciate the sound quality.
The Amiga SOUNDBLASTER is a small amplifier that comes complete with two high quality 50 watt 3-way speakers. It is easily connected to your Amiga and adds a new dimension to all your games.
Tilt Amplilier Frff StiREO HikOPHOMS This unit has Men designed and hum in the UK sptcfficalty lor use with ihe Amiga II uses Ihe We are onnng away a pair ol stereo headphones free with every SOUNDBLASTER lor a limned latest microchip technology to produce a hetty S watt per channel ol high Quality sound. Twin period These headphones plug into the SOUNDBLASTER allowing you to listen without volume controls allow bom volume and balance to M set and a LED indicates that the unit is m disturbing the neighbours!
Operation The amplifier connects to me Amiga via me monitor socket. It also has a through connector to allow the amplifier and a monitor to t e plugged m together fh . The SOUNDBLASTER package is completed with a mams adaptor to power me amplifier and The speakers that come with the SOUNDBLASTER are 50 watt 3 way speakers and arecon tamed man attractive hi tecenclosure. Tnesoeakerssoundassuperbas they look thanks toapowertul Payment is accepted over Ihe telephone with VISA & ACCESS cards or through the post by 3' woofer foi ail the low tones, a 2* m ifl • range speaker tor an the m iddle
notes a nd a ti ny r tweetei cheque, postal order, eurochegue. Bank drafts etc for all the top of the scale tones. The speakers connect to tne ampirher via 2 5M ol cade f0._ AVAILABLE NOW ONLY E44.99 . £2 for postage SIREN SOFTWARE. 84-86 PRINCESS STREET, MANCHESTER M1 6NG X-COPY II Version 2.1 NEW NEW NEW NEW X-COPY II is the ultimate disc duplication system for your Amiga. This superb program is not just a back up system, it also incorporates a full disc editing program.
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SIREN SOFTWARE, 84-86 PRINCESS STREET, MANCHESTER M1 6NG TEL 061 228 1831 WARNING 1988 Copyright Act - Siien Soltware neither conpones or authorises Ihe use ol its software for Ihe leproPuction ol copyrighted material The facilities ottered by X-COPY are intended to back up useis own software. PD software and other such programs where pemtissioo has been explicitly given.
It is illegal to make copies of copyright material with the permission ol the copyright holder standard in A500s. Now one year later, and as the guarantee had expired, we decided to clean up the Amiga. It led to us disassembling it to wash the casings.
A satisfied customer - have him stuffed Guess what was inside? Only four memory chips on the main circuit board (revision 6A), not 16 as shown in the schematics at the back of the manual. A further four sockets are visible. In other words, this is an Amiga that uses one megabit chips, not 256 bit chips, and can have a whole megabyte of chip ram on the main circuit board.
And we've had our Amiga for just over a year!
U34 was also replaced with a daughterboard containing two chips and a flying lead. Does this suggest it's a prototype A500? Do I have a Fat Agnus II (is there a test?), and can I make the modification? (We have an A501.)
I would also like to say what an excellent magazine Amiga Computing is. It's good that your magazine covers the more serious aspects of the Amiga, not just games.
But why did you stop the cover discs? 1 guess that some younger people may not he able to afford Ihe magazine at £2.95 or even make use of the disc without a hard disc (all the disc swaps involved! But I could make use of the cover discs and have looked forward to them every month.
Now that I have just sent in my subscription I would've liked the option of having a cover disc each month.
I've never played the games but have marvelled at jolyon's "law- breaking metal-scraping" demos, with the rest of the cover disc such as Workbench version 1.3.2 going on to my A590. Please bring back the cover disc for those subscribers who want them.
Mouse problems? There are two species of Amiga mice, one made in Hong Kong, the other in Malaysia.
The Hong Kong mouse has cal- culator-style buttons internally with a push forward door for the ball; the other has microswitches and a circular door for the ball. I should know, we started of with a Hong Kong mouse, now we have a Malaysian species.
[ohn Christopher Lee, London, Unclean 1 PURCHASED AMIGA Computing as it stated that it had the new verEXCELLENT service! And I'm mil talking about Boris Becker. Town Computers of Town Road. Hanley, Staffordshire, sold me an A500 Iasi year and I found Ihem lo lie most helpful and free to offer useful advice.
I later bought a memory expansion and two external disc drives.
I nfortunalelv. When I installed the drives the computer failed to bool.
I returned the machines and drives the next day and had Ihem tested. The fault lay in the drive port on my computer and this had lo he returned lo Commodore under warranty. When I explained that I was developing software on my machine I was offered the loan of another A.iOO without any fuss.
Sion 1.3.2 Workbench upgrade.
After using your script facility to put the new software on to my current Workbench 1.3,1 had the following error message when the workbench is loading: Pure bit not set.
Please can you tell me if this is correct, as I appear to be having some difficulty in using other types of software on this new Workbench but that could be because there is a fault on it. Thank you for your help.
R. W. Travel!, New Milton, Hampshire.
I don't know. If you don't read the instructions you can't expect it lo work. The Readme file explains this - execute the Readme file and all will be tickerty-boo.
Lucky begger WHAT a really fantastic mag this is, Anyway I'm building up an Amiga system: dfl; 512k upgrade and printer, but have hit a snag.
Hard drives are expensive, therefore I would be very grateful if you could send me one free (20 megs will do for now) thanks.
Now on to my problem with Workbench. Putting my favourite programs on to a single disc is tough. Not that 1 don't know what to do, but there just isn't enough room. Crunching and removing unwanted files helps a little but still doesn't solve the problem.
What would be ideal, is if the Workbench could be booted from The machine was returned promptly and was tested before I collected it. I might also add that I enjoy reading your magazine and found it most useful when I was considering purchase of my A500.
Would it he possible lo have a series of articles on elemental machine code and C programming? I find the reader offers department to be of great value also. I find that the reviews are well written and. Unlike many magazines, manage to include humour without being silly.
Would it also be possible to include slighllx more programs lo type in. Such as the excellent Model t niverse program.
This was the first program that I dfO:; and the program icons from
dll) : and dfl: could both be loaded into the one window. Thus
letting me load up my favourite programs from the one window
without even touching the Shell.
Can you please also recommend a good book to really explore AmigaDos, telling me how much it will cost and where to get it from.
Last but not least (who's said that before?) Please would you print a few lines on why my A level computing teacher should invest the school's money on an Amiga system.
Look forward to the hard drive, oh yes, and the reply.
Simon Vernon, Leek, Staffs.
Right Oh. The hard drive's in the post. Putting icons in windows when they refer to different devices is a very strange thing to do. And I can't see anyone ever being stupid enough to write one.
Your school should get Amigas because when you go out to the big, bad world you'll have to contend with lots of different computers.
Only the Amiga 2000 is compatible with the BBC. Amiga 500. IBM PC and Mac.
Soon it will run Unix which will be a very important operating system. As a graphics tool it is the most cost effective machine you can buy. And if your teacher is into music it has greater abilities than anything at a similar price.
I hope that answers your questions. By the way, I lied about the hard disc.
Typed into my Amiga and found it very useful in ilustrating the differences between the Amiga and the Commodore B4C that I previously used.
Pete Aikin.
Staffordshire, here a re no plans for a C series bocausv by Ihr lime you hove bought o copy of Manx or Lullice.
Oil Ihe documentation you'll need, and a minimum of two floppies on a I meg machine, you have spent a fortune.
Simon feels lhal not enough readers will benefit from articles which need you to spend nigh on £300 before you gel going. If you think he is wrung write to him.
Broken chips FINDING Workbench 1.2 software unusable due to constant gurus when doing anything with a window, I bought the 1.3 software.
It is an improvement, but if I get cocky with windows, opening two or three and changing their shape the guru visits me.
It is impossible to program windows with Basic, so all menus have to he simple screens. I also have a problem with games. Race games (Chase HQ and GPS) fall over regularly but I have never had a problem with F16. I suspect the 1.3 chip, maybe a particular function linked with race game scrolls, or windows is dodgy on the chip.
Therefore replacement seems a viable route. However being a spineless programmer, I wouldn't like to touch hardware until my theories are proven.
I hope that someone who has had the same problem but is now cured may write to this grand magazine and relieve some frustrated racing drivers.
I am reluctant to send my machine off to a repair centre as you often hear of machines reluming without the symptoms being f eased.
I consider it must be impossible lo pinpoint a singular minute error in something as complex as a chip, and 1 don't think their experts sit around all day playing Chase HQ wailing for Ihe machine to fall ?
AMIGA COMPUTING April 1990 29 _ over. As ivilh most everything these days, replacement is the key.
And if I can find what to replace then ii can be sent off.
Martin Ritwood, Lincoln.
Nah. When I worked in a computer shop ue didn 't spend all day playing Chase HQ H'e played Snapper, but then il was a BBC shop a long time ago.
Your Amiga is sick. More sick than just a new 1.3. It needs one of the big chips changing, one with loadsa pins. Take il back lo Dixons and sny: "This Amiga is not of merchantable quality. Ezra Surf told me to ask for o new one".
Sold to the man in the hat I HAVE a few problems lo sort, so please take a year or two off work to solve them. First of all. Best magazine around, down lo earth and humorous. 1 would like to know of any books there are in which I could find oul how to write my own comms programs.
1 am just out of the army and I am looking towards a career in j computer programming, please help (I am 18).
I have had my Amiga 500 for about a year but I haven't really got using ii until Ihe weeks before Christmas, and il totally amazes me.
Bui as I have mentioned before I am interested in communications with my computer so all advice will be heeded and gratefully appreciated.. Hero in Northern Ireland we are way behind where Amiga, software. Hardware and advice is concerned. Help me ObiWan. You are my only hope.
Russell Willis.
Newtownards, Co Down.
The Model Shop in Ihe centre of Belfast may not be the place to be seen, being totally uncool, but it has a good stock of books. There is a computer shop in Woolco down the road from you but they only sell games Han a look at some of | the public domain comms programs which come wilh source code. A go Term or FFI2 is a good place lo staH because it is simple.
Machine code oldie LAST Friday 1 discovered your magazine. On 8 bit machines all my own programming for the las!
Seven or eight years has been in assembler, and I'd prefer to do that with the Amiga.
I started programming 20 years ago by cutting cards for Fortran for IBM, ICL and Honeywell mainframes, and I have taught Basic for Ihe Beeb to social science students.
But I want to use assembler. The snag, finding the information, f have Devpac, which is good, I have one book on machine code but it uses quite a different assembler.
I've ordered the Rom Kernel Manual - includes and autodocs.
I've ordered the MC68000 book, still waiting for them.
The intuition manual is deleted, out of print, most books I look at in bookshops spend about three-quarters of the test on intro to Basic, or intro to C. 1 can program in C, but prefer assembler, and anyway Ihe price of a good C package is beyond me al the moment.
So please nail )olyon down and ask him what books make up the best library for a dedicated assembler programmer, and tell him I'm looking forward to his next article, Stan Lenton.
Leominster, Herefordshire Nailing Jolyon down is what a lot of people unnt to do. He's working on a game right now and so won't bore time to do too many articles.
Recommended books are Ihe Amiga Hardware Reference Guide from Addison Wesley and Systems Programmers Guide from Abacus, although you probably won't need both.
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£14 99 £17 99 £17 99 £21 99 £14 99 £10 99 £12 95 £22 99 £9 99 £10 99 £15 99 £12 95 £1299 £9 99 £10 99 £14 99 £999 £12 95 £999 £13 99 £1999 2199 £13 99 £13 99 £14 99 £19 99 £18 99 £13 99 £14 99 £13 99 £13 99 £11 99 £10 99 £13 99 £2199 £2199 £10 99 £1799 £2199 £2199 £1199 £26 99 £25 99 £999 £14 99 £8 99 £13 99 OetoeSfrp Poker Empre Str*es Back Europe Super League CHEQUES PAYABLE TO MCS CONSULTANTS. MCS HOUSE.
As OVERSEAS ORDERS ADO £2.58 COMPUTER SUPPLIES ESSEX CM6 ?SE Sjnp Poker 2 Plus Ghostbusters 2 £13 99 £13 99 Starr*------------------ Stum Car Rrar Shadowgate £12 99 £2199 £1099 SOI £10 99 Skate of Art Strider £10 99 £16 99 Savage ... S D World Snooker Solder o1 Lighl Sami and Gruavsie Sorcer lord £9 99 £1395 £11 99 £9 99 £10 99 Sporting Tnangles Soy Versus Spy £13 99 £9 99 Sm City £19 99 Speedbad arurttcpack Cafe £14 96 £12 99 Space Rouge £24 99 Space Ac* TnpATron £26 99 Take Em Out Three Stooges __£21 99 £13 99 £13 99 Tank Attack __________ Tunderbirss £22 99 £9 99
ThundertMade £13 99 Toobm £14 99 Thundercats_________________ Time and Magik £12 99 £10 99 Tin Tin .. Tnvtal Pursuit £14 99 £14 99 Targhan £13 99 Tetns £1099 Theider £10 99 TV Sports Foolbai Turbo Outrun £16 99 £16 99 Untouchabfes £22 99 Vmdcators £12 99 Voen £9 99 Wizbaa £10 99 Wcked Wrvrers £9 99 £16 99 Waterloo £15 99 £2199 £21 99 Xenon 2 Xybots ---------- ZortZero £14 99 £14 99 Zynaps 30 Pool £10 99 £17 99 THIRD COAST TECHNOLOGIES LTD Amiga A500 ? Batpac*--------------------£369.00 Amiga A500. 8atman Pack ? Tenstar Opbon______________________________£386.00 Amiga A2000 full UK spec
machine ..Call for details Xetec Hard Dm es are the fastest hard drives »» Xetec 45 Meg. Full SCSI 25 Milliseconds head Park ..£649.00 IVS 50 Meg.TuM SCSI 25 Milliseconds Head Parte £599 99 Xetec 65 Meg. Full SCSI 25 M4Useconds Head Parti________________ £699.00 Xetec 85 Meg. Full SCSI 25 Milliseconds Head Park___________ £799.00 Xetec 109 Meg. FuB SCSI 25 Milliseconds Head Park ..£999.00 Xetec 251 Meg Full SCSI 25 Milliseconds Head Park_____________
£1995.00 A2000 HARD DRIVES Xetec 22 Meg. Full SCSI 25 Milliseconds Head Pa «5Me; fiiiSCSI 75Milsaconds **ead Ptik 50 Me; f i i SCS 25 v * seconds -ead Park 65 Me; Fui SCS 25 vm seardt » ad Pak 85 Meg f«Ji SCS 25 M*hsecxrds need Pert 109 veg M SC$ 25 MlisecoAds *«ae *'* .
?5i Meg ;J SCSI 25 M i (seconds -e* Pe'k .
£399 00 £49900 £599 OC £649 00 f 9900 £94900 , £*89900 AMIGA A500 & A2000 RAM UPGRADES Amiga A500 1 Meg Ram Upgrade (Wc clock & switch) .. £69.99 £33900 £14900 £699 00 £1099 00 ...£249.99 ....£14900 ....£379.99 ....£399.99 Amiga A500 2 Meg Internal Ram Expansion (populated)_________ Amiga A500 2 Meg internal Ram Expansion (unpopulated) ___________ Amiga A500 4.0 Meg Internal Ram Expansion . Amiga A500 8 0 Meg Internal Ram Expansion------------------- Amiga A500 8 0 Meg Board expands m 2.4 and 8 increments (takes 1x1 0 RAMS, unpopuhM)
...... Amiga A500 2 Meg External Ram Expansion (unpoplated)...... . Amiga A500 2 Meg External Ram Expansions (populated) ... Gdam 22 Meg Full SCSI 25 Milliseconds Head Park .. Hampshire Micros COLOUR £169.00 +VAT MONO £129.00 +VAT STAR LC10 PRINTER Black ribbon £4 00 ? VAT Colour ribbon £6 00 ? VAT (with cable & paper) Philips CM8833 Colour Monitor C1S0. VAT LC24 10 Printer £199.00 . VAT Citizen 120D Printer £104.00. VAI Acorn AKF11 2 Colour Monitor £116.00. VAT Citizen Swift 24 Printer £265.00. VAT
Commodore Amiga Batpack £312.00 . VAT Panasonic 1124 Printer £239 00 . VAT Tenstar Pack £21.74 .VAT Amiga 601 Udgrade £101 . VAT Comana 11M) CAX54 £72. VAI All printer prices include Cable & Paper Panasonic KXP1081 £119.00 . VAT DISKETTES 10 3.5-1351pr DS DD ....£7.39 . VAT 3 5'Disk box lor 100 ...... £691 . VAT 3 5'Disk box lor 50 ..... £5.17. VAT
5. 5'Disk box for 120 ....£7.35 . VAT Panasonic KXP1180
- -----------------------£169.99
99 £129.99 1 Meg External 82 track court ....
1. 44 Meg 89 Track .... I External with
Track Counter Star LC-10 Mono Pnnter... Star LC-10 Colour
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5. 25 with Track Display . .....
5. 25 without Track Display.... 1 Meg Floppy Drive. I Hampshire
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885911 or FAX 885651 % NEW PRODUCTS £299.00 £249.00 £149.99
£99.99 £95 99 £499 00 £195.00 £139.99 Processor Accelerator
Mhz Accelerator will support t between 45-50% more performance
whilst mam taxing Replacement Amiga Mouse A500 & A2000
J_______________ A-Max Mac Emulator Roms________________ Amiga
A2000 8 Meg Expansion Board (Unpopulated) _ Amiga A2000 8 Meg
Expansion Populated 2 Megs .¦ Amiga A2000 8 Meg
ExpanslO tttiMBMilM Am gj A590 Upg'ase Chips 1 100 £59.95
A2000 at a later date offering future expansion
_________________£199.99 ALF MFM drive kit for A500. Offers
support ot STS06 IBM PC drives. Available with or without
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Entire kit including Enclosure host board and controller auto
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99 ALF RLL kit available at the same pnee tor people with RLL
IBM ST506 type
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ALF controller and *¦ * board without power supoly and
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host______________________________£129.99 Toolbox 3 slot or 2
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allows support of A2000 products on me A500 eg: 8 meg ram
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00 £14999 ...£24.99 £249.99 £14999
- .£349.00 £51900 £11.00
D. I.Y. kits to interface embedded SCSI hard drive or IBM PC
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Digit with built in RGB splitter______________ Professional
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RGB Splitter for colour cameras allows full colour digitising Minigen Amiga A500 & A2000 Genlock Professional Genlock Overscan. Fader, built m RGB Splitter too many features to list________________________ Rendale 8802 Genlock . Microtext Teletext Adaptors buUt In tuner----------------- X-Specs 30 Glasses, excellent tor Cad Cam shuttering gives a whole new outlook on your
• Accelerate! ..... 15-50% mof .
Compatatxbty with software 8-16 Mhz switch fit ...... inch embedded SCSI drive any capacity. Simply plugs Into side of A500 can draw power from machine or external source. Up to 4 megs of desk cache or system memory can be instKled.Oflers transler rates up to twice that of A590. Board can be removed and used In SPECIAL OFFER When you purchase one ol the above Items why not Ireal yoursell lo our super accessories De-lux Mouse Mai . £3.99 3S Head Cleaner .£1.99 100 Address Label 3W x
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AMO CABLE £174.99. AMIGA ROM KERNAL LIBRARY .. AMIGA MACHINE LANGUAGE £14.95 AMIGA PROGRAMMERS GUIDE (COMPUTE) £16.95 AMIGA PROGRAMMERS HAND61 «U ..... £2395 DUST COVERS DON'T LEAVE IT MONO & STEREO DIGITISERS '•* tr wOr* 'Mmpr JK 70KHQ o*y OHM UNO. Cui t KMIAMG* NM cn He *hO SwSsttR * scnu.Tituw SCUMDi rtre. Fantm.M*aujnrarlurtInUrrctor c tevmi waMnms TREE -SOUND WORKSHOP- DISK . , A500T2000 MONO DIGITISE RE27.991 I ASOG'2000 STEREO DtGlTISER£37.99n A500 .£5.49 A2CXO - 2 COVERS £9.99 3 S' EXTERNAL DRIVE£4.99 ICM6833.BBW MONIIDRC699 ]
10&4 S MONITOR £6.99 CITIZEN 1200 £5.99 star laaiao caouR£5 99 Flam* retardant animate PVC DRIVES' (hamel wawr.1 **xnr* wan • *' On h-noehe*.. **,»«Ur.
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Win, 3. D kcM » .,»d i0NGER LEADS MANY OTHER TYP£S AVAKABLE TO ORDER , AMP2 - *500 PARALLEL PRINTER CABLE 3 0m._________________C1C NM1 - *500 A500 NLA MODEM CABLE 1 5m _____________¦ NM2 - AMO - Al 000 NLA. MOOEM CABLE I 5m_______________________o ML1 - DEMON 4 DESIGNER A500 MODEM IEA0-----------Cl £5.99 EXTRA' ANY LENGTH MONITORS SHARERS Want to use two cou*xitor* (or I compiA*. I VCR) wilh one TV or monitor'' NO MORE toad swapping it you connect our MONITOR SHARER switch Your ciSog toads ptug m to Sharer and toad* liorr Sharer connocB to TV or Mortoor Push bulton changeover switoh can Da
used al FOR SCART Tvs 4 MONITORS USEFUL OOOS & ENDS REPLACEMENT MOUSE FOR , , AMIGA. ST. AND C64 £29.99 |_J MOUSE MAT A4. NON SLIP. RED r , OR BLUE ....£4.99! I EXTERNAL DRIVE SWITCH FOR Df 1 r , NO EXPOSED PARTS £8.99 ] 4 JOYSTICK ADAPTOR FOR 4 PLAYER , GAMES ... £8.991__I MOOULATOR SPLITTER- CONNECT, , RGB IE AO 4 MODULATOR £8.99 LJ MODULATOR EXTENSION LEAD APPROX 6'LONG £8.991 .
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Lockable Disk Boxes 50x31.2' £5.95 100x31 2- ..£7.95 Special Box and Disk Offer 100 capacity disk box only £4.95 when purchasing 50 or more disks Stationery... Stationery... Stationery... Micro-pert all edges 520 1.000 2.000
9. 5- x 11' 60gsm £9.50 £15.95 True A4 70gsm £8.50 £12.95 £23.95
True A4 80gsm £8.95 £13.95 £25.95 True A4 90gsm £9.75 £14.95
£27.95 Labels
1. 000
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3. 5"x 1.5" (1 across) £5.25 £9.50 £17.95
3. 5- x 1.5- (2 across) £5.75 £10.50 £19.95
4. 0'x 1.5" (1 across) £5.75 £10.50 £19.95
4. 0-x 1.5- (2 across) £5.75 £11.95 £22.95
2. 75" x 1.5" (3 across) £4.75 £8.50 £15.95 Accessories 31 2-
Cleaning Kit .....£4.95 Amiga 500 Dust
Cover ...£4.95 Amiga 1000 Dust
Cover .£9.50 Mouse Mai
(Foam) .....£5.95 Ribbons Canon PW1080 £2.95
Panasonic KXP 1080 ...£3.95 Cittten 1200......£3 95 Panasonic
KXP 1124 ...£4.95 Epson FXAIXRX80.....0.95 Star LC10
(Mono)---095 Epson 1X80)86----------050 Star LC10
(Cotour) C7.9S NEC P2200...... £4.95
Sta lC24-10-------------£4 95 Twi AMI Amiga 500 upgrade board
.5 to 1 Meg . .
In seconds!
? No technical expertise required ? Realtime Clock ? Low power consumption ? On off switch ONLY £72.95 inc VAT + Delivery STOP PRESS-BUY PECIAU External Drive ONLY £72.95 inc VAT + Delivery BOTH ITEMS £139.95 Order Hotline (0256) 463507 n Orders under £8 m value carry a smal order charge of £2 WE Amiga owners have always been smugly aware that the sound output from our computer comfortably outclasses any competition. Those with suitable hi-fi systems are duty bound to connect up and listen goggle- eared to the intro tunes of games. Or. Better still, the superb public domain music available.
For those without suitable sound resources the alternatives are listening to the tinny and sometimes mono sound from a monitor or television set, A more sensible approach would be to buy a custom-designed sound amplifier to provide the screams of despatched aliens in frill stereo. And, good heavens, if I don't have such a device sitting on my desk at this very moment, the Sound Blaster from Siren Software.
The amplifier is a small cream coloured box that sits neatly on top of an A500. Ft connects to the Amiga's speaker outputs, taking power from the small 12 volt transformer supplied. The sound is rated at 5 watts per channel which, when used at top whack, is extremely loud. Enough to drown out speech in a busy magazine office, for example.
Pardon? What was that. Green? Oh. 1 said: Loud enough to drown out speech in a magazine office!
The only controls on the unit are the two oversized volume knobs, one for each stereo channel. This neatly sidesteps the need for a balance control, the only drawback being that if you need silence in a hurry - say to answer the telephone you have to twiddle two knobs instead of one. The speakers are of excellent quality. They are three-way (woofer, mid-range and tweeter) car speakers rated at 50 watts a-piece.
Small enough to sit on your desk.
They provide a good stereo image with only marginal distortion at the highest volume settings; 1 connected them to a portable CD player and they gave better results than the originals. A very acceptable two-and-a-half metres of cable is provided, enabling the speakers to be placed where they will give best results.
Documentation, however, is disappointing. After all the trouble spent on getting the unit to look pretty, a hurried A4 instruction sheet is a serious letdown. Maybe the piece of paper I got isn't the finished version, because it labelled the power supply socket incorrectly. Thankfully, the unit itself has all the connections clearly marked.
As an added bonus, and "for a limited period only folks". Siren is supplying a pair of free stereo headphones. These are bog standard units and connect to the spare socket on the amplifier. If you want to listen in private you must remember to unplug the main loudspeakers, because they do not cut out automatically.
