[1"z June 1988 Magazine - May not be reproduced for without permission. EDITORIAL - 19 JUNE 1988 It was pleasing to see a good turnout at the June 1 meeting, but come on you guys who haven't been for a couple of months - it would be nice to see you again at the July meeting. Kickstart, Workbench v1.3 I am now told that it may be another month or so before Commodore get the bugs ironed out and the contract with MicroSmiths (Fast Fonts) tied up. So don't expect to see the 'official' 1.3 release disk for a month (or two, or three...). It now seems that Commodore won't have the FastFileSystem working for floppies in 1.3 but will in 1.4, anyway for more information read the article on DevCon, found elsewhere in this issue. Subs This month is the cut off time for those people who have been contacted and haven't paid. On July 1 you will be deleted from the club list. If you look at your magazine mailing label and it says "SUBS DUE ($30)" (or $15 for school students) on it, then that means you! Magazine I managed to get the last magazine out just in time. I will try and get this one out a bit earlier. I had a hassle with NZ Post last month - they wouldn't accept the newsletters for mailing. Anyway I managed to convince them to mail them or else! If anyone was charged surplus post then let me know. In case you are wondering, the back page is purposely photocopied without any articles on the inside - this is so you can just tear it off if it was damaged in transit, and I didn't have any articles on Word Processing to put in the last magazine - contrary to what the last Editorial said! Submission Guidelines Anybody who wants to write something for the magazine (thats all of you, right?), could you please follow a few setting out guidelines to assist me with my job. If you use any wordprocessor other than Textcraft, Textcraft Plus, Prowrite 2.0 or Excellence then save your file as ASCII (text only). If you own one of the above then simply keep to these: 1. left margin = 3, right margin = 73 (total width = 73) 2. set page size to 66 lines (standard), no top/bottom margins 3. left & right justify the entire document Can you please get articles to me by the Wednesday before the meeting. Amiga On TV Have you seen the Amiga on TV yet - various advertisers are using the Amiga in their adverts. The original "Nutella" ad showed the Amiga with DPaint. The "Formula 44" (cough medicine) ad shows the Amiga in the background and about a month ago "Entertainment This Week" showed the Amiga 2000 doing some desktop video work. Commodore are doing another run of advertising on TV, this time with 30 second commercials instead of 15, they start to air about the 13th June. Help Wanted Anybody who would like to help me put together the monthly magazine (stapling, stamping etc) then I would love to hear from you. (O]FONT5;EXIT; EDITORIAL continued (O]FONT1;EXIT; Newsletters Received NZAUG (Wgtn): 1.3 Summary, A's and B's of the 2000, Letters. NZAUG (Auck): well Roger {Manson} where is it? AAUA: Arkanoid review, Two year after, NWAUG, Amiga questions, Ferrari Formula 1 review, DevCon report, BASIC pictures, Jet review, PopCLI. Software Impressions... Software I have had contact with and have come to certain conclusions: Excellence! - this Word Processor is the best yet on the Amiga. Kind Words - this is the successor to Textcraft Plus with fonts and graphics (the screen and requesters even look the same!) Gomf 2.2 - this is the "Guru Buster", I am very impressed with this program and how easy it is to operate, and I recommend it to anybody who is sick of the guru. See Ross's review later in this issue. Write & File - Nicely integrated wp and database, easy to use. Photon Paint - Fantastic 4096 colour paint program, can do some really neat effects. e.g. wrap pictures around boxes, cubes, circles etc. Adrum - Neat little synthesizer with great sound, but it has a limited market. PixMate - Incredible image enhancer, convert images between resolutions and enhance any image with about 3000 special effects. Jonathan {Secretary - Editor} NEW PRODUCTS Hardware Live! is soon to be available for PAL Amigas. All Amiga orders are being filled with the cheaper Thomson 4121 (Commodore 1706) colour monitor until the 1084 begins to ship again in about 1 month. The 1706 is not as good as the 1084 which is not as good as the early 1081 which was supplied with early Amiga 1000s (thats of course, my opinion). The price difference of the 1706 has something to do with the recent price drop of the A500 and A2000. The 1084 will cost about $200 more than the 1706. Various third-party non-Commodore supplied monitors seem to produce excellent pictures with the Amiga. The PAL Flicker Fixer for the 2000 is in the Bay. Software Games to watch out for: Out Run, Super Hang On, Roadblaster, Bionic Commando, Gauntlet, Starglider 2, Zarch, Carrier Command, Legion Of Sword, Enlightenment, Elite, Dungeon Master, Capone, P.O.W, Creature, Skyfox II, Gunship, Romantic Encounter, Late Nite, Aquaventura, Mars Cops, Skate Or Die & lots more... For the serious user: Pro Video Plus, The 64 Emulator 2, Photosynthesis, Animator Flipper, Kara Fonts, Video Effects 3D, dbProfessional, Fleet Check, X-CAD, Professional Page v1.1, Word Perfect Library, Write & File, Softwood File IIsg, Publishing Partner Professional, Deluxe Write, Photon Video. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks this month go to: Commodore Computer (NZ) Ltd., Ross Deeley, Martin Stafford, Amigan Apprentice & Journeyman, Mike Phillips, Amiga User International and Amiga World. This newsletter was printed on a LaserPro Silver Express laser printer. Title page designed on City Desk v1.1 and printed on my Okimate 20 (the pictures of the A500, A1000 and A2000 were stolen from an old NZAUG (Auck) newsletter.) Ferrari Formula 1 review and DevCon report were reprinted from AMIGA WORKBENCH, newsletter of the Amiga Users Group, P.O Box 48, Boronia, 3155, Victoria, Australia. VICE CHAIRMANS REPORT Hi for the month of June. Mike has let me loose this month to do the chairmans report so without further ado, here it is. At our last committee meeting we talked about Special InterestGroups (SIGs) and decided that we should set up a SIG for new members to be held once a month at a new members home. This would be run by one of the senior members of the club demonstrating things that don't get covered at the monthly meeting or problems that crop up between monthly meetings. We also talked about hiring a hall on a Sunday afternoon where everyone that comes along brings their computer. The object of this is for people with families to bring them along, and for those who can't make it on the Wednesday club night. The object of this would be to have a less formal get together and have a bit of fun and have a contest on certain games and the winner would get a small prize, if you have any further ideas on this please don't be shy at the next meeting and let us know about them. This brings me on to the next subject of members feed back. At the meetings when we ask for further comments we would like at least someone to have something to say as this would help the committee to know what you the member wants from the club and also gives the committee some ideas on what to arrange for further meetings, because we are certain that everybody cannot be happy, as this is nearly an impossibility, so don't be shy and have your say. Sound Sampler At the last meeting you where told that those of you who where interested in sharing a sound sampler that you would have to make two groups one for the 1000 owners and one for the 500 & 2000 owners due to the 1000 having a differant connector to that of the 500 & 2000. This has since changed as a member in the club has said he can make an adaptor plug so that the sampler can work on all Amigas, so all those members who said that they would like to purchase and share in this please bring along $35 and give it to me at the next meeting. Blank Disks As most of you are aware the club holds a supply of blank disks to sell to members which are availible from either myself or from Ross at a rate that is cheaper than buying them from a shop, the idea of running this service was to make a bit of money for the club to be able to purchase public domain software, as the club is running on a very tight budget. If members don't use this service more often we might be forced to cut down on our purchases of PD software. All it takes is a phone call to Ross or myself to arrange a time to come around with your money to pick them up. Next Meeting The next meeting is to be held on 6 July 1988 with a demonstration on how to use a sound sampler using Audiomaster and Perfect Sound software and the usual beginners lessons etc. Those people who said they would bring there computers along to the next meeting, if you cannot do so, please let me know so that I can arrange for someone else to. The agenda for the next meeting is as follows: 7 to 7:30 set up your Amiga, 7:30 to approx 7:45 Committee report, 7:45 to 9:15 lessons and demos, 9:15 to 9:30 report back, 9:30 to whenever supper and wind up. Those younger members who wish to play games should bring along a joystick to enable them to do so. Trevor Cook CLUB MEETINGS FOR 1988 Meetings of the Bay Amiga Club are held on the first Wednesday of each month (except January) at the Wesley Conference Lounge, Hastings Street, Hastings (opposite Municipal Theatre). Setup time 7 - 7:15. Start time 7:30 sharp. * July 6, 1988 * August 3, 1988 * September 7, 1988 * October 5, 1988 * November 2, 1988 * December 7, 1988 RAMBLINGS Well it had to happen sooner or later, an Atari ST owner traded his 520ST in to upgrade to a Commodore 64 Pro Pack! If that isn't good advertising for the Amiga vs ST wars, then what is? The 80286 bridgeboard for the Amiga 