Gold Fish 2/goldfish_vol2_cd1.bin/information/generalinfo

Text File | 1994-11-27 | 27KB | 586 lines

       G E N E R A L    C D - R O M    I N F O R M A T I O N

                   July 15, 1994

========
OVERVIEW
========

This document provides general information about my CD-ROM series, including
CD-ROM's that are in production and ones that are planned for the future.
It includes all necessary details for ordering CD-ROM's and a sample order
form at the end.  This is currently the most comprehensive document I have
for answering questions about the CD-ROM's.  There are two CD-ROM series
that are intended to meet significantly different needs, and a one-time
CD-ROM production that contains the entire contents of my 1000 floppy disk
library.

========================
WHY CD-ROM DISTRIBUTIONS
========================

More Cost Effective

It is simply far more cost effective, both for me and for the library
subscribers, to distribute the library on CD-ROM's than on floppy disks. The
cost of a subscription to the floppy distribution averaged about $40 per
month for less than 12Mb of new material per month.  A CD-ROM distribution
averages about $25 per CD-ROM every couple months, for 50-150Mb of new
material with each release.  Thus I can supply almost an order of magnitude
more new material at about a quarter the average cost of a floppy
subscription during the same period.

Multiple Distribution Formats

With the floppy distributions, the name of the game was sometimes to see
just how much material could be crammed onto a single floppy.  There was
almost always a tradeoff between the convenience of having the material in
unarchived format and the desire to get as much material as possible into a
new release, or to make something fit on a single floppy.  A significant
amount of time actually went into juggling things around until a set of 10
floppies achieved the desired density of 95-100% full.  In some cases,
material had to be rejected since it was simply too large for a floppy
distribution.  This is one reason why there are not very many animations or
large graphics images in the floppy library.

With a CD-ROM distribution, we get the best of both worlds.  Given a vastly
larger amount of space, the new material can be distributed directly in two
forms: an unarchived (ready-to-run) form, and an archived (BBS-ready) form,
on the same media.  This is how the FreshFish CD-ROM is organized.  The
FrozenFish CD-ROM's that are scheduled for release after about each third
FreshFish CD-ROM will eventually contain only the BBS-ready form of new
material from as many previous FreshFish CD-ROM's as will fit on a single
CD-ROM.

==================================
FLOPPY DISTRIBUTION PAST DISK 1000
==================================

Now that the floppy library has reached disk 1000, I will not be doing any
more floppy releases.  When I first announced several months ago that I
would cease doing floppy based distributions at disk 1000, a number of
organizations and individuals inquired about taking over this job and
continuing the library past disk 1000, with my "official blessing".  I have
selected Amazing Computing (PIM Publications) for this job, based on their
longtime commitment to the Amiga.

The conditions of continuing to keep my endorsement include adherence to my
standards for quality, production values (look and feel), and free
redistribution of the resulting work.  The plan is that they will select the
best bits and pieces off each FreshFish CD-ROM, and organize new floppy
releases using this material.  They may of course, decide to incorporate
material from other sources as well.

They are expecting to start with the Jul/Aug FreshFish CD, so I anticipate
that the first batch of floppy disks after 1000 should be available sometime
in August 1994.  Contact PIM Publications directly for further information
(1-800-345-3360 voice, 1-508-675-6002 FAX).

====================
THE FRESHFISH CD-ROM
====================

Goals

The FreshFish CD-ROM is designed to meet the needs of users who want copies
of new releases of material as soon as practical with a CD-ROM distribution.
Depending upon when the material is received in the CD-ROM production cycle,
and the time to go from CD-ROM master to production CD-ROM's, there should
be an average latency of about three to six weeks between receiving new
material and its availability on a FreshFish CD-ROM.  This CD-ROM is
currently on about an 8 week production cycle, and typically contains 50-100
Mb of new software with each release.  Eventually I hope to increase the
amount of new material to 200 Mb or more with each release.

