Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_5

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 172.7 KB | 3,319 lines

•   A5000, the New Archimedes Machine − At the Acorn User Show, Acorn will
be launching, and actually selling, the new ARM3 based Archimedes
computer, the A5000. It is such an exciting product that we have
dedicated a complete supplement to explaining all about it.
5.1
The basic facts are:
5.1
•   25MHz ARM3 processor (giving 13 MIPs)
5.1
•   Fast (12 MHz) 2M memory expandable to 4M
5.1
•   Bundled with Acorn multisync monitor
5.1
•   1.6M floppy capable for reading (intelligently) all the Acorn formats
and also the 720k and 1.44M PC formats
5.1
•   40M internal IDE hard drive
5.1
•   RISC-OS 3 operating system
5.1
•   Unit starting price, including m/s monitor and hard drive £1499 +VAT
(£1761)
5.1
(No, that’s not a misprint − it really is less than £1800!) This looks
like a real winner especially when you take that price into account.
Well done Acorn! All they have to do now is produce lots of them − and
quickly!
5.1
•   A5000 Learning Curve − For an extra £38, you can buy an A5000 Learning
Curve (£1799 inc VAT) which gives you PC Emulator (1.6), DR-DOS 5.0,
Genesis Plus, First Word Plus, Acorn DTP, Pacmania and Lemmings plus a
two-hour tutorial on two audio cassettes and a Home Computing magazine.
5.1
•   A410/420/540/R260 price drops − The A440 has been discontinued but the
A410 and A420 are still available and their ex-VAT prices have been
dropped by £200 to £899 and £1099 respectively (£1049 and £1284 inc
VAT). The A540 and the R260 Unix machine have each been dropped by £500
to £2495 and £3495 respectively (£2925 and £4088 inc VAT).
5.1
(The A3000 price is unchanged at £599 +VAT.)
5.1
•   Acorn badged printer − Also to be launched at the A.U. Show is a JP150
inkjet printer with an Acorn badge. The cost is £276 inc VAT when bought
with an A3000 or A5000.
5.1
•   85M Removable drives − We are now stocking the new Syquest 88M
removable drives in Mac-type external cases. I have been trying one out
and they seem fine. They run at 900 kbytes/second (cf the 42M removables
at 580 k/sec). The formatted capacity is 84.7 Mbytes. The drives cost
£690 and spare cartridges are £140 each. (More details on page 21.)
5.1
•   A310 memory upgrades − IFEL have improved the deal they are offering
us on their 4M ram upgrades so we can now do it for £320 inclusive. It
is worth remembering that, as we say in our adverts, “price isn’t
everything”. In other words, you can buy memory upgrades at less than
£320 even including fitting plus carrier collection and delivery but it
may not necessarily be a good buy. From our experience, plug-in type
upgrades which use the ROM sockets are generally OK, but if your
computer is one of those where problems do occur, the money saving may
well not be worth it in the long run. We believe that the soldered-in
variety are the best bet.
5.1
Also, you will see adverts claiming “MEMC1a not needed”. We do not think
this is a good idea. Again, from our experience, most computers probably
will get away without fitting the MEMC1a on these upgrades but some can
cause problems and the problems may only become obvious when some other
hardware is added to the computer. For example, we had an A310 returned
with a SCSI hard drive which, apparently, would not work properly. Our
engineer, Ray Maidstone, eventually discovered that, although there was
a problem with the SCSI drive, the whole thing was compounded by
interaction with the memory board. This had been fitted some time ago
and had worked properly even without a MEMC1a. However, with the
addition of the SCSI drive, the combination would not work properly
without a MEMC1a. Although neither the memory upgrade nor the SCSI
controller apparently needed a MEMC1a on its own, we found that the
combination most definitely did.
5.1
Beware, too, of cheap DIY upgrades. If they work, that’s great, but we
have had more than one computer which Ray has had to spend quite a long
time on to find what was wrong. Often it was not due to bad soldering −
with many, it was a fault revealed by doing the upgrade. Whatever the
cause, it works out to be a very expensive way of getting a cheap
upgrade!
5.1
•   Archimedes Disc Rescue − No longer should “Broken Directory” or “Bad
Free Space Map” strike terror into your hearts, even if it is on the
root directory of your 100Mb SCSI hard drive! LOOKsystems have produced
their Archimedes Disc Rescue package which allows you to repair your
discs quickly and easily. The programs work with both hard drives and
floppy discs on most Archimedes filing systems such as ADFS, SCSI, IDE,
etc. The package includes three utilities, which will repair and recover
files, directories and disc maps by selecting the appropriate filing
system and drive number or by dragging the ailing file or directory onto
the icon bar. There is also a sophisticated disc editor, for more
confident users, allowing you to navigate around, edit and repair discs.
(It is even possible to edit some non-Archimedes formats such as DFS and
IBM.) The programs are accompanied by a manual that includes a disc
repair primer and an explanation of the Archimedes’ disc formats. It
costs £35 inclusive of p&p (no VAT) from LOOKsystems.
5.1
•   Bit-Mapped Fonts − Wyddfa Software has produced a family of four bit-
mapped fonts. Anwen medium, bold, italic and upright. They cost £3 each
or £9 for all four. These are not outline fonts and so you do not need
to have a copy Acorn’s outline font manager. However, the printout is
not as good as with outline fonts.
5.1
•   Capsoft Disc Nº2 − A disc full of Draw files for just £9 from Capsoft
(B J Thompson). It has a number of drawn fonts for poster and display
purposes and frame borders for DTP use. See page 53 for a review.
5.1
•   Careware Disc 14 − consists of !FarBeyond which is Tetris with a
colourful twist, !PolySaw which is a desktop polymos, an interactive
hyper cube, the classic game of life, Mandelbrot generator, caret
blinker module, !CheckTemp which displays info on WIMP template files,
an HP Deskjet 500 setup utility, an Epson FX printer emulator, a Basic
program compressor, a word wrapped printer utility for text files, a
Lempel-Zev-Welch compression utility and some easy FNs to produce Draw
files from Basic.
5.1
•   Christmas Allsorts is a collection of Christmas oriented Draw files
from Sherston Software. The price is £16.95 +VAT.
5.1
•   Clip Art / Line Art − Some new discs of clip art are available this
month from G.A. Herdman and Southern Printers. Contact them for details.
5.1
•   Compression − Computer Concepts are releasing a new utility which uses
Lempel-Zev-Welch (LZW) compression to load and save files in compressed
format “five to ten times as fast as other utilities such as !Spark”.
This should not be confused with the LZW utility on the Careware 14 disc
(see above) which is only a set of SWI calls for use within a program
environment. It is a full desktop filing system so it operates with all
RISC-OS applications directly. This costs £49 +VAT or £53 through
Archive. This means that for just £53, you can effectively double the
capacity of your hard disc − which has to be good value for money even
with the falling drive prices mentioned below.
5.1
(We have just got hold of a copy and it looks as if loading and saving
times are never more than 50% more than uncompressed filing and file
size savings can be as much as 80% on sprites, 70% on Drawfiles and even
text files go down by 50%. Programs, however, are not compressed at all
and the utility doesn’t even bother to try. One disadvantage is that it
takes up about 200k of RAM which may not be too helpful for those with
only 1Mbyte! A de-compressor is also provided which can be freely
distributed, so you can send compressed files to other people and they
will be able to un-compress them.)
5.1
•   Enter the Realm − The 4th Dimension has extended its games list to
include Enter the Realm which is due to be released at the Acorn User
Show. This is an arcade style game with 6 layer full parallax scrolling,
sampled sound & speech, 16 colour graphics with 256 colour screens to
set the scene. It has a story line that runs throughout the game, you
have various weapons, pickups, monsters, interactive characters to
interrogate, buildings to enter, scoreboard etc. The price is £24.95 or
£23 through Archive.
5.1
•   FaxScan − SpaceTech’s Faxscan which turns an Amstrad FX9600T or
FX9600AT fax into an Archimedes scanner is now available through Archive
(see Archive 4.12 p3). The interface on its own is £110. Please check
that your fax has a label underneath saying “FX2”. If it says “FX1” you
have a very early model and will need a different version of the
interface − but it still costs £110. The complete package of FX9600AT +
interface + printer cable is £570. Remember that what you get for is a
plain paper fax that will also send faxes straight from the computer
without having to print them out, a plain paper copier, an Epson
compatible printer, an answering machine, a telephone and a 200 dpi
scanner with sheet-feeder!
5.1
•    Fireball II Extra − The popular Archimedes “Breakout” type game,
Fireball II has now been re-released with a few extra features including
an editor but with 180 “fiendishly difficult” screens to complete. The
price is down from £24.95 to £14.95 from Cambridge International
Software or £14 through Archive.
5.1
•   First Impression − At last, there is some help with Impression (as
well as Archive magazine)! Stephen Ibbs, a lecturer at Bilston Community
College, has produced “First Impression” − a tutorial package for
Impression II. It consists of 250 pages in a ring binder looking
remarkable similar to the Impression ring binder and contains 13
tutorial chapters and 11 appendix chapters plus a couple of floppy discs
with example documents and templates. First Impression contains
reminders, hints & tips and self-assessment tasks. The cost is £29.95
from Stephen’s company, “Word Processing” or £28 through Archive. Both
include p&p.
5.1
If you want even more help, Stephen is offering a distance learning
package from Bilston College which is intended for those who cannot
attend normal college classes and wish to study at home. The course will
be £35 (plus the cost of the tutorial guide) and is suitable for all
ages.
5.1
More details of First Impression are given in the review on page 17.
5.1
•   Fun & Games − HS Software has provided us with three games in one,
under the title “Fun & Games”. It is aimed at helping 5 to 9 year olds
on National Curriculum Maths and English. “Coconuts” helps children with
sequencing and devising and repeating patterns. In “Burger Boy”, you
have to help make up orders for a fast food take-away. This covers a
range of skills including reading, matching, sequencing, auditory and
visual memory and addition to 10 and beyond. Finally there is “Tidy” in
which you help Emma and her pet parrot to tidy her bedroom. This again
helps with a range of skills. Fun & Games costs £19.95 from HS Software
or £18 through Archive.
5.1
•   Guitar Chord & Piano Keyboard outline fonts − Dalmation Publications
have produced two specialist outline fonts at £5.50 each (£10 for both).
‘Guitar’ makes it easy to produce chord windows for a range of stringed
instruments and ‘Piano’ provides a chord box creator for keyboards in
general.
5.1
•   Hi-Fi Sound Upgrade Module − Ray Maidstone has produced a plug-in unit
with flying leads to connect to an external amplifier. It bypasses the
high-pass filter circuit and so gives a much clearer sound than the
straight output. The unit is user-fittable and comes with full instruc
tions. The price is £24.80 from Ray Maidstone or £23 through Archive.
5.1
•   Karaoke Performer − EMR are launching a karaoke system that will work
with any cassette player and any Archimedes computer. Each set consists
of 6 professional backing tracks on audio cassette for just £10 + £1.50
p&p +VAT. The text of the song scrolls in various ways on the screen in
sync with the audio. The control program also allows a separate graphics
program or video controller to be used to make original backgrounds
during the performance. A free graphics animation is provided with each
set. Over 90 sets are already available from 50’s to 80’s hits and
featured artists. EMR also sell a Karaoke unit with echo microphone,
mixer and amplifier + speaker system to compliment the Karaoke Performer
costing £69 inc VAT.
5.1
•   Laser Direct HiRes4 − Computer Concepts are now producing a 600 dpi
laser printer for “under £1000” (plus VAT). They are using the very
popular Canon LBP4 and combining it with their Laser Direct interface
for just £999 +VAT (£1,100 through Archive). All the comments we have
made about this combination in earlier issues apply but the price has
now dropped, thanks to Computer Concepts, from £1,255 to £1,100. HiRes4
has an Epson emulation (128 grey-level printing), Econet & Nexus network
options, PC (and other) compatibility via the serial & parallel
interfaces and a 1-year on-site maintenance is included. This will help
to keep Archimedes DTP as the most affordable and effective DTP system
available on any computer system (especially when combined with the new
A5000!)
5.1
Just think about it..... A5000 + Impression + HiRes4 gives you 600 dpi
DTP for just £1760 + £180 + £1100 = £3040 (= £2587 ex VAT). Remembering
that the A5000 has ARM3 and 40M drive, you have a very powerful system.
The only thing you might want to add is another 2M ram.
5.1
For a professional flatbed 300 dpi scanner (see below), add £990 + £200
for a SCSI interface or buy a SCSI drive and use the interface.
5.1
Surely, that’s an unbeatable system! Will someone with contacts in the
outside world (well, outside Acorn) please tell them about this system?
5.1
•   Pandora’s Box − Another of 4th Dimension’s games to be released at the
Acorn User Show is Pandora’s Box which combines classic puzzles and
arcade action. It uses isometric 3D graphics. The game play is basically
that the beast has escaped from Pandora’s box and has to be captured and
returned from whence he came before he does untold damage to mankind.
The price is £24.95 or £23 through Archive.
5.1
•   Penguin lovers should go to the Colton Software stand (59) at the
Acorn User Show. Don’t ask me why. Rob Macmillan says it’s serious!
5.1
•   Scanlight Professional − A flatbed scanner offering 300 dpi 256
greyscale scanning. It uses the SCSI interface (which many people are
already using for hard drives), white-light scanning for accurate grey-
level scans and enhanced Scanlight software which includes scan selected
region, full grey-map control of brightness and contrast, instant image
rotate by any angle, sampling options to reduce Moire patterns, image
enhance options such as blurring, sharpening, etc. The price is just
£899 +VAT or £990 through Archive.
5.1
•   Scanlight special offer − For a limited time, we are offering
Scanlight Seniors (both A3000 and A300/400) for £380 instead of £434
(CC’s full price is £468.82). This is only while stocks last. Also, we
still have some of the Scanlight Juniors (mono) at £189 (cf CC’s price
of £220.07).
5.1
•   SCSI drives prices down − The drives we introduced last month are
selling well and we’ve managed to reduce the prices. We have also now
extended the range to include internal drives. When they are supplied to
us, they come with metalwork and cables suitable for the Apple Macin
tosh. However, the prices are so good that it is worthwhile buying new
metalwork to make them fit properly into the Archimedes. Part of the
pricing table we included last month is repeated so that you can see the
improvements in pricing. Also, Oak Solutions have changed their pricing.
Some of their drives have also decreased in price. (20M drives are no
longer available through N.C.S.)
5.1
EXTERNAL drives WITH podule
5.1
   WW   HS   Frog   AW
5.1
45M   500      520
5.1
50M      560      620
5.1
65M         550
5.1
80M   565
5.1
100M   695   760   620   790
5.1
200M   1060   1180   870
5.1
300M      2100   1290
5.1
640M      2850   1690
5.1
1000M         2290
5.1
If you look at the prices without podule, i.e. for those of you looking
for a second SCSI drive, the differences in price are more marked....
5.1
EXTERNAL drives WITHOUT podule
5.1
   WW   HS   Frog   AW
5.1
45M   400      320
5.1
50M      460      420
5.1
65M         350
5.1
80M   465
5.1
100M   595   660   420   590
5.1
200M   960   1080   670
5.1
300M      2000   1090
5.1
640M      2750   1490
5.1
1000M         2090
5.1
INTERNAL drives WITH podule
5.1
   WW   HS   Frog   AW
5.1
45M   405      490
5.1
50M      470      535
5.1
65M         520
5.1
80M   450
5.1
100M   570   660   590   700
5.1
200M   995   1090   840
5.1
Again, the prices without podule, show a more marked difference....
5.1
INTERNAL drives WITHOUT podule
5.1
   WW   HS   Frog   AW
5.1
45M   305      290
5.1
50M      370      335
5.1
65M         320
5.1
80M   350
5.1
100M   470   560   390   500
5.1
200M   895   990   640
5.1
•   Stop Watch − G.A.Herdman has produced a twin timer stop watch working
in the desktop. It has a large display suitable for class viewing using
either Porterhouse fonts from Applications Disc 1 or the outline font,
Trinity for better effect. It also has a lap-timer and will give a count
down with audible warning. It displays hours, minutes and seconds to
0.01s and 100 hours. £19.99 + £1.50 p&p from G.A. Herdman.
5.1
•   Three new games are due to be released by Krisalis at the Acorn User
Show: Lemmings which, in other computer formats, won a “Game of the
Year” award, Chuck Rock which according to the advert in Acorn User,
includes “parolex scroll” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that − but even my
spelling’s not purfect!) and Manchester United Europe which takes that
club into European knockout competitions with both management decisions
to make and arcade action matches to play. Each game is £25.99 or £23
through Archive.
5.1
•   Turbo Type is a typing tutor from Cambridge International Software
Ltd. It features an on-screen keyboard during all exercises, digitised
sounds, large text option, exercise editor, metronome for improved
typing rhythm and has four levels of exercises: beginners who can
practise subsets or the complete keyboard, intermediate for typing easy
sentences, advanced for difficult sentences and short paragraphs and
numeric for those wanting to practice the numeric keypad. TurboType is
£24.95 from Cambridge International or £23 through Archive.

•   Acorn Desktop Assembler − Acorn have released a new version of their
well established Assembler − this time, it has a fully RISC-OS compliant
front end. It comes with two versions of the macro assembler, ObjAsm
which assembles programs into object (runable code) and AAsm which
assembles programs that can be run and debugged. It also includes
Acorn’s Desktop Development Environment.
5.2
The DDE includes a range of four interactive tools − DDT for debugging
executable images files, FormEd which is an improved version of the
template editor, Make which is a new desktop application for construct
ing programs from their sources and SrcEdit, a text editor derived from
Edit with some new features for constructing program sources. There is
also a wide range of Non-interactive tools: AMU − a compact alternative
to Make, Common − a utility to find the most common words in a file,
DecAOF − a utility for examining AOF files output by the compiler or
assembler, DecCF − a utility for examining chunk files, Diff − a text
file comparison tool, Find − a tool for finding text patterns in the
names or contents of sets of files, Link − a tool for constructing
usable modules, programs, etc LibFile − a tool for constructing general
purpose (library) routines, ObjSize − a utility to measure the size of
an object file, Squeeze − a tool to compress finished programs so they
take less space on the disc and WC − a text file word and character
counter.
5.2
The price of the Desktop Assembler, including DDE, is £175 from Acorn or
£155 through Archive.
