Acorn Risc Technologies StrongARM CD-ROM

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Text File | 1996-07-13 | 27.4 KB | 564 lines

___________________________ _____________ ________ / | \| \ | | / | | \| | / | |\ | | | / /| | |/ | |\ | | / /_| | | | > | | / | ______/| |/ | |_______ / | | | | | / /| | | | | | / / | | | | /| | /_________/ |________|_______| |_____________/ |________________| Archimedes Public Domain Library _____ ______ __ __ ____ _ _____ | __ \| ____| \/ |/ __ \( ) ____| | | | | |__ | \ / | | | |/ (___ | | | | __| | |\/| | | | | \___ \ | |__| | |____| | | | |__| | ____) | |_____/|______|_| |_|\____/ |_____/ _ __ _ _ __ __| | / _` | '_ \ / _` | | (_| | | | | (_| | \__,_|_| |_|\__,_| __ __ ___ _____ ___ ___________ _ _ ______ _____ | \/ |/ _ \ / ____|/ _ \|___ /_ _| \ | | ____|/ ____| | \ / | |_| | | __| |_| | / / | | | \| | |__ | (___ | |\/| | _ | | |_ | _ | / / | | | . ` | __| \___ \ | | | | | | | |__| | | | |/ /__ _| |_| |\ | |____ ____) | |_| |_|_| |_|\_____|_| |_/_____|_____|_| \_|______|_____/ This part of the catalogue contains non-commercial 'Demos' and animations and also disc magazines. For prices and ordering information see the main catalogue 'APDL Info'. All items in this section count as ONE POINT towards Bonus Discs. ____________________________________________________________________________ -=-=-=- DISC MAGAZINES -=-=- Disc magazines abound for some makes of computer, especially the Amiga. Personally I prefer my magazines printed on paper but the biggest advantage of a disc mag is when you've finished reading it you still have a disc - so far I haven't found a way of reformatting a printed magazine. M001 -=- Power to the programmers - Issue 1 -=- Disc-based games magazine from Coin Age aimed at Arc. enthusiasts. Filled with a number interesting articles and well worth a look. This is aimed mainly at games programmers or those that want to learn how to write games and is therefore fairly technical. M002 -=- New Dawn Magazine - Issue 1 -=- Issue One. A variety of items and some good and informative articles. Published by Quantum and contributors include Tom Cooper who has written some of the best PD games for the Archimedes. Also includes two original games. I have reviewed several disc based magazines in the past, normally costing about £3 per issue, and this is the by far the best of any that I have seen-and it's PD. If this high quality continues I shall try to include all future issues. M003 -=- New Dawn - Issue 2 -=- It has so I have (see above). If anything it's better than the first issue, mainly because there are more 'outside' contributions. M004 -=- New Dawn issue 3 -=- The third issue of New Dawn. Completely different from the two earlier ones. There are some new members and this has resulted in major changes. More 'articles' but I found some rather puerile and others a bit smutty so it couldn't be recommended for younger users and mature users probably wouldn't be interested. I found the font used rather awkward to read although it's nice to look at. There are two (short) articles on programming. No facility to print these from within the program but they're text files so you can do so yourself. Only one game, which I didn't find very exiting. In all, probably quite good, with a more polished interface than before. However in my personal opinion the content is not up to the high standard of issues 1 and 2 but bearing in mind the low standard of many disc mags this is really 'praising with faint damns' so don't be put off! M005 -=- Spectrum issue 1 -=- A new disc magazine from the people who brought you the Riscy Game flight simulators. I'm not going to go into detail about what's in it, if you like disc magazines then try it and see for yourself. M006 -=- Lunchtime issues 1 and 2 -=- The first two issues of Lunchtime magazine archived onto a single disc. This is a rather unusual disc magazine because it has articles on a lots of subjects - except computers! Most of these are humorous without descending into either smutt or 'in jokes', which does rather make a change. M007 -=- Lunchtime issue 3 -=- Third issue of this interesting mag (subtitled 