Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_3

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 93.6 KB | 1,754 lines

•   ABC Extras Package − for use with version 2 of the ABC compiler,
provides a crossreferencer, a library maker and a profiler and trace
package. £49.95 from Dabs Press or £45 through Archive.
3.1
•   Accounts & Invoices − Two programs that have been available for some
time, but only just come to light are Apricote Studios’ two packages,
The Account Book £27.95 and The Invoice Program £27.95 (buy them
together for £49.95). These programs offer purchase and sales, VAT and
trial balances etc and invoicing and statements for up to 700 customers
with 100 stock presets.
3.1
•   Archway up in price − Archway (RISCOS version) from Simtron has now
gone up in price to £99.95 (Archive price £85)
3.1
•   Arcol − MultiUser 256 colour Art Package from TAP Consortium £50 + VAT
for single user or £250 + VAT for a site licence. Yes, another art
package, but from what I saw of it at the Econet Conference, it looks
impressive. It is configurable to whatever system you want to use
including being fully networkable and it has some interesting features
designed for people who are concerned with real applications of an art
package rather than just using it to draw pretty pictures. This is born
out by the inclusion of such features as the ability to produce colour
separations.
3.1
•   ArcTrivia £24.95 (£23 through Archive) is now available in a new
version with 7,000 questions. Registered users may get an upgrade free
of charge by returning their old disc plus a blank disc to Moray Micro
Computing.
3.1
•   Careware 4 (£6 but remember that all the £6 goes to charity now, not
half of it as before − see Comments on page 14) contains an excellent
animation produced on Euclid/Mogul by Malcolm Banthorpe, a serial link
to BBC micro, !BIN − an application to allow you to drag files onto the
icon bar for deletion, !PCdir − a desktop application which converts
files to and from MSDOS, 3D adventure game, screen blanking routine, WP
file conversion routines, function key strip printer and some more tunes
for use with Maestro.
3.1
•   Shareware 15, available now, contains lots of bits and pieces: 16
graphics demos, two !Draw fonts, six !Maestro tunes, 17 sampled voices
and improvements for using View.
3.1
•   Shareware 16, available now, contains (another) 256colour art package,
link to Psion organiser and the latest version of the YAIG game which
works in the overscan mode giving much greater screen area in which to
play.
3.1
•   Central Heating Calculator − D.J.Holden has produced a commercial
version of his central heating calculator program that appears on the
Shareware 12 disc. It has several extra facilities and bug fixes. For
further details he can be contacted at 29 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham,
London, SE26 5RN. (01−778−2659)
3.1
•   Genlock for the A3000 −  Wild Vision now have a genlock card available
for the A3000 for just £199 plus VAT. It is a mini podule that fits
inside the A3000.
3.1
•   Caption Generator − Chromatext is a flexible caption generator from
Wild Vision allowing 35 screens of video titles in various colours,
fonts and sizes to be stored for overlaying on video as and when
required.
3.1
•   LC10 Typefaces − Ian Copestake Software have created a brand new
collection of typefaces for the LC10 printer − 7 typefaces are avail
able, £9.90 each (inc VAT etc) or £24 for three (and introductory offer)
or all seven for £44. Specify computer, wordprocessor and disc format
when ordering. (N.B. These are not the outline fonts for Acorn DTP that
Ian is planning to offer later in the year.)
3.1
•   MicroTrader, the integrated accounts package for small businesses from
Meadow Computers is now RISCOS compatible and has a whole host of new
and improved features still at £200 + VAT including telephone support
service.
3.1
•   New Noah Paint − Noah Paint (as reviewed in Archive 2.11 p 56) from
GMA Hamburg, has been updated and has had a new manual written for it
and will now be known as Noah Professional Paint. The Noah Paint 16 has
been released at only £10 + VAT.
3.1
•   Noah Tools #1 for just £10 + VAT from GMA Hamburg has !FastROM to
speed up the MEMC, !ReBoot to call a hard reset, !WatchDog to give BASIC
editor access from desktop, a trashcan (a bin in UK terminology), mouse
controls via the keyboard, accessing filetypes, !Shell is a brand new
CLI gives CLI history and editing etc, IFF Loader to load IFF pictures,
BigScreen to emulate a 20“ monitor on a multisync (= an overscan mode?),
and finally a VT100 emulation. (Look out for Noah Tools #2, also £10,
which is on the way, said to have a “Reassembler” (disassembler?),
NoahTree = Disctree, Filefinder like grep in Unix, RISCOS changer which
changes normal BASIC programs into applications and possibly a multiple
copy program. Also in the pipeline are Noah Games# which will be £15
each, the first of which will be a version of “tetris”.)
3.1
•   Pipedream Extended Dictionary £6.95 from HJH Software (Archive £6.50)
provides 156k of user dictionary that includes most words that you will
require even in quite highbrow documents.
3.1
•   Programmers’ Reference Manuals − The new P.R.M.’s are here! Four
volumes plus a separate index for just £79.95. There is a rumour of an
upgrade for owners of the old manuals − £55 plus the two front covers of
the old PRM, but I can’t get anyone to confirm or deny the rumour. The
Archive price is £75 − not as much discount as usual because this price
includes carriage and the manuals are extremely heavy.
3.1
•   RISCOS Mogul for RISCOS Euclid − £20 inc VAT from Ace Computing (£18
through Archive). See Malcolm Banthorpe’s review on page 50 for more
details.
3.1
•   Transputer Addons for Archimedes − Gnome Computers Ltd have developed
a new programming environment for use on the Archimedes based on the
Inmos Transputer Development System (TDS). The hardware is based around
three plugin boards: a Link Adaptor (£200) allowing communication with
an external transputer system at 10 or 20 MHz, a TRAM Motherboard (£250)
which provides similar facilities but also houses up to 4 TRAMs which
allows Archimedes to act as a standalone TDS, and the Transputer
Baseboard which houses a T4 or T8 transputer and 1 to 8 Mbytes. (Boards
with 2 Mbytes of RAM and a 20 Mhz T425 or T800 are £875 and £995
respectively.) The software consists of a Server Program (£200) which,
with the Archimedes high speed screen and disc handling, gives an
overall performance of  2 to 3 times that of a midrange PC. It can also
support versions of C, Fortran and Pascal compilers (£750 each).
3.1
•   WordPower now PD − Ian Copestake Software have now made WordPower, the
wellestablished wordprocessor that started life on the BBC Micro, a PD
program available for just £5. It is a full working version that works
on the Archimedes and is complete with documentation.
3.1

•   Acorn C Compiler Release 3 is now available. It includes a RISCOS
library; support for developing desktop applications, relocatable
modules and programs using overlays; enhanced development tools; a 500
page manual with many examples (also on disc) and 4 reference cards. The
compiler costs £149 ex VAT to first time buyers (£145 inc VAT through
Archive), £70 (inc VAT) for Release 1 owners and £50 (inc VAT) for
Release 2 owners. This does not include postage and packing which is
charged at £5.20. To obtain an upgrade you must return the original disc
(NOT the complete package) along with a cheque, postal order or official
order made payable to ‘Acorn Direct’ and send it to Vector Services Ltd.
3.2
•   Adventure Creator − Alpine Software have now released an Archimedes
version of their Adventure Language and Programming System ALPS (£32
plus £1 p&p), which allows you to create your own adventures. The
program requires at least 1Mbyte and comes with an 800k disk, a 28 page
introductory guide and a 42 page reference guide.
3.2
•   PRM upgrades − if you own the old PRM’s, you can obtain an upgrade by
sending the covers of the old manuals with £50 and £5.20 p&p to Vector
Services Ltd.
3.2
•   Cambridge International Software have launched three new products for
the Archimedes market: ‘Confusion’ (£9.95) a breakout game with a
difference, the rules are never the same; ‘Pro Copier’ (£9.95) a disc
sector copier for professional backups of your business applications;
‘Super Creations 1/2/3’ (£9.95) consists of two discs containing
instrument sounds which can be used for your own programs or games. (We
have tried on a number of occasions to get in touch with CIS to check
availability but be so far had no success.)
3.2
•   Concept Keyboards for the Archimedes − Sherlock Rehab Data of Norway
have produced software which allows the use of Concept Keyboards with
the Archimedes.
3.2
•   DeltaCat Mouse Eliminator − Voltmace have a joystick for the Archi
medes which simply replaces the mouse − £29.95 or £28 through Archive −
works a treat with Interdictor flight simulator!
3.2
•   Desktop Games − Anonymouse have produced six desktop games on two
discs. The first contains onearmed bandit, Reversi and a Pelmanism game.
The second disc contains Pontoon, a memory game and Yahtzee. Each disc
costs £10 or you can buy both discs for £15 (prices include VAT and
p&p).
3.2
•   DIGIT − the image analysis software DIGIT is no longer available from
the Institute of Ophthalmology. However, copies can still be obtained
from Dr B.P.Haynes at 31 Priory Gardens, Berkhamstead, Herts, HP4 2DS.
Tel: [phone]. The software is now supplied as RISCOS applications
and the prices are as before i.e. DIGIT package for 2d measurement £150,
3DIGIT for 3D reconstruction £50, GRAPHDATA for reading graphs £30. The
packages can be used with the Watford video digitiser or Wild Vision
chromalock for measuring video pictures or with the Summagraphics Bit
Pad 2 digitiser tablet for measuring photographs, graphs and drawings.
3.2
•   DiscTree − Mitre Software launched a second release of their DiscTree
software (£49.95 inc VAT). One of the main features of the update is a
‘compressed file output’ which reduces the number of floppies that are
required for backup. The ‘TreeViewers’ have also been enhanced to
include: filer type facilities such as auto update on the creation/
deletion of a directory and copying/saving of files; improved display
appearance with the ability to create a display on any subdirectory and
not just the root; and directory management options (delete and copy).
Existing owners should note that they are entitled to an upgrade free of
charge.
3.2
•   EType − Impact Software / 4th Dimension have released a new driving
game based on an EType Jaguar. It boasts digitised sounds and graphics
for 5 different courses. The courses contain other cars, oil spills,
road works, trees, rocks, billboards, policemen, etc. (See review on
page 49.)
3.2
•   Fun School 2 − Database Direct have produced a new series of edu
cational programs for the Archimedes. There are three packs: the under
6’s, 68 year olds and over 8’s. Each pack comes with eight programs, a
badge and detailed instructions. The computer itself monitors the
child’s progress. The skill level − initially set by the parents − is
automatically adjusted to suit the child’s ability.
3.2
•   LinCAD − Linear Graphics have now finished their 2D CAD package for
the Archimedes. (£150 + VAT) See the show report for more details.
3.2
•   Lingenuity’s A300/A400 internal SCSI hard drives are now in full
production. They supply 5 sizes of hard drive: 20M (40 ms Seagate) at
£375, 49M (40ms Seagate) at £499, 75M (18ms Rodime) at £799, 105M (18ms
Rodime) at £839 and 217M (18ms Rodime) at £1249 (all prices exclude
VAT). Lingenuity say that parts of the SCSI software have been licensed
directly from Acorn, so there should be no problems with compatibility.
(See page 10.)