5.2
•   Acorn Desktop C − Acorn’s new version of the C language now also works
in the desktop and comes with the same range of debugging tools as the
Desktop Assembler. Desktop C consists of the C compiler itself (a full
implementation of the 1989 ANSI standard), plus CMHG which allows you to
write modules in ANSI C, ToANSI which converts source C programs from
the PCC style to ANSI C, ToPCC which converts source C programs from the
ANSI C style to PCC plus the utilities of the Desktop Development
Environment as listed above. The price is £269 from Acorn or £240
through Archive.
5.2
•   Adventure Playground − Storm Software’s latest offering consists of
two explorations for children aged 6 to 9 that aim to “develop a wide
variety of educational skills: planning, decision making, logical
thinking, memory and strategy”. The price is £19.99 from Storm Software
or £19 through Archive.
5.2
•   Air Supremacy − Superior Software’s new simulation allows you to
choose between aircraft, ground or sea combat forces as the battle
progresses. Level one is set in Europe in 1918 with biplanes and tanks,
Level 2 is 1944 in the Pacific with fighter aircraft and gunboats, level
3 is 1991 with jet aircraft and desert tanks and level 4 is set in 2150
with futuristic aircraft and rapid attack hovercraft. £24.95 from
Superior Software or £23 through Archive.
5.2
•   Alexander is a remote sensing application from Lindis UK (a.k.a.
Lingenuity) allowing you to interpret and manipulate satellite images.
Facilities include averaging and gaussian filters for smoothing, Laplace
and median filters for image enhancement, four types of classification
and several different display options. The software on its own costs
£764 (£650 +VAT), a multi-user licence costs £2,350 (£2,000 +VAT) or buy
it bundled complete with an A5000 at just £2525 (£2149 +VAT) or as a
package with an A540 + Eizo 9070 for £4752 (£4044 +VAT).
5.2
(Taking £1761, the list price of an A5000, away from £2525 shows that
the first bundled deal gives you the software for just... err... £764!
Taking £764 away from the second bundled price of £4752 shows that the
A540 and Eizo 9070 would cost you £3988. However, the Archive price for
the A540 & monitor is £2930 + £850 = £3780 so you could save yourself
£208 by buying the software from them and the computer from us and get a
£200 software voucher which we give with every A540!)
5.2
•   Bambuzle − a puzzle game from Arxe Systems involves trying to fill a
series of “pods” with four balls each of the same colour from a
selection of different balls provided at each level. Getting the right
balls into the right pods is another matter − and you are working
against the clock! The price is £19.95 from Arxe or £19 through Archive.
5.2
•   Cartoon Collection is a set of four discs full of cartoon type
chracters in Paint format from Micro Studios. The price is £19.95 or £19
through Archive.
5.2
•   Charity Part Exchange − A number of people have asked us recently if
we do part exchange on computers − I think it might have something to do
with the coming of the A5000! Anyway, the answer has, so far, been “no”.
However, we have just had an idea....
5.2
For a limited period, we are going to try offering part exchange on
A310’s, A3000’s and A400 series computers plus hard drives and monitors.
What we will then do is to refurbish the machines and make them
available at cost to registered charities (and possibly also to schools
if enough become available).
5.2
So, for example, we can offer £300 off the price of, say, an A5000 in
return for your A3000. We will get Ray Maidstone to refurbish the A3000
and then make it available to charities for, say, £350 +VAT (which we
unfortunately have to add and pass on to the government − unless anyone
can see a legal way round it) which comes to £411 − rather less than the
full price of £695.
5.2
However, if you felt able to accept a bit less than the offered discount
then we could reduce the price that a charity would have to pay.
5.2
What about warranty? − We would offer a six-month warranty on the
refurbished machines although, given that we would be doing all this at
cost, it would be on the basis that the charity would be responsible for
getting the computer to us, we would repair or replace it and send it
back at our expense.
5.2
How much will you offer? − Well, we have to reserve the right to change
the amount being offered (or withdraw the scheme altogether if it’s
costing us too much) but, initially, we can offer...
5.2
A310   £200
5.2
A3000   £325
5.2
A3000 (2M)   £350
5.2
A3000 (4M)   £400
5.2
A410   £450
5.2
A410 (2M)   £470
5.2
A410 (4M)   £510
5.2
Colour monitor   £80
5.2
Multisync monitor   £120   *
5.2
ST506 hard drives   £5   (per 10M)
5.2
ST506 controller   £25
5.2
SCSI hard drives   £10
(per 10M)
5.2
SCSI controller   £40   *
5.2
* This applies only to certain types of monitor and controller. It has
to be entirely at our discretion.
5.2
(These figures are based on what one of our rivals is offering. It’s
slightly less, but then it is in aid of charity.)
5.2
What about other add-on hardware? − Other hardware will be treated on
its merits. Because we are doing this at cost, we will have to be sure
that we will be able to sell the items that you are offering us −
otherwise, we are going to be out of pocket.
5.2
What about all my data? − If you want to keep your hard drive and/or
computer so that you can transfer all your data, you can pay for the new
computer, have it delivered and then, up to one calendar month after the
purchase, return the old computer/drive to obtain your part-exchange
money.
5.2
•   Cheap computers?! − Acorn have recently re-launched their UK Teach
ers’, Academics’ and (now also including) Students’ Support Scheme. The
offer is a discount of £100 off the price of an A3000 Learning Curve
pack with monitor and stand (£899 inc VAT) or £200 off the price of an
A5000 Learning Curve pack, which includes the hi res monitor (£1599 inc
VAT).
5.2
This offer is available to teachers and academics (as before) but now
Acorn have extended it to full-time students in F.E. or H.E. whether
they are doing study or research. It also applies to teaching support
staff such as advisors, advisory teachers, inspectors and technicians in
schools and teachers’ centres. The term “academics” includes those in
teaching or research in teaching hospitals, medical schools etc.
5.2
Application forms are available from N.C.S. or your local Acorn dealer
and we would be happy to supply the computer(s) for you so that you can
benefit from our technical back-up service. There is an “assisted credit
scheme” for teachers and academics (but not students) but this is not
available through N.C.S.
5.2
•   Chequered Flag − Cambridge International Software’s racing car
simulation program has 4 race tracks, 3 levels of difficulty, design
your own car, manual or automatic gearbox, mirrors and you have single
races or can take part in a World Championship series. £24.95 from
C.I.S. or £23 through Archive.
5.2
•   Chuck Rock − is a parallax scrolling arcade game from Krisalis. Travel
around throwing rocks at appropriate things and picking up others. The
price is £25.99 from Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
5.2
•   !CL is a multi-tasking communications link with the Psion organiser.
It gives remote file access, print to file or printer, send or receive
Psion file etc. Available for £25 from Mark Godwin, 13 Prestbury Close,
Blackpole Village, Worcester  WR4 9XG.
5.2
•   CNC Designer for millers − Techsoft now have software available for
translating drawings created in Draw or in their own Designer package
into G and M codes for CNC millers. This adds to the software they
already have (though not previously mentioned here) for the control of
CNC lathes.
5.2
•   Control Logo − Longman Logotron have now finished their control Logo
for the Archimedes. It uses the same keywords as the BBC version and
allows you to control outputs and sense inputs and also has the facility
to regulate the power of outputs. It also adds extra primitives that
exploit the processing power of the Archimedes. The cost is £22 +VAT
from Longman Logotron or £24 through Archive.
5.2
•   Converta-Key − An alphabetic overlay for your keyboard which allows
children to use a keyboard set out in alphabetical order. This new
program from Triple R Education, the educational “arm” of the 4th
Dimension, works with other software as well as their own. It comes with
a range of introductory programs such as Hangman, Quizmaster, Anagrams,
Memory Master, Find It and Speed-type. The cost is £19.95 from Triple R
or £19 through Archive.
5.2
•   Creator Support − Alpine Software have produced a number of products
to help those who are using their arcade games designer package,
Creator. The Creator Support Disc, £19.95, provides various utilities
for games writers − sprite compressor, mode converter, sprite to Creator
object converter, background build up, plus an application to allow
Creator games to run in mode 9 for extra speed and to release more
memory. Sprite Library Disc 1, £5 provides sprites of various animated
characters and building blocks suitable for backgrounds. The Sound
Effects Disc 1, £5 is self-explanatory. Alpine are also now producing a
quarterly magazine called Alpine Express, £1.20 for three issues, but
free to registered Creator or ALPS owners.
5.2
•   Data Word − This is a database, from Triple R Education, aimed at use
within the National Curriculum. It works just like a card index but is
flexible enough to use it as a word processor. The cost is £19.95 from
Triple R or £19 through Archive.
5.2
•   DeskEdit − Risc Developments (a.k.a. Beebug) have produced a multi-
purpose text editor − all that !Edit should have been − with facilities
for use with Basic and C programming. £24.95 from Risc Developments Ltd.
5.2
•   DIY VIDC Enhancer − Atomwide have just released a new version of their
long established VIDC Enhancer. (For the record, they invented it and
others have copied their idea!) The hardware hasn’t changed, but the
software includes a modes editor. You can now load up any mode module
that is in memory and edit it to suit your monitor − even if it’s just
shoving it a bit to the right or to the left − and then save it as a new
module, customised to your needs. The new enhancer package is £25 +VAT
from Atomwide or £28 through Archive. If you have the Atomwide enhancer
(and NOT any of the copied versions) you can send your original modes
disc plus a cheque for £5 to Atomwide (NOT to us, please) and they will
send you a new disc and manual.
5.2
•   DrawAid − This application, which allows you to create Draw files from
within Basic programs, was reviewed in Archive 5.1 p57. Since then,
Carvic Manufacturing have (a) added extra features and a tutorial, (b)
corrected the bug that was reported and (c) moved from Cambridge to the
North of Scotland! The price of DrawAid is still £10 and the address of
Carvic Manufacturing is given in the Factfile at the back of the
magazine.
5.2
•   EasiWriter − When does a word-processor become a DTP package? Icon
Technology, who produced EasiWriter, refer to it as “more than a word-
processor” − and it certainly is. It allows text in columns, insertion
of Draw files, sprites and FWPlus files, has spell-checking and auto-
hyphenation, styles for emphasis, paragraph definition and setting
structure. N.B. It needs 2M to run on an Archimedes. (I have many
happy(?) memories of Icon Technology’s “MacAuthor” on my Apple Mac in
the very early days. Icon Technology certainly know what document
processing is all about.) It costs £150 +VAT or £160 through Archive.
5.2
•   Elite is here! − Hybrid Technology have just launched Elite on the
Archimedes. At last, the all- time best selling computer game has come
to the Archimedes which, I am sure, will do justice to this very popular
and addictive game. The Arcade bulletin board (081−654−2212) already has
an area specifically dedicated to discussions about Archimedes Elite.
The price is £39.99 from Hybrid or £37 through Archive.
5.2
•   Ethnic Borders is the intriguing title of a disc of 43 decorative
Poster borders from 4Mation. The cost is £10 +VAT or £11 through
Archive. The title is derived from the fact that many of the designs are
based on Maori art.
5.2
•   Fun School 3 − Database Educational Software have produced “six
stunning educational programs that will help to develop many skills
including number and word skills at your child’s own pace”. Their Fun
School 2 was the biggest selling educational package ever with, they
claim, over 150,000 UK sales. Fun School 3 comes in three complete sets
of six programs each for under 5’s, 5’s to 7’s and over 7’s. Each set is
£24.99 from Database or £23 through Archive.
5.2
•   Hawk V9 price drop. Wild Vision’s Hawk V9 digitiser has now dropped in
price to £199 +VAT. It comes with fully RISC-OS compliant software
providing an “extensive range of image scaling and enhancing options”
allowing sprites produced to be dragged straight into whatever desktop
applications you are using.
5.2
•   Illusionist − Clares new 3D graphics package that enables you to
create “any object of any colour, illuminate it with coloured light or
spot lights and render it in any 256 colour mode”. Features include 3D
editor, materials editor, anti-aliasing, saving in compressed or clear
formats, compressed formats being compatible with Pro-Artisan, Render
Bender II and Titler. The price is £99.95 from Clares or £89 through
Archive.
5.2
•   Lemmings which, in other computer formats, won a “Game of the Year”
award is now available on the Archimedes from Krisalis Software. Having
played it, I can see why it was an award winner. The scenario is that a
whole pile of little animals are entering the screen and have to be
guided to a safe haven before they fall off into something nasty. Sounds
a bit boring but I’m not a games freak and I found it absolutely
fascinating trying to work out how to get through each level. It costs
£25.99 from Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
5.2
•   Manchester United Europe is a football simulation from Krisalis which
takes you into European knockout competitions with management decisions
to make and arcade action matches to play. The price is £25.99 or £24
through Archive.
5.2
•   Memory upgrade for A5000 − Atomwide are just about to launch a memory
upgrade for the A5000. There is no definite price yet (but check on the
Price List which is printed later) but it will provide 4M for less than
£140 (the price of the Acorn 2 to 4M upgrade board) and it will be
upgradable to 8M by plugging in an extra MEMC and memory chips.
5.2
•   Money Matters − This is a suite of programs to teach currency facts.
It is based on the circus theme and is suitable for “tots to teens”. It
aims to teach children all about British coins and ways of tendering
money. At a more advanced level, it is designed with specific National
Curriculum attainment targets in mind. The cost is £19.95 from Triple R
or £19 through Archive.
5.2
•   Picture Book − A set of four educational games for children (no age
specified, but young, presumably) from Triple R Education. It consists
of an electronic version of an ABC book, an introduction to spelling, a
counting program and a ‘snap’ game. The cost is £19.95 from Triple R or
£19 through Archive.
5.2
•   PinPoint is a “new generation database” from Longman Logotron. Clearly
aimed at education, it provides DTP like facilities for creating and
publishing multiple page forms. It has a WYSI-WYG data entry system, a
table browser, statistics generation and graphical analysis, all of
which can be combined to produce reports based on data entered. The cost
is £99 +VAT from Longman or £105 through Archive.
5.2
•   Pirate is a swash-buckling adventure from Chalksoft for children aged
8 to 14. Steer your ship through uncharted waters coping with problems,
exploring passing ships. Logic, strategic thinking and map-making skills
are developed. It is aimed at Geography and Maths at Key Stage two. The
price is £23 from Chalksoft.
5.2
•   Repair work − Ray Maidstone, our repair expert nearly passed out when
I showed him a list of charges being suggested by one of our rivals who
have just opened a repair service. (e.g. the cost of repairing a basic
A3000 including “up to one hour’s labour” is £65 + parts + carriage +
VAT.) I won’t tell you his exact comments but I will paraphrase them as,
“Gosh, that sounds a little bit expensive − I wish I could earn £65 an
hour. Please tell your subscribers to send their computers, drives,
monitors etc to me and I will charge on the basis of how much work I
actually do on each one.”
5.2
So, there you have it, the Archive Repair Service is born! If you have
something that needs repairing, drop us a line or give us a ring and
we’ll see what we can arrange for you.
5.2
•   Replacement mouse − Clares are selling a mouse for the Archimedes
which has “tactile micro-switches, opto-mechanical sensors, high
resolution (290 tpi) and two direction sensors per axis to provide a
stable mouse pointer”. However, the best recommendation for it, as far
as I can see, is that it works and is about half the price of the Acorn
one! It costs £32 from Clares or £30 through Archive (cf £56 for the
Acorn replacement mouse.) (Actually, I didn’t find it too good as the
buttons are not separate “islands” − the whole of the front edge of the
mouse is “continuous button”. There is nowhere to rest your middle
finger when you are not using it and I found I got accidental <adjust>
clicks occurring − but to save £26, it may be worth it.)
5.2
•   ScoreDraw form Clares is a utility that takes a Rhapsody II score and
converts it to a Draw file. The cost is £61.95 from Clares or £57
through Archive. A sample printout is shown below.
5.2
•   SCSI controllers − Morley Electronics have two new SCSI controller
cards available. They are both 16-bit interfaces for speed and one has
an added RAM cache, again to speed it up more. The prices are £149 and
£199 +VAT respectively. The A3000 versions have to be external to the
computer and are cased in metal, so they are £169 and £219 respectively.
The Archive prices are £160 and £220 for A400/540/5000 and £180 and £240
for A3000.
5.2
We have done some speed tests to compare it with the Oak SCSI interface.
We tested it on an A3000 with an ARM2 processor connected to an Atomwide
100M high speed Quantum drive. We did the raw file loading speed test,
our “better test” where we copy the contents of a directory containing
all the files on Applications Disc 2 and the same test but using the
contents of Applications Disc 1. The results are shown in the review
article about SCSI versus IDE on page 19.
5.2
•   SCSI drives − We are also now supplying Morley’s 40M and 100M SCSI
drives. The Archive prices are £350 and £560 respectively for internal
drives and £435 and £620 respectively for A3000 drives. These prices
include a non-cached board because, as suggested by the timings of the
SCSI boards mentioned above, it hardly seems worth the extra £50 to have
the cached version. (Morley have done some comparative tests of their
boards against Oaks and say that for larger drives, 200M+, their cached
board “leaves Oak board standing”.)
5.2
With the proliferation of SCSI drives that we now sell and the various
SCSI interface options it has all got a bit complicated so let me try to
simplify things a bit. (Actually, the best bet is to ring us up, tell us
what sort of thing you are looking for, and we will advise you what
options there are.)
5.2
A3000 drives are the simplest in some ways because they have to be
external drives. In the 40 to 50M range, the Morley 40M is the cheapest
at £435 but then if you want something a bit faster and a bit bigger,
the Frog 45M with the Morley interface comes out at £480. This is an
external interface but if you want to, or have to, have an internal
interface, it has to be the Lingenuity one which is the same price as
the Morley one but is a bit slower being only an 8-bit interface. If you
want the fastest in this range, you would have to go for the Atomwide
50M drive with a Morley external interface at a total of £585 (£425 +
160).
5.2
If you want a 100M drive for your A3000, it works out that the Frog
external 100M plus Morley interface is the cheapest at £580 (£420 +
£160). For a faster drive, you could choose the Atomwide 100M plus
Morley interface at £755 (£595 + £160).
5.2
If you want an internal drive for an A310 or A410, the cheapest is,
again, the Morley 40M at £350 followed by the Oak Worrawinnie 45M at
£405 and the Frog 45M with Morley interface at £430. At 100M internal,
the cheapest is the Frog with a Morley interface at £530 (£390 + £140)
followed by Morley’s own 100M at £560 and Oak’s Worrawinnie at £570. For
higher speed, you could go for Oak’s HS drive at £660 or Atomwide’s 100M
with Morley interface at £645 (£505 + £140).
