Film At Eleven The News and Rumors of June, by Jim Meyer We can dispense with the most frequently asked question, "Is 1.3 out yet?" right away. No, it is not. Commodore-Amiga software techs were bitten by a few unanticipated bugs (yes, that's an oxymoron...) which caused Yet Another Test Release. One sign of their hopefulness that this is the Final Release is the label: Omega 3. Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet, which doesn't leave much room for more releases. There is an excellent chance that 1.3 will be released within the next 6 weeks. (Unless, of course, it isn't...) The 1.3 ROMS, which are little changed from the 1.2 ROMS, have passed QA and are ready for release. At least one bug, slated for a fix in 1.4, was frozen into the ROMS. The File System (the old one) does not correctly update file size after an error has occurred. Also, under the old File System, you cannot have partitions larger than 52 megs. The Fast File System fixes this, and the Old File System will have this deficiency corrected in the next version. Anyone writing printer drivers and using the Gamma 4 release, by the way, should be warned that things have changed sufficiently to make these drivers incompatible with the current release. YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR RAD: AND AGNUS TOO: One of my favorite features of 1.3 is RAD:, the recoverable ram disk. When you set RAD: up right, you can re-boot from it. Unfortunately, it is not compatible with the new "Fatter Agnus" chip, which means that you will have to choose between the luxury of booting from ram, and the luxury of having 1 megabyte of chip memory. Do you like the "pop-up" menus that the Mac has? If you do, be nice to Jim Mackraz. He's hoping to be able to make them one of the new features of the 1.4 release. Speaking of being nice to people, it is now safe to stop reporting the "Hold down Left- Amiga-N and drag a window" bug. Andy Finkel estimates that this bug has been reported 82 times since it was published in Amazing Computing. Not only that, but Bryce Nesbitt, the author of that article, is now part of Commodore-Amiga Technical Support. Looking for a job? As of this week, Commodore-Amiga still has an opening for a summer CATS person, or - as Carolyn Scheppner put it - a "slave". Interested (and qualified) persons should contact Commodore at their West Chester number. John Foust, commenting in the Amiga Zone section of Plink, said that AMnews is no more. Their parent company, Topdown Development Inc., was apparently a little too lavish with their money. Word from their former Vice-President is that AMnews is "on hold for now." The good news is that this leaves a number of Amiga journalists with more free time. Hey, folks - TUNA is looking for more authors! The pay isn't very good, but we promise that we will never go bankrupt! Did you ever wonder if the price of RAM chips had much of an impact at Commodore? Ponder this: the reported figure of 600,000 Amigas sold translates to something like 9 MILLION ram chips! Short Takes: Anakin has announced that they plan a 1.3 release of Easyl. One feature slated for this release is overscan support. They are currently taking suggestions for features. William Hawes has sold over 1,000 copies of AREXX. AREXX, the Amiga port of the REXX language, is Bill's self-written, self-promoted, and self-marketed product. Not only that, but AREXX (quoting from the manual) is "a 100% Amiga product", since both the program and documentation were written on an Amiga 1000. Nice going! If you're interested in owning the World's Most Expensive C- 64, take heart. There is a new revision of The 64 Emulator which looks for an installed 68020 chip. I have yet to see benchmarks on this release, but it is entirely possible that it now works just a little slower than a real C64. Jerry Pournelle has the new 1.3 ROMs in his Amiga 2000. I wish someone more deserving had gotten them, however, as Mr. Pournelle is still given to bashing the Amiga. At least he recently admitted that he "forgets how to use the CLI" if he stays away from it for a while. Contrary to what Mr. Pournelle writes in his column, the CLI will cease to be a Preferences option with the 1.3 release. It will always be present, unless the user sends it away with an ENDCLI statement. The next Amiga - the mythical Amiga 3000 - will have a much more attractive case than the 2000. It has been reported that the case of the 2000, designed in West Germany, is considered quite attractive by the Germans. It figures. This is an old tip, but it bears recycling. Certain AmigaDOS commands require a temporary file, which is created in the T directory. Unless you have reassigned T: elsewhere, the system will access the Workbench disk, if available, or will prompt you to insert it. Script files - invoked with Execute - also require a T directory. Your