Archive Magazine 1995/ARCHIVE95.iso/text/products/volume_08/issue_04

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 21KB | 371 lines

Å  World War II (disc 1 and disc 2) (ILP and Academy Television) Ö Disc
1 (Global Conflict) gives an overview of causes and significant events
of the War using archive film footage from the National Archives of
America, an index, glossary and hypertext links. Disc 2 (Sources and
Analysis) contains source material resources, archive photos, newsreel
and film footage personal diaries, pamphlets and case studies. RRP ú130
+VAT each disc, Archive price ú147 each disc.ááA
8.4
Å  10/10 Driving Test ù Six games designed to make learning and revising
the essential facts of driving fun. You can choose which areas you wish
to work on, and progress at your own speed. You can also use the
questions from the games outside of the game environment if you just
want to test your knowledge. The price is ú25.95, from Ten out of Ten,
or ú24 from through Archive.
8.4
Å  Acorn Desktop C and Assembler Ö The copies of Acornæs C and Assembler
packages we had on special offer last month all went very quickly. Those
who were disappointed may be interested to know that Acorn have now
dropped the standard prices of these items. They are now: Desktop C
ú149.95 inc VAT (or ú138 through Archive) and Desktop Assembler ú99.95
inc VAT (or ú92 through Archive).
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(As a special offer up to 31st December only, those who tried to get the
really cheap offer copies can order them at ú120 and ú80 respectively.
Ed.)
8.4
Å  Acorn RiscáPC PC486 Cards (almost!) Ö The latest news on the PC card
is that the first 500 will be built as evaluation cards in Q1 1995. The
first cards will be shipped to press, key dealers, educationalists and
customers starting in January. (Does Anyone know what defines a Ékeyæ
customer?) Acorn has committed to produce 10,000 cards and anticipates
any order backlog will be fulfilled by the end of Q1 1995. The cards
will use the TI 486 SXL chip running at 33MHz. (Watch out for the flags
flying over 96a Vauxhall Street! Ed.)
8.4
Å APDL Clipart CD Number 1 Ö This contains nearly 500Mb of sprites,
Artworks files and drawfiles. Most is black and white clipart of
reasonable size to give clear printout for DTP purposes. These are
placed in directories divided by subject, and there are directories on
Animals, Cartoons, History, People, DTP (borders, corners, decorations,
etc), Places, Religion and Transport. There are also over 580 256-colour
sprites covering a variety of subjects. The CD also contains CCæs
Artworks Viewer and the Earthmap application. The price is ú28 inclusive
(no VAT) from APDL or ú28 including VAT from Archive.
8.4
Introductory special offer Ö ú25 from APDL or Archive on orders received
up to 31st December 1994.
8.4
Å  Archiboard IAP ù The Supreme Software Systemsæ BBS Software
Archiboard (which we use to run Archive BBS) now has Internet support.
The range of packages has been increased, starting from the entry level
version at ú50, giving full BBS functionality. A network version which,
in addition, allows access to the BBS from another machine over an AUN
network is ú89. These can be purchased with the Internet Access Package
(IAP) which includes a yearæs access to the Internet via Demon Internet
Ltd. The Entry level version is ú200, and the network version is ú240.
Postage is ú2 within the mainland UK, ú5 elsewhere. Full details and
site licence details are available from Supreme Software Systems. (VAT
not applicable.)
8.4
Å  Archive indexes? Ö Several readers have asked recently whether we
produce annual indexes to the Archive magazine. The answer is that we
used to do so but felt that, for the huge amount of work involved, they
were not really worthwhile, especially as there are electronic
alternatives.
8.4
I personally have to refer to old articles very frequently and find the
ArcScan database and the Archive words discs invaluable...
8.4
Å  ArcScan Data Ö For many, many years Eric Ayers has faithfully
generated the ArcScan data month by month and this is available on
Archive Utilities Disc N║ 3 for ú2. When there is space on the monthly
disc, we put on an update to this data. ArcScan itself costs ú14 through
Archive.
8.4
Å  Archive Words Discs Ö For those of you with 4Mb+ machines, the Words
Discs form an alternative and very effective way of searching for that
elusive reference that you are sure you have read somewhere in Archive.
