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Amiga Update (1998-03-11)
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_ __ _ <>_ __ _ ||
/\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E
/__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors-
/ \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional Newsletter)
BACK FOR THE FUTURE ||
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AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Gateway 2000, Inc.
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980311
S U P E R A M I G A C L O N E S F R O M P H A S E 5 !
B A R S A N D P I P E S F R E E D O W N L O A D
U P D A T E D I B R O W S E A V A I L A B L E
A M I G A F O R P C - M A Y B E
A A A A W A R D S O P E N V O T I N G
P H O T O G E N I C S N G T O D E B U T
N E W I M A G E F X V E R S I O N
U S E R G R O U P L U N C H E O N P L A N N E D
U S E R R E P F O R I C O A - E L E C T I O N S
F I R M I N U K N E E D S A M I G A T A L E N T
Editor's Thoughts and Introduction:
Good news and less good news, but mostly good news. That's this
edition of "Amiga Update". The not so good news is an announcement of
an innovative product from Siamese Systems that may not be built. We
feel this product could lure some Wintel folks to a more enjoyable
computing experience. Like many companies in the Amiga arena, though,
it seems Siamese Systems needs some assurance they can actually sell
the products before they'll build them. Give the amount of time the
Amiga market has been depressed, this isn't too surprising.
That's one reason we're happy to see signs of forward movement, like
the recent announcement from Amiga Incorporated about new generation
machines. We have for you today an eye popping announcement of another
new generation computer - super Amiga compatibles from Phase 5. It's
our lead story.
There's good news on the software front too. A number of companies
are using the Amiga 98 show in Saint Louis to bring new or updated
products into the light of day. We have some news items below for you.
Speaking of Amiga 98, that show starts in just a couple of days. We
hope to see you there!
Brad Webb,
Editor
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S U P E R A M I G A C L O N E S F R O M P H A S E 5 !
Phase 5 Digital Products Announces Development of the Pre\Box, a
PowerPC-Based Computer System with Amiga OS 3.1
Taking The Next Step Towards PowerPC Multiprocessing, The Pre\Box
Will Take Off to New Performance Dimensions
Beside the finalization of upcoming products such as the
CyberVisionPPC and the BVisionPPC graphics cards, phase 5 digital
products has started a new development project for a stand-alone,
PowerPC-based computer system, called the pre\box, which will use the
licensed AMIGA OS 3.1 and a further advanced version of the PowerUP
System Software to provide Amiga compatibility on the AMIGA
OS/Workbench 3.1 level under CyberGraphX V3.
"The license agreement that we have signed with Amiga International
allows us to start the development project of this new machine, which
had been in conceptual design for several months now. It is an
important step for revitalizing the Amiga market, encouraging
developers and rebuilding a market which is strong enough to maintain"
says Wolf Dietrich, General Manager of phase 5. In a separate
announcement Dietrich states that the A\BOX, the long-term technology
project of phase 5 digital products, is postponed but not cancelled.
"The A\BOX project will be continued with revised targets and
specifications and with extended resources, based on the succesful
introduction of the new product lines". Dietrich points out that the
key for the survival of the Amiga and the Amiga market is the
availability of new outstanding stand-alone hardware products as soon
as possible, a goal which shall be reached with the pre\box design.
"We need an expanding market in the very near future, or the battle
may be lost for the Amiga computer system" he adds.
The new pre\box machines will be targeting the medium and upper price
regions for PCs or Personal Workstations, but are designed to provide
stunning performance. All systems will come as multi-processing
systems with at least four PowerPC CPUs installed, which will allow
them to provide an extremely high computing power at an outstanding
price/performance relation. "Multi-processing has been one of the most
important goals, if not THE most important design goal for phase 5
digital products in the past 18 months" explains Wolf Dietrich. "It is
here where alternative technology can offer advantages and superiority
over the mainstream products in the PC market. While our current
PowerUP product line, which consists of upgrade cards for existing
machines, helps the user to update his system and secure the
investments made in existing hardware and software, it is a challenge
to built new stand-alone hardware products which can price-wise
compete with the mainstream PCs - especially under the impression that
PC systems are blown out at dumping prices regularly, and that a PC
system you buy today maybe outdated and nearly worthless in less than
a year." Consequently, the company does not plan to build single-CPU
systems which would have to compete at a similar performance level
with Intel-based systems, but wants to fully utilize the opportunities
which have been given with the move to the PowerPC. "Developers who
jump on the PowerUP bandwagon today can make their products ready for
multiprocessing quite easily.Therefore it will be possible to take two
giant steps - from a single-CPU 68k system to a Multi-CPU PowerPC
system - within only one year, an impressive progress for the Amiga
community which many have not thought possible" Dietrich adds.
