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MegaDisc 07 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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Taxtime
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2000-04-10
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TAX TIME! / AWARDS
by Greg Ford
About now is the time that all happy Amiga Users should put away their
Compilers/Digitisers/Astronomy Programs/Games, and start serious work with
a Spreadsheet/Database. Why?...because its tax time guys!. End of financial
year. The sooner you get that tax return in, the sooner you get your cheque
back so that you can buy that Drive / Memory / Printer / #? you've
wanted for so long!.
With the close of the Financial (Business) year in mind, you may recall
that most of the mundane, everyday magazines (with some exceptions) choose
Christmas-time to give their annual awards for soft/hardware. But not in
MEGADISC. I have decided to make my own awards now. Just to give you some
further ideas of how to spend your tax cheque.
These awards are based on software and hardware that I have personally used
and liked, and need not have been released in the last 12 months.
These are my opinions only, you may disagree.......so here goes.
HARDWARE
Spirit 1.5 meg Internal Memory Card:
This product is a must for those memory hungry programs!. Completely
transparent to the user, and auto-configs under 1.2. The inbuilt clock
calendar is accurate (even if it drops a day at end of month occasionally),
and most programs, including copiers, use the fastmem. Having 2 megs of
memory on-line does wonders for the speed and general behaviour of the
machine. Its a little tedious to install, but the effort is well worth it.
Available for the A500 & A1000
Price: about $700.00 [Ed: maybe more at the moment, considering chip
prices]
NEC CP6 Colour Printer:
See Jim Bolf's review in MEGADISC 6. This would have to be one of the most
reasonably priced colour printers on the market. 24 pin, various inbuilt
fonts, and ease of use make this printer a must. Combined with the right
printer driver, (see PrtDrvGen 2.3 below) it produces excellent colour
pictures.
Price: about $1050.00 street price.
SOFTWARE
Absoft A/C Basic Compiler:
I use this product as an excuse to avoid writing a lot of programs in C,
(lazy, lazy!). It generates FAST code in stand-alone programs that do not
require a separate runtime library. It compiles quickly (especially to Ram:
or a hard disk), and is simple to use. Graphics seem to benefit the most
from the speed increase. Not copy protected.
Price: about $199.00
PrtDrvGen 2.3 Printer Driver Generator:
It may seem strange to give an award to a product as "esoteric" as this,
but if you've ever been frustrated by Commodore's standard printer drivers,
you'll understand that this is the answer to many peoples prayers. The
program is easy to use, and allows you complete control over all aspects
of printer control. Not copy protected.
Price: Available in the public domain (Amicus #22).
Quarterback 1.4:
A Hard Disk backup and restore program that is fast and reliable. Single or
twin floppies can be used to either backup or restore, cutting down on disk
change delays. You can exclude programs or whole subdirectories on backup.
The program multi-tasks, and your default settings can be saved to a script
file to configure the program.
Price: about $90.00 - Coast-to-Coast Software.
GAMES
Personally, I cant get too worked up over most of the games on the market,
I guess I prefer playing with hardware hacks, however....
Shanghai:
Something here to keep the higher sections of the brain active. Shanghai is
an excellent strategy game that I keep coming back to.
Test Drive:
For sheer fun, this game is hard to beat. It borders on being a simulation
rather than a game, and holds your interest for a long time.
SPECIAL AWARDS
The "Is the Mail in yet?" Award:
Goes to MEGADISC.
I look forward to my regular edition of MEGADISC...Don't You??? 'Nuff Said.
[ED: Honest, I didn't bribe him.]
The "Gee, wouldn't it be nice?" Award:
Wouldn't it be nice if Neriki brought out a Home market (read cheaper)
version of their Genlock, so that we all could play Video Production
Studio.
Come on guys, it doesn't have to be broadcast standard (so that the big
boys aren't tempted to use the cheaper version), and would really open up
the Desktop Video Market. The Amiga is perfect for this kind of product.
Sigh....perhaps someday.....
So, those are my Awards for the year, just to get you thinking about how to
spend what you cheated out of the Taxman.
I'll probably hear screams of anguish from everywhere that I didn't include
some of the more obvious programs like The Director etc, but I just calls
then as I sees them, and what I have nominated has helped me the most in
the past year or so. Besides, I get more enjoyment from writing programs
than using them. Yes...I guess insanity strikes early in my family.
For Desktop Video Users:
Speaking of the Neriki Genlock (above) prompts me to comment that I had the
opportunity to visit their manufacturing facility in Orange recently, and
saw a demo (and got to play with) an Amiga Genlock. Its sensational!. For
the uninitiated, let me explain that a Genlock allows you to overlay Amiga
graphics, (still or animated) over an external video signal. Imagine being
able to overlay Amiga generated scrolling titles on your home videos in
real time!. Combine pictures to video. Merge any Amiga generated graphic
over (into!) existing video sources. All with adjustable clip levels etc.
This seems to be an area that the Amiga will excel, now that the hardware
is available.
My contacts tell me that a Macintosh version is almost finished prototype
development, so I guess that our old adversaries will be given a chance to
play catch-ups!. The same source informs me that they have designed
interfaces for the Polaroid Palette for Amiga and Atari.
OS 1.3:
As of the writing of this article (late May) V1.3 of KS & WB has not been
released. A phone call to Commodore Sydney was met with promises of a 2nd
Quarter 1988 release date. Only time will tell. The interesting thing is
that Commodore promised a release of WB 1.3 , but has not decided on
whether to release KS 1.3.
It appears that KS 1.2 & 1.3 are similar, except that the 1.3 code contains
the autobooting procedures for hard disk. The drive needs to have special
configuration ROM's to be recognised by the Amiga, and it appears unlikely
that older third party drives will be supported unless the manufacturer
brings out an upgrade kit of some description.
[ED: See "MegaBites" for more information about OS 1.3.]
So You Think That Your Amiga's Good:
Yours Truly works for a large (unnamed) Govt Dept and gets paid to
administrate a W*NG VS65 Minicomputer. It's currently only got 5 users (with
another 16 going on in August), and is affectionately(?) called "Ole Chug
Chug". Sorry, W*NG, but it's SLOW. Admittedly, it's running some pretty heavy
databases (400,000+ records) and such, but I guess I expected better.
Remember, we're comparing a very expensive mini to a home micro, but for
pure user enjoyment, give me my A1000 anyday....I wonder if I'll still have
a job tomorrow ?.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ END OF TAXTIME ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^