Just load up the appropriate file into Edit and search for the relevant
word or words. Each disc is ú2 and contains the words from four
magazines. (There is so much information that you canæt fit five
magazines on an 800Kb disc even though it is just the text and no
diagrams!) If you have a machine with a fair amount of memory, you can
join these text files together and search two or three volumes at a time
Ö which is very helpful, I find. (What would make my life complete would
be if someone would write a search routine that had two words as input
and looked for occurrences of one word appearing within x-number of
bytes of an occurrence of the other word. Any offers, anyone?)
8.4
Å  Archive Utility Disc 8 ù This is the RISC OS 3.1 Upgrade Disc. There
are new versions of !Alarm (2.61), !Calc (0.53), !ChangeFSI (0.95),
!Chars (1.17), !PrintEdit (0.38), !T1ToFont (1.26) and a couple of
utilities to select and deselect the 3D desktop. All applications now
check the 3D bit in CMOS ram and load the 3D templates if appropriate.
Previously, this was done via !NewLook. Unfortunately, they cannot be
installed into the Apps icon on the iconbar, but will need to be loaded
from disc. This disc is available from Archive for ú2.
8.4
Å  Bitfolio Clipart Ö LOOKsystems have two more packs each with 100
drawfile cartoons. The first öMore Cartoonsò is a general selection and
the second öXmas Collectionò is more specifically festive Ö holly,
reindeers, Santas, penguins, turkeys, TV, presents, booze, etc. These
cost ú20 each from LOOKsystems or ú20 through Archive.
8.4
(The Xmas Collection also contains a strange cartoon of a baby
surrounded by some men in fancy dress Ö has anyone got any idea what
that has got to do with Xmas? Ed.)
8.4
Å  Chess II Ö David Pillingæs popular Chess program has been updated
with a choice of 2D or 3D boards, save game as sprite, drawfile or text,
rotate board, show hint, easy play-level setting, replay last move, show
history in continuously updated window, display possible moves for
pieces, improved game play, RISCáOS printer driver support. Chess II is
ú16 either from David Pilling or through Archive. Upgrade from Chess I
by sending old disc plus ú10 to DP (not to NCS).
8.4
Å  Clan Acorn æ94 Ö This is a club designed to bring the people who use
Acorn Computers together with those designing and making them. All
members will receive a membership card with a unique number offering
Clan members exclusive offers and information from Acorn.
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The first offer will be the chance to take out an Acorn Visa credit
card. Then members will have the opportunity to obtain Acornæs C++ and
the new developer toolkit at a special price. Third parties are also
working with Acorn to provide multiprocessor capabilities for RiscáPC
computers and connectivity kits to allow users to access the Internet.
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Members will also receive information about projects and technologies,
opportunities to acquire appropriate early releases and beta-releases,
discounts on current products and a chance for end users to give Acorn
input on new developments.
8.4
Life membership of the Clan is ú15 which includes a promotional pack of
Acorn merchandise. To join Clan Acorn, contact Acorn Direct (Vector
Services) on 01933-279300 and ask for an application form to be sent to
you.
8.4
Å  DrawWorks ù a suite of five programs to increase the power of Acornæs
standard Draw application. DrawExtra allows you to control the defaults
for Draw, increase the undo buffer size, and gives a new buttonbar with
features missing from the Draw toolbox, including Zoom, Save and Print.
DrawInfo gives details of the size, number of objects and so on of a
drawfile. DrawKern allows the kerning of font within drawfiles.
DrawMerge takes several objects and merges them to create a single path,
making interesting patterns, and some strange effects Ö some clipart is
included to demonstrate. DrawScrunch distorts draw files as if they had
been drawn on a öpiece of scrunched up paper.ò The price is ú15
inclusive from iSV Products.
8.4
Å  Eidoscope ù The Eidos home video editing system is now available. To
use it, you will need a Risc PC (minimum 4Mb) fitted with an Eagle M2
card. Features include easy to use control panel; real time edits, mixes
and wipes; Full video/audio synchronisation; Imports sprite animations;
single frame export; 12.5 frames per second @ 160╫120 pixels and 32,000
colours. Full screen playback is possible, and the files are fully
compatible with other Acorn packages. The package can be purchased for
ú169 +VAT from Computer Concepts or ú185 through Archive.
