@database "ar413.guide"
@Node MAIN "Amiga Report Online Magazine #4.13 -- October 18, 1996"
===========================================================================
  October 18, 1996            @{" Turn the Page " link MENU}             Issue No. 4.13
===========================================================================
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                 "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!"

                      Copyright 1996 FS Publications
                            All Rights Reserved
@endnode
@node MENU "Amiga Report Main Menu"
@toc MAIN

===========================================================================
==                               Main Menu                               ==
===========================================================================

    @{"  Editorial and Opinion   " link OPINION}             @{"    Featured Articles    " link FEATURE}

    @{"         Reviews          " link  REVIEW}             @{"  News & Press Releases  " link NEWS}

    @{"      Aminet Charts       " link     FTP}             @{"       Reader Mail       " link MAIL}

                     ---------------------------------

    @{"    About AMIGA REPORT    " link ABOUT}             @{"    Dealer Directory     " link DEALER}
 Contact Information and Copyrights     Amiga Dealer Addresses and Numbers

    @{"     Where to Get AR      " link WHERE}             @{"     Advertisements      " link COMMERCIAL}
 Mailing List &  Distribution Sites     Online Services, Dealers, Ordering
               ______________________________________________
         //   |                                              |       //
========//====|  Amiga Report International Online Magazine  |======//=====
==   \\//     |  Issue No. 4.13            October 18, 1996  |   \\//    ==
==============|  "THE Online Source for Amiga Information!"  |=============
              |______________________________________________|
@endnode
@node JASON "Editor"
@toc STAFF

===========================================================================
                                  EDITOR
===========================================================================

                               Jason Compton
                               =============
             Internet                                  Address
             --------                                  -------
        jcompton@xnet.com                     1203 Alexander Ave
      jcompton@amigazone.com                  Streamwood, IL 60107-3003
                                              USA

               Fax                                      Phone
               ---                                      -----
           847-741-0689                             630-736-1286
@endnode
@node KATIE "Assistant Editor"
@toc STAFF

===========================================================================
==                           ASSISTANT EDITOR                            ==
===========================================================================

                             Katherine Nelson
                             ================

                                 Internet
                                 --------
                               Kati@nwu.edu
@endnode
@node KEN "Games Editor"
@toc STAFF

===========================================================================
==                             GAMES EDITOR                              ==
===========================================================================

                               Ken Anderson
                               ============

               Internet                             Address
               --------                             -------
             kend@dhp.com                      44 Scotland Drive
         ka@protec.demon.co.uk                 Dunfermline
                                               Fife KY12 7TD
                                               Scotland
@endnode
@node WILLIAM "Contributing Editor"
@toc STAFF

===========================================================================
                            CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
===========================================================================

                               William Near
                               ============

                                 Internet
                                 --------
                              wnear@epix.net
@endnode
@node EDITORIAL "compt.sys.editor.desk"
@toc OPINION

===========================================================================
    compt.sys.editor.desk                          By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON}
===========================================================================

We can make all the noises we want.  I've made them all myself, and I'm
hearing them daily.  The Amiga acquisition by VIScorp hasn't gone as
quickly as everybody would have liked, and it's frustrating to people.

Yes, machines are still available.  There's certainly enough 4000Ts to
satisfy demand, and there's enough A1200s in storage (although the
inventory numbers themselves are to some degree a point of discussion) to
last for a while.  In that sense, then, there's nothing "wrong" with the
Amiga market.

But a lot of Amiga users are tired of not having a strong owner to tell
them that things are fine.  Amiga Technologies was actually doing a decent
job of it for a while.  Whether you thought it was a silly case or not,
whether you liked the specs or not, the Walker was a sign that SOMETHING
was happening.  That AT cared enough to contract out development of a new
machine.  In that, at least, people felt like there was work being done.

But of course, Escom's PC and UK interests meant that AT wouldn't have a
long and prosperous future as a division of Escom, and has been in
bankruptcy for some time now.

I made it my job years ago to bring news to Amiga users, and more recently,
VIScorp made it my job as well.  And it's frustrating for me when I don't
have more to report, but international technology purchases are not exactly
cash-and-carry operations.  If anything, we all should have learned that
from the Commodore liquidation.

So, what's news?  Lots.  Jim Drew of Emplant fame is back in business, with
a sordid tale of the misdeeds of Utilities Unlimited which were all not his
fault.  DirOpus 5.5 is out and we've got a preliminary review.  We also
have an opening article and review in what will hopefully be increased
support by Amiga Report for the fascinating genre of interactive fiction
gaming.  Other software and hardware packages are arriving weekly at AR,
and it will hopefully be soon that my schedule opens up enough to allow me
to fit everything in.

Of interest is that Dale Larson's IAM company, which recently added a book
of Internet erotica (stories from a respected author) has run into some
snags in printing and advertising--specifically, that the only US-based
Amiga print magazine will not run an ad for the book.

There are also rumblings that Oregon Research, the US based developer of
Termite, TermiteTCP, GameSmith and others, as well as distributor for
HiSoft products, has run into overwhelmingly high order volume paired with
severe understaffing--so if you can't get a hold of them, don't panic.

The ex-Portal Amiga Zone is running again in beta on CalWeb, and should be
running again soon.  A good number of Portalities seem to have made the
transition, as evidenced by the long CC: list I get in my e-mails from Harv
Laser, Zone maintainer.

Stay tuned.  We'll be back.

-Jason
@endnode
@node COMMERCIAL "Commercial Products"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                            Commercial Products
===========================================================================

@{"             CalWeb            " link ZONE}  The new home of the Amiga Zone

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node MAIL "Reader Mail"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                               Reader Mail
===========================================================================

From: "Robert A. Knop" <rknop@mop.caltech.edu>
Subject: AR Reader Mail

Hi-

This is a response to Nick Christie's response to my enumeration of the
Ubenefits of a Unix shell account.  First off, most of Christie's points I
actually agree with.  I did not mean to say that the Unix shell account is
the be-all and end-all of internet access.  I merely meant to point out
that the shell account does have its uses and advantages, and that it
should not a priori be neglected when considering an internet account.

Indeed, one of my points, that a shell account is infinitely easier to get
going than a PPP account, is probably obselete now with Miami out there.  I
haven't tried Miami myself, but everything I've heard about it suggests
that setting up a PPP account with it is really not a whole lot harder than
running a normal terminal program.

I stand by my other points, however, with the understanding that a Unix
shell account cannot do the multithreading or graphics than a PPP account
can do.  There is one point I need to address specifically, though, for
Christie's response indicated a lack of understanding of my original point.

Christie wrote:

 > As for the behaviour of Lynx, I do not believe it retrieves only one
 > screen- full of text at a time.

This is correct -- Lynx retrieves the whole document at once.  But that
wasn't my point.  My point was, if you are on a shell account, the whole
document doesn't have to go over the modem to your computer.  Consider:

  ---------              ---------
  | Your  |              | Unix  |                              | Rest
  | Amiga |--modem link--| Shell |---fast ethernet connection---| of
  |       |              | Host  |                              | Internet
  ---------              ---------

If you are cruising the web with Lynx on a Unix shell account, when you get
to a page the whole thing is transferred to the host on which you have your
shell account.  Only the screen you are looking at is transferred over the
modem down to your Amiga -- not because that's all that Lynx transfers, but
because Lynx is running on the Unix host.  The Unix host thinks your Amiga
is just a terminal, and sends it only what the terminal should see -- i.e.
whatever is displayed on the screen.  And that's all that has to go over
the modem.

On the other hand, if you have a PPP account, the whole document is
transferred over the modem to your Amiga.  Your web browser, whatever it
is, is running on the Amiga, so that's where the document goes.  Because
the modem link will tend to be slower than the host's link to the rest of
the internet, the less you send over the modem the faster and more
responsive things will be. 

It's not a big deal, really, I just wanted to make sure that this point was
clear.  All I was trying to say with the original letter was that if you
are shopping for internet access, ask yourself what you really want.  If
what you really want is an E-mail account, and perhaps the ability to
cruise the web to get textual information off of it, then a shell account
may actually serve you better than a PPP account.  Of course there are
things a PPP account can do which a shell account cannot.  That's all.

-Rob

                            --- --- --- --- ---

From: ssolie@freenet.calgary.ab.ca (Steven M. Solie)
Subject: Fourth Level Developments Law Suite

I'm sorry to bother you but please hear me out.  I wasn't sure who to 
tell this to so I thought I'd tell a "reporter".

Over the last couple of months or so, many messages have been passed to 
FLD about Ami File-safe V3.0 availability.  Apparently, a lot of people 
have sunk money into AFS V3.0 since their valentines special.  Many of 
those people have seeked legal aid and have found dead ends because FLD 
is overseas.

I have written a couple of E-mail messages to FLD about the situation and 
have heard nothing in response.

What I think we all want to know is, "Is FLD bankrupt or not?"  Why would 
a company which advertises excellent support be treating its customers 
like this?  Have certain hostile users, including myself apparently, been 
singled out and are on the bad list at FLD?

Could you please look into the situation and write a short report for the
next "Amiga Report"?  Many loyal Amigans would be grateful to at least hear
a peep.  I think they might write back to you considering your place in the
Amiga community (great work by the way).

Very concerned,
--Steven Solie


     We'll look into this and report in an upcoming issue.  Meanwhile, if
     other readers have stories, good or bad, to share about FLD, we'd like
     to hear about it.   -Jason

@endnode
@node OPINION1 "E-Cash and Amiga"
@toc OPINION

===========================================================================
                             E-Cash and Amiga
  Jonathan Gapen                                      innuendo@execpc.com
===========================================================================

I heartily agree that a good "electronic cash" system could do wonders for
the Amiga market, but I believe that the shareware sector would benefit
much more than software companies and retailers.

As with most Amiga users, I think, I use quite a number of high-quality
shareware programs, but without paying the fee.  Of course I mean to reg=
ister "some day," but some day always seems a few weeks in the future.  
Why?  In part because of limited funds, I have to wait to earn the money
before I= can spend it.  However, the larger barrier is the effort
involved, especially for authors in other countries.  Banks charge large
fees for cashing personl checks from other countries, so you have to pay
for a wire transfer, or go to the US Postal Service to buy a money order. 
(For ShapeShifter, I simply wrapped cash in stiff cardboard, to avoid the
bother.)

Recently, I purchased a license for Holger Kruse's excellent Miami.  While
I would have bought it anyway, the on-line registration with First Virtual
made the whole process painless.  So painless, in fact, that I purchased a
Magic User Interface key file the next day, through SASG's on-line order
WWW page.

With a number of the proposed "e-cash" standards, this process would get
even easier, since there would be no need to go through First Virtual, or
waiting for a charge verification on a credit account.  Instead, you would
simply "spend" the e-cash issued to you by First Virtual, or your bank.
It's secure, no one else can spend it but you, and attempting to spend it
twice alerts the bank to e-cash fraud.  It's as fast as handing over paper
bank notes.

Retailers and software companies may benefit from e-cash, but to be
successful, they already need to accept payment by credit card.  They don't
suffer from inconvenient transfer of money now, so making that process
simpler won't give them the same benefits as the shareware authors of the
world.
@endnode
@node OPINION2 "E-Cash On The Net"
@toc OPINION

===========================================================================
                             E-Cash On The Net
  Maximo Lachman                                di540@freenet.carleton.ca
===========================================================================

There`s only 1 system that works - Minitel.  That`s since the French PTT
had their own bank, as well as phone system.  They are completely
self-contained.  Any other solution needs too much co-ordination between
disparate entities, which means either poor security or high transaction
costs.  What would work better is a worldwide COD system, similar to what
UPS uses in the US.  They charge $5 per transaction, which isn`t bad since
they ship for less than the Post Office.  Although UPS does ship worldwide,
they won`t send COD,at least for now.  Perhaps they need to team up with
American Express to handle the foreign exchange aspect. 
@endnode
@node NEWS1 "Mayland V1.0"
@toc NEWS

TITLE

Mayland

VERSION

1.0

AUTHOR

  Name : Allan Odgaard
 Snail : Dagmarsgade 36, DK-2200 Copenhagen.
 Email : Duff@DK-Online.DK
   WWW : http://WWW2.DK-Online.DK/Users/Allan_Odgaard/

DESCRIPTION

Mayland is a very powerful and flexible calender and reminder program.

FEATURES

 o  Execute a command and/or show a message! Not only at the exact event
    time, but also some minutes/hours/days before and after.
 o  Come Again feature of message requester.
 o  Drag'n'Drop events to quickly reschedule.
 o  Year/Month/Day Calculations can be inserted in the message text, e.g.,
    "I'm %y-1976 years old!" will always show my correct age.
 o  Overview containing link buttons to the previous and next months.
 o  Holidays can be defined and are uniquely displayed on the calendar.
 o  ARexx control.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

MUI 3.1+
Kickstart 39+
MC68020 or better.

AVAILABILITY

AmiNet:Util/Time/Mayland.LhA
<http://WWW2.DK-Online.DK/Users/Allan_Odgaard/Mayland.HTM>

PRICE

The registration fee is 120DKK, US$20, 35DM or =A315.

DISTRIBUTABILITY

It is *NOT* to be distributed on magazine coverdisks or similar without the
owner's explicit written consent.
@endnode
@node NEWS2 "AQCVid"
@toc NEWS

For immediate press release:

   AQCVid: Omnilink Corp.'s NEW Amiga interface for use with the QuickCam

Omnilink Corporation is pleased and proud to announce their first foray
into Amiga(TM) development with the AQCVid(TM).  A unique hardware and
software solution which allows Amiga users to enjoy the benefits of the
popular PC QuickCam(TM).

For those of you who are not familiar with the hardware specifications of
the QuickCam, here are a few:

   * Up to 320x240 pixel capture.
   * 4-bit grey scale (16 shades of grey) and 6-bit grey scale (64 shades
     of grey).
   * Frame rates up to 24 fps.
   * Draws less than 350 milliwatts of current.
   * Field of view is approximately 65 degrees (equivalent to a 38mm lens
     on a 35mm camera).
   * Focus is fixed from 18 inches to infinity.
   * Lens is f1.9.

A more recent QuickCam model has been introduced, which has 640x480 as one
of its resolutions, with 24bit colour.  AQCVid support is tentatively
planned for this model, adding an even greater quality to an already
impressive roster of applications.

AQCVid is only for use with the PC/Windows version of the greyscale
QuickCam.

This development will allow all Amiga users a new field of applications for
both amateur and professional use.

Here are some of the possible applications:

  1. Photography in several file formats (JPEG, IFF, Datatypes, etc.) for
     desktop publishing, games, multi-media, Internet(homepages, etc.),
     image processing, family digital picture albums, conferencing, etc.
  2. ANIM and CDXL format animations (from live action) for use in games,
     multi-media, Internet(homepages(AVI, MPEG), etc.), video (image
     processing), family digital video albums, conferencing, etc.
  3. Whatever else 3rd party developers and Amiga users can dream up.

The AQCVid is designed to work with all ECS/AGA Amigas, and includes
CyberGraphX support.  File formats currently include IFF, ANIM5, and ANIM7.
CDXL (animation w/sound) and JPEG is tentatively planned for a future
release.

Users also have the option of time lapse with exposure control.  Internet
users have an overwrite previous file function, useful for realtime 'net
video updates.

An ARexx Commodity is also supplied to allow for control of the QuickCam by
other external applications.

16bit audio sampling/playback support is also tentatively planned for 16
bit Amiga audio expansion cards.   Also planned is a ImageFX(tm) module
that will allow direct control of the QuickCam by ImageFX.

As new Amiga models come into being, Omnilink is committed to maintain
AQCVid compatibility with these hardware advancements.

We hope this will show the Amiga community and the personal computing
community of the world, Omnilink Corporation's dedication to the best
personal computer on the planet, the AMIGA.

Developers who would be interested in supporting the AQCVid for their
software and hardware Amiga applications, as well as interested Amiga
users, may contact us through our Omnilink homepage at
"http://www.portal.com/~omnilink" (SEE IMPORTANT NOTE BELOW).  Our homepage
may also be accessed thru "http://www.cucug.org/amiga.html".


IMPORTANT NOTE:
---------------
After 9/30/96 our new WWW location will be http://www.olnk.com
our E-MAIL will be support@olnk.com for support and sales@olnk.com for
sales.

More information about the QuickCam and other Connectix products, can be
found in the Connectix home page at "http://www.connectix.com".

QuickCam is a registered trademark of Connectix.
AQCVid is a registered trademark of Omnilink Corporation.
Amiga is a registered trademark of VIScorp.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            AQCVid Technical Information

Release date: November 1996
Price: $59.95 Introductory offer upon release QuickCam is NOT included.

The AQCVid is an adapter that plugs into your parallel port.  All power is
supplied by the Amiga.  The QuickCam connects to the AQCVid adapter.  There
are NO modifications needed to be done to your Amiga or your QuickCam.

  Minimum Requierments:
     Amiga 500/600/1200/2000/3000(T)/4000(T)
     Harddrive

     Processor: 68000
     Ram:       1 Meg Chip
     Chipset:   ECS
     O.S.:      3.1

     Connectix Gray Scale QuickCam, IBM-PC version

  Recommended:
     Processor: 68020 or better
     Ram:       2 Meg Chip 4 Meg Fast
     Chipset:   AGA or graphics card with Workbench emulation

  Software capabilities:
     Colors:
        16 - ECS/AGA or graphics card with Workbench emulation
        64 - AGA or graphics card with Workbench emulation

     Maximum Resolutions:
        Stills:
           323 x 200
           161 x 122
           80  x 61

        Animations:
           Anim Op 5 and Anim Op 7W compression:
              312 x 200
              160 x 122
              80 x 61

           Anim Op 7L compression:
              256 x 200
              160 x 122
              64  x 61

     Image exposure time:
        QuickCam timing: 1/1000 seconds to 2 seconds
        Software timing: 1/60 seconds to infinity

     Save Formats:
        IFF-ILBM
        IFF-ANIM Op5 Byte
        IFF-ANIM Op7 Word
        IFF_ANIM Op7 Long
@endnode
@node NEWS3 "Amiga Imagine"
@toc NEWS

[From the Imagine Mailing List]

To all AMIGA users and interested parties here on the IML

As you are all aware, Impulse is at a cross-roads in its development of
Imagine.  Due to the demands of our users, Impulse is investing all of its
resources in the on-going development of Imagine for Windows.  However, as
I have mentioned before, this leaves little for the improvement and upgrade
of the Amiga version of our software.  Furthermore, the uncertainty of the
hardware itself causes us concern over the long term viability of this
market.

That said, I do not want to abandon those users who have for so many years
supported my company and our products.  If I can determine that sufficient
demand still exists for this effort, I will try to find a way support that
group.  None the less, I am going to put the ball in your court.  You will
have the opportunity to "determine the fate" of Amiga Imagine.

I have requested that a company named Intellipoint Corporation undertake a
market study of the Amiga market.  Mr.  Michael Nixon is a user of the
Imagine product and will oversee the development of this study.  My goal
will be to determine from this market study how Impulse can meet the needs
of its Amiga users.  Your response will determine how we proceed from this
point forward in this market.

If you are a registered user of Imagine, you will be contacted by
Intellipoint Corporation and asked to fill out a questionnaire on your use,
upgrade desires and wish list for Imagine.  If you are not a registered
user, I would suggest you email Mr.  Nixon at MikeNixon@gnn.com to
participate in this study.  If you have any questions about this study,
please contact Mr.  Nixon as Impulse would like to remain impartial during
this process.  We do, however, look forward to the favorable results.

As you can see, we are still interested in your business.  Impulse is
striving to be the company that earns your respect.  We can only earn that
respect by delivering products you desire and are willing to pay for.  I
encourage you to participate in the study and speak your mind.  You decide.
This is very important for the direction that we take and your input is
vital.

Sincerely

Michael C. Halvorson
President, Impulse, Inc.
October 3rd 1996
@endnode
@node NEWS4 "MathScript V3.0"
@toc NEWS

TITLE

   MathScript

VERSION

   3.0

AUTHOR

   Simon Ihmig
   Beim Rauhen Hause 30
   22111 Hamburg
   GERMANY
   email: Ihmig@tu-harburg.d400.de

DESCRIPTION

   This program is a mathematical equation editor. Like a word
   processor that lets you write text, MathScript is used to write
   mathematical formulas.
   It offers you a variety of mathematical and physical symbols and lots
   of objects like fractions, roots, brackets and matrices to compose
   formulas, which can then be imported into word processors or DTP
   applications to produce scientific documents.

   Here is an overview of the features of MathScript V3.0:

   * WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get)
     While you edit your formula it is displayed in its final look.
     Editing is done like a word processor, use the keyboard to enter
     characters, move the cursor with the cursor keys or the mouse, mark
     blocks by dragging the mouse...

   * MUI
     Uses MUI 3.x for its nice font-sensitive resizeable and customizable
     GUI.

   * Symbols, Objects
     Extensive amount of symbols and objects, accessable with the
     keyboard and/or popup menus

   * PostScript Fonts
     Uses industry-standard scalable PostScript Type1 or Type3 fonts. You
     can choose different fonts for the following types of characters:
     variable, function, text, greek, symbol, number and 2 special
     purpose fonts.

   * AutoFormat
     MathScript automatically formats your input, i.e. it uses the
     appropriate font for each character.
     So called "styles" affect the way this is being done. The following
     styles exist:
     Math, Variable, Function, Greek, Text, Extra1, Extra2.

   * Function Recognition
     MathScript "knows" the most common function names (like sin) and is
     able to automatically apply the function font to it

   * Export
     Save formulas as EPS (PostScript), IFF or TIFF files

   * Import
     Files produced by the export function can be loaded back again

   * ARexx
     It has an ARexx port with lots of commands

   * Clipboard
     Support the system clipboard for cut, copy and paste operations

   * Function Keys
     ARexx scripts can be assigned to function keys

   * Online Help
     It offers extensive online help in four different ways:
     - Menu Help:   AmigaGuide help for menu items
     - Gadget Help: AmigaGuide help for gadgets
     - Bubble Help: Help bubbles for gadgets
     - Quick Help:  Status bar help for gadgets and popup menu items

   * Toolbar
     Access the most used functions with nice little image buttons

   * Locale
     Supports locale.library (OS 2.1+) for localized GUI text

   * Registration
     Registering is easily done with the little Registration Tool

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

   AmigaOS 2.04
   MUI 3.1
   2 MB RAM

AVAILABILITY

   every Aminet site, directory misc/math,
   e.g. ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/misc/math/MathScript30.lha

DISTRIBUTABILITY

   freely distributable, but shareware
   Copyright ) Simon Ihmig 1994-96

PRICE

   Shareware fee of 20$ or 30DM
@endnode
@node NEWS5 "R.A.M. Magazine"
@toc NEWS

R.A.M Magazine
ARTbas Editions
31160 ARBAS - FRANCE

Tel : (+33) 61 90 49 00
Fax : (+33) 61 90 23 52

E-Mail : jchesnot@pratique.fr

R.A.M.  is a French magazine dedicated to the Amiga, published twice a
month.  Until now it was only available by subscription, but from the 1st
of September it'll be sold by newsagents (30000 copies in 12000 stockists).