2000 will run OS/2 - IBM's latest attempt to catch up to the Apple Mac (let alone the Amiga!). Psygnosis (makers of Barbarian, Terrorpods & Obliterator) now develop their software on the Amiga instead of the ST - maybe more software firms could do the same. Steven Speilberg (amongst other film professionals) uses 18 turbo-charged Amiga 2000s with specially designed Agnus chips for broadcast quality resolution (which were developed by Commodore) to assist with special effects. Latest reports indicate Amiga software (especially games) is outselling the Atari ST in all of Europe, and in America (where the Amiga has always outsold the ST) developers are developing even more software than they had previously. TIPS, TRICKS & BUGS Maxiplan Users Ross Deeley advises us that people who are using Maxiplan Plus to use version 1.8G not the latest upgrade, 1.8J, the latest has a few more potentially more dangerous bugs than 1.8G. If you nolonger have 1.8G then contact Ross. DPaint Abort Fill Using DeluxePaint II from Electronic Arts, I found this handy feature. When using the fill, solid or dithered, and you discover right away that it is not what you want, press the space bar. This will stop and erase the fill while it is still in progress, instead of waiting until its finished and hoping that you can use Undo. This works for some other features too. Assign Undo If you mistakenly "assign" a non-existent logical device name, for example "assign funts: df1:fonts", you can easily un-assign it by simply typing: assign funts: That is all, just assign funts: with nothing after it. Batch Screen Clear Sometimes I want to clear the screen from within a batch file, such as the startup-sequence file. While a CTRL-L will clear the screen from the command level of the CLI, I couldn't find a way of including a Control sequence in a batch file while in ED. I did find than an ESC-C would also clear the screen and could be entered into an ECHO statement in the form: echo "*ec" When the batch file is executed, the screen will clear itself (or reset) when it reaches that command. (This is actually a printer command to reset.) Amiga Audio Output You probably already have your A500, A1000 or A2000 audio output connected to the audio input of your monitor, but you can connect it to a stereo. Audio inputs are categorised as low impedance or high impedance. Low impedance is anything under 600 ohms; high anything over 2000 ohms. The Amiga audio needs to be fed into a high impedance input. Simply connect your Amigas stereo output to the left and right "Aux" inputs of your stereo or amplifier. Virus Update By now most of you would have heard about or encountered the dreaded virus. I am told that there are now 37 different variations of the original virus. I strongly suggest that you power off before loading any commercial game. This is because most games have certain copy protection schemes, which when the virus is written onto these, are ruined - thus the game will no longer load. The need to power off with productivity software is not as great, because at the moment most virus live on the boot track of the disk. Productivity software usually does not contain copy protection (with the possible exception of Electronic Arts).The virus I reported in the last issue is now widespread in New Zealand (no, not because of me!). This virus will write itself to any disk whether it boots or not (but it can't write to a write-protected disk) - this means that you should check all fish disks you get from the club. I will make available the VKill program which can check for non-standard boot tracks (e.g. any viruses or protection). Please don't think, however, that the virus should ruin your enjoyment of the Amiga - all computers on the market have a virus of some sort and the Amiga viruses aren't particulary nasty. CHIEF ARCHIVISTS REPORT Report By Ross Deeley Not much news this month, as yet (18th June) there have been no more Fish disks released. However I expect that there will be another shipment in a couple of weeks. It seems that Fish disks are now coming out in less frequent, but larger amounts. We do have two new sound demo disks: the Genesis demo is a long sound sample that keeps loading from the disk while it is playing the song and the Sonix Player disk means that people who do not own Sonix can play the "You're the Voice" song that comes with the "El Gato" demo, and there are two other songs on the disk as well. The Sonix player will work on a 512k machine but I am not sure about the Genesis demo. As part of the ongoing process of compiling the best software on to a small number of disks I have created the Games1 disk which contains some old favorites like Amoeba Invaders and the Cosmo asteroids game plus a word/phrase guessing game (to prove the Amiga can be educational as well as fun). The compilation of a business program disk is a little more difficult as it would have to