3.2
•   MEMC1a upgrade − on its own, the MEMC1a chip costs £79.95 inc VAT and
can be obtained from your local Acorn Dealer. It is also supplied as a
free upgrade with the Floating Point Podule or the Acorn SCSI card. The
upgrade is on a one chip per card basis and will only be supplied if
your computer doesn’t already have a one e.g. if a school wants to share
a FPE between say 10 machines then it will have to buy 9 extra MEMC’s.
3.2
•   Noah Paint 16 − GMA have reworked their 16 colour art package, which
now includes a new manual (on disc). Some of the facilities it now
provides are: a magnifier, brushes, 3D aids, colour palette manipula
tions and stats, grid lock, cross fade and links to the Watford
digitiser. The price is £10 ex VAT.
3.2
•   PlaneDraft − new prices − following the comments made in Archive 3.1
p42, Vision Six have now revised their prices for this Structural
Analysis package: £375 for the frame analysis only (was £475), £200 for
truss only (was £250), £250 for grid only (was £325), or £700 for all
three (was £875). They have also said that the points mentioned in the
review will be implemented as improvements in the near future.
3.2
•   Quest − an established BBC database application now converted to
Archimedes. It is readily available from the Advisory Unit for
Microtechnology in Education, Hatfield at £30 (site licence).
3.2
•   RAM prices down again − we’ve had yet another drop in the price of the
ram for A400/1 series computers. It has gone down from £210 to its
present price of £120. This means we can sell a 420/1 equivalent for
£1715 and a 440/1 equivalent for £2240. These prices include £100 of
free software. (Compare this with Acorn’s own prices of £1954 and £2874
for 420/1 and 440/1.)
3.2
(If you want to buy a PC emulator at the same time, add £60; if you want
an Acorn monitor, add £230; if you want an Eizo multisync monitor, add
£525.
3.2
•   RFS Filer for RISCOS − the Data Store have produced a RISCOS utilities
disc that includes a module which will allow the Computer Concepts ROM/
RAM board to be accessed from the desktop just like an ADFS disc. (If
you only want the RFS Filer, we have a module written by CC that does
this. If you send us a blank 800kformat disc, we will give you a copy.)
3.2
•   Shareholders’ offer − Acorn have formulated a special offer for
shareholders in the Acorn Computer Group plc which consists of a reduced
purchase price on the Acorn range of computer systems. Full details will
be sent with the halfyear results but the reductions are estimated to be
between £70 and £420 on the Archimedes range.
3.2
•   Watford Graphics Tablet − Watford’s new graphics tablet is now
available from stock − Archive price £305.
3.2
•   Word Power Shareware − Word Power was mentioned in last month’s
products available section. Since then, Ian Copestake Software have
pointed out that the software is in fact shareware and not public
domain. The difference being that the user is expected to pay on
registration. The price being £41.40 inc. per copy (less any initial
costs). For this you get a manual, function key strip and technical
support from the author.
3.2

•   Acorn Assembler (£199 + VAT or £195 through Archive) comprises three
programs plus a manual; Aasm which assembles files for immediate
execution, ObjAsm which assembles files into Acorn’s AOF format and
Linker which links AOF files.
3.3
•   Allin Boxing from Dabs Press complete with its digitised grunts and
groans is now available for £14.95 (£14 through Archive).
3.3
•   ALPS System and Cops from Alpine Software which were mentioned last
month (3.2 p 2 and 3.2 p 4) are now available through Archive for £29
and £18 respectively.
3.3
•   C Front (release 2) from Mitre Software now supports release 3 of
Acorn ANSI C. Users can receive a free upgrade of Cfront by returning
their original master disc to Mitre Software.
3.3
•   Clares’ Artisan Update − the 256 colour art package ProArtisan has
been reduced in price to £99.95 inc VAT (through Archive £85) and
Artisan 2 is now available from stock £59.96 in VAT (through Archive
£55). Existing Artisan owners can upgrade to Artisan 2 by sending just
their original disc and £30 to Clares (or £28 through Archive).
3.3
•   Computer Concepts Upgrades − the InterROM series along with SpellMas
ter now work under RISCOS and a free upgrade is provided by Computer
Concepts. Just send back your Archimedes ROMs or discs to Computer
Concepts and they will upgrade them for you.
3.3
•   Disc Utilities from The Data Store (see Archive 3.3 p 32) is now
available through Archive for £15. Soon to be available is FontFX (£10
through Archive) which uses Acorn’s Outline Font Manager to construct
!Draw paths of antialiased text. The text can be drawn around various
shapes e.g. straight lines, circles, arcs and can be rotated, scaled,
shadowed, etc. This allows you to produce sophisticated text shapes that
can be loaded into applications such as !Draw, Impression, Acorn DTP,
etc.
3.3
•   EType Designer is now available at £16 from Archive − design your own
courses with custom obstacles, etc.
3.3
•   External Dual 3.5“ drives for the A3000 are available from Morley
Electronics for £125 + VAT or through Archive for £135. The plugin
upgrade is easy to install and does not require a separate PSU as the
drives draw their power from the A3000.
3.3
•   Fireball II − Cambridge International Software will be releasing this
game in a games ‘minipack’ after Christmas. The game offers digitised
sounds and all sorts of extra bat’n’ball functions such as mirror,
snake, laser, etc. Until then, the game can be obtained for £8.50 from
the author, Simon Heather, at Mayfield House, Bunbury, Cheshire, CW6 9SY
or telephone [phone].
3.3
•   Fun School 2 from Database Software comes in three versions: under
6’s, 6 − 8’s and Over 8’s. Each has eight different educational games
for just
3.3
•   G.A.Herdman Educational have a whole range of educational programs,
long established in the BBC/Master market, which have now been made
available in completely rewritten form making full use of RISCOS. They
range in price from £9.99 to £39.99 and include titles such as Household
Electricity, Advanced Chemistry Assessment, Atomic Theory Plus, Advanced
Organic Chemistry II, Advanced Inorganic Chemistry II, Advanced Physical
Chemistry II, Periodic Table, Periodicity 1 & 2. Send them an s.a.e. for
full details.
3.3
They are also working on a product called DTP_ Images which is disc full
of images, specifically designed for the education market, which will
supplement Acorn’s own DTP examples disc.
3.3
•   Holed Out Designer − Now you can design your own golf courses and so
never get tired of playing Holed Out. £18.95 from Impact or £18 through
Archive.
3.3
•   Jigsaw from 4mation Educational Resources (£29 + VAT) consists of 16
full screen pictures (featuring artwork from Rodkey Matthews and David
Cowell) which can be jumbledup into a jigsaw by a rather clever program.
It offers various degrees of difficulty from great big pieces which are
all orientated in the correct direction to lots of little pieces all
higgledypiggledy.
3.3
•   MacroAssembler from Wingpass (£47 through Archive) produces AOF files
and is easy to use to create relocatable modules. This assembler has
several special features which make it ideal for use with C language
programs.
3.3
•   Memory Upgrades for A3000 from Morley Electronics − 1M & 3M upgrades
are now available (£150 and £415 plus VAT). The boards are easy to
install as they plug into the standard RAM expansion sockets provided
and offer full compatibility with all Acorn software. We have managed a
very special deal with Morley and can offer them at £140 and £395 inc
VAT and carriage.
3.3
•   Memory Upgrades for A3000 − CJE Micros have a 1M upgrade for the A3000
at £165 (Archive price). They are also working on a 3M upgrade and will,
in due course, be offering a tradein on the 1M version.
3.3
•   Memory upgrades for A305 − SPEM in Italy has produced a 2M upgrade
that can be fitted into an A305 or an upgraded A305. Basically, it plugs
into the sockets used by the second half Mbyte of ram on the main p.c.b.
In addition it requires a couple of tracks cutting on the underside of
the p.c.b. and a couple of wires soldering onto it. It is not for the
fainthearted and, needless to say, fitting it will void your warranty.
SPEM are offering it at a special price to Archive subscribers in Italy
− Lire 750.00 or, to other European Archive subscribers, £299.99.
3.3
•   MultiStore, Minerva’s long awaited fully relational database system,
is now in stock. It is multitasking and handles multiple files open at
once and has lots of interesting features. The price is just £299 inc
VAT. (£250 through Archive)
3.3
(Many of you have protested against Minerva’s policy of copy protecting
their discs and some have even said that, on principle, they would not
buy any of Minerva’s products. It may be of interest to you to know that
MultiStore is not, as far as we can see, copy protected and it can be
backedup using the standard *BackUp command.)
3.3
(We have a review copy of MultiStore, but before you all write in,
offering to do the review and get your free review copy, I should say
that we need someone who really knows about databases and who is already
familiar with System Delta Plus, Alphabase and also Pipedream 3,
preferably, so that we get a better overview of what is available and
how MultiStore compares with the opposition. MultiStore is an extensive
package and we want to do justice to it in the review.)
3.3
•   New language compiler − Cambridge Pascal is now available from Dabs
Press for £79.95 (£70 through Archive). This is a comprehensive version
of Pascal with many extras for use on the Archimedes, including access
to star commands and SWI’s, compilation of relocatable modules, desktop
compatible, full dynamic string handling, local error handling and
random access files.
3.3
•   The Datafile of Educational Software and Addresses is now in its sixth
edition. It offers 4370 records of software titles and over 1000
addresses of agencies likely to be of interest to the educational
computer users. For more details contact Nick Evans, PO Box 55, Grimsby,
DN32 0QB or phone [phone] (evenings and weekends only).
3.3
•   Worra PCB and Worra CAD have now been rewritten to take full advantage
of the RISCOS window environment. The packages are available from Oak
Computers and each costs £49.95 inc VAT (or £46 through Archive).
3.3
•   Worra Plotter will allow HPGL compatible plotters to plot draw files.
The package allows you to configure the pen speed, plotter size, pen
configuration and size/offset of the drawing. It costs £29.95 inc VAT
from Oak Computers (or £27 through Archive).
3.3

•   32M Archimedes for just £7? − Well, no, don’t get too excited − we’re
talking about a library of routines suitable for linking into programs
developed in C which provide up to 32M of virtual memory (assuming you
have that much disc space to play with). It is said to be ideal for uses
where large quantities of data have to be processed, e.g. image
processing. However, moving data to and from virtual memory has to be
performed by the routines provided. The cost is £7 from DT Software.
3.5
•   A3000 Interface for 5.25“ drives − Dudley Micro Services have designed
an interface (price £39.95) specifically for the A3000, for connecting
one or more 5.25” (or 3.5“) drives to an A3000. They sent us one to look
at and it consists of connectors to the p.c.b. and the internal drive
linked by a ribbon cable out through the back of the computer to a
freestanding plastic box containing the interface. External drives have
to be linkselected internally as drives 1 and 2 since the internal drive
remains drive 0. A link on the interface allows for older disc drives
that do not provide a ‘ready’ signal.
3.5
•   ARM 3 upgrade from Gnome Computers − These are now available though in
rather short supply as they are having difficulty with supply of the
ARM3 chips. They cost £495 + VAT direct from Gnome, but they cannot give
us any discount until supply improves so they will not be available
through Archive just yet. They are cheaper than the Aleph One upgrade,
even at Archive discount prices, but we have not had a look at one yet
to be able to compare them.