History

As of 15-Jul-94 five FreshFish CD-ROM's have been produced.  The October
1993 CD-ROM went into production in late October, however because of a virus
on the CD-ROM, most copies were destroyed and replaced with another
production run in mid November.  The December 1993 CD-ROM was completed in
late December, but because of holiday delays, did not go into production
until early January 1994.  The March/April 1994 CD-ROM was completed in the
first week of March and went into production about a week later.  The
May/June 1994 CD-ROM went into production on May 23rd and the Jul/Aug 1994
CD-ROM is expected to go into production on Jul 22nd.

For the first two CD-ROM's, they were named after the month in which the
work was done to produce them.  Starting with the third FreshFish CD-ROM, I
decided to do like magazines do, and name them after the period of time over
which they are expected to be current before the next release comes out.
Both the October 1993 and the December 1993 CD-ROM's are now sold out and no
more production runs are planned.  There are still enough of the March/April
1994 and May/June CD-ROM's available to meet the anticipated demand for back
issues for the next couple of months.

Structure

Since there is not enough new material of sufficient quality released every
couple of months to fill a CD-ROM (or enough time to organize it if it was
available), I include some other material on the FreshFish CD-ROM to make
effective use of the available space.  Each FreshFish CD-ROM is organized
into several different sections:

    A overview section containing information about the library,
    this particular CD-ROM, hot breaking news, etc.

    A section containing material that is newly released with
    this CD-ROM, in ready-to-run (unarchived) form.

    A section containing material that is newly released with
    this CD-ROM, in BBS-ready (archived) form.

    A section containing installed versions of popular tools
    that are anticipated to be released in updated form on each
    CD-ROM.  By leaving the CD-ROM mounted, you can potentially
    free up several hundred megabytes of hard disk space to use
    for other purposes.  Of course the tools can still be copied
    from the CD-ROM to a hard drive if you prefer the faster
    access speed of the hard drive or don't wish to leave the
    CD-ROM mounted all the time.  If this section gets too
    large, it may eventually be split off onto a separate tools
    CD-ROM.

    A "filler" section.  Whatever space remains after putting
    everything else on the CD-ROM will be filled with selected
    material from a previous CD-ROM or from the floppy based
    library distributions.  This may or may not include all the
    new material from the previous CD-ROM, depending upon space
    available.  The intention is that users will be able to
    order every other FreshFish CD-ROM (at least in the
    beginning) and because of the overlap, not miss any new
    material.


=====================
THE FROZENFISH CD-ROM
=====================

Goals

This CD-ROM is intended to meet the needs of users who prefer to get their
doses of new material in larger chunks over longer intervals.  It also
provides a way for BBS operators to have the maximal amount of recently
released new material on-line using a single CD-ROM.  All of the material on
the FrozenFish CD-ROM's will be in the BBS-ready format.

History

The current plans are for a FrozenFish CD-ROM to be produced after every
third FreshFish CD-ROM.  The first FrozenFish CD-ROM started shipping on
April 27th.  Future FrozenFish CD-ROM's are expected to be released
approximately every 6 months or so.

Structure

Each FrozenFish CD-ROM will contain all the new material from each of the
previous FreshFish CD-ROM's, up to the limit of available previous FreshFish
CD-ROM's or reaching the maximum capacity of a CD-ROM, whichever comes
first.  For the first couple FrozenFish CD-ROM's there will probably not be
enough older CD-ROM material to fill it, so material will probably be
included from the floppy distribution, starting with the latest disk and
working backwards until the CD-ROM is full.  For the first FrozenFish
CD-ROM, this includes the entire contents of floppy disks 1-1000.

Even though there is significant overlap in coverage of material between the
FreshFish and FrozenFish CD-ROM's, they present the material in vastly
different ways and are targeted at different types of users.

