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- Path: news.uh.edu!barrett
- From: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Markus Illenseer)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
- Subject: REVIEW: Gold Fish CD-ROM Set
- Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc
- Date: 27 Jul 1994 23:54:50 GMT
- Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
- Lines: 422
- Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <316s4a$mot@masala.cc.uh.edu>
- Reply-To: markus@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE (Markus Illenseer)
- NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
- Keywords: freeware, CD-ROM
- Originator: barrett@karazm.math.uh.edu
-
-
- PRODUCT NAME
-
- Gold Fish CD-ROM Set
-
-
- BRIEF DESCRIPTION
-
- The Gold Fish CD-ROM is a 2 CD Set which contains the Fred Fish
- AmigaLibDisks 1 to 1000 in archived and unarchived form.
-
-
- AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
-
- Name: Amiga Library Services
- Address: 610 North Alma School Road, Suite 18
- Chandler, AZ 85244-3687
- USA
-
- Telephone: (602) 917-0917
- FAX: (602) 917-0917
-
-
- In Germany, the CD may be purchased from:
-
- Stefan Ossowski Schatztruhe
- Gesellschaft für Software mbH
- Veronikastraße 33
- 45131 Essen
- Germany
-
- Telephone: +49 201 78 87 78
- Fax: +49 201 79 84 47
-
- and
-
- GTI Home Computer Centre
- Zimmermuehlenweg 73
- 61440 Oberursel
- Germany
-
- Telephone: +49 6171 8 59 34
- Fax: +49 6171 83 02
- BTX: *GTI#
-
- Other dealers will follow.
-
-
- LIST PRICE
-
- Suggested retail price is $24.95 (US), or approximately DM 39,90.
- Street price varies in a wide range, so please compare. Amiga Library
- Services offers the CD for $19.95 by direct sale. In Germany the price is
- higher due to import tax and shipping fees.
-
- All mentioned prices are for the complete CD set containing two CDs,
- although the CDs are packaged in one single (special) jewel box.
-
-
- SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
-
- HARDWARE
-
- Any Amiga equipped with a CD-ROM drive. This includes the
- A570, A1270, CDTV, CD32 or any supported third party CD-ROM
- drive.
-
- 512KB of RAM required. At least 2 MB RAM is recommended,
- though 5-8 MB is more comfortable.
-
- A hard drive is required if you plan to copy or install
- some of the software packages on your Amiga.
-
- SOFTWARE
-
- AmigaDOS 1.3 or higher required.
- Works fine with AmigaDOS version 2.
- AmigaDOS version 3 is highly recommended.
-
- A CD-ROM filesystem is required such as AsimCDFS, AmiCDROM,
- Babel CDFS, Xetec CDFS, etc. The Commodore CDFS, supplied
- with AmigaDOS 3.1, is known to have some bugs with the
- tested CD, but it is suitable to get most of the stuff on the
- disc. AmiCDROM is on the CD itself.
-
-
- COPY PROTECTION
-
- None.
-
- MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
-
- Amiga 3000, 2 MB Chip RAM, 12 MB Fast RAM
- Several hard drives.
- Apple CD300 (same as Sony CDU-8003A) CD-ROM drive.
- AmiCDROM Version 1.10.
-
-
- REVIEW
-
- As a general overview, I would like to explain the why, what and
- wherefrom of this CD-ROM. I then will review the installation and the
- compilation of the CD.
-
- Throughout this review, when the word 'disk' is used, I mean a
- floppy disk from the Fred Fish library (the AmigaLibDisks). The word
- 'disc' is used to mean a CD-ROM. Please don't be confused. :-)
-
-
- BACKGROUND INFORMATION
-
- The long awaited Golden Fish is here. It is the assemblage of 8
- years of tremendous work of thousands of authors, artists, magicians, gurus
- and, last but not least, Fred Fish. Here is a little history about how
- this disc came to be.
-
- Since the the Amiga's introduction in late 1985, in the days of
- net.micro.amiga (Usenet's dawn), when the real Gurus attempted to discover a
- wonderful machine, Fred Fish assembled freely available and distributable
- stuff and made it available through a floppy disk-based distribution for
- Amiga-freaks all over the world.