3.5
•   BBC software upgraded − RESOURCE have upgraded many of their BBC
titles so that they run on the Archimedes without having to use the BBC
emulator and, in some cases, the graphics have been improved: Castle
Pack (£21.95), Cateby Manor (£27.50), DIYbase (£27.50), Forge (£38.50),
Leisure Unlimited (£29.95), NEA Case Study (£16.50) and Software Tools
(£16.50).
3.5
•   Caverns is a new arcade adventure game that has been recently released
by Minerva Software. It not only requires flying skill and shooting
accuracy but various puzzles must also be solved if the game is to be
completed. The game consists of 15 levels, each with a playing area of
approximately 16 times the size of the screen. It costs £17.95 inc VAT
or £17 through Archive.
3.5
•   CraftShop 1 and 2 (£29 + VAT each) are two very impressive new
educational packages from 4mation each of which contains two programs.
As they say in their blurb, describing them is not easy, so they provide
a free demo disc − just send them a blank disc and an S.A.E.
3.5
CraftShop 1: ‘Patterns’ allows you to use repeated, rotated, reflected,
scaled and translated simple shapes to create interesting patterns and
pictures. ‘Stitching’ − imagine the traditional curve stitching (nail &
thread pictures), convert it onto the screen in full colour and extend
the idea into 3D with rotation.
3.5
CraftShop 2: ‘Tiling’ is used with Acorn’s !Paint application to create
repeated patterns across the screen (sounds a bit dull, but it certainly
is not!). ‘Embroider’ allows you to create embroiderylike patterns in
various colours with ready made ‘stitches’ or DIY ‘stitches’ to produce
quite fascinating patterns.
3.5
All CraftShop designs can be used with JigSaw and also Snippet and
Poster when available (see below).
3.5
•   DTP Images 1 & 2 are two discs of !Draw line drawings, pixel based
!Paint items and video digitised images for £8.99 per disc or £14.99 for
the two. Send to G.A.Herdman Educational Software for more details.
3.5
•   Educational Software from Northern Micromedia − Firstly, they have a
primary word processor called Stylus. The Mk 1 version of this, which is
a conversion of the BBC Micro program, is available now for £15 and Mk
2, which will add dictionary, choice of fonts, etc should be available
in summer 1990.
3.5
They also do a range of educational programs for various levels: ‘All
About Me’, £11 (age 4+), ‘Camping’, £15.20 (913), ‘Crossword Callup’,
£12.80 (all ages), ‘Funfair’ for basic numeracy, £18.80 (7+), ‘Pip Goes
to the Moon’, £12.80 (5+), ‘What’s It To You’ − decision making, £14
(11+) and ‘Yellow Brick Road’, £16.50 (79). (Add VAT to all prices.) We
hope to have review copies of some or all of these titles, so if anyone
is interested in doing any of the reviews, please write to the Archive
Editor and indicate your area of interest and your expertise.
3.5
•   Fortran User Interface Development System − called ‘Interacter’ from
Interactive Software Services is a subroutine library which enables
software developers to combine ease of use with portability. There are
versions for VAX/VMS, Unix, Prime, IBM PC and Archimedes. Full details
from I.S.S.
3.5
•   Genesis − Software Solutions’ new educational database is now
available in full release form. The prices are £99.99 for noneducational
and £69.95 + VAT for education when purchased direct from Software
Solutions. The Archive price is £85.
3.5
•   Integrex have inks for their 132 printer that can be printed onto
paper and the result transferred to fabric. The final pattern is
waterproof. TAP Consortium had some nice pieces of textile printed in
this way on show at BETT.
3.5
•   Mindwarp − £14.95 from Future Software is a new shootemup game written
by Richard Millican. It consists of over 40 levels, increasing in
difficulty. If you are lucky, you may catch a piece of a dying alien
craft which can help you in various ways such as extra fire power,
speed, lives and so on.
3.5
•   Outline Fonts − Acorn have made their outline fonts available
separately as font packs. (They are included in DTP packages but if you
can’t aford the DTP prices, you may still need the outline fonts.) There
is a Font Starter Pack which contains Trinity, Homerton and Corpus for
£45 + VAT (£47 through Archive) and a separate New Hall pack, also £45 +
VAT (£47). (Acorn DTP at £145 through Archive supplies all these fonts
plus Selwyn.)
3.5
•   Ram for A410/1 is down in price yet again! This time it has dropped to
£80 per Mbyte. Also, we are now also selling individual chips at £12
just in case one gets mangled as you are trying to insert it! It is not
an easy task to insert the chips without bending the legs as they are
the socalled zigzag chips, not the more common, and sturdier, dualinline
packages.
3.5
•   Spare parts for 310’s − Some of you with the older 310’s and 305’s are
beginning to have worn out mice (call the R.S.P.C.A.!) and worn out disc
drives. If you know that they are now defunct and you simply want to
replace them, we can supply replacements. The mouse at £55 is just a
straight plugin replacement, but the disc drive obviously needs a bit of
technical knowledge to fit it. The old drive has to be removed, the
front fascia of the new drive has to be taken off as it is not needed
and the drive then has to be mounted into the metal cradle that the old
one occupied. You may need to adjust the position of the drive to line
it up with the slot in the front fascia, but this should not prove too
difficult. At £70 for the drive, it is certainly cheaper than buying
Acorn’s own replacement drive.
3.5
Another alternative is to find someone to repair the existing drive.
Bedford Technical Engineering (see Factfile), who are part of Granada
Rental and Retail Ltd, will repair the 3.5“ drives for £20 plus parts.
If the heads are duff, since it would cost more to replace them than
buying a new drive, they offer a “service changeover” i.e. a refurbished
but guaranteed drive for £45 + VAT.
3.5
•   Studio 24 Plus version 2 is available now − £169 inclusive. (Not £149
as originally stated by EMR.) The new version is multitasking and adds
extra features including DM printouts, midi keyboard remote control and
onscreen notation during record and playback. If you have version 1, you
can update it by sending the disc back to EMR with a cheque for £71.50
(£69 + £2.50 p&p). The bad news is that EMR say that they will not sell
Studio 24 Plus Version 2 to dealers “at the moment” so if you want it
straight away, you will have to pay full price direct to EMR.
3.5
•   Video overlays on A3000 − Wild Vision have extended their range of
genlock and video overlay cards to include the A3000. Chroma 220, 235
and 250 boards at £155, £199 and £355 respectively (+ VAT + carriage)
provide a range of hardware options, all in minipodule format. (Archive
prices are £165, £210 and £375.) The three boards are equivalent to the
well established Chroma 320, 335 and 345 for the 310 and 400 series
machines at £155, £295 and £395 respectively. (£165, £315 and £420
through Archive)
3.5
Chromatext software (£39.95 + VAT or £42 through Archive) provides video
titling and XAT video utilities package (£79 + VAT or £84 through
Archive) provides a wide range of software for the video producer
including test card, leader clock, realtime clock, horizontal title
scroll, etc. Also includes overscan modes for full screen use.
3.5

•   A3000 5.25“ interfaces − It is possible to fit some of the 5.25”
interfaces that were designed for the A300/400 series machines into an
A3000, but the mechanical arrangement is never ideal. Watford and Dudley
Micro Supplies now do interfaces specifically for the A3000. I have not
yet seen the Watford one. The Dudley Micros one is OK except that it
consists of an external plasic box with cables coming out between the
back plate and top plate of the computer which might cause the cables to
be cut into by the metal backplate.
3.6
•   A3000 Analogue Port/User Port − Schools, amongst others, will be
pleased to hear that Morley Electronics are now selling a minipodule for
the A3000 which includes a user port and an analogue port manufactured
to Acorn’s specification and fully compatible with the old BBC Micro in
terms of the OSBYTE commands. What is more, it has a connector for I2C
devices which opens up all sorts of possibilities for interfacing to
various other devices. The price is £69 + VAT or £72 through Archive.
3.6
•   A3000 external 3.5“ drive from Morley Electronics. These are now
available from stock at the Archive price of £125. They are not, as we
first thought, dual drives. It consists of an interface and a single
3.5” drive in a dual box. You take the internal drive out of the
computer, install the interface instead of it and put the drive into the
external box making it into the dual drive as shown in Morley’s advert!
Sorry for the confusion but this arrangement is better, if you think
about it, since it gets away altogether from the Amigastyle sideentry
drive. A question was raised about preserving the warranty, but since
the drives are supplied to Morley by Acorn I don’t see that there should
be any problem.
3.6
•   A3000 memory prices falling − We have arranged a special price for
Archive subscribers for memory upgrades for the A3000. The 1M and 3M
upgrades are £125 and £350 respectively including VAT and carriage. (The
make of ram depends on what supplies we can get at the time − could be
Computerware, Morley or Watford, but at that price, who’s complaining?!)
Note though that this is a limited offer, while stocks last. There are
strong rumours of a rise (yes, a rise!) in the price of ram over the
next few months.
3.6
•   Acorn Midi Software updates − Acorn have improved and added features
to the software on their three Midi products: A3000 user port & midi
podule, A300/400 midi podule and the midi addon to the I/O podule. The
new software will be going into all the podules currently in production
but the new ROMs and manuals are available for existing owners as
upgrades with product codes AKA 54, AKA55 and AKA56 respectively at
prices of “around £10, £15 and £12 respectively”.
3.6
•   I/O podule software improved − If you buy the AKA56 upgrade to the
software for the midi addon to I/O, you will find that the new ROM
contains improved code for the I/O itself. If you have experienced
problems with the I/O card, such as problems with interrupt handling,
this ROM at “around £12” should solve the problem.
3.6
•   Another ARM3 board − A third manufacturer is producing ARM3 upgrades −
Watford Electronics. The good news is that at £349 +VAT, the price is
somewhat lower than Aleph One’s price of £599 +VAT. The board is similar
to the one produced by Aleph One and again needs the MEMC1a upgrade
fitting to A310’s and old A440’s, but Watford will supply the MEMC1a
upgrade with the ARM3 for £49 +VAT. The bad news is that, as with Gnome
Computers’ ARM3 board, they are not yet available in quantity. Aleph One
do not seem to have the same supply problem but no doubt the cheaper
versions will become more numerous.
3.6
•   Archimedes First Steps − At last, a beginners’ book about the
Archimedes. £9.95 from Dabhand Computing (£9 through Archive). See the
review on page 17 for details
3.6
•   Best of Archive BBS downloads − Shareware 19 is now available. It
features some of the best programs downloaded from the Archive BBS. It
includes the following: home accounts application, hypertext based
application, scientific calculator, dustbin, two file utilities,
disassembler, RS423 downloader, othello, space invaders, a text
adventure, and little desktop demo. Thanks, Karen!
3.6
•   Best of SID downloads − Shareware 20 is now available  It is the first
of a series of discs of the best programs that can be downloaded Acorn’s
SID database. Thanks to Phil Colmer!