'Edward's Revenge'). Includes an Interview with God. Presumably because it's a non-computer oriented mag they didn't think Bill Gates would be appropriate. M008 -=- Virtuality Sample Issue -=- The 'PD sample' of Virtuality magazine which has now merged with Illusions. Quite a lot of reviews and other articles but it's biggest fault is that it uses !Magpie. This makes it slow and cumbersome and very difficult to get hard copy of bits you are interested in. M009 -=- Lunchtime issue 4 -=- 'Yul Brynner's Memorial Toolshed'. No, I won't tell you why it's called that - you'll have to read it and find out. Once again there's a lot to read. The user interface is improved so the text area is bigger and the colours are nicer too. Lunchtime continues to improve and shows no sign of the contributors running out of ideas. M010 Thumper - Issue 1 Interesting new magazine with various articles including info on drum programming for Soundtracker writers, help and examples for Persistence of Vision, a Repton type game and some fictional stories. TipTop - Issue 1 A magazine from Tim Willis which is intended to be a continuing review of Archimedes PD. The content is a bit sparse on text so there's very little 'real' information about the programs reviewed, but on the other hand it compresses well so it doesn't take up too much disc space. The main problem is the display interface. This is a desktop package from Musbury Consultants and *would* be very good except that if it decides it doesn't like the current screen mode it changes it. I end up with a %^&&$y awful flickering Mode 13 screen and have to change to something more suitable. Unforgivable in a commercial package from people who should know better but not the fault of the magazine TipTop - Issue 2 Similar to the first issue but with about double the editorial content. M011 -=- Opinions -=- The first four issues of this magazine compressed onto one disc. This magazine is edited by Linton Dawe and looks very interesting. Opinions 1 Reviews of FontFX, poster and various PD programs Opinions 2 Reviews of Pipedrean 4 and various PD, plus various other articles Opinions 3 More reviews and an article on outline fonts. Opinions 4 Improved user interface. Various reviews and an article on Watford Electronics. This is obviously a personal opinion but it reinforces my own and that of many others who have dealt with them. I suggest you take note. M012 -=- Thumper issue 2 -=- Better than the previous issue with improved interface. Still a bit thin on content but shows a lot of promise. Includes a few PD applications and some short Tracker tunes. M013 -=- Core Dump -=- Now this is a magazine I *like*. It's actually full of interesting things! The user interface is intended to make it easy for you to read the articles rather than just be pretty (although it's that too, especially the second issue). Scrolling sideways moves back and forth in the current article and up and down moves between articles. Nice. CoreDump 1 One interesting item is a discussion on fitting two MEMC's to enable you to have 8Mb of RAM in an A310 (and probably an A400 as well). Also a piece on doubling the speed of a 486 PC but I wouldn't advise you to try this unless you're prepared to scrap the motherboard if it fails. CoreDump 2 Improved user I/face. You can now switch the sound off (well, turn down the volume to zero) and the 'dissolving scroll' adds a nice touch. Articles on programming the VIDC, ARM code, a DIY 30Mhz A5000 (sound plausible) and how NOT to speed up your A3000. M014 -=- The folding Fifth -=- No, I don't know why it's called that and I can't be bothered to find out. This is a magazine which is supposed to contain articles on non computer related topics. Owing to the fact that it uses Genesis and the 'links' are either scrambled or it's just incompetently written I couldn't even *find* the articles so I don't know what it's like. If you are one of these strange people who actually like Genesis/Magpie then you might want to take a look (perhaps you can make it work!) M015 -=- Kalaeidoscope -=- A 'sample' issue of a proposed new disc magazine. Doesn't look bad but, as usual, they've