If I had to criticise the Sound Blaster, then I would say that it should have had different types of socket to connect the speakers and the power supply, avoiding completely the danger of sending 12 volts up the wrong hole.
But with an amplifier the sound Audiophile John Kennedy tries to make himself heard above the noise of his new toy quality is of paramount importance, everything else takes second place.
Sound Blaster is loud and, although not quite up to System A standards, it is of high fidelity.
You owe it to your Amiga to hear it through a decent set of speakers.
When you do. Make sure you let the ST owner down the street know all about it.
RKPORT CARD Sound Blaster Siren Software 061-228 1831 £44.99 + £2 p&p EASE OF USE... Possible confusion with the sockets loses it a few marks.
VALVE . ¦¦HE The speakers alone must cost this.
PERFORMANCE Loud, clear sounds.
(ALKALI. 7«% Competition winners V£ need 10 bring you up lo dole on o few competition winners: Wayne Gretzky's hockey outfit was won by David Fairweather of Middlcshorough: the lucky person who will be flying with D1 is Ken Holland of Wureham in Dorset: end driving in the rest Lone will be Un Timson of Clitheroe. Lancs.
Well done ell of you. Wo hope you enjoy your prizes.
Good old Green THANKS to the vigilance of Amiga Computing's Nik "Green" Vcitch. Geir.rs pleyers hevc been sevod from e rusty dose of The Pentagon Cude Virus which wes on the review copy of Leisure Genius's Risk.
Quick es e flesh he conquered South Eest Asie while Jeff celled Lesley Welker et Virgin to wem her of the r,-'l~g**r Portunelcly only 20 infected copies got out, so the copy of Risk you buy in the shops (end you should - it's jolly good) will bo virus free.
Perbeps the reel preise should go to cunning Cenedien Steve Tibhett: it wes our mete's program.
VirusX 4.0, which spotted the I f Amiga Arcade THERE is e kind of megic which the Bitmep Brothers conjure up when they code e creation. Xenon.
Speedbell end even Xenon II which wes written for the 3umeps by Tne Assembly Line show the pojj*hed progremming end silver surfeces which ere the Brotbors hallmark.
Even programming are only bom with one pair of hands, so to setisfy the Amige world's hunger for Bitmep Brothers' programs they heve hired some help.
Den "Antired" Melone. Rob "Driller" Qupmen. Steve "Beverly Hills Cop" Tell end the artificially intelligent RnbTrovollyen.
The enhencod teem will produce Speedbell 0. E sequel to the hugely successful futuristic sports gome.
Steve Tell is working on e secret project end the originel leas ere working herd to polish Cedevar.
Un isometric 3D gemo which will '¦-ill [ho BM's reputetion for producing gemes which ell look the Bitmaps breed for Speed ball sequel COMPETITION for the best t'ootic gemo is hotting up. The newest end fleshiest contender is Emlyn Hughes Intcrnetionel Soccer from Audiogenic. The pleyebility is cluimod to be unsurpessed with ection et SO hemes e second end digitised sound so gooo you you League winners might es well bo et e mutch.
Budding Scline Scotts will enjoy the Teem F'ii'i'r which e fesh- ion design option. Teilor the cut L end pettems of the stnp.
Full leegue and championship games can be played. The opposing cxhibil artificial intelligence (so it isn't quite like the reel thing).
Played on a full PAL pitch it is the result of G.'.ih«iSe Blighe working on different versions for a couple of years concentrating on the games programming and AI.
Terry Wiley has worked on the front end. While the graphics are by Andrew Calver. A spokesman for the company said: "Its in a different league", but then you have to expect that son of thing from Cary.
Pricey parrots All the latest news on the games software scene SOMEWHERE deep in the heart of the Amazonian jungle there beats a drum. Softly at first, and then louder, the insistent beating awakens our hero. Kid, from a deep, drug-like sleep. He wakes slowly.
With difficulty (a bit like Greenl confused and uncertain (a lot like Green], The last thing he can remember is pulling on an old pair of boxing gloves that he found in his uncle's attic.
And now here he is surrounded by trees and shrieking parrots.
Thore's something odd going on here.
No there isn't, it's just Kid Gloves, a platform game from Logotron set against scenes of the Ice Age. Rain forests, the Industrial Revolution, tho pyramids of (oh no not again!) Egypt and the psychedelic West Coast of the Swinging Sixties.
REVIEWED In the shops now at £24.99, which seems a bit pricey for a Bombjack-cum-Rick Dangerous rip-off.
THIS MONTH 95% Pipemania 91% Austerlitz 90% X-Oul 89% Hound of Shadow 86% Starflight 86% Super Cars 81% Dr Plummets House of Flux 80% Untouchables 78% Operation Tbnderbolt 71% Demons Tomb 69% Vortex 67% Gold of the Americas 65% Fifth Gear 65% Kick Off Extra Time 52% Space Ace 1 MAX HACKS • Weird Dreams • Space Ace • Arkanold II • IK+ Kid Gloves- ladders and platforms from Logotron Gallup Chart Hard Drivin' Domark £19.99 Ghostbusters II Activision £24.99 FOR the first time ever the development of an arcade machine and its home computer conversion is progressing in parallel.
Klax, the Atari coin-op, was unveiled at the amusement trade exhibition at Olympia, but won't be shipped into the arcades until mid-April to coincide with the all- format release of the Tengen computer version.
Based on a very simple concept, Klax has you catching coloured tiles as they roll down the screen and flipping them into bins below.
The aim is to arrange the tiles in lines of three of the same colour.
It sounds easy, and it is, until the tiles start rolling down faster than you can catch them.
Check it out. Sounds like it could be the next Tetris.
Extra Time Anco £9.99 Shadow of the Beast Psvgnosis £34.95 Batman - The movie Ocean £24.95 Double Dragon 2 Virgin Mastertronic £24.95 A Kick 00 VI Anco £19.99 RE 1A S lv £49.99 NE HOW long do you think the experts at Amiga Computing spend reviewing a game? A day? A week? Well here is a program which has been under test for a year. That's how long it is since I first saw a game which was then called Pipeline. And it is as fresh today as it was in the spring of '89.
When you have a game with a zillion evil aliens or a film star in the title role it is easy to understand how it can be enthralling.
Abstract games are harder to understand, but often just as much fun.
Pipe Mania has a shade more plot than Tetris, and a tad loss than Bombuzal. But it rates alongside those two as one you can't put down. A real "It's three in the morning so I'll just have one more game" jobbie.
The pipe has got to be built, presumably because that is what you do with pipes. For every extra bit you add on you score more points.
Sections are added against time, they come off one - easy mode - or two - experts only - stacks. In a two player game each player has one of these, but when playing solo you can choose which stack to use.
You can see five shapes ahead in each stack. This allows you to build in an unconnected area and then join the sections up later.
Playing two player is vicious, you need to absorb so much information where the pipe is. What your shapes are and most importantly what your opponent is planning.
When the time limit expires all pipes must be connected, but if you use a cross-shaped tube the s then i fresh tf 89.
With a star in inder- tlling.
Ler to much more sthan igside 'I put n Ihe more
t. fre- it you mbit tints, time, e-or . M a it has g solo t use.
Tad in »u to i and ious, infor- what npor- plan- es all tut if a the score, and end pipes. These are really taxing because the stacks will appear to conspire against you, forcing the pipe away from the end.
The graphics have been spruced up considerably in the past year. In most respects this is an improvement, however sometimes arrows which show Ihe direction of flow in one-way pipes are a bit difficult to see.
The sound is similarly lukewarm. The left-over pieces exploding at the end sound a lot like Michael Barrymore's ''awright", and the simple tune is a let-down on the Amiga.
Still it is the gameplay which matters and which shines. This is a case of a game where the score doesn't tell the whole truth, I've played it nearly every day for the past year. Nothing else comes close in addictiveness.
Simon Rockman side pipes do not need lo be linked. A liquid then runs down the pipe and you are awarded points for each section filled. As the liquid runs along you can add bits of pipe, but eventually you'll fill the screen or the gunge will catch up with you.
To help you there are reservoirs which slow down Ihe flow. Make sure an early bit of pipe goes to one of them.
You must fill a minimum number of elements to progress to the next level. Any segments of unused pipe on the screen are destroyed at a cost of 100 points. This can be especially annoying when you have built a long loop and missed out one section which renders connected pieces redundant.
As you progress through Ihe levels there are more hazards and bonuses to be found. There are funny fish-shaped blocks which get in the way of your path-building, pipes which give you a bonus Overall - 95% even when outnumbered, as was the case at Austerlitz.
Although the Russians were taken somewhat by surprise to find that the army they had come to relieve no longer existed, they still had superior numbers and a better position on the Pratzen Heights, three miles west of Austerlitz.
Austerlitz is held up as one of Napoleon's most decisive and strategical)' brilliant victories, not least by the man himself. However, given the facts which have emerged since the battle, it seems not so much a miracle of military genius as a foregone conclusion.
Alexander was relatively inexperienced and was in command of a very pick-and-mix force of Austrians and Russians, most of whom had not seen much action either. Anyono with more intelligence than my hamster could've beaten them. Anyway here is your chance to try.
Austerlitz is the latest Napoleonic battle to receive the Peter Turcan treatment, the last effort from this section of the PSS stable being Waterloo which got an excellence award in the November issue back in the good old 1980s.
For those of you who don't remember it, didn't get it or have lost, burnt or eaten that issue, I will give you a run-down on the playing system again.
Napoleonic wars were one of the fl-'oSSot MOV NAPOLEON is regarded as one of history's greatest generals alongside the likes of Lee. Patton.
Rommel and Julius Ceasar. He was certainly the greatest of his period, as is demonstrated from his rise from the Corsican middle-class to the throne of an empire which at times included the host part of Europe.
It was his skill as a politician as much as anything which reserved him a place in history. He was the darling of the French people and the army. On his way back from exile in Elba the royalist armies sent out to capture him refused to harm their Emperor and ended up joining his ranks. As Wellington said shortly before Waterloo, "His hat on the field is worth 50.000 men."
His superb multi-tasking brain (he was known to dictate upwards of three letters simultaneously) made him a fearsome opponent most interesting periods of warfare.
Large armies were not uncommon when the world was still gripped by the imperial fever. The techniques involved had to encompass use of both fairly ancient modes of war such as lancers and more progressive technology like muskets.
This not only made it difficult for the generaLs of the period, but also for anyone trying to simulate the strategies involved Among the more interesting details that Dr Ttotan takes into account are the fragile chain of command and intelligent corps commanders.
This means that not only might your orders not get to the specified corps but when they arrive - which can take several hours - the local commander may decide he has special knowledge of which you are not aware and simply bin them.
All the offensive and defensive plays of the time are supported, with individual units adopting line column and square formations to suit the situation. The morale of the combatants is also ten- important Orders are issued in plain English using a system which actually makes sense and adds to the realistic feeling of the simulation 1 say simulation because this is not jnst a wargame. But a highly accurate account of a historical situation. The attention to detail is superb.
The graphics are wonderful but they're not jnst gloss, you need to look around to find out what's going on - there is no overhead map depicting units.
The day is broken up into units of 15 minutes, perhaps because this is a nice manageable unit in terms of movements and overall gametime, but perhaps also because Napoleon once said "A bottle may be won or lost in a quarter of an hour."
To my knowledge this series is the only worthwhile simulation of Napoleonic warfare and I only hope it will continue.
Luanda Orr AN illegal race, a fast car and lots of weapons. Sounds like fun? If you answered yes.
Then apart from saying a lot about your state of mind, you'll be interested in Hevrson's latest contribution to road safety.
The game concentrates on making control of the car the main challenge, something which will have the less patient throwing down joysticks in frustration.
The view is from above and slightly behind, so if you are careful you can drive behind the various objects scattered around.
If you persevere visit the local QuickFit for extra fuel, guns and ubiquitous extra weapons. More enemy cars and helicopters turn up to be shot at I can't help feeling that if tbete was an established range of budget games for the Amiga, this would be one of them. At the asking price.
Fifth Gear gets tedious, John Kennedy OPERATION THUNDERBOLT If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it anyway Kidnapping arabs have boarded an airliner, forced it to land in hostile territory and taken hostages What, again? Well I don't care - it keeps me in work.
I'm hard, see? 1 wear combat gear and cover my face is black makeup. And I've got a machine gun.
It's my job to solve problems like this without any of that sissy negotiation stuff, just get in there and machine gun everything that moves.
If one or two hostages get burned, well that's their problem.
They shouldn't have been flying with arab airlines in the first place.
First 1 have to make contact with Intelligence. Intelligence is not something I have had much contact with, but I'm sure I'll recognise it when I see it. Unless I shoot it first, hur hur.
Hey. Here's a cat. Get out of the way, cat. Oops. Stupid cat. I shot it.
It shouldn't have been on an arab street in the first place.
The arabs are throwing all they've got at me. Guns, knives, hand grenades, even tanks and helicopters. You name it. In fact everything that the commies used the last time 1 went on a mission, the code name Wolf operation.
This time 1 have a laser-sighted machine gun. As long as I get the equipment and ammunition floating down on the parachutes that is.
Plus I got a buddy with me this time. Walking down the street beside mo, just as keen to clean up this gutter town as 1 am. Those dirty stinking arab commies don't have a chance.
What's this? A dog now. Get out of the way.. Oops. Stupid dog. It shouldn't have been on an arab street in the first place. It seems to have left some ammo for me as well. Never mind. It was probably brain washed.
Riding on the jeep makes a change. So do the attacking jet aircraft. They're really taking this attack personal, aren't they?
Hey! What's this! They've shot my mate! Those darn pinko subversives! I'll get you all!
Right, I'm in the plane now. And the last kidnapper is hiding behind the pilot. There is a good chance that I'll hit him as well. Oh what the heck.. I've always wanted to learn to fly.. The graphics in Operation Thunderbolt could not really be bettered in this type of game, with the possible exception of the slightly less than impressive 3D scrolling.
The large enemy sprites jump out from all directions, blazing away with their guns quickly and lobbing all sorts of nasty things towards you.
Playing with a mouse means you'll need to pick up a laser sight to get anywhere, as without it you can only tell where you are aiming by the impact the bullets make. Not a good technique with limited ammo. With the sight, a small coloured dot appears over whatever you are about to blow away.
The joystick option comes with the sight as standard, perhaps to make up for the impossible lack of speed. Another game where a dean mouse mat is 8 must Sound effects consist of good quality speech samples tolling you the obvious, and budabudabuda- type machine gun sounds. The arabs make a slight moan as you shoot them. All very tastefully done.
I have being trying very hard to avoid criticising this game on moral grounds, but I can't contain myself any longer. It just seems strange to me that writing a game about machine-gunning Libyans is seen as perfectly OK and normal.
Imagine the same gamo, moved to a small town in the south of England. Say also, for the sake of argument, that the name of the town was Hungerford. It's not funny any more, is it? The sad thing is that this game will sell well.
|ohn Kennedy (t ii'riilnm I humlrrlwll L,24. W Of run OviM iill - 7B".. I II II II II I I I I ¦ I II I I I I I I I ¦ PUBLIC APOLOGY
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catalogue, more than 200 different items.
How to order: By phone 01 977 9596 (Visa Access) By fax 01 977 5354 By post: Club 68000, Wickham House, 2 Upper Teddington Road, Hampton Wick, KINGSTON, Surrey KT1 4DP Post and Packaging: Software: UK + EEC £1, Non EEC £3 Hardware: Courier Service £6 Prices subject to change without notice IF you think this is a game about the antiquated caste system in India then you have obviously been spending too much time in the arcades and not enough in the cinema. How anyone could miss the chance of seeing Sean Connery, probably the greatest actor to tread a board since Larry, is completely beyond my
The game follows the plot of the film quite faithfully and is divided into six parts spread over two discs. The first of these levels has you as Elliot Ness poking around a warehouse looking for documented evidence to use against the felons, Ness must shoot approximately half the population of Chicago before collecting enough pieces of paper. The interesting thing is that those who like to wade knee-deep in gore will not fare as well as the quick in and out artist. Hanging around to shoot at people only encourages more bad guys to join the fray.
Evidence collected, Ness now finds himself as sole agent trying to stop a consignment of bootleg alcohol. It can be confiscated by shooting the bottles, but watch out for the swelling ranks of henchmen who want to do some henching.
This easily ranks as the most forgettable part of the game, closely followed by the next section.
In order to protect a star witness the Untouchables must rapidly make their way to the station.
Instead of hailing a cab and inviting the driver to make all haste they decide to take a short-cut through the backstreets. This turns out to be not such a hot idea, as all makes and models of hoodlum pop up out of the masonry in an attempt to get to grips with the law.
Members of your gang load up the pump-action and pop round the comer of the alley to blast off a couple of rounds, but when at last the work is done don't turn round, because you've got to keep moving
- time is, as they say, of the essence, At last you reach the
station, and it was well worth it. The graphics in this part of
the game are wonderful. The animation isn't anything terrific
and neither are the sprites, but the background is incredibly
well done.
A catastrophe has happened. A little sprog in his pram has accidentally started rolling down the steps and only our hero can save him, while simultaneously introducing the concept of annihilation to the several thousand bad guys who have also turned up on the scene.
It is vitally important to stop the sprog from spilling his brains, so you'll have to nudge the pram past obstacles and passers-by until it reaches the bottom, Actually the pram is quite a handy weapon - although it is eas- ily overturned by Mr Average with no difficulty whatsoever if it runs across someone with a less than saintly background it will vapourise him. Obviously some sort of occult power.
Level five is pretty short. The witness has been taken hostage by one of the bad guys. You have just one bullet to make him see reason.
If you miss it's mop and bucket time for Mr Witness.
Finally chase the henchman across the roof of the court building. Duck into cover to reload and shoot pot plants for extra energy (don't ask me, I'm only the reviewer), if you are successful he will eventually get fed up and throw himself over the edge or something like that. And then you've done it - what a hero.
While the name may be untouchable the game certainly isn't. The graphics aren't excellent, the sound isn't terrific, but saving it from scorn and ridicule is the gameplay - it's very playable.
Other software houses should take note - this is how to do a film tie-in properly.
Green OK. So you've seen it all before, it's just another Thrust-Raiders-Oids clone, yeah.yeah. Next program please.
Oh good, lots of blood and violence, now this is what gamna are all about- But hold OC 4 rpjT nt* if GAMES DR PLUMMET'S HOUSE OF FLUX Into the valley of weirdness you pass Dr Plummet's House of Flux by. You'll be missing out oa something. Not missing out on ayen state of the art programming.
Not out on originality, or wonderful effects.
You'd out on a neat sense of humour. *orortth*ng which is get* tin£ hard io find these day*, and mostly coming from across the Atlantic. Remember, if it makes me statt a paragraph with "but" then it is something worth looking at.
Tae Dr Plummet of the title is odd. Vtey odd. Tne archetypal mad scientist kind of odd. A real Pink Floyd fan. With flares, tar out psy- chodelic ties and purple jackets.
The Assistant Fditer lrast- So. Dr Plummet, bored with mankind (and alien-kind for that matter) has set bimmlf up on a custom-built planet to hide away with his ultimate weapon, davignwt foo previous week. Obviously both the aliens and tho humans are after this weapon, hell bent on death Ann devastation.
And you? Well, you know better You aren't a breadhead into destruction and heavy things like that. You're a good guy, and you're going to rescue the good doctor. Or at least have a try.
Your snip is of the small, rotatable. Thrustablo type with blasters fid standard weapon deflec* lion shields. Ideally suited to exploring outer space and strange planets, or at least. PUn*** which obey the normal physical rules.
Dr Plummet was never one for rules, so his idea of gravity and Newton's concept tend lo dims in places Somewhat dramatically at timos. Like, opposite even. Or at the vay least, very odd.
In several scenarios it is more like flying a stunt kite a space- ship, swooping and diving m circles to rescue the astronauts.
Didn't I mention the astronauts?
Tnere are six to be rescued oeiore fa* af ¦*vr» QftK'fHtUt m~M gel I til If fpOCdtUff 46 AMIGA COMPUTING Apnl 16a0 you move oa to the next scenario, weirder than ihe one below.
They are pouped into four sections of seven. Allowing you io choose your starting place. Thuy range from seemingly un-weird pianola to zones with seriously hypnotic My favourite was a land ot the giants, based in a laboratory- It was great fun reliving A level organic chemistry from the point of view of a benzene molecule Thu is ihe of I really like. Written more as a bobby than a professional product. More for fun than fame. Flying in the face of 'real' Amiga programmers everywhere. It even obeys some foul not all) operating system rules, so 1 managed to inmll ii on to my hard disc.
This almost ~ -up for the bog-standard font used to display scores. TeoVa bad. Guys. Ruins the karma. A bit of parallax scrolling Would have r mre avpa*.ii.r.g too. But hey. I'm mellow and won't complain loo much.
With the game you get some nice props to make you ieel better about spending your money, and quite right TiV Opening a hn a hnv to nothing more than a tolder As shoot of instructions and a disc is Blow up ihe gun. Bur avad me scarfoldiog vay depressing. Or Plummet has enclosed some alien currency and a letter from a chum for you to read. It all add* to the yme, lifting it above the ordinary.
It's tun. Get it.
John Kennedy Dr Plummet's House of flux a-i.ur, Micfuillusiuns Overall - 81 ST COMPUTERS 520ST-FM SUPER PACK 1Mb DISK DRIVE £450 OF SOFTWARE ARCADE GAMES Arkanold II Imagine £19.95 Beyond The Ice Palace Elite £19.95 Black Lamp Firebird £19.95 Buggy Boy Elite £19.95 Chopper X Masterlromc £9.99 I kart Warriors Elite £14.95 Marble Madness Electronic Arts £24.95 Quadra lien Logotron £19.95 Ranarama Hewson Consultants £19.95 Return To Genesis Firebird £19.95 Melbourne House £19.95 Mandarin £19.95 Electronic Arts £24.95 Firebird £9.95 Elite £19.95 Ocean £19.95 Melbourne House £19.95 Hewson
Consultants £19.99 SPORTS SIMULATIONS Eddie Edwards Super Ski Elite £19.95 Seconds Oul Tyneaof! £19.95 Summer Olympiad *88 Tynesoh £19.95 The range of Atari ST computers offers something for everyone From the games enthusiast who wants the challenge of the very best in arcade action, to the businessman who wants to make financial forecasts or faultless presentations The ST offers high quality graphics, sound and speed for the gamer, whilst providing a last, user friendly and affordable solution to business The ST is now tirmly established m the home environment and boasts a wealth of users in
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OESKTOP PUBLISHING. EDUCATION. MUSIC. PROGRAMMING. SPREADSHEETS. WORD PROCESSING and more For a lull l«st of the software available, as well as details ol the ST range, complete and return the coupon Detow Aims com© aura uct 520ST-FM EXPLORER PACK WITH BUILT-IN 1Mb DISK DRIVE £399 INCLUDING VAT With SM124 mono monitor: £498 With SC1224 colour monitor: £698 SS 1040ST-FM PROFESSIONAL PACK NOW WITH TV MODULATOR For the serious Nome user and me small business. Wo nre pleased to announce a new package based around me 1040ST-FM Tne 1040ST-FM nas 1Mbyte RAM and a tMbyte built-in disk drive In
addition, me I040ST.FM now comos with a TV modulator built-in (The previously available 1040ST-F was designed lor use with a monitor only and did not come with a modulator I This modulator allows tho 1040ST-F to be plugged directly into any domestic TV set. And comes complete vwth a lead lo allow you lo do so The new Professional Pack' trom Sikes include* the now 104OSTFM with modulator plus lour high quality software packages including a spreadsheet. Database word processor and programming language This Professional Pack' software will enable you lo gat Straight down to business with your
new computer In addition to this software (worm £38* 64). It you boy the Professional Pack from Silica Shop, you will also receive the Silica ST Starter Kit (worth over C200|. Free Of Charge Return the coupon tor further information £499 INCLUDING With SM124 mono monitor: £598 Wilh SC1224 colour monitor £798» Organiser Triangle Publishing £49.95 JOYSTICK Atari CX40 Joystick Atan Corp £4.99 FREE ATARI BUNDLE VALUE:£458.97 ATARI 1040ST-FM (Coitputer) £499.99 VIP PROFESSIONAL (Spreadsheet) £149.95 MICROSOFT WRITE (Word Processor! £149.95 SUPERBASE PERSONAL tOatabami £59.95 BASIC DISK A MANUAL
(language! £24.98 NORMAL RRP: £884.82 LESS DISCOUNT: -£385.82 PROFESSIONAL PACK PRICE: £499.00 The value lor money offered by the Atari ST range is reflected in the Explorer Pack featuring the 520ST-FM computer with 512K RAM The 520ST-FM computer now comes with a built-in 1 Mb double sided disk drive as well as a tree mouse controller and a built-in TV modulator. The new 520ST-FM Explorer Pack includes the 520ST- FM computer, the arcade game Ranarama. A tutorial program and some useful desktop accessories In addition, it you buy the Explorer Pack trom &l ca. We will give you the Silica ST
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• SM124 mono monitor: £398 3 • SC1224 colour moniior: £5981 WHY
2Mb & 4Mb MEGA ST The MEGA ST computer* irs styled as as lightwsight keyboard with a separata CPU.