5.2
If you want an external drive for an A310 or A400 series machine (or an
A5000!) because you can’t fit an internal drive, there is a similar
range as for the A3000 but at slightly different prices because of the
different costs of the interfaces. In the 40 to 50M range, the Morley
40M is the cheapest at £425 but then if you want something a bit faster
and a bit bigger, the Frog 45M with the Morley interface comes out at
£460. If you want the fastest in this range, you could choose between
the Atomwide 50M drive with a Morley interface at a total of £565 (£425
+ £140) and the Oak HS 50M at £560.
5.2
If you want a 100M drive, the Frog external 100M plus Morley interface
is the cheapest at £560 (£420 + £140). For a faster drive, you would
have to go to the Atomwide 100M plus Morley interface at £735 (£595 +
£140).
5.2
If you are unhappy about the “unproven” nature of the Morley software
interface and prefer the extremely stable Oak software then you will
need to add £40 to the price of an A3000 podule and £60 for an internal
podule on other the machines.
5.2
•   Search & Rescue is a role play program for children aged 9+. An
emergency at sea is reported and, as Coastguard, it is your task to
coordinate the actions of lifeboats and helicopters. It brings in
elements of Maths, Geography, English, History and Science. The price is
£33.50 from Storm Software or £31 through Archive.
5.2
•   Sesame Street Crayon is a computer colouring book. Lots of pictures
for you to colour by clicking on the colour you want and clicking on the
area you want to fill. The result can then be printed on a colour
printer. It comes in two varieties, Numbers Count and Letters for You,
which gives a clue to the fact that these programs also have an
education content − rather like Sesame Street TV programme. Each pack is
£19 through Archive.
5.2
•   Sky Hunter is a computer program linked to BBC’s new TV series
starting in January 1992 − Look and Read. Sky Hunter is a peregrine
falcon and the children’s job is to catch some crooks who intend to sell
Sky Hunter illegally. To catch them, you have to solve various problems
along the way. This program, aimed at 7 to 9’s costs £24 +VAT from
Longman Logotron or £26 through Archive.
5.2
•   Statistical software − If you need to do statistical analysis then
FirstJR is a cut down version of Serious Statistical Software’s package,
First. FirstJR costs £49 with a school site licence for £140.
5.2
•   Step by Step Videos − Pedigree Films have produced a set of four
videos to help you with using the A3000 and other Archimedes computers.
They are £14.95 each (£14 through Archive). Up & Running (80 mins), Text
Processing (70 mins), Data Handling (55 mins) and Art & Graphics (55
mins).
5.2
•   Target Maths − This is a suite of four programs designed with specific
National Curriculum attainment targets in mind. Eliminator helps in
learning tables; NumberFax shows factors, odd and triangular numbers
etc; Scale Factor helps in reading linear scales and, at higher level,
improve arithmetic skills; Slider is a computer version of snakes and
ladders. The cost is £19.95 from Triple R or £19 through Archive.
5.2
•   The Font Book from Dalmatian Productions is a user guide for fonts on
the Archimedes range of computers. This 100+ page book comes complete
with a disc of outline fonts and decorative draw files for just £10.50
inclusive − cheques payable to T. Richards.
5.2
•   The Public Key − This magazine which promotes interest in Public Key
Cryptography has had to increase its charges as the initial levels were
not realistic to cover costs. Issue 1 and issue 2 each cost £3 (£4 from
EEC and £5.50 elsewhere). The disc containing the cryptography program
is £6 (£7 from EEC and £8 elsewhere). The complete package of two issues
plus disc is £11 (£13 from EEC and £17 elsewhere). Cheques (in dollars
or pounds sterling) should be made payable to George Foot.
5.2
•   Tower of Babel − an interactive 3D strategy game involving an
interconnecting network of towers, platforms and lifts. You have to take
control of robot spiders and program them to solve problems and puzzles
and interact with various other creatures. Alternatively, realtime
control is available for instantaneous reaction to the game’s develop
ments. £24.99 from Cygnus Software or £23 through Archive.
5.2
•   VoxBox − This is a supporting package to Rhapsody II, Maestro and
other music packages. It allows you to play scores, provides percussion
sounds, converts sound samples into Archimedes voices and allows you to
digitally synthesize voices by drawing waveforms or harmonics. The price
is £61.95 (inc VAT) from Clares or £57 through Archive.
5.2
•   Waterloo − This successful simulation from Atari, Amiga & PC’s is now
available on the Archimedes. The author, Dr Peter Turcan, seems to have
enjoyed doing the transfer. It has 3D perspective pictures of the
battlefield, sounds of canon and an English language parser to interpret
the orders that you, the commander-in-chief give to your subordinate
officers. The cost is £24.95 plus £1 p&p from Turcan Research Systems
and for that, you get a disc, full manual and a colour map of the
terrain and the initial dispositions of the armies.
5.2

•   4th Dimension game fix − If you are having problems running any of the
Fourth Dimension games, it is probably because they are trying to get a
quart into a (1M) pint pot. To make things easier, Fourth Dimension have
produced a configuration saver program which is available FREE from them
(not from N.C.S.!).
5.3
•   A5000 memory upgrades − Atomwide now have memory upgrades available
for the A5000. The 2 to 4M upgrade is £130 through Archive and the 4 to
8M is £470. This latter upgrade requires the MEMC to be taken out and a
socket put in its place − definitely not a DIY job, unlike the 2 to 4M
which can be undertaken by any sensible, technically minded person. The
price of the 4 to 8M upgrade includes two-way carriage.
5.3
•   A5000 1FD − the 1M floppy disc version of the A5000 (a “Product not-
Available”!) We said (quoting Acorn, by the way!) that the version of
the A5000 with 1M RAM, no hard drive and no monitor version would be
available in January. They are now saying that they will be available
“in small quantities only during the first quarter of 1992”. Rumour has
it that they will only be selling them to VARs (Value Added Resellers −
companies who sell complete systems with an Archimedes at the centre)
and not releasing them to the general public. So those of us who want to
supply a real “quality” system with an Eizo monitor and a SCSI drive
will have to wait for several months to come. Well, not quite....
5.3
•   A5000 monitor upgrade − A growing number of people are feeling that
the Acorn multisync monitor does not do justice to the quality of the
computer, so we are now offering the Eizo 9060SZ as our recommended
alternative. It provides a dot pitch of 0.28mm instead of 0.38mm and
better linearity. If you want an Eizo 9060, just add £200 to the price
as quoted with the Acorn monitor. So that means we have some spare
multisyncs....
5.3
•   A3000 monitor upgrade − As a spin off from the offer above, we have
some Acorn multisync monitors for sale that would be ideal for use with
the A3000. At £310 inc VAT, they are only £60 more than the Acorn
standard resolution monitor but allow you to go into the higher
resolution modes unavailable to users of standard resolution monitors.
5.3
•   A5000 IDE hard disc upgrades − We can now supply a 100M second
internal IDE drive for the A5000 for £380. This is a fast drive (as
IDE’s go!) and fits under the floppy drive.
5.3
•   Acorn printer sheet-feeder − Acorn are hoping to have, “fairly soon”,
a sheet-feeder unit for their inkjet printer. It should be available by
the time you read this − but ring before ordering, just to check! The
price is £69 +VAT or £77 through Archive.
5.3
•   Archivist is an “easy-to-use” database from Oregan Developments.
Designed in accordance with LEA guidelines, it is “ideal for education”.
The price £24.95 inclusive or £50 for an additional site licence from
Oregan Developments.
5.3
•   ARM3 prices down (and up!) − After dropping the price of their ARM3
upgrades to £199, Watford Electronics have put the price back up to £249
saying that it was only an “Acorn User Show Special Offer Price”. Aleph
One have just brought their price down to £249 +VAT. (£280 through
Archive) The A3000 ARM3 upgrades are now £249 + £35 fitting charge or
£340 through Archive. As I write, the CJE ARM3 is still available at
£199 +VAT or £225 through Archive.
5.3
•   Bonjour de France is a series of four Genesis applications on 9 floppy
discs for use in teaching French at Key Stages 3 and 4. The cost
including a teacher’s guide and over 100 worksheets is £95 +VAT from Oak
Solutions or £103 through Archive.
5.3
•   CalcSheet − Trail Software have produced a RISC-OS compatible
spreadsheet called CalcSheet which is aimed particularly at users with
1M computers and floppy drives. Features include keyboard short-cuts,
1000 columns by 9999 rows, 80 built-in functions, graphing facilities,
timed auto-save and macro facilities including a learn option. The price
is £99 +VAT or £520 +VAT for a site licence. A demo disc is available
from Trail Software for £5, deductible from the purchase cost of the
software itself.
5.3
•   Cataclysm (not ‘Catalysm’ as in all the big glossy adverts) is a new
arcade game from 4th Dimension. You have to avoid the inundation of your
spaceship by adjusting valves, pumps etc within a given time limit.
Watch out for the pressure valves, dissolving blocks and filters. £24.95
from 4th Dimension or £23 through Archive.
5.3
•   Chameleon is a utility for doing quick and easy colour changes to Draw
files. It provides a range of 16 and 256-colour palettes, including a
256 level grey scale, and allows selection and changing of colours from
each palette. It also has an HSV (hue, saturation, value) palette.
Chameleon is £25 +VAT from 4mation or £27 through Archive.
5.3
•   Colour printer drivers − Ace Computing have added to their wide range
of RISC-OS printer drivers one for the new Deskjet 500C sheet-fed colour
inkjet printer. The price from Ace is £15 inc VAT and p&p.
5.3
•   Glimpse is described by Sherston Software as the simple way to find a
clip art file. It allows you to view a miniature version of the file in
a filer window. Files can be loaded directly from a Glimpse window into
Draw, Paint or any RISC-OS application. The price is £8.50 +VAT from
Sherston.
5.3
•   Grievous Bodily ’ARM is another game from the 4th Dimension stable. It
is an arcade style game involving beating up some drug-smuggling baddies
using your expertise in kicking and punching and using weapons picked up
along the way. £24.95 from 4th Dimension or £23 through Archive.
5.3
•   Hilighter is Sherston Software’s new text and graphics presentation
package. It allows you to display information in a RISC-OS window and
have it linked so that users can explore the information provided. The
price is £45 +VAT from Sherston.
5.3
•   Holed Out Compendium − Fourth Dimension have released a version of
HoledOut that consists of HoledOut, Extra Courses 1, Extra Courses 2 and
HoledOut Designer − all in one pack for £24.95 or £23 through Archive.
5.3
•   J − The language J is now available for the Archimedes. Version 3.4 is
available from I-APL for £17.00 + £2 p&p. This includes A Dictionary of
J and Tangible Math rewritten in J.
5.3
•   Notate is a music composition program from Longman Logotron aimed, as
you might guess, at educational users. Its range of facilities includes
up to eight staves, synthesised and sampled sounds, accidentals and
repeats, auto-checking of note length relative to bar space remaining,
chord facility, configurability for different levels of user, auto
transposition, Midi file input and output and direct playing on Midi
instruments. The price is £57 +VAT or £64 through Archive.
5.3
•   Oak PCB for RISC-OS − Oak Solutions now have a PCB layout and
schematic design package available for just £150 +VAT (£160 through
Archive) or there is an educational price, including a site licence, for
£120 +VAT. Facilities include four copper layers, automatic generation
of drilling and solder resist layers, automatic movement of tracks if
components are moved, hard copy via RISC-OS drivers or via a supplied
HPGL driver, comprehensive parts library for both PCB and schematics.
5.3
•   Polyglot is a foreign language character generator which provides fast
and easy access to foreign language character sets when using RISC-OS
applications. £19.95 from Risc Developments. (Although it has the same
address as Beebug Ltd, they ask us to make clear that this is a separate
company.)
5.3
•   Recall is Sherston Software’s database designed with National
Curriculum in mind. The price is £39.95 +VAT from Sherston.
5.3
•   Revelation 2 is the CD-ROM edition of Longman Logotron’s education-
based art package (£119 +VAT or £125 through Archive.). Revelation was
created with particular emphasis on facilities for taking images from
other sources such as digitisers, scanners or video frame-grabbers and
processing them to create totally new pictures. Revelation 2 adds
various extra features including extra colour mixing, colour processing,
image effects (sharpening and dithering) and extra fill options.
5.3
It also comes in a CD-ROM version for £139 +VAT or £145 through Archive.
5.3
•   SmArt Suite is a linked graphics system from 4mation. When you load a
picture, different parts of it can be changed by selecting from a menu.
The package which is £55 +VAT (or £59 through Archive) comes with over
24 files on subjects including cars, shops, churches, maps of Britain.
Also available, as separate products, are discs on the subjects of
Leisure, Heraldry, Faces, Fashion, Homes, Trees and Gardens and
Dinosaurs. These discs are £16 each +VAT or £18 through Archive. SmArt
Filer is an application for those who wish to create their own sets of
SmArt files − £35 +VAT or £38 through Archive.
5.3
•   Teletext Adaptor Front End − The RISC-OS front end (written by Geoff
Titmuss) for the Morley Teletext Adaptor was mentioned 12 months ago in
Products Available but it is now available through The Really Good
Software Company at a price of £29.95.
5.3
I have had a play with it and would say that Geoff’s software brings a
new lease of life to the adaptor. It is a full multi-tasking RISC-OS
application and the Teletext screen appears in a RISC-OS window. Just
click on any of the numbers in the window and that Teletext page appears
in due course. Best of all, you can flick back to any of the previous
ten pages you have been looking at. This means that if you want, say,
the television programmes, you can select page 601 and get on with some
other work while the three screens making up that page are loaded, then
select 602, then 603 and finally 604. Then you can look at any of the TV
program pages at the click of a mouse button. One other extra feature is
that you can set your computer’s internal clock from the Teletext clock,
at the click of a mouse button. (See the review on page 27.)
5.3
•   Touchtech 3000 is an infra red touch screen for the Archimedes from
Microvitec which fits onto their Cub 3000 monitor. At £300 +VAT, it
comes with a suite of nine programs to develop colour recognition,
finger painting, simple addition, shape recognition etc for the teaching
of very young or special needs children.
5.3
•   Yes Chancellor 2 − Chalksoft have now released an Archimedes version
of their economic simulation package, Yes Chancellor. You are in the hot
seat at Nº 11 Downing Street and have to keep the UK economy from
collapsing. You have, amongst other things, to set taxes, control
interest rates, do wage bargaining and deal with membership of the
European ERM. This simulation is aimed at adults and economics students
and includes an information booklet written by a former Senior Official
of the Inland Revenue. The price is £23 +VAT or £25 through Archive.
5.3

•   A5000’s back in stock − The stock situation on A5000’s seems to change
weekly. Anyway, as I write (2/1/92) we have both A5000 Learning Curves
and straight A5000’s without Learning Curves in stock. No, sorry, not
the A5000 1FD (1M no hard drive version). We have some on order but we
gather that Acorn are not releasing any for the foreseeable future. As
far as we know, Acorn are only supplying them to VARs (Value Added
Resellers), i.e. companies who buy them and add their own software and
hardware etc which they then sell as a complete system.
5.4
We can help you in customising by  (a) offering alternative monitors
e.g. we supply an Eizo 9060S for £200 above the price including the
Acorn multi-sync (b) offering a second additional internal 100M IDE
drive for £380 (having tested that it is compatible with the Acorn IDE
interface − see comments on page 12) and (c) offering £100 in part
exchange on a Conner 40M IDE drive (i.e. replace the 40M with 100M for
£280) but this offer is at our discretion as we don’t want to end up
with lots of 40M IDE’s we can’t get rid of. Also, we can offer (subject
to availability) a second additional internal 40M IDE drive for £120
(the extra is to account for extra cabling and labour) but I won’t put
this on the Price List − it’s complicated enough already. If you are
interested, give us a ring. So, based on a Learning Curve pack, here are
the combined prices...
5.4
   2M     4M     8M
5.4
A5000 (40M)   £1799   £1929
£2399
5.4
A5000 (40M + 40M)   £1919   £2049
£2519
5.4
A5000 (100M)   £2079   £2209
£2679
5.4
A5000 (40M + 100M)   £2179
£2309   £2779
5.4
then add £200 if you want an Eizo 9060S instead of an Acorn m/s or £270
if you would prefer a Taxan 795 or £460 for an Eizo 9070 (16“) or £910
if you want an Eizo T560i 17” Trinitron (see below for details).
5.4
•   A5000 Technical reference manuals − Acorn have produced a technical
reference manual for the A5000 which consists of about 40 pages of text
plus 9 A1-size drawings including assembly diagrams, circuit diagrams
and component layouts. The price is £65 from Acorn or £62 through
Archive. (They are in stock now.)
5.4
•   Atomwide 200M SCSI drives − The 200M Pro Quantum drive mechanisms that
Oak Solutions use in their High Speed drives are now available from
Atomwide in their own boxes. I am using one on my A540 and it is
noticeably faster than the 100M Conner in the A540 itself. (1350 kbytes/
sec cf 790 k/sec) The prices, through Archive, are £705 for an internal
drive and £795 for an external. (These prices are without podule.)
5.4
•   Careware and Shareware Four new discs of PD software are available
this month:
5.4
Careware 15 is ‘religious’ clip art: dove, lion, lamb, fish, sheep,
spring lamb, whale, holly, Santa, snowman, snowflakes, tree, 14
different crosses, handshake, open hands, praying hands, anchor, bible,
censor, crown of thorns, handbell, pulpit, scroll, baptism, boy praying,
person kneeling, nun, bishop, singers, robed figure, Bede, Coverdale,
Tyndale, Wycliffe, church yard, lighthouse, Westminster, helmet, inri
scroll, signpost.
5.4
Careware 16 has clip art images from ILEA designed to promote “positive
images” of people of different races, gender, ages and disabilities.
5.4
Shareware 42 has twilight, sun and moon rise/set calculator, gravity
simulator, various blank sheets for personal organiser, clipart
(includes typewriter plus sprites of car, crash, masks, town crier,
tanks, policeman, poundsign, scissors, scouts symbol, world map),
desktop Pacman game, draughts, Escape from Exeria, Guardians of the
Labyrinth, various desktop patterns, wall paper designer(?), address
label database, desktop backdrop, “approximate” clock, current directory
set utility.