===================
THE GOLDFISH CD-ROM
===================

Goals

This CD-ROM is intended to provide a complete archive of my 1000 disk floppy
library.  It can be used to produce master floppy disks for further
duplication and distribution, using a simple to use program that is provided
on the CD-ROM.  It can also be used by BBS or anonymous ftp sites to provide
convenient electronic access to all the material from the floppy library.

History

The GoldFish CD-ROM went into production on May 3rd, and is expected to
start shipping by May 7th.

Structure

The GoldFish CD-ROM is a two CD set, in a single slimline jewel case, and
contains the entire contents of the 1000 disk floppy library in both
archived (BBS ready) and unarchived form.  The first CD contains disks
1-1000 in lha archived form and 1-249 in unarchived form.  The second CD
contains disks 250-1000 in unarchived form.  The price of this two CD set is
the same as the FreshFish and FrozenFish CD-ROM's.

====================
FROZENFISH-PC CD-ROM
====================

Goals

By popular demand from BBS operators that use IBM-PC systems, I have decided
to produce a limited number of a special edition of the April 1994
FrozenFish CD for use on IBM-PC systems.

History

The FrozenFish-PC CD-ROM should be available starting about Aug 1, 1994, as
a CD-R "gold disk".  Depending upon demand after that, I will continue to
supply it in the CD-R format as individually created CD's, or else do a
small production run (100-200) of regular CD's.  The price of this CD will
be $24.95 because of the lower anticipated volume and thus higher individual
production costs.  Anyone that orders the CD-R version can later upgrade to
the regular production run, if desired, for $5 plus shipping costs.

Structure

This CD will have all the same material as the April 1994 Amiga version of
FrozenFish, but instead of having the material for each floppy disk as
individual archives, there will be a single lha archive for the entire
floppy disk.  Thus there will be 1000 archives for floppy disks 1-1000.  The
other material on the CD-ROM, such as the GNU material, will remain in the
current format.  All file and directory names will conform to the IBM-PC 8.3
format, uppercase characters only.  There will also be "files.bbs" type
files in each of the directories containing archives.

===================
NEW AMINET CD-ROM's
===================

I am happy to announce that I will be carrying the new Aminet CD's as an
authorized U.S. distributer.  Both the Aminet Gold and the Aminet Share will
be available.  Subscriptions for both CD's are also available, at $59.95 per
year for the Gold version and $44.95 for the Share version.  There are
expected to be four releases per year, so the subscription is actually for 4
CD's, regardless of when they actually end up shipping.

The only physical difference between the Aminet Gold CD and the Aminet Share
CD is the front cover artwork.  Built into the price of the Aminet Gold CD
is an automatic contribution to the creators of the CD and sufficient margin
to make the disk attractive to low volume resellers and retail sales
outlets.  Users who purchase to the Aminet Share version are expected to
make their own contributions directly to the creators if they feel that the
CD is worthwhile and wish to support creation of future Aminet CD's.

=====================
MEETING PEARLS CD-ROM
=====================

I am happy to announce that I will also be carrying the new Meeting Pearls
CD.  This CD contains about 150 high quality and high resolution fractals, a
ready to run version of PasTeX which includes fonts for FAX and 600 dpi
printers, a ready to install version of the Amiga NetBSD port, and many
other ready to run applications including UMS, DaggeX, a lot of utilities,
games, etc.  Because the version of NetBSD included on the CD-ROM includes
encryption code that is restricted for U.S export, all imported CD's will
only be available for resale within the U.S.

====================================
COMPATIBILITY WITH NON-AMIGA SYSTEMS
====================================

ISO-9660 LEVELS

The ISO-9660 standard defines three "levels of interchange":

  Level 1:    Each file extent must be recorded on contiguous sectors.

        A file name must consist of  8 characters or less, plus "dot",
        plus 3 characters or less.

        This format is commonly called "8.3 names".

        A directory name must consist of less than 8 characters.


  Level 2:    Each file extent must be recorded on contiguous sectors.

        A file name must not be longer than 31 characters.  It must
        contain a "dot".

