READERS' HINTS, ADVICE, ACCUMULATED WISDOM...   <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   *** New HINTS_&_TIPS Compilation Disk If you like Megadisc's Hints & Tips sections, then you'll love this disk. Leigh Murray has worked long and hard putting it together in a very easy to use format - it uses a hyperbook format and is terrific for reference and navigating to find particular types of tips. All of the hints and tips from MD 1 - 30 are included on this disk (many hundreds) and they cover ALL facets of Amiga use. Price: $19.95 or $13.95 for subscribers to Megadisc. HINTS: Keep Them Coming After setting up the MD.Hints&Tips compilation disk, I am now thoroughly convinced of the value of the hints and tips. And I don't mean only those from our erudite editor, but also all the myriad bits and pieces from MegaDisc readers at every expertise-level, from beginner to boffin. There are some real gems amongst those hints. So I want to make a special plea to all MegaDisc readers to send in hints and tips. You will get free disks for your hints, and the rest of us will get the opportunity to learn something new. Inspired by discoveries made whilst making the hints disk, I've sent in hints myself. I hope tons of others do the same. Leigh Murray Queanbeyan NSW  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Speeding up the Shell  One thing that I noticed when I added extensive aliases for every command under the sun to my s:shell-startup file is that it took so looooooong every time I started a new shell process. This was caused by the fact that every time I went into shell, it was carrying out the functions of my shell-startup file and re-aliasing everything, when it didn't really need to because once it is initially aliased, it stays that way until re-aliased or the system is rebooted. So I thought then that to solve this problem, all you really have to do is place all of your aliases in your startup-sequence. There is a trade off. Your startup sequence will become slower. But when you compare it with the time you were waiting for you shell to open, added up each time that you used shell, then you might think it is worth it to make the change.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Dealing with the BSG9 Virus  Dear Tim, I was reading through a copy of a friend's MegaDisc 30 in order to get a feel for the publication in preparation for writing a few of my own submissions, when I noticed a some things, that I would like to comment on. Firstly I think you have a very fine magazine going here and I wish you the best of success in the future. Not only that, but you have inspired me to try and help gain the success that this magazine deserves by contributing myself. I am really glad to see the support that people give your publication, and the job that it is doing of providing users with a wealth of low cost information. I also have some more specific comments about two of the articles that were found in issue 30. - The first was Megabites, in which the author talked about the problem of having an invisible file that they couldn't delete and was even specific enough to name the directory that it was found in (devs). I am sure that you and the author already know of this but many of the readers may not. That particular file could be one of two things. An indication that the disk is infected with the BSG9 trojan, or indeed the protected against the mentioned virus. The way that BSG9 functions (as far as I can tell), is to replace an important file on your disk with an identical appearing version (except for it's size which will probably vary). It then moves the original file to the devs dir as an invisible file. From now on it can reference this file when it is required so that you will not think something is amiss, while peacefully propagating itself onto every unprotected disk (including hard disk) that it finds it is offered. The way to protect against this is to write protect your disks! And use virus checkers REGULARLY. But to afford yourself the maximum protection, you can put an invisible file in the devs directory to beat the BSG9 to it. When it detects that there is already an invisible file in your directory, it either a) Thinks it is already been there or b) wont propagate onto that disk because it can't copy the necessary file, being unable to delete the already existing, PROTECTED invisible file. I have included a copy of the file that I use to protect my hard drive. I was once really troubled with the BSG9, but since cleaning it out and using this file to protect my disks, I haven't heard a wiff from the critter ever since. Ed: you can find this file in this drawer - just copy it into your DEVS directory on your boot disk or hard disk.  