8.4
Å  EMR products Ö Anyone wishing to get hold of any of EMRæs music
products should contact Le Computer in Chelmsford who will be handling
them in future.
8.4
Å  Eureka 3 Ö Longman Logotron have released version three of their
spreadsheet package. Amongst the enhancements are: easy interchange with
Lotus and Excel, easy linking of spreadsheets with Impression, triple
toolbar, improved graphics support and background printing. Eureka 3
costs ú99 +VAT or ú110 through Archive. Site licences are available:
ú240 +VAT for primary and ú400 +VAT for secondary (ú265 and ú440 through
Archive). Upgrades are available through Longman Logotron: ú29 +VAT for
single user and ú99 +VAT for S/L.
8.4
Å  Fonts Ö A new Acorn font company has been formed by Adrian Look of
LOOKsystems and Dave McCartney of The Datafile. The first two offerings
from The Font Company Ltd, as it is called, were Letraset Digital
Typefaces (29 typefaces for ú35 inclusive), and URW Typeface Library (75
typefaces for ú75 inclusive). These are highly professional font
conversions from well-established font companies, Letraset and URW.
These font packs are available through Archive for ú34 and ú72 inclusive
of p&p.
8.4
The very latest release is a huge range of Monotype Classic Fonts giving
you access to hundreds of top quality fonts at Acorn-level pricing Ö
rather less than PC or Mac users would have to pay! There are eight
packs of fonts, each with between 50 and 60 faces and each costing ú60
inclusive from the Font Company or ú58 through Archive. If you would
like a full listing of these eight Font Packs, so that you can select
the fonts you would like, give the Font Company a ring.
8.4
Å  Heavy mouse balls ù Weighing in at four times the weight of the
standard mouse ball, these fit neatly into the Acorn mouse, giving it a
more positive response. They are available from Oak Consultants for ú3
including postage, packing and VAT.
8.4
(Message to Oak Consultants: Sorry but we have lost your address!
Anyway, that means you get two mentions in Archive because weæll have to
put it in again next month and put your address in the Factfile. Ed.)
8.4
Å  In Ancient Egypt Times ù This is a range of materials in printed and
disc form for the study of Ancient Egypt. You will need a copy of
KeyNote or Key Plus data handling packages to use the disc information.
Topics include Gods and Pyramids, the Nile and Farming, Everyday Life,
and Modern Discovery. Text can be converted to Hieroglyphics, and the
text and graphics in the package can be exported for use in childrenæs
own projects. The price is ú17 +ú2.50p&p +VAT from Anglia Television.
8.4
Å  iSV 100 outline fonts ù A new pack of 100 RISC OS 3 format fonts, in
36 separate families has been launched by iSV Products. Both book and
display fonts are included in the pack and all fonts include the full
latin 1 character set, scaffold lines and automatic kerning data. The
price is ú40 inclusive.
8.4
Å  iSV Font Designersæ Toolkit 2.5 ù This is made up of four
applications for designing fonts. Font Catalogue is used for creating
printed font catalogues, with on-screen WYSIWYG display of printed
results. FontKern allows you to edit the kerning information of RISC OS
3 fonts, and even convert RISC OS 2 fonts to RISC OS 3. FontTrix allows
the generation of font families from one master font. Oblique, Mirror
Semibold and many more weights can all be generated quickly, viewed, and
made available to other applications. Finally, iSVMetric allows editing
of a fontæs metric data, to tighten character widths, for example. The
pack price (including a free copy of FontED, Acornæs font editing
program) is ú30 inclusive.
8.4
Å  Ladakh ù A geography information pack containing parallel datafiles
for families and life in the United Kingdom and Ladakh (Northern India).
Records of 200 children are provided, half from a Tibetan village, and
half from three schools in the UK. Accommodation, travel, eating habits,
pets and many other fields can be compared, and a print pack helps
teachers with ideas and worksheets. The price is ú15 +ú2.50p&p +VAT from
Anglia Television, and you will need a copy of KeyNote or Key Plus data
handling packages.
