Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_02/issue_08

Text File | 1995-02-21 | 14KB | 260 lines

•  BASIC V manual − For those of you who have ordered the new A400/1
series machines, you will find that you have a language called BASIC in
your computer but that you have no documentation for it! Acorn have now
produced a separate BASIC V manual which you can buy for £19.95 (or £19
from Archive including p & p). This is in stock at the Acorn warehouse
even though, at the time of writ-ing, the 400/1 computers are not
available.
2.8
•  DIGIT Image Analysis Software (manual, 3.5“ disc and connecting lead)
£150 from the Institute of Ophthalmology. DIGIT is used for the accurate
measurement of objects traced on a high resolution Summagraphics Bit Pad
2 digitiser tablet (£405 + VAT). Video screens captured with the Watford
Video Digitiser may also be measured with a screen cursor controlled by
the Archimedes mouse or the tablet.  DIGIT is simple to use and performs
all the functions of expensive image analysis systems costing many
thousands of pounds for a minimum system cost of about £1,500.
2.8
•  DiscTree − Search and save utility for RISC-OS from Mitre Software
(£49.95 or £44 through Archive) allows hard disc users to archive and
restore files and provides search facilities to find those lost files
that you put on the hard disc some-where! There is a review on page 24.
(Desktop Enhancer users can get a 20% discount on DiscTree when
purchased direct from Mitre Software by simply returning their DTE
master disc with a cheque for £39.95. Send it direct to Mitre, NOT to
Archive.)
2.8
•  Noah Paint Professional − 256 colour art package from GMA in Hamburg.
Instructions are written in English! We have one available for review,
so if the reviewer thinks it is good, we could stock it and offer it at
a discount. From GMA, it costs £129 +VAT.
2.8
•  Paul Hobbs’ shareware disk which we mentioned in Archive has now been
updated to include RISC-OS versions of the Video Tape Indexer and
Cassette Inlay Printer and he now has a second disk which will have the
ARCSCAN modifications and indexes for Archive plus a RISC-OS version of
the ‘PhoneBook’ program from an early Archive Shareware disk. This is
available for £1.50 plus a blank formatted disk as was the first disk.
The first disk incidentally also contains extensive BASIC library files
including one for the WIMP manager as requested by somebody in Archive
2.6. The applications, even if they are not of any interest in them
selves, are based around a common skeleton program and between them they
demonstrate how existing programs can be adapted to run under the WIMP
manager.
2.8
•  R140’s at Archive prices? If anyone is inter-ested in buying one or
more of the new Acorn Unix machines (list price £2949 plus VAT) at
Archive discount prices let us know (by letter, phone or via Eureka II)
and we will see what we can arrange.
2.8
•  Shareware Summary − Here is a list of all the different Shareware
discs that are now available. Shareware N¼0 − Originally called the
“Graphics Demo Disc” − 49 graphics demo programs plus “MenuMaster” − a
program which allows you to add in your own demos and edit the order in
which the programs are run.
2.8
Shareware N¼1 − MenuMaster with 7 more graphics demo programs plus Life,
Mandelbrots, European Geography, Structured Directory Lister.
2.8
Shareware N¼2 − DFS reader, backup and archiver, 9 graphics demos, 256
colour Sprite Editor, CMOS ram Editor, Disc Copier, LQ printer Font
Definer, Matrix Functions, Memory Mappings & Vector Listings, BASIC Fast
Screenload, Connect Four, Mastermind, Solitaire and Star Trek. (Cost
£4.50)
2.8
Shareware N¼3 − Epson printer setup, Underground map update, CMOS editor
update, System Delta to FWPlus mailshot, Audio tape inlay printer /
database, Videotape database, File transfer with a Liberator, Monitor
test pattern generator, Contours Demo, Graphics Demo, VTR count-down
clock, “ARC” file compressor / decomp-ressor, Flip Game, Night Shooter,
Let Drop.
2.8
Shareware N¼4 − BBC font character editor, Bird watcher’s database, 3D
Mandelbrots (BASIC), Graphical shape transformations, 8 “pretty
patterns” programs, Hidden line graph plotting, FWPlus printer driver
editor, File transfer and sorting utility, Patience, Golf.
2.8
Shareware N¼5 − 51 pieces  of music, some classical, some modern, for
the Music Editor.
2.8
Shareware N¼6 − Full of utilities etc for First Word Plus − some new
items but mainly a compilation of all the items previously available
through the monthly program discs.