chosen to use fancy graphics so although the disc is crammed full (there isn't even room for a copy of ArcFS which you will need) the editorial content is not very large. The proposed 'proper' version will have 3-4 discs and cost £3.50-£4.50. Personally I have a strong objection to 'professional' (?) programs that remove my RAM disc, alter my mouse speed and don't properly restore the system font, so I'm not impressed. M016 -=- Lunchtime issue 5 -=- 'Wardrobe Racing for Foreigners'. Even bigger and better than the previous issues. Nothing more to say, is there? NOTE - The tools used to create Lunchtime are available as the 'Meditate' package on B255. M017 -=- Spectrum Issue 2 -=- Issue two of Spectrum magazine. Reasonable balance of articles about PD software, computers, and various other topics (even football gets a mention - how low can they get!). The software is quite good too, although it can be a bit quirky - you use the mouse to select items but then the arrow keys to scroll the text. Still, it's probably one of the best disc mags around, disregarding 'specialist' mags only Lunchtime equals it. M018 -=- Spectrum Issue 3 -=- The user interface is much improved (easier to use and faster) and this issue is a great leap forward. Lots of interesting contents, all non technical, and as well as reviews of many commercial products there are also short reviews of dozens of PD games. Now works perfectly on the Risc PC (issue 2 needed Game On). Highly recommended. ___________________________________________________________________________ This section contains non-commercial demos. These are normally programs written by enthusiasts to show off the graphics and/or sound capabilities of the Archimedes. The other sort of demo's are demonstrations of commercial software which can be found in the 'Commercial' catalogue. This type of program is most likely to suffer from compatibility problems, especially with the Risc PC. They are often written by people who have graduated from other computers and who have never even heard of the PRM's, much less actually made use of them. Some badly written demo's appear to run OK but cam cause a complete crash when they finish. In general my advice is ** MAKE SURE YOU DON'T HAVE ANY UNSAVED DATA BEFORE RUNNING A DEMO ** Quite often the only 'way out' is to press RESET. Sometimes they do stupid things like clear memory or clear the RMA. Sometimes even a 'hard reset' (CTRL-RESET) won't work and you will actually have to switch the computer off and on again to restore things to normal. Of course, many demo's ARE written by genuine Acorn enthusiasts who do know how to write good software and which return you cleanly to the desktop if you press ESCAPE, but it's best to be prepared for the worst just in case. Despite all these difficulties demo's can be great fun. Some have absolutely staggering graphics displays which push the machine to its limits. The Archimedes is probably the only computer which is fast and powerful enough to enable quite exotic demos to be written in interpreted Basic. Sometimes this is combined with a few machine code routines to speed things up. This means that although the best demo's are written in machine code or compiled languages programmers don't need to be experienced in these to produce good displays. Quite a few demo's are written in Basic and this is often a good way for people to see 'how it's done'. D004 and D005 - These contained Maestro tunes. As there is a new section in the Individual Catalogue for these they have been deleted D007 Projector - 1.11 from Ace Computing, disc 1 with 8 demonstration films. Compacted files D008 Projector - 1.11 from Ace Computing, disc 2 with 13 demonstration films. Compacted files D015 Music / graphic demos from Brothers in Arm. !ArmScroll, !Bounce, !Rotate, !Scarface, !Z_Brother D027 Demo 1e12, Demo6399, Demo01 (works on RiscPC if you run it twice!), DudsDemo and James (Bond 007). D028 DVS demos. Two applications, !Ray1 and !Ray2, each of which consists of a series of animated ray-traced images plus a selection of stills. All of these can be selected from a menu. D044 !BallsDemo and !Arcangels