5.4
Shareware 43 is a DBK raytracer with demo files. (Members’ prices are £6
for Careware and £3 for Shareware.)
5.4
•   ChartWell is a sophisticated graph and chart package from Risc
Developments. It provides horizontal and vertical bar charts, line
graphs, pie charts, scatter diagrams and polar plots. £29.95 from Risc
Developments Ltd. (Although it has the same address as Beebug Ltd, they
ask us to make clear that this is a separate company.)
5.4
•   Cumana SCSI interfaces − Cumana have now released three SCSI inter
faces: 16 bit internal for A310/400/5000, 16 bit external for A3000 and
8 bit internal for A3000. The prices are £151, £161 and £130 respec
tively (+VAT). One major plus of these interfaces is that they include
CDFS so you won’t need to pay for an upgrade to the software if you buy
a CD-ROM system. (We have one of each for evaluation, so we hope to
check whether, for instance, they will work with Computer Concepts’
ScanLight Professional. A report will, hopefully, appear next month.)
5.4
•   Eizo T560i monitor − If you want a really top-notch 17“ monitor for
the Archimedes, this is it! It’s a Trinitron tube with 0.26mm dot pitch
which, on a 17” monitor is very fine and it has the advantage of the
flat Trinitron tube. However, the best part about it is that it is
(extremely) intelligent. It is microprocessor controlled so what you do
is to teach it any new mode you want to use. With a push button control,
you can adjust brightness, H size, V size, H position, V position, side
pin (to cut out pincushion distortion), trapezoidal (again alters the
shape of the screen), H static convergence and V static convergence.
Then having adjusted each of those parameters for that particular screen
mode, it remembers them so that when the same signal appears again, the
monitor says, “Ah, I know that mode” and displays it exactly as you had
adjusted it. Then you can switch to another mode you use commonly and
adjust that to get optimum use of the screen.
5.4
The price? Oh, yes, the price... “only” £1240 inc VAT and carriage! Is
it worth it? Well, I’m using one at the moment and it is certainly very
impressive but for me personally, the extra £450 over the Eizo 9070
would be difficult to justify. This is partly because I use the same
mode 99.9% of the time, so having to re-adjust the screen when going
from mode to mode doesn’t worry me. Also, the T560i, like the Taxan 875,
can’t quite cope with mode 102 (1152×448) and so you have to use mode
106 (1088×448) i.e. 6% fewer dots across the screen. Still, if you
change modes a lot and especially if you want to use the same monitor on
different types of computer and want the extra resolution then the T560i
is for you.
5.4
(I’ve got one of the new Microvitec 20“ autoscan (microprocessor-
controlled) monitors on order, so I’ll let you know how I get on with
that − the Archive price is likely to be £1590.)
5.4
•   Flight Sim Toolkit − Simis Ltd have released a flight simulator editor
for just £44.95 inc VAT or £42 through Archive. It allows you to produce
your own flight simulations by using a ground editor, a 3D shape editor
for objects like trucks, planes, etc, an aircraft model editor which
controls the plane’s flying characteristics and, finally, a cockpit
editor.
5.4
•   Freddy Teddy is back − Topologika have released a third in the Freddy
Teddy series for infants. This time Freddy Teddy is in The Playground.
The Playground is £29.95 +VAT, which includes a free site licence, or
£32 through Archive.
5.4
•   Hard Disc Companion II − Risc Developments’ update of their hard disc
backup program is now available for £45 +VAT. It is faster than the
original and has many new features including backup to hard drive as an
alternative to floppies, backup certain filetypes only or ignore certain
filetypes. It can also be used for backing up networks. (Their adver
tisements claim that it is “the best selling hard disc backup program”
but I doubt whether, at £45+VAT, they could possibly have sold as many
as Shareware 36 which, at £3, has a hard disc backup as one of its many
programs and utilities.)
5.4
•   Hearsay II − Beebug’s new comms package is now fully multi-tasking.
£75+VAT from Beebug or £82 through Archive. See the review on page 34
for more details.
5.4
•   Morley prices drop − The Morley SCSI disc drives have dropped in price
and the 40M drives have been replaced by 50M. The new prices are given
on the price list but are summarised here in comparison with various
other drives. Atomwide (AW) and Frog drives come without podule and so
can be paired with Oak, Morley uncached (Mu/c) or Morley cached (Mc)
podules. The figures in italic are high speed drives.
5.4
EXTERNAL drives (with podule)
5.4
   WW   HS   Frog   Frog   Frog   AW
AW   AW   Mrly   Mrly
5.4
         Oak   Mu/c   Mc   Oak
Mu/c   Mc   Mu/c   Mc
5.4
45M   500      520   460   510
5.4
50M      560
620   560   610   435   485
5.4
65M         550   490   540
5.4
80M   565
5.4
100M   695   760   620   560   610
790   730   780   570   620
5.4
200M   1060   1180   870   810
860   995   935   985
5.4
300M      2100   1290   1230
1280
5.4
640M      2850   1690   1630
1680
5.4
1000M         2290   2230   2280
5.4
5.5
5.4
INTERNAL drives (with podule)
5.4
   WW   HS   Frog   Frog   Frog   AW
AW   AW   Mrly   Mrly
5.4
         Oak   Mu/c   Mc   Oak
Mu/c   Mc   Mu/c   Mc
5.4
45M   405      490   430   480
5.4
50M      470
535   475   525   360   410
5.4
65M         520   460   510
5.4
80M   450
5.4
100M   570   660   590   530   580
700   640   690   570   620
5.4
200M   995   1090   840   780
830   905   845   895
5.4
•   Prophet − Apricote Studio’s combined Stock Control, Invoicing and
Accounts program is called “Prophet”. (I’m sure there is a good reason
for the name though it escapes me at the moment unless it relates to the
biblical quote, “and behold, he shall make a great prophet”!) The price
is £169.95 from Apricote or £157 through Archive. If you already have
either Account Book or Invoice Program, you can get the full package for
£69.95 from Apricote and if you have both, it will cost you just £39.95.
5.4
•   ScanLight prices drop − With the coming of the ScanLight Professional,
Computer Concepts have dropped the price of the A4 Scanlight to £399
+VAT with sheetfeeder and £299 without. (Archive prices are £435 and
£325 respectively.) They have also dropped the Price of ScanLight Junior
(not the 256 version) to £129 +VAT or £140 through Archive. There is
also an upgrade to the software which offers improved grey-map control
using a bezier curve along with simpler brightness and contrast
controls. It now also includes image enhancement functions such as
sharpening. CC claim that ScanLight is the only scanner software that
offers realtime greyscale dithering of images to produce near photo
graphic on-screen representations. This software upgrade will be
available to all existing ScanLight owners free of charge.
5.4
N.B. ScanLight Professional only works reliably with certain SCSI
controller boards − Acorn, Morley and Lingenuity. In some cases, it
works OK with the Oak SCSI board and CC are actively trying to get it so
that it works consistently with Oak boards. However, they are NOT
working on any others because they are not Acorn compatible. It does NOT
work with the TechnoSCSI board. ScanLight Professional is available
through Archive at £970 inc VAT or £1070 with a SCSI podule.
5.4
•   ScreenTurtle − Topologika’s latest release is a “friendly” turtle
graphics program called ScreenTurtle. It uses a parser so that if it
doesn’t know the command you type in, it guesses! It has on-screen
interactive help and it ‘ticks’ commands that it likes. As well as the
standard Logo features, it has absolute directions, “BEARING” and
“HEADING”, as well as positive and negative Cartesian co-ordinates. To
extend turtle graphics into the realm of art, there is a turtle
generated colour FILL as well as a mouse controlled PAINT. The price is
£39.95 +VAT from Topologika or £43 through Archive.
5.4
•   Software from Germany − There is a thriving Archimedes software
industry in Germany. One example of this is Klein Computers from
Ruesselsheim, near Frankfurt. They have developed five items of
Archimedes software: MouseRecorder (£25) for creation of demos, BestForm
(£49) which is a formula-editor for DTP, 2D/3D FunctionPlotter (£20)
which includes Drawfile output, G-Draft (£49) a CAD package and HD-
Backup (£10) which includes other disc utilities. All these prices
exclude VAT which, presumably, would be charged by customs on entry to
UK, though small items are often ignored, I think. Klein computers would
prefer a Eurocheque written in DM (but who, in the UK, uses Eurocheques?
even in 1992!). (A demo of BestForm appears on the monthly program
disc.)
5.4
•   TinyLogo/TinyDraw is now available from Topologika in a new version
(at the same price of £29.95 +VAT or £32 through Archive) which includes
adjustable shapes, colours preserved on export, undo, error checking, 3
pencil thicknesses etc. An upgrade for existing users is available for
£5 +VAT (+ £1.50 p&p) if you send back your old disc plus proof of
purchase to Topologika (not to Archive).
5.4
•   !Transfer is a new utility which will allow you to transfer text from
any icon in any RISC-OS application to any other. This has many
applications − for example, you could grab a name and address from a
database and drag it straight into a wordprocessor. !Transfer is just
£8.95 from Apricote Studios or £8 through Archive.
5.4
•   Typestudio is Risc Developments new text effects package which allows
you to draw and edit text, save in Draw or internal formats, print using
RISC-OS drivers and add or remove effects. These effects include
moulding to shapes, flowing along lines, shadowing, slanting, 3D and
mirroring. All this for just £45 +VAT.
5.4

•   A5000 floppy drive extension cables − Ray has made up some extension
cables (£18 each) so that you can have a socket at the back of your
A5000 to plug an external floppy drive into without going inside the box
each time you want to connect and disconnect. Note that these are not
electronic buffers. Acorn say they don’t need to be buffered although,
in view of the problems noted in the Comment Column on page 9, it might
be good to have an interface. That’s not for buffering but to provide a
degree of flexibility over the various control lines used by different
types of drives − not all floppy drives are recognised if they are just
plugged straight into the socket.
5.5
•   A5000 availability − We still cannot get enough A5000’s, especially
the Learning Curve version − well, they come in fits and starts. Acorn
have said that their will be more available in mid-February so, if you
want an A5000, I suggest you send in a cheque to book your place in the
queue.
5.5
•   Acorn Publishing System − Acorn have launched a DTP bundle comprising
a 4M A540, Eizo 9060S monitor, and Computer Concepts HiRes 8 printer,
Scanlight Professional flatbed scanner (300 d.p.i. 256 grey levels),
Impression II, Equasor and the Impression Business Supplement. All for
£4995 +VAT = £5869. The price of these products separately is £6196 even
at Archive discount prices.
5.5
(I know what you are thinking, “Why use an A540? Why not an A5000?”.
Part of the reason is that, being realistic, to make good use of a 300
d.p.i., 256 grey level scanner, 4M of ram is hardly going to be enough
and, officially, the A5000 is only a 4M machine. Also, the Acorn multi-
sync may be cheap but it’s not realistic to think of using it for a
system of this calibre. So, now that Atomwide are shipping their 8M
upgrades for the A5000, what would an 8M system cost using each
computer. Adding £315 for a 4M upgrade to the A540 gives £6182. Compare
that with making it up with a 2M A5000 plus £590 for a 2−8M upgrade
including replacing the 40M IDE with a 100M high speed SCSI and the
Acorn multisync with an Eizo. That would cost you, at Archive prices,
£5935. For the extra £247, you gain the ability to go up to 16M but you
lose the ability to use 1.6M floppy discs and, at present, access to
RISC-OS 3, though that will soon (?) be available for A540 costing in
the region of £100 thus increasing the difference to approx. £347.)
5.5
•   Acorn SCSI card / Syquest removable drive solution − Those of you who
have had problems running the 42M and 84M Syquest removable hard drives
on the A540, (i.e. on the latest version of the Acorn SCSI podule), will
be pleased to know that we have a fix which seems to work OK. Acorn are
working on a “proper” fix − they have been for some considerable time
now − but at least this will allow you to use the removable drives. If
you want a copy of the software patch that Adrian has written, just send
us a blank, formatted disc and a small donation for our charity pot and
we’ll send you a copy.
5.5
•   Aleph One ARM3 prices down (again!) − Aleph One have now joined CJE
Micros in providing ARM3 upgrades at £199 +VAT (£225 through Archive).
5.5
•   Atomwide SCSI drives − The prices of Atomwide drives has decreased
this month and the range has been extended to 400M. This is good news
because they use the fast, high quality, Pro-Quantum drives which seem
to be about the best drives around at the moment. I am using a 200M Pro-
Quantum as my main drive and, as I have said before, it is ffffast! They
are the same drives that Oak use for their High Speed range but the 100M
and 200M now work out cheaper, even with the Oak SCSI boards. The prices
are....
5.5
   50M   Internal −   £285
5.5
   100M   Internal −   £395
5.5
   200M   Internal −   £685
5.5
   400M   Internal −   £1055
5.5
   50M   External −   £370
5.5
   100M   External −   £485
5.5
   200M   External −   £775
5.5
   400M   External −   £1145
5.5
Add £200 to each for an Oak SCSI podule so that you can compare prices
with the Oak HS range.
5.5
•   BibleMaster − Many readers have asked if there is a computer version
of the bible available for the Archimedes. I have looked around for ages
and found nothing. (Does anyone know different?) So, I am breaking with
my normal rule of not supplying PC products! BibleMaster is a new
computerised bible for PC compatibles, which works under the PC emulator
provided you have at least 4M free in your PC partition. It is based on
the New International Version and is sold by Hodder & Stoughton for
£49.95 inc VAT (£45 through Archive). You can look at two passages at
the same time, export text to disc for inclusion in word-processed
material (but check the copyright situation first!) and you can keep and
edit a verse list for study purposes. It has over half a million cross
references and an on-line help facility.
5.5
•   !Bulletin is a bulletin board communication system from XOB for use
over Econet networks. It provides the usual bulletin board services
including electronic mail, special interest groups and closed user
groups. This fully RISC-OS compliant software runs on any Archimedes,
supports up to 1,500 users and comes with a site/network licence for £67
from XOB.
5.5
•   CableNews is Lingenuity’s new frame-based presentation system. It
allows you to prepare presentations from sprites and draw files and with
text using outline fonts. The price is £169 +VAT from Lingenuity with
educational prices and site licences also available.
5.5
•   CalcSheet − Following comments from a reviewer, (the review was never
published) Trail Software has removed CalcSheet from sale with immediate
effect. Any customers who are unsatisfied with the product can have a
full refund from Trail Software.
5.5
•   CoCo is a control language for the Archimedes produced by Commotion.
For £49.95 +VAT, it provides a RISC-OS environment control language that
will allow you to operate an interface device with switch inputs and
outputs as well as motors with variable power and direction control.
Lego UK have adopted CoCo for use with their InterfaceA.
5.5
•   Concept keyboard − Northwest SEMERC have produced the Oldham Overlay
Keyboard (a concept keyboard by any other name). This A3 board with 128
switches costs £166.67 +VAT from NW SEMERC. There is an optional switch
input (£50 +VAT) to allow special needs switches to be connected for
people with severe physical difficulties.
5.5
•   Detour is a file manipulation utility to enable you to overcome
problems with software written to run on a specific filesystem, drive or
directory. It can be used for a number of purposes including acting as a
virus protector. The price is £19.95 inc VAT from Electronic Solutions.
5.5
•   DrawPlus update − This has now been updated to version 2.10. It
includes some minor bug fixes and is compatible with the A5000. The
updated version has been put onto Careware Disc 13. Existing Careware 13
owners can send their discs back for update − a further small charity
donation would be appreciated but is not obligatory.
5.5
•   DTP For All − Bruce Goatly’s new book has just been published by
Wileys / Sigma. It costs £12.95. For details, see the review on page 22.
5.5
•   Electronic Bible − Here’s the ultimate(?) add-on for your Archimedes.
A pocket-sized electronic bible (smaller than a personal organiser) with
LCD display and full ASCII keyboard that contains the whole of the bible
− both old and new testaments − plus concordance and thesaurus. It
allows you to look for the occurrence of multiple words − you could
find, say, all the places where the words “Jesus” and “Pharisee”
occurred in the same verse or within a couple of verses (you choose) −
this is much more powerful than a straight concordance. The Electronic
Bible has a serial link, so we are working on a cable and software to
allow the output to be fed into an Archimedes. Electronic Bible costs
£250 from Hodder & Stoughton or £235 through Archive and the link will
soon be available for £25, we hope.
5.5
•   Ethernet card for A3000 − Atomwide are now marketing an Ethernet card
for the A3000 at £229 +VAT (or £255 through Archive). It can be used
with thin Ethernet cabling and Acorn’s TCP/IP or AUN software to provide
cost-effective networking to mainframes, minis etc. This is an internal
8-bit podule but a 16 bit standard podule version for use on thick or
thin Ethernet will also be available in a couple of weeks time. The
price will be the same as the A3000 version.
5.5
•   FastType − Micro Guide have published a typing tutor under the title
FastType. It is a fully RISC-OS complaint application. It is also
supplied with a disc of PD special needs software as the author is
continuing to develop FastType particularly for those with special
needs. The cost is £19.95 inclusive from Micro Guide.
5.5
•   Floating point accelerator − DT Software have harnessed some PC
hardware − an 80287XL FPA − to improve the speed of the Archimedes
floating point functions. It comes on a single podule and, in software
terms, is linked in to where the floating point emulator normally
resides. It has the great advantage (unlike the Acorn FP co-processor)
of being ARM3 compatible. The 80287XL is, apparently, almost equivalent
to an 80387 and it runs at 37 MHz. (A 60MHz version is under develop
ment!) It provides 3 to 4 times speed increase on multiply on an A540
and even better improvement on lesser machines. Trig and transcendental
functions show an even more marked improvement. The price is £174.95
inc-luding VAT from DT Software or £165 through Archive.
5.5
•   Geoscan the world geography database has been updated to take account
of some of the changes that have taken place in world geography
recently(!) and has also had various new features added including
!Geobrief which contains background information on over 200 countries
and territories. This is in a common text format which allows for easy
inclusion in WP / DTP work by students. There is also an application
which allows students to print out the main information in various ways
to a standard dot-matrix printer. The price for the new version of
Geoscan is £45 from Passkey Marketing or £42 through Archive.
5.5
•   Good Impression − is a book of layouts, designs and graphics which can
be created with Impression. It costs £26.95 from ‘Word Processing’ or
£25 through Archive. For more details, see the review on page 47.