Our main aim being the news forefront, we would be grateful if you could
keep us informed about your new projetcs and products.

You can send us your press releases, or even your software or hardware
products for testing.  They will, of course, be sent back to you after
testing.

Don't hesitate to contact us for any complementary information, either by
phone, fax or email.

Yours faithfully,

The editors
@endnode
@node NEWS6 "IPISA '96"
@toc NEWS

IPISA '96
Incontro dei Programmatori Italiani per lo Sviluppo su Amiga
Sixth Edition

Saturday, November 30, 1996 

Milano, Italy

The Italian Amiga community will meet on November 30th, 1996, at the sixth
annual IPISA conference.  IPISA stands for "Incontro dei Programmatori
Italiani per lo Sviluppo su Amiga" (which means Italian Programmers'
Meeting for Amiga Development).

IPISA is an open meeting (advance registration is required for a small fee)
focussing on non-commercial products, projects and ideas, and on the
distribution of high-quality information and advanced software tools.

IPISA'96 will be held Saturday November 30, 1996, in the Conference Hall of
the Centro Universitario ISU (via Valvassori Peroni 21, in Milan), from
10:00 AM to 6:30 PM.  A complete lunch will be served in the ISU refectory.

Here is a tentative list of the talks and papers (unless otherwise
specified they are in Italian).

- Michele Console Battilana (CLOANTO Italia)
  Perpectives in the personal computing world

- Paolo Canali
  Trends in digital technologies

- Rocco Coluccelli
  MOOS: advanced applications control in ARexx

- Luca Danelon (Interactive)
  The preparation of an Amiga CD-ROM

- Vittorio Ferrari
  VEGA: a graphic-adventure engine

- Haage & Partner
  PowerPC: Architecture and programming (English)

- Francesco Leonardi, Giuliano Pochini
  VOXEL Space

- Fabio Rotondo
  DOOPSI: an authoring system for graphic adventures

Attendants will receive the Conference Proceedings, consisting of
professionally printed documentation and the IPISA'96 CD ROM.  Additional
goodies could be donated by the intervening companies.

The CD-ROM will contain talks-related software, PD and shareware software
and demo versions of commercial programs.

The following companies have been invited:

- Amiga Technologies GmbH
- Haage & Partner
- Motorola
- PIOS Computer AG
- Phase 5
- Stefan Ossowski's Schatzthruhe
- VISCorp

but until today we are able to the confirm only the presence of Haage &
Partner, the developers of Storm C.  The other companies couldn't either
confirm or deny their presence.

The fees are:

- Meeting admission (including lunch): ............................. US$ 40
- Conference Proceedings for non-participants (sent by air mail): .. US$ 40

The following special arrangements for an Hotel accomodation (bed &
breakfast) for Friday 29 and/or Saturday 30 are available:

Approx. prices for 1 night

Room       | Prices US$  | Prices DM 
------------------------------------
single     | 42          | 68
double     | 28          | 45
triple     | 25          | 40
quadruple  | 23          | 37

Note well: to join the meeting, non-italian people need to book before
November, 1 1996.

For details on hotel payments and Conference fees, please send an e-mail
to: Sergio_Ruocco@rcm.dsi.unimi.it

Further informations can be found on the IPISA Home Page at the following
URL: http://www.bhuman.it/ipisa/index_eng.html
@endnode
@node NEWS7 "SysPic V4.00"
@toc NEWS

TITLE

   SysPic

VERSION

   4.00

AUTHOR

   Grzegorz Calkowski / The Beet Research
   Rzedowice
   ul.Dobrodzienska 8
   42-780 Dobrodzien 
   POLAND  

   E-Mail: calkowsk@usctoux1.cto.us.edu.pl
           unclemat@irc.pl

DESCRIPTION

   New version of the well-known bootpic program.  The 4.00 introduces
   many new features.  Just take a look what SysPic can do.

   SysPic 4.00                               * - a star feature :-)

      o is small & VERY fast! (picture decompression routines written
        in optimized assembly)

      o shows IFF-ILBM pictures of any size and resolution,
        supports AGA modes (also HAM8)

      * has a flexible script-like language which allows you to display
        configurable text with hard/soft info, also with typewritter and
        shadow effects

      * can display a realtime digital clock on the displayed picture

      * can fade-in picture and fade-out it to Workbench (with selectable
        rate) - this works in asynchronous manner (i.e no delays) -
        mouse pointer is also faded

      * can play IFF-8SVX samples or Protracker modules with volume slide
        synchronized to fade-out

      o centers picture both horizontally & *vertically*

      o centers the mouse pointer when exits

      * has a very powerful random selector - an option assures that
        a picture won't show twice until all pictures are shown

      o forces Workbench to open behind the displayed picture so it can be
        closed after whole Workbench initialization, also works with
        the Directory Opus 5, the Workbench replacement

      o has no problems with MCP 'PubModes' feature

      * is iprefs-jump proof - sets overscan prefs before IPrefs will do it!

      o picture can be displayed in a desired mode or just promoted to
        specific monitor

      o optionally blanks the pointer sprite so you won't see it when the
        Workbench screen opens (it would look annoying)

      * picture is automatically closed when something goes wrong with
        booting - when an requester pops up on Workbench or so

      o detaches from shell in an intelligent way (i.e after loading
        the picture)

      * DOES NOT fragment the memory!!!

      o has been thoroughly tested by a team of betatesters

      o will be updated and supported in future

      * comes from Poland :))

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

   Kickstart 3.0 or higher required

   Optional for module playing:
   ptreplay.library v6.5, included in the package

AVAILABILITY

   Any Aminet site (release date 01-Oct-96):

   Aminet:util/boot/SysPic400.lha

DISTRIBUTABILITY

   Copyright (c) 1995-1996 by Grzegorz Calkowski

   Freely distributable shareware.  One month of evaluation period.

PRICE

   Shareware fee:

       US$10 or 15DM

   The registration is "life-time", i.e you will have not to pay an
   update fee for any future release of SysPic.

   The program is not crippled, all features work.  It only
   displays an annoying shareware reminder when quits.
   Registered users will receive a keyfile which disables it.

   IMPORTANT:  previous versions of SysPic were released as Cardware.  All
   people who sent me a postcard will get the keyfile FOR FREE.
@endnode
@node NEWS8 "BCS Folds, Amiga User Group Continues"
@toc NEWS

Press Release
From:  Herbert Wollman   hwollman@mitre.org   Secretary for Boston Computer
Society Amiga User Group.

Boston Computer Society folds, Amiga User Group continues.

During the week of Sep 17, 1996, the Board of Directors of the Boston
Computer Society, the largest and most influential Computer User Group,
shocked their members by suddenly voting to declare bankruptcy and disband.
Over the past several years membership had slipped from a peak of 27,000 to
about 18,000.   Membership was worldwide, but concentrated in New England,
USA. 

The BCS was composed of about 30 Special Interest Groups and User Groups,
each with its own organization, and many smaller subgroups.  The leaders of
most of the groups are currently planning to continue, and are
investigating the formation of a new umbrella organization. 

Since the Amiga is the only computer to emerge THREE times from bankruptcy,
the Amiga User Group is experienced with these things, and is leading the
efforts.  We plan to continue, with "business as usual." General meetings
will continue on the fourth Tuesday of each month, at 7:30PM, at M I T The
Video and Technical subgroups will continue, but may have to relocate.  
The BBS which we share with the Commodore and HyperMedia Groups will
continue to run on an Amiga.  It can still be reached at (617) 729-7340,
but we have temporarily lost our e-mail and Internet link. 

For further information please contact me, Herbert Wollman  
hwollman@mitre.org  (617) 272-2994
@endnode
@node NEWS9 "Pretium Demo"
@toc NEWS

The demo version of Pretium is now available!  Pretium is the premier
financial software package designed for the Amiga.  It is as simple to use
as writing in your checkbook, but advanced enough to take advantage of the
power of your Amiga.  The commercial version is now shipping, and is
available through the address listed on the web page.

To download the Pretium Demo, visit our web site at
<http://www.iag.net/~cstone/pretium>.

If you have any problems downloading Pretium, just e-mail me by replying to
this message.  To have a copy of the Pretium demo sent to you attached to
an e-mail message (MIME format), simply reply to this message with "send
demo" as the message subject and it will be sent to you within 24 hours.

Thank you for your interest in Pretium and enjoy the demo.

David Orr
Innovative Digital Dynamics
@endnode
@node NEWS10 "Guru ROM V6"
@toc NEWS

The 'Guru ROM V6' for Commodore A2091 SCSI Controller is available!

Suggested Retail Price DM 99.00 / Empfohlener Verkaufspreis DM 99,00

***************************************************************************

Ordering information:

Just send an E-Mail to stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de including your address and
the products you want to order. Please do not forget to include your credit
cards details.

***************************************************************************

Product Information:

Stefan Ossowski's Schatztruhe and Ralph Babel, author of the well-known
"Amiga Guru Book" and long-standing former system software developer for
GVP, the American company known for its high-quality hardware products,
present:

Guru ROM now also for the A2091!

The Guru ROM for GVP's line of host adapters set new standards for SCSI on
the Amiga; its high degree of compatibility with the widest range of SCSI
devices is unprecedented; its performance goes to the limit of the
underlying hardware.

All of this is now also available for owners of Commodore's A2091 SCSI host
adapter.

Years of experience, technical know-how, and competence from the world's
best Amiga software and hardware engineers are condensed in this
penultimate product.  It makes it possible for the user to productively and
comfortably use SCSI, without sacrificing performance, risk of
incompatibility, or waste of resources.  Together with exhaustive
documentation, the "Guru-ROM" enhances each A2091 and each GVP Series-II
host adapter in many decisive, for the serious user essential features:

Universal: a SCSI driver without compromise for the A2091, all GVP
Series-II host adapters, and all "Combo" and "G-Force" accelerator cards
for the Amiga 4000, 3000, 2000, 1200, and 500.  Compatible with all 680x0
processors from the 68000 to the 68060.  This ROM module, which has been
considerably extended in its code and feature set, replaces all previously
distributed driver ROMs.

Fast: unparalleled transfer rates of up to 3.5 MB/s raw (Zorro-II limit),
3.2 MB/s measured with "RawScsiSpeed", 2,9 MB/s measured with "ScsiSpeed" -
even on a stock 7-MHz 68000-based Amiga!  Even higher figures (3.4 MB/s and
3.1 MB/s) possible on GVP host adapters with local RAM; all the while, the
CPU typically retains 80% free processing time.  Always maximum performance
through the automatic selection of the currently optimal transfer mode
(DMA, buffered DMA, or PIO).

Versatile: supports all device types defined in the SCSI standard, such as
hard disks, CD-ROM drives, streamers, scanners, and magneto-optical
devices.

64-bit support: supports the use of media with more than 4 GB of storage
capacity, even with existing filesystems.

Compatible: complete support for the RDB standard, resulting in
trouble-free autoboot, automount, and the exchange of devices and media
between two computers from Amiga OS 1.3 through 3.1.

Flexible: disconnect/reselect, synchronous transfers, and parity checking
can be enabled individually for _each_ device (even for devices without an
RDB).  Also complete write-protection is possible (useful for kiosk
applications and for virus protection).

Intelligent: maximum compatibility with nearly all hard- and software
through special handling of all known firmware bugs of the most popular
SCSI devices and DMA hardware flaws in the A3000 and A4000, workarounds for
internal bugs in the WD SCSI chip, patches for A-Max and Picasso, as well
as special modifications to account for defective application software.

Upward-compatible: fully compatible both with the SCSI-2 as well as with
the SCSI-1 standard, thereby providing the broadest support for all devices
on the market including those still to come.
@endnode
@node NEWS11 "Guru ROM V6 Update"
@toc NEWS

'Guru ROM V6' Update for GVP SCSI Controllers

Update Price DM 39.00 / Updatepreis DM 39,00

***************************************************************************

Ordering information:

Just send an E-Mail to stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de including your address and
the products you want to order.  Please do not forget to include your
credit cards details.  Please note that you have to be a registered
customer of the Guru ROM V6 (GVP Version) in order to qualify for this
special upgrade offer.

***************************************************************************

Update features:

64-Bit-Support: Supports the use of media with more than 4 GB of storage
capacity, even with existing filesystems.

Increased compatibility with nearly all hard- and software through special
handling of all known firmware bugs of the most popular SCSI devices and
DMA hardware flaws in the A3000 and A4000, workarounds for internal bugs in
the WD SCSI chip, patches for A-Max and Picasso, as well as special
modifications to account for defective application software.
@endnode
@node NEWS12 "Belgian Amiga Site"
@toc NEWS

I have started a new amiga page for belgian people.   Therefore I need all
information there is about happenings, people, clubs, bbs, sites,
home-pages,...   on the amiga in belgium. 

At http://studwww.rug.ac.be/~cfauconn/ami_belg.html you can find an index
of the available information.  There you can choose for amiga users in
Belgium by clicking on users page.

I ask you to fill in the form with some info , so that the list can grow,
and to pass the word around to your friends, ...

If you are a belgian Amiga user , this is the place you were looking for.

Thanks for participating ...

Christophe.

christophe.fauconnier@rug.ac.be

!!!!Don't use the old emailaddress: cfauconn@eduserv.rug.ac.be!!!
BUT: christophe.fauconnier@rug.ac.be

url: http://studwww.rug.ac.be/~cfauconn
@endnode
@node NEWS13 "Persistence Software"
@toc NEWS

[We pulled this from the CUCUG Web Directory.  Jim certainly has a lot to
say.  The veracity of some of the claims here, particularly about other
developers, has come under fire in the past.  Nevertheless, we're
interested to see what will come next.  - Jason]

Announcement from Jim Drew - Persistence Software

The History of Utilities Unlimited... By Jim Drew

In 1984, I returned from Honolulu, Hawaii and began working for a Commodore
dealer in downtown Portland, Oregon.  Within a few months I became
technical support representative of the educational division of Commodore
for the state of Oregon.  I worked for this company for about 9 months
before being approached by several individuals trying to recruit me as an
employee to write disk duplication software.  After some nagging, I decided
to go ahead and I began working with a company by the name of 'Final Source
Software'.  I wrote many commercial disk copiers, and designed several
hardware based disk copiers.  I was also writing some software for a
company by the name of MegaSoft (located in Battleground, Washington).
After MegaSoft's hardware disk copier had failed to meet its expectations,
I was asked to fix it.  I did, and shortly thereafter Final Source Software
was dissolved and turned into a retail software rental chain.  I worked for
a few months at Central Point Software, and wrote their Copy ][ 64/128
program.  After this was completed I went to work full time for MegaSoft,
which after many problems changed its name to "Utilities Unlimited".

In 1986, a couple (husband & wife) purchased 50% ownership in Utilities
Unlimited.  This couple previously bought and sold forklifts (they did not
know how to turn on a computer, but wanted to be on the road to the
future).  After about 9 months of problems with the original owner, the
couple purchased the remaining 50% of the company, which included me.  At
this time the C64 market was just about at its end, and our hottest selling
product, SuperCard+ (a hardware based disk copier) was just about at
saturation.

A deal was made that I would get a small (very small) percentage of the
company if I would stay on and develop new products.  A choice was made
between a Nintendo cartridge copier or an Amiga disk copier.  We went the
Amiga route after a phone call to Nintendo was returned by their legal
staff.

SuperCard Ami was born.  I designed the hardware, the software, did the
advertisement layouts, handled dealer accounts, and technical support.  I
was constantly busy with software updates due to new copy protection.  I
was always busy.  During this time, I married my beautiful girlfriend
Chauna (pronounced Shaw-nuh).  During the course of the next two years, I
designed the KickStart board (ROM switcher), Boot Drive Selector,
DigiDither, SuperCard Ami II, SYBIL, and a few other things which did not
make it to market.  I also released more than 30 updates to SuperCard Ami I
& II.  I was still doing everything by myself.

We filed a lawsuit against Ashcom Design & Development for ripping off
Super-Card Ami II.  More than a year after the initial filing, and $10,000
later, we won the copyright infringement suit.  In return, we got a box of
"MAC II" units (their copy of Super-Card Ami II) and that was it...  no
damages because the company had nothing (it had been liquidated by its
owners).

Some things were a bit startling to me at this point because of sales
starting to decline.  Ads were placed for products that did not exist yet
(like SYBIL), based on assumptions.  I did not voluntarily create these
ads..  I was told to.  When products would be late (a natural thing in the
software world), lots of excuses would be given...  we even had a fire one
time that never really happened.  I had never done business this way
before, although I did not like what was going on, I was only 24 and did
not own enough of the company to be counted and the idea of working at
McDonalds was not too appealing.

I had setup a deal with ReadySoft to bundle SYBIL with their AMAX II+
upgrade for A500 machines (software only since there was no Zorro slot on
the A500).  After spending a great deal of time setting up this deal, a lot
of bad things happened, and it cost Utilities Unlimited nearly everything.
I had designed a custom version of SYBIL that could be detected (at the
request of ReadySoft) so that you could just not run the AMAX II+ without
SYBIL.  I had the circuit boards made, boxes printed, etc...  the deal fell
through and Utilities Unlimited was in trouble.

The primary owners of the company decided to sell their home and move the
company to Lake Havasu City, Arizona (to start fresh with some new
capital).  I had little choice but to go, so I did.

Before I left, I started getting phone calls from Joe Fenton, who was living in Texas at the time.  He was very helpful, giving some
suggestions to some quirks he had with SYBIL.  After talking with him quite a bit, I explained what had happended with ReadySoft, and
I was really out for revenge.. to write a full color, multitasking MAC emulation.  Joe said he had a pretty decent knowledge of the MAC
OS, and that he thought there would be no problems.

Once I got to Lake Havasu (April of 1992), I talked the owners into hiring
Joe.  Joe came in the middle of May, 1992.  Much to his surprise, I was the
only person at the company (that did anything).  He was under the
impression (like thousands of customers) that Utilities Unlimited was as
large as GVP, having dozens of employees. 

This is where things went really sour with Utilities Unlimited....

The owners wanted ads placed immediately for EMPLANT (which by the way was
just a name I thought up one day, and then turned it into an acronym after
the fact).  I could not believe that they wanted to advertise such an
elaborate product that had not even existed yet!  I knew that they had
faith in my abilities, but this was a bit much.  So, a list of 'features'
was made based on what Joe and I thought we could do.  Joe worked on
hacking the MAC OS, and I worked on the circuit board layout.  We both
worked on the custom logic equasions and the features the board would have
(we had lots of ideas, some of which were implemented on the EMPLANT board,
but have NEVER been used!)

Keep in mind that EMPLANT, the circuit board layout, the software, in short
EVERYTHING was designed on an Amiga 500!  I had a slingshot Zorro expansion
on my A500 (which had a VXL*30 accelerator).  We had really no Amiga
equipment, just two accelerated A500s and a stock A2000 (this at a time
when the A3000 had been out for awhile). 

In the middle of August (already late for its shipping date), EMPLANT went
to FCC testing in Chandler, Arizona.  We failed miserably.  Actually, our
Seikosha printer failed, along with our A2000.  The EMPLANT board had
absolutely no problems, but if the system fails, the product can not be
passed.  We were at FCC on a Friday, and returned on a Monday (Joe's
birthday) after doing some pretty elaborate things to our system in order
to get EMPLANT passed.

In September, we were suppose to show EMPLANT at the World of Commodore
show in Pasadena, California (at DMI's booth, supporting the Resolver video
board).  Well, Joe, my wife, and I all went to the show and caused quite a
scene because we brought the prototype EMPLANT board with us.  I have most
of it on video tape (my wife taped me with the crowd).  At this point we
had NEVER even scene a MAC screen pop up!  Joe and I were getting very
worried.  The company had spent all of its money on advertising (full
page/full color ads were about $5,000 each) in the various Amiga magazines
instead of getting us the equipment we needed to finish and test EMPLANT.

Sometime in early November, we saw our first MAC screen appear!  (I don't
recall the day exactly, but I have it on video tape!  We had a party that
day!) Hey, we did it!  Only 3 months late, but we were successful.  Upon
hearing this news, the owners instantly cashed checks and ran credit
cards..  even though the product was in no way ready to ship!  It would be
almost a full month before the first version was ready to go.  Lots of
angry people!  Where is my product!?  The product shipped, and wow was
there a ton of problems (which we expected).  Joe and I were working 20+
hours a day, sometimes in 30 hour shifts.  Not only did I have to help
debug, I had to make new advertisements, handle dealer sales, do magazine
interviews (try doing that with a straight face when you know what REALLY
is going on), etc.  It was a nightmare.  The only good thing about the
entire situation is that I had beaten ReadySoft, which was my only
intention in creating EMPLANT.  The first release of software was
reportedly in October (according to the history)...  this was faked!  It
was not until mid November did we actually release the product for the
first time.

Before the first release, the husband of the couple died of a heart attack.
Joe and I were shocked by the death, as it was completely unexpected.  We
were a bit concerned that the remaining owner (a women with no computer
experience what-so-ever) could handle things...  but who were we kidding? 
We did everything already anyways!  However, pressure was intensified
greatly.  She had only one thing in mind, and that was retiring.

At the World of Commodore show in Pasadena (1993), sound support and 32 bit
clean operation was shown for the first time.  John DiLulu (Commodore's
cheif marketting manager) and Alex Amor (Creative Equipment, Inc.) had a
meeting with me to discuss an AMIGA/EMPLANT bundle deal.  An agreement was
reached, but as usual nothing came of it.  One thing that was requested by
Commodore engineers was our chunky to planar routines.  These routines were
given to Commodore (through John DiLulu), but apparently never reached
engineering.  By the way, we did spend a great deal of time getting
licensing agreements with Commodore for reverse engineering the
multitasking code.  Commodore stated that if we were not using the code in
its entirety, then no licensing agreement was necessary, but they would
like a copy of the code for reference.  I still have the letter from
Commodore's managing division (John DiLulu's office) pertaining to this.

Looking back, it is now easy to see why Commodore went down the tubes...
the cheif marketting manager couldn't even pass along a disk..  how the
hell could he make executive decisions?