2.8
Shareware N¼7 − A disc database of Archive magazine plus data files for
Archive, Risc User and Beebug for use with the ArcScan Database
available from Beebug.
2.8
Shareware N¼8 is a single game “YAIG” − Yet Another Invaders Game from
Bj¿rn Fl¿tten in Norway. We decided it was good enough to stand as a
single disc − in any case, it occupies over 600k of disc space. (Works
only on 1 Mbyte+ machines.)
2.8
Shareware N¼9 contains various graphics demos and examples of computer
graphics, several file utilities (EXALL, disc tree printer, filetypes
and ‘filedo’ utilities and a disc recoverer), mode 15 to mode 12
converter, palette converter (Arthur to RISC-OS), NEC printer utilities,
two fast fade programs as requested in Archive 2.6 p 22, System Delta
export utility, ADFS disassembler (Arthur only), bank account manager
and three games: 3D breakout, bowls and roller ball.
2.8
Shareware N¼10 contains Address book database (WIMP based), 4096 colour
selector, expenses manager (WIMP based), Reversi game, Star Trek game, a
simple 3D volume of rotation program and 29 astronomical programs from
Dr P. Duffet-Smith’s book ‘Astronomy with your personal computer’,
converted for Archimedes by Mr D. Fagandini.
2.8
Shareware N¼11 contains 6 concerti in Maestro form, one each from
Messers Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt, Mozart and Schumann.
2.8
Disc copier − There was some confusion caused by an advert we put in
some of the major magazines which referred to the disc copier on
Shareware N¼2 as a ‘disc editor’. Sorry about that. If you want a disc
sector editor, there is one on the program disc Volume 1 N¼ 6. The disc
copier is for allowing you to do backups of discs that have some sectors
damaged so it can be used for recovering duff discs as long as the duff
sector is not part of a directory. It could also be used to make a
backup copy of commercially protected discs to allow you to keep a
backup copy in a safe place.
2.8
•  Vietnamese fonts − Ian Copestake Software now has Vietnamese fonts for
use with First Word Plus on the Archimedes.
2.8
Review Software Received...
2.8
Apart from reviews already written we have received review copies of the
following software: Noah Paint Professional. (In case you are wondering
why so little of the software actually reviewed in Archive appears on
this monthly list of what is available, that is because I advertise them
on Eureka II and they usually get snapped up before the magazine goes
into print.)
2.8

2.8
A
2.8
•  A410/1, A420/1 and A440/1 − The new range of Archimedes has been
announced (I use that word advisedly!) which has the re-styled case, the
new p.c.b. and is said to run 10% faster. The 410/1 (£1199 +VAT) has 1
Mbyte upgradable to 4. It has the hard disc controller hardware but no
hard disc and has a four-slot backplane as standard. The 420/1 (£1699
+VAT) has 2 Mbytes and an internal 20 Mbyte drive. (i.e. it is equiva
lent to the existing A440 less 2 Mbyte of RAM.). Finally, the A440/1
(£2499) has 4 Mbyte RAM and a 50 Mbyte internal drive. (These prices do
not include a monitor.)
2.8
•  ARM3 chip for Archimedes / R140 − Here is an interesting press release
which I reproduce in full....
2.8
New Acorn Processor to upgrade existing Arcs
2.8
With the announcement by VLSI Technology Inc of Acorn Computer’s new ARM
processor, colloquially known as ‘ARM3’, comes news of an upgrade kit
for existing Archimedes 300- and 400- series and R140 computers.
2.8
Cambridge-based Aleph One Ltd says it will supply a small circuit board
which replaces the ARM2 processor with an ARM3 and control circuitry for
“a few hundred pounds” available from “the middle of the year”. This may
be fitted in seconds using a simple tool provided as part of the kit.
2.8
The ARM3 processor is based on the same RISC microprocessor core as the
current ARM2 but adds 4 Kbytes of very fast ‘cache’ RAM and bus
synchronization circuitry. This allows the processor to spend much of
its time running from its local cache memory but still allows external
memory access at the usual speed when necessary. Standard upgrades are
expected to run the processor core at 24 MHz, with 48 MHz available when
supplies permit.