3.6
It contains four demos, two games (battleship & solitaire), Arcterm
3.11, FormEd, DFStoADFS, ModeExtend, Sparkplug, Trash, VDUsaver,
keyboard=mouse utility, plus four C utilities. At least two more ‘Best
of SID’ discs will follow shortly. STOP PRESS Sharewares 21 & 22 ready −
No spare space here, so see page 60 for details!
3.6
•   Faster and cheaper ARM3’s from Aleph One − (perhaps that should read
“faster OR cheaper”). ARM3’s are now available at 30MHz, instead of
20MHz as earlier versions, at the same price of £595 + VAT. (£650
through Archive) While stocks last, the 20MHz version will be available
at £495 +VAT from Aleph One. If you want your 20MHz version upgrading to
30MHz, Aleph One will replace the chip and the clock for you for £50
+VAT (thus making a 20MHz chip available for someone else!) Don’t get
too excited though − you will find that upgrading from 20 to 30 MHz does
not give a further 50% speed increase. From figures which Aleph One gave
me, it looks more like about 28% in mode 0 or 25% in mode 27. If you are
not sure what speed your chip is, the crystal on the p.c.b. is 40MHz for
the 20MHz chip and 60 for the 30MHz chip. Also, the chips that are
capable of running up to 30MHz are black as opposed to the slower
versions which are grey with a purple middle. Electronics experts
amongst you may be tempted to try speeding your chips above the quoted
rates and you will probably find that they will still work. However, at
higher temperatures they may begin to malfunction, so you trade off
speed against reliability.
3.6
(For the PCminded among you, the Norton index rises from 1.0 on an 8MHz
ARM2 to 3.2 on a 20MHz ARM3.)
3.6
Sadly, the ARM3’s are not compatible with the Acorn f.p.u. This is not
bad design on Aleph One’s part but just because of the different pinouts
of the ARM2 and ARM3. So, if you want speed increase for doing calcula
tions, you have to choose which is going to be better for the sort of
work you are doing. In order to help you judge which will be best, Aleph
One provide a program speed testing service. You can send them a typical
program on a disc and they will run it with and without the ram cache on
the ARM3 so that you can judge the likely speed increase. In order to
help Aleph One provide that service without too much hassle on their
part, they lay down certain specifications about the program to be
tested. If you are interested, send them an S.A.E. for a specification
sheet.
3.6
•   Confusion over Confusion − Confusion from Cambridge International
Software is the same program as Fireball II as reviewed by Dave Bilsby
last month, page 41. It is available now through Archive for £10.
3.6
•   Modem prices down − We’ve managed to do a better deal on the two
modems we sell. The SM2400 modems is down from £235 to £210 and the
WS3000 V22bis from £350 to £310. Modem cables, which were proving very
difficult to get hold of, are no problem now because we are getting them
made locally using better quality cabling and sockets at the same price
of £10.
3.6
•   Outlines Fonts − Ian Copestake Software are due to release sets of
outline fonts for use with RISCOS. Symbol sets for mathematics and
languages will be included. See the advertisement on page 48 for more
details.
3.6
•   PD software − A couple of new sources of Archimedes PD software have
come to our notice. The first is Sandie the Walrus, alias Alexander Goh,
who has just published his first PD disc. It contains FWPlus file
converter, RISCOS application maker, Babyblues, Battleships, ChangeFSI
(from Acorn), scientific calculator, Projector (from Ace), horizontal
text scroller, Settype, Solitaire, StickyBD, Soundtracker and Wanda.
This first disc is available now from Sandie the Walrus, 12 Mornington
Road, Radlett, Herts, WD7 7BL.
3.6
Also, Peter Sykes has set up a huge catalogue of PD software: 38
straight Archimedes discs at £2.50 each plus 15 PC emulator PD discs at
£3 each. Send an S.A.E. for a list to: Peter Sykes, 96 Lanehouse Road,
Thornaby, Cleveland, TS17 8EA.
3.6
•   Pipedrivers from Ian Copestake Software enhance your ability to
control a printer from Pipedream and make scientific and foreign
language wordprocessing a possibility. They provide symbol sets and
different typefaces for a range of printers. Contact Ian for further
details.
3.6
•   TEX for the Archimedes − Donald E Knuth’s text formatting program TEX
is now available on the Archimedes, including the A3000. It allows
complex mathematical and scientific texts to be tpeset and printed on a
range of printers. TEX is available from TooLs GmbH for £99 (£69 for
education).  The also have various typefaces available for different
printers. Send to TooLs GmbH for details.
3.6
•   Trivial Pursuit − Domark have now released their Trivial Pursuit game,
£29.95 (£27 through Archive). It’s the real thing with TP board and
animated question master. See review on page 41.
3.6
•   Watford ram prices down − The price of the ram upgrades for the A300
series have gone down to £285 and £499 (+VAT) for the 2M and 4M upgrades
respectively. (Note that the 2M board is not directly upgradable to 4M.)
The price of their A3000 boards has also fallen to £129 and £349 (+VAT)
for +1M and +3M respectively. (But see the special offer price on page
2.)
3.6
Important note: In the next few months, the price of ram is very likely
to be going back up again due, so I am lead to believe, to surcharges
levied by the E.E.C. on Japanese imports. If you are waiting for the
prices to go down further before you buy your upgrades, you may get
caught out. I cannot make any guarantees that they won’t drop further,
but I would very much doubt it. This applies to all memory upgrades.
3.6
•   Z88 A Dabhand Guide − £14.95 from Dabs Press (£14 through Archive).
See the review on page 60. (In case you are wondering why we deal with
Z88 when we say we are a ‘pure’ Archimedes magazine, it is because we
consider the Z88 to be a peripheral to the Archimedes!)
3.6
Products to come
3.6
•   DTP packages from Beebug and Clares. Beebug are saying that their
“Ovation” should be ready in two to three weeks (i.e. third week in
March at the latest) and Clares say their “Tempest” will happen at the
beginning of April.
3.6
•   Hypercards abound − another new “hypermedia” system has been announced
by Relational Engineering. InterLink at £99.95 inclusive allows you to
combine text and images in a card format, different cards being linked
by clicking on the relevant part of the visible card. For more details,
see the advert on page 5.
3.6
•   Tabs − a new 3D design tool with a difference, from TAP Consortium, is
due for launch in May. It provides a 2D edit window and a 3D view,
continuously updated. The new idea is that, having created your object,
the computer ‘unfolds’ it to provide you with a 2D sheet from which you
can make up a model of the object in cardboard or whatever. Like Arcol,
their 256 colour art package, Tabs will be fully networkable and will be
sold either on a oneoff basis or with a site licence.
3.6

•   1 Gigabyte Tapestreamer! − Oak Computers are now selling a 1Gbyte
(1000 Mbyte) Tapestreamer for just £3999 + VAT (£4030 inclusive from
Archive). For more details, see the SCSI Column on page 20.
3.7
•   A480’s are here! − By the time you read this it should be possible to
buy from Atomwide (£850 + VAT) or through Archive (approx £890 inclu
sive) a 4 to 8 Mbyte upgrade for A440’s and A440/1 (or upgraded 410’s
and 420’s). The reason that 300 series computers are excluded is that it
uses the coprocessor slot on the backplane to get at all the necessary
address lines. One board therefore plugs into the backplane and the
other connects to the existing MEMC socket. The board should be low
consumption because it uses eight 4Mbit chips to provide the extra 4
Mbytes instead of the thirtytwo 1Mbit chips making up the existing 4
Mbytes. The boards are “right way up”, unlike some other memory
upgrades, as this aids air flow and reduces the likelihood of
overheating.
3.7
•   Better Multisync at lower price − Eizo used to supply a lowradiation,
low static multisync monitor (the 9060SZ) at about £40 more than the
9060S. They have now discontinued the 9060S and brought the price of the
SZ down to the same price. Also, because of larger quantities that we
are now buying, we have been able to increase the discount. The 9060SZ
is now available at £530 (or £510 if you buy it at the same time as an
A410 or A3000).
3.7
•   Careware N¼6 contains Application maker, Scientific calculator,
StickyBD, Sparkplug, Desktop utilities, Wordpro <−> FWPlus converter,
RFSmod for CC ROM podule, 17 Maestro files (ancient & modern), Hangman
(very graphic!), Connect 5 (oneupmanship?) & Polymos (based on ancient
chinese game).
3.7
•   Shareware N¼7 updated − Thanks to Eric Ayers, Shareware 7 is now
updated to volume 3, issue 6. Also, the data is now compatible with
Arcscan II (£17 through Archive). We will put the data on this month’s
program disc and on the Archive bulletin board. We cannot update old
Shareware 7 discs free of charge because of the huge amount of admin
involved if several hundred readers sent their discs in for update.
Either send us a donation to charity when you send in your old S/W7 for
updating, or just order a new S/W7 at £3 − hardly an excessive charge if
you add up the cost of the disc plus postage and packing plus an admin
charge!
3.7
•   Shareware N¼18 − (which I forgot to mention last month) contains
various !Draw files containing 3 drawn fonts and a number of coloured
pictures, several demo programs, space battles, rocks (asteroids),
Maestro files (classical & modern) and Imperial College’s HOPE language
interpreter.
3.7
•   Shareware N¼23 − contains SoundTracker with tunes, Address book, File
loading utility, Text printer, SetType, Sparkplug, Using View on RISCOS,
Pelmanism, Connect 4, 3 demos: Baby blues, Scrolling text & Bouncing
Bars.
3.7
•   Cheaper ST506 drives for A410 − We are now stocking Oak Computers
ST506 drives for 400/1 series computers. They are slightly slower access
speeds (28 ms) than the Computerware ones (22 or 24 ms) but also
slightly cheaper: £210, £330 and £410 for 20M, 40M and 47M respectively
as compared to £230, £420 and £510.
3.7
•   Colour Digitiser from Wild Vision − a new colour digitiser including
“FastGrab” software is now available from Wild Vision at an introductory
price of £339 +VAT (or £360 inclusive through Archive). We have had a
look at it and it seems very impressive especially at the introductory
price. This price is to be reviewed at the end of April. More details
are available in the comment column on page 13.
3.7
•   More DTP Images − G.A.Herdman Educational Software are increasing
their range of discs of images for use in DTP to five at £8.99 each or
various discount prices for different numbers of discs.
3.7
•   GINO is here! − Fortran users will be pleased to hear that Intelligent
Interfaces have produced GINO (£750 + VAT) in the form of three modules:
GINO−F 3D which is a library of over 200 usercallable Fortran subrou
tines including basic line and arc drawing, characters and symbols,
colour, line styles, full 3D transformations, windowing, projections and
viewing; GINOGRAF which provides advanced facilities for producing
graphs, histograms and pie charts by simple automatic call instructions
or more complex and flexible routines; and GINOSURF which displays 3D
data as contour maps or surface views with hidden line removal.
3.7
•   Impression with no dongle? − In response to popular demand, Computer
Concepts have decided that it will release an educational network
version of Impression that does not require a dongle. This version will
be licenced to the particular school and will only run on their
networked machines. (This is separate from, but complementary to, the
existing offer of conventional ‘dongled’ Impressions where schools
buying 10 or more copies pay only £60 + VAT per copy.)