Things were going pretty well for EMPLANT..  AMAX IV was no competition,
and it was funny to see them with a full color, multitasking MAC emulation
after spending several years stating that it could never be done!  I do
have to say that I have a great deal of respect for Simon Douglas.  Joe and
I checked each new version of AMAX IV to see if anything had been
'borrowed' from EMPLANT's MAC emulation, and we never found anything even
remotely similar between our code.  This made it a good, clean, competitive
game.

We wanted to make a PowerPC based Pentium(tm) emulation.  I even met with
IBM and Apple to discuss a technology buyout because our ideas were so
revolutionary.  We decided to first make a PC emulation on the Amiga, and
then port the code to the PowerMAC platform.

Business was starting to slow down, so the owner asked what was next?  I
told her that we could start working on the PC emulation..  great, time for
new ads...  remember those 'e486DX coming soon!' ads?  How about the ads
showing Windows running?..  the Windows screenshots were faked!

We hired Mark Wignall to write all of the PC sided drivers.  A lot of the
speed the emulation has is due to experimentations.  We spent a lot of time
creating things like the CD-ROM driver, comparing our work constantly with
SoftPC, PCTask, and CrossPC.  We spent countless hours on the ANSI routines
so that text output would be the fastest possible.  We would time every
revision with a stopwatch, hoping to gain that 1/10th of the second extra
speed.  Mark also wrote the PC emulation's documentation, which would be
the last paper-bound documentation ever produced at Utilities Unlimited.
The owner did not want to pay for packaging or documentation.  She believed
that documentation on the disk was sufficient.  She also believed that
'people just throw away the packaging anyways, so why pay the extra money
to make it look nice?' Sheesh!

At this point I was being told what to say and do.  Neither Joe nor Mark
had a clue as to what was really going on behind the scenes.  It became so
bad that Mark didn't even know when we released the PC emulation for the
first time!  He was not to know, fearing he would try to convince everyone
it was not ready (which it wasn't)...  it did not run Windows, DOOM, or
anything else it was suppose to.  It worked in simple DOS mode, supported
the x87 style FPU, and had the Pentium(tm) Processor instruction decoding.
For the most part, it did work well for what support it had (missing ALL of
the protected mode and MMU mode support).  I went to the World of Amiga
show in London, and showed it for the first time.  People were impressed at
the speed of things that I showed, but I could not show Windows because it
simply would not work.

Mark left because of what was happening.  Joe and I continued our work on
the emulations, but we wanted to build some new hardware goodies!  NO WAY!
The owner did not want to have anything to do with FCC or hardware ever
again.  Ack!  We had plans for a multiprocessor board, 060 board, video
board, and other really neat things.  We had even drawn out schematics and
gotten developer information for everything we needed.  I know that we
could have made the fastest accelerator and video board ever.  Our hands
were tied (more like we were tied to a pay check).

About this time ShapeShifter was released.  After Joe and I looked at it,
we were pissed beyond belief.  The majority of the code came from AMAX IV,
with some of our code, and even Apple's code.  I immediately starting
documenting the code, and the changes that the code went through after
several releases (especially after making it clear that much of the code
was 'borrowed').  After going through the lawsuit in the UK, the owner did
not want to attempt to go after 'some kid in Germany', because it would
cost too much money, and we would get nothing back.

I sent two registered letters to the author, and each letter was returned
undeliverable.  I just wanted him to stop while he was ahead.  Joe and I
are probably the best 68K reverse engineerers in the world.  We have gone
through gigs of code over the last 4 years, figuring out why certain MAC
applications do weird things with our MAC emulation.  We can tell which
Apple engineer wrote any part of the ROM or OS code, based on their
programming style.  We knew AMAX IV well too.  It was easy to document what
code came from where inside of ShapeShifter.

At this point I really can't do much about ShapeShifter, although there are
a couple of legal councils in Germany willing to take 80% of the earnings
of a successful lawsuit.  Personally, I think that when judgement day rolls
around, the author will wish that ShapeShifter was just a character in
Archon...

After a few months, we started working on the PowerMAC version of the
e586DX emulation module.  But because the company's revenue was slowing
down, we were told to make something in the mean time.  So, MACPRO was
created as a means to produce income.  We continued to work on PowerCLONE,
and once again, the company's revenue was not up to par, so we created
Mac1200 and MacLite.  These emulations took several months to create and
debug.  The company was in bad shape, although it had several considerable
assets (a new 10,000 sqft building, cars, etc.)

On August 23rd, (one day before Joe's birthday) the owner decided to shut
down Utilities Unlimited.  We had absolutely no warning.  I had been
repeatedly told that the owner simply had too much money invested in the
company to ever shut it down, so this was the last of my worries.

Utilities Unlimited International, Incorporated is officially bankrupt.
Even though there were no creditors, a bankruptcy was filed to prevent any
potential lawsuits in the future, and to null and void any commitments
(like the lifetime warranty on products).

Joe and I are both unemployed at this point.  My small percentage of the
company was dissolved in outstanding loans to the owner.  The one thing
that I did manage to get was the copyrights to all products free and clear
(I owned 50% of the copyright myself, plus a percentage of the company's
50%, so I had controlling interest in the copyrights anyways).

Since together, Joe and I did *everything* (except write paychecks), it
makes sense for us to try to form a new company ourselves..  one that is
honest with what is going on, since we will have no pressure from any
outside source.

We have decided the name of the company will be "Persistence Software".

We will provide the same technical support that we provided to the
customers in the past (I think you will find every review of our technical
support to be outstanding).  We will also still provide support for EMPLANT
customers, and I am going to make the information about EMPLANT hardware
publically available.

Since November of 1995, Joe and I have been working on the PowerMAC version
of the e586DX module.  That emulation is about 80% complete at this point.
IT IS NOT DONE!  ...and I am happy to be able to say that!  (Well, maybe
not happy....  just glad I can be honest about it!)

During this time, we have also been working on a completely new Amiga based
PC emulation.  We have re-written the emulation from scratch (yes, again).
And instead of releasing bullsh*t specs, we are going to odopt a new (read
as REALISTIC) approach of hyping our software...  we are going to release a
crippled demo version.  If you like it, great...  order the full version. 
If not, you didn't get screwed and left with something you can't use.

 Please check out the PCx page for further details.

We are pleased to announce that Blittersoft (a UK based company) has been
granted the world-wide distribution rights to all Persistence Software
products.  Blittersoft was Utilities Unlimited's European distributor, and
quite frankly, was the only reason Utilities Unlimited survived as long as
it did.  Paul Lesurf does an excellent job of promoting products, and I
know that our products will be well handled by his company.

All orders (also Trade) should be directed to Blittersoft.

Blittersoft and Persistence Software will jointly provide technical support
through WEB pages, email, CompuServe, GEnie, and telephone support. 
Software upgrades will be available through our WEB pages and on various
support forums.

Again, I would like to stress that Persistence Software WILL support
EMPLANT customers.  There will still be updates and technical support.  No
more EMPLANT boards will be manufactured (unless somebody wants to buy the
rights to EMPLANT).  We do have parts here for repairing boards, however,
we will not be able to repair or replace boards for free.  Some reasonable
fee will be charged for any repair work necessary.

I know that this announcement will come as a shock to many people.  Hey, it
was a shock to Joe and I too!  Utilities Unlimited was one of the most
successful and well known Amiga companies around..  and everything was done
by only two people, not a building full of people.  We have accomplished a
lot in a very restrictive environment, and I know that we can accomplish
much more now that we have complete control.

The reason for releasing the 'history' of Utilities Unlimited is to let
people to know what really went on behind the scenes, and for everyone to
know that although I was the figure head for the company, somebody else was
pulling my strings.  I will not do business like Utilities Unlimited did. 
I want honesty at all costs, even if it means losing business.  Although
there is only two of us, I believe that we have proven our abilities
sufficiently for people to at least listen to what we have to say.  Joe and
I like to tackle the impossible, and fortunately, we don't have to make
anymore wild claims.  Any officially released information will be very
real.

I would be interested in hearing from you!  If you have an Amiga product
idea that you would like to see a reality, drop me a note.  We have a lot
of nearly finished products (hardware and software based) that we are
looking into releasing.  Since the Amiga market has temporarily stalled (it
will be back), we are not quite sure what products are necessary at this
time.  This is where you, the user, can help us!

I can be reached at my new email address: jimdrew@lnknet.com My AOL account
will be gone shortly, so don't try there!

I appreciate your support in the past, and I look forward to providing you
with high quality products in the future.

Sincerely,

Jim Drew, Persistence Software
@endnode
@node NEWS14 "NetNews Offline Vol II CD-ROM"
@toc NEWS

The 'NetNews Offline Vol. II' CD-ROM is available! =

Suggested Retail Price DM 19.80 / Empfohlener Verkaufspreis DM 19,80

***************************************************************************
Ordering information:

Just send an E-Mail to stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de including your address and
the products you want to order.  Please do not forget to include your
credit cards details.

***************************************************************************
Product Information:

On this CD you can find everything that was published in the Amiga-related
newsgroups from Usenet and other networks in the 3 month since the release
of NetNews Offline Vol.  I.

This release contains more than 217.000 postings, which are of high
interest for every Amiga user.  You will find technical advice for many
problems, wild flame wars, curious stories and a huge amount of valuable
information and news.  With this CD, you can take one of the most
interesting parts of the Internet directly to your home.  Do you know a
cheaper alternative of accessing Usenet without paying huge amounts of
telecommunication costs?

NetNews Offline is one of the most interesting CD-ROM releases published in
1996 and is a 'must have' for every owner of a CD-ROM-drive.

Contents of this CD

comp.sys.amiga.*:              83,087 articles
comp.unix.amiga:                  887 articles
rec.games.video.cd32:             507 articles
comp.sys.cbm:                   5,955 articles
de.comp.sys.amiga.*:           14,535 articles
de.comm.software.ums:             838 articles
fido.ger.{amiga|amiprog}:       2,721 articles
z-netz.rechner.amiga.*:        23,427 articles
comp.periphs.scsi:              7,007 articles
diverse C++-Foren:             21,043 articles
diverse C-Foren:               19,284 articles
comp.lang.{modula2|oberon}:     1,193 articles
comp.lang.rexx:                 2,008 articles
de.newusers[.questions]:        1,201 articles
news.announce.newusers:           184 articles
news.lists:                       156 articles
comp.dcom.{isdn|modem}:        19,320 articles
de.comm.{isdn|modem}:          11,800 articles
Misc                            1,960 articles

total                         217,113 articles
@endnode
@node NEWS15 "Aminet CD 14"
@toc NEWS

Aminet CD 14 is available

Suggested Retail Price DM 25,00        Empfohlener Verkaufspreis DM 25,00
subscription price     DM 19,80        Abo-Preis                 DM 19,80

***************************************************************************
Ordering information:

Just send an E-Mail to stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de including your address and
the products you want to order.  Please do not forget to include your
credit cards details.

***************************************************************************
Product Information

Aminet CD 14, dated October 1996, contains more than 1 gigabyte
(uncompressed) of software in thousands of archives.  Since the release of
Aminet CD 13 more than 800 MB new software has appeared.  The current
edition has a special focus on business software.  Hundreds of programs
from various sources were included.  The commercial highlight of this
edition is a full version of TurboCalc v2.1.

Contents of Aminet 14

Directory    Size            Files         Contents =

biz          109 MB          302           Business software
comm          73 MB          359           Communications
demo          73 MB          104           Graphics & sound demo
dev           41 MB           96           Development software
disk           5 MB           45           Disk & HD tools
docs          32 MB           72           Documents
game          72 MB          182           Games
gfx           25 MB           93           Graphics software
hard           1 MB           18           Hardware related
misc          37 MB           65           Miscellaneous
mus           23 MB           85           Music software
pix          288 MB          289           Pictures
text          16 MB           59           Text software
util          43 MB          262           Utilities
@endnode
@node NEWS16 "Opus 5.5 Utilities"
@toc NEWS

  GPSoftware releases new utilities for Opus 5.5

  GPSoftware has released new utilities for Opus 5.5.
  These include:-

  . A new graphical diskinfo.module

  . Swedish Locale Catalog files

  . New user-developed modules including:-

  deliplay - plays modules using DeleTracker
  compare  - compares files and shows differences
  hotlist  - allows you to keep your own favourite hotlist
             of directories and programs

  . OpusSDK - Opus Software developers kit - all you need to develop
  your own modules for Opus. Autodocs/guide plus includes.

  . Secrets Revealed !

  Also released are a number of hints and tips for using Opus
  and details of some Opus secrets and undocumented features. 

  . Monthly win an Opus t-shirt competition.

See the Opus WWW pages for details

  http://www.livewire.com.au/gpsoft/dopus55.html

--
Regards, Dr Greg Perry
GPSoftware, PO Box 570, Ashgrove, Qld Australia 4060 Ph/fax +61 7 33661402
Internet Email: zzgperry@mailbox.uq.oz.au
   WWW  : http://www.livewire.com.au/gpsoft/
@endnode
@node FEATURE1 "An Introductory Invitation To Interactive Fiction"
@toc FEATURE

===========================================================================
             An Introductory Invitation To Interactive Fiction
  Simon P. Dainty                                izzy@ancient.demon.co.uk
===========================================================================

Mentioning 'Adventure' to your average computer game player these days will
probably result in that all-too-familiar puzzled look of someone attempting
to grasp an unyielding memory of ages past.

  Adventure - also known as Colossal Cave - sparked off a mini revolution
back in the old days, when powerful home computers were as common to the
man on the street as time machines are now.  Written by both Willie
Crowther and Don Woods in 1977, Adventure quickly became something of a
behind-the-scenes phenomena with academics and computer professionals
alike.  In fact, just about anyone with even the most limited access to a
mainframe or mini computer back in the late 70's would likely have heard of
and experienced Adventure at one time or another.  It was something new,
something previously unheard of - something wonderful.

  Something wonderful?  Yes, indeed.  "So, the graphics and sound effects
were well ahead of their time then?" Well, no - not quite.  You see, back
in those long lost days of lore when a real computer more closely resembled
that ancient twin-tub washing machine your folks still keep hidden away at
the back of the basement, advanced graphic and sound potential wasn't
really an everyday requirement - let alone a commercial viability.  The
research and development teams that brought you the likes of the pre-80's
Digital mainframe, and the growing number of establishments that employed
them, were not looking for a machine that could display feature-rich
texture-mapped graphics in 256 colours.  Nor were they in search of CD
quality sound spread across multiple channels.  The computers of that era
were designed for a commercial and academic role - and those roles didn't
require the employ of that which we take for granted today.  No Sir, flash
graphics and stereo sound were not a factor.

  "Okay," you may ask, "So, what was the big deal behind the graphically
challenged and soundless Adventure, then?"

  A perfectly valid question if ever I saw one.  Indeed, the game must have
held some kind of mass appeal for those early pioneers of the academic and
professional circuit, as opposed to being yet another chess or Tic Tac Toe
implementation that you played whilst waiting for your latest and greatest
to compile.  The answer to your question, if indeed you ever asked it,
would be a single noun that is rarely ever used in common, everyday
conversation: Immersion.

  You see, because Crowther and Woods weren't able to bury their offering
deep within a sea of high resolution graphics, they had to opt for a
totally different approach.  One that was only too common in a time when
the closest most people got to a computer was a monochrome VDU and a well
used keyboard.  Everything revolved around the text-based terminal.  There
were no windows, no screens, no intuitive menu or gadget system, nothing. 
Just plain, old fashioned text.

  Unlike today, people didn't care that the machines they were using could
only display an ASCII character set; they were accustomed to it, and they
took advantage of any restrictions.  The joint authors of Adventure wrote a
computer game that would open the floodgates of the gaming world to many
that would eventually follow in their footsteps, a game that would one day
be available for every computer platform in the world.

  It required no joystick to play, because it relied on a limited verb-noun
parser in order to gain input from the user.  There was no need to support
non-existent sound and graphics hardware because all of the audio and
visual cues you could possibly desire were etched in ASCII on the terminal
screen, just waiting for that mass of neural interconnectivity seated deep
within your head to interpret the world around you - in a level of detail
that only the human brain could ever hope to offer.

  The idea of the game was as simple as it was brilliant: describe to the
player the location around her including any objects she may encounter on
her travels and, by issuing simple commands at a prompt, allow the player
to travel between locations within the game world, examine any game objects
more closely and generally interact with the environment that had been
detailed to her through the power of idyllic narrative.  Or, in other
words, dump the player inside the pages of a book and give her enough
freedom of choice so as to enable her to effect the outcome of the story,
hopefully arriving at a successful and appreciable conclusion.

  It was this obvious amalgamation with linear fiction that gave birth to
the name 'Interactive Fiction', and even though the words "Text Adventure"
were already deeply engraved in the psyche of all who had travelled a
wandering path through the genre, 'Interactive Fiction' remained as an
alternate reference for those wishing to confuse the ill-informed amongst
us.

  The whole concept of computerized Interactive Fiction was a revolutionary
step forward at that time, even though multi-participant, around-the-table
role playing systems such as Dungeons & Dragons were a popular and growing
movement.  It didn't take very long before people other than Crowther and
Woods had experienced the magic of:

    At End Of Road

    You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
    Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and
    down a gully.

    > examine building

    It's a small brick building. It seems to be a well house.

    > west

    At Hill In Road

    You have walked up a hill, still in the forest. The road slopes back
    down the other side of the hill. There is a building in the distance.

    >

And with that, Adventure gave birth to a flamboyant style of gaming that
would very soon become familiar to millions.  A richly detailed genre of
entertainment that would eventually be written into the annals of computer
gaming history under the grossly misleading heading of "Text Adventures."


What Crowther and Woods unwittingly set in motion by releasing Adventure
was an area of computer gaming that relied more heavily on the imagination
of both the author and player, than it did on the level of technology
available at the time.  And, because of the simplicity and flexibility of
the design, it didn't take very long before other developers adopted the
concept of Interactive Fiction - thus offering even more worlds for the
desk-top adventurer to explore.

  One such team of early pioneers - more than any other - took the noble
art of interactive writing far further than even Crowther and Woods could
have imagined when they first put to authoring Adventure.  Releasing over
thirty titles in the days when their fires burned strongest, Infocom
changed the face of the Interactive Fiction movement in ways that still
govern the majority of development today.

  For Infocom, it was the release of 'Zork' back in the 1980's that started
their rise to interactive stardom, and it's not surprising to discover that
the original Zork drew several similarities toward Adventure.  Even though
Infocom are credited for over thirty Interactive Fiction titles - the vast
majority of which are seen today as classics in their own right - they
often stayed well within the sprawling realms of the Zork universe, giving
it far greater coverage as each title passed.  Of the thirty-five games
written by Infocom (formerly known as Interlogic Games in their early
publishing days) there were nine offerings directly related to the Zork
universe (Zork 0, Zork 1, Zork 2, Zork 3, Beyond Zork, Enchanter, Sorcerer,
Spellbreaker and finally Wishbringer) with a further three titles making
Zork-esque references (Starcross, Planetfall and Stationfall).  As you can
no doubt tell, Infocom were proud of 'The Zork Universe', and they must
have been doing something right if it was selling and making a profit.

  Taking the concept of Adventure's limited parser and game engine several
leaps further, Infocom was able to offer a complex level of detail and
world building that few aficionados of the art could ignore.  By developing
and employing the flexibility and potential of a virtual 'machine' within a
machine, along with a powerful programming language to complement it (ZIL,
or Zork Implementation Language), Infocom released title after title where
the complexity and ingenuity between each successive offering grew at an
astounding rate.

  You may be prompted to ask yourself how Infocom was so very capable of
developing an impressive line of adventure games that had a mass market
appeal in such a short space of time, given the sizeable amount of planning
and writing that an area of interest like Interactive Fiction requires.  It
is easy to understand the 'how' when you discover their secret...

  Infocom's ace in the hole was to become the building block of all of
their future explorations.  The 'Z-Machine', coupled with the complimentary
'Z-Code' file format layer (each 'Z' referring to Infocom's original Zork),
became the base mechanics from which they would grow their impressive line
of text-based interactive games.

  You see, Infocom realised that writing their games from scratch each time
would prove to be a long and costly - if not tiresome - endeavour.  So,
instead of taking that severely limiting route, they hit upon the idea of
developing an interactive game system that could be easily adapted for the
the number of different computer platforms that were available, and less
demanding to code under than the OS of each respective system.  They
created the Z-Machine as mentioned above, an interpreter much like a BASIC
interpreter, that would run on the target machine but with with the design
goal of accepting 'adventure' games as its programs.  The data format of
these individual game-files were given the name 'Z-Code', which is evident
in the file name extension that the titles Infocom released were given. 
Each game-file name was appended with ".z" and a number, detailing the
version of the Z-Code game-file interpreter that the code was written to
take advantage of.  Forthcoming versions of the interpreter offered far
greater advances at a programming level over previous releases, eventually
allowing for both graphics and sound effects to complement the text of any
game.  All in all, the Z-Machine/Z-Code combination was a quantum leap in
the right direction.

  Although it is plain to see that Infocom often based their works in
worlds outside of our norm - the numerous Zork offerings are especially
evident of this trend - there were several examples that took to genres
other than pure fantasy.  Indeed, there were many noteworthy titles that
differed sufficiently from anything that had been previously experienced
before, and these became instantly recognisable classics of the era.

  In Brian Moriarty's 'Trinity' you play the role of a modern day American
tourist pulled into the events surrounding the creation and detonation of
the worlds first atomic bomb; the 'Trinity' of the title referring to
Trinity Site where the atomic age began with a radioactive "BOOM!" As a
game, Trinity is a joy to experience, but it's the potential toward a truly
interactive educational journey that offers the greatest promise.  Actually
witnessing the true horror of the events unfold for real it may not be, but
being drawn into the history surrounding the birth of The Bomb ignites the
hypothetical "What if...?" fires like nothing else.

  Infocom also delved into the nightmarish realms of Lovecraftian horror
with the release of 'The Lurking Horror'.  ('Lovecraftian' being the name
given to a gothic style of writing based on the worlds and utterly alien
monstrosities that were first brought to paper by the enviable, though
obviously deranged, pen of Howard Philip Lovecraft way back in the 1920's.)
Although not gothic in era, The Lurking Horror introduced a terrifying new
concept to the adventure game: play upon the reader's fear and morbid
curiosity as opposed to plunging them head-first into an all-too-obvious
fantasy world.  True, Lovecraft's 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' or
Poe's 'The Pendulum and the Pit' it isn't, nor are you ever likely to
quiver before the towering forms of Azatoth, Nyarlathoptep or Cthulhu, but
The Lurking Horror has definitely had a dramatic effect on some of today's
interactive experiences.