5.5
•   Helix Basic is a “fully functional Basic V language interpreter”
designed to allow “anyone, whatever their programming experience to
write professional RISC-OS compliant multi-tasking programs.” Quite a
claim! The price is £99.95 inc VAT from Craddock Computer Systems.
5.5
•   Insight is a data-logging package from Longman Logotron. It provides
the software interface for data-logging interfaces such as Sense and
Control, LogIT and Philip Harris. It allows data to be taken in either
at very high speed or on a “time-lapse” basis and provides analysis and
display of the received data. The price is £69 +VAT from Longman
Logotron or £75 through Archive.
5.5
•   James Pond, the fishy special agent, is now available. This is an
arcade adventure with a “green” slant and a degree of humour. £25.99
from Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
5.5
•   Key Author − a multi-media Presentation System produced by ITV Schools
division. It aims to provide a multi-media system that links in with
their Key Plus database system. The cost depends on the type and size of
establishment purchasing it from an individual user at £55 and a (<150
pupil) primary school at £65 to a (>800 pupil) secondary at £180 and a
FE/HE college at £450.
5.5
•   Mah Jong, The Game − Mah Jong Patience has been out for quite a while
now but here is the proper Mah Jong game. You have to pit your wits
against three other players, all of whom are the computer playing a “no
holds barred” game. This implements the Western rules of Mah Jong, not
the original Chinese rules. The cost is £22.50 from Cambridge Interna
tional Software or £21 through Archive.
5.5
•   MatchMaker seems to be the ultimate in interfacing for special needs
applications. It will allow “any switch to... operate any Archimedes
program”. Quite a claim, but Matchmaker itself contains a sophisticated
micro-processor system and has its own 20 × 4 character LCD display.
This is available for £850 +VAT from SRS Systems Ltd.
5.5
•   PC emulator upgrades (listen carefully, please, while I try to
explain... ) There are two upgrade products to allow you to obtain the
1.7 version of the PC Emulator, one for MS-DOS users (“the AKA48 PC
Emulator 1.7 upgrade”) and one for DR-DOS users, i.e. those who bought a
Learning Curve pack (“the AKA45 PC Emulator 1.7 + DR-DOS 5.00 upgrade”).
5.5
Who should upgrade? It’s only really users of A5000’s (since 1.6 doesn’t
work on RISC-OS3) or those with versions before 1.6 that need to
upgrade.
5.5
How much does it cost? For MS-DOS users, the AKA48 costs £17.62 inc VAT
if you already have 1.6 or £34.07 if your version is earlier than 1.6.
For DR-DOS users, the AKA45 which includes an upgrade from 3.41 to 5.00,
costs £45.82.
5.5
Where do I get it from? You can only get your upgrade by mail order
(though they do accept official orders from educational establishments)
from Acorn Direct in Wellingborough.
5.5
What do I have to send? Send a cheque payable to ‘Acorn Direct’ (or
official order) with your PC Emulator disc to Acorn Direct, (not us!).
If you have version 1.6, send the “small PC Emulator (CGA) disc”. For
AKA48 (MS-DOS) do NOT send your MS-DOS disc. For AKA45 (DR-DOS) you must
send your DR-DOS registration number.
5.5
How long does the offer last? You must upgrade before 27th March 1992.
5.5
If there is anything you don’t understand, please DON’T ring Norwich
Computer Services but address your queries to Acorn Customer Services on
0223−245200.
5.5
•   PC expansion card − (breaking the normal rules about only mentioning
products that are actually available now) Aleph One’s 386 PC expansion
card should be available by the end of February at £495 +VAT (or £545
through Archive). It is claimed to offer between 10 and 20 times the
speed of the software emulator alone (though that is presumably
comparing with a non-ARM3 machine). It uses a 386SX compatible micropro
cessor and has 1M of ram upgradable to 4M and occupies a single half-
width podule. In operation, it is just seen as an extension to the
original PC emulator but it does allow very rapid, almost single key
switching between the PC environment and RISC-OS. We saw it operating at
the BETT Show with Flight Simulator running at a very respectable speed.
(Watford Electronics were also supposed to be showing their PC card at
the BETT Show but potential customers were told that it would be
available “soon” but that they were unable actually to demonstrate it.)
5.5
•   Printer drivers  − We are going to be stocking Ace Computing’s printer
drivers including their latest one for the Deskjet 500C colour printer.
They are £16 +VAT each or £17 through Archive. Printer drivers available
are Deskjet 500C, Paintjet, Epson JX and compatibles (inc Star LC10,
XB24 and Citizen Swift-24 with colour ribbon), Canon PJ 1080-A and
ColourCel.
5.5
•   Removable SCSI drive prices down − The prices of the removable drives
and cartridges have dropped again this month. The 42M drives are now
under £500 − well, £495 − but that includes VAT and carriage. The extra
42M cartridges are now £70. The 84M drives are down to £680 and the
extra cartridges to £120.
5.5
•   Shareware Disc 17 update − Acorn have now released a RISC-OS Extras
Extras disc which we are distributing as Shareware Disc 17. The disc
contains the latest printer drivers, modules, etc (version numbers shown
below) along with a virus killer and protection module. If you already
have Shareware 17, send it in for an update but we would be grateful for
a small donation to charity to accompany it. Thanks.
5.5
Modules: Econet 5.48, Hourglass 2.02, IRQUtils 0.12, NetFiler 0.24,
NetFS 5.53, NetPrint 5.30, NetStatus 2.01, SoundScheduler 1.13, VGAModes
1.45; printer drivers: !PrinterDM 2.46, !PrinterIX 2.46, !PrinterLJ
2.46, !PrinterPS 2.46; system: !Scrap 0.53, !SysMerge, !System 0.52
which includes Clib 3.75, Colours 0.52, FPEmulator 2.80, MessageTrans
0.06, WimpUtils 0.04; utilities: BigDelete, FSVersion, SetStation; virus
kit: !Killer 1.17, VProtect 1.06.
5.5
•   Twilight is a screen saver program with a difference from The Really
Good Software Company. It is multi-tasking so that applications that are
running can continue even after the screen has been switched off. It
also has password facilities and a hot-key combination that sends your
screen to sleep instantly. The price is £29.95.
5.5
•   Want a dirt cheap A540?! − You may have seen adverts for A540’s at
£1999 +VAT (£2349); well, we know a man who can sell you one for even
less! Seriously though, if you are interested in a new A540, we may be
able to get one for you at (just) under £2000 inc VAT. They won’t be
covered by Acorn warranty because they are already several months old
(although unused and boxed) but we would cover them with our own NCS
warranty. Give us a ring if you are at all interested.
5.5
•   A3000 spares − A company that uses A3000 motherboards has a fair
number of A3000 cases, power supplies and keyboards sitting around
gathering dust. We can sell them at about half the normal spares price,
i.e cases £15, p.s.u.’s £24, keyboards £18. Give me a ring if
ineterested.
5.5

•   3D Construction Kit is Domark’s new program for creating 3D anima
tions. Design your own house and “walk through it” even before it’s
built or build and fly your own plane. The price is £49.99 inc VAT (£46
through Archive) which includes an instructional video cassette. (See
Comment Column on page 20.)
5.6
•   A400 series discontinued − Acorn have decided, not surprisingly, to
cease production of the A400 series computers. There are still some
machines available and there may be some bargain prices around,
especially for A420s. If the price is right, you could throw away the
20M drive and put in a decent-sized SCSI drive. (For example, we have
one A410, 4M with 40M ST506 drive available at £1190. Give us a ring if
you are interested.)
5.6
•   Bible Base − This is a RISC-OS compliant package using a PD version of
the King James Bible. It comes on six floppy discs and can be run from
hard disc. It is £12 inc p&p from Bernard Veasey, 24 Drift Road,
Nyetimber, Bognor Regis, West Sussex  PO21 3NS.
5.6
•   CD-ROM − Cumana have reduced the price of their CD-ROM from £399 to
£299. The ROM drive has an average access time of 350 ms and a data
transfer rate of about 150 kbytes/sec. (There are apparently a number of
Archimedes-specific CDs under development including an encyclopaedia
from PEP Associates which was being demonstrated at the BETT Show.)
5.6
•   David Pilling’s program discs − Over the months, we have mentioned
David Pilling’s excellent series of discs of Archimedes software.
Despite the fact that they are so good, we have not, in the past,
stocked them. The trouble is that they are so cheap (£5.99 each) that
it’s impossible for us to give a discount on them and still cover our
costs. However, there has been so much demand that we have decided to
sell them at £6 each so that you can have the convenience of being able
to order them from Archive alongside other items without having to make
a separate order. If you only want David’s discs, it is obviously better
to go direct to him, especially if you want several discs because, if
you buy four discs at a time, you get one free. We cannot operate that
offer. We have decided to stock the most popular discs. (The numbers in
brackets are references to Archive reviews or comments.)
5.6
EMACS (2.6 p36 + 3.3 p11) − The classic text editor. A multiple buffer/
document editor with built-in programming language. Comes complete with
manual, online tutorial and several programs. Includes full working C
source code.
5.6
MicroSpell − 43,000 word spelling checker, MicroSpell is a spell checker
for EMACS but works with other applications, too. It can also be loaded
as a module to provide continuous spell checking while you type and
instant access to the dictionary with *spell command.
5.6
Chess − (4.9 p59 + 4.12 p25) Play Chess on the RISC-OS desktop. Fully
RISC-OS compatible version of chess. Computer will think of its next
move, whilst you use other programs. Many features; load and save games,
edit board, computer play, step through game, algebraic notation, on
screen clocks, undo move, save game setup, print games etc.
5.6
CrossStar − Wimp based crossword puzzle solver. Fully RISC-OS compliant,
desktop based crossword puzzle solver. Includes over 200,000 words.
Saves completed grids as Draw files for use in DTP etc. Solves inter
locking clues. Multiple/user defined dictionaries. Dictionaries can be
edited or browsed through. Add new words to dictionary.
5.6
Spark (3.4 p22) − File archiver for RISC-OS which lets you keep files
and directories in archive files in a compressed form. It will unpack
zip, zoo, lzh, tar (both UNIX and Archimedes), Compress and arc (SEA, PK
and Archimedes) files from IBM PC’s or other systems. It can also create
PC compatible arc files. Spark can code and decode, uucode, atob (CET+)
and FCET files. DES data encryption gives password protection of files.
(Bonus items on the disc include !BackDrop which lets you stick files
onto the desktop background, some PD applications, the old ‘arc’ and
over 1M of nice colour pictures.)
5.6
MTV Raytracer − Database driven raytracing renderiser (mentioned in
Brian Cowan’s review of Scientific Software on page 55) which will
convert a geometric description of a scene into a 3D raytraced image
that can be saved as a sprite. All reflections and shadows in the scene
are calculated to give life-like pictures. Primitives − spheres, cones/
cylinders, polygons and patches. Demo images, database files, C source
code, instructions and background info.
5.6
StarChart − Boldly go with a RISC-OS multitasking program that uses a
database of 9,000 stars etc to produce star maps. Also calculates the
positions of the planets and shows them on the maps. Star maps are in
the form of Draw files and can be imported into !Draw or other
applications.
5.6
NovaPaint − Extensive 16 colour paint package. Features: easy to use;
primitives (lines, curves, circles, ellipses, triangles, rectangles,
etc.); tools (user-defined brushes, airbrush, auto-shader, colour fills,
colour-cycling brush-es/rectangle drawing, etc.); palette tools (define
graduated palettes, compress palette, colour mixing); effects (pixel
average, area squash/stretch/distort/rotate, sphere wrap, cylinder wrap,
‘blob’). Plus the Fontmaster two-tone font system (including a font
editor and 23 fonts as well as bold, shadowed, underline and italic
styles); undo function. Pictures can be saved as sprites or in a special
compressed format (which can be used outside NovaPaint), 8x zoom at
which level fills, lines, triangles etc. can be drawn as well as pixel-
level editing. All drawing options can use ‘transparent’ colour to
achieve irregular area copies etc; help facility and manual. 14 demo
pictures.
5.6
Panorama − Draw the World (5.5 p26) − 180,000 coordinates outlining the
lakes, rivers, continents, state boundaries, etc of the world and a
program that can produce Draw files from them. You can make your own
maps of any part of the world and then use them in DTP etc. Includes the
positions of nearly 1,000 cities. Does simple, cylinder, Mercator and
perspective projections. Can be used from a single floppy disc and
requires no setting up.
5.6
ArcFS (5.5 p59) − Compressed Filing System, ArcFS is a filing system
using the powerful LZW data compression algorithm. It allows files to be
saved in much less disc space. Because it is a true read/write filing
system, programs can be used in the normal way. So you can press <F3> to
save files back to the filing system and Impression documents can be
loaded by dragging or double clicking. Compatible with all normal filing
systems. Offers a choice of compression method. Files can be encrypted
for security. Can also read Spark and PC format archive files. Space
saved depends on file type e.g. sprites may use only 10% of normal.
5.6
Trace (5.4 p61 + Comment Column, page 25) − Trace takes sprites and
turns them into Draw files. Sprite format clip art is cheap and
plentiful and you can make your own with a scanner. Draw format clip art
is expensive and has to be painstakingly drawn by hand. Sprites take up
lots of valuable disc space. Draw files are smaller. Sprites cannot be
scaled easily. If you try to make them bigger, they develop jagged
edges. Unlike some trace programs, Trace will work with colour sprites.
Tracing is not magic − not all sprites will give good results.
5.6
•   Deskjet 500 Colour printer drivers. Both Ace Computing and Risc
Developments now produce printer drivers for the Deskjet 500 Colour. Ace
Computing’s driver costs £16 +VAT or £17 through Archive and Risc
Developments’ costs £15 +VAT.
5.6
•   Desktop C and Desktop Assembler upgrades − It is still possible to
upgrade your old version of C or assembler to the desktop version which
includes the DDE. All you do is send the original disc plus an appropri
ate cheque to Acorn Direct at Wellingborough. The inc VAT costs are as
follows:
5.6
C release 3 to Desktop C   £99.87
5.6
C release 2 to Desktop C   £123.37
5.6
C release 1 to Desktop C   £123.37
5.6
Assembler to Desktop Assembler   £88.12
5.6
Software Developer’s Toolbox
5.6
                     to Desktop Assembler   £88.12
5.6
•   Dreadnoughts is the second wargame product for the Archimedes from
Turcan Research Systems Ltd. The author, Dr Peter Turcan, obviously
enjoyed converting Waterloo to the Archimedes and has followed it with
this simulation which allows you to fight the sea battles of the First
World War − seven different scenarios are provided. The price is £34.95
from Turcan Research Systems and there are two extra scenario discs at
£16.95 each − Ironclads which includes various battles from Japanese-
Chinese and Russo-Japanese conflicts and Bismark which provides six
scenarios from the Second World War.
5.6
•   Eizo monitors − Sadly, in their wisdom, Eizo have discontinued the
9070 16“ monitor. There is now a big gap between the 14” 9060SZ (£530)
and the T560i (£1240). If you are looking for a monitor, turn to the
Comments Column on page 21 where I have given my personal views about
various multisync monitors. Ed
5.6
•   EMR are continuing to produce new music based programs and hardware as
well as producing updates to their existing products. Studio24 Plus is
now up to version 3 (£249 inc VAT), Scorewriter PMS has been updated
(£499 inc VAT) as have RhythmBox II (£29.95 inc VAT) and SoundSynth II
(£49.95 +VAT). There are now eight Creations sound sample discs at two
for £17 +VAT. MicroStudio is an interactive recording studio for home or
school music teaching (£79 inc VAT). It allows you to learn the left and
right hand parts whilst following the music on screen. Symphony Music
Library and Modern Music Library consist of several discs of music, for
use with EMR music systems, costing between £3 and £15 inc VAT.
Storybook is an educational program that allows you to play and/or
produce your own stories with animated pictures and sampled sounds (£59
+ VAT). Extra stories are available at £39 +VAT a set. Mister Sound
Recorder is a tool for young children to allow them to record and replay
their own voices and sound around them. (£15 inc VAT) DreamWave is “the
only complete synthesizer for the Archimedes”, providing internal sound
creation for use with Maestro and other programs (£39.95 inc VAT).
Orpheus is a sophisticated voice editing system for Midi instruments
(£29.95 inc VAT). Karaoke Performer allows you to link a cassette
recorder to your computer and have a sing-along  session. The words are
given in a scrolling display and the words are highlighted in case you
lose your place! Sets of six songs cost £19.95 inc VAT per set. VuMusic
II allows you to play back music from a Midi system or one of the other
EMR programs along with user generate sprites (£39.95 inc VAT). If you
just want to play the music, you can use Music Player (£19.95 inc VAT).
Midi Analyser is a utility for Studio24 Plus which monitors data
received on the Midi interface with printout if necessary  (£19.95 inc
VAT). !SXFS is a system exclusive filing system that provides simple
recording and playback of any system exclusive data from Midi instrument
(£9.95 inc VAT). WFS to module sample converter is a utility that
converts EMR waveforms to relocatable modules (£9.95 inc VAT). Sound
Tracker to EMR waveform converter is a utility that removes sound sample
data from Sound Tracker files and converts them to EMR waveforms (£9.95
inc VAT). The Midi4 Acorn SWI emulator allows EMR’s Midi4 interface to
be used with Acorn’s standard SWI calls (£6.95 inc VAT). Maestro File
Converter changes Maestro files to Studio24 / MicroStudio format (£9.95
inc VAT). RhythmBox Converter changes RhythmBox note data to Studio24 /
MicroStudio format (£9.95 inc VAT).
5.6
EMR also has a range of hardware add-ons. As well as their Sampler 8 and
Midi4, they now produce SMPTE which is a full spec SMPTE to Midi control
expansion card at £129.57 +VAT, A3000 Multi-Interface which provides
Midi, sound sampler, analogue and user port at £79 +VAT and A3000
Expansion Tower which allows A3000s to connect up to 5 standard half-
width podules and has space for a hard drive. The tower costs £260 +VAT.
5.6
•   FAXPACK − Computer Concepts, after a long gestation period, have
finally given birth to their FaxPack which is their internal fax card
for Archimedes computers including the A5000 (fitted externally on an
A3000). Instead of printing your fax and then putting it through a
conventional fax machine where it is scanned and digitised, you can,
from your own application, “print” (FaxPack just appears as a printer
driver) straight to a fax interface and off down the telephone line.
