______________________________________ / \ / A. M. I. G. A. \ /__________________________________________\ \ \/ \ \/ / /\ \_____ \ \ /\ / \ \ \_____ \ \ / /_ / \ \ \_____ \_____\/ / \__ / /\ \ -)vark(- \_____ / / \__ /_____/__\_____\___________________\/_______/__________\ \ / \ The Amiga International / \ User Groups Association / \________________________________________________/ (- The Information Super-Hype Way -) I have been quite fortunate just recently to receive a 3 months free Internet access from my dear friend Mike Burrows. The Internet provider is called Globalnet, who, surprise surprise, only provide software for the PC. I will not go into it too much, but the software installation was not without problems, but eventually it was up and running and I could log onto the 'net with my PC. So, my attention turned to my Amiga. I always like using my Amiga over my PC for obvious reasons, which you will not doubt be aware of, as Amiga users yourselves. I was utterly dismayed to find that the Amiga has the worst collection of software for logging onto the Internet. Now, I have only had a modem since August 1995, but I consider myself well conversed with the travel of BBS's, and the like, so I thought the Internet would be 'nay problem'. How wrong I was. I read in What N@t an article about the Internet in the Amiga. This is/was a predomintaly PC orientated publication, which so far, has not appeared again since the summer edition (the one with Elvis on the front cover for the curious). It was also worth noting that most of the screenshots of the WWW pages were from AMosaic, an Amiga World Wide Web browser ! I gleemed the information that I would need either AmiTCP or AmigaNOS in order to set up a network on my machine for the connection to the Internet. Now, I did not know my PPP from my IP, so I tried AmiTCP, even though the article suggested AmigaNOS for the beginner, I like a challenge. I obtained AmiTCP Demo V4.0 from my Aminet 7 CD, and I followed the installation provided, but soon as it asked for my netmask server, my IP address, my domain etc, I was stumped. Tearing my hair out, I rang up my fellow enthusiast, the aforementioned Mr B, and he sent me the disk that DEMON (a popular Amiga Internet Provider) provide for their customers. On the disk was AmigaNOS. Ahh I thought, this was supposed to be easy peesy, so I tried to install it, and the installation did not go very well, in fact, I could not get it to work at all. However, apparently, once this software is installed, the only facility it gave you was E-Mail, and FTP (downloading of software), no WWW browser. So, I went back to my Aminet 7 CD, and found a install script called COBBWEBB. This required several other programs that were to be found on the disk. So I copied them all into the same directory, as explained in the COBBWEBB instructions. Then I used the installer to install everything. However, it faulted at the installation of PPP1_30, which was needed to make the initial connection to the Internet provider. So I examined the instructions of PPP, and finally managed to install it. This was about two weeks after receiving my gift of the free Internet connection. In the mean time, I had been using my PC to log onto the net, and rather successfully I might add. After obtaining AMOSAIC 1.4, and MUIFTP, I managed to browse the WWW and download some software direct from the Aminet using the latter. So far I am not impressed with the Internet one bit. The Amiga is very bad at accessing the net. I have found it to be slow, cumbersome and unstable. I am currently using 64 col hi-res laced screens, with my 28,800 sportster, and my PC with it's 14,400 sportster seems faster. The whole point I am trying to reach is this. In order to access the internet on my Amiga, I have got the following programs :- PPP1_30 AmiTCP 4.0 demo version MUIFTP ZGIF and sun audio datatypes Magic User Interface 2.3 shareware version Amosaic 1.4 beta Amosaic 1.2 (as the above is not 100%) EdPlayer With the above, all written by different people, I can log onto the Internet, use FTP sites, and browse the WWW. However, the list does not include the .libraries and fonts you require. You could also add AmigaElm (which I could not install properly) for Email, an Archie client, a Gopher, Finger, UUCP, Newsreaders, some of this I do not yet fully understand, after all, three weeks of surfing the net, what do you expect. BUT, I when I read the Q&A in Amiga Shopper, the Workbench in Amiga Format, and see users asking how to unarchive files of cover disks, I think to myself, how on earth would these people get Internet access if they so wished it. Here is my plea, if there are any programmers reading this text right now, listen up. If you are thinking of what to do for your next project, may I urge you to consider this. Why not create an all in one Internet Solution Package, that allows you to do the full monty. Allow access to ALL the services Internet provides, in one easy to use and install package, with the beginner in mind, and the expert at heart. Whoever comes up with such a brilliant package, would make a killing, don't you think ? After all, was it not Demon who announced recently profits of £22 million ? Not bad for a company that solely provides Internet access for around £10 per month. Think about it. Vark/NFA (or my Sunday Name - Varkanoid aka Varkisanoid) End