MUSICAL HINTS & TIPS Dear Ed, Please find enclosed my review of New Wave Software's midi sequencer plus drum machine program "Dynamic Studio". I'd like you to concider it for inclusion on a future Megadisc issue and you're very welcome to use it. I'm using my Amiga as a composition tool, a musical instrument (i.e. using it in recording demo tapes) and to score and publish my compositions. At the moment it only has 512k ram and one drive (but that's doing it hard for music creation). I'm using Deluxe Music Construction Set, Dynamic Studio, a Yamaha DX 100, a borrowed Casio CZ 1000, a four channel mixing desk and a four channel tape recorder. I'm buying a Roland MT 32 sound module (I'll send you the review as soon as I get it out of lay-by) and intend buying sampling software and a sampler interface. I'm currently writing hints and tips articles for Deluxe Music Construction Set and Dynamic Studio and will send them in as soon as they're completed. PAUL C. NASH Sydney Ed: Your review on this issue Paul, many thanks. We also look forward to your next article on DMCS hints and tips, and maybe an eventual Theme Disk on music...? If anyone wants the benefit of Paul's experience, contact him through us. _________________________________________________________________________ GAME & GRAPHIC & DRIVER CONTRIBUTED Dear Megadisc, My compliments on your excellent productions, which I came into contact with through a friend. Although I'm too short of cash at the moment to take out a subscription, I would like to make a contribution to your next issue, and if accepted get a free M.D. ! There are three items on this disc which I hope you'll find useful :- 1. A game (in Basic) "EMPIRE-MISSION" see the file "empire-mission.doc" 2. Some computer "art" created with Dpaint; see the file "pinup" 3. A printer driver for the Seikosha GP700A colour printer. (I read somewhere that you're collecting printer drivers) Some comments about items on M.D.6:- The program PrinText is really useful! But I found that you can't use it to look at a picture or print out a file unless you display a text file first! Am I doing something wrong or is this a fixable problem? Great artwork by Graaf !! He's inspired me to do some of my own. A question:- Do you know the address of ASDG, the American company that produces FACCII, which I would like to buy? I have only found one local seller whose prices are exorbitant. Sarv.Engelhardt, Hilton, W.A., 6163 Ed: Thanks for the comments and contributions, Sarv, very good stuff, but too big for MD! Anybody who'd like to see Sarv's game can contact him through us, or get it direct from us as a Theme Disk. Pinup Graphic was great too, but this is a family mag! Opher Kahane tells us he is going to make some improvements to PRINTEXT when he finishes his stint in the Israeli army, so we'll hope it's soon. ASDG's address: 925 Stewart St, Madison, Wisconsin 53713 USA. TEL: (608) 2736585. FaccII is a great program for speeding up disk access, and does it with buffers as big as you like, depending on memory. About A$50 I think, and well worth it. ASDG makes a lot of other high-quality products for the Amiga, too, and currently markets CYGNUS-ED Professional, an excellent text editor. ________________________________________________________________________ ABOUT JET AND USING SIDECAR It is a pity that one does not have all the time of the world, there is so much to learn and to explore.I just bought a program from SubLOGIC named JET. I normally do not indulge in games but I could not resist the special that was available at Grace Bros Broadway. The program normally sells from $99 to $109 and the day I looked in at Grace Bros they had some for sale at a reduced price of $69.95. I must say that I am not yet a fighter pilot but it fascinating to try to fly around and attempt some landings. I am afraid that I am not yet very good at it but the program did behave very well and that is more than I can say about my language I used each time I crash landed. I did not have any problems copying the program on a backup disk nor did I have problems loading it in VD0: (recoverable RAM disk) or on the Amiga partition of my harddisk installed in the Sidecar. It also ran perfectly from any of these media. All I have to do now is to find the time to fly ! Some of your contributors confessed of having bought the Sidecar and found this addition to be a doubtful purchase. I don't know if you remember but some time ago I wrote to you and told you what sort of setup I am using and that included the Sidecar. I can understand that if you were not used to using say for instance Wordstar, dBaseII (or dBaseIII), Multiplan etc. that you could do with having the Amiga as the only computer, but as is the case with me, I developed a complete Accounting program written in dBaseII by using Wordstar. When I purchased the Amiga for no other reason then that I thought that this machine was the ultimate computer I still was using my old computer equipped with the programs mentioned above. However it is quite cumbersome having two machines plus a printer and other equipment sitting on a desk somewhere in a corner of a room that also has to be shared with members of my family. With the availabilty of the Sidecar and the fact that my old computer was not keeping up with the demands placed upon it there was no choice. As I wrote you before, my Sidecar has 640K + 2M of memory, 30M