@4 -------------------------------------------------- |@7 READERS LETTERS@4 | -------------------------------------------------- @5 Black Dragon Design 4 Alloe Field Place Illingworth Halifax HX2 9ES@3 Dear AmosZine, @1 Congratulations on your mega-sized Christmas issue, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. A real treat for AMOS users. Some of the source code was dynamite, and I liked the inclusion of the article about Guru errors (since I'm getting a lot of them lately with my latest project!). I quite enjoyed reading the CD-ROM articles. I too have recently forked out for a Zappo CD drive and I'm finding it very rewarding (if somewhat overloading - the amount of stuff on those CD's is often too much to cope with during one session of computing). However, I'd like to know where the £19.99 goes when we buy the CD's. Do you have any idea? How can they possibly charge so much for 600+ megabytes of what is (or at least should be) completely free software? CD's are incredibly cheap to make and packaging can't add up to much more than a quid or two so... well, who's getting rich? I've recently written in to one of the glossy mags asking them the same thing, but I'm doubtful they'll print my letter. I'm just curious that's all (being a shareware/PD author myself) and loads of my most recent software buyers have said they've got hold of my productions from CD compilations. Hence a lot of us are on CD and are getting £0 for it. But back to your diskmag... I reckon it's the best one for AMOS at the moment, and I hope you can keep the quality this high. I'm usually full of ideas/complaints about diskmags but not today. As Beavis and Butthead would say: AmosZine rules! Best wishes, Andrew Campbell@2 Cheers for the praise Andrew. I don't have a clue where all the dosh goes on a CD. One thing that I do know is a hell of a lot of work & time goes into compiling a CD. This is evident from three sources that I have dealt with through F1. One in particular looks like going bust over their CD. It was a PD library, they took nearly five months to get it all down on a gold disc, and in doing so they left their other business matters (ie. orders) by the wayside and lost a LOT of custom. After many problems with the CD they finally released it....and nobody is interested in buying it! I know for a fact The Assassins CD had quite a few problems and took at least 2 months, while the group LSD stopped producing their diskmag, Grapevine for SIX months to produce their Legal Tools CD. So, if they do rake a lot of money out of it, who can blame them? But your point was what do the authors of the programs that make up the CD get? Err, sod all matey by the looks of it, except maybe your product gets passed around more? Anyway, has anybody actually turned around and ASKED for a cut of the proceeds? The problem there of course would mean the end of PD CD's as they would be prohibitively expensive because of hundreds of royalty payments making PD CD's impractical. Maybe you could write to the compiler and ask for a free copy of the CD? You never know!! P.S Just noticed Black Dawn on CD32 cover CD. As you can see from this issue we are trying to maintain standards, if not improve them. It all hangs on the support of Amoszine readers. Thanks for your support since issue 1 Andrew, it has not gone unnoticed. @3 Steve. @1 Steve Pullinger 96A London Road St. Leonards E. Sussex TN37 6LR @3 Dear Steve, @4 First of all thanks for AZ#4. I can't believe the amount of stuff on here, its amazing. I managed to trash disk one somehow, but even so the quantity and quality is outstanding. I loved the art-work and Andrew Campbell is a very interesting read. Brilliant. I have included a useful little program on this disk, well its useful if you've got a copy of Vista. I'm afraid its written in C, but I've sent it anyway 'cos: 1: Its PD. 2: It makes animating fractal landscapes a doddle. 3: Amos isn't exactly blessed when it comes to OS-friendly file handling. The program is called VPath, and the document file is called VPath.asc. I've just read the High Octane II Diary on Amoszine #4 and felt a distinct sense of deja vu. Just like the author, Paul Cottage, I decided to get a hard drive for my A1200 and after an eternity of scrimping and saving I finally reached the day when I could pick up the 'phone. So, on the 12 of September, I telephoned a dealer and sent my cheque confident in their assurances that I would get a hard drive by the middle of that same week. Friday.. no hard drive. I 'phoned and was told that they were temporarily out of stock on 130MB hard drives, and no sorry we can't say exactly when they'll be here. Wednesday the following week.. no hard drive. "Sorry the despatch manager's at lunch, but we're expecting a batch on