        A directory name must not be longer than 31 characters.


  Level 3:    A file name must not be longer than 31 characters. It must
        contain a "dot".

        A directory name must not be longer than 31 characters.


In addition, there are two character classes that specify what characters
can be used in file and directory names:

d-characters:    Upper-case letters, digits, and underscore ('_').  These
        characters can be understood by any ISO compliant system.

d1-characters:    Any character.  The interpretation of these characters is
        subject to "agreement" between the system writing the CD-ROM
        and the system reading it.

Most CD-ROM's intended for the IBM-PC market conform to level 1d of the
standard, while Amiga CD-ROM's tend to be closer to level 2d1.

Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol

Only CD-ROM's that conform to level 1d are guaranteed to be readable on all
systems that support ISO-9660.  Because of this limitation, an extension to
the standard called the "Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol" has been developed
by the CD-ROM industry and is widely supported on a number of different
operating systems, including most UNIX systems and some MS-DOS and Apple
systems.

When used with a software driver that understands the Rock Ridge extensions,
a CD-ROM recorded with Rock Ridge extensions appears as a CD-ROM containing
30 character filenames with no restrictions on the characters used in
filenames, while still being ISO-9660 level 1d compliant and thus fully
readable by software drivers that do not understand the Rock Ridge
extensions.  This is how most of the rest of the CD-ROM industry produces
and uses CD-ROM's that are compatible between the different systems.

Unfortunately, support for the Rock Ridge extensions is not common in the
Amiga CD-ROM market, and probably will not be until Commodore's standard
CD-ROM mastering software and drivers support Rock Ridge.  The way Amiga
CD-ROM's preserve the ability to use long filenames with no limitations on
the character set, is to almost conform to level 2d1 of the ISO-9660
standard, and thus are incompatible with systems that only support level 1d
plus Rock Ridge extensions.  Apparently this includes many (if not most)
MS-DOS systems, and quite a few UNIX systems.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that many producers of Amiga CD-ROM's, including me, wish
to preserve the original AmigaDOS filenames.  This is absolutely required
for bootable CD-ROM's for the CDTV and CD32, and CD-ROM's where it is
desired to run the software directly off the CD-ROM (I.E. more than simply a
collection of "lha archives").

These CD-ROM's are not strictly compliant to the ISO-9660 standard, and the
point in the standard that they are closest to (level 2d1) is much more
"liberal" than what is tolerated by most PC systems and some Unix
systems. Thus I have no way to predict whether a specific non-Amiga system
will be able to correctly read my CD-ROM's (or any other Amiga CD-ROM's that
don't strictly conform to ISO-9660 level 1d) because it depends almost 100%
on the specific software driver which is responsible for reading the CD-ROM.
In most cases, asking your software vendor what level of ISO-9660 their
software complies with will not be very informative, and the only way to
know for sure is to get a CD-ROM and try it.

The CD-ROM has a CRC list that can be used to verify that all of the files
can be found and read correctly, and some non-Amiga users have reported
complete success at accessing all the files, but sometimes only after
consulting their software or hardware vendor for appropriate configuration
information and patches to the system's driver software.

=====================
HOW TO ORDER CD-ROM'S
=====================

Per CD-ROM Price

Currently all CD-ROM's range in price from $11.95 to $24.95.  See a current
published order form for details for each CD.  You can preorder as many
disks as you would like.  Customers with existing accounts at the time of
any rate change will always receive the lowest available rate, either the
rate in affect at the time of the order or the rate at the time of shipment,
whichever is lower.  So order now and always get the best available rate.

Shipping and Handling Charges

Shipping and handling is $3.95 per package of up to 4 CD-ROM's to any
location.  For more than 4 CD's in a single package, add $1 per each
additional CD.  Federal Express is also available within the USA for $12.95
for up to 4 CD-ROM's per package, plus $2 for each additional CD.