harddisk (10M for AmigaDos and 20M for MsDos) and a Clock/Par+Ser+Game Port. The Accounting program has been re-written by using Wordstar and compiled using CLIPPER and by utilising the 2M of Ram and the harddisk, seeing is believing what this combination can do. And if you really want to impress anyone you can change to the Amiga partition at the touch of a key(s), start a Score in Sonix, go back to MsDos and whilst the Score is playing (preferrable using a stereo amplifier !) use any of the programs you have available under MsDos. What a wonderful machine the Amiga is ! NB. Someday I will have finished the documentation for the use with my Accounting program. If anyone has MsDos and is interested, I will make this program available. Compiled, the size of the program is about under 260K and the only restrictions are the size of diskspace and available RAM. Chris Sengers Richmond NSW Ed: Thanks for the generous offer, Chris, and anyone interested can get in touch with us to find Chris. There's no doubt about the Amiga's multi-tasking, it's spoilt us all for other computers. (See the article this issue on Multi-Tasking, if you understand the concept fully.) ______________________________________________________________________ GRAPHICS OFFER FOR PROGRAMMERS Rob Englander writes from Adelaide with an offer to do the graphics for any programming project anyone might have. He's sent in some great animations and graphics (get them from us or through him - address from MD) which were just too big for a Megadisc. So programmers get in touch! About your question about making flash icons, Rob - we use ZAPICON to make a DPaint brush into a TOOL icon, then ICONTYPE to change it to any other kind of icon (though project to drawer doesn't seem to happen), and ICONMERGE to make "animated icons". There is also a program called BRUSH2ICON which does similar things. Find them all on the MD Icon Theme disk. And fonts - they're everywhere! Including a whole diskfull of TeX fonts on a recent Fish disk which can be converted into Amiga fonts, not to mention our Fonts Theme disk. ________________________________________________________________________ MORE PRINTER DRIVERS Henry Gilkes sent in a disk full of printer drivers from West Lakes SA, and there are a few new ones there, thanks a lot Henry. If anyone wants any of these, feel free. There is also another disk full of drivers, mainly thanks to Chris Hussey and Eric Holroyd, along with Colin Day and a couple of other generous souls. NECp5.8 Qume_LetterPro_20 CBM_MPS1000 Okidata_293I EpsonQ diablo_630 NECp6.1 ImagewriterII NECp6.2 diablo_c-150 NECp6.3 brother_hr-15xl Xerox_4020 HP_PaintJet NECcol.24 Diablo630.1 Diablo630.2 HP_LaserJet Okidata_292 okimate_20 LQ2500V1.2 Diablo_Advantage_D25 diablo_adv_d25 epson_jx-80 LQ2500V1.2a DiabloC150.2 DiabloD25.1 hp_laserjet_plus DiabloD25.2 NECp5.XL DiabloC150.1 __________________________________________________________________________ D O N'T P I R A T E M E G A D I S C by Nic Wilson & Andy Clay [Ed: Nic insisted that I put this letter on the disk, and as he and Andy are responsible for some of the best content of Megadisc, I just had to do so. What's more, I greatly appreciate the sentiments expressed, and have to agree with them. How much pirating of Megadisc occurs? I have no idea, but however much there is, I'd be happier if there were less.] I would like to state my opinion on the piracy of MegaDisc. Andy and I are programmers, we program now for the Amiga alone. The programs we write are either requests from other users or to help ourselves in our day to day programming. Quite often these programs (like the ones on this disk) are very useful to others. As we do not personally know every Amiga user in Australia and the world, we have two choices in getting our programs to you. We could sell them via a software house which we do not want to do as we program for the sheer enjoyment. Our other option is to distribute them via Magazines such as MegaDisc. If users constantly pirate MegaDisc, MegaDisc will disappear from the market and make it very hard for ourselves and other programmers to distribute our programs. MegaDisc, in my opinion is the best value for money out of all of the Amiga Disk Magazines. It is a locally produced product and we owe it to ourselves to support MegaDisc. I urge all User Group Presidents to ban the piracy of MegaDisc in their clubs. In our user group, anyone caught with a pirate copy of MegaDisc is given one chance to destroy it and then buy an original or be removed from the club. If anyone would like to respond to my opinion, please respond to MegaDisc so all users may read your reponse. Nic Wilson Technician, Programmer, Club President ________________________________________________________________________ Dear Megadisc, Can you supply any information on setting up a Midi system? Having bought Gary Rayner's Interface and the Deluxe Music Construction Set at the same time as the Amiga, also a Yamaha SHS10 keyboard with a Midi built in, every effort to link up has been fruitless. I am a Yamaha organ enthusiast. The President of the Brisbane Users Group, Dr. Greg Perry, recently installed a NetComm Modem for me. Greg spent a considerable time at my home instructing me in how to use the Modem. I would give every recommendation to Greg for his backup service, rare in this day and age. By the way I am a member of the Brisbane Users