  Taking a somewhat surrealist approach (although perhaps not as surreal as
Buñuel and Dali's 1928 movie 'Un Chien andalou'), A Mind Forever Voyaging
places the player within the role of an Artificial Intelligent machine,
alongside a simulated wife and an equally simulated son - an obvious detour
from any of Infocom's previous experiences.  Pegged as one of the best
adventure games in the history of the scene, it takes very little effort to
appreciate the awesome creative wealth that Infocom had at their disposal.
Coupled with other science fiction elements offered by the likes of both
Planetfall and Stationfall, the humble text adventure had fluidly evolved
from the initial treasure collecting cave romp, through modern day horror
and out into an unmapped future.

  Even respected linear fiction and medieval legends were given the
interactive treatment when Adam's 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy',
Doyle's 'Sherlock Holmes', and King Arthur's quest for Excalibur made their
way onto the game store shelves.  As far as Infocom were concerned,
imagination really was the only limit.

  Alas, in 1986, Activision - the renowned and wide-spread game publishing
house that had seen years of action under the 8 bit deck - finally acquired
everything that constituted the imaginative wealth which surrounded the
rise of Infocom, and set into motion the goal of establishing a global
media empire.

  True, Activision did indeed treat the player to several further games
that were based in the worlds of Old Infocom, but there was something very
fundamental missing from the interactive mix.  The graphic adventure 'Zork
Nemesis' may have held more than a passing resemblance to those earlier
Zork games (including, surprisingly, The Lurking Horror, due to the former
game's somewhat gothic streak), but it failed to yield the feel and
immersability of the original Infocom works.  On the other hand, 'Return to
Zork' had completely gone the way of the CD ROM, and was more closely
related to an interactive movie production than anything else.  Having said
all that, though, Activision did attempt - in sparce fashion - to pander to
those who would not be directly attracted to their most recent offerings.

  By strategically releasing 'themed' compilations of previously published
Infocom titles, Activision were in a prime position to make a little extra
revenue (which, no doubt, contributed greatly toward the sizeable budgets
taken up by their more recent graphical exploits) from the die-hard
Interactive Fiction fan.  Of the two 'Lost Treasures' packages that were
released, each contained several Infocom original titles and were swiftly
followed by the 'Infocom Masterpieces' collection.  Milking the magic of
Infocom for all it was worth, it was plain to see that Activision saw only
swelling dollars and the furthering of its movie production exploits.

  Sadly, and probably completely to be expected, Activision finally closed
the Infocom offices in 1989, and, with that, an era which covered the early
days of the technological revolution came to an uneventful end.


If, after reading this far, you've come to the conclusion that the text
adventure had its greatest staring role back in the 80's, you wouldn't be
far from the truth.  Adventure's appearance toward the end of the 1970's
sparked a fascination with the idea of Interactive Fiction, and it was the
following decade that really made the game style its home.  Infocom, Scott
Adams, and Level 9 all played a dominant part in bringing us some of the
best works of Interactive Fiction ever, but it would probably never have
happened had the audio and visual capability of today been available when
the interactive ball first started rolling.

  Technology has come so far since the end of the 1980's that the average
game player just isn't satisfied with reading their way through a product.
Commercial Interactive Fiction had given way to beat 'em ups, shoot 'em ups
and DOOM clones.  The gamer wanted fast action, awesome graphics and neato
sound, whereas the original adventure games seemed far too laid back for
the modern action freak, even though the animated graphical adventures
offered by the likes of Lucas Arts, Activision and Sierra still proved
popular.  It was a clear case of changing with the times.

  ...Or was it?

  Although the mighty Infocom has effectively ceased to be an individual,
identifiable entity, and just about every other commercial text adventure
developer disappeared into the swirling void many, many moons ago, there is
still a fringe market that is hungry for both new and old products.  It's
the mid-1990's, and Interactive Fiction is still a thriving scene between
those ancient ghouls that swim the ether worlds vacated by those who had
once trampled a colossal path; the enquiring 'newbie' who has but recently
discovered the art for the very first time and those who have once again
happened across the genre after years in exile.

  The realm of freely distributable software has opened the arteries for
products deemed "off the beaten path", wide enough even for the adventure's
life blood to continue its ebb and flow; and it was the advent of four very
centralized focal points that helped keep the art healthy and growing long
after its alleged sell-by date.

  The first of the 'focal points' that we shall discuss is widely regarded
as the heart of Interactive Fiction today - the reason why, you'll soon
discover.  The second, third and forth elements that contribute to the
modern movement can equally be seen as both the central nervous system and
the vocal capacity of our hypothetical gaming 'body'.  Without these extra
'anatomical appendages', the end of the text adventure as a whole may very
well have passed us by in the night without our even knowing that it was in
trouble.


The Interactive Fiction Archive at ftp.gmd.de stands testament to the
foresight and unfailing dedication of but one man, and his desire to see
the adventure game movement of past years flourish in this day and age of
fast-paced arcade action.

  Employed at GMD in Germany as a man of many talents, Volker Blasius' very
first experience of Interactive Fiction was a surprising and captivating
little title named Advent, that he found lurking amongst the hierarchal
clutter of an IBM mainframe.  This single encounter held a fascination with
Volker that was difficult to ignore, and it would eventually lead him into
his own respected and unenviable role within the genre.  What's more, it
doesn't take a genius to realise that Advent was none other than a simple
port of Adventure itself; in fact, since Adventure first reared its very
formidable head all those years ago, there have been innumerable variations
of the original 1970's title - all with their own subtle, yet appreciable,
differences.  Believe it or not, Adventure is one of the most updated games
in the history of the computer.

  Alas, for reasons best left for Volker himself to reveal, his days of
adventure gaming were somewhat limited.  Missing all of the middle period
of Interactive Fiction (most notably the Old Infocom era), he wasn't
re-introduced to the genre until years later when he accidently happened
across several related Usenet news groups (more of which we'll read about
later), and that's when the concept of a central archive of Interactive
Fiction initially took root.

  Volker first announced the opening of the original central archive way
back in 1992 and, with the unhesitant help of Interactive Fiction veteran
Dave Baggett (who we'll hear more of later), set in motion the monolithic
task of maintaining and expanding a core reservoir of artistic talent both
ancient and new.

  The popularity of the Interactive Fiction Archive at ftp.gmd.de continued
to grow and grow as more fans of the genre either gained Internet access or
discovered the archive for the very first time.  It was this growth in
popularity that prompted Volker to contact Chris Myers of Washington's
wuarchive, with the intent of spawning a mirror of the original ftp.gmd.de
site.  Myer's agreed at once, and the American mirror opened its welcome
doors in January 1993 with an appreciable twelve megabyte of server space
dedicated to the cause.  It wasn't until a short time later that both
collaborators realised the initially invested twelve megabyte file store
limit would prove to be a very conservative offering.

  Within the space of a year the Interactive Fiction Archive had not only
grown to unforeseen proportions, but its global popularity had demanded,
and gained, the need for a mirror image of the original - and that turn of
events was only the beginning...  In October 1994, Finland's nic.funet.fi
also joined in the celebration of what once was by opening a second archive
mirror on its own FTP server - offering an even greater distributability of
all things adventure.  It sure seemed that the initial dream of Volker
Blasius had, from its humble beginnings, taken to the world like a fish to
water.

  Since the archive's original conception, Volker has been seen as some-
thing of a saviour in the Interactive Fiction scene.  Because the archive
has witnessed a dramatic increase in activity over the years - due to it
being very well received by the unconstrained masses of adventure game
aficionados the world over - Volker has had to volunteer more and more of
his time to maintaining and expanding the archive, cataloguing all incoming
files, notifying the public as to availability and generally playing care-
taker to what is widely regarded as the Hub of Interactive Fiction on the
Internet.

  Sadly, this need to distribute all of his time between his work, personal
life (yes, some people do have them) and the archive means he has very
little time for playing many of those titles that have appeared over the
course of the site's steadily evolving life.  That shows true dedication to
the cause which is appreciated by all who have trodden within the halls of
'ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/', but it is only the story of one element which
makes up the whole of Interactive Fiction today...


It's all very well having a central repository where today's adventure game
developer may distribute the hard earned results of his labour, but without
a means to learn the tricks of the trade and exercise those creative skills
we are likely to witness very little action and a lot of homeless ideas. 
That is where Usenet comes into play.

  I should have no need to explain the design and globe-spanning potential
of Usenet, as everyone with Internet access will have crossed its myriad
paths at one time or another.  Indeed, other than e-mail and Internet Relay
Chat, it's very likely that a significant part of your own on-line time is
spent browsing the news groups and threads that you find of particular
interest.  It could never be doubted that Usenet is a very advantageous
hunting ground, offering topics of conversion for subjects as diverse and
mundane as you're ever likely to envisage, and it's hardly surprising to
discover that Interactive Fiction, too, is just as well represented as any
other area of interest.

  Regardless of which style of adventure game we are drawn toward, there
will always be a time in our explorations when the path ahead is well and
truly blocked, by some seemingly impossible puzzle or quest.  Indeed, the
very thread of Interactive Fiction both past and present is based around an
involvement within a story that is made ever more difficult to complete by
the, often, vast number of puzzles inherent.  Of course, your simple 'put
the iron key in the rusted lock to open the door' type of problems often
speak for themselves, but when you can't get the iron key because the
starving Ogre won't make a trade unless you give him the peanut butter and
jelly sandwich that the wicked old witch of the north-northwest keeps
locked away in her candy cottage, you can appreciate where the need for
help may arise.  (Even more so if you didn't find the parchment hidden
within the secret compartment in the bed of King Valoosifus IV, explaining,
in cryptic prose, how to locate said cottage in the first place.)

  Luckily, for the hapless adventurer that we all sometimes tend to become,
Usenet rides to the rescue with a news group dedicated to the goal of
answering just about any game related question our prying mind could
possibly hope to conjure.  'rec.games.int-fiction' is a veritable bee's
hive of constant begging, pleading, hair-pulling, game selling and general
informing, inhabited by some of the most prominent players in post-Infocom
Interactive Fiction.

  Without a doubt, if you're hopelessly stuck within one of the hundreds of
games both commercial and freely distributable, rec.games.int-fiction can
appear to be a God-send, offering all the help you could possibly ask for;
and, what's more, if you've got your own self-styled wisdom to impart, you
can guarantee your words will fall upon at least one receptive hear.

  But what of the other side of the coin?  Where should all those talented
beings who wish to pursue a more creative role in Interactive Fiction take
up residence?  Simple...  Let me take the time to introduce you to our
previously mentioned news group's twin brother: 'rec.arts.int-fiction' (or
'raif' as it is more commonly known)...


From its creation by Adam Engst way back in 1987 as an open forum for the
discussion of hypertext-based literary fiction, rec.arts.int-fiction has
gone a long way to fulfilling the needs of almost a decade of adventure
game development.  When Engst first set the wheels of 'raif' in motion as
he worked in the computer room at Cornell University (which would have been
a sprawling mass of restless students if it was anything like the computer
room at WVU's Mountain Lair), he could never have imagined the impact it
would eventually come to have.

  Initially only a sideline topic, the discussion of Interactive Fiction
and the problems encountered whilst writing such challenging media have
become the soul residential habitat of 'raif' - and the growing amount of
traffic passing through its quarters on a daily basis bares witness to the
many and varied on-going developments in the genre.  When there's an idea
for a new game just waiting to take form, a complex or simple programming
design that needs a little functional help or the prospect for futhering
the already impressive possibilities and lists of specifications that have
come to surround modern Interactive Fiction, rec.arts.int-fiction is where
all the action is most likely to happen.  If it is the development of
interactive text-based titles that strikes a chord within, the knowledge
base at play in 'raif' is both extensive and far reaching...

  As of this writing, there are currently two primary adventure development
packages available for those creative types who wish to engage in the
magical aspects of the art.  'Inform' by Graham Nelson is an unrestricted,
freely distributable, multi-platform compiler that accepts hand-written
adventure game source code and generates Infocom standard Z-Code game-files
for later playing via one of the many versatile freeware Z-Machines.  Often
touted by many as the ultimate Interactive Fiction development suit, it is
not overly difficult to appreciate its staggering potential after you
discover the impressive number and quality of games that have previously
been written under the environment.  Its somewhat modular library structure
and Object Oriented approach fits perfectly within the current trend in
development system design, and with the recent release of Inform version 6
offering even greater flexibility and world building functionality, you
can't help but praise Mr Nelson for such a damn fine contribution to the
furthering of our interactive cause - even if the supplied programming
documentation does leave the reader a little confused and grasping for
purchase from a higher force every now and again.

  Travelling in a vaguely opposite direction from Inform - for reasons that
I will explain shortly - we happen across the undeniably impressive form of
Michael J.  Roberts' 'Text Adventure Development System' (or 'TADS', for
those wishing to save on those all-important syllables).  Holding an equal
popularity against Inform within the adventure development community, TADS
may prove to be responsible for some of the most playable Interactive
Fiction titles written since those extremely memorable days when Old
Infocom roamed the non-linear circuit.  Although offering a world building
system that is all-too-often claimed to be significantly more powerful than
that of Graham Nelson's already enviable masterpiece, TADS takes to the
role of adventure development in very much the same way.  Comprising of
both an impressive Object Orientated compilation suit and a separate run-
time interpreter executable, TADS is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a truly
magnificent authoring system.  Alas, the seemingly proprietary way in which
Roberts' decided upon going about crafting TADS (along with the current -
but very close to changing - Shareware status of the package) may initially
pull the potential developer a little off of balance...  You see, unlike
Nelson's contribution, TADS employs its very own adventure game-file format
as opposed to following the highly evolved Infocom Z-Code mechanism, and
with that it denies the budding game player the option of using one of the
many advanced Z-Machine interpreters that have been so painstakingly
written over the years.  It should be stressed, however, that this reliance
on a "non-Infocom standard" format in no way, shape or form, impairs the
true power and scope of Roberts' Text Adventure Development System.

  At the other end of the spectrum there exist several development systems
that either lack the finesse of both Inform and TADS because of their
present early state of development, or being viewed by the vocal masses as
restricting the full potential of the author in ways deemed inappropriate.
The 'Adventure Game Toolkit' (currently available in both 'classic' and
'Master' editions), by David Malmberg and Mark Welch, has been around since
the 1980's and can be held partly responsible for many of those interactive
titles available today.  But, because of the relatively low quality and
stability of the majority of those products that were released, it is often
viewed by many as being far too easy for the prospective author to create a
working game before having fully gain a suitable grasp of the Toolkit's
mechanics.  Whether or not this argument is true should ultimately be
decided by anyone wishing to use AGT in developing Interactive Fiction
comparable to those titles offered by Inform or TADS.  What's more, it is
also worth noting than many of those games written by via AGT were first
released in the late 80's, and that could hold to being a deciding factor
in any defence of their quality.

  Thomas Nilsson and Gran Forslund's 'ALAN' (or the 'Adventure LANguage'),
on the other hand, is a relative newcomer to the world of the adventure and
has seen very little third-party development in recent times.  Although the
vast majority of present day authoring takes place under the watchful eyes
of Inform and TADS, ALAN offers the potential to create moderately sized
projects offering competent mechanical potential with only a minimal of
programming effort.  Whether or not this approach should be seen as a
distinct advantage and prove to yield a future crop is a question best left
to time itself, but its apparent ease of use, coupled with the fact that it
is a free and unrestricted package, may prove popular amongst those budding
authors who see the likes of Inform and TADS as too overbearing a system to
code under.  Similarly, Kent Tessman's 'HUGO' has also seen very little
third-party activity since it was initially release, even though it is
widely claimed to be far more accessible than several of its rivals, whilst
still maintaining a decidedly comfortable state of flexibility.

  Whatever the future holds for any of the above packages, it's plain to
see the desire that programmers hold when it comes to offering the common
man a relatively simple entry into the Interactive Fiction authoring arena.
This degree of development is equally evident on the other side of the
programming fence, where we are delighted to discover that never before in
the history of Interactive Fiction as there been the enormous scale of
game-file interpreter development than has been witnessed over the course
of recent years.  Not wishing to stand still in light of the current
advances in authoring system complexity, the Infocom Z-Code compatible
interpreter of yesterday is undergoing a transformation in functionality
and world building integrity at a phenomenal rate.

  Not content with letting the interpreter lay dormant after the advent of
the likes of Zip, ZorkMachine, PInfocom and ITF, the developer's insatiable
lust for progress and multi-platform coverage has brought life to several
recent additions to the interpreter's family tree - the most distributed of
which must surely be Stephan Jokisch's 'Frotz'.  As a Z-Code client, Frotz
has stood the conclusive test of time making itself available on every
computer ranging from the commendable old Amiga of Commodore past, through
Apple Macintosh and on to the PC before finally coming to rest at the feet
of the mighty UNIX box.

  Not wishing leave all the hard work of managing the bulk of Interactive
Fiction to the likes of the formidable Frotz, the perpetual might of the
hive-like developing community have answered the call for faster and more
full-featured interpreters by presenting the would-be adventurer with an
impressive gathering of titles.  MaxZip, JZip and XZip are but three Z-Code
clients that live in a constantly developing state of flux, and when you
add to those numbers the recently released Level 9 game-file interpreter,
'Level9', along with the 'AGiliTy' Adventure Game Toolkit client, you can
clearly see the scale of development that is currently taking form.  Even
the infamous World Wide Web has seen its own fare share of interpreter
action with the admirable creation of Z-Plet - the Java-base Z-Machine
applet - meaning that, in more ways than one, the capable Web browser is
indeed a multi-faceted window onto the on-line world.


Having now firmly introduced ourselves to three of the most fundamental
mechanisms involved within the realm of modern Interactive Fiction (the
Interactive Fiction Archive based at ftp.gmd.de, rec.games.int-fiction and
rec.arts.int-fiction), the final stop in our exploration of the genre's far
reaching hypothetical body leads us now to the role that the electronic
magazine has taken under its wing.

  As is clearly the case in every area of interest, there will always be an
alliance of minds that are only too willing to share their valuable time
and expertise with those who offer a similar topical appreciation.  Both
Volker Blasius and Dave Baggett are already familiar characters to the
reader due to their unfailing dedication in keeping the spirit of today's
Interactive Fiction alive, but without an alternative method of spreading
further word of the cause other than the previously mentioned news groups,
there will always be as many people left out in the cold as there are in on
the action.

  Kevin Wilson had gone some way to bridging that gap when issue #1 of
'SPAG' (otherwise known as the 'Society for the Preservation of Adventure
Games') first made a welcome appearance in May 1994, and since then he has
strived to mould the quality and scale of the freely available e-zine in an
attempt to offer an alternative source of information that is as easily
available as a regular FTP or World Wide Web session.  By undertaking a
periodical approach to Interactive Fiction, SPAG allows the frequent reader
with little real 'net access to keep ahead of the latest news, reviews,
gossip and offerings that many of us take for granted.

  Similarly, Eileen Mullin's 'XYZZYnews' - which first saw the light of day
in January 1995 - has contributed immensely to the awareness and furthering
of Interactive Fiction since the very first issue.  Generally taking a more
positive stance toward the genre than Wilson's SPAG (which often tends to
deal more with reviewing past and present developments as opposed to
discussing the application of the art), XYZZYnews is constantly in the face
of topical discussions like interactive design and future presentation, as
well as regularly pointing the proverbial spotlight at those individuals
within the genre who have had the greatest influence on the current state
of development.  And it is that which makes it a truly indispensable read.


  As a final word on the subject of e-zines, it's worth keeping well in
mind that both SPAG and XYZZYnews are freely available from the Interactive
Fiction Archive at ftp.gmd.de, as well as the religiously compiled digests
of postings from Usenet's rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction
(along with the impressive number of freely distributable titles that are
presently available for the taking - but that's only to be expected).


Reading this far you may be curious to know as to exactly where our beloved
Amiga stands in all of this.  After all, you're reading this article in
Amiga Report, so you would expect our challenged platform to have some say
in the matter at hand.

  Well, if the truth be known where Interactive Fiction is an issue, the
Amiga is sitting right there at the top of the text adventure heap - along
with just about every other computer system available today.  There is
surprisingly little difference between the state of the text adventure on
the Amiga, PC, Apple Macintosh, Acorn Archimedes, PSION Personal Organizer
(that's correct), or the several free and proprietary variations of UNIX
that are doing the rounds.  In actual fact, the vast majority of those
freely distributable Interactive Fiction products that are now available
tend to be completely interchangeable between different and incompatible
Operating Systems.  And why would that be?  For once, a simple and common
answer: some painstakingly documented standards and a imposing library of
highly portable source code.

  As we have already discovered, companies like Infocom wrote the bulk of
their titles in such a way so as to be easily portable between any
individual Operating System; it would not have been in their best interest
to develop each game separately for every available computer whenever the
need arose.  By offering a system dependant interpreter program (Infocom's
'Z-Machine' is one example, as you may recall) the only other element
required to play the adventure games would be the individual game-files
themselves.  These game-files constitute nothing more than an encoded ASCII
text file, which contains all of the important information needed by an
interpreter in order to easily reconstruct each individual game world. 
And, as we should already be aware, ASCII text files can be passed easily
from computer to computer, requiring practically zero technological know-
how.

  With the above information firmly in our grasp, it takes very little
effort to imagine the awesome scale of adventure now open to us.  If the
individual game-files can be had so easily, the only other element required
before we may play them is the actual interpreter program itself - and that
is where the art of portable programming comes into effect...

  Because standardized programming languages such as C, C++ and Pascal are
common amongst many modern computer systems, writing software on one
machine with the general intention of applying it under any other brand of
Operating System becomes an everyday reality.  As long as the author takes
special care so as not to encode any system specific elements within his
program, porting it to a non-native platform constitutes little more than
simply copying the source code onto the desired target computer and then
recompiling it from there.  It is with this method of multi-platform
development in mind that allows today's Interactive Fiction such a wide-
spread audience.

  Impressive Z-Code interpreters such as Stefan Jokisch's Frotz, the
proprietary TADS run-time executable; Robert Masenten's Adventure Game
Toolkit interpreter, AGiliTy; Alan Cox's 'ScottFree' Scott Adams game-file
interpreter and the Level 9 format interpreter, 'Level9' (which was written
by Glen Summers and ported to the Amiga by David Kinder) have all made an
appearance on practically every viable platform imaginable - along with the
formidable porting of Graham Nelson's Inform by Stephan van Egmond, and
Michael J.  Roberts' TADS.  (And all of that is without even bothering to
make mention of the relatively new ALAN and HUGO systems).