The pre\box system is designed on a ATX formfactor motherboard and
incorporates a fast SDRAM-based memory subsystem with initially up to
100 MHz memory speed. Depending on the actual bus speed of the PowerPC
processors which are used, the processor bus also runs at up to 100
MHz. The four PowerPC processors, which are located on a separate CPU
card, will be equipped with inline or backside caches, also depending
on which type of processor is actually used. As the PowerUP System
Software features a software-controlled cache coherency, the pre\\box
can even be equipped with CPUs which do not offer hardware support for
multiprocessing, such as the PPC603e or the PPC750 (G3).
The pre\box system also has an integrated 3D graphics subsystem,
which is connected via a 66 MHz PCI 2.1 bus with a peak performance of
264 MB/s and comes with eight MB of graphics memory. With this gfx
subsystem, a powerful standard is provided as the minimum base
configuration on which software designers can rely. But more than
that: On the same 66 MHz PCI bus there is a special slot for a
Voodoo2-based 3D accelerator card which is directly coupled to the
built-in gfx chip. "We plan to provide, either on our own or in
cooperation with other vendors, a Voodoo2-based solution as a powerful
upgrade option" comments Wolf Dietrich. "We will not forget the
demands of the serious gamers."
Also as standard, there will be an integrated Ultra-Wide SCSI-II
controller and a 100 Mbit ethernet controller available, which will
allow usage of todays powerful UW-SCSI devices and provide fast
network connectivity - a feature which will also support the
distributed multiprocessing concepts of phase 5 digital products.
For the use of inexpensive hardware expansions, a PCI bus with three
standard PCI slots is integrated. This PCI bus runs at 66 MHz, but
will also accept 33 MHz PCI boards. With the PCI bus integrated,
development of new stunning hardware products for the pre\box systems
is quite easy; more than that, developers can use standard PCI
products and adopt them for the pre\box systems by simply writing
software support for them.
Yet not decided is, if there will be a socket for an optional 68k CPU
left on the board."In this next-generation product, the consequent
option for using 68k software will be emulation. We are continuously
encouraging Amiga developers to support our new MP software
technologies and guidelines which we introduced with our PowerUP
System Software, and those who follow these recommendations will be
able to provide applications that utilize the vast power of our
upcoming pre\box system right away. This is where efforts should be
spend now" says Wolf Dietrich.
Beside these main features, the pre\box will offer all standard
functionality which is expected from a computer system today, such as
fast serial and parallel interfaces, a USB bus, and an EIDE interface
for use of e.g. inexpensive CD-ROM drives or additional cheap
harddrives.
The pre\box release is scheduled for the early fourth quarter 1998.
The pricing of the pre\box system is already determined based on the
current pricings for PowerPC processors. Currently it is planned to
offer the following versions of the pre\box with the following
suggested retail prices:
pre\box 604/800 with four PPC604e-200 MHz CPUs suggested retail price
DM 3.995,-- / US$ 1995.00/ UKP 1495.00 pre\box 604/1000 with four
PPC604r-250 MHz CPUs suggested retail price DM 4.995,-- / US$ 2495.00/
UKP 1895.00 pre\box 604/1200 with four PPC604r-300 MHz CPUs suggested
retail price DM 6.995,-- / US$ 3395.00/ UKP 2595.00 pre\box 750/1200
with four PPC750-300 MHz CPUs, each with 1 MByte Backside Cache
suggested retail price DM 8.995,-- / US$ 4495.00/ UKP 3395.00
These prices are valid for pre\box systems in an ATX minitower,
including mouse and keyboard, as well as AMIGA OS 3.1 and the PowerUP
System Software, excluding memory, harddrive and CD-ROM. For an
entry-level configuration of memory, harddrive and CD-ROM (32MB, 4GB,
24speed) an additional DM 750,-- (US$ 375.00 or UKP 275.00) must be
considered.
