## Review: Almathera Ten On Ten CD Pack

### By: Jason Compton

The "5-Foot 10-Pack" has become something of an eyesore in the IBM PC CD-ROM market. These monstrosities, which sell for about US$40, contain 10 CDs, usually one Doom collection, a few mostly worthless multimedia offerings, and some totally worthless CDs as filler. Occasionally, there are a couple of classics, but in general, the vinyl holders aren't worth buying. (They do sell pretty well, though.)

Almathera had the same idea, but turned it around completely. Rather than the largest packaging possible, they squeezed their 10 CDs into a paperboard case roughly the size of two stacked jewel boxes, each CD with its own paperboard sleeve (which, by the way, form a nice rainbow-order pattern in the case.) They had to jack the price up a bit (it's more like US$60), but...

### Disc 1: Almathera Comms & Networking CD

This is the "main" CD of the collection. It is the only CDTV/CD32 bootable CD, allowing the user to access the rest of the discs if they're not fortunate enough to have a CD-ROM equipped full-blown Amiga (or a CDTV or CD32 so decked out that a boot CD is unnecessary).

The primary purpose is to get the user connected to something, somewhere. For modemers, Terminus is included. For local networking, Parnet and SerNet (largely for the CD32) is included, as are Envoy tools. For TCP/IP type net connections, a comprehensive installation of AmiTCP 4.0 demo is included, along with quite a few useful and fun networking programs (Grapevine IRC and Netrek, to name a couple.)

The work of getting the user online is very well done, put together by Almathera's resident net geek, THP.

When you're tired of talking to other computers, there are some diversions on board. The entire Blaz...uh, BLAZEMONGER collection of articles, StarWoids, and a complete Amiga Report archive up to and including the Auction issue and 3.09. An assortment of "useful" utilities, including DiskSalv, LHA, DMS, and KingCon are there for enrichment purposes.

It's a good start, even if it is missing such staples of networking as Mlink and a decent FTP client. Still, just about every essential is here, and in a well presented form. Nice sendoff.

### Disc 2: CDPD 1

To be flat, this is an old CD-ROM, one of Almathera's first products (if not THE first), with Fred Fish discs 1-660 and about 100 MODs. Not a bad thing, per se, but nothing current enough to keep you entranced for ages.

Protracker and Noiseplayer are included for MOD enjoyment, and KingFisher is on the disc to make the Fishing process less of a hassle.

### Disc 3: CDPD 2

This companion piece brings the Fish collection up to about 760, adds 220 disks of the Scope collection and 150 megs of archives from the now-defunct AB20 archive of Amiga software (back when Aminet was not a mighty monolith of Amiga FTP)

As an interesting aside, 10 disks from JAM Magazine (Just Amiga Monthly) are included. The readme file didn't mention them...that's what made it an interesting aside.

Again, not bad. There's certainly useful software to be had. But it can't replace being current.

### Disc 4: Demo 1

The third offering from the old archives of Almathera is what it sounds like-a big collection of demos. Most fall under the category of "single-screen" demos, rather than the multi-screen "mega-demos" that I prefer. Such is life. Good luck getting some of these to run...you know how demos can be...

Aside from the collection, there are some games, a small collection of clipart, a dash of fonts, some classic animations (including works of Tobias Richter and Eric Schwartz), and a large collection of MODs.

Good stuff, considering you only paid $6 for it. This is a CD worth spending some time on. I admit, I'm a sucker for animations.

### Disc 5: World Vista

Hey, great idea! Educational/reference software for the Amiga!

It was originally a CDTV title, and has endured some minor bug-fixes to make it usable for all Amigas. (It's a good idea to disable mouse-altering clients, though, just in case.)

The interface is sound and easy to navigate. The information on the countries isn't always encyclopedic in scope, but the included musical clips and digitized HAM images are a nice touch. Pity that it still has the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia...

The program is OS-compliant, but its method of handling multiple screens can be a bit alarming if you try to multitask (after all, on the CDTV, they didn't think you would.)