-
- The success of his series is without compare. Fred gathered huge
- amounts of Amiga 'stuff' by fishing around networks himself, or by having
- authors submit their material directly. No other disk series has ever had
- similar luck and acceptance over the years - although the number of direct
- subscribers was never high enough to make it reasonable to continue the
- series....
-
- In 1993, Fred announced that the number of direct subscribers to the
- floppy distribution was not large enough to continue the distribution. The
- number of subscribers increased from 41 to 75 after a call for subscribers
- in mid-1993, but that was still far fewer than the 150 required subscribers
- which would be essential to survive.
-
- As a solution, Fred finally decided to go one step further,
- switching from floppy disks to modern mass media: CD-ROM. This was an
- eventful step with many risks but also many advantages. The 'Fresh Fish CD'
- was born. Its success allowed Fred to stop the floppy disk distribution.
- The response was rather good. It is too much work for the small company to
- continue both floppy disk based and CD based distribution. There are some
- other volunteers to continue the floppy disk based distribution (i.e.,
- Amazing Computers in the US or SAAR-AG in Germany).
-
- To give the end users a bit of time, he continued his normal
- AmigaLibDisk floppy series up to number 1000. This was achieved in December
- 1993. Since then, Fred has distributed his material on CD-ROM only.
-
-
- GOLD FISH
-
- The Gold Fish CD-ROM (from now on called GF) is a 2-disc set that
- contains all of the original AmigaLibDisk series (except for disk 0, which
- was eaten by Fred's dog :-)). Not a single file is missing, except for some
- copyrighted material he had to delete, making this disc set a wonderful
- treasure to keep you busy for days.
-
- Every floppy disk is made available on the CD in both archived form
- (lha archives), and unarchived form (normal directory structure of the
- disks). The first CD contains disks 1-1000 in archived form, and disk 1-249
- in unarchived form. Disk two contains disks 250-1000 in unarchived form.
- This makes 650MB for each CD - the maximum a CD can contain.
-
- The first CD contains the archived floppy disks in a BBS directory
- for direct use in a BBS (Bulletin Board System) or on an anonymous FTP site
- on the Internet. This directory contains a subdirectory for each disk. In
- these thousands of subdirectories are archives for each software package.
- There are no archives for the entire disks. A program called 'PufferFish'
- creates redistributable - original - Fred Fish floppy disks out of these
- archives.
-
- GF comes in a nice, slimline jewel box that holds two CDs in the
- space of an ordinary, single-CD jewelbox, for convenient storage.
-
- GF was mastered in the ISO 9660 Mode 2 format (hence no crippled,
- MS-DOS format filenames). I couldn't locate any directory-level deeper than
- 4 or 5; hence, the CD is ISO-compliant and will work with almost every ISO
- filesystem.
-
- During the making of a CD, due to a missing 'feature' of the
- ISO-9660 filesystem, which is used on every good CD-ROM, the original Amiga
- protection bits are gone (e.g., Script, Archive, Execute, and also
- filenotes). This makes it impossible to start shell-scripts directly off the
- CD if they make use of the S-Bit (Script). Fortunately, there are not that
- many tools on GF depending on this. The only (supplied) way to restore a
- file's original protection bits is by extracting it from its corresponding
- lha archives in the BBS directory.
-
- (A technical note: it *is* possible to store the missing flags and
- filenotes. ISO-9660 and the Rockridge Extension do support this, but both
- the ISO image (during creation of the CD) and the CD-ROM filesystem have to
- support that extension.
-
-
- INSTALLATION
-
- There is no installation required. A simple 'setup' script expands
- search paths to LIBS: and C: on the CD for supplied libraries and commonly
- used tools like 'MuchMore'.
-
-
- USAGE
-
- What to do with such immense source of programs, goodies, tools,
- pictures, sounds, and texts?
-
- Indeed, the purpose of an archive CD is limited. It can be seen a
- large and useful backup medium, or as useless, hopelessly outdated trashcan.
- Your mileage may vary.
-
- One could just browse through the entire disc -- a man-life of work
- (mythical man month :-)) and get lost in the depths of icons, directories and
- documentation.
-
- One could search for specific stuff. For that purpose, four
- methods are provided.
-
- The first is the file "FileList", which is found on the first CD.
