From megalith!nobody@uunet.UU.NET Tue May 3 11:29:57 1994 Received: from relay2.UU.NET by toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu (4.1/UCD.CS.2.5) id AA06019; Tue, 3 May 94 11:29:54 PDT Received: from uucp5.uu.net by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AAwoib01666; Tue, 3 May 94 14:29:48 -0400 Received: from megalith.UUCP by uucp5.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL ; Tue, 3 May 1994 14:29:50 -0400 Received: by megalith.miami.fl.us (V1.16.20/w5, Dec 29 1993, 21:22:55) id <1dsk@megalith.miami.fl.us>; Tue, 3 May 94 13:39:13 EDT -0400 Return-Path: Sender: errors@megalith.miami.fl.us Errors-To: errors@megalith.miami.fl.us Warnings-To: errors@megalith.miami.fl.us Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Reply-To: fnf@fishpond.cygnus.com (Fred Fish) Message-Number: 801 Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.announce X-Newssoftware: CSAA NMS 1.2 Message-Id: Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 13:39:10 -0400 (EDT) From: fnf@fishpond.cygnus.com (Fred Fish) (CSAA) To: announce@cs.ucdavis.edu (CSAA-Submissions) Subject: Fishing Report - May 1, 1994 Status: R T H E F I S H I N G R E P O R T by Fred Fish May 1, 1994 --------------------- COMMODORE LIQUIDATION --------------------- Along with all the other Amigan's that got the word that Commodore had filed for voluntary liquidation on April 29th, I was deeply saddened by this news. What this means for the future of Amiga technology still remains to be seen. It is everyone's hope that another company will buy the rights to manufacture and distribute Amiga hardware and software, and that the Amiga as we know it will continue to survive and evolve. With Commodore gone, the continued existence of strong and vital channels for organization and distribution of freely redistributable software is more important than ever. Please be assured that I will continue to support the Amiga via my CD-ROM distributions for as long as there continues to be a strong demand for such service. ------------------- FROZENFISH CD-ROM's ------------------- The first FrozenFish CD-ROM went into production on April 23rd and started shipping on April 27th. This CD contains 6128 archives, including the complete archived contents of floppy disks 1-1000, all of the GNU and other useful utilities off the latest FreshFish CD, and all of the new material on the first three FreshFish CD's that was not included in the floppy library. In summary, this CD currently contains everything of interest that I have ever released on floppy or CD. The FrozenFish CD is the CD that I'll be recommending for BBS/FTP use, because it has a full 640+ Mb of archives, including much more than just what is in the floppy library. Although the GoldFish CD is a two CD set containing approximately 1295 Mb of material, it is the same material (disks 1-1000) presented in two different forms, archived (425 Mb) and unarchived (870 Mb). So for BBS/FTP users, the FrozenFish CD is a superset of the GoldFish CD. Anyone that has already preordered the GoldFish CD, that thinks the FrozenFish CD would better suit their needs, can switch to the FrozenFish CD by simply sending me a FAX or leaving me a message at (602) 917-0917. You can also send me electronic mail at my internet address "fnf@fishpond.cygnus.com". If you do request a switch, please advise me whether you would only want to switch if you can get one of the CD's from the initial production run, rather than having to wait for a possible second run. There are only a limited number of this CD currently available. ----------------- GOLDFISH CD-ROM's ----------------- The GoldFish CD-ROM is going into production on May 3rd and should start shipping on about May 7th. This is a two CD set, in a single slimline jewel case, and contains the entire contents of the 1000 disk floppy library in both archived (BBS ready) and unarchived form. The first CD contains disks 1-1000 in archived form, and disks 1-249 in unarchived form. The second CD contains disks 250-1000 in unarchived form. This 2 CD set is the same price as the single CD FrozenFish and FreshFish CD's. The GoldFish CD contains a program called "PufferFish", that makes it simple to create master floppy disks directly off the CD-ROM, for further duplication and distribution. It also has the same BBS support files and tools as the first FrozenFish CD, and contains a beta release of the new 2.0 version of KingFisher to make finding material much easier. ------------------ FRESHFISH CD-ROM's ------------------ At this point I am completely sold out on the first (Oct 93) and second (Dec 93) FreshFish CD's. The third FreshFish CD (Mar/Apr 94) started shipping on Mar 14th and I still have sufficient stock of these CD's to meet the anticipated demand for the next month or so. The next FreshFish CD will be the May/June issue, and is expected to start shipping about the middle of May. My staging area for the new material that will be included on this CD is already over 120Mb, and will likely grow to close to 150Mb by the time the CD is finalized. --------------------------- FUTURE FLOPPY DISK RELEASES --------------------------- Now that I have reached disk 1000, I will no longer continue to produce a floppy disk based distribution. When I first announced this several months ago, a number of organizations and individuals inquired about taking over this job and continuing the library past disk 1000, with my "official blessing". I have selected Amazing Computing (PIM Publications) for this job, based on their longtime commitment to the Amiga. The conditions of continuing to keep my endorsement as the official continuation of the floppy based library include adherence to my standards for quality, production values (look and feel), and free redistribution of the resulting work. The plan is that they will select the best bits and pieces off each FreshFish CD-ROM, and organize new floppy releases using this material. They may of course, decide to incorporate material from other sources as well. For a limited time I will continue to fill orders for floppy disks. After about June 1st, I will either forward floppy orders to Amazing Computing, or return them to sender. --------------------------- ISO-9660 MASTERING SOFTWARE --------------------------- Starting with the March/April FreshFish CD-ROM, I switched mastering software. I am now using an enhanced version of mkisofs, which was written by Eric Youngdale, and enhanced by Frank Munkert to make it suitable for generating the "Amiga flavor" of ISO-9660. This mastering software has now been used to produce the previous FreshFish CD, the FrozenFish CD, the GoldFish CD, and will be used for the next FreshFish CD. The CD-ROM's produced by mkisofs are 100% compatible with the latest versions of most 3rd party CD-ROM filesystems, including AmiCDROM, Xetec, Ralph Babel's, Commodore's 3.1, FastLane, and AsimWare Innovations. Other products have either not been tested or have been found to be incompatible for reasons that are not yet clear. This software is covered by the GPL (GNU General Public License) and once a few more enhancements are made, myself or Frank will be working to get the changes folded back into the version maintained by Eric. In any case, the package will be available for anyone to use. Someone has already written a "bare-bones" graphical user interface for it. Hopefully this will continue to evolve to the point where Amiga users will have access to an easy to use mastering system for the production of Amiga compatible CD-ROM's. -Fred ><> -- Read all administrative posts before putting your post up. Mailing list: announce-request@cs.ucdavis.edu. Comments to CSAA2@megalith.miami.fl.us. MAIL ALL COMP.SYS.AMIGA.ANNOUNCE ANNOUNCEMENTS TO announce@cs.ucdavis.edu.