3.7
•   Last days of Doom − £19.95 (or £19 through Archive) from Topologika −
over 150k of text and 218 ‘rooms’. This is the third part of Peter
Killworth’s Doom adventure trilogy.
3.7
•   Maps of the World − £29.95 (inc VAT & carriage) (£28 through Archive)
from Micro Studio is a graphics library pack for the Archimedes
featuring over 150 maps of various countries of the world.
3.7
•   Personal Accounts − a new program from Apricote Studios at just £14.95
is aimed at individual or club accounts. It features multiple bank
accounts, direct debits and a range of editing and searching facilities.
The number of entries is limited only by memory capacity e.g. 1 Mbyte
A3000 would give you over 20,000 entries. (If it is as good as their
Account Book program or their Invoice Program then I suspect they have
underpriced it at £14.95. I hope to have a review copy soon.)
3.7
•   Prices down again! − In line with our general policy of keeping prices
down as much as possible, Norwich Computer Services have reduced the
prices of binders, for example, by a whole 50p!!! Seriously though, what
we have done is to try to make things simpler for ourselves (and for
you) by making all our prices multiples of £1. This means that most of
the items on the price list that were £n.50 are now £n.
3.7
•   Rotor − Getting in a Spin − a new game from a new supplier, Active
Sales, is available for £24.99 (or £23 through Archive). Active are not
new to the games scene having started on Amiga and ST but are now to
moving into the Archimedes area. Their first offering is a very
intricate looking space maze game, a little like Caverns from Minerva
Software.
3.7
•   VIDC enhancer from Atomwide (£30 +VAT or £35 through Archive) is a
hardware modification which increases the speed of the clock on the VIDC
so that you can increase the amount of information displayed on the
screen. Basically it will give you a range of extra modes in 2, 4 or 8
colours, up to the same resolution as the high res mono output on the
A400 series machines.
3.7
•   !Works #1 − Jim Markland has produced a prgrammers’s toolbox to enable
you to output DXF files compatible with !Draw. These files can be read
by humans(!), merged, editted etc and ported across to other computers.
£10 from Jim Markland.
3.7

•   A3000 Technical Manual − Acorn have produced a manual for the A3000
which includes full circuit diagrams including the User port/Midi I/O
podule and various other bits of hardware and interfacing information
(£29.95 from Acorn or £28 through Archive). It consists of an A4 ring
binder with 32 pages of text plus all the various physical and circuit
diagrams, some of which are in separate plastic folders.
3.8
•   A400 series prices reduced − Acorn have reduced the prices of the
A410, A420 and A440/1 as well as the A3000. Also, if you are thinking of
an upgraded 410, note that we now sell Oak Computers’ ST506 drives which
are cheaper than the Computerware equivalents. Acorn’s new prices and
the upgraded 410 equivalents (all including VAT) are as follows:
3.8
   Acorn   Our   Acorn   Our
3.8
   Old   New   equiv.   Educ.   equiv.
3.8
A3000   746   689   −   574   −
3.8
A410/1   1379   1264   −   1034   −
3.8
A420/1   1954   1724   1530   1466
1304
3.8
A440/1   2874   2414   1860   2053
1634
3.8
The Archive prices include £50 worth of free software of your choice
with an A3000 and £100 worth of free software with a 410.
3.8
(If you want an Acorn monitor at the same time, add £230 and if you want
an Eizo 9060SZ lowradiation, multisync monitor at the same time, add
£510.)
3.8
•   A410 ram upgrades − The threatened price rise has not come − 410 ram
is still only £80/Mbyte and if you buy it fitted into an A410, it is
only £70/Mbyte as reflected in the Archive prices for upgraded 410’s
quoted above.
3.8
(Note that an Archimedes can only have 1, 2 or 4 M of ram, not 3. So, if
you order “2M of ram for a 410”, we will presume you mean that want a
further 2M to add to your already upgraded 2M computer.)
3.8
•   Apocalypse − 3D space shootemup game from 4th Dimension which also
requires some brain power − £29.95 (or £28 through Archive).
3.8
•   Archive Monthly Program Discs − To reiterate for the benefit of new
members of Archive, these are available at £3 each. There is one each
month and, although there is no disc subscription as such, you can order
them in advance. So you could send in, say, £18 and ask for the next six
program discs starting from Volume 3, issue 8, or whatever. When we send
out the last disc for which you have prepaid, we put in a note to that
effect.
3.8
What is on the discs? Well, to be frank, the contents is very variable.
If there are any listings in the magazine, whether in main articles or
in Hints & Tips, they will be put on the disc. Then, if any of the
contributors send in sample files, we include those. For example, Gerald
Fitton has included a lot of examples that readers have sent in of
applications of Pipedream. Then, if there are other public domain
programs or demos we have lying around, we may stick a few of those on
it. So, sometimes it represents exceptional value at £3 but at others
less so. Unfortunately, we haven’t really got the time to ensure that
the standard is maintained at a constant level, so it’s up to you to
decide if it is worth paying £3 a month in advance or if it’s better to
wait and see what the magazine says is on the disc.
3.8
•   Brainsoft MultiI/O podules − Unfortunately there has been a problem
with the supply of the Brainsoft I/O podules. Technomatic who are now,
we understand, the sole agents for Brainsoft, do not seem able or
prepared to give us any discount. We will therefore be unable to supply
them.
3.8
•   Bug Hunter / Moon Dash − Two in one games from Minerva. Bug Hunter is
an animal going round various rooms trying to pick up objects and drop
them on top of a variety of insects. Moon Dash is a variation on space
invaders. £17.95 or £17 through Archive.
3.8
•   Careware N¼7 − contains all sorts of utilities such as Keith Sloan’s
new improved !PCDir 1.00, for transfering files between Archimedes and
MSDOS, !FontEd, !Chars, Sprite <−> GIF, Amiga/ST/MacPaint −> Sprite,
Draw −> Metafiles, 12 BBC fonts, Batch file printer driver, Printer
buffer, Z88 link, File utilities, Desktop BASIC module, Jot pad,
Application examiner, Lowmemory screen mode and various other bits and
pieces.
3.8
•   ChangeFSI − Acorn have changed the status of the graphics application,
ChangeFSI. After releasing it into the public domain including putting
it as a free download on SID, Acorn have now decided that it is no
longer public domain! I’m not sure whether they expect the hundreds of
people who already have the program to destroy their copy, but they say
it is now no longer to be distributed on our Shareware discs. We have
complied with their request and replaced it on Shareware 21 with
!Translator written by John Kortink which is, so I am told, as good as
ChangeFSI anyway. (John reckons it is better, but I suspect he may be
biassed.)
3.8
•   Colour Video Digitiser − MicroEye 1A is a new colour video digitiser
with multitasking software from Digithurst, a large company who produce
digitisers for a wide range of computers. There is a version for the
A400/1 series at £400 + VAT and one for the A3000 series at £495 + VAT.
Note though that the software requires 2M ram minimum, so it could not
be used on an unexpanded A310. Also available is Picture Book (£99 +VAT)
which is a database for pictures and text.
3.8
•   DIY hard discs for A410 − If you have an A410 and would like to put a
hard disc in it, you should realise that you already have the hard disc
controller hardware. Thus, all you need is a suitable ST506 hard drive,
some metalwork, screws and a pair of cables. (The HFORM program is on
the RISCOS Support Disc.) Drives can often be bought, from various
sources, more cheaply than through Archive, so if you want to go down
that route, we can sell a hard disc mounting kit for £19 which consists
the metalwork, screws and a pair of cables. You should note, of course,
that doing it this way is a little risky in that it may be difficult to
get support if it doesn’t work properly when you have set it up.
3.8
•   Geoscan (version 3) − A teaching aid for GCSE and A level. It consists
of (1) a booklet of worksheets and ideas for more worksheets and (2) a
wimp based database of 100 countries with 80 items of data on each.
Information is presented in charts and diagrams and can be subjected to
various statistical calculations. Geoscan is £45 from Passkey Marketing.
3.8
•   Integrex colour dump − D.W.Brown has produced a colour dump for the
Integrex colour printer which is claimed to have a better colour
gradation than the one supplied with ProArtisan. He will supply this for
£17 inc p&p. He also has an enhanced version which allows a colour to be
picked off the screen and printed out with varying shades. The required
shade can then be selected and your range of shades can be stored on
disc for repeated use. Using this facility, you can “fine tune” your
colour dump. This version is £25 inc p&p. (D.W.Brown, 2 Westend Villas,
Westend Parade, Gloucester, GL1 2RY. 0452−417697.)
3.8
•   JOYsticks!!! − If you pass 18 Mile End Road and see a flag flying over
the building it’s because, after months of frustration, we now have
joysticks in stock. We were getting a few joysticks at a time and
maintaining a back order list of, at times, up to 50 customer’s orders,
but Voltmace have finally provided us with a reasonable volume of their
Deltacat Mouse Eliminator joysticks.
3.8
According to my two games consultants, Tim and Jonathan Beverley,
several games, most notably Interdictor and Rotor, are much easier to
play when using a joystick. Voltmace joysticks are now available from
stock at £28.
3.8
•   Maddingly Hall − Adventure game from Minerva £14.95 (or £14 through
Archive). “Murder, mystery and intrigue in this text and graphics
adventure. Bertie Hall, a single young man with a reluctance to work, is
running short of money. In an attempt to solve his problems, he arranges
to visit rich Aunt AgathaÉ ”
3.8
•   Maths Pack 1 − HS Software have produced Maths Pack 1, ‘a totally new
concept in educational software’ for just £11.95. Designed for National
curriculum key stage 1, age 5 − 7 years.
3.8
•   Pineapple Digitiser now available for A3000. The popular Pineapple
colour digitiser can now be operated on the A3000 by buying their
convertor kit − basically a metal housing plus a 12V power supply − for
£65 + VAT. (The software supplied with the digitiser has also been
improved by adding powerful noise reduction and outline drawing
facilities.)
3.8
•   Price cuts − Various items on the Archive Price List have come down in
price as a result of getting better bulk discounts on behalf of
subscribers: Computerware’s hard disc podules for A310 (including
metalwork and cables) are now available for £220. Panasonic printers:
the 9pin, KXP1081’s are now down to £175 and the 24pin KXP1124’s are
down to £275. Morley’s A3000 memory boards are down in price − 1M is now
£110 and 3M is £330. If you have a 1M Morley board and want to upgrade
it to 3 M, just send it back to us with a cheque for £220. (Remember,
all the Archive prices include VAT and UK carriage.)
3.8
•   RISCOS upgrades − If you are still using the Arthur operating system
and want to upgrade to RISCOS, we still have a number of upgrades
available. The full price is £36 but to clear the stocks, we will sell
them at half price (£18).
3.8
•   Serial Link to BBC − Ivoryash Ltd have produced a true RISCOS serial
link to BBC Micro. It installs as a disc icon on the icon bar and
thereafter is accessible as any other filer under RISCOS. Good value at
only £9 for the software on its own. If you buy it with a serial lead,
it costs £20. (Both prices include VAT and p&p.)
