--------------- A3000 Update By Thom O'Leary --------------- After being an Amiga 3000 owner for one year, I am on the whole very satisfied with the machine. I recently upgraded to the "final" version of Kickstart V37.175/Workbench V36.67, known collectively as WB 2.0.4, and supposedly finalized for insertion into ROM, now available to all you A500/ A2000 or new owners. Also, shareware and PD programmers have been hard at work, creating utilities that enhance the new operating system. I'll cover a few of those. WB2.04 is quite stable, but so were the earlier versions. There have been only minor visible changes throughout these current releases. These include some new programs and fixes to a few that didn't work at all (FKEYS), or now included to match the manual (HDBACKUP/FKeys), and some enhancements to the system programs, such as saving various prefs (.pre) with icons that work, in the Prefs/presets/drawer. These allow you to save various versions of all the Prefs programs, such as Palette, Patterns and Pointers, and change them with a click of an icon. Better yet, I use a few shareware programs and have put all my presets in a Menu on Workbench and can change them in an instant. My system has basically remained as default and I haven't permanently changed anything, except for the default disk and drawer icons. I really appreciate being able to do that, for most default icons are too big for my liking, and now I can change my environment almost instantly through the presets. When I get bored looking at grey screens, I switch back to WB1.3 colors and feel comfortable again. It does take some getting used to WB 2.0. I'm still frequently annoyed by the switch of colors 1 and 2, for all old icons look "wrong" I've decided it makes sense with the grey background. Another change also has to do with icons, for WB 2.0 puts each icon in a sort of "imaginary" rectangle, whether you want it to or not. This gives a consistent 3D-look to all icons. This is fine as long as you stay in WB2.0, but if you move to WB1.3 or have two Amigas and want to switch disks between them, all vertical icon spacings are messed up, spread apart, due to the imaginary rectangle which isn't there in WB1.3. When icons overlap, the text or filename can be read through this imaginary rectangle. WB2.0 ignores your old Disk.info Snapshot positions and puts all disk icons along the left side, so if you wish them to remain on the right you must constantly move them and re-Snapshot. What the Workbench really needs is a "Snap-to-grid" feature. The new C=1950 Monitor doesn't have rasterlines or the 1080/1084 monitors' visible horizontal scan lines, which were useful for lining up icons, if not visually pleasing. The multi-sync monitor is smooth and there aren't any such guides, so evenly arranging icons is time consuming. Most of the new Workbench features are quite handy, and some seem as useless as ever, but I suspect different people will find different programs and various features useful. At least, it is fun to play with your prefs and configurations. The PD and shareware programmers haven't been idle, and there are quite few convenient programs available for WB 2.0, most addressing or enhancing the Workbench inconsistencies and features. There are at least two programs that allow you to add menu items to the Workbench Tools menu. Now that I have a hard-drive I couldn't do without them. I no longer have to open level after level of drawers to access a program, or even search for where I put it. I simply add it to the Tools menu, and opens it. The two I know about are: AddMenu V1.5 (Nic Wilson Software) and Stefan Becker's ToolManager V1.3 (PD Germany). Both essentially do the same thing, with nice interfaces and using config files, so you can add whatever programs you want and run them from the Workbench menu. There are auxiliary menu programs that also work with WB 1.3. They are helpful if you have a hard drive or extra external drives. They open iconized windows on Workbench, allowing additional menus, but not within Workbench. The best such program is ParM V2.5r ("beerware" by Sylvain Rougier, France). This program allows for a submenu and changes of colors and hot- keys. It is my first item in the Tools Menu, as it is more flexible and the submenus allow for grouping items and including most everything on my 50 meg hard-disk. I also use it on my A1000, accessing the external drive. It is here that I listed every drawer of my System: disk, which also tells me exactly what is inside each drawer, so I can change my presets in a flash. Parm takes some study of the docs but it is well worth it. It allows you to run programs from either the CLI or WB, and since some programs will only run from one or the other, and some offer a choice, Parm can handle either. In drastic cases I use XICON with the WB code and run CLI-only programs from Workbench, including assigns and script files. Also take note of Xicon V2.01 (Pete Goodeve) as it is much better than IconX and has many added and convenient features, such as using the icon's Tool Types without need for a script file. Quick is similar but more limited, allowing for four "utility" menus and 12 items each which "wrap" to the right until you fill them. It does the job and the little iconized "." symbol hides nicely in the Workbench Titlebar. There is also AmiDock V1.2.4 (Gary Knight)... a NeXT type "Button" interface that allows for placement on the Workbench and designing your own buttons, where clicking accesses the program or script file. These latter three programs work well on both WB1.3 and WB2.0 and blend well with the Tools menu types, although you certainly don't need them all. There are also Key menu types that allow menu choice via keyboard, or pop-up under your pointer to make a nice change and also work with WB1.3. One of the first WB2.0-only Tools menu items, WinMan V1.0 (Jorrit Tybergheim, PD) which when run adds five "window control" menu items to the Tools menu or after AddMenu/ToolMgr items, cascade, maximize, minimize or arrange open window neatly vertically or horizontally. I only wish it could save or return to original configurations. Among the good features of WB2.04, the Shell hasn't been ignored. One of the first things you notice is that Ed now has menus and you can click to move around. That makes the program much more useful for the beginner. There are also more programs made internally resident and missing from the C directory. My only complaint: How do you copy them? Not that you normally need to copy, but some older install scripts don't work because the try to copy, say, ASK to RAM: and apparently you can't copy Resident commands anywhere, though they aren't available anywhere else. ASSIGN has a few more convenient arguments. One is ADD. This means that you can use XICON or the CLI to add things to your assignment list whenever you want to increase an Assign. You can keep your system C: and Fonts: separate, create a new drawer C1 or Fonts1 to keep your extraneous Fonts or C commands and then add them to the assign list when you need them. Example: (I used Xicon so I can do it by icon.) 1> assign Fonts: Fonts1 add Then, when you type "assign" in the CLI or use your fonts, you see that both drawers are assigned as Fonts:. You then have access to the Sys:fonts AND the Fonts1 drawer. This is very convenient, as you can put fonts or extra c commands anywhere and simply add them when you need them. Your system and programs load faster without having to read all the extra fonts if you don't intend to use them. Specialized fonts can be kept separate. I run ProPage via script from a menu and assign-add its special fonts when needed. I do the same with overly crowded special CLI commands. List has also been upgraded with new arguments. "Quick" I find useful as it simply lists Filenames and along with "nohead" you can use "Sort" to get just an alphabetized list of files in a drawer. There are other enhancements and even new programs and c: commands with the WB 2.04 upgrade, but there isn't even a ReadMe file to tell you how to use them. Still, the A3000 and the upgrades are great to work with. I think you will find it all a pleasure to work with. END OF TEXT