--------------------- MORTON'S MUSINGS By Morton A. Kevelson --------------------- CAT OUT OF THE BAG? As a licensed Commodore developer, I am privy to certain bits of information regarding future Amiga developments to which I am sworn to secrecy. As an experienced journalist, I am always on the lookout for any juicy tidbits that I can safely pass along. One such item appeared as an anonymously written feature in the August issue of AMIGA news, a monthly newspaper format Amiga publication with a cover price of 95 cents. The demur developer who provided this information claims to be beta testing the "A4000" and the "A1000 Classic" or the "A800", the official nomenclature has not yet been established. As interesting as the story is, it is apparently a hoax in the sense that it was based wholly on a spurious news release someone uploaded to bulletin board services. For what it's worth, both machines are supposedly based on the AA, pronounced double-A, chipset. I will not go into any details about the specific hardware configuration of the two machines other than to say that the A4000 is based on the 68040 microprocessor and the A800 is based on the 68030 and that both machines sport full speed, high density floppy drives. The AA chipset sports enough power to, hopefully, keep the Amiga graphically competitive for a few more years. Most notable of the enhancements is the support of an 8 bit, 256-color display out of a 24 bit, 16 million plus color palette, in all of the Amiga's display modes including the super hi-res display modes. SHOW OF THE MONTH DEPARTMENT New York City does not suffer from a lack of shows or conventions. The most recent extravaganza, which was also a first time for NYC, was the Democratic National Convention. Although the DNC made all the headlines, the 10th annual PC EXPO, which took place barely a fortnight before June 23-25 in the cavernous Jacob K. Javits convention Center, was the show that attracted my attention. This was the first time that I attended this monster exposition. I quickly perceived that even an extended lunch hour would not provide sufficient time to even quickly browse through the 735 exhibitors. Less than 10 seconds per exhibitor is just not enough even for PC developers. Under the circumstances, I had to be contented with madly dashing from booth to booth, grabbing handfuls of free samples, while fending off the various PR types who were attracted by my press pass. Amidst this veritable sea of exhibitors, which included massive constructs from IBM, Apple, Microsoft and other well known developers in the PC world with the exception of Commodore, the single Amiga exhibit was stationed at the most strategic location of the entire three level show; right at the entrance to press booth. This tiny booth, which was staffed by dedicated members of AMUSE, the New York Amiga Users Group, was equipped with an Amiga 3000T that was stuffed with Commodore's new A2386SX Bridgeboard and the recently released A-Max II Plus Macintosh emulator. A-MAX II PLUS CONTINUED After my report last month I resolved the problem of accessing the CD- ROM drive with the new A-Max II version 2.5 software,. I duplicated the CD- ROM drive's mountlist entry, renamed it AMAXCD: and appended it to the mountlist file. It seems the A-Max II version 2.5 software expects to see an AMAX mountlist entry for the CD-ROM drive, although version 2.06 seemed to get by without it. I also installed the A-Max II Plus hardware since my last report. The Macintosh floppy drive capability with the Amiga's internal drives appear to work as specified. Once the A-Max II Plus hardware is installed, the Macintosh ROMS are read into the Amiga's memory in just a second or two. The shortened startup time is far more convenient than the lengthy delay required to load the Mac ROMs from the external cartridge. If you are updating your system from the cartridge version and an external Macintosh floppy, you can continue using the old hardware and still access the external Mac floppy drive. Just remove the ROMs from the cartridge. The Amiga's internal drives now default to the Macintosh 800 kilobyte floppy disk format when reading and writing. When using your existing A-Max formatted floppy disks, hold down the shift key when inserting the disk to avoid a lengthy format checking delay. IVS PREPARES TO ENTER EXPANSION CARD WARS The trend to squeeze more functions onto an Amiga expansion card continues unabated. The first Amiga expansion cards were