©"reeled by a coiled telephone style cablo Them are two versions of the MEGA ST. one with 2Mbyies of RAM and the other with 4Mbyies Each version has a 'Mbyte double sided disk dnve built-in lo tne CPU unit The MEGA Sts do not come with modjlator built-in and must therefore be used with a monitor With every MEGA ST purchased, we will add the Professional Pack' software (worth £384.831 detailed S"!«X MEGA ST 4Mb MEGA ST £1199 £
• mono monitor £1298
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[ To: SI | PLE Silica Shop ltd. Dept AMCOM 4 90 1-4 The Mews, Hatherley Road. Sidcup, Kent DA14 4OX PLEASE SEND FREE LITERATURE ON THE ATARI SILICA SHOP: SIDCUP (& Mail Order) 01 309 1111 1-4 The Mews. Hat ~ - OPEN: MON-SAT 9am - LONDON 01-580 4000 52 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P OBA OPEN: MON-SAT 930am - 6 00pm LATE NIGHT: NONE DTP pj LONDON 01 629 1234 ext 3914 Set fridges 1st floor), Oxford Street. London. WiA 1AB 13 North Part. Roafl, Harrogate HG15PD Sales: (0322) 92518 BRILLIANT! Well, il loots brilliant. II sounds brilliant. Il comes on four discs and il costs lots of money,
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I The evil commander Borf has hit | upon a novel way to enslave Earth by means of the fiendish Infanto ray which changes everyone into children. A freak reflection must have hit our office.
Earth's greatest hero, going by ! The snappy name of Ace, has involved because not only has he been knobbled by the Infanto ray. But his girlfriend has been kidnapped. Ever had one of those days?
The game is made of about 40 short scenes, each lasting for several seconds. At various points during a scene our hero will meet a nasty fate unless you correctly judge his reactions.
For example, at one point a large robot is mashing up the ground and to pass you must go left, wait a bit, then move left again. If you get it wrong three times . You die. And back to the start you go. Eventually you learn what to do in each scene
- by a process of elimination if necessary.
It's not easy of course. Each scene will take a good number of attompts to got right, and although there is a save game option, it is quicker to play through the entire sequence again.
The games runs in 512k. But support an extra disc drive. This halves the irritation which being able to install it on a hard drive would have eliminated.
The reason for this style of gameplay is that the game has been converted from the laser disc version, which used a system of separate animations stored on a laser disc and displayed when needed.
The Space Ace arcade game - the sequel to Dragon's Lair - looked amazing, but it cost a fortune to buy and kept breaking down.
The number of discs in the Amiga package certainly seems impressive. However, once you get it right, the contents of the first disc can be played through in the space of one minute, At more than £10 a disc the value for money quotient might seem rather low. But it is easy to see why il costs so much. The time and effort spent on the graphics must have been phenomenal, and both cost The animations are based, more than based - copied - from the laser disc arcade version. The creation of ex-Disney artist Don Blulh.
They look stunning; fast moving, colourful and detailed. The sound track has also been digitised from the arcade game to good effect.
Space Ace is the closest you could imagine to playing in a cartoon. It is real, interactive TV.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is nothing more than a memory test, rather like the old Simon computer games.
Admittedly if you see Space Ace playing in a shop, you'll probably want to buy it straight away. Think very carefully before you do.
John Kennedy DEMON'S TOMB
• _____Strange goings on in the Devonshire countryside LYNTOS'
srends in front of tbe inscriptio&s. Scribbling in his
notebook. His sbedow moves wildly o& th wall in front of him.
Cest by e flickering oil lamp.
Working feverishly, be is totelly oblivious to tbe homble fete tbet will befall him before [be end of ' the [bird paragraph.
Suddenly a strange w.nfl i'n- door to Tft ounol tomb shut, esc Lynton is tapped. But worse, u be tum». His lamp falls to tbe floor end stutter*. Spreading buro- ing oil which ignites tbe dried loeves end umber scettered an the floor. The tomb Alls with smoke, end Lynton realise* tbet be bes only seconds to livo before it OeCOmes bis fftfeh fee ...which is when you teke over.
With your last few breaths, you must try to preserve as much information es possible. The more you can save, tbe more help you will hew been to those who will come to investigate your absence You have only e short time before you ere overcome with tbe beat see smoke, so full use must be made of the smell number of moves available. Whatever you do.
You cannot thwart the prophesy of the opening paragraph: Lynton dies.
This 'prologue* is a game in its own right, and finishing ;j will provide vita] duo. It is to original start to a game - a immature and exciting adventure before the main challenge Nynf Once this prologue is ended - by the unavoidable and nn rofoflahlc death of the good professor you begin the adventure proper, playing the son Richard as he tries to solve the mystery of his father's death.
One of the nrst locations you'll visit is the tomb, and if the pro- loguc was played correctly there will be some clues waiting to be carefully examined. Tho major ono is a nftri-hert'. Complete with suitably vague scnbbLngx. These notes point to e unusual astral arrangements. Which when roir.bir.cd with strange happening in the locality, all point to somo rather deeds afoot.
To add to the general weirdncss, the adventure starts on Sunday, March 20,1900 - which is particularly odd bocausc my diary shows March 20 as a Tuesday.
The program provides a traditional text only system, and a menu one for the terminally lazy. The text parser is a pleasure to use. And it is definitely a shame to play with only the menu system and so miss out on it.
Text con bo edited, and a history of the last few moves is kept in memory. Typing cor- reeled easily. If you type "go mouth* all you have to do is hit arrow up and replace the m with an s. Almost as much fun as AmigaCos.
You on also define macros. For example. You migbl went to type Invent instead of tbe longer Inventory ell tbe tune (wears out tbe keyboard. Don't you knowi. In f**i ell tbe features such os rent loed end save ere included. E well os allowing cotnplote control over bow the text is displayed on tho screen.
Tbe commend Thinking about will provide e wey of discovering wbel Xichorc knows ebout people and This is bes elweys been lecking from gemcs where you pley e cberecter other then yourself. It is obvious tbet the chereaer you ere controlling must heve some beckground knowledge of their own, but in other gemcs you could never ecru- elly get et it - e serious omission.
A sense of humour is elweys ;rfl*yffTeir.T & to itivcZlUTC. Tod thl fim* ] rain's: ;['j ju£ right NW tOO sarcastic. Not too silly. Unless, of course, you type something strenge like "eel feet' which will produce en equally silly reply. 1 elso like tbe response when you esk for your tea* op ooot rood scons so far.
If you are stuck, the menu system might provide some clues. All the possiblo verbs ere then -It the bottom of the screen end Con easily be selected with the cutsots keys or a dick oaths rnoute Once a verb such is Drop has been highlighted, all the objects being carried will appear. You might think that having all the options displayed like this will m Vw t'fji* Q solve, but this isn't the case, as the problems roqum some thcugm.
Graphics are provided for all mam loCaUOUS. Loaded frOXQ when needed. They take the form of small sketches to help you visualise what is going on hot if. Like rne. You prefer to 10 mental irosgw* conjured by the nee, you can ignore the drawings if you wish.
Demon's Tomb uses a good sys- tern, combined wish as interesting plot. It is a tough adventure, with many location* and puzzles to soh*. And should appeal to the old school of advoturars John Kennedy Drmua's hnuli tiwn lclln$ urnr Ihuw L VEX had the feoling that 1 i something's os and you oonT know what it is? Could it be ifisT a large hungry hi*-.- heii is travelling across the universe to gecyou?
Take on a foe but be careful
- in tests Vortex went on killing pooplo after ordinary solar
disturbances were washed away.
What's she point of singularity?
"Two people can team up to kill the vortex faster. Collide with Us food (asteroids) and dcg it up wuh ann- matter m a vitH of (nl -rg»llaf billiards match. But itll be back - and 000 of these days.. Cets a bit repetitive after a while but there is an olement of strategy.
Two player mode is a must Green AMIGA COMPUTING April WHO SI IF YOU'RE INTOAMGA GET MTO ACTKMC Amiga Action is the definitive games magazine for your Amiga.
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STAR FLIGHT Ticket to the moon CAPTAIN'S log stardate 30-10- 4619: Having outfitted my ship and selected my crew 1 am preparing for my most dangerous mission yet. Apart from seeking out strange new worlds we are expected to assess them for future colonisation Despite the urgency of this mis- sion I have been given little money to outfit my ship. Hopefully we will be able to collect enough valuable minerals to trade in for some- thing useful on our return.
Captains Log (supplemental): I have promoted Perky to First Officer. He is only an android but seems more capable than the rest of the crew. Mr Waffie is particularly poor at his duties - perhaps 1 should have spent more money1 on training him. Unfortunatley it is impossible to train androids so when 1 have the money I'U have to scrap Perky. Ho hum. The trials of being a captain.
Captain's log stardate whatever We've been in deep space for a while now. I find the ship really easy to handle. Everyone is taking orders properly.
Due to the inexperience of my navigator we have had a few near misses with flux holes. Tnese can instantaneously transport the ship to another part of the universe, but we may not bave tbe fuel to get back. Eridium consumption is pretty high with our inefficient engines - we'll have to invest in some high technology when we get back.
Supplemental: Did I notify Microlink of my change of address?
Captain's log stardate 5-1-4620: Made orbit around a likely planet but realised just in time that if I landed we would never be able to JITHLITV:100 RACE: RNDROIO DURRBILITV:IB LRH. RBTE : B take off again due to fierce gravity.
Auto-scoops and we have excavated lots of valuable promethium deposits.
Second Lieutenant Mr AJ suffered some minor injuries when we got caught in a wind storm but he'll pull through - probably. We have encountered several types of organic life forms. 1 stunned a couple with the vehide's weapons and we will take them back for vivisection - if we don't get too hungry on the trip home.
Captain's log stardate unknown: Dear diary, we had a pretty lucky escape down on the planet's surface. A snowstorm blew up and we lost track of where I'd parked the ship. When the douds lifted so to speak we discovered we were but a Next planet in this system seems more hopeful. According to sensor data it might be suitable for colonisation, but I think I'll pop down to the surface and give it the once over personally.
If a couple of colony ships full of telephone sanitisers turned up here all ready to go and discovered there was no surface water, things might get a little rough for me bad: at base.
Supplemental: Made good plan- etfell. Opened the viewport on the way down but although the view was quite pretty it took an awful long time. Think Til give it a miss in future. The little All Terrain 1 Vehicle works well. I put on the few scan! Yards from ihe ship.
We had to leg il but ao one was lost or injured. Unfortunately this means the ATV was lost and all the stuff we had collected. Someone's not going to be very pleased when we get back.
Captain's log stardate 1-4-4620: On our way home we encountered an alien vessel. I dropped the shields and offered the paw of friendship via the communications officer. Unfortunately sjeee he was so badly trained 1 could only understand every third word of the other chap's message so I'm not really sure what he was on about.
If it was that important he'll send a telegram or something.
Supplemental: The good ship Amiga Computing pulled alongside and asked me to report on how my vessel was behaving. I had to tell them in respect of graphics and sound it was not overwhelmingly endowed but that this was incidental to the main task of investigating, exploiting and colonising a big universe.
This was shortly before they sailed straight into a black hole of course. Shame. Nice ship. Looks like a fish. Moves like a fish, steers like a cow... Green T 'T TT' AT?r T?vnnn nmn m Ur f LA 1 i A 1 Hvl-Ci You have to be on the ball H VANS is *w*y on the loll. Ho-*
- *-1 past one defender. He* put
• mother. There* spocators os the pitch. They think it's ell
over.. Eva&k vUrpf the bill into me top left ot" the not It iv
England mey not win the World Cup again. But they should give sire the thrashing they deserve (he i(j iq 4 pjrti afi manner). Yep.
I've just soon e World Cup drew where luck took e beck seat. End troublesome fan* guerenteed e pOylftOTt One nvth may not be an ikland, but 11 men will heve to pley on one.
Kick Oft was the Oc*t iooty game of *d&, in iect the beet ectton looty getnc ever. Now Anco See released tin ¦*xjy nvif n Thu it Extra Tunc, the expansion due to Kick Oft the! Provide* extre referee*. Formations. Pleyuig surfaco*. Kicking ebilitiet end wind*.
Tne referee* ere inconscqucn- tiil. Whicb ik v r- h g mar could be levied el the formation*. Blitz.
Crisscross, Felcon end Lockout ere the four new formetion* eddcd to the regular*.
However. Blitz i* en ell out formation diet i* e* eftec- tive e* Liverpool pleying -1-2-4, , pley* it. VouTl leero the meaning of the word frustration. Ho hum. So whet new suriece can you look forward to pleying on? Well, mere'* artificial (Oidhoml. Normal. Herd.
Soggy end Wot Now than, whet we* the only problem with Kid Oft? It we* the fact mat tbc ball kiudflefl off tnc kurfacc faktcr man tnc piaycrk ana they could rarely catch up.
With Rochdale's tinker* e* the front four. It just doetn't work.
Criticro** i* equally hopeless.
Toi* formetion it tuppoted to enehle your toem to koep posses-
* ion of the bell. Doc* it it? Doe* it i helL Felcon meke* good
u*e of your ¦winger*, if you heve good winger* the! I . But
thet retuit* in your equivalent of John Butdo apnntmg Cu'Au the
wing only to tina that lan Rukb i ktill plodding in the mifl*
Pleying e g-2-i with fe*t winger* i* ju*t *0 much more effective. All of which leed* us on to the only sew formetion the! I* reelly worth tne Fit-** of day tnc This entail* most of your squad hedging around your penalty erce to such en extent thet they ere in dinner of jot eg arrested for loitering. In fqer the Lockout is far too effective, end when the computer So whet he* Anco done with the sew turfecet? Made it so that the Dell tlows down? Nehh. Thet migttt be useful. Mott of the turfecet actually make tho bell bounco higher end runi-1 e 1 reelly cen't believe this. I'm sorry but I
cen't. 7m* is stupidity beyond beliof. Tnere-* only one surface, soggy, that makes the bell slow down, but the player* also slow down as well, making for en iimtabng game.
Talk about opportune Lo Truk a like on a bad day.
Whet's next, eh yes. The most fundamental change of ell. Tne ability to kick the ball You can sow kick the bell at venous strengths, in fact you could before. ; but now it's supposed to be more ' deliberate.
As soon as a player pick* up the bell fil'd be handbell - but you know whet I meenl. The line underneath turns white. It thon starts turning black, piv.l bv pixel the more white wmtc pixels when tne fire button is pressed, the stronger the shot.
All good end well in theory, after ell it sounds quite natural.
However m practise thi* makes the geme very herd. Why? Because Kick Off is an instinctive geme relying on very test reaction* to score goals end deer the belL It ell results m desperate clearances being kicked ell of three feet to a marauding striker, end shots on goal turning into harmW prodk inro the goalie k arras .Naturally the computer teams . Can hit pixel-perfect bells every nme. So oven pleying Russia, tho best teem in the league system, it's v I jr. Uphill tfpiggk*- Add to this wind factor 10 ana you can heve games where skill sits end Watches in tho stand while the artless slog it
out on the turf.
The wind factors can be quite amusing it set to Crazy level. A goalkeeper can even scoro at the other end wilh one kick Although most of thou- improve- mcnik *~-*n Do rurnoa off. Doing ko would mean that you had wasted your money. To bo honest, if you have completely mastered the original game, and are looking for a real challenge, then Extra Time is it. Otherwiso, stick to Kick Off.
Oocauko ocgumcTk o*i? Heading for h(Xii of fruiUckk auktraboa.
Duncan Evank AMIGA CQMPUTISG ApnJ i'JifO AT MlCRONET We re Really Talking i can**"'. ,piol0272' U444444 i l W1 an j,1444.
An 'ith Micronet you can lum your computer into a communications terminal that will download free software, access up-to-the minute computing information, play exciting multi-user games, talk to other people (and computers) and a lot more.
And if you pay for a year's subscription in advance we'll even give you a modem free when you join.
Kl KK SoFTWAKK On Micronel you can browse through an extensive software library of free programs, select one and then download it.
e now have software for all popular machines, from the Spectrum to PC compatibles, including the Atari S I and the Amiga.
Teli-sirilwjiro w" I,,¦I'1""' Entkktainmknt But Micronel is not just informative, it's also a lot of fun! As a member you'll have access to u range of games, including the UK's most popular multi-user game.
Shades, where the action is live and so are your opponents!
I always better informed.
Add to this Prestcl's massive database and oil'll have all the facts at your fingertips.
Naoei Wv*
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Information Micronet is also a computer magazine.
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- line- numlxro*1 r i I Name: I Acidic I I I I Return lo:
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Micronet r modern uffrf arailahlr in ihr I K only In nr» ambm ahilr turk laat. Minimum •ub~ n|*inn proud I vrai Distinctly Digita Cleverly written and always favourably reviewed in the press, Digita produces a range of powerful, low cost software for the home and business user.
MAILSHOT I FINAL ACCOUNTS DGCALC Ihe program will take intormabon prepared by Cashbook Controller ard produce a complete set of accounts including ' Trial Balance ' Trading and Profit and Loss Account
- Balance Sheet * Notas lo the Aecourtt
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Ah reports may be produced at any tune, with comparerwbudget figures if requirad The facility to ptodixa these documents quiOJy. Accuratety. Ard regularly is ol enormous help m running any business. Urge or small, snce one shows the true profitability tchewd. Ard me other the exact strength of the tusmess in terms of assets and £29.95 ft you ever need lo send out mailings or print labels, you know how fddly and tmeconsummg it can be making sure all Ihe labels are printed cor reefy Weti now all that s a thing ol Ihe past. Because Mailshc* actually *how« you the labels onscreen, you can We names
and addresses in exactly the correct place. 8ut mote than that the labels are animated on screen os a conwiuou* sheet, allowing you to scroll backwards and forwards to search for particular keywords or lo edit entres with Ihe minimum ol tuts. Faclfhes include search ng. Detect on ot duplicate labels, sorting even surname!) 9 fabe« across. »9 cop.es y any label This has to be the amplest and most erteCive medcd of creating a £24.95 price bracket with 512 rows by 5? Column*, giving you up to 29$ 2* cells A* win all Oipu prodxta. The operaton ot the program is dearly thought out Beog either
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- even J you ve new used a spveadshewt before Some of the
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INVADERS " MAILSHOT PLUS Do you ew have lo print names and
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ott Wed not anymore Ihe Emulated TWEwnter transforms ya»
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lustircaaon © , »¦* £49.95 CASHBOOK COMBO Money saving
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HOW TO CREDIT ? 0391 Post: Digita 1 Bla ' Ex INTERNATIONAL 'Serious software at a sensible price" All software written in Ihe UK Prices include VAT S P & P (add £2.00 lor export) BUSTERINC barnacles. What a load of rottca fish. After years of waiting, tho great assault on moxxkmd at lo*t malcrioiiMd.
While wc watched the skies they massed their forces in tho oceans.
Now they're going to pay us hack for all the crap wc dumped in the North Sea.
A bunch of highly evolved fish have developed weapon technology far surpassing our own. Instead of mounting a takeover hid for CEC howover. They seem intent on destroying the human race.
Well lust wait till you get hold of them oh? You'll knock them off their perch. They thought we'd just rlam up without moving a mussel did they? Well they'll have to get their skates on to escape without a battering.
Two defectors from the enemy camp are on hand to bo of assistance. For a small foe they will supply you with a selection of ships and advanced bolt-on weaponry.
This is quite a novel aspect of tho game. Instoad of having to blast, say, 20 rod aliens with funny ears and collect the glowing orange pod that they drop you can now pay up front for any weapon you might want Saves on tho potential embarrassment not to say inconviemeocc encountered should a previously iinnfitimA .tlien life form incapacitate your craft on the way to pick up said glowing orange pod.
Of course m yeu must have the noccessary dosh. You start out with a small advance, but further sums depend on your score during a particular level Everything you mercilessly blast is worth points. And what do points make? - weapons!
Unfortunately this means that if you buy lota of equipment at tho beginning of each level you could end up having no score to speak of.
Them's the breaks, 1 guess.
Smoothly sidoways scrolling through an ocean tench, sorry trench, notice the wonderfully crafted backdrops. Don't notice them for too long though or you'll fall foul of wave upon wave of demented avengers.
Admittedly when you're armed to the teeth some of them regard you with much tho attitude a* Tm sure tho fattc* of the faned calves adopted when ho happcnod to notice tho prodigal son rum into tho drive.
Most of the piscine efforts aro but poor players on the stage of life who strut for a few milliseconds before they are gone and seen no more.
Tho obligatory end-of-lovol beastio. And the now de ngeur halfway through level beastie put up a pretty good showing though. A lot of advanced plamuL£ u nxjuirod to have the right weapons available to bo able to deal with these hazards effectively.
As shoot-'em-ups go this is ono to take note of. What is lost in originality (and lot's face it. Who has written a truely original alien- blaster recently?) Is more than made up for by the wonderful graphics and fast action.
Cameplay is excellent, although the game can be very tough at rimes Tho only thing that mars tho whole effort is the loading.
Obviously a ponalty for tho detailed graphics, levels can tako more than tho customary couple of seconds to star, up horn floppy.
There is also an unnecessarily long wait, when you die. For the high score table after which the main game has to load in again.
However, these faults can be easily Lovely graphics, lovely sound, lovely action, lovely game.
Green HAVE you ever thought that beneath the everyday and mundane aspects of existence lurks such supreme terror and depravity that the human mind just has to filter it out.
Next time you are stuck on the tube for an hour it may not be simply that London Regional Transport are a bunch of bungling buffoons - it may be some dark and occult force that have made them that way.
It may have been encounters with LRT that led the famous patron of such schools of thought,
H. P.Lovecraft, to pen great works on this very topic. Such has
been the appreciation of his efforts that the frenzied
paranoic masses invented a role-playing game of the same
subject. Call of Cthulhu.
Now, 1 am making no statement whatsoever on the social adjustment of the people at Electronic Arts, but they too have decided that this is a pretty neat idea and have released this, the first in a series of adventures in this vein.
1 say adventure, but much of the first disc is taken up with the generation of a character so it is more correct to say the first of a series of role-playing games set in an adventure environment, or something like that. Probably.
The character generation ends up producing a fairly Cthulhu-like character, which is no bad thing.
Players must first choose their name, sex and nationality ( British or Yank ), at which point they will be presented with a brief physical description of their character.
If they find themselves unable to get into the role of an ugly, overweight slob it can alwa_ys be thrown back into the electronic maelstrom.
Next up is occupation. If you chose to be a woman I'm afraid that not all of the professions are open to you. But before my sisters of liberation at OASIS launch suicide bombing raids on EA HQ I'd like to point out that this is in keeping with the period of the '20s, when this game is set. Professions include amateur sleuth, occultist, novelist and the very honourable, noble and just career of journalism.
Your choices so far will give a start in some skills and a fund to enable you to practise others. Some skills may not be relevant to this particular scenario, but the characters are transferable to other titles in the series. However, beware, the skills do make a difference.
REMEMBER imperialism? The concept that gave us Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands and the Commonwealth Games? Now you too can re-live the heady days before potatoes and stomp the British jackboot ail over a lot of unsuspecting natives, way back in the times when pirates made their living of the ocean (some things never changel.
Up to four people can play, representing France. Spain, England and Portugal - unused countries will be run by the computer at one of three expertise levels. Explore new territories, exploit new colonies, kill lots of natives - it's all there.
Chose a random game or set the parameters to Historical for chronological accuracy. Simple to play but with lots of cunning strategy under the surface. Trade hot ashes for trees and build an empire on blood, toil, tears and sweat - preferably someone else's.
Green Your immediate task is to stay | alive. There are some very strange goings on, er, going on. You'll be well into the game before you start to understand what you have to do.
The adventure surrounds the mysterious town of Biytheburg and a mythical black dog. The hound of shadow. Although much of the action takes place initially in London it will be necessary to travel to Biytheburg in the course of your investigations.
A lot of investigation also takes 1 place in the reading room of the British Museum. Getting in may be the first test of your abilities.
One aspect of the game 1 was particularly impressed with was the interaction with other characters. No longer is the player assumed to be the only intelligent human being in existence. Other characters also make observations and suggestions which, while sometimes it may seem that they are dragging the plot in a direction one might not particularly wish to take, is certainly far more realistic.
The game is interspersed with lovely sepia-toned screens of the more important locations which certainly add to the atmosphere and, even if you are not taken that way. Are just nice to look at. This is all in keeping with the great attention to historical detail and conformity with the works of Lovecraft.
This is the best presented adventure I've seen for a while and definitely the most interesting. 1 would be happier looking forward to the next in this series if only I could convince a rather large hound from Satan's own stable that Bonio are far more tasty.
Lucinda Orr SOMEONE has copped oul.
Here is a game with three of the most interesting cars due to be produced in 1990 and Gremlin Graphics has cheated on the names.
Instead of using the names Cizeta Moroder, Alfa Romeo and Honda, Gremlin has made up some silly wimpish names. But that will only worry the real car buffs.
The game is what matters, and at first glance it doesn't look anything special. Nine Super Sprint style tracks which scroll as you race computer generated cars around them.
But that first glance rapidly turns into something more. A determination that you can do better if you try again. And you will: your line improves as you learn the circuits.
Race wins produce prize money, which can be spent on repairing the car after the last race - there is bound to be some wear and tear - or by buying bolt-on goodies like a turbo or missile which lasts one race, or by trading in your car for a new one.
The garage assistant looks as though she has escaped from a Cinemaware title. Buying a car is hard work. Even if you win a couple of races and do very little damage to the Blue Zagato you start wilh it is unlikely that you will be able lo afford the next vehicle without haggling.
You'll have to haggle hard with this now car salesman to gel a decent price oul of this Monty Python loving vegetarian with an Oedipus complex. The buying and selling adds both a random element and some tactics off-track.
But it is when the light go green that skill really starts lo count.
The rival cars start to spread out since each has a level of skill. If you play dodgems a bit and let a slow computer car in front of a fast one you can start the kind of pile- up which will let you romp away with the first prize.
There is nothing special about the game, yet the more you play the more you want to. I kept going even alter my trigger finger started to hurt. What the game lacks in sampled speech and dazzling copper lists it makes up for in sheer gameplay.