Regular shipments within the U.S. are sent via Priority Mail.  Shipments to
international destinations are sent via either small packet airmail, or air
parcel post, whichever is appropriate.

Address For Ordering

You can order CD-ROM's from:

    Amiga Library Services            [phone]    (FAX or voice)
    610 N. Alma School Road, Suite 18    [phone]    (voice only)
    Chandler, AZ  85224-3687        [e-mail]   (email)
    USA

Payment can be made via:

    o    cash  (suggest registered mail)

    o    check, money order, international bank draft (payable in U.S. dollars)

    o    credit card (VISA or MasterCard).

Be sure to state in your order which CD-ROM's you want and include the
appropriate shipping and handling as indicated above.  As with the floppy
distributions, funds not immediately used will go into an escrow account
(fully refundable at any time), to be charged against as CD-ROM's are
shipped.

Credit Card Orders

I am not currently set up to do automatic credit card charges upon each
release of a CD-ROM.  Because of the amount of work required to manually
process credit card orders, I encourage people that know they are going to
want to obtain CD-ROM's on a regular basis, and pay with a credit card, to
preorder several CD-ROM's on a single credit card charge.  Any unused
balance is fully refundable, of course.

If you order with a credit card, please include a statement with your order
that you agree to have the charge made to your card before delivery of the
CD-ROM's, subject to full refund on demand of any unused portion.  If you
FAX in an order to be paid via credit card, please sign it somewhere.

========================================
REDISTRIBUTION and COMPILATION COPYRIGHT
========================================

Free Redistribution Will Continue

The main focus of the library will be to continue to supply freely
redistributable software.  That is, if a user wishes to take something off
of the CD-ROM and distribute it directly to other users, or make it
available for electronic access, no permission is needed from me to do
so. There may however be a small number of files on the CD-ROM which are not
distributable, if they are licensed from third parties to make the CD-ROM
more usable.  For example, this might include all the necessary files from
Commodore to make the CD-ROM usable in a CDTV or CD32, or it might include
all the Amiga header files to make gcc more usable.  There will be a list of
all files on each CD-ROM that fall into this category.  People wishing to
redistribute material from a CD-ROM will be responsible for sanitizing these
files out of their redistribution.

Compilation Copyright

I struggled quite a while with this issue.  I've always explicitly
disclaimed a compilation copyright on the floppy distribution, mostly to
make it simple for users to redistribute complete floppies, or the
collection as a whole.  It would not have been feasible to have a single
source for the floppy based distribution and have the library achieve the
popularity that it has today.

However, CD-ROM's change the entire picture.  It is anticipated that there
will eventually be almost an order of magnitude more time and effort put
into acquiring and organizing the material on each CD-ROM, than what goes
into the current floppy distribution.  This is mostly because it is
anticipated that there will eventually be an order of magnitude more
material to organize.

So instead of 50 hours or so of work spread out over several weeks to
organize the material on 10 floppy disks, it takes several people, working
the equivalent of a full time job, several weeks to produce each CD-ROM. As
with the floppy distribution, a significant percentage of the cost of each
CD-ROM goes towards compensating various people for this labor.  There are
also significantly higher fixed monthly costs associated with maintaining or
contracting for the necessary equipment and software to produce CD-ROM's.

In short, CD-ROM's bring a slightly more commercial flavor to the library
(at least at the point of origin) than what has been traditional in the past
for the floppy based distribution.  However I will always strive to keep
costs down and produce a CD-ROM that is an excellent value for the price.  I
hope the user community will understand the need for this change.

For these reasons, I have decided that all CD-ROM's will have a compilation
copyright, but the only restriction will be that they cannot be "cloned" and
the material redistributed on CD-ROM or similarly priced optical media
without prior permission, nor can they be used as the basis for generating a
substantially similar CD-ROM distribution.  There are no restrictions on
mounting the CD-ROM and making its contents widely available for electronic
distribution, copying the entire contents of the CD-ROM to non-optical media
such as hard drives or tape, or copying any of the contents to media of much
smaller capacity like floppy disks.