  As can be clearly seen, if you've got an Amiga with the minimal resources
necessary to take advantage of the basic requirements that adventure games
demand, you can guarantee the possibility of being capable of experiencing
and enjoying any of the vast number and genre of titles that are currently
in circulation.  Couple that with opportunities now open to you for
actually authoring your own imaginative works of art, and you will discover
that the myriad worlds made available to you are uncountable in number and
fantastic in design.  Sound like Heaven?  It is.

  Incidently, before I continue, I would like to take this opportunity to
offer my very special thanks to an individual who, in recent years, has
contributed more to the state of Interactive Fiction on the Amiga than any
other.  Dave Kinder's Amiga ports of Michael J.  Roberts' TADS and both the
ITF and Frotz Z-Code interpreters, coupled with Glen Summer's Level 9 game
interpreter, has truly opened the way for more people to experience and
develop adventure games on our ailing but ever-so-capable choice of
computer.  I doubt very much that I would ever have undertaken my own
little renaissance tour of Interactive Fiction had I failed to notice and
download an early copy of David's ITF port from Aminet.  Thanks David, your
effort and support is greatly appreciated by myself and, no doubt, many
many others whose lives you have helped enrich - including Amiga Report's
very own Jason Compton, who is himself an aficionado of the art.


At the outset of this article I was predominantly more inclined to detail,
albeit briefly, the historically significant aspects of Interactive Fiction
in an effort to illuminate some of its already established accomplishments.
I also attempted, in a fashion, to draw the attention toward but a few of
the more diverse Infocom offerings of previous years, hoping - as you very
often tend to do - that added enlightenment may help give birth to an even
greater curiosity in the reader.  After all, whilst I'm sitting here at the
keyboard of my A1200 typing this article, it would be nice to know that
someone, somewhere is actually taking heed of my predictable choice of
words, and possibly even contemplating delving into the veritable treasure
chest of exotic delights that sit quietly in wait at ftp.gmd.de (or one of
its more geographically advantageous mirrors).

  You see, because Interactive Fiction relies primarily on the ability of
the author to competently project the game world he has created, coupled
with the imagination of the player who will eventually interpret and inter-
act with those events bestowed upon him, the realms of possibility now open
to every individual for exploration are infinite.  Whether you ultimately
decide upon a leisurely stroll through the numerous fantasy lands of David
Baggett (the respected co-caretaker of the Interactive Fiction Archive) and
L.  A.  Leary's somewhat Zork-esque 'Unnkulian' [TADS] genre of titles, or
opt for the more relatively sombre distractions offered by Leon Lin's 'The
One That Got Away' [TADS] and Andrew Plotkin's impressive 'A Change In The
Weather' [Inform], you can pretty much guarantee that your curiosity will
be pleasantly rewarded.

  Indeed, the morbid mass appeal of wandering around the shadow infested
hallways and haunted back rooms of Brendon Wyber's 'Theatre' [Inform] in an
attempt to uncover the abominable secret that lies therein, may initially
seem more like a fitting scenario for the pages of a best seller by Clive
Barker or James Herbert, but the overall atmosphere of Wyber's well-crafted
gothic tale should not be scoffed at.  Equally, the story and turn of
events surrounding D.  A.  Leary's 'The Horror of Rylvania' [TADS] would
not have appeared out of place in a Saturday night Hammer double feature.

  When presented with a library of highly acclaimed themes such as Thomas
Shelby's conspiratorial exploits through author C.  A.  McCarthy's
impressive multi-dimensional catastrophe, 'The Light: Shelby's Addendum'
[TADS], and Graham Nelson's stunning turn-of-the-millennium epic 'Jigsaw'
[Inform], it is plain to see that Interactive Fiction can offer an escape
from reality that very few of today's commercial products could ever hope
to match.  The final immersion of the player into the world put before him
need only take the reading of a short paragraph of text and a few seconds
visualization before the spell is complete.


Alas, we are coming to the close of this introductory article, and I hope
that it has proven to be as interesting to read as it was for me to write.
The whole exercise of putting finger to keyboard was to help bring a
greater understanding toward the world of Interactive Fiction with,
perhaps, the intention of tempting those readers - who have not previously
experienced the cream of the imaginative crop - into investigating the
genre a little further.

  As you have no doubt inferred by now, there is a lot more to both the
history and current scene of Interactive Fiction than I could have possibly
detailed in such a brief introduction.  If I was to hold the bag open and
let the cats escape of their own free will, this article would be closer to
five times its present length, and Amiga Report would surely attain the
(temporary) title of 'Interactive Fiction Monthly'.  You now already know
that the Interactive Fiction Archive located at 'ftp.gmd.de/int-fiction/'
contains a veritable library of multi-platform games, interpreters and
development systems just waiting to be downloaded.  They can all be had for
very little personal cost, and the entertainment value to you could be
enormous.  Why not drop by sometime?  You may even surprise yourself.

  Happy adventuring
@endnode
@node REVIEW1 "CSAReview: Vidi Amiga 12 RT"
@toc REVIEW

===========================================================================
                        CSAReview: Vidi Amiga 12 RT
  G. O. Jones                                      gi@gj-Cent.demon.co.uk
===========================================================================

PRODUCT NAME

  Vidi Amiga 12 RT

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

  Full Colour Video Digitiser, Real Time capture (ie.  no freeze frame
  required)

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

  Name:       Rombo
  Address:    Kirkton Campus, Livington, Scotland
              EH54 7AZ

  Telephone:  (44) 0506 414631
  FAX:        (44) 0506 414634

LIST PRICE

  I paid around 139 UK pounds for mine, although the prices are much
  cheaper now.

DEMO VERSION

  None

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

  HARDWARE

    2MB RAM required.  More is recommended.
    Video hardware, NTSC, PAL or Secam.

  SOFTWARE

    AmigaDOS 1.3 or greater.

COPY PROTECTION

  None.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

  Amiga 1200, 2 MB Chip RAM, 4 MB Fast RAM, 50Mhz 030 CPU.
  Workbench 3.0.

INSTALLATION

  Uses a custom script: an icon is dragged to the target directory and is
  double clicked.

REVIEW

  The Vidi 12RT hardware plugs into the Amiga parallel port.  It is a
  fairly large unit which causes some irritating problems.  First, due to
  its width, the serial port on the A1200 is obscured by the right hand
  side of the case, meaning you will have to remove your modem or MIDI
  interface each time you wish to use it.  You can get around this problem
  by making an extention cable.  There is an order form with the unit for
  this cable but I feel it should have been included free.  The second
  problem involves powering the unit.  Due to its power requirements, you
  need an external power supply.  Yet again this is not included and so you
  will need to purchase one.

  The Digitiser has 3 inputs.  The first 2 are standard composite video
  inputs and the other is a Super VHS input (or YC).  You can select which
  input to use using the software so you don't need to fiddle with switches
  on the unit itself.  Big Box Amiga owners may have a problem plugging in
  the digitiser as the parallel port is lower down than on the A1200.  The
  extention cable will come in handy for this problem too.

  The software that comes with the digitiser consists of a Grabber, a
  simple Image Processor and a basic Animation arranger.  The Grabber page
  has all the controls for grabbing images: you can alter the Hue,
  Saturation, Brightness and Contrast of the images, select the input to be
  used, and even set it to grab images in a loop with a time delay between
  each grab.  There is also a trigger function that will grab an image each
  time a joystick button is pressed: handy for a simple security system. 

  The Image Processor contains the usual features found in most Amiga
  graphics programs.  You get Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Blur etc.  These
  functions are fairly useful, but a dedicated program will do this much
  better.

  The Animation arranger allows you to arrange your stored frames into an
  Animation.  It displays thumbnails of the images which can be selected
  and moved around, deleted etc.  You can then save them as an IFF ANIM
  file.  The Vidi software doesn't seem to like palette changes or loop
  frames so you may have to convert the Anim using another program before
  it will work with certain programs.

DOCUMENTATION

  64 Page manual, laser printed.

  The manual is reasonable.  It has example images, a tutorial, setup
  instructions for the hardware, and most importantly a troubleshooting
  section.


LIKES

  Quality of grabbed images are good.  S-VHS input, PAL/NTSC and SECAM are
  autodetected,


DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

  The case obscures the serial port and won't connect to Big Box Amigas
  without an extention cable.  Needs external power supply.  Software
  doesn't use ASL filerequesters.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

  ProGrab from Gordon Harwoods seems to be better supported.  It has a
PCMCIA option for A1200 owners for faster grabs.

BUGS

  There seems to be a bug in the Grab page.  After selecting the Mix
  function to convert to the image to a lower colour mode, returning back
  to the Grab options resulted in a guru.  There is a V2.0 of the software
  but this isn't a free update.

VENDOR SUPPORT

  Rombo have released PC versions of their Digitisers, however they still
  sell their Amiga version and even still sell their Atari version.  There
  is a help hotline mentioned in the manual.

WARRANTY

  None mentioned in the manual.

CONCLUSIONS

  Although the ProGrab 24 from Gordon Harwoods is more popular than the
  Vidi, you can buy a Vidi 24RT for less than a ProGrab, which makes it a
  good value.  The Vidi 12RT's picture quality is good and the software is
  useful.  A1200 owners may want to consider the ProGrab and its PCMCIA
  option, or the recently re-released Videomaster.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  Copyright 1996 G. O. Jones.
@endnode
@node REVIEW2 "CSAReview: WordSmith 1.02 And Com-mentor 1.3"
@toc REVIEW

===========================================================================
               CSAReview: WordSmith 1.02 And Com-mentor 1.3
  Esa Haapaniemi                                        eha@ernst.oulu.fi
===========================================================================

PRODUCT NAME

  WordSmith 1.02 and Com-mentor 1.3.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

  Finnish-English-Finnish wordbook and commodity for clipboard
  translations.  There is an educational learning game included.

  All documentation and button text are currently written in Finnish, but
  an update is planned to correct this.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

  Name:                StoneWare SoftWorks
  Address:  Arsi Koutaniemi    OR    Marko Ollila
            Tellervonpolku 7         Elosalamantie 2 C 27
            11120 Riihimdki          02100 Espoo
            Finland                  Finland

  E-mail:          Arsi@bitfield.fi  OR  mape@dreamt.org
  World Wide Web:  Promised to be ready "soon" but I don't know the address
                   yet.

LIST PRICE

  The price was 300 Fmk.  (Finnish marks) that is approximately some $75
  (US).  But when compared to normal price difference between countries it
  will be much nearer $30 (US).

  Additional vocabularies for other languages are promised with 100 Fmk. 
  Extra word translations should be found freely from the coming WWW page.

DEMO VERSION

  None that I know.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

  HARDWARE

    1 M memory and 3 M of hard disk space should be enough.  If the words
    are unpacked, 5 M of hard disk space is needed.

    The program should work with base 68000 too, and because of the special
    packing library it is faster if the packed versions of the words are
    used.

    No graphics card nor FPU are needed nor especially supported.

    There is still a benefit of having fast prosessor and more than 2 M of
    Fast RAM.

  SOFTWARE

    Version 2.0 of AmigaDOS at least is needed.  Works with 3.0 and 3.1.

    The program uses StoneCracker library (stc.library) for packed data and
    that library is included with the package for 68020+ and 68000
    prosessors.

COPY PROTECTION

  The program comes on 3 DD FFS formatted Amiga disks.  The Commodore (RIP)
  Installer is included with a paper sheet of cryptic letters and numbers
  (4420 of them) of which one is asked when the program is installed on HD.
  After that the sheet can be stored as long as the program is not moved or
  reinstalled.  The program can not be used from the disks.

  The numbers on the sheet are printed on red paper and the numbers are
  really tiny (fontsize is some 6 or smaller).  Some people might have
  problems in reading those and they are almost impossible to photocopy
  with cheap machines.

  The disks are standard FFS format and can be backed up for safety.

  The Installer script writes something on the first disk after checking
  the correct code.

  After installing, the copy protection is completely invisible.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

  Amiga A1200 with 50 MHz 030, 8 MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM
  1 internal Chinon HD floppy and internal 3.5&quot; 350MB IDE HD.
  Commodore A1084 monitor (for video work)
  The KickStart version is 39.106 and WorkBench 40.42.
  Toolmanager 2.1, SClock 1.72, YAK 1.58, Blanker and DCoMMB loaded

  Amiga A2000 (model B) w. 25 MHz 030, 8 MB Fast and 1 MB Chip RAM
  1.6 GB HD (3 different SCSI disks)
  Retina Zorro II graphics card and Idek 15 ' MF-II multisync
  KickStart version 40.63 and WorkBench version 40.42 on 3.1 ROM.
  ...2.5x SONY CD-ROM, QIC 150 MB tape backup system...

  I did all the testing on Amiga A1200 and only after finding some special
  bug or feature I changed to Amiga A2000.

INSTALLATION

  The program is equipped with Commodore Installer.  The installation is
  easy and all of the program is uncompressed inside one directory and
  wordlists on separate directories inside the main directory.  The config
  file is copied to S: and library into LIBS:.

  The vocabularies are arranged in subvocabularies including anatomic,
  botanical, zoological, and computer words.  They can be used all at the
  same time or separately.  The slang vocabulary is included as well and it
  can be protected with a password.  All new special words that are not
  included in these large databases can be added by the user into several
  new own vocabularies.

  The installation script gives information on the needed diskspace and
  tests the prosessor (for unpacking library).  The words can be kept
  packed or unpacked on the HD.

  When the unpacking is done the installation script asks to input one of
  the 8 letters cryptic code from the included sheet.  There are 4420
  different codes on the sheet with really small letters and if the code is
  miswritten, the same code is asked again.

  When the code is given the installer asks to insert the original
  unprotected disk and writes something on it.  I did not find any problems
  reinstalling the program after this (I did want to test the program with
  uncompressed words).

REVIEW

  This is something that the Amiga should have had for a long time before.
  The promised Swedish-German-English vocabularies with cross translations
  to each other add even more to this program's usefulness.

  I did start the program on the first time without looking at the
  Amigaguide document file at all.  The interface that I saw was rather
  unprofessional looking, as it was opened on LowRes screen as default and
  I had everything else on PAL HighRes_InterLace screen.  The display could
  be changed, but there was no testing mode, everything must be either
  saved or cancelled directly.  I did unluckily pick DBLNTSC: High Res No
  Flicker, saved it and after that did not see anything useful on my 1084
  (A1200).

  Fortunately the WorkBench was still open, and after getting my monitor to
  sync to that signal I could slide the WorkBench down and reset the
  WordSmith screen to something more usable on this monitor.

  I can say about the interface that it is clumsy.  There are no menus
  available and everything is handled from buttons that open new windows on
  top of the main window.  No changes (except the screenmode) are used
  before they are saved and all of the texts on buttons are in Finnish.

  Only toggleable button is the button for translation direction (either
  English > Finnish or Finnish > English) and only target that takes some
  other input than the left mousebutton is the input field for words.  The
  text in the input field is rather long and it must be cleared completely
  (SHIFT-DEL) before it can be used.

  The program knows some really difficult technical terms that were not
  available on previously used commercial PC program ("Amiga" was
  translated to a C= made computer :-)).

  I had to try quite a long time before I found words that were not on the
  list.  My special words for Chemistry are not so well included.  BUT
  simple ones like Asetone, Saccharose, Paraffin, ...  are.

  The vocabularies are really large and the separation of the words into
  several categories is really useful.  And the vocabulary includes really
  a lot of "dirty" slang words too!  Fortunately they can be cut out from
  the Ahjo educational game and the main program with an owner-specifiable
  password.

  For those words that are not included there is a window for starting
  one's own custom vocabularies that can be used like any other category on
  Ahjo and on the main program.  Only one custom wordlist can be used at a
  time.

  The custom word window has checking option for words that are already in
  other vocabularies, but unfortunately that stops working as soon as any
  new word is added.  That problem was not corrected on the new version I
  got.

  There are some annoying parts in the main interface including the already
  mentioned one mouse button working.  Other things like internal
  single-tasking (the main program stops working until all other windows
  are closed on WordSmith), error messages at the other end of the window
  as searched and found words, confusing mixed button types and alike make
  this all seem like it was only some quick interface test.  Version 2 is
  promised to be much more professional.  Current upgrades are concentrated
  only on found bugs that prevent the use of the program.

  Ahjo, the educational game, is a new kind of interface window on
  WordSmith.  It has options on choosing the category (all words or slang,
  custom, computers, botanical, ...) and time to think, a small requester
  to put the gamer's name for the highscore list, and big buttons for
  starting, quitting.  The question and input requesters are sometimes too
  short to see all of the words.

  This part of the program can be used currently only on Finnish>English
  learning.  But if there are self-made vocabularies on any language, they
  can be tested as well.

  Only once did I get the previous version of the WordSmith to collapse.
  It happeded when I chose an unknown word to be printed and iconified the
  program immediately after that.  That bug was not repeatable...

  Outside the main WordSmith program there is a commodity, Com-mentor.  It
  is a small (27 K) and quick way to make translation of words.  It does
  not include joker mark on search as the WordSmith does.  It still does
  translations to both directions and fast (on 50 MHz 030 !!!).

  Com-mentor opens with a hotkey to a simple unresizable window on the
  Workbench and includes only one input field and larger output field that
  can be scrolled if there are more than ten answers.  The size and opening
  position for the program can be changed with another configuration window
  that can be opened with another hotkey.

  All words from the Com-mentor can be copied to the clipboard just by
  pointing them with a mouse and activating.  Even though all the words are
  represented in capital letters they are read as small letter words to the
  Clipboard.  At the same time all the chosen words are changed to small
  letters on the Com-mentor preview.

  Another "problem" is that the words are sometimes misleading.   There is
  no separation between British-English or American-English way of writing
  the words and many words have more slang meanings than actual
  translations.

  Perhaps the worst problem with this is that all of the manuals (only
  Amigaguide file) and button texts are written in Finnish (correction
  promised).

  So currently this is only useful for Finnish speaking people who want to
  make quick translations Finnish<>English.  As it has large vocabulary and
  there are promises for other languages (including German<>English this
  can become really something useful!

DOCUMENTATION

  I was somewhat amazed to see that the only things in the envelope were
  three disks and a red leaflet with thousands of codes on both sides.
  There was not even any Readme_First file on the disks.

  Currently the only documentation is an Amigaguide document in Finnish.
  And even that is very simple, more like an advertisement for the
  programmers and their "skills."

  Fortunately when I did contact one of the authors and sent him a list of
  all the problems he "documented" them back to me, and told to me that
  they were mainly corrected already.

  I got a new version of the program and a short README file too, but again
  no other documents.

  Still this kind of program should be self explanatory and documents are
  somewhat enough and the program can be used even without.

LIKES

  - Com-mentor is a really fast and small commodity.  And the clipboard
    working directly with just pointing the wanted word is an extra plus.
  - Ahjo, the educational game, could be some fun and useful without the
    annoying bugs.
  - Really large vocabulary (much bigger than commercial PC/Windows and
    Macintosh programs I have seen before).
  - Program is made here, I'll support national programmers !-)
  - Promised other languages (German<>Swedish<>English<>Finnish) will
    be useful.

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

  - Everything is in Finnish (except one uninformative text in Ahjo).
  - Several words are still not completely correct.  A lot of long
    words (for example "binary numbering system") are translated with
    only two words or even with shortenings (exclusive OR = XOR).
  - Somehow resembles windows programs (unexplainable unrepeatable
    bugs)... That does not prevent the use, it is only annoying.
  - Too Macintosh like (one button, no menus).

  All of the found "problems" should be corrected with version 2.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

  I have shortly used one Windows program and one Macintosh version.

  The Windows version had translations German<>Finnish and Swedish<>Finnish
  included with the English<>Finnish but no German<>Swedish<>English.  The
  program was really slow on 75 MHz Pentium w.  8 M RAM and Win 3.1.  And
  as the program was "only" 5 HD disks and took some 8 M of hard disk
  space, it did not include even nearly as many words as WordSmith.

  The Macintosh program was an old one and included only the
  English<>Finnish translation.  As it was made to fit on single DD disk,
  it really did not shine at all.  Still the interface was somewhat similar
  with this Amiga version except that all of the buttons were in English. 
  And no clipboard was directly supported nor any extra educational game.

BUGS

  I'll write this only as a list as all of them should be corrected before
  this is published.  Most of the bugs in the original 1.1 version were
  already corrected on this current version and only the following were
  still left.

  - Custom words can not be written easily, as even the latest version
    forgets the checking of new words as soon as one new is inserted.
  - Too small requesters, some words are longer than the window for them
  - Several words are still &quot;wrong&quot;

VENDOR SUPPORT

  I did tell them about the bugs I found and after some days I received a
  mail telling me that most of them are already corrected.  I got the
  upgrade as soon as I specially asked for it.

  I feel a kind of like a gamma tester !-) But I am not connected to the
  authors in any other way than that I am their customer.

WARRANTY

  There is no warranty that I know.  Even the installer script was told to
  be AS IS and there are no promises to pay for any possible harm made by
  the program.

  Still I have found no bugs that could destroy anything, as the data is
  only read from hard disk and there are no writes done (except when
  installing).

CONCLUSIONS

  When the author gets all of the annoying bugs out from the programs and
  makes interface and documents in English/other languages this is much
  more than it's cheapness (only ~30 US$) and does beat similar (same
  price) programs in the Windows world easily.

  When the new languages (Germany<>Swedish<>English<>Finnish) become
  available there surely is use for others than Finnish and/OR those who
  want to learn Finnish.

  Current version could be claimed to be as hackers test of programming
  skills on any interface (not Amiga specially).  Only the large vocabulary
  is something special.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  There is no copywright nor any copy protection on this file !-) Write
  "Delete" to get rid of this annoying review ;)

  Esa Haapaniemi
  University of Oulu
  Department of Chemistry
  Finland
  eha@ernst.oulu.fi
@endnode
@node REVIEW3 "Review: DirOpus 5.5"
@toc REVIEW

===========================================================================
                        DirOpus 5.5 Review: Part 1
                            By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON}
===========================================================================

When DirOpus 5 showed up, I was skeptical.  I'd gotten along just fine
under the WB2/3 system and was comfortable using DirWork 1.62, and later 2,
for my file management purposes.  I installed DOpus 5 and played with it a
bit, but it just didn't have a lasting appeal for me.  "Too much memory
use" I said.  "Not really my style." I said.  I put it aside.

Now it's back in my face again and I can't ignore it.  DirOpus 5.5 is here,
and I've given in.  I'm not going to fight it anymore.

DirOpus 4 was quite popular as a file manager akin to its contemporaries,
DirWork and DiskMaster, among others.  The basic idea for those of you who
somehow have lived without any of these tools is that you get two
side-by-side directory listers, and can copy, delete, picture view, LHA or
un-LHA, whatever you like, between the two sides.  They're often great
timesavers and are in general very convenient to use.