(German and UK prices include VAT, US prices excl. local taxes, all
prices are based on the current currency exchange rates.
Specifications and prices are subject to change without prior notice).
In order to support and encourage customers of PowerUP boards for
existing Amigas, phase 5 digital products will offer substantial
discounts on the purchase of pre\box systems to owners of PowerUP
boards. "We want to provide security for the investments of the users
today. Obviously, Amiga users and developers need to see a fast
growing base of PowerPC systems in these days, in order to support the
progress of developments. We want to encourage the users to invest in
PowerPC technology now" comments Wolf Dietrich.Owners of PowerUP
boards who later take advantage of the discounts on purchases of a
pre\box system will not have to return their PowerUP boards to receive
this discount, but can continue to use their PowerUP-Amiga as a
stand-alone system or even use it's performance from the pre\box via a
link system which will be provided with the pre\box, and with which
the networked multiprocessing feature of the PowerUP System Software
can be utilized.
With this new product roadmap and variety of powerful and stunning
products to come, phase 5 digital products underscores it's position
as the leading innovator in PowerPC hardware and system software
development in the Amiga market. "We want to further support the Amiga
market with these efforts" states Wolf Dietrich. "Part of our efforts
will also be to support the developers, and to encourage them to
develop for PowerUP with our best endeavours. We will do whatever is
possible for us to make existing developers stay with the Amiga, and
will also try to win back Amiga developers who have left the platform
or put developments on hold. Recent releases of PowerUP compatible
software products, which had been realized within just a few weeks by
their developers, show how easy and efficiently existing Amiga
software products can be ported to support the new processor and
performance generation. To convince software developers, we also need
to make them aware of the market potential and the outlook to the
future that we offer. All users can support these efforts, too, by
contacting their favourite Software vendors and requesting PowerUP
versions of their software."
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B A R S A N D P I P E S F R E E D O W N L O A D
11 March, 1998
The best MIDI sequencer Bars & Pipes Prof. 2.5b for the Amiga is now
downloadable from the following site:
http://members.theglobe.com/geoarn
From this site you can also download others of Blue Ribbon's software
packages:
* SuperJAM!
An Auto Composer and 'band-in-a-box'
* PatchMeister
A MIDI patcher and library
* Tools packages for use with B&P.
Additionaly, the site contains relative information, links and a chat
forum.
- George Arnold, the Bars & Pipes Software Site.
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U P D A T E D I B R O W S E A V A I L A B L E
10 Mar 1998
{The following message was sent to users of iBrowse on the 10th,
announcing an update to the popular web browser. Within hours, the
server hosting the web page from which the update could be obtained
was swamped. Brad}
Dear iBrowse user,
Thank you for your interest in iBrowse, the world wide web browser
from HiSOFT that is used by more Amiga users than any other browser.
We are delighted to announce that version 1.2 of iBrowse is now
available. Please surf to the iBrowse page of the HiSOFT web site to
download a program that will update you from v1.12a to v1.2 of
iBrowse. As usual, this update is completely free of charge.
http://www.hisoft.co.uk/cgi-bin/hisoft/upgrade
Below is a summary of the changes made in 1.2 from 1.12a.
o Added PNG and XBM support.
o Added a Global History window where you can view visited URLs.
o Added save as plain ASCII.
o Added smart window activation mode.
o Added an option to not select the download window. o Added a
minimum chip memory limit in prefs.
o Added options to have windows open on startup.
o Added clipboard support.
o Improved cache browser opening speed.
o Improved colour handling for images. (Made it possible to store
images in fastram. Good-bye 2MB chip memory limit! As a side effect,
image decoding is much faster on AGA systems.)
o Alt cursor left/right now means back/forward.
o Fixed a few bugs in the ftp code that could lead to crashes.
o Fixed a few bugs in the ARexx code.
o Fixed problems on sites which had traling spaces in their cookies.
o Fixed a lot of small problems in the image decoders that could lead
to crashes.
o Fixed (finally!) the >80 chars long file comment bug. IBrowse now
truncates the URL nicely and tries to remove the most unnecesary parts
of the URL.
