Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_05/issue_09

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 15KB | 270 lines

•   A5000 drives − If you prefer to keep your podule slots free and want a
second large hard drive for your A5000, as well as the 120M drive at
£380, we now have a 240M drive at £675 and a 420M drive at £1150. These
can be fitted in the space underneath the floppy drive.
5.9
•   A5000 2M memory upgrades − Atomwide now have a non-expandable 2M
upgrade for the A5000 at £89 +VAT (or £100 through Archive). It is
vertical mounting and is therefore easier to fit than the expandable 2M
upgrade (£130 through Archive) since you don’t have to remove the floppy
drive and hard drive.
5.9
•   !BBCLink − Turing Tools have produced a “pre-compiling link editor”
for BBC Basic. The idea is that Basic compilers normally do not
recognise the LIBRARY function, so BBCLink enables you to call routines
that are not in the actual code to be compiled, just as long as the
routines exist in other sources referred to within the file. This brings
the idea of object-oriented programming within reach of the Basic
programmer. !BBCLink is £39 for a single user, £229 for a commercial
site licence, £189 for an educational site licence and there is a demo
version for £5, refundable on purchase of the full version. (There is no
VAT as Turing is not VAT registered.)
5.9
•   BirdTech scanning and printing − The phone number we gave last month
for BirdTech’s scanning and printing service was wrong. With apologies,
it should have been 0263−70669.
5.9
•   Careware 17 should be ready by the time this magazine goes to press,
possibly even 18 as well. See the Price List for details.
5.9
•   CD-ROM upgrade for Acorn SCSI cards − Acorn have released an upgrade
to enable their SCSI cards to be used to run CD-ROMs. The software is
the same for both versions of the Acorn SCSI card but for owners of the
earlier AKA30 cards, there is a simple board modification to be made.
The AKA31 has a link change instead. The price of the software and
instructions is £19.95 +VAT or £22 through Archive.
5.9
•   Design Concept’s fonts − Design Concept are continuing to increase
their list of outline fonts. The latest additions are Chinese and Katiyo
− both English characters but the former in a Chinese style. (See page
63 for a review of some the earlier fonts and programs.) For a free
catalogue, write to Design Concept.
5.9
•   Direct Laser Printers − Calligraph now have a wide range of direct
drive laser printers (i.e. the same sort of thing as the Laser Directs).
Bottom of the range is a Qume (300 d.p.i., 6 p.p.m.) at £899 + VAT
(Archive price £990). Then there is a 600 × 300 d.p.i., 4 p.p.m. Canon
at £969 + VAT (Archive price £1080). This is the equivalent of the
Computer Concepts’ Laser Direct LBP4 except that the CC version goes up
to 600 × 600, not just 600 × 300 d.p.i. The next one up is the equiva
lent of CC’s LBP8 − ArcLaser 600-8 is a Canon 8 p.p.m. printer offering
600 × 400 d.p.i. for £1399 +VAT (Archive price £1560). If you are
looking for an even faster printer with a dual bin facility then the new
ArcLaser 600-12 is a Qume laser printer offering 600 × 300 d.p.i. at 12
p.p.m. (Archive price £1560).
5.9
Calligraph also have a cheap laser printer with a deep paper tray that
is ideal for network use − ArcServer is a 300 d.p.i., 8 p.p.m. Taxan
printer and comes complete with network spooler software for £1069 + VAT
(Archive price £1180).
5.9
•   DrawPrint & Plot is Oak Solutions’ updated version of their WorraPlot
ter. DrawPrint is a tiling program for outputting Drawfiles in sizes up
to A0 on A4 sheets. DrawPlot is a RISC-OS driver for HPGL plotters. The
files it produces can be transferred to PC format discs and sent to
cutting or plotting bureaux for the final product to be produced. The
price is £39.95 +VAT or £43 through Archive.
5.9
•   Eizo 17“ monitors − I have now had several hours of practical
experience of using the various Eizo 17” monitors. The newest one I have
been looking at is the T560iT which is a higher spec version of the
T560i. It has an anti-reflective coating on the screen and has achieved
the MPR II standard. It also has lower electrostatic emission character
istics so that it complies with the more stringent Swedish TCO
regulations. It is, therefore, more expensive than the T560i − £1360 at
Archive prices compared with £1240, so is it worth paying £120 for the
extra “T” ?!
5.9
The advantage of the anti-reflective coating is that you won’t find
yourself having to angle the monitor to avoid reflections from strip-
lights or other strong light sources. If you are definitely always going
to be working in a low ambient light level, then the only advantage
would be the higher safety standards. However, being realistic, most of
us will, on occasions, find ourselves with some sort of bright light
causing reflections. I would say that if you can justify paying £1240
for a monitor, it would be false economy not to stretch the extra £120
for the T560iT at £1360.