by Arc Angel, !Armaniac2, TCD Demo1 by The Chip Duo, Arctic Software's !PDemo and Medway_1 D045 Two demos from Network XXIII, Granny (Chow) and Wibble. D048 Four demos from Archima/Pisoft based in Belgium, some very nice effects. !Archima (needs 2MEG), !Automate, !Demolition and !Wierd. D052 Seven demos, !Demo_A, !PV_DEMO, !Ripoff, MEDWAY1, !DEMO (Bouncy bar demo), !Flump1 and BLOB (Zombiesoft demo 6). D055 MegaDemo by Armaxess, a truly mega demo in six parts. Also !Overscan1 by Medway 256 and ArabelaI. D057 Three cartoon demos from German group Software Evolutions, Lucky Luke, Cubitus and Disc Run. Amusing and definitely different to any other Arc demos to date. D061 QRT Demo 1 - A demonstration of this excellent raytracer with many animated half screen pictures and a witty and moral AMF the Doomwatcher scrolltext. QRT Demo 2 - Another demonstration,this time an animated film about strange beings called Blibbles. D063 !Ba (Bananaland by Sick), !Froggy, !Stingray and AM-Demo1 D064 Seven demos - !CamSoft, !DDD, !DreamSide, !Flip, !MegaNet, !Pathetic1 and !Pathetic2. D065 Three demos from DudleySoft - !5Min, Demo2 and Demo3. Plus !Blood and !MDemo-I. D066 !MrM - a suite of five demos (!Balls, !MyDemo, !Scroller, !Starfield and !TheRing), !DemoGe72, !BOE and !Rats. D069 Amiga Star Wars Walker demo. This version requires a minimum of 2 meg memory and hard disc. D070 Walker demo, for 1meg machines. Cut down version of D069. Plus !Balls, Andy_Demo and !Demo_001. D072 !Squirrel animation demo, similar to "Mission Impossible" advert on TV. Requires 4meg. D073 !CokeCan, !Gopher, !Wurld and C4 demo. D076 Projector (1.11) from Ace Computing. Disc 3 with 5 demo films. D078 !Archie, !Error, !G-o-d, !IrqDemo1, !QuickLime, !Runner, !Scroller and !TacRock D079 Seven demos - !Canada (best with 2meg+), !3d_demo, !Demo_3, Eg_Intro, !Ferris, !PVS and ZODIAC. D086 !RiscDream by Armaxess, even better than their previous MegaDemo, very good indeed. Plus !Wellen and !MaxIsBack. D088 Two demos from Software Evolutions, !PicShow and !Xmas, plus !FishDemoS. D089 !TeaPot rotating teapot demo, !Slide demo complete with sliding block puzzle plus CC's Newton's Cradle demo. D095 GelloSim, !SoundDemo, !AECDemo, !Awesome2, !SuperBall, !3, !Tunnel2 D096 !AceDemo4, !DarmTanz, !SoundDemo and Arc Angels' !WaterDemo. D097 Arc Angels' Mega Demo, excellent. Be warned, it does contain a little bad language. B098 !TNT (The New Triad), !Decem, !Windows and ACEDemo2 D099 BIA's !Demo2, !BitBox and !TransMrtl from ArcEmpire. D100 ARMageddon's MegaDemo and !Ball_Rot, !XYMOX and a demo of Spacetech's Orrery. D101 Three demos - RockBand from Arc-en-ciel, !KanDemo and !StuDemo7. Plus a few desktop sillies, !B+Q, !Border, !Cat, !CrazyIcon and !Plopper. D102 Three demos - Arc Angels' !PowerDemo, !Tertius from Arc-en-ciel and !Apple. D106 11thHour, AmpDemo01, AmpDemo02, BarDemo2 and FunkyDemo. D107 Ice Cream demo from Hig Risc a five part demo that includes a Frogger type game, NB requires at least 2meg and a MEMC1a chip. D112 Armless 1, 3 and 4 and Orange Squash, all by Wayne Keenan. D113 Rainbow demo. A collection of 43 short Basic programs. Nothing very exiting but as they are all fairly short they would probably be useful and instrutive to anyone interested in Basic graphics programming. *** updated and some extras added August 93 *** PLUS - ParaManic - A short 'scrolling stars' demo in Basic by Wayne Keenan and - Laser - a nice variation on the scrolltext theme by Chris Stephens. Once again these are included more for their interest to programmers although they are still worth looking at. D114 !Chubby, !SkulDance, !SMSinFive and !Yeah. All Basic demo's from Wayne Keenan PLUS Three nice scrolltext demos from Stuart Tyrrell, imaginatively called !StuDemo2, !StuDemo3 and !StuDemo4. They are all more than just scrolltext, some have simple games included. *** !Arctic added June 94 so it replaces Data Stream DD-004 *** D116 Digital Aurora from Quantum (needs 2Meg) plus the short demo !SomeC D117 !Roller, ray traced balls running down a ramp, makes Amiga owners go a funny green colour. !SkullDemo, !Beauty,'The Beauty of Fractals' demo plus four