Reader Mail

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Jason:

Concerning your report on the Amiga Convention 95 in Montreal.  Valley Soft
gave out over 100 catalogues at this show.  We had another 100 available
for anyone who requested them as well as business cards.  We were invited
back to future shows so we hope to meet you again.  You were at our booth I
believe and we did offer a catalogue to you.  We were located just to the
left of Obys Computers and had our table piled high with software.  We,
like the other dealers that were there were there for the explosure as well
as to show Amiga owners that there is still support for their systems.

We have been Amiga users since the first A500's arrived in Canada and
dealers since 1992.  We would appreciate being added to your list of
dealers as we do ship all over North America and have over 500 different
Amiga game titles IN STOCK!  Our address is:

Valley Soft
P.O.Box 864
Pembroke, Ont.  K8A 7M5

Phone 613-732-7700
Fax   613-732-8477
Internet valsoft@renc.igs.net (Canada)

Thank You,
Bill
Valley Soft

     This oversight was entirely my fault, and I apologize. -Jason

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From: Eyal Teler <teler@CS.HUJI.AC.IL>
Subject: The future of the Amiga

At last I got to reading AR316.  In the reader mail deparment, Joe Brewin
wrote:

  I'm afraid ESCOM's only interest is squeezing the technology for all they
  can get from it and then tossing the rind in the garbage to be hauled away
  to the nearest landfill.

I hope he is wrong, and it seems to me that he is.  Of course, ESCOM is
interested in getting all they can from the Amiga, but they're doing it
with good intentions.  They won't try to shove a dead animal at people, but
if people do buy the Amiga, Escom seems to be willing to continue its
development.  They have some plans for simple enhancements, and are talking
about a future RISC Amiga, which seems encouraging.

And Escom does seem to try to make the Amiga a better choice for people
looking for a computer.  I was annoyed with the high price, initially, but
after reading in AR what will be bundled with the Amiga, I understand where
this price comes from.  It's the first time that the Amiga is bundled with
a full productivity suite, and this should certainly show it in a new way.
Together with the bundled multimedia software and games, you certainly get
a comprehensive software bundle with the Amiga.

With a little (or, hopefully, a lot of) marketing, and the help of Amiga
enthusiasts, maybe people will actually get the idea that everything you
want done by a home computer can be done by the Amiga.  At the very least,
I hope that there are a lot of people who still want to buy an Amiga,
enough of them to convince Escom that working on more advanced Amigas is
worth while.

    Eyal Teler

--
teler@cs.huji.ac.il
ET's home page is at http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~teler

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From: RJMARIER@STTHOMAS.EDU
Subject: Hello, howdie, and all that good stuff

Yes, I did buy my Amiga new.  However before I could send in my
registration cards, Commodore went out of business.  I had only had my
compputer a month at most, but I'm sure it was less.

The problems I'm haveing are in several areas:

[ I ]

Video Problems:  
- RF and Composite send no signal at all.
- The main RGB video works, but has several problems.  After haveing my
Amiga on, say an hour, I start getting lines that flicker on the screen.
They are random spots on the screen, but usually there will always be some
up by the title bar area of the screen and when you use the menus.  When I
pull down a menu the selections usually have lines flickering through the
selections and extend out of the menu.   When this flickering problem
becomes more numerous on the menus, it is possible to see a "reflection" of
a menu choice to the right of the menu.  What I mean is say on the main
workbench screen, I hold the right mouse button down and got up to the menu
that says TOOLS.  Well, then it displays the menu selections, in this case
it is ResetWB.  The ResetWB will have lines flickering through it and out
onto the main part of the screen.  ON that main part of the screen next to
the menu selection, you can see ResetWB being reflected.  I've tried
programs like GrabIFF and QuickGrab to take a Snapshot of the screen,
however when I display the snapshot, it looks perfectly normal.

[ II ]

Video/Memory ?
- There is also another problems with random lines on my screen.   These
are little black lines scattered in differant places across the screen.
Some are actual lines, dots, and dashes When I've used screen grabbing
programs like above, I do capture these lines in the picture.  Therefore,
this might be a memory mapping problem.

[ III ]

Serial Problems:
- Basically, when I try to Download/Upload (with my fast memory turned on)
I get a lon of errors.  They come one right after another.  This problem
happens 70 to 90 % of the time however, it doesn't always happen.  When I
deactivate the fast ram, that will sometimes fix the problem, but again not
always.

I've taken my Amiga to an Amiga store, where I've swapped differant
accelerator cards, SIMMS, deleted and reinstalled software, tried differant
cables, and everything else.  However, nothing ever seems to work.

My setup is: An Amiga 1200, with a Microbotics 50 Mhz '030, and a 4 meg
SIMM.  I usually run my screen display in DBLNTSC mode.  I've got a 200
watt power supply.

I've tried my best so far to figure out what is wrong with this thing, but
myself and the people I've had check this thing out can not figure it out
either. 

Thanks much,

A patient (but frustrated) Amiga Owner,

               Robert Marier

     -Anybody have any ideas?

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