5.9
So, how does the T560iT compare with the F550i? Is it worth the extra
£470? (£1360 − £890) First of all, I must say that the F550i is an
excellent monitor and anyone moving up from a 14“ monitor of any type
will see a significant improvement. With all three 17” monitors, the
micro-processor control makes them so much more user-friendly. They can
be set up in each of the modes you use to give the optimum display using
every last millimetre of the screen (except in modes 12 & 15 which are
half height and three-quarters width, though none the less very usable).
5.9
What then do you get for the extra £470? The first advantage of the
T560iT’s Trinitron tube is that you get a brighter screen. I found I had
to run the F550i at full brightness all the time and when the sun was
bright (in England, in May?!?!) I really could have done with a bit more
brightness. This is particularly noticeable with Impression because it
uses a white background. The problem with the F550 is that, if you try
to make the whole screen white, it really cannot cope and it goes a
little grey. To see this effect, create a new blank document and
increase the magnification to give you a complete white screen. Size it
down to a couple of inches square, put the pointer over the top right
hand corner of the window ready to open it out to full screen size and
cover the rest of the screen with a couple of A4 envelopes. Watch the
square of white in the top lefthand corner of the screen as you click
the mouse to open the window to full size and you will see the drop in
brightness. I also tried this with the Trinitron tube and couldn’t see
any change in brightness.
5.9
The other difference between the two tubes is the colour saturation.
This is clearly seen if you put up, say, the test card from Atomwide’s
VIDC modes disc. (You will need this disc or a VIDC enhancer to use any
of these monitors.) If you have two computers and can put the two
monitors side by side, you will see a definite difference in the
intensity of the colours. The F550 colours are more pastel, if that’s
the right word.
5.9
In defence of the F550i which, as I have said, is an excellent monitor
at £890, I have always found the non-Trinitron tubes less tiring to use
than the Trinitrons (well, the Taxan 795 which is the only Trintron I
had tried prior to the T560i). This could well be because the display is
not as bright or colourful and is therefore more restful. Also, the
Trinitron tubes do have a couple of dark shadow lines across the screen
which would never be seen on a television with a constantly moving
display but, with a steady white background, these dark lines can be
clearly seen. Having said that, the lines are a lot less obvious on the
larger tubes than on the 14“ ones and, in use, I haven’t found the
T560iT at all tiring to use. Because I use it all day, every day, I
think I can justify the extra cost and will be sticking with the T560iT.
5.9
•   Epson emulation − We have managed to find an Epson emulation for the
Acorn JP150 printer. The cost is £98 through Archive. It means that any
recalcitrant software that insists on printing to an Epson printer can
be used with the Acorn JP150 printer. This is likely to be particularly
useful with the PC Emulator.
5.9
•   Flopticals’ price down − Just after the last magazine went to the
printers, Morley dropped the prices of their floptical drives. The new
Archive prices are as follows: 20M external £490, 20M external + podule
£580, 20M external + cached podule £630, 20M internal floptical drive
£400, 20M internal + podule £490, 20M internal + cached podule £540. The
20M discs are £29 each or five for £115 (= £23 each). Note that, at
present, the Morley podules are the only SCSI podules that will support
the floptical drives. Also, currently, the drives will not read any of
the Acorn formats, only 720k and 1.44M MS-DOS formats.
5.9
•   Keynote is the primary version of the KeyPlus database, aimed at
children at Key Stages 1 & 2. It is produced by the education department
at Anglia Television and costs £27.50 +VAT for an individual copy with
site licences between £30 and £250 depending on the size of the
establishment from <150 pupil primary schools to FE and HE colleges.
5.9
•   KiddiCAD − Oak Solutions have a 3-D building block program − a bit
like building with Lego but in 3-D. The object can be viewed from any
position and any angle. You can build blocks into sub-assemblies, save
them and then use them to build up an even bigger model. Views of the
models can be printed with standard RISC-OS printer drivers. (£69.95
+VAT or £76 through Archive.)
5.9
•   Le Monde à Moi − This is a skills development package designed to
stimulate spoken and written French in children from 9 years upwards.
Based on a set of pictorial scenes, there is a range of sorting,
matching and sentence construction tasks that can be done. The price is
£15 +VAT from Northwest SEMERC.
5.9
•   Graph_IT is Sherston Software’s graph drawing software aimed specifi
cally at schools. “It has been designed to produce professional looking
graphs quickly, accurately and easily, without having to master a
complicated spreadsheet or database package.” The graphs can be saved as
Graph_IT files or as Draw files, so that the output can be used with
other WP or DTP packages. The price is £19.95 +VAT from Sherston
Software and this includes three fonts: Junior, Montclair and Tabloid.
