iss4 A M I G A N A I R W A V E S June 1989 WELCOME: to the fourth issue of Amigan Airwaves and a special hello to new members of our Group. Once again, thanks for your comments on the last issue and especially to those of you who made helpful suggestions and contributions for this one. PD Disks: I hope that everyone has now obtained copies of PD Disks 4,5 and 6 from Andy, G8NTH. Has anyone been able to run the demo of AVT software on Disk 6? There is a possibility that we may be able to put together our own UK PD disk in the not-too-distant future. Andy has sent me some of his satellite tracking programs and we just need a couple more programs to fill up the remaining space on the disk. Parliano Italiano? If so, could you translate the Doc. files for an Italian PD Disk which appears to be quite a comprehensive terminal program for packet? I understand that the disk contains an Amiga version of YAPP (Yet Another Packet Protocol!). European Report: I am pleased to report that I have established contact with Renato I3EJ and Peter DF5ZI who run the Italian and German Amiga Amateur Radio User Groups. Renato tells me that his group has about 100 members - about the same as us; Peter didn't seem very sure about his membership. He said that he sends out about 25 copies of Amigan Beacon and relies on PBBS circulation for everyone else. Surprisingly, neither group yet has their own newsletter but both Renato and Peter want to continue receiving copies of Airwaves so maybe they plan to start one soon. Pat ON9CBF reports the existence of a group of Amigans in Switzerland and is trying to establish contact with them. Incidentally, Pat is in the U.K. for a couple of months, so will not be on the Saturday morning 40M Amiga Net again until early August. Report from Down Under: Larry VK6CP is a regular correspondent and keeps me in touch with Amigan developments in VK. We are even in contact via packet mail and I am sure that he would like to hear from any other members via VK6ZML. Larry is ex-G and is in the process of starting up an Australian Amiga Users Ham Group; they only have 10 members at the moment but I am sure that they will grow rapidly as our Group has in the past 12 months. Larry is particularly anxious to be able to use the YAPP protocol on the Amiga so if you have have any info. about this, please contact him. He is aware of the Italian PD disk, but he doesn't speak Italian either! Stateside Report: As I mentioned last time, I spent a couple of weeks in Florida over the the Easter period and as on previous trips, had a fantastic time. I didn't have much time to shop around for software etc. but I did find a computer store in Sarasota that was closing down and offering 30% off everything in the shop. Most of the best things had gone, but I did come away with $30 worth of magazines, including 10 disks. The guy who ran the store told me that the 2000 is selling almost as well as the 500 in the States which is I suppose a measure of the greater `disposable income' over there. He also said that there was `no contest' between the Amiga and the Atari ST in the States. This was later confirmed in an article I read in the respected magazine Compute! which said that the ST was in decline and some software houses were no longer supporting it. Enquiries about word processing programs produced the same answers from two different people. Apparently excellence! V2.0 is in the pipeline and takes care of the shortcomings of the existing version. A brand new WP program called Pen Pal is also ready for launch and these two are likely to become the pacesetters as far as Amiga WP programs are concerned. Kathy recently got married and moved QTH and as a result, she has been out of circulation for a couple of months. The good news is that she has married another Amigan, Lou WA3MIX. The Sunday night Amiga Net on 20m has been suffering in recent weeks, partly as a result of poor propagation and partly because of the absence of Kathy who used to control the net so ably from her Pennsylvania QTH. Ben Blisch, who designed the AVT Fax/SSTV hardware and software, has sold the rights to AEA, the manufacturers of the PK 88 & 232. The hardware is being repackaged and the software upgraded and it will be available (only through AEA) as from 1st July. The new package is likely to be well worth waiting for, although it will be more expensive. Any orders or correspondence sent to Ben Blisch since Feb./March are likely to have been severely delayed, not only as a result of the sale of the AVT system, but also because Ben has been in hospital undergoing surgery and has only recently returned home. Copies of correspondence should therefore be sent to AEA. It is not clear at this stage whether the new AEA package will be imported to the U.K. by ICS. Magazine Update: ST/Amiga Format is to split into two. As from August, Amiga Format will be published monthly, presumably with a disk of Amiga programs. This split will, I am sure, be welcomed by both the Amiga and ST fraternities. The other change that has been announced is that Your Amiga is to be published monthly, rather than every two months. This will leave us with four dedicated U.K. Amiga magazines to choose from each month. Time will tell if the market can support this many, plus Amiga World and possibly other foreign magazines (Amigo Times?) which may have ambitions to appear in our newsagents. Memory Expansion: I have now installed my 1.5MB Spirit memory expansion. This