Group. Please find enclosed cheque for Games 6 Pack and other items. DAVID BEERE Beachmere. Qld. Ed: Info on MIDI can be found on MD7, and there is a book called "Music Through MIDI" locally available. The DOS Disk_Manual will be priced just like Megadisc, but current subscribers/purchasers of MD can get it for $13.95, when it's released (about end of October, I'd say). Anyone interested can tell us to contact them when it's released. And I'm glad you got good service from Greg - he's got an offer going of NetComm Pocket Modem plus GPTERM (Viatel and general comms package) for $360 for anyone who can show proof of purchase of MD. _________________________________________________________________________ Dear Megadisc, I'm looking forward to Megadisc 8 and appreciate the M.I.D.I. articles in No. 7. Please include the revised MIDI circuit in a future Megadisc. My main interest is computer music and I have one of the latest Yamaha H.S.8's. This is Midi compatible and I have managed to get a reasonable system working with my Amiga 1000 and Deluxe Music Construction Set, but it is a bit slow when you input music from the Yamaha keyboard - the dreaded GURU appears too often when you try to go too fast or if you try to input from both keyboards at once/or the pedals with a keyboard - have you any suggestions, or information about future programs that will get round this? Keep up the good work. BILL BLUNDEN Elizabeth Park, S.A. Ed: Doug Myers will be glad to hear that, Bill - why don't you contact him (call us)? I'm sure he can point you in the right direction. Also read the "Dynamic_Studio" article this issue by Paul Nash, who seems to have a lot of information about music - get in touch with him too. _________________________________________________________________________ Dear Megadisc, Once again, sincere thanks for the excellent service your publication is providing. Such efficient access to the PD catalogue, as well as the quality of your articles, has and is continuing to increase my understanding and application to the enormous creative potential of the Amiga. DAVID YOUNG Stanwell Park, NSW. Ed: David is using the Amiga as a professional tool for graphics and animation. He's sent us an excellent article on all this, which will be in this issue if we can squeeze it in (it came late) - if not, see it on the next issue. __________________________________________________________________________ Dear MD, Got your letter the other day, promoting MD, and asking for submissions etc. etc. Here is my contribution. Hope you can use it! I know ARP has been covered briefly in a couple of places, but this is a COMPREHENSIVE review. Besides, it's the only software I currently have that I feel strongly enough about to review. ARP is great!!! If it's a bit long, short, whatever, feel free to play around with it. I'm not a journo or anything, so I don't care what people do to my ramblings. Do whatever you like to it, only USE it! Speaking of M.D., congratulations on the good work, etc. etc. Only one problem - living in the country makes it impossible to get M.D.! All the local stores have stopped stocking Amiga software - obviously they can't get a big profit margin on Amy programs! Maybe it's time to subscribe?! All I have to do now is work out where to get the money from! (a poor College student who hasn't worked for 6 months isn't very flush, believe me!) Anyway, best finish up here and let you get back to the task of compiling the next issue! Drop me a line or something if you can't include my article (we all like to improve on our faults and I can't do that if I don't know what they are!) Regards, Jason Pearse. Bathurst Ed: Thanks, Jason, see your ARP review on this disk. It is a pity that there's a lack of supply of good software to far-flung dealers - usually it's not their fault, but rather the tendency of most software houses not to send software on consignment, so that it can be returned if not sold. Dealers don't like to be stuck with unsold stock, so tend to err on the very cautious side. If software houses got their act together and released software simultaneously here and overseas, as well as taking back unsold copies, I think we'd all benefit, and there would certainly be less piracy - people will buy software in quantity if it's good quality and available. __________________________________________________________________________ Dear Megadisc, I would like to tell you of something that happened that other "new to computer" users may be experiencing. I recently purchased an Expansion Module for my Amiga 1000, as I found there were occasions when I needed more memory - or so the dreaded "Guru" kept telling me. He has been telling me this since I purchased it in 1986. We plugged the Expansion Module in - nothing happened. We turned the Amiga off - checked that the Module was pressed in correctly - turned it on again. I put the "kind words" disc in, opened it, typed a letter, tried to print it, only to be told by the *!!*!!