/// The Emulation Rambler
    ---------------------
    By Jason Compton
    (jcompton@tcity.com)



How have they done it?

How have Dan Gookin and his contemporaries created a market for 
themselves?

Let me clarify what I'm rambling about.  Dan Gookin is the author of
the wildly selling books designed to promote pride in computer
illiteracy, namely the "<insert topic here> For Dummies" series.  It is
bad enough to look on the cover of a book as silly in concept as "Mac
For Dummies" and see that millions of these books have been sold to
people who truly believe that Mr. Gookin is the only one in the world
who can explain what pointing and clicking is, or that DIR /P is an
awfully nice way to manage their directory reading.  Now Microsoft has
joined the fray, releasing the "MS-DOS 6.2 Upgrade for Dummies",
complete with Gookin's book.  Wow.  For $77.95, you apparently will get
compression that actually WORKS, along with a big book telling ou how to
insert the disk in your A: drive and typing "install". Incredible,
especially when the normal 6.0-6.2 upgrade will sell for $9.95.

This all happens at the same time we in the Amiga community talk about
how intelligent we are for owning Amigas, and rip on the company that's
producing them.  Apparently, it's supposed to be the other way around.

Shall we revise the slogan to "Only Amiga makes it possible, you dense
headed moron!"?  Or, how about "DirOpus for Dummies", for those who
can't grip a directory manager?  "Workbench 2.1 For Dummies" if you just
haven't ever figured out how to use snapshot?

Enough of that.  The point is, people out in the Mac and IBM world
allow themselves to be insulted by these people, and at the same time
they feel okay about not having a clue what they're doing, since
Gookin'll fix it all.

On to the Amiga:  No progress has been made in obtaining an Emplant for
the magazine, but there is a considerable amount of talk about
BridgeBoard upgrades on CSAEmulations.  There are two interesting notes
to be made.

1. I was told that 286 bridgeboards could be upgraded in speed by
installing a 286/12 or 286/16 chip and a faster clock. According to a
poster on CSAE, the bridgeboards may havehad design flaws making this
less than 100% functional.

2. Cyrix has come out with a snap-on attachment aimed at surface-mount
386sx chips, those you'd find in a 386 bridgeboard, for example. The
$200 attachment apparently gives you the power of a 486sx. Considering
that the difference between the prices of 386 and 486 bridgeboards is
more than $200, this might be something to keep in mind for any IBM
emulation moves.  Apparently, this attachment is in Computer Shopper.
Any more info about how the thing actually WORKS would be appreciated.

Another rumor off of CSAE: Amax IV is in beta version. This takes me by
surprise since I'd never actually seen Amax III released.

That's it for this week, everybody.  May all of your emulators be 100%
compatible.  Bye for now.