DirOpus 5 was a major departure from this system.  Instead of being a
lister tool that you run in a window or on a separate screen like all the
rest, it was going to go farther.  It was going to make you throw Workbench
entirely out the window.  Preposterous, you say?  Nope.  DirOpus 5 can
replace your workbench, backdrops and all.  You access your directories as
you would have under Workbench, but instead of the fairly limited power
Workbench gives you to manipulate files, you have complex button bars, docs
full of commands, and other new goodies at your command.

As I alluded to earlier, it doesn't come for free.  My less-than-elaborate
boot system puts up DirOpus 5 on an 800x600x256 color (Retina Z3
CyberGraphX) screen and leaves me with about 11.5 out of 14 megs free when
all is said and done.  This is fine by me, as memory is so cheap it's not
worth complaining about anymore.  But it does mean that those systems with
under 6 megs of memory are going to feel the burn at one point or another.
It is possible to run DirOpus as a separate program rather than as a
Workbench replacement, but I so far haven't found a reason that affects me
personally.

In Part 2 of this review, we'll go into some of Opus 5.5's more endearing
configurability properties.  For now, I want to look at a few of the
advantages immediately available to users who don't have the time, desire,
or skill to do in-depth configurations on their file manager/Workbenches.

LHA: Opus, like any good file manager, knows how important LHA is to users.
But the way it de-archives files is quite interesting.  You can de-archive
to a new, separate window which acts as a temporary lister for the files in
the LHA archive.  You then can selectively copy out the files you need for
your purposes, in case you don't want everything in the LHA archive.  This
is significantly easier than the same operation done from the shell.

OpusFTP was released as an add-on previously, but is now an integrated part
of the DirOpus 5.5 package.  A little innocuous button in the default
toolbar reads "FTP", and if you're running any sort of TCP stack or clone
(MLink), you're in business.  Opus will let you open any FTP site,
anonymous or otherwise, as a standard lister window.  From there, you can
carry out just about any operation, from simply copying files to or from
the site to renaming to deleting and viewing and reading.  There have been
other implementations of this scheme (notably, the FTPMount device) but
this system feels faster.  It is worth noting that I've had some difficulty
in getting the OpusFTP program to actually quit.

Opus brings a lot of new options to the Workbench.  Besides replacing other
ToolManager-style dock and button bars, it enables you to keep your
left-out Workbench icons, as well as offering the ability to create
Windows-style Program Groups.  Some may find this useful for organization's
sake, or to make the system more palatable to a Windows user who needs to
the system for certain purposes.

None of this is really as impressive as one particular advantage over
standard Workbench (and most directory management utility) operations, and
that's the introduction of multithreading.  In the Workbench, you're more
than welcome to multitask in another program or on another screen if you
have a big task going in the WB, but you're not able to, say, start up
three different copy commands.  DirOpus 5.5 multithreads everything (each
lister is its own task), so you never have to wait for something to finish
before proceeding with the rest of your work again.  There is of course a
speed hit, but I find DirOpus very capable under a 4000T standard 040/25
setup.

Now, I'm not at all against the shell.  I use it quite a bit.  But for mass
operations that don't necessarily follow any particular wildcard pattern,
having a good GUI way to go about them is a great benefit, and DOpus 5.5
provides an excellent medium.  Next time, we'll take a look at some more
specific configuration options for DirOpus 5.5.

DirOpus 5.5 by Jonathan Potter
Published by GPSoftware
PO Box 570
Ashgrove, Qld
Australia 4060
++61 7 33661402 voice/fax
zzgperry@mailbox.uq.oz.au e-mail
http://agnus.livewire.com.au/gpsoft/
@endnode
@node REVIEW4 "Review: Frotz / Infocom CD"
@toc REVIEW

===========================================================================
 Review: Frotz and Classic Text Adventures Masterpieces of Infocom CD-ROM
                            By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON}
===========================================================================

In a thematic gesture, I thought it was high time I gave recognition to one
of the neatest gaming genres in the world and how you can take advantage of
it on the Amiga.

Back in the day before the Amiga started a home computer graphics
revolution, much of computer gaming was done in ASCII form.  (credit where
credit is due, even though the Amiga didn't capture the world, it had
everyone running scared, as attested to by then-director of Apple
engineering Jean-Louis Gassee)  The game of Adventure pioneered the text
adventure (or, as it's now known, "interactive fiction" genre) and the game
of Dungeon took it to a higher level.  The former has been done and redone
dozens of times the world over and has turned into the stuff of legend.
Many Unix systems (including Amiga NetBSD) ship with it as standard: for
fun, the next time you're in your ISP shell, type "adventure." You may get
a pleasant surprise--I did on my new CalWeb account.

The latter, Dungeon, became known as Zork, and was the motivator behind the
founding of the company known as Infocom, which spawned a few dozen of the
finest games the world has ever seen.  This is not hyperbole by a
sentimentalist, I'm being serious.  Infocom's authors (called
Implementors) are among the best writers and puzzle designers yet seen in
computer gaming.

Oh, sure, not all of Infocom's games were hits.  Some of the best games met
with little commercial success (A Mind Forever Voyaging springs to mind),
others were decidedly sub-par or at least missing a certain special
"something".

One of the best things about Infocom was that you could be the owner of
practically ANY computer platform (and remember, back in the 80's, that was
literally more than a dozen) and Infocom would support your platform.  The
genius behind this was that each game was compiled into a single data file,
and this file was accessed through an interpreter, which, no matter whether
you were on a Commodore Plus4 or an Amiga or a Kaypro, looked precisely the
same to the Infocom data file.

Set up such a useful standard, and others are bound to duplicate and
imitate it--which is exactly what has happened.  The Infocom "Z-Machine"
standard was hacked and disassembled and analyzed until today, authors
around the world are able to create their own text adventures in a form
nearly identical to the Infocom standard.  Dozens of these games are out
there, with more on the way all the time.

What's the upshot of all this?  The other side of the coin is that the
interpreter format is an open book as well.  Independent programmers for
just about every conceivable machine have developed their own Infocom-style
interpreters which let you load the data file from any version of Infocom
game and play it on your respective machine.  For the Amiga, the best
interpreter out there right now is the Frotz interpreter, ported and
supported on the Amiga by David Kinder.

Frotz's operation is very simple.  You load up Frotz, which will open
itself on any standard Amiga (or graphics card) screen you specify.  You
load in an Infocom-style data file.  The new games are almost all free or
shareware, and are available from ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/games.
Infocom released all of its titles for the Amiga.  But it is fairly hard to
come by the original Infocom packaging, and the Lost Treasures of Infocom
series for the Amiga was never in great supply.  You can find the Lost
Treasures series for the PC or Mac (which is a two-box set containing all
of Infocom's text adventures) but even this isn't the easiest thing to
find.  So now Activision, owners of the Infocom properties, have come out
with something else.

The Classic Text Adventures Masterpieces CD-ROM is about as inexpensive as
it's going to get.  For about US$20, you can own almost the entire back
collection of Infocom titles on CD-ROM.  The exceptions are Hitchhiker's
Guide To the Galaxy (the rights on this game license have expired), a
fairly good game, and Shogun (the rights have expired here as well), by
most accounts a pretty lousy game.

You also get three bonus titles: the top three entries in last year's
rec.games.int-fiction game contest in the Infocom category.  (The other
three games were entered in the TADS category, which is another form of
interactive fiction game.  There is an Amiga interpreter but the games were
presented as precompiled PC .exe files.)

There is, of course, a catch.  While Frotz will access each game
flawlessly, giving you a whole lot of entertainment (35 games worth),
you'll be hard pressed to get very far without documentation.  Infocom was
legendary for fascinating, well-presented packaging that could double as
copy protection--a vital clue here, a map there, a note that isn't
described in the game except to say "You'll find that in your game
packaging."  The Lost Treasures series provides these in a handbook, but
they're more expensive.  For a $20 CD, you get online documentation in
Adobe Acrobat .PDF format.  This is all well and good, but Adobe doesn't
make Acrobat for the Amiga.  No problem, I'm told, the freeware port of
Ghostscript will handle it.  This is what I've been told, but I've not been
able to get Ghostscript to properly interpret a single PDF document.  So,
if you're a braver or more successful soul than I with Ghostscript, or have
access to another way to read .PDF files (for example, running Acrobat
under Shapeshifter or Emplant Mac emulation) then you're set.

I can't stress enough how overwhelmingly cool Infocom games are.  On the
CD-ROM, you'll get the absolute-required-playing Zork series, which set so
many standards for entertainment they're hard to count, Douglas Adams'
Bureaucracy, the Infocom murder mysteries of Deadline, Suspect, and Witness
(all engaging in their own ways), the hilarious Nord and Bert Couldn't Make
Head or Tail of It, the Planetfall/Stationfall pair which introduces Floyd,
the best computer game character I've ever seen, and the chilling and
amazingly well written A Mind Forever Voyaging.  And about 20 others which
are almost all classics.

I strongly suggest giving this CD a look if you can get a hold of it.
Activision has it in limited release, but for the price and the quality,
it's worth searching for.  Also be sure to get Frotz for yourself and
browse through other offerings in ftp.gmd.de/if-archive, the home of
Interactive Fiction on the net.  You can read more about Interactive
Fiction in this issue's Feature story.


Classic Text Adventures of Infocom
Activision, Inc.
310-479-5644 phone
support@activision.com e-mail
http://www.activision.com 

Frotz 2.01 Amiga - Available on Aminet
David Kinder
kinder@teaching.physics.ox.ac.uk
@endnode
@node REVIEW5 "Review: X-10 Amiga Atlanta Banquet Video"
@toc REVIEW

===========================================================================
      Review: X-10 Amiga Atlanta 10th Anniversary Amiga Banquet Video
                            By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON}
===========================================================================

In January of this year, Amiga Atlanta was one of the first Amiga user
groups to reach its 10-year anniversary.  To celebrate the event, group
President Lamar Morgan and the organization decided to put on a major
production, a banquet in an upscale Atlanta hotel complete with notable
computer industry and Amiga guests.

Among those in attendance, apart from some 100 past and present members of
the club, were Tim Jenison and an entourage from Newtek, Dale Luck and RJ
Mical, (both late of Amiga Corp, with Dale still at and RJ recently
departed from 3DO), Dave Haynie, Fred Fish, and three Amiga Report editors:
Katherine Nelson, Addison Laurent, and myself.  The event was hosted by
PBS Computer Chronicles host Stewart Chiefet and CNN TalkBack Live host
Susan Rook, whose witty banter with RJ Mical almost entertained the crowd.

The event lasted what seemed like forever (actually 4 or 5 hours) and has
been effectively edited into just over 2 hours of VHS footage.  The AAi
membership includes a number of video professionals who shot and
subsequently edited the tape.  You get just about everything, from the
introductory loitering in the hall (which lasted about an hour in real
life--you get a minute or so) to the Governor of Atlanta's Amiga Day
proclamation, and all of the speeches and presentations of the evening.

The night was a lot of fun.  You don't get the plate of banquet chicken we
all were treated to, nor do you get to experience the night first-hand.
But you do get a great insight into the history of the group and of some of
the guests present, which is a capsule history of the Amiga itself. 

The evening was full of laughter (some of it cheap jokes about VCR clocks),
and not too much maudlin reminiscing performance.  (I have to admit that
most of that actually came from me during the now apocryphal "Message to
Escom" tape Amiga Atlanta put together last year)

About the only complaint I have with the tape is the train-wreck loss of
pace the AAi commercial has.  About 2/3s of the way through AAi advertises
its aging tape of Amiga demos.  Had there been other commercials in the
tape (which coincidentally wouldn't have been such a bad idea), it wouldn't
have seemed so out of place.

The rest of the tape is well worth having.  In terms of sheer power, it's
not a Deathbed Vigil, but as a source of whatever this thing we call
"Amiga" is, and what it means to people, there's few better places to look
than the X-10 vidoe.

X-10 Banquet Tape
Amiga Atlanta, Inc.
Available in NTSC and PAL

Contact lamar@mindspring.com for pricing and availability.
@endnode
@node REVIEW6 "Review: Phase5 Blizzard 1260 Accelerator"
@toc REVIEW

===========================================================================
              Phase5 Blizzard 1260 Accelerator Review: Part 1
                            By: @{" Jason Compton " link JASON}
===========================================================================

Phase5 was the first to hit the market with 68060 technology for the Amiga.
It didn't take long after the introduction of their first CyberStorm
4000/060 board for them to realize that there was a market for colossal
speed among the 4000's little brother, the A1200.  The Blizzard 020 and 030
series has done well for A1200 users, and they can make the switch to full
060 power as well.

The Blizzard 060 board is a high-performance 68060/50 accelerator card for
Commodore/AT A1200 machines.  The board itself is a very tightly designed
PCB, like most Phase5 products, with what few additional components there
are surface-mounted very near to the PCB.  Most of the components,
including the PCB and the single SIMM slot (Which can accept up to a 64 meg
SIMM) face to the underside of the machine when installed.

Like all accelerators, the Blizzard goes in the trapdoor.  I imagine it
would be possible to slip it in without removing the case, but my A1200 has
long been open for access and the screws misplaced, so I did it the easy
way.  There is comfortable room for installation and removal, unlike the
Falcon 040/25 card which takes up ALL available space and is a headache.

There is basically only one jumper of interest, which selects whether or
not Kickstart ROM will be mapped to FastRAM for increased performance.
This is highly recommended.

The Blizzard comes with special support software.  Of most interest to
general users is the CyberPatcher software.  When activated, certain
software packages (generally graphics and rendering packages such as
ImageFX, Lightwave, Cinema4D, etc.) gain dramatic increases in performance.
This is due to the nature of the programs as well as the nature of the 060.
Since virtually no software is compiled specifically for 060 processors,
060 users at best can use 68040 compiled software.  But the 060, while
fully compatible with the 68040 and its FPU math unit, does not run all 040
and FPU instructions equally well.  Some require additional emulation,
which slows performance.  CyberPatcher circumvents these bottlenecks and
puts the software back on the path of least resistance.  CyberPatcher is,
plainly, very cool, and an advantage no other 68060 board out there has.

Documentation is provided in English and German.  The English instructions
are adequate, with only a word or two that slipped by untranslated.

There are other support tools to make programming with the 060 easier (and
more compatible), including an Enforcer-alike and an assembler.  StormC is
purported to support the 68060 chip directly, but as we don't have a copy
we are unable to test its performance.

Next issue, we'll deal with benchmark issues, although for early reference
you can look at the Blizzard's performance in the Apollo 1240/40 test.

From a usage point of view, the Blizzard is more or less transparent in
operation.  Once you've dealt with the single board jumper, you're done
worrying about the hardware.  The 060 is relatively low power so no
provisions for heat are made.  It can get a bit warm, but nowhere near the
scorching temperature of a full 040.  Most software will run unhindered.

Anything that does exhibit problem (certain games aren't going to run) can
be dealt with easily.  By holding down the "2" key during a reset, you can
switch the board off entirely, giving you back a 2 meg A1200 with 020/14
processor.  For software that demands nothing more, you'll be in good
shape.  The Blizzard can be switched back on at the next reset by repeating
the process, or by cold booting the machine.

Since the A1200 can't normally benefit from graphic card enhancements
(unless you venture to put the machine in a tower case), AGA will be
somewhat of a damper on the speed of the 060 for certain applications.
However, for pure raw processing speed, little contends with the Blizzard
1260 card.

Phase5 updates its 060 software on a fairly regular basis, so continued
support exists.

A SCSI/memory card may be added to the Blizzard, which provides an external
SCSI port and a second SIMM slot, this one capable of taking a full 128
megs of memory.  We were unable to obtain one for review.

Stay tuned for benchmarks...

Phase5 Digital Products
++49 6171 583787 voice
++49 6171 583788 fax
http://www.phase5.de/
mail@phase5.de e-mail
@endnode
@node MAILLIST "Amiga Report Mailing List"
@toc WHERE

===========================================================================
                        Amiga Report Mailing List
===========================================================================

If you have an internet mailing address, you can receive Amiga Report in
@{"UUENCODED" link UUENCODE} form each week as soon as the issue is released.  To be put on
the list, send Email to majordomo@amigalib.com

Your subject header will be ignored.  In the body of the message, enter

subscribe areport

The system will automatically pull your e-mail address from the message
header.

Your account must be able to handle mail of any size to ensure an intact
copy.  For example, many systems have a 100K limit on incoming messages.


** IMPORTANT NOTICE:  PLEASE be certain your host can accept mail over   **
** 100K!  We have had a lot of bouncebacks recently from systems with a  **
** 100K size limit for incoming mail.  If we get a bounceback with your  **
** address in it, it will be removed from the list.  Thanks!             **
@endnode
@node UUENCODE
@toc MAILLIST

===========================================================================
                          UUDecoding Amiga Report
===========================================================================

If you receive Amiga Report from the direct mailing list, it will arrive in
UUEncoded format.  This format allows programs and archive files to be sent
through mail by converting the binary into combinations of ASCII
characters.  In the message, it will basically look like a lot of trash
surrounded by begin <filename> and end, followed by the size of the file.


To UUDecode Amiga Report, you first need to get a UUDecoding program, such
as UUxT by Asher Feldman.  This program is available on Aminet in

     pub/aminet/arc/

Then you must download the message that it is contained in.  Don't worry
about message headers, the UUDecoding program will ignore them.

There is a GUI interface for UUxT, which should be explained in the docs.
However, the quickest method for UUDecoding the magazine is to type

     uuxt x ar.uu

at the command prompt.  You will then have to decompress the archive with
lha, and you will then have Amiga Report in all of its AmigaGuide glory.

If you have any questions, you can write to @{"Jason Compton" link JASON}

@endnode
@node AMINET "Aminet"
@toc WHERE

                                  Aminet
                                  ======

To get Amiga Report from Aminet, simply FTP to any Aminet site, CD to
docs/mags.  All the back issues are located there as well.

Sites: ftp.netnet.net, ftp.wustl.edu, ftp.luth.se, ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk

@endnode
@node WWW "World Wide Web"
@toc WHERE

                              World Wide Web
                              ==============

AR is also available on the WWW!  Some of the mirror sites include a mail
form, allowing you to mail to Amiga Report from the web site and some also
include a search engine allowing you to search recent issues for specific
topics and keywords (if your browser has forms capability).  Simply tell
your browser to open one of the following URLs (pick a location nearest you
for the best performance):

Australia
     http://ArtWorks.apana.org.au/AmigaReport.html
     http://www.deepwoods.saccii.net.au/ar/menu.html
     http://www.livewire.com.au/amiga/cucug/ar/ar.html (w/search and mail) 
     http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~pec/amiga.html

Germany
     http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/amiga/ar/

Greece
     http://www.acropolis.net/clubs/amiga/amigareport/

Hungary
     http://mm.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/Data/AR

Italy
     http://www.vol.it/mirror/amiga/ar/ar.html

Poland
     http://www.pwr.wroc.pl/AMIGA/AR/

Sweden
     http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/ar/

United Kingdom
     http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~gowdy/Amiga/AmigaReport/
     http://www.iprom.com/amigaweb/amiga.html/ar/ar.html (w/search and mail) 
     http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/kcci1

USA
     http://www.cucug.org/ar/ar.html (w/search and mail)
     http://www.omnipresence.com/Amiga/News/AR/

Additional Amiga information can also be accessed at this URL:
     http://www.cucug.org/amiga.html

Mosaic for the Amiga can be found on Aminet in directory comm/net, or
(using anonymous ftp) on max.physics.sunysb.edu
@endnode
@node COPYRIGHT "Copyright Information"
@toc ABOUT

===========================================================================
                Amiga Report International Online Magazine
                 October 18, 1996          Issue No. 4.13
                       Copyright 1996 FS Publications
                             All Rights Reserved
===========================================================================

Views, Opinions and Articles presented herein are not necessarily those of
the editors and staff of Amiga Report International Online Magazine or of
FS Publications.  Permission to reprint articles is hereby denied, unless
otherwise noted.  All reprint requests should be directed to the editor. 
Amiga Report and/or portions therein may not be edited in any way without
prior written permission.  However, translation into a language other than
English is acceptible, provided the editor is notified beforehand and the
original meaning is not altered.  Amiga Report may be distributed on
privately owned not-for-profit bulletin board systems (fees to cover cost
of operation are acceptable), and major online services such as (but not
limited to) Delphi and Portal.  Distribution on public domain disks is
acceptable provided proceeds are only to cover the cost of the disk (e.g. 
no more than $5 US).  CD-ROM compilers should contact the editor. 
Distribution on for-profit magazine cover disks requires written permission
from the editor.  Amiga Report is a not-for-profit publication.  Amiga
Report, at the time of publication, is believed reasonably accurate.  Amiga
Report, its staff and contributors are not and cannot be held responsible
for the use or misuse of information contained herein or the results
obtained there from.  Amiga Report is not affiliated with Escom AG or
VIScorp.  All items quoted in whole or in part are done so under the Fair
Use Provision of the Copyright Laws of the United States Penal Code.  Any
Electronic Mail sent to the editors may be reprinted, in whole or in part,
without any previous permission of the author, unless said electronic mail
is specifically requested not to be reprinted.

===========================================================================
@endnode
@node GUIDELINE "Amiga Report Writing Guidelines"
@toc ABOUT

===========================================================================
                      Amiga Report Writing Guidelines
===========================================================================

The three most important requirements for submissions to Amiga Report are:

     1.  Please use English.

     2.  Please use paragraphs.  It's hard on the eyes to have solid
     screens of text.  If you don't know where to make a paragraph break,
     guess.

     3.  Please put a blank line in between paragraphs.  It makes
     formatting the magazine much much easier.

     4.  Please send us your article in ASCII format.

Note:  If you want to check ahead of time to make sure we'll print your
article, please write to the @{"Editor" link JASON}.

Please stipulate as well if you wish to retain copyright or hand it over to
the editor.
@endnode
@node ZONE "CalWeb"
@toc ONLINE

===========================================================================
                    CalWeb: The Home of the Amiga Zone!
===========================================================================

AMIGA ZONE MOVES TO CALWEB!

THE AMIGA ZONE MOVES FROM PORTAL TO CALWEB INTERNET SERVICES

For over ten years the Amiga Zone has been an online resource, home,
community, oasis, for Amiga owners.

For over ten years I've made my living running the Zone and supporting Amiga
users all over the USA, Canada, and the world.

Five years ago when American People/Link pulled their own plug, we had to
find the Zone a new home and we found a good one on the Portal Online
System. 