5.9
•   Italian disc magazine − Raffaele Ferrigno tells us that there is now a
disc-based Archimedes magazine in Italy. Apparently it is bimonthly and
it is free! More details from Raffaele Ferrigno at Via Andrea d’Isernia
16, 80122 Napoli, Italy.
5.9
•   Nº62 Honeypot Lane is a new program from Resource aimed at primary
school work in a whole range of subjects. It is based round the idea of
exploring and discovering the routines and relationships that exist
within a household through a year. The price is £29.95 for a single user
and £74.95 for a site licence.
5.9
•   Pesky Muskrats − This new game from Coin-Age Ltd bears certain
resemblances, in the basic game strategy at least, to Lemmings. The
difference is that you are trying to kill all the Pesky Muskrats instead
of saving them. The price is £25.99 or £24 through Archive.
5.9
•   ScreenTurtle is Topologika’s easy-to-learn turtle graphics program. It
is a fully RISC-OS compatible program and offers a range of Logo
features but always with the aim of making it accessible for the younger
users − aimed at 8 to 13+ year olds. The price is £39.95 + VAT or £44
through Archive.
5.9
•   Shareware 44 − “Fortran Friends”, compiled by D.J. and K.M. Crennell,
contains: a desktop tool allowing compilation, linking and execution;
fast binary input/output, callable from Fortran; thirty-three graphics
routines emulating Basic commands, e.g. CALL LINE(IX1,IY1,IX2,IY2);
forty-four Sprite_Op routines; eleven utilities, e.g. J = IGET() which
simulates Basic’s GET command; a general SWI calling routine; fifty-one
wimp routines + some utilities; utilities to create Draw files for
‘path’ and ‘text’ objects; utilities to plot a line graph through a set
of X,Y points; various algorithms, originally part of the ACMToms;
Fortran applications − using SpriteOps for manipulation of objects made
of spheres, using wimp routines to display polyhedra from pre-stored
datafiles; advice for converting a Basic program to Fortran; list of
reported bugs in Fortran77 release 2; list of commercial suppliers of
libraries callable from Fortran; list of bulletin boards accessible from
JANET.
5.9
•   Shareware 45 − contains: typing tutor, address book and label printer,
easy-to-read font for children, modes 20 & 21 for Acorn multisyncs, Draw
options object killer, menu screen grabber, sprite & draw file
previewer, clipart including: Body − brain, eyeball, eyes, germ, hand,
inner ear, nervous system, skin1, skin2, skull/brain; chemical equip
ment: beaker, bunsen, distillation, conical flask, separation funnel;
General: blast furnace, tap; Pond: beetle, pike; Transport: glider,
lorry1, lorry2, plane.
5.9
•   Shareware 46 − contains: Basic compressor & cross referencer, module
information utility, regular expression finder (for cross referencing),
File/directory lister for RISC-OS and PC partitions, simple assembler,
desktop ‘filer’ utility.
5.9
•   Shareware 47 − contains: desktop keystrip, selective disc backup, a
utility to make ‘plinth’ sprites, (another different) typing tutor,
desktop eyes, orbital mechanics simulation, four dimensional cube
display, three games: !Bang − desktop bomb squad, Inertia screen
designer and !Zoo − a guessing game / expert system.
5.9
•   Squirrel update − Digital Services have produced a new version of
their Squirrel database. Version 1.10 has a huge range of new features −
I have a list of features 2½ pages long which I do not intend to try to
summarise! All registered Squirrel owners will get their upgrades free
of charge and the end user price has not changed − still £140 through
Archive.
5.9
•   The Crystal Rain Forest − Sherston Software have produced a new
educational adventure game. The scenario is that you have to help the
King of Oglo who has been poisoned by some evil tree-fellers. To save
him, you have to find some magic crystals hidden deep in the forest. The
adventure is intended to be both a starting point for conservation and
nature work and also a fun way to teach children how to use Logo. All
the puzzles encountered are related to Logo and are presented in a
structured manner so that pupils learn about Logo almost without
realising it − well, that’s what Sherston claim! The price is £35 +VAT
from Sherston Software.
5.9
•   The Public Key − Issue 3 of The Public Key is now available. This is
the magazine specialising in public key cryptography. For more details,
see the advert on page 10.
5.9
•   Vector − 4Mation’s new drawing package, Vector, is now available at
£85 +VAT (£92 through Archive). Written by Jonathan Marten (of DrawPlus
fame), it has a range of new features including replication of images,
masking of objects (so that parts of one object will “show through”
another object), radiation (replication + rotation), path-merging,
interpolation, new path patterns, etc, etc. (See comparative review on
page 13 − but a full review will follow as soon as it is ready.) A demo
version of Vector is included on the monthly program disc.
5.9
•   X-fire − yet another all-singing, all-dancing, shoot-em-up arcade game
from 4th Dimension. The price is £24.95 or £23 through Archive.
5.9