other stunning graphics demos called, imaginatively, Demo1, Demo2, Demo3 and Demo4, two with C source code. NOTE - This disc is so full there wasn't room for a copy of ArcFS so you will need one from somewhere else. D118 !4DSolids, good graphics demo which rotates various three and four dimensional geometric shapes in a desktop window. !Bricks, short demo of flying bricks, !Thomas, animation of Thomas the Tank Engine, !WildWest, animation of wild west steam train, !LiteBike, good animation of ray traced Lite Cycle going in circles, !Rats, utterly pointless demo of bouncing rats with an inordinately long wait before anything happens. D119 Two scrolltext demo's, KOOL ICK from Kuldip Pardesi and RAIN. Although it's 'only' a scrolltext Kool Ick is actually worth watching. Rain is nothing exceptional but it's written entirely in Basic assembler so nosey programmers can see how it's done! D120 !Datawaves, !Stars (simple scrolling starfield in Basic assembler), !Tecc (the Author calls this an electronic Christmas card), !Triangle (a sort of orbiting scrolltext), !SlomptNeon (an imitation flashing neon light display, simple but very effective with the lights out), !FogDemo (the first original idea I've seen in a long time). D121 !Animated (three different 'movies' at once), !Fourier, Demo3 from Noah, !Coral (draws 'coral like' structures), !FlagDemo from Arm's Tech, !House (rotating perspective drawing of a house in a small window), !Persian (display Persian rug style patterns), !Planet (draws the Earth from any point in space in various ways (slow but good). D122 Five good demo's from Moonlight Graphics - !Chick, 2DWaves, Jogger, !Earth (very good), !ESP. The last one is billed as a 'game' but really it's a demo with a simple guessing game !Waves by Graham Hick Plus some graphics programs - Foglia, Juliana+, Ripples (superb), Snow2, Squares, Patcol. D123 !VeryBig - A 'very big' (about 1.2Mb) desktop morphing demo !Rings, non desktop screen of moving circle !WavePlasm, a screen of moving multi-coloured wave patterns - would make a good (flashy!) screensaver D124 !Tertis from SICK. This is a Tetris game but it's a standard non desktop version with loads of flashy effects bolted on. The graphics are very good, no doubt about that, but they're so intrusive that you wouldn't want to treat this as a 'real' game. If you want a good game there are plenty of alternatives, if you want some nice graphics.... !Molehills = unexiting scrolltext. There may be more to it but as usual I'm too bored to wait and find out !Colours1 = Now this really is an interesting scrolltext (not the text, people who write scrolltexts NEVER have anything to say). Very flashy, very colourful D125 Data Stream discs DD-002 plus DD-003 !BallsDemo and !ArcAngel (both from Arc Angels), !RUN, !Windows, 222Sprites, C4 (nice animation of the Channel 4 TV logo), Triangles (just four moving triangles, shows how even a few lines of Basic can produce stunning effects on the Arc.), !ARMscroll, !FullBordr, !Rotate and !Bounce (all four from Brothers in ARM), !RipOff D126 Brain Dead. This has some very good effects and superb graphics displays. It's let down by a moronic scrolltext with bad language, appalling grammar and worse spelling. Also be prepared to switch off your computer when you finally get fed up - the usual ex-A***a owner's poor programming techniques thoroughly screw up everything. D127 A series of short(ish) Basic demo's which will be useful to anyone who wants to see 'how it's done'. !Bounscape, !Message, Scroller1, !YastiB, !Ballox, !Boxar, !MicroLiza, !Ognas, !Planet, RotatOr, !TacRock, TurboTxt2 with various other tools and short demos from the same author. PLUS !Scroll15, a 'sample' scrolltext which illustrates the techniques used and NewScrolle which demonstrates fast scrolling of anti-aliased fonts. D128 A collection of demo's from AMF - !777, !Salaam 8, !Solemnis, !Novem and !Decem. Unlike most demo's with scrolltext AMF's are normally worth reading and don't just consist of a load of 'hello to...' and other moronic utterings. PLUS !Pathetic3 and !Kryten D129 !Ped>Hex - A demo 'rave video'; text on a constantly changing