minimum-capacity, single-function devices. I still have a C Ltd aMega RAM expansion card for the Amiga 1000. This one megabyte card, stuffed with 32, 256 kilobit chips, was roughly the same as a full size A2000 card. My first Amiga 2000 expansion cards were a two-megabyte Micron Technology RAM board and a Pacific Peripherals Overdrive SCSI host adapter. The RAM card was loaded with 64, 256 kilobit RAM chips, and the Overdrive was actually made by Interactive Video Systems. Both are full-size Amiga 2000 plug-in cards. Plug-in cards continued to evolve. As memory chips increased in capacity and dropped in price, RAM board capacity expanded first to four and then to eight megabytes. Meanwhile, SCSI host adapters shrank to half-length cards. It did not take long before Commodore placed two megabytes of RAM on a single full-size card along with a SCSI host adapter. Other developers upped the ante to four and then eight megabytes with a SCSI host adapter, while shrinking the card to half length. Interactive Video Systems' Grand Slam Card offers eight megabytes of RAM, a SCSI host adapter and a parallel port on a half-length card. The most recent offerings were from Great Valley Products, which has upped the ante even further by adding a SCSI host adapter and RAM expansion to its 68030/68882 accelerator card. Now Interactive Video Systems is preparing to counterattack with Vector, its own version of a combination accelerator/RAM/SCSI card for the Amiga 2000. Vector's preliminary specification sheet indicates sockets will be provided for both the microprocessor and math coprocessor. The microprocessor can be either the economical scaled-down 68EC030 or a full-function 68030 chip. The 68EC030 has all of the functions found on the 68030 with the exception of the MMU. Vector's design still supports the remapping of the 16 bit Kickstart ROM into high-speed 32 bit RAM even without the MMU. Vector is available in 25, 33 or 40 Mhz versions. Vector's on-board memory can be expanded to 32 megabytes using industry standard 1Mx8 or 4Mx8 SIMMS. In addition, Vector includes a fully compatible A2630 expansion bus. This allows RAM to be expanded up to 144 megabytes by using third party products such as DKB'S 2632 RAM expansion board. Vector's unique feature is the ability to turn off the 68030 and switch back to the Amiga's native 68000 microprocessor while still providing access to the high speed SCSI host adapter and four or eight megabytes of RAM. As of this writing Vector will be the only 68030 combo board that supports the sharing of RAM and SCSI resources with the 68000. Vector's SCSI host adapter implements IVS' SCSI-Share Network, which supports the sharing of SCSI peripherals among several computers hooked to the SCSI bus. SCSI-Share is also supported by IVS' Trumpcard Professional SCSI host adapter and the Grand Slam expansion card. Although Vector is being designed as an Amiga 2000 coprocessor plug-in card, my source at IVS indicates that much of Vector's development was actually done on the Amiga 500's expansion slot. This should make it easy to develop an Amiga 500 version of Vector. At this writing, Vector is still in the late prototype stage. Pricing and availability have not been announced. WALNUT CREEK CD-ROM Walnut Creek CDROM, a supplier and producer of CD-ROM products for the PC and Macintosh, has recently released the AB20 Amiga CDROM. This disc is a snapshot of the AB20 Amiga collection from the Internet site ab20.larc.nasa.gov, which is no longer on line. The disc contains over 300 megabytes of compressed data organized in a variety of categories including applications, archivers, data communications, demos, Fish, games, graphics, hardware, language, networking, sounds, Amiga TeX, usenet and utilities. For compatibility with MS-DOS systems, all file names have been truncated to eight characters plus a three character extension. Note that this disc is not compatible with CDTV. Some of the included material is available from other sources, most notably the Fred Fish collection. Still, at a price of $24.95 you will get your money's worth. Walnut Creek CDROM is also offering the Desktop Library CDROM. This disc contains more than 1,000 works of classic literature, historical documents and reference works in generic ASCII text files. These works range from ancient Greek comedies and tragedies, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, writings by Plato and Aristotle, and Aesop's Fables. Also in the collection are the complete