be a bootable Workbench disk in order to run properly on a single drive machine, however I will have a word processor disk set up in time for the next meeting. Reminder Bit Copiers are banned at club meetings. If you want to copy any (non-protected) disks use the "dfc" program which is found on the BayAmigaClubDisk. It is also on the "copy disk for small machines" where it is set up to run on booting that disk, without loading Workbench. If you use this disk you should be able to use the Buffer feature on a 1 meg 500 if you only have 1 drive. Viruses As there are now number of different strains the old Virus Killer disk and the Vcheck1.2 program will not guarantee that a disk does not have a virus. There is a new program called "Vkill"which can examine the boot track of a disk and see if it is normal. This program must be run from the CLI and can be found in the c: directory of the club copy disk. I will also put it on the word processor disk that I am setting up. I suggest that you copy it to ram: put the disk you wish to check in df0: and then type: ram:Vkill df0: check The program will then tell you whether there is a boot block installed on the disk and if so whether or not it is standard. You can then remove any virus by typing: ram:Vkill df0: Do not do this with any copy-protected disks (eg commercial games) as it will probably prevent that disk from running. The presence of a non-standard boot track does not necessarily mean that it is a virus but it is fairly likely. Always power off before booting copy-protected disks. The "Basic Games disk" is very popular but some people with two drives have had some difficulty with it. Some of the games will not run unless the disk is in DF0: (the internal drive) So after booting a normal Workbench, put the "Basic Games" disk in DF0: (if you have a second drive you can put the workbench disk there, note that if you get a requester asking for the workbench it says put it in any drive). Blank Disks You can save $7 per box if you buy your blank disks from the club. Premium quality Nashua 3" DSDD are only $43 PER BOX! Of course we charge a higher rate for sales of less than 10 disks: 1 disk $5 7 disks $31 2 disks $9 6 disks $26 3 disks $13 8 disks $35 4 disks $18 9 disks $39 5 disks $22 All profits from the sale of disks go to the club. This money is needed to continue expanding our PD Library. Contact: Ross Deeley (Chief Archivist) 38 Napier Rd. Havelock North (070) 775-959 Hours: 6:30pm - 9:00pm Mon-Fri 1pm - 6pm Saturday 10am - 5pm Sunday Napier Members can obtain blank disks and the most recent PD disks from: Trevor Cook, Phone (070) 435-074 GAMES SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP (SIG) It has been suggested by several members that we hold a games competition. The idea would be to hire a hall some Sunday afternoon (not the second sunday following the club meeting) and everyone brings along their Amiga. A small entry fee would be charged to cover the cost of hall hire and any prizes that would be awarded. Suggestions as to what games would be suitable would be welcome. A two machine JET dogfight is likely if we can get cables to connect machines together. There will be a discussion about this competition at the next club meeting. A Joystick is an essential part of any Amiga used for playing games. While there are cheap ones available, I always recommend WICO as they last where others wear out. I still have the original Bat-handle that I bought 5 years ago for my C=64 and it is still working perfectly. One of my Red-ball joysticks is about 4 years old and still going strong. Whether you choose a red-ball or a bat-handle is a matter of personal preference. Both types have buttons on top of the stick and in the base. Retail price is $89.99. Amiga 500 and 2000 owners can buy extension cables for mouse and joystick ports. This makes it easier to swap controllers if required (many 2 player games require 2 joysticks). Retail price $35. High Score Table: Please send all high scores to Jonathan and include the level reached (and the level started from if applicable) as well as your high score. The next meeting of the Games SIG is Sunday 17th July 1:15pm at my place. Ross Deeley Games SIG Co-Ordinator SOFTWARE REPORT: GOMF 2.2 GOMF v2.2 by Silicon Springs Development ($79.99 Retail) GOMF stands for 'Get Out of My Face' and is subtitled "the Gurubuster" An earlier version was released as shareware but typically nobody sent in any contributions so the author went commercial. This program enables you to recover from software errors and program crashes. You can run this program from either CLI or workbench (put it in your startup-sequence, it only takes a small amount of memory). Thereafter whenever you get a 'Software error Task Held' requester, you can select 'cancel' and instead of a Guru you see the GOMF window. By using the 'Whap' option you can remove any windows or screens that