Once again, thank you for you interest in iBrowse and we hope you
enjoy using the new version.
Best regards,
__________________________________________________________________
HiSOFT SYSTEMS, The Old School, Greenfield, Bedford MK45 5DE, England.
Freecall 0800 223 660 sales (UK only) +44 (0)1525 718181 voice +44
(0)1525 713716 fax sales@hisoft.co.uk http://www.hisoft.co.uk/
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A M I G A F O R P C - M A Y B E
Siamese Systems Accepting Pre-orders for its PC-based Amiga Board
For immediate release 4th March 1998.
Siamese v4, PCI based Amiga.
Fellow Amigan
As you are probably aware the Siamese System has been developed to
bring the Amiga into the mainstream computer market to create a hybrid
Amiga/Windows platform that can bring rewards to the Amiga owner by
giving them access to the low cost PC components, and to the PC owner
by bringing the richness of the Amiga software base. Initially the
Siamese System worked with Serial (for RTG) and SCSI (for File
Transfer), followed by v2.5 which now uses the Ethernet and TCP/IP
protocol. Now we are working on Siamese v4.0 which is based around a
complete AGA Amiga on a PCI card which can take a 33mhz 68040 or a
66mhz 68060.
This system has many aims in life which are as follows:-
* To give Amiga owners the Ultimate and fastest Amiga ever, and one
that is fully backward compatible.
* To push the Amiga Alpha project into the next stage and giving the
Amiga the Alpha chip power.
* To create the Ultimate Hybrid machine using Amiga / Macintosh /
Windows operating systems in one box.
* To give the PC access to the Macintosh software market and creating
a hybrid Macintosh / PC using this card.
* To give the PC and Mac owners a new software base of the great and
inexpensive Amiga software.
However, we face a dilemma with the Amiga market in the position it
is in with users holding back on investing in Amiga hardware until
they see something happening at Amiga Inc. We are working on the
Macintosh version of this product because we know there is a very
large market for this innovative product, born out by the hundreds of
emails received since the press release was sent out last week.
However, we are concerned about the lack of activity in the Amiga
market. Even though the Siamese system has sold in reasonable numbers,
being the best selling product at many dealers, this is not what we
would consider selling in a strong enough volume to encourage us to
invest the many thousands of pounds necessary to create a full Amiga
version of the Siamese v4. This project is not just software and
involves expensive hardware design work, therefore we must be
financially very careful.
As many should be aware I have backed the Amiga since 1988 and have
stuck solely with this market until now, but financial pressures are
forcing us to push into other markets to survive. Having read the
announcement from Vulcan software I can only agree and applaud his
brave and from the heart comments. I believe that by pushing into
another market that is prepared to upgrade to newer hardware we can
earn the revenues needed to create new and exciting Amiga products,
and bring back the old Amiga user who could afford to support the
development community. A knock on effect would be that these new
PC/Mac users could later be turned onto the Amiga software market with
a simple upgrade disk, we call this "Amiga by Stealth". As I hope you
can see this is very important for the future of the Amiga and can
have a very beneficial effect on the Amiga developers by selling their
software to Mac owners running on the Siamese v4 Amiga.
Now to the main point of this message posting, we need to be sure
that there is a market for this great new Amiga product that we are
preparing before we invest in the development. So we need to know how
many people will order this product upon completion, are prepared to
put down a deposit on the final price, and pay the balance within 30
days of availability. The retail price of this product excluding CPU
is to be 399.00 Pounds including UK vat, and $499 in the US.
We are working the deposit on a sliding scale approach so that the
bigger the deposit the more you will save on the final price. The
chart is based on the UK price and this is the amount the UK and
European price will be based on. Bear in mind that the deposit is non
refundable unless we do not deliver the product. Time for delivery
would be about three to four months from date final decision on
whether this product should go ahead..
