READERS' QUESTIONS  Ed: As usual thanks to Nic Wilson, Andrew Wong, Steve Bolton and various other kind and knowledgeable souls for helping me out when my limited knowledge got stretched beyond its elastic limit. [If you see the initials SB on an answer, it is by Steve Bolton who has been helping me out as a sub-editor at Megadisc.] By the way, please feel free to send in any answers to the questions here or anything that relates to them, and please don't think that our answers are the final word - if you think they're lacking in accuracy or clarity, or are just plain wrong, please let us know.  ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? Requests for help - HyperBook and IBM Emulation 1 Has any user of HyperBook managed to open a window of their own on (not behind) the HyperBook screen? I'd like to know how. 2 I have a 20 meg hard drive on an Amiga 2000, and 10 megs are set aside for IBM work via a A2088/A2286 BridgeBoard. I almost never use that section. In fact, since I installed WB 2 on that machine, I can't use the IBM side at all. When I try, I get a System Request "Couldn't find library". Neither I nor any of the locally available 'experts' can understand what the problem is. SnoopDOS doesn't help. I can run IBM if I really need to (which hardly ever happens), but only in '>A', if I boot from the PCInstall floppy. I have checked obvious things like Assigns. Any suggestions? John Collett 54 Cambridge Rd Hillcrest, Hamilton NZ Ed: If anyone does know the answer to this, please get in touch with John - write to his address direct. He has answered many questions for other people after all!  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Is WB2 Safe?  Dear Ed: Is there any benefit or danger in installing WB2 on my system? I have an Amiga 1000 with a Phoenix board fitted. There is an internal Quantum 52 mb hard disk and a kickstart switch for 1.2 and/or 1.3. I like it as it is but I perceive that WB2 is slowly replacing WB1.3 on MegaDisc. I am concerned that the installation of WB2 might wreck my present A1000 arrangement. I would like to record that I think MegaDisc is the best source material that any Amiga owner can have and I have referred many new Amiga owners to it for the information that nothing else gives them.  John A. Close Buderim, QLD. Ed: All benefits, no dangers, John. Nothing would be wrecked, but to be safe you may like to use a Kickstart switch which would give you easy access to both WB1.3 and WB2. And thanks for the recommendation - we do need users to recommend Megadisc to those who haven't heard about it.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?  Good Idea re Tax  Dear Ed, Tax time has arrived again and with the tighter guidelines put out by the government this year I find that I need to justify the time I spend on my computer to claim even the percentage of its cost and depreciation that I do. I was wandering if anyone has created a program or script that could be executed at start-up which would create a log file automatically and append the latest time that you started up or logged on (if that was necessary to differentiate for business time spent on the computer) this time to the end of the resulting log file. I am only just starting to try to learn AREXX and will use this as a starting project but it could take forever with the amount of time I get to do this sort of thing and was hoping for something this financial year. I look forward to hearing of any ideas.  Steve Ruttley. 047 39 1004 Ed: Sounds like just the thing for ARexx - has anyone got any ideas? Please let us know for the next issue.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?  The thorny question of IBM Emulators  Dear Tim, As you may not know, I've become a role-playing game addict. In particular I like the SSI games, such as "Dark Queen of Krynn", "Eye of the Beholder", etc. Now these come out for the PC market usually about a year before the Amiga version appears. But lately there have been strong rumours that SSI will not be making Amiga adaptations in future. So I have become interested in getting a PC emulator for my Amiga-2000. A "Golden Gate" bridgeboard sounds ideal but is a bit too pricey for me. In fact, you can buy a '386 complete with monitor and hard disk (second-hand) less than the Golden Gate 386 emulator bridgeboard. I have heard mention of ATOnce and IBeM, but the cheapest one seems to be PC-Task which I've seen advertised in the latest edition of ACAR for $65. Do you know which emulators can be used to run games like the ones mentioned above? Also, which would work on an Amiga-1200 ?  