works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Virgil, Dante and Milton, all of the Sherlock Holmes stories along with books by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Stephan Crane, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, the 1990 U.S. census, the Koran, and the King James Version of the Bible. A complete listing of all the files on this CD-ROM would greatly exceed the capacity of this column. At a price of $39.95, this disc is a bargain. Since all of the works are in the public domain, the Desktop Library is an excellent reference work for students and teachers from which suitable excerpts can be easily incorporated into reports. The text files have all been formatted to print out on 80 column wide paper. For compatibility with MS-DOS, all line endings have both are carriage returns and line feeds. Most Amiga applications expect only a line feed ending. A copy of MuchMore, the freely distributable Amiga text reader, is included on the disc. MuchMore deals properly with the carriage return plus line feed endings and lets lets you quickly browse through the text files and save selected portions to disk or printer. The length of many of the text files exceeds one megabyte. If you intend to edit these files in their entirety, your Amiga should have at least two megabytes of RAM. A text editor, such as TurboText from Oxxi, that quickly can deal with large files, is also required. While placing your order for these discs you may wish to stock up on CDROM caddies. Walnut Creek CDROM'S asking price of $4.95 each is about the best price I have come across. CONSULTRON DELIVERS CrossDOS 5 Plus, CONSULTRON'S MS-DOS file system and PC XT software emulator combination package, has arrived. This two-part package consists of CrossDOS 5.0, a much improved version of CONSULTRON's original MS-DOS file system for the Amiga, and CrossPC an IBM XT software emulator for the Amiga. Here is a first look at the package. Once installed, CrossDOS transparently endows AmigaDOS with the ability to read and write MS-DOS formatted storage media. This means the system automatically treats MS-DOS formatted disks like any other Amiga storage medium. This works for directory utilities, such as DiskMaster or DirectoryOpus, as well as applications. The only things you have to watch out for are the file names. MS-DOS file names are limited to eight characters plus a three-character file extension. When copying files using the Workbench, CrossDOS automatically truncates the .info file extension to INF and back to .info as required. The .INF files, on the MS-DOS format disk, are also automatically recognized as icons and displayed on the Workbench. CrossDOS can also be told to automatically filter out of text files the carriage return with line feed paragraph markers used by MS-DOS files to the line feed paragraph markers used by AmigaDOS files. Automatic text translation to ASCII-7, international and Danish/Norwegian is also available. On the Amiga's standard 3.5 inch floppy disks, 720 kilobyte MS-DOS format disks are supported. If you have one of the new high density Amiga floppy drives, the 1.44 megabyte format is supported as well. Floptical drives are also supported with the 1.44 megabyte and 20 megabyte formats. CONSULTRON is now offering Amiga Floptical drives at $500 for the internal version and $600 for the external version. Floptical disks are also available at $21 each when you buy five at a time. MS-DOS formatted hard disk drives can also be accessed with CrossDOS 5.0. CrossPC, a software PC XT emulator, is the second part of the CrossDOS Plus package. CrossPC is actually a customized version of Mark Tomlinson's shareware IBEM package. A demo copy of IBeM can be found on the AB20 CDROM from Walnut Creek CDROM mentioned elsewhere in this month's column. The demo versions of IBeM are limited to a two-megabyte hard drive partition and a 15- minute operating time. To obtain a fully functional version of IBeM, send the requested fee to Tomlinson in New Zealand. CrossDOS must be installed before CrossPC can access the Amiga drives as MS-DOS drives. Once it is running, CrossPC emulates an IBM XT computer. The hard drive can be set up as a dedicated MS-DOS formatted unit or as an MS-DOS formatted partition on an Amiga drive. The PC display emulation consists of either the CGA graphics mode with full color text and low-and high-resolution graphics, or the monochrome text mode. Microprocessor emulation is for the 8088. Support is provided