This avoids the time, trouble and cost of having the intermediate paper
copy. If you don’t have a laser printer, this represents a considerable
time saving as you can send complex graphical images without waiting for
them to print out first.
5.6
This is a fully multi-tasking application, even allowing faxes to be
received in the background while you get on with other tasks. You can
communicate with other machines that have a FaxPack interface and
transfer files using the LZW compression algorithm to reduce transmis
sion times. (Equivalent speeds can be as much as 20k baud.)
5.6
The fax interface has auto-dial or manual modes and uses tone or pulse
dialling. It offers 9600 bps operation with fall back to 7200 and 4800
bps, compatible with all Group 3 fax machines. It will auto-answer, and
you can set the number of rings before answering.
5.6
It comes with a name and address utility program which allows you to
auto-dial the phone numbers directly from the phone book.
5.6
The price? Oh yes, it costs £299 +VAT (+£10 carriage) or £345 through
Archive.
5.6
•   Junior Database is a RISC-OS compliant database aimed at the edu
cational environment − for children aged six and upwards. The emphasis
is on good layout and ease of use. It has colour graphics and a hot-
linked personal tutor (sounds like fun!). Junior costs £53 +VAT from
Iota Software or £57 through Archive.
5.6
•   Good Impression − A book of layouts, graphics and designs for
Impression. Sincere apologies to Stephen Ibbs about our review last
month (p47) in which Robert Chrismas said that it only had about 100
pages. In fact it has 207 pages! Good Impression is numbered in
chapters, not consecutively through the whole book and what I suspect
happened was that Robert counted the pages by counting the pieces of
paper making up the book, forgetting that there are two pages on each
piece of paper! Sorry if we have mislead you − personally, I think that
Good Impression is very reasonably priced at £25 through Archive.
5.6
•   Image Outliner is Iota Software’s offering on the sprite to Draw file
conversion front. It works in full 256 colours and is fully multi-
tasking. The price is £79 +VAT or £85 through Archive.
5.6
•   Image Scan is an overhead image scanning system from Iota which uses
the latest CCD technology with rotating mirror and lenses. Being an
overhead system. it can be used for items that are not flat (see the
picture below) or are delicate and cannot have a hand scanner dragged
over them. It comes in modular form, so you can buy the different
components as finance allows. The basic black and white scanner costs
£399 +VAT (£450 through Archive). Then, to speed up the communication
with the computer, there is a fast parallel card costing £99 +VAT (£110
through Archive). If you want to expand to colour, the upgrade kit
including colour head and software costs £149 +VAT (£165 through
Archive) and a lighting unit is available to provide even illumination
of the objects being scanned. This costs £92 +VAT (£105 through
Archive).
5.6
•   Junior PinPoint is a version of Longman Logotron’s “new generation
database”, PinPoint, aimed at primary schools. It has a reduced set of
facilities and a simplified user interface. It is intended for use at
Key Stages 1 & 2. The cost is £24 +VAT from Longman or £26 through
Archive.
5.6
•   PAL colour decoder − Pineapple Software have produced a PAL colour
decoder. This allows an Archimedes monitor to be used as a TV set (by
using a video recorder as a tuner) or as an S-VHS TV monitor. The
decoder also acts as an S-VHS adaptor for the Pineapple Digitiser (or
any other digitiser that requires R, G, B and sync signals). The price
is £79 +VAT.
5.6
•   Pineapple digitiser software − Pineapple have released a new version
of the software for their colour digitiser. This comes as a free upgrade
to owners. It provides the facility to capture a sequence of frames −
the fastest is up to every third frame − and it could be used for time-
lapse camera work. There is also a replay facility with variable replay
speed.
5.6
•   PC 386 Card − Aleph One has launched its PC expansion card for the
Archimedes. This remarkable single-width podule works in conjunction
with the PC Emulator (v1.6 or greater), and provides a 20 MHz Intel
80386SX-compatible PC in a window (or, if you prefer, full-screen) with
VGA, EGA, CGA or MDA graphics − truly two computers in one! It is fitted
with a bi-directional parallel port and an RS232 serial port, and comes
with 1M RAM as standard. The card can be upgraded to 4M RAM and can
optionally be fitted with an Intel 80387SX floating-point processor. The
basic price for the 1M version is £495 +VAT; the 4M version is £625 +VAT
and the floating point processor costs another £99 +VAT. Archive prices
are £545, £680 and £110 respectively.
5.6
•   Smart Art! − 4Mation have launched yet more packs in their SmArt
series. Each costs £16 +VAT from 4Mation or £18 through Archive.
SmArtoons has twelve characters, two backgrounds and a suggestions file
and is aimed at the creation of animations and cartoons. Aliens consists
of lots of different aliens. Look SmArt has a number of animal faces and
human faces with a whole range of facial expression. The existing
packages, Leisure, Homes and Faces are now also available in French and
German (£16 per language per pack +VAT or £18 through Archive). Finally,
they now have a Modern Languages pack covering words associated with
meals and looking at items on a supermarket shelf. This two disc set
which has all the words in each of nine modern languages (French,
German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Hebrew and Greek)
costs £20 +VAT or £22 through Archive.
5.6
•   Special Needs Trackerball − Northwest SEMERC, in collaboration with
Penny and Giles, have produced a trackerball for the Archimedes for use
by people with poor motor control or learning difficulties. It is more
rugged than the conventional trackerballs and has special functions such
as the ability to simulate “double-clicking” (a difficult task for some
special needs users) by a single key press. Dragging, which also causes
difficulty, is made easier with a single key. Special keys are also
provided to allow movement to be limited to up/down or left/right only −
particularly useful for navigating your way through menus (which the
able-bodied sometimes find difficult!). The ArcTracker, as it is called,
costs £269 +VAT from Northwest SEMERC.
5.6
•   Split an Image is Sherston Software’s latest offering. For £19.95
+VAT, you get around 100 draw files of cartoons of “the rich and famous”
− could be quite useful with the forth-coming general election!
5.6
•   TouchType is a typing tutor from Iota Software Ltd. Chris Drage in
Acorn User described as “the definitive typing tutor for the
Archimedes”. It costs is £49.95 from Iota or £46 through Archive.
5.6
•   Touch window from Lindis is a transparent membrane that fits over the
monitor and provides a resistive matrix of 256 × 256 points to provide a
touch screen effect. Put it on the table and it becomes a concept
keyboard. Put it over a picture on the table and it can be used for
tracing. The price is £235 +VAT which includes driver software, cables
and p.s.u.
5.6
•   Widgit Software has produced a number of programs aimed at primary and
special needs areas. Screenplay (£35 +VAT) allows you to produce simple
animations and stories by adding foreground pictures onto a background,
adding text titles and sound. You can add animation or you can create
exercises for the pupils to do using the collages that you have
produced. Gridit (£30 +VAT) is a flexible program designed to develop
spatial awareness, early number skills and logical thinking. It is
versatile enough to be used for those with severe learning difficulties
and also right up to children at Key Stage 2. Blob 1 and Blob 2 (£18
+VAT each) are two programs centred around a friendly little character
called “Blob” and are aimed at developmentally very young children. They
operate from single key / switch inputs. Count with Blob (£20 +VAT) is a
range of early number activities for infant and nursery level children.
5.6

•   Aliped − A multi-directional scrolling game from Alien Images / Dabs
Press in which you wander around a castle trying to shake off the spell
that has been cast upon you by the evil step-mother of a fair princess.
The price is £14.95 from Dabs Press or £14 through Archive.
5.7
•   Budget DTP − is a new book from Roger Amos, published by Dabs Press at
£12.95 (£13 inclusive through Archive). It shows how you can use Draw
and Edit to do DTP on Archimedes computers (RISC-OS 2 only) without
going to the expense of buying a DTP package. Chapters include, What is
DTP?, Draw in depth, Edit in depth, The font system, Page layout, etc.
5.7
(I was amused to see that although “the author’s text was prepared using
!Edit and !Draw”, the book was produced “using an Apple Mac DTP system”.
Ed.)
5.7
•   Charm − This compiled language with assembler, linker, editor,
tutorial, two games (including source code) was mentioned by David Wild
in his Languages Column (Archive 4.11 p34). It now has a desktop shell
from which to run the utilities. The program is distributed by David
Pilling and is now available through Archive at £6.
5.7
•   Colony Rescue − This new adventure game from Alien Images / Dabs Press
is set in 2143 AD when the universe has started to contract, causing the
innermost galaxies’ fine balance to be upset. Their only chance is you
in your humble rescue ship! The price is £14.95 from Dabs Press or £14
through Archive.
5.7
•   Desktop Publishing on Acorn Computers − This booklet which I offered
free of charge two months ago is finally in print. I am sorry that it
has taken so long to produce but once I got started on it, it grew and
grew. I employed two consultants to give their expertise in comparing
Acorn systems with Mac and PC and the resulting document is 20 pages
long! The evidence as to the superiority of Acorn systems over Macs,
pound for pound, is quite staggering. If you know anyone who is
interested in setting up a DTP facility, let us know and we’ll send them
a copy of the booklet. I have reproduced part of the booklet in this
month’s magazine because I think it is important information. (See pages
69.)
5.7
(I offered the booklet free of charge and  will stick to that offer if
you are seriously interested in buying a DTP system. However, if all
subscribers asked for a free copy just because it was free, it would
cost me a couple of thousand pounds. So, if you felt you could contrib
ute to the cost, I would be most grateful. The cover price is 75p, but
50p would just about cover the printing and postage.)
5.7
•   Grievous Bodily ’ARM − Fourth Dimension’s latest offering is a
“brutal, uninhibited arcade beat ’em up” game. The excuse for the punch
up is that you are trying to save the city from an evil scientist who is
making vast amounts of cheap illegal narcotics and you have to ‘get him’
in order to save the city from his grip! £24.95 from 4th Dimension or
£23 through Archive.
5.7
•   Newton − Longman Logotron have produced another package extending the
use of their Logo language. Newton enables pupils to study the concept
of forces. You can give your turtle mass, apply forces to it and see how
it behaves. You can also explore frictionless surfaces, bouncing balls
and collisions. The cost is £19 +VAT from Longman Logotron or £21
through Archive.
5.7
•   (another) PC Emulator upgrade − Version 1.8 of the Acorn PC Emulator
(AKA70), which incorporates support for VGA graphics and Expanded memory
LIM 3.2, will be released on April 21st 1992. The RRP remains the same
at £99 +VAT (or £96 inc VAT through Archive).
5.7
The product includes the new version of the emulator, MS-DOS3.30, a
revised manual and MS-DOS CD-ROM extensions (MSCDEX 2.20). You can
configure the emulator to use VGA support, which allows you to run DOS
applications which make use of VGA. This includes many of the range of
CD-ROM titles listed in the NCET CD-ROM scheme for schools.
5.7
The memory requirements of version 1.8 when running without VGA support
are the same as version 1.7. You can run DOS applications in single-
tasking mode only in 1M but to use both multi-tasking and single-tasking
modes, you need 2M or more.
5.7
When configured to use the VGA support, some applications may need more
than 2M to run in multi-tasking mode, but will still run in single-
tasking mode. This includes the CD-ROM titles for which you need 4M, if
you want to run them in multi-tasking mode.
5.7
There will be an upgrade to 1.8 (AKA71) for existing owners of the PC
Emulator available from 1st June (sic) until 1st September 1992. It will
contain the 1.8 PC Emulator and manual only, with no CD-ROM extensions
or DOS disc; users retain their current DOS disc.
5.7
The price for upgrading to 1.8 is £9 +VAT from version 1.6 or 1.7 and
£29 +VAT from a version earlier than 1.6. This upgrade is available for
all existing owners of the PC Emulator, whether originally supplied with
MS-DOS or DR-DOS.
5.7
There is a special upgrade offer for Educational institutions which are
using version 1.6 or 1.7. This allows institutions to purchase one unit
of the upgrade for £9 and copy the disc to replace all their units of
1.6 and 1.7.
5.7
The PC Emulator 1.8 manual (AKJ35) is available separately at £8 (no VAT
payable).
5.7
•   PDSview − Spacetech have produced a package which allows access to
data from NASA’s Planetary Data System available on CD-ROM. The viewer
allows you to enhance images, use false colour or construct true multi-
spectral colour images, to make “movie” sequences as well as examine
features such a volcanoes or to make 3D projections of the surface of
planets. The package is fully RISC-OS compliant and the PC Emulator is
not required to run the package. PDSview forms a powerful image
processor in its own right. PDSview is £99.50 +VAT (£108 through
Archive) and this includes a disc full of sample images. If you have a
CD-ROM, you can then buy a two-disc sampler set of some 1,500 images
which includes various views of volcanoes and views from a range of
spacecraft including Voyager, Nimbus, Landsat, NOAA, etc. The sampler
set costs £40 +VAT (or £44 through Archive). The main database of images
− 26,000 in all(!) − comes on 12 CDs and covers the complete Voyager
mission. This costs £200 +VAT (or £220 through Archive).
5.7
•   RISC-OS 3 printer driver − A5000 owners will be pleased to hear that
Ace Computing have now done a RISC-OS 3 printer driver for the HP
Deskjet 500C. It will also work on the HP PaintJet and the PaintJet XL.
The price is £18.80 inc VAT from Ace or £17 through Archive.
5.7
•   Starch − An arcade action game from Alien Images / Dabs Press set in a
launderette! Harry and Dave are working through the night trying to
clear the backlog of unfinished washing. (Doesn’t exactly sound an
exciting scenario but Ed’s two sons, aged 11 and 13, certainly enjoyed
playing with the review copy of the game.) The price is £14.95 from Dabs
Press or £14 through Archive.
5.7
•   Titler − Clares Micros have released their new video titling and
presentation package called Titler. For £149.95 inc VAT (£135 through
Archive) you get two packages − Titler itself which you use to combine
input from Artisan2, Artisan, Illusionist and RenderBender II and add
titles in various fonts to create screens for display − and Sequencer to
combine the screens together with special effects such as fade, wipe,
scroll, etc. It also takes input from Tracker and Armadeus. Link it with
a genlock system and you can create professional standard video-titling.
5.7
•   Vidi-Archimedes − A video digitiser for the Archimedes from Rombo
Productions. For £149 +VAT, you get a digitiser that can grab frames
from moving video at 320 × 256 pixels in 16 grey shades and can replay
frames at 10 per second. If you work from a still video image, you can
use the built-in electronic filters to build up a full colour image at
up to 640 × 256 in 256 colour.
5.7

•   A5000 CD-ROM offer − Acorn are offering to education (yes, education,
only, I’m afraid) a “complete A5000 CD-ROM system” for £1799 +VAT. This
consists of an A5000 (not Learning Curve), 40M IDE, 4M ram (not 2M),
Acorn multisync monitor, Cumana CD-ROM drive and SCSI interface, a pair
of mains powered stereo speakers, seven CD-ROM discs (Hutchinson
Encyclopedia, Revelation 2, Space Encyclopedia, Times and Sunday Times
Sampler, Illustrated Holy Bible, Illustrated Works of Shakespeare,
Sherlock Holmes), PC Emulator 1.8, !CD Player to play audio CDs, Cumana
SCSI utilities, ChangeFSI, three CD caddies, mouse mat, Access to Cumana
CD-ROM hotline, £25-off voucher for a year’s subscription to NERIS, £30
voucher for a year’s subscription to The Times and Sunday Times CD
(RISC-OS version). This package will be available through Archive. (An
A3000 upgrade version to add on to an existing A3000 is said to be
“available 1 July” and will be £599 +VAT.)
5.8
I have been down to Acorn to look at this system and it looks very
exciting, especially when you compare it to the offerings for Mac, PC
and Nimbus, etc. It seems to be another area, like DTP, where Acorn
could shine because of the high power/price ratio of the A5000. We
really need someone to write something for Archive about it. The trouble
is that, unlike DTP, I make no claim to be an expert on it. Any offers?
Ed.
5.8
•   Archimedes Open Day − The University of Sussex is having an Open Day
on 2nd July to demonstrate the use of the Archimedes in the teaching of
Mathematics and Statistics. Contact Dr D.R.Robinson on 0273−606755 for
details.
5.8
•   Base5 programs − There are now two more programs to add to the Base5
database management system. They are AdMaths which is an advanced
mathematics and statistics package and Mailmerge which is a flexible
mailmerge system allowing the merging of information from different
databases. The prices are £25 and £10 respectively but there is no VAT
payable on them. (Base5 itself costs £69.)
5.8
•   Cheap A540’s − We can still get hold of a few of the cheap (but brand
new) A540’s that we mentioned last month. They will be £1925 inc VAT and
carriage each. (Beebug still have three available, they tell me, at
£1875 − yer pays yer money...) We also have a couple of ex-demonstration
A540’s. These have been reconditioned and have a full 12 months’
warranty. These cost £1725 inclusive.
5.8
•   Chameleon upgrade − 4mation have produced a new version of Chameleon
which has “lots of new features including fountain fills”. The new price
is £37.50 +VAT (or £41 through Archive) and the old program is no longer
available. The upgrade from the old version is £12.50 +VAT but is only
available direct from 4mation.
5.8
•   ClearView − A new hypertext application is available from DEC_dATA. It
allows you to display, search, cross-reference and print text files. The
application costs only £10. There are two ClearView files available −
Columbus’ First Voyage (£6.95) aimed at primary and lower secondary and
Scientists and Inventors (£8.95) which contains the biographies of over
300 scientists and inventors. There is also a version of ClearView that
allows you to compile your own files. This costs £50 from DEC_dATA.
5.8
•   Clipart − Primary Education Services are producing large amounts of
clip art on a whole range of subjects aimed especially at primary
education but useful for anyone interested in the particular subject.
The discs are £5 each (+ VAT) or £4.50 each if you order 4 or more discs
at once. Add £1.50 for postage and packing. The subjects currently
available are as follows (most are single discs but those which are two-
disc sets are marked with a super-scripted 2): Pets, Farm Animals,
Wildcats, Birds of Prey, Pond Life2, The Body, The Circulatory System,
The Human Skeleton, Man in Space, Leicestershire2, Sikhism, Mecca and
Medina, Diwali, Chinese New Year, Christmas, The Romans, The Vikings and
The Greeks.
5.8
•   Colour scanning and printing − BirdTech are offering services of
colour scanning using a Sharp JX100, laser printing using a Laser Direct
600 d.p.i. and colour printing using a Deskjet 500C.