==================
PRODUCT-INFO FILES
==================

Material included in future CD-ROM distributions will be accompanied by a
file that contains information about the material, for various database
programs or other tools to use to index specific types of material, find
specific programs, etc.  This file, currently called a "Product-Info" file,
contains important information like the program name, version number, author
information, short and long descriptions, etc.  A specification exists
(included on each CD-ROM in the Information directory) which authors can
follow to generate appropriate Product-Info files for previously released
material or future releases.

Since manually generating accurate Product-Info files for previous releases
is a massive effort, I am calling on all authors and other interested
parties for help.  Ideally, the author of specific material should submit
updated Product-Info files, but anyone is free to do so.

===========================
ISO-9660 MASTERING SOFTWARE
===========================

Starting with the March/April FreshFish CD-ROM, I switched mastering
software.  I am now using an enhanced version of mkisofs, which was written
by Eric Youngdale, and enhanced by Frank Munkert to make it suitable for
generating the "Amiga flavor" of ISO-9660 (I.E. Level 2d1).  This software
is covered by the GPL (GNU General Public License).  I will be working to
get the changes folded back into the version maintained by Eric.  In any
case, the package will be available for anyone to use.  There is already a
"bare-bones" graphical user interface for it, however hopefully someone with
detailed knowledge of Amiga Intuition programming will write a more
comprehensive graphical user interface for it, thus making it even easier to
use.

The cost of CD-R (write once CD drives) continues to drop.  I suspect that
within a couple years, if not sooner, the price will be within the range
that makes it reasonable for serious hobbyists, or computer clubs, to
obtain.  The availability of this software, and future generations of it,
will make it very easy for Amiga users to generate their own CD-ROM
compatible CD's.

=================
CDTV/CD32 BOOTING
=================

One of the current side effects of switching to different mastering software
is that support for directly booting the CD-ROM's on the CDTV/CD32 has been
suspended.  Because of the relatively high license fees that needed to be
paid to Commodore for each CD-ROM sold (more than the cost of actually
pressing the CD-ROM), and the relatively small numbers of users that
currently actually make use of this feature, I have decided to produce
royalty free CD-ROM's for the moment.  The money previously spent on these
fees can be put to better use to improve the CD-ROM distributions for the
vast majority of current users that don't care about CDTV or CD32
bootability.

This does not mean that the CD-ROM's cannot be used on a CDTV or CD32, just
that users that wish to use them must acquire additional hardware.  In the
case of the CDTV, all that is required is a floppy disk drive to boot from,
and a suitable bootable Workbench disk.  In the case of the CD32, an
additional requirement is an expansion box that provides a floppy disk port.
Such expansion boxes are currently under development by a number of
different companies and/or already available in certain markets.

It is possible that when demand warrants it, I may do special versions of
the CD-ROM's that are CDTV/CD32 bootable, or else produce CD-ROM's that are
targeted directly for CDTV/CD32 users with considerably different content
than current CD-ROM's.  So these moves do not mean I am abandoning CDTV/CD32
users, or ignoring their needs, just that I am attempting to make the best
use of available resources, and the payment of license fees on every CD-ROM
was not judged to be cost effective at this time.

======================
CD-ROM DRIVER SOFTWARE
======================

Each CD-ROM is tested with a number of different CD-ROM drivers, including
the following packages:

    Asimware Innovations    DEVS:asimcdfs.device 1.9   L:AsimCDFS 2.6

    AmiCDROM 1.9        L:cdrom-handler  1.9

    FastLane            L:CDRive  3.4

    Xetec            DEVS:cdx.device 1.10   L:CDxFileSystem 1.95

Use the AmigaDOS version command on the specified files to find out if you
are running versions older than these files.  If so, and you experience any
problems with a CD-ROM, a software upgrade may fix it.