3.8
•   Shareware 24 is now available. It contains two applications − bar
chart generator and a simple database, two games − ballroom blitz and
ladybird, some 16bit soundtracker music, various utilities including
desktop options for *Copy *Wipe and *Count, desktop options for Epson LX
printer, a desktop printer text spooler and screen modes 20 and 21 for
NEC 3D multisync monitor.
3.8
•   Shareware 25 is a Maths Disc compiled by our own Brian Cowan partly
from his own work and partly from contributions from readers.
3.8
It contains various programs: Numerical integration, Simpson’s rule,
Solution of polynomial equations, Cubic splines and interpolation,
Primes, Series, Puzzles, FFT: BASIC, FFT: Assembler, Function plotter,
Extended precision calculator, Recurring decimals, Superfast 3d surface
plotter with movable views, Frequency and time response of linear
circuits, Pole zero plots.
3.8
It also has a number of BASIC functions and procedures which you could
include in your own programs: Beta function, Binomial coefficients,
Elliptic integrals, Error function, Complementary error function,
Factorial, Gamma function, Logarithmic gamma function, Polynomial
interpolation, Simpson’s rule integration, Trapezoidal integration,
Write# in ASCII form, Hyperbolic functions and inverses, Complex
arithmetic and functions, Polar to rectangular conversion and Matrix
operations: transposition, identity matrix, determinant, solve linear
equations, inverse matrix, decomposition, displaying arrays and complex
matrix operations. For anyone needing mathematical applications, this is
a very good £3 worth! Thanks to Brian and all the contributors.
3.8
•   Splice − a film editor from Ace Computing (£30 or £25 through Archive)
allows you to examine and edit a film, frame by frame. If used in
conjunction with any art package, e.g. !Paint, it can allow you to make
simple cartoons by drawing each frame.
3.8
•   Talisman − A new game from Minerva. Looks like variations on a theme
of Thundermonk. £14.95 or £14 through Archive.
3.8
•   The Olympics − 4th Dimension’s new Olympics program is available now
at £19. It consists of two discs and includes Diving, Shooting, Javelin,
Swimming, Canoeing and Pole Vault!
3.8
•   Tween − from Ace Computing (£30 or £25 through Archive) produces films
from Draw files. It uses techniques similar to Mogul and generates a
film by calculating intermediate frames from a set of key positions.
3.8
•   Video Enhancer from Atomwide (£35 through Archive) is a hardware addon
which increases the speed of the VIDC clock so that higher resolution
modes can be displayed in colour. It can produce up to 1024 x 640 or
1280 x 480 in up to 16 colours. Since the sound is generated by the
VIDC, one side effect is that when the enhancer is used, the pitch of
all sound goes up a perfect fifth! This is no problem as you can switch
the higher speed clock on and off by using a toggle switch. It can
alternatively be software switchable but this involves removing the main
p.c.b. and soldering it, so it should only be undertaken by an Acorn
component level service centre. If you are prepared to have it hardware
switched, you can fit the board yourself with a Philips screwdriver and
a bit of common sense. The enhancer comes with a disc providing various
new modes you can use though, of course, the enhanced displays can only
be viewed on multisync monitors. (Atomwide tell us that these higher
resolution modes do not show up very well on the Taxan 770, but are
excellent on the Eizo 9060.)
3.8

•   CAST1 − Cash Book program from Soft Rock Software (£29.95 inc p&p) for
use by individuals or small companies. Up to 10 cash books, analysis in
26 ‘columns’, cheque payments, VAT analysis, analysis codes, etc.
3.9
•   DTP Images price change − The DTP images discs from G.A.Herdman are
now available for a standard price of £8.99 for one disc or £7.49 per
disc if more than one are ordered at the same time.
3.9
•   Easiword − “A true RISCOS” word processor from Minerva for £39.95 (£36
through Archive) with all the usual features (except a spelling checker)
plus the ability to select screen display between 30 and 132 characters
across the screen and large characters for use by the visually impaired.
Documents can be previewed on the screen. It should be available by the
time you read this − the press release of 17th May said it would be
available at the end of May.
3.9
•   FlexiFile − Minerva have now produced another multitasking database in
response to customer requests: aimed at small business, education and
home hobbyists. It will apparently be available “at the end of May” at
the “low price” (their words, not mine!) of £149.95 (£130 through
Archive).
3.9
•   ManatArms − A new animated arcade adventure game for 4th Dimension,
£19.95 (or £19 through Archive), written by the author of U.I.M.
3.9
•   Monitors galore − We now have an extended range of monitors for the
Archimedes. In the medium resolution range: in addition to the Acorn 14“
at £250 we have the Microvitec Cub 3000 14” (also £250) of similar
screen quality but in a rectangular metal case − much easier to stand
your mugs of coffee on (!) − and it comes complete with video and audio
leads so that the sound can be amplified by the monitor. (The minus
side, in my view, is its styling − it’s the same design of box as the
Cub monitors for the old BBC range but in a cream colour to tone in with
the Archimedes. So the dark surround of the glass tube, which is covered
by the moulding in the Phillips monitors, stands out and changes the
whole look of the thing. Also minus is the fact that the metal case
tends to resonate if the volume is turned up. Well, it does on the one
we tried. Also, the audio plugs, as wired by Microvitec, caused
distortion. You need to modify them by adding two 1k resistors to join
the stereo channels into the mono input. We will modify the leads for
you at no extra cost.)
3.9
Also medium resolution is the Phillips CM8833 (£280) which is physically
similar to the Acorn monitor but it comes with a separate composite
video input − useful for direct video work − and stereo speakers.
3.9
For higher resolution work, we have two new multisyncs on our list, the
Oak 20“ colour monitor (£1550) which makes such a difference to the
effective use of the computer − you can spread your applications windows
around the screen and work on them much more easily.
3.9
To make use of the hires mono output of the 440 or 400/1 series
computers, we have the Eizo 21“ mono − paper white, flat screen at
£1050.
3.9
•   Shareware 26 − contains: Desktop phone book, PCB designer, Player for
Maestro tunes (uses less memory and so plays the huge tune files on S/W
11 that hitherto have had to be played using the old ‘Arthur’ version of
Maestro), Voices and tunes for Maestro, Desktop file access editor,
Program to display Draw files, Text adventure game.
3.9
•   Stop Press − A Viewdata editor is now available for the Archimedes.
£30 + VAT from the Advisory Unit in Hatfield.
3.9
•   Teletext Adaptor − Ground Control are offering a Telextext adaptor for
the Archimedes for £60 inc VAT. (See Richard House’s article in Archive
3.7 p 43.) The hardware bears a striking similarity to the UTA1 as
supplied by SCML (Solidisk) but the software has been completely
rewritten by a different programmer. It works under Arthur but on RISCOS
it is multitasking. If you already have a Solidisk BBC Teletext adaptor,
Ground Control will sell you the new software plus an Archimedes lead
for £25 inc VAT. (If anyone buys the new software, do let us know how
good it is. Ed.)
3.9
•   Teletext Server for Econet − XOB have developed RISCOS multitasking
software to work with the Morley Teletext Adaptor to allow BBC’s,
Archimedes and A3000’s on a network to download Teletext pages from the
one adaptor. The software alone costs £87 +VAT or with the adaptor for
£205.
3.9
•   The Art Machine is the name of a “major art exhibition/workshop at the
McLellan Galleries, Glasgow from 2nd June to 26th August. Topologika
will be selling the “Art Machine” Software pack at the exhibition for
£19.95 (or £29.95 after the close of the exhibition). The pack consists
of five concept keyboard driven programs on maths and art: Fractal
Trees, Snowflakes, Cyclic Story, Patterned Tiles, Moving Squares.
3.9
•   Z88 Link − Dudley Education Computer Centre have produced a Z88 link
that does not require a chip at the Z88 end (and presumably doesn’t
require you to have PipeDream to provide you with the Z88 filing system
module at the Archimedes end). The software on its own is £18 and
combined with a lead, £26. The lead on its own is £10. They do a network
licence for £54. (All prices are exclusive of VAT and carriage.)
3.9

•   1M / 4M upgrades for A3000 − Atomwide are getting into the A3000
memory upgrade market. They are doing a bare p.c.b. (costing £35 through
Archive) which has eight sockets into which you plug the memory chips.
If you want a 1M upgrade, you use a standard 410/1 memory upgrade (£70
through Archive). The Archive price for a populated 1M board is £100. If
you want to make a 4M upgrade, you use the larger 4M by 1 bit chips
(HM514400ZP−8) instead of the 1M bit chips. At the moment, these are
about £350 for a set of eight but the price is dropping. So, the current
Archive prices are £100 for the 1M upgrade and £375 for the upgrade to
4M. (The prices of the Morley upgrades are currently £105 and £285 but
note that the Atomwide boards are 4 layer boards and only have 8 chips
compared to the Morley’s 24 chips. This reduces the current consumption
and comes closer to Acorn’s tight specifications for memory upgrades.)
If you buy the 1M Atomwide board from us and then wish to upgrade,
simply return the board and we will exchange the chips at the current
rate. Remembering that the prices of both sets of chips are still
falling, it would be worth contacting us before either ordering a 4M
board or sending a 1M board for upgrading.
3.10
•   A3000 ram prices down again − The Morley A3000 ram boards are now down
to £105 and £285 for the 1M and 3M boards respectively.
3.10
•   A3000 SCSI drives − Due to overstocking, we have a few 20M and 80M Oak
A3000 SCSI drives with podule at very special prices of £520 and £920
respectively. The normal Archive prices are £560 and £970, and the Oak
prices are £615 and £1100. (Please ring before ordering to check
availability.)
3.10
•   A310 upgrades from Computerware are down in price a little: £370 and
£575 through Archive for the 2M and 4M respectively. Those prices
include fitting by Computerware themselves; they include collection and
return delivery by overnight carrier and a free MEMC1a upgrade (normal
price £74).
3.10
•   A310 memory upgrades − D.I.Y. A310 memory upgrades from Protokote Ltd
are now available. The 1M boards are £345 +VAT and 3M boards are £510
+VAT. (£375 and £570 respectively through Archive.) They, too, will take
the larger OS ROMs (if they ever appear!) though it does require track
cutting and soldering to implement it which should only be done by an
Acorn Componentlevel Service Centre. Also, it looks as if it would not
be possible to fit an ARM3 upgrade with it, unlike the Computerware one.
You don’t actually need to fit a MEMC1a to get either upgrade working,
but it is our opinion that fitting either memory upgrade will shorten
the life of the old type MEMC’s.
3.10
•   Acom − A full multitasking comms package for only £29.95 (inc VAT)
from ECD in Delft, Holland. (£28 through Archive) It has various
terminal emulations: rawVDU, ANSI, Viewdata, VT52, VT100 and VT220 as
well as a Viewdata editor. (See Comment Column for more details.)
3.10
•   Another new monitor − We have now added the Eizo16“ colour multisync
(9070SZ) to our list of monitors (£880 including a free VIDC enhancer).
It is very similar to the 9060SZ (14” − £520), so is the extra 2“ worth
the extra cost? Well, having actually used it, I would say it certainly
is. In fact, if you were thinking of getting an Oak 20” monitor (£1550)
it would be well worth looking at the 9070 first since, at virtually
half the price, it offers comparable resolution and takes up somewhat
less desk space.