5.8
(The leaflet that BirdTech sent us was very impressive − it was in
colour but it was crystal clear, laser quality. The technique used is
simple but very effective. The coloured parts − a big bold title and a
logo − were printed on the DJ500C and the main text was printed
separately on the laser printer. The overall effect made you think it
was done on a colour laser printer. It wasn’t until you looked carefully
at the colour parts that you realised they were not such high quality as
the main text.)
5.8
•   Datapower − SterrySoft has produced a new database for schools use.
Its capacity is 960 records with up to 24 fields. It uses a 24 field by
24 record spreadsheet type display and has a range of editing and
reporting facilities. The cost is £29.95 (no VAT).
5.8
•   Desktop Thesaurus − Risc Developments have produced a desktop
thesaurus which is fully RISC-OS compliant. You can type in the word you
want to check or you can “save” it from an editor or DTP package into
the thesaurus window and it will offer you various alternatives. £19
+VAT from Risc Developments.
5.8
•   Diction is a RISC-OS compliant dictionary program from New Era
Software. It has a 6,000+ word dictionary and costs £15 (no VAT) from
New Era. This price includes a site licence.
5.8
•   Dictionaries for German, French and Spanish − New Era Software have
produced fully defined G.C.S.E. dictionaries in three European langu
ages. These are RISC-OS compliant programs and costing £25 each (no VAT)
from New Era. This price includes a site licence.
5.8
•   Digitising tablet − Techsoft have just produced a new digitising
tablet with a 12“ × 12” active area. It comes with both a stylus for
freehand work and a puck-type pointer with cross-hairs for accurate
work. The software is a sophisticated mouse emulation program so that
the tablet can be used with any applications software. The price is £175
+VAT.
5.8
•   Eizo F550i − Eizo UK have just produced another new monitor that looks
as if it might be a replacement for the now discontinued 9070. It is the
F550i. The basic facts are: 17“, 0·28mm dot pitch, flat screen (but not
Trinitron), microprocessor controlled, Archive price £890 inc VAT &
carriage. It will need a VIDC enhancer (£28) if used with A300/400/3000
computers or an enhancer modes disc (£5) if used with A540 or A5000. I
am using one at the moment and am extremely pleased with it, especially
the microprocessor control which makes it much easier to use when
changing from mode to mode. Once set up in the different modes that you
use, there is no need to make any adjustments to the size, position or
shape of the display. The display is so clear that I can display the
whole of the double page spread of this magazine and still see the words
clearly enough to edit the text − well, not clearly enough to want to do
a lot of editing at that magnification, but it is possible which it
certainly wasn’t on the 9060 or the 9070.
5.8
We also stock the Eizo T560i which is 17“ but 0.25 mm dot pitch and uses
a Trinitron tube. The members’ price is £1240. Putting the two side by
side, it seems to have exactly the same resolution as the F550i but the
T560i’s colours are much more saturated and there is a much greater
range of brightness available.
5.8
•   Floptical drives − Morley Electronics are the first company (to the
best of our knowledge) to implement the new floptical drives on the
Archimedes. These are very high density (20M) floppy drives that use
optical techniques to give accurate enough tracking to achieve the high
packing density. The same drives will also read, write and format 720k
and 1.44M floppy discs. This is an advantage to non-A5000 owners as it
adds 1.44M to the list of disc formats they can read. Morley are working
on the suppliers of the flopticals in order to get information that will
allow them to write software to read and write all the Acorn formats.
The flopticals could then be used as a replacement for a standard floppy
drive.
5.8
The drives are available now and sell at Archive prices of £625 for the
external drive, £475 for the internal (which can also be fitted by a
dealer or a competent DIYer into an A5000 as a second drive), £685 for
an external drive plus a podule and £570 for an internal drive plus a
podule. Each drive comes with one floptical disc. Extra discs cost £35
each or £165 for a set of 5. These are SCSI devices, so IDE owners will
need to buy a separate SCSI podule.
5.8
Owners of existing Morley SCSI podules need a software update which can
be obtained from Morley for £10 +VAT. Owners of other SCSI podules will
have to replace their card with a Morley one because you cannot have two
SCSI podules in a computer at once and none of the other podules, as
yet, will support the flopticals. (We have asked Oak Solutions about the
situation but have not, as yet, had any response. Lindis UK say that
they do not, currently, have any plans to write suitable software so
that they can be run from their SCSI interfaces. Acorn are, I would
guess, unlikely to extend their SCSI software to include flopticals.) We
hope to have a floptical drive for testing purposes in the next few
days, so we will give further reports next month.
5.8
•   G-Draft − is a 2D CAD program which can output to HPGL plotters or dot
matrix printers via files in Draw format that are passed to the RISC-OS
printer driver. It is fully RISC-OS compliant and offers a range of
features including automatic dimensioning, 8 layer drawings, HPGL input,
symbols can be input from or output to disk libraries, etc. The price is
£80 excluding VAT but including postage from G-Soft in Germany.
5.8
•   Graphics & font packs − Logan Interactive have produced a series of
fonts and graphics packs: Bullets (highlighting symbols) £8.95, Liner
(family of 4 fonts) £24.95, Sunshine (decorative font) £8.95, Railway
mapping symbols (2 fonts + graphics) £24.95, Transport 1 (transport
pictograms − 1 font + graphics) £16.95 and Transport 2 (route diagram
symbols − 1 font + graphics) £16.95. Here is a sample of Transport 1: a
f  g  h  m  y .
5.8
•   Inkjet refills and cheap inkjet cartridges are available from a
company called HCS (not HCCS of Acorn fame) on 0800−252−252.
5.8
•   Interacter 1.60 − The Fortran user interface/graphic subroutine
library, Interacter is available from Interactive Software Services. It
is a subroutine library which allows menus, forms, text windows and high
resolution graphics to be added to Fortran software in a system
independent manner. It is available for RISC-OS, RISC-iX, DOS, DEC VAX/
VMS, PRIMOS and various other Unix systems. The RISC-iX version costs
£950 +VAT for a two-developer licence (or £570 +VAT for education). A
single user RISC-OS licence costs £195 +VAT (£146.25 +VAT for
education).
5.8
•   MicroDrive World Edition − Cambridge International Software have
produced a version of their well-established 3D golf simulator with
seven courses covering English parkland, Spanish riviera, US lakeside,
US pine forest, Caribbean, Scottish links and Portuguese coastal. £29.95
from CIS or £27 through Archive.
5.8
•   National Curriculum Planner and Database − New Era Software have
produced a database and a planner for those having to plough their way
through the administration involved with the National Curriculum.
NCPlanner is aimed at the task of recording National Curriculum
assessments and NCBase is used to generate progress charts. The two
programs together cost £25 or £40 inclusive of site licence and
automatic upgrades.
5.8
•   PinPoint upgrade − Longman Logotron have issued an upgrade to their
PinPoint database. The extra facilities, including horizontal bar and
line charts and extra options for many of the existing features, is free
of charge to existing owners. All registered users of PinPoint should
have received their free upgrades by the end of April.
5.8
•   Precision is a RISC-OS compliant reading program produced by New Era
Software and aimed at special needs students. It has facilities for
learning, testing and recording and uses a limited number of selected
words. You can also include pictures if you wish and it costs £20 (no
VAT) from New Era including a site licence.
5.8
•   PrimeArt upgrade − PrimeArt from Minerva will now work in mode 21 and
has new features including support for concept keyboards, sticky menus
and brush latching. The upgrade costs £10 +VAT from Minerva. The
PrimeArt package is £79.95 +VAT or £87 through Archive including a
primary or special needs site licence.
5.8
•   PrimeArt display kit − Minerva now produce a program to allow you to
create a rolling demo of PrimeArt pictures just by dropping the files
into a directory. The price is £12 +VAT from Minerva.
5.8
•   Science control software and hardware − SterrySoft produces a control
box (£19.95) and three applications packages (£9.95 each). The control
box connects up to an analogue port (not standard on Archimedes but
available as an add-on podule) and provides inputs that can be used for
temperature sensors, pendulum recording and car-on-ramp type
experiments.
5.8
•   !SFXM − This is Cambridge International Software’s new sound effects
maker. In software, you combine oscillators, noise generators, envelope
generators, pulse generators, low-pass and high-pass filters, multi
pliers, sample and hold, variable delays, echo and reverb, etc to create
interesting new sounds. Apart from the fun aspect and applications where
sound effects are needed, I can see this being used in education as a
way of investigating the effects of some of the fundamental components
such as filters, delays, etc. The price is £39.95 from CIS or £37 from
Archive.
5.8
•   Supermarket is a RISC-OS compliant program produced by New Era
Software and aimed at special needs students. It is a simple simulation
of a supermarket and comes in five different languages under the names
Supermarket, Archfarchnad, Supermarkt, Supermarché and Supermercado. The
programs are £10 each from New Era (no VAT) including a site licence but
if you buy more than one at a time, the first one costs £10 and extra
languages are then £8 each.
5.8
•   Swiv − Krisalis have ported their Atari/Amiga etc game, Swiv, onto the
Archimedes. Fly a helicopter gunship or drive an armoured jeep and...
...well, blow everybody up, I suppose! The cost is £25.95 or £24 through
Archive.
5.8
•   Tapestry software − SterrySoft has produced a program that will allow
you to design tapestry on a 50 × 40 grid in 8 colours with two styles of
stitch. Designs can be saved for later use and colour printed. The cost
is £9.95 (no VAT).
5.8
•   Virus watch − Pineapple Software have introduced a new service for all
Archimedes owners to combat the growing threat of viruses. The service
will operate as follows:
5.8
1)  On payment of a small annual registration fee (£24 + VAT), customers
will receive a disc containing details of all known Archimedes viruses
together with software developed under licence from Acorn Computers
Limited, which will render all of the known viruses ineffective. Further
discs will be sent out to customers during the year as more viruses
become known and, in the case of any particularly damaging virus, an
immediate innoculation disc will be sent to all customers.
5.8
2)  Pineapple will act as a central point for collecting information
about new viruses. Any Archimedes users who suspect they have suffered
the effects of a new virus (i.e. one that is not cured by Pineapple’s
latest release of software) should send full details to Pineapple.
5.8
3)  In extreme circumstances (if all else fails!), they will offer an
‘on site’ cure to customers, although the cost of this will have to be
arranged on an  individual basis.
5.8
Pineapple would like to stress that they are not trying to make a profit
out of the warped pleasure that some people seem to get from creating
these viruses − hence the charge which, it is estimated, will just about
cover the running of the service.
5.8
Unfortunately, judging from the experiences of PC users, viruses are
here to stay but Pineapple think they may at least be able to help
control the problem even though it is unlikely that it can ever be
completely eliminated.
5.8

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

•   Acorn Portable − The new Acorn portable computer is here! Turn to page
5 for full details.
5.10
•   Animals − The latest offering in 4Mation’s set of SmArt files is
Animals which provides nine animals with various backdrops to put them
on and a set of ideas for their use. The price is £16 +VAT from 4Mation
or £18 through Archive.
5.10
•   ARM3 prices down − CJE Micros have again dropped the price of their
ARM3 upgrade − this time to £169 +VAT or £195 through Archive. Aleph One
are maintaining their price of £199 +VAT on the basis of their belief
that it is a technically superior product. We are making a slight
concession to CJE’s price drop and reducing the Archive price of the
Aleph One ARM3 to £215. (The A3000 version remains at an Archive price
of £285 including 2-way carriage.)
5.10
•   Banner − Kudlian Soft have produced a RISC-OS compliant banner-maker
which uses outline fonts and RISC-OS printer drivers to create banners.
You can either print them on fanfold paper along the length of the
paper, or on page-based printers such as Deskjets or Laser Directs,
ready to fix together to make up a composite banner. The price is £15
+VAT or £17 through Archive.
5.10
•   BasShrink − After the review in Archive 5.8, Architype have modified,
improved and enhanced their Basic program compressor and produced
BasShrink 2.14.
5.10
•   Calligraph 600 d.p.i. laser − Calligraph are now selling a (true) 600
d.p.i. A3 size, 8 p.p.m. direct drive laser printer, the TQ-1200. This
is true 600 d.p.i. and, with image enhancement, can give a simulated
1200 d.p.i. (In the same way, the CC Laser Directs are really 300 d.p.i.
but with image enhancement give a simulated 600 d.p.i.) The TQ-1200 has
a 250 sheet paper cassette, can handle paper sizes from A6 to A3 and has
a 150 sheet multi-purpose feeder option which enables it to take
envelopes, transparencies, labels and also paper plates and Plazer
plates. You can also add an extra 250 sheet paper cassette for dual bin
use or for heavy network use. The output is VERY impressive. I am hoping
to do some blow-ups next month to show the difference between 300/600
d.p.i. printing and 600/1200. The price is £4995 +VAT from Calligraph or
£5650 through Archive. If you want to use it at full resolution, I guess
you will need a machine with at least 8M of RAM.
5.10
(•   Carewares 17 & 18 − There has been a delay in the production of
the two Careware discs we mentioned last month, so this is to say that
Carewares 17 and 18 are NOT available yet.)
5.10
•   CSVtoText − This application was written, initially, to solve the
problem of getting PinPoint output in CSV format and converting it into
a sensible format for putting into Impression. However, it can be used
for any such conversion from CSV to text. The price from Architype
Software is £9 for business, secondary or tertiary education and £5 for
home, primary, infant or junior schools. (A PD version of CSVtoText is
included on this month’s program disc.)
5.10
•   Eizo 9070’s − Yes, that does say “9070”. Eizo have found a number of
the very popular 16“ monitors that they discontinued in favour of the
new F550i. The rrp was £899 +VAT (£1056). We sold them at an Archive
discount price of £790 inc VAT (rrp’s on monitors are never very
realistic!) and can offer these monitors at £690. However, if you want
one, you will have to move fast − indeed they may all be gone by the
time this gets into print.
5.10
•   ExcellonDrill − Anyone using ArcPCB and having access to an Excellon
automatic drilling machine will be pleased to hear that Silicon Vision
have produced a driver to enable you to create drill files. The price is
£75 +VAT from Silicon Vision.
5.10
•   Floating point co-processor − If you want a 387SX floating point co-
processor for the Aleph One 386 card, they are available for £108
through Archive.
5.10
•   Gods − This is an arcade game converted from the Atari by Krisalis. As
Hercules, you have to search the depths of an ancient city in search of
immortality. The game boasts 15 different weapons systems plus 20
potions and power-ups plus a host of intelligent monsters. The price is
£25.99 from Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
5.10
•   Interface podules for A3000 − Commotion now sell two interface podules
for the A3000. The original user/analogue port podule at £49.95 +VAT is
now joined by a user/analogue/midi port podule at £79.95 +VAT.
5.10
•   Nebulus − Another arcade game from Krisalis. This one involves
destroying giant towers that someone has built in the sea. You start off
in your mini-sub and try to demolish the towers without getting wiped
out yourself. The price is £25.99 from Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
5.10
•   Ovation 1.3 − By the time you read this, Risc Developments should have
released an update to Ovation. This will now include mail-merge,
pamphlet printing, rotating pictures, First Word Plus importing and a
Thesaurus hotlink. The price is still £99 +VAT or £110 through Archive.
5.10
•   Removable hard drives − There has been another drop in the price of
the removable hard drives. The 42M drives are now down to £455 inc VAT
(cf Morley’s 42M at £499 +VAT) and the 84M down to £670 inc VAT (cf
Morley’s 84M @ £699 +VAT). The cheapest we could find elsewhere for the
42M drives was £449 +VAT = £527, so we are still keeping Archive’s
prices well below the competition.
5.10
•   RISC-OS Turbo Driver for BJ10ex − This is the first in a series of new
printer drivers produced by Computer Concepts. The idea is that they use
CC’s FastText rendering technique developed for the Laser Directs and
now benefiting users of other printers. They print up to three times as
fast as the standard Acorn printer drivers. The driver for the BJ10ex is
the first of a series and provides half tone printing in up to 128 grey
levels as well as plain text printing in any font style, portrait or
landscape. The drivers come bundled with twelve Acorn outline fonts plus
the Acorn outline font manager. The software plus lead costs £49 +VAT
(£53 through Archive) or you can buy it with the printer for just £249
+VAT (or £275 through Archive).
5.10
•   ScanLight Junior 256 − After a long delay due to difficulty of supply,
the ScanLight Junior 256 scanners are available again. Supplies are a
little bit limited because the demand is so high but, as of today, I can
say that they are actually “in stock”. There is also a price drop.
ScanLight 256 is now £199 +VAT or £225 through Archive.
5.10
•   Toner cartridges for Telethon − Are you wondering what to do with
those used toner cartridges? Surely, they should be able to be re-
cycled? Well, they can and you can make some money for the ITV Telethon
fund-raising marathon. The EcoCare Group will give about £3 to £4 per
cartridge to charity. If you live in East Anglia, they will collect the
cartridges from you − just ring 0263−513553 to arrange collection.
Otherwise, you can send your old cartridges to us and they will collect
them from here.
5.10
•   SPECIAL DEALS − One of the three Acorn distributors is closing down
and is selling off Archimedes hardware and software. For example,
Prolog-X, which sold at £179, is available for £25. Marconi Trackerballs
(normally £56) are £35. PrimeArt (was £87) is £25 and Numerator (was
£80) is £25. For a full list, see the extra sheet in the Price List.
5.10

•   Analogue simulation package − Mijas Software have produced a general
purpose ‘analogue’ simulation package called ArcSimp. It provides
integrators, summers, function generators, trig functions, etc and will
allow you to model all sorts of different systems. ArcSimp costs £50
including VAT and p&p from Mijas and they also sell a demonstration
version for £5 refundable against a purchase of the full system.
5.11
•   Archimedes Basic Compiler (ABC) − Oak Solutions, who now distribute
the ABC compiler, have produced a version 3. This is a re-presented
version with extra facilities and sells at £99.95 +VAT or £105 through
Archive. We hope to have a review of it in due course.
5.11
•   Castle Life − Oak Solutions have produced a package to allow children
to explore a mediæval castle, using plans and views to plan and execute
their own “visit”. The material relates to History Key Stage 3 and
Technology Attainment Target 5. Two discs, one manual and twelve
worksheets cost £50 +VAT from Oak Solutions.
5.11
•   Clipart by the volume − 23 volumes of clip art from Image Club
Graphics of Canada which were originally only available on Macs and PCs
are now available in Archimedes Draw format. Matt Black (that’s the name
of the company) sells the 23 volumes for £29.95 each. A full catalogue
is available from Matt Black for £7.95 inc p&p.