system will work more quickly, with fewer disk swaps, if you create a T directory in RAM: very early in your Startup-Sequence and assign T: there. Try this: Makedir RAM:T Assign T: RAM:T That's all there is to it. Golden Gate Shows has announced the Amiga-Commodore Users Computer Show, to be held September 10 & 11 at the Bayside Expo Center in Boston, Massachusetts. A quick check of the exhibit map indicates that 98 booths are planned. Further information may be obtained from the Show Co-ordinator, Fosella Kirkham, at P.O. Box 767, Larkspur CA, 94939. That concludes the June installment of FAE. Late-breaking news items and/or announcements are always welcome, and may be electronically mailed to me via Plink: NY*JIM, or BIX: jmeyer, or may be US-mailed to: Jim Meyer, P.O. Box 1168, Wappingers Falls, NY 12590. Interceptor Review by Jim Meyer I've managed to waste most of the last three days, thanks to Electronic Arts' latest offering, Interceptor. This simulator has been getting rave reviews since its release. Indeed, one Interceptor fan is none other than Jay Miner, the man whose avowed intention in designing the Amiga was to make better flight simulators possible. Is Interceptor the killer game it purports to be? Is it worth $49.95? Is there a Santa Claus? I'll do my best to answer at least two of these questions. Interceptor comes on a non-copy-protected disk, accompanied by a 19-page manual and a codewheel. You may either boot from the Interceptor disk, or (with the Interceptor disk mounted in the internal drive) click on the disk icon. You gain nothing by not booting from the Interceptor disk, however, since there is no way to exit the game without re-booting. The game itself, while not copy-protected, employs a form of piracy protection. You must successfully decode a 4-digit hexadecimal number, using the codewheel, in order to play. You'll have to read the instructions in order to accomplish this, as the codewheel is read from the inner wheel to the outer, the reverse of what one would normally expect. Keep the codewheel handy. You'll have to decipher a code every time you start a mission. When you first run Interceptor, you are assigned the callsign "R", for Rookie. This designation means that you have successfully completed the first three missions. Should you decide to use your own callsign, you will have to qualify for missions. Once you qualify, you will have to successfully complete each of the missions in turn before you can fly the next. Qualification for combat missions consists of taking off from an aircraft carrier, and successfully landing on that carrier. If you have ever parallel parked an 18-foot car in a 19-foot space during an earthquake, while sitting in the back seat, you will have a fair idea of how easy this task will be. Fortunately, crashes are painless. This simulation is, in a word, stunning. The solid 3-D graphics, while sparse, are well rendered. The animation is the smoothest I've seen yet, and there is very little lag in the controls. You are given a choice of vantage points, either sitting in the pilot's seat or viewing the jet from the outside. While in the pilot's seat, you can look in any of six directions, as well as up or down. The view from outside the plane is particularly well done. When you first select this vantage point, you are "zoomed in" behind the plane. Should you be close enough to water or land, you will even see the plane's shadow! There are six missions in all, four of which are documented in the manual. They range from the relatively simple "Visual Confirmation" mission, which requires you to fly close enough to an unidentified aircraft to be able to identify it, to a split- second mission which requires you to shoot down an incoming cruise missile. While I was somewhat disappointed with the limited number of different missions, the manual warns that "...you may have to contend with a tougher array of opposing pilots" the second time around. I have the frayed nerves to attest to the skill of the first wave of pilots, and I'm not so sure I want to come up against a tougher bunch! Interceptor is a very involving simulation. When you execute an Inside loop, you can almost feel your body being slammed down into your seat. The realism programmed into the game heighten the involvement considerably. There is a perceptible "boom" when you break the sound barrier, accompanied by a jerk in the movement of the plane. After you fire a rocket at an enemy plane, it is plainly visible as it tracks its quarry. The afterburners kick in with a satisfying "whump". You can even "skip" off the wave tops, provided you hit at an appropriate angle and speed. If you try to fire your rockets while you are landed, you will see their fragments fly as they hit the ground and explode. For some reason, however, they will fire if you are floating on the ocean. I'm