8.4
Å  Laser printers Ö Computer Concepts are no longer able to supply any
direct drive laser printers because Canon have discontinued both the
LBP4 and the LBP8 and have not yet replaced either of them with anything
suitable. This leaves Acorn users with two alternatives...
8.4
Ö Calligraph direct drive lasers Ö If you want an A4 direct drive laser,
Calligraph do a 1200 dpi single bin Sharp printer at ú999 +VAT (ú1150
through Archive) and a dual bin version at ú1149 +VAT (ú1290 through
Archive). If you can afford to go to A3, they do a 1200 dpi Toshiba TQ-
1200 at ú4995 +VAT or ú5575 through Archive. These printers all do 8
pages/minute. Toner for the Sharp is ú120 through Archive (estimated
15,000 pages), the drum kits are ú135 through Archive (estimated 30,000
pages), and the toner and drum for the Toshiba are ú85 (5,000 pages) and
ú475 (20,000 pages) respectively through Archive.
8.4
Ö Standard laser printers Ö We have selected a couple of the best non-
direct-drive laser printers which can be driven from Acornæs own printer
drivers or CCæs Turbo Drivers. The Panasonic KXP4410 is a 5 ppm, 300
dpi, 0.5Mb laser of proven pedigree which costs ú570 (or ú620 with a
Turbo Driver) through Archive and the Epson EPL5600 is the latest 6 ppm,
600 dpi laser which has 2Mb RAM as standard and yet only costs ú820 (or
ú870 with a Turbo Driver) through Archive. In between these two is the
Epson EPL5200 which is a 6 ppm, 300 dpi laser with 0.5Mb RAM
(expandable) and costs ú650 (or ú700 with a Turbo Driver) through
Archive. All three of these laser printers come with a 12-month on-site
warranty.
8.4
Å  MacFS Light Ö Computer Concepts are now offering a floppy-only
version of MacFS at ú49 +VAT (ú55 through Archive). If you want to read
and write SCSI devices such as removable hard drives then you will need
the full version at ú108 through Archive. MacFS Light needs an Acorn
machine with high density floppy drive (i.e. A5000 or later) and RISCáOS
3.1 or later. (The price now compares favourably with AppleFS from
Oregan, which is also floppy-only, at ú58 through Archive.)
8.4
Å  PipeEd for PipeDream ù A new teaching pack designed to help teach
first time users of PipeDream. The pack includes two sets of A4 cards ù
teacher and student sets, written as a series of nine lessons, each
around ninety minutes, to introduce the ways in which PipeDream can be
used. The teaching notes are detailed, giving topics for discussion, and
describing the tasks to be completed. The Student pack briefly outlines
each of the tasks, and includes a disc containing all the tasks for the
lessons. It can also be used at home or in the office Ö it is not
limited to education. The packs are available for ú25, extra teacher
packs may be purchased at ú10, and student packs at ú15.
8.4
Å  Pocket Book II Programmeræs Guide Ö (No, donæt get too excited, itæs
not available yet Ö that was just to get you to read this paragraph!)
Until the proper PB II Programmeræs Guide is available, the best you can
do is to get a copy of the Psion 3a Programmeræs Guide which is
available by sending a cheque for ú6 (made out to Psion UK Ltd, I
presume) to Customer Services, Psion UK Ltd, 85 Frampton Street, NW8 8NQ
or ring them on 0171-262-5580.
8.4
Å  PrimeMover Ö Minervaæs new release is claimed to be öthe first real-
time animation program for the Acorn platformò. It allows you to create
animation from sprites and, once the animation is created, it can easily
be changed by simply clicking and dragging with the mouse. It allows you
to trim and/or mask your sprites and to reverse them horizontally or
vertically. PrimeMover costs ú69.95 inc VAT from Minerva or ú66
inclusive through Archive and will run in 1Mb but 2Mb is recommended.
8.4
Å  ProArtisan 24 Ö Clares have launched their 24-bit art package,
ProArtisan 24. It costs ú169.95 inc VAT (or ú155 through Archive) and
there is an upgrade through Clares of ú49.95 from PA2 or from öANY other
art packageò for ú85 inc VAT. Site licences are available at ú499 +VAT
for primary and ú699 +VAT for secondary.
