Falcon News...........

       I was working for 7 days in my local computer  shop,RJ  Computers
(30 Westbourne rd, Downend, Bristol, tel 566369 ;-)  )
and  I  noticed  that they had two Falcons in  the  shop,  one  for  shop
demonstrations  and one for selling.  So far they had ordered  the  extra
memory and the hard disk,  but none had turned up, so we waited for a few
days and low and behold......It all turned up.
          Bob  (The techy man at RJ) had connected up the memory and  the
hard drive but disaster struck!!!!!!!  The hard  drive was formatted  for
an  Amiga and we could not low-level-format the drive as we didn't  have
any software to do this..
          So  after a few days Bob recieved some software,  but they  had
sent the Skuzzy software which isn't much good when you have a IDE drive.
But  Bob was not to be beaten and eventually managed to format the  drive
with the wrong software (Amazing bloke). So we were ready.......
          The first things to go on were the basic demos, a rather pretty
"Motorola inside" demo (65,000+ colours),  and 2 versions of a demo  which
span a floor made up of tiled faces,  and distorted the floor at the same
time,  whilst it zoomed it and out (It makes you feel sick after 20 secs,
but it is worth it).
          Then I arrived with my mountain of software and started to fill
up the hard drive.  I had a program called Winrec which is a P.D.  real
time  sampler  to hard disk proggie,  but we had no way of  inputing  any
sound into the microphone socket.  This is where I come in.  I made up a
lead  which  connected the Falcon to the Amiga CD-32,  and by  using  the
Amiga as a CD player,  you can sample the CD.  So two songs by Queen went
on.  The  good  thing about the Falcon is that it can add compression  at
the same time,  so a song that should take 40 Megs on the hard drive only
takes 14!  Not bad eh!!!!!!  (this was for a song that lasted 4 mins, and
was recorded at 33Khz-16bit-stereo!!!).
          I then tried some programs from the ST,  one was FCopy pro, and
the  other  was  the AVK virus killer.  Both worked well  and  all  other
programs that ran on an ST, ran about 4 times as quick on the Falcon.
          Then  today  I went into RJ's with my brother and  watched  Bob
install  a 9 meg demo onto the Falcons diminishing Hard drive  space.  We
booted it up and.....and......and the screen went all fuzzy.  I  realised
that  the demo only ran on a SVGA monitor.  So we ripped one out  of  the
inferior 386 that we had in the shop and plugged it in..........
          The demo starts with some nice clear music and a piccie showing
four  areas  of  the demo,  Graphics,  Sound,  Serious  software  and  an
Introduction of the Falcon 030.  All you do it click on the corresponding
quarter of the screen and the demo loads.
          All the sub-sections have the same sort of thing, i.e. They all
show  a bit of text with an  Australian woman reading the words  out  to
you  (REALLY clear speech).  The graphics show you all of the  different
rezes and colour modes,  the sound shows you all of the effects that  you
can do (all of the effects changing the womans voice!), the serious stuff
shows you the really exciting spreadsheets and databases you can get, and
the introduction explains why you should get a Falcon....
     All in all there must be about 10 mins of speech from the woman, and
just  when  you  leave  the demo a man says "We're  doing  it  your  way"
(ooeerr).
     So all in all I have been impressed by the Falcon,  but owing to the
fact that I am Uni for another 2 years,  the chances that I will get  one
are quite remote.......


Sob.....Sob........