Simon Rockman Super Curs £24.95 (irt'mlin Cruphii s Overall - 87% warn When you're talking AMIGA talk to Microsnips In fact, whatever your needs, vvc have over 3,600 different computers and accessories in stock
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Once again, from the Hi Yes, darlings, John W J Kennedy looks at take
• three of Deluxe Video PRODUCERS names appear at the end of the
credits after a TV programme, next to directors and the
Copyright MCMXM bit. Excitable people, always deeply interested
in what they are doing, running around with clipboards and
ballpoints around their necks on pieces of string.
When you were small you might have asked your mother "What do producers do?" And she would have answered "They produce things. Get your feet off the sofa".
Producers do indeed produce things, and a lot of time and effort it involves too, not to mention the incredible expense of setting up a shoot. For those of us who would like to make our own TV programmes but lack the financing of huge advertising revenues and licence fees, Deluxe Video 111 may be just what the director general ordered.
Dvideo 111 is the new improved version of Deluxe Video 11, which may not come as a great surprise. This updated version has been rewritten from scratch, and now supports anim files, more tracks, user interaction and Midi control.
So what is Dvideo? It's all very well saying it's an improved version, but an improved version of what exactly?
Dvideo is a program which allows you to combine IFF picture files, animations, brushes, sampled sounds and tunes all in to one neat package or "production".
A finished production consists of one or more "videos", comprising scenes, tunes and so on. To alleviate the problems of limited memory and disc space, the first video can pass control to the second, the second to the third and so on. This means your epic remake of Ben Hur can last as long as you have disc space to store it.
BY using the joystick and keyboard options, the next scene or video to be played can be chosen by the user, allowing complete interaction. I guru-ed once or twice when passing control to another video, but after a bit of cutting and pasting it seemed to sort itself out, and the problem didn't recur. The moral is to keep videos short and save often.
Each video is made up from a collection of tracks - video tracks, sound tracks, control tracks and so on.
As an example, a video track could include a scene which fades in a picture, puts some text on it and then fades it out again. Brushes, animations and anim-brushes (brushes composed of several parts) are controlled from within scenes and all can be manipulated.
Playing an animation backwards is about the only option missing. Even this can be faked by turning the animation into a anim brush, and then playing it back in ping pong mode.
Text can be overlaid on images and moved around to produce scrolling credits. The movement of text and brushes is definitely not perfectly smooth, which is a bit disappointing.
It's a matter of taste as to whether or not you find it acceptable. I learnt to live with it.
One way to distract the viewer's attention from the trembling graphics is to provide some sound effects.
Standard SMUS music files and samples can be played, and parameters such as volume and tempo altered.
Midi signals can be stored and replayed, although the timing will not be quite as accurate as with a custom Midi package. In between scenes, new information must be loaded in to make the best use of the ram available. This sometimes causes a small glitch in the music or animation.
By using the expert mode, which gives you full control when data is loaded or dumped, such glitches can be avoided as tunes or effects can be pre-loaded.
1 ines are completely separate between videos. This means that with longer productions split into several parts the sound track is disjointed.
For the serious desktop video user (dam thought I'd get away without using that phrase) a special type of event allows Arexx messages to be sent, which means, in theory at least, you could control a frame-by-frame VCR or a genlock device.
Editing is easy. Lift icons, move Ihem about and plonk them in the right placo. Events are represented by small boxes which are placed on a track labelled in fractions of a second.
The time scale can be magnified and reduced to allow the start and end arrows of each event to be carefully positioned. I would have preferred the magnify to be a bit stronger, because synchronising sound effects with an animation proved a bit hit-or-miss.
Deluxe Video III comes with a program to construct simple slide shows. It works well, and constructs a video script which you can either just click-on-and-go, or edit to change effects and time delays.
Another program helps with moving the various files which make up your video on to a floppy for your friends.
A distributable player program is also supplied so your friends can watch the files without infringing copyrights.
I HE manual is the usual comprehensive EA volume. I could only find one minor mistake (in the hard disc installation) and contains nearly everything you need to know.
The excellent tutorial section will drag you through all the possible options. Once you have finished this, the next thing to do is to set yourself a goal, sit down and do it. The manual works well as a reference guide, although is a bit skimpy in parts.
Putting together a rolling demo is something which Dvideo achieves with ease. All your IFF screen shots and animations can be merged into utcJHi!!!
T P»ts totlMS SEI l:U fM Th TH 1 ' ¦Ortn ___ i , Scenes may be cut and pasted into their correct order one professional-looking film, complete with sound effects and tunes. Hopefully I'll be able to produce one featuring the staff of Amiga Computing for the next computer show.
¦ REVIEW ¦ Apart from the achievement of splicing all your short animations into How each new scene appears depends on the effect chosen one. There are serious applications for Dvideo. Of course you could use Dvideo to generate a list of credits for your home video and genlock them over, but that's only scratching the surface.
Imagine an estate agent's shop window after hours, with digitised pictures of houses appearing on screen, along with prices and descriptions. If you had lots of ram and hard disc space, you could rotate the houses to show all possible views.
And all with a soothing. Musak accompaniment.
REVIEW Picture an exhibition in a large hall, with hundreds of stands scattered everywhere. An Amiga running a Dvideo production could store maps which visitors could examine by means of the joystick.
In the exciting and dynamic world of business, presentations are common and are usually boring overhead projected affairs. Even the slide show program running on the Amiga would be an improvement. Or the company may wish to provide training facilities.
Dvideo could be the heart of an interactive video system.
Story-boarding is the laborious process whereby animators and advertisers create rough outlines of ideas, without resorting to expensive filming. The standard procedure is to knock up a few rough drawings and imagine what they would look like animated, Dvideo would be a better visualisation tool with real animations.
You can use Deluxe Video on a 1 meg A500 with a single drive. It won't be fun. But you could do it. A sensible system would comprise a hard disc and as much ram as you can afford. 1 used a fast, large capacity drive with a 1 mog machine and rarely had problems.
OTHER hardware which should be added to the category of useful, but not essential, include video digitisers and sound samplers.
If you intend to store your creation on video tape you'll also need to make sure you have all the relevant leads.
Most new new videos have Scart connections, so all you need is a standard Amiga to Commodore monitor lead.
From the software point of view an art package such as Deluxe Paint II or III is almost a necessity, with Photon Paint or similar if you are into HAM mode.
Deluxe Video is best viewed, not as a stand-along program, but as a way of combining all the output from your sound and graphics packages into one something it does very well.
REPORT CARD Deluxe Video in Electronic Arts 0753 49442 £99.99 EASE OF USE.... Cut here, paste here. Easy.
Apart from scrolling, everything is okey-dokey.
VALUE . ¦¦LLLL Bit pricey, considering you'll need half a dozen other products to make the most of it.
OVERALL A useful tool.
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Cvill fuxxf. Fa* (tacty co4t&iK cuee&i Place your order today, using the form on Page 113 ¦ REVIEW ¦ straightforward affair. In fact. IFF works so well you might be tempted to ask why bother with a program such as Ultracard.
Do you really need to be able to integrate sounds with graphics and text? I usually keep my sound samples in my music package and my graphics in my art package. If I want to combine them I use a package like Deluxe Video. My text stays in my word processor, and sometimes makes excursions to a database with next to Canadian Intuitive Technologies brings cut-price Hypermedia systems to your Amiga, with two discs and a funny shaped manual.
After loading you are placed in the Control Room, from where you can access the various stacks, including the main instructions. Everything works with mouse-clicks and menus, although not as well as you might expect. After reading all the bits and pieces you will feel little more than bemused and will wonder how to go about creating your own stacks.
A good question, and not one immediately obvious from the available information.
The use of the standard Amiga IFF protocol makes integrating existing sounds and images a relatively YOU may be forgiven for thinking that the terms Hypertext. Object Orientation and Hypermedia Information Construction Sets are nothing more than blase American computer jargon. But believe it not. Deep down, under all the hype and twaddle, there does exist a genuinely interesting theory about information management.
The idea - or concept. I should say
- boils down to a form of computer database that not only stores
text but can also handle graphics and sounds, all in a
user-friendly, interactive, have- a-nice- day. Mom's-apple-pie
The items of information, in whatever form they may be. Are stored in stacks of frames which the user can browse or navigate through by clicking on gadgets and selecting various options. This browsing is supposed to stimulate interest, just as flicking through a book or magazine can suddenly trigger off an original idea when you see something that interests you.
Hypertext was initially only available on the Apple Macintosh, mainly due to the hi-res graphics and memory needed. The fact that the Mac was the first computer where people needed to store text, graphics and sound in any form at all. Also helped.
And in the age-old way of Mac- orientated people, the principle of Hypertext was claimed to be an incredible step forward in human computer interfaces. It certainly sold a lot of software and got many column inches in the Mac press.
A success in any accountant's book.
Now you too can share the experience, as Ultracard from no proDlems. No Hypermedia neeaea here.
However, if you're set on creating a talking instructional manual with text and graphics, with Ultracard you might just have loaded the correct John Kennedy navigates his way between the hype and the hypermedia .
¦ REVIEW ¦ package. The scripting language is how such programs can be written. As an example, a simple name and address database is supplied. Hardly breathtaking, but it proves that something potentially useful can be achieved.
You will no doubt be over the moon to hear that Ultracard supports Arexx.
The explanation of Arexx is often stated thus: If you don't know what it is, you won't be able to use it. This is a very annoying explanation, so permit me to give you a better one.
Arexx is a standard communications protocol developed by William Hawes which allows different multi-tasking programs to pass commands between one another.
In theory, a completely separate program could be controlled from your Ultracard environment, for example to drive some external hardware.
A public domain program called UCBrowes is supplied to allow you to freely distribute any stacks which you may have created.
If you plan to spend a lot time with Ultracard, a hard drive is extremely handy. In fact it is almost essential because stacks take up a lot of disc space.
Sometimes using Intuition and sometimes using strange gadgets gives Ultracard an awkward feel. The inconsistency remains throughout, with pointers assuming strange shapes more or less at random and requesters appearing with meaningless error messages. The overall impression is that of a rushed product.
Ultracard is also crippled by an appalling manual. Pretentious and patronising, it passes the buck to text files available from within the program and encourages you to access a bulletin board for more information.
This might just be forgivable if the text files were useful and, assuming you own a modem, the bulletin board was reasonably local. Unfortunately the text files are worse than the manual and the bulletin board is in California.
As a concept, Ultracard is an interesting piece of software. As a piece of software it is too badly produced to consider using.
REPORT CARD Ultracard HB Marketing 0895 444443 £39.95 EASE OF USE.... With a Wimp environment. Ultracard should be easy to use. Bad instructions mean it isn't.
Doesn't do that much, so speed isn't an issue.
It may be priced at the lower end for serious software, but real quality always costs.
Hypertext is a wonderful concept.
Ultracard is dreadful software.
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Order today.using the form on Page 113 Juot torn* ot tho pononal org*ni**rt kiform*tk r i adt*d pag** MENTION the phrase desktop publishing, or even better, DTP, to anyone seriously into computers and they will go glassyeyed and do one of two things. Either they will slump forward and do a fair impression of a Canadian log-sawing contest or they will start babbling about Aldus Pagemaker and Ventura.
While once it was acceptable to think that DTP was only truly possible on the Apple Macintosh, people are now waking up to the fact that results of the same standard can be obtained on home micros such as the Amiga. At least this seems to be the view of Gold Disk, which has just launched PageSetter II on to the market.
The original PageSetter was good but lacked certain features, which made some things very difficult and others impossible. This was not too serious, because it was aimed at the low end of the market, for people who weren't taking it all that seriously. The question is, does PageSetter II take DTP seriously?
The First thing that must be said is that PSII will not load any original PageSetter documents. They may appear to have loaded OK, but try looking at them or printing them and you'll have a close encounter of the guru kind.
This may seem like a Bad Thing, but in fact it is a Good Thing because it shows that PSII has been re-designed from the bottom up. Upgraders may be confused to find that although the screen layout looks similar, all the menus have been re-organised, obviously to cope with the new features.
The major change is the way fonts are produced. Suppose you were producing a newsheet and wanted a 96 point headline (that's seriously big
- the default Workbench font is only 8 point). Now most packages
allow you to increase the size of the font. Even art packages
have a re-size function.
Aha, but the problem you soon come across is your lovely sculpted font begins to resemble something a rather young child might have built with building bricks. In short, you get the jaggies and the blockies.
The answer to this is scaleable fonts.
These look a lot better on the screen, and when it comes to printing the output will be at the resolution of your printer - not much of an advantage if you are on a 9-pin dot matrix but a definite must if you have 24 pins or an ?
Citizen Green buys a sled called Snowdrop and becomes a press baron overnight about ¦ UIGABAJIC • Th1w-*" ¦S-sfiSs s&SsE «",no .*o M5 played *tih Amiga Basic llV ¦hiMt fi« will inow a row hricls mrssmj.
Scan C. Rosst I loom al ¦' r*rt,*5" utikli set' oul lo no in lilt lioto wi u» Qmu •*!•*« ¦atari * ' w '""'"T" Sr-S Extend your Basic Although this mis produced on a Star LaserPrlnter Bll, a version printedO on a cheap 24 pin eras almost as good infra-red laser at the other end of your parallel cable.
The standard adopted by Macs and the like is called PostScript, which relies on cunningness contained in the printer as well as superior software.
Gold Disk's answer is the CorapuGraphic fonts, developed by Agfa. Gold Disk reasons quite soundly that there is no point having two incredibly intelligent machines on your desk when one will do. Why go to the expense of buying a Postscript compatible printer when the job can be done just as well with some advanced software which costs less and is infinitely updatable to account for advances in technology?
Broadly speaking, any DTP package and all its features can be divided into two parts - those which make certain things possible and the features which make the system easier to use. The CG fonts are an example of something that directly effects the output; let's now have a look at some of tho features which make the system easier to use.
PageSetter II uses a full Wysiwyg system. All the text is displayed on screen as it will be printed nut. And all the editing takes place in this mode as well. This can cause some frustration in the rate of screen refresh, especially if you are using the CG fonts.
Since these fonts are made up as you go along there can be an annoying time lapse, and even a relatively unskilled typist like myself may find himself a bit ahead of things.
In an attempt to alleviate this problem the program will, disc space permitting, create a cache of each letter's form as it comes across it.
PSI1 comes with a separate cache edit program so that you can set up a cache of a particular font in a particular point size before you start getting down to business - useful if you're the sort of chappie who doesn't like to hang around.
To limit the size of the cache you can de-select all the letters you are unlikely to use. Such as all the foreign stuff, or numbers perhaps.
On the whole, the rate of refresh is easy to live with. It isn't that slow unless you have a lot of text or bitmap graphics on screen, and even then by using the wireframe graphics and interruptable refresh facility you will avoid much of the frustration.
One of the best features of PSII is the auto-linking, auto- column page setup. When starting a new page you can enter the number of columns you need and the width of tho gutter - a term which in DTP has come to mean the blank space between adjoining columns - and the software will set up a page with full length boxes in place.
No calculation is necessary on the user's part.
If you chose auto-linking as well, the moment you paste some text into the first column it will automatically flow into all the other boxes.
Linking is one of the most powerful tools in PSII. When two text boxes are linked any surplus text from the first box will flow in to the second, and k III ' 1" X lliir 111" freedom to design and re-design your page without having to worry about all the effort involved, it is virtually all done for you.
The page guides, grids and coordinate references can be set between centimetres, inches or. More usefully for those experienced in typographical layout, picas.
The system of grouping together boxes is also a great help. By shift- clicking (holding the Shift key down while selecting a box with the mouse) a number of boxes can be selected as a group. The group can then be moved from the second to the third, and so on if you have more boxes.
The advantages become obvious when you want to edit a piece of text that stretches over more than one box.
Instead of having to painstakingly add or delete words from one box and shift them to another, it is all done automatically.
Even more cunning, if you have a chain of throe boxes and decide to lose the second one in favour of. Say. A large picture of the editor, then the text will automatically re-direct itself bom the first box to the third.
This means that you have complete 5$ 2§§£S-" £§§gs|8?
52 %.
2 :fc J l j Harsins: left 8.868 I toe 18,888 I rinhti8.888 hot. IT Boxes can be opaque, transparent, or force text to wrap around them Position: leftgjg top 1.888 I «i thl2.258 lit. All Active BoxII Li.
Expounding on my original thesis that the purpose of a DTP package is to produce good results with the least possible effort, let me tell you the sad tale of the drop cap.
If you don't know what a drop cap is. Then scan back to the beginning of this box, Seo the incredibly large letter E? Note how it starts at the same height as the text (I hope) but drops down taking up three lines worth of space, with the fourth line running undernoath it. This is a dropped capital, aka a drop cap.
In the PageSetter II manual the list of uses for the impermeable box (one that text flows around instead of fills) includes that of creating dropcaps. Aha. You may think - dead simple. Just define a box for the 36 point character, make it impermeable and drop it into the top-left comer of tho box containing the text.
Well done. Points for imagination and creative problem-solving.
But sorry, no cigar.
The thing is. When you make the box small enough to be three normal lines deep, your large capital will disappear. Why?
Because the box has become too small for the font.
But there was plenty of space below it, you cry. No, watch my lips - tho box is too small for the font, not that particular letter. Tho box has to leave room for descenders on letters liko j and g and y. So that means you can't do a drop cap? No. It just means you'll have to be even more cunning and inventive. The way to solve this problem is to have three boxes one with the drop cap. One containing the two lines to go beside it and one for the rest of the text to spill into below. The last two boxes should be linked together for text flow.
So there you have it. Drop caps can be done - but at a price, and tho price is time. If it takes you five minutes to do each drop cap and you average three to a page simple mathematics will tell you you're spending a quarter of an hour extra per page. Over 10 pages this easily stretches to more than a couple of hours.
At the drop of a cap ?
Around maintaining the relative positions of the boxes inside it.
Drawn to scale fonts More importantly, the boxes can be accurately aligned to left, right, top, bottom or centred. This is invaluable for achieving straight lines down the edge of a complicated layout.
It is plain that Gold Disk is taking DTP seriously with PageSetter n. Its commitment to ease of use as well as quality of output is underlined by the inclusion of the CG fonts and the amount of work which has gone into re-designing the menus.
The system of text entry, editing and layout makes it possible to emulate the design techniques used by professionals - and get similar results.
Although pitched at the same price point as the original PageSetter. PSII seems to be directed at the serious user as well as the hobbyist.
As an attempt to satisfy the needs of the semi-professional as well as the casual user. PageSetter n succeeds admirably. The only let down is the manual which, while it details all the available features, doesn't inform users about the type of situations they are likely to be used in or how they can combine with other features to ONE of the features that puts PageSetter n in the top league of DTP packages is the implementation of Agfa's CompuGraphic (CG) fonts. A complete rundown on scaleable fonts and related subjects like Page Description Languages (PDL) is material for another article,
however it would be wise to know what they can do for you.
When at last the work is done and it's queuing up to jump down the parallel cable, PSII steps in and mucks around with its CG fonts.
Individual characters are constructed in memory and the page is sent to the printer in a number of "strips", depending on how complicated it is.
Unfortunately many users will have problems using the bigger fonts produce specific effects.
Overall, in spite of a slight aura of instability surrounding some aspects of the software like the way text sometimes appears horribly corrupted on the screen PageSetter II is on a well-packed page. Because PSII needs chip ram for creating the images to send to the printer and because chip ram is one thing that nobody has enough of. Inevitably problems arise.
The fault is usually in the form of letters being trimmed a bit. Sometimes to the extent that over half the letter is missing.
Admittedly this was only discovered by printing out a 96 point. 16 character headline at 300 x 300 dots per inch (dps) resolution on a laser printer (itself with 1 meg on board), out it is still a worry because this is just the sort of setup that may be needed for some DTP purposes.
There is no way to solve the problem short of major surgery (fitting a fatter Agnus) or major layout re-design.
Undoubtedly an excellent product, and well worth trading your granny in for. If I had just spent a large sum of money on a similar Mac system. I would have been very annoyed with myself.
What's on the box?
REPORT CARD DOUBLE clicking on any box on your page will bring up the Active Box requester. From here it is possible to change margins within the box and the absolute position of the box on the screen by entering numerical values. There are The Lock gadget, rather sensibly, prevents you from altering the box - moving it around, resizing it and so on - by accident, although it doesn't stop you entering or editing any text inside it. The lock is handy when involved pieces of your layout mean Two more gadgets control the priority of text on the screen. One will make the active box transparent or
opaque - with the obvious effect that when an opaque box overlaps something, the something disappears and the other controls whether a box is impermeable. An impermeable box. Where it overlays another box. Forces the text in that box out of the intersection. Another term often used to describe this mode of behaviour is variable margins.
Unfortunatelv impermeability only applies to boxes, so it is not possible to flow text along the outside of. For argument's sake, a bitmapped banana. Well, actually it is.
But not this way. When it comes down to it, almost everything is possible, it's just a question of how badlv you want to do it - in days, hours and minutes.
The QuickDraw option can also be found here. Selecting this gadget means that the current box will appear on screen as a crossed-out box - useful to cut the time of refieshes when vou know it will not
- Tints and boroered boxes are made possible bv the last gadget
here. Selecting this and setting the associated features in the
Draw menu will allow a background tint of various tones - you
can even design your own with the built-in editor.'
PageSetter H HB Marketing 0895 444433 £99.95 EASE OF USE.... Incredibly easy to use. The manual could have been more explicit on the uses of features and not just their mechanics.
Interruptable screen refresh cuts down on most of the boredom problems.
VALUE.. Remarkable. Needs 1 meg of ram. But compare the overall price to similar products running on a Mac and you'll want to buy several copies.
OVERALL just what the Amiga has been waiting for to firmly establish itself as the poor man's Mac.
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Tel: (0525) 718181, Fax: (0525) 713716 Behind the calm fagade of universal order lurks an eerie type of chaos.
Alastair Scott begins a three-part series on using your Amiga to explore this new and exciting science WHAT is chaos, and why are lots of people writing about it? Instead of answering the question directly, let me first introduce you to two contradictory views which demonstrate a huge upheaval in how scientists understood the world.
In 1776 the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace said: "Suppose there is an intelligence which knows the relation between every body in the universe at a given time. It could state the relative positions, motions and effects of these bodies at any time in the past or future. " This quotation is taken from his Mdcanique Celeste, a gigantic mathematical exposition of the world as first described in Newton's Principia of 1687.
According to Newton, the world was deterministic - you could run it backwards and forwards via a straight jacket of equations which allowed nothing untoward to happen.
Philosophers and writers, especially William Blake and Jonathan Swift, disliked this because God seemed to be reduced to a passive onlooker as the wheels of time ground slowly on and on.
The First cracks in the Newtonian edifice appeared in the nineteenth century with the development of the kinetic theory of gases. According to this theory, a gas is a system of 'Solves the restricted 5-body problee SCREEN 1,640,256,1,2 WINDOW 1,"The three Body Problee", 0,0)-(631,242),0,1 RANDOM IZ E TIBER PALETTE 0,0,0,0 PALETTE 1,.33,.35,.55 PALETTE 2,1,1,1 PALETTE 3,0,.0,.A PALETTE 4,0,.4,.2 PALETTE 5,1,.53,0 TOR a=1 TO 4:MENU »,0,0,•":MEAT DETINT a-c:DEFDBL d-1 DIN SHARED i(2 ,y 2),eass(2 DIN SHARED xvelocity(2),yvelocity 2 ,xaccel 2 ,yaccel(2) counter=400 easa0=4l*RND 4l
aiss1=4l»RNt r4» x=RND*4**S6NCRND-.5* y=RND*4 *SGN(RND-.5» GetPerees esss0,eass1,x,y CLS:COLOR 2 PRINT USING'Nasses are Cl.(Ill and Il.llll-;eass0*10,eass1*10 ShovBinary PlotOrbit 3 countless indistinguishable particles.
Because there is no way of telling one from another you have to introduce averages and probabilities to describe the behaviour of the gas. You can only say that it is most probably in a certain state - it may be in any state, although the probability of being in unlikely states is incredibly small.
When you pour boiling water into a cold mug. It may freeze - because each water molecule can exist in several states, one of them being ice. This could happen with your next mug of coffee or just before the collapse of the Universe, there is no way of predicting when.
The probability of such an unlikely event has been calculated. It turns out to be the second largest number in physics. This number, written with one character per centimetre, would stretch across the observable universe many times.
By the 1890s. Jules Henri PoincartS, building on the mathematical work of Rayleigh, had found that many systems which seemed deterministic actually gave random, unpredictable results - even supposedly safe Newtonian ones. In the year 1903 he said: "... it may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena... prediction becomes impossible." This is chaos, which GetParaes eass0,eass1,x,y ivelocity(2)=xvelocity 2 *.00000051 yvelocity(2)=yvelocity(2)r.00000051 PlotOrbit 4 ShovBinary LOCATE 30,1 PRINT"Press eouse button to return to Basie";
WHILE NOT HOUSEC01:WEND MENU RESET WINDOW CLOSE 1 SCREEN CLOSE 1 ENO SUB GetParaes(e0,e1,x0,y0)STATIC xC0)=3 :xC1)=-3S:x(2)=x0 y(0)=0l:y(1)=0l:y(2)=y0
• sss(0)=e0:eass(1)=e1:eass(2)=.1l
iveloeity(2)=.0!«:yvelocity(2 =.0!R END SUB SUB
PlotOrbit(colour)STATIC SHARED counter TOR a=0 TO counter
xaceel(2)=0l yeccel(2)=0l TOR b=0 TO 1 deltai=x(2)-x(b)
deltay=y(2)-y(b) distance=deltax*deltairdelteytd eltey Poincart
called "the fortuitous phenomenon", and here are its signs:
Even if the system seems orderly, you may get completely random
results which cannot be predicted.
