PRODUCT NAME SAAR & AMOK CD Vol II BRIEF DESCRIPTION This CD-ROM contains the complete (german) SAAR-AG and AMOK PD series which covers freely distributable programms, pictures, text files and so forth. The entire CD is directed to the german-speaker among you. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Compilation License S.A.U.G. e.V. Manufacturer Kreativ Marketing DISTRIBUTION Main places to buy the CD-ROM currently are: Germany: Stefan Ossowski Schatztruhe Gesellschaft für Software mbH Veronikastraße 33 45131 Essen Germany Fon: +49 201 78 87 78 Fax: +49 201 79 84 47 and Saarbrückener Amiga User Group e.V. (S.A.U.G.) c/o Martin Schulze Parkstr. 14 66806 Ensdorf GERMANY Fon: +49 6831 506171 BBS: +49 6838 84739 other dealers will follow. You can also try to command the CD in your local book store: ISBN 3-86084-240-4 LIST PRICE Suggested retail price is DM 39,90 (approx $US 27) Street-price varies in a wild range, please compare. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Needs any Amiga equiped with a CD-ROM drive such as A570, A1270, CDTV, CD32 or any supported third party CD-ROM drive. Needs at least 512KB of RAM. Recommended are at least 2MB of RAM, best are 5 to 8MB. As some of the software package are intended to be copied or installed to harddisk if used more than once in your lifetime, you would be in need of a harddrive. SOFTWARE Requieres at least WB 1.3, works fine with WB2.x, highly recommended is WB 3.1. Requieres a suitable CD-ROM filesystem such as Asimware, AmiCDFS, Babel CDFS, Xetec CDFS or the Commodore CDFS of WB 3.x. AmiCDFS can be found on the CD itself. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING The CD-ROM was tested on an Amiga 3000 with 2 MB Chip, 12 MB Fast RAM, several hard drives. Troughout the test, WB 3.1 (40.35) and KS 3.1 (40.68) was used. No test under WB 2.x were performed. The used CD-ROM drive was the Apple CD300 drive (Sony CDU-8003A). Used CDFS was AmiCDFS Version 1.14. REVIEW In a general overview, i would like to explain the why, what and wherefrom of this CD-ROM. I then will review the Installation and the compilation of the CD. GENERAL Well yes, I am back. Another CD, another review, another critical test. This time I was bribed. I got a free CD from the SAAR-AG club and was asked to write a review. Here it is. Looks like UseNet makes names famous. Let me use my text tool construction kit for CD-ROM reviews :-) The name of the CD is composed with the names of the two of the biggest and most active Amiga clubs or groups in Germany: SAAR-AG and AMOK. Both have different targets but share the interest of distributing their material to the interested public. Together they make available a large found of software. SAAR-AG, Saarbrückener Amiga User Group .e.V., short SAUG, was funded by Gerhard Seitz in 1989, and is sucessor of several smaller groups. The SAAR-AG group distributes a floppy disk based PD and FD series which has - in opposition to other series - the idea distribute mainly german material in german language to help those souls who cannot speak or only have small knowledge of the english language otherwise common on other series. Over the years they assembled 800 disks full of Amiga programms throughout all topics and applications. AMOK, Amiga Modula and Oberon Klub, is directing his series to the Modula II and Oberon Users and of course programmers among the interested people. The history of the AMOK people is not explained on the CD and I know only little of the background of this club. What I do know is, that some of the important people in the Modula and Oberon Scene are involved. Guys like Friedjof Siebert (programmer of the Oberon Compiler, one of the best Oberon Compiler available outside the world of the Oberon Machines at ETH Zuerich), Hartmut Goebel, Kay Bloay and maybe Claudio Nieder do contribute some of their programmes to the AMOK series. AMOK has a very strict and fixed guideline for all contributions to their series. All programms must be made available with source or at least link-modules, must by style guide compliant and have good documentations (If they really do apply to those guidelines is another story). For Modula II and Oberon Fans a must. BACKGROUND ABOUT PRICE The manufacturer is claimed to be 'Kreative Marketing'. In fact this is still the 'Schatztruhe GmbH' who also produced 'Meeting Pearls', 'Aminet 3', 'Aminet 4' and other Amiga-only CD-ROMs. You might know that the other CD-ROMs are available for a low price - about DM19.80 ($US 13). The SAAR-AMOK CD is made available for DM 39.90 ($US 27), which in my opinion is a high price. The 'Schatztruhe GmbH' somehow seems not to be happy about this price, too, and decided to release the CD under anohter name. I really wonder what the SAAR-AG and AMOK Klub are doing with the money they earn - it is quite a lot - they don't leave a word about this. SAAR AMOK CD Vol II The here discussed CD is a compilation of two floppy based series. All original floppy disks are on this CD, i cannot check whether the original content of the disks is also on the CD, i doubt so. Every floppy disk is made available on the CD in archived form (lha-Archives), and some of them in unarchived form (normal directory structure of the disks). The CD contains disks 1-800 of SaarAG and disks 