- This file is probably the fastest and most useful way to find distributions.
- It covers only the BBS part of the (first) CD.
-
- Second are the two "CRCList" files on both CDs. These files contain
- the entire file tree of the CDs (that is, the full name of every file) with
- CRC (Checksum) information. This method is best for finding single files.
- It covers all material on both CDs.
-
- For these first two methods, a tool like 'grep', 'c:search' or an
- editor with a search function is required.
-
- The third method is AKwic, a simple GUI using its own database,
- searching for normal strings in filenames. Quite fast and reasonable. I
- like that it displays all found matches and then asks you for a further
- choice rather than showing you only the first match and then asking you to
- search for the next match. It covers only the BBS part of the (first) CD.
-
- The last tool is KingFisher. This program is a big one. The entire
- library has been catalogued, classified and merged together in this database
- program. KingFisher is complex and demands a bit of knowledge about how a
- database (like Lotus, Excel or somesuch) works and how to find specific
- stuff. KingFisher allows you to search for a wild range of keywords such as
- 'name', 'graphics', 'author' and more. This enables you to find related or
- similar programs,. Unfortunately KingFisher is a bit a too large of a
- program to be used every now and then. Covers only the BBS part of the
- (first) CD.
-
- It is quite annoying that both AKwic and KingFisher don't cover the
- unarchived material of GF.
-
- The unarchived part of the GF contains most of the stuff assembled
- in the way the original floppy disks contained the packages. This is even
- the way the authors or submitters send the material to Fred or elsewhere.
- Unfortunately not all the packages are really unarchived. Mostly, source
- code hasn't been unarchived and left assembled archived. This sure saves
- rare disk space, as is - funny enough - required for GF for not being a 3 CD
- set. GF is *full*: not a single megabyte more is available. The argument
- is left to the user. Note that the original file and directory structure of
- the floppy disks has not been changed in any way. Not a single icon has been
- altered.
-
- GF contains often used programs like Installer, MuchMore, AmigaGuide
- and more, so that you can use most of the installed software packages
- directly off the CD. Most of the packages though are intended to be
- installed on a hard drive, as they are either complex packages which quickly
- alter files and need a writable medium, or are simple tools required at
- startup time. Games, hacks and texts can be left on the CD of course. You
- name it.
-
- I can't review the material on the CD - it's hopeless. Let's just
- say that there's too much stuff on it. :-)
-
-
- LIKES AND DISLIKES
-
- I hate being forced to swap the two CD's every now and then, but
- that is a feature of GF - too much material to be assembled on one CD. And
- then again, what is swapping of two CD's compared to playing "disk jockey for
- thousands of floppy disks?
-
- Also, I really hate the text viewer 'MuchMore' used all over. And
- there is almost no way around this, as most (all?) entries of it ask for a
- ':C/muchmore' rather than to use 'muchmore' and leave the rest to the file
- search path of AmigaDOS. Then I could rename my lovable 'More' to
- 'MuchMore' and use that one. There are even other possibilities, quite
- fancy, but these would require a complete rework of the CD, which is not the
- goal of GF.
-
- [MODERATOR'S NOTE: The problem that Markus mentions can be solved.
- If you are running AmigaDOS 2.04 or higher, check out the program
- ToolAlias on Aminet. ToolAlias is a commodity that substitutes one
- tool for another without actually changing the icon. For example,
- you can specify that whenever someone clicks on an icon with the
- tool ":C/muchmore", the program "sys:utilities/more" is automatically
- used instead. I have been using the program for a year and have
- found it to be quite stable. - Dan]
-
- I don't claim to be a Workbench user -- I barely use it -- but I
- don't like the look of GF on the Workbench. Sometimes the windows open at
- random positions. Some icons look fancy, shiny or are unusable. But I must
- acknowledge that this is the way the material was submitted by the authors
- and it never was an intention of Fred to change any material. So I must
- blame the authors. *BLAME* :-)
-
- I like the general compilation. I started - years ago - with Fred
- Fish Disk #75, and never really had a chance to look at earlier material.
- Also, over the years, I lost track of sometimes quickly updated disks, hence
- GF offers me a chance to keep up. There is quite a lot of material I've
- never seen before, although I had the possibility to grab them every day via
- BBS or ftp. But I simply didn't know about them... who can read all those
- 'Contents' files?