Friday. Friday.. "Sorry, stock hasn't arrived yet..." Friday the following week.. no hard drive, no stock - "We've had some problems getting these particular drives, but you can upgrade your order to a 170MB drive if you send another ten pounds". @4 OK, at last they're giving me a straight answer and a fair offer. Ten quid in the post. Friday the following week.. Ding Dong! At last, it's arrived. Opened up my beautiful friend and fitted the hard drive. Doesn't boot. I don't panic, I open up the Amiga again and check my connections.. all OK. Power up.. hard drive doesn't boot. In desperation I load the prep disk, a-ha! The drive's there alright and the software formats it, installs Workbench etc. Right, here goes.. hard drive doesn't boot, load WorkBench and try to CD to DH1: from a Shell. "Please insert volume.." Has my hard drive disappeared? No, the prep software can see it and WorkBench is there. All of a sudden, the drive boots and everything works OK, great. Trouble is, the computer needs to be reset a random number of times (36 was the most) before the drive decides to come to life. 'Phoned the dealer, "Try cutting line 1 on the data cable, @4there should have been a note telling you to do this", (there wasn't). The note wouldn't have helped anyway, 'cos the drive still wouldn't boot. 'phoned the dealer again (nice for BT.), "It must be faulty - send it back" Spent 4 quid on postage, but they promised me another drive Monday two weeks later.. no hard drive. 'Phoned dealer and was told that the replacement drive had also turned out to be faulty, it was the last one in stock and "No sorry, we can't say when the new stock will arrive". By this time I had just about had enough of this sloppy and totally 'f*** you' attitude that they obviously reserve for their customers and demanded a refund. Evasive is a word that springs to mind, but after another 'phone call, I was promised my money back and the very next day a cheque arrived. Only problem was, the cheque was 10 pounds short. I was told that they would look into this, and one day they may even do so, but I won't hold my breath waiting. So, who are they? @5 G***** H****** Computers@4 that's who. ======================== This type of behaviour is not isolated either, check out the letters page in the Christmas Amiga Computing, one of their readers got well and truly burnt by Hobbyte. Perhaps we need a public service, Dodgy Dealers to Avoid Like the Plague; but its not all bad news, read on... The saga continues.. Once the cheque cleared, I tried a different dealer. My new hard drive was delivered the following day. It booted. One week later it died. Was I cursed to wander drivelessly for the rest of my days? Perhaps I should bin my Amiga and get a nice dependable C64? A replacement drive arrived the following week. It booted, and (touch wood, fingers crossed) its still alive and well. My computing life has been transformed by this little miracle. @4One other thing, this new drive came with stacks of very helpful and reassuring documentation: first class. So, who are the golden boys/girls then? First Computer Centre of Leeds, you are wonderful. When I've saved up for some memory, I know who I'll trust. Well I feel much better now, thank-you and good-night Steve Pullinger. Anyway, thanks again for all that lovely source code, etc. and I'll try and keep up a healthy contribution rate, All the best @1 Steve Pullinger. @2 Thanks for VPATH Steve, at the time of writing it is planned to go on AZ Supp disk 5 but it may even make it onto this disk,space permitting. I starred out the name of the company you mentioned just in case! Glad you are happy with AZ. I have sent you a replacement for your knackered disk 1. @3 Steve. @2 A few one liners mentioned to me in passing;@3 @6 * When I want to quit AZ I get a scrolling message that takes ages end when all I want to do is quit back to Workbench, I hate this, it's annoying. @4 No problemo, just do a Control+C to quit Amoszine. @6 * A few articles in recent AZ's were either inacurate or incorrect as far as the coding examples go, I think this is bad and could confuse beginners. @4 A valid point. I know what articles you are referring to, but AZ is here for people to air their opinions and share their ideas/advice AZ is just a mouthpiece for Amos programmers it is up to the individual to get the facts straight and present the best code possible. We don't turn away many articles as we would end up with very few contributers. How would you feel if you spent hours doing work for AZ only to get it chucked back at you, it would probably be your last. All said and done though, I agree we will have to keep a better eye out for these things in future and try to correct them. My oplogies to any inconvience this may have caused anyone.