1-106 in archived form, disks 601-800 of SaarAG and disks 91-106 of AMOK in unarchived form. This makes a total of 420 MB of archived and 200 MB of unarchived material. The CD was mastered in the ISO 9660 Mode 2 format with Commodore extensions, I couldn't locate any directory-level deeper than 4 or 5, hence the CD is ISO compliant and will work with almost every ISO-filesystem - even on UNIX or PC. The CD was tested and been declared for usable - normal user can fully access the CD, unike 'AmiNet 3' for example - under NetBSD-Amiga on the above described system. The CD has not been tested on a PC-clone system, i doubt that the CD will work correctly there. There are too many files on the CD which are lomger than the allowed 8.3 scheme. During the making of the CD, due to a missing 'feature' of the ISO-9660 Filesystem, which is used on every better CD-ROM, the typical Amiga protection flags are gone. The only (supplied) way to resurrect these flags is using the supplied lha-Archives in the BBS-directory. This applies to flags like Script, Archive, Execute and also Filenotes. For technical note: It *is* possible to store the missing flags and filenotes, ISO-9660 and Rockridge Extension do support this, but both, the ISO-Image during creation of CD and the CD-FS to mount the CD, do have to support that extension. This makes it impossible to start shell-scripts directly off the CD if they make use of the S-Bit (Script). Fortunately, there are not that many tools on the CD depending on this. INSTALLATION There is no installation required or provided. Some programms on the CD do require a special environment though, it is up to the user of the CD to set up the required Assigns and expand the search Path. USAGE What to do with such immense source of programms, goodies, tools, pictures, sounds, texts and source codes. I was asked not to use the sentence 'Yet another boring archive CD' - hum, ok, I try :-) Yet another floppy disks based series on CD. A 'Frozen Fish' clone. Great source code collection. Cheap and well sorted backup media - move your fantasies on CD. Indeed, the purpose of an archive CD is limited. Can be seen a large and usefull backup media, or as useless, hopelessly outdated trashcan. Your milage may vary, for many among you dear readers, this CD is probably a nice chance to get never-seen material. One could just browse through the entire stuff - a manlife of work - and get lost in the depth of Icons, directories and man-pages. One could search for specific stuff. For that purpose four possibilities are provided. Let me mention right here, that all supplied databases for described search tools only do cover the SAAR-AG series. AMOK has not supplied any tool to search data - or at least I couldn't locate any. Among them is KingFisher. This programm is a big one, the entire library has been catalogued, classified and merged together in this database programm. 'Unfortunately' the supplied version is quite old, and supplied databases are not in the new format, thus the new, more powerfull KingFisher cannot be used instead. Nontheless KingFisher was very suitable for my searches - I even found out, that some of my very old programms are on the CD. The database does only cover the archived part of the CD, but it is very easy to find the same stuff in the non-archived part of it. The other search tools are 'SaarCat' (in fact 'FishCat') - I was not able to search for specific programms. SaarCat only allowed me to search for disks and then see the contents of the disks. No idea if this is my fault or a faulty installation on the CD. Another tool is 'MegaFish'. It crashed my machine immediately on start (reproducable). No idea why. It is left to the author to fix this problem. [After some chats, it turns out that the tool opens in an AGA-Screenmode which is of course not existant on my A3000] Last but not least you can browse through the contents-files using your favorite editor, viewer or search-tool. A very usefull thing for CD32 and CDTV users is the 'Tools' directory on the CD, which holds archives of most recent tools like 'compress', 'lha', 'DMS' and 'Installer'. The corresdonding binaries can be found in the C: directory on the CD. A drawback maybe is, that ParNet or other'network' tools are not provided. At least not pre-installed. The unarchived part of the CD contains most of the stuff assembled in the way the original floppy disks contained the packages. This is even the way the authors or submitters send the material to the clubs. I can't review the material on the CD - it's hoplessly. Just let's say: too much stuff on it :-) The stuff is well choosen, contains a minor part of AmiNet-goodies and has also material which never made its way to the Internet. This does not mean that the material is useless! LIKES AND DISLIKES I like that all supplied text files had an Icon and that the default tool uses 'Sys:utitities/more' instead of a stupid or useless text viewer. You can use the (supplied) ToolAlias to select your favorite text viewer. I don't claim to be a workbench-user, i am barely using it, but i don't like the visible outfit of the CD. Sometimes the windows open at random positions - even those snapshotted by the manufacturer of the CD, and not by the submitters of the material - icons look