Online
July 94
Rob Hays
	Recent announcements of the launching of new online services
from major magazine publishers may lead you to believe that this
is a recent trend. Actually, one of the first such services has
been around for many years, and this month we will nose around
the Amiga section of BIX.
	The Byte Information eXchange was begun by Byte magazine as
a technically oriented BBS. The idea was to furnish a place where
developers and programmers could congregate to help each other
over those inevitable hurdles. While it may have begun as sort of
a nerd heaven, BIX has mellowed a bit over the years, and
broadened its appeal to non-professional users. However, BIX
makes no bones about not being geared toward the novice user. The
system's learning curve is somewhat steeper than CompuServe's or
GEnie's. Although help screens are available for most options,
it will probably be some time before you will want to consider
using the Command Mode and abandoning the menus.
	The Amiga Exchange contains sections ranging from old
information from the Amiga's earliest days, to closed-to-the-
public sections devoted to the hardware and software developers
of today. Naming follows a Unix-style convention, with all
conferences beginning with "amiga.". In addition to the
conferences mentioned earlier, there are sections for users to
exchange ideas, programming and developer issues, hardware, arts,
Unix, and games. There is also a Commodore conference run for
developers, and a section for vendors to support their products.
Reading through the messages will reveal many familiar names of
people long associated with the Amiga.
	BIX places all file transfer activities in one area, which
is subdivided and organized alphabetically by type. For instance,
to search for games files, you choose menu item 3, Listings, from
the Main Menu. Choose item 1 to pick your Area, then type
Amiga.Games. You can also type a question mark here to obtain a
listing of file areas. Follow the same procedure to select a
subarea, search for specific file names, then select Receive to
tell BIX to send the file to your computer.
	As with Delphi, which we visited last month, BIX also
provides connection to the Internet. Although not as
comprehensive, BIX offers basic functions such as telenet, and
ftp, and more are planned. Also like Delphi, BIX has a special
price for those curious about the service; the first five hours
for $5.
	To take advantage of this, set your modem and communication
program to 8-N-1 and full duplex. Dial 1-800-695-4882, and press
return a few times until you see the Login: prompt, where you
type bix. At the Name? prompt, enter bix.net. Note that the
special is good for the calender month in which you sign up.
After the introductory period, fees are $13 a month plus connect
charges. These are generally $3 per hour via phone line, or $20
per month which includes the first 20 hours of usage, with
additional hours priced at $1.80. If you use telenet to connect
through an Internet account, connect charges for BIX are $1 per
hour anytime.
	BIX certainly is not for everyone, but if you are a
developer, or serious power user, you definitely should be part
of the Amiga Exchange on BIX.

Update
	No sooner had last months column on Delphi been turned in,
than changes were announced. First, a new SIG manager has been
named, the same person who had been maintaining the database
area. This has allowed him to straighten out the lingering
problems caused by neglect.
	Second, the restrictions on personal files left in your
Delphi workspace have been eased, which should make managing
information much easier. There is now no limit to the number of
e-mail messages or data files left online, and temporary files
are safe from deletion for at least 48 hours. This change means
that after a long night of cruising through cyberspace on the
Internet, you can wait a reasonable amount of time to transfer
your files to your home system.

Files of the month
	If you are having trouble figuring out what those Guru or
Software Failure numbers mean, check out AlertPatch 3.0 from
David Swasbrook (figure 1). Not only will it provide you with
English descriptions of the Alerts, it offers several different
ways to deal with them when they happen. The archive contains
everything needed, including AmigaGuide format docs. A $10
shareware fee is requested. At 2400 bps the 50K file takes
approximately 4 minutes to download. On CompuServe this file is
named ALERT.LHA and is in the AmigaTech section.
	If you can't figure out why a program can't find all of the
files it needs when it starts, a utility named DosTrace (figure
2) can help. This program from Peter Stuer is intended to replace
the program SnoopDos. It opens a window and proceeds to list all
of the files, resources, etc., as they are requested and
allocated. When a program can't find something it needs, right
away you can see what it was looking for and where it expected to
find it. Documentation is in both ASCII and AmigaGuide formats,
and version 2.13 is freeware. The file DTRACE.LHA can also be
found in the AmigaTech section. At 2400 bps the 23,882 bytes
downloads in about 2 minutes.

	Remember, I can be reached as:

		R.Hays5		on GEnie
		RHAYS		on Delphi
		72764,2066	on CompuServe
	For U.S.Mail:
		Rob Hays
		P.O.Box 194
		Bloomington, IN 47402
	Please include a SASE if you need a personal reply.
	That's all for now. Next month we will take a peek behind
the Portal at the Amiga Zone. See you online!