A Basic book  - The second point that I wanted to mention pertains to Leigh Murray's great article 'Software Pot Pourri'(?). In it she notes several books about the Amiga, and specifically, BASIC. One book that she mentioned was 'Beginners' BASIC'. If you have had some trouble finding this book after reading this article, it is because with a small oversight she mispelled the author's name, who is more rightly, Clive Prigmore, not Trigmore. I have a copy of Beginners' BASIC, and got it way back when I was learning BASIC on my C64. While there are some differences between the BASIC that the book was written about, and the AmigaBASIC that most of your readers will have on their system disks (unless you're straight from the OS2+ mold), it really is, as Leigh said, more of a general introduction to the very basics of BASIC. And a very very good one at that. I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to start BASIC from scratch. Scott English Thornton NSW  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Question & Answer - Fax as scanner  Dear Ed: I have an A2000 3/60 HD and I use a fax. Can you tell me... if I purchase a modem, and OCR software, could I then use the fax as a desktop scanner? If so it would sure make my home office a lot more flexible. I would like a scanner, but can not afford a flatbed scanner and don't particularly like hand scanners. No urgency required, but an answer would be appreciated. [Ed: I replied, saying I didn't think it was possible...] Dear Ed: Thank you for replying to my question on using a fax machine as a scanner. I also posed the same question to Mark King, of Amadeus Computers. He has just replied saying, yes it can be done, connecting the fax to the Amiga via a modem (with GP Fax). But you need the full MIGRAPH OCR software, as the hand scanner software is specific to that item. So now for an outlay of $800 I end up with a full page scanner. The fax cost $1000, so for less than the cost of a flat-bed scanner I will have a fax/answer machine/scanner with modem access, though it be black and white only. Thanks again for your reply. Steve Grabham Shelly, WA. Ed: Thanks for the info, Steve - you might however have some difficulty getting the software by itself. Let us know how it all goes, please.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Happy about SadCat!  SADCAT = Happy, joyous searching of catalogs. After years of waiting with PD programmes (waiting to load, waiting to search, waiting to wait.........), and just starting to think 'there must be a better way?', Megadisc and its excellent contributors have done it again! SADCAT fulfills all my requirements for a simple cataloguer (simple and yet brilliant!). For those that missed this little nugget, it is a VERY simple disk cataloguer written with AREXX. I know that we all should be able to write things like this, but if time restraints are the same for you as for me.... you basically do just what needs to be done most of the time! Anyway, SADCAT produces an ASCII text file that can be read, perused at your leisure (um, well?), printed, updated, etc., etc. The BEST use I have found for it is to search it, using the DOS search command we all have! I keep catalogs of all the various types of disks:- Tech work Fish disks Megadiscs Other Public Domain, so that I can find a file quickly if needed. Over the years, you collect lots of Fish and PD disks, and it's worth while checking the disks you have for a programme before buying a new (different) disk. I use an alias in my Shell- startup that streamlines the process a wee bit. My Fish Disk catalogue is called Fish, in the DH0:Catalogue draw. The alias line in the shell-startup file is: Alias sf Search Dh0:Catalogue/Fish Nonum Pattern [] So in a shell, I could type: > sf Artm and it would be the same as typing: > Search Dh0:Catalogue/Fish Nonum Pattern Artm. NOTE: The path is used so that I can be CD'd in any directory, and the  shell can still find the catalogue data. The square brackets [] hold  the parameter passed from the command line, ie the pattern you  want to search for. I have a specific alias for each of my catalogs, which makes quick searches easy. Note as well, that you can redirect the results to a file or printer just the same as a normal command, ie: > sf >Ram:results ARTM or > sf >PRT: ARTM The results I get from my file are: The_Art_Department.brush 380 AmigaLibDisk459:AmiDock/dock/Non-Interlace/  MainDock/ The_Art_Department.brush 596 AmigaLibDisk459:AmiDock/dock/Interlace/  MainDock/ which is not the ARTM programme I was looking for (it found depARTMent!) To get around this, spaces can be included within quotes (""), ie: >sf "ARTM " and that will find it, OK. So, thanks heaps Mike Fuller, and Megadisc, yet again! Simple, and yet brilliant! Perry Mowbray.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   ...Interesting little tidbit... "*" I notice you've had a couple of crib cards and things recently, one thing mentioning things such as uses of the star... Anyway, as well as using the "*" for the current console window, there is also a new assignment (WB2 and above) called "CONSOLE:" which does the same thing, without the ambiguity. I think it was in one of the Rom Kernal Reference Manuals. Anyway you can just do something like this: Echo >CONSOLE: "Hi!" ; Not very useful I know... But still! Unfortunately it isn't fully compatible, for example "Copy CONSOLE: to Notes" won't work, even though "Join CONSOLE: to Notes" will work. Anyone know why? Anthony Towns  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Installing MD on hard disk  For those