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Amiga Collections: New Zealand Amiga Users Group
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New Zealand Amiga Users Group Newsdisk v07 (1987-08)(NZAmigaUG).zip
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Bay News
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1993-12-02
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BAY AMIGA CLUB
NEWSLETTER 4 - AUGUST, 1987.
Dear Members,
There seems to be little happening in the Amiga world this month - the
"hush before the storm" of the 500s and 2000s?? or just mid-winter blues??
Little new in the magazines and we wait for the top-of-the-line
word-processors still.
However, we can make news!
TRADE FAIR:
First, we members have been invited by Datastream to attend the Napier
Trades Fair on a roster system. The fair is being held at the Dalgety
woolstore in Pandora Rd, Ahuriri, from Wednesday August 5 to Sunday August
9. On Sat. the hours are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and on Sun. from 10 a.m.
to 6 p.m., while on Wed to Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. We discussed ways at
our last meeting to advert attention of the public to the Amiga. Here is a
golden opportunity for us to help publicise the Amiga. If you haven't
been rung by me and would like to help please let me know so that I can
arrange a suitable time for you to be on duty. The main request is for
the weekend shift. Two or three Amigas will be there and all you have to
do is to be on hand to answer questions and demonstrate software.
SOUND SAMPLING:
Those of you who like music and sound effects have found by now that the
strength of sound on the Amiga is really its memory - large enough to hold
good digital sound samples. Truly outstanding is the 4
voice/stereo/digital sound in software such as Sonix, Deluxe Music, Instant
Music, etc.
It is very important to be able to make sound samples from real life
sounds - they are so much better than synthetic sound such as the SID chip
sound of the C64 or "computer sound" in other computers.
We discussed the possibility of buying Mimetics or Futuresound as a Club
purchase, so that we could share in IFF sound samples. But our
"kind-hearted" local dealer has ordered Futuresound and has offered club
members the use of this fabulous product on a hire basis. This is a great
offer by Wayne Crabtree of Datastream. We will soon then be able to
record baby's cries, dishes breaking, distorted guitars, opera singers'
voices, etc., and use them in our Basic programmes and Music software.
BEST SOFTWARE:
Members voted last meeting for the best software in use in their homes -
not more practical stuff. The results? FaeryTale Adventure, Flight
Simulator II, Silent Service, Sonix.
DISKS:
When our present order of cheap disks runs out (at present, $5.95 each for
d/d d/d) we will be able to get them for $5 each from the Chief Archivist
(Ross Deeley). Please phone him for orders.
NEW AMIGAS:
The new 500s will be in Napier shortly - by the time this newsletter
reaches you. Apparently it will come out sooner than the 2000s - GOOD!
This machine will put the Amiga fairly and squarely into Family reach at
$1600 (let's hope that Commodore include 1 meg. in the price).
DELUXE MUSIC:
I had just received this great music software before the last meeting.
The bill from Electronic Arts direct - $197 (NZ). If you like entering
scores from classical or rock music straight from the original - this is
the programme for you. It is not a sound editor like Sonix. In fact both
programmes complement each other: Deluxe Music for scores editing and
Sonix for sound synthesis. There will be debate over the relative merits
cost-wise versus quality between the two programmes. Deluxe Music will
cost you plenty in NZ - nearer $300 - and it is heavily protected from
copying. In my mind it is so good I recommend it anyway - it is the equal
of DPaint II. I have spent the last 4 weeks entering Beethoven Piano
Sonatas, Mozart, etc., some of them complex, many bars (up to 300), and it
still it succeeds in handling the scores and sounds of piano music.
RAM EXPANSION:
By now some of you will be wondering "Why these constant references to Ram
Expansion?" This is the third newsletter "going on" about ram. The reason
is quite simple: the Amiga was built greedy for memory - if you want great
graphics and sound, plus easy DOS access, plus speed, then you cannot enjoy
the Amiga without at least 1 meg. of memory. With extra ram you can boot
your "boot disk" into ram, with all your housekeeping tools, utilities, and
then safely multitask, program, enjoy to your heart's content all and
sundry programmes without those annoying requesters for "INSERT DISK XXX".
Extra ram is better than another drive.
When I come home from work I turn on the machine and after "kickstarting"
just boot the ramdisk and leave it there all session, or all weekend. Any
problems with the GURU? Just reboot with bootdisk and by 10 secs you have
your ramdisk back.
1. With Textcraft - use the 'on/off' icon and turn ram off, make sure you
have some other programme running first - a CLI opened will do, click on
Textcraft, left Amiga-n to get back to Workbench, click on ram again, left
Amiga-m to get back to Textcraft for unlimited documents space.
2. With DPaint - turn off ram, from your ram cli, type cd df0:, then type
Dpaint - you then will have a correctly working DPaint. Pull down the
screen to get back to Ram, turn it back on and access your other programmes
while still running DPaint.
3. With "Little Computer People" do the same, but type PET. When you have
finished with your pet, reboot with boot disk and 10 secs later - Voila!
your ram disk.
MORE ON RAM: (This is published with permission from Ross Deeley)
There are now three types of RAM disk available on the Amiga. Most will be
familiar with the RAM: device and those with expansion ram may also be
using VD0: (recoverable ram disk from ASDG as in the above section). The
latest RAMdisk is NV0: from Comspec. This has been sent to all registered
owners of 2mg ramboards. Recent purchasers and those who did not register
may obtain it from Datastream or the Chief Archivist.
[News Flash-- NV0: will only work on Comspec Ramboards; well at least it
did not work on the <demo> 2000 <3Mb> that we had at the trade fair.
--Ross]
Like VD0: NV0: is recoverable after a reset, but unlike VD0: or ram: it
does not do dynamic memory management. If you specify a size of 880k then
that is what it takes whether it is full or nearly empty. NV0: does have
one advantage however - in that if you specify a size of 880k then you can
use the Diskcopy command from the CLI to copy an entire disk to or from
NV0: This is much faster at copying a disk with a large number of files on
it than Copy df0: to VD0: all. (Note: the Workbench dragicon diskcopy
doesn't work this way).
NV0: is initialised by a program in the Expansion drawer which is run by
the binddrivers command in the startup-sequence. It is possible to have
both NV0: and VD0: present at the same time if you have enough ram and if
you Mount VD0: before binddriversin the start sequence. In fact I (Ross
Deeley) have made a boot disk that diskcopies df0: to NV0: - then file
copies that to VD0: - then ejects NV0: (using the EjectNV command that
came with it). Of course, once ejected NV0: cannot be reloaded until the
machine is rebooted. This boot disk by NV0: method cuts 40 secs from the
time to boot and copy to VD0: but it does require you to click a format
NV0: button and hit return for the diskcopy.
Comparison Chart:
FEATURE NV0: VD0: RAM:
recoverable yes yes no
dynamic memory no yes yes
diskcopy yes no no
max size 2mb? 2mb >2mb
timing in secs
file copy from df0: 23.1 20.3 18.4
" " " ram: 9.4 6.6 2.5
" " to ram: 5.3 6.2 2.5
Copy entire disk
read 49.7 # 146* 135*
write 51.9 # 410* 395.5*
(# - diskcopy. * - copy files)
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NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, August 5, 7.30 p.m. at Ross Deeley's, 38 Napier Rd
(back section), Havelock North
7.30-8.30 Business Session, Problem-solving
8.30-9.30 Workshop
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