not so sure about Santa Claus, but I do know that Interceptor is a killer game, well worth the purchase price. I do wish that it was expandable, perhaps with separate mission disks, and the keyboard controls are not as sensitive as I'd like, but none of this has stopped me from spending a lot of time with it. Robert Dinnerman has programmed a winner with Interceptor. Video Titler 1.1 by John R. Vig Once one becomes proficient in using VideoTitler, it is a terrific program. Becoming proficient is not easy, however. VideoTitler consists of two parts: VideoTitler, which is what the name implies, and VideoSEG, a special effects generator and slide show program. To use these programs, an Amiga with two disk drives and at least 1 megabyte of RAM is highly recommended. With VideoTitler, one can: o Create spectacular titles in any of four resolutions, 320X200, 320X400, 640X200 and 640X400, plus standard and "severe" overscan. o Use any Amiga font, ColorFont (created by Calligrapher), or preferably, one of the PolyFonts which are unique to VideoTitler. A set of symbols and shapes are also provided. The PolyFonts can be stretched, tilted, and mirrored. For example, it is easy to make a large PolyFont title that extends diagonally from one corner of the screen to the other. o Enhance the fonts with any of 20 different styles. Examples of style names are: Emboss, Fat_neon, 3D_Block, and LargeStar, o Control separately the colors of text, and of the styling (e.g., the shadows and 3D backdrops). o Use IFF pictures, brushes and windows as the backdrops and fills for the titles, or create a color-gradation, solid color, or tiled pattern as the backdrop. o Save the title as an IFF file, to be used in a paint, animation or slide show program. o Create animations with the titles. o Use clips of images or text, and manipulate the clips for interesting effects. The VideoSEG (SEG = Special Effects Generator) is a presentation system which allows the creation of superb quality slide shows, in either a manual or automatic mode. One can select from over 50 different slide-to-slide transitions, including wipes, fades, spiral-in and spiral-out, block, diamond and dissolve transitions. While one slide is being shown, the next is loaded into a buffer to insure smooth, professional-looking transitions. In the manual mode, the mouse becomes the slide projector controller. The left-mouse button is "forward" and the right-mouse button is "reverse". An option allows the pointer to be visible so that one can point with the mouse to items of special interest. Creating and editing a slide show is easy. The only objection I have to VideoSEG is that it has "pop-up" menus which pop up in the middle of the screen, and which require the pressing of the LEFT mouse button; i.e., for some menus, one presses the RIGHT mouse button, for other menus, one must press the LEFT mouse button. The program is supplied on two disks, and with two manuals. The VideoTitler manual is 120 pages long, the VideoSEG manual is 43 pages, plus an eight page "Addendum" was supplied with the 1.1 upgrade. These make for a lot of necessary but dull reading. I have mixed feelings about this program. The capabilities are outstanding, however, in the user interface and manuals, there is a great deal of room for improvement. For example, to center text, one must hit three keys: SHIFT + ALT + UP-ARROW, and there is no menu equivalent for this operation. Even for the operations that can be executed from the menus, some of the menu items' names seem illogical. For example, to select a color or color gradation for the background after creating the text portion of a title, the menu item is named "Clear To". Also, there are four color palettes for changing the colors of the various parts of the text styles. These are named A, B, C, and D-pens. The B pen is used to change the shadow layer of text, for example. Would it not be easier to remember what this pen does if they had named it "Shadow pen"? The manuals are fairly complete, but contain too few examples. A "Keyboard Commands" reference card is included, but it is printed in light blue letters, and with tiny text. Is Aegis more concerned with making life difficult for pirates than for making the program easy to use for legitimate users? (Aegis should also note that light blue is no longer difficult to copy with modern copying machines.) VideoTitler is unprotected. It can be installed on a hard disk, with some difficulty. After installing by following the manual's directions, VideoTitler could not find the fonts. I eventually discovered that I had to edit a ".titler" file in order for VideoTitler to look for the fonts in the appropriate directory on my hard disk. After installation on a hard disk, VideoTitler can no longer be started from the WorkBench. My attempt at "zapping" was unsuccessful. I called Aegis