Totalamiga-01.pdf

CONTENTS

Contents

NEWS

SEAL Update .................. 4

New releases and

Announcements.............. 5

Amiga OS 3.5 ................. 8

Piracy.............................. 10

CU Amiga Closure .......... 12

Amiga Inc. Update .......... 12

Gary Peake Interview ..... 14

Letter

from the

Editor

The Chairman Speaks

According to the non amiga clan the

amiga is dead! Well read on. Back in 92

when I was researching which computer

to buy, the amiga scene was well and

truly alive and kicking (sic), just about

everyone had an Amiga or owned one,

and newsagent shelves were brimming

with Amiga magazines. My mind was

made up, I bought my first Amiga and to

this day I have never looked back.

the Amiga group, my faith in the amiga

community was restored. After the first

phone call I had a steady stream of

Amiga fanatics phoning me to find out

more about my venture, and to join the

amiga user group. Today we are still

recruiting new members.

Hello and welcome to the first issue of

CLUBBED. With this magazine we hope

to make sure that the Amiga knowledge

and experience within SEAL is brought

together in a useful resource for all

Amiga users. Another major aim of the

magazine is to keep readers up to date

on happenings in the Amiga community.

Particularly if you don’t have access to

the internet you can feel very remote

from the wider community. We try to

report all the important happenings and

make you aware of the latest releases

and upgrades.

My wife Sharon usually speaks to

people phoning during the day, Sharon

tells them all about the user group and

with a “why don’t you join” dropped into

the conversation they are usually

members by the time they put down the

phone! Some people just phone for

some advice, saying that they have

seen our flyers (which are displayed in

various computer shops), or it might be

the case that someone has heard of our

user group and has put them in touch

with us. There is always someone to

help, if not myself, then I will put them in

touch with another member who has the

same set-up or specialist knowledge of

that particular problem. This is one of

our aims of the user group, to try and

help and support the amiga community.

Now let me take you forward to 1998,

and well the Amiga scene is not quite

what it was six years ago. Many of the

Amiga magazines have now dis-

appeared which include Amiga Shopper,

AUI, Amiga Power and Amiga

Computing to name but a few, and the

magazines that do remain are now but a

mere shadow of their former selves.

closure and an interview with Neil

Bothwick the CUCD compiler on page

13.

when he emerges gives valuable advice

to our members, and last but by no

means least Robert who is our vice

chairman. Robert is a constant source of

inspiration and enthusiasm and without

him we would not be publishing this

magazine (after a little nurturing from

myself to start up our own magazine

after seeing his outstanding demonstra-

tion on DTP at one of our hall meetings ,

and after lots of positive feedback).

REVIEWS

Review Scoring............... 21

CyberStorm PPC ............ 16

Internal ZIP Drive............ 19

Intrinsic Tower................. 20

ImageFX 3.2 ................... 22

Lightwave ....................... 26

Genetic Species ............. 28

Sensible Soccer.............. 30

PD Paradise ................... 32

On a more positive note we have loads

of news and announcements of new

products and upgrades. Hardware, soft-

ware and games reviews by people who

have really used the products and loads

of hints and tips to help you get the most

from the stuff you’ve already got.

The magazine is produced entirely on

Amigas. The layout is done in

PageStream 3.3, the images are

prepared in ImageFX and Photogenics.

The covers are printed on my HP

Deskjet 1120C as is the camera ready

artwork for the rest of the magazine. we

hope to show just what you can achieve

with your Amiga and some of the top

quality software available.

In March of this year, I had a brainwave

(occasionally these do happen!) was I

the only mortal in South Essex still using

an amiga? Surely there were others to

uncover, people like myself who some-

times needed advice, or someone to talk

to about the amiga scene. The scene

was set, my mind was made up, I was

going to advertise in Amiga Format, my

aim was to see if anyone was interested

in helping to start up a local user group.

My advert was printed in the April

Edition of Amiga Format, now all I had

to do was to wait for all the Amiga en-

thusiasts to start dialling! The first

person to respond was a guy called

Tony who was very keen to be part of

In this issue there is only one tutorial,

we hope to develop this side of the mag-

azine much more in the next issue. Also

if you have any questions you’d like

answered please send them in and we’ll

do a Q + A section.

The point I am trying to make, is that

without a user group people have no

one to talk to about their Amiga

problems, the Amiga scene, or just to

socialise with other Amigans. So if you

think you are the only one using an

Amiga, think again there maybe just

another South Essex Amiga Link just

around the corner!

The committee members of South Essex

Amiga Link are Spencer who is our

secretary/treasurer, as well as coming

up with the missing “link” in (South

Essex Amiga Link), Gary the

“Australian” who is our assistant

secretary/promotions officer. Gary has

the gift of the gab, and he also likes his

“KFC”. Mick Smithson is our technical

Adviser, who goes into hibernation but

In this first issue we have the very sad

duty to report on the demise of CU

Amiga magazine. The last issue is

October which is out now. The closure

was announced on the 13th of August

and came as a great shock to all

Amigans and, as I understand it, to the

staff of CU Amiga. Everyone at SEAL

would like to thank the CU staff for their

efforts and wish them well for the future.

You can find a detailed article on CU’s

As this is the first issue we need your

input, what do you think of the mag,

have we missed anything, what could be

done better? Don’t be shy, send in your

comments and questions and we will

consider them all.

Mick Sutton, Chairman

About SEAL

SUPPORT

Photogenics Tutorial ....... 34

SEAL Membership.......... 34

Subscription Info. ............ 35

Gallery ............................ 36

Enjoy the mag,

Basically, we`re a bunch of Amiga

freaks, who got together due to the in-

spiration of Mick Sutton (”sicky”) We

formed SEAL for a few reasons, and

guess what ? Here they are:) To party

on down with other Amiga users in our

area. To help each other out as much

as possible with our different areas of

knowledge and expertise with the

Amiga. To help out (and be helped),

Amigans worldwide, and generally

keep in touch. To educate, inform, en-

tertain, and promote the Amiga ethos.

rowdy:)

able to escape the evil clutches of Borg

Gates.

Robert Williams, Editor

SEAL commandos are diverse in our

Amiga interests:

Blurb

In the meantime, we’re still going pretty

well. We have the best graphics soft-

ware of all platforms, the best internet

efficient computer, the largest share-

ware site (by far) of all platforms, the

most loyal users, and are playing

Quake, Myst, Descent etc. Amiga is

definitely the most efficient and

friendliest computer ever. Still. Not bad

for a platform that got kicked in the

head by Commodore (spit!) over 4

years ago, eh?

• Photograghy

• 3D gfx & animation

• Graphics

• Programming

• DTP

• Internet

• Gaming

• Music

Clubbed is published quarterly by South Essex Amiga

Link. For subscription details see the back page.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors:

Gary Storm

Mick Sutton

Spencer Jarvis

Roy Burton

Cover Art: Robert Williams

If you have any queries suggestions or want to contact us

for any reason please use one of the following:

EMail:

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 565128

(19:00 - 22:00 GMT only please).

The views expressed in this magazine are those of the

author of each piece, they do not nessecarily reflect the

views of the editor, other contributors or SEAL as a

group.

Please Note: Clubbed is produced by SEAL members in

their spare time, while we will always strive to produce

the mag on time and include all the advertised contents

this is not always possible if other commitments get in the

way. The price you pay for Clubbed covers our costs and

nothing more, we don’t make a profit from it.

If you wish to contact a contributor please send your

message to one of the addresses above and we will pass

it on.

Amiga is a registered trademark and the Amiga logo,

AmigaDOS, Amiga Kickstart, Amiga Workbench,

Autoconfig, Bridgeboard, and Powered by Amiga are

trademarks of AMIGA International, Inc. / Gateway, Inc.

All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their

respective owners.

Throughout the

mag you’ll find

these Tip boxes,

each one has a

handy hint or idea

to help you use your

Amiga more productively.

clubbed@williams.demon.co.uk

SEAL meets monthly on a Friday eve-

ning at our venue, we also have weekly

get-togethers at member’s houses,

where things usually get pretty rude &

Gateway have the miggy now, and are

developing a new Amiga, to be

released late next year (’99). It’s gonna

kick ass, and the pc world will finally be

WWW:

http://seal.amiga.tm/

Post:

Clubbed

450 High Road,

BENFLEET,

Essex,

SS7 4AQ,

ENGLAND.

Find out more on what we’ve been get-

ting upto over the page…

CLUBBED - Issue 1

Autumn 1998

NEWS

With the news pages we try to report the

most important events on the Amiga

Scene and give the views of our

members. For example after the closure

of CU AMIGA we reported the news the

following day and Gary Storm

Interviewed Neil Bothwick (This is also

in this issue of Clubbed, see page 13).

members’ houses almost every Friday!

We have also had four meetings at our

regular hall venue in Basildon. At each

hall meeting we have some topic or

activity planned, here are the things

we’ve been getting up to:

Final Office CD:

Sofwood Products Re-Released

Photogenics NG

Paul Nolan has sent us a quick note

saying he is aiming to release

Photogneics NG in November. However

he has been very busy working on the

OS5 Dev (previously known as the

Bridge System) so Pgs may be delayed.

http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~pnolan/

An American company, Soft Partners

have bought the rights to Softwood’s

suite of Final applications: Final Writer,

Final Data and Final Calc. They have

announced a Final Office CD-ROM

which will include all the above products

along with Softwood’s packs of holiday

clipart and Final Writer for Windows 95.

• Lightwave Demo

• PageStream Demo

• Video/Scala Demo

• Bring and Buy Sale

Here are a few of the things we’ve been

doing at SEAL over the last few months:

World Map Project

For some time now we’ve been working

on a world map showing Amiga

usergroups. The idea behind this is to

allow users to find groups near them in a

graphical way and to show what areas

don’t have a user group near by. We are

working on a three layered system

which will have a world overview, con-

tinental maps and finally, a country view

for those countries with many user

groups (USA, UK, Germany etc.). Work

on this project is temporarily on hold

while we finish this issue of Clubbed, but

should have re-started by the time you

read this.

Power Amiga

User Group

Web Pages

SEAL has had an internet presence

almost from the start of the group, this

has now grown into quite an extensive

web site at: http://seal.amiga.tm/ . We

have information on the Club, which is

regualarly updated with the latest hap-

penings and events, contact details and

a list of members.

Posters and Advertising

We’ve been doing the best we can to get

the news of SEAL out to Amiga owners

in the local area (particularly those not

on the internet). We designed two

posters (one is shown on the back

cover) and put them up in several shops

locally. We have been listed in the last

couple of CU Amigas and our website

has appeared on their CD twice (thanks

to Neil Bothwick). Unfortunatly we

haven’t got into Amiga Format yet even

though we’ve written and EMailed many

times, hopefully next month!

The Final Office CD-ROM will cost

US$100, but Soft Partners are offering a

reduced price of US$65 on pre-orders

for the CD. There will also be reduced

upgrade prices for people who already

own one or more of the included ap-

plications, but these had not been

announced at time of going to press.

This is a new user group in the

Portsmouth area, they’ve only been

going for a couple of months but already

have 25 members! The group offers ser-

vices such as scanning and printing and

regular meetings, they also have a

monthly magazine.

Final Writer, Calc and Data:

three of the Amiga’s premier

office applications, on one CD.

In the Projects section you can find in-

formation submitted by our members.

This currently included a history of the

Amiga, a review of the CyberStorm PPC

(an updated version of which appears in

this issue of Clubbed) and a list of our

essential utilities.

The PAUG website already has loads of

interesting information, including stuff

about the group and reviews of software

and hardware by members. They also

have a website rating section called the

PAUG Internet Awards. A commitee of

their members rate Amiga websites and

award them from 1 to 5 stars based on

site content and design.

The applications on the CD will be the

latest release versions but will not have

any updates, if the Final Office CD sells

well upgrades are promised. As many

people (myself included) will already

have one or more of the applications

included, and therefore may not be inter-

ested in this CD, it is important we let

Soft Partners know that there would be

demand for upgrades. If you don’t have

EMail get in touch with SEAL and we’ll

pass the message on.

Meetings

Over the few months SEAL’s been going

we’ve had a meeting at one of the

Robert

Software Partners:

http://www.softpartners.com

Amiga Writer Demo

John A.V. Services

The commitee awarded the SEAL

website their top 5 star award, thanks

guys!

Haage and Partner have released a

demo (in both English and German) of

their new Amiga Writer word processor

on their website. Amiga Writer was pre-

viously named Easy Writer but the name

had to be changed as it clashed with an

existing PC product. Amiga

Technologies have given H&P approval

to use the Amiga name.

For those that don’t know, Amiga Writer

is a brand new serious wordprocessor

for the Amiga, some of its major features

are:

(01708) 523210 2 Manser Road,

Rainham,

Essex, RM13 8NL.

• Footnotes and endnotes

• List of contents

• Master pages and Chapters

• Paragraph, font & size pop-up menus

• Flexible tab settings

• Many font manipulation options

• Colour selection for text and underline

• Preview of text attributes and colors

• Lock position and size

• Set distance between text and box

• Set line weight and color the frame line

and its background color

• Text wrap around boxes

• Set box to the background or fore-

ground of other boxes

• Multiple columns

• Text formats: AmigaWriter, RTF, ASCII,

expandable by plugins

• Image formats: Amiga IFF, JPEG,

PNG and Datatypes.

So visit their website at:

http://www.richtemp.demon.co.uk/

Or if you’re in the Portsmouth you can

‘phone Richard on:

(01705) 829541 after 15:00

3 Camera

Event Recording:

Also:

World Standards Video

Conversion

Format Conversion

(specialising in obsolete

systems)

The first version lacks a spell check and

thesaurus but these are promised for

version 2 in early 1999 which will be a

free upgrade from version 1. Version 2

will also have a full printed manual.

WoA 1999

Confirmed

Following the success of the 1998 World

of Amiga show the organisers have

announced that the ‘99 show is already

being planned. Dates and venue have

not been confirmed as yet but the

Hammersmith NovaTel is the likely host.

Wedding

Drama & Theatrical

Birthday

Duplication from all

Consumer Formats

Kids

Presentational

Cine, Slide & Photo > Video

Sporting

The official WoA website is now being

hosted by Infinite Frontiers after the

closure of CU Amiga... Surf along to:

http://??

Video > Photo

Haage and Partner are at:

http://www.haage-partner.com

Video Tape Doctor

Private Functions

Amiga Writer showing its

box-based layout.

CLUBBED - Issue 1

Autumn 1998

NEWS

ScanQuix 4

RBM Computertechnik of Germany have

announced version 4 of their ScanQuix

scanner software. ScanQuix supports

several types of scanner:

NewsRog

Tornado 3D 2

GoldED

Studio 5

Eyelight have just released yet another

upgrade to their 3D renderer Tornado3D

which is its third major upgrade since its

release late last year. So far all the

upgrades have been free to registered

users. While on the surface version 2

looks little different to previous versions

many new features have been added

and bugs squashed.

test image then printing it out and re-

scanning. This allows ScanQuix to scan

an image and product perfect printed

output, the program supports 24bit

printing via Turbo Print and Studio. The

Photocopy Pro feature can be used to

take perfect colour copies in conjunction

with Turbo Print.

Newsrog is a new program for reading

Usenet discussion groups on the inter-

net from ShadowWorks software.

ShadowWorks claim it is the most

powerful news client on the Amiga.

NewsRog is a MUI program and is very

well presented, it is designed with a

high-end Amiga in mind but will run on

most OS3 systems. It supports

advanced filtering to help remove spam

(advertising posted to many groups) and

posts from authors who are often annoy-

ing or abusive. The software also allows

the filtering out of entire threads started

by a particular authors making it eaiser

to avoid flame wars (angry arguments)

which often spring up in some news

groups. The filtering can also be used to

highlight posts and threads contributed

to by authors you particularly like.

Dietmar Eilert has announced the

availablity of the latest version of his text

editor GoldED. Version 5 is available in

a CD-ROM package called GoldED 5

Studio, this includes the editor and a

wide selection of Plug-ins which tailor it

to specific uses. For example the WWW

(world wide web) plug-in highlights

HTML tags and allows you to apply

common formating at the click of an

icon. Recently GoldED has been in-

cluded with Haage and Partner’s Storm

C compiler as it’s editor, the new version

integrates into Storm’s development en-

vironment.

• Epson

• Hewlett Packard

• Mustek Paragon

• Artec

• Umax Astra (comming soon)

options

while reading posts

including options to hide

quotes or put them in a scrolling area so

you can get to the new text quicker. You

can read through a group by pressing

just one key that pages through each

post then automatically moves on to the

next one when you reach the end.

Speed Demon

One of the most important features (in-

troduced in version 1.75) is Tornado’s

support for Phase 5’s PowerUP PPC

accelerators. This makes Tornado

(which was already a fast renderer)

many times faster than the 68k opposi-

tion. In version 2 the PPC support is

robust and speeds up rendering by

several times. For example a 233Mhz

PPC 604e renders about 8 times faster

than a 50Mhz 68060.

ScanQuix is sold in the UK by Eyetech.

ScanQuix is a stand alone scanning

application that also lets you scan

directly into popular Amiga programs.

For version 4 RBM have added several

useful functions, one of the most inter-

esting is Calibratix which allows you to

calibrate the scanner by scanning in a

Visit RBM’s website at:

http://www.rbm.de/

Eyetech:

07000 4 26442 (Weird number eh!).

Although it is already a powerful pro-

gram NewRog has the facility to add

new features via pluginsand includes

first-class online documentation in

HTML format. A working demo limited to

2 news groups is available for you to try

out, the full version costs US$30 and is

available from Questar Productions.

Key New Features in 5

• New user interface

• What’s-This help for all buttons

• Dialogs can be left open permanently

• Simplified configuration

• Improved tab support (hard tabs)

• SAS/C environment

• Sequence compiler (faster playback)

• Roget’s Thesaurus included

• Central setup for all add-ons

• Sequences can be saved as AREXX

macros

Keeping Amiga

Companies Alive

Newsrog is fully internally multitasking

so you can be reading one group while

downloading posts from another. It

allows for both on-line and off-line

operation. There are several clever

New Features

There are hoards of new features in T3D

2, some of the more interesting ones

are:

http://www.frii.com/~srk/ShadowWorks/Pr

eview/NR.html

As you can see on these news pages

and in other magazines there are many

fine products still available for the

Amiga, from newcomers like Amiga

Writer to updates on old favourites like

ImageFX. In the Amiga community we

often moan about lack of software and

while there are some things we do miss

people tend to forget the wealth of great

stuff that is out there.

continued support to get them through

the next 12 months. We hope that they

will be developing on OS5Dev during

this period but they still need to eat, pay

the bills etc until OS5Prod machines be-

come available and they can start sell-

ing. AInc have already had a wonderful

response from many developers who

will be working hard to get our favourite

products ported and updated.

CyberVision PPC

• Postscript font support for instant

logos.

• Soft Particles for very realistic smoke

effects.

• Hair Generator to make hair (ob-

viously) and grass etc.

• Mesh Painting makes texturing parts

of an object eaiser.

• Golem Scripting Language allows you

to automate animations and effects via

scripts.

CyberStorm PPC owners will be pleased

to hear that Phase 5’s CyberVisionPPC

graphics cards have now been released.

The CyberVision PPC is an add-on

graphics card for Phase 5’s CyberStorm

PPC and Mk III accelerators. It features

a 3D Labs Permedia 2 graphics

processor which has both 2 and 3D

capabilities. The Permedia 2 is the

fastest chip ever used on an Amiga

graphics card by a large margin,

that allied with a direct connection

to the accelerator and 8Mb of

fast SGRAM should give the

card stonking performance.

The first deliveries of these

cards arrived in the UK in

late July. The recom-

mended price is around

£180 and the cards are

available from several

dealers in the UK including

White Knight Technology.

only about 25-30Mb/s. While this is

twice as fast as a Zorro III card it is

about half what most PCI cards acheive

on the PC. While this is somewhat dis-

sapointing it’s important to remember

that much of the graphics speed is

down to the speed of the

bus between the graphics

memory on the CVPPC

and the Permedia 2 chip

which runs at full speed on

the card and with the latest

CyberGraphX drivers the

CVPPC is still considerably

faster (several times in most

cases) than any other Amiga

graphics card and this is without

the 3D functions being used.

However there is a problem, in this time

of uncertainty for the Amiga market

many Amigans seem to be taking a wait-

and-see approach to spending money

on their Amigas and this is hitting the

companies that have supported us

through thick and thin very hard.

Remember also that any apps you buy

will run on OS5Prod machines through

emulation so you are not wasting your

money.

You can findout more about T3D and

request the 2.0 update (if you’re a regis-

tered user) from the Eyelight website,

http://www.tornado3d.com. Tornado is

distributed in the UK by Blittersoft:

(01908) 261466

GoldED 5 showing syntax highlighting

in Storm C source code.

We will be making an announcement at

the MAE [This refers to the Mid-West

Amiga Expo, a show taking place in the

USA on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October,

ED] that we hope will provide the classic

market with a boost. Stay tuned.”

The full version of GoldED Studio on

CD-ROM is priced at DM89.90.

Upgrades for registered owners and

StormC users are DM49.90. The previ-

ous version of GoldED (4.7.3) has been

made available free from the GoldED

website and is also on the Amy

Resource volume 10 CD-ROM, it is in-

tended as a demo of version 5.

If we want the Amiga to be anything

more than a enthusiasts platform like

the 8bit machines have become we

need to support our companies, here is

a usenet post from Fleccy Moss of

Amiga Inc. explaining why he supports

current Amiga companies:

In some pro-

grams (includ-

ing Workbench)

you can select

several options at

once from the menus,

click on each option with the left

button, then release the right

button over the last option you

want to choose.

Phase 5 have announced that a library

supporting the Permedia 3D functions

will be available soon, which will hope-

fully allow 3D accelerated applications

and games to become available. Look

out for a full review in the next issue of

Clubbed!

Michael Carrillo, a keen Amigan and

webmaster of the Amiga Yellow Pages

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/michael.carrillo,

has organised a survey so Amiga users

can let companies know what they

would like to buy in the near future.

Many SEALs filled one in at our meeting

on the 18th of September, if you’d like a

form EMail Michael at

michael.carrillo@bt.com or contact us

“I have spent over $600 on my machine

over the past few weeks (Scala, DOpus,

Napalm, Foundation and some HW

bits).

The GoldED homepage is at:

http://members.tripod.com/golded/golded

.htm

Find out more about Amy Resoure at:

http://www.amyresource.it

Initial reports from knowledgable users

on the Internet indicate that the CVPPC

might not be as fast as we might have

hoped. The speed of the bus between

the 68k CPU and the card is said to be

Phase 5: http://www.phase5.de

White Knight: (01920) 822321

The developers and retailers need our

CLUBBED - Issue 1

Autumn 1998

NEWS

DOpus 5

Fernando

Mid West Amiga Expo

OS 3.5 Announcement

A1200 Sound Card

Kickstart

Amiga Sale

Napalm!

ClickBoom, famous for Amiga Mist and

Quake have released a demo of their

new Command and Conquer style

strategy game, Napalm. The game,

which supports graphics cards and

AGA, looks and sounds totally cool.

Kato Development have released their

long awaited Melody sound card for the

A1200. The Melody is the first full

duplex 16bit sound card for the A1200.

The board, which plugs into the clock

header, uses a 20bit audio CODEC with

a 108dB signal to noise ratio (compared

to 80dB on many other cards). The card

comes in two versions, base and pro,

the pro version adds a hardware mpeg 3

audio decoder. The Melody 1200 is AHI

compatable for use with a wide range of

audio software and games. Kato have

taken over development of Octamed

SoundStudio for the

Amiga so the new ver-

sion, due soon, should

have excellent Melody

support.

GP Software have announced that the

latest upgrade to Directory Opus 5 (their

great directory utility and Workbench

replacement) will be released at

Computer 98 in Cologne Germany on

the 13th - 15th of November.

At the end of August Kickstart, the

Surrey Amiga user group, held a sale of

Amiga stuff at their hall, they invited all

comers so 4 SEAL commandos made

the trip, Mick, Gary, Dave and Robert.

Just as we were putting this issue to bed

Gary Peake of Team Amiga posted this

announcement from the MAE (held on

the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October) on the

Amiga Web Directory.

There will also be a full Classic OS3.5

emulator shipping with the NG OS so we

can all start buying software again

secure in the knowledge that it will be

supported and runnable with the NG

Amiga!

The background graphics are amazing

and there are a wide variety of buildings

and vehicles all beautifuly 3D rendered.

At the hall there were 18 tables loaded

with bargains including both Classic and

more up to date hardware and software.

Everyone found something of interest to

buy. During the sale we met several

Kickstart members and also the guys

from Amiga Soc (a UK wide group with a

strong internet presence) and the Power

Amiga User Group from Portsmouth.

The upgrade will be called Fernando

and will have many new features and

improvements.

If you want more info. please contact us

at the addresses in the front of the mag

for an update.

This 3.5OS upgrade and the promise of

full emulation in the NG Amiga will

smooth the transition for all Amiga users

to the NG Amiga.

Anyway you can see for yourself by

downloading a demo from:

http://www.clickboom.com

GP Soft:

http://www.gpsoft.com.au

“Reported to me by Team AMIGA

members at MAE (Columbus, Ohio) ...

In the next week or so, a website will go

up especially for OS3.5 and Amiga

Inc will begin releasing information

on the upgrade to the Amiga

press. More details about OS3.5

will also be released in

Cologne....

Directory Opus 5 is distributed in the UK

by Compute! (formerly known as Wizard

Developments): (0181) 3031800

Napalm will be distributed in the UK by

the usual CD-ROM suppliers such as

Weird Science: (0116) 2463800

It is official!!! Amica Inc. announces

OS3.5 with P5 PPC board support

will be done by the first

half of ‘99! It was not

announced however,

whether the OS3.5

upgrade will use the P5

or H&P PPC software.

Later in the day Sensible Soccer and

Doom knockout competitions were held,

great fun was had by all and our very

own Gary Storm came runner up in the

Sensi. Even Robert who has never

played football either on the pitch or

screen was pursuaded to have a go and

displayed his usual games playing

prowess by losing 4-1.

The Melody has a

pass through for

additional

devices, Kato

Develpment

have their own

highspeed serial card for

this port. The board is designed

to fit in both desktop and towered

A1200s.

PageStream

News

Gary Peake gpeake@wt.net”

For several years now PageStream 3

has been the only professional DTP pro-

gram available for the Amiga, during this

time it has progressed from very shaky

beginings to one of the finest pieces of

software available. We use PageStream

3 here to produce Clubbed by the way.

Developed in combination

with a lot of Amiga

developers, OS3.5 Upgrade

will use the current 3.1 roms

and will be a CD ONLY release!

There will be no PPC version,

however PPC support will be in-

cluded using either P5 or H&P PPC soft-

ware, as stated above.

Gary has since confirmed

on the Team Amiga mail-

ing list that the approved

PPC software will be

Haage and Partner’s WarpUP.

Here’s a quote from Fleecy Moss on

Usenet:

You can find out more about Kickstart on

their webpage at:

http://www.arrakis.u-net.com

Here’s a small section from the announ-

cement: “We’d like to make clear

Melody1200 is a High-End product, it’s

not a noisy toy which even shows the

sound of the mainboard and motors of

drives etc.! The price is probably too low

for such a product but this is a conven-

tion of KatoDEV.”

http://kato.home.pages.de

Rob about to lose the game...

surprise surprise!

? You can drag files from Workbench windows onto file reques-

PageStream has been available on the

Mac for a couple of years and now

Softlogik has a Windows 95 version

nearing completion. Many companies

dropped the Amiga as soon as they con-

verted to another platform but Softlogik

have shown a strong commitment to the

Amiga. Version 3.4 for both Amiga and

Mac is promised in the next few weeks

with useful new features such as a spell

checker (much needed here at Clubbed

HQ) and simpler page guide setting.

Version 4 for Amiga will be shipping at

the same time as the Windows version

early next year.

“One of our main reasons for doing

OS3.5 is to (try to) revitalise the Amiga

market. Developers need users to buy,

retailers need stuff to sell and users

need to know that the investments they

make will still be good next year and the

year after.

ters to quickly select that file and directory. Many programs

that don’t run on the Workbench screen have an AppIcon on

the WB, drag files onto this to load them into the program.

Highlights concerning the OS3.5

upgrade:

• RTG Support

• RTA Support

• CDFS Support

• New Interface

• Plus bug fixes and updates to several

areas of the OS

NetConnect 2 In

Availability Shocker!

We hope that the support OS3.5 gives

for graphics, sound and co-processor

cards, as well as accelerators,

memory and IO cards, will

help everyone in the com-

munity. I am jst sorry it’s so

late.”

The long-awaited second version of the

Net Connect internet package has finally

shipped from Active Software. The

package which includes Vaporware’s

internet clients (Voyager, Microdot,

AmIRC etc.) and AmiTCP also includes

several utilities to help integrate the

package. These include a Contact

Manager which stores hotlinks and

people’s address details for all the ap-

plications and an archive extraction

utility X-Arc which can automatically de-

archive downloaded files.

system a GUI configuration utility and an

installation “Wizard” which walks you

through the setup for your internet ser-

vice provider. The aim of these features

is to bring Genesis up to the ease of use

of Miami while keeping it’s powerful

features. For example Genesis can run

more than one network interface at a

time so you can connect to the internet

while remaining connected to a local

network.

Purposes of the OS3.5 upgrade is to

support all the advanced hard-

ware/software that is on the Classic

Amiga market and to allow developers

to code for a higher spec Amiga Classic.

This will open the door for more and

better software and hardware for the

Classic Amiga while giving developers

more transition time into the NG Amiga!

SoftLogik are able to perform these

feats because PageStream has been

specifically designed as a multi-format

program with only the user-interface

areas different for each platform, as

PageStream evolves so does the ver-

sion for every platform.

Finally some good news for

Classic Amiga users. On behalf of

all SEAL members I’d like to thank

Team Amiga, Amiga Inc. and all in-

volved for making this happen.

? You can abort drag (moving an icon, window or other object)

The current version of PageStream is

3.3a, the upgrades to 3.2 and 3.3

carried a small fee, the 3.3a upgrade is

available from the SoftLogik website:

http://www.softlogik.com

Active Software:

(01325) 460116

http://www.active-net.co.uk

operations on the workbench (and in many other programs)

by clicking the right mouse button before you release the left

button.

NetConnect 2 Includes a new version of

AmiTCP called Genesis which gives the

The Melody1200

I/O Module

CLUBBED - Issue 1

Autumn 1998

NEWS

Attempts to downplay this and portrait

DC members as misguided or bored

students is IMHO utterly inappropriate,

and a slap in the face of every serious

Amiga developer, and everyone who

was forced to leave the Amiga in the

past because of piracy, sometimes in

bankruptcy...

ditions for that. Even then the emphasis

needs to be on amnesty, not on the

chance to do “cool stuff”.

shops), were also selling/supplying

pirated goods. In some cases

Commodore knew of this, but did noth-

ing about it, as it`s back was against a

financial wall and it didn`t want to lose

more dealers.

Piracy

Gary Storm

investigates the

continuing problem

of Piracy in the

Amiga community.

As to conventional anti-piracy measures:

yes, I do think threats can help, as long

as they are not empty. I do inform ISPs

(and if necessary, upstream network

providers) about illegal file archives in

no uncertain terms, and sometimes take

additional action as well. So do many

other Amiga software authors who

still care. This means that

occasionally pirates lose

their Internet access or

even their jobs, or are

hit with criminal law-

suits, in particular if

the ISP who is in-

formed about the

illegal archives

happens to be their

employer or school.

So, what can be done to help stop

piracy?

P robably everyone has engaged in

And no, I don’t think that DC can con-

tribute much useful work, or have done

so: So far all I have seen from them are

programs with illegal backdoors, pro-

grams to disrupt or steal the work of

other programmers, programs based on

stolen source or object code, and pro-

grams based on illegally reverse-

engineered algorithms. It is not difficult

at all to come up with “c00l stuff” if you

simply ignore all rules and laws. Some

people on this list seem to have forgot-

ten that, and apparently don’t seem to

care if laws are broken during program

development, as long as the end

product is “c00l”. If this is the attitude of

the new Amiga developer community

then I don’t want to be a part of it, be-

cause the Amiga won’t have much of a

chance professionally.

format your hard-drive. Fun. Not.

Trojan Horse, disguised as a “keyfile

maker”, that allows them to break into

*every* Amiga on the Internet, that ex-

ecuted that program even once before.

With this mechanism DC has stolen

countless keyfiles and copies of com-

mercial software from countless Amigas

and, as a “friendly gesture”, formatted

the hard disks of victims’ computers.

Many idea`s have been bandied about

and discussed on the Team AMIGA

mailing list, which hopefully

will help out the ICOA

group. Ideas such as

having a port specifi-

cally added for a

type of dongle, not

a “bloody hell I’m

sick of this dongle

always getting in

the way and crash-

ing my machine

everytime I have to

use a new one” type

dongle, which we all

hate, and was pretty use-

less anyway (remember

Robocop 2?), but rather a “smart”

dongle which has the latest protection

algorithms (which although anything can

be cracked in time, there is a point

where a pirate won’t want to spend

thousands and years trying to crack one

game). This dongle may also interface

with a chip within the Amiga itself. I’m

confident the many experts (such as

Mario Saitti; Dave Haynie; Fleecy Moss;

Gus Haines; Dimitris Dimitriou; Holger

Kruse; Stephane Desroisiers; and Gary

Peake) can help formulate the basis for

future piracy busting, and make it as

painless for the honest use as humanly

possible.

piracy in one form or another,

maybe you still do?

Blackmail is also in the pirates arsenal,

as Gary Peake pointed out: “Groups like

DC now target certain developers. They

physically make contact either by phone

(usually) or email and ‘make an offer’

such as this ... give us x number of

keys/registrations to crack/give away,

etc and we will hold piracy down on your

software to a manageable level. If you

do NOT play along with us, we will target

you and pirate as much as possible until

we shut you down.

Piracy comes in many shapes - from

taping your favourite tv shows, music off

the radio, or what we’re going to talk

about... software piracy (or more specifi-

cally, Amiga software piracy).

Everyone knows that software piracy on

the Amiga helped to kill off Commodore

(along with Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould’s

mismanagement, and ineffective mar-

keting); the extent of it’s influence can

be debated ad-infinitum, but it did have

an influence. Unbelievably, even with

the tiny Amiga market of today, there is

still a pirate element.

4. spread lies that those backdoors and

Trojans were part of various commercial

software titles, not their own work, and

in doing so ruined the reputation of

several programs and their authors. This

is not only slander in its worst form, but

has also created a reluctance among

Amiga users to connect to the Internet,

fearing their Amigas might be broken

into. The disinformation spread by DC is

continuously being fought by companies

involved in Internet development and by

user groups, magazines and mailing

lists all over the world.

Such measures may

currently be difficult to

perform in some Eastern

European countries, but can

work very well in the US and many

other countries. Certainly more than an

empty threat.

They also keep very meticulous records

and woe be unto him who crosses them

if they first agree to ‘the deal’.

Couple this with the fact that some of

our most prolific current developers are

ex DC, etc and you see the enormity of

the problem here.

There are many reasons people

used/sold pirated software. Users to

save money; test things out; lack of

availability; dodge dongles etc etc.

Pirates to test their “skills” for electronic

street cred, and to make money. It’s a

waste of time going into reasons in any

great detail, as they’re personal and dif-

ferent. What people tend to forget

(myself included), is that dealing with

pirated software actually affects REAL

people, with their REAL lives. There is a

REAL cost in money, emotions, relation-

ships, future, and sanity.

As to the skills of pirates: for the most

part these are highly specialized

Assembler skills and detailed knowledge

of the current Amiga hardware. I fail to

see how this is in any way particularly

significant for a future Amiga with a dif-

ferent CPU and different hardware.

These people would have to acquire

new skills, just like any other (non-

pirate) user.

I also have a “one strike and you are

out” policy regarding piracy. Anyone who

is detected or observed using a stolen

keyfile of any of my products is entered

into a database and will not receive a

registration or any kind of support from

me for ANY of my current and future

products, unless/until I get direct, first-

hand knowledge that this person has

stopped using pirated software al-

together. If that means fewer

registrations to me fine, but it’s a matter

of principle. Those losses cannot

possibly hurt me in the same way as or-

ganized piracy.

Either way, catch 22. In

comp.sys.amiga.emulations it is damn

nigh impossible to get developers there

to openly protest/protect their own soft-

ware. That is left up to people like me

and other Team AMIGA members to do

for them it appears”.

5. committed countless other incidental

crimes, such as using stolen telephone

calling cards for international cracker

conferences and software exchange,

running up phone bills of innocent in-

dividuals and companies.

What we need are people who can write

professional software and who are will-

ing and able to learn, to commit them-

selves, to take product responsibility, to

take personal and financial risks, and to

provide support. This is something I

have not seen from DC so far. I don’t

think that any member of DC could

possibly be more significant to the future

of the new Amiga than any average

Amiga user who is willing and able to

learn how to write software for the new

machine, and to show some commit-

ment.

For a more personal insight, Holger

Kruse (Miami developer) recently said

Especially points 3. and 4. are extremely

significant. If the same thing had

happened in Windows then this would

have been the opener in Headline

News, and the FBI and Interpol would

probably have made every effort to put

the responsible members into jail.

However, since they “only” harmed the

Amiga, a “dead” platform with not much

of a commercial market, apparently

nobody really cares...

This issue was recently brought to the

surface after Gary Peake of Team

AMIGA posted to the list that ICOA

(Industry Council for Open Amiga) had

begun a work group to tackle possible

anti-piracy measures. A fierce debate

(on the Team AMIGA mailing list)

ensued between a member of “DC

Legal” and the other Team AMIGA

members. DC stands for “Digital

Corruption”, a cracking group... pirates,

allegedly. The “DC Legal” section codes

utilities as freeware or shareware, but

the general consensus is at best a case

of guilty by association, and at worst a

way to hack into your hard drive, as

many pirate-affiliated utilities are

actually “Trojan horses”. These internet

based “utilities” allow members of the

pirate group to access your hard drive,

and take any key-files from you, for

spreading. They can also take whatever

else they wanted, in theory, and even

“About Digital Corruption: in case some

of you don’t know yet:

In the meantime, what can we do? Well,

for a start you can delete any pirated

software you have, and buy whichever

programs you find you can`t do without.

or essential. Report any acts of piracy

you encounter on the net or at the local

boot sale. You can phone or mail us,

and we can pass the message on, or

you can call the police.

in the last few years they have

In the end the question, at least with

respect to organized piracy, is, do we

take a stand, or do we cave in ?”

1. cracked, illegally distributed and il-

legally sold about every Amiga program

in existance, using extensive and ex-

pensive computer and network equip-

ment. That’s hardly the result of a few

“bored individuals”. It is the result of an

organized,international crime organiza-

tion.

Others have similar stories. Commodore

lost many promising programmers to the

pc, due to piracy. One friend of Dr.Peter

Kittel was emotionally distraught when

all his hard work on a utility was pirated

to the point of devastation. He moved to

the pc, and became successful there.

He even managed to save up for the car

he never had as an Amiga programmer.

Can you blame him ? I can`t.

Well, I DO care: The overall damage DC

has done to my company is, even

according to careful estimates, so enor-

mous that I cannot possibly “excuse”

this in any form. If any individual or or-

ganization officially “excuses” or

pardons the acts of DC then I will ob-

viously in turn hold that person or or-

ganization responsible for my losses.

A completely different issue is to try and

resocialize pirates other than DC, e.g.

people who simply *use* pirated soft-

ware, and perhaps pass it on to friends,

but don’t play any part in international,

organized crime. I have no objections

against this as long as it is made clear

that *we* do not need *them*, but are

*offering* them a way out of their situa-

tion and potential legal problems, and

that it is ICOA who determines the con-

With effective anti-piracy technology on

the next Amiga, companies will flock to

the system, and software should fall in

price. With effective anti-piracy, Amiga-

Inc won`t go the same way as

Commodore.

2. blackmailed Amiga authors into pro-

viding them with “favors” (financial and

otherwise) in return for not cracking their

software immediately after release.

Needless to say, those “promises” typi-

cally were not kept. Again, the result of

organized crime.

Apparently, it seems that cracking

groups and playground pirates weren`t

the only nails in Commodore’s coffin. A

number of Commodore dealerships (aka

At the end of the day your computing

depends on it. Let`s learn from the past,

and look to the future.

The way I see it, DC is an international

organized crime ring, that engages in

network terrorism and software ter-

rorism.

3. written and distributed an illegal

CLUBBED - Issue 1

Autumn 1998

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