25.00 pounds deposit Total price to pay inc. deposit 375.00 pounds
saving of 25.00 pounds 50.00 pounds deposit Total price to pay inc.
deposit 350.00 pounds saving of 50.00 pounds 100.00 pounds deposit
Total price to pay inc. deposit 325.00 pounds.Saving of 75.00 pounds
If you are a dealer, you can pre order from the first batch and if
you meet the right order quantities you can become a distributor for
that territory, obviously the same rule applies and a deposit must be
paid up front. Please contact us if you wish to be a dealer and we
will send you the special introduction prices.
There is a time scale on this, and if we do not reach near enough to
the 500 units the product will have to be dropped, I am sorry but that
is the way it has to be. We have invested everything in this Amiga
market and can not do it any longer unless there are people who are
willing to order the product. This is not a new idea and it happens in
many other areas where there is a very small potential market.
As you can see it is worth paying the deposit and as long as we meet
a target of 500 boards we will invest the money needed into the Amiga
version of the "Siamese PCI Amiga". This may seem like an
extraordinary way to develop a product but the software is 80%
complete and the hardware is 60% complete. However the development
cost is too high when the Amiga buying public have become so lethargic
about paying for new Amiga products and at the same time complain
about the lack of development.
Remember we are not a large company with deep pockets, we are an
Amiga company working in the best tradition of the Computer market on
a tight budget and with more ideas than money. I hope that you will
see the sense in this and understand that we want this new Amiga to
appear, but we cannot develop it just for fun, it must have a market
to sell too. I have already had a large amount of interest in this
board and I am confident that this confirmed order scheme will work,
which is why I am risking a good flaming to put the reality out there
to the community. I hope that this is acceptable to most Amiga users,
the ones I have field tested this on have all been very positive and
encouraged me to continue, so this is now up to you, are you in or
out?
For those who say how can it be faster than any other Amiga, well it
works like this, all I/O, graphics display, sound and file operations
will be processed by the host PC/Alpha processor, and the bandwidth
across the PCI bus is about 10 times the Zorro3 bus speed. Therefore
the 680x0 processor just sends a simple system request and carries on
processing code. We expect to give between 50-100% effective speed
increase for the processor being the equivalent of a 133mhz 68060. To
back this up, the Amiga will have OpenGL using the Host PC and its
graphics card to render and therefore again no work for the
68060.Finally, an average PC graphics card will always be faster than
an Amiga card because of the increase in bus speed that this new
system will have access too. Also if this card is fitted into the
Alpha, the gradual Amiga porting will give incredible performance
increases way in advance of any PowerPC chip based card.
Finally let me talk about money, as this is very important. You can
buy a cheap 233mhz PC for around 600.00, add the Siamese PCI card and
a processor from your existing accelerator, ( if removable ) and for
1000 have the most innovative computer on the Planet.
What about games, well this card has a full AGA chip set on board, so
most games should work without any problems through the Amiga Video
output, also if you wanted to create a hybrid Analogue / Digital video
system with your existing Genlock you could with this card. This is
something sadly lacking in the budget video world, again another Amiga
first.
Please check out our web site for more details about the potential of
the card and if you want to join the plan there is an email form to
fill in and we will send you the paper work.
Yours sincerely
Stephen Jones
Managing Director
Siamese Systems ltd.
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A A A A W A R D S O P E N V O T I N G
Umeå, Sweden. Wednesday February 18, 1998.Presented in proud
association with AMIGA International, Inc.March 1st through March
31st, the public voting for the AAA Awards 1997 is open! Cast your
vote on those you feel have done the most for the AMIGA during 1997 at
http://www.aaa-awards.org/
or
+46-[0]90-710020
Have your say right away!
Presentation
The winners will be announced and awarded at these locations:
AAA Award International
Saturday May 16, 11:00
World of Amiga '98, Novotel Exhibition Centre, London (England)
AAA Award Sverige
Saturday April 4, 15:00
AmiTech '98, Wasahallarna, Stockholm (Sweden)
Juries
Thanks to our jury members, we have three final nominees in each
category, selected from many suggested candidates.