Sarv Engelhardt Hilton, W.A. Ed: IBeM and CrossPC are the same program (ie Consultron bought IBeM and made it into CrossPC) but do neither EGA nor VGA so wouldn't work at all. It seems that ATOnce doesn't even do what PC-Task can do, from various reports, especially when it comes to emulating VGA, so I'd also forget about that. Chris Hames (author of PC-Task) says that arcade games fail on his emulator PC-Task, since they are graphics intensive, but says that if it's not too graphic intensive, the games may run. The best bet is to get the demo version of his program from us and try it out - the demo does everything but save to disk. If it does work you can get it from us for $55. And I agree that the bridgeboards are just too expensive - perhaps you may have to buy a clone... Has anyone got any other suggestions?  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Vidi 12 Digitiser  Dear Ed: Do you sell the new Vidi Amiga video digitizer? Does it digitize in colour from a video without pausing the picture (is that what they mean by real time)? I have seen them advertised form $275-$300. Have you seen what they can do? What is the quality of the digitized pictures? Do you have a disk of example pics from one? Do you need anything else besides a computer (A1200) and video or camera to use one? Graeme Leece Dubbo, NSW. Ed: You must pause the display to digitise it with the current version Vidi 12, so that means your VCR needs a steady pause mode. The new RT version will be able to grab off live video, by buffering the frames through the Vidi. This is what they mean by real-time (RT). It is hoped that they will be shipping by the end of August and there will be in 12-bit and 24-bit versions available. Yes we do sell Vidi and will sell the new version too. We were being sent a disk of example pics, but they've not turned up yet. You need no more than the video/camera and the computer to use such a device.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Answering Machine and Computer Fax  Dear Ed: Just a short fax to prove that the Maestro 9600XR and GPFax are working well, and to thank you for your patience and help during the assorted trauma (traumae?) involved in getting the wretched thing form you-know-who in Canberra. The one unfortunate side effect (which I failed to consider) is that we now have to choose between the answering machine and the fax, unless there is something we've missed. Any ideas? Thanks again!!!  Peter and Wendy McAlister Ed: Glad it's going well. The only way you can really use it all together, is by using a fax-switch such as are made by BIT Technology. This device gives a message to the caller to "say fax" or remain silent and then be relayed to the answering machine. However they cost a few bob.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Free Schematics  Dear Ed: A friend gave me a 5.25 Disk Drive from a BBC micro. I have MegaDisc 12 where it tells how to connect a 5.25 but the details are a bit sketchy. I was wondering if you could send me a rough schematic showing the connections to use it as DF1. Also I was wondering if you could send me a schematic for a midi-interface as I have become interested in music on the Amiga.  Brian Gilbert Euroa, VIC. Ed: There was a kit we were selling but it only worked with a particular NEC 5.25" drive which is now unobtainable I believe. MD16 had a 5.25" Disk drive kit and MD26 had a 5.25" modification with illustrations, but that's about it. Megadisc 4 had a MIDI interface which is still available and works well.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Disk Locking / Text and graphic displayer  Dear Ed: Do you know of a PD or commercial programme that can make the contents of a disk unable to be copied. All commercial games have special copy protection added to stop people from copying their hames, so I was wondering if there is a special programme that could add a similar copy protection to any disks that I may make up in the future. I thought that there may be some special Bootblock Utility that might do this, that could allow anyone to load the program, but not be able to make a copy of it??? Also, I am looking to buy an Action Replay MK III cartridge. Do you sell them and if so how much are they??? One more thing... with the solutions that I sent you in ASCII format, is it possible to get a PD programme that can add IFF or ILBM pictures to the text to make things look more interesting? I think that there are some commercial word processors that can add pictures to the text, but can these be then saved in a format so that a general text viewer like Fullview can read these ASCII files with pictures included. Do you know of any PD equivalent???  