technical support for assistance. "It can't be started from WorkBench" was the answer I got. The Night Sky of July by Marilyn Bonachea Date Event July 1 Mercury is at its greatest latitude south of the ecliptic. July 2 Midpoint of 1988 occurs at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). July 5 The moon passes 5o north of Mars. July 6 The Earth is at its furthest point from the Sun, (Aphelion). Mercury is at its greatest elongation west, 21.4o from the Sun. July 8 A meteor Shower can be expected tonight (Capri- cornid meteors). Peak is at midnight. July 9 The moon passes 6o north of Jupiter. July 17 Mars is at its greatest latitude south of the ecliptic. July 19 Venus is at its brightest, magnitude -4.5. July 25 Mercury makes its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion). July 29 Delta Aquarid meteor shower tonight. Expect radiants in the sky most of the night, peaking around 2 AM. The rate should be anywhere from 10 - 35 radiants per hour. July 30 The moon makes its closest approach to Earth (perigee). The Start of Summer by Marilyn Bonachea The months of June and July are at once an ending as well as a beginning. The dark interlude of the Spring sky begins to fade in our memories as the Summer's brightening star field unfolds its awesome spectacle. The eastern sky brings forth the great gas and dust clouds of the Milky Way, nursery to tomorrow's stars. Our tour begins promptly after sunset, so make your way out of the city to a rural area (if you have the program Galileo, or perhaps Amigazer or Starchart, you should be able to follow along with me without leaving the comfort of your home). Lean back and enjoy some generalized stargazing while your eyes adjust to the darkness. Looking north, we find the familiar Big Dipper, a natural starting place for our tour due to its easy recognizability. The Dipper is part of Ursa Major, the Big Bear. The dipper is easy to find, due to its brightness, but try and identify the rest of the Bear. Also, test your eyesight by looking at Mizar, the next-to-last star in the bear's tail; good eyes will find two stars there. If you make an imaginary line connecting the two stars on the far end of the dipper's bowl and continue across the sky, your path will take you straight to Polaris, the North Star. Polaris acts as a sort of pedestal upon which Ursa Major, the Little Bear, pivots as it wheels around the northern sky. Seeming as if to surround and snare the Little Bear within its coils is Draco, the Dragon. Draco can be hard to find simply because he snakes around so much. His tail lies between the Big and Little Bear, and his head rests near Lyra and Hercules. Below Draco is Cepheus, the King, a house-shaped figure which rests next to the Milky Way. East of Draco is Cygnus, the Swan, its outstretched wings spanning the Milky Way, with the bright star Deneb in its tail. Just above Cygnus is tiny Lyra, the Lyre. Vega, third brightest star in the sky, is here. South along the Milky Way we pass diamond-shaped Aquila which contains bright-white Altair. Further south is teapot- shaped Sagittarius, the Archer. Saturn is in Sagittarius during most of June, superimposed over the heart of the galaxy. This combination of Saturn and the center of the galaxy offers an unparalleled view rife with clusters, nebulae and star clouds, as well as majestic Saturn himself. Moving west, we find the curl which forms the stinger of Scorpius, the Scorpion. Scorpius boasts bright Antares as its focal point, and the region surrounding Antares is a beautiful sight indeed, when explored with binoculars. Reaching up toward the ecliptic (the path the Sun follows during the year), Scorpius' stinger arches as if to strike at the foot of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. Ophiuchus stands with his feet upon the ecliptic. The Serpent itself is divided in two: Serpens Caput, the Head, lies to the northwest and Serpens Cauda, the Tail, lies southeast, snaking its way into the Milky Way. Following the ecliptic westward we pass through Libra, the Scales, as we make our way to Virgo, the Maiden. Bright, blue- white Spica marks an ear of wheat held in the hand of Virgo. The other arm seems as if to grasp at the tail of Leo, the Lion. Leo rests on his forepaws, the bright star Regulus, while its head, shaped like a backwards "?" leads us back to our launch point, Ursa Major. Enjoy your tour, and see you next month! The Hewlett Packard PaintJet by Dan Bonachea Our beloved Amiga is blessed with outstanding graphics capability...I don't need to tell you that, you already know it. Unfortunately, until recently, Ami was cursed in one respect: the printed page. Oh, you can pick up any old near-letter quality printer and print very nice hardcopy of text, and some decent gray-scale pictures, even some fairly good 24-pin dot-matrix color output. But they just don't seem to have quite the grab that Ami's monitor has. This has been one of my few dislikes about my system. Graphic output simply was NOT up to par! Enter the Hewlett Packard PaintJet. The PaintJet is an ink-jet printer which combines 4 colors, cyan, yellow, magenta, and black, to perform its magic. The ink comes in two cartridges, one for black ink, and one for the three-color ink. The black ink cartridge has an approximate life-expectancy of approximately 1,100 pages, based on 1000 characters per page (at this point I was getting excited about the prospects of filling my house with every picture I have come across! Then I read on...) The color cartridge, unfortunately, requires a higher per-page ink density, so one can expect only about 180 pages of color graphics. BIG let-down. This unfortunate side-affect makes the price-per-page go up as well. Set-up is easy. The PaintJet (supposedly) comes in three versions, parallel, serial and HPIB (IEEE-488). I can only assume that the serial and HPIB interfaces are a special order, because mine came with a parallel interface and nothing more. The power supply is separate from the printer, ala the Commodore 64. When I first plugged the power supply in after setting up the printer, I got one of the biggest surprises I've had in quite some time...the printer goes through a sort of power-on/off routine, meaning that the power comes on for about half a second then goes right back off (I am still a little leery of this function, but I have heard of no failures caused by this, so I cross my fingers and hope). Once connected to the Amiga's parallel port and powered on, you are raring to go. Simply open up preferences, go to the printer select screen, scan through the printers available, and select...select...hmmm...there doesn't seem to be a choice for the PaintJet listed here. That's right, unless you have the AmigaDOS 1.3 printer drivers, printer.device and preferences, you'll be barking up the wrong tree. If you don't have them, all I can say is to get them. Numerous software packages are out which have the 1.3 printer stuff on the disk, such as ProWrite 2.0 or Shakespeare, or perhaps you might find some friendly dealer or maybe someone from your user group. Some specifications: print rate is a respectable 167 characters per second at 10 characters per inch, 200 cps at 12 cpi, and 300 cps at 18 cpi (You read that right. Most dot-matrix printers slow down as their characters get smaller, but the PaintJet gets faster). Line length is 80 chars at 10 cpi, 96 chars at 12 cpi, and 144 chars at 18 cpi. Two font sets are built in, Courier 12 pt., and Letter Gothic 12 pt. and 8 pt. (is that really THREE font sets? Arguable). Text printing can be uni- or bi-directional, color printing is uni-directional only, and transparencies can be printed upon (this, by the way, uses a larger amount of ink and the transparencies are NOT cheap). The printer will accept any 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper (more on this later). Maximum density is 180 dots per inch, both horizontal and vertical. dot size is 0.0085 inch (That's 85 THOUSANDTHS of an inch!) The printer comes with an 8K buffer installed, which is reduced proportionally in size if downloadable fonts are used. The physical size of the printer is 11.89 x 17.40 x 3.86 inches and weighs 11 pounds. Now for the nitty-gritty. As I said (contrary to popular belief), the printer will accept any 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper, within reason (weight-wise). There IS special paper made for the printer, a clay-coated paper which HP says is specially vacuumed to reduce dust, the number one enemy of ink-jet printers. I highly recommend using it, though not for HP's reasons. The clay-coated paper is specially made to work with the ink in the cartridges so that it will spread the ink together somewhat, blending the colors for a much more pleasing result than you will get with regular copier or typing paper. It also tends to dry much faster. How is output? Excellent! I have compared the output with the screen display, and all the colors are there, even in HAM mode. In fact, unless you want to buy a VERY high-end printer (minimum $5000), I don't see how you can do better. Yes, there is always the Xerox 4020 color ink-jet printer, and I must admit the output from that printer is excellent also. In fact, you can't go wrong with either printer, except for one fact. To clean the nozzles on the 4020, you need to get a cleaning fluid kit, which is not cheap. To clean the nozzles on the PaintJet, you need only wipe them with a supplied brush and plain WATER! Of course, you could also simply change the print cartridge. Oh! Did I forget to mention that the nozzles on the PaintJet are IN THE CARTRIDGE? EVERY time you change cartridges, you change print nozzles. HP does this with all their