8.4
Å  Risc Disc CD ù This is a new CD-ROM aimed at Risc PC owners. Contents
include utilities (programming, DTP, disc, desktop), Replay movies,
Photo CD images, JPEG images, Artworks files, drawfiles, PC animation
players (AVI, FLI and MPEG), MPEG movies, as well as demonstration
software from many Acorn software houses. The price is ú19.95 from
Uniqueway Ltd, or ú19 through Archive.
8.4
Å  Rosie & Jim Talking Activity Packs Ö For young infants who are fans
of TVæs Rosie & Jim programme, Sherston Software have produced the first
two of their talking activity packs: öDuck loses his Quackò and öJim
gets the Sneezesò. These allow early or non-readers to enjoy the company
of Jim & Rosie and all their friends. Click on the pictures and words
and hear the digitally-recorded voices of Rosie and Jim speak from the
computer. Each pack costs ú10 +VAT from Sherston or ú12 including p&p
through Archive.
8.4
Å  Scrabble for the Archimedes/Risc PC Ö My favourite game is here at
last! US Gold have finally released Scrabble for Acorn computers and,
not surprisingly, itæs excellent. You can play against each other or
against the computer Ö or get the computer to play against itself,
although itæs so fast you could do with an Éaction replayæ facility. You
can set the level of vocabulary and ingenuity that the computer uses
when it is playing against you, so you can use it to build up your own
level of skill. In the practice mode, every time you play, if it thinks
it could have done better, it suggest dozens of alternatives that you
could have played and shows you how many more points you could have got
(but doesnæt allow you to go back and have your go again. Drat! The
manual (which I have had to photo-enlarge from A5 to A4 because the type
is so small) lists all the permissible two letter words (105 in all) and
the gameplay uses them all to very high-scoring effect, sometimes. The
trouble is that when you then play örealò Scrabble with your friends and
relations at Christmas, you wonæt be too popular. You score 22 points
with öAYEò as in the illustration and they will challenge it. They wonæt
be too impressed when you say that öNAò is the Scottish way of saying
önoò and that öAYò means öalwaysò or, for that matter that öOOò is wool
(Scots), öDAò is a heavy Burmese knife and öAIò is a three-toed sloth!
They will probably refuse to play with you any more Ö still, at least
youæll be able to play against the computer!
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Scrabble costs ú27.99 + p&p from US Gold or ú27 through Archive.
8.4
Å  SCSI II interfaces Ö The Cumana SCSI II interfaces are now available
at ú199 +ú7.50 carriage +VAT from Cumana or ú235 inclusive through
Archive. A cable for connection to external drives is available through
Archive for ú27. This has the new SCSI II connector on one end and an
Amphenol (Centronics) on the other end. For connection to internal
drives, a standard IDC cable is all that is needed.
8.4
Å  Shoemaker-Levy CD-ROM ù This is the Network Cybernetics Corporationæs
CD-ROM title SL9: Impact æ94. It contains hundreds of images, movie
sequences and technical information related to the July 1994 collision
of the periodic comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, and the planet Jupiter. Stills
are stored as JPEG, GIF and TIFF, video sequences as MPEG and FLI/FLC.
The technical information is stored as ASCII or PostScript.
Unfortunately, the viewer applications are all for PCs or Macs, but with
ChangeFSI and Edit, the stills and texts are accessible on RISCáOS
machines, and there are PD MPEG and FLI/FLC players available. The price
is ú25 including postage from Lambda Publications.
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Å  TextEase ù This is a new presentation package for letters, posters,
notices and so on. Features include a button bar for the frequently used
functions, and dynamic text. The prices is ú25 from Ivoryash limited,
and a demo disc is available for ú2.
8.4
Å  UK Schools Internet Primer Ö Koeksuster Publications have produced a
book to provide information, mainly aimed at schools, on how to use
Internet and what facilities are available through Internet. This costs
ú9.95 + p&p from Koeksuster or ú9 inc p&p through Archive. For more
details, see the review on page 24.
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