Greame Beaven Wyong, NSW. Ed: We have a licenceware program called DiskLock which is said to be able to fulfil your requirements, but we haven't actually tried it. You could set the protection "delete" bit of all the files on the disk, if you wanted to casually protect them. For example, to protect the file XYZ from deletion: PROTECT XYZ -d and you could check that it's worked by: LIST XYZ and you'd get something like: XYZ 5648 ---rwe- 23-Jun-93 09:27 where the "----rwe-" indicates you can read, write and execute the file but not delete it. To do a whole disk full of files you need to do a batch arrangement as discussed at length in the WB 1.3 Enhancer manual. Action Replay Mark III - no idea now where you'd get it. Does anyone know? Text and graphic displayers: there are 2 good ones that I know of - 1. P-Suite by Chas Wyndham, which includes a displayer, editor, and numerous other utilities for these purposes. On Fish 744. 2. Magnetic Pages by Mark Gladding in NZ - he produces AMSMag, a diskmag for the NZ User Group with this program which is also very clever. See our disk Misc 138.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Beyone the guru  Dear Ed: There is a little problem I am having lately with my Amiga. Maybe you can shed some light on it. I did not contact Commodore because, frankly, I am getting sick and tired of being shuffled around to the various departments and end up waiting, listening to elevator muzak. Every time I use the Amiga, at a somewhat random point in time, I keep getting this Guru Meditation: 8100.000c - 00242758. Reading up on the first number tells me that there has been a Fatal Error (Dead-end) in the EXEC Library at Task address #242710 which points to RAM according to SYS-INFO. The strange thing is, that this Guru can happen anytime, whether I am about to load a Picture into DPaint, save a Textfile from CED or even just get a directory in CLI. And it's always the SAME Task!! I think it started when I installed WB2.1. I might have to go back to 2.04 (I hope not, as this version has some nifty features I don't want to be without). I have the GVP G-Force 30 40mhz board with 8meg 32-bit RAM and the Opal Vision 24-bit Graphics Card (the Best thing since Sliced Bread!) and a CD-ROM with Xetec Driver Software), which all seems to work perfectly - well almost. Problem #2 is the Requester I keep getting at the start of EVERY computing session: Gvpscsi Device: Unit 005 Unexpected Status $48/$46 In other words the CD is playing Silly Buggers! After clicking on the CONTINUE button, however the CD works without a hitch! This is more of an annoyance than a serious problem I think. I hope you can help me in this department.  Manfred Kiehne Lavington, NSW. Ed: Can anyone help Manfred with this problem?  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? rexxmath Library A number of Rexx programs I've seen want the rexxmath.library or something similar. From their docs I think this was included in the original Rexx distribution, but not with WB2.0. Is there anywhere I can get this (or similar) library? (Preferably PD.) Ed: Willy Langeveld did it on Fish 227 called RexxMathLib. History What happened to the article on Amiga beginnings we were promised? Or did I blink and miss it? Ed: Which article on Amiga beginnings, Anthony? Who was going to write it? We did have one on "Amiga History" on MD5 which went into the whole history to that time. Anthony Towns Eight Mile Plains QLD  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? SCSI-2 and SCSI-I drives One quick question. With a SCS1-2 controller, can you use any SCSI harddrive, or are they making SCS1-2 controllers for SCSI-2 drives only???  Peter Bagnato   Florida, USA.  Ed: Yes you can use any SCSI drive on any SCSI controller, and you'll find that if you use either a SCSI-2 drive on a SCSI-1 controller, or a SCSI-1 drive on a SCSI-2 controller you'll get much improved results over using SCSI-1 drive and controller. A SCSI-2 drive on a GVP controller for example ends up doing 2.2 meg/sec against 1.2 or so for a SCSI-1 drive on the same controller.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Invisible File Your comment at the end of the hint on Dealing with the BSG9 Virus had me hunting for the file. Could I NOT find it because it was a "PROTECTED invisible file"? How do I make it visible? Name lost! Ed: If you were to list the appropriate directory in a directory utility or in the CLI, you would have found something like the following (the result of listing part of my DEVS directory): serial.deviceWB2 5412 ---rw-d 01-Sep-91 18:54 siosbx.device 8612 --arwed 13-Sep-90 17:35 SS.device 4 ---rwed 07-Dec-92 09:42 system-configuration 232 ---rw-d 03-Jun-92 07:39         64 --ar--- 19-Sep-90 21:24 **** this is the one 29 files - 4 dirs - 0 links - 2527 blocks - 1257705 bytes Used 6352384 bytes - Free 8192 bytes (0 % free) As you can see, there is no name but it's 64 bytes long and you can click on it in a directory utility to copy it elsewhere.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?