5.11
•   Clipart on CD-ROM − APA Multimedia have produced “The Really Useful
CD-ROM Vol. 1” at £49 +VAT which contains “megabytes of clipart in Draw
and sprite format” plus some sound samples.
5.11
•   DrawBook − A great help for those doing budget DTP is Emerald
Publishing’s DrawBook. It allows you to combine drawfiles, one for each
page, to create a book. The order and contents of the book can be edited
and it also enables headers and footers to be printed on each page. The
cost is £15 +VAT or £16 through Archive.
5.11
   Landmarks − Longman Logotron have just released another two in their
Landmarks series of educational information packages. They are “Aztecs”
and “Columbus” and each costs £24 +VAT or £26 through Archive.
5.11
•   My Town/Village is a resources pack (£7.50 +VAT) for use with the My
World Package (£15 +VAT) from NW SEMERC. It includes a range of
pictorial scenes depicting towns and villages through the centuries.
5.11
•   Multiple CD-ROMs − Cumana have reduced the price of their “6-pack” CD-
ROM drives to £1499 +VAT. These provide six drives that can be used on a
network, all 6 drives being accessible simultaneously.
5.11
•   PenDown Plus − A new version of PenDown has been released (£79 +VAT or
£85 through Archive). Extra features include a new 65,000 word diction
ary with check-as-you-type, font find-and-replace, table editing,
mailmerge and address database.
5.11
•   Portable trackerball − (Ed’s wish in last month’s “A4” article has
come true!) PEP Associates have converted the Logitech Trackman Portable
− a serial trackerball − to work on the serial port of the new A4 (and
presumably also the A5000, though that is less relevant). You can buy
the full package including carrying case, various cables and adaptors
and the A4 software for £95 inclusive or for £45 you can get just the
software and the trackerball (with, presumably, a cable to connect to
the A4). If you already have a Trackman Portable, you can buy the
software on its own from PEP for £19.
5.11
•   Professional Tools Pack 1 − Electronic Solutions have produced a set
of RISC-OS utilities for £14.95 +VAT. These include monitor protector
and data security program, colour enhancement software, animated generic
ARM3 control software, module protector utilities, key-activated
utilities and utility manager, multisync monitor emulator, system speed
controller and a fix for RISC-OS 2’s “FileCore in use” bug.
5.11
•   Prolog is back! − Keylink Computers Ltd have produced a version of
Prolog for the Archimedes (2M or more). It costs £69.95 +VAT and uses
the standard Edinburgh text. It comes with a 120+ page manual with a
large amount of background information.
5.11
•   Risc Basic Compiler − Silicon Vision have produced a version 3 of
their Risc Basic Compiler which also links in with Acorn’s DDE. It sells
at £149.95 inc VAT or £135 through Archive. We hope to have a review of
it in due course.
5.11
•   Saloon Cars De-Luxe − Fourth Dimension have now produced a de-luxe
version of Saloon Cars. For £34.95 (£33 through Archive) you get a range
of new and improved features. They have taken into account the fact that
some people have hard discs (onto which it can be installed), more than
1M and ARM3. In other words, on more powerful machines you will be able
to get more detail and/or speed.
5.11
•   SolidCAD release 5 is now available from Silicon Vision. It has a
bigger manual, a module for high speed animation, SuperPlot driver,
SuperDump driver, 24bit RGB output, high speed rendering (claiming to be
“the fastest rendering package”), drawfile output, etc. £149.95 inc VAT
from Silicon Vision.
5.11
•   The Last Ninja − In another series of battles against evil, you have
to use swords, nunchakus and shiraken stars to rescue the stolen scrolls
of Ninja. You also have to solve some devious puzzles in over 140
“action-packed screens”. The Last Ninja costs £24.95 from Superior or
£23 through Archive.
5.11
•   ThinkSheet − In the very early days of Archive, I asked for an ideas
processor for the Archimedes. Having got used to using one on the Mac, I
felt I was missing out. At last there is one available. Fisher Marriott
Software have had a Nimbus and PC version available for a while but have
now released a fully RISC-OS compatible version for the Archimedes.
ThinkSheet allows you to enter text, organise it, search through it and
reorganise it to your heart’s content − all in the RISC-OS environment.
Then you can export your text to a WP or DTP package. Facilities are
also provided for transferring information to and from ThinkSheets on
Nimbus and PC. The price is £39 +VAT from Fisher-Marriott and £89 +VAT
for a school site licence.
5.11
•   Training galore! − Several companies are now offering training courses
for end-users. Broad Oak Computers in Bishops Stortford (0279− 718767)
do courses on Impression, Squirrel, Schema, FWPlus, Artisan, Pendown and
the PC Emulator. They charge £50 +VAT per day. They also do a correspon
dence course on BBC Basic V. Acorn Computers in Cambridge (0223−214411)
do courses on Impression, Squirrel, Schema, PC Emulator, PinPoint,
Vector, PipeDream, Revelation and Magpie, plus more general ones on the
Learning Curve software and one on Graphics, Animation and Video. They
charge £49 +VAT per day. Minerva software in Exeter (0392− 426160) do
courses on Archimedes Awareness, Draw/Edit, Atelier, MultiStore/
Flexifile, Desktop Office, Impression and TimeTabler. They charge £60
+VAT per ½ day, £110 per full day or £150 per full day depending on the
course.
5.11
Interestingly, they all say that the most popular courses are the
general introductory ones and the ones on Impression. Does anyone know
of other companies doing such courses? Do any of them cover other
applications such as Ovation?
5.11

•   12 new Acorn computers!!!!! Yes, this month, Acorn have launched
twelve new computers as well as some other new products. Actually the
twelve are variants of four new computers (A3010, A3020, A4000 and Acorn
Pocket Book) and the A5000. Here are brief details but for full
technical details, see the enclosed supplement.
5.12
•   A3010 Family Solution is based on the exciting new A3010 computer and
is aimed at the home user. The A3010 uses an ARM250 processor which
gives it 50% more processing power than the current A3000. For £499 inc
VAT you get a computer that will connect to either a TV or a standard
resolution monitor or a multisync monitor. It has two joystick inter
faces (Atari switched-type), 1M RAM, upgradable to 2M, and comes with a
game (Quest For Gold), a wordprocessor (the new version of Easiword −
see below) and an audio training tape.
5.12
•   A3010 Learning Curve uses the same computer as the Family Solution but
is upgraded to 2M of RAM and is bundled with more software and comes
complete with an Acorn AKF40 monitor. For £799 inc VAT, in addition to
Easiword and Quest For Gold, you get a set of Genesis applications and
PCSoft (PC Emulator, by any other name, but now with DR-DOS 6).
5.12
•   A3020 is also an ARM250-based computer. However, in place of the TV
modulator it has an interface for an IDE hard drive and, in place of the
two joystick ports, there is space for networking circuits, either
Econet or Ethernet. The basic A3020 has 2M (upgradable to 4M) and comes
with an AKF40 monitor (see below) for £749 +VAT (£880) or £799 +VAT
(£939) with an AKF18 multisync monitor. There is also a 4M version with
a 60M internal IDE drive (which does not take up the mini-podule slot).
This costs £899 +VAT (£1056) with the AKF40 or £949 +VAT (£1115) with
the AKF18 multisync. (The exVAT education prices of the A3020 computers
are all £100 less than the end user prices.)
5.12
•   A4000 − The A4000 is basically an A3020 in a metal case but with a
larger (80M) hard drive. The A4000 looks very much like a ‘slim-line’
A5000. Like the A3020, it takes just one internal mini-podule. With an
AKF40 standard resolution monitor, it costs £949 +VAT (£1115) or with an
AKF18 multisync, it costs £999 +VAT (£1174). The exVAT educational
prices of the A4000 are £100 less than the end-user prices.
5.12
•   A4000 Home Office − This is a package aimed at the serious home user
and consists of an A4000 system, an advanced wordprocessor (EasiWriter
II from Icon Technology) and Desktop Database from Iota Software. With
an AKF40 monitor, it costs £999 +VAT (£1174) or with an AKF18 multisync,
it costs £1049 +VAT (£1233).
5.12
•   A5000 prices DOWN (and drive sizes UP!) The A5000 is now available in
two formats: the 2M/HD80, similar to the current A5000 but with 80M
drive instead of 40M at £1399 +VAT (£1644) and the 4M/HD120 with 4M of
RAM and a 120M hard drive for £1599 +VAT (£1879). (The education prices
are £1199 and £1399 +VAT respectively.) The A5000 Learning Curve version
is £1699 inc VAT and is based on the 2M/HD80 version. These computers
are still supplied with the AKF18 multisync monitor although some
dealers (including N.C.S.) may be persuaded to trade in an AKF18 against
a more expensive multisync monitor.
5.12
•   A5000 hard-drive-less computers − There are now two A5000 computers
available without hard drives (but with AKF18 multisync monitors). The
A5000 ES has an Econet interface and 2M of RAM and costs £1299 +VAT. The
A5000 NS has an Ethernet interface and 2M of RAM and costs £1399 +VAT.
(The education prices of these two computers are £1199 and £1299 +VAT
respectively.)
5.12
•   Acorn Pocket Book − Acorn have launched a pocket-sized computer
(developed in co-operation with Psion and bearing a remarkable similar
ity to the Psion Series 3). These will have an Archimedes link with
software that will make the Pocket Book appear as a filing system on the
host computer. The cost is £249.95 inc VAT.
5.12
•   AKF40 monitor − Acorn have launched a new monitor aimed particularly
at the A3010 and A3020 computers. It is functionally the same as the new
AKF17 standard resolution monitor with stereo sound output but it has a
tilt and swivel stand. The A3010 and the A3020 are not as deep as the
A3000, so the monitor can be self-standing, behind the computer.
5.12
•   AUN Level 4 Fileserver − The new version of Acorn’s Fileserver
incorporates the Acorn Universal Networking software. The price is £399
+VAT.
5.12
•   10 Out of 10 Maths is the first of a new series of educational
programs from Triple R, the educational arm of Fourth Dimension. Each of
the 10 out of 10 packages, including 10 Out of 10 Maths, consists of six
educational games. Each package will have two manuals − one for the
teachers and one for the pupils. Also, each will come with three sets of
graphics, the idea being that they are designed to appeal to different
age groups. This package covers areas of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, estimation,
units and powers. The software also includes a scoring system so that
teachers can see how the pupils are progressing. The price is £25.95
from Fourth Dimension or £24 through Archive.
5.12
•   2067 BC − “A wacky arcade caper, set in a weird era where just about
anything can and will happen. As Terrance Pterodactyl, you’re challenged
to complete your missions to resume life as you know it in 2067 BC.”
This new game from Oregan Developments costs £16.95 (no VAT).
5.12
•   Analogue simulation package − Mijas Software has produced a general
purpose ‘analogue’ simulation package called ArcSimp. It provides
integrators, summers, function generators, trig functions, etc and will
allow you to model all sorts of different systems. ArcSimp costs £50
including VAT and p&p from Mijas and they also sell a demonstration
version for £5 refundable against a purchase of the full system.
5.12
•   Colorgraf 0516 is an 8-pen A3 plotter for £295 (no VAT). It is HPGL
compatible, so as long as you have an appropriate driver such as
DrawPrint & Plot, it represents a very cheap plotting option. It can use
cheap felt-tip pens (e.g. a box of 50 for £2.99 from Asda). These
plotters are being imported from Czechoslovakia by O G Brown, 2 Westend
Villas, Westend Parade, Gloucester GL1 2RY. If you want to do a screen-
dump, software is available from the same source for £35 (no VAT).
5.12
•   Cyber Chess − Fourth Dimension have added chess to their long list of
games for the Archimedes. This is a RISC-OS compliant, 3D simulation
version − with 2D as an option. It implements full chess laws including
en passant, underpromotions and the 50/75 move rule. Cyber Chess is
£49.95 from Fourth Dimension or £46 through Archive.
5.12
•   Desktop Office version 2 − This is a slightly updated version of
Desktop Office from Minerva with a few extra features. The main change
is that it also includes a copy of the new Easiword as well as the
Wordwise Plus look-alike that version 1 contains. The price is £99 +VAT
or £108 through Archive.
5.12
•   Easiword version 2 − The original Easiword was a multi-tasking
Wordwise Plus look-alike and the new version is a First Word Plus look-
alike. The price is £59 +VAT or £64 through Archive.
5.12
•   Geordie Racer − This software from Longman Logotron is based on the
popular BBC School TV series, “Look & Read : Geordie Racer” which is due
for its next broadcast in Spring 1993. The TV programmes are aimed at
young readers aged 7 − 9 years and the software is an adventure game
designed to improve their reading skills. The price is £24 +VAT or £26
through Archive.
5.12
•   Grid Algebra − This is the first Archimedes package produced by the
Open University Centre for Mathematics Education. It provides a dynamic
visual approach to algebra for primary and secondary level teaching. The
program relates horizontal and vertical movements over a grid to the
four basic operations of number. Algebraic expressions are generated by
journeys made over the grid. The price is £25 inc VAT from the O.U.
5.12
•   Molecular modeller − Arachne Software are producing a molecular
modelling package which, when completed, will sell at around £50. In the
meantime, if anyone wants a demonstration disc, they are available from
Arachne for £5 refundable against a purchase of the full package.
5.12
•   Nevryon II − This is an upgrade of the original Nevryon shot-em-up
game from the Fourth Dimension. The main enhancement is the two-player
mode so that you can work together to defeat the aliens. The price is
£19.95 from Fourth Dimension or £19 through Archive.
5.12
•   PlayBack − Risc Developments have produced a real-time mouse and
keyboard recording and replay system called PlayBack. A PD version of
PlayBack is also supplied which can be distributed freely to allow
others to replay the sequences you have recorded. The price is £19 + VAT
from Risc Developments.
5.12
•   RISC-OS 3 is now available for all Acorn Risc-based computers. The
full upgrade will cost £89 inc VAT but, until mid-1993, it will be
available at the special price of £49 inc VAT (£50 through Archive
including postage because the manuals are so very heavy). For this, you
get a set of ROMs, fitting instructions, new Applications Discs and the
full RISC-OS 3 documentation and 3.10 Release Notes.
5.12
Owners of A305, A310 and A440 (not A440/1) will need larger ROM sockets
fitted. These are available as a dealer upgrade for £30 inc VAT.
5.12
Schools (or anyone else for that matter!) wanting large numbers of RISC-
OS 3 upgrades can buy a 10-station set for £399 inc VAT. This includes
one set of discs, one set of documentation and ten sets of ROMs.
5.12
A5000 owners can get an upgrade from RISC-OS 3.00 to 3.10, the latest
release, for £19 inc VAT. This includes the ROMs and the 3.10 release
notes − a 40 page document giving the extra features of RISC-OS 3.10.
5.12
(Knowing what happened when RISC-OS 2 was released, I suggest you send a
SEPARATE cheque just in case demand outstrips initial supply. We will
hold your cheques in the order in which they arrive and send out the
upgrades in strict order. Archive readers are the first to know about
this upgrade, so you can be at the head of the queue if you send a
cheque straight away.)
5.12
•   Saloon Cars De-Luxe Extra Courses Volume 1 − 4th Dimension have now
added an extra courses disc to their De-Luxe Saloon Cars game. It costs
£19.95 or £18 through Archive. (N.B. Saloon Cars Deluxe does not work on
Archimedes computers using Taxan 795 monitors.)
5.12
•   ScanLight Professional − A new version of ScanLight Professional is
now available. It utilises a new model of scanner and although it will
be functionally the same, an A4 flat-bed 300dpi SCSI device, it has a
number of advantages. It is only a little bigger than actual A4 size and
it operates marginally faster than the previous model. Most importantly,
it is cheaper than its predecessor! This new version is £595 +VAT (£665
inc VAT through Archive). It should work with all SCSI cards, provided
the manufacturers have followed all Acorn’s guidelines. (It has been
successfully tested with Oak, Acorn, Morley and Lingenuity cards.) N.B.
This scanner can produce images over 8M in size, so you need to think
carefully about what type of machine you are going to use with it.
5.12
•   SCSI hard drives − We have another supplier for Mac SCSI hard drives
that work out cheaper than their Archimedes equivalents. (The price
advantage of the Mac drives from Frog Systems has decreased so we have
stopped selling them.)
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      Internal   External   Access
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   40M   £230   £320   20ms
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   100M   £375   £465   17ms
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   180M   £500   £590   17ms
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   400M   £890   £980   14ms
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   650M   −   £1340   14ms
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   1000M   −   £1760   14ms
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All the drives come with 5-year warranty except the 40M drives which
have 2 year warranty.
5.12
•   Shareware 48 − The latest Shareware disc is Acorn’s Pascal for use
with their Desktop Development Environment. Full details are on page 41.
5.12
•   Silicon Vision prices drop − Silicon Vision has decided that “to
encourage higher volume sales” it is dropping the price its Archimedes
software. The new prices, including VAT, are as follows, the Archive
prices being in brackets after each one.
5.12
ArcPCB   £125   (£116)
5.12
Solid Tools   £275   (£255)
5.12
Solid CAD   £99.95   (£93)
5.12
FilmMaker   £79.95   (£74)
5.12
Solids Render   £99.95   (£93)
5.12
RoboLOGO   £49.95   (£46)
5.12
RiscBasic Compiler   £99.95
(£93)
5.12
RiscFORTH Compiler   £99.95
(£93)
5.12
SuperPlot   £24.95   (£23)
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SuperDump   £24.95   (£23)
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ShareHolder   £125   (£116)
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Datavision   £99.95   (£93)
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These prices supersede the ones we reported last month (which came from
an earlier Silicon Vision press release).
5.12
•   Talking Pictures is “A colouring book that talks” from Wyddfa Software
(£20 inc VAT). This RISC-OS compliant package is a colouring book with
digitised speech aimed at encouraging language development in the under
fives.
5.12
•   Vector 1.02 is now available. This includes the missing text-to-path
feature that RISC-OS 2 users need. It also allows corrupted drawfiles to
be loaded and provides automatic creation of mask substitutes which,
unlike Vector’s own masks, are renderable by other applications.
Existing users can upgrade free of charge by returning their Vector
Applications disc to 4Mation.
5.12
•   Vision Digitiser is a very low-priced video digitiser from H.C.C.S. −
£49 +VAT or £55 through Archive. For more details, see the review on
page 43.
5.12