for the Amiga's mouse, serial and parallel ports. CrossPC runs in its own window and will multitask with other Amiga applications. The memory that is available to MS-DOS depends on the microprocessor in your system. For 68000-based Amigas, MS-DOS is limited to 256 kilobytes. For systems with a 68020/30/40 microprocessor, up to 704 kilobytes will be available to MS-DOS. While running on a A2630, 25 Mhz 68030, equipped Amiga 2000, Norton's utilities reported a performance index of 1.04 as compared to a standard XT. For now my experience with CrossPC has been limited by a variety installation problems. Refer to the following section on Commodore's Install program for additional information. I have succeeded in installing all of CrossDOS Plus with the exception of the MS-DOS hard drive partition for CrossPC. To date, all attempts to create the partition have resulted in a system crash. It seems that the MS-DOS hard drive partition program is sensitive to certain hardware configurations. Judging from the size of my phone bill, Consultron is trying very hard to fix the problem and I have full confidence in their ability to do so. An update with a possible fix is scheduled to arrive the same day this column goes in the mail. You can expect an update in my column next month. CrossDOS Plus lists for $59.95. Existing owners of CrossDOS can upgrade for $20. At either price, if you need access to MS-DOS media and can get by with PC XT emulation, this package is a bargain. Since I expect the installation bugs to be resolved by the time this column is published, CrossDOS Plus receives my conditional endorsement. BUG IN COMMODORE'S INSTALL PROGRAM A bug has manifested itself in Commodore's official AmigaDOS 2.0 Install program. When used to install an application on an Amiga equipped with a DKB Multistart board, the Install program will abort when it attempts to access the startup-sequence file. I have already encountered the bug with the Install programs that were provided with ASDG'S Art Department Professional and CONSULTRON's CrossDOS 5 Plus. 386SX BRIDGEBOARD Commodore has begun shipping its A2386SX Bridgeboard. The lack of advance hoopla can be attributed to several factors not the least of which is a shortage of supply. As of this writing, all of the A2386SX Bridgeboards are being sold as part of a packaged system based on the Amiga 3000. One configuration consists of an Amiga 3000-25/50 with 2MB of RAM and the A2386SX for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $3,399. The other reason for the A2386SX'S low profile may well be its MSRP of $959. This translates to a $799 street price at the local Commodore Amiga dealer who is also offering the A2286 Bridgeboard for $349. In either case, these prices are what comparably rated, fully equipped, PC clones complete with one or two floppy drives and a hard drive can be bought for. I have even seen 80386SX systems, including one with the IBM name on it, complete with floppy drives, a hard drive and a VGA monitor at the price of the new Bridgeboard. The A2386SX Bridgeboard is equipped with an 80386SX microprocessor running at 20 Mhz. The board is shipped with one megabyte RAM and is expandable to eight megabytes RAM. The extra memory above 640 kilobytes can be configured as either extended memory or expanded memory conforming to the LIM 4.0 standard. The A2386SX supports up to two floppy drives which can be any combination of a shared Amiga drive of either the standard 880K/720K capacity or the newer high density dual speed variety, an external A1011 floppy drive or up to two dedicated internal drives. The internal drive option supports all four PC floppy disk capacities including 360K, 720K, 1.2M and 1.44M. The A2386SX is not supplied with a floppy drive. Emulated display modes are the same as for the earlier Bridgeboard models consisting of the MDA monochrome text mode and the CGA color graphics mode in AmigaDOS windows. The package includes MS-DOS 5.0. ALL THINGS VIRTUAL Prespect Technics has announced GigaMem, a virtual memory manager for the Amiga which simulates up to 1 gigabyte of RAM on any mass storage system such as a hard drive. A gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. The exact value, which is obtained by raising 2 to the 30th power, is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Intelligent management lets GigaMem support multi-tasking, that is several programs can access the virtual memory at once. GigaMem can be set to perform memory swapping