with a hard disk who enjoy Megadisc as much as I do there was an ARexx script on MD31 called Megadisc install. As a bit of an exercise in getting to grips with this new language supplied with OS2 I have been trying to use and examine as many pre-written scripts as possible. I created a drawer called Megadisc on the work partition of the drive using DW then copy the Disk.info from the just received copy of Megadisc and rename it to match the file I created, ie Megadisc34.info for the Megadisc34 drawer. Then using IE change the icon's type to a drawer instead of a disk which it of course is as supplied. Originally I was copying MD Install into RAM: by dragging its icon over but I have put it into a drawer on the Work: partition now for convenience. Any way before you double click on the icon to run MD Install you need to change the comment line in its info. If you double click as it is you open the script to read from fullview. So select the icon by clicking on it once then go into the icons menu on the workbench and select information or Right Amiga I and erase :c/fullview replacing it with rx then save it. As long as Rexxmast is running (If you boot with anything like the standard startup-sequence on OS2 it should be. See previous Megadisc articles on ARexx if you are confused) then when you double click on MD Install's icon the ARexx script will start and if the new Megadisc issue is in a floppy drive you need to just follow the prompts to copy the issue onto hard disk. Then enjoy the benefits of not having to wait through the grinding and graunching (is that how you spell it?) of the floppy access to enjoy Megadisc. Plus no need to make a floppy backup, You can take any programs or tutorials quickly and easily then when finished retake the space on your hard drive for the next eagerly awaited issue of Megadisc or if absolutely necessary that bit of work you never quite get to. Anyway that's enough from me except to say thank you to the team producing Megadisc and all the people who contribute, I have learnt a great deal and look forward to much more and thanks to Tim for listening to and advising me while I was agonising over exactly how to upgrade my system to fit my requirements. Steven Ruttley PS To any Amiga users in the Blue Mountains area I would love to hear from you.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Computing History  I first got involved in computing as a hobby some 10 years ago with a VIC 20, then Commodore 64 and into an Amiga 500. I am married with three kids, and at first it was a "computer game" idea for the kids. Just under 12 months ago we purchased a 500. Attempting to prise the kids loose so my wife or myself could have a few minutes play occasionally became almost impossible. Around August 1992 we decided to purchase another Amiga, and as the word was out...NO MORE 500's... we bought a 600. Our present equipment stands at Amiga 500 with 1084 monitor. Amiga 600HD with 40mg hard drive and 2mg ram. 1084S monitor External Floppy drive Star 24/20 Printer. We are all still very much novices as far as using the Amiga goes. We all feel that it is a good hobby, and are all interested in taking it further than just games playing. We have a large collection of PD material from Megadisc and are using the various articles, Tutes and Utilities to learn more about the Amiga. The kids mainly use it for games, and my wife and I have been teaching ourselves Word Processors, Databases etc. Using Superbase (a database) we have compiled our record/CD collection, and lately our PD collection. We have numbered each PD disk and using Superbase, set up a database with fields covering TITLE, NUMBER, MEGADISC NUMBER, TYPE, DETAILS. A hard copy printout is then made, and placed in a clear book (loose leaf A4 size book). This then becomes our catalogue. A front cover was made using Printmaster (graphics and title). Bill Woolford  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Damaged disks  Just recently, I've received through the mail a few damaged disks - I suspect we have a new and heavy handed postie. I've had unqualified success in recovering the disk contents by doing the following. (a) Rip off the metal slider but be careful not to touch the exposed portion of the disk. (b) Remove any distortion in the cover by gentle manipulation. (c) Insert in disk drive and copy immediately to a fresh disk. Do not, under any circumstances, put a damaged disk in your drive. It may like its new possy and refuse to come out again. George Knight 1 Audie Pde Berkeley Vale 2259  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   AGA pics  Hope you like the aga pics. I digitized both pics with Digiview gold 4.0 on my Amiga 1200. I used a colour video camera and Vidi electronic colour splitter. Digiview owners will be pleased that there are absolutely no compatibility problems. I digitized the images in 640x512 colour mode, and saved them as IFF 24 bit true colour files. This 24 bit IFF file can then be rendered to produce a HAM8 picture using Art Department Pro 2, or Deluxe Paint AGA. The results are not too bad, I think the resolution of my camera isn't all that great. I'd like to see