the offending program was using. After that selecting the GOMF button will remove that program and free any memory that the program wasusing. Two other programs are on the disk: 'Recall' will bring up the GOMF window so you can remove programs that have not actually crashed but are in an infinite loop and NUKE is a program to remove tasks that do not have windows or screens open. Also on the disk are some sample errors that you can try out. I recommend this program for all Amiga owners who use the machine for anything other than playing games. It is especially useful for programmers, people who experiment with Public Domain software, and Word Perfect users. Ross Deeley LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Editor LoadWB Magazine Dear Sir, I wish to complain about the instructions supplied with a number of recently released games. We are now used to poor translations (such as "With pressing the SPACE key you can stop the game up to another pressure on this key." & "Insert game disc when the Workbench is demanded" & "After a short leader you are asked to insert the second disk" & "Some scanty tips may be catched after the title screen") but at least we can work out what they mean. When the only instructions are in German it is almost impossible to work out how to play the game. What is "einen Geschichkeitsteil" and what do you do with it. These games come via some NZ distributor and therefore should have English instructions. Yours Amily, Ross Deeley COPYING DISKS ON A SINGLE DRIVE, 1 MEG AMIGA You can run the public domain copying program "DFc" from the CLI. Put DFc on a bootable disk (e.g. a Workbench disk). Boot that disk but when the AmigaDOS (CLI) screen appears, hold down the CTRL and D keys while it is booting. This will give the following on the screen: *** BREAK - CLI 1> Then type dfc and hit return. The program will run and you can use the buffer feature to copy a disk with just one pass. Click on the button that says "Buffer Off" (it will change to "Buffer On"). Write protect the disk you wish to copy and insert it into the drive. Click the "Go" button it will then read the entire disk and soon prompt you to swap the disk for the destination disk. Once it has finished you can make another copy of the same disk by clicking on the "Again" button. DID YOU KNOW? ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange is one of the standard formats for representing characters so that files can be shared between programs. A DOS Text File is in ASCII format. BOOT To start a computer. It comes from the phrase "to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps". The computer must first find a program to tell it how to run any other program. ICON A visual representation of a tool, project drawer or disk. The word itself means an image, statue, painting mosaic etc of sacred personage, itself regarded as sacred. IFF Interchange File Format. An Amiga software standard that allows for the interchange of graphic and sound files among different types of programs from different program developers. IFF supports numeric data, dates, pictures, text and sound. MACRO Microcomputer Automated Command, Relative Order. A string of commands that record, save and play back the keystrokes and mouse clicks used to perform almost any operation a program is capable of. Repetitive, multi command tasks are executed by pressing just one or two key strokes. MACROs are used a lot in word processing, spreadsheet and data base programs. PIXEL PICture ELement is one dot on the display screen. Amiga low resolution = 320 pixels across and 200 pixels high, med res = 640 x 200, interlace = 320 x 400, high res = 640 x 400. BUSINESS SIG The next topic will be Databases (what they are, how to use them etc). "Softwood File IIsg" will be demonstrated by Trevor Cook as the example program. Bring your problems, questions and databases along so we all can learn from each other. Date has not been set yet but will be announced at the next meeting. FOR SALE Nigel and Rachel Jones have the following item for sale: Commodore Amiga 1010 External Disk Drive $400 ono In excellent as-new condition, phone Nigel or Rachel on Waipukurau (0728) 87 006. STOP PRESS!! Ross Deeley has just received Fish Disks 137 through 146, hereports that there is a good mouse accelerator program and a very fast non-bit copier, an update to Analyticalc and more. Anyway these will be available from Ross, Trevor and at the July 6 club night, so please use this service and buy your disks from the club - this is out only way of funding the club Public Domain library! Commodore NZ are about to release a new monitor which is supposed to be better than the 1081, the 1084 and the 1706. PRINTER DRIVER COLLECTION If you have any printer drivers that are out of the ordinary then please bring them to the next meeting to put on the Club Printer Driver Disk or give them to Ross. That's all folks...