to either a file or a partition. GigaMem will function on any AMiga that is equipped with a memory management unit, MMU. Pricing is $149 for the generic version which will work with any Amiga hard disk host adaptor or $98 for the version that works with Prespect's own ALF 3 Oktagon controller. TWO FROM MOONLIGHTER Moonlighter Software Development recently sent two things my way: a copy of Ami-Back version 2.0 and a press release for Ami-Back Tools. The former has found its way to the growing pile of brand new latest version soon-to-be- reviewed-in-great-detail software in which Central Coast Software/New Horizons' Quarterback 5.0 also resides. It would be interesting to do a comparison of both products, as they seem to make similar claims about speed, data compression and tape drive support. I have been holding off for several reasons. To start with, I do not have a tape drive and testing with one should be a part of these reviews. Next, through a bizarre sequence of events, my three vintage Amiga's now sport no fewer than five hard drives and four host adapters among them. As such, my files have a high degree of redundancy. Finally, ever since my Commodore 64 did a spontaneous reset in the middle of a major review, I have been a fanatic about maintaining multiple backups of all my data files. As such, I have very little motivation to spend several hours feeding floppies to the floppy drives while waiting for several tens of megabytes to transfer. Moonlighter plans to ship the $79.95 Ami-Back Tools in September. Features include the GP, a sophisticated disk optimizer that ensures efficient data storage and the Disk Analyst, a specialized program that examines the disk for potential problems and makes repairs as required. Also included are 911-Recovery, which is also part of Ami-Back version 2.0, which lets you recover deleted files and data from crashed disks, and Antiseptic, a disk wipe program that clears your disk of everything, presumably beyond the resurrective capabilities of 911-Recovery. Finally, Lab Test is a program that checks and compares checksums for file corruption and virus infection. All of these programs are tied together by the Administrator. BARGAIN BASEMENT PRINTERS I recently obtained an offer to purchase refurbished printers direct from Epson. The offer looks good enough that I felt it would be worthwhile passing the information along. The printers are demo models used at shows and by dealers. The units have been completely refurbished, are complete with all accessories, including toner cartridge, as well as the original Epson two- year warranty. Prices range from $99 for the nine-pin dot matrix ActionPrinter 2000 to $628 for the 6 page per minute ActionLaser II with 2.5MB of RAM. The 24-pin dot matrix ActionPrinter 3000 can be had for $138. You may be able to obtain a slightly scratched unit for even less. I took advantage of this offer to order an ActionLaser II with 2.5 MB RAM for only $585, which included shipping. The units are in short supply and you will probably be put on a waiting list. The printer I ordered wAs expected to ship a month later. If this deal works out as planned you can look forward to some musings on getting the most out of a laser printer in this column. I'M OPEN TO FEEDBACK If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this column, or if you have some particular topic you would like to discuss, write me. I normally do not respond directly to individual requests, but I promise to read everything you submit. I can be reached at: Morton Kevelson P.O. Box 336 Cooper Station New York, NY 10276-0336 DEVELOPERS MENTIONED Amiga News 145 Grove St. Ext. P.O. Box 51 Peterborough, NH 03458 603-924-9455 Commodore Business Machines Inc. 1200 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 215-431-9100 ReadySoft Inc. 30 Wertheim Court, Suite 2 Richmond Hill, Ontario Canada L4B 1B9 416-731-4175 Walnut Creek CDROM 1547 Palos Verdes Mall, Suite 260 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 800-786-9907 510-947-5996 Epson Accessories, Inc. 20770 Madrona Avenue P.O. Box 2903 Torrance, CA 90509-2903 800-873-7766 Interactive Video Systems 7245 Garden Grove Boulevard, Suite E Garden Grove, CA 92641 714-890-7040 CONSULTRON 8959 Ridge Rd. Plymouth, MI 48170-3213 313-459-7271 Prespect Technics Inc. Box 53, Rte. de Lotbiniere Dorion, Quebec Canada J7V 2K0 514-424-5596 Moonlighter Software Development 3208-C East Colonial Drive Suite 204 Orlando, FL 32803 407-384-9484 END OF TEXT