ink-jet printers, and I think it is a very good idea, considering the alternative. Let's get down to facts. Do I recommend the PaintJet? Just like any other computer-related hardware question, the answer depends on what you want to do with it. If your output has nothing to do with graphics of any sort, I would most certainly recommend against it. The cost of the cartridges is prohibitive, and there are dot-matrix printers available which can do a fine job for text-based printing. But if you have a need or desire for color output, I can see nothing in its price range which is as easy to use or has as nice a printed page as the PaintJet. Bravo, HP! CHEATING AT LARN by Frank Swilling (PEOPLELINK: Minotaur) The PD D&D game "Larn" is nice to look at and fun to play, but while those nice folks at The Software Distillery added up-to-date Amiga graphics to make the game more enjoyable, their thinking about death remained very medieval. They say, "If you die, you die. Kaput. Finis. Back to square one." I say, "Bull!" (Well, after all, I AM the Minotaur. Surviving the dangers of labyrinthine mazes is nothing new to me, eh?) And so I found a way to restore life to my hapless alter-ego without having to replay huge portions of the game. "Frank Daring", glutton for punishment that he is, has survived to play the game through Difficulty 7! (He has grown somewhat bored with going through the same adventures over and over again, though, and is now looking for new dragons to fry, as it were.) You may not want to test your patience through 7 levels of difficulty, but if you want to play at least ONE game completely through without fear of nasty little setbacks like death, read on. One of Larn's many files is named ".larnopts". .larnopts allows you to customize the game in several small ways, including naming your character, choosing his/her sex, and naming a "savefile" to which games in progress are written when saved by the player. Unfortunately, Larn erases your "savefile" when you restore the game for further playing, so if your character gets killed, you can't go back and re-restore the saved game to take another whack at it where you left off. Unless you take one extra step... First, go into CLI and Ed your .larnopts to set up your parameters. Mine looks like this: no-introduction male name: "Frank Daring" savefile: FD Then, whenever you save a game in progress, copy your savefile to a place where Larn won't see it when you restore the game. I play Larn from a disk in df1:, so when I save a game, I open a CLI window and type "copy df1:FD to VD0:". Then, if I get killed, all I have to do is "copy VD0:FD to df1:" and fire up the game from where I last saved it. What Larn doesn't know won't hurt it. Now for some tips on Strategic Saves. Always remember to copy your savefile to a place other than the disk you are playing from. (If you have room on the disk, you can make an extra directory and copy your savefile there, or you can hide your savefile from Larn by renaming it, i.e. copy df1:FD to df1:Peekaboo.) If you have the patience, you can gather a lot of power very quickly by drinking from fountains (don't wash!) and then weeding out the bad results but saving the good. Here's how I go about it: if I've saved the game before I drink, and the first effect is bad, I quit, copy VD0:FD to df1: and try again. (Quitting the game erases your savefile just as getting killed does.) If the result is good, I save the game, copy df1:FD to VD0:, restart, and take my next drink. Every bad effect is ignored, and every good result is saved, until the fountain dries up. Particularly good results include receiving extra hit points, extra experience points, and extra spells. (Extra spells, by the way, means extra times to cast spells in your repertoire. The spells themselves are obtained by reading books. The deeper you go into the dungeon, the more powerful the spells become, and the more experience points you need to have them work when you cast them. You won't live very long at the deeper levels without having a variety of powerful spells at your disposal.) If you save a game in the middle of a level, when you restore it the maze and monsters will be the same, but spell books and scrolls will contain randomly different spells and effects. If you save the game before reading a spell book, for example, you can exert some control over the spell you learn. (Many of the books in an "un-doctored" game are duplicates, and there's no point in receiving a spell you already have, so do your save-copy-restore routine until the spell comes up as something new to you. If you save a game right before you go downstairs to the next level, everything about that level will change if you quit-copy-play without doing a save while actually ON that level. This is useful in situations where the game throws you into an impossibly dangerous spot right off the bat and there's no way for you to avoid getting killed. For example, if you're only on Level 3, and going down to Level 4 puts you into a locked room with a Dragon, a Vampire, and an Umber Hulk, you're dead meat. No way do you have the spells, the hit points, the experience, or the weaponry to survive an encounter like that unless you can get out the door and lock it behind you without getting attacked, which isn't going to happen unless you're right next to the door and they're all at least two moves away from you. So quit-copy-play and keep going down to that level until the game comes up with a scenario you can "live" with. Save-copy at points where you have all your spells, hit points, etc., intact, so that if you tackle something that gets you killed, you can restore to a position of strength and try a different strategy. (On one occasion, I had to open a locked door and destroy seven powerful monsters in order to get to the stairs that would take me down to the next levels. I died 12 times before I was able to work out a hit-and-run strategy that ended with THEM dead instead of me.) There are other game-playing tips I could share with you, but, hey, this article is getting kind of long already, and I'm sure you'll want to think some things out for yourself as you go along. So use these tips in good health. And here's to your daughter's speedy recovery! MISCELLANEOUS MINUTES: A Report From the Omicron Beta Miga Michiana Chapter by TRAVIS-T The Omicron Beta Amiga Michiana Chapter met for the third time on Wednesday, June 1. This time it was for real. Burkat Computer people were great at getting the word out to the Amiga community. About 20 interested people actually showed up, and another dozen were reported as interested but unable to make it. So it looks as though it is finally going to all come together out here in Michiana Land. How did the meeting go? Pretty darned good! I let the start build gradually by playing portions of the video tape of the last Valpo meeting with Oran Sands. After it was late enough to actually get down to business we started discussing what we wanted to do as a group. First order of business was a group name. As suggestions were not forth coming (Amigoids can be quite shy at first) I put forth my favorite -- The Omicron Beta Chapter. Naturally some rose to the bait and asked what left field that one came out of. So I immediately launched into a fevered search for Leo Schwab's "Marketroids" demo. When it reached the punch line at the end, where the cartoon figure on a recumbent bike dragged out the Amiga sign and the words "No B--- S--- Just Excellence" flashed up I explained. To me this motto captures the quintessential spirit of the Amigoid. An unyielding search for the best in computing with a playful disregard for the conventional and mainstream. The early Mac fostered some of this spirit before the Apple marketroids polished it into the Yuppy's computer. But what other group than those folks at Los Gatos could whip up the "ultimate game computer" with Guru Meditations for system alerts and then seriously aim it at all markets? When CBM saved them from the clutches of Uncle Sam Tramiel and tried to tone down the high tech weirdness by getting rid of the Guru, the programmers flexed their collective muscles and forced it to be put back in. Then, a hacker in the developer community writes a program to get the Guru "Outta my face!" (GOMF!), and it proves to be a very popular utility. Only on the Amiga! Only 150,000 A1000 machines were sold in the 2 years of their production. These went to a group of individualists which had a high percentage of fiercely enthusiastic hackers. The composite picture is not of a teenager on a C64 breaking into systems. Instead it was of a professional programmer who enjoyed the power and freedom of having a "real" computer system at their disposal. They were strongly opinionated, often engaging in heated "flame wars" (debates or criticisms) on the bitstreams. Most of these came from the academic and research communities and did their work on multiuser minicomputers running Unix. The personal computers before 1985 did not offer them the kind of environment they would want to come home to. When the Amiga hit the market it held the promise of releasing the pent up creative urges in these enthusiasts. But this kind of character, however indelible the mark he/she might leave, is too rare to constitute a profitable market. When A500 hit the market it was often quietly noted as the passing of an era. The demographics of the Amiga community changed almost overnight. The Los Gatos group was gone, and the Amiga was turned into an advanced version of a '64. Nearly half a million new Amigas sold in half a year. Nevertheless, those who bought the new Amigas might be argued to have a slightly greater quotient of