LEFT/RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON SCROLLS UP/DOWN ESCAPE QUITS: Date:AUGUST 95 D., Sorry for the delay in getting this to you as decided I had to redo this info disc to try and get over more clearly what is on offer and what you have to do if you require data archived to CD by us. The response so far to the "trial" ads has been poor. We will have to decide the best place for adverts in future as don't want to advertise across all Amiga mags and am still not convinced there is a big enough market for these services on the Amiga and we maybe should try something like "Computer Shopper" as it covers PC, Amiga, Mac, Acorn and even Atari. So there will be a delay before other new Amiga ads appear. If you dont see our ads. for a while don't worry as we are still here and willing to help in any way we can. If you can pass on that we exist it would be appeciated especially if you know anyone wanting to develope Amiga and PC CD ROMS. You should find all the basic details about what you need to do now and the price to archive varying amounts of data to CD rom in the CD_SERVICES directory. Anyway I must get this posted so thanks for the letter+stamp etc as that was what we wanted but is not usually what we get sent. Please read on and sorry to bore you to death.......but here are recent questions or misconnceptions replied to ... it may be of interest. However to run over your questions: Amiga and PC-CD roms are basically the same but the Amiga uses longer file names so you have either to cut down the filenames to the msdos 8 by 3 format ie STUPIDFI.LEN OR NOTVERYB.TXT ETC ETC. IF YOU DONT THEN MSDOS WON'T "SEE" THESE FILES AT ALL. HAVE NEVER USED THE PC AMIGA EMULATOR SO COULD NOT SAY IF THAT WOULD ALLOW LONG FILENAMES AND THINK YOU WOULD BE TAKING A RISK TO TRY IT IF IT DID. If you send me the emulator I could try it out to see if it would work. However the easist way is to use something like DMS to crunch floppies track by track and call the files a MSDOS FILENAME IE TESTFLOP.DMS. The DMS files unpack directly from Amiga CD roms but unless the emulator runs DMS then you will have to copy them to the amiga and then unpack them to floppy there...you will find lots of detail in the following text about this stuff. PC AND MACINTOSH DATA ON THE SAME CD IS O.K. IN THEORY FOR US BUT HAVE NEVER DONE IT YET AS HAVE HAD NO NEED. THE PROGRAM WE USE IS ON THE PC AND ALL YOU DO IS ATTACH THE MAC HFS SCSI HARD DRIVE TO THE PC SCSI INTERFACE AND THE SOFTWARE MAKES A HYBRID CD CONTAINING A MAC HFS PARTITION AND A ISO9660 PARTITION. SO YOU COULD HAVE AMIGA AND MAC STUFF ON THE MAC HARD DISK AND MAYBE PC STUFF ROM ELSEWHERE. IT GETS COMPLICATED BUT IN THEORY YOU CAN DO ANYTHING WITH A BIT OF MUCKING AROUND. MAC FLOPPIES: ETC WE DONT REALLY SUPPORT THE MAC at present although we can do the above but maybe if that softwatre only MAC emulator works well we could offer High density mac floppy support...basically at the moment we offer single session Amiga and PC cd's and Multisession if the data is in MSDOS FILENAMES OR THE AMIGA DATA IS SAVED INSIDE AN MSDOS FILE...SEE LATER. PRICES: see the CD SERVICES directory and the PRICES_ETC file and all details are there and you should check out the Price Table as it indicates the pricing stucture we think is fair. Photo CD: well basically we dont really want to support it as it is a bit of an out of date format and a pain to do and the results are not as good as just using a JPEG or even an uncompressed file to view you image data...I would basically say don't bother. Audio CD: can add tracks to the end of a single session CD ROM and the PRICES_ETC FILE AGAIN GOES INTO DETAILS ABOUT WHAT CAN BE DONE. IDEALLY WE WANT SAMPLES IN WAV FORMAT SO THAT MEANS USING SOMETHING LIKE AMIGASOX TO CONVERT AMIGA SAMPLES TO WAVS AND THEN WE CAN GET TO WORK ON THEM. 99 TRACKS IS THE MAX FOR A CD SO IF YOU STAY WITHIN THAT LIMIT YOU SHOULD BE O.K. ...AM NOT TOO SURE IF THE NUMBER OF TRACKS REDUCES THE STORAGE SPACE AVAILABLE BUT PROBABLY NOT. Floppies: If you send the return postage for them you will gethem back as we gave up on floppieslong ago as they are so slow so we would not really want to keep them even if you said to do so as they take up a lot of space. My advice for lots of floppies would be to USE VBS tapestreamer to save your files to videotape and then send that. You can get about 100Mb an hour at least so that is a lot of floppies but please note we cannot handle them in track mode as we only deal with files as it allows unattended data to be recovered to our hard drives. So if you dont have VBS then it might be a good idea to take us up on our Serial Port Data Collector offer as that is better than VBS. However you would need the software as well to allow you to transfer the data to us but we cant sell you the software. However we could LOAN you our VBS software for data transfer purposes only WITH THE UNDERSTANDING YOU WOULD ONLY USE IT FOR THIS PURPOSE AND WOULD DESTROY THE DISK AFTER USE......WE ARE VERY TRUSTING. It has been a bit more complex than anticipated to come up with some sort of CD backup pricing scheme to suit all the possible requirements as each CD BACKUP by its very nature is a one off, so we need to be flexible to cover all possible requirements. Basically you first need to decide: 1) WHAT TYPE OF CD ROM DO YOU REQUIRE ? a) Single Session: 1) the CD ROM performs as an image of a hard drive with all the icons and files exactly as on Hard Drive. It can't be updated later but will run on any CD Rom Drive...even the ancient Single Speeds. Audio CD tracks can also be added after the 1st Data track before the CD ROM is finalised. 2) Audio data can be directly taken from any Audio CD track with no loss of quality but as most CD tracks are Copyrighted this may not be legal in most cases. Alternatively PC format sound files ie .WAVS(RIFFS) are ideal sources for audio tracks and although each file/sample has to be in 16 bit 44khz format we have a program to convert lower quality samples/.WAVS into the 16 bit.....this wont improve the quality but means an audio track can be produced from them and up to 99 audio tracks can be on a single cd with of course 74 minutes of total playing time. Another sound source could be on a high quality audio cassette as it can be resampled at 16 bit 44khz to a very high standard and the result written out to a cd track. The hi-fi audio track of a VHS/SVHS video can in many cases be a better recording medium than audio cassette due to the lack of hiss so be aware that audio tracks can be created from these sources. (Price wise it is a bit difficult to calculate the cost to do this but we will stick with the pricing scheme given in the PRICES_ETC file but can write out a small sample audio track on any single session cd-rom we do to give you an example of this) b) Multisession XA: 1) I am being specific here in saying Multisession XA NOT PHOTOCD Multisession as in my experience PHOTOCD DOES NOT always guarantee reading XA compatible (MODE2 tracks) and so a CD drive will possibly read Multisession PhotoCDs but wont read Data CD's that are stored in multi-sessions. PhotoCD's use custom software to access the "pictures" whereas XA CD's must be readable by your CD software driver alone(we can supply a driver that is 100% AMIGA multi-session compatible). So first you will have to make sure XA CD's work on your CD DRIVE...check your manual or supplier(usually brain dead I know). Once you know you have a compatible CD rom then you can decide to use multisessions or stick with single session as both have advantages as described below. Most SCSI CD ROM DRIVES should be XA O.K. as ours are, but please try and check as we can't refund monies if you can't read the XA CD especially after the second session is written as that is when problem will appear. 2) At the moment no way exists to make Amiga Multisession XA CD'S using long Amiga filenames (we are working on a fix and WINDOWS '95 may help). The filenames we support for Multisession are in the standard ISO9660/PC MSDOS FILE FORMAT. That does not mean you cant do a small backup of a hard drive but does mean you have to use a program like QUARTERBACK (V5 is O.K.) which allows an image of a hardrive to be stored in a single FILE and it is this file you have to name in 8 by 3 format for storage on multisession CD's. Of course you can't run the Amiga DATA from CD as it is compressed inside the file. But once written to CD if you ever have to reformat your hard drive etc you just run Quarterback and select the file on CD and within a few minutes (depends on speed of CDROM) all your hard drive is back up ready to run. However if you just want to store DATA FILES IE GRAPHICS SOUNDS AND ANIMS etc and want to run them from the CD in MULTISESSIONS you have at the moment to rename or just stick to the MSDOS 8 BY 3 filename convention for your Amiga files you want to store in multisessions. IE FILENAME.EXT FLOPPYD1.DMS GRAPHIC1.IFF SOUNDFIL.WAV DTPPAGE1.TXT ETC. ETC. {8chars}. {3chars} Any type of file ie graphic, sound, binary, text, animation can be stored as long as they stick with the above filename convention. Each SESSION can be as small or as large as you need but any session above 200Mb begins to defeat the purpose of an UPDATEABLE CD as it would be better to make a SINGLE SESSION CD as it is faster to do, will run on any cdrom drive and probably be cheaper all round. We therefore will only accept up to 200Mb of data(unless you can persuade us otherwise) for any single session of a multisession CD and sessions less than 100mb and maybe sessions of around 50Mb each is a more sensible use of updateable XA CD's. ie 12 50mb sessions is a better bet than 3 200mb sessions. 2) HOW MUCH DATA DO YOU WANT TO STORE ON CD ? Basically the more data you want to archive to CD the longer it takes us to prepare and write out and so the more expensive it becomes. 650Mb is the Total available and that represents 74 Minutes of Audio CD music but a combination of both is possible. SEE DETAILS OF THE PRICING in the CD_SERVICES directory PRICES_ETC FILE!! 3) HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SEND THE DATA ? As primarily a MAIL ORDER SERVICE this is maybe the most important question as if you can't get us your DATA then we can't make your CD. Locally it is possible for us to pick up data on site especially from PC's (usually via the parallel port) but that again is a lot of hassle as it requires time and travelling and we have to charge for it. For non local users there has to be another way round this unless they want to come to us which in theory is possible but which underestimates what can be done via the postal route especially for small amounts of data. FLOPPY DISKS: ANY FORMAT IE AMIGA 880K: AMIGA 1.76MB: PC 72OK : PC 1.44MB CAN BE ACCEPTED. They are slow to read and write and are bulky to transport but they are cheap and popular and despite not wanting to, we will accept data on floppy disks. HOWEVER WE HAVE TO MAKE A SURCHARGE (10p A DISK READ at the MOMENT) (20p A DISK FOR HD AMIGA 1.76MB FLOPPIES) as we have to pay someone to read them onto hard drive as don't have the time to do it OURSELVES YOU CAN STORE FLOPPY DISKS AS TRACK FOR TRACK BUT WE ONLY DEAL WITH FILES. SO FOR NDOS DISKS OR TO STORE FLOPPIES TRACK BY TRACK CREATE A DMS IMAGE FILE THEN STORE THESE ON FLOPPY OR BETTER STILL HARD DRIVE AND THEN TO VIDEOTAPE OR BACK TO FLOPPY. AGAIN TO REPEAT WE ONLY DEAL WITH FILES SO IDEALLY CONVERT YOUR FLOPPIES INTO DMS FILES IF YOU ARE SENDING FLOPPY BASED DATA AS OTHERWISE WE WILL HAVE TO STORE THEM IN SEPARATE DIRECTORIES UNLESS YOU SAY OTHERWISE... PLEASE USE DMS IF YOU CAN OR LHA IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT....THANKS. ********IMPORTANT********* DMS IS A BUGGY FLOPPY TRACK TO FILE COMPRESSOR THE BUG IS A RANDOM CRC ERROR THAT THE PROGRAM GENERATES WHEN COMPRESSING A DISK: V2.04 HAS MEANT TO SOLVE IT BUT I DONT KNOW IF IT IS TRUE AND THE ONLY SURE WAY TO KNOW A DMS FILE IS 100% IS TO UNPACK IT AGAIN. THIS SOUNDS HELL BUT IF YOU CREATE A RAD: RAM_0 DISK IN MEMORY THAT SIMULATES A FLOPPY YOU CAN UNPACK TO MEMORY IN A FEW SECONDS AND BE 100% SURE YOUR FLOPPY IMAGE IS O.K....A RARE BUT IMPORTANT PROBLEM AND ABSOLUTELY CRUCUIAL IF YOU ARE MAKING A MASTER DISK AS YOU DONT WANT TO SEND US DUD UNCHECKED DMS FILES. ***************************************************************** VIDEO TAPE: VBS: This WELL KNOWN CHEAP?? ARCHIVAL SYSTEM can save AMIGA DATA TO VIDEOTAPE (VHS OR SVHS ONLY PLEASE). It is possible to save a few hundred Mb on a four video-tape especially using Version 3.0 software. (Please verify the data saved to tape). (SEE COMPATIBLE HARDWARE OFFER) This would be ideal in theory for larger amounts of data as it can be recovered "unattended" by us so this is better than floppy but it still takes up a lot of computer time so we have to add A SURCHARGE of £2-50 PER HOUR OF TAPE HANDLED...see CD_SERVICES directory. I should point out that there is always the possibility that your video- tape may not read properly ie tracking or other problems. This is why we ask you TO ENCLOSE RETURN POSTAGE FOR ANY MEDIA YOU SEND TO US as it is NOT included in the CD PRICE as if there are any problems we can return them to you with no hassle. Other TAPE STREAMERS WE SUPPORT JUST NOW ARE THE PC QIC TAPES IE QIC 40 QIC 80 AND THE QIC 340MB SO DATA CAN BE SENT ON THESE. THE VIDEO TAPE PER HOUR SURCHARGE STILL APPLIES TO THESE AS IT TAKES THE SAME TIME TO READ THE DATA YOU WROTE TO TAPE. Other tape/disk formats will be supported if they become popular ie ZIP disks etc if there is real demand. AS WITH ALL TAPE OR VUNERABLE DATA "VERIFY IT IS ERROR FREE" AS OUR CD CREATION PROCESS IS 100% RELIABLE SO NO ERRORS WILL BE GENERATED BY OUR PROCESSING, SO THE CHECKING BY YOU IS THE CRUCIAL LINK IN THE CHAIN. HARD DRIVES: NO DATA SURCHARGE THE DETAILS as with the above are in the PRICE_ETC FILE in the CD_SERVICES directory BUT SCSI OR IDE DRIVES IN PC OR AMIGA FORMAT ARE ACCEPTABLE AND EVEN 2.5" IDE DRIVES CAN BE PROCESSED. This method is probably better for more serious users and OF COURSE we don't charge extra to process these and eventually we should offer a discount. LARGE IDE DRIVES IE 700MB (IE A FULL CD AND MORE) ARE DROPPING IN PRICE LIKE A STONE SO VERY SOON FOR £150+ YOU COULD SEND A FULL CD IMAGE FOR NOT SO MUCH MONEY. WE SUGGEST THAT EVEN IF YOU HAVE A LARGE SCSI DRIVE, A PERSONAL BACKUP OF THEM ONTO A CHEAP IDE DRIVE IS A MUST, NOT TO HELP US CREATE A CD EASIER BUT FOR THE FACT THAT TOMMORROW YOUR LARGE SCSI HARD DRIVE COULD CRASH AND YOU COULD LOSE THE LOT. I HAVE LOST LOTS OF DATA IN MY TIME AND THAT WAS ONE OF MY MAIN REASONS FOR USING CD-ROM, SO BACK UP BEFORE ITS TOO LATE. NOT A NICE THOUGHT BUT IT DOES HAPPEN AND IF THAT DATA IS IMPORTANT TO YOU, THEN YOU WILL BE IN TROUBLE....BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY AS THE CLICHE SAYS. ONE COMMENT ABOUT IDE DRIVES IS THAT TO CONNECT TWO TOGETHER ON THE SAME CABLE YOU NEED TO MAKE ONE DRIVE THE MASTER AND THE OTHER THE SLAVE. IN SOME SITUATIONS THIS WOULD BE USEFUL FOR US TO DO AND ALTHOUGH WE KNOW HOW TO SET UP SOME DRIVES O.K. IF YOU HAVE A SMALL INFO SHEET GIVING THE "JUMPER" SETTINGS TO CONFIGURE YOUR DRIVE AS A SLAVE DRIVE THEN A COPY OF THESE SETTINGS WOULD BE WELCOME. SENDING DRIVES IS "SAFE" IF THEY ARE PACKED WELL(TREAT AND MARK AS GLASS) BUT PLEASE DONT SEND A HARD DRIVE WITH DATA YOU CANT AFFORD TO LOSE AS ALTHOUGH UNLIKELY THE DATA MIGHT BE DAMAGED IN TRANSIT AND THEN YOU ARE STUCK. BASICALLY DESPITE THE LENGTHS I HAVE GONE TO MAKE YOU FALL ASLEEP WADING THROUGH THIS TEXT IT IS A DEAD SIMPLE PROCESS TO GET YOUR DATA BACKED UP ONTO CD, ALTHOUGH GETTING THE DATA TO US IS THE HARDEST PART AND I HAVE TO LEAVE THAT TO YOU. ************************************************************************ I REMIND YOU AGAIN THAT RETURN POSTAGE CHARGES FOR YOUR FLOPPIES/TAPES/ HDRIVES ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE "CD PRICES" SO PLEASE ENCLOSE SEPARATE PAYMENT OR STAMPS TO RETURN THESE TO YOU SAFELY. ************************************************************************ I WOULD URGE YOU TO SEND ANY PAYMENT/CHEQUES....VIA RECORDED DELIVERY SO WE KNOW YOUR MAIL REACHES US SAFELY AND WE CAN INITIALLY VERIFY OUR POSTAL DELIVERIES ARE 100% O.K.. ============================================================== PLEASE MAKE CHEQUES PAYABLE TO MR.BARR PLEASE !!! ============================================================== WE HOPE TO OFFER VIRTUALLY ANY CD SERVICE THAT IS PRACTICAL AND THAT INCLUDES A CUSTOM PERSONAL PD CD COMPILATION SERVICE FROM OUR SMALL RANGE OF PD CD'S OR FROM YOURS OR A MIXTURE OF BOTH. SO IF INTERESTED LET US KNOW AND ALWAYS SEND A DISK AND STAMP AS WE NORMALLY UPDATE THIS DISK EACH WEEK. WE CAN CREATE A WIDE RANGE OF other CD FORMATS EVEN CD-I disks from Scrambled or unscrambled files from OPTIMAGE CD-I Tools. PHOTO CD is still possible although we never use it ourselves as it is clumsy and slow and you are best to just store images as graphic files probably JPEGS as the quality is better and you can get data off a CD without special software drivers. The only reason to use PhotoCD as far as I can see would be if it was to be played back on a non computer player that just handled that specific type of data. PhotoCD's are still probably good if image libraries from Photo Agencies are wanted as these are probably the highest quality you will be able to obtain but for you own data or scans I would say forget it as it is more trouble than its worth. MOST OF THE ABOVE LETTER HAS REALLY CONCENTRATED ON PERSONAL CD SERVICES FOR YOUR OWN USE BUT IF COMMERCIAL MASTERING IS REQUIRED YOU WILL FIND DETAILS IN THE "PRICE_ETC" FILE AND BASICALLY IT IS JUST THE SAME PRICING FOR THE ABOVE BUT A SMALL SURCHARGE IS ADDED AS IT TAKES LONGER TO DO BUT WE ARE ALSO WILLING TO HELP OUT IN OTHER WAYS TO MAKE LIFE AS EASY AS POSSIBLE. O.K. I MAY HAVE MISSED OUT SOME CRUCIAL INFORMATION BUT I CAN'T THINK OF WHAT IT IS JUST NOW BUT HOPE YOU LET US KNOW HOW WE ARE DOING SO FAR AS IF YOU DONT SUPPORT US WE WILL EVENTUALLY TAKE THE HINT. I CAN'T SEE ANYONE ELSE OFFERING THIS TYPE OF SERVICE AS OTHERS IN OUR POSITION SEEM HAPPY TO CHURN OUT ONE NAFF PD CD AFTER THE OTHER AND AM NOT TOO SURE WHO REALLY WILL BUY THEM AS ONCE YOU HAVE BOUGHT A FEW YOU REALISE MOST STUFF IS REPEATS OR DUBIOUS QUALITY STUFF PORTED FROM THE PC......BORING AND PRETTY USELESS TO THE END USER. HOWEVER HAVING YOU OWN CUSTOM CD MADE TO YOUR OWN REQUIREMENTS SOUNDS A LOT BETTER USE FOR CD THAN A DUMPING YARD FOR PC JUNK. SO GET STUCK IN NOW AS IT IS REALLY GREAT FUN AND YOU WILL BE IMPRESSED WITH THE END RESULTS AND YOU WONT NEED TO HAVE BOUGHT £1000'S WORTH OF EQUIPEMENT TO DO IT. ADVERT OVER !!!! HOPE THIS HAS BEEN OF USE AND HOPE YOU ARE WILLING TO GIVE US A GO.... THERE IS AN ORDER FORM WITH A COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER ON THE DISC TO PROTECT US AND YOURSELF SO PLEASE PRINT IT OUT AND USE IT IF POSSIBLE AND WE WOULD APPRECIATE A SIGNATURE TO KEEP THINGS AS LEGALLY TRANSPARENT(OR SHOULD THAT BE OPAQUE) AS POSSIBLE. BEFORE I FORGET WE ADDED A LOW GRADE ANIM WHICH I DID, WHICH IN ALL ITS GLORY WAS A HI RES 256 COLOUR 640 x 512 interlaced anim but I had to change it into a poor low res 16 colour gray scale anim to make it fit on the disk. It gives an idea of the type of graphics we can do and that includes nice quality scanning and if needed image conversion etc, Scala Scipts etc etc Please check out the hardware section for a few Amiga/PC items for sale(as new). Anyway better go and sorry for the initial delay but I had to try and clarify a few issues in order to speed up the CD creation process for you in the long run. GBE (Mr Barr) Press Escape P.S. TO PLAY THE ANIM THE FLOPPY CANNOT BE WRITE PROTECTED.....IT IS POWERPACKED SO YOU COULD UNPACK IT AND COPY TO HARD DISK IF YOU WANT. >> >> >> >> >> >> © COPYRIGHT 1995 GBE