fancy, shiny or are unusuable. But then i must admit, that this is the way the material was submitted by the authors and it never was an intention of the makers of the CD to change any material. So i must blame the authors. *BLAME* :-) I like the general compilation. Although I have no personal use for the CD, I am sure that many peoples will like the archive. It has much material for programmers of Oberon and Modula II and many uncommon tools. A probable disease is that the CD contains outdated material. This is life. Everything changes. Some of the material is timeless and can't be found elsewhere, other stuff has never been updated since, whereas other stuff is so alive it can't be kept updated at all. I totally disagree with the idea to distribute the CD only in the german-speaking area of the world. NO text on the CD which is important to use the CD - installation, explanantations, contents of the disks - has been translated into any other language. Major drawback in my eyes. I am not that comfort with the price, but I like that it is below of other - mostly more useless and less interesting - archive CDs. If you are author of any material on the CD, you will get a special price - you have to ask for it yourself though (no, not me, the SAAR-AG group). Beeing a 'archive CD' a very important matter is missing: BBS.txt. It is not possible to use the CD on a BBS to make material available in a pre-installed way. Quite a lot of work to do so. Only submitted tool to help you is 'GetCDFile'. Another topic is 'copyright' and 'disclaimer'. This topic has been discussed for years on UseNet now and still seems not to be credited in the right way. I found at least one archive which should not be on the CD, the permission was only granted for the floppy based series and it is explicitly mentioned that the archived should under no circumstanced be distributed on CD-ROMs. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS There are quite some other CDs to compare SAAR-AG + AMOK CD with. First of all, I must compare this release with the first release: Quality has increased. Price has (slightly?) been dropped, outfit has been facelifted. The other disk based CD archive is 'Frozen Fish', (or 'Gold Fish') from Fred Fish. Both CD's share quite a lot of material, but the history is different, and Fred had more time to etablish his position. Saar-AG though, is - in Germany - the successor of the 'Fred Fish' disks since Fred dropped his (floppy disks based) series. Both series are/were somehow dependend on material found on world wide AmiNet. Due to the lack of english texts on the Saar-AG CD, the CD is somehow fixed on german speakers among the readers. Of course you can work with the CD without speaking german - just you won't understand the supplied contents files. This is a plus of Fred Fishs' series. The minus of his series is the higher price. As the last several hundreds Fred Fish Amiga Lib Disks and also the last hundreds Saar-AG Disks were sometimes a subset of material found on the AmiNet (world wide Internet Library for Amiga), I should compare the CD with the existing AmiNet-CDs, but I think this would yield into some sort of religious which is not the object of this review. (A carefull reader of my reviews will see a similarity in above text parts, and will hence know that I always try to pull up critical but fair reviews...) CONCLUSIONS The CD is a for every Amiga User. I don't admit it is a 'must' - this is reserved for Oberon and Modula freaks and of course to the german readers (not everyone speaks and reads english, but, hm, i guess then he won't even be able to read my review :-) among you. Either for personal use, for shared use with friends, to be made available on BBS or via FTP - this archive will fit into your needs. A reliable product, which is quite usuable. I'd rate it 3.75 out of 5 stars. The last quarter star can be achieved if the CD becomes cheaper - but this is up to you. Support the makers of Amiga specific CDs and make it possible to issue large amounts of CDs. The higher the amount, the lower the price! The other full star is a *MUST* in my eyes: translate important information texts into english! Not even the cover of the CD contains english or may be even spanish or french texts. This makes the CD difficult to use for our world wide friends. A shame in the times of EU and world wide networks. You may wonder why this costed the CD a full star - I fighted hard with me, but I cannot be asked to write a review on the international UseNet (hence english) for a german CD even though the CD contains lot of very usefull and nicely arranged material. But even if I would have published a review of this CD in a german Amiga Magazine I certainly would have been bothered about this fact. COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review represents my honest opinion, your mileage may vary, tell me about! If you use this review in any way - re- publishing for example, the author requests at least a copy of the used media. Special thanks to disk magazine 'Amiga Gadget' who did so in the past. Copyright 1994 Markus Illenseer. All rights reserved. You can contact the author at: Markus Illenseer Kurt Schumacherstr. 16 33613 Bielefeld GERMANY markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de