3.10
The 9070 is a standard IBM type monitor and can therefore also be used
on computers other than the Archimedes whereas the 9060 comes specially
adjusted to the Archimedes’ output. If you try the 9070 on a standard
Archimedes you will find that it does not work in anything other than
the multisync modes but with the VIDC enhancer added to your computer it
works in all the normal modes as well as the extra modes provided with
the enhancer. You will find too that you can leave the enhancer switched
on all the time as it even works in the lower modes with the higher VIDC
clock speed. Mind you, you will have to switch the enhancer off for
applications where the pitch of the sound is important since the
enhancer raises the pitch somewhat. I am going to be using the 9070 for
DTP work on the magazine in future, I think, rather than splashing out
on an Oak 20“.
3.10
•   ArVis video products − Video Electronics Ltd have a range of video
products for the Archimedes: ArVis video controller & genlock podule
(£279 for PAL or £295 if SVHS is also required), Videographics expansion
card (£877) for colour digitisation and framestore, ArVis PAL encoder
(£139). Send to them for technical information or send them £5 for a
demo disc. (All prices are exc VAT.)
3.10
•   Cheaper Joysticks − Bulk buying of the Voltmace joysticks has enabled
us to reduce the price from £28 to £25.
3.10
•   Computerware drives down in price − The ST506 drives produced by
Computerware are now almost as cheap as the (slower) Oak Computers’
drives. See the Price List for details.
3.10
•   Escape from Exeria is an escape from the caves game for just £2.95
from Soft Rock Software.
3.10
•   First Word Plus special deal − We have ended up with rather a lot of
copies of First Word Plus in stock so, “while stocks last”, as they say,
we are offering it at £75 (Acorn’s full price is £92).
3.10
•   Genesis special deal − We have ended up with rather a lot of copies of
Genesis in stock so, “while stocks last”, as they say, we are offering
it at £75 (Software Solutions’ full price is £100).
3.10
•   Herewith the Clues! − A Dennis Wheatley murder mystery from Actual
Screenshots. £23 through Archive.
3.10
•   Laser Direct is here! − Computer Concepts’ new laser printer mentioned
in last month’s Forthcoming Products is now available. Well, a small
number have been shipped out of which I have just one for sale at £1080.
We’ve tried it out and it does seem very much faster than the Apple
LaserWriter NTII (PostScript) laser we use normally. The quality is, as
far as we can see, identical (at about 1/3 of the price!). We hope to
have some detailed comments on it next month in the DTP Column.
3.10
•   MultiFS − allows you to access MSDOS, Atari DOS and BBC DFS disc from
the desktop. £36 from Arxe Systems Ltd. (See advert on page 15.)
3.10
•   Ovation − the professional DTP system from Beebug Ltd is now avail
able. For £99 +VAT (£105 through Archive) you get wordprocessor and DTP
rolled into one. It comes with four full outline fonts. We hope to get a
review copy soon, so keep your eyes on the DTP Column.
3.10
•   Panasonic SheetFeeders & Ribbons − We now sell cutsheet feeders for
KXP1124 printers at £125. Also, ribbons for Panasonic KXP1124 printers
(which had been proving difficult to get hold of) are now also available
at £11 each.
3.10
•   Pendown II − Schools’ wordprocessor from Longman Logotron is now
available in a prerelease version of the Primary version for £39 + VAT
(£42 through Archive) with a free upgrade to the full Primary version
when it is released “in September”. The secondary school version with
spelling checker and other extra features is due in January 1991.
3.10
•   Poster from 4mation is now available. It provides facilities for
taking !Draw files and combining them together with text to produce
“interesting” effects for displays, posters, etc. Images can be
stretched, squashed and twisted. Poster comes either without any fonts
for those who have already bought some outline fonts, or with a
selection of about 20 fonts. The prices are £64 and £89 respectively
plus VAT or £68 and £93 inclusive through Archive.
3.10
•   Presenter II / Graphbox / PipeDream 3 Hotlink. There are now upgrades
available for Presenter II and Graphbox which allow them to be dynami
cally linked to PipeDream 3. The idea is that, as you change the data in
the Pipedream spreadsheet, the graph of the data is replotted automati
cally without further intervention from the user. Contact Lingenuity or
Minerva for more details. (See also PipeLine Column on page 31 for
details of the PipeDream upgarde necessary to run it.)
3.10
•   Shareware Outline Fonts − Shareware discs 27, 28 and 29 are now
available each with a batch of outline fonts. Each disc also has !FontEd
and !Chars on it. Shareware 27 has 6 headline fonts, 8 script fonts, 12
serif fonts and 4 symbol fonts. (30 in total) Shareware 28 has 38
sansserif fonts and Shareware 29 has 30 serif fonts. These fonts are not
hinted and so will not be quite as effective at very small sizes on a
dotmatrix printer though at larger sizes they are indistinguishable from
more expensive commercially available fonts. Note that, to use them, you
need Acorn’s font manager which is available with Acorn DTP, Impression
or Acorn’s Font Starter packs.
3.10
•   Slideshow − £14.95 inclusive from 628 Software turns your computer
into an electronic projector by allowing you to display consecutively a
number of mode 12 or mode 15 full screen sprites with a range of
different transitions.
3.10
•   Stig of the Dump and The Worst Witch have now been upgraded to
Archimedes versions. £19 and £22.50 +VAT respectively from Sherston
Software. (£21.50 and £25 after 31/7/90) Both relate to English AT1 & 2
but Stig of the Dump is for 913 year olds and The Worst Witch for 710’s.
3.10
•   !Store from LCI Software (£4.99 + 75p p&p) is a utility which stores
certain system variables which enable the computer to know how to run
various files which you may have on your (hard) discs. It stores the RMA
sprites which are used to give icons for the various filetypes from
different applications which you may have.
3.10
•   Superior Golf is well named! For £19.95 (£18 through Archive) you get
six courses (3 at 18 holes plus 3 at 9 holes) plus a driving practice
range and a course and hole editor. It has a lot more features than
Holed Out including onscreen map and range indication as well as club
selection with distances quoted (all of which are on paper with Holed
Out). The driving is done with a power meter similar to Holed Out but
then you have to catch it on the swing meter to avoid hooking or slicing
the ball. The other immediately obvious difference is that putting is
done with the same 3D view as driving whereas Holed out gives a bird’s
eye view of the green.
3.10
•   Watford ARM3’s available − We are now stocking the 30MHz Watford ARM3
upgrades. Although the supply is intermittent, we do have a couple in
stock at the moment. For comparison with the Aleph equivalent, see the
Comment Column on page 11. Also available are ARM3 upgrades from SPEM in
Italy. More details later.
3.10

•   42M removable hard drives − Oak Computers are now selling a 42M
removable SCSI drive for £1185 + VAT (£1190 inc VAT through Archive)
including a SCSI podule. Remove the data cartridge for security reasons
or for portability from machine to machine or for durability in transit.
Extra 42M cartridges cost £99 + VAT (£105 through Archive). These are
true hard drives, not the slow “Bernoulli” type. More details in the
SCSI Column on page 43.
3.11
•   512M SCSI drive − Oak Computers are now selling a 512M external SCSI
drive for £4085 + VAT (£3990 inc VAT through Archive) including a
podule. This is actually a 640M drive but Acorn’s software can only
access 512M per logical drive − but see SCSI Column on page 43.
3.11
•   A3000 memory prices down again. Morley boards are down to £100 and
£265 for the 1M and 3M respectively and Atomwide are down to £90 and
£365. The Atomwide 3M board has not gone down in price as much as we had
hoped, as the price of the 4M bit chips is still staying fairly high at
the moment.
3.11
•   A3000 memory boards − Computerware have now entered the A3000 memory
board market with one which uses the same (excellent) philosophy as
Atomwide. The idea is that it has 8 chips only. If you want a 1M
upgrade, you put eight 1M bit chips in (same chips as A410/1 memory
upgrade at £60/Mbyte) but if you want a total of 4Mbytes in your
machine, you use eight 4M bit chips. (Sadly, it does not give you a
total of 5Mbytes because the internal 1Mbyte is disabled − the existing
MEMC can only address 4Mbytes of ram.) The current Archive prices are
£35 for the unpopulated board, £90 if it is populated with 1Mbyte and
£365 with 4M.
3.11
•   A310 memory upgrade prices are not falling at the moment except that
we have some Watford boards we are selling off: 1M at £290 and 3M at
£490. Ring if you want either of them.
3.11
•   A410 memory prices down again − A410 − We have now got the price of
the memory upgrade ram for A410’s down to £60 per Mbyte.
3.11
•   Alien Invasion − Alien Images, Dabs Press’ games software arm has
produced an Archimedes version of the classic space invaders game. The
game play is identical to the original black & white game that I used to
play on my 2k Acorn Atom but there are 1,000+ levels, a sprite editor,
speed control, etc. £14.95 from Dabs or £14 through Archive.
3.11
•   ArcComm is back − After several months of being unobtainable, ArcComm
communications package is back. It has some new features and a new price
of £29 + VAT (£31 through Archive). Tim Saxton is having a look at it
and I hope to have his comments in next month’s magazine.
3.11
•   ArcLaser − A direct rival to Computer Concepts’ Laser Direct is now
available at £899 (+VAT + P&P) compared with CC’s £999 +VAT. It uses the
same Qume laser engine, so the difference is in the podule hardware and
the driving software. We hope to do a direct comparison soon. The price
was £799 but that was only an introductory price so when you add
carriage (£12.15 + VAT) you get a total of £1047.82 which is getting
pretty close to the allinclusive Archive price of £1080 for Laser
Direct. Unfortunately, Calligraph will not give sufficient dealer
discount (unless I buy 10 at a time!) to offer a discount through the
magazine so you will have to order direct from Calligraph.
3.11
•   CadMust − Complete design system for digital and analog circuits.
CadMust Schematic provides schematic diagram drawing and CadMust PCB
gives a PCB layout facility. Both are available from USARC in Amsterdam.
3.11
•   ChangeFSI − A new RISCOS version is available from Wild Vision for £22
+ VAT. Their press release says that Acorn “has decided against placing
this program in the public domain and it is being distributed under
licence from Acorn.”
3.11
•   Deeva from Calderglen Computers Ltd is a sideways scrolling
‘shootemup’ program for £19.95 inc VAT.
3.11
•   EPROM Programmer − Racing Car Computers have produced an EPROM
programmer for the Archimedes including multitasking interface software.
It costs £149.95 inc VAT, handles standard CMOS & NMOS ROMs from 2716 to
27512 and is available in two forms: an external box with its own p.s.u.
that communicates at 19,200 baud via the serial port and a parallel
version at the same price which takes the form of a podule with a ZIF
socket on the end of a ribbon cable. They are also doing adaptor boards
that will allow it to program microcontrollers.