AAA Award International 1997 Jury
Darreck Lisle, Amiga, Inc.
Mick Tinker, Index Information Ltd.
Kermit Woodall, Nova Design
Jason Compton, Amiga Report / Legacy
Lamar Morgan, Amiga Atlanta Inc. (American user group)
Guvenc Kaplan, Amigart (Turkish user group)
Angel Alvarez Diaz, Spanish user
AAA Award Sverige
Johan Otterström, Örebro Videoreklam
Gunnar Liljas, AmigaInfo
Stefan Smietanowski, software developer
Magnus Eklund, Icing Organizing
Tomas Johansson, Amiga-Team (Swedish user group)
Björn Andersson, user
Per-Olof Yliniemi, user
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P H O T O G E N I C S N G T O D E B U T
Photogenics Ng Debuts at Gateway Computer Show-Amiga98
Paul Nolan is pleased to be able to give an exclusive preview of the
totally new Photogenics Ng at the upcoming Amiga98 show, March 13th to
15th. Although the name is still subject to change, (see
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~pnolan/newname.html), enough core
features are in place to demonstrate the unparalleled level of
creativity the software will offer.
Photogenics Ng aims to offer the user never before seen levels of
power and sophistication, whether creating works of art from scratch,
manipulating existing images, or creating professional quality
graphics for your web site.In addition to alternating between demos of
Photogenics Ng and the Siamese System at his stand, Paul will also be
giving a free 45 minute seminar on Saturday evening at 6pm.
Further details of Photogenics Ng will be posted at:
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~pnolan/
Amiga 98 show details can be found at:
http://www.amiga-stl.com/show.html
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N E W I M A G E F X V E R S I O N
Friday, March 6th, 1998
Nova Design, Inc., producers of the award winning ImageFX package and
Aladdin 4D package, are proud to announce that the shipping version of
ImageFX 3.0 will be premiered at Amiga '98 in St. Louis!
ImageFX has been the required graphics application for all Amiga
owners and has been a part of Video Toaster/Flyer owner's toolkits for
years. Combining painting, image file format conversion, image
processing, and special effects, ImageFX is the undisputed leader in
graphics manipulation on the Amiga leading the pack in all markets
worldwide.
Highlights of ImageFX 3.0
The interface still follows professional standards for the Amiga and
the video and film industry with its paintbox style approach. This has
been built on in ImageFX 3.0 to allow child menus to remain open for
quick access to frequently used functions, larger effects previews
that you can zoom in and out of and move around in, font sensitivity,
multiple image windows including the ability to open multiple windows
for the same image, real image layers that allow you to compose
complex composited images that can be modified over and over with
ease, and many other improvements throughout.
Cross platform connectivity has been a top concern with ImageFX, from
its Video Toaster/Flyer support, to its wide range of image file
format support for all computer platform image formats. With this new
release ImageFX improves its Flyer support and also now gains support
for the Photoshop native file format so that layered images can be
shared from Photoshop to ImageFX. ImageFX also now directly supports
loading, and preserving, color-mapped (CMAP) image data for quick,
accurate, conversion of these formats.
Special effects have always been one of the touchstones of the power
of ImageFX. From the earliest days ImageFX pioneered bringing high-end
"Hollywood-style" special effects to the desktop with it's morphing
and warping, wire removal, lightning and fire effects. The effects in
this release extend this even further!
The all-new Clouds module allows you to generate true fractal clouds
that can animate their movement and evolve over time, via batch
processing, from one form to another. The clouds can be layered to
create three-dimensional effects and combine with custom, or supplied,
palettes to create wild plasma designs as well.
Scatter is an amazing new effect that can shatter an image into
pieces as small as a single pixel and blast them apart in many
different patterns. This can be used for artistic designs or for
dramatic transitions.
Also new in ImageFX 3.0 is Splash. Splash uses ray tracing and bump
mapping to create liquid simulations of rain, water ski surf,
gelatinous wiggles and more. The effect can be batched to animate
puddles of rainwater and create highly organic transitions.