Well, it's happened again.. Portal has informed all of its customers that
its ten year history as an online service and Internet provider is coming to
an end on Sept. 30, 1996.  This is very sad, it's short-notice, and the
decision is completely out of my control, but it's also irreversible.  

Portal is changing its entire business plan from being an ISP to selling an
accounting system to other online services.  

So be it. It's sad, but like I said, the Zone went through this before and
now we'll go through it again, and come out the other side better and wiser.

THE AMIGA ZONE IS MOVING TO CALWEB INTERNET SERVICES.

CalWeb (http://www.calweb.com) is a two year old Internet provider located
in Sacramento, CA.  It has a good sized customer base, and very
knowledgeable support staff. 

It's also run by a long time Amiga owner who has been a friend of mine for
many years.

The world of modeming has changed much in the last ten years.  In 1985 you
had very few choices and you had 1200 baud.  These days, everyone and his
dog has an ISP running and a web page

But the vast majority of those providers don't know an Amiga from a hole in
the ground, and could care less about Amiga owners.  Say "AWeb" or
"IBrowse" to them and they'll say "Omega?  Amoeba?  What?  Huh?  They still
make those things?"

CalWeb is different because it's the new home of the Amiga Zone.

In October 1996, a new custom front-end menued system will be added to
CalWeb to host the Zone.  It'll have features for Zone users that neither
Plink nor Portal ever had nor were they willing to add.

The tradition of a friendly online Amiga community, run by long time Amiga
owners, users and lovers will continue. 

Message bases, huge file libraries (we plan to move over the 20,000+ files
we have on the Zone on Portal to CalWeb, MANY of which you'll never see on
Aminet or anywhere else), live nightly chats, vendor support and our famous
prize contests will continue.

We've given away tens of thousands of dollars worth of Amiga prizes in the
last ten years.  No one else even comes close. 

I urge any and all of you who were on Plink, or who are now on Portal or
who may have left Portal..  or even if you were never on either but used or
still use another online service to join CalWeb for the Amiga Zone.  I
personally promise you the best online Amiga community we can possibly
build.  You will not be disappointed.


CalWeb has arranged a special signup offer for you!

Call:
 1-800-509-9322
  or
 1-916-641-9320
  or telnet to calweb.com, login as "guest", and follow the prompts. 

You can join CalWeb for US$19.95 flat, a month.

CalWeb takes major credit cards or you can establish a monthly invoiced
account if you don't have plastic.

The signup is FREE.

To get this deal you must say "THE AMIGA ZONE SENT ME" when you call or
signup online. 

I hope to see lots of you join CalWeb.  You can telnet into it from
anywhere for no hourly charges at all.  Your $19.95/mo fee covers
everything and also gets you ten meg of storage which includes hosting your
own personal web page.  Naturally, when the Zone opens there, you'll have
unlimited use of all of its features and areas.  Never a "money meter"
clock to worry about.

Your personal or business CalWeb Web pages are maintained by you via FTP. 
It's pretty slick.  You can make a net connection to the server with any
Amiga FTP client, put your files onto it, the permissions are automatically
set (no "chmod-ing" required!) and flip to your running browser and see the
changes instantly.

The Amiga Zone's new home is already up at:

         http://www.amigazone.com

running on CalWeb's server.  Ckeck it out!

Please feel free to write to me at harv@amigazone.com or harv@cup.portal.com
if you want more information.

Remember to say "THE AMIGA ZONE SENT ME!" when you join.

A splendid time is guaranteed for all.  

Please plan to join us in the Amiga Zone on CalWeb!

@endnode
@node BBS_ASIA "Distribution BBSes - Asia"
@toc BBS

===========================================================================
                         Distribution BBSes - Asia
===========================================================================

                                -= IRAN =-

                              * MAVARA BBS *
                              0098 21 8740815


                                 -=JAPAN=-

                           * GIGA SONIC FACTOR *
                     Email: kfr01002@niftyserve.or.jp
                            +81-(0)564-55-4864

@endnode
@node BBS_AUSTRALASIA "Distribution BBSes - Australasia"
@toc BBS

===========================================================================
                     Distribution BBSes - Australasia
===========================================================================

                              -=NEW ZEALAND=-

                             * BITSTREAM BBS *
               FidoNET 3:771/850.0   AmigaNET 41:644/850.0
                             +64-(0)3-548-5321


                               -=VICTORIA=-

                         * NORTH WEST AMIGA BBS *
          EMail: mozza@nwamiga.apana.org.au     Fido: 3:633/265.0
         BBS Phone/Fax: +61 3 9331 2831   USR Courier V.Everything
@endnode
@node BBS_EUROPE "Distribution BBSes - Europe"
@toc BBS

===========================================================================
                        Distribution BBSes - Europe
===========================================================================

                                -=FINLAND=-

                              * HANG UP BBS *
           Email: helpdesk@hangup.dystopia.fi (telnetable site)
                           +358 - 09 - 278 8054

                               * LAHO BBS *
                    +358-64-414 1516   +358-64-414 0400
                    +358-64-414 6800   +358-64-423 1300

                             * KINDERGARTEN *
                      Email: matthias.bartosik@hut.fi
                             +358-0-881 32 36


                                -=FRANCE=-

                              * DYNAMIX BBS *
                        Email: erlsoft@mcom.mcom.fr
                    +33.1.48.89.96.66 Minitel to Modem

                        * RAMSES THE AMIGA FLYING *
     Internet: user.name@ramses.fdn.org     Fidonet: 2/320/104-105-106
                      +33-1-45845623   +33-1-53791200


                                -=GERMANY=-

                           * DOOM OF DARKNESS *
                      Email: marc_doerre@doom.ping.de
                          +49 (0)4223 8355 19200
           AR-Infoservice, contact Kai Szymanski kai@doom.gun.de

                              * IMAGINE BBS *
                    Email: Sysop@imagine.commo.mcnet.de
                              +49-69-4304948
              Login: GAST (Download area:  "Amiga-Report")

                         * LEGUANS BYTE CHANNEL *
                    Usenet: andreas@lbcmbx.in-berlin.de
                       49-30-8110060   49-30-8122442
                 Login as User: "amiga", Passwd: "report"

                              * REDEYE BBS *
                        Internet: sysop@coolsurf.de
         Modem/ISDN: +49-89.54662690   Modem only:+49.89.54662680

                          * STINGRAY  DATABASE *
                 EMail: sysop@sting-db.zer.sub.org.dbp.de
                              +49 208 496807

                            * VISION THING BBS *
                             ++49(0)345 663914
                          System Password: Amiga


                                -=GREECE=-

                            * HELLAS ON LINE *
          EMail: cocos@prometheus.hol.gr    Telnet: hellas.hol.gr
                    ++301/ 620-6001, 620-6604, 620-9500

                              * ODYSSEY BBS *
             email: odyssey@acropolis.net   Amiganet: 39:250/1.0
                  ++301-4123502   23.00-09.00 Local Time
                http://www.acropolis.net/~konem/odygb.html


                                -=IRELAND=-

                               * FWIBBLE!  *
               Fidonet: 2:263/900.0   E-Mail: 9517693@ul.ie
              Phone: +353-902-36124    Midnight to 8am (GMT)
                       Freq "Readme.txt" for details


                                 -=ITALY=-

                        * AMIGA PROFESSIONAL BBS *
                 Amy Professional Club, Italian Amos Club
                              +(39)-49-604488

                               * AMIPRO BBS*
                         AR and AMINET distributor
                               +39-49604488

                              * DB-LINE SRL *
                Email: amiga@dbline.it   WWW: www.dbline.it
                              +39-332-767383

                               * FRANZ BBS *
                          EMsil: mc3510@mclink.it
                               +39/6/6627667

                                 * IDCMP *
                             Fidonet 2:322/405
                               +39-542-25983

                             * SPEED OF LIFE *
                  FidoNet 2:335/533   AmigaNet 39:102/12
                The AMIGA Alchemists' BBS   +39-931-833773


                              -=NETHERLANDS=-

                       * AMIGA ONLINE BS HEEMSTEDE *
      Fidonet: 2:280/464.0, 2:280/412.0   Email: sysop@aobh.xs4all.nl
                      +31-23-5471111   +31-23-5470739

                             * THE HELL BBS *
           Fido-Net : 2:281/418.0   e-mail : root@hell.xs4all.nl
                             +31-(0)70-3468783

                          * TRACE BBS GRONINGEN *
            FidoNET 2:282/529.0   Internet Martin@trace.idn.nl
                             +31-(0)-50-410143

                              * X-TREME BBS *
                      Internet: u055231@vm.uci.kun.nl
                               +31-167064414


                                -=NORWAY=-

                              * FALLING BBS *
                       EMail:  christon@powertech.no
                               +47 69 256117


                                -=POLAND=-

                          * SILVER DREAM!'S BBS *
                            SysOp: Silver Dream
                               +48 91 540431


                               -=PORTUGAL=-

                               * CIUA BBS *
                FidoNet 2:361/9   Internet: denise.ci.ua.pt
                           +351-34-382080/382081


                                -=RUSSIA=-

                             * NEW ORDER BBS *
           E-Mail: norder@norder.spb.su   FidoNet: 2:5030/221.0
                              +7-812-2909561


                                 -=SPAIN=-

                            * GURU MEDITATION *
                              +34-1-383-1317

                            * LA MITAD OSCURA *
             E-Mail: jovergon@offcampus.es   Fido: 2:341/35.19
                               +34-1-3524613

                        * MAZAGON - BBS - SYSTEMS *
       E-mail: jgomez@maze.mazanet.es   FTP: ftp-mail@ftp.mazanet.es
                               +34 59 536267
                              Login: a-report


                                -=SWEDEN=-

                                * CICERON *
                           E-mail: a1009@itv.se
                               +46 612 22011


                                -=TURKIYE=-

                            * NEEDFUL THINGS *
                   E-Mail: Erdinc.Corbaci@beygir.bbs.tr
                              90-216-3629417


                                -=UKRAINE=-

                            * AMIGA HOME BBZ *
         E-Mail: Oleg.Khimich@bbs.te.net.ua   FidoNet: 2:467/88.0
                              +380-482-325043


                            -=UNITED KINGDOM=-

                           * AMIGA JUNCTION 9 *
        Internet: sysadmin@junct9.demon.co.uk     FidoNet: 2:440/20
                             +44 (0)372 271000

                             * CREATIONS BBS *
           E-Mail: mat@darkside.demon.co.uk   2:254/524@Fidonet
                             +44-0181-665-9887

                            * DRAUGHTFLOW BBS *
                   Email: Ian_Cooper@draught.demon.co.uk
                            +44 (01707) 328484

                              * METNET CCS *
     Email: metnet@demon.co.uk    FidoNet: 2:2502/129.0  2:2502/130.0
                     +44-1482-442251   +44-1482-444910

                           * OCTAMED USER BBS *
                    EMail: rbfsoft@cix.compulink.co.uk
                            +44 (01703) 703446

                              * SCRATCH BBS *
      EMail: kcci1@solx1.susx.ac.uk     Official Super Skidmarks site
                              +44-1273-389267
@endnode
@node BBS_NAMERICA "Distribution BBSes - North America"
@toc BBS

===========================================================================
                    Distribution BBSes - North America
===========================================================================

                                -=ARIZONA=-

                       * MESSENGER OF THE GODS BBS *
                           mercury@primenet.com
                               602-326-1095


                           -=BRITISH COLUMBIA=-

                             * COMM-LINK BBS *
       EMail: steve_hooper@comm.tfbbs.wimsey.com   Fido: 1:153/210.0
                               604-945-6192


                              -=CALIFORNIA=-

                            * TIERRA-MIGA BBS *
             FidoNet: 1:202/638.0   Internet: torment.cts.com
                               619.292.0754

                          * VIRTUAL PALACE BBS *
                   Sysop Email: tibor@ecst.csuchico.edu
                                916-343-7420

                        * AMIGA AND IBM ONLY BBS *
            EMail: vonmolk@crash.cts.com   AmigaNET: 40:406/7.0
                               (619)428-4887


                                -=FLORIDA=-

                            * LAST! AMIGA BBS *
                              (305) 456-0126


                               -=ILLINOIS=-

                           * EMERALD KEEP BBS *
                 FidoNet: 1:2250/2     AmigaNet: 40:206/1
                               618-394-0065

                            * PHANTOM'S LAIR *
  FidoNet: 1:115/469.0   Phantom Net Coordinator: 11:1115/0.0-11:1115/1.0
                         708-469-9510 708-469-9520

                            * STARSHIP CUCUG *
                       Email: khisel@prairienet.org
                               (217)356-8056

                         * THE STYGIAN ABYSS BBS *
                            FIDONet-1:115/384.0
                  312-384-0616   312-384-6250 (FREQ line)


                               -=LOUISIANA=-

                             * The Catacomb *
                        E-mail: Geoff148@delphi.com
                               504-882-6576


                                 -=MAINE=-

                     * THE KOBAYASHI ALTERNATIVE BBS *
                           FidoNet: 1:326/404.0
                      (207)/784-2130   (207)/946-5665
                     ftp.tka.com for back issues of AR


                                -=MEXICO=-

                               * AMIGA BBS *
                             FidoNet  4:975/7
                               (5) 887-3080

                           * AMIGA SERVER BBS *
                                  5158736

                          * TERCER PLANETA BBS *
                           FX Network 800:525/1
                              [525]-606-2162


                              -=MISSISSIPPI=-

                            * THE GATEWAY BBS *
        InterNet: stace@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil   FidoNet: 1:3604/60.0
                               601-374-2697


                               -=MICHIGAN=-

                            * DC PRODUCTIONS *
                    Email: dcpro!chetw@heifetz.msen.com
                               616-373-0287


                                -=NEVADA=-

                              * PUP-TEK BBS *
                       EMail: darkwolf@accessnv.com
                               702-553-2403

                              -=NEW JERSEY=-

                          * T.B.P.  VIDEO SLATE *
                               201-586-3623

                           * DLTACOM AMIGA BBS *
       Internet: dltacom.camphq.fidonet.org   Fidonet: 1:2606/216.0
                              (201) 398-8559


                               -=NEW YORK=-

                             * THE BELFRY(!) *
              Email: stiggy@belfry.org   WWW: www.belfry.org/
                        718.793.4796   718.793.4905


                                -=ONTARIO=-

                           * COMMAND LINE BBS *
                               416-533-8321

                              * CYBERSPACE *
                       joehick@ophielia.waterloo.net
                      (519) 579-0072   (519) 579-0173

                          * EDGE OF REALITY BBS *
            EMail: murray.smith@er.gryn.org   Fido: 1:244/320.0
                               (905)578-5048


                                -=QUEBEC=-

                         * CLUB AMIGA DE QUEBEC *
          Internet: snaclaq@megatoon.com   Voice: (418) 666-5969
                      (418) 666-4146   (418) 666-6960
               Nom d'usager: AMREPORT   Mot de passe: AMIGA

                              * GfxBase BBS*
        E-mail: ai257@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu   Fidonet: 1:167/192
                               514-769-0565


                               -=TENNESSEE=-

                            * AMIGA CENTRAL! *
                      Email: root@amicent.raider.net
                               615-383-9679

                               * NOVA BBS *
                            FidoNet 1:362/508.0
                               615-472-9748


                               -=VIRGINIA=-

                       * NETWORK XXIII DATA SYSTEM *
                       EMail: gottfrie@acca.nmsu.edu
                               804-266-1763
                      Login: anon   Password: nopass


                              -=WASHINGTON=-

                          * FREELAND MAINFRAME *
                         Internet - freemf.wa.com
                               (360)412-0228

                              * PIONEERS BBS *
                            FidoNet: 1:343/54.0
                               206-775-7983
      Login: Long Distance   Password: longdistance   Or FREQ: AR.lha
@endnode
@node BBS_SAMERICA "Distribution BBSes - South America"
@toc BBS

===========================================================================
                    Distribution BBSes - South America
===========================================================================

                                -=BRAZIL=-

                               * 68000 BBS *
            AmigaNet: 120:5521/1  Email: vaclav@antares.com.br
                    +55-21-393-4390   [16-06h (-3GMT)]

                            * AMIGA DO PC BBS *
            Fidonet: 4:801/44   Email: fimoraes@dcc.unicamp.br
       +55-192-33-2260   Weekdays: 19-07 (-3 GMT) Weekends: 24 hours

@endnode
@node DEAL_ASIA "Dealers - Asia"
@toc DEALER

===========================================================================
                              Dealers - Asia
===========================================================================

                                 -=JAPAN=-

                             Grey Matter Ltd.
                           1-22-3,Minami Magome
                        HillTop House 2F suite 201
                             Ota-ku,Tokyo 143
              Tel:+81 (0)3 5709-5549   Fax:+81 (0)3 5709-1907
    BBS: +81 (0)3 5709-1907   Email: nighty@gmatter.japan-online.or.jp


                              -= MAYLAYSIA =-

                  Innovations Lights & Magic (M) Sdn Bhd,
                         A1106, University Towers,
                           46200, Petaling Jaya,
                           Selangor Darul Ehsan
                  Tel: +6 03 7544544   Fax: +6 03 7544588
                        Email: skchiew@pc.jaring.my

@endnode
@node DEAL_AUSTRALASIA "Dealers - Australasia"
@toc DEALER

===========================================================================
                           Dealers - Australasia
===========================================================================

                              -=QUEENSLAND=-

                               Image Domain
                               92 Bridge St
                        Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
                        E-mail: imagedomain@msn.com
                 Voice: 617-3216-1240   Fax: 617-3852-2720

                             Synapse Computers
                              190 Riding Road
                         Hawthorne, Brisbane 4171
                        Voice/Fax: +61 7-3899-0980


                            -=NEW SOUTH WALES=-

                               Amiga Genius
                              826 Hunter St.
                         Newcastle West, NSW 2302
                 Ph: +61 49 623-222   Fax: +61 49 623-583
                      E-Mail: cdgtb@hunterlink.net.au

              Unitech Electronics Pty. Ltd. / Maverick Amiga
                              8B Tummul Place
                          St. Andrews, Sydney 2566
               Voice: +61 2 9820 3555  Fax: +61 2 9603 8685


                              -=NEW ZEALAND=-

                                CompKarori
                         LG/F Karori Shopping Mall
                            Karori, Wellington
                          Tel/Fax: +64 4 476-0212
                       Email: sales@compkarori.co.nz

@endnode
@node DEAL_EUROPE "Dealers - Europe"
@toc DEALER

===========================================================================
                             Dealers - Europe
===========================================================================


                                -=AUSTRIA=-

                   A.R.T.  Computeranimation Ges.m.b.H.
                              Feldstrasse 13
                              3300 Amstetten
                Tel: +43 7472/63566-0 Fax: +43 7472/63566-6

                        Solaris Computec Ges.m.b.H.
                              Mariahilfpark 1
                             A-6020 Innsbruck
               Tel: ++43-512/272724   Fax: ++43-512/272724-2
                       EMail: solaris@computec.co.at


                                -=BELGIUM=-

                              AVM Technology
                            Rue de Rotheux, 279
                              B-4100 Seraing
              Voice: +32 (0)41 38.16.06   Fax: +32 (0)41 38.15.69
                      Email: defraj@mail.interpac.be

                               CLICK!  N.V.
                            Boomsesteenweg 468
                        B-2610 Wilrijk - Antwerpen
           VOICE: +32 (0)3 828.18.15     FAX: +32 (0)3 828.67.36
           INTERNET: vanhoutv@nbre.nfe.be      FIDO: 2:292/603.9


                               -=BULGARIA=-

                           KlubVerband ITA Gmbh
                                1309 Sofia
                          P.F.13, KukushStr.  1-2
                  Tel: +359-2-221471   Fax: +359-2-230062
          Email: KVITA@VIRBUS.BG     Contact: Dr.  ING B.  Pavlov


                                -=DENMARK=-

                               Data Service
                           Att.  Soren Petersen
                              Kaerhaven2a 2th
                              6400 Sonderborg
          Phone/Fax: +45 74 43 17 36   EMail: sorpe-95@sdbg.ih.dk

                              Nemesis Amy BBS
               EMail: boersting@hoa.ping.dk   Fido: 2:238/43
                       USR 33k6 V.E.  +45 75-353726


                                -=FINLAND=-

                          Lincware Computers Ltd
                              Lovkullankuja 3
                               10300 KARJAA
               Voice: +358-50-5573696   Fax: +358-11-231511
                      EMail: linctech@freenet.hut.fi


                                -=FRANCE=-

                            ASCII Informatique
                             10 Rue de Lepante
                                06000 NICE
               Tel: (33) 93 13 08 66   Fax: (33) 93 13 90 95

                            Quartz Infomatique
                          2 bis, avenue de Brogny
                              F-74000 ANNECY
                  Tel./Fax (automatique): +33 50.52.83.31
                          E-Mail: tcp@imaginet.fr


                                -=GERMANY=-

                           AMItech Systems GmbH
                              Ludwigstrasse 4
                             D-95028 Hof/Saale
               VOICE: +49 9281 142812   FAX: +49 9281 142712
                       EMail: bsd@blacky.netz.sub.de

                    dcp, desing+commercial partner GmbH
                               Alfredstr.  1
                              D-22087 Hamburg
                Tel.: + 49 40 251176   Fax: +49 40 2518567
                   EMail: info@dcp.de   WWW: www.dcp.de

                          Hartmann & Riedel GdbR
                               Hertzstr.  33
                           D-76287 Rheinstetten
          EMail: rick@p22.aop.schiele-ct.de   Fido: 2:2476/12.22
              Voice: +49 (7242) 2021     Fax: +49 (7242) 2167
             Please call before visiting, or we may be closed.

