4]--------------------- 3]MORTON'S MUSINGS 3]By Morton A. Kevelson 4]--------------------- 3]COMMODORE MUSEUM OF ARCANE TECHNOBILIA EXPANDS Due to a reasonably priced offering by one of the attendees at a recent AMUSE meeting, I have added an Amiga 500 system to supplement my A1000 and A2000. The good news is that I will now be able to report upon Amiga 500 specific hardware based on hands-on experience. The bad news is that I spent so much time fooling around with this three MB, three disk drive, Amiga 500 which was equipped with a somewhat antiquated CSA 68020/68881 adapter board, a Communications Associates Gen/One Genlock and the more than 250 floppy disks of Amiga software that came with the system, I did not get to look at most of the new products I had expected to try by this time. The most peculiar part of this system is the Atari SC1224 color monitor which is being used as an RGB display device with the help of an adapter cable. If any of you should happen to know something about this Atari ST monitor, or if you can tell me where to find out about it, please get in touch. 3]MORE ON GENLOCKS The first AMUSE October meeting featured a presentation by Keith Nealy of The Nealy Group. The Nealy Group specializes in corporate client video productions which are created with considerable assistance from the Amiga. The Nealy Group was also the outfit that orchestrated the launch of the Amiga 3000 at the Palladium in New York City last April. The Nealy Group is looking for knowledgeable Amiga people for full-time, part-time and free-lance work. If you are interested, send them a letter describing your experience and capabilities on the Amiga. See address below. Nealy also passed on some useful information regarding genlocks. The primary purpose of a genlock is to encode the Amiga's RGB video output into a high quality composite video signal. However, no matter how good a genlock you have, the encoded video signal will not be as sharp as the Amiga's original RGB output. The problem is the limited bandwidth of the NTSC composite video signal, which limits the overall picture resolution. The secondary function of the genlock is to synchronize the Amiga's RGB video output to an external composite video source. This process is known as genlocking. When genlocking is taking place, the Amiga receives its timing information from the genlock device, which in turn is based on the timing of the external video signal. It is impossible to obtain a high quality genlocked image with a video tape recorder used as the external video source. The timing variations of the VCR's video signal, which are even inherent in signals coming from one-inch commercial video tape machines, degrade the image quality. This is why commercial studios always use expensive time base correction equipment with their VCRs. The timing variations are also the reason why the image quality deteriorates so rapidly when you try to copy video tapes from one VCR to another. The best source of a stable video signal for non-commercial users is a camcorder in camera mode. 3]BEWARE, PRICE SLASHERS ON THE LOOSE I noticed the first incidence of price abuse in an Oct. 9 press release from commodore. If you tune to your consumer channel you will find Commodore has "slashed" the suggested retail price of the Amiga 500C by 25 percent to a new low of $599. This means that, after discounting, retailers will be able to offer the Amiga 500C for less than "the magic" $500 price which will cause consumers to turn out in droves and buy vast quantities of Amiga 500s. In my opinion, based on past experience with the old price structure, I expect to see the 500C discounted to $400 by the time you read this. Consider machine will now be selling for no more than the eight bit Commodore 128D was going for when it was discontinued a little over a year ago. Seriously, folks, I am really very pleased Commodore is moving in this direction with its low-end machine. The large number of new users that are bound to come on line will make the software developer community sit up and take notice. Meanwhile, Apple Computer, in a brilliant counter move which is intended to capture market share, has come out with a new low-cost line of Macintosh computers. The cheapest model, dubbed the Macintosh Classic, is very similar to the Macintosh Plus which is based on the 68000 microprocessor, comes with one megabyte of RAM, a single disk drive and a black and white display. This fruit will retail for a mere $999. For only $1,499 you can get the same machine with two megabytes of RAM and a 40 megabyte hard drive. Give me a break. For $999 I can get an Amiga 500 and an A-Max II and have both machines as well as a color display. If you are looking for color in a Macintosh computer, then you will have to go for the new Macintosh LC, which stands for low cost, which will be priced in the $2,500 to $3,000 range. The Macintosh LC is expected to be available some time next year. Finally, Apple is offering the Macintosh IIsi, which means "simply irresistible", as the introductory machine for their Mac II line. The Macintosh IIsi will retail for only $3,769 with two megabytes of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. The keyboard and monitor display for the IIsi are extra cost options. Frankly, all of this leaves me speechless. Finally I would like to present the following quote from John C. Dvorak's Window Dressing column which can be found on page 418 of the September 1990 issue of MacUser magazine: "...perhaps one of the finest true multitasking GUI machines, the full-stereo Amiga..." I think that this just about sums it up. Incidentally, a GUI is a graphical user interface. 3]SOFTWEAR FOR THE AMIGA Yes, that's right: softwear. This week's AMUSE meeting featured a fascinating talk and demonstration by Susan Lazear of Cochenille Computer Knit Products, Inc. Cochenille's Bit Knitter is a hardware and software interface which lets you convert bit mapped IFF images into knitting patterns for an electronic knitting machine. The Bit Knitter is used to download the resulting code to the knitting machine, eliminating the tedious and time consuming task of keying in the data by hand. Although I spent a significant part of my youth behind the counters of Orchard Fabric Center, which was my family's retail textile outlet located on New York City's lower east side, my knowledge of knitting is virtually nil. Nevertheless, Lazear's presentation was so alluring that it was all I could do to restrain myself from running out and buying an electronic knitting machine. Fortunately, all of the electronic knitting machine emporiums closed their doors before the start of the Amuse meeting. Bit Knitters are available for a variety of electronic knitting machines which are made by different manufacturers. Although Lazear started Cochenille Computer Knit Products with her Amiga, the company is presently offering versions of the Bit Knitter for the MS/DOS and Macintosh computers in addition to the Amiga. Lazear has been travelling the world giving demonstrations of the Bit Knitter and running Computer-Knit workshops. She recently presented her Bit Knitters and DeluxePaint techniques in New Zealand. If you own an Amiga and an electronic knitting machine, be sure to get in touch with this outfit. 3]PULSAR'S POWER PC BOARD My recently acquired Amiga 500 has been pressed into service without any delay. As soon as I verified the functionality of the machine, I pried an actual production sample of the Power PC Board out of Pulsar's Doctor Oxide. I am pleased to say the Power PC Board is now fully operational and moving out the door. Here is what you get: It's designed around an NEC V30 microprocessor running at eight megahertz. The board has one megabyte of RAM and a real-time battery backed clock. When you install the Power PC Board and boot the Amiga, the first 512 kilobytes of the onboard RAM is immediately available just like Commodore's own 1/2 megabyte A501 expander module. To access the second 512 kilobytes, as well as the battery backed clock, you have to install the KCS custom drivers on your Workbench disk. The Power PC Board's boot disk has an automated installation procedure which makes this job easy. Unlike the AmigaDOS RAM: device, the KCS RAM disk behaves like a fixed size 512 kilobyte disk drive and its contents will survive a warm boot. The KCS RAM drive is separate from and in addition to the AmigaDOS RAM: device. If you have a DMA hard disk drive, such as Commodore's A590, you should not install this RAM drive, due to incompatibilities with this release of the driver software. The Power PC Board will recognize up to four Amiga floppy drives, either 3.5 inch or 5.25 inch in both the 360 kilobyte and 720 kilobyte formats, as MS/DOS drives. An external, 80-track, 5.25-inch disk drive can be double stepped to obtain a 360 kilobyte format. The video display can be set to emulate the Hercules compatible MGA Monochrome Graphics Adapter or the CGA Color Graphics Adapter. The MGA display is 720 by 348 pixels while the CGA display can be either 640 by 200 or 320 by 200. You also have the option of turning on interlace for compatibility with NTSC video equipment; however, this does not increase the screen resolution. The CGA display can be set to work with four or eight colors and you have the ability to set these colors to any of the 4096 colors in the Amiga's palette. Mouse support is provided via emulation of the Mouse Systems mouse. You will have to provide your own copy of the Mouse Systems mouse driver software. Any of the three possible MS/DOS printer ports can be assigned to the Amiga's parallel port. In a similar fashion you can assign either COM1 or COM2 to the Amiga's serial port. The memory configuration for the MS/DOS side of the Power PC Board makes 704 kilobytes available to the system. This is a bit more than the 640 kilobyte standard. To improve compatibility with software that does not recognize the extra memory, you have the option of switching it off. The software which is provided with the Power PC Board consists of Microsoft MS-DOS Version 4.0 with GW-BASIC supplied on three disks and accompanied by a massive 430-page reference manual. This package also includes Microsoft MS-DOS Shell with its own 118-page User's Guide. Pulsar has also thrown in an additional disk which contains the shareware programs File Express, As-Easy As and Galaxy which are a data base, spreadsheet and word processor respectively. 3]FREE SPIRITS - NON-ALCOHOLIC Free Spirit Software has just released its Sterling Service BBS, which is being billed as "The Friendly Amiga Bulletin Board System." The program features Amigatized graphical interface for the sysop, which makes it easy to set up, run and maintain the BBS. For the BBS user, Sterling Service BBS offers six "clubs" or special interest groups, each of which acts as separate BBS program. Free Spirit has also announced the release of Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus, the fourth program in this learning series for younger children. 3]SOFTWOOD...SOFTWARE Now that SoftWood Inc. has decided to part company with Brown-Wagh to do its own distributing, I have been finally able to obtain a review copy of Pen Pal, the WYSIWYG word processor with graphic capabilities. A quick look at the package tells me Pen Pal has more advanced graphic handling than either excellence! or ProWrite, which I had previously examined. Pen Pal also includes built-in data base and form generating capabilities. Although the program does include a built-in spelling checker, it lacks a built-in thesaurus. SoftWood has just released its Electric Thesaurus, a stand-alone thesaurus program for the Amiga. The Electric Thesaurus features the Roget's II Electronic Thesaurus database and search engine which was developed by the Houghton Mifflin Company. More than 500,000 synonyms are provided with the package. 3]GAMES A review copy of Loom from Lucasfilm recently arrived. Loom is more of an interactive computerized story, with very nice sound and graphics, as opposed to a traditional computer adventure game. The Loom project leader was Brian Moriarty, formerly with Infocom. Those of you who have been around computers for a while may remember Moriarty as the author of several of Infocom's text adventure games such as Wishbringer and Beyond Zork. I found Loom to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience. 3]COMPANIES MENTIONED The Nealy Group 12 East 22 St. Penthouse D New York, NY 10010 212-420-1404 Cochenille Computer Knit Products, Inc. P. O. Box 4276 Encinitas, CA 92024 619-942-1957 Free Spirit Software P.O. Box 128 58 Noble Street Kutztown, PA 19530 215-683-5609 Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus: $34.95 Sterling Service BBS: $149.95 SoftWood, Inc. P.O. Box 51209 Phoenix, AZ 85076 800-247-8314 Pen Pal: $149.95 Electric Thesaurus: $49.95 Lucasfilm Ltd. P.O. Box 2009 San Rafael, CA 94912 415-662-1966 Loom: $59.95 Pulsar 410 Maple Avenue Westbury, NY 11590 516-997-6903 $525 4]END OF TEXT