A classic effect from other computer platforms, Pagecurler, has been
added as well. This can add a cool curled page effect to the edge of
an image or make letters appear to peel off of the page!
The true gem in the new effects is called FXForge. FXForge uses
simple mathematical expressions that, when applied against each pixel
in the image, can create hundreds upon hundreds of new effects. It
uses a superset of the same technology used in Adobeä Photoshop' s
Filter Factory plug-in and is completely compatible to formulas for
effects created for that package. Due to the overwhelming popularity
of these formulas, you can find hundreds, if not thousands, of them
available on the Internet. Experienced users can create these as well
to extend their toolkit of special effects on their own! Unique to
ImageFX's FXForge is the ability to animate the parameters and access
ImageFX's swap buffer for transitional effects as well!
The Show's the Thing
Look to get hands-on exposure to the new ImageFX 3.0 at Nova Design's
tables at the Amiga '98 show and also participate in the many ImageFX
training seminars to be held on both days of the show. You'll be
astonished at all the new features listed here and many others that
will be shown for the first time at this show!
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U S E R G R O U P L U N C H E O N P L A N N E D
7 Mar 1998
At 12:00 PM Sunday, at the Gateway Computer Show-Amiga98, Amiga
Atlanta Inc. will host a User Group Luncheon in the restaurant of the
Harley Hotel. It's purpose is to promote oportunities for growth and
success of Amiga User Groups. Amiga Atlanta will be distributing
packets of helpful and useful information at the luncheon. Don't miss
this opportunity to find out how to make your Amia Club more
successful.
See you at the show, March 13-15, 1998.
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U S E R R E P F O R I C O A - E L E C T I O N S
3 Mar 1998
The Steering Committees of the Jay Miner Society (JMS) and the
Industry Council of the Open Amiga (ICOA) today announced that the JMS
has been appointed to hold elections for the position of User
Representative on the next Steering Committee of the ICOA, which will
take over in mid-April.
The ICOA <URL:http://www.amiganet.org/icoa/> is a non-profit
organization which develops and promotes standards, and provides
support for Amiga developers. It has been chosen by Amiga Inc to
provide the official developer support program for the Amiga in
future. The position of User Representative is being created to help
the ICOA in making decisions that benefit and satisfy Amiga users in
general, not just programmers and manufacturers. The JMS
<URL:http://www.jms.org> is a non-profit international user group
devoted to empowering Amiga users and fostering the spirit of the
Amiga. It created the ICOA initiative and launched it in May 1997.
The User Rep will have a full voting seat on the Steering Committee
for a period of one year, alongside the four seats for those elected
by ICOA members and a permanent non-voting veto seat occupied by an
Amiga Inc representative. This position, combining the roles of
consumer advocate, opinion-gatherer, strategist and community liaison,
will require a serious commitment of time and effort. The JMS and
other user organizations will provide support for this. The Committee
will have face-to-face meetings roughly every 3 months, and will also
attend selected Amiga shows. Expenses incurred by the User Rep in
attending these events will be paid for by the ICOA.
Nominations for the position of User Rep are invited from now until
the 13th March. Full details of the election procedures are available
at the JMS election web site <URL:http://www.jms.org/election/>.
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F I R M I N U K N E E D S A M I G A T A L E N T
11 March, 1998
A production facility for an innovative UK wide advertising medium,
using the Amiga Computer, will shortly be established in the Edinburgh
(Scotland) area.
Shops TV, the company behind the operation, would like to hear from
anyone with experience of using classic Amiga software, such as DPaint
and Scala, and who is interested in using these skills in full-time
employment.
In the first instance please Email:
David Liddle (dliddlea@cix.co.uk)
or write, enclosing a brief resume, to
David Liddle,
3 Brandfield Street,
Edinburgh EH3 8AS.