additional board is multi-layer, well constructed and fits inside the FCC screen in the A 1000. The installation instructions are very clear and the procedure reasonably straightforward. The most difficult stage is carefully prising out the 64 pin 68000 microprocessor and reinserting it in the socket on the Spirit board. Somewhat to my surprise, everything worked first time and it was quite something to see `1946453 free memory' appear at the top of the Workbench screen! I was able to run several memory-hungry programs and demos for the first time and began to wonder how I ever managed with only 512K! My initial elation was somewhat curtailed however when I found that I was getting gurus and `freeze-ups' far more frequently than before. Enquiries to the Amiga User Group in Leicester and Bytes and Pieces (the U.K. agents for Spirit Technology) revealed that the likely cause of the problem was two slow PAL chips in my early model A 1000. Unfortunately, replacement of these involves quite major surgery and a further 20 pounds for the faster chips; an unwanted side effect is a monochrome composite video output for evermore. I therefore sought advice from Spirit Technology in Utah before proceeding and they suggested grounding pin 10 on four chips on the daughterboard which I am glad to say, did the trick. I am assured that this problem is confined to the early A 1000 machines so don't hesitate to buy a Spirit memory expansion if you have a later model A 1000 or A 500. Hardware/Software Reviews: Charlie G0EIW, has kindly written a very comprehensive review of Amiga Fax which is attached as a supplement to this issue of Airwaves. For those of you who are interested in this program, Charlie has also put together a disk of Fax pictures he has received off-air and he will supply a copy on request (send blank disk and postage please). One of our new members, Ed Davies G4XVV, has responded to my request for a review of Kindwords V2.0. Ed says: " Firstly my dislikes; I don't think much of Superfonts which don't look good using my printer. The program does not enable selection of the printer's fonts or sizes from the drop down menus! The font has to be selected from the printer's own controls, while the size can only be selected by presetting DIP switches. So it's not possible to change the font or font size from within the font program. It's not possible to produce columns of text so the program cannot be used for DTP. On the good side, you can save files in ASCII format which is useful for packet transmission. The Spelling Checker and Thesaurus are quite useful but you need to load them into RAM and have two drives available or you're forever swapping disks! The program has an automatic `copy' facility which saves a copy of the original document, just in case the wrong 'save' name was typed in error. All the features, for page numbering, tabbing, justification, underlining etc are easily set by clicking a gadget selected via a drop down menu. Print options of draft, LQ or Superfonts, single or continous paper, etc. are selected from a menu and saved with each document for future use". Ed concludes that the program, which can be bought for a discount price of around 34 pounds, is quite good value for money. WorkBench V1.3 has been widely reviewed in the magazines by those far more expert than I. Suffice to say that it is worth having and the manual is the best that I have ever seen from Commodore - but that's not saying much! WB 1.3 really consists of a series of enhancements rather than any single `great leap forward'. The Shell is certainly much better than the old CLI and the printer drivers are faster, particularly in the graphics mode. A number of useful PD utilities and four extra fonts are also included. The Commodore Show: This was again held at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith and I understand drew record crowds on the first day, Friday, June 2nd. Fortunately, the weather was much cooler than it had been a week or two previously, but even so, it was unbearably hot downstairs. Hard drives were much in evidence and significantly lower in price than at previous shows. The other main hardware interest seemed to be memory expansions with several 'Show Specials' on offer. The Bytes and Pieces stand was particularly popular and crowded. The price of disks continues to come down, the best bargain being a box of Sony 2S2D for #8.50. All the usual software bargains were there and I managed to buy DPaint III for 47 pounds. The Superpic frame grabber and genlock (show price #499) were being demontrated using a camcorder and some very impressive freeze frames were shown being stored on disc in standard IFF format. I went to the show with my XYL Lory and Pat ON9CBF who stayed with us for a couple of days. We were pleased to be able to meet up with Charlie G0EIW and another of our members, John G6CNX, who I called up on my 2m handy talkie by prior arrangement. Perhaps at the next show, we can arrange an even bigger gathering.... Talking of the next show, we learned that this will not be until June 1990, the Commodore Christmas show having been absorbed into the Computer Shopper Show which is to be held at Ally Pally from November 24-26. Tailpiece Congratulations to Wayne Plummer RS 88079 who has now passed his RAE and is on the air as G7DYR; his packet mailbox is GB7SPV. Reminder Don't forget to send a SAE to Charlie G0EIW if you haven't already done so. 73 de Bob, G3LMH @ GB7AEU