* Guru that I was out of memory. I contacted the firm we had purchased the Module from. We were asked to bring the Module and Computer in. We did. They checked it out and their technician told us he suspected a faulty Pal chip. He said that when Amiga first came out that some chips had been purchased from Texas and that these had turned out to be faulty. Because Amiga did not know which computers had the faulty chips, they could not re-call them. The outcome is that it cost me $100 to have a CPU replaced. I have written to Commodore but do not hold out much hope. Keep up the good work - the Megadisc is TERRIFIC. MARGARET BALDWIN Sadliers Crossing, Qld. Ed: Yes, the old demon A1000 PAL chip problem. There are various people around who can fix this problem, including Nic Wilson in Qld, and Chris Ralph in Sydney (see Oz_Products). Thanks for kind comments, Margaret. _________________________________________________________________________ Dear Megadisc, I have just received a copy of Megadisc 7 and proceeded to make an AmigaBasic disk from the tutorial. Some points that you may or may not be aware of are: Copying to RAM:- Copy c/Format RAM:C failed to work with w/bench 1-2 but substituting System for c worked. Also during Copy RAM:libs to AB the line reads, Devs All instead of Libs All. However I would like to express my appreciation for an article that caters for the first time users like myself. New users who have difficulty in getting any programs to work from Manual instructions most of which seem to favour experienced computer operators. I hope the series and some future articles will continue in the same vein. CLIFF HICKMAN Tingira Heights. NSW. Ed: Jonathan Potter continues his series on AmigaBasic this issue, seems to be much appreciated by various people. Jonathan keeps his FORMAT command in his C: directory, but it's true that it starts out in the SYSTEM drawer on the Workbench. I guess anyone who got that far searched around for it till they found where it was. Colin Tringham provides a good article on how to set up for writing programs this issue, and Gary O'Connor tells me that next issue will have a bunch of practical hints from him (he's made up a Theme disk which is indispensable for Basic programmers - get it from our PD collection). _________________________________________________________________________ Dear Megadisc, Thank you for the two disks that I received on the airdrop on 17th August. Both arrived intact despite some fairly bad weather. You can rest assured that a subscription will be forthcoming upon my return to Australia sometime in December. I have found the information on all of your disks to be very useful. Most of the questions that I wrote to you about have been answered, however I could find no information about running a program written in BASIC from the CLI. The tutorial on BASIC tells how to run AMIGABASIC from the CLI but not the actual BASIC program. This is fairly important to the program as I wish to save the memory involved in loading the Workbench to free up as much memory as possible for the BASIC program. Another question that I have come up with since our conversation relates to American software. My parents are currently residents in Washington and have offered to get some software for me. Is software for the U.S. market compatible with the Australian Amiga monitors etc., or are there modifications to the software brought out here? Further to our radio-telephone conversation, you asked me to give you a bit of information about where I am, what I am doing and what my Amiga is used for. I am living on an island in the southern ocean (about 55 deg.south in latitude). I work for the Bureau of Meteorology as an observer and my job here involves doing a series of surface and upper atmosphere observations as part of the world-wide meteorological network. Part of these observations is a 12 hourly balloon flight where we release a hydrogen filled balloon with an instrument package under it used to measure pressure, temperature and humidity through the atmosphere to a height of about 26km. I am writing a program to deal with the raw data from this package. This involves the input of pressure, temperature, relative humidity and elapsed time into the program to get a radiation correction to the temperature and also to extrapolate between the pressures that have been input, to get information at standard pressure levels through the atmosphere. The program regularly deals with arrays of the order 100 by 10 and so is fairly memory intensive, hence my wish to save memory through avoiding loading of the Workbench. As a part of the programming I have had to come up with some nice routines to control input of information and also to control the editing of data. If you are interested I will send these into you on a disk when I get back to Australia. Aside from this programming my Amiga also sees use as a Word Processor for typing up of letters which are all sent out via telex. The main program that I use for this is Text Craft which I find very good for its ease of use. As you might expect, the computer also sees a fair bit of usage for playing games, Shanghai being the one that seems to get the most use. DAVID FREEMAN Macquarie Island, Antactica (!) Ed: Greetings to our coldest user! Apart from the fact that US-written programs (except where expressly designed) address NTSC screens (ie, 400 pixels vertically is maximum) and so leave a black space at the bottom of our PAL screens, they work fine. US programmers are wising up to the (bigger) PAL market and most programs seem to come out in 2 versions these days, or even better, recognise which of the 2 systems they're running on. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX END OF READERS_LETTERS XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX