Amiga Interview with Dirk Stöcker
Developer of XAD

(15.05.2001)
translated: 22.05.2001 from Kai Stegemann

*Hello Dirk would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?

I am 25 years old and since the half of that time I own Amiga computer.
I am coding since the beginning of the 90ies and in the last fey years
I made projects ( like XAD) that were greater and made more sense.

*What was your way to the Amiga computer?
*Since when do you use Amiga?

I got to the Amiga over the ordinary way of the C64.
I cannot answer the 2nd question accurately.
It must be around 1989.

*What types of Amiga computer do you own?

A A4000T with a PPC-Board and several extensions,
A1200, A2000 and 2 A500.

* What versions of AmigaOS is running on the machines?

On the A4000 it is OS3.9. On the A1200 V3.1. On the others 2.1 , 2.0 and 1.3.

*What kind of software do you develop?

At the moment mainly XAD and XFD.
Additionaly some developertools and apart that I am participating in some opensource-stuff.
Since I am no longer a student there is less sparetime for programming.

*What was the idea behind XadMaster?

I began to use the xfdmaster.library in 1996
( formerly the decrunch.library decruncher) with VirusZ.
One year later I began writing clients for that.
Beside that I wrote CheckX. It was the complicated handling of
the decrunching that disturbed me heavily, especially with VT.
So I  created a concept at the end of 1997 and tryed to convince
Georg to make it come true. But he had no time and that was the reason
why I started the developing, with more experience trough XPK,
and in 1998 the first useable version was finished.
In the end of 1999 a nice tool was there.
How easy viruschecking became is visible trough CheckX.

*Can you please tell us something special about XADMaster?

There are many.
It can handle diskarchives as if they were e.g. lha.
Nowadays it recognises about 100 different types of archives.
The algorythm were created for high stability so that XAD can
decrunch some archives better than the original programme.
Some are even only decrunched with XAD. For others XAD is the only Amiga decruncher.
For that reason the system can be extended by everyone.
The website http://www.dstoecker.de/xadmaster.html gives detailed information about that.

*How long took the development?

Until now it were 3 years and there is still a lot to do ( however noone believes me ).
And without supporters like Stuart, Mikolaj, Andrew and Ronald it would last even longer.

*What software do you use for developing?

SAS-C 6.58 ( what else?).
Inspire_II as editor ( does anybody else no this one beside me?).
And then Mungwall, Enforcer, CyberGuard and all the other things.

*Will there be Updates in the future?

Yes for sure, XAD is not finished,
BUT if I had more time updates would come more fluently and
a finished unix-version would be there, too.

* How made XADMaster its way into AmigaOS3.9?

H&P had asked me and I had no problem with it.
I had never wrote XAD to earn money so the spreading
as a bundle with OS3.9 was a good idea.
I hoped honestly to find some new client-writers.

*What are the differences to the shareware-version?
( aare there any?)

There is no requester appearing if you dont have a keyfile but OS3.9.
Besides that the versions are identically.
On the one hand there are no updates available.
But on the other side you can register for half of the prize
( Amiga Arena makes it possible to do it without 3.9 ;-)
Many people dont register because they dont anything else
because the version included in 3.9 satisfies their needs.

* Dont you lose the interest in developing if you see
  how are honored in the Amiga market?

I am not developing to earn money,
but I need these programmes and developing makes fun.
As long as I recieve some stamps from all over the world,
some registrations or nice words I have no problems with it.

* Are you going to support future versions of the AmigaOs?

If my Amiga lives that long and if I dont
have to buy special hardware just to run the simple OS: YES!

* How do you, as a developre, see the future of Amiga?

The classic Amiga has and had sinvce 5 years no real future.
I hope that the new concepts will find their way because
I dislike modern PC-software ( concepts and licensing ).
If these concepts are realised by Amiga or others ( years later )
cannot and wont be judged by me. I would like to be surprised.
I hope that I will be able to use a sytem
that makes fun as the Amiga ( e.g. Linux does not belong to these systems).

* When did you use an Amiga the last time?

Sunday evening. Yesterday I was lazy. But this evening I will continue.
I have to finish the comtroling software for a small onechipbased hardware :-)

* What software did you buy last time for your Amiga?

An old diskpacker ( RAP! TOP! COP! )
for 5DM because Stuart had written an COP! client
for XAD and he would like to have the programme for that client.
Besides that I dont buy software very often because
I am writing the software myself and I have everyrhing I need.

* What kind of software do you use until today?

Wordworth for writing texts, ArtEffects for imageprocessing and
several compiler, assembler (SAS, Storm, Maxon) and the software I need.
I dont play games very often,
but I would like to play modern versions of "The Settlers".

* What kind of soft-/ hardware are you planning to buy in the near future?

Maybe a sfx-board. Sometimes I think about buying
a modern PC but I dont know for what reason.
I have enough of them at work ( okay only some of them are modern)

* Do you believe in a comeback of Amiga?

I dont expect anything I going to be surprised.

© Amiga Arena 2001