-
- What a pity that some of the material can be found updated
- every 20 disks. But that was important at the time Fred distributed
- his floppy disks on a monthly base. I can't blame him for submitting
- an entirely complete archive.
-
- Shortly after GF was pressed, it was discovered that some files on
- the discs were copyrighted or contained viruses. (Strangely enough, they
- have been on the floppy disks for years!) These files have now been deleted
- and a new pressing of GF has been issued. (The first pressing is completely
- sold out.) Upgrade from first pressing to second is possible for a small
- fee. Write to Fred or Amiga Library Services for more information. Some
- other changes have also been involved, such as a bug-fixed KingFisher. If
- you have the first pressing, the virus-containing files won't affect your
- Amiga unless you happen to execute them.
-
- You can also write to Udo Schuermann for a new version of KingFisher
- with new features. Most probably also with updated Databases.
-
- A probable disease is that the CD contains outdated material. This
- is life. Everything changes. Some of the material is timeless and can't be
- found elsewhere, some stuff has never been updated since, whereas other
- stuff is updated so often that the most recent version does not appear on
- GF.
-
-
- COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
-
- There is only one product which contains lot of Fred Fish Disks,
- this was the (nowadays) way overpriced CD from Almathera, which contains the
- disks 1-750 in unarchived form. Unfortunately, I can't compare GF with this
- CD because I don't own it and never had a chance to borrow it. I don't know
- if there is a database tool for quick access of material.
-
- [MODERATOR'S NOTE: There have been several other Fish Disk CD-ROM's
- in existence. Hypermedia produced 7 versions of their "Fred Fish
- Collection" CD-ROM, Asimware Innovations produced "FishMarket",
- Xetec produced two "Fish and More" discs, and possibly there have
- been others. - Dan]
-
- The Fresh Fish CD's also contain some of the last disk based
- material, but I don't think I should compare that with this entire
- archive.
-
- Similar to the GF is the 'Frozen Fish' CD from Fred Fish. This
- is a single CD based archive CD, which contains disk 1-1000 in archived
- form.
-
- Last minute: Fred also informed me, that he intends to release a
- special PC/BBS form of the Frozen Fish with disk #1-1000 as 1000 individual
- lha archives, one archive per floppy disk.
-
- The only other floppy disk based series, which made its way to a CD
- I know of, are the German AMOK and SAAR series. They made a CD containing
- about 730 disks in unarchived form. Fortunately enough it seems that this
- CD is not a subset of any of Fred's material, but a completely own archive.
- This CD is intended for German users, as many of the texts and programs
- haven't been translated into English.
-
- As the last several hundreds Fred Fish AmigaLibDisks were sometimes
- a subset of material found on the Aminet ftp sites, I should compare GF with
- the existing Aminet CDs, but I think this would turn into some sort of
- religious war. :-)
-
-
- CONCLUSIONS
-
- The GF is a must for every Amiga User. Either for personal use, for
- shared use with friends, to be made available on BBS or via FTP - this
- archive is what you need. It is also a nice family album of the world-wide
- Amiga community.
-
- For a future release of GF (it is not required, and I think will
- never be done), I would like to see a KingFisher which is far more easy to
- use. Also it should cover _all_ supplied material.
-
- [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Kingfisher is continually being updated, and an
- official release is scheduled soon. The program does not need to be
- physically on the CD-ROM: you can install it on your hard drive.
- - Dan]
-
- GF is a reliable product, which is quite usable. I rate it 4 out
- of 5 stars.
-
- The last star can be achieved if the CD becomes cheaper - but this
- is up to you. Support the makers of Amiga specific CDs and make it possible
- to issue large amounts of CDs. The higher the amount, the lower the price!
-
-
- COPYRIGHT NOTICE
-
- This review represents my honest opinion. Your mileage may vary --
- tell me about it!
-
- Copyright 1994 Markus Illenseer. All rights reserved.
-
- You can contact the author at:
-
- Markus Illenseer
- Kurt Schumacherstr. 16
- 33613 Bielefeld
- GERMANY
- Voice: ++49 (0)521 103995
-
- markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
-
- ---
-
- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
- Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu
- Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu
- Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu
- Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews
-