• Change the initial conditions slightly and the final result is
enormously different.
Listing I simulates a Newtonian system which Poincarti studied. It consists of two different fixed masses and a tiny third mass orbiting, rather like a double star with a planet, except that the larger masses would normally be orbiting around each other. Only gravitational forces between the masses are considered.
The planet's path is plotted, then its initial velocity is changed by one part in ten million and the path is calculated again. Sometimes the paths are identical, other times they are completely different - there is no way of telling which will occur for a given run. And both of the conditions of chaos are satisfied.
If you try a few times, you should see that the closer the planet eventually passes to one of the stars, the bigger the difference. Why?
Newton's law of gravitation states that gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the planet and the star. If you have two very small and • force=eass(2)aaass(b) (10lBdist snce) xaccel(2)=xaccel(2)-force*delta x yaccel(2)=yaccel(2)-foree*delta 1 NEXT xveloeity(2)=ivelocity(2)*iaccel( 2) yvelocity(2)=yvelocity(2)*yaccel( 2) i(2)=i(2)*xveloeity 2) y(2)=y(2)+yvelocity(2) IT a=0 THEN PRESET(320*20,x(2),128«10*y(2)) ELSE LlNE-(320*20*i(2),12«*10*y 2 , colour END IT NEXT LINE(318*20*x(2),127.10*y(2))-STEP( 4,2),2,bf END SUB SUB ShovBinary STATIC TOR a=258
TO 378 STEP 120 CIRCL£(a,127),4,5,,,.5 PAINT(a,127 ,5 NEXT END SUB Listing I DRAKKHEN SIM CITY You are in control of a city.
Build the metropolis. Live your imperialist dreams.
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Suspicious people may think that these effects can be explained by rounding errors in the Amiga's arithmetic. As usual, Nature is too clever - it doesn't matter whether there are rounding errors or not, because chaos doesn't care. Another suspicion: Can planets and stars be approximated by point masses, as the program does? Yes. As Newton show'ed.
That was a small subset of a problem which caused much head scratching over the years - the N-body problem. Put N masses anywhere in space and make them interact via gravitational forces only. How do they move? Can you predict their motion?
, xvelocity(a)=FNrandon(1) ERASE xaccel,yaccel,nass 1 Solves the N-body problen yvelocity(a)=FNrando«(1 ERASE x2,y2,xvelocity2,yvelocity2 • nass(a)=RND*5 ERASE nass2 SCREEN 1,640,256,3,2 x2(a)=x(a) RUN WINDOW V'The N-Body Probleo",(0,0) y2(a)=y(a)
- (631,2421,0,1 xvelocity2(a)=xvelocity(a) choice: 0EF Fnrandon(x
)=RND*x"SGN(RND-,5) yvelocity2(a =yvelocity(a) iten=HENU(1)
RAN00NIZE TIBER nass2(a)=nass(a) IF iten=1 THEN PALETTE 0,0,0,0
NEXT scale=scale*2:restart PALETTE 1,.33,.33,.33 WHILE NOT
endflag END IF PALETTE 2,1,1,1 FOR a=0 TO nun IF iten=2 THEN
PALETTE 3,1,1,0 xaccel(a =0 scale=scale 2:restart PALETTE
4,1,0,0 yaccel(a =0 END IF PALETTE 5,0,1,0 FOR b=0 TO nun IF 1
tea-3 THEN PALETTE 6,0,0,1 IF a 060 062 b THEN franeflag=1
PALETTE 7,0,1,1 deltax=x(a)-x(b) RENU 1,3,2:BENU 1,4,1crestart
BENU 1,0,1,"Options" deltay=y(a)-y(b) END IF BENU 1,1,1,"
Nagnify by 2 ¦ distance=deltax*deltax+delt IF iten=4 THEN BENU
1,2,1," Reduce by 2 " ay'deltay franeflag=2 BENU 1,3,2," Space
frane force=nass(a)*nass(b) (10*d RENII 1,3,1 :RENU 1,4,2: re
tar t BENU 1,4,1," Body fraoe istance) END IF BENU 1,5,1,"
Restart progran" xaccel(a)=xaccel(a)-force'd IF iten=5 THEN
BENU 1,6,1," Ruit progran eltax endflag=-1 FOR a=2 TO 4:BENU
a,0,0,"":N£*T yaccel(a)=yaccel(a)-force*d END IF ON BENU G0SUB
choice eltay IF ften=6 THEN BENU ON END IF RENU RESET DEF1NT
a,b,e,n NEXT WINDOW CLOSE 1:SCREEN CLOSE 1 endflag=0 NEXT END
franeflag=1 FOR a=0 TO nun END IF scale=1
xvelocity(a)=xvelocity(a)*xacce RETURN COLOR 2 1(a) INPUUHow
nany bodies? (2-20) ",nbo yvelocity(a)=yvelocity(a)eyacce SUB
restart STATIC dies 1(a) SHARED nun CLS x(a)=x(a)*i»elocity(a)
FOR a=0 TO nun nun=nbodies-1 y(a)=y(a)*yvelocity(a) x(a)=x2(a)
DIR SHARED x(nun),y(nun),nass(nun) IF franeflag=1 THEN
y(a)=y2(a) DIR SHARED xvelocity(nun) x=scale*x(a)
xvelocity(a)=xvelocity2(a) OIR SHARED yvelocity(nun)
y=scale*y(a) yvelocity(a)=yvelocity2(a DIR SHARED
xaccel(nun),yaccel(nun) ELSE nass(a)=nass2(a) DIR SHARED
x2(nun),y2(nun) x=scale*(x(a)-x(0) xaccel(a)=0 0IH SHARED
«ass2(nui») y=scale*(y(a)-y(0) yaccel(a)=0 DIR SHARED
xveiocity2(nu») END IF NEXT DIR SHARED yvelocity2(nun)
PSET(320«2*x,128*y),3*(a ROD 5) CLS FOR a=0 TO nun NEXT END SUB
x(a)=FNrandon(3 WEND y(a)=FNrandon(3) ERASE
x,y,xvelocity,yvelocity Listing II Newton solved N= 2 in
And Lagrange, a contemporary of Laplace, believed he had solved N=3 with the conditions above, the restricted three-body problem.
Unfortunately for clockwork thinkers, Poincare came along, showed that Laplace was wrong and that anything with N 2 was also insoluble. So the answers to my questions are 1) Don't know, and 2) No, Now by "insoluble" I mean that you can't write down the solution to the gravitational equations as a formula, even if your writing paper exhausted the forests of the world and your pen used all the Indian ink in India - the jargon term is "inexpressible as an analytic solution", or some such gobbledygook. However, you can solve them numerically, and Listing II does this for N between 2 and 20.
Masses, positions and velocities are assigned randomly to save you typing in lots of numbers.
With N=2 you get some strange looking yellow and red paths. They look much more familiar if you imagine the yellow path as that of the Sun. the red path as that of a comet, and select the Body Frame option from the menu. This redraws the scene as if the Sun were stationary with the comet moving round it - you should see elliptical orbits.
If the comet keeps coming too close to the Sun it may be thrown into a different orbit, or even shoot straight • oul of the Solar System. This celestial billiards effect is used when transferring spacecraft into different orbits using the gravitational field of Venus or Jupiter as a slingshot. Notice that the orbit is always smooth, it never has any strange kinks and twists.
With N= 3 you do get peculiar 1 Simulates a GaLton board SCREEN 1,320,256,3,1 WINDOW 1,"The 6atton Board",(0,0)-(
311. 2421.20.1 WINDOW 2,"Binomial'", 90,301-1230,2
MENU 1,0,1,"Options" NENU 1,1,1,"0uit program" ON NENU GOSUB
choice NENU ON DEFINT a-: tries=0 DIN SHARED ball 48 DIN
SHARED binoniaL(20) DIN SHARED bottom(20) Graphic
Botto«Display FOR a=0 TO 18 xcoord=158-a*8 ycoord=16+a*8 FOR
b=0 TO a LINE(xcoord-1,ycoord-1)-STEP(2,
2) ,1,b PSET(xcoord,ycoord),2 xcoord=xcoord+16 NEXT NEXT WHILE
TIMER COLOR 4 LOCATE 1,1 PRINT"Tries";tries del tax=0 del
tay=4 xcoord=156 ycoord=S goright=0 WHILE ycoord 060 =200
PUT(xcoord,ycoord),ball xold=xcoord yold=ycoord
xcoord=xcoord*deltax ycoord=ycoord*deltay IF ycoord MOO 8=0
THEN IF ycoord 060 160 THEN deltax=4*SGN(RND-.5) IF
deltax 062 0 THEN gor1ght=goright*1 END IF ELSE deltax=0 END
IF looking orbits, and you can see why solutions cannot exist
- there is no way you could express such peculiar orbits in
the form of the nice smooth mathematical functions you get in
toxt books. Once again, chaos has turned up.
With N greater than 4 or 5 the orbits become so complicated it is difficult to follow them on screen. With N in END IF PUT(xold,yold),ball WEND bottoR(goright)=botto»(goright)+1 bino»ial(goright )=bino«ial(gorigh t *1 tries=tries*1 IF botto«(goright) 062 12 THEN ERASE botton DIM SHARED bottOR(20) Bot tobD i splay ELSE ycoord=238-6*bottOR(goright) PUT(xcoord,ycoord),ball END IF ShouGraph WEND SUB ShowGraph STATIC WINDOW OUTPUT 2:CLS ¦axval=-1 colour=2 FOR a=0 TO 20 IF bino*ial(a) 062 iaxval THEN »axval=binoRial(a) END IF NEXT scale!=154 naxval FOR a=0 TO 20 LINE(8*a,196)-STEP(7,-scale!*bino
mial (a)),colour,bf colour=6-colour NEXT WINDOW OUTPUT 1 END SUB SUB Graphic STATIC WINDOW OUTPUT 1 CIRCLE(4,4),2,4,,,1 PAINT 4,4),4 GET(2,2)-(6,6),ball CLS END SUB SUB BottomDisplay STATIC xcoord=6 LINE(0,164)-STEP(320,76),0,bf FOR a=0 TO 19 LINE(xcoord-1,168)-STEP(2,70),3,bf xcoord=xcoord+16 NEXT END SUB choice: MENU RESET WINDOW CLOSE 1 WINDOW CLOSE 2 SCREEN CLOSE 1 END the hundreds, even supercomputers are struggling: N bodies require approximately operations to calculate one step of each orbit, so computer time increases geometrically as N increases arithmetically.
This is a serious problem known as NP-completeness which hampers simulation of large systems in many branches of computational physics.
Much work is being done to get round the problem by devising new lines of attack which need less operations per time step. One success lies with the sorting of an array of numbers. You will probably have used the simple bubble sort, which is about the slowest imaginable; computer science books will give others, such as the insertion and shell sorts, which are much faster for big arrays.
Incidentally, Einstein showed that the Newtonian edifice was but a brick in a much grander construction - you can easily show that Newton's theory is a special case of Einstein's relativistic theory. Don't worry too much, Newton's theories are perfect for most problems, but big distances and or high velocities and energies, as found in astronomy and particle physics, require relativity.
THE final blow to Newton came with the discovery that probability has a fundamental rflle in quantum mechanics.
The last topic in this introduction to chaos is the Swiss army knife of physics - the Hamiltonian. Given any system of particles you can, in principle, write down a mathematical function called the Hamiltonian, which is usually a measure of the total energy of the system. Given the Hamiltonian, you can manipulate it to get equations of motion, then solve these equations to predict the behaviour of the system at any past or future time. This sounds dangerously Laplacian, so you should be expecting a catch somewhere. And there is - in Einstein showed that the Newtonian edifice was but a brick
in a much grander construction y almost every real case the Hamiltonian cannot be manipulated. Those cases occur when it has sharp edges.
The Galton Board, an early pinball gamo found in many science museums and simulated in Listing HI.
Demonstrates this. Considor a triangle made up of rows of nails driven into a board. Drop a metal ball bearing at the top of the triangle and let it bounce left or right at random off a nail in the next row. Where does it end up at the bottom of the board?
It is much more likely to end up near the centre than near tho edges, as taking a simplified board with only four rows shows. In Figure I a dot is a nail and the number of ways the ball can reach that nail is displayed beside it. Chock them.
So the ball has a one-in-eight chance of ending up at either of the outer nails, but a three-in-eight chance of ending up at one of the middle nails.
If you continue this analysis.
Pascal's Trianglo builds up row by row. The numbors given are binomial coefficients, and dropping lots of balls should give an approximation to the binomial distribution, with its characteristic central peak, as was Gallon's intention. If you run Listing
III. This distribution is plotted in the small window.
My mentioning probability should set alarm bells ringing - the system should not be deterministic. Indeed, if you try writing down a Hamiltonian for the ball's motion on the board, you get into a fine mess with nasty spikes, caused by the nails, everywhere.
Spikes aro bad news, only in tho past 30 years have mathematicians gained even the slightest idea how* to handle them, and in this caso even they are stumped and the Hamiltonian cannot be manipulated.
You can drop a ball, but you cannot predict precisely where it will land.
Even a couple of extra iron atoms in one of the nails could make the ball end up in a different place - chaos strikes again!
Hamilton could be Saint George slaying the dragon of NP- completoness. Instead of using positions and velocities as in Listings I and II. People have recently found that using a Hamilton special called the "action" to specify a body often leads to much quicker calculations. This demonstrates a common paradox often the least obvious way of solving a problem turns out to be best.
• NEXT MONTH: Everything you were never told at school about the
pendulum, and why weather forecasting doesn't work very well.
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pnees ere mcSuwe of V A T ONE of the many advantages the Amiga
has over its competitors is the versatility of Workbench.
Thanks to some farsighted programmers and developers, we can
muck around with the way il looks and feels until the Sts come
Preferences will let you change its colours, its resolution and the appearance of its pointer. There are public domain programs out there that will let you open more than one workbench, have an overscan Workbench and have an eight-colour Workbench, though these aren't of much practical use unless you have more than a meg of ram. A number of PD programs will cut the Workbench down to two colours for you, thereby saving about 21k of memory. Yet more PD programs will change the appearance of the gadgets and windows. The possibilities seem, and probably very nearly are, endless.
Ultimately, what makes your Workbench yours tae the icons.
Commodore supplies two tools on the Extras disc. IconEd and IconMerge. To edit and personalise your icons.
Unfortunately both are extremely poor examples of their ilk. With the greatest respect to the authors of these two programs, who in their defence were certainly working to a hazy spec and ridiculous deadlines, the only thing I can recommend you to do with IconEd and IconMerge is delete them from your (copy of) Extras disc.
To play with icons properly you are going to need proper tools. If you're going to bore a hole in a piece of wood you use a drill. At a pinch, and if the wood is thin enough, you could get away with a screwdriver and a hammer, but it'll take you longer, the hole will be the wrong size and it won't end up exactly where you want it. So jobbers who take a pride in their work will use the proper tool, preferably an electric one.
There are a number of dedicated icon tools in the public domain - i use John Scheib's IconMaster. It has an adequate array of drawing tools, including brushes and the all important undo function. Regular readers will find IconMaster on the October 1989 cover disc (RIP). New readers can either avail themselves of a back issue or get hold of Fish Disk C023 from their favourite public domain distributor.
The trouble with creating icons is that most of us don't consider For the l¥ve of icons Make your Workbench a thing of beauty. Jeff Walker explains how ourselves competent enough artists to accomplish the job. This is poppycock. Drawing is like writing - the first few paragraphs are the hardest, but once these are written the adrenalin starts pumping, the words begin to Sow and you'll start to have more ideas than you know what to do with. So the trick is knowing how to start.
FOR the inexperienced but aspiring icon artist there are three ways to begin the job someone else's artwork, clip art and existing icons.
Using someone else's artwork is a problem, firstly because it will almost certainly use more than four colours and secondly because IconMaster will only import the top left-hand comer of the screen. So you'll need to do some work on it; for this you'll need another tool, like Dpaint III or Spritz. To cut out and save as a brush just the small part of the screen you're interested in.
If it's a HAM screen you'll first need to use something like PDCmate io convert it from HAM to 16 colours.
Then you'll need to convert your brush to four colours, probably by hand because Dpaint III, powerful as it is, will probably make a right pig's ear of the job. This is utterly forgivable because you really are asking the very highly improbable.
The ideal program for the job would take an 8,16 or 32 colour screen or brush and convert every colour to a different black and white fill pattern. I often used a homegrown utility to do this when DTPing on my ageing Amstrad CPC6128,1 have yet to find its equivalent on the Amiga a fact which never ceases to amaze me.
Clip art can be gleaned from a number of places. There is precious little of it in the public domain, but a number of dealers sell discs crammed with it. In general the clip art on offer is of fairly poor quality, mostly ported from another computer or scanned in by one of these expensive hand scanner things.
It's not cheap, but it is usually two or four-colour (ask before you buy!)
And for the non-artist clip art represents an easy starting point. Most of my early icons started life as clip art.
The least expensive way of personalising or creating new icons is to start with an existing one and play with it. Use IconMaster to give a second image to the Shell icon, make the printer in GraphicDump look more like the one you own -1 mean, how many people have orange printers?
Public domain discs - or for that matter, the Amiga Computing cover discs - contain many excellent and amusing icons that will do as a starting point. If you own a modem you'll find that most Amiga bulletin boards contain archive files full of nothing but icons. All are fair game for alteration and improvement, although if you intend to distribute your icons via PD discs or modem you should be fair to the original artist and give credit where credit's due.
No matter how you begin the job, the art of creating good graphics in four colours is to deceive the eye into believing it is seeing more than four colours. We do this by using fill patterns. Most graphics artists use this Getting the most from fill patterns FLESH tones are hard to produce unless you're an expert at mixing colours. But when you've only got four colours to play with, the job is impossible. The best we can do is try to give the impression of flesh by using a fill pattern.
The close-up view of the Jeff icon reveals a few tricks. Flesh is represented, rather well I think, by orange and white vertical stripes.
The medium brown of the moustache is achieved by a black and orange chequered pattern, while the lighter brown of the beard is composed of black and orange vortical stripes, some slightly offset to give a straggly effect.
The Bottle icon shows how green can be simulated with blue and orange cheques.
Green is really created by mixing blue and yellow, but orange has a lot of yellow in it, so mixing blue and orange gives gives a greenish tint to the bottle. The fact that wine bottles are usually green adds to the illusion.
Note also the cunning use of short black strokes as shading on the white label to help convince the viewer that this bottle is a three- dimensional object.
Various weights of checks and stripes will render various shades of colours, although the wider the stripe and the larger the cheque, the more obvious the pattern will be.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Despite the pattern being obvious, it will still have a different tone to it. But remember that too many fill patterns in a graphic will confuse the eye. Less is more.
Technique when designing sprites and backdrops for the 8 bit machines, which are short on memory. But even on their low resolution screens, these graphics work well enough. Ask any Spectrum owner.
Thanks to the high resolution of the Amiga workbench screen, fill patterns can be very deceptive, I have tricked people into seeing green, flesh, grey and various shades of blue and brown, as well as the four standard colours, all in the same icon. To be honest, 1 didn't trick them, they tricked themselves. Let me explain.
If you're drawing a graphic of Maggie Thatcher's face and use a close approximation to a flesh tone to colour it, then when someone looks at your graphic the colour they will see will be flesh - because that's the colour Mrs Thatcher's face normally is. Likewise, because wine bottles are normally green, if you draw a wine bottle and use a fill pattern that is as close to green as you can get, the viewer will convince himself that the bottle is green.
LIKE any eye deception, on closer inspection the illusion will be very quickly shattered. On the whole, the smaller the graphic, the longer the illusion will last.
This is an important point - large areas containing the same fill pattern will deceive the eye no longer than it takes to do a double take. Be subtle.
Of course, fill patterns aren't used exclusively for giving the impression of more colours. Sometimes you will want the pattern to be obvious, as in a striped apron for instance. In fact, using an obvious fill pattern in the graphic can add to the illusion of the not-so- obvious ones.
You will need to use other deceptions to give the illusion of perspective. The standard drawer icon uses one of these techniques to trick you into seeing a drawer opening when you click on it. For the non- artist this can be the most difficult aspect of drawing, no pun intended.
The secret is observation and experimentation. Look closely at the drawer icon - the Notepad icon is another good example - to see how it is done. Use Edit Image : Primary Image and Edit Image : Secondary Image in IconMaster to take an even closer look. From here you'll be able to investigate the technique at pixel level.
' Take notes, make pencil sketches Perspective and shade and then clear out the icon and try to draw it for yourself from scratch.
Don't worry about the decorations too much, getting the perspective correct is more important here.
Another difficult technique to master is shading. Again, study some examples. Think about where the light is coming from and which parts of your drawing will be in the shade. The Protext Wordprocessor icon on the December cover disc is a good example.
On the same disc, the Workbench
1. 3.2 icon shows how to use a shadow to give your graphic a
feeling of depth.
This shadow was created with Dpaint III. 1 cut out the insect as a brush, clicked on black for the foreground colour and selected Color from the Mode menu - this made a silhouette of the whole graphic - then used the perspective option to "lay" the brush down backwards as if it was flat on the ground, and Brush : Rota It : Shear to angle it as if the light source was coming from top left.
Lastly I used a black and blue I'.rtr»f7i 7»ij ».!
& FOR small icons, just a hint of perspective is usually enough to get the desired effect.
Study the legs of the ram chip. In close-up you can see that they look like nothing more than funny shaped white blobs, yet in the normal sized icons they are clearly the legs of the chip.
This is mainly because our brains know that chips have legs, so it makes us see those white bits as what it knows they look like. But any old blob won't satisfy - it has to be thought about. Notice the angle of each leg. About 45 degrees, and notice how each leg gets thinner.
This is one way to create the illusion of perspective.
We feel we are viewing the graphic from the right and from above. If the legs were drawn pointing down instead of up. The perspective changes to below the graphic.
This icon would undoubtedly survive without the legs, but it's little touches like this that tum good icons into great ones.
Shading is easier than perspective, especially in small graphics. A large-ish black area is usually enough to give the impression that a part of the graphic is in the shade. The tree icon shows this technique very well. The whole of the left hand side of the tree trunk is in the shade, and so is the branch at top left. The trick is to visualise where the sunlight is coming from and then decide which parts of your graphics would be thrown into shadow. On a small icon, this alone is enough to create an illusion of perspective, but a larger one needs more thought.
The broken offset lines running down the trunk give the impression of bark, and it's these that ultimately make that tree look "round''.
The textures of the leaves on the tree end the grass on the ground also add to the perspective. Each was achieved by first creating a brush, then painting with it.
The leaves brush was just a random mixture of black and orange pixels, with a little white highlights thrown in to try to create the illusion of sunlight sparkling off shiny leaves. The brush was about a quarter-of-an-inch square on the screen. I used Dpaint HI to paint on the foliage with great circular sweeps of the mouse, but you could just as well use IconMaster to pick up the brush and plant it all over the top of the tree.
The grass was done in a similar manner, except that random orange and black lines were used, at various grass-like angles, instead of single pixels. White was used sparingly again, for the same reasons. The brush ended up about a quarter of an inch wide by half an inch high and looked like a little clump of grass, wider and less dense at the top than at the bottom - sort of V shaped.
I didn't paint the grass on.
Because this would have blurred it.
Instead I planted it, tussock by tussock. After a while I saved time by picking up a group of tussocks and planting those.
The whole graphic comes across to me as a warm, sunny day in early autumn. Had I used blue and orange instead of black and orange, the season would have changed to summer or, by adding a few daffodils, spring.
Shading is all about observation.
Look around you.
There are shadows everywhere. Study how they fall across objects.
Notice how they climb up the sides of things and then change direction when they get to the top surface.
Do you see how some shadows are darker than others?
Take care also to study reflections.
These are the opposite of shadows and need to be included in your graphic by using subtle light- coloured highlights.
Stipple pattern to lighten up the colour and fray the edges in an attempt to replicate that wishy-washy look that shadows have.
Luckily, much clip art comes ready shaded - all you need to do is touch it up a bit and add a bit of colour. In fact, this is a very good way to get to grips with the shading technique and learn about drawing in general, in much the same way that typing-in Basic or C listings helps you to learn to program in those languages by getting you used to the keywords and syntax.
The icon builder's loolkil To get good at any artform - be it music, acting, drawing, painting, writing or whatever - you need to have supreme confidence in yourself and practise regularly. You mustn't get disheartened by what others regard as failures.
William Golding, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, was 43 years old before he saw his first novel, which had been rejected by umpteen publishers, in print.
Lord of the Flies is now compulsory reading in the British school curriculum.
IconMaster Essential. My favourite icon editor. Available on Fish Disk C023 or the Amiga Computing cover disc for October 1989.
Dpaint HI Highly recommended.
The best Amiga graphics package.
Available from any reputable Amiga dealer or mail order firm. Dpaint II owners can get a low cost upgrade from Electronic Arts.
Icons Recommended. Every old icon represents a potential new one.
Modem owners should check out their local BBS for archive files containing nothing but public domain icons. Non-modem owners should find a modem-owning Amiga user for a friend. Get yourself down the local computer club.
Spritz Optional. Selling for as little as £10 these days, Spritz is well worth the price and fine for the casual artist. It doesn 't contain most of the advanced, time-saving features of Dpaint III but knows about brushes and does have special features for loading, editing and saving icons.
PIXmate Optional. Image manipulator extraordinaire, PIXmate is a way of converting HAM images into something Dpaint III or Spritz can understand.
IconMaster will load HAM images, but the results are messy.
Clip art Optional, or recommended if you can get it for next to nothing.
Commercial offerings are expensive and, frankly, a complete waste of money. Hassle every public domain distributor in the book until you find some. Modem owners should call their local BBS and do searches for "art" and "clip" in the files area.