Scotland
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I N F O R M E R /__\\ | \ || | \ || ||-- \\
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MEGABALL 4 REVIEW
=================
Originally appearing in issue 5 of The Informer, Dec/Jan
1996-97
©Eldritch Enterprises
I've been a breakout fan since the VIC-20 days, so the chance to
review "MegaBall 4" was something not to pass up. MegaBall 4 is the
first commercial release of MegaBall, earlier versions of which have
been in the shareware world for some time. For the few people in the
Universe who've never seen this sort of game, a quick explanation may
be in order. You bounce a ball off a paddle at a wall of bricks. Your
object is to destroy all the bricks with the ball. It helps to break
through the wall, trapping the ball between the top of the wall and
the top of the display, where it will bounce for quite a while,
destroying many brickshence the name. Anytime you miss a ball when it
comes back at you, your paddle is destroyed. You have four paddles
when you start the game, so you don't want to miss often. As we'll see
in a moment, there's much more than this basic game play to MegaBall
4.
Installing MegaBall 4 is simple. The program arrives on three disks.
Disk one contains an installation icon. When you double click on it,
you're greeted with an old fashioned iconx/script file installation
procedure rather than the slick Amiga installer program. No matter,
the installation proceeds quickly and easily. You can install MegaBall
4 to any disk or directory you wish. You can also play it directly
from the floppies.
Besides the game itself, the installer will copy a board editor and
two documentation files to your MegaBall 4 drawer. The documentation
is in AmigaGuide format and includes a file each for the game and the
board editor. While manuals would be nice, these files are certainly
adequate and do help keep the price down. There is a single printed
sheet to help you get going.
Also installed are a series of boards for you to play, and a set of
very bouncy and entertaining tunes which will play during the game.
The music is quite good, and written by Al Mackey, whose brother Ed
wrote the game itself. Depending on memory in your system, up to five
songs can be loaded into memory at the start of game play to save time
when switching songs. There is a provision for turning the music off
if you prefer.
"Mods" is a common term in modern computer gaming. This refers to
special objects you can pick up or run into that change the way the
game is proceeding. MegaBall 4 has mods galore. As you destroy bricks,
tiles of different colors and patterns will sometimes fall toward you.
Catching or bumping into these tiles with your paddle will produce all
sorts of results, some not so pleasant. There are 14 mods total and
they add a lot to the game.
As if all the mods aren't enough, the various bricks do different
things when hit. Some just vanish. Others explode, taking nearby
bricks with them. Some change composition, turning into other types of
bricks. There are 36 different bricks, if I count correctly. Some are
invisible, a particularly nasty trick.
All these elements work together to create a fun, exciting breakout
game. It stood the real test of game playI could barely force myself
to stop, even when a particularly nasty board keep frustrating me.
This game is addictive in the extreme. One of the things that
undoubtably contributes to the excellent play is the game's long
history. It's been around five or six years, evolving and maturing as
it went. A certain amount of devilish creativity on the part of the
game's author also helps.
By now you've probably determined I like this game. In fact, I think
it's excellent. It rates an "A" on the Informer's A - F scale. There
are a few things other than the game itself to like, and we should
mention them. There are hundreds of boards to download from the
Internet and BBS sites. They range all over the scale in terms of
quality, but are a lot of fun to try. Many use the multitude of
colored bricks to make quite clever pictures, making them fun to look
at also.
MegaBall 4 comes from Intangible Assets Manufacturing, 828 Ormond
Avenue, Drexel Hill PA 19026-2604. E-mail to info@iam.com, fax to
(610) 853-3733. You can find them on the WWW at http://www.iam.com. It
should run on any Amiga with AmigaOS 1.3 or higher. The MSRP is US
$30*. I tested it on an A3000 with AmigaOS 3.1. It auto-detects AGA
and then uses a more colorful graphics set, though the non-AGA version
is very nice also. MegaBall 4 works perfectly in AGA mode on my Retina
board, so at least some emulated AGA systems will see the enhanced
graphics.
Rating: A
By Brad Webb
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Amiga Update on the net: some issues available at:
http://www.sharbor.com/amiga/news/ (in html format)
Australian Mirror Site: http://www.comcen.com.au/~paulm/index.html
All back issues available (in ASCII text) at:
http://www.globaldialog.com/AdventureCentral/AU/index.html
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Copyright 1998 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified.
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