2.8
Tests prove that the ARM3 is fully ARM2 software compatible (both RISC
OS and Unix run unmodified) and typically offers a factor of two to
three speed improvement over ARM2, occasionally reaching a factor of
five. In particular, the reduction in memory bandwidth used by the
processor means that high resolution graphics modes which have slowed
ARM2 systems, affect the processor considerably less. This makes ARM3
upgrades particularly useful in graphics-intensive applications, notably
RISC OS and X Desktop.
2.8
~~~~~~END~~~~~~
2.8
I checked with Aleph One Ltd and they said that although they hadn’t
actually been able to get a chip to try out their new board, their
claims were based on work done on evaluation samples within Acorn. The
speed increase is particularly noticeable on graphics-intensive tasks
since Acorn have written the RISC-OS graphics routines so that they can
run within the 4k of cache ram on the chip itself.
2.8
The speed increases refer to the 24 MHz chips and clearly, the 48 MHz
chips (when the silicon becomes available) will provide even more speed
increase though not another factor of two since the whole process is
limited by the speed of the main ram. Because the speed increase is very
dependent on the type of application, they say they are prepared to run
speed tests on any software that people want to send them, though
obviously they cannot do so until they actually have the chips available
from VTI to try it out on. If you are interested, contact Aleph One Ltd
on 0223-811679.
2.8
•  Atelier − A new art package (£99.95) from Minerva available week
beginning 29th May.
2.8
•  Desktop Publishing − There are two packages that we know of that are
under development. Computer Concepts’ ‘Impression’ is said to be
“available some time in the summer” and Acorn’s own DTP package should
be “some time in June” and will cost “round about £150 +VAT”.
2.8
•  GraphBox − from Minerva Software is, to quote their press release,
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“an impressive multitasking data presentation package.  There are twenty
different types of graph to suit varying data and presentation require
ments.  Data entry is in spreadsheet form or may be dragged between
other programs such as Arc Edit or Draw.  It is fully multi-tasking.
Many graphs may be plotted on one axis or in monochrome if desired.
2.8
Chart and graphs include: Scatter (with Error Bars), Line (with Error
Bars), Bubble, Polar Scatter, Stacked Area, Cumulative Area, Bar, Wire
Surface, 3D Bar, Stacked Bar, Percentage Bar, Horizontal Bar, Horizontal
3D Bar, Horizontal Stacked Bar, Horizontal Percentage Bar, Pie, Surface,
Polar Line
2.8
The X, Y or Z axes may be linear, logarithmic, squared or a function of
your choice.  All mathe-matical functions are accepted as input
including COS, SIN, RAD, ACS, LN, etc.  Integrates with ALL suitable
RISC-OS applications e.g. spreadsheets, databases, DTP, CAD, etc. or
load data from CSV, TSV, ASCII and other files.”
2.8
•  Ibix the Viking − A new game (£19.95) from Minerva available week
beginning 22nd May
2.8
•  Mach Technology are advertising, in a double page colour spread in A &
B Computing (i.e. over £1,000 worth of advertising!), four major new
products: Hyperbase (£49.95) an advanced database which supports cards
and stacks containing textual and graphical data in any combination;
Modula-2 compiler (£89.95) − an optimising compiler based on Wirth’s 4th
edition definition; Mach BASIC (£39.95) − a BASIC compiler with “full
BASIC V support” which “correctly handles dynamic scoping, local
variables and arrays unlike the competitors”. Their claim is that it is
“the fastest compiler on the market”; 20Mbyte hard disc and podule
(£249) − no, that’s not a typing error, the advert does say £249 and
that is inclusive of VAT though carriage is extra. All the other prices
are inc VAT and p&p.
2.8
It is strange that this is the first that we have heard of this company
offering four such major products at such amazingly low prices. I have
not yet managed to find anything out about the availability of the
products as I only got the magazine yesterday and it is now bank holiday
weekend, but I will try to find out and put it on the Order Form which
goes to the printers a few days later than the magazine.
2.8
•  Timewatch from Mitre Software is a time management tool costing £29.95
and which should be available “late May”. It manages appointments,
includes a day-to-day notebook and allows the management of a ‘To Do’
list for tasks. For the forgetful, details of anniversaries, birthdays
etc can also be entered. You can organise the timing and duration of
appointments and it keeps track of ‘ongoing’ and ‘overdue’ tasks. It
will do searches of the data and, of course, allow you to print out the
data in various ways. It is RISC-OS only, but allows you to import data
from Arthur diary files.
2.8
•  Programmers’ Reference Manual (version 2) − Available “some time in
August”, say Acorn.
2.8