                             Hirsch & Wolf OHG
                              Mittelstra_e 33
                              D-56564 Neuwied
            Voice: +49 (2631) 8399-0   Fax: +49 (2631) 8399-31

                           Pro Video Elektronik
                                Roßmarkt 38
                           D-63739 Aschaffenburg
                 Tel: (49) 6021 15713 Fax: (49) 6021 15713


                                 -=ITALY=-

                              C.A.T.M.U.  snc
                            Casella Postale 63
                             10023 Chieri (TO)
                          Tel/Fax: +39 11 9415237
       EMail: fer@inrete.it (Ferruccio Zamuner)   Fido: 2:334/21.19

                            Cloanto Italia srl
                           Via G.  B.  Bison 24
                                33100 Udine
                 Tel: +39 432 545902   Fax: +39 432 609051
              E-Mail: info@cloanto.com   WWW: www.cloanto.com


                              -=NETHERLANDS=-

                               Chaos Systems
                               Watermolen 18
                           NL-1622 LG Hoorn (NH)
            Voice: +31-(0)229-233922   Fax/Data: +31-(0)229-TBA
         E-mail: marioh@fwi.uva.nl   WWW: gene.fwi.uva.nl/~marioh/


                                 -=SPAIN=-

                               Amiga Center
                               Argullós, 127
                              08016 Barcelona
                Tel: (93) 276 38 06     Fax: (93) 276 30 80

                           Amiga Center Alicante
                                Segura, 27
                              03004 Alicante
                            Tel: (96) 514 37 34

                               Audio Vision
                               San Jose, 53
                             Gijon (Asturias)
                           Tel.  (98) 535 24 79

                        Centro Informático Boadilla
                                Convento, 6
                     28660 Boadilla del Monte (Madrid)
                Tel: (91) 632 27 65     Fax: (91) 632 10 99

                                Centro Mail
                            Tel: (91) 380 28 92

                                  C.R.E.
                             San Francisco, 85
                          48003 Bilbao (Vizcaya)
                Tel: (94) 444 98 84     Fax: (94) 444 98 84

                               Donosti Frame
                           Avda.  de Madrid, 15
                      20011 San Sebastián (Guipuzcoa)
                Tel: (943) 42 07 45     Fax: (943) 42 45 88

                            Eurobit Informatica
                    C/.  Gral.  Garcia de la Herran, 4
                           11100 - San Fernando
                                   Cadiz
                           Tel/Fax: (956) 896375

                                 GaliFrame
                           Galerías Príncipe, 22
                             Vigo (Pontevedra)
                Tel: (986) 22 89 94     Fax: (986) 22 89 94

                                 Invision
                             San Isidro, 12-18
                     28850 Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid)
              Tel: (91) 676 20 56/59     Fax: (91) 656 10 04

                                 Invision
                               Salamanca, 53
                              46005 Valencia
              Tel: (96) 395 02 43/44     Fax: (96) 395 02 44

                                  Norsoft
                                Bedoya, 4-6
                               32003 Orense
                Tel: (988) 24 90 46     Fax: (988) 23 42 07

                                 PiXeLSOFT
                              Felipe II, 3bis
                              34004 Palencia
                Tel: (979) 71 27 00     Fax: (979) 71 28 28

                            Tu Amiga Ordinadors
                              C/ Progreso, 6
                       08120 La LLagosta (Barcelona)
                  Tel: +34-3-5603604   Fax: +34-3-5603607

                                  vb soft
                               Provenza, 436
                              08025 Barcelona
                Tel: (93) 456 15 45     Fax: (93) 456 15 45


                                -=NORWAY=-

                             DataKompaniet ANS
                        Trondheim Innovation Centre
                           Prof.  Brochs gt.  6
                             N-7030 Trondheim
                  Tel: +47 7354 0375   Fax: +47 7394 3861
  EMail:datakompaniet@interlink.no   WWW: www.interlink.no/datakompaniet

                              Sezam Software
                              Ulsmågveien 11a
                              N-5o5o Nesttun
                       Tel/Fax: +47 55100070 (9-20)
           ABBS: +47 55101730 (24t)   Email: oleksy@telepost.no


                                -=SWEDEN=-

                                DataVision
                                 Box 1305
                              753 11 Uppsala
                     Street Address: Sysslomansgatan 9
 Orders: +46 (0)18-123400   Shop: +46 (0)18-124009   Fax: +46 (0)18-100650


                            -=UNITED KINGDOM=-

                           Almathera Systems Ltd
                Southerton House / Boundary Business Court
                             92-94 Church Road
                         Mitcham, Surrey / CR4 3TD
            VOICE: (UK) 081 687 0040     FAX: (UK) 081 687 0490
 Sales: almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk     Tech: jralph@cix.compulink.co.uk

                        Brian Fowler Computers Ltd
                           90 South Street / Exeter
                              Devon / EX1 1EN
               Voice: (01392) 499 755   Fax: (01392) 493 393
                Internet: brian_fowler@cix.compulink.co.uk

                              Computer Magic
                          Unit 8 / Freemans Yard
                    Doncaster Road / Barnsley / S71 1QH
                      Tel: 01226 218255 / 0378 425281

                             Visage Computers
                              27 Watnall Road
                           Hucknall / Nottingham
           Tel: +44 (0)115 9642828   Tel/Fax: +44 (0)115 9642898
                        EMail: visage@innotts.co.uk

@endnode
@node DEAL_NAMERICA "Dealers - North America"
@toc DEALER

===========================================================================
                          Dealers - North America
===========================================================================

                                -=CANADA=-

                          Animax Multimedia, Inc.
                             Willow Tree Tower
                       6009 Quinpool Road, Suite 802
                       Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 5J7
                 Ph: (902) 429-1921   Fax: (902) 429-1923
               EMail: info@animax.com   WWW: www.animax.com/

                           APC Computer Services
                            402-5 Tangreen Crt
                         Willowdale, Ont.  M2M 3Z1
                         Voice/Fax: (416) 733-1434
  EMail: shadow@interlog.com   WWW: www.interlog.com/~shadow/apccomp.html

                           Atlantis Kobetek Inc.
                           1496 Lower Water St.
                           Halifax, NS / B3J 1R9
               Phone: (902)-422-6556     Fax: (902)-423-9339
                     E-mail: atkobetek@ra.isisnet.com

                Atlas Computers & Consulting - Derek Davlut
                       400 Telstar Avenue Suite 701
                           Sudbury, ON / P3E 5V7
                Phone: (705) 522-1923   Fax: (705) 522-1923
                   EMail: s2200147@nickel.laurentian.ca

                            CineReal Pro-Video
                            272 Avondale Avenue
                          Ottawa, Ontario K1Z 7G8
               Phone/Fax: (613) 798-8150 (Call first to fax)
                        EMail: cinereal@proton.com

                      Computer Shop of Calgary, Ltd.
                          3515 - 18th Street S.W.
                         Calgary, Alberta T2T 4T9
                 Ph.  1-403-243-4358   Fx: 1-403-243-2684
           Email: austin@canuck.com   WWW: www.canuck.com/cshop

                           Computerology Direct
                             Powell River, BC
                                  V8A-4Z3
               Call 24 hrs.  orders/inquiries: 604/483-3679
          Amiga users ask for HEAD SALES REP for quicker response!

                        Comspec Communications Inc
                              74 Wingold Ave
                         Toronto, Ontario M6B 1P5
 Computer Centre: (416) 785-8348  Sales: (416) 785-3553  Fax: 416-785-3668
      Internet: bryanf@comcorp.comspec.com, bryanf@accesspt.north.net

                             ElectroMike Inc.
                         1375 Boul.  Charest Ouest
                           Quebec, Quebec G1N2E7
         Tel: (418) 681-4138, (800) 463-1501   Fax: (418) 681-5880

                            Forest Diskasaurus
                         35 Albert St., P.O.Box 84
                          Forest, Ontario N0N 1J0
                           Tel/Fax: 519-786-2454
                        EMail: saurus@xcelco.on.ca

                         GfxBase Electronique, Inc
                              1727 Shevchenko
                             Montreal, Quebec
                  Voice: 514-367-2575   Fax: 514-367-5265
                             BBS: 514-769-0565

                         Le Groupe PowerLand
                            630 Champagne
                       Rosemere, Quebec J7A 4K9
             Voice: 514-893-6296   Fax/BBS: 514-965-7295
                    Email: mchabot@nationalnet.com

                              National Amiga
                             Oakville, Ontario
              Fax: 905-845-3295   EMail: gscott@interlog.com
             WWW: www.interlog.com/~gscott/NationalAmiga.html

                        Oby's Amigo Computing Shop
                             765 Barrydowne Rd
                         Sudbury, Ontario P3A 3T6
            Voice/Fax: (705)524-5826   Email: obys@vianet.on.ca
                   WWW: icewall.vianet.on.ca/pages/obys

                            Randomize Computers
                                 R.R.  #2
                         Tottenham, Ont.  L0G 1W0
                   vox: 905-939-8371   fax: 905-939-8745
     Email: randomize@interlog.com   WWW: www.interlog.com/~randomize/

                            Software Supermart
                            11010 - 101 Street
                         Edmonton, Alberta T5H-2T1
                Voice: (403) 425-0691   Fax: (403) 426-1701
                       EMail: ssmart@planet.eon.net

                         SpectrumTech Electronics
                       412-1205 Fennell Avenue East
                           Hamilton, ON L8T 1T1
                Voice: (905) 388-9575   BBS: (905) 388-2542
           E-Mail: ste@spectrum.gryn.org   Contact: Derek Clarke

                   Wonder Computers Ottawa Retail Store
                            1315 Richmond Road
                          Ottawa, Ontario K2B 8J7
                 Voice: (613) 721-1800   Fax: 613-721-6992

                  Wonder Computers Vancouver Sales Office
                            2229 Edinburgh St.
                        New Westminster, BC W3M 2Y2
                           (604) 524-2151 voice

                           young monkey studios
                            797 Mitchell Street
                         Fredericton, NB   E3B 3S8
                Phone: (506) 459-7088   Fax: (506) 459-7099
                        EMail: sales@youngmonkey.ca


                             -=UNITED STATES=-

                               A&D Computer
                               211 South St.
                          Milford, NH 03055-3743
                Voice/Fax: 603-672-4700   BBS: 603-673-2788
                         Internet: amiga@mv.mv.com

                             Alex Electronics
                            597 Circlewood Dr.
                            Paradise, CA 95969
                  Voice: 916-872-0896  BBS: 915-872-3711
         EMail: alex@ecst.csuchico.edu   WWW: www.km-cd.com/~alex/

                           Amigability Computers
                               P.O.  Box 572
                           Plantsville, CT 06479
                            VOICE: 203-276-8175
                         Internet: caldi@pcnet.com

                              Amiga-Crossing
                                PO Box 12A
                        Cumberland Center, ME 04021
        VOICE: (800) 498-3959 (Maine only)   VOICE: (207) 829-3959
              FAX: (207) 829-3522   Internet: amiga-x@tka.com

                          Amiga Library Services
                          610 Alma School Rd, #18
                          Chandler, Az 85224-3687
                Voice: (800) 804-0833   Fax: (602) 491-0048
                        E-Mail: orders@amigalib.com

                           Amiga Video Solutions
                           1568 Randolph Avenue
                            St.  Paul, MN 55105
                 Voice: 612-698-1175     Fax: 612-224-3823
           BBS: 612-698-1918     Net: wohno001@maroon.tc.umn.edu

                          Applied Multimedia Inc.
                              89 Northill St.
                            Stamford, CT 06907
                           VOICE: (203) 348-0108

                            Apogee Technologies
                          1851 University Parkway
                            Sarasota, FL 34243
                            VOICE: 813-355-6121
            Portal: Apogee     Internet: Apogee@cup.portal.com

                            Armadillo Brothers
                            753 East 3300 South
                           Salt Lake City, Utah
          VOICE: 801-484-2791     Internet: B.GRAY@genie.geis.com

                            Computer Advantage
                             7370 Hickman Road
                           Des Moines, IA 50322
                          Voice/Fax: 515-252-6167
                       Internet: Number1@netins.net

                             Computer Concepts
                   18001 Bothell-Everett Hwy, Suite "0"
                             Bothell, WA 98012
                           VOICE: (206) 481-3666

                               Computer Link
                              6573 middlebelt
                           Garden City MI 48135
                 Voice: 313-522-6005     Fax: 313-522-3119
                         clink@m-net.arbornet.org

                            The Computer Source
                          515 Kings Highway East
                            Fairfield, CT 06432
                Voice: (203) 336-3100   Fax: (203) 335-3259

                       Computers International, Inc.
                             5415 Hixson Pike
                           Chattanooga, TN 37343
                            VOICE: 615-843-0630

                          Computerwise Computers
                              3006 North Main
                              Logan, UT 84322

                        Concord Computer Solutions
                        2745 Concord Blvd.  Suite 5
                             Concord, CA 94519
 Orders: 1-888-80-AMIGA   Info/Tech: 510-680-0143   BBS/Fax: 510-680-4987
             Email: moxley@value.net   WWW: www.ccompsol.com/

                                 CPU Inc.
                            5168 East 65th St.
                          Indianapolis, IN 46220
                  Voice: 317-577-3677   Fax: 317-577-1500
                          Email: cpuken@indy.net

                              CyberTech Labs
                               PO Box 56941
                         North Pole, Alaska  99705
 Vox: (907) 451-3285   BBS1 : (907) 488-2547   BBS2 & Fax: (907) 488-2647
            EMail: 71516.600@CompuServe.com   Fido: 1:355/17.0

                              DC Productions
                          218 Stockbridge Avenue
                            Kalamazoo, MI 49001
                       (616)373-1985   (800)9DC-PROD
                    Email: dcpro!chetw@heifetz.msen.com

                               Digital Arts
                             1321 North Walnut
                              P.O.  Box 5206
                        Bloomington, IN 47807-5206
          VOICE: (812)330-0124   FAX: (812)330-0126   BIX: msears

                              Digital Castle
                       4046 Hubbell Ave.  Suite 155
                         Des Moines, IA 50317-4434
                           Voice: (515) 266-5098
                          EMail: Sheep@netins.net

                             Digital F/X, Inc.
                            1930 Maple, Suite 7
                           North Bend, OR 97459
                  Voice: (800) 202-3285 / (541) 756-6693
           Email: DFX@Mail.coos.or.us   WWW: www.digital-fx.com

                           Electronic Connection
                               635 Penn Ave
                          West Reading, PA 19611
                  Phone: 610-372-1010   Fax: 610-378-0996

                              HHH Enterprises
                                 PO Box 10
                            Hartwood, VA 22471
                            Contact: Tom Harmon
              Voice: (540) 752-2100   Email: ko4ox@erols.com


                              HT Electronics
           E-Mail: HT Electronics@cup.portal.com     BIX: msears

           422 S. Hillview Dr.          211 Lathrop Way, Ste. A.
           Milipitas, CA 95035          Sacramento, CA 95815
           V: (408) 934-7700            V: (916) 925-0900
           F: (408) 934-7717            F: (916) 925-2829


                           Industrial Video, Inc.
                           1601 North Ridge Rd.
                             Lorain, OH  44055
         VOICE: 800-362-6150, 216-233-4000     Contact: John Gray
                  Internet:  af741@cleveland.freenet.edu

                            Kipp Visual Systems
                          360-C Christopher Ave.
                          Gaithersburg Md, 20878
                               301-670-7906
                           kipp@rasputin.umd.edu

                           Krulewich Enterprises
                                554 Vega Dr
                         Corpus Christi, TX 78418
                           Voice: (512) 937-4624
                      Email: 1040.3444@compuserve.com

                     The Lively Computer - Tom Lively
                             8314 Parkway Dr.
                             La Mesa, CA 91942
                   Voice: 619-589-9455 Fax: 619-589-5230
                        Net: tlively@connectnet.com

                                Magic Page
                            3043 Luther Street
                          Winston-Salem, NC 27127
           Voice/Fax: 910-785-3695   E-mail: Spiff@ix.netcom.com
                          Contact: Patrick Smith

                                MicroSearch
                        9000 US 59 South, Suite 330
                              Houston, Texas
                 VOICE: 713-988-2818     FAX: 713-995-4994

                         MicroTech Solutions, Inc.
                     17W745 Butterfield Road, Suite F
                        Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181
                   Phone: 630-495-4069 Fax: 630-495-4245
               Email: info@mt-inc.com   WWW: www.mt-inc.com

                          Mr. Hardware Computers
                      P.O.  Box 148 / 59 Storey Ave.
                          Central Islip, NY 11722
                 VOICE: 516-234-8110     FAX: 516-234-8110
                         A.M.U.G. BBS:  516-234-6046

                            Paxtron Corporation
                              28 Grove Street
                          Spring Valley, NY 10977
     Voice: 914-576-6522    Orders: 800-815-3241    Fax: 914-624-3239

                              PSI Animations
                         17924 SW Pilkington Road
                          Lake Oswego, OR  97035
                           VOICE:  503-624-8185
                     Internet:  PSIANIM@agora.rain.com

                          Raymond Commodore Amiga
                            795 Raymond Avenue
                         St. Paul, MN   55114-1521
                 VOICE: 612.642.9890     FAX: 612.642.9891

                           Safe Harbor Computers
                          W226 N900 Eastmound Dr
                            Waukesha, WI 53186
                 Orders: 800-544-6599   Fax: 414-548-8130
                           WWW: www.sharbor.com

                             Slipped Disk
                           170 E 12 Mile Rd
                   Madison Heights, Michigan 48071
                        Voice: (810) 546-DISK
                  BBS: (810) 399-1292   Fido: 1:120/321.0

                           Software Plus Chicago
                         2945 W Peterson Suite 209
                             Chicago, Illinois
                           VOICE:  312-878-7800

                        System Eyes Computer Store
                          730M Milford Rd Ste 345
                         Merrimack, NH 03054-4642
               Voice: (603) 4244-1188   Fax: (603) 424-3939
                  EMail: j_sauter@systemeye.ultranet.com

                              TJ's Unlimited
                              P.O.  Box #354
                        North Greece, NY 14515-0354
                  VOICE: 716-225-5810   BBS: 716-225-8631
           FIDO: 1:2613/323   INTERNET: neil@rochgte.fidonet.org

                         WenteK - Amiga Computers
                         10317 N.  Scottsdale Rd.
                          Scottsdale, Ax.  85253
                  Voice: 602-483-7200  Fax: 602-483-6826
                        EMail: robert2@doitnow.com

                                Zipperware
                             76 South Main St.
                           Seattle, WA  98104
                 VOICE: 206-223-1107     FAX: 206-223-9395
      E-Mail: zipware@nwlink.com   WWW: www.speakeasy.org/zipperware

@endnode
@node OPINION "Editorial and Opinion"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                           Editorial and Opinion
===========================================================================

@{"    compt.sys.editor.desk     " link EDITORIAL}  <insert noise here>

@{"       E-Cash and Amiga       " link OPINION1}  One view...

@{"    E-Cash On The Internet    " link OPINION2}  ...and another.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node NEWS "News & Press Releases"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                           News & Press Releases
===========================================================================

@{"     Amiga Imagine      " link NEWS3}  Be a part of its future

@{"       IPISA '96        " link NEWS6}  The prestigious Amiga conference

@{"    R.A.M. Magazine     " link NEWS5}  The French magazine goes newsstand

@{"   Opus 5.5 Utilities   " link NEWS16}  DOpus 5.5 gets a boost

@{"  Persistence Software  " link NEWS13}  Jim Drew is back!

@{" NetNews Offline Vol II " link NEWS14}  NetNews returns

@{"      Aminet CD 14      " link NEWS15}  The series continues

@{"      Mayland V1.0      " link NEWS1}  Calendar/Reminder software

@{"         AQCVid         " link NEWS2}  The QuickCam Interface package

@{"      Pretium Demo      " link NEWS9}  Financial organization software

@{"    MathScript V3.0     " link NEWS4}  Mathematical equation editor

@{"      SysPic V4.00      " link NEWS7}  Bootpic display program

@{"       BCS Folds        " link NEWS8}  But its Amiga branch continues

@{" Guru ROM V6 for A2091  " link NEWS10}  The famous ROM for Commodore SCSI

@{"   Guru ROM V6 Update   " link NEWS11}  An update for current GVP GuruROMs

@{"   Belgian Amiga Site   " link NEWS12}  A .be site goes online

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node FEATURE "Featured Articles"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                             Featured Articles
===========================================================================

@{"   Interactive Fiction   " link FEATURE1} An introductory invitation

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node REVIEW "Reviews"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                                  Reviews
===========================================================================

@{"   Phase5 Blizzard 1260   " link REVIEW6}  The A1200 powerhouse

@{"       DirOpus 5.5        " link REVIEW3}  The massive directory utility

@{"     Vidi Amiga 12 RT     " link REVIEW1}  The video digitizer

@{"  WordSmith / Com-mentor  " link REVIEW2}  Finnish translations and more

@{"    Frotz / Infocom CD    " link REVIEW4}  The legendary Infocom and its legacy

@{" X-10 Amiga Banquet Video " link REVIEW5}  Amiga Atlanta's event immortalized

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node FTP "Aminet Charts"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                               Aminet Charts
===========================================================================

  Due to Aminet downtime, there are no available Aminet Charts this time
                                  around.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node ABOUT "About AMIGA REPORT"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                            About AMIGA REPORT
===========================================================================

@{"        AR Staff         " link STAFF} The Editors and writers

@{"   Writing Guidelines    " link GUIDELINE} What you need to do to write for us

@{"  Copyright Information  " link COPYRIGHT} The legal stuff

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node STAFF "The Staff"
@toc ABOUT

===========================================================================
                                 The Staff
===========================================================================

               Editor:               @{" Jason Compton    " link JASON}

               Assistant Editor:     @{" Katherine Nelson " link KATIE}

               Games Editor:         @{" Ken Anderson     " link KEN}

               Contributing Editor:  @{" William Near     " link WILLIAM}

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node WHERE "Where to Get AR"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                              Where to Get AR
===========================================================================

                         @{"   The AR Mailing List   " link MAILLIST}

                         @{"         Aminet          " link AMINET}

                         @{"     World Wide Web      " link WWW}

                         @{"   Distribution Sites    " link BBS}

                         @{"   Commercial Services   " link ZONE}

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node BBS "Distribution Sites"
@toc WHERE

===========================================================================
                            Distribution BBSes
===========================================================================

                          Arranged by Continent:

                          @{"      Asia       " link BBS_ASIA}

                          @{"   Australasia   " link BBS_AUSTRALASIA}

                          @{"     Europe      " link BBS_EUROPE}

                          @{"  North America  " link BBS_NAMERICA}

                          @{"  South America  " link BBS_SAMERICA}

Sysops: To have your name added, please send @{"Email", link JASON} with the BBS name,
its location (Country, province/state) your name, any internet/fidonet
addresses, and the phone number of your BBS

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adv @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
@node DEALER "Dealer Directory"
@toc MENU

===========================================================================
                             Dealer Directory
===========================================================================

                          Arranged by Continent:

                          @{"      Asia       " link DEAL_ASIA}

                          @{"   Australasia   " link DEAL_AUSTRALASIA}

                          @{"     Europe      " link DEAL_EUROPE}

                          @{"  North America  " link DEAL_NAMERICA}

Dealers: To have your name added, please send @{"Email", link JASON} with the BBS name,
its location (Country, province/state) your name, any internet/fidonet
addresses, and the phone number of your dealership

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@{"   News   " link NEWS} @{"  Opinion  " link OPINION} @{" Articles " link FEATURE} @{"  Reviews  " link REVIEW} @{"  Charts  " link FTP} @{"  Adverts  " link COMMERCIAL}
@endnode