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FREE COURIER DELIVERY This package is available ONLY from . THE COMPUTER STORE ONLY £399 The word is PROTEXT Britain's favourite home-grown word processor has now been joined by Prodata, the Arnor database 'Protext - the real joy comes only from using it.
I can say without any fear of contradiction it is the best word processor available at the price, in my view, at any price in fact' AU13189 "Protext really is the best text processor on the Amiga" ST AMIGA FORMA T 2 89 "Wins hands down as the all round package" SI' USEtR K KX V couldn't be more impressed'... "So a big thanks to Amor for writing a brilliant piece of software" COMPUTER SHOPPER PROTEXT is now Britain's fastest selling Word Processor on Atari ST and Amiga computers, and is used by many of the leading computer publications and journalists, as well as thousands of businesses.
Protext's powerful features indude:-
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available in any program
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Protext was awarded the "Best Buy" accolade in PC Buyers Guide, and was given a bottom line verdict of 5 stars in What Persona! Computer?
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Amiga owners please note that you need 1MB to run Prodata - see below lor special price for Prodata plus A501 (512K memory + clock expansion) "Totally menu driven. Prodata must rank among the top database systems... ' sr user 12 89 "Prodata is a very sophisticated database package, and at £79.95, it is most certainly worth the money' YOUR AMIGA 12 89 'Amor have a quality product at a very reasonable price' POP COMP WEEKLY 19 10 89 ORDER FORM - Send to: Arnor (AC), 611 Uncoln Road, Peterborough Please send me (indicate where applicable): PE1 3HA Name Addresi PROTEXT V4.2 @ £99 95 PRODATA @
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Via _ Mike O'Reilly uses I M AmigaBcisic to ijm HI I I II ci multi-tasking ¦ ¦ ¦ w Workbench toy game in town SOLITAIRE is a small workbench implementation of the classic puzzle game. It is fully compatible with the multi-tasking operating system, so it can be played while a disc is being formatted or a file is being printed - yes, Solitaire is a Workbench toy written in AmigaBasic!
The aim of the game is to finish up with a single peg in the centre hole. A peg is removed from the board when an adjacent peg jumps over it into a vacant hole.
To make a move, first click on the peg with which you intend to make a jump. These may only take place horizontally or vertically - not diagonally - over one peg only, into a hole on the other side. If such a move is possible with Ihe selected peg, the selected peg is highlighted.
Next click on the target hole and the jump is performed, with the peg which has been jumped over being removod. Only valid moves are accepted. If. Having highlighted a peg.
You wish lo change your selection, click on another valid peg and the highlight changes.
The game finishes when there is no possible jump left - no peg will highlight when clicked.
Click on the Play button to reset the board, click on Ihe close gadget to end.
Solitaire is a very simple game, but quite tricky to finish.
The listing is fully commented, making it easy for you to change things and experiment with the subroutines and subprograms. Owners ofHiSoft's Basic Compiler will find comments in the listing suggesting a couple of changes that should be made before you compile it.
' Workbench Solitaire by Hike O'Reilly.
* © Copyright 1990 Aaiga Cooputing.
1 Oefeat initial Hindoo tor 1 Hi Soft Basic Compiler users.
REII 80PT10N T* DEFINT a-z 1 the 9x9 array Peg!) Holds a colour ' value for each place on the board, ' including the borders: 1 0=Blue, 1=llh1te, 2=Black, 3=0renge.
DIN PegC8,8 ' Assign a colour value to each 1 possible state of a board square.
E«pty=0 Highlight-1 Board=2 FulUJ ' Open Window on the workbench screen ' Iscreen-id = -1). Using a window-id ' of 1 causes the prograo to resize ' the AaigaBASIC window and use it as 1 its own window. Thus, clicking on ' the close gadget also ends 8asic.
I WINDOW 1,"Solitaire",(10,S01-1262,1 801,2*1*8*16,-1 I ' Draw board and two gadgets.
COLOR 1,0:LOCATE 15,8 PRINT "About Play!"
I ' Box for About LINE (50,110M100,120)"B i ' Box for Play!
LINE (1A7,1101-1197,120),,B I 1 Solid box for the board.
LINE (16,8)-(236,98) 2,BF ' Board setup routine.
60SUB Initialisation ' Nain loop. Wait for a mouse click.
Hold=1 WHILE Hold=1 ' Specify Mouse subroutine.
ON MOUSE G0SUB Mouse.Handler ' Enable mouse checks.
MOUSE ON WEND END ' Set up the initial state of the ' board and draw the pegs.
' The variable "Flag" indicates ' whether player has highlighted ' a peg to be moved.
Initialisation: Flag=0 FOR Rov=0 TO 8 FOR Column=0 TO 8 Peg(Column,Row)=Board NEXT Column NEXT Row 1 Place pegs in appropriate 1 starting positions.
FOR Column=3 TO 5 FOR Row=1 TO 7 Peg(Column,Row)=FulI NEXT Row NEXT Column FOR Column=1 TO 7 FOR Row=3 TO 5 Peg(Column,Row)=Full NEXT Row NEXT Column PegU,4)=Empty ' Middle hole vacant ' Draw pegs and hole.
FOR Row=1 TO 7 FOR Column=1 TO 7 CALL Colour(Column,Row) NEXT Column ?
NEXT Ron RETURN ' Nouse routine to deteraine where a ' click occurred and act accordingly.
Nouae.Handler: ' Read x and y coordinates of 1 point clicked on.
Test=ROUSE(0):x=HOUSE(1):y=HOUSE(2) ' If click occurred on Play! Then 1 reset board.
If x»H9 AND x 201 AND y 112 AND y 122 THEN 60SUB Initialisation RETURN END IF 1 If ft occurred on About then ' show credit window.
If x 50 AND x 104 AND y 112 AND y 1 22 THEN COSUB About RETURN END IF Did click occur on the board?
IF KAO OR x 220 OR y 20 OR y 89 TH N RETURN If so, calculate which row and coluan of the board (9i9).
Coluan=INT((x-40) 20) Row=INT((y-20) 10)ei Is the square of the board selected part of the border?
IF Peg(Coluan,Row)=Board THEN RETUR 1 A click has occurred on a peg 1 position (i.e. a peg or an eepty ' hole) so we can continue.
' A peg is not presently highlighted.
IF Flag=0 THEN COSUB First.Click ' A peg is presently highlighted.
IF Flag=1 THEN 60SUB Second.Click RETURN 1 This subroutine is carried out if a ' peg is not highlighted. If a valid ' eove can be Bade with the peg 1 clicked on, then it is highlighted.
First.Click: Wali d=0 ' Has a peg clicked on?
IF Peg(Coluan,Row) Full THEN RETUR Is a valid nove possible with the peg?
GOSUB Check.For.Legal.Nove ' If so, then highlight it.
IF Valid=1 THEN Peg(Coluen,Row)=Highlight CALL Colour(Coluen,Row) Highcoluan=Coluan 'Remember which Highrow=Row 'peg is highlighted.
Flag=1 END IF RETURN ' This subroutine is called if a peg 1 is currently highlighted. It checks ' to see if a valid juap can be aade ' by the highlighted peg to the hole ' clicked on. If so it carries out ' the nove. If another valid peg was ' clicked on then the highlight is ' changed.
Second.Click: I ' Vacant hole or alternative ' peg not clicked on?
I IF Peg(Colunn,Row)=Board THEN RETUR N IF Peg(Column,Row)=Highlight THEN R ETURN IF Peg(Coluan,Row)=Eapty THEN 1 Nove down.
IF Row=Highrow*2 AND Coluan=Highc oluan AND Peg(Coluan,Highrow*1)nFull THEN Peg(Coluan,Nighrow)=Eapty CALL Colour(Cotuan,Highrow) Peg(Coluan,Rov)=Full CALL Colour(Coluan,Row) Peg(Coluan,Highrowe1)=Eapty CALL Colour(Coluan,Highrov*1 Flag=0 RETURN END IF ' Nove up.
IF Row=Highrow-2 AND Coluen=Highc oluan AND Peg(Coluan,Highrov-1)=Full THEN Peg(Coluan,Highrow)=Eapty CALL Colour(Coluan,Highrow) Peg(Coluan,Rov)=Full CALL Colour(Coluan,Row) Peg(Coluan,Highrow-1)=Eapty CALL Colour(Coluan,Highrow-1) Flag=0 RETURN END IF ' Nove right.
IF Coluan=Highcoluan*2 AND Row=Hi ghrow AND Peg(Kighcolunn»1,Rov)=Full THEN Peg(Highcoluan,Row)=Eapty CALL Colour(Highcoluan,Row) Peg(Coluan,Row)=Full CALL Colour(Coluan,Rou) Peg(Highcoluon*1,Row)=Eapty CALL Colour(Highcoluan*1,Row) Flag=0 RETURN END IF 1 Nove left.
IF Coluan=Highcoluan-2 AND Row=Hi ghrow AND Peg(Highcoluan-1,Rov)=Full THEN Peg(Highcoluan,Row)=Eapty CALL Colour(Highcoluan,Row) Peg(Coluan,Row)=Full CALL Colour(Coluan,Row) Peg(Highcoluan-1,Rov)=Eapty CALL Colour(Highcoluan-1,Row) Flag=0 RETURN END IF END IF ' Decide whether to change highlight ' to a different peg.
Valfd=0 ' Valid peg?
IF Peg(Coluan,Row)=Full THEN G0SU8 Check.for.Legal.Nove END IF ' If so then change highlight.
IF Valid=1 THEN Peg(Highcoluan,Highrow)=Full CALL Colour(Highcoluan,H1ghrow) Peg(Coluan,Row)=Highlight CALL Colour(Coluan,Row) ' Reaeaber new highlight peg.
Highcoluan=Coluan:Highrow=Row END IF RETURN ' Subprograa to colour a peg position ' its appropriate colour leapty, full ' or highlight). It draws a rectangle ' at (Coluan,Row) in the colour ' contained in Peg(Coluan,Row).
SUB Colour(Cotuan,Row) STATIC ' Peg is a global variable.
SHARED Pegl) x=A6»Coluan*20:y=13*Rov*10 1 Draw rectangle.
LINE (i-5,y-3)-(x*5,y*3 ,Peg(Coluan ,Row),8F END SUB ' Subroutine to check if a valid wove ' can be aade by the selected peg. If 1 so, set Valid flag = 1.
Check.For.Legal.Nove: 1 Check for up aove.
IF Row=l THEN GOTO Down IF (Peg(Coluan,Row-1)=Full OR PeglC oluan,Row-1)=Highlight) THEN IF Peg(Coluan,Row-2)=Eapty THEN Valid=1 END IF END IF 1 Check for down aove.
Down: IF Rov=7 THEN GOTO Left IF (Peg(Coluan,Row*1)=Full OR PeglC oluan,R0H*1 =HIGHLI6HT) THEN IF Peg(Coluan,Rov*2)=Enpty THEN VaIi d=1 END IF END IF ' Check for left aove.
TURBOSOFT Dept (Amiga Computing) 41 South Street Leighton Buzzard Beds. LU78NT MAIL ORDER ONLY TEL: 0525 377974 FAX: 0525 852278 FORTHCOMING »TTRACTIONS European Super league Poo. O' Ra0iar.ce Oregon* o' Flame Diiooes Aocdos Goiaen Snoa UMS a ______ Full Motai Pianel .
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use re ?XiVmunlca[lon Mtween busmesses Today Left: IF Coluen=1
THEN SOTO Right IF 0 eg(Cotutn-1,RoH =Full OR Regie
oluen-1,Roe)=Highlight) THEN IF Peg(Colu«n-2,Ro«)=E »ty THEN
Vatid=1 END IF END IF 1 Check for right eove.
Right: IF Colunn=7 THEN SOTO No.Hove IF (Peg(Colu«n.1,Row)=Full OR PegiC oluentl,Roe)=Highlight) THEN IF Peg(Coluenr2,Roe)=E«pty THEN VaIid=1 END IF END IF No.Hove: RETURN 1 Credits and short instructions.
• bout: ' Disable aouse until eindoe is draen.
HOUSE OFF ' If coapTling.eith HiSoft Basic use ' 162 instead of 152 in next line.
' Open a gadgetless eindoe.
HINDOW 3,,(0,01-(300,152 ,16,-1 COLOR 2,1:CLS:L0CATE 2,1 PRINT " Workbench Solitair PRINT PRINT " Nike O'Reilly Writ ten In" PRINT " Salthill Galway Aaig aBASIC" PRINT " '1990 Copyright Aaiga Coa puting " PRINT " " PRINT " The ain of the gaie is to finish" PRINT " up with only one peg reaai ning In " PRINT " the centre hole. A peg is reioved " PRINT " when another adjacent peg juaps " PRINT " horizontally or vertically over" PRINT " it into a vacant hole. Per fori a" PRINT " juip by clicking on the pe g to " PRINT " ¦ove and then the target h ole."
PRINT " A new gane can be begun at any " PRINT " tiae by clicking on PLAY!.
' Box for OK!
LINE (117,1*2 -(157,152),2,B Delay=1 1 Redirect aouse checks to nee s r.
ON HOUSE SOSUB House.Bait ' Re-enable aouse event checks.
HOUSE ON 1 Wait for OK! To be clicked.
WHILE Delay=1:UEND WINDOW CLOSE 3 RETURN ' House routine to check for ' OK! To be clicked.
House.Wait: Test=H0USE(0):x=H0USE(1):y=HOUSE(2) 1 Did aouse click occur 1 uithin OK! Rectangle' IF x 117 AND x 160 AND y 1A2 AND y 152 THEN Delay=0 RETURN TWO WAYS TO ENSURE YOU GET Reach the top with... Self-Tuition Courses World leaders - Hons graduate teacher authors - At all major shows - £5 off total for 2, £10 off for 3 Complete course taking beginners toCCSE in 24 programs on 59 topics * 2 books. £24 (Amiga, ST, PC, PCW, CPC.
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Superplan ... Zoetrop (5 in 1 package) ALL PRICES INCLUDE VAT CARRIAGE FREE LEISURE SOFTWARE All pricee ara aubjact to changa without furthar notica. All gooda subject to availability Please note some Leisure tiles are awaiting release Nic Veitch investigates just how many typefaces one man needs with Star's XB24 printer DO you have a good imagination? Right. Just imagine, if you will, that you have a large block of plastic, say 451 x 341 x 139 mm.
Now heal it up until it is on the hot side of tepid and put it in a wind tunnel. If you scoop out the insides you have your own DIY case for a Star XB24-10.
Ergonomics are all very well, but you can go too far. Mind you. All these rounded edges and sculpted front panels make a relief against the stark, hard horizontals and verticals of most office appliances.
It is even in a particular shade of off-white which almost, but not quite, matches your Commodore kit at least it does after being covered in journalistic grime. Well nobody's going to see it at the back of the desk covered in magazines anyway.
After unpacking and removing the obligatory three pieces of expanded polystyrene (Oh! There's only two) the first thing you must do to one of these printers is put a piece of paper in and press the feed button. Motors whir, lights flash and your page is parked automatically. That's what you pay money for.
The front-panel overflows with stuff. Five buttons and 19 LEDs, which are mostly connected to the surprising number of fonts.
There are 15 letter quality fonts, though one of these doesn't really count as it is a representation of the Code 39 bar-coding system.
Only seven fonts can be obtained using the button on the printer itself, the rest will have to be prised out with cunning use of escape codes. A shame, since fonts like Blippo and Orator are a lot more useful than some of the ones on the panel. Script for example.
Two of the fonts are also available in super letter quality. This should obviously be reserved for writing super letters like ones to President Gobblechops or your bank manager.
When SLQ is activated the little green light on the front panel changes into a little red light to let you know that something devastating is about to happen.What is happening is the XB is entering its cunning 48-pin emulation mode. T vo fonts are available in SLQ mode: Times and TW- Light.
Times is of course the elegant, serifed stalwart of the printed word.
TW-Light is rather similar but of a lighter weight and with big serifs. In fact only the SLQ mode gives it the definition to stop it from disappearing completely.
Dot matrix printers may never quite match the quality of a laser but with output this clear and precise most people would be hard pushed to tell the difference.
If that still isn't enough for you by way of fonts then you can download to the internal memory. With no extra memory card you can download a font and still have a 12k buffer.
Speedwise the XB is looking good with a draft (pica) rate of 200 cps and for LQ (pica), just a shade slower than the Epson LQ-850, although considerably quieter. In fact the XB has a quiet mode - actually just a switch to turn off bi-directional printing - which enables the user to work at the same desk and remain sane.
Being a Star there is no problem in setting tbe printer to Epson compatibility and running it happily from Workbench under the Epson driver.
Preferences is also the place to set colour printing on if you have the optional extra noise, sorry, colour kit.
The kit is incredibly easy to install - pop out the ribbon and lever up the plastic bit. Aha. That's where the other bit of polystyrene got to - whip it out and drop in the colour widget. It can only fit one way round. Put everything else back where you found it. Load up with a colour ribbon and you're ready for business.
Using the colour kit and SimCity I printed a poster-sized map [six pages) which came out looking very good indeed. The ribbon had only slightly started to fade by the end. But the colours were still clear.
Access to any conceivably interesting area of the printer is fairly straightforward, the only exception being the tractor-feed. Star printers favour the sensible method of using a push-tractor (although a pull-tractor is an option).
Once Or close the w not,hlng so hecom Then* g* hard-favoured Then css! •9iU r0"' This is all well and good, but in order to preserve the XB's contoured charm they have decided to hide it under a plastic cover. This.
Too, is fairly acceptable.
¦ REVIEW ¦ The problem is that in order to load some fanfold paper you have to remove the roar cover and to remove the rear cover you have to remove the front cover and to remove the front cover you need to take out the plastic single-sheet feeder. Dear oh dear minus several million points for lack of intelligence.
Petty whinges aside, the XB is an all-round superhero of a printer, but at a price. For Ihe average home user it is a bit flash. For the serious usor flashnoss translates to convenience and it's worth looking at.
KKI'OKT CARD Star XB24-10 Approx £495 0494 471111 Star Micronits EASE OF USE... Only marred by the difficulty in changing paper types.
SOFTWARE.. The XB24-10 is fully compatible with an Epson and so well supported by Workbench.
SPEED.. Not excessively fast for a 24 pin but pleasing to the ear, especially in undirection mode.
VALUE.. Not cheap. A bit flash for home users but generally well priced considering the features. Competitive against the Epson LQ850. Shop around.
OVERALL All you could want in a dot matrix Great quality with the 48 pin emulation mode.
Torminal tricks IN addition to the pitch, print mode and font, many other options regarding the setup of the printer can be carried out from the front- panel. To access these options turn off the printer and then turn it on again holding down the Set, Paper Feed and On-line buttons. You will then enter (cue strange music and special effects) the Memory switch zone.
From this moment on your printer starts acting weird and thinks it's a terminal. Menu options will be printed out and at the touch of relevant buttons the print-head will position itself under one of the headings.
By use of four of the buttons on the front panel you can step up and down through the menu changing all the default settings. Everything from whether zeros appear with a slash to the number of lines the paper will be fed forward from the top of the page when auto loading.
You can set the default LQ font to be one of the internals not on the ffont-panel.
Using the XB's reverse feed capability at each option, it will go back and put an asterisk next to the option chosen. All this leads one to conclude that there is a great deal more intelligence at one end of the printer cable than at the other.
Unfortunately the language, character set and page length are still set by a DIP switch. With all these wonderful menu systems why do we have to go back to the primaeval chore of rooting around in the guts of the printer with a Bic?
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Dayume telephone number in case of Queries Send to: Database Direct, FREEPOST, Ellesmere Port, South Wirral L65 3EB (No stamp needed 4 posted in UK) Order at any time of the day or night Orders by phone 051-357 1275 Orders by Fax 051-357 2813 To place your subscription, please use this order form Orders by UcroLnk UAG001 General Entju m 051-357 2961 . J GET and PUT are the two most exciting commands available from AmigaBasic. As soon as a programmer brought up on 8 bit technology spies them, he is soon salivating with ideas.
The commands allow us to make the most of the Amiga's ability to move graphics around quickly.
Grabbing piece ssr AmigaBasic
- and not B _before time ot tne " action a Both commands have a
dual personality in AmigaBasic. Referring to file handling as
well as to graphics. In this article we will be using them in
their graphics context, because this is more fun.
Firsi a warning - GET and PUT are dangerous commands. AmigaBasic is not widely renowned for being robust, and commands such as GET and PUT will cause it to sail closer to the wind than normal.
It is therefore a good idea to get into the habit of constantly saving to disc (not ram!) Any programs you are writing which use GET and PUT. It only takes a few seconds to do and will save your temper if you have a run in with the guru.
So what exactly can we achieve with GET and PUT? As the names might suggest. GET copies graphics from the screen and PUT replaces them at any position. And they do it very quickly.
To store graphics data. AmigaBasic must have somewhere that is safe to read and write to - somewhere that won't get in the way, somewhere that can be kept track of. The perfect place is in a large dimensioned array. Integer arrays - that is. Arrays with a percentage sign after the variable name - are ideal because not only can we store the graphics data here, but we can examine it as well.
An array can be manipulated easily from Basic and even saved to disc, which gives us our first sneaky use - saving screen displays.
Saving the screen data on other computers has always been relatively simple because tho address of the start of screen memory is usually fixed and easily accessible. Not so on the Amiga, where many screens may exist at once and few things are tied down to fixed addresses.
GET and PUT offer us an easy way to store the screens to disc, ideal for loading title pages and backdrops for your Basic programs.
Listing 1 will draw a pattern, save it.
Then clear the screen and re-load the image. Several points need to be covered. First, how did we decide on the size of the array? This is boring and I don't want to talk about it here, but if you are interested the formula can be found elsewhere in this article.
We also need to examine two strange looking Basic commands, MKIS and CVI. The first takes an integer and turns it into a string, the second takes a string and converts it into an integer. These commands are complimentary in that if x equals an integer, then cvi mcis x» is equal to x. The reason for bothering with such strange looking commands is to save time and space. An integer stored on disc uses three times the space as its equivalent string.
In case you were wondering, there is no need for you to save entire screens this way by specifying the coordinates in the GET statement you can save any portion of the screen.
If you are using more than one bitplane (two colours), you may need to save the screen in parts to stop Basic crashing with an Out of Memory error. Be warned that this program will also take a long time to save the data.
The second listing is slightly more interesting. It re-draws the digits 0 through 9, GETting each in turn and storing them in an indexed array.
Once they have all been stored, the program uses them to tell the time.
The result is a very large digital dock, which will even tell the correct time if you have don't a real-time clock module inserted in your Amiga.
Drawing the large numbers is achieved by printing the digit at the top of the screen and then testing each pixel in turn with the POINT command. This result is then magnified by multiplying each coordinate by four and re-plotted. This stage will take a few moments from AmigaBasic and may make you wish you had a copy of HiSoft's Basic Compiler.
Once all the digits have be carefully stored away, the exciting business of telling the time can commence. The actual time is extracted from the system clock via a quick glance at - TIMES, and Ihc resultant siring is Ihen parsed and each digit PUT on the screen individually.
The PSET qualifier in the PUT command is needed to prevent the large numbers being XORed with existing screen data - the default setting of PUT. Including PSET forces the image io overwrite everything instead.
Calculating array sizes THE amount of memory which the graphics data takes up in an array depends not only on its height and width, but the number of bitplanes used as well.
Bitplanes determine the number of colours which can be used in a screen display. The number of planes in a display is known as the screen's "depth'1.
The formula for working out the size of the integer array needed looks terribly complicated. Here it is: Slie.0f.Arr.y«(6e((HeiBbt31)=2MNT« Wide*16 16 *Deptk)) 2 So for our two bitplane. 32 x 32 pixel digits, it becomes: Slie.OI.Arriy=(6*(32*1)*2*INT 32*16 ) 16)*2 2 which works out to 201. So the dimension is declared with: HH bl(201) ' Use (ET end PUT to make big umbers
• and use TINES to shou the tiie.
• 61990 Copyright Aaiga Computing.
• Open a neu pel screen aith tuo bit 1 planes and accompanying
SCREEN 1,320,256,2,1:IHN00H 2,,,0,1 ' Reserve soie space
• for SET to play uitb.
' In HI soft Basic replace ' uitb DIN bX 10,201).
DIN bZ(201,10) CALI create.digits(bXO) CIS
• the Use generation ' pert of the progree.
A. loop: tl=TlHES Listing II When 1 was experimenting with the
HiSoft Basic Compiler (vl.05) I came across a slight anomaly
regarding the use of multi-dimensional arrays. Using arrays of
more than one dimension with GET and PUT is perfectly legal as
long as you remember the order in which the indices are
specified. For example, in Listing II we dimensioned the array
like this: DIN b* 201,10) However, with HiSoft Basic the array
would have to be dimensioned in this way: DIN bX 10,201)
Various little changes must be made to lake account of this.
It is only a small point, but one that kept me busy for a
while as I tracked the bug down, if you are typing the listing
into HiSoft Basic road the REM statements for the corrections.
As it stands, the listing runs perfectly under AmigaBasic - no
mean feat!
Listing II also shows how several large graphics can be stored and used later at any point on the screen. If you really liked the clock program, but were tired of waiting for all the digits to be drawn and stored, you could save them to disc just like we saved the screen data. This would save time when you came to run the program again.
Storing multiple images in an array gives groat scope for animation.
Several frames of motion could be stored in each element of the array and cycled through to create the IF otl=tS THEN a.loop otl=tS CALL drau.nuabersltt.bZO) SOTO a.loop 1 Sub-prograo to 6ET all digits 0-9.
SUB create.digits(bXO) STATIC FOR s=0 TO 9 ' brev nueeral in top of screen.