The included phrase-translation guide (that speaks the translated phrase, from a choice of a couple dozen or so) is a nice touch, as are the city maps (even if they are a bit too rare.) As a general-reference tool (providing the country still exists), this is actually a nice program.

### Disc 6: The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare

Let's hear it for AMOS.

This was clearly the product of a company that said "CDTV? Wow, this multimedia stuff is neat. Let's get a multimedia authoring system and write some software!"

The result is...well, it's ok. Yes, it IS Shakespeare's collected works, and I suppose not all of the pictures are terribly distracting. But on balance I think I'd have preferred a less gaudy presentation, as well as one that accessed more quickly (some of Shakespeare's scenes are short, and you lose the rhythm having to click, click, click...)

It's nice to have. Hey, it's a lot cheaper than buying one of those Shakespeare collected works volumes. But it's decidedly CDTV-era. Get together some actor types and have a blast.

### Disc 7: Pandora's CD

Sorry, I just don't quite get this one.

It seems to be a combination "CDTV Multimedia Sampler Disc" (something to make you feel good about having bought one) and a multimedia promo disc (i.e. something to convince people it's worth buying one). Originally published by Optonica, the disc is a combination of self-promotion for their own products and some multimedia educational and entertainment (both used loosely) features, consisting of animations with voiceovers, mostly.

Check it out, then shelve it. I couldn't get the interface to work properly on the 3000.

### Disc 8: Team Yankee

Is it silly to have a 5.5 meg game on a CD? Well, yeah. But the story goes something like this-

The floppy license to this game had already been sold, so Almathera bought the CD license. Plus, they needed to round out the ten pack. "Nine Pack of CD-ROMs" just isn't as satisfying if you think in decimal.

This is a 3d (at times) multi-vehicle strategic tank battle game. To understand more, you'd really just have to see it. The manual was scanned in and included on the CD (and on Disc 1, for convenience), and can be viewed as the game plays out, since it multitasks.

The game is nothing exciting, and I could think of dozens of others I'd have preferred, but hey, they didn't ask me. Consider it a nice reward for making it this far into the set.

### Disc 9: Almathera Photo Library CD

Part pretty picture collection and part promotional vehicle for Photogenics. That's a pretty fair way to sum this up.

It's about 530 megs of data, largely consisting of collected IFFs, GIFs, and JPEGs, with a small assortment of PhotoCD images (in file form) and some Photogenics-generated sample pieces, as well as a demo version of Photogenics itself.

Rather interesting was the inclusion of the Ten on Ten box logo as one of the Photogenics examples. Showoffs.

It's hard not to like lots of pictures. It's certainly lots of pictures. The IFFs are largely HAM-8, though, so be wary, ECS users.

### Disc 10: Almathera Clipart and Fonts CD

To give you a starting point for original Photogenics creations (presumably), here's 190 megs of fonts and clipart.

Sure, they could have put a lot more on there, but it IS a rather large chunk of fonts (bitmapped, CompuGraphic, and Postscript) and the usual stock black and white clipart.

Hey, it's got Bodoni, the font Amiga Technologies is using for their new logo. Can't complain much there.

### As a Whole

So, let's take score. 4 hits (Comms and Networking, Demo 1, World Vista, Photo Library), 5 iffy's (CDPD 1 and 2, Shakespeare, Team Yankee, and Clipart and Fonts), and just one miss (Pandora's CD). That's really not bad at all, and of course, tastes will vary. (I challenge anybody to stare me in the eye and tell me they found Pandora's CD an unbridled success and masterpiece, though.)

It's a lot of data bang for the buck. An investment in something like the Aminet Set may give you a more consistent diet, but it's 6 less CDs and a much less eclectic arrangement. Almathera's Ten on Ten has a sense of style, and the included CDs should be enough to keep you busy for a long, long while.

Almathera
Southerton House
Boundary Business Court
92-94 Church Road
Mitcham, Surrey
CR4 3TD England