phsychadelic background. Very hypnotic effect. !Megatar - Very good graphics and sound effects spoiled by boring text which goes too fast to read on an ARM 3 unless you switch off the cache. This is probably worth watching right to the end, I'm told it's very good, but I can't be bothered to wait for all that 'greetings to...', especially when most of it's in German! D130 Render Bender animations. Almost 2Mb of Render Bender pics. Five animations, Soldiers, Dripping tap, BoxDemo, RollerDemo and SpiraDemo PLUS Four ray traced pictures created with Clare's Render Bender package complete with source code. NB Needs ArcFS v2+, not supplied. (Was APDL D037+D059) D131 Weather satellite demo. A sequence of 16 infra-red weather pictures depicting the weather systems over Western Europe and North Africa on a particularly stormy day (Mon 29/Jan/1990). PLUS Five whole screen, high resolution sprite images depicting Great Britain on three days in April 1990 decoded using the Spacetech weather podule and five more whole screen, high res sprite images - four of Great Britain and one of Europe - taken on 19th and 20th July 1990. Decoded using the Spacetech weather podule. (Was APDL D016+D021+D041) D132 !Cindy_C from Quantum. Probably only of interest to frustrated adolescents who lust after Cindy Crawford but, on consideration, that could be a substantial proportion of APDL customers! Well, at least we now know a bit more about 'Nemesis' of Quantum. D134 !BBC2 - You know that BBC logo - the one where it looks as if someone's flung a pot of paint over the '2'...... !Bodgering - Well, the name's original. !SFDemo1 - Solar Flare demo 1. D135 Three Ray Traced animations. !Krypton from Stephen Mansfield, !Mirrors (no name), and the superb !Molecule from Richard Cownie and David Seal of Acorn. D136 !FlyingPig, !DemoBars, !Dreamers, !HotDog, !BallCubes, !HotDog - all scrolltexts with various additions - plus MegaDemo from George Saliaris. This reproduces a graphics display from Greek TV. The original was produced on SPARC workstation, so, although it's soundless, it's a good illustration of how powerful the Arc is. Makes a nice change from all those boring scrolltexts (and it gives your ears a rest!) D137 !Jelli - very good Rave demo. The graphics are 'flashy' rather than stunning but the music really is superb. !TripATron - Great fractal images, much better than some of the 'normal' graphics displays PLUS !Erasure D138 !SquoQuo. No, I don't know where they get these stupid names from, but there does seem to be a connection between the silliness of the name, the banality of the scroll text and the use of words like 'grafix', 'muzix' and 'compie'. This is really quite good but the Authors say (yes, there's actually a !Help file) that the scrolltext lasts for about 30 minutes so I doubt if you'll stay til the end! D139 !Prodigy4 - Jericho. A large sound demo. It contains over 1.2Mb of compressed sound samples. Nothing much to look at but great sounds, especially if you've got extension speakers or headphones. Wire your Arc up to the hi-fi, turn up the volume, and wake up the neighbours. D140 !Pulse - Another sound demo, not as load as Prodigy4 but there's a choice of two plus a nice psychodelic graphics display as well. !PPP_Demo3 - Usual scrolltext and graphics demo, all in Basic. D141 !PPP_Demo4 - 'Timewave'. Much better than number 3. All in Basic (uncrunched) but has some great effects. Crude scrolltexts (the implimentation, not the content), but lots of nice, short, interesting, graphics routines. !Flump3 - Not state-of-the-art but quite good. D143 Liquid Dreams from Quantum. This is probably the best demo I've seen so far. I actually managed to watch it without falling asleep or feeling a strong desire to go and make a coffee while waiting for it to finish. Some nice, imaginative, effects (and no scrolltext!). Very few demo's are worth the time it takes to watch them, but this is definitely one that is. D144 Rave1 from Chris Savage and Richard Aldridge. Three high quality original tunes written using Coconizer with a non desktop selector/player (not nearly as pretty as !Resonance). Works OK on RiscPC with !GameOn.