non-conformance. They were willing to take a risk on a machine that was snubbed by the journals as merely a game machine and prone to excessive crashes. They could look past the distortions and half-truths to see the Amiga for what it is -- a personal vehicle with enormous synergy and untapped potential for expressing the wings we all have inside ourselves. For some of us with the itch for excellence in whatever fashion, whether it is a horse, cars, rockets, or computers, nothing is really fast enough. "You shout loud and do the best you can." This enormous digression was meant to give the sense I tried to convey in a few brief words. I told the group that I liked Leo Schwab's rallying cry a lot. It makes a good motto and expression of esprit de corp in the manner of a fraternal organisation's motto. The Marines have their "semper fideles", my alma mater has "non sibi", and Phi Beta Kappa stands for "philosophia biou kybernetes." I think that "ou boliton arete" says it all for the Amiga enthusiast. "No BS just Excellence!" Yeah! Anyway, the group voted to adopt the name because nobody had anything they thought was better. As one member pointed out, "We can always change it later." The next order of business was nomination of officers. It was mentioned that certain programs from Commodore in support of user groups require a minimum level of formality -- a charter, bylaws, and officers. I nominated Scott Newman for President because of his leadership and extensive computer experience. He revenged himself by nominating me for Vice President. Jerry Jones was nominated Librarian because of his generous donation of a complete set Amiga ROM Kernel and System manuals. Linda I-forgot-your-name was nominated Secretary because of her obvious intelligence and irrepressible elan. Formal elections will be held at the next meeting but the party slate probably won't change. There were no competing nominations. Doc from Burkat's addressed the group on subjects ranging from mutual support to CBM policies. He had the new demo from EA for F-18 Interceptor. Hearing the digitized sounds of a high performance fighter in full augmentation blasting in stereo from large speakers was an interesting concept for a personal computer. We showed a few more bits of the video tape and some demos others hadn't seen. The meeting place at the Candlewood East Clubhouse was agreed almost unanimously to be ideal. The wide screen TV was great for displaying what was happening on the 1080 monitor next to it. The ambience was conducive to relaxed friends sharing enthusiasm for mutual interests, whether it was Mean-18, music, video, or games. The last group didn't break up until nearly 11. Next time we will have an A2000 with a hard drive and database to show. And more demos. As Program Chairman Elect I expect to have themes on programming, telecommunications, digitizing sight and sound, CAD, desktop publishing, and more. We have a wide diversity of talents and interests within our geographical community. We have a good start on achieving a lot of great and fun things with our Amigas. No BS! ABOUT THIS ISSUE We promise you that one of these days we will get an issue out before the end of the month in which it was intended! As it is, TUNA is published almost monthly, under the auspices of DAMAJ publications. We invite you to join us. Lurking amongst the thousands of Zone members are many, many good minds capable of producing pleasing combinations of binary-encoded ASCII characters. Share your thoughts, experiences, joys and frustrations with us as together we wander through the world of the Amiga. Articles should be ARCed and mailed to CRYSTAL T and NY*JIM. (You can do this with the /CC option before you /SEN the letter.) Plain ASCII works best, and please don't right-justify the text. This has been Volume 3, Issue 1 of TUNA. It was written in its entirety by CRYSTAL T (Dan and Marilyn "Crystal" Bonachea), NY*JIM (Jim Meyer), JOHN*VIG (John R. Vig), MINOTAUR (Frank Swilling) and TRAVIS-T, whose real name escapes me for now. We encourage reproduction of the text, subject to the copyright restrictions that follow. The Unofficial News of the AmigaZone (TUNA) Copyright 1988. Reproduction of all or portions of this publication by Amiga User's Groups is both allowed and encouraged, as long as proper attribution to the authors is given, and provided such re-publication occurs in a non-commercial atmosphere. Re-posting of this publication to electronic bulletin boards and/or network services is allowed, provided that this publication, including this notice, remains intact. All other rights are reserved. TUNA is originally posted to the AmigaZone section of the American People Link Network (PLINK). Both TUNA and DAMAJ have no connection with PLINK, other than being happy customers of the largest, most active Amiga section on any electronic network.