CLS:LOCATE 1,1:PRINT a ¦ Scan it pixel by pixel.
FOR x=0 TO 8 STEP .25
• Then drav it and a sbadou.
FOR y=0 TO 8 STEP .25 If POINT(x*8,y) 0 THEN PSET 104.i*4,10S*y=4 ,2 If POINT(x*8,y) »0 THEN PSET (100*x=4,100*y=4),3 NEAT y NEXT I illusion of movement. Until the next time we meet, try playing wilh some wire-frame graphics and animating them svith GET and PUT.
' Loading and saving acraan diaplaya ' fros Basic using 6ET and PUT.
I ' 61990 Copyright Asiga Computing.
I ' Open a single bitplane ' PAL screen and window.
I SCREEN 1,320,256,1,1:UIND0H 2,,,0,1 1 Reserve some space.
DIN SH6745) • DEFINT e-1 I ' Create a quick demo screen.
I FOR 1=0 10 320 STEP 4 LINE tx,256 (160,0) LINE (x,01-1160,256) NEAT i 1 Set and save screen data.
SET (0,0 - 320,256),sX OPEN "screendata" FOR OUTPUT AS 1 FOR a=0 TO 6745 PRINTI1,HKIS(sX(a) ; NEXT a CLOSE 1 CIS ' Load and display the screen data.
OPEN ¦screendata" FOR INPUT AS 1 FOR a=0 TO 6745 sZ(a)=CVI(INPUTS(2,D) NEXT a CLOSE 1 PUT (0,0),sX END Listing I ' The aegic SET statement.
' For NiSoft Basic use:
• get (100,100)-(132,132),bX(a,0) SET (100,100)-(132,132),bX(0,a)
NEXT a END SUB ' Drau time string, digit by digit.
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the Amiga JONATHAN READ was born in England la yours ago. Ho moved 10 Now Zealand lulo in 1067. Which is whom he :in» discovered iho Arnig**. In ho pcr u*wlo 2 hia puronls lo splash out on on Amiga 600 and colour monitor, but il wasn't until 1080 that ho bogan using Doluxe Paint II to produce some sonous artwork.
He's off to Waikato Polytochmc this year to do a course in graphic design, whore ho hopes to gain enough knowlodgo to start up his own computer graphics company and rotiro a billionaire on his 36th birthday. Failing that Jonathan will settle for a job in an advertising company.
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TELEPHONE No IN CASE OF QUERIES I TRACKDISPLAY is a software solution to the floppy drives which have an LED display at the front to show the current track position. This can be very useful - you can see where read and write errors occur, for example.
The program emulates this by On the right track The programmer OLIVER Prill is an 18-year-old German student doing his second year A levels. He has an A1000, bought in 1986, 512k memory, two floppies and a Star NL-10 printer.
He says he will soon upgrade to at least 1 meg. But these upgrades are still quite expensive for the A1000.
His main interest is programming, and from time to time using a word processor or playing a game with friends. He started programming in assembler on the C64 in 1984 and then continued on the Amiga. If he has some spare time this year he fancies his chances at writing a game.
Printing the current track, sector and block positions into a small multitasking window on the Workbench screen. It shows you the name of the disc in the drive, which will be renewed when you insert another one.
It is best to start TyackDisplay from the CLI with the run command. If you want to show the positions for all your drives, simply start TrackDisplay for all your drives and drag the windows to where you want them. So the syntax is: run trackdisplay dfn: where n must be a number from 0 to 3, because you can only connect up to three external drives to the Amiga.
If you just type run trackdisplay you will get some information on the program and how to use it. If you run the program for a drive which is not connected or not valid, it will tell you in your current CLI window.
Do not type the drive number in capital letters, always use lower case.
If you attach a tool icon to it, TrackDisplay will run from the Workbench, but only for drive dfO:.
; Trackbisplay by Oliver Prill.
; c Copyright 1990 Aniga Computing.
Section nain,code_c ; Use chip pen.
Tst.t dO beq workbench cli: cpp.b A"d",(a0) bne syntai cnp.b f"f",1(a0) bne syntax cpp.b 3 aO) bne syntax sove.b 2CaQ),dO sub.b 448,dO nove.b dO,drive bra start workbench: nove.l 4,a6 tove.l «0,a1 jsr -294(a6) nove.l d0,a4 tst.l Sac(a4) bne start nove.l 4,a6 tea S5cCa4),aO jsr -384(a6) jsr -372 a6) nove.b I0,drive Oliver Prill show you how to use machine code to open up a window on where your read write head is hanging out ; Check il drivenunber exists, start: clr.I dO cpp.b 3,drive ; Bigger than 3!
Bgt errorl cnp.b 40,drive ; Or less than 0?
Bit errorl ; Open libraries and devices, jsr openlibs ; Open trackdisk.device opendevs: nove.l 4,a6 sub.I a1,a1 jsr -294 a6 nove.I d0,readreply*16 lea readreply,a1 jsr -354Ca6 dr.I dO nove.b drive,dO clr.I d1 nove.l 4diskio,a1 llo flags, trackdisk.device structure.
Nove.l 4trackdisk,a0 jsr -444(a6) tst.l dO bne error2 ; Write actual screen into screenhd nove.l intbase,a6 nove.l 56 a6),screenhd ; Write drive nunber ; into window structure, nove.b drive,dO add.b 148,dO nove.b d0,windowtitle+8 ; Open window, nove.l intbase,a6 nove.l Iwindowstrudure.aO jsr -204Ca6 ¦ove.l d0,vindovhd ; Write text into window.
¦owe.I gixbase,a6 ¦ova. I «8,d0 ¦ove.l 17,d1 ¦owe.I uindovhd,a1 ¦owe.L 50(a1),a1 jsr -240 a6 ; Howe, ¦ove.l windovhd,a1 ¦ove.l 50(a1),s1 ¦owe.I outputtxt,aO ¦ove.l 17,d0 jsr -60(a6) ; Text.
¦ove.l gfxbase,a6
• ove.l 8,d0 ¦ove.l 25,dl ¦ove.l windouhd,a1 ¦ove.l 50(a1),a1
jar -240U6) ; Hove, ¦ove.l vindovhd,al ¦ove.l 5D(a1),a1
• ove.l voltxt,aO ¦ove.l 9,d0 jsr -60(a6) ; Text.
; Get disk na»e.
Jsr checkchange print: ; Renew every 10*(1 50) seconds.
¦ove.l dosbase,a6 ¦ove.l 10,dl jsr -W(s6) ; Check if chosen drive is connected.
¦ove.l diskio*20,a0 ; start of ; device ; structure clr.t dO ¦ove.b drive,dO
• ulu 14,dO ¦ove.l 36(a0,d0),a2 cap.I 0,a2 beg quit ; Get track,
sector and find block.
¦ove.w 72(a2),d1 ; Get sector.
¦ove.w 74(a2),d2 ; Get track.
¦ove.l 02,d3 ¦ulu 111,d3 add.u d1,d3 cap.x block,d3 ; Has block changed?
Beq uait ; No, don't renew.
; Save track, sector 8 block in stack ¦ove.w d1,ssector ¦ove.w d2,strack ¦owe.w d3,sblock clr.I dl clr.I 02 dr.I d3 ; Get new track and print.
¦ove.l gfxbase,a6 ¦ove.l 13*8,dO ¦ove.l 17,dl ¦ove.l vindovhd,a1
• ove.l 50(a1 ,a1 jsr -240(a6
• ove.l 1100,dl ¦ove.w strack,d0 jsr subprint ; Get new sector
and print.
¦ove.l gfxbase,a6 ¦ove.l 9*8,dO ¦ove.l 17,d1 ¦ove.l uindouhd,a1 ¦ove.l 50(a1),a1 jsr -240(a6) ¦ove.l 10,d1 nove.w ssedor,d0 jsr subprint ; Get new block and print.
¦ove.l gfxbase,a6 ¦ove.l 14*8,dO ; cursor * pos 14 ;(1 char = 8 pixels) ¦ove.l 17,01 ¦ove.l uindowhd,al ¦ove.l 50(a1),a1 jsr -240(s6) ¦ove.l 11000,01 nove.u sblock,d0 ¦ove.w do,block ; Save for ; later check.
Jsr subprint ; Check if dose gadget has been used ¦ ait: ¦ove.l vindowhd,aO ¦ove.l 86la0),a0 ¦ove.l 4,a6 jsr -372 a6) ¦ove.l d0,a0
• ove.l 20(a0),d6 tst.l dO bne quit ; Check if disk inserted, lea
diskio,a1 ¦ove.w 14,28(a1) ¦ove.l 4,i6 jsr -456Ca6) cap.I
S0,32Ca1) bne diskchange bra print ; Open libraries, openlibs:
¦ove.l 4,a6 ¦ove.l gfxna«e,a1 dr.I dO jsr -408(a6) ¦ove.l
d0,gfxbase ¦ove.l intnane,a1 dr.I dO jsr -408(a6
• ove.l d0,intbase ¦ove.l dosnaoe,al clr.I dO jsr -408U6) ¦ove.l
dO,dosbase finish: rts ; Close libraries, doselibs: ¦ove.l 4,a6
¦ove.l gfxbase,a1 jsr -414(e6) ¦ove.l intbase,a1 jsr -414(a6)
¦ove.l dosbase,af jsr -414(a6) rts ; Error, invalid drive
Errorl: jsr openlibs clr.t dO ¦ove.l dosbase,a6 jsr -60(s6)
• ove.l d0,d1 ¦ove.l errortxt1,d2 ¦ove.l lerr1end-errortxt1,d3
¦ove.l dosbase,a6 jsr -48ta6) jsr closetibs dr.I dO rts ;
Finish progren.
Quit: jsr elosedevs jsr closewind jsr doselibs rts ; Error, drive not connected.
Error2: dr.I dO ¦ove.l dosb8se,a6 jsr -60(ai)
• ove.l d0,d1 ¦ove.l errortxt2,d2 ¦ove.l err2end-errortxt2,d3
¦ove.l dosbase,a6 jsr -48Ca6) jsr doselibs ¦ove.l 4,a6 lea
readreply,ai jsr -360(a6) dr.I dO rts ; Close window,
closeuind: ¦ove.l intbase,a6 ¦ove.l uindouhd,a0 jsr -72(a6) rts
; Print the neu track, sector and ; block positions.
Subprint: ¦ove.l d0,d2 divu 01,d2 ¦ove.l d2,d3 ¦ulu 01,d2 sub.u d2,d0 divu 10,di ¦ove.l d0,saved0 ¦ove.l 01,saved1 add.u 148,d3 ¦ove.b d3,string ¦ove.l gtxbase,a6 ¦ove.l windouhd,a1 ¦ove.l 50(ai),ai ¦ove.l string,a0 ¦ove.l 1,d0 jsr -60U6) ¦ove.l saved0,d0
• ove.l savedl,d1 cip.w 0,d1 bne subprint rts ; Check lor disk
and close gadget, diskchange: ?
£30 , Hisolt Basic is THE language to get you started with programming the Amiga.
? Runs up to 30 times faster than Amiga Basic ? Produces stand alone programs ? Compatible with PC Quick Basic & Amiga Basic 1990 DTP YEARBOOK The Desktop Publishing Yearbook 1990 is an invaluable buyer's guide containing the most detailed survey available of hardware, software and services in the electronic publishing field And there are dearly-written 'how-to- articles for both the newcomer to Desktop Publishing and the experienced user Artides cover software, laser and other electronic pnnters. Matrix printers, dgitisets and scanners, training and forms creation, bureau services, word
processors, and many other key topics indudtng the emerging desktop presentations technology.
Whether you're a beginner or professional and would like to find out more about the exciting possibilities of DTP, then this book has all the information you need. Send for your copy today.
1990 Yearbook now available Save over £5 on RRP Our price including UK postage £14.95 Hisoft Basic is easy to use ? Supplied with a high quality manual ? No upper limit to program or data size ? Multi-tasking editor and compiler Hisoft extend is the natural enhancement tor Hisoft Basic users ? 50 functions and subprograms ? Load and Save IFF pictures ? Use all the commands in your own programs Together both programs would usually set you back almost £100, as a special offer to Amiga Computing readers both programs are available for just £69.95. SEE ORDER FORM ON PAGE 113 Buy the combined
package of the HiSoft Basic Compiler and Hisoft's award-winning Extend library for less than the price of the compiler alone I ?
Move.I gfxbase,a6 ¦ove.v 08,dO ¦ove.v 033,dt ¦ove.l uindovhd,a1
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• ove.l 50(a1),8l
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checkchange cap.I 01 gadget ; Close gadget used beq quit ;
while no disk bra print ; in drive.
; Bait until disk is in drive, checkchange: ¦ove.l vindowhd SO ¦ove.l 86(a0),a0 ¦ove.l 4,a6 jsr -372(a6) ¦ove.l d0 a0 ¦ove.l 20(a0) d6 tst.l dO bne closegaddout lea diskio.at
• ove.v m,2»(a1 ¦ove.l 4,a6 jsr -456Ca6) cap.I 0O,32(a1) bne
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Jsr readdisknaae rts closegaddout:
• ove.l 01 gadget rts ; read sector 880 and print disk naie
readdisknaae: lea diskio,a1 ¦ove.l 0readreply,14(a1) ¦ove.v
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• ove.l vindovhd,a1 ¦ove.l 50(a1),a1 ¦ove.l 0clearline,aO ¦ove.l
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Ble shortnaae ; Yes, print.
¦ove.b 018,dO ; No, change naae ; to 18 chars.
Shortnaae: jsr -60(a6) rts ; Close trackdisk.device, closedevs: ¦ove.l 4,a6 lea readreply,a1 jsr -S60(a6) ¦ove.l 0diskio,a1 jsr -*50(a6 ¦ IF AN ADVERT IS WRONG, WHO PFTS IT RIGHT?
We do. The Advertising Standards Authority ensures advertisements meet with the strict Code of Advertising Practice.
So if you question an advertiser, they have lo answer to us.
Lb find out more about the ASA. Please write to Advertising Standards Authority.
Department X. Brook House, Torrington Place. London WC1E 7HN.
ASA This spare is donated in the interests of high standards in advertisements.
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Syntax: jsr openlibs clr.t 00 «o«e.l dosbase,a6 jsr -60(a6)
• ove.l 00,01 ¦ove.l Isyntaxtxt,d2 ¦ove.l Isyntaxend-syntaxtxt,d3
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Parameter area.
dc. b Si
dc. b "treekllisplay by Oliver Prill."
Dc.b Sa
dc. b 'lc)1990 Saiga Coaputing.'
Dc.b Sa
dc. b "STMS*: run trackdisplay "
dc. b " dfO:jdfl:|dfZ:|df3:»" syntaxend: even ; 18 spaces betveen
the quotes belov.
Clearline: dc.b ' even nodisk: dc.b "-ho disk in drive-" even savedO: dc.l 0 saved!: dc.l 0 gadget: dc.l 0 strack: dc.v 0 ssector: dc.v 0 sblock: dc.v 0 errortxtl:
dc. b "Invalid drive nuBbcr.",Sa errlend: even errortxtZ:
dc. b "Orive is not connected.",Sa err2end: even trackdisk: dc.b
"trackdisk.deviee 0 even vindovhd: dc.l 0 windowstructure:
dc. v 475,0,165,37
dc. b 2,1
dc. l S200,14,0,0,vindovtitle screenhd:
dc. l 0,0
dc. v 165,37,165,37,1 vindovtltle: dc.b "Drive df : ",0 even
string: dc.v 0 dlskio: ds.l 20 block: dc.v 0 drive: dc.b 0
• vin voltxt:
dc. b "bisknaae:" tvtn gfxneae:
dc. b "graphics.library",0 even gfxbase:
dc. l 0 intneit:
dc. b "intuition.library",0 even intbsse:
dc. l 0 doineae:
dc. b "dos.library",!)
Even dotbeie:
dc. l 0 outputtxt: dc.b "7:000 S:00 8:0000",0 even readreply:
ds.l 8 buffer: ds.b 512 end MAKE YOUR AMIGA EARN!
AMIGA PUBLIC DOMAIN Yes making money wilh your Amiga Becomes incidental when you know how. Your micro is. Ii only you knew it, a gold mine. The size and make is irrelevant. Make ihe initial elton NOW by starting your own HOME BASED BUSINESS.
NOW ONLY C1.RO Moil or C10.RO 10 This may be Ihe most important move you will ever makeI REMEMBER: You'll never get nch by digging someone eise's "ditch".
Anyone in the country, including YOU, can become very rich in a relatively short period of time |ust by doing a lew basic things117s more rewarding than playing games The benefits are many and vaned Full or part time For FREE details send S A E to: MAGNETIC MEDIA VICTORIA ARCADE. ALOERGATE TAMWORTH. STAFFS B79 70L TEL 0827 59566 31 PILTON PLACE (AM4) KING AND QUEEN STREET WALWORTH. LONDON SE17 1DR LOOK!!
PAYABLE TO PRICE INCLUDES VAT, 1*1 CLASS POST IN UK (Airmail
Postage Eueope Scantltfiavia CJ BO'IO Other count'taa M60M0I rc
FIRST AID FOR OMPUTER REPAIRS ATARI ST AMIGA Slm|)ly send your
machine glong wilh a £15 diagnostic fee ar you will be sent a
wrillen quotation for Ihe cosl of repairing your machine.
* lYPierffl £45. 1 WEEK TURNAROUND *
W. T.S. ELECTRONICS LTD, CHAUL END LANE, LUTON, BEDS LU4 8EZ Tel:
0582 491949 (4 LINES). Fax: 0582 505900
3. 5" BULK DISKS FULLY CERTIFIED, TOP QUALITY PRODUCT 38p with
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5290 4485 991 4784 51 98 Richard Howt & Angela Hammetl
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prices include U K VA.T at 15% PHONE: Monday lo Saturday 9
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Sculpl 4DPro11MB 32982 Sculpt Amman 40 Junot 79 81 TneDrector 39 79 Turbo S*ver 9982 7oe!roc*1MB 7981 HARDWARE i2 i3R «san Board ROM for A500 64 86 1MB MiniMix A500 RAM 199 87
3. 5" NEC Orne SwrXtvPort 68 77 512X RAM Wilh OowSwlc* 7081 A Mia
Mac (rotator to Roitb 10994 A41 at Bed Sca-nar 459 77 A590
20MB Hard Ow ...37996 AM AS Sarcia-4 Interface 77 74 Cauo
MT240 Midi KyDrC 12995 D VewGoKM 119&3 M»di Master l-»Hace 34
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(4. 512*) ..... 1196 VO Arnsa PAI D ssr 9982 PACKAGES
Aoortwr .....2990 G-JOBCS Starter
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Amiirt for Beg*ners Arex. Macro inie-oraur AearCMi**' Pus BAD Out Optirraser BBC Emulator Calligrapher font Designer Os* Master House*»Dor DOS 2 DOS Fde Translet Enha-ce* 1 3 S.W]pcfaOe laa 2 Dux earning Syst Good 3 Guru InUrceotor Kan SuB Haad fo-ls MAC 2 DOS file Transler Masie'piK* fonts Mjy* Beacon Typ*g Pro«ct 0 Batt.MOitor Suoeroac* 2 .. Vrus Infect Protection Wo-doaHoct I'Brary x Ccey 2 Bacsuo-t :! y Your family Tree Ger WOROPROCESSORS Kindeords 2 Ou&ne Ideas Organiser PenPai (NEW) Prolart Scfi»e(Paii«um) Transcript Wotdcerleel .... AmigaTEX AmigaTEX
provides a powerful alternative In document preparation. II enables you to typeset complex or long documents, especially those of a technical nature such as user manuals or journal papers. It gives you true typeset quality with kerning, ligatures, lull floating accents, mathematical and technical symbols and the ability to produce tables and special formats. AmigaTEX will accept input from any text editor or word processor and with its built- in screen previewer, a document formatter of mainframe power becomes available. Also included with AmigaTEX are LaTEX - a document formatter with dozens
of preformed styles, SliTEX - a slide generating macro, and BibTEX - a bibliography database program. AmigaTEX is fully file compatible with other versions of TEX.
Printer drivers are available for most printer types and the complete set of Computer Modern Fonts Is included. A companion program METAFONT is available for those who wish to create new fonts or modify existing ones.
AmigaTEX is £125 and printer driver sets (laser series, Epson FX series, NEC P6 and Epson LQ series, HP DeskJet) are priced at £75 each. METAFONT is £50.
All prices include VAT and carriage.
Access and Visa accepted.
For further details and free demo disk write or call: THE TEXT FORMATTING COMPANY SUFFIELD WORKS, 1 SUFFIELD ROAD, LONDON N15 5JX TEL: 01-802 4470 Amiga Amiga Amiga Amiga Amiga Amiga The U.% Amiga Users group is the Largest Amiga ottCy user group in the world. We are now in our fourth year and are the most established and experienced Amiga user group in the U.% 'We have over 1,500 members and are able to offer an unrivalled level of support. Our members receive a 60+ page bi-monthly newsletter puchfd with articles of interest at all levels, we have a massive library of public domain software
and run an Amiga only bulletin board We offer our members superb discounts on all hardware,software and boohs. The U.%A.U.Q. is the group to belong to regardless of your age or level of experience, our aim being to provide support and encouragement to everyone. Why not join us and start to appreciate what Amiga computing is all about.
OiAP &r PIOTR GORCZYNSK1 says: I have subscribed to Amiga Computing since November 89. Unfortunately I receive it a month late because I live In Warsaw, Poland. Still, games benefit from having soma time before the cheats are revealed. The solution to Space Ace is: Right. Left. Down- Right. Left. Left. Left-Down, Up-Up-Fire-Right, Up-Right, Right-Down. Right-Down.
Left-Fire-Up-Up-Up-Right-Up-Right-Left-Left-Righl-Up- Fire- Fire-Fire-Fire. Right-Fire. Down-Fire-Up. Down- Right, Down-Fire, Left. Right. Right. Left. Right. Left, Right. Of course, you'll need to sort out the timing.
Game Killer GAME KILLER is always on the look-out for hot tips, so if you have found a cheat mode, bug or written a poke then drop it in the post - on disc if it is a long listing.
If your work is used I'll send you a game drawn at random from the goodie box.
MAX TENNANT says: Here is a tip I found myself, so all you sissy tipsters, here is a way to get the most out of the Rainbird game. Infinite lives. Walk into the mirror on the right. )ust before you go all the way through, tap out SOS in morse code on the Help key. That Is dot. Dot, dot. Dash. Dash, dash. Dot. Dot. Dot. The lives count will turn into an infinity symbol.
Keep on walking to see Emily play.
GEORGE CHRISTO VDIAS says: When the title screen for Arkanoid II comes on press caps lock and type MAGENTA, then press S while playing to open the gates to the next level.
To speed up getting the prize to you please cut out, photocopy or copy this form. It will be used as the address label to send out your parcel so please write neatly. Remember you have signed this to say that you haven't pinched the tip. If a friend told it to you find out how he got to know. Else I'll visit you.
- ---------------------- MARK HAYES saya: You can make any of the
players invincible on the fighting stages by pressing the
spacebar when a player has just been hit. When he hits the
ground tap space, then press fire to continue. The
invincibility lasts until the end of the round. This is all you
need to progress beyond the black belt to reach Megahero
Name ..._______ Address . Telephone.. I have supplied tips pokes cheats for ..(list I confirm that the information I have supplied is mine, it hasn't been published elsewhere and I haven't sent it to anyone else.
Send this form to Mas "The Hax" Tennant, Game Killer. Amiga Computing, Second Floor, North House, 78-84 Ongar Road, Brentwood. Essex, CM15 9BG.
Signature . Date . - --------------r-J WARNING THE ONE ON THE RIGHT IS HANDLING STOLEN GOODS.
If you are involved in software piracy then you are breaking the law.
THISCAMPAIGNIJjORGANISEpBY Any inf0rmatj0n 0n piraCy DIDAfV h | SUM should be passed to rlltftvl
- I i-I -L 1 The Federation Aeainst Software Theft. IS THEFT
EUROPEAN LEISURE SOFTWARE publishers association Telephone
01-24U o f do commodore J Amiga A500 complote. Now on* €349
FROM £349! ¦ Amiga A500M with A1084 £015 hi-ros colour monitor
! Amiga B2000 latest jK modal. £949 wilh 1.3 Roms and 1MB
ch©-RAM Price* Include VAT. Delivery A warranty. ¦ Amiga B2000
As abovo. Plus £ 1495 Pleas add CIS lor overnight delivery.
A2288 PC-AT bndge board & 5|* disk All systems are tested
before despatch. ¦ Amiga B2000 With A2286. Plus £ 1795 On-sit
maintenance options available. A20Q0A 2092 20MB autobool hard
disk B2000 + AT Bridge Board ? 40MB autoboot hard disk £2095! |
13j* DSOO drskottes, per 10 £10 IC1010 NEC 3j* haB-helght drive
£79 I A501 plug-m RAM dock 812K £119 IA1084 High-ros colour
Monitor £249 I ASM 20MB autoboot hard disk £375 I RAM lor AMO.
Per MB ... £99 I Amdrlve 20MB SCSI hard disk £339 I Amdrlve
50MB SCSI hard disk £425 I Star LC10 Multifont Printer £179 I
Star LC10C colour. 120 cp*. NIO £229 I HP OeakJet* 300 dpi
tofcjot. B W £695 I HP PaintJet colour inkjet 180 dpi £889
IDXY1200 A3 8 pen plotter £1159 I Trackball Marconi RB2 £ 59 I
FrameGrabber Phone ugergt tentek Dgmee to PERIPHERALS I
A2286 PC-AT board A sh drive £595 IA2088 PC-XT board & sY DRIVE
£ 249 I 20M8 AirigaMS-Oos hard disk £229 I A2090A 2092 20MB
autoboot h d £375 IA2090A 2094 40MB auto boot h d £675 I A2620
68020 Accolotalor Card £1295 IC20S8 8MB Board. 2MB installed
£375 I RAM tor abovo. Por 2MB ... £ 199 I Flicker Flier
Multiscan Adaptor £ 349 118* Multisync high-res monitor £445
IC2010 NEC 3f" Internal drive £79 The power of AMOS is amazing,
it's so easy to use and the commands are very straightfor
ward. It's got total control over the Amiga' A. Kalim,
London 'We use STOS to write educational software for the ST-
it's very good hut AMOS is 10 times better.!'
- Jason Salisbury, Prisma Software ¦ SuperBase Personal ¦
¦ Arena Accounts ¦ Personal Tax Planner ¦ AC Basic v1J ¦ SuperBack ¦ B A D. Disk Optimizer ¦ Publisher's Choice ¦ Pro"ex1 v4 Amiga C for Beginners 'Good luck in producing what looks to be the best utility released in a long while'
- V Pike, Swindon I Amiga C Advanced Programmers 24 9$ ¦ Amiga
Tricks A Tips A superb demo After viewing the disc for nearly
tivo hours solid picked my chin up from the floor... AMOS is
going to be an utter classic'
- D. Chapman, East Sussex ¦ Sculpt 30 XL ¦ Muslc-X ¦ Pro-Video
PAL Plua ¦ Pro Video font sets ¦ TV-Text Professional ¦
SummaSketch Plua ¦ PAL Randal Pro ¦ Rendale 8802 Ganlocfc ¦
MlnlGen ¦ DlglVlew Gold ¦ Oe Luxe PhotoLab J CD ware Whether
you want to write action-packed games, stunning demos,
stimulating educational software or even a database, AMOS is
the perfect package for your Amiga.
AMOS has its own super-fast music module and conies with convert routines for Soundtracker, Sonix and GMC. There's even a command called VUMETER which allows you to link animation to sound.
You can also substitute a new music routine at a later date if you want - AMOS is that flexible.
Commands like Rainbow and Copper Move allow you to create incredible graphical effects - and they are so easy to use.
You can display any of the hundreds of public domain fonts on screen, and AMOS sons out the proportional spacing.
Jump to and from Workbench with a single keypress, allowing you to multitask.
The menu commands have to be seen to be believed: Animated sprites in pulldown menus, the ability for the user to change the order of menu items while the program is running, multi-level menus and more.
AMOS is the package that the Amiga has been waiting for - the first software to unleash the true power of the Amiga to everyone.
But don't just believe what you see here
- see for yourself. Send £2 for an exciting interactive demo in
which you can try out many of AMOS's powerful commands for
yourself! The text files on the disc are full of information
AMOS will go on sale in May - later than we planned, but it'll be well wonh the wait! _ rasVPTTlIN Don't delay - send a £2 cheque or postal order and we will send you the AMOS demo disc by return of post.
Send to: Mandarin Software, Europa House, Adlinglon Park, Vdlington, Macclesfield SKIO iM».
SuperPtan VlzaWrlte Desktop v2 Professional Page vtJ Includes WP. Desktop, colour separations. CAD WP with graphics, thosaurus, dicsonary etc. 1W.es Sates. Purchase and Nominal Lodger* plus Invoicing 168 »• UK Income Tax computation program, from Digits 39.*s By Absofi Compiles Arrsga Basic . FASTI I49.w Backs up 20MB In 20 nsnules. Any Amiga hard drive 37.*s Spoods *sk access up to 500%. Work Bench or CU 34 *$ £79.95 ¦ System Programmer's Guide 32*s
79. *s ¦ Amiga Basic Inside A Out llts
18. 45 ¦ Amiga Dos Inside A Out 1B.«$ ¦ Lattice C vS I ¦
Dos-2-Dos ¦ PC Emulator vl.t ¦ CM Emulator v2 ¦ BBC Emulator
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without programing!
Iperoase rersonal 2 As abovo. Plus text, mail merge, batch entry etc. ¦ Professional v3 With Forms Editor and DML programming languago Pro Sproadshoof w*h businoss graphics, Omo planner High poilormanco desktop WP. Now with HQ lonts ¦ De Lux* Paint 3 £ ¦ De Luxa Video 3 ¦ Dtglpalnt 3 ¦ Design 30 ¦ Anlmagic ¦ Photon Paint 2 Aega Imagos Aogis Animator Aogia Oraw Aegis Artpak 3D graphics and artmason lor Ihe professional user 3 ¦ Scuipt-Anlmato 4D Jr. As Sculpt 4D above, without HAM ray-tracing Much taster than Scuplt 3D. With 24-b4 plane option 1W is ¦Without doubt tho bost paxo ot MIDI aoftwaie
to date-199 ts Professional video titter wlh lonts. Extra lonts available 189.es Choice ol 4 sets ol 4 ana-aliased lonts. Each... 89 *$ Latest tun-feature video utter, includes Zuma fonts 139.*$ 12x12 Graphics Tabtet with last driver software 425 oo Broadcast quality genlock tor the professional user 825.00 £199 ts ¦ Fantavision 34 as 109 es ¦ Professional Draw 114 »i 89 ts ¦ Aegis Draw 2000 179*$ 49 ts ¦ PageFllpper . FIX 79.SS I IF YOU WANT IT TOMORROW.- CAUUSTOOAYt ON 01-546-7258 I half-price epectet offer, while etocka last- £49.95!
PRODUCTIVITY 154 a 14* Prices are POST FREE A Include VAT.
Order by phone with your crodit card, or send cheque PO or your credit card numbor Otttoi or dors welcome. Wo dospalch samo day by FIRST CLASS post Please allow 3 days lor doltvory ol hardware orders. Prices are quoted subject to avalabtfy. «•* mi Why not en|oy the tree Teletext database* with the MicroText Teletext adaplor... Fully programmable, with Fastest facAty. Instant access to Iasi 18 pages, doubte pago view, telesoftware loader, auto-stan background LAKESIDE HOUSE, KINGSTON HILL. SURREY. KT2 70T. TEL 01-546-7258 Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Learn lo typo quickly, easily and perfectly -
the fun way!
This is an artificial intelligence software system from the writers of Chessmaster 2000 - winner of the US Chess Federation Computer Chess Championship it checks your progress lesson by lesson, every step of the way. Through a typing course tailored to your individual needs.
Mavis makes the learning fun when creating your lessons by selecting quotes from history's greatest wnters. Countless riddles, rhymes. Jokes and hundreds of fascinating facts from the Guinness Book of World Records Iiyou feel your typing could be better, this is the ideal way to learn!
Reader offers RRP £29.99 OUR PRICE £24.99 You know how expensive it s to replace your batteries when they run down.
Even with rechargeable batteries you still have to wait 14 hours for fun charge. We have solved the problem with the unique superlast powerful battery and charger Kit.
This amazing device wil completely charge four standard AA size rechargeable batteries in under 2 hours and each battery can be recharged at least 1.000 times.
Further, for a limited period we can sell the charger and four rechargeable batteries at the staggenng low cost of C19.05 (plus C1 pAp).
It will pay lor Itself within weeks!
AMIGAD0S: A Dabhand Guide SAVE on batteries Is d comprehensive guide fo the Commodore amiga's disc Operating System (Versions 1.2 and 1.3). It provides a unique perspective on this powerful system in a way which will be welcomed by the beginner and the experienced user alike Hatner than simply reiterating the Amiga manual, this book takes a genuinely different approach to understanding and using the Amiga and contains a wealth of practical hands-on advice and hints and tips I ne many features of this book indude
• run coverage of Amiga DOS 1 3 functions For you personal
stereo, radio or TV
• r Ding vntn orio Miaul (he WoiKDench
• I he Anvga s meraichcal ting system
• Pathnames ana Device names
• I he Amiga's mjinasxing capabilites
• I he AmgaUOS screen edtor
• AngaDOS commanos
• daich proceswig
• Amga trror code descripfions
• now io -iitae new systems decs
• use or the KAW oiscs
• using AnagaOOS withC Amiga Computing approved reading
Publishers' Choice Whether you are designing a simple flyer,
creating a newsletter, banners, posters, or even producing a
magazine, Publisher's Choice offers a comprehensrve solution id
your Desktop Publishing and presentation requirements.
With the program you can easily combine text in a variety of styles, in multiple columns and with customised graphics. It comes with over 200 professionally designed Images, and hiflh quality "Headline' fonts.
In fact. Publishers' Choice combines the Kmdwords 2.0 wordprocessor. PageSetter 1.2 page composition package.
Artists* Chotce an program, and the Headline fontpack.
Because the Amiga is multi tasking you can have an the programs working on the screen at the same tme. Or just use them individually as powerful stand alone programs.
RRP £99.99 OUR PRICE £14.95 £79.99 LET THERE BE COLOUR TO ORDER PLEASE USE THE FORM ON PAGE 113 Once upon a time there were two drawbacks lo video digitising on the Amiga Either il was slow or il was expensive Thanks to a price breaklhrough trom Rombo, you can now produce good colour images quickly and cheaply Thanks to Amiga Computing and Rombo you can get the high specification PAL VIDI digitiser and Vidi Chrome colour sottware tor only £119.95. The award winning Vidi ckgitiser connects to a black and white or colour video camera to grab mono pictures instantly and uses a series ol filters
combined with a camera lo produce slartlingly realistic HAM colour images SAVE £15 SIM CITY You are in control ol a city. - Build the metropolis. Live RRP £2999 your imperialist dreams. Nun pnirc Can you rule for 100 -- years? The thinking man's £24.99 Populous. SAVE £5!
DRAKKHEN The late of the world lies in - your hands. Magic, RRP £29.99 animation and monsters amr pricf add up to a game which no role-playing enthusiast £24.99 should miss. SAVE £5!
Buy both and save £15!
PLEASE USE THE ORDER FORM ON PAGE 113 EXCLUSIVE! M SAVE £20 Just how good is Protext?
'...merely the best wordprocessor for the Amiga',, n an Ow»OaO-6«f-9W«cM wy Protext is acknowledged by many as THE word procossore for most home micros, and the Amiga version is no exception.
What you get with Amiga Protext is a powerful workhorse with a proven track record Phis a saving ol £20 off the retail pnce of the new version 41 Prtss comments Reader offers Twelve rods hold your issues in place and keep them in pristine condition in this smart PVC binder 25 for £20!
The perfect desktop environment for your mouso with its specialty-designod. Perfect- grip surface. It ensure much smoother movement, gives super positive control and protects your table top from scratches Disc storage box £4.95 This luxury padded box « the ideal storage medium, holding up to FIFTY 3 5* discs CO E£ Home Accounts Day by Day RRP £54.90 OUR PRICE £34.90 ? Comprehensive search tactty ? Automatic remnders ? At-a-glance week and month summaries ? Print option ? Grtxpmg ol related messages £54.95 Home Accounts has been designed to make full use of the Amiga's features, giving you
the widest range of home accounting facilities available at this price.
The program lets you set budgets and control up to 13 separate accounts, with optional printouts of any data Within seconds of loading you data disc you can chock your budget or any account, and even display or print the data In bar or pie charts.
Day by Day replaces your manual system for diary, business organiser, notepad, planner, reminder and so on.
It's suitable for both business and home applications, including numerous useful functions which serve every requirement It's suitable for both business and home applications, including numerous useful functions which serve every requirement.
Among its many features are: ? Cabftder-daryplanner ? Categories such as bilks, birthdays and letters ? Appointment sorting ? 'Urgent' noice board ? 'Overdue' notce board ? Advance notice of forthcomeg events Keyboard dust cover (A500) £4.95 Protect your Amiga with th*lop- quaMy cover made from dear, water-resistant vmy1 irs bound with strong cotton and features the Amiga Computing logo Mouse mat £6.95 Batman the Movie computer game at a knock-out price Only ZP £14.95 ArgAsm Probably the fastest assembler ever for the Amiga!
Exclusive price for readers of There's always a demand for apare Amiga diaca - and at Amiga Computing wa have lots we will be happy to sell off at a really exceptional price. They are all discs that have been prepared as monthly cover discs, but they are brand new and have never been used, so you can safely reformat them and use them for any purpose you like. Look at these prices: Need some extra discs?
5 for £7.50!
? Ml mu* I* cjpatutiy ? UntmiM »pM vu«l ol Un ? CubMtll -"dm* ? MarvMnt we* «k Both of these powerful programs are excellent value on their own. But if you buy this exclusive combination package well knock £20 off the combined retail price.
READER OFFERS Boost you micro's sound output with an ST Soundblaster The essential peripheral for all games players and musicians Take advantage of the Sts superb sound capabilities by routing the output through the Soundblaster's high quality amplifier and speakers.
The amiplifier has been designed specifically for the ST and implements the latest microchip technology to produce an ear-shattering five watts output. Twin volume controls enable you to adjust the output and balance to suit.
ONLY £34.99 The quality 50 watt speakers consist of a 3in woofer for thumping bass output, a 2in mid-range unit for crisp music and effects and a tiny 1 in tweeter which pumps out the highest frequencies the ear can hear.
The package comes complete with mains adaptor and full instructions.
No soldering or opening of the ST's case is required - simply plug in, boot up your favourite software and turn up the volume Order today,using the form on Page 113 Tank Attack is a computerised board game tor two. Three or lour players, where each one takes the role of a General commanding a country's Tank Corps of one or more armoured divisions.
Your objective is to capture the enemy headquarters, which will require the planned strategic deployment of your forces and regular fire duels between your own and enemy units.
Weather, morale, skill, judgement, planning foresight, careful management of rebuild and repair facilities and luck all play a part in deciding the result of each game.
Tank attack is one of those games you keep coming back to.
And at the special offer price of only £19.99 is guaranteed to give you and your friends hours of action-packed excitement.
• Control a full division of tanks and armoured cars
• See all the fighting 'live' on your computer
• Superb board and fully detailed playing pieces Real time
graphics Plav as allies or en Play as allies or enemies
Suitable for all ages £12.99 RRP OUR PRICE £9.99 Place your
order today, using the form on Page 113 1 AMIGA vl A omputing
Offers subfea toavaHatxMy October 1989-March 1990 bundle
t£l6.00 9898 tAdd a Europe & Era £12 Overseas _
• Octooer 1989 £3.10 9716
• November 1989 C3 10 9717
• December 1989 C3.10 9718
• January 1990 C3.10 9719 February 1990 £2.10 9720 March 1990
£2.10 9721 tndudee cover doc Cover Oscs August-Januaiy £9 00
9881 Rombo Vidi-Chrome E119.95 9891 cm Protext Version 4
Seepage IIII 9530 ?
Casio Pocket TV400 colour TV (see page 76) £94 .95 Plus post and packing £1.50 9865 bd HISoft (see page 61) Bas* Compter £69 95 9896 ?
Battery charQer £19.95 (see page itii Plus pan and packing £1.50 9861 s Amiga DABhand Guide (seepegee no-ltll A comprehensive guide to the Amiga's disc operating system (versions 1.2 and 1.3) £14.95 9866 = Amiga cover discs (teepogee 110-111) 5 assorted d.scs £7.50 25 assorted discs £20 .00 9887 9888 E3 READER OFFERS Mall Order offers seepage "0 till PuMohora Choice £79 99 9667 _imn_ Hm Gon £98 85 9669 BetlSw Wort Perfect 4.1 version 178 85 9870 X-Cad £89.85 9871 Small Business Accs Xlra £89.95 9873 Mavis Beacon Typing £24 99 9874 Home Accounts Day by Day £34 90 9851 Va*d 10 30 4 90 ArgAsm
£54 95 9858 _ Soundblaster isaegage II.
£34.99 9890 =1 Sim City see page re) £24.99 9883 Drakkhen seepage!SI £24 99 9884 1-1 Sim City and Drakkhen see page 761 £44.99 9885 =1 Batman - The Movie Game seepage 111 £14.95 9882 Tank Attack If page 11* £19 95 9848 1=1 Dust covers £4.95 9507 =1 Mouse mats £4.95 9508 =1 Binders £5.95 9509 =1 Disc boxes £4.95 9860 = Addition for postage: Europe & Eire add £3 1 1 Overseas add CS Unless otherwise rxtceted Send to: Database Direct, FREEPOST, Ellesmere Port, South Wlrral L65 3EB (No ftlarrp reeoec I pooiao m UK) Products an rcrmaMy despatched muhtn 49 hours ol rece& but detvery ot certain
terns could take up to 26 da s Payment, please indicate method (?)
ChaquwEurochaque made payable to Database Diract AccM* Ma tarcard£ urocard BarOaycanl VitaConnact
* *• LI LI.) L-l LI. 1 LL.l 1 JJ Order at any time ol lha day or
night Ooal large* la gee rear name address srtd oeda card
narrttet Orton 0y p«r» 051457 1275 Order* Oy Far:051457 2013
Orders p, UcMnt 14*0001 General Enquiries: 051457 2061 Name _
Address Daytime telephone number in case ol queries Signed TWO
WAYS TO ENSURE YOU GET SlMGA.
1. Complete and mail subscription form on Page 113.
2. Hand this form to your newsagent.
Please reserve me a copy of Amiga Computing magazine every month until turther notice.
I will collect I would like it delivered to my home Name: . Address: .... Postcode: .... Note to newsagent: Amiga Computing should be obtainable from your local wholesaler. If not, contact Circulation Manager on 0424 430422 I------------------1 ¦ LAST BLIT THERE is never any shortage of things to review at Amiga Computing, but we choose our .. reviewers carefully and sometimes there is Nothing for a particular expert
to do. One day D) Walker Morgan, one of the less tame Unix exports, breezed into the office and asked what there was for him to do.
''Well 'Nothing"' said Simon the ed.
"What?" replied DJ. " "he said, "it's a new product for the Amiga". DJ smiled and went home to his trusty A1000. A few days later he mailed his i review to Simon using the magic of modems and Cix: Nothing dropped through my letter box. Great. I said, grabbed it and dashed up stairs. My first complaint was the documentation which was in Nothing format. Then I found it. A small one inch cube of Nothing, which if inserted carefully into the disc drive allowed you to read the full instructions.
1 couldn't wait to get Nothing up and running. I plugged it in straight away. Nothing in the serial port.
Much ado about nothing Nothing in the parallel port. I made sure I put Nothing in the drive chain and Nothing in the 56 pin expansion port. Then 1 booted my Amiga and ... Nothing.
It was wonderful. I sat there running all my favourite programs knowing Nothing was happening, and whenever I printed anything Nothing filtered the text output and added Nothing to the characters.
1 strongly recommend Nothing as an all purpose product for people who don't know if they need Anything which is not available.
The folks at Nothing, though, didn't answer ihe phone. I dialled Nothing and all I got was a dial tone. But I have it on good authority from the designer of "Anything not available- that Nothing is compatible with Pcs and Ataris.
So soon Nothing will be a standard addition to most Pcs. People will point at your machine and say: "What have you got installed in that", and you can proudly say: "Nothing".* 1 f ~Jr sBfl i , i J The team at Amiga Computing would like to thank US Gold fora keen medieval meal and knees-up al Coombe Abbey. Perhaps it might have shown better taste on our part if we hadn t turned up dressed as Batman.
Pictured here are Simon ",It's a rally car" Rockman. Stc " What was that sign " Veilch and feff "It's in that field" Walker. But 1 which is which?
M COMPUTERWISE BRIGHTON AMIGA SPECIALISTS WE HAVE 100s Of SOFTWARE TITLES (MANY ARE NOW DISCOUNTED). BOOKS AND PERIPHERALS IN STOCK AT ALL TIMES.
CALL IN TODAY FOR YOURS £1000 INSTANT CREDIT AVAILABLE TO PERSONAL CALLERS ¦s 0273 674626 OPEN 10 AM TO S.30 PM MONDAY TO SATURDAY 44 GEORGE STREET. KEMPTOWN. BRIGHTON OPPOSITE THE AMERICAN EXPRESS BUILDING A500's * SPECIALIST REPAIRS * ST'S Repairs unoertaken on Amiga 2000. Atari Mega ST. Printers.
Monitors, V.O.U.'s etc. ano most Business & Home Computers All our engineers are fully experienced in 16 bit tecnology Don't risk damaging your ST. Ask about our all inc. Ram and Drive Upgrades "12 MONTHS- SEND YOUR MACHINE ESTIMATES =£ OR PHONE FOR DETAILS P'W'L' SHIELD COMPUTER SERVICES LTD SO Flixloa Road. Urmaoo. Manchester M3T 3A8 Tel: 061-747 3185 Fax: 061-747 0515 ADVERTISERS1 INDEX Amigatex ...... .....105 Immediate Media ...... 105 Amiga PD Library________ Amiga User Group .. Anco Software.... ______99 105 .... 48 Interactive Publishing_____ Ladbroke
LC. L ..... ...52 26 .....88 Applied Research
Kernel Amor ..... 105 Line!
Products ......2 ......84
M. C.S ...... 31 Asncom .... ......30
Magnetic Media
- .104 Byteback ...... 18 Mansfield
Computers .....32 Calco Software ... Castle
Software ....109 22 MO Office Supplies-----------43 Memnrv
Pxnansion Svstems 70 Club 68000 .. 44
Microsnips ..... .....61 Computer Store 83
Microtext 99 Computerwise .. .....114
Mirrorsoft ..... 116 CP Software ......
C. R.L .. ...... ____10 .....106 Overseas
Media__________ Power Computing ..... ......3
16. 17 ...115 Database Software .....
61. 102 .7.8.9 55 Rombo, .. Datel
Electronics ...6 Sabre Technologies .. 95 Dialcom
U.K . Shield Computer Services Silica
Shop ..... Siren Software ...114 Diamond
Computers Digicom .62.63 13 47 28 Digita
International . ......56 SK Marketing
89 Digital Integration------- Evesham Micros .....
____14 96 Soflmachine ..
Softsellers ...... .....79 25 Hampshire
Micro Computers .32 ULTaV GO Third Coast Technologies Tri
logic 32 33 Hi Soft .. 73
Turbosoft ...... .....87 Homebase
Business..... ...104 Video Productions-------- _____31 HSV
Computer Supplies 34 WTS Electronics .
.104 PAL VERSION £114.95 vidi-amk;a SCREEN shot AVAILABLE
FROM ALL GOOD COMPUTER SHOPS J • i ¦ VIDI FEATURES..
• Take snapshots in 16 shades live from video.
• Multiple frame store will utilise all available memory).
• Dynamic rut anti paste.
• Full palette com ml.
• 1 lardware and software control of brightness and contrast.
0 Compatible with all video standard* colour, black and white, VI IS. Beta.
PAL, NTSC etc.)
• I p ;radublc to full colour with additional ' YIDH :I1R0ME'
COLOUR UPGRADE £19.95 incVAT 105 .52 .26 .88 ....2 .31 104 .32 ..43 .20 ..61 ..99 116 ....3 ',17 115 ..95 114 .47 ..28 ..89 .79 .25 ..32 ...33 ...87 ...31 .104 |VIDI ENABLES YOU TO
• Have perfect freeze frame frt
• Incorporate real life objert im« your favourite design.
® (*11111 real lime 3-1) imaue YIDI-AMIGA SCREEN
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• Cupmre and Mon* union ¦npience,**.
• Desk tup video.
• D.T.P. DeskTop Pulilidiiim i. VIDI-AMIC.A SCREEN SHOT Rombo
Ltd., 6 Fail bairn Road, Kirkton North, TEL: 0506-414631
Livingston, Scotland EH54 6TS. FAX: 0506-414634 WELCOME TO THE
Mint sinister power has forced the Magic Canyon Theme Park lo done do.n' Hi, don the mere mention of ita name send shudders donn lour spine? What terrible secret drove its former owner mad?
Voo're the inheritor of this mysterious pleasure dome - only you ran find the answer. Step through the creaking turnstile, board the mystery train and ripenence a fantastic journey through four entireli different rones: Dream Land. Dragon land. Future Land and festerday Land.
With outstandini! Visual effects, sinister sound and an infernal plot, this is one mystery you II never forget Surviving il is an achievement, solving it is the moot challenging pari of all.
Once you've stepped through the gales, there's no going hack.
OUT SOON ON ATARI ST. AMIGA AND PC IMAGE WORKS. IRWIN HOUSE. 118 SOUTHWARK STREET. LONDON SE1OSW TELEPHONE: 019281454 FAX: 01583 3494 1 Available with or without calendar clock. • Plugs easily into A500 slot so no soldering. • Switch provided to switch RAM in out. • Battery backed calendar clock, retains time date on switch off. • Amazing low price.
512K RAM Extension board £19.99 512K RAM Extension board + clock £29.99 S12K RAM Extension board, populated £59.99 512K RAM Extension board + clock, populated £69.99 Our trained technicians can repair all hardware, including y Amigas, in minimum time at competitive rates.
2 Holds disk drives, genlocks etc...
• Easy access to pystick pans
• Monitor sits about A500 £54.95 3 HiSoft = PUT
(x,y),bX(»,0),PSET NEXT q END SUB 4 Suits Amiga 500 or Amiga
• Taac 1 Cltlran drive mechanism
• On Oft switch on rear ol drive
• Throughport connector
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• Long cable lor location either side ot computer 5
• Full 12 months guarantee 6 Foi poww' and value lor money, I
don't think that Protext can ba baatan It oan ba ueed as
»irrp*y as you choose. Or can hantSe tha meat corrpta* mwtmerge
routines... m short. I can ba what you want a tobe'.-Mkronet
'Anyone with a prolnMenal mtarast in words «t likely lo Imd It
pays dvWnnds- PC Riislnaaa World "Proleat deserve* to ba the
system by wh«h al ether wcrd processor* are fudged- - Vote
Computer The great strength oI the parhage • H ease oI use* -
CPC CompiAing