what kind of job a broadcast quality camera would do. 911HAM8.AGA was digitized from a magazine, through a camera. ELLEHAM8.AGA was digitized from a still frame on video cassette. Joshua Schutte  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Swapping Icon colours  With regard to Leigh Murray's suggestion for a program to swap colours of icons between 1.3 and 2.0 on MD 33, there is a program that will perform the switch on Jam Disk 9 in the PD collection. It may be possible to use pattern matching to get it to convert all the icons on a disk. Hope that helps. Thanks for your time, James Margitich Post Office Sandy Creek SA 5350  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Point Manager  Dear Ed: I'll just reply to your query about Point Manager. Basically a point allows someone with a modem to become their own "Mini BBS" for mail. Such a program is useful for users who use FidoNet mail a lot instead of logging on to a BBS using the mail facilities there. Becoming a point means that mail can be grabbed from a BBS automatically, you become an extension of the BBS and hence Fidonet, with your own Fido address, so that netmail can be sent directly to the point. I'm no real expert on this, having never done this myself, but people with a modem would be able to recognize the program's uses and have no problems with it. Jason New Adamstown Hts, NSW.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Downloading hint & ReloKick  Dear Ed: Once again I've read another good review of MegaDisc in a pommie magazine. I think it was a recent CU Amiga. It's good to see that you are getting your name and product known around the world. Here are a couple of tips that I've come across lately. Maybe you could find space for them sonewhere. When downloading files from Bulletin Boards, highlight Filenames and press Right Amiga C to copy the file name and Right Amiga V to paste it into the Files to Download Requester. No more wrong names, 1's instead of 1's or 0's instead of O's. It's also quicker than typing. Of course you need WB 2 or greater. I use NComm V2 and it saves a lot of time. I've got an A1200 with 10 Meg of RAM and was having trouble using the CU Amiga cover disk program ReloKick to boot into 1.3. If you have an MBX RAM expansion that is fully populated, run the utility to disable the 4 Meg section reserved for the PCMCIA slot. It is on the disk you get with the Card. Now ReloKick should work with no problems. You can even copy all the files from the ReloKick disk onto your Hard Disk, Rename the ReloKick StartUp-Sequence, add the command to disable the 4 Meg section then copy it to your Harddisk, boot with no StartUp-Sequence and type Execute "Whatever you renamed the StartUp-Sequence to". Ed: I believe that CU have been legally rapped over the knuckles by Commodore for putting their proprietary software on a PD disk! Graeme Sayers Armadale, VIC.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Convert the A3000 to A500 mode  Dear Ed: I'm especially glad to have your PD disk UT 363. After putting the necessary file in my hard disk, and a script in "FKeys", I can convert the A3000 to A500 mode in about 5 seconds. This enables my grandsons to play some of their favourite games again! Alan Jones City Beach,  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Egad!  Dear Ed: To all you well-meaning programmers out there - a warning. GadtoolsBox 2.0 is full of bugs. For me, it is too late. I'm working on a BBS program and after I had done about 30K of GUI saved file I realise that this was just not meant to be . There is a bug in the save routine that left me with saved files that crashed the computer every time they were loaded. There is also a bug in the LISTVIEW gadget routines in which the gadget continually changes size - very annoying since you can never position it correctly. The only way to avoid this bug is to have the select-show on. This is fine if you actually want the select-show on, otherwise (like me) you have a problem. The program also can "lose" its menus - in which you hit the right mouse and nothing happens. This occurred to me on several occasions and worse still, the program saves these lost menus with the file and the bug is loaded again. At first I thought the new features outweighed the bugs - however the continual need for 3 or 4 backups (and having to use them) is simply so frustrating (designing over and over again) that it has become a case for me to go back to the previous version (1.3) and wait for the next version of GadToolsBox to come out. Paul Mclachlan Blakehurst NSW  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>   Beware  Dear Ed: Some advice: 1/ I recently purchased the excellent simulation game "Harpoon -The Signature Edition". Distributed by Electronic Arts on the Gold Coast, the package set me back just under $100. I read thecompatibility sticker on the side of the box which assured me that the program inside was compatible with every Amiga known to man, the various operating systems and was hard disk installable. Well, I successfully installed the program on my hard drive and followed through the manual to get up and running. Everything seemed