3.11
•   Fan speed controller − Ray Maidstone, who has been investigating the
idea of slowing down the fans on Archimedes computers to reduce the
noise to an acceptable level, has come up with a circuit board which
does just that. It fixes onto the fan powersupply connector and sits at
such an angle that it also acts as an airflow deflector to ensure that
the air which is drawn in actually goes to the parts of the board that
need cooling. He has used temperature probes to research all this, so it
isn’t just a madcap scheme. He will be selling them by the time you read
this. For more details, contact Ray Maidstone, 421 Sprowston Road,
Norwich NR3 4EH.
3.11
•   Hostages from Superior Software, £19.95 (£18 through Archive) is an
action graphics adventure aboutÉ hostages.
3.11
•   Inertia − A new game from 4th Dimension £19.95 (or £18 through
Archive). Explore two huge, colourful landscapes in your highly
sensitive craft negotiating ramps, jumps and various hazards. Includes
two soundtracks.
3.11
•   Interactive Video − British Nuclear Forum have produced three
interactive video discs for use with the Archimedes. One of them has won
a ‘Nebbie’ award. (It’s an award from an international interactive video
disc organisation in Lincoln, Nebraska.) The idea is that you control
the video by clicking on the screen with a mouse and the Archimedes
controls the video disc. I played with an Apple Mac version of this sort
of thing at the Science Museum in Amsterdam when I was there on my hols.
It was great fun and has a lot of educational potential but until it
gets going there is no incentive for producers to do the videos and
until there are some videos there’s no market for the video controllers!
3.11
•   Jiglet from 4mation is a junior version of Jigsaw at only £29+VAT (£30
through Archive). Aimed at younger Archimedians, it gives a choice of 16
pictures made up into 4, 6, 9 or 12 piece jigsaws.
3.11
•   Memory Magic is a game from Cambridge International Software based on
an Indian game where you have to remember the contents of a dish having
seen it for a certain length of time. (Kim’s game, we used to call it.)
The price is £15.95 (£15 through Archive) and it is due for release at
the All Formats Fair on August 4th.
3.11
•   MicciMouse is a mouseandicon driver front end for the Pineapple
Digitiser, providing facilities for monitoring, capturing, manipulating
and arranging images. The basic version is available for £4 from
Chessfield Software. An enhanced version with much more comprehensive
facilities is available for £21, also from Chessfield.
3.11
•   MicroDrive − a golf simulator (yes, another one!) from Cambridge
International Software. Full 3D view, no power meter but a full use of
mouse keys to control the swing. The price is £19.95 (£18 through
Archive) and it is due for release at the All Formats Fair on August
4th.
3.11
•   NStore − National Curriculum recordkeeping and reporting for primary
schools from HS Software (£24.95) stores records on all the Statements
of Attainment from levels 1 to 6. Provides various facilities for
graphs, level summaries, ranking, etc.
3.11
•   Ovation demo disc − for £5 from Beebug Ltd, you can get a demo disc of
their new DTP package, Ovation. It’s probably worth having anyway, even
if you don’t want to buy Ovation because on it are Acorn’s Outline Font
Manager and a couple of Beebug fonts. The cheapest way to get the font
manager otherwise is to buy Acorn’s Font Starter pack at £47! The fonts
and the manager can then be used with !Draw (free) and FontFX (£10) to
very good effect for ultracheap semiDTP.
3.11
•   Shareware 31 − now available containing an editor for use with C,
graph plotter, desktop magnifier, quacking good demo, funny mouse
pointer, ‘Secret Garden’ adventure, Taipei Chinese game, BASIC program
compressor, DFS reader, complete DOS filing system, BASIC access from
desktop, computer shutdown from desktop.
3.11
•   Shareware 32 − now available containing a whole load of lineart from
various sources plus various utilities: sprite to GIF, sprite to TIFF,
!Translator, Teletext to sprite, sprite mode converter, util to display
info on screen modes, Impression key shortcuts, convert spooled text for
Acorn DTP, Textonly printer driver, keystrip for !Draw, palettes to
improve LC10 and Integrex colour output quality.
3.11
•   Snippet from 4mation is a screens workshop for £29+VAT (£30 through
Archive). It provides loading, saving, printing, carouselling, etc of
screens. It can add borders, change colours and do special effects.
3.11
•   WorraCad, Oak Computers’ precision CAD system, is here at last − well,
it will be by the time you read this. Oak have gone through several
rewrites of this software in order to really get it right as far as
importing and exporting via multitasking are concerned. It will work
properly with Draw, Paint, Impression, Euclid, Genesis, PipeDream, etc.
It is objectoriented and uses floating point arithmetic to 18 signifi
cant figures. It has tools for generating geometric constructions such
as tangents and normals, and other facilities including hatching,
dimensioning, scaling, mirroring and rotating. Even with all these
features, it will run on an unexpanded A3000. From what I saw of it at
the Econet Conference, it is a very impressive piece of software and, in
my view, grossly underpriced at £75 + VAT (£80 through Archive). Mind
you, they say that this is an “introductory price” although they give no
indication of when it will be going up in price. The only bit of bad
news, some would say, is that it uses a dongle (identical to the
Impression dongle). If you have already got Impression, you can either
put the two dongles together or send them back and get a single dongle
that will work with both pieces of software.
3.11
•   XRun is a yet another vertically scrolling shootemup program from XFM
Software (£9.95). It is described as having “20kHz sampled sounds,
excellent graphics 18 levels, multiple powerups etc.” Having tried out a
review copy, it is very similar to YAIG on Shareware 16. XFM are
offering a ‘special price’ to Archive readers of £7.95 − just quote your
subscription number.
3.11

•   A3000 memory prices down again − Atomwide’s 1 to 4M A3000 upgrade is
now down to £355. We now also have Computerware memory boards available
at the same price as the Atomwide ones: £90 and £355. These are the same
format with just 8 chips, as Acorn prefer, providing either 1M or 4M by
using different chips. (With the 4M chips, you don’t end up with 5M,
unfortunately, as one of the four megabytes just duplicates the internal
ram.)
3.12
•   A3000 memory prices down again (part 2) − The Morley 1 to 2 M boards
are now down to £90 and the  1 to 4M upgrade boards are on special
offer, while stocks last, at £240. To upgrade from a Morley 1M board to
a 3M, it is still just the difference in price: £240 − £90 = £150. Send
in your old 1M board with a cheque for £150 and we will upgrade it for
you.)
3.12
•   A3000 VIDC enhancers − Atomwide have now redesigned the VIDC enhancer
so that it will fit into the A3000 as well as A300/400 series machines.
If you have a multisync monitor, it is well worth thinking of getting a
VIDC enhancer at £35.
3.12
•   A310 memory upgrade price drop − Computerware’s memory upgrades have
dropped in price. The 1 to 2M upgrade is now £360 and the 1 to 4M
upgrade is £540. Despite what we put in last month’s issue, these
upgrades will continue to be available from us either as Computerware
upgrades or from another company, as yet undecided. The new company will
take over all the guarantee commitments of Computerware and, in any
case, we at N.C.S. will give a personal guarantee to cover the full 12
months.
3.12
•   ARM3 price drop − Aleph One have dropped the price of their 30 MHz
ARM3 upgrade to £495 +VAT. We can now sell them for £520 inc VAT
(compared to the Watford ARM3s at £460).
3.12
•   CASA − Computer Aided Structural Analysis of 2D frames is available
from Vision Six. The entry level version at only £150 +VAT copes with up
to 32 members and 32 nodes and will run on a 1M machine. The full
version is £600, needs somewhat more memory, and has a capacity only
limited by the amount of memory (which could be up to 8M, don’t forget,
with Atomwide’s 4 to 8M upgrade).
3.12
•   DataSweet − a suite of desktop applications written especially to
develop children’s data handling skills. Each application may be used to
explore data handling techniques from basic graph drawing to full
database searches and spreadsheet calculations. The whole ‘DataSweet’
has been written with the National Curriculum guidelines on data
handling in mind. For further information, contact Hampshire Microtech
nology Centre on 0705−378266.
3.12
•   Desktop Office − is a very impressive looking package from Minerva
which combines, in the multitasking environment, database, wordproces
sor, spreadsheet, graphs & charts and communications packages. This
looks to be excellent value at only £129.95 inc VAT (£120) through
Archive.
3.12
•   Minerva price reduction − Not surprisingly, with the launch of Desktop
Office, Minerva are reducing the prices of GammaPlot & SigmaSheet to
£49.95 (£46 through Archive).
3.12
•   Memory chips for Willi Langhans’ upgrade − Those who sent an S.A.E.
for the plans of Willi Langhans’ D.I.Y. memory upgrade may wish to know
that we can supply the memory chips at £70 per Mbyte (8 chips).
3.12
•   Monitor leads − We now sell extralong (1.2 m) monitor cables (£15) for
use with Acorn or Philips monitors. They also have a connection for
sound so that you can amplify the Archimedes’ sound and have manual
control over the volume.
3.12
•   Nevryon − £19.95 from the 4th Dimension (£18 through Archive) is a
fast action sideways scrolling shoot ’em up game. Two discs, 256 colour
graphics, 4 channel stereo, 6 pieces of stereo music, 6 levels of “true
parallax scrolling” and an “amazing array of weaponry for maximum
destruction”!
3.12
•   Personal Accounts Special Edition − Apricote Studios have done a new
multitasking version of their Personal Accounts especially for the A3000
and Archimedes. New features include: Automatic standing orders and
forecast ahead, budgeting, 10 bank/credit accounts online at the same
time, calculator, usable for clubs or nonVAT businesses. The new price
is £24.95 or £23 through Archive. If you bought the earlier version, you
can upgrade for the difference in price and your old files are com
pletely compatible. Return your old disc to Apricote (not to Archive)
with a credit card number or cheque for £10.
3.12
•   Redshift − an impressive fastscrolling (vertical) arcade game from
Minerva (£17.95 or £17 through Archive).
3.12
•   Removable hard drives − The Electric Scribe Co. Ltd are selling a
removable hard drive for the Archimedes. It’s basically the same
mechanism as the Oak drive but only costs £749 +VAT though this does not
include a SCSI podule. See the SCSI Column on page 12 and the advert on
page 13 for more details.
3.12
•   Shareware 30 − Although we mentioned Sharewares 31 and 32 last month,
we seem to have omitted to mention Shareware 30 which contains various
soundtracker modules plus a soundtracker test program.
3.12
•   Careware 8 also got missed out of the honourable mentions. It contains
a ‘Primary’ word processor, yet another 256 colour art package, desktop
‘Life’, graphics demos, mouse patience, bat’n’ball game with a differ
ence, ‘peggity’ game, various Maestro files, FWPlus file conversion,
autodisc formatter, disc label designer, line editor module, movable
icon bar, 01 to 071/081 conversion, RMA manager.
3.12
•   Tabs − the 3D model making software from TAP Consortium is now
available in its fullrelease version. This software allows you to create
models on screen and then get the computer to print out an exploded view
of the model which can be used to cut out and make a 3D model. (We have
a review version and need someone working in an educational CDT
environment to try it out. You would need to have access to a Plotmate
A3M or HGPL compatible plotter.)
3.12
•   WorraCAD − a mistake on the Price List last month gave the price as
£70 − it should have been £80, sorry! Oak’s own price is £75 +VAT =
£86.25. For more details, see the advert on page 22.
3.12