to be going okay until about six minutes into the game when the program just shut itself down. This frustratingly occured numerous times, after many attempts to reload the program, run it under different conditions, etc. Finally, after a couple of phone call enquiries I got onto Electronic Arts and lo and behold, one of their software technicians. Rennis solved my problems in the blink of an eye. "Oh", he informed us, "you've beenunlucky enough to buy one of the NTSC versions of the game. You'll never be able to run it so just send it back and we'll send you the PAL version". Needless to say that's what I've done. I just thought someone else out there may be about to buy this program and would benefit from this advice. Apparently EA informs me, if you own one of the new AGA machines this problem is negated through the ability to choose your display modes on startup. 2/ ALWAYS ENSURE YOU HAVE A RECENT BACK-UP OF YOUR HARD DISK. Sailing under the "It only happens to other people" banner, my Amiga 2000 recently had a major coronary whilst I was using the "Re-Org" program to do some hard disk maintenence. Whilst I do backup my hard disk I have, until recently, only done this once in a blue moon. Not any more. I ensure that I backup at least once a month now, or whenever I make a significant change or addition to my disk. Of course, the Re-Org program warns you that you should ensure your data is backed up prior to using the program, but I, like some others I may assume, rarely did so. After many long hours my system is now back to almost pre-crash configuration, however, if I'd taken the time to ensure that I made a fortnightly, of even monthly, backup of my disk, I could have saved many wasted hours. So, as advised by many more experienced users before me, if you have a hard disk, take the time to regularly back it up. And now the questions:  1/ Can anyone offer advice as to how to install the following programs on hard disk (I have a 60MB SCSI drive using O/S 2.05) F/A 18 Interceptor Populous Flight Simulator II Lemmings II - The Tribes I own the original program disks for all these excellent programs but would really like to run them from my hard drive. In particular, Lemmings II, as I am at this stage unable to even make a copy of the program and must run it from the original program disks all the time. 2/ Could anyone offer advice as to how I may be able to get the following programs to run under O/S 2.05 (short of buying the old Kickstart ROM and installing a switchable ROM set-up). Impossible Mission II Shadow of the Beast (The Original) Digi-Paint 3 (Program runs okay, but requesters don't work) [SB - DigiPaint3 can be fixed by using a public domain requester patch, these generally make requesters look better than the standard ones and this problem has been on a past Megadisc, the requester I used to fix DigiPaint3 was NewAReq.] Any information or advice that can be offered would be greatly appreciated. Once again, thanks for a terrific disk magazine. I look forward to the next edition. Stephen Unwin Surrey Downs.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>  SNAP and POWERSNAP: Slight Indigestion with QED and a few Burps After reading John Knight's rave about Snap in MD27, I got the PD disk containing it (on Fish 524 - there is now a later version on Fish 793) from MegaDisc to try it myself. And it IS all that he said it is - a very handy, fast program, easy to install and use. But I had a bit of heartburn getting it to work OK with QED (a terrific text editor) because the pasted text usually - but not consistently - contained only one letter for every double occurring in a word. That is, if the word contained a double l, for instance (as in Gallery), then in the pasted text there'd only be one l (as in Galery). With erratic spelling, the program seemed virtually useless. So I read the doc more closely (if all else fails, take drastic action and read the instructions .... ). And I found a CHARDELAY parameter. By adding a tooltype to the icon CHARDELAY=20 or specifying Snap CHARDELAY=20 when starting it from the CLI, the problem disappeared. In the process of trying to solve the Snap problem, I tried out PowerSnap (the latest version is on Fish 781; I tried an earlier one) to see if it handled double letters better. It didn't. And it doesn't seem to have a handy parameter for fixing the problem. It is also much slower in operation because it tends to have a quiet think after selecting the character, after snapping the text, and before it does the paste; everything goes dead for what seems, to an impatient person, like hours (it is probably a second or two). It is definitely not as nice to use as Snap. By the way, there is another well-regarded Snap program in the public domain, Osnap, which comes on AmigOz 38; I haven't tried this snapper yet. And Workbench 2 CLI supports cut and paste too. Leigh Murray Queanbeyan NSW Ed: Check out also John Collett's article "ARexxPorts" for a discussion of using ClipItV1.1, a similar program to Snap